FIC (ST): "Ten Punishments, or The Decalogue According to Elim Garak" (G/B, G/Du, G/m; rated R)
I've been feeling nostalgic about my old fandoms, so...
Title: Ten Punishments, or The Decalogue According to Elim Garak
Author: pen_and_umbra
Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Pairing(s): G/B, G/Du, G/m
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, willy-nilly blasphemy and, erm, implied mpreg except not really.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Viacom/Paraborg pwns j00 all.
Word count: 4,315, complete
Summary: The one death, two curses, and seven death sentences of Elim Garak's life.
Notes: This has to be the strangest story I have ever written. Honestly. I liked how it turned out but where the original idea came from, I do not know and can't even begin to start guessing. This is more fic recycling; originally posted to the ASCEM mailing list in 2004.
Ten Punishments
or
The Decalogue According to Elim Garak
* * *
by pen_and_umbra, 2004
He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed. (Ex. 22:20)
Elim Garak's last sacrifice is not for Cardassia but for love, and he is surprised he's not more surprised at his reasons. His voice is quiet when he touches the headstone.
"The years changed both of us, my love." He knows Julian would smile, but he's not there with him. "Our family," he adds. A dash of blood wets his cracked lips.
Thirty years ago, he would have never thought he'd meet his end on his own front yard in South Metok City, or that he could kneel on green grass there. But it is grass that's wetting his aching knees and real sunshine he can once again feel on his back, although the Human tombstone seems so out of place on Cardassian soil.
If you seek my monument
Look around you
A fitting epitaph for a man who made the grass green again. Garak's heart swells in pride as he looks around, seeing all that Julian gave him and Cardassia. The green grass, the chartreuse sky, the decades filled with the most unlikely of things: love.
When he speaks, his voice is thick with the blood. "You gave me everything, when you were all I needed."
A few feet away lies the slab marking Mi'boq's grave, now half overgrown with moss. Garak estimates that in another dozen years, the moss will have covered the entire grave; maybe then, the Bolians will stop pestering the Cardassian government to return the body. He'll never see that day because he's half gone already, his senses dulled. He can't feel the slender poniard that sticks out of his chest or even the sun any more. All he feels is the love that he had inside, a grain of sand that had once troubled him. Now, it is encased in luminescence, in mother of pearl, in the memories of the decades he shared with Julian.
Where it seeps into the mulch hiding Julian's decomposed body, Garak's blood makes the moonswain flowers grow red for years to come.
It takes Gentor a day to find his father's body. Garak is buried in the traditional Human way although Gentor unwittingly errs in the details: Elim Garak's duranium urn is set atop Julian Bashir's, in the same grave. The headstone is erected next to Julian's and the epitaph is done in Standard, much like Julian's is in Kardasi.
Surrender to the sky
Your heart of anger
Years later, Gentor is buried there, too, between Mi'boq and their fathers. His epitaph speaks of patience, because that's what his Cardassian father taught him.
* * *
And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death. (Lev. 24:16)
The first rule of any good interrogator is, Wait. That moment, Garak hates Cardassia for stealing his best trick, because she's making him wait.
He gave all that was his to Cardassia, yet she asked for more and more and more, until he had nothing left but his eloquence. With that, he curses the name of his only lord and ruler. Quietly, of course, because it would only humiliate him more if he were to make a spectacle out of his misfortune. Here, at the end of space, he waits, silently, counting the rotations of the space station he inhabits. He's gotten used to being patient; in fact, he has made an art of it.
Garak grins into the semi-darkness of his tailor's shop. Enabran would be so proud.
Good interrogators learn that waiting and observing, not sharp blades or blunt objects, are their tools. Torture is the last vestige of the desperate, the method of those who care only of the quantity and not the quality of the information they get. Men in pain say many things and confess to any atrocity when suitably encouraged...and such blindness to the truth has no value for men like Elim Garak. Quality is what he delivers, be it with his tailoring or in the darker pursuits of his past, and he always does it by waiting. Endless patience, not genetics, is what made him Enabran's protégé.
He sometimes misses the blood, though -- at moments like this. Garak looks into the darkness and the low lights that pierce it, and attempts to hear the blood coursing through his veins.
He knows how the scent of blood can be intoxicating, its sticky heat like the finest aphrodisiac to an addict like him. Alas, he cannot hear his blood, and he has long ago learned how to do business without breaking skin. In the end and as the irony of ironies, he became too good in what he did to spill blood. His skills killed his desires.
But then again...there can be new desires. Garak puts down the laser seamer and sits back.
"Garak to Bashir."
The viewscreen in front of him flickers on to show Dr. Julian Bashir's harried countenance. Despite his obvious tiredness, Julian smiles.
"Bashir here. What can I do for you, Garak?"
Garak lifts his eyeridge into a measured show of disapproval. "Sleeping would be an adequate starting point, my dear doctor. Pardon my bluntness, but you look terrible."
Julian's sardonic yet amused smile makes a pool of warmth ignite in Garak's abdomen. He makes the decision like he always does: swiftly and with no hesitation. It would be tonight.
"Thank you. Now did you call with a specific subject in mind, or were you just in the mood for some general harassment?"
"Mmm," Garak temporises as he recognises the glint of something heated in Julian's eyes. Oh yes. Tonight would be perfect. The scales along his spine bristle as desire rises in him. "As a matter of fact, I did have a specific topic I wished to discuss with you...over dinner."
That night, Garak teaches Julian many things about Cardassia and Cardassian stamina, but he also learns -- learns that he can have desires without blood. His world is changed for good.
* * *
He that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death. (Ex. 21:15)
Elim Garak is sixteen years old and his world has just changed irrevocably. His palm stings where it hit his father's cheek and he wants to see if his father's cheek stings, too, but all he can see are the tips of his shoes. He burns inside because Enabran has not understood his actions. He explains although he knows it's in vain.
"I love him, father." His voice sounds thin even to his own ears.
"And so you took him with a knife?"
Garak closes his eyes. In a flash, he remembers the blood and the keening, wet sound Lemtek made and the way his muscles corded as he fought against his bonds. Somehow, seeing the memory of the blade entering Lemtek feels more arousing, more intimate, than any of the times when his cock was in its place.
"He wanted me to." His father has taught him well; the lie is convincing.
"I doubt that, Elim."
"But he did!"
Enabran looks five hundred years old. "Very well. We'll speak of it no more."
Garak feels relieved because he hasn't yet learned that every action changes him. Because of poor Lemtek, he will always prefer a sharp blade to a blunt tool, and that's just the first of his lessons.
The years afterwards are a blur. Enabran teaches him things he doesn't like but must know. He learns that humanoids can still smell after their nose has been cut off and that hearing the pain of others is more effective than pain itself. Fear is to be his tool, not pain. Good interrogators have no ego because they're subservient to the needs of their subjects.
These are important lessons he sometimes forgets, because his need for blood overcomes his good senses. During his mistakes, he learns to enjoy the intimacy of pain and the smell of fear. He learns that fear is a smell he will know even with his nose cut off, because it comes from within that intimacy.
For Garak, from that day until Julian, sex is but a precursor to violence.
* * *
He that believeth not, shall be damned. (Mark 16:16)
Garak has forgotten the meaning of faith long ago. He needs a saviour to erase the seven years of emptiness and dust on post-Dominion Cardassia, and when one walks into his office at the Provisional Government complex that morning, he also forgets how to speak.
"Well, don't look so surprised," Julian says and smiles.
Garak's memories have faded, faces becoming blurred and featureless, but not Julian's, never his face. That smile is still as sharp in his mind as it is in piercing his heart.
The lie is automatic. "I'm not." Automatic, but expected.
The smile widens. "I've come to help." He dangles the Doctors Without Borders insignia from one finger.
"But...why?"
"Because I believe in the Cardassian people." He doesn't say that his faith is stronger than people, but he doesn't need to; Garak can see the knowledge in the dark wells of his eyes. "I have faith in you."
"I'm glad." I'm glad one of us does, Garak thinks but doesn't say. He doesn't quite trust Julian, but that's only because he knows of his difficult years.
"I've missed you, Elim. Us."
Later on, there is time to curse circumstances and recount all the stories they have accumulated during their time apart. They'll speak of Julian's dealings with Section 31 but never of the Obsidian Order, because some things are best left in the dark.
Right now, though, all Garak can think of are Julian's hand on his and that smile that's just for him. He never did learn how not to think of Julian from the distance they have carefully maintained, and that smile says he doesn't have to, not any more. Julian doesn't care that he is old or too short for a Cardassian or that his gestures have always been slightly too epicene. Julian embraces his flaws, his claustrophobia and curious delicacy and sensitivity to fashion faux pas. All of it.
There will be no more distance, Julian's gaze says. Just us, it promises.
Garak wishes he could believe these things, these promises. A part of his soul withers away because he is old and can't see that Julian will be the one to teach him the meaning of faith again.
* * *
And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death. (Lev. 20:10)
Garak never forgets his first mark.
A Gul in the Central Command, Tisamet Ghemor is a Cardassian patriot, a husband to the noble Mist'ika, a father four times over, a beautiful body of muscle, and a most dangerous man -- a predator who will not be prey except accidentally. People who know the right things easily manufacture such accidents.
Garak has come to know these things, things learned in the indirect, convoluted way one learns of such matters in the Obsidian Order. He's learned that Tisamet is also a man of many vices, among them expensive kanaar and young men of impeccable physique. So when Garak visits him that day on the pretence of business but with a gift of Kshi'ankanaar and himself, he has faith in what's about to take place.
Because he's still young, it takes Garak two minutes to verify he has judged Ghemor correctly (he soon learns to read the signs in seconds) and another five minutes of polite flirting (something he learns to savour only later in life) until Ghemor leans in and puts his hand on Garak's thigh.
"Please, Mr. Garak. Do call me Tisamet."
Garak smiles and the hand on his leg moves to his groin. "Of course. Elim."
"Elim."
That first time, Tisamet fucks him right there on the divan. Garak sees stars because the hard, ridged cock inside him makes him forget how to breathe and think and feel anything but his own lust and the man on top of him, screaming his name. He comes three times that night and every time, Tisamet catches or swallows his semen as if it were the exquisite kanaar he brought.
Three days later, when Garak can sit down again and after Tisamet has undoubtedly finished the kanaar, an accident is arranged for Mist'ika Ghemor. Garak takes care to select a method that is not too mutilating, yet convincing enough. Mist'ika's body survives the fall reasonably intact and during the funeral, Tisamet takes Garak's hand in his. The sorrow and need bleed through the connection into Garak, and his desire is so strong that it takes several years before Enabran can convince Garak to dispose of him.
In Tisamet's funeral, Garak has no hand to hold on to. Instead, he grasps the slim ceremonial dagger of the Obsidian Order, and the sight of it makes everyone whisper and give him a wide berth. Tisamet's brother, Tekeny Ghemor, watches him with something dangerous gleaming in his eyes, and Garak wonders whether the blade of the poniard he holds would feel the same going into Tekeny as it did in Tisamet. At the thought of Tekeny's blood, his uniform seems especially constricting and Garak makes a mental note to have Mila look into letting it out at the seams.
When Tisamet's ashes are scattered into the wind, Garak feels a part of his soul wither because he is young and doesn't yet know that there will be others. One day, he will have a family that has nothing to do with blood.
* * *
If a man lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. (Lev. 20:13)
"We need to talk, Elim."
Garak smiles patiently. Julian doesn't need to say which topic he intends to address. "When the time is right."
"When will that time be?"
"Not right at this moment, at least," Garak says and gestures around his office with the padd in his hand. "I'm trying to work."
For a heartbeat, quiet returns. Garak knows it won't last.
"You're beautiful."
Julian always describes him with the strangest of adjectives, and not just when he has Garak's cock inside him. He is always resplendent, exquisite, incandescent, sublime -- all these loquacious, decadent, multi-syllable things Garak would find ridiculous if Julian didn't say them so earnestly.
"I am?"
Julian leans forward. "Superb."
The languid quality of Julian's voice makes it hard for Garak to concentrate on his padd. "You do realise that we can't procreate the old-fashioned way," he temporises, knowing where the words are leading him. "Don't you, Julian?"
"You're dissembling."
"Of course I am, my dear."
"Well, then." With a haughty little gesture, Julian adjusts the glasses perched on his aquiline nose.
Julian has worn glasses since his fiftieth birthday and Garak relishes the sight of them. He was so perfect and the glasses make him...less perfect. More human. With an amused snort, Garak surrenders his concentration and puts his padd down to look at his husband. Teasing Julian about his recent obsession with offspring never fails to incense him, which in turn entertains Garak.
"Lie down. Please." Garak taps the obsidian surface with the tips of his fingers, gently, as if it is Julian's body he's touching and not his desk. Julian complies but before that, he takes the time to undress, slowly, as if they are Garak's hands unfastening the catches of his suit and not his own.
When Garak slides his finger into him, Julian moans. Two fingers, and he talks, barely. His glasses are slipping down his nose and Garak nudges them back up with a finger even as he pushes his by now severely distended cock into Julian.
"Please, Elim. Please." He doesn't talk any more; he whimpers, despairing and pleading.
Garak smiles through the red haze of his mounting pleasure, looking down at Julian, his soul tender and bright. "Of course, my love. Always."
In the end, Julian bucks and kicks and comes with a scream that turns heads in the crowded foyer of the Cardassian Provisional Parliament. Those that don't know don't dare to ask, and those that do know only smile smugly.
* * *
Whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. (Ex. 31:15)
Garak is young and new to Bajor, so he doesn't know it's a holiday; the plant husks and wreaths decorating the house mean nothing to him. It will be years until Major Kira teaches him the meaning of the Bajoran Gratitude Festival. The irony of words versus actions will amuse him for years to come. Gratitude, indeed.
"Sheket."
The man flinches at his name, almost imperceptibly but the move is there. Good, Garak thinks. He has not been in the Resistance long enough to become hard. His shell is brittle and transparent.
"I am Sheket," he rallies.
"You know why I'm here." Not a question but an assertion. On loan from the Order in an unusual gesture of inter-agency cooperation, in fact, and Garak wonders what Enabran's plan is. He knows it has something to do with Dukat, but he's yet to receive his orders.
"I have no idea, Cardie."
Garak smiles. Like glass, this man. "You'll learn."
He puts his portable kit on the table and opens the box. In the sunlight, the instruments glitter and gleam with their purpose, and the man goes as pale as the spring wheat in his fields. Garak knows that this moment is of importance: the first steps towards the incredible intimacy a torturer and his subject share. He's slowly learning to like these moments. His anticipation of the blood, the seduction of his voice and manner.
All through that sunny afternoon, Bajoran blood crawls across the floorboards at Garak's skilled touch. Following its meandering path with his gaze, Garak wonders why the Bajorans won't do as their blood does: follow the path of least resistance. It would make his life easier and he wouldn't have to work through such a lovely day. He'd much rather be back on Terok Nor, sharpening his verbal blade with Gul Dukat or, perhaps, fucking him. He finds both activities pleasant enough.
The Bajoran is young and too brave. The Resistance have much to learn, and so does Elim Garak. Years later, he understands that spilling blood is too direct a method; the Bajorans, on the other hand, never seem to learn that particular lesson.
* * *
He that curseth his father or his mother, shall surely be put to death. (Ex. 21:17)
"Damn you, Enabran."
A marriage is always a compromise, but also more than the sum of its parts. Garak knows how lucky he is and on most days, he tries not to be too smug about it.
Julian has learned to like the odd things he likes, the bites and the bruises, while he has memorised the gentle things Julian prefers. Together, they alternate from experiments in something Julian calls "Tantric arts" to nights that leave bloodstains on the sheets, and both have taught Garak that there is no end to Julian's curiosity. His inquisitiveness is Garak's delight, yet that day it's that trait of Julian's that has brought him humiliation.
"Damn him," Garak repeats, quietly. He wants to use stronger words but in his mortification, he can't think of any.
Julian's hand is warm on his. "I'm so sorry, Elim."
Garak's smile is one of his not-smiles. His Julian, the doctor, knows these things and doesn't smell of fear like he himself must do. Julian understands the sesquipedalian diagnosis ("sexual dimorphism capabilities intact [...] atrophied oviducts [...] oogenesis unlikely [...] indissoluble haemopoietic tissue abnormalities") and the slowly rotating diagrams of his blood cells on the screen, when all Garak can think of is that even from the grave, Enabran has come to smite him.
"There's nothing to do?" His pain is a living thing. In three days, he'll start calling it Enabran's last revenge. "Nothing?"
Julian shakes his head and draws closer, his fingers making soothing caresses in that place on Garak's neck he's long since learned. "It's grafted into your blood markers, Elim. I can't undo it any more than I can undo my own genetic corrections."
In a way, Garak appreciates Julian's unperturbed demeanour in the face of his deficiency. To Julian, it's a medical fact, part of Garak and in no way a shortcoming, but Garak knows better and the irony is staggering. The alteration of his blood is not something Enabran, his father, saw as a deficiency (inability to produce eggs), but an enhancement (immunity to certain neurotoxins).
"There are other options, Elim. Donors. Adoption."
Garak leans into Julian's embrace. "I know," he whispers. His father's shortsightedness has robbed him of his breath.
Five days later, Garak walks back to his hotel, mere five blocks from the Institute where Julian still works to undo the deficiencies in his altered body. In his numb sorrow, Garak doesn't see the Bolian girl running at him until they collide. At first, Garak thinks he has tripped over a dog or some other Human pet that so often are allowed on the streets of Paris unleashed. He soon learns otherwise, and that her name is Mi'boq.
* * *
Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death. (Ex. 22:19)
Like his father, Dukat treats them like the animals they are. Garak wonders if that is something Ektor Dukat taught his son, much like Enabran taught claustrophobia to his.
When he puts his hand on Dukat's shoulder, Garak can feel the tension. "This can wait, can't it?"
"Bajorans," Dukat says, almost spitting the delicate syllables. "I try and teach them, and this is my thanks?"
Garak nods. He remembers that frustration, too. "Fifty?"
"I'm making it an even hundred this time," Dukat growls as he keys in the order. "Worthless cattle."
When Garak takes his hand and gently guides him towards the bedroom, he can still feel the tension singing through Dukat's slender, steely body. Mass murder gives him headache, Garak knows, and decides to alleviate the pain.
That night, when he screams Dukat's name and afterwards, before he falls asleep in a bed sticky with sweat and semen, Garak wonders when he should dispose of the monster at his side. It's a question of when and not if -- not because Dukat is a monster, but because he is a weak monster. His avid appetite for Cardassian men is of no consequence, but the Order considers his equally unquenchable appetite for Bajoran women a liability. Enabran's signature is now on the order and as it was with Tisamet, Garak has no choice but to obey.
Perhaps poison, Garak ponders. The death of a traitor would suit a beast like Dukat, although using the poniard he has secreted under his pillow would be far more enjoyable. In his young life, there are few things Garak loves more than the slight, wet resistance he feels when his blade slices through warm flesh and the iron scent of blood. He unlearns that love later in life, when experience teaches him subtlety, but at that moment he's still bound by his naïveté.
Sleep claims Garak before he can come to a conclusion. His sleep is untroubled, because he falsely believes he has time to come to a decision. He doesn't yet know that his judgement is in error and that his fate is to end his life in the Order only to begin a new one at the locus for his fall from grace: Terok Nor, the Guardian of Space and of flawed men.
* * *
And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you. If you will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name, ... behold, I will corrupt your seed. (Mal. 2:1-4)
Their family is a riot of textures and tones, from grey to pink to the pure blue of Mi'boq's skin. Secretly, Garak loves how un-Cardassian it is. Aliens, orphans, and exiles; artists, doctors, and not one soldier.
His Human fingers are cool on Garak's brow. "I always thought they'd have your eyes."
Garak looks into the deep, warm brown eyes even as he feels the arousal that skitters through his aging body. He's coaxed into life by the cool touch that, by now, knows him better than he himself does.
"We'll never know, will we?"
Julian's gaze flickers away, clouded and unclear behind the silver-framed glasses. "We have Gentor and Mi'boq."
Secretly, Garak relishes the fact that if nothing else, Mi'boq carries the colour of his seed. Mi'boq, the brave and fragile that followed him home on that bleak day many years ago.
Garak smiles although his heart is breaking anew. It always does. "It's not the same." His words simplify the tragedy to Human terms. "Is it?"
"I don't know. Do you?"
Garak doesn't answer that time, if only because he's heard the words so many times already. They've had this discussion in too many times, in too many words already. He never wanted children but Julian did; irony, then, that the obstacle was not in his husband's enhanced genes, but in the weakness of his own blood. His failure. Enabran's last revenge.
Later that night, Julian falls asleep in his chair, a padd still clutched in his hand. He doesn't wake up when Garak comes over and brushes his greying hair off his high forehead.
"I don't know how I could live without you, Julian," Garak says. He can hear the broken glass in his voice. "I'm so sorry I couldn't give you the children you so wanted."
* * *
End
* * * * *
I've been bogged down by work and school and will be so until the end of the month. Agh. In meetings my spare time, I've been writing. Current to-do list:
* That forever-in-the-works Snape/Karkaroff. Sigh. *stabs it*
* More Snape/Harry in the style of PG Wodehouse, á la Round Bottom, Twelve Inches.
* Do Not Taunt the Happy Fun Ball, a Harry Potter/Star Wars crossover crackfic (I stole the name from someone's icon and now I've completely forgotten who had it. Help?)
* The Coruscant Rules (Anakin/Palpatine, and NC-17 this time. Promise.)
* My jedi__santa giftfic, and I finally have a plotbunny!
* Three slashfest prompts -- two Star Wars, one Dorian Gray. Three. I must be mad.
* Amuse Bouche, Holmes/Watson, NC-17
Oi. Oh! And if you're a Trek fan, you really should go and download Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning. It's a feature-length sci-fi parody, made by and for fans, and funny as hell. The special effects kick ass from here to the Delta Quadrant.
ETA: Don't forget to put in your entries for the Star Wars T-Shirt Slogan Competition! You have until October 20 and there's stuff to be won.
ETA2: Damn, I'm once again late for the Beta Reader Appreciation Day. So let me just say, guys? Love you. Thank you so much. I wish I had more firstborn children to go around to give to you.
Title: Ten Punishments, or The Decalogue According to Elim Garak
Author: pen_and_umbra
Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Pairing(s): G/B, G/Du, G/m
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, willy-nilly blasphemy and, erm, implied mpreg except not really.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Viacom/Paraborg pwns j00 all.
Word count: 4,315, complete
Summary: The one death, two curses, and seven death sentences of Elim Garak's life.
Notes: This has to be the strangest story I have ever written. Honestly. I liked how it turned out but where the original idea came from, I do not know and can't even begin to start guessing. This is more fic recycling; originally posted to the ASCEM mailing list in 2004.
Ten Punishments
or
The Decalogue According to Elim Garak
* * *
by pen_and_umbra, 2004
He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed. (Ex. 22:20)
Elim Garak's last sacrifice is not for Cardassia but for love, and he is surprised he's not more surprised at his reasons. His voice is quiet when he touches the headstone.
"The years changed both of us, my love." He knows Julian would smile, but he's not there with him. "Our family," he adds. A dash of blood wets his cracked lips.
Thirty years ago, he would have never thought he'd meet his end on his own front yard in South Metok City, or that he could kneel on green grass there. But it is grass that's wetting his aching knees and real sunshine he can once again feel on his back, although the Human tombstone seems so out of place on Cardassian soil.
If you seek my monument
Look around you
A fitting epitaph for a man who made the grass green again. Garak's heart swells in pride as he looks around, seeing all that Julian gave him and Cardassia. The green grass, the chartreuse sky, the decades filled with the most unlikely of things: love.
When he speaks, his voice is thick with the blood. "You gave me everything, when you were all I needed."
A few feet away lies the slab marking Mi'boq's grave, now half overgrown with moss. Garak estimates that in another dozen years, the moss will have covered the entire grave; maybe then, the Bolians will stop pestering the Cardassian government to return the body. He'll never see that day because he's half gone already, his senses dulled. He can't feel the slender poniard that sticks out of his chest or even the sun any more. All he feels is the love that he had inside, a grain of sand that had once troubled him. Now, it is encased in luminescence, in mother of pearl, in the memories of the decades he shared with Julian.
Where it seeps into the mulch hiding Julian's decomposed body, Garak's blood makes the moonswain flowers grow red for years to come.
It takes Gentor a day to find his father's body. Garak is buried in the traditional Human way although Gentor unwittingly errs in the details: Elim Garak's duranium urn is set atop Julian Bashir's, in the same grave. The headstone is erected next to Julian's and the epitaph is done in Standard, much like Julian's is in Kardasi.
Surrender to the sky
Your heart of anger
Years later, Gentor is buried there, too, between Mi'boq and their fathers. His epitaph speaks of patience, because that's what his Cardassian father taught him.
* * *
And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death. (Lev. 24:16)
The first rule of any good interrogator is, Wait. That moment, Garak hates Cardassia for stealing his best trick, because she's making him wait.
He gave all that was his to Cardassia, yet she asked for more and more and more, until he had nothing left but his eloquence. With that, he curses the name of his only lord and ruler. Quietly, of course, because it would only humiliate him more if he were to make a spectacle out of his misfortune. Here, at the end of space, he waits, silently, counting the rotations of the space station he inhabits. He's gotten used to being patient; in fact, he has made an art of it.
Garak grins into the semi-darkness of his tailor's shop. Enabran would be so proud.
Good interrogators learn that waiting and observing, not sharp blades or blunt objects, are their tools. Torture is the last vestige of the desperate, the method of those who care only of the quantity and not the quality of the information they get. Men in pain say many things and confess to any atrocity when suitably encouraged...and such blindness to the truth has no value for men like Elim Garak. Quality is what he delivers, be it with his tailoring or in the darker pursuits of his past, and he always does it by waiting. Endless patience, not genetics, is what made him Enabran's protégé.
He sometimes misses the blood, though -- at moments like this. Garak looks into the darkness and the low lights that pierce it, and attempts to hear the blood coursing through his veins.
He knows how the scent of blood can be intoxicating, its sticky heat like the finest aphrodisiac to an addict like him. Alas, he cannot hear his blood, and he has long ago learned how to do business without breaking skin. In the end and as the irony of ironies, he became too good in what he did to spill blood. His skills killed his desires.
But then again...there can be new desires. Garak puts down the laser seamer and sits back.
"Garak to Bashir."
The viewscreen in front of him flickers on to show Dr. Julian Bashir's harried countenance. Despite his obvious tiredness, Julian smiles.
"Bashir here. What can I do for you, Garak?"
Garak lifts his eyeridge into a measured show of disapproval. "Sleeping would be an adequate starting point, my dear doctor. Pardon my bluntness, but you look terrible."
Julian's sardonic yet amused smile makes a pool of warmth ignite in Garak's abdomen. He makes the decision like he always does: swiftly and with no hesitation. It would be tonight.
"Thank you. Now did you call with a specific subject in mind, or were you just in the mood for some general harassment?"
"Mmm," Garak temporises as he recognises the glint of something heated in Julian's eyes. Oh yes. Tonight would be perfect. The scales along his spine bristle as desire rises in him. "As a matter of fact, I did have a specific topic I wished to discuss with you...over dinner."
That night, Garak teaches Julian many things about Cardassia and Cardassian stamina, but he also learns -- learns that he can have desires without blood. His world is changed for good.
* * *
He that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death. (Ex. 21:15)
Elim Garak is sixteen years old and his world has just changed irrevocably. His palm stings where it hit his father's cheek and he wants to see if his father's cheek stings, too, but all he can see are the tips of his shoes. He burns inside because Enabran has not understood his actions. He explains although he knows it's in vain.
"I love him, father." His voice sounds thin even to his own ears.
"And so you took him with a knife?"
Garak closes his eyes. In a flash, he remembers the blood and the keening, wet sound Lemtek made and the way his muscles corded as he fought against his bonds. Somehow, seeing the memory of the blade entering Lemtek feels more arousing, more intimate, than any of the times when his cock was in its place.
"He wanted me to." His father has taught him well; the lie is convincing.
"I doubt that, Elim."
"But he did!"
Enabran looks five hundred years old. "Very well. We'll speak of it no more."
Garak feels relieved because he hasn't yet learned that every action changes him. Because of poor Lemtek, he will always prefer a sharp blade to a blunt tool, and that's just the first of his lessons.
The years afterwards are a blur. Enabran teaches him things he doesn't like but must know. He learns that humanoids can still smell after their nose has been cut off and that hearing the pain of others is more effective than pain itself. Fear is to be his tool, not pain. Good interrogators have no ego because they're subservient to the needs of their subjects.
These are important lessons he sometimes forgets, because his need for blood overcomes his good senses. During his mistakes, he learns to enjoy the intimacy of pain and the smell of fear. He learns that fear is a smell he will know even with his nose cut off, because it comes from within that intimacy.
For Garak, from that day until Julian, sex is but a precursor to violence.
* * *
He that believeth not, shall be damned. (Mark 16:16)
Garak has forgotten the meaning of faith long ago. He needs a saviour to erase the seven years of emptiness and dust on post-Dominion Cardassia, and when one walks into his office at the Provisional Government complex that morning, he also forgets how to speak.
"Well, don't look so surprised," Julian says and smiles.
Garak's memories have faded, faces becoming blurred and featureless, but not Julian's, never his face. That smile is still as sharp in his mind as it is in piercing his heart.
The lie is automatic. "I'm not." Automatic, but expected.
The smile widens. "I've come to help." He dangles the Doctors Without Borders insignia from one finger.
"But...why?"
"Because I believe in the Cardassian people." He doesn't say that his faith is stronger than people, but he doesn't need to; Garak can see the knowledge in the dark wells of his eyes. "I have faith in you."
"I'm glad." I'm glad one of us does, Garak thinks but doesn't say. He doesn't quite trust Julian, but that's only because he knows of his difficult years.
"I've missed you, Elim. Us."
Later on, there is time to curse circumstances and recount all the stories they have accumulated during their time apart. They'll speak of Julian's dealings with Section 31 but never of the Obsidian Order, because some things are best left in the dark.
Right now, though, all Garak can think of are Julian's hand on his and that smile that's just for him. He never did learn how not to think of Julian from the distance they have carefully maintained, and that smile says he doesn't have to, not any more. Julian doesn't care that he is old or too short for a Cardassian or that his gestures have always been slightly too epicene. Julian embraces his flaws, his claustrophobia and curious delicacy and sensitivity to fashion faux pas. All of it.
There will be no more distance, Julian's gaze says. Just us, it promises.
Garak wishes he could believe these things, these promises. A part of his soul withers away because he is old and can't see that Julian will be the one to teach him the meaning of faith again.
* * *
And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death. (Lev. 20:10)
Garak never forgets his first mark.
A Gul in the Central Command, Tisamet Ghemor is a Cardassian patriot, a husband to the noble Mist'ika, a father four times over, a beautiful body of muscle, and a most dangerous man -- a predator who will not be prey except accidentally. People who know the right things easily manufacture such accidents.
Garak has come to know these things, things learned in the indirect, convoluted way one learns of such matters in the Obsidian Order. He's learned that Tisamet is also a man of many vices, among them expensive kanaar and young men of impeccable physique. So when Garak visits him that day on the pretence of business but with a gift of Kshi'ankanaar and himself, he has faith in what's about to take place.
Because he's still young, it takes Garak two minutes to verify he has judged Ghemor correctly (he soon learns to read the signs in seconds) and another five minutes of polite flirting (something he learns to savour only later in life) until Ghemor leans in and puts his hand on Garak's thigh.
"Please, Mr. Garak. Do call me Tisamet."
Garak smiles and the hand on his leg moves to his groin. "Of course. Elim."
"Elim."
That first time, Tisamet fucks him right there on the divan. Garak sees stars because the hard, ridged cock inside him makes him forget how to breathe and think and feel anything but his own lust and the man on top of him, screaming his name. He comes three times that night and every time, Tisamet catches or swallows his semen as if it were the exquisite kanaar he brought.
Three days later, when Garak can sit down again and after Tisamet has undoubtedly finished the kanaar, an accident is arranged for Mist'ika Ghemor. Garak takes care to select a method that is not too mutilating, yet convincing enough. Mist'ika's body survives the fall reasonably intact and during the funeral, Tisamet takes Garak's hand in his. The sorrow and need bleed through the connection into Garak, and his desire is so strong that it takes several years before Enabran can convince Garak to dispose of him.
In Tisamet's funeral, Garak has no hand to hold on to. Instead, he grasps the slim ceremonial dagger of the Obsidian Order, and the sight of it makes everyone whisper and give him a wide berth. Tisamet's brother, Tekeny Ghemor, watches him with something dangerous gleaming in his eyes, and Garak wonders whether the blade of the poniard he holds would feel the same going into Tekeny as it did in Tisamet. At the thought of Tekeny's blood, his uniform seems especially constricting and Garak makes a mental note to have Mila look into letting it out at the seams.
When Tisamet's ashes are scattered into the wind, Garak feels a part of his soul wither because he is young and doesn't yet know that there will be others. One day, he will have a family that has nothing to do with blood.
* * *
If a man lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. (Lev. 20:13)
"We need to talk, Elim."
Garak smiles patiently. Julian doesn't need to say which topic he intends to address. "When the time is right."
"When will that time be?"
"Not right at this moment, at least," Garak says and gestures around his office with the padd in his hand. "I'm trying to work."
For a heartbeat, quiet returns. Garak knows it won't last.
"You're beautiful."
Julian always describes him with the strangest of adjectives, and not just when he has Garak's cock inside him. He is always resplendent, exquisite, incandescent, sublime -- all these loquacious, decadent, multi-syllable things Garak would find ridiculous if Julian didn't say them so earnestly.
"I am?"
Julian leans forward. "Superb."
The languid quality of Julian's voice makes it hard for Garak to concentrate on his padd. "You do realise that we can't procreate the old-fashioned way," he temporises, knowing where the words are leading him. "Don't you, Julian?"
"You're dissembling."
"Of course I am, my dear."
"Well, then." With a haughty little gesture, Julian adjusts the glasses perched on his aquiline nose.
Julian has worn glasses since his fiftieth birthday and Garak relishes the sight of them. He was so perfect and the glasses make him...less perfect. More human. With an amused snort, Garak surrenders his concentration and puts his padd down to look at his husband. Teasing Julian about his recent obsession with offspring never fails to incense him, which in turn entertains Garak.
"Lie down. Please." Garak taps the obsidian surface with the tips of his fingers, gently, as if it is Julian's body he's touching and not his desk. Julian complies but before that, he takes the time to undress, slowly, as if they are Garak's hands unfastening the catches of his suit and not his own.
When Garak slides his finger into him, Julian moans. Two fingers, and he talks, barely. His glasses are slipping down his nose and Garak nudges them back up with a finger even as he pushes his by now severely distended cock into Julian.
"Please, Elim. Please." He doesn't talk any more; he whimpers, despairing and pleading.
Garak smiles through the red haze of his mounting pleasure, looking down at Julian, his soul tender and bright. "Of course, my love. Always."
In the end, Julian bucks and kicks and comes with a scream that turns heads in the crowded foyer of the Cardassian Provisional Parliament. Those that don't know don't dare to ask, and those that do know only smile smugly.
* * *
Whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. (Ex. 31:15)
Garak is young and new to Bajor, so he doesn't know it's a holiday; the plant husks and wreaths decorating the house mean nothing to him. It will be years until Major Kira teaches him the meaning of the Bajoran Gratitude Festival. The irony of words versus actions will amuse him for years to come. Gratitude, indeed.
"Sheket."
The man flinches at his name, almost imperceptibly but the move is there. Good, Garak thinks. He has not been in the Resistance long enough to become hard. His shell is brittle and transparent.
"I am Sheket," he rallies.
"You know why I'm here." Not a question but an assertion. On loan from the Order in an unusual gesture of inter-agency cooperation, in fact, and Garak wonders what Enabran's plan is. He knows it has something to do with Dukat, but he's yet to receive his orders.
"I have no idea, Cardie."
Garak smiles. Like glass, this man. "You'll learn."
He puts his portable kit on the table and opens the box. In the sunlight, the instruments glitter and gleam with their purpose, and the man goes as pale as the spring wheat in his fields. Garak knows that this moment is of importance: the first steps towards the incredible intimacy a torturer and his subject share. He's slowly learning to like these moments. His anticipation of the blood, the seduction of his voice and manner.
All through that sunny afternoon, Bajoran blood crawls across the floorboards at Garak's skilled touch. Following its meandering path with his gaze, Garak wonders why the Bajorans won't do as their blood does: follow the path of least resistance. It would make his life easier and he wouldn't have to work through such a lovely day. He'd much rather be back on Terok Nor, sharpening his verbal blade with Gul Dukat or, perhaps, fucking him. He finds both activities pleasant enough.
The Bajoran is young and too brave. The Resistance have much to learn, and so does Elim Garak. Years later, he understands that spilling blood is too direct a method; the Bajorans, on the other hand, never seem to learn that particular lesson.
* * *
He that curseth his father or his mother, shall surely be put to death. (Ex. 21:17)
"Damn you, Enabran."
A marriage is always a compromise, but also more than the sum of its parts. Garak knows how lucky he is and on most days, he tries not to be too smug about it.
Julian has learned to like the odd things he likes, the bites and the bruises, while he has memorised the gentle things Julian prefers. Together, they alternate from experiments in something Julian calls "Tantric arts" to nights that leave bloodstains on the sheets, and both have taught Garak that there is no end to Julian's curiosity. His inquisitiveness is Garak's delight, yet that day it's that trait of Julian's that has brought him humiliation.
"Damn him," Garak repeats, quietly. He wants to use stronger words but in his mortification, he can't think of any.
Julian's hand is warm on his. "I'm so sorry, Elim."
Garak's smile is one of his not-smiles. His Julian, the doctor, knows these things and doesn't smell of fear like he himself must do. Julian understands the sesquipedalian diagnosis ("sexual dimorphism capabilities intact [...] atrophied oviducts [...] oogenesis unlikely [...] indissoluble haemopoietic tissue abnormalities") and the slowly rotating diagrams of his blood cells on the screen, when all Garak can think of is that even from the grave, Enabran has come to smite him.
"There's nothing to do?" His pain is a living thing. In three days, he'll start calling it Enabran's last revenge. "Nothing?"
Julian shakes his head and draws closer, his fingers making soothing caresses in that place on Garak's neck he's long since learned. "It's grafted into your blood markers, Elim. I can't undo it any more than I can undo my own genetic corrections."
In a way, Garak appreciates Julian's unperturbed demeanour in the face of his deficiency. To Julian, it's a medical fact, part of Garak and in no way a shortcoming, but Garak knows better and the irony is staggering. The alteration of his blood is not something Enabran, his father, saw as a deficiency (inability to produce eggs), but an enhancement (immunity to certain neurotoxins).
"There are other options, Elim. Donors. Adoption."
Garak leans into Julian's embrace. "I know," he whispers. His father's shortsightedness has robbed him of his breath.
Five days later, Garak walks back to his hotel, mere five blocks from the Institute where Julian still works to undo the deficiencies in his altered body. In his numb sorrow, Garak doesn't see the Bolian girl running at him until they collide. At first, Garak thinks he has tripped over a dog or some other Human pet that so often are allowed on the streets of Paris unleashed. He soon learns otherwise, and that her name is Mi'boq.
* * *
Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death. (Ex. 22:19)
Like his father, Dukat treats them like the animals they are. Garak wonders if that is something Ektor Dukat taught his son, much like Enabran taught claustrophobia to his.
When he puts his hand on Dukat's shoulder, Garak can feel the tension. "This can wait, can't it?"
"Bajorans," Dukat says, almost spitting the delicate syllables. "I try and teach them, and this is my thanks?"
Garak nods. He remembers that frustration, too. "Fifty?"
"I'm making it an even hundred this time," Dukat growls as he keys in the order. "Worthless cattle."
When Garak takes his hand and gently guides him towards the bedroom, he can still feel the tension singing through Dukat's slender, steely body. Mass murder gives him headache, Garak knows, and decides to alleviate the pain.
That night, when he screams Dukat's name and afterwards, before he falls asleep in a bed sticky with sweat and semen, Garak wonders when he should dispose of the monster at his side. It's a question of when and not if -- not because Dukat is a monster, but because he is a weak monster. His avid appetite for Cardassian men is of no consequence, but the Order considers his equally unquenchable appetite for Bajoran women a liability. Enabran's signature is now on the order and as it was with Tisamet, Garak has no choice but to obey.
Perhaps poison, Garak ponders. The death of a traitor would suit a beast like Dukat, although using the poniard he has secreted under his pillow would be far more enjoyable. In his young life, there are few things Garak loves more than the slight, wet resistance he feels when his blade slices through warm flesh and the iron scent of blood. He unlearns that love later in life, when experience teaches him subtlety, but at that moment he's still bound by his naïveté.
Sleep claims Garak before he can come to a conclusion. His sleep is untroubled, because he falsely believes he has time to come to a decision. He doesn't yet know that his judgement is in error and that his fate is to end his life in the Order only to begin a new one at the locus for his fall from grace: Terok Nor, the Guardian of Space and of flawed men.
* * *
And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you. If you will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name, ... behold, I will corrupt your seed. (Mal. 2:1-4)
Their family is a riot of textures and tones, from grey to pink to the pure blue of Mi'boq's skin. Secretly, Garak loves how un-Cardassian it is. Aliens, orphans, and exiles; artists, doctors, and not one soldier.
His Human fingers are cool on Garak's brow. "I always thought they'd have your eyes."
Garak looks into the deep, warm brown eyes even as he feels the arousal that skitters through his aging body. He's coaxed into life by the cool touch that, by now, knows him better than he himself does.
"We'll never know, will we?"
Julian's gaze flickers away, clouded and unclear behind the silver-framed glasses. "We have Gentor and Mi'boq."
Secretly, Garak relishes the fact that if nothing else, Mi'boq carries the colour of his seed. Mi'boq, the brave and fragile that followed him home on that bleak day many years ago.
Garak smiles although his heart is breaking anew. It always does. "It's not the same." His words simplify the tragedy to Human terms. "Is it?"
"I don't know. Do you?"
Garak doesn't answer that time, if only because he's heard the words so many times already. They've had this discussion in too many times, in too many words already. He never wanted children but Julian did; irony, then, that the obstacle was not in his husband's enhanced genes, but in the weakness of his own blood. His failure. Enabran's last revenge.
Later that night, Julian falls asleep in his chair, a padd still clutched in his hand. He doesn't wake up when Garak comes over and brushes his greying hair off his high forehead.
"I don't know how I could live without you, Julian," Garak says. He can hear the broken glass in his voice. "I'm so sorry I couldn't give you the children you so wanted."
* * *
End
* * * * *
I've been bogged down by work and school and will be so until the end of the month. Agh. In meetings my spare time, I've been writing. Current to-do list:
* That forever-in-the-works Snape/Karkaroff. Sigh. *stabs it*
* More Snape/Harry in the style of PG Wodehouse, á la Round Bottom, Twelve Inches.
* Do Not Taunt the Happy Fun Ball, a Harry Potter/Star Wars crossover crackfic (I stole the name from someone's icon and now I've completely forgotten who had it. Help?)
* The Coruscant Rules (Anakin/Palpatine, and NC-17 this time. Promise.)
* My jedi__santa giftfic, and I finally have a plotbunny!
* Three slashfest prompts -- two Star Wars, one Dorian Gray. Three. I must be mad.
* Amuse Bouche, Holmes/Watson, NC-17
Oi. Oh! And if you're a Trek fan, you really should go and download Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning. It's a feature-length sci-fi parody, made by and for fans, and funny as hell. The special effects kick ass from here to the Delta Quadrant.
ETA: Don't forget to put in your entries for the Star Wars T-Shirt Slogan Competition! You have until October 20 and there's stuff to be won.
ETA2: Damn, I'm once again late for the Beta Reader Appreciation Day. So let me just say, guys? Love you. Thank you so much. I wish I had more firstborn children to go around to give to you.