#elim thinks of the few plants he had growing on

[uglysockperson]

Elims first bloom

#i have an angsts story i was thinking of when i drew this #something along the lines of garak being taken from home for obsidian order training/school? obviously not a good time #must feel terrible to be dragged away with mila knowing she can do nothing for him and thus not fighting to keep him #as well as tail probably glaring at him with no thought of letting the boy have a moments peace #elim thinks of the few plants he had growing on #miles sill and can only think of how dead and gross they mist be mila would have tossed most of them by now #when he comes back for the few days between on planet work and sending him to a moon he comes to fine the single plant the survived Thad #bloomed and though elim didn’t feel like crying then no one was happy to see him back . #it didn’t hurt him to not be greeted into welcoming arms because he’d never had that #but the thought that his little plant was waiting for him and bloomed in time for him to see it had him crying because maybe for the first #time someone was waiting for him to come back and was happy to have him #anywayyyyy my own succulents did not Handel Summer well #elim garak #star trek

[cyrelia-j]

[Fic] Inside a Dream IV (Garak/Bashir)

Wanted to get a bit more dramatic with this but try and keep a bit of quicker pacing. Julian and Jack are such literature nerds.

Past Parts are Here:

Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3

Still AU but not really an AU set at the end of everything show/books. Angst, Drama, Romance, falling in love [again maybe] but lots of angst and bittersweetness to be had, 

After Sarina's death and Julian's coma, Julian dreams. With the aid of a device provided by the other augments, Garak is able to bring that world to life. And then Jack shows up in the flesh, wanting "his" Julian back. Garak is forced to confront the truths he didn't want to face and decide if he's going to fight for him.

Brief note on other pairings: You can read Kelim into this (especially from the first 2 chapters- no decisions made on whether that avenue will be pursued) ALSO, past Julian/Jack Pack (Jack, Lauren, Sarina, Patrick in some form or another but nothing explicit) in this chapter more explicit Julian/Jack but I would still hold it to be in the past and garahir is the end game.

If I could be with you tonight

I would sing you to sleep

Never let them take the light behind your eyes

The killswitch… Garak sits outside in the garden watching the night blooms of the evening primrose. The seeds were a gift from Julian years ago. Julian had said that he was aware of the potential problems in introducing foreign species to a new world, but he didn’t think that would be a problem. The flowers were strong. They grew through the cracks in the sidewalk of old Earth, along railways and in deserts were there was no water. They were perennial and bloomed anew year after year, hardy plants always returning with their fragrant night flowers. But they weren’t invasive, yielding to other species when in competition for resources, allowing others to grow instead, fading into the background. Garak thought in a way they were a lot like the man who’d gifted them to him.

They flourished here though, and he watched the pale orange catching the moonlight. Jack had told them about far more than just the killswitch, though that was the issue which lay at the heart of what needed to be resolved. Jack was also able to explain the strange dreamworld that Julian’s mind was trapped in. It was an old place on Earth which no longer existed after the Third World War. It was genetic memory, Jack had said, but not Julian’s. It was Jack’s and Garak wasn’t sure that he particularly cared to hear any more on the how and the why of that. It was quite clear from the way that Jack spoke to him, from the way he stomped up and down the room demanding that they hurry up and “fix” his Julian what they were and might possibly still be to each other. As far as Garak was concerned Jack should have been the one to retrieve him then.

Why should Garak be the one to spend two years staring into the ashen face of a corpse? Clearly Julian has no shortage of paramours spanning the Alpha Quadrant who could come for the body as it were. It gives Garak some flash of memory of a state funeral he had attended once for a prominent legate. After the family was called to send off the beloved old bastard no less than three separate groups stepped forward unbeknownst to the other. Not only had it been a fiasco which Garak admittedly relished, it was an awful stain on the reputation of the Records Bureau. Had Garak known that he would be the one called in to waste his valuable skills on scaring a bunch of bureaucrats he wouldn’t have been nearly as amused as he was.

You already know the reason that it had to be you, Elim, his mind traitorously supplies. From Jack’s account, the three of them had nearly died themselves. In Jack’s case, it was only the shock of pulling his own eye out that severed the break that was going on in his mind. He was sure that Jack had been telling the truth when he said somewhat evasively that it was only a similar shock to the others that pulled them through though he refused to elaborate. By their absence, Garak imagines the price to have likely been much higher. Still, that doesn’t mean that he has to like it. The process was already taking its toll on him prior to Jack’s arrival and the revelation that Garak’s place here is merely as some hired necromancer to revive a Guls damned corpse so a crazy augment gets his lover back…

Not for the first time this evening, Garak is seriously contemplating dumping the lot of them. He has responsibilities here. He should already be in bed for the meetings he knows he’ll have to deal with tomorrow. The Castellan of the Cardassian Union hardly has the ability to stay up all night for one comatose human… especially a human who made it quite clear that their lives were off in two parallel directions never to intersect in such a fashion. But then Garak keeps coming back to the whys of Jack giving him the device. Once he was well there was no reason Jack couldn’t have come for Julian then. No, Jack was quite emphatic that Garak was the one meant to revive him, but the more he spoke, the more obvious it was that one still grasped sanity by a precious thread. Still, by all accounts, between the three augments there’s no reason that they couldn’t work out the science themselves.

And that’s when Garak shuts his eyes and has a waking dream of Julian’s mouth nearly meeting his in that terribly human action before stopping, before those eyes had looked at him with that pitiful apology. Nothing makes sense. None of it and he was painfully honest with Parmak. He can’t do this anymore. Whatever stupid game this is, he can’t be a part of it. Garak frowns. As the wind blows the delicate primrose shakes with it. He isn’t yours, Elim. He never was. Whatever you dreamed between the two of you on the station however many decades ago it was now, that’s all that it was. You might as well chalk it up to the delusions of a mind at rest, of a lonely consciousness desperate for something to cling to in your solitude. These flowers are the only tangible blossoms to bloom from your foolish fantasies.

Garak reaches out to pluck one then pauses. He was going to place it beside Julian’s bedside but it’s a sentiment that he still finds beneath him. You’re pathetic, Elim. Courting the unconscious body of another’s lover, and in such an overwrought human way at that; you’ve grown too soft. He walks towards the back door then stop himself, sensing someone coming. It’s an irrational action, he tells himself. This is his house after all, and he’s hardly the ex spy skulking around a repurposed space station. Nonetheless, Garak slips back into the shadows behind the stone wall next to the house. Julian had said to him once that Garak was the only one truly capable of approaching him undetected. Garak thought little of such an observation at the time. He was trained to be silent, to leave no footprint. It wasn’t until the truth of Julian’s augmented status came to light that Garak realized just what an accomplishment it was at that.

It would seem that Jack cannot sense him either as he walks out looking down at something in the palm of his hand. Garak’s left eye catches a flash of silver as Jack walks to that wooden bench. He stops, listening likely even for a breath. But Garak leaves none in the night air loud with the sound of rushing wind and insects making their chirruping mating calls. He remains ensconced in the darkness though he doesn’t doubt that were Jack to know to search for him, that single augmented eye would still easily seek him out from the shadows. But Jack doesn’t know to look for him and Jack seems to be unusually occupied as he does something with the device that nearly causes Garak to give himself away when he starts in surprise.

It’s Julian standing there. Not the Julian from the dream world, lost and confused, but a Julian that appears more the old Starfleet officer that Garak once knew.

Julian has that same exasperated expression that he used to wear when Garak would say something especially outlandish. That’s not what catches Garak’s attention the most prominently, however. No, what stands out the most is the matter of Julian’s age. He appears much as he had when they parted ways on Deep Space Nine. Garak isn’t quite sure it is then what he’s actually witnessing. Some sort of toy? A recording? Fortunately for him, that little slip goes unnoticed because Jack’s attention is solely fixated on the figure in front of him like he’s looking at one of the electromagnet specters that humans call “ghosts”. He appears solid, however, much like the Julian from the mobile projections into the room. But if he’s a mobile projection then why doesn’t he appear as his actual age? Ah, vanity, doctor, do you still see yourself as that young man?..

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself, Jack,” Garak hears Julian say, bound in a fast embrace as that sentence is muffled into Jack’s shoulder. Garak watches the arms come up, come back, a few moments of breathing and he’s cursing himself for his inability to let things lie. Whatever this is, he doesn’t particularly want to witness it.

“I can and I will and that just goes to show you who the better augment is since you gave up, rolled over, played dead and I… I’m not gonna let you do that hm.”

“Jack-”

“The lizard, the lizard man, that’s the prince, right? Should’ve been a frog but you always liked to mix your myths so… So that’s the key, that’s what you want right? That’s the bait, that’s the little bell to bring the cat out from under the couch, isn’t it hm?” There’s a strange pause to that moment, as Jack once more returns to the matter of Garak’s alleged unique ability to pull Julian from whatever mental trauma he’s suffered.

“Please tell me that you didn’t leave Mrs. Norris by herself,” Julian says looking at him concerned, taking a step back. Jack huffs indignantly.

“Lauren has it. The hellbeast likes her better but you knew that when you got her. You knew she didn’t like me, knew she liked to scratch at my pants, disappeared to two eyes looking looking what if I…” Jack had taken a few steps moving in a circle like some strange old timepiece Julian had shown him a picture of once. He called it a cuckoo clock explaining that they were a popular conversation piece (curious term, Garak had always thought) and that the mechanisms would prompt the little figures on the hour to pop out of a little door and spin around with a chime or some other indicator sound. He never quite understood the visual until now that Jack walks almost manically like a little bit of that timepiece from an old wooden machine.

“That’s it! Should’ve thought of it earlier... The cat’s the key… no, the play’s the thing and you’re playing with me, Mercutio!”

“Jack,” Julian says softly, Jack stopping upright at the soft call of his name. Julian takes his hand, the intimate gesture rather turning Garak’s stomach. It has far more meaning to him when Julian’s thumbs circle around the maniacal augment’s hands. “I’m proud of you for coming here yourself. You know I miss you-”

“But you can’t you can’t, you can and you will and you’re mine and I…” Jack takes a deep breath, the soft tap of his vibrating foot to the stone. “I can’t do it without you. We can’t do it without you and you’ve rested long enough.”

“Jack…” forehead to forehead and the wind carries the sound well enough that Garak can close his eyes. “I can’t come back to you. I don’t… I don’t even know why I’m alive right now but if this is the price for the rest of you can live I… I don’t mind sleeping awhile.”

“I reached out to you, Alice. I told you to take my hand and not fall down the damn rabbit hole.”

“Ah, but here I am,” said with that touch of self-effacing Julian humor. “Sous une lumière blafarde… Court, danse et se tord sans raison La Vie…” Garak hears a laugh, not understanding those words. Jack does. Garak can hear it when he answers.

“You don’t belong in the darkness, Julian,” he says oddly steady.

“I’m where I belong, Jack.”

“Right,” a snort. “How doth the little crocodile improve his shining tail, and pour the waters of the Nile on every golden scale?”

“This isn’t about him,” Julian growls. “You know that. I told you that a long time ago when they joined the lot of us.”

“It’s always about him. Let us come to a common term, let us worship no one except our God.”

“You don’t need to blaspheme to make your point.”

“Aha! The translation is blasphemy! You said it, there, I said it was and you said it wasn’t and now you turn it on your head mmhmm devil’s advocate, Fie thou dishonest satan!”

Guls, how has Julian spent so many years with that? And Garak is sure it has to be at least that long. It was likely since the first time they met as much as Julian had gone on about how much the man exasperated him. But it wasn’t just Jack, Garak recalls, it was all of them. Section 31 had done some experimental procedure Jack had said which bound the five of them together as a failsafe. It’s how Julian has that genetic memory of Jack’s ancestors. It’s how they were able to attack all of them at once. It was a dead man’s switch as they said in human culture; an apt term that Garak has grown rather fond of. The main System is dead and they should be too but they escaped. Some perhaps more than others and Garak has heard plenty to decide that he’s done playing these games with the humans and he’s going to-

“I love you Jack,” said simply and Garak breathes in deeply thoroughly irritated at such garish human sentiment.

“You loved him first and you love him more and when he brings you back I’m going to kill him.”

“No you won’t, Jack.”

“You’re coming back with me, you’re coming back with me!” the stomp of a foot, some other scuffling noise. “I didn’t… I didn’t come here… all the way out here… I… you know that I wouldn’t… not alone… I wouldn’t come here alone and come back alone, from childhood’s hour I have not been as others were!”

“I know… I know, love but I… I’m tired Jack. I can’t do this anymore. I don’t have the strength for it and you and the others you don’t need me. You don’t… not like that I promise you. It’s the last of the connection still trying to force us all back together but I would never leave if I didn’t think you could handle it. Don’t you see? They’ve had us locked in that… that boxed Eden so long but I…”

“The cloud that took the form…”

“There’s no demon, Jack. I promise.”

“I wasn’t talking about me, hm... I was… I was… you say his name in your sleep and I used to think you were awake mocking me but not you, foolish virgin.”

“Jack…”

“And he is the demon bridegroom! So then let us hear the confession of an old friend in hell”

“You don’t need to keep on about him. You’re getting fixated again and you’re fixating on nonsense because he and I can never be together as I’ve told you more than once, Jack!” More stomping, more scuffling, and Garak looks to see Jack’s frantic agitated pacing before he comes to stop yelling into the sky like a man possessed. The entire conversation has deserted him and right now he doesn’t have any answers.

“Will no one rid me of this meddlesome lizard?!” Jack bellows. Julian walks up to him stopping, strangely seeming to shift to the older Julian, but not tired, not defeated, strong, standing tall.

“I won’t let you hurt him.”

“Are you going to come back from the land of the dead to stop me? Hm? Then stifle yourself!”

“Maybe I will,” Julian says with that quiet resolution that makes Garak smile in spite of himself.

“You come back and I kill him.”

“And if I don’t you kill him twice as hard,” Julian finishes with a soft laugh as if they’ve had this conversation more than once. Such morbid gallows humor, you’ve refined. I knew you had potential, my dear. “Get some sleep, Jack. Things will be better in the morning and you’ll know the right thing to do.” Ah, well that’s reassuring, Garak thinks as that seems to mean something to the two actors in the garden sharing more human nuzzling, grooming each other like two primates in the wild. Garak closes his eyes, still, silent, counting up the way he used to do in the closet when it was dark to steady himself and the walls started closing in. The darkness itself poses no threat but he’s also made use of that technique for entering that deep state where his presence blinks out.

He’s only dimly aware of the footsteps as Jack strides past murmuring softly “off with his head.” He’s only dimly aware of a lot of things really, the entire conversation neatly tilting everything upside down in his Julian world view. But first things first, he needs to get that mobile emitter away from Jack.

It’s time that Garak talks to the real Julian.

One day I'll lose this fight

As we fade in the dark

Just remember you will always burn as bright

-My Chemical Romance “The Light Inside your Eyes”

Note: Julian and Jack quote from Baudelaire “The End of the Day” from “Fleurs du Mal”, Lewis Carroll “The Crocodile”, Shakespeare “Twelfth Night”, Poe “Alone”, and Rimbaud “First Delirium” from “A Season in Hell”

(Part 5 is now HERE)

#star trek ds9 #star trek deep space nine #ds9 fanfic #post canon cardassia #Garak/Bashir #garashir #Julian Bashir #Elim Garak #ds9 jack #angst #romance #fanfic #update #cyrelia-j