Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Garak, is there something you wish to speak to me about?” Julian Bashir asked a very different looking Elim Garak during their usual lunch date. Sporting lightning blue, bony protrusions on his temples chin and face. Garak’s slate grey skin which spilled into a pale cream undertone, brought out the yellow that now filled the whites of his eyes.

Seated at a table in Quark’s bar, Garak thoroughly scanned the menu for a meal big enough to quell the persistent rumbling in his stomach.

“Nothing in particular comes to mind.” Garak looked up from his menu. Not finding horns or his skin being a different shade of grey the least bit worthy of mentioning. That mystery was his alone to bear. The less Julian knew about his secret mission, the easier he’d be able to see it through without any interventions.

“So, then sprouting a beard and horns is a normal day for you?” Julian pried, trying to get answers out of Garak about a medical phenomenon that seemingly happened overnight. Was it a rare Cardassian mutation that Garak had never mentioned to him? Or perhaps a parasite that was metamorphosizing Garak’s body as they spoke.

Whatever was afflicting Garak, Julian found the whole thing alarming and he wished they could skip the usual, infuriating song and dance to get a straight answer for once.

“Oh, that. As it happens, I stumbled across a species akin to what humans would refer to as a ‘dragon.’ It was terribly wounded and on the verge of death. To my great surprise it told me about a curious process where a dragon’s soul might fuse itself with a living host, ensuring its survival.”

“Garak…”

“Let me finish doctor, I assure you there’s nothing to worry about.” Garak held up his hand, putting a stop to Julian’s remarks, so he could finish the story.

“Being the gracious Cardassian that I am, I allowed it to bond with my body in order to take it back to its ancestral home.” Garak explained, hoping the narrative he’d just described had provided sufficient answers to satisfy the dear doctor and get him off his back.

“That’s it? That’s all you have to do?” Julian tilted his head. Suspicious of the simplicity of Garak’s responsibilities, knowing only too well the effects of removing a Symbiont from its trill host.

“I will have to transfer Indrak’s soul to a new dragon body, which might kill me. But he assured me the risk was minimal.” Garak assured Julian with the ease of a Ferengi making a business transaction, as if putting his life on the line was the small cost of business.

Julian dropped his hands on the table and sighed. He hated the idea of Garak, a man liable to do anything to escape the misery of being on Deep Space Nine, being taken advantage of.

“The dragon was dying, Garak! It would have promised you anything to get you to help it. Did you not consider that?” Julian searched in Garak’s golden eyes for…

Naivete? A leave of his mental faculties? The truth was, that Julian knew exactly why Garak had shared his body with an alien being. That wasn’t the part Julian was having trouble with. What hurt was the fact that Garak had endangered his life at all.

“I had no doubts as to the possibility, but knowing that we shared something in common, as a fellow exile I could not refuse his request.” Garak confessed as a matter of fact. The compelling side of his story making Julian’s shoulders slacken with relief.

When presented with a noble, dying creature. Garak had rushed to its aid without reservations. Though, Doctor Bashir suspected Garak had rallied to the cause of helping the dragon out of a slight death wish, the result was still the same—Garak was helping someone and to that, Julian had no objections.

“That’s very selfless of you, Garak, but this Indrak fellow you combined with, did he give you any idea what this ‘change’ would entail? Like a sudden compulsion to hoard gold for example?”

Julian sheepishly asked Garak a clichéd question straight of Earth folklore. Luckily Garak knew nothing about dragons and took the question at face value.

“If you were wearing any gold rings, I might be tempted to liberate them from your fingers.” He said smugly, eyelids lowered in a manner that could be considered as seductive. Julian opened his mouth with every intention of retorting, but could not utter a word against the man bewitching him with words.

“I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not.” Julian replied incredulously, choosing bafflement as his response. Was Garak playing into the dragon lore or actually considering his hypothesis? It was hard to tell at times.

“Neither can I! Although I am craving meat, that much is true. Enormous amounts, as a matter of fact. Merging with a dying being exacted a big toll on my body.”

At the sound of that, Julian’s head turned and his heart gave him a jolt. Garak was feeling the cost of his sacrifice. Not a physical wound, but an unpleasantness that pained Julian to hear he was experiencing.

“I’ll ask Quark to fetch you some roast beef.” Julian said in a collected voice. The best way he could help Garak right now was to steady himself and to give Cardassian ‘dragon’ some sound doctorly advice.

“Bigger.”

“Excuse me?”

“We are hungry for something bigger.” Garak clarified, raising his voice slightly. The change to we causing Julian observe, that though the dragon in Garak rarely exerted any control over Garak’s speech. He still could at any moment. Thankful that Indrak had allowed so much time between he and Garak to chat amongst themselves, Julian brushed aside the one interruption and went back to the conversation at hand.

“Don’t tell me you’re so hungry you could eat a horse.” Julian said, hoping he wasn’t jinxing himself. He didn’t know what he would do if he had to watch Garak eat a carved horse with the table manners of dragon.

“No, not that much.” Garak shook his head to Julian’s immediate relief.

“An entire pig cooked on a spit with an apple in its mouth?” Julian joked, the image of a roast pig rushing to his mind as he thought the words; feast.

“How medieval. I’ll take it.”

—

It took Garak two hours to eat the pig by himself, one hour to cut it with cutlery like a gentleman and another hour to talk between bites. The much-needed nourishment had done wonders for his mood and his repertoire of conversation topics, of which Julian was only too happy to oblige listening to.

“How does it feel?”

“Trying at times, but electrifying in others. Indrak is an ionic dragon, capable of harnessing electromagnetic forces. As such every cell in my body feels charged and ready to be unleashed.” Garak explained, finding the sensation invigorating. The buzz in his body? The desire to touch things to free the energy inside him? Garak had never felt more alive. It was almost as good as having his implant turned on. Almost.

“Like rubbing your feet on carpet and giving your friends a small static electricity shock when you’re a kid?”

“If you say so.” Garak took Julian’s word for it, despite knowing nothing about such a custom.

“Indrak is also honest to a fault and told me Ionic dragons are incapable of lying.” Garak gazed into Julian’s eyes, gauging whether he had noticed. Garak himself condoned his newfound frankness, but yearned to know what Julian thought about it.

“Now that you mention it, everything that has come out of your mouth has been rather honest. You are polar opposites of each other. Yet made for each other.” Julian remarked with amusement, unknowingly describing his own relationship with Garak.

“But where would that leave us doctor? I can’t have Indrak sitting opposite me for lunch.” Garak interjected. The passionate Garak that Julian knew and loved came out to contest his favourite lunch buddy.

“So, you’re saying…?” Julian steered the question, but let Garak finish it with fond words of his own.

“That you and I were made to perfectly keep each other company? Yes, I am.”

Chapter Text

The sky on the planet Dornenn was like a swirling nebula that night. Clouds coalesced across a sky specked with stars in a galactic show that awed even the most nervous humanoid on the planet.

A dread filled the pit in Garak’s stomach, his breath quickening, but he remained brave in the face of what came next. Especially since Doctor Bashir was holding his hand firmly in solidarity. Before them stood a towering grey dragon with a serpentine body, devoid of any limbs. Her name was Leyrak, a rumbling voice in Garak’s head informed him.

“Indrak, you have returned.” Leyrak, Indrak’s mate spoke plainly to the dragon residing in Garak’s body, ignoring the two ‘mice’ basking in her presence. Humanoids were so small, and lived such small lives, that anything smaller than a dragon were called mice by the dragons in this nesting site.

“He has.” Garak filled the silence Indrak was respectfully creating, by not speaking through him. Garak’s chest filled with warm gratitude, on the already warm planet, drawing beads of sweat from his forehead. But Julian didn’t care if Garak’s hands were wet, dry or covered in pig basting sauce, he was never letting go.

“Are you ready to shed the shell of the mouse you are taking shelter in?” Leyrak asked bluntly, when a little tact would have gone a long way. Ionic dragons were known for their honesty to a fault, which also meant complete directness.

Julian’s eyes widened at the casualness in which Leyrak had suggested tossing aside Garak, but he remained silent after Garak shot him a warning look.

Nudging something behind her long, coiling back, a smaller dragon bearing Indrak’s resemblance slithered onto the scene.

“This is your progeny, Virak. He hatched shortly after your banishment. The child knows what is expected of him.” Leyrak gestured towards the young dragon before her. Gifted with wisdom and foresight, Leyrak had informed her offspring of his duties in the rare chance her husband should need of a replacement.

“It will be an honour to serve you, Father.” Virak bowed his head to Garak, the host bearing the dragon responsible for bestowing life upon him. Many moons had passed for Virak, waiting to be of use to his father and now the moment had finally arrived.

“What does he mean by serve, Garak?” Julian asked, the baby dragon’s words made him feel uneasy, without knowing why.

“It’s a delicate way of saying that in order for Indrak to be reborn, he will need to inhabit a new host body, which junior is offering.” Garak flippantly nicknamed the doomed young dragon.

“No! There’s got to be another way.” Julian stared at the juvenile dragon. His gut filled with dread knowing a young life hanged in the balance.

“I don’t know how else to say this Julian, but one of us has to die…” Garak gave Julian the cold facts of the matter. Unable to look him in the eye as he said it.

And it’s either Garak or Indrak. Julian finished the sentence in his mind.

When Garak had requested Julian to accompany him to Indrak’s ancestral planet, he’d done it solely as a safety precaution, should anything happen to him. True, he’d also selfishly wanted Julian around for moral support, but never to witness making a choice like this.

“And nothing can be done to save you both?” Julian asked softly, knowing in his heart what the answer was.

‘No.’ Garak said in a low tone. The silence that followed told Julian that it was time to make a choice.

Having made his decision, Julian approached Indrak’s offspring with a heavy heart and crouched down to meet his eye level.

“You are giving Garak back to me, and allowing your parents to be together again and for that we thank you.” Julian blinked away bittersweet tears pooling in his eyes. Tears, bitter from his words being the final say in another creature’s life, yet sweet from being reunited with Garak.

Julian stood up and gave Garak space to perform the soul splitting ritual.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I am glad to have you by my side.” Garak said, his voice a little shaky.

An icy blue tendril of energy burst from Garak’s chest, snaking around his neck with a mind of its own, making him gasp for air. Unwrapping itself from Garak’s throat, the tendril speared through the air, piercing Virak’s chest like a needle and thread.

Virak bellowed with pain, shaking his head left to right in an attempt to resist the soul transfer. His consciousness was fighting against imminent erasure, desperate to cling on to its last moments of life, but the power of Indrak’s will was too great to overcome.

Garak felt a tug in his chest and groaned as the last remnant of Indrak left his body. He felt a chill, creeping across his body, the parting gift of a dragon requiring one last burst of body heat to finish what they had started.

Julian watched as Garak suddenly slumped to the ground. His legs rushed towards Garak’s prone form, before his mind had a chance to catch up. He checked for a pulse. The pulse was weak and Garak’s skin was cold to the touch.

“Garak… you’re freezing.” Julian said out loud to himself. His worst fears realized. He had climbed mountains to get to this point in time—getting his head around that his friend had merged with a dragon, having the final word on one of the hardest decision he’d ever had to make in his life, only for the possibility that his closest friend might not make it.

Across from the two close friends, Leyrak recognized her mate’s soul successfully transferred to his new, albeit small body. If only Garak could be so lucky, Julian thought and squeezed Garak’s hand. He never wanted to let go, lest the little warmth his hand was providing was the thing that ended Garak’s life.

—

“Wasn’t I right, doctor? Didn’t I tell you I would make it out in one piece?” Garak asked rather chipperly for a man formerly on the verge of death. Once the terror of Garak freezing to death had worn off, Doctor Bashir had taken Garak back to Deep Space Nine as fast as the shuttle could handle and turned up the heating as high as he could without passing out from heat stroke.

Once Garak was safely back on Deep Space Nine, the ‘easiest’ part of his recovery was keeping him company and convincing him to stay in the infirmary’s temperature-controlled pod.

“You can hardly consider suffering from an extreme case of hypothermia as being intact.” Julian countered Garak’s very generous account of things. At this point, Julian couldn’t tell whether the front Garak was putting up was being overly optimistic to cope with the fact he had nearly died or was being contrarian to prove a point. It was always hard to tell with Garak.

“While your concern for me is touching Doctor, I really must be going.” Garak tried to negotiate an early release from an infirmary stay he knew, would be as long as possible to ensure his recovery.

“You can come out then, but first I have something to give you.” Julian opened the pod’s latch despite his best judgement and let Garak step out of the pod. Julian was too relieved by Garak surviving such a close call to be the one to smother him with too much medical attention. Once Garak was on the mend, Julian didn’t have the heart to keep him cooped up in the infirmary.

Julian pulled out a blue scarf from behind his back and handed it to Garak, and quickly looked away, almost embarrassed by the gesture.

“A scarf? I didn’t take you for a knitting man.” Garak confessed as held up the scarf by the hand and inspected the garment’s intricate key shaped patterns. It was very skilled craftmanship for a doctor whose hobbies didn’t tend to be creative.

“I didn’t, I used a replicator, but you know… I told it what colour it should be and patterns I thought you’d like, the closest thing to the Cardassian flag.” Julian admitted, revealing a surprising considerate effort for such a situational accessory that wouldn’t be worn for very long.

“How thoughtful.” Garak smiled and wrapped the scarf around his wide neck. The dark blue colour matched well with his complexion and brought out his light blue eyes. Impeccable taste on the doctor’s part. Garak watched as Julian paced around the room, mouth slightly open as if he was about to share something. Perhaps about the life or death situation they’d been through? But no such words came, only soft spoken words about Garak’s release.

“Please dress warmly and you can return to your shop if you feel up to it.”