Once you get over the fact that In The Pale Moonlight’s title was a Batman reference of all things - a Joker quote being, “Have you ever danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight?” is just bonkers fitting for the situation
DS9 may have a lot of faults but when it was good it was phenomenal, and while everyone rightfully lauds (and memes) about the final soliloquy Avery Brooks absolutely nails I feel like the title is encompassing in a way that a lot of Trek titles lack due to their tendency of pretentiousness to tack on a vaguely relevant Shakespeare quote. It can be taken literally - per Sisko, Garak and even Starfleet’s involvement of attempting to assuage the Romulans into the war and the subsequent relinquishment of one’s morals in the former and latter with the assassination of the Senator and presumably those he flew with, the criminal who recorded the false data rod - as them tempting fate and doing something so dangerous it could either undermine or fix their situation with no alternative between. You can also take it upon the analogies, especially the religious ones that they tended to carry through DS9 (like Sisko being Moses, the Prophet)
First of all, you could interpret the Devil here in a multitude of ways, but namely and most glaringly it’s Garak. (
Don’t even get me started on that likeness: the powerful creation under the proverbial omnipotent eye, cast out in exile from the right hand to suffer and be criticized as a corrupted bane both by peers and by others, etc.) The Devil deals in duplicity, in secrets, in making deals to damn one’s ‘soul’. However “the devil made me do it” attitude that Sisko employs is neatly shut down from Garak’s relay with him in the tailor shop, holding him accountable (“And if your conscience is bothering you, you should soothe it with the knowledge that you may have just saved the entire Alpha Quadrant, and all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal… and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don’t know about you, but I’d call that a bargain.”)Then you have the title alone, 'in the pale moonlight’, of course meaning when things are dark, half seen, lacking the vibrancy of color - of the distinction of right and wrong, black and white. In the dark, one’s mind tends to guess and supplant fantasy as assurity, even if it’s only to one’s self: in this case it’s the actions of the actors at play versus the rest of the Alpha quadrant’s perceptions. One of the marvels of DS9 was honestly their ambiguity of the “moral man” in the face of war. To merger the “moral man” with the Machiavellian conundrum is one of the highlights of the show.
And then of course the ending soliloquy (though one can contend it is, in fact, a monolog - a confession to the audience) is an answer to the title. I have danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight, and I can live with it.