This is the saddest scene in A Stitch in Time. It’s the scene when Palandine and Elim last share intimacy, and Elim is being too daft too realize who she is. Of course, he certainly understood at a later point and was most certainly crushed. And so he felt the need to scatter those crumbs of clues for Julian too, like “You like tragedy? Here have some.” Poor Garak.
In the middle of today’s fitting, my client broke down. It was an extraordinary moment. […] As her grief spilled out, she also revealed that she had separated from her husband just before the negotiations began. It seems that he was a philanderer who had betrayed her trust from the beginning, and that she had tried for years to deny the truth of their relationship. I was nonplussed. […] I offered her a glass of kanar, and to my surprise, she accepted it… and several others.
- She broke down because she came on this mission to see Elim and he doesn’t bloody see who she is.
- She outright tells about Barkan
- Kanar! Who drinks kanar!? k-a-n-a-r-d-a-s-s-i-a-n-s :U
And so, what happened to Palandine when she was arrested?
The crowd had momentarily separated her from her escort, the two investigators and Constable Odo, and she stood there, looking at me with an expression that froze my blood. Not angry, not reproachful… not even disappointed. An even expression, relaxed, clouded by that tinge of sadness I had first noticed when we discussed Gul Dukat and the expected morality of Cardassian men. My first thought was that she must be a formidable negotiator. The second was that she was about to expose her “contact.” But she just continued to look at me with her intelligent, gray eyes, as if my skin were transparent and she could see all the way to the bottom of my soul.
[…] It took half the bottle before I began to breathe again; and only when it was empty did I finally ask myself the question: Why hadn’t she betrayed me as I betrayed her?Unlike Enabran, she forgave Elim. Then, we can expect that she most certainly offed herself, probably with poison. She was relaxed. In peace. Ready to go.
…On the upside, Pythas survived and I believed he personally watched out for Kel, because he knew she was most certainly Elim’s daughter.
It wasn’t Palandine, but it was her voice. And then I realized – it was Kel. She had grown into a powerful young woman with a sturdy beauty that was a harmonious blend of both parents.
Neither Barkan nor Palandine were ever described as sturdy but that would be a fitting description for Garak… and it wouldn’t be Garak writing if the book didn’t have lies and half-truths… ;)




