Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
Picture this: You are young and charismatic and very intelligent and you are so, so alone. Through no fault of your own, you have had the responsibility of a secret balanced upon your shoulders. It’s not your secret, not really, you never had a choice in the matter, but if it gets out your life will be ruined. So, from childhood, you’ve known you couldn’t let anyone too close.
But you are young. You are young and weighed down with secrets and you meet a man who wears his deception like great gilded armor. You don’t know what lies beneath, but you watch him stroll through the Promenade and you know as well as he does that he is untouchable.
You have lunch once or twice a week. You trade novels and sharp remarks and at some point you realize you know him better than anyone else on the station. You realize you don’t know him at all.
You know he thinks he knows you. You know he doesn’t know you’re lying.
And then suddenly he’s fading in front of you, maybe dying because of his secrets and you realize all at once that he was never wearing armor. He’s like you, forced to tell lies since before they could fit properly into his mouth, and at some point someone took the loose ends and wove them into a cage.
There is a man in your life who is just like you and he is dying in your care. He tells you stories of his life and you know none of them are true, you know there are some secrets a man carries to his grave. He tells you stories and you can hear the truth in every word and you can’t help but ask him why he’s telling you all this.
He looks you straight in the eyes, the bastard, and the answer rolls off his tongue, smooth as honey, soaked in fear he dare not speak aloud, I need to know that someone forgives me.
You know this man better than anyone. You do not know him at all. He has bared his soul to you and he was lying through his teeth. You look at him and see yourself and you make a decision.
“Treason, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder” is such a raw line that you’d think it comes from Shakespeare, but really it comes from that Star Trek homo, Garak
A Ds9 episode from Garak’s perspective. The episode is him trying to finish this one big order for some dresses while also stopping an assassination attempt in secret.
We see him get some secret information that Sisko is about to be murdered but he can’t tell Sisko for secret reasons. So he has to thwart the assassination attempt himself. We see him make subspace calls to his contacts, sneak around on the station after closing and eventually follow and take out the assassin just as they’re about to murder Sisko.
We ALSO see him deal with Quark being a difficult customer, Bolian customs issue for a button delivery and also Julian Bashir being clueless about what is happening right in front of him at all times.
While Garak is dealing with this very stressful day we get hints about some regular A plot business going on. We see Kai Winn pass the shop talking to Sisko. Garak and Julian have lunch and we hear Julian say stuff like “Quark shouldn’t have bought that mango in the first place” but we never get any details.
At the end of the episode Garak closes the shop early because obviously he’s stressed OUT. Of course Julian says something like “I guess you had a slow day today”. Garak smiles and nods and say “Indeed Doctor, I was bored out of my mind” and they walk away smiling, as we pan to the shop storage room where the body of the assassin is shoved inside a box of discarded wrapping paper.
All I want is that one perfectly comedic scene where Garak is in the middle of getting the dead body into the shop when he hears Julian on the promenade outside. Gaarak, always thinking on his feet, passes the body off as a mannequin while Julian comes in to chat away about racquetball or whatever.
listen i know Tekeny Ghemor canonically hates garak’s guts but like. he IS still the father of an obsidian order operative whilst himself being a dissident, presumably he and Iliana actually had some pretty significant ideological differences, and ultimately he didn’t give a shit bc he’s A Dad™.
and the fact that he is A Dad keeps making part of me think about. some contrivance where he SOMEHOW discovers the circumstances of why garak was in the order in the first place (idk like, a Ghemor Lives au or something so post Inferno’s Light) and from then on it’s basically “kira, this is your new brother, i found him in the trash”. both garak and kira are horrified by this development.
just read in the deep space nine companion that when “the wire” first aired, fans felt it didn’t really reveal anything about garak. and like. preaching to the choir here on tumblr dot com but the whole POINT of “the wire” is that the quote-unquote truth of garak’s past isn’t actually important. the “truth” is not a location and a name and a list of crimes committed–it’s much more essential than that, especially when put into the context of garak’s relationship with bashir, which the episode literally revolves around.
garak is experiencing the worst pain of his life and desperately seeking help. bashir is offering, but even in extremity, garak can’t accept. he’s done things which he knows bashir would find abhorrent, and though he doesn’t want to die, he also doesn’t want to be saved unless it’s in full knowledge of the price of the life that’s being bought. he could accept that ignorance from anyone else, but not from bashir–not from someone he’s grown (against his better judgement) to care about.
so garak takes away the polite fiction of plain and simple tailor. he strips back bashir’s veneer of deniability and lets him make an informed choice about whether or not garak’s is a life he finds worth saving. “especially the lies” isn’t just pithy misdirection: contained in the stories garak crafts is everything bashir really needs to know, and on some level, bashir recognizes that. he takes the worst that garak has to give and looks it over and says–I don’t care. I’m going to save you anyway.
and i think that’s beautiful and you know what??? i do think that’s beautiful. I’m sure garak delights in the irony of it, later: that here in hostile territory, embroiled in misery and isolation, he finally finds–at the hands of a foreigner–some measure of the recognition and acceptance he’s craved his entire life.
when is a political enemy of state who is hell bent on loving the country which banished him and also only speaks in riddles going to hit on me at the cafeteria. when
it’s just so funny that luther sloan shows up in julians life like HELLO i am here to be the dark reflection of your lifelong spy fantasies, darling 💃
and julian is just like sorry that position has been filled by a middle aged lizard man who gives me the worst reading recommendations of my entire life and touches my elbows way too much. i am obsessed with him
