Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
Yes, we are told she is his housekeeper and it’s implied Mila keeps his secrets and possibly has dispatched a few people or done Obsidian Order dirty work. But that doesn’t mean only one of these things is true.
Is the implication of her being a bad cook and not cleaning the basement that she isn’t a domestic worker? Or is it an indication of both her and Tain’s status? Tain is the head of one if 3 branches of government. His housekeeper is probably the boss of a bunch of other servants- not the one doing the cleaning, the one keeping track of the affairs of the house, hiring and firing servants, maybe personally waiting on his needs and his alone, things like that. A man like that probably has a separate cooking staff. Tolan probably isn’t his head gardener and might not even work for Tain much at all, Tolan is a government contracted worker that takes charge of the upkeep of a specific section of Kardasi'or, including grounds management and sanitation.
Isn’t it more interesting that Garak’s class dynamic is, yes, service class, but specifically the kind of servants privileged enough to be in charge of other servants? To live in close proximity to the man they work for? Is it not a parallel to Garak himself as an Order agent of his background- of and above the people, with more in common than them than many other Order members in some ways but no ability to connect to them? Does it not tie into his early Season 7 breakdown- he is doing something for the good of Cardassia, but must harm other Cardassians to achieve it- how long has that guilt eaten at him? Was it the fact that he was doing it again after years of civilian life and on behalf of the Federation that finally made that break within him? Is it not characteristic of his alienation and how he loves Cardassia but we almost never see him in the show get along with other Cardassians? Its a position that privileges him- he never went hungry except as a punishment, he always had a place to sleep and clean clothes because otherwise it would reflect badly on his parents employer, he literally got into a prestigious school his class would otherwise bar him from- and it also is easily a position of isolation and harm long before he goes to Bamarren. Tain gets access to abuse him because of the positionality of his mother being such a close servant- and if she wasn’t the housekeeper before, Tain would have put her in this position specifically to have access to Garak without it arousing suspicion. Garak himself never questions why Tain is allowed to punish him before he knows the true nature of their relationship. And I’m not even bringing up my favorite subject of Cardassian racial/ethnic politics.
And for personal extrapolation and yes more ASIT stuff; what would it say about Mila’s determination for Garak to submit to his fate if she occupied the role officially as Tain’s servant, but also did the work off the books of handling certain things for the Order? Induction into the Order is explicitly an opportunity for service class people to attain status, power, and wealth. Doing the work of that on top of the legitimately very difficult work of maintaining a household- possibly MULTIPLE HOUSEHOLDS, Tain has three residences mentioned in the show, and not having the opportunity to rise above anything more than a favored servant, for a woman like Mila, is an open wound.
Headcanon that Mila was not a housekeeper in the usual sense, but rather a housekeeper in the John le Carré spy jargon sense.
Fact 1: Mila can’t cook.
Evidence: She says herself that she is not much of a cook in ‘The Dogs of War.’ Also, Garak wouldn’t eat her food in ‘What You Leave Behind.’
Fact 2: Mila doesn’t clean.
Evidence: Of the messy basement in Tain’s house where she lives, she says “This place hasn’t
been cleaned in years” (’The Dogs of War’) rather than something more like “I haven’t cleaned this place in years.”
Fact 3: Mila is consistently referred to as Tain’s housekeeper (and confidant) in ‘Improbable Cause,’ ‘The Die is Cast,’ and ‘The Dogs of War.’ So she is definitely a housekeeper - unless, of course, that is just her preferred cover story and she’s really the Obsidian Order’s top sniper or something. Which is also a VERY good headcanon, but for the moment let’s just go for the simplest explanation.
In le Carré’s novels, the housekeepers are a department of the British intelligence service, and they are in charge of the financial aspects of espionage as well as internal affairs within the service. (I’m going off of the definition given on the jargon section of the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy wikipedia article, as well as my memories of a handful of his works, but feel free to correct me on this definition if you think I’ve missed some nuance.)
So basically, Mila doesn’t clean… except for organizing and orchestrating all of the OO’s cleanup and coverup operations. She can’t cook… but she can cook the books when money has to flow clandestinely from one shady source to another. She can’t sew either (Garak definitely doesn’t get it from her)… unless it is to sew someone’s lips shut with blackmail material or to patch holes in an agent’s cover stories.
I was thinking about how I call In Purgatory’s Shadow “the Tain Pain Train” and then my stupid fucking brain was like “you know maybe Tain asks Mila sometimes if she wants to ride the Tain Train” and now I want to throw myself bodily against a concrete wall.
ALT
