shakespearevillain:

conceptadecency:

What does post-canon Garak watch on Cardassian television when he’s home alone of an evening because his husband has a late shift at the hospital?

There are three levels to what Garak watches. The first is what he watches when Julian is around – the news, symphonies, ridiculous political dramas that Garak ridicules for their inaccuracy more than he watches them. The second is reality t.v., but things like Cardassian Big Brother where everyone is trying to stab everyone else in the back and alliances are made and destroyed by the second. This is what he’ll quickly change away from when Julian comes home and look sheepish about until Julian confronts him and tells him it’s ok to watch trashy television if that’s what makes him happy.

When he’s sure he’s absolutely alone, and you can’t convince me that he doesn’t have some way of tracking Julian, he uses an encrypted padd to watch Cardassian Hallmark movies. Most of them are about the tension between love of family and love of state with the peculiarity that oftentimes family wins out in these dramas. The general will abandon his political career to go make kanar with the woman of his dreams. The famed scientist will leave her studies behind to go planet hopping with a burly ship captain. He keeps tissues nearby and will occasionally indulge in a box of Delavian chocolates as he watches the whirlwind romance. 

Julian has caught him a total of once. Garak had been hard at work pushing some new bills for housing reform through the senate and thought he could catch the tail end of The Uzantine Promise before Julian came home. Julian came home early and found a passed-out Garak sleeping on a padd that was portraying a drawn-out love confession between a Cardassian Glinn and a baker from a small fishing town. When Garak woke up, the padd was off (apparently out of battery) and a blanket was draped over his shoulders. 

Julian is still saving his husband’s fondness for romances for a day when Garak gets upset with himself and declares himself as a heartless cog in the political machinery – something which happens about once a year at this point – and he can’t find another way to prove to him that he does have a heart.     

Did. Did you know that Garak saved one of Ziyal’s paintings, and that he takes it with him when he travels between Earth and Cardassia in his duties as Ambassador?

—

With a sigh, Garak stood up from his chair and, carrying the painting carefully between both hands, went over to the wall opposite his desk. There, in a little alcove, stood a small table upon which, at his instruction, there was a vase of freshly cut perek flowers, scarlet bright. Leaning over the table, Garak hung the painting on the wall. Sitting at his desk, he would be able to look up and see it, and take courage from it. He stood for a while studying it. Focusing on the detail, he picked out delicate meya lilies, and mekla, and long winding elta, and copper ithian leaves, narrow and elegant. There were Edosian orchids too, for him, and from Bajor there were lilacs for Colonel Kira, and leaves from the moba tree, and spiny twists of basil. When Garak moved his head back to capture the whole, the intricate pattern of flowers and leaves swirled and intertwined.

“You’re remembered,” he said to her, as he did every time he performed this quiet ceremony. He often talked to Ziyal. “As long as I live, you’ll be remembered.”

—

Orchids for Garak and lilacs for Kira! And he will always remember her 💜💜