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.

Crimson Shadow spoilers. This is just too funny not to share XD This book is a delight.

***

“Garak,” Picard said, “I cannot be involved in the removal of the democratically elected leader of another government—”

“No?” Garak looked disappointed. “Why, Captain—you’re no fun at all.” He sniffed. “Sisko would have been willing.”

“Yes, well—I’m not Benjamin Sisko.”

Garak gave a measureless smile. “Indeed, no! No, you’re not! But you need not trouble yourself. I believe that I may yet be able to persuade the castellan to fall upon her sword.” He gestured around the room. “You have merely provided the setting for the crime, Captain. Fear not. Someone else will commit it.”

“You know that I’d like to believe that,” said Picard. “But you’re not that persuasive, Ambassador Garak.”

***

Reading Crimson Shadow and Garak keeps writing to Julian but so far, after three chapters, Julian has yet to write back afaik. And it’s so sad to me? It makes me feel like Garak’s character has a necessary component of longing. Now he is home, on a partially healed although still very much hurting Cardassia, but still *home*, yet even with Kelas at his side, he longs for Julian. He reaches out over and over. Asks him to come visit. In ten+ years, Julian has never visited?! It just. It pulls at my heart. It hurts to think he finally got the thing he wanted in all his years of exile only to lose another necessary component of his contentedness. If he ever got everything he wanted, would he cease to be Elim Garak?

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 💜💜