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Limitless	By : CyreliaJ Category: Star Trek > Deep Space 9 Views: 2154 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek Deep Space Nine of any of its characters. I'm also not making any money off of this.

Chapter List
- 8
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- 10
Note: A bit longer than expected to get this but Chapter 8 shouldn't be as bad *knocks on wood*. Anyway, this takes place between chapters 6 and 7 and it was a tough decision on its placement but ultimately I thought it would actually work better after chapter 7. The chapter that clears some things up but may make for more puzzles. Either way, my beta had me crying bitter tears when he had me cleave it in half but i think it worked out for the better. Thank you so much all of you still keeping with this story. I'm really excited for its conclusion (and earning its rating to boot haha). C&C is of course welcome!

Garak's Chambers (2 weeks prior)

Garak’s Chambers (2 weeks prior)

   It was his index finger on the left hand which moved first, a curious thing since he was right handed. But it didn’t stop there, even though that alone would have been a miracle itself. No. There were more that followed: middle, ring, thumb, until he felt his entire hand able to curl into a fist. It balled tight, flexing hard, as if he were able to actualize every bit of strength in his body to that singular point. It was that tension which brought to the forefront a sudden awareness, a drawing back from the darkness, and he blinked quickly, realizing that in fact he could blink. He could move his head, and his neck craned down, eyes focused exactly where they needed to be most- the chains. Those heavy silver shackles weighted heavily around his neck until he feared they would drag him down beneath the hard surface on which he rested, into a dark airless abyss of nightmares beneath his knees.

   But as he looked down he saw nothing but the solid floor. There were no nightmares, no demons, no phantom voices. It was silence. He realized that there was nothing but him in this room with those manacles, with those iron- No. No, they weren’t iron, he realized as his entire left arm now came back to his control, and he was able to reach up and grasp them. It wasn’t iron. It wasn’t titanium or some other bond unbreakable by human hands, but a fragile, delicate link rife with infinitesimal breaks that he could feel so easily. Julian had no idea why he thought they were so heavy before. He grasped them hard, his hand clutching and pulling, and the more he tugged the more he felt his heart beat loudly in his own body. The more the warmth, the light, everything that he’d been missing in the time… Time… How much time had it been? He looked down and saw at his feet sand pouring from his naked body, sloughing off, running down until he knelt in the center, the stone crumbling from around his legs in a fine waterfall of fine white granules. He caught himself on his hands, falling forward, the weight of his body almost too much to handle.

   “Julian…” His name. Yes. Yes, that was… his name, the name that was his and his alone. He swallowed air as if he were taking his first breath into the world. He sucked in another greedy breath as the light grew almost blinding to his eyes and he finally began to feel as if his legs might support him to rise. He rose on unsteady feet, fixated on the floor beneath him, on his toes curling into the hard ground. He flexed them a few times, marveling at his body responding to the commands of his mind so easily. He was almost afraid to raise his head as the motion began to lose its novelty, but at last he looked and saw in front of him a door that seemed far too small to fit him through. He started walking towards it anyway, finding that the more he walked, the distance stayed the same.

   His steps wavered at first, but grew stronger as his feet became used to the cold hard floor. He wasn’t sure when, but somehow all at once, the distance closed, the space concentrating down then to a long hallway. It was then that a single beacon of light starting shining brilliantly from beneath the door. “Julian.” He heard that name spoken again and it almost made him break into a run. He didn’t run; but he walked faster. He saw as he approached, ivy tendrils wrapped around that door, the wood old, splintered, but still sturdy. When he got closer still, he heard the crunch of snow beneath his feet, and saw on every side trees tall enough to cover the entire sky.

   Old, massive douglass firs stood tall around him. That’s what was being created before his eyes. That darkened tunnel gave way to the forest around him in the midst of that long winter night. Winter. Yes. Winter had come. Winter had set in. He looked down at his feel sinking into the snow feeling no chill. And then he blinked, and the way was clear. The ground was a narrow back of fallen needles weeds cleared to dirt with only a few errant stumps defiantly drawing to the sky. He knew this path. He knew this place. And when he looked up once more that door changed again with some ancient alchemical magic. It became a gate, an old iron gate leading into the beautiful gardens of his aunt’s home on Earth in the English countrywide.

   “That’s right… you were the only one who ever knew… who ever believed… that it was all here. That it was all me. You were the only one who listened, who understood me...” He whispered the words to himself as he neared the gate. It grew larger the closer he got, until it towered over even his adult self as if he were once again a child. It was cold, he seemed to realize, that snow, that wind chilling him as it blew at his back. He could feel the cold again, could feel deeply that sensation as he peered desperately into that door into summer. Julian reached out feeling the warmth, feeling the sun on the other side of the gate and through the bars he could see someone near the swing, calling to him softly.

   “Open the gate, Julian.” He reached out hesitant, not sure if he had to strength to move the heavy swinging gate on the rusty old hinge. His aunt had always had to open it for him with his clumsy uncoordinated hands. Julian breathed in deeply, hearing her voice, feeling that warmth bleeding through and he closed his eyes- not enough to fall into sleep but to remember. Yes, that’s right. He did know how to open the gate. He knew how to open everything.

“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.” The gate seemed to shrink as those words were spoken, growing smaller, the iron bars easily sliding into his grip. “And I have promises to keep.” Julian whispered the words to himself hearing the click of the latch, the gate groaning as he looked beyond it and saw, not his aunt sitting on that old stone bench in the garden, but- “And miles to go before I sleep.”

Julian pushed on it, and weightless beneath his fingers, it flew open pulling him into the light of the old garden.

“And miles to go before you sleep.”

   His eyes snapped awake, body jerking with an almost violent start. Julian sucked in a breath, as if somehow he hasn’t been breathing, as if he’d been underwater, lungs burning as he sat up. The blood rushed to his head all at once. Julian hissed as his eyes blinked rapidly, scanning the room expecting a flurry of lights, expecting that garden and his aunt with a big basket of scones. Except, of course it was dark and she was very much not there. Julian took in the shadows of the room- nightmare inkblots blurring to mundane minutiae. No, of course she wasn’t not here because there was Deep Space Nine, and there was not even his own quarters and thus could only be-

“Julian?” He heard Garak’s voice, softly at his ear, that same voice which called to him, that same voice which brought him out of the darkness and into well, a darkness of another sort. He brought a hand to his temple trying to clear out the cobwebs as it began to come back to him in some bizarre whirl of images that he couldn’t quite sort.

“I’m sorry I… I think I must’ve been dreaming something… something impossible or at the very least so improbable as to be-” It was then he realized that he was in fact sitting up in Garak’s bed naked, the sheets pooled at his feet. He felt a strange sense of calm settling over him as the blanket of memories settled, sorted, like a perfect index. “…As to be completely true… It’s true then… isn’t it?”

   “You know, that’s the whimsy of truth, my dear,” Garak answered sounding almost amused from his seat on the edge of the bed. Julian read his own name in faint upraised puckered skin a low trail of foothills winding over and around the ridges along Garak’s spine. “It is a far more fickle and subjective mistress than she would have you believe.” Julian looked away from him quickly drawing his knees to his chest making a study of the plain wall. The plain simple wall, exactly as it appeared without the trappings of lies, fanciful imaginings, feelings; it comforted him in a moment when he felt his head may very well break apart. Garak’s answer was a damning admission of guilt as far as he was concerned. Guilt? He almost laughed at that. No. The guilt was solely on him. Julian swallowed hard and absently brought a hand up to his throat feeling for those chains. They were gone. But in their place he could feel the bite of wet stinging scratches, skin raw and bleeding from what, he wasn’t entirely sure.

   “And have you had me then?” he demanded bitterly. “As many times as you needed me?”

“Have I?” Garak’s cryptic murmur just made him laugh humorlessly.

“Of course I’m wasting my time expecting a straight answer out of the Cheshire Cat.” Julian forced himself to look at Garak’s back soberly, that memory a sharp stab of nerves to the pit of his stomach as he read once more “JULIAN”. It made him faintly nauseous. “I’m putting a stop to this. All of it. I don’t know what you know, what you don’t know, and frankly I don’t care. I know what I’ve done and I…” he faltered, feeling his shoulders shake, the breath drawing out of his body as if by some demonic force, and he felt his chest constrict so tightly so painfully with that pressure, it made him feel like he was back in his last year of school right after he-.

   “Well that was certainly anticlimactic.” Garak sounded almost disappointed and it made that flutter of anxiety start to beat to anger. Julian fought instead to bring it to a heel of determination.

“I know what I’ve done.” He repeated forcefully, sternly letting go of his knees, stopping the childish comfort. Julian rose, ignoring the indignity of his nudity as he noted that Garak was fully clothed. He imagined his own garments must be in the outer sitting room, a dozen memories rushing to the forefront that he quickly tamped down. “This was… this is… a mistake. All of it. Surely… surely you know that just as sure as it’s you that it had to be you that brought me back.”

“Is this the part where you cry that I’ve defiled your maidenly honor and thus must make reparations?”

“This isn’t funny, Garak!”

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t find it funny, now would you, Doctor?”

   “I don’t…” He exhaled frustrated, seeing Garak watching him with nothing more than bland curiosity as if he was too boring to be worth the attention. “For God’s sake a man is dead!”

“I don’t believe that’s either been entirely confirmed or denied,” Garak replied with an infuriating glibness.

“Have you gone mad!?” Julian stared at him incredulously hands going to Garak’s shoulders, seeing him tense, fingers digging in and his he couldn’t understand just why it was that he barely seemed to be reacting at all. “Did you hear me?”

“You are shouting,” Garak said still looking at him with a cool assessment that was completely unnerving. “I must admit I hadn’t quite anticipated this reaction.”

   “You hadn’t…” Julian half hiccuped, half swallowed down hysterical laughter the more he remembered, the drugs, the mind control, the manipulation, the great insanity, Leeta, Elizabeth, Garak. He swallowed hard, shutting his eyes, fingers behind his neck pressing hard. “Exactly how did you expect I’d react to realizing everything I’ve done… everything he… I… I’ve been planning to do?” His voice was quiet, hanging to sanity by the thinnest sliver and he wasn’t sure that he could hold it together long enough to understand. He thought that he might just start screaming and possibly not stop until they finally came to take him away. Julian felt his knees nearly buckle under him as he took another deep steadying breath. “Forget it just…” He needed to get dressed. Julian went for the door, finding Garak unwilling to cede that space that he needed to pass. “What are you doing, Garak?”

   “It’s strange,” Garak continued more talking to himself than to Julian. “You’ve definitely been acting within your normal behavioral parameters at times during these past few months and especially in the beginning there were moments that one could clearly see…”

“Garak,” that desperation was beginning to claw its way to the surface once more, Julian shoving him hard, hardly causing him to move. “I just need… please…”

“You really weren’t acting as yourself… that you can recall at any point?”

“No! Of course not, do you really think… do you really think that I could possibly that I would ever…” His hands stopped on Garak’s shoulders, head ducking and he laughed softly. “My God… You really believe… you really think that I’m some sort of… of monster, don’t you?”

   “I suppose I should have accounted for this reaction, but it seemed so unlikely,” Garak’s answer was once more infuriatingly evasive. “Ah, but that is the beauty of the job, isn’t it Elim,” He said to himself, gently taking Julian’s hands and lowering them back to his sides. Julian opened his mouth again to protest, to demand just what in the hell was going on in that crazy Cardassian head of his, but Garak stopped him. He squeezed Julian’s hands lightly, fingers carefully, slowly moving until his thumbs rested to the inside of his wrists. Julian found that even in this madness his breath caught again the ghost of a memory insinuating itself back painfully to the forefront so vividly that he could almost believe it was happening right then. He felt Garak’s hands tighter, harder, pinning his wrists back down to the mattress of the bed, teeth at his neck at his shoulder, some primitive hiss in his ear as Julian arched against him, a knee up, his body twisting as if to roll them over but instead he-

   Julian blinked rapidly, eyelids fluttering the landscape fast like the lens of an ancient Earth film.

“Garak,” he said slowly, calmly, “I need to go. If you cannot see anything else, surely you realize that this cannot continue. I know you see it. Whatever it is you think is happening, whatever has happened I know that you’ve been… trying to… stop the horror that I’ve brought to this station… that you’ve even been trying to help me. I know you have.” He looked at Garak’s hands still holding his wrists with steady bemusement. “But what I don’t know, what I seem to be painfully, frightfully in the dark about, is what’s changed. What makes you think that-”

“You.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s you, doctor, Julian. No, I suppose that’s not entirely accurate. I should say, Julian, that I came to a very important realization recently, thanks in no small part to you yourself.”

“This is hardly the time to be coy,” Julian snapped.

   “It’s all you,” Garaks answered looking at him brightly, beautifully as if watching the closed petals of a dull unremarkable bud bloom to peony beauty before his eyes.

“What are you talking about?”

“That’s what you said to me tonight, Julian. Unless perhaps you’ve forgotten that particular memory in a haze of other meaningless endearments murmured under the freeing cover of darkness.” His fingertips brushed Julian’s hair back, those long tendrils, unfamiliar to his skin for all those years now back, and all the baggage that came with that carefully crafted persona. But beyond that, more present, more damning was how those calloused pads brought an electric arc that he found alarming in their tactile familiarity to his skin. “You know, I’ve often found that’s when some of the best secret are revealed.”

   “This is where the best secrets are revealed, my dear Julian…” hushed to the shell of his ear, hands to his shoulders. Garak let his tongue trace imagined ridges, trilling along Julian’s neck until his every hitch of breath was in time to that beat. “But what secrets are you hiding?” Those fingers curled tighter until Julian took hold of dark locks pulling his head back with a strength those slender arms didn’t appear to possess.

“It’s all me, you know,” he whispered fervently, their foreheads touching for just an instant. He turned his head, eyes slipping up, down, meeting Garak’s for not a fraction of time before speaking softly against his mouth. “It always has been.”

   “It always has been…” Julian parroted back repetition of that sobering memory softly, dumbly, fingers to his own mouth as if he could not believe it was he who spoke the words. He took a step back that realization hitting like a splash of ice water to the face.

“Of course, my dear,” Garak answered calmly. “I would be a terribly poor friend were I to leave you to the mercy of an unwanted psychic intruder but…”

“But?”

“But then I realized after I saw... ah but the how is not important so much as the fact that I did at all- quite early in fact. I came to the realization rather early, my dear Julian, that there is no invader and that all of that darkness wrapped in Federation purity is the lovely paradox that is Julian Bashir.” Julian almost thought that was the whole of it until Garak added with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, “And that is where the game became far more interesting.”

   “Game?! You think that this is all a damn game?! Do you have any idea the scope of what I’ve done?! What I’ve done to you even?!”

“Tss tsss...” A rebuke, a hissing delicate call for quiet. Garak pressed a fingers to Julian’s lips with a smile far too predatorily excited. It should have frightened him. It didn’t. “Everything is a game, my dear. But not everyone knows that they’re playing.”

“This isn’t a game,” Julian insisted stubbornly.

“Oh but it is, dear Julian.” Garak contradicted, that smile never leaving his face. “And do you know what I want more than anything right now?”

   Julian kept his mouth closed to a tight line. If he didn’t answer then Garak wouldn’t answer. If he only remained silent, if he held his tongue, then they might remain locked in this world of stone, unmoving, immortal, safe from having to step back into their own time. But he knew that that like anything else it was doomed to die, to crumble into dust and slip through his fingers, pitiful paltry sand swept away by waves far greater than just the two of them.

“What do you want, Garak?” Julian asked, almost terrified of the answer, voice an unsteady tremble. He looked out to the main sitting room, to his clothes strewn on the floor in a trail leading here. His eyes hyper focused on the Starfleet uniform crumpled in a ball next to the sofa. His arms crossed even in the heat of the room an unconscious shiver fissioning up his spine giving him goosebumps. It seemed in that moment that he already knew the answer.

“I want you to finish the game of course.” The words whipped past him like a bitter wind.

   Julian’s bark of laughter was ugly and scornful.

“Never. Do you hear me? Not in a million damn years. I will never again become that monster. Not for anyone, not even you.” Julian took a step, turned away, hand pressed to the doorway. He looked at those clothes, legs locked into some static status as if he were once more stone. He just stood there staring harder repeating emphatically. “Not even for you.”

“Such a curious choice of words,” Garak murmured walking past him. “As if I should loom so large in your worldview that I could command such things.” Julian felt him rush past and watched as he carefully took the uniform first, folding it with delicate consideration. “But that begs the question of why you started the game in the first place.” He set the folded uniform on the end of the sofa moving next to a balled up pair of red panties.

“I did not-”

   “Oh, but you did, Julian. Whether you chose to accept the truth from this “lying lizard’s tongue”, as you so colorfully said earlier this evening, there it stands. For while you may have the station fooled, your friends, your conquests, even yourself, you cannot fool me, not any longer. Remember the one truth we have now in this stunning dance of deception. The one constant in the equation; it is all you. And so again, now that we understand that it is not you who are at the mercy of a cruel and malicious alter ego, now that we understand it is not you who is the slave to the demon’s desires, but he to yours, the question remains, why did you start the game, Julian?” Garak placed the last piece of folded clothing on top of the pile, a red satin brassiere, staring Julian in the face, the color of blood. Julian had his mouth closed tightly still staring at the pile hard. His expression was unreadable, some deep introspection as his fingers curled, clutching the wall as if he might rip a piece from the frame with nothing but the strength of his hand. He stared hard, eyes a wavering wavy mess as he looked further down to the floor and bowed his head.

   Garak waited patiently, taking a seat at the other end of the sofa, until it looked as if Julian might well double over and crash to the floor. His shoulders were tense, the pitiful naked form, the caterpillar cocooning itself, wrapped tighter and tighter until it might suffocate and burst forth renewed into a new and unbreakable body. There was a deep draw of breath, long, easily a slow sip of air engulfing more counts than may have seemed possible. And then with an unsteady exhale, doubt breathed out slowly, more steadily, until Julian stood straight, releasing the wall, meeting Garak’s patient expression with an odd gravity.

“If you win,” he said walking into the room, “then I’ll tell you.” Julian grabbed the undergarments, no hesitation in slipping that red satin up and over his slim hips well aware of Garak’s eyes on him. “If this is what you want. If this sick scenario, if this game is what you want... if you won’t allow me to stop it then you damn well better be hellbent on stopping it yourself, Garak,” he practically spit as he donned the brassiere, an absent flicker of his eyes even in that anger to see if Garak was watching him.

   “The door is not locked, Julian. For all your aspersions, for all your venomous castigations, you only need but walk out now,” Garak answered mildly. “I should hardly think that after your grand ethical proselytizing that my petty whims would hold such sway over your carefully crafted moral compass.” Julian almost ripped the uniform as he tugged it on shaking his head violently back and forth; a wild whip to cast out some imagined demon. Long fingers pushing back, threading through that thick mane, his hands came to a stop around the back of his neck and he looked at Garak, the top still unzipped haphazard and loose. He opened his mouth, started, and closed it again, silently a moment longer. He held Garak’s eyes, searching, every secret space of his soul seemingly poured out in that agonized expression before he looked down at the darkened floor once more.

“I could almost-” He never got to finish that sentence.

   The door chimed and Julian swore. His attention vacillated wildly between the door and Garak, mouth opening and closing wordlessly.

“I… I wasn’t aware you were expecting company…” Julian’s voice intoned hollowly, the same words spoken by Garak in his own chambers a seeming eternity before the entrance of a different visitor there at Julian’s calculation.

“Oh come now you’ll have to do better than that. Why after the beautiful performance you gave me just now, my expectations for your lies have increased exponentially. No, you won’t be slacking on my watch… Jules.” His head flew up at the name from Garak’s lips, the shift instantaneous to that cue. That second self took immediate control, his mouth thin and angry.

“Well if you’re so bloody fucking smart, Elim Garak, then I don’t need to lie now, do I?” He glared at the door, at the loud knock as Odo’s voice came through clear and hard.

“Mr. Garak, I know you’re in there and you know I can override whatever codes you have in place.” Julian looked at his shoes and picked them up instead under an arm stepping back towards the bathroom. Garak chided him with another reproving click of his tongue.

   “Are you giving up so easily, Jules? The truth is such a lazy and uncreative way out.” Garak turned back to the door. “Now I wonder how long it will take the good Constable to override my newly minted security codes. I did pay a good price for them after all. You know that’s the funny thing about doors. Without a lock, anyone can open it, can insinuate themselves inside. But even with a lock, there’s always a way, always a trick-”

“Bugger the door, bugger your tricks, bugger you, he cannot see me in here,” Jules snarled at Garak as if they were co conspirators arguing over an escape plan and not two adversaries nearing a final showdown.

“Yes, I can see where that might look suspicious,” Garak agreed mildly as he heard Odo outside beginning a series of fast entries.

   “Or would it looks so suspicious?” Jules mused to himself as he entered a moment of dawning clarity. His eyes dropped to the table’s surface, his posture relaxing. “Would it really?” He fingered the wounds around his throat as he realized he had in fact some of them back open to bleeding once more. He danced his fingers down with a deep breath taking hold of his wrist squeezing hard to bruise with a faint grimace. He repeated the action to the other, the effort making him wince once more in pain but the darkening of skin began as expected. Jules looked at Garak with a nasty smirk. “Care to wager whose lies will win this one, darling? I can do a sight better than that even with the time that I have.”

“That would be unwise,” Garak answered softly, darkly, but with a playful glint in his eyes.

“And why is that?” Jules challenged.

“Because I never laid a hand on your, my dear.”

“What?” Jules looked stunned, blinking only once turning fast to the door gripping the shoes tightly. He couldn’t afford that gamble, then. “The hell you-”

   It was then that his eyes locked onto the table once more, bright and near feverish when he glimpsed the half empty bottle of kanar; the same bottle he’d brought over that night weeks ago. “Garak?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m sure I’ll look a right arse if this doesn’t work but…” Jules looked at Garak crossing fingers childishly behind his back. “I am the key.”

He didn’t have to wait long.

“I am the lock.”
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Limitless