---

DILEMMA

---

 

 

There was a universe in which Garak’s and Bashir’s friendship took a far more troubled turn than in most of the others.

It began innocently enough, when Garak and Odo returned from their awkward experience aboard Tain’s ship, and Garak confronted Bashir with, “Why didn’t you tell me that you so boldly, foolishly faced Tain during my illness with the wire?”

The human shrugged. “You didn’t ask me how I’d managed to cure you. So I saw no particular need to bring it up.”

“You all but dared Tain to torture you!” Garak insisted.

“Well, I hardly think that I…,” Bashir began to deny, but Garak broke in on him, saying, “You enthusiastically agreed with him that you knew many things that he would like to know.”

“Yes, and then I offered to tell him. About biology, medicine, tennis….”

Garak was shaking his head impatiently. “Now don’t bother to deny it, Julian. You were playing games with him, and you as good as admitted to him that your behavior was brazen. When Tain asked you if all Starfleet lieutenants were as brash as you, you confessed that you doubted it, and he heartily agreed with you.”

“Well, all right, but what’s your point?”

“Just this: for all of your impressive intelligence, you were incredibly stupid that day, and don’t ever do such a foolhardy thing again!”

Bashir smiled lopsidedly. “Why, Garak, I didn’t know that you cared so much.”

“I’m serious! That was by far the most irresponsible behavior that I’ve ever seen from you!”

Now the human frowned. “Yes, and that’s just it: you didn’t see it. You weren’t with me, and you were in no condition to have accompanied me if you’d wanted to, so are you telling me that Tain told you all about such an insignificant event from years ago during this very traumatic mission that you and Odo just shared?”

“Tain entertained me with the story of your folly while Odo was first in his cell, and that alone should tell you that your past encounter with Tain was hardly insignificant. He told me that he’s thought back upon that day many times, and regretted not teaching you the error of your ways.”

Bashir looked offended. “He’s regretted not torturing me just for the sake of teaching me a lesson? Rather frivolous and petty.”

Garak leaned closer as if proximity could help him to get through to the human. “There would have been nothing frivolous or petty about it. Fear of the Obsidian Order must be maintained. Letting you off untouched after such a bold challenge potentially weakened the power of the Order.”

“Oh, nonsense, I didn’t tell anyone!”

“That much is fortunate. See to it that you never do. And if you should ever see Tain again, don’t flaunt your bravura and naïveté at him. You humans have an expression: don’t wave the red cape in front of the bull.”

Both men spent the next few moments silently irked and irritable. But it was the human who relented first.

His frown disappeared, and he said, “Garak, I’m sorry. For whatever it’s worth, I, too, have thought back to that day more than a few times, and suspected that I got off very lucky. I truly knew nearly nothing about the Order back then, and didn’t realize just how terribly dangerous it and Tain were. I’ve heard a lot more since, and I’ll confess that I occasionally shudder to think how silly my behavior with him was. I assure you that it won’t happen again. And, by the way, I’m pleased that you care so much.”

His Cardassian friend was indeed mollified, and accepted the human’s slightly sheepish smile, while returning a gentle one of his own.

 

But quite some time later, their troubles multiplied as Tain lay dying in the Jem’Hadar prison with Garak at his side, and Bashir looking on quietly from across the cell. This time, when Tain asked Garak if the two were alone, and Garak lied and confirmed it, impressing Bashir with his friend’s trust, Tain turned out to have more than just a passing interest in their solitude. The head of the Order then proceeded to inform Garak of the precautions that he’d taken against the potential destruction of the Order: the coded signal whose mere sending would bring a wave of additional well-trained Cardassian agents to the sender’s (Garak’s) side, proclaiming him the new head of the Obsidian Order, and ready to do his bidding and obey his every whim; and the location of the cache of biogenic weapons that would be at Garak’s disposal, thus assuring the Cardassian Union supremacy over all other empires. All that Garak had to do in order to achieve all of this was to stay alive and return to Cardassian space. And then Tain died.

When at last Garak looked up from the body, and regarded his friend across the room, Bashir’s own gaze was in his lap. The human had to be aware of the Cardassian’s eyes upon him, but he gave no sign of it.

At length, Garak sighed heavily. “You might as well look at me, Julian.” Even then, for a while, he thought that the human would not do so. But finally, Bashir raised his head in a bleak stare, and understated, “We have a problem.”

 “Let me hear your solution,” the Cardassian ordered emotionlessly.

Bashir shrugged helplessly. “I have no choice. I have to tell Starfleet.”

Garak’s next sigh was even lower and slower. “Then I have no choice. I have to kill you.”

“You can’t be serious,” Bashir said flatly, even though he certainly had to have contemplated the possibility, even the likelihood.

“You have to report this. I have to see to it that you don’t.” Garak offered his own shrug in return. Then he rose.

Gritting his teeth, Bashir observed, “Then I am truly facing the new head of the Obsidian Order.”

Garak responded with a grim nod.

“You have effectively become him,” Bashir commented significantly, and a trifle bitterly.

“More or less. But with just one exception: with you, and only with you, I will be merciful and quick.” He started to approach his erstwhile friend.

Bashir slid farther back on the seat. “Now wait a minute!”

“Don’t fight me. I won’t have to hurt you if you cooperate.”

Bashir dove off of the bench, screaming, “Worf!! Martok!!”

Instantly, Garak was upon him, and had him by the neck.

“Please!!! Wait!!!”

“If you cry out again, you die immediately.”

“I promise!!” the human whispered. “I was foolish anyway! They’re obviously not by the door! They’re giving you privacy with your dying father! Please listen to me!”

“Make it brief and sensible.”

“If you kill me, the Klingons will almost certainly kill you! They’ll know that you did it; there’s no one else in here! You’re going to break my neck, aren’t you? There’s no way that you’ll be able to pass that off as natural causes! Worf already doesn’t trust you! You’ll never stand a chance against him and Martok both! And then Tain’s secret will die with you, and all of his plans will go to nothing! The Obsidian Order will still perish!”

“Give me a viable alternative.” Garak’s eyes were wide and demanding.

“I will keep silent. I will not tell Starfleet.”

“Julian…!” Garak growled threateningly, not believing him for a moment, and his arms maneuvered into better position to carry out his dire intentions.

“I’m serious!! I promise!! I’m taking your earlier advice to heart!! You warned me to never again brazenly stand up to the head of the Order!! You cautioned that I was far too brash with Tain years ago!! Well, you were right, and I’ve learned my lesson!! Please give me a chance to prove it to you!! It’s probably the only chance for both or either of us to live!! Garak, please, you don’t want to do this!! Help me; help us both!!”

Garak’s eyes narrowed, and he did not move. So softly that he almost wondered if he’d truly heard it, Garak thought that he heard Bashir whisper, “I’m afraid!” Then, he saw the human blink back tears.

So slightly that Bashir wasn’t sure whether he’d imagined it, Garak minutely loosened his grip, and then the Cardassian instructed tightly, “We will sit together on one bench. You will pretend to be consoling me over Tain’s death. Say one wrong thing, or make one move to leave my side, and you’ll die at once. I will not allow the Klingons to learn Tain’s secret. I am willing to kill us both to prevent it. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir!!!” His desperate relief was palpable.

“If we get away from the Dominion’s imprisonment, you will accompany me to Cardassian territory. If you try to escape, I will kill you.” He quirked a brow ridge. “So, if you should decide to try to get away later, be very sure that you can succeed, because if I get hold of you, there’ll be no second chances, and I will no longer be inclined to do it mercifully and quickly. Do you understand that?”

Bashir nodded tearily.

“You will remain under my influence indefinitely: if you behave, I’ll keep you as my friend, lunch-companion, and perhaps even confidant, in a limited fashion; if you don’t behave, I’ll hold you as my prisoner, and perhaps even victim. Is that also very clear?”

“Yes, Garak.”

 

“Do you trust him?” Dukat asked Garak a few months later.

The latter shrugged nonchalantly. “I trust no one entirely. I can’t afford to.”

“Then why don’t you kill him?”

“Why don’t I kill you?”

“Because I’m the head of our government’s military. You need me.”

Garak gestured expansively. “Even the head of the Obsidian Order needs a personal physician. And in that, I can trust him. Dr. Bashir’s Hippocratic Oath won’t allow him to harm me. And we have nothing similar in the Cardassian Union.”

“Convenient,” allowed Dukat.

“Still,” insisted Damar skeptically. “A human as personal physician to the head of the Obsidian Order?? Unorthodox, to say the least.”

“Unlike with any previous holder of that position, I did not even have to torture him to determine his loyalty,” Garak pointed out to them.

“And how that must have disappointed you,” Dukat quipped, though not without some rancor.

Bashir watched the three of them balefully as they so dispassionately discussed him.

“Admittedly, you do appear to have him completely cowed.” Dukat studied the human in their midst with narrowed eyes.

“We have an understanding.” Garak said bluntly, “As long as he remains loyal to me, I’ll continue to treat him as a friend. If he ever betrays me, I will torture him to an exceptionally slow and miserable death.”

Bashir sat very still, with downcast eyes, as the three reptilians scrutinized him, trying not to see, via his averted vision, the humor that they displayed at that pronouncement. But he could scarcely miss the amusement in Damar’s tone as the latter speculated, “Exceedingly creatively, I’ll wager.”

“Of that, you may have no doubt,” Garak stated flatly.

Bashir shuddered and swallowed hard.

Dukat requested coldly, “If you must ever punish him for betrayal, I’d like to be summoned. I wish to observe. Or perhaps even to participate.”

“I echo that request,” Damar said with an unsavory smile.

“Granted,” replied Garak without hesitation, undoubtedly knowing that that additional ominous threat would go even farther toward assuring his already humble companion’s subservience.

The human stammered, “Sir, if you have no further need of me, may I retire for the night?”

Dukat surmised, “No stomach for our current conversation, I presume?” He smirked.

“No, sir,” Bashir whispered.

Garak consented generously, “You may, Doctor.”

Once alone in his own bed, as had become his habit each night, the human cried himself to sleep.

 

“Good morning, sir,” Bashir addressed stiffly at the start of the next day, glancing apprehensively askance.

Garak offered a faint, tolerant smile. “They’re gone, Julian. You needn’t speak so formally.”

“Nor you so threateningly?”

“Quite,” Garak acknowledged mildly.

“But the threat remains,” Bashir countered bitterly.

“What would you have me say, Doctor?”

“Your vile threats wound me.”

“But not so much as the reality would. Now I suggest that we change the subject.”

Bashir wasn’t finished. “Would you really let them participate in my ghoulish demise?”

“It would be politic to grant their requests. They’re powerful men.”

“And what of me, your friend?” he stressed ironically.

“If you intend no betrayal, you have nothing to fear.”

“It would be three times as devastating and terrifying with three of you wielding your species’ vicious perversions on my poor, frail, helpless human body!”

“But not three times as painful. The results would remain essentially the same.”

“You missed the point.” When Garak quirked a humorless grin, Bashir continued, “But I wouldn’t, would I? Miss the ‘point,’ that is? You would use ‘The Device’ on me, wouldn’t you?” he accused.

“Naturally. That is the only penalty for state criminals who betray at the highest levels. Now, are you satisfied? We have a lot of work to do. Here, file these.”

“Yesss, sir,” Bashir hissed sulkily, taking the documents.

“Oh, now you resent your secondary role as file clerk? You feel that you should just hover idly, attentively awaiting my next hangnail or heart attack?”

“Of course not; I would go stark raving stir crazy.”

“Well then, why continue with your hostile tone?”

“At the thought that I have to live every moment of the rest of my life with the danger hanging over me of a potential, cruel, sadistic, agonizing, excruciating, fatal attack from you, my only remaining and relevant friend.”

“And from my political cohorts.”

“And from your political cohorts,” he echoed cooperatively.

“Well, live with this thought instead, Julian: behave yourself as you always have, live a long, peaceful, painless life, and die gently in bed, comfortably attended.”

The human was frustrated at his failure to make his superior understand his misery. “Of course that is my intention! But what if – I don’t know! – something just…happens: something that I cannot anticipate, predict, or prevent? And then, what if you don’t believe me, that it’s not my fault??”

“We all take chances like that in life, Julian,” Garak said much more softly. “Why should you be exempt?”

“But in my case, you can control it!” Bashir extended both arms appealingly.

“If you are truly innocent,” Garak told him slowly, “it is unlikely that I will fail to believe you. Now, I am sorry, but that is the best that I can do.”

“Allow me a suicide pill,” the human begged.

“No,” Garak countered automatically.

“You hand them out freely to the agents all of the time!”

“You are not an agent.”

“Garak….”

The head of the most fearsome Cardassian agency looked the human intently in the eye just then. “Julian, don’t you see? If I let you have a suicide pill, you’ll feel far more free to betray me, knowing that you can escape ‘honorably’ and pain-free immediately after what you doubtless perceive as your ‘duty’ to Starfleet. Put simply, you know too much. I must keep terror hanging over your head in order to compel your obedience. I would be incredibly foolhardy to supply you with an easy ‘out’ to soothe your fears and your guilty conscience over abandoning your Federation.”

Bashir hung his head in sadness. “I suppose that I understand, but don’t you realize what this does to me? How I suffer from the terror and the guilt, day after day, and year after year?”

“And I have the power to change all of that, hmm? Are you really so eager to die, however painlessly?”

After a lengthy pause, the human admitted, “No, I suppose not. I just need an escape route in case of unforeseen emergency, because I find the constant fear of your ultimate horror so insupportable.” He looked up then. “It simply must not happen to me.”

“Whether you believe it or not, you have at least as much control over that as I do, my friend.”

“Friend,” Bashir echoed dully. “Just what will that word mean, if the worst ever happens? Does it mean that you’ll…comfort me…even as you’re tearing out my living guts???”

For that, Garak had no answer.

 

But perhaps he thought it over and changed his mind.

For presently, just a few hours later, he announced to Bashir that he would be back in about ten minutes, and then promptly left the room. And he had left open the drawer. The drawer that held the suicide pills, along with other assorted nasties. The drawer that he always kept meticulously locked, whenever he was out of the room even for a moment. Garak knew that Bashir knew that that was where the pills were kept.

Was this an offer or a mistake?

Had Garak had second thoughts and decided that he didn’t want to have to do something dreadful to his friend after all, and that, in case of disaster, he, too, would rather see his human friend have a quick, merciful end? Was this therefore an offer that Bashir could grab a suicide pill, without Garak’s ever having to expressly say so? Could it be a subtle mercy to which the Cardassian preferred not to call attention?

But if it were a mistake, would theft of a pill constitute a sufficient offense to bring on the very punishment that Bashir would do anything to avoid? Did Garak ever even make such mistakes? As he had once told Bashir, the Cardassian species could be best characterized by its attention to detail. Could Garak have missed this, such a crucial detail? If so, could the human seize a pill without getting caught? Would Garak know the exact count of the pills, and realize that one had been appropriated?

Bashir sidled slowly over to the drawer and peered into it. Yes, there were the suicide pills, along with a few other items whose use he didn’t even want to imagine. The sight of the pills tantalized him: they represented a way to end his constant tormenting terror of being obscenely and fatally tortured. Wouldn’t that relief be worth this small danger? He felt at horrifying risk every moment of every day, the way that things were. He might actually be able to relax and more or less enjoy his life, with such a “way out” in his possession. Bashir couldn’t shake the fear that something unforeseen might occur to endanger him, and he felt compelled to protect himself against the possibility. He envisioned no intentional betrayal of Garak, and he thought that Garak knew that; otherwise, he surely would not have left the pills unguarded.

Bashir reached his hand into the drawer. Just as his fingers touched a suicide pill, his subconscious abruptly whispered to him, “Not one. Two.” With no time to ponder the significance of his own internal hint, the human grasped two of the pills, and secreted one into each of two pockets. He mentally shrugged: after all, if Garak knew the precise count of the pills, Bashir would as easily get caught for the theft of one as two.

He hastened back to his desk, and busied himself with his files. When Garak returned, Bashir studiously kept his head down, and his eyes on his task. He thought that he saw, via his peripheral vision, his Cardassian friend thoughtfully observing him a time or two, but he dared not look up, lest his eyes betray his guilt.

 

It was a few more months before he saw the superior wisdom of his own subconscious. It had realized that if Bashir intended no betrayal, then betrayal could only come from someone else, and that that someone would need help as well.

Against all odds, Miles O’Brien broke into his room.

“What the devil are you doing here? Miles, do you realize the risk that you have taken?? Do you have a death-wish???”

“Shut up; I’m getting you out of here!”

“You’re not an undercover agent!”

“Says who? I did all right against the Orion Syndicate; now come on!”

Of course they were captured. And naturally they were vilely threatened. And obviously Garak saw Bashir reach into both pockets, withdraw two items, and shove one insistently into O’Brien’s hand.

And absolutely Bashir saw Garak’s eyes turn bittersweet, sad, but relieved, as both humans ingested the pills right in front of him. Dukat and Damar yelled in protest, but Garak’s tragic-but-accepting farewell gaze was a beautiful sight, and the last one that Bashir ever saw.