JUSTIFIED FEAR

This may…or may not…be an Alternate Universe.

Garak had long since tired of asking Julian Bashir what was bothering him. The Cardassian had coaxed, cajoled, and coddled his human friend, all without success. Bashir was unusually reticent, somber, and unresponsive. He had been avoiding his customary lunch companion, both at lunchtime and otherwise, and Garak had come to his quarters this evening to inquire as to the reason.

Frustrated with the lack of response, Garak changed tactics. He dropped his serious, soothing demeanor, and teased the human, “You will tell me what I want to know. We have ways of making you talk.”

Instead of receiving even a minute smile for his effort at levity, Garak was shocked by the venomous, resentful eyes with which Bashir speared him.

“What?”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” The human sounded bitter.

“What is? That’s what I’ve been trying to find out; tell me.”

“You really don’t get it.”

“Get what? You haven’t told me!” Garak was becoming exasperated.

The human dropped his gaze and let out a long, heavy sigh. “You…and Odo…in the Gamma Quadrant…,” Bashir said very slowly and softly. He was no longer meeting the Cardassian’s eyes at all.

“What about…?” Then Garak realized. “Oh.” Bashir was obviously referring to Garak’s recent torture of the shapeshifter.

The silence grew awkward between them.

Finally, Garak tried carefully, “I can see how that would distress you. But believe me, the extenuating circumstances….”

“You should have found a way out of it,” Bashir interrupted abruptly, harshly.

A bit more firmly, Garak declared, “There isn’t always a way out of unpleasant events.”

“Unpleasant? That’s your word for what you did?” the human responded in disbelief. He was still keeping his eyes well away from Garak’s.

Trying to be kind and sympathetic, Garak automatically reached out a hand to his friend’s shoulder.

Bashir’s gaze shot upward abruptly; he blanched, and recoiled.

The Cardassian jolted back in astonishment. “I wasn’t going to hurt you!” he insisted defensively.

“How was I to be sure of that?” Bashir challenged accusingly.

The “tailor” blinked at him. The human’s emotional affliction over that unfortunate event was far worse than he’d realized. Garak stared back wordlessly, in utter disbelief.

All at once, Bashir’s control broke; he sobbed once, again dropped his gaze, and buried his face in his hands.

With infinite care not to startle, Garak eased himself down onto the sofa next to the human, and very gently took him into his arms. Relatively unalarmed this time, Bashir slumped into the offered embrace, and gazed balefully up at his friend, his face already drenched on both sides from eyes to chin.

“Oh, Julian! You’ve got to believe that I would never have done such a thing without severe provocation.”

“Odo didn’t provoke you.” His tone had changed from anger to sadness.

“No, Tain did! His challenge was as clear as could be. If I had faltered in following his orders, he would have turned Odo over to the Tal Shiar, and probably executed me.”

“How can you…bear the burden of what you’ve done?”

Garak eyed him honestly. “Frankly, it isn’t easy. But, it helps that Odo has forgiven me. We’ve even been having breakfast together since then, at his suggestion.”

“I saw.” Bashir gazed at him with an all-consuming sadness.

Trying to fight down bitterness at his friend’s monumental judgment and rejection of him, Garak couldn’t help remarking, “And here you are, refusing to have lunch with me, and it wasn’t even you that I tortured.”

Seemingly instinctively, the human cringed away from him, his suddenly wild eyes widening alarmingly.

That’s when the reptilian realized. “Oh! That’s the real trouble, isn’t it? Not Odo’s torture, but, potentially, yours? As in, what if you had been with me on that expedition, instead of Odo?”

Tears flowed faster, and expression crumpled.

“Oh, Julian,” Garak murmured softly. He pulled the human close again.

“I don’t want you to…ever!” he sobbed.

“Oh, my.” The Cardassian was at a loss. “Well, Julian, of course I wouldn’t, not if there were any way out of it.”

Bashir again eyed him accusingly, his lip trembling.

Garak stared back in perplexity. “Well, I can’t offer a guarantee; how could I? I can’t know what’s in our future. I don’t want to ever torture you, and I’ll find a way out if there is one to find, but if there isn’t? What would you expect me to do??”

“I don’t know,” he whimpered mournfully.

“Would you prefer to be turned over to someone else? Someone with no compassion or concern for you?? Is that what you’d want???”

“I don’t know,” he whined miserably, sounding much younger than his years.

An overbearing, unbearably smug Dukat swaggered over to Damar in the privacy of the former’s quarters, aboard his ship.

“I’ve been monitoring some of our taps that we left aboard Terok Nor, and I heard something very interesting. From the one in the doctor’s quarters, of all places.”

Damar glanced up at him. “Bashir, isn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

“What was so interesting?”

“He was talking to Garak, and the human was very upset. It seems that Garak has recently tortured Odo, on Tain’s orders.”

Damar looked baffled. “How does one torture a shapeshifter?”

“I plan to find out, believe me. I’ll access their logs. But that’s not the point. What I found so interesting is that Bashir is now utterly terrified of Garak. It seems that he fears the same treatment.”

Damar smirked. “Ah yes, our species’ specialty. It gets them every time. We wouldn’t be nearly the power that we are in the quadrant without that constant unspoken threat hanging over all of them, and not just over the humans, either.”

Dukat grinned back. “You can see it in their eyes when they look at us. Their stare alone seems to say, ‘Cardassians! Torture! Aughhh!’” He emitted a quite unsavory laugh.

A bit later the same day, Dukat sought out Damar, bursting with his news regarding just how one does go about torturing a shapeshifter, but an eager Damar spoke first.

“Bashir’s not the only one. I listened in on the recordings of several of our other taps, and I heard O’Brien in his quarters, crying on his wife about the horror of it all. He’s now thoroughly scared of Garak, too.”

Dukat laughed softly. “I think we can use this. For our amusement. And to punish Bashir; I’ve been looking for a way to do so, ever since he and Garak foiled my plans to disgrace Kotan Pa’dar.”

“And I would certainly enjoy punishing O’Brien for his role in the battle of Setlek 3.” Damar was grinning with him.

“Miles, why can’t I move?” A panicky Bashir squirmed ineffectually where he lay prone on a table. No restraints were visible.

From a table nearby, the engineer replied, “We’re being held down by a forcefield. Granted, it doesn’t feel like one of ours. Ours are spongier; these are more restrictive.”

“Which brings us to the next point: where are we??”

The answer came, not from O’Brien, but from the silent appearance of the three men who entered just then.

Garak was a few shades paler gray than usual. Dukat and Damar were striding in alongside him. There was a marked contrast in attitude: the former appeared acutely reluctant, while the latter two were decidedly eager.

Instantly, Bashir’s eyes attained maximum width; he easily guessed the nature of the situation, given how recently he and Garak had had their anguished conversation. Those huge expressive eyes flew to O’Brien, as Bashir murmured, “Oh no.”

Given his far more thorough experience with Cardassians through the years, the blonder human easily surmised the meaning of Bashir’s murmur. He predictably muttered, “Bloody hell.”

Garak’s slight nod provided unnecessary confirmation, and the former Obsidian Order agent elaborated, “It seems that when we discussed this in your quarters, we were overheard via planted listening devices.”

Defensively, O’Brien protested, “Well, I didn’t discuss it in his quarters!”

Smugly, Damar informed him, “No, you discussed it in your own.”

“Ah jeez,” the blond mumbled.

“And that gave us delightful ideas,” Dukat gloated.

Trembling as much as the confining forcefield would let him, Bashir asked, “And why are we naked?”

“They always do that.” O’Brien dismissed the significance of that detail, trying to give his friend a modicum of reassurance.

To that, Dukat bore a look of doubt. “Don’t be too sure of that. True, our people tend to strip our victims to unnerve them, and to emphasize their vulnerability, but this time, we just may have more specific reasons, in addition.”

“More sinister, from your point of view,” Damar relished saying.

Now both humans tensed in alarm.

Dukat read their assumptions through their expressions, and chuckled mildly, “No, nothing so perverted, I assure you. Just something more painful.”

Garak clarified bleakly, “If I don’t torture you sufficiently agonizingly to suit them, they’ll take over and torture you in far more delicate parts of your bodies.”

“But otherwise, essentially using the same diabolical procedures.” Damar smirked.

“Which are?” O’Brien was visibly trying to brace himself.

Dukat took his time getting to the point. “Well, we were fascinated by the method Garak used on Odo, but alas, that technique won’t work on a ‘solid,’” he employed the term with some disdain, being one of the aforementioned, himself. “But, we wanted something as similar as possible that would work on you.” So saying, he produced from behind him a long metal rod, and touched it to the bottom of Bashir’s bare foot.

The doctor jolted briefly under the confining field. “That’s cold!” he complained.

Damar smirked again and half-chuckled as if at some private joke of his own.

“It won’t be next time, I assure you,” Dukat revealed more grimly.

Both humans frowned in deep suspicion at that.

Dukat was enjoying his captive audience, and milked his spotlight theatrically. “Have you seen the recordings of Odo’s torture?”

Bashir shivered. “I didn’t want to see them.” O’Brien shook his head in agreement.

“Too bad.” But Dukat clearly didn’t really care; he was enjoying his narrative. “Because then you would have seen how Odo’s…skin?...outer layers?...flaked and peeled off as if he were burning.”

O’Brien’s expression sagged. “Oh god, you’re going to burn us. And that’s why you said it wouldn’t be cold next time.”

Ignoring the human as if he hadn’t spoken, Dukat went on, “Do you know that your ancient human ancestors used to put a long metal pipe into the fire to heat it up to burn their victims?” He sounded almost conversational. “Well, we don’t need anything as crude or primitive as an actual fire. Not when we have far more efficient modern gadgets.” He nonchalantly pressed a control on one of the very many inexplicable gadgets in the room, and it lit obligingly. He inserted the metal rod into an opening in the machine, and it quickly glowed red hot at the business end, while remaining dark and cool at the grip. Decidedly verbose as he typically was, Dukat continued, “Of course, I know that you’ll repair all of the damage easily with a dermal regenerator when we return you to Terok Nor, but you’ll still feel it being done to you, and it’ll hurt just as much as in your people’s ancient times.”

Bashir’s panic was growing. “Garak! No!”

The addressed hurried to him, and, reaching effortlessly through the forcefield as Dukat had done with the rod, he cupped Bashir’s face tenderly in his hand.

Surprisingly, Dukat seemed even to approve. “That’s it, console him. How poignant. Draw out the suspense. Comfort him while he knows full well what you’re going to do to him.”

“No no no,” the brunette human was murmuring steadily.

“I’m so sorry, Julian,” his Cardassian friend all but whispered. “But this is indeed one of those rare moments I spoke of, in which there is no way out.”

“Don’t do it! Refuse!”

“I can’t. If I do, Dukat and Damar will take over, and target your genitals with the hot probe.”

“Mercy!”

“Only with me is even a bit of mercy possible.”

Bashir gave up and sobbed. He nestled desperately closer into Garak’s palm.

Only then did any of the Cardassians notice that O’Brien was muttering steadily, unintelligibly, to himself, with his eyes tightly closed.

Garak stared across at the engineer helplessly, unable to reach both victims at once, and unsure how to comfort the less-well-acquainted Irishman, in any case. Dukat and Damar shrugged and smirked at each other. Each human dealt with the overwhelming fright in his own way. If anything, the Cardassians found the contrast entertaining.

At length, O’Brien’s volume rose, and he asked coherently, “Why are you doing this? And why to us? Or are you just bored?”

This time, Dukat answered briefly, “Kotan Pa’dar.”

“Setlek 3,” responded Damar, just as succinctly.

O’Brien cursed quietly and turned his head away; Bashir’s eyes were drawn, against his will, from the comforting hand of his trusted friend, to the face of his particular tormentor, and he whispered in horrified realization, “Rugal.”

“Precisely,” confirmed Dukat in self-satisfaction. He produced a hypo from somewhere in his uniform, and injected first one human, and then the other, with it.

“What’s in that?” demanded the doctor in alarm.

“Only a stimulant, to ensure that you don’t lose consciousness. We can’t have you passing out on us. We want you awake and fully aware for every moment of your torture.”

“You sadistic barbarian!” Bashir hissed.

“Don’t provoke him, Julian,” insisted Garak. “Believe me, it’s standard procedure.”

In a desperate attempt to console his fellow human, O’Brien insisted, “Julian! They promised we’d survive it; we’d have to, in order to go back and use the dermal regenerator.”

But Bashir replied worriedly, “But in what traumatized mental condition?”

“I don’t know,” his friend admitted.

“Now let’s see,” Dukat spoke with a flourish. “Which of you shall be first?” He regarded the two helpless humans pseudo-pensively.

Generously, Damar offered, “Your victim should be first; all of this was your diabolically brilliant idea.”

Dukat nodded his gracious thanks, and he and Damar approached Bashir from opposite sides of the table.

Garak’s tragic expression barely registered on Bashir, as the latter screamed, “No!! NO!!!”

Dukat and Damar each gripped a human arm, pulling each arm straight out and away from the human’s side.

The forcefield automatically adjusted to allow them to do so. Clever innovative design, engineering Chief O’Brien thought dully, allowing only Cardassian movement, while thoroughly restricting any attempted motion by members of any other species.

Eyes downcast, Garak slowly withdrew the hot poker from its heater, and resignedly went toward Bashir.

“Garak!! Help me!!!”

“I can’t,” his friend said sadly. “They’ve already warned me that if I do anything foolish, such as try to attack one of them with this rod, the two of them will take it from me and bury it in your groin.”

Bashir cried out in anguish at that horrific pronouncement.

Infinitely reluctantly, Garak installed the hot end into the human’s left underarm.

Bashir’s scream offended sensitive Cardassian hearing, but two of the three endured it with a grin, and the third was too emotionally anguished to care. Bashir’s left arm, with a will of its own, tried frantically to flail in Dukat’s grip, but the latter held on easily.

After Garak withdrew the probe, Bashir panted and gasped in agony and shook uncontrollably while Garak mournfully circled around to the other side of the victim, where Damar held his right arm away from his body. The grisly procedure was repeated with similar results.

“Now leave him alone!” demanded O’Brien. “You’ve done enough to him!”

Dukat regarded the blond in feigned shock. “Why, no, not nearly.”

So saying, he and Damar now each lifted a leg of the victim, exposing the tender flesh underneath the bend of the knee. Garak gritted his teeth, closed his eyes in despair, and obediently burned the victim behind each knee, one after the other. Bashir shrieked wordlessly, as O’Brien yelled, “Stop it!!”

The Cardassians barely allowed Bashir to catch his breath before they lay his legs back down on the table, and, as he’d clearly been previously instructed, Garak inserted the still shockingly hot rod between toes. Additional shrill screaming went on as the human flesh was seared between each two toes of both feet. Bashir was so loud, in fact, that one could scarcely hear O’Brien bellowing at the torturers to stop.

By the time that they’d finished this task, Bashir was simply shaking and crying like a baby. Scorched, dangling fragments of flesh hung from the various injured locations of his body. Struggling to progress from wordless agonized sounds to intelligible speech, the brunette human haltingly volunteered, unasked, to Dukat, “I’ll…never…cross you again!” Then he shivered violently from the effort that those few words had cost him.

“I’m sure that you will not,” Dukat oozed, supremely confidently.

The Cardassian trio moved on to the other human.

Bashir shuddered and spasmed uncontrollably throughout the entirety of O’Brien’s identical torture.

When at last both humans lay trembling and gasping, Dukat retrieved yet a different metal rod: this one with an intricately complex design on the business end, instead of a plain rounded point.

“What’s…that?” O’Brien managed to pant.

“Cardassian characters, symbols,” semi-explained Damar. “In our own language. We’re going to brand you, label you, as your kind once did to animals.”

Dukat added, “Of course, once again, we’re well aware that you’ll erase the brand when you return to that station, but at least you’ll get to feel it happening to you, and at least you’ll wear the mark for a little while.”

“But…what does it say?” asked Bashir weakly.

With severe regret, Garak aimed the new rod at Bashir’s tender tummy, as Dukat declared with relish, “Tortured expertly by Garak.”

A few days later, Odo approached Bashir and O’Brien in Quark’s one evening, and said, “It is most unfortunate that my misery led to your own. Is there any way that I can help you gentlemen?”

“Just join us. Spend time with us,” welcomed Bashir.

O’Brien nodded and gestured to a seat at their table. “Yeah. You belong here. You’re the other member of the Victims’ Club.”

“Try not to be too bitter. Garak truly means us no harm. I genuinely believe that. He was a victim, too, caught in terrible circumstances both times.”

“Constable, it was far more horrible on our end, trust me,” stressed O’Brien.

“You don’t have to tell me; I do know that.”

“Of course you do. Miles didn’t mean anything by that, I assure you,” said Bashir.

A comfortable and comforting silence gathered them together like a warm quilt.

Tension rose several notches, however, when Garak also joined them.

“Are you well healed?” asked Garak, with very evident concern for them both.

“Physically,” O’Brien replied briefly, and took a long gulp of his drink.

“Emotionally will take a good bit longer,” Bashir agreed. “What worries me is that now we’ll never know if we can safely talk without being monitored by them.”

The next time that they encountered Dukat and Damar was when the Defiant rescued the two of them, plus the Detapa Council, from the rampaging, misguided attack of the Klingons. Bashir, irked that instead of showing gratitude for the rescue, Dukat was referring to a simple procedure of blood-screening as “disgusting,” called the dangerous Cardassian “disgusting” in return.

“Julian!” Garak demanded indignantly a short time later, “Are you trying to goad Dukat into calling for another torture session?!”

“I know! I shouldn’t’ve called him ‘disgusting.’ He told you???”

Garak regarded him disparagingly. “He’s not the only one with listening devices around here.”

“Garak! Now you’re spying on us? Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, after all, you are a spy. It’s what you do.”

Garak stared in annoyance at his unusually prickly friend.

Encountering him in a corridor, Damar challenged Bashir haughtily, “You like to live dangerously, don’t you, human?”

In misery, Bashir admitted, “I know, I shouldn’t’ve dared call Dukat ‘disgusting.’ Tell him I’m sorry, please!”

“Tell him yourself.” Damar nodded in a direction just past the doctor’s shoulder.

Bashir whirled in dread.

Dukat observed the human severely and arrogantly with hands on hips.

In a small voice, Bashir reminded him, “I kept my promise; I haven’t interfered with you again! And now I’ll make a new promise: I’ll never insult you again! Please forgive me; I just reacted without thinking because I had assumed that you would be grateful for our rescue, and not give us trouble over a little blood-screening, to ensure that you’re not a shapeshifter!” Then he paled several shades further as he saw his sometimes-friend, sometimes-torturer arrive. “Garak!” he spoke in hushed horror.

Garak raised reassuring hands. “I was not summoned to hurt; I was monitoring, and saw this problem unfolding.”

“For once, I’m glad you monitor us. Help me. Get me out of this.”

“I’ll try.” He turned to Dukat. “The young man has made an eloquent apology. And as he said, he has not violated your order that he never again interfere with you. He has even offered to abide by a further condition that you hadn’t yet demanded: that he never again insult you. He deserves a chance to prove his sincerity.”

Dukat visibly considered Garak’s words, and then he swaggered over to Bashir and towered intimidatingly over him. Automatically, the human withdrew a step, to which the reptilian responded by stepping insistently forward again, and seizing the mammalian by the chin to prevent further withdrawal. He tilted the head upward and forced Bashir to meet his cold gaze.

“If I spare you at this time, I want you to fully understand precisely what will happen to you if you ever violate either of these conditions.”

“I think I know, sir.” Bashir was trembling in his grasp.

“Not quite. If there is any additional violation, I will require you to beg us to torture your groin with the heated rod, and tell us that you want it, before that punishment is administered.”

For an instant, Bashir was speechless with horror. Then, he very carefully, meekly, said, “I…am uncertain that I could bring myself to lie to you that severely, sir.” From the corner of his eye, he saw Garak nod approvingly. Later, the latter would privately applaud his deferential wording and implied respect through his preference for honesty toward the dangerous reptilian.

Dukat grinned a most unsavory grin, and said, “I will find a way to make you able to do so.” He paused for suspense, and then explained, “You will say anything that I instruct you to say, for if you do not, I will double the length of time for which the probe is in place.”

Bashir gulped noisily, and nodded feebly in submission.

Dukat let him go.