Note: I recently finished watching DS9 for the first time on Netflix, and then read A Stitch in Time, The Crimson Shadow, Section 31 and Enigma Tales very shortly thereafter, needing more of Julian and Garak's story. As soon as I finished Enigma Tales, I wanted to write this, as the ending of that book was such a perfect mix of devastating and hopeful!

It's set post-canon, and after the events of Enigma Tales, when Bashir, who is catatonic, is left in the care of Castellan Garak and his staff.
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It has been five days since Garak last visited Bashir.

Though, for the first time since Ezri Dax delivered Bashir into his hands for safe-keeping, he hasn't been kept from his side by the escapist industry and wilful avoidance of make-work, but the real work of a castellan. Five long days spent holed up with a delegation of Bajoran representatives, discussing war crimes trials and extradition treaties, and coming no closer to agreeing on the details of any of them.

Five long, arduous days, and nothing substantial has changed, either outside this room or within it.

The air is still tainted by a faint antiseptic tang and the metronomic bleeping of the medical monitoring equipment, counting out heart and respiration rate; reassuringly steady but nonetheless jarring in the otherwise silent space.

The same still-life tableau is arranged in front of the window, but Garak's gaze skims over it towards the biobed and then the table beside it, finally resting on the vase of mela lilies set there. They're wilting now, their broad, white petals crinkled and browning at the edges: the only sign that any time has passed. That the room and its inhabitant weren't placed in a stasis field when he left, like a starship morgue.

That association chills him, and he says, "I'll bring fresh flowers," just to hear the sound of his own voice.

He gets no response, but then he hadn't expected one.

"I thought we could continue reading Sayak's book, if you have no objections," he forces himself to continue. Forces himself, too, to turn and walk towards the window.

This moment is always the hardest; will likely always be the hardest. The initial moment wherein he has to look, confirm, and admit that Bashir is also unchanged, still lost to him, trapped inside the intractable prison of his own body and mind.

He puts it off a little while longer.

"Ah, the stowaway," he says instead to Kukalaka, picking the bear up from the windowsill where it had been carefully placed in the exact same spot where Pulaski had left it: one shiny, plastic eye looking out over the city, the other fixed on its owner. "I'm afraid there may be some delays in arranging your citizenship, my small friend. I've been kept very busy of late."

He runs his hands over the toy, the fine scales on his fingertips catching here, on stitches made from a different, thicker thread than the rest, and there, on scorched patches where the synthetic fur had melted and then reformed into rough spikes as it cooled. Scars from the destruction of the original DS9, perhaps? Frankly, it's a wonder that the bear survived at all.

He muses on the possible avenues of this miraculous escape for far too long, dreaming up ever more elaborate scenarios until the realisation hits that he's taking distraction to sublimely ridiculous levels. It's past time to face reality. To face Bashir.

Garak looks at him obliquely, out of the corner of his eye. First, at the slow rise and fall of his chest, then the sag of his chin, and then, eventually, his face. Bashir's eyes are dull and unfocused, but the shifting light of the dying day streaming in through the window makes shadows play across his features – ebbing and flowing beneath the curve of his cheekbones and the bow of his lips – lending a deceptive animation to his blank expression.

Just as he did on his last visit, he places Kukalaka on Bashir's lap, and then lifts his hand, meaning to settle it on the bear's head. Bashir's long fingers – those clever, surgeon's fingers – droop bonelessly, as limp and lifeless as an empty glove. Garak shifts his grip and squeezes them, just a little too hard. Bashir doesn't try to pull away, or complain, or even wince. He doesn't react to the pressure in any discernible way. Likely, he doesn't even feel it.

Garak lets Bashir's hand drop, takes the seat at his side, and opens his book at the page he'd marked.

"Now, Almar had fallen into the clutches of his enemies when we left him," he says. "I hope you're as eager as I am to discover whether or not he escapes."

That particular stopping point had been born half from necessity, half from design. Garak had been reading to Bashir for so long that his throat had grown dry and felt abraded, and his eyesight had begun to blur. He could probably have soldiered on, eked out his voice for the last few pages of Almar's tale, but by pausing where he did, just as the story was reaching its denouement, might have served to irritate Bashir. Might have roused in him a desire to hear how it ends, and thus built his anticipation for Garak's next visit.

It was a slim hope, unrealised, but Garak has precious few tactics he can bring to play in this waiting game he's decided to engage in, and he's determined to use all of them.

And reading is still one of the strongest, he thinks, so he continues on through the climax of Almar's tale, and the entirety of Taselle's, pausing every so often to wet his mouth with kanar.

He's barely made a start on the legate's tale when a soft noise draws his attention to the doorway behind him.

The nurse standing there cants her head in a deferential nod. "Sorry to disturb you, sir," she says, "but it's 22:00. Time to put Doctor Bashir to bed."

The news honestly surprises Garak. He'd been so focused on Sayak's words that he hadn't noticed the time slipping away; the sun going down and the room's lights coming up.

"Of course," he says, getting hurriedly to his feet. "He needs his sleep."

"Rest is a great healer," the nurse says sagely, though it seems to Garak that, if that old adage were true, then Bashir would have come back to himself – to Garak – long since.

He murmurs his assent, nonetheless, and the nurse bustles forward to check on Bashir's vital signs – good, it appears, judging by her small smile – and then prepare him to be moved to the biobed.

When she plucks Kukalaka from Bashir's lap, something about the sight of the bear in her hands unsettles Garak in a way he cannot name or even put his finger on, and, without thinking, he reaches out and touches her arm, stilling her.

She frowns at him, puzzled. "Sir?"

"I think he should keep the bear with him," Garak says, and the words feel right even if the nurse looks unconvinced.

She turns her frown on Kukalaka, and her nostrils flare as if in distaste, perhaps thinking the worn, battered bear unsanitary, or else wondering why he'd ask that a grown man be put to bed with a toy.

Pulaski's parting advice floats to the forefront of Garak's mind; advice that Parmak had reiterated, so it seems that it's accepted practice in Cardassian medicine, too, and thus likely to satisfy the nurse.

"He needs familiar things around, to help remind him of who he is," he says. "And there's nothing more familiar to him here than that bear."