Message-ID: <005101c43642$6b4a7640$87c5fea9@max>
To: "ASCEM-S" <ASCEM-S@yahoogroups.com>
Organization: ConGlomeration
From: "Keith & Jessica Bratcher" <campbratcher@psci.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Mailing-List: list ASCEM-S@yahoogroups.com; contact ASCEM-S-owner@yahoogroups.com
Precedence: bulk
Date: Sun, 9 May 2004 22:53:56 -0500
Subject: [ASCEM-S] NEW DS9 "Nineteen Shades" 10/12 (G/B) [NC-17]
Reply-To: "Keith & Jessica Bratcher" <campbratcher@psci.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit



Please see part 1 for codes, disclaimers, and notes.

-------------------------------------------
Nineteen Shades, by Penumbra (part 10/12)
-------------------------------------------


By the time Bashir could escape the infirmary for lunch and get to the
replimat, Thuli was already seated at one of the more secluded tables
and wolfing down a bowl of Kohlanese stew. Nodding in greeting, Bashir
retrieved his plate of Gladst (no sauce, extra basil) from the
replicator along with a glass of water and decided to survive the day
without the Delvin fluff pastries his sweet tooth was clearly
craving. 

As he sat down opposite Thuli, Bashir sighed and stretched his neck
until his vertebrae aligned themselves with an audible crack. "Whew,
that felt good," he muttered and smiled at Thuli. The young Cardassian
was in evident good spirits. "Good afternoon. I apologise for being
late."

Thuli smiled back and plonked the spoon into his now empty bowl. "It's
quite all right, Dr. Bashir."

"You're leaving soon?" Bashir asked as he tucked into his Gladst. 

"Our transport to Mathenite space leaves at 1900 hours station time,"
Thuli said with a nod. "So how is Dele?"

Glancing back towards his infirmary where he'd just inspected Delemek
Serka, Bashir pursed his lips as he thought on what to answer. He
suspected this seemingly offhand inquiry into Serka's well-being was
one of the reasons why the Cardassian had suggested they lunch
together. The invitation had been something of a surprise but Bashir
had accepted it immediately, if only because he was now hopelessly
entangled in Thuli's life through Garak and, by extension, Serka.

"He's fully recovered as far as I can tell. The activation of the
implant seems to have had no permanent effect on him."

"So is there something you can do about the implant? Neutralise it,
maybe?" Thuli asked, obvious hope in his questions.

Sighing in frustration, Bashir stuck his fork into the Gladst. "I'm
afraid not. Its construction defied even Chief O'Brien's sensors, so
the only people who can help you are the Obsidian Order," he said
through a mouthful of food, his tone carefully neutral. "I'm sorry,
Thuli."

"The Order is the last place I'd go for help," the young Cardassian
said. He shivered and the scales of his bare forearms
bristled. Cocking his head, he studied Bashir for a moment. "Dele
refuses to speak anything bad about him, you know."

Bashir frowned. "About whom?"

"About Master Garak, of course," Thuli said and leaned forward,
catching Bashir's eye. The look on his face was both closed and
earnest. "Which brings me to the other reason why I wanted to meet
you. I wanted to thank you for not letting Dele get caught in the
past."

Ignoring the flush creeping on his cheeks, Bashir assumed a slightly
amused mien. "It was quite accidental on my part," he said, hearing
the slight catch in his voice when he felt the ghost of Garak's hands
on his body. Accidental but so very good indeed.

"Nevertheless, I owe you. Master Garak was -- is -- the love of his
life." There was little sorrow in Thuli's voice, but his sombre eyes
gave away the tragedy. "He's been the spectre in our bonding for many
years. Maybe that'll pass now with the Parting completed."

Bashir frowned, not understanding how a relationship could survive
under such circumstances. "Hasn't that been frustrating?"

"Of course, but I love Dele. I'll take what I can because he is, quite
literally, my life. Without him, I'd be nothing but a Sixth."

That infernal, elusive term again. "So tell me, what's a Sixth?"
Bashir asked, his food now forgotten in his intense curiosity. "I keep
hearing the word but I haven't been able to find a definition."

"A Lower Sixth is an *as'kjresnita*, a marked pariah. Look."

Leaning forward over the small table, Thuli pulled up his sleeve and
turned his arm so that Bashir could see the string of Cardassian
letters that ran down his bicep. The letters had faded to a dark blue
and a ragged scar bisected them. There were other marks on Thuli's
arms, most notably double bands of bone white keloid around his
slender wrists that caught Bashir's eye.

"What happened to you?"

Without taking his eyes off Bashir's, Thuli covered the Cardassian
letter tattoo with his other hand. "There's a lovely device called
'Circles of Fire' that the Order uses. A most exquisite form of
torture," he said, his voice unnaturally level as he flexed his hand
into a fist. The thick scars stood in clear relief as his skin flushed
to a darker colour. "Victims have been known to attempt to bite off
their own thumbs in their desperation to get the cuffs off their
wrists."

Bashir swallowed, suddenly not hungry at all. "What could you have
possibly done to merit such treatment?"

"All I did was born an undesirable, a Sixth, a marked outcast," he
said, squeezing his bicep where the tattoo was. "We do the menial and
dangerous work -- waste extraction, street cleaning, radioactive
material sweeps, that sort of thing. We're also the prostitutes and
the entertainment of bored soldiers in our society."

"Entertainment?" Bashir asked, not quite certain what Thuli meant with
the word although he had a hunch the man wasn't talking about juggling
or street mimes.

"Pillow talk is a Cardassian vice, so the prostitutes are often
informants for both the military and the Order. In the lower
districts, not a day goes by without a patrol of young, eager soldiers
of the state scrounging the streets for rumours about dissidents or
radical thinkers...and if they find none, they want to have some fun,"
he said, spitting out the last word as he pulled down his sleeve. 

With some dread, Bashir forced himself to ask the next logical
question. "What sort of fun are we talking about?"

"The painful kind," Thuli said with a smile that was more a grimace
than anything else and rubbed the keloids on his wrists. "The rumour
has it that it's how Master Garak built his reputation in the Obsidian
Order as a skilled interrogator. Long ago, he was working undercover
in the Third Order mechanised infantry and as the story has it, he
grew rather bored of the mind-numbing routine the jarheads
maintain. So while he was not investigating the dissident movement in
the Third Order, he excelled in coaxing out the very best performance
from whichever Sixth he'd picked up for his amusement that night."

Bashir closed his eyes and they burned under his eyelids. "I don't
think I want to hear any more, Thuli," he muttered and opened his eyes
when he felt Thuli's warm hand on his. 

"That was long before my time and rumours are rarely the whole truth,
Dr. Bashir," he said earnestly. "And you must understand who I am
before you can judge Master Garak. We, the Lower Sixth, are at the
fringes of our society, little better than animals. I'm only telling
you this because..." 

"Yes?" Bashir prompted after a moment of quiet when Thuli had trailed
off.

"Because I want you to understand how dangerous it will be if you at
some point decide to look closer into Master Garak's history. My
advice is, don't. What I've told you barely scratches the surface and
any further inquiries are bound to reveal only ugly things."

"So what you're saying is that ignorance is bliss?" Bashir translated,
narrowing his eyes at this unexpected advice. His scientist's mind
immediately rebelled against the tenet. "I find that hard to accept."

"I speak from experience. I made the mistake with Delemek and I've
regretted it ever since." His gaze glued to his tea mug, Thuli played
with his fingers in a nervous manner. "Dele saved me from my life of
shame because he's a great man. He doesn't care that I'm a Sixth and
that's why I'll never stop loving him. But that doesn't mean I can
forget what he did during his time as a Legate in the Central
Command," he said faintly, his eyes glazed over with pain. "I've
forgiven him, but forgetting is harder."

Bashir sat back and took a deep breath that left him slightly
dizzy. Intellectually, he'd been aware of Garak's history as an
Obsidian Order operative, but until now he'd not come across any
practical evidence on what that really meant. The thick bands of
gleaming white scar tissue circling Thuli's wrists and the deep pain
and shame in his eyes had changed all that. With some dread, Bashir
realised that one of the reasons why Garak knew things about his body
not even he himself had known -- why he was so good with his hands and
mouth and that slender, agile tongue of his -- was that he'd studied
such things to become a better torturer.

"I think I'm going to be sick," Bashir muttered, trying to find his
way out of the ethics quicksand he'd found himself in. 

"I'm sorry, Dr. Bashir. Take what I've said with a grain of salt. Dele
wouldn't speak so highly of Master Garak if he were a monster," Thuli
said, grasping Bashir's hands into his as he pressed his point. "Don't
try and see the shades of grey as black and white, please. He, much
like Dele and myself, is the product of our society, nothing more."

Feeling the intense warmth of Cardassian hands on his, Bashir
sighed. The touch reminded him of Garak's heat, the feel of the
Cardassian silk-slick skin by now so very familiar and dear to him. He
realised he was falling and try as they might, his ethics had little
pull when it came to his feelings. 

"I understand," he whispered to Thuli and nodded. "Really, I do." 

Thuli's hands were warm on his as they squeezed gently. "The past is
gone and unchangeable, and even I admit that Master Garak has paid for
all that he's done."

Bashir pulled his hands back and pinched the bridge of his nose
between his thumb and forefinger, trying to forestall the headache
developing behind his eyes. "Please don't call him that," he muttered
absently. 

"Don't call whom what?"

"Garak. You keep calling him 'Master Garak' even when you imply he's
no longer the person he used to be," Bashir said and let his hands
fall into his lap. 

"Ah, I'm sorry. It's just a bad habit of mine. That's what the
soldiers made us call them."

"I really can't see Garak ever wanting anyone to use such a ridiculous
address in his presence. To me, he's just plain and simple Garak,"
Bashir added with a slightly warmer smile. Gracing his effete and
eminently suave tailor with an honorific as serious as 'master' seemed
more like an insult than the compliment it was meant to be. "Nor can I
see him taking pleasure in violence without purpose," he added. 

"Garak belonged to a wholly different organisation, not this band of
ordinary thugs I was talking about. The military reacts to
provocation, while the Order is more interested in what someone might
do, not what they have done," Thuli said and met Bashir's grin with a
gaunt smile. "Did you know that the Obsidian Order never wear those
obnoxious, stiff uniforms the preening Guls and Glinns so adore?"

"They don't?" Bashir asked, dubious. In the collective mind of the
Federation, the triangular, beveled cuirass that was part of the
uniform had developed into a visual symbol of Cardassian military
prowess.

"No. They wear plain grey clothes with no rank markings so that you
can never tell if it's a junior operative or a senior interrogator
standing before you. A most bland sheath, covering the sharpest of
tools." 

Bashir nodded in understanding, for he had long recognised Garak's
talent for intentional blandness, both in appearance and in words. He
was the master of the pregnant, significant pause because so often, he
spoke in voids -- conveying all that he meant not in the words of his
lies, but in the empty, tense spaces between them.

"I just don't..." Bashir said, waving his hand above his now cold
Gladst to relieve his frustration. "I'm having a hard time
understanding the necessity of such bloodthirsty paranoia. Random
intimidation seems such short-sighted methods of operation because
they tend to lead to revolt."

"You're describing the military again -- the blunt tool. The Order is a
precision instrument. There's nothing random about their actions." For
a moment, Thuli studied him carefully, the scrutiny of his deep-set
blue eyes as disconcerting and penetrating as Garak's was. "Let me ask
you something, doctor. When you go out in your ships and destroy
Cardassian and Dominion vessels, do you ever wonder why?"

"I don't need to wonder. We go out only when it's absolutely
imperative to do so," Bashir said, not quite grasping where Thuli was
going with his tangent but willing to play along regardless. "Because
it's necessary for the survival of the Alpha Quadrant and the
Federation."

"Exactly -- because it's necessary. I can forgive Dele for his sins
because he did what was necessary to uphold Cardassia's pride, and
same goes for Ma--, for Garak," Thuli said, his eye contact
unblinking. "We all do what we think is necessary, that's all."

"I see your point," Bashir said, dropping his gaze. "I'm just...it's
hard, to be so torn about all this," he muttered, cringing at his
oblique choice of words and the lie they covered. The lie was, of
course, that it was in any way hard, when in fact it was so very easy:
regardless of who Garak had been and the atrocities he'd committed, he
was also Garak, the tailor with a penchant for tall tales and a gift
in ensnaring the hearts of young doctors.

With a finger under Bashir's chin, Thuli tilted his face up and
regarded him more closely. "There is love in you, I can see it now. So
love him for what he is now, instead of denying yourself this
happiness in order to dwell in the past. Please," he said, touching
his cheek with his fingers. "For me."

"For such a young man, you're remarkably perceptive," Bashir said and
made a watery smile as he recognised the wisdom of what Thuli had
said. Now, in this time of war and peril, he wouldn't allow himself to
think of anything but the future he might have, finally not alone.

Thuli smiled back at Bashir. "I had a good teacher."

-------------------------------
End of part 10/12.




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ASCEM-S/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
     ASCEM-S-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
     http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
 

From ???@??? Sun May 09 23:56:34 2004
X-Persona: <Stephen Earth>
Status:  U
Return-Path: <sentto-1978024-8074-1084161306-stephenbratliff=earthlink.net@returns.groups.yahoo.com>
Received: from n1.grp.scd.yahoo.com ([66.218.66.64])
	by skylark (EarthLink SMTP Server) with SMTP id 1bn1SHFI3NZFjw1
	for <stephenbratliff@earthlink.net>; Sun, 9 May 2004 20:55:07 -0700 (PDT)
X-eGroups-Return: sentto-1978024-8074-1084161306-stephenbratliff=earthlink.net@returns.groups.yahoo.com