Send Me A Couple/Quote And I’ll Write A Story
Oh, I will totally make it sad. I will make it the saddest thing to ever sad. And then we’ll all be sad. And then we’ll try to get un-sad and then we will think of the sad thing and become sad again.
I mean what.
Grasp
“C-can I hold your hand?”
Garak looked down at that ashen face, at the bluing lips, at those dimming brown eyes that glistened only out of fear and momentary need. He didn’t want to be here, but he could never get himself to leave. He reached, he always did, towards that warm yet weakening hand. He was thanked with a limp smile and a single tear which escaped from one of those flickering eyes.
This is it. The moment he realized.
“I’m sorry we won’t be able to meet for lunch anymore,” the weakened man whispered. Garak offered a smile. A frail one. He knew it would vanish, but it couldn’t. Not yet. And it wouldn’t. Not for another moment. Not until…
“I shall treasure the ones we had, my dear Doctor.”
The man’s smile grew. It lasted a second. If there were more words that were meant to follow, they never did. There was a shaky breath, just one, before one last exhale extinguished what little light the man had left. He was gone. He always was. And Garak’s smile went with him.
How many times had he relived this? Twenty? Forty? The number hardly mattered. The pain always felt the same. The ache in his heart rang the same. He carried it with him throughout the day like a weight which only grew heavier with each pass of the promenade, each familiar face, each Starfleet uniform. It never got easier. It never would. Despite that, each time he lived through this experience, he ended it the same – with a kiss on Doctor Julian Bashir’s forehead.
It was the closest he ever got.
He stood then and looked down at the bloody figure sprawled across the floor. Red painted the whites and blacks that dawned the Doctor’s body – a suit out of his time. Garak spent hours on it, labored over it, crafted it to impress the dear man. He’d succeeded. He would never make a suit like that again.
“Computer, end program.”
Julian’s body disappeared. The blood and suit went with it. The pain remained. It always did. Just once, he hoped it wouldn’t.
He left the holosuite, took out the datarod, crossed Quark’s, and handed it back to the Ferengi owner. Quark didn’t ask. He never did. He simply took the rod and stowed it away with the rest.
No one spoke to Garak as he stepped out of the bar and back onto the promenade. It was full. He was empty. They were living. He was dead. He died in that holosuite, wearing a suit that wasn’t his, with his cold hand clinging onto the only family he had. A family he never truly appreciated until it was gone.