mandalus :: the city of fates.

[ He doesn't want people seeing him look all droopy, and well also like death warmed over. Voice mode it is. He's about to speak but ends up just coughing for a minute. ]

... shit. [ Stupid cough. Stupid dying. All of it getting in the way of speaking. ]

Hey, if it wasn't obvious already, I don't think I'll be going on that special field trip after all. Unless coughing all over someone really can take them out. [ He needed more time. It took just that little bit too long to find the bomb. And he had been so ready for the fight too. Sigh. ]

But I- I know you guys can do it. [ At least he hopes so, and it's been a long time since he truly hoped for something. ] I believe in you.

Tell me about it later, would you?

[Garak is sitting in a chair on the Vengeance, obviously very drunk, holding a modified phaser and a bottle. Khan is visible in the background, heavily restrained and unconscious in what looks like an uncomfortable position.]

I hope you've all dismantled the bomb by now. As you can see, Khan won't be setting it off any time soon.

Doctor Bashir, those Engineering extension courses you took were fantastic. I wish you were around to see this. Doctor, you know what I mean.

[Garak takes a long drink out of the almost empty bottle, finishing it off, and then just sets it down.]

I'd like to tell you all about something I did in the past. My proudest moment and deepest regret. It was a few years before I would leave Cardassia. We'd just made contact with a group of strange aliens. They were very few in number, but their technology was very advanced and they grew soldiers that didn't need to eat or sleep.

They went to war with us. They were going to war with the entire Alpha Quadrant, really, it just happened that Cardassia and Romulus decided to strike first. Such a disastrous strike. A trap we should have seen coming. My best friend, Elim... he lost his father in that attack.

[Garak picks up the bottle as if to take a drink, then frowns at it and sets it down again.]

Family is one of the most important things in a Cardassian's life. He volunteered to join my scouting mission to find their homeworld. They didn't like to leave their homeworld, you see. These aliens. Well, we were lucky... or unlucky... enough to find it. This ship we were on... it might have been small but it easily packed enough firepower to destroy a planet.

Elim... he. He tried to stop me, of course. But I did it. I saved Cardassia, saved the Alpha quadrant, and doomed my friend to be a traitor for trying to stop me.

I was a decorated hero and he was tried for treason. I testified at his trial, and he was executed for all Cardassia to see.

[Garak puts his face in his hands.]

I always thought you'd outlive me.

[Then he reaches out and turns off the video.]