"You weren't very good at taking care of yourself before the war, either, my dear," Garak said, his voice quiet as he reflected back on the times that caught Julian off-guard in the Infirmary because he'd been so absorbed in his work that he'd forgotten the time, or the moments where a case had become so desperately urgent that he would place himself at a detriment for the well-being of his patient. It had become more frequent, more destructive, when the war had ramped up, when their safety and stability had been put at risk, after he'd gotten back from 371 and his secret had come out in the span of as many days, when he'd somehow decided that the only thing worth the effort were his job and whatever distractions he could find with the Chief.
But no. No. Garak was going to silence those thoughts. Dukat had once called him a petty man, bitter and driven by selfishness, and if there was anything that Garak was not going to do, it was make anything that Skrain Dukat had to say truth.
Speaking of...
"If you are at any fault for her death, so am I," Garak said, squeezing Julian's hand again lightly. "Because it was Dukat that killed her. And if I had simply killed him when I had the chance, none of this would have come to pass." Granted, if he had, he also likely never would have forged anything close to a friendship with Ziyal. They wouldn't have known about the girl to begin with, and when she did finally make her appearance... There would have been a distinctive irony in facing her wrath, in her discovering the father she'd sought was dead, slaughterd by the same hand that had ended her grandfather. There would have been a cyclical nature that his own literature driven mind found amusing. Perhaps in another reality, Skrain Dukat was dead, Ziyal loathed him with just as much fury as her father had for the same reasons, and Jadzia Dax was still contented and whole. But the two of them, here, now, were rather unlikely to find that reality. "We all loved her," Garak said, his voice soft and understanding. "She was a light that was snuffed out far too soon, a victim of dominoes that none of us realized were falling until it was too late. Captain Sisko is as much at fault as you or I. He's the one that forbid them from going on missions together. Were that not true, Jadzia would have been on the Defiant alongside Worf and well out of harm's way. None of us could have predicted any of this, my dear. None of us were prepared."
Shifting closer, Garak raised his other hand to touch Julian's cheek, "I've missed you as well," He said, a soft sadness in the words. "Particularly when it seems... that we've both made assumptions to our own detriment. Julian," Garak said, the name strained, a pain accompanying it that he could not voice entirely. "I needed you more than I was willing to admit, more than I was willing to ask for, and it pained me every day that there was a gulf which existed between us that seemed to be growing wider and wider with no way to bridge it. I decided you were done with me, and I wasn't going to push for something you weren't willing to give. To think that I cared about your status at all... That I made you think I cared, that it changed you at all. Maybe I do let my pettiness get the better of me."
Maybe Dukat had been right.
He'd be cursing his brain for that thought for the rest of his life.