So perhaps agatharights brought up the idea of a Tuvix episode for ds9 because combining any ds9 character would literally be the best thing
and I took the WORST ONE and RAN WITH IT
Garuark is the most smarmiest and also the most charming also also the most difficult to draw
Suddenly, every other beverage but extremely expensive kanar mysteriously disappears from Quark’s
FUUUUSION - HA!
COMPLETELY TERRIFYING, I LOVE IT
ahaha jesus just feeling up bashir’s ear. HORRIBLE
I LOVE THIS FANDOM
so every few weeks i remember this thing and i sit straight up in bed screaming like a nightmare because
imagine this
really
the first thing that would happen would be a lot of screaming. because quark is….. quark is squeamish. quark is cowardly. quark hates violence. quark is a de facto pacifist. and you know, as much as he tries to squash it down, he has a streak of compassion that runs pretty deep.
garak has a lot of memories, a lot of thought processes, that wouldn’t just be upsetting to quark, they’d be terrifying. garak has done a lot of things, and had a lot of things happen to him, that quark has never even thought to imagine. garuak would start shrieking from within five minutes of coming into existence, and he wouldn’t stop for days.
of course, this is also because garak’s internal rube goldberg machine of self-deceptions and coping mechanisms would come tumbling down at the introduction of a completely new mind.
after the breakdown comes the wave of unbearable self disgust. garak is a proud man. pathetic, but proud. he’s spent a long time finding ways to work around the awareness of how far he’s fallen. garuark hasn’t yet had time to reconcile that pride with being a small time bartender with nothing to worship but profit.
once garuark settles down a bit, gets used to existing, he’s probably be pretty charming. endearing, even. personally, i think his first move once he’d settled in (likely to the bar, not the tailor’s shop; garuark has loved and nurtured the bar like his own child for over twelve years, the tailor’s shop is his prison and little else), is to make a pass at doctor bashir. several passes, actually. julian is too attractive for his own good is something both parts of him can agree on, though garak has a little more…. invested, shall we say. but garuark is more reckless than garak, more overconfident.
if he succeeds, which he likely does, it makes the good doctor even more likely to be a voice for garak (and garuark).
odo is even more suspicious of garuark than he was of quark - not least because it seems that garuark is running a fully legitimate business. even though odo’s hidden cameras go missing inside the bar even faster than they did inside the now defunct tailor shop. but odo softens when he sees the confused emotions behind garuark’s eyes when the man looks at him. slimy charm, but underneath that a flash of annoyance-admiration-guilt-adoration, and he’s fairly sure what’s coming from who but…. no. no he isn’t.
he doesn’t quite have the heart to make garuark’s life truly as hellish as he ought to.
meanwhile, a battle has been won within garuark. he is going to be a Good Ferengi, not a Good Cardassian. and damn, is he going to be a better ferengi than quark ever was. at least, in terms of making a profit.
garuark can squash down the empathy, compassion, and visceral moral reasoning that kept quark tethered to the ground. and he happens to have a good deal of…. information. information that certain people might find unfortunate.
each time something happens, julian leaps to his defense. odo is loathe to pursue.
about a year after his creation, garuark disappears.
two years later, rumors of a ruthless new ferengi crime lord, operating in the gamma quadrant, reach ears on the station. garuark doesn’t just have his own moon. he has a solar system. and then several.
when anyone sees through his holographic ferengi disguise, he tells them “my mother was a ferengi, but my father? he was a cardassian.”
garuark knows a feeling that this….. this is probably something that julian bashir will never forgive him for. that odo would not consider this a part of their game. he has a feeling that at some point, in the past, he would have been bothered by such consideration. he also knows that from childhood he was taught very effective techniques to avoid such lamentable hangups. for c- for the rules of acquisition, you understand. sacrifices must be made.
in a decade, garuark sits atop a throne of latinum to rival even the grand nagus’s, and a pile of corpses just as high.
and then there is an accident. a transporter malfunction. and when garuark arrives, one ferengi and one cardassian materialize on the pad.
quark throws himself on the floor and weeps. his compassion is no longer expertly suppressed, and he feels every drop of the blood on his hands. he is at the mercy of his own mind.
garak? garak hyperventilates for a moment - just a moment - and then he goes for the knife in his sleeve. he has spent thirteen years deifying profit, serving the false god and the false edicts of a damn ferengi, and for each infinitesimal loss cardassia has suffered for lack of his servitude, that little creature will pay.
quark may have regrown his conscience, but he hasn’t forgotten the past thirteen years. he knows garak as well as he knows himself - and he remembers at least sixty ways to kill a man with his bare hands.
after fighting, they tumble, bloody and exhausted, to the ground. they look at each other. they both want to go home, back to ds9, to their loved ones, their friends.
unfortunately, those bridges are burnt so thoroughly that no evidence remains that anything was ever build there at all.
(dedicated to @jazzypizzaz who helped me hash out some of this stuff)
