i actually wanna talk more about bamarren and mila the regnar… ok so i feel like it’s very reasonable to assume that tain had someone at that school watching garak and then reporting back to a go between that would then pass anything of note along to tain. (which is really the only plausible way he’d know garak had a pet) the question is who. it could have been palandine or barkan, and there’s even a really phenomenal post canon fic that reveals that palandine used and betrayed him to grab power in the order, and it would also explain a lot of their dynamic, but likely not their betrayal—i’d imagine tain would want to juice that weird love triangle/poly situationship for all it was worth and i think if they would have been friends for another term shit would have gotten weird, and then tain would have that leverage over him forever. or maybe i’m wrong and tain felt he was “ready” or whatever and then had them cut him loose. but they never worked for or with tain, as far as we know, and so it would seem much more likely that he would want to use someone he not only trusted enough to do well (since he had been grooming garak to be perceptive and have high situational awareness since he was very young) and probably would want to use again in the future, but also someone who was in the same class and dorm as garak, so as to keep a closer watch on him. which brings me to pythas. pythas, the first person to befriend him, the only person from his class that we know of to have worked for tain later, and the only person who could see right through him in the pit and everywhere else. i don’t think pythas knew what he was doing or why, or even that he was working for tain at all, but just that he was told to do something and it was his duty to obey the request of the state. nothing more nothing less. he genuinely liked garak, they were genuinely friends. but that ran parallel to his work. he was always the model of professionalism, a dedicated night person until the end… i think after he took over once tain retired, he fully knew why. i think he had know before then, tbf, but hadn’t been able to really confront its implications. and there was a time after the fire when it seemed like everything might be different, and whatever had been his lifelong purpose—intrinsically tied to garak in a way that always kept them at just enough distance to actually be close—might drastically shift in a way that would allow them the connection that had always been almost treasonous to acknowledge, especially once they had both left school. but then the plague and the social instability and the assassination and pythas just sorta panicked. fell back into old safe patterns of thought and behavior. and somehow it felt as though he were fulfilling his fate line, entwined with garak’s, and their relationship ended as it had begun, as it had always meant to.
