Drisana paced the promenade nervously. Three weeks ago, she had been on Earth enjoying a simple walk through the northern Utah mountain side. She never could have planned on what happened next. On her way back down the mountain side, a sudden overwhelming dizziness overcame her, followed by the feeling of being pulled in a direction she never even knew existed. Then, she blacked out. When she came to, she was in a large metal holding cell, dimly lit except for some reddish lighting that seemed to come from the floor and ceiling, but no light source could be immediately seen. She was interrogated by humans-or people who at least looked human, as well as by some beings she never ever dreamt existed.
It took her interrogators a solid week by her count to realize she did not have a translator implant, and another week for her to get adjusted to it enough to understand what was said to her. The questions once she could understand them were fairly basic, and once they realized she was not a threat, that she had in fact been pulled through a temporal anomaly, they released her and gave her own quarters and a small stipend of money until she could figure out what to do with her life as she would never be allowed to go back, even if she could-she had seen too much and could change the timeline.
Not only had the temporal anomaly take her more than four hundred years into the future, but it had pulled her to a section of space that in her day was not even known to exist. She had landed at a space station on the end of the Gamma quadrant called Deep Space Nine, or DS9 for short. It wasn't long before the entire space station knew about her, if not her name.
The humans and bajorans on the station tried to be as friendly towards her as possible, but she could sense the guardedness in which they talked to her, that the friendliness was fake. Drisana had never felt so alone in her life. It was during one of these depressing self-reflections of her new life; sitting in a small bar called Quark's that was run by a Ferengi bartender that she finally connected with someone in a most unexpected way.
As she sat at the bar counter, sipping at a light beverage they called synthohol that she happened to overhear a rather interesting and intelligent debate between the merits of two races; Human, and one she had never heard of before-Cardassian.
She turned to look at this hot bed of debate and saw Doctor Julian Bashir, whom she had met once or twice during her interrogation and whom had given her the translator implant needed for communication...and the most attractive man she had ever laid eyes on. He was certainly not human but to her eyes he was so much better than human it did not matter. Turning so it wouldn't appear that she was staring she listened surreptitiously to the conversation they were having and discovered he was a Cardassian, exiled to this space station and that he owned his own business as the station's number one Tailor.
Later that night in her quarters Drisana dreamt of the attractive Cardassian. Wondering what it would feel like to run her fingers along his elongated neck, down the scaled ridges that ran along the sides of it, or perhaps over the light ridges that made up his eye brows and the light plating over his nose bridge. She started awake from her dream, half engulfed in the passionate sensuality of the dream and half laughing at herself, for being so insane. For all she knew, human females could disgust him.
Still, she did clearly hear he was an exile from his own people, completely alone. While she did wonder what had caused his exile, she was more interested in knowing how he spent his time, wondering if he might just be as lonely as she was.
Pacing her quarters the rest of the night, Drisana decided she would pay a call to his Shoppe first thing in the morning. She had finally decided she had nothing to lose by his rejection, and if nothing else, might end up with what she would consider her first real friend aboard the station. Unable to sleep any further, Drisana prepared a bathe and some very light perfume and laid out her best clothes.
She thought visiting him first thing in the morning might give them a chance to talk before most of his actual business showed up. She looked forward to getting to know the handsome, exiled Cardassian Tailor, no matter what direction the conversation took.
Garak sighed deeply as he slowly opened his eyes and peered at his old-fashioned digital clock above his bed. Another glorious day of being bound alone to this insipid station, complete with fake smiles and courtesies for his customers all the while slowly dying inside from utter loneliness, a feeling he would rarely admit even to himself for fear of sinking into a depression nothing could shake him out of. Pulling himself out of bed and slowly stretching his long neck he headed for the shower and to ready himself for yet another day as the station's Tailor. Considering he had once been a top spy for the Obsidian Order and an Assassin of considerable talents (though admittedly hidden behind a disguise of being a gardener), he considered this to be without a doubt the bottom rung of his now pathetic existence. Yet, he was in fact an excellent Tailor and did take some small measure of pride, of condolence from that fact.
Garak had just barely unlocked the doors of his business when the familiar buzz of a customer crossing the threshold sounded. Emerging from the back room with his fake smile in place he was about to put on his usual act until he looked at her. He did not know her name, but he did know her background as did the rest of the station. Garak slowed his approach. He had seen her sitting alone in the bar yesterday. He had also longed to join her, but his luncheons with Julian had become such a tradition he didn't feel it right to break it, not with the only person who had gone out of his way to make any sort of friendship with him. He hated to admit it but those luncheons were one of the few things that kept him able to go on living in his five years of exile that he had thus far endured.
What caused him to slow was not that he had seen her before, but rather what seeing her had done to him that night. Garak had been plagued with sensual and sexual dreams of this human female to the point he awoke half-way through the night to discovered he had soiled his sheets with his own male essence in the passions of his dreams, a problem he had not had since first become a full adult male more than twenty years ago.
He was about to introduce himself, but she spoke first. Her voice was deeper than most human females, but still very feminine with a smoky almost sultry quality to it that made his member jump a bit of its own accord-which he dearly hoped she did not notice as she spoke.
