This is the sequel to "Taking in Trouble."  See that story for
acknowledgements and disclaimers.

************************************

Lake Ent'rakh sat in a small valley formed midway up the face of the
tallest mountain of the Shimat chain that ran along the coastline of the
northernmost tip of Cardassia Prime's northern continent.  Here
temperatures rarely exceeded 10 C. in full daylight--an unusually bright
daylight--and fell well below freezing during the very long nights.
Hardly a climate for heat-loving Cardassians, and no permanent Kardasi
settlements had ever been established here.  However, Lake Ent'rakh held
a secret that the ancient Hebitians had discovered.  Beneath it churned
the molten core of a volcano not yet gone dead, as all the others in the
Shimat chain had.  Its waters therefore maintained a constant 27 C.
temperature, and the Hebitians had duly established a combination resort
and retreat here in the otherwise deserted mountains, its purpose to
"chill the fevered spirit and warm the cold heart."

It must have been a remarkable sight  in its day, Bashir reflected.  A
wall four meters thick and twenty meters high had ringed the entire
lake.  Archways opened out of it every ten meters, their interiors
decorated in intricate patterns with thousands of tiny, multi-colored
gemstones.  At the portion of the wall which faced the entrance into the
valley, a curving stairway led to the top.  Garak told him that eight
swaying rope bridges had allowed passage from one side of the wall to
the other, but that a true spiritual experience required that a visitor
walk the entire circumference, a distance of more than ten kilometers,
before descending by these same stairs and then diving into the warm and
welcoming waters.  Now only about a fifth of the wall remained, in a
dozen freestanding sections.  The stairs no longer existed, the rope
bridges had rotted centuries ago, and the gemstones had been torn out by
generations of desperate men and women hoping to stave off starvation
during one or the other of Cardassia's recurrent famines.  And yet, even
in it's  ruined state, the place was magnificent.  Garak had planned the
excursion even before they became lovers.  "I wanted you to see what we
were before nature conspired against us and we lost our way," he had
said solemnly upon their arrival.  "Fortunately, they had no energy
weapons when the Hebitian civilization fell, and its traces still
linger.  All that was ancient and beautiful in my Cardassia has been
vaporized clean and replaced with bright new Federation functional."

Their first day here they had hiked the entire perimeter of the lake in
the four hours of daylight that came around between 26 hour stretches of
chill darkness.  Today, the second and last of their camping trip, they
had spent in the water.   Bashir's enhanced reflexes enabled him to
catch in his bare hands a dozen of the silver and rose colored fish that
darted everywhere in the azure green water.  They planned to cook them
over an actual fire when night fell and hunger beckoned.  Then Garak had
suggested they swim to the opposite shore and back.  It surprised
Julian  somewhat how a strong a swimmer Garak was for a man of his
years.  As long as the doctor did not particularly exert himself, the
Cardassian kept pace at his side.  Three-quarters of the way back,
however, Bashir's exuberance took hold, and he crossed the remaining
meters at the maximum speed his special gifts allowed, leaving Garak far
behind.

Now he treaded water a small distance from shore and studied his lover's
approach.  Garak swam in a very peculiar way, at least to human eyes.
He held the top of his head out of the water just below his nostrils,
leaving the rest submerged.  All four limbs churned underneath the
surface as well, rarely causing the slightest wave or ripple.  As Bashir
watched, he realized that all those racist jokes about "Cardies" as
lizards or snakes had got their reptiles mixed.  What the man swimming
toward him resembled was more powerful, more dangerous by far.  And
Julian had to admit that he had always been attracted to danger. *Ah, my
clever, charming crocodile* he said to himself, as he set out with rapid
strokes to enfold the Cardassian in an embrace.  Then, like a rescuer
pulling a drowning man to safety, he practically dragged Garak ashore,
where they made passionate love just as the sun began to dip beneath the
horizon.

***
They were ironically spending the nights  in pure Federation functional,
a small emergency tent, thousands of which spread across the emptied
landscape of Prime to house homeless Cardassians.  They'd brought four
portable heating units, and the interior temperature, even at night, was
for Bashir a comfortable 15 C., but Garak complained constantly of the
cold, and spent all his time wrapped in or huddled underneath three
superinsulated thermal blankets.  Julian felt lucky he had been able to
persuade Elim to sleep naked under the blankets, but he found snuggling
beneath them so stifling that he kept having to get up and cool off.
They'd only been asleep an hour when he fought his way out of the
covers, went over to the water container, and poured a cup of the icy
liquid over his head.  He dried off with a towel, stepped out into the
cold night for a few seconds, and only then felt shivery enough to dive
back into the overheated cocoon with Elim.  The Cardassian was sleeping
heavily, his breathing deep and regular.  Julian slipped in beside him,
his chest nestled  against the scaly back, his head resting on the
shoulder just where the neck bones stopped.  Garak shifted slightly but
soon grew still.

*Why did I wait so long for this?  I'm so happy* Julian's no longer
sleepy mind told him.  Unfortunately, his body told him something else.
What was the matter with him, that he still longed to fuck Garak.
Hadn't his lover shown him countless ways to experience exquisite
pleasure without any necessity for penetration?  Was it because most of
his previous partners had been women, that he didn't think you'd really
made love unless you'd stuck your cock in someone's hole?  He could just
hear Elim saying, "What an unimaginative notion, my dear boy, so
narrow-minded."  Nevertheless his cock was now definitely ready to poke
itself in between those silver gray buttocks.  Bashir cursed his
weakness and reached down to do something about the situation.  As if it
had a will of its own, however, his hand instead delved down into the
scale-lined crevice.  Garak stirred and murmured softly.  Julian let his
index and middle fingers probe further, past the guardian muscles, to
stimulate the pleasure cluster he knew lay right beyond.  The
Cardassian's body jerked as if an electric current had passed through
it.  Now fully awake, he arched his back and moaned loudly.  Julian
rubbed harder and faster, and his lover's cries increased in tempo
accordingly.  "Oohh, my dear, go deeper, deeper," Garak whimpered.

 "I'd have to use my cock for that," Julian said ruefully.

"Yes, yes, do it."

What the hell was going on?  After all Elim's protestations about not
tolerating anal penetration?  Was this another of his elaborate
obfuscations, designed to work Bashir up into this very state?  Well, he
certainly wasn't going to refuse the long hoped for invitation.  He
quickly straddled his lover and thrust eagerly as Garak writhed in
apparent ecstasy.  Try as he might,  Julian couldn't prolong the
experience to the extent his partner would obviously have preferred.  He
came in a convulsive rush, and withdrew, rolling over on his back in a
haze of bliss.
 

Without a word, Garak was on him, flipping him onto his back and
pinioning his wrists with a powerful grip while he used  his knees to
spread Bashir's legs so that he could, seconds later, slam into him
hard.  Bashir was momentarily puzzled.  Garak had shown absolutely no
interest previously in playing rough, but then he had shown complete
aversion to fucking, too.  Obviously their sex games were simply being
switched into a different register. *Just enjoy the excitement, Bashir*
he told himself.

Human anal clefts were definitely not self-lubricating, but fortunately
the fine scales that lined a Cardassian's organ ruffled out, soft and
moist, when the man was fully aroused.  The first time he saw it, Bashir
had thought "feather duster";  the first time he had taken it into his
mouth, he revised the metaphor to "cotton candy on a stick."  Still, the
impact of Garak  pounding away at him, coupled with the uncomfortable
position of his arms, was not making this the most pleasant fuck he'd
ever experienced.  "Elim, can you take it a little easier?" he said.

For an answer, Elim jerked his arms back in an extremely painful way,
and, matching his syllables to the rhythm of his thrusts, barked, "Doc .
. . tor . . . for . . .once . . . in . . . your . . . life . . . just .
. shut . . . up."

Julian felt a little frisson of fear.  This seemed to be something other
than his partner's desire for new kinds of sexual stimulation.
Everything in Garak's voice said rage, not passion.  The doctor
reassured himself with the knowledge that his superior strength and
agility would allow him to break free if he felt in danger of serious
injury.  Besides, how much longer could the Cardassian keep this up?  He
had always come very rapidly in Julian's hands or mouth.  Now, however,
he seemed unwilling or unable to let go. He grunted with each thrust
like a man chopping away with an ancient axe at a tree that refused to
fall.

For what seemed like an eternity to his partner, the Cardassian labored
until at last his body stiffened. He gave a shrill cry like that of an
animal howling at the moon, and Julian felt the rush of warm liquid
inside him.  Then Garak uttered another cry, almost like a sob.  He let
go of Julian's wrists and clambered up.  The doctor rolled over and got
to his feet, seeing that Garak had retreated to the far corner of the
tent.  He was standing there naked, his back turned, and his whole body
heaving convulsively.  Partly it was the cold, but the rest of it was
either grief or anger.  Bashir couldn't tell.  He gathered up one of the
thermal blankets and made to wrap it around Elim's shoulders.  Without
turning to look at him, Garak pushed him away savagely.

"Elim, what's wrong?"

"Wrong?" came a strangled reply.  "Surely you cannot have failed to
notice that I just raped you."

"Raped me?  How can it be rape when I've been begging you to fuck me for
the past five days. Granted you were a little more forceful than--"

Garak turned around then, his face anguished.  "Oh please, doctor, spare
me the hair-splitting.  It was my intention to violate you, to master
you utterly, and I know that you are quite intelligent enough to realize
it."

"All right," Bashir went on, carefully measuring his words.   "You
warned me that you wouldn't tolerate being fucked, and I pressed on
anyway.  Your reaction wasn't exactly welcome, but it's psychologically
understandable.  I shouldn't have been so eager to take a few drowsy
syllables as consent.  Although you certainly *did* seem to enjoy the
whole process."

"Oh yes, I did enjoy it.  I've never felt anything so erotic in my
life.  That was the problem."  Garak's voice was filled with a
bitterness and self-loathing Bashir had only heard once before, when the
Cardassian was having his worst moments of withdrawal from the endorphin
implant.  "And just as my pleasure was about to crest, I heard HIM, as
clearly as if he were standing in this tent.  He laughed at me. ‘So,
Elim at last we see you for what you really are.  All that veneer of
sophistication and cleverness, all that fine appreciation of literature
and art you acquired under my protection, it can't hide the fact that
you're the bastard son of a street whore who can find no greater joy
than letting himself be fucked up the ass by his betters.' Suddenly I
was overcome with the irresistible urge to take you and dominate you and
prove to Tain that he was wrong, that I belonged on top, that I was
nothing  like that contemptible piece of filth, Kadz."

"Kadz?" Bashir said incredulously.  "Do you mean to tell me that you
hate him so much because you think you might have become him?"

"Of course.  Isn't that the obvious reaction?  Suppose you were to
encounter a young man who had been born with limitations similar to
yours, and had not had the good fortune to be genetically enhanced.
Wouldn't the sight of him fill you with hatred?"

Bashir shivered.  The unreconstructed Jules was a figure who stalked his
nightmares.  "I think he might frighten me, Elim, but I wouldn't hate
him.  I would hope that I would simply feel sympathy for him."

"Pity," Garak snorted.  "No thank you."

"Not pity, compassion.  Is that not an emotion known to Cardassians?"

Garak didn't answer.  Instead he began to put on his clothes, then to
roll up the blankets.  "Gather your things, doctor," he said at length.
"I can't bear to remain here.  I'll drop you off at the nearest
starbase."

Julian gripped him by the shoulders and forced him to look him in the
eye.  "I agree we should get out of here, but I won't leave you like
this.  We'll return  to your house.  I'll move back into the guest
room.  We'll forego being intimate until we can rebuild each other's a
trust, a step at a time.  I won't give up on us, Elim."

"Always the optimist," Garak whispered, his face a picture of
hopelessness. "Very well, we'll go home together,  for all the good it
will do us.  Although I can't fathom how you can bear to be anywhere
near me, after what I've done."

***
Julian had lain in his bed sleepless, replaying the disturbing events
over and over in his mind. So he leapt up  immediately when the security
alarm sounded. But Garak had reacted even more quickly. The Cardassian
stood checking out the video feed from his external security cameras.
Underneath the whine of the alarm, the doctor's ears discerned a series
of dull thuds.  Someone was pounding on the front door.  Bashir came up
behind Garak and looked at the screen as the rate of the pounding
accelerated.  Its source was about the last he would have imagined.
Moxh stood outside, kicking at the door desperately while struggling to
hold up Kadz, who leaned against his sister, supporting all his weight
on his right leg, while the left dangled a few centimeters off the
ground, twisted into an unnatural shape.  A bone protruded at mid-calf.
The boy's head lolled like a rag doll's upon the girl's shoulder.  His
face was a blur of blood and bruises.

"Garak, what are you waiting for?  Let them in," the doctor insisted.

"Not so fast. It might be a trap."

"I doubt that he beat himself to a pulp just so he could get another
crack at your replicator."

"No, but whoever did this to him might be using those creatures to gain
entry."  Garak gestured at Bashir with his disrupter.  "Get your weapon
also, and we'll risk opening the door."

Julian went to his room, shaking his head at Garak's paranoia.  Still,
he supposed that his friend had made plenty of enemies with very long
memories during his career in the Obsidian Order. He would probably
never be able to let his guard down. The doctor retrieved his phaser
from his luggage and stood to one side of the door, covering Garak, as
the Cardassian programmed it to open.  The two young people stumbled
inside as the door immediately slid back and locked behind them.  Moxh
looked around in dismay at the two men's weapons and froze for several
seconds before pushing her brother toward the doctor.  She uttered
strangled cries of distress while imploring him with frightened brown
eyes, still rheumy with the after-effects of her illness.

"My God!" Bashir exclaimed after getting a close look at Kadz's
injuries.  He swept the boy up in his arms and started barking orders,
not now lover or houseguest but CMO.  "Garak, beam up to your runabout
and bring down the emergency medkit. I'm taking him into the guestroom.
When you get back, I'll need all the blankets you have in the house."
The doctor half expected a protest, but Garak only nodded silently and
did as he had been requested.

That Kadz had made it to Garak's house from the park, the assumed
location of the attack, was nothing short of a miracle.  The cuts and
bruises looked to be a day or two old.  His sister must have dragged him
here slowly, meter by meter.  The boy was now only semi-conscious,
dehydrated and delirious.  And in excruciating pain.  Every step Bashir
made, every arrangement of his patient on the bed brought a little bleat
of agony.   The doctor fumbled through his bag, took out the most
powerful painkiller he had and injected Kadz with the maximum dose.  By
this time Garak had returned with the medkit.  The doctor started some
intravenous fluids and then began the arduous task of trying to repair
the damage.

He found his efforts impeded, however, by Moxh, who was clinging to his
robe and addressing him with a series of incomprehensible grunts.
"Garak, take the girl into the kitchen and try to quiet her down, will
you," he asked.  But when the Cardassian approached, Moxh screamed and
dived under the bed.

"She hasn't seen me at my most ingratiating,"Garak apologized with a
shrug of his shoulders.  "One has to admire her courage, returning to a
house they had robbed, risking immediate confinement in a labor camp.
She must love her brother very much.  And trust in your compassion even
more."

Julian smiled at Elim's managing to say "compassion" without a sneer.
"Well, she's at least out of the way at present.  It's probably best
just to leave her there."

Refocusing his attention after the interruption, Bashir rechecked the
readouts on his diagnostic instruments.  They gave a grim account. There
was internal bleeding where a cracked rib had punctured a lung and more
from a lacerated organ that served Cardassians as both spleen and
liver.  He injected cloptamarine to slow the blood flow; to stop it
would require surgery.  An operation would also be needed on the crushed
and mangled leg. For now he simply straightened it out as best he could,
made preliminary repairs with a bone regenerator, and immobilized the
limb in a cast.  The other fractures, and there were many, fortunately
had come as clean breaks, and the bone regenerator sufficed to mend
them.  Finally Bashir took out his dermal regenerator and worked
carefully to restore Kadz's battered face, to reduce his swollen eyes
and mouth to normal proportions.

Just as he erased the last bruise, Kadz stirred to consciousness.
"Fedder?" he asked, confused.  "Where's Moxh?"

"She brought you here, she's just fine," Bashir said in soothing tones.
"What the hell happened to you?"

The boy tried to scoot up into a sitting position, but the effort soon
caused him to groan and lie still.  "Mmmmmmm.  Head hurts, dizzy." he
gasped.  "What happened? Klingon.  Made him mad."

"You certainly did," Bashir observed.  "Whatever did you say to him?"

"Klingon asked . . . that  I do Moxh for him . . . wanted to watch how
Cardies sport.  Then, he's not pleased . . . Said I don't do it like a
real man--he's going to show me how. . . . Fine I say, but that's one
strip more. . . . Klingon just laughs, says it's free, ‘cause I'm such a
. . . disappointment."  Kadz paused and struggled for breath.  "No one
cheats Kadz out of what's his, though.  So I pulled him off her.  Said
cheaters got no honor.  He grabbed me up by the leg. . . . . Don't
remember much else  . . ." he trailed off into a wracking cough that
brought up a trickle of fresh blood to the corner of his mouth.  "Not
easy to talk," he gurgled.

"Don't try.  I shouldn't have asked you to. Here, I'm going to give you
something that will let you rest."  Bashir filled a hypospray with a
strong sedative and put it to Kadz's neck.  The boy's eyelids fluttered
a few times, and then he drifted off to sleep.  The doctor bent down and
gently pulled Moxh from under the bed, lifting her up to have a look at
Kadz. She reacted with a happy chirp at seeing her brother's face
returned more or less to its usual appearance and then climbed in
carefully beside him, draping one arm over his shoulder.  Bashir covered
both of them with two of the blankets Garak had brought in and then
beckoned the Cardassian to leave the room with him.  "I can't believe
he'd take on a Klingon-- all for one strip of latinum," Bashir confided
as they walked into the living room.

"Oh, it wasn't just the latinum, my dear doctor.  Poor Kadz was
defending his manhood.  I suppose there's been no one to tell him that
he lost it the first time he bent over for a twofie gitter."

***

 "I think he'll live," the doctor said as he reclined on the couch with
his feet propped up on its arm.  He stifled a yawn.  "When his vital
signs have stabilized,  I'll beam over with him to the nearest hospital,
because he'll need surgery for the internal bleeding and a major
reconstruction job on the leg."

"Julian, there isn't a hospital on Cardassia that would admit him.  He
won't ever have had his birth registered.  He'll never pass the DNA
scan."

Bashir shot him a disbelieving look. "You can't be serious," he
exclaimed.  "When they see how much he's suffering, they certainly won't
turn him away just because he's illegitimate."

"The most they will do is offer him a lethal injection to end that
suffering," Garak explained calmly.

"Good heavens, it's not as if he were some animal who'd been run down in
the road."

"That's precisely what he is, to Cardassian eyes."

"With all the people you lost in the Dominion exterminations, you'd
think that every surviving Cardassian life would be precious," Bashir
said accusingly.

"Yes,  but we lost an even greater percentage of our resources," Garak
responded.  "If the hospitals wouldn't treat accies during prosperous
times, they're hardly likely to change now that everything from
hyposprays to biobeds are in short supply."

It was true that the Cardassian medical institutions had only returned
to a subsistence level of care, capable of handling the life-and-death
cases, but little else.  The doctor had noted in his report that the
less seriously ill should be accepted into Federation hospitals for
elective treatments for at least another year.  Otherwise it would be
unconscionable for Starfleet Medical to pull out completely, which had
been the  recommendation of the commission he had served on.  "I suppose
I could evacuate him out to the Infirmary on Starbase 419," Bashir
mused, "but he really doesn't need to be dragged about again." Then his
eyes lit up.  "Wait, I've got a plan.  The big medical supply depot for
the relief effort is on Cardassia Two.  If you've got space you could
clear,  I can get what I need from the industrial replicators there,
load them on your runabout, and perform the surgery here.  It will only
take a few hours."

"If I pack up the materials in my sewing room, it could serve your
purpose," Garak replied.

"You don't mind?"  Bashir felt a twinge of guilt.  He'd landed Garak
with these two unwanted guests, and now he was about to turn his lover's
home into an outpatient clinic.

"Consider it a small recompense--for what happened earlier."

"Right." Bashir ducked his head, feeling awkward.  He dared to give
Garak's hand a little squeeze.  "Uh, I'll  go dress and then be off
immediately.  Kadz should stay asleep the whole time, with all the
sedation he's under, but you might check in on him every half hour or
so, to be on the safe side.  Sorry to keep you up all night."

"I don't think I would have slept in any event," Garak said with a tight
smile.

"No, nor I."  The doctor took two steps toward the door, then stopped.
"Um, Garak," he began, regarding the Cardassian with slight
apprehension, "I hate even to ask this, but I can trust *you* not to
give him a lethal injection, can't I?"

Garak's face  relaxed into a more genuine smile.  "It *would* be the
best solution for all concerned, but you need have no fears.  You will
find him just as you left him."
 

On to Part Two