Archived fic rec - Exile

[sakura_no_miko]

Title: Exile

Author: thehoyden

Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space 9

Rating: R

Pairing: Garak/Bashir

Warnings: mostly offscreen, but references to slavery, beatings, abductions, and other fun evil-government-related stuff

Other notes: alternate universe

Length: 9k

Summary: Exile was certainly dark, but in Julian Bashir’s case, it was warm and humid instead of numbingly cold.

 

I find the idea of exile fascinating, as many people do. For some people, familiarity is the most important thing in life–being with friends and family, the food and streets you grew up with. For someone like that, exile must be the worst sort of punishment–being trapped in a unknown land, in a place where the culture and food and smells in the air are all different. Of course, for other people, such a change is exciting, or even freeing.

It’s also interesting to examine the idea of heroics when said hero is in a position of powerlessness. You don’t always have the conquering hero, the hero who overturns governments, frees oppressed peoples, and generally causes revolution. History is full of smaller stories–the people who smuggle food, doctors who work in secret, people who save one life, two, a family, a child. It’s a painful truth that sometimes you can’t stand up to the power structure. Sometimes you have to bow your head, compromise, and scrape by, so you can stay alive, so you can try and help people.

It actually reminds me of that self-sacrifice theme I keep going back to–dying for a cause is easy, but staying alive, surviving, that’s the hard part.

Julian, here, really is a heroic person. He’s been cast out by the Federation, and he really has no reason to help anyone–just his own personal values and courage. And yet, for every small success, his own life ends up more in danger, and he finds himself even more constricted. It’s a thankless existence, but he keeps going.

He does win Garak by the end, though, so I suppose that’s some consolation. And now they get to travel the galaxy, doing good works. Well, good-ish in Garak’s case, I’m sure.

 

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Originally posted on tumblr on 03/09/13