I am fundamentally incapable of writing a drabble when a whole oneshot will do, apparently, and boy howdy is this cheating, but here you are. This takes place immediately after 3x02 The Search II.
–
“We’ve got to go,” Commander Sisko is saying, tugging on his arm. “Come on.”
There’s nothing he can do and there isn’t time, so Julian goes, but his mind is doing six things at once. Sometimes his genetically enhanced brain is convenient, but right now it’s just a burden. Even as he’s listening for Jem’Hadar and calculating the odds of success (low) and survival (lower), part of him is thinking Garak and dead and “I’ve missed you.”
“He’s not coming,” he tells Miles and Miles says, “I see,” and then they’re speeding away and firing torpedoes and waking up in a changeling cavern. Garak lying crumpled and unmoving against the bulkhead is etched on the inside of Julian’s eyelids and it burns white-hot with every blink.
It turns out not to be real. It should make him feel better, but it doesn’t.