God, I am just devoured by that episode. There’s so much there. I want to explore so many things from it. 

First of all, I have to go away and think about Sarina a bit, because I want to write a DD9 thing with her in it, and she’s turned out to be an actual person which has rather complicated things.

Second of all, I wonder about Garak trying to deal with Julian’s saviour-complex/need to be loved-appreciated. “I love you, Garak.” “No, you don’t.” “What do you mean? How can you say that? Don’t you love me?” So many horrible layers there. Garak wanting desperately for Julian to love him–how incredible would that be for him?–but also, really, he’s living in enough lies. Adding another one might take away his ability to tell where reality ends and his fictions begin. So then what does he do? Do they try to work through this? Could Julian even see clearly enough to do so? Does he pull back and risk losing whatever tenuous thing might exist? 

Thirdly, Julian Bashir going flowers for Algernon and oh my god so many horrible sad!fic lines in my head… DNA unspooling, he can’t tell the difference between a tricorder and a hypospray, and in the end it all falls apart just like he thought it would… the only difference is that it’s not with a bang, it’s with a whimper. 

God. How am I supposed to sleep?