Garak's History
Elim Garak was a Cardassian tailor and Promenade shopkeeper of Garak's Clothiers who lived on Deep Space 9. He had previously been an agent of the Cardassian intelligence agency, the Obsidian Order, but was exiled to Terok Nor. He worked with Starfleet during the Dominion War, returning to Cardassia Prime just prior to
the Battle of Cardassia to help organize the Cardassian Liberation Front. He was known to be a witty conversationalist and a skilled tailor. Underneath his friendly and charming exterior, he was a proficient assassin, saboteur and expert liar, able to adapt to a variety of situations. He loved Cardassia and hated his exile on DS9 but was good friends with Julian Bashir and Odo.
Elim Garak was the son of Enabran Tain: a nefarious Cardassian who never grew tired of repeating to his son "I should have killed your mother before you were born. You have always been a weakness I can't afford." Garak had a strong, almost crippling, case of claustrophobia. He told Ezri Dax that, in his youth, his father would discipline him by locking him in a closet. At age four, Garak and his father spent a day in the country together, their "only day" as Garak would later recall. Garak impressed his father by mounting a riding hound despite falling off numerous times. As he limped home, his father held Garak's hand and would later recall that he was very proud of him that day. At one point, Garak also spent time on Tzenketh, where he was trapped in a small room with moving walls.
At one time, Garak was a high-ranking member of the Cardassian intelligence agency, the Obsidian Order. He was the protégé of his father, who had become the head of the Order in 2348, though their familial relationship was kept secret throughout Garak's life (and only openly addressed by Tain on his deathbed). During his time as an operative, Garak was instrumental in the arrest, torture and execution of Gul Dukat's father. That fact contributed to Dukat later regretting not having had Garak executed (though not for lack of trying, according to Garak). Garak had a vindictive streak and once tried to invent charges of treason against a gul just for being long-winded, but Tain stopped him. He also spent time on Romulus, posing as a gardener at the Cardassian embassy. During his time there he may have been involved in the deaths of several important Romulan officials, including Proconsul Merrok and Sub-Commander Ustard and the Romulan ambassador (though this was based on stories Garak told of his own past, which were not reliable).
As an Obsidian Order operative, Garak had a cranial implant installed in his skull which would help him resist torture. The implant caused his brain to release endorphins when in pain, thus making the experience of torture pleasurable. When Garak was exiled to DS9 he hacked the device so that it remained on continuously, in order to make his exile tolerable. Finally the implant failed and he was brought to sickbay in excruciating pain. While there he confessed to Bashir that life on DS9 was itself torturous. Despite Garak's best efforts, he was unable to acquire a replacement implant and was thus forced to endure life without the pleasure creating endorphins that he had become addicted to. Enabran Tain told Bashir that he wanted Garak to live a long, miserable life, rather than simply executing him.
Garak's masterful skills for subterfuge were such that even in the most dire of scenarios he would lie and misdirect any attempt to ascertain the truth or his intentions. Enabran Tain commented that Garak would "Never tell the truth when a lie will do." Later, Garak claimed that he considered lying a skill that required constant practice. Garak was an expert interrogator and torturer. In one interrogation, Garak eschewed physical torture and extracted a confession simply by staring at his prisoner, a Doctor Parmak, for hours. Garak took a great deal of pride in his ability to force information from people and did not need to be ordered to do so. Garak learned Klingonese at some point during his time at the Obsidian Order, a fact he revealed when he spoke to a group of Klingons confronting Constable Odo.
In 2368, Garak somehow betrayed Tain, and Tain ordered him killed. Garak escaped, but was exiled from his homeworld of Cardassia Prime.
While suffering from the degradation of his cranial implant, he gave three versions of the reason for his exile to Doctor Julian Bashir:
1) He first claimed he was a gul in the Cardassian Mechanized Infantry and was exiled for killing several Cardassians, including his first officer, a man named Elim, as well as the daughter of a prominent military official, who were on board a transport going from Bajor to space station Terok Nor, when he destroyed it. Garak thought he was in fact killing members of the Bajoran Resistance who were planning to sabotage Terok Nor.
2) He then changed his story to say that as he and his assistant Elim were interrogating a group of Bajoran children he felt pity for them and let them go instead of turning them over to be executed. He was exiled when Elim turned him in to the authorities.
3) Garak also said that he was exiled after being framed by his best friend Elim with evidence that a member of the Obsidian Order was allowing Bajoran prisoners to escape.
Dr. Bashir later discovered from Enabran Tain that "Elim" was actually Garak's first name, indicating that none of these explanations were entirely true. Another time, he claimed he was exiled for tax evasion. Even this account (and any others), however, are almost certainly fabricated or distorted, as Garak was fond of saying, "The truth is usually just an excuse for lack of imagination." To Garak truth is the lines in between lies; he once claimed that all he says is true – "especially the lies".
When Sisko asked Garak if the attempted assassination plot against him in 2371 was somehow related to his exile, he stated that he seriously doubted that the finance ministry would try to kill him for not paying his taxes.
After his exile, Garak took up residence aboard Terok Nor, under the command of Gul Dukat. Bitter over Garak's involvement in his father's death, Dukat attempted to have Garak executed. Garak again escaped death's grip, surviving to see the Cardassian government withdraw from the station in 2369. He set up a tailor's shop, and went into business soon after his fellow Cardassians left the station.
Garak loved Cardassia and the Cardassian state, which he saw as one and the same, and he loved working for the state. Exile to him was torturous. He longed to return to Cardassia, even at one point agreeing to murder fleeing members of the Cardassian dissident movement in return for a pardon (an agreement that was broken by the gul who made it with him).
Those who had exiled Garak from Cardassia said he didn't deserve a quick death. His old Obsidian Order boss Enabran Tain said, "I want him to live a long, miserable life. I want him to grow old on that station, surrounded by people who hate him, knowing that he'll never come home again.".
Garak hated living on Deep Space 9, mostly because it meant he was exiled from his home, Cardassia, which he loved and which he now felt like he could not serve.
Garak kept contacts in the Cardassian Union after his exile, and when Starfleet took control of Terok Nor, renaming it Deep Space 9, he attempted on occasion to use his position as the only Cardassian still aboard to regain his usefulness. Many on the station believed Garak was still a spy. He befriended Dr. Julian Bashir, and began to reveal small bits of information to the doctor about his past and current events. When once asked by Bashir whether he was an outcast or a spy, Garak suggested that maybe he was "an outcast spy." The Doctor asked how he could be both, and Garak simply replied "I never said I was either." Bashir and Garak began to have weekly lunches, where they grew to be friends. His assigned quarters were Chamber 901, Habitat Level H-3.
Garak helped uncover Tahna Los' real intentions after he was granted asylum by Sisko. He invited Bashir to hide in his shop and overhear the Duras sisters selling a substance that was used for explosives.
Along with Bashir, he foiled a plot by Dukat to embarrass a Cardassian diplomat who opposed Dukat's dictatorial ways. Dukat had accused Kotan Pa'Dar of abandoning his child after the occupation of Bajor ended.
In 2370, Garak was offered a chance to regain his position on Cardassia by killing members of the Cardassian Underground. When the deal was revealed to be a lie, he instead killed the gul who had made the offer and helped the rebels escape.
Later that year, Garak began having life-threatening headaches. He had been using his cranial implant continuously for two years to alleviate the pain of being exiled to a Bajoran space station (he had had the implant inserted into him years previously by the Obsidian Order in order to help him resist torture: the implant released endorphins into his body). The implant began to malfunction, and Doctor Bashir was forced to deactivate the device. Garak had to learn to live without it, overcoming severe withdrawal symptoms.
Garak was not part of the crew that entered the Gamma Quadrant in search of the Dominion, however, he was included in a simulation conducted by the Founders after capturing that crew. In the simulation, the Garak character was killed trying to stop the Dominion from taking over Deep Space 9.
He helped rescue Kira from the Cardassians who had surgically altered her and tried to convince her that she was actually a Cardassian agent who had been reprogrammed into thinking she was Kira Nerys, which was in reality an attempt to reveal the ties a former legate had to the Cardassian Underground. When the station was set to self-destruct because of an automated Cardassian anti-terrorist program, he tried to use his Cardassian security codes to disable it. He became part of Bashir's nightmare caused by an alien who was using mind control on Bashir.
In 2371, an explosion destroyed Garak's shop. Garak was later revealed to have caused the explosion himself, to preempt an upcoming assassination attempt by the Flaxian Retaya by drawing Odo into the investigation. The two later learned that the assassination was ordered by his former mentor, Enabran Tain. Tain offered Garak his old position in the Order back, and despite their past history, Garak accepted. Garak joined Tain on a joint Obsidian Order/Tal Shiar mission to destroy the Founders' homeworld in the Gamma Quadrant. During this time, he was briefly assigned to interrogate Odo using an experimental device that prevented him from shape-shifting when approaching the point when Odo would have to return to his natural form, but Garak eventually ended it after Odo revealed nothing more interesting than that he still wanted to return to his people, Garak realizing that he didn't have it in him to torture those he was close to any more. The mission failed and the Dominion destroyed Tain's fleet at the Battle of the Omarion Nebula, though Garak escaped aboard the USS Defiant. He returned to Deep Space 9 and rebuilt his shop.
When, in 2372, Starfleet learned of the Invasion of Cardassia, rather than betray the Klingons Captain Benjamin Sisko asked Garak to measure him for a suit while Worf made an intelligence report to the captain. When it was clear that the captain wasn't in need of a suit, and the entire meeting was a method of back-channel communication to the Detapa Council, Garak thanked the captain and said that he had "Everything I need." Garak contacted Gul Dukat to warn him of the impending Klingon invasion of Cardassia. The two enemies fought side-by-side to defend the Detapa Council members during the First Battle of Deep Space 9. Garak later admitted, however, that he was tempted to shoot Dukat in the back during the conflict but decided against it, if for no other reason than that he couldn't possibly defeat all of the Klingons alone.
When Quark wanted to hire Garak as an assassin in order to kill himself as part of a contract he should not have done when he thought he was dying, Garak, realizing he did not want to die, seemingly played along with his wishes in order to help him deal with the horrible dilemma he was in and, in time, solve it.
When Dukat's half-Bajoran daughter, Tora Ziyal, came to the station in 2373, Ziyal became attracted to Garak. The two formed a bond as the only Cardassians on the station, and Ziyal fell in love with him.
In hopes of finding any survivors of the Cardassian fleet, Garak returned to the Gamma Quadrant on the Defiant in 2372. During the trip he was informed by the Female Changeling that there were no survivors, and that in fact, one day all Cardassians would die by the Dominion's hand. While in orbit of the Founders' new homeworld, Garak attempted to obliterate the Great Link using the ship's quantum torpedoes. His attempt failed when he was discovered by Worf, and he was imprisoned on Deep Space 9 for six months.
Garak received a message from the Gamma Quadrant the following year from Enabran Tain. Traveling to Dominion space, Garak and Lieutenant Commander Worf were captured and imprisoned on Internment Camp 371. There he found Tain, dying. On his deathbed, Tain finally admitted that Garak was his son, and told Garak that he was proud of him. While Garak was at the camp, Gul Dukat, as the new leader of Cardassia, arranged for the imprisoned Cardassians to be freed – with the single exception of Garak. Despite his claustrophobia temporarily immobilizing him when he was forced to work in a confined space, Garak eventually modified Tain's subspace transmitter to allow the prisoners to escape from the camp, with Worf and the recovered General Martok both complimenting his courage, Garak in return complimenting Worf's strength at providing him time by fighting with various Jem'Hadar. He returned to his shop on the station, and Ziyal.
For some reason, the inhabitants of the station eventually began to trust Garak, something he found disconcerting. He joined a mission to station Empok Nor to find parts to repair Deep Space 9. While there, he was exposed to a psychotropic drug. Garak became deranged and killed a Starfleet officer, Amaro, before being subdued by Chief Miles O'Brien. After recovering from the effects of the drug, Garak asked O'Brien to express his regrets to Amaro's wife. The event also made Garak and O'Brien come closer to each other because of their similar traumatic experiences in their life.
When Starfleet withdrew from the Bajoran sector at the start of the Dominion War, Garak joined the crew of the USS Defiant. He explained that he would rather stay with his Federation associates than live on the station, which would soon be under the command of Gul Dukat once more.
He was part of Sisko's crew that destroyed a Ketracel-white facility. Though the attack was successful, the ship was disabled, and crash-landed on an uncharted planet. Garak helped fight Jem'Hadar soldiers also stranded on the planet.
Following this, Garak remained at Starbase 375 where he underwent several debriefings, as his knowledge of the Cardassians proved a valuable asset to Starfleet Intelligence, though he cooperated rather reluctantly. He rejoined the Defiant's crew for Operation Return. When Starfleet retook Deep Space 9 during Operation Return, Garak found that Ziyal had been killed by Damar, noting to Major Kira that he had never understood Ziyal's feelings for him and would now never have the chance to learn more about them.
Later in 2374, Captain Benjamin Sisko asked for Garak's help in finding evidence that the Dominion was planning an invasion of Romulus. Garak contacted his remaining contacts on Cardassia Prime and found them willing to assist, but then they were all killed within one day of speaking with him. Garak then proposed that they fabricate the evidence in order to give the Romulan Star Empire reason to join the war. However, he doubted that the faked recordings would fool the Romulans, so without Sisko's knowledge, he had Romulan Senator Vreenak assassinated and implicated the Dominion so that the Romulans would enter the war.
Garak spent the rest of the war decoding Cardassian transmissions for Starfleet Intelligence. Although he excelled at this duty, the thought that he was betraying and enabling the deaths of numerous Cardassians was so deeply troubling that it subconsciously aggravated his claustrophobia to such a debilitating severity, that even by Garak's own admission, spaces he found tolerable, such as his tailor shop and other areas, were now inducing panic attacks. However, Ezri Dax, in her first major case as the station's counselor, was able to treat his psychological difficulty to a manageable degree, helping Garak accept that defeating the Dominion had to take priority.
During the final months of the war, Garak used his contacts in the Cardassian Union to find the leader of the Cardassian Liberation Front, Damar. Finally returning to his people with Commander Kira – given a battlefield promotion to Starfleet commander so that the Cardassians would find it easier to take orders from her on Garak's suggestion – and Constable Odo, Garak aided Damar's resistance against the Dominion. When the fledgling resistance was crushed by the Jem'Hadar, Garak, Kira, and Damar retreated to Tain's house, his boyhood home, where he was reunited with Tain's housekeeper and confidante, Mila. From there they led a civilian uprising on Cardassia.
After Mila was killed in the final days of the Dominion War, Garak led the uprising with Damar and Colonel Kira and participated in the storming of Dominion Headquarters, killing Weyoun 8, who was the last of Weyoun's clones. With the war over, Garak's exile had ended. He returned to his planet as a possible leader, being supported by the Federation, Klingon and Romulan Empires. However, the Cardassia he knew was gone forever, destroyed by the Dominion. The reconstruction would be dire, as his final, preoccupied and sorrowful look showed.
