So this is based on @janeway-is-my-captain‘s post, where Garak was stranded on Voyager instead of DS9. And this plot bunny wouldn’t leave me be. I feel like Janeway and Garak would have had a great dynamic together. Mostly it’d just consist of them butting heads constantly, but he’d become one of her closest advisors.
Ramble warning: No, really. Serious Ramble Warning. So I figured that instead of Seska, it’d be Garak who is the Cardassian spy sent into the midsts of the Maquis, and is then eventually stranded in the DQ with Voy and Janeway. Janeway gets the Maquis crew manifest and is like, oh shit. He’s called up to the ready room and it turns out the Captain and Garak have some kind of history together (maybe they were unlikely allies during the Cardi-Federation war or something). It’s a bad disguise™ (which I sorta based on Robinson’s character in ‘Dirty Harry’), but she recognises him. And inexplicably, and against everyone else’s expectations, Janeway just trusts him. Tuvok has serious reservations, and naturally so does Chakotay and everyone else onboard, because it’s a Cardassian spy. Captain. Really.
But no, she just accepts him. And much like in DS9, no one trusts the spy with very questionable loyalties. But eventually, after a couple of seasons, Garak has earned a handful of friends amongst the crew, and has become one of Janeway’s most trusted advisors. But he’s still a Cardassian and an ex-Obsidian order agent, so much like Seska, he is going to have differing views on how they should get home. This is ongoing, and there’d be a couple of juicy episodes in that, but in the end he is deathly loyal to Kathryn Janeway.
I feel that he’d be the Neelix-character. A jack-of-all-trades, tailoring, cooking, assasinating and what not… Can’t imagine the carnage if he becomes the morale officer.
Anyway, this will all culminate in Series 4 where something bad happens with the Maquis crew or something, and Janeway has to confront Garak, wanting the real reason as to why he was on Chakotay’s ship. This’d be a bit like The Wire, and Garak has to admit the truth™ to her. His exile from Cardassia was, for some reason, postponed, but now he is on the run from the Obsidian Order. Instead of heading to DS9, he goes chasing the Maquis. Because before he was exiled, he was working on the Maquis issue. He’d learnt that Tuvok was working undercover, spying on Chakotay for Starfleet and the Federation. But wherever Lt Tuvok is, Kathryn Janeway isn’t far behind. So there’s his (convoluted) ticket out of his predicament.
And Kathryn realises, in a partially destroyed room with a very aggravated Cardassian, that Garak had run to her for help.
TL;DR: Garak and Janeway have history, he’s the Cardi spy instead of Seska, discovered very early on and then has to assimilate into the crew. Butts heads constantly with Janeway and everyone else, but the Captain and the Cardassian spy become very close friends. Then it turns out he was never a spy, rather he was running away from the Obsidian Order, to the one person in the Federation he thought he could trust.
Shit. This was way longer than I thought it’d be. I just… really loved this idea. Janeway and Garak would be fabulous together. They’d just be bouncing off each other constantly. And the tension between Garak and literally everyone else would have been great to watch as well.
Yes, OP. Give me the Forbidden “Garak on Voyager” AU that I never knew I needed so desperately.
