#she also let me talk about garashir canon for a good couple of hours

[to-boldly-ship-mcspirk]

I made my friend who has absolutely no experience with lower decks watch the final episode because I couldn't contain my excitement and this one episode alone managed to convert her, without context

[mollyencrypted]

Ah, so this is the episode in which the Garak/Ziyal relationship begins.

If the age difference between him and Bashir makes me hesitant about making them a couple in the Kelvin Expansion then you can be damn sure I will do everything in my power to keep his relationship with Ziyal platonic.

(And again, why will the canon show not give Ziyal some friends her own age??? It’s weird! Especially when Jake spends 90% of his time at a loose end without Nog and has nothing better to do than try to set up his father. You’d think someone would have encouraged the two to hang out.)

So let’s talk about the Kelvin Expansion’s version of ‘For The Cause’!

First things first: the A-plot stays exactly the same. It’s the B-plot that needs an overhaul.

Now, I do think Garak and Ziyal should interact in this 'verse, solely because they’re the only Cardassians around (and both outcasts at that) and so have a shared perspective that no-one else can ever really understand. And she does fancy him at first, because everyone who gets crushes has had one on someone way older at some point, right? It’s part of growing up. But he is not comfortable with this because it’s weird. (It is pretty much canon that he fancies Bashir but I really do want Bashir to be the one who actually initiates this (should I choose to incorporate that relationship into the Kelvin Expansion) in order to minimize any potential weirdness so the same principle kind of applies, but to a lesser extent because Julian is at least a decade older than Ziyal.)

But there was a scene in ADS9’s version of 'Sons of Mogh’ in which Sisko encourages Jake to spend some time with the newest resident of DS9. But what with one thing and another they never actually run into each other until this episode.

Now, in this version Garak doesn’t go to his holosuite non-date with Ziyal, out of his typical paranoia and also because if she really is trying to initiate a romantic relationship it’ll be awkward as hell, and so she spends about an hour waiting in Quark’s (Ziyal is very good at waiting for people) before leaving in near-tears - but runs into Jake coming in to go watch that baseball programme or possibly play through a different one, but the important thing is that he’s there. And she looks sad and he’s a nice guy who doesn’t like people to be upset, and he’s been meaning to go say hi for a while anyway, so he asks if she’s okay and if she’d like to talk about it, and offers to introduce her to baseball to see if it’ll cheer her up. She accepts his offer and a friendship is forged.

Kira proceeds to yell at Garak for upsetting Ziyal, and Ziyal ends up chewing him out in person later on, but Kira sort of understands his reasoning (because Dukat is an asshole, because she understands that several people would want to cause Garak severe bodily harm - herself included sometimes - and because he’s right, if Ziyal’s interest is genuine then this is sort of weird) and he and Ziyal still have their canon Outcast Club conversation, only in less date-like circumstances.

Ziyal and Jake (and Nog, eventually) are seen hanging out throughout the rest of the show. Eventually, she notices that Jake is sort of cute. Garak and Kira (and also Julian because Dukat, and possibly because Garashir if that’s going to be a thing) breathe identical sighs of relief.