The BLTS Archive - The Pride of Lions
Part Five
by Blue Champage (rowan-shults@sbcglobal.net)

---
TWENTY-ONE:
"You raise the blade, you make the change--you rearrange
me 'til I'm sane..."

Pink Floyd
---

"I GOT NAILED in the RAIN LAST NIGHT they tried to HAUL me OFF to
JAIL..."

"Music half volume!" Ezri screamed.

"...things were lookin' KINDa SERIOUS--hey, who's messing--" Kashi
emerged from the bedroom, and smiled. "Oh, you." She came over to Ezri
and pulled her in for a kiss. "I woke up and thought it must've been
something I said."

"I just had a couple of things to take care of; I didn't want to wake
you. Are you meeting Julie and the Doctor in the infirmary with me?"

"Yeah, lemme finish getting dressed. Odo finally gave me back my
star." Kashi went back to the bedroom, Ezri in tow.

"You, uh...you going to mention to Julian what we talked about last
night?" Kashi wondered.

"I'm not sure. I haven't made up my mind yet. Would you rather I not
tell him until I have?"

Kashi sighed, and her hands in her hair stilled a moment. "No. You'd
better tell him. Like we said, he might have some relevant input."

"Well, the idea...it can't be too problematical. It never slowed him
down with Jadzia."

"From what you tell me, I doubt he was thinking that far ahead. Would
you hand me my clip? Thanks."

They were quiet until Kashi pronounced herself ready; she took Ezri's
hands as the latter stood, and they gazed at each other for a moment,
and exchanged a long kiss; they rested against each other's shoulders
briefly, then Kashi stood straight again and took Ezri's hand as they
proceeded to the infirmary.

"Julie..." Kashi went at once to where the long-haired Bashir was
sitting curled up on a biobed. She unhesitatingly climbed up with him
and put her arms around him, sitting back on her heels. Ezri touched
his hand and said "Where's Julian?"

"In his office," Julie said softly.

"Are you all right?"

Julie nodded. "Julian increased my usual morning dosage of whatever
that concoction is."

"Good idea. Just relax; you know Julian won't let anything happen to
you."

"I know," Julie said, then turned and hid his face in Kashi's neck.
She began to rock him and hum. She and Ezri exchanged a look before
the counselor moved off to speak to Julian.

Rather than the sorts of preparations she might have expected, Julian
was sitting in his surgical smock, staring fixedly at his office
terminal screen. Procedural schematics were running across it, but she
wasn't sure he was seeing them. He looked up when she came in. "Ezri.
Thanks for coming."

"Wouldn't miss it. How are you holding up?"

"I'm all right. This first treatment, it'll be comparatively easy to
halt things if the unexpected comes up. As time goes on, that will be
more difficult. By the latter part of the last treatment, we won't be
able to stop without damaging him, so if things don't go well..."

"Don't distress yourself with imaginings," Ezri smiled. "Desiderata."

"Julie's quoting is infectious," Julian said, half-smiling. "This
morning I told Carter--oh, never mind." He sighed, slumping. "You're
right. It's like you said, when I came to your office in tears that
day. If I weren't in love with him..."

"You weren't this upset over your work with Sarina, and you had as
much in common with her. Well, not quite as much, but you know what I
mean."

"I didn't love her at the time, and the procedure I intended to do on
her couldn't have harmed her in any way that I could see."

"You've calculated the odds of any harm to Julie already, haven't
you?"

"Took about two seconds."

"Well?"

"Point zero three percent chance of the absolute worst."

"Then I'd stop fretting and think about your patient. He's out there
in Kashi's lap."

"He's probably happier there than he'd be in mine right now."

Ezri sighed. "I probably shouldn't mention this, you've got enough on
your mind...but maybe you could use the distraction."

He rubbed his eyes and looked up. "What distraction?"

"Kashi wants you to do the implantation procedure...with one
stipulation."

"Which would be?"

"She wants me as the other parent."

Julian blinked. "Oh, my."

"That's not quite what I thought when she asked me, but close."

"What do you think?"

"It depends. I'm a Trill. Is it possible? Under these circumstances, I
mean. I know that it's optimally possible."

"Certainly. Kashi would need a few treatments shortly after the
procedure, but Trill and human are physiologically even more similar
than human and Bajoran; besides which, the baby would be half human.
And it's no more difficult to recombine genetic material from two ova
than from any other source. The baby would be a girl, of course."

"She doesn't really care about the child's gender. But I
haven't...made up my mind. I don't know if I want to have a child in
another universe, a daughter I'll never see, or almost never. And the
living conditions where Kashi will be..."

"It's certainly a huge decision."

"I don't want to tell her no, but Julian...she doesn't want anyone but
me. If she can't have the baby with me, she says she doesn't think
she'll go ahead with it...and what that tells me is that *she's* not
completely sure. If she were, she'd be willing to accept another
genetic donor. I think she doesn't know herself what she wants,
completely..."

"And this way, *you* make the decision for her."

"Yes, I think that's it."

"Then you know there's only one thing to say."

"I know. But it's hard."

He got up and came around the desk to her, crouching by her chair and
putting an arm around her. "Of course it is. But I think you can make
her understand what she's doing. It's for her good, not only yours,
that you don't let her put this decision off on you."

"I know. Maybe it's that...Julian, I'm really, really flattered.
Nobody's ever...it's really quite an honor."

"No, no one's ever asked me that particular favor either. I think I'd
be quite full of myself. More than I already am, I mean." He sighed.
"I suppose we'd better get started. I don't want to make Julie wait
any more."

---

When everything was finally deactivated and we'd done all the checks
we could with him still sleeping, I gave him a mild stimulant and
leaned over the biobed, whispering "Julie, love."

He turned his head toward the sound of my voice, and his eyes moved
under their closed lids.

"Wake up, sweetheart. We need to check you over. Don't be afraid,
we're all right here."

His eyelids fluttered, and those luxuriant lashes swept apart all at
once. He didn't speak, only looking around, eyes like saucers. He saw
me and clutched at my shoulder.

"It's all right, love. You'll be a little disoriented for a few
minutes. Partly that's the sedation; we can't use an inducer for this
sort of procedure. Do you feel all right?" 'Gods, please,' I thought,
holding his hand tightly.

He nodded. "All...all right...everything..." his voice was a rich,
soft whisper, and my eyes nearly teared up. "...everything's odd.
Thoughts...like voices in my head. That weren't there before."

Ezri told him, stroking his forehead--Kashi had his other hand--"Well
don't worry, you haven't become telepathic. It's just mental chatter
you're aware of now, that you weren't before. You'll get used to it.".

He made a face. "Bloody damned *noisy*."

Ezri, Kashi and I all exchanged relieved grins. "He's our Julie,"
Kashi murmured.

"As Ezri said, you'll get used to it," I soothed him. "It won't seem
so loud, or so distracting."

He looked up at me. "Well? How did it...did you pull it off?"

"I very much think we did, love, this first treatment. Your next one
won't be for a few days; we have to analyze the effects of this one.
If your condition is close to projections, we're on track."

"I don't have to stay here the whole time, do I?"

"No, not if the exam we're about to give you checks out. We'll need
you in a few times a day, and Ezri will need to work with you on
evaluating your perceptual skills and pattern recognition."

"More of those tests?" he grumped.

"Actually, there are a few things I can have Julian handle," Ezri
said, winking at me, "in the interests of keeping you...interested."

Julie and I looked at each other and smirked. "Now *that* almost
sounds like fun," he said.

I kissed him, slow and soft, and damn the professional atmosphere.
"You're going to be fine, sweetheart. Dr. Guirani and Nurse Akula are
going to finish the postop evaluation, all right? I'll see you again
in a few minutes."

He stroked my cheek with the backs of his fingers and nodded at me,
with a brief smile, before closing his eyes again.

Kashi stayed with him as my staff--Guirani smiling at my obvious
lovesickness--came up to finish the work I'd begun before waking him.
Ezri and I went into my office and I sat down heavily on a stool,
groaning "Oh my God."

"Just breathe," she said, patting my back.

"I love him so *much*."

"I know."

"He was like a child. I can't believe he trusts me like this."

"I saw." She stroked my head.

"Am I honestly not an example of some strange complex or other, being
so crazy in love with my own...my own--"

"No. You're not."

"He's so different from me, though."

"I know."

"I think I'm going to faint."

"No you're not."

"I could use some coffee..."

Ezri gave me a final pat and went to the replicator in the main ward.

---

There was a message from the Captain waiting for me in my quarters,
asking me to visit him in his; I did so.

"Hello, sir."

"Doctor, come in. I understand congratulations are in order."

"So far, sir, yes they are. His first treatment has come off almost
exactly one line with projections. If I didn't know better I'd say he
was deliberately cooperating."

"Oh, surely not." Sisko smiled at me. Kasidy was sitting at the dining
table with a mug of something and a portable terminal. She looked up
at me, smiled and winked, but went back to her work without speaking.

Sisko and I sat on the couch. I said "Thank you for stepping in for me
with vice-Admiral Nieve. She was my advisor at the Academy and she'll
never believe that I've grown up."

"Simply a matter of soothing a few formless fears. From my end...I
haven't heard back from Admiral Stephanopolous, but I'm told he has
been thoroughly briefed on the situation."

"I don't think I like that," I muttered.

"I found it disquieting as well, but I'm sure he won't spring anything
on us. He is sympathetic to your situation, Doctor."

"Sympathy is one thing, what he perceives as his duty to the
Federation is another. Did you want a formal report, sir? I did bring
my notes."

"I'd be interested in hearing them, but I mostly just wanted to ask
how you and Julie, and Ms. Ishikawa, are doing."

"Has, um...has Dax mentioned to you..."

"The nature of her current relationship with Kashi, yes, she has told
me."

"Kashi wants Ezri as the baby's father."

Sisko's eyes got huge.

"Well, its other parent, however you wish to phrase it. Ezri thinks
she's going to have to say no."

"I see." He sat back a moment.

"I'm telling you because you're her best friend, sir, not because
you're our commanding officer. She's having some trouble with the
decision. I think she could use someone to talk to besides me."

"I can just imagine. Did she tell you, or did Kashi?"

"She did, because she needed to know if it was medically possible to
impregnate Kashi with a half-Trill zygote and then send her home,
where she wouldn't have specific medical supervision. It is, but I
don't think that made things any easier for Ezri."

We'd caught Kasidy's attention. "Good Lord, Ezri's a baby herself,"
she said, shaking her head.

"A three hundred thirty-year-old baby," I pointed out.

"Still." Kasidy sighed and sipped from her cup, then went back to her
terminal.

"You and Julie?" Sisko asked.

"He's progressing wonderfully, sir," I said, and I'm afraid the huge
smile on my face was something approaching fatuous. "Why, only the
other night--um--I mean..." I veered off, but judging by the
ever-so-slight smile he favored me with, the Captain had more than an
inkling of the general nature of what I'd been about to say. "He's
exploring so many new aspects of himself. His artistic talent is
unbelievable, I...should show you a drawing he's done of one of
Keiko's holosuite programs. He's been talking about other mediums,
too--he wants to try oil painting, and with his fine motor control
he'd be a spectacular soft-medium sculptor."

"And is it still your determination to stay with him?" Sisko asked
quietly.

"Yes, sir, it is," I said, also softly. "I thought I'd made that
clear."

"You did." He sighed. "But I can't help worrying, Julian. You are a
very impetuous man...and Fleet does not take a bright view of
interaction between Starfleet officers and the leaders of *certain*
unallied forces. Even leaving aside the extrauniversal aspect of
this."

"We've been over that, sir."

"Things have changed a bit. Some pressure has been brought to bear on
Admiral Stephanopolous, according to a friend of mine at the
Admiralty. The admiral knows your background and respects your work,
particularly your expertise in Jem'Hadar physiology and Dominion
biogenic weapons; he feels it's in the best interests of the
Federation to keep you happy and in Starfleet. I would add that I
agree with him. But I must also add that there is
some...resentment..."

"Of me, for being what I am, the exceptions that have been made for
me," I finished quietly. "As much of that in the Admiralty as there is
of the faction that sees me as a valuable commodity--for the same
reasons the other batch resents me."

"In a nutshell."

"You're worried, aren't you, sir. That's why you asked me here."

"Yes, Julian, I'm worried. I didn't expect this to be easy, certainly
not for it to be simple. But it is proving simpler than I'd
anticipated--opinion seems to be running against us far more quickly
than I'd expected. The trigger seemed to be your treatment of the
Captain's condition. He is the second-in-command of the Terran
resistance, and, that being the case, your treatment of him
constitutes a very real form of aid to their cause. What I did can
also be seen in that light, but I was kidnapped and offered very
little choice. And, as I said before, the climate in the Federation
council and Starfleet command was different at the time, with respect
to such matters."

"Are you warning me that my time with him is limited?"

"No, I'm warning you that I don't like the way things are running
right now."

"I appreciate your telling me, sir."

"I'm sorry, Julian; perhaps these fears of mine are just as formless
as vice-Admiral Nieve's. But they exist for the same reason." He
lifted a hand from the sofa back and laid it on my shoulder.

I half-smiled. "Thank you, sir. I'll always appreciate your concern.
So does Julie. I don't suppose you two have punched each other
recently?"

Sisko smirked. "No, but that could be due to the fact that we haven't
seen each other recently."

"Julie said something to me the night you, um, brought him back to me.
He said you radiate like a stellar core. Julie's perceptions of
people, their moods, their presence, has been very finely honed; and
your personality is--strong, powerful. It may be that you can simply
stand there saying nothing...and *still* come across as loud and
overbearing, to him, as though you're pushing constantly against him.
Please try not to hold him responsible."

"After the information you've given me about his background, I would
find it difficult to hold even a punch in the jaw against him for
long."

---

"Julie?"

It was dark in my quarters again. His second treatment had been
completed yesterday; he seemed no more or less disoriented than he had
after the first, and Ezri said he was doing swimmingly with the tests,
demonstrating more and more abilities in various forms of
communication, written and verbal. He was still on medication; his
emotional difficulties weren't going to go away any time soon, and
this was an exceedingly stressful time for him.

"I'm beginning to get used to this," I said to the darkness, walking
in. "Kashi told me about a picture story she's read, concerning a boy
who can't walk in through his front door without getting ambushed by
the resident tiger. Seems oddly apropos...oh."

My eyes adjusted none-too-quickly. There was something in the corner,
a large angular shadowy shape, but Julie was on the sofa, lying on his
side, curled up, like he would lie against my shoulder in bed. I went
to him, kneeling by the sofa. His face gleamed with tears in the
starlight.

"Sweetheart," I whispered. "Tell me."

He let me take his hand, brought my palm to his cheek and pressed his
damp face to it. "'For being human holds a special grief of privacy
within the universe'," he whispered, "'that yearns...and waits to be
retouched, by someone who can take away the memory of death'." He hid
his eyes in my palm.

I looked up toward the corner; seen closer, the object was clearly an
easel. "Computer, half lights," I said quietly.

As they came on, the painting was revealed. Jadzia. My Jadzia,
obviously; she was in uniform, standing in her typical posture, hands
behind her back, with that impish smile. My Jadzia, yes; but to Julie,
Jadzia was Jadzia.

"Gilgamesh," I said softly. "Who lost the only friend he had that
could give his life meaning...and went on a quest to defeat death, to
bring him back..."

"And failed," Julie said softly. "And sometimes I feel...you're my
Utnapishtim. The one who survived the flood, and death itself...the
one who knew the secret. God played dice with the universe and you
survived; I went down. But no more than Utnapishtim can you bring her
back..."

"She wouldn't want you to grieve for her forever," I said. "She'd want
you to remember her with love, not pain."

"Shut up, Julian. I hate it when you start in with platitudes. What do
you know about this kind of loss?"

"I'm a doctor," I said. "I know about death. And I was a good friend
of my Jadzia. I know what she'd want."

"But who have *you* lost, who was as much to you as she was to me?"

"I've never had anyone who was as much to me as she was to you," I
said. "At least...not the same. Not quite. Grief is real, Julie, I
don't mean you should pretend you don't miss her. But you attack
yourself for her death, and it's keeping you from grieving properly.
You didn't kill her."

But had I really grieved properly myself? I thought of Jadzia's
reassuring smile at me when I told her the only thing I could tell
her, and how she tried to comfort *me*, assuring me that the life of
the symbiont was all that mattered...I remembered Luma blotting tears
from my eyes before they could fall, as I performed the surgery that
would end Jadzia's life. And I remembered Miles meeting me at the lock
when I transferred Dax to the ship that would take it home. Miles took
me to his quarters with him and let me cry on him for the better part
of two hours. He shed some tears as well, though nothing to what I
did. Keiko, wiping her own eyes, finally had to put us both to bed.

But that hadn't been enough to express the loss I felt. I shook my
head; time later for my own ruminations. Julie needed me now.

"I--" he stopped, sniffed, and sat up. I got up on the couch next to
him, and he let me pull him close.

"Think how happy she'd be for you now," I said, stroking his hair.
"Think of what she'd say to you. She'd tell you not to be an idiot,
wouldn't she? She'd tell you it was wrong to blame yourself, and she'd
be right."

"That's what Ezri says."

"If there's anyone who'd know, it's Ezri." I thought fleetingly of
Ezri as the shade of Enkidu.

He was quiet for a time, and then whispered "'Alone, as he had never
been alone when he had craved, but not *known* what he craved...'" he
paused. "Well, I know now. I can *see*, the way she did. I can...I
could love her properly now. But it's too late."

"It's never too late to love her. I'll never stop."

Julie sighed. "It's for Sisko," he muttered.

"What? Oh, the painting? That's lovely of you, sweetheart. He'll be
very happy to have it. She was killed just when he so desperately
needed her counsel...and he felt it was his fault, too."

"And you feel it's yours."

"He was her CO. I was her doctor. Neither of us saved her. You were
simply her friend, and you did the best you could. You didn't kill her
any more than either of us did."

He was quiet a while, resting against me, arms wrapped around my neck.
"I think if it weren't for that...stuff, in the hypo," he whispered,
"I'd be having quite a fit right now."

"That's what the stuff in the hypo is for. Not to keep you from
feeling, but to keep it from overwhelming you to the point you can't
cope with it. I'm afraid I can't stop the feelings, any of them,
horrible though they are. But I won't leave you alone with them."

"I know."

"The painting's beautiful. It's everything I thought you could do,
from the drawings, and it isn't even done yet."

"It's nearly done. A little touching up." He took a shuddering breath,
and attempted to speak, but his eyes closed and he was obviously
struggling. Finally he murmured "...'Until one learns acceptance of
the silence...or turns again to grief, as the only source of
privacy--alone, with someone loved'." He took another breath and his
eyes opened. "I think I need to cry, Julian."

"I think you're right. Go ahead, love."

He curled up in my lap and wept.

After a time I said quietly to him, "Even Gilgamesh returned to life
when the shade of Enkidu entreated him not to hate the friendship
they'd shared, simply because it hadn't lasted forever."

"Nothing lasts forever," he said weakly. "But somehow, nothing ever
changes..."

Later that night, he woke me up and silently proceeded to wear me out
past the point that even enhanced stamina could have kept me going.

---
TWENTY-TWO:
"You ain't seen *nothin'* yet--here's somethin' you're
never gonna forget..."

Bachman-Turner Overdrive
---

"Captain Bashir."

Julie looked up over his own shoulder. "Garak. Hello."

"May I join you? I'd like to hear how your treatments are coming
along."

"By all means," Julie smiled. Garak took the seat opposite him where
he sat with a mug of replimat raktajino.

"Were you meeting someone?" Garak wondered. "Doctor Bashir, perhaps?"

"No, he's at a staff meeting. Apparently the Defiant is being called
out for an escort mission. The line was briefly broken out at AR 914
and there's an emergency evacuation in progress. He doesn't want to go
just now, but duty calls..."

"Indeed. Is it advisable to interrupt your treatments this way?"

"Doesn't make any difference. If anything, allowing more time between
them is ideal, allows leisure for evaluation. We've been a bit rushed,
for obvious reasons."

"You seem quite well."

"I feel fine. The changes...they're not so abrupt as I was expecting.
I can barely notice a difference, in fact. Then suddenly I'll...I'll
be researching something, and read a pageful of notations, and realize
that I didn't have to...use one of my own methods to understand them
or remember them. Sometimes I start to do it anyway, out of reflex,
before I realize it isn't necessary."

"That is, I take it, good news."

"So far the news has all been good." Julie smiled and took a drink of
his raktajino.

"Your mood is certainly..."

"Improved?" Julie raised a droll eyebrow at Garak.

Garak smiled back. "Forgive me. I meant no insult."

"I suppose I'm just too...busy. Thinking. Noticing things. About me, I
mean, my own...perceptions, to have much energy to spare for fits of
temper. Though I wouldn't try pushing that, if I were you."

"Believe me, Captain. I know about your temper. I will never
deliberately provoke it."

"You provoke Julian's constantly. He says you'll even provoke Worf's."

"I admit that in this milieu I am occasionally forced to be creative
in seeking out entertainments."

"How creative?" Julie wondered, leaning forward on the table. He was
wearing his old blue tunic, and let it slide off his shoulder as he
folded his arms, cocking his head slightly in inquiry, eyes sparkling.

"Oh, dear..." Garak gazed at him. "You're going to be *far* more
dangerous now than you were before these treatments, aren't you?"

Julie smiled slowly. "As our dear Julian says...I may as well use what
I have." He ran a finger delicately around the rim of his cup. Very
delicately; the grace in the gesture was captivating. "Everything I
have." The last words were in Kardasi.

"You wouldn't by any chance be attempting to provoke a confrontation
between the Doctor and myself?" Garak answered in the same language.

"Not at all. You two have sufficient confrontations of your own. I was
thinking more of one between you and me...if it should happen we both
have the time, some occasion. And the inclination." He leaned slowly
back in his chair, stretching his shoulders, and crossed his long legs
provocatively.

"You are the most blatant flirt..."

"No, not the *most* blatant flirt. That would have been you, calling
Julian a Vulcan. And a computer. And several other things. It's only
happenstance that he didn't realize that was what you were doing."

"Told you about that, did he?"

"Only after I'd already figured things out myself. I deeply enjoyed
our first meeting, Elim. And our little chat in the infirmary. Julian
can be *so* oblivious to...fine nuances, can't he?"

"Some nuances, yes, he can indeed."

"Well...I like the game as well as the next man. Provided you're the
next man. But there's also something to be said for the
occasional...straightforward maneuver for position."

"Position...as your present attitude?"

"Perhaps. Perhaps I'm simply teasing you. I *do* love how you flush
stormcloud-blue between the scales..." he essayed an actual shy smile,
then reached forward to pick up his cup again.

Garak leaned up and caught his wrist suddenly. Far from struggling,
Julie only leaned a bit farther forward, very slowly easing Garak's
stretch, letting himself be drawn in. He didn't speak, only gazed,
eyes huge and warm, into Garak's. Julie's mouth was open a little, his
expression anticipatory, inquisitive.

Garak just gazed back at him a moment, then said "I must admit you're
good. You not only know Cardassian behavior patterns when it comes to
these things...you manage, somehow, to know my own. Perhaps more
thoroughly than I do."

"My special gift," Julie whispered.

"What I would like to know," Garak murmured back, "is what exactly it
is you want of me. You are *so* desperately entranced by the good
Doctor...I find it difficult to believe your attention could be turned
from him so easily." Yet that was exactly the way it felt. Julie's
attention was focused--riveted--on Garak, and Garak could feel very
little else at that point.

"Perhaps," Julie whispered, "I simply enjoy your company. Julian has
told me so very much about you...you've made an indelible impression
on him, though perhaps not the sort you'd like. I never met your
counterpart in my universe before he was killed, and I must admit I
never felt the lack, and still don't--compared to you, he was vulgar
and obvious. You're *entirely* different. I think you could be subtle
in all sorts of ways...subtle and delicate. Precise..." not moving the
hand Garak still held trapped, he brought his other up to touch the
fingers imprisoning his wrist. "...like this."

Garak's eyes closed as Julie's fingers moved.

A breath later, he was muttering, in standard, "I think perhaps we
should remember where we are."

"No one's interested. I'd know. Believe me."

"I imagine you would, but this is still...inadvisable." Garak let go
of Julie's arm, withdrawing his hand from the younger man's touch.

Julie gazed at him another moment, then smiled, and his manner changed
in one of those abrupt transformations that occasionally concerned
Julian. "There's news of the twelfth fleet," he said "Julian told me."

"Indeed. Please share it with me; I haven't been briefed thus far."

---

Garak looked up from his desk, having been finishing up with the
latest batch of coded messages Captain Sisko had asked him to work on.
"Come in--why, Doctor. I was under the impression you had been
assigned to the Defiant for this most recent escort mission."

"I arranged for Lieutenant Kalon to serve as CMO aboard for this one.
It's a simple enough situation, not likely to be severe casualties,
and she needs the experience in field command; I've got a crack triage
nurse assigned to her, too, help give her a few pointers. Besides, I
didn't want to be away from Julie right at this point in his treatment
schedule. Guirani is as proficient as I am, or better, but I'm the one
who developed this therapy."

"I can understand that. What brings you by?"

"We haven't spoken much lately," Julian shrugged, straddling a dining
chair, with a tug at the knee of his uniform trousers. "I've been
preoccupied."

"Yes, that much is understandable. I must say I envy you; I was rather
disappointed to hear that my own Mirror counterpart had been killed.
Surely an enlightening experience, to meet a
self-that-might-have-been..."

"I wouldn't be too let down, Garak. Just ask Quark. Or Kira, she dealt
with your counterpart too. Many of our counterparts are less than
congenial people."

"So it would appear."

Julian smiled at the floor with a slight guilty raising of his
eyebrows. "Please forgive Julie. He has his own reasons for the way he
is, too. You know, it turns out he has a very basic grounding in
Terran literature. Nothing recent, of course. Hasn't *been* anything
more recent than a century or so ago, in his universe."

"Really? Why did he not mention this familiarity at our last lunch?"

"Wasn't the topic; and he didn't know at the time we're always forcing
our respective culture's classics on each other."

"Forcing? I was under the impression you enjoyed our exchange of
ideas, Doctor."

"Oh, I do. I enjoy a great many things about our association." Julian
folded his arms across the chair back, rested his chin on them, and
smiled again.

Garak glanced up from the desk, then looked back down and finished
putting away the rack of isorods he'd been organizing. "Most
gratifying to hear, but depressingly obvious. You have yet to absorb
everything I have told you about subtlety."

"Oh, give up, Elim. I'm about as subtle as Cardassian hemorrhagic
fever."

"Not the euphemism I would have chosen for you, but, sadly, correct in
its basic intent. Tell me then, what are these many things, besides
our intellectual exchanges, that have kept you entertained for so
long?"

"Oh, do you need to ask? How unsubtle of you." Julian chuckled. "Well,
for one thing...your eyes."

Garak nearly dropped his padd. "My what?"

"Your eyes. They're a most hypnotic shade of blue. One can be
simply...transported by them. And your voice--it's lyrical, musical;
sometimes deeper, rougher, but never harsh. Your graceful hands...your
skin, all the colors of a stormy sky...your intensity. It's palpable.
That undoubtable sincerity, and unapologetic deceptiveness..."

"Doctor. Please," Garak said abruptly, then nearly rested his forehead
in his palm, but stopped the revealing gesture in time. "I'm afraid
I'm going to have to ask you what your other self has been saying to
you."

"Why?"

"Because I believe I may have left him with something other than an
accurate impression of my feelings for you. He is...unfamiliar with
the way we interact, with the closely focused attention we give each
other in the course of our...unique form of communication."

"Convoluted, I think you mean. Communication by the slightest
intimation, inflection, word choice...Cardassian attention to detail.
It's quite stimulating."

"Doctor..."

Julian got up and approached the desk, rested a hand on it and propped
a hip on the edge, leaning across it slightly. "I don't think he has
the wrong idea at all of your feelings."

"Oh, do you *not*--" Garak started to snap, glancing up sharply.

Into the face of a hunting cat.

A feral grin had replaced the guileless smile. "Surprise," Julie
growled.

Despite his best effort at control, Garak could only stare for a brief
moment before saying "Captain Bashir."

"Quite so."

"Are you aware of the penalty in the Federation for impersonating a
Starfleet officer?"

"Not nearly as fearsome a thought as the penalty Julian would inflict
upon me for cutting off my hair, assuming I wasn't going to use a
follicle stimulator on it before his return. And in any case, I *am*
Julian Bashir, am I not?" Julie wondered, raising one eyebrow,
imitating Garak's inflections flawlessly.

"May I ask the purpose of this little performance? Were you simply
bored in the Doctor's absence?"

"Not quite. In fact, he's the reason I'm here. I need your help."

"You've chosen a distinctly odd manner of soliciting it," Garak
snapped, getting up and moving to the replicator.

"I was only making a point," Julie said softly, folding his arms and
resting more of his weight on the desk. His feral grin turned to a
smirk. "And make it I did, I believe."

"And that point would be?"

"If I hadn't *let* you know exactly who I was, would you have been
able to tell?"

"Eventually."

"How soon?"

"That would have depended on the course of our conversation."

"Hardly. I could have pleaded any number of excuses for whatever slips
I might have made. And as far as just *being* Julian..." he was
transformed again, and Julian said teasingly "Oh, come, Elim, you know
I'm right on this one, admit it." Julian vanished into the aether
again and Julie said "And he is, you know."

"Stipulated--*for* the sake of argument," Garak said, then sat at the
dining table with the small glass he'd procured. "That being so, you
have essentially answered my question with another question--an answer
which begs another answer."

"You mean, what's the significance of my point."

"You *are* better at that than he is, I must admit. It's one of the
things I enjoyed so much about our first meeting."

"That *was* refreshing, wasn't it? But to answer the question that
begs..." Julie got up and went back to the dining table, straddling
the chair he'd taken before. "Julian, among others who shall remain
nameless--not that that does much good, I'm sure you'll know who they
are soon enough--tell me that you have it within your power to
accomplish certain things. That you posses certain espionage-related
skills."

"Surely you don't expect me to simply speak right up and confirm these
accusations."

"It's not hard to tell they're true, Garak. I'm very good at reading
people. You know why."

"I concede the point. Continue."

"There is something I'd like you to do for me. It's not complex--not
for you--and not particularly dangerous. For you."

"The nature of this activity?"

"There's information I want. Classified Federation Intelligence
information."

"Oh, come now. What could you do with such information? Are you the
Dominion spy Doctor Bashir was accused of being?"

"No. What I'm after has nothing to do with your war against the
Dominion. I want the information for my own people, for the Terran
rebellion."

"I take it there are reasons you can't ask Captain Sisko or Doctor
Bashir."

"Of course there are, Garak, don't be tiresome. Sisko trusts me as far
as he can throw me and Julian is so pure it's almost *still* enough to
affect my digestion from time to time."

"I think before we go any further, you'd better reveal the nature of
your desired intelligence. I can tell you nothing more about my
ability to retrieve it until then."

"I'm sure you're familiar with the treaty of Algeron."

"Signed by the Federation with the Romulan Empire."

"It contained a proviso the Federation did not adhere to perfectly."

"A certain renegade admiral, rather, who was prosecuted for his
illicit development of...I see. Interphasic shielding."

"Exactly. Information pertaining to its design and implementation was
developed illegally, and so, according to my research, it cannot be
used by the Federation...or disseminated by it."

"But the information does exist..."

"I think I even have a fair idea where to look--but I can't get to it.
You can."

Garak considered, downed the rest of his kanaar and went to the
replicator with the glass. "You mentioned earlier that Dr. Bashir was
the reason you're here."

"He is."

"And how is providing your people with interphasic shielding
technology associated with the Doctor?"

"My cause is somewhat divided in its numbers. Our organization has
always been precarious; it's only my and T'ser's association with
Smiley that has guaranteed its continuing to remain a largely-single
force this long. Break that force up into smaller factions, and,
cloaking technology or no, we wouldn't last long."

"Divide and conquer."

"Caesar. Such a blowhard."

"Agreed. That particular Caesar, at least. Please go on."

"With interphasic shielding, since we already have the related
cloaking technology moderately well distributed among our forces, we
could adapt many ships quickly, without heavily straining our
organization with long waits or conflicts over the available materiel.
Which, as you must know, is always in short supply."

"As per usual for such endeavors."

"So, even if the Federation was willing to part with more conventional
weapon or defensive technology--which, of course, it emphatically
isn't--that information would not be nearly the boost to my cause as
would interphasic technology."

"The Federation is not the only source of information to be found in
this universe. There are a number of arms dealers I know personally,
as well as many more that can be contacted less directly, that would
be happy to do business with you. Not for interphasic technology, I
grant you, that information is limited to Federation Intelligence."

"I have nothing to trade with non-Federation-allied sources."

Garak considered Julie. Julie considered Garak back.

"And now I think we come to it," Garak said softly. "You believe you
do have something *I* want. Badly enough to risk my liberty to obtain
this information for you."

"Yes. I do."

"Then I regret you have wasted your time. I'm quite willing to take my
chances in this universe, despite the fact that my 're'appearance in
yours might gain me a powerful position there. It might also gain me
my death."

Julie chuckled. "You disappoint me, Garak. You've already forgotten
the question that begged the answer."

Garak frowned.

"I love Julian, and I want to stay with him. One way or another. With
the technology I want to give to it, my cause would be certain to
survive without me, whereas I've no way to be sure of that as things
stand. I'm sure you know Julian and I may have to make some difficult
choices, if we want to be together."

Garak nodded. "I can see that, of course. What I do wonder is why,
seeing as you are fully aware of my *own* feelings for the Doctor, you
think that I would go out of my way to help you obtain your goal?"

"Are you really laboring under the impression that Julian can return
your feelings? Especially now?" His voice, for once, was soft,
neutral. Not enough to be insulting with pity; but enough not to
instantly provoke a hostile response to the question.

"I...have no immediate expectations in that area, no."

"You remember the first point I made when I came here."

Garak eyed him very warily. "Yes."

"Elim," Julie said, the lion receding and the dark eyes clearing into
the ones Garak knew so very well, that could hide nothing, *wanted* to
hide nothing...and which shone now with undisguised affection. For
him.

Julian crouched before Garak, leaning in his lap, taking his hands.
"What would you give," he whispered, smiling, "for a dream come true?"

Garak just gazed into those clear amber eyes for a moment.

Julian murmured "Here. Julie's taught me a thing or two about
Cardassian preferences." He got up and moved behind Garak, and his
hands slid over Garak's shoulders...and Garak jerked away, standing
and moving away a few paces.

"Please," he said shakily. "I *have* had Captain Bashir's talents in
that area more than adequately displayed to me."

"Then what do you say, Elim?" Julian approached again, behind him, and
slim arms slid intimately around his waist as warm human breath flowed
over his neck. "I really *have* admired you so much, for so long..."

Garak's eyes squeezed closed. "You are an extremely cruel man, Captain
Bashir."

Suddenly the voice, the arms around him, weren't Julian--rather, they
were, as much Julian Bashir as the one he knew, and as familiar. But
Garak could tell who was supposed to be speaking. "I'm not trying to
be cruel. I could say that I know who you used to be, and that you
*are* a fine one to talk about cruelty...I could say that you are
still capable of being quite ruthless in accomplishing your goals. I
could dwell on how you and I understand one another in a way Julian
never will. But I'm not really interested in rubbing those things in
your face, Elim, so I'll just say that I'm honestly not trying to be
cruel...and that even if you decline to obtain the information for me,
I won't leave without letting you be with him at least one night. Not
unless you tell me to go."

Garak was still, then turned slowly, not fast enough to break quite
free; Julie shifted his hands and let them rest on Garak's shoulders,
not quite neutrally, not quite a deliberate seduction. Garak lifted
his own hands and laid them on Julie's waist. He gazed intently into
the other man's face a moment, then asked "Why would you do that for
me? When you say you love him so much?"

"Maybe because he's so very fond of you himself. Garak, I don't really
know why. It's not much like me, for a few very powerful reasons...but
I've been changing, you know about that, you've changed, too."

Garak gazed at him another moment, then nodded slowly. "May I, then,
give you my answer in the morning?"

"Yes," Julie said unhesitatingly.

Garak seemed just slightly taken aback, but Julie didn't comment on
this stipulation; he wanted Garak to know he'd been telling the truth.
Garak finally let his hand slide up the front of the Fleet uniform to
brush cool-colored fingers across a warm-glowing cheek, let his thumb
brush Julie's lips. "What did you have in mind?" Garak asked softly.

"Whatever you do. I'm not bragging," Julie said, turning his face into
Garak's palm, nuzzling, "when I say that I can give you absolutely
anything you want."

"And can you enjoy it?" Elim asked in a rough voice.

Julie blinked, briefly still, than said "You know, Garak...at this
point in my life? I honestly have no idea." He thought again, then
added, "I can promise you I won't hate it. That I won't be bored. As
you saw, I can do more than simply look and sound like him...and if
you chose that, chose *him*, I can promise you I'd enjoy your pleasure
in it, because I know you love him."

"But do you honestly know enough about him, about us, to do what you
say you can?"

Julie nodded, and before the nod stopped, Julian was saying to him "I
wasn't lying. I do admire you, Elim. I don't care who you've been in
the past. All I care about is now. Right now."

That was all Elim cared about at that moment, as well.

---

Garak shifted, realized he wasn't being nearly shoved out of the
narrow Cardassian bed by the leggy presence of someone else, and
opened his eyes. Light spilled out of the bathroom. "Julie?"

"I'm here. One moment." He spoke in Kardasi. It made his voice sound
deeper, used less of the light, almost whispering tones the Doctor was
prone to. But then, Julie habitually spoke in a deeper voice than
Julian did.

Garak reflected on the feeling of ease between the two of them. Not
affection, precisely, but a relaxing of the guard. An understanding.
It was almost as though they had been courting in the Cardassian
fashion all this time, and had finally given each other their
surrenders... 'No,' he told himself firmly. 'We abandoned the game,
for the greater part, only because we had reached an understanding
beneficial to both our agendas--which is an entirely different thing.'

The light vanished, and Julie came out into the bedroom, still naked,
slim and strong and smooth, skin gleaming in the starlight, making
Garak's breath catch. The human was brushing a thick fall of
waist-length waves.

"Have you visited the infirmary while I was asleep?"

"No. Julian's not on the station; that means the computer thinks I'm
him, and all his clearance codes work for me. I replicated a follicle
stimulator." He had to say "follicle stimulator" in standard rather
than Kardasi.

Julie let Garak hear the smile in his voice as he came back and sat
next to him, curling his legs close to his body and leaning on one
palm placed to the opposite side of Garak's waist. "I felt a bit naked
without it."

"And you grew it slightly longer than it was before..."

"Right. If anyone notices the replicator usage, and wonders what I
wanted it for, it's explained. Julian doesn't have to know I'd cut it
off...or why."

"Just out of curiosity--what did you do with those lovely locks you
sacrificed earlier?"

"They're in a braid, in my art supplies. Unbelievably silly of me, but
I couldn't bear to toss them down the disposal. Were you interested in
them?"

Garak let his hand trail down Julie's chest to his waist. "I might
be."

Julie slid down to lie with him, touching his chest ridge soothingly.
"I'll weave you something pretty with them, shall I? You'd be amazed
what I can do with hair."

"You dressed hair as well?"

"If it involves manual dexterity, I've probably done it at least once.
Ask Julian."

"I don't need to, believe me. In any case...weave with some of it,
perhaps. But I'd like it if the rest remained in its natural state."

"Nothing easier." Julie sank down to rest his head on Garak's chest,
not the same way he lay against Julian's shoulder, but comfortable
enough. "Tell me, Garak...you are definitely a man to look a gift
horse in the mouth. Why did you assume that my 'free and clear' offer
was genuine? After all, what could I possibly gain? No one does
anything except for gain, now, do they...?"

"You'd know that better than I, but in any case...you may be a
consummate actor, but you are still Julian Bashir, and with those
eyes...you will never be more than an adequate liar, if that. And I
cannot be fooled by merely 'adequate' liars."

"Quite the left-handed compliment..." Julie chuckled. "You didn't
mention that I'm not fool enough to try to lie to *you*. You could
give a manufacturer's code to any lie I might manage to come up
with...with the exception of the acting variety. So then, are you
ready yet to tell me why you didn't choose *him* to be with you this
evening?"

"I should have thought it would be obvious. You *are* him, so close to
him, even when you're fencing, that it's quite enough to..."

"Float your boat to the harbor, as Kashi would say?"

"Interesting expression. What I was going to say was, it's enough in
itself to place me in a...compromised emotional position."

"Heartache," Julie said quietly.

"I beg your pardon?"

"It feels heavy, painful, inside your chest."

"Something like that," Garak admitted. "It is enough. I could not have
endured...that. After all, if I was interested in a simulacrum of
Julian, I know holoprogrammers that could give me a Julian even more
realistic than you are. One that knew every detail of our
association--even one that knew what I, personally, like, even as well
as you can fathom it."

"That's true enough. In fact, I nearly forgot this whole idea, for
that reason. But I thought that if you were confronted with the, as it
were, real article...you might change your mind."

"That's it exactly. You are Julian Bashir, as you said. Not the one
I've known, but one that's just as real. One born identical to him,
one who might have been. And in all decency...that ought to be far
more than enough, for someone who has no claim on his affections.
Besides...after such a generous offer, you deserved more respect from
me than to ask you to playact."

Julie shrugged, shaking his head. "You *do* have a claim on his
affections--I know, not the one you'd like. But it would have been all
right, really, if it'd been him you wanted. It really isn't...it
doesn't have to be anything to me."

"That may be part of it--perhaps it hurt my pride to think of it being
nothing to you, and I didn't see how it would be possible for it to be
anything else under the circumstances you were offering me. And in any
case, in a way, it *is * him I'm with now, only..."

"Only what?" Julie looked up at him, eyes glimmering.

"...only, as I believe you mentioned...transformed into something of a
dream come true," Garak admitted, and, as Julie grinned and began to
giggle, Garak smiled as well.

"I can at least teach him to give you a decent massage, if you'd
like," Julie chuckled. "Though he couldn't do most of what I can,
he's...a very long way from hopeless. And he's always ready to learn
about different therapies, for different species."

"That would be very kind of you. Even more kind than you've been so
far," he added archly.

Sarcasm or no, Julie took the opportunity to say "Oh, I don't pity
you, Garak."

Garak glanced sharply at him. "I'm glad to hear that."

"It's not as a favor that I say it. I've been through things that make
your life now look like a dreamdust vision. I've lost those closest to
me. My homeworld was destroyed. My parents sold me and I spent my
childhood being subjected to things you honestly don't want to hear
about--and yes, I know what you used to do, as I said. And since that
time, I've been almost completely alone. So no, I don't pity you,
Elim, that isn't why I'm here. I suppose...this is what Julian calls
compassion--the same thing that nearly made me kill him--because I
understand. I love him, too."

"I appreciate your taking the time to be so clear," Garak said softly;
Julie would have expected to hear sarcasm, playful or otherwise, in
the words, usually. This time, he didn't. "This isn't the way my
Julian would show the compassion I'm sure you both have in equal
measure...but it is the same compassion. How's your shoulder? In this
light I can't tell if it's still bruised; your skin is too dark."

"It's all right. I haven't bothered with the regenerator. I must say
nobody but Julian has had the audacity to slam me into a wall quite
that hard recently...and he was trying to tickle me, not seduce me."

"You shouldn't have called me those names just before biting my neck
ridge."

"I did tell you I would give you whatever you wanted..."

"And you most assuredly did not lie. About that, at least."

Julie glanced up at him. "We are both of us proficient liars,
Elim--but in our own ways. Something else Julian will never have our
grasp of. So what exactly do you mean?"

"When I asked you, earlier, if you could enjoy it."

"And do you think I did? Or didn't?"

"I honestly have no idea. I was...preoccupied, and I have every reason
to know that you are, as I said, a consummate actor."

"Such a flattering testament to all the things I do best," Julie
purred, rolling in Garak's arms to slide up where he could trace the
older man's neck scales with his mouth.

"Julian wouldn't care to hear you talk like that," Garak said.

"No, he wouldn't. So predictable, isn't he?"

"I find that I'm not terrifically partial to it, either."

Julie lifted up on his elbows, shining waves of dark hair tumbling
around them both. "Why Elim. I could almost believe that you *liked*
me."

"*Almost*, my sweet? Perhaps you aren't so gullible a babe as you
seem..."

Julie chuckled at the broad sarcasm, adding "Oooh. 'My sweet'. I like
that one."

"Does he call you that?"

Julie spoke briefly in standard--"No. 'Sweetheart'. It's not as though
he speaks Kardasi."

"But you do, well enough to have evaded my question."

"Yes, I do, don't I?" Julie said, with a feral smile. He nibbled
enticingly at Garak's neck ridges and went easily boneless as the
other man grasped him and rolled him onto his back.

"If I tell you, will you tell me?" Julie whispered.

Garak eyed him, then nodded.

"I did like it, some of it. Some of the time I was just concentrating.
Some of the time I was thinking of something else."

"What did you enjoy?"

"Your hands. The way you touched me, the way you kissed...it wasn't
hard to feel how much you love him."

"And you were concentrating..."

"I think you know when those times were. That was pleasant, too.
Knowing I was doing things at my own wish, even if it wasn't like it
is with him. I could feel you...taste you. I didn't go numb."

"And when were you thinking of something else?"

"Not when you think. Or rather...not what you think. I was thinking
sometimes...of me, of what I was feeling, rather than what you were
feeling, rather than simply letting my body respond without any
participation by me."

"I can see where that would be unusual for you."

"It's only been with Julian. And you, now. It's not the same as with
him at all...but I don't dislike any of it with you. There's no need
for...concern. You love him too much ever to hurt me. Or even try to
do anything without my permission, express or implicit."

"I wouldn't hurt you anyway. I've never taken any pleasure in causing
pain. Professionalism and pleasure are two entirely different things;
almost antithetical, in fact."

"I know...I've caused my share of pain. It was not what you could call
professional of me. And as far as you go...like I said, I'm very good
at reading people."

"Under the circumstances, I suppose what you've told me is better than
I could have expected."

"It's certainly better than *I* expected. Nothing personal."

"No offense taken. And to answer *you*...you will have your
information, if it lies within my power to obtain."

"Thank you. I know I can trust you not to take advantage of that
qualifier."

"You can indeed."

"Good. Now, I believe you were...yes, that."

---
TWENTY-THREE:
"...when some stupid with a flare gun burned the place
to the ground...Smoke on the Water--and Fire in the Sky..."

Deep Purple
---

"I'm going to have to go back soon."

"Because you're angry?"

Kashi lifted her head and got up on one elbow so she could meet Ezri's
eyes. "No, of course not. I told you I'm not angry; I understand your
choice. I even understand I was trying to get you to make mine for me.
It's just a feeling I get about this."

"You did say you didn't want to leave Julie without you."

"Julie doesn't want to go back at all. Well, there's something he
wants worse, let's put it that way."

"You offered to stay with him."

"He doesn't want me to stay--well, he does, but he doesn't want to ask
it of me."

"I think you're feeling a little hurt, and it's influencing the way
you see things."

"I'm not hurt. I'm not angry. I'm not even surprised, all right?
Please don't analyze me while we're in bed, it spoils the experience."

Ezri chuckled. "Sorry, but it's kind of ingrained. I'll do my best."

Kashi settled onto her again. "I think he's going to *ask* me to go,
if he decides to stay; he needs someone to tell Smiley what's
happening, and if he goes himself...he may not come back. Either
because someone, your side or mine, will stop it--I'm not saying they
necessarily will, I'm saying he'll worry they will, and he'd be right,
it's a possibility--or because he won't be able to leave himself, his
conscience will stab him, once he's back in the thick of things over
there."

"He's talked with me about going back and helping Smiley and T'ser get
things stable, then returning."

"Yeah, with kind of a vacillating note in his voice. He thinks it'd be
a good idea, a sort of compromise--but he doesn't want to do it."

"He's still as torn as you are about it, you mean."

"Yeah, that's what I mean. I think I'm going to wind up playing
messenger. But you know all this wondering and planning is so much
pissing in the wind, right now--Julie's treatments are keeping him
here for a while, for weeks; by the time they're done, and you're as
done with him as it's going to get outside a lifetime of work,
executive decision will have come down and all this is going to be
decided for us."

"Only if they decide against us, if you see what I mean."

"Look, I don't talk with Sisko like you do, and even *I* can see which
direction to reinforce my shields, if you get me. Ninety percent
chance Julie and I get the boot and the Federation takes away all your
little transporter toys for the time being. With me, it's pretty
simple." She kissed Ezri softly. "Unpleasant, but simple. I go back.
Julie..." she shook her head. "He and Julian are going to have to
think awfully fast."

"They're already thinking."

"And you don't care for what Julian may be thinking, do you?"

Ezri sighed, pensive. "No, I don't. He'll never come out and admit it
if he's thinking of desertion, disobeying orders, breaking the law.
But I know him well enough to know that he'll do it in a second if he
thinks it's the right thing to do. If he thinks it's what he *has* to
do."

"Yeah, well. That's what you get, forming a government that has
service to the individual, not service to the state, as its highest
virtue."

"You think we should all be like the Cardassians?"

"Hell no. I'm just saying you get what you pay for, in government or
anything else. You want a simple, super-efficient system...you'll be
sacrificing personal freedoms out the wazoo. You want a government
that serves the people, on the other hand, and you get an entire
population of wild cards. Frankly I prefer the wild cards. But then,
I'm a Terran rebel."

"I prefer wild cards, too. Most of us do, in the Federation, at
least."

"Not counting Vulcans."

"Or a few other species. Or certain examples of almost all species.
Kashi, I really think your ninety-percent estimate is a little steep.
We have a lot of respectable people at bat for us in this."

"You're the only person I know who'd use that expression."

"I learned it from Benjamin. He's a big baseball nut."

"Really? Maybe he can teach me the rules sometime."

"I can do that, if you want. We all played on a team for him not long
ago, I haven't had time to forget much."

"Didn't Julian make you all look sick?"

Ezri sighed. "Julian wanted to be a team player above everything else;
that was the most important thing to the Captain at the time, he
thought it was our best way to win. He thought playing a game
*together*, based on heart and teamwork, was the only chance we stood
against a team full of Vulcans."

"Vulcans? Sheesh. You got creamed, didn't you?"

"Pureed. Julian's also very used to holding back, not letting his
enhancements be noticeable..."

"So he didn't save your collective posterior."

"No, he didn't. Rom sort of saved the day for us, because we were just
pretty easy to please by that point. Anyway, as far as Julian, none of
us had the heart to yell at him about it--it just seems so gauche to
ask someone enhanced, who's been so ashamed of this secret that nearly
ruined his entire life, to 'get out there and *use* that illegally
enhanced stamina and hand-eye coordination and beat those Vulcans.'
Maybe not quite as unthinkable as asking Julie to get out there and
seduce those marks, no, but you can see what I mean."

"I'd have done it. Got out there and beat the Vulcans, I mean, not
asked Julie that."

"Too bad we didn't have you on the team. That throwing arm would have
burned every shot right past the plate. And there's no way you'd ever
get tagged." Ezri rolled so that they faced each other and said softly
"You don't have to go anywhere just yet."

"No, not yet," Kashi agreed, and they kissed for a time. When they
paused, Kashi asked "Tell me the truth. Are you ever going to be able
to look at Keiko the same way again?"

Ezri laughed with her and said "I don't know. Probably not. But after
seeing her with you, *nobody* is going to be able to look at Keiko the
same way again." They giggled, and Kashi hummed a snatch of a tune.

"What was that?"

"Little something by Stevie Ray Vaughn. Never mind."

---

"Come," Kira's voice called. Julie adjusted his grip on the painting
and stepped through the door.

Kira looked up as she came in from the bedroom and blinked. "Captain
Bashir."

"Intendant."

She winced. "Prophets, Julian, don't do that."

"Sorry. Old habits, you know."

"Same here. I understand you've been blessed with a new first name?"

"If you can call it that. My best friend used to call me Julie. Julian
discovered that, and wouldn't stop using it. Now I'm finding it
difficult to answer to anything else."

"Well." She appeared not flustered, but puzzled. "Is there something I
can help you with?"

"Yes, actually. I have a gift for Captain Sisko, and I thought he
might rather receive it from your hands than mine. Plus I'll admit I'm
still a bit embarrassed over my last encounter with him."

"A gift?"

Julie held it up. "It's a painting. Would you mind?"

"Oh, not at all. I suppose it's one of your own?"

He nodded.

"You must know, you're Julian's latest enthusiasm in general--your
relationship first, then your treatments and their *incredible*
success--I'm happy for *you*, of course, but I wish *he'd* shut up for
two minutes--and now your divinely authored artistic work. I'm sure
it's quite good, of course, but..."

"Have you tried shoving food down his throat? It seems to work for
Garak."

"I usually see him with Ezri at lunch these days, and I'm so busy
trying to get my own food down I don't have time to force-feed him.
Has anything worked for *you* yet?"

Julie grinned ferally.

"Oh. Um, of course. Ahm, what's the painting of? Or can I ask?"

"Certainly." Julie pulled the wrapping cloth from the frame and held
the portrait up for her inspection. "My best friend, on my side," he
added.

Kira's expression melted. "It's beautiful. The look on her face--that
smile, like she's just got away with some joke. I can almost hear her
speak..." she came up and touched the frame lightly with her
fingertips. "You must know our Jadzia was close to our Julian, too,"
she added.

"Yes, he's told me."

"Have you talked with Worf?"

"I have a bit of a problem with him for the same reason I haven't
spoken with you alone until now. Who you are...where I'm from."

"But you *can* talk to Garak?"

"I know you met him, Julian told me as much, but I never did. I
certainly knew him by reputation, but I don't think I'd have known him
if I saw him."

"Be glad. He gave me far worse creeps than our Garak does, and that's
saying something." She took the painting carefully from him and stood
it in a chair to admire it a moment before dropping the wrapping cloth
back over it. "I get the feeling that this might displace some of the
African art on the Captain's wall."

"I just hope it brings back more good memories than painful for him. I
had a...more difficult time painting it than I thought I would."

"I can see that. It's kind of difficult for *me* to look at it. I
don't know how you did it, but it *feels* more real than a photo, or
even the still holos I've seen. It's like you can see who she is, as
well as what she looks like. Not that I know anything about art, I'm
as artistic as mange weevil. But then, maybe, someone like *me* being
able to appreciate it speaks well for it."

"Thank you, Colonel," Julie said very softly, obviously unsure of
himself.

Kira looked up, eyes widening, as though realizing the way he must be
reacting to her presence. "I'm sorry. You're probably imagining I'll
give that psycho laugh and casually order a few executions."

"Actually, when I finally did meet your counterpart, after we'd
captured her...I was less than kind to her. I felt justified at the
time, but Captain Sisko let me know that what I was doing was
unacceptable. I didn't believe him at first. I do now; not for her
sake, though. For mine. Anyway, I have this odd sensation of...wanting
to apologize to you, which is ridiculous. If you *were* the Intendant,
I'd have no inclinations in that direction whatsoever. I'd kill you
with my bare hands. But you..."

Kira considered him a moment, then smiled just slightly. "I'm glad you
can see that we're that different."

"Anyone could. Anyone...in their right mind," he finished, almost
inaudibly.

She considered him a moment.

The comm chirped. "Ops to Kira. Emergency--report at once."

"On my way."

She hardly noticed as he followed her out toward Ops.

As the lift rose over the deck, she was out, ducking under the lift
roof. "Report."

"Message from the Defiant, sir," said some technician Julie didn't
know, on either side of the Mirror. "They're in trouble. The 'Hadar
were able to keep a narrow channel open near the location of the
previous break, concealed from sensors. After the threat was
supposedly over, the Defiant was targeted for a surprise attack."

"The rescue convoy?"

"Were able to make it safely out of range while the Defiant engaged
the 'Hadar fleet. Most of the evacuees aboard the Defiant had been
transported off to other ships by the time the attack occurred."

"'Most'?"

"Some of the wounded couldn't be moved."

"What kind of damage have they taken?"

"They've lost the cloak, shields, long-range communications, main
drive...they had partial drive for most of the trip back, but they've
lost it now. Attitude control is out. They have thrusters, but they're
useless without attitude. Their core is verging on breach."

"What's their course? How far off are they?"

"They'd been on course for the station, but changed their trajectory
when they fell out of warp, just before they lost impulse, when they
realized they didn't have the maneuvering ability to dock. They set
course to enter orbit around Bajor Six."

"Are they still on that course?"

"...scanning...their course has altered again, they have a hard tumble
on, I don't know where they picked that up."

Kira was tapping lights at her station. "Prophets."

"Sir?"

"They won't make orbit. Their course has gone collision rather than
rendezvous with the planet's orbit."

"They could destroy the entire colony," a Starfleet woman breathed.

"No they won't," Kira hissed grimly. "They'll destroy the ship
themselves before they let it hit the planet. And by their course and
speed...point eight c--they'll never make it. They have to initiate
self-destruct before the Defiant is close enough to irradiate the
planet's atmosphere when it goes."

"Any sign of a change in their course?"

"Nothing yet."

"What in the area is big enough to tractor them?"

"Nothing, since the Enterprise left dock. The Marchioness might handle
it, but it'll take them...eleven minutes at maximum impulse--"

"They haven't got eleven minutes! What else?"

At that point, Julie lunged down a ladder access, and, once he was out
of sight, said "Computer! Put me through to Elim Garak."

"Garak here. Doctor?"

"No, it's me, and if you ever *want* to see Julian again, beam
directly to runabout pad B. Have you got authorization or do you need
mine?"

"I'm cleared for that. I'll be there at once." The comm went silent.

"Computer, emergency transport, one to runabout pad A, medical
authorization Bashir gamma three." He vanished in a column of light.

---

"Sir!"

"What is it, Lieutenant?"

"The Euphrates and the Tigris have disengaged docking
restraints--they're moving away from the station."

Kira's eyes widened, and she looked swiftly around. "Bashir," she
growled, and cursed. "Get tractors on those ships, now!"

"Um...we can't, sir." The technician looked up. "They've gone to warp.
They're both out of range."

"Course?" Her expression indicated she already dreaded the answer.

"Into the system, sir. Bajor Six."

"They're WARPING *INTO* THE SYSTEM?"

"Yes, sir."

"Damn it, Bashir, you crazy son-of-a--" she controlled herself.
"Whatever you've got in mind...Prophets willing, I hope it works. But
if you get yourself killed in the process Julian'll never forgive me."

---

"Steady on, Elim..."

"Programming's complete here, Captain. Ready to slave into your
computer...now," Garak replied from the Euphrates, over the comm. "You
say you've done this before?"

"I said I'd tried it before."

"I don't think I want to know how it came out."

"No, you probably don't. Accepting computer control...now."

"Gods. Flying at warp through a solar system certainly does get one's
blood circulating... I must admit--"

"Garak, shut up and prepare your beam-out."

"It's prepared, but for the split-second time setting. Which should
be?"

"Better make it...two seconds after the beams engage. We'll have to
make sure contact was made properly before we can beam out, but
there's no telling how long the runabouts will hold together after the
beams hit the Defiant--the shear might destroy them in a second or
two, or they might hold together a little longer...I'm setting both
tractors to disengage on the instant contact is lost with the other
tractor; we can't afford the imbalance if one of us is destroyed
first, it'd throw the trajectory we're trying for completely off
kilter. I'm coming out of warp. Keep a sharp eye on your readouts,
I'll need you to correct if there's even the slightest bit of drift.
If the tractors don't hit at precisely the right points on the hull at
precisely the same time, with us locking on in passing on orbit out,
we'll tear the Defiant up as well as these runabouts. Which would be
unfortunate, since our transporters won't reach the planet with that
much power tied up in the tractors. We'll have to beam onto the
Defiant."

"That's going to be touchy. I hope you're good with a transporter."

"I'm not bad, but we're going to have to rely on the Tigris's aim--as
I said, we'll have to time it pretty closely, within a second or so,
to be sure the program is carried out and still get ourselves off
before the shear does for both runabouts. We won't be able to spare
our attention from riding herd on the beams."

"But do we still have time to match their axes at all?"

"Working on it now. Any help you want to give me...all right, we've
got it. That tumble will be altered by contact with the planet's grav
field; without the computers we'd never have matched it in
time...tying into thrusters...matching..." On the monitor screens,
they could both see the Defiant rolling and yawing with the runabouts
flipping like attendant bolo bats, still on approach.

"Well. You did ask me if I was ready to die today," Garak reflected.

"And I hope you are, because whether we save the Defiant or not, our
own chances are thin as a promise. You really should have told Julian
you love him before now."

"I have a message for him in my computer, to be delivered at the event
of my death."

"Trust you to be ready for any contingency."

---

"Chief! Status!"

"Internal com is down, sir," Worf informed him, getting back into the
helm chair after the latest explosion had knocked him out of it.
"Still no attitude control."

"How close are we to Bajor Six?" The ship rocked again as another
panel blew out.

"Six minutes, fourteen seconds."

"Too close--is the self-destruct sequence functional? Otherwise we'll
have to--" another explosion; Sisko was thrown from the command chair
and against the tactical station. As he was dragging himself back up,
his eyes lit on the external scanner readouts there. "What the--"

"Sir, we're being approached--two runabouts, ID indeterminate."

"Hail them!"

"No response."

"Damn it, what the hell do they think they can--"

The ship rocked again, hard enough to knock out main power to the
bridge; Sisko's head collided with the railing and his own lights went
out, too.

---

"Captain--"

"Keep it together, Garak--just a little...longer...engaging
tractors...NOW!"

The runabouts both jerked so hard the inertial dampers were partially
overcome and Garak and Julie were flung from their respective pilot's
chairs. They both clambered back up, desperately trying to see the
readouts.

"Captain!"

"We're on--!" a horrendous metallic groan sounded behind him and Julie
whirled to see the amidships hull began to actually, visibly, bend.

"Garak! Your readouts!"

"Numbers are on line, Captain--"

Then Julie heard nothing for a few moments, as the transporter effect
began, and his hearing faded. He wondered if the transporter would
exist long enough to put him and Garak back together again.

---

"Sir? Sir!"

"I'm...Worf, what--how are--"

"The two runabouts were able to initiate a brief lock on the hull,
sir, calculated to pull us up into an orbital trajectory."

"Two RUNABOUTS pulled the DEFIANT into orbit? At near-c? Ow." Sisko
winced as the pain that raising his voice caused stabbed his temple.

"Apparently they had just enough power for one super-augmented
three-second lock before the tractor emitters failed. They locked on,
one on the dorsal side of the ship and one at the ventral, en passant
at a speed slightly exceeding our own; they had, of course, no power
to spare for impulse, the maneuver probably required the power from
all their systems...but it was sufficient to alter our course such
that we entered orbit, rather than being pulled directly into the
planet's gravity well."

"And the runabouts themselves?"

"Destroyed..." he tapped lights as power began coming back up all over
the bridge. "Four point three seconds after the beams were initiated."

Sisko sighed. "Any idea who they were?"

"None, sir. There was no time to determine that before the ships were
torn apart by shear."

"What's our status?"

"Internal com is back up."

"Sisko to O'Brien--status?"

"We're not out of the woods, sir," O'Brien said. "That last jolt--what
the hell was it? It didn't originate down here."

"That was our collective anatomy being saved by two very brave and
very foolhardy runabout pilots, Chief. We're in orbit around Bajor
Six."

"Then as soon as I can get us some engines, sir, we'd better get back
out of orbit, because the core is making a lot of noises I don't
like--and the core ejection system is completely shot."

"Then your priority is impulse power, Chief. Everything else will have
to wait. Just do what you have to do to keep us from blowing up in
orbit around an inhabited planet."

"Aye sir, already am. O'Brien out."

Worf helped Sisko into the Captain's chair as frantic activity
continued around them. Sisko caught Worf's arm as the other man
started to turn back to the conn. "Worf...do you suppose...Kira...?"

Worf paused at the obvious pain in Sisko's face. Then he said softly
"It *is* true she is a formidable enough pilot to have accomplished
this...and it is true she is of the temperament to have tried. But I
do not think she would have endangered a second pilot to make the
attempt; she would have tried alone. I do not believe she was in
either of those runabouts, sir."

"Thank you, mister Worf," Sisko sighed, touching his temple gingerly.
"I needed to hear that."

---

"Captain Bashir...?"

Julie slid down the wall to land on his rear. "Where...cargo bay.
We're in the cargo bay."

"I'm sure the transporters sent us to the most stable open area they
could, though the condition all three ships were in, it's surprising
we didn't materialize through a bulkhead."

"Are you all right?"

Blood was oozing down the side of Garak's face. "I don't think I can
stand, but this blow didn't knock me out. Therefore, it likely isn't
serious."

"Well, we're still here...either it worked, or we're on our way to a
fiery death in Bajor Six's atmosphere," Julie managed to say over the
noise of the red alert sirens.

"So I'm trying to look on the bright side," Garak said. "With luck,
I'll be dead in a few moments and this abominable ache in my head will
be gone."

"Let me...where's the..." Julie located the emergency medkit,
stumbling toward where it was clamped to the wall, supporting himself
on the variously tumbled and disarrayed containers he was having to
thread his way through. "After this," he was growling, "Julian better
have bloody survived the battle with the Jem'Hadar."

"Or you and I are going to feel monumentally foolish," Garak agreed.
"Fond as I am of a number of people who are presently on this ship,
there isn't one of them whom either of us would have risked this
venture to save, except him," Garak remarked matter-of-factly.

"Here, hold still," Julie said, stumbling again as a jolt rocked the
bay around him, before making it to Garak's side. "I'm not too
familiar with these kits, but I should be able to kill the pain and
clean up the mess, at least."

"That would be *most* appreciated, Captain."

"Call me Julie, Garak. I'm not Julian. I won't put up with your bloody
stupid pompous overformality."

"Really, Captain. I'm hurt."

"So hold still, I'll be done in a second...what's this stuff...no, not
that...ah, here." He loaded a hypo and injected Garak. In a moment
he'd cleaned up the head wound and installed a bandage. "There. Good
enough."

"*That* is debatable..."

Julie wrapped his arms around Garak's waist and hauled him to his
feet. "Come on. Let's get to the bridge and find out what's going on.
And find whether we're both going to have to enter into a prolonged
period of mourning," he added grimly. "At least, if we were going to
burn up in the atmosphere, we would have, by now--so if he made it
through the damage, we saved him."

"I'm so relieved." Garak stumbled once; Julie paused, supporting him,
then dragged him out through the alert sirens into the general mayhem.
"Computer, locate Doctor Bashir."

Computer raspberry.

"Bloody, forgot," Julie muttered.

"You've just answered our most pressing question, though," Garak
sighed, eyes closing, as they leaned against the lift wall. "Bridge,"
he told the lift. "If Julian were dead, the computer would simply have
located you. Since it couldn't distinguish between you and
*some*one..."

"You're right, it must mean he's alive." Julie slumped against the
lift wall himself. "Thank Gods..."

"I think it makes more immediate sense to thank *you*, Captain. And
me, of course."

The lift doors opened on a minor disaster; computer and other system
guts were hanging out in unappetizing view as people scrambled around
trying to get things back up. One technician looked up, saw them, and
dropped the ODN fiber bundle he was carrying. "Doctor? Garak?"

"Not doctor," Julie said, letting Garak have his shoulder as he
stepped onto the bridge. "But you've got the rest right. Captain?
Neighborhood rescue squad at your service. I hope you won't be
dragging us out again like this any time soon?"

Sisko just stared a moment, then broke into a huge grin. "Captain
Bashir," he said, with a definite note of satisfaction in his voice.
"And our friend, the plain and simple tailor. I knew whoever was in
those runabouts had to be completely insane--I don't know why you two
didn't occur to me right off."

"You're welcome, Captain," Garak sighed as Julie sat him in a vacant
station chair--the station in question was blown to hell and gone.
Garak continued "Captain Bashir may indeed be a crazy man, but his
particular stripe of crazedness has its uses."

Sisko, whose head bore a bandage that mirrored Garak's, came carefully
over to them. "Are either of you hurt badly?"

"Not badly. Garak's head's the worst."

Sisko said "Captain...thank you. Unfortunately, I don't know whether
you're going to get a medal or get deported. If your plan had failed,
you might have knocked the Defiant into the atmosphere before we had a
chance to self-destruct. The Bajor Six colony could have been
destroyed."

Julie and Garak exchanged a smirk. "And if we hadn't tried it, you'd
all be dead, including some of the evacuees," Julie said. "I take it
we're in for an after-the-fact upbraiding from your Admiralty?"

"As I said, the situation is rather ambiguous. But then, Captain,
everything about you is ambiguous, isn't it? And that goes without
saying for Garak."

"Why, thank you, Captain," Garak beamed.

"Is Julian all right?" Julie asked, trying to keep the anxiety out of
his voice and failing.

"He's...alive," Sisko said, his voice softening.

Julie's look became even harder than usual. "Tell me."

"He was treating casualties in the engine room when the radiation in
the starboard

nacelle service chamber went out of the safe band; it was being
evacuated when one of the fuel pods blew. Julian went in under the
blast door as it was coming down, to get to two people who were still
in the nacelle."

"Bloody little fool," Julie cursed. "How is he?"

"He'll live, but he was badly irradiated. Even without your hair--in
fact, he has even less right now--no one would have any trouble
telling the two of you apart."

Julie cursed again. "Come on, Garak. Let's get to the medical bay."

---

I found out all about what happened later, of course. At the moment
all I knew was that I badly wanted to be unconscious.

"Julian? Oh my God. Julian..."

I knew that voice...

A gentle hand stroked what was left of my hair. "My love," the voice
whispered. "Sweetheart, look at me, please...Julian..."

I managed to get my eyes open. "*Julie*?" I rasped incredulously.
"What are you...doing...h...?"

"Saving your stupid burnt ass, you bloody dolt," he said, nearly in
tears. "You look like *hell*!"

"You look wonderful."

"Compared to you I'm beauty incarnate."

I smiled with the side of my mouth that wasn't swollen. "Or compared
to anybody. How did you get here?"

"In a runabout."

"Are we...back at the..."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Bashir," Lt. Kalon said, coming up to us. "The Doctor
needs to rest until we can get him back to the station for treatment."

"I won't bother him. Just let me stay with him."

"My people need room to work, Julie love," I told him gently. "Stay in
my cabin, all right? We should be home soon."

"It may be longer than you think. The Defiant will survive this,
but--"

"--but the Marchioness is on its way to tow us out of here," came
another familiar voice, and Garak appeared at my bedside, trailing a
nurse who was attempting to repair his head. "Doctor. You look
positively revolting."

"Garak? You too?"

"I'm afraid so. But you're correct, we *will* be back at the station
soon. The Marchioness will only be only waiting for Chief O'Brien to
let them know that structural integrity, not to mention the core
baffles, are up to standard to tolerate the tractor field."

"Miles..." I sighed. "You should have heard the names he was calling
me while he dragged me out of the nacelle through what I'm pretty sure
was *not* intended to be an access conduit."

Julie said "I hope he included a few for me. What about those two you
were trying to help?"

"I got the first one out under the blast door before it closed. It
turned out the second had been killed before I got to him."

"I'm sorry, love," Julie said, with an effort. I could see that the
only thing he cared about was me, but knowing how I would feel about
it, he was making an effort to consider my grief over the occurrence.

"I'll be all right," I whispered.

"Mr. Bashir..." Lt. Kalon said threateningly. The nurse was dragging
Garak off someplace, probably to finish working on his head.

"Please," Julie said, again with an effort. His hands kept making
abortive gestures toward me; I knew how I must look, he was probably
afraid he'd hurt me if he touched me. "I'll stay up by the wall here.
I won't get in the way."

Kalon sighed. "All right. But if we need to get to him quickly you'll
have to clear the area; we don't have the leisure to work around you."

"Thank you. Believe me, I wouldn't endanger him."

"That's not hard to believe, under the circumstances," Kalon snorted
before shooting me with another painkiller and some tri-ox, then
moving off to see to the other patients.

"What did she mean by that?" I wondered to Julie.

He smiled, tears appearing in his eyes. They didn't quite run down his
cheeks. He ignored them, stroking one of the few burn-free areas on
me, my right cheek. "Nothing, love. You'll find out when we get you
home."

---

Julie came into the office to find Garak already there. Sisko wasn't,
yet.

"Elim," Julie said easily, taking the chair next to the Cardassian's.

"Captain. Excuse me. Julie. I haven't seen Julian for a day or
two--how did he look when Dr. Guirani released him this morning?"

"With his clothes on, you can't see he was ever burned, and he's got
his hair back. The hair on his head, I mean. There are a few big grey
patches elsewhere on him, but he says they don't hurt. In all he's
quite well for only a week in the infirmary; his biggest complaint was
that hyronolin makes him nauseous, but he says he feels fine now. Is
he still yammering his bloody head off over the wardroom terminal to
the Admiralty with Sisko?"

"One can only assume."

Julie chuckled, relaxing in his chair, crossing his legs. "I never
thought I'd see the day Sisko would go up against the Admiralty for
the likes of you and me. How many times were you stopped and thanked
on your way here?"

"Four."

"They got me six. One of them in tears, her brother was aboard, one of
the evacuees."

"Do you think we ought to be telling them that it's Doctor Bashir they
should be thanking?"

"Depends. Tired of being the hero of the week?"

"It's quite a novel sensation...and the doctor himself? Should we tell
him that everyone who was on the Defiant has him to thank for our
intervention?"

"Oh, why ruin his good opinion of us...so. Which do you think?
Decorations, or legal action?"

"I'm going to take decorations. You can have legal action, you're the
pessimist."

"More so than you?"

"Only next to Julian. He could make *anyone* look like a pessimist.
Speaking of whom..."

The office doors slid open and Sisko and Julian entered, both of them
looking frazzled. Sisko plodded directly to his chair and flopped down
into it. Julian, following him, plopped to the desk simultaneously.
They heaved a sigh, very nearly in unison.

Julie and Garak eyed them, then each other, then them again. "Well?"
Julie prompted.

Julian and Sisko exchanged a look. Sisko smiled. So did Julian. Sisko
grinned. Julian began to laugh, slid off the desk and let his upper
half flop into Julie's lap. Julie caught him, eyebrows rising.

"Where do you want the reception?" Julian asked him, as he and Sisko
dissolved in hilarity completely.

"The news is good, then," Garak said in satisfaction.

"I have never seen the like of tail-chasing," Sisko managed to get out
between almost soundless guffaws. "They had no idea how to react to
this--and Dr. Bashir was *great*!"

"How so?" Garak wondered.

"Admiral Stephanopolous is rather in awe of me, for some reason,"
Julian said, "I couldn't say why. Vice-admiral Nieve has something of
a maternal complex where I'm concerned. Admiral Embri..."

"Apparently finds the doctor...decorative," Sisko explained, "and has
been trying to get Julian assigned as his personal aide for some time.
Ludicrous, of course, but apparently he hasn't given up hope..."

"And the other two we were speaking with--Captain Rittenour and
vice-admiral Weaver--attended the Academy with Captain Sisko. Between
the two of us..."

"Between the two of us, there never really was a chance of any other
outcome," Sisko sighed. "Doctor, I have to say I'm impressed. I've
never seen one man work so many angles at once."

"It wasn't easy," Julian admitted. "Have you ever tried to be
ingenuous, mysteriously perspicacious, and sexy--all at the same
time?"

"I think you just summed up your personality," Garak muttered, but no
one caught it but Julie, who grinned a feral grin at him.

---

"Julian is such a *prude*," Julie sighed, sipping his drink.

"That isn't what you've said up 'til now," Garak murmured back to him,
smiling pleasantly at the Marchioness's first officer as she passed by
with a Federation ambassador who currently resided on the station.

"The wardroom. How boring. The holosuite would have been *so* much
more interesting."

"Professor O'Brien's program, yes," Garak mused. "I'm sure the doctor
was worried that if you became bored you'd either disrobe and go for a
swim or start shoving other people in, fully clothed, when the evening
became long to you."

"Wouldn't that have been more interesting than *this*? Are *you*
enjoying it?"

"I realize that you are not what is commonly called, in our dear
doctor's culture, a 'people person', Captain--sorry, Julie--but you
*could* look at this as an opportunity to observe the interactive
mechanics of this sort of situation. The rebels, provided they win
their freedom permanently--and I have no doubt you will--will not
always be an organization of half-starved underwashed trigger-happy
escapees. You may need to know how to behave in such settings
someday."

"And I suppose you're having a better time?"

"A splendid one. Admiral Embri had not the slightest idea what to say
to me, did you notice? The man is a dyed-in-the-wool diplomat...and
the presence of a Cardassian wearing a Silver Cluster is enough to
render him speechless."

"I notice a lot of people are having that reaction to both of us.
Difference is, you enjoy it. It bores me."

"No, my dear. It makes you feel like a display item, which, if I may
say, guests of honor at these functions always are in any case.
Judging by your reactions, you'd like very much to rearrange their
distressed and artificial smiles of patently worried goodwill, both
with your fists and possibly with that enormous dagger you're wearing.
Klingon, isn't it? And the boots?"

"The boots aren't Klingon, exactly. They're Klingon make, designed for
Bajorans."

"Close enough. And the rest of your garb seems designed to emphasize
the...savage glory of your universal origins as well. Not that you
aren't one of the loveliest men I've ever seen, but you might have
worn more above the waist than the baldric that machete is hanging
from."

"But bronze mail goes well with the trousers, doesn't it?"

"With scarlet silk featuring a chained pattern of gold down either
side? To within retinal-burn tolerances. The sash at the waist might
be just a bit over the top, however. What is that jeweled item braided
into your hair, exactly?"

"The kill-chain of a Klingon captain whose ship I took in a fight. In
Klingon society on our side, at least the part of it he was from, if
you're defeated, the credit of your kills goes to whoever defeated
you. I must admit I haven't worn it in awhile, my hair hasn't been
long enough to get it all braided in. The looks it's been getting
would seem to indicate that a good many of these Federations do know
what it is, though."

"So you dressed deliberately with the thought in mind of causing a
shocked stir, rendering yourself such a display of beauty and color
that even Vulcans would stare...and then you begin to complain when
people demonstrate the exact wide-eyed, determinedly-smiling,
obviously-anxious reaction you'd hoped."

Julie grinned. "Julian's done wonders, but I'm afraid I'm always going
to be just a bit contrary. Honestly, now. Do you want me to become a
clone of him?"

"Perish the thought. There is no one alive I care more for, but two of
that particular version of him would definitely be one too many."

"And you, Elim. Enjoying yourself, as we've established. Ex-member of
the Obsidian order and still, periodically, spy--receiving the
second-highest civilian decoration the Federation can bestow. Mingling
and drinking with command-level Starfleet officers and Federation
diplomats and their guests and families. Lauded as a hero for
successfully bringing off an almost-certainly suicidal attempt at
saving a not-only Federation ship, but a *Starfleet warship*. What do
you suppose your old tutors and superiors and colleagues on Cardassia
would do on hearing of you--*you*, Elim Garak, pride of the Order--in
such a situation?"

Garak considered the question calmly for a moment.

"They'd shit," he opined, smiled at the thought, and sipped his drink.

Julie got a bug-eyed smirk and was forced to clutch the port lintel he
was standing next to, burying snorts and guffaws in his drink. Finally
he managed to choke "Well, *that* was plain and simple enough."

"I do hope I've lent a bit of joie de vivre to your tedious evening,
Julie my sweet."

"Oh, you have that. Come on, let's find Julian. Do you dare me to kiss
him in front of everybody?"

"That would lend a boost to *my* evening, most assuredly. You are a
frightening--not to mention uncouth--man in many ways, Julie Bashir,
but I must admit...you *can* be a great deal of fun."

---

"Julie and Garak are thick as thieves," I noted, standing next to the
buffet with Ezri, Kashi and Keiko. Keiko and Kashi were holding hands
and getting looks, but so were Julie and I, and we were on opposite
sides of the room at the moment.

"Julian, what possessed you to let him dress like that? People think
that's really the dress uniform of his organization."

"His organization hasn't got uniforms, Keiko, but it's not far off the
mark. When we studied Captain Kirk's crew's visit to the Mirror
universe at the Academy, descriptions of the Terran Empire uniforms,
and holorenderings thereof, were included with the cultural analyses.
What Julie's wearing is an excellent representation of the style,
though I can't imagine anyone else looking so good in such a getup."

"You."

"Bite your tongue. Attitude is as much a part of that ensemble as are
the clothes. I'd look a complete fool."

"No worse than you do in that wolfskin."

"Speak to your husband, that one goes with *his* program."

"Kashi, then," Keiko said, and kissed Kashi's cheek. Kashi snickered
and said "I was going to wear something pretty damn close to what he's
got on, but Ezri wouldn't let me..." she glanced around, but Ezri was
standing to my other side, not reacting to the conversation, gazing
toward Garak and Julie.

I asked "Is something wrong, Ezri?"

"No, not really. They just seem awfully close...well, not quite that.
Thick as thieves, you said? That seems more like it."

I leaned conspiratorially toward her. "You think they're up to
something, m'lady Wantsomore?"

"I'm sure it's nothing to worry about. Entertaining each other,
probably. Neither of them can be that comfortable here."

"Shall we go rescue them from being targeted by every functionary who
passes them? Everyone'd love to see Julie and me standing close again,
I'm sure."

"No need--here they come." Julie and Garak were threading their way
toward us from the opposite end of the room. Well, Garak,
appropriately enough, was threading. Julie was moving with his usual
lissome stride, simultaneously impossibly graceful and capable of
stomping flat anything that got in his path. "How does he walk like
that?" Ezri wondered.

"I think it's those boots. He doesn't do the landscape-leveler walk
without them on," I said.

"They're a shield," she commented, "they make him feel more powerful."
I nodded, realizing she was likely correct.

The two joined us. "Doctor, counselor, Mesdames Keiko," Garak greeted
us, making Keiko giggle. Julie walked straight up to me and kissed me
firmly, but thankfully quickly. I still looked nervously around.
Little hope we hadn't been seen; of *course* we had been, people come
to these events largely to see and be seen and catch up on the gossip.
If it's a good event for that sort of thing, that was. And this one
most definitely was. Julie and I were the talk of the sector in Fleet
circles.

"Oh, *don't* be so bloody prudish," Julie muttered. "You think there's
anybody here who doesn't already know about us?"

"There isn't now, I must admit," I sighed. "Gods, that grin again.
People will think you're going to rip their throats out. Try to be
civil?"

"Back off, Julian, he's doing wonderfully," Ezri asserted, patting
Julie. He beamed down at her. "Thank you," he said, with a falsely
haughty glance at me.

"Captain and Admiral on close approach," Garak muttered in warning; I
turned to see Captain Sisko and Embri moving through the crowd toward
us, in no great hurry. Embri kept bumping into people because his gaze
was being tractored in by Julie and me.

"That man has been positively cross-eyed all night," Julie muttered to
me. "I thought he'd never stop staring at us. I take it he's the one
who fancies you?"

"And obviously you now, too."

Ezri smirked. "What a delectable contrast you two must be presenting
to him," she murmured. "You in your dress whites, Julie in...that..."
she waved a hand to indicate Julie's garb, what there was of it.

"Julie, stop it," I muttered to him as he started to sneak an arm
around my waist.

"We don't want to disappoint the Admiral," he snickered.

"We don't want to give him a coronary, either. You can have anything
you like of me when the reception's over, now stop."

"Hello, everyone," Captain Sisko said, approaching us with Admiral
Embri. "The Admiral and I...have some news for you."

---

"It had to happen," Ezri said in a small voice, climbing out of her
gown and hanging it up.

Kashi, already in as much underwear as she ever wore, namely not much,
was sitting cross-legged on the bed, elbows braced on her knees, chin
resting on her clasped hands. She didn't reply.

Ezri tossed her shoes in the closet and climbed up next to Kashi,
putting her arms around the other woman's waist. "Hey, come on," Ezri
said. "Talk to me."

"I'm sorry, I'm just sorta...uh, it's kind of throwing me for more of
a loop than I expected. I mean, sure, we knew it had to happen. But we
didn't know exactly when it would be."

"Julie and Garak ended up getting you both some extra time, in
gratitude for the Defiant, so we can be sure he's had all the help we
can give him. We can be grateful for that."

"Two more months."

"Which we couldn't be sure we were going to have before. Julian will
have a chance to come up with something to help with your, what did
you call it, being set to high gain, even if he doesn't have time to
come up with a way for you to have a baby later on, when you're more
sure of the time."

"And I won't have you," Kashi whispered, "and he won't have Julian."

"I know. And Julian and I won't have you and Julie. But you and Julie
will have each other...and you'll be, how do I put it...well."

"So if you've got a sibling and you've got your health, you've got
everything?" Kashi muttered dryly.

Ezri's brow creased. "Excuse me?"

"Never mind. Julian and I deserve a powerful kick in the butt, don't
we? He chases Julie, I chase you, the two of you finally let
yourselves get caught...and all four of us wind up shafted."

"I wouldn't say Julian exactly chased Julie...more of an irresistible
force and an immovable object, if you see what I mean. Anyway, I'm not
sure what 'shafted' means exactly, but I don't agree with it. You knew
the whole time you were chasing me we'd be parting ways eventually.
You wanted to have what we could, you *knew* it was going to be at
least somewhat painful when we had to separate. I knew it, too." She
cupped Kashi's cheek and turned her face up. "You're just a little
shocked right now. In a little while you'll realize that we *did* know
what we were doing...and that we wouldn't have missed it, either of
us."

"Ezri, schist. If you hand me some kind of we'll-always-have-Paris
crap, I'll forget how easy it would be for me to fall in love with
you."

"You already love me," Ezri said softly. "I love you, too. But we'd
make each other crazy eventually. I'm *not* saying I like having the
Admiralty decide when you and I end our relationship, but there is
something to be said for not waiting until it...ends of its own
accord--dies, as it were, and I think you know that that's a foregone
conclusion for the two of us. This way...we'll always love each
other."

"You corny so-and-so."

"Um, yeah, a little. You've got to admit this is a pretty corny sort
of trauma we're having here. Shall I cue the violins?" Ezri smiled.

Kashi smiled back, then began to giggle, and fell over backward on the
bed, hauling Ezri with her. "I still beLIEEEEVE," she sang in a
broadly smarmy voice, "it's best to LEEEEEEAVE while I'm in
LOOOOOOOOOOOVVVE!"

"AAK!" Ezri covered her ears. "I don't need to hear more to know that
has to be one of the drippiest songs twentieth century Terra ever
produced."

"You're right, but it was *so* appropriate," Kashi laughed, rolling
Ezri over and under the covers. "Computer! Ishikawa music program
one."

Heavy drums and strings started up, for once not deafeningly.

"What's that?" Ezri wondered.

"'Kashmir'," Kashi said, wriggling comfortably between Ezri's legs.
"Led Zep. I'm still working on the light show. Floyd's 'Comfortably
Numb' is up next. D'you think Keiko grows poppies in her arboretum?"

"Poppies?"

"Never mind."

---

"That's it. We're bloody for it."

"Calm down, Julie. I told you, we'll think of something. We won't let
this happen."

"What is there to think of?"

"If I resign my commission, it wouldn't be nearly as easy to keep me
in rein. Private citizens are under a whole different authority, and
all the procedures would have to be started anew."

"It'd kill you to do that, and it'd do nothing but buy time, even if
you were allowed to do it, which isn't likely, under the
circumstances."

"Starfleet isn't a conscription--"

"But there *are* still laws which would allow them to forbid your
resignation, and if you think they wouldn't you live in even more of a
dream world than I've suspected all along.

Anyway, even if you could, you know the end result would be the same."

"Julie, let me help you with that thing, you're going to choke
yourself." I helped him unbuckle and get out of the baldric, which I
draped over the back of a chair, then came to help him get that
unbelievable kill-chain out of his hair.

"Ouch."

"Sorry. Listen, don't get upset. I mean, get upset, but don't get..."

"Insane," he finished for me dryly. "I'll do my best."

"I didn't mean it like that. I meant there's no *need* yet for that
sort of reaction. We've got time, just over two months. We'll figure
out what we're going to do and arrange to get it done. I have a few
more ideas..."

"What now?" He turned and started unfastening my uniform.

"Miles. I hate to ask him to do it, but he could arrange...passage for
me. As I said, I don't want to ask him to--if we were caught, he'd be
in every bit as much trouble as I was, and he has a family to
consider."

"You mean repeatedly? Set up something like what the Intendant and
Bareil used to get here?"

"Or whatever he comes up with exactly. I'd prefer it to be something
he didn't have to directly oversee each time it was used, that's
true."

Julie gave me a look as he pulled my dress jacket off. "Julian. You're
a doctor. A Starfleet surgeon, in the middle of a war. How often do
you think you'll be able to just *slip away* before an emergency comes
up and you're nowhere to be found in the universe? You'd come home to
a security squad. And they'd have to suspect where you got the
device."

"I didn't say it was a perfect idea; I'm only thinking out loud. There
are many possibilities, Julie. We'll have time to pick the ones we
like best and polish them a bit."

"Polish them. I was right. I told Garak *anyone* would look like a
pessimist next to you. Smiley could do the same for me as you suggest
about Miles, but it's not workable for some of the same reasons--who I
am, and *my* situation. No one would try to prosecute me on my side,
is the only advantage. But if we were caught, once again it would be
your hide. And in any case--seeing each other for a few hours every
now and again? That's your idea of staying together?"

"Of course not. I can see that this is a bad time for you to be
thinking about it, you're in a complete tizzy, so let's talk about
something else."

"Very easy to say. How can I think about something else? What else
should I be thinking about?"

"We can come up with something, I'm sure," I soothed, stroking his
hair back from his face, running my hands along his arms.

"No, Julian--don't." He pulled away from me and stepped back. There
was an edge in his voice. The only other times he'd asked me not to
touch him were when the only one he could abide near him was Kashi.

I dropped my hands at once. "Whatever you say, love."

His head bowed briefly, and he took a couple of breaths. "I didn't
mean it."

"You did. You weren't frightened of me, no, but you were angry and you
didn't want to be touched. It doesn't matter to me why, love, if you
tell me to stop, I will. I'd hope you would, too."

He gave me a dirty look. "What do you think I'd do?"

"I know you would. All I meant was, it's an entirely normal feeling
you're having. You don't need the excuse of being in a panic or a
murderous rage to ask people to keep their hands to themselves. Now
that you can truly feel it when you're touched, there are going to be
times you simply don't want it, and not necessarily out of panic."

He turned and went to the couch, sitting down slowly. "Even from you?"

"Even me." "Is it allowed to change my mind now?" He whispered, and
looked over at me, with a slightly abashed smile.

I smiled too, and couldn't help a small chuckle. "Of course it is." I
went to him and sat down just behind him, sliding my arms around his
waist, one hand moving to lie flat against his chest and pull him
comfortably against me. He leaned back, relaxing with a sigh.

"You and Garak seemed to be having a good time this evening."

"As good as it could get for either of us, I suppose."

"Just after the presentation he drew you aside and said something to
you, and you didn't seem pleased. You two aren't sniping at each other
again, are you?"

"No, it wasn't that. I...special-ordered something from him, and he
told me there might be a delay."

"Really? What?"

"Something for Smiley. I'm no judge of tailors, but from what I could
see I think Smiley'll like it. Tess will, too."

Good God, I'd almost been right about T'ser's nickname. "What,
matching Terran Resistance uniforms?"

He chuckled. "No, it's a surprise."

"If you say so, sweetheart. You have a session with Kashi tomorrow,
don't you?"

"Yes, but now I think of it, Ezri reminded me of something today--one
of the exercises she thought might help keep me interested. Ones that
you could help me with, like she said? I should have shown it to you a
long time ago, it's a little behind me now in terms of standard
script...at least, most of the time. She said keeping up the simple
exercises is a good idea, especially as long as I'm still having
spells of confusion. And of course there are a lot of things besides
letters this one is good for. All sorts of symbols and notation."

"Show me then."

He sat up away from me and turned, pulling my undershirt out of my
waistband and off. "Turn around."

I did. "And do what?" I nearly braced in anticipation of that
Cardassian massage technique again.

"Just sit there...and try to tell what I'm writing on your back with
my fingers." His fingertip proceeded to trace a delicate line across
the exposed skin of my shoulders and the nape of my neck.

"Ooh. My cousin and I did this when we were children. Just because we
liked the way it felt, I mean, not as an exercise," I said.

"You're not paying attention."

"Sorry, I am now. Do the first letter again."

He spelled out our name, Jadzia's, Ezri's, and, with a few delays,
"Ishikawa", working his way down my back. Every time he came to the
end of a word, I'd say it and ask him if I'd got it right; he'd say
yes and go on with something else.

Well, *I* was quite enjoying this little practice session, and if it
helped keep Julie interested in remembering and using letters easily,
I was all for it.

He ran both his palms across my back with a hint of that
more-than-human vibration, causing my eyes to nearly roll back in my
head, as sensitized as I was after he'd so carefully turned my back
into a mass of exposed nerve endings. "This means I'm done, or I'm
starting over," he said, "but I want you to try it with me now--I
figure out what you're spelling on *me*."

"Gladly." We both turned, and I stroked his hair up over his shoulders
out of the way and kissed his back, and spelled as delicately across
his shoulders as I could while maintaining enough contact that he
should be able to follow each letter.

He gave a soft chuckle. "I love you, too. That's very corny, Julian."

"I could get to like this sort of homework," I said, noting with
satisfaction the gooseflesh my touch had raised across him, letting my
fingers continue to trail over his beautiful skin in aimless patterns.

"I think I know why she told me to keep on with this. With you," he
breathed.

"Why's that?"

"I get...oh, it's so distracting," he said, and I knew he was smiling.
"I *can't* keep track of what I'm doing by focusing and translating
like I used to do. It has to be...learnt and trained in the way you
have it, because there's no *way* I can concentrate so hard on the
symbols when we're touching each other like this. Being upset--or
otherwise distracted--won't be able to interfere with me...if I can
manage to do this with you."

Smiling, I slid my arms around him and squeezed, nuzzling, briefly
taking his earlobe in my mouth and sucking lightly; he let his head
fall back to it. In a moment I released his ear and said "Oh...am I
interfering with your concentration, my love?"

"In several most wonderful ways. You're...keeping me honest, if you
see what I mean."

"So that's why you were slowing down a bit toward the end, on me...?"

"Yes. You have a very pretty little gasp," he whispered, "and when you
shiver like that..."

"Mmm," I sighed in contented arousal. "Would it be all right if I
wrote messages across the front of you too?"

"They'd be backwards to me if you did it that way."

"Then maybe..." I tugged gently, pulling him over on his back in my
lap. "...I'll just trace a mandala."

"I'd like that," he murmured. "You can write a sonnet on my back
later, and I'll try to tell which it is. Just don't compare me to a
summer's day."

"Thou *art* more lovely, but not more temperate," I laughed with him.
"There was Shakespeare in that discard pile?"

"Only those annoying poems."

"I'll look you up a copy of Cymbeline. You'll like that one."

---
TWENTY-FOUR:
"Oh won'tcha gimme three steps, gimme three steps mister,
gimme three steps towards the door..."

Lynyrd Skynyrd
---

The last few days had been neither lovely nor temperate. The only
sleep I'd had had been on the cot in my office that almost everyone in
the infirmary has seen at one time or another, especially Luma and I.
We had a massive influx of evacuees from a recently settled agrarian
world called Saholm, which turned out to have been a bit too close to
Dominion-controlled space. We, being the closest fully-equipped
Federation-run space station to that area, saw a lot of that sort of
thing. Sadly, they'd had quite a number of wounded, and my entire
staff had been working twenty-six hours around for days.

I was about as cheerful as I always am after a stint like that; the
largest determining factor of my mood in those circumstances, besides
exhaustion, is how many we managed to save and how intact we'd managed
to save each of them. The ratio...was not bad this time, but it wasn't
the best, either. All I wanted to do was eat and sleep. A shower would
have been welcome, but I suspected I might fall asleep and drown.
Perhaps Julie would be willing to help.

I walked into my quarters, slipped on something and thudded to the
floor.

"Julian?" came Julie's voice. I just lay there dazed for a moment
before I felt a pair of distracted hands helping me up. "Are you all
right? Oh, you look...hideous."

"Thank you, I feel hideous, it's a set." My eyes focused on him...and
got huge to the point I'm surprised a few of the enlarged veins didn't
burst. "Julie? What the...?" he was covered in something grey,
speckles of dampish darker stuff and whole swathes of lighter
crumbly-looking stuff. "Is that clay?" It was in his hair, too. All
through it, in fact. I looked around the room.

What I'd slipped on was a dropcloth. It covered most of the floor and
some of the furniture. In the middle of the cloth were several small
improvised pedestal arrangements, each of them holding at least one
blob of clay. Some were figurines--one of them looked like a dolphin,
but I didn't get a close look at most of them. Some were still only
blobs, and some were in between. In the middle of these was another
heavier dropcloth on top of the first, smaller, holding a wad of wet
grey twice as big as my head. "Were you bored, sweetheart?"

"You *must* be tired. You're the one who suggested I try clay. Sit."
He planted me at the dining table and placed a pillow on the placemat
in front of me, then shoved my head down on it. "Don't worry, I won't
get clay in your food." Silent, I closed my eyes and waited while he
brought food, then got me back up and fed me--not literally, but he
got me to eat--then got me on my feet again and to the shower. "You've
blood and such in nearly as many places as I have clay." The vigorous
spray he set the shower for woke me up for as long as we were in
there, and I managed to help him with his hair as well as letting him
help me. He activated the sonics, too, to help take care of anything
we might miss.

Feeling storm-blasted, we fell out of the shower and he toweled me a
bit before letting me stumble into the bedroom and fall over. He
dragged the covers out from underneath me and laid them over me,
murmuring "What did you do before I came along? Fall down in the
entry, covered in bodily humours, and pass out at once?"

"Sometimes," I hazily admitted. "Or in my office." He said something
else, but I didn't catch it. I was out.

The computer woke me; considering he'd put me to bed sometime in the
early evening, I must have slept quite a while--why hadn't I been
called to check on the cases I specifically--oh, yes. Julie had
probably been clever with the voice-only comm again. "Julie love," I
sighed, stretching, feeling the soreness of the back-to-back shifts
announcing itself in all the usual locations, "we need to have a
little talk about that..." I knew he wouldn't allow a patient to come
to harm before disturbing me, but he wasn't above asking one of the
other doctors to take my routine follow-up checks.

I sort of slithered out of bed and teetered on my feet, then got into
some shorts and a uniform tank and went out to the main room.

He was curled up in the floor by the huge clay lump in the center of
the double-layered portion of the dropcloth, asleep. Not surprising,
it was oh six hundred. He was coated again, dressed only in shorts.

I didn't want to wake him, but he was going to be more abjectly
miserable the longer he slept in drying clay, sonics or no. "Julie
love." I went down on one knee to touch his shoulder, thus bringing
one of the improvised pedestals into my field of vision. I stopped.

The little valley with the waterfall.

It was the exact same scene he'd sketched, only in three dimensions.
Not a flat etching in the clay--a complete, tiny sculpture, the most
exactly detailed miniature I think I'd ever seen. It's difficult to
see all the nuances of such a thing before the clay is fired, or
whatever fixative process has been undergone, but it wasn't in this
case. I could just barely discern, with my slightly augmented ability
to pick up visual detail, waves near the waterfall, the smooth
coursing of the water over the lip of rock, even individual flowers.
The trees had leaves, and finely corrugated bark.

I went and got a medical tricorder; with the hand-held scanner, they
include a function simply to amplify the view of a wound. I scanned
the little thing; it was a complete landscape. All grey, but complete.

I looked at the other figurines, some of them slightly larger. Keiko
and Kashi reclined in perfect detail on my couch, Kashi's hair soft
and flowing enough to nearly feel. I was there, sitting at my desk,
absorbed in the terminal. Bloody, I looked like my best friend had
just died. I wondered if I always look like that when I'm so intent on
something, or if it was an artistic comment on a dour mood I happened
to be in.

There were more. The dolphin was in fact a dolphin--that one looked
more like a copy of a famous statue I know I've seen somewhere--he'd
doubtless found it in the computer--than something he'd come up with
himself. It wasn't as good as his original work, for one thing, though
it was a precise rendering.

There was one I wasn't sure of--a swirling melange of threads and
tendrils, thicker spirals, some sharp-edged, some smooth, on a base of
wavelike curves. 'Perhaps the wormhole,' I thought. I had seen him
gazing out the port at it.

And an improbable pattern of little star-shapes, so carefully touching
one another, lightly at the points, that they appeared to be in a
tumbled but systematic pattern of flight, tilted at all angles, nearly
a dozen of them seeming to hang free in the air over the flat base.
'Kashi's stars,' I thought. 'The ones she sometimes pulls out of her
hair and juggles. That's what they look like in the air, to him.'

I'd been going to examine a few more of them with the tricorder, but
Julie shifted and snuffled, then lifted his head. "Mm?"

"Hello, sweetheart. You're going to want to wash and get some sleep in
bed instead of on a clay-covered tarp. You must have been up all night
with these."

"Mm." He pushed himself up sitting with one arm. "What are you doing?"
he wondered blurrily, and yawned.

"Looking at the detail on these. They're incredible, Julie, how did
you do them?"

He shrugged. "Very carefully." Suddenly he reached over, picked up the
waterfall scene, squished it in his fist and splatted the imploded
piece onto the huge clay lump he was sitting next to.

"*Julie*!"

"What?"

"Whyever did you do *that*?"

"Didn't like it. I'll have to try another medium. It's so artificial
if the water isn't clear, don't you think?"

"I still can't believe you did that."

"Wh...oh, I'm sorry, did you like that one? I'll make another for
you."

I just shook my head. "You're hard to believe sometimes, love."

"I *said* I was sorry."

"I didn't mean that. These are...so perfect, so lovely. Except that
one of me. Do I always look like that at the terminal?"

"No, usually you're more animated. Your eyes do go a bit glassy,
though."

"Everybody's do in front of a terminal screen. Sweetheart, there's
something I need to discuss with Kashi today; do you mind if I cut her
session with you short this afternoon? It's the only chance I'll have
to speak with her alone before tonight, full as the infirmary is right
now."

"It's all right. Actually, she and I were both going to be with Ezri;
more relaxation exercises."

"How are those coming, by the way?"

"I don't need them as badly as Kashi. She says they're some help to
her." I then saw why his hair wound up caked with clay; he absently
ran the hand he'd squashed the waterfall with through it, apparently
to get the loose clay off, before he started to get up.

"Don't most artists keep a second bowl of water for that?" I gestured
to his hair, smirking.

"Um. Yes, I suppose they do, don't they? A habit I have...I'd better
go wash."

"Yes, you had, or you're going to itch something fierce. Come along,
I'll help."

"Wait a moment...I finished something else last night." He went to the
easel in the corner, and pulled the drape from the painting there.
"It's for you," he said.

It was Jadzia and me. We were posed in front of the mansion in my
Queen's Gambit program--Jadzia's favorite to play with me--her dressed
as Lady Wantsomore and me in my tux. I was looking a bit embarrassed,
hands in my pockets, smiling at her sidelong. She was smiling
brilliantly, teasing but tolerant, looking out of the picture; her
body was turned just slightly toward me so that her head was a little
atilt as she grinned at the viewer. Her opera-gloved hand curved over
my arm. Her eyes sparkled like sapphires.

My throat closed up so hard it hurt.

"I asked Ezri what you'd like," he said. "I wanted something that
would remind you of the fun you had together. What close friends you
were, not just that you worked together or...whatever," he finished
awkwardly, looking at the floor, obviously barely managing not to beg
the question of whether I liked it.

"Julie," I whispered. "It's *beautiful*. I can't thank you e--" I cut
my own words off, grabbing him and kissing him, clay be damned. He
threw his arms happily around me.

Eventually we broke for air, and so I could blot off the tears
threatening to run down my cheeks. "It's beautiful," I said again.
"It's perfect."

"I'm glad you like it," he sighed contentedly as he pulled me close
again.

When I could speak, I looked over toward the clay-coated area of the
room and asked "What's that one next to Kashi's stars, love? The
wormhole?"

"No, it's the waterfall. What it feels like, when I'm under it."

I backed up a little to look at him. "It's very evocative. Could you
do a few more like that? The way things make you feel, I mean."

"Why would anybody want to see that?"

"If they're all as intricate and well-done as that one, everybody
would want to see them. And anyway, I want to see them, no matter what
they look like."

He considered. "Things I haven't seen?" It seemed to be an odd notion
to him; and no wonder, with his visual aptitude and ability for
detail. It probably seemed a pointless exercise to portray things that
didn't physically exist. But he only shrugged. "All right."

---

I went to Ezri's office that afternoon; the three of them were there.
Knowing what they were working on, I didn't sound the signal, just
slipped in quietly.

Ezri was counting them back up out of a mild state of hypnosis,
apparently. Her eyes acknowledged my presence, but she kept speaking
in a soft, level voice. Kashi was sitting with her head on the sofa
back and her feet on a table; Julie was lying with his head in her
lap.

As they blinked and tried to rouse themselves to full awareness, I
came around and sat next to Ezri. Julie saw me and smiled slightly;
Kashi said "Oh, hey, Julian. She ever done this to you? It's *great*."

"It is rather pleasant, but it almost always puts me to sleep," I
admitted.

"Us too, sometimes," Kashi said as Julie took hold of the sofa back to
pull himself up.

"I needed to speak to Kashi--did Julie mention it?" I said to Ezri.

Ezri nodded. "We're mostly through here. Julie and I have a few more
things to talk about."

"Would you step out for a bit with me, Kashi?"

She yawned and got up as I did, came and put a companionable hand on
my shoulder, and I rested one on her back as we left.

"I have some interesting news," I told her as we wandered down the
corridor. "While studying your chemical and physiological profiles, I
was able to come up with a way that might restore some degree of
fertility to you."

She looked up at me, awake now. "Yeah?"

"Now, if it did work, you still wouldn't be easily able to conceive.
You'd have to work at it, because your ovulation rate would be low and
probably quite erratic. But it should at least be possible. As far as
I can see, you'd have no abnormal degree of difficulty with
gestation...but I have a rather delicate question."

"Shoot."

"Are you actively repelled by the thought of sex with men, or simply
disinterested?"

Her eyes got big, and she smirked. "Am I getting hit on, here?" she
chuckled.

"Oh, stop that. You must see why I'm asking."

"Yeah, I think so. Getting knocked up via turkey baster would be hard
to arrange in my universe for the same reason the implantation bit is
kinda outside the realm of possibility as things stand. In other
words, I'd have to do just a LOT of boffing if I wanted to get
pregnant."

"Um, yes, if that means what it sounds like it does."

She sighed. "Terrific. No, men don't gross me out or anything. They're
just *boring*. In bed, I mean. Nothing personal. I'm sure you and
Julie could light up the station if Miles rigged a line into your
bedroom."

I cleared my throat. "Actually...yes, I think we could."

"So I get to locate some poor doofus who doesn't mind having a daily
roll with a woman who'd just as soon be reading Tom Robbins. Lucky
stiff."

"Kashi, you're becoming almost unintelligible."

"Sorry. I've been rooting in your historical banks. I can't find the
Zep four-album greatest anyplace, though, you people should look into
that."

"I'll speak to Miles...I realize that--the scenario you mention seems
almost as impossible as the implantation does, but one never knows.
You may someday get to know and like some man who's not interested in
women but wants children, something like that. And you'd at least be
able to give it a try. It's up to you, though, of course."

"Yeah." She sighed. "Any drawbacks? Funky side effects?"

"A few. You don't experience many of the side effects of the hormonal
changes that bring about ovulation, since you don't ovulate; I happen
to know Keiko has very little trouble with them--frankly my own
biological cycles seem to give me more trouble than hers give her--but
since the procedure that was done on you changes many of the factors,
it's impossible to be certain how your body would respond now."

"So the only drawback would be the occasional bout of PMS?"

"Of what?"

"Never mind. I wasn't using the term accurately, anyway. But it
doesn't sound like a big deal."

"No, it isn't, usually. And there are many ways to treat such
symptoms, though I don't know how available to you they'd be on your
side."

"Mm...would there be time for you to keep me under the glass for a
while, see how I react to it?"

"Yes, but the earlier we do it the better, allow us as much time as we
can get to see how you're coming. Same as the treatments I have in
mind for your other problem."

"How's that coming along, by the way?"

"We're heading toward the infirmary anyway, come on and I'll show you
what I've come up with. There's nothing, of course, that I can do
about your trained-in responses; Ezri is the one who'll help you with
those, as much as you can be helped at this point. It *would* be
possible to eliminate those responses...but it would be every bit as
unpleasant, most likely, as the equally extreme conditioning that was
done on you before."

"No thanks."

"Wouldn't be within our power anyway, Ezri and I aren't allowed to
perform procedures like that, though there are non-Starfleet medical
practitioners who could. In any case, the problem *I'm* dealing with
is finding a way to either reduce or counteract your chemical
alterations. There are quite a number, most of them involving your
neurotransmitters, but not all of them; some are about as subtle as a
club, such as increasing both your tendency to produce adrenaline
under certain stimuli, and increasing the amounts you produce.

"The problem lies in making adjustments such that the production of
the chemicals in question isn't actually compromised, rather than only
dampened back to normal. Especially in your line of work--or in simply
being a rebel--you don't want your fight-or-flight responses
deactivated. For instance, I could counteract some of the
neurotransmitters by arranging to alter your dopamine levels, and
increase your endorphin levels, concurrent with the first chemical's
production; but you don't want that if you're warping out of danger
with the Alliance in hot pursuit. You need your reactive ability. I'm
particularly concerned about effects dealing with your limbic system."

"But you think you're closing in on something that'll help?"

"Help, yes. If you lived here on the station, I'd be willing to do
more, but I'll have little or no opportunity to observe you and
correct any dangerous miscalculations after you return home."

"It's all right, Julian. Anything you can do for me would be a bigger
help than I have any hope of getting back there."

"I'm at your service, Kashi. After I've told you the specifics we can
get started whenever you like."

"How's now?"

"If you like, but I'm afraid we'll only have time for some preliminary
medications that can have...unpredictable side effects. The infirmary
is packed to the gills right now."

---

"After taking a look at the flight logs of the Defiant's last escort
mission...I think I owe Julian an apology."

Ezri sat next to Julie, handing him one of the two cups of tea she was
carrying. "What for?"

"The night we went to Vic's, I made some comment about Federations
being a lot of comfort-obsessed puppies with no will to fight. And you
do look that way, compared to us, at least, but I have to admit...that
when it comes to it, you fight, and you do it bravely and well. The
way the Defiant held off that entire attack fleet while the evacuee
ships got out of the danger zone was nothing short of amazing. Our
Defiant's never been put to a test quite like that--some fairly nasty
scrapes, yes...but while it's true that your people have far more in
the way of resources and power than we do, it's also true that the
enemy you're facing is by the same factor more formidable than the
Alliance. We don't have any shapeshifter worries, at least not as
yet--we may not have located the wormhole on our side, but..."

"Julian and Nerys found it."

"Julian and Nerys knew it was there, and where to look. Almost no one
on my side does, though, either thing."

"Speaking of fighting, and Julian, have you ever seen him target
shoot? It's incredible. The enhanced hand-eye coordination, I suppose.
Julian is a doctor foremost, always, but like you said, when it comes
to it...even him. He'll even kill. He and Jadzia had a million
conversations over how conflicted he was about it, but when he chooses
not to kill, it's just that--a choice. He even managed to impress a
group of extremely battle-weary soldiers when we were fighting the
'Hadar at AR558."

"We? You too?"

"The Jem'Hadar are coming for you, you pick up a phaser. Also, one of
the engineers stationed there and I modified the cloaked mines the
'Hadar were using and turned them around on the Dominion forces."

"You? Again?"

"Well, like I said at the time, it was more likely Jadzia, or maybe
Tobin...I'm not just really well integrated yet, we talked about
that..."

"My Jadzia wasn't joined, of course. But she was a better-than-fair
engineer all the same." He paused, sipping redleaf. "He's no soldier,
capability or no," he said softly. "He's a healer. He must hate having
to kill even the Jem'Hadar."

"With a passion. But we'll do what we have to do to survive
free...just like your people."

---

"Oh, my--what in the world happened here?"

Kashi had left only a few minutes ago, having stayed a while so I
could watch her for unpleasant effects from the preliminary
injections. Now I stared in consternation as Worf, Julie, Leeta,
Quark, and Ezri filed, walking wounded--all but Ezri--into the
infirmary. "Was there some kind of accident?"

"You could say that," Quark grumped. "Doctor, if you can't keep your
crazy half-Nausicaan wife or boyfriend or double or whatever the hell
he is under control, allow me to suggest that you take away his
clothes and lock him in your quarters? It works on Ferenginar."

"You want that other ear as black as the first one?" Julie said; he
made for the attack, and Luma shielded
the-more-than-willing-to-let-her-defend-him Quark, while Worf grabbed
Julie with the arm he wasn't holding cradled to his massive chest. "We
have already behaved foolishly once today, Captain Bashir," he
muttered in Klingon, according to the comm translator. Julie subsided.

"Do you mean to say that this is all the result of a *fight*? I
thought you must've been caught in a depressurizing chamber."

"No," Quark said, "but my bar *looks* like it was caught in a pressure
evacuation." My staff were mobilizing, getting everyone settled
wherever they could find room in the crowded infirmary, starting
scans.

"Ezri?" I sighed. "You aren't hurt, are you?"

"No, I was under a table."

"What happened?"

"Well, Julie and I were having supper at Quark's after we finished our
session. Worf came in and...um, you know Worf and I..."

"You're having an adjustment period, I know. What then?"

"I said hello to Worf, like I always do, and he very nearly ignored
me, like he does about half the time, gave me a kind of almost-nod and
kept moving. Julie reached up and stopped him with a hand on his
chest, and said--pretty pointedly--that it was rude not to answer
people when they greet you. Worf told him it was none of his business.
Julie disagreed, said I was his friend and that made it his business.
Worf demanded to know the exact nature of our friendship. Julie wanted
to know what he was implying. Worf accused Julie of being every bit as
enamored of Jadzia as you were, Julian, and warned Julie away from me.
Julie invited Worf to enforce that stricture at his earliest
convenience. They were yelling in Klingon by this time, both of them.
Anyway, Worf said he'd be happy to and implied that it wouldn't be
difficult to knock the fight out of a...what was it...a
scruffy-looking half-starved barbarian--"

"Who's scruffy-looking?" Julie muttered.

"You most definitely are," I muttered back.

Ezri hadn't paused. "--especially one who was apparently the result of
a liaison between...um..."

"A backstabbing wife-coveter and a half-human sewer rat," Julie
supplied tonelessly as Luma ran an anabolic protoplaser over him.

"Vole," Worf corrected, also tonelessly.

"Oh, yes, that's right," Julie agreed, and winced. "Ow."

"Hold still," Luma said tightly.

"What then?" I asked, regenerating the damaged blood vessels in
Quark's ear.

"Julie called Worf a flatulent bombastic self-important
tribble-brained--um, it sounds more intimidating in Klingon..."

"I get the idea."

"And Worf swung at Julie. Julie ducked and swung back. I went under
the table. Quark came out to break it up and they both grabbed him and
tossed him back over the bar. Julie took Worf into the wall with a
shoulder block, which is, I think, when Worf's arm got broken, and
Worf socked him in the eye hard enough to send him flying backward
onto Leeta's Dabo table."

"My FAVORITE Dabo table," Leeta muttered. "Worf could've wrecked it.
Everybody's chips went everywhere. And he used one of my best friends
to do it!"

"Oh, insufferable," I agreed with her; she nodded with a satisfied
look as I smiled at her.

Ezri said "So she took exception, both to your Mirror double getting
punched, Julian, and the disarray of her table, and as Worf was coming
after Julie she climbed up on the table, stepped over Julie and jumped
on Worf's head."

"I had better check you for neck strains," muttered Nurse Akula, who
was tending Worf; he put down his scanner and reached for a different
one.

Leeta added "Check his ribs too. I landed a couple of good kicks. And
check *my* ribs while you're at it. I thought those ridges were going
to go right through me for a minute." Worf eyed Leeta but said
nothing. Julie smirked.

"So anyway," Ezri continued doggedly, "Julie's gotten into it with a
Bolian whose chips had been scattered to the four corners when Julie
landed on the table, and Worf is crashing around blind with Leeta on
his head, and people are getting a little disturbed by the whole thing
and scrambling for the exits. I heard Quark screaming the Ferengi
distress call, so I crawled behind the bar and found him holding his
ear, and called Odo, and grabbed Quark and dragged him out of the bar.
Leeta had Worf in a headlock with her legs by this time and was, how
does Kashi say--giving him particular ned, with words to the effect
that nobody punches Julian on *her* shift--"

"She is a formidable combatant, even if undisciplined," Worf muttered.
"I must admit I found a whole new respect for her." He was holding his
head with his good arm.

"What can I say," Leeta sniffed. "I'm loyal to my friends."

Julie smiled at her.

"--and Worf was trying to peel her off, but his broken arm was messing
that up--"

"--so he sort of whipped forward and I went flying and hit the bar
headfirst," Leeta said.

"Worf, my God," I protested. "That could have killed her!"

"She was about to blind me! It was like having a heq'toth razorcat on
my head! I reacted instinctively."

"I didn't fly as hard as all that," Leeta cut in. "I had time to break
the fall with my arms.

I think I cracked the left one."

Undeterred by all the asides, Ezri went on "Julie saw that, and shoved
the Bolian over a table, and went to take another swing at Worf; they
grappled and staggered out onto the Promenade. I got to Leeta and
helped her out of the bar just as security was arriving. I screamed at
everybody and they all quieted down, and came with me here. Everyone
but the Bolian, he ran when he saw security coming. But judging by how
fast he was moving, he couldn't have been badly hurt."

"Even Julie obeyed your order to quiet down and come along?" I
wondered.

"Especially Julie," Julie said sullenly. "That's a wicked right jab,
Worf. Mind sometime showing me how it's done?"

"You may be too thin to send your adversary on as long a trajectory as
I did you, but of course, if you wish."

"I may be thin, but I ground myself well. Thank you, Luma." Luma
patted him and turned to take care of Leeta. Luma obviously still gave
Julie a slight frisson, but he seemed mostly used to her.

"All set, Quark," I said, and gave him a hand down from the biobed.
It's always terribly tempting to lift him down like a child, but as
usual I controlled the urge.

"Thank you, Doctor. And now if you'll excuse me, I have a bar to
reassemble. As for *you*," he said to Leeta, "your shift's not over."

"Yes it is," said Luma. "She's got some vertebral disc compression.
She'll be here for a bit, and then she should rest the remainder of
the evening."

"Then I'm docking her pay. Defend your friends on your own time,
Leeta."

"I was defending your property, too! I've stopped half a dozen fights
in your bar this last year alone!" Leeta protested.

"You know that it's not the Ferengi way to show favoritism to family!
Unless there's an advantage in it, of course," Quark qualified his own
statement.

"It's all right, Leeta," Julie said, and raised his voice slightly,
"Mr. *Worf* and I will make good on it for you, won't we, Worf?"

Worf sighed and nodded. "It is only fair. After all, she was defending
her professional territory honorably."

Leeta preened and exchanged a smile with Ezri and me. "Thanks, Worf.
That means a lot coming from you." Quark made a frustrated noise and
stalked toward the door.

Past Captain Sisko. Quark paused and looked up at Sisko, who looked
back; Quark turned to glare back toward Julie, then shook his head in
disgust and left.

Julie grinned.

"Making Leeta's lost salary up to her should be sufficient reprimand.
This time," Sisko added significantly. Worf was looking mortified.
Julie looked feral. Ezri looked embarrassed and Leeta said "Hello,
Captain...um...sorry about the disturbance."

Sisko smiled benignly at her, glanced less benignly at Worf and Julie,
and looked at Ezri. "Old Man..." he began with a hint of soft
reproach.

"Come on, Benjamin, I'm not Jadzia! Maybe she could've taken them on
both at once, but I couldn't manage even one of them."

"She did try to defuse things, Captain Sisko," Julie said. "She asked
me not to make an issue of Worf's refusing to answer her; I ignored
her."

"Indeed. And who threw the first punch?"

Silence.

Worf sighed. "I did, sir."

"*You* did, Mr. Worf? I would have figured our tempery guest here for
that."

Worf stared stonily into space. "My suspicions at the time were
reasonable. He is, after all, Julian Bashir."

"Well. You are under a great deal of strain right now, for reasons we
all know. As long as Captain Bashir is not pressing assault
charges...?"

Julie looked at him, plainly startled. "Oh. No, of course not. Mr.
Worf and I...have reached an accommodation. Haven't we, Worf?"

Worf nodded. "We have. I was unaware of...your...bespoken-for state.
You fought well, Captain Bashir."

My jaw dropped, as did a couple of other people's. Not *know* about
Julie and me at *this* point...? Trust Worf not to be able to read the
writing on the glowing sign being waved in his face while choirs of
angels sang the words directly into his brain auditory center.

Julie was saying "Thank you, Commander."

"Worf?" Sisko asked. "Will *you* be pressing charges?"

Worf looked puzzled.

"Against Leeta," Sisko clarified, wearing the closest thing I think
I've seen on him to a smirk.

Worf glared as the rest of us, including Leeta, nearly swallowed our
own lips to keep from laughing--except Julie, who roared with
merriment. Worf climbed down from the biobed, flexed his arm
experimentally, and strode silently from the room.

I went to take a look at Julie's eye. "Actually," I murmured near his
ear, "Quark's suggestion doesn't sound bad."

"Only if you're naked too and locked in along with me," he whispered
back.

"Well, naturally. There wouldn't be much point to it otherwise, would
there?"

He paused. "So are you done with the eye?"

"Luma, was anything wrong with him besides that eye?" I asked, raising
my voice a bit.

"A few bruises. Nothing he won't live through," she said.

"Then yes, I'm done with you, love," I told him. "I'll be in late.
I've got a mountain of back deskwork to deal with, concerning this
latest batch of evacuees that we're hosting."

He kissed me. "Wake me up."

God, I love that expression on him. I smiled. "All right."

He hopped off the biobed and went to Leeta. "Can I?" he asked Luma,
holding his arms suspended around Leeta as though about to close them
for a hug.

"Not hard," Luma cautioned. "And do it around her waist, not her
shoulders."

Leeta smiled broadly as he squeezed her carefully. He said "I'll have
to tell your counterpart all about it when I see her again."

"Did you and she ever date?" Leeta wondered curiously. Sisko and Ezri
and I winced, but Julie only paused a moment, then said quietly "No,
we never did. Obviously I had no idea what I was missing." He kissed
her cheek, making her giggle softly, then let her go and went out
quickly.

"I don't understand why people think he's not as nice as you," Leeta
puzzled to me. "Rom's scared to death of him."

I said "Not everyone is as perceptive as you are, Lis. I mean that
quite sincerely."

Ezri was still floored and silent by the extreme--for him--affection
that had been evident in Julie's thanks to Leeta. "I can't believe the
changes in him," she muttered to the Captain and me. "Would you ever
have thought to see him do that?"

"After the painting Nerys gave me from him? It doesn't surprise me
much," Sisko pointed out as we drifted a little away from the biobeds.

I added "Lis stuck up for him. Against a Klingon twice her weight.
It's not much really--Worf wouldn't have hurt Julie seriously, or
Leeta either--probably not nearly as badly as he and Jadzia used to
hurt each other on a regular basis. Though I can make no sure claims
*Worf* mightn't have wound up in real trouble. But in any event, Leeta
is enough to give a Breen warm fuzzies. I don't think Julie even cares
that she seems to regard us as essentially the same person."

"You are essentially the same person," Ezri said offhandedly.

"Don't let's get into *that* again," I sighed. "I'm going to have to
ask him his secret."

"Secret?"

"He has so many amazing women standing in line to protect him.
Including you," I added. "Whereas amazing women have a tendency to
simply snicker at me."

"Now, Julian. Leeta'd have done the same for you. That's kind of the
point, isn't it? Benjamin, I'm going to take a rain check on the drink
we were planning tonight; Julian's right, we've got a ton of backed-up
work."

"See you tomorrow night then, Old Man? Kasidy will be coming in, I
know she'd like to chat."

"Oh, sure." They exchanged a shoulder pat and Sisko took his leave.
Ezri's face immediately went pensive.

"Something, Ezri?"

"Julie. When he left just now? I noticed Garak waiting outside. Julie
noticed him, too--that's when he asked you if you were done with him.
He walked right to him and they went off down the Promenade together.
Looked like they were heading for the habitat ring."

"At least they're getting on, instead of that bizarre
thrust-and-riposte they had going for a while."

"They definitely are," she agreed, and we went to my office to dive
into the terminal.

---
TWENTY-FIVE:
"Liar"

Three Dog Night
---

"You're still a bit discolored," Garak observed as he and Julian moved
down the Promenade.

"I think he left it this way to make a point."

"Oh, he's too thorough for that. I'm sure it'll just take a bit of
time for the leaked blood in your skin to disperse."

"Did you hear what happened and come to provide commentary?"

"Actually, your order is in."

"Splendid. When can I pick it up?"

"Now is quite workable for me."

"I've got something for you, too. Perhaps you could...bring my order
and meet me at my quarters? Julian won't be in until late."

"I'll see you in a few minutes, then."

---

"Interesting. Obviously it's the piece of weaving you mentioned, but
what exactly is it?"

"Whatever you want. If I were you I'd probably use it as a bookmark or
something."

"No," Garak said softly. "It's far too exquisite to be handled so
roughly. Appropriate, considering the source." He let the long,
shimmering ribbon unroll and fall across his opposite hand. "Amazing.
As a tailor, I can't help but be impressed at such skilled work. How
did you manage to weave in a pattern of single strands? The texture
and thickness never vary...the fabric is about the weight of heavy
Terran silk. I would think human hair would be too coarse, not pliable
enough for that, though as a piece of fabric it feels quite soft..."

"Some people's might be. And some people don't have my hands."

"True...there's even a...six-strand pattern as a border."

Julie handed him a small rolled piece of cloth as well. "What I didn't
use is in there. That is how you asked for it, isn't it?"

"Indeed." Through the thin fabric, Garak could feel the texture of a
soft braid. He opened the cloth and lowered the ribbon in too, then
rewrapped the cloth. "I realize I have no right to ask...but, matters
having turned the direction they have, exactly how do you expect
this--" he held the dark red-gold rod in its protective box out to
Julie, who took it and went to the terminal, "--to improve your
situation with the doctor?"

"I told you why I wanted it."

"And the way you described it, I assumed that you had intended to--as
it were--abdicate your position and remain here, after being certain
your people were provided for. That is, apparently, no longer a
possibility."

"Not at the moment, but one never knows..." Julie was watching
information roll slowly across the screen. "Julian...seems to
think..." Julie shook his head in frustration and ran a hand through
his hair. "Sometimes Julian just *won't* think. He puts me off. Talks
about how we have time, even about my going back until the situations
in both universes have settled some, Gods alone know when that will
be. And I think he believes it could work, because he wants it to so
badly. He's *determined* that somehow, things will come right."

"A determination you do not share."

"Julian's a romantic, you know that. He believes in the fundamental
justice of the universe. Whatever universe. You and I know very much
better than that. In my universe, life for humans tends to be nasty,
brutish, and short, and my life has been no exception."

"At least it isn't 'short' yet."

"Yes," Julie agreed wryly. "Nasty, brutish and ongoing, then. I said
to Julian once...what was it, something like, 'Can't you understand
that things don't always work out the way you want them to just
because you want them that way? Are you Federations so used to having
your own way?'"

"An accurate summation, at least as far as it goes."

"Well, he's doing it again. I don't know how he plans to pull this out
of the fire, but he's certain he can. Or that something will happen.
Or *anything* but the flamingly obvious fact

that he and I are in for a world of hurt, one way or another."

"Then I suppose...*your* concern at the moment is minimizing the
hurt."

"But trying to figure out which world will ultimately be least
hurtful, for either or both Julian and me, for the Federation and this
war he plays a crucial part in, for the Terrans on my side and their
own fight..."

"That would certainly be the tricky part." Garak wandered over to look
over Julie's shoulder at the screen. "I hope this is what you were
looking for?"

"Perfect. Wait'll Smiley gets hold of it. The Alliance won't know what
hit them." The smile on his face was positively leonine.

"I take it you do not plan to tell the doctor about this..."

"If you thought for a minute I *did* plan to tell him, you'd never
have done it. No matter *what* I held out to you on a silver platter.
I won't be so foolish as to ask any detailed questions, but I take it
you covered your tracks adequately?"

"Actually this was a fairly simple matter. The Federation has a
tendency--which has nearly been fatal to it any number of times--to
trust too much in the kindness of strangers. I've observed that this
seems to be associated with their obsession with personal freedoms. A
weakening of security always seems to accompany that trait."

"True enough."

"How did you plan to get this information back to Smiley? Are you
going to make a trip home?"

"I will, Kashi will, or both of us will. Kashi thinks she's going to
have to play messenger, but I need to get back at least once in any
case for a stretch."

"Even if Doctor Bashir finds a way for you to stay with him, you
have...matters to attend to there."

"Exactly."

"And...what, should the Doctor learn of this small piece of industrial
espionage after the fact? If you are permitted to remain here,
continued--if erratic--contact between our universes seems likely."

"Smiley and Tess can handle that. Smiley is a phenomenal engineer and
Tess is a military genius, and they aren't alone, of course. That's
another reason I settled on this particular technology; I don't think
it's unbelievable we could develop it ourselves."

"So quickly?"

"He doesn't need to find out about it quickly. Also, as I said, Smiley
can fabricate a reason for the sudden occurrence of a breakthrough in
the area."

Garak laid a gentle hand on Julie's shoulder. "Julian would be capable
of fathoming that. His own O'Brien is quite the mechanical genius."

"But Julian has an unfortunate tendency to believe what he wants to.
As I'm sure you know, it is possible to get through to him, but one
has to work at it singlemindedly. For such a stunningly intelligent
man, he can be painfully easy to fool."

"And how do you feel about doing this in the knowledge of how *he*
would feel about it?"

"Inquisitive today."

"Face it, Captain Julie. You would *have* to be very worried about
this deception, and there is no one else in this universe you can
safely talk to about it."

"Good point." Julie shook his head and said softly "I'm happy my
people will have this technology, happy for them, for my home. But
it's...unsettling, how much it's hurting me to deceive Julian like
this. You and I understand the necessity of lies...but I've never had
to lie to someone I *loved* before. He trusts me. He wants to believe
no evil of me, it's what he's wanted since he met me...and I suppose
I've been...comforted by the degree to which he's managed to succeed,
despite my best efforts to prevent him from it. And after everything
he's done for me..." He lifted his eyes to look over his shoulder at
Garak. "It's easier for you. He expects you to lie to him. He loves
you anyway."

"Sometimes he has an odd way of showing it." "Odder than your various
odd ways? Or is that why...? From what everyone says about Julian and
you, there was a time when you could have had *him* on a silver
platter with very little effort. But you refrained...and that doesn't
seem like you."

"Doctor Bashir is not without allies. Yes, I easily could have made
him desire me. He was blindly and thoroughly fascinated with me for
years, despite his occasional outbreaks of temper at my serpentine
methods. But I have a strong feeling Captain Sisko would have taken
exception, and an even stronger feeling Jadzia Dax would have stepped
in. She had a remarkable insight, and serpentine ways of her own...and
she would have felt she was up to the task of handling an exiled
Cardassian spy. She has always been protective of the Doctor...excuse
me. Had always."

"Do *you* think she could have? Handled the situation."

"Jadzia? Perhaps. But I know for a fact I would not have wanted to go
up against Lela--a previous host, if you didn't know. If there is
anyone as used to intrigue and manipulation of...resources as a spy,
it would have to be a politician. Not only that...I don't mind the
role of pursuer, and he may care for me, as you say, but there are
other factors to be considered. His state of desire, for example."

Julie chuckled mirthlessly. "That seems to be the general sentient
consensus in this universe. But I've *been* desired, and from anybody
but Julian...you can have it."

"I would agree with you verbatim, but under the circumstances there
might have been a comment more personal to me than to the Doctor being
made there. Was it really called for, my sweet?"

"I don't mean you." Julie put his hand over Garak's where the latter's
rested on his shoulder, and felt his muscles relaxing as cereus--or
whatever it smelled like to Garak, Julie hadn't asked, though he knew
from experience Cardassians, who could smell it more easily than
humans, found that pleasant as well as the effect--slowly permeated
the air near them. "*You* don't repel me at all. I quite enjoy you.
But I didn't mean you anyway, because we both know that it's not me
you 'desire'."

"Although, if you'll recall, you offered me *him*...and yet it was you
I accepted. Does that tell you anything at all?"

Julie held his gaze a moment. "Elim, I was right. You *do* like me."

"The Doctor is not the only Julian Bashir in the vicinity who insists
on extra initiative from those around him before he'll deign to see
some things," Garak muttered, rolling his eyes. "You're right. It
takes a singleminded approach." He looked back at Julie. "We've
discussed the interphasic technology...but not your bartering stock.
Is that deception gnawing at you at all?"

"What deception?"

"You haven't told him, have you?"

"Oh, you mean the sex. No. But I don't see why that's a deception. I
*would* tell him, if he asked, but it might bother him to know it,
because he's worried about my...my recovery. Then again, he might be
pleased to learn how...prepossessing I found it, compared to what I'd
been used to with anyone but him. In any case, he isn't jealous, and
he'd never be so foolish as to believe he could act as though he owns
my body. It's mine, and I'll do or not do what I want with it, for
whatever reasons seem good to me. If anyone tried to enforce another
attitude on me..." he shook his head. "I'd kill them. Although...maybe
not Julian. Maybe myself instead, if *he* ever did that to me. But he
never would."

"No." Garak leaned down to kiss Julie's cheek; Julie turned his face
up a little to receive it. "He never would." The Cardassian gently
withdrew his hand from Julie's and left silently.

---

"Hello, love," I whispered, sliding in next to Julie.

"Mm. Hello." He uncurled and rearranged himself with me. "Tired?"

"If you are. You had a busy day, too."

"A broken cheekbone and a few bruises. Nothing, in the presence of an
infirmary stocked like yours. Is Leeta all right?"

"Fine, though to get a look at Rom when he got there you'd have
thought we'd had to reattach her head with self-sealing stem bolts.
He's used to her fighting, but not used to her failing to win."

"Who did win?"

"Nobody that I could see. Well, you and Worf, in a way. I noticed you
two were speaking comfortably together."

"Nothing like a little Klingon-style get-to-know-you session to trash
a bar." He began to giggle; so did I. "It really was just the thing."

"I'm startled you managed to break his arm. Worf is a martial-arts
expert and much stronger than either of us."

"And I'm a vicious Terran sewer rat, or whatever he said. Ezri's
right, it's more impressive in Klingon. Anyway, it was even. Well,
except for Leeta--she was definitely advantage Julie." He let me go so
I could finish getting out of my uniform.

"You've got a couple of new pieces started, I noticed. They weren't
clay."

"No, the stuff's called jademorph. It doesn't require any special
effort to keep it malleable while it's being worked. Cheating in a
way, but I had a few ideas I wanted to experiment with...and this
particular type takes any color glaze. I saw some finished pieces in
the computer library, and they did appear to be jade carvings, or some
similar stone."

"The glade?"

"For one. If you don't glaze jademorph, it comes out transparent."

"The water."

"Mm-hm." He snuggled up to me again, touching me eagerly, everywhere.

"When you called, you said you wanted to hear about what I've found
with Kashi's--"

"I talked to her earlier. Tell me the rest about fifteen minutes from
now."

"Fifteen min--Julie..."

"Thirty, then."

"Just wait a moment, it'll only take a--"

He suddenly rolled me on my back and straddled me. "Julian, stop
*talking* or it'll come out I never let you up again," he smiled.

"That's not the best thing to say to get me to shut up."

"How about this. I love you more than anything, and I'd do anything to
be with you, do you understand that? Really understand?"

I was taken aback by his sudden intensity. "Of course, sweetheart."

"Are you sure?"

"Julie, what's wrong?"

"Nothing." He kissed me. I decided to let it drop. His emotions were
unpredictable, more so these days, even as his perceptions and mental
capabilities were clearing and becoming more stable. It wasn't kind to
try to make him explain every slightest surge of feeling.

---

I squirmed against the mattress, scooted over a little, a little
farther, still slightly too asleep to realize what I was looking
for...

I hit the carpet with a shocked thud, slowly recovered from the
jolting awakening and sighed, running a hand over my hair. "Julie..."
I got up; it only took me a moment to determine that he wasn't in the
quarters.

I commed Kashi. "Julian to Kashi."

"Dax here, Julian. I had to tranquilize Kashi, she was running in
circles like a trapped animal."

"Was she in a panic? Chemical surges from the injections?"

"I'd sure say it's the injections, but she wasn't panicked so much as
trying to work off energy, talking a mile a minute, flushed and
overheated. When she started playing Blues Traveler and screaming
along with it, I couldn't stand to watch any more--the standard dose
of semorphil couldn't even put her to sleep. She's sitting at the
dining table, humming along with Three Dog Night. Stark naked, I might
add."

"Not that it's getting me anywhere with her TONIGHT, apparently," came
Kashi's voice distantly.

I puzzled "'Three Dog...?' anyway, I suppose Julie isn't with you,
then."

"No, isn't he with you?"

"He was. I just fell out of bed because he wasn't there when I rolled
over."

Her voice grew tense. "You don't think he's taken off again?"

"Not blindly, at least, unless he had some kind of less specific panic
attack for some reason. Not impossible...but I doubt it, at the stage
he's progressed to, and with the medication. I don't think he can
completely...lose himself, the way he did before. Though he could
easily be upset over something..." I was rambling with nerves. "Don't
leave Kashi; I'll see about finding him myself, and call you if I come
up with nothing."

"Let me know."

"I will. Bashir out." I grumbled, going back into the bedroom to
dress, "Julie, blast it, leave a note! Is it so hard to understand why
I'd worry?"

Hearing that, I paused. Had I checked thoroughly or simply panicked? I
returned to the front room.

The terminal was off, first thing I'd looked at, of course. I scanned
around, saw the sketchpad, and picked it up. It was full of
half-finished drawings, but that was all. Many of them were views of
the waterfall; there were several studies of Leeta as well, some of
them obviously not the one I'd dated. I realized he must know his own
Leeta fairly well, her being Smiley's clerical assistant; I wondered
what their relationship was like. She'd obviously known he was
physically off limits to everybody, from the way Ezri had described
her actions with him...I flipped through some more details and
studies, but there was nothing written.

I called "Computer, full lights." I went around Julie's shrine to the
Gods of Clay and Jademorph to where I could see the easel, and the
cloth was pulled back; on a swirling blue background, in a softly
luminous gold paint, was written a brief message in a lovely, flowing
longhand it would have taken me forever to learn to mimic: "I'm all
right. I love you."

It was beautiful. Leave it to Julie to create a work of art to leave
me a six-word note. For that matter, leave it to him to learn to write
in artistic scripts in a few weeks, when writing at all was only newly
comfortable to him.

For some reason, it occurred to me to go to the rack of isolinear rods
and chips next to the desk and check my holosuite programs; I slumped
in relief. Keiko's waterfall program was gone.

I debated going after him. Obviously he couldn't drown in a
holosuite...

OH, yes he could. If he was in a contrary enough mood he could
deactivate the safeties using the same skills he'd doubtless planned
to employ to get into Quark's at this hour. I wanted to trust him...

"I really do, love," I whispered aloud. "But you're ill. And you may
be upset. You may need me..."

I decided to check on him. If he asked me to go, I would.

He'd got in through the upper door; the lock mechanism was in place
and appeared to be activated, but when I tried it, it was open.

He was in suite one. Since I am Julian Bashir and that's who was
running the program, I didn't have to argue with the computer. It
scanned me, bleeped in brief confusion, then shrugged its cybernetic
shoulders and the door slid open. I went in.

The program could be set to depict various times of day. Julie had
wanted to come here at night, apparently. I could see well enough;
there was a gibbous moon programmed, and its light reflected off the
water, and the snowcaps of the surrounding mountains. The falls seemed
quieter. Not surprising; anyone coming here at night would be more
interested in tranquility than total verisimilitude.

Rather than call out at once, I started off to skirt the small lake.
It wasn't quite as easy at night; I don't have Julie's catfooted
surety. I paused every few steps to look around, past any intervening
rocks or trees or other objects, but he could be a way off. I doubted
it, though. I was fairly certain I knew where he was.

At night, all you can see in the little cave behind the falls is the
softly phosphorescent column of the falls itself, and tiny reflections
of moonlight appearing here and there in the water, with an occasional
ephemeral glimmer across the rocks, colorless in the cool, fresh dark.

I didn't think he'd be in the water; I frankly am a bit phobic of
swimming around in pitch-black water. Even as clear as this water was,
it'd be impenetrable to my largely-normal retinas only a couple of
meters down, at night. Of course, that didn't necessarily mean the
thought bothered Julie...

I edged into the cave, and I could distinguish him sitting on the
small ledge, knees against his chest and his arms folded around them.
He was gazing at the falls. I didn't want to startle him and send him
for a chilly unexpected dunking, so I lowered myself slowly to a
crouch and stayed still, waiting for him to notice me.

When he did, his eyes fastened on me with such an imploring look I
felt a stab in my chest--but I had no idea if what he wanted from me
so badly was to come to him, or leave him alone. "*Are* you all right?
Really, love?" I asked, only loud enough to be heard over the muted
falls.

He nodded. Then a shaft of moonlight danced across his features and I
saw his eyes sparkle as they closed, and he shook his head.

I found my way to him in the near-darkness. There wasn't much room; we
made best use of what there was by standing, and embraced each other.

"More of the same, poor love?" I whispered sympathetically into his
ear.

He was still so long I wondered if he had heard me; then he nodded
against my shoulder.

"Do you want me to leave you alone again or stay with you?"

"I'll be all right. I need to think...no. I don't need to think.
There's nothing to think about...I just need to be alone." He took a
deep breath. "Julian, I want to stay with you. Can you...can you
understand?"

"Of course, sweetheart. What else could be so important?"

"What else indeed," he whispered with a tremor in his breath.

I cautiously began to release him, having to force myself; as I turned
to find a handhold in the rough rock wall, setting my foot on the
nearest stable rock, I felt him grab my other hand suddenly and heard
him say "Don't stop loving me."

My head snapped around so hard I nearly lost my balance. I turned back
to him at once, taking his shoulders in my hands. "What in God's name
could make you say such a thing?"

"Just say you won't."

"Are you sure you won't tell me about it? Is it anything specific?"

"It's only the...feelings. Julian, you're everything to me. *Please*."
I could barely hear the last two words.

"I won't stop loving you. Ever. Under any circumstances. Even if we
both get killed I won't stop loving you, do you understand?"

He hid his eyes against me again. I held him a few moments longer, and
then he gently disengaged and sank back to his seat on the rock, head
bowed, not looking at me.

I reached to stroke his hair, but my hand wavered a moment, then fell.

I found my way back out of the cave, letting him be.

---

"How do you feel?"

"Kinda cross-eyed."

"That explains your crossed eyes," I said mildly, patting Kashi's arm.
"I gave you something in your last injection to make all this
inactivity a little easier for you." The infirmary had finally cleared
out to the point I had time for voluntary cases; it took a couple of
days.

I'd pretty much had to force the idea of the contraceptive implant on
her. It may have been true that it was extremely unlikely she would
have sex with anyone who'd be fertile with her until she was actually
making the attempt at pregnancy, but everyone knows only fools rely on
that. I assured her she'd have no trouble removing the implant herself
when she decided the time was right to make the attempt.

She still wasn't thrilled with the whole in-vivo conception idea.
"Couldn't you just vacuum-seal me a sample and I'll have Smiley beam
it in? Julie says he's got pinpoint control with a transporter."

I chuckled. "I told you, with your low ovulation rate, you're almost
certainly going to need a lot more than one sample and one attempt."

"What a charming thought," she muttered, reaching for Ezri's hand.
Ezri gave it to her and stroked Kashi's forehead lightly with her free
one. Kashi lifted her head to glance down toward her lower abdomen.
"What's that blue light doing?"

"Nothing, of itself; I aim with it."

"Then what are you aiming?"

"I'm shielding your uterus from what I'm doing to the rest of your
system. If I didn't, there'd be a little side effect to this part of
the treatment."

"You'd bleed like a stuck pig," Ezri informed her.

"Eeek." Kashi became very still. "See Kashi. See Kashi very carefully
not moving out from under the blue light..."

"Ezri!" I said. "For a counselor, you've got a horrid bedside manner.
You're frightening the poor creature."

"At least I know not to move, now. Who wants the grandma of all
periods?" Kashi muttered. "Why can't we do the anti-high-gain
treatments at the same time as we do this? I'd like to get it all over
with."

"Because you'd be a biochemical soup victim if we did that," I said,
taking another look at the monitors.

"Human hormone--and other chemical--systems are all interrelated, even
if the functions they perform are quite different," Ezri said. "It's
not all that immediate a thing, but he's right, you'd be sick."

"Two more days of this, you said," Kashi sighed.

"That's right. One more of treatment and at *least* one more before we
begin the neurotransmitter adjustments. I don't even want to start on
your adrenaline levels for a week. You'd be attached to the ceiling
until someone phasered you down."

"I thought you said the results probably weren't going to be as
dramatic as I hoped they'd be."

"They likely won't, but while we're making all these adjustments,
you're going to be...delicate. As though you haven't already noticed
that."

"That's why I've cleared some time for us," Ezri said, "and Keiko has,
too."

"Just as long as I don't get the sweats again. That gets old. Y'know,
between Julie's getting his brain scrambled, me getting it in the gut,
you two aren't gonna have time for anyone else."

"It won't be that bad."

"Really? Are we having fun *yet*? Sorry. I just hate..."

"Lying flat on your back while someone else takes over," Ezri said
sympathetically. "Definitely not your style."

---

When I came in that evening, rather late but not overwearied, Julie
was examining a little green object that glistened in the light from
the terminal; he was sitting at the desk, with a stack of padds next
to him.

I came to him and leaned down to kiss him. He looked up to receive the
kiss, then wordlessly handed me what he was holding.

The same scene I'd watched him destroy, tiny and perfect in every
detail...but this one was emerald green--no, he was right, it was more
like some variety of jade, in the depth and density of colors--except
for the water, which was clear...and underneath it, I could make out
the shapes of rocks and smooth areas of sand, and even plants. The
shelves of the banks just beneath the water's edge were very detailed.
The falls had been highlighted with something that made it fire to a
bubbly-looking milky white--tiny bubbles, on the inside; the outside
of that part of the piece was water-smooth. What I could see of the
cave was as close to accurate as my eyes could make out.

"I like that one much better," he said. "More realistic. Perhaps
you've noticed I'm very into realism," he added dryly. I was still
speechless, staring at the small, perfect thing I could hold in one
palm. Such a thing could be painstakingly programmed and replicated,
but to be made by untrained, nearly unsupplemented-by-tools, human
hands...he continued "I was going to glaze in more colors, but I'm not
that proficient with it yet and I didn't want it to look like a bloody
finger painting."

"No," I said, "that wasn't at all necessary. It's just right." I
admired it another moment and held it back out to him.

He looked puzzled. "It's yours, idiot. I told you I'd make you another
of those. Only better, of course."

I laughed as I sank down next to him, resting half in his lap; he
threaded a caressing hand through my hair, stroking it. "You're right,
I'm an idiot, I *had* forgotten that. Thank you again, love. I've
never thanked you for that note you made me the other night, either."

"The 'I'm all right' note?"

I scooted up closer to him, setting the sculpture on the desk so I
could stroke his bare chest with that hand--he and Kashi seemed less
than keen on wearing clothes from the waist up unless they were cold
or in public, and sometimes not even then. I wondered if that came
from the same place their fondness for long hair did. I corrected him
"The 'I'm all right and I love you' note."

"I scraped that for the canvas."

"You did *what*?" I sat bolt upright.

"It was only a note," he said, wondering.

"Julie." I sighed. "It was graceful and elegant, and I would've liked
to have kept it."

"A *note*?"

"It was beautiful! It was *art*! You must see that. Sometimes I think
you're being deliberately obtuse."

It was not the right thing to say.

He did not quite dump me in the floor as he rose from the chair and
strode away from the desk; he only dumped me--expeditiously, but not
roughly--out of his lap, giving me my own weight back. He stopped in
the middle of the room, one hand to his forehead.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly. "You know I didn't mean it like that."

"I don't know any such...you're right. Fine, as far as I'm concerned
it was never said. After all, I call *you* stupid a half-dozen times a
day."

"It was indeed said and I was not calling you stupid. I was saying
that I suspect you of being intentionally difficult at times, and if
you're going to get worked up because I commented on *that*, you
should stop bragging about it so much yourself."

He jerked slightly, the hand moving to his mouth, and I knew he was
stifling a laugh. I was about to get up and follow him, but just as I
made it to one knee, he was next to me, lowering himself close and
holding me. We kissed a long moment, his mouth whispering all its
enhanced magic against mine, and I swayed slightly; he held me up
until we separated.

"Hello," he said. "I'm glad you're back. I've finished a little
claymake I promised you--"

"Oh, love--"

"--and I'm planning a calligraphic piece for you. Something in blues
and gold, I think." He touched the collar of my uniform, then my
cheek. "You can pick a quote, if you like. Or just tell me what you
want it to say."

"Julie, I think I may just love you."

"I should damned well hope you do, but I'm not painting that on it.
What do you want for supper?"

He'd been busy that day, too--not only finishing the waterfall for me,
but gathering and organizing all the research he'd been doing.
Technically, his computer clearance code would not allow him into
anything a non-Federation, non-allied government representative isn't
normally permitted to see; but this situation being so sensitive--and
his being able to use my voice clearance to sidestep some of those
limitations, though as far as anyone could tell the only times he'd
used it were for a door unlock and a site-to-site transport, plus some
minor and log-documented replicator activity--it had been decided that
the information he'd compiled to send, or take, home would be perused
to see that it did not step on anyone's dragging hemline.

"I sent you the medical files. They're in your computer."

"I know, I found them this morning. I might call them up and take a
look at them tonight; I didn't have the chance today."

"No immediate rush...I did have a few questions for you about some
things I tried to get to and ran into that bloody 'access denied'."

"Why do I get the feeling you've been banging your nose on that one a
lot the last weeks?"

"Headlong rush from file to file, think I've got it, and that strident
*noise* and 'access denied'." He sighed, setting his plate in the
replicator and going to flop on the couch with his glass of spring
wine. I was surprised to see him drinking anything Bajoran, but
thought it might be best to say nothing. I stuck with Tarkalean. I
can't drink redleaf at night, it keeps me up. He was continuing "Not
to mention how much time it took to correlate everything with the
notes I brought with me--now that I can check them myself, not just
take whatever the search hands me..."

"I could have helped you more with that, while you still needed it."

"You're not exactly idle in your own work here."

I sat with him. "You still look pensive."

"I am...I want to talk with you about something," he said, paused, and
finished softly "and I want you to *listen* to me, all right?"

"Ooh, ouch. What have I done now?"

"Ignored the inevitable. Julian." He leaned forward, resting his
elbows on his knees, holding the wine glass loosely in both hands and
gazing across the room at the Sulamid sculpture that had finally made
it back onto the wall. "At the risk of sounding like a romantic
heroine, I need to know your intentions about us. Not," he added,
forestalling the reiteration of my litany, "what you plan at this
point in time to do or not do next in your struggle to generate
alternatives in this situation. I want to know what you intend."

"I intend to stay with you."

"And how do you propose to do that?"

"I told you, I'm still--"

"I believe that. But what if push comes to shove, Julian? We need to
decide what we're going to do...if all else fails. Because we're in an
unstable situation, love. Too many factors are too quickly changeable;
we need to be ready. If you'll stop tap-dancing for ten seconds and
accept that..."

He was right; I had indeed been postponing several very tough choices.
I had thought about them, of course, even extensively thought about
them--but in an abstract sense, not an immediate one. "What would be
best to do *if*," rather than "What am *I* going to do *when*." And
there would be a when if none of my efforts to forestall it were
successful. We both knew that now. I wondered if Embri just had it in
for us for not returning his affections, then shoved the whimsical
petulance aside.

"You're right...well. I'm listening to you now. Let's hear your
thoughts again."

"The most ideal situation--I'm allowed to stay here, or you're allowed
to come home with me, or possibly both, because traffic between the
universes is unrestricted on both sides."

"The best Miles and Dax could do only bought us more time, as far as
that goes. The way it's being explained to me now is more as a
resource conflict. We don't need a constant avenue of universal
traffic going on in the middle--literally, almost, where this station
is--of a war with the Dominion."

"Oh..." he chuckled darkly. "Is that their latest excuse?"

"Frankly, of all of them, it's the one I can believe most easily. If
this were a civilian scientist group back on Earth...well. There might
be a hope, even if there were still obstacles. Not here, though."

"But you have to be here."

"No I don't. I can request--"

"The foremost expert in Dominion biological weapons and Jem'Hadar
biology is not going to be allowed to serve his own whims, Julian. Not
unless he's at least a Captain and his whims are fairly well in line."

I sighed. "Right, I suppose. Though there are still--all right, all
right. Go on. I'm still listening."

"Since that's impossible, the next best scenario would be that one of
us was allowed to emigrate permanently."

"Also out, by Starfleet order."

"And I'm amazed you thought they'd *ever* give you up, or believe that
the only motive the leader of the Terran resistance had in being
here--post-operative motive, that is--was that he'd fallen in love
with his own double. Of *course* they believe I'm here to steal
technology, maybe create a permanent system of smuggling it! Julian,
some of them may even believe I'm a shapeshifter, or at least a
Dominion agent, with a method for moving supplies and personnel in and
out of your territory that's been disguised to look like something
else."

"But after everything that's happened--all of our testimony, reports,
solid evidence, Captain Sisko's--"

"It can't all reach every single one of them, you know that.
Starfleet, and the Council, are not a single rational entity versed in
everything it needs to know to understand everything that we
understand. And they're a government at *war*. A terrifying, some
would say unwinnable war. Nothing makes even gullible people paranoid
like war does."

I blinked. "Are you trying to tell me you think that the concerns over
the ultimate effect of the interuniversal transfer of matter and
energy, not to mention sentient influence--"

"It isn't only so much hooey, Julian, but it's what they're telling
themselves so they'll feel better. Federations hate admitting that
they're doing what they're doing out of their own interests. They like
to believe it's always for the greater good. Do you believe that if
they thought they could trust it and they could think of a way to do
it, they *wouldn't* turn the same technology they're so concerned is
unsafe into a weapon against the Dominion?"

I swallowed. There was a pause. Finally I said "I'm still listening."

"Neither of the first two options is viable. Now, if we want to stay
together, what will have to happen?"

"Julie, it isn't that hopeless yet!"

"Damn it, *answer* me! *Think*!"

My head sank into my hands as I mirrored Julie's posture. "It won't be
us balancing our duties, it won't be one of us abandoning his
post...it'll be both of us, losing *everything*."

"You're catching on to my train of thought. It's called a worst-case
scenario, you've heard of them...? Of course. And what do they teach
you in Starfleet about dealing with worst-case scenarios?"

"In an incomplete nutshell--if the preferred scenarios are lost,
unattainable...minimize the damage as much as possible. Even if the
damage proceeds, try the next possibility, and the next...until, if
nothing up to then has worked, it reaches the point of simply escaping
with your own life. Or less than that, if your life can salvage
something in being lost."

"That's the sort of thing we need to be thinking now." He finished the
wine in his glass and got up to go to the replicator.

"Julie, I'm sorry. I should have seen all this. I *did* see it, in a
way, I just..."

"It wasn't fair and it wasn't right and you didn't like it, it was
unjust and unkind, so you wouldn't give up fighting it and work *with*
it. Julian, don't apologize. I love that about you," he told me,
turning back at the replicator to smile briefly at me before turning
away again. "And I'm good at browbeating people, so don't worry about
it. I could see it because I've never expected to be able to do
anything about the fact that the universe--yours or mine--is unfair
and unkind. It's the natural order of things to me."

"I don't especially love that about you. For your sake, not mine."

"I know." He sipped from his second glass. "You also have a
disheartening faith in sentient nature."

"Garak says that, too."

He smiled. "Yes. He told me how you've always clung to it in the face
of everything, of the most shattering betrayals and examples of
stupidity and selfishness and cowardice...and ruthlessly practical
Cardassians. Why *is* he so important to you, Julian? I know why *I*
like him--I just don't understand why you do. Is that all it is? Your
faith in the ultimate goodness of intelligent beings? Or are you such
a shining example of Federation values that you're capable of loving
even those who are base and ignoble, by those same standards?"

I let my head hang where it was, not answering him. I knew what he was
asking me, but he didn't leave any room for doubt.

"Why *do* you love me?" he whispered. "You'd better be very clear on
that. You'd better know why I am what I am to you, because the end
result of this could be that I'm all you have in any universe, for a
very long time." His voice was shaking.

"Why do you love *me*, Julie?" I asked helplessly, meeting his eyes.
"Can you even begin to honestly tell me? It can't be simple
familiarity, we're as different as two people can be."

"And as similar," he reminded me softly. "I never thought I'd say this
to anyone. I love you because you're noble and good and you have that
faith, you loved me in spite of everything I could do--I might have
killed you a handful of times, but you so steadfastly believed I
wouldn't...that I *didn't*. Your faith makes things happen, even if
only with me. I've never known that before. And you didn't only
respect the fact that I could kill you where you sat or that I can run
a revolution or pilot like a demon from hell, you respected *me*."

"That's just it. Are you sure it is love? And not gratitude, not some
kind of--"

His glass hit the table, miraculously not falling over. "How can you
doubt it? How can you feel me touch you the way we do and *doubt* it?"

"Sweetheart, it isn't *you* I doubt. I know the feelings you're having
are real. But they're very new to you, and--and I nearly hurt someone
badly once, someone I'd helped, because she was so grateful to me she
would have let me push her into being what I wanted her to be. I can't
let that happen again."

He folded his arms and glared at me. "I know all about that, and I
dare you to take a good long look at me and point to ANYTHING that
reminds you of Sarina Douglas."

"You know what I mean, Julie."

"Yes, I do. Gratitude. I *shouldn't* feel gratitude? You made me
whole! You took away some of the pain and you gave me some measure of
peace. You taught me to feel, for the first time since almost before I
can remember, and then didn't simply leave me alone with it when it
got ugly. You even repaired the crossed circuits in my head, or at
least added something that means I can look at the things going on
around me, and *understand*, without ripping myself nearly to shreds
to keep up! I can take so many things for granted that before, I
couldn't begin to master. I can...breathe, I can *rest*, I can spare
the attention to *read* those words I remember hearing Kay recite to
me--just because I want to, not because I have a good reason to expend
the effort. I can put my energy into so many things--to paint Jadzia,
and mourn for her, I can--bloody hell. Do you expect me NOT to be
grateful to you, you stupid damned fool?"

"No," I said softly. "You wouldn't be human if you weren't grateful.
That's why I--"

"But that's not why I love you." He sank into the chair he was next
to, still glaring, but starting to look shaky. "If anything,
gratitude--or, as I'd be more likely to put it, someone having
something to hold over me--would make me...angry, I'd resent it, try
to find a way out of the debt without losing...face, pride, anything
that I had--I had so little. And it's a kind of connection with
someone, and I didn't want any connection I couldn't sever at will. I
hate being in debt to anyone, but it's not like that with you. I'm not
afraid of it. It barely *exists* as a connection, next to the
connection of loving you. Julian, some part of me loved you the moment
I saw the way you looked at me, that openness and caring in your face,
before either of us had any thought to your doing a thing for me. And
you still haven't answered me. Why would someone like you want me?"

I let my head fall back into my hands. "Julie, if I answered you by
saying it's because you're strong and compassionate and brilliant and
talented and unbelievably brave, braver than I'll ever be, would you
laugh yourself sick?"

"That'd be my first inclination."

"You aren't what they did to you. It was monstrous, and it could have
made you into a monster, but even the very worst they could do
couldn't do *that* to you."

"Julian, you know what I've done, you know what I *was*!"

"Yes, a vicious bastard, but *only* because you had no choice at all
in the matter! It was necessary to your simple survival. Not even what
was done to you when you were only a child, things that would break
strong adults, could make you anything other than human. When the
*need* to be so focused, so pointed, ruthless in your practicality and
methods, was removed, you were no longer ruthless. You remember how it
was sometimes with Jadzia, how you cared for each other, and she made
you laugh? She made you really *laugh*. You were safe with her, and
there was still humanity in you."

I got up and came over to him, settling to one knee by his chair.
"What was done to you, and the results of it, will never be completely
gone from you--but it isn't in charge any longer. Your fear isn't
controlling your feelings, and your inability to communicate isn't
controlling your actions. You never were a monster and you're not even
a vicious bastard now. You're a civilized, fascinatingly complex,
insatiably curious man...with a temper, and a mouth on him the size of
the Coal Sack, I'll grant--" he smirked, involuntarily, and I smiled,
then sobered again a little and continued.

"Most importantly--you were *willing* to come back from where you were
hiding. Most people in your position never are, at least not
completely. You're willing..." my voice cracked a little at the
thought, "...to live with what you're going to have to live with, for
the rest of your life. I couldn't do that, if it were me.
If...everything hadn't killed me outright, it would have destroyed me,
and if it hadn't destroyed me, I'd never have come out into the light
again. You have got to understand the kind of courage that takes. It
makes the courage to die seem paltry, even self-serving."

"I always thought I was just too afraid to die," he said in a bare
whisper. "There were so many times I could have...and I thought of it
so often...I thought I was a coward."

"Please don't say that," I murmured, my eyes closing with the pain of
hearing it, and rested my head in his lap, on our folded hands.

He leaned down to whisper against my hair "Are we agreed, then? And do
we believe each other?"

I nodded slightly. "I think so, sweetheart."

"We'd better know so. We may not have time to hash things out if
anything untoward should come up."

I closed my eyes, felt my head whirling..."I know so," I blurted,
raising my face to him.

"Gods, Julian...so do I." He kissed me and whispered "I want you.
Now."

Which apparently he meant literally. We made love right there in the
floor by the dining table, with our usual level of enthusiasm and
thoroughness. I'm not sure how long we were at it, but we could barely
walk by the time we made it into the bedroom and crashed to sleep.

We didn't realize our mistake until the middle of that night, when
Julie woke me, in considerable anguish.

"Mm...what's..." I ran my hand down his arm.

"OUCH!" He yanked away from me, wincing at his own action. Just then I
noticed I wasn't feeling so wonderful myself.

I tried to sit up. My knees, elbows and back all screamed. Good night,
I was even rugburned on my--"OW!"

"You too?" He panted.

"Can you walk?" I graveled.

"I think so..."

"Between how sore I am all over and the burns, I'm not sure I can.
Could you get my kit out of the bathroom?"

"I can die in the attempt, at least," he said, setting one foot on the
floor with exquisite care. "Ouch. Damn! Ouch. Bloody damned ouch. Why
did we *do* that?"

"Because we're young and in love."

"And stupid."

"Yes, that too. At least it wasn't a beach. I could tell you horror
stories..."

He'd made it to the bathroom; I could hear him getting the kit out,
dropping it, swearing, having to bend over to pick it up, and letting
out a stream of moderately corrosive profanity at the action; he then
reappeared and dropped the kit on the bed. "I think I'll stand."

"Then you'll have to help me up so I can reach you."

"Is there anyplace on you I can touch?"

"Let's see, besides my hair...Gods, not really. Here, this hand's not
too badly off." He gingerly took the proffered hand and did his best
to hold steady while I gritted my teeth and got up.

The first thing I did was give us both a shot to kill some of the
pain; he sagged in relief and I'm sure I did, too.

"How in hell's name did we miss this earlier?" he wondered.

"This sort of friction burn sometimes takes a while to announce
itself. That's true of some sorts of radiation burn, too. All right,
we have two options. I can take care of first-degree burns with the
dermal regenerator in the kit. We'll peel like snakes, considering how
much of our body area is affected, but a few minutes in the shower
should get the worst off. Also it'll take quite a while with a
regenerator this size."

"What's the other option?"

"Putting on clothes so we can go to the infirmary."

"That's an *option*? We make like snakes."

"I thought you'd say that." I switched on the regenerator and got
started on him. I noticed he was smiling, and wondered "What's so
amusing, sweetheart?"

"If I had it to do over," he said in a half-purr, "I would."

"So would I." We exchanged wicked grins and I continued working.

"How about the dining table next time?"

"Sure you wouldn't rather try the couch first?"

"I didn't mean *our* dining table."

I snorted with laughter. "Quark's?"

"No, the tables are too small. Plus it'd likely be good for business.
On second thought, let's make it the wardroom."

"If I thought you were serious I'd be extremely titillated."

"I am serious."

"Sometimes I forget who I'm dealing with. Love, I've got quite a
number of mildly odd little fantasies that involve you and me au
naturel, but that isn't one of them. Well...it wasn't until now, at
least. Gods, what a mental picture."

"Ouch! Careful there, all right?"

"Sorry. I was distracted." I grinned at him and he smiled back.

We peeled, all right, I don't know which of us was more
diseased-looking. We went over each other in the shower with bath
brushes until we looked fairly human again, then fell back to bed with
unison sighs.

"Are you very sore?" I asked him as we got comfortable. "One of these
days we'll have to consider stopping before all our relevant major
muscle groups ache."

"Not bad. I don't mind. I like thinking of how I got this way."

I kissed him. "All right, then, I won't press any more painkiller on
you. Julie...if it comes to making a run for it, I think it should be
in your universe."

He looked sharply up at me. "Why?"

"We'd be vastly harder to find. Probably no one would even bother
looking for you, they'd simply curse your name and your factions would
have to make do with T'ser. Starfleet would have a far worse time,
maybe an impossible one, locating me there, and they'd be hesitant to
send in the big search armament for the same reason they don't want me
there--contamination of your universal spacetime. I'm sure they'd try,
and we'd have to work hard to see that they didn't succeed, but our
chances would be much higher."

"Julian...you don't want to be a human in my universe, and especially
not a fugitive human. Such humans are any Alliance member's for the
taking."

"We don't have to stay within Alliance-controlled territory."

"Going out of Alliance-controlled territory would be...difficult, or
humans would be doing it all the time. Look...I don't know of anywhere
we could go that we would be either entirely safe or entirely welcome,
not since the Halkans were conquered by the Breen."

"We can find a place, or make our own. Both of us have a lot to offer.
And after they stop searching, which I know might be a while...Terrans
have very little access to medical care where you're from. They need
doctors. I could be big help to your people. All Terrans, I mean, not
only the resistance."

"I know how important that is to you, but you look just like me. If
anyone recognized you..."

"Appearances can be altered. I do it for Starfleet intelligence
missions all the time."

"Change your appearance?" He looked alarmed.

"No, other people's. Remind me to tell you about the time I turned
Miles, the Captain, and Odo into Klingons."

"Ew."

"The Captain looked all right, but Miles and Odo were pretty
unattractive, I have to admit."

"I don't want you to change your appearance, though. How would you do
that to your*self*, anyway?"

"Oh, I couldn't do it extensively. But there are some minor
alterations I could make. Coloring, slight bone augmentation or
reduction--"

"If you do *anything* to change the appearance of those eyes or those
cheekbones I will make you regret it."

"I hope you love me for more than my eyes and cheekbones."

"Don't change the subject."

"If necessary, I could make us look Bajoran, and then we'd be much
safer. I'd rather not, because likely your people wouldn't exactly
trust us--the only Bajoran I can recall seeing on Terok Nor these days
is Leeta--but it could be a useful emergency ploy. You see, they
wouldn't have to be permanent changes. It could all be reversible,
even if my equipment was limited, if we plan it that way."

Julie appeared cross and looked away.

"What's the matter?"

"I like that we look the same, and I DON'T want to look like a bloody
stinking BAJORAN, and I don't want to look at YOU and see a bloody
stinking Bajoran, either. God, I'd rather you made us into
Cardassians."

"I'd likely only be able to make small alterations, like the nasal
bone corrugation, in your universe. And we could still look the same
as each other, though it'd be better not; two completely identical men
are far more noticeable than two who look like they might be related
to some degree."

"I don't like it," he spat.

"It doesn't thrill me, either, but it doesn't have to be forever."

"I'll think about it. But it shouldn't be my side of the Mirror we run
to. Julian, you just don't understand what it's like there."

"But I do know what it's like here. I'd rather be a fugitive in the
middle of a war against the Alliance than against the Dominion."

"You don't understand..."

"Then explain."

"There's some level of...sanity here. One has to go a very long way to
find that in my universe."

"I know this universal milieu seems vastly more attractive and much
safer for us than yours does, and in many ways it is, but the
paramount thing is that we be able to hide from Starfleet as long as
we need to. That's better accomplished in your universe. We could
arrange to return here after a certain time had passed--years, I
mean--but at first it's necessary to--"

"Nothing is better accomplished in my universe. My being there is one
thing, but I can't stand the thought of anything happening to you."

"Things will happen to me here if we're found."

He shook his head. "Those things are *nothing* next to what I'm
talking about. I want you to stay you, more than just in your
appearance. Living where I'm from...I don't think that'll happen.
You'll become...harder. More like me. I know you're a very capable
soldier when you have no choice, but that isn't what I mean. I'm not
talking about soldiering, with rules and policies and accords and
such."

"I know what you mean, but I'll still be me, Julie. It might even make
a better person of me. There are good, honorable people in your
universe. I know Smiley is one. Kashi is one. Even you only *appeared*
to be vicious as long as you had to."

He laid his head on my shoulder and said nothing.

"Talk about it in the morning, then?"

He nodded. I kissed his head and settled down with him. "One other
thing, my love."

"Mm?"

"If it does happen that we have to make a break for it...I have to
tell Ezri."

He lifted his head, brow furrowed. "Whatever for?"

"I promised her that before I made any...any grand gestures, took any
irrevocable actions, I would go to her first. It'd only be a
formality, really, because I did promise her. She won't change my
mind. And she won't expose us. If I'm determined enough to actually go
through with it...she wouldn't try to take you away from me if I was
willing to go to such lengths. She wouldn't do that to you, either.
And I wouldn't tell her until just before the fact."

He blinked thoughtfully, then said "I suppose you're right, she
wouldn't. My Ezri might, but my Ezri was never Jadzia."

---

"Hello, Elim."

"Hello, Julie." Garak hadn't looked up from the garment he was working
on, which Julie couldn't immediately identify. "How nice of you to
drop in."

"I've got a problem."

"I'm sorry to hear that, but you've got so many one more hardly seems
a shattering event, does it?"

"This one...rather is."

Garak looked up, got to his feet and set the little tool he'd been
using down on a counter. "And you were so satisfied with our last
transaction you're giving me repeat business. How very gratifying."

"Oh, stop it, Elim. I only want to ask you a few things about Julian,
you've known him for so long..."

"Many here have."

"It does have to do with our previous transaction; you're the only one
I can speak to about it."

"Then we'd best not talk here. I've been keeping the shop open only in
the mornings, to leave time for the decoding work I do for Starfleet;
you might meet me for lunch in my quarters at thirteen hundred?"

"I will. I have a session with Ezri and Kashi at the moment anyway.
Thank you, Elim." He gave the Cardassian a quick, soft kiss and turned
to go.

He didn't see Garak close his eyes, leaning against the counter with a
quiet exhalation, as soon as his back was turned.

---

"My GOD, what is that? Is it Klingon?"

"No, it's Terran. Quite a delicacy, very popular."

"It looks as if it's going to march across the table and pinch my face
off."

"Even if it weren't replicated, it would be a little beyond any such
action. The animals are thrown into pots of boiling water until they
turn that color. They start out more brownish. At one time, I'm told,
they were thrown into the water alive."

"And people call *me* a barbarian. What sort of animal is it?"

"A lobster. A saltwater crustacean."

"*That's* a fish?"

"In a manner of speaking. Eating them requires a bit of
familiarization with technique...allow me to demonstrate."

"I see...heavens, it's messy."

"I had no idea you were so fastidious, my sweet."

"I'm not, usually, but I've been living in what feels like sterile
surroundings for so long...God, and I'm starting to talk like Julian.
Anyway, all right, here I go...whoops."

"Never fear, all is not lost. You can still extract the meat in
several smaller pieces instead of one large one...like so."

"All right...now what? Just eat it?"

"If you like, or there are several condiments there you might try; I
chose the most popular ones. I prefer the melted butter, myself."

"I'll try that, then...mhm. Mm...(gulp) Oh. It does taste far better
than it looks, I must admit. In fact I think I'll sit over here where
it isn't in my direct line of sight."

"An excellent idea. If it makes you feel any better, many humans share
your sentiments, both in the flavor of the meat and the rather
questionable presentation method. Personally I don't see why the meat
can't be extracted in the kitchen rather than at the table, but then,
I'm not human. What is it you wished to discuss? Questions about the
doctor, you said."

"Sort of." Julie paused to take a sip of white wine. "And what's
this?"

"A Chardonnay--wine--that the Doctor enjoys. I thought you might like
it."

"It is good--what sort of wine is it?"

"Made from an Earth fruit. Grapes."

"Oh, I know what those are." He set his glass down. "You know Julian
and I might have to...to make, as Kashi would say, a run for it if he
can't come up with a way to get his superiors to change their minds
about allowing traffic between our universes right now."

"I know. I do hope it doesn't come to that."

"Believe me, so do we. But we talked about it last night, and he
thinks that my universe would be the best choice."

"Thinking about what precisely you would be hiding from, I am forced
to agree."

"Well, in principle, I agree too, but I have to talk him out of it."

Garak regarded him as he cracked a leg with an expert snap.
"Because...of course. The interphasic shielding technology."

"He can be painfully easy to fool...but not *that* easy. If Smiley
comes up with it just as he and I arrive--and believe me, Smiley's not
going to sit on something like this, something that would easily win
the Terrans their freedom, just for the sake of my love life--and if
he finds out I'd had it and hadn't given it to him right off, my life
would quickly become not worth living, assuming I even remained
alive--there'd be no question of the time correlation."

"You did say your plan depended on keeping anyone here--most
particularly the Doctor--from finding out about the sudden
technological advances in your universe for at least a time."

"It wouldn't have to be forever, but there would have to be time. As
it is, we carry out his suggested plan...and he'll know. And I don't
know what he'll do."

"What exactly concerns you? His being angry?"

"I can handle his being angry. What I can't handle is his believing
that my primary reason for being here was to get my hands on a piece
of technology that could turn the war so unequivocally. That I...that
I--"

"Used his affection for you to gain time to determine what data would
be most helpful to your cause and obtain it before being forced to
return home?"

"Yes, that." Julie snapped a leg of his own with unnecessary force,
having got the technique down after one false start brought on by
unfamiliarity.

"I was under the impression that he was the one who began your
romantic association."

"He was the one who...who was good to me to the point that I didn't
resist it when it began of itself."

"He also suggested you return here with him."

"That doesn't mean I mightn't only have been grabbing an opportunity.
For all he knows, Smiley and I staged the whole scene in his office. I
did protest when Julian wanted to come with me to see him, said I
wanted to speak to Smiley alone."

"I see...and now, after all the assistance you've been given here..."

"The entire senior staff, nearly, has gone out on a limb for
me--rather, he threw himself into the breach for my sake and they all
followed him for his. To get me time here, access to information,
medical attention...what could he possibly think of me if he knew?"
Julie shut up and ate for a little while. So did Garak.

When they'd gone through salads and lobster and were sipping wine,
Garak spoke quietly. "I see your problem, and I'm sorry; but such is
the way of deception. Necessary deception or otherwise. We both know
that."

"You've deceived him, from the moment you met; to hear him tell it,
it's part of what you are to each other. His own government's deceived
him, he manages to live with that. But me? It's a lie at the
foundation of what we are to each other, at the very
beginning--affecting the very reasons we're together at all. Can
Julian forgive a thing like that? Would he believe I love him? That
the main reason I thought up the whole interphasic shielding scheme
was so that I could abandon my cause to stay with him?"

"He would want to believe it. I think you know that much."

"But could he? He's...oh, you know. He'd be so bloody *hurt*. And
angry and sad and...Elim, suffice it to say I've got to find a way to
convince him that my universe is not the place to run to."

"That will be difficult. He is only being logical in his arguments."

"I know."

"Well, then...if you can't convince him on a logical basis, you'll
have to convince him on an illogical one."

"How do you mean?"

"Appeal to his emotions, his instincts--anything that can provide you
with a suitable weapon against the machinery of reason. Convince him
that despite the logic of his argument, there are other considerations
which are more important in your situation."

Julie was quiet a long time. Then he swallowed the rest of the wine in
his glass. "You mean trick him."

"Truth is an ephemeral thing, Julie; always open to interpretation.
There are many, many factors in operation here, emotional and, as I
said, instinctive, given the situation between you and the Doctor. You
are a cunning individual; is there no way those many factors and
circumstances could be recombined to argue your case for you without
resorting to outright lies? They *are* the clumsiest and least
effective kind, you know."

"Wouldn't that still be tricking him?"

"The worst it could be called would be a lie of omission. You are
already tricking him, make no mistake; but there are ways to attain
your goals without compounding the deception."

Julie looked up, his eyes large and luminous. "I'm not very good at
lying, Elim."

"That doesn't surprise me. The Doctor is the worst liar I've ever met
in a long life. Every thought in his head is plain in his face. Very
well, don't lie, then." He got up and came around the table, took
Julie's hand and led him to the sofa, where he reached for the other
hand as well and gazed into Julie's eyes. "Julian," he said softly,
"taking refuge in my own universe is a terrifying thought to me. There
are things you don't know, which I cannot explain--I barely understand
them myself. If I returned there with you, I would lose that which I
have fought so hard to gain here--and I can't bear that idea. We could
lose each other in my universe, Julian...and I would lose myself." He
sat back a little and raised his brows. "Now. Did I lie even once?"

"No, but taken together it was a lie. You know he'd think that I was
talking about the medical treatments I've been getting, or about how
horrid life was for me there and how I couldn't stand to go back to
it."

"Not at all. If the Doctor wishes to make inferences you do not
intend...that can hardly be considered your responsibility. In any
case, you don't need to be as verbose as I often am. A much more
direct emotional approach could be equally effective." "You mean throw
a raging fit?"

"Or a number of other options. Those needn't be lies, either. Think
about how you'd feel if the Doctor did find out about the data rod;
those emotions are very unpleasant. All you would need to do is
express them. Again, not a lie; simply an indirect communication."

"Mm. But I have enough trouble with that sort of thing. It seems
insane to deliberately court it."

"As you wish, Julie. The options are endless and I'm sure your
imagination is adequate."

Julie nodded, staring at their clasped hands. He released Garak's and
reached to slide an arm around him; Garak accommodated him, and they
arranged themselves comfortably. "Elim, no matter how many times
you've lied to him or betrayed him, he's still always there for you.
He'd still risk his life for you. It's the same as I feel about him,
in a way...how *can* you go on every day without him?"

"Really now, Julie...what choice have I?"

Julie kissed him. "You have one, for a while yet."

"Then for the while, that is the choice I'll make." He caressed
Julie's back as their mouths met again.

---

continued in part six