The BLTS Archive - When It Alteration Finds by Novus Homo --- Warning: For those unable to think for themselves, this is slash. As in, male slash male. Or, for the wholly dense, this details sex between men, specifically Bashir from ST:DS9 and a man of my own design. If this doesn't trip your trigger, don't read it. If it's illegal for you to read this, for heaven's sake don't tell anyone. This is the sequel to my earlier story "Romeo and Julian". If you haven't read it, it's probably a good idea to do so first so you know the people involved. Also, be forewarned: there's a rather gross death in it, but the deceased is revived later and it's not one of the DS9 characters we all know and love (some of us more than others :-). Disclaimer: Everything Trek is copyright Paramount Pictures. Alexei Tagenian is copyright moi. (Well, no he's not, but I made him up, so don't use him.) They're not making money off of this; neither am I. I'm just taking the DS9 crew out to play for the night. No copyright infringement intended. Reposting: R'Rain's archive? Sure. ASCE Archive on aviary.share.net? Sure. Anywhere else? Email me (I'll probably say yes). Historical Note: This story is set fairly soon after the events in "Doctor Bashir, I Presume?" Gripe: Jeez, all this to read a bit of slash? --- "...Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds Or bends with the remover to remove." -William Shakespeare, "Sonnet CXVI" --- *I should be celebrating. I should be fucking celebrating!* Julian's lover was returning. The doctor was sitting in Quark's, brooding over his drink. Dark clouds would have hung over his head, he mused, if it had been an old comic book. He didn't know what Alexei thought of him. He had been on the news, of course. Or rather, his father had been on the news. Illegal genetic alteration. Up the river, as they say. Julian had made up a name for his former secret genetically enhanced persona: Jules Subatoj Singh. It seemed to fit, somehow. He continued to brood. Could Alexei still love him? Julian, the created man? He remembered the argument he had had with his father while he was on the station: "You're not my father. You're my architect." Could a man as sweet as Alexei love a building, a mass of DNA? Quark sidled in, silent as air. "Doctor, I hate to intrude," the Ferengi said, with the characteristic hissing note to his voice, "but you've been staring at that drink for over an hour. You're nursing that root beer like it's Santraginean stout. What's wrong?" Julian laughed bitterly. "I doubt it's anything you can help me with, Quark." "You'd be surprised," riposted the barkeep. "Let me guess: the love life. What's going on? You can tell your barkeep. That's what I'm here for." "He's coming back tomorrow." "Who... ah, yes. That Tagenian fellow. The Maquis." Julian slammed his fist onto the bar and regarded the Ferengi in a fury. "Look, Quark -" Quark promptly assumed Ferengi cringe number five. "-And a very nice boy too, no doubt. I can certainly see why you like him." As promptly as it had risen, Julian's anger had passed. "He's coming back tomorrow, like I said. He's probably seen it all in the news. I'm a disgrace. It'll be a fine enough thing if he looks at me." "Nonsense!" said Quark, all obsequy and cheer. "Why, if I were him, it wouldn't -" His words were cut off by a slight tremor. Very slight, barely enough to rattle the glass on the table. But enough that he and Bashir both noticed it. There was a murmuring among the crowd. Bashir hit his commbadge. "Bashir to Ops. What was that?" Dax's voice echoed into the bar. "We're reading a slight spatio-temporal flux originating from the wormhole. Checking it out now." "On my way," said Julian. He stood up. "Thanks for the chat, Quark," he said, only mildly sarcastically. Then he walked out. Quark stood looking after him, then collected the glass Julian had left behind. He was about to put it on his tray, when something caught his eye. He examined the glass more carefully. The liquid in it was clear and flat. --- "Dax, what can you tell us?" asked Sisko. The senior staff was gathered around the science console, in anticipation of the Trill officer's report. "The wormhole is emitting a series of spatio-temporal pulses at random intervals. Now from what I can tell, they appear to be harmless, but I'm still unable to track their effect." She paused. "Pulse now." The station shuddered slightly again. Dax checked her board, then she looked up. "Captain?" "Yes?" "Where did you get that ball?" He was tossing a baseball between his hands. "At Comiskey Park in -" "No, I mean where did you get it just now. You didn't have it before." Sisko looked down in bafflement. "You're right. Damned strange." Dax extended her hand. "May I?" Sisko handed her the ball. "I'll be in the science lab if anyone needs me." She walked out of Ops. --- The small transport vessel docked at the upper pylon. Bashir was there to meet it. The huge gear-shaped door rolled out of the way, and he was standing there. Alexei. Julian's lover. The one who took the doctor's breath away completely. His brown hair was in the same style as before, with those beautiful strands falling forward in front. The ivory face, fine and handsome as ever. He wore a flattering grey-and-brown outfit of vaguely Vulcan design. Bashir noticed these things. Then Alexei was rushing forward, embracing Julian, and they were holding each other, weeping with joy. Alexei let go. "Race you to the turbolift!" he yelled, and took off. Julian, astonished, flashed off after him. Both of them laughing and running like children, all thoughts of betrayal and genetic manipulation vanished from his mind. --- The door barely had time to swish open before they were through it. Julian leapt through the air at Alexei, crashing into him and bringing him down onto the bed. They whooped in joy. Julian pressed his face down on Alexei's, kissing him, licking, nibbling all around his face. They kept kissing as Julian scrabbled with his fingers to remove Alexei's clothes. By and by, they were both nude. Julian kissed his way down Alexei's chest and abdomen, kneading and caressing with his hands. Eventually, he got to his lover's cock, already hard and jutting, waiting for him. Without hesitation, Julian took it in his mouth, licking and biting it gently, but with intense passionate vigor. Alexei started to moan, his body writhing under the doctor's skillful ministration. Suddenly Alexei pulled out. "Julian..." he panted, "I want to fuck you. Can I?" "Sure, love," got out the older man. "Anything for you." He started to turn over. "No," said Alexei. "Get on top of me. I want to see your face." Julian advanced on top of Alexei until his lover's cock was neatly aligned with his ass, then he abruptly pushed himself down on it. He gasped and tears sprang to his eyes as it entered him, lubricated with his own saliva. His face radiated his joy as he watched his lover approaching release. Then Alexei moaned once, long and low, and Julian felt his lover's seed enter him. Julian came as well onto Alexei's muscular chest. They lay there awhile, enjoying, until Julian rolled off of Alexei. He scooped up his semen from Alexei's abdomen with his hand and lifted it to his lover's lips. Alexei licked it off, smiled. "You taste as good as always, Julian," he whispered. "I love you, Alya," said Julian. The words may have been unoriginal, but they were still heartfelt. "I love you too, Julian." They were interrupted by another shudder. --- The Bajoran woman sat in her variety shop on the Promenade. She had just acquired a set of Earth Tarot cards and had laid them out in a pattern that was supposed to tell fortunes. She thought about the cards she saw, and looked down at them again. *Strange*, she thought, looking at the card representing the Present. *I could have sworn it was the Lovers.* It was Death. --- Alexei began to scream. Julian gaped, leapt up from the bed and grabbed a robe. "Medical emergency!" he yelled. "Two to beam directly to the infirmary!" His lover's hair fell away, his fine skin shrivelling into a white papery membrane. The scream was strangled and faded away. By the time they were beamed into the infirmary, Alexei was a corpse. And, judging from his appearance, had been for some months. --- Dax, Sisko, O'Brien, and Kira were discussing the results of the investigation of the baseball. "The spin of the atoms in the ball is out of phase with other objects," reported Dax. "If it were a whole 180 degrees out of phase the ball would be antimatter, but it's only two degrees out of phase. It looks as if it came from another universe." "The ball appeared at the same time the pulse occurred. Now it looks to me like the pulse is sending off small bubbles of unreality - or at least altered reality. These pockets randomly grab onto objects and swap their worldlines with their counterparts in another universe." "Worldline?" interrupted Kira. "The sequence of events the object has undergone. For instance, the ball in your office," -here Dax addressed Sisko - "may have had its past altered to another past where you took it with you." "Is the phenomenon dangerous?" asked Sisko. His question was answered dramatically when the station shuddered and Bashir's hysterical voice suddenly came over the comm. "Medical emergency! Two to beam directly to the infirmary!" O'Brien and Dax broke off at a run: he to the transporter console, she to the turbolift. --- When Dax arrived at the infirmary, what she saw appalled her. A three-month-dead naked corpse lay on the bio bed. Bashir didn't look much better. He was slumped over in his chair, wearing only a robe, completely silent and staring. Dax grabbed a medical tricorder and scanned the doctor. "Shock," she murmured to herself. "I shouldn't wonder." She turned the tricorder on the corpse. It - he, Alexei Tagenian - had indeed died three months ago. The cause of death was burns and shrapnel wounds, followed by explosive decompression. And he showed the same two-degree phase variance as the ball. Then it clicked. He had come to the station three months ago, pursued by the Maquis, riding a hot runabout. She had personally beamed him away to the infirmary. Except in this version, she hadn't. He had died when the Maquis blew the runabout to pieces three months ago. And Bashir had been there at the moment the pulse had hit. He'd seen his beautiful (Dax reminded herself) lover suddenly rot before his eyes. She walked to him. No wonder he was in shock. --- "What!" The senior staff was gathered around the table in the briefing room, including Bashir, who was looking drawn and haggard. *No surprise,* thought Kira. Sisko, by way of contrast, was looking straight at Dax in incredulity. "That's what happened, Captain. Alexei's worldline was replaced by one in which he didn't survive. So far, we've also had twenty-four separate reports of objects or phenomena that were similarly changed, ranging from a change in eye colour to the vanishing of Quark's entire stock of Romulan ale." Worf broke in. "Does this mean that at any moment, anything can be replaced? For example, I could be replaced by a timeline in which I never transferred to DS9?" "Or," Odo interjected grimly, "the station could have its past replaced by a timeline in which it was destroyed by the Cardassians, or the Dominion, or someone else. Powers know we've been in enough touch-and-go situations." Sisko was truly nonplussed. "How can we stop this phenomenon?" Dax was at a loss for words. Kira suggested, "Maybe we can ask the Prophets if they know what causes this phenomenon. It's coming from the Celestial Temple, isn't that right?" "Perhaps," Sisko said. "Dax, I know that a danger report is unlikely to be useful, but can you tell if the amount of changes increase as you get closer to the wormhole?" "No," Dax said. "I don't know that at all." Bashir, quietly, yet in a voice which showed the strain of the last forty-eight hours, said, "I'll go." "Are you sure, Doctor?" Sisko said. "You've been through a lot." Bashir looked straight at him. "I know. If this works and I can get things sorted out, it won't matter. I want this stopped before anyone else gets hurt." Once again, a shudder passed through the station, and a red alert siren went off. "Sisko to Ops. Status!" demanded Sisko. The baffled voice of the duty officer responded. "Sir, part of Upper Pylon Two just vanished!" "Casualties?" "None. The section was unoccupied." "Keep me informed. Sisko out." He turned to Bashir. "Dax, go with him. Take the Rio Grande. And for gods' sake be careful." The science officers left. Sisko's eyes followed them. *But how careful can they be...* --- The wormhole was usually a beautiful phenomenon, a shimmering blue-and-purple cloud which flashed into existence and opened, emitting yellow tendrils of coherent light. This time it was reddish and roiling, shooting random lightning streamers into the Denorios Belt, and looking more like a plasma storm than a Celestial Temple. Undaunted, the runabout swooped gracefully into the portal. When the wormhole closed behind the tiny ship, it looked as though it had been eaten by some gigantic beast. --- "The impulse engines are losing power," Dax reported. "This always happens when the aliens want to talk to you. I'm reading atmosphere and surface." "Good," said Bashir, abstracted. "Set down, then." The runabout came to rest on the impossible surface. The runabout hatch opened and Bashir walked out. The first thing he saw was a wash of softly glowing light - --- A rush of images. Incomprehensible words and noise. Julian saw Alexei rot, saw Alexei step out of the docking bay, saw Alexei at Starbase 173, about to leave, saw Alexei making love with him, saw him beaming into sickbay when Bashir had saved his life. White light. Heartbeat. Breathing. "Talk to me!" Bashir called. "What's happening to the wormhole?" Dax (not really Dax) looked up from her science console (not really a console). "Nothing is happening to the wormhole." "Then what is causing these changes?" "Changes... what are these?" demanded Sisko at the staff meeting. "Things have had their pasts replaced by different pasts," Bashir said, before realizing the problem he faced. "Yes, linear time..." said Quark, leaning over the bar. "We still do not fully understand it. We do not understand these changes... Were not all things as they are now?" "No!" said Bashir. "They were different. Alexei, my lover, was alive. He's dead now." Alexei lay on the bed. "Is it not in the nature of all things to die?" He rotted. "You don't understand. The changes the wormhole has caused - If it weren't for them, he would still be alive. We rescued him three months ago. But his past was changed so that we didn't save him. It's altering the path of time!" Ty Cobb hit a home run. The crowd roared. "Time has many paths. Why is the one you remember preferable to another?" Bashir spoke before he thought. "Because I'm with Alexei!" "Alexei -" "My lover." "Lover." Alexei looked up from his sickbed. "What is this?" *Oh, spirits help me,* thought Bashir. "The person I'm in love with - that I have a sexual desire for." He knew he was leaving 4 000 years worth of romance and subtlety, but it had to do. "The Sisko explained linear procreation to us," said Jennifer, looking up from her beach blanket. "You wish to continue your family with the Alexei." Julian hung his head. "I don't know yet. I want to know! If we stay in this timeline, with Alexei dead, I'll never know what could have happened! If we start a family, or marry, or what! I'm deprived of this chance if the timeline doesn't change back." "But you are not deprived of the Alexei," said Alexei, in Sickbay, "because you exist here," said Alexei, in the runabout, "and here," said Alexei, making love to him, "and here," said Alexei, at Starbase 173, "and here," said Alexei, in the turbolift. "But I am a linear creature, and even though I was with Alexei then, I am not anymore!" "The Sisko told us that it was not linear," said Jennifer on the Saratoga. "You exist with the Alexei." Julian's head spun, cleared. "But I am not with Alexei _as much as I want_. I love Alexei! I want to be with him as much as I can. Can't you reverse the changes to the time line?" Dax looked up from her console once more. "It is possible to reverse the changes of which you speak. But your linear existence may be terminated in the process." In agony, Julian yelled, "I don't care! If Alexei lives then it doesn't matter." Dax regarded him in shock. "But you will be unable to expand the existence you share with the Alexei." Julian wearily explained, "But it doesn't matter to me whether I live or not as long as Alexei does. That's the nature of my love for him. It's not only a sexual desire, although that's the beginning of it. It approaches the point where his life means as much to me as my own." The Starfleet chaplain quoted, "Greater love hath no man than this, that he give up his life for his friends." The photon torpedo casket was launched into space. "We still do not fully understand this - love," said Dax, "but we reverse the change of which you speak." White light. Heartbeat. Breathing. Bashir didn't know what had happened, whether it had changed or not. Then the light cleared - --- *I should be celebrating. I should be fucking celebrating!* Julian's lover was returning. The doctor was sitting in Quark's, brooding over his drink. Dark clouds would have hung over his head, he mused, if it had been an old comic book. He didn't know what Alexei thought of him. He had been on the news, of course. Or rather, his father had been on the news. Illegal genetic alteration. Up the river, as they say. Julian had made up a name for his former secret genetically enhanced persona: Jules Subatoj Singh. It seemed to fit, somehow. He continued to brood. Could Alexei still love him? Julian, the created man? He remembered the argument he had had with his father while he was on the station: "You're not my father. You're my architect." Could a man as sweet as Alexei love a building, a mass of DNA? Quark sidled in, silent as air. "Doctor, I hate to intrude," the Ferengi said, with the characteristic hissing note to his voice, "but you've been staring at that drink for over an hour. You're nursing that root beer like it's Santraginean stout. What's wrong?" Julian laughed bitterly. "I doubt it's anything you can help me with, Quark." "You'd be surprised," riposted the barkeep. "Let me guess: the love life. What's going on? You can tell your barkeep. That's what I'm here for." "He's coming back tomorrow." "Who... ah, yes. That Tagenian fellow. The Maquis." Julian slammed his fist onto the bar and regarded the Ferengi in a fury. "Look, Quark -" Quark promptly assumed Ferengi cringe number five. "-And a very nice boy, too, no doubt. I can certainly see why you like him." As promptly as it had risen, Julian's anger had passed. "He's coming back tomorrow, like I said. He's probably seen it all in the news. I'm a disgrace. It'll be a fine enough thing if he looks at me." "Nonsense!" said Quark, all obsequy and cheer. "Why, if I were him, it wouldn't matter to me at all." Quark as Alexei was not an image that Julian cared to dwell on. "Well," said Julian, "I have to go straighten my quarters." He stood up. "Thanks for the chat, Quark," he said, only mildly sarcastically. Then he walked out. Quark stood looking after him, then collected the glass Julian had left behind. He was about to put it on his tray, when something caught his eye. He examined the glass more carefully. It was root beer, just like Bashir had ordered, albeit somewhat flat after the doctor's prolonged brooding. *Naah,* thought Quark, and dismissed the stray thought from his mind. --- ....without hesitation, Julian took his lover's cock in his mouth, licking and biting it gently, but with intense passionate vigor. Alexei started to moan, his body writhing under the doctor's skillful ministration. Suddenly Alexei pulled out. "Julian..." he panted, "I want to fuck you. Can I?" "Sure, love," got out the older man. "Anything for you." He started to turn over. "No," said Alexei. "Get on top of me. I want to see your face." Julian advanced on top of Alexei until his lover's cock was neatly aligned with his ass, then he abruptly pushed himself down on it. He gasped and tears sprang to his eyes as it entered him, lubricated with his own saliva. His face radiated his joy as he watched his lover approaching release. Then Alexei moaned once, long and low, and Julian felt his lover's seed enter him. Julian came as well onto Alexei's muscular chest. They lay there awhile, enjoying, until Julian rolled off of Alexei. He scooped up his semen from Alexei's abdomen with his hand and lifted it to his lover's lips. Alexei licked it off, smiled. "You taste as good as always, Julian," he whispered. "I love you, Alya," said Julian. The words may have been unoriginal, but they were still heartfelt. "I love you too, Julian." They kissed again, and continued to kiss and lie together, enjoying the moment, and letting time slip by... --- The End