The rooms that had once served as Bashir's quarters had changed very little from the time when he had still been in Starfleet. But they felt so much emptier. Sterile. As though they had been carved away at the centre - and just as surely stripped of all that had ever been personal to him.

But not quite all, perhaps. Still gazing around, he grunted softly as he eased himself into the chair, and rested one hand against the exterior of his travel bag. Much of the weight was its own, with the little that he had been able to carry with him. A change of civvies, another for the night, and a padd for some of the data he'd originally intended to seek. But everything he held there was his own, and at least there was comfort in knowing that Kukalaka was still tucked somewhere beneath the rough, utilitarian fabric.

"So, is it good to be back?"

These quarters don't even feel like mine any more. He was more like a visitor to an unfamiliar room, glancing for the very first time at surrounding colours he had once seen every day. With one hand gripping the back of the seat, and his elbow on the table, he turned to find the major still watched him from a few steps away. Her voice was soft, fringed with a trace of a gentle smile - and Julian wondered that she had managed not to sound as uncertain as several others had done. On the Destiny, on Captain Sisko's ship. Only moments earlier, at the airlock.

"It's been a while," he confessed.

He had not spoken to so many of his former colleagues since he'd stood on the lower of two platforms, waiting for enough of the crowd to pass him by. It had been a fine day on Bajor, enough for the fabric of his clothes to absorb some natural heat. The crowd was not taking a long time to thin, and then his time would come to take his own place on the narrow ramp leading up to the entry hatch.

A peculiar thing, that Kira's had been the last face he had seen from his old life - before boarding the shuttle and continuing what there was of the new. "Stay in touch," she had told him, shaking his hand. He remembered that he had nodded, returned her smile, but wanted nothing more than to leave her behind.

A moment of silence passed between them, until Nerys stepped back and lifted both hands to indicate the entire length and breadth of Bashir's quarters. "I should probably leave you to get settled."

"Thank you."

She glanced once over her shoulder a moment before she reached the exit, hesitant to step through. "If there's anything you need…"

"You'll be first to know." Julian smiled. As the door slid open, and closed again, there was only one occupant remaining in the rooms.

The past haunted every corner, incorporeal images rising in his memory, and fading back to the same long shadows before he could capture anything beyond a weak afterimage. But you were the one who wanted to be alone. As his gaze panned around the now empty quarters, he squirmed along with the twisting of his belly. Almost automatically, he reached into the travel bag, and wrapped one hand beneath Kukalaka's furry arms.

The bear was looking a little worn, some of his seams coming apart where the thread had begun to unravel. Again. "Don't worry." Positioning Kukalaka on the table, Julian paused as he looked down at his dark brown face. This operation would require some additional equipment. Just some thread and a thin metal needle. He patted the bear's soft fur, swearing as he always had that he would fall to pieces before he would allow it to happen to his first ever patient. But then he snickered. "The doctor will be with you shortly."

He stumbled on the first step, bracing himself with both hands against the back of the chair. With the distant blackness beyond the view port even sharper against the textured orange slope below, he noticed that his pulse had intensified - now so fast and strong that he could sense it throbbing beneath his skin. Breathing deeply and deliberately, he closed his eyes and gripped the support so tightly that his hands began to ache. When, he wondered, had the familiar blackness between each blinking star left him feeling so vulnerable and exposed?

"Back soon," he promised the recumbent teddy bear. But the distant window watched him steadily, already demanding the attention of his anxious gaze.

Lifting his hands from the furniture, Julian recoiled, and stared for a moment at the reverse imprint it had left against his palms. It had always been that way, always open as though something was watching from outside. He had imagined the same unfeeling observers, many days after his last return from the Gamma Quadrant. But even this, he had managed somehow to forget. Until now. Feeling his heart jump in his chest, he retreated from the staring, open eye.

"Sisko," he exclaimed unexpectedly - and intently enough to startle even himself. He was breathing far too rapidly, already lightheaded, heart thundering as he backed against the wall. The blood prickled beneath the surface of his skin, where he furiously rubbed his face with the back of one hand. One man drowning, dwarfed by the vastness of the universe. But the idea remained, sharp and overwhelming. He had to speak to the captain.

Julian paused for a deep, steadying breath, cleared his throat, and knitted the fingers of both hands together before he glanced in turn at Captain Sisko and Doctor Hayes. They were alone in the wardroom, seated on the array of furniture at the far end. Away from the long, glaring light of the conference table. But I was scared. He felt the fear even now as though it were a shadow at his back. The whole time. So scared. He had to focus, to dig past the surface layer of his memory and find those moments that had drifted away, sinking downward through the murkier regions of his mind.

"Captain," he began, and coughed again to re-establish some semblance of a voice.

Hayes sat at a distance, but the doctor's gaze was like a spear, constantly prodding against the younger man's back. It had been one of the conditions imposed on their meeting. He would have to be there, to be sure that Julian did not become too stressed.

And what exactly does that mean? Resisting a second glance to Hayes' staring blue-grey eyes. Bashir was no longer sure that he could have come up with a definite answer.

"It's all right, Julian." Leaning forward slightly, hands locked together atop his knees, Sisko held Bashir's attention with his own steady, even gaze.

And Bashir nodded. "I know that, Sir."

Everything he had to say had seemed so clear a moment ago - on leaving the privacy of his quarters behind him. They had seemed even clearer in the minutes before - when silence and solitude had brought all the nagging worries back into his mind. But now, in the larger single room, all words swirled shapelessly inside him. Perhaps this had all been a bad idea. Just as he'd suspected all along. He looked at Sisko with wide, pleading eyes.

"I've read the report from Commander T'Parn." The captain seemed to sense Bashir's unease - fuelled as it was by a burning need for clarity.

Sisko remained entirely tacit as he stroked a corner of his thin, dark moustache. The conflict in his eyes, the sharpened attention, was clear to see - even had nobody been looking directly his way. "There was more," confirmed Bashir, longing to break the heavy silence. "I'm surprised that Starfleet hasn't already been pressing us for information."

"They have," Sisko responded, calm as a lake on a windless day.

"But just to tell it all to you, and if I don't talk to Starfleet Intelligence directly… Are you certain that's likely to be enough?"

Sisko leaned back, again, continuing to stroke the stubble around his chin. "It ought to be," he concluded finally. He had been the one to propose this compromise, the suggestion that to meet with someone familiar might prove easier than a debriefing session with some long distant stranger.

"Then you probably should know." Bashir also punctuated his reply with an unintentional glance at the doctor at his left. But this was too important. He couldn't start to hold back now. "When he… Deyos, that is. When he first took us off the Ragnarok, and before we reached the Velos system… He was particularly keen to find out about you."

"Deyos?"

Bashir blinked, now suddenly, intently focused on the captain's eyes. Of course - there was a very good chance that he had been first to mention the Vorta by name. He had seen that smug, pale face so many times already, scarcely even able to close his eyes without that same vision filling his view. But it was clearer still at the depths of his dreams. "Yes… yes, Sir," he responded with some brief surprise.

"Wasn't that the name of the Vorta you told us about?" Sisko narrowed his eyes. "The one at that prison camp…?"

"Three Seven One." Few other numbers had ever been trapped so inextricably in his memory. He raised a hand to stop Hayes from intervening, but concealed it just as quickly. The tremor had not been so clearly visible - but he certainly felt it. Just as he felt the ground seemed to shift and tilt beneath his feet. "No," he gasped. "We have to do this now."

"Are you sure?" asked Sisko.

Swallowing hard. Bashir nodded and forced himself to look into the captain's eyes. "We may not get another chance."

For a moment, a troubled query passed across Sisko's hairless brow. A tightening of his skin, which might otherwise have been entirely missed. But whatever his doubts, no more were spoken aloud.

"What if you were to write everything down?" he asked instead. "As you remember it. Would that be easier?"

"Possibly, Sir. But…"

"But…?" Sisko encouraged him.

"I don't know that it would make a lot of difference in this war." Julian could hear his own voice rising. "The thing is, Captain - I don't know how much I can tell you. I can be as honest as any other man, but that wouldn't matter. There's just too much I still don't know. But every now and then, I remember something. And I think, perhaps it's real, but then it might not be. And even then I can't be certain. What use would that be to…?"

Everyone had been asking so many questions - then as much as now. "I wish I could say I'd forgotten what they wanted to know," continued Bashir, shaking his head in quiet despair. "I know that we decided not to put a lot of what we learnt on the station's computer, especially with something as dangerous as the Harvesters. It was just as we promised. But--" He chuckled bitterly, tapping a finger against the side of his own skull. "It's one of the 'advantages' of genetic enhancement. Something you might not know, perhaps. I remember everything. And if anyone has managed to get even half of this information from me, that's frightening. For the Dominion…"

"Julian," his captain cut in. He had kept his voice smooth and calm. "Slow down. You don't have to rush. There's plenty of time."

No. There isn't.

"All right…" Sisko proposed, after a long and thoughtful pause. "What if you could share some of this data with Starfleet as well? I'll have Chief O'Brien set down some of the information he knows as well. It would help us to discover exactly what we're fighting against if anything comes of all of this."

"We might be better prepared… As long as we kept it top secret." Bashir hesitated. It went against all that he was, all that he had sworn to protect. But then he nodded. "I can start right away."

"No," insisted Captain Sisko, as he glanced once at his latest CMO. "Not all at once. And don't try and tell me that everything's fine. You're not - and I can see it from here."

"I heard--" He swallowed hard, speaking in a voice that was closer to a hoarsely whispered breath. "I heard that you were under orders not to come after me."

As quickly as he could, he interrupted Doctor Hayes' oncoming response. "Miles told me," he explained. "Is… Is it true?"

Hayes paused, but nodded reluctantly. "Yes," he admitted. Not without a trace of resignation in his voice.

"I just wanted to say, it's… It's all right." Bashir took a deep breath. But he had to tell them, even if it really was too late. He could not let this man - or any others - feel such shame on his account. "I understand."

"Julian."

He stopped and turned back at the sound of his name. The corridor beyond the wardroom was even darker than many other parts of the station, a cast of near-black casting deep shadows as Hayes came closer. He knew the question before the older man had a chance to ask.

"No." Bitterness stung his eyes like acid. "Not this time, Nathan. No more tests. I've lost count of the number of times I've been scanned and prodded in the past few days, and honestly I can't see what difference it would make."

Hayes ran a hand despairingly over his face. "I can't accept that," he insisted. "You've been in my position, Julian. I don't think I have to tell you how it is, but my hands are tied without some way to find out what's going on."

"Then there's nothing you can do." Julian was almost certain that Hayes had detected tiredness in his voice. He could hear it himself, clear as if it had been amplified inside his head.

Perhaps there may have been more for him to say. Certainly, the thoughts were there - bubbling upwards, to be trapped behind the still unyielding silence. Bashir shook his head. The weight across his shoulders was growing painful. Seeing the older man's mouth open, he interrupted before the anticipated protest.

"I have to go…"

"You know, I could have you confined," Hayes called after him.

As Julian turned to look over his shoulder, the ferocious internal storm was cast from his eyes - as a mounting charge on a hot day would cast lightening through the raging upper atmosphere of any planet. Their gazes locked. Nathan's eyes were bereft of energy, but he said nothing more as the fire of Bashir's reaction drained away to nothing more than dead, brittle embers. Not at this price.

"No," he whispered. "I'm happy to help the captain. That's enough."