"Well, f***," muttered a voice that O'Brien remembered from the field. "I need help here."

"What happened?"

Hurried footsteps.

"What do you nee—wholly sh*t."

Paralyzed silence. Then, "Miles!"

O'Brien opened his eyes and was relieved to see the owners of the voices standing real and tangible, more than the false promises of feverish dreams.

They looked back at him. Dazed. Unable to traverse the disconnect between what should be and what was.

"Help."

That one word out of O'Brien was enough to shake the doctors from their stupor. They whispered to each other for a moment, then split up, three of them departing to care for other patients and two approaching O'Brien.

"They did this to you last night?" One man asked softly. O'Brien offered a tiny nod of his restrained head but no verbal response—too much talking and the overseer might take his physicians away. The doctor dragged a dismayed hand through his hair and exhaled.

They exchanged no more words as he and his partner undid the grim mechanisms that held O'Brien's bindings taught. Release. O'Brien stretched deeply; the role of his shoulders produced a grinding crack as his long-static bones slid past each other.

One of the doctors helped O'Brien to his feet, gave him a pair of crutches, and led him to a closet where they stored extra sheets and a few hospital gowns.

The physician turned his back to O'Brien, affording him some privacy while he stripped away his wet layers and tied his gown. O'Brien found himself oddly surprised by the gesture, confused by even the most basic acknowledgment of his decrepit dignity.

The doctor then guided O'Brien to a fresh, dry cot where he collapsed and nestled against the clean sheets, desperate to generate a little warmth.

After stepping away to collect some equipment, the doctor returned, ready to dress O'Brien's burn. Following a gentle rinse, an antibiotic ointment, a soothing cream that dulled the pulsing sting in O'Brien's cheek, and a neat layer of taped gauze, the engineer looked and felt quite a bit better.

He slept for most of that day. Now and then, a doctor would brush against him with a sympathetic smile or a comforting pat on the shoulder. After observing O'Brien attempt to relieve the tension in his neck by rolling his head from this side to the other, one doctor actually messaged him, rubbing firmly into the tangles of his muscles. Somewhere between his consciousness and unconsciousness, the final shift ended and O'Brien was left alone. When he woke and discovered that the doctors had left, he gulped against the fear in his chest and fought a sudden urge to cry. Could he do anything to ensure safety from such nightmares as he'd experienced less than 24 hours ago? O'Brien scrounged for options but discovered none. He could only wait and hope desperately that his Cardassian tormenter would rather sleep than make a midnight trip to the infirmary.

So O'Brien lay awake and alert. Once he thought he heard footsteps in the hallway. The beat of his heart throttled loud and fast in his neck and ears, but nobody came in, and his panicked arteries dipped back to their regular pressure.

After three hours or so, O'Brien's exhaustion began to overtake his fear. He closed his eyes and almost slept, but he was still conscious enough that the creak of a door or the thump of a footfall would spark him rigid.

When the Cardassian did arrive, O'Brien was grateful that the suspense, at least, had ended. He made no facade of mental or physical preparation for the ordeal to come. Nothing, O'Brien knew, could prepare him to tolerate whatever pain encroached. But he would survive. Even if some part of him would rather not.

He didn't resist when the cardassian strapped him to the bed. He lay limp and thought of home but the image of DS9 in his mind hurt like a cavity, so he shifted his attention to the sound of his breathing. The torturer held the brand over him. The engineer's eyes watered against his will, and a hollow ache inflated below his heart.

Then something new happened.

He heard a noise. A bang. A distant echoing explosion. The cardassian turned to face the sound. Shouts rose like dust from a fallen building, and something delicate cowered in the dim corners of O'Brien's mind. The torturer cast the brand aside, which soothed the anxious rush of his victim's blood. The thing in O'Brien's mind grew slightly, venturing into the light. The yells came closer and louder. The torturer called to the overseer. A voice came through on one of their com badges. "Help!" Static extinguished any discernible language. Both cardassians armed their phasers and hurried from the room. Silence. The thing stood centered in O'Brien's head: Hope. Desperate hope.

Another explosion. Closer. Yelling again. Phaser fire. A metallic cacophony as doors slammed and bodies crashed and cages were ripped at the hinges. A second explosion pounded through the air, vibrations loosening rumble from the concrete ceiling. Then, "Find O'Brien!"

At least that's what he thought he heard.

But that would be impossible... surely. "Take the right hall." The voices were close though the sounds of battle continued at some distance. A small group must have slipped through the turmoil.

"We'll check this way."

He refused to admit to himself that he recognized that voice.

Jogging steps approached. Without thinking, O'Brien screamed. "I'm here!" His cry wrenched the other prisoners from their stunned listening. Together they yelled "We're here! Help! Please help!" No one could be sure he wasn't dreaming.

The steps were impossibly close now. O'Brien worried, for a moment, that he'd wake up. A team of two humans and one Klingon burst into the room. "Bashir!?"

"O'Brien!"

The sound of his name so close and so sure brimmed O'Brien's eyes with frantic, yearning tears. "I'm. I'm here. I'm here." He couldn't stop shouting. "I'm here! I'm here!"

"Miles!"

Again that impossible voice.

"Julian! Julian! Julian!"

O'Brien didn't stop until he felt a hand seize his arm. "Julian."

"Miles, I'm here."

Julian's hand found O'Brien's and squeezed. "I'm here."

Miles teetered at the edge of hysterics.

Bashir split O'Brien's bindings with a bolt cutter. "We're getting you out of here."

"The others?"

"Jadzia and Worf will take care of them. Can you stand?"

O'Brien was about to say yes because before remembering that his leg was broken. "No, I." He realized that he didn't want to explain any further.

"What is it?"

"My leg is broken."

Bashir's eyes glowed momentarily hot and horrified, but a breath later he'd gathered himself, focusing again on the task at hand.

"All right. I'll carry you."

Julian gave the engineer no time to respond before lifting him off the bed.

The left wing of the prison, usually stocked with cardassians, was desolate, its regular occupants engaged elsewhere. Bashir made easy work of the one hundred and twenty eight stairs required to reach the outside world where night hung dark but warm. A runabout was waiting for them. Bashir loaded O'Brien into the passenger seat and commanded the computer to engage the flight sequence. O'Brien registered the gentle thrum of a healthy engine. Liftoff.

For three minutes, neither man spoke. Both were, perhaps, shocked, still processing the whirlwind rescue and waiting to discover some overlooked stroke of disaster. But no chaos came. The little ship sped away until Cardassia was like a marble half submerged in a dark liquid. Their tiny craft was too far away to be detected by the shrinking planet. Nothing pursued them.

They were safe.

"Miles." Bashir broke the silence and put the shuttle into autopilot. The doctor lifted O'Brien from his chair and carried him to a single person sick bay set up in the back of the craft. "Here we are." Bashir laid him carefully on the cushioned operation table. The two made quiet eye contact, Bashir's eyes asking while O'Brien's refused to tell.

"So they broke your leg."

Exhale. "Yes."

The doctor unraveled, a distressed ramble replacing his steady tenor. "I'm so sorry. I should've been there sooner. I should have kept—"

"Julian. Stop."

Bashir hesitated a moment but closed his mouth.

"You did everything you could. And you saved me."

Julian looked away from the engineer, hiding whatever emotion seized his features and refusing to accept the reassurance.

"Miles," he said, and O'Brien could tell he was thinking carefully. "What happened to your face?"

The question surprised O'Brien.

"Nothing really. It's just a scrape." He lied with natural, almost reflexive fluidity.

"Miles."

O'Brien looked at the doctor, willing his features to adopt an oblivious innocence.

"You know I'm going to check for myself. Please tell me."

O'Brien shook his head, not unwilling, but suddenly unable to conjure the words and pry them from his tongue.

Concern creased the skin between Bashir's eyebrows. O'Brien watched as his own pain diffused into the doctor's eyes. He smiled with closed lips, wrapped graceful fingers around O'Brien's forearm, and nodded, understanding what the engineer couldn't say. Carefully, Bashir began to remove the gauze taped to engineer's cheek. With the seal of the bandage broken, O'Brien could feel cool air rush over his sticky wound.

Bashir didn't gasp upon seeing O'Brien's face. He wasn't surprised. He had known that his fragmented solace would die and sink to the bottom of his chest. So he stood, appalled in the manner of a man who had hoped his predictions would prove false.

"Miles."

O'Brien drew a shuddering breath. "I'm sorry, Julian."

"Miles," Julian dropped to his knees so he was eye-level with the engineer, "what are you apologizing for? Don't apologize to me! I'm sorry. I—" The anger that fueled his tone transformed into something denser and more miserable. Bashir's voice weakened. "I failed."

It was O'Brien's turn for indignation. "You didn't fail."

Bashir shook his head.

"Julian! I'm alive. And if it weren't for you I'd still be stuck in that hell hole getting my…face burned, and my bones. Broken. You got me out. And I'm going to be fine because you're my doctor. And that's what matters, right?" He was telling Julian. He was telling himself.

Bashir detected the doubt in his friend's voice. Keep it together for him, Julian, he berated himself.

"That's right, Miles. You're right."

"Good. Now…shut up and fix me."

Humor. A chuckle cut through the swollen tightness that lingered in Bashir's throat, and an exhale that might have been spent on tears was, instead, devoted to laughter.

"Right away."

Bashir started by placing an IV in O'Brien's left arm. "Painkillers for you."

"Marvelous."

Carefully, Bashir removed O'Brien's cast. Whoever set O'Brien's leg had done a decent job, but osteofusison would be quicker and less painful than any splint. Bashir flinched to see the bruising and swelling that patterned O'Brien's shin, but he didn't say anything. Now wasn't the time. After delivering an anesthetic to the leg, Bashir made an incision in O'Brien's flesh from the base of his knee to the top of his ankle. The doctor proceeded to locate and fuse the crack in his friend's tibia. He finished by smoothing the fresh bone, modeling it into shape, and sealing the skin with a dermal regenerator. From there, Bashir moved onto O'Brien's burns, which he cleaned and closed with a special setting on the dermal regenerator. The cuts across the bridge of O'Brien's nose received similar treatment. Bashir also discovered a broken rib, which he fused and iced.

"Now," Bashir began to speak as he finished patching up the skin that covered O'Brien's rib cage, "we've got to do something about your hair."

O'Brien almost chuckled. He hadn't considered it a priority, but he couldn't dispute the mess that his hair had grown into. It's tangled curls retained the sweat and blood he'd lost. It's length and volume had surpassed both comfortable and fashionable levels.

"Please," said O'Brien, "anything you come up with has to be better than the way it is now."

So Bashir set to work. He placed O'Brien's head over a portable basin and ran the water until is was pleasantly warm. Transparent soap turned brown and opaque as it mixed with grime and pulled dead skin from O'Brien's scalp. The water flowed with solid pressure, rinsing away the foul mixture until it ran clear, and O'Brien's hair looked about three shades lighter. Bashir proceeded to message conditioner down into the roots of the engineer's locks. O'Brien said, "I thought you already washed my hair?"

Bashir explained that yes he had completed the shampooing stage, but now it was time for conditioner.

O'Brien thought for a moment. "Conditioner. You mean that white creamy stuff my wife uses?"

To which Bashir responded, "Wow."

Once his hair was dry, Bashir got to cutting it. He proved a proficient barber and within half an hour, O'Brien sat neatly trimmed and freshly shaven. (Of course Miles had insisted that he was capable of shaving himself, but Bashir made up some medical reason for him keep still, so, a little uncomfortable with the proximity of his face and the doctor's fingers, O'Brien let Bashir cut away the stubble that had appeared along his jaw in prison.)

The engineer looked impossibly better now that he'd been healed and groomed, but Bashir still had work to do.

The engineer needed food. His skin hung from a body that had begun digesting itself. Not so long ago (but also interminably long ago) he'd had an athlete's physique. His hours in prison trimmed his frame and sculpted his muscles. That stage didn't last long. As the weeks continued, his body consumed energy it didn't have until he'd grown decisively too thin. His muscle turned to fuel, so he was skinny without being lean. Another day. Athleticism morphed into emaciation.

In total, O'Brien had spent 187 days in that prison. Six months. Too long.

They must have starved him terribly, Bashir thought, there's no other way for somebody to lose so much weight in half a year.

The doctor tried to prevent his mind from calculating O'Brien's approximate calorie deficit, but he couldn't fight the math flashing through his head anymore than he could fight his instinct to breathe.

"When did you last eat?" Bashir asked the engineer.

"They actually fed me pretty well in the infirmary. I ate twice yesterday. And the day before."

So in cardassian prison being fed "well" meant eating more than once a day for two consecutive days. Pity and anger rose again in the doctor.

"What did they feed you?"

O'Brien paused. "I—I'm not exactly sure."

Bashir raised an inquisitive eyebrow, prompting O'Brien to continue.

"I guess some kind of nutrient supplement thing…? They were like…" O'Brien searched for the word. "You know, the uh—emergency rations. But not sweetened."

"…Nothing else?"

"…No."

Bashir gagged over the idea of subsisting on nothing but emergency rations for six months.

"I'm sorry I can't give you any decent food yet. You've been starved enough that I worry a proper meal might spike your insulin. A few more hours of intravenous nutrition and a good night's sleep. Then we'll go about getting you some solid food, OK?"

"Sounds good."

The doctor wanted to do better. Somehow, to make something better.

"Are you…comfortable?"

"Julian," O'Brien's eyes connected securely to Bashir's, "I'm more comfortable than I thought possible."

Bashir offered a quiet, slightly strained smile and nodded at the ground. "All right." The doctor cleared his throat. "Can I get you anything?"

"No, Julian, I'm fine."

Bashir laughed. "You, my friend, are /not/. C'mon now. Give me something to do."

O'Brien opened and closed his mouth. "I—" a sheepish look. "Could you just stay?"

"Stay?"

"I'm sorry — I — you have work to do—"

"No. Miles, Miles. I'll stay. I'm happy to stay. I'd. Love to stay. As long as you want me here."

Relief smoothed the jagged bits of O'Brien's expression. "Thank you."

"Of course."

They sat together without speaking, Bashir reclined with his eyes closed in a commodious black chair beside O'Brien's cot. A few minutes passed. The silence expanded into a soft, comfortable place.

"You know," O'Brien's voice surprised the resting doctor, "I was..." He hesitated

"What is it?"

O'Brien looked panicked…no—embarrassed. "Miles, you all right?"

"Yeah— I'm sorry. I was just thinking how…good…it feels. To hear somebody else's breathing." A beat. "Or. you know, I mean— it's good to be around other people," he added hurriedly.

The contents of Bashir's chest unraveled a little. He blinked twice. "You've been alone for a long time."

O'Brien bobbed his head, his eyes trained on the ceiling. "Yeah."

"If you ever want to talk about it just. You can."

"Thanks, Julian."

"You're a hero you know."

"Oh please."

"You are."

"It could have been any one of in that cell, Julian. I was just doing my job."

"…a heroic job."

O'Brien went quiet.

"Miles," Julian continued, "you defended the Federation. You…you were not spared any pain. So don't you dare deny yourself any of the gratitude, aid, and respect the Federation offers you."

"…Why—"

Bashir sighed. "Because cardassians know how to strip a man of his dignity. And you listened to their taunts for six. months." Bashir looked away, shaking his head. "Six months…I imagine" he returned his gaze to the engineer. "I imagine it's been a while since you heard anything good about yourself, or anything true."

Bashir hadn't expected O'Brien to start crying. But he did. Some piece of steel, carefully welded, split in two, and everything bound up in O'Brien's abused mind flooded forth.

"Thank you, Julian," he sobbed.

The doctor stood from his chair and crouched beside the engineer, a protective hand guarding O'Brien's shaking shoulders.

"They— I— I /deserved/ it," Miles spat through his tears. "'A real Federation officer wouldn't have been caught! A real officer wouldn't be…wouldn't be screaming. A good officer wouldn't weep from an empty stomach!' That's what they said." A tortured grin, damp and shining. "Pathetic. They called me pathetic. They /made/ me pathetic. They— 'All right prisoner, I'm giving you another chance to maintain your composure. Let's see if you /cry/ this time, or maybe you've finally learned to be man.' I didn't…I never. Learned." He choked over nothing. "I never learned!"

Bashir's irises dilated and glinted. "You're a man, Miles O'Brien. A good man. And a fine officer. You cannot judge yourself for…for showing signs of pain. You're human, Miles!" Bashir softened his tone. "You're human, my friend. And they /torturered/ you. What you asked of yourself— what the cardassians /forced/ you to ask of yourself— it's impossible." Bashir exhaled. "You've done /nothing/ wrong," the doctor's voice fell fierce and low. "/Nothing./" He stroked the side of O'Brien's head, holding his friend safe and close so the engineer could hear the easy rhythm of his breathing."

O'Brien's sobs turned to shuddering gasps, then finally rhythmic breaths, deep and slow and even.

"How about some water?" Bashir offered.

No reply.

"Miles?"

The engineer was asleep. Bahsir smiled approvingly. Good. Careful to keep from waking the engineer, Bashir removed himself from the room. He'd return after completing a brief mid-flight inspection of his run-about.

"Hello, Doctor." Garak had accompanied Julian on the rescue mission as an expert in the general schematics of cardassian prisons. He was also in charge of monitoring the ship while the doctor was otherwise occupied.

"Hello, Garak." Julian managed a tight-lipped smile.

"How's the chief?"

Bashir swallowed. "How would you be after six months in cardassian prison?"

Garak offered a nod in concession, his brows raised above a knowing frown. "That's about what I expected."

"Yeah."

A beat.

"He will…live though…?"

"Yes." Bashir was pleased with the concern in the cardassians's tone. "Yes. Of course. He's recovering well. Physically anyway."

"That's good to hear." Then "You know you have a brave friend."

Bashir looked up from the route consul he was studying. "I certainly do."

"Very brave."

"…what are you getting at, Garak?"

"Well, surely you've seen the footage? I imagine it would be medically relevant."

"What footage."

"The footage of the Chief. In prison. Cardassians often record their interactions with their prisoners for, I guess you might call it research. Albeit grim research." Garak waved his hand "Regardless. The Federation discovered the recordings in their raid, and they've forwarded along O'Brien's files."

"And you watched them?"

"Well not all of them. I'm not /that/ sick. But I saw enough to testify to the Chief's constitution. Honestly, I didn't realize our mild-mannered engineer had that sort of courage in him. Very few last as long as he did." Garak mused.

"And, as a simple tailor, you know so much about the torture of war prisoners because…"

"Ah, well I may be a tailor, but I'm still a cardassian," Garak grinned. "We learn these things in primary school."

Bashir chuckled. "Right, of course. My mistake."

"Doctor," Garak's voice lost its sprightly lilt, adopting instead a seriousness rare in the cardassian's demeanor. "Do look after him. He's…he's been through worse than most." Garak began to turn for the door. He paused. "And tell him, if you think it's appropriate, that I believe he behaved admirably…Well— admirably /and/ brashly. You humans and your foolish pride. But I suppose that's just the Federation way."

Bashir nodded slowly. He looked at nothing. "I suppose it is."

The cardassian stepped two centimeters closer to the doctor, drawing his gaze, and offering one of those uncommon, genuinely compassionate expression that never quite looked natural on his coy face. "He's a fighter. You know that better than anyone. He'll get though this."

"…Yeah." A rapid bob of his head. Solemn but appreciate eye contact as the doctor tried to convince himself that, for once, Garak spoke the truth. "I'm going to check on him."