Nightlife of the Gods

by G.Dunbar

Salvation a la mode. Lies, love, blood, mud, and mutants...2nd book in a series

7. Default Chapter Title

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Keiko didn't get the point. She got it, but she didn't get it even though had she gotten it she would have been the one who came out on top. The one who was right in the eternal battle of the sexes that O'Brien couldn't win even when he willingly lost, and he couldn't believe it. He sat in the Defiant's commissary with his hands folded in front of him trying to figure it out. His hurry-up bite of dinner before beginning the countdown to getting out of there growing cold in front of him.

"Commander Dax's immunization requirements are current to the evacuation from the station at the time of Gul Dukat's attack." Worf's large, weighty frame slouched next to him, his mood and face displaying his deep feelings of dissatisfaction with life at large.

O'Brien looked at him. "What'd he do? Hit her with a booster on the way through the airlock? What are you talking about? Come off it. She's going to the outer colonies,

her immunization record is six months too old. Half of us are out-of-date. Kira. Nog. Rom," he indicated Rom sitting to his left at the table, across from Worf.

"Um, yup," Rom nodded, "six months."

"And he's not even going," O'Brien assured. "He's just coming in contact. But, hey, sorry. Those are the rules."

"Yup," Rom nodded. "That's the rules."

Worf huffed. "Commander Dax and Major Kira have just returned from the Bajoran outer colonies."

"It wasn't planned!" O'Brien insisted. "Look," his hand clamped down on Worf's arm. "I told you. Face facts. There's nothing esoteric about it."

"Nope," Rom shook his head. "Isn't. Told Leeta the same thing. But…um, she doesn't want to listen. Just doesn't."

"Do they ever?" O'Brien agreed. "I'm talking for forty minutes. I'm telling Keiko I can see where she's been right, and I've been wrong. I realize, wait a minute, this is the same thing. It's identical to what's been going on between her and me. How come I can see this when it's Worf, but I can't see it when it's sitting in front of my own face? In my own damn home? When it's my wife?"

"Um…" Rom's face puckered in an innocent frown. "I don't know. Why can't you?"

"Because I can't," O'Brien scoffed. "I can't, but now I can, and the honeymoon is over. Try explaining that to a Klingon; you can't."

"Nope," Rom shook his head in agreement, "not possible."

"But short and sweet that's exactly what it is," O'Brien assured. "The honeymoon is over. It's changed, different -- and it's supposed to be. "That's the deal. It's supposed to be. Growth, change, moving on, the whole nine yards. You're supposed to get bigger, better."

Worf huffed. "I am content."

"Which is the problem," O'Brien's hand caught Rom's shoulder in encouragement. "Tell him. Marriage isn't a dead end, it's a new beginning. That is the way it is. I can see this. I know exactly what he's doing and where he's going wrong. But can I see this with myself? No. That's my point. Because I should be able to. If I can see it with Worf, I should be able to see it with me. Right or wrong?"

"Um…" Rom blinked at Worf. "I don't know. What are you doing?"

"He doesn't know," O'Brien waved. "No more than I know. He's doing what I do; making it worse. What should have been over in two hours is going on two weeks."

Worf huffed. "I am not in favor of discussing this."

"He's married," O'Brien insisted. "You think Leeta's never walked off in the year they've been married?"

"Yup," Rom assured. "Today. Walked off today. This…um…this afternoon I think it was. Lunch. Said 'I'm going'. Yes, that's what she said. You and Julian are jerks and I'm going."

"Exactly," O'Brien nodded. "That's exactly what happened. Dax got mad and walked out. So, what do I do? I mean when Keiko walks out?"

"Um…" Rom said. "I don't know. What do you do?"

"Maybe not out," O'Brien agreed, "but away. I tried to explain that to him. She didn't walk out, she walked away. The only reason she walked out was because you were aboard the Defiant and she didn't have enough room to walk away. Were you on the station she would have walked off into the bedroom, into the kitchen -- "

"Nope," Rom shook his head. "Out. Walked out. Bam. Out the door."

"Whatever," O'Brien said. "Out, off, away; she walked. That's what she did, she walked. So, what do I do?"

"Um…" Rom said. "I don't know. What do you do?"

"I follow her. 'Is it over yet?' That's what I do. I want it to be over so bad I make it worse. I hound her. If I don't follow her, I definitely hound her. I ask. I pout. I whine. I huff, I puff -- I mean, put Worf in there, not me. But I think you know what I mean."

"Yup," Rom said. "Know exactly what you mean and, nope. Can't do that with Leeta. Nope, can't. Leeta will hit you."

"Can't do it with any of them," O'Brien assured. "It's not the way to handle it. Am I making sense?" he asked Worf studying Rom.

"Why are you and Doctor Bashir jerks?" Worf insisted.

That was a good question maybe. O'Brien's head turned back to Rom.

"Um…" Rom said. "Because I said I'm going and Doctor Bashir said I'm not and I said I am and Doctor Bashir said, okay, Rom is."

"Huh?" O'Brien said after some extensive thought.

"It is irrelevant," Worf replied.

"No, it isn't," O'Brien groaned. "You asked, so don't give me this irrelevant crap because I know why you asked, and you're dead wrong. The door's open, Julian walks in. He walks in when it's closed. For crying out loud it was flung wide for four years and he ignored it."

Worf stared at him.

"The door," O'Brien assured. "I'm speaking metaphorically over here and you know what I'm saying. It should have lasted two hours, it's lasted two weeks. Want it to last three more? No? Then knock it off. You're making her angry. Look at her face. You're getting on her nerves. Forget this crap about Julian because with that you're getting on mine, yeah, you are. He's a friend of mine. You're a friend of mine. I'm being stuck in the middle between two friends, and, no, I do not like it, and you are not telling me -- not telling me Dax doesn't like it any less. Okay? That's what I'm saying to you. You want the plain truth? That's the plain truth.

"And yeah," he said, "maybe that's a little different than what's been going on between Keiko and I, but it's the same thing. In principle it's the same. You're telling her to choose. You're telling her she has to choose, and she doesn't want to. That's in your head, that's your rule, it's not hers."

Worf huffed. "I am not telling Commander Dax she and Doctor Bashir cannot be friends."

"No," O'Brien agreed. "You're annoyed that she's back five minutes and gone for the next six weeks. Hallo! This is news? It's not. That's what you're annoyed about. That's what I'm annoyed about. So stop blaming Julian, who's got nothing to do with anything other than he's there. Under orders, like her. Doing his job, like her. Kira, and, yeah, Keiko. Face it. Accept it. Deal with it. You want to complain to someone, complain to Captain Sisko because this was all his idea. Not Dax's. Not mine, yours, Kira's, Keiko's, or Julian's. It was Captain Sisko's. Tell him he's ruining your marriage. Let me know how you make out.

"Okay?" he patted Worf's arm. "Let me know. He'll tell you what I'm telling you. What are you, nuts?"

Worf's inspecting eyes shifted back to Rom.

"In English this time," O'Brien supported. "What's the deal with you and Leeta?"

"Um…" Rom said. "Just that. Yup, just that. Told Leeta the same thing. I'm under orders. I'm doing my job, and I'm going.

"Yup," he nodded. "I'm going. Doesn't matter what Doctor Bashir says, he's wrong. I'm going…and…I'll be back. I'll see you when I get back…and…um…if you're mad, I guess you're mad. Doesn't change anything. Nope. Doesn't. That is the way it is…and I'm right," he grinned. "Doctor Bashir told Leeta he was wrong and so she's mad at him now, too. But that's okay. She won't be mad at him and she won't be mad at me. She'll deal with it."

"You're sitting at the wrong table," O'Brien turned away from him.

"Um…" Rom looked around confused because the commissary was empty except for them. Captain Sisko as emphatic this field expedition to Anar's colony maintain the same high level of security as the first.

"Look," O'Brien tried one last time with Worf, who he knew, yeah, he did. Had known for as long as he had known Keiko, from the Enterprise, and Worf did huff, he puffed, he sighed. He had a very large presence, a very heavy presence. But he was a very large, a very heavy male. A Klingon. Smoothed, softened, sculpted by his Human upbringing and environment. Silent, watchful, quiet, he was still Klingon. Employing Vulcan-like techniques of control and temperance to tame, train the wild beast living, breathing, thrashing, inside of him.

"Fact of life," O'Brien said, "we are all Cro-Magnon men regardless of the species. We're Neanderthals. Prehistoric. We want what we want, above all only the way we want it…Except for maybe Julian," he admitted while Worf sat there contemplating the theory. "Julian wants it, but he's different. He's…I don't know. A vapor or something. A wood nymph."

"Irrelevant," Worf reminded.

O'Brien looked at him. "I'm making a point here. The only man I have ever known to successfully combine the two aspects, if you want to call them that, is Captain Sisko.

"Honest," he got up to get himself a cup of coffee from the replicator. "Not even Captain Picard -- he was an intellectual, don't get me wrong. He was very much an intellectual. But Captain Sisko has this incredible esthetic quality to him, I guess you could call it, on top of everything else. It's unmistakable. It's obvious; he cooks! He doesn't just cook, he cooks. Take a look at his kitchen -- take a look at his quarters. What do you see? Same thing when you look at him. Style, strength, intelligence, class, and he's not afraid of being or having any of it. He's a captain. He's a soldier. He's a father. He's a man.

"That's a heck of a package," O'Brien shook his head. "That," he said, "is genetically advanced. Don't give me any of this enhancement nonsense. Captain Sisko's not enhanced, he's advanced."

He stood there thinking about that for a while. Feeling Worf's pain and concern over coming up short in the eyes of the woman he loved. To where Bashir did what? Come closer? He took his coffee, moving back to his seat at the silent table. "What's so cute about Julian Bashir?" he eventually asked.

"Um…" Rom said when Worf didn't say anything.

"I mean other than he's cute," O'Brien dismissed. "Because he is cute; physically attractive. But what's so interesting about him? What is it about him? What attracts the lot of them to him like flies?"

Worf sighed. "You are exaggerating."

"No I'm not," O'Brien assured. "You are. You're insisting there's something special about Dax and I'm telling you there's not. She's one of a million -- probably more -- so what about it?" he clouted Rom gently. "Come on. You're the man with all the answers. What about it? Why does Leeta like Julian? Why is she friends with him?"

"Um…" Rom concentrated hard on the question. "I don't know. Because he's interested maybe?"

"Huh?" O'Brien said. "Interested in what?"

"That," Rom nodded. "Just that. He's interested."

O'Brien pondered that, throwing it aside with a scoff. "No, he's not interested. He's a con man. He's not interested in crap. I'm more interested and I'm not interested in half this garbage and neither's Worf."

"Yup," Rom nodded. "But Doctor Bashir acts it."

"Right," O'Brien said. "He acts it. Looks it. Sounds it. Talks. In the meantime he's not and they have to realize that -- they have to," he advised Worf. "They have any brains at all, they have to. What are you saying? Dax doesn't have any brains? No? Well then she has to."

"Yup," Rom nodded. "Does."

"He's escapism," O'Brien told Worf. "Okay? That's what he is. You're being a pest, he's goofy entertainment. Which would you rather be around? I'm telling you I can see this so clearly -- I just can't seem to see it to save my own damn life when it's me!' he grit his teeth and slammed himself in the head with the heel of his hand.

"Who can?" Rom agreed.

"Huh?" O'Brien said.

"Who can?" Rom picked up his fork, digging down into his dinner. "No one. Nope, no one. That's just the way it is."

"I can't stand you," O'Brien stared at him.

"Um…" Rom said.

"I'm serious," O'Brien scooped up Rom's plate, took him up by the arm and plunked both of them down at an adjacent table. "Sit over there, all right? Just sit over here."

"Um…" Rom said. "Okay," he shrugged. "But it's just grubs, you know. Yup. Just grubs and beans."

"Where was I?" O'Brien sat back down next to Worf with a sigh. "I don't know. It stinks, you're right. Here ten minutes, gone a year, and damn you if you dare say anything about it. Just damn you," he picked up his coffee with a shake of his head.

"Six weeks," Worf said dully.

"Right," O'Brien sneered. "This time. Give it time. 'You need to start a club.' I'm serious. That's what Keiko said. 'You need to start a club.' Forty minutes I'm enlightening her to how I've been enlightened and that's all she said. 'It sounds to me like the two of you need to start a club.'"

Worf looked at him.

"Me and you," O'Brien nodded. "I'm telling you she missed the whole point."

"What is the point?" Worf inquired.

"We're twins," O'Brien assured. "Me and you. Twins. So see? I'm wrong even when I'm right."

Worf nodded. "I believe I may understand."

"Good," O'Brien said. "Because I sure as hell don't. I'm just trying. That's all I can do is try." He regarded Rom jealously. "What's his secret?"

"Ferengi females do not wear clothes," Worf reminded him the Ferengi Alliance was a patriarchal society to the extreme that it was sexist. The female a subordinate totally subjugated by the male. That was not the same with the Klingon Empire where the female was much more equal, or Terran society where the female was completely equal. It wasn't a keen sense of uncommon insight Worf attributed to Rom, it was his culture; the Ferengi could not think anything else.

"Point," O'Brien conceded. "Sort of. So he's the boss. So he's a born natural to be the boss. Doesn't mean his wife agrees with him."

"She does not agree," Worf replied.

"No," O'Brien snorted, "she agrees with us. Ours agree with him. We may as well be the ones not wearing clothes because we're not. We just think we are. It's a screwy universe. I'm telling you, a screwy universe."

"That is accurate," Worf picked up his prune juice with a sigh.

"Is it working?" Bashir grinned at Dax clutching the edge of what he called an examination bed and personally felt much more like a tilt-table no matter how hard she tried to sit straight.

"Oh, it's working," she assured, her feet cold and her head numb and spinning interesting colors.

He laughed. "I meant the suppressant, but that's all right. Honestly, you'll be fine in a moment."

"Uh, huh," Kira staggered back in from the toilet to flop over the examining bed next to Dax and snatch his hypospray away from him. "We'll see. Lay down. Let's see how you like it."

"Later perhaps," Bashir took his hypospray back with a wink. "Right now I have a date with a number of eukaryotic organisms once I'm finished with you two -- ready?" he asked Dax.

She stared at Lange's putrid collection of samples lined up within sight. "Maybe in a minute," she slipped down off the examining bed to move carefully for the door.

Bashir shrugged. "All right. Though I insist your responses are largely psychological -- the two of you." He capriciously dangled the hypospray in front of Kira. "Are you ready?"

"I hate you," she assured. "I mean, I really hate you."

"Nonsense," Bashir disputed with a laugh. "What you hate is having to see a doctor; who doesn't? It's a universal repulsion."

"Explains the four years," Kira grimaced under the tickle of the hypospray against her neck.

"Now that's very clearly some sort of file or system error," Bashir maintained. "My inoculation record is as current as Dax's, at the very least yours. As a matter of fact I remember quite clearly…"

"Feeling better?" Michelle stopped by about five hours later to sympathetically inquire as he lay face down on his desk, feverish, perspiring, exhausted and hoarse from attempting to hack up his large intestine and just get it over with.

"God, no," Bashir wheezed. "The only saving grace is I'm not sure I could possibly feel any worse. They can't be ready to disembark yet. Please tell me you're a hallucination."

"They're ready," Michelle apologized while callously stuffing his attaché in his hand.

"No, I can't…" Bashir slumped for the door to turn back and fall down on his couch. "I'm sorry, but I just can't. Hail Dax and tell her I'm in surgery…intensive care…" he closed his eyes against the body mass attempting to sit him up. "The morgue…"

Dax found him sprawled in the middle of the airlock, incapable and stubbornly refusing to try taking another step.

"What are you doing?" she stood over him with her hands on her hips.

"Dying," Bashir assured. "Don't even try to talk me out of it."

"Come on," she hoisted him and his duffels to his feet, tossing one or the other of them over her shoulder; it felt like it was him. Miraculously however he had a momentary recovery as the door to the turbolift closed and he seized her in a kiss until the vertigo returned to overtake him and he fell into the wall listening to her laugh "Halt program."

"I've been good," he claimed as she wiped his hair off his forehead and he fought back the acidic nausea threatening him.

"You've been very good," she agreed.

"I haven't said a word," he said, wanting to say several and managing an incredulous, excited, "Six weeks. I can't believe it, six weeks. Six glorious and incredible weeks." She danced in front of his eyes.

"Six weeks," Dax smiled.

"Hm," his arms curved around her like she was a comforting body pillow, his head snuggled against her shoulder, tasting the fragrance of her throat and ear.

She laughed again. "Are you sure you're sick?"

"Dreadfully. You?"

"Well…" she said. "Getting there I suppose. I can tell you, the one for Rudellian plague is one of the worst."

"If not largely responsible for the frontal lobe epilepsy," Bashir resisted the urge to nod which would not have been too clever. "That figures, it is Cardassian spawned."

"But even that eventually begins to get better," she promised.

"After it first gets much, much worse," Bashir sighed. "Marvelous. Judging from you I should expect to be able to stand on my own somewhere around midnight. So much for our dinner plans, not that a night's sleep isn't a novel idea, simply not what I had in mind." His heady whisper kissed her ear.

"Oh?" she said as if she didn't know. "What did you have in mind?"

"Yes, well, I think you know the answer to that by now. It's all right though. I'll be good; cross my heart. 'Dax, who?' How's that? Can't be anymore unmoved or distant than that I would think."

"Yes, well, I'm not sure I want you to be that removed."

"Good." He took a chance at kissing her full on the mouth again while the turbolift spun around them.

"Are you all right?" He heard her ask as he hung onto her desperately trying not to gag.

"Lurid," he confessed. "Incredibly."

"What?" she laughed.

"The thought, feeling, sensation. I never realized how alike sex and being on the brink of death were -- my God, I think I'm delirious."

"Soon," her hand stroked his back consolingly.

"Followed by a series of spastic convulsions," he guessed.

"Similar," she teased.

"All right, they're identical," he agreed and her hand sharply cracked his hip in scolding. "Ow. Stop that. I told you it was lurid. Not my fault. The Maquis infiltrated my medical banks, maliciously replacing my inoculation records with one of their own."

"I don't think so."

"All right, it was Gul Dukat then."

"Try again," she nodded.

"Well, you certainly aren't suggesting it was Captain Sisko, are you?" he grinned. "Dare I reveal the last time he voluntarily submitted to an immunization series?"

"Hm…" Dax said. "Four years? Like you?"

"Never," Bashir kissed her. "Just like the rest of us -- make it good; has to last."

"What does?"

"The kiss. Not a day, more like three."

"Or two," she calculated.

"With a little luck. Still, that fairly kills the idea of a good night's rest as well -- ow!" he laughed as her hand cracked against his hip again. "Will you stop that? I told you it's not my fault."

"No, it's mine."

"Definitely," he assured.

It was an impending two and a half days, fifty-six hours. The Defiant scheduled to transport them roughly midway in distance to Dyaan IX. Time, the runabout Styx would take almost another four days to reach the colony due to its maximum sustainable warp speed of 2.5 for 38 hours. She was new, bright, fast, but she was still only a runabout, heavy under her science module, and armed.

Dax deposited Bashir's duffels on the bridge of the Defiant, aiming him toward a chair. He sank into it, his head lolling back to look up into Kira's face looming down on him like one giant peakish brown eye winking and blinking at him from under a bristling dark red brow. "Don't even think about it," he warned her.

"What?" she said.

"Vomiting on my head. I know you want to get even. You have that look in your eye; the middle one."

"TCH!" She slapped her lips together in this thoroughly disgusting sound, sending him whirling and his stomach into a near-fatal tailspin as she pushed herself off from the back of his seat.

"Doctor?" Sisko said as Bashir's chair ground to a swaying halt with him facing the navigation console rather than the farewell assembly Sisko had called to wish them all good luck.

"Yes, I heard you," Bashir assured while Jake helped him figure out what was wrong, assisting him in carefully turning his chair back around forward. "You were saying something about arms. Weapons, I presume you to mean -- not appendages," his hand raised weakly. "One small question however, please."

"All weapons will be disabled by Major Kira prior to entering the planet's orbit," Sisko assured. "They are a precaution only, Doctor."

"Yes," Bashir said, "similar to the immunization boosters -- may I be excused? Please? I really think I'm about to die."

"Jake," Sisko's head flicked for his son to help as Bashir rose gingerly to his feet.

"Quite all right," Bashir declined, "I'm not strong enough to go too far…"

"Made it to the toilet, Doc," Jake's voice penetrated Bashir's daze, "that's all that counts."

"Is that where we are?" Bashir patted the cool, aluminum seat under his head.

"Been," Jake assured. "Sorry to bother you but I was beginning to worry you may have passed out on me."

"Brief coma," Bashir straightened up, thought the better of it and rolled over to stare at the ceiling, "nothing to be concerned about. Absurd really, I maintain, because much of this is a psychological response."

"Umm…" Jake said doubtfully, "I don't know about that. From what I remember from my last booster, and the way you look, it's pretty physiological."

"How vulgar of you to even suggest that," Bashir closed his eyes. "My God, I can't believe how awful I feel. There's no way anyone could survive twenty-four hours of this, I know I can't."

"You'll feel better," Jake promised, giving him a hand up.

"When?" Bashir insisted. "Compared to? Whom? Major Kira and Commander Dax? Major Kira has two livers and Dax enjoys gagh as if it were caviar -- My God," he shrank back from the approaching turbolift. "It makes me gag to even think about it."

"Nog was worse," Jake nodded. "He's still feeling pretty bad and it's been what? Nine, ten hours for him."

"With those Ferengi lobes of his?" Bashir said. "I guess so. The symptoms of vertigo must have been magnified a hundred fold; Rom also."

"No, actually Rom went down and stayed down for maybe three hours and after that he was fine. I guess it varies with the person -- you should know that," he grinned.

"Why? Because I'm the Chief Medical Officer? For all that's worth. I'm still sick."

Jake laughed. "I'm not so sure being the Chief Medical Officer counts."

"The devil it doesn't," Bashir assured. "As sick as I am, all of you can be, once a month if I maliciously misplace your inoculation records the way someone maliciously misplaced mine…Once a week…" He started for the turbolift to stop. "No, I can't do it. I can't go in there. All this whirling and churning and spinning, it wouldn't be half as bad if we didn't insist on getting everywhere at some fantastic speed. I'll stay here. I'll sleep here…"

"My God, yes," Bashir stretched out prone on his deliciously comfortable bunk while Jake quietly set his duffels aside.

"Think you can take it from here, Doc?" Jake leaned over to verify. "You're down the end of the corridor, right next to the toilet."

"No," Bashir mumbled, "but I can't see where I have any choice."

He fell fitfully asleep, his mind contorting and distorting the day into a series of hallucinatory images, vaguely recalling waking up somewhere around 2300 to determine his position and locate the shower. He was much better after that, fading into a restful state upon returning to his cabin, dreaming of Dax rather than Jake leaning over him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

"Questions?" Sisko resumed asking the floor trying not to laugh after Bashir's undignified exit. "Commander?"

"No…I don't believe so…" Dax shook her head at Kira. "Any communication I would presume to be restricted to the Defiant or the station?"

"Absolutely," Sisko agreed. "Priority One only. It's a science expedition, however it is still special operations. Major? Or Mrs. O'Brien?" He gave a nod to Keiko not to exclude her.

"No questions," they said.

"Excellent," Sisko smiled. "In closing then, I'm sure the crew and officers aboard the station, as well as those here aboard the Defiant, join me in wishing the best of luck to

Major Kira and all members of the science team; Doctor Bashir in particular, at the moment," he joked.

"Definitely," Dax laughed above the Chief's boisterous "Here, here" and the group's short round of self-congratulatory applause.

"Seriously, honey," O'Brien's grin beamed from ear to ear for Keiko standing offside of his console, "congratulations. There's a heck of an opportunity here, he's right about that."

He had just decided this. Within the last hour it had suddenly clicked, as it had clicked earlier about Worf and him being twins, they were talking about science. The focus was science. It was just what the Doctor of Marriage ordered.

"It's interesting." Keiko reserved celebrating, but she was impressed by much of what she had heard during her lengthy briefing by Kira and Captain Sisko, and for a short while with Bashir and Dax.

"Oh, yeah," O'Brien supported. "I mean, I wasn't there for much of it." He didn't have to be. He had all the background on the Anar part of the equation.

"But, wow," he shook his head, "I didn't know about all this other stuff myself… the mummy and everything. It's interesting. It's definitely interesting. It suddenly started all making sense to me what Captain Sisko's trying to do here."

He was starting to breathe a little faster, beginning to sound a little overly anxious, wanting to ensure she knew she had his support. It was also good that he recognized this almost immediately, before she did. Maybe. He still recognized it, shifting his focus. "Are you sure you don't have any questions?" he checked. "Now's the time to ask -- Captain Sisko anyway. Kira will be here."

"No," Keiko said.

"Okay," O'Brien accepted. "Okay." Wracking his brains to think of something else to say; he didn't have to think too long or too hard. "Kids' get off okay? Settled?" It was a little obvious, as its answer was a little obvious; their mother was here. He was here. Where did he think his kids were? Alone? On their own?

"Leeta's there," Keiko replied.

"Leeta," O'Brien stated.

"Miles…" she sighed.

"No…no…" O'Brien said quickly.

"They'll be fine," Keiko assured.

"They will be," O'Brien agreed. "Absolutely. I have no problem with Leeta or anyone else." Which wasn't exactly true. Leeta not exactly on his list of top ten. Odo probably a step or two higher. Kassidy Yates second only to Jake's place as Number One. He didn't know why she didn't ask Kassidy.

"Jake's here," he agreed with Keiko. "I mean, what are you going to do? Jake's here. I just didn't realize Leeta was coming to our place rather than the kids going to her.

"But that's fine," he assured. "That's even better. That's…" he paused as something else suddenly clicked in his mind. "She lied."

"What?" Keiko said.

"Nothing," O'Brien waved. "Nothing. I guess Rom just didn't understand her -- what time did she show up?" he checked. "Noon?"

"I guess," Keiko shrugged. "Lunchtime."

"Uh, huh," O'Brien said.

"Miles…" she groaned again.

"No, I was just wondering," he claimed. "I was just wondering -- I mean -- " he told her as tactfully as he could, "I don't want to have a Bajoran houseguest when I come home. Okay? That's what I'm saying. Not that she wouldn't come in handy with taking care of the kids and things, but she's got a job. She's got a life. I don't want to get in the middle of it. Not between her and Rom. And not between her and Quark -- which, I don't know how you managed to get him to give her a week off, but you did. You did."

Which, now that he stood there saying that he knew how she did. "You paid him. You paid Quark. Aw, jeez!" he threw up his hands, quietly, but they were up in the air, and sooner or later everyone there would start looking like they always looked; he lowered them, taking a breath.

"What are you doing paying Quark?" he just wanted to know. "What is he doing? Renting her out? She's the one doing the work. You pay her, not him. Not her and him. Just her. Got it? Her."

He sealed it, ended it, with a nod and an emphatic smack of his hand down on the console. "Okay," he said, satisfied it was settled. "Don't worry about it. I'll take care of it. You just go on your assignment and I'll take care of Quark when I get back…and, um…" he said, his brain working overtime again on what to do, what to say, where to go next. "What are you doing? Did you eat? Dinner? I started to but had to get cracking on finishing the analyses so we can get out of here. Want to meet in the commissary? Say twenty minutes?"

"That'll be fine," Keiko replied.

"Great," O'Brien exhaled. "Okay, that's great. You go ahead, unpack, get settled, whatever you have to do, and I'll meet you; I'll be there; twenty minutes."

"All right," she said.

"Barring any unforeseen disasters," O'Brien quipped as he turned for the wall panels and she walked away, because in a way it was all going a little too smoothly. It was all falling into place a little too easily.

He ogled Nog standing stiffly at attention with his pudgy cheeks puffed up and swollen like some bloated dead fish. "What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing, Sir," Nog squeezed out between his locked jaw. "At your service, Sir. Whatever you need me to do."

"Uh, huh," O'Brien said. "Well, you're making me sick just looking at you; get out of here. I'm serious. Go on. Get out of here. Don't worry about it. They don't need me, they sure as heck don't need you."

"I'm on duty, Sir." Nog's teary-eyes stared back at him.

"I said, get," O'Brien's thumb arced in the direction of the exit. "You're on duty when you can come back here and stand up. They'll be arguing about it for three hours anyway; who's on, who's off, who's where -- "

"Thank you, Sir!" The kid whirled away from him like a top.

"Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait a minute!" O'Brien caught him by the shoulder. "Before you go -- "

"Yes, Sir!" Nog shot back to attention with a snapping salute.

O'Brien's eyes rolled. "Knock it off. I just wanted to say I don't know what you overheard me saying to Keiko about Leeta and your father, but I didn't mean lying as in lying. She wasn't lying to him. She just told him what she wanted him to know. That's what adults do. Right or wrong, that's what they do. Don't worry about it, anything. You know where your mother is; you know where your father is. If your father wants to know where your mother is, all he's got to do is ask. Okay?"

The kid had no clue what he was talking about whatsoever.

"All right, go ahead," O'Brien turned Nog loose with a permissive wave. He bolted out of there like Bashir had crawled, desperately.

"Yes…" Sisko agreed with Dax's laugh with a wandering glance toward the exit into the ship's interior.

She smiled. "You have about ten minutes until the system analyses are completed if you want to wait for Jake."

"Tempting," Sisko admitted, out of the corner of his eye catching the Chief's hands up and flailing.

Dax also noticed, her smile broadening. Her comment teasing. "You'll find the general recommendation to be they need to start a club."

Sisko looked back at her blankly. "Club?"

"The Chief and Leeta. And…" she admitted, "rumor has it they may be looking to indoctrinate Worf; long distance relationships," she clarified when Benjamin continued to seem uncertain.

"Ah," Sisko said. "Yes, of course. And true," he chuckled. "Quite true -- though I wouldn't be concerned about Mister Worf developing anything more than the normal degree of separation loneliness we all experience whenever apart from family and friends."

"I'm not," Dax assured.

"No," Sisko's chuckle deepened. "Separation comes with the territory, Commander, how well we all know that. Starfleet as respectful and understanding as it can be of its 'couples', if you will…" His thoughts and attention trailed back to the O'Briens. The Chief calmer, his hands down. Leniency, would probably also be a trait Starfleet incorporated, tolerance. Particularly in regard to its civilian associates. Either would be applicable to Keiko O'Brien. A woman Sisko did not know well and found difficult to know at all. Fair to say they did not see eye-to-eye on many issues, and had gone toe-to-toe on a few occasions. It wasn't a question of liking or not liking Mrs. O'Brien, he imagined he liked her well enough. He also however, found her actions too often highly questionable. Inappropriate, frankly. Involved in her husband's career at times when she should be maintaining a respectful distance, distant when she should be involved.

She was a woman who gave the appearance of having great difficulty in letting go of what was past, the Enterprise specifically. Scornful of the Chief's assignment to the station, the only conclusion Sisko could reach was that O'Brien's position here as Chief Engineer was somehow beneath him in her opinion.

That did not set well with Sisko, already no starry-eyed fan of Jean-Luc Picard or his Enterprise. Indeed, while under the control of the Borg, Captain Jean-Luc Picard attacked the U.S.S. Saratoga, killing Jennifer Sisko, Sisko's wife and Jake's mother when Jake was only twelve years old. Diplomacy, tact, training, got Sisko through where friendship, forgiveness, or even understanding never would in any dealings with Picard. Respectively, Chief O'Brien, on the other hand, was indisputably a brilliant engineer and man, plucked by Starfleet from the almighty Enterprise and set down in Sisko's engineering bay. Not demoted, or deported, a fistful of recommendations touting O'Brien as the perfect man for the job, which he was.

Simply carrying with him a ball and chain. "Excuse me," Sisko petitioned Dax, "I'd like to reiterate a personal thank you to Mrs. O'Brien before she leaves the bridge."

"Not at all," Dax turned away for the flight console with a shrug and a smile for Kira impatiently hovering over the analysis. "Anxious?"

"No," Kira waved. "Just…"

"Sick," Dax laughed. "Well…if you want to take overnight with Nog and Julian when they wake up, I think I can probably last until about midnight."

"Worf and O'Brien can take overnight; whatever. We'll figure it out -- Bashir?" Kira reacted violently, her stomach already upset enough. "No, no, no -- "

Dax laughed again. "Actually I thought he did pretty well the last time."

"No," Kira said firmly. "If Bashir wants to do something -- "

"He can post guard over the Styx?" Dax joked.

"No, but that's an idea."

"Posting guard?" Dax said. "Do you really think that's necessary?"

"No. Bashir's an idea," Kira assured.

"If he wants to do something…" Dax nodded with a sympathetic smile after Nog suddenly bolting away from Ops for the ship's interior, noticing Keiko had also left and Benjamin was talking to Worf. "Well, there's always Lange's contaminated samples -- if I play it right," she winked at Kira. "That will not only give Julian a reason to play with his new equipment it will give him something to play with."

"I don't care if he lives there," Kira assured again, exiting the analysis. "Finally."

"Perfect as always?"

"Close enough. I'll take navigation."
"I guess I'll take the helm," Dax agreed amicably. "We'll let Worf and the Chief fight it out over Ops -- though I have a idea," she hinted, "the Chief's hoping to spend a little time with Keiko?"

"He's got until midnight," Kira shrugged.

"Which leaves Worf at Ops," Dax nodded. "All right. In all fairness to Worf though I think we should begin duty rotation at 0600? 0700? I can be here at 0600."

"Either," Kira accepted.

"Sixteen hour shifts?"

"You and Nog can do twelve; the Chief also."

"Our mates and team members thank you," Dax teased.

"Whatever," Kira said. "Five minutes."

"I'll spread the word," Dax volunteered.

Sisko moved quickly from Dax to block Keiko's egress. He did not mean it to come across that way. In fairness to the troubled woman it was entirely possible that the problems between her and the Chief were differences of opinion. Different ideas. From career, to marriage, to children. It remained however a difference that should have been addressed prior to making any commitment, and under no circumstances was it a difference that should have been dropped down in the middle of his station. At best, Keiko O'Brien was an intelligent, capable woman herself. An educator, a botanist. At worst, she was a social-climbing shrike, fawning over Jake as son of the Commanding Officer, fawning over Bashir with his acute sense of grace and style. If she extended herself in true friendship with any of the station's hierarchy, it was probably Kira Nerys.

For reasons likely only the Bajoran Prophets and Sisko's God knew, since nurturing and bearing Keiko's son Kirayoshi in surrogate, Kira and Keiko became and remained friendly beyond the bond that had temporarily united them. Little Molly O'Brien normally quiet and unobtrusive, startling Sisko with her enthusiastic "Aunt Nerys". Kira uncharacteristic and equally spirited in her approach and handling of the little boy.

"Captain," Keiko paused in front of Sisko either intentionally or unintentionally blocking her way. From her perception, it fair to say that if she was a woman who could not see beyond her own wants and world, he was a man she found to be somewhat self-contradictory in his government and management of the crew and station. For example, the issue of a station school. Captain Sisko could not see the value or purpose of a school; he had to be shown. It was inconceivable to Keiko that she would have to defend her idea of a school to anyone. She had a child, he had a child. The reasons for her request began and ended there whether the student population eventually numbered twelve or two hundred, or it eventually closed. It closed. After five struggling years, life aboard the station too erratic to support it continuing. Allow it to flourish rather than fail. It was perhaps something Captain Sisko understood and knew from Day One. It was definitely something Keiko refused to accept one year after it all came to an end.

Most importantly however, if there was a man Keiko saw standing in front of her, it was a man whose wife had been killed during the line of duty, leaving him to raise their twelve-year-old son alone. There was probably a degree of personal resentment that it had been Captain Picard, a man whom she greatly admired, who unwilling killed Jennifer Sisko. But regardless, Jennifer Sisko had been killed. Jake Sisko left without his biological mother for the rest of his life. Was that something Chief Miles Edward O'Brien wanted incorporated in the epitaph of his life?

"Yes, Mrs. O'Brien," Sisko replied to her courteous address, trying to keep his attention on her, not her husband in the background. "I simply wanted to extend a personal thank you to you for accepting this position."

"It sounds interesting," she said simply.

"Yes…" he agreed, watching her closely for any sign of dissention. He understood she had just returned after a year's absence. He understood that was one of the Chief's primary and continuing complaints, his wife's absences. He understood the shadow under which she had returned, the Chief's incarceration. And he understood most of all she was a woman whose work he knew, its caliber and hers, as he knew she was a woman who could be trusted. He felt his grin explode. It was probably the biggest smile he had ever given her.

"Welcome home in any event, Mrs. O'Brien," his hand patted her shoulder, completing her amazement. "You and your family have been missed."

Keiko left the bridge with a shake of her head. Sisko moved on in the direction of the Chief, stopping briefly to exchange a few words with Worf without surreptitious reason. Dax's joking comment about Worf potentially needing "a talking to" as much as the Chief, forgotten, and not taken seriously at the time she said it. Nog raced by them at one point, his hand clapped to his mouth.

"Doctor Bashir's inoculations," Worf explained disgruntled.

"No less a victim himself," Sisko agreed amused.

"Your own records are severely outdated," Worf informed him. "I cannot find where you have had a complete immunization series since taking command of the station."

Sisko looked at him.

Worf cleared his throat under the look. "Given the location and primitive conditions of the colony as described by Major Kira, I took the liberty of reviewing all inoculation records for the field team, as well as the crew of the Defiant to ensure all were sufficiently protected in either direct, or indirect contact. Given your status as commander of the station I did not feel it to be excessive in including you in the review."

"To the contrary, thoughtful, Mister Worf," Sisko smiled.

"If you insist," Worf said. "Though my motive at the time was to be thorough. Presuming standard protocol would require a medical review to have been conducted prior to my or Commander Dax's assignment aboard the Rotarran, I was concerned. Particularly since Doctor Bashir upheld his inoculation records had been altered or misplaced, inaccurately reflecting him to be seriously remiss."

Sisko laughed. "I have an idea, Mister Worf, you'll find Doctor Bashir was joking."

"I have since realized his," Worf assured. "Though current at the time of our assignment, Jadzia's inoculations have expired. My own review is scheduled to come due in three months."

"It's a date," Sisko winked. "I'll make an appointment with Doctor Bashir for the two of us immediately upon his return."

"This would be prudent," Worf agreed.

Then there was Worf. Sisko reflected as he stepped on. Keiko O'Brien accepting Worf' as her husband's Enterprise colleague was silent in her appraisal of Dax. He eyed O'Brien's back turned to him as he worked at the wall panel, sincerely hoping the Chief could see to understanding this assignment and refrain from unduly seeking to involve others in his general disapproval of Keiko's career choices.

"Huh?" O'Brien looked up at Sisko's voice.

Sisko smiled. "Everything all right?" he repeated.

"Oh, yeah. Kid's just sick as a dog. Stupid to even have him up here; no good to me or anyone else. Let him sleep it off; tomorrow is another day."

Sisko nodded. "The kid" he understood was Nog.

"Or did you mean the hands?" O'Brien asked, no one's innocent and therefore no one's fool. "You know, the hands." He waved his in exaggerated demonstration looking more comical than anything else.

"Maybe both," Sisko acknowledged.

"Quark," O'Brien assured. "He's trying to collect an agent fee or something for Leeta watching the kids. It's okay. I'll take care of it. No, works wonders. You know what I mean?"

"Oh, yes," Sisko said.

"Other than that…" O'Brien returned to work with a shrug. "Ten minutes, maybe? Everything's fine; all systems go." He chuckled suddenly. "Unless you want to consider three hours deciding duty rotation."

"Chief, you've lost me," Sisko admitted.

"Easy enough to take care of as well," O'Brien promised. "Twelve hours. That's it, twelve hour shifts. Short. Sweet. Standard protocol. None of this six hour, nine hour, rotating every four hours -- "

"Chief," Sisko stopped him and the hands starting to wave again.

"Sure you don't want to come along?" O'Brien checked. "Plenty of room. Got an opening even; First Officer."

"Tempting," Sisko admitted for his own reasons; Jake. Certain that was not O'Brien's point, and not quite sure what the point was. "Still lost, Chief," he confessed. "Mister Worf is First Officer of the Defiant."

"Uh, huh," O'Brien said. "And whose field team is it?"

Field team. "Major Kira…" Sisko replied slowly. "But, again, that would be concerning the field team." He smiled suddenly, joking for the most part with a twinkle in his eyes. "Surely you're not suggesting there's an interest on either Mister Worf's or Major Kira's part of some form of role reversal?"

"Mass confusion," O'Brien assured. "I don't know, maybe it was just because the Anar guy was aboard and no one really knew what to do with him. I do know, never mind what's possible, it takes a crew to run her right. They've been briefed, get them up here. We're not in disaster mode over here, we're on a mission -- what?" he said to Dax showing up.

"Five minutes," she nodded.

"Wrong," O'Brien corrected, "ten. That's just what I'm in the middle of telling him. I don't care whose security you have to up how many notches to clear them for the bridge; do it. But I am spending some time with my wife; I'm having dinner with my wife."

Dax blinked wide-eyed at Sisko blinking wide-eyed back at her. "Actually…" she smiled for O'Brien, "you have until midnight. Kira feels duty rotations should begin at 0600 or 0700 -- as long as you and Worf don't mind overnight?" she felt Worf move up behind her, his breath warming the top of her head.

"No," O'Brien recovered from his brief, though pleasant surprise. "No, hey, that's fine; thanks. I mean," he said, just in case they thought he was talking out of his left kidney, "I realize she's my wife, but I don't have to be crawling in bed with her ten minutes after she's in the door. I can at least try to be a little bit more discreet than that."

"Yes, well…" Sisko cleared his throat uncomfortably.

"I think we can understand that," Dax grinned at Benjamin and the embarrassed flush spreading up from his collar.

"Definitely," Sisko assured with a pat of her arm and a glance toward the exit. "As I think -- "

"Yeah, hey, whoa! What am I doing?" O'Brien jumped back to the Ops console with a call for Rom and bridge duty. "Two minutes," he advised Sisko. "If you're going, you better go."

"I'll have Jake hail," Dax promised.

"It would be appreciated," Sisko thanked her, extending good luck and good health to everyone one last time as he left.

Worf held his huff of disapproval until Benjamin exited. "Major Kira's suggestion of six hour duty shifts is not acceptable."

Dax counted to three before she turned around to him with a smile. "Who said anything about six hours?"

He eyed her. "If duty rotations are to begin at 0600 -- "

"Begin," Dax agreed. "Actually Kira suggested two twelve hour rotations should provide sufficient coverage -- which, actually," she alerted O'Brien, "you can cancel Rom until 2400. Kira and I will be here with Worf. Nog should be fine by the morning for the three of us to relieve the three of you."

"Works for me," O'Brien nodded. "T-minus one, folks, unless you want me to reset everything."

"No," Dax assured.

Worf followed her to the helm. "I would prefer a full two duty shifts of sixteen hours."

"That's fine," Dax said, having an idea everyone would be working a full two duty shifts, except for possibly the Chief and Keiko, just simply in their own areas. Julian and Jake in the Infirmary or science lab, either aboard the Styx or the Defiant, probably both. Kira and Worf aboard the bridge. Her and Nog dividing their time between the bridge and lab, and Rom dividing his time between the bridge and his other engineering duties.

It was perhaps something she should have suggested aloud, or perhaps not as possibly it wouldn't have mattered; she wouldn't know. Agreeing with Worf, he interpreted her as being glib or abrupt. She didn't think she was being either if only because she didn't feel either. She felt…? Dax wasn't quite sure how she felt other than not physically as well as she would prefer or tried to appear.

She felt…let me see...if Dax had the time or the inclination she would probably tip her head back and say something like let me see. She felt irritated, yes, that Worf did not seem to respect she did not feel well enough to be bothered by nonsense, and it was nonsense. Kira wasn't attempting to usurp his authority anymore than she had attempted to on their first excursion into the Bajoran outer colonies. She was simply being Kira. Speaking the way Kira spoke, acting the way Kira acted. Perhaps a little more gruff or abrupt than she normally might, and that was also something Worf, for some reason, refused to accept or respect; think, actually. What Worf was actually refusing to do was just think. Kira was anxious regardless whether or not she said she wasn't. She was anxious about the field mission. Nervous, concerned, about the colony and everything that went along with it. Angry with Shakaar, angry with Anar, the Klingons, the Dominion, Anon Dukat, everyone, and all rightfully so.

She was also not feeling well enough to hassle or be hassled about nonsense, and arguing about duty rotations, Dax maintained was sheer nonsense when all Kira really wanted to do was get underway, out of orbit of Bajor Prime, through the system into open space, which would be around 2400 approximately, yes. At which point the only thing Kira wanted to do, the same as her, was retire to her cabin and get up at 0600 and start again fresh. Other than that? No, Dax didn't believe she was thinking or feeling anything else in particular other than possibly this really was beginning to sound very much like some bizarre instance of déjà vu.

It didn't matter. Her thinking, Worf not thinking, Worf was distinctly abrupt and emphatic, both in his tone and his grab for her wrist. "Jadzia!"

Dax went wild, rage rearing up inside of her. Her Trill markings exploding from violet to ebony black, her voice lashing as she tore her wrist away from him. "I said that's fine! You can rotate two full duty shifts with Kira! Nog and I will be in the lab!"

Kira's head snapped up, her mouth twisted in confusion, O'Brien gaped, his hands flying into the air. "Oh, jeez, here we go! Now we're going to have a goddamn murder on the bridge or something!"

"No, we're not going to have a murder!" Kira snapped. "What are you talking about?"

Dax was calm. Within a moment she was calm, as within a moment she had flown. The anger vomiting out the frustration building inside of her with Worf's huffs, his grunts, his groans and moans. She was calm and Worf was staring at her, and she really did not care. "No, it's all right," she said to Kira tugging at her arm.

"Are you sure?" Kira insisted.

"Yes, I'm sure," Dax said, realizing she didn't look calm although she felt calm. Her hands nervously wiping themselves across her hair, her face white and spots blanched to a shrimp color, but that had nothing to do with Worf, more Julian's inoculations.

"Sick," Kira nodded with an incensed whack of Worf. "What's the matter with you? You know she's sick!"

Worf huffed. "I was merely speaking to Commander Dax about the duty rotations."

"Never mind about the duty rotations, forget the duty rotations!"

Worf huffed. "As First Officer of the Defiant it is my responsibility -- "

"It's covered! Take the helm! You," she said to Dax, "it's all right. Get out of here."

"Oh, now, wait a minute -- " O'Brien butted back in.

"Call Rom," Kira stalked back to navigation.

"Huh?"

"Rom!" she barked, hailing the station to notify them to reset the docking release sequence.

"Everything all right, Major?" Sisko inquired over the console.

"Yes, it's fine," Kira assured, disengaging the com link with a look around the bridge, settling on the Chief. "I told you to call Rom."

"Fine, I'll call Rom," O'Brien surrendered.

"No, it's all right," Dax interrupted. "Really, Kira, I'm fine. Worf can take Ops."

"Okay, I won't call Rom," O'Brien's hands were heading for the air again.

"Knock it off!" Kira warned and he glared at her. She ignored him to verify again with Dax. "You sure?"

"I'm positive," Dax assured.

"Okay, fine," Kira accepted and sat down.

Dax looked at Worf stubbornly silent and as stubbornly not moving. "The Chief wants to spend some time with Keiko," she said evenly, as evenly as she could. "He wants to spend some time with his wife -- she's his wife!" the pitch of her voice rose shrill again.

"Right!" O'Brien hollered out. "She's my wife, and I'll tell you what. I'll make it real easy for everyone; I'm out of here!" And he was. He was gone. They could stand there ordering the release sequence reset forty-seven times for all he cared; he was out of there.

Dax was waiting when Worf's head turned back to her from watching the Chief. "Now take Ops," she said.

He sighed. "Jadzia…"

"Do it!" she pointed.

He did with an accompanying stiff notice to Kira. "I will take Ops."

"Whatever," Kira shrugged with a nod for Dax assuming her seat at the helm. "T-minus thirty seconds."

"Yes," Dax concurred. "T-minus thirty seconds. Engaging rear thrusters; standby."

"Standing by," Kira said.

Dax closed her eyes for the moment it took the thrusters to power on. She opened them with a slight smile for Kira glancing her way. "I'm fine. You?"

"Can't come too soon," Kira assured.

"No," Dax agreed. "It can't."

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Eventually the end did come. Jake returned shortly after they pulled away, Dax pointing him toward the com system and Benjamin nervously waiting on the other end. They talked for a few minutes, Jake remaining on deck for a couple of hours until he became restless and bored by not enough to do and excused himself to a remote corner of the ship to sit and think and write. At 2400 or close enough Dax left the bridge and Worf to the helm, Rom at Ops, Kira maintaining her position at navigation, the Chief a minute or two late. O'Brien exited the turbolift though when it arrived and she was glad for Kira's sake. Hers?

"Hey, I just want to say I'm sorry about what happened before," the Chief stopped her to apologize.

"Everything's fine, Chief," Dax assured.

"No, wait a minute," he said, "listen to me for moment. Because you know it's rough, it really is. It's different when you're married; everything changes; I know. Worf's not trying to be hard nosed about anything, he really isn't. No more than I'm trying to lord over Keiko. It's just different. It's not a relationship, it's a marriage. We miss you more, we want you there more, because when you're not it's like a piece of us is missing, which it is, and we don't like it. That's the plain and simple truth. We just don't like it and there's no way we're going to, so give him a break. You understand what I'm saying to you?"

"Oh, I understand," Dax said.

"Good," O'Brien nodded. "Good. But then, heck," he chuckled, "you ought to. You've been a guy -- a man for what? Eighty, ninety years?"

"Close enough," Dax smiled.

"There's no difference," O'Brien assured. "I don't care what species you are, there's no difference."

"Hmmm…Some," Dax imagined if only because there were some differences among the males within the same specie genus. "But you know what I find most fascinating?"

"Hey, hit me with it," O'Brien said. "I'm over here handing out advice to Worf, Rom, when the three of us should

probably be asking you."

"Possibly," Dax agreed. "Because I can't understand why it's assumed it's not changed or different for us. As rough, tough, lonely, with us missing you as often and as much as you miss us…And that the last thing we need…" her finger poked into O'Brien's burly, manly chest, gently backing him up, away from her, "is some self-absorbed jerk demanding we understand him when he hasn't bothered to understand us for two minutes." She left.

"Point," O'Brien said. "That's a good point."

Exhausted and tense throughout her turn on the bridge Dax was now wide awake as she lay on the bunk in her quarters. Up, down, she was rifling through her duffel looking for something to read and finding a handful of Klingon music Worf had packed away for her as a goodbye present. Touched, she wanted to be annoyed. Annoyed, she knew she should be touched.

"Worf," she sat down on the floor with a sigh, cradling the tapes in her hands and having no idea what to do with him or them other than knowing Julian would have a fit if he saw them.

"Julian…" her head snapped up. Thinking, wondering, and just wanting to know how he was and to see him, she dropped the tapes and jumped up, exiting her cabin to find him.

He was down the end of her same corridor, the last cabin next to the toilet, across from the shower, sound asleep and sprawled on his bunk, making the most of the room he had available to him.

He looked extremely innocent and extremely young. Dax crouched next to the bunk with a smile and a light kiss on his cheek. He stirred, the kiss and loose ends of her hair tickling his face, his eyes opening slightly, glazed with sleep and not quite sure of his surroundings and then suddenly concerned when he realized she was leaning over him.

"Jadzia!" Bashir sat up with a start, panicked that she might be sick or something worse was wrong.

Her fingers touched his lips quieting him and coaxing him to get up. "Come on," she drew back to collect his discarded uniform and boots.

Bashir was obedient, though curious, pulling on his jumpsuit. "Darling, what…"

She kissed him. Her wouldn't say so much like a man, other than her strength was that of a man's pulling him into her arms. It was odd, strangely appealing at the same time. He surrendered to the suggestion and excitement her aggression inspired, perhaps wondering somewhere in the back of his mind why he was getting dressed.

Dax smiled under the kiss, jarring him back into a sense of reality when she pulled away from him again, urging him to finish dressing.

"Yes, all right," Bashir nodded, giddy, groggy, he knew he had to be a ridiculous sight hopping up and down on one foot as he pulled on his boots but he didn't care, there was something fanciful about the situation that he wanted to give into. Obviously, because though he exerted himself, kissing her once he managed to get his shoes on, he was clearly following her lead. She grabbed him by the hand, peering around the corner of the door to check the status of the corridor that was empty and quiet and they were off like two escaping thieves, dashing for the turbolift.

"Where…" Bashir started to ask as the door closed and he found himself back in her arms.

"Shuttlebay," Dax instructed the computer.

Bashir blinked. "Shuttlebay…" he said, but he was being smothered and it took precedence for the moments it took for them to arrive, which, by then he didn't care where they were, or if they just halted the program. The door swished open and he looked up to stare out at the looming, silent structure of the runabout.

"The Styx…" he said.

"Come on," Dax had him by the hand and they were darting across the floor, up the hatch, into the interior to the midsection and her crew quarters.

"Why you little minx," Bashir whistled impressed, disbelieving as she pulled him inside the cabin, tugging his jumpsuit down off his shoulders and whipping his T-shirt up over his head. "I can't believe it. Why didn't I think of that?"

"Hm," her mouth closed over his with intensity, murmuring, "I want you, Julian, I want you."

It was back to being odd, a mixture of appealing and uncertainty, her building aggression inspiring his. Bashir could feel himself already starting to sweat, hear his brain trying to reason with his inflamed senses that with each passing moment more than a risk of discovery was increasing as they stood there clutching at each other like their lives depended on it.

"Because it's madness, darling," he managed with a gasping breath, meaning the setting, what they were doing, not her. "It's madness."

She stepped back, yanking him up to her with such force that they both fell against the frame of the bunk and he woke up from his frenzy enough to realize not only was it possible someone could get hurt, but how this really was not what he wanted. Not for her, him, them. To the contrary, it was everything he didn't want. Desperate, primitive, approaching animalistic.

"No, I can't, darling," his moan answered her moan about wanting him, his hands clutching at hers clutching him, trying to pull away from her. "I can't."

For God's sake he could feel his mouth watering. He was drooling. One would think they were in the peak of sex and they weren't. He'd be dead of a heart attack, insane, long before they culminated the act.

"Darling, I can't!" He was free, slamming and pinning her arms against the frame of the upper bunk, gasping for breath, trying to reason with her, explain. "I can't make love to you simply because I'm afraid that if I don't I won't be able to. This is madness; it's insane." He was pleading with her. Aware she was staring at him, almost glaring at him. "For God's sake, it's only two days. If we can't control ourselves for two days!"

She pulled loose of him easily, pushing him away. Much of his strength relying on his weight he heaved against her to keep her pinned back and he had to weigh twenty pounds less than her.

"Jadzia!" he said as she whirled for the door. She ignored him and he was grabbing up his T-shirt, struggling back into it, and chasing out after her.

"Jadzia!" Bashir insisted and she stopped in the hatchway to look back at him, expressionless, sullen. He nodded, extending his hand. She stared at it. "Come on," he said. "Come back inside."

She looked away but didn't leave and Bashir took a chance, pulling his jumpsuit up over his shoulders as he moved up to her. "Jadzia?"

She folded her arms, closing herself off, silent and angry. Bashir already knew that, not entirely sure why or what about. Rejection, possibly. Ridiculous because he wasn't, nor had he rejected her. The situation, yes. The timing. He touched her arm and her head whipped around to glare at him.

"Talk to me," he encouraged softly. "That is what some of this is supposed to be about."

She eyed him, shoving his hand off her arm and stalked forward to the helm where she paced before dropping down into the seat. He followed, perching on the console in front of her, waiting. Eventually she sighed, still sullen. In her eyes, her expression, her head as it cocked. "Explain the rules to me again. Explain them to me."

"Rules…" Bashir's mouth opened in surprise.

"Yes," Dax nodded, "the rules, and don't you dare tell me you don't know what I'm talking about."

"Except I don't," he apologized. "I'm sorry, but I really don't."

"Well, I'll make it simple for you. Why is all right for you to break them, but it isn't if I do? Because you thought of it? Because they're your rules, not mine, which they're not!"

Bashir stared perplexed aft to the midsection.

"Julian!" Dax insisted.

Bashir shook his head again in apology. "I'm sorry, darling, I'm not ignoring you. I am just trying to understand what you're saying because I certainly never meant it to come across that way."

"Well, it did!"

"Yes, that much I do realize. However, in all honesty I don't understand why?"

"What do you mean why?" she snapped.

"I rejected you," he agreed with what seemed to be the root of her complaint. "Except I didn't. Perhaps what I don't understand is why you would even think that?"

Why she would think that. "Because!" her arm flailed back toward the cabin.

"The setting," Bashir nodded. "The temptation. Darling, that's what I rejected, not you."

Dax stared at him. "It's the same thing!"

"No, it isn't."

"Yes, it is! Oh, this is ridiculous," her head dropped back with a groan, angry, embarrassed tears stinging her eyes and they were ridiculous, too.

Bashir's confusion passed into uneasy concern. Her emotional display touching the lover in him wanting to console and cure also touched the doctor. His instincts telling him, as they had with Leeta, there was an underlying cause to her stress, either known or unknown to her, with it probably being most significant that she wasn't Leeta. The irrational argument and tear-stained cheeks so atypical of her, it was the second time in two weeks her posture collapsed under hardly grueling circumstances. She was in love, not pain. It far less intriguing and astoundingly feminine of her that she would become hysterical in the process than it was potentially alarming.

"No, it isn't ridiculous," he reassured gently. "Darling, you're upset. There's nothing ridiculous about it."

"Of course I'm upset! Julian, I just wanted to be with you. That's all I wanted. I didn't care where, how, I just wanted to be with you. But, no, that's not acceptable, it's not allowed except when it's you!" She pushed her hair back. "And then…let me see…It can be in the turbolift. It can be in the cargo hold. The commissary. The Ark. The Town Center. Your quarters. The lab. It can even be in the shower! It just can't be me. My idea."

"Spontaneity," Bashir guessed.

"Yes," Dax nodded. "Spontaneity."

"And I ruined it."

"Yes," Dax nodded. "You ruined it."

"I wasn't trying to."

"Well!" she said. "You did. You really did. And you know what, Julian? It's not acceptable. It's not allowed. I am not there only when you want me to be, I'm there because I want to be!" She slapped the arm of her chair, her eyes burning red. Angry with him for making her upset, seeing her upset, angry with herself for being upset, defensive over her right to be upset.

Which she had every right to her feelings, Bashir did not begrudge her the right. Actually beginning to feel slightly relieved that all that might be wrong was a fairly common enough need for reassurance and comfort. "Come here," he slipped down off the console, his hand extended.

Dax gaped at him.

"Damn the rules," Bashir nodded. "I do anyway, you're right. So I'll just be honest and say it. Damn the rules."

"That's the whole point," she groaned.

"That I ignore them, and you can't," he verified.

"Yes!"

"That's perception, darling," he promised. "Actually, we're both ignoring them together, with the issue simply being at whose idea."

"Simply?" she accused. Admittedly a poor choice of word however irrelevant to what he was actually saying, she nevertheless seized it and ran with it, condemning and vilifying him. "Julian, you didn't even speak to me for four days!"

Bashir could feel his headache pounding, attempting to squelch a newly rising personal concern that she wanted an argument, in fact was pushing for there to be an argument between them. He declined, focusing and trying to maintain a balance in his response. "Avoided you, yes. I tried to explain why beyond some tedious dissertation on how such is the psychological nature of the Human male to retreat periodically."

"Worf!" she blasted him. "I know why, and I am so tired of hearing about Worf, thinking about Worf. Worrying, wondering, revolving everything around Worf; it has nothing to do with Worf. It has to do with you. You want me there, when you want me there. No consideration for anyone, including me. There is no difference between the station, the Ark, the Defiant! Only what you deem different."

"Worf," Bashir agreed. "What I deem different is Worf. Kira and Keiko are aboard the Ark -- or the Styx, in this instance. Jake, Nog. That's not saying they can't, or won't realize our relationship; they very well may. It will probably be a small miracle if they don't. We are talking six weeks. But I'm far less concerned with what their responses might be than I am with what I know Worf's would be. Anger. Quite probably, violence. It's not even necessarily relevant that he's Klingon, other than the sheer size or power of him, it's the fact that you're his mate."

"Worf is aboard the station," Dax nodded.

"The station is massive, darling. You could be a thousand places, all legitimately so, compared to perhaps the ten you could be here aboard the Defiant. Apart from Worf would have to be truly deranged to do something like barge into my quarters in hopes of finding you and I together and attack us, he would first have to be looking for problems or troubles to find any. Seeking them out, suspecting us for a reason. That's what the rules are actually all about, not to hinder or control you or I. I don't want to give Worf a reason to suspect, think, or be concerned about anything. I want him to be completely in the dark. No conflict, no confrontations, and certainly no harm to come to you."

She stared at him blankly. Bashir smiled, stooping to crouch in front of her, picking up her hand whether she wanted him to or not. She didn't fight him, and he cradled it lovingly between his. "Which hardly explains why I would then arbitrarily break them if I'm so concerned about some ill will befalling you."

"No, it doesn't," Dax assured.

"Perhaps because I don't like them?" he offered. "Or want them? Any more than you do? Annoyed that they're necessary? Which they are? The truth is, I don't want conflict or confrontation from any direction, not only Worf. I want everything to be perfect. For us to have the very best opportunity to develop, thrive, and succeed in our relationship. The conflicts are out there. They'll be there. We'll have to face them, and we will face them, later. When we're ready. Stronger. More confident. Trusting," he promised. "Me, not you. I swear, darling, I never meant to give you the idea that you have any less right to initiate intimacy than I do. If I felt or thought anything about you approaching me, I thought did she think this through? Because I know I haven't, it wasn't my idea. The turbolift was my idea. It may have seemed spontaneous, or I may have seemed spontaneous, but I can assure you, I evaluated our surroundings, calculated the risks, decided they were acceptable and kissed you."

"I can't stand you," Dax said.

Bashir laughed. "It does sound clinical, doesn't it?"

"It's stupid!" she snatched her hand away. "Julian, we're aboard the Styx, not the bridge. Give me some credit for having at least thought even if I didn't walk around evaluating risks, calculating odds, if only common sense!"

"Trust, darling," he assured. "Not credit, trust. It's a question of trust. My ability to trust automatically. Nothing to do with you."

"I don't care what it is, just do it," she hissed. "I don't care what you thought, meant, felt. I felt immoral, humiliated, and I will never, NEVER feel that way again!"

She was sobbing, gasping tears almost uncontrollably, her hair hanging over her hands as she buried her face trying to hide and contain the convulsions looking to vomit out her misery and be done with it. Bashir's relief evaporated into paralyzing fear, wanting to bolt for the Infirmary and too frightened to leave her. "Jadzia…" he implored desperately.

"I'm sick," she choked. "Julian, I'm sick!"

"Yes. Slightly feverish as well, and it's probably not helping matters."

"No, you're not helping matters," she caught her breath. "I don't care how much you think, you still don't just think! It never extends beyond you."

"Too much actually," he nodded fervently. "I think too much, about everything, especially you. All those concerns about wanting everything perfect constantly on my mind. Jadzia, I love you madly. I want to protect you, and that includes from anyone's vulgar slander, certainly not ever want to cause you to feel vulgar in any way. Is that what you're possibly feeling?" he asked, desperate to determine the cause of her distress. "The pressures of someone's moral standard? Please say you're not. Because we will always be wrong to those who believe we are wrong."

"I don't care what anyone thinks!" she exclaimed.

"Are you sure?" he pressed. "Darling, that isn't an accusation, or criticism, merely a question. Because I'll tell you I do care. I care very much what anyone says about you."

"Well, in that way, yes," she nodded impatiently. "But that's not the point. Julian, two weeks ago we embarked on a field mission, not to have an affair. Did I know I was going to have an affair with you? Was I planning to have an affair with you? Was I even thinking about having an affair with you? No! But I'm having an affair with you. That doesn't even make any sense. None of this makes any sense. It's all just happening so fast, too fast, I can't even think!" she dropped back in her seat exhausted. "I can't think," she shook her head. "Never mind anyone not being able to think. I have no idea what is even happening." She picked at the arm of the chair, wiping the tears, mucus and saliva from her face with the sleeve of her uniform.

Bashir frowned, trying to dissect what she was saying. "Yes, well, apart from I have to disagree with everything you just said, I don't for a moment believe anything you just said. While you may not have known or planned our relationship, you had to be thinking about us. I'm not quite sure why you have this idea we just happened. We didn't just happened. We happened over a period of six years. That's hardly quick. The only thing that could be said to have happened quickly between us was once acknowledging our love for each other we wanted to share it, solidify our standing with each other. But that physical desire, the same as our love, was already there. No more happening in a moment than anything else between us."

He stared at her, swallowing back the ache he could feel building in his throat. "Jadzia, are you having second thoughts?"

She eyed him loftily. "About?"

"Us," Bashir said frankly. "Again, that's only a question."

"No," she shook her head and his eyes closed. "Are you?"

"God, no," he assured with a daring light touch of her sticky cheek. "Let me get you something."

He returned quickly with a sterile wipe, his medical tricorder and a hypospray. Dax blew her nose as he scanned her. "How sick am I?"

Bashir smiled. "I suspect much better than you were a few minutes ago, and even a few hours. There's also Dax to consider. Doubt if he finds these inoculations any less repulsive then we do -- wanting to spit them out if he could," he closed his tricorder with a wink, applying the hypospray to her throat.

"That's not an answer," she yawned almost immediately. "What did you just give me?"

"A mild relaxer," Bashir admitted. "For your stomach. Hardly potent enough to induce sleep -- which is where I suspect that yawn comes from; a desire to sleep. Did you manage to get any rest at all today?"

"If you call living on the bathroom floor for two hours rest," she took the tricorder away from him to review her screening.

"How well I know and can sympathize with that," Bashir laughed. "Between the Rudellian plague and Kora virus, I'm not sure which one was worse. If Anar had to choose a rendezvous sight for his Maquis did it have to be the Cardassian border? Quite frankly, apart from the Klingon madness I'm surprised the only illness they've contracted is Rigelian fever."

"Increased neurotransmitter output," Dax roughly handed him back the tricorder.

"Infinitesimal," Bashir reassured. "Along with some residual nausea, largely due to irritation by this point, a mild fever, and some minor congestion of the esophageal passage -- also due for the most part to irritation. Other than that?" he smiled again. "Dax is also no more immune to the effects of anxiety than you are. He's complaining a little, we'll call it that. Probably tired himself and wondering what all this commotion is really about…I can relate to that," his thumb caressed her cheek. "Respecting everything you've said I wish an apology and I love you could somehow set your heart and mind to rest. Can they?"

"I suppose that would depend on how sick I am," Dax replied flatly.

Bashir's eye twitched, not in a wink. "I'm sorry?" he said.

"How sick am I?" she repeated.

Bashir glanced at the tricorder. "You and Dax? Darling, I just explained the increased neurotransmitter output is entirely normal. You feel poorly. But there's certainly no sustained damage or trauma…from the immunization series…" he was gesturing with the tricorder, offering it to her to see again for herself, a light breaking as she sat there looking tired and worn. "Are you talking about Curzon?"

"You said I was sick," she reminded.

He said a great deal more than that. He said she was emotionally stressed to the point of being suicidal. Self-destructive. A victim of repeated psychological and physical abuse. Possibly in the early stages of rejection, and regardless, losing the battle to live her life from under the oppressive and vicious control of Curzon. Those terrifying findings and theories streaming unemotionally out across the monitor screen to be read and then dropped. Never to be discussed or even mentioned again.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

"Oh, my God, Jadzia," Bashir dropped to his knees in front of her. Horrified he could be so blind, dense, for that matter so callous as to not realize or expect it to eat at her like some slow poison over the past two weeks regardless of whatever other glorious or uplifting event occurred. What did he think she did? Simply forget about them like he did?

"How sick am I?" Dax coolly repeated for the third time.

"No, that's an awful word," Bashir begged. "It's inaccurate for one. Darling, please, you have to understand, much of what you read was only the computer's opinion. Yes, you're stressed. You're horribly stressed. Traumatized, abused. Surrendering to Curzon's bizarre fixation with the Klingon Empire, partially in your own defense because how else can you be expected to defend yourself? You can't.

"But, darling, if for a moment I thought there was any validity to the idea of rejection we'd be at the Institute despite my loathing for them, hardly en route to some field expedition. It's just something I'm terrified of happening. Of course I am. You've been through this before."

"Belar," she said.

"Yes," he said. "Jadzia you almost died; out of the question. There's no way it's reaching anywhere near that extreme; it's simply not. I understand enough about the mechanics of the integration process to know what to watch for, damn if I'm not technically qualified, and certainly so do you know firsthand the symptoms of rejection having lived through their beastly attempt to repress Dax's experiences with Belar at any costs, including you; we'll work it out together.

"A fine thing for me to say, I know," he consoled her, guilt-ridden and nauseated by what he had done, or failed to do. "Hardly caring enough not to load all of this on to you and then just leave you there to handle it however best you could; overwhelmed by love certainly not acceptable as some form of defense or excuse."

"You have a funny way of showing it some times," she agreed.

"Selfish," he assured. "Utterly. Totally, totally inexcusable. Though I was overwhelmed, still am. In that way you're right. It did happen so fast. One moment we were apart and then next we were together. Jadzia, when I kissed you it was the dynamics of some star exploding. And when you ever said I love you? I swear I couldn't hear or see anything else. What couldn't we conquer? What can't we? I don't know, I can't explain what I was or wasn't thinking. Some bizarre, irrational belief that now anything that was wrong was somehow miraculously fixed? Isn't that just so completely insane?"

"Romantic, maybe," she allowed.

"Yes," Bashir said. "In the meantime you're attempting to assimilate all of this on your own. Little wonder you're questioning everything. Sheer wonder you're not panic-stricken because you're right, of course. Simply because Curzon appears quiet, doesn't mean he's gone."

"I didn't say I accepted your theory," she stopped him.

"No," Bashir felt the softness of her cheek under his hand, seeing the log of love-batterings she had endured. "And don't I wish I could be called upon to have to defend it, except I can't be. Facts are facts, darling, and they're awful facts. It isn't the point of your existence, nor Dax's. Nothing you or he has to learn. You're a living archive, not simply some testimonial to the existence of domestic violence in the modern universe --

"Regardless of what it's called," he stopped her. "Culture is not an excuse. It never has been and it never will be. Civilized worlds respect simply because a past generation upheld some horrifying practice or belief it doesn't mean they do. In fact, refuse to. That is the nature of life. Its guiding light, its responsibility, to grow. To recognize and acknowledge its destructive cycles and patterns and stop them. Just like you go forth into the future with the knowledge and information it has accumulated -- a future, or present, darling, I insist, that doesn't need you to bring to its attention of how there are worlds of extremists who simply refuse to grow. The Klingon. The Cardassian. The Ferengi. The Romulan, and how many countless others? We already know.

"We do," he promised. "Our children will know as well. The wounds and scars of our lifetime will be there for years. We don't need yours to drive the point home. Curzon's work with the Federation is over, it's done, it's past. If it was wrong for Torias to turn back and pick up Nilani's hand, it's wrong for you to turn back and pick up Curzon's. It can't be both ways. I'm sorry, but it simply can't be. You're a scientist. Premiere Distinctions in exobiology, zoology, astrophysics -- "

"Jadzia couldn't have been on the wrong path?" she interjected.

She was speaking of herself in the third person. Bashir's head dipped. "At least not transferred to the perfect assignment? A science officer aboard a station, rather than one in the field? Yes, of course, that's entirely possibly. We can certainly explore that avenue, along with all others. What it may mean and how it may manifest itself. Perhaps finding out Curzon is as utterly innocent as you, not exercising undue and unfair control; I don't believe that. I'll be honest with you, but yes, it is possible; what isn't?

"It's also entirely possible," he said, "you may simply require a certain degree, or level of physicality that life here doesn't generally afford you, at least not on a regular basis. What happens then when you're deprived? Common sense says you seek to obtain satisfaction elsewhere. Toxins aren't the only addictions, darling. Exercise stimulates your brain, not only your body. However, no theory as to how or why negates the abuse and misuse you've had to endure. The physical, emotional, and mental damage that is also addictive, and so debilitating. My concern is intensified, not blinded by the fact that I love you. I'm seeking to cure, fix, identify the cause and areas of danger, not point a finger of blame. If I were, quite frankly, I would be pointing my finger at more than Mister Worf and Curzon. I would be pointing it at everyone who insists on identifying you with Curzon, as Curzon, affectionately or otherwise, old man. You are not old man. You're Jadzia. Living your life to become who you are; joined. Achieving in your field to ensure, not only your acceptance to the Symbiosis Commission, but your value as a host to Dax. Darling, if the Institute felt Dax would best be served, or serve, repeating an existence as a Federation Ambassador there was no reason to choose you. Which they did choose you. No more some clone of Curzon's than Curzon was a clone of Torias."
"Yes, all right," Dax said wearily. "I can accept there's some substance to your theory, Julian, I'm just not willing to accept Curzon as being the root." She bit her lip, honestly greatly disturbed by the thought.

As well she should be. "Darling, while it may be simple by comparison, Curzon utterly refused to surrender his control of Odo at the closure of your zhian'tara rite."

"He can be obnoxious," Dax admitted.

"Controlling," Bashir insisted. "Domineering. Selfish. Power mad. Belar was at least honest, murdering when he felt like murdering, not depleting his victim like some vampire. As Belar, for all his own madness, was powerless against Curzon's control of Dax. Unable to peel away at the Institute's memory repression and reassert himself into Curzon's awareness for eighty years. But he certainly could reassert himself with you."

"Yes," Dax said. "And I don't know, Julian, perhaps the weakness lies within me, not Curzon. Something I have to learn -- for Dax to carry forth." She smiled at him slightly for the first time in an hour? "Other than the joy and experience of being in love. Knowing, recognizing, feeling it. When it matters most. At the time, not after the fact like Torias."

"I suppose that's also possible," Bashir answered quietly. Generously, also, Dax knew.

She nodded. "Julian, the training at the Symbiosis Commission is not unlike textbook. A script, guideline. Rules and regulations. Somewhat different to then go out and live it especially when the whole point is for Dax to learn. Can you understand that?"

"Absolutely. For all the field training Starfleet provides, for all the simulated programs, lose your patient for the first time. Not some holographic reenactment or drill to prepare you, but a being. A soul. A life passing. Over. Dead. At your hands, or by your hands, if only because there was no way you could stop it. I'll never forget that experience for the rest of my life; I still never forget them; never accept. Yes, there is a remarkable difference in learning, knowing, and living something. You cannot begin to compare them."

"No," Dax agreed. She studied him. "A star exploding?"

Bashir smiled. "Definitely. I can't think of a better way to describe it."

It was probably close enough. "You're a fascinating man, Julian Bashir."

She spoke like she was a thousand years old intrigued to find there were still things that could excite or ignite her. Bashir grinned. "You just decided this?"

"No," Dax shook her head. "No, I didn't just decide." She remained pensive, the slight smile on her face relaxed back into benign, thoughtful expression.

"Talk to me," he invited when she didn't speak for several seconds. "I'm expressing my concerns, what are yours? Do you have any specifically? Any questions you haven't been able to answer for yourself?"

"Worf?" she apologized.

Yes, of course, Mister Worf. A victim of Curzon's ruthless power the same as she. Bashir looked away; he looked back. "Darling, simply because you are enabling Mister Worf to be precisely who and what he is, Klingon, doesn't make him a victim. To the contrary, Mister Worf is already who and what he is; a wolf in sheep's clothing. An individual with his own lengthy list of emotional and psychiatric problems, including an identity crisis, none of which are your responsibility or concern. You're not a doctor, and you're certainly not a punching bag."

"No," Dax shook her head. "No, Julian, you're thinking emotionally."

"Yes," Bashir said. "I loathed Mister Worf from the moment he walked onto this station, long before he ever sat down next to you. When he did, I hated him. Less for the fact that he was sleeping with you than for the fact that he was hitting you. I don't care what are the true reasons behind the violence. Whether in his deranged mind it's something he feels you deserve, or simply something that gives him great pleasure; I beg to differ. The idea that someone would take such an abominable act and justify it as a cultural oddity, capsule it, entitle it with the word love, is an abomination unto itself. The premise alone is enough to make any sane person vomit on the spot."

"Stagnation," Dax nodded calmly. "If you're right and Curzon is in actuality stagnating me, then I am stagnating Worf, and I can't…" she said as Bashir closed his eyes again, "I can't understand why I would do that? Why, or how, I wouldn't see that I was?"

"Because you aren't," Bashir said. "Stagnating Mister Worf how? Darling, to stagnate someone suggests they have potential. What's Mister Worf's potential?"

"I don't know," Dax frowned.

"No," Bashir said coldly. "Neither do I. He's already mastered the art of standing around like some sort of pillar of Klingon sobriety while indulging in the ecstasy of sex culminated while beating his mate's head against some wall. Wearing his bangs, and cuts and bruises like badges, the two of you spending the day looking and feeling the part of two spent animals."

"Are you through?" Dax asked when he paused.

"Yes," Bashir said. "Yes, I'm through. Forewarned, darling," he chanced a smile. "Don't ask me to understand or accept Mister Worf as innocent. It's not going to happen."

She nodded. "I'm concerned that I'm going to unwittingly repeat the same pattern with you. I don't want to do that. I love you, Julian. And I want to…" she thought, trying not to notice the stinging sensation of tears returning to her eyes. "I want to love you the way I love you; more than anything. Never desperate, and never because I feel I have to. Is that possible? I don't know," she said. "I really don't know. I know I just wanted to be with you so badly, I don't even know why. I have no idea why."

"Because you're in love," he said, somewhat in awe of the innocence in her confusion. "You were upset? You needed a hug?"

Dax frowned again. "Are you sure?"

Bashir laughed. "No, actually. If you were Human, I would say, yes, absolutely. Seriously though, I do know that I would much prefer to think those are the reasons why rather than becoming paranoid your wanting to be with me is because you're acting out some sort of external symbiotic bonding."

"That would be extreme, wouldn't it?" Dax had to laugh a little also.

"Definitely," Bashir assured. "Who knows though. There may be a degree of validity to your concern considering you are joined, and you know the joy of living as a joined Trill."

"Oh, I do, Julian," she said. "I love my life."

"Good," Bashir smoothed the few new tears that had stained her cheek. "I want you to love it. I want you to live it. Can you ever forgive me for being so obsessed with you wanting to include me that I would in turn neglect you so horribly?"

"Well…" she said though really only to torture him. "Probably. But then I also didn't sit you down to demand we talk."

"True," his thumb creased the corner of her mouth, wanting to kiss her so badly with that bizarre notion it would make everything all better. Repair whatever lingering strains remained between them. "I'll tell you a secret. Real or imaginary, I wouldn't be concerned about repeating some pattern and developing a parasitic relationship with me. Not only would I never allow you to harm yourself in any way, the six year history between us is very real. That's the root of our love, its foundation, route of development. Firm. Solid. Undeniable. Nothing unhealthy about it. We love each other, and we both just want it to work. A little desperately perhaps, on both our parts. But that's also understandable when we've denied and starved ourselves of each other for so long."

"We need time together, Julian," she decided.

"Yes," he agreed. "A block of time, that's very true. No duty calls, settling for the moments afforded us on some field assignment, but uninterrupted time. It's not something easily arranged, but if we really want to I'm sure we'll find a way."

"I really want to," she said.

"So do I. Oh, darling, so do I."

"Good." She settled back in her seat with a smile, looking so provocative. Bashir recalculated the risks of breaking the rules, seizing her in his arms, and the argument starting all over again. He decided against it. "Feeling better? Your stomach?"

"Some. Yes," she nodded. "You?"

"Fine, actually. For the most part. But then I slept. Four, five hours? Works wonders once the initial crisis is over. Rom had the right idea." He checked his watch that he didn't have with him.

"01:20:06," the computer reported.

Earlier than he thought, but still late enough. "Come on," he stood up, collecting his tricorder, hypospray and her hand. "I seem to remember something about Jake volunteering to be wide awake and alert by some frightful hour. Meanwhile, I'm sure we can work something out between our schedules. Give us some time to be together to talk, if we want to. Or simply stare at each other over our respective cups of tea," he joked as they entered the Infirmary. "Perhaps at some point you're off duty?"

"Possible," Dax said. "Nog and I are scheduled to be relieved from the bridge at 1900 to assist you and Keiko in the lab."

"Well, that's perfect," Bashir approved. "Not only does that allow Nog a chance to become familiar with the study's premise before arrival, I can set him up with Jake under Keiko's supervision while you and I take a break somewhere neutral like the commissary."

"That should be fine."

"Definitely," Bashir averted his eyes to look around the sterile, pristine laboratory. "Actually, I'm even considering allowing us to clutter in here now rather than bother about setting everything up in the Defiant."

Dax laughed. "Familiarize yourself with any differences there may be in the systems?"

"Something like that," Bashir grinned.

"I just may get my analysis of Lange's samples yet."

"1900. Promise. It'll be waiting for you, next to your tea."

"Where have I heard that before?" She watched him set the tricorder and hypospray away.

"From me. But, no, this time it will definitely be there."

He ordered lights out as they walked for the door, the Infirmary dipping into darkness, a minor awkwardness in the brief silence between them as they each suddenly didn't have anything to say. The flat sole of one of their boots made a funny squeaking sound against the floor. She could see his smile flicker. Another step and she just stopped. "Julian," she said.

"Yes?" he answered quickly. "I'm sorry. Did you want to take the suppressant with you? I suppose it's all right if you really think it's something you might need."

"No," she shook her head. "I'm fine."

"Oh," Bashir said.

She studied him, knowing the look on his face, having seen it often. The slight tip to his head, the eyes widened slightly. His carriage, neutral, placid, casual. Finally she just asked. "Julian, could we break the rules?"

His head tipped back and then forward, exhaling a thankful breath and broad grin. "I thought you'd never ask."

"Hm," Dax smiled as his fingers curled through hers, the pressure of them strong. She watched his eyes droop and his lips part before her eyes closed. It was a loving kiss. Tender, sensual, long, his voice cloudy when he ordered the computer to place her on unavailable status.

"Commander Dax is currently unavailable," the computer rejected the request as a duplication. Bashir blinked at his com badge.

"Now, why didn't I think of that?" Dax teased his surprise.

"Very funny," he said. "Computer? Amend Commander Dax's status to place her and Cadet Nog on sick roll until notified. Under no circumstances are either of them to be disturbed until released."

"Was that wise?" Dax wondered, watching him transfer her screening to the Defiant's medical bank.

"We'll find out. Come on."

He picked the wrong cabin, the bunks on the opposite wall than the quarters they had been in but that was all right, he picked the right cabin next. Atmosphere mattering more than the cabin arrangement in this instance the arrangement was very much a part of it. He dropped her hand only for the moment it took to slip his jumpsuit off his shoulders and toss his T-shirt aside. Dax glanced from his naked chest to his hands pressing tightly against hers, their fingers entwining.

"I believe this is where we were," Bashir agreed.

It was a loving union, silent except for their breathing, reminiscent of the first time in its construction and focus to show love, promote it, consummating their relationship that had risen a level. Their discussion a result, not the cause of the elevation that had actually occurred early the morning before when confronted with the prospect of being revealed they faced it without fear or question. They were lovers in love, any resemblance to an affair, superficial.

Deliberate, determined, involved, Bashir was aware of almost welcoming some new opportunity to share that truth and understanding, thinking about it randomly throughout the night. Wondering, occasionally wanting someone to walk through the door and discover them. No one did. Not at any point to find them wrapped in passion, or during the time they were bold enough to fall asleep for a short while. He woke up under the weight of her across his chest. She woke up under the pressure of his kiss. An hour later he was scooping up their clothes and her hand, poking his head out the door for a quick look up and down the corridor before scooting for the shower to drop the cargo in a heap on the floor and themselves back in each other's arms.

There were two showers, as noticed earlier, to accommodate the eight crew, both sonic, maximum programmable time: ten minutes at ten minute intervals, efficiency in crew management, water consumption, storage, and recycling, on the minds of Starfleet engineers rather the romantic. That was all right. Lacking the stimulus of warm, constructed rain, the limited time, time was irrelevant after the first few minutes provided the door did not fling itself open at the maximum allowable twenty minutes, which it did not. He activated the maximum time, an hour later activating it again. The sanitizing vaporless wash refreshing and invigorating, her matted, snarled hair softening under his hand in moments rather than dripping wet.

Dax relaxed comfortable in his strength she had noticed in Benjamin's office and now felt in his arms around her. The maturity. The newfound serenity in the hand smoothing her hair as she rested against his shoulder. She smiled. "Two rules broken in one night?"

"Why not?" his whisper breathed in her ear. "Seemed a perfect way to dispel any lingering doubts I'm any less on fire for you."

"No doubts," she shook her head.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"Me, too," he kissed the trail of spots along her cheek line.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

It was earlier than he thought it was; 06:21:05 when they sat in the small, utilitarian commissary, gazing at each other over their cups of tea like lovers do, a prevailing tranquility about them and in the air around them. The night, time spent together, seeming to have been much longer than it actually was, five hours, that was all. Bashir sipped his tea, knowing he was sitting with the ultimate in partners. His wife. His mate. He gave it a year or thereabouts before he actually asked her, also knowing he'd probably be tempted to from time to time especially during quiet moments like these. "What time is duty call?" he wondered.

"0700," Dax smiled.

Bashir nodded, thinking of their schedule date for 1900. "Twelve hour shifts then."

"Yes," Dax said. "On the bridge, anyway, for Rom, Nog and I. The Chief also, if he wants to; he may. Between whatever he and Rom might need to do to cover engineering."

"And Keiko," Bashir completed for her.

"Yes," Dax smiled.

"Can't be any easier than it's ever been for Miles," Bashir surmised. "Especially now since Keiko's only just returned."

"And leaving again," Dax said. "They'll work it out." She actually had a great deal of faith in the unit Miles and Keiko O'Brien.

"Oh, yes. Definitely," Bashir agreed. "Perhaps not in the same way others might, but they'll work it out their way, and that's what really matters."

"I imagine it does," Dax accepted with another soft smile. "Worf has second bridge duty; eighteen hours."

Bashir's sheepish grin dropped briefly to his tea. "I was trying not to ask that."

"I know," she nodded.

He laughed quietly. "Yes, all right, you win. No more rules."

"Only what's common sense," she agreed.

"Fair enough…and, well, I suppose we can make a reasonably early night of it; 23-24 hundred? Especially for those of you who have to back on duty at 0-seven."

"Either or," Dax imagined.

"My cabin?" Bashir asked. "Not here, darling. It was wonderful."

"But very close confines," she understood.

"Close enough," he smiled. "Particularly if Jake, or Keiko, or even Nog do want to remain in the lab for a while. In all honesty, it's not going to be as simple as I thought. You were right."

"It's not the Defiant," she said.

"With three additional crew members to consider, not only Kira. Still, I hope you don't mind if I still say we'll work it out."

"No, I don't mind."

"Is that a yes then?"

"Yes, I'll be there," she promised.

"So will I. By twenty-four. With bells on."

"Bells?" she laughed.

"An expression," he leaned across the small table with a stroke for her neatly braided hair. "If I have a fantasy it's not only to be with you every night, it's to be with you like this every morning."

"Sounds like a nice one."

"Definitely," he kissed her.

"Last of the rules?" she asked, listening to his breath, feeling it on her face, the same as he could feel hers.

"Generally speaking. Never kept too much to that one anyway."

"No," she said.

"Have to remember that when we get back to the station."

"The station," Dax savored. "What's at the station?"

Bashir bit back a silly giggle. "Do you know I went so far as to swear an oath to myself that I would never even kiss you in my office? Finding the idea not only derelict and so utterly beneath us, but debauched?"

She thought about that. "Which one of us needs to see a counselor?"

"I do," Bashir laughed. "Come on," he stood up with their tea and a flick of his head forward to the Infirmary suite. "Time to see about putting you officially back on duty."

"Um, hm," Dax obligingly fell in step. "I'm fine. You just want to play."

"Of course, I want to play. It's all quite impressive. You know I'm going to be hounding the Captain and the Chief, not only to keep her, but for an entire upgrade. Infirmary, surgical suites, ICU, lab, everything," he set their tea down on the medical console, securing his tricorder. "I'm five years post-modern except for an occasional patch. With that Cardassian matrix as much a dinosaur as the Ark by this time."

"Oh, I know," Dax settled on one of the two streamline examination beds with a nod for the array of overhead clusters that basically meant he could turn the entire Infirmary into an expanded surgical theater or ICU, or whatever else he cared to do. For their usage, apart from Nadya, that probably translated into petitioning Anar to contain the mummy aboard the runabout throughout the mission. "It really is extremely impressive. The UFP must have been desperate to appease Shakaar for Lange."

"With Shakaar as desperate to appease Captain Sisko."

"Oh, yes," Dax laughed. "Can we include the science labs in your fantasy?"

"Which one?" he looked up from her screening with a wink.

"Clever," she took the tricorder away from him with that coy wrinkling of her nose he absolutely loved. The results of her screening showing her very near ninety-six percent.

"Almost perfect," Bashir approved. "Can I talk you into breakfast yet? Papalla juice? Anything?"

Dax smiled. "I think I'd rather know what happened with Alexis Ortiz."

Bashir's mouth twisted, his head dipping again with his blushing grin. "One of those questions you've been trying not to ask?"

"Hm…" Dax considered. "Possibly. She's extremely forward for a Human."

"Aggressive, I would say," Bashir agreed. "That's interesting though. I know I hadn't thought of her approaching you. Can't imagine why she would; should I?" he asked.

"You," Dax agreed.

"Basis for your question," Bashir nodded. "And, well, that's part of it, I suppose. Though in my reevaluation of what the actual trouble was -- my trouble. Captain Sisko's words and advice when he promptly handed the issue of discharge back to me. In fairness I had to agree I couldn't say I wasn't overreacting to her personal attention, if only because I questioned myself of that at the time. Ultimately however, all of that was really irrelevant because the facts remain. She did speak grossly out of turn during the cardiac replacement, fully aware no general anesthesia penetrates to the subconscious, leaving the patient's psyche utterly vulnerable; or she should be aware of this, which obviously she is, as obviously it didn't concern her; she didn't care.

"As far as her earlier handling of the same patient," he said, "I have no proof she actually ignored him, but I do know Quark was more attuned to his surroundings to realize something was very wrong and when he attempted to secure medical attention on the man's behalf, she did, in fact, dismiss him without bothering to investigate. Thoroughly out of the question. At that time it hardly mattered who the patient was, whether he was intoxicated, or what he was, including the party responsible for causing the entire ruckus. Which, in due respect to the man, he hardly was. He wasn't even involved. Having entered the Infirmary at some point after the group from Quark's; as I said, neither here nor there," he smiled at her beautiful face. "No more than my feeling she was putting me in a personally awkward position, which she was. I discharged her. Relieved her of her duties, yes, absolutely, with a full report to Starfleet Medical, along with my recommendations she be placed on probation prior to, and hopefully after, a peer review. Sanctioned, and be required to repeat a rudimentary class or two, whether someone considers that overly harsh of me or not. I'm not even going to be here to supervise her six-week internship. Hardly up to returning to God knows what because I failed to respond to a situation that I wouldn't begin to tolerate if I were here. I'll take my chances she files some ludicrous complaint against me. To put it bluntly, the burden of proof is on her. I did not call her a bitch. Michelle was there and knows exactly what I said. I did deem her a witch, but that was not to her, it was simply said; out into the air. A verbal release of the frustration and anger I felt; furious at the level of insubordination, that she would interrupt my reprimand and invite me for some breakfast date.

"I'm sorry," he did not apologize. "Upon calming down at Captain Sisko's advice, and inquiring into what had actually transpired between her and Quark and my patient, I was even angrier and concerned -- for the welfare of my patients and my Kingdom," he smiled again. His weight balanced on his knuckles propped on the examining bed like some chimpanzee as he stood in front of her, speaking softly, feeling calm, serene, as he had begun feeling at some point earlier in the middle of the night.

"I'd like to talk about you for a moment, if we can," he said. "Not about Ortiz, but about traumatic stress syndrome, which is my diagnosis, yes. You exhibit some rather classic clinical symptoms associated with an abused adult. Most specifically, apart from the physical injuries, is a willingness to remain in the situation. That is where the issue of a concern over suicide emerges, whether or not you are actually fantasizing about committing suicide at this time."

"I'm not," Dax replied, also calm, listening.

"Good," Bashir said. "I'd also like to explain something. Whether or not ideas of culture, or cultural practices are relevant, they are not applicable. What I mean is, the same as the Articles of Federation offer a guideline in acceptable social or governmental behavior, regardless of what the individual world may deem their structure or right, so does the medical community. The fact that the abuse within your relationship with Worf does not extend beyond your sexual relations, in no way precludes, or prohibits, that area of your life from being determined to be sadomasochistic, and that is unacceptable.

"The fact," he said, "that you are the individual who is being invited, or encouraged to participate in a practice otherwise foreign to you, is what causes you to be determined the victim, or enabler, and Mister Worf to be determined the promoter or perpetrator. No, you aren't the one in control, nor do you have the power to say no without assistance. If you were, or if you had, you would have said no the very first time. To Worf, or to Curzon, which is why I feel the root of the trouble goes much deeper than Mister Worf, to an issue of control.

"What I can do then," he said, "what I have to do, for your sake, Mister Worf's, and, yes, my own, is stop subjectively viewing Worf as the ultimate evil, and begin objectively viewing him from the perspective of a doctor. Without getting into a debate on the Klingon culture, I can tell you, yes, Mister Worf also requires intervention and intensive psychological counseling and therapy, in fact, should be required to enroll in a structured program if he wishes to remain within the organization of Starfleet. It's utterly ludicrous to think that what prohibits a world from being a member of the UFP would in turn be somehow acceptable on an individual basis; which, I repeat, it isn't.

"As, in fact," he said, "I should be having this conversation with the two of you. I can't. Not at this point. However, emphatically, that is my goal. In the meantime, I am in love with you, and that magnifies everything. I need to be able to be confident, never mind anyone else, that any professional association I have with Worf is strictly professional. Not some form of punishment, or revenge, or power that I can relieve him of his duties above and beyond Captain Sisko, because he is hurting the woman I love. Mated, to the woman I love.

"A marked concern of mine," he said, "in that, regardless of how my culture views extramarital relationships, or how your culture views the same, it is vehemently unacceptable within Mister Worf's culture. A fact that causes an immediate risk of the abuse or violence expanding from its restricted area and exploding in your life. With the accompanying fact, that now, regardless of what Federation laws may read, Mister Worf is well within his cultural rights to kill you.

"Out of the question," he reiterated again what had been said before. "When it is time to inform Worf of our relationship, ideally, I would like for the two of us to first conference with Captain Sisko, allowing him the opportunity to express how he feels Worf should be advised. Respecting how apart from any concern for retaliation or violence, the potential of general disruption to the flow and unity of his staff would also have to concern Captain Sisko immensely.

"Right now," he said, "what I would like for us to do is focus our attention on enrolling you in a structured counseling program. Certainly, as your doctor, I would want to be initially involved in selecting the appropriate person to manage your case, but you also have to be completely comfortable with the choice. Feeling confident and free to talk about whatever you care to talk about, and that includes us, or me, if you so desire. Therefore, the best way I feel for us to find the right counselor is for us to conduct the interviews together. Reserving releasing any details other than a necessary base history, and even who you are, until personal introductions have been made, and you say yes, this is the one. Will you agree to participate in such a program?"

"Yes, I'll participate," Dax said honestly.

"Good," Bashir was pleased.

"I also like the idea of talking with Benjamin first," she agreed. "Maybe not for the same reasons as you."

"My reasons are stress," Bashir assured. "You're under enough stress. Surely the addition of our relationship has brought its own. Something your counselor may tell you, and certainly me."

"Maybe," Dax said. "But it was also stressful before, simply different."

"Sounds like my outlook," Bashir smiled. "How are you around Worf, if I may ask?"

"Good question," Dax laughed. "And, well, let me see…I would say somewhat less awkward than I would have thought Jadzia would have been, and somewhat more awkward than Dax normally is."

"And which of you is talking?" Bashir verified good-naturedly.

"Both," Dax smiled. "All. Jadzia. Dax. Which is who I am. Physically, emotionally and intellectually. With all of who Jadzia is and was and all of who Dax is and was brought together; joined. I can't be separated, that's very true. My host body will die, as I might die as well. Either way there will never be another Jadzia-Dax again, anymore than there would be another Julian Bashir. Something," she admitted, "I need to explore and make sure I understand fully before attempting to point it out to anyone else."

"You did fine," Bashir assured.

"And I have an idea some are just confused by the external, Julian," she said. "Ignoring it for fear of focusing on it and cheating Dax out of his rightful acknowledgment and inadvertently end up cheating Jadzia."

"That would be a classic humanoid response when confronted with the extraordinary, such as your species," Bashir agreed. "What can't be, or isn't understood, is nevertheless categorized or divided, hopefully in an effort to understand, rather than destroy, either way forgetting the whole is greater than the sum total of its parts."

"Don't do the opposite?" Dax requested.

"Got it," he promised. "No I won't focus only on Jadzia, forgetting Dax, despite this primal creature inside of me who loves the external you madly, I love you. Insisting I understand because you're right. I'm also a collection of intellect, emotion, and experiences. Simply without the physical symbiont relationship and guidance of Dax. Our internal connection to ourselves and the universe is intangible; we call it soul. Romantics and scientists alike believing it lives on beyond the host body, either in another host, through our children, or as a developed advanced lifeform. Living, some would like to think for eternity; we've yet to agree which, if any or all are actually right," he finished with a grin. "Or if it's all just folklore."

Dax nodded. "I can see where it might be a little difficult for you to decide."

"Quite," Bashir laughed. "I'm not sure the choices could be anymore diverse. Getting back to the choices of a counselor, while we're still aboard the Defiant, I can secure recommendations from the medical banks. Once we're on the planet I can contact Rebecca Sorge for her recommendations from the runabout if Anar really doesn't have the communications equipment."

"He has to," Dax believed.

"Anon Dukat's transport," Bashir agreed. "That's what I'm hoping."

"Yes," Dax said. "However, we are on a communications lockout."

"I'll make it an exchange," Bashir offered. "This way Anar can have an update on Janice's status."

"He can probably get that any time he chooses. I'm sure all of that was arranged before he left the Tir."

"My point," Bashir assured. "Yes, he can, and there's no way we can stop him, so really, what does a communications lockout actually mean? Meanwhile we're here for six weeks. It will take at least that long to arrange for any appropriate candidates to come to the station to meet you. I'd like to have all of that in place by the time we're home rather than waiting until then to begin our search, particularly since the interview process is going to add even more time before you begin actual counseling."

"Yes, all right," Dax said.

"Good," Bashir said. "It's not an attempt to intimidate you, simply stressing something you need."

"No, I know that," Dax nodded. "I'm not intimidated."

"Good," Bashir said again. "Ideally I'd like it to be Rebecca Sorge, however, I'm not willing to wait the six months for her to return from Cardassia Prime, if she plans to return. In the meantime there has to be someone else out there, and you can practice with me in the interim."

"Hm," Dax smiled. "Why is it I just can't counsel with you again?"

His lips touched hers lightly. "That's why. Long term it would be counter- productive."

"Got it," Dax said.

"Excellent. Now what about that idea of breakfast?"

"Maybe in a couple of hours," she hopped down with a laugh to have a critical look over the modifications the Chief had made to the science station in compliance with Anar's adamant refusal to allow any planetary surveys. Foolish because they also could have assisted him in a better understanding of the area and land they were attempting to cultivate. As it was now the only offering they could make was a combined opinion of hers and Keiko's.

"All right," Bashir sighed. "But I insist that hollow feeling in the pit of your stomach is called hunger."

His arm encircled her waist and she felt the light burst from a hypospray. "Nutritional supplement," he offered before she asked. "Everything that cup of tea of yours doesn't have."

"Something to do with that lightheaded feeling can no longer be attributed to vertigo."

"Absolutely," he settled back against the console with a sympathetic smile for the panels. "I believe the Chief also disabled many of the arrays."

"I'm sure he did. He's hiding something."

"Anar?"

"Yes. It's more than an environmental concern."

"Or simply wishing to be disagreeable," Bashir nodded. "Well, we've suspected that all along as far as my understanding."

Yes. But now she knew. Face to face with what they could do, and could not do simply because they were not allowed to, she knew.

"Any idea what really?" Bashir asked.

"No," Dax admitted.

"Beyond some form of weaponry or defense," Bashir guessed.

"Well, that, yes," she agreed. "Maybe it's Klingon. I don't know. Some of the artifacts…"

"If not some of the furnishings," Bashir nodded, "appear to be distinctly Klingon in origin."

"Yes."

"An actual downed Bird-of-Prey?" Bashir shrugged. "Recently? Rather than a collection of trophies secured over the years? Anar's hints and our theories include they had the power and numbers at one point. Nevertheless, it seems a bit odd to display on one hand what you're attempting to hide on the other. Not that it couldn't have serious ramifications if you're right. Particularly if there was some sort of new or improved technology aboard that no else knew about; yet." He took her hand, drawing her away from the science console to his adjacent medical. "On a far lighter note, you'll be pleased and surprised to know for all my ignoring Janice's samples…"

"You actually did begin an analysis?"

"Well, I created a file," he grinned. "But, no," he said as she laughed, "I did transfer all your logs to the Defiant -- "

"So did I."

"I know. I deleted them and incorporated them with my file. We're now linked and all set to begin. Simple matter of transferring the file to these data banks…Which we can do right now…" he accessed the log. "But wait before you applaud, because there's more…"

"Nadya," Dax said as the genetic chain appeared on screen in a spiraling figure-8, rotating and multiplying as the chain arced out, and the data began to stream across the display.

"Yes," Bashir said excitedly.

"Are these your simulations?"

"It's everything. Have a seat," he invited. "Interestingly enough as convinced as I was Sian was probably not her biological father, I'm now not as sure the lacking genetic markers couldn't be explained by manipulation -- certainly engineering is a plausible consideration at this level, the corrosion is obviously quite extensive. However, if one considers the use of hybridomas to rapidly produce monoclonal antibodies in an effort to combat the effects of the gamma radiation, and that of a recombinant technique to cause the desired gene to reproduce itself in an attempt to stimulate a polymerase chain reaction -- which, unto itself, could explain the number of DNA fragments…And," he said, suddenly interrupting himself, "admittedly I just thought of this, quite possibly the basic principle Janice employed in her experiments."

"Tissue regeneration," Dax said.

"Controlled replication," Bashir said. "Extraordinarily difficult to achieve, to the contrary, the very nature of topical application fairly guarantees unequal distribution, particularly under the conditions she was having to work under -- by hand, for God's sake. As would the natural absorption into the blood stream potentially wreak havoc with any other ongoing therapies or treatments…" He sat down enthusiastically next to her.

"The Rigelian antidote," she said.

"Yes. That's why the astoundingly high levels of antibodies."

"And why Dukat and his troop would even become infected," Dax said, beginning to think as rapidly as he was.

"Because Janice didn't administer the serum immediately, which of course, she wouldn't. Not until she absolutely had to."

"Due to their injuries," Dax said.

"Open wounds," Bashir assured. "Magnifying the absorption rate…As there are likely additional factors to consider. Such as why the use of the compound at all."

"Plasma burns," Dax said.

"Precisely. The ointment providing heat extraction rather than simply acting as a suppressant, invaluable in the treatment of burns -- what I had actually been considering as the most feasible explanation."

"Yes," Dax agreed.

"And also," Bashir grinned at her, "the rapid growth of bacterium in some of the samples; hybridomas -- potentially naturally forming. This is utterly fantastic. Taken to the farthest reachings…"

"Or at least as far as the grotto and Lange's mummy?"

"Yes," Bashir said. "Quite possibly offering the explanation as to why the lack of natural deterioration in the corpse. Upon death, the process slowed, not halted entirely, manifesting itself in preservation, with only the source of the phenomenon waiting to be defined. Genetic engineering, quite possibly."

"But also quite possibly stemming from something as natural as diet or the environment," Dax nodded. "To varying degrees, the effects wouldn't be something we haven't seen before. Induced, as with the Genesis experiments of the past century, but also in its natural state."

"Yes," Bashir said. "The Gamma Quadrant where Kai Opaka was killed and rejuvenated. The residents of the world quite literally slaves to their environment."

"If they wish to live," Dax considered thoughtfully. "That would explain not only Anar's concerns about environmental contamination, but also what effects any contamination might have on Nadya's chances for survival, particularly if the source of the phenomenon is natural. With determining the source uppermost to both Anar and Lange, quite possibly each for their own reasons initially or possibly not. Lange's involvement with Nadya's health issues were apparently from the time of her arrival, with the subsequent discovery of the mummy suggesting limitless potential."

"Contamination would definitely be one of my concerns," Bashir assured. "Including the potential for a genetically altered organism disrupting the planet's ecosystem."

"I think you're probably harmless enough."

Bashir paused in his critical analysis. Dax smiled, studying the display, "As I think, even if we were to determine Nadya is in her own way dependent upon her environment, it's something Anar can accept. Possibly contributing to why he is adamant about her not leaving Dyaan IX. Hesitant in you assuming treatment of her and inadvertently creating some conflict between your therapies or Lange's, already at best experimental, or the natural, because in all honesty he doesn't know…and he wants to know first, if he can. With the greatest fear probably being that for all the miraculous indications, Nadya's potential is limited regardless."

"Utterly fantastic," Bashir said again.

"Yes," Dax agreed.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

It was 0618, the bridge quiet under the low hum of her systems, a mood indicative and inducing. Worf verified the time silently, the thick, smooth pads of his fingers drumming a dull, monotonous rhythm on the helm console.

"You're setting yourself up to fail." The Chief's voice penetrated his divided concentration. Worf looked up and over to him.

"Hello," O'Brien said to Worf sitting there looking at him like he was speaking Klingonese, which admittedly maybe he should try. "I'm telling you she's upset; I told you this."

He did. He left Dax at the turbolift to make fast tracks to the bridge to bring her point to Worf's and Kira's attention, who could wait five minutes while he took two to explain it to Worf who finally got it, maybe yes, apparently no.

"What does she have to do?" O'Brien asked. "Dissolve into tears for you to realize that? Talk to her -- not now!" he groaned with Worf's flickering frown toward the exit. "Later. Take a break together. An hour. Even a half an hour. When she comes on duty; 0700."

"0600," Worf corrected. "Commander Dax is scheduled to resume duty at 0600."

"I thought Kira said 0700?" O'Brien frowned across to Rom having a ball playing assistant Ops manager.

"Um, yup," Rom nodded. "06, 0700, that's what Major Kira said."

"Okay, whatever," O'Brien waved. "Between 0600, 0700, she'll be here -- early," he assured Worf. "If I know her, and I do know her. She's like this one, Kira. They love this stuff. Short staff, red alerts, disaster modes, twenty, thirty hours, they don't care. Couple hours' break they're bored and want right back in the action; so take advantage of it, all right? When she comes on, take her aside, to the commissary, get her a cup of coffee, she's not going to say no. It's what she wants you to do. None of this grabbing at her arm in the middle of the bridge."

He stood up with a shake of his head. "What the heck is the matter with you? Keiko would knock my head off my shoulders if I ever did that to her. You're reacting. She's reacting. Stop reacting. I told you before. It's not what, it's not where, it's how you do it. Understand me?"

"Yes," Worf sighed.

"Okay." O'Brien gave him a supportive slap on the back and a nod of accomplishment to Rom. "Marriage is as hard as you make it out to be, and it's already not easy, so just do it; right. Do it right…like you," he wandered over to Rom with a chuckle.

"Um…" Rom glanced toward navigation.

"No, that's okay, you can stay, just checking out a few things. Worf can handle it."

"Okeydokey," Rom said. "But…um…you know you're wrong."

"Oh, yeah? About what?"

"Marriage," Rom nodded briskly. "Marriage is great; I love it."

"Uh, huh," O'Brien said. "Ask your wife lately? For that matter, seen your wife lately? Know where she is?"

"Um…yup," Rom grinned. "Your place. Watching the kids until Chief O'Brien comes home. That's where Leeta is. Didn't go back to Bajor, nope, didn't do that. Didn't go to Cardassia where she'd rather live with Janice and Anon. Nope, didn't do that either. Went to your place because…well, where else is she going to go? Not to the bar. Mad at Quark, too. Captain Sisko. Odo. Lots of people. Not mad at the kids, so she'll go play with them for a week. Makes sense to me."

"Check the sensors or something," O'Brien suggested. "See who we have out there."

"Okeydokey," Rom said. "But that's where Leeta is; yup. That's where she is."

"Nog told him," O'Brien sat back down at navigation with assurance for Worf. "Trust me, he didn't know. Nog told him."

Worf huffed. "It is 6:23."

"Yeah? So? What are you saying? You want to meet her instead of waiting for her to come on?"

"Yes," Worf decided. "Yes, I am saying that."

"So go," O'Brien shrugged. "It's okay, go on. I can handle it. You'd be gone if she were here, so just go."

"Thank you," Worf said.

He left. O'Brien shook his head again, transferring full control of Conn to his console. "Like talking to a wall."

"Big one," Rom put in.

"Oh, yeah," O'Brien assured. "And a thick one."

She was not in their quarters, though she had been there. Worf picked up the music tapes dropped on the floor beside the open duffel, fingering them in his large hand. Her smell, a sour one of sickness, was stale and probably imaginary, the bunks were untouched. She had not been there long. Curiosity had him wondering what she wanted in the duffel. Concern had him hearing the Chief's voice with its advice about doing things right or wrong. Were the tapes wrong?

"They are tapes," Worf spoke out loud, emphatic and decisive. Tired of the Chief's confusing analogies, there was a limit to his patience, too, not only Dax's. This matter, which he could not explain, had gone on long enough. He activated his com badge. "Location of Commander Dax."

The computer responded with her familiar answer for an unfamiliar reason. "Commander Dax is currently on the sick roster and cannot be disturbed. Please state the nature of the emergency."

Worf fumed. "That is ridiculous. We are currently at one half staff. I am the First Officer of the Defiant, acting Commander. I have not been advised of any crew illnesses or injuries. When was Commander Dax placed on the sick roster, by whose orders?"

"Checking…Commander Dax was placed on sick status at 0128:29 by Chief Medical Officer, Doctor Bashir. Presently the sick roll includes Commander Dax and Cadet Nog, also placed on sick status at 0128:29 with the addendum Cadet Nog was relieved of duty as Assistant Operations Manager due to illness by his acting Supervisor, Chief Engineer O'Brien at 1925:05. There are no additional crew or passenger listings at this time.

"Crew Management protocol," the computer continued in response to Worf's complaint, "allows for the acting medical officer to place off-duty personnel on infirmed or injured status at their discretion without mandatory notification of the Officer-In-Charge of Crew Management and disbursement except in the instances of Yellow or Red Alert. The Officer-In-Charge is Major Kira Nerys. The status of all crew members currently listed on the sick roll is scheduled for review at 0700 with required notification of the Officer-In-Charge if duty call is anticipated to be affected…Duty call for Commander Dax and Cadet Nog is recorded to be scheduled for 0700. Do you wish an additional notification of crew status to be forwarded to you following medical release or review?"

"Commander Dax is my wife," Worf retorted, exiting the cabin with a growl. "I, as her husband, should have been notified."

"Denied," the computer refused. "It is a Class One Offense for any medical personnel to reveal, discuss, or otherwise reference a patient's status or condition with any person or device outside of what is necessary for appropriate medical care without the patient's expressed permission. In the event of critical, or life-threatening injury or illness, or in the event of a patient's passing, it is the exclusive and sole authority and right of the Chief Medical Officer to determine when notification of immediate family members is appropriate following any necessary or required notification of the Commanding Officer…"

"I am the Commanding Officer," Worf halted in the corridor. "To repeat, we are at one half crew. As First Officer of the Defiant I am to be aware of crew status at all times."

"Denied," the computer sorted through the request finding its basis suspicious and irrelevant, chastising him. "Commander Dax's marital status is not germane to her performance of duty. Persistent or further inquiries under this basis are inappropriate and considered anomalous activity by definition of abuse or attempted abuse of right and privilege, a Class One Offense. As Commanding Officer of the Defiant, solely, you have been notified of crew status. At all and any time the Chief Medical Officer may deny notification under these guidelines. As at all and any time it is the exclusive right of the Chief Medical Officer to supercede or remove a Commanding, superior, or any officer or crew member from duty as medically unfit for duty. Potential for harm of self or any officer or crew is qualified as medically unfit. As is violation or attempted violation of any medical code, ethic, or canon, qualified as harm or potential for harm -- "

"bljatlh 'e' ylmev!" Worf barked, ordering the computer to shut up, turning to face the end of the corridor and its two looming alternatives other than the turbolift; the toilet and Bashir's assigned quarters.

The toilet and adjoining shower were open, available and empty and he was facing the door to Bashir's cabin, staring at it. Trying to stare through it, which was impossible. Listen, to what was only unsatisfying silence.

"Location of Doctor Bashir," his voice rang out.

"Doctor Bashir is currently unavailable…" the computer began her refrain.

"petaQ!" Worf reared with a ferocious curse, his hands slamming into the door, prepared to rip it open if Bashir or the computer refused; he needed neither's permission. The door opened immediately, unlocked and interpreting the striking blow as a request for admittance. The cabin was empty, though Bashir had at some point been there. Slept, before leaving in a hurry, the state of the quarters suggested with its careless scatter of articles and disheveled cot.

Worf stepped back confused by the information before his anger reasserted itself and he whirled for the turbolift, from there the Defiant's Infirmary that was as empty, quiet and dark. Neither Dax nor Nog guests of the modest patient ward, nor Bashir whose office was also vacant. Worf gripped the edge of the console, sputtering his fury aloud. "I demand to know the whereabouts of Commander Dax."

"Denied," the computer reminded. "Commander Dax is unavailable except in the instance of emergency or Alert until 0700 duty call as specified by the Chief Medical Officer and cannot be overridden without cause. The current operating status of the Defiant is normal as specified by the Commanding Officer."

"I am the Commanding Officer!" Worf thundered. "Do not force me to order an Alert status!"

"Checking and locating…" the computer agreed. "Commander Dax is aboard the Defiant and will be available for 0700 duty. A review of all systems, operations, and data fails to detect any potentially critical situations. If knowledge or belief of unidentified threat or suspicion of threat is due to an unknown or Alien entity or situation you are required to issue an order for Alert readiness in anticipation of potential or actual imminent crises. Do you wish Alert status to be initiated?"

Worf was already out the door, cursing, sputtering and threatening the computer with deactivation as he pounded for the turbolift and…where? He had no idea. The possibilities seemed endless, the twenty minutes until Jadzia's required appearance on the bridge an impossible time to wait. The door to the turbolift opened to the unexpected sight of Nog and Jake aboard. The two of them as startled as Worf, more so to find themselves suddenly under the imposing glowering scowl of who was their friend and at the moment looked only extremely large, extremely angry, and extremely Klingon. In unison they took an unconscious wary step back, Worf not helping with his verbal attack of Nog.

"You are well," he challenged.

"As in not sick?" Jake ventured hesitantly when Nog failed to respond.

Nog groaned in his excited chatter. "I think I got that much!" It was the answer he was having a little trouble with, if Worf wanted an answer. Did he want an answer? If so, was there a particular answer he wanted? Anyone's guess was as good as Nog's as he stared from Worf's piercing eyes burning down on top of him to Worf's heavily breathing abdomen looking him dead in the face.

"Beats me," Nog finally decided with a sigh, opting to embrace his Uncle Quark's teachings and straddle the broad middle between committing to a firm yes, or a firm no. "Guess so. Kind of. Maybe."

Worf entered the turbolift with a dissatisfied growl for the answer that was not an answer. "Where are we going?"

Nog hesitated. "You want to answer that?" he checked with Jake.

"The commissary?" Jake proposed in the form of a question open to suggestions for all the clout he had on his side, but Nog didn't fault him. There was just something about being locked up in a turbolift with a Klingon before his morning coffee that made facts like being the son of Captain Sisko irrelevant.

"Will you knock it off with who I am?" Jake answered Nog's mutter somewhat annoyed.

"Can't," Nog assured. "It's too important to me."

"Oh yeah?" Jake said. "Is that why you're friends with me?"

"At the moment?" Nog answered honestly. "Yes."

"Fine," Jake folded his arms.

"Or at least why I'm glad I'm friends with you," Nog agreed. "I'm only kidding."

"Whatever," Jake said.

"I am," Nog insisted. "So's he."

"Yes," Jake nodded. "Worf's only kidding."

"Uh, huh," Nog said. "And what did we say he was kidding about?"

"I don't know," Jake sighed.

"That makes two of us," Nog assured. "Okay. Here's what we do. I'll tackle the middle of him, you grab him somewhere around the top."

Jake looked at him.

"You're right," Nog nodded. "It didn't work with Leeta, it's not going to work with Worf."

"I just want a cup of coffee," Jake said.

Nog was with him. "Sounds like a plan to me."

They ogled Worf.

"Any day now," Nog shifted from one foot to the other.

"Yeah, no kidding," Jake agreed.

"Commissary," Worf digested. It was an answer and a suggestion that made sense. Beyond the Chief's idea that he breakfast with his wife in the commissary as some form of exercise in improving communication between them, it was entirely possible Dax was already in the commissary. Her overnight medical leave simply set to expire at her time of duty rotation without requiring formal clearance or physical exam unless she maintained some complaint. This apparently the case with Nog who was en route to the commissary himself, not the Infirmary. What continued not to make sense was Dax's steadfast avoidance of her husband during her off-duty hours and Bashir's apparent willingness to support her in this choice.

Worf ogled Nog ogling him. He had no actual evidence Bashir was involved in Dax's previous decisions to wall herself away from him and truly everyone with her orders for the computer to place her as unavailable, but he had it this time. The orders were Bashir's more than an hour after Dax left the bridge, following her contact of Bashir that he answered. Leaving his quarters to meet her or escort her somewhere other than her quarters or the Infirmary where she remained through the night while Bashir also did not return to his quarters but likewise spent his time elsewhere. It was not the Infirmary, though violently sick himself when he left the bridge at 19:10. The Defiant's lounge was possible, Worf supposed, though finding the choice as odd as the circumstances. The commissary was unlikely, though made sense by this point in time.

"Yes," he nodded stiffly to Nog and Jake. "The commissary is acceptable."

The lift engaged to their relief and his disappointment moments later. Neither Dax nor Bashir were in the commissary. Kira and Keiko O'Brien were, involved in animated mirth as they sat at one of the tables with their mugs of raktajino, plate of half-eaten pastries and assortment of data padds. Kira clutching one of the padds to her chest, begging to be allowed to keep it, her eyes dancing in rare, uncharacteristic joy while Keiko's head bobbed with reassuring proud laughter that she knew Kira would want that copy in particular and that it was hers, yes, definitely. Worf halted in the doorway with a huff.

"Oh, brother, here we go again," Nog groaned behind him to Jake. "You know, some people really make better doors than others."

"Yes, they do," Jake shushed him. "Just, come on, come on."

They squeezed and pardoned their way around Worf who never moved, but also never said anything like "Stop. Halt. Back in line, infidel targs." Leaving them free to make a run for the replicators, Jake with a shake of his head for Worf who was beyond him, to where Kira's and Keiko's laughter he understood.

"Pictures of the kids," he grinned at Nog, impatiently shoving his way in front of him.

"Whatever," Nog was disinterested in both. "Come on, hurry up or get out of the way. I've got ten minutes if I'm lucky."

"You've got more than that."

"Yeah, okay, fifteen to your all day," Nog hammered in his order for coffee and two Aldorian waffles.

"No, I don't have all day," Jake laughed with a nod for Nog's lavish plate of rolled chocolate crepes, soft and warm and oozing berries and sweet cheese icing. "That's an idea."

"Get your own," Nog threatened.

"I am," Jake assured. "I am."

Worf regrouped his annoyance bearing down on Kira and Keiko celebrating their reunion with the insistent announcement, "I am looking for Commander Dax."

Keiko paused in collecting up her photo souvenirs of Earth and the two children, Kira paused halfway through taking a swallow of her coffee, the two of them looking back at him mystified.

Worf huffed again. "Commander Dax is forty-five minutes late for her duty call of 0600…"

"0600?" Keiko interjected with a frown, about to apologize to Kira for making her late.

"No," Kira waved Worf's version of reality aside. "0700."

Worf huffed. "You requested duty call be for 0600."

"No, I didn't," Kira said. "I know what time I ordered duty call; check the schedule."

"I am aware the schedule is recorded to be 0700," Worf agreed testily. "That is not the issue. Commander Dax specifically stated she would return to the bridge at 0600, which she has not done. My inquiry into her absence revealed her to have been placed on the sick roster at 0128:29 by Doctor Bashir, together with Cadet Nog…"

"You're still sick?" Kira turned a suspicious eye on Nog happily gorging himself. "Huh?" Nog paused in a lick of the icing dripping down his finger.

"Much better," Jake grinned.

So Kira could see. "Nog's fine," she turned back to Worf.

"That is irrelevant," he assured. "Commander Dax and Cadet Nog are on sick order."

"Dax is fine, too," Kira promised.

"Irrelevant," Worf insisted. "There has been no order of release for duty by Doctor Bashir scheduled to review the sick rooster by 0700."

"Is it seven o'clock already?" Keiko checked her watch in surprise.

"I don't know, probably," Kira checked hers also.

"06:45," Keiko nodded.

"Close enough," Kira agreed.

"They are not in the Infirmary!" Worf expired with an exasperated howl, finally securing their attention as confused and uncertain as they were initially to what he was saying. Aggravated by a puzzlement as to why he was steaming and stewing and huffing and puffing, looking like he was about to pop like some overheated conduit for…what? About what?

Kira and Keiko didn't have any idea, any more than Jake or Nog. They looked between themselves trying to figure out what they couldn't figure out. Worf took a breath, impatiently attempting to explain. "Commander Dax and Doctor Bashir are not in the Infirmary."

So? Kira almost said what came to mind first and that was Bashir was sick also. He'd review the rooster when he reviewed it, whenever he got up. She didn't say that though. Something else coming to mind that may not relieve whatever Worf was fussing about; bridge duty Kira gathered and dismissed, but would answer what he was rambling on about, the whereabouts of Bashir.

And Dax. The obvious entered Keiko's mind as well, at the same time as Kira's, the two of them chiming in chorus, "Wait a minute, I know where they are."

"I know, I know," Kira added with her characteristic mean-everything and nothing wave. She tucked her data padd under her arm, secured her coffee and remaining hunk of flaky pasty and headed for the door, Keiko accompanying her with a confidential all-knowing roll of her eyes.

"They need to start a club." Keiko had said it before and she'd say it again.

"And how," Kira agreed, actually understanding more than she cared to about what was really souring Worf's mood; Dax's assignment, to the extent that she didn't care to understand it at all. Finding she had little patience for it, the same as Keiko, for that matter Dax, for that matter Sisko who would probably prefer not to know he had an aspiring Chief O'Brien on his hands.

Rom? Rom and Leeta were a unit separate and apart from Kira's world. Generally ignoring them, tolerating them, though minimally when she couldn't, appreciating, she supposed, Rom's reliability, resourceful and useful talents in engineering and other like areas. Leeta, Kira preferred not to think about at all. Loathing her when she did, deeply resenting, despising, considering her dim-witted and extraordinarily crafty at the same time, infuriated by her audacity, desire, and ability to survive the stigma of her one-time association with Dukat that Leeta survived only because she was allowed to. The masses extending sympathy and understanding to the wide-eyed innocent who couldn't possibly be held accountable for anything she did.

"Where are they?" Jake asked Nog curiously.

"Better question," he said.

"Who cares?" Jake laughed.

"I do," Nog assured. "The guy's hypospray happy. Come near me again with one of those things, no way. It's not going to happen."

"No, you're not going to have to have any more boosters," Jake turned away to grab his Aldorian waffles out of the replicator. He opted for six of them just in case, knowing Nog's sweet tooth, but also knowing Bashir's.

"It's not just the boosters," Nog trotted along beside him as they followed Kira and Keiko out the exit for the turbolift. "It was this for my stomach, and that for my head, I really don't need to see him again."

"Hm…formality," Jake nodded, his plate catching the oozing plop of syrup and berries as he ate with his chin jutted out over the dish. "Like Nerys tried to explain to Worf…these are actually decent."

"They're out of this galaxy," Nog's finger arced out, scooping up Jake's leavings and popping it in his mouth. "I didn't even know I was on the sick rooster."

"Formality," Jake repeated. "That's what I'm saying…right or wrong?" he grinned at Kira's disapproving grimace for his breakfast even though that trail of flaky crumbs they followed to the turbolift he believed were hers?

"What?" Kira said.

"Nog doesn't have to see Doctor Bashir again, does he? Anymore than Dax does. It's all just formality."

"Yes," Kira scoffed, tired of talking about it.

"See?" Jake's elbow caught Nog in the side of his lobe.

"Ow!" Nog complained.

"Well, get your nose out of my plate," Jake suggested. "You ate yours."

"Well, get your plate out from under my nose," Nog countered. "I didn't eat anything; I swallowed. Told you, ten minutes if I'm lucky."

"About that," Jake nodded. "Where are we going?"

"Shuttlebay," Kira tossed off.

"At some point," Keiko put in.

Jake laughed, knowing what they meant. "He'll be here; Worf. He did this before; not sure why." That wasn't totally true just more or less diplomatic. Jake had an idea why, Dax's assignment. He just wasn't sure if he should say anything about it; he knew he shouldn't.

He didn't have to. Appropriate or not Nog said it for him, using a different example than what would be the classic example of the Chief. "You mean like because maybe he's mad?" Nog helped himself to cleaning up the gooshy guts of one of Jake's waffles getting ready to fall out the moment Jake picked it up. "Kind of like Kassidy having to break your father's arm before he would agree to you going?"

"She didn't break his arm," Jake hastened to reassure Kira and Keiko.

"No, but I'll bet she wanted to," Nog assured. "Just like my mother threatened to break my father's if he left."

"That…" Jake told Kira and Keiko, "is probably a little more accurate, though, no, Leeta didn't break Rom's arm either."

"No, she left, too," Nog agreed.

"To watch Molly and Kirayoshi," Jake explained to Keiko who probably already knew that.

"With Kassidy," Nog told him what he probably did not know.

Jake didn't. He blinked. "Is that where she is?"

"Yes," Nog assured. "Oh, yes -- right or wrong?" he solicited Keiko.

"Yes," Keiko nodded, admittedly fascinated the same as Kira was, though Kira was probably admittedly more fascinated with the waffles on Jake's plate that hovered, dangling temptingly under her nose when they weren't hovering, dangling temptingly under Nog's.

"Yes," Keiko said. "That's where Kassidy is."

"What'd I tell you?" Nog helped himself to the waffle he was working at depleting bit by bit anyway.

"Go on, just take it," Jake agreed.

"I am. Eating it, too," Nog assured, stuffing it in his mouth, talking with his mouth full, causing half of what he said to be reasonably incoherent, but that was okay. His audience got the gist of it. "Trust us. Jake and I have it all figured out. And if that's what we have to look forward to, to earn the rank of grownup…"

"We're not growing up?" Jake offered when Nog took time-out to swallow.

"Are we?" Nog checked.

"Hm…" Jake thought about it jokingly. "Maybe not."

"Yeah, try about ten years," Nog smacked his lips together with a lick and flick of his head for the open door. "Are we standing here for a reason?"

"Worf," Jake reminded.

"He's not coming."

"Yes, he is," Jake's plate bobbed dangerously close to Kira again. "Worf's coming, isn't he?"

Kira sighed longingly to the waffles. "Who knows."

Jake grinned. "Want one?"

Kira's head snapped up, her eyes flashed, she grabbed the plate possessively. "Give me that!"

"Finally," Keiko applauded.

"Just leave one for Doctor Bashir," Jake requested.

"Go away," Kira waved him back over to his side of the turbolift.

"Well, there are three," Keiko mentioned.

"All right, fine, that one," Kira poked the scrawniest one of the plump trio out of the way.

"What about Dax?"

"They can split it."

"Sounds fair to me," Keiko agreed and dove in.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Worf sighed when they left, their voices eventually vanishing down the corridor. He looked around the commissary. The only place left was the bridge. This, of course, was what Kira meant, and where Dax was by this time, ready to assume duty at 0700. He activated his com badge. "Commander Worf to Chief O'Brien."

"Hey," the Chief answered jovially. "How are things going? Need a few more minutes? That's okay, you got it. Ten, twenty, whatever you want, I can wait. Kira and Nog will be here any second, don't worry about it."

Worf viewed his com badge silently. The Chief clear in his presumption Dax was in attendance with her husband, as he was clear in his unwitting announcement she was not yet aboard the bridge. Kira wrong, as the Chief was wrong, in her belief Dax was present, again, only a natural error. "I am looking for Doctor Bashir," he replied to O'Brien. "Is he aboard?"

"Bashir? No, haven't seen him? Why? Does he have himself locked out?" he chuckled. "Probably still in bed. What's the matter? Dax still sick?"

"On the sick rooster, yes," Worf agreed. "With Nog. The computer will not accept their authority without a release."

"Forewarned. Want me to send someone to wake him up?" he chuckled again suddenly, apparently checking himself to see if he could reach him. "He may think he's dead but the emergency medical program thinks otherwise. It's not been activated. Banks have though…and, yup, they're up now. It's him. Probably in the shower. Dax and Nog were released…nope, they're not. You're right. Both still on the sick rooster. Definitely in the shower, either that or he fell asleep at the console with his coffee in his hand. I'm telling you, he has the life, I wish it were mine."

"Thank you," Worf said. "I will advise Doctor Bashir to release Commander Dax and Nog."

"Before Kira finds out she has two useless right hands and hands him his head," O'Brien laughed. "I'm with you."

"Yes." Worf signed off to look around the commissary one last time. "The Infirmary," he sighed. Dax and Bashir en route from one direction while he was departing in another. That still did not explain where either had been since neither were in the Infirmary at the time. "The lounge," Worf said aloud. Truly the last viable alternative where they had sat talking and intermittently consoling each other in their physical misery. It was an example of friendship and closeness that continued to agitate him beyond any acceptance. Deliberate, he maintained, on Bashir's part, and also now on Dax's, who chose to ignore her husband's wishes to cultivate a less foolish relationship with Bashir, and therefore a more acceptable and respectable one, and instead ignore her husband. Isolating and excluding herself from him as she went about her daily activities and duties. He failed to understand the reasoning, or the point, other than a childish power struggle. One he refused to tolerate, above all succumb to.

He scanned the deck of the corridor critically with its lingering dust of pastry crumbs not yet displaced by the ship's ventilation system when he exited the commissary to proceed to the open turbolift waiting for him with Kira, Keiko, Jake and Nog aboard. Two of them eating, two of them looking bored. He did not understand boredom, any more than he understood many afflictions and expressions common to a staggering majority of humanoid groups, Bajoran, Human, and Ferengi among them. Life was extremely directional and self-explanatory. Emotion, a vital component, always vigorous, virile, and occasionally malignant, needing to be controlled not tamed. In any event, it was never just simply bored.

"What?" Kira said to Worf's scornful review of the plate with its lone Aldorian waffle that she reluctantly passed back to Jake for safekeeping and Bashir.

"At half staff," Worf advised, "we do not have the maintenance crews available, nor is it appropriate to place additional demands on the systems to filter unnecessary particle waste. The commissary is for crew meals, the turbolifts and bridge are not…your raktajino, however, is acceptable," he relented slightly under her death look, "as we are at normal operation."

"Resume program," Kira directed.

"Yes," Worf concurred as the door closed. "It is currently 06:51. Chief O'Brien has determined Doctor Bashir to be in the Infirmary, in the process of reviewing Commander Dax's and Cadet Nog's medical status. I will advise him a release must be issued immediately as bridge operations will not accept their authority; he is aware of this, though apparently it is something he has momentarily forgotten. Chief O'Brien and Rom will remain aboard to insure you have sufficient assistance and coverage -- "

The turbolift halted, the door opening to the silence of the main shuttlebay and the runabout Styx. Worf's crest crinkled with his frown. "This is not the bridge, nor the Infirmary."

"Shuttlebay," Keiko slipped past him to catch up with Kira's stalk for the runabout. Jake and Nog maneuvering their way around him on a fast hike to join them.

Worf followed with a huff. "I do not understand. As Chief Medical and Science Officer, Doctor Bashir, or Commander Dax, should be in attendance for any necessary explanation or guidance in use or application of the runabout's medical or science systems. As well as required direction, determination, and assignment of all investigations and experiments to the mission technicians…"

He ducked his head under the low clearance of the rear hatch, entering to halt in the mid-section a stride behind Kira and the others turning into the combined medical and science suite. Bashir sat on the main science console. Sipping from a cup of coffee in his hand, his feet propped up on the seat in front of him, conversing with Dax comfortably curled in the adjacent seat, her elbow propped on the back rest, her hand supporting her head as she drank her tea.

"What'd I tell you?" Kira's hand waved as Bashir looked up and Dax looked over her shoulder to their entourage of visitors.

"The shuttle," Jake grinned, entering with his plate extended in greeting. "Aldorian waffle for the teacher?"

"Oh, quite," Bashir took one appreciative look and that fairly settled that rather nicely.

"Sorry," Jake apologized to Dax. "I tried."

"It's all right," she assured understandingly.

"So it is," Bashir agreed. "We can just split this one."

"No," Dax shook her head. "That's also all right."

"Why?" he said. "It's fruit."

"Fruit?" she laughed at his effort to tear the soaked wafer neatly in half.

"Well, it has fruit in it," Bashir pronounced the juicy hemorrhage of berries and cheese not only delectably obscene, but healthy with a lick of his stained fingers. "Good fruit. Good-for-you-fruit…yes? Definitely yes? Absolutely, positively, there's no galactical reason why you would possibly deny yourself?" he wafted the sinfully delicious breakfast treat before her eyes. "A compliment, if not a sight better than that tasteless cup of tea."

"Oh, all right!" Dax snatched the plate.

"Harlot," Bashir laughed.

"Definitely," Dax's head tipped back with a blissful moan to Keiko. "Did the Chief include these in our replicator menu?"

"They better be," Keiko smiled.

"Make a note," Dax petitioned Kira.

"Already taken care of," she assured.

"Or it will be," Bashir glanced down on the console, suspecting one or two of their guests were there for reasons other than sharing breakfast; he was right. As early as it had seemed before, it was now quite close to being late. 06:54, as a matter of fact.

"Goodness," he hopped down with apologies to Kira and a look around for his tricorder that Dax handed him from the security of her lap. "Sorry. So absorbed, didn't realize the time. Dax and I have been tossing around a host of radical theories with Janice's experiments and studies of the mummy, including the possibility of linking Nadya's Band-Aid treatments. The basis lying in the controlled production of hybridomas -- hybrid cells," he smiled at Kira frowning over the display as he turned for the medical console. "Rapidly multiplying and dividing. A technique used in genetic engineering but also the treatment of disease, or injury, and yes, a host of biological products, including biological warfare. That's Nadya, if you're wondering. Though, realistically, of course, there had to have been rigorous treatments and therapies prior to Janice's intervention or the child never would have survived her initial injury.

"I think, however, if we look to the former ranks of their Maquis operation, that mystery can be solved fairly easily by the assumption they had a previous, possibly lengthy association with some medical practitioner or doctor. Most likely Bajoran, or Starfleet. Quite possibly 'on staff', if you will. Either killed, or deserted…I suspect some time ago, however," he acknowledged to Dax, "rather than during the recent conflicts due to the state of Nadya's health."

"It would make the most sense," Dax agreed to Kira and the others. "While some of the distortion of Nadya's chromosomes can be explained by extensive genetic manipulation, the present degree of corruption of the mutable sites indicate treatment was aborted before satisfactory completion."

"Insuring six years of life and hell," Bashir assured. "The rate of cellular development and division in a growing child would fairly mandate a steady breakdown in the synthesized structures, and the eventual reemergence of the cancers."

"Cancer cells also multiply rapidly," Dax explained to Nog and Jake. "Which is why Nadya's early and current treatment would have to be fairly consistent and ongoing if Doctor Lange's predecessors were relying on hybridomas, to the extent that Julian and I believe she may have been. Monoclonal antibiotic therapy is short-lived, attacking the superficial antigens of a cell only. The underlying cell itself is not destroyed, eventually recovering from the temporary retardation."

"Got it," Jake nodded. "But wouldn't that suggest someone from outside Starfleet or Bajor who didn't have a background in Bajoran physiology?"

"Or someone who was extremely limited in available equipment, the same as Lange," Dax smiled. "But, no, that's a very good question."

"Sit down," Bashir agreed, inviting Keiko also and Kira if she were interested while he completed his screening of Nog, formally releasing him and Dax for duty and the bridge before the Chief called wondering what was going on.

"Thanks," Jake grinned and sat. He and Nog, along with Keiko listening attentively to Jadzia's brief explanation of what they were looking at on screen.

Kira likewise delayed her departure to question Bashir. Avoiding the subject of genetic engineering versus treatment or therapy, and the subsequent ethical and legal questions potentially surrounding both Lange's and her predecessor's involvement with the Maquis child, to focus on Bashir's mention of biological warfare, a question that Worf had. Finding the nature, or basis, of Doctor Lange's experiments having to be known, and therefore easily explained by the Maquis Anar, even if he couldn't explain in entirety the processes used by Lange in her development of her inventory of creams.

If this explanation was one Anar cared to provide, which apparently he did not beyond the general description of botanical ointment of medicinal value. That to Worf was naturally suspicious. Suspecting Bashir and Jadzia realized this as well, even if Kira did not. With the full extent of Lange's experiments likely including an attempt to harvest select hybridomas to improve the quality of the clone cells she needed to mass-produce the monoclonal antibodies required by the ailing child. A premise that firmly suggested genetic engineering, and also the possibility Lange was considering the cloning of replacement organs for Nadya; possibilities that were definitely on Jadzia's mind. Caught up in Jake and Keiko's enthusiasm she confirmed the effects of the radiation poisoning on growth hormones, stunting the child's development, she hesitated with Jake's tactful inquiry into the child's current and expected intelligence quotient, her eyes flickering to Bashir's enjoying his portion of the tasty breakfast before smiling reassuringly.

"No, Nadya is quite fine," she said. "She's actually a remarkably resilient child… that's not to say the extent of her illness isn't visibly evident, it is. Though again, she's somewhat less fragile than one might perceive at first glance."

"Quite," Bashir washed down his waffle with a drink of coffee and a laugh, perching back on the console. "To say the least. Though to answer your question, which I suspect has something to do with genetic enhancement?"

"Just a question," Jake shrugged.

"Just an answer," Bashir agreed. "No. The brain is an organ, like any other organ, one you would certainly focus on saving and preserving first and foremost. The child is intelligent and discerning for her age. However, intelligence is not only physiological, or genetic, it's environmental."

"Ditto," Nog assured, having labored for nineteen years under the stigma of his species.

"Case in point," Bashir shrugged to Jake. "You taught Nog to read. Four years later Nog successfully achieved admittance to Starfleet Academy."

He continued talking, lengthy and detailed, his speech smooth and flowing. Moving on to address Kira's question of Cardassian experimentation with biological warfare, and/or the possibility of environmental contamination from runoff from the Cardassian mines as somehow being related to the mummy's continued preservation while lying in her shallow grave, that Bashir described as a cesspool of waste.

"Absolutely, yes." Bashir surprised Worf slightly with his empathic acceptance of the theory. "With the dramatic upheaval the Cardassian mining operations had to have caused to the region, it is entirely possible the woman actually died elsewhere -- ice, for example, creating a natural stasis, and hence mummification of the corpse. Finding itself dislodged from its original site, the body could merely have floated along some artery until becoming trapped again in the quagmire of the swamp -- it didn't have to be fifty years ago. It could have been two weeks or two days before Janice's discovery. We already know the area is prone to flooding, with it being highly plausible the mines aggravated the existing problem. In the meantime, the present level of pollution could very easily be a recipe for now chemical preservation, as it could have as easily been a liquid pool of acid, literally dissolving the corpse, which obviously it did not.

"However," Bashir said, "what's also possible is the question of the existence of a natural condition or phenomenon. Whether or not the identity of the corpse is that of a genetically engineered clone, superior to her species, or a resulting mutation from some ancient, possibly biological war. I've no doubt whatsoever Janice's studies included attempts to isolate the cause and source -- as ours certainly will," he assured.

"Notwithstanding are there more of her out there? If so, where? Now that our own hypotheses are a little clearer and better defined, a gross exam should be able to determine if the corpse traveled, how it traveled, if not realistically how far? The request for a botanist suggests Janice was focusing on plant pathology. Fungology, perhaps?" his grin spread itself between Dax and Keiko. "Indigenous or foreign? Who knows? The possibilities are endless and thrilling."

"Some," Kira granted, personally preferring a genetically engineered enslaved clone to having stumbled upon a four thousand year old community of cousins living a mere light-year from the Cardassian border.

"A vastly superior cousin," Bashir encouraged her imagination to run wild. "If she survived four thousand years in death, her calculated life expectancy would be very near the definition of immortal."

"If she didn't die," Dax smiled.

"If the process of regeneration was manageable." Keiko scrolled though Jadzia's limited notes on the contaminated samples, thinking of the stress of accelerated development and constant regeneration, but also of flowers that bloomed once in two hundred years, the whole of their enduring strength put into producing a brief, vivid moment of majesty.

"How did she die?" Jake wondered.

"Drowning," Bashir confirmed, with a nod for Keiko. "Though one would think, yes, accepting the theory and level of regeneration, not only would death occur excruciatingly slowly, but also the time and ability to resuscitate her would be extended to weeks, rather than hours. Providing her body was physically capable of withstanding the constant cycling rather than each developing version of herself being weaker than the last, shortening her life expectancy considerably. Her body falling into a natural stasis, similar to sleep, for example, and eventual mummification."

"Or she was trapped," Kira shrugged, realistically.

"Or she was murdered," Nog said.

"Either or all," Bashir drank heartily from his coffee with a sly smile. "Including whether or not the condition is in any way contagious, or acquired through exposure."

Jake laughed. "So if Nog suddenly starts growing…"

"Or you yawning," Nog clouted him.

"Or our hair turning gray," Dax agreed.

"I'm leaving," Keiko assured.

"Definitely," Dax smiled at Kira.

"Okay, okay," she said. "The mummy's interesting. I admit the mummy's interesting." She reviewed Bashir. "He has a scar on his chest; two of them."

"Anar?" Bashir smiled. "Yes, well, in consideration of Jake and Nog, I'll refrain from asking how you know that."

Kira looked at him. "Are you interested or not?" she insisted as Nog groaned and Jake's head dipped with his snicker.

"Quite possibly," he assured. "Albeit Anar's injury could be old, in contrast, there was no indication Anon Dukat had suffered any previous injury at the time of my examination of him. Absolutely no suggestion one of his sentries endured plasma burns over 60% of his body, despite Anar's and Anon's claims of both during the Chief's hearing, and the prevailing lack of equipment, which, yes, should require there be physical evidence unless one was inclined to immediately accept the miraculous."

"They're odd," Kira said, unsure of how old.

"Odd?" Bashir repeated. "I'm sorry, but you're going to have to do a little better than that."

"Round," she demonstrated impatiently, making a fist to show approximate size, and also placement, spacing. "Smooth. Like circles; round, smooth circles, yes," she insisted.

"Like an indentation?" Dax mused, thinking.

"Impression," Kira agreed. "Yes. You can feel the outline of the scar, and there's a difference, not only in the texture of the scar -- "

"But the surrounding tissue," Bashir nodded to Dax. "Skin graft; has to be. There may have been too much damage to the flesh for Janice to feel she could insure effective closure; phaser, perhaps."

"I was thinking of his bat'telh," she replied almost apologetically.

"Yes," Kira assured. "And, I don't know, is that possible?"

Bashir gawked at the two of them. "To survive a blow to the sternum -- "

"And pleural cavity," Dax offered.

"From a bat'telh?" Bashir said. "It wouldn't simply be the external tearing -- "

"But the internal trauma," she said.

"Yes," Bashir insisted. "Emphatically yes. He'd be killed immediately."

"Or within minutes," Dax allowed.

"Yes," Bashir admitted. "If the bat'telh somehow missed a vital organ, but he would still be dead."

"Anyway to find out why he's not?" Jake ventured to Kira. "Within reason, I'm saying."

"Or at least what Lange may have done?" Dax tried not to laugh as Kira looked at Jake.

"What could she have done?" Nog muttered out of the corner of his mouth to Bashir.

"Damned if I know," he freely acknowledged, staring at the display. "I'd have to think about it…" he stared at Keiko.

"Plant life," she nodded.

"Mud specifically," Bashir grinned. "The mass gravesite is in an area of field. Janice may have done something as rudimentary as pack the wounds, either realizing or not realizing the implications at the time."

"Runoff from the mines," Dax interjected.

"Yes," Bashir said excitedly. "The flooding causing random deposits. It may be mineral or ore based. Some cultures do ingest dirt, in ceremony, or in a committed belief in the health properties."

"We do," Nog shrugged. "Maybe not the dirt."

"No, but the raw insect life," Bashir agreed. "It could be microscopic, fungal, amoeboid, in origin."

"It could be anything," Jake summed up what had already been decided before.

"Yes," Dax smiled at Kira. "Could you…"

"I'll ask," Kira assured. "I'll ask."

"Within reason," Dax teased.

"Maybe," Kira said and the group of them laughed again.

Worf watched from the background, listening to the ongoing exchange, studying the interaction that appeared natural. His gaze dropped again to Bashir's hand encircling his cup of coffee, the manner in which the doctor held the streamlined white mug seeming to fascinate him for some reason. The surety of the grip, the span of the fingers that were long, slender, strong-looking like cabled wire; he had a Human hand, it was the mug that intrigued him. Identical to the one Jadzia was holding, neither of them indicative of the Defiant's replicators.

Worf glanced aft, over his shoulder, down the short distance to the turn into the commissary, adjacent to the medical and science suite. The mugs were reasonable, the Chief simply wrong which Infirmary. His attention on his task and duty at Conn, and not realizing the Defiant's medical banks were being accessed from a remote location, also reasonable.

Worf remained focused on the commissary, the supply closets, and weapons locker directly opposite, forward of the standard rear hatch, and broad, doublewide entrance into the rear cargo hold that included a satellite engineering and transporter console with isolation chamber rated to contain radioactive, or biohazards.

His glance shifted back to the Infirmary. Selections from Lange's inventory were not present. The ensuing discussion of Doctor Lange and her home world had then developed secondary to the primary one of physical fitness and health. The hypospray, the extent of Jadzia's initial breakfast, as Bashir had deemed it, the medical tricorder was cradled in Jadzia's lap, suggesting she had conducted her own screening prior to Bashir's appearance, or Bashir was perhaps likewise feeling unwell.

Or had been. Worf fixated on Bashir's hand surrounding his raktajino, the coffee's warm steam dissipated as he perched on the console, one foot on the floor, the other off and sharing the balance of his light weight. He was now fine. Relaxed, refreshed, alert, continuing to talk unhurried and detailed. They had been there twenty minutes. The Chief poised to hail at any time, Kira just now mentioning the bridge, unenthusiastic as the others to leave the discussion behind. Worf hesitated in his annoyance as he had hesitated upon his arrival in the door. The scene was harmless and expected by both Kira and Keiko O'Brien who attributed nothing unusual to their belief Jadzia and Bashir would be here aboard the Styx's Infirmary, as did neither Jake and Nog react to anything as being out of the ordinary. To the contrary, all were now involved in the chatter of their anticipations and field expedition.

Once again Worf had no idea what he was thinking above, beyond, apart from what everyone else seemed to be thinking, seeing or responding to. Uncertain in his foundation that was without foundation like that one foot of Bashir's dangling in the air. The split, flare of his trouser cuff draped over the neck of his low-heeled boots, neat, crisp, clean.

Worf's head snapped up. From the polished leather of Bashir's boots, the deft grip of the coffee in his hand, to the glossy sheen of Jadzia's hair. She as refreshed, alert, renewed, alive as Bashir was. They were not two people who had spent the late and early hours comforting each other in their physical misery, but had separated at some point to ready themselves for the day. Where? The shower opposite Bashir's quarters aboard the crew deck was unused since 23:11:10. The additional available two had to support Nog and Jake Sisko, and possibly Jadzia, though she, as Bashir, had been gone from their cabins for hours. The Defiant's Infirmary was vacant. Worf stared aft to the commissary, feeling the approach of the center escape hatch behind him as he stepped back into the corridor. He turned around staring at the hatchway, a division marker between the two crew showers supporting their sectioned crew quarters, two aft, two forward, completing the design of the mid-section. He almost touched the entry panel of the shower closest to his reaching hand to check for the time of use, if there was use, he did not. The span of his fingers closed, curling into a fist that could tear Bashir's head from his neck sending it smashing into the wall with one blow, his decapitated corpse toppling over, the mug of coffee dropped and broken on the floor. Worf turned back around staring at the cup in Bashir's hand, his watch missing, his tension, giddiness, gone. The chaotic, angry frizzle of spitting bursts of nervous energy. In its place Bashir peaceably drank his coffee, never once looking up to meet the eyes of the Klingon in the doorway, or even acknowledging his presence at all. Worf swore a death curse, a blood oath.

"But, in epilogue, did nothing," Q advised Sisko oblivious to his early morning visitor as well as the naughty going's-on of half his senior crew with a haughty arch of his brow. "As the Trill sat and listened, and the doctor sat and talked, the Klingon did nothing, and so the triangle that wasn't was now born."

"Yes, well, Doctor Bashir is actually right," Ziyal announced her arrival with a yawning stretch in his right ear. "Now is not the time -- "

"Quite all right!" Q slammed her on the back in reassurance with a beaming smile, the apple she was just about to bite, shooting itself out of her hand, across the room, and out the door. "They'll work it out. Elsewhere, elsewise, I have a plan."

"Another one?" Ziyal sighed after her disappearing apple, rolling its way into the dimension of Unknown.

"The same one," Q assured, gently pressing her head down over Captain Sisko's shoulder and her nose upon Commander Dax's journal. "Read."

"'These are brutal men, Benjamin…'" Ziyal read, Q nodding, and Dax's voice filling the room.

Intelligent. Soldiers. Warriors. Martok, Tain, Anar, Tan. They are not Dukat, who must seem more like a fool to them than even to us. An aside thought has me doubting if Tan would acknowledge that, never publicly. I think, however, if we look at it from the perspective of your Terran "brothers under the skin" some of this will begin to make more sense. Respect, if they couldn't extend anything more to each other, which obviously they can and do, in the instance of Anar and Tan. Anon and Pfrann are young men. The mutual friendship they feel and have with Anar would have to be different -- if you say no, be advised Curzon says yes. My friendship with you, Benjamin was different than the one shared with my peers. You were a young man; I was already old. Experienced and wise enough to know there are few Benjamin Siskos, truly gifted, truly special, truly unique. We want you. We thrive through you. Your rank and species irrelevant.

Ziyal straightened up.

"What?" Q interrupted his approval to groan.

"It's very interesting," Ziyal agreed. "Commander Dax is very astute. Though I know Chief Engineer Tan's loyalty to my father is unshakable, whether or not he privately agrees or disagrees with him, it's not important. The leader is always right. That is the First Commandment, and my father is the leader, there is no other.

"The same…" she continued as Q roused himself from his puzzled gawk to glare suspiciously over Captain Sisko's shoulder and down on Commander Dax's journal. "As Anon is the leader after my father, and George is the leader after him. Chief Engineer Tan is a firm believer in rule by hereditary aristocracy -- "

"Read!" Q stuffed an extradimensional copy of Commander Dax's journal in her hand, this one scrolled to the right entry.

"I'm reading," Ziyal shrugged, and she was.

It's probably safe to presume that one association was choice. Dax's voice refilled the room. Anon. The others are a need: the UFP and Bajor. Without which the colony will not survive regardless of whose name its leader bears. A rude awakening for a former Maquis leader; I've mentioned this to Julian. One that in the end finds the much hated Federation the winner, with the power, in control. Not the Klingons. Not the Dominion. And not the Cardassian Union -- the only other choice Anar has if they are to survive. Housing the colony under the umbrella of the Cardassian Union, however unstable it might be, it's still far more stable than they are. I highly doubt however if that option has ever crossed or would cross Anar's mind with any degree of seriousness. Believable or not Anon and his brother and troop are unique, are friends, now family with Anon's marriage to Lange. Since Anar apparently doesn't object to the union he has to approve, not only accept, if only because I can't see him accepting anything of which he does not approve.

To the opposite, we are definitely vying for his approval, you probably more than any of us. A Federation Starfleet Captain. Emissary to the people of Bajor. The Prophets' chosen. Anar has to have come to know about you at some point during his longstanding career as Maquis leader. Nevertheless, I believe you will find he is holding his blessing in abeyance, waiting for us and you to prove ourselves, not he have to prove anything.

I have this image in my mind of him having done the same thing with Anon Dukat. Probably differently than his approach to us, or possibly the same. In the end Anon did what? Passed? By the simple act of accepting the colony, noticing and not contributing to their strife? Doing what he could to alleviate what he could? Solidifying his unity with the Bajoran settlement by marrying the Human surrogate daughter of the Town Elder Shakaar Adon? A closing act that is either brash or brave. Independent or arrogant. Your choice. To me, it simply suggests while Anon may be his father in some ways, he also might have something his father lacks: tolerance for species other than his own. A true tolerance. True appreciation. True love for the Human Lange with her flowing Klingon hair.

"How romantic," Ziyal had to laugh out loud at the choice of words, having an idea Dax had done the same.

"You're supposed to be reading," Q reminded sternly.

"I am reading," Ziyal assured.

What all of this actually means, Commander Dax continued. Where it might, will, or may not lead, I'm unsure. Other than in there somewhere the truth may find Anar equally capable as Anon in his ability to see beyond the species Cardassian and the name Dukat despite his suspicions surrounding Kira of having this same talent…

"'Fixation,'" Ziyal paused.

"'If one embraces Julian's opinion,'" Q nodded wickedly.

With Julian citing Anar as unbalanced. Commander Dax agreed. He's not. It's rude, though reasonable to question Kira's association with Ziyal and Dukat. Anar doesn't know Kira, we do.

Kira probably tempted to put Anar in the pit with the Klingons (I promise to stop her if she tries). And then there's me with my question if Anar is voicing suspicions at all? Rather than attempting to determine if Kira is a kindred soul capable of forgetting what she can't forgive for the sake of future generations?

Maybe. Difficult to tell. Anar's personal interest in Kira is obvious. As obvious as the man we met on the station is the man who lives here. Honest when he says he's a leader, not a diplomat. A general personality that lends itself to being strikingly similar to Anon Dukat. Simply older and more self-assured…More tempered? Reasonably so, perhaps. What's most interesting to me is that Anar also seems to have difficulty with general dishonesty (Anon on the witness stand?) exploding in blunt frustration long before he lies. That rule, of course, does not apply when he's the one in control and truly doesn't want you to know something, or doesn't wish to answer. Then he just ignores you -- again, Anon Dukat? I'll close with that thought. The children have been much too quiet for some time now and we both know what that means.

"So we do," Q snatched the padd away as Ziyal stared up at him. "As there you have it in magnetic white and blue. A triangle, by any other name, on the verge. Hm? On the verge. A triangle," he formed one between his pointer fingers and his thumbs. "One side named Kira, the other named Anar, and the other named his Gul Dukat. You think not?"

"Oh, well…" Ziyal stammered.

"Fine!" the robes of Q whooshed out as he turned on his heel. "Be your father's daughter. Let him linger in that Federation asylum until he rots. Let Gowron triumph, and Winn prevail. The Dominion oozing their gelatinous slime from the Alpha Quadrant to the Beta…and when they do," he threatened her. "Don't call Q, we'll call you!"

He vanished. Ziyal blinking after him until she just shrugged, found herself a fresh apple and sat down on the sofa to console Captain Sisko how Jake and all others would be fine, even though he couldn't see her anymore than he could see the next two years in front of him. But that was all right. They came of their own accord, just like dear Opaka said, and she had complete faith Captain Sisko would come as well.