*Please, be kind. This is my first fan-fic that I've let anybody read, and I would love to know what people think of it. Reviews are really appreciated.



*A Place in Time

It was the day after Jadzia's wedding. Julian was miserable, constantly chastising himself for letting her go. He had never really told her that he loved her; maybe if he had she wouldn't be married to Worf. She thought he was just a flirtatious young doctor with a crush on her. Maybe he was. No, he'd been over that a thousand times before. It had started out that way, but he was really in love with her now. Somehow, I've got to put this behind me he thought as he sat in Quark's, sulkily sipping a raktijeno. He was still trying to fool himself, but he knew that he could never truly forget her.

Suddenly, Julian felt a strong hand on his shoulder. As he looked up, Miles O'Brien sat down in the seat opposite him.

"How are you" he asked, his voice full of sympathy. If anyone had a hint of Julian's true feelings it was Miles.

"Fine." he answered.

"Yeah, right, and my mother was a Cardy. Come on Julian, I know how you feel. You can't bluff me"

"No I guess I can't." He said with a wry smile. "I'll be all right in a few days."

"Maybe. There's something bugging you though. What is it?"

"Oh I don't know." Julian said with a slight groan. "I'm not sure. I just feel like there's something wrong with all this. It seems so ...fake."

"I think I know what you mean. It's kind of weird, Jadzia going against the Trill board and all."

"Not only that, but it's...well, out of the clear blue sky she suddenly decides she's infatuated with Klingon culture. It's not like her to be so narrowly focused. I've known her a long time" Julian sighed.

"I know. I'll leave you alone now. If you need anything at all just let me know. Have dinner with us tonight. I know Keiko would be glad to have you, and Molly has been asking for her 'Uncle Julie'." He smiled.

"Thanks Miles. I'll be there."

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Months passed, and Julian still didn't feel any better. Outwardly, he appeared as exuberant as usual. He even pretended to flirt with other women, but only to make sure Jadzia didn't feel bad about him. Inside, he was still miserable and getting even more so. He cringed every time he saw Jadzia with Worf, and felt like doing something awful to him. Julian's relationship with Jadzia naturally became somewhat strained, but they were still good friends.

Julian kept to himself a lot, and didn't associate much with the rest of the crew, unless it was the O'Brien family. He grew very attached to Molly, and spent his off duty hours playing with her. Life was extremely dull for Julian...until something happened.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

It all passed in a blur. He didn't really know what had happened. He only knew that he was dead inside, which for him was worse than being physically dead. He could remember bits and pieces of things: A Pah Wraith, Captain Sisko bellowing out orders, Miles comforting him for...something. And then he would remember it all, and live through the torment again and again. It filled his dreams, turning them into nightmares until he would wake up in a cold sweat.

Jadzia was dead. The Wraith had killed her, murdered her. And he, Dr. Julian Bashir had been unable to save her. He had extracted the Dax symbiont from her lifeless body and placed it in stasis. But what good was that? He didn't care anything for the wormy creature, except that Jadzia had cared. It would live on, while Jadzia was gone forever. He had tried desperately, spent over fifteen hours in surgery, trying to repair her damaged nerves, trying to find a way for her to live without Dax. Then she had died, and he with her. He would never be able to live without her. And he hated Worf. Worf had grieved for the Klingon ritual period of seven days, and then went on as though nothing had happened.

Every day since her death, Julian made a vow that he would spend the rest of his life in finding a way to unjoin Trill hosts from their symbionts.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Several months later, Julian woke up with a very strange feeling. It felt as though he were in two places at once, although he knew that was impossible. All day as he finished his medical reports, he felt that he was living two lives as the same time. When he went to sleep at night, his dreams were always the same: He would wake up and go to work on the promenade. Sisko and Odo and all the rest of the regular station crew were there, and life went on, like it was before Jadzia died. Except there was one difference: someone named Ezri was there, and Jadzia wasn't.

Julian would usually wake up remembering his dreams, and wondering who Ezri was, but it was not for a few more weeks that he found out. He had just fallen asleep, or woken up in the dream, when Ezri came up to him and started laughing. When he asked her what the joke was, she said that she was remembering how funny he thought the purple oceans on Trill were. How could Ezri have known that? He had only seen Trill's oceans in Jadzia's Delhern Park holo-program. Then something began to dawn on him. As he remembered other things Ezri had said, he became more and more convinced that Ezri was the new host for the Dax symbiont. The thought shocked him. He couldn't imagine that this incredibly young and bubbly officer carried Jadzia's thoughts and memories with her. Or could she?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Julian now spent all of his free time studying Trill physiology. He was growing more and more concerned about his dreams however. They became more real every night, and he was beginning to feel distant from his present timeline. It was now not only at night that Julian had the "dreams". He would find himself drifting off in the middle of the day, but could do nothing about it. It was as if he were living in two alternate existences at once. The dreams were preventing him from working on his Trill project, which was unacceptable, so he decided to seek the advice of a neuro- psychologist. He requested a runabout from Captain Sisko on the pretext of a medical convention on Earth.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Julian arrived at his appointment with Dr. Richard Calvin exactly on time. He was shown into a large office overlooking an artificial waterfall.

"Well Dr. Bashir, how can I help you" said Dr. Calvin in a quiet voice.

Julian then proceeded to tell the doctor everything that had happened since Jadzia's death.

"I have heard of only two other cases with symptoms like yours." said Dr. Calvin, "My opinion is that the trauma caused by your friends death, has projected your mind into an alternate timeline. It seems impossible, but has been proven to be quite the opposite. This timeline where we are conversing right now, is the result of your friend not being replaced. The new host for your friend's symbiont was not assigned to your station, and therefore you do not know her in this existence. However, in the other timeline, the symbiont was placed inside the Ezri personality you described. You made friends with her, and therefore the gap left by your friend, was filled by this new person."

"It sounds rather complicated." said Julian skeptically.

"Anything to do with the time concept in complicated. This IS quite possible though. I really don't see any other explanation for your problem."

"What happened to the two cases you mentioned earlier?" Julian asked with some concern.

"Well, that's not such good news." Dr. Calvin sighed. "The first case lived in both lines all of her life. On her last visit with me, she described that her alternate self had been killed. Two days later, she was killed in exactly the same way she had been in her 'dream'. The second case is even more bizarre. He came to me with these dreams in the same way you have. On each visit here, he became more and more involved with his alternate life. His other self was apparently much happier than he was in this timeline, so the poor man spent his own life searching for a time portal to transport him into his dreams. On one of his journeys, he went through an unstable wormhole, and actually ended up in his past, meeting his younger self. Somehow, he made it back, but I don't know what happened to him since."

"How do you know about his experience through the wormhole if you haven't heard from him?" questioned Julian.

"After he had not returned in several years, I looked through his files and requested further information on him. I got back his report, which chronicled his experience. The strange part is that he didn't remember ever having any dreams or leading an alternate existence at all. I'm inclined to believe that he fixed whatever caused him to have the dreams in the first place, when he went back in time."

"So he cured himself of this. How did he make it back here though?"

"I don't know. The commonality in those two cases, and yours too, are that the dreams started immediately after personal trauma, namely the death of a loved one."

"I see. There's no cure then, is there." solemnly spoke Julian.

"None yet discovered. I'm very sorry. If you have any more problems, or if the dreams get worse, please feel free to come back." Said Dr. Calvin sympathetically.

"Thank you Dr., Goodbye."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Julian spent the next three years on Deep Space Nine, until he was granted a much-worked-for transfer to a Trill outpost. There he was assigned the position of performing autopsies on dead Trill, which helped him greatly to learn how the race's system operates. He was also saddened however, for every female Trill always reminded him of Jadzia.

After several years of working with the dead, Julian was transferred to trauma surgery, where he could work on real Trill instead of just holo- simulations. Most of Julian's experimental surgeries were complete failures, but luckily they were performed on Trill that would die of injuries anyway, regardless of what was done to help them.

Twenty years later, Julian was Chief of Medical Research on Trill. He had had several successes to boost his confidence, and had actually unjoined a Trill where the host body survived for nearly a year after the symbiont's removal. Secretly, in the back of his mind, Julian was hoping that he could find a way back to his past, like the man who went through the wormhole. If he could learn how to unjoin Trill where the host body would survive for a normal life span, he could go back to Jadzia and save her from her fate. His love for her had never died within him, even after almost a quarter of a century had passed.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Finally, after five years of impatient waiting and watching, Julian was convinced that he had succeeded in his goal. He was now sixty-two years old, and had unjoined a Trill in which the host had survived normally for five years, and had no sign of weakening life functions. He had devised a new way to repair nerve stems, which the trill symbiont bonds to and changes the configuration of. After so many years of patient waiting, Julian had done it. If only he could get back to Jadzia.

He still suffered from his dreams. In his alternate existence, he had married Ezri after Captain Sisko departed to be with 'the prophets'. Odo had rejoined the changelings, Miles was the father of six, ,Worf had been violently killed by the Jem Hadaar, and things were generally a mess.

Julian had heard of a man who claimed to be able to transport himself to a different time at will. If he could do that, he might be able to take passengers. He decided that he would go and see this man as soon as possible.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Good day, Mr. De'nchek." said Julian, "I have come to you for the purpose of time travel."

"I'm sorry Dr. Bashir. I don't take passengers."

"Money is no object. I will pay whatever you ask."

"Sorry, but I can't. It's too dangerous to risk." shortly barked De'nchek.

"Five thousand bars of gold-pressed latinum." said Julian hastily. He had made a huge fortune off of his experiments, so he could easily quadruple this sum if necessary.

"Five thousand?...sorry, still too dangerous." De'nchek said with some interest.

"Ten thousand. I will decide if it's too dangerous."

"Ten thousand!" he had obviously never seen that large amount before." You've got yourself a deal! What time do you want to see?" the question seemed oddly put, but to the point.

"I need to go back to the Alpha quadrant border, Deep Space Nine, the station that orbited Bajor. Stardate 51931.2" *No wait. * He thought, *If I went back just a little bit farther, I might have a chance to stop her wedding. * "Change that to Stardate 50263.4."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

As Julian, boarded the peculiar-looking shuttlecraft, he thought that might never return to this time again. What if something went wrong, or De'nchek was just a crazy fool? What if he didn't remember how to perform the surgery correctly when he went back? These and a thousand other terrible thoughts flooded Julian's mind with horror. But it was all for Jadzia, so it was worth it.

De'nchek started the engines, and the shuttle shot off at terrific speed, until it suddenly just disappeared in a flash of light…………. (To be Continued)