8
Light filtered slowly into his vision, a dim, quiet light that seemed to spread out evenly all around him.
Artificial light.
In the background, he could hear soft sounds, familiar sounds.
Reluctantly, Bashir blinked himself awake.
"It's about time," a cheerful female voice said from beside him and Bashir opened his eyes. He registered immediately that he was in his own infirmary. It was Dax who had spoken to him, and she was standing beside the biobed, grinning down at him. "You had us a bit worried these last few hours. Quark was going to start taking bets on whether you'd wake up or just sleep the rest of your life away."
"Jadzia?", Bashir muttered in confusion. Then relief swept through him. "Oh, thank God. Am I glad to see you. Where did you find us?"
Dax's smile changed to a frown.
"Us?", she asked.
"Me and Syreeta. Or was it her ship? Where is she?"
He pushed himself up on his elbows, regretted it for a moment as his vision blurred, and looked around.
There was no one in the infirmary but him and Dax.
"Who's Syreeta?", Dax asked.
"Lieutenant Syreeta Narayan," Bashir replied quickly. "Where is she? We were stranded together on that planet."
"Julian, slow down. There was no planet. I don't know what you're talking about."
"The Orinoco crashed on a planet in the Gamma Quadrant," he explained. "That must be where you found us. We were stranded there, and couldn't get either of our shuttles' communication systems working."
Dax gave him a puzzled, concerned look.
"Julian, we didn't find you on a planet. We picked you up in the Orinoco a few hours ago. Your shuttle hit a subspace eddy and it knocked out some of you systems, as well as you. We towed you back to the station with the Defiant and brought you down here."
Bashir stared up at her, uncomprehending.
"A few hours ago? No, Jadzia, I've been gone for nearly two weeks."
"You were at the conference on Betazed, but that was only for one week," Dax said, shaking her head. "Do you remember that?"
"Of course I remember that," Bashir replied. "I mean after that."
"After that, you came back here, hit the eddy and we brought you home. Julian, you've been unconscious and then sleeping for just about three hours, but that's it. I swear to you, only a few hours have gone by. You weren't missing; we knew where you were the entire time. I think you must have been dreaming."
"What?", he asked, sitting up fully. Dax put her hands out to steady him, but he ignored her. "Computer, what stardate is this?"
"Five-three-four-eight-point-eight."
Bashir felt his stomach drop. Exactly the stardate he remembered before the crash.
"You said I hit a subspace eddy. What if it did something to the timeline?", he demanded.
Dax shook her head.
"It was just a normal eddy, Julian; I've already analyzed it. No chronotons, nothing unusual. And we never once lost contact with the Orinoco, even though we couldn't get through to you personally. We always had it on our sensors, too."
Bashir felt dizzy, like he had been punched in the gut. Had it all been a dream? Those thirteen days with Narayan, had his mind made all of that up? It had seemed so real, and he had gone through all of those thirteen days, every minute of them. How could that possibly be a dream?
But here he was, on the station, and it was the same day on which he was meant to return, and there was no sign of Narayan. He blinked, rubbing his eyes.
"Sisko to Dax."
"Dax here, go ahead, Benjamin."
"Any change down there?"
"Julian's awake, but I'm afraid he's a little disoriented. He thinks he was missing for two weeks."
"I'll be down shortly. Sisko out."
"I'm just going to get Nurse Jabara to examine you," she said. "Sit tight."
He didn't know what else to do. He felt as if part of his life had been ripped away from him, and no one else noticed or cared. Thirteen days. Twelve of those days had been spent trekking through a mountain range with a woman he'd barely known at first. Bashir didn't know what to think; only a few minutes ago, to him, he had been wondering what his life would be like when she was no longer around. He had spent all that time just with her and now–
Now she was just a dream? Someone his mind had made up for him?
Bashir lay back down, staring blankly at the wall. Dax had no reason to lie to him, of course, nor did the computer. But how was this possible? How could his mind have deceived him so completely? He wasn't even sure how to feel. What is this was just a dream, and he'd wake up again in the mountains? He tried to force himself awake, then realized he was already conscious. Besides, the last thing he remembered was that flash of sunlight – or some kind of light – off of the river. Not going to sleep.
Jabara came in, smiling at him.
"Good to see you awake, Julian," she said. "Lie still and I'll have a look at you."
He let her examine him; he knew her well enough to trust her professional competency.
"Well, you look fine. A bit of a concussion when you were knocked out of course, but nothing you won't shake off in a day or so. I'd still recommend you take tomorrow off and rest."
He nodded, unsure what else to do. Sisko came in then, grinning.
"Julian, I'm glad you're back," he said. "But Dax said you were disoriented? What happened?"
Bashir sat up again.
"Sir, I don't know how to explain this to you, but I was missing for thirteen days, not a few hours."
Sisko nodded.
"I have a clear memory of every moment of each of those days!", Bashir continued. "I was with another Starfleet officer, and we were stranded on a planet in the Gamma Quadrant!"
"Julian, I'm sorry, but you didn't even come anywhere near the wormhole," Sisko said. "We analyzed the hell out of that eddy; there was no temporal disturbance. There's no indication you ever left the Orinoco and it certainly hasn't been thirteen days."
"You may have dreamt it," Jabara told him gently. "I checked in on you. After about an hour, you went from being unconscious to sleeping. You would have gone through a normal REM cycle."
"But a dream of thirteen days?", Bashir asked, although he knew with a sinking feeling it was possible. Dreams came and went so quickly, and he was prone to having particularly vivid dreams, with his brain enhanced as it was.
But Narayan… She had been so real. Despite what Dax said, there must be a possibility that something had happened to him. He couldn't just write this off as a dream. Too much had happened to him for it to have been imagined.
"If you want, you can review my scans and analysis tomorrow," Dax offered.
"I'd like to do that," Bashir replied.
"Come by the lab at around eleven hundred, and we'll go for lunch afterwards."
It sounded so normal, as if he wasn't sitting here with two weeks of his life missing and Narayan gone, like she'd never existed. But to them, it had only been a few hours. He'd been away at an ordinary conference and had come home, with only a short delay.
"Can I go now?", he asked Jabara.
"Yes," she replied. "But I mean it about taking tomorrow off."
He nodded; he wasn't about to argue. He had work of his own to do.
"You sure you're okay, Julian?", Sisko asked. "You know we'll check this out."
"I know, sir," Bashir said nodding. "I don't know how to feel. I'm missing so much time. But to you, I'm not. It seemed so real– no, it was so real. I'm not sure what to think."
"No one ever said life on this station was run of the mill. Make sure you get some rest, and we'll work on this first thing tomorrow morning."
That wasn't soon enough for Bashir. When he returned to his quarters, which were exactly the way he'd left them either one or three weeks ago, depending on which version of reality was valid, he called O'Brien and arranged to meet him for breakfast the next morning. The chief sounded more than a little relieved to hear Bashir's voice, and Bashir found himself feeling nothing but anticipation in seeing his friend again. It was with a jolt he realized the guilt over the enhancements and the feeling he must be different had taken several seconds before rearing their ugly heads.
He pushed that aside and went to have a shower. No matter what Dax and Sisko said, it had been two weeks since he'd had a real shower and he'd need to shave, too. But his reflection in the mirror caught him off guard. He did not need to shave. Instead of the healthy beard he'd had on his face by the end of the trek, Bashir had only a five o'clock shadow. He stared at himself, then ran a hand slowly over his chin.
It was only supposed to have been a few hours since he'd contacted the station…
Shaking his head firmly, Bashir activated the water shower, foregoing the sonic option, and turned up the heat as high as it could go. Thirteen days in the mountains with only freezing cold river water had left him with a chill he couldn't shake. He stayed in for twenty minutes, then climbed out, and changed into his pajamas. A fresh change of clothes that wasn't his uniform. For a moment, it felt alien.
Then he put that aside and went to his personal terminal and set to work. There were things he needed to find if he was going to prove his story. Starting with Syreeta Narayan and her whereabouts.
When the door buzzer sounded the next morning, Bashir didn't bother looking up when he told the computer to admit O'Brien. His friend came into the livingroom and looked startled.
"Julian! You look like hell! Didn't you sleep?"
Bashir shook his head, gesturing to the chair opposite him. O'Brien hurried over and sat down, looking worried.
"Why not? Are you all right? Dax told me that you dreamt you were missing for two weeks."
"I didn't dream it, Miles," Bashir sighed, running his hands over his face, the lower part of which was now covered with stubble. "I couldn't have dreamt it. I lived those thirteen days in the mountains with Lieutenant Narayan. I don't know what happened to me, but I can't have just been asleep for a few hours!"
"Whoa, whoa," O'Brien said. "Dax mentioned you thought you were with a woman named Narayan. Tell me what happened."
And Bashir did. He found he couldn't hold back; he told O'Brien everything, every little detail he could remember, all of their conversations, about the shuttles and the position marker, the abandoned house, the cat-creatures, about finding another Starfleet officer on the same remote planet, against all odds. O'Brien listened silently, attentively, as Bashir spoke, never once interrupting.
"And I can't find any record of her," Bashir finished bitterly, gesturing at the computer station at which he had spent the entire night. "I tried every kind of search I could imagine, but nothing. Miles, there never was a Syreeta Narayan! But how is that possible? How could I have made all of that up? I checked for the Sir John A. MacDonald, but it was decommissioned twelve years ago! How would I know that?"
"Because I told you," O'Brien said. "A cousin of mine served on the Sir John as first officer. I can't remember why I was talking about it, but I do remember mentioning it."
Bashir blinked, then closed his eyes as the memory came back to him. He remembered now, too.
"But what about the air flight position marker? How would I know they used to use them on Earth?"
O'Brien shook his head.
"I don't know, Julian, but with your memory, I wouldn't be surprised if you heard it once and always remembered it. And it isn't much of a stretch; most terrestrial flights still use some sort of signal beacon, but they usually come from satellites now."
Bashir felt as if he were sinking further and further into his couch. He shut his eyes, putting a hand to his forehead.
"Is this how it felt after the Argrathi prison, Miles?"
"I don't know, Julian; I don't know how you feel."
Bashir swallowed hard.
"I feel like she died. She never existed, but I feel like she died. Maybe– maybe she was only in my mind, but she was real, dammit!"
"Then yes, that's how it felt."
"I don't– This doesn't even begin to compare with what those twenty years were like for you, I know. But what am I supposed to do now? All of a sudden, Syreeta's gone and everyone's telling me it was just a dream? How could something so vivid be just a dream?"
O'Brien shook his head.
"I don't understand how anyone's brain works, especially yours."
"I understand this isn't twenty years–"
"Julian, you don't have to try and justify the time difference. Our experiences were different, but that doesn't make what you went through any less real than what I went through. Look, I'm probably the only person on the station who understands what it's like to lose someone who never really existed in the first place. Everyone can tell you it was just a dream; you can say it to yourself all you want. And maybe it never happened anywhere but in your mind, but it did happen. Even if it was just to you."
"I checked everything, Miles. The colony on Lionus. It was settled nearly thirty years ago, and Syreeta's only twenty-seven! But she said she was the youngest person to land there, and that she'd been born en route. And there's no record of any accident killing anyone sixteen years ago. Lionus does have two moons, but I remember the shape of the continents on Syreeta's necklace and they're all wrong. And I can't find a Bajoran doctor named Berch in Starfleet or the Bajoran Medical Authority anywhere. She just– doesn't exist."
O'Brien nodded slowly. At least he understood how this felt, Bashir thought. It was a mixed blessing. Now that he himself knew what this was like, he wished to hell O'Brien had been spared it.
"Julian, have you eaten yet?", his friend asked.
"What? No."
"Right." O'Brien rose and went to the replicator. "Scones with raspberry jam, two raktajinos, two eggs, scrambled, sausage, and brown toast."
The replicator deposited their food with a hum and O'Brien brought it over. Bashir accepted it, suddenly famished, and bit into the scone gratefully. He had subsisted on rations, wild game and plants for nearly two weeks now; he hadn't had his usual breakfast since… yesterday.
In the Orinoco. He could remember that. The problem was, his brain was telling him it had been two weeks ago.
"I'm not sure what to tell you, Julian," O'Brien said, shoveling some eggs onto his fork. "If something did happen, Dax will find it. I can't explain what went on. I know what it feels like, though, to be missing all that time. I hate to say it, because I know how crass it sounds, but you'll get used to it. It'll fade."
Bashir wanted to shake his head but didn't. How could Narayan ever fade? How could she not be out there, living her life? Was she out there somewhere, wondering where the hell he was? Or was she some old, forgotten memory too, a woman he'd met once, her name dragged back up by his brain for no particular reason?
He knew O'Brien would never understand the loss of a real companion. Narayan hadn't been a fellow convict, and they hadn't been locked up together, helpless and at the mercy of their jailers. They had been forced to work together to survive, and that survival had been an accomplishment. And they'd had their freedom, there wasn't the desperation of being in prison. Yes, they had been stranded, but their limit had been that entire world, not a tiny cell.
"It might help to talk to the counselor," O'Brien suggested.
Bashir sighed.
"I remember ordering you to do that," he commented.
"And I hated you for it at first," O'Brien replied easily. "I just wanted to be alone. But it did help."
Bashir shook his head.
"I don't want to be alone," he said. There was no statement more true. He was afraid if he was alone now, that the memory of Narayan would overwhelm him. He had not been alone those thirteen days and it had kept him sane. He didn't realize how much he'd come to depend on her presence until it was gone.
"We're your friends, Julian. We're all here for you."
Amazingly, Bashir believed that. Despite all the self-consciousness that came with knowing he had lied to them all these years, he believed that. They were his friends. That hadn't changed.
He spent the later part of the morning with Dax, going over all of her data very carefully, finding nothing anomalous in it. Each minute was more disheartening than the last. Her scientific evidence was piling up on top of his inability to find any trace of Narayan in any Federation record. Perhaps she had simply existed only in his mind… That thought made his heart heavy.
They had lunch together, joined by Garak, who was pleased to see Bashir again. It was obvious the Cardassian was interested in Bashir's experience, and just as obvious that Dax wanted to keep the conversation away from that topic. She asked all about the conference and he answered, refusing to be diverted; he didn't really want to think about Narayan just then. Garak, at least, was more than intelligent enough to get the hint and kept his questions to himself. Bashir knew he couldn't escape the Cardassian's inquiries forever, but it was enough that he could do so right now.
Afterwards, he went back to his quarters and relieved himself of duty for another day. He was exhausted. Twelve days of hiking, with only six hours of sleep per day, even if they had never happened, had left him in need of sleep. And he'd had no sleep the night before. Bashir managed to put on his pajamas before falling into bed. He slept without dreaming.
It was the early hours of the morning when he awoke, feeling better, at least physically. Afraid that lying in bed would only start him thinking about what had or hadn't happened, he got up, dressed, shaved, and wandered down the promenade.
Everything was closed now, even Quark's. There was no one around, and Bashir climbed to the upper level, moving to stand next to the large windows. He looked out into space, toward where he knew the wormhole was. He did have friends out there, on other ships, a few still on Earth, or on other worlds. And he had friends here, good friends.
"Doctor?", a voice said from behind him and Bashir started inwardly, turning. Odo stood behind him and to one side, his hands clasped behind his back.
"Constable," Bashir replied.
"Everything all right?"
"No, not really," Bashir said.
"Anything I can help you with?"
Bashir sighed.
"No, Odo, I'm afraid not. I wish it were a simple security matter."
The wormhole flared to life suddenly, stayed open for a moment, then closed just as abruptly. Bashir was startled, but Odo appeared unphased.
"It's been opening and closing inexplicably for a few days now," Odo said. "We were worried it was Dominion ships coming through, at first, but Chief O'Brien and Commander Dax say it isn't open long enough. A ship would have to be traveling through at warp, apparently, to get out fast enough. And since that isn't possible, it seems nothing's coming through."
"Why is it happening then?", Bashir asked.
Odo shrugged.
"Who could guess at the motivations of the wormhole aliens, Doctor? Perhaps this just something they do every so many centuries and we're only now seeing it."
Bashir nodded vaguely, looking out at the darkness where the wormhole was, where it had lit up so brightly a minute ago. He had seen his flight path, and checked the station's logs as well as the Defiant's. He hadn't come near the wormhole, hadn't been in the Gamma Quadrant. Hadn't been gone for thirteen days.
He'd only been asleep, dreaming.
"If you'll excuse me, Constable," Bashir said.
"Of course, Doctor. Have a good night."
Bashir nodded, knowing he probably wouldn't, and went back to his quarters.
Two weeks passed, slowly. Around him, life on the station continued as normal, and Bashir felt himself being drawn back into that, while staying apart from it. He felt as if there were two Julian Bashirs, one who lived on Deep Space Nine, who had his friends there, his life. He did his job better than he normally did, and played darts and fought Spaniards with O'Brien, ate with Garak, shared drinks with Dax. He even recorded a brief letter to his parents, telling them about the conference.
Then there was the second Bashir, the one who watched all of this happening, detached. The second part of him wasn't living his life, he was reliving the thirteen days in the mountains, and thinking of Narayan. Always thinking of Narayan. There were times when he woke up and expected to see her sitting next to a fire. There were times, when he was alone, that he was sure he heard her voice. Once he even caught a faint whiff of the scent of the mountains: the cold, clean air, the smell of the trees and the dirt. Then it was gone again.
He wondered if this was what it was like to be depressed.
Her memory didn't fade, as O'Brien had said it would. She wasn't real, but she had been real enough to Bashir, and he found himself stubbornly unwilling to let that go. Even if she had been just a dream, she had helped him with so many things. It was easier, now, to see how people still accepted him despite the enhancements. It was easier even to live with the enhancements. What was done was done; she'd been right about that. Against his will or no, he had been given a gift, and it would be foolish to squander it because of what some other man like him had done centuries ago. He wasn't Khan Singh, he was Julian Bashir, and there was a galaxy of difference between them. Because he chose it to be so. Real or not, Narayan had given him the ability to see that.
He went to bed one night and dreamt he was back on the planet. He was alone, sitting and watching the settlement they'd never reached, but unwilling to go down and see what it was. It didn't seem to matter now. It was his dream, he would find whomever he wanted to find down there. He just sat in the river valley, looking down at the town below, until he woke up.
Bashir felt worse upon waking up than he had since he'd regained consciousness on the station. He lay in bed for a few moments, then got up and dressed hurriedly. His duty shift didn't start for another hour, and there was someone he wanted to see. He made his way through the corridors, which were still fairly empty at this hour, and arrived at Kira's quarters. Knowing she'd be awake, he pressed the buzzer. A moment later, he was admitted and stepped over the raised lip of the doorway. Kira was wrapped in a robe and looked puzzled upon seeing him.
"Julian, how are you?", she asked.
"I've been better," he replied dryly. "Major, there's something I need you to arrange for me."