"How many lives have you saved in your medical career? … Hundreds? Thousands? Do you think any of those people give a damn that you lied to get into Starfleet Medical?"

(Luther Sloan, Inquisition)

To his utter astonishment, there were two faces waiting to greet him as the door to the general's quarters slid smoothly open.

"This is the tale you would tell to your children?" A familiar voice had been saying. "And I thought Human stories were graphic."

"Ah, Doctor," exclaimed Garak, smiling in his direction. Bashir was surprised to find that the greeting wasn't nearly as disturbing as it might have been on the previous day.

"Apparently he's no longer a doctor," Martok interrupted with a searching glare. "So for just this moment, I will not be a general."

"And I," announced the blue eyed Cardassian just as fiercely. "Am most definitely not a tailor."

"Nor any of those other things, I suppose." Bashir could not hold back an automatic jest.

"You are absolutely right. Although I have not been a gardener for a very long time."

For a moment, the corridor filled with Martok's laughter. Such open mirth was peculiarly contagious, and there was a hint of a smile in Garak's eyes as well. "Good," the Klingon bellowed. "Then we are just three comrades about to share a good meal. Now are you going to quit standing in that doorway like a bewildered targ or do I have to come out there and get you?"

Raising his hands as a token of surrender, Bashir stepped through the door. But when they took their places at the table, he found that his stomach was squirming every bit as much as Martok's gagh. Several of the slender, red-bellied worms appeared to be rising up to greet him.

"Well this is certainly pleasant enough," remarked Garak. "The three of us coming together, sharing a most… interesting lunch…"

The touch of mischief in his smile was unmistakeable. "And it was well worth accepting the invitation, just to see the look on your face when you saw that I was here."

"I must admit, it did surprise me," the former doctor confessed. "I never realised you were partial to Klingon food."

"A life in exile may not be wholly pleasant. But it does leave a man open to new adventures, which he might otherwise never have thought to experience."

He cast a meaningful glance in his good friend's direction, causing Bashir to suspect that the Cardassian was talking about more than just himself.

"Perhaps so." Looking down, Bashir pushed his meal thoughtfully around his plate. He sensed even before returning his attention to them that there was silence at the table. With a barely audible sigh, he leant back and dropped the handful that had already been wriggling in his fingers. Miles, Jadzia, even Garak… What could possibly await him on Earth that was worth leaving them all behind?

"What exactly is the Federation so afraid of?" he continued softly, staring at an old stain on the table's otherwise blank surface. "That I'm good with numbers? That I can defeat Chief O'Brien at darts? What exactly do they think I'm going to do to them all?"

He glanced up, first with just his eyes, but finally lifted his head to face them. Just as he suspected, his companions were watching. Well? he thought. Say something. He had never known either of them to be without an opinion, and their unblinking, blue eyed stares pierced him to the core. But then he realised, he knew exactly why they weren't speaking. It was because, deep down, they saw that he'd always known the answer to his own question. That ever since Adigeon Prime, he had never been quite normal.

"Never mind. Forget I said anything."

Again, the silence was broken by Garak. "When do you leave?" he asked, as usual cutting right to the heart of the matter.

"Tomorrow."

"Will you be seeing your family?"

"I hope not." Bashir surprised himself at the sudden bitter edge to his voice. He paused to allow himself two deep breaths. When next he spoke, his words were much calmer, although not quite as steady as he would have liked. "That is, I suspect that I will. Most of them will come for the trial, and some have offered to let me stay with them while I'm there. It's just, I'd rather not…"

"That is not good," Martok commented with a shake of his head. He'd dropped the food back onto his plate, and fixed his staring eye on their exchange since the moment when Garak had first brought up Julian's parents. "If a man cannot seek the companionship of his family, then what else does he have left?"

"You sound just like Counsellor Dion. Hayes isn't having you two report on me as well, is he?"

The two men exchanged a look of genuine puzzlement. "My dear doctor." Garak slipped easily into the old familiar expression. "I'd have thought after all our lunches together, you'd know me better than that. Even if he had, do you honestly believe that I would tell him the truth?"

"What is shared among friends is not for outside ears," announced Martok with no small amount of wounded pride.

"I'm sorry," Julian backtracked. "I didn't mean to offend."

"No offence taken, my friend," the one eyed general assured him. "It is those who made the decision who should be sorry. They are the ones who have acted without honour. Come. You have barely touched your meal."

Allowing the general's words to settle in his thoughts, Bashir stared down at his plate. "I don't suppose it matters what happens now, anyway," he said. "As far as I can tell, I died when I was six, at the hospital on Adigeon Prime."

"Well - I must say," interjected Garak. "For a dead man, you talk a lot."

"Ha," said Martok. His single eye glistened with good humour. Even Bashir managed a faint smile.

"If you say so."

It was Garak who suggested that his friend accompany him back to the tailor shop. Finding himself with no reason to refuse, Bashir nodded, and both men bid the general a pleasant farewell. They were silent on the way to the turbolift, happy in each other's company, but it had never been in Garak's nature to resist the chance for a conversation.

"You know," he began, as the lift slowed towards its destination, and he continued as they stepped onto the Promenade. "I must confess. When we first met, I thought I had you figured out in less than a week. It never occurred to me that someone so young and… talkative could possibly be keeping secrets."

Bashir paused and glanced sidelong at his companion, wondering on what conversational track the station's resident Cardassian spy could be leading him now. "I remember," he said.

"Tell me, Doctor." Garak strode two paces ahead, and turned to face him head on. "That brash young man from five years ago - was he really Julian Bashir, or was that all just an act?"

Bashir realised that he was frowning, staring at some undefined point just centimetres beyond the railing. "Perhaps…" he mused. "He may have been a little of both."

They continued their slow amble along the Promenade.

"So are you saying that it is possible to be genetically engineered, and still have so little idea about how the universe works?"

"There's no gene for experience, Garak."

"No, I don't suppose there is." Both men stopped again at the entrance to Garak's shop, where he watched Bashir with a steady, searching gaze. A smile had started in his eyes and was now spreading to the corners of his mouth. "All that time, and you never told a soul." The blue eyed tailor actually chuckled. "You know, my friend. I do believe…"

"…There's hope for me yet?"

"I'm glad you think so." With a brisk nod, Garak turned and stepped away through the tailor shop door.

It was late in the evening by the time Bashir returned to his quarters, feeling secretly more than a little weary. Restless and agitated, he'd sat at the replimat since lunch and watched the crowds of myriad aliens pass him by until he finally leapt from his seat and began to pace the length of the station's more deserted corridors.

He was not naïve enough to think that his wanderings would go unnoticed. But luckily, the only other person he did happen upon was Morn - possibly on his way to or from Quark's. Bashir sidestepped quickly past before he could be dragged into any lengthy conversations.

His own quarters were a third of the way down the dimly lit corridor. And he quickly saw that - yes - he was not alone.

"Do you really have to be here tonight?" he asked the pale faced nurse who'd shown up at his door. He imagined handfuls of gagh beginning to squirm at the base of his intestines.

"You know I do, Doc--" Janet Thompson flinched at her error. Any other time, Bashir reflected, he might have smiled at the way her normally steady, honeycomb-tinted gaze had so suddenly faltered. She was only new, after all - less than four years out of her teens - and every bit as nervous and excitable as he had been when the recently rechristened Deep Space Nine had been his new assignment.

Remembering the eager anticipation of years past caused the weight to return to his shoulders. He longed still more for the comforting familiarity of his quarters, and sighed. "It's all right, Janet. No need to explain." Keying in his personal security code, he allowed her to proceed first through the door. "Help yourself to the replicator. I have to freshen up."

He stepped into the next room, where he leaned against the wall and rubbed his eyes, momentarily grateful that at least he could achieve the illusion of peace and solitude. She's being awfully quiet, though. He glanced to his left. He doubted that even Thompson would have willingly left him alone for so long.

"But you know what they say on Risa," he called, hoping to elicit some kind of response. "All that is mine, is yours."

"That's good to hear," said a voice from the shadows - a clear although slightly nasal tenor. Decidedly not Nurse Thompson.

Chill dread surged along the underside of Bashir's skin even before he called for the lights. In an instant, he had taken in the likeness of the man sitting calmly in his bedroom chair. Average height, average build, although ever so slightly pale. Fingers, pressed together at the tips, held thoughtfully against his mouth. Right leg folded - a little too deliberately casual - over his left. His hair was ginger-brown, although nowhere near the fiery copper of Doctor Hayes'. Close cut, Bashir noted, and swept back with a subtle cowlick where it was receding a little at the temples.

Humourless smile. Tight cheeks. Unblinking, level gaze.

Don't trust him.

"I wouldn't bother calling for help," the stranger informed him without any sign of hesitation. "You'll find that the comm lines are down, and your… uh… guest - Miss Thompson, was it? - is otherwise indisposed."

He rose to his feet, every movement deliberate and calculated. "So, we finally meet," he commented.

"Finally?"

"We've been following your career for some years, Doctor, ever since we first learnt about your little… deviance, shall we say?"

"For starters, that's impossible." Fighting to keep a tremor from his voice, Bashir stepped forward.

"Because you thought that nobody could have known until a week ago?" The stranger shook his head in apparent disappointment. "And they said you were an intelligent man."

"Am I supposed to be impressed because you discovered a record in some archive, somewhere? How do I even know you're telling the truth?"

"Oh, believe me, the people we got this information from are not the kind to keep records," the man responded. "Starfleet Medical, on the other hand, that's an entirely different story. Let's see… Bashir, Julian. Born August 2341, by old Earth reckoning. Graduated second in your class. Specifically requested the posting to Deep Space Nine because you claimed to be interested in 'frontier medicine'. Awarded a commendation in that same year for saving the lives of three Federation ambassadors. Although incidentally, two out of three of those same ambassadors were among the first to denounce you. Were you aware of that?"

"I was, actually." Bashir swallowed back a steadily tightening knot in his throat.

"So much for gratitude," the man went on. He continued to tick each point off on his fingers as though merely reciting a list of requisitions. "Let's see. What else? Youngest ever nominee for the Carrington Award, which went to… Doctor Roget, if I'm not mistaken. Received another commendation for your role in maintaining the field hospital on Ajilon Prime. Captured and imprisoned at Dominion Internment Camp 371..."

With that last comment, his voice slowed and he gazed back up at Bashir, seeming to search every part of his face. "And need I even mention, you ended up in the same barracks as several men who were already known to you. Tain, Martok, Worf, Garak… What are the odds?"

"Two thousand, three hundred and twenty to one," Bashir replied automatically. "Give or take a half dozen or so."

"Ah. I see you've already given the matter some thought."

"Perhaps I have. So what?"

"Oh, and it appears that your former girlfriend has finally decided to return this." The intruder took something from a nearby table and held it up to the light. Julian's teddy bear. Leeta had borrowed him while they were still dating. "Guess she figured you'd need it more than her, especially since… well, you know."

Anger rose from the depths of Julian's gut. So you know my career history, he wanted to say. So what? Leave Kukalaka out of it. But he pushed his feelings down as far as they would go, and pictured himself locking them away behind a heavily bolted door. He had no desire to let this man see that he'd touched on something personal.

Folding his arms across his chest, he returned the stranger's cold stare. "I don't have time for this." he told him. "It's already been a long day, and I'm supposed to be on a transport tomorrow. So if you have something to say to me, make it quick."

"Ah," said the man. "You see, that's where we run into a problem."

"What do you mean?" demanded Bashir, but with a terrible suspicion that he already knew.

"We need you here," the reply was simple. There was a cold pressure of something pressed against the base of Julian's neck, followed by the unmistakeable hiss of a hypospray. "I'm afraid we can't allow you to return to Earth."