Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bashir took the pretext of an update on requested medical supply shipments to tell Sisko that Elim had agreed to help them. Sisko nodded, unsurprised; Bashir hadn’t explicitly mentioned before that he was trying to recruit Elim, or even that Elim knew about Section 31 in the first place, but Sisko had obviously been expecting it one way or another anyway.

“If you’re sure,” Sisko said. “It’s not that I think that we can’t assume Garak is on our side, especially considering Cardassia’s regime change, but…”

“But?” Bashir prompted.

Sisko shook his head slightly, his mouth an impassive line. “I’m more concerned about your judgment, doctor. I don’t doubt your ability to assess his skills and potential usefulness, but in terms of his… stability…”

“Captain,” Bashir said, frowning, “I’m sure it’ll be fine—”

“You’re sure,” Sisko deadpanned. “Well, I know I’d feel better if I could speak to him directly about this.”

Bashir relaxed, half-smiling. “You mean you want him over for dinner.”

Sisko didn’t look too thrilled by the prospect. Then again, he hadn’t looked thrilled by the prospect of inviting Bashir to his personal quarters, either. "You do realize that it would look quite odd for me to invite Mr. Garak over for dinner, don't you, doctor?"

"Hm, I suppose so. I don't think it's that suspicious, though."

"That doesn't matter - you yourself should know best how important plausible deniability becomes if we were to involve Mr. Garak in our... investigation."

Raising an eyebrow, Bashir leaned back in his chair. "And I take it you expect my help with that 'plausible deniability', captain?"

"Forgive me for being so direct, but what is your current, ah—" Sisko gestured lightly. "—relationship status with Garak?"

Admittedly, Bashir had to take a moment to think about that question - though he probably wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as he should have been at the prospect of discussing his love life with his commanding officer. "We are... friendly with each other, if that's what you mean."

"As far as I am aware you two were romantically involved until very recently? I'd say that your imprisonment at the hands of the Dominion put a bit of a dent in that... involvement, no?"

"That is correct, sir. We did somewhat rekindle our previous friendship, though. If that counts for anything." He was exaggerating - things were still very fragile between Bashir and Elim, but Captain Sisko didn't need to concern himself with those details.

Sisko nodded. "This might be a little unorthodox, Dr. Bashir, but I would like for you to simply bring Garak along for our next senior staff dinner."

"But he isn't senior staff—"

"Neither is Mrs. O'Brien, and yet she regularly accompanies the Chief."

Bashir exhaled. "I believe Elim would be more inclined to join us for dinner on his own rather than as my... plus one."

"It would be much more convenient to explain his presence through that, though," Sisko explained, tight-lipped. Clearly the captain had already made up his mind about this.

There really wasn’t a dignified way out of this, but Bashir had to try anyway. “That may be,” he argued weakly, “but Elim and I only recently reconciled and I don’t want to give him the wrong idea.”

Sisko gave him a flatly unimpressed look. Perhaps he already realized that the idea in question - that Bashir did want to get back together with Elim, to have the kind of relationship with him where he did take him to dinner with friends again - was not wrong, merely inconvenient. And, currently, hopelessly out of reach.

“That is not my problem, doctor,” Sisko said bluntly. “I don’t care how you go about this. It makes no difference to me whatsoever whether you actually figure out some arrangement with him or simply engage in an elaborate deception. As long as no one else thinks twice about it, and the two of you keep your childish drama out of this, then that’s good enough.”

In other words, Get your shit together, Bashir. Bashir frowned. “Is that an order, sir?”

“As a matter of fact, commander, it is.”

This was going to be hard to explain to Elim.

"—and the sheer audacity of it all! Can you believe it?!"

Miles O'Brien was not the type to eavesdrop, although he felt it would be dishonest to claim he held no interest in the lives of other people at all. Some things, however, simply did not concern him, and since he had been raised to be polite and mind his own business, interacting with the likes of Elim Garak made him a little uncomfortable.

Of course, Garak was rumored to be secretive and mysterious, but really, the lad drew way too much satisfaction out of burdening others with his more casual affairs than Miles thought to be appropriate.

Still, some of his clothes needed adjusted (he'd lost a bit of weight since Keiko had been off station with the kids for a few weeks - replicated food simply didn't measure up to her cooking) and Garak was arguably the best tailor on the station, even if his competition had attempted various smear campaigns regarding his Cardassian nationality.

Not that there aren’t other, more objectionable things they could criticize him for, Miles thought dubiously as he stepped over the threshold of Garak's Clothiers to find its proprietor and Major Kira's young friend Ziyal in a heated discussion.

"Elim, you do realize I could be more supportive if you simply let me in on the whole story, right?"

Garak scoffed at her, angrily folding a gaudy garment against his chest. "That's all there is! And you heard him!" (His voice sounded a bit hoarse, though not quite as if he’d been  yelling.)

"I think it's a sign of trust and... good will to invite you to those things," she pointed out thoughtfully. Apparently neither of the two had noticed Miles' arrival yet, or simply chose to willfully ignore it. He felt half inclined to turn on his heels and just come back at a later time. But— "You're never satisfied with what Dr. Bashir says, anyway! No matter what he does - you make a huge scene out of it. How about you try being a little grateful for once?"

"Grateful?" Garak gasped indignantly. "For what!?"

Ziyal pushed a bundle of fabric into his arms and glared at him. "How about the fact that I still listen to all of your ridiculous dramatics, Elim?"

Before Garak could get into it again, Miles wisely chose to clear his throat loudly enough to make his presence known.

Both Cardassians snapped their heads towards them in almost eerie synchronization, although Garak seemed far more adept at plastering a fake customer-service smile on his face than the girl. He cleared his throat and stepped out from around the counter.

"Chief O'Brien," Garak whistled pleasantly. "What an unexpected surprise to see you patronize my humble establishment!"

"Er, yeah. Look, Garak, I need you to retake my measurements and adjust some of my wardrobe," Miles muttered awkwardly, then quickly added, "if you got time for it, of course?"

“Oh, certainly,” Garak said, smiling effusively. “Let me go get my sizing scanner.”

Miles decided not to question why Garak had to go into the back room to get a sizing scanner when, being a tailor, he probably had one up front already. Maybe he just needed a minute to properly compose himself in private, considering how upset he’d sounded when Miles had walked in. What did Julian do now? Miles thought.

Ziyal gave Miles a pleasant enough but awkward smile before hurrying after Garak into the backroom.

It was fairly common knowledge, at least around here, that Cardassians didn’t have very good hearing, so Miles wasn’t all that surprised when Ziyal started speaking again just loudly enough that he could make out most of what she was saying even from here. “I thought you… happy about…”

Garak said something indistinct. Miles tried to focus on a clothing display instead of the conversation. It did not work.

“Well, I…! …Captain Sisko’s business, but… this… what you wanted, isn’t it? You… an idiot, Elim…”

“Ziyal! Shh!”

Garak came back out, sizing scanner in hand. The rest of Miles’ visit was almost painfully normal, aside from the periodic clearing of throats (Garak) and glares (both Ziyal and Garak, to each other). Easily ignorable. Miles was thinking he’d made it out of this encounter without actually getting involved in any of this (eavesdropping aside) when, just as he was getting ready to leave, Garak spoke up: “Say, Chief O’Brien, you know Dr. Bashir quite well, don’t you?”

“Yes, I’d say so,” Miles said warily.

Garak widened his eyes slightly and stared at Miles unblinkingly; it was more than a little unsettling. “Was Dr. Bashir truly depressed after I ended our arrangement?”

What kind of question was that? Did Garak think Julian was faking it? Miles opened his mouth to refute the very idea, then closed it again, remembering that that had been the changeling. But it had been very convincing, very in-character. And then, after Julian got back from the Dominion camp… Miles nodded.

Garak didn’t outwardly react to that answer. “Depressed enough to stage a desperate attempt to trick me into a relationship again?”

“Oh, for the Prophets’ sake, Elim,” Ziyal said, setting down the folded pile of Miles’ clothes with a huff. “Will you just make up with him instead of interrogating his friends?! At least go for Captain Sisko’s cooking! I’d kill to be in your place right now!”

“Ziyal—”

“I’ll, uh, I’ll just go, then,” Miles said, stepping back towards the door.

Garak barely spared him a glance and continued arguing with Ziyal as he left. It was only semi-interrupted when Garak started coughing, but Ziyal continued lecturing him about being “histrionic” straight through it until the door to the shop closed and Miles could, thankfully, not hear them anymore.

Terrible customer service, Miles thought, but clearly Garak was going through something right now and Miles wasn’t going to hold that against him.

It wasn’t that Miles had been unaware that Julian and Garak had been an item, obviously. He knew. Actually, he knew a lot more than he’d ever wanted to know. He just never really thought about it. There’d been no reason to. Who his friends were and weren’t dating occupied very little of Miles’ brain space to begin with and, quite frankly, he’d never really assumed that Julian and Garak had been all that… serious. He hadn’t been surprised when he heard that Garak had decided to end the relationship while Julian was- while the changeling pretending to be Julian had been “injured”.

Miles hadn’t blamed Garak for the decision and, considering that the changeling had fooled him and everyone else too, still didn’t blame him. He certainly wouldn’t expect Keiko to stay with him if he’d had a life- and personality-changing injury like that, if she couldn’t handle it — and he and Keiko were married with children.

The fact that Julian and Garak hadn’t gotten back together after the Dominion camp hadn’t even registered with Miles, because really, who would have gotten back together under those circumstances? Except that now that Miles was being presented with this information again, he realized something now that he probably would have realized as soon as he learned what Julian had really been doing in the Dominion camp - if only he’d cared enough to think about it for a minute.

The poor lad, Miles thought, grimacing to himself while staring at Garak’s storefront. He must have known - and probably had known all along - that Julian had been under orders to… abandon him. No wonder he’d practically vanished out of Julian’s life lately.

No wonder Julian was so depressed, too. It wasn’t that he’d been broken up with - it was that he’d been forced to hurt and betray someone important to him, someone he cared about deeply, and someone who didn’t seem like he was about to forgive him anytime soon.

Not that Miles thought that he himself would be all that forgiving in Garak’s shoes.

Miles rubbed his forehead and decided to just go back to work. That plasma distribution manifold wasn’t going to fix itself.

To no one's surprise, everything that possibly could've gone wrong that afternoon did in fact go wrong, and Miles ended up with an explosion in his face, singed eyebrows, and later a visit to Captain Sisko's office.

"We repaired the leak right away, but the problem is worse than I thought," he explained. "The entire plasma distribution manifold is shot."

Sisko frowned deeply. "Can't you replicate a new one?"

Always getting asked that was the curse of an engineer. Miles explained that no, beta-matrix compositors couldn’t be replicated, and it wasn’t like they could just get a new one from Starfleet - it was Cardassian tech. Fortunately for Sisko, Miles had already thought about where they could get this Cardassian tech: Empok Nor, a sister station to DS9 in the Trivas system that had been abandoned for over a year. It was unlikely that the Cardassians had wasted time and resources removing or irreparably sabotaging the plasma distribution manifold while pulling out. And the Dominion didn’t appear to have any strategic interest in the area.

Odo was skeptical, pointing out that Cardassians usually booby-trapped anything they’d built or occupied if they had to pull out. Even Deep Space 9, which had been handed over as part of a cease-fire settlement, had had a fair few booby traps to contend with. Booby traps that had been a nightmare to deal with, since they were keyed to respond to anything without Cardassian DNA.

Bringing a Cardassian along seemed like a very tidy solution. Sisko agreed. Even Garak agreed, though Miles suspected he’d needed some nudging from Sisko.

Julian disagreed. Apparently Garak was sick.

“Last time he had Bajoran flu it developed into pneumonia and he almost died,” Julian said irritably. “He’s not going anywhere until I’m certain he’s completely clear.”

“We don’t have time to wait for that,” Miles argued.

"Are you sure that Mr. Garak is too sick to join the mission?" Sisko questioned Julian with a raised eyebrow. "Obviously I'd rather not risk anyone's health for our benefit, but under the circumstances..."

"I'm sorry, captain, but you'll have to find another Cardassian to do your bidding for you."

"Well there's no abundance of them running around the station, is there?" Miles prompted. "And we can hardly call up Gul Dukat and ask him—"

"No," Kira said from where she had been silently leaning against the captain's desk for the past few minutes. "But we have Ziyal."

Even Julian, who still seemed rather disgruntled, looked up at her with intrigue. "You can't be serious. She's a civilian."

"So is Garak," Miles pointed out. 

"It's not like we have much of a choice—" Kira said bluntly, although Miles could tell she wasn't entirely comfortable with putting her ward's head on the chopping block like this. "But Ziyal is a very capable young woman. And she has been looking into different studies she might want to follow up on at the University of Bajor! Maybe a little insight into... engineering will give her another perspective."

Odo harrumphed. "With all due respect, Major, but this isn't a school trip."

"She's not some defenseless little girl! Besides, it’s not like Cardassian booby traps are hard to get rid of, they’re designed so that even the dumbest trooper can deactivate them safely, you just have to avoid triggering them in the first place. And I know that half-Cardassians don’t trigger them."

"And she did grow up on stations just like DS9 and Empok Nor — one can assume she must have some familiarity with the layout," Bashir added.

"I can't believe this," Miles muttered, painfully aware that he'd much rather have taken Garak along than Gul Dukat's daughter. 

"Captain?" Odo prompted.

"I'll have to think about it," Sisko said at length. "And I'd like to speak to Ziyal herself, before we make any decisions on her behalf."

"Well, you better get her quickly then," Miles said. "Time's of the essence."

"Y'know," Miles told Ziyal as he walked with her through the airlock. "I always thought you were more of an, er, artsy type."

"I guess I am," the girl said and stubbornly shouldered her bag that she had refused to give up for Miles to carry. "But Nerys thinks I shouldn't get stuck on only one thing. She wants me to have as broad of a choice for my future as possible."

Humming, Miles thought that this made a lot of sense. He could appreciate Kira looking out for Ziyal like that — especially since the poor lass already had enough of a curse to bear with her heritage. "So, engineering, huh?"

Ziyal's carefully restrained expression told him more than words possibly could. He had seen his own daughter make that exact same face before, after all.

“Well,” Miles said, “even if you end up deciding that engineering’s not for you after all, I’m glad you’re here.” Boq’ta and Pechetti, who were closest, gave sincere if awkwardly reserved nods of agreement. Stolzoff and Amaro were busy joking with each other about shooting voles with their phaser rifles.

Ziyal just looked at them. “I wish Elim were here instead of me,” she muttered balefully.

It’d probably be rude to agree, Miles thought. “It can’t be helped. Dr. Bashir doesn’t want to take any risks with Bajoran flu.”

“I told Elim to go to the infirmary for that cough before Dr. Bashir caught him with it,” Ziyal complained, throwing her hands up, “And you know, it’s his own fault in the first place for not getting vaccinated! He knows full well that Cardassians can get Bajoran flu!”

This was apparently a point of contention between the two. Fortunately, before Ziyal could really get into it, Nog showed up, over-prepared and over-eager. Miles had to remind him not to call him “sir”, which caused Ziyal to snort into her hand. He decided not to ask. He was pretty sure he already knew.

Oh, well.

"Let's get going," Miles announced, then, to bring the crew's attention to himself. "Next stop: Empok Nor."

Elim was going to kill that bastard doctor.

It wasn’t like he’d wanted to go to Empok Nor. In fact, under different circumstances, he would've been relieved that he was taken off the away team roster before they even left the station; he wasn’t comfortable with how lately, everyone seemed to… trust him. He was unnerved and resentful of his name being bandied around in Ops as someone they could just ask to help out.

But he resented Bashir stepping in and saying he needed to stay at DS9 even more. He hadn’t even talked to Elim about it first, just went straight to Sisko complaining about the assignment and insisting that Elim couldn’t go anywhere while he had a dire case of the sniffles.

Elim, in turn, complained to Sisko. Sisko was dismissive. It was nothing personal, he said, just part of a medical officer’s job to intervene if duty assignments conflicted with someone’s current health status. Elim was far from the first person Bashir had grounded because of a seemingly minor illness, and would undoubtedly be far from the last. And Bashir’s concerns, Sisko said, had been reasonable; apparently Bashir had just told him about the last time Elim had had the Bajoran flu, and how bad that had gotten. Any crewmember with a similar medical history could expect to be grounded in this case.

Still, Elim didn’t really believe that it wasn’t personal. And neither did Sisko, Elim suspected, but he let Bashir’s ruling stand. And they sent Ziyal instead. Of all people. It wasn’t that Elim didn’t think she wasn’t fit for the job (dismantling booby traps was incredibly easy, and it didn’t sound like there was much else going on Empok Nor), it just felt like a slap in the face!

And then Elim had returned to his shop only to be chased away by Odo, who had been present when Bashir had said that Elim was too sick to go to Empok Nor, and had decided that that meant that Elim was too sick to keep his shop open and it was his job to ensure that Elim didn’t “endanger public health” and “infect anyone else” by daring to be anywhere besides his quarters or the infirmary.

Elim was not going back to the infirmary.

An overall terrible day, only compounded by the fact that Elim was, in fact, sick. He’d already been given a dose of antibiotics but, like before, Elim had hidden his illness for long enough before Bashir put his foot down that he couldn’t be simply cured with one hypospray injection. He still had symptoms, and he’d need a second dose of antibiotics tomorrow morning, before Ziyal and the others got back and—

Well, he felt miserable. And he felt like this was all Bashir’s fault. He was cold, congested, and that stupid expectorant was making him cough even more than he had that morning. And he felt he’d been treated like a child. And Ziyal wasn’t even here. And when he’d spoken to Sisko about Bashir, he’d asked in an aside about whether or not he really had ordered Bashir to “fix” their relationship, and Sisko had just given him a mildly annoyed look and said, “Has it worked yet?”

Maybe he had wanted to go to Empok Nor after all. If only to get away from this station and all the insane people on it for a day or so. Hell, if they got the replicators and environmental controls working again, maybe Elim should just move there.

“Elim, if you don’t stop sulking and say something within the next thirty seconds, I’m going to log you as unresponsive and use my medical override code on your door.”

“Sands, fine,” Elim groaned, pressing his face against his pillow and yanking his blanket up to almost the top of his head. “Enter.”

He refused to look up as Bashir loped into his quarters and then his room. He heard a medical kit being placed on his bedside table and then opened; he felt the mattress shift as Bashir sat on the edge of it, then he was subjected to the sound of a medical tricorder whirring over him.

He coughed and tugged the blanket up a little further.

The whirring stopped and it sounded like the tricorder had been put away. “You’re doing a lot better already,” Bashir said, and he was probably debating with himself whether or not he should put a ‘comforting’ hand on Elim’s shoulder. Thankfully, he seemed to decide against it. “Right now, the only thing I’m really concerned about is your temperature. Have you eaten yet? You should have a hot meal - something with broth.”

Elim rolled over just to glare up at him. “Are you going to give me more of that awful chicken soup?”

“I thought you liked it,” Bashir said mildly.

“What I’d like is for you to get out of my quarters.”

“That’s too bad,” Bashir said, “my shift is over for today. I’m not going anywhere. We need to talk.”

“You mean you want a captive audience for your emotional wallowing.”

This earned him a glare, which was strangely refreshing, considering most of Elim’s recent interactions with Bashir had been marked by little more than cloying guilt and self-pity. Bashir got up and headed in the direction of the replicator. “If you don’t want chicken soup, I can get you something else. What would you like?”

Elim refused to answer, and ended up with a bowl of chicken soup forced on him anyway.

Their journey ended up being uneventful for the most part. Miles studied various layouts and schematics of the ever-approaching station, with Boq'ta at the helm, and Ziyal and Nog pouring over one of those insidious Cardassian boardgames Julian liked to play from time to time. Stolzoff, Amaro and Pechetti were somewhere in the back, likely resting or telling each other scary stories. Poor Pechetti, Miles thought to himself.

"What are you doing?" Ziyal asked Nog when he pulled back one of his pieces from the board.

"Regrouping."

She looked at him like he had just kicked her pet vole. "But you're losing."

"That's why I have to protect my assets," Nog explained patiently.

"You've barely got any assets left! If you don't make a move and risk something you're absolutely going to lose, Nog."

Clearly committed to his own strategy, Nog studied her for a moment and then gestured back at the board. "Your move."

"This is maddening," Ziyal mumbled, rolled the octagonal dice and started moving her pieces. "It's worse than playing with Dr. Bashir. Kotra isn't about 'regrouping' and hoarding 'assets'— it's about bold strategy and decisive action. How would you react if I tried to play tongo in the 'Cardassian way', hm?"

"Well," Nog said as he watched her capture his pieces. "I would tell you that you were being foolish. Because if you did that, you'd definitely lose."

Ziyal made a face. "Chief, would you take on the winner? I'd love to play against you.”

Miles blinked. “Me? Why?”

“Elim’s said before that you’re a good kotra player, which I thought he’d heard from Dr. Bashir.”

“I’ve never played kotra before, let alone with Dr. Bashir,” Miles said.

Ziyal looked surprised. “Oh,” she said.

“I’ve played Cardassian pinochle once before,” Miles offered, though he hadn’t particularly enjoyed the game. Despite what the Universal Translator said, it really wasn’t anything like pinochle.

Ziyal made a vague sound of acknowledgement; she seemed to be considering something other than the game. (It wasn’t like she didn’t have the time to do that, since it was now Nog’s turn again and he was staring at the board with his chin in his hands and an expression of intense concentration.) “Oh,” Ziyal said again at length, “maybe it’s because of your war record.”

“Excuse me?” Miles said.

“Setlik III?” Ziyal said, blinking. “I know Elim knows about it, because he’s the one who told me about it. You led two dozen men against the Barrica encampment and drove out an entire regiment of Cardassians, didn’t you? And there was something with a field transporter…”

“That was a long time ago,” Miles deadpanned.

“But you’re still the same man,” Ziyal said innocently, like she was genuinely oblivious to the fact that the topic made Miles uncomfortable, “and if you’re half that brazen while playing kotra—”

Miles cut her off. “I’m not a soldier anymore,” he said. “I’m an engineer.”

“Hm. Do you miss it?”

“What?” He was finding Ziyal’s directness incredibly off-putting, but maybe it was his own fault for thinking of her as Cardassian instead of Bajoran. Bajorans, especially Bajoran women, tended to be incredibly blunt and forthright.

“Well, everyone knows that you and Dr. Bashir role-play ancient battles in the holosuites. Didn’t you even switch from defending a fortress to fighting air-battles after he messed up his leg?”

“We do it for fun,” Miles said. “It’s just a game.”

“Ah. Hm,” Ziyal said. “Well, so is kotra.”

Before this already uncomfortable interaction was able to escalate any further, Miles was thankfully rescued by Pechetti, who handed him a PADD with a list of (mostly) necessary items they would have to gather.

There was something unusual next to the bypass displacers and polarity maximisers. "Cardassian emblems and insignias?"

"A low priority," Pechetti mumbled evasively. "But if we happen to see any..."

"This is a salvage operation, Pechetti. Not an opportunity to indulge your collecting obsessions."

Pechetti blinked, blushing a bit. "Right." 

The rest of their journey went by mostly uneventfully. After a while it became Nog's turn to pilot, which in turn left Ziyal by herself, although she thankfully didn't try to bother Miles again, and instead busied herself with drawing in a little sketchbook she had brought with her.

When Nog announced that they were approaching the station Miles slid into the seat next to him. "Take us out of warp. And run a full scan, I'll take the helm."

After the ship had come to a halt, Nog carefully studied the readings on his monitor "The station's main power supply and life support systems are off- line. No lifesigns."

"I'm taking us into transporter range."

"Uh, Chief," Nog pointed out. "I don't think it would be very wise to beam aboard. There are probably pattern scramblers rigged to go off if they detect a non-Cardassian transporter signal..."

"That could be messy... we'll have to dock. The landing pads are sealed. Let's try an upper pylon."

"Won't the airlock have booby-traps?" Nog asked.

"Isn't that what I'm here for?" Ziyal interrupted, leaning over Nog's shoulder to look at his screen. Miles wasn't sure if she actually understood any of the data flashing across the monitor. 

Nog looked very uncomfortable. "Are you sure it is safe to let Ziyal go by herself? Maybe someone else should do it instead? I'd volunteer..."

"That's a very generous offer, Nog," she said, glaring at him. "But I'm afraid that the scanner in the airlock might hold little appreciation for it considering you're not Cardassian."

"She's right," Miles agreed evenly. "Ziyal is the only one we can safely send down without issue."

Ziyal flashed a sharp smile at him and then disappeared to the back to get into  her gear.

"I don't know, Chief. Somehow it feels wrong to make a civilian do this," Nog said after he had made sure Ziyal really was out of sight.

Miles just shrugged and sighed. Privately, though, he kind of felt inclined to agree.

Chapter Text

Elim slept for a while after finishing his soup. He’d strongly implied that he expected Bashir to leave before he woke, but Bashir simply… decided not to do that. Instead he dragged a chair (with some difficulty) in from the next room and settled there, editing a paper he’d gotten back from peer review and keeping an eye on Elim.

He always looked younger than his actual age because of his round face, but the effect was emphasized when he was asleep, and tiny stress-wrinkles smoothed out as his expression relaxed and slackened. His dark hair fanned out on his pillow - a bit tangled from all the tossing and turning he’d done before finally dozing off - made his scales seem paler in the low light. He looked small and fragile. Bashir just watched him for a while.

Eventually Elim started coughing himself awake and rolled onto his side with a groan, facing Bashir. Bashir reached out and brushed his hair out of his face, stroking his cheek with the back of his fingers, and Elim blearily opened his eyes.

“How are you doing?” Bashir murmured.

“...’m cold.”

Evidently, Elim was too exhausted to object to Bashir still being in his room. “I’ll get you something,” Bashir said, putting his PADD on the bedside table and collecting his cane. He got Elim another blanket - which wouldn’t do much, he was very cool to the touch already and hardly generated his own body heat, but would at least stop what little heat his did have from leaching out into the room (which was kept at quite a high temperature, at least); he also got him a mug of ginger lemon tea with fourteen grams of honey dissolved in (which was really over-sweetening it in Bashir’s opinion, but Elim wasn’t likely to notice in this state and the honey would help soothe his throat).

Elim took the tea without complaint, and didn’t even shrug off Bashir helping him to sit up and tucking the extra blanket around him. Bashir knew he was hovering, knew he was overly fussy and paranoid about Elim’s health, but he couldn’t help it. God, Lizzie had hated this.

“I’m still cold,” Elim grumbled.

"I could get you a heat-pack," Bashir offered half-heartedly.

"Can't you just," Elim said heavily. "You know..."

"Of course I can. But I assumed you wouldn't find much appreciation for it."

Pulling Bashir down with him, Elim huffed. "Right now I'd appreciate not freezing over my petty preferences, Doctor."

"You'll be mad at me for this later," Bashir pointed out, and yet wrapped himself around Elim, letting Elim rest his face against his neck.

"Absolutely. But that's... for later, yes. Right now all I want is... hmhm..."

It was hard to not smile at how easily Elim settled against Bashir. And he wasn't just more vulnerable when sick, but also willing to readily confess to his desires — even if he would surely backtrack on those later. 

"Is this alright, then?" Bashir asked, softly running his fingers through Elim's hair.

"Feels better than before," Elim admitted quietly. "Don't stop touching me, sir. You're warm."

"Noted."

The moments they spent lying in silence were decidedly less awkward than felt appropriate — then again, they had been very physically close before the whole changeling disaster. Even if both of them held rational objections against being so intimate, their bodies certainly had kept such tender contact in fond remembrance. 

Bashir fully expected Elim to doze off again, but eventually Elim started shifting and twisting in his arms. 

"What's wrong?" Bashir mumbled, reaching for Elim's wrist to feel his pulse. 

"I'm bored," Elim muttered in irritation and pulled his hand free. "I've been lying in bed all day. What do you think?"

"Well, you're hardly in the shape to play kotra, hm?"

With an indignant snarl, Elim wriggled himself free enough from Bashir's hold to reach for his abandoned PADD on the nightstand. "Surely you have a novel on this that won't bore me to death?"

"It's mostly scientific studies," Bashir explained dryly as he watched Elim wrestle with his access code. "And some of my own papers. I doubt they'll be of much interest for you."

Elim blearily blinked at the screen, licking his lips with effort as he browsed through the limited selection of reading material. "Don't tell me you actually read this stuff? ....and how did you get access to the one about 'Cardassian scale health in an off-planet environment'? That one must be highly classified!"

"Relax," Bashir said and stroked Elim's back. "I've told you before that I used to work with Cardassian doctors in an official capacity."

"Hm."

"You should go back to sleep, Elim. You need to rest."

For a second Elim just glared at him with petulant defiance, but soon enough it softened into an utterly exhausted obedience. "Fine," he said at length, coughing quietly against his shoulder. "But you should read this to me— staring at the screen just makes my head hurt more."

Bashir took the PADD from Elim and was not at all surprised to find the same article that Elim had just accused Bashir of acquiring illegally opened on the first page.

Nerys had been right about one thing: It was absurdly easy to deactivate Cardassian booby traps as long as one was able to avoid setting them off (i.e., being not at least 50% Cardassian). Of course, this meant that she was wrong about this being a “valuable learning experience” for Ziyal in the first place. Not that Ziyal really minded too much. She had nothing against engineering, but she also had no interest in it. She understood that Nerys wanted her to pursue something “practical” when she went to university, but Ziyal disagreed with her definition of practical — working part-time at Elim’s shop had proved to Ziyal, if not Nerys, that she could make a decent enough living as a creative type without relegating her passions into being a hobby that she pursued only when she was done with “real” work.

Besides, she had a rich father. One she had leverage against. She wasn’t really concerned about money going forward.

“Welcome to Empok Nor,” Ziyal said cheerfully as the others filed out of the airlock. She was still in the EV suit because they were a lot more complicated than booby traps and she’d needed help to get it on properly, let alone take it off without hurting herself or damaging it. “I deactivated the central security net and I turned on the emergency power, so I think that environmental controls should be working now too, right?”

“Right,” O’Brien said, “but there would have been a bunch of breathable air still in here when the Cardassians left, and obviously it hasn’t gone anywhere. I don’t think we’ll be here long enough for the air cyclers to start up.”

“How about until the heaters kick in?” Stolzoff said, rubbing her arms. Ziyal briefly considered just leaving the EV suit on, but it was bulky and uncomfortable (she thought she might have put on the one meant for males) and it wasn’t actually that cold on Empok Nor, from what she could feel on her face. It was only a few degrees below DS9’s temperature. Elim would have complained - or at least silently seethed about it - but not her.

O’Brien walked over to the console that Ziyal had been using and checked the data on it. “They’re on,” he confirmed, “but again, we should have everything we need and be on our way back to DS9 before the temperature here actually starts to change. You should just be glad Cardassian stations are built to retain heat indefinitely - otherwise we’d be iced over right now.” He turned to Ziyal. “Good work,” he said. “You can go back to the runabout and wait for us there. We should only take a few hours.”

“You want me to wait in the runabout?” Ziyal said, frowning. “But I barely did anything!”

“Well, I don’t… we don’t really know what’s on this station, if something didn’t show up on scans,” O’Brien hedged.

“And you’re a civilian,” Nog added.

“So is Elim!” Ziyal protested indignantly, “would you have made him wait on the runabout?” She saw O’Brien’s lips press together, like he had to physically stop himself from pointing out that Elim had been in the Obsidian Order and was therefore only a civilian on a technicality. “If there’s anything here, it’s probably more booby traps,” Ziyal continued, “so I should go with you.”

“I think she’s right, chief,” Amaro said.

O’Brien waved his hands. “Fine, fine,” he said, “Alright, listen up. We're going to break up into three teams. Nog, you’re with me. We're going after the must-haves. Pechetti and Amaro, you'll do could-use. Boq'ta, Stolzoff, and Ziyal — would-be-nice.”

If it were Ziyal, she would have had the group of three be on the must-haves, but she (begrudgingly) understood why O’Brien would put a security officer with her and the engineer. Though she still didn’t think he’d do this with Elim.

They wandered along down the promenade - or what was the promenade on DS9, anyway - looking for bypass displacers and polarity maximizers. Nobody even attempted to make conversation, even though the silence was deafening otherwise. 

As they approached what appeared to be the infirmary, Stolzoff noted a strangely blue and dim light emanating from within. They agreed to investigate briefly, and Ziyal carefully braced herself against the arch of the entrance to peek inside.

"Ew," she grumbled, more annoyed than genuinely grossed out by the weirdly sticky substance dripping down her fingers. "What's with this stuff?"

Boq'ta stepped up next to her and first scanned her hand, then the remnants left on the arch with his tricorder. "It's a biogenic compound," he informed her. 

"I wonder where it came from," Ziyal said, wiping her hand on her pants. "Do we need to report this to anyone? Or take a sample? Maybe Commander Dax would be interested in it..."

"A sample might be a good idea," Boq'ta agreed, glancing back at Stolzoff who merely motioned for them to hurry it up.

After they had taken a sample and stored it away safely in Boq'ta's kit, they continued into the infirmary. The glowing light clearly had its source here, and Ziyal curiously walked past three large chambers that held more of the strange blue substance. Only one of them was still closed, but too fogged over for her to clearly identify its contents.

"These look like stasis tubes," Boq'ta commented from behind her.

"Help me with that," Ziyal addressed Stolzoff and pointed at a large piece of bulkhead that appeared to have fallen onto the closed stasis tube. It wasn't very difficult to find the handles for the latch after this, and eventually she managed to pull it open with a huff.

Before she could even see what was inside, Ziyal heard Boq'ta gasp. Inside the chamber laid the badly decomposed remains of a person. She could tell it was a Cardassian even before Boq'ta confirmed it with another scan.

"He's been dead for about a year..." he mumbled, then carefully picked up a military insignia from the body, showing it to Ziyal and Stolzoff. 

"Sands..."

"A regimental badge?" Stolzoff asked.

"I'm not sure," Ziyal admitted. "It looks like it's some kind of battalion emblem, but—"

"This'll make Pechetti's day," Boq'ta said.

As the two others got ready to leave, Ziyal turned to look back at the remaining stasis tubes. "Don't you think it is odd that these are... empty? If that soldier has only been dead for a year, I mean..."

"I'm sure it's nothing to worry about," Stolzoff said calmly and motioned for her to follow. "And even if it were - you've got me with you for protection."

Ziyal hesitated once more, then nodded mutely and hurried out of the infirmary.

The runabout had been disengaged from its docking and exploded as soon as it was far enough away to do so without damaging the station. Obviously it hadn’t done that to itself, and it was too complex for a delayed booby trap. O’Brien called them all to meet up in a central location, and Boq’ta volunteered the infirmary because of the suspicious stasis tubes. After some (but not much, all things considered) investigation and discussion, they discovered that the stasis tubes had been activated very recently and concluded that their former occupants were now loose, and were the ones responsible for what happened to the runabout.

Pechetti recognized the badge Boq’ta had fished out of the dead soldier’s ribcage as one belonging to the Third Battalion, First Order. Ziyal gasped. She’d heard about them from her father. They were famously tough - and paranoid. Their motto, “Death to all”, may as well have applied to other Cardassians for the way they casually sacrificed anyone not in their battalion.

To make matters worse, the two missing soldiers had apparently set up a dampening field, because tricorders weren’t working. And without the runabout - and no subspace transceiver on the station itself - there was no way to contact DS9. Fortunately, O’Brien and the other engineers quickly came up with a solution. The teams were shuffled around and assigned new tasks, though Ziyal was still staying with Stolzoff.

“Don’t let her out of your sight,” O’Brien warned Stolzoff as she, Ziyal, and Pechetti got ready to go to the habitat ring and work on a microfusion reactor. “I don’t want any of us getting hurt, but Ziyal is a civilian, so if anything happens to her—-”

“Major Kira will kill us if the Third Battalion soldiers haven’t already,” Stolzoff said, “don’t worry, chief, I get it. We’ll be careful.”

“Come on, hurry up,” Pechetti said, “the sooner we have a signal out, the better.”

It took a few minutes to trudge up to the habitat ring, since turbolifts didn’t work on emergency power. It seemed a little warmer out here - the station was designed to prioritize heating in the habitat ring, Ziyal was pretty sure - but nonetheless Ziyal found herself shivering and rubbing her arms. Maybe she should have kept the EV suit after all.

“Are you okay, kid?” Pechetti asked.

“I’m not a child,” Ziyal snapped, “I’m the same age as Nog, would you call him ‘kid’?”

“Uh— I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“No, it’s alright,” Ziyal said, deflating. She rubbed her temples. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for. I think I’m developing a headache.”

“Maybe we walked into a pocket of toxic gas,” Pechetti said, “it’s not like we can use our tricorders to check.”

“I don’t think so,” Stolzoff said, “I feel completely fine.”

“Me too. But there are some things that are poisonous to Cardassians that aren’t poisonous for humans.”

“I thought all those things weren’t poisonous to Bajorans either.”

“If you’re referring to cobalt diselenide, I don’t know if I’m immune to that or not, and I don’t really want to find out,” Ziyal said, “but I also don’t see why there would be any of that here. Why make a booby trap against non-Cardassians and then use something dangerous only to Cardassians?”

“...maybe you’re just dehydrated,” Stolzoff said.

“Oh. Maybe.”

“Here it is,” Pechetti said, stopping in front of an access panel that Ziyal passed the exact equivalent of on DS9 every day. “As long as the reactor itself wasn’t completely dismantled, then I should be able to start it up from here.” He pulled off the door and immediately frowned. “Of course, I’ll have to repair this first…”

“Take your time,” Stolzoff said, a little sarcastically. “Ziyal, stay close.”

“Sure,” Ziyal said, rubbing her arms again. Was it just her, or was it getting colder?

The closest turbolift made the distinctive noise of arriving, though the doors didn’t open. Ziyal wasn’t the only one who had heard it, as both Pechetti and Stolzoff had both jumped and whirled around to face it as well.

“Tell me one of you did that…” Stolzoff said, eyes wide.

Both Ziyal and Pechetti shook their heads. Stolzoff gave Ziyal her hand-phaser and readied her phaser rifle; Pechetti leveled his own hand-phaser. Stolzoff deliberately stepped in front of Ziyal as they approached the turbolift.

It was empty. Pechetti mumbled something about accidentally calling it and walked back towards his access panel. Stolzoff, quite sensibly, stayed on guard. Something felt very off to Ziyal. Of course, everything felt very off to her right now, but something in particular—

She smelled someone. That was it. She could smell a Cardassian, and it wasn’t just the stale year-old scents of Empok Nor’s former inhabitants.

“Get down!” Ziyal shouted just a second too late for Pechetti to avoid the fist that smashed out of a glass case he had been standing next to. It grabbed him by the throat and yanked him into the case, shredding his uniform on the glass shards, possibly impaling him, and then he was gone.

“Pechetti!” Stolzoff yelled after him, aiming her rifle at nothing but the darkness. She slapped her combadge. “Stolzoff to O’Brien! A Cardassian- ah!”

A second soldier (it had to be a second soldier, surely the one who had dragged off Pechetti couldn’t move that fast) had lunged at her from behind, a hard strike likely intended for her neck landing hard on her shoulder instead as Ziyal fired at the soldier. Stolzoff’s phaser had been set to heavy stun, which should have put any full grown Cardassian down for an hour or more, but this one simply lurched away, then turned towards Ziyal.

He looked crazy. He was covered in sickly sweat and his eyes were wild and red-rimmed, his mouth open and tongue bulging out like he was overheated and severely dehydrated, despite the damp chill of the station. He smelled like he’d crawled out of a graveyard and Ziyal clapped her hand over her nose and mouth, nearly dropping her phaser.

Stolzoff - despite the arm that the soldier had hit not moving - swung up her phaser rifle and fired at him. She missed, but it was apparently enough to spook him, because he backed off, disappearing around a corner as neither Stolzoff nor Ziyal pursued.

Stolzoff’s combadge was beeping. “O’Brien to Stolzoff! Stolzoff, respond!”

Ziyal took her loaner badge out of her pocket and tapped it. “Tora to O’Brien. Stolzoff and I are okay,” she said. “Well, Stolzoff is wounded—”

“They got Pechetti,” Stolzoff gasped, holding her injured shoulder.

“Who did? The Third Battalion soldiers?” came O’Brien’s voice.

“Yes, both of them, I think,” Ziyal said.

“I’m going after Pechetti,” Stolzoff said, approaching the shattered glass case. On the other side was an emergency tunnel, intended for quick evacuation. Dots of blood lead into the tunnel.

“Wait! We’re coming to you!” O’Brien called before closing the comm channel.

Ziyal put a hand on Stolzoff’s uninjured shoulder. “They didn’t go far,” she said, “or at least, Pechetti didn’t.”

“What?” Stolzoff said.

“I can smell him, really close by. I think the soldier left. His scent is gone. We should go get him.”

Stolzoff looked conflicted. Ziyal understood: O’Brien had ordered her to wait, but if Pechetti was bleeding, then they couldn’t afford to.

So without explaining herself, Ziyal pushed Stolzoff aside and crawled into the emergency tunnel herself.

“Ziyal—!”

Pechetti was only barely inside the emergency tunnel, slumped across the path right at the line where the ambient light from the habitat ring fell into shadow. He was bleeding from several cuts, a few of which had visible shards of glass, including one at his throat - one which caused him to choke and gag with every breath, blood dribbling out of his mouth. Ziyal was just surprised he was still alive. His arms and legs twitched uselessly, as if he was seizing, but his eyes were trained directly on her, shocked and pleading.

“Ziyal!!” That was Chief O’Brien’s voice this time, right before a hand closed around her ankle and pulled her back towards the habitat ring. Instinctively she thrashed around and kicked her attacker in the face. Unfortunately, it turned out to be Amaro, who now sported a bloody nose.

“Wh— ow, ouch, hey-”

“Sorry,” Ziyal said, though her heart was still pounding.

“Is that your blood?” Boq’ta said. He was clutching a first aid kit.

“Pechetti’s. He’s alive.”

“I’ll get him,” Nog said resolutely, grabbing the first aid kit from Boq’ta and, with a nod from O’Brien, squeezing past Ziyal and into the emergency corridor. Amaro wiped his face with the back of his hand and pointed his phaser rifle - with flashlight - into the corridor after him.

O’Brien cringed upon seeing Pechetti. “Jesus,” he said. “Stolzoff, what happened?”

“The Cardassians,” Stolzoff said. She handed her phaser rifle to Boq’ta so she could take off her uniform jacket and fashion it into a sling for her limp arm. “Both of them. One grabbed Pechetti, dragged him away - the other one hit me from behind — they both ran away, though. I guess they’re not interested in face-to-face combat, only ambushes.”

“Cowards,” Amaro muttered.

“That doesn’t seem right,” Ziyal said. “About the Third Battalion, I mean.”

“Maybe there’s something funny going on here,” O’Brien said, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Nog! How’s Pechetti?”

“I wish Dr. Bashir was here,” Nog called back. “I— I think his neck is broken. He said he can’t feel anything from the shoulders down. And the dermal regenerators don’t work. I put a bunch of coagulant film on him, so he’s not bleeding anymore, but I can’t pull out any of the glass. Do… you think it’s safe to move him, Chief?”

O’Brien huffed. “No,” he said, “but I think it’ll be even more dangerous to leave him in such a hard-to-defend position. Let’s see about carrying him down to the infirmary. Carefully.”

Elim didn’t remember falling asleep again, though the fact that he did didn’t really surprise him, especially considering he had asked Bashir to read out loud to him the most boring thing he could have possibly had on that PADD. What did surprise him was the fact that Bashir had apparently dozed off as well, lying in bed next to (or partially under, technically speaking) Elim.

It took some effort to pull himself out of the blankets and Bashir's grasp, but eventually Elim was stumbling towards the refresher, miserable and rubbing his runny nose and eyes.

A nice warm shower with real water would be just what he needed now. Elim cursed under his breath when he stood too quickly after relieving himself and the world around him spun wildly. Of course it would've been easier to just wake Bashir and ask for some assistance, but he stubbornly decided against it and instead started to pull off his nightclothes clumsily. 

...maybe he should've gotten a stool or something for the shower. In lieu of any supportive furniture, however, Elim simply sat himself onto the cold tile on the showers floor and turned on the water on the hottest setting.

Oh, it was blissful. Steam and warmth enveloped him and Elim breathed in deeply, almost feeling like his congestion was fading away with every inhale.

Then he got very, very dizzy.

"Oh, no..." he mumbled to himself, deciding that lying down with his cheek pressed against the tile would be the best course of action for the time being. He was getting very tired again, and while the warmth of the shower was incredibly soothing, somehow he wished himself to be back in bed, curled up with Bashir.

"Elim?" came an alarmed voice from outside the refresher. 

Elim licked his lips, collecting a few droplets of moisture with his tongue. "Yes, I'm here," he said quietly.

Evidently Bashir hadn't heard him, because the next thing Elim knew was that Bashir had forced open the door and frantically looked around, his eyes wide and his face painted with worry.

"Oh," Bashir said, visibly relaxing once he spotted Elim. "I thought you had run off..."

Elim grumbled and turned away - he was fully content with just lying here and soaking up heat and moisture for a while. 

Between the sound of the shower and his own blood rushing through his ears, he barely noticed the rustle of fabric before Bashir entered the shower - now dressed in only his underwear and shirt - to help Elim sit up. Elim bared his teeth at him.

"I was comfortable like that..."

"You're going to drown in a puddle if you keep lying on the drain, Elim."

Elim narrowed his eyes. "Go away."

"Come on," Bashir said, ignoring him. "I'll help you get clean, and then we'll get you back to bed. I've got another hypo waiting for you out there."

It was too easy to consider fighting Bashir — instead Elim just relented and let himself be manhandled. Bashir's gentle scrubbing at his scales wasn't all that unwelcome, anyway.

He blinked his eyes open again as something occurred to him. “Sir—” he started, then swallowed, looking over his shoulder at Bashir kneeling behind him, propping him up. “Doctor, is this okay?”

“Hm?”

“Your- your leg. Is it alright for you to… kneel like that?”

“I’ll be fine for a little while,” Bashir said, lathering up some hair cleanser in his hands. “It might hurt a bit afterwards, but I don’t mind.”

“Mm… alright.” Elim didn’t know what else to say. If Bashir was unconcerned about his leg, then Elim couldn’t really do anything about it, could he? And surely Elim couldn’t say anything stupid like how he wished Bashir wouldn’t hurt himself for his sake.

Instead he just leaned back against him and kept quiet as Bashir dutifully washed his hair. It was so soothing that Elim had to keep checking himself from falling asleep again. He really was just so exhausted.

“Elim,” Bashir said, giving his aural ridge a gentle pinch. “The shower is not for sleeping.”

“I’m not, sir,” Elim moaned. “I’m awake.”

“Okay, good. Stay that way for me, hmm?”

“Hnn.”

…it was possible that he fell asleep again. Certainly Bashir washing him seemed to go by way too fast, and then Bashir was helping him stand up, and he got light-headed again, his vision spotting as he groaned and clung to Bashir’s damp shirt.

“Easy, easy,” Bashir said, wrapping Elim in a dry towel and setting him down on the closed lid of the waste extraction unit. “Your blood pressure is a bit low, but it’s mostly because you’ve been lying down all day. You’ll feel a lot better once the Bajoran flu is taken care of, once you get your second round of antibiotics tomorrow morning.”

Between the refresher and the bed, Bashir had somehow managed to dry himself off and slip into a fresh pair of replicated underwear. Elim barely paid it any mind when the mattress dipped beside him and Bashir was close and warm again.

Something nudged at his neck and he swatted it away, only to be mildly scolded. "It's just a hypospray, Elim. You can go back to sleep in just a minute.”

"What if I don't want to sleep with you in my bed?" Elim slurred.

Bashir watched him carefully for a moment. "Then I'd leave - although I'm not entirely comfortable with having you unsupervised. I was very worried when you disappeared earlier."

"Surely your superior senses should have— have alerted you, no?"

"I was fast asleep."

Elim grumbled and reached out blindly to paw at Bashir's arm. "I feel terrible."

"I know," Bashir said gently and brushed a few still wet strands of hair from Elim's face. "I'll stay in the living room and will come check on you from time to time? How does that sound?"

"Bad. Just be quiet and get down here— my head hurts enough without your incessant babbling..."

So Bashir slid under the blankets with Elim, wrapping one arm loosely across his chest and resting his head on Elim's shoulders. "You'll be better tomorrow, I promise..."

Elim thought about a snappy response for a few moments, but eventually decided that having Bashir humiliate himself by acting so demure and foolish surely had to be satisfactory enough.

“We have to stay focused,” Miles said, addressing the group at large, minus Pechetti, who was unconscious now in one of the abandoned stasis containers. They’d managed, after some digging, to find some strong and human-safe painkillers that the Cardassians had left behind, and Miles had given Pechetti an extremely conservative dose that had knocked him out regardless. “Pechetti was almost done getting the microfusion reactor online. Boq’ta, how are you doing with the conduits?”

“I’m done,” Boq’ta said, almost shaking with fear.

“Good,” Miles said, then stopped to think about their next steps. He looked at Ziyal. She looked… not nervous, really, but vaguely ill, and she kept scratching at one hand. Miles knew he couldn’t afford to let anything happen to her. She was a civilian, for Christ’s sake, and just a kid - only Nog’s age — hell, Miles was regretting bringing Nog along on this, too. If he’d known this would happen…

“Chief?” Amaro said.

“We can’t…” Miles tried to gather his thoughts, “I want to get the signal out as fast as possible, but if we keep working, the Cardassian soldiers are just going to pick us off one by one. We’ve— we’ve got to go on the offensive,” he said.

“You mean, we need to hunt them down before they hunt us down?” Stolzoff said.

“Switch phasers with Boq’ta, he can hold a rifle right now,” Miles instructed her. “Boq’ta, you stay here with Stolzoff, Ziyal, and Pechetti.” Between him and Stolzoff, even if she was down an arm, they should be able to protect the civilian and the casualty; the infirmary was designed to be the second-most defensible position on the station, outside of Ops. “Nog, Amaro, you’re with me. We’re going to find and disable that dampening field first thing, then we’ll use the sensors to track them down and neutralize them.”

Nog snapped to attention. Amaro nodded grimly. Boq’ta looked like he was about to faint.

Ziyal’s eyelids were twitching.

“Good luck, chief,” Stolzoff said.

Miles nodded grimly, and took a deep breath as they stepped out. It was time to set aside being an engineer and start being a soldier again. He didn’t like this.

Chapter Text

Ziyal was mad and she didn’t really understand why, but it didn’t matter.  

All she knew was that she felt irritated by Stolzoff acting as her protector — clearly Ziyal was the most capable here, considering Boq'ta had turned out to be a frightful coward that reminded her of what Elim had told her Cardassians used to do with Bolian prisoners a little too much right now. He would make an attractive jacket.

And then there was Nog, that little vole. Truthfully Ziyal had never wasted much thought on the young Ferengi, although she found him marginally more pleasant to be around than Jake Sisko. Nerys had once pointed out how it was a good thing that Nog didn't have too much in common with his uncle, although Ziyal felt inclined to disagree. She rather liked Quark. Although he did irritate her sometimes.

She scratched her arms nervously and leaned forward to peek out of the infirmary.

Why had Chief O'Brien picked Nog to go with him? It just didn't sit right with her.

Granted, none of this sat right with her. The Starfleeters, the Cardassian soldiers - it was all wrong, and she didn’t like it. She didn’t like being treated like a child when she was the same age as Nog. She didn’t like being shunted off to the infirmary while Nog got to go hunt down the soldiers. Got to go off with O’Brien. Got to command O’Brien’s attention when Ziyal had been there too, damn it.

Yes. That was it. Ziyal didn’t like O’Brien and Nog together. She didn’t like the way O’Brien treated Nog like a- like a son. She hated it, in fact. She had to separate them. Separate them, then take care of those stupid, slime-coated Cardassian soldiers with the desiccated brains and awful stink. Ziyal could neutralize them, easily, she was sure. Nobody liked to look at her and think about it, but she’d committed her share of violence in the Breen’s mines and her skills had only been further refined by her training and sparring with Damar and Nerys and Elim. And the Third Battalion was a joke, her father always said they were only fearsome because they were too mentally deficient to feel pain and the individual soldiers were pathetically useless if cut off from their culty little pack. Ziyal could definitely eliminate them and O’Brien would be impressed. Really impressed, not in that condescending, slightly bewildered way Dukat sometimes was.

Ziyal slipped out of the infirmary and onto the promenade. It was easy; Stolzoff was occupied with Boq’ta’s whining and Pechetti’s groaning. She walked over to the space that, on DS9, was Elim’s shop - though it was impossible to tell what sort of function it had served on Empok Nor before the station was abandoned. Some sort of conference room, maybe. It didn’t matter. She was here for the computer terminal. She needed to access station sensors.

…apparently O’Brien and his cohorts hadn’t managed to find and deactivate the dampening field. That meant she didn’t know exactly where they were. Nor the soldiers. But it also meant the reverse was true, and Ziyal could move about unnoticed. She could do that. She just had to find them the old-fashioned way.

And then the question would be — how to lure away Nog?

Nog definitely heard something this time. They were being followed. He was completely certain of it now. “Chief,” he said urgently.

O’Brien turned. “You hear something again, Nog?” he said. Despite the last several reports Nog had made of suspicious sounds turning out to be nothing, O’Brien still took him very seriously. Nog was relieved and grateful for it, every time, even if Amaro looked increasingly annoyed.

“There’s— something. In the corridor behind us, past the junction,” Nog reported. “I- I don’t know if it’s the Third Battalion soldiers, though. It doesn’t sound heavy enough. And it’s only one… thing.”

“Maybe it’s just a vole,” Amaro said, exasperated. Nog knew that Amaro was just as on edge as he was (though O’Brien seemed admirably calm) but he did feel it was rude to be so dismissive. “I mean, there’s got to be a bunch around still, right?”

“Nothing’s lived on this station for a year,” Nog said. “The voles would have all starved to death.”

“Maybe they just ate each other.”

“I don’t care about voles right now,” O’Brien said. “Nog—”

“I don’t think it’s a vole, Chief,” Nog insisted. “Maybe… maybe it wasn’t just the soldiers that got left behind?”

O’Brien opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by combadge. “Stolzoff to O’Brien.”

He tapped the badge. “What is it, Stolzoff?”

“We, uh… we lost Ziyal.”

“You what?!”

"She was here just a minute ago! I tried contacting her but—- how's that dampening field looking? Do you think you can track her down?"

O’Brien wiped his face with his arm. "Damnit, Stolzoff! How could you lose a civilian?! Make sure you stay where you are in case she comes back..."

"Noted, chief," Stolzoff said awkwardly, then paused. "She was acting a little strange— but I assumed it was because of the whole Cardassian soldiers thing..."

This was turning out to be a real nightmare. "I'm sure she hasn't wandered off too far. Just stay put for now, alright?" 

Sighing heavily and sitting back, O’Brien took a look at the power couplings he was reversing. Nog could practically hear his thoughts. Of course this wasn't Stolzoff's fault, and O’Brien would take responsibility for whatever happened when the time came. After all, he had been the one to leave Ziyal with her, and let her stay on this wretched station. (Though with the runabout destroyed, where could she have gone?) Not to mention Miles had agreed to take Ziyal on the mission in the first place. (Nog was very glad, in this moment, that the burden of command didn’t fall on him.)

"Chief?" Nog asked him. "I already finished realigning the plasma circuits, is there anything else you need me to do?"

"Good work, Nog," O’Brien breathed, then turned to face him fully. "Say... how well do you know Ziyal?"

"Uh, we have met a few times when she was visiting my uncle's bar, but other than that...? Is this because of what she was talking about on the runabout? About Setlik III?"

"What? No. I think she just wanted to see if she could get under my skin — it's no surprise considering she's friends with Garak, really. It's just that she's apparently decided to wander the station by herself."

"Should I go out and look for her? It's much too dangerous with these soldiers running around!"

Before O’Brien could reply Ziyal stepped out of the darkness a little distance away from them. "Come now, Chief, surely you know I can take care of myself..."

Nog spun around, automatically pointing his rifle at her in his surprise — O’Brien put a calming hand on his arm. 

"And all that gossip about Setlik III," Ziyal continued nonchalantly, eyes wide and innocent. "I would never judge a man's character by mere rumors."

"How did you get in here? Both doors are secure!?" Nog blurted out.

"I've spent most of my childhood on stations just like these. Do you really think I don't know how to get into places I'm not welcome?" She pushed Nog's rifle aside and stepped into O’Brien's space, holding out her hand to him with an endearing little smile.

Visibly disturbed, O’Brien reached out and took what she was offering him. Both Nog and Amaro leaned over to see what it was.

It was a Third Battalion insignia.

"Where on Earth did you get this?" he hissed.

"I took it from one of those soldiers," she replied lightly, as if it was the most casual thing in the world. "I wanted to help out, too, Chief. You might think I'm just some scared little girl, but I can handle myself. I can contribute."

O’Brien looked at her in horror. "Did you kill him?"

A flash of disappointment washed over Ziyal's face, but she quickly regained her composure. "What? Don't act like killing Cardassians is something you're unfamiliar with. I don't blame you, Chief — you did what you had to do." She paused to scratch at her neck and glanced back into the darkness. "As did I, I suppose."

“We’ve got to get you back to the infirmary,” Nog said. Noticing O’Brien moving to close up the panel he was working on, he quickly added, “I’ll take her, Chief.”

“I don’t know…” O’Brien said — though Ziyal didn’t protest, which was surprising considering she’d wandered off in the first place; Nog would have assumed she didn’t want to be in the infirmary.

“I’m sure they’ll be fine,” Amaro said, “especially since Ziyal already took down one of the soldiers. Maybe she can protect Nog instead of the other way around.”

“Hey!” Nog protested. Ziyal just smiled, a little too sharp.

O’Brien sighed. “Fine,” he said, “but Nog, just stay at the infirmary, okay? Don’t come back here by yourself. Amaro and I will be fine as soon as we get the station sensors overridden anyway.”

“Sure thing, Chief,” Nog said, saluting quickly then marching off in the direction of the promenade, with Ziyal trailing uncomplainingly behind him.

“You really like Chief O’Brien, don’t you?” Ziyal said as they traversed the connecting bridge.

“The Chief is a good man,” Nog said. “I’m learning a lot from him.”

“He seems to like you a lot, too,” she observed.

“I work hard,” he said, unsure of how else to respond.

“Hmm.”

She was definitely acting odd. Stolzoff was probably right, and she was just unsettled, frightened even, by the Cardassian soldiers- soldier, singular. A morbid part of Nog hoped that they’d walk by where she’d apparently killed one and he’d get to see the body and make sure he was really dead. In the meantime, though, he had to get Ziyal back where she was safe. And while he was doing that, if she was scared, maybe Nog could… comfort her?

Not entirely sure what he was doing, Nog turned to Ziyal as they walked, and opened his mouth, trying to think of something to say.

Her eyes glittered in the darkness. Nog got the impression that something was very, very wrong just a second too late.

She grabbed him by the front of his uniform - plucking his combadge off — yanked his rifle out of his grip, and turned it on him. Nog raised his hands in alarm.

“I don’t want to go back to the infirmary,” Ziyal told him, as casually as if she was rejecting an offered slice of pie. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

“Okay,” said Nog, mouth dry. At least, he thought, if she intended to kill him, she would have already pulled the trigger.

Though it wasn’t impossible she had worse in mind.

Bashir woke up again sometime around 2400 hours to Elim about an inch and a half away from his face, watching him intently.

“Elim,” Bashir murmured, his voice thick with sleep. Elim just huffed and pulled away, resettling on his side next to Bashir with his hand propped under his head. “Elim?”

Elim coughed a little, then said, “I think you’re sleeping more than I am right now, sir.”

“Hmn. It’s been a long few days at the infirmary.” Bashir sat up and stretched. Elim watched him, frowning slightly and absently rubbing his nose and mouth with the back of his hand.

“There’s no need for you to schedule yourself such long shifts,” he complained. “And even if you do, surely there’s nothing stopping you from actually resting in between. Don’t you sleep at night?”

“No,” Bashir said bluntly. “At least, not well.”

Elim just glared at him, like that answer was somehow intrinsically suspicious.

Well, maybe it was. Bashir was telling the truth, he hadn't been sleeping well, not since… well, not since Sloan had shown up the night after he’d killed that changeling. Except Elim wouldn’t know that, of course, because the only times Bashir had gotten a good night’s sleep had been when Elim was in his bed or he was in Elim’s - rather like right now.

Bashir sighed. “Listen, Elim,” he said, “we do need to talk.”

Elim, stifling another cough, rolled his eyes and made an impatient go-ahead gesture.

“It wasn’t my idea,” Bashir began. “Sisko was the one who brought it up. I only informed him that you had agreed to help us—”

“—which really was not necessary to do so, Doctor, it isn’t tactically sound for us to all know about each other—”

“—as I’m sure you’re aware, we’ve determined that the safest place to discuss any of this is in Sisko’s quarters, and he regularly has senior staff dinners, and it isn’t difficult to arrange for anyone not involved to not be able to make it—”

“—wasn’t there a human proverb about putting all of one’s eggs in a single basket?”

“Elim,” Bashir said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Let me speak.”

“Sorry, sir,” Elim said, not sounding sorry at all. He re-tucked his blanket around himself with exaggerated fastidiousness, then pinned Bashir with a faux-patient look. “Do go on.”

“What I was trying to say was that I never suggested inviting you over for dinner, let alone recommended or requested it,” Bashir said. “Sisko, however, said he would prefer to be able to talk to you… directly.”

“He doesn’t trust you to coordinate,” Elim said, sounding both goading and perversely delighted.

Bashir couldn’t help but scowl at that, but elected to not bring up Sisko’s actual concerns about Elim’s mental state. And - to be fair - that he didn’t trust Bashir… to accurately assess said mental state. “Yes, well, be that as it may, people do notice who is and is not invited to dinner with the captain. And people who are not members of senior staff do not, generally, get invited. Except in… specific circumstances.”

“The partners of senior staff members,” Elim said.

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s very obvious, isn’t it?” he went on, narrowing his eyes, “my question is why your proposed solution to this little obstacle is to… get back together.”

Bashir decided there was no harm in breaking eye contact with Elim and looking at his lap instead, even if it did show weakness. He heard Elim make a small scoff (which was immediately followed by irritated sniffling).

"...your hair looks nice like that," Bashir deflected and reached out to tuck a feathery strand behind Elim's aural ridge. They had neglected to oil it before going to bed. 

"And you're a pathetic old man," Elim snarled in turn.

"Look, I won't act like I wouldn't derive any personal... satisfaction out of playing house with you."

Elim looked mildly horrified. "I can't believe you'd just admit it like that."

"It's not like I have much to lose at this point. And you don't have to like it, and you don't have to... do anything like this when we're in private either."

"So you just want us to pretend to be obsessed with each other whenever we're in public?" Elim asked incredulously, though something about his tone made him appear much less apprehensive than Bashir would've expected him to be.

Bashir smiled. "Ah, but there's not much to pretend, is there?"

Elim shoved at him, but seemed too tired and sick to protest loudly.

"I think we should go back to sleep. We can talk about this more in the morning after you've had some breakfast..." Bashir proposed at length.

"I fail to see what else we would have to discuss. I already agreed to help you with Section 31 — it's not like I have much of a choice other than to join you in your little farce now."

Somehow Elim's expression had become rather unguarded - perhaps it was the cold, or simple exhaustion. Bashir reached out again and placed a hand against the curve of Elim's jaw, stroking his thumb over the lower eye ridge. "I'm sorry, Elim," he said, for some reason. He wasn't sure what he was apologizing for - for he had wronged this boy so many times. 

...then again, Bashir thought dubiously as Elim pulled the blanket back with a defiant look to settle between his legs, he really isn't much of a boy anymore. Not like Elim had ever had the chance to be that in the first place.

"Shut up," Elim said gracelessly and dug his fingers into Bashir's hips, his expression almost comically intense in the darkness, as if he was assessing Bashir's underwear for potential flaws. 

"I didn't even say anything."

"You were thinking— yes, like that. I hate it when you do that."

Bashir laughed and brought his hand to rest on Elim's arm. "Go to sleep. You don't have to do this."

Elim looked up at him like Bashir was filth. "Oh? Isn't this what you were after all along?" He tugged at the hem of Bashir's underwear once, then settled his cool palm against Bashir's crotch, applying pressure.

"What?" Bashir asked, genuinely surprised. "You seem to misunderstand, Elim. I... said what I said not because I want to have sex with you, but because I... I love you. Is that so hard to understand?" 

Elim looked like he had been slapped across the face, then apparently regained enough control of his facial muscles and tried for a deliberately disgusted grimace. "You don't love anyone but yourself, Julian."

The way Elim said Bashir's first name— with an obstinate and deliberately rude Cardassian suffix added onto it, didn't go unnoticed by Bashir. He was, however, much too caught off-guard by Elim saying it at all. 

In fact it felt... nice. Familiar. Even if it had clearly been meant as an insult. 

Apparently Bashir's barely contained affection showed on his face, and Elim almost shrunk back, cringing visibly. 

Somehow, somewhere deep and dark in Bashir's mind, Tain reared his ugly head for just a second.

"That's... a very good idea," Bashir said diplomatically after an awkward pause.

"I— what?"

"Using my first name. It'll help establish the nature of our 'close relationship' to others."

Elim goggled at him, whatever he had been planning to do between Bashir's legs now laid forgotten. "I was insulting you, you vole! Don't you think people would get suspicious if I was talking down to my romantic partner like that?"

"You're Cardassian. They'd probably think it's meant to be affectionate," Bashir said. "Besides, it's not like the Universal Translator picks up on this kind of stuff either. In fact— as long as we're not around other Cardassians you are free to insult me as much as you please."

To this Elim only let out a stream of very powerful and vulgar curses, and then returned to kneading at Bashir's lap. "Back home they would skin you like a filthy brangwa bitch, Doctor," he cursed under his breath, then paused to correct himself. "Julian."

The disgust in Elim's voice felt very convincing, but he didn't stop touching Bashir, stroking him through his underwear until he could feel Bashir's cock harden under his attention.

"Elim," Bashir hummed, still tired but now pleasantly dazed. "Don't stop talking..."

Elim looked him straight in the eye when he pulled Bashir's underwear down far enough to wrap his hand around him. His scales chafed pleasantly against Bashir's sensitive skin, and Elim carefully traced every little vein and skin fold on Bashir's cock, dribbling a bit of spit on the head which he then spread around with his thumb.

"I don't think I ever really thought about how whorish you humans tend to be," Elim said almost casually, tugging at Bashir with maddening leisure. "Or is that just you? Selling yourself like this to take down an enemy..."

"Just what would Mila say...?" Bashir mumbled, deliberately inflammatory, and got rewarded with a scandalized gasp and a nasty scratch to his thigh.

"Are you going to shut up, or do I have to gag you?"

Just as Bashir contemplated the latter option, Elim - now visibly flushed, but still appearing irritated - moved a bit closer, increasing the speed of his almost experimental strokes just so. 

Somehow, the line at which they could've stopped this from escalating further blurred right in front of Bashir's half-lidded eyes, as he watched Elim give him a particularly rough tug, then drag sharp claws over his foreskin before finally digging a pointed thumbnail into the little slit on Bashir's glans.

Bashir barely stifled the resulting groan, watching in horrified reverence when Elim pulled his hand back and gave a little flick of his tongue to his thumb, before popping it between his lips.

"Please," Bashir's breath hitched at the sight. "Can you say it again? Say—"

This time it sounded much less like an insult — but Bashir's cock didn't care, still twitching eagerly when Elim's breath ghosted over it. Then, incredibly, sharp teeth tugged at Bashir's foreskin and he had to consciously will down his approaching orgasm so as not to break the spell prematurely.

"Elim, stop," he managed in a brief moment of clarity. "You don't have to do this... you're still sick..."

Elim looked up at Bashir with feverish eyes, teeth still closed around his cock before pulling back just far enough to speak. "I don't think you are in any position to stop me, sir. Not even if you wanted to."

The implication, combined with the pointed ironic use of submissive speech and the look on Elim’s face, triggered an intense - and unexpected in how quickly he lost control - orgasm that left Bashir bucking his hips up in Elim’s grasp, gasping and tearing at the sheets with his hands. Elim seemed nothing but displeased — though he’d at least managed to avoid catching a faceful of semen, and had instead moved fast enough to cup his hand over Bashir’s cock just before the moment of ejaculation.

Coughing, Elim wiped his hand on the bed. “Done already? You really are pathetic, you know that, Doctor?”

“I don’t think you understand the things you do to me,” Bashir croaked. He pulled Elim up into his lap and was surprised when Elim slapped his hands away.

“I’m tired,” Elim muttered. “I want to go back to sleep.”

“Elim…”

“What? Haven’t you been telling me to rest all day?” He coughed again, leaning back against Bashir limply and tucking his head up under his chin.

It was an easy position for Bashir to put his hands on Elim in, yet a fairly innocuous touch to the waist prompted Elim to let out an irritated growl and push Bashir’s hands back to the mattress.

“Elim,” Bashir protested cautiously, “don’t you want me to… return the favor?”

“I want to sleep,” Elim repeated.

"On me? You're quite heavy."

Elim bit him in retaliation, although not too hard. "You like it."

Bashir hummed and pressed a hesitant kiss to Elim’s aural ridge, only to be rebuffed by Elim shaking his head away from him. “Elim—”

“I said I’m tired…”

“But… I’m… not done,” Bashir said.

Elim gave him a dismissive huff. “You already got off. I was there, Doctor.”

“I want to- reciprocate, Elim—”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Let me touch you.” Bashir was not above begging. “Elim, please. I want to touch you, I want to give you pleasure. I want to feel you around me— please, please let me touch you, Elim.”

Yet Elim still seemed uninterested. “You are touching me. I’m lying on you.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I could go somewhere else. Like the couch.”

“But these are your quarters, and you’re sick—-” Bashir stopped himself and sighed. “Nevermind,” he said, giving up. “But I do have to get up in a few hours and I wouldn't want to wake you up by pushing you off."

After this Elim didn't reply, either because he was too tired and exhausted, or because he deemed the topic of the discussion unnecessarily ridiculous. Instead he just shifted slightly from time to time, until eventually settling in a seemingly comfortable position, even allowing Bashir to draw his arms around him.

For a moment, Bashir - feeling uncharacteristically vulnerable for once - considered declaring his love to him yet again, but ended up dozing off, before he could formulate anything substantial.

Nog didn’t know Ziyal all that well, but he did know enough about her to know that this wasn’t normal behavior. Of course, this would have been abnormal behavior for just about anyone. Not content with just getting rid of Nog’s combadge and pointing his own phaser rifle at him, Ziyal had also stripped him of most of his uniform (everything except his undershirt, pants, and socks), tied his wrists and ankles with wire, and barricaded them in what had obviously once been crew quarters. Nog was sitting on the floor, his back against an overturned couch, while Ziyal paced the room in front of him, still waving the phaser rifle.

He took a deep breath— yes, he was Starfleet now, but none of his training had prepared him for a situation quite like this. Of course, hostile takeovers were part of the simulations, although he didn't recall any programs where the people (and in this case singular person) were not... well... exactly obviously hostile. Ziyal wasn't an enemy, and while her behavior was definitely a threat to the successful completion of their mission, right now his biggest priority was 1) to free himself 2) to protect Ziyal from whatever it was that had caused her to become so erratic. 

Though Nog supposed it wasn't farfetched to assume that it was somehow related to the Cardassian soldiers and mysterious biogenic compound they'd come across.

...then again, Starfleet training aside, he was still a Ferengi. If he couldn't fight her, he still could bargain. Nog looked around, watched Ziyal for a few more minutes, and listened intently.

He could hear her heart thumping loudly.

"Are you alright?" he tried.

Ziyal whipped around, her loosened hair clinging to her face. Was she sweating? In a place as cold as this? "I'm fine! What do you want?!"

Nog hadn't expected such an abrasive reaction to his innocuous question. "Oh, I was just wondering. I mean... you're clearly waiting for something. Aren't you?"

"That doesn't concern you!" Ziyal snapped, waving the rifle around. It didn't look like she had received any trigger discipline training.

"Well, if it doesn't... Why keep me here?"

She snarled at him. "Oh, wouldn't you like to know? Do you think I'm stupid?"

Nog would've raised his hands defensively if he could. "No! Not at all! I'm just... concerned about you. That's all."

"Concerned?" Ziyal repeated incredulously, and threw her head back to laugh. Perhaps it was just the dim light, but Nog felt that her neckridges seemed more... pronounced than usual. She stepped closer now, eyes practically glowing in the dark as she came to a halt in front of him and crouched down. "The only one you should be concerned about is Chief O'Brien."

"Wh-why?"

Ziyal pursed her lips and languidly dragged the nuzzle of the rifle down Nog's neck and chest, eventually letting it rest low on his stomach. He swallowed with difficulty. 

"Have you already forgotten? There's still one more soldier on the loose... and the good Chief is all by himself now. With nobody there to watch his back." Her pretty face suddenly scrunched up into an exaggerated worried grimace. "I do hope he is alright. I don't know what I'd do without him..."

"I— I didn't know the two of you were close."

Ziyal pushed him onto his back with the rifle. "We're not. Say, Nog," she whispered and straddled his lap to effectively pin him down to the ground. "Do you have a good relationship with your father?"

Nog blinked. "Uh, yes?"

Before he really could process what was happening Ziyal had hit him across the face with the butt of the rifle. "Oh, I'm sorry. That was a bit harsh, wasn't it?"

"You don't have to do this, Ziyal," Nog rasped, licking his lips and tasting blood. Although he wasn't exactly sure what "this" entailed.

"Oh, but don't I? Do you know who my father is? Do you even know why I am here in the first place?"

"Gul Dukat—"

"Yes, that's right. If my father had been any other Cardassian in the galaxy I would have been back on Cardassia, or on Bajor, or maybe he would have had the common decency to kill me — I would not be stuck between worlds like this! Everybody looks at me with pity because they know my father, the delusional despot who can’t keep his sotl to himself!” She growled and started scrabbling at the front of her tunic. “And it’s so phekking hot in here!”

Nog didn’t really think it was, but he also knew that directly contradicting someone, especially when they were already worked up, tended to sour a deal. Plus, Jake had told him repeatedly that telling females to calm down was sure to do the opposite. “You could put on my uniform jacket,” he suggested carefully instead, “it’s temperature-regulating.”

Ziyal ignored him, stripping off her tunic and kicking off her pants all without actually getting off of Nog. She was now down to her thermal underwear and Nog was frankly terrified for his virginity. Thankfully, she - at least for now - only continued to rant. “It’s not fair,” she half-shouted, pointing at him (which was something of a challenge gesture for Cardassians). “Your father is great. He loves you. And you have your uncle, too! And Chief O’Brien - even Captain Sisko! I only have a psychotic whore!”

“Are— are you accusing me of hoarding father figures?”

“And you have lots of friends,” Ziyal rambled on as though he hadn’t even spoken. “You’re in Starfleet and everybody on the station likes you. Your best friend is Captain Sisko’s son, and my best friend is a schizophrenic invert who self-destructs every time I take my eyes off him!”

“I could be your friend, if you want,” Nog said. He didn’t actually want to be friends with someone who was mostly likely about to commit unspeakable acts to him, but it seemed like an opening offer she would be receptive to, which would increase his chances of getting out of this alive.

Ziyal glared venomously down at him, then punched him in the ear. Nog shrieked.

"Even Nerys sees me as a pawn!" she cried.

"I-I'm sure that Major Kira loves you very mu——"

Nog fell silent. That was his combadge chirping, buried somewhere in the pile of Ziyal's discarded clothes. She only glared at him, then scrambled to grab it.

"Nog? Where the hell are you? Pechetti said the infirmary doors suddenly slammed shut and now they can't figure out or override the access code! I told her you're on your way but—"

Ziyal wordlessly pointed the rifle at Nog's face. Answer him, she mouthed in Bajoran, a language she must've known Nog was capable of understanding. He did in fact also speak some Cardassian, although not nearly as well.

"Er, Chief!" he exclaimed anxiously, eyes flickering to Ziyals' finger resting above the trigger. "We— we're almost there, uh, there was... an issue with..."

"You're cutting out, Nog!"

Nog looked at Ziyal who jerked her head, motioning for him to continue.  

"Actually, Chief— I could really use some help here-—" he devolved into shrieking and attempted to roll out of the way as Ziyal furiously fired the rifle into the couch, yelling incoherently.

"Nog? Nog!?"

Somehow he managed to crawl a few feet away from Ziyal, though she quickly caught up, smashing a vase into the ground next to his face and kicking over a side table.

"Chief! Help!" Ziyal shrieked into the combadge. "The soldier—-" She cut herself off by shooting at the ceiling, then a shelf, scattering random clutter everywhere. "Prophets! He's got Nog! Please help me," she sobbed hysterically, although her expression remained eerily calm. "I don't want to die!"

"Hold on, Ziyal," the Chief's voice echoed through the room as she advanced on Nog. "I'll be right there—-"

She dropped the combadge carelessly, and crouched down over where Nog was cowering against the wall. "What do you think, Nog? If we're lucky all this noise won't just draw Chief O'Brien here..."

"Are you insane?" Nog blurted out. "You're trying to sicc the remaining soldier on us?"

Ziyal clicked her tongue in annoyance. "If Chief O'Brien doesn't take him out, then I will. Turns out we're both quite skilled at killing Cardies..."

"Ziyal, did you lock the infirmary doors?" Desperately trying to think of a way to de-escalate the situation without enraging Ziyal further, Nog wriggled himself up into a seated position. "Maybe we can take you there and... see if everything's alright...? You did say you were feeling hot—"

"Shut your mouth and make yourself useful," she growled and dragged him to the room's personal console by the scruff. 

Nog leaned onto the console, breathing heavily, and was keenly aware that she was waving the rifle around behind his back again. 

"The dampening field should be disabled by now," she informed him. "Which means the chief knows where to go to find us. And I wanna see where he is— we wouldn't want him to run into that soldier on the way here..."

"I need my hands to operate this thing," Nog complained, but fell quiet when he felt the nuzzle of the rifle tracing his lobes.

"Just tell me what to do," she hissed, claws digging into the side of his neck. "And maybe I'll leave you alive long enough for you to witness that I am much more useful to Chief O'Brien than you could ever be..."

Chapter Text

Miles almost hoped he’d be killed here so he wouldn’t have to face the consequences of all of this going to shit under his command. Even though he knew that - in all likelihood - there would be little to no tangible consequences, because he had had no way of knowing any of this would happen, and only took the safest and most reasonable-seeming actions once it had started happening. Knowing what he knew now, he still wasn’t sure what decisions he would have changed, besides the one where they came here in the first place.

The dampening field had been located and dismantled (with a phaser), but the sensor readings weren’t immediately… obvious. Miles could see - besides the expected life signs in the infirmary, and himself and Amaro - one Ferengi, and two Cardassians. One of the Cardassians was with Nog, the other wasn’t.

He had no way to tell which one was Ziyal and which one was the soldier; the computer was completely refusing to identify any Bajoran lifesigns whatsoever. It seemed to think that anything with Cardassian DNA was 100% indubitably Cardassian.

“Well, at least we know she’s alive,” Amaro said. “Otherwise she wouldn’t show up on the sensors at all.”

“If it’s the soldier that’s with Nog, though, then why did he leave Ziyal behind?” Miles said.

“Maybe he thought she was dead?”

“Well— could be. But both of ‘em are moving.” Whoever wasn’t with Nog was running around the corridors of the habitat ring, while the one with Nog appeared to be… pacing, maybe, or patrolling the perimeter of the room they were in, although it seemed to be mere workers’ quarters, not very large.

“Ziyal said the soldier got Nog - maybe he was trying to get out with his hostage as fast as possible. Or maybe she just managed to escape.”

“We’ll go after Nog,” Miles decided. “Either way, it’s most likely that the Cardassian with Nog is the soldier. And I don’t think he can be reasoned with. Let’s go.”

Amaro shouldered his phaser rifle. “Are we just going to attack them head-on?”

“Hell no. Too dangerous, for us and for Nog. We’re going to go to the room directly above them and set up a new sensor uplink to get clearer information on what’s going on. Then we figure out a way to separate the soldier from Nog — and make sure Ziyal doesn’t come wandering in.”

There was a problem, of course. Station sensors could only be accessed via console, as the verbal interface for the computer didn’t function at all. (Did Cardassian computers even have verbal interface? DS9 had already had the hardware for it when they’d showed up, but Miles couldn't recall ever seeing it without Federation software already installed.) Consequently, while on the move, they were restricted to tricorders. Their tricorders could detect the lifesigns just as well - though experienced similar confusion between Cardassian and half-Cardassian which Miles really did not have the time to adjust for right now - but their ability to precisely locate the lifesigns left something to be designed. The readout said how far away the lifesigns were, and in which direction. They were not precise enough to differentiate between levels of the habitat ring.

Miles had taken twenty meters bearing 000 to mean twenty meters along a diagonal, with Nog and the soldier being about nineteen meters dead ahead and a level (approximately three meters) below.

This was not the case.

It was also not the soldier who was with Nog.

“Ziyal!” Miles called in surprise, and relief. 

Ziyal turned around, rifle in her hand— and for a second Miles struggled to comprehend who she was firing it at, but then Amaro dropped onto the floor lifelessly next to him.

"Oops," Ziyal exhaled sharply, having the gun trained on Miles now, yet nodding at Amaro. "Don't worry about him — it was only on stun." She paused and flashed an innocent smile. "I think."

"What the hell is going on here?" Miles ground out.

"I fear things have escalated a little, Chief..."

Bloody Cardassians. Miles scoffed in disbelief. "Well, I'm sure they feckin’ have! What happened to Nog?" According to the tricorder, he should have been in the room with Ziyal, but he wasn’t visible.

With a little shrug Ziyal turned towards an upturned couch at the back of the room. "He'll be fine. You can bother with him later — I think the two of us have more important things to concern ourselves with now, don't we, Chief?"

Miles knelt down to check on Amaro, cursing under his breath, then made to get closer to Ziyal to make sure she wasn't injured.

He stopped approaching when she didn't put the rifle down and was in fact still training it on him.

"Ziyal," he said cautiously. "Put the gun down."

"Nuh-uh. I don't think I will."

Miles' mind started racing. He wasn't entirely sure what was going on inside her head, but to him it was not much of a surprise this cursed place was driving them all crazy. And Nog...

He watched Ziyal walk to the couch, her eyes glowing in the dim light, keenly trained on him. 

Being a trained soldier, Miles had to estimate the gravity of the immediate danger — and Ziyal dragging out Nog with the muzzle of her rifle pressed to his neck certainly seemed a more pressing issue than a wayward Cardassian soldier right now.

"I find it a bit sad, you know," Ziyal said and solemnly traced the gun up and down the curve of Nog's lobe. Nog looked absolutely petrified, staring at Miles like he wished he hadn’t shown up, and was bound with wire and gagged with what appeared to be his own sock. "That it takes this much to get your attention, Chief."

"What?" 

"You were supposed to look out for me. You even promised it to Nerys..."

Miles was floored. "Ziyal, just stop this now. We can talk about- about everything once we're back on our way to the station!"

"Oh, you'd rather kill that soldier than talk to me, is that it? Elim wasn't wrong about you..."

"Garak is a compulsive liar! You know just as well as I that most of what he says doesn’t actually mean anything!"

"And yet you wanted to bring him here instead of me!”

“You didn’t even want to come!” Miles said, bewildered. Despite the clear hostage situation now unfolding before his eyes, he was being strongly reminded of certain arguments with Molly. “Listen, Ziyal. Something is very wrong here. Something in the air, or- or that biogenic compound you got on you, who knows what it does?”

“I feel,” Ziyal growled, pressing the tip of her rifle hard enough into Nog’s neck that his eyes bulged from lack of air, “fine. I feel great.”

“This isn’t like you,” Miles said firmly.

“You don’t know me,” Ziyal spat.

Nog made an aborted choking noise, and Miles tensed, wondering just what the hell Ziyal was doing to him now — then realized that Nog was looking directly behind Miles just as he heard a terrible crunching noise from behind his back where Amaro was on the floor.

While Miles and Ziyal were arguing, the missing Cardassian soldier had simply walked into the room behind them and broken Amaro’s neck with such a degree of violence that he nearly beheaded him. Amaro was, without question, dead. Miles had barely processed this when Ziyal shot the Cardassian soldier - his body dissolving away to nothing where he stood.

Miles whipped back around to face Ziyal again, only for her to get spooked and dig her rifle into Nog's ribs — Miles doubted she had changed the setting back.

“See?” she said, half a hoarse whisper.

“What?” Miles said, hands still raised in surrender.

“I’m good. I’m just as good as him. I’m better than him!”

“Wha- who—? Nog, you mean?”

“Who else would I mean?! Of course Nog! What about this do you not understand!? You’re the one who’s been treating him like your son! He’s not even the same species as you!”

This did not clarify anything to Miles, and judging by the look on Nog’s face, he didn’t really get it either. The inescapable conclusion was that Ziyal had simply lost her mind.

“Ziyal,” Miles said carefully, “what if we just found somewhere for you to sit quietly until we can get the SOS signal out? I’ll sit with you,” he offered, “if you let Nog go.”

Ziyal just narrowed her eyes at him.

“When they pick up the signal at the station, they’re going to assume the worst,” Miles explained. “Which means they’re going to send Dr. Bashir. He’ll help you—-”

Ziyal shoved Nog over and threw her rifle to the side in favor of a small knife she had pulled from - what, her boot? - and lunged at Miles, screaming.

Miles did not want to do this. He did not want to fight a twenty-year-old girl off her rocker on God only knew what, that she’d been unwillingly exposed to. He was a man who always felt bad for his enemies, more than anything. He didn’t want to hurt her. And yet, left unchecked, Ziyal had already proven herself to be dangerous. Letting her go would mean putting the others at risk, especially Pechetti and Stolzoff, who were already wounded. Miles had to do something. He didn’t have to like it, as a soldier he—

No. Miles was a soldier third, and engineer second… and a father first.

So when Ziyal barrelled into him like a rabid Tulganian wooly rhino, Miles grabbed her arms, not to hold her in place but to pull her into a tight hug. He gritted his teeth, his breath forced out of him as Ziyal’s knife plunged into his side, just below his ribcage, but he didn’t let go of her.

“That’s enough, Ziyal,” he said - he knew he sounded a bit pained and strangled for obvious reasons, but he managed to keep his voice firm yet gentle, like he was talking to Molly. “That’s enough now. It’s time to settle down.”

“No, no!!” Ziyal thrashed around, and Miles grunted and tried to hold her place so she wouldn’t dislodge the knife, which she seemed to have already forgotten about. “No! Let go of me! I hate you!”

“No you don’t,” Miles said, even though he knew full well she wasn’t talking to him anymore. “You don’t hate me. It’s okay, Ziyal. I’ve got you. You’re okay.”

“No— it’s not! It’s, it’s not…” Tears began to roll down Ziyal’s cheeks, and she gradually stopped fighting, instead clinging to Miles just as hard as he was hugging her, and sobbing into his shoulder. She went limp, and - considering the knife sticking out of him - Miles couldn’t support her, so instead they sank to the floor, sitting together while Ziyal wailed and cried her heart out and Miles just held her.

Nog managed to spit out his gag and wriggled his way over to Amaro’s remains. Face pale, he hit Amaro’s combadge with his chin and called Stolzoff at the infirmary, telling her to bring them a first aid kit and a pair of wire-cutters.

It was over.

A distress signal with no details was always more alarming than one with details. Not knowing what kind of situation they were headed for, Sisko elected to call Bashir in to the Defiant, which reached Empok Nor in far less time than it would have taken the runabout. The now-destroyed runabout, they found.

They also found three dead - two Cardassian soldiers in poor physical condition, plus Crewman Amaro - and three wounded, one serious; Crewman Pechetti would need to be transferred to Starbase 371 for more extensive treatment than DS9’s infirmary was equipped for. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Miles hadn’t moved him, but, Bashir reasoned, if he hadn’t done that, then Pechetti would be dead now instead of critically injured. Miles and Stolzoff were both able to be fixed up on the Defiant. Nog was a bit bruised and obviously shaken, but otherwise unharmed. Boq’ta was uninjured (and had been the one to ultimately set off the SOS signal with Miles incapacitated). Ziyal was fine. Physically.

When the Defiant got there, Miles was holding Ziyal in a very fatherly and very tight embrace, which turned out to be the only thing keeping her calm, because as soon as Bashir tried to separate them so he could attend to Miles’ stab wound, she had grabbed Bashir’s arm and bit him, her teeth nearly reaching bone before Worf managed to pull her off of him. After that she was sedated.

It was at that point that Miles explained about the mysterious biogenic compound that Boq’ta had a sample of his kit. Bashir ran it through the computer for analysis as soon as they’d gotten back on the Defiant. It turned out that it made anything with Cardassian DNA “go violently insane” - as Sisko put it when Bashir explained it to him.

“As such,” Bashir said, “I’m going to have Nurse Kahrimanis sedate me as well until we’re back at the station and can synthesize the counteragent I’ve developed.”

Sisko raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure that’s necessary? I thought you had less than one percent of Cardassian DNA. Are you sure that, uh, being bitten by someone affected actually qualifies as exposure to the compound?”

“I’m developing a fever, captain. So I think it’s better safe than sorry.”

Sisko agreed without further argument. He seemed a little too willing to accept the idea that Bashir might suddenly turn homicidal.

Even though Elim still was feeling a bit under the weather when the Empok Nor team (and thus Bashir) returned to the station, he rushed down the habitat ring and towards the infirmary as soon as he received news of Ziyal's state.

"She should be all right in a few days. Dr. Bashir neutralized the psychotropic compound that was affecting her nervous system," Dr. Jicyes informed him curtly when he barged into the front room without invitation. The place was still bustling with nurses and security — Elim figured that Odo had wasted no time taking statements from the surviving members of the away team.

Surprisingly Chief O'Brien joined him as he watched Ziyal through the small window of the observation room. "She looks so peaceful... it's hard to believe she's the same girl who attacked us."

Dr. Jicyes looked up from her PADD. "In a way, she's not. The drug brought out the worst parts of her and allowed them to take over. She wasn't in control of her actions. I hope Starfleet takes this into consideration while conducting their investigation of the incident."

"Can I talk to her?" Elim asked, fidgeting. While Chief O'Brien wasn't exactly wrong — Ziyal did look rather peaceful — he still felt his chest ache at how pale and diminished she appeared.

Next to him, O'Brien cleared his throat. "I'd like to speak to her too, actually."

"Fine," Dr. Jicyes sighed. "For a minute. Now, if you'll excuse me — I have to check in with Dr. Bashir regarding his treatment."

Elim felt that walking into Ziyal's room, side by side with Chief O'Brien was decidedly less weird than it should.

"Ziyal—" he started, and she opened her eyes, lids heavy.

"Elim," Ziyal mumbled hoarsely. "Chief."

"I thought you might want to know that we salvaged the plasma manifold. It's being installed right now," O'Brien said gently.

Blinking somberly, Ziyal looked down at her hands. "Hah. Mission accomplished."

Apparently Chief O'Brien held no resentment towards her for her actions, and even felt somehow protective of her. Elim wrinkled his nose and decided to hold back his curiosity to watch the conversation for now.

O'Brien chuckled awkwardly. "Well I guess it didn't exactly go the way any of us expected." He paused. "You know there's going to be an inquest...?"

"...so I've been told," she sighed, then sat up a little. "Chief, I was hoping—"

"I'll talk to Dr. Bashir," Elim interjected quickly. "He managed to get a mild sentence for me as well, I'm sure he can get you cleared of all charges considering the circumstances..."

"It's not about that," Ziyal said seriously. "I'd like for you to express my deepest condolences to Amaro's wife. I'd talk to her myself, but I'm not sure how well I'd be received..."

"You only stunned him, Ziyal,” O’Brien said. “I can, and I will, personally attest to that."

"Yes, but if I hadn't done that then he might have survived..."

Elim glanced back and forth between them - Ziyal looked crushed. He only now noticed the deep rings under her eyes.

"...I'll tell her," O'Brien said at length.

"Thank you," Ziyal said, her voice small.

After that O'Brien nodded at both of them and said his goodbyes, leaving Elim alone to stand next to Ziyal's biobed.

"I was so worried," he blurted, as soon as the door shut. "When they called in Dr. Bashir to go with the recovery team, I just knew something had happened to you. I never should've let you go with them in the first place—"

"Stop that, Elim."

Perhaps he should give her a little more time to process everything. "...I'm sorry. I'll go check on Dr. Bashir, but after that I'll come back and bring you something to read. This infirmary is dreadfully boring, isn't it? "

"Oh, Prophets. Poor Dr. Bashir..." Ziyal sighed, putting her face in her hands and shaking her head. "I can't believe I bit him."

"Trust me, it's not his first time," Elim supplied dryly.

"You're horrible, Elim."

He took a moment to think about the state of affairs - as things stood he and Bashir had agreed to stage a romantic relationship with everything it entailed. Ziyal was arguably the closest thing Elim had ever had to a close friend, and while he didn't feel uncomfortable at the prospect of lying to her, he definitely felt inclined to weigh his options regarding the outcome of any potential lies. "Actually... Dr. Bashir and I reconciled while you were gone, Ziyal."

She looked up. "What?"

Elim made an abortive movement with his hand and grimaced. "Let’s not get into the details of it, I just wanted to let you know before the rumor mill hits you first."

"Mr. Garak," Dr. Jicyes called before Ziyal could formulate a proper answer, although Elim didn't doubt she likely had no clue how to respond to this sudden revelation in her current state. "Ziyal needs to rest now, you can visit her again tomorrow."

He offered his palm to Ziyal as a goodbye, but when she didn't lift her hand to meet him he just took it between his own and patted it gently, offering her a little smile.

He didn't miss the way Dr. Jicyes glared at him as he walked past her and straight to the room Bashir was recovering in.

Fully aware of the busy infirmary, Elim hurried towards the bed Bashir was sitting on and practically threw himself at him.

"Elim," Bashir said, sounding sufficiently surprised at being embraced.

"I'm so glad you're alright," Elim whispered loudly, then pressed a rather wet kiss to his doctor's lips. "Julian," he added for emphasis with a breathy exhale.

"You're still sick," Bashir mumbled, almost sheepishly. "You shouldn't be running around the station in your condition."

"And you, my dear Doctor, are one to talk! I'd even dare to say that you are a terrible man for making me worry like that..."

Bashir blinked at him, realization dawning on his face — realization that Elim deemed to be long overdue. Although, admittedly, he felt a certain satisfaction at humiliating Bashir with such an outrageously public display of affection.

"Look, Elim. About Ziyal..."

"I understand you will be extending her the same support during the inquest as you did in my case," Elim said and finally let go of Bashir.

"She won't be in much trouble, the lab results will likely clear her of any potential charges," Bashir explained, then paused. "Also, it would be very foolish of Starfleet to try the daughter of Gul Dukat for anything during a time like this."

"Are you trying to tell me that your sacred Federation values stable politics more than justice, Dr. Bashir?"

Huffing, Bashir made to stand, rubbing his neck at the spot where he had been receiving the counteragent to the biogenic compound. "I need to finish up here. And you should return to bed… I'll come check on you once I am done giving my statements."

“Very well. I shall be waiting - if only so that I can ensure that you get some rest,” Elim said, giving Bashir an overly-sweet smile. Bashir hesitantly smiled back.

As he left the infirmary, Elim silently hoped that Bashir would be sensible for once in his life and return to his own quarters instead.

It was too much to hope for.

Elim greeted Bashir pleasantly enough when he showed up at his quarters, but as soon as the door slid shut, frowned at him again. Bashir only raised his hand placidly in surrender.

“I heard from Dr. Jicyes that in all the confusion, you managed to avoid getting your second antibiotics injection,” he said.

“Ah,” Elim feigned surprise. “Is that why she was glaring at me when I visited Ziyal?”

“Probably not. But, nonetheless, you can’t avoid it simply because you don’t want it.”

“I feel fine now,” Elim huffed. “...did you at least bring it here with you, or are you going to try to force me back to your damned infirmary?”

Bashir pulled a hypo out of his labcoat pocket. Annoyed, Elim let him inject him, but he didn’t enjoy it. Or let him enjoy it.

“My god, Elim, it’s just a hypospray,” Bashir muttered. “Stop acting like I’m trying to kill you.”

“You could have put anything in that, you know. I’m trusting you an awful lot to think that that was really antibiotics,” Elim sniped, rubbing his neck where Bashir had injected him.

Bashir raised an eyebrow. “And what do you think I would dose you with, Elim?”

“Well, not poison,” Elim said, nudging Bashir over to sit on the couch so he could get him some tea. There was no reason to be rude to a guest, even if it was Bashir. (Besides, treating Bashir like a guest instead of an expected presence in his quarters sent the subtle message that he had a welcome he could easily overstay.) “You’re much too attached to me. Though I suppose it wouldn’t be impossible for you to… engineer circumstances such that I need your expert medical care, hm?”

“Elim…”

“Nevermind that. How’s Ziyal?”

“She’s with Major Kira,” Bashir said, politely accepting the mug of unsweetened Tarkalean tea. “The compound was completely flushed from her system, she’s had the counteragent, and there were no indications that there would be aftereffects - especially since she’s not fully Cardassian - but, just to be on the safe side…”

“So Major Kira is keeping an eye on her,” Elim surmised. “And… as for you…?”

“I don’t think you need to keep an eye on me, Elim.” Bashir rubbed his forehead. He looked very tired. “I got the same treatments Ziyal did — and the only symptom I had - a fever - has already gone away. Anyway, I was less exposed, both in terms of amount of compound and time exposed to it, plus I have less Cardassian DNA to begin with. Far less.”

“So you aren’t likely to snap and kill me anytime soon,” Elim said, folding his arms.

“Ziyal didn’t kill anyone.”

“What’s that Terran saying? ‘It’s the thought that counts’?”

Bashir sighed, unamused. “Let me just skip the part where we talk in circles for forty-five minutes and get to the point—”

“Oh, so you did have a purpose in coming here!”

“Elim, enough. You put on a very good performance at the infirmary and I am here as a part of that. I intended to sleep on the couch.”

“You did not,” Elim said, “but you will be.”

Bashir frowned, pouted almost, like he really had been expecting Elim to invite him back into his bed despite the fact that he was, indeed, no longer feeling the effects of the Bajoran flu. “I also wanted to ask you what you’ve told Ziyal.”

“I told her that we’re back together,” Elim said bluntly.

“That’s all? Because she’s going to be able to smell whether or not we’ve been—”

“I can tell her we’ve been taking it slow.” He rolled his eyes.

“She’s not going to believe that,” Bashir muttered, half to himself.

“Fine then. You can avoid her. It’s not like you have any pheromones to smear all over me, so she won’t be expecting your stink in the first place.”

Bashir set his mug aside. “Now you’re overselling it,” he said.

“Pardon me?”

“You don’t have to compensate for our… deception… by being as rude as possible in private.” Despite the stern tone, the corner of Bashir’s mouth was twitching up, like this was funny somehow.

Elim sat next to him with an aggrieved sigh, and was silent for a long minute. “If anything had happened to Ziyal, Doctor,” he said at length, “anything worse, I mean… then I would have considered it your fault.”

Bashir inclined his head, as though agreeing. “I had no way of knowing any of that would happen,” he said neutrally. Not really defending himself, just - pointing it out.

Elim shook his head. “Nonetheless, if it had been me there instead of Ziyal…”

“I’m sure you would have done a lot more damage,” Bashir said.

Elim pursed his lips but didn’t otherwise dignify that with a response. If Bashir insisted on underestimating Ziyal so flagrantly, then perhaps, Elim thought, one of these days he ought to enlist her help in putting him back in his place. For now, though, he seemed relatively well-behaved. Elim got up. “I’ll go get some sheets for you. Just because you’re confined to the sofa doesn’t mean I’m going to make you sleep like an animal.”

“Thank you, Elim,” Bashir said quietly.

Elim snorted. “If you try to crawl into bed with me you’ll find yourself sleeping on the floor, sir.”

“I’ll stay put,” Bashir promised.

It was like when she’d first arrived on the station all over again. Except worse, really. Curiosity and pity, Ziyal didn’t really mind so much; the only one who had looked at her with fear back then had been Elim, and even that had been short-lived and more related to his own paranoid fantasies than, well, anything to do with her.

This was different. People were afraid of her. They looked away when she walked by, and nobody said “hi” or anything. Sometimes people forgot that she had Bajoran hearing, not Cardassian, and she could overhear them muttering about how she’d gone crazy at Empok Nor but they always knew something like this would happen eventually, because she was Gul Dukat’s daughter after all, and it must run in the family…

Before now, DS9’s residents had been content to ignore that little fact about her whenever it was more convenient, which it usually was. Now it seemed like it was plastered all over her, and there was nothing she could do about it. She was lower than garbage.

She ended up in Quark’s, because at least there she always knew what kind of worth she had. The monetary kind.

Which meant, Prophets bless the place, she would always be welcome.

“You’ve heard about what happened, right?” Ziyal asked Quark as he mixed her drink. She was trying not to look or sound so miserable.

“About Empok Nor?” Quark said, “sure, everyone’s heard by now.”

“I figured.”

“Well, from what I’ve heard, none of it was your fault,” Quark said, as plainly as if he was telling her the current market value of the bottle of Canopian brandy he was holding. Which meant he might not have been completely telling the truth, but Ziyal appreciated the effort nonetheless. “We’re in deep space. Crazy things happen. I bet half the people in this bar have been possessed, mind-controlled, replaced by doubles, or exposed to drugs that make you lose your mind. You know, I’m pretty sure all of those have happened to Chief O’Brien before, too.”

Ziyal nodded slightly. “He did seem pretty… understanding.”

“Maybe you should talk to him about it. See if you can get him to share some stories.”

“I don’t know… he doesn’t seem like the type who wants to talk about his own experiences.” She grimaced, remembering how she had prodded at him about Setlik III. It had started out as nothing more than idle curiosity, and - she had to admit - not quite fully understanding that not every soldier was proud of what they’d done for their state. Even now, she had trouble wrapping her head around that.

Quark shrugged and handed her her cocktail. “Ask his wife, then,” he said. “Look, my point is that you shouldn’t get so hung up on this. I get that you’re sorry about what happened to Amaro, but if you ask me, you should just be glad that the rest of you got back here in one piece.”

“Pechetti is probably going to be discharged from Starfleet because of his injuries.”

“Okay, but you didn’t have anything to do with that. If anything, you saved his life by distracting that Third Battalion soldier.”

Ziyal took a sip, looking at Quark suspiciously. “I think you have way too much information about what happened at Empok Nor, Quark…”

“I have my sources,” Quark said, with a not particularly disarming smile.

Almost as if in response to that, Nog walked into the bar. Ziyal probably wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been actively avoiding him ever since they left the infirmary. In fact, since he hadn’t been in the infirmary in the first place, the last time she’d actually seen him had been when she was terrorizing him in the Empok Nor habitat ring.

Quark apparently mistook her panicked look towards Nog as suspicious. “It’s not him,” he said, confusing her for half a second: “Trust me, it’d be way easier - and cheaper - if I could just get him to tell me anything that’s going on. But he’s sealed up tighter than a Nagus’ purse when it comes to mission details,” Quark grumbled.

“Oh,” Ziyal said, catching up with the conversation again. “Um, I should go.”

“Already? You haven’t even finished your drink. Or ordered anything to eat! I’m trying out this new menu item called buffalo wings. They’ll go great with that Suhail Sidecar of yours.”

“Do- do buffalo even have wings? I thought they were like zabu.”

“Hell if I know. Hi, Nog.”

“Hi, Uncle. Hello, Ziyal,” Nog said, then gave Quark an expression that was clearly supposed to convey something, but Ziyal couldn’t really interpret it. Neither could Quark, apparently, because after a second or two Nog said, “uh, Uncle, don’t you have some other customers to attend to?”

“Oh, I get it,” Quark said, grinning, “alright, Nog, you can talk to Ziyal alone.” He quickly moved off, though he was likely still within earshot. Nog looked annoyed.

Ziyal didn’t know what to do. “I… hello, Nog.”

“Hi,” Nog said, and immediately looked somewhat embarrassed. “Um. Already said that. Right. I- I wanted to talk to you, Ziyal.”

“I— I’m sorry about what I did, I really am,” Ziyal blurted out. “That must have been terrible for you..."

"It was," Nog agreed, then apparently realized how horrified Ziyal looked at those words. "B-But I've had worse! Much worse! And I know you didn't actually mean to hurt me— well. At least I like to think you didn't!"

"Um..."

Nog seemed a little bit panicked now, and Ziyal felt terrible for being the cause of his distress. She was very tempted to just hop off her barstool and run back to her quarters. She couldn’t sulk at Elim's now that he and Dr. Bashir were together again.

"—that I've been meaning to ask you," Nog talked over her thoughts. "Would you like to have dinner with me some time?"

What. "What?" Ziyal asked flatly.

"Dinner. You know— the two of us, at a restaurant, eating food. Together. We can talk too, of course. Or, uh, not. If you'd prefer that."

Ziyal stared at Nog in sheer disbelief. "I almost killed you a few days ago— and now you want to have dinner with me?"

"Yeah," Nog said, apparently unimpressed by the severity of her previous actions. "So, when are you free?"