The Shadow Across the Grass

Note: Thank you to my friend, my arse-kicker, my beta, JA Ingram, who spent untold hours going over the plot of this and forcing me to think it out. She challenged me on the plot and the details, and much of what you read here is due to her influence and good sense. She also helped me immensely with many scenes, including writing the bulk of Stephen's Blue Christmas challenge. You may notice characters, locations, and concepts similar to those found in her Garak/Bashir stories The Cheap Date and Sinless and in our joint story The Never-Ending Sacrifice. This is not a coincidence, and I thank her for allowing me to draw from them.

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

-- Crowfoot, 1890

1

Julian cracked open an eye at the first wail. The chrono read 0535, or exactly two hours since the last time he'd been so rudely awoken.

He crawled out from beneath the blankets and pushed himself to his feet, shaking the cobwebs from his mind as the screams of a very unhappy infant filled the air. He paused for a moment to scowl at the snoring hulk who hadn't even had the common courtesy to wake up this time. The bastard...

Fiona was wet, of course, but a sodden diaper didn't normally elicit this kind of indignation from her. "Let's see, sweetie," he murmured to her as she howled, her face purple and her fists balled up as if she were planning to punch him in the nose, "you're not hot, you haven't gone number two again..." He suddenly noticed an acrid smell coming from the corner of the room. "Did you throw up?" he asked, cradling the infant as he peered into the crib; sure enough, a puddle of vomit had already soaked through the bedding and was probably seeping into the mattress at that very moment. A quick check with the medical tricorder he kept in the room confirmed that she'd picked up the rotavirus going around the station, which also explained the diarrhea she'd had earlier that night.

As he ordered a hypo of bicyclidine and a bottle of electrolyte solution and sat down in the big rocking chair with her, he took a second to glance up at the portrait of Keiko and Molly - the original Molly - that hung on the wall above the nursery replicator. It was amazingly true to life, he thought, especially considering that the artist who painted the portraits from Julian's identikit sketches had never met them in person, since in this timeline they'd never been born.

"How did you do it?" he asked Keiko's portrait. "How did you handle it all?" But the painting didn't answer him, and even as he said the words he realized that it had likely been as much a struggle for her as it was for him.

He injected Fiona with the antiviral; after a few minutes of rocking and patting her, she eventually calmed down enough to take the bottle. As he looked into her sweet face he wondered for the thousandth time how he could reconcile his love for his girls with his wish that Keiko were alive. It was ironic, he supposed, that the only reason he was a father was because she'd never been born, and the only reason she'd never been born was because he and Miles had done something she'd probably have approved of, had she known.

The moral implications of what he'd done sometimes gave him a headache. They had been intending to return to the Defiant while on Deep Space K-7 a hundred years in the past when they'd ducked into a corridor and interrupted a violent rape. That ostensibly good deed had prevented Keiko's grandfather from being conceived, and the resulting change had created a timeline identical to their original one except for the fact that Keiko and her children had never existed. Then his last-ditch attempt to bring her back by artificially impregnating the young woman (a morally suspect act if he'd ever heard of one) had catapulted him and Miles into a new and completely different timeline in which Garak had succeeded in his attempt to destroy the Founder homeworld, which in turn had prevented the Dominion from sending the Bajoran sun into supernova.

It really was ironic, he thought: his 'good deed' had caused at least three innocent people to wink out of existence, while his less morally defensible act had saved the lives of three billion Bajorans and countless millions in the Gamma Quadrant. It had also given him this precious little girl and her older sister. He remembered an old saying his mother had once taught him: the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. He wondered if the opposite was true as well.

Fiona let go of the bottle, her eyes dropping shut as she relaxed in his arms. He placed her gently on a quilt on the floor and cleaned up her crib, then changed her and put her back to bed before dragging himself back to the bedroom and dropping like a lead weight.

Only to wake up three minutes later when his alarm went off.

"Good morning," Miles said in a chipper tone as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. "She sleep through the night?"

Julian made a note to kill him when he had a free moment. "She woke up three times," he muttered. "I just got back to bed."

"Mm." Miles was already in the hallway. "Mind if I grab the shower?"

He glared at the man. "Could you please wake up Molly and get her ready for breakfast?" he asked, his voice a bit more plaintive than he'd meant it to be.

"But I thought you-" Miles suddenly noticed the look on Julian's face and sucked in his lips. "I'll, uh, go get the girl. You shower first."

Good choice, he thought as he pushed himself back to his feet and headed toward the bathroom. He had a long day ahead of him and the last thing he needed was to spend the morning stinking of baby puke and righteous indignation.

They had just dropped the girls off at daycare after breakfast when Miles started humming a song, the most absurd grin on his face.

"What is up with you?" Julian asked.

"Nothin'." Miles suddenly began to sing. "I'll have a bluuuuue Christmas without you..."

"Shut up!" Julian said with a snort. "Why are you singing that? Christmas isn't for three months yet."

"Well, I was thinkin'."

He rolled his eyes; here it comes, he told himself. "What is it?"

"Well, y'know, this is actually gonna be our first real Christmas with the girls-"

"Yes, yes it is."

"-and I was just thinkin' about Christmas back when I was a young lad, and how Sean and Padraig and I would light candles in the window and go to Midnight Mass at St. Vincent's and wait for Father Christmas - and I suppose it made me think about how nice it would be if we had more."

He shot a glance at Miles out of the corner of his eye. "More Christmases."

"More kids," he clarified to Julian's silent horror, his tone of voice inexplicably reasonable despite the magnitude of the bomb he'd just dropped. "I've always wanted a big Irish family, and like Sisko said yesterday, it's a lot of fun growing up with a bunch of brothers and sisters. We have two girls, why not a boy? Maybe even twins?"

No, Julian thought, correcting his earlier note: he wouldn't kill Miles. He'd torture him to within an inch of his life and *then* kill him. And cancel Christmas at the same time.

He looked back at Miles, who was apparently expecting some kind of reply from him. What the hell did he think...and then a wicked idea entered his mind. "All right," he said, firmly suppressing an arch grin, "when do you want to start?"

"Well, any time, I guess," Miles mused as they passed the Klingon restaurant on the way to the Infirmary. "When d'you think you can schedule it?"

He pretended to consider the point for a moment. "We're rather busy right now with the meningitis epidemic on Bajor and all, but I can probably get you in with Dr. Girani by the end of the week."

Miles gave him a puzzled look. "Why do I need to see her? I thought it was just a cheek scraping."

"You need to see Girani so she can clear you for the surgery," he said innocently. "She'll perform the procedure herself, of course; I wouldn't dream of-"

"Surgery?" Miles said, interrupting him.

"For the artificial uterus." He gave Miles a broad smile. "After carrying Fiona I could never forgive myself if I denied you the joy of carrying one of our children yourself. Or even two, if you think you're up to twins."

Miles's eyes grew wide and his jaw dropped to the floor as he stopped stock still, staring at Julian in the middle of the Promenade, a look of pure panic in his eyes. "But - but I - are you out of your - I can't..."

"You'll love it," he said, gazing dreamily off into the distance. "There's nothing quite like it. It's so," and he waved a hand in the air, "spiritual. It grounds you, makes you feel at one with the universe - well, you'll see." He beamed at Miles. "Now that you've volunteered, I can't wait. I'll tell Mirat you'll comm her. Have a good day, dear."

As he gave his still sputtering husband a peck on the cheek and headed toward the Infirmary, he couldn't help but chuckle to himself at the look of sheer horror on the man's face. Serves the bastard right, he thought.

He didn't think he'd ever understand how the instrument of so much death and suffering could be so utterly beautiful.

Julian had always found it ironic that something as elegantly geometrical and ethereally delicate as the average virion could bring so much misery to so many. Yet the virus he'd just isolated, the one displayed on the slide in front of him, was without a doubt one of the most brutal killers he'd ever encountered, with over 530 victims in Lonar Province over the last eight days.

He adjusted the microscope to view the entire virus particle under medium power. Most Bajoran retroviruses were asymmetrical, but this species was almost unnatural in its crystalline blue perfection.

Or was that the answer? He selected a strand of RNA and magnified one section, then re-adjusted the microscope to focus on one anomalous nucleic acid pair. Strange: uracil was normally found paired with adenine, not xanthine, and to make matters worse the molecule he'd found wasn't even typical Bajoran xanthine.

Something was rotten in the province of Lonar, he suspected.

"Doctor?"

He looked up at Jabara, who was leaning against the doorjamb. "Any news from Starfleet?"

"Nothing yet," she replied. "Any luck?"

"I've isolated the virus," he said. Who would have the information he needed... "I'll send what I have to Starbase 375, but I'd like you to put in a call to Dakhur for me right away. Have them send us any information they have on genetically engineered viruses discovered on Bajor in the past ten years."

She grimaced. "Are you thinking it's a holdover from the Occupation?"

"It's possible," he said, one eyebrow quirking up almost involuntarily in surprise. "Listen, when you talk to the Ministry, also have them send up any information they have on epidemics in Lonar over the past 50 years or so. If there was an earlier outbreak during the Occupation, the Bajorans probably didn't have the technology at the time to identify the virus as engineered."

"I'll call them right away," she said as she stepped back into the main room.

As the door closed behind her, Julian examined his reflection in his office window. Her words had indeed surprised him; Cardassia had brought many horrors to Bajor in his original timeline, but biowarfare using genetically engineered pathogens hadn't been one of them. Then again, perhaps his change had also affected how the Cardassian Empire waged war.

It was possible. In this timeline, Cardassia and the Federation had exchanged ambassadors long before the Bajoran pullout. If the Cardassian ambassador had learned about Colonel Green's use of a modified smallpox virus to decimate Korea before the invasion by his ecoterrorists...

But there was no sense obsessing over what couldn't be changed, he told himself. He sent the data he had to Admiral Quinn's team on Starbase 375, then tapped his combadge. "Dr. O'Brien to Captain Sisko," he called.

"Doctor!" the captain said through the link. "Any success?"

"Yes, sir. I've isolated the virus, and I suspect that it may have been engineered."

Sisko paused, as if thinking for a moment. "I can't say I'm surprised; the First Minister suggested the possibility this morning. Have you uncovered any evidence that could support your theory?"

"Just the unnatural symmetry of the virus structure and the fact that the RNA contains a molecule that isn't normally found in Bajoran retroviruses."

"Do you have time to prepare a short presentation for this afternoon's staff meeting?"

"Yes, sir; I'll prepare a report. I've already sent the data I have on the virus to Starbase 375 so they can begin work on a treatment protocol."

"Good work, Doctor. Let me know if they come up with something. Sisko out."

He began to collate his report, then paused for a moment to let the daycare know they might be late that afternoon. As he typed out the message, he thought about the changes he'd made and how despite all the petty annoyances and difficulties of his life he was still happier than he had ever been in his previous life.

Sometimes it bothered him that the changes he'd made had actually improved his life. Improved, he snorted; they'd given him something he'd never thought possible. In his old life he'd flitted from lover to lover, never letting himself think for a moment about a family. And why would he? He'd believed the Adigeon Prime geneticists who had told his parents he could never father a normal child. Then he found himself suddenly the father of a perfectly normal little girl with another one on the way, and somehow-

He sighed. If he'd known earlier that he could father a normal child, he probably would have married Palis and remained on Earth, which would have meant that none of this would have happened - and the Bajoran solar system would be gone. Perhaps Miles was right, he thought; maybe these things do happen for a reason.

He returned to his report.

"Doctor, I'm sorry we don't have time for your presentation this afternoon," Sisko said as Julian took his seat beside Miles at the conference room table. "We've just received word that Bajor's main relay station in the Gamma Quadrant has gone dark. First Minister Shakaar has asked Starfleet to investigate."

"The Lemna V relay?" Kira asked as she sat across from them. "There's a Bajoran colony on Lemna V."

"The last signal from the colony was received three hours ago," Sisko continued. "Since then, nothing. Given the reports we've had over the past few months of attacks by Jem'Hadar and Vorta on strategic facilities in the Gamma Quadrant, it's imperative that we find out what if anything has happened, and from what Captain Nkama tells me the Gryphon isn't going anywhere right now. Is that your understanding, Chief?"

"Commander Park says she'll be in dry dock for the next two weeks at least," Miles answered. "The phase inducers are completely fried."

"Which means," Sisko said with a scowl at the padd in his hand, "that we're going to have to go out there ourselves with the Defiant. Colonel, I'll be leaving command of the station in your capable hands. Doctor," he continued, turning to Julian, "Admiral Quinn has asked that you remain on station until the meningitis crisis has been resolved, so I'll ask you to choose a member of your staff to accompany us."

"If the colony's been attacked," Julian replied, "you'll need more than just a physician. I'd suggest the Defiant be staffed with a full trauma team, including the EMH."

Sisko nodded. "Very well. Assign a team."

Dax sat back in her chair. "There's not much we can do with one ship," she said, "especially if the Jem'Hadar has mounted an offensive. Is Command sending us backup?"

"The Venture is on its way, but it won't arrive for at least 24 hours. The problem might very well be a solar flare or even a failure of the colony's electrical system. If Lemna didn't have the strategic importance it has we could wait, but the Bajoran government has asked that we investigate the outage immediately." He tapped his padd again. "There is one other urgent matter. We've just received word that Gul Dukat escaped from Starbase 681 yesterday."

The senior staff reacted with shock and anger as Julian thought back to the last time he'd seen the man. Dukat had led a group of rogue Cardassians and Jem'Hadar on a futile attack of the station some months earlier. After seeing his first officer, Gul Damar, killed, he'd suffered an episode of primary psychosis and had been taken to Starbase 681 for treatment; from what Julian had heard on the grapevine it might not have been his first. Psychotic or not, though, Dukat was always dangerous. And if he had heard about Ziyal...

"I'm not happy leaving the station with him at large," Sisko continued, "but we have no evidence that he's on his way here. For all we know he could have disappeared into Orion space or allied himself with the Breen."

"Could he be behind the outage?" Kira asked. "Lemna's a critical facility. If he's thinking of leading the Vorta and the Jem'Hadar against Bajor or the Federation, the first thing he'd do would be to take the Lemna relay out. And being the second Bajoran colony in the Gamma Quadrant..."

"If he is responsible," Worf interjected, "it is imperative that we reach the colony as quickly as possible. Gul Dukat has no love for the Bajoran people."

Sisko held up a hand. "People, Dukat is only one man, and not a well one if the psychiatrists at Starbase 681 are to be believed. Let's not overestimate his ability to wreak havoc. Constable," he said, turning to Odo, "I'll ask you to also remain behind. Although I doubt Dukat will come calling, if he does I'll need you here to co-ordinate station security. You know better than anyone what he's capable of."

"I'll have my deputies keep an eye out for him," Odo replied.

The captain let his gaze pass over them. "We'll be departing at 1900. Colonel, don't hesitate to call on the crew of the Gryphon should you require any assistance. Until 1900, then?"

Julian met Miles's gaze as they rose to leave. "I'll be along in a moment," he whispered, squeezing his hand surreptitiously. Miles nodded grimly as he left.

Once the room had cleared, Julian stopped by the door. "Sir, if you have a minute?"

"Have you heard from Starbase 375?" he asked.

"It's not about that, sir. It's about Dukat." He thought for a moment. How to convey what he had to without breaking the law... "Captain," he started, "there's another reason why Dukat could be headed to Deep Space Nine."

"Doctor, if you know something - does this have to do with Ziyal?" he asked, his eyes narrowing.

"I strongly suggest that you speak with her before the Defiant departs. She's on the station today; she has an appointment with Dr. Girani at 2000." He hoped that would be enough of a hint, given Mirat's specialty.

But Sisko didn't take it. "You can't tell me?" he asked, the frown lines between his eyes deepening.

"She would be better suited to provide you with the relevant information than I would," he replied, "and Bajoran physician-patient confidentiality laws prohibit me from releasing personal information about a civilian without a direct order." Also, he added privately and with some embarrassment, he really didn't want to be the one to spring this on him.

"Ah, yes," Sisko groaned, rubbing his temple, "Bajoran medical regulations. I think we've heard quite enough already from Kai Winn on that subject." He suddenly grinned. "It's strange, isn't it? You wouldn't think Ziyal would be such a sweet young woman. Just goes to show you that nature only goes so far." He waved a hand. "I'll speak with her before we leave. Dismissed."

"How'd he take it?" Miles asked when Julian caught up with him at the turbolift.

He shook his head. "I didn't tell him everything. He's going to talk to her."

"It's like a bad holovid of Romeo and Juliet, is what it is," Miles said as the doors closed behind them. "Level Two. You know, Sisko's going to blow a gasket."

Julian leaned into Miles, his earlier annoyance with him pushed to the back of his mind. "I wouldn't want to be in their shoes right now," he said, "but what can he do other than yell? They're both adults. Listen, I have to stop off at the Infirmary and assign a trauma team before we go home. I'll also have to upload the EMH to-"

As they stepped out of the turbolift they were immediately greeted by an ear-splitting scream coming from the direction of the daycare. Not again, he thought as he pressed his palm to the security panel and the door opened. If he found out whose whiny spoiled brat was causing the ruckus this time, he'd report them to-

"-NOOOOOO! DON'T WANNA GO!!"

Oh God.

Julian knelt down, placing his hand gently on the stomach of the screaming, wailing girl floundering around the daycare floor. "Molly, it's Papa. It's time to go home, sweetheart."

She gave him a filthy look, her face redder than her hair and her voice rising into a near-screech. "NO! DON'T WANNA GO WANNA STAY NOW!! "

"Molly-"

"I HATE YOU!" she screamed, slipping out from under his hand as she leapt to her feet and began to run around the main room, throwing toys and books around in an incoherent rage as she ducked Julian's arms. "I HATE YOU!"

He finally grabbed her around the waist and held on as she flailed, her face darkening by the moment. "Come on," he said more firmly than he meant to. "Now stop it!" But she kept fighting him even as Miles returned to the main area with a bundle in his arms. "What has got into - STOP THAT!" he yelled as Molly sank her teeth into his arm.

"LET ME GO!"

"She's been like that for the last hour," an obviously exhausted Agnetha Karlsson said as she leaned against the doorway. "I was going to call you, but your nurse said you were in a senior staff meeting."

"NO! I DON'T-"

"We were, but it wasn't - IT WASN'T AN EMERGENCY," Miles got out between Molly's shrieks, rocking Fiona while Julian used his free hand to replace the toys Molly had scattered. "If it happens again-"

"LEGGO OF ME! LEGGOOOOO!"

"-just COMM US directly!"

"Molly-" Julian began.

"I HATE YOU! I HATE - NOOOOO! "

As they left the daycare somewhat shamefaced, Molly redoubled her squirming in Julian's arms as her screams turned into incoherent howls. Two prylars whispered furiously to each other as they passed them in the corridor, giving the four of them filthy looks as Molly began to kick him and Fiona began to wail.

"You," Julian muttered to Miles, "and your 'big Irish-"

Molly suddenly vomited all over him.

"-family'."

He wiped the stinging liquid out of his eyes and batted at the trickles of putrid bile-stained vomit that were dribbling from his completely soaked uniform jacket down his trousers and into his shoes. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Miles suddenly turn his face away and stifle a laugh. The arse, Julian thought savagely: the complete and utter arse.

He opened his mouth to give him a tongue-lashing when Molly began to cry. "Papa, I'm-" she got out before she began to sob.

"It's okay, bunny," he murmured to her, cradling her in his arms. "Let's go find out what's wrong with your tummy, okay?"

She nodded, burrowing her head into his wet shoulder.

He should have noticed she was sick, he thought as he followed Miles down the Promenade. She was normally such a good girl that he should have noticed there was something out of the ordinary. At that moment he didn't know which one of them deserved to be kicked around the Promenade more: Miles for making fun of him or himself for not doing his job.

Just as they reached the Infirmary Miles suddenly stopped in his tracks and spun around, his eyes wide. "You don't think it's..."

"It's not the meningitis," he replied as he brushed by Miles and carried Molly into the main diagnostic room. "Humans are completely immune. It's probably the bug Fiona came down with this morning. I think I've seen half the kids on the station in the Infirmary since the D'Abruzzo boys brought it back from Earth."

Miles's shoulders visibly relaxed. "Thank God."

Julian placed Molly gently on a biobed and began a standard viral scan as the evening nurse stepped up to the bed. "Okuna," he said after he read the results on the diagnostic screen, "could you get me 0.2 ccs of bicyclidine and 125 millilitres of human pediatric electrolyte solution? Also ask Dr. Perreira to see me as soon as she has a moment, if you don't mind."

She wrinkled her nose at his uniform. "The rotavirus?" she asked, handing him a hypospray and a stack of clean towels.

"That and being overtired, I think." He injected Molly with the antiviral then peeled off his uniform jacket, plucking off his combadge before throwing the filthy rag into the refresher bin in the corner. One good thing about the new quilted uniforms, he thought: they absorbed more.

The air suddenly filled with the unmistakeable stench of a full diaper. Julian put down the towel he was about to clean Molly's face with and sighed loudly. If one more thing -

"I'll take Fi home, get her cleaned up," Miles said from behind him. "You'll have to feed her though; the Defiant leaves at 1900 and I have to get ready-"

"Yes, I know," he interrupted, glaring over his shoulder. "I'll be home as soon I talk to Eva Perreira."

Miles chuckled and patted him twice on his clean shoulder, leaving before Julian could stare any more daggers into his back.

"Is Daddy goin' on the Defiant?" Molly asked. "Is he goin' away?"

"Yes, he is, bunny, but don't you worry. He'll be back for dinner tomorrow." He tossed the towel towards the recycling bin and took the glass of electrolyte solution from Okuna, whose face was a portrait of schooled neutrality; he silently thanked her for having the common decency not to laugh at him, at least not to his face. "Now drink this," he told Molly. "It'll make your mouth and your tummy feel better."

As Molly reluctantly sipped at the sweet liquid, Julian grabbed a fresh towel and tried to make himself respectable - a losing battle, he suspected.

"Done!"

"Good bunny! Now let's see Dr. Eva and then we'll go home and get you all comfortable, hmm?"

"'kay."

As he picked her up and went off to find Eva Perreira, he wondered if he'd ever get the hang of being a parent.

2

Julian arrived at the Infirmary the next morning only slightly worse for wear. Molly's stomach had calmed down enough that she'd been able to sleep comfortably and Fiona had only awoken once during the night, but it had been a while since he'd slept alone. According to the calendar he and Miles had just celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary last week (which is what probably got Miles thinking about having another child), but in reality it had only been sixteen months since they'd landed in this timeline and a short six months since they'd actually become lovers.

It wasn't surprising, he supposed, that he had become accustomed to his new life so quickly, but then again he hadn't lost as much as Miles had. The worst of it for him had been the loss of Keiko and her children (and of Garak, he had to admit), but of course his losses were nothing as compared to Miles's. Still, finding out that day that he, or the previous Julian, had been working on an in vitro fertilization procedure for the two of them had come as a shock.

But then he'd met Molly, his Molly, the next morning. Julian and Miles had returned to the station to find a young Bajoran nanny waiting for them at the airlock, a tiny redheaded girl nestled in her arms. Molly had hopped out of the nanny's grasp and run up to them, almost toppling over as she stretched her arms wide to give them both a hug. Miles had understandably been beyond even noticing her existence; his 'real' family had just disappeared into thin air, and (as he later told Julian) he had at that moment been torn between ripping apart the universe to get them back and throwing himself out the nearest airlock. But Julian had knelt down and swept Molly up, giving her an enormous kiss and fussing over her. She couldn't have known that he and Miles weren't the same Papa and Dada who had left her two days earlier; all she knew was that they were her parents and she loved them. And in that first moment he'd held her in her arms, Julian had fallen in love right back.

He didn't know how many times he'd been told that having children was the perfect expression of love. Usually it was some ancient, creaking relative of his encouraging him to settle down and raise a family 'before it was too late', but even his mother had said it from time to time. He'd always smiled and outwardly agreed with whomever was spouting the platitude, but he'd never really believed it. How could he? As a physician and a counselor, he'd dealt with too many children who had been conceived to prop up a failing marriage between two warring, incompatible adults, or who had been abused - physically, mentally, and even sexually - by those who professed to love them. But since he'd been in this timeline he'd learned that having a child in one's life could bring greater joy than he'd thought imaginable.

He'd fallen in love with Molly and Fi, those two amazing little beings, almost instantly, and he suspected that his love for them had somehow triggered his love for Miles. The scientist in him bandied about words like 'hormones' and 'pheromones' and the cynic in him shouted 'guilt' and 'transference', but none of that seemed to matter. He had fallen in love with his best friend, the macho and irritable Miles O'Brien, a man who on his best day thought a grand romantic gesture meant warning him before he farted under the sheets. Miles had eventually learned to love him in return, but even now Julian wondered sometimes if he was nothing more than a barely adequate substitute for the real love of Miles's life.

He sat at his desk and brought up the day's messages. The Health Ministry had sent them data on the virus samples isolated on Bajor during the Occupation; Julian was surprised by the sheer number of pathogens that had been identified. As he transferred the information to the Infirmary database and uploaded the first samples to his terminal, he wondered why anyone would use such an indiscriminate, uncontrollable tool that could backfire so easily to do their dirty work. Cardassians were histologically similar enough to Bajorans that they were susceptible to most Bajoran pathogens. Why, then, would they unleash a potentially fatal-

The Infirmary's emergency alert suddenly went off. He rose to his feet, but before he could return to the main area Kira's voice came over the comm system. "Ops to Infirmary. There's been a medical emergency at the Temple. I'm beaming two directly to you."

"Acknowledged," he replied, saving his work as the familiar whine of the transporter filled the room. He rushed to the beam-in biobed, grabbing a tricorder on the way.

It was Ziyal.

"What happened?" he asked a near-frantic Jake Sisko, who had also been beamed in.

"I don't know!" he cried, wrapping his arms around himself as Julian scanned Ziyal. "When I got there she was lying on the floor. She was - she was..." and he began to cry. "Doc, please..."

"She's been subjected to some kind of energy discharge," Julian said to Jabara. "3 ccs of cordrazine." He injected the drug and scanned her again. "Damn."

"What is it?" Jake cried, trying to get back to her side as one of the technicians tried to hold him back.

"We'll need the neuroscanner," Julian said. "We'll start with a deep level scan, with special attention to the medulla oblongata." He turned to Jake. "Listen, why don't you go out into the waiting room-"

"I'm not leaving her."

"All right; then take a seat there," he said, gesturing at the neighbouring biobed. "And don't interrupt us. The scan we're about to run is delicate, and we'll need to pay full attention to it."

As they positioned the bulky piece of equipment over Ziyal's head and began the scan, Julian snuck another look at Jake. It had been only four days since Miles had opened the door at 0400 to find them standing in the corridor, Ziyal in tears, Jake fiddling with the earring the station's resident vedek, Halan Parnas, had just fitted him with. Miles had been right: it was just like Romeo and Juliet - if Juliet had fallen pregnant.

He returned his attention to the scan. "I'm picking up activity in the dorsal horn," he said as his eyes met Jabara's. "Let's give her 2 ccs of morphonolog and 5 ccs of pectrinal chloride." Ziyal was in severe pain if the scans were to be believed, but that wasn't a normal side effect of an incapacitating blast from an energy weapon.

But neither was the shutdown of large sections of her cerebral cortex. He looked up at Jake again. "Are you sure you didn't see anything or anyone unusual? No burns on the floor, or-"

"I..." Jake was almost vibrating as he apparently willed himself not to break down completely. "I think the cabinet they keep the Orb in was open. Is she going to be okay? Is the baby..."

"Jake," he said after a moment, walking over to lay a hand on the younger man's shoulder, "this is very serious, and you should prepare yourself. It's not good. Sections of her brain are shutting down and I don't know if I can stop it."

"But you'll try, right?" he asked, his eyes black with fear and grief.

"Absolutely." He turned back to Jabara. "Prep her for surgery. I'm going to try to isolate the brainstem and apply cortical grafts to reroute around the damaged tissue." He tapped his combadge. "Infirmary to Ops."

"We're in the middle of a crisis right now," Kira replied. "In fact, I'd like to see you up here as soon as you can make it."

He frowned. Ziyal's condition was deteriorating but if conditions were really that bad, informing Kira about it could wait. "I'll send someone down. Infirmary out." He tapped his badge again. "Infirmary to Dr. Girani."

Her drowsy voice came through the comm system ten seconds later. "What is it, Julian?"

"We have a medical emergency. I need your help immediately. Bring Okuna if she's there."

"Well, of course Dani's here," she grumbled. "Where the hell else is she going to be: running the dabo tables at Quark's? We'll be there in ten minutes."

"Fine," he said, but not before the connection was cut off. He frowned; Girani Mirat might be one of the best GPs and ob/gyns he'd ever met, but at times she could be more caustic than bleach. Sometimes he wondered why Danielle Okuna put up with her.

"Doc," Jake began, "is she-"

He interrupted him. "I have to ask you to wait out in the front area. Do you have anyone who can stay with you? Is Kasidy on the station?"

"I-" He drew his hands over his face. "I don't remember, I can call-"

"Jake," he said, grasping his shoulder again, "I'll do the best I can, all right? Just hold on for her sake. If anything happens, I promise you'll be the first to know."

He nodded wordlessly, the tears falling freely as he reluctantly allowed a technician to lead him towards the waiting area, his gaze never leaving the face of the young woman on the biobed.

Julian's eyes met Jabara's again as the door closed. "What do you think her chances are?" she asked under her breath.

"Not good," he replied in a low voice. "And she's already lost the baby."

She grimaced, shaking her head as she returned to the task of preparing Ziyal and transferring her into the surgical bay.

As he changed into scrubs and sanitized, he almost contacted Ops again to find out if they could reach the Defiant. If there was anyone Jake needed at the moment it was his father, but without the Lemna relay they probably couldn't contact the ship.

He let out a sigh and pushed through the doors to the surgical bay, clearing his mind of everything but the procedure he was about to perform.

He was applying the first cortical graft when Girani and Okuna arrived. "Sorry to wake you," he said to them, not looking up from the surgical field. "Girani, I'll need you to cover out front. Okuna, go to Ops and tell Colonel Kira that - that Ziyal has been critically injured by an unknown energy discharge. Jake Sisko found her in the Bajoran Temple. We'll probably be in surgery with her for at least the next four hours."

"Jake and Kasidy are out in the waiting room," Girani replied. "Should I comm the captain?"

"He's on the Defiant right now. I don't know if they're in comm range given that there's a problem with one of the relays in the Gamma Quadrant. You can ask Kira if they can get in touch with him." A sudden noise from the direction of the Promenade made him frown. "What's going on out there?"

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Okuna step aside to allow Girani out of the bay. "I don't know," she said. "People are running around crying."

"Before you go to Ops, then," he said as he manipulated the graft into place, "comm the Gryphon. Given that Perreira's on the Defiant, we might need help from Dr. Sanchez's team if it turns into a riot." As she left, he took a deep breath, then returned to the task at hand. Station crisis or not, this patient needed his undivided attention.

It was almost 1200 before he and Jabara had finished implanting the grafts, but he wasn't sure if it had made any difference. "I'm going to speak with Jake and Colonel Kira," he told Jabara over his shoulder as he crossed to the sanitizer and cleaned up. "While I'm gone, run a second deep scan. I'm not convinced we stopped the cascade, but if we were able to isolate the brainstem she might make it. Comm me if she regains consciousness or gets worse while I'm gone, but make sure to let the two of them in first." It might be the only kindness he could give them, he thought, and given the events of the past week Jake had a right to be there.

"The Colonel's still in Ops," Okuna said from the doorway. "She said something serious had happened and she wanted to see you as soon as possible." She and Girani traded worried glances.

He nodded, ignoring the cold lump of fear that suddenly settled in his belly. "I'll talk with Jake first," he said to Girani. "Keep an eye on her and if the scans turn up anything unusual, comm me."

As he went out to update Jake, he looked back at the surgical bay for a moment, hoping against hope that Ziyal would make it.

He arrived in Ops ten minutes later only to be waved into Sisko's office by Colonel Kira, whose expression was troubled as she stood at one of the viewports. "Sit down," she said as the door closed behind him, gesturing towards a chair before taking her own seat behind Sisko's desk.

"I don't have much-" he started, but he looked again at her face. Her eyes were hard, her face was lined, and she looked as if she had aged ten years overnight. This was more than Ziyal, he realized.

She paused before speaking, looking down at her hands before returning her gaze to his face. "The wormhole's disappeared."

"Disa - WHAT?!?" His mouth dropped open. "What do you mean it's disappeared? The Defiant-"

"I know," she said, holding a hand up. "We picked up a garbled transmission from them just before the wormhole vanished. We can't find any trace of it. I've sent out...."

Her voice trailed away in his mind as the implications of what she had said began to reverberate. If the wormhole had vanished, if it were gone forever - no, no, he wouldn't think of that. It had to be temporary; it just had to be. He couldn't accept the alternative. He wouldn't accept the alternative. Miles was on the Defiant, the Defiant was in the Gamma Quadrant, the Gamma Quadrant was cut off -

The air felt suddenly thick, as if it were holding him in its grasp. He could hear Kira saying something, but it was nothing but noise. Was this what Miles had felt when Keiko had disappeared - oh God, how was he ever going to tell the girls? How was he going to live without - please, he begged, please let this be temporary, please-

And his eyes snapped open as a sharp pain lanced itself into his right cheek.

Kira had slapped him.

He looked up into her determined face. "I - I can't believe that," he said. "That can't be. He's not gone. They're not gone."

"Julian," she said, "I know this is a hell of a shock but you need to pull it together. You and Odo are the only members of the senior staff I still have. I'm going to need your help."

He found himself rising to his feet. "We need to go out there and run a close-up scan of the area," he all but shouted. "Maybe the signature of the wormhole has just changed, or-"

But she was shaking her head. "We've already done that. A science team from the Gryphon went out an hour ago. There isn't even a sign that there ever was a wormhole. The good news is that we didn't find any debris, and there's no sign that the wormhole's been destroyed."

If they were gone - no, he simply wouldn't accept that. Miles wasn't gone. There was no debris. It was temporary. "Could this have something to do with what happened to Ziyal?" he asked.

Her eyes suddenly widened. "Oh Prophets, Ziyal. How is she?"

He took a second to centre his thoughts. Keep your mind on your job, he admonished himself. "I'm not certain yet exactly what happened," he said, "but it's very serious. I don't think she's going to make it."

She looked away. "I...Jake...this is just..." But she stood up straight again (taking her own advice, Julian thought) and looked him in the eye. "As to your question," she said in a rough voice, "I don't know. The wormhole disappeared just before Jake commed us for beamout."

"Infirmary to Colonel Kira."

They frowned at each other as Kira tapped her combadge. "Kira here."

"Colonel, Ziyal is awake and she's asking for you," Girani said. "She says she has something important to tell you."

"Has she stabilized?" Julian asked.

"I'm afraid not. You'd better come down right away."

They shared a look before leaving Sisko's office for the Infirmary. In the turbolift, Kira looked up at him. "You okay?"

He shrugged and gave her a quick but grim nod. 'Okay' was about the last word he'd use to describe himself, but Kira had been right: he had a job to do. He had to remain calm and to carry out his duties. In any event, it was far too early to panic.

"Nerys..." Ziyal breathed as she reached out from the biobed they'd moved her to in his absence. She was pale, almost ethereally so, and her voice was barely a whisper. To her side, Jake was standing, holding her other hand, his face deceptively calm as he softly caressed her shoulder. Kira took Ziyal's hand and stood over her.

Ziyal blinked, her eyes suddenly vacant. "It was Father."

"Father?" Kira asked. "You mean Dukat?"

"He...his eyes were...red..." The words came slowly. "He tried to...get past me to the...I think he threw me...I don't..."

The colonel hit her combadge with her free hand as Ziyal's eyes fluttered shut. "Kira to Ops. Go to red alert. Gul Dukat has been spotted on the station. I want full security details on all pylons and pads and increased security on the Promenade. No ships are to leave the station until further notice." She turned back to Ziyal, waiting until she opened her eyes again. "Do you remember anything else?"

Her eyes closed again; Julian grabbed a tricorder and scanned her discreetly while she spoke. "...no...he was red...the baby...is she..."

Julian's eyes met Jake's; he gave the young man a brief shake of his head before stepping in between her and Kira. "Everything's fine," he said, not wanting her last thoughts to be ones of grief or pain. "Just try to rest. Colonel," he said, turning to Kira, "could I join you in the front room in a moment? I need to speak with Jake privately."

Kira made a sound of protest but Julian shook his head again. "All right," she said, her voice hollow. "Ziyal, honey, I'll see you soon. Take care." She squeezed the girl's hand before giving her a kiss on the forehead and retreating to the front waiting area.

He drew the young man aside. "Jake," he said in a low voice, "you have to make a decision for Ziyal. Her respiratory centre is failing. She doesn't have a personal directive in the system and she isn't in sound mind at the moment, so we don't know whether she'd want to be put on a respirator under these circumstances or - or whether she'd prefer nature to take its course. Under Bajoran and Federation law you're her next of kin now."

Jake stared at him in horror. "But I - I'm only - I can't..."

"You have to," he said, putting a hand on the younger man's shoulder. "It's your decision. You probably didn't consider this possibility last Sunday-"

He slumped against the wall. "Oh, God," he groaned. "I - how can I tell you to..." He swallowed, his gaze riveted to Ziyal's face. "If we put her on a respirator, do you think she'll get better?"

"I wouldn't say never, but I think the chances are in the neighbourhood of one in a million, if that. Parts of her brain are already gone."

Jake dropped his head into his hands, letting the tears fall freely. "I...I don't want her to live like that," he said as he rubbed at his eyes. "I don't want her to die, and I don't want her to suffer, and..."

"I know, Jake; I know."

He suddenly glared at Julian. "Goddammit!" he cried out through his tears. "What the hell am I supposed to do?"

He said nothing. What could he say?

Jake's gaze eventually wandered back to Ziyal's still, ashen face. "Just - just make sure she isn't hurting, okay?," he finally said, his voice almost a whisper. "That's - don't do anything else. I can't put her through..."

"All right," Julian replied, silently signalling one of the nurses. "We'll leave you alone with her. She isn't in any pain. Call if you need me - I'll be out in the waiting area."

He nodded wordlessly; Julian gave his shoulder another squeeze before heading toward the front room.

"How is she?" Kasidy asked him as she and Kira rose to their feet.

"I'm sorry," he said to them. "I don't give her more than a few minutes. Jake's with her now."

"Sweet Prophets," Kira murmured as tears began to stream down Kasidy's face. "And Captain Sisko is on the Defiant. I...I have to get back to Ops. If Dukat's on the station, we're in even more trouble than I realized."

"That was four and a half hours ago," Julian pointed out. "He could be on Cardassia or anywhere in the sector by now."

"We still have to prepare for the worst, and-"

Jake's voice suddenly rang out from the main room. "Doc!"

He had never been a religious man, he thought as he and Kasidy rushed to Ziyal's bedside, but at that moment he prayed to any god, prophet, or even devil listening for the ability to start this day over again.

Ziyal's skin was tinged with blue, her eyes closed, her breathing irregular and laboured as Jake sat beside her, his cheek pressed into hers, his tears spilling over onto her cheek. Less than a minute later Ziyal let out a final ragged breath, her eyes flickered, then - nothing.

She was gone.

If for nothing else, Julian thought as Jake dissolved into heaving sobs in Kasidy's arms, Dukat would surely roast in Hell for this.

3

He'd wanted to complete Ziyal's autopsy that afternoon but had desisted after Girani marched him into his office and ordered him to take the rest of the day off to be with his children. She'd been right, of course; the researchers at Starbase 375 had the meningitis problem well in hand, Girani and the Gryphon's CMO were perfectly capable of handling anything that came up on the station, and his girls needed him more than Starfleet did at that moment. So there he stood at 1320 outside the daycare, three hours earlier than normal, wondering how he was going to tell Molly about Miles.

In the last sixteen months he'd watched Molly grow from a little toddling two-year-old, barely able to run or form even a short sentence, to a talkative, athletic little girl. During that time, however, she'd never lost her fear that Miles would one day simply disappear. One reason was the paranoia of her little friend Tekeny Garak, whose father had given his life to destroy the Founders. Tekeny was certain that any adult who began to act unusually (as Elim Garak had apparently done shortly before his death) was about to disappear, and his constant assertions that Miles was "going away" had taken their toll on his daughter. Unfortunately, Tekeny had only seen what would have been obvious had anyone else been watching Miles closely. The man hadn't been able to dissimulate his distaste for and disbelief in the new timeline and everything in it, including Molly.

Julian couldn't fault Miles for not being able to act like a father to her, at least not at first; after all, this Molly wasn't 'his' Molly, not the one he had with Keiko. As the months passed and as Miles recovered from his devastating grief, though, he had still refused to see Molly as real. He had treated her and the child Julian had been carrying at the time as little more than characters in a holonovel, only beginning to accept and love them after Fiona had been born. Molly had recovered some of her confidence since then, but now Julian had to go in there and tell her that her Daddy really had "gone away" just like she had been predicting for the past year.

He suddenly cursed himself under his breath and told himself to get a grip. Stranger things had happened in this sector; the wormhole could pop back into existence at any moment. There was absolutely no need to scare her. The crew of the Defiant might have even closed the wormhole themselves if there was an invasion force on the other side, or if Dukat's men had destroyed...

No. He wouldn't think of that.

He pressed his palm to the security panel and entered the daycare centre.

The front room was unnaturally quiet. Julian could hear murmuring in the back room and a few whimpered tears, but the happy laughter he normally associated with the place was completely absent. He snuck a look in the side room only to find two dozen Bajoran children sitting quietly, their hands clasped in front of them, one of the younger boys crying in Hantha Rekhim's arms.

Agnetha Karlsson held a finger to her lips as she gently closed the door behind her. "They're praying," she whispered as she led him to one of the smaller media rooms.

He turned to look back at the children through the window in the door, wondering why - but then he almost smacked himself on the head. Of course they're praying, he chided himself: their gods had just vanished into the vacuum of space. He'd been so fixated on what had happened to Miles and the rest of the Defiant crew that the full implications of the wormhole's disappearance hadn't even entered his mind.

Molly was sitting in the far corner of the media room, playing silently with a holo-construction set while the three Garak children napped on a sofa shoved up against the far wall. "Hey, bunny!" he said softly as he knelt down by the door.

She jumped to her feet and ran toward him, kissing him on the cheek as he held her in his arms. "Papa!"

He grinned at her. "So how's your day been?"

"Everybody's sad," she said. "Miss Hantha said the wormhole closed up."

It suddenly felt like an icy band had wrapped itself around his heart, and he wondered how much of it she understood, or (for that matter) could understand. "Yes, it did," he said as he stood and walked with her out to the main area. "We're going to go home early today. Do you want to wait here while I get Fiona?"

Mrs. Karlsson, who had been following them, held up a hand. "The two of you stay here. I'll have one of the nursery aides bring her out."

Molly watched her leave, then tugged on Julian's sleeve. "Is Daddy gone to fix the wormhole?" she asked.

"Not exactly-"

"Then where did he go?"

He took a deep breath. How could he ever explain this? "Listen," he said, kneeling down again, "why don't we go home and talk about it."

"Is Daddy coming home for dinner? You said he was," she said with a pout.

"I know I did, but..." He hugged her again. "Daddy's going to be late, so we'll have early dinner, okay?" he said quietly.

"'kay." Just then one of the infant caregivers emerged from the back with Fiona. He took the baby and carried her away, Molly clutching to the waistband of his jacket.

In the end it hadn't been as difficult as he had expected. Molly was simply too young to understand what "the other side of the wormhole" meant, and had decided that Miles was actually off fixing it. He didn't bother to correct her; the wormhole could return at any time, and if it didn't-

He forcibly turned his mind away from that. There was no if, he told himself: the wormhole would return. It was only a matter of when.

He fed and changed Fiona, put both of the girls down for their naps, and sat down at the terminal, checking the time in Dublin before arranging for a subspace channel to Earth.

Aoife O'Brien beamed at him once the connection went through. "Julian! It's so nice to see you! Michael!" she cried, twisting in her seat to shout up the stairway behind her. "Michael, Julian's on the comm! Come downstairs!" She turned back to him. "So how is everything? How are the girls?"

He tried to tell her, but all that came out was, "I...I don't know how I'm supposed to..."

She looked into his eyes for just a moment, then her face went absolutely white. "I'll fetch Michael; you - you just wait there," she said in a thin voice before quickly heading up the stairs.

Julian had only spoken to Miles's father and stepmother once before in this timeline, when he'd called them the day after Fiona was born. Even though their conversation had been short, they had been thrilled about the baby and they seemed to like him very much. He wondered if Miles really understood how fortunate he was to have such supportive and loving parents.

Michael O'Brien flew down the stairs. "Julian," he said, his eyes dark with fear as he sat in front of the panel, "what's going on?"

"Miles is, um, on the Defiant," he started, trying to control his emotions. "The ship was on a mission in the Gamma Quadrant, and the wormhole just...it vanished, and we can't contact them..."

Michael's mouth dropped open. "The wormhole - vanished?"

"It..." Julian swallowed. "There's no trace it ever existed. We've sent people out, but..."

"Oh no," Aoife moaned from behind her husband. "No...no...please, no."

"When - when did this happen?" Michael finally said.

"A few hours ago," Julian replied. "I was in surgery...they only told me just now. I, um, I got the girls home and I thought I'd better comm you."

"Do you know if he's all right?" Aoife asked. "Can you get a message through to him?"

He shook his head. "We can't reach them. We don't know where they are or...or anything and I..."

"Bloody," Michael muttered. "And you with the young ones." He turned to his wife. "Aoife! Power up the other terminal and comm Starfleet Family Services. Tell 'em to get us seats on the next shuttle out. And don't forget to say it's a hardship case and we need priority. Julian," he said, turning back to the screen, "we'll be there as soon as we can."

"But-"

"No buts, son," he said, interrupting him. "Something tells me that right hoor of a father of yours isn't exactly bustin' the quadrant down to help you, is he?"

"Well..."

"Right." He twisted in his seat and listened for a moment. "There is? Three hours? Y'sure?" He listened for another moment, then turned back to Julian, shaking his head. "Aoife says they messaged us already; there's a special shuttle going out to Bajor, but we'll have to be fairly lively if we want to catch it. Listen, I don't know exactly when we'll get there, but - just hold on. We'll be there before you know it, and with any luck Miles'll meet us at the airlock to tell us we missed Harold's giant birthday bash for nothing." He gave Julian a nod. "We love you, son. We'll be there by the beginning of next week."

"Thank you," he finally got out past the lump that was beginning to form in his throat. "I'll - I'll see you soon."

The screen went dark. He dismissed the idea of messaging his own parents; that bridge had been burnt the moment he'd received his father's vitriolic message after Fiona's birth. But there was one more thing he had to do.

He got up to make sure that Molly was still sleeping, then returned to the terminal. "Computer," he said in a low voice, "search Miles O'Brien's logs for personal directives."

Two files found.

Typical of Miles, he thought: one for him and one for his father. "Play file 'Julian'. Volume low."

Miles's face suddenly appeared on the screen. "Hey, you," he said. "If you're, um...Christ on a crutch, I hate this bullshit..."

He smiled at Miles's blasphemous tirade in spite of himself.

"...but if you're watching this I'm probably dead. Well, maybe I've been taken prisoner by the Cardies or God knows who in this sector, or I've gone missing or something, I don't..." He stopped to take a deep breath. "Right. First off, if I'm dead I want you to know that I love you. Now you take care of yourself and remember, I want you to name the baby Molly..."

Julian reached up and silently paused playback as a wave of cognitive dissonance passed through him. This wasn't his Miles; this was the Miles who had existed before they changed the timeline. But in another way, he thought as he examined the features on the screen, this was more "his" Miles than the one he knew. This Miles had loved him, and not as a substitute either. This Miles had chosen to marry him and had chosen to create their two daughters. He had the same mannerisms and way of speaking as the Miles he knew, of course, but the Miles on the screen had in a very real sense belonged to Julian in a way the one he knew never would.

He tapped the screen again to resume playback.

"...after my ma. And, um, don't spend the rest of your life pinin' away for me, okay? Find yourself a nice guy or a nice girl, I don't care, and just - be happy. Sisko has a copy of my will but if he's gone off and got himself killed at the same time, I left another copy with Commander Data on the Enterprise." He reached toward the screen. "Seriously, Julian. I mean it. Don't spend your life mourning me. For one thing, if you do that I'll come back from Tir na nag and haunt you."

That won't happen, Julian thought.

"Now if I've gone missing or something, I don't want you to risk your fat gut on some batshit scheme to free me, all right? You get someone else to do the dirty work. You might be carryin' her but she's my girl too." His eyes suddenly became soft. "And anyway, wouldn't make sense for both of us to get thrown into some backwater Cardie stockade, especially with you like that. I, um..." and with that Miles gave the monitor a stern look. "If you can't get me back, I want you to promise you'll go on with your life. Don't sit around for thirty years waitin' for me. Okay?"

"No," he said out loud.

Miles narrowed his eyes; Julian got the distinct impression that the man on the screen knew him all too well. "Love, I'm telling you," he said, "don't try to take on the bloody universe. You might be the most stubborn bastard in the sector and probably the whole quadrant but if I don't come back you have to go on with your life." He huffed. "Listen. Save this and re-open it in a year and watch it again; maybe it'll make more sense then." He looked away for a second, then leaned in towards the screen. "I hope to hell you never have to play this, love, but if you are, just - be a good father to Molly, all right? Put a holo of me by her crib, let her know that I loved her and wanted her more than anything..."

"Computer," he said in a rough voice, "end playback."

He sat in front of the monitor for a few minutes, thinking about what he'd do if Miles-

Stop brooding on it, he told himself.

He had just risen to his feet when the door chimed. "Come in."

Kira stuck her head through the door. "Is this a good time?" she asked in a low voice, peering around him towards Molly's door.

"She's down for her nap; come in." He waved Kira into the living area. "Has anything happened? Any news?"

"I sent out another runabout, but they didn't discover anything new," she said as they took seats across from each other. "I just talked to Dr. Girani; she said she sent you home. How's Molly taking it?"

"She doesn't understand, but then again I'm not exactly sure how to tell her. I'm not certain she-" and he suddenly stared at her. "Oh God - Jake. Is he-"

"I was just at their quarters," she told him. "Jake's doing about as well as you'd expect, I guess. Kasidy and Nog are there with him now." She shook her head in apparent disbelief. "I still don't know why they hid their relationship from Captain Sisko. I mean, you knew about it, I knew about it, the Cardassians probably knew about it. Why run around behind the captain's back?"

"Ziyal said that Sisko ordered Jake not to see her, but that was back when he was seventeen. If I'd been in Jake's place I'd have told him to sit on it and rotate, but I suppose it's different when your father's the station commander. Did Ziyal tell you about..."

She gave a brief nod. "The three of us had dinner last night. Captain Sisko seemed to take the news pretty well, she said. He was shocked, of course, but compared to what they'd been expecting it was nothing. By the way, Kasidy said she tried to get in touch with the captain's father at his restaurant, but he's already halfway here."

"I know," he said. "Jake commed him from our quarters on Sunday. Mr. Sisko said he wanted to come out here and make certain everything was legal, or at least that's what he said - I have a feeling he really wanted to make sure Ziyal was good enough for Jake. Now..."

"Now he'll be here to support him," she finished. "I commed the Venture's captain, by the way; she'll have her CMO keep an eye on him, but I wanted to give you a heads-up in case he needs to see a doctor when he gets here. Kasidy doesn't want to give him the bad news over subspace. I also let Captain Figueiredo know about Miles. She asked about you and the girls."

He sighed, trying to ignore the sympathetic look in Kira's eyes. Miles had once mentioned to him that he'd served with Gabriela Figueiredo on the Rutledge when she was just a green ensign fresh out of the Academy. He'd described her as 'a hell of a soldier' and hadn't been surprised when she rose quickly through the ranks. Julian knew that she and Miles exchanged messages in this timeline on a weekly basis, but he didn't know if he'd ever met her himself.

"I should get back," Kira said as she stood and headed toward the door. "I have about twenty more notifications to make. It's one of those things nobody ever teaches you how to do, but you have to do it anyway." She reached the doorway, then turned back. "If I hear anything I'll comm you."

"Thanks. I might take a runabout out myself, for what good it'll do. If there are any free, that is," he added.

"Captain Nkama's offered us the use of the Gryphon's shuttles. They have more sensitive scanners than the runabouts. I'll let him know you might want to borrow one."

"Thanks."

It was probably futile, he told himself as he watched the door close behind her. They'd sent out at least three runabouts that he knew of and had been searching the area with the station's sensors for the better part of six hours. He didn't know what he thought he'd find but he felt he had to go out there, if only for his own peace of mind.

"Papa?"

He turned to find Molly standing by her door, her red curls in disarray as she rubbed at her eyes. "Did you have a good nap, sweetie?" he asked her.

She nodded. "Is Daddy home from fixing the wormhole?"

"Um, he's - he's not, um..." he babbled, before taking a deep breath and starting again. "He's not home yet," he replied, "but you know what? Papa's going to go out there tonight and work on it too."

"But *Daddy* fixes things, not you," she said with an air of authority.

He grasped for an explanation. "Well," he started, "tonight I'm going to start. So after dinner we're all going to go back to the daycare and you and Fiona can spend the evening there with Mr. Kalen."

She pouted at him. "I want Ziyal instead."

Oh God. "I, um...I have to talk to you about Ziyal," he said, a lump of cold dread forming in his stomach. "Let's go sit on the sofa."

"'kay."

Once they were seated, he put his arm around her. "This is really sad news, bunny. Ziyal was in the Infirmary today."

"Did she sneeze?"

He raised an eyebrow. "No-"

"She sneezed last week. That's cause Jake put a baby in her tummy, right?"

"Ye-es, that's - that's true," he stammered, a bit shocked by her grasp of the situation, "but that's not why she was in the Infirmary today. Today, a bad man did something terrible to her and hurt her very badly. Miss Jabara and I worked very hard to try to - to try to fix what he'd done, but the bad man had hurt her too badly and we couldn't help her."

"Did she go away?"

He gave her a sad smile. "No, bunny, she didn't go away. She and the baby died and they had to go to heaven."

Her little brow knit as she looked up into his face. "When are they coming back?"

"Oh, honey," he said, holding her tight. "They can't come back, sweetie. When people go to heaven they can never come back. I'm so sorry."

"Papa! No...."

Julian held Molly as she cried against his shoulder. Even though she seemed heartbroken, he still worried whether she really understood what he'd meant, especially considering this was the first time she'd had to deal with death in person. She'd known, of course, that her friend Tekeny's father had died when she was a baby, and he and Miles had once told her about Miles's 'really good friend' Keiko and her daughter who had died, but this was someone Molly had actually known, even loved.

He only hoped this was the last time he'd have to do this for a very long time.

4

The Infirmary was as still as a cathedral the next morning. Girani, who had just gone off duty, had left Julian a message mentioning (among other things) that most of the Bajoran civilians who normally made up the bulk of the station's residents had left for the planet surface the previous evening. Some of them had been scared off by Kai Winn's sudden pronouncement that the disappearance of the wormhole was a sign of the Prophets' displeasure at the continuing occupation of Deep Space Nine by Starfleet, but the majority were concerned that Dukat was preparing to wreak further havoc. Julian couldn't blame them, not after what the bastard had done to his own daughter.

And that was the first order of business for the morning: Ziyal's autopsy. It turned out to be completely routine, almost overly so. He didn't discover anything during the gross examination that would explain the underlying cause of death, but he collected the necessary samples and set them aside for further study. As he closed up, he looked down on her face one last time. Sisko had been right; she had been a sweet young woman. She would have made a fine mother too.

Jabara sealed the remains in a steri-bag and arranged for the bag to be beamed directly to the station temple; as Julian watched Ziyal's body shimmer out of existence, his mind went back to the first time he'd met the shy girl. Kira had brought her to the Infirmary after rescuing her from Dozaria. He'd treated her minor infections, cuts, scrapes, and badly healed broken bones, but he'd also detected subtle signs that the girl had been sexually abused. Unfortunately, she'd refused to see a counselor, preferring instead to spend her days with Garak, who naturally had been flattered to have such a beautiful young woman fall in love with him even if he didn't love her in return.

No, he reminded himself: that was in his original timeline. In this timeline Garak had been married to the imperious and commanding Iliana Ghemor, a woman who would not have tolerated any threat to her husband's undivided attention. Ziyal had instead sought counselling from the station vedek and had eventually entered into a wholly appropriate relationship with a young man her own age who reciprocated her feelings. Well, appropriate in the eyes of everyone but Captain Sisko, that is, and his reservations were understandable; after all, Jake was the son of the Emissary of the Prophets and Ziyal was the daughter of Bajor's Public Enemy Number One. Still, it hadn't really been any of Sisko's business, especially since Jake and Ziyal had both been legal adults for almost two years at the time of their elopement.

He returned to his office and, pushing aside his worries for the moment, slid behind his desk and checked his mail for any word from Starbase 375 about the virus. He had a suspicion he'd seen that atypical molecule before but he simply couldn't pinpoint where, and without knowing where the virus came from it would be almost impossible to develop a vaccine or a cure. Maybe if he-

"Julian!"

He turned in his seat to find a tall dark-skinned woman standing beside the nearest biobed, a manicured hand resting on the shoulder of an older man who was perched on the bed. She grinned at him as he went out to greet them.

"How are you? How are the girls?" she asked in a light accent Julian couldn't quite place.

He opened his mouth to answer her, then noticed the four gold pips on her uniform collar. "Captain," he stammered, "I-I'm-"

"Oh, please," she said before turning to the older man with a conspiratorial smirk. "See, I told you. Every time he sees me he gets all formal, especially if there's someone else around. I tell him every time, 'just call me Fig', and every time it's 'aye sir, Captain Figueiredo sir'. Sometimes I think the only person he actually listens to is Miles." She turned back to him with a wide smile. "You've met Joe before, haven't you?"

The older man broke in before Julian could answer her. "Actually, I don't think we've met," he said. "I'm Joseph Sisko. Ben's father. You must be Julian O'Brien, right?"

"Yes, sir," he said, taking the man's hand. "I understand you came out to talk to Jake." Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jabara step into the ICU and tap her combadge, closing the door behind her.

"I did," he said. "Well, him and his new - who would think that such a thing could happen in this day and age? Anyway, Gabriela here," and he nodded towards the captain with a twinkle in his eye, "she was kind enough to give me passage to the station and escort me to the Infirmary. Her doctor spent most of the trip fussing on me, going on and on about my heart. I don't see what all the bother is about; they put in a new one last month and said it'd give me another 50 years." He grinned up again at Captain Figueiredo; it was obvious the elegant woman had caught his eye. "I could probably outrun all of you young folks without even trying."

She chuckled. "I don't doubt that, but I think your grandson would feel better if Julian gave you a quick once-over."

"And the standard blood check," Julian added as he took two vials from Jabara, who caught his eye and gave him a quick nod before powering up the blood analyzer.

Joseph frowned as he held out his arm. "What I don't understand is why they're still doing this nonsense. I had to have a test when I boarded the Venture too. Didn't that Garak destroy the shapeshifters?"

"The Founders are tricky," Figueiredo replied. "Starfleet suspects that there were a few Founders off-planet at the time, and the ones that were spared were probably members of whatever passed for the Dominion government. And since they don't have anything to lose, they're potentially more dangerous than they were even before."

"Everything checks out," Julian said to them, one eye on the door to the Promenade, "with the blood and with your heart, sir. I'm sure Jake will be relieved."

"That boy worries too much. He's worse than Ben." He suddenly frowned. "Where is Jake anyway? He said he and Ziyal were going to meet me at the airlock. Has he-"

Just then Kasidy entered the Infirmary. "Joseph," she said as she approached the biobed, "is everything okay?"

"Just fine, dear," he replied with a smile. "They're just fussing on me as usual. Did Jake forget I was coming?"

She and Julian shared a look. "Actually, Joseph," she began, but Captain Figueiredo interrupted her.

"I should make sure that Ferengi bartender I saw isn't cheating my new ensigns out of a year's worth of pay. We've been in deep space for almost two years, out past the Klingon Empire," she explained to Kasidy. "We just returned to Earth three weeks ago to pick up crew replacements and have those new warp engine improvements fitted. I swear to God, the ensigns get younger every year." She turned to Julian and grinned at him. "I can't wait to meet the baby, and I can't imagine how big Molly must be by now. I'll catch up with you later. I'll see you later too, Joe."

"You too." Joseph Sisko watched Captain Figueiredo leave, then turned to Kasidy, one eyebrow raised. "What's up?"

She gave him a sympathetic look. "I'm afraid I have some bad news."

As Kasidy told Joseph about the wormhole and Ziyal, Julian quietly moved to the foot of the biobed, letting the scanner monitor Joseph's cardiac status as he watched him carefully. He wasn't too concerned about the elder Sisko's heart - the new prosthetics didn't usually give much trouble, and he was otherwise healthy for his age - but it didn't hurt to be careful any time a man on the far side of eighty received disturbing news, especially if he'd just undergone major surgery.

"So nobody knows whether the ship's been damaged or destroyed or just trapped." Joseph said after Kasidy had finished. "We really have no idea what's going on."

"We don't," she replied, "but the station did receive a garbled transmission from the Defiant right before the wormhole closed. Colonel Kira, Ben's second-in-command, says it was simply a routine position report."

"So we know they were probably fine at that point."

She gave him a confident smile. "Exactly. Kira's sent out at least four teams of scientists I know of to scan the area, but they haven't discovered any evidence to even explain what happened. Julian went out himself last night as well - didn't you?" Kasidy asked, turning to him.

"I did, but it was pretty much a useless effort," he said with a shrug. "I was planning to spend the afternoon going over the sensor results with a fine-toothed comb, but I'm beginning to wonder now if I'm just duplicating the efforts of officers who have much more experience with these things than I do."

"Julian's husband is on the Defiant," Kasidy added. "They have two little girls. I'd go out there myself but the Xhosa doesn't have the kind of sensors a Starfleet shuttlecraft has."

Joseph shook his head. "You must be out of your mind," he said to Julian before turning back to Kasidy. "How's Jake taking it all?"

"He's devastated. I've been so worried about him that I've made sure he hasn't been left alone. It probably sounds morbid-"

"No," Joseph reassured her, "that's simple common sense."

She nodded. "Right now his friend Nog is watching him, but he has duties aboard the Gryphon so we should get back." She patted Joseph's arm. "Seeing you might give him something to hold on to."

"I hope so," he sighed as he ran a hand over his face. "You know, some day I'm going to give Benjamin a piece of my mind over this. There's no quicker way to throw two young people together than to forbid them to see each other." He turned to Julian. "How long had they been together, do you know?"

"I think you should speak with Jake about that," he replied. "As his physician-"

"-you can't break a confidence," Joseph finished for him. "That's fair enough. I'd be damned annoyed if my doctor started blathering on about my sex life to my family." He eased himself off the biobed. "Listen, would you let me know if they discover anything about the wormhole? I know you'll probably be on it like a wolf on steak yourself-"

Julian smiled.

"-but I'd like to be kept in the loop if at all possible."

He took Joseph's proffered hand again. "I will. And don't forget to comm the Infirmary if you require medical assistance. We're here 26 hours a day."

"I'll do that."

Julian's smile fell into a troubled frown as he watched them make their way out of the Infirmary and down the Promenade, Joseph leaning on Kasidy's arm. He was glad Joseph was here - Jake could use his support - but on the other hand his presence was another thing the young man would feel responsible for.

His gaze wandered back to the terminal in his office, and he debated whether it would be a waste of his time to go over the sensor records from the Anticosti. If he didn't, though, he'd probably spend the rest of the day and night worrying about whether he'd missed something. "Jabara," he called to her, "I'll be in my office. Call me if you need me."

She looked up from the biobed she'd been sanitizing. "Yes, doctor."

As he slid behind his desk he took a moment to check his mail again. He frowned; for some reason, he'd received an inordinate number of messages in the last 24 hours from people he barely knew. He opened one from an old classmate of his, wondering why he was writing, only to find - a sympathy card. "Goddammit," he muttered under his breath, stabbing at the keyboard to delete the message, but - but...

Five minutes later, after he'd dried his eyes and blown his nose, he noticed a cup of steaming hot Tarkalean tea sitting on his desk that he knew hadn't been there when he sat down. He peered out his office window, but Jabara had gone back to the main room and wasn't looking in his direction.

He had good people working for him, he thought: damned good people.

He opened the sensor log file and got to work.

She was barely through the doorway when Molly spotted her. "Auntie Fig!"

"Molly! How's my little goddaughter?" Gabriela Figueiredo cried, dropping to one knee as the little girl barrelled towards her. "My heavens, you're so big! And so tall! And so huge!" She looked up at Julian. "And you look just like your Papa!"

He grinned at the two of them. "Miles says she looks like a cross between me and his mother." He was faintly surprised Molly recognized her, but then again Miles did share some of his correspondence with her.

"She does, but she's ENORMOUS!" Fig gave Molly a big smooch right on the tip of her nose and scooped her up. "The last time I saw you, you couldn't even walk. And goodness," she said, looking down at the baby in Julian's arms, "is that Fiona? She looks just like a little transporter copy of Miles!"

"My baby," Molly said with a wide smile.

Fig burst out laughing as she carried Molly into the main room. "So she's your baby, is she? Do you feed her?"

She shook her head. "Papa does that," she said, wriggling out of Fig's grasp and hopping up on the sofa.

"Do you change her then?"

"Papa does that too."

"So what do you do?" she asked, holding her arms out to Julian. "Here, let me have the baby," she told him. "You sit down and put your feet up."

Julian handed Fiona over (with some trepidation, he admitted to himself) before taking a seat on the love seat across from them. "Molly helps bathe her," he told Fig.

"Oh, she does? She's going to have red hair, isn't she? She has the eyebrows." She suddenly looked back up at Julian. "How in the name of all things holy did you end up with two redheaded children?"

"Don't ask me," he replied. "Some great-grandfather of mine, I suppose. You should have seen her after she was born; she had a big shock of hair just above her forehead. It fell out about a month later."

She nodded. "Miles sent me a holo of her. Eduardo's hair did the same thing." She turned to Molly. "Do you remember Eddy?"

She shook her head. "Is he your baby?"

"He is, and he lives on Earth." Her voice was suddenly muted. "You haven't seen him since you and your Daddy and Papa visited us when you were just a little tiny baby yourself. He's a lot bigger than you, though; he's almost nine years old."

Molly peered up at her. "Does he live with you?"

"Molly..."

But Fig gave Julian a brief shake of her head. "It's all right. No," she said to Molly, "Eddy lives with his daddy and step-mommy in a place called Luanda, near where his daddy and I grew up."

"Do they have animals there?" Molly asked through an enormous yawn.

Fig made to answer her but Julian interrupted. "I think somebody needs a nap before dinner," he said, trying not to sound too severe.

Molly gave him a disgusted look. "But Auntie Fig's here!"

"And she's going to be here for at least another week, maybe even longer," he told her. "Now go on. She'll be here later on."

She pouted at him even as she held back what looked to be another huge yawn, but she obeyed, hopping off the sofa. "Are you going to have dinner with Daddy and Papa and me?" she asked Fig.

"You bet I'll be here for dinner," she answered, giving Molly a sad look and ruffling her hair again. "Now you go have that nap."

They watched her run off to her bedroom. "How's Eddy handling it all?" Julian asked her after Molly's door closed, hoping she wouldn't notice the vagueness of his words.

But she took the question in stride as she patted the burbling Fiona on the back. "Not as badly as I would've expected, I suppose. We tried to keep the divorce civil for his sake. I wish I could've had him on the Venture, but it's just not possible." She let out a sad sigh. "The kind of help he needs simply isn't available on a starship, especially one stationed in deep space."

He gave her a sympathetic smile, wondering privately what type of help the child needed, when Fiona suddenly began to cry. "I'll take her; she probably needs to be changed," he said as he lifted Fiona out of the captain's arms and carried her off to the nursery. "Was he happy to see you at least?" he asked over his shoulder through the open door.

"I'm not even sure if he recognized me," she said from the hallway. "I'm starting to understand why your parents took you to Adigeon Prime."

He froze.

Breathe, he told himself: just change Fiona's diaper and don't forget to breathe.

"Not that I would ever condone your parents' decision," she hurried to add, "but Eddy could spend the rest of his life dependent on others. I'm terrified of what might happen to him when Alvaro and I pass on."

"Let's hope," he got out past the lump of panic that had formed in his throat, "that won't be for another eighty years or so. And they do have excellent programs on Earth for disabled adults." He tossed the dirty diaper into the recycler, then picked the now-sleeping Fiona up and carried her to her crib. "I'm just going to put her down; she's conked right out."

Fig chuckled. "You know what my mother always said: there's them that eats and them that sleeps, and you got two that sleeps."

"Not usually," he said as he gently rested Fiona in her crib, placing her stuffed bear beside her before covering her with a blanket and palming the light off. "Fi's still recovering from the stomach bug that's been going around the station. So is Molly, for that matter, which is probably why she fell asleep on us."

He took a moment to wash and sanitize his hands, then returned to the main room where Fig had retaken her seat. "Can I get you something?" he asked. "I know you're probably tired of raktajino."

She rolled her eyes. "That and blood wine and gagh and gladst and - you know what I'd really like? A plain cup of Earth coffee. No sugar, no milk, no spices, no live worms..."

He chuckled. "One cup coming up." He ordered the coffee and a tea for himself from the replicator, handing one cup to her before retaking his seat.

"Mmmm...now this is good," she said after taking a sip. "You don't have any more of that real stuff stashed around, do you?"

"I think Miles used up the last of-" He suddenly dropped his gaze to the cup in his hands. He hadn't thought of Miles in five minutes: what kind of monster was he?

Her voice was light but full of concern. "I didn't ask in the Infirmary - well, I didn't want to unnecessarily worry Mr. Sisko - but how are you doing?" she asked.

"I've, um..." He snorted as he put down his cup, pushing his self- flagellating thoughts aside. "I've had one spectacular crying jag and I've spent most of the last 24 hours going over sensor data until my eyes feel like they're crossed. I just - I know the wormhole could pop back into existence at any moment, but what if it doesn't? And I know I shouldn't be defeatist, but - I don't even know how to tell Molly." He sighed. "It was hard enough telling her about Ziyal."

"If it helps," she said gently, "I can tell you that there's no right way to do it. And at this point there's really nothing to tell her. For all she knows he's on a mission."

She was right, he knew, but he still felt like an abject failure. "Have you had a chance to speak to Jake yet?" he asked, changing the subject.

"I wish I could talk to Jake," she said. "I wish somebody could. He's gone completely mute." Her gaze was distant as she put her cup down. "I remember when he was a little boy. He was such a bright, talkative child, so verbal. Jennifer used to say he'd either end up in politics or advertising, and she hoped he chose advertising because it was more honest."

Julian smiled.

"But now...there's nothing in his eyes but rage. Of course I can't blame him for that; after all, four days..." She looked back at him. "Was it really her father who did it?"

"That's what she said, and the evidence supports it. Before she died, she was able to tell us that his eyes had turned red."

"Like yours were when you were possessed by that pah-wraith, right?"

He digested that snippet of information with another jolt of surprise; in his timeline Keiko had been the one possessed, and from what he recalled she hadn't changed appearance. "Yes, exactly like that," he finally said. "In fact, that's the assumption Constable Odo's operating under."

Just then her combadge chirped. "Petrov to Figueiredo."

She sat up, immediately assuming the aura of a cool, competent Starfleet captain. "Figueiredo here."

"Captain, Constable Odo of DS9 has just advised that Ensigns Knoblauch and Rosenberg are in the station brig."

She ran a hand over her forehead and groaned. "What did they do this time?"

"The constable broke up a fight between them and two Klingon officers from the IKS Rotarran," Petrov said. "Dr. King's looking after their injuries-"

Figueiredo rolled her eyes.

"-but they don't seem too badly hurt. Just a few broken bones." The voice paused. "The Klingons don't have a scratch on them, so I don't think there'll be an incident."

"I'll be there as soon as I can," she said, shaking her head. "Figueiredo out."

She turned to Julian as they both rose to their feet. "It shouldn't take me too long to read those two the Riot Act and find some appropriate Jefferies tubes for them to clean out. If Molly wakes up before I return, tell her I'll be back soon."

"Will do," he said with a grin. "Enjoy yourself."

She laughed. "Oh, I'm sure I will, the day they discover a cure for Ensign Aggression Disorder. See you in a few."

Julian's smile faded as he gathered up the used cups and saucers and deposited them back in the replicator. He'd checked his permanent record as soon as he'd landed in this timeline; there was no sign that anyone in Starfleet knew about his enhancements. He'd told Miles about them after they'd arrived in this timeline; if anyone had the right to know, it was the person he was married to. But Figueiredo?

He realized he had some research to do. Who else knew? Was she trying to blackmail him? Had he told her? He couldn't imagine doing that.

He sat down at his terminal with a sigh and began to go through his personal logs once again. There had to be a clue...

5

It was likely the smallest senior staff meeting the station had ever hosted. Julian sat at the conference room table with Kira and Odo that morning, glowering at the padd in his hands as he read the words on the screen.

"It's obscene," Odo grunted. "They've barely been gone two days, and Admiral Ross already has a list of replacements prepared."

"The Defiant's been off station for longer than this in the past even with all of us aboard," Julian said, "and the station hasn't spontaneously disintegrated. Starfleet even has a Galaxy-class starship in dock. Why is he acting so quickly?"

Kira shrugged. "Between the three of us, I blame Kai Winn. That 'proclamation' of hers probably scared the hell out of Starfleet. They've gotten so used to treating this place like just another deep space installation that they forgot this is a Bajoran station. Suddenly they're afraid that if they don't get a permanent team here right away, we'll take the place over and kick them out."

"Nice to know they place so much trust in me," Julian muttered. Almost six years in Starfleet, eight years before that in the Academy and Medical Academy - did they think he'd hand over the station-

"The Saint of the Orphanages?" Kira said incredulously, breaking into his thoughts. "The recipient of the Dailenium Eye? The man who came *this* close to throwing his pips in Ross's face because he didn't want to risk harming the Prophets? Julian, of course they don't trust you: they think you're on our side!"

His mind raced as he grasped for a reply. "Well, I suppose I see your point..."

"I still don't know why the two of you didn't take up Shakaar's offer," she continued, shaking her head in apparent disbelief. "It's not like either of you have any future-"

"Colonel," Odo interrupted, "I think we have to make the wormhole our first priority at this point."

She looked at Odo, then sighed. "You're right," she said, clicking a button on her padd. "About the wormhole, Starfleet's advised that they're sending Dr. Lenara Kahn and her team here from Earth. They're scheduled to arrive at 1300 today aboard the Asoka along with Admiral Ross. Dr. Kahn's been working on a way to temporarily close the wormhole; she's hoping she can use the same methods to re-open it. Constable, I'm sending you to escort her team out to the Denorios Belt. Commander Park from the Gryphon will be going with them but I'd like a Bajoran representative out there as well. I'll greet Admiral Ross. He's also planning to attend Ziyal's funeral." She turned to Julian. "Are you going?"

"For part of it," he replied. He wanted to take Molly, but he had no illusions that a three-year-old girl could sit through an hour-long funeral, let alone the full Bajoran death chant.

"Shakaar's ordered a full honour guard, by the way," Kira continued. "He and I are going to be there until at least 1800 hours. The vedek of the Capital Temple and her ranjen are also coming up from Bajor to pay their respects, so security will have to be tight. We don't need a repeat of what happened to Vedek Parso last year."

"We'll be ready," Odo replied. "I've assigned a full detail to our guests."

Julian gave Kira a puzzled look. "Why all the dignitaries?"

"Blame Vedek Halan," Kira said. "After Jake and Ziyal went to see her she messaged the Kai to let her know about the marriage, but she also 'accidentally' blind-copied every member of the Vedek Assembly." She raised an eyebrow. "By now the entire planet knows about it. Shakaar thought he should attend the funeral as a show of respect to the Emissary, and I'm guessing Ross feels the same way. Starfleet's walking on palukoo shells right now and Ross doesn't want to be seen visibly disrespecting Bajor. Not that it matters in his case: he's lucky if Halan lets him in the temple door."

He nodded silently. If relations between Bajor and the Federation were that tenuous they would likely want to make a show of it; on the other hand, he agreed with Kira that Ross was the wrong man for the job under the circumstances, especially considering what he'd ordered Julian to do in this timeline.

When he'd gone over his permanent record the previous afternoon he'd noticed a stern reprimand from the admiral for refusing to detonate a bomb inside the wormhole that could have killed the Prophets. He wasn't surprised to learn that Bajor had viewed his refusal in a wholly positive light and had even granted him their highest civilian decoration, but he hadn't realized how angry Ross had been over the matter. As the senior Starfleet officer assigned to Deep Space Nine at the moment, though, he'd have to make a show of polite respect to the man whether it was otherwise advisable or not.

Kira clicked her padd again. "Vedek Merel is a different matter. I suspect her intentions are more political than respectful no matter what she says, and as one of the leaders of the progressive faction she has as much of a stake as anyone in publicly displaying her opposition to the Kai. And after that comment she made yesterday...did you hear?" she said to Julian. "Winn said 'we don't know if Ziyal told the truth about what happened, so it would be inappropriate for her to receive a Temple funeral'."

His jaw dropped. "She said-" and he bit back his next words. Winn might be a flaming bitch but she was also the Kai of Bajor, which meant he had to watch his words: he'd learned that lesson all too well in the past. "Perhaps someone should advise the Kai that the evidence proves otherwise," he finally said after he had managed to control his temper. "Dukat's fingerprints and his DNA were on Ziyal's throat where he grabbed her."

Odo snorted. "His fingerprints were also on the doors to the Orb's case, although we haven't been able to determine how he arrived on the station. Even without physical evidence, I'd prefer a credible witness's dying words to mere supposition, and Bajoran law agrees with me."

"I know," Kira said, "and Vedek Halan agrees with you, but..." She gave the two of them a grim look. "The next 26 hours aren't going to be a lot of fun for any of us, but let's remind our staffs to be professional and respectful to our guests - all our guests. Jake Sisko's gone through enough already; he doesn't need a diplomatic furor to break out between Bajor and the Federation."

"I'll make sure the Starfleet staff keep themselves in check," Julian said, suspecting that Kira's words had been as much for himself as for anyone else.

"And I'll speak to my constables and have them pass on the word to the Bajoran civilians - those who are still on the station," Odo added.

"That's all I can ask. Odo, I'll let you get to work. If I could speak with you, Julian?"

Odo rose from the table and stalked out the door. "What is it?" Julian asked.

She looked down at her hands, then spoke. "I think you should take some time off."

"Now?" he said. "With the Defiant gone?"

"I'm concerned about you," she said, giving him a searching look. "How long were you up last night looking through the sensor records?"

He squirmed in his chair. "Not that long - I mean, a few hours, but..."

"Julian," she said in a patient but firm tone, "I checked your terminal records. You were online from 2130 straight through to 0545, and during that time you accessed 243 different files from the sensor directories. The night before it was 183 files. I can't have you working yourself into the ground; it's not good for your patients and it's not good for the station."

He sighed. He didn't like being spied on, but he also didn't like the implication that his lack of sleep automatically made him ineffective as a physician. But she was the boss, and from her tone of voice it didn't sound like she was about to brook any dissent from him.

"I checked your personnel record as well," she continued. "You have over six months' worth of accumulated leave, at least if Captain Sisko's records are accurate. I want you to take a few days off. Miles's parents are arriving this afternoon on the Asoka, and I know they'd like to spend some time with you. Right now with the Gryphon and the Venture in dock we have enough backup so that if an emergency does occur, we can handle it."

"But the epidemic-" he began.

"I've spoken with Admiral Quinn and she agrees with me," she said, interrupting him. "She told me she was very impressed with how quickly you isolated the virus, but there are 39 researchers on Starbase 375 working around the clock to find a cure. In fact, she told me that if I didn't order you to take leave she would, and for longer than three days."

He held up his hands, conceding defeat. "I still have to meet with Admiral Ross tomorrow morning," he pointed out. "But if you insist I take the rest of the next three days off..."

"I do." She thumbed the padd. "You're off from 1200 this afternoon until 0800 on Wednesday. And I don't want to find that you've spent all of it studying the sensor records, either, okay?"

He sighed. "All right."

"Good. Dismissed."

He left the conference room and returned to the Infirmary. Girani wasn't going to like her new schedule, he suspected, and neither was he.

"Michael, Aoife!" Julian called as they came down the ramp. "How was your-"

"Good heavens, she's such a big, big girl!" Aoife said, all but tearing Fiona from his arms. "Look, Michael, Fiona already has a tooth! Oh, don't you look good in red..."

"I'm lookin' at this little sweetheart over here, love," her husband said as he swung a giggling Molly around the cramped corridor. "Have you ever seen so much gorgeous red hair in all your life?"

"And such a cute little button nose, yes you do-"

"-yes, you're a sweet darlin'-"

Julian took a deep breath and waited for Michael and Aoife O'Brien to finish fussing over the girls and notice his existence. After a few minutes of Michael exclaiming how much Molly looked like a little angel and Aoife cooing over Fiona's big green eyes, though, he realized that the moment might not come, at least not in his lifetime.

"Um," he began again, "how was your-"

"Aren't you the sweetest babby-"

"You can count all the way to three? Well, I-"

"-the cutest little thing I've-"

"-you're ready to run for Miss Ireland, aren't you, love-"

An older woman in vedek's robes snuck a look at Julian's face and quickly turned to hide her face as she passed them, her shoulders shaking in suppressed laughter.

Wonderful, Julian thought; I'm reduced to entertaining the clergy. "Michael," he started again in a considerably louder voice, "how was your trip?"

"Hm? Oh, just fine," Miles's father said as he looked up distractedly. "We made a fair time out here, at least from what the captain said. Three days quicker than it used to take." He suddenly took in Molly's funeral dress and Julian's dress blues; the colour quickly drained from his face. "Why's the lass in black?" he suddenly asked Julian. "There hasn't been-"

"Julian-" Aoife began.

"No news," he hastened to say. "I'd have messaged you if I'd heard anything, you know that."

Aoife swallowed and took a heaving breath. "Of course you would have." She looked at Molly's dress again, then frowned at her husband. "Her dress is green - bottle green."

Julian reached over and tucked a stray lock of hair behind Molly's ear. "A young lady who lives on the station passed away last week," he told them. "Her funeral is this afternoon, and Molly and I are going. And yes, it's green; green is the colour of mourning on Bajor, at least for children."

"Thank Go-" Michael began, but interrupted himself. "I shouldn't say that; it's a sad thing no matter what. I just assumed-"

"Who was she?" Aoife asked as she not-so-subtly elbowed her husband.

"Her name was Ziyal. She babysat the girls in the evenings. In fact, she was just married a few days before she," and he lowered his voice with a significant look at Molly, "had to go to heaven."

The girl nodded. "Jake put a baby in her tummy," she said in a sudden loud voice that carried through the Promenade, "and they got the vedek to-"

"MOLLY!" he cried. "We'll tell Granny and Granda about it at home, all right?"

"'kay," she whimpered, wrapping her arms around Michael's neck and burying her head in his shoulder. Good job, Julian told himself, as he imagined kicking himself in the arse: make your daughter cry in front of your in-laws. That'll set their minds at ease.

He picked up their bags (and almost staggered; Aoife had apparently decided to bring along a shipment of bricks) and ushered them toward the turbolift for the Habitat Ring. As soon as they entered the lift, Molly wiggled out of her grandfather's arms. "Are you comin' to the funeral, Granda?" she asked him.

Michael shrugged. "Well, I-"

Julian crouched down. "Molly, they just got here. They're tired and they want to spend some time with your baby sister. This is the first time they've ever seen her. Now you and I are going to go to the funeral, just for a little while, then we'll come back and you can spend time with them, too. If that's okay with Granny and Granda," he added, looking up at them.

"That's not a problem," Michael quickly assured him. "That's what we're here for."

"But-" Aoife began, then closed her mouth and nodded. "Of course."

He rose to his feet, wondering faintly what Aoife had been about to say, when the turbolift door opened. "Just this way," he said, picking up their bags again.

"Oh! This is-" Aoife began as she walked through the door of their unit and looked around, "-this is very...interesting. Isn't it, Michael?"

The elder O'Brien cast his gaze around their front room, apparently confused as to what his wife found 'interesting' about the plain taupe walls and grey carpet. "I suppose," he said, shrugging.

"Molly, go wash your hands," Julian said. "We have to leave in a few minutes."

She sighed, but left for the bathroom.

"Can I offer you something? Tea, coffee, something else?" he asked his in-laws.

"That 'something else' would go down right smooth after that boneshaker of a trip, I'll tell you that," Michael groaned as he dropped onto the sofa like a lead weight, propping his feet up on the coffee table - just like Miles did most evenings.

He pushed the memory away.

Aoife glared at her husband. "Stop your bitchin', it wasn't that bad. He's always makin' a mountain out of a molehill," she said to Julian, who was by then rummaging through the top cabinet for the open bottle of Bushmill's. "In fact, we had a very nice trip here. They gave us a comfortable double cabin and Captain Levesque even had us at the captain's table for dinner last night. We also met this lovely young woman as well, Lenara Kahn. She told us she was coming here to reopen the wormhole, although her explanation as to how she was going to accomplish that feat was quite beyond me. I'm an interior designer, not a physicist. Isn't that right, sunshine," she crooned to Fiona, who was staring wide-eyed at her shiny earrings.

Julian brought over a glass and the bottle to the sofa, pouring Michael a healthy shot before handing it to him and placing the bottle on the coffee table. If their shuttle had really been that bad, he could probably use a refill or two. "And what can I get you, Aoife," he said. "A cup of-"

But she interrupted him. "Michael," she said, "it's not even 2 PM. Must you?"

"Come on, love, it's 5:00 somewhere," he grumbled as he took a sip.

Julian held back a grin; this was how he and Miles must appear to their friends sometimes. The irritable one and the - well, he wasn't much like Aoife, or at least he was beginning to hope he wasn't, but still.

And suddenly a wave of grief slammed into him.

He turned away for just a second, covering the kick he'd just got to his gut by walking down the hallway. "You finished, bunny?" he called to Molly through the bathroom door. "We have to leave-"

"I'M PEEING!"

He sucked in his lips and walked back to the front room, where Aoife had just deposited Fiona on the floor and was urging her to crawl. "I'm afraid Fi's not quite there yet," he told his mother-in-law as he crouched down beside her. "She's got rolling down but not crawling."

Mother-in-law, it suddenly hit him. I have a mother-in-law.

"I'm only encouraging her," Aoife said. "You should have seen my Harold when he was a wee one. Crawling at six months, walking at ten - he was a regular Fergus O'Gheoghan, he was."

Michael peered down at her from over the arm of the sofa. "And when did Harold win the Carrington then, love?"

She glared at him. "Just because Harold hasn't won a major Federation award doesn't mean I can't be proud of him." She rose to her feet, wiping her hands on the front of her trousers as she peered down the hallway toward the bathroom door. "Julian," she said in a low voice, "about the, um, funeral..."

Julian, who was still confused by Michael's mention of the Carrington Award (had he won it in this timeline? He'd lost in his own), gave his mother-in-law a puzzled look. "What about it?"

"Do you really think it's wise for Molly to go?" she asked, a hand on his forearm. "The girl's so young; don't you think it'll confuse her?"

"I think she'll be fine," he assured her. "Of course I'm not going to keep her there for all four hours, but I think it would be good for her to see how adults celebrate a lost life."

Aoife was still distressed. "But with her father, what's happened," she pleaded, her voice dropping to a whisper, "won't she think it's for him?"

He sighed as a little voice in the back of his head whispered 'Round One'. "Aoife," he said, keeping his voice low, "she's my daughter and she's going with me. We won't be there for very long anyway. And Miles has been away on missions for longer than this before; Molly doesn't have any idea where he's-"

Just then Molly emerged from the bathroom, skipping back to the main room. "Ready to go, honey?" he said in a bright voice. "Did you sanitize your hands?"

The girl nodded her head. "We have to go say bye-bye to Ziyal and the baby, Granda," she told Michael, who had reached over to stroke her hair. "They got hurt really badly and even Papa couldn't help."

"Your pa's a clever man," he replied. "If he couldn't help, I venture nobody could."

Aoife picked Fiona up from the floor, sighing as she gave him a disapproving look. "If that's what you think is best," she said to Julian, "we'll see you when you return."

It had only been thirty minutes, but he suspected Molly had already set the pan-galactic record for fidgeting.

Ziyal's funeral was for the most part a typical Bajoran affair. It had begun with an emotional eulogy by Vedek Halan that had most of the attendants (including Julian and Molly) shedding tears, followed by a short reminiscence from Colonel Kira that had almost everyone laughing. The vedek of the Capital Temple, whom Julian was surprised to recognize as the woman who had laughed at him earlier, was now at the altar pronouncing a prayer in classical Bajoran.

"Rakaja ut shala morala," the vedek intoned, her voice clear and strong. "Emaboru kana uranak. Ralanon Sisko det Tora Ziyal en Sisko den Tora Deborah propeh va..."

So Jake had named the baby after his grandmother, he thought. He'd known they were planning to keep the child; he'd found traces of the standard Bajoran medicinal herbs in Ziyal's bloodstream during the autopsy, and the very fact that they'd eloped had spoken to their intentions. Julian only hoped that the act of giving the child a name helped the young man deal with his loss. It was all too easy for well-meaning friends and family to ignore the loss of a child in instances like this. Perhaps having the name on the program and in the vedek's prayers would remind them that Jake had lost more than just his bride of four days.

As the vedek droned on, Julian took the opportunity to sneak a look around the chapel. Most of the Bajoran attendees were either staring into the lamp at the front of the room or were sitting quietly, eyes closed, hands clasped in their laps. At the back of the room, Admiral Ross and his aide stood, separated from the rest of the mourners by at least two metres. Nobody would stand near them: Ross was being shunned. He wished he could join in the sentiment, but he had to spend most of the next morning with the man going over various Starfleet-related matters.

Molly squirmed again; he lay a gentle hand on her shoulder to calm her and turned his gaze back to the front of the chapel. Jake was, of course, the principal mourner, and had been treated with the utmost respect by everyone from the lowliest prylar up to First Minister Shakaar, but for all Julian could tell the young man might as well be dead himself. He didn't cry, didn't look around, didn't scream and shout. He just sat between his grandfather and Kasidy, his eyes closed, not moving a muscle. Only once did Julian catch him expressing some emotion: at one point during Vedek Merel's prayer he had opened his eyes, just for a second, and had given the dark Orb a hard stare, his eyes full of unspoken rage. Julian still remembered the young boy whom he'd first seen hanging off the top level of the Promenade flicking sand peas onto the heads of unsuspecting station residents, but now he also saw a man older than his tender years, bent and bowed with grief, unable to accept the worst thing a man could face.

The worst, he thought.

He suddenly imagined himself at the front of the chapel, with Miles's parents on either side of him and his children on their laps. Would I look like Jake does right now? he thought. Would I just sit there, without moving a muscle? Would I cry? Would I scream? Would I try to pick up the vedek and hurl her through the bloody-

He took a deep breath and willed himself to remain calm. He had Molly, he had Fiona, and he had the very real possibility that the wormhole would open at any time and bring Miles home.

Molly wiggled again as the prylars assembled for the death chant. Julian suspected she'd had enough and quietly led her out of the chapel and into the antechamber. "How are you doing?" he asked her once the door closed behind them.

She stuck her lower lip out. "Everybody's sad again."

"That's right," he replied. "They're all sad because they'll never see Ziyal again. Are you sad?"

She nodded as she clung to him.

"Why don't we go home?" he suggested. "You can ask Granny to replicate you some cookies."

As they left the temple, he looked around the deserted Promenade. The shops were closed, the corridors empty - fitting for a desolate day like this one, he thought. There had been a time when this place had been an exciting new frontier to him, full of mystery and intrigue and new experiences. He'd relished the charm of the unfamiliar language and ideas, but he hadn't paid a bit of attention to the people behind that superficial charm. Exoticism, he thought, his mind spiralling back to the art classes he'd taken at Harrow: the representation of a culture as nothing more than entertainment or spectacle for another. The Cardassians had exploited the Bajoran culture (or what they'd left of it) in that way, seeing it as a simpler, more naive society than their own. He'd been guilty of the same offence. In fact, it had only been in the past year that he'd begun to appreciate Bajoran society as a synthetic whole and not merely a collection of oddities. The station and Bajor had somehow become home, and the prayers of the vedek he'd heard today had seemed no more simple and naive (or exotic and mysterious for that matter) than the calls of the East London muezzin or the bells of Bow Church. Maybe Kira was right: maybe he was going native.

They entered the turbolift, and an obviously sleepy Molly held her arms up to him. He lifted her up, and within seconds she had drifted off, her head on his shoulder.

He thought again about Ziyal's death as the turbolift door opened. It hadn't just devastated her loved ones; it had been a deliberate act of cruelty meant to cause pain to every resident of the station. But what could you expect from someone like-

And as he entered his quarters, and as his eyes suddenly took in the transformed front room, the little voice in the back of his head suddenly whispered 'Round Two'.

The walls of the main room had been recoloured a bright red, while the side cabinets had become an almost painfully intense shade of blue. An enormous pointillist portrait of Miles's face - at least 1.5 metres wide, he estimated - adorned the far wall. Over a dozen garish papier-mache birds hung from the ceiling; they were surrounded by a festoon of glittery, translucent green fabric that was draped around the top of the walls. The sofa and loveseat had been covered by the type of pseudo-Persian blankets he usually associated with tacky old holovids of the Arabian Nights, while the chair had some kind of slinky black fabric thrown haphazardly over it. Strangest of all was the glowing, writhing fluorescent gold sculpture - if he could even call it that; for all he knew it could be a new life form - adorning his coffee table.

He looked down; at least she hadn't changed the rug.

In the corner he spotted Michael standing near the replicator shaking with laughter. "She's just in the fresher," Michael said, chortling. "If you could see the prize expression on your face, lad..."

He didn't reply; he just stood there, his mind racing. How could she do this? And how could she do this in less than an hour?

Just then Aoife returned to the living room. "Julian!" she cried, waking up Molly, who looked around and instantly stiffened in his grasp. "So what do you think of-"

"AIEEEEE! AIEEEEE! NO!!!!!" Molly jumped out of Julian's arms and ran to her room.

He chased after her only to find her bedroom similarly transformed and Molly under the bed. "Bunny, what's-"

"NO ODO!"

Odo? But of course, he thought with a sigh, as two and two suddenly collided to make five. "It's the birds," he said, looking up at Aoife, who was standing in the doorway giving him a puzzled look. "She's afraid of them."

"Birds?" Aoife repeated, disbelieving, as Michael began to pull down the papier-mache creations. "Now who would be afraid of pretty little birds?"

Molly was by now merely sobbing in blind terror. Julian checked her again, realizing from the smell that he'd have to get the carpet under the bed cleaned, and suppressed a sigh of frustration. "Our chief of security is a shapeshifter," he explained. "One day he apprehended a suspect by turning himself into a bird and swooping down on him. Unfortunately, he flew right over Molly's head and it spooked her. Since then, she's been terrified of birds or of anything that looks like one."

"They're all gone," Michael called from the front room. "Threw 'em in the recycler."

"You hear that?" he said lightly, reaching between Molly and the bed to rub her back. "All gone."

She gave him a look of misery and fear, then, almost before Julian could hold his arms out, she scooted into his grasp, burying her face in his shoulder as she continued to cry. He carefully inspected her bedroom for any other sign of avian invasion before carrying her out and down the hallway toward the bathroom. He snuck a look into Fiona's room to make sure-

-and the painting of Keiko and the original Molly was gone.

He spun on his heels. "The painting," he gasped, "the one of the mother and daughter! Where is it?"

Aoife rolled her eyes. "That piece of kitsch? I hadn't got around to recycling it yet-"

"Oh, thank God!" Julian cried, almost falling to his knees in relief.

Michael gave him a worried look. "What's wrong?"

He glared at Aoife. "That 'piece of kitsch', as you call it, is the only image in existence of - of two old friends of Miles's. They died last year. He would have been dev-" and he stopped himself, clamping his mouth shut: he really didn't want to give either of them the wrong, or in this case the right, idea.

Aoife's face paled. "I - I didn't realize. Sweet Mary! Michael, where's that painting?"

"Right here," he said, pulling it out from behind the sofa. "I put all of it back there," he told Julian with a knowing look. "I didn't know what you wanted to keep."

He took the painting from him with his free hand and propped it up near the door of the nursery, then carried Molly off to the bathroom. Before he began to remove her now-filthy dress, slip, tights, and underwear, he took a moment to catch his breath. How could she-

And then he snorted at his own idiocy. How could you, he asked himself. How could you yell at someone who had spent three days on a crowded shuttle just to help you out? And her adventure in decorating hadn't even been that bad.

Well, all right, he conceded; it had been that bad. And they were his quarters, his and Miles's, not theirs. But still...

"Papa?" Molly said, tugging at his sleeve.

"Sorry, bunny," he said. "I was just thinking." He helped Molly undress, then started the sonic shower for her and threw her sodden clothes into the recycler.

But his mind kept going back to that incident. He certainly had over- reacted, he told himself. Even if he had been in the right about his and Miles's personal property, he shouldn't have yelled at her.

If there was anything he did know about families, it was that sometimes you had to apologize even if you were in the right, and this was one of those times.

He helped Molly change into fresh clothing and put her down for her nap, then returned to the main room, which (and again he didn't know how) had been returned to its original colours, although the painting and the pulsating yellow sculpture hadn't been moved. "Aoife," he started, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been so adamant. It's just-"

"No," she interrupted him, waving a hand as Michael watched her expectantly. "I'm the one who should apologize. I got so enthused with the idea of fillin' up a blank space that I forgot they were *your* rooms. I shouldn't have tried to throw out your possessions, and I should have asked you first. I'm sorry."

"Apology accepted," Julian said.

The three of them shared a look of mutual understanding; obviously Michael had had a word with her while he'd been looking after Molly. "Listen," he said, changing the topic, "I'm sure you'd like to have a rest, so why don't you unpack and the five of us will go out for dinner tonight?"

"You mean Bajoran food?" Michael asked suspiciously. "Is that spicy?"

"Michael can't have anything too spicy," Aoife explained. "It gives him gas."

Oh wonderful. "We'll go to Quark's," he said. "He has an extensive selection of Earth-style food on his menu. How does 1900 sound?"

"That'll give us time to get a few winks in," Michael said, nodding as they headed to the spare room. "I could sure use it after today."

So could I, Julian thought as his gaze returned to the writhing yellow sculpture: so could I.

6

Julian returned to the Infirmary after his leave to find it as deserted as it had been before he left. He suspected Kira simply hadn't wanted him to break down on the job, but since the bulk of the station's civilian population had decamped there wasn't really a need for a fully manned Infirmary. He hadn't even had to squire around Ross: the admiral, shocked (and, Julian suspected, a little offended) by the Bajorans' attitude toward him, had fled the station after the funeral. An Admiral Somar was arriving in four days' time from Earth in what Kira sneeringly called 'an attempt to placate the locals'. He wished the man luck.

On the medical side of things, the researchers at Starbase 375 had cobbled together a treatment regimen for the meningitis consisting of eight different drugs. It wasn't a cure and it wouldn't work as a vaccine, but Admiral Quinn had told him that her team thought it would at the very least stop the spread of the virus and reduce the death rate. Julian had instantly relayed the good news to the Bajoran Health Ministry, and in the past 48 hours the fatality rate had shrunk from 35% to less than 1%. He still considered that too high, though. If he could only locate the source of the virus, he thought as he took a seat at one of the main Infirmary terminals, he might be able to devise a quick and dirty vaccine.

Try as he might, though, he couldn't remember where he'd seen that blasted xanthine molecule before. He cursed his apparently malfunctioning eidetic memory and began another search in the database, widening the search parameters to look for any instances of uracil- xanthine combinations in RNA.

As the search ran, his mind wandered back to his in-laws. Michael O'Brien hadn't given him much trouble, but that was mainly because it virtually took a tri-cobalt bomb to get him to do anything at all. He was content to carry out his wife's orders (and orders they were, he had found), but he also took the frequent opportunity to complain about her behind her back. Julian wasn't sure if he liked that. He did, however, appreciate that unlike many men of his age and culture, Michael didn't seem to mind that his son had married a man. Of course, that had been explained after he'd brought out a wad of family holos for Molly to look at and Julian had discovered that Michael and his five sisters were themselves the children of two men, a heavy spaceship mechanic and a classical pianist, who had just celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary with a week's vacation on Risa.

Aoife was a different story. There was no doubt that she was a good- hearted woman, but Julian suspected she had got so much into the habit of running the show that she forgot that it wasn't always her show to run. Or perhaps, he mused, she had always been that way, and she and Michael were simply perfectly matched. In