Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Bashir walked into the arboretum and closed the door behind him, while Elim was alone and tending to a rare Orion helleborine, Elim’s first impulse was to reach for a nearby tomato vine and throw one of the fruits at him. He understood that it was a Terran tradition to throw tomatoes at someone who deserved punishment.

However, he stayed his hand and continued clipping rhizomes as if he hadn’t noticed Bashir’s entrance, nor heard the clack of his cane-tip on the floor as he approached him.

For an uncomfortably long time, Bashir was silent, standing somewhere behind Elim; Elim could feel him watching. Then, at length, Bashir cleared his throat. “Elim.”

Elim didn’t bother to hide his sigh, but when he turned around, he pretended to be pleasantly(?) surprised to see Bashir anyway. “Doctor!” he said with intentionally false cheer, “the Defiant has returned safely from the Gamma Quadrant, I see!”

Bashir smiled very blandly. “Funny you should mention that…”

"You don't need to tell me. I'll be reading the mission debriefs tonight before bed, either way."

Something in Bashir's expression told Elim that the man had not only come to visit the arboretum to repeat easily accessible (well, for Elim at least) information to him. "You do know that you're not actually supposed to do that, right?"

Blinking upwards, eyes wide and innocent, Elim flicked a bit of dirt from his sleeve. "It's not like anyone on the senior staff will find out about it...?"

In lieu of a chair, Bashir leaned heavily onto his cane with a sigh. "I've had a rough couple days..."

Is he going to whine about how hard his cushy Starfleet job is now? Elim thought dubiously but just politely returned to tending to his plants. Maybe it would be better if Bashir got... whatever was eating at him out of his system. It wasn't like he had many other friends to talk to besides Elim - if Elim offered him a listening ear, perhaps it would grant him a few days of freedom from Bashir's incessant need for interaction. 

"...have you ever thought about having children, Elim?"

Now, this felt like a trap. "I'm Cardassian," Elim said evasively. "It's not really something we consciously consider. It's just something we do. Although I doubt Tain would've let me, either way." 

"I did think about it, but with... well, everything that I had going on in my life - both my genetic status and... professional responsibilities..."

"You made an informed decision against it?" Elim finished that line of thought.

Bashir nodded solemnly, determinedly staring at one of the thorny Orion imports. "There was too much at risk. It's too late for me now, anyway, but this mission really made me understand what kind of things I will forever be missing out on. It's one thing to build my legacy on medicine or diplomatic relations, but another to have this legacy be continued and carried on by my kin."

Losing his patience, Elim clipped off a wilted leaf with more aggression than he had necessarily intended. "I'm afraid I fail to follow, Doctor?"

"We came across some strange readings in the Gamma Quadrant. Turns out it was a whole planet, housing distant descendants of the Defiant’s crew — including Commander Dax and Odo with a new host and himself, respectively."

"Distant? How is that possible?"

Bashir shrugged almost helplessly. "I suppose a lot of things can happen in two hundred years."

Elim, baffled, put his clippers down and fully turned to face Bashir. “Excuse me?” he said.

Bashir, groaning slightly, levered himself to the floor and sat next to where Elim was still kneeling; Elim had the brief thought that if Bashir couldn’t get back to his feet on his own when the conversation was over, he would not be helping him up. “The planet had an energy barrier with a load of quantum fluctuations. When we crossed the barrier, we didn’t go back in time - yet - but supposedly, when we were to leave the planet after two days, we would - or had - crash-landed right back on the planet, two hundred years in the past. The planet was named Gaia, by the way. We named it.”

“In the past?”

“Yes, apparently when we crash-landed in the past, there was no way to get the Defiant back running again, let alone with warp capabilities. And of course, this was centuries before the wormhole was even discovered. There really was no choice but to stay on Gaia. Not just an encampment, mind you, but a proper settlement.”

“And people had children and such,” Elim surmised. He wasn’t finding this terribly interesting so far.

“By the time we got there, er, the first time, just now, that is - the population had swelled to a little over eight thousand people… all directly descended from the original fifty crew on the Defiant. Or rather, from the forty-seven people who actually reproduced.”

“Constable Odo wasn’t one of them, I assume,” Elim said, “but…?”

“Well, Major Kira died within the first few weeks.”

“I see. Who else? You? I didn’t think you were so old that you couldn’t, given the right situation…”

“Ah, no,” Bashir said, looking a little awkward. “When I said it’s too late for me to have children, I wasn’t referring to—- I irreversibly sterilized myself when I got married.”

Elim felt an embarrassing flash of disappointment, and somehow felt sure that Bashir had seen it on his face although he didn’t think he’d shown it. Thankfully, he didn’t say anything.

“Major Kira died, you say?” Elim said, changing the subject.

“She was hit by the energy discharge when we went through the barrier the first time,” Bashir said, raising his hands, “she’s fine now, because we have the equipment to treat the neural damage here on the station. But two hundred years in the past, on an unknown planet, with only whatever equipment survived the Defiant’s crash…”

“Doctor, trying to follow this sequence of events is giving me a headache.”

“Time travel is like that.” Bashir rubbed his forehead. “So— no Bashirs running around. I did get to see my own grave, though. Interesting experience.”

“I see,” Elim said. Was that what he was so bothered by? A stark reminder of his own mortality?

“Mm. I checked the dates on the markers. I outlived everyone else from the Defiant, except for Odo, of course, and the Dax symbiont - Worf died just a few years before me, but it was over a hundred years after everyone else. So for a century or so, the only original settlers left were Odo, Worf, and myself. Just imagine.”

“Sounds unpleasant,” Elim deadpanned.

Bashir smiled. “Apparently I spent most of the rest of my life trying to rebuild the Defiant’s warp core from scratch. I must have been planning to head back to the Alpha Quadrant, even if it took seventy years to do so.”

“You would have had the time. But I suppose you simply didn’t have the materials.”

“That was what everyone said. Seems I turned into a bit of a… cautionary tale in the settlements on Gaia. I died a sad old man, alone and utterly unfulfilled.”

“That’s very tragic and all, Doctor,” Elim said, “but if all that happened, then what are you doing back here?”

“Well, obviously,” Bashir said, “when we left Gaia and went back through the energy barrier, we didn’t get thrown two hundred years in the past.”

Elim paused. “So what happened to the settlement?”

“It ceased to exist. Their ancestors were never born.”

He said it so casually. Elim frowned at him. “Doctor, I’m sure you can give me the exact number, and I don’t particularly care to hear it - but if the settlements on this planet went from about fifty people to over eight thousand in the course of two hundred years, then doesn’t that mean that - in addition to the eight thousand who were there when you visited, tens of thousands more people who had already lived their whole lives from birth to death there were simply… undone?”

“Yes,” Bashir said bluntly.

"I’d have thought that your Federation morals would've kept Captain Sisko from making such an unsavory decision."

"While there are certain ideals the Federation stands for, there is no blanket ethical rule to apply to each and every situation," Bashir explained, visibly uncomfortable. "Besides, Captain Sisko was in favor of letting, ah,'nature take its course', so to speak."

Elim blinked and turned to look at Bashir. "You're telling me the Defiant's return to DS9 was unintentional?"

"Originally, yes. But there were certain... parties left unsatisfied with the idea of staying lost in the Gamma Quadrant for the next two hundred years."

The first explanation Elim could come up with was related to Major Kira's passing. Had the Major objected to being sacrificed for a group of hypothetical and yet potentially real people? Had someone else been? Perhaps Constable Odo? It was no secret that he felt very strongly about Kira, although Elim liked to think that Odo's affection for her was dampened by the fact that she had pretty much been the first person to ever show him any affection, which rendered his presumed feelings a little pathetic.

Bashir grinned at him, although he didn't seem very happy about it. "I can tell you're trying to figure it out - and I do think you might be right, too."

"So," Elim tried, glancing back at the flowerbeds so as to not let Bashir think that he had Elim's undivided attention. "Odo had... objections?"

"Odo? Oh. Well, uh, yes. He did, too, I suppose."

Too? "Out with it, Doctor. I don't have time for games today. These plants won't take care of themselves, you know."

"Well, it should be enough to say that Odo was also involved in the events that brought us back," Bashir said at length. "As was I."

"I'm not surprised," Elim complained, surprised, and fully turned back to his work.

"I had to do it, Elim."

"Spare me your melodramatic tale, Doctor. I know enough about your selfish behavior to be able to tell when it drives you to what only you deem a rational decision. Even if your motivations are lacking— oh, but surely you don't expect me to find it admirable that you betrayed your captain and crew out of duty to your government? I'm positive someone else would've gotten around to dealing with Section 31 eventually..."

He couldn't see Bashir's expression at that moment, but the doctor remained suspiciously silent for a long while after Elim had spoken. 

"...it wasn't me, by the way. I mean, I fully intended to sabotage the original plan, but Gaia's Odo preempted any actions I could've taken. I did check his calculations for what it's worth though. They were flawless."

Elim grimaced. "You've always been a control freak. Still, I don't see what you are trying to accomplish by telling me about this tale of woe of yours. Are you trying to demonstrate to me how serious you are about fighting Section 31— that you would throw away the lives of thousands of innocents to achieve that goal?"

Suddenly, then, Bashir had moved beside him, carelessly touching his clumsy mammalian hands all over the helleborine. "You misunderstand, Elim," he said evenly as he inspected the plant. "I came back for you."

Eyes narrowed in disbelief and embarrassment at once, Elim pushed him away from the flowers. "You can't be serious! You know well enough that I don't care for any of these pathetic human displays of—"

"But I do! I couldn't bear the thought of losing you! Leaving you behind without a goodbye! I'm aware you like to think of me as some cold-hearted, opportunistic predator, but you've said yourself that one of my biggest flaws is sentimentality..."

"You're terrible," Elim scolded Bashir, almost in disbelief at the sheer audacity. "Completely awful."

Bashir just smiled at him with a sad hopelessness clouding his expression. "Oh, I know. You're completely right, of course."

"And I really do genuinely hate you sometimes," Elim raged on.

"Well, I'm glad to hear that you don't find it to be a constant state of being."

"Oh, but I wish I did, Doctor!"

“You don’t mean that, Elim—”

“How can you expect me to do anything else?!” Elim snapped, snarling at him. “You come in here telling me your little tale of woe, telling me that you can’t bear the thought of losing me-!”

“But it’s true,” Bashir said. Elim loathed whenever they got into a situation where Elim was spitting mad and Bashir was quiet and calm, though in this case it seemed more that Bashir was simply too depressed to raise his voice - it didn’t make Elim feel any better. “Elim, please… I couldn’t lose you… I couldn’t go through that again.”

Elim scoffed. “Like when you lost Tain, hm, Doctor?”

“Like when I lost you,” Bashir said softly, “because I accepted my orders to infiltrate the Dominion.”

Elim, caught off guard, jerked his head away to stare at the flowerbed and not at Bashir. Despite that, his every other sense was attuned to Bashir sitting next to him, way too close. Even in the greenhouse warmth of the arboretum, Bashir’s body heat called out to Elim like a beacon, while his scent and the sound of his breathing reminded him of what had been missing from his left ever since Bashir had left for Meezan IV.

“So what?” Elim said in what he intended to be a low hiss, and came out more as a hoarse whisper. “You expect me to be impressed by this… grand sacrificial gesture you intended to take? You think that I’ll welcome you back with open arms because you were willing to erase tens of thousands of people from this timeline just for the chance to see me again?”

“I just need you to know that I’m serious,” Bashir said quietly.

Elim exhaled slowly through his nose. “I see what you’re after, sir,” he said at length, still not looking at him. “You’re desperate to get me in on your plot against Section 31, and you know that I only agreed to participate the other day because I wanted to get you out of my quarters.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Elim saw Bashir cringe. Served him right. “How are things going with Ziyal, by the way?”

“She is still my friend, if that’s what you’re wondering. Don’t change the subject.”

Bashir exhaled shakily, reaching for his cane, but aborting the movement just before touching it as if he had decided against getting up after all. "If you really do not want to get involved with Section 31, I understand and respect that decision."

"But?"

"...but I'd be very glad if you were to consider reinstating our shared lunches again."

Elim eyed Bashir in disbelief. He had known that humans as a species tended to stray towards sentimentality - Bashir was a prime example of that - but this was even more pathetic than anything else he had come to know about the man. "Sands," he breathed. "You really must be an embarrassment for your superiors. Lunch? Really?"

"Oh, I won't deny we'd have an advantage with you on our side, but going against Section 31 is not a decision I can make for anyone else."

"But having lunch is?"

Trying for a small smile, Bashir placed his hand on Elim's arm. It burned like fire, even through the insulated fabric. "Well, would you perhaps have lunch with me tomorrow?"

"Where?" There was no way he was going back to Bashir's quarters after... last time.

"The replimat? Our table?"

Elim huffed and dug his claws into the soil in front of him. "I'll think about it..."

Bashir eventually lurched to his feet, wobbling dangerously as he put more weight on his cane than it was probably rated for. Elim kept his eyes trained on his plants. He nodded slightly, absently, as Bashir mumbled a goodbye and began to shuffle out of the arboretum.

“Wait,” Elim groaned, standing up and brushing the dirt off his pants.

“Elim?” Bashir looked back hopefully.

Elim was sure his expression was some pathetic mixture of reproachful and resigned, but he didn’t avoid Bashir’s eyes this time. “About Section 31,” he said. “I’ll help you.”

Bashir’s eyes widened. “You— you will?”

“If anyone can pull this off, you can,” Elim explained with a sigh. “You were willing to go to such extreme lengths just for me - with the entire Federation at stake, I certainly wouldn’t bet against you.”

It was easier for Elim to pretend that he had nothing to do with Bashir’s decision to turn on Section 31.

Bashir smiled, hesitantly, and didn’t call him out. “Thank you, Elim.”

“Oh, don’t even start with that. This is a professional matter, do you understand? Strictly business. Section 31 is a threat against Cardassia; you yourself are proof enough of that.” Elim frowned pointedly. “Since Cardassia joined with the Dominion, I’m sure that the Federation’s concern about Cardassia as an enemy has only increased…”

“Yes, of course,” Bashir said. “Strictly business.”

Elim made a mental note to remember this moment so he would be able to count exactly how long it took for Bashir to make it personal again.