Chapter Text
Julian Bashir opened his eyes. It was a move he regretted at once. Bright white light from above stabbed into his vision like thousands of tiny gleaming needles, making his head throb and his stomach turn. He shut his eyes to regroup, but his faint sense of unease escalated to near panic as he remembered that in his experience bright white lights from above usually meant doctors, or surgery, and since he had no recent memory of going to a doctor, and the last time he woke up under surgical lights without knowing where he was, those ten years ago –
Fuck!
Heart slamming against his ribs, he sat bolt upright and looked around. A Bajoran woman in some sort of uniform – a nurse? – came rushing toward him, holding out her hands like she would comfort him. That was all well and good, nurses were always kind to him and he sort of appreciated getting attention from the pretty ones but right now he wouldn’t care if the hottest nurse in the whole universe was here, because his parents had no right -- he was an adult and they had no fucking right to do this to him again –
The nurse turned and called over her shoulder. “Captain!”
An imposing man in a uniform approached, talking to an older woman with salt and pepper hair. Their insignia looked Starfleet, but their uniforms were strange, unlike any he’d ever seen before…
Were they some sort of Starfleet secret police? Had he been found out? He gripped his knees with sweaty palms and realized he was wearing a surgical gown. Were they going to reverse what had been done to him? His insides melted into quivering jelly. He hated what his parents had done, but the thought of it being taken away from him now was an even more horrifying thought. Hadn’t he been messed with enough?
“Who are you?” he shouted, considering it a small miracle that his voice wasn’t shaking, because he sure was. “Where am I?”
“Doctor Bashir – Julian. Calm down.”
That brought him up short. Doctor? What the hell was this?
Oh my god. Maybe this was it. He was losing it, following down the same path as many others who were like him. He was finally losing his mind. “What’s going on?”
A soft groan drew the Captain’s attention to a biobed off to Julian’s right. He followed the Captain’s gaze and saw a Cardassian boy about his age sitting up slowly, a hand pressed to his ridged forehead.
“Mister Garak, glad you’re awake.”
The other boy – Garak? – snapped his head up, eyes widening as he took in his surroundings. He gasped and opened his mouth to speak but the Captain held up his hands to cut him off. “It’s alright, you’re not in any danger. Neither one of you is. Just hold on -- now that you’re both awake, I’ll explain everything.”
Garak turned to look right at him with this little lost and bewildered expression, and when their gazes locked Julian was staggered by a warm burst of feeling in his chest. Unexplainable feeling. For this Cardassian boy.
It was strange, but for some reason it seemed so familiar to him, somehow, to look at this person and to feel this way. Which made no sense. He was sure that he didn’t know this Garak – surely he would have remembered meeting a Cardassian? -- but nevertheless there was some sort of a connection here, a major connection, a pull so magnetic that he felt like he’d just been trundled up into a giddy ball of excitement and set rolling down the side of a steep mountain.
And even weirder was that, even though he prided himself on his, well, affinity for all sorts of humanoids, whenever he set off in sparks like this it was more often than not over girls, and he’d never even met a Cardassian in person until now. All the pictures he’d ever seen of Cardassians usually framed them in a vaguely sinister way, but Garak had a rather pleasant round face and really amazing blue eyes; he’d never really thought that a boy could have such pretty eyes...
The Starfleet man cleared his throat, and Julian came back to himself with an embarrassed little jolt.
“I’m Captain Benjamin Sisko,” the man said with an air of kindly authority. He gestured to the woman next to him. “This is Doctor Pham. You’re on the Federation outpost Deep Space Nine, and you are both residents here.”
Residents? Julian stole a glance at Garak, who had adopted a hard expression of suspicion that was doing a pretty good job of masking how frightened he undoubtedly was. His own face probably looked a lot like that.
“There’s been an accident. The two of you were on a shuttle en route to the station, and you were forced off-course into the wormhole. We believe that you passed through an energy anomaly that has de-aged you.”
Julian digested this. “De-aged?”
“That’s right. You’re actually a grown man in your early thirties, Julian, but you’ve been de-aged into a young adult. About eighteen years old, according to our scans. Garak, you’re –” Sisko paused to think, and he looked a little bemused. “Actually, I have no idea old you really are.” He turned to Pham, who shrugged. Sisko chuckled. “Well, somewhere in early middle age, I suppose. But right now you appear to be at an age roughly equivalent to Julian’s.”
Sisko turned back to face him, serious again. “Julian, what’s the last thing you remember?”
The situation was still confusing as all hell, but Julian started to relax just a tiny bit because it was starting to look as if the outing of his genetic status actually wasn’t the order of the day. He thought back. “I – I don’t know. Studying for finals? I just got accepted to Starfleet medical…I don’t have any memory of this station at all – you say I live here? What do I do?”
The Captain and Doctor Pham exchanged looks as though something had just been confirmed. A little prickle of irritation shot up Julian’s spine as Sisko ignored his question and turned to the Cardassian. “Mister Garak, do you remember anything about living on this station?”
Garak hesitated, sliding a quick glance Julian’s way. “No, I don’t,” he answered slowly, as though the words were being dragged out of him. “I remember being on Cardassia. Finishing my last year of school.”
An upwelling of compassion shunted Julian’s fear and annoyance firmly to the side. They may not be getting a lot of answers, but whatever was going on at least he was among his own kind, with people from Starfleet. How would he be feeling if he’d woken up surrounded by Cardassians?
Sisko nodded. “Our scans show that you have memory engrams consistent with your true ages, but those memories beyond your current ages have been blocked.”
Blocked memories did not sound like a good thing at all, but Julian was surprised by how comforted he was by the fond, almost paternal expression Sisko turned to him. “Julian, to answer your previous question, you are the station’s chief medical officer.”
“Oh.” Now there was a revelation. He blinked and smiled a little bit at the cautious pride he felt from this news. Good to know he’d made it through medical school, at least. But what was he doing out in the middle of nowhere? Was it something he had chosen, or had they found out about him and sent him out to the edges of Federation space? And what had he been doing traveling on a shuttle with a Cardassian?
Sisko continued on. “Mister Garak, you own a tailor’s shop on the station’s Promenade.” Garak took this in silently, nodding slowly at this bit of information.
Julian watched the subtle flexing motion of Garak’s neck scales and suddenly needed to know --
“Captain,” he burst out, “do Garak and I know each other?”
His face blossomed with heat as he felt Garak’s eyes burning into the side of his head, but he resolutely held Sisko’s gaze, willing a straight, simple answer.
Sisko gave him a short, lopsided smile. “Yes. Yes, you do. In fact, I’d say that the two of you are good friends.”
Friends. Well, that was alright. At least he hadn’t been Garak’s jailer or something like that. Good friends, even. He glanced at Garak and wondered at the little tug of disappointment in his stomach.
“Now listen carefully,” Sisko continued, businesslike. “We’re working on a solution right now. Fortunately, our station’s engineer Chief O’Brien has had some experience with this kind of phenomenon. But it’ll take him and our science officer Commander Dax several more hours to adapt the station’s technology. But don’t worry,” Sisko assured, his grin so certain that Julian was calmed in spite of himself. Was there a class that command officers had to take in Starfleet – Speeches and Smiles 101: How to Inspire Confidence? “We will get you both back to normal very soon. In the meantime we’ll set you up in some guest quarters while you wait.”
Julian frowned. “Not our own quarters?”
“I’m afraid not. We don’t want to disrupt your memory block. We aren’t sure how your brains will react and we’d rather not risk it – O’Brien and Dax assure me that your memories will be restored when you’re physically returned to normal.”
He was unhappy about this, and Garak looked even unhappier, but what could they do?
Sisko seemed to pick up on their disgruntlement. “I know this situation must be distressing for you both. I promise we’ll set everything right very soon. Just try to take it easy, and we’ll call you in a couple of hours.” He turned and beckoned forth a tall man with a smoothed-out face who was accompanied by a young woman in a Starfleet uniform. “Constable Odo here will take you to your rooms as soon as you’re ready. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
It wasn’t really a question; Sisko turned, the door swished open, and he was gone.
Doctor Pham stepped forward and spoke to them kindly. “You’re all done here for now. Nurse Kaela will bring you some clothes to change into, and then I can go over your scans with you in more detail before you go.”
Looking at the scans sounded like a good plan, but all in all Julian was eager to be getting away from the infirmary and its bright clinical lights. He hopped off the bed when the cute nurse approached with a folded grey and green jumpsuit and a smile. It was a very nice smile, but his attention was drawn over to Garak.
For his part, the Cardassian looked positively offended by his identical jumpsuit. “Excuse me, I…I thank you for your trouble, but I simply cannot wear this! It’s - it’s indecent!”
Julian wasn’t sure about indecent, exactly, but it did look to be skintight and it was kind of ugly; he knew he didn’t have an eye for this sort of thing, so he figured that it must be especially hideous. The nurse seemed a little affronted, but Constable Odo harrumphed a short, raspy chuckle and suggested they let Garak replicate something for himself. Garak looked a little taken aback but nodded his appreciation, and he quickly dialed up a simple black tunic and matching trousers that Julian thought looked a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
He cleared his throat and flashed his most winning smile at Garak. “Hey, I’ll take a set of those too.”