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Chapter Text

I swear by Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius the surgeon, likewise Hygeia and Panacea, and call all the gods and goddesses to witness, that I will observe and keep this underwritten oath, to the utmost of my power and judgment.

- Classic Hippocratic Oath

“There’s a Tear in the research labs.”

Julian blinked. Jabara had stormed into the room looking—well, okay, not very agitated, but for Jabara, yes, very agitated—and checked very quickly to be sure no one else was there before bursting out with that pronouncement.

“Like… Tears of the Prophets? Gives visions to those who look into them? That kind of Tear?”

“Yes.”

“On the station?”

“In the research labs.” She paused. “The Cardassians have already stolen all the others, and they won’t keep this one here long. They take them back to Cardassia to study. If this one is stolen too… we’ll be entirely without the Prophets’ guidance.”

Julian froze as he realized what she was asking. Jabara already knew that Julian had a contact who could get into the research labs and smuggle things down to Bajor, because he had arranged for it once before—to stall the genetic experiments for a while and free some of the victims. She wanted him to get word to the other cell, to arrange for it to be done a second time.

“You realize,” he said slowly, buying himself time to process, “that this screams ‘trap,’ especially if none of the other Tears passed through here on their way back to Cardassia.”

“I’m aware. I’m not asking for the impossible—but this is too great a chance not to take the risk. I know they must know that, and my cell doesn’t have the capability to take that on.”

“It doesn’t have to be a trap for rescuers. It might be a trap for you. How many people know it’s there?”

“The entire laboratory staff,” said Jabara. “Including the Bajorans. They’re watching to see if one of us tries something. But that’s the beauty of it; no one knows we’re friends, and even if they did no one thinks you have any association with the Resistance beyond the obvious.”

Jabara always came to see Julian secretly, something which had gotten harder since Leeta had moved in—Julian had no idea how far he could trust Leeta. She wasn’t actively malicious, not like Hana, and he didn’t think she was a collaborator, but he had no way to know if she would keep his secrets. But if the Cardassians or Odo were watching Jabara, they might have noticed this visit and the timing would have been suspicious.

Julian’s lack of visible connection to the Resistance was his shield and he had only actively involved himself with an operation that one time. If this became the second, he wouldn’t be able to dare a third.

Odo knew Julian was friends with Kira. But if Kira got away clean, or wasn’t directly involved with the operation… Odo would be suspicious, but wouldn’t be able to connect it back to Julian. That still left the fact that it had to have come from someone on the staff. Process of elimination would be good enough for a Cardassian investigator but it wouldn’t be for Odo without some sort of affirmative evidence. If they were careful, if they were clean, it was possible. But there was something else, something in the back of his mind… and then the realization slammed into him all at once.

“You don’t care if this is a trap for you as long as the Tear gets away.” His voice was flat.

“I’m still going to put effort into not getting killed. Our patients need need me, and when all this is over helping them will be easier if we’re both there to work on it. But yes, the Tear is more important than me. Ensuring Bajor continues to have the Prophets’ guidance is more important than any one of us.”

“Because the Prophets’ guidance has done so well for Bajor already.” He regretted the words almost as soon as they slipped out, but Jabara only looked at him tiredly.

“I know you don’t believe they’re good at being gods. I also know that you’re going to help me anyway because you care that I believe it.”

“You know me entirely too well for someone who’s only known me for so many months.”

“It’s why we get along.”

“You realize what you’re asking. If I get involved in this I won’t be able to risk a third time.”

“I know. But a good card is no better than a bad one if you never play it.”

He sighed. “I’ll see what I can do.

“What you can do, Julian, is far more than most.”

“I know. That’s how I got exiled from the Federation in the first place.”

***

“I have something for you.”

Kira looked at Julian with surprise. While it wasn’t unusual for him to approach her quietly in the back corners—they were known to be friends—the last time he had ‘had something’ for her had been the enhanced experiment victims. That operation had been a success, and despite compartmentalization she knew that several of those individuals had gone on to be a great credit to the Resistance, but Julian had been clear that the only reason he had been involved was the magnitude, and he had been clear he wouldn’t get involved again.

Which meant whatever he had was of similar magnitude.

With some apprehension, she asked him what he meant.

“I’m told there’s a Tear on the station. In the research labs.”

“A Tear?” That was… disastrous. There was only one Tear left that hadn’t been taken to Cardassia Prime for study. If they got that one, Bajor would be entirely without the Prophets’ guidance. With the Occupation destroying Bajor, they desperately needed the Prophets’ guidance. The will of the Prophets was the only way they were going to succeed in getting rid of the Cardassians.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“The same way I knew about the last thing I brought you,” Julian answered. “It’s probably a trap, although we’re not sure if it’s for my source or for you.”

“Possibly both. It would have to be very well-planned—and I probably wouldn’t be able to stay on the station afterwards.”

Julian winced. “I thought that was likely.”

“You’re getting wiser in the ways of how we operate.”

“I was custom-built for pattern-matching.” That was a… singularly odd way to phrase it, although all of Julian’s descriptions of himself were odd in one way or another.

She decided this was not the moment to ask. “If we do this we’ll need that thing you have. And any reconnaissance you can do on the labs—does your friend have any idea what additional security measures were put in after the last time?”

“I can ask. They’re not tactical like you are, though, or even as much as I am, so I wouldn’t trust a list to be complete.”

Not even as tactical as Julian, but probably the person he’d been getting lessons in Cardassian politics from, the one who put forth such a compelling case for the end of the Occupation being imminent. Kira really was getting curious about the identity of Julian’s friend. It was obvious he trusted them implicitly even as he was careful to maintain compartmentalization—Julian was, Kira thought, the only distinct connection between the two cells operating on the station, although after that incident with Julian and the legate she had some confirmation Taria was involved, which was probably also how Julian had gotten recruited in the first place.

“Whatever we can get helps. I assume this has to take place quickly.”

“It’s not staying on the station long, no. A few days at most.”

“That makes it even more likely it’s a trap,” Kira pointed out.

“Believe me, I know.” Julian leaned back against the wall. “I wouldn’t have risked it. But I know you will, and I am, as I’ve said, in the service of Bajor.”

“You’re going to wind up serving the Prophets sooner or later with that attitude.”

“So I’ve been told.”

Had his friend also told him that? While Julian didn’t exactly make a secret of his allegiance to Bajor, he didn’t advertise it either—it was important for the Cardassians to regard him as a neutral party. Evidence that he was trusting other Bajorans with his secrets was simultaneously concerning and something of a relief: while more people knowing meant more people who might let something slip, it also gave credence to his involvement in other things.

Kira had decided to trust him about whatever he was doing with Dukat, but that didn’t mean she didn’t appreciate supporting evidence.

“I can’t create a plan right now; I need to get in touch with other people. There’s a good chance we’ll need to involve you more directly.”

“Involve me as little as you can, but I will be involved if I have to—I won’t be able to get away with it a third time, but I know this is important.”

“This is one of the most important things we will undertake.”

“Then I’ll do what I need to.”

***

Despite his words to Kira, Julian had not truly been expecting to find himself, once the heist had been pulled off, sitting in an unused maintenance tube with a box containing a Tear of the Prophets—apparently everyone had been needed for the other parts of the plan and the least hazardous job of babysitting the box had fallen to Julian. He was to wait with it for Kira to come to him and then walk with her to the escape ship. There would be a distraction that should draw most of the Cardassians away, but Julian was there to distract-via-flirting anyone who might be left.

He desperately hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. He didn’t want anyone spotting him tonight. It was bad enough that he was involved at all, even if there was no one else who could believably serve as a last-ditch distraction.

To distract himself from his anxiety about that, he turned his attention to the box beside him. It was not ornately decorated, but the case had clearly been lovingly crafted. The Tears, he knew, were some of the oldest surviving treasures of Bajor, studied by the vedeks for generations. They gave visions to those the Prophets deemed worthy, to help people work the Prophets’ will in the world. Visions of the past, possible futures, and more symbolic instructions were all possible. Never anything truly direct, but often useful all the same.

He did, on some level, understand why they were taking such risks for this object. The visions offered useful guidance and communication with their gods, in a time when people were desperate for such comfort, and with good reason.

Not that the visions offered were usually in any way comforting, but if you believed, you had the comfort of your gods.

Julian wished he could believe, because maybe then he wouldn’t be sitting in a disused maintenance shaft trying not to panic about getting caught doing something that openly proclaimed his allegiances. If he got killed there would be no medical help for the Bajorans and the children would bear the full brunt of station life and Nog would have another downward spiral like he had last time Julian had been dead and it would get harder to get supplies to the resistance…

He tightened his grip on the box, feeling the pressure of the carving digging into his hand. He let that feeling ground him, bringing him back to his body, back to the tube.

Focus, he told himself. Breathe. Be aware and alert, but not panicky. He rubbed his hand further over the box. The carvings really were beautifully done. He ran his hands over one of the seams of the box and heard a brief click. He looked down to see that the box had popped open. Before he could close it, his eyes fell upon the glowing helix inside the box.

And suddenly, he wasn’t in the tube anymore.

Chapter Text

He’s seated at a desk in a wood-paneled office. There’s art on the walls, and shelves of books, both PADDs and paper . Two curtained windows let in light and air, and he can hear the sounds of children’s laughter from beyond them. Sitting on the desk in front of him is a plaque, clearly meant to go on a wall. In written Bajoran, it commemorates ‘ Bashir Julian’ for ten years as the research director of the Jennifer Sisko Pediatric Genetics Institute.

He stands up to look around the office. The books on the shelves are medical textbooks. Many of them are about genetics, including a few that he appears to have written about treating the aftereffects of genetic manipulation and the ethics of genetic manipulation . Others are about the physiology and child development of various species—not just Bajorans, but also Cardassians, Klingons, Ferengi, and a number of Federation species. There’s even one about Romulans and a few about species he’s never heard of ; there are several about something called the ‘Jem’Hadar,’ all of which he’s written. (In some cases with coauthors, but his name appears on the spines of all of them.)

Julian knows little about art, but he can tell that the art on the walls is a fusion of Bajoran and Cardassian styles; somehow he’ s unsurprised to see that the signature at the bottom reads ‘Tora Ziyal.’ They are clearly made by a mature hand, the product of an older artist than the Ziyal he knows.

He walks to the window, drawn by the laughing children, and opens the curtain. The first thing to strike him about the view is the verdant green landscape. He sees a paved path winding among flowering bushes and small fruit trees to the playground directly in front of his window.

The playground, like many hospital playgrounds, features toys and climbing structures that have clearly been adapted for children with mobility issues. The first level of the climbing structure is accessible by ramp and several swings have buckles; beside the sandbox there are sand and water tables at wheelchair height. The whole playground appears to have been constructed to be beautiful as well as functional; the climbing structure is a veritable maze with a tree in the center. The children playing are not just Bajoran or Cardassian-Bajoran hybrids; he sees other species as well— some human s , two Trill who look like twins , and what looks to be an Andorian-Klingon hybrid, among others. (He can guess what that child is doing here; there is no way that conception happened without quite a lot of genetic intervention, and unless the doctor doing that intervention was beyond exceptional, no way it happened without problems.) Some of them drag IVs or wear leg braces, others have tics or wear breathing apparatuses, and a few use wheelchairs. A Cardassian adolescent is clearly new to using a hoverchair; she clumsily practices the controls on the field beside the playground w hile a Bajoran adult encour ages her. Other adults move through the rest of the playground, settling disputes and helping those who need it. He sees one Bajoran-Cardassian adult lift a Bajoran child with an IV to the top of a slide and guide him down, careful to keep the IV from getting tangled. He laughs and begs to do it again.

“It’s a wonder you get anything done, as easily as you’re distracted by that window.”

He turns to see an older Jabara standing in the door of the office. She wears a uniform with a name tag on it; the title beneath her name proclaims her to be dean of the nursing educational program. He doesn’t answer her; she appears to take his silence for surprise and laughs.

“Ziyal said I am to remind you that you are having lunch with her and General Kira and that if you get distracted by interesting research again she will come and drag you out by your hair.”

Julian still isn’t sure how to react to this; he manages, “I’m sure I can avoid that.”

“Good. Kira wants to complain to you about politics again; the Federation is once again making diplomatic noise about our harboring criminals. As though anyone could be a criminal for something done to them as children! It’s not like we take in the ones who did it to themselves, but no, we are apparently building some kind of Augment army.” She rolls her eyes . “You told me about it and I believed you, but when we started this project I hadn't internalized just how severe the prejudice is. ”

“They think we’re all the next Khan.” There, that seems safe enough.

“We manage to imprison our own augmented criminals just fine. I think they just don’t like that we managed to do what they couldn’t. Which reminds me, we’ve got the raw data back from the latest round of testing. I haven’t done more than glance at it but I think it looks promising; they all seem to be breathing better .”

“I’ll look at it after lunch.”

“ I look forward to your analysis . And don’t forget you have an appointment to come terrify my students about research ethics during the afternoon lecture!” She ducks out of the room. He looks back out at the playground, and then the room dissolves around him.

***

They had accomplished setup faster than anticipated, which meant Kira would have some time in the tube with Julian before they met up with the transport ship. To her mind, this was a positive, because it meant a chance to talk before she left—her fragile truce with Odo wouldn’t survive his outright catching her, and there had been no way to do this that left her completely clean, not in the time they had.

Or it was a positive until she reached Julian and saw the Tear’s case open and glowing with Julian staring at it, transfixed. She muttered a curse. The Prophets wouldn’t have shown him anything if they hadn’t welcomed him opening it, but the timing was spectacularly inconvenient.

It did, at least, serve to prove that he was indeed part of the Prophets’ plan for Bajor. She sat beside him to wait for him to come out of it.

She was not kept waiting long; he took a shuddering breath and looked up from the glow a moment later. Kira hastily closed the case; as much as she wanted to see if the Prophets would speak to her, now was not the time, and the choice of who looked at it rightfully belonged to the Vedek Assembly. A closer look at Julian revealed tears in his eyes; he looked transformed, lit from within in a way she had never seen from him before.

“Julian?” she asked quietly.

He startled. “I… saw, Nerys,” he whispered. “A future, a possible future… Bajor free… Bajor healed. And not just healed. A refuge for pediatric genetics experiment victims from across the quadrant.”

Her breath caught. She had first taken up a weapon to free her people at the age of twelve; she had been fighting for that freedom her whole life. The idea that it might be within their grasp…

The Prophets did not show you visions that weren’t in some way relevant to you. They wouldn’t have shown Julian such a future unless they wanted him to participate in bringing it about—which meant it was possible to heal Bajor within their lifetimes. Heal it enough to help others.

“You saw our freedom?” she asked.

“I think it was a while into the future. I was research director at an institute for pediatric genetics and had been for some time. You were a general—I don’t know of what; I just heard the title mentioned attached to your name. Presumably whatever military force Bajor formed in the aftermath. The Federation was angry we were giving refuge to their victimized children, and to those adults who had been victimized as children. And Bajor, at least the part of Bajor where the hospital was, was green and growing.” He still seemed awed, and there was a fervency in his voice when he next spoke. “It’s no secret that I don’t worship the Prophets. But I would give everything I have, everything I will ever have, to bring about that future.”

“And that’s why the Prophets invited you to stay.” She was certain of that much. She had told him he would be an asset to Bajor and she had been right, because now the Prophets had confirmed that invitation. Had suggested he would be a part of rebuilding Bajor.

Maybe that was even why the Tear had wound up on the station in the first place, to give Julian this vision.

Julian was staring into the middle distance in that way he did when he was looking into the past. Kira waited silently for him to speak.

“I haven’t told you why I was exiled,” he said. “It’s hard to talk about… did you know that it’s illegal to be genetically engineered in the Federation?”

“To be?” she asked. That sounded absurd, if Julian’s vision was right about the number of children it happened to.

He gave her an amused look. “You’re the third Bajoran I’ve told about that and every one of you has said those exact words in that same tone.”

“I’m not surprised. That is an incredibly stupid law.” Outlawing performing the procedure and outlawing going and getting it done to yourself both made sense—and saying that if you did it to yourself outside Federation space you weren’t welcome to come back was probably a necessary corollary—but just outlawing being engineered criminalized the victims.

The Federation really had no business running around calling themselves morally superior.

Julian gave a bitter laugh. “I was slow, as a child. Small, awkward, falling behind in school—there were so many concepts the other children took for granted that I couldn’t begin to master. I didn’t really understand what was happening to me… all I knew was that I was a great disappointment to my parents. Just before my seventh birthday, they took me to a planet called Adigeon Prime. You probably haven’t heard of it…. It’s outside Federation space, far from here. Affiliated with the Orion Syndicate, which seemed a great irony later in my life during the months I spent treating their slaves. As places to get illegally genetically resequenced go, it’s one of the better ones. Very expensive. Nothing but the best for my father; I was his greatest project. The only one he ever completed successfully.”

Julian’s anger and bitterness were palpable. Kira didn’t blame him. Long ago, he had referenced two months of being tortured as a child, and later he’d told her that his parents had been the ones who arranged his torture. This had to be what he’d meant—and given apparent Federation prejudices on the subject, this also had to be the root of his repeated insistence that he was a monster.

Fury filled her. She didn’t know what he’d been like before, couldn’t know that, but she didn’t think genetic engineering changed who you were as a person—which meant his parents had not seen his kindness and compassion as valuable but had instead had him tortured to increase his intelligence. And possibly his physical abilities; she didn’t know what was typical for a human but she had noticed him surviving on rather less sleep than she thought humans needed, and then there had been that time Odo thought he’d murdered Ibudan because of something to do with punching a wall. Kira had never been terribly clear on the details of that and when she’d asked Julian had gotten extremely tense and point-blank refused to explain.

No, this made a terrible sense, and explained why Julian had exerted himself to be involved in that rescue.

Children were the future. Even the Cardassians valued their own children above all else. Child abuse was one of the very few grounds for divorce in the Cardassian Union, assuming the extended family didn’t just kill the abusive parent first.

And the Federation was willing to throw away its children because they’d been victimized. The Federation was willing to say such victims were the monsters, to say it so early and so often that Julian was convinced of it. Julian, the one who was so compassionate he had stayed on Terok Nor for more than a year of his own accord, who was willing to devote his entire being to a lifetime spent healing a people he hadn’t been born to.

What was wrong with them?

“The Federation has laws about people like me,” said Julian, again in that faraway tone he used when he spoke of his past. “And they did too good a job on Adigeon Prime. I was fifteen when my parents told me what they'd done. They had to—I was excelling so much they were worried someone would… notice. I joined Starfleet, went into medicine, knowing that both of those were illegal for someone like me. I was careful. I watched myself. I couldn’t bear not to excel in pediatrics but I was careful everywhere else; I was carefully calculating what grades I needed to graduate in the second position.”

Julian had once spoken to her of it being dangerous for him to draw attention—and how he valued children too much to not ex cel at pediatrics. This was the key; this one piece of information made all of the oddities Julian had let slip about his past come together into a cohesive whole. It even explained why he was so focused on the children, if he was being the protector he wished he'd had.

“ But someone found you out,” Kira prompted when Julian didn’t speak again.

“Section 31,” he said. “I’ve mentioned them—the Federation’s very own Obsidian Order . I don’t know if I wasn’t careful enough or if they somehow got access to the records from Adigeon Prime, but they let the secret out, made sure I was thrown out, made sure I was going to be prosecuted. And then then Section 31 came to me, while I was despairing . They had me taken from my cell in the dead of night. Brought me to a safehouse of theirs. Told me I had a choice: I could go into a black site to be one of their experimental subjects, or I could work for them. They said they would still let me practice, if I worked for them. They said they would finish my medical education. I could run a free clinic, cure plagues, research whatever I wanted, as long as I was an agent of theirs and worked on their projects too.”

There was no way Julian would have taken that deal, and if they thought he would it only proved they knew nothing about him. Even as naive and inexperienced as he had been at the time, he would have known what kind of projects a group like that would want. She knew someone had wanted him to develop interrogation techniques at some point; they probably also wanted biological weapons and untraceable poisons.

A naive and inexperienced Julian would have been even less likely to take that deal; he hadn’t yet been exposed to the idea of doing distasteful things in service to a greater goal. Julian as he was now might at least flirt with the idea of taking them down from the inside, although he wasn’t suited to that kind of thing and she thought he knew it. All that time hanging around with Garak—who was definitely far more than he seemed—had to be teaching Julian something.

“But you escaped,” she said.

“They underestimated my physical capabilities, or possibly just my desperation. And the safehouse was in a crowded spaceport. I took the first disreputable-seeming transport out of Federation space I could find, before they could raise the alarm.”

The rest of the story she knew, in the broad strokes. Once he was out of the Federation he had fallen in with smugglers and bounced around a lot before settling on Terok Nor, desperate for some kind of steady home.

Julian looked down at the Tear, now sealed in its casing. “When I first started interacting with the lab survivors, it was suggested that the Prophets had brought me here—someone who knew what they were going through and had more experience with genetic manipulation than Bajoran doctors.”

“I’d say whoever said that was right,” said Kira. “What you saw in there confirms it. The Prophets want you here.” She knew he didn’t like the Prophets, but he had always respected her people’s belief in them. And he would never let his dislike get in the way of helping Bajor, even if it meant serving the Prophets in the process.

“I don’t quite know how I feel about that,” Julian said softly. “But that future I saw… achieving that is worth any price they could ask of me.”

Kira set her hand over Julian’s and squeezed. “We’ll work for it together,” she said.

“After the end?”

Kira was going down to Bajor with the Tear and she wouldn’t be back until the Occupation was over—wouldn’t see Julian until the Occupation was over. But Julian believed that would be relatively soon, as did his friend who knew Cardassian politics. Julian’s vision was more evidence in favor.

“After the end,” she agreed. Perhaps it would be soon.

That got a real smile, although Julian still seemed a bit overwhelmed. “If we achieve what the Prophets want us to, then we have to,” Julian said. “Because someday in the far future, I have lunch with General Kira.”

Kira smiled. "I’m trusting you and your other cell with the station. And when this is over, we’ll see each other again. So keep yourself alive.”

"You keep yourself alive too."

"My sense of self-preservation is much better developed than yours."

He laughed quietly. "Perhaps. But you're just as devoted to saving your people, even if it takes a different form. You were my first friend on the station, Nerys. I couldn't stand it if I never saw you again."

Now tears were filling her eyes. She reached out and gave Julian a quick hug. "You'll see me again," she said. "The Prophets will bring us together." She pulled away and checked her timepiece. "Three minutes and then we go. We have a Tear to save."

***

Julian stared at the altar before him. “How do you keep the Cardassians from noticing this?” he asked.

“We move it around a lot,” Jabara replied. “I wouldn’t have brought you here, but if the Prophets have talked to you directly, our prylar needs to know.”

“I hadn’t realized there was a prylar on the station.”

“You didn’t need to know.”

And now he did, apparently. As soon as Julian had described his vision to Jabara, she insisted he had to come with her to the shrine he hadn’t known was on the station. Services were apparently a catch-as-catch-can affair that were neither held nor attended regularly, and the altar itself was quite small. Julian hadn’t been aware there was active practice on the station, but apparently receiving a vision meant he had to be brought to the prylar’s attention. Something which he was not thrilled with, although Jabara had assured him that only the prylar would know, and the room was indeed empty of any people other than the two of them.

“Wait here,” Jabara told him. “I’ll only be a moment.”

And then Julian was alone in the room. He approached the altar, looking at the lamp on it. A duranja, meant for the dead—of which there were plenty on the station, and Bajor in general.

“I suppose you know I don’t think you’re good at protecting Bajor,” said Julian. “If you can see futures, you could have warned the Bajorans about the Cardassians before they arrived. If you could intervene enough to bring me here and you’re not just being opportunists, you could have prevented all of this from happening.”

The fire in the lamp flared, and Julian paused, looking at the flickering light.

“I won’t serve you. I won’t worship you. I won’t surrender my own judgment to your will. But I will work with you if it means healing Bajor. I would have worked to heal her anyway—but I wouldn’t have so much as considered the future you showed me, had you not showed it to me. That future is so much more than I ever would have dreamed possible. So thank you for that. That chance to hope for something that much better, to dream of being able to reshape medicine, to truly heal a world… I thought that dream had died when Starfleet threw me out.”

He paused again, considering his words. “I swore myself to Bajor already, and her people. Even if I won’t swear myself to you directly, for that dream, that chance, the possibility of creating that future, I will work with you.”