A/N: As you may be aware, I have no idea where this is going. But hopefully you'll still enjoy it! And, please review! :-)

"How long do you reckon we've been here for?" the doctor asked his Cardassian accomplice, his voice weary and his eyes tired.

Garak shrugged and looked up at the sky, squinting. The red dwarf star was still very bright, and so it looked as if night was not about to fall any time soon. "I wouldn't dare hazard a guess, my dear doctor," he answered honestly.

Bashir sighed. "Weeks? It must be more than a few weeks."

Garak nodded slowly, not really listening. "I dread to think what state my shop will be in. "

"Oh?" Bashir looked over at him.

"I left it in Morn's tender care," the Cardassian said, and Bashir didn't need Ferengi-hearing to make out the regret in Garak's voice. "No doubt there are clothes all over the floor, and that's not to mention the disorder that my tailoring tools will undoubtedly be in."

"Well, you never know," Bashir opined. "Morn might be keeping it spick and span. It might look better when we get back than it did when we left."

The Cardassian tailor held up a correcting finger. "If, doctor. If we get back." He saw that Bashir was about to say something, and so he jumped in before he could. "And, please, don't give me any of that human spiel about luck or hope."

The doctor held up his hands in defensive. "I wasn't going to. Garak, what's gotten into you?"

The Cardassian sighed and looked down at his hands, which sat pensively in his lap. "I apologise, my dear doctor. It's just, we've been here, on this godforsaken rock, for what seems like an age. Surely Captain Sisko has sent out search parties. Surely we haven't been forgotten about."

"Forget about you?" Bashir repeated, a smile playing on his lips. "Impossible."

"I appreciate the sentiment, doctor, but right now, I don't think that that's really going to help us." It was harsh, but it was true, and the Cardassian knew that most truths were indeed harsh.

Suddenly, Bashir laughed.

"Am I missing something?"

"Oh?" Bashir looked up and met his eye. "No, I was just thinking what might happen if the Dominion happened across us." But when he had laughed, it had been sadly and grimly. What would happen if the Dominion did find them? That didn't exactly bear thinking about. "Where's Pri?"

Garak cleared his throat. "She was shivering," he said; his tone was blunt but the doctor knew that he was just trying to appear emotionless. "So I covered her with the thermal wrap and I think she's fashioned it into some sort of den." He shifted over to the left slightly, and, sure enough, wrapped up in the foil cocoon, was the little pink sloth animal.

Bashir smiled at the endearing scene.

"I know, it's a pitiful sight," the tailor conceded. "A former operative of the Obsidian Order taking a helpless little creature under his wing."

"But it's a welcome sight," Bashir reasoned. "I know. We should try and pass the time. Sitting here and wondering if that distress beacon's reached Deep Space Nine can't be very good for our nerves. Why don't we take a walk?"

"A walk?" Garak repeated, an incredulous eye-ridge raising.

"Yes. A Walk. Why not? It might make time pass quicker."

"Doctor, I'm sure Lieutenant Dax has told you multiple times that you cannot 'make time pass quicker'." Despite this, Garak reached over and removed the doctor's combadge. He then tinkered with a few of the wires inside of it and placed it in a hollow in the tree. "It should act as a homing beacon, should we get lost on our walk," he explained, upon noticing Bashir's confused expression.

"What about Pri?" Bashir inquired. "Should we leave her?"

"There's only one way to find out," Garak said, so quietly that it was nearly under his breath. He and Bashir began walking. They had only gotten a few dozen metres away from their makeshift campsite when they heard scuffling behind them. The doctor span on his heel, looked down and smiled at what met his gaze.

"Garak?" he called out ahead, for the tailor had kept on walking. "I think my question's been answered."

The Cardassian turned around and returned to where Bashir was. He hunkered down and scooped the distraught little creature up in his arms, which now made contented noises.

"I think Pri's going to develop separation anxiety if we're not careful," the doctor mused, though something told him that the Cardassian would not have deeply minded that.

With all participants now present, they resumed their little journey.

"Fascinating."

Garak stopped in his tracks and looked over his shoulder. He notice that the doctor was taking a peculiarly large amount of interest in a group of mushrooms that had made their home at the foot of a particularly imposing tree. "Doctor, what is it?" he enquired, as he stroked Pri's soft fur.

"Honestly, Garak! You must see these fungi," Bashir called out to him jovially, his interest rather piqued by the multi-coloured, multi-sized, multi-textured mushrooms.

But Garak was in no mood for examining fungi, however interesting they might be. "No, thank you, doctor, but I was never really interested in fungi."

"Ah. Of course. Because why look at dull plants when one is a spy or a tailor?" He frowned. "Hang on a minute. Weren't you a gardener?"

Garak smiled, evidently pleased that Bashir had recalled this bit of information. "Well-remembered, doctor. We might make a spy of you yet." He paused. "I was a gardener on Romulus, in fact."

"And you still can't bring yourself to appreciate these mushrooms?"

Garak shook his head. "I was more into flowers myself. Specifically, Edosian orchids. I always said that a perfectly maintained flowerbed could melt even the stoniest of hearts. Which reminds me. I must given Chief O'Brien's wife my compliments on her aboretum."

Bashir was just about add something when Garak clamped a hand over his mouth. Bashir knitted his brow. "Garak," he struggled to whisper. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Quiet, doctor," Garak said, with a voice so quiet that it suggested a great deal of urgency. "I believe we are being watched." Gently, he removed his hand away from Bashir's mouth. He looked down and saw that Pri, too, was being very quiet.

"Watched?" Bashir repeated, perhaps a little too loudly. And then his grew very wide when he felt the ground shake beneath his feet. He swallowed. "What should we do?" he asked Garak.

"I'm afraid to say that I don't know," Garak admitted. "You are the expert on carnivorous reptilian megabeasts."

Under any other circumstances, Bashir would have smiled. But this time, he only made a grim face at the Cardassian tailor. He saw that Garak had taken to holding Pri rather tightly, as if afraid – not that Garak would ever be afraid – that the little animal would leap out of his arms and run away. Then Bashir flinched.

Bashir frowned. "I think I saw something. Perhaps it was a search party! It could be Captain Sisko and Dax and O'Brien and–"

But Garak narrowed his eyes and clamped a grey hand over the doctor's mouth before his voice could get any louder. "I wouldn't start shouting just yet, doctor."

"Why not?"

"Because, either night has suddenly fallen very quickly, or we are standing in the shadow of something very large."

Bashir whipped his whole body around and came face to face with a most unwelcome sight. Standing before him, Pri and the Cardassian tailor was a great hulking beast. He couldn't tell if it was carnivorous, but it was certainly mega, and its intricately scaled body told him that it was definitely reptilian. Before he could deduce any more, the beast let out a deafening roar and the foul stench of its breath reached Bashir's nose; it had probably recently eaten meat. The creature had two very large eyes with slits for pupils. Its tongue was forked and purple. Each of its long, thick legs ended in talons. Its tail was pure muscle. It reminded Bashir of an Earth dinosaur.

The beast began to advance on them, and they noted how much louder its laborious breathing was getting.

Bashir scrambled for his phaser, even though he knew that he didn't have one with him.

"Pri!" Garak said with an urgency. Bashir followed Garak's line of sight and understood why he had shouted. The little pink animal was rounding on the dinosaur-like beast and was squaring up to it. The dinosaur stared down at Pri and looked rather confused. What was this tiny, cute little creature going to do it? To a four-tonne, well-armoured, highly muscled reptile?

Pri bowed her little furry head, and after a moment's silence, let out the most deafeningly high-pitched scream that either the doctor, the tailor or the dinosaur had ever heard. Bashir and Garak had been thrown to the ground by the intensity of the shriek, and when he had landed, the Cardassian had hit his head on the trunk of a tree, nearly knocking him out. They watched in awe as the dinosaur bowed its head and scurried away, disappearing as quickly and as unexpectedly as it had appeared.

Garak slowly brought himself into a seated position, rubbing his head. As he drew his hand back, he saw that he was bleeding slightly. Bashir waved is tricorder over the wound and gave Garak a smile. "It's nothing to worry about. A battle wound."

"She really is full of surprises, wouldn't you say?" Garak said to Bashir as they looked at Pri. "I suppose we shouldn't judge a book by its cover."

"Unless it's an enigma tale," Bashir said with a triumphant smirk.

"Doctor, do you really have no taste? Enigma tales are at the forefront of Cardassian literature."

"Or a repetitive epic."

Garak only sighed. "Still better than what you humans have to offer. I mean, how Caesar didn't know that Brutus was going to kill him is just beyond me."