An AU in which Julian Bashir is on the autism spectrum and upon arriving on DS9 as he does in canon, has different interactions with the characters we all know. The fic is generally from his perspective and though he is different, yes, he is still Julian Bashir and recognisable as such. It’s also interesting how he interacts with others, and how his relationship with Garak forms and grows.
I love that though yes, he processes things differently to others and people don’t always get him and it takes them longer to understand, but him he is never written as broken in any way and the wider implications around this are touched on.
There’s a conversation with Kira about what humanity did with those it saw as disabled or broken, how deaf culture has been almost destroyed in trying to ‘fix’ them and moments on how the Federation pushes its views on this sort of thing, and other issues like reproductive health, on others without regard for differences of culture. All of which has very real implications for the real world.
It’s a really wonderful fic. I can’t speak for how it’d read to someone with autism but to me it seems very well done.
And one of the best things? Even though this is AU it also addresses something that is very much there in canon but that canon glossed over and then ignored where it really shouldn’t have been.