"The figure of the tyrant-monster is known to the mythologies, folk traditions, legends, and even nightmares, of the world; and his characteristics are everywhere essentially the same."
(Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.)
According to some more entrenched members of DS9's senior staff - Hayes had touched on the subject already with Dax, Sisko, Kira; and even Bashir had mentioned it once or twice during their initial tour of the station - meetings in the wardroom had recently been settling into a distinctly familiar pattern. Gather, exchange greetings, find a seat, and begin to discuss what little news had reached them from Cardassia Prime, and what new doom would be awaiting them around the next corner once the Dominion managed to strengthen its forces.
Nathan had held his new post for just over a week. He had very little experience with the various exotic species that would congregate on Deep Space Nine. But he'd seen a good twenty years of Starfleet service, and hostile aliens were as familiar to him as the now well established daily routine. He could still recall his most recent encounter - earlier that year and in a place far closer to home.
A bone-chilling, impersonal voice had hijacked the fleet's communications channel. Hayes waited, surrounded by the other doctors, nurses, med-techs and assorted well-known faces, and listened from the quiet fortress of sickbay. Every face around him was equally tense and grim. One of his younger interns had been trembling. She saw him watch, and clenched her hands so tightly that their knuckles turned to circles of pale creamy white.
It was the voice of the Collective. Soon, Hayes had thought. Soon the consoles would be exploding all around them, and there would be wounded. Battlefield triage. The stench of scorched metal and burning flesh.
Almost like the barbecues his extended family still held every year back home, if the meat in this instance had not been humanoid…
"Honestly?" he'd told Bashir a little over a month later, strolling beside him and glancing all the way around at the dim, foreboding corridors. "I've never even seen a Jem'Hadar."
For a moment, his companion had stopped. The expression on his face was difficult to interpret. "You'll get your chance," he said, simply. And the soft tone of his voice had sent a chill through Hayes' already slightly aching spine.
So what do you do when your safe, sane universe collapses around you? He found the answer without hesitation. Throw yourself into your work, push all thoughts to the back of your mind, and pray like Hell that the memories don't haunt your dreams.
As they rose to leave, gathering scattered notes and disconnecting computer displays, Sisko stepped forward to seize the attention of Nathan Hayes. "Doctor?" The question in his eyes was clear.
It was then that Hayes realised the others had also stopped where they were, faces turned towards him like guided torpedos. He wasn't at all surprised. They'd been casting subtle glances in his direction ever since the meeting began.
They're worried about their friend.
"He'll be fine," Hayes assured them. "With time."
But there were other important questions still plaguing his own thoughts. "Captain, I'd like a word in private, if I may?"
The shade of anxiety returned to the captain's dark eyes. But he nodded.
"It's about Do-- it's about Julian, isn't it?" said Captain Sisko, wasting no time as soon as the room was clear of onlookers.
Hayes nodded, clenching his jaw. "I have to be honest, Sir. I'm more than a little concerned."
"That he might try the same thing again?"
"To be perfectly blunt, yes." The middle aged doctor steeled himself for the question he knew he would have to ask. "You've known him a lot longer than I have, Captain. Has he ever shown any signs of… irrational behaviour…? You know. Before?"
"No more than any other overly eager, headstrong young officer." Sisko studied the doctor's face. "You're asking me if I think he's dangerous. Like Khan."
"I wouldn't go that far," Hayes assured him. "But I have taken the liberty of contacting an old friend from my intern days at the Academy. Doctor Athena Nikos. To the best of my knowledge, she's the closest thing the Federation has to an expert on the effects of - um - genetic resequencing."
Sisko suddenly looked incredibly tired, and rubbed the smooth, hairless surface of his skull. "Do whatever you have to, Nathan. But to answer your question. No, I do not think that Julian is mentally or emotionally unsound. A little erratic, perhaps. Downright infuriating at times. But not unstable."
"Except that the next time he tries to poison himself, he might just succeed." The doctor frowned, wondering briefly how much of his last comment had even been directed at Sisko. "That's not a risk I'm willing to take."
"You're supposed to be resting," Hayes accused Bashir as he strode back into the Infirmary.
"I'm supposed to be on a transport to Earth." The young man was frowning, distracted. He sat cross legged at one end of the biobed, hunched over a padd in his lap with a stylus in one hand and a sharp, intense expression in his eyes. He was not as pale as he had been earlier that morning, but Hayes still worried.
"Regarding that," he said, keeping for the moment to what he hoped would be a safer topic. "I've spoken to the judge presiding over your parents' trial, and arranged for you to testify via subspace instead."
He was even more disconcerted to see Bashir look up, and the lines on his forehead deepen. "I'm not going to Earth after all?"
"Well… No." Hayes felt his own brow tense slightly. "I don't understand. You aren't…?"
He snuck a glance at what was on Bashir's padd - a composite picture of a forty-, or possibly fifty-something year old man, with sharp creases all the way down his cheeks, and ginger brown hair brushed back away from his eyes.
Julian noticed, and set the padd to one side. "It's just something…" he began, but his voice trailed away, and he sighed. "Forget it. It's not important."
