Chapter Text
The surface of the planet was a dull copper color, barren of any apparent life except for microorganisms that flourished in the rock formations.
Bashir snapped his tricorder close with a put-out sigh and turned back towards the shuttle where the rest of the landing party was awaiting his return. He alone was responsible for their delay and the doctor bowed his head sheepishly when irked expressions glowered back at him.
The fine hair on his neck bristled to attention, a tingling sensation crawled over his skin; and Julian whirled around, keen eyes searching for the cause of this unease that twisted his insides. He could see nothing yet definitely felt as if he was being watched, hunted. The Human's instincts were rarely wrong.
The desolate expanse of dried earth stared back at him, indifferent to his mounting agitation. His hand slowly inched closer to his belt for his tricorder–
"Doctor Bashir?" A male voice drawled out, skirting on the edges of insubordination, the poor man was tired and wanted nothing more than to get rid of the red dust cloying his skin. "Are you finished down here? We really should get back."
Get back? Now? But they had barely arrived! Granted, they'd been here for little over two hours, but research was slow and their exploration tentative in the face of possible danger. Perhaps they were missing out, perhaps the underground was rippling with resplendent life that wished to be discovered. They had to stay.
Julian opened his mouth to argue his point but murmurs of agreement rose up around the crewman. He expected better from the so-called science division. Disappointment made him heave a sigh that he immediately bit back, aware of the stares aimed his way. The doctor was irrationally saddened by the display of loyalty, and disinterest for what the unknown world offered them. Bashir suppressed the stab of hurt that burned hot in his heart for a split second before agreeing with a frown.
Doctor Julian Bashir was alone, in more ways than one.
The landing party got back to the station with little more than rock samples and the feeling of having being cheated out of what should have been an adventurous journey. Dejected-looking crewmen shuffled their way out of the shuttle bay, the low hum of voices interrupted by Bashir's excited chatter.
The man appeared to be talking to himself, his colleague wasn't paying him much attention but the doctor didn't seem to notice, or care. Julian was very much aware of how annoying he was being, but the desire to connect won out over self-consciousness and he chatted on, bouncing between subjects as fast as his mind could establish the connections between them. It also served a distinct purpose, that to distract the doctor from the headache that made his eyes water and forced light tremors out of his frame. A blessed hypospray was waiting for him in sickbay but first–
It only was after the ensign excused herself that Bashir ceased talking, words dying in his mouth with a bitter taste; he was standing in the middle of the corridor, alone.
'They hate you.'
Something in his chest tightened at another rejection, resting among countless others in that bruised part of his soul that he buried away. Julian meekly bowed his head and headed towards sickbay. Ghostly chuckles echoed in his ears and he shook his head, blaming the headache quickly evolving into a migraine for the imaginary noise.
The doctor urged his legs to carry him to his desk, barely acknowledging Girani who gave a worried frown when he failed to answer her. Applying the hypospray to his neck with a minute sigh, Bashir turned hollow eyes shadowing an equally blank expression to the computer terminal. He must have some work to do.
He hoped he did.
Bashir gave Girani that kind of smile, that insincere, forced smile that all doctors practiced on their patients before turning back to his terminal. She left with a huff, the sound of her steps keeping him company for a few more precious seconds.
The pain in his head ratcheted up to another notch as a cold sliver plummeted into his stomach, sending tendrils of pain up his spine and nerves, leaving nothing behind but an emptiness that ached.
He heard the laughter again.
He had missed his lunch date with Garak.
Again.
He hadn't meant to. Julian found his thoughts to be unnaturally fuzzy, the days passed in an erratic blur, he couldn't keep up, mind fogged over by an anxiety that he could not part from, his nights were cut short by nightmares that tormented him until the early hours of the morning. The doctor could never remember what they were about, only take note of the evidence of tears on the pillow and the disturbed blankets laying on the floor.
Julian would make it up to the Cardassian.
He was the only friend he had.
After almost biting through the thin flesh of his lips, Bashir sent a written apology, followed by the request to share dinner at Quark's. A cry of laughter startled him into sitting up straight and he offered a sheepish smile to his friends, Kira laughing the loudest at something Odo must have said. The Changeling merely huffed but he could discern a soft grin there.
"So, was the landing party as disappointing as the rumors say?"
With a sparkle in the eye that he only partially faked, Bashir launched himself into the retelling of their not-so glorious discovery, or lack thereof. His story quickly sparked another, and another, until his throat was parched. He failed to notice the others trying to pitch into his monologue, or any of their attempts to interrupt, really.
Julian was just so happy, so eager to share what he had seen, what he knew and what he loved; so relieved to finally speak to people that listened and appreciated him. Desperate to make a connection with someone, anyone; just for a moment escape from the tormented and twisted thoughts that had come upon him these last few days; burying him in a depression that stuck like mud that refused to come off.
Kira's smirk had vanished, her mouth was pinched tight with irritation, Odo was looking as bored as ever, only half listening; sharing a look with Ezri who was still nodding along with a frozen smile that must have made her face ache.
He was being a prat again, a nuisance.
Julian didn't notice anything. He never did learn, did he?
"So you see, what really happened that day is that-"
"Does he ever shut up?"
The words were only said in jest, he supposed, yet they rang unpleasantly true all the same. A chorus of snickers rose around the table, the Major laughing the loudest as she sipped at her drink, his esteemed colleagues hiding their mocking smiles politely; but he could see it in their eyes, that the joke wasn't one.
How many times had he been told to stop talking? Was he really that boring? How dull did you have to be to elicit that reaction from everyone, including his family, his colleagues, his friends? Were those people he called friends simply humouring him as one does a child? His perfect recall merrily walked him through all those memories where he was ordered to be silent, to shut up.
His so-called friends failed to notice the dark bags weighting down his eyes, the exhaustion forcing constant tremors from the overworked doctor. The haunted look casting shadows in his eyes remained unseen, or perhaps no one cared enough to ask if Julian was alright.
'They don't care about you.'
Pulling through the suffocating, negative spiral, Julian muttered an excuse about unfinished experiments, and pushed himself to his feet, feeling heavy as the hollow sound of laughter echoed in his mind long after it died away. He pointedly ignored O'Brien's questionning gaze and briskly walked out the bar. The doctor repressed a flinch as jeering blew through the room, going from table to table like a virus; he squashed down the paranoia.
It was only after he was back in his quarters, eyes stinging with tears that he stubbornly refused to let fall that he remembered about Garak.
Oh god, Garak.
Julian wasn't only a nuisance, he was also a failure; a terrible friend.
The tears won the battle over his will and cascaded down his cheeks; his own breaths rattled in his chest, wheezing out and past his lips. He couldn't catch his breath.
Julian pulled frantically at his hair, in desperate need of a way out from the distress suffocating him, stealing his sanity away.
Julian didn't sleep that night, but the nightmares still found him helpless to their torment.
The sensation of feeling watched returned full force, bursting through him with a certainty that left cold chills scuttling across his skin. There was someone here with him. Something.
Throwing the covers off his freezing body, Julian gasped on a mounting feeling of dread, scanning his quarters as if expecting something to jump out of the shadows and slice his throat. The silence was deafening, unnaturally so. With a barely hidden stutter, he ordered the lights on, suppressing the wave of paranoia.
Nothing.
There was no one hiding behind the couch or underneath the table. There was no one, but him.
Yet it felt anything but.
Cursing himself foolish, Bashir strode to the replicator to order some Tarkelean tea, unwilling to allow this ridiculous bout of fear ruin the rest of the evening. The deft fingers closed around the warm beverage and– something strikes him at the back of his head and he buckles to his knees, swiveling around to see his attacker but–
Bashir only met darkness. He was alone. The pain however, was quite real, black spots clouded over his vision as nausea threatened with a vengeance. The man assessed his surroundings warily, eyes bloodshot and wide. Julian listened for a sound that would indicate the location of his attacker but his heart refused to slow down enough for that white noise in his ears to recede. There was someone in there with him, Bashir was sure of it.
"Show yourself." He snapped.
There, in the corner of his eye, something moved. Bashir shot to his feet, pushing through the throbbing in his skull that accompanied the sudden vertigo.
"Who's there?"
A nagging voice lectured him about calling security already but he was too stubborn, too confident in his ability to defend himself. He was an Augment, wasn't he? A freak, a monster, a super-human that could take care of a burglar or two. Julian didn't feel like bothering Odo for something he could fix himself.
Julian Bashir was prideful, and it would be his downfall.
The sound of shattering glass spurred him into motion as he ran to the bathroom, the pain in his head all but forgotten. His attacker must be in there!
Cold trickled down his spine as he met his reflection in the mirror.
The unbroken mirror.
In fact, the room was immaculate as ever, nothing was out of place and Julian had encountered nothing on his way that would confirm his suspicions of his attacker being there at all. Bashir glared at his reflection, shame at his foolishness for letting the criminal walk free coloring his cheeks. He was thankful that Kira wasn't here to see what a failure he was.
Well, since he was in the bathroom, might as well take care of his wounds. He needn't worry his nurses, he could take care of this. Reaching out a hand to grab the first-aid supplies hidden behind the glass, Bashir halted with a frown.
The man in the mirror looked... wrong, somehow; distorted, twisted. Julian stepped closer until he was flush against the sink, his eyes skirting across his own features, attempting to find the cause of his unease.
It was his eyes, he decided.
They were not his.
There was someone with him.
"Who–"
The doctor had a split second to register the hair on his neck bristling to attention, the flickering of the light bulb above; a shadow whispering across the tiles in the corner of his eyes before an invisible force bashed his head against the mirror.
It shattered and cracked easily under the strain of inhuman strength, a spider web spreading across the glass, tinted with bright specks of blood. The world had imploded behind his eyelids in a flash of searing pain, leaving him blind. His breath hiccuped in his lungs; Julian chocked on a cry as the throbbing in his head intensified. It hurt. It hurt so much. He was gonna die–
"H-help–"
An impossibly stifling weight settled onto his back; flattened him against the counter until he could no longer breathe; suffocating. The sound of ribs being crushed echoed through his being with a clarity that left him shuddering in abject terror.
His chest was burning with an excruciating pain that tore him apart; consuming him from the inside out; Julian sobbed soundlessly, unfeeling of the tears that trickled down and disturbed the small pond of blood beneath.
Malice and fear and rage. It was inside his head, scorching its way along his veins, rippling across his mind; everywhere.
It was pure, unadulterated agony.
Julian's mouth stretched wide around a scream that would not be heard. He couldn't breathe‐ he was going to die–
–it hurts- please stop- Help me-help me-pleasesomebodyhelp–
With an eldritch chuckle, it bashed the doctor's head onto the counter, slamming it down onto the shattered shards; they sank into the skin like needles into flesh, pierced clear through his cheeks. Julian surrendered to unconsciousness that offered an oblivion free of suffering.
It stopped.
The doctor sagged like a puppet cut from its strings.
It had won.