InsaneJournal

    And then she was gone.

    There was a moment when it seemed like it simply wouldn't happen.  Disbelief like a fog in his head, his mind balked and in that instant, not long enough, but for a brief second, he may have had the power to change reality with a thought.  This isn't happening.  But as is the problem with limited, corporeal, linear beings such as humans, a disbelief in ones self easily replaces that power and lands one firmly, with a shattering crash, back on solid ground.  But for an instant, he may have lived up to his true potential.  Because events aren't inevitable are they? If you break up the time between now and what is guaranteed to occur, you delay it forever because it's just like any other line, you can quantify it infinitely. But then it goes out the window. Time flies, it does.

    "What happened?"

    "A moment before the wormhole collapsed there were two energy discharges registered in the Bajoran temple.  Security found her like this."

    "Two cc's Leporazine.  Now."

    The familiar smell of burned tissue and fabric and Jadzia is unconscious, not breathing, her heart is stopped.  They get a pulse the moment the drug hits her system and he sedates her to prevent her from waking while she is oxygen deprived and wounded.

    Julian knew the moment he saw her, though.

    Awake and alert, she already knew, too, he didn't have to tell her, and he wasn't sure he could have anyway.  Marcia was there in his peripheral the whole time, but she hardly said a word.  She prepared her for surgery while Julian stared at her monitor.  A hand, trembling with weakness, but fingers strong with intention circled his wrist and captured his eyes finally.  Her voice was hoarse, difficult to hear.  "Thank you, Julian," she said.  He felt his frown deepen and stretch.  "For everything," she added with a squeeze.  She meant it, he was sure.  For everything.  She glanced down at herself, what she could see, and at Marcia removing the drape from her mid section.  Her eyes came back to Julian's and gave to him the last words of Jadzia Dax.  "I'll never forget you."

    The time he spent futilely looking for a way to save her though he knew none existed, the time he had alone with her then, until Worf arrived - she wanted him to hold her hand though he couldn't during the procedure. Marcia did. The symbiont, wounded but stable, away in stasis, she looked on it for the last time, horror in her eyes. Then he held her hand.

    There were hours then.  They must have been hours.  Marcia waited in the wings and Julian stood by her bed after the simple act, his surgical scrubs loose around his neck. "Just when it was getting interesting. I had to come in and mess everything up again," she said with a smiling, faltering grim. He remembers sitting down by her side then and shaking his head.  He said nothing. He couldn't think of a thing that would be permissible. All he could think was that this wasn't his.  This didn't belong to him.  She made it hard to remember that though. "Julian. Stay with me."

    She cried, but bravely. All he could do was look at her, keep giving her painkillers until she was woozy with it. She was brave almost to the end. A cough shook her and painful tears rimmed her eyes. "Julian I don't want to die," she cried and a sob wracked her body.

    Julian went numb and his ears rung dangerously from that moment on. He isn't sure if she said anything after that or not. He remembers putting his hand to her face, fingertips over her brown hair and then down past her temples to her neck. The spots. They're not raised at all. Perfectly smooth. If he closed his eyes he wouldn't have any idea they were there. Wouldn't have any idea who she was beyond cool skin beneath his hands. And almost immediately, he left the room. He stayed outside because it didn't belong to him. Never did.

    "Julian?" she called after him weakly.  He could hear her but couldn't move.  Marcia came to her side and he could feel her regard on him in the doorway.  "Julian..."  Jadzia cried in anguish, confusion, but he didn't have an answer for her, and Marcia called him by his title but he didn't recognise it at all.  There was a bleating, begging cry all around him but he could not acknowledge it.  That fragile wall in his mind between sanity and lunacy was threatened by what he had seen, the things he saw in his own hands.  The casual way he separated them.  The only thing to do was to remove himself from this danger.  And like so many times before, he hid himself shamefully away for the preservation of himself, and not for the good of everyone else, the good of the people he claimed were the whole reason he existed and the reason he had to hide.

    "It's alright darlin'." Marcia cooed to her.  Julian could not avoid a glance to them from the corner of his eye, and he saw Marcia's hand tight around Jadzia's, her fingers threading through her hair.  He couldn't look again.  It didn't belong to him and it never would and and never did.  He ruined it, and he couldn't stand the reminder for another second.  Julian slipped, slinked into his office around the corner and locked the door.

    Hours later still. Three more hours she lay dying, and held on until the Defiant came home.

    That yell.  The station vibrated with it and fell silent as it had the last time a Klingon heart broke within those walls.  Wasn't so long ago.  Julian tossed his scrubs to the table after that moment and walked home.