#Seeing Julian interact with the EMH and later have to work out the cure for Zimmerman is some top tier content ngl

[walkingstackofbooks]

Frankly, there should have been some sort of required explanatory paperwork and consent forms in DBIP - besides Zimmerman contacting Julian's parents, it always bothers me that everything else Julian has to do seems to just come up as they're going, and honestly, I'm not sure Julian would have agreed if he'd been given any forewarning on what it would all include.

(I mean quite honestly he's barely enthusiastic about any of it, and I kind of feel that if he hadn't felt that he *had* to given Zimmerman had already showed up on the station and launched into the "chance of a lifetime" spiel, he might well have declined even if he could have opted out of the parents thing.)

But I digress. The point is, what if Dr Zimmermann did email Julian the forms to sign off on - just, while Julian was in the Dominion Camp. And the changeling impersonator simply deleted the email (well, emails plural) because it was irrelevant.

So then you've got Zimmerman getting impatient to start his project (it's bad enough he has to model it on someone else, let alone waiting for them to even grace him with a reply) until eventually he decides oh fuck it, I'll just forge his signature to send to my superiors, it's not like he's going to refuse once I've explained in person.

And then it just... never comes up. No-one asks and he certainly doesn't feel the need to ask why Bashir had ignored him (and maybe he does overhear something about camp 371, which means he's definitely not going to bring the missing email up) and then by time anyone might have thought to question his ethics, if Julian ever did mention that he'd explicitly asked for Zimmerman to avoid his parents or what have you, the whole enhancements thing will have come out and it would probably just seem like Julian was being, idk, petty, if he ever tried to bring it up to the powers-that-be. Not that I think he would. But you know, even if a friend did try to persuade him, I can't see that approach bearing fruit.

And ugh, I'm just so angry on his behalf, because while the way it worked out was probably actually better in the long run than him keeping his secret forever/it coming out in some way where that plea deal wasn't able to be made, I'd really like Zimmerman to have faced SOME repercussions more than just, y'know, not getting with Leeta. (Not to downplay the that Rom, my hero, made to this episode of course. Thanks, Rom, for your service. You had the greatest of timings)