"Because she was a Doctor."

Her head and eyes on the ground, her voice quiet and hurt--Vashara would torture herself for just how pathetic it all must have looked to her CMO and his staff. To the survivors of the Cosmo, Vash was a savior, the tragedy of their cadet cruise surely just the start of her legend. But the incident left Vash irrepairably damaged; she'd lost her best friend, the Cadet XO, and the love of her life, their Doctor and the Cadet Commander of their Squad. Vash lost them both in a matter of seconds, before anyone could blink, let alone mentally register such a thing.

But emotionally processing it? Vash discovered it could not be done. No amount of counseling, no amount of meditation, no amount of anything could help her...except playing the legend. So she got lost in it; the crew of the USS Hawk went from mocking the hype to becoming adherents: with Vash on the bridge, nothing could beat them. Even in the face of defeat, Vash and the crew managed victory. There were dark moments, times when the unresolved pain underneath would turn their legend blackhearted and hateful, her mind replaying the time Malachi Brown watched her torture a Vorta, before murdering the thing in cold blood. 

But it was all better for her than facing the truth. That she would not question, not until the war was over. If it ever ended for her.

Her head lifted at the sound of chaos: medical emergency. Worse, it was the CHENG. The young Captain frowned, her voice still soft. "Good luck, Doctor, and thanks." Then the real, hurting, Vash was gone. Replaced by the harder edged voice of the growing legend, her comm badge tapped with the newly repaired right hand--although she paused before speaking, her eyes widening a nano second after her fingertips hit the comm badge.

[i]Ow.[/i] "Captain Vaella to the bridge, I'm moving from Sickbay to Main Engineering, with the CHENG down I need to review what we got from the Dominion boat. If the Venture doesn't show up in ten minutes, drop the warning buoys and take off to Vulcan, warp 6." She wanted to say max warp, but after the battle, she didn't want to tempt the Orion with a golden opportunity to break more by pushing it.

And the chaos of sickbay had grown so intense that for once even Captain Vaella could slip out, unnoticed.