by anneinchicago
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He crouched on the floor, his normally broad shoulders rounded, his spine curved. But beneath these outward signs of submission, there was still a suggestion of stiffness, of a proper Starfleet correctness.

The normal bright yellow of his uniform was stained and dirty, the black dusty and smeared with unidentifiable substances. One sleeve was torn and beneath it one could see where the warm gold of his skin had turned both an angry pink and a charred black. Pink where the skin had begun to regenerate; black where the flesh was too burnt to do nothing more than flake away into ash.

His face was smudged with both dirt and blood; an open cut on his cheek still bled freely. One dark, almond-shaped eye was ringed with the soft purple of old bruising and his normally full mouth was now even fuller, made so by the casual, back-handed slap of a passing Hirogen.

Hair that was usually neat, trained back and tidy, now hung in sweat-matted strands down his back and in his eyes. Blowing back those strands with an angry breath, he glowered up at the Hirogen who had claimed both his ship and the lives of his friends.

"Go to hell," Harry said and in his voice was both hatred and bitterness, humiliation and pain. "I won't do it," he said again.

But, despite whatever weakness his voice may have given away, in his eyes there was only defiance and hard, unrelenting hatred.

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End