The BLTS Archive- Revisions
#7: Snakeskin
by Ellen Milholland (pretyclose@aol.com)

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Disclaimers: Characters aren't mine.

Archival: ASC and JuPiter Station - yes. Anyone else - ask.

Author's Notes: This is part seven of my 'Revisions' Series. I have
rewritten the Year of Hell timeline. This comes after 'So Many Scars.'
ENJOY!

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"I am the black of the blackest ocean
And that tear in your hand."
     -'Tear in Your Hand,' Tori Amos
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DAY 245
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And I'm bleeding.

I can feel it, sticky between my fingers as I touch my forehead and
warm against my skin as it trickles down my chest, underneath my
uniform. I'm lightheaded, but nothing hurts.

It will. I know. The blood that I've lost will catch up with me. The
skin that I've lost.

The bridge is dim, and a faint glow permeates the darkness. I am
choking back my heart from my throat, and I see the slaughtered bathed
in crimson.

I see the bodies of my friends among the rubble, and my heart is
screaming.

The broken beams and fallen wires create mazes of shadows on the
ripped carpeting. I slip through the shadows, and feet that could not
be mine are carrying me towards the haphazard graves of the dead and
dying.

The first that I find is little more than a girl. Tendrils of the
woman's hair have fallen serenely around her face, creating an angelic
halo, even now. She has not been gone long, but the rigor mortis has
made her stiff, trapped in a gruesome pose of death. Her face is
contorted in pain, and I can almost hear the cry on her now-silent
lips.

Even after death, I can hear the screams. The sound echoes in my ears,
swirls through my thoughts. The screams of the dying are on my
conscience. The blood of the innocent is on my hands.

The next is mangled so badly I can hardly recognize him. His face is
charred and his features are difficult to discern.

I move to push the debris from his body, and I pause to look at my
hand. This is not my hand. It can't be. It's bloody, but I cannot be
sure whether the blood is mine or not. The skin is red and blistered
from fire, and the palm is tough and callused – snakeskin.

The hand of snakeskin cannot be mine. Even as I command it to clear
the corpse, I wonder if perhaps I am trapped in someone else's body as
they live in mine.

There is blood, but it is not so wet, now. Dried into his clothing,
and on the debris, it is brown and hard.

I stand and move away. Remember the objective, Janeway: find the
living, if any, and get them to sickbay. Find the living...

Find the living.

I am surrounded by ghosts of my past, and there is no escape. The
living cannot survive long here, enveloped in the death.

I didn't realize there would be so much death. Four years ago, when we
left spacedock, I didn’t realize there would be a cloud of destruction
that would follow us like a shadow, killing my crew and stealing our
souls.

The Krenim have ceased their attack. The ship is so quiet. The main
computer is off-line, but emergency power is still providing life
support and a handful of other secondary systems. I miss the
comforting hum of a functioning ship – the buzz of the warp core and
the vibrations of the deck plates under my boots.

We are dead in the water, but Voyager is no longer the Krenim's
plaything. They have left us here, whether to recuperate or to die, I
cannot be sure. But a few of us are alive, living in the space that is
permeated with the stench of death.

And those of us that are left, we will not die.

There is Tuvok, though injury after injury have affected him deeply,
and he has grown disturbingly frail. His skin is delicate, and his
body brittle. His mind, though, has not lost its edge, and his eyes
have not lost their luster.

Seven has grown hard and cold. Her curves seem to be all sharp angles,
and the planes of her face are a study in shadow and light. Her
curiosity has steadily dwindled away to little more than an ember
which is slowly dying within her. She doesn't speak much, but then
again, neither does anyone else. We have no words left.

And there is Tom. Sometimes it seems as if there always has been Tom.
As if he's always been beside me. As if he's always been half of me;
half of my strength and half of my weakness.

I can hardly remember the days before our love, the days before the
war.

That’s the most painful. Our lives have become intertwined with this
death and destruction. I don't remember what it is to live without
war. I don't remember what it is to be frivolous – to eat more than my
fill or take more than my share.

He is not with me here, now. He's being treated by the doctor, because
of the massive injuries he suffered during the attack. I should be
with him. I should be at his side, but I'm not. I'm sitting in the
remnants of my command chair in the charred remains of my beautiful
bridge, and suddenly I'm crying. I'm sobbing and tears are collecting
on my jawbone. They are warm and salty on my lips, and I cannot stop.

My head spins with the pain and the guilt and the anger. The song of
the dead rings in my ears as I collapse to my knees in front of the
tattered seat. The choir of corpses is singing its song as I conduct
with hands of snakeskin.

Everything is dead or dying, and I am no exception.

And I'm bleeding. Oh God, I'm bleeding.

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The End