It was a beautiful hand.

A small freckle on the surface above the beginning of the index finger was the only deviation from creamy white skin, stippled ever-so-gently by hairs the color of nothing and sunrise and days she spent in happier times with people now long-dead or long-something-Else. She studied her hand with an intensity that she had not been able to summon for years in the moments before it left her forever, in those burning moments before her perfect white creamy freckled left useless left hand was severed from the rest of her trapped form in a flash of white and fire and pain.

“Fleur. You shouldn’t have tried that.”

The klaxon was wailing incessantly and piercingly from somewhere above her head, now pressed against the cool relief of the metal floor, but she could still recognize that voice, and the presence that accompanied it.

“Make that awful noise stop.”

She did not look up, but instead found some solace in the metal of the floor as her body began shaking, and as uncontrollable sobs emanated from places within that she had not wanted to acknowledge for years. Her slow tears mixed with the spreading bloodpuddle as she pulled her non-existent left hand back away from the shattered, useless control panel that would have effectively ended not only her own life, but the lives of these men who would be taking her home. If she had only been successful… If she had only been able to press that button in time… Things would be different. Better. There would have been certainty in death, but now…

“Stop her bleeding. We can’t take her in like that.”

She held her eyes closed and sobbed into the coagulating blood on the floor. She felt strange hands begin to lift the crimped and twisted metal of the collapsed bulkhead from her back. If the vessel hadn’t been torn apart in the boarding, she might have been able to activate the destruct sequence. If they hadn’t—