A/N: Huge thanks to my reviewers, especially Bolo who kinda inspired this part. Thanks Bolo!! And remember, my ego is never big enough! :^P Enjoy!

Chapter 21

The gray liquid ran down Harper's battered face as the soft gentle sponge wiped away the weeks worth of grime, blood, sweat and dirt. Rommie dunked the now filthy sponge back into to the bowl of soapy water and felt the warm water lick up against her sensitive skin. She lifted the sponge and twisted the malleable object, letting the dirty soapy water flow down the surface of her hands and fall into the bowl like a rain shower.

Once again she gently placed the soft cleansing tool against her engineer's bruised and cut cheek. As she was wiping away the layers and layers of grime, she could, for the first time, see what her crew did to the earther. Deep purple bruises covered his swollen eyes, a huge gash cut across his forehead while many smaller cuts and bruises coated the rest of his young looking face.

She ran the sponge across his lips only to create new bleeding from the chapped and cut tender surfaces. She quickly treated the newly opened wounds just like she had all the others.

Once more she felt the warm liquid run down her hands as she gazed down at the motionless form that laid in front of her. The now spotless face seemed so out of place on the filthy body and topped off with the bloody spiked hair. It looked as though someone had transplanted his face which was a very unnerving thought, even for an android. Even more unnerving was the huge swollen mass that rose up off his neck. His dataport.

With even more care than before, she placed the dripping sponge near the now blacked port. After being repetitively ran over by the sponge, more reds and silvers began to shine through. She did an in depth scan to see what kind of damage had been done. The sensitive and delicate nerve endings that connected to the hardware were severely burned which basically meant that his port was swollen shut from the inside. She injected him with specialized nanobots that should repair the damage, but it would still be a long time, maybe even a year, until he was able to use the port. 'Great, more happy news for Harper,' she thought sarcastically.

She threw the completely filthy sponge to the floor where it landed with a soft wet splat right next to the other three sponges she had already ran through. Only his face and neck were cleaned and treated and she had already used up four sponges. She hoped Trance had gone sponge crazy and bought out the drift on their last supply run.

Now that his exposed skin was done, she was going to have to remove his clothing. His clothing were so disgusting that she thought they could get up and walk themselves out of the airlock. Dark crimson dried blood, fresh bright red blood, blacked dust from the conduits, yellow stains from sweat, and some other mystery colors that she didn't even want to know what the sources were. She had to resort to her memory banks to figure out what color his long sleeve shirt was originally. It turned out to be a nice bright cheery orange.

She griped a pair of scissors and slowly cut his stiff shirt completely off. Her circuits paused as the sick injures played out before her eyes. Unlike his face, the dirt and blood hadn't penetrated his thick shirt. All of his injuries here were plainly visible. His left upper arm caught her eye first. It was swollen to twice it's normal size and colored lovely shades of blues, purples and blacks. A scan revealed that the bone was too shattered to be repaired, it would have to be replaced. Luckily, it was a simple operation, but with Harper's pathetic Earth-ghetto raised body, the recovery time would be twice as long. His arm would have be in a sling for at least a month. Then the sick realization of who had caused such damage to him crossed her mind. How would Trance react to knowing what she had done to Harper? Quickly she compartmentalized the thought of the mental rehabilitation of the crew. She'd have to worry about that later. First she had to finish cleaning up Harper and then perform the operation to repair his arm.

She returned to surveying the rest of his torso. Bruises were everywhere, covering every inch of skin. Three huge blacked circular bruises covered his sickly misshapen ribs that rose out of the famished body. He did have broken ribs, but the queasy forms that the ribcage took on was not caused by the recent injuries. Those injures were old, very old. Rommie's circuits started buzzing. In all the time Harper had been on board, she had never seen any more of his body than his face and his lower arms. He had always called privacy mode to simply change his clothing and he would throw a huge fit if anyone tried to take his shirt off for a simple medical examine. Could this be why he almost went into heat stroke that one time the environmental system went out of control. Everyone else was either shirtless in boxers or in a sports bra and shorts, but Harper would not take off his heavy cargo pants and tee-shirt even though sweat was pouring off of him and he was about to pass out from the heat. Was this deformity what he had been hiding? Did the others know? Trance had to, she had been the only one to treat him during the Magog infestation. This would explained why Trance was always so protective of Harper while he was in medical, not letting anyone else see his body, always turning on privacy mode.

Rommie looked closer at Harper's ravished body. Old scars covered even older scars, deep impressions dipped into his skin, and almost every visible bone had been broken. None of the breaks had been set correctly which created a rising, twisting sculpture out of his skeleton. Then something started to click. Data was racing through her processors as a pattern arose from the chaotic mosaic of his scars.

"No.." she gasped out in a whisper. "No, it can't be."

But she knew it had to be. It all made sense now, all the facts fit nicely into place. The small deep scars, the circular indentations that laid in very specific locations, the thousands of healed fractures that she could read off of every bone in his pitiful body.

Everything Harper had done to the others, to Dylan, to Trance, to Tyr and even the horrors he committed on Beka, all those tortures, Harper had learned them all first hand. Harper had experienced all the same pains, all the same tortures...and more.

Rommie's mouth was still hanging open as her hands began to quiver a bit. Curiosity then took the better of her as she gently rolled him over on his side to look at what had been done to his back. Her jaw dropped even farther when she saw it.

There was not one inch of smooth skin. Hills and valleys were created on his back by the layers of scars. There were long deep whip marks, short small scars like the ones that now covered the rest of her crew, and a whole other mix-match of different scars that she couldn't even tell where one started and the others began. Like his front, his ribs were sickly but his spine overpowered the grotesque ribs. Instead of running straight up his back, it slowly twisted its way up like a old knotty branch.

More information clicked in her head as she let him back down on his mutilated back. This explained why he would always slightly flinch whenever anyone touched him. She read server nerve damage that could cause him intense pain if touched. How it must be like to feel pain anytime someone touched you. She also read that many of his nerves on his back where completely destroyed. She remembered all the comforting backrubs Beka had given to him over the years, and this whole time he couldn't even feel her hand on his back, he couldn't feel her comfort. A small lone tear rolled down her face.

She bent over the peacefully sleeping form and pressed her lips against his clean forehead. She then moved the subtle lips down next to his ear and caressed his other cheek with her soft hand. She whispered tenderly into his ear, "It will all be okay Seamus. You're safe here. I'll never let anyone else hurt you like that again. You're safe." She stayed, rubbing her cheek up against his. She couldn't bring herself to let go, she never wanted to let go. She couldn't bear give an opening for the cruelties of life to attack her engineer once more. She wanted to erase all the damage that was done to him, to hold him when he was an infant and protect him from all the evils he would face. But all she could do was let her tears roll down his young tortured face.

After a few minutes, she broke her embrace that Harper would have never allowed when he was awake. "Must get back to work," she ordered herself. She continued to patch up the broken ribs, the bruises and the few remaining random cuts. She cut off the rest of his filthy clothing and quickly threw the wrenching fabrics out the closest airlock. She washed his hair only to find more deep cuts and bruises on his skull. Finally, after hours of patching up the delicate organic, she was done.

Harper was clean and was in the nice white medical garbs. His left arm was incased in a thin white cast and he was still sleeping soundly. Like the others he had numerous tubes running in and out of his ravaged body. Food nurturance, nanobots, fluids, and medicine were coursing through all of the sleeping bodies.

She stared down at her crew, her entire crew. They were everything to her, each special in their own way, each held a piece of her heart...even Tyr. She knew she should have stayed detached, but with so few crew, she found it so very hard not to spend time analyzing each of them, getting to know each of them so intimately. She knew all of them would fully recover physically and that they should be waking up in a few days, but the unknown psychological damage that was done constantly plagued her mind no matter how much she compartmentalization she did.

But she knew she couldn't just watch over them until they woke up, there was still a lot of work to be done. She knew that the entire ship needed to be cleaned up before any of them saw or smelled the carnage Harper had caused. They did not need the gruesome horror of decaying bodies to twist the knife that was already sticking out of their psyches.

So Rommie turned her back on her healing crew and headed out to over see the Mari-bots in clean up duty. She was sure there was an intestine on some ceiling with her name on it.

TBC......