All credit for these characters goes to Joss.

This story starts here in Chapter'>http://www.fireflyfans.net/bluesun.aspx?bid=2207'>Chapter One

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TRAUMA MEDICINE: Chapter Four

It's who I am.

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They held her down and ignored the way she sobbed and pleaded. One of them brought the back of his hand down hard across her mouth to silence her, but he could still hear the muffled whimpering. As it went on and on, with him powerless to stop it, he prayed to the God he no longer believed it that they would hurry up and finish. All five of them. Get it over with.

He couldn't look at her, nor at what they were doing to her body. He didn't need to. Unable to close his eyes or turn away, he chose to look at them. Those tamade hun dans. He studied their faces and promised himself he would kill every damn one of 'em if he got the chance. And what savagery he saw in those faces. Brutal desire. Voracious self-gratification. Eyes glazed, unfocused in the heat of sensation. Mouths hanging open loosing bestial grunts with every thrust into her. Faces florid and dripping sweat. And then the hideous predictable grimace that signalled release. How gorram ugly, how totally ruttin' repellent these men were. He felt his own mouth twist and the sting of perspiration as it dripped into his eyes.

How ugly men can be.

He expected them to put a bullet in his brainpan afterwards, but they didn't show him that charity. Didn't save him his suffering.

It's haunted his nightmares for years, filling his nights with impotent rage as the horror replays over and over again. And always there's the serpent's voice telling him that maybe it wasn't like that. Insinuating that she didn't fight because, well ... hiss, hiss ... And sometimes his anger turns on her, on her vulnerability and her inability to save herself. She should have fought them, gorramit!

Her abused body – scratched and battered and bleedin' – looked dead at first. So pale, so small. Immature breasts and slender thighs exposed by torn c