Disclaimers: All Characters and everything else that is Trek belongs to Paramount and Viacom. I am merely borrowing them to help fill in my imagination. This is a personal log entry by Tom, after the episode ‚Faces‘. Please forgive the Stardate, I am still trying to figure out the Stardate that was given (or an approximation of it. My brother lent out his Star Trek Encyclopedia to his friend—who has not returned it yet). This is one of my first works of fiction that I wrote last year, but only now, have I decided to put it in. Faces Log Lieutenant Paris‘ Personal Log, Stardate 943392..5
A.Blunt- offofthedeck@hotmail.comI had some real fun today. So much fun, that I never want to go through that again. Pete Durst, B‘Elanna Torres, and myself were caught by the Vidiians. They then took B‘Elanna away and proceeded to split her into two people—her Klingon half, and her human one. They later put her human half into the mines with Durst and myself, while they kept her Klingon one in a lab for study. Apparently she has something in her genes which in unaffected by the phage. The rest of us worked in the mines, waiting for our captors to harvest our organs. Talk about asking for donations! They later came to us and wanted Durst. I insisted that they take me instead, but then I found a phaser rifle pointed in my face. Pete then said "They‘re the ones with the guns."
B‘Elanna‘s human half and I never saw him again.
Then again, we knew that we wouldn‘t.
B‘Elanna‘s Klingon half saw Pete‘s face on a doctor of theirs. I felt sick when I heard that. According to Janeway, one of them had once claimed that their race had been that of an advanced civilisation, while another even said that he was a sculptor, an artist.
Then the phage came.
A disease with no cure.
A disease in which the only way to survive is by harvesting body parts from either the dead or unwilling victims, like Neelix was.
I can‘t really fathom a disease that can make a race do this.
Then again, it has not affected me.
But would I be willing to do this to others? To kill in order for me to live?
I don‘t know.
I‘d like to think that I wouldn‘t, but the truth is I just don‘t know—it would be nice if I did.
But I don‘t.
I feel as though I‘ve let the Captain down. She says that what happened to Pete was not my fault, and had I applied more pressure, the Vidiians would have taken the both of us. Then she would have lost two officers instead of just one.
But I was the senior officer! It was my DUTY to protect those under me.
And I didn‘t.
I couldn‘t.
I know intellectually, that there was nothing I could have done.
Nothing.
The scenario keeps replaying in my mind over and over and over. And I can‘t change anything. Not a damn thing! No matter how much I try to, I can‘t. And I know that I couldn‘t. I know that there was nothing I could do to prevent what they did.
So then, why does it feel so bad? Why do I keep saying to myself—like a mantra—that I could have, that I should have done more? Even if it meant death.
I was ready to die in Pete‘s place, but they said no, and Pete wouldn‘t let me go in his place. I‘m going to have nightmares tonight—I know that for a fact. Now that‘s four deaths on my conscious, in my dreams, in my nightmares.
Something else to add to my demons.
If Chakotay didn‘t get us out, both B‘Elanna and I would soon have been dead. Killed for our organs. I don‘t think that dad would have cared. When I was sentenced, he said that he had no son, or at least he implicated it. I was probably dead in his mind from that point on.
Well, today, that almost became fact.
The end