Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

This has to be some ploy.

To what end? Simon has no idea. 

It’s not like he has a lot of time to entertain said ideas with how fleeting his consciousness is. He’s asleep most of the time, and hardly awake the rest– sat up enough to practically be spoon fed whatever it is they have, too out of it to remember, floating on a high he can’t place.

It’s disconcerting.

The whole living with an alien concept is not one Simon’s entirely gung-ho on. Not that he has a choice. He hasn’t had a choice about any of this actually, but he doesn’t think he has the room to complain. Whatever happened, he’s not in the SM-13 anymore, and now he’s in some extremely refined ship with plenty of technology to boot– all over again, he has to remind himself that this, apparently, is not a Consolidation of Iron ship as much as it could be. They’re the ones with all the scientific resources, they’re the ones who had the sneaking suspicion about extra-terrestrial life.

He still remembers sitting inside that awful sub, listening to Ava and the other expedition managers getting giddy over the images he’d recovered. The bones. They’d been excited but… not surprised. Not entirely. They hadn’t believed him (or hadn’t cared) when he said there was something alive down there.

Now there’s something alive in what the Captain refers to as ‘The Hamster Ball’. 

Rocky’s weird. Unsettling, yeah, that was the thought. He (?) doesn’t have a face, body a constant clambering rotation. He climbs through the strangely segmented spaces of the ship like what he thinks a monkey would (Simon vaguely remembers drawings of the things as a kid, but that feels like it was a century ago). He makes noise constantly which is a plus. Simon always knows where the alien is, with it clicking and humming away. 

So does the so-called-Captain of this vessel. 

In the moments Simon’s actually awake and aware of his surroundings, Captain Grace putters around any of the given rooms without a clear worry in the world. Whatever his role in this is, he must be important- they feed him well. He’s got a shocking degree of muscle under his –usually– vaguely timid facade. There once was an instant of wakefulness from whatever cot he’d been adjudicated to where he’d spotted the Captain moving around, back and forth in the hall, hauling boxes to and fro. They must’ve turned on gravity at some point. Somehow. Because Simon watches for about half an hour with a hint of envy as Captain Grace hefts equipment from Point A to Point B for a purpose he can’t yet garner.

But shit. Simon’s glad it didn’t come to a fist-to-cuffs, because there’s muscle there he had not expected to see. Sure in their brief encounter before, Simon had caught the hints of it. People just need muscle to live. It was there. Simon just didn’t expect to be… there.

He’d nodded off again not too long after that.

Then he’d woken up and nearly lost his shit when the alien (Rocky, it’s Rocky, the Captain’s been anal about it) was sitting mere inches away beside him on the other side of the glass.

Apparently he ‘needs to watch’ because it ‘makes him feel better’ and ‘it’s a cultural thing’ so ‘we don’t ask questions’. If Simon had anything to say about it, it’d be out of the question and not allowed because it makes him feel like… like something somebody’s squinting at through a window.

Not that the Rock can squint at him. It doesn’t have eyes. Or a face.

For that reason, Simon prefers to sleep.

If he’s asleep, he doesn’t have to wrap his mind around any of this. Any of what’s now, any of what came before, not a lick of it. 

He prefers to sleep through the thought of an alien watching him sleep. Prefers to sleep through whatever medical care the robot arm deems necessary to give him, prefers to sleep through, well, all of it. Most of the time he’s on so many drugs (apparently) he doesn’t even dream. And if he does, he doesn’t remember it. 

That’s another thing he prefers to sleep through too. 

He’s down an arm.

He hates that.

Down an arm, exhausted constantly, and thoroughly confused. But the latter two are relatively normal.

During the weird adrenaline fueled rampage through the ship, Simon hadn’t thought too much about his armlessness. Of course it was horrifying. It is, still, incredibly upsetting. But Simon simply doesn’t have the energy for it anymore. He doesn’t have an arm. His left arm is up and gone, kaput, he’s got a useless stump that stays a useless stump no matter how many times he tries to shakily reach out with it.

It. Hurts.

It really, really hurts. 

Simon can always tell when the drugs start petering out because a lance of sharp, nervous pain jolts through where the bone used to sink into the socket. He’s not stupid. He knows where that was. But it doesn’t hurt any less knowing it, in fact it probably hurts worse knowing. There should be something there and there just isn’t, instead his skin is stiff with a fresh wrap of bandages every time he opens his eyes. He should be grateful, he thinks somewhere in the back of his mind. Grateful for the waste of fabric and grateful for the waste of medication. 

Grateful, too, for the food.

It’s really good. Not that he remembers eating too much of it.

Nothing makes sense.

So Simon sleeps.

Lets himself sink into it bodily, into whatever this too comfortable cot is, and just drift.

Simon doesn’t know how many days pass with him in and out and drugged (probably for the better) before he finally wakes. For real this time.

He cannot hear the telltale hum of the alien. Slowly, he turns his head to the sectioned off part of the room and finds the glass empty. There is no sentient rock watching over him this time. Maybe it got bored. He hopes so. A genuine cursory glance around the room proves it to be… very sterile. A sizable chunk of the room is taken up by the irregularly shaped panels of the alien’s space, wedged right up to the cot and even slightly over it. Heat radiates from it, faint, like the age old memory of a sun. Something’s scattered inside, but he can’t for the life of him fathom what those are. They’re dark, pointy, left wantonly across the ‘floor’. What appears to be a veritable pile of duffel bags is crammed near the ‘back’ of the space. A path from the space carves up over the other bedspace and out into the hall he’d seen the Captain meandering through in his moments of semi-conciousness. The rest of the room is white, padded even, though a flurry of equations and notes scatter across one of the corners. Straight onto the wall. Like an insane person. Framing that is a series of small, colorful loose papers, somehow stuck on, scrawled with more notes and equations. The other cot is clearly someone’s bed, possibly the Captain’s, strewn with a combination of honest-to-god pillows and the– that’s the quilt the Captain had all but worn like armor, folded much more carefully near the foot of the bed. It’s colorful now that he has the time to look at it. A collage of greens, yellows and pinks, symbols and shapes he doesn’t entirely recognize. One of them is a plant. The fact that there’s enough fabric for that alone is mind boggling.

But, it’s quiet. Simon’s alone.

So the alien isn’t there. And neither is the Captain.

Slowly, Simon reaches back with his remaining arm to prop himself up.

Static clambers up the wounded side of his body, and he grimaces.

Fucking ow.

An orange blanket crumples at his waist as he painstakingly props himself up. Immediately his vision flickers white, dizzyingly so, and he has to fight to let his hand decide whether it wants to keep holding him up or fly to his face. It buckles, but holds. He groans.

The robot in the corner perks up. So Simon hadn’t killed it. 

Fucking great. 

The more camera-like of its limbs rightens itself on a rotating joint, like someone too cautious to want to tempt closer. It must’ve learned not to screw with him too much, so that’s a plus. It doesn’t stop his head from throbbing, pounding, pulsing down his entire face, his neck. His mouth feels cold. Jesus, his teeth feel cold, and he groggily tries to open his mouth and finds he’s parched.

Shit.

The robot doesn’t interrogate him this time. Swaying where he’s sat himself up, Simon glares across towards it. It stares back, but makes no move to approach. With a cursory glance towards his arm, he finds a fresh wrap of those bandages. On top of that, he hasn’t bled through. Okay. That’s good. He can work with that. He’s also not… coated in blood anymore. The Captain had made an attempt to scrub him off before telling him he’d needed to rest, not leaving room for argument, and Simon couldn’t’ve because he’d conked out as soon as he laid back down in the medical wing. His sweater’s also long gone, but whatever shirt he’s wearing has something on it and it’s too upside down for him to bother reading. He grunts, discontent with that.

Water. He needs water. And food. And. Answers.

Resolving to get just those things, Simon reaches to brace himself against the cot and pry his legs out of the orange blanket. He almost pitches over, catches himself, and swings his bare feet to the floor.

These aren’t his pants either.

Holy hell, how much extra everything do these guys have? Who are they with?

Not Eden obviously. Not the Consolidation either, or so they say.

They wouldn’t let him keep the pendant if they were Consolidation. Actually, he doubts Eden would either, they’d want to plant it– yet that’s what he finds wrapped firmly around his wrist and dangling in his palm when he raises his remaining hand. It’d been retied to the leather cord, much more gently fastened around his wrist.

Huh.

Palming ragged hair from his face, Simon staggers to his feet and almost eats it against the weird glass wall. Narrowly catching himself, he hisses, and the robot behind him whirs almost worriedly. One pointed glare back sends it recoiling back into its corner.

Groaning in time with the pitiful spoilt grumbling of his stomach, Simon pushes himself upright and reluctantly uses the glass wall as a brace for him to oh-so-slowly shuffle around the corner.

Everything’s off. His whole entire body wants to tilt right, weighed down by the weight of his own arm. The intact one. That’s not fucking fair. It’s almost infuriating actually. Balling his sore hand into a fist against the glass, he braces his arm and makes an effort to not simply pitch forwards. A frantic heat roils up across his skin, pallid, uncomfortable, a strain on his thoughts as much as his being. But he can’t just lay here any longer.

How– how long has Simon been laying here?

Too long. Whatever it’s been, it’s been too long, way too long, he needs answers.

Laying around won’t do him any more good, Simon decides.So he takes a wavering step forwards. Gravity drags on his sore calves, his knees, his hips, his face, as if it fully intends to tug him along face first into the metal floor. He doesn’t let it. Simon grits his teeth. Rightening himself, he presses more balance against his hand, against the impossible wall, and takes another stubborn step. 

Then another.

And another.

He falls into a pace.

The hallway from what he thinks, now, is a bunk room, is short. It attaches to the main hall without a door, the lock wide open, the left side of the floor partially occupied by a ladder. It’s useless now, pushed into a recess in the ground. He skirts past it and keeps leaning on the wall as he moves. Stumbling past the gap where the Captain’s bed is recessed into the glass dome, it isn’t long until he finds himself bracing against the structure yet again where it races down the hall. More of those colorful slips of paper scatter the opposite wall where the Captain and any other human habitants might frequent.

The ship makes noise.

Ship or– it could be a station. Simon has no idea. There were corners blocked off last time, he thinks. There could be others here. Other attachments, other halls–

Why would he be left alone with the Captain, though? Him, a patient, a convict?

Did Ava really give him his out?

If she did, this guy has to be Consolidation. It just makes sense.

Vision swimming, he drags himself along through the gentle, oddly comforting hum of the engines. The sound rumbles through the floor, the walls, a constant not unfamiliar from Eden. Yet there’s no expected ring of footsteps overhead, ahead or behind. No clang of constant bare bones repairs occurring deeper in the belly of the station.

Just the hum of the engines and–

Someone singing. A woman singing. Music. 

As far as Simon knows, the only person (aside from the automated translator of the alien) he’s heard is the Captain. And the ship’s computer, he thinks. But the only human has been the Captain. The other two were techy, he could tell even half conscious. But the Captain was always sort of just– muttering to himself. 

It was never anything specific. Mostly vague things like ‘eugh that looks ugly’ (probably in reference to his fucking arm), scolding the robot arm with striking familiarity, saying ‘don’t worry about this’ and ‘don’t worry about that’ and ‘Ryland, Ryland, Ryland, something, something, something’. None of it was necessarily directed at Simon. At least not that he could tell. Or he just wasn’t awake for those parts.

Simon really doesn’t want to think about how long it must’ve been that he slept if that’s the case.

Shuffling himself agonizingly around the next corner with his entire right side pressed against the wall, he forges on.

Because there’s music. Music he hasn’t heard before.

Fast paced, there’s piano scattered in there, some kind of sharper drum beat. It’s being played, right along with one of the women singing. The second is singing along, slightly off key. It’s irritating.

“–it’s not the way I planned it! Shooow me how you want it to be. Tell me babaay ‘cause I need to know now–!”

Simon hauls himself, panting, around the corner towards the hallway from before.

“– oh because! Mah loneliness, it’s killin’ meeee–”

“And I.” The translator chimes in, affect flat.

“–I must confess, I still bahlieeeeve–”

“Still believe.”

Standing in the now wider, more open corridor, Simon sees… a lab. It’s a laboratory. With equipment scattered around on multiple tables; some as basic as measuring tapes, others weights and chemical components he can’t even begin to wrap his head around. The music absolutely fills the space. More of the glass divide hangs over the ceiling, leaving a barely walkable space, and splits into another mostly equal half of the lab space. The alien is deep within it, perched up on a divided desk, speaking along to the song when prompted with as much enthusiasm as the translator allows. Spurring the response is none other than the Captain. 

The other singer. Apparently. 

He’s presently singing into what Simon thinks is a beaker.

“When I’m not with you, I lose my mind! Give me siiiiiign– hit me baby one more time!”

Yeah, actually. No way these guys are C.O.I.

“Grace.”

“Shh-shh. Stop it.” Shoulders shaking slightly where he faces one of the lab counters, swaying side to side and foot to foot, the Captain emphatically waves a hand to dismiss the alien. “More enthusiasm! We could do for more enthusiasm– oh baby baby, the reason I breathe is you–”

The beaker is once more extended towards the alien. Rocky.

The alien who’s started tapping and has slightly rotated in Simon’s direction. Simon cringes.

”Simon is awake.”

Clearly startled at the concept, the Captain drops his beaker. Thankfully it appears empty. Nevertheless, Simon pre-emptively winces when he expects it to shatter on the ground, but it doesn’t. It gives a loud ‘dink!’ and rolls unceremoniously away from the man’s socked feet. Turning with wide blue eyes, he fumbles for the glasses hanging precariously off his ear and under his chin. He seems all but ready to sprint towards the bunks before catching sight of Simon and downright jumping out of his skin.

“Jimmeny– Christmas!” He bites out. “You can’t just sneak up on a guy!--”

Simon blinks. He opts not to answer. Instead he eyes the alien, and then promptly turns his attention to the wide window just opposite him, at the far end of the lab.

It faces space. Like all windows do.

But it’s full of light.

In the corner of his vision, the Captain is running a frantic hand through his wild blonde hair and turning to a computer screen. The previously deafening music is turned down to a mere whisper then. So much so Simon can’t even make it out.

”Simon can move more quiet than Grace,” the alien –Rocky, Rocky, it’s Rocky– chimes curiously. “Did not hear clearly until hallway.”

“You heard him in the hall!?”

”Yes.”

“Why didn’t you say anything!?”

“Rocky try. Grace too busy practicing karaoke.” The alien does something approximating a shrug, rather flippant.

The Captain doesn’t seem pleased. He levels a half-assed glare at Rocky and grumbles to himself, plucking up the escaped beaker. There’s an unmistakable flush on his face. But that doesn’t matter. Simon’s eyes are on the window and the daunting space between it and himself, the wide expanse of lab floor he hadn’t been allowed to see previously. 

It’d been blocked off. Simon had chased them.

He swallows, skirting past the hushed, semi-heated conversation between the Captain and the alien Rocky with the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. His eyes are all for the window.

He’d–

Before, before he’d been in and out of it, Simon had seen something. Something unbelievable, something that all but shut down his thoughts after.

He has to be sure.

As if he can’t see the light from here.

But he has to see it again.

Rightening himself to the best of his ability, Simon takes another staggering step forwards. A grunt rips out of him when the alien comments first.

”Be careful! Simon is not symmetrical anymore, statement! Is not good for humans, bad for balance–”

“Yeah, no shit.” 

The Captain whirls around near scoldingly. “Hey.”

Simon winces, turning his attention pointedly back towards the window as he reaches up for the glass for balance. It’s all he’s got now, warm under his calloused palm. A straight shot. He just has to make it a straight shot to the window to confirm this all, and then he can deal with the blatant disrespect he’s showing the guy in charge. 

Whatever discontent was hanging in the air dries right up as the Captain skirts over with an outstretched hand. 

“Need some help?”

“No.” It comes out a hiss so sharp the Captain leans away.

Simon stubbornly balances himself against the warm structured glass, only teetering sharply away as the alien skitters up. That’s right. He fucking skitters. Like a bug. Immediately Simon wrenches his hand away, feet flailing back. Instinct has him bringing his arms up defensively. When only one comes up, the momentum sends him turning with a near-yelp. His already untrustworthy vision goes a little spotty with the sheer suddenness of it.

Simon goes falling right back. 

“Fuck.”

Back to the cot it is, he surmises dreadfully.

Instead of hitting the floor, Simon finds himself caught. Arms wrap around his waist and keep him from toppling like a rag doll, startlingly strong, managing to keep him on his feet. The both of them still go staggering, but not for long– the Captain’s talking, the alien abuzz with worry.

”Falling! Falling! Falling very fast!–”

“Woah there cowboy!”

Jesus. If that doesn’t make Simon feel like complete shit. Here he is, tripping over himself and having to be manhandled like some damsel in distress and it’s embarrassing, it’s overwhelming, he wants nothing more than to yank himself out of the Captain’s firm grasp and finds– he just can’t.

Exhaustion rolls over him in a merciless wave. It drags down on his head, his eyelids like the gravity in here. He wants to let his whole self go limp, and at once, doesn’t dare. He simply can’t. There’re still things he needs to figure out, things he needs to confirm, the alien he needs to get away from– but he’s hefted upright a bit more, an arm slung around his waist, his weight pulled grudgingly against the Captain’s shoulder. Throbbing pain crawls sorely up his side, up his shoulder, fuzzy and hot and all encompassing for a moment as he closes his eyes.

Nope.

Can’t do that.

Simon pries them open again.

The Captain’s talking. All smiley and dopey faced, all teeth and too-bright eyes. 

“–probably shouldn’t be up right now on your own. You’re probably starving right? Or– uh, I’ll get you some water, then sit you back down, okay?”

“No,” Simon rasps harrowingly out again. Christ, he sounds like a corpse.

The Captain blinks at him owlishly.

“I’m sorry?”

”Simon is still ‘in shock’, question?” The alien Rocky asks from the enclosure. ”Need to rest, better for surviving. Better for healing, statement!”

Simon squirms to get himself loose from the Captain’s grasp. He takes another staggering step forward. “Just– I’m fine. It’s fine.”

Simon is very not fine. Whatever stellar painkillers they have access to here, they’re fading. Fast. It twinges through his left side something entirely electric, weak muscle spasming alight through the stump of his shoulder like there’s something still there. He staggers. The Captain’s hands flutter uselessly out like he means to touch again, but he seems to think better of it.

”Why Simon not want help, question? Stupid.”Another pointed step towards the window and he drifts back into his pace. He saves his energy and manages not to glare back at the alien, instead shuffling closer, closer, ever closer to the round window before him.

“It’s okay Rock, we’ll be here. Let’s uh… let’s just give him some breathing room.”

The conversation fades to the back of his mind. Instead, Simon focuses on what’s before him. On the window.

On the expanse beyond it.

The reality of the previous encounter comes crashing right back into the forefront of his mind in a chilling instant. 

Stars.

Stars stretch, bright and beating, wondrously alive in the great expanse of previously hungry space. It isn’t hungry now. The blackness doesn’t swallow up what light remains to the degree it had before, no, it lets it all through, beaming to greet him through the impossibly thick glass of the ship window. There’re so many. Many more than he remembers seeing, far brighter, far more constant than the fading ghosts he’d seen a few months prior. All of it is caught in a faint buzz of a blur. They’re moving. Turning, twisting in space.

There go Simon’s knees.

An alarmed sound escapes both the Captain and the alien, but Simon couldn’t give a damn.

It’s– it’s there.

It’s all there, he wasn’t lying, Simon wasn’t hallucinating, it’s all there.

Simon’s entire life had been dark. He’d been brought up to the main Martian station as a young child, much younger than he was when all of the universe vanished. His mother said he couldn’t even walk. He’d learned to walk onboard. And he’d watched Mars blip out of existence from the biodome on the station with the gaggle of other children, surfaceborn and stationborn. Sol’s light had died fifteen or so minutes later. After that, for weeks, a field of black grew expansively from the pinprick of their being in the nothingness. His mother had died up there from it, died from the panic of another person, the selfishness. A part of him did too.

Whatever part of him that was weakly kicks around in his chest as if stirred by starlight for the first time in– 

He blinks.

By the time Simon was a young man, they’d needed the remaining astronomer on Eden to point out what stars were disappearing. To run through data and records and cross reference what light had flickered out in the past week. Then the last month. The last year. It got to the point that the astral sea was a void with a distant dusty haze of light millions of lightyears away. Those were gone too. But Simon wasn’t supposed to live long enough to see that light vanish. Humanity wouldn’t.

Yet it’s there.

Greeting him gleefully, a full sky turns his entire being on its axis. He slips to the floor like a toddler. He presses a hand to the glass and finds it frightfully warm, not cold like he’d expected. But it’s there. It’s there and he can feel it on his face, the distant throb of sunlight on his raw skin.

It’s the most beautiful thing he’s seen. More beautiful than the tree, or new faces, more beautiful than hands passing him an heirloom, more beautiful even than the fleeting sight of the pendant hidden in the panel– reminded of it, he reaches for where it dangles from his wrist again, tied carefully. It shimmers in that endlessness, refractions of starlight he’d forgotten caught along the chips and facets of the- glass. Enamel. Whatever the sprout is trapped in. 

It’s beautiful.

It’s beautiful and Simon can’t stop looking at it. Can’t stop looking at the array of stars he can’t even begin to fathom the names of, the distances of, so close and yet so far at once, all gently turning and vanishing behind one side of the window only to reveal more. More.

More.

Endless and eternal, brighter, coagulating in a magnificent blue he doesn’t remember ever seeing before, purples and reds gathering together in an eternal tangle snaking slowly across his field of view.

It’s the stars.

All the stars, every celestial body he’d been too foolish not to familiarize himself with as a child.

And then, the selfish, idiotic part of himself swells with justification. 

At once, he knows exactly what happened. Or what might’ve.

He’d said it to the creature in the SM-13. When it was playing with his head, pulling out his doubt, toying with him. The researcher, with her odd accent and the shake in her voice, asking him what he thought. Asking him what mattered. Telling him it mattered.

“What’s easier to believe?” He’d said abysmally, trying to measure his breath as the meter remained stagnant. “That all the planets and stars disappeared or that a couple space stations disappeared?"

It didn’t matter at the time. It was sourceless groping for hope, hope he couldn’t entirely spare. But now, it matters.

It matters because the next thing he’d said was. “What if they were all there wondering where we went?”

But that’s just it.

Simon blinks out at the eternal, living starlight before him and feels his shoulders pitched forward. As all things are, his joy is short lived.

Unless.

He’d told the creature what she’d wanted to hear. His doubts. His uncertainties wrapped prettily up for her to take, to use, just like the voices of those researchers. Putting words into their mouths that weren’t theirs. The possibility of it alone sends a sharp spike of wariness through his chest. It liked to use people. Liked to bend their voices.

Liked to make him see things.

Simon finally rips his eyes from the beauty of the universe before him and instead peers dubiously over his shoulder at the two.

If the Eel is toying with him, she’s done it masterfully. Pried up whatever figment of life she might’ve choked down and placed it here with him as if to say that things like her aren’t all that bad. The rock moves like a bug- a crab, maybe from the books he’d read as a child during the short time education hadn’t changed. And then she’d plucked up whatever human semblance she could muster and put it into the shape of something he’d find comforting. But still strangely authoritative. Maybe it’s that he’s blonde. Like Eva. Maybe it rings in the back of his mind, there’s something in his mind that screams– this guy is in charge. Or he should be. It hovers under the surface of the Captain’s trepidation, some kind of certainty, hidden under blue eyes and less anger and a softness to his face that Simon feels both entirely undeserving of and slightly disturbed by.

This is a ploy.

This could be a ploy.

Like in those same childhood stories, warnings, ancient ancient tales from back on Earth where people said creatures would take the visage of what the viewer desired most. What more could Simon desire than a clean ship, safety, a commander who doesn’t look at him with strange deference or even disdain? Stars in the sky? Eternal, ever-expanding, borderless, all for his eyes to see?

Staring back over his shoulder, Simon hesitates.

Maybe he should play this safer.

No, he will play this safe. He’ll hold his cards close to his chest. And through that he’ll have to figure out the truth of this. Whatever… thing is going on in the background here.

They hadn’t known what he was talking about with the stars disappearing either, he realizes. The entire sequence of his waking is still a haze, but some things stuck out. That does. So does the confusion on what Eden is, the C.O.I., the should-be absence of Earth and Mars and all things. Perhaps to these delusions, there never was a world without.

How complex is this lie?

“You said…” he wavers. “You said the stars are dying.”

Both the alien and the Captain perk up. They almost seem to share a glance, but it seems to be enough to encourage the Captain closer. He moves as if Simon is a wild animal, keeping his distance, but he tugs over a stool from one of the numerous sterile tables in the space. Keeping a safe ten feet away still, he plops himself down comfortably close to the alien’s chamber wall, hooking his heels in the rung. It doesn’t teeter, remains stood firm in the center of the floor as he spreads out his hands, sucks in a breath, and promptly clasps them together and tucks his balled fists under his nose.

“What do you remember?”

Simon narrows his eyes. “What?”

The alien tilts, moving forwards in that same disturbing scuttle. It takes all of Simon not to cringe- he cannot show fear. Not now. Can’t play into its hand.

”How long until Grace remember after coma, question?” It says. Its voice is a flurry of incomprehensible notes, like the wind instruments he barely remembers; all overlain with the ring of a robotic voice. The translator. Right.

“Mmm… I didn’t know my name for a while.” The Captain starts cautiously, turning back to Simon. “But you remembered yours.”

“Simon.” He offers again.

“Yes!” He claps. Genuinely claps, a stupid grin spreading across his scruffy face. This time Simon does wince, and his face falls immediately. “Right, okay. Do you remember your last name?–”

“Are you going to answer my damn question?” Simon bites back instead.

The alien shifts. It stomps indignantly. ”Not patient. Rude, rude, rude!”

The Captain blinks owlishly at him, as if taken aback. But he lowers his hands back to the stool, leaning precariously forward and back. He looks like a kicked animal. “Sorry. What uh… what do you know about germ theory?”

This guy’s nuts. Maybe crazy, yeah, but also just. Mind blowingly- Simon doesn’t have the words, and it’s pissing him right the fuck off. Whatever scowl must’ve crawled up his face and died is enough for the man to press on, even if it’s with slightly less enthusiasm. Instead, he reaches back towards the counter.

”Puppet show!?” The alien chirps eagerly. 

“Not yet,” the Captain says, instead propping a whiteboard on his knee. With another fumbling hand, he finds a pen, and Simon finds himself feverishly, hilariously reminded of the small room dedicated to mission planning. They had two pens in that room, a board like this twice the size mounted on the wall and grimy from decades of use.

A second glance around proves this room is full of them. Full of- full of so many things, instruments and objects left out without care, glorious paper swept mindlessly from one side of the board to go falling to the floor like leaves. It feels heathenistic, Simon has to bite his tongue. He turns his attention back towards the board as the Captain scrawls out a series of small dots, and then a bigger dot. With more fumbling, a red pen comes out, a thick squiggly line drawn between the two images. Behind him, the alien shuffles around through the messy collection of… tools? Are those tools on the floor of its enclosure?

“So! Essentially, at its most basic- it’s little organisms that need to eat things. Because all organisms need to eat things. These little organisms eat so much that they proliferate– uh, reproduce, exponentially, but that means they need to eat more. So they end up hurting bigger things.” The little dots and the big circle are gestured to respectively. “Except in this case those microorganisms are ‘astrophage’, or star eaters, and those are the dots that were all over the news. What they do–”

A new series of circles is added near the red line where it leaps across the board towards the big circle. One is closer, directly in the path of the line, and the other is further away below it.

“Is they migrate through a bunch of different solar systems to find suns to eat. That’s the Petrova Line. Well, it’s more like the thermal energy of the suns to eat. And then they store it, and hop back to-” the red marker draws a line to the smaller circle. “-whatever carbon-dioxide rich planet is in the area to reproduce. And then they pop back and forth and back and forth to eat more energy and do it again, until they cover whatever sun it is they found. Which sucks for us, because they’re ridiculously light absorbent and grow like algae and thermal energy does absolutely nothing to them- so they’re kind of. Simultaneously blocking out the light we need, while also eating up the thermal energy we need to survive on Earth.”

He taps the further little circle with the butt of the pen.

”Or on Erid.” The alien suggests.

“Or on Erid!”

”Or on any habitable planet in our galaxy. Rocky does not know biology well, but infection is everywhere.”

Okay. Okay, that’s a lot to process, but it’s an answer.

All the possibilities for his current predicament keep cycling through Simon’s mind. He ends up staring down at the floor as the Captain carefully sets the whiteboard on the ground before him, fiddling with the pen.

“So the stars are still dying?” He posits, cautiously.

Sucking in a breath, the Captain breaks into a much fainter smile. But it isn’t frightened. Not as much as it should be on the face of someone who just explained the impending doom of whatever universe this is, imagined, hallucinated, cast upon him or otherwise.

“Yes, but we found the cure.”

The alien jumps into an explanation eagerly, forelimbs raising to gesture.

”Grace Rocky save stars! Earth send Grace to Tau Ceti, like Erid send Rocky’s crew to Tau Ceti. At planet we name ‘Adrian’ or Tau Ceti E, astrophage goes to reproduce, but does not grow in population. This is good, emphasis! Because Tau Ceti sun is not dim like all other stars! We sample Petrova Line in both directions and find life!”

“–and then we pulled a flyby through Adrian’s atmosphere to pick up more of that stuff, since that life was actually a species of amoeba that eats astrophage!”

”Problem solved, statement! Stars saved. Still need better name than ‘Taumeoba’-” 

“Hey. Taumeoba’s great, thank you very much.”

Both of these guys are weirdly enthusiastic to explain all this. Then again, they’ve apparently found a cure to whatever proverbial disease is infecting these stars. Another half glance out the window proves they’re as bright as ever- but then again, Simon hasn’t seen actual stars beyond tiny blips on the edges of visible voidspace in decades. The two’s chatter becomes a threatless din in the back of his mind as he tries to piece it together.

If this is a lie, it’s a very complex, very well thought out one.

But if it is a lie, it’s one that can be caught. Simon’s good at that. He’s been trained in that.

He shakes himself from it when it becomes abundantly clear that he’s being spoken to. The Captain’s leaning against the counter from his stool, watching with abject, almost painful worry. 

“Is that bringing anything up for you?”

Simon opens his mouth. He debates honesty for a moment, and then decides against it.

“No,” he lies easily. 

As if he needs to remember a thing at all.

The alien seems exasperated, turning about in its space. It’s already sauntering off. ”Rocky need to see human remembering data, statement.Where is portable earth thinking machine, question?”

“I put it over by the uh- over by the mass spectrometer- yep. Wait, where’s yours?”

”Grace’s closer.”

With a deflated hum, the Captain turns to face him again. He doesn’t get up from his stool just yet, but he does seem about ready to. Instead he taps his fingers along the rim of the stool and looks at Simon with something adjacent to… understanding? Is that it? How incredibly misplaced it is, that raised brow and sad eyed look, lips pressed into a thin line.

“Just- I have a lot of questions. I’m sure we both have a lot of questions. But thanks for not going all crazed killer on us again.” He’s still tapping. It irks Simon. Makes the corners of his eyes twist. “Take your time. Soak it in. It’s a really great view, but uhm. I’ll be right over here. We both will. Rocky’ll keep his distance. And if you get hungry or you wanna sleep again, just say the word.”

For a long while, Simon’s silent. He remains tucked against the cupula, eyeing him, eyeing the alien moving happily in his own half of the space. The man behaves as if this is normal. Not frightening. Not completely mind boggling. But he seems earnest, or as earnest as he can be with the lie on his lips.

He isn’t about to push it.

Not when he doesn’t know where he is or how real any of this could be.

“Okay,” Simon lies again.

The Captain smiles, belief settling easily onto his too-cheery face; like a light switch stuck on the positive.

Sleep is unavoidable, and when it comes? It’s all encompassing.

It just is. Simon fucking loathes it. It limits his waking moments, leaves him exposed around this stranger and his alien.

There are five possibilities he can think of, and he simply can’t decide which makes the most sense right now.

Possibility one: Simon’s gone insane. And, or, he’s hallucinating.

That lends into possibility two: He’s dying, which is the cause for the hallucinations. Low oxygen will do that. He knows that. Other gases will also do that, like whatever comes rolling off of rust. On Eden, people’d say one might see their life flash before their eyes when they died. Maybe he gets an extra trip up towards psycho while he’s drifting into the proverbial light.

Not that he wants to be going into any light. But he’d seen things in the sub, even in the first few hours. Shadows. A ghost even. He’d been so sure it was real he’d tried to stab it only for it to be gone.

Once it got low he probably started seeing things. Like the meter not dropping below the lowest register, hovering, offering him vain hope. The vision of the disconnected speaker, the ship coming apart in shreds- red, iron and tangy, cutting through his world and looking down upon him with a great white eye.

“Agreed”, it had said.

Possibility three: this is the Eel’s work.

Like his mind had supplied in the waking moment he’d gotten himself up the second time. This is all created by the Eel, showing him what he wants, what any human would want, a clean ship that isn’t overcrowded, resources, warmth. The sensation of not being at somebody else’s throat or beckon call for the simplest of things. Not food, not clothing, not intimacy or warmth, not a damn thing. Somewhere with stars. Somewhere with a captain that isn’t angry. A leader not blatantly conspiring something. Somewhere with signs of life, good life, friendly life–

A daydream. A lie. A siren’s call.

If this is the case, it wants something from him. Or, the Eel will turn things on its head just to torture him for what he did. These things’ll become nightmarish, and the ploy will be proven.

For now, it seems, the illusion holds steady.

Possibility four: these guys are, inexplicably, C.O.I. The Consolidation knew far more than it ever dared say to its own people, just like the maze of buried information on the database after he’d crossed the wires. Either they’re uninformed or excellent liars, and he’d been right to think the C.O.I knew damn well about alien life. Which means two other things– either they’d known what’d happened to the stars the whole time, or, somehow, the black box had made it and they’d all been zapped miraculously back into a universe with stars.

Either way, there’s a truth being buried somehow.

But Simon can figure that out. All lies can be caught, he knows this. He’d been starting to realize it in the months before Filament Station, it’d hit him squarely in the face during the assault.

They shouldn’t’ve trained him to be somebody who pushes. Who asks questions. Who’s stubborn. If he pushes enough, the truth will come out.

When it comes down to it, there’s a slick eighty percent chance this is all a ploy.

Then, there’s possibility five: It’s the most selfish possibility, the most contrarian to everything he should believe. 

He’s made it out.

Somehow, impossibly, whatever’s holy had decided he did deserve to live and chucked him willy-nilly back into a sky full of stars. And he’d been right. That it’d been the space stations that disappeared and not everything else. Whatever decided that also must’ve found it funny that he get picked up by these guys.

There’re things that just aren’t lining up all the way though. The explanation the Captain offers is… gradual. Not immediate. And not something that would affect planets. From what he recalls, both Captain and alien had been shaken up at the prospect of Earth and Mars disappearing, but that makes more sense if it’s true. Anyway, it’d make more sense that just the stations disappeared for no discernable reason. 

Simon doesn’t push it. He doesn’t talk very much at all in fact. He just sleeps. Sleeps and thinks and blearily eats the most amazing food he’s ever eaten in his entire miserable life and sleeps again. 

How incredibly proactive of him.

Simon thinks that in any other circumstance, he’d be kicking and screaming more about this. That he’d be dragging himself up and out of bed despite the Captain’s insistence over and over again. He just hasn’t lost an entire limb before.

That hurts.

It hurts a lot. Again, whatever painkillers they have are phenomenal because they rarely lapse enough to wake him, and when they do, the dose knocks him right back onto his ass.

It’s the good shit. Even if his stump feels weird and fuzzy sometimes, and he keeps moving like his left arm is there. That’s– that’s a lot too. Having both arms is more than just a little important. He’s lived his entire life with two arms. But more seriously, every competent thing he can do is with both arms.

Time passes in a blur.

The robot machine arm gets ballsy with him. For the first few times Simon’s lucid enough to notice, his attempts to swat it away are successful even if he passes out around the time the Captain shuffles in. Eventually he starts to wake to it doing things- messing with a line in his remaining arm, changing the bandages, offering food or water pouches he scarfs down without thought or heed to any digitized warnings offered.

Sometimes when he’s conscious, the alien is there. Looming in its space, oriented like its ‘sitting’. It makes noises to itself a lot. Simon hates these times. It’s unnerving to see.

At times, he’s awake enough to walk. Or try to. Sometimes he sits on the edge of the cot, staring through the weirdly textured walls of the alien’s space at, well, everything. He can make sense of very little. Sometimes the robot tries to lead him around the room, and he finds himself too worn out to protest or fight back. That never lasts long.

Most times Simon simply lay. He’s aware he’s awake. He’s aware of the feeling of the air in the room. It’s cool against his cheeks, his hairline. There’s a vent or something nearby and it isn’t uncomfortable. The weight of a blanket sits on him, traps warmth against his legs, his body, so much of him. 

His eyelids are heavy. He couldn’t open them even if he wanted to.

He hasn’t slept like this since he was a child.

All things are snippets. He doesn’t dream. Maybe that’s the drugs, but either way it’s a blessing. 

There are times when he can open his eyes, and he sees the corners of the room.

The Captain is there more often than not. A persistent presence. So is the alien, huddled nearby in the enclosure; but the Captain stands out.

He’s always wearing different clothes. There must be so much- so much for just him, and the alien doesn’t even wear clothes, so the more the merrier. And it’s all so- colorful. Not threadbare, blacks, blues, yellows, oranges. He wears what might be a flight suit tied around his waist at most times. He putters around in faded white shoes, with his messy blonde hair, glasses rarely on his nose where they belong. Sometimes he walks around in that beautiful quilt. Like a coat of many colors, covered in symbols he can’t quite parse.

Sometimes the Captain is at his bedside. Watching. Talking to him- nothing Simon particularly understands or remembers. Other times he has a portable computer on his lap, cross legged on the floor beside him. Or on his cot on the other side of the alien’s space. He mutters to himself a lot. Makes little noises, chattering nothings at the alien, who chatters back. 

Other times when he’s gone, Simon tries to look at the room. At anything. At the myriad of colorful little slips of paper plastered on the far walls, the alcove around the Captain’s bed. Faint blues and flowery yellows, scrawled on wildly in bold, splotchless ink. Similar ink marks the equations on the wall in the corner. Any attempt to scrub them off either failed or had been abandoned.

But it never keeps.

All that really sticks is that this place is lived in, and both the Captain and the alien linger as if worried he simply won’t wake.

Each time, he’s brought back down through a tide of body-heavy exhaustion; down into the dark recesses of his mind where there is blissfully, blessedly, nothing at all.

For a time.

“Do you believe in miracles?”

Brother Kemuel had whispered it to him on the ship to Filament Station.

It wasn’t like there was much place to hide. Much place to be subtle. But the guy was younger, more optimistic than most of them- than Simon especially. Perhaps he’d known that. It had to have been something in Simon’s disposition, scowling against the back of a freight net.

“No.”

“Why?”

He’d huffed, raised a brow. The severity of what they were doing hadn’t dawned on the boy. Not yet. Not ever. Not even after Simon spotted his corpse drifting aimlessly in the black.

The Eden soldiers were not counted as dead. They weren’t tallied.

It was supposed to be peace talks. That’s what the C.O.I thought. He’d known it wasn’t, but when it came down to it, cutting the entire station as a loss hadn’t seemed possible. Hadn’t seemed right. Not with all the people on it, not with the days poured into the battle. Not with the resources bound to be lost.

But the Father was desperate, and Kemuel still believed in miracles then; and Simon still believed for a fraction of a second that this was all for some greater, holy good.

“If there ever were any, He stopped giving them when he took everything.”

“But He left us.”

“So?”

Kemuel had frowned at Simon then, struck, almost a touch offended. “You sound careless.”

“I’m not- I’m not careless,” Simon had protested. “I just don’t put as much thought into it as you all do.” A lie. “The Father knows this all best, so that’s what I’d rather go with.” Another, partial lie.

This was when Simon had started to think about the possibilities. That’s how they’d trained him after all, to think outside the box, to do what was necessary. Had anyone else thought it necessary to think? To consider what the Father left unsaid in the face of their empty bellies and sallow faces?

The young man –a boy– had relented to sit back against the wall. He had curly hair. He looked the part of one of those little angels in the slides from the Old World, handpainted ceilings cracked with centuries of candlesmoke and wear. Places Simon could only imagine.

“But you think about it enough that you don’t believe in miracles.”

“What’s the point of this?”

He’d been annoyed, but not too much. On guard. But still, Kemuel had shrugged and clasped his knees.

“Bored. Curious. You don’t talk to a lot of people.”

“I guess not. But that’s not my job.”

“What is your job?”

“For now? Same’s you.” Simon had lied again.

“So they sent the Butcher for peace talks?”

He’d rolled his eyes at the nickname, but it still caught him up. That seed of doubt. He knows that’s not what it’s for, but still- “Better safe than sorry, right?”

“Sure, I guess.”

Kemuel had looked down then. Seemed to debate what to say.

He had not looked back up, but this time he does, with a sneer, a scowl. 

“Is that what you tell yourself?”

Simon’s head snaps up. Breath catches in his chest at the sheer shadow across the young man’s face, lips twisted cruel, teeth curled crooked and sharp in his mouth. He’s staring over with such bitterness.

“What?” Simon finds himself saying.

The boy goes stiff. His joints lock up, snapping out in twisted terrible angles that have Simon leaping to his face. The buzz of conversation in the bay is gone silent, the hum of the ship’s engine long gone. It’s empty. Everyone else is gone. He scrambles back across the opposite row of seats and trips like a coward to the floor.

The interior is going rusty, jagged with gore. 

Kemuel doesn’t move. He doesn’t stand, doesn’t chase Simon down. He just stares.

The boy’s face is frozen, covered in a sheen of ice, and then at once, he’s not Kemuel anymore. He’s Joseph reaching out, swaying him to silence while he’d demanded answers. He’s the fire spilling forth down the hall as Simon took the coward’s way out and ran. He’s Ava in the window, the eye of the Deceiver, the Father an alabaster figure in the dark staring disappointedly at him. The massive tooth of the Eel’s maw as all became enveloped in red, in pain.

Kemuel comes to him in the blood, freezing cold lips against his tattered ear.

“Do you believe in miracles?” He says.

Simon opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

Blood comes rushing in.

He sinks, and all is white.

Simon wakes with a start.

He isn’t loud when he does. No. There’s simply a sharp intake of breath, wrought with the immediate throbbing of his right arm.

Right shoulder.

He can breathe.

Simon blinks, shoulder straining. He can breathe- he can breathe, he can breathe.

It’s dark in the room. A light near the floor in faint orange is the only thing to distinguish anything, but it’s– it’s all he’s got.

He feels awake.

So remarkably, overwhelmingly awake.

He’s being watched. It prickles along the back of his neck, instinctual, animal. There’s something nearby.

Simon stares at the ceiling and sucks in another sharp breath, in and out, as if reminding himself he can breathe.

He can breathe, he can breathe, he can feel his thoughts rocketing around in the space of his own skull as he tries, painstakingly, to shift again. The dull throb awakes pins and needles along the body of the stump, forcing him back into the too-plush surface of the cot he’s laying on. Good god, he could sink through it. He could crash through to the floor. But he doesn’t. Instead, he lets himself sink and doggedly tilts his head to and fro.

Tucked in the corner is the robotic arm. It tilts its weirdly shaped ‘face’ arm towards him, cocking like depictions of pet animals, rubbery grabbing appendages flexing with anticipation. But it makes no move to approach him. It remains stationary on its track along the ceiling. Nevertheless, the ‘being watched’ feeling keeps, crawling slowly down his spine as he lay with his chin tilted towards the paneled ceiling. Still, Simon turns his head.

His entire body twists in a flinch.

The alien is there. Huddled with its spindly long legs tucked to its sides, remarkably close. Does it not know he doesn’t like it? Why does it have to be so close, are all aliens so intrusive? Are they all meant to hover and stare?

It doesn’t have eyes, he remembers as quickly. In the dark light of the room, its facade tilts slightly towards him as it begins to unfurl a leg.

“What’d’you-” escapes him in a slurred mess.

”Did not mean to scare Simon, statement.” The translator buzzes faintly. A quick glance down proves whatever system it’s coming out of is perched on the floor beneath the alcove. ”Sorry.”

It’s trying to be quiet. Even the translator seems to catch on, the electronic voice escaping softly as the odd song chittering from the actual body of the thing. And yet, it places a… a hand on the glass closest to him. Three stumpy fingers spread against the surface, as if an attempt to comfort. That, too, is disconcerting. 

“What do you want?” Simon hisses. He’s still slumped back in his appointed cot, but the reluctance to get up from the warmth and excessive comfort of the thing dies at the alien confronting him.

Well. Him confronting the alien.

It hurriedly holds up a single finger as a faint groan sounds from the other side.

“Hngh…”

”Shh! Simon must be quiet. Grace sleeping. Takes a long time for Rocky to make Grace sleep.”

Eyes darting to peer through the enclosure, he spots the second cot occupied. Not sat upon, not being made, not being leaned against. In the comfortable, soothing dark of the room, the Captain lay sleeping, curled away under that colorful quilt. His glasses are tucked against the edge of the cot precariously, but he’s buried in the pillow (and shit, Simon realizes not for the first time, he has his own pillow). Simon stares over, and then quickly turns back to the alien.

Rocky. Right.

The Captain isn’t awake to chastise him though.

“Why would you want him to be asleep? Both of us asleep, huh?-”

Despite the alarm shooting through his chest, Simon finds himself going quiet too. It’s a harsh whisper out him, his voice raw.

He’s thirsty. He’s so thirsty. His mouth feels cottony and numb. It’s awful.

”When Grace no sleep, is grumpy-angry-stupid. Not good for work. Grace staying up to watch Simon sleep too long. Bad for health.”

What the hell is it with these guys and-

“Why’d he need to do that?” Simon bites out. “I’m fine. Okay? I’m fine, I’m not gonna go crazy on you-”

That might not be entirely true, but it’s not like he’ll say that out loud. The first sign of a falsehood and he’s going to assert how little he should be fucked with. Again.

”Scared Simon will not wake up,” the alien offers tentatively. ”I understand.”

Oh.

For being a massive rock on the other side of the glass, the alien manages to look… withdrawn. A little deflated even. He’s drawing his other forearm in a little awkward circle like a kid worried he’s in trouble, toeing the ground. 

“Okay,” Simon croaks. Fine. That’s- reasonable. “Where’s everyone else?”

”No one else. Just us.”

The alarm keeps. It pounds in his chest. “Why?”

For all intents and purposes, the rock alien tilts back. He tap-taps his previously circling arm and pauses, before continuing lightly.

”Grace crew asleep for trip to Tau Ceti. Did not wake up. Only Grace. Rocky’s crew did not know about radiation. Got sick, did not wake up. Alone for a long, long time until Hail Mary arrived. But no one else. Until you.”

Tau Ceti. Tau Ceti, does he recognize that? He thinks, distantly, that it might’ve been mentioned in the earlier explanation about ‘saving the stars’. Whatever unease was lingering slowly starts to shift into a pang. Simon wants, selfishly, to go back to the window. To sleep there, to stare out for hours. But there’re more important things at hand, things he needs to figure out. Things he can figure out with the rock-thing awake and talkative. 

Lies are cyclical. Simon knows this. It’s a circle he’d been walking for the greater part of his life, listening to the Father’s declarations and sermons, the interpretations of ancient texts as if their survival was a thing determined by something holy simply for the sake of… what, perseverance? That it was the end times.

And now, it just. Isn’t. 

Every possibility comes spiraling back to the forefront of his mind. Oh-so slowly, Simon’s remaining hand grips the edge of the cot as he sits himself up. He’s wearing some kind of glove, and when he glances down he spots a white something, a pinch through his palm betraying a line stuck in him. Something he’d see in a medical bay. His back aches in protest, but he persists. The rock worriedly presses both its three-fingered hands against the ‘glass’, as if anticipating Simon to topple over.

”What are you doing, question?”

Simon ignores the prompting and instead offers his own as soon as he’s more upright.

“What do you mean, no one until me? How the hell’d I get here-”

”Human memory is really bad.” 

For his part, Simon levels a bit of a glare at the creature. He draws in his forelimbs like a nervous bug, an air of dubiousness hovering around him despite his facelessness. But the stubborn little thing remains sat there, not keen on skirting back, on giving Simon any space. Still, he tap-taps, resolute. 

”Grace say that when first waking up on ship, he did not remember a lot. Not even being on a ship. He did not know he was in space. Did not know why. Or where. Or his name. Grace says sometimes this can happen when humans are medically asleep.” 

He quiets. Whatever vitriol had been boiling up in his chest falters. Answers. This is answers, and as disoriented as Simon is right now, he’s awake. He can remember these things. He can catch them in the lie later, work out the details, so he just- stays quiet.

If he’s learned one thing, it’s that most of the time, people just keep talking when there’s nothing else to do.

Not that this thing’s a person. 

But it seems to work. 

One of those forelimbs traces forward a touch, relaxed. 

”Simon was in a human ship object. Should not have survived space. But did.” 

“What ship?”

”Grace calls it ‘submarine’.” The creature continues lightly. ”Not built for space. But inside, was safe atmosphere. Inside was… very bad.”

Very bad could mean a lot of things.

“Medically asleep.”

The rock shifts his front limbs together again, uneasy as can be. ”Mary’s diagnostic system calculated, is better if Simon is asleep to heal. Simon woke up anyway. Not always normal. When we find Simon, there was no left arm limb. Lots of injuries. But still, Simon wakes up. Had to be careful.”

“That thing- so that thing was keeping me asleep this whole time?”
The alien must not like the harsh turn of his tone, because it stiffens.

”Yes, for healing. But less over time, to not make an addiction. Is not good for human immune system.”

Simon finds his nose scrunching. He’s wearing this all on his face and he knows it, so it’s a relief the alien doesn’t seem to have eyes. Hasn’t appeared to have eyes the entire time. It probably can’t see his scowling, but it seems to catch enough of his disposition to know when to shut up. It’s smart. Simon certainly doesn’t like it. Not for a second.

“What do you know about humans?”

”Rocky still learning.” 

“Why?” He demands.

Those little hands grab at the air. At nothing. 

”Important for living. Grace is human, need to know. Need to stay safe, statement. Is important.”

Peering through, the Captain sleeps on. Oblivious. Exposed. Simon wouldn’t sleep in front of many, many people. Not many of his brothers and sisters. Not the Father, not that he’d say so aloud. Not those who trained him. Not the Captain if he could’ve chosen it, most certainly not the alien. If Simon ever had a choice in the matter, he’d sleep locked in any closet he could find, not this room in the red and the dark with so many strangers. No matter how friendly or optimistic they could be.

Voice low despite it, he remains sat up. The alien fidgets.

“Why would you need to stay safe from him, huh?”

”Not stay safe from Grace.” The alien retorts shortly. ”Not dangerous.”

There’s an ample pause that has frustration rising up in his face. It settles tight in his jaw, inspires the urge to lean forwards, to snap. He does, just a little bit. Just enough. Enough for the alien to lean traitorously back. 

”Simon is not dangerous. Simon is fighter. Simon is scared.”

For something hummed with such conviction, the alien’s whole body shifts with doubt. As if, perhaps, it’s trying to convince itself of that certainty. He isn’t entirely sure how or why he understands it so, if it’s the vibration it makes, a deep thrumming ache, in the chest, invasive. He could leap from the cot for it. Flee down the hall and land flat on his face but at least, at least he would be far from it. He would be far from it belittling him so, simultaneously- calling him a fighter? What are its intentions, talking in circles like this?

What good is it to lie to something that must know him so entirely from the inside?

It stills him. Quiets him. Draws him to properly think for a damn second.

He hesitates. And then, he elects to be honest.

He hurts. Badly. Whatever they’d been pumping him full of must’ve been lessened in intensity, so even if he did run right now? It would hurt. It would awake the animal soreness in his legs, in his stump shoulder where it’s only a gentle simmer at the moment. He’d disturb the alien from where it lingers and, inevitably, wake the Captain, who’s proven to be more than capable of holding his weight. He’d be caught, dragged back to this cot and made to sleep again. He’s under this thing’s apparent supervision- that and the skittish robot arm.

Simon is scared.

He’s been scared for a very, very long time.

Since the sub. Since before that, in the C.O.I’s sorry excuse for a prison- no, before then, before even the mission falling apart, the flight there, learning of said mission, the Father’s spiels becoming ever more vitriolic, the bulk of his training- no, he’s been scared since he first got blood on his hands as a child, still soft, like a baby, without a mother to cling to any longer.

“Yes,” Simon admits, and it breaks from him unbearably small. And then he flounders for something a touch firmer. “I am. I am fucking scared. I don’t know where the fuck I am, I don’t know who you people are, I don’t know how those stars are out there- I don’t even know if this’s real. And you sit there. All the fucking time. Like-” he gestures. “Like you’re waiting for us to be asleep enough to do something.”

”Rocky would not,” the alien all but gasps it, offended. It’s the loudest he’s been the whole time.

“Then why! Why are you here all the time!? Why’d’you have to fucking be here when we- when I sleep!”

”I am scared too!” The alien all but squawks it, pushing himself all the way up on his creepy legs. ”Always, always, always watch sleep! Not safe sleeping alone!”

Oh.

The alien hushes itself, but it continues its tirade with a light stomp. ”Simon is first human Grace see in a long time. My Grace is scared. My Grace does not want to be alone. Eridian- Rocky and Grace are best friends, but is not the same. Humans need other humans. And Simon- was very sick. Very injured. Rocky scared Simon will go to sleep and not wake up!”

He’s moving closer to the wall between them now, pressing an adamant three fingered hand against the nearest pane. Such proximity draws Simon to recoil, just a bit, moving away to the best of his strained ability. But the alien quiets, the rumbling growl faltering into a fainter murmur, a song, echoing in the translator’s softened tone.

"Rocky’s crew sleep for a long time. Did not wake up. Did not know how to fix.” The alien warbles. ”But then found Grace. But Grace is brave. Too brave sometimes. And- sometimes, Rocky scared something will happen that will not be fixed. Grace Rocky already almost die to save each other. Rocky will always remember. Always, at all times, remember. Grace also injured, and would not wake up for a long, long, long time. Could not sleep until Grace wake up. Not safe to sleep alone because- because what if- what if Grace does not wake up.”

For something so faceless, so visibly stagnant and unreadable, it seems to waver. Seems to falter, seems weighed down by the mere thought or memory or whatever it is it’s considering. At once, that weight seems to settle in Simon’s chest; and the rock balls up its hand into a fist it very lightly knocks against the wall. It shifts, rotating slightly towards where the Captain lay.

”And then what if Simon does not wake up. Rocky cannot fix. Humans survive together. Need both to wake up.” The creature goes still, woefully so, proven alive only by the strange rattle of the shapes on its top. ”I do not want to be alone again. Do not want to lose anything again.”

Oh.

What a terribly human thing for this thing to express. What a terribly real, reverent thing for it to vocalize, even through the odd staccato of the translator. How sincerely and painfully recognizable that is, that feeling, articulated by a thing far from human; a thing that makes him scared. For one perfect moment, it feels too genuine to be a ploy. The alien’s fingers tremble, nearly spreading again, and then ball up in a silent grasp as it lowers itself back to sitting with a sigh.

Simon’s lost for words.

”Please sleep.” He asks. ”Healing is faster with sleep. And Grace will be worried.”

Grace. The Captain. The alien’s Grace.

It settles back where it had been before, even if its limbs splay slightly more awkwardly this time. It fiddles, rubbing one of its forearms anxiously, the short stony fingers brushing worriedly against a particularly stark little mark. It shimmers in the low light.

He swallows.

Sneaking yet another glance over through the barrier, Simon finally sets his jaw. There between the layers of oddly warped ‘glass’, the strangely organized clutter within, the darkness of the room bathed in warm light in some facade of safety; red, and he wants to blink it out. But it stays, a remnant in the corners of the room, by the floor. Still cast within it, no longer disturbed, the Captain lay in his cot.

The man sleeps so blissfully.

This entire time he’s been undisturbed by the whispered argument, at least since the beginning. From here, Simon can see where his face is tucked into his sheets, angled towards the alien’s enclosure as if even in his sleep he’s made sure he can be seen. His blonde hair is bathed deep maroon in the dark light, wild and unkempt. His shoulders are lax, and pulled up around him are colors. Colors, clear even in the overwhelming warm red- the whites and oranges of the sheets, the red of his shirt, and the blanket. The blanket. 

Simon’s seen it around, but looking at it properly, it’s so- so very much. And it draws the image he’d conjured up as a child, the story of Joseph, a namesake for many. The dream reader, beloved of his father and the Father, smart and yet oblivious to the truth of the world; bathed in the coat of many colors made by his mother, bathed in the sun, and the earth, and all things good. And there the man lay beneath it with hair like wheat in the stories, warm with life; painted in his sleep with what in any holy speaker would call the image of peace. Color. Color and all the symbols it makes, meaningless shapes to him, red, orange, yellow, blue, animals and bugs and birds, near ancient depictions of houses, childish drawings of planets, flowers and reeds and petals and shapes intended for all things green and good and precious.

He lay there, asleep, the most exposed he could ever be– despite Simon being in the same room. Despite how driven by his own fear Simon had been, with the door open, with the lights off. Putting himself at risk.

For someone who claimed to take survival so seriously, it feels… frivolous. No, stupid. Fucking idiotic. 

And yet.

None of them are alone.

The alien said it. The Captain had been alone. The alien had been alone- and now, despite all things, despite the potentials and possibilities, despite the impossibility of it, Simon is no longer alone either.

He isn’t alone.

He’s safe and he can breathe, and there is someone there to watch him. Who wants him to wake up.

Who wants him to live.

A veritable altar in a perfect bed just across from him.

“Okay,” Simon breathes before he can help himself. 

He relents. He pays his penance for it. For being an asshole, for being a monster in his first waking moments. He’ll listen.

Under the alien’s ever present eye, he shuffles painstakingly back down in the cot and lay.

And lay.

And lay.

Is it a ploy?

Simon- thinks it might be easier to believe that. But many things could be. He could think himself to damnation.

Wherever he is now, it feels very far from damnation.

He lay still.

And lay, staring up at the sterile ceiling, listening to the alien’s soft coo as it chatters nothings to itself.

Until once more sleep comes, a warm dark, a good dark, to the tune of another person breathing even in the same room as him.