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The waves crash under the pier. Liam dangles his legs off the edge. If he closes his eyes, he can pretend the lack of ocean spray chilling his legs is just because of his thick coveralls.
Thud.
He takes a slow, measured breath in. The air is stale.
Thunk.
He lets it out. The cold bites at his ears and nose, but it's far too dry. He can hear the sea, but it doesn't make it to his skin. He doesn't open his eyes.
Bump.
"What Liam doing, question?"
Liam sighs and cracks his eyes open. The waves crash on the screen below him, the pier is a cold metal bridge, and he was never at the shore at all. Arvid rams repeatedly into his shoulder.
"Liam. Liam. Liam. Liam."
"What, bro? God." Liam finally shoves back at Arvid, who doesn't look sorry in the slightest. For someone without a visible face, he still manages to look smug.
"Arvid boreddddd."
"How is that my problem?"
"Just the two of us here. No one else to talk to."
"No one else to torment," Liam grumbles. "So what do you wanna do then?"
"Not this."
"This?" Liam gestures to the recorded ocean on the screens surrounding them. "Why not this?"
"Boring," Arvid groans.
"It's not boring! It's… It's…"
"Boring?" The cheeky grin in Arvid's voice is audible through the tinny speakers of the makeshift translator.
"No, no. I can't explain it, I guess. I don't know."
Arvid rams into his arm again, though not as hard this time. "Liam misses home."
Liam laughs, the lump in his throat a little bigger than he would have preferred. "Don't you?" Arvid hums in agreement, but doesn't say anything else, a rarity for him. The silence unnerves Liam, really. He'd prefer Arvid keep talking at this point, but he just sits there staring at him, and Liam squirms.
"I don't know, bro. Or, I don't know how to… articulate it, I guess."
Arvid stays silent. Liam feels like he has to keep talking.
"It's like… I know I can't go home, right? I don't have much of a choice but to die out here. Verstappen made sure of that," he laughs bitterly. "And it's not like this is all that realistic. These screens are just… well, they're screens, ya know? I'm only getting the sights and the sounds, and even that is filtered through a million layers of artificial bullshit. But I'm not too keen on spending all my time looking out the window and seeing nothing at all. I think I would actually lose my mind if I did. So even though this is fake, and I can't actually experience it like I would on Earth, it's… I dunno. Makes me feel like I have a life left."
"Liam have life left."
"Yeah, yeah, I mean like, I'm alive, but I didn't really get a choice to be up here, y'know? Piastri and Alonso, they volunteered for this. They had time to prepare for the fact that they were going on a suicide mission. And Albon and Russell, too. They knew only one of them was going up and the other was getting left behind, and still, they were fine with it, they prepared for it. They made the most of the time they thought they had left with each other, and good for them, right? Except Albon and Russell died in that explosion three days before the mission, so there goes the lead scientist and the replacement, and oh, Lawson helped train them! Lawson has no friends or family! Let's chase him down and drug him and force him on a suicide mission light years away from the only home he's ever known. That's a wonderful idea, thanks, Max." Liam dimly registers that he's crying at this point, but now that the words are coming out, he can't seem to stop them.
"And I wish I could have talked to Oscar and Fernando again before we went up. They put me into the coma before I could do much of anything but try to run, really, and by the time I woke up on the ship, the two of them had already been dead for who knows how long. God, alone on a spaceship with no memories and two dead bodies. Who wouldn't want to live my life?" he chuckles wetly. "I wonder if they believed Max's excuse about why they put me under early, or if he just told them the truth. I wish I could talk to Max now. And I wish I could ask him what the fuck he was thinking, but I couldn't, because I know what he was thinking, and he was right. God, I hate that he was right! Because I'm here, aren't I? And I'm doing the stupid mission, just like he knew I would, even after I said I was gonna sabotage it, and I'm never gonna go home, and I'm gonna die in space without anyone on Earth knowing what became of me." He takes in a shaky breath. "At least I get this, right? At least I get to be aware and alive at all. The other two died while they were still in the coma." He scrubs at his face the best he can with his hands, tears slowing. "Or maybe this is worse."
Arvid gently nudges his arm when it becomes clear that Liam is done for the time being. "Not worse."
"Yeah? How do you figure?"
"Liam here. Arvid here. Liam and Arvid together. Not alone and no dead bodies anymore."
Liam snorts. "The lack of dead bodies is a plus, that's true."
"And we save stars. Badass."
"I gotta tell you, I don't feel very badass, mate."
Arvid's genuine confusion is visible, even without a face. "Not?"
Liam shrugs. "Just feels like more of a scramble to survive than anything."
"And you survive. Badass."
"Okay, man." Liam shakes his head. "Whatever you say. Badass." He looks down at his feet swinging off the edge of the cold metal bridge, the recorded ocean waves still crashing on the beach below. "Can you even see the screens in here? Is the sound enough to, like, echolocate, or whatever?"
"No. Boring."
"Well why didn't you tell me? I could've done something about that. C'mon." Liam pushes himself to his feet and pads towards his workshop, Arvid joyfully clanging and crashing along behing him. The recorded sound of ocean waves fades as the door slides shut behind him.