Chapter Text
The pain is blinding, radiating white hot from the stump that used to be his arm, throbbing in his legs, his face, his back. Everything is pain.
Still, Simon pulls the black box to him, his fingers caressing the leather sheath. He weeps. He hopes.
"Please... keep this safe, okay mom?" he whispers, choking the words out. "It's more than me. It's more than me."
He repeats it like a prayer. Ava believed that this black box contained Humanity's salvation, believed with that same burning faith that she kept alive until the very end. He tries to pick that flame, borrow it just for a while, and he raises to his feet. Pained grunts escape his gritted teeth. He feels more animal than human.
The Eel begs and insults, in turn pleading and venomous. He ignores her and stumbles to the console. He just needs to hold it together for a little longer. Just a little longer.
The short few steps feel like an eternity of pain. The putrid smell of meat makes him gag. Still. He makes it. The metal feels warm under his fingers, almost boiling. The ship is alive around him, struggling for survival as the Eel gives chase.
His instincts scream at him as he clutches the porthole shield's dial. The glass can't handle the pressure. It will shatter, and Simon will die. But he will die anyway. He has to believe that the black box will make his sacrifice worth something. He has to. He doesn't have anything else anymore.
The Eel bites down onto the submarine, her teeth piercing through the thick metal like cardboard. The Iron Lung rears up with a deafening screech. Simon flies backwards, his skull hitting the ground with a dull thump. He scrambles to get back up.
"Can't you see this is a mercy?" The beast howls as she tries to pry the Iron Lung open.
Fury fills Simon's veins.
He wants to live. He only ever wanted to live.
And yet, everyone demands of him to lay down, to just take it.
Accept the abuse with a smile and kiss the hand that hit him, like it's a kindness.
He refuses.
"Fine! You want the Butcher?" His voice cracks and he rips the fire extinguisher from the wall.
"Come on!"
He charges.
Wrath is a sin. On Eden, Simon was Father's armed hand, his blunt instrument of destruction. His Butcher. His violence could be righteous, could be pure, could be good.
Falling back into the role is easy. His body remembers. He hits the teeth, over and over again, screaming, swearing. One of them breaks. For a second, he stills.
The Eel roars and bites down harder onto the submarine.
"Pray that you stay dead!"
It rings like a curse.
The hull whines and creaks between her jaws. Breaking a tooth was barely a scratch for something her size. And yet... She screeches incoherently about salvation, about living. She's furious that he managed to hurt her at all.
Good, he thinks, dark satisfaction curling into his stomach. At least, he gave her something to remember him by. May she choke on his corpse.
Blood cascades into the Iron Lung, swallowing Simon. He tries to get up, gulp one last lungful of the submarine's stale air... But his legs buckle under his own weight.
A part of him, all animal rage and terror, thrashes and howls at his body's betrayal. How dare it give up on him now, after all this? After all he's endured?
Another small, shamefully weak part of him sighs in relief.
It's over. He can finally die. He knows he won't join his mother in the Grove. He forfeited his place in the afterlife the moment he betrayed his Brothers and tried to save Filament Station. He's not even sure there is a Grove at all. Maybe it was just bullshit. Fuck, he knows how many times Father lied to the rest of the flock, to keep them docile, pretending the Last Tree was fine, that it was alive and thriving. Why would it be any different with this? Maybe there's just nothing when you die. Maybe nothing Simon did ever mattered, no reward or punishment awaiting him beyond the Veil.
Still.
Death has to be kinder than the Hell he's in right now, right?
He closes his eyes and waits for oblivion.
...
It doesn't come.
His heart doesn't stop, the pain doesn't fade. His mind crackles but doesn't shatter. He's still there. A desperate sob escapes him, the last of his air bubbling away... And still, Death forsakes him.
He should be drowning, but he's not.
Somehow, with blood filling his lungs and the cloying taste of copper on his tongue... He's still alive.
The Eel is silent. He doesn't know if she's even still around, he can't see through the blood. She has to be, she wouldn't just... spare him.
Once more, he gathers the last of his strength, gritting his teeth together. He tries to get up and finds that he just... can't.
His legs are there, the one arm he has left too. He can feel them, his flayed nerves screaming at him, he can even flex his muscles... But he can't seem to peel himself away from the sub's floor...
Oh. Simon's part of the floor, his pain bigger than his body as veins and flesh worm from the hull, under what's left of his skin, rooting into him like festering parasites... His stomach lurches with nausea as he understands, finally.
The Iron Lung is keeping him alive.
It breathes for him, keeping him safe in a parody of a womb while he's being unspooled and knitted back into something else.
Briefly, Simon considers biting his own tongue. Some of his Brothers chose to end their lives this way rather than fall to the hands of the COI.
He dismisses the idea. If ripping off his own arm wasn't enough to kill him... This wouldn't work either. Despair washes over him. He's trapped. Forever alive like a tumor on the side of another animal.
He laughs. There it was. This was Hell. His punishment for killing all of these innocent people.
All that time struggling, running, and it still caught up with him.
And then... The Light is back.
It glows through the walls of the submarine like they're not even there, impossibly bright through the blood and meat. It's physical, in the way light should not be. Honey-thick, it seeps into the cracks of Simon, tracing his shape, and it's a different kind of agony all over again.
The Eye sees him.
"SIMON."
Pain is a language Simon speaks fluently.
He was born in it, from it, in a world that bites more often than it barks. He knows the cold burn of the knife, the strangling twist of the rope, the sickening crunch of the bone.
He knows pain.
This is different.
This is not the discordant singing of damaged nerves, nor the dull throb of crushed tissues trying to heal.
This is reality unraveling. This is him unraveling, his very soul being unmade and remade, over and over again. Shattered and then glued back wrong.
I just want to be free... Please... Simon's last thought is a prayer.
There is a loud crack, and everything goes black.