Chapter Text
—— { 22 } ——
As Black settled down to sleep, various memories floated through his head. He had experienced a lot of things on this ship without having adequate time to process all of them. One particular memory that he had been grappling with for a while settled in the forefront of his mind. It was from the third day aboard the ship when Creatul turned the lights off. He learnt a lot about humans that day.
When the lights went out, Orange let out a yelp of fear, startling so much that she dropped the leaf she had just grabbed back into the filter in O2. “Black? Are you there?” She called out, switching her flashlight on quickly to scan around herself. The crewmate dressed in black was nowhere to be found and fear was seeping deep into Orange’s veins at having been left alone.
The moment the O2 room was plunged into darkness, Black broke away from Orange and headed down the corridor while he morphed back into his natural tentacled form. Slipping into the vent and travelling along to admin, he stopped behind the grating when he heard the voices of Yellow and Rose talking to one another.
“Stay close, I don’t want to lose you in the dark.” Rose said, pulling Yellow to his side gently as he scanned the room with his flashlight trying to look out for any danger near them. “You stay close too.” Yellow replied, holding fast to Rose’s hand and giving it a reassuring squeeze. She too was glancing around, and despite the way the both of them were remaining strong on the outside, Black could sense fear radiating from them both. From Rose more so than from Yellow.
At that moment, Black spotted the humanoid form of Pink moving outside of the door, heading up from storage in the dark. Black shifted within the vent causing it to creak slightly. “What was that?” Yellow asked, hesitating as she heard the sound. Rose pushed Yellow behind him, turning to face the vent as he kept his arm out to shield Yellow. “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.” He told her with confidence that he did not feel.
Still, his determination to look after Yellow even to his own detriment of putting himself closer to the vent was admirable. Black hadn’t seen an act like that before in a human, even less so in the other cephalopods in his home colony. Self preservation had always won out on the previous missions he went on. Fellow imposters were willing to throw each other out of the airlock when they were caught in order to save their own skin. Humans who claimed to wish to stick together would scatter when danger came running at them. But not Rose and Yellow who remained firmly at one another’s sides.
Pink had heard the shift within the vent in turn, and she doubled back into admin, heading out from cafeteria to be seen by Yellow and Rose. “Hello?” She called into the room, shining a flashlight that she didn’t need ahead of her. Rose shifted his body to block Yellow from both the vent and the person coming into the room even though he had registered that it was Pink. He really was not one to trust anyone aboard aside from his girlfriend.
“Pink, are you okay?” Yellow asked, the more trusting of the two as she took hold of Rose’s hand again and looked over at Pink. “Yes, I’m here to check the admin table to make sure everyone else is too.” She let them know, making her way over to the aforementioned table, her eyes glancing over at the vent to signal to Black that she knew he was there. Black knew what that look meant. She wanted to do a double kill with him. But he hesitated.
He couldn’t bring himself to kill Rose and Yellow. Not after that display of love and care they held for one another even in the face of potential danger. Black poked out of the vent slightly to shake his head at Pink. She glared at him angrily before turning back to Yellow and Rose as Black slipped back into the vent. “Two in storage, three in admin, one in weapons, navigation, electrical, and medbay.” She informed them, fudging the actual admin table results to give Black an alibi even though he wasn’t complying with her wishes.
“Let me see.” Rose replied, distrusting as always as Pink stepped away from the table and left the room. Hurriedly, Black vented back over to outside of navigation, getting out of the vent and reforming his human disguise so as to make the most of Pink’s forged admin information. He headed over to weapons figuring that Orange was the person that Pink had stated was in weapons, and there he found her alone in the dark. Open and vulnerable to be killed if he so wished.
“Black?” Orange asked again, looking around the control chair of the ship’s weapon system for any sign of him. “Orange.” The orange clad crewmate let out a scream at the sound of her colour designation. “Easy, it’s alright, it’s me.” Black said, shining his flashlight in her direction. “That was so scary!” Orange exclaimed, clinging to Black’s arm immediately.
The irony of her running towards an imposter for protection was not lost on Black, but she was safe here as killing her would ruin his alibi. “It’s alright, I just went to check on my download in navigation.” He lied easily, and she nodded her head, still holding onto his arm in the dark. “I thought the imposter got you. Or maybe that they’d get me.” Orange admitted, shivering at the thought. Black glanced away briefly at that, not that Orange noticed as her helmet was pressed in close to Black’s arm.
“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.” He told her, parroting the words that Rose had said to Yellow. It didn’t really feel right saying it to Orange, but Purple was all the way across the ship, hopefully still with White. If she lived to see the next day, he hoped he could tell her those words and mean them.