Chapter Text
“You found one of my shirts,” Grace comments as he wriggles on a pair of latex gloves.
Simon has been coerced back onto the medical bed, but his feet are firmly on the floor and ready to run if the robot arm so much as twitches. Grace tried to convince him that he’d deprogrammed it for the time being, but until there are wires in his hands Simon will stay vigilant.
It’s Grace’s shirt? Well, that would make sense--he’s wearing a similar one now that shifts in Simon's field of vision as he prepares instruments. It says Ah! The element of surprise. But there’s no element which uses Ah as a chemical symbol.
Simon doesn’t understand these shirts. What’s the purpose of putting letters across your clothes that have nothing to do with your ranking or your station?
He flinches, realising he’s taken this man’s property. What should he do, take it back off?
But Grace seems unbothered. He’s humming tunelessly as he clatters about the room, thunking dressings onto a tray. “I won’t lie to you,” he says with a chuckle, “I am not even close to a medical professional. Like, I struggle with Bandaids. So if you really don’t want Armando, this is gonna be pretty ropey.”
“No robot.”
“I promise he’s nice. He’s just a little handsy.”
Simon says nothing.
“Oh-h-kay.” Grace wheels a chair over to him, making scooting motions with his feet. “Talking my ear off, you are.”
He reaches a standstill, sitting in front of Simon. Simon becomes suddenly, overwhelmingly aware of being in his underwear.
Grace peers at him over his crooked glasses. “You might not like this, but you’re gonna have to take the T-shirt off for me to check all your scarring.”
Simon throws it off. Get it over with. He hopes Grace can’t hear the way his breath has sped up.
“Oh. Wow. Okay. Cool.” Grace taps the puddle of shirt perfunctorily.
Simon stares at the wall, trying to force his heart back into rhythm.
A real human. He has to be. He’s warm and solid and clumsy, even. Simon didn’t think he’d see another human being again.
“So,” Grace says, swinging back and forth on the chair, “The last time I tried to touch you, that wasn’t so swell for either of us. If I… can you promise not to choke me again?”
Simon considers it. He can’t promise that, because Grace hasn’t proven to him yet that he’s not a danger after all. So he says nothing.
There’s a tiny, quivering corner of him somewhere that’s crying out to trust him.
Grace’s head dips. He laughs, high-pitched. “Great. Amazing. Well, here goes nothing, then. I’ll… I’ll start by just checking your head. That seems like a good level 1. So--I’ll just explain everything I’m gonna do. Hope that helps mitigate the… violent reflexes. I’m a pretty external processor anyway, if you hadn’t noticed.” He squints to consult a beat-up laptop he’s set up next to Simon. “Okay, the written knowledge of all the combined doctors on Earth commands me to shine a little light in your eyes and check that your pupils dilate and contract correctly. Can I do that?”
Simon says nothing.
“Look, how about you just say no if you don’t want something instead?”
Simon finds himself nodding.
“Right! Amazing! We can do that.” Grace clicks on a pen-shaped light and moves it slowly back and forth, shining it into Simon’s eyes. “That… looks okay, I think. Again, I’m pretty much just guessing here. I’m a molecular biologist, I never liked any of the blood-and-guts medical stuff. Which is another reason why I’m delaying the dressings.” He laughs sheepishly. This man is full of laughter. His smile bursts across his face easily, as nervous as he looks behind it.
He’s scared of Simon. What does he know?
“Can I ask you a few questions? The Laptop of Wisdom wants me to check your memory.”
Simon shrugs.
“Hey, I never asked you this, I’m so sorry! What’s your name?”
Simon looks away from his probing gaze. “Simon.” It comes out of his wrecked throat full of grit; he coughs.
“Simon. I like it.” He can hear the guy smiling again. “Got a last name?”
“Have you?”
Grace’s eyebrows quirk in surprise. He puts the pen away. “Grace is actually my last name. Don’t tell Rocky.”
Simon glares at him.
“You really don’t like him, huh? Bad alien experiences in your childhood?”
Simon says nothing.
“I’m Ryland. Ryland Grace.”
“What sort of a name is Ryland?”
“An, uh… American one?” Ryland types something noisily out on the laptop. “Right. Who is the… I won’t even ask about the current president. I wouldn’t be able to verify that. I wonder who is the president right now… okay, sorry, here’s one. Can you tell me what year it is?”
“378 EIC.” That’s what he’ll want to hear, Simon reckons. This place doesn’t look familiar enough to him to have anything to do with Eden or Mars.
“Three hundred and… what now?”
Simon scoffs. “What, you want IMC?”
“IMC?” Ryland echoes. He doesn’t offer anything else except a bemused look Simon doesn’t understand.
“Where are you from?”
Recovering himself, Ryland says, “Well, I--I was about to ask you that.”
“You first.”
“Earth. I’m from Earth. Are you… not?”
“Which colony?” Simon asks him. Nobody just says ‘Earth’. Earth doesn’t fucking exist anymore. What is up with this guy?
“Colony…? I, uh, don’t think we’re on the same page here. I mean--I’m from San Francisco, is that what you mean? The USA?”
The names ring a faint bell. They’re old, very old. The USA--the United States of America? That doesn’t exist. Not even before the Quiet Rapture.
“I’m from Eden,” Simon tells him.
That stops Grace. “Eden? The--the garden of?”
Simon gives him a look. “The fucking station. Eden. What station are you from?”
“I’m--I’m not from a station. I’m--well, I haven’t been to Earth in a pretty long time now, I guess, but–”
“What is this place?” Simon cuts in.
Grace--Ryland--kisses his teeth. “Okay. So, don’t freak out. We… I don’t know how to say this better. We’re in space. We’re on a spaceship.”
“Where in space?”
“Oh,” Ryland says, stilted. “You--took that well. Can I check your face?”
He reaches to hold Simon’s head in place. Simon--he knows he’s probably fine here, physically at least, but he’s a fucking coward, and so he scrambles away.
Ryland puts his hands in the air, awkwardly high. “Sorry. Too fast. Okay. If I go slower, can I try?”
Simon slumps. This is so fucking stupid. “Do it.”
“I promise it won’t hurt. Or, not too bad. For too long. It’ll probably hurt a little, I don’t know why I said that--“
“Do it.”
“Okay,” Ryland says meekly. His gloved fingertips land on Simon’s temples. “Gonna check for bumps,” he explains, and roams his fingers across the tacky mess of Simon’s scalp, pressing just barely at his skull.
He’s close. Simon watches his pulse thread along his neck. No tattoos or markings. There’s a faint purpling bruise, though, from Simon’s forearm.
“We’re not in the Milky Way. We are… darn, can’t remember exactly… memory is enduringly janky… well, we’re around fourteen lightyears from Earth. Not to freak you out.”
Fourteen? Simon wants to say, but his mouth is oddly slack. He realises he’s closed his eyes. The hands on his head are so gentle. Soothing even to his aching head.
“It’s a long story. The short version would be… I was sent to investigate a star and send back information to help Earth, and I met an alien along the way who helped me, and… the plan now is to go back to his planet.”
Before Simon can process any of that insanity, he hisses as Ryland discovers a tender spot.
“Sorry,” Ryland says softly. “Yeah, that’s pretty nasty.”
A lump rises in Simon’s throat. He won’t cry, he won’t cry.
It’s just nice. It feels…
Really nice.
Ryland finishes palpating his scalp and checks his chest, his torso, his face, chattering about the Hail Mary and the alien and something called Astrophage. Simon hangs bonelessly from his hands. Light hands on his skin. Like nothing he’s felt in--how long? Inspecting the ruined flesh.
Ryland’s glasses have slipped further down the bridge of his nose, surely useless now. Simon can’t get over how spotless he is. Not a speck of dirt. Not a single mark or scar. Not the smallest hole on the goofy cardigan he’s wearing. If he’s human, he’s a different species to whatever Simon is. And he won’t stop smiling.
There’s a distinct feeling of wrongness to this. Someone so perfect shouldn’t be touching someone so contaminated. What if the mutations come back? What if they’re contagious?
Ryland reaches the dressing on his cheek and Simon feels his blood thrum through his temples.
Are there fangs on my face are there fangs on my face--
He doesn’t ask, just watches Ryland’s reaction carefully as the dressing is peeled away. Ryland swallows heavily.
“What?” Simon asks him. Oh, fuck. He’s growing something. The mutations--
“I’m so sorry.” Ryland blows air out through his mouth. “I’m not the best with blood, is all. Oh, man. I got this.” He tosses the dirty dressing onto the metal tray and takes a moment to compose himself.
A man who hates blood.
“It’s funny,” he huffs, bringing a wipe to the side of Simon’s face, “When we found you in that crazy sub, you were drenched in blood. I had to really put on my big boy pants for that moment. Thought that might have broken the phobia, but… evidently not.”
“Where was I?” Simon asks faintly. The wipe makes contact with the wound and he grunts.
“Sorry,” Ryland says again. Every time, he apologises. “Honestly, you might have to help me out there. I… gosh, when I think about it it gives me the heebie-jeebies…” he shivers. “When you pinged an alert on the Mary... You were on a moon that looked like it was made of blood.”
Simon would nod if Ryland weren’t working on him. That’s relieving to hear, actually. A fact of existence that they both share, at last. “That’s right.”
“So… what’s that about?”
Simon says nothing.
“Right. Question for when you’re less banged-up, maybe.”
He’s finished taping on a new dressing. Simon nods.
“I’m sorry if I’ve been talking your ear off. I never know when to turn it off.” He laughs, but it’s hollow this time. “I’m just… not used to having another human around, I guess.”
Simon has a lot of questions he hasn’t the energy to ask now. Why is he the only human on this ship? How could he possibly not know about the Quiet Rapture--has he been traversing space for that long? What did he mean, investigate a star? There are no stars left to investigate. It’s like he’s from another world entirely. A world where people laugh easily and never scar.
What does he know about Simon? The rock was calling him convict.
“The black box,” he remembers aloud. “Did you find it?”
“We downloaded some files that looked like they might’ve come off a black box,” Ryland says. “Some very freaky stuff. Is that what you’re talking about?”
“You downloaded it. You have it?” Simon begins to tremble.
He did it. He did something fucking useful for once in his life. The horror might just have been worth it.
“Yeah.” Ryland speaks it softly, very softly, like Simon is an animal he might spook. “We’ve got it all. Hey, maybe we can look over that stuff when you’re feeling better?”
“I’m fine,” Simon says offhandedly.
Ryland harrumphs. It’s so unexpected, Simon nearly laughs. “Well, I’ll just take a look at your fine arm, then. If only I’d known you were fine, I wouldn’t need to gross myself out doing all this.”
“I can do it myself,” Simon fires back.
Coming in with the worst fucking timing for his ego, his arm--the arm that isn’t even there--decides to scream in pain and send him doubling over himself on the bed.
“Oh, shit,” he wavers.
“What, what is it?”
“Arm. I don’t get it… it keeps hurting but it’s not fucking there anymore.”
He shouldn’t be exposing himself like that. He certainly shouldn’t be letting Ryland put a hand on his heaving shoulder.
“Phantom pain.”
“Doesn’t make--” a fresh, nauseating wave-- “Any fucking sense.”
“Can I get you some pain relief?”
And that’s how he finds himself letting this guy jab a new needle into him. And he wasn’t wrong before, he’s none too good at it, stabbing Simon four or five times before he hits a vein and saying things like jeepers and sugar-honey-iced-tea. He doesn’t seem to curse. He promises Simon he’ll keep the morphine bag mobile so he won’t be tied down again.
Simon mostly agrees to all this because he’d started to tear up from the pain and the overwhelm of all this and he didn’t want Ryland to see.
Ryland unwinds the layers of stained bandages covering what’s left of his arm and Simon stops looking.
“It’s okay,” Ryland tells him in that same soft voice. “It’s not infected. It’ll heal.”
Simon tries to remember what the fuck they were talking about before. There was something important he needed to say.
The black box. The information on there is vital. He tells Ryland this, aware that his syllables are starting to slide about as the pain relief makes him woozy. “You need to get it to--the fucking COI, I guess, or Eden, if we can get it there, or… anyone who could make a difference.”
Ryland doesn’t answer him for a long while.
“Ryland?”
He jumps at that. “Yeah. Uh… sure.” He doesn’t sound convinced. “Why don’t we just talk it all over in the morning?”
“Is it night?”
“Well, hard to tell in space. You’re due a rest, though.”
“We’ll send out the information then?” Simon reiterates, sounding too much like a worried child for his own liking.
“Yes. We’ll figure it all out. Do you wanna stay here? It’ll be much comfier than that box room.”
Simon shakes his head. He needs to stop doing that. Now the morphine floats around behind his eyes, dulling the pain but intercepting his clarity of thought. “Where are my clothes?”
He wants his hood and his harness. It’s stupid, maybe, but he feels wrong without them nearby. Without his hood to hide in and his harness snug against his skin. All that’s between him and the blazing angel-light of Ryland is the curtain of his dank hair.
Ryland fetches them. They’re haphazardly folded, but clean, like they never saw the blood ocean.
Then Simon makes the mortifying discovery that he needs Ryland’s help to even get into said clothes. He stands burning with shame while the soft hands tug his sweater into place and button his pants. Ryland looks red in the face too. Simon’s not sure why.
“You’re sure you don’t want something with no holes in it?” Ryland ventures.
“I want my fucking clothes.”
Ryland purses his lips hard and nods furiously. His hands hover over Simon when he finishes, like he’s contemplating doing something else.
Simon gets out of there. He’s half-floating on the drugs now and he doesn’t wanna say or do anything else that’ll compromise him while he figures out what the fuck this situation is and how he can stay alive in it.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Ryland calls after him. “Lemme get you some things, at least!”
He doesn’t meet the alien on his journey back. They kept their word, then.
Sinking to the floor of the closet and closing the door behind him, he loosens the vice grip he had on himself and lets tears well in his eyes. Why was Ryland so nice to him? Why’d he have to touch him so gently? It’s made everything feel so much fucking worse. Now the horror stands out in sharp relief to those gentle hands. Now he can’t stop thinking thinking thinking about blood in his mouth in his nose in his eyes suffocating him.
But at least they have the files. He saved the black box. It was real. He’s alive.
Now he needs to find a way to convince Ryland to do something with them. But that’s a plan to be made tomorrow.
Ryland’s a molecular biologist. Maybe he can dream something up. That’s a nice thought.
Ryland’s voice comes from the other side of the door again. “I’ve got you a bunch of stuff I thought you might like. Take anything you want. I’m gonna go away, though, alright? I won’t stay and freak you out. I’ll be up a floor. Holler if you need anything.”
Simon will not be fucking hollering. But--fuck--a part of him wants to. Because now he’s alone again.
He scrubs away the traitor tears. Not the time for that. Time…
Time to sleep. But he’s curious. Before the painkillers can knock him out, he opens the door, peering around the larger room first to make sure nobody’s still there. Sure enough, there’s a spread laid out in front of him: a steaming cup of some sort of food, a clear straw-punctured pouch labelled H20, a pile of blankets and pillows, and one of those dumb T-shirts.
Simon gathers them all inside his room, a harrowingly slow process with one arm and a cotton-wool head. The healing scars all over his skin pull and itch like crazy as he shifts the bedding into place. But he does it. Makes up a sort of bed on the floor, much more comfortable than the cold metal on his bare skin.
He wants to sleep so badly he could weep, but the pull to eat whatever’s steaming in that cup is stronger. It’s a bland sort of oatmeal thing; it’s surely the best thing he’s ever eaten. He didn’t realise how desperately hungry he’d been. Eating stirs up his thirst, and he gulps down the water in a single go.
Sated, he curls up in his new nest, wishing he had his knife to cling to as he slept. It’d make him feel better. He’s not sure asking Ryland for a knife would be the best tactical move though.
Ryland… Grace. Hail Mary, full of Grace. Ha. He wonders if that was intentional.
He slides into unconsciousness with an absent hand curling around the Seed, still puzzling over the afterlife and penance and angels and aliens and skew-whiff glasses.