Chapter Text
There was blood everywhere. All around Simon, inside Simon, in his mouth, choking him, changing him. It changed people’s voices. It changed what he saw. It changed the world. The blood was everywhere, and he was nowhere anyone would want to save him.
He gave up on fighting.
Simon woke to blinding lights, and pain. So much pain. His head hurt, his arm hurt, his ears rang, and every single inch of his body ached with something. Hadn’t the COI had enough with him? Did they want more? Or was this something else, a hallucination from the thing in the blood, another nightmare? He’d given up. That was supposed to be the end of it, he’d stopped fighting. He was supposed to have died. He had wanted to die.
The ringing eased from his ears as his eyes adjusted to the light. A soulless voice came from somewhere above him, “Eye movement detected. What is two plus two?”
He shook his head. Not real. It couldn’t be. As he looked around, all he saw was sterile white, cleaner than anywhere he’d ever been. He looked to his right. An IV in his arm. Well, that was proof of it. This couldn’t be anything more than a dream. He’d wake up back in that hellhole, dying, or maybe even dead. Maybe his eternal punishment would be to stay there forever.
Seemed fitting.
He went to rip out the iv, to send some shock of pain to end whatever this was and go back to reality, before he could get used to the soft clothes his brain had conjured up. But his arm wasn’t working. He looked to his shoulder.
His arm was gone. Bandaged neatly, but some blood was already peeking through. Okay. Maybe his head just couldn’t compensate for what happened in reality, couldn’t come up with a lie good enough to hide the fact that he no longer had an arm, so it just didn’t try. Simon didn’t care. All he had on his mind was getting rid of that IV. He bit it and ripped, ignoring the trickle of blood that traced down to his wrist. He was cleaner than he had been in a very, very long time, even with the blood. The voice above him spoke again.
“Body movement detected. What is two plus two?”
Simon stumbled out of bed. A robotic arm came down to nudge him back into the sheets, but he swerved, dizziness kicking in. He moved around another arm, to what looked like a door. The whole room was weird, arms on the ceiling, three rings with mattresses essentially floating within them, a geometric hodgepodge of what looked like glass sectioning off almost half of the room. It was all clean. All white. Whatever this place was, it was a really good dream. Almost felt real.
He pulled himself through the door, noting that everywhere else seemed clean too. His socked feet made little noise on the smooth, cold floor. There was an echoing, musical noise somewhere ahead. He made his way to it, slowly. A voice made its way to Simon, causing him to pause in the strange hall.
“Yes, Rock, I remember what happened last time. But I don’t want him to wake up alone. I mean, can you imagine that?” A man said. The voice was soft, irritation tinged with worry. More music ensued. “Okay, okay, yes, you can. But I can’t just not go to him.”
Even more music. Simon hadn’t heard so much in years. “I’m not wearing the pillow suit. But I will be careful. Promise.”
Simon continued when the voice stopped. He reached a fork, two paths leading directly to the left and right, and then what looked like a bedsheet hanging on the wall.
He never had to decide which way to go, because at that moment a man rounded the corner to his right. The man’s hand ran through his blonde hair over and over, mussing it up and further skewing his eyeglasses, muttering all the while. Simon didn’t move. Whoever he was, he looked soft. The wrinkles in his forehead crinkled around his eyes, as if he had spent much of his life with them crinkled in laughter. Not now, though. No, now he looked worried. The man looked up, eyes widening as he registered the bloody figure in front of him.
Simon lunged. The man took a couple of pathetic steps backwards, like he was going to run, but Simon fell onto him too fast. He put a knee on each arm, and his hand on the man’s throat.
“Where am I?” Simon questioned. His voice was hoarse with disuse, crawling with distrust. The man’s blue eyes were shaking with fear, his breath getting faster by the second, but he answered.
“You’re on the Hail Mary-“ he started. Simon interrupted to give himself time to think.
“I didn’t ask anything else.” He growled. The man below Simon nodded, his Adam's apple squirming under Simon's hand.
“Okay. Yup. Alright.” The man’s words were breathy, his chest moving up and down erratically. He looked close to hyperventilating. Simon almost felt bad. As far as he knew, the Hail Mary wasn’t a ship within the COI. But he couldn’t take chances. For all he cared, this was just another person who barely registered Simon as anything more than a criminal. A convict. A butcher. There was no way he was going to go through that in his dreams, too, after everything he'd been through in reality.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Grace. Ryland, actually but everyone just calls me Grace-“
Simon tightened his hand on the man’s throat, and ignored the dizzy spots in his vision. Too many words, especially as his head swam and his stomach rocked. He couldn't keep track of them. Grace stopped talking.
Simon reevaluated his choices. He could be dreaming. He could be recaptured by the COI going back on their word, which wouldn’t surprise him. Or this could be real, and the man in front of him actually was a man named Grace and the Hail Mary wasn’t another cage, but a safe place. With his luck, he sincerely doubted it.
He figured it was best to play it safe, and go with option two. Especially since his head kept feeling lighter. And his hand seemed to be loosening, despite his doubling efforts to keep it tight. Below him, Grace's eyebrows creased in worry.
There was music down the corridor. Grace stiffened. “What is that?” Simon asked. He couldn't quite remember why the music set him on edge.
“A friend.” Grace answered. He'd finally learned to keep his answers short.
“Yours or mine?”
“Both, I hope.”
Simon didn’t like it. Not one bit. He swayed on top of Grace, trying to maintain consciousness. Nothing made sense in his head anymore. Lights swarmed in his vision, warping reality, setting the ringing off in his ears again, settling a halo in Grace's blonde hair. He let go of Grace’s neck, but didn’t completely retreat, choosing instead to sit up straighter. That should help him stay awake. He didn’t want to go back. If this was a dream, he didn’t want to leave it. Couldn't leave it. Where it wasn't lights, but blood, blood everywhere, changing everything, skewing his perception and messing up the world, stealing its sense.
That was when he saw the huge ball rattling towards him. He couldn’t even dodge before it hit him square between the eyes.
“Grace stupid, statement.” Rocky was hanging off of a bar in his section of the bedroom, fiddling with a new breeder for Taumoeba. He swapped between this and his latest project, which involved trying to extract nutrients from his food into something remotely edible for Grace. It wasn't going well.
“Gee, Rock, thanks,” Grace sighed, looking at the man on the medical table. He’d reopened several wounds on his little walk. Armando had been working overtime with him. The blood had been Grace's to clean, to swipe away with an alcohol wipe as if it had never been there. As if he hadn't been sick just a day earlier, trying to clean gallons of the stuff off of the only human contact he had in years, trying to mop it up as the man kept on throwing more up, kept on bleeding more, and Grace couldn't figure out where it was coming from. And then the teeth in his cheek, the flaps on his neck, the crackly bark crawling up his leg. The restraints on his waist and chest felt barbaric. But what else could Grace do? He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Not compliment,” Rocky sang. “Insult.”
“Yeah, I got that. Sarcasm, Rocky, we’ve talked about this.” Grace kept staring at the long black hair, the hollow cheeks.
“Human language stupid. All humans stupid. Small brain. Act stupid when scared. When sad. When angry. Inefficient. Stupid stupid stupid.”
Grace just looked at the chest and waist restraints on the only human he had seen in years. “Yeah. Stupid.”
A few hours later, when they were both in the lab trying to figure out the food situation, Armando’s alarms went off again. Grace immediately went to go check on the man, but was quickly stopped by a very angry xenonite ball. Desperately, he glanced at the camera set up in the bedroom, the feed showing his only human companion fighting hopelessly to escape his bonds.
“Grace must wear pillow suit, statement.” Rocky trilled, stamping one of his claws. Grace looked at the ridiculous assortment on the wall, a mutilated shirt that had belonged to Ilyukhina encased in dozens of cushions. Rocky had insisted that it be made after initial contact with the, apparently violent, man. To be completely fair, it wasn't as if he had absolutely overpowered Grace. It was just very clear that he was not quite out of the fight or flight being in that horrible ship had forced him into.
“I’m not wearing the pillow suit,” Grace said. Rocky stamped again.
“No. Humans stupid. Humans act stupid when scared. Man scared. Grace wear pillow suit.” He said all of this in a low pitch, angry, and Grace had to strain to catch the harmonies. He still felt like a fraud in his Eridian fluency, missing several words. But he could always catch the gist. Rocky was not a subtle speaker.
“He’s restrained! I’m going.” He insisted, pushing past the ball. "And you can't come. You aw how he initially reacted to you. Just wait until I give the okay."
Rocky whistled, annoyed, and greatly protested as Grace left to the bedroom, and then closed the door behind him. Rude, but necessary. Immediately, he saw a problem. He hadn’t tied down the man’s arm, for fear of being cruel, but now that same arm was whacking at Armando. The robot kept coming in to try and calm the patient on it's table, but said patient was uncooperative. His eyes were wide, afraid, and he fought against the restraints Grace had put on him.
“Armando! Cease treatment!” He called. The poor nanny bot did as it was told, retreating upwards. The man swiveled towards Grace, breathing hard. Grace pushed his glasses up, stepping towards him. “Are you okay?”
“Are you fucking kidding me? What are you, COI? I did what you asked. Let me go!” The man shouted, then kept fighting. He went to work on the restraints, but his fingers were clumsy with medicine, useless on the buckles. It was a pathetic sight, and Grace whimpered as he heard the scraping of nails on metal.
“I don’t know what COI is, actually. We collected your vessel from an abandoned moon- could you please stop? You’re going to hurt yourself!” Grace urged. Then he saw the fresh blood seeping into the bandages on the man’s shoulder. Too little too late.
“Why do you care? I’ll tell you what, you don’t!” The man continued. But he stopped fighting. He glared at Grace, face pinched in pain and distrust. His chest rose an fell quickly, and his eyes crossed ever so slightly. If he hadn't already been forced into a laying position, Grace thought he would have likely fallen over. A dizzy spell.
Grace swallowed. “Why wouldn’t I?”
The man heaved in breaths. His eyes darted between Grace and the door, then at the bands holding him down. “I don’t deserve it.” Grace just stood there, shocked. The first human he had seen in years, years, and he didn’t think Grace should care about him. Couldn’t care about him. “You’re wasting supplies on me. Bandages, fluids, medication. You shouldn’t be.”
Again, Grace remained stationary. He managed to swallow his disbelief. “I’m not wasting anything. You need stuff, so I’m giving you it.”
“That’s not how it works,” the man scoffed. “You want something.”
Transactional. That was how this man thought. Grace had a few students like that in the past, who thought every little act of kindness had to be repaid. “I don’t want anything from you. You’re a person. You needed help. I gave it to you. It’s that simple.”
“No,” the man said. “No, it doesn’t work like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t.”
Grace groaned, more in desperation than anything else. The way this was going, as soon as the man gathered enough stamina to fight again, he would, and he would just end up furthering his injuries. “Fine. How about this: I want to know your name. Could you tell me it?”
“What?”
“Your name,” Grace insisted. “I want to know it. If you want to see this as some sort of transaction, even if it’s not, fine. Then the price for me saving you is simple. Just tell me your name.”
The man took a long time to respond. He glanced at the door again. Flexed his fingers. Finally, after what felt to Grace like endless awkward lifetimes, he answered. “Simon.”
Grace breathed a sigh of relief.
“Okay then, Simon. Are you thirsty?”
“Why?”
Grace held back another groan. So, they were back to this. “You’ve been asleep for days? People tend to be thirsty when they go that long without water.”
“I haven’t done anything for it.”
Frustration bubbled through Grace. He pinched the bridge of his nose again. “It’s water. You need water to live. Why, exactly, do you seem to believe you need to pay me for necessities?”
“Because that’s how it works.”
Grace was at a loss. He didn’t want to play the owe card again, and force Simon to do anything; he didn’t want that kind of power. What he wanted was for the man in front of him to trust him and accept help, and to stop reopening his gosh darn wounds. Simon, too, seemed confused, and his eyelids were drooping.
“Mary, could I get some water?” He called. Simon’s eyes widened as one of Armando’s arms descended with a pouch. Grace grabbed it, then handed it to him. He accepted with a look of disbelief. Then he took a sip.
“Well,” Grace said, looking down at Simon with sheer relief coursing through him. “Are you hungry?”
Simon stared at him for a long time, the confusion playing across his face. “Yes?”
Grace grinned. “Great! Mary? Some food?”
Another pack was delivered a minute later. Simon accepted it, something like reverence in his eyes. When he started eating, he wouldn't take his eyes off of Grace.
“Do you get it now? There’s no transactions here. Just people helping people,” Grace said. Unencumbered by Simon’s refusal of basic human decency, he wanted to talk to the man. Just talk. Get rid of the stupid restraints. Maybe hug. God, how he wanted to hug Simon. How he wanted to hug anything other than a mishappen ball who never actually enjoyed it and was only there for his benefit.
Simon nodded. “Yeah, I get it.”
Grace grinned even larger. He was getting somewhere, and only in a few hours, with only a couple of bruises. Simon understood. And now, they could actually bond, the way Grace had been starved for long before the needle had been shoved into his neck.
“You’re an angel.”
Wait.
What?