Chapter Text
Simon and Nikki had been sitting at the same spot for nearly five hours. Grace turned the gravity back on and sat with them for the first hour, but eventually got pulled away to work in the tunnel.
They spent those five hours in silence, simply watching the stars outside twinkle and shine.
Nikki had never lived in a universe where the stars existed, so she was marvelling over the novelty of something she hadn’t been able to comprehend.
Simon, however, had remembered what the stars were like before they disappeared. He was young at the time, but he still remembered looking across the wide windows of the station and watching the stars fade in and out. Perhaps the astrophage crisis existed in his reality too because his memories of stars were faint. These stars were bright. They shined brighter than any artificial light he had ever seen on Eden.
Looking at the wide expanse of stars across him, he started to feel something mend inside his chest. He didn’t even know it was broken, but now that he was surrounded by stars, it hit him just how much he missed the twinkling night sky.
In the back of his mind, he wondered if Nikki’s parents got to witness the stars in their afterlife.
At one point, Grace returned with food rations and blankets for each of them. Simon gave Nikki the comfier, colourful one and kept the standard issue fleece for himself. The rations were thankfully bland and easy to digest because Simon’s stomach felt like they were doing somersaults as they watched the stars pass by.
He’d glance down on occasion, to see if Nikki had fallen asleep from where she was cuddled against him, but she was equally as mesmerized by the view in front of her.
She had a look of child-like wonder in her eyes. It was the most raw, amazed look he had ever seen on her and he felt his heart melt at the sight of it.
He prayed to the stars that Grace and his crew were truly as nice as they seem to be. Hope had always been a fickle and unbelievable concept for them. When Grace extended an offer to stay with them, away from the cold, dark cells of the COI, Simon’s thoughts immediately wondered what they wanted out of them. Kindness and compassion was not a virtue seen on Eden unless it was by families or mentors – and these people were strangers.
Simon did not want to trust them. He really did not want to let his guard down for the first time in years, only to be thrown back to the COI.
And yet, he found himself hoping. Everything about this reality felt idyllic– utopian, almost. They have been through so much and, perhaps, Simon was losing the will to fight. Maybe, for once, he wanted to believe that there was finally some good in this world. That, if the stars still burned bright here, that good people walked amongst them as well.
Above all else, he found himself hoping for Nikki.
If everything Grace and his crew had been saying was true, if the offer was still there after he were to reveal they were convicts, and if they still saw them as human beings despite their criminal history, then Nikki would get a chance to live free. She would be able to roam without shackles weighing her down, sleep without staying alert, and, most important of all, look out the window and see stars rather than bars.
And so, Simon found himself praying to the stars harder than he had prayed to any God for this glimmer of hope to be as real as the twinkling lights all around them.
In the distance, Simon heard footsteps approaching them. They were different from Grace’s. This person had a slight drag in the way they walked and seemed to take shorter strides than Grace. Since there was only one other person on the ship with two legs, Simon realised it was Bryan.
“Hey,” he heard a voice call out from the corner. The footsteps stopped right before entering the room, like Byran wanted to keep himself hidden. “Can I come over?”
Simon and Nikki glanced at each other before nodding and looking back at the corner. “Yeah.”
“And, uhm,” Bryan hesitated. “Did Dad tell you about my, uhm, mutations? Like, did he explain how I look like and, like, what to expect?”
Simon and Nikki shared a look of surprise.
Dad?
For a moment, Simon wondered why Grace hadn’t mentioned that Bryan was his son. But then, he remembered that Bryan had popped up on the Hail Mary only two years prior. Simon had taken care of a two-year old Nikki, and he could say with confidence that Bryan did not sound like a two year old.
“Yeah,” Simon answered. He could almost hear the nervousness building up from behind the wall with each passing moment they stayed silent. “Grace told us.”
“Alright.”
Bryan finally stepped into view and, in all honesty, they really did not need to give him and Nikki that many disclaimers. Maybe it was because they just encountered a massive, freaky eel in the blood ocean, but Bryan’s mutations were not nearly as bad as he played it out to be.
“Hey,” Bryan waved, one of his tentacles mimicking the movement behind him. “Just wanted to introduce myself.” He cleared his throat and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I’m Bryan.”
Nikki sat up and Simon turned his body to face the young man. They noticed Bryan awkwardly shuffling in place when they didn’t answer immediately.
“Simon,” he greeted.
“Nikki,” she hummed, then gestured to the side of his face. “I like your eyes.”
“Thanks,” Bryan gulped and the two large eyes on his cheekbone blinked. “Full disclaimer, I’m still getting used to having four eyes so forgive me if I stare sometimes, I’m just trying to focus all four onto one spot.”
“Right,” Simon said. “I’m getting used to the mouth too. Mutations are weird sometimes.”
“You should have seen him drink water earlier,” Nikki added with a teasing smile. “Everything came out the side. He had to pour it in his mouth and let gravity bring it to his throat.”
“Well,” Bryan shrugged. “You’re doing a lot better than me. I was still more mutant than man during my first week on the ship. Dad didn’t even know I was human… Actually, if you want to see it, Mary recorded my arrival here. I can search for the video file. It’s pretty fucking gruesome though. Bad hair day, amongst… other weird cosmic freak shit…”
All Simon seemed to have lately was questions.
“Can’t be as bad at the blood eel that sent us here,” Nikki said with a shrug. How she was able to stay composed in this insane conversation was beyond Simon. Perhaps it was a young-people thing. “It had, like, a million teeth but the tiniest eyes. Oh, and its mouth was bigger than our sub.”
“You guys had monsters in your reality too?” Bryan looked genuinely impressed. Weird ass conversation, Simon needed a drink. “Dad said they don’t have monsters in this reality. Which is pretty fucking comforting because I am done with all that bullshit.”
“How could he know for sure?” Nikki countered. “We didn’t know monsters like that existed until it tried to kill us. Oh!” She clapped her hand and held a finger up. “Technically, we didn’t think it was a monster. We’re running off the theory that it’s a God.”
All four of Bryan’s eyes bulged out of their sockets. “Seriously?”
“Yep,” Nikki said, popping the ‘p’. “Two of them, actually. One that wanted us dead, and another that sent us here. My 아빠 (Dad )even ended up in some kind of cosmic mind space where he got to see one of them up close. It was freaky.”
It really was. Simon had a feeling that was going to haunt him in every nightmare he was about to have for the rest of his life.
“Duuudeeee, no way! That’s terrifying.” Bryan shook his head. “Hella interesting, though. I know Dad would love to pick your brain about the experience and come up with theories, but me? Personally? I want to be as far away as possible from all that weird shit. I– Look,” Bryan pointed at them. “If someone gives you an unmarked package and tells you to deliver it over to the next city at double your usual rate, run. And if you don’t, at the very least you gotta run once you encounter your first mutated zombie.”
Simon wondered if Grace had any alcohol on his ship. He had it a few times in prison. As shitty as it was, it did the job. Surely a ship this big should have something he could drink.
“Dude,” Nikki spoke up. “You have no sense of self-preservation.”
“I was told it was an important delivery! Like, a child’s heart or something!”
“A child’s heart?” Nikki repeated, sounding more and more incredulous. “Are you an organ trafficker?”
“Ohmygod, no!” Bryan quickly waved his hands and tentacles around, clearly affronted by the idea. “I was a medical courier! I delivered organs from one hospital to the next! Legally!”
Okay. Clearly another thing that simply didn’t exist in their reality. At least it was legal. Then again, Eden had things that they considered a rule of the law that the COI considered illegal. So, who even knows at that point.
Simon was tired. It’d been a long couple of days.
While he couldn’t completely understand Bryan’s actions, he had a feeling that the guy was like Grace. Clearly, he also wore his heart on his sleeve. Bryan had nervous tells that one could spot a mile away, Simon could read him like a book. He could also tell that, while he seemed to be a little awkward, he was a good kid at heart.
“Bryan.”
“Y-Yes!” Bryan whipped his head to look at him. “Sir…?”
“Simon’s fine, kid.” He moved aside, leaving some space on the ledge him and Nikki were sitting on. “Sit down.”
“Uhm…” Bryan eyed the small space between the wall and Simon. There wasn’t a lot of space, but it wasn’t small enough that they couldn’t turn to each other and talk comfortably. At least, if Bryan didn’t have mutations. “Are you sure?” He asked. “I can’t fully control the tentacles… They might try to grab you…”
Simon raised an eyebrow. “Do they want to hurt us?”
“No!” Bryan shook his head. “No, no. Not anymore. They’re just curious about everything.”
“Then I don’t mind them. Sit.”
Bryan nodded and scuttled over, plopping himself down and turning to face the two of them. Nikki leaned against the wall on the other side, while Simon scooted back and leaned against the window.
As Bryan predicted, some of his tentacles reached out for the two of them, curling around Simon’s stump and Nikki’s head. Neither of them seemed to mind, the tentacles were surprisingly gentle.
“Sorry about them…” Bryan apologized as he tried to gently yank the tentacles off them. Clearly it didn’t work and he only succeeded in getting them to coil around Simon and Nikki even more. “Once they get used to you, they won’t reach out to you anymore. They don’t grab Dad or Rocky anymore.”
“It’s fine, really.” Simon shrugged and one of the tentacles moved up to his side-mouth. “I’ve got a question.”
“Yeah?”
“If you're Grace’s son, why does it sound like you just met him two years ago?”
“Because I did just meet him two years ago,” Bryan said. “It’s… complicated?”
“We’ve got the time,” Nikki piped up and got comfy in her corner.
“Okay, well,” Bryan trailed off, scratching the back of his neck. “When I first got on the ship, I wasn’t in my own head. I’ve got, like, a couple people up here with me? Most of them are dormant now, especially after Dad managed to synthesize a better cure, but I was fighting for control of my own mind in the early days.”
Bryan wasn’t exaggerating when he said it was complicated. Simon had a feeling he had to adapt to abnormalities fast. He couldn’t keep feeling a mental whiplash at every new piece of information that gets thrown his way.
“He kept calling me ‘kid’,” Bryan continued. “I mean, I know it’s because he didn’t know my age and I look a lot younger than I am, but to my zombified brain, I thought he was my dad.”
Simon and Nikki blinked.
“Surely, that can’t be the reason you still call him ‘Dad’ now, right?” Nikki said. “It’s been two years.”
“No, no,” Bryan shook his head. “That’s just how it started. Once he gave me the cure, I was still in and out of my own mind for a few weeks while the mutations started to heal and the other voices in my head went silent. It was rough.” He shook his head, like he was reliving it in his mind. “I cried a lot. Any moment I was in control of my own mind was spent crying and freaking out. We both know it’s a coping mechanism, but I could not calm down unless Dad was there with me. He kept me grounded.”
Good lord. Bryan had gone through some horrific experiences. Simon was almost terrified to learn about Grace and Rocky’s backstories now.
“Eventually, I came back to my senses permanently and realised that, ‘Oh, this strange man I’ve been cuddling up to and crying my eyes out to was not my father’. Dude, I almost killed myself then and there.”
Nikki snorted and Simon turned to look at her in surprise. He never once heard her make that sound.
“Sorry,” she apologized and cleared her throat. “Took me by surprise.”
“We didn’t talk about it much after– we were focused on, like, a million things. Like, the alien he met during the time I was still processing the cure.”
“Rocky?”
“Yep,” Bryan pointed at Simon. “He absolutely did not fuck with the tentacles back then. He likes them now, though. Once he realised he was able to teach them to do some work, he got friendly with them real fast.”
“Right,” Nikki said. “And, I assumed you stopped calling Grace ‘Dad’ at that point?”
“For a while, yeah.” Bryan shrugged. “I’d slip up sometimes, but I mainly called him ‘Grace’. It’s… Look, it’s unconventional.” He turned his body to face the two of them better and dropped his hands to his lap. “We were both struggling for different reasons, and I am not a kid, but I couldn’t help but feel like one. I was in a whole new reality, in a body I barely recognized and light years away from Earth. I just…”
Bryan’s tentacles started to encircle him, almost like it was comforting him and trying to apologize for something. Simon could see profound sadness in his eyes, reminiscent of how Grace had looked like earlier. Like father, like son.
“I was so lost, and he had so much on his plate but he still did his best to help me figure out this… new me. Maybe it’s my lack-of-daddy issues, but I couldn’t help but think of him as a parental figure. He supported me through a lot, even when he didn’t need to anymore. He’d always make time to check in on me, or include me in his projects.” He sighed and glanced at the stars out the window. “I didn’t say anything, of course. I didn’t want to make it weird. Like,” he turned back to them and shrugged. “‘Hey! Just to let you know, I may have started to actually think of you as my dad!’ No,” he said as he held up a finger. “I’d sound crazy.”
Simon didn’t think so. Honestly, that sounded like how a lot of familial relationships formed on Eden. Family was never restricted by blood but it was also never reserved for small children. He knew of teenagers that got taken in by their mentors. Building a chosen family was an honorable act on Eden because it was seen as an act of humanity and unity, two very important (and ironic) virtues of Eden. After all, having a good soul was important for the Tree’s nourishment.
“I don’t think it’s crazy,” Nikki voiced out Simon’s thoughts.
“Maybe our social cultures are different,” Bryan shrugged. “But for us? It’s a little weird.”
Simon hummed. “I’m assuming something happened that made it less weird?”
Bryan let out a long sigh and pursed his lips. “Him and Rocky almost died. As in, I genuinely didn’t know if they were going to ever wake up.”
Nikki frowned. “That bad?”
“So fucking bad,” Bryan said while shaking his head. “Dad got knocked a couple times during a space walk mission, then he bashed his fucking skull into the control panel and went unconscious. Rocky, then, had to get out of his ball to carry him to the med bay. Oh,” he exclaimed as he remembered something. “I don’t know if Dad mentioned it to you, but our atmosphere is toxic to Eridians. When Rocky carried Dad, he was basically getting chemical burns all over his carapace and left a trail of ash as he moved. He was, quite literally, burning himself alive to save Dad.”
“What the fuck,” Nikki muttered.
“Exactly my reaction when I found them in the med bay,” Bryan said with a grimace. “Dad told me to stay in a secure part of the ship because of how dangerous the mission was going to be but I felt and heard everything go to shit. When the gravity was back to normal and the tentacles finally let go of the handles they’ve been holding, I went to look for them and… Well, they were both passed out, Dad on the bed with Armando treating him and Rocky on the floor. I carried Rocky over to his tunnel so he could recover. It’s how I got these scars,” he said as he extended his arm out for Simon and Nikki to study. “His atmosphere is mostly ammonia gas, and it’s usually over 210 degrees there.”
“What the fuck,” Simon muttered it this time, as he looked at the scars on Bryan’s arm. He assumed those were from whatever caused Bryan’s mutations, but to find out that it happened after he got on the ship made Simon realise that Rocky’s atmosphere was more dangerous than it looked.
“It was terrifying,” Bryan said as he pulled his hand back. “I genuinely thought they were both going to die. I was alternating between both their bedsides, just praying to whatever would listen for them to survive.” He swallowed and looked down. “I didn’t care about pretense anymore. I talked to him a lot when he was unconscious and called him ‘Dad’ the whole time. I…”
Bryan bit his lip and frowned as the tentacles around him wrapped around his shoulders and torso, tightening slightly as it started to console him again. Simon noticed Bryan’s hands were shaking but the guy was trying to hold them down.
“I felt selfish,” he admitted. “Dad’s got a million reasons to stay alive. He’s so incredibly important to Earth and Erid. And yet, when I thought he was dying, I asked him to stay because I wanted him to stay. I’ve lost everyone, I could not lose him or Rocky too. He’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a dad, I couldn’t…” He trailed off before shaking his head and letting out a breath. “I couldn’t fathom it. Guess who decided to finally wake up mid-break down?”
There must be something about this universe and good timing. Everything seemed to happen exactly when they were meant to happen.
“Anyway,” Bryan sighed out. “To cut a long story short, Dad also admitted he realised he had been treating me like a son and just… didn’t bring it up either.”
“Wow,” Nikki breathed out. “Rocky must have been pretty surprised when he woke up.”
“Not exactly. Apparently he’s always viewed me as his kid, so this didn’t really change anything to him. Fun fact, he still thinks of me as an actual kid.”
“You don’t look that young.”
“I–? Hey!” Bryan frowned and pointed at Nikki. “That’s mean, take it back!”
“I don’t mean it like that,” Nikki corrected herself. “I’m saying you don’t look like you’re ten or something.”
“Oh, right.” Bryan backed down. “I mean, like, for an Eridian, we are young. Hell, he even considered Dad a child until he learnt how old I was.”
“How old is Rocky?” Simon asked.
“231.”
“Holy shit.”
“Right!” Byran exclaimed. “I call him a fossil sometimes.”
“Fossil…? Nevermind, I assume it’s an Earth thing,” Nikki waved off. “How old are you and Grace?”
“I’m… Huh,” Bryan tilted his head to the side and counted with his fingers. “I should be 21 now. Maybe 22, but I’ll need to ask Dad which month it is. Dad’s age is a little odd. He’s, like, almost 40 if we count it by Earth years, but because of time dilation, his body is younger than that.”
Finally, a concept that Simon is actually familiar with. The Martian space stations did have a system to calculate age regardless of time dilation (albeit no one had ever traveled this far before), but it seemed like this reality didn’t have one.
“Oh, we’re all the same age,” Nikki realised. “Well, except for Rocky.”
“You’re 21?”
"And my 아빠 (Dad )is 38. So, a little younger than Grace by Earth years, but older if you factor in time dilation.”
“Huh.”
Bryan looked at Simon with a certain look in his eye. Nikki noticed and called it out.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Bryan quickly said and turned back to look at her. “Just remembered some random thing my Dad said about him and older men.”
"Oh?" Nikki perked up. "What a coincidence. 아빠 (Dad )has a thing for--"
“Nikki,” Simon cut her off. “Time and place.”
“We have all the time in the world, and we’ve got nowhere else to be for the next two years.”
“No.” Simon shut her argument down and returned his attention to Bryan. “I’m sorry you went through all that, kid. Sounds like a true nightmare.”
“It was.” Bryan grimaced. “But it’s over now. And, hopefully, whatever hell you guys went through is over as well.”
“I hope so,” Simon agreed. He wouldn’t be able to feel truly safe until they told the crew the truth about who they were and they still would be allowed to stay on the ship. Until then, he wouldn’t allow himself to get too comfortable.
Bryan nodded and got up, stretching as he did so with his tentacles mimicking his movements behind him.
“I’m starving, so I’m going to go.” He put his hand on his stomach and Simon swore he saw something move underneath the fabric. “Dad’s going to be here in a bit with your food rations. I’d bring them here myself, but I don’t know how he makes them.”
“He makes them?” Simon asked. They assumed the rations were stocked on the ship and not made there.
“Yeah,” Bryan confirmed. “We do have some that were packed from Earth, but we’ve had to adjust our food situation when I joined. Though, I do think Dad makes yours differently than our usual rations. I think there’s a little more nutrients in yours since you guys are still recovering from your injuries.”
“That’s nice of him.”
"Isn't it,아빠 (Dad) ?” Nikki leaned closer to him, nudging him until he had to push her away.
“Stop it, Nikki.”
Bryan studied the sight in front of him for a moment before turning and heading towards the corridor. But before he left, he turned back to say one more thing to Nikki.
“This is totally and completely irrelevant,” he started as he looked at her and avoided all eye contact with Simon. “But my Dad likes people with long hair. He thinks it’s pretty.” He shrugged. “Do with that as you wish,” he said before disappearing around the corner.
Nikki turned to Simon with a smile.
“아빠." ("Dad.")
“No.”
“아빠~" ("Dad~")
“No.”