Chapter Text
It was small.
And it was dark.
The only light emitting through the space was from the control board, small beads of green and red against the rust of the metal panelling.
It was all rust.
Always rusting.
He doubted there was ever a time when there was no rust.
He’d heard the ship had been new, once.
Long ago.
Before the stars all died.
He’d heard the ship had gleamed, shimmering in the light of that star known as Sol, glistening with a damp sheen as she rose up from the brilliant blue sea.
Back when such as a thing was blue. When Sol was something that gave warmth and light, and life could thrive even in the darkest of depths, simply due to the residual energy the great star pierced deep into the waters of the planets.
Now though…
Dreams. He thought.
Nothing more than dreams.
He didn’t remember, couldn’t remember, a time when the lights were not a sickly, artificial gold. False amber that illuminated rusted walkways, fog-damp air spitting the glow about the ships that now slugged pitifully through the blackness of space. The dwindling supplies and masses of humanity still crawling about the halls had long ruined the environmental controls. Lungs filled with moisture, coughing on the infections that burrowed deep into the tissue, blood seeping from their mouths and noses, day in and day out. If a day had any meaning anymore.
There was always rust.
Rust in space, now that, perhaps, could have been a funny joke some thousand years ago.
And now, was inevitable.
Rust.
Rust everywhere.
What an ironic fate, the very oxygen that kept him alive was what burned the metal cage holding him from the darkness outside.
Philza grinned, teeth reddened with blood from the infection festering in his lungs.
If he did make it out of this box, he doubted he’d last much longer.
They could have just let him rot in the prison. It wasn’t as if he was going to survive anyhow. He could just curl up into the corner and let sleep take him away. To an afterlife or to nothingness, anything would have been better than this hell-scape.
But no.
They had welded this coffin shut not more than an hour ago. Locking him within.
Sending him down…somewhere…
The window had been sealed off, enclosed in more of that awful rust to keep it from shattering.
Why have a window if they were just going to close it? Why keep the old design of this blasted ship if it was just to be meant as a tomb?
“Retrieve photos within the required areas,” he’d been ordered. “And you will gain your freedom.”
Freedom.
He scoffed.
Then coughed.
Carmine splattered across wall of the ship, blending perfectly within the rust of the walls, the rust of the oxygen tanks, the rust of the pipes, the rust that permeated everything since the day he had been born.
Ah yes, he wiped his mouth clean with the back of his hand. As if freedom was any different than this.
In a way, he wasn’t wrong.
This was just a smaller box than the box that was his old ship. This was a more compact version of his own home aboard that ship. No windows to stare out at the nothingness of space, no furniture to rest upon or admire should he require sleep or a reprieve from the monotony of being alive within the rust box. Just a control panel for steering and taking photos of the outside, though he supposed that was different then occasionally catching the rare glimpse of his ship’s lights bouncing off the rare chunk of debris floating amidst the blackness outside.
It wasn’t really much of a punishment if he was already living like this before.
Execution, maybe, he doubted he was going to survive this if he went through with their plans. They had only offered him freedom, not a cure for the infection.
Meaning, if he didn’t die in prison, if he didn’t die here, then he would die within a few weeks back on the crowded ship. Either smothered in rust and the cramped proximity to either people who were also rotting from the inside, or the blasted walls of this tiny box.
Either way, he would be surrounded by rust.
At least here, he pondered, flicking the switch of the camera to receive a grainy, black and white photo on the display screen. There could be something interesting to look at.
It wasn’t much.
Just the image of some rocks against the sea bed.
A few, sluggish bubbles from his craft boiling up within the fluid around them.
Perhaps it was a mercy the camera couldn’t receive any colour.
If it did, the image would only be another rust coloured thing to add to the rusted walls and floors and pipes and panels and gods there was no end to this rust was there?!
He knew the sea was blood.
Why it was blood, well, that’s what he was here for. Supposedly.
But he was glad he didn’t have to look at it in its true colours.
No more rust. He hoped.
No more rust.