Chapter Text
The person without a name stares out the window at the stars burning outside.
There isn't much else to do with their time here. There's more to do, more to experience within the ship, things they can touch and taste and move. But the things inside never change, not really, unless they do it themself. The things outside- they might not be able to interact, per sé, but they can watch as they shift and move and give them view of the world outside. They can watch the thousands and thousands of stars they float among, and take comfort in the fact that somewhere out there, there has to be a planet orbiting one of them, a habitable one, full of light and people and interest and something other than the endless monotony they're forced to remain in.
They don't know how long they've been here, wandering this cramped little space ship, wondering who had lived here, where they had been going, or whether they had gotten there. All they can do is trace their hand over the steel-and-bismuth walls of the ship, or examine the strange stains on the floor, a crimson that shines eye-burning greens and purples in the light, and ask questions there are no answers to. Sometimes, they would stumble across something new- a blanket, dirty and damp, an empty glass of what once might have been water, a violin, falling apart from disuse. They'd tried to play it once, but if they had ever known how, the skill had quickly slipped through their fingers, along with everything else.
Sometimes, they'll catch fragments of memories-the tone of a woman's voice as she asks them a question, the sear of a burn received quickly and without warning, the screech of raucous and unrestrained laughter. All too often, they slip through their fingers like sand in an hourglass they can't grasp the entirety of, and they're left alone again with nothing but questions and that same whispering, crooning song.
How long have they heard the song? They can't recall. Sometimes, it reaches them from beyond a veil they cannot see, beckoning to follow through a door they cannot seem to find. It calls to them, promising a set to belong to, a home for them to discover, a release from the ache of being firmly not quite right within a reality not made to suit them.
Other days, it's inside them, a technicolor chorus echoing through their bones in terrible and kaleidoscopic harmony. It reminds them that they are as much the song as the one sung to, that they are the colors and symphonies echoing across their existence as well as the one experiencing them. It's almost comforting- despite it all, there is more in the universe than their tiny world made up of a windows and a few empty rooms. They almost don't feel lonely anymore. Almost.
On the hardest days, the song leaves them, and the silence is deafening. They are simply alone in their tiny piece of the universe, with no company but their restless thoughts and the clank-clank-clanking of their footsteps on hard steel. On those days, their energy seems to leave them like water through a sieve, and it takes almost more than they have to get up and stumble to the radio. Any messages it had received or broadcasted had long since been cut short, swallowed up by static, but the sound helps disrupt that awful quiet. Those days, they would take the song back in any form, even the kind so loud their ears bleed and the colors blotting their vision burn and twist holes into their eyes. Anything but that absence, the wonder that maybe this time, it will not come back, and the closest they have to kin or kind has vanished from the world, leaving them in painful, hollow singularity.
You know the notes. The lost tune coaxes them. We miss you as much as you miss us. You belong with us. We sing for you, you know. Just this once, could you sing for us?
They desperately want to. And yet, for some unknown reason, they are afraid.
Somewhere within the depths of the ship, they had found a cracked little mirror, tucked away within a compact and in some pocket of ragged clothing, forgotten by the last owner. Their tentacles had seized it almost ravenously, a new thing to experience within this colorful and boring purgatory. Thoughtlessly, they'd pried it open, needing only for something new to entertain them for a while.
They hadn't known what they had expected to see. They knew the basics of their body- legs, arms, tentacles, wings, head, torso. Still, they couldn't help but stare at this stranger's face of theirs- glowing eyes almost comically wide, the color of the sun's glare on the snow. A long, thin nose, with an odd shape as though it had been broken once and not healed quite right. Hair in what was probably meant to have been a braid, now knotted and fraying, a dusty raspberry shot through with grey. A few adjustments, and they could make out more: the oil spill black of their wings, the opalescent glistening of their tentacles, the faint glow that radiated from beneath their skin, shining in all visible colors and many that weren't. No, they weren't sure what they had expected, but somehow, this hadn't been it.
A piece of them had cried out, seeing their face looking back at them. The rest had listened in blank and silent confusion, wondering why it had awakened that nameless grief they carried.
Their dreams seem to know why. But they are so filled with rainbow distortion that, whatever narrative unfolds beneath their eyelids, it's all but erased entirely by the time they wake, cheeks stinging and throat raw. They don't know understand it. The colors are their home, their sole companion in this existence they find themself trapped in. Why does it tear at them so much to visit with them while they sleep? No, they do not understand, and yet they continue to wake up to find themself crying, and they do not look into their reflection again.
Once, as they had been spending their usual few hours staring out into the deep space surrounding them, they had seen something else out there. A ship, like theirs, but only in the sense that they were both ships. Honestly, it would've been more accurate to call it a trireme. It was at least a hundred times larger, and a hundred times nicer, too. It bore an insignia that they thought marked it as belonging to somebody important, though the language was foreign to them. It moved with a speed they wouldn't have thought possible otherwise, cutting through space with precision and a purpose. They wondered if it was sentient. Some ships were, they knew somehow, and this one looked expensive enough to be one of them. If it was, they warranted it knew itself inside and out. Knew what it was made of, what it was for. Where it was going and how to get there. Had the means to get there, too, with those great big engines firing and fueling it and pushing it forward. It could get out of the infinite blackness that encircled them, find somewhere better that wasn't dark and lonely and so, so cold.
With a growl, they sunk it.
It had occurred to them, afterwards, that there might have been people on it. Even the sentient ships need pilots, don't they? And ships were made to carry things, to carry people. Surely that one had been no different. With a twist in their gut they remembered its great size, how many might have fit inside of it. But from the distance from which they had watched, they had heard no screams, only the boom of the engines as they caved in on themselves, and they had seen nothing but debris and a brief spark of flame before the void had swallowed the metal titan. And surely, they justified to themself, if there really were others out there, if they weren't as alone as they felt, then they weren't lucky enough to get any within a lightyear radius. Whatever gods were out there hated them too much for that.
They had curled up in their pile of pillows after that, the only room in the ship without windows, and if any bodies had floated past, then they wouldn't have been able to see them.
The room they sleep in isn't exactly the cleanliest. It's littered with feathers, sort of like their own, a dullish golden brown without that riotous color that permeates everything around them. There's more stains in there, too, stains that they're pretty sure must be blood but are too nervous to diagnose as such. They hope no one died in this ship. It wouldn't make a difference, not really, but it would still be unpleasant.
It's even less pleasant when they consider just how much of it is on their nest of sorts, a large compilation of every soft and warm thing they had managed to get their hands on. They know space is cold, but every time they check, the diagnostics hold firm that the heating should be working. The food replicator, that's more finicky, but the warmth is supposed to be there. So why isn't it? It seems that no matter where they go, the coldness of the void follows after, and they spend most of their time not staring out into space huddled in their bed of every pillow, blanket, and article of clothing they could find. It's a shame, really, as whoever used to own them must have bled an awful lot, especially on their clothing.
Why did they bleed so much? What happened to them? Why are they here instead? It all just leads back to the same questions, and it doesn't look like they'll be getting any answers.
Another important question. Why the hel did they keep a dead body in the engine room? This is a personal favorite of theirs, because it just seems different than the others. The only thing that might not be connected to the colors. It's a level of oddity that would be amusing if it wasn't, well, a body. It's frozen to the core, covered all in ice, though there was more when they first found it. Slowly, oh-so-slowly, it seems to be thawing in the heat. They're almost jealous of the warmth the corpse is treated to. They'd have kept their nest in there instead, if they didn't feel so uncomfortable rooming with a dead person- though the cold is so bad sometimes it doesn't feel like they have another choice. They could probably move it, if they wanted to, but where would they put it? It's a small area, and for some reason, they feel guilty throwing it out into space. They don't want anyone else lost or adrift in the cold and dark, even if they're not around to feel frightened anymore.
If it had smelled, they might have felt differently. There's only so much sentimentality can do when you're alone in a small space with very few places to go to escape sensory unpleasantness. But oddly enough, it doesn't smell. It doesn't seem to be falling apart, either, or doing any of the things that normal bodies are supposed to. Hel, it it wasn't for the utter lack of breath or heartbeat, they'd have thought the person was sleeping. But instead, it sits propped up against a wall, the ice encasing it slowly melting away.
Some days-the bad ones, when even the colors won't associate with them-they find themselves alone in there with it, propped up against an engine. The cold is always worse on those days, bad enough that even a dead body isn't enough to keep them away from what little warmth they can reach. They press themself against the engine, too drained to feel embarrassed and too isolated to have any real reason to. If they feel so desperately alone that they find themself talking to it on occasion? Well, that's their business, and nobody else's.
Still, today isn't one of those days. The song within them hums so deep in their bones they can barely hear it, a thing that shouldn't be comforting, but is. As always, it's colder than they'd like, but what are they really going to do about it but bundle themself in what they can fit and pray that it works? It's uncomfortable, whoever made these clothes clearly didn't plan on the wearer having tentacles, but they'll allow the limbs to be pins-and-needled if it means a little less of the chill that won't leave them alone.
Another shiver works its way up there spine and yeah, it's definitely worth it, gods know they're cold enough as it is. They squint boredly out at the blackness and wait for the world to let them back in.
Is that what this is? Are they being punished? Have they done something wrong? It...doesn't seem that unbelievable. They do have a body in their engine room.
This isn't how you normally punish people, though. They're pretty sure there's meant to be less of the infinite dark and loneliness of the cosmos and more walls. Maybe that wasn't enough to contain them?
Maybe this was the only way to be rid of them. Maybe they were left in here and launched into space in a last-ditch attempt to get rid of them for good. Maybe they were too dangerous to risk being in proximity to anyone.
They examine their tentacles, and remember the thrill in their gut as they'd watched the massive ship combust, and think of all the stains around the ship they were praying weren't blood, and can't help but think that must be the answer.
Movement from out of the corner of their eye catches their attention and they stare, because suddenly there is something to stare back, because as it turns out, the other ship that had not must not could not have contained people was not the only thing out there, and there is another starship flying towards them alarmingly fast.
It's sleek yet rough, organized yet chaotic, a mottled amalgamation of many different metals and materials that didn't look safe to patch a ship with, yet somehow a deliberate and unified presentation. None of that matters, though, because unlike the last ship, this one seems to have noticed the speck that their vessel is in comparison with it and looks like it intends to do something about it.
Transfixed, they stare as it gets closer, closer, even closer, until it blocks out almost all of the darkness they've grown so accustomed to.
A voice crackles out of the radio, and they flinch, and then they're crying because this might be the first time in the eternity they'd existed for that they'd heard another soul speak. They're so overwhelmed by shock and relief that it takes them a moment to realize they should answer, and another to find they didn't recognize the language being spoken.
Fear seizes deep in their stomach, fear that the one chance they have of being saved is going to be ruined over something as pointless as a language barrier.
Then, they realize they haven't even tried seeing if whoever is on the other end can understand them, and they're racing across the ship, stumbling as they trip over a chair, picking up the microphone and not even bothering to hide the desperation in their tone.
"Hello? Hello, this is the...uh-this is the ship you see in front of you. Can you understand what I'm saying?" Their voice sounds like leather hardened and cracked in the sun, ragged from disuse.
There's a brief pause, and then the person on the other end speaks again.
"Hello, this is the NCS Aurora, responding to a distress signal from the NMS Mímir. Is this you?"
They let out a laugh of pure elation through their tears as the voice's response comes out as something vaguely accented but nonetheless comprehensible. "Y-Yes, that's me- I believe? I've been on this godsdamned ship for so long- you're the big ship with the solar sails?"
"Yes, that would be us. Taking you into our cargo hold now."
They don't really know what that means, but they do know that they won't be alone anymore. There's a thunk, and the whole place shakes, and they dart to the window to see what look like massive grabbers extending out of the NCS Aurora to take hold of their ship, dragging them slowly and precisely to itself.
They start to pace wildly. What do they do next? Should they be gathering their things? So many questions, so blessedly new and unthought of before, and yet still stressful as for the first time there's an end in sight and decisions to be made. They spend the next hour shoving what belongings they want to keep into a duffel bag, the few things that they haven't gotten sick of, ruined, or both.
After that, unsure what else to do, they set about tidying the place, trying to make it look less like they'd battled a laundry demon and lost. Then they check on the body, still half-covered with ice, and decide that for lack of a better place to put it, they'll leave it there and pray that if anyone finds it, they'll have a decent chance to try and explain themself before being arrested, or whatever it is astronauts do with space criminals.
Their blood chills even colder at that thought. Is that something they should be worried about? Are they going to get a breath of freedom only to be trapped again?
They don't have much time to consider the thought before there's the sound of a door being kicked open, followed by several sets of careless, heavy footsteps, and their breath stops.
They start running almost as fast as they can, tentacles shoving chairs and tables out of their way as they rush to the painfully small room that serves as some sort of foyer.
And then they're staring down the first three people they've ever seen, and the barrels of three separate guns.