Work Text:
Daisuke is watching the sunset on the digital “window” —
when the whole thing turns bright, blinding red.
It scares him right off of the couch he’s lounging on. He stands on wobbly legs, but stumbles when the alarm blares, hunching over and clamping his hands against his ears. He peeks up at the screen.
WARNING. EMERGENCY. COLLISION IMMINENT.
Daisuke tries to slow his breathing, already feeling dizzy. Keep it steady, keep it steady, he thinks, like Swansea says when he’s trying to learn how to use a new tool. He braves the noise and forces himself upright, in hopes he can make it somewhere, do something, although he doesn’t know what yet —
He feels the crash before he can hear it.
The ship jolts, sending him down harshly onto his hands and knees, but the pain barely registers once the deafening boom of the blast hits him. The ship lurches and drags him across the lounge. He digs his nails into the carpet, but just ends up in a limp heap of tangled limbs and burned palms as the back of his head gets slammed into the stairway.
The alarms are still wailing distorted tones. The screen violently flashes a garbled red message. The warping letters mix with the black spots in his vision.
Once the ship stops moving and the room stops spinning, he weakly pushes himself off the ground. It takes him a moment, with a white-knuckle grip on the rail and his teeth grit against the pain and noise, to get his balance again.
The first few steps feel like swimming through mud, but he’s soon scrambling up the stairs and into the dim hallways. A scream is stuck in his throat: somewhere between — Captain — Swansea — someone, anyone?
He doesn’t know where he’s heading. He just knows there’s panic in his veins and a pounding in his head and he has to run. He hears a commotion, the voices loud but barely a murmur above the klaxons and his thundering heartbeat, so he sprints towards it.
Smoke filters up from the cockpit. He stops, peering down the stairs and trying to listen in, but nothing is intelligible and his eyes water and burn.
Anya rushes up through the gray plumes, barreling past him with an uncharacteristic forcefulness. He's glad to see her, but the terror on her face and the urgency in her pounding footsteps puts a knot in his stomach.
Daisuke stumbles back, coughing. An acrid smell rises up. There's the scent of burning plastic and oil and chemicals he recognizes from his time working on repairs, but an underscore of something sickly sweet and metallic that he can't put a name to.
He turns to follow after Anya when he hears a shout coming from below.
It isn't the arguing voices and overlapping orders he's been hearing. It's an anguished, blood-curdling scream.
He ducks back when he hears footsteps approaching. He feels faint. Swansea always tells him, stop getting in the way, and he doesn't know what's going on, but he knows he won't be able to do anything but get in the way, so he backs away from the main path and tucks himself into the hollow of the door to Utility. He presses himself against the cold metal and squeezes his eyes shut.
The entrance to the cockpit opens. That smell, the unfamiliar, sickening one, fills the air. Shouts and sobs grow louder, closer. He doesn’t look. He lets the noisy procession pass by. Fade into the distance, out of sight.
But he knows he can’t stay here forever — heat is rising, sparks are flying. The smoke is so thick he can barely breathe.
He follows the sound up the stairs, but he stops in his tracks, almost tripping over his own feet on the last step as his heart sinks deep into a dark black pit.
Someone’s being dragged into Medical. Someone, he thinks, because they’re such a bloody mess he can’t even tell who. He can’t tear his eyes away long enough to tell who’s carrying them. He can’t hear anything over the intertwining voices, and that same screaming. The door closes and they disappear.
His heart thumps erratically against his ribs, his stomach churns, pain blooming in the back of his skull.
Daisuke bolts from the stairwell, past Medical, into the lounge, on muscle memory alone with his eyes stinging too much to see. He locks himself in the closest bathroom.
He falls to his knees on the cold, hard floor even though it hurts like hell.
It’s quiet. Too quiet — the screeching and wailing and blaring and crying still ring in his ears. His lungs burn, he tastes blood and smoke and acid.
He’s scared.
Half-formed thoughts spin uselessly in his pounding head. The ship. The crew. The body. His body. Floating through space. Earth. His parents. His future. His failures. And the only thing that’s really coherent is the fear.
His mind keeps spiraling like the way his stomach twists, except his thoughts stay lodged stubbornly in his brain while his last meal decides to evacuate.
He spends a while in the tiny cubicle, under the flickering lights. Who knows how long. He just watches drool and tears drip into the murky water. He still sees red among the black spots and cyan afterimages burned into his pulsing vision. A slideshow of jumbled memories flashes behind his eyes. He can’t remember anything concrete, even if he tries. Maybe that’s for the best.
The mangled image of what he saw in front of Medical is still embedded in the center of the mess, threatening to surface. He retches as he desperately attempts to fight it back.
There's a knock on the door. Daisuke, startled, spits up the last of the acid and bile from his empty stomach.
Swansea enters even though he didn't receive an answer. Daisuke looks up at him through tear-blurred eyes.
He has a serious look on his face, the one he gives when he's absorbed in his work, or when he's trying to impart some big life lessons to his intern that Daisuke never quite understands. There's something tired and haggard beneath it.
Daisuke opens his mouth to say something, but just whines. Swansea crouches down and puts a hand on his back, and the simple touch has him crying and babbling, all his half-formed questions tumbling out of his mouth at the same time.
“Daisuke,” Swansea chides, in that same stern way he does when Daisuke gets distracted during an important job. His voice then softens to say, “It's okay.”
Daisuke sniffles and swallows.
“Is — are we — the ship…?” Daisuke stutters out, voice thick and wet.
Swansea sighs, looking off into the pipes running down the wall as he thinks.
He always tries his best to make things understandable for Daisuke. He's learned to keep it simple and take it slow. But the moments waiting for an explanation are agonizing, with breathless dread writhing in his chest.
“Hard to tell the extent of the damage, but she’s stable, for now. The foam filled up all the cracks.”
Daisuke nods and tries to calm himself. He knows — well, he should have known, if he were thinking straight — about the ship's emergency response, and the expanding foam that releases when the hull is breached. He had smelled the familiar chemical tang, but he was so scattered he could barely see. He just remembers red and loud and mess.
“The stuff's all over the place.” Swansea's mouth briefly twitches up into a hint of a smile. “Remember when you got stuck in it that one time, trying to fix that vent?”
Daisuke makes a noise, the closest he can get to a laugh in his state, and smiles a little himself.
But he thinks about the captain having to dig him out, and his heart throbs painfully out of rhythm. He blurts out the next question on his mind. “The crew — who — ?”
He feels a bit dizzy as Swansea frowns. He grips the toilet like it's his lifeline.
“Captain took the brunt of it. Got burned up bad, but he's still alive. Rest of us, we're all fine.”
Daisuke fruitlessly gasps for air, he retches but nothing comes up.
“Hey, kid, stay with me!” Swansea rubs his back, firmly, up and down his spine. It's kind of an awkward motion. Unsure but still comforting. “Fuck, you saw it, didn't you?”
Daisuke just whimpers, a strangled sound.
“It's okay, Daisuke. Anya's taking care of him. You know she's good for it.”
Daisuke takes a deep breath sucked through his teeth and lets it out in a coughing wheeze.
He does trust Anya. She's squeamish and shy, but can really shape up when she needs to. He thinks of the times she's treated his injuries, the way she would flit about the room, the way her deft fingers worked when cleaning wounds and tying bandages. It's easier to think of himself on the table, instead. It keeps him from imagining the details.
Swansea squeezes his shoulder. “You and me will get through this, right?” There's not even a tinge of fear in Swansea's voice. He's not the worrying type. He's a fixer, a hard worker, and worrying does nothing but waste time.
Daisuke isn’t as strong, but he forces himself to take a slow breath. And another, and another, until the tangled mess of thoughts has been pushed out of his head, and he can think enough to speak clearly.
“...Okay. We’ll do it.”
He has to at least pretend that he’s capable. Daisuke hates the idea of being useless, of dragging the crew down. He refuses to be dead weight.
“We will.”
Swansea doesn’t doubt himself, so he can’t, either.
They stay there for a moment, silent and still.
Daisuke tries to ground himself in the present. Even if the present is cold metal and stomach acid and a clumsy, clammy hand on his back. He scrubs the snot and drool and tears off his face with the back of his fist.
The hand leaves his back, and he turns, almost ready to beg his mentor to stay before he manages to hold his tongue.
Swansea is still there, digging through his pockets. He takes out a pouch of water from the kitchen, tears the corner off, and hands the dribbling bag to Daisuke.
“Sorry, I couldn't find a cup or anything…”
But Daisuke takes it gratefully, sucking down half the package in a few gulps while a good amount of it ends up spilling down his chin. It's lukewarm, but it feels soothingly ice-cold as it flows down his raw throat and soaks into his shirt. He drinks so eagerly he chokes a little.
“Take it easy, kid!”
Swansea gives him a strong pat between the shoulderblades. He splutters, coughs, and gives an apologetic smile.
“S…sorry.” Daisuke swallows and wipes the water from his chin.
Swansea sighs. He stands.
“I'll be making the rounds and assessing the damage. Take a while to pull yourself together, and come join me.”
Daisuke immediately sits up straight. “Really? You'll let me help?”
“I need all the help I can get.” Swansea shrugs.
It's hard to tell his expression as he looks down at Daisuke, but Daisuke would like to think there's a bit of fondness in it. A kind of distant affection like a reluctant stepparent. A smidge of trust, at least.
Daisuke nods. “Of course! I'll do whatever I can.” His voice is still crackly, and when he tries to stand, his shaky, stiff legs won't take him all the way.
“Don’t push it, kid.” Swansea nudges him back down. “Breathe. Clean yourself up. I need you at your best.”
And that’s as good a reason as any, so Daisuke tries to follow the simple instructions. He watches Swansea leave, he peeks out the door as the man recedes down the hallway, but he doesn’t panic.
He has to make his mentor proud.