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The door slides open behind him.
Jimmy’s brain makes his head turn so he can see who it is, but he knows. He could hear her shoes shuffling in the hallway.
“Oh. Hi.” Anya rubs the back of her hand under her nose and gives a single, dry chuckle. “I thought you were asleep.”
Jimmy nods, conciliatory. Yes. She would think that, this time of night. What a coincidence that they’re both here.
She’s in what passes for pajamas, the only sweater she's got, and leggings underneath it.
Her flight suit is warmer, but she takes it off and flips it over Polle every night. She claims it's because she doesn't want to sleep in her ‘work clothes’, a bit of distaste in her mouth, like she would get them any dirtier if she wore them lying down than standing up, but Jimmy thinks she just does it to feel normal.
He gets it. If she has to get up and get dressed every morning, maybe she's still a real human being after all. Someone just getting through their hellish day.
It helps them all keep routine, at least. Polle’s chime when she tugs the suit off him has become their new sunrise. The Tulpar crew still wakes at 0530 CST because of her internal clock.
Anya is lingering in the doorway, half turned like she might go back to the lounge.
“Is everything okay?” Jimmy asks. Anya shrugs.
“Yeah. I couldn't sleep. I came to sit in his chair.” She gives him a rueful smile. Look at us. Caught in the same act.
Jimmy usually likes those smiles. He cant see it well in the dark, but it's a smile that shows her teeth when most of them don't. The shy, girlish ones she gives Curly or the relaxed ones she gives Daisuke never do, because she's embarrassed about them. Only Jimmy gets the awkward flashes of her tooth gap. The space where her front incisors are just a little too short.
“I can move," Jim offers. Anya shakes her head.
“Actually. Can I sit with you?”
He blinks, then holds out his arm in a casual invitation. She takes it. Settling on his lap with her back against the arm rest. Jimmy curls around her, part comfort and part keeping her on his lap so she doesn't slide off.
“It’s so gruesome in here now.”
Jimmy hums, but doesn't have anything to add, so he says nothing instead of idley commenting on the smears of blood or stray bits of glass everywhere. Its a long batch of quiet before she speaks again.
“I knew I should worry. I just thought he'd make it back home.”
He has to clear his throat to reply. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”
“He was acting different. I knew he was, and I still didn't do anything. It's my job to do something, and I didn't. I failed him.”
Jimmy shakes his head. He doesn't disagree, but he doesn't blame her.
“What would you have done?” He asks, because they’re on a spaceship in the middle of nowhere. He doubts the med bay is stocked with mood stabilizers or a competent therapist in a can. The kind of help Curly needed isn't something that Pony Express can hire for petty wages.
Anya laughs a very sad and genuine laugh. Then her lip juts out, and she turns her head so he can’t see her face.
“I just never knew the right thing to say.”
She's falling off his lap. Jimmy lets her go, and Anya rises to curl up on his seat instead.
It’s cold without her. The moments of closeness made him forget the bite of the chill.
The ship is always cold, but on low power mode, it's uncomfortably so. Swansea says he doesn't mind it, but Jimmy knows he’s lying, and Daisuke shakes a lot of the time.
Anya puts her chin down on the tops of her knees. “Is it terrible that I want him to be sorry? That I want to know if he regrets it? It wouldn't change anything, but if he was sorry, I could forgive him.”
The hornet in Jimmy’s throat flutters it's wings. Then it starts to buzz. It takes a few tries, but he swallows it into his stomach and shakes his head no.
“Even if he wasn't sorry. I just want to know why. Or how he's doing. I would do anything just to talk to him again.”
He can't help it, the bitterness bites him. “He's in your office, Anya. Talk to him all you like.”
“Jim," Anya says, exasperated. Two fat, helpless tears roll down her cheeks. They glow in the digital light.
“Sorry," Jimmy says. "That was insensitive.”
She sighs some more, and picks at a cuticle with her thumb. "It's not you," she says. More gloopy tears fall.
“C’mon, don't cry over him. He’d hate that," Jimmy says, and Anya nods in agreement.
“He would. It would make him feel really awkward,” she says, trying for a smile. It falls. Her shoulders hike, and she chokes on a sob. She's really only dehydrating herself, but Jimmy looks away and lets her cry. Eventually, she stifles her noise to a few hiccups.
“Jim," she says, and takes a breath. "I want you to know. I'm really sorry for what I said.”
It feels like a sudden slap, and Jimmy recoils on impulse, shushing her sharply.
"I just-" she starts.
“Anya, don't," Jimmy says.
“No, I am. I didn't mean it. I mean, I kind of did. In the moment. But I wouldn't actually have-" she cuts herself off.
“Don't say that." Jimmy shakes his head.
“It’s true.” She wipes her cheeks. “You scared me, and I. But I wouldn't really have said anything to anyone.”
The hornet stops it's fluttering and dives into his soup, stirring up a vicious current. Barely fettered acid rises from his stomach and washes the inside of his throat.
“Anya," he croaks. "Don't, uh, don't worry about that anymore. Okay? It doesn't matter now.”
Anya nods some more, and closes her eyes like she's praying. “I know. It doesn't. But if we're going to die, I didn't want you to think I would do that to you.”
The acid curdles. If the revulsion shows on his face, she doesn't see it.
Anya gazes up at the broken screens instead of him. Her eyes trail along the bumpy croppings of foam and come to rest on the tiny surveillance camera in the corner, jutting out its ever watchful eye, cushioned by the white fluff around it.
The cast of red light blinks softly over her face.
Jim wonders if he should go, flee the scene and let her bare her grief where he can't witness. But as he thinks it, it feels cowardly. And like she would know why he's running.
Jimmy's still deliberating when she speaks again.
“Do you really think anyone’s watching us?”
Jimmy chews his lips. Curly had told him last year when he caught Jimmy smoking in the bathroom instead of the cockpit. The information is hush hush, Captain’s knowledge, but Curly decided Jimmy ought to know the truth about the cameras.
Jimmy grabs his hands and pulls his legs up on to the seat with him, then puts them back down again. Two dirty boot prints mar edge of the chair. He frowns in displeasure, and tries to dust some of the mess away. Disgusting.
The ship is stripped bare and blasted clean every year, and its not like they take much dirt onboard with them, but somehow it still ends up caked on bottom of their shoes.
It’s them, of course. Bits of hair, skin, and sweat collecting on the rails on the floor, making sure someone still has to wipe down the counters and sweep the kitchen once a week.
Escape with us! had been on a poster in the recruitment office. In the center of the page had been a hurried Polle the Pony, straddling a rocket in a three piece suit, hauling an overstuffed briefcase, and waving his wife and grasping Pollettes goodbye.
Jimmy had liked it when he saw it. Escape was all they really wanted, wasn't it? But here Jimmy is. Dead in space. Stuck in the captain's seat. Leaving boot prints all over his dead best friend's chair.
The hornet sinks into his gut, wilted from its rattling.
“Yeah,” Jimmy says once Anya looks to him for an answer. He scratches a thumb over his knuckles and gives his most earnest nod, looking up at the camera instead of into her eyes.
“Yeah, I really fucking hope so.”