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Ripley found him on the observation deck.
It wasn’t much of a deck… just a bolted-on alcove with a wide, scratched viewport and a bench that had seen better welds, but it was the quietest place on the ship, and Bishop had gravitated to it as naturally as he had to every window on the Sulaco.
Now, with no company logos on the bulkheads and no cryo-tubes full of crewmates a few doors away, he looked… smaller somehow. Civilian. Ripley imagined for a moment the faint seams at his hips and under his ribs, where pale synthetic skin had been regrown over the repairs.
The stars of course didn’t care about any of that. They were reassuring perhaps because of that fact. They hung out there in their usual indifferent clutter, and Bishop sat very straight on the bench, hands folded, watching them like he was trying to memorize their arrangement.
Ripley lingered in the doorway a moment, feeling the old reflex tug. Turn around, don’t disturb him, let him be a machine doing machine things. Then she remembered he wasn’t property anymore, and neither was she, and that one of the only people (artificial or otherwise) who had never once lied to her was sitting right there.
She stepped in. The door slid shut behind her with a tired hiss.
“You always pick the scenic spots.” She offered an easy smile.
Bishop turned his head. His face did that subtle brighten-and-soften thing it did when he recognized a friend. “Low traffic. Stable gravity.” He smiled back. “And the view is… agreeable.”
She huffed, almost a laugh. “You can say ‘beautiful’, you know.”
“I can.” He looked back out at the starfield. “I’m still evaluating when it’s appropriate.”
She crossed the small space and sank down beside him, leaving that bit of courtesy distance he always gave other people. It put his shoulder just outside the reach of hers.
They sat in silence for a minute. Ripley listened to the ship’s old bones creak, to the faintest hum of life support, to the quiet tick of Bishop’s cooling system cycling down after whatever task he’d just finished.
“How are the legs?” She asked finally.
“Stable.” He flexed one knee, as if to check. “There’s residual jitter after low-power states, but it resolves within acceptable parameters.” He paused for a moment. “You ask me that every day.”
“Yeah.” She nodded once. “I plan to keep asking.”
He considered that. “I don’t mind. It suggests you expect me to still be here.”
“Yeah.” She repeated, softer. “I do.”
Another little quiet. Stars. Metal. Breathing… hers real, his simulated. She wondered if he was doing that for her benefit.
Then, she started what she’d come to do. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“I assumed.” Bishop said. “You have that look.”
“What look?”
“The one that says you’ve spent too long thinking about something, and have decided it needs to be said aloud or it will burn your internal processors.”
She snorted. “You calling me neurotic?”
“Efficient.” He tilted his head. “In your own way.”
That got her to smile, brief and crooked. It faded almost immediately. “About Hadley’s Hope.” She began again. “About… you.”
He waited. He was good at that. No prompting, no filling silence with reassurances — just attention offered, not demanded.
“I didn’t believe you.” Ripley ducked her chin, staring at her hands. “When you said you couldn’t harm a human. When you said you’d go down into that pipe and you’d bring the dropship in. I wanted to. Christ, I wanted to. But all I could see was Ash.”
“That’s understandable.” Bishop said.
“It’s more than understandable.” She snapped, then winced at her own tone. “Sorry. I just… I kept pushing. Told you I didn’t trust synthetics. Said it like you were an interchangeable part. And then you —”
Images flashed, uninvited. Him in the pipe, pale and narrow and brave. The dropship descending. The deck buckling. His body coming apart in a white, impossible spray. His hand still gripping Newt even as he was torn in half.
“Then you did everything you promised.” She breathed deeply. “And more. You… you got us out. And you paid for it.” Her voice thinned. “And then the company —”
Tried to use him as leverage. Told her he was an asset, they were all assets. Hooked her up to lie detectors and left his ruined body in a heap because they didn’t see the point in fixing a machine with that kind of damage.
“We don’t have to talk about them.” Bishop said quietly.
“No.” She agreed. “We don’t.”
He was looking at her again, head tilted a fraction, that slight furrow between his brows that meant concern. “You feel guilty.” He observed.
“Of course I do.” She huffed. “I treated you like hell. And you… you died for us.”
“I ceased functioning.” He corrected gently. “Temporarily. And I was the logical choice.”
“That doesn’t make it any less of a sacrifice.”
Bishop considered that, gaze dropping to his folded hands. His fingers flexed once, as if checking their own reality.
“I made a calculation.” He conceded. “My body is rated for environments yours isn’t. I am faster in confined spaces. I can interface directly with flight controls. And…” He hesitated, then added, quieter… “Losing me would have caused less pain. That mattered to me.”
Ripley’s throat closed.
“You were wrong about that.” She said, when she trusted her voice. “About the pain.”
He looked up, surprised.
“You’re not… disposable, Bishop. Not to me. Not to Newt. Not to any of us who made it out.” She made herself meet his eyes. “When that thing ripped you in half, I thought —” She broke off, swallowing. “I thought I’d lost a friend.”
He blinked, once, slow. “You had.”
“Yeah.” She pressed her lips into a flat line. “I had.”
They sat with that. The words seemed to hang in the air between them, simple and heavy.
“Ellen.” Bishop spoke at last.
It still startled her when he used her first name. Nobody did that lightly.
“I did not experience resentment…” He continued. “…when you doubted me. I understood the source. You’d been… compromised by something that wore my face. Even after the knife demonstration, your anxiety markers remained high.”
“You stabbed your own hand on the table.” She said dryly. “Hell of a meet-cute.”
“It was statistically likely to reassure the squad.” He glanced up at her. “It did not reassure you.”
“No…” She admitted. “It didn’t.”
Bishop nodded, as if that fit neatly into a chart somewhere. “Trust is not an on/off variable.” He folded his hands together neatly. “It’s… iterative. You kept watching. You challenged me. You kept Newt away from me when you were uncertain.” His mouth curved. “You also let me help when it mattered. You asked me to fly us. You followed my guidance through the atmosphere. You risked your life to disconnect me when the platform was failing.”
“You were still trying to get Newt clear.” Ripley noted.
“So were you.” He countered. “From my perspective, trust was building. Even when you didn’t name it.”
She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “That’s a generous interpretation.”
“It’s an accurate one.”
Silence again. This one felt a little less sharp-edged.
“I’m still sorry.” She breathed out again, through her nose, slower this time. “For… thinking you were just another Ash waiting to happen. For treating you like trash before you proved otherwise. You shouldn’t have had to prove it.”
His expression softened. “I appreciate the apology.” He paused. “And I don’t want you to erase your caution. It kept you alive.”
“It nearly cost you.” She muttered bitterly.
“It also means that your trust now is… significant.” He reassured her, wanting to validate her reasoning, to highlight the importance of this. “Weighted. If you had trusted me immediately because my face was pleasant and my voice was calm, I would worry about your judgment.”
She snorted, despite herself. “Thanks.”
The corners of his eyes creased. Ripley enjoyed that little detail in his expressions when she could tell he was satisfied by something. “You tested the system thoroughly. Now you approve of it. That’s… gratifying.”
“Trust me, the feeling’s mutual.”
He smiled, small and real. “Then we’re aligned.”
She leaned back against the bulkhead, letting her shoulder brush his. It was a small contact, but she didn’t pull away, and neither did he.
“You know…” She began thoughtfully, head tipped to the side, “…you didn’t have to come with us. After they fixed you up. We broke you out and you could’ve gone anywhere. Hidden. Found some quiet corner of the galaxy where nobody ever asked you to crawl through a pipe full of lord-knows-what again.”
He considered that for a moment. “I am not designed for solitude. And my loyalty subroutines are… robust.” There was a faint, wry note in his voice. “I prefer to apply them where they are reciprocated.”
She glanced sideways at him. “You mean with us.”
“Yes.” He said simply. “With you. With Newt. With Hicks… and Jones, too.” A small, almost shy pause. “If you’ll have me.”
Ripley snorted again. “We already do.” She said, like it should be obvious by now. “You’re stuck with us, Bishop. No returns policy.”
His shoulders relaxed by a degree that most people wouldn’t have noticed. She did.
“I’m… glad.” The corner of his mouth quirked upwards, and he looked back out at the viewport.
They watched the stars a while longer. After a bit, he spoke again. “For the record, I knew the queen would likely attack me first.”
“Because you’re synthetic?” Ripley asked idly.
“Because I was between her and you.”
She turned to look at him. He was staring straight ahead, as if reciting a fact from a manual.
“That’s the kind of thing you say when you’re trying to make me anxious.” She squinted.
“I intend the opposite.” He said quickly. “I want you to understand that I made that choice. Not my programming. Me.”
Ripley looked back out at the stars. They were overwhelming and beautiful and endless.
“If it comes down to it again…” She spoke quietly. “…we’re not leaving you behind.”
He didn’t argue that it was illogical. He didn’t offer percentages. He just nodded.
“I’ll do my best to make sure it doesn’t come down to that.”
She let her head tip back again, let her eyes close for a moment. She was so tired of fighting alone. Of being the only one in the room willing to say no.
Beside her, Bishop sat very still, very present.
“Hey, Bishop.” She said with her eyes still closed.
“Yes?”
“Next time I say I don’t trust synthetics… remind me I’m an idiot, alright?”
“I won’t call you an idiot.” She heard the smile in his voice. “But I will remind you that you trust me.”
“That works.” She nudged her shoulder against his.
He was quiet for a moment. Then: “Ripley?”
“Mm?”
“For the record… I trust you, too.”
She opened her eyes, looked at him. “Yeah?”
“Yes.” He met her gaze. “You also got us out. You got me out. You believed me when it mattered.”
She let out a slow breath. “Guess we’re even, then.”
“Hmm.” Bishop hummed. “I’m comfortable with that assessment.”
They sat there then, together, watching the stars go nowhere fast. Two escapees from the same nightmare, sharing the same small bench on a ship that finally, for the first time in either of their lives, belonged to nobody but the people on it.