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His irises had a faint, glowing, red light in them.
Ava didn’t doubt it this time. Not like she had before, not like she had made herself doubt it before.
He was blood soaked and choking, arms wrapped around the black box, the SM-7 barely pulled up in time to save him from drowning in the blood that had started to flood it after…
After whatever exactly had happened down there.
(She heard some of it over the radio, voices and whispers and metal ripping apart despite the ship being entirely intact now. Whatever was down there was so much more than they had thought. So much worse. It was not hope, not salvation in any way.)
”My name is Simon. I know you don’t know. You don’t want to know. You don’t get to send me down there without knowing, Ava.”
He unnerved the crew. He unnerved her.
She thought maybe now she had an idea of why.
He saved Elle and May. If he’d been telling the truth about losing the SM-8 (and she had not believed he was. She didn’t understand but at first she thought this was some kind of ploy. Some way to gain freedom he didn’t deserve after Filament. Before it’d become clear there was no reasonable way for him to know what he did) then…
If he had been telling the truth her wife would’ve died in those depths. She would’ve sent her and her assistant to their deaths. For nothing.
Just like she had every person before. Six people lost to a nightmare. They shouldn’t be here. They never should’ve come here.
She needed to get the Convict - Simon, treatment, she needed to get him to Elle.
Her wife was a scientist, not a doctor, but they didn’t have a doctor. Whatever else he’d done… Elle would treat him like she would any patient. She had always been that way, and had treated convicts before. Though none of them had destroyed the station her brother was on.
(She and Elle had been… more distant, once convicts started getting sent in the subs. Once the SM-1 and SM-2 were lost command suggested using people that didn’t… have so much value. Elle didn’t think it should be that simple.)
It’d been one of the only times he’d protested since he told them he knew what they were looking for on AT-5, during his interrogation.
“I didn’t destroy Filament Station.”
His voice had been flat, barely angry.
Not expecting anyone to listen.
(What was it he’d said when she’d pulled him back up over his refusal to follow the map and take pictures?
”I would tell you how I know what I do if I thought you’d fucking believe me.”)
Ava had read his file, the circumstances too weird to avoid it. It didn’t include his name, but it did include a name.
The Butcher.
Details on why he had been called that were sparse, she wasn’t sure if it was a role he’d filled for Eden, or something to do with their conflict with Filament. She knew they’d called him that before the station was ever destroyed, and that he’d had multiple knives on his person when he was arrested.
She wasn’t sure why a man called Butcher would lie about destroying a station, unless it wasn’t a lie at all.
(Had he ever gotten a proper trial? How old had he been when Filament was destroyed? She would bet he was younger than she was when she joined the army, and she’d joined young.
When did she let herself forget that convicts were - )
When she crawled into bed with Elle later that night she wasn’t surprised to find she was clinging onto her slightly tighter than normal.
(She was doing the same thing.)
She listened while Elle told her how the - how Simon was doing. That he had suffered mostly minor injuries from the sub being pulled up and him losing his balance and not being able to brace properly. Nothing that wouldn’t heal.
And she listened while Elle told her he showed signs of long term malnutrition. Ava knew he hadn’t been in her custody long enough to explain it, he’d been denied food before.
Elle wanted to monitor him for a day or so to make sure he was okay and hadn’t suffered a head injury, and her voice shook slightly as she said she didn’t think he destroyed Filament, but she did think something was wrong.
Ava agreed. She didn’t know what else to say.
She shouldn’t be worried for him. At least some thought that. That he wasn’t one of hers, one of her crew.
But he was free now. Even if a convict couldn’t - shouldn’t be her concern, a free man certainly was. She owed him if nothing else.
(And it stayed with her. Everything about him, the way he looked, the way he spoke. The way she’d gone to see him while he was in Elle’s care and he hadn’t spoken at all, had rolled over and turned his back to her.
She didn’t think he was angry. She didn’t think he was much of anything.)
One night Ava saw him standing at the edge of the deck, nearly leaning against the safety rails, swaying gently.
He was staring down at the churning blood, offering her no acknowledgement (though she was sure he knew she was there) until she said his name.
The light in his eyes flickered as he turned towards her, reflective almost.
She wondered where he kept going. The way he seemed to leave his body sometimes, not really seeing or hearing what was around him.
She thought it was the ocean. She thought whatever was down there had its claws in him in a way that taking him out of it couldn’t fix.
Maybe Ava should press him more, try to get him to explain how he knew the things he did, what exactly had been done to him down there, but she didn’t. She didn’t want to know, not really. She was afraid.
She grabbed his arm and pulled him away, surprised at how pliant he was.
She was even more surprised when she saw May waiting outside of his room, which Elle would tell her later was not an uncommon sight. That May had taken over observing him in medical, had helped him to his room when he was cleared to leave.
”She said she’s been having nightmares… I have been too.”
So had Jack and David, so had Ava. Dreams of being in the blood ocean, in a ship, of Elle’s voice screaming in her head, of giant fangs piercing through and -
She had never gone down there (had she?) They were just dreams. They had to be.
(Elle didn’t think so. May didn’t think so.
She wondered what they saw. Neither had told her and she wouldn’t ask.)
She didn’t ask. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t think it would matter if she did.
And so they continued. She made sure no one tried to lock Simon up or take him away from her crew, stood between him and whoever found him threatening enough to try and do something about it, she held Elle at night, she woke up because one or both of them had a nightmare, she kept an eye on May, Jack, and David. She made sure the COI heard the recordings from the black box and understood the futility of sending anyone else into the blood ocean.
Between her, Elle, and May, they kept Simon from wandering too much at night.
(She never forgot about the night she found him staring down at the ocean.)
Eventually he started talking again, not always to her, but he did. Eventually it seemed like the glow in his eyes faded a bit. Eventually he seemed more human, like a living, breathing, being, and not someone detached from everyone around him.
But he never fully relaxed, still had moments where he went away, where he seemed to be listening to something none of them could hear.
(She never forgot about the night she found him staring down at the ocean.)
Ava wondered if one day she’d wake to find him simply gone. Not a body, not something tangible to be mourned. Just… gone.
(She never forgot about the night she -)
A few years ago she wouldn’t have said she had hope, not while condemning people to a horrible death all alone, but now she could.
She hoped Simon wasn’t going anywhere, but she knew if he was she wasn’t going to be able to stop it.