Chapter Text
After what seemed like a thousand years on the cold, desolate planet known as Polus, the crewmate was finishing his last task—updating a temperature reading—before he and the crew were to head to Mira HQ for the season. It was his team’s last assigned mission for the year, which meant once he got home he could finally relax like no other.
With a few short taps of a button, Rose finished his task and hurried to the dormitory to finish packing his bags. It should be quick, as he’s not the type to pack heavily while travelling. “Makes it harder to lug around,” he says. Everyone had already finished packing, so it was just up to him to wrap up and head out. He would forever miss the dorm room he was given, considering it was a single dorm granted due to his crippling social anxiety.
Okay, crippling is an overstatement, but getting home is the focus here.
The room was an accessibility thing, seeing if he had to share a room with someone, he might have died by now—either by the worry of being roomed with an impostor, or maybe watched in his sleep. Either way, he needed it, and so he was granted it by the captain. Sweet!
Rose slung his bag over his head, shut the lights, and closed the door for the final time. He'd likely never see that room again. The quiet, insulated, sterile room that he watched slowly grow into his own. It was bittersweet, in a way.
He trudged along the corridor, making sure to tidy everything up for the next crew while on the way, it’s the nice thing to do. Plus, they were already landing, he just needed to do a final check-in for the captain and he’d be off.
Once the doors opened, he looked down the hall one final time as he smiled fondly. A rarity from him.
Well, there goes that era of his life, time to head home.
The snow crunched softly beneath his feet, leaving a trail of frozen footprints behind him leading to the ship. Purple caught up, waving lazily as he ran past Rose.
Huh, how nice. Out of character, but nice.
Rose continued walking, beelining towards his way back. Walks were some of the only times he properly zoned out and could stop seeing everything. He liked walks, it took his mind off of the overwhelming speed of the world—a breather, a gale of fresh air he felt like he hadn’t had in weeks.
As the crewmate approached the ship, he stopped. Was this really it? After all this time in the cosmos of the universe?
It was, and it was time to go back home.
And so, he continued, looking around the area before stepping inside of the airlock.
“Alright, crew. We've got another 6 month journey ahead of us. you know the drill, keep ‘er runnin, don’t die, report any suspicious behaviour, kay? Tan’ll be in charge for a bit ‘till we’re at a safe cruising altitude. Don't cause trouble, and buckle up.” The captain said to the team, his voice booming through the room with a gruff expression. Everyone gave either a quick nod, a quick “yep!” or a thumbs up.
Once the ship took off, some crewmates listened to music in their headphones, some talked with others, and some were silent. Rose stirred quietly in his seat, watching everyone speak as Tan fumbled to put a movie on for some entertainment. He felt relaxed for the first time in a while, considering the havoc of packing all their research up for MIRA.
He wasn’t unused to being silent in most group conversations, in fact, he enjoyed just listening. Took a lot less pressure to exist. Hell, he was such an observer he could immediately tell when something was wrong with equipment, apps, or even crewmates. He was the assigned detective and tech guy for a reason, y’know!
The few hours of talking and movie-watching led to the usual conversation topics about memories. Ones like when Rose slipped in front of everyone, Purple getting caught stealing from the cafeteria, or even stuff like Banana’s kid getting a really bad concussion and the story behind that. He noticed how Coral always talked with a beaming smile, or how White kept fidgeting with their hands. He even saw the way Banana never failed to look away when trying to remember something.
What we’re trying to get at is that Rose noticed everything. He never says it, but he notices. He notices way more than you would think.
He noticed the different way Purple’s crystals glimmered in the dim lighting, noticed how Tan seemed more stand-offish than usual, and how Yellow somehow seemed even ruder than usual. His sense of worry seemed to be set off more than necessary when he was sitting in the lobby area. Something didn’t seem right to him, it was off and he didn’t like it one bit. Coral—who was sitting beside him—took notice and temporarily disconnected from the other conversation.
“Rose, are you alright? You seem... quieter than usual.” she asked, genuinely curious. While she wasn’t wrong that he was silent, it was hard to explain why, as there wasn’t really any sort of reason, just that things were just slightly different enough to set his internal alarm off.
“Y-Yeah, I’m just… thinking.” he sheepishly spoke, keeping it minimal to not worry her any further. Coral could tell he wasn’t in the mood to talk about it, so she didn’t push further.
“Alright, but remember if you need a helping hand, I'm always here!”
She smiled, and Rose smiled back awkwardly. He liked Coral, he thought she was kind-hearted, but sometimes he wondered how she never felt the need to ask a million questions. He admired her in a way, as did everyone else. For a moment, he felt a little more at ease, taking a deep breath in and exhaling to calm his nerves so he didn’t end up imploding on himself. Gray had helped him with learning how to self-soothe when he was in the middle of a meltdown, and she gave him a few pieces of advice he took to heart so he wouldn’t have another one.
…but just as he had finally rationalized the situation, there was an announcement.
“WARNING: MILD DAMAGE DETECTED, ON-BOARD MAINTENANCE REQUIRED. CAPTAIN HAS BEEN NOTIFIED OF CURRENT AND/OR ONGOING ISSUES.”
Rose jumped in his seat when the announcement jingle came on, followed by a grating text-to-speech voice. He thought the hell of radio static was over until Lime had to make his own announcement. The feedback caused him to immediately cover his “ears” so as to not overwhelm himself further. Coral immediately jumped into action and made sure he was okay with a silent thumbs up. She knew Rose was easily overstimulated by noise.
Soon after, Lime began talking after clearing his throat.
“This is Captain Lime speaking. First announcement—, tasks are being sorted right now, estimated finish time should be around 15 minutes.
Second, we’re at a safe cruising speed, so feel free to stretch out before you’re given your assigned duties by Tan. That will be all, thank you.”
Then, Lime switched off the radio with a crackle. All conversation skidded to a halt as the atmosphere changed from a casual environment to “work mode”. Rose internally groaned, not excited to have to walk all around the ship just to fix wires and electrical issues. Orange would probably bother him the entire time as well. He didn’t have anything against him, but he would prefer to be left alone while he worked. The waiting felt like hell, but eventually, Rose got his list. Taking a look at it, it didn’t seem too hard. Nothing he isn’t already used to.
So, no need for stalling, let’s be on our way.
As he got up to move to the cafeteria, he bumped into Purple along the way, smudging his goggles and almost tripping over. Purple looked at him weirdly for a moment before stabilizing him.
“Ah— didn’t see where I was going.” Rose mumbled, fidgeting with his hands nervously. Purple was easy to anger, but he was never the type to show it obviously. Rose knew that, of course, he always felt like he was walking on eggshells around him. Purple calculated for a moment before sighing.
“You're good. No need to do all of that nervous bullshit.”
Rose exhaled, slightly confused as to how Purple let it go so easily, but didn’t question it. He had a job to get to, god forbid his stream of thought be messed up by a simple flunk in his steps. So he moved, stepping to the side before realizing he probably seemed a bit rude dismissing the other with such a nonchalant hand. He stepped back awkwardly as Purple almost tripped from the sudden move from the other.
“Would you want to… walk to Medbay with me?” Rose asked sheepishly, a bit louder than before but not loud enough to be booming. A simple enough request, said perfectly so that Purple had a chance to say no. They were going the same way anyways, there’d be no point in denying just to walk together anyways.
Purple raised an eyebrow, but accepted.
“Uh, yeah. Sure.” with a simple thumbs up as he looked away awkwardly. Rose was one of the few he tolerated, he was quiet, did his job, and was a no-nonsense kind of guy. The exact person he was glad existed, not taking up a lot of space. Essentially, he liked the awkward autistics.
They made their way down the hallway, entering the room. A few others, such as Yellow, Lime, and Gray were there as well, most waiting to update their scans. Some were here accompanying someone else. Rose had to update his own, but Purple stayed behind. This raised some suspicion from Rose, but he didn’t comment on it. He rationalized and assumed that Purple had already scanned back on Polus.
“Oh, hey, Purple.” Yellow slid between the two, and they got to chatting. Yellow leaned against the wall while Rose shuffled over to the nearby lineup. He ignored how Yellow dismissed him, but it still left a sour taste in his mouth. He had to remind himself that Yellow was kind of just like that. Rude, but usually got her tasks done on time without complaint. He zoned out for a moment, wanting to get out of this Medbay scan so excruciatingly badly so he could get to his normal slew of tasks that he knew like the back of his hand.
A few beds were placed along the walls, usually used for the crew members who were injured or sick. He’s been in one of the beds a few times before, but that was a few years ago by now. He'd prefer not to dwell on that. It wasn't traumatic by any means, it was just a stupid flu. By the entrance, there were a few blue crosses. They were a forgettable detail, but once you looked hard enough you noticed them. Originally, they were red, but MIRA had to change it to blue for legal reasons.
Suddenly, a finger tapped him on the visor.
“Hey, you good?” asked Gray, a bit concerned, since she knew of his habit of zoning out for minutes at a time. Obviously, he was startled by this and jumped back a little, almost bumping into coral who was just getting off of the scanner.
“Bwuh— oh, uh. Yeah.” he stated flatly with an air of jumpiness. Gray gave a simple “oh alright” before going back to her conversation with Coral. Rose felt like a total asshole, and also himself starting to spiral back into his mind. Why couldn’t he have been less blunt? Did he have to be like that all of the time?
Hey. Hey. No. Stop that.
He shook his head slightly with a groan before stepping onto the scanner. The green ringlet around him tickled as it scanned absolutely everything inside of his body—ranging from simply height and weight to the diameter of his small intestine. The light felt uncomfortable as it passed through his body. Honestly, he was surprised as to how he doesn’t have third degree burns all over his body from this thing. Technology, I suppose.
After a few moments of waiting, the screen verified his scan and loaded his results onto his tablet. While he was making his way off of the pad, he decided to wait for a few others to finish before leaving. He had the time anyways, nobody’s dead so why hurry?
Before he left, though, he quickly glanced at Purple. He saw him trying to push Yellow away, seeing as she was beginning to teeter into his personal space. Rose left to instead peer around the corner, not caring if he looked weird.
He couldn’t really hear what they were saying because they were speaking in a hushed whisper to each other, but he knew he heard Yellow’s voice going… softer? The intonation was like a question, with Purple clearly becoming more agitated with each passing moment.
He quickly left, mostly because he still had a full list of tasks to do, also because he didn’t feel like possibly being stuck in yet another awkward situation.
He left for a task near the upper engine, which was fixing some wires. This specific task always hurt his hands and was usually somewhat dangerous, but someone had to do it, god forbid anyone else does. He flipped on his awkwardly shaped goggles to protect his “eyes” while he soldered the two wires together. Rose was pretentious, he could just lazily tie them and it’d hold over for a few days—but where’s the fun in that?
He was almost finished, when he noticed Tan walk past and into Reactor. He found this strange, as Tan was never usually assigned any Reactor tasks. Usually she’s in Medbay helping with scans.
Strange, but he isn’t gonna dwell on it.
Rose’s lack of attention to the wires ended in him burning himself. The pain immediately travelled all throughout his hand with a sudden yelp. He dropped his soldering tool on the floor with a rattling clang and writhed in pain for a second before grabbing the roll of gauze in his carry-on. He usually carries it for emergencies or mishaps like this, and he’s used it lots of times—it’s definitely proved to be a useful thing to have on hand.
Once Rose was finished wrapping up his hand, he quickly soldered the last wire before moving off to his other tasks.
“Stars…” he muttered to himself, rubbing his head as he made the slump over to Electrical. He had to calibrate the distributors and divert some power to Shields. Tedious at times, but manageable. While walking up to the designated area, an alarm started blaring loudly across the ship, startling Rose as it was unexpected, and kind of hurt his head. He crouched into a ball on the floor as he tried not to let the message mess him up too much—even if the voice was like nails on a chalkboard to him.
“THIS IS AN EMERGENCY MESSAGE ISSUED BY CREWMATE I.D. WHITE AND CREWMATE I.D. TAN; A BODY HAS BEEN DISCOVERED, BELONGING TO CREWMATE I.D. CYAN. PLEASE MEET IN THE CAFETERIA IMMEDIATELY, YOUR ATTENDANCE IS MANDATORY—“
The world skidded to a complete halt as he processed the message. He was initially in denial. Cyan? No, no way. She isn’t really dead, is she?
“—FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THIS MESSAGE WILL RESULT IN DISCIPLINARY ACTION. I REPEAT: PLEASE MEET IN THE CAFETERIA, ROOM 2BAJ FOR AN EMERGENCY MEETING.”
Okay, I guess this is real. Alright.
Rose bolted to the cafeteria, using his expert ninja moves (fear) to dodge anyone else going the same way.