Chapter Text
Simon knows he’s going to die after Ava’s transmission cuts off.
He can’t really hope for anything else to happen. She was coming to get him, her rat in a maze. He was almost out, but It had found her. It didn’t want to let him go.
She’s dead and he doesn’t have time to sort through those feelings, because he’s throwing the sub into reverse and barrelling backwards away from the eel, from the wreckage, listening to It screaming for him.
“SIMON! SIMONNNN!”
He clenches his jaw as he stares at the proximity sensor, listening to the monster begging him to come back, to come easily, and he knows it must be over but he doesn’t fucking care.
It has to earn it if it wants him so badly.
He gets a few minutes. He gets down into the crawlspace, drags the blackbox from its slot, surges out of the blood filling the little space and crawls free just in time. As he’s strapping the blackbox into the life preserver and praying to everything that this helps, that this information does something good, that damn light on the sensor starts blinking. The beeps start slowly at first before building to a furious staccato. His heartbeat matches the pace before the sub lurches to a halt. Simon is flung face-first into the console, smacking his aching head into metal one more time before he’s falling to the ground. Teeth like yard-long pikes pierce the top and bottom of the Irong Lung. They screech as they bore through the metal like it’s wax and the Eel grips tightly.
Simon staggers to his feet, sloshing through blood and ignoring the flashes of the camera from the vein-like vines growing over the button. He sees those teeth and he can’t think, there’s no time, he grabs the fire extinguisher.
“So you want the Butcher, HUH??” He slams the heavy metal cylinder against the nearest spike, beating it as hard as he can again and again until he feels it give a little, then a lot. He smashes down a final time and breaks off the top half, leaving a jagged peak behind. The ear-splitting screech that rings through the sub sends him to his knees before he can catch himself. He drops the fire extinguisher, gropes desperately where it fell, but instead he finds a smooth tube of bone.
Simon lifts the broken tooth from the gore surrounding him, the blood running off it in rivulets as he stares. He gets to his feet, catching himself against the wall of pipes as the sub jerks again. The hand clutching the tooth moves when he wants it to, but his other, his left hand, stays on the pipes.
He looks at his hand and staggers back when he sees those same fucking vines crawling over his flesh, driving roots deep into his skin. He cries out, pulling hard but his hand isn’t moving, the pain of the roots sinking into him dulling, dying, until he can’t feel his fingers. Simon pulls harder, feeling the strain of his skin and his muscles. His vows to the Last Tree fly through his mind as he feels his desperation bloom.
Do you renounce the COI and all its works, and all its empty show?
Feet planted, pulling, throwing his whole body into the movement
Do you believe in The Last Tree, life outlasting, bringer of breath and root?
The tendons stretching, fraying, slowly snapping
Do you believe in Eden, shepherds of the final seeds, who face the empty sky, and in what we must now do to survive?
Bracing against the pipes, all feeling to his left hand gone
Do you believe in The Father, leader of us all, who speaks the names of the stolen stars and guides us on the path to survival?
A scream leaving his lips, raising the tooth shard and bringing it down
Do you stand with your brothers and sisters, against the tides of change and blood, to feed the Last Tree and protect us all?
The crunch of bone on bone, his elbow coming loose, the skin finally ripping away
This is our truth. This is the truth of life. We are proud to do what it takes to survive.
Simon falls back hard, slamming his head against the far wall of the sub as he collapses. He looks up with unfocused eyes to see what was his arm being overtaken, the bloodvines swarming over it and sucking it dry. He makes a sound, something quiet and desperate, when he looks down at the ragged stump left on his side.
The bone broke before it could be ripped free - his shoulder feels a little loose, like it almost dislocated, and the muscles that once worked in symmetry with his right hand now hang torn and useless. He squeezes the tooth in his dominant hand - his only hand - and begins to pray.
“Please,” he whispers, hoping the eel can’t hear him, “please, I want to live. I just want to live, I don’t want to die. Please don’t let me die.”
The turning of a new eye upon him feels as if he’s been scrubbed raw suddenly, the truth of him pulled from the dark places he’d made to hide it away as something answers him.
“What would you do if you were to live, little star?”
He shudders at the quiet whisper wending its way into his mind, taking root.
“I- I would help.” He speaks louder now, voice muffled inside the slowly-filling tomb. “I would be- god, I want to be better, I don’t want to hurt or be hurt anymore, please-”
His voice breaks as a surge of pain rushes up his side, opening a gash on his face that starts to grow teeth.
“GHH- please… I’m so tired of having to fight.”
“Are you dimming now then, after everything?”
“No.” He can barely muster the stability in his voice. “I- can still-” He growls and slashes at a vine that’s gotten too close, the tooth slicing it and adding a little extra blood to the space. “I’m not done. So just let me live, let me prove it. I can be better than this.”
“... I believe you.”
Simon feels a rush of cold air carrying the scent of something new, but familiar. Recognizable in the way that he only could’ve smelled this in his dreams, the memories of his ancestors passing down the knowledge of safety, shelter, food, and life.
He can smell trees.
“This one they’ve sent to protect me, he will need your light as you need his. The world you know does not have to come to pass, little star. You must help to save them all.”
“I will- I’ll help, I’ll do anything, just please-”
There’s a sharp pain in his side as the voice fades, the cold air still wrapping around him. He’s forgotten where he is in the few seconds of talking to… *whatever* that was, that he’s still about to die, and the blood took notice. He cries out as a vine burrows into his side, tunneling through his flesh like a thing possessed.
“NOOOOOO!”
The eel has heard.
“You cannot leave, Simon, there is nowhere to go! All the stars are dead, the Light is all that is left, you must join me-”
Right as he’s on the edge of passing out, just before the vine pierces something he can’t survive losing, a roaring fills his ears. The eel, the sloshing blood, the creaking sub, everything is drowned out and blown away as Simon feels himself being wrenched away.
It’s hard to tell how long it takes for him to arrive. Time seems to crease and fold, bending backwards and forwards at once and pulling Simon alongside it. That cold, tree-scented air keeps him whole, keeps him from dying as they move through nothing and everything.
Eventually and all at once, everything snaps back into focus and Simon is free. Noiselessly, he slumps back against the wall he’s been leaned against, eyelids fluttering shut before he can take in how different everything around him is.
As he sleeps, his mind rewrites itself over some of the horrific things he’s seen, cloaking them in shadow to keep him safe for now. There would be time later to think again. He finally would have the time to think, to breathe, to live. The voice that saved him dulls to a soft whisper in the back of his mind with a final word, before it hides itself away.
Star.