Work Text:
The ship’s engines hum all around him: not the hum of a ship that’s alive and well and whole, but the final, soft groans of a ship heading towards its death. Even through Isaac’s suit, the stench of blood and guts reaches him, whatever hunger he had earlier is long gone by the time he has gone through yet another long, nameless hallway, ears open for the tiniest creak of a pipe or a faint screech of one of those things.
He reaches for the door at the end of the hallway.
It slips away from his grasp.
Instead there is another corridor and there is her, always her at the deepest, darkest edges of his dreams- is this another one? is he dreaming?- because the guilt of losing her still lingers.
“I tried,” Isaac murmurs, his voice distorted.
“Isaac,” croaks the flickering figure of Nicole.
“Isaac,” whispers a softer voice of a woman not gone but still here. Isaac’s eyes snap open. He blinks. Rubs his eyes. The ceiling fan hums softly. Like a ship that is alive and well and whole, silently sliding through the endless eternity of space. Isaac takes a deep breath. Not Nicole. Nicole is dead and dead and gone.
“Isaac,” Ellie murmurs again, close enough to be heard but not close enough to touch. Isaac wishes she would, can’t quite make the words come out. It’s selfish of him to be this way, to make her see his nightmares when she has her own too: he finds her often in their kitchen, staring down at her tea gone cold.
“I’m here,” Isaac says. “I am. Not there. I am here.”
“Can I?” Ellie asks and Isaac hears her shifting. He opens his eyes again to watch her crouch next to the couch, her long hair open and ruffled, pillow leaving creases on her cheeks. The TV is on silent, its glow blue.
Isaac swallows. Bites back a noise of discomfort when Ellie’s hand brushes his.
“Sorry. Fell asleep watching Captain Space-reruns again,” Isaac mutters and gives her hand a tug. Ellie smiles, a tiny rueful expression that often reminds Isaac of the first time they met- mutants crawling through corridors, her face splattered with blood, sweat clinging to his skin and the weapon heavy in his hands- except they are not in space anymore. They are long gone from the threat, the peace still a concept too abstract for either to quite understand.
“Nerd,” Ellie says and takes his hand between hers. Her hands are so strong even when they are smaller than his: her skin is darker than his, his hand more littered with scars and fading bruises.
Isaac takes a deep breath. Doesn’t close his eyes again. He shifts to allow Ellie to lean against him.
“I am here and I am whole,” Isaac murmurs. Nicole’s fading voice whispers at the back of his head but he focuses on the way Ellie feels, puts his arms around her, feels her lips against his scruffy cheek.
“You’re Isaac Clarke,” she says. “And you’ve survived. You’ve survived and I have survived. We are here today, at our home and there is nothing threatening our lives.” She says it like she always does: with conviction, with enough confidence that Isaac can believe it.
“I am here,” Isaac mutters, buries his face against her hair. There is the faintest scent of something that is purely and honestly Ellie and his heart clenches painfully.
“It’s okay,” Ellie says, strokes his short-shorn hair. He trembles. She doesn’t. They had both stared the end of humanity in the face and spat on it. She may not have seen the start of the infection but she knows, she knows.
They pull apart but only to press together again, his lips on her forehead, her fingertips tickling the underside of his chin. It elicits a tired smile from Isaac and a crooked grin from Ellie.
“Let’s go back to bed, Isaac,” she says and helps him stand up. Gratefully he curls an arm around her waist and gives her the tiniest squeeze. He doesn’t want to let go now that the first shakes have passed. She is alive. She is warm and she is Ellie, his fellow survivor, his fellow fighter. She leads him to bed, rubs his cheek and tells him to shave, she doesn’t care for beard burns anywhere on her body after all. He only huffs and lets her pull him into her arms, snuggles against her and listens to her heartbeat as she drifts back to sleep.
He may not sleep much, may not ever sleep again all that well but at least his nights are calm.