Chapter Text
Simon woke up.
Before remembering, there was a moment where the only thing he felt was surprise. Why was he surprised to wake up? Then the pain hit. Followed by the memories. The sub. The monster. He just wanted to live.
Why couldn’t he just die.
He opened his eyes and wondered if he was dead after all. The light coming down on him was blinding, and the pain in his head spiked. Through the haze he distantly recognized that everything surrounding him was white and cleaner than he had ever seen before. Something hovered above him and briefly granted him reprieve from the light. Until.
“What is two plus two?”
What the fuck
Simon woke up.
He was surprised to be in the same room again. Surprised the too clean room and the too kind man and the fucking freaky alien weren’t a trick made by the eel. Surprised that they hadn’t started demanding payment for saving him yet. There was always a price to pay.
“Hey, glad to see you’re awake again. Need more water?” The halo haired man asked him, like that was a totally normal thing to do.
He wasn’t sure what the price for all of this was yet, but he was going to pay it. He had already decided he was going to do anything to stay alive on this too perfect utopia of a ship. He had done everything he could in the blood ocean just to stay alive. He wasn’t going to stop just because he didn’t understand where he was or why.
Simon woke up.
Always the moment of surprise before he could settle back down into the man he was becoming. Not the butcher, not the convict. Just a man. An alien to the Eridians and a hesitant acquaintance to Grace, but just a man. They had welcomed him into their ship, their planet, and their confidence. Simon was free to move around the biodome as he wished. He could fill his time with whatever he could find to fiddle with or read. He could, and did like that morning, sleep late when his body was so exhausted from tormenting him awake with nightmares it was forced to grant him a reprieve.
He sat up and checked the bandages on his torn arm. He didn’t want to change them more than necessary and waste more supplies he would have to answer for, but Grace got fussy if he came to breakfast and something was leaking. It was novel to have a morning routine other than rushing to follow orders or prepare for a full day of nothing but counting stains on a blank cell wall. Life had settled into a pace that wasn’t demanding but was pleasantly full of mundane tasks. No one had explicitly said his job was to keep the house clean, but Grace wasn’t doing it, and he needed some way to keep the balance on the scales for what he owed mostly even.
There was too much noise coming from the main rooms to be just Grace alone preparing breakfast. There were several aliens that came to visit the house for research or diplomatic purposes, but the likely bet was Adrian and Rocky. Simon liked Adrian the best for as much as he reluctantly liked any of them. They were quiet and pensive. Larger without looming. They seemed sturdy and Simon appreciated that. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, but it was reassuring to feel like there was no chance that he could when it came to at least one of his frequent companions. Every once in a while, especially after a night when the nightmares wouldn’t leave him alone, there was the lingering fear in the back of his head that the voice of the eel would come back. That the eye could see him. That he wouldn’t be able to turn away this time. He still wasn’t sure how he had gotten away at all.
Grace was fragile. It didn’t matter that he was taller than Simon by a couple of inches, or that his muscle was starting to come back after the Eridians had synthesized proper nutrients for them. It didn’t even matter that he was seemingly capable of piloting the ship that saved the stars. He wasn’t settled into his body the way he needed to be to be truly dangerous like Simon was. His head was in the sky and not grounded where it could keep him safe. If Simon were inclined to hurt him, there is not much Grace would be able to do to stop him.
He shook away his maudlin thoughts and moved toward the door to the living area. The eel had left him alone in sleep, he shouldn’t invite it to stay in his head during waking hours. He opened the door and walked into chaos. Rocky was jittering around only the usual amount and Adrian was present, so those were pretty solid clues nothing too harebrained or dangerous was being planned on the living room table. But papers were scattered everywhere and Grace had the frantic gleam in his eye that meant he had already had two too many cups of the Eridian version of coffee.
The papers the aliens had figured out how to print that were strewn around the room were fascinating. It wasn’t actually paper but rather a very finely pressed metal, and Simon was always worried he would crush them and ruin the hard work that went into printing them. There was ink tamped into carved valleys and divots so they could be seen by both species without constant shuffling, but the ridges on the back were fragile since the metal got unwieldy if it was made any thicker.
“Mornin’.” Simon greeted. He could pretend to be a functional human when he needed to. “What’s this?” He gently picked up one of the pieces to examine. It looked like human engineering. Ship parts.
“Good morning!” Grace paused his frantic arm waving and bickering with Rocky to make eye contact and send him a smile. Simon appreciated how often Grace looked him in the eye even if he never held it for long. That wasn’t a dignity the C.O.I. guards often offered him. It made him feel human. “Sorry, I hope we didn’t wake you up. I assumed you would be sleeping in a bit later since you weren’t up when I came out this morning.” He rambled. They had only been on Erid for a few months, but it was long enough to know each other’s sleeping habits. And the sleeping habits of the aliens. Simon didn’t think he would ever come to see the idea of someone watching him overnight as anything other than creepy and invasive. He didn’t like being watched. The eye flashed through his mind again. He forced it away.
Grace shook his head like he was dislodging his thoughts as well. Simon wasn’t sure if he picked the motion up from Rocky or the other way around, but sometimes they acted too similar for creatures with two completely different makeups from two completely different solar systems. “Anyway, it’s the plans for the Hail Mary. The Eridian scientists have asked if I wanted to look over them together and see if there was a way she could be repaired. I told them I wasn’t quite ready for that yet, but they wanted me to be prepared with the information just in case.”
Simon stilled. “What do you mean you aren’t ready? You don’t know enough about engineering?” A simmering ball of something unnamable settled in his gut.
“No, I mean...” Grace’s eyes cut to his for a moment before skittering away. A flash of guilt crossed his face before the usual awkwardness came back. “I don’t think I’m ready, like, emotionally? I’m still pretty messed up around here,” he waved a hand around his head. “from the journey here. I don’t think I can start planning a trip back so soon. And I don’t actually know that I want to go back to Earth? I mean I miss it, but I don’t know that I want it.” He laughed nervously and fidgeted with his glasses.
“What?” Simon forced the word between his teeth. He couldn’t articulate more. His jaw was frozen.
“Yeah, I mean, it wouldn’t exactly be an easy undertaking. I’m not sure if the Eridian scientists would even be cool with helping make it happen when we actually look at the scope of what needs to be done. But anyway, it’s a lot to think about. I’m just not there yet.” Grace said, bunching wads of the papers together carefully, and no longer making an attempt to meet Simon’s eyes.
The paper Simon was holding crumpled in his fist when he couldn’t control the way it tightened. He felt the grooves digging into his palm, ruined.
One more thing he would have to find a way to pay for.