Chapter Text
Save your breath.
He stared at the ceiling of the submarine, his mind listlessly tracking the blood trickling down the metal beams.
What a fucked up way to die, huh?
Suffocated in an ocean of blood by a horrifying eel monster from God-who-knows-where. Simon didn't want to think, thinking just made his head ache worse than the stomach gurgling from all that sludge he’d downed. He couldn't even call it food. Just a way to pass the time before his inevitable death.
A scratchy voice pierced through the submarine’s intercom, scolding him about something but Simon could barely make out what it was saying from the way the static in his ears all blurred together. He wasn't even sure it was an actual person anymore or just one of his messed up delusions. He would be upset either way.
Whether it was some sentient creature or Ava, or whoever, it was all the same. They wanted him dead and they didn't care how he died as long as they got what they wanted from him. One was asking him to sacrifice his life to get some black box for humanity and the other...he wasn't even sure what that eel thing wanted. Humanity was screwed anyway.
Why, of all things, did he get the short end of the stick? He got the information the fucking C.O.I. needed. Guess one convict wasn’t worth more than the other who’d jumped.
Hypocrites.
All of them.
He knew he shouldn't be talking though. He knew, to some extent, why they did this. He killed people. Not on purpose. But he murdered them. Their blood was on his hands. Sixty-three innocent lives in Filament Station. Gone. Along with the metal coffin they were imploded in.
Simon groaned into his hands as a broken sob slipped past. "SHIT!" he cried, pulling at his shaggy black hair. Why did he listen to them? If only he wasn't so gullible, he wouldn't be in this mess. The people who he called his family—his brothers. All that history just for them to abandon him and throw him under the bus.
He didn’t even know of their fucked up plan until the last second. He was content with his job at Filament Station, just doing as he was told like with the rest of his life. It was better than hanging in Eden where more of his brothers would rather preach than do the actual work. He hadn’t imagined when he accepted the mission from his brotherhood that they’d blow up part of the station to get back at the Consolidation. He had a feeling things would go wrong from the moment they placed the last bomb within the catacombs. They had no idea how to handle these fragile explosives, so when they were caught, Simon willingly surrendered, only to be pinned with blame from his surviving brothers, the ones who knew exactly what calling him ‘The Butcher’ would do.
He should have known loyalty and trust wouldn't have gotten him far in this world. It never had, so why did he start now?
Stupid. Stupid. STUPID!
He was going to die a slow, agonizing, rotting death just because he thought there was hope. Hope for a better life for him and his brothers. Good things never came easily to him, especially when a leap of faith was involved. Simon wasn't one to learn from his mistakes.
Simon curled into himself, struggling to keep his breath steady as the speaker spat out with more demands. Simon's brain blocked out all the noise. His bloodshot eyes fixed on the metal floor with twitching heaves of breath. He was going to die and there was no way out.
The blood around him rose to his knees, the pungent smell encroaching his senses while it slithered up his body. An electrifying spark of light flickered and Simon’s eyes went wide, stinging in the red haze. They were tiny red dots that pulsed with electricity. It was almost entrancing. Aside from the fact Simon was stranded in a blood ocean with a fucking eel monster. The submarine churned and quaked as he looked around for the monster. The submarine twisted, throwing Simon into the walls, knocking him out with the blood submerging his body.
—
Watney's breath hitched when he pressed the gauze to his throbbing wound on the side of his waist. He pressed down with his hand firmly, swallowing down the pain in his throat. He squeezed his eyelids shut, determined to keep the tears from trooping out. Just his luck that he got lost in the terrain while his crew mates flew out back to Earth. He knew their reasons for leaving him behind—I mean, he would be ignorant if he didn't.
They thought he was dead. Plain and simple. Anybody would come to the same conclusion. However, that didn't make the thought process anymore satisfying nor heart wrenching.
He wasn't sure how long he would even be on Mars for. For all he knew, he would die here without anyone even knowing he was alive this whole time. Watney sat back down on the gray swivel chair, glancing up at the station's ceiling that was a solid opaque white color. He had a sudden yearning for the sky. Will he ever see it again?
Mark was tinkering with his comm arrays when a channel seemed to ping from it. He shot up from his seat, hope seizing at his heart. He had gathered all the power sources around the HAB, tight beams that frequented repeated pings which seemed to match a frequency on the channel he was on. He leaned in close to the panel to watch the pings increase in speed. He pressed in send to tactile a message when red ruby light sparked through the comms and the HAb seemed to warp around him, leaving him to drift atop his seat bewildered. Suddenly, he was shot smack down into solid floor,
He groaned in pain, clutching his waist and the new throbbing sensation in his head. His vision was blurry from the fall but from he could tell; he wasn’t in the HAB anymore but a white industrialized craft with a man staring at him wide eyed from a corridor with a rock with legs jutting out from it in some sort of crystal bubble. Now that. That was something. His eyes fluttered shut as he fainted.
—
Now that Cooper was in the stolen space ship to save Brand, he knew he had to use that same wormhole he used to travel to those other worlds. As much as he hated being away from Murphy once again, he knew she was at peace with her family in that hospital bed. He had seen her once more to know that life treated her right and that she saved Earth. It was startling at first but now with what he knew about the world that Murphy had set out, he knew his next mission was to get Brand back and go back to where they came to find peace back where they came from and make a home out of it.
He knew he couldn’t live out is life without thinking of Brand just waiting out there on a planet, not knowing if anyone would get her or not. Despite their earlier transgressions, he’ll admit he cared for her and would not live with himself knowing he didn’t try looking for her and showing her the world his daughter had built. When he drew closer to the wormhole that transported him and his crew to the different planets that he thought the universe was telling him to find a solution in, he felt a pang of nostalgia and bittersweetness fill his lungs. Although, he still felt the mission was dispatched for no reason and nothing came out of it, he somehow knew this was how it was supposed to be. A domino effect into helping Murphy figure out the solution to Earth’s impending doom.
Cooper would forever miss the lost time he could have spent with his family, laughter, tears, and memories that were at stake because of his stubbornness, he knew what had been done, had been done. Time simply could not go back. He wiped at the tears pooling in his eyes thinking of Tom and Murphy.
Oh, how much he would give to see and hug them again.
He smiled and closed his eyes as the spaceship drifted into the tunnel. Thinking back of his children and what they accomplished. Once he got back to the space station and Earth with Brand, he would learn everything there was to learn about them. How their lives went, what he missed. Cooper wasn’t religious but for one moment, he prayed that Murphy and Tom knew he cared for them long after they were long gone and he was too.
The man was lurched out of his thoughts when a shimmering red particles wandered down the tunnel, making the wormhole faster in it’s descent. Cooper held onto the arms of his chair. This didn’t happen before. What was happening? He held his breath and leaned back as the light blinded his vision and the light consummating the wormhole veered and squeezed as if the universe itself was breaking apart. He felt dazed while the space ship quaked and shook. Stars littered around him. He could hear voices through the communication centre he swore he hadn’t turned on before. He passed out before the spaceship even drifted beside the Hail Mary.
—
Scritch. Scritch.
Behind a white board, Ryland continued his calculations meticulously with an air of shock to his own wit. He leaned back and pondered softly to himself, reiterating the results. He had no knowledge of himself but that he was a smart dude on a spaceship, years away from his Earth's sun (Sol) which was a huge inconvenience since it would be really nice for someone to pop in and give him a rundown on what happened while he was out.
It was apparent to him when he saw those bodies of his apparent comrades before that he was alone in this craft that he didn't have a choice but be a one man show. Who thought of only having three people on board anyway? Wasn't there usually five or something? Not that he could remember. Maybe there were more and they just spaced them too.
Ryland thumbed the bridge of his nose, his glasses loosely hung from his face. If he could just figure out what he was doing here in the first place. Maybe then, he could piece everything else together and not spiral into the theatricals. Theory 1: He was in space because of some intergalactic execution. Theory 2: He willingly volunteered which would cause one to think they were more insane than he thought.
Okay. First things first, his name was Ryland Grace. That was for sure. Probably. He was some sort of...teacher that was a total nerd who swore like the alphabet soup. He was the only person alive on this ship. American too. White, somehow fit and healthy, and, for lack of better words, felt super unprepared about everything that was happening.
He wasn't sure that was the post-amnesia talking but he had a feeling he had felt this way even before.
Oh snicker doodles. He's going to die out here, isn't he?
Ryland closed his eyes and wheeled back against the wall with both hands down his neck with a loud exasperated sigh.
Holy effing muffins.
_
Out on Capa’s spacewalk outside the Icarus spaceship to find out what the interference in the communication network was about. He was anchored to the spaceship in the too heavy spacesuit NASA had sent the crew. A sudden solar flare from the sun ensues an electronic resonance that crackle with his space suit. Robert heard the voices of his comradesm weary in distress before being blinded by a bright light. The stars around him seem to glitch and wriggle in place. That was impossible, considering how far they were from the other solar systems and the fact Icarus had been mantelled to hold place unless someone on board made a mistake.
Robert groaned deliriously as he watched from his space suit’s visor. He was drifting in the nothingness of space. The spaceship that was Icarus and the sun they were travelling to seemed to just have…vanished. Poof. Gone. A whirlwind of confusion and panic rose in Robert’s chest. His mind ablaze a million questions as he tried to steady his breathing. Maybe he was under a lot of stress and he was hallucinating. No matter how long he waited and willed himself to wake up from this nightmare, he was still drifting. Listlessly in what seemed to be in the middle of nowhere of space. This time, Robert was sure he wasn’t imagining things however impossible it may be; he was stranded in the middle of space without anyone to find him. The sweat building up in spacesuit was suffocating and he felt like he could drown in the heat form his laboured breaths.
“Hello? Anyone?” Capa tried to call out, wondering if this was a very realistic hallucination he was having and if his crew mates were just a few metres away, wondering why he went silent. When got not response back but his own panicked breathing, he felt his chest grow tighter. What the hell was happening?
A crackle shot through his headpiece and his heart soared with relief, “Oh my god, are you guys there? I swore I just-“
“H-hello? Who is this?” A voice Capa didn’t recognize rang through. Robert blinked confused and paused. Did he accidentally intersect a different communication panel?
“This is Robert Capo from the Icarus 2 space station. How did you get into our communication network?” Robert asked, although he more worried about his safety and where the hell the Icarus 2 was in the first place.
“What? I..that can’t be. They can’t have sent out another space ship unless the Taumoeba didn’t get back to Earth as planned,” The guy murmured under his breath, sounding weary with exhaustion. A twinkling sound of chitters sounded in the distance, “Ugh, no Rocky, I made sure I sent the probe back properly. But sometimes… there are circumstances that human engineering can’t predict. Do you think…?” The chittering seem to musically extend.
Capa listened in observantly although he was sure this was some sort of fever dream. “Look. I don’t know you and you don’t know me but…this will sound insane but I seem to have lost Icarus 2. I was just supposed to have a spacewalk around the space ship to check what went wrong with the comms when everything around me started warping and now…I’m floating in space.”
The feedback from the other side went quiet with the slight shuffles of something metallic. “…You were on a spacecraft and now you’re just floating around. When you mean by sun, did you mean Earth’s sun, Sol?”
Robert blinked, even more confused before but he didn’t have the brain capacity or the oxygen to question it, “Y-yes, where else? I’m sorry but if you’re somewhere near me, could you pick me up? I don’t know how I got into this situation and the probability of me surviving this with the oxygen I have left is low without the Icarus 2.”
The man on the other side’s breath hitched and he his voice seemed to grow closer, “We’ll try to find you as soon as we can. Since our intercoms connected, you shouldn’t be too far from the Hail Mary.” ‘Hail Mary’? Capa never heard of a spacecraft being sent out with the name like that before. Perhaps another country made a bootlegged version of the Icarus and made a stab at saving the sun themselves, however that was a long shot because the Icarus 2 had all the resources a sun saving spacecraft would ever need or want. He tried to not to think of it too much because he felt like vomiting and that wouldn’t make his heat slicked situation any better so he tried to focus on the voices on the other end of the communication channel.
“Ah! It looks like you’re 25 light minutes away somehow. I can’t believe we hadn’t detected you or your craft sooner!” The voice was intrigued, whispering some things about space relativity and transmissions which Capo would have understood if he wasn’t about to barf all over himself. Robert felt his vision growing blurry and his limbs beckoning to rest. Now that he knew someone was looking for him, his whole body system seemed to shut down, wanting him to sleep. Maybe once this hallucinations were over, he would find himself back in the Icarus, in bed, and being able to see his comrades again.