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"Were you scared?"
Purple pauses at the question, fingers drumming on the right side of the floor slowing to a stop when they chance a glance at Red. Red had went still. Their visor was fixed on an uninteresting dent in the wall and their legs were curled up to their chest; Purple thought it was quite un-Captainlike. In fact, they had thought Red was quite un-Captainlike throughout this whole thing—until, well, this last day, funnily enough.
Funny. Right. Haha. Their whole crew is dead and they are the only survivors.
"Uh," Purple responds intelligently, "hah, well, I—I mean, I don't know. I didn't really think about it, I just knew I had to do something."
"You talked circles around a murderous alien like it was nothing."
"I guess I—forgot to be afraid?" Purple offers sheepishly. They laugh. "What do you want me to say?" they accuse, but it's more nervous if anything.
"God, Purple," Red lets out a soft cackle. The back of their head falls against the wall behind them suddenly, and it makes a little thump sound. "You're brave."
"You say that like it's a bad thing," mutters Purple. "Like I didn't just save our lives."
"Well, that's not what I meant, obviously. Why wouldn't it be a good thing?"
"I dunno, you just said it—weirdly. In a weird way, okay?!"
"Oh, okay," mocks Red. "What else do you want me to say, that's not—that's not totally obvious. That's not something you already know."
"I told you, I don't—"
"You want me to say that I'm sorry? That you were always right? That I should've never reached out to give you this job, this—this awful, suicidal job, because it's a stupid thing to do even if I thought I missed you, or whatever. You want me to say that I should've listened to you, that I never should've signed that NDA, that I should've stayed with you way back when, and none of this would have to happen?" Red spits out in a rush. But then they breathe, and they collect their words, and states with the hard, flat edge of a conclusion built with blood: "Because you'd be right. That's what I should've done."
Purple frowns. Yes, they frown with their visor. It's possible, okay?
"Well, if you're already putting it out there…"
"—I was terrified, okay?!" Red pleads with a rupture in their voice. "And you—you just just did that. You talked to it. You handled it, you walked in there like you always knew what you were gonna do. And—this is the craziest part—you waited for me. You—you held out hope. Kept fighting, trying—anything."
"Well," Purple hesitates—bites their tongue. A strange thing to do around Red; they never had to do that with them, they'd just say what was on their mind— "Maybe I was just throwing stuff at the wall—wouldn't hurt if I was gonna die anyway!"
"No, no, then I'd die. You still didn't let that happen so easily."
"Red, come on. I just… thought about surviving. If not me, then you. Everything aside, I had to make sure at least one of us was making it out of here alive."
It's not like Purple knows either. Did—what, did some deep, instinctual part of Purple's soul know that Red was going to save them? No, that's not true.
They had stalled for them anyway. You know, just because. Really, didn't hurt not to.
"Hah, yeah, then we just had to go and survive. Both of us," Red chuckles. The phrase trails off, before they correct it with a perky "—alive."
"Yeah," Purple agrees faintly. "Uh huh."
"What are we even gonna do?" Red asks like it's a joke (a grin in the sound of their voice) but they both know it's not.
"I don't fucking know!" Purple laughs.
"Can you believe Lime was right the whole time?!"
"Um, duh!! Yes, I can believe it!! That saltwater gun worked like crazy!"
Red joins them in laughter, leaning forward, then playfully smacking down the brim of Purple's cap. "We're some damn heroes, huh? You saw how cool I looked back there."
"Yeah, yeah, you were all captain's kick and whatever." Without missing a beat, Purple swipes Red's hat.
"Hey!"
"This is your captain speaking," Purple reports in their impression of Red. "Welcome back to my Terraria Let's Play."
"How did you know—"
"The cameras in the cockpit just happen to work," snorts Purple. "It's sooo useful, I know."
"I—" Red flushes, and tries not to think about all the embarrassing Cuphead deaths that Purple probably saw. "Whatever. You know what, you can keep that hat. Clearly you're the better captain."
"Oh, yeah? G-gee, if—if Red says so, it must be true!" Purple says in a really stupid sounding Green impression. Red tries not to laugh too hard (it wasn't that funny) (maybe Purple's just funny?) (maybe they're crazy after surviving that). They switch out their security guard hat for the Captain's hat—once fixed on their head, they plop the cap upon Red's head. Red instinctively adjusts the overcorrection of the brim.
And they smile.
It's something like the end of the world, but they look at each other, and they see someone who has survived.
"Uniform looks good on you," Red remarks.
"You're not so bad yourself, Cap," Purple replies. "Or should I say, ah…"
"It doesn't matter," Red says gleefully, giggles bubbling up through the sound of their voice—they clutch Purple's shoulders. "It doesn't matter."
"Fuck MIRA," Purple giggles right along with them. "Fuck em all."
"We could run away," says Red. "Steer this ship off course—"
"—become swashbuckling space renegades—"
"—just go, totally rogue—"
"—nothing would stop us—!"
"—nothing but ourselves!"
"…"
"…"
They share a grin, then a slow sigh.
"It's nice to think about."
"Yeah," says Red. "God, I fucked up. World's shittiest Captain, reporting for duty!" they mock, pitching up their voice into something snarky and mean.
And what is Purple supposed to say to that? That it's true, that it's very true, that maybe it was all a little bit their fault, but definitely, at most, it was MIRA's? That they themselves made choices that allowed people to die? That they worked for a system that perpetuated abuse? What can they say that hasn't already been said?
"…It could be worse," they try instead, going for reassuring.
Red does the Amongi equivalent of rolling your eye. "Like this isn't worse."
"No, no really!" Purple exclaims. "We could be dead."
Red hums; closes their eyes, really thinks about it. Then—they decides to look at Purple, and they decide to smile. "That is true. We could be dead."
"Yeah…?"
"Yeah."
"Hm," says Purple with a budding sort of amusement. "Guess you're not all bad ideas."
"I'm awesome," Red says simply. "So awesome."
Purple leans back against the wall with a note of satisfaction. "Let's not go too far."
The thrum of the engine is a faint and solid sound, just as present as the void of space they know engulfs the outer walls of the ship. Goodnight, Heracles, Purple thinks.
Red's right hand rests on the floor between them, palm-up. Lingering, yet intentional, and familiar—reminiscent of a time that seems so long ago now.
There is a steady sadness that swoops between them. Mourning. Stress—the lapse between bouts of intense stress, the sort of anticipation where you know you just got the hard part done, but you also know that you're gonna have more things to worry about later. This is that; a silence that is thick and thin, an eerie peace that promises future troubles, an ominous feeling that this is not over.
But that is the future, and that is for soon and later and other such nonsense.
This is right now, and Purple lets their hand fall atop Red's, just like how it would back then—but new all the same, because they survived, and it's over, and it's not really over, but it is over enough. They are somewhere between ending and beginning, and it is nice to have someone by your side at a time like that.
Red intertwines their fingers. Purple squeezes back. Their hands are clasped, and through the layers of their gloves? It almost feels warm. Or perhaps that is Red's imagination.
"Let's go home," says Red. It's an illogical sentence: there's no home to go back to. "I'm tired."