Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Ava stared down at the current sloshing around her legs, watching the eddies and bubbles form and swish away over her boots. 

She took a short breath through her nose. It didn’t sting like she expected it to, not like metal, but sickly-sweet, oddly comforting. It was comfortable, too, like wet towels left to heat under the radiator, steaming and soft. 

Her eyes felt heavy, unfocused, blurred at the edges like she was sleepy. She couldn't be though, right? She’d only just been standing, standing… where had she been standing?

The ground beneath her boots shifted a little, sending layers of red moving everywhere. Ava watched it with intrigue, her mind blank and quiet. 

Soft, soft soft. When had she last felt like this? Pleasant, unbothered, unannoyed, nobody nagging at her, poking her to talk, to lead… wherever she was didn’t mind her silence, the tiredness that pressed like stones behind her eyes. 

A little sound reached her ears, startling her into a flinch. What was that?

She stood for a moment, silent, then the sound continued. 

Oh. It was herself. She was humming, some meandering, unknowable song, coming from way down in her throat. Interesting. She couldn’t remember ever knowing any songs, not even a lullaby. Where did it come from?

Not very quiet anymore, Ava thought, listening to herself over the silent waves pushing at her legs. One of them itched suddenly, a muscle spasming, sending the red away for a moment. 

She peered at it curiously. Odd. She wondered if this place would push her up if she stumbled, or would it just, hold her? Or would it pull her down, take her someplace surrounding, enveloping, even quieter?

Ava wondered, with a detachment that perhaps should have alarmed her. But there was nothing to be worried about here. No danger, no dread, no crows no eels no convicts- 

Her leg convulsed again, stronger this time. 

The humming stopped. 

Hm?

Ava blinked, her eyelids closing and opening very, very slowly, sealing against themselves like blood seeping through her pants. She felt it in her boots now, lapping at her skin, warm wetness saturating each border. 

Oh. 

It felt nice. Ava wondered if it was calling to like, if her own blood was following. Whether the amorous embrace of this place would keep her here, climb her dry clothes and slip right in, filling up the space behind her eyes. 

Then it started. The metal, rising to meet her shallow inhales, tingling inside her nose. Something coming from her skin, soaked through from the waves purling around her calves. 

The smell of iron. 

There was something to that thought, and Ava frowned, trying to blink away the fog. Iron, entering her lungs with each inhale, provided passage by her need to breathe. 

She shook her head, pulling her hands up to press into her eyes. Think, Ava! She told herself sternly. Think!

There was nothing to think about. That’s all there was. 

Her leg spasmed hard, rocking her knee all the way up to the joint of her hip, uncomfortably like electricity shooting up the socket. She winced, pulling her hands away from her eyes. 

There was something wrong - the peaceful serenity of before was leaving, draining, letting her head clear without giving any answers, any anything. 

Ava cleared her throat, trying to make a noise, trying to get the gunk out. She coughed, gagging on whatever was stuck in there. It tasted like iron in the back on her tongue, as coarse as coal and soft as trimmed fat. 

“Hel- Hell, hello?” She managed after spitting chunks from her mouth. Something felt grainy and rough behind her teeth, coating her tongue and the inside of her lips, catching on the cracks. 

The ocean moved in response, a wave pawing at her knees. Was it rising? Was it… colder?

She shivered, clutching her arms close to her chest. Her neck was itching now, an ache spreading down her side. The stones behind her eyes pressed painfully, pressure mounting, making the stillness of her own legs wobble. 

It was cold now, and Ava tried to take a step, to move her legs, and instead she stumbled, catching herself before she fell into the mirror-dark sea. It rippled in response, swallowing her reflection in its inky depths. 

Ava whimpered, hot tears tracing paths down her cold face. Her head hurt like someone had taken a pipe to it, like she had fallen asleep again with nothing but cooling coffee in her stomach. 

The ground shook beneath her, growing soft and placid, her entire body shaking with it. She felt her legs fall further into the sludge, the border between liquid and solid blurring somewhere around her knees. 

“P-pl,please,” Ava shuddered, no longer warm. “W-what?”

She wasn’t sure she understood her own question. What was this? What was she doing here? What did all this want from her? What did she do to make the warmth stop? What could she do to make it come back?

She tried to take another step, only to stumble further into the matter. It sunk up to her hips, gently holding her legs still. The blood over it licked at her elbows, rising up and down the small of her back through her overalls. 

The stench was pungent as it reacted with her skin, filling her lungs with the reek of iron. The sickly-sweetness was no more, replaced with the sting of unnatural, unusual metal. Ava gagged on nothing, holding her hands up around her face, trying to see through the blur of tears. 

There was a sky, and in the sky a storm rang out. 

Ava gasped, eyes widening. It was, well, beautiful; red and purple and even darker red, laced with bolts of pure light that crackled and rang in silence. All consuming. All enveloping. Moving, changing, distorting, yet…

Ava thought, with a brief, striking moment of clarity, that there were faint, shining stars in the spaces between the storm. 

And then her head went under. 

…

Ava did not wake with a start. 

Life eased its way into her mind, gentle fingers of wakefulness brushing at her hair, smoothening her frown. It woke her with the quiet calm of an early morning, when the sun has only just begun to kiss the horizon. 

Ava hadn’t seen the sun in a long, long time. 

There were rustles of movement around her, somewhere beyond the low rasp of her breath and thunder of her heart. It sounded like a thousand shifting birds resting, feathers brushing down, mixing with cawing and break-snapping. 

It was annoying. She wanted to go back to sleeping - wasn’t she sleeping? - or dying or whatever. Ava wanted to be silent and warm again. 

Life, however, was annoyingly persistent. Gentle fingers became tugs, in the way of light through her eyelids, of some kind of far-away beeping, of hushed conversations. 

Ava sighed, a familiar noise. 

The conversation quieted, then picked back up again. 

Ava grumbled this time, louder, purely out of half-felt annoyance and foggy sleepiness. She really didn’t want to open her eyes; frankly she’d rather die right now, and sink into eternal darkness with everyone else. At least it’d be quieter. 

“Mmm-sfh..- Smmon… cptin -va?”

Ava groaned again when she heard her name, far clearer than any of the rest of the hush-hush conversation. 

“Can- you hear–... E?”

Hmmm. Still not great. It sounded a bit like she was underwater, or her ears were plugged up real good. It was kind of uncomfortable, actually. She wondered if it had anything to do with the stuffed-with-cotton feeling of her head.

“Hrmf,” She responded, irritated. 

Someone chattered closer by, and then there was movement, a point of pressure somewhere on her right side. A pricking in her arm. Ava frowned, twitching, trying to pinpoint it. Something about her body felt weird, somehow stiff and relaxed. Like she was falling very, very slowly, and not moving at all. 

She twitched again, trying to push away the numbness of her mind. Felt like she was pressed into a cloud, except this cloud was… kind of uncomfortable. And cold. She shivered, and the strange tingling numbness of before rippled through her body again. 

“S…rry Capti…an” The voice from before made its way into her floundering thoughts, prodding at the haze she was stuck in. She could hear a little more, but it seemed to bounce off her right and come in through her left. Weird. Was her sense of direction off? Hmm.. 

Then another sharp prick in her maybe-arm, and a new rising of flurried chatter. Ava wishes they’d shut up and let her sleep again.

But no. In fact, the opposite happened. Ava felt, gradually, like the fog in her brain was becoming mist. Condensation dripped in the liminal space, gathering the stuffiness and turning it into avoidable puddles of confusion and exhaustion. Like normal. 

Ava sighed, a sound deep from her soul. She wished she could sink down into one of those puddles and drown to death, but she had work to do. 

What kind of work? Gods, who knew. There was always something waiting for her, pressing, urgent. What could be urgent about the end of the universe, huh?

“ahp - Tin? Ava?”

Ava’s eyes blinked open, and the world expanded around her. 

Blurry as hell, firstly, and way too bright. The dull ache in her head rebounded twice as sharply, like an ice pick through her tear ducts. Ava winced, squinting through her lashes, the light turning into odd, refracting-star shapes. 

“Gah,” she said, trying to turn away from the glow, her eyes sliding close to slits. There was a hushed yell, and frantic movement, and slowly the lights flickered a few times and dimmed, not enough, but better. 

“Cap’n?” Said the muffled voice from before, on her right. Ava blinked her eyes wider, to half-slits, and glanced over. 

The world looked weird now. Colorless and somehow too colorful, turning into fragments of  shapes like one of those eye-toys Ava once had. She gingerly shut one eye, her left, and the colorless world disappeared. 

And there was a person next to her, hovering to the side. 

“Hmmf,” Ava mumbled, trying to focus her one eye on them. They seemed to recoil momentarily, stepping out of her sight for a moment, before swimming back in. The world seemed to be spinning in place, light where it shouldn’t be, color and movement where they weren’t needed. 

The hell?

“Captain, can yo… see me?” The voice spoke. Ava frowned, wondering why she could hear better with her head tilted this way. 

“Mmm, hmm,” She responded lazily, taking a moment. The world was still sharpening, clarifying, and she was in no hurry to do anything before it decided to let her exist a little easier. 

“Do you recognize me?” The voice continued annoyingly. 

Ava tried to focus again, her second eye rebelling and cracking open. It made the world weird-weirder again, but also let their silhouette against the light refine. 

A face, long, dark hair, a tight posture. 

“Mmm, daaaveee,” 

The person nodded. David, Ava recalled hazily. Her second in command. Hm. 

Ava drug her gaze away from him, and tried to focus on whatever lay above them. Lights, but in the spaces between lay nothing but grey. A good place to let her eyes do nothing, and perhaps figure out their differences. 

There was movement up there, something swirling, crawling between the light. Something red and blue and dark and… 

Ava shut her eyes, letting the imagery her brain was conjuring fall away. 

“Hey- you can’t sleep yet,” Came the annoying voice of her second-in-command. He always had to be right, huh? Fuck him.

“Ffffffuhhk… youh,” She managed, the very first words upon waking. 

She didn’t see it, but she imagined David smiled at that. Or at least the hint of a smile in his next words told her so. 

“How’ ya feel?” 

Like hot shit, and also like nothing. Ava wasn’t sure how to get that across, so she tried to shrug. Tried. Something along her upper body moved, some sort of rippling, hopefully her shoulders, but she was about as in-control of her body right now as the colors in her eye. 

“Oh, uh, oh,” David stammered. What was that for?

Ava peeled open an eye again to try and fix him with a glare. He stared back, dark eyes too blurred to give anything away. He flinched when she tried to make contact anyway, taking a miniscule step back. Coward. 

“We, uh, took you off the hard meds,” he said. Ava didn’t really care anymore; his voice had started to slide through her mind, joining the puddles of uncaring that lay somewhere along the bottom. “You probably feel weird. You’ll wake up in pain later, but, well, lucid?”

He spoke those last words with a hesitancy that made her bristle. Well, she had committed to not caring anymore, so she let it go. She was totally lucid right now anyway. 

Hmm, she should tell David that. 

Fuck David. She wanted to sleep. 

She closed her eye, sighing in relief as the light faded behind her eyelids. 

“Rest well, Captain.”

…

The next time Ava woke up, she felt like she was on fire. 

Her skin itched, her flesh stung, and something just felt wrong. There was a bone-deep ache coming from somewhere, but in the medley of pain, she couldn’t feel where. It just hurt. 

Before she knew it she was groaning, her face screwing up - which only sent more ripples through her. Somewhere outside herself there was a clatter of noise, heard through a muffled wall, and rising voices. 

Ava tried to breath deep, her chest tight with slowly-spiraling panic. Her skin felt stretched, her ribs too stiff, catching painfully on whatever was hurting. 

“Hey-hey, slowly,” A voice, soft and clear, spoke into her left ear, where the dense wall felt thinner. Ava was made aware of touches on her side, something around her arm being fiddled with, and another prick of pain, tiny in the sea of it, passed. 

“Breathe,” The voice said unhelpfully, and Ava tried to quit squirming, moments before a wave of calm hit. Huh?

Oh. They had drugged her, then taken her off the drugs. Now she was awake and in pain. So they’ll drug her again. Easy. 

Ava gritted her teeth, waiting for the everything to subside. It did, a little, not enough, after a bit. The itching and burning was tempered, drained down to puddles, and the heavy ache was lessened. 

It was all relieved enough for her to notice a couple things. 

Firstly, she was pretty lucid. Maybe they had her on some heavy stuff last time - she barely remembered even waking - or something, and then cut her off. Cuing the total return of pain, wherever she sustained it. 

Secondly, she was on a cot, not a thin one but still a cot. There was a flat pillow behind her head and what felt like a sheet over her body, catching on something that wrapped her body. Or most of it; there was a tightness over her right arm, leg and shoulder, and her neck and cheek felt stiff too. 

Great. 

“Can you open your eyes?” said the patient voice. Ava had almost forgotten they were there. 

Ava sighed, a tight, painful noise, and eased her eyelids apart. 

It was still too damn bright, but not as bad as the first time. Her vision still swam, black threading through all the colors, confusing, but not quite overwhelming yet. There was still a weird disparity between her eyes, and she elected to close the right one this time. 

It settled the world into grey, white and black, soothing in its emptiness. Ava wouldn’t mind feeling a little less right now. 

“Hmm,” The person next to her hummed quietly. Ava slowly turned towards them, letting her blurry eye try to focus on the dull silhouette. 

She didn’t recognize her. Some floppy brown-hair, young woman with a round face and the same tired features everyone had these days. 

Weird. Ava knew everyone on her crew. Who was this?

“Who’rr yoh?” Ava mumbled, her words coming out intelligible if not a little mushy. 

The girl smiled tightly, her hazy face crinkling. 

“I’m a medic,” She explained, explaining nothing at all. Ava scowled, ignoring the fresh ache in her cheek. Something about that must have been amusing, because her smile became a little more real. 

“Mmmm… and?” Ava prompted, trying and failing to think of better questions. 

“Uh, my name is Lea,” The nurse said back. Ava certainly didn’t recognize a Lea on her team. 

“You’re still on your base station,” Lea clarified after a moment. “I was transferred here.”

Ava glanced up at the ceiling just in time to see the light have a little seizure. Yeah, she could tell exactly where she was. 

“Hrmmm, whyy…?” Ava said after another moment, glancing back at Lea. 

Lea seemed confused for a second. 

“Um, your um, station does not have a qualified care staff,” Lea said cautiously, as if trying to figure out whether Ava knew that. Of course she did. It was hard not to, when the best patch-up jobs were done by engineers with a month’s training, maybe. Not good enough to beat cancer.

“Yuh,” Ava responded, blinking slowly. “Whhy?”

“Why- oh, well,” Lea said, a finger tapping nervously somewhere. Ava wishes she’d stop all this oh, um, hmming and give her a straight answer already. What did it take to get a competent person these days? Ava’s staff was competent. Where were they?

“I assume it’s because it’s a smaller boat and high medical care is unness… Sorry, not what you mean?” Lea trailed off as Ava scowled harder and managed a little head shake. “Do you mean to ask what I’m doing here?”

Ava thought for a second, and did a little half-nod. Lea nodded back, relaxing. 

“I understand. You and your uh, worker, were in a pretty bad state when they pulled you out,” Lea continued, glancing furtively to the side. Ava tried to follow her split-second gaze with no luck, and settled back on the girl’s face. 

“I don’t have the details about it all, not sure anyone does really, but your second-in-command called for immediate urgent care under the basis of… extreme importance,” Lea continued, her finger tapping another annoying rhythm. “There was a lot going on, uh, still is, but you should know that Fiber Station has docked pretty close by.”

Ava blinked in surprise. Really? Fiber Station had been the closest formerly to their little tugboat, but not close enough for crew exchange. It made sense, then, how someone new appeared on her station. But still, to waste resources moving a station closer? For what purpose?

The entire reason Ava and her crew were here, hovering over these damn moons, was so the rest of the COI could avoid blood on their hands. Literally. There was no reason to bring an entire station’s worth of people or resources to a tentative and possibly dangerous anomaly. 

The hell was going on?

“There's… some other stuff,” Lea said, nervousness chittering in her voice again. Ava narrowed her eye, trying to scope out why this girl was so nervous to talk to her. “But um, I think you’d want to talk to Acting Captain David about that… he promised to come by later, during his meal break.”

Ava narrowed her eye further, and Lea looked away, her fingers still drumming against her leg. Something was weird here, but Ava wasn't sure what. She couldn’t wrench it out of the nurse, not now with her current vocal shortcomings, and if David was coming by later anyway, then… 

Ava sighed and nodded, turning away from Lea and shutting her eye. The instant bliss the darkness brought her was a little concerning, but she’d deal with that later. She had sleep to chase now. 

She distantly heard Lea moving around, rustling things and muttering to herself. Ava hazily wondered how much longer they were going to pump her full of precious painkillers, before slipping off into dreamless sleep. 

…

Something nudged at her side. 

Ava ignored it. It was too early. Her alarm hadn’t even gone off, and it was still dim. 

Something nudged her again, a little harder, more persistent. 

Ava growled, hoping to scare whoever the fuck though waking her up right now was a good idea. 

“Did you just growl at me, Captain?”

Ava sighed. David. If he was poking her awake, he probably had a decent reason. Although if it was because the temperature reports were bugged out again she was seriously going to-

“I know you’re awake” He said, annoyingly correct again. Ava huffed and peeled her left eye open again. 

Seemed like her vision was improving, because David was pretty damn close. Close enough for her to see his worried dark eyes darting around through her sleep-fog. He was close by her side, leaning over her a bit. Probably trying to weigh whether pissing her off this early was worth it or not. 

“David,” Ava said, her voice muffled and a little weird, but better. “Whhat,?”

David flinched back, falling out of her close-range sight. What was up with him today? He was usually so cocky and smug, not… jumpy. She peered at him curiously with her good eye, watching as he tried and failed to look anywhere but her. 

“Can you… see me?” He said tentatively. She was his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. 

“Mmhm,” Ava hummed. The hell was with these people?

“Uh, how many, uh, fingers am I holding up?” David held up a hand with two fingers pointed up. 

Seriously?

“Tew,” Ava mumbled, narrowing her eye at him. 

David nodded and leaned back, running the hand through his hair. All signs spoke of his being nervous, but frankly Ava couldn’t care a whole lot. He could get himself together, and tell her what was going on, or she’d drag the information out of him later. 

“You want some, water?” he asked her weakly. Ava glared at him for a moment more, then nodded. He sighed, and disappeared in the distance for a moment. 

Ava heard the running of water, the clink of metal on metal, and then David was back, a beat grey cup in hand. Ava grunted, trying to lift her head up, realizing pretty quick that moving was taking a hella lot more effort than she anticipated. 

“Oh- Hold on Cap’” David darted away for a moment, only to come back with another pillow in hand. It was just as squashed and sad looking as her current one, but Ava would take it all the same. 

Ava gritted her teeth as pain flared down her face and neck when David lifted her up to place the pillow beneath her head. She sighed raggedly as she sunk into it, taking a moment to adjust to her new level. 

She still couldn’t see a lot, anything past a few feet a distant blur, but she could make out David’s face better from where he sat next to her now. 

He was really fucking exhausted, Ava realized immediately, her face-searching authority skills kicking in immediately. Dark shadows like pressed bruises hung under his eyes, and his face looked thinner and drawn, his mouth a sharp line that bordered a grimace. His dark hair lay flat and falling into his grey eyes that were shadowed by his knit brows, and he leaned heavily against the arm of the chair. 

Yeah, he looked like shit. 

“Look shhi-” Ava tried to tell him before a rasping, god awfully painful cough grated in her chest. She wheezed for a long moment, trying to dislodge something in her throat that simply did not want to leave. 

“Here, here-” David lifted the cup to her lips, letting her sip slowly, trying to quell the wracking spasms. The water was cool, delightfully colder than herself, and she gulped it down, feeling waves of relief flow through her as her throat was soothed. 

“Thanks” She croaked, trying to get back to breathing normally. Her chest still felt tight and odd, like something was pressing down the right half. 

“So, um, I’m sure you’ve got questions, yeah?” David said, rubbing his hands up and down his pants absentmindedly. “But you should try to save your breath so how about it just… Uh, tell you everything I know?”

Ava nodded. Reasonable. And despite his current exhaustion, she trusted David to get to the most important parts. He knew her, and therefore knew what she wanted to know. 

“So, after you went down, we may have panicked a little bit,” David said hesitantly, as though embarrassed. “And we relocated every monitoring device we could to your target.”

Ava didn’t quite approve, but she let it go for now. 

“It was normal for a while, but then there was something weird.” David continued, dropping his gaze down to his hands. “The heat signatures spiked. We heard movement and yelling over the radio and then - nothing. The chain was there but you hadn’t ordered a recollection yet, so I decided to… wait, and give you the full recouping time.”

Ava nodded approvingly. She had instructed David to giver a solid 30 minutes post last contact if she ever went without checking in, or got too deep, before pulling her out. Good on him for listening to her for once. 

“So we waited, and about ten minutes in… the chain snapped” David whispered that last part. 

Oh. 

“I-um, I didn’t know what to do,” David said, in a hushed voice. Ava felt a twinge of pity, as she imagined him standing at the radio booth, waiting, waiting for someone that couldn’t possibly come back. 

“Hmf, how…” Ava huffed, trying to articulate how the hell am I here then? But failing. 

“How are you here? Yeah, I’m getting there,” David laughed, strained. “Like I was saying, we thought you were gone. So I sent off a message to the council, giving them the gist of it, and then we all sort of went to the port. To move the monitors, officially, but we were all just…”

He made a sort of waving motion with his hand. All just what? Wasting time waiting around for her? Ava gritted her teeth down, anger washing over the brief gleams of upset sentimentality. 

“Anway, it was a good thing someone was watching the sea cuz, well…” David tilted his head, clearly searching for words. “Something came up.”

Ava frowned. Huh? There was no way for the subs to surface by themselves. The chain was required to pull them up, and without that… they were, in essence, dead meat. 

“We-I don’t - honestly we wanted to see if you knew what it was,” David laughed nervously again, rubbing his hands faster now. There was a frantic gleam in his eye now, that spoke of the little bit of insanity that came with too many sleepless nights and uncertain situations. 

“We’re calling it the dragon, right now.”

Ava blanked. 

The dragon?

A thing?

“What?” She asked, startled. David smiled ruefully, not quite reaching his eyes. 

“Yeah, cuz it was all… scaley?” David explained, explaining nothing at all.

“We only saw a bit of it, but it seemed fucking huge. Like, bigger than this damn station big, if the fucking eyeball was anything to go off.”

“Eye?” Ava inquired. What was… familiar about this story?

“Mhm,” David affirmed. He gestured vaguely to the room around them, the maybe triple-closet sized place. “Probably half this size.”

Oh shit, yeah, that was big. 

“So only a bit of it surfaced, right?” Uh, sure? Ava hadn’t been there. “And we all freaked because hell it was scary. But it just kind of… watched us? Like, I think Aron shit his pants. It was kinda funny, actually,”

Something made a little thump movement as David laughed, and Ava scowled as her head pinged with pain again. 

“Yeah and so…”

Something was pulsing, just out of her sight. Ava frowned, trying to figure out which of her senses were messing with her now. 

David continued to ramble a bit, running a hand through his already mused-hair. The rhythmic movement skipped a wave, then increased a touch more. Her right eye was beginning to ache a bit, maybe with the painkillers wearing off properly. 

Ava grunted, softly enough not to be heard, and peeled it open, hoping to maybe relive some of the pressure behind it. 

It was just as disorienting as the first time, although now Ava was properly lucid enough to think Ok, what the fuck?

She could see David. Like, simultaneously more and less than she should. She was watching his heart pound in his chest, she was seeing his skipped heartbeats from stress and caffeine and probably a decent amount of terror from recounting this story, she saw the flutter of his lungs as he took a staggered breath. 

She closed her left eye experimentally. The world went dim, dark even, but somehow she knew everything was exactly where it had been. David was making some sort of gesture with his right hand, the bones in his ring finger giving a little involuntary jump and-

David flinched, hard, turning to staring at her with pin-point pupils. His breath was coming in harder now, a slight hitch to it, and Ava saw his pulse pick up by a mile while the rest of him went still and faded from view. 

Ava frowned, manually closing her right eye and opening the left. Damn thing, confusing her, scaring David. 

“Captain?” He said, acid fear bleeding into the hesitancy in his voice, tapering off into a tiny, miniscule tremble. 

“Mmh,” Ava responded. “What happened to…”

She rocked her head a bit, twitching the muscles on her right. David seemed to get the message, because he glanced away, only to look right back and wince. 

“As I was saying,” David mumbled, looking away again. “The uh, dragon, it had something inside… its mouth.”

Ava couldn’t stop the shiver of disgust that ran through her, despite the many disgusting things she had seen in the last years. 

“What?” She asked, despite not really wanting to know.

David looked at her, truly, and grimanced. 

“The Subs.”

“No,” Ava said instantly. Bullshit, she called. David was crazy. No way anything from down there would help them out of the ocean. 

“Yep,” David said, reclining back in the chair. “Spat y’all out, left you and the SM-13 bobbing on the surface like ducks. I think that’s what ducks do, right?. Anyway, then it looked around a minute more, and sank. We haven’t seen it since.”

Ava groaned, wishing she was dead again. 

“Sorry, Capn’” David said, genuine sympathy softening his face. He knew it was a lot, but Ava wanted it. She needed the information, even if all she wanted to do was sink into the wispy grey fog in the corners of her vision. 

“No, no,” Ava said, shaking her head. “Go on”

David frowned, concern apparent in his sleep-hazed eyes, then nodded. 

“We drug the subs out of the water, with like, hooks, and got to welding you out,” David explained. “Poorly, really. The subs might be unusable, now, but we weren't sure what state you or the box was in so… I made the call to do whatever was the fastest, all hands on deck.”

Ava sighed. Losing the use of the two subs sucked, no doubt, but she couldn’t fault David for the decision. In fact, she’d probably have made the same one, had she been in his shoes. Funny how that worked out now. 

“Inside it was um, oh, Ava it was,” David blanched, looking like he might empty the components of his stomach out. “Disgusting, sorry. Really fucking nasty. I won’t describe it, you can see the leftovers later if you want, but we think through some sort of puncture holes a lot of blood got in, began coagulating, got really acidic and…”

David turned away, hand over mouth, breathing hard and taking a moment. Ava ignored the sharp pulse behind her right eye, keeping the left on David's visible wellbeing. He was a biologist; it had to be pretty… bad, then, to upset him like that. 

He took in a sharp breath, visibly composed himself, and turned back to her. 

“We… cut you out of the shit, Captain. You were stuck in there, unconscious and looking a step away from death.”

Based on her current condition, Ava sure did believe him. 

David inhaled sharply, glancing away again, before nodding his head down sharply. 

“Lea told me not to tell you yet, but, I think you might kill me if I don’t now.” David said, not ominously at all. Ava watched the way his eyelids twitched involuntarily, nerves and stress battling over his face. 

“Yeah?” Ava rasped, wondering what could be worse than anything she’d heard so far.

“Your right side was stuck in the uh, blood,” David winced. “We got most of you out just fine, with some acid burns and stuff.”

“Most?” Ava snarled. David flinched, and glanced towards the foot of her bed quickly. 

“Your leg was stuck,” He said simply, quietly. “It ripped off.”

Ava glanced down towards the hazy that was the rest of the room, trying to see for herself. She couldn’t, the rest of her body covered in the same grey sheet, pulled over herself like a fresh corpse. 

“Oh,” She said. 

David let out the breath, perhaps relieved she hadn’t killed him, perhaps concerned that was her entire response. 

“And um, one more thing,” David said. Ava pivoted her gaze back towards him, becoming rather baffled. What could possibly be more important than all the crap he had just finished telling her?

“The sun's back,” David told her.

…

They kept talking for a while, relaxing into it despite the calamity and emergencies surrounding them. 

“So, you know, after the freaking sun appeared, plus my new transmission to Foundation Station telling them all the crap that happened, they decided to move Fiber Station over, to try and help out,” David laughed. “And probably to make sure us lowly workers didn’t screw up what could be, what, our salvation or some shit? Yeah, so Fiber Station officers and stuff have been crawling all over the place, which sucks cuz we can’t leave, so it’s been real cramped.”

Ava scowled, annoyed at the very idea. 

“Fuck’mm,” She said, fuming. “They’rr useful?”

David shrugged, looking off towards the doorway. 

“We got a real medic out of it,” he conceded. “And she’s pretty good. Not sure poor Ross or Alba could have kept you two alive, and they’re the best we got.”

You two. Oh. Ava was forgetting somebody. 

“The convict?” She asked slowly, her throat tightening around the words. How had she forgotten?

You sent me down here to die, and you don’t even know my name?

Ava expected to see distaste, or disgust even, creep across David’s face at the mention. He had never been on board with the convict program, and despite his tendencies to desire equality amongst all, she knew he, like all COI, had an aversion towards those Eden cultists. 

Instead his face softened, and he looked away, his brows knit. Was, was that - pity, on her second-in-command’s face?!

“He’s-, yeah, we pulled him out too,” David said quietly. “Alive. He’s awake, sometimes too. I’ve talked to him…”

Ava tilted her head, go on. 

“He um, he won’t stop apologising,” David said hesitantly, as if he was expecting her to snap at him. “If he’s not crying. He told me he was sorry about everything, about- about the x-ray, about yelling at me… Lea sedated him before he got too hysterical. She thinks everything that uh, happened down there might have knocked a screw loose, per say.”

Ava wasn’t sure about that. She’d have imagined he was an unapologetic bastart too, if she hadn’t heard the sincere tremble in his voice when he told her I didn’t mean to do it. Any of it. It wasn’t my fault. 

It was hard to keep him as a convict, then, when he sounded like a beaten child.  

She didn’t think David quite believed the dangerous facade either, based on his deep frown as he stared a hole into the floor. 

“Where’s he?” Ava asked. 

“He’s alone right now, but I was gonna move him in with Jack,” David said, as if that wasn’t a hella sentence to unpack. 

“Wait- with Jack?” Ava said, incredulously. “Simon- he, Jack, the radiation, Jack’s fine with that?!”

“No, of course not,” David retorted, his hackles rising at her tone. “But we don’t have much space and even less actual credible medics. One, right now, and we’re running her ragged. So Jack kindly put aside his grievance and agreed to a roommate, till he’s dead I’spose.”

Ava shook her head, ignoring the shoots of pain down her neck. 

“Move him in here,” She said, despite her mind screaming at her to absolutely don’t fucking say that!! “Give Jack some peace. Better for Lea, too. She can treat us at the same time.”

David frowned, seeing her logic but perhaps wondering what motivated her to speak it. 

“I mean, alright,” He said, still confused. “I’ve had Aron keeping an eye on him, so if you don’t mind he’ll come and watch you too.”

Ava nodded. Hopefully that would let David get some free time, and some much needed sleep for once. 

“Uh, Ava,” David said, then paused, his mouth parted as though in mid-thought. 

“Yes?” Ava asked back. 

“I um- I, this isn’t the time to ask but,” David scratched at the back of his neck, his eyes sliding down to the floor. Ava watched all the signs of his tell-tale nervousness begin, her gaze narrowing. 

“Why did you go back for him? Not the box. It was more than that, I know. Why him?” 

Shit. Ava didn’t want to answer that question. 

…fuck…

After a long moment of silence, in which Ava stewed in her misplaced anger and David in his anxiety, she growled. 

“I’m an idiot, alright?” Ava hissed, ignoring the way David’s eyes flicked back to her, shocked. “I don’t know. I don’t know! I shouldn’t have, fuck I shouldn’t have but I fucking did and I don’t FUCKING know why!”

Ava thought about the last radio transmission on the deck, the silence between frequency chatter and words. The excited terror pouring through her chest, molten and hot down her spine. Finally something! She’d thought, lungs stuttering, waiting for the convict to continue. 

And then they’d talked. And then Ava’s excitement sublimed into silent, determined fear like ice spreading through her intestines. It wasn’t a question, then, to try. To salvage whatever demons down there had left of a man who was so… scared, that he’d plead for an uncaring captain to save him. 

“I don’t know.” Ava said, softer, staring down at her hands. “It felt right, even if it was wrong. I had to try.”

David stood there, silently, and watched her fiddle with her thumbs. 

“ok,” he said gently, and Ava’s already wretched mood dropped lower. 

“Can you- I want to, ugh,” Ava said, struggling to word her next request. David tilted his head towards her, quiet, waiting. He was rarely quiet, so she must really look like shit. 

“I want to see it for myself,” Ava said, and she knew David understood. “I need- I need to see it myself.”

“I’ll ask Lea,” He said, rising slowly to his feet. Ava tracked his face as he began disappearing into the fuzzy greyness that awaited the border of her vision. “She’ll have to clear you, but, I’ll make it happen.”

Ava wanted to thank him. She also wanted to cry, and bash her head into the wall until everything was silent, but she did neither. 

“Go take a nap already,” She said instead. “You look dead.”

David huffed, the most laughter he could manage at this time, and shook his head, padding gently out of the room. 

Ava remembered the days when David would poke at her to get more sleep, standing over her at the console with coffee in hand and a sharp tongue. Where had that gone, huh?

Buried somewhere down there with the rest of her leg, she supposed.

She glanced down at the foot of the bed, and found she could see no more of it now than before. Ava wondered if David was lying. She couldn’t be… she still had… no. 

Ava shoved it in the corner of her mind for later. 

Now, without David there, the room felt… small. Suffocatingly big, at the same time. Ava shivered, hating this feeling. Hating the fuzzy in her eyes and head, the foreignness of her own body.

She stewed in the anger of helplessness before succumbing to another fog of sleep.

~Two day prior~

When Simon came to, he felt like he was freezing in the depths of hell. 

Quite literally. Simon’s first waking thought was what ring is this?

If he had been lucid enough to remember the father’s teachings, he would have said the seventh. Where the violent angry ones go to choke on boiling streams of blood. But he was so cold, perhaps he had made it all the way to the bottommost frozen depths. 

Simon was not lucid. Simon was foggily unaware of his own brain, and woke with the mind of an animal in an unfamiliar, half-grey place. 

Blinking his weary and heavy eyes open, Simon watched the cosmos swirl around him, confusion battling sleepy peacefulness. His mind poked and prodded at himself, trying to get him to remember, to think!

But the ceiling was so… colorful. He had only seen this much color once, on the walls in the Father’s private rooms. It was beautiful then, and it was mesmerizing now, even as his eyes ached and his head spun. 

He was in someplace silent, and his ears twitched as consciousness extended towards them. No noise, not yet, but gentle buzzing silence. Not even the rise or fall of his chest, not the beat of his heart. Nothing. 

Simon hummed. He did not even notice he had stopped breathing, only when the short melody became shorter as his air ran out. No worries. Didn’t seem like he needed anymore anyway. 

He was still cold though. Cold enough to shiver, which he wasn’t doing for some reason, and cold enough for his fingers and toes to be snapping off. 

He couldn’t feel his feet. Or fingers. Checked out, then. 

Simon picked his head up, ignoring the way the entire room tilted. His head was all mixed up, his mis-matched eyes telling him one thing while the sensitive balance inside his ears whispered something else. 

His brain eventually connected some wires or the other, and forced his lungs to take a deep breath. Simon watched his own chest rise with abject curiosity, intrigued by the way it pulled the sheet taunt over him. 

Then his whole body twitched, like it was waking up without him, which only served to remind Simon of the cold. 

Hm, he was still cold, and sitting around was NOT helping. He wasn’t sure why his thoughts were so loud all of a sudden. Where did they even come from? Father? God? The Ceiling? 

Hm

Simon sat up. It was surprisingly easy, even when his head told him he was falling very suddenly. He looked down at the sheets pooling in his lap. Didn’t seem like he was falling. Was his brain, lying, to him? 

Simon squinted his eyes and looked up at the ceiling for confirmation. The ceiling did nothing but do its little shimmy-color dance, which had been delightful for a few minutes… moments… hm, hours? and now was simply confusing. 

He wiggled his limbs, of who responded with rather sluggish, vague moments that could NOT be called wiggling - why were his words getting so big all of a sudden? -, but they did move. Except, something felt a little weird. 

Simon blinked, each eye out of order, wondering why his left side was all itchy and cold and hot. He scrunched his face on that side, squishing the eye real tightly close, and watched as the ceiling became drab and grey. 

Weird. He didn’t know color only existed on one side. 

Simon blinked the eye open, letting it float whatever across his mind’s eye. He was now trying to mentally prod at the odd feeling of pricks and tingles across his limbs, everywhere except… 

Simon let out a grumble and a long breath, his face twitching with annoyance. He wiggled his left side again, making it wake up some more. 

Then he made the mistake of looking. 

Where the sheets had slipped off his upper body, there was nothing but a plain brown, slightly stained shirt covering him. It had a soft, wide neck and short sleeves that looked a little torn, and… nothing peeking out through the hole. 

Where did his arm go?

Simon wiggled once more, watching his shoulder move a little bit, and flap the empty sleeve-end. What? Where’d it go?

Simon squinted, then looked around, trying to see if it was hiding anywhere. The grey room provided nothing, just plain surfaces that shimmered with pretty hues sometimes and swam in the corners when he wasn’t looking. 

Hm. Odd. 

Simon looked back just in case he was crazy - heh - and his arm was back. 

The empty sleeve still flapped, emptily, when he wiggled. Evidently, it was still out there somewhere. 

Simon tried to grab at the empty air, stopping short when he realized something was pulling at his other arm. 

Some kind of tube, thin and clear, was wrapped into his elbow. When he shifted it made a little prick, which should’ve hurt, he supposed, but didn’t. How funny. It was so tightly wound that he could barely move below the joint. Interesting!

Before Simon could properly get to investigating the odd business, he heard a faint Tap tap tap outside. 

Woah. Two seconds ago he wasn’t aware what outside was. Now he was hearing things!

Hearing… things. 

Simon didn’t know what that meant.

The animal mind that had taken over in his… drug addled incapacity spooked, freezing his joints up and locking his eyes on the doorway, that he had only just become aware of. Fear pricked at his neck, so he did the only thing he could feel to do, and he hid.

Which amounted to basically pulling the sheet up close to his curled-up form in the furthest corner of the bed, squashed up against his little pillow. The monitor - was that new? - beside him beeped once, a little flicker of red on the screen. Simon ignored it, eyes trained on the wavering door, not noticing the little stain of red inside his curled-up elbow. 

It opened with a satisfying click that Simon’s mind filed away to replay later. Something blobby and dark walked in, fuzzy and uncertain around the edges. Simon tilted his head, squinting as he pressed himself further into the wall-bed-edge thing. 

“Oh,” The thing said, startling. It must have seen Simon then.

Simon wondered briefly if they were scared of him. They should be, he thought for no particular reason. Was he scary? Hm. 

“Hey- Go get Da-” They disappeared again, before poking back into the room. Simon tried to remember what they had said, but the words slipped through his mind like they were oiled up, sliding into one ear and out of the next like worms. 

Ew. Simon didn’t want worms in his ears. 

“Hey, co- um, you, how are you feeling?” Said the Thing, coming closer, slowly. 

Simon frowned. Feeling… feeling… hmm. He was dandy. Or, perplexed. No, those were just words. She was asking for words though, right?

“Worms,” Simon said confidently. 

The Thing flinched again. Perhaps they were not expecting him to respond. Sometimes Father talked and asked questions without wanting an answer. Were they like Father? Simon hoped so. He wanted somebody to explain stuff already. The Ceiling was being very quiet. 

“Did he just say-, um,” It said softly. Perhaps they thought Simon couldn’t hear! He had a brother like that once. He died young though, and Simon felt ooold. Old people used to complain about being cold, before they all died, so maybe Simon was old now.  

“Sorry. You feel like, worms?” It said a bit louder. They were close enough for Simon to make out blobby bits of dark hair on a pale face, features just a smudge that moved like ink in water. 

Simon hummed, briefly forgetting the question. 

“Worms,” He said. Why worms again? Oh right. In his ears. Simon should tell her that. 

“Woormms, earrr,” He said, shaking his head. 

“You have worms in your ears?” It asked. Was that… skepticism? Rude.

“No” Simon snapped back, resting his head against the wall again. 

“Oh, good,” They said. Simon noticed how nice and clean the white something or the other it wore was, how rare white things that weren’t stained brown or black were. Father had a robe like that… Simon had always wondered if it was as soft as it looked. 

“I’m Lea, a medic from Fiber Station,” They said. Oh. So it was a person. “I’ve been treating you for a few days now.”

Simon grumbled deep in his chest, his eyes slowly shutting of their own accord. 

“Before you sleep, can you answer a few questions for me?” The person asked. Simon hummed, forcing his eyes back open. 

“Lovely, thank you,” She smiled. Simon blinked, astonished. Nobody had smiled at him in years! What a wonderful, perhaps stupid person. Simon wondered if she was one of his brothers. But wouldn’t he know her then? Hmm. 

“Do you remember your name?” She asked, pulling something flat and square out of her white robe. There was something dark and thin in her hand, hovering over the flat thing. Simon wondered what it was. 

“Siiiimooonnn,” He mumbled, far more interested in the way her hand moved as she scribbled onto the paper. Oh! It was paper. She was writing! How interesting. 

His name wasn’t as long as the dark lines she was making on the paper. 

“Thank you, Simon,” She said with another smile. “Now tell me, are you in any pain?”

Simon shook his head automatically, then thought about it. Then shook his head again. 

Lea frowned, her little face breaking into lines. 

“How about your elbow?” She asked. “I think you jabbed yourself with the IV. May I fix it?”

Simon didn’t know what the FUCK - woah, loud! - an Eyevee was, but he nodded anyway, uncurling himself as she came around to his other side. 

Simon watched with draining levels of concern as she fiddled with his arm, fixing something and stopping the tiny pricks that he had barely even noticed were happening. 

“Thank” he stated, because she did something for him and it was polite. Father was always happy when Simon was polite and well mannered. 

Lea smiled, and Simon watched the corners of her mouth curl with absolute fascination. 

“I’m glad to see you so upbeat,” she said, retracting her hands and going back to the paper. She jotted something down, and looked back up at him. 

“Are youuuu…. Brothrr?” Simon asked. 

“Uh, no, I’m an only child,” Lea responded hesitantly. 

Simon frowned. She clearly didn’t understand his question.

“Mmyyyy brotherr,” he tried again, pointing at himself vaguely. 

Lea shook her head. 

“No, I’m not your brother,” she said. “Do you have many?”

Simon nodded enthusiastically. He did! There were so many brothers in Eden and… wait… 

Simon shook his head, his mood dropping. His brothers were dead. They left him.

“No more,” he said. Lea’s smile fell away, replaced with a soft look in her eyes and her brows pressing together. 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, and scribbled something else down. “Is there anything else you remember right now?”

“Hmm, wherrsss Fatherrr?” Simon mumbled, trying to think. Thoughts did not come to him. 

“Your father?” Lea repeated. “I don’t know where he is. Where was the last place you saw him?” 

“Hmmmm,” Simon hummed quietly, poking at his brain. “He saaid byyyeee at… stationn… hmm”

“I see,” Lea said. Simon wasn’t sure what she was ‘seeing’, considering she was looking back at her paper. How strange this lady was. 

“What about your mother?” she asked, looking back up again. Something about the faint, hazy darkness of her eyes pricked at Simon, letting the question burrow into his mind instead of squirming right out. 

Simon blinked. His mother?

His… mother?

“My mama?” He asked, not even thinking. No, he was remembering soft black hair clutched into smaller fists, a tight mouth that bunched up her cheeks when she smiled… 

“Oh, Simon, I’m sorry,” Lea said, her eyes wide. Simon sniffed, wondering why she was apologising. She ducked behind the monitor for a second, rummaging around for something, before holding up a scrap of cloth. 

It was little and mottled with old stains, but Simon watched, with somehow even more blurry eyes, as Lea reached up to wipe at his face. 

“I didn’t mean to make you cry,” She said, still apologetic. Why was she apologising? 

Oh. Right. She said he was crying. Simon felt it now, as though separated from his own body. A smear of hot wet tears that Lea was carefully drying up, all the way back to his squinched eyes. 

“No… ok…” He sniffled, feeling like his head was being stuffed with spare cloth and pillows. At least there were no more worms in there. Hopefully. 

“We can talk about something else,” Lea asked. She was done wiping away all his tears, and Simon felt a little better now without the rough scrap against his cold skin. 

“Hmm… color.” Simon stated. 

Lea nodded, as though that was completely and entirely expected. 

“Yes, colors,” She said. “Do you see a lot of those? Anything odd?”

In response, Simon pinched his left eye close, and shook his head. Then he opened it and closed the right one, and nodded. 

Lea took the answer in stride, jotting a few things down on her paper. 

“You see odd colors with your left side only?” She said tapping her own left eye. Simon nodded, relaxing. How nice that she listened. 

As she wrote a few more things down, a little tap tap came from the doorway. Simon looked over lazily, relaxed from the pleasant conversation, only to freeze up again. 

There was a man waiting by the open door. 

“Oh- Captain David, hello,” Lea piped up besides Simon as if nothing was wrong at all. 

Maybe nothing was, but something told Simon hide hide hide, just like when Lea came in. His body curled up quietly, and he pushed himself back down into the bed, just like before. Lea shot him a worried look, but did nothing to disencourage the cautious behavior. 

“Afternoon, Ms. Lea,” The man said. Lea nodded and took a step back, shuffling through her papers. Simon kept his eyes trained on the newcomer as he crossed the threshold and, slowly, as though approaching some cornered animal, made his way to Lea’s side. 

She murmured something to him and passed over her notes, letting him skim through him. If something surprised him he did not show it, or perhaps Simon’s vision wasn’t good enough to catch anything. 

“Who’rr youh?” Simon drabbled. The man frowned, perhaps not expecting Simon to talk to him directly. He still wouldn’t look Simon in the eyes. 

“David, currently acting Captain of this station,” He said. Oh. That sounded… important. Simon wondered if Father had a title like that once. 

“Hmm,” Simon said, and then tried to get a better look at the man. 

Dark, shortish hair that fell into his face, a tired, sad face with shadowed eyes that maybe looked blue-ish, or greyish or maybbeeee purple… No, Simon was making that last bit up. 

Still, there was something oddly familiar about him that Simon couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“I knowwwwww….. You” Simon stated, watched as the man - David? - looked up in surprise. 

Hm. Blueish-grey, Simon decided. They would be kinda pretty if he didn’t look so inexplicably haunted. Perhaps he was in hell with Simon too. That’d be nice, to have some companionship.

“I uh, I was with Captain Ava on the bridge when you…” Simon watched his throat bob as he swallowed, intrigued by the motion. “We talked, briefly. About… things, after the radiation.”

Ohh, interesting. Simon did remember a little now. Yelling. A grainy black-and-white image, bones. A conversation cut off but hard and cruel words.

Simon winced. He suddenly didn’t want to think about that.

“I’emmember,” He mumbled, picking at his sheet. 

“You do?” David asked. “If you do, then, know, I… I messed up, and… things should have gone differently. It… wasn’t your fault.”

Simon glanced up in surprise, meeting the familiar-but-strange man’s eyes. 

“Really?” Simon said. He felt it this time, the hot prickle of tears around his eyes, already blurring his view of the man. 

“Yes,” David said, perhaps not noticing Simon’s sniffling yet. “I have had time to think, and clearly we were all very aggravated and… Whew, um, you did a bad thing but you didn’t mean it, you didn’t know, so, I’m…”

Simon could see the clench of David’d jaw even through his building tears. 

“M’sorry,” Simon hiccuped before David could finish, his face scrunching up. He couldn’t see what David and Lea were doing, but based on her little sound of alarm, he figured Lea at least was worried. 

“didn’know, m’sorry, m’sorryyy,” Simon repeated as his breathing grew staggered with his rising sobs. He tried to rub at his face with his hand, before he remembered he was still all tangled up and tied to a machine. It only made him sniffle harder, a little whimper leaving his throat as he squashed into a ball best he could. “Tried to-to, to stop-”

“Oh- Simon, please,” He heard Lea’s voice softly in his ear. , and the same rough cloth rub at his face. He let her trace his closed eyes softly, scrunching his face at the feeling. He wished it would stop. He wished he could go back to being all-loopy and not just a little-loopy. 

“Uh, listen,” David’s voice interjected, closer than he was before. “You really - please stop apologising. Like I said, I don’t… hold that against you, alright?” 

Simon nodded, blinking his swollen eyes open. Everything was gross and blurry and he didn’t like it one bit. David was besides him now, his hands gripping the side of the bed, something dark and uncertain on his face. 

Oh, had Simon messed up again?

Before he could start sniffling again, David sighed, and ran a hand through his messy hair. 

“Please stop crying,” he said with the cadence of a man who did not know how to console someone. Simon knew a couple of brothers like that once, who didn’t like to be around the children, or the ones harshest with training and failures.

David seemed… conflicted. Maybe Simon was acting like a child, right now. He might be making him uncomfortable, and that wouldn’t do. 

Simon looked up at him, wishing he was Father instead. 

“M’sorry,” He said again, and winced when David sighed again. 

“Hey, how about you take another nap, hmm?” Lea said, finally coming up to him again. “I think you might be a little confused and tired right now, so how about we keep talking when we wake up, alright?”

Simon sniffed, and nodded. That sounded alright. Everything felt a little too big right now anyways, too bright, too loud. Slipping back into the silliness of before sounded OK. 

Lea was fiddling with something next to him, some sort of stick with a pouch hanging. David glanced at him, blueish eyes round and uncertain. 

“We can talk more later, if you…want,” David said as Simon’s head started to get a bit fuzzy. “There are other people interested in… hearing your story, if you are willing.”

Of course Simon was willing. He’d do anything to get out of…

Simon’s head dropped down to his chest, his eyes sliding shut. His sniffling was replaced by little huffs of sleepiness, a soft sound. 

David watched him slowly uncurl, his legs still pulled up close to his chest, laying on his missing-arm side. He looked… quiet, almost innocent. 

Since The Quiet Rapture, none of us get a choice.

David shook the memory off. Lea shot him an inquisitive look as she continued to fiddle with the IV, letting the little bit of sedative take the convict out to dreamland. 

Or not. Supposedly Foundation Station gave the all-clear to use some of the harder stuff, so he might just get lucky and pass out all the damn way to friday. 

“Is he out?” David asked when the man stopped twitching entirely. Lea nodded, her face tight, and turned away to mess with the monitoring device. 

David sighed. He knew she was probably confused about his conversation with the convict, but frankly he didn’t want to explain himself again. These damn Fiber Station officials marching up and down their little tugboat, wrinkling their noses at the rust, at the stench of iron, uncaring about the shit Ava’s crew was going through, had choked enough out of him. 

David blew another breath out through his nose. No, the COI didn’t care, but that didn’t make their job any less important. David was going to have to suck up his complaints and play good until the Captain was well enough to take over, and then maybe the COI would leave him and his ‘story’ alone. And by god, he hoped that was soon. He was a shit Acting Captain. 

“Why was he apologising?” Lea said after a few tense moments. David frozen, starting at the back of her head. Really? Could she not just do her job and let it be?

“I’m stationed here for the next long while,” She said, as though reading his thoughts. “May as well explain why a grown, scared-to-hell and back man is sobbing like a child and apologising like that.”

She… was right. 

David shuffled uncomfortably, dropping the hand carding through his hair to rub at the back of his neck instead. 

“You know about… the convict realization program?” He said, not without some hesitancy. Lea paused, then nodded tersely. 

“I heard it was for Eden reforms to do… tasks, I guess,” She said, finally turning to him. “Like maintenance, manufacturing… the like. You know, reconform to better society.”

David stared at her, something hardening in his face. How nice, to be able to believe that. 

“Maybe on Fiber Station,” he said with a slight, bitter laugh. “But anyone unfortunate enough to end up here gets welded in a nice, cozy sub, and dropped into the AT-5’s ocean.”

Lea stared back at him, her brown eyes wide. 

“This is a research station, of course,” David said lightly. “Limited staff. I’m the only biologist, and the only reason I’m here is because the convicts that… made it, brought me samples to work with. Blood, tissue, brick, stone, bone. There was so much we found, and not enough. But enough to risk the cost of sending them here in the first place.”

“Ok,” Lea said, glancing at the convict. “So then… why is he…?”

“I didn’t finish,” David said. “Foundation Station learned soon that if people heard of what was going on, the lengths we went to for information… Well, not everybody was happy about the program. Not at all. But after we lost two scientists down there, the council decided enough was enough and shut down any complaining. You’re young, I’m sure you didn’t hear much about this.”

Lea frowned. 

“Why… were people complaining?” She asked, her voice quiet now as the true limit to her knowledge sunk in. 

“Because they believe it was a way to kill those Eden fucks,” David said plainly. “And I don’t think they were entirely wrong.”

Lea looked down at her shoes, her hands wringing together. David felt, briefly, guilty over answering her questions, but she asked. It was always easier not to know. 

“I see,” She said after a moment, raising her eyes to meet his. “Doesn’t explain his words. If the convicts are so irredeemable, expendable, why is apologising?”

She was clearly not buying the bullshit, but guilt sunk in regardless. David shuffled around again, glancing down at the sleeping convict. He was totally silent now, mouth parted just a bit, scarred and weird-face-half pressed into the pillow. 

“I messed up,” He admitted quietly. “There are x-ray boxed attached to each sub, and I was in charge of wiring them and… fuck, I must’ve attached it to the box inside of… alright, it doesn’t matter. He pressed the button because we were busy and he was still welded in the sub, and radiation-blasted Jack halfway to heaven and gave me and A- Captain Ava a nice little dose too. You’ve seen Jack. It wasn’t pretty.”

Lea nodded, absorbing his words. David didn’t really care who she pinned fault to. He knew now they were all fucked then anyway, and hearing the convict blame himself and sob apologies… no, it wasn’t his fault. David had the blame there, and he’d tell the convict as much - again - next time he woke. It was only fair. 

“You were examined for complications?” Lea said, frowning up at him. David nodded, and pulled down the side of his collar. There, between the juncture of his throat and shoulder, was a messy, week-old looking suture a few inches long. 

Lea winced. She could tell exactly what had been done there, and it wasn't pretty either. She could still see the stitch-marks of an unsteady hand. 

“Got a tumor or two removed, but I’m still kicking,” David grinned without any humor. “Wish we had a medic for that. My buddy Ross had to do it, and just ask her bout’ it. It was a riot.”

It hadn’t been in the slightest. The fresh memory of pure alcohol-induced numbness under a bright light and worn scalpels flickered across his mind, and he repressed a shudder.

“And, just to clarify, the convicts were not expendable,” David said. “Was it awfully convenient that this was a job with a high mortality rate? Shit, yeah. But out here, hell, even on your stations, nobody is expendable. We need everyone we got, and that includes them.”

Lea rubbed at her arms, looking away. David felt a little guilty again, but he had heard through the grapevine that she’d volunteered to come when the order was given. She wanted experience, and damn, she was getting it. 

“I should check on the Captain,” She said, stepping away. She gave David one last uncertain look, before softening. “I-I’m sorry, about everything. Not that we need more apologies right now, but, yeah.”

David understood. 

“One of my crew is going to be stationed outside the door, in case… of anything,” David mentioned as she passed him. 

She nodded, and left the room swiftly. 

David stood around for a moment more, feeling like the weight of AT-5 was pressed down his back. 

“Oh, Simon,” He muttered, pulling his hand roughly over his face. “The hell are we going to do?”

Simon dozed on, unaware of his name being called.