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“You could just kill me anytime you want with this much salt, you know.”
Purple lets out a quiet snarl as they finish laying down the line of salt, a rough mixture of what they and Red had recovered from the kitchen and Cyan’s gem kit.
“Gee, I always thought you were the smart one on this ship, but I guess dire circumstance will lead anybody to do something as stupid as keeping an Impostor alive just for a little extra company, huh?”
“Shut up,” Purple growls, sitting down cross-legged just inches across the salt line from the giant, pink, fleshy mass that they used to believe was Green. That part of them still wants to believe is—
“Okeydokey!” the Impostor croons, with a saccharine tone that drips with sarcasm. Purple braces for more scathing remarks, but…
Nothing comes.
They look up from under the brim of their hat, coming face-to-face with Green(‘s corpse), met with the horrifying shit-eating grin torn from a part of their face that was never meant to open.
But it’s silent. They stare at each other for a good long time, far too long, giving Purple too much time to see all the familiar parts of Green’s face through the alien’s twisted expression. And it says nothing.
“What? That’s it? I was starting to think your species also dies if it stops talking for too long,” they hiss. “And ‘okeydokey’?? Cut the act already. You don’t have anybody left to fool now.”
The Impostor’s face flashes with something unreadable, just for a moment, before the grin turns deeper and darker.
“Bold to assume that I think I’m fooling anybody, Purpsie.” The nickname makes their bone run cold, their muscles tense all at once.
“And what, exactly, the fuck is that supposed to mean?!” they snap, fur standing on end as they instinctively kneel forward. “You’re literally called an Impostor! Just drop it already! I know you sick freaks like to kill, but do all of you like psychological torment this much, too?! Or is it just you?”
The smile drops completely for a second, and when it returns its bite is hardly a shadow of its former sneer. Green’s face leans in further, too close— the alien could easily just reach over the line and finish it all right now. But it doesn’t. When it speaks again, its voice is a low, chilling whisper.
“Now don’t get me wrong, I do love playing around with your silly little heads. But you seem to have misunderstood severely, my dear security guard.” A pink tendril flicks the brim of Purple’s hat, and they’re too frozen in place to pull away like they should, like any sane crewmate would already have done long before now.
“It is just me. It has been, ever since the hull breach. Just…”
A sickening squelch, horrifying slithering, as the looming pink mass across the salt line shifts and shrinks and rearranges, Green’s body retracting and reshaping, until the only thing left is a perfectly-intact green crewmate standing there, smiling with that horrible grin.
“…Me.”
—
Red hears the metallic thunk-thunk of Purple’s boots long before they see them stumble into Navigation, and hears their panicked hyperventilations just shortly before that.
“Woah, hey, did something go wrong? Did it break out?” Red’s hands are already around Purple’s shoulders, steadying their shaking, heaving body; their head whipping around on high alert. Purple takes a moment to respond, only shaking their head as their breathing begins to stabilize.
“No, they’re… they’re still in Storage. It’s… The salt’s fine.”
Red feels their shoulders untense, but only part-way— the salt is fine, the alien contained, but clearly that’s not the only thing Purple is so frazzled over. They tug gently on the security guard’s shirt, guiding them to the corner near the pilot’s seat where the two have set up a makeshift sleeping area with blankets and a clean mattress from Medical (sleeping in separate rooms at this point would be a death wish).
“Then… What happened…?” Red tries their hardest to speak gently, quietly, despite the years of learning to speak as loud as they could to command others’ attention. Purple sits gingerly on the mattress, head still in their hands, not looking Red in the face. It takes a while for them to speak.
“It’s… nothing. The Impostor is just still playing mind games with me. I’ll be fine.”
After all this time, it still makes Red’s stomach go cold the way Purple’s tone evens out so quickly under distress. The way Red knows they had to learn just to get by. They try to find the words to respond, to comfort their friend, but… nothing comes. The handbook was never any help when it came to reassuring crewmates (“No Biggie” was not nearly as helpful as MIRA would have you believe), much less… actual friends, if you could still call them that. Red isn’t sure, but they still want to, eventually.
For now, though, all they can do is wrap a hand around Purple’s shoulder, giving them quiet comfort as their lonely ship hurtles along its empty path through the stars, waiting for whatever happens to the two of them— the three of them, if you could put it that way— when they finally touch down on land.