Chapter Text
He was dying.
Simon was dying in this hell. It was by some twisted miracle that he was still alive, but he wouldn’t be for much longer. He wasn’t surprised, at this point. He was as ready as he could ever be. He had practically announced it.
“You want The Butcher!? Fine!”
He felt as if he had transcended pain. He could still feel it all, of course, but it was like his brain had finally made the move to shut off his pain receptors. It was just numb. His flesh was flayed and ruined, burned and mutated beyond recognition. Not that it mattered. He didn’t need to be recognized anymore.
He was part of a tree, now. Not The Tree, no, but a tree. His lack of a left arm helped a bit. That was where it decided to grow, in the fleshy and bloody remains of broken bone and muscle that still sat in the part of his bicep that still lived.
He wasn’t entirely sure if he was human anymore. He didn’t seem much like it. He felt like he was already halfway to being entirely liquid.
The trunk of the tree had started from his arm, then the rest of it had practically swallowed the lower half of his body as the roots had grown rapidly. It was now working its way up to consume the rest of him.
He supposed he was glad that at least it was the tree that had taken him and not that fucking eel. He hoped she died painfully, if she ever did.
Am I giving in?
What else could he do? He was attached to the tree. Even if he did still have lungs, he would drown. Get crushed by the pressure. Boil alive. Probably everything at once.
That’s not what I mean. My mind—
He’s fucked. Truly. He can only hope the black box—
WHY MUST YOU GIVE IN SO EASILY?
Shit.
I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO LIVE.
Of course I want to live. But I can tell I won’t. I’m not going to.
YOU ARE SO SIMPLE. YOU DO NOT BELIEVE?
What else is left to believe in?
ME.
——————
Grace wakes with a start. He’s stuck to the bedding with sweat, his heart is beating out of his chest, there’s bile at the back of his throat—
He scrambles out of bed, just barely making it to the bathroom to vomit in the toilet. It’s still dark outside. He takes quick, rattling breaths, coughing up his dinner.
Heck of a nightmare. Wow…
The nightmare he had just awoken from was making him panic. His vision was swimming, he could hardly hold himself up above the toilet, his breathing was getting away from him. It’s been a while since he last felt a terror like this.
The dream was too close to reality. He had been standing out on the bio dome’s beach, the waves lapping at the edges of his shoes. He had closed his eyes to enjoy the quiet ambiance of the water. Then it had changed, in a very subtle way. The wind shifted, both in direction and scent. It smelled a bit more like iron. The waves were warmer, and made his feet tingle.
He had opened his eyes to find himself halfway dissolving in an ocean of blood. The beach was no longer the soft gravelly sand he had requested specifically, but a hard grey stone. The sky was dark. No atmosphere could be discerned. There were no stars. (That was completely bizarre in and of itself, since he had requested that he have a live feed of the Eridian night sky in his dome, which was tricky to do at first but they had managed it. He liked making new constellations from time to time.)
He was terrified. But the thing about nightmares is that you don’t usually react the way you want. He just stood there, the boiling acidic ocean almost up to his knees, burning his body away, becoming one. (That was oddly specific. He was characterizing the blood ocean. He did do that sometimes, but not with something on this scale.)
In the moments before he woke, he saw something in the distance, bursting out of the ocean. It looked like a tree. A giant of an oak, or a maple. He couldn’t tell, it didn’t have any leaves that he could identify. But it kept growing. It was surpassing redwoods, at this point.
Man, I miss the redwoods. Just had to drive a couple hours north and there they were. I wish I went more often, didn’t take them for granted.
That was when he woke up. A tree, exploding out of a blood ocean under a starless sky. (Again, bizarre. He wants to check outside just to make sure that it really was just a dream.)
The blood is what made his stomach churn. The sky and the tree is what terrified him, though. He hadn’t seen an honest-to-Rocky tree in… decades, if you counted the comatose years. It felt jarring to see such a three-dimensional tree after all this time. And the stars! He had had a sky that was just stars for years, and all of a sudden there weren’t any. He failed.
He rips off a bit of toilet paper to wipe his mouth, tossing it in the toilet as he flushes it and shakily stands. He doesn’t feel entirely awake yet, so he forces himself to turn on the big light and pry open his eyes. It stings, obviously, but it works. He turns it off before he suffers any more.
He darts through the house, tripping over random clutter here and there, pushing out the front door and stumbling down the steps. He desperately stares up at the sky, stupidly not watching his footing, but it doesn’t matter. He’s just relieved to see the stars still there.
He plops on the steps, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms.
“Okay. Let’s chill out. It was just a bad dream…” He mumbles to himself under his breath, taking a minute to gather his wits about him to stand back up. He turns to go back inside, but notices a dark spot on the horizon, blocking out a large patch of stars. He sniffs, the scent of metal and death stinging his nostrils.
Nope. Nope, nope, nope, it was just a bad dream! Just a bad dream!
He stumbles back to his bedroom, where he quickly slaps himself out of it.
What are you doing!? Where are you going?! Go back out! You haven’t started hallucinating yet, why would you start now!? Check to see if it’s still there!
He’s starting to have a bit more control over his limbs, so he trips a bit less on his way back out, this time with his glasses firmly shoved onto his face. Wait, those won’t work, he’s farsighted— he pushes them up his forehead, staring back out across the bio dome ocean.
The dark shape is still there.
“Son of a biscuit!” He dashes back inside, scrambling for his Eridian pager to contact anyone who might be outside his dome.
“Hi, anyone there? I need someone to initiate the dawn cycle early! There’s something in here, I need—“ He jumps back outside, running down the steps to the beach in a stupid attempt to see more of the dark shape. “Just start the day, please!”
A usually pleasant lilting voice answers, this time tinted with anxiety. “Friend Grace? Is okay, question? Will start dawn cycle, statement. Reiterating question, statement.” (It’s Rose. Grace hadn’t gotten much time with them, but they had a gorgeous melody and their carapace was smooth and artfully shaped, so it only seemed fitting he called them a flower that simply meant ‘beauty’.)
“I’m okay, Rose. Something big popped up out of the ocean, and I just can’t see it without the sun.”
“Understand. Dawn cycle initiated 12,276 Earth seconds early. Rocky has been notified, statement.”
“Thank you, Rose.”
He clicks off the pager. A moment later, the surrounding sky flickers, abruptly shifting to a slightly lighter dawn. The artificial sun rises, and he can finally see it.
A tree. Red in what he hopes is the dawnlight, but suspects it to be something else entirely. It’s huge and magnificent, but still utterly terrifying in the way it is completely foreign.
He takes a step towards the ocean, tearing his gaze away from the tree as he fights his racing thoughts to just stay coherent and think normally for once—
The water. The water at his feet is turning red. And not from the light.
“Oh, no—“ He backs up, turning away and covering his mouth. He can’t run, there’s nowhere to run to, and quite honestly nothing to run from. It’s fine.
He’s fine. He’s definitely not feeling like his very reality is falling apart at the seams. Definitely not.