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“I’m gonna throw up.”
The moment the words left their mouth, Green felt bile rising in their throat. They barely made it to the half-broken crate in the corner and unlatched their helmet before they choked out the contents of their stomach. As they retched over the side, they could hear Purple hurriedly shift out of the spot where Red had exploded behind them.
“Oh, ew, ew ew, I got some on my helmet,” Green gagged a little, fully detaching the helmet from their suit and wiping it off furiously. “Purple, do you need the vomit crate too?”
“Um.” Green turned back to see Purple staring at the remnants of the alien splattered all around the room, then shaking their head. “Yeah, no. I’m good. Totally fine. We should probably get rid of all this ore.”
“We should?” Purple shot them a look and crossed their arms. “Oh! No, you’re right, we should. But the trash chute…”
Purple turned to the hole patched by Orange’s trust balls, then back to Green.
“Well.” Purple said slowly, walking toward the storage room door. “It’s not like we’re going to be using this room for anything else, right?”
“Um, right.” Green looked down and picked up a particular large rock-egg-shell, tossing it experimentally in their hand. Their gaze fell on Cyan’s poor, visor-less body, and a twinge of guilt ran through them. “Should we move them out first?”
“Can’t.” Purple was looking at Cyan too, then shook their head. “Can’t risk the alien babies still being there. Or breeding or rehatching or something.”
“Right.” Green said, quieter this time. “At least the cleanup is easy.”
They leaned back, and with every bit of strength they had, threw the ore at the trust-ball seal. Purple took their hand and pulled them into the hallway just as the rock made contact, and Green watched through the windows of the doors as the bodies of their friends were sucked into the void of space. They closed their eyes, let go of Purple’s hand, and turned away.
“You doing okay?” Green asked as they sat just outside storage. They could still hear the whistling of the depressurization every once and a while – the ship hadn’t yet figured out to stop devoting oxygen resources to storage, so it was currently stuck in a cycle of declaring a state of emergency, dumping oxygen in, thinking it was over, and then checking back on it a while later to start the cycle again. There was nothing left in that room.
“Eh. Could be better. But considering everything, could also be worse.” Purple shrugged half heartedly, one shoulder coming up. Green hummed in acknowledgement. Purple’s helmet laid on its side next to them. They pulled it into their lap, staring down and studying it with an intensity in their eyes that Green hadn’t seen before.
It was the first time Purple had taken the helmet off, and Green couldn’t help themself from stealing glances their way. Their hair was dark, with flashes of violet when the light caught it a certain way. It fell like a curtain in front of their face, and Green valiantly resisted the urge to brush it aside.
“When do you think they became- you know?” Purple asked after a few minutes of silence. “I thought maybe Orange was always like that, but Red, at some point they must’ve-”
They cut themself off, swallowed, but Green could still hear “died.” They thought about it, going through the events of two days before carefully, when a memory suddenly sprung into their mind.
“After the hull break, Cyan and Black found a few of the ores cracked, plus a few of the shipping containers had broken seals. It must’ve been then, in the chaos of everyone being thrown around.”
“They ran to save one of the crates.” Purple muttered, dragging a hand down the side of their face and groaning. “God, they couldn’t just let it go, could they? Had to save their precious captain’s cargo and give up their life for MIRA.”
Green thought about the hull breach, how it seemed so much longer than two days ago now. Something dark settled in their stomach as they remembered Red, pulling them back into the hallway as they ran past, before disappearing out of view. Was that the last time they had seen the real Red alive? If they hadn’t pulled them in, would Green’s remains be floating in the void of space right now?
“I didn’t notice.” Purple grit out, hands clutching at the suit’s sleeves. “They barely left my view during that entire time, because I was looking out for them like I always do, and they were behind a crate so that I couldn’t see them for maybe thirty seconds. And that was enough to get them killed.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Green said without thinking. Purple looked up, eyes slightly red but no tears falling. Green hesitated, but kept speaking. “You couldn’t have done anything in those thirty seconds. Not if the alien was that fast, you would’ve just been killed too.”
Purple was quiet for a few seconds. They looked back down at their helmet, picking at the side of it.
“I know.” They took a deep breath. “But, thank you.”
“I think it’s my fault.”
Green heard a slight shuffling noise in the cot next to them, then, in the darkness, saw the faint outline of Purple sitting up.
“What?” Their voice sounded a bit hoarse, but not groggy. Green didn’t think they were asleep, either.
“I mean, I was just thinking about it, and,” They sat up too, but didn’t turn to face Purple. “The only reason Red offered for someone else to fly the ship was because I wanted to be captain, right? And they were doing something nice for me, and that got them and everyone else on the ship killed.”
“We still don’t know for sure that was even Red.” Purple said, though they sounded unconvinced. “We don’t know that’s how they died.”
“But we think it’s why.” Green pressed the bottom of their hands to their eyes, squeezing them shut. “I think that's why. I went through every moment I could remember, and White died almost immediately after. Red was gone for a few minutes while we were putting together the party, I saw them, I didn’t say anything but I saw them, and then White turned up dead and I-”
“Green…” Purple said softly.
“And if I hadn’t run out of the Reactor room, Orange wouldn’t have- even if we suspected Lime first, we could’ve gotten them out!”
“Green.” Purple said again, slightly louder.
“The only reason I’m even alive is because Red pushed me aside when they ran into storage! And now everyone is dead, they’re all dead except us, we’re two left out of a crew of eleven! We lost nine people in two days! How can I look my family in the eye after that? Look at their families? Tell them I still want to become a captain when I got their children and their siblings and spouses killed–”
“Green!” Purple shouted. They flinched away, but Purple was already at the edge of their bed, gripping their shoulders tightly and turning them to look at their face. Their eyes were wild, and desperate, and full of something else Green couldn’t describe. Compared to everything else about them, everything else in the room, they were striking and bright.
“For someone who’s clearly smart, you can be so stupid sometimes, you know that?” Purple said, though there was no cruelty behind it. “You just told me earlier it wasn’t my fault Red died. Can’t you apply that same logic to yourself?”
“But if I hadn’t been there-” Green started, then was cut off as Purple placed a hand over their mouth.
“No, no hypotheticals,” Purple said firmly. “You were there because you deserved to be. You earned your place here, to be standing next to all of us. And Red made some choices that were affected by you, sure, but that’s something only they could’ve done differently.
“Red was the captain. They had all the power in the world on this ship, nobody forced them to run after those crates, just like nobody made them hand over the controls to White. You can go over all your past mistakes until you lose your mind, but in the end it doesn’t matter, because Red was their own person and had their own priorities and nothing you could’ve done or said would have changed that.”
Their shoulders sagged in defeat as they let go of Green, and sat down on the cot beside them.
“I wish I got to know them better. All of them,” Green mumbled, drawing their knees up to their chest. Purple let out a breathy laugh.
“Red was an asshole, and an idiot,” Purple sighed. “But they were also the hardest working person I ever knew. Once they got it in their head they had a goal, nothing could stop them from chasing after it.”
“...Orange mentioned climbing the corporate ladder at MIRA.” Green mumbled. Purple looked at them, face full of curiosity. “Them and Blue knew each other a pretty long time, years, I think. This wasn’t their first shipment together.”
Green could feel the warmth radiating from next to them, their pinky fingers brushing against each other. Slowly, unsurely, they took Purple’s hand in theirs. Purple didn’t respond, but leaned fractionally closer to them, their voice full of exhaustion and grief as they started another story about Red.
And it felt so hopeless still, but at least, Green thought, at least they had each other, and the memories to keep everyone else as company.