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Sleep didn't come easy to him, now.
It never really had- some of his brothers had found the close press of bodies and the murmur of other sleeping people around them a soothing noise, a reassurance, especially when they were children who hadn't known any better. Children who trusted the people leading and teaching them, a community dedicated to the only thing in the universe that gave them purpose. Then it'd been the ship with only his brothers, and then the cell alone- and even then, in solitude and silence, plagued by the losses and lies, sleep eluded him.
Still did, though now it was easier to blame that on who- what he was now, with every breath leeching warm air- still too cold for the rest of him- through his mouth, his throat, his chest. He felt like a sieve more than a person, and the thought felt apt in a way other comparisons hadn't.
Something that might've been able to carry something greater, that looked like it had the capacity to store and gather and help, scored with intentional holes that made it useless in the face of what it could've been.
Everything in his vision was tinged red, though it was better now than when he'd taken those first gasping breaths, disoriented and blind and-
Alone, was maybe the worst part. Blind was definitely the second on down on the list. He thinks Grace might laugh if he said that out loud, an awkward, pained, but still genuine laugh. He was near enough to hear, now. Adrian had been the one to keep him company before- since the moment they'd found him, really, the song-like tones of their speech nothing like the ambient noises humans made, breaths and grunts and the occasional snore. Distantly familiar, but no more helpful in lulling him back under than they'd been when he was young.
It seemed like it was the one thing about him that remained unchanged.
And then when sleep did come it didn't stick for long. Really, all it seemed good for was making the line between dreams and the impossible reality he was living more difficult to draw. He hadn't quite been able to shake the feeling that he was just... flashing in between some kind of purgatory and paradise, torn between the two with violent yanks and hooked grips. Could it really be fully considered a paradise when he still had marred and inhuman skin and insides from everything that had happened in that stupid blood ocean? When he could still sense the thrum of it, the feeling, warm and alive around and on top of and inside of him. When his dreams consisted of sightless eyes digging into swells of dirt, rough protrusions that cut odd lines through his perception.
He dreamt of vivid red and iron, the smell and taste of it so ingrained into who he was that he couldn't imagine a time when he hadn't known.
They claimed he woke up flailing sometimes, but he only really remembered the times he woke entirely still, the skin around him tight and confining, his organs too still inside of him, his body itching with the dreamed sensation of waves, thrumming through him, dissolving him with every swelling breath. Spreading him so thin that taste and smell and sight weren't even things he could miss, washed up on shores in frequent and painful pins of disconnect as he caught on the pockets of the shore, every breath just enough to find them momentarily again. Macro pins and needles on an even more macro presence, made small by the scale it'd spread across then, and still felt all encompassing now.
'Dreams', he called them. As if it were that easy to separate his reality from whatever this was.
Simon blinked slowly, the one good eye he had still unbearably bleary and useless in the dark of the room around him- the other gone, ripped out in the midst of a fit he couldn't quite remember. He took in another breath, feeling his chest swell in a pale mimicry of the dreams that haunted him, the ribs under his skin feeling as though they were pulling taut around him. His exhale blew warm air across his knuckles where they still rested against the bed, the swollen holes along his arms an fleshy human pink and red despite everything else. He worked his jaw for a moment, feeling the bone click familiarly, even as his teeth ached with his next inhale, pushing up past the bone and flesh of his cheek and chin.
Jutting up from the soft expanse below, the waves carrying each click as he reached and writhed and swelled and-
He rolled onto his side, pushing himself up with his one good arm, feeling the air settle cool around him as the blanket he'd been provided slowly slid off his body. He caught it before it hit the floor, fingers still tingling, digging into the fabric like they could burrow into it, through it. It felt like a rumble of thunder spreading through his throat, the staticky reaches of his mind, the edges of his perception fuzzing with the urge- the urge to feel himself seep through each woven thread, to clump the fibers and ingrain himself so deeply into the mesh that nothing could ever separate him from it again. He took a breath again, rattling wet and sucking, feeling the line and branches burrowed through his knuckles and wrists contract uncomfortably against the suffocating fabric- it was lumpy, soft, something Grace had described as a 'first pass'.
He folded it slowly over his thigh, and then again, letting it flop onto the bed in a messy fold.
The tingling numbness of his limbs didn't abate when he pushed himself to standing, rocking back and forth on legs that felt closer to hastily patched blood bags than anything else. His steps forwards were shuffling and slow, loud in the quiet as he made his way towards the door. Low light still flooded in through the murky windows, not quite the glass Simon knew, but close enough to it, fracturing and smearing the darkened waves just outside. The outside of their dome was lit up with a weak, pale glow, some other kind of mimicry of wherever Grace had come from. It caught on the waves slightly as they rolled in, the only thing breaking up the black water and horizon.
It was cold, the air damp and humid, mineral and... something else he couldn't quite name. Nothing close to iron was about all he could say for sure.
There was an aching need pressing down on his back, his arms, spreading across the thin membrane loosely holding his organs and veins in place. He could feel himself rocking backwards as the next wave broke against the shore, and he could imagine it all again, could feel it- an ocean couldn't be hurt, couldn't be injured in a way that really mattered in the grand scale, but the breaking against the shore was the closest thing Simon could remember to feeling pain. Drops and puddles of himself scattered amongst rocks, forcibly separated from the whole and left in dark cold until the mass roared back in, claiming and losing all in the same measure.
Perhaps that was what he was now, a pooled helpless mass, and one that could never return to the whole.
Perhaps that was what he always was.
He could barely feel the steps as they fell, could barely hear the crunching of the gravel beneath his feet over that familiar roar. He stumbled, his feet catching where he couldn't quite manage to pick them up properly. His one arm buckled underneath his own weight, the pebbled ground digging into his chest and face in what might've been a painful way, but that roar- he forced himself up again, and that rolling black was so complete he could almost convince himself it wasn't water at all.
There were no voices, no whispering impressions of the many that had made up the whole, the quiet deafening enough it might as well have been pure silence haunting him, but. The waves broke again, flecks pricking across his skin and cooling in the breeze, somehow the most real thing he'd felt since he'd woken. Too cold, far, far too cold to be the real thing but- he forced himself forwards anyways, feeling the gravel press distantly into the skin of his palms, his knees, his feet- but even that sensation would be lost soon, drowned out wholly and completely by the rush, that thrum, that roar. His breaths tasted of grit and sodden earth, sand stuck to the open orifices across his skin, the damp there alluring- he could feel that, could be that, could sink into the earth and grit and-
Water, cold, separate and indifferent, washed over his knuckles first and he recoiled.
The ocean was artificial, the waves and the beat of it entirely constructed. It was something Grace had been eager to explain the moment Simon had laid his eye on it, but he'd forgotten that long enough in his haze that the next crash of water, just water, caught him entirely off guard. He sputtered for breath, feeling the sting of it along his legs and neck and chest, branching up into his sinuses in a full-body ache. He attempted to reel back, but the anticipation that had been buzzing through his veins only a moment before left him wrong-footed and entirely disoriented, the sting of his palms as they scrambled against damp gravel finally enough to break through everything else.
There were hands on him, a voice, human and high, and then the water was just lapping at his ankles, his ass sore and hair plastered across his face as he wheezed for breath, feeling as though every nerve ending in him had gotten sanded down to raw fibers. Even the open air felt enough to make the sensation of just being alive an unbearable one.
Hands flit around him, hovering just inside his peripheral, and once the synapses in his brain started slowly firing again, he couldn't help but huff at that. Skin aching with need and lungs heaving for breaths, and Grace still hesitated to lay a hand on him. His brothers would have shoved at him, would have forced cheer and comradery into their voices until it took no effort at all to hold, would have talked and laughed and touched until whatever could've bothered him was the farthest thing in the universe.
Though, perhaps it was better now, even if Grace didn't touch often. At least he was still there, hands bloodless and worn soft and scarred. Hesitant but good.
"-take mushrooms, man!" He was exclaiming, wobbling a bit atop the gravel before he crouched besides Simon, wrapped in his usual sweater with a partially sodden quilt draped over one arm. "Are- are you okay? That was freaky, like some kind of horror movie- nevermind, nevermind actually, not at all important. Are you hurt at all, anywhere?"
"Mm-mm" he hummed in a negative, feeling as though his body was still on the verge of buzzing entirely separate from his conscious mind. There was pain, there was cold, both of those things were wrong, things he shouldn't have been able to feel at all. The echoing in his head was a hollow mockery of the choir he'd had before, that aching sense of loneliness almost more painful than the aching burn still wracking through him as he struggled to breath at a measured rate.
"What- what happened?"
"I don't..." He tried, his voice on the verge of unintelligible through a mouth that wasn't built for words, his breath catching on his skin, in his throat, his ribs, the branching veins of his open lungs, flowering and full. "I don't know."
"Okay, okay, we'll just- we can just take a sec." Grace said, clearly forcing a level of calm into his voice. He waited a moment more before he seemed to decide something, sprawling down against the ground besides Simon. He was barefoot, damp pebbles still clinging to the bare skin before they were washed away by another incoming wave, and Simon flinched again as Grace let out a low hiss. "Woah, that's cold, alright."
They sat in silence for a moment as Simon kept himself busy scrubbing his good hand up what was left of his opposite arm, trying to force the pins and needles out before he... he didn't quite know. Before he actually wanted them there, maybe. Before they became part of who he was again- he couldn't even remember the first time he'd felt them, it just.... was. One section of the greater whole he'd been subsumed into, and one of the few things he'd been allowed to keep once he'd been spat back out, even if it was a pale mimicry of the real thing.
The roar of it was that way too, something that had been who he was rather than something that burst against his ears again and again, the cold of it all entirely foreign. Even before the SM-13 had imploded, the blood had always been unbearably hot, more than enough to burn, a boiling mass of iron and... something like hunger, but not quite that frantic. Even Ellie had felt little more than a drop in the bucket at the end, when the lines between them evaporated entirely like they'd never existed at all, when he'd been...
Everything.
And now he was... not nothing persay, but... crushingly less.
And how to explain that to a man who... who knew so little, compared to everything that had happened. Who knew only what the Eridian science equipment could glean from the blood that had caked Simon from head to toe when they found him. He didn't know if there was another living thing who could understand what exactly had happened to him, what he'd become, for however brief.
The silence stretched between them like a physical weight, though lessened by the crashing of the waves across the shore, the shift of pebbles beneath them. He saw Grace look to him out of the corner of his eye, but only briefly.
"Um... feeling better?" Grace hedged after a while, when the pins had finally subsided and his breaths had settled in his chest in a way that didn't feel revoltingly wrong.
He was sore still- he was supposed to be careful with how much he moved around the house, let alone across the beach and halfway into the water. Cold tingled at the tips of his fingers, his clothes clinging to his skin where they were soaked through, his hair plastered against his neck and cheeks.
"... Better." he said, because it was true.
"Good, good, good." Grace said, nodding to punctuate each word. "You have a nightmare? Or- you don't actually have to tell me, if you don't want. Um. Okay, do you... do you want to stay out here, or maybe go inside? You can stay if you want to! I'm just- well, being wet and cold isn't really conducive to recovery and I can bring you a blanket if you want me to-"
"I think-" Simon said, because he knew enough to know that Grace would talk in circles around himself if left to his own devices. It was a trait of his Simon usually appreciated, but felt grating against his frazzled brain. "I think I just... need a second."
"Alright, okay." Grace said, settling down again to stare out at the black water before them, the frothing peaks of the waves breaking up from the surface to crash against the shore. "That's fine. Whatever you need."
The quiet then felt a little easier, Grace's presence beside him steady enough, almost close enough to feel without touching. He could imagine the other's warm leeching into his skin, even with the half a foot of space between them, could just barely make out the sound of his sigh above the waves. Simon cupped his hand across the back of his neck, felt his skin itch and crawl with the cold before it settled again.
The sky was familiar to Simon, save for the false moon hanging high above them, shedding dull light across the wet gravel. He knew that beyond that opaque sky was another one entirely full of stars, still shining even thousands of light years away. Still alive, in their way. That was why he'd even been in that ocean to begin with, he distantly recalled, though even that, the C.o.I and its members, his brothers and Filament station, all felt so distant. There were still quirks that plagued him, a fear response that was ingrained into him after so many years a prisoner, sleeping habits he doubted he'd ever shake. A need that never really went away, no matter how hard he tried to crush it.
"I have... dreams, sometimes." Simon said finally, wondering if he'd even be able to be heard. He didn't have to wonder for long- Grace's head whipped towards him the second he’d started speaking, and Simon felt the corner of his mouth twitch. "Of... hm. Just dreams. And then I wake up. And everything feels... wrong. My whole body, like I'm missing something."
Grace's eyes, involuntarily or not, drop to Simon's missing arm. He couldn't quite stop the half smile that pulled at his mouth- he was so easy to read it was almost comical. It was like he couldn't help himself, like his first thought was the only thing leading him around.
It made sense for him to have drawn that conclusion anyways, with the little knowledge he had. He'd been able to tell that Simon’s arm wasn't an old injury, something about the scar tissue. Even if Simon's behavior hadn't made it obvious. He'd been so concerned about it, so much so that Simon couldn't really bring himself to explain the infinitely worse loss hanging over his head. 'Worse'... that felt like the wrong word. The more significant loss, maybe. The one that had done and still had the most effect on him. Grace knew of the mutations, physical and whatever internal mess had happened where Simon couldn't see, but he had no idea just how far away Simon was from 'human'.
And if he were being honest with himself, he hoped that it would stay that way, even as the urge to explain, to give into those curious eyes was practically burning his throat.
"... Sometimes I feel it so much that I try to go looking for it." Simon finished, a mild sensation of frustration, directed inward, made his skin prickle again. "Which. Doesn't work."
"That makes sense." Grace said softly, his hand inching closer to Simon, but stopping right before making contact. Simon burned with that too, the sensation of near-touch, anticipatory, electric. "I uh, obviously don't know all of... well, the stuff that happened to you, or like why, or how, but. I'm sure we can figure out some way to make it easier for you."
"No more medicine." Simon said flatly, before he could really stop himself. Even the thought of it made him feel a little nauseous. Loss of function, a waste of resources, being unable to retain that fact that his arm was gone, that his body was limited to a fraction of what it'd been before, from what it felt like it'd always been- but he needn't have bothered even say it aloud, Grace was already shaking his head.
"No, no, of course not Simon." He said with a kind of gravity, like the idea was an abhorrent one. "I just... I know we don't know each other that well, but... You're still human. Beyond that, you're still a living, feeling thing and I- I want to help you, in whatever way I can."
The phrasing of it was almost familiar, intonation that implied a greater purpose, language that was abstract, but... he'd only ever heard it in reference to the Last Tree, not... him. It felt strange, to be offered such... He didn't even know what to call it, really. Then the word came to him, appearing in his mind as his breath was shunted out of him as an almost-laugh.
Grace. He was being given grace, here.
And even more than the sense of loss that plagued him, the memory of the roar, the rocking, the iron all around him, he'd wanted the shape of that kindness the longest.
"Alright." He said finally, feeling as though something inside of him had given way. Like the waves had washed away all the stinging grit that was stuck inside him too, pressing up from under his skin, foreign but unforgettable. His tongue felt heavy, the vaguest tinge of iron still resting in the back of his throat, but he swallowed, the air damp and cool in his mouth, in his arms and chest and knuckles, and forced himself to speak again. "There was this moon, and on it was this ocean..."