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Temperature has rarely been a comfortable thing for Simon.
Most of his life has been spent in the biting cold. It's not the kind of cold that's accompanied by changing seasons, by leaves that melt into shades of sunset or sheets of powdery white so beautiful that Simon often has a hard time believing that snow used to be real.
No, Simon's familiarity with the cold is clinical. Simon is intimately familiar with a sharp and unforgiving chill, draining away the scant heat one could generate and sucking it into panels of corroded metal.
The cold wasn't anything new to Simon even before they moved to Eden. It felt like a part of him, in a way, growing up on Mars where so much of the infrastructure went to keeping the buildings warm, where frostbite wasn't as uncommon an occurrence as people wished.
The cold on Eden was different, though. The cold on Mars felt natural, the result of a thin atmosphere and greater distance from the sun. The cold on Eden was artificial, the recycled air sending shivers across his skin on the nights he curled into his bunk with no blanket or extra clothing to defend against the metal pressed to his back, metal that wicked away any heat he created on his own.
It was uncomfortable, sure, but discomfort wasn't anything new. By the time Simon was captured by the COI he had even come to treasure the way his fingers sometimes went numb and stiff, the way his blood felt sluggish and slow. Any sensation was treasured, really. Anything that reminded him, even for a second, that he was alive. Being alive was a rarity these days.
In many ways, the cold of the COI was no different. It was more methodical but no less cruel, no less forgiving in the way it left his muscles shuddering after another day of hard, grueling labor.
Simon liked to work. He liked something to do with his hands, something to occupy his mind and distract him, but most of all he liked the way it felt. He liked how the movement made his muscles burn, warming him up from the inside and often even drawing a sweat beneath the thin and tattered clothes he was afforded.
All that is to say, Simon knows the cold. He knows chill, he knows discomfort, he knows the song it croons to distract while freezing you to death.
The warmth is new.
Not novel, certainly. Simon's mother has been dead for a very, very long time, but he still remembers the golden, kind warmth he found while bundled into her arms. He remembers the animal kind of pleasure as he curled into her side, body heat exchanged in a soft, loving way.
Simon remembers the warmth of his Brothers. It wasn't a kind warmth, not usually, although it wasn't unkind, either. It was the pass of calloused skin between shaken hands, the clap on a shoulder in approval, the slick, seeping heat of blood as it gushed from between Simon's fingers in a frantic attempt to stem the bleeding of a boy much younger than he was.
Sometimes, occasionally, it was the press of a body against his own. It was pulling a shaking body against his, murmuring softly— far too quietly for anyone else to hear, comforting— and trying to remember what his mother did on the nights Simon woke up from his nightmares in a cold sweat.
For most of Simon's life, warmth has been stolen. It's something fought for bitterly, something that burns far more often than it comforts.
The warmth of the SM-13 was not warmth.
It was burning, scalding, blistering sensation, a bastardization of the kind of comfort Simon so often craved. It was a roiling heat that delighted in singeing Simon whenever he forgot himself and pressed a bare hand to the metal of the sub, metal so hot that Simon, in his most delirious moments in that dark, cramped box, wondered how the metal hadn't started melting yet.
Simon could feel the small amount of body fat he had melting and rendering away, his skin sloughing off and leaving behind patches of black. Surely, Simon thought, mind fuzzy with the injuries he had obtained, the pain making everything an terrible kind of peaceful, the sub must be melting by now.
Then there was the heat of the blood. It was surprising, although in some odd way it made perfect sense. Blood kept living things warm, of course the blood that gushed through the wounds and gaps and crevices of the vessel would be just as sweltering.
It sounds twisted to say that Simon enjoyed the heat of the blood as it rushed around him, flooding his senses with thick, red, suffocating iron. It's true, though. It felt like for the first time in a long, long time, Simon was being embraced by another living thing.
It was that sensation that Simon clung onto in what he assumed was his last moments. When Simon closed his eyes, filled with peace at the knowledge that he would die and so would the thing chasing him, Simon almost felt like he was being hugged.
If Simon deluded himself, if he let himself slip into that living, breathing, gasping warmth, it felt an awful lot like he was right back in the arms of his mother. Maybe that's why death, the thing that had haunted Simon for as long as he could remember, wasn't so daunting.
Simon got one last hug from his mother before he felt his body shredding itself apart, before he felt something that was not him before but was apart of him now, reaching out and out and out until his already-ruined eardrums caught the last agonized shriek of the eel.
The warmth on Erid was new.
Simon has rarely found himself cold since waking up on Erid. There seems to always be a soft thing within reach, a blanket or a sweater so thick it almost feels suffocating. The soft, warm things aren't needed very often, not with how regulated the temperature in the biodome is. The soft, warm things are there for comfort rather than necessity.
It's uncomfortable. It was uncomfortable, that is, the notion of comfort for comfort's sake. The plenty that still makes Simon shrink away, makes him recoil, far more secure in his ability to make something out of nothing and floundering when he's handed all he's ever wanted or craved.
Ryland Grace is a warm, comfortable thing. He's soft in all the ways that seem to steal the air right out of Simon's lungs and sharp in the ways that shoot a delighted thrill through Simon in turn.
He's bright, brilliant, aglow with a life that Simon does not recognize. He's beautiful in the way a star is beautiful, something bright and shining, cutting through light years of oppressively dark time and space. He's everything that Simon has never known he could dream of.
It's Grace's warmth that Simon thinks of, now. He thinks of the glittering joy of Grace's laugh, the press of a slender body against Simon's in the bed they share, the press of a soft hand against his. Grace gives his warmth to Simon with an ease that Simon doubts he'll ever really understand. Simon misses it so much his chest aches.
His chest. Yes, Simon's chest aches. Why does his chest ache? And why is it so cold, here?
Where is here?
It's not unusual for Simon to be missing parts of his memory. In fact, he remembers very little in the period of time after his mother died. He's grateful for it, in a way. It feels like it keeps her separate from what Simon became after her body was gifted to the Tree.
This kind of loss, though, is staggering. It feels like… nothing.
It feels like Simon is surrounded by nothing.
He feels his body, sometimes, in this place of nothing. Only when it hurts, though. Simon finds quite a bit of comfort in that. He knows how to handle an existence where the only thing that seems to break through the haze is pain.
Oddly enough, Simon isn't distressed by this place of nothing. He's barely distressed by his lack of… well, distress. He knows he should be distressed, he should be trying to figure out where he is, what's going on, why he's cold again, but instead Simon finds himself complacent.
Not uncaring, necessarily. Maybe… relieved. There's a certain kind of peace that comes with knowing you can't change anything.
That doesn't mean that Simon is happy about it, though. He detests it, actually, the not-knowing, but he's not sure what else to do other than drift in this nothingness, shot through with occasional pangs, the sole evidence that he's still alive.
Pain gets a bad rep, sure, but it's a damn good way to know that you're not dead.
It'd be easy for Simon to think that he's dead. There's not a lot of evidence to the contrary except for the rare stabs of pain and the fact that Simon is pretty sure he's supposed to be in hell.
Not that he believes in hell, really. Simon doesn't believe in any of it, not anymore. He did when he was a kid, sure, when he was still young and stupid and believed in the inherent good of the people around him.
There's not a lot of inherent good to go around when what stands between you and another day alive is the sharp jab of a knife into the gut of another person.
Despite that, Simon always imagined he'd end up in some dark, torturous place. He stopped believing in a god a long time ago and despite that, he still always knew where he would end up. One day he would feel that final flash of agony and then he would be dead, whisked away to some other place to suffer tenfold for all the pain he'd caused to extend his own small, fragile life.
This place… isn't that, though, Simon is sure of that. For one, Simon isn't suffering.
Purgatory, maybe? That did make sense to Simon, actually, a place that was made to neither punish nor reward. It was simply… there.
That doesn't feel right, either, because Simon isn't dead. Then where—
"I'm proud of you, you know."
It takes a long moment for Simon to understood what's been said. It takes him a long moment to understand that words have been spoken at all, that a noise other than the agonizing loudness of the silence was filtering into his awareness.
"That's probably a bad thing to be proud of, right?" A soft laugh winds around the words, gentle and musical before settling back into something quieter. "But I am."
Simon suddenly becomes aware of his ability to blink. He's not sure if he was incapable of blinking before or had simply forgot it while suspended in a blinding nothingness, but Simon lets his eyes slip shut and when he drags them open he can feel the rough, gentle give of soil beneath them.
It's bright, where they are. Not blinding, although it certainly feels like it when Simon rapidly blinks in an attempt to let his eyes adjust to the sudden influx of light. When Simon's eyes finally do adjust, settling, working out the rough shapes before him before color returns in any detail, Simon changes his mind.
He's pretty sure he is dead, actually.
"You're not. You're a little closer to it than I'm happy about but you're not there yet. Give it some time, kid."
"What?" Simon croaks, voice horrible and raspy and raw with disuse. He's hardly aware he's spoken until he's answered with another laugh.
Simon doesn't have the wherewithal to startle when he feels a shifting at his left side, an arm slipping around his shoulders to draw him closer, imploring him to lean. Simon goes easily, still docile in his confusion and disorientation.
Warmth. Good warmth. Familiar, kind warmth.
Somehow, Simon knows who the warmth belongs to. He's leaning in further without conscious thought like his entire body is seeking it out, satisfying a craving that's sat low and heavy in his chest for so much of his life.
She doesn't speak. She just shifts, adjusting, chest moving with a huff as Simon bears all of his weight onto her with a lack of regard that feels utterly foreign. She doesn't complain, though, simply humming and tilting her head to knock against his.
That's where Simon regains what awareness he can. She doesn't speak any further as Simon blinks slowly, still cataloguing the sensations in his body with a wince, still trying to summon any kind of thought past a bleary, dreamlike confusion.
They're in an orchard. An apple orchard, as far as Simon can tell by what's scattered on the ground around them.
"It's nice, isn't it? It's what we wanted."
It is.
Simon had always been afraid of death, even before he really understood what the matter entailed, but his mother liked to talk about what she thought her heaven would be. She talked about it a lot, towards the end, when she was slipping further and further.
"It's… really nice, honestly. I would lie and tell you it's not, try to keep you alive as long as possible, but I think you'd be happy knowing that. I'm happy here, Simon."
"You're dead."
"I am."
Simon knows that his mother is dead. Still, the easy confirmation makes something sink and settle in his gut. It's strange for a dead person to say they're dead, the confirmation of their discontinued existence somehow both impossible and very, very reassuring.
"You're happy here?" Simon asks, although he already knows the answer. He's hardly sure where here is but it certainly seems nice, a place where the sun hangs low in a golden sunset and illuminates the rows and rows of apple trees on either side of them.
His mother hums, giving his right arm a soft squeeze. "I am. Existing is pretty easy here. It's, uh, comfortable. It's nice. I owe it to you, you know."
Simon blinks in confusion. He wants to sit up, face her properly, see her face after this long, but greater than his desire to see her face is his desire to stay cradled in her embrace, head tilted onto her shoulder in a way that allows him to feel the vibrations as she speaks.
"There's- uh. H-how?"
Her shoulders move in a shrug. "I'm not entirely sure. However you managed it, killing that thing, it… dropped me here." A little laugh shakes her chest. "My saving grace."
"Grace." Simon echoes. There's a nice feeling in his chest, then, something that Simon has become very familiar with. It's new, and scary, but really, really nice. "I have a saving Grace."
"I know." She hums. "He's wonderful, isn't he?"
"Yeah. He uh… he really is." Simon lazily blinks at the orchard around them, the blanket of soft grass that seems to echo in every direction, softened by a sun that hasn't inched any closer to darkness than before. "I miss him."
She sighs, then. She gives Simon's arm a gentle caress, moving to drop a soft kiss to the top of his head. "Remember that, would you? When you go back, I mean."
Panic shoots through Simon in an instant. He wants to scramble up, lock his arm around her, frantically insist that he can't leave, not yet, but she just makes a soothing noise and squeezes Simon closer.
"Hey, kid, take a deep breath, I'm not trying to get rid of you. I'm just saying you can't stay here, not yet." There's a sadness in her voice at that, a soft regret that somehow placates Simon. Like she loathes the idea of their separation just as much as he does. "You're welcome here, when it is your time. He is, too."
"What do you mean, proud?" Simon asks, suddenly, mind snagging on the first thing she said. Oddly enough, that's what Simon actually focuses on.
Not the fact that he's… here, wherever that is, with his mother. Simon doesn't even bother to question it. He knows, with the same kind of warm certainty and finality he felt inches from death, that he gets this moment with her. That this isn't a dream.
Well, actually—
"Am I dreaming?" Simon asks before she even gets a chance to respond, the cogs in his mind suddenly turning a little quicker. "Am I- is this- real?"
"Eh. Hard to say, really. You're asleep, kind of, so I guess this would make it a dream. As far as real…" She shrugs again. The arm around Simon's shoulder adjusts, hand sliding up to sink into his hair. Simon feels every ounce of tension in his body leave in a rush, melting away as she untangles knots that aren't there.
"It's as real as anything here is real. It's more real than the shit they were spouting on Eden."
A startled laugh tears out of Simon's throat at that, surprised and delighted. "You didn't- you didn't believe?"
"Fuck no. I mean, I don't know, it's…" She sighs. "I didn't really care what they were saying, as long as you were safe. I thought moving there would keep you safe."
Simon can feel as her throat bobs, hand stilling in his hair.
"I'm sorry, Simon."
The apology is quiet, soft, so regretful and mournful that Simon is sure his mother has been holding onto it for a long, long time. He's not quite able to respond to that, not in the way he'd like to.
"All I ever wanted for you was a happy life. You were such a happy kid, you know? Smart, and kind. I'm sorry you lost that because of my decision."
"We would both be dead otherwise." Simon interjects, suddenly needing to make his protests known. "If we stayed on Mars, we would have—"
"Not just that. The—" She cuts herself off, clearing her throat. "I'm proud of you, Simon. I'm proud of you for keeping yourself alive."
Simon still remembers the sensation of the knife being pressed into his palm. He still remembers the flash of blankness, the half-confusion as he looked up into her eyes before a grim certainty settled into his bones and never quite left.
"It wasn't easy, was it?"
Somehow, that's what finally makes tears well up in Simon's eyes. Somehow that gentle question is what sends Simon shuddering, eyes burning with tears after so long without practice.
Simon shakes his head. He wants to speak but it feels impossible, throat tight and face hot as he turns and presses his face into the crook of her neck. His mother sighs and gathers him a little closer, squeezing Simon as he silently cries against her.
"I know, love. I know." She murmurs. "You shouldn't have had to do that. You were… god, you were just a kid. I was worried, you know? You were such a sweet kid, I honestly didn't know if you had it in you."
I didn't, Simon wants to say. Sometimes I still don't know if I do. Sometimes I think there was a monster inside of me long before that fucking ocean, something that let me be the Butcher instead of your son.
"You did good, Simon. I'm proud of you for keeping yourself alive until you made it. That's all I ever wanted for you. Alive and happy."
The words are muffled against Simon's silent sobs. He catches them, though, and they only rip the tears out of him even more.
Simon's mother holds him close and carries him through it, waiting until the tears have run their course. The action of crying is agonizing and she soothes him through it— being soothed is something Simon has only become familiar with recently. He's pretty bad at it, he thinks.
Eventually, though, the tears fade and Simon is left a quiet, tired, shuddering mess at her side. He wants to speak, move, do… something, but he's exhausted and sore and tired and he's finally, finally with his mother again.
Sore. Simon is sore. That's- no, he's not—
"You need to go back, Simon."
Simon shakes his head frantically but the movement is sluggish, hazy, like he's moving through… well, like he's moving through a dream.
"No, please, don't—" Simon's voice is cracked and pitiful, pleading. "Please don't make me go, I just got you back—"
"You never lost me. I'll be here, kid. I'll be waiting for Grace, and I'll be waiting for you."
The fight bleeds out of Simon all at once, panic giving way to a horrible, cold reluctance. Simon hasn't felt this much like a child in years. He's not sure if he likes it or if he hates it.
"You promise?"
"I promise." Simon's mother says, squeezing him close with a finality that puts an awful dread in his chest.
Simon swallows around a throat that feels very dry all of a sudden. "Will- will I remember this?"
"I don't know, Simon. I hope so."
Simon closes his eyes, drinking in the sensation of a kiss being pressed to the top of his head. Tears that Simon didn't know he still had begin streaming down his cheeks once again, renewed by the loss.
"Enjoy your life, my love. You've paid for it with blood."
There's a bitterness in those words. A regret, sure, but not a despair. A knowledge that Simon did what had to be done even if it left him mangled and twisted with a ledger dripping red.
"Be... be kind to yourself, when you wake up. Say hi to him for me."
Simon wants to resist. He wants to fight back, he wants to claw to stay, he wants to scramble to grab onto the hazy, blissful warmth that's quickly being replaced by ache and bone-deep cold.
He doesn't, though. Simon allows his eyes to remain shut as he savors what he knows is the last time he'll feel the embrace of his mother for a very, very long time.
"I'll see you soon."
The tears follow Simon into wakefulness even as the memory of his mother slips away. The warmth of her skin is replaced by a chill in his veins, the quiet contentment replaced by a bleary, painful, groggy confusion.
Simon doesn't know why he's crying when he wakes up. He does know, however, as he turns his face into a pillow and lets the sobs tear out of his throat, that he misses his mother very, very much.