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Marty’s been better, these past few weeks.
Emmett thinks that while being cooped up on the ship for a couple months had likely been good for the young human, give him time to adjust and settle in, the boy isn’t made for it in the way Emmett is.
No, as he watches Marty spring off in the direction of the market’s more permanent shops, bounding away with Einstein by his side, it is clear he needed much more enrichment than milling about on the DeLorean and occasionally watching a movie. Emmett will have to make sure he purchases more things for Marty to engage with before they leave.
That, and he will pick up some of the extra parts he needs for his project. It may take a few more years than thought, but the change in plans is ultimately for the best. He’s waited twenty-seven years already, another few won’t do him any harm.
“Hello?”
Emmett is startled from his thoughts, and turns to his customer.
“Sorry, sorry, repeat that?” Emmett asks. The customer repeats himself. Emmett is not listening.
His mind trails after Marty, following him through the market and across the way. Of course, Emmett had insisted the boy take a tracking device with him, as well as a tablet with which he can communicate with him. Of course, this marketplace is on the safer side, especially compared to D2. Of course, Emmett worries anyway.
Although he’s no expert in human behaviour, Marty is fragile. That much is obvious.
Some species are more skittish than others, some more fearful, but Marty is bold. Humans, from the devastatingly few videos and first-hand accounts of the destruction and havoc they purportedly wreak, are risk takers. Marty is no different in that regard (though Emmett has yet to experience the ‘danger’ Marty’s kind supposedly poses).
But Marty is also skittish and fearful. Maybe he’s just young. Maybe that’s just his personality; he knows now that those accounts and stories are inaccurate... but, no, Emmett is neither stupid nor oblivious. Even if it weren’t for what Marty has implied occurred before he met him, the kid exhibits the clear signs and hallmarks of experiencing a traumatic event, and Emmett can’t help but check the tracker again for the nth time that minute.
The customer transfers a couple hundred credits to his account, and walks off. He’s not so sure what he said to them, but it must have been a convincing enough sales pitch or explanation.
Turning around, he stares at the corner where the fabric of his stall’s tent has been pulled and wrapped around some chairs and bits of scrap metal and wood. It’s dark in there, and claustrophobic, too, but Marty seems to like it. Nobody can see him when he's in there, but he can listen to the comings and goings of the world around him with ease. Emmett wishes that had been enough, that the boy hadn’t felt the need to run off somewhere else. Hopefully he’s staying out of trouble; his new friend Lee seems keen on taking advantage of Marty’s impulsivity. At least that other one, Paul, seems to have a more level head on him.
The trio of youngsters almost got themselves arrested the other day. That cannot happen. Marty’s identity as a human cannot be known, and if he gets picked up for something idiotic, they’ll surely register his species. That little disguise won’t help much if they make him take it off.
In the market, the crowd has thinned. Fewer and fewer potential customers throw glances at his wares as they pass, more preoccupied with making their way back to shelter or to the portions of the market designated for the nocturnal.
Yes, by now, the second sun is setting, emblazoning the pink sky with striking oranges and reds. The vibrant hues streak upwards and out across clouds. Ever moving, the sun continues on its nightbound course to where the first sun lies barely crowning the mountain range in the distance.
That boy has no concept of time, Emmett has found. He guarantees that Marty will not realise his absence has become of concern until sunset bleeds to dusk, and even then, if he is caught up in- whatever it is those three get up to- then he may not notice at all.
He takes in a short, steadying breath, and tries to still the lash of his tail. There is no use for anxiety now. His hearts need not beat quite so fast, because Marty is probably safe, wherever he is.
Probably.
There’s a little voice inside Emmett’s head that’s come about recently which has begun to whisper his shortcomings back to him when the world gets too quiet and his thoughts become too loud. You ‘probably’ shouldn’t brush off Marty’s safety so easily, it says, what kind of person does that make you?
Emmett closes up shop a little earlier than he’d planned. Carefully piles his wares onto his cart and begins to wheel it back to his ship. He loses himself in his thoughts as he goes, running through contingencies and what-ifs for the numerous situations Marty could possibly have wormed his way into.
The wheel of the cart catches on a rock, and the whole thing jolts. An invention of his teeters on the edge, and if Emmett had been in any logical state, he’d have held himself back from the instinctual lunge to save the machine.
As it were, however, in his haste to save something he cared about, he accelerated its descent. It clatters to the ground in parts.
He stands for a moment, claws twitching. Patience and time. Patience and time. You cannot rush when it comes to the fragile.
Picking up the pieces in hopes he may be able to repair it, Emmett looks towards the shipyard.
If luck or fortune hold any substantial seat in this world, then Marty will be waiting at the DeLorean for him.
There are four figures next to the DeLorean, which stands proud but not tall amongst the massive cargo and passenger ships that dwarf it.
With Emmett’s approach, the young boys and Einstein come further into view, features and details steadily becoming discernible. The sight of Marty alive and well will quell the urge to calculate care plans for a time. Though Emmett cannot see Marty’s face through his disguise, his friends seem happy, so he can only assume the human is much the same. Lee bounds around the space, skipping in circles around Marty and Paul before tackling Marty to the ground.
Dust kicks up from where they tumble. Emmett freezes.
From this distance, there is little he can do to help. A moment goes by with bated breath as he waits for… something to happen. However, Marty does not shove Lee off of him or indicate the usual signs of distress he exhibits when touched without warning; instead, the loud barks of his laughter echo through the tepid evening air.
For some reason, the usually delightful sound hurts to hear.
“Marty!” he calls out, the human stilling from where he’s writhing around in the dirt with his friend. Lee groans when he spots Emmett, lifting himself from the ground.
“Seriously?” Lee whines, “Marty, you said he wouldn’t be back for another hour.”
“I packed up early,” Emmett responds for Marty. Then, he considers for a moment why Lee is unhappy to see him. “You know, you are more than welcome to continue to playing, if you-”
“We are not playing, Doc,” Marty cuts in, dusting himself off. “We’re hanging out.”
A confused silence befalls them. Einstein woofs.
“What?” Paul pipes up. “What does that mean?”
“You know, just,” Marty fumbles with hand gestures that have no meaning to any of them, “like, we’re spending time together and being in each other’s company. Hanging out. Not playing.”
Paul blinks slowly and purposefully, double layered eyelids sliding sideways across his eyes, as if to say ‘that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.’
“We… weren’t playing?” Lee asks, mandibles twitching and opening back ever so slightly into a frown. He wrings his hands, fingers threaded together and rocked back and forth in a motion that Emmett will have to inform Marty later means sadness for Lee. “Aww.”
Deciding that Marty will join him when he desires to, Emmett starts to take his leave, stepping forth to board the ship. Before he can, though, he’s interrupted.
“Uh, Doc, was it?” Paul says, making direct eye contact with him instead of his usual off-centered stare. Emmett’s frills raise on end. “Can I come on board for a little?”
Paul squints at him, waiting, and there’s something like suspicion in his gaze. Then, as the seconds tick by without an answer, Paul starts to tilt his head slightly to the side, in the same way Emmett has seen Marty do dozens of times.
“That,” Emmett begins, warily glancing between the three boys, “would be up to Marty. I have no preference either way.”
“WHAT? Actually?” Previous sorrow suddenly forgotten, Lee grabs Marty, who tenses under the grip. He tries to shake him, but only really succeeds in pulling at the fabric of his jacket. “Marty, please, I wanna see your ship. Please.”
Marty takes Lee’s hands in his and gently pulls them off of himself. “…Sure.”
Throwing all four of his arms into the air, Lee’s mandibles click together, and he buzzes an excited sort of noise.
Of course, Lee is much less excited when they board the ship and the interior is not significantly different from any other ship he’s been on. Paul, on the other hand, appears to be scrutinizing every corner, every hall, and immediately asks to be shown where Marty’s quarters are. Marty leads him down the hall while Emmett tries to stop Lee from digging through their trash.
“Lee, I understand your curiosity, but you really will find nothing of note in there.”
“There’s gotta be something interesting. You’re a scientist, what if you have cool scrapped inventions or poisons in here,” Lee replies, fingering through the discarded packets and papers with one set of hands and holding the trash can at different angles with the other. He then pauses. “Wait, this is stupid. You wouldn’t just throw poisons out, that’s dangerous. Or scrap, either, ‘cause that could be reused.”
He drops the bin, some spilling out as he does so, and raises his hands as to show he’s done with this endeavor.
Marty returns, Paul in tow.
The human seems relaxed and, from what Emmett can gauge with his face hidden by goggles and fabric, happy.
Marty hasn’t been so at ease in… maybe ever.
He wonders what he’s been doing wrong that Paul and Lee are somehow getting right.
In the midst of a quick little fix-it that a customer has asked Emmett to do on their tablet, a crashing sound comes from the main area of the ship, followed by multi-species yelling and Einstein’s barks.
Taking but a single moment to carefully put the tablet and his tools down, he wastes no time in making his way to see what the commotion is. It could be anything, serious pain and injury or the universe’s least funny joke.
He walks in to find Marty, disguise off and blatantly human, shoving his head into the sink and sideways under the tap. Water gushes into and out of his mouth as he gargles and groans. The skin on his face is redder than Doc has ever seen it.
There’s an empty chemical bottle discarded on the side, cap a few inches away from where it rests, deceptively innocuous.
A chemical bottle that should be locked away in a cabinet Marty isn’t meant to know about.
Emmett surges forwards. Lee and Paul are also there, but he’s not concerned with them at this moment.
“I told him not to do it!” Paul defends, “but Lee didn’t believe Marty when he said he's eaten it before and-”
Ignoring Paul, who cuts himself off as Emmett goes to pick the bottle up and stops himself before he can touch it, he swears under his breath. In a split second, he sprints back to his lab for a pair of gloves or anything he can use just to see what the hell Marty has had exposure to and how toxic it was, if it’s even toxic to him at all.
Upon return, Marty is still alive, though still clearly seems distressed. Paul is hovering over him worriedly, and Lee is running one of his left hands under the tap as well now, underneath Marty’s head, using whatever water is coming out of Marty’s mouth. Marty doesn’t seem to be swallowing very much of it.
Picking up the bottle, Emmett frantically reads the label.
Capsaicin.
He uses tiny amounts of this concentrate to make a gel to treat the joint pains that arrived beside the years and never took their leave as time left them behind.
Looking back up at Marty and Lee, they seem… okay. Well, as okay as they can be. Lee looks like he might pass out from the pain, and Marty is still running water into his mouth and groaning.
Capsaicin’s effects are highly variable between species. Many have no reaction to it; they simply lack the kind of receptors that the compound interferes with. But for those that do, the poison is highly painful and can cause severe digestive issues when ingested.
Lee clearly just touched it. Emmett can only hope that Marty spat out whatever he put into his mouth.
Wordlessly, he places the bottle into a little plastic bag that he ties up, wipes up the droplets that spilled on the counter, and carefully removes his gloves in a manner of seconds. Neither boy will die, but they certainly already regret this decision.
Emmett wants to be relieved. He does. He really, really does. Capsaicin. It is not often that he meddles with chemistry, but of the various compounds and chemicals in the cabinet they swiped this from, this is one of the least hazardous.
The cabinet was not locked. There had never been a need.
Whatever happens to Marty now, it’s Emmett’s fault. And if Marty had picked up anything else and consumed that instead, his potential death would have been blood on his hands.
So it is not relief that he feels. It is the cold draw of a black hole, emptying and frightful and inescapable.
“Marty…?” he asks, tentatively.
The boy pulls his head out from the sink. “Ah,” is all he can manage to say before plunging his mouth back into the stream of water, which is likely doing very little to help the pain, considering capsaicin is lipophilic.
“Ohh man,” Lee moans, “this hurts.”
Paul, who is now standing off to the side, crosses his arms; another gesture picked up from Marty, no doubt. “Yeah, of course it does. Why did you touch it?”
“Marty drank like half the bottle and was fine!”
Paul makes an aggressive motion in the direction of the human. “On what planet is he fine? Also, I feel like we’re glossing over the whole human thing.”
“Human?!” Lee exclaims, looking around. He momentarily takes his hand out from under the water and promptly puts it back in. “Where?”
Emmett sighs.
“Doc, it’s fine,” Marty insists, cradling a glass of ice water in his hand. Every now and again he takes a sip from it. “I didn’t even throw up.”
“It is very much not fine, you-”
“It is!” the human interrupts, “I’m not stupid, Doc, stop babying me! Paul read the label to me, and I know what capsaicin is. I did a presentation on it for school. I even drank hot sauce for that.”
“Marty-”
“No! I know you think I’m some- some- some kid who can’t take care of himself, but I’m not!”
Marty’s chest heaves in the aftermath of the words, and he takes another sip of his water. Emmett isn’t sure if the boy’s face has gone more red with anger or if it’s just the lingering effects of the toxin he decided would be a good idea to consume.
“What if it hadn’t translated properly, Marty? What if it hadn’t been as close to the kind you are familiar with back on your home planet? What if it had contained another compound that is poisonous to humans?” he tries to keep his tail still, tries to keep his composure, but the level of dangerous idiocy that was just demonstrated leaves him shaking. “We don’t know what you can and can’t have; there’s a reason we’ve been so careful about what you eat and trying new foods! Not to mention that capsaicin is strictly for topical use, not consumption!”
Marty swallows and pulls the glass away from his face. “Not true. It makes food hot.”
“You- what?” An odd turn of phrase, for it has no inherent thermal effects, but does that mean...? Of course. Why wouldn’t humans eat poison for pain. What in the world… “That doesn’t disregard any of my previous points, Marty. That was not safe. It still isn’t, you could still have a serious reaction to this!”
Puffing up, Marty’s frown deepens. “Just stop! You aren’t my dad, Doc. Stop acting like it!” He rises to his feet, water sloshing over the edge of his glass and splattering on the floor, and storms off.
Emmett wills himself to follow.
He does not succeed. Instead he just sits, silent and dumbfounded.
Back home, he’d been top of his class in everything. His kind are generally on the higher end of the intelligence spectrum, though it is never a good idea to use that information for real-world application, as with any intelligent species the margins are so wide and encompassing that it is rarely a useful measurement. But he’s always been smart in a way others could seldom keep up with.
Whenever there was a question, even philosophical, Emmett knew how to answer it. Whether it had a concrete analytical answer or required rhetoric made up of figures and wisps of feeling or emotion, Emmett could put words to it.
He finds himself completely and lethally at a loss, here, pulled so far out of his depth and left to drown.
All those answers, yet he’s never been great at understanding other people in true, non-hypothetical social interaction.
There’s a reason I chose to be on my own for all those years, he thinks, the thought coming unbidden. It devours him whole and repulses him simultaneously; how revolting, to think he’d prefer to be alone. Marty’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him.
But I am not the best thing that has ever happened to Marty, far from it.
Someone hovers in the doorway. A flash of golden feathers and green eyes tells Emmett exactly who.
Paul peers in.
“May I come in?”
Emmett nods. Paul looks confused for a second before the meaning of the gesture clicks and he enters, choosing to sit with but not next to him.
The younger boy, likely around the same relative developmental stage as Marty if he had to guess, knowing what he knows of both their species, doesn’t meet his gaze. This is not unusual, but he seems especially nervous.
“I wanted to say sorry,” he admits, head ducking in apology. “I came onto your ship looking to find something wrong.”
Emmett blinks slowly.
“Something wrong?”
“He’s, uh, really jumpy.” Paul replies. “Marty, I mean. I think he only lets Lee clamber all over him ‘cause he’s so light he knows he could throw him if he wanted. And even then…”
Paul doesn’t need to say it. They both know that sometimes Marty just can’t handle it.
“I see.”
“I was just worried, especially since he seemed so bubbled,” Paul admits. Emmett waits for Paul to finally turn his head to him. The feathers framing Paul’s face seem to droop. “He doesn’t know how to read, he doesn’t know basic courtesies, he says weird things and uses gestures I’ve never seen. I didn’t know he was human. Or that he probably…”
As he trails off, they both understand exactly what he’s trying to get at here.
“I… I guess it seems really silly now. I thought you were, like, you know… bad.”
“…I can assure you that in the time that I have known him, I have brought no harm to him. And I am not offended that you were worried,” Emmett responds, slowly. “I understand well the concern that you are feeling. I feel it just the same.”
Paul looks away again. “Okay,” he says, and then stands. “Well, that’s all I wanted to say, so. I promise I won’t tell anyone about him, by the way. The human thing.”
“I would appreciate that. He would as well. The Federation aren’t the best when it comes to dealing with situations they don’t have exact guidelines for.”
Nodding- a stiff motion that Paul winces at the moment he makes it- he leaves Emmett alone again.
When Paul and Lee leave in a flurry of goodbyes and promises of secrets kept, the ship seems quieter than ever before.
Marty doesn’t appear to still be upset with him, and his face is significantly less flush now, but Emmett frets nonetheless. He has to hold himself back from hovering over him with careful hands; Marty would only think he’s crowding him.
The human himself loiters in the room with Emmett, tapping at one thing or the other on the tablet Emmett gave him. Probably looking at the map again. He seems to quite like the map. That, and playing the names of certain hard-to-translate places on the speaker over and over, which does begin to grind on Emmett’s nerves after a while.
Still. He bites his tongue and doesn’t mention it, because the kid is clearly trying to get the device in his head to make the syllables have discernible meaning, and it’s not as though he asked to be the first introduction of his language to the wider world.
He plates up food for himself and Marty. Placing one plate at his own seat and the other at Marty’s, his eyes flick up to the boy, who has now forgone the tablet in favor of listening to his man-that-walks.
The boy’s eyes are closed, and he seems almost at peace.
“‘I found the simple life ain’t so simple,’” Marty sings, and it occurs to Emmett that the human’s voice sounds good, “‘when I jumped out on that road,’”
Perhaps it is the cadence, the way the syllables of his words are timed. The stresses, the push and the pull of sounds that are warped. Emmett hasn’t heard anything like it, though he can’t say he’s met a species with quite the vocal range of a human before. A couple that come close. Many can sing. Very few can sing with words at the same time, with such a knack for pitch control and dragging out words to make a tune.
He’s heard a lot of music from a lot of different cultures; each unique and beautiful in its own right.
Music is special. Singing is special. Emmett isn’t sure how art remains a universal thing between intelligent species, but the number that don’t make or have any reaction to art can be named on a short list.
It’s an emotional thing, Emmett thinks. It is inherent with higher emotional development.
“‘I got no love, no love you’d call real,
ain’t got nobody waiting at home.’”
And while he knows Marty is just singing along to whatever he’s listening to on that old primitive device of his, the words hit closer to home than he’d like; more mournful than a boy at Marty’s developmental stage should be.
He appears happy enough, eyes screwed shut, belting out lyrics alongside whatever is playing in his ears and making the most unusual motions with his hands in the air in front of him. One goes up and down as though it were sliding along a plane with his fingers changing positions in a way that seems highly specific, the other holds nothing pinched between his forefinger and thumb, moving rhythmically, purposefully. Emmett isn’t sure what to make of it.
Eventually, Marty stands, still making those same strange ghost-gestures, though with far more intensity. He moves his hands above his head at some point, does an unusual kicking motion at another, until finally he falls to the ground and starts… writhing? On the floor?
“Marty,” he calls, though Marty does not hear him, so he calls louder: “Marty!”
Flinching, the boy jolts up as though he’d forgotten his present company, and shrinks in embarrassment. He sheepishly removes the head-transmitters from his ears.
“Uh…”
“Dinner is ready.”
Marty nods, giving a nervous smile that looks a little too much like grit teeth for Emmett’s liking. “Awesome, thanks, uh. Thank you.”
Emmett sits down and tries to make it seem casual. Tries to ignore the tightness in his throat and the thickness of the air. Marty needs relative normalcy. He needs stability.
Marty takes his seat.
“What, what is this?” he asks, poking the tiny gelatinous cube on the side of his plate. It wobbles dangerously close to the edge.
“That is the congealed blood of a spapig. Of course, seasoned with various spices you are familiar with as well, but it is something new for you to try if you so desire.”
Marty stops poking it. “Oh… so it’s sorta like black pudding? My grandparents used to make that sometimes. —— thing, or whatever, family recipe. I never ate it. Sounded kinda gross.”
“…Perhaps?”
“Though, I don’t remember it being like jelly,” he remarks, finally picking it up and viewing it with a look Emmett believes to be disdain on his face. He scrunches up his nose. “I don’t really want to eat this.”
Emmett nods. “Then, do not.”
That earns a strangely pointed silence from Marty, whose expression falls flat. “I’ll eat it if I want.”
“…Okay?”
Marty huffs, takes a few seconds, shuts his eyes and puts the cube into his mouth. He stops chewing a moment later, opens his eyes, and looks sick.
For a moment, Emmett believes the boy will spit it out, but he swallows.
“Ew.”
“Not a fan of that one?”
“No.”
“Any immediate bad reactions to it?”
“No.”
“Let me know if anything out of the ordinary occurs in the coming days.”
Marty nods wordlessly, and returns to the rest of his meal.
“So, about earlier…” he starts, and Marty rolls his eyes and groans.
“Really? Are we seriously doing this again?” he says through grit teeth, eyebrows furrowing.
Emmett shakes his head. “No, I just wanted to ask why humans eat food that is painful to consume.”
Marty blinks twice and cocks his head at him. “Huh?”
“Earlier you mentioned that you knew it was safe for you to consume the capsaicin because it ‘makes food hot’.”
“Well, no, I said it makes it hot.” Marty corrects, raising an eyebrow. Emmett frowns. Marty frowns back. “Hot. S-P-I-C-Y. Hot.”
“I thought we established attempting to spell words out does not work? You are making noises that have no meaning to me.”
“Ugh!”
“Marty…”
Marty’s shoulders drop. “Sorry. I just hate when the translator doesn’t work right. If they were gonna stick a device into my brain, it might as well work right.”
They weren’t intending for it to work at all, Emmett does not say. The boy does not need to know just yet that it had been meant to make him vegetative.
A miracle indeed that it did not.
The boy returns to his food, pushing it around more than he eats it.
Pivoting, Emmett says: “The mirror’s broken again.”
Marty looks up at him momentarily, and then back to his food. It doesn’t seem like he even considers responding.
“Is there something wrong with it? I’d rather not have to keep replacing it, so if I can fix whatever’s wrong, then…”
“Can you just stop?” the human asks, going uncharacteristically still, with his voice quieter than Emmett thinks he’s ever heard him.
Emmett has a brief vision of glass shattering. He has overstepped. He can recognise this. He isn’t sure where or why, but he has.
“I am only trying to help.”
The dust and shards of glass sparkle like an ocean, or the water that leaks from Marty’s eyes on occasion.
“I don’t want it.” Marty replies, and the conversation is over.
They eat the rest of the meal in silence.
Marty retreats immediately to his room afterwards, which is highly unusual of him. The kid typically spends the evening hanging off one of his arms and hovering over his shoulder, impossible to shake off (not that Emmett minds). Though, he supposes, Marty has been more distant these past few days.
But the boy does emerge much later into the night, peering into the entrance to his workshop. He stands at the threshold, daring not to take another step further, and it is reminiscent of when he’d been first warming up to him.
Marty’s distant lingering had felt like progress, then. This feels like regression.
“Doc,” he murmurs from the shadows, “am I gonna have to hide what I am forever?”
Standing in the low-light, Marty’s appearance far more resembles that of the accounts of survivors and the stories of humankind.
The darkness throws an umbral shawl over the boy’s form, hunched shoulders giving a more menacing silhouette than they should. All Emmett can see of his eyes is the reflected shine of the light under which he is working; and from that, he can tell the boy is staring at him.
He feels stalked.
Maybe he shouldn’t have watched those videos. He had heard enough of the stories, he did not need to see them.
Marty shifts, and Emmett sees a flash of the grainy security footage from the a ship that had been foolish enough to take an unwilling human onboard. Of walls splattered with blood, bright blue-green mixing with the human’s deep red. How the human stood there in the middle of the carnage, breathing heavily and missing an arm, before it, too, fell with the others.
Persistent. Resilient. And painfully mortal, like the rest of them, if only to bring plausibility to the horror.
Then, Marty steps into the light, and the image falls away. In its place stands a misfortunate, downtrodden young boy, and Emmett wonders how someone could look at him and ever think monster.
How someone could look at him and ever think to hurt him.
“…Doc?”
Emmett takes a second more to think of a response.
The safest answer is yes. Not simply safe in the sense that it will likely be the most correct, but safe as in if they hide him forever, they minimize risk to his wellbeing.
But ‘safe’, as Emmett has come to find, is not synonymous with happy.
“Paul and Lee were fine with it,” Marty adds.
Emmett sighs.
“Because they know you, Marty,” he replies, “good folks do not determine people as dangerous based on their species; that is speciesist.”
He puts the wrench he’s holding down, pulling the goggles up off his eyes and onto his head. Marty seems to hesitate for a moment before continuing fully into the room.
Emmett knows he isn’t going to be happy with the answer he has.
“You will, however, suffer the consequences of the misconception that your kind is not sapient. Others will not see you as a person if you are to walk around as yourself; even more yet will still judge you regardless purely for what the few humans that have made it into space have done.”
Marty stares, corners of his mouth pulling down. For a moment, Emmett is too locked on to the vibrant blue of his eyes to register the expression as a frown.
“You keep saying that. What did they even do?” he asks, eyes crinkling a little. His eyebrows furrow and Emmett really wishes he could have had a more desirable answer for the boy after the day they’ve had.
“…I would like you to imagine what would happen if someone were placed in an unfamiliar, dangerous situation with no way home and nothing left to lose, and those who had taken them were putting them through the same things you went through.”
“They’d… they’d fight back.”
“As most would, Marty. Most would fight back with everything they have. And most would fail to do much damage before being stopped. Humans are simply very efficient at successfully taking everyone down with them.”
Marty’s eyes seem to dim, and, oh, Emmett would do anything to bring the light back to them. He’d shuttle headfirst into the nearest pulsar to retrieve that ever burning, ever bright liveliness and shower sparks and stardust upon the boy, if he so could. He’d wrangle every star in this planet’s night sky, and the next, and the next, and so on and so forth, if only it would fill the hole Emmett keeps excavating in the boy’s heart.
The human lets out a soft murmur, too quiet for Emmett’s hearing to pick up. Then, he screws his eyes shut a moment, opening them newly invigorated, and the ghost of a smile echoes on Marty’s lips.
“Can I have eight thousand credits?”
Maybe he should come to expect it, but it seems each sentence out of the kid’s mouth is designed to bewilder.
“Excuse me?” Emmett reels back. “Whatever for?”
“A ——.”
Emmett taps his ear. “A what now?”
“It’s an instrument.”
Must this keep happening?
Is he doomed to hurt him over and over again?
“I cannot afford that.”
The enthusiasm fades, though Marty doesn’t seem all that surprised. “You’ve definitely made that much, Doc, I’ve been around for like half of your sales.”
“After fuel expenses, maintenance, keeping you and I and now Einstein fed and hydrated, and other necessities such as hygiene products and medicines, no, I cannot afford to spend eight grand on an instrument.”
“But it’s from-”
“The answer is no, Marty.”
With a sigh, and a smile that seems a little too forced (though Emmett would not say he is well-versed enough in the human’s facial expressions just yet to say for sure), the boy returns to his room and leaves him in silence.
He cannot afford such an item. Even if he could, he could not justify the expense.
Still, Emmett checks over his earnings before he retires that night, and then once more when he awakens the next morning.
Marty’s been picking his locks.
Where the human learned such a skill, Emmett cannot claim to know, nor does he truly wish to enquire.
Emmett had locked the cabinet that Marty and his friends had raided the other day, and almost immediately he found that Marty was intentionally opening the cabinet and leaving its contents untouched.
Out of spite, perhaps? Or simply because the boy can? Regardless of the reason, it makes his hearts cease in his chest every time he sees it.
Einstein nearly got in there.
The animal did not knock anything over himself, mimicking the human’s actions by opening the cabinet and doing nothing with it, but that had been the point at which Emmett knew this behaviour must cease.
Marty was willing to listen, when it concerned Einstein’s safety and not his own. Because Marty insists the locks are “stupid”, and that he’s “not going to drink any old chemical he finds lying around”, nevermind the fact the boy has already done that once before.
“It was safe”, Marty had insisted. Emmett dares to disagree.
But Marty is wanton with his own welfare it appears, especially as of late. He comes back from outings with Paul and Lee boasting about some new food he tried, in full. He retells one evening with all the pride of a job well done how the incurred emesis of a meal he could not recite the name of was a “rite of passage” and how it had “surprised [him] that it hadn’t happened before now”.
Though hard to admit, he finds his previous ruling of Marty’s lack of destructive harm failed to include the supernova that seems on its way to happening.
Human blood is red, as he’d found out via the surviving security footage of a ship crash-landed, crew dead long before they’d hit the ground. He’d thought maybe brown, from the bandages he’d found of Marty’s. If he had to guess without testing, he would say the oxygen carrier in human blood is iron.
Copper is much more common. Cobalt less so. Some species forgo an oxygen carrier and typical blood entirely in favor of hemolymph and an open circulatory system. The categories stretch on, and Emmett is no biologist, so it doesn’t matter.
Or it does. This isn’t good for him, his head hasn’t hurt this much in years, but he can’t help but spiral.
Iron, iron, iron.
The nuclear fusion of iron is an endothermic reaction, and spells the death of any star creating it. A natural process, the alpha process, building and building and living until it collapses inwards in a fraction of a second. After, an explosion, taking everything nearby down with it.
Marty’s on his way to making iron, and Emmett feels as powerless to stop it as the cosmic, uncontrollable forces he’s been likened to.
Maybe that’s why he’s running. Maybe that’s why he shouldn’t. Maybe Marty’s teetering on the edge about to fall and shatter and Emmett shouldn’t rush, he shouldn’t run, but oh, what else is he meant to do?
Unlocked cabinets are one thing. Marty disabled the tracker. He isn’t responding to any of his messages.
Einstein’s got a sense of smell like no other, Emmett knows from somewhere between Marty’s rambling and the animal’s ability to know where his food is located at all times. Shoving one of the boy’s shirts under Einstein’s nose and he seems to know what Emmett wants, or maybe he, too, wants to find Marty, but off they go through the market to go find that kid.
That is, until Einie stops short in front of another child. One that isn’t Emmett’s. The kid is looking at an odd object that appears to be made from a kind of wood, though not one he’s ever seen before, carved intricately and made into… something. He isn’t quite sure what it is. It is stringed in a way that seems purposeful, and is hollow. The kid is staring, probably lost in thought.
The kid then jolts when Einstein descends upon him, pulling his hands up in fear and pushing away. Einie licks him, much to his apparent disdain.
“Augh, gross, get your animal off me!” they yell, shoving harder. Emmett tries to whistle the way Marty does to get Einie’s attention and only half-fails.
“Einstein, here boy!” he tries instead, and Einie does respond, if a little less quickly than he does with Marty.
The kid on the ground lifts themself up and looks at Emmett, upset.
“You need to get control of that thing, man! What even is it?”
“Have you seen a, uh, person dressed in clothes that cover up their whole body, wearing goggles and fake antennae?” Emmett asks instead of bothering to explain himself, for he fears he could not come up with a reasonable explanation anyway.
“…You mean Marty? Yeah! He was showing me around the market, earlier,” the kid says, suddenly grinning, “are you his ‘Doc’?”
“Well, not ‘his’ so much as that is what he calls me. Do you know where he went?”
“Uh, yeah, that way,” they point, and then spares Emmett another glance, “I can take you if you want.”
Opening and closing his mouth, Emmett nods. The other looks confused for a moment.
“Marty does that, too! With his head. What does it mean?”
Ah, of course.
“‘Yes’.”
The kid tries it out themself, nodding once, and then twice, the second motion a tad too fast; they wince in pain.
“Ow…” they mutter, starting off in the direction they pointed in and looking over their shoulder to check if Emmett is following. “So, uh, can you guys stay on-planet?”
“What? No.” Emmett frowns, looking the kid up and down. “Who are you?”
“I’m Needles! Hasn’t Marty said anything about me? We met a few days ago after my parents dropped me off here; it’s my time to go out into the real world. We’re really good friends!”
The kid punctuates his sentences with some interesting hand motions and a half-smile that doesn’t seem too real, and Emmett understands.
“Hm, I can’t say he’s mentioned you,” he replies, and after it seems to make Needles sad, he amends: “But we haven’t been speaking much these past few days.”
Not entirely true, but Needles perks up nonetheless. “Well, that’s probably it, then! I can’t see why else you wouldn’t know who I am. Say, can Marty stay?”
Emmett’s hearts stutter. “No.”
“But he would be fine! He’s my age, or, like, equal to it, and I’m out on my own now. He and I could hang out here together!”
“No,” he says again, too fast. He can’t let Marty stay here, alone. He can’t.
It also isn’t Emmett’s decision to make.
…“You aren’t my dad, Doc. Stop acting like it.”
He wouldn’t be alone, either. He has clearly made connections while Emmett has been busy selling his wares.
“I suppose the final choice comes down to Marty. He is autonomous. It is up to him.”
Needles seems satisfied with that answer, and suddenly Einstein is barking and running ahead towards a more permanent-looking residential structure. At some point they’d moved out of the main market and to here.
Out front, Emmett recognises immediately three of the four figures and the brewing storm within subsides if only for now.
“Oh, Einstein, where’d you come from?” Marty says, reaching down to pet him. “Anyway, I’m fine, you don’t need to worry. I just like the stability and it’s hard that things keep changing, you know?”
He hasn’t seemed to notice Emmett’s approach just yet, still chatting away to an older woman who looks to be related to Paul. Paul and Lee are squabbling a little further away.
“You could always stay here, if need be. We’d be more than happy to house you; I’ve never seen Paul take so quickly to anyone; Lee was pounding on my door every morning just to get turned away until he gave him the chance,” she offers.
Emmett’s breathing arrests. It doesn’t hold long, or shouldn’t, but the split second anticipation he lies frozen in wait of Marty’s response.
“I couldn’t do that,” he says, raising a nervous hand to the back of his neck, “I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“You wouldn’t be. I’ve got many mouths to feed, all six of Paul’s younger siblings and Lee more days than not, I’m well equipped. Another would be no burden.”
“I really don’t know…”
It’s selfish. What Emmett does next is selfish, and there is naught he can do to deny that.
He steps forwards, purposefully putting himself into Marty’s line of sight and placing his feet down as loudly as he can to announce his presence and interrupt what is about to become the end of his world.
“Doc!” Marty looks delighted for all of a moment, from what he can tell of the boy swathed in clothing, before his shoulders drop and he turns inwards. Embarrassment, maybe? Nervous? “Heyyy…”
Before Emmett can say anything, Needles inserts himself into the conversation.
“Marty! Your Doc guy said it’s your choice if you wanna stay on planet!”
“Uh…” Marty turns to Emmett, and he finds himself glad he cannot see the boy’s face right now.
But Marty does not escape Needles’ clutches, for the boy begins to talk again, requesting more and more that Marty stay, voice rattling around Emmett’s skull painfully.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Emmett says, “I’ll be over there when you’re ready to go back to the ship.”
“Aha, does that have to be now?”
“Marty.”
Marty tsks. “Right.”
Perhaps ten minutes and one assumedly very awkward conversation between Marty and Needles later, they take their leave.
“Do I even need to explain to you why that was dangerous?” Emmett asks as they walk back, refusing to look at the human. He doesn’t want to see what effects his words will have.
“…I was fine.”
“What if something had happened?”
Marty harrumphs. “Is everything just ‘what if’ with you? I was fine!”
“You might not have been!”
“I can handle myself!”
“Can you?!” Emmett whirls around, a sudden motion which causes Marty to stop and startle. “I can’t tell!”
The boy shrinks, but the floodgates are open and it all spills out and he is ever, ever glad Marty’s face is not currently visible.
“You run about with your friends in a manner that almost gets you arrested, you consume a painful toxin you found and assumed was safe, you reveal that you are an undocumented person belonging to a species that is currently illegal to house in all jurisdictions, you keep unlocking my cabinets that contain hazardous substances, you keep disappearing without saying where you’re going, you turn off your tracker, and you refuse to respond to my messages in such a way that makes me think something has happened to you!”
They’re stopped dead in the middle of the street. The foot traffic of the market gives them a wide berth as Emmett’s voice gets louder, many casting glares his way, though a woman walking beside what appears to be an adolescent of her species sends him a sympathetic glance.
Marty stays quiet for a few moments. “I can handle myself,” he reiterates, and Emmett breaks.
“I can’t,” he confesses, all fight draining from him, “I can’t handle you doing this, Marty. I’m terrified.”
Surprisingly, fight seems to drain from Marty, too.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I… I’ll keep the tracker on. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“…Thank you.”
“Please stop locking the cabinet. I’m not gonna go in there again. You don’t need to lock it.”
Emmett considers this. “I will find something to put on it to keep Einstein out. It will not be a lock.”
Marty nods.
They resume walking.
The next day, Emmett expects things to be slightly less tense. And they are! They are.
For the morning, at least.
Marty waves as he disappears off to find Paul and Lee, and Emmett glances down to see the tracker still operating and live.
Hopefully the boy makes the most of his last full day planetside.
If he chooses to stay with me, he thinks, and promptly shakes the thought from his head.
Late that afternoon, when Marty returns, Emmett knows even before he says anything that something is very, very wrong.
He throws his bag onto the floor with an abnormal aggression. He doesn’t even look at Emmett as he enters, and stomps where he’s usually much lighter on his feet.
The volatility puts Emmett on edge.
“Are you alright?”
“No!” Marty yells, bringing both hands up to his head and gripping at the fabric of the hood. “I’m not!”
After a good few seconds of waiting for some kind of elaboration, Emmett cautiously probes further.
“Any particular reason why?”
The human’s hands clench into fists at his side. “Needles bought the ——.”
“The…?”
“The ——! ——!” Marty makes an awful respiratory noise that sounds like he’s choking on air, “a ——! it’s, it makes- it’s from- it’s a ——!”
He collapses in blubbering syllables of all kinds, and Emmett has to surge forwards to keep him steady. For once, Marty does not flinch at the motion.
After many minutes, Marty collects himself enough to further explain.
“The ——. He took it. It’s- it makes music, Doc, it’s from ——, and he took it. He knew I wanted it.”
Though Emmett cannot envision what Marty is talking about, whatever it was seems important. And he knows how much music means to him, the man-that-walks never not on his person.
Marty pushes himself further into the touch and then embraces him. Emmett pulls his arms around him and holds him back, rubbing his hand up and down Marty’s back.
Not an optimal end to the day at all.
They eat food fresh from the market and watch a movie that night, Marty refusing to leave Emmett’s side and Einstein doing much the same. The movie is a simpler one, some kids’ movie Emmett doesn’t care much for but puts on in hopes that it’ll be easier for Marty to follow along with. So much is still unfamiliar to the kid.
After, Marty goes to bed, and Emmett again counts over what is left of his earnings after the subtraction of necessities. It is not eight thousand credits. Not enough to buy whatever instrument it was that Marty never even specified the purpose of. Not enough to possibly get the boy’s mind off whatever it was Needles bought.
Maybe tomorrow he can find some other music-maker for him. Perhaps even a musical instrument of sorts. Something that is not egregiously expensive.
And when tomorrow comes, and Marty still seems down about it, Emmett’s resolve only hardens.
He’s about to leave to the market when, unexpectedly, Needles approaches them. Marty doesn’t see him immediately, too busy adjusting his goggles.
“Hey, Marty,” Needles begins, and Marty’s head whips up to look at him.
“You!”
“So, what do you think about staying on-planet? I know you said no yesterday but-”
“No!”
“I would let you use it if you stayed and we could-“
“Needles, if I never saw you again it would still be too soon! I don’t want to talk to you! I don’t want to stay on planet with you! I don’t want to do anything with you!” Marty gets very close to Needles’ face as he rants, who rears back minutely. “The only thing I want from you is for you to go away!”
“Um,” Emmett tries to intercept, but Needles goes for the kill:
“Oh, come on, don’t be such a wimp!” The insult is sudden and confusing, though Needles still seems as hopeful as he’d been. There isn’t an ounce of malice behind it. “What are you even so upset about? If you stay, then you-”
“Wimp?!” Shoulders raised, arms coming up, legs moving out as he seems to poise to strike and never does, “Nobody calls me-”
“Boys!” Emmett yells, placing himself physically between them, “stop!”
Needles looks baffled at the responses Marty is giving, and Marty-
Marty announces: “I’m leaving!”, turns, and walks away.
Needles moves to follow him, but Emmett places a hand on his shoulder.
“What did you do?”
It seems for a second like Needles debates denying doing anything, but he chooses to explain.
“Marty wanted this thing, I don’t really know what it is, but I think he just thought it looked cool or something,” he says, fiddling with his claws, “and so I figured maybe I could get him to stay on the planet if I offered he could use it, whatever it was. I wasn’t tryna upset him, it was just supposed to sweeten the deal.”
Emmett nods slowly. Right. Worst part is, Needles seems genuine.
He studies the boy.
He’s young. That much is obvious. His kind, culturally, are known for pushing their young out of the nest early, so to speak, but generally not this early.
There is a twang of sympathy he feels; Needles had simply wanted a friend to help navigate this strange new world with. Oddly, it is reminiscent of another marooned kid.
So perhaps that is why he asks what he asks and offers what he offers.
“Did your parents leave you anything to support yourself with?”
If they’d been willing to leave him so early, it’s highly possible they left him with nothing to his name.
Needles frowns. “Uh, yeah?”
Nevermind.
“I need to find a job, though,” he adds, again refusing to meet Emmett’s eye. “I kinda already spent the money they gave me. Didn’t know this place did no refunds, hah.”
“Do you want to work for me?”
It comes out before he can think it through. Marty clearly has some kind of issue with this kid. This is definitely a bad idea. But, Marty isn’t disagreeable; surely they can sort their differences out? Emmett isn’t even entirely sure what the issue is.
At the offer, which takes a moment to register with the boy, he beams. “Oh, oh, actually?!”
He could still go back on it. It would be mean, but he could say no, here, and walk away clean. Or at the very least ask Marty first.
In that split second, the darkness Marty stood in the other night whispers to him:
Marty may not choose to come with you.
And in a moment of weakness, Emmett nods, and Needles throws his arms into the air in celebration.
Maybe he should teach this kid not to accept any old offer without at least hearing the details. Though, Emmett doesn’t really have any details just yet, which becomes apparent when Needles asks what he would even do for them. In response, Emmett shrugs and says some kind of amalgamation of clean and help with maintenance. They can sort it out.
What’s important is that he would get paid and would have room and board, and isn’t roaming the streets of an unfamiliar planet broke and homeless.
What’s important is not thinking about how bad a decision this is.
So Needles runs off to retrieve his belongings, and the event settles. It locks into place like a set of gears seizing, and Emmett feels both like he has done something fantastic and like he’s made a grave mistake.
He means to leave. He’d meant to use this short time before they left to get something else for Marty; sure, he has gotten a few things already, but he’d still like to make it up to him. If Marty’s even going to choose to-
Point is, he instead stands and contemplates what just happened until Marty comes back from wherever he stormed off to with Paul and Lee in tow.
Apparently they’d wanted to say bye to Emmett, too, not just Marty. Sweet of them.
Which leaves them here.
Marty stares at the retreating forms of his friends forlornly.
They already have plans and ways to stay in touch, but…
Emmett sighs as Paul and Lee become nothing more than specks in the distance. He has to do this eventually, and he’s been sitting on it for far too long.
After all, what right does Emmett have to force Marty to come with him? He’s known him for a couple months; he holds no authority over the boy, not really.
And here, here offers everything that Emmett cannot: full social integration with a society Marty has yet to find his place in, friends his own age, and most crucially, stability.
Because Emmett is a wanderer at heart and could never stay in one place forever. It may be to Marty’s detriment to always be on the move.
“Marty… if you so wish,” Emmett pauses, swallowing, finding the words hard to speak all of a sudden, “you can stay here with them.”
The young human goes eerily still beside him, breathing halting to a sharp but quiet stop.
“I couldn’t help but overhear what Paul’s mother told you the other day,” he continues, looking away from the boy now, “and as you said before, I am not your…”
Parent.
Guardian.
Keeper.
Any of the words that may complete that sentence fall short before they can leave his mouth, because no matter how much he may try to convince himself otherwise, Marty has wormed his way into Emmett’s life in a way that no other being ever has.
And, for the short time they’ve been together, he’s begun to see himself as not just Marty’s friend, but his protector, too.
But there is no denying the safety that Marty feels with his friends. Going to Paul for advice. Allowing Lee to touch him without asking first… Emmett’s not sure what he’s been doing wrong, but there must have been something.
He knows Marty doesn’t like the way he talks. The precise, clinical language he sometimes uses. The fact he’s a scientist at all. Though the boy has never detailed what happened to him, it is not hard to hedge a guess.
A fear of being ‘cut up again’, as he’d explicitly said, leaves very little to the imagination.
And the lack of trust is understandable. Emmett hasn’t exactly been the most trusting of Marty, either, and it is a two-way street.
“I suppose what I mean is, Marty, is it’s your choice. If you want to stay with them, I will not stop you.”
No response comes from the human for too long, and Emmett turns back to look at him.
Marty looks completely and utterly crestfallen.
“Do… you not want me around anymore?”
Oh, dear.
“Of course I want you around, Marty,” Emmett blurts, eyes going wide. Oh no. Curse miscommunications. “I merely noted that you find yourself quite comfortable around your friends, and I did not want you to think that you couldn’t take them up on their offer if you so desired.”
Throwing a brief look around them to confirm their solitude, Marty removes the goggles and tugs the cloth over his mouth down to hang around his neck.
He looks up at Emmett and the hurt in his eyes stabs at him more than the dozens of times he’s accidentally pierced himself with a tool.
“Truly, I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t want you around. I would strongly prefer if you stayed with me. I like you, and I like having you around,” he tries to backtrack further.
For a harrowing moment, it appears to be to no avail.
Then Marty blinks, and begins to nod slowly. “I, uh, would strongly prefer to stay with you,” he echoes. “What on Earth made you think I would wanna stay here?”
“Well, your friends,” he starts, stuttering a little, “and I haven’t exactly been the best to you. And you seem so much more comfortable around them.”
“Doc, are you stupid? Paul and Lee are great and I’m gonna be sad to leave them, but you’re you,” he says, gesturing at him. His eyebrows are all knitted up. “You’re my Doc.”
Emmett…
Is at a loss for words.
All the knowledge bouncing around in his mind and yet still he is left stumped. In lieu of what would only be incoherent babbling, he opens his arms, and Marty grins like a madman and near-tackles him into a hug.
“I’m sorry,” Marty says into his chest, “I’ve been kind of awful, huh.”
“You haven’t been awful,” Emmett replies, “but you have been sending a lot of mixed signals.”
Marty’s hands grip tighter, and Emmett can feel him stiffen a little. “I’m trying.”
“I know you are,” he murmurs, “I know you are.”
“Uh, am I interrupting something?”
Pulling away from Emmett, Marty looks bewildered and then angry and then afraid.
Needles flinches and points at Marty’s uncovered face.
“Holy shit-”
“What is he doing here?!” Marty yells, pointing back at Needles, “I told you to get lost!”
“You’re a-”
“I offered him a job.” Emmett answers, cutting Needles off.
“You what?!”
“I offered him a job.”
Needles starts pointing with his other hand, too. “What-”
“I heard you the first time! Why would you do that?!”
Emmett shrugs. “He needed a job, and he’s unlikely to be hired by anyone because he’s so young. Not to mention he needs housing.”
“You know I don’t like him!”
“Because he… bought? Something? I really am not sure what the issue is but I am certain we can work it out.”
“Will someone-”
“It wasn’t just something, it was a ——!”
“Still not translating.”
“Augh!”
“Hey!” Needles barks, and both Emmett and Marty finally turn back to him. “Can one of you please explain what’s going on?”
Silence, and then Emmett can see the rising amusement on Marty’s face as he fights a smile.
“No,” Marty chirps, and turns back to Emmett. “I am so mad at you.”
The statement lacks the heat it had just a moment ago,
and Emmett feels, for the first time in a while, like they’re going to be okay.