Discover Top Posts Tagged with #what a chapter

What Evolution Made Us - Part Sixteen

A/N: So I have been fighting demons for like three weeks to get this done, but it's finally finished. This chapter is. A ride, so warnings for a lot of fevered religious metaphors, Simon being Simon, deification and general misery. Oh, and hallucinated corpses. Yeah, this is a fun chapter.

@markiplier this is your doing. Simon has been living in my head since February. You planted the seeds, I'm just delivering the fruit.

Anyway, this is basically just the culmination of almost six months worth of thinking about this character, and I am very proud of it although I'm not entirely sure all of it is coherent. I'm not ending the story, don't worry, but this chapter is 11,000 words long and almost entirely internal monologue. I'm sorry for your dashes.

In any case, enjoy!

Home | First | Previous | Next

credit to the lovely @uzmacchiato for the divider!

Grace slumps in the pilot’s chair, hating himself just a little bit. His throat feels choked up. It’s been about fifteen minutes since Simon went non-responsive on comms, and every single second he thinks to himself that he needs to be out there, he needs to be doing it, he should be working instead of Simon, he should be inside and safe, not having to confront the awful metal death trap that nearly killed him—

There is a sound over the radio and Grace immediately jolts. “Simon? You good?”

There’s a muttered curse, and then a moment of silence. “…yeah. Yeah, ’s fine, jus’— metal’s tough. Gonna take a minute.”

It doesn’t sound entirely convincing, and Grace bites his lip. “…okay. Please let me know if you need help.”

He’s so close to just saying screw it and putting the suit on to go out and help, or at least get eyes on Simon to make sure he’s okay.

He leans forward in the chair and rubs his eyes. He’s not sure if it’s the nightmares or something else but he feels awful.

His eyes are heavy and gritted like sandpaper, and he’s aching, a phantom pain all over that he can’t fix or distract from.

He wants to fall asleep and not wake up, a tiny voice whispers in his head.

Grace straightens up, shaking his head, surprised at the thought. It hasn’t been that bad in months, not since he met Rocky, and the thought surprises him.

It’s not… that bad. Not even close.

He’s okay. He’s doing okay, he’s just tired. That’s all. (The thoughts sound strangely like reassurances in his head.)

He stands up absentmindedly and wanders into the lab doorway, needing to stretch a bit. All the blood samples are still sealed away, he’s double checked. There’s no way it can get through the plastic containers and the extra xenonite container.

But… he can see the box with the sample of the strange fleshy substance from across the room. The dark tendrils are crawling up the sides of the box.

It’s spreading, or trying to. Grace exhales shakily. Maybe he really does need to get rid of it, maybe Simon was right.

***

The Iron Lung is really a very stubborn piece of shit, Simon thinks to himself, and immediately feels a little bad. It’s not the ship’s fault. Sorry, girl, he thinks, and pats the hull absentmindedly.

The Lung protected him down there, he thinks as he starts measuring for the first panel. It will just fit with the curve of the sub’s walls.

She protected him from the heat of the ocean, from the burning, parasitic blood that would have corrupted his flesh to nothingness and anguish, and she withstood the enormous pressure, creaking and complaining as she did.

It’s this thought that makes Simon’s task a little easier, although for some reason his bones are starting to ache, a sort of deep-seated burning that makes this more difficult than it has to be. The welding tools feel familiar in his hands.

He’s still not actually gone inside. He doesn’t have to. At least, not yet. He might have to eventually.

They’ve got to break the ship down, take her apart and patch her onto the Hail Mary, keep whatever’s useful. How much compatibility the Lung will have with this ship is debatable, but even so. Waste not, want not.

Simon shudders, suddenly feeling chilled. It’s not just the reminder of the Father— he’s cold. It’s cold in this space suit. That doesn’t make a lot of sense.

A bead of sweat rolls down his neck, and it prickles the skin there, and Simon realizes that he might have a fever, actually.

Oh, that’s not good. Should he go inside? He should go inside. Grace would want him to go inside.

Wait, no, he can’t disappoint Grace, he has to get this done. This is important, they need these panels so they have radiation shielding so they can get home— home?

It feels like an odd word in his head, one he’d stopped using and thought he’d probably never say again. Simon doesn’t know if he has a home anymore.

His assumption was no, but then Grace offered an outstretched hand and his whole universe has been turned on his head. They’re going to Earth.

Saints willing, Simon will get to step foot on a planet. On Earth, Terra, whatever it’s called. He’ll get to… to go home, if such a place can be called that and not Paradise.

It’s getting weirdly hard to blink. His eyes feel scratchy, somehow.

He pauses in his work, bracing himself in the space between the Iron Lung and the Hail Mary. It’s pretty nice to just kinda float here, to take a minute to breathe and to look up through the visor at the millions of trillions of stars all around them.

Simon feels very small. He doesn’t think it’s entirely a bad thing.

Another crackle of static comes from over the radio. “Hey, Simon, buddy, just— haven’t heard from you in a while. Are you— you still there?”

Simon swallows. “…’m still here. Jus’… stars are pretty.”

He’s surprised by how slurred the words are. He can hear the slight panic in Grace’s voice. “Maybe— maybe time to come inside? Yeah? We can rest and finish this tomorrow.”

Simon struggles upright and grits his teeth, ignoring the way his head feels like it’s under too much pressure. “No, ’s fine— I got it.”

He reaches for the tools, moving sluggishly, and tries to focus on the task at hand. In the back of his perception he can hear agitated rustling and now it’s Rocky over the radio.

He climbs up on top of the sub and peers down into the first hole, the one Grace had made when he pulled him out. It’s dark inside, all the lights and electronics long dead, but he flicks the light on his helmet on absentmindedly and peers into the space.

Everything is pretty much as he’d left it— the walls are still stained in red, the blood not oxidizing how it should, and there is no sign of anything growing or ready to lunge at his face.

Simon catches sight of one of the fleshy looking tendril things that had been growing out of the walls before and exhales shakily, his heartbeat slowing down. It’s drying now, all the moisture gone, and it’s beginning to crack and flake away. It’s dead.

It’s dead. Space can kill it.

Simon feels for some reason like he’s moving through water now and not nothingness. But maybe it’s got something to do with the exhaustion in his limbs.

He stands up to move a little further down the hull, trying to find a good spot to cut into it, and— his foot lands wrong, and he slips, the momentum sending him drifting out and away from the ship.

His stomach gives a sudden horrible lurch, and he flails, trying to push himself back toward the hull.

The tether’s still attached, but his flailing isn’t helping, and for one single moment it pulls taught and Simon is wholeheartedly convinced it’s going to snap and set him adrift.

Would it really be so bad, he wonders to himself. To die out here in the embrace of the universe, to sleep forever in an abyss of starlight.

It doesn’t matter what happens to him, not really. It doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t be such a bad way to go, really.

There’s a sudden tugging sensation, and he’s being pulled backwards, and then within seconds there are hands on him, an arm wrapped tight around his chest, an arm in matching red, and Simon reaches up and holds tight to Grace’s hand as the other starts pulling them slowly backward.

“Hey, I-I got you, you’re okay, we’re okay, let’s get inside now, yeah?” he hears Grace say over the radio, and he shifts a bit, trying to get his feet under him.

He should get back to work, he needs to finish this job so they can be safe, but— his head isn’t spinning because he needs gravity for that but it does hurt, pretty damn bad, and his skin is aching and prickling with every touch of the suit.

He feels freezing.

Simon lets Grace pull him gently toward the center of the Hail Mary and back toward the airlock, wondering absentmindedly if he’s going to be punished for not completing the task— it wouldn’t be too bad, not here, not with Grace, it’d be fine, he can take it and it’s really only fair for not managing to get the task finished.

Chain him up, maybe. Maybe isolation, that would be easiest, just shut him in a little box in the dark like the elder brothers used to do and leave him for a bit. He doesn’t like it but he can handle that, he’s been alone plenty before.

Before he can get too far down that train of thought, though, there’s a sudden roaring in his head, a phantom, soundless approximation of the eel, screaming and screaming in the absolute darkness of the sub. It had been so dark, down there.

Simon shudders involuntarily, and a wave of fear washes over him.

He registers faintly that Grace is making shushing noises, still crackly with static, but— his eyes aren’t focusing properly but he can register white walls and padding and heavy metal doors.

Ah. Airlock. Wonderful.

He closes his eyes again. The light hurts his head after the quiet emptiness of out there. (Empty, but not dark, not silent. Just quiet. How strange.)

Simon suddenly feels the helmet being removed and now Grace’s voice is in his ears directly instead of over the radio.

“Hey, just stick with me, y-yeah, you seem kinda out of it but I know you can hear me,” Grace says.

Simon feels a hand press ever-so-carefully to his forehead, only for Grace to flinch back. He registers a curse, the first Grace has uttered since they’ve met, so quiet that it’s just on the edge of his hearing, and then the hands are back, helping him pull off the gloves of the suit.

“You’re burning up, seems like the— like the fever’s back. It’s okay, though, it’s gonna be okay, we’re gonna get you to Armando.” Simon could have told him that.

He pries his eyes open— each time it gets more and more difficult. He blinks sluggishly, but he can breathe, at least. There’s that.

Grace opens the hatch on the suit and helps him wriggle out of it. Simon goes boneless and compliant, his limbs too tired to really respond to him, letting Grace tug him this way and that until he’s free, until he’s tucked back against Grace’s chest as the other propels them into the ship proper, pulling them both along with one hand by his tow lines.

Simon can’t help but shudder— it’s cold in here, too, colder than he remembers it being, and the air prickles what skin is exposed like fire.

He feels bad for assuming Grace would punish him, he’s too kind to do that, he’s far too gentle, of course he won’t do that to correct him, even if every fibre of Simon’s body still expects something, some kind of hurt to come down on his head, something deserved to make him remember exactly what he did, what he is, and put him back where he belongs.

The blood is still so thick, too-wet and tacky and it is everywhere, seeping into his throat and heavy across his skin and Simon squirms weakly, not wanting to get it on Grace.

He can’t let it touch Grace, he’s too precious, too important.

But Grace won’t let him go, the arm wrapped around his torso squeezing just a fraction tighter and Simon wonders why his ribs aren’t hurting, if he’s just not feeling it for some reason, because he is definitely feeling everything else.

Everything aches. His joints are burning like they were put to the fire and his head feels like it’ll just crack open.

He registers only dimly Grace shouting for Rocky to engage the centrifuge, but he does feel it when the gravity spins up.

They land haphazardly on the floor and Simon’s knees buckle against his will, giving out as his head spins. Without Grace’s arm around his shoulders he’d have fallen to the floor.

Grace half pulls, half drags him down into the medical bay while Simon tries to get his feet to obey him and help take the weight. They stumble over to one of the beds and Simon slumps onto it.

He waits, and hears the quick beep of the radiation tracker, before Grace exhales shakily and steps closer, his sneakers making soft thuds on the floor.

Simon pries his eyes open to see the low warm light of the medical bay, and Grace leaning over him. His fluffy blonde hair is backlit by the lamps.

Simon is too tired to fight it when Grace tilts his chin up just a bit to see his eyes, and he lists into the touch, blinking and trying to keep his eyes open so he can keep looking at his savior.

Grace is frowning, the lines around his eyes crinkled in worry, but his hands are gentle as they brace Simon’s shoulders.

Simon goes with it when Grace pushes him gently down onto the bed before fluffing up some blankets and draping them over him.

Simon shivers, the chills starting to hit in earnest, and in between one moment and the next Grace is gone, vanished from his sight, and Simon starts to panic just a little.

Everything has a strange hazy quality to it, as though the world has been draped in gauze, and he grits his teeth to keep them from chattering as he’s dragged back into the submarine, into the moments when he was so delirious that he didn’t know up from down, when he was hallucinating his mom’s voice and his hands covered in blood and the slices of a mad god peering at him in an ocean of red red red red red—

Simon whimpers, curling in on himself as his hands come up subconsciously to tangle in his hair.

He can’t do this, he can’t get the voices out of his head and they are screaming at him, always the same.

TRAITOR MURDERER BUTCHERBUTCHERBUTCHER YOUWILLDIEWITHTHERESTOFUS THEREISNOTHINGYOUCANDO—

He doesn’t want to die.

He doesn’t want to die, not here, not like this, not so far from home— home? What home?

He has not been there in years, not in the years since his mother died, and how he wishes so desperately that she was here with him, he could really use her help right now.

With trembling fingers he reaches automatically for the place at his right shoulder where the knife sheathe has sat for twenty years, but it’s not there and he thinks for a terrible moment, fear choking his throat, that he has lost the last piece of her somewhere beneath the waves.

No, no, he can’t— he can’t lose her, it’s the only thing he still has, and he wanted to show Grace— show him— show him what? The pathetic scraps of a life he has left?

He wants to tell him about his mom and her smile and how she used to slip scraps of food to the other mothers on Eden with young children—

Grace. He’s not there. Simon’s on the Hail Mary, it’s not the ocean, he’s out of the ocean and he’s never going back, ever, he’s okay—

He pries his eyes open again and he’s staring at a sideways view of the medical bay, somehow he hasn’t moved an inch despite the thrashing going on in his head.

Although it takes a tremendous amount of effort, he reaches down toward his belt and fumbles open the pouch there. His fingers brush the worn leather of the sheathe and he is finally able to get a breath, even as a chill washes over him, leaving him shaking.

Pain skitters through his muscles, ricocheting in every direction, and he whines low in his throat, pulling the sheathe out and bringing it up close to his face, stroking the leather with his thumb automatically as the blankets rub against his skin and send flares of prickling sensation up.

His mom had given him the sheathe when he was six, something special shared between them even though they didn’t do birthdays on Eden.

The sheathe and the little knife that had come with it had been almost too big in his hands, but she’d taught him how to wear and hold them, showed him how to use the knife to cut rope and for cooking, and Simon had felt so happy that he was able to help her with her chores.

The knife had been small and sharp, and it was only years later that he realized the handle was made of bone. It had what she explained was her initials engraved on it.

To Simon, it was the most precious thing in the world.

Simon’s mom had always been a little different than the other adults on Eden. She wasn’t cold like the others. There was something warm in her, even as the heat and the light began to dissipate, and she didn’t hesitate to share it.

She always found something to be cheerful about. The thing he remembers the clearest is the upward turn of her lips and the mischievous sparkling in her eyes when she was happy.

It always seemed like she knew a secret that no one else did.

Grace is a lot like that. He’s cheerful like that, and smart.

Simon’s mom had been so smart, she’d been the one to finally work out the anti-matter drive, and she was always doing calculations when she wasn’t mending things. Simon doesn’t think his mom really believed in Eden, but he’d never gotten the chance to ask.

When he was twelve, something happened. Illness swept through Eden, bringing fever and delirium and death.

He hadn’t been affected, so he faded into the background, ignoring the threat of punishment and stealing what rations and spare supplies he could, taking them back to his mom where she lay insensible on their shared mattress.

There wasn’t much he could do, and over long, agonizing days she grew sicker and sicker until he could barely hear her breathing, unless he was right next to her.

Simon had been panicking the whole time, but by that point it had sunk in— she wasn’t getting better.

He’d lain down next to her on their mattress and curled into her side, not wanting to shift away from her too-hot skin. It had felt like she was burning up through her clothes.

He stayed put, for hours or days he didn’t know, until the rhythmic sound under his ear stopped.

Simon doesn’t have faith in God, not anymore. Not in the way Eden preaches.

He hasn’t since that day, when he stayed frozen for hours beside the body of his mother, praying desperately under his breath that the slow cooling meant she was getting better, and not fading away.

He hasn’t believed that God actually cares about anyone for years. The ocean and its monsters just confirmed something he already knew—

God is real, and he did not care about him. No one was coming to save him.

He shifts on the bed, uncomfortable, as his limbs ache and spasm. The blankets are somehow already tangled around his legs.

It’s dark in here, the lights turned down as low as they can go, and he shakes his head, trying to dispel the idea that it’s the flickering electric light inside the Iron Lung.

That turns out to be a mistake, and his head pounds.

Simon squeezes his eyes so tightly shut that he sees little bursts of color, but when he opens them he nearly screams.

He lies beside his mother, indistinct as she is in the near darkness, curled together on their mattress just like they used to, but Simon can’t stop the flinch when she reaches up and brushes a lock of hair out of his eyes.

Her hands are cold as ice, the texture leathery, and something in the pit of Simon’s stomach drops with dread.

Even so he leans into the touch, his eyelashes fluttering with the overwhelming urge to cry as he surrenders, and his mom props herself up on one elbow.

Her ebony tresses, graying at the temples and always smelling of rose water, cascade down around them both, as her hand drifts down his face toward his chin.

“Oh Si,” she whispers hoarsely. “What have they done to you, baby?”

Simon blinks, not wanting to look away from her. “M-mom— I—“

His throat is too tight to form the words.

He doesn’t expect it when she abruptly has him by the throat, too much force coming from decaying fingers, and he startles, tries to speak, even as the pressure closes his windpipe.

His mom leans forward until they are almost nose to nose. “Was it worth it?” she rasps. “Are you proud?”

For a single suspended moment there is light, and he can see her face— it is horrible, the skin loose over sunken cheeks and eyes decaying into nothing so much as moist pits of clear jelly, teeth missing and rotting in blackened gums, the sunken rictus grin of a skull overtaking her face and making it almost unrecognizable.

Simon falls back, his heart beating nearly out of his chest, trying to get away from this thing that is not his mother as it hisses at him, words of accusation and whispers of absolving light buried below the surface, because she wouldn’t send him down there, right?

Surely she wouldn’t condemn him to that, not even if she hated him, no, no, nononono she wouldn’t, i-it wouldn’t—

He flails, wrenching at the blankets entrapping him and suddenly there are hands, there are hands on him and they are grasping, pulling, reaching—

reaching into him and into the places where his organs should be and tearing at his skin and climbing his sides, the phantom sensations of a thousand hands scratching and tearing and pulling, yanking him down, all the people he’s hurt, the brothers he’s betrayed trying to pull him down to hell, because surely that is where he belongs—

The cold floor of the medical bay comes as a shock so sudden that it jolts him back to reality, only to feel the burning, aching sensation of chilled tile against his too-hot skin.

Simon keens in pain involuntarily, still feeling that sensation of hands reaching and reaching and reaching and dragging him under—

He scrambles backwards until his back hits a wall and curls in on himself as tightly as he can manage, unable to stop scalding tears from rolling down his burning cheeks.

He rests his head on his knees, shuddering, and grits his teeth, trying to tell himself that none of this is real, it can’t be, there’s no one else here but Rocky and Grace—

there’s no one else here, he’s in space, in space where there are still real stars, he’s not alone in the void and he never will be again, he’s not back there—

The sound of a footstep startles Simon and his head snaps up, sending a jolt of pain through his temples and his neck.

There is an angel standing across the room.

They’re tall, cast mostly in shadow, a radiant halo of soft light shining behind their head, turning everything soft and fuzzy around the edges, and fluffy curls shine at the edges like gilded gold— Grace.

Simon doesn’t want to look away, but he leans his head back against the wall, shivering. He can’t seem to stop shaking, even as Grace takes a few steps closer.

“Hey, Si,” he says softly. “Can you hear me right now? You seem a little out of it.”

Simon squeezes his eyes shut, praying that Grace will come closer, will allow him just a single touch, but the footsteps stop by the bed.

He forces his eyes open again, only to find that Grace has stopped by the bed, depositing the things he’s carrying on a nearby shelf.

He’s talking. “I’m not gonna come too close, I don’t want to spook you if you’re not all here, but I’ve got some stuff that’ll hopefully help with the fever.”

He lowers himself to the ground slowly, until he’s leaning against the supports of the bed, legs stretched out in front of him. He gives him a smile, and Simon fights the urge to whimper.

He hasn’t believed that Grace is truly an angel for a while now, but… it’s hard sometimes.

How can someone so good, so kind, not be something divine? How can someone so much like sunlight exist in this world that is so full of darkness? It doesn’t make sense, and it makes a pit open in Simon’s stomach….

Because if Grace can exist, then all the cruelty, all the betrayal, all the heinous shit he’s done was a choice, a choice that he made, over and over and over— he doesn’t deserve an angel.

He doesn’t deserve any of this, not really.

(It feels like this kindness was meant for someone else.)

Grace has explained before how he and Rocky were sent on missions by their planets to save the stars, how they discovered the solution together and have been working on a way to send it back.

He’s explained all of it, all the things they risked and the discoveries they made and the sheer numbers of lives staked on their success or failure, but it hasn’t hit Simon until exactly this moment what this means.

The savior of the entire world is in front of him, the person who has stopped the fucking stars from going out, and instead of doing something more important he is here, trying to take care of Simon.

It’s sinking in that Grace risked his life and the well-being of Earth (home), of billions of people, for a single, worthless convict like Simon.

The last hope of humanity, their literal Hail Mary, and he put it all on the line just to save a sinner with the blood of nearly a hundred people on his hands.

Simon tries to take a gasping breath, feeling the weight of his choices crushing down on his shoulders, and shudders.

He doesn’t know how he will ever repent for the things he’s done.

Grace could have died.

He could have died while trying to save Simon and condemned all life left in the world in process.

Simon curls in on himself, hands fisting in his hair. He’s not worth it. He’s not worth that.

He used to believe that he was worth saving, but the universe has done nothing but tell him, over and over and over again, that he is not, that it doesn’t matter if he wants to live because there are other more important lives out there.

Why would Grace— why did he—

“Simon? Hey, bud, it’s okay. You’re not in danger right now.”

Grace’s voice is still soft, soft like silk and warm, but it cuts through Simon’s spiral like a knife.

He glances up from behind a curtain of dark hair, squinting against the light, and finds Grace, offering a hand to him.

“C’mere, come sit with me,” he says, and Simon breaks.

He is, at his core, a selfish man.

For all his self-hatred, all his repentance, Simon is selfish, and he aches.

Somehow Simon has fallen into a miracle he doesn’t deserve, but that doesn’t stop him from wanting.

So, when Grace offers, Simon goes.

He crawls to him, his arms shaking with the strain of supporting his weight. A thousand phantom hands claw at him and catch his clothes and try to drag him back, and Simon fights it with everything he has, gritting his teeth and forcing himself to move forward, closer to the warmth of his rescuer.

When he is within reach, Grace stretches his arm out and wraps it around Simon’s shoulders, drawing him close, and Simon collapses, laying his head once again in his lap. It’s almost a perfect mirror of the first time, and Simon wonders passingly at the fact that he ever thought Grace would be cruel to him.

He’s too kind, too merciful, for that. Simon blinks up at him but can’t stop the whimper that sneaks out from between his teeth at the chill that has suddenly crept over him.

Grace makes a shushing sound as he reaches for something behind him, and Simon closes his eyes automatically, even though he doesn’t think Grace is reaching for a knife, not really.

A weight drops over him, something warm, and Simon registers the soft fabric as a blanket.

He blinks again, not wanting to look away from those sky-blue eyes that are looking down at him with so much kindness— although there are faint worry lines around them.

Grace is worried about him. No, he shouldn’t do that, he should save his worrying for someone more important, that’s not for Simon.

He shifts, uncomfortable, and reaches out to grasp the hem of Grace’s shirt carefully.

“… please—“ he rasps. “The hands, they— they won’t leave me alone, it’s— they’re gonna drag me back—“

Even to his own ears the words sounds slurred, and those lines in Grace’s forehead deepen.

Moving so slowly it’s almost imperceptible, he brushes sweat-soaked locks of hair out of Simon’s eyes.

Grace’s fingers trail down his jaw, down to his throat, and Simon can feel him pause for a moment, his fingertips resting right at the place where the jugular vein skims close to the surface of his skin like a silverfish.

Simon’s pulse flutters against his fingers frantically.

Simon can’t bring himself to move. He is frozen, something in him simultaneously terrified and rapturous, unable to look away.

Grace’s hand comes to rest at the back of his neck for a moment, cradling his head, scratching light patterns into the sensitive skin of his scalp, and Simon shudders, the sensation rippling out from those points of contact.

He whines softly, pressing himself closer, and Grace lets him.

Time crawls. After what feels like a few thousand years, Grace begins to move again.

His hand drifts down, from Simon’s neck to his shoulder, resting there for a moment, his touch firm and yet somehow delicate, and— oh.

Grace begins to stroke his hand down Simon’s back, down his arms, and Simon can’t help but shudder under his touch.

He is freezing cold, but Grace’s touch is warm, the warmth of the embers left in a fire, the warmth of a comet tail a hundred million miles long, burning bright against the darkness.

“Is this helping?” he asks.

Simon forces himself to nod, just a tiny bit. It’s all he has energy for.

Grace is golden sunlight and amber honey and summer skies and all the things Simon thought he’d never see, and he has chased the darkness away.

Grace’s hands have left trails of radiance in their wake, turning the sparking sensitivity in his skin into a gentle blazing warmth, and the phantom hands no longer have a claim on Simon.

Grace has driven them all away.

Grace’s lips twitch up just the smallest amount. “Good. Okay, we need to try to bring your fever down, yeah? I’ve got some cool clothes, I’m gonna put them on your forehead and neck for a bit.”

As Grace is laying the clothes across his skin, Simon can’t help but wonder if he knows he’s speaking to him like he’s a child. He doesn’t… really mind it, to be honest.

He’s floating in a daze, but it’s better than before, better than out on the hull— because he’s not alone. He’s not alone, not anymore, not here.

Simon closes his eyes for just an instant, just to rest, he just needs a little rest, and Grace goes back to softly scratching at his scalp with the very lightest touch of his nails.

Simon’s still in so much pain, still shivering despite the warmth of the blanket, but he tries his best to focus on the benediction his savior is giving him, on the gentle touches that leave tiny individual echoes of sensation. It feels like some holy revelation, to be touched like this.

Simon had almost forgotten what gentleness felt like, what it was to allow someone near enough to touch without flinching.

He leans into Grace’s hand, not able to find it in himself to care that he’s behaving like some abandoned creature, all starvation-stark ribs and weeping wounds, when it is finally given somewhere to rest.

How many prayers has he said in vain, asking for just a fraction of what Grace has given him freely? How raw are his knees, from the penance he’s already paid, and how often can he repent for something that at the time— at the time he believed was right?

This— this is what he has not shared with anyone, and what he will not share with Grace.

This is the thing that he holds over himself, a self-imposed Sword of Damocles where the edges have grown not dull but ever sharper with time. The blade has grown so razor-thin that it slices through the air now and leaves half-remembered whispered prayers.

For so long, so many years after his mother died, Simon let the hurt fester and rot as it scabbed over, until calluses became callousness and he just… stopped caring.

He let himself become the thing they loved and feared, the thing they used when all else failed, and he almost reveled in it.

It had felt good, to have a purpose. To know where he belonged in Eden, to know that they would have use of him.

They weren’t allowed to touch the Last Tree, toward the end. It was sickening and dying, even though the Father insisted it would grow healthy and strong if only they could find more blood to water the soil.

Everybody knew it.

The bark was beginning to flake, the leaves no longer grew, and it seemed to be ever more gnarled with each passing year, as though the cares of all the people had been hung from its branches with hangman’s rope.

Simon has spent so many years serving a cause that only now he can see for what it is— callousness and cruelty, masquerading as salvation.

Eden never cared for the human life it stole, those at the top only wanted more for themselves. Simon can see that now.

He just wishes he had been able to see it earlier, to pull away before— before it happened.

Filament Station was when it all crumbled apart. That was when the old wounds reopened, the flesh of his mind laid bare and flayed before the realization of what he’d done, what he’d enjoyed doing.

He had deluded himself into thinking they were right, that he was right, and look at what that had done.

Simon doesn’t know if he’s been drifting in and out of sleep or not, but he feels it when Grace shifts and immediately everything in him springs back to full awareness.

The sudden burst of adrenaline does nothing except make the pain more acute, and his eyes fly open as his savior moves. He doesn’t have the reserves left to fight the whimper that leaves his throat.

His grip on Grace’s shirt tightens. “…p-please—“ he croaks, his voice rough as gravel. “Please don’ leave, I-I can’t—“

But it doesn’t stop Grace from moving away. Simon is lowered gently to the ground and he curls in on himself reflexively, anything to stop the aching in his joints and the terrible sensation of the cold creeping back in.

“I-I’ll be good, I swear, whatever y-you want, jus’ please d-don’t— don’t leave me, I-I can’t go back, please don’ send me back, I can’t—“ he can’t seem to stop, the air feeling too thin in his lungs as he goes from a mumble to nearly a shriek, and suddenly there are hands on him.

He flinches, expecting the attempt to pull him down again, but no, it’s Grace, he’s back, he’s touching Simon’s shoulders carefully and trying to pull him into a sitting position. “Hey, hey, it’s okay, I’m right here, I just had to get the thermometer.”

Simon goes with him, barely able to make any effort to move on his own, and Grace lets him lean into his shoulder as his head spins furiously.

He lets Grace take his temperature— it doesn’t matter, none of it matters, because he should be dead.

He should already be dead, for any number of reasons, and there’s not really a purpose for him to keep existing. It doesn’t matter, if he’s got a fever or not.

He finished the mission, he got the blackbox back, and Grace doesn’t need him. He should have died a long time ago and he’s just been a dead man walking.

Grace moves again and Simon grips his biceps tightly with strength he didn’t realize he had left. “Please, stay, I know there’s no— no point but please, everything hurts an’ it’s safer with you, please…”

Grace wraps an arm around his shoulders and tries to move them both in an upward direction. It’s very difficult— Simon’s practically dead weight at this point, and although he tries the only thing he can do is cling to Grace.

He cradles Simon, playing with strands of his hair, but he can’t get them past kneeling. “It’s okay, Si, I promise. I’m not going anywhere. We just gotta get you on the bed, okay? You’ll be more comfortable there.”

Simon nods listlessly, unable to parse the sensations in his body apart from pain. Standing up seems impossible, and he can tell Grace is struggling.

He should just leave him here on the floor, he’s fine on the floor, he’s slept on the floor for years, it wasn’t like the prison cells had mattresses, he’ll be fine—

There is soft music coming from somewhere behind him. “Friend Simon okay, question?” It’s Rocky.

Grace shifts against him, and his answer rumbles in Simon’s chest. “Yeah, bud, he’s… he’s alive, he’s got a pretty bad fever but he’s not shedding radiation. You can come over.”

There is a quiet clatter, and the sound of music. It’s soft and gentle and Simon suddenly feels something nudge itself up underneath his arm.

He blinks down at Rocky dazedly as the little alien nestles into his side, his carapace crouched low to the ground. He’s back in the shimmery close-fitting suit.

Grace’s eyebrows jump and he seems to realize what his friend is doing. He shifts, so Simon is half-leaning on Rocky, and he slowly pushes them both upright.

Rocky moves with Simon as Grace pulls him to his feet, pressed into his side and under his arm and extending his legs slowly until he’s standing.

Simon leans on him heavily, and the rock alien helps him move the handful of steps over to the bed, trilling softly in a key that makes his suit reverberate against Simon’s skin.

Rocky is very, very warm.

Grace braces him as he sinks down onto the side of the bed, and Simon sways when he steps away. He blinks, and Grace is across the room, collecting— something.

In the time he’s had his eyes closed Rocky has moved, plunking two limbs down on the bed so he’s propped up at an angle.

Simon leans against him as his vents click softly. “Keep Friend Simon safe, no worry. Will be okay. Need rest, heal. Get better. Will watch.”

Simon nods slowly. “…okay…”

Grace returns, this time with things in hand. He guides Simon slowly to lay down, and then spreads something over him— a quilt.

It’s a quilt, soft and warm and patterned with beautiful colors that Simon’s vision is too blurry to decipher.

Grace climbs onto the bed after, settling himself so he’s leaning against the wall, and reaches out for Simon again.

He goes, of course, and lets Grace pull him closer until he’s half in his lap again.

But this time it’s different— Grace shuffles them both so that Simon’s ear comes to rest on his chest, his head tucked beneath Grace’s chin.

Arms wrap around him, solid and warm and oh, it has been so long since he was held.

Simon can’t help it, he melts, all the tension and the fight draining out of his limbs until he feels like he may never move again.

Distantly he registers light scrabbling and the settling of a five-legged presence, then Rocky rests a limb very lightly on his side and trills softly.

“Simon rest. Rocky Grace watch,” the Eridian hums, and Simon opens his eyes just a sliver.

He stretches a hand out, feeling like he’s moving through molasses, and taps twice on the glass over Rocky’s claws.

There are other creatures out there in the universe, there are actual, honest-to-god aliens, and he was somehow lucky enough to meet this one.

And this one… is incredible. Is smart, and funny, and often very impatient, and so impossibly kind.

He cares about Simon, someone from another species who he has never met, as though he were his own.

It is another revelation all its own, one he’s already had but which is hitting him all over again, to realize that this little rock alien cares about him simply because he’s alive.

Simon curls himself up a little tighter, drawing his legs up closer to Rocky.

It’s only now that he registers that he’s covered in the quilt, the enormous patchwork quilt that Grace often wears around his shoulders.

He’d explained to him, at some point, how the different squares show different symbols, and said that hundreds of different people had made the pieces, had passed it around the world, adding lucky charms, to send with the astronauts to Tau Ceti.

It feels like a blessing, a benediction, to be tucked around him this way, and Simon cannot help but wonder if all people on Earth are as kind as Grace.

Are humans supposed to be like this? Are they supposed to be this kind? Or perhaps Grace is an outlier, an anomaly, something warm and radiant and divine.

Perhaps he is special, and the kindness that flows freely from him like cascading waterfalls is something that the people of Earth sorely miss.

He loses bits of time, he thinks. Things turn slippery in his mind.

More than once he’s jolted into nightmarish dreams, visions of blood and gods not their own and long, razor sharp teeth, the thinning ribs of starving winters.

Simon cannot help but whine low in his throat as each vision passes, feeling as though he’s drifting untethered in the abyss.

Each time, Grace is what draws him back.

His heartbeat, steady and rhythmic under Simon’s ear. His hands, that move softly as though Simon is some precious thing, something to be treasured, that stroke his hair and rub circles into his back.

Grace lets him fall apart, and Simon tries to trust that he will hold him together until he can do it himself.

It’s getting worse, he’s pretty sure. He feels too hot and freezing by turns, the low, steady ache of the fever moving through him in waves.

Simon whimpers when he begins to shake involuntarily, the muscles spasming in his legs and his forearms and everywhere, but he is rewarded by Grace stroking his hair out of his eyes gently.

He tries to press a little closer to Grace’s warmth, to curl a little closer to him, and as desperate as he is to know that he’s not alone he doesn’t care if it’s pathetic.

He lets out a low keen in the back of his throat, some combination of pain and fear and exhaustion, and is reminded of the ‘kindness’ afforded by the other Brothers of Eden the last time he was sick.

It was nothing, really, quiet and solitude to recover, but nothing more, leaving him broken in the dark waiting to either get better or die.

He spent so long in the darkness that time, unsure if he would ever heal, a dog abandoned in its kennel until such a time as it would be useful again.

It had been a hard few days, and when Simon had finally emerged he had been just a little more tired and a little more wary of the ones who left him to lie there on a filthy mattress alone with a raging fever.

Grace isn’t like that. Grace is good, Grace is kind, Grace is warmth and radiance and all the good things they lost long ago, and Simon can’t help but feel he has somehow stumbled into a dream, into an afterlife not meant for sinners like him.

Some small part of him still insists that he will be cast out when Grace discovers the full extent of his crimes, but Simon cannot bring himself to care any longer.

Grace cares about his well-being, although Simon has not quite figured out why, and he will protect him and help him heal.

He is like the most highly revered of angels— he is a savior, a healer, a helper, someone who comes with open hands and solutions to drive away the darkness descending on humanity.

Simon exhales shakily and reaches up to curl a hand into Grace’s shirt. He has never thanked Grace for rescuing him, for taking such care to make sure he’s recovered.

“…t-thank you,” he croaks out, his voice hoarse, and he can feel Grace shift under his ribcage.

Simon swallows. “Thank you, for… everything.”

Grace has frozen for a moment, but slowly he returns to combing his fingers through Simon’s hair. His other arm is still wrapped firmly around Simon’s back.

“You’re welcome,” he says softly. “I couldn’t… leave someone else alone out here.”

Simon blinks up at him, wondering in passing if he has actually been hallucinating, because how could someone so beautiful and kind really exist in the world?

Grace cradles him close, as though he’s something delicate to be protected, and his voice rumbles in his chest when he speaks.

Simon feels the words more than hears them. “You’re safe. You’re safe, you’re okay, it’s going to be alright.”

Simon doesn’t know exactly when the realization hits, as they lay here, that Grace is right. He’s safe. He’s actually safe.

He is cared for, is valued, is protected from the danger outside, from Eden and the COI and the ocean and all of it.

He never has to go back.

Simon hiccups, then sobs, turning his face into Grace’s chest and squeezing his eyes shut as the tears begin to well. He has nothing left to stop it with, and so he cries.

He cries for a long time, the tears running down his cheeks, as Grace continues to murmur reassurances. It feels holy, feels like absolution and catharsis.

For such a long time, Simon has been nothing but Eden’s attack dog, their Butcher, their monster.

He’s almost forgotten his own name before, with how little they used it.

He was a title, a role, a tool to them, never a person, and for so many years he begrudgingly accepted it because he had nowhere else to go.

But he doesn’t have to be that here.

Perhaps he can choose something anew, can find his way from here under the guidance of the gods of the stars, can learn from the universe, the universe that is so much larger and stranger and infinitely wiser than the humans who thought it disappeared.

And if it isn’t possible for him to survive any more, if he’s run out of chances, maybe death itself will greet him gently and kindly.

Simon can accept that, he will accept that with dignity, for it is more than he ever allowed himself to want— he will have died for a purpose, one of his own choosing, a purpose that will leave someone, somewhere, just a little bit better off than they were before.

He hopes Ava is okay.

He can still her voice in his ear, the cold confidence that had shattered apart into desperate pleading in those long, torturous moments before they lost contact.

Simon had hated her, at first. He had hated her and her second-in-command and everyone else on the tow ship, mostly on principle. But he’d volunteered for the realization program.

He’d volunteered to go down, had trusted that they had a deal. Maybe he shouldn’t have.

But he can’t hate Ava, no matter how much he tries, because she had a job to do, people to protect. He knows what it’s like.

When he looked at her, he’d seen the steel in her voice for what it was— a rusting, failing suit of armor, one that was rapidly falling apart, one that she was desperately trying to hold together under the weight of all the lives in her hands.

And he’d seen that armor fail, heard the panic in her voice, when they were both lost beneath the ocean, trying desperately to find each other in the darkness.

She didn’t have to come find him herself.

She didn’t have to take the risk, but she did anyway, and she’d spent what he’d thought was her last breath apologizing, voice cracking, and telling him that she was sorry she’d failed him.

Simon can still hear the panic in her voice, the terror, and something softer, something kind, something very human. That softness had bled through earlier, too, when she’d offered her name to him like an olive branch, an outstretched hand, trusting that he wouldn’t bite. And so Simon hadn’t.

He’s delivered the black box back safely, has held up his end of the bargain, and now he is free, by the terms of the deal they’d made. He has fulfilled his promise.

He can only hope that Ava lives, and is able to do something good with it. He prays that she did not trade her life for his, if only so that she can survive a little longer, maybe without the armor this time.

Not for the first time, Simon wonders what sort of god would have made a world where such armor was necessary.

He remembers the great staring eye looking down at him through the hole in reality and shudders.

Grace’s hand plays with the ends of his hair absently.

The thing about the god, Simon thinks, is that it didn’t really know them at all. The eel had seemed to think it was something else, something from beyond, and he is not inclined to dispute that.

A half remembered sentence resurfaces in his mind. An ignorant god looks through a pinhole and thinks what it sees is all there is…

There it is, he thinks, there’s the epiphany.

Simon does not believe that what he saw in that vision —nightmare? Or horrible reality?— was the god he has been taught to pray to, the god he was taught existed in everything, a Creator and Destroyer in equal measure.

For years on Eden, the Father preached that the Great Creator no longer cared about humans, that he had abandoned them in the remnants of his failed universe, but that they could return to his Light if only they were willing to sacrifice everything.

It has been a long time since Simon has trusted the thing that calls itself God.

Does he believe in Him? That, he’s not sure of, but he sure as hell does not trust him, nor anything claiming to have the power to right the universe, because what kind of creature, even one that powerful, could bring the stars back to life?

He looks up at Grace for a moment, at the brilliant indigo eyes as bright as sky, and he wonders what it would be like to touch his hair. It looks soft, the low light of the medical bay making the air around him go slightly fuzzy and washed out.

Grace is radiant, the light making the ends of his hair glow like a halo, and Simon cannot help but think that he has found his angel.

He has found his Creator in another person, somehow, in the someone who preserved the glittering expanse of the heavens and will set all to rights.

His saving Grace, his rescuer, who appeared by some act of divine intervention in a blaze of starlight to lift him from his grave— who has showed him so much, the vast and messy and sprawling life of the universe, who has showed him that he can get right up close and place his hand to the thundering pulse of it, can taste it with the back of his teeth, and it tastes like citrus and sea-salt and effervescence.

Grace places a hand to Simon’s forehead, those sky-blue eyes crinkling with worry, and Simon receives the touch as if it’s a benediction, the blessing of something holy, and closes his eyes.

He has never felt the religious fervor that those on Eden swear their souls by, has never felt tempted to lay his sins down at the altar of the Tree so they may be judged and forgiven, for he has long known that forgiveness is not something that will be granted to a muzzled, rabid dog like him, but in Grace’s arms perhaps he can find another altar of his own creation.

Whatever happens, whether he lives or die, Simon will remember this moment as one of bliss.

For once in his life, he doesn’t have to be what he’s been, he can find something new, something better.

Perhaps instead of the snarling, beaten dog, tugging ineffectually at the chains of his masters, he can be something else, something softer, something more suited to the benediction of gods.

After all, isn’t God always shown as a shepherd, he thinks, as Grace fusses with strands of hair that have fallen in his eyes.

Perhaps instead of that attack dog he can come out the other side of this consecration made of fever and fealty something born anew, something soft and trusting and gentle, far more lamb than wolf, something that could stand before the altar of judgement and be trembling and terrified and weak and yet still be treated as worthy.

And if Grace needs it, if ever it comes to the point where he cannot afford to keep Simon anymore, he will go willing and quiet, he will accept the end for what it is, will revel in it even, because it will be an end not of slaughter but of sacrifice.

If ever Grace requires his blood to be spilled, that deepest of spellcraft, that kind that is ancient and familiar and divine, he will accept it as the lamb accepts the knife, knowing and trusting that its Shepherd means for it to become something far more important.

And God, if he exists, if he still cares, might smile.

Grace’s tone is worried, his voice low. “Hey, Si, stay with me, okay? Your fever is really high, we have to get it down.”

Simon leans into his hands, blinking contentedly up at him, and Grace exhales. His hands are shaking. Why are his hands shaking?

His angel tries for a smile. “We’re gonna need to give you medicine for it, but the best way to deliver it is if you’re asleep. If Armando keeps you sedated for a bit, just until your fever goes down, it’ll give you a better chance. Is that okay?”

Simon nods, a bit dazed, and he doesn’t totally understand all of the words but it doesn’t matter. Grace thinks it’s best, so he’ll do it.

He watches as the mask and its plastic tubing appear, held in the grip of the clawed robot. Rocky is trilling beside him, a low, comforting rumble against his hip that soothes something inside him.

Grace takes the mask from Armando, and Simon wants to reach up and wipe away the tears that are welling in his eyes.

There’s no reason to cry, it’s okay. If this is how it ends, then he’s glad to go like this.

Simon tilts his chin up and lets Grace slip the mask on, feeling the plastic settle against his face.

His savior’s arms wrap around him again, holding him close, and Simon can hear Grace’s heart beating in his chest. The beat is steady, but accelerated, a slightly uneven rhythm.

Grace’s hand tangles in his hair, and Simon lets his eyes slip closed, nestling a little closer to his angel. He draws a breath, letting the acidic medicine-taint of the mask’s oxygen wash over him, and lets himself relax.

The last thing he hears before he drifts off to sleep is Grace, murmuring softly somewhere above him— “You’re safe, you’re here with us, it’s going to be okay, I promise…” —and a warm, gentle hand in his hair.

***

Grace can’t do this. He can’t do it, he feels like his lungs have stopped working, he doesn’t know what to do.

He holds Simon close, trying desperately to be mindful of the pressure and not squish him now that he’s peacefully asleep. He feels like he’s coming apart at the seams.

A stony claw comes to rest on his arm in its suit. “Friend Grace. Breathe,” Rocky whistles, the translator’s volume turned down as low as it will go, and Grace tries to follow his advice.

He breathes in. Out. Repeat. Repeat again. And he holds Simon.

He holds the other man close to his chest, unwilling to let him go, unwilling to put even an inch of space between them even as his skin prickles and burns as though it’s on fire at the sensation of another human being in his arms.

Simon had been dazed when he looked up at him, far away, only half listening and taken over by fever, but it doesn’t make it better because Grace had looked down into those warm brown eyes and saw the trust there, the sheer fevered, fervent belief in him, and it scares him.

Something in Simon’s expression had been so open and trusting and reverent, as though he was looking up at a saint instead of a man, and Grace is scared.

He is terrified, actually.

This is too much, it’s too much and he can’t do it, he doesn’t know how to handle it.

Some part of him wants to bolt, wants to drop everything and run, but there’s nowhere to run to, and he can’t abandon his friends like that.

But even so it scares the hell out of him, almost as much as it did when he first registered that Simon had a fever.

It’s too much, that trust is being placed on him and it’s so heavy because what if one day he makes a mistake, or a wrong decision, what if he gets them all killed? What if he dooms the Earth to darkness because of something he chooses?

He has been handed Simon’s trust, something that he knows, he knows, is hard-won and incredibly precious, and Grace is freezing, freezing, freezing with it in his hands, unsure what to do with this fragile thing he’s been handed.

He is the deer in the headlights, the startled, wild creature that will bolt at the slightest provocation, and he always has been, and he is so desperately lonely that he will cling to the only other human around for light years, the only other human who has tolerated his presence, even when he should be backing away, should be disengaging, should be discouraging whatever strange fevered devotion Simon has caught.

He should have known this was coming, what with the talk of where Simon grew up, and he has no idea what to do about it.

Simon is struggling, and Grace will cling to him anyway, even as he curses himself for it, because the alternative is loneliness, the alternative is never feeling the warmth of another human again and he thinks that if he has to go back to that existence after knowing one such as this he would go insane.

So where does that leave him?

Sitting here in one of the medical beds, willing himself to believe that it will work out alright and clinging to the man in his arms, the only person he knows out here, and hoping that he will survive the night.

You don’t really know him at all.

Maybe the thing that’s scaring Grace the most is that Simon looks at him like he’s someone special.

He looks at him like he holds all the answers, like he will know what to do at the end of the world, like he is some infallible deity who can decide the fate of everyone on a whim.

Or maybe it’s that he’s right.

Far too many lives are depending on him and Rocky, on the both of them succeeding in their missions and bringing the taumoeba home, and he knows that Stratt would say he should be working on getting the solution prepped and ready for travel, should be working around the clock to make sure that it reaches the people on Earth before it’s too late for them to do anything about it.

He shouldn’t be sitting here, unwilling to let go of Simon.

And Grace feels like he’s gotten away with something reckless, jeopardized the mission and humanity’s chances and come out the other side when he really shouldn’t have, he went against orders and he’s being so, so selfish, but if saving Simon is worth it, if one person can be worth it—

He runs up against a wall again, the end of the thought trailing off into nothing where there should be a conclusion, but he just… can’t remember.

You always knew you couldn’t trust her.

Grace knew the minute he met Eva Stratt that he couldn’t trust her, but it had been so damn hard to remember because they had grown to be… colleagues, certainly. He hopes they were friends.

He wishes she were here. She’d know what to do.

In fact, she’d probably already be doing it, be up in the cockpit figuring out how to transform what supplies they have into some kind of miracle, running on a double serving of coffee and an hour of sleep.

Grace exhales slowly. Simon kind of reminds him of Eva, actually.

They’re both quiet, reserved, watching the world through dark eyes and always, always, trying to figure out the people around them. Always more perceptive than expected, sharp-tongued and wickedly smart.

Eva had shown that intelligence more, Simon hides it.

He gets angry faster, she never allowed herself to do so.

Even so, the similarities remain, and Grace wonders how he keeps finding people who are so mysterious.

Mysteries hide betrayal. Mysteries lead to suffering.

He shakes his head to clear it, thinking that he should probably get some sleep soon, and looks down at Simon.

The man sleeps peacefully in his arms, although the image of those eyes, warm and dark like the Russian soil under his fingers on a squalling September morning, looking up at him with trust and quiet adoration, as he slipped the mask over his head, will haunt Grace for a long time.

He strokes Simon’s hair gently, tucking strands of sweat-soaked ebony behind his ears, coaxing the curls stuck to his neck off until they lay neatly.

Grace knows he’s staring, but it’s hard not to.

Simon is beautiful.

He is well and truly beautiful, somehow all sharp angles and bloody knuckles and hardened whipcord muscle, but soft too, soft curls and soft eyes and hands that move so very gently, handling everything with such care when they’d been in the lab that it nearly took Grace’s breath away to watch.

Simon’s hands have calluses, his skin bears scars, and all Grace can think is that these marks too are beautiful, are the irregularities collected over a lifetime, are reminders of that life in every twitch of muscle and press of skin as Grace holds him in his arms.

Simon is solid, and real, and here, and he’s warm —although currently he’s too warm, actually— and maybe it’s ridiculous for Grace to latch onto him as hard as he has but he’s missed this, truly he has, and it’s taking all of his self-control not to fall apart.

He has to keep it together right now.

He glances at the faint scar across the bridge of Simon’s nose.

It’s a diagonal slash, seemingly fairly recent, although it’s already faded from angry red to a barely perceptible white, tracing a path across his face in absentia as though it is not a physical thing but the concept of nothingness.

There are other things Grace has noticed, too. The cuts on Simon’s arms have faded yet more, the pink lines in place of gashes now faded all the way to white.

They’re not visible at the moment with Simon tucked securely under the quilt but he remembers the surprise and no small amount of horror on Simon’s face when they’d first changed the bandages.

But those are not what he is most interested in.

No, what draws his attention is the raised, gnarled burn scar on Simon’s neck. It is strange and branching, and it does not really look like it was meant to cover the tattoo underneath.

He had noticed it the first time Simon had laid his head in his lap, but now…

Grace doesn’t know how to explain it. The burn is somehow faded, moving along the color spectrum from pink toward white, its surface not quite so raised and angry.

In fact, even the tattoo seems off, fuzzy and indistinct where before the lines had been crisp.

Grace doesn’t know what to make of it, not being a doctor, but he would assume that Simon is healing.

According to Armando, his ribs are nearly healed already, fused back together into their proper shape within less than half the time it ought to take to fix.

The robot had decided, too, that Simon no longer needed the brace to support his wrist, that the muscles and ligaments and tendons and bones were in fully working order again.

It’s almost as though Simon is healing right before his eyes.

You don’t know what he is. He could be dangerous.

There is something strange going on onboard the Hail Mary, Grace can tell. Or perhaps the problem is him.

He’s been seeing tiny flickers of things, just shadows, out of the corners of his eyes sometimes, even when Rocky insists that no one is there, and there are whispers, human sounding whispers.

Grace has even gone so far as to dig Yao’s gun out and stash it safely, unloaded, beside his bunk.

Yao would have liked Simon, he thinks to himself. They would have gotten along.

Ilyukhina would have adored him, would have dragged him into all sorts of ridiculous things, and Simon would probably have liked her back.

He likes Rocky, after all, and Grace has often thought that the Eridian reminds him of his crazy Russian friend.

They are dead. They are dead and you are not and there is nothing you can do to bring them back.

Grace flinches, startled, and tightens his grip on Simon subconsciously.

Simon’s here now, he’s not going anywhere, Grace isn’t alone anymore and they found the problem in the coma pods anyway, they won’t repeat that.

He will take from you. You don’t know him. He will take and take and never give and eventually you will wake up with a knife to your throat, if you are lucky enough to be woken up.

The voices are getting louder, somehow.

Grace actually unwraps one of his hands from around Simon and reaches up to tug at his own hair, the motion and sensation familiar and comforting.

Simon isn’t like that. He wouldn’t think about—

He already has. He has thought of it already, has considered it before. You are not safe. You should get rid of him. Toss him out the airlock. Don’t you want to save yourself… coward?

Grace has a vague notion that he knows what is causing this, but the lab is so far away and he feels so very small.

He shakes his head. He has given Simon his trust, and has received it in return.

He has said it like a vow, sworn it like the most sacred of oaths, and he means it. He trusts Simon. He trusts him.

Maybe he’s scared but he has chosen to give his trust to this strange wanderer they found from the stars, and he will not go back on that. Not now.

Coward. Risking the lives of billions for your own personal comfort. You are a coward, Ryland Grace. We have seen your soul and you are not worth the oxygen. You are selfish. You risk everything for one man, so that you don’t feel so alone. Selfish.

Grace can’t stop the full-body flinch that overtakes him, and he curls forward, over Simon, as though trying to protect him.

Rocky takes notice, putting down his current project and shifting himself just slightly so he rests against Grace’s leg. “What wrong, question?”

Grace exhales, running his only free hand over his face. “I think— I think there’s something wrong, Rock. Voices— in my head. Think it’s… the sample, we pulled off the submarine.”

He looks around at the nest they’ve made, trying to figure out how to extricate himself. “I need— it needs to go.”

He eases Simon down onto the bed proper, moving slow, wincing when he stirs and subconsciously reaches out for warmth. Thankfully, he finds the edge of Rocky’s suit and Grace is able to escape.

He glances at Rocky. “Watch him, okay? I have to go do one thing.”

Rocky bobs his carapace in acknowledgement and settles closer to Simon, resting one claw lightly on his side, and from here Grace can see how hard Rocky is working to make sure he doesn’t get injured worse.

Grace hurries forward, something stinging in him already at the feeling, or rather the absence, of someone in his arms. He doesn’t waste time, though.

He makes it to the lab and heads right for the xenonite container for the strange fleshy substance they’d pulled off the walls, and in an instant all his fears are confirmed.

The strange substance is spreading, pulsating and twisting as he watches, tiny fleshy feelers pushing their way out through the cracks in the xenonite. One or two of the feelers even wave in the air, swaying, and Grace fights the urge to gag in disgust.

He picks the box up as gingerly as he can and starts to move. He can hear something howling in the back of his head, something screaming at him that he’s a coward, that if he really wanted to help humanity he would open the box.

Don’t you want to save everyone? Don’t you want to be a hero, or fool them into thinking you are one? Don’t keep him— you can’t save him. You cannot trust one such of him, you cannot think he is safe. His hands are dripping blood, the blood of innocent people, and yours will be too if you fail. You cannot fail, Dr. Grace. We need you, Dr. Grace. Find a way, Dr. Grace. Remember? She didn’t care about you either. Get rid of him. He will betray you, just as she betrayed all the others before.

Grace tries valiantly to ignore it, instead moving toward the airlock. He has to dispose of this thing, now.

(It’s getting so bad, hissing in the back of his head like a tea kettle, and he can barely see straight as he stumbles to the airlock.)

It takes him perhaps a minute to place it in the airlock, close the inner door, and remotely jettison the contents. He watches as the container floats off into space, feeling immensely relieved.

The voices fade away to nothingness. They’re gone. They’re gone.

Grace watches it float away for a moment, trying to decipher what he’s feeling. Relief, he thinks, because he no longer has to worry… but disappointment too, that he did not get to find out more.

But none of it matters. None of it does, not in this moment, not as much as his crew. Grace makes his way slowly back toward the medical bay and his friends.

He goes back to Simon.

He crawls into the bed, gets himself settled so he can hold Simon in his arms, his heart breaking a bit at the way Simon instinctively burrows into him and his warmth.

He strokes his hair again, something he’s already finding he likes to do, and tries to relax.

Rocky pats him on the shoulder carefully. “Friend Grace no worry. Rocky watch Grace Simon sleep. I have you, statement.”

Grace is immeasurably comforted by the presence of his rock-solid —haha, get it? That pun would get him booed out of class— best friend.

He slumps against the wall and closes his eyes, still holding Simon tight.

It feels wrong to let go of him. As though one slip, one mistake— and it all goes up in flames.

Grace has a secret— Simon should have died from the radiation poisoning alone.

The submarine he was in blasted him with so much radiation that if he had been anyone else, he would have died, but Grace has watched him recover, watched him actively find hope for the future, and for some reason beyond his comprehension it means that Simon is recovering.

His body is fighting the radiation sickness the only way it knows how— burning the infection out, until it becomes safe again.

Grace didn’t tell either Simon or Rocky because, at the time, it had just seemed kinder.

Rocky didn’t need to traumatize himself further by seeing what happened to humans, and Simon didn’t need to hear that he might still die when he had made it out of that submarine.

Somehow, Simon is healing right before his eyes, and if Grace were a superstitious man he would say it was because there was someone or something out there that didn’t want him to die, that wanted him to have another chance at a life.

Or, perhaps, it was something inside Simon himself that was preventing him from dying, some ferocious star-dust hope built on ash and the remnants of lives.

But either way, Simon lived against impossible odds.

Grace readjusts the quilt and closes his eyes. Come on, Si, get better. You did it once, you can do it again. Just… don’t leave me here, he thinks to himself, already feeling sleep beginning to tug at his bones.

Tag List, Part One!

@anuwubis @guppygalaxy @the-blue-eyed-fallen-angel @im-acatperson @trenchcoathunnybee08 @xothecryptid @fandom-skellyweirdo-jumper @bornwithnochains @machokoolkat @glitteroctopus72 @sophiasharp @cornix-the-void-crow @emjistarflower @dearest-darling-pharma @pink-lily-and-alana-moon @t00muchanxiety @zozgreenery @glasssphinix @reallarks @just-a-notion @tir3dace @i-am-so-normal-about-turtles @thethingwithfeathers11 @moon-storm @phthalocyanine-green @fin-139 @emmarose17 @grandmaster-penis @underwatersun @bornwithnochains @myronanempire @djvance @fanofsomestuff98 @mug-of-shark @notsoheterosapien @riven-system @marlon-does-art @quimble @bookie265 @phantom-things @asa-s @marvel-is-a-bitch @existingswing @my-mourning-coffee @ferrymens-lantern @pastasaway @ribbitty-rabbit @waffleloverx @mothman-go-eeeeeeeeee @grainypicofthemoon

#what a chapter

Trending Tags

Recently Viewed Tags

#what a chapter