Chapter Text
Simon wished more than anything that this had never happened at all.
He never had any choice in the matter. Growing up on Eden was a series of following orders with very little leisure time. No time to rest when survival is a daily battle. Filament station was a disaster, and he honestly didn’t even want to be there in the first place. But he was the highest ranking to have survived the capture from the COI, so he took the brunt of the blame. That led to a warped perception of who he was amongst the other inmates, and he very quickly earned the Butcher title after someone decided to see what Simon was about. His training kicked in, and granted the guy did have a homemade shiv, but he still felt bad. It felt like everyday he would wake up, make some choices he hated, and then fell asleep again.
He wishes he could sleep now, but he’s sure if he closed his eyes for too long now then he would never open them again. Something… happened when he heard Ava scream. He looks around for evidence of the black box, but it was nowhere to be seen. He can see shards of glass near the control panel and figures the window reopening must’ve sucked it out into the ocean. He hopes the data survives the ordeal and the scientists can do something with it. Frankly he’s too exhausted, terrified, and confused to make much sense of anything he experienced in the past week so he’s content to put it out of mind for now.
The last thing he remembers before the eerie quiet he now experiences was the screech of the creature that had been chasing him during his time in the SM-13. He swore it was about to rip open the ship, he heard the creak of the hull and watched the cracked glass of the window shatter completely. Light had flooded into the sub and then suddenly.. nothing. He’s not sure how much time had passed, but the ringing in his ears told him he more zoned out than passed out. He looks over and sees something sticking off of one of the main pipes that ran along the wall of the ship, maybe a foot in front of the remnants of his crudely drawn map of the blood ocean floor. A wave of nausea grips him as he realizes he’s staring at his own arm, and the searing pain suddenly floods his senses as his nervous system is reminded of the traumatic ordeal that adrenaline had pushed out of mind.
He turns over and throws up a dark, chunky, red substance. His vision swims as he realizes as it’s the same shade as literally everything else in the ship as it’s still coated in the horror that is apparently human blood. He whimpers slightly, and leans back so he’s sat up straight. He can feel himself loosing consciousness, he doesn’t have the strength to fight it. He still desperately wishes none of this had to have happened at all, that the Quiet Rapture never occurred in the first place and could visit Mars again. Or any planet really, he wasn’t picky at this point.
That’s the last thing on his mind as he finally succumbs, did it really have to be like this? Was God truly so cruel he simply ripped away most of his creation, content to allow the remains slowly kill each other over the fight for resources? He wish he could see a real star, he’s not sure if he can truly remember what they looked like, or if his only memories contained the slowly fading light of already dead stars that he desperately clung to until they went out one by one. Any star, any planet, frankly a kind face would do.
***
The Hail Mary had been on route to Erid for about 6 months. Grace had figured out that there were actually some seeds deep in storage. Who knows, maybe Stratt figured it was better safe than sorry and maybe she wanted them to be able to extend their time if they needed to. She didn’t want there to be any risks, and it wasn’t like they weighed much or took up significant space. It wasn’t nearly enough to completely live off of by a long shot, but combined with the taumeoba soup it was enough to at least not be completely malnourished. She had thankfully selected relatively hardy plants that grew easily, Grace wasn’t ecstatic about living off of zucchini, radishes, and beans for a while - but then again what could he do? He still had some real rations left, but the earlier he started growing the better.
Rocky had been fascinated by the plant life. The closest thing to plants on Erid were closer to fungi due to the lack of light, so an organism that relied entirely on light was a concept that Rocky only knew from Astrophage. He was vaguely aware of there being light reliant lifeforms on his own planet, however he wasn't exactly a biologist and didn't know much about them. He had a hard time disconnecting the two due to this, and was a little horrified to find out that plants were that main source of nutrients on earth and that humans couldn’t function properly without some kind of plant variety in their diet.
“Can Grace eat Astrophage, question?” Grace shakes his head furiously, thinking back to the crater a milliliter of astrophage created back on the launch site.
“Too much energy for human body to handle, probably would hurt me. Plants only take in a little bit of the light and convert that energy into sugars. It’s a much simpler process on an energy level that’s actually healthy for me. The fact taumeoba can eat astrophage is honestly amazing.”
Their conversation is interrupted by the computer’s voice ringing through the halls of the ship. “Blip-A detected”. This caused both Rocky and Grace to look at each other. Grace quickly snapped away his gaze and began making his way to the cockpit so he could actually lay eyes on the mystery object. It obviously wasn’t Rocky’s ship, they had left that behind several months ago. This was a new Blip and Grace really didn’t want to run into it at near light speed if he could help it.
He managed to clamber into the control room as quickly as he could to try and begin slow down procedures. Oh man, was that even physically possible to do at the speed they were going at? He finally managed to find the object on one of the screens, and thank god for the Hail Mary’s detection systems because they have a decent amount of time to slow down and get a decent look at what had flown into their proximity. It was still pretty far away, far enough that Grace wasn’t sure if he’d be able to properly make out what it even WAS with the telescopes according to the size readings the ship was giving him.
He heard Rocky finally manage to follow him into the cockpit and began to make questioning noises. Grace looked his way slightly and just shrugged, he honestly didn’t have much information beyond crashing into it wasn’t an imminent danger.
“The ship caught it really early, it’s hard to tell what it is with the size and how far away it is. I’m going to slow us down to try and get a decent look at it, it’s really small and weirdly stationary for an interstellar space object.” That was the weird thing, most things like comets and asteroids were hurling through interstellar space at incomprehensible speeds, not as fast as the Hail Mary, but still faster than anything that could occur on Earth. This object appeared to just be… free floating. Like it had just been placed directly into their flight path and it was now simply experiencing space. Rocky nodded and appeared to ponder for a moment.
“Grace have any theories, question?” Grace stared at the new Blip and pondered a bit. He truly was at a loss. Most things that size in interstellar space had some kind of momentum going for them, there is no way for an object so small to just… form in the middle of the void. There’s only one other possible thing he could think of. And there it probably is, holy moly. They had been on the opposite side of it so it had just come into the reading. There was a wormhole.