Chapter Text
The first thing Ava notices upon waking up is the light.
No. No, the first thing she notices is that she's alive.
There's fresh, mechanically filtered air in her lungs, sticky blood on her skin, she's alive - and there's a fuck off flourescent light shinning right in her fucking eye.
The second thing she notices is that she's not the only one.
She squints, on instinct, brings a hand up to block the painful light and turns her head to the side - only to find the convict huddled in the corner of the room they've been stuck in.
He's covered in blood, drenched head to toe in the thick, viscous fluid - and from what she can see, so is she.
He looks... Jesus he looks fucking terrible.
The convict - Simon. Fuck - is shaking. Little tremors that she feels (what?) more than she sees. He's not looking at her, blood soaked eyes trained on the door situated on the other side of the room and - oh fuck.
He's missing an arm.
Fuck.
He's not just missing it, it looks like it was ripped off of his body, viscera and bone just jutting out for the world to see. He looks like a feral beast. He looks like a child pulled from an abusive family unit.
Oh, oh God - she's going to be sick.
She...
She did that to him.
Ava throws up over the side of the metal table she'd been laying on.
It's bile, mostly. Bile and blood and chunks of things she really doesn't want to think about.
"Oh god..." She murmers, watching Simon snap his eyes - and that's... that's not blood in his right eye, Jesus - to her for a moment before flicking back to the door.
She follows his line of sight. Straining her ears, she can almost make out... voices, maybe? And a faint orchestra, for some reason. One of the voices is more distinct, words she can almost parse out if she focuses.
The door, strangely shaped as it is, appears to be metal, some type of rubber sealant blocking out the edges.
Ava gets the strangest sense that she shouldn't be able to hear a damn thing.
She gets the strangest sense that she should be dead right now.
The door shifts, a precursor to swinging open, and in a flash she's placed herself between the convict - Simon, Simon - and whoever's coming in.
She doesn't know why. Doesn't have it in her to question her instincts right now. All she knows is that this is not the C.O.I, they never would have placed them together, and it's certainly not Eden, because then she'd definitely be dead - probably fertiliser for their fucked up tree.
No, this is a rogue faction. One that apparently had a leader stupid enough to burn all their power on flourescent lights - or one powerful enough to not need to conserve the energy.
An idiot or a powerhouse previously unknown to the dregs of humanity.
At this point, Ava didn't know what she was hoping for.
But she'd put Simon in that fucking submarine, and she'd almost died trying to get him out. If an ocean of blood, and whatever the fuck was in it, couldn't kill them, she'd be damned if this did.
The door hisses open, sliding sideways at an angle instead of forwards, and a man steps through.
He is not what she expected.
Short hair, messily cut underneath some type of knitted hat. There's lab googles stuck to his face, overtop wired glasses and blue latex gloves to match.
He looks almost... kind.
That is a hard thing to come by, these days. Kind people are mostly dead, or they've had it beaten out of them by people all too willing to take advantage of them.
The man in front of them has soft blue eyes that are staring at them in naked, undisguised concern. A smarter man would have hidden that away until he got a read on them.
An idiot, then.
He's got his arms up, fingers splayed like he's trying to calm a frightened child.
"Hey, hey," His voice pitches low as he takes a hesitant step closer to their corner, "I'm not going to hurt you."
Ava doesn't trust it for a second.
Behind her, Simon tenses. She doesn't have to turn around to know, she just feels it, like its her own muscles bunching up. Ava allows her instincts to guide her, shifting to the right to hide more of him behind her and snarling at the new man when he steps closer still.
"My name is Grace," The man powers through, still in that gentle, patronising tone, still moving closer, "What's your - oh shoot, do you even understand what I'm -?"
"Ava." She grunts, cutting him off.
The man - Grace, she supposes - flinches visibly.
So he did know her.
(And, Christ, whoever put this idiot in charge of interrogation is an even bigger idiot than he was)
He can't be part of an entirely rogue faction, then. Communication is difficult over the few stations they have left, let alone an entire colony that nobody knew about.
"And this is..." The man gestures to Simon, completely oblivious to her cataloguing everything he says.
Ava's about to answer for him when a throat clears behind her.
"Simon," He rasps. It sounds painful, and his cheeks split too wide around the word, but he pushes it out regardless, "My name is Simon."
"Hi Simon..." Grace's voice turns softer, eyes becoming impossibly more tender as he stares at the man behind her.
Okay... so, informed enough to know her by name, not informed enough to know the butcher of Eden. That... actually, that gave her an extremely narrow range to work with.
Not even narrow - non-existent.
Anyone who knew anything about the C.O.I knew about the butcher. His name and face was plastered across every communication network they could get it on during the brief man hunt after filament.
If anything, Simon should be the more recognizable of the two of them.
"You guys are a long way from home." Grace prattles on, apparently knowing where their home stations are too. Or, just hers, she supposes, since he hadn't recognised Simon, "I mean, you're lucky the Eridians caught your distress signal. No one was exactly keen to do a pit stop on a moon made of blood. I mean - I didn't even believe them at first but, like..."
He gestures at them. Which, yeah, she'll give him that.
"And they thought you were dead when they cut open those... were those submarines? I mean, I guess you were in an ocean... made of blood. But, um, you're not dead! Hooray!"
He smiles at them, they watch him in bewilderment.
His smile falters, and Ava actually feels a little bad about that.
"Um, anyway. Everyone thought it'd be better if you saw me first, you know?"
She did not know. She actually thought he was a terrible choice for this. She did not inform him of her thoughts on the matter.
"A - a familar face," He says, and she wracks her brain for where she could have seen him before, coming up entirely blank, "To break the news of, um. Wow, I've never had to actually tell anyone this before - um, so - don't freak out -"
"What?" She cuts him off, already understanding that this man can and will continue to ramble until forcibly stopped.
"So uh." He lifts his hands and shakes them by his head - is he - is he doing fucking jazz hands right now? "Good news, or well - it's certainly not bad news - it's could be worse news -"
"Grace."
"Right, um. Aliens are real. And you're, um, we're on their planet. 16 light years from earth."
Oh great, they hadn't sent an idiot to interrogate them - they'd sent a fucking lunatic.
"Okay - I can see you don't believe me, that's fine! I wouldn't believe me either. But, I'm just saying, you were found on a moon made of blood, so - nice to meet you pot, I'm kettle."
He mimes shaking his own hand.
Ava is so tired of this. She's about three seconds from knocking Grace out and demanding they speak to an actual representative of this colony. This was a fucked up... test, or something, and it wasn't funny.
Simon clearly needed medical attention and they were wasting time with these games.
She eyes Grace. He's muscular, tall and broad in the shoulders - scarred to hell and back. But he doesn't strike her as a fighter.
She could take him.
"I'll just, um - Rocky!" Grace calls out, smart enough at least to realise he was being sized up and calling for back up.
Whatever, she could take them too.
The door swings open again and - well, fuck her sideways.
That was an alien.
-
Grace didn't know what to expect when he walked into the decontamination room.
He'd been told, in a very frantic micro thrum, that a exploration mission had found more humans, and that they were mostly dead, but then they got better.
Apparently their radiation levels had finally dropped below what could be detected - in six hours, how? - and Grace would now be safe around them, which is why he'd been yanked out of class and hassled to the labs.
He'd also been informed that they'd been found drowning inside metal submarines on a moon full of blood.
Which, just... what?
And, as far as they could tell, it was human blood too.
How does that even - Grace forcibly pulled himself back from following that train of thought.
Go reassure the newly not dead humans that they were safe first, bury himself in his lab with the blood samples later.
They're not on their beds when he walks in, instead they're huddled and shaking in the corner of the room, staring at him with matching wide eyes.
One of them, the man, he thinks, is hiding behind the woman. He's obviously twice her size but he's so folded in on himself Grace can barely make him out from behind her.
He seems... significantly worse for ware.
Grace tries his best to calm them down.
Obviously, they don't believe him - about any of it, not that they're safe, not the aliens, nothing.
Which is completely fair.
Clearly, they've been through an ordeal. Adrian had told him that one of those submarines was welded shut, from the outside. Which was so uniquely messed up that Grace didn't really know what to do with it.
He tried to be gentle, but that was just setting off danger warnings in their eyes - they each had one normal eye, and one blood red patch where an eye should be - so he switched gears.
Proof it was.
"Rocky!" He called for his friend, who immediately scuttled in because he was waiting right outside the door (just incase went sideways and the blood people turned out to be dangerous, afterall).
The woman's - Ava's, and gosh, couldn't her name be anything else - jaw dropped, giving him an ample view of - huh, those were some, uh, sharp canines she had there.
Simon actually leans around her for the first time since he'd walked into the room, only to go absolutely, deathly still at the sight of Rocky.
"New humans afraid. Question?" Rocky asks with a tap of his foot, his old translator hastily reinstalled for the benefit of their two new bloody friends echoing his words.
"They're surprised, Rocky." Grace turns and, no, no Rocky is right, definitely afraid.
Ava is trying to hide it but her um, her gills, which she has, are flapping in fear.
Not to toot his own horn, but Grace is kind of an expert at decoding alien body language these days. And those gills are... definitely alien.
He's beginning to think the Eridian's may have misdiagnosed those two. Either that, or the blood they're covered in is an extreme mutagenic agent.
Given the english, he's leaning towards the latter.
"What is that?" Ava gritts out.
Grace winces, "He - okay not he, persay, they don't have genders the same way we do, but he's not a that."
Rocky does the Eridian equivalent of rolling his eyes.
"Why do you call... him, he then?" Simon creeps further out behind Ava. The fear has dropped away a bit from his eyes, curiosity peaking out instead like one of his kids during a science lesson back on earth.
It's kind of adorable, actually, even through the slasher movie blood drench.
"Grace is sexist. Statement!" Rocky chirps, which no.
"Rocky, no."
Ava is frowning at him in a way that suggests he might receive a knife to the gut soon if Rocky's telling the truth. He shoots a panicked look at his friend, nudging him with his hip.
"Rocky make joke. Is humor." Rocky laughs, entirely unrepentant, Grace groans into his palms.
"You - okay." Grace waves a hand at Rocky, deciding to cut this off before Rocky decides to tell them he's homophobic too, "Proof. There he is."
For a moment, all the humans in the room turn to Rocky.
"Proof." Ava echoes, staring off into the middle distance. Then she pauses, turns to face him with those mildly unnerving eyes. "You said we're on an alien planet."
"Um. Yes?" Weird emphasis on the words there, but okay. He glances at Rocky, who isn't looking anywhere in particular because he's got 360 degree echolocation, then back at her.
"A planet?" She says again.
Maybe the blood ocean gave them brain damage along with all the... fish bits.
"Yes." He confirms with a slow nod, "It's called Erid. We're about 16 light years from earth, so the journey back is - around six-ish years, if you want to go that route but -"
"Earth?" It's Simon, this time, that speaks - and the sound is all but punched out of him.
"Okay." Grace says, mindful of the way the two look identically shell shocked. "Clearly we are having some miscommunication issues."
He sneaks a peak at Simon, who's still shaking and definitely has unsanitary blood soaked into his wounds.
"Why don't we get you two in a shower and then... well, let's just get that blood off you first."
-
As it turns out, the only shower on Erid that would be in any way functional for a human - slash human adjacent fish things - is located in his house.
It's a heck of a journey.
For all Ava looked ready to jump him in the decontamination room, she was as weak as a kitten the second they started walking.
Simon, at least, just let Grace pick him up.
Ava insists on hobbling along beside them, ocassionally stopping and using an eager Rocky as a support beam whenever she got winded. It's slow going, the double gravity making all three of them slower than they aught to be.
In his arms, Simon hasn't taken his eyes off the simulated ocean once. Grace wonders if its to do with the gills in his neck, or the fact that he seemed shocked to hear the word 'planet', let alone 'earth'.
How long had it been since either of them had seen an ocean?
The stairs were the hardest part. It took a minute of semi silent bickering, and Ava and Simon just staring at eachother for ten seconds, but eventually they settled on Grave taking Simon up first, and then coming back for Ava.
Rocky volunteered to make sure she didn't crack her skull open if she passed out while they were gone.
Good man.
He debated helping Simon into the shower, but he honestly didn't trust the man to be able to stay up right while he was off fetching Ava. Instead, he just carried him through the doors and deposited him on the couch.
"I'll, um, I'll be right back." He offers, "hang tight?"
Simon just blinks at him, which he takes with a grimace. Fair enough.
Ava, who, like her companion, has her eyes locked on the horizon when he makes it back down the stairs, seems to have faded a little while he was gone.
Rocky bids him good luck, with a distinctly derogatory tone under his words, before doing the Eridian equivalent of storming away.
He glances at a dead eyed Ava and very deliberately decides not to ask.
She's almost docile as he scoops her up, though a little grumble escapes her nonetheless.
There's blood soaked through his shirt. He can feel it on his neck, the sleeves of his shirt where he's holding her.
He should have put on proper PPE for this. He should have done alot of things, really. He's being unbelievably irresponsible about this entire thing.
He wonders absently if he's going to wake up with gills too.
-
The water is hot when it hits him.
He looks down, watches it run red over his bare feet.
It feels like it means more than it does.
Grace is right outside the door, waiting in anxious anticipation for him to slip and fall. He can hear him, his heart beating rapid in his chest like a loose hatch on a generator.
Simon should not be able to hear a heart beat through a door. He should not be able to sense Ava, alert and aching, on the other side of the little house. He should not be alive.
None of this feels as significant as the water running down his body.
"Take as long as you want." Grace had said. Soft eyes looking at him like he was worth anything at all.
Simon can't remember the last time he'd had unlimited access to water. Never, actually. Not once in his life had it not been a thing to ration.
Take as long as you want.
Simon tilts his head up, lets the hot water sting the open wound on his face. He relishes the burn.
He knows he's being selfish. Ava is sitting in the other room, blood crusting on her skin as exhaustion pulls her further down, but he can't make himself hurry.
There's soap, right where Grace said it would be, and he uses it to rid himself of every speck of that godforsaken blood he can see.
He paws at his hair, working the soap in there too. His remaining hand is clumsy, trembling, but he untangles the knots in his hair one by one nevertheless.
He hasn't felt clean in so long.
Eventually, the water runs clear. The skin on his fingers begins to pucker, and standing up feels like more effort than it's worth.
A twist of a knob shuts the water off, steam hanging in the air as he wraps a towl around himself.
It's soft.
-
Getting everyone clean and dressed was an exercise in coordination Grace hadn't properly experienced since he was an actual middle school teacher a lifetime ago.
He only had the one shower, because he'd never expected to see another living person again, so he'd had to juggle the two blood drenched wrecks and himself - all while making sure no one fell asleep standing up or had an infection that would actually kill them.
He'd ended up disinfecting and bandaging Simon's arm - which looked like a horror movie prop - two steps away from the bathroom while Ava showered, on a stool he'd dragged over from the kitchen.
The man barely even flinched as he dabbed the yellow disinfectant mitxture on to his bare muscle tissue. He just sat there, arm extended and head hung low.
It honestly painted a troubling picture of the treatment he was used to receiving.
Grace took care to be as gentle as he could with the bandages, finsihing the tie off with a loose knot to the side before moving on to disinfect the gnarled flesh on the corner of his mouth.
It honestly wasn't as bad as he'd initially assumed. The gaping, stagger toothed maw he'd glimpsed in the decontamination room had revealed itself to be a simple incision, a few canines poking through
He supposed the blood had really obscured it - wait. Grace looked closer. Was it... Oh.
"You're healing." Grace breathes.
"What?"
Grace watches Simon's skin ripple as he speaks. Even now, he can literally see the flesh knitting itself together. The jagged teeth being sumbsumed under fresh scar tissue.
His fingers itched with the urge to draw some blood. He needed to get this stuff under a microscope, he just needed it.
Something had happened to Simon. Something had changed him - and Grace new dang well that at least some of the answers would be buried within him. The multitude of samples that the Eridian's had secured for him notwithstanding, he would love to be able to compare it to a fresh draw.
With a level of restraint that should render him eligible for some kind of award, Grace does not ask Simon if he could have a tooth.
Even though he really, really wants one.
"There," he says, wounds as clean as he can get them and plastered up to boot, "All done."
Right on cue, the shower shuts off.
Both men turn towards the door, then hastily look away.
A moment later, Ava steps out, clad in one of Illyukhina's pyjama sets. It's covered in little rocket ships and dogs.
Grace turns his full attention to helping Simon stand up in order to avoid laughing at the picture she makes. All war veteran scowls and a blood red eye wrapped up in soft cotton.
Ava's slighter than Illyukhina had been, and she's pretty much drowning in the fabric.
She looks, a bit, like a very angry kitten. With her hands on her hips, her foot tapping the floor, and her blonde hair soaked behind her ears.
"So, the planets?" Is the first thing out of her mouth.
Right.
"Right." He spins on his heal, beckoning them to follow. Grace is well out of practice with human emotions, and he has a feeling this conversation is going to get very emotional, very quickly.
He may not remember much of his parents, these days, but his mom had taught him something: nothing is ever made worse with chicken soup.
He doesn't turn around to check if they're following him. Eridian architecture is made to echo, he could probably hear them from the bottom of the hill.
No one says anything while he putters about, pulling out a pot and a couple of synthesised stock cubes.
All hail whichever genius stuck every flavour of stock they could find on the hail mary, he literally owed them his life.
"So, the planets." He finally says as he sticks the pot under the sink for water, "I'm guessing something happened to yours?"
"They disappeared." Simon says, leaning on the wall in the entrance way.
Grace blinks, the water in the pot sloshing slightly as his grip falters. "Dissa - how? Every planet?"
Ava snorts, "God knows."
"The stars too." Simon adds.
Grace's mind spins. The stars and the planets... gone. He can't even imagine.
It didn't make any sense.
How could every star and planet just dissappear? And all at once, too? Surely someone would have noticed, there would have been some kind of warning, a sign.
It was impossible.
He put the pot on the stove, stock cubes dissolving within it.
A moon full of mutagenic human blood. Two people staring at him with blood red eyes and gills on the sides of their necks.
He may need to adjust his standards of impossiblity.
"Okay." He says, walking over to his fridge to grab a couple of me-patties, "So, we are on a planet. Right now."
He cuts the patties up into little cubes. Protein is important after experiencing traumatic events. The only protein on this planet, before today, was him - so, well, beggars can't be choosers.
"Obviously, the stars are still here - we made sure of that. So I'm leaning towards... alternate dimensions? I mean, it makes the most sense - not that any of this makes sense. The moon you were on could have been a wormhole or a -"
He pauses as he glances back at them. Neither of them appear to be paying attention to his alternate dimension theory, eyes fixed instead to the steaming pot where he'd just dropped the me-patty chunks in.
Simon licks his lips.
Thats... concerning.
Grace snaps his fingers, their eyes snap back to him, like they've been broken from a trance.
"Alternate dimensions, wormhole, thoughts?"
"Did you say you made sure the stars were still there?" Simon asks.
Grace sighs, "Okay. Soup first, life stories later."
He shoos them into the living room, following close behind with a tray carrying three bowls and a bunch of rehydrated crackers.
"Bon apa - oh, okay."
There is no more soup in their bowls.
Two bowls full of boiling hot soup just - gone.
Grace had never seen someone consume something so fast. It was just one degree short of them just unhinging their jaws and sticking the entire bowl inside their mouths.
They'd just taken soup shots.
Grace didn't think either of them would actually ask for a second bowl - that kicked dog look far too pervasive for people with healthy attachments to food.
So he didn't offer, he just grabbed their bowls and topped them up.
The second round went down slower than the first. Neither of them were bothered by the temperature of the steaming liquid, even as Grace knew (from copious experience) that it was hot enough to singe your tongue right now.
Simon bit into the meat, eyes closed in absolute revenance. Ava wasn't any different, staring at a chunk on her spoon in awe. Her normal eye was dialated, the mutated one pitch black.
"What is this?" She asks as she brings the spoon to her lips.
"Uh."
On one hand, he probably should have told them what the meat was before they ate it. As like, a human decency thing. On the other, he was slightly nervous to admit that they were technically eating synthetic chunks of his thigh.
Not in the least because they both seemed just a little too enthusiastic about how much they liked the taste of it.
It could be because they came from a universe with no planets - and so likely no meat either.
The sharp teeth poking out of Simon's face glistened.
Grace did not think this was the reason.
"It's synthetic meat." He goes with after a beat.
"Synthesised of what?"
Shoot.
"Uh... me."
Simon pauses with his spoon halfway to his mouth, processes what he's said, and then takes a mouthfull anyway.
Well, at least he's not mad about it.
Ava, still holding her bowl, does not look mad either. No, she's looking at the soup like it holds the answers to life, death and the universe.
A tear escapes her eye, the human one.
"How?"
"Well, uh, they had to synthesise me protien from somewhere - I was kind of dying for a minute there," he huffs a laugh, neither of them seem to appreciate it, "Right, so all the meat on the hail mary - my ship - was cooked and frozen, so the protein was denatured. And synthesising meat is next to impossible without denatured protiens so..."
"So they used you." Ava says softly.
"Bingo."
"Could this be done anywhere?"
"I mean - yeah, sure." He shrugs, "You'd just need the xennonite tanks and - uh, actually you should probably talk to the nutrition team about that. Marble - they invented the synthesiser, actually - they'll have a much better explanation for you."
Ava nods, eyes wide and unfocused as he takes in what he says.
"Can we go back?"
"What?"
Why the heck would they want to go back to a universe with no planets?
"No."
Simon's bowl clatters to the table as he snaps to look at Ava. He's shaking his head, slowly at first, then rapidly.
"No, no I'm not going back there."
"Simon -"
"No." He stands up, pacing as far away as he can without leaving the room. "I'm done - I'm done."
Ava stands up too, hands out in the universal - and apparently cross dimensional - sign of peace. Grace, with no better recourse, moves the bowls of soup away from the edges of the table and avoids looking at either of them.
"I'm not asking you to go back in the ocean, you've more than earned your freedom."
"Yeah." Simon laughs, it's a bitter sound, "You've said that before."
Ava snarls, and Grace cannot help but glance back up. That was not a human sound, that wasn't even close to a human sound. Simon bares his teeth right back at her.
What was going on?
"Don't be fucking selfish." She storms up to him, stabbing him in the chest, "This is bigger than us."
"Oh, enough with your bullshit mantra. The C.O.I -"
"This could save everyone." She grabs his arm, well, the one he has left anyway. "Don't you see -"
"I don't give a fuck."
"Our people -"
"Your people."
"Ours." Her voice is insistent, "The C.O.I, Eden, everyone. We could actually feed people, Simon."
"You think they'd let us." He scoffs, "Ava, they'd shoot us on sight."
"What?"
"We're fucking monsters. Just look at us."
"No - they... it doesn't matter." She closes her eyes, "It would be worth it, if we could get them this technology."
Simon laughs again, tearing his arm out of her grip with a rough shake. He walks over to the couch, back to where Grace is desperately trying to blend into the cushions.
"Worth it for you." He says, picking his bowl back up, "I want to live."
"We can't just abandon them."
"Why not?" Simon shrugs, "They abandoned me."
"I didn't."
That seems to strike something in Simon, who freezes for a moment before visibly shaking it off.
"You abandoned them."
"... What?"
"The second you got in that submarine." Simon continues, eyes boring into his soup, "What the hell did you think was going to happen? You knew -"
"No."
"You knew. We should be dead right now. Both of us. You wanted out."
"I wanted to rescue you."
"You wanted the information I had." He scoffed again, "I was never getting out."
He looks back at her, then. Grace can see the way her entire body tenses as they stare at each other.
Simon shakes his head.
"You just wanted it to be over."
"Fuck you."
The door slams shut as she storms out.
Grace flinches.
For a minute, the only sound is the scraping of Simon's spoon against the bottom of the bowl. Silently, Grace pushes his untouched soup towards the other man.
"So..." He says when the silence grows actually unbearable.
"I'm not going back." Simon grunts.
"You don't have to." Grace reaches out, one finger gently tapping Simon's against the bowl. He's still tense, but he seems to appreciate the contact. "I'm not sure it's possible, anyway."
That, at least, seems to relax him.
"I'm sorry." He mutters eventually, mostly into Grace's soup. "I just..."
"It's okay." He get's it, lord knows he didn't want to go back home either.
Simon extends his leg, tapping his ankle against Grace's for just a second before pulling back.
"Thanks."