Chapter Text
When Curly’s hair grows back, it is white; Befitting of the age he should be, and what he has lived through.
He could get a more thorough facial reconstruction, but he can’t stand being a constant reminder of everything he used to have. He’d rather personify all he has found and lost. There is no penance, there is no karma, only suffering and its absence. Hearing the words ‘budget’ and ‘cosmetic surgery’ together in that order weren’t very promising, either.
Each day moves through him, slowly and gently. A soft dance to quiet music to an audience of naught but sunbeams that collects on his scars like honey. He hasn’t seen a sunset in his most recent three years on Earth. The afternoons are sweet, almost sickeningly slow. Each morning is a reprieve from night terrors or panic attacks. The moon is a fickle companion on his sleepless nights. His body may be on earth, but his mind orbits the stars.
The water calls to him in its waves, splashes, and whirls.
It’s his replacement for that which he shall not name. The last thing that very nearly killed him. Something that takes more pollution than it can stand, and still doesn’t buckle. It’s the one thing that cannot leave him, that he cannot escape in his mind. Drowning but never dead. Cold but never frozen.
Setting and never set.
He has become deeply, sickeningly, terrifyingly aware of all the hollow places within himself that Jimmy used to occupy. How he—Curly had forgotten what it was like to be at peace without something looming over his shoulder and taking it from him. He was so familiar with it he began to find that pain comforting in its regular occurrences. He never once thought that sort of fear was abnormal. Just one warning, and then another.
And another and another until he’s here and Jimmy is not. And none of them are either.
They all deserved to come back. To live through thick and thin. To be vulnerable. Weak. That is not something to fear. What is such a thing is the act of pretending you’re untouchable. That minuscule possibility can’t happen to me, and if it might I’ll ignore all the warning signs until I can’t and it kills me!
Anya. Oh Anya. The thought of her; not only her final months, but the life she should have lived as a beloved doctor, makes suicide seem like penance for what he could—should have prepared for long before they boarded. But that would mean escaping from his consequences. The life he has crafted for himself out of mistakes and idiocy. It would mean being more like Jimmy than he already is.
He spat on Jimmy’s grave. It didn’t fix anything. Didn’t even feel good.
What did Swansea feel, waking up one day and putting his foot down—to quit alcohol for over a decade long streak of sobriety. And to relapse so quickly when faced with despair. To love Daisuke like a son, but not enough to even say if he wanted to save that damn cryopod for the boy. Want without consequence. Action without result. If something goes wrong, have an excuse in your back pocket, to assuage your own guilt.
Daisuke lived and died without knowing the truth of it all. Who also put trust before reason. Who alone could close his eyes and sleep through the worst of it. Too sweet for this horrible captain. They were all his failures, because he let a maggot love him like a corpse. He failed the maggot too, who began to love him like a fellow leech. His stupid heart bled so deep it drowned them all.
That ball of sunshine is not useless. He is simply not meant to be carted around a cramped death trap.
Nobody is.
The news of Daisuke’s fate weakened his mother’s heart. Like his. The doctors say she’s not long for this world. But they said that to him the day he came home. And he’s still kicking. At the very least, Curly can support her. Not with much more than his words most days, though he’s stumbled headfirst into being a verifiable poet.
He supposes that’s just what suffering does to any soul. He’s got paintings of those months aboard the Tulpar, full of flesh and metal and mind-shattering horror. They’ll probably rot in some forgotten corner until he dies and gives some poor wellness checker a fright. He’s burnt some, too. If he needs the money, he’ll still sell them. It’s nothing the world hasn’t already known.
If there’s one good thing that’s come out of his prosthetics, it’s that metal limbs can’t catch hypothermia. He can let the waves wash over his feet and stare into the horizon for hours. Though he wears a hat and sunglasses in case he forgets to blink. Unlike that sorry little screen, this is real. He doesn’t want to lose his remaining eye to something as trite as sun exposure.
He can smell the salt and the mud; Hear crab claws nip at his heels in metallic clinks and listen to seagulls and ships alike. The wind sweeps over his exposed teeth. Sometimes he sees their faces, like sirens. Calling.
In the end, he couldn’t forget the first domino of it all. Pony Express. The necessity of credits. The fact that his closest friend had decided sexual assault was a good idea, that he did not care until there was a paper trail of evidence, and vessels of consequences to be silenced and not heard. That Curly let someone like that into his life for years and years. For just a few minutes, he had even agreed to doom them all. It even felt good. Just one more, and then another. Until the immensity of what he had done was staring him in the face.
Oh.
The sunset had left without him. For just one moment, there is only Curly and the ocean and twilight. The tide moves in, breaks upon the shore, and flows out to sea. He breathes with it so his body doesn’t realize what happened. Just one more, and then another. There will be more days and breaths and tides ahead of him. Just one more, and then it’s over for the next to come. Until something finally gives. Curly does not know how long his resolve will last.
If he can’t sort out all of that madness, who will?