Chapter Text
153 days after the crash.
҉
҉ ҉
And God
please let the deer
on the highway
get some kind of heaven.
Something with tall soft grass
and sweet reunion.
Let the moths in porch lights
go someplace
with a thousand suns,
that taste like sugar
and get swallowed whole.
May the mice
in oil and glue
have forever dry, warm fur
and full bellies.
If I am killed
for simply living,
let death be kinder
than man.
҉
҉ ҉
“Are you scared of dying, Curly?”
The bandages wrapped around Curly’s bloodied form were messier than she would have liked.
Everything was messier than she would have liked.
“Are you scared of dying, Curly?” she asked again. His eye was set upon her, his lipless mouth hung slightly agape, and neither held answers. She sighed to try and alleviate the weight she felt against her chest.
With all the gentleness left within her, she settled her hand against what remained of her Captain’s arm.
The first few days after the crash, when he was still a wailing, trembling mess of exposed muscles and charred meat, she hadn’t dared to merely breathe in his direction for fear of hurting him. After a while, she figured out how to touch him without causing him pain.
She laid the pad of her fingers on the white bandage, her palm cupping the round end of the limb, and she just stayed there, unmoving, hoping to be enough. Curly didn’t flinch under her soft touch. Sometimes, when the agony of his condition was too much, and when the gnawing pit of despair threatened to swallow him whole, his bloodied stump reached out for her hand. In these moments, fleeting moments, they made sure that they still existed. That they were still human.
“Curly, are you scared?” she asked one more time. “I need to know.”
The orb of Curly’s eye held her gaze silently. It said nothing.
She breathed. Her breath was shaky. Her breath was shaky, but her hands were calm. Her hands were steady and sure, soothing. Her hands knew what to do.
“I know it’s… probably quite stupid to ask,” she murmured, her voice a long and serene stream of words. “I mean, with what you did… Death probably didn’t scare you at all.”
A whinging rattle gurgled from deep within his chest. She didn’t know if it meant yes or no, or something else entirely, or if it was just an involuntary bodily reaction. “I’d wager,” she continued, “that you’re probably more scared of being alive.”
Curly extended his stump towards her, just half a millimetre, just enough to make the contact between his flesh and her palm more tangible. She chuckled wetly. “I don’t know if you regret it. Crashing us, I mean. I don’t know if it matters now. I mean, I know it doesn’t. But… For what it’s worth, I wish you’d killed us all.”
His gaze pinned her down. It was unsettling, this wide, unblinking eye set upon her, following her every move. The last remnant of him, the last proof that he was still in there, that it was still him in this prison of broken flesh.
“Was it easy?” she asked. “Steering the ship into that asteroid, disabling the autopilot, watching it all crash down, was it… Did it feel easy? Did it feel right? Did it feel like…”
She looked down into her other hand. The green bottle felt as heavy as lead between her fingers, yet as light as a feather too. “It’s okay if you don’t answer,” she said. “I don’t think I care that much anymore. Or maybe, I think I’m more scared of being alive, too.”
She let go of Curly’s stump to open the cap of the bottle.
“Anya? You in there?” came a voice from the other side of the door.
“You should leave, Daisuke,” she answered, barely raising her tone. In the end, it didn’t matter if he heard her or not.
“Anya! Can you open the door?” he asked as she heard him frantically try to pry the lock open.
“… No.”
Daisuke’s fist pounded against the heavy metal door in frustration.
“Damn it!” he swore. “Stay there, okay? I mean, not that you can go anywhere else but still, I’m gonna get Jimmy!”
A shiver ran through her whole body, and she felt her inside curl around themselves. That damn kid.
She had tried, she had genuinely tried. Until the very end, she had been trying. For the sake of hope, for the sake of a better tomorrow, for the sake of something to keep despair at bay, to mark the line between death and a life worth living. Hope, caught somewhere in her throat, burning down her lungs, like a breath held too long, like a heart about to burst, beating, beating, beating. A shard of it to keep her alive, scraped from the bottom of Pandora’s box. And then one day she woke up, and it was gone.
And it had never been there to begin with.
“Hey. Heard the lock’s broken.”
His voice. Hope had never been there to begin with. Only his voice.
“Hey. Anya!” he called sharply. “Can you hear me?”
He was never going to leave her alone, was he? He would always be there, behind her door. “… Yeah, I can hear you, Jimmy.”
“The rest of our medicine stash is in there too. Damn. This could be bad. Did you try to really put your back into it?”
“Any wrenches laying around?” Daisuke chimed in. “How heavy is the med kit?!”
She didn’t answer. She tried to forget they were here. If she tried enough, maybe she could forget she was here too.
A pause. “… Anya, is the door stuck?”
“No.”
“Huh? What do you mean?!” Daisuke sounded confused, a bit lost. Anya felt sorry for him.
Through the door, she heard Jimmy sigh in annoyance, then take a long, deep breath. “Look. We’re all stressed. But you can’t go breaking down at every little hardship.” He sounded pissed. Pissed at her little tantrum, pissed at her uselessness. Pissed at her existence. Pissed that he wasn’t the one in control.
“Open the damn door,” he ordered. Pissed that she was behind a locked door.
Anya got up and went to the door. She pressed her head against the cool metal and gathered what was left of herself.
“… You were right,” she declared, as loud as she could muster to make sure he would hear. “You were right all along. I should have done this from the beginning. I always believed that our worst moments didn’t define us. Didn’t make us beyond repair.”
She had to believe she hadn’t been beyond repair.
“You think I wanted this either? Make no mistake. This isn’t my worst moment. Far from it.”
She turned away from the door. The bottle of painkillers was still in her hand.
“It’s the best decision I’ll ever make.”
Curly looked at her from his dirty bed. She wondered if he had understood. Behind the door, the two men were still calling after her.
“Open the door,” Jimmy barked. His voice made her want to claw at her skin, to flay herself alive. She held on.
“I’ll take care of it.” She was echoing his words. He probably didn’t even notice.
They kept talking between themselves after that. She paid them no mind. Curly was staring intensely at her, and she held his gaze. She wondered if he was trying to plead, with his one singular eye and his voiceless throat, if he was screaming from inside his case of flesh, begging for her, or if he was merely observing, like he had always done.
“You listening, Anya?!” called Jimmy’s authoritative voice. No, she wasn’t.
She crouched next to Curly, her face next to his face, almost touching. She raised a gentle hand, and her fingers came to brush softly against his bandaged cheekbone. He didn’t flinch. He merely stared. He slid his arm towards her, trying to reach her, trying to initiate touch.
As a nurse, Anya had always marvelled at the human body. Its resilience, its complexity, its ingenuity. All the love it was capable of. How hands were made to fit into hands, how skins were covered in sensory cells so eager to be touched, how eyes filled with tears, filled with joy. How the very self was made and unmade by the touch of someone else. Curly, flayed of his skin, amputated of his hands, deprived of tears, could only know pain. Yet still, when the gnawing pit of despair threatened to swallow her whole, his bloodied stump reached out for her hand. And with touch, they existed. They were human.
He wouldn’t even have that anymore.
It was over, it was all over. The sun was setting through the plastic windows and it was the twilight of their lives. What does it feel like to be at the end of time?
Back on Earth, back when she was a kid, she had an uncle who painted twilights. She remembered watching him for hours in his workshop, spreading wet paint on the canvas, trying to capture the very last light of the day through the inky darkness of the night, sketching abstract clouds of greyed blues, cold purples and spectral yellows fading away like passing ghosts. The pictures had been bleak and grim, but Anya had always found solace in the quiet melancholy of their desolated wastelands. They made death seem sad, but peaceful. Dreams hemmed with dim colors, a soft light extinguishing, then gone. The twilight behind those plastic windows, with its overwhelming sun like a huge unblinking eye, was a red, screaming, angry thing of burning colors and decimating lights, of fire and blood and rage engulfing the medical room. It was an angry and resentful death, a death that refused to die, a death burning at life.
What does it feel like to be at the end of time?
She thought about all the time she’d had so far. About the years she spent up in the stars in the closed capsule of a ship. About the things she did and the ones she failed to do – most of them, really. About the connections she made and the connections she missed – most of them. About all the lives that would go on without her. About what could have been and never would.
Idly she wondered when it started to go sideways. If in the timeline of her life, there was this one moment she could point to and say “this, here, is the point of no return.” If there was something to be done about it.
Back on Earth, back in her small and windowless pod in the city, there had been a slow and sleepless evening – one among many – where she had watched this post-apo movie. The end of the world had been caused by a nuclear war at the beginning of the film, and the story was about these two orphaned girls who were trying to survive in the wilderness. The movie didn’t end well. But then, something weird happened. The recording glitched, the television bugged, or maybe she just pressed the wrong button on the remote, but something caused the film to play again backwards. Anya watched in enraptured silence as one of the little kids breathed again, brought back by the force of her sister’s desperate pleas, and they hugged tearfully. They walked backwards down the hills, the older carrying the younger on her back. Then it kept rewinding. The fire in their shack abated. The wounds blackening their skin healed. The lake filled back up. The grass grew again. And from walking skeletons, the girls turned back into plump little children. At the climax of the movie – at the very beginning – the mushroom cloud of the bomb shrank, the blast sunk into itself, the broken pieces of concrete floated and merged into cities, streets and homes. Even the dead came back to life, their molten flesh melding into human figures like playdough.
Then the film played forward again, and they all died. Because it was just bound to be like that.
Because she was bound to end like that.
What does it feel like to be at the end of time?
Anya’s throat constricted painfully. An ugly sob tore through her and, belatedly, she realized that she was crying. She hadn’t cried in such a long time, she thought she had forgotten how to. Warm tears ran down her cheeks. Had tears always been so warm? She couldn’t remember. Sorrow and pain washed over her like tidal waves. She felt like she was drowning. Like she was bursting at the seams and coming undone.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she murmured. “Not when he’s here, not when… This ship is our grave, it has been for five months. There is no way out.”
She had tried. She had really tried.
She had read this line in a poem once. What is a ghost? Something dead that seems to be alive. Something dead that doesn’t know it’s dead. They were ghosts, wandering in the winding corridors of their own mausoleum, haunting the broken hull of their ship. Dead, and tortured by their mockery of aliveness. Trapped in their own flesh and unable to escape. Curly’s fate wasn’t that much different from their own.
“Curly, I...” she whispered to him, her voice thick and watery. “I know you want to die too, and I know I could get this over with for you, but… But I want someone to stay with me until the end. I’m sorry it’s you. I’m so sorry, Curly.”
She wiped the tears that had fallen over her cheeks. She breathed in, trying to compose herself. The air tasted of stale blood, rot and mouthwash. Fire fresh, of course. The last air she would ever breathe. She didn’t know why, but it felt fitting. She sank to her knees on the ground.
“I’m being selfish, aren’t I?” she asked Curly with a wry, wet and humorless laugh. “You can allow me to be selfish just this once, can’t you Curly? You’ve been selfish so many times before, you can allow me just this once, right?”
Desperation had driven her there, but she wasn’t even desperate anymore. She wasn’t even angry. She wasn’t even scared. She wasn’t even that sad.
The end of time felt selfish.
Somehow, it was fitting too.
She tipped the bottle of paracetamol into her hand, and a white tablet fell into the cup of her palm. She rolled it between her thumb and her index. She held it to her face, that white, oblong pill, the last shred of her free will.
The heatless burning lights of the setting sun were dancing on her hand, casting long black shadows against her skin. Curly was looking at her with more intensity than he had ever displayed before. Curly’s eye, set on her. The setting sun, like an unblinking eye.
She wondered if she should cheer. Here’s to the crew of the Tulpar, she could say. Here’s to the fate that dooms us all. Here’s to Captain Curly, who tried to kill us and should have tried harder. Here’s to a life half-lived. Here’s to all that is unborn.
She pressed the pill against her lips. “Here’s to all that is unmourned,” she said.
Up there or down there, no one would miss her.
She slipped the pill into her half-opened mouth. “Let death be kinder…” she whispered aloud to herself like a prayer.
Tradition dictated that she should wash down the paracetamol with a bottle of strong alcohol, if not to inhibit her liver, at least to get thoroughly smashed for the last few unpleasant minutes of her miserable life. She swallowed the pill dry. Maybe she could have used a bottle of mouthwash, but somehow, the idea of drinking that thing felt worse than death. Perhaps there was something funny about that, some sort of dark joke or gallows humor. Maybe she could have used some rubbing alcohol. There had to be a bottle of isopropyl in the emergency cabinet. Maybe she could have just used some water.
But water was precious. Pointless to waste the few resources they had on her. Pointless to waste anything on her. Even now, as she was nearing her end, as they were all nearing their ends, she still somewhat cared about that kind of things.
Daisuke, Swansea… Perhaps there was something about them that was worth saving.
The end of time felt selfless. How odd.
She grabbed another pill. Slipped it into her mouth. Swallowed.
She knew it would hurt. Overdosing on painkillers was rather painful – who would have thought? Her stomach would ache and nausea would claw at her heart, then her organs would fail one by one, she would seize and puke, blood and bile and foamy bits of paracetamol dribbling down her chin. She would cry and shake and call for help. At the very end, she might even beg for her mom. And then, she would die, or lose consciousness and never wake up, and she wouldn’t be there anymore. At long last, the end. Dying was the hard part. The rest would go smoothly.
She grabbed another pill. Slipped it into her mouth. Swallowed.
She leaned against the privacy screen, folding her legs against her chest. Her belly pressed against her lap. She tried not to think about it.
Curly wailed above her, his broken voice wheezing out of his torn throat.
“I’m fine, Curly,” she spoke in a soothing voice. “I told you, didn’t I? This isn’t my worst moment.”
His eye looked at her with unblinking intensity from high above her, bathed in the fiery halo of the sun like a God encased in flesh.
He who always turned a blind eye to her. Robbed of all movement, robbed of all voice. Now only an eye to see. It was almost poetic. It was almost funny.
How demeaning and how sublime.
His shattered form started to tremble on the bed, his throat emitting soft rumbling pleas, attempted words.
“It’ll be over soon,” she calmed him. “It was long overdue.”
She had been chipped away scale by scale, until she was but pieces of herself at the bottom of the ocean floor. All that was left, now, was for the waves to scatter her.
She grabbed another pill. Slipped it into her mouth. Choked a little bit on it. Swallowed.
She lay a hand over her heart. It felt so calm beneath her hand, calmer than it had been in years. It knew it would be alright. She knew it would be alright.
The end of time felt peaceful.
She grabbed another pill. Slipped it into her mouth. Swallowed.
Killing herself and all that festered within.
She let the rhythm of the repetitive gesture rock her into a dissociated lull. In the end, even death was simple. She was at the threshold, at the liminal second when the axe was about to fall, when the rope was about to tighten and both were suspended in the aether, waiting, and she was life and death at the same time. The dryness of her throat barely even registered; only a sterile and magnificent quietness.
She grabbed another pill. Slipped it into her mouth. Swallowed.
What will death be like?
She grabbed another pill.
Something crashed against the door. Metal clashed against metal in a furious cacophony of repeated strikes, clang, clang, CLANG.
“We’re here, Anya!” Daisuke called from the other side. The strikes continued, relentless, like a hungry beast pounding. Instinctively, she crawled away from the door as far as she could, her back against Curly’s gurney, facing the entrance of the medical room with a growing horror. Her heart was pounding in her ribcage as her blood thundered in her ears. The metal smashed like waves and Anya felt each crash reverberate into her skull. Above her, Curly whined, and in spite of her rising panic she lay a soothing hand on his arm to shush him.
Then the lock on the door bent in a scream of metal and left a wound-like gap in its wake. The pounding continued with renewed effort, its sound coming closer and closer as the animal behind grew frantic.
She was scared it would devour her alive.
Then, the door flew open. Anya closed her eyes.
“Hey, Anya!” called Daisuke’s relieved voice. “We got you out!”
She was still on the ground, curled up into a ball with her knees under her chin, one arm on Curly’s stump, the other obscuring her face like a little child playing hide and seek.
“And we’d like to know why you locked yourself in in the first place.”
Jimmy’s voice was dripping with cold disdain.
She uncurled herself and got up on wobbly legs, propped against Curly’s medical bed. She made sure to avoid the other two men’s stares.
Curly’s eye was piercing right through her. Steady, intense. Ever the same. Was he relieved? Was he worried? Was he pleading? Was he sorry for her? There was no way to know. Was there even enough of him within that breathing carcass for him to understand what had just happened? She felt his stump shiver inside her hand.
“We managed to get Swansea’s axe!” Daisuke explained with excitement. “At first we thought we could get into utility so we could reach the medical bay through the vent, you know, the one that’s broken? But it was like, super dangerous and so I was like, hey so we got the axe, maybe we could force the door instead? And it worked!”
“That’s… That’s great, Daisuke, thank you for opening the door,” she acknowledged with a faraway voice.
“Honestly, we should thank Pony Express for cheapening out on locks!”
Anya felt like she couldn’t breathe.
“Thanks indeed,” Jimmy mumbled, checking the door by sliding it back and forth. “This thing broke down in two minutes, and now it won’t close at all.” He demonstrated by attempting to shut the door. At its best, the dent left a sizable gap between it and the wall, so wide she could see the lounge on the other end of the hallway.
“At least our friend Curly over there will be able to keep an eye on us now,” he said it as a joke, but it felt like acid poured directly into her ears.
“Maybe Swansea will be able to fix it a little?” she proposed hopefully.
“Swansea?” he snorted with a roll of his eyes. “You mean, the guy who’s drunk half the time and asleep the other half?”
Daisuke’s face fell all of a sudden, distraught. “Swansea!” he wailed. “Anya, I think it’s best if you check on him! He’s… Well, I think he’s in a coma.”
Anya jumped with worry. “What?! Why, what happened?”
Jimmy rolled his eyes. “Calm down, kid, the poor guy’s just drunk out of his mind. He’ll be fine.”
“How much mouthwash did he manage to drink?” she asked, befuddled.
“That idiot got his hands on a bottle of isopropyl. For some reason, he must have thought it would be a good idea to chug it like a shot of tequila. Maybe he thought it would fuck him up faster, I don’t know.”
She turned to Daisuke with a questioning gaze.
“Yeaaaah, it’s… It’s what happened, yep. One hundred percent,” he assured with an unsteady voice.
She stayed silent for a few seconds, just enough to gather her wits. “Then I…” she began, in a quiet warble. “I guess I should go check on him, right?”
She took a step towards the door.
“Wait.”
Jimmy’s authoritative voice embedded itself deep within her chest. She froze still, not even a single of her muscles was moving.
“That little stunt you pulled earlier. ‘This isn’t my worst moment’ and all that. Anya, you were planning something in there. What did you do?”
She breathed. Once. Twice. “N-nothing,” she said, with as much assurance as she was able to muster and a thousand times more than she felt.
Jimmy’s hand grabbed her wrist, as fast as the bite of a snake, and tightened around her. He lifted her arm. The bottle of painkillers was still in her hand, uncapped.
“What. Did you. Do.” His voice was low, heavy with the promise of something dangerous.
“I… I…” she hesitated. Should she lie? To say what? Nothing she could say would make him let go, she was trapped.
“You tried to poison Curly with those, didn’t you?” he guessed.
“… Yes,” she lied. That was the easiest answer.
Jimmy dropped her wrist, huffed at her with all the contempt in the world. “Really?” he scoffed with a look of disbelief, an eyebrow raised. “Geez, nurse Anya, that’s one line I didn’t expect you to cross. Doesn’t this go against your oath or something? They don’t teach you about asking for permission before you fuck with someone’s body?”
“I, I just…” she grasped for an explanation. “I just thought it was the most humane thing to do. He’s… The painkillers will run out soon, he’ll be in constant pain.”
Jimmy plucked the bottle of paracetamol from her hand. “So what, you put him out like a dog? That’s not for you to decide,” he said with finality.
“His ability to communicate is limited,” she argued, “but that’s what he wants, can’t you see?”
“That’s not for him to decide either.” Jimmy snapped in a scathing tone. “Who cares what he wants! This is about what we decided here, and we decided that he has to live.”
“What for?” she snapped back. “Why even stay alive at this point?!”
“Because I said so,” he barked.
“Wow, wow!” Daisuke intervened, coming between the two of them. “There’s no need to fight, we came in just in time so there’s no need to get angry, right?”
Jimmy huffed, levelling Daisuke with an angry sneer, but he backed down nonetheless. Although his shoulders were still rolling with anger ready to lash out, he said nothing else.
Daisuke turned towards her. “Is it true that you tried to kill the captain?” he asked in a small voice.
Anya put her hand on his arm. “Daisuke, I’m sorry,” she apologized, her eyes brimming with genuine sorrow.
If she had just one regret about dying, it was leaving Daisuke behind on that doomed ship.
“No, it’s okay.” He looked at Curly over her shoulder. “I get it, I think. At this point it’s best to just… Pull the plug, I guess?”
She gave him a watery smile. “That was my thought, too.”
On the bed, Curly gave a whimpering cry. Daisuke’s mouth twisted into a silent apology. “I just wish it didn’t hurt so much, you know?”
She knew. She did, too.
“If you’re done being all sentimental about this,” Jimmy cut in, “I suggest you go and take a look at Swansea. I mean, he could be dead by now, who knows?”
Daisuke squeaked in alarm and hurried outside.
Jimmy didn’t follow him right away. He stood at the door, a severe expression on his face. Anya lowered her eyes to avoid his. She felt like a child about to be scolded. She felt powerless.
“Whatever you did earlier,” he began, biting.
She nodded her head at him, her eyes still on the ground, to show that she was listening.
“At least I know you won’t do it again.” He made the bent door and its broken lock smash against the wall to prove his point. The sound of metal clashing made her jump, rang deep inside her ears.
She nodded again in deference, unable to utter a word.
He tilted his head towards the green bottle in his hand. “I’ll keep that with me,” he declared, making the paracetamol tablets rattle in their plastic container. “Since I’m already the one who has to give Curly his fucking meds all the time anyways.”
Anya swallowed down any protest.
Jimmy turned around to leave. As he was crossing the threshold, he paused one last time. “Go and help Daisuke with Swansea,” he ordered. “We don’t need him choking on his bile. I’ll be back later for Curly’s meds.”
He left. He swung the door shut. It remained ajar.
Her eyes glazed over with tears that wouldn’t fall.
Her gaze fell down to her closed fist. She unfolded her fingers to reveal a single plain white tablet, and she picked it up with her other hand.
She had swallowed six of those in one go. Three grams. It was certainly above the recommended posology of one gram per six hours. It was maybe even enough to make her a little bit sick. It was definitely far from enough to kill her.
She held the white oblong pill between her thumb and her index, the last shred of her free will. In the end, she couldn’t even have that.
Well, at least she wouldn’t get a headache.
She turned around to face Curly. His eye scrutinized her features, unmoving, set on her like a fatality. From the plastic window, the sun still bathed the room in its red, apocalyptic light, setting yet never set. A nightless twilight. A prolonged agony with no promise of death.
“Maybe I should give this to you?” she wondered aloud, holding the white painkiller in front of her. With a shaky delicateness, she grasped his chin between her fingers and opened his jaw. It clicked wetly as it moved, tongue coming unstuck from the palate, damp flesh rubbing against damp flesh. She pressed her fingers into his mouth, feeling the slick warm muscle of his tongue beneath them, trying to get the pill as deep as possible without choking him. She didn’t want to choke him. When it was far enough, she tilted his head backwards and gently massaged his trachea. Curly constricted his throat and did his best to swallow, her fingers still in his mouth. She shuddered with disgust.
She retreated her digits and wiped them as best she could against the beddings. The sheets were so messy anyways, so a bit more, a bit less, it didn’t change much of anything. Didn’t matter.
“I’m…” she began, unsure. “I’m sorry.”
She didn’t know why she was apologizing. If it was for the painkillers, for trying to kill herself, for failing to do just that. For not killing him, too. Maybe a bit of all of that, maybe none. In that very instant it just felt right to say it, somehow. Maybe just to hear the echo of her own voice.
Her heart was still beating in her chest, erratic and wild, like a scared animal, like a bird in a cage. The end of time felt far away.
Curly stared at her noiselessly. The silent, cruel God in his case of bleeding flesh, of torn sinews and amputated limbs, putrefied in a smell of rot and death. The necromancee. Bathed in a halo of dying light.
Curly’s eye set on her. The setting sun, like an unblinking eye. “Will you please stop looking at me?” she begged.