Chapter Text
Simon had been unceremoniously shoved into a tin can with only an empty promise and a lie.
He’d been thrown against every wall in the sub, sustained multiple concussions, run out of food and water, had every bit of his body soaked in blood, burned and scarred, and, worst of all, had his mind become some sort of chew toy for whatever the hell the blood monster was. He was done, but his work wasn’t finished.
Crouching to the floor of the sub, he quickly wrapped the small blackbox in a life vest, like it was a bandage that would staunch all of the universe’s wounds. It was bigger than him.
Everything was. Eden, The Coalition, The Eel. Simon was so small and his already miniscule world was shrinking by the minute. He never had a choice. No one ever listened. There were no souls left in the universe to care about him since the Quiet Rapture. And yet…
Simon roared. Not in rage or sorrow, but in some deep, primal need to get the universe itself to fucking listen. Despite the Rapture, despite Filament Station, despite the blood and the Eel and his burns and scars and deep terror and, despite everything trying to crush him, Simon dared to want, more than anything else, to live.
Even if no one else wanted that.
The ship continued its desperate journey onward. The Eel was getting closer. It was too fast for the sub to outrun for much longer. His eyes darted around the sub in some futile final attempt to find a way out, but before he could think, he was haphazardly tossed into the wall again.
His hand found a grip on the pipes of the vehicle keeping him alive. As he steadied himself, he felt a creeping pressure build up and over his arm. Branches, tree branches, wrapped themselves, like pulsing veins, over his exposed flesh. He tried to pull away, but pain shot through every nerve in his body like he was somehow ice cold and on fire. His second hand was secured to the other wall in the same way.
He had to get out. He had to LIVE.
Struggling against the roots, he screamed in agony as he violently tore his right arm free from his new horror-filled handcuffs. The Eel continued to scream in his mind, ranting and raving about shit that he didn’t think he had any mind left to comprehend as he pulled on his left arm. The roots had entwined so deeply that he couldn't even feel his fingers. He was trapped in a cage, within a cage, within a prison. Again.
He continued to pull. He should have been used to the pain at this point, but everything continued to hurt more than he’d ever been hurt before. Despite it all, Simon still tried. He pulled with his whole body weight to free himself, propping a foot up on the pipe to give him some more force as sonorous voices hunted his mind and ghostly visages haunted his eyes.
It was almost blinding when the sinew of his flesh finally gave out and he pulled himself free of the wall. It was almost fascinating to see his arm plastered to the pipes. It was almost enough to make him laugh hysterically. Maybe he would if he could, but all that came were tears his body barely had enough water to make.
The indicator light blinked faster and faster.
“It’s more than you, Simon.” “It will never let you go.”
Fuck this. Fuck all of this. Fuck this and fuck the Eel and damn it ALL to the HELL IT CRAWLED OUT OF.
Simon raised his eyes to the console. The binder he had hurriedly shoved under the lever to keep the sub moving wasn’t giving up, so he wouldn’t either. Almost immediately, he was thrown against the wall yet again, hard enough to hear a crack.
When he was lucid enough to see and feel, he slowly pieced together that the Eel had bitten straight through the hull. Blood poured in through every tiny fracture like it was consciously crawling its way toward Simon. It continued to pour even as Simon bashed the teeth as hard as he could. It continued to drown him even after the tooth was broken.
The creature wailed in barely disguised rage.
It wanted him, but it had never wanted Simon. It wanted the Butcher. And if it would mean he could live, he would give it the Butcher. The everything that he was, for the everything he could never have. He shoved the lever forward in one beautiful, desperate hail mary.
Either way, he was damned.
Half conscious and bleary from another night of restless terror, Simon bravely cracked open his eyes to face the world.
The light pouring in from the clear glass-like substance was nearly blinding to his sluggish mind. Still, he had to be grateful. It was far better than the radioactive green of a camera in an ocean of…
His thoughts trailed off as he frowned to himself. He’d like to never think about that place again, but even here, safe on some sort of… fake planet, the Eel haunted him. He absentmindedly touched his hand to the empty stump of his left arm. Despite it being gone, it still felt like the branches were slowly consuming him. He rubbed the stump of his arm with a sharp hiss and decided that dwelling on his trauma was not productive in the slightest.
His “room” was fairly small and sparse, maybe twice the size of the sub, but it was still safe and Simon would be eternally grateful for that. The walls were bare and somewhat sharp from the material it was built out of. The ‘bed’ he slept on was very similar to the material of the stupid little chair in the SM-13. The aliens that found him had synthesized it under the assumption that he slept on that sort of thing. It wasn’t perfect, but it was much better than some of the cells he had slept in. Besides that, he had oxygen and some form of liquid food.
The aliens that had found him were very kind to even do this for him. For the Butcher.
He wouldn’t complain, especially because he couldn’t. The aliens spoke in some sort of weird music. A lilting melody that signified something Simon still didn’t fully understand, but he and the aliens could understand just enough to keep him alive. That was enough for Simon.
But still…
How did the aliens find him? Where did they find him? Could they understand him? Why did they even want to? Questions constantly burned in Simon’s mind like the bleeding pipes of the SM-13, but those questions had to wait until he could find a better way to speak with his new…? Captors? Friends?
He didn’t remember much of how he was found. He could barely remember how long it had taken him to feel even a little bit better. Regardless, he was alive and, admittedly, doing better.
Rolling himself off the leathery bed, he stood up and carefully tested his weight. Something no one tells you about missing a whole arm is that your balance is absolutely fucked. No one would have told him that back on Eden though. He would have just become more compost for the soil. Too weak to keep around and just another mouth to feed…
Tap, tap, tap.
Simon turned around to gaze out through the clear wall of what he could only assume was glass. On the other side was one of the moving rock aliens that had hovered around while he was recovering from his injuries. Simon still could barely believe that he had recovered at all.
“Hey. Uh… what’s up…?” he croaked out, still a little groggy from sleep.
The alien just chirped at him and tapped the glass a little harder. A series of tones rattled in the glass and he couldn’t help but find it entertaining. He just stood there for a moment and watched the little thing tap against the glass before— oh fuck—
It was pointing.
Realization slammed into him like a boot to the head and he turned to look at what the alien was pointing at. There, on the floor of his small enclosure was a meal waiting for him. A mix of bagged, liquid nutrients that needed to cool from the environment that the aliens lived in. Just enough nutrients to keep him alive. He would take that over downing another bottle of isopropyl alcohol any day.
Stupidly, he turned back to the alien. It seemed to let out a happy sounding trill as it ‘watched’ Simon notice his meal. Maybe he really was just another lab rat. Out of the pan, into the fire, and back out of the fire into another pan. Such was his life.
Either way, he was the one who wanted to live. He wouldn’t complain about being alive.
He thanked the alien and moved to the corner to consume his meal. The alien trotted off as soon as it saw him move. For some reason, the aliens never watched him eat. Maybe he wasn’t a lab rat? Just more questions that would almost certainly never be answered.
He not so graciously slurped up the grey slurry like the lifeline it was. He was fortunate enough that these aliens were extremely intelligent. He assumes that they had analyzed his body as he was healing and determined the conditions that he would need to live. That alone was fascinating.
He really did owe these aliens a lot, but the compound interest would just have to come back later to bite him. He really was just enjoying being alive and not in the sub any more. Whatever they were keeping him alive for could wait.
A familiar series of tones snapped him out of his thoughts. He turned to face the familiar bluish green of his favorite alien through the glass.
He had a favorite alien. Sure. Whatever.
The alien hummed in a low tone and rested on its own five legs in a way that Simon interpreted to be non-threatening. It was much larger than a lot of the other aliens that Simon had seen. Maybe because it was more important? The other aliens seemed to listen to it.
It moved slowly and carefully, like it didn’t want to startle Simon. Gently it pushed a small box forward. Simon stood up from the corner and slowly approached the glass, peering down at the object. It looked like some sort of speaker. As Simon studied it cautiously, the alien pressed a button at the top with a small click. Slowly and deliberately, it hummed a series of notes close to the box.
A smooth and low robotic voice crackled to life. In perfect English.
“Hello, human-friend.”
What. The. Fucking. Hell.