Chapter Text
Locke wakes him with a smack to the face. “Up, lick.”
He tries to hit back, swiping wildly, and she dodges with what he foggily recognises as infuriating grace, only to dart back in with a stab of her claws into his side. It doesn’t pierce, but it’s a reminder that she could gut him if she wanted. Bitch.
“Eat.” Fish again, flopping in a waterless bucket. This is fucking torture. And yet- he grabs the wriggling, slimy, suffocating thing, and bites down hard, severing the head and spilling blood down his front in hungry haste. His company ignores him. She’s eaten already, taking her share and dumping its bloodless carcass atop his own allotment. She’s even washed before bothering to wake him. Of course, her hands clean again so she can continue leafing through her books.
He finds the other bucket, the one she’d used to clean herself, when he’s done draining the thin, fishy blood, and removes his shirt. He’s not so fastidious as Locke is, doesn’t scrub until the fishblood nearly seeps right on back out through the cracks of her fingers, but then he’s not the one with a precious and fragile collection of paper thousands of miles under the sea.
He tried to look at one of her books, once, when she’d left it behind in the room. He hadn’t even heard her come back in. His eyes had dragged across the word ‘Cain’, something about ‘Nod’ before he couldn’t see much through them at all, light exploding as his head was slammed into a bulkhead. The dent is still there. Grey-pink water drips into the bucket as he wrings his shirt. It still smells gross. If he ever gets out of here, he’ll make sure to drown himself in fresh water.
A muttered curse, and his attention drags back to Locke. He hangs his shirt over the chair to dry, and tries not to scratch at his ears, painfully itchy as they are, as he flops back on the cardboard boxes he’s been using for a ‘bed’.
He’s glad at least he got to keep his nose. Locke more than lost hers, the slits are framed with odd folds of flesh, even more mangled on the side where the scar tissue twists across her cheek and brow, entirely swallowing where an eye should be. She sits twisted, hunched over her precious bloody books.
Her ears flick, soft tattered edges something more animal than human, and the one eye slides to fix him with a stare. He sees the flesh of her cheek rise. It doesn’t connect, though, there’s no lip to actually lift. Her fangs, more like tusks, are always on show. He feels the snarl intended regardless.
He stares anyway. Maybe if he’s rude enough, she finally will gut him, and put an end to his miserable new existence.
🦀
“You were the one who wanted this.”
She’ll claw the sneer off their face one day.
“Right, sure, fuckin’ of course, I wanted newborn babysittin’ duties -”
“Well how else could we justify your precious air down here? There needed to be someone breathing it- and it did give us a nice snack.”
Maybe that day should come sooner.
“Then eat him already.” She spits. “Drive him out t’be hunted. ‘m sick of the cunt’s whining, eyeing up my books.”
A lazy, stretched smile that splits to their ears. “But he’s perfectly sane. Where’s the sport in that ?”
🦀
He can feel the pressure. He hasn’t needed to breathe, but air escaped from his mouth regardless, the last vestiges of when he’d needed it now gone. The water that wants to fill that space, that presses on his chest, is a panic attack.
Something darts by, and his eyes jerk after it-
Locke stuffs a wriggling, thrashing fish in the duffel bag she’d looped around herself, zipping it shut. Her flesh is pale, exposed, clothes left behind in the dry air of the habitat. She kicks off the ground and soars up, out of the pool of light marking the moon pool entrance, a cloud of pale sediment. Within that halo, he can’t see where she’s gone.
Peter stays in the light. He isn’t hunkered. He just stands there, stiff, hair escaping the loose tie he’d held it back with. He hardly even flinches when her claw curls around his shoulder. She gives him an irritated look, and he just stares at her.
She grabs him by the hair, and kicks off the ground. It hurts, but it’s numbed by the cold, and she pulls him through the water, through the dark, even as he kicks, tries to claw at her. The iron grip doesn’t relent until he’s entirely lost sight of the moon pool light, until he wants to howl with no air in his lungs. The seabed hangs beneath him, and he is in orbit in space, twisting all wrong to try and cling back to the world, adrift and alone-
A beam of light. The water is full of snow. Marine snow, living detritus ashing his hair. Silver things flit by, and his mouth hangs open, the water rushing and paralyzing him with that coldness now cutting out through him.
Locke kicks away from the spotlight, from the running cables she’d stretched out from the pool. She looks at the paralyzed childe. Even with the light now illuminating the haze, his pupils had blown wide as soon as she’d hauled him deeper. He’ll have better night vision than most, especially if it’s cultivated.
She turns, and comes to a still. Let him have his panic attack. She’s waiting for something, and as long as he stays here, he’ll see it too. And if he doesn’t, she can wash her hands of an idiot fledgeling with no survival instincts. She’ll eat her fish in peace, and read her books, and wait until the search teams return, hopefully with something to report.
Fish swim by. She’s caught enough. They sit in water, back in the habitat- fish blood is foul, but it’s even fouler if it’s old. These may swim free. Some she sees heading up. They know what is coming as well.
And then it’s here.
The great carcass drifts down, with a retinue of hungry, writhing feasters already at work. She swims forwards, past a shark that has snatched a bite already, that angles itself to come in for another mouthful. Claws drag across the sweep of mouth, along combs of baleen that will never feed again.
Its deathsong was sweet. And it will fall past the edge of this shallow shelf. It sinks, and she knows its flesh will feed yet more congregants. She turns, and watches a crab, shifting towards the edge, past the fledgeling. He hadn’t left, after all. If there was air to make it, she might almost grunt in approval.
Peter- what little is left of Peter- stares at the riddled, half-eaten flesh. Hagfish writhe. A fin scrapes limply on the edge, and the crab takes hold. It raises a handful of meat to its segmented mouth. Devouring. Falling.
He steps forwards just to see a little more. His eyes are dark as he watches god fall into the dark.