Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Medicine (Corbin POV)

It was a quiet morning when Corbin stepped out of the algae bay and into the corridor. Everyone should have left by now, as they were spending the day planetside, running errands and visiting friends. Either way, Corbin was happy to finally to have some much-needed alone time. Well, he was alone technically. Tycho was there as usual and also Kizzy. She had hit her head yesterday, which didn’t come as a big surprise to Corbin, considering how she handled workplace safety.

Anyway, she should have been given medicine and should be sleeping soundly in her bed right now. This meant that he basically had the ship to himself and didn’t have to worry about encountering any other crew members.

After their near-death experience, he had felt like he was closer to everyone and had tried his best to open up more. He had even tried to make friendly conversation with Pei when she had visited. He had felt like part of the crew for the first time ever. Things had been going too well and inevitably, a fight with Sissix over her piloting skills had changed the whole situation: A few speciest remarks had slipped out of his mouth during their disagreement, causing Sissix and then everyone else to withdraw.

He wasn’t even that mad about it. Of course, this was no way to treat your colleagues, but if they had really cared, they would have tried to talk it out. It was just like it had always been: One small mistake and they drop you at an instant. He had then retreated into his former shell, and no one seemed to care about it. Well, no one except Ohan, who had singlehandedly decided that he and Corbin were something like friends.

And he had to admit it, having a friend was nice. They sometimes hung out in the algae bay, listening to music when Corbin wasn’t too busy. Ohan had discovered that he had a huge interest in music and wanted to listen to everything that he could get his hands on. Some of it was beautiful, some was absolutely dreadful, but Ohan always listened with the same curiosity and serious expression.

The sessions in the algae bay had started when Ashby, who was not the biggest fan of experimental jazz, had banned Ohan from playing his music at the fishbowl. The only other room that had good acoustics (important for Ohan) and was mostly shielded from the rest of the ship (important for the others) was the algae bay.

This was fine with Corbin since he enjoyed the company and could tolerate most of the music, still feeling guilty for what he had done to Ohan. It had been one of those awful instances when his mind had just gone blank and he had almost felt like he was watching himself.

And while he was still hating how he had breached Ohan’s sovereignty, Corbin knew this but there was no way to undo this. So the best thing he could probably do was try to be a good friend to him and don’t argue about the need to listen yet another hour of twelve-tone music.

The music wasn’t the only sacrifice Corbin had made. In the last tendays, it had become very clear that Ohan was still struggling with eating. He didn’t enjoy the nutrient paste anymore but also couldn’t get used to have full meals three times a day, all consisting of new things he had never tried before. Dr. Chef had ordered him to have several snacks a day, but Ohan seemed to forget about this, or maybe he just didn’t want to eat, Corbin wasn’t quite sure. So after extensive research on food in lab environments, he had decluttered the back of the lab. He put a chair for Ohan there and made sure to always have some snacks provided. Nothing producing crumbs or, even worse, dust. Nothing that would lead to sticky fingers. And Ohan did eat when they sat there together to listen to his atrocious music. Sometimes he did need a bit of a push, but he almost always ended up eating a least a little bit.

Marcus would still have killed him if he knew Corbin let someone eat in the algae bay, but he tried not to think too much about that. About Marcus in general, and how he was nothing but a copy of his father. Corbin had spent hours looking at old photos of himself as a child. He put them side by side with the few photos he had of Marcus as a child, in search of little differences. Maybe the modders had giving the clone a little fun tweak, just a little anomaly. But there was none. He was a carbon copy of his father and would always be. And nothing he could ever be or do would truly be him. It would always be Marcus.

With all those thoughts haunting him, he tried his best to focus on his work and on Ohan getting better. Also, they would have regular contracts again soon, Ashby had told him a few days ago. The captain had already been sending out applications. Things would be getting back to normal soon enough, hopefully.

And with the prospect of being stuck with the crew for tendays on end, the thought of having the whole day to himself was a welcome one to Corbin. He could have breakfast in peace, maybe sit on the bench in the garden with a cup of tea. Get his spreadsheets in order without interruption.

Just as he wanted to turn right into the direction of the fishbowl, heard a noise coming from the other corridor. That was weird. He felt a spike of anxiety in his chest.

Wasn’t everyone planetside? Could it be… intruders again? But that wouldn’t be possible, right? Didn’t Ashby say something increased safety measures? Where could he hide? Was it too late to run back to the algae bay? Or his room?

A very loud and angry “Shit!” followed by a metallic rattle changed his mind. No intruders, just Kizzy and one of her shenanigans. What was doing she here? Shouldn’t she be sleeping? His instincts told him it would be something illegal. Careful to not make any noise, he snuck around the corner.

There she sat, in front of the door to the med bay. She didn’t wear her usual working gear or her crazy leisure time clothes, but baby blue pajamas. Scattered around her was an arsenal of tools, a red crowbar catching his eye. It looked like she had not seen him so far.

Grumbling something incomprehensible to herself, Kizzy picked up the crowbar and positioned it on the crack of the door. Corbin had to do something, anything, right now before she could break the door. He took a deep breath.

“What exactly do you think that you are doing?”, he asked as he approached her. Kizzy winced.

„Why do you care? Just leave me alone”, she mumbled with a contorted face.

“I would love to leave you alone. If you would be so kind as to stop dissembling our ship.”

“That’s my job. I can dissemble whatever I want, you stupid…”, Kizzy had continuously raised her voice, but suddenly stopped speaking. She grimaced and hid her face behind her hands, accidentally dropping the crowbar in the process.

As it hit the floor with a loud clang, she crunched even further, making a sobbing noise. Was she crying? Stars. He should definitely leave her alone, he wasn’t into her emotional escapades.

Carefully, he took a few steps backward. He would have to tell Ashby about the issue tomorrow, like he should have done right away. Approaching Kizzy had been a very bad idea from the start.

“Yeah, get lost, thank you very much”, she murmured, still crouched on the ground. Suddenly, it hit him and he understood what was happening here. He knew that posture and the frustration in her voice very well.

„You’re in pain“, the words just slipped out of his mouth. That was the reason she wanted to break open the door. And Dr. Chef had locked it, like always when he left the ship. Probably because Kizzy and Jenks had helped themselves one too many times on his pills.

“Oh, thanks a lot for the diagnosis, I couldn’t have told“, Kizzy hissed at him, still holding her head in her hands.

Corbin hesitated. It would be easy to help her and he could even stop her from ruining the door, but then again he didn’t want to get too involved with Kizzy. But the pain - He knew that pain very well since his childhood.

He felt like he was watching himself, crouched down on the ground in the middle of a migraine episode.

„Listen. I think I can help you. If you let me?“, he finally asked.

Kizzy seemed to think about it, probably surprised by his question. Then she said: „Okay. Just take that crowbar next to me on the floor and…”

“No”, Corbin interrupted her. “No, we really cannot break the door open, that’s not even up for discussion. But I have something for your headache down at the bay, just give me a minute…”

Corbin didn’t wait for her answer and sprinted back down to his lab. He was glad he still had a small batch of the migraine algae from Saturn. Ashby didn’t mind him growing his own stuff.

Like he had done many times before, he prepared a compress, put some ointment on it and then some of the long blue-green algae.

While he was preparing the compress, he couldn’t help but imagine how Kizzy would laugh about his medicine, or maybe she wouldn’t even wait for him and just break into the med bay. But his sorrows turned out to be unnecessary: When he returned, she was still sitting on the ground, her face hidden behind her hands and hair.

“I’m back”, he said as he kneeled down beside her. She was still quietly sobbing, not looking at him. He understood the pain, but did she have to be so dramatic about it? How was he supposed to put the compress to her temple? There was so much hair in the way.

He waited for her to fix it, but she didn’t move. Fine, then he would take care of it.

With a quick but careful motion, he brushed her hair out of her face and behind her ear. Irritatingly, her hair refused to stay there, making its way back into her face. How was he supposed to work with that?

Thankfully, Kizzy understood his confusion and took care of the problem with some kind of clip she had pulled out of her pocket. He had seen those around the ship, connecting pipes. Stars, those were definitely not hair accessories.

“You’re not planning to use this on a pipe later, right?”, he asked.

He got no answer, so he went back to dealing with the compress. Carefully, he put it onto her temple, right onto a dark purple spot where she had probably hit her head.

„Just hold it there for a few minutes and it should get better. It’s an old recipe from Enceladus.” She fumbled with his hands and the compress, taking it over to press to her head.

“When I was a child, I frequently had migraines. And the people on Saturn weren’t really fond of the GC medicine, so they made their own stuff. Of course the algae medicine is no comparison to GC standards, but for my migraines, it always worked wonders. I don’t get them as often as I used to, but I still carry it with me”, Corbin explained. He was still surprised Kizzy had let him do this without hesitation, but he also knew how desperate he felt when he was in pain. How he would try anything to make it better, no matter how ridiculous it was.

„Thank you“, Kizzy said. „It smells like something died on my head, but I already feel better. You know… Yesterday I slipped and hit my head. Dr. Chef said I would be fine and gave me some pills, but they just didn’t work at all. Thought I would just repair the door after I found better pills, but this is definitely less of a hustle.”

She smiled at him, a very tired but relieved look on her face, and it occurred to him that this was probably the first friendly interaction they had had in standards. And it wasn’t even about work.
Corbin didn’t know which way to look.

“Don’t worry about it, please. That migraine algae grows way too fast anyway. If you need anything, I’ll be down in the bay.”

Before he could embarrass himself any further, he hurried away.

***

Corbin spent the rest of the day down at his workplace, trying to distract himself from the weird feeling in his stomach. Touching Kizzy had made him kind of nervous, and when he went to sleep later that night, his mind kept replaying what had happened. How Kizzy had looked at him when she had thanked him, with that little smile, and also the way he had brushed her hair out of her face. He tried to tell himself it was nothing special, but there was no denying that their interaction had left some kind of impact on him.

A tenday later (Corbin POV)

At dinnertime, Corbin felt a spike of attention whenever Kizzy said something. Which meant most of the time, since she only stopped talking when her mouth was way too full for the others to understand a single syllable. The things that annoyed him the most about that situation was that he didn’t actively choose to listen to her - she didn’t talk about stuff Corbin was actually interested in. What caused him to listen was rather some kind of instinct, like when you overhear your name in a conversation. Something had happened with his mind since that evening when he had helped Kizzy with her headache:

Every time he passed the med bay, his thoughts went back to them sitting on the cold floor and talking. The way her hair had felt when he had pushed it behind her ears, how she had smiled at him when she had felt better.

And he had started to notice the way she dressed. Instead of thinking of her as a colourful mess, he started recognizing the different clothing items.

All of those changes combined bothered him immensely. Usually, he could just immerse himself in his own thoughts and get up immediately after he had finished eating - maybe he would exchange a few courtesies with Dr. Chef and Ashby, but that was about it.

But that had turned into listening to the pointless conversations and having to continually fight the urge to take a quick glance into her direction. What was he even trying to look at? He had seen her face a thousand times and knew her features well enough. There was nothing new or interesting about them, just like there was nothing new or interesting about the conversations of the crew.

Right now, they were talking about a speciest comment that had been made in the GC parliament and the repercussions following it and how everybody and their grandparents talked about it.

“I just don’t get why people act their way. You could delete all my memory and put me into a speciest community and let me live there for, maybe ten standards and I can guarantee, I would never ever have even a single speciest thought. Not one. Because I am just not built that way”, Kizzy said.

Most of the others nodded in agreement, but Corbin silently shook his head. Like it was that easy. Getting raised in open-minded society had obviously turned their brains into mush.

“Cheers to that”, exclaimed Jenks and raised his cup of mek.

Before Corbin knew what he was doing, he blurted: “Sorry, but that’s absolute bullshit!”

Everyone stopped talking and looked at him. Ashby gave him a warning glance, Sissix had raced an eyebrow.

“Oh yeah, I forgot that you are quite the expert on that topic”, she said, causing Ashby to focus his warning gaze on her.

“I just wanted to say that it is not that easy to not absorb the believes of your parents and your community, especially growing up. All of you have absolutely no idea how it is to be raised in a speciest society”, Corbin said, wishing he had stayed quiet.

Everybody was looking at him and the attention made him feel sick. They wouldn’t believe him anyway, so why bother? But he was too agitated and some part of him just kept going.

“The comments that my teachers made on other species, the stories we got told and everything. I didn’t even meet other species until I started university. How was I supposed to educate myself?”

“Didn’t you consume some kind of GC media on your orbiter?”, Rosemary asked. She sounded a bit reproachful, but also curious. Her fingers were now entwined with Sissix’.

“Not that much. Most of the people there weren’t especially fond of the general council and its news. I played some of the modern sims that were species inclusive, whenever my peers could get theirs hands on that stuff. But we always had to hide those from our parents who wanted us to play those old saturnian sims. There was just that one way of thinking and one way of living, meaning you better stayed within your community. I was lucky because my father was so focused on education, otherwise I would have never been allowed to go study on Mars.”

When he raised his eyes from the table for a second, he expected to see angry faces, but his most of crewmates didn’t look mad. Not entirely friendly either, but some had hints of compassion on them.

“Maybe I should have questioned more stuff that I got told when I was younger, yeah, but how was I supposed to know? I don’t want to claim that it makes me a better person that I grew up like that, I just… Ugh, never mind.” He had already told them way too much.

Everyone was silent, until Sissix raised her voice again. Who else? She could clearly never give him a break.

“You know, I really want to believe you, but you are giving me a hard time”, she said.

“Sissix, is that really necessary?”, asked Ashby. “I thought we were starting to have kind of an open conversation for once.”

“And nobody has yet started to rip the other’s heads off”, said Kizzy, who had been busy tying knots into a cable she had pulled from her pocket.

“Do I want to know what cable this is?”, Ashby asked her.

Kizzy shrugged. “I’m sorry, I get tense during fights.”

Sissix interrupted them.

“Listen. I don’t want this to turn ugly. But Corbin, I think when you tell everyone about your upbringing and how you couldn’t help but have your poor human brain infiltrated with all this speciest propaganda, you should tell them what you did in university. Because that is a whole other story.”

Within a minute, the whole room seemed to have gotten ten degrees colder.

Kizzy and Jenks were on the edge of their seats. Ashby seemed to be torn between curiosity and the wish to just end the whole thing. Rosemary and Sissix had gotten so close that they were almost sharing a seat. Ohan and Dr. Chef seemed to be both only mildly interested, but interested still.

Corbin rolled his eyes. Why couldn’t they just leave him alone?

“Sissix, my life isn’t a fucking drama show. I don’t owe you or anyone an explanation for what I did fifteen standards ago. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

He got up from the table swiftly and left the room without another word. Everyone was still quiet. Only when he was out in the corridor, he heard the conversation getting picked up again. Kizzy laughed about something. How could she be so careless after he had basically poured out his heart to the whole crew? He felt incredibly betrayed.

Cleaning filters (Corbin POV)

The next day, Ohan visited Corbin, who was cleaning algae filters. After putting on music and watching the algaeist work for a while, Ohan said: “Maybe this is a misunderstanding. But I don’t have the impression that you like or respect me less because of my species.”

“Why would I?”, Corbin asked, “I know I sometimes lose my temper and get a bit mean…”

“Very mean”, corrected Ohan.

“Fine. But it’s just something that has been ingrained into my brain and that gets triggered in the worst moments. Your job is something I could never do. Why would I think that you would be worth less than me?”

Ohan nodded slowly. “That’s just what I thought.”

He sat quiet again and Corbin took up his work again. The filters were full of clumps and pieces of brown, rotten algae. He couldn’t wait to replace the old batch.

“Maybe you could tell the others about your university experience. I’m sure it was not that bad and then they would get along with you better.”

“I am not interested in getting along, thank you very much”, Corbin said without looking up from his work.

There was too much on his plate anyway, without thinking about how he would get along with his crewmates. The new patch of algae he was growing, the struggle of keeping the old patch running for some more days, and all that chaos up in his head.

To a certain degree, he had always experienced anxiety, but it had gotten substantially worse after what happened in the Quelin space. A weird, uneasy feeling had infiltrated every waking moment, causing him to flinch at the slightest unexpected noise and sometimes even at his own reflection.

Ohan gently patted his back, as if he knew what Corbin was thinking. Usually the algaeist hated to be touched, but from Ohan he didn’t mind it. The period of caretaking had involved a lot of touching: Helping someone to sit or stand up and even walk just didn’t work without a lot of physical contact. He had felt very weird about it in the beginning, but he had gotten used to it over time.

“For me it is very obvious that you care a lot about the crew. But other people have a harder time understanding these things. They might need a little more effort from your side.”

Corbin shrugged.

“Maybe you’re right.”

He paused for a moment.

“But I still won’t do it, not after what happened in the fishbowl the other day. If anyone wants to know things, they know where to find me.”

I don't really care (Kizzy POV)

„Kizzy, can I tell you something?“, Jenks gave her a questioning look.

She put her tools down for a moment, the pipes could wait. They had started to clog since the days after the ship had been hit by the Toremi, and now it was so bad that Jenks had to assist her with her work.

He wasn’t too happy about it and used every opportunity to take a break, which she totally got. Unclogging algae pipes was probably the most boring job on the whole ship.

“What is it?”

“You have some algae sticking on your temple”, Jenks told her as he reached over and pulled a dried piece of algae off of her skin. He held it up against the light and with horror she recognized it was still some of the long blue-green algae Corbin had given her for her pain the other day. She had washed her hair at least twice since then.

“This one looks… different”, Jenks commented and she snatched the dried algae out his hands. She had not told him about the episode. It had felt like a weird fever dream and she had not really known what to make of it.

“Eew. That stuff is everywhere. Literally everywhere. I just hope it’s not too bad for my skin… But actually, I think I once had a lotion that had algae in it – no idea why I bought it, it didn’t even smell good. Who would want to smell like algae anyway?”, Kizzy said, picking up her tools again.

“Also, concerning algae, we need to talk about that Corbin drama yesterday. I don’t know about you, but I just have to know what happened between him and Sissix during their university time. Of course, I already asked Sissix, but she said she doesn’t want to tell me. Corbin should tell me about it himself. Yeah thanks a lot, as if he would ever voluntarily share anything personal with me.”

Yes, he had been nice to her once that day. But that had been the only friendly interaction in the last standard and considering his demeanor, she would probably have to wait at least four to five standards before she could expect him to be nice again.

“Kizzy, why would you even care? He probably was just as awful in uni as he is now. There are probably a few stories about him saying speciest things and that’s it”, Jenks said, pulling another large piece of brown algae out of a pipe and throwing it into a bucket that stood beside them.

“Well, I don’t care that much.”

Jenks gave her a knowing look.

“Yeah fine, I do care. You know how much I hate secrets. I need to find out. We should make a plan, maybe we could blackmail Corbin. Or bribe him.”

She put the screwdriver behind her left ear and picked up a flange, trying to figure out if it was the right size for the pipes.

“How do you bribe people if you don’t have a shitload of money?”

“That’s the part where you don’t”, Jenks replied.

“You know, you aren’t exactly helping me with this thing.”

“That’s because I am not trying to.”

“Fine, I will figure it out by myself, then.” Kizzy sighed.