Work Text:
Clang, Clang, Clang
The banging against the door startles her, and she almost drops the pills she’s holding to the ground. The ground reverberates as Daisuke and Him profusely strike against the metal Medbay door. The air is stale with burnt wires, dead, dangling astray on the cool floors of the room. They are like vines, a reminder of entrapment curling around her throat, choking her.
Daisuke yells out for her, and He says nothing.
Curly stares, wide-eyed at her, and she can hear his voice telling her to stop, and that she doesn’t need to do this- and that he can fix it. The same things he mumbled to her months ago, the neon green light illuminating the room against the pin-drop silence of what she had revealed.
“Everything will be okay,” and now he is a whisper of what he once was. A captain turned silent observer. His blue eyes, once alive with leadership, with faith, have turned dull and lifeless with the familiar view of dejection.
“This can’t be fixed, Curly, not now. It’s too late,” She whispers, and his eyes crinkle and she is unsure if it was out of pain due to his burned skin or out of the hopelessness of their situation.
Daisuke yells at her again, to not panic. His voice does not have that childish lilt to it anymore. The funny thing is, she is as calm as she has ever felt since the incident. Since she found out, what happened that day wasn’t a hallucination and was real, the evidence in her stomach. Since the crash, maybe this is the calmest she’s been her entire life. It hurts to think she could continue on in any other path.
Curley’s eyes beg, and some cruel part of her realizes the irony of this. She had pleaded with him to do something- anything, to use the control he had and now look at him. Completely to her mercy. He cannot force her to ignore any longer, to continue.
“Everyday since the Crash I’ve wondered why you did it, Curley,” she whispers.
The pills shake in her trembling hands. The floor vibrates. She wonders how much more time she has before they find a way to get in. Till He comes in and laughs at her with that snarky tone and cruel smirk, one that beseeches her with contempt and disregards her humanity.
“I told you. What He did,” she looks up at the ceiling. Curley says, does, nothing. Once again, history repeats. Chokes them, a startling reminder, a cautionary tale. She’d call it a lesson, but that is a word for those who decide to keep going. No, if anything, she’d call it a burden, now much too heavy to carry.
“Everything could have been different,” she stares at the corpse of a captain who can do nothing and thinks, This is who he has always been. Someone, who can do nothing.
“But, I guess we were doomed the second He was let on board. It would have all gone wrong no matter what,” she looks at the former captain and sees herself in his vacant eyes, “Everyday I’ve wondered who I should blame, and…I still do not know. I think we were both His victims. I think he took as much as he took from me as he took from you.” She had seen Him give Curley painkillers once. Realized that the story of Curley crashing the ship had a few cracks in it.
“Yet… I’m not sure if I forgive you Curley. I want to. I wish I could,” and she sees his eyes, brimming with anguish, bleak and lifeless. She longs to tell him she forgives him, but maybe that would be a lie. She cannot help but think of his dismissive behaviour, of how she had put his trust in her, and he had simply held in his hands, letting it slip into the cracks. Of "Everything is going to be okay," . Of how he never stepped in when she needed it. The guilt he feels is strong, she knows that is not a lie, but is that enough?
Her and Curley are the same, she realizes. An illusion of what they once were. Curley, with his golden hair and bright blue eyes, always sees the best in everyone- to the point of fault. Curley, burnt skin and silenced, staring at her with regret. Does he still see the best in everyone? The potential he holds themselves up to, the faith he placed. Is it still there? She wants to ask. She doesn’t know what answer she’s looking for. If Curly, in his state, is still capable of putting faith into others, then maybe she would be as well. Maybe she could stop, and try. Is this her only solution? Does Curly feel guilty? Does it matter? Guilt does not purify.
These senseless doubts. Useless.
Anya remembers who she used to be, she remembers playing board games with the crew and laughing and being happy. They are the same, in which He had taken away who they are. Defined them by their worst moment, a treacherous leech that suckles the skin sip by sip, until one looks down and all they can see is an empty vessel, hollowed out by the weight of regret, of defeat. . Any semblance of control, stolen. She glances at Curly, and does not know what to feel. Anger, because she has been in pain and he could have helped her. Empathy, because he is in pain, and she will not be able to help him anymore.
As a young girl, she used to be afraid of space monsters and aliens. Her mother had told her humans are much more terrifying. She looks at the pills one more time, and then she shoves them all at once down her throat. They resist at first, dragging across the skin of her throat, but they end up making it regardless, dryly. It tastes astringent, bitter, and clinical. It tastes like freedom.
Curley sobs and she wonders if it’s because of the pain or because of his inability to actually do anything, even if he wanted to, this time. She wonders who is the true dead person out of the both of them, because death is a full stop, and what is a full stop, if not being forced into silence, forever? To be an observer, to never act. Atleast, her last words are this. His last words… She does not remember the voice he spoke to them in, nor the words themself. Death is never so strongly felt until the absence of a lively voice settles in.
Outside, He speaks to her as if she’s going crazy. As if this is just another ‘breakdown.’ And she realizes this is what she needs to do. Has to do, to be her own person. To not be torn down to a shell of who she actually was. The person who she has fought for all this time, herself, she must go through with this, for them. He cannot take from her anything else, she will not let Him.
He tells her, from outside, to open the door. Commands it with the facade of stolen control he thinks he rightfully has.
“I should have done this all along, you were right,” and she hopes He can hear this. Hopes that it might get him to see her as a person. Knows that it won’t. Says it anyway. He does not get to control what she does, to scare her into submission, into silence. Her words are her own, and she will make him hear her.
“I… always believed that our worst moments didn’t define us. Didn’t make us beyond repair.”
She is more than her weaknesses. More than the parasite that resides inside her, a reminder of why she’s doing this.
“Make no mistake.. This isn’t my worst moment. Far from it. It's the best decision I’ll ever make.”
Curley groans again, in distress, and she feels guilty for doing this here, in front of him. It’s the only place with a lock. Even if this is what she has to do… it seems awful. Yet, a smaller, meaner part of her thinks he might deserve it. The larger part of her that used to be her entirely thinks that he is not a bad person, rather a victim. She looks at him and sees herself.
“Why do you think Pony Express put a lock on the Medical room but not in the sleeping quarters?”
“For, safety, of course!”
He was right. This is the safest she’s ever felt.
“It’s okay, Curley,” she whispers, barely coherent. She wants to reach out, caress his cheek maybe. Anything to relinquish the look of despair glinting in his eyes. Her last view of the world, she doesn't want it to be this. Yet, words are like fireflies, flickering just outside of her reach. Curley’s eyes are wet with the familiar view of tears, and despite all this, despite the horrible thing she is making him watch, she cannot find herself to feel guilty, because she knows, with certainty this time, saying it with the same conviction he told her, that,
“Everything is going to be…okay.”