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You want the butcher!? I'll give you the butcher!
There's so much noise all at once. Simon's heart crashing against in his ears, blood sloshing around his panicked feet. A groan of something formerly human and eldritch. Bones cracking. A steel canister breaking against hollow tubules sharper than the ringing in his skull. Ava screaming—Panicked screaming, like she was truly scared. Before she went quiet, she was truly afraid. He is truly afraid.
But this is bigger than any of them. This is bigger than him. He has the chance to save humanity and bring back the stars. The stars he and his brothers dreamed of, the stars he's been fighting and clawing and kicking to get back. Hope is bigger than him.
There's a split instant where he can feel his body being ripped apart. Flesh pulled apart. Bone splintering. Molecules torn to shreds. He can feel it, he is dying. Simon shuts his eyes tight, to embrace the sureness of nothingness. He wanted to be remembered. They never even got to know his name. If no one else will remember his name, they will remember his pain. One last scream into the void. A proclamation of desperation. Of hope.
And then, it goes quiet. It all goes dark. Silence, quiet, stillness. No more screaming, no more ringing. It's just nothing. He doesn't even feel pain, or numbness. He feels nothing. Is this the afterlife his brothers raved so much about? If so, if this is what his brothers were racing to meet, it's fucking lame.
How long will this last? How long will he have to sit in the nothingness? How many seconds, years, universes, will he burn through until it ends? If there even is an ending to nothingness. His eyes, still strained to shut tight, finally relax. No more leaky sub at the bottom of an ocean, no alien shit for him to navigate through. No more loneliness. If this is all there is left, he can at least enjoy it for now.
As Simon's eyes slowly flutter open, he finds he is not lying down, nor standing. Hardly a sensation of floating, more like he just is. He opens his eyes more and more. He finds himself on the surface of something grey and lifeless. A moon. This… this isn't right… Maybe he survived?
Looking around, there's absolutely desolation as far as his eyes can see. No one around, no submarines or ships. No blood ocean. Just the same, monochrome cratered rock. And then, he looks up. Tiny, white dots litter the sky. Like looking through a thin cloth against an intense light. If he focuses hard enough, they're red and white and blue and yellow. Some are closer together than others. They twinkle and sparkle like glitter. Like-
Stars. Those are stars. Stars! And they light up the black emptiness like glitter. Those are fucking stars! Whatever happened, whatever Simon did, he brought them back.
"I did it! Ha! I fucking did it! I saved all of us," Simon rises to his feet. "I got the stars back, I saved us all!"
He laughs, never wanting to take his eyes off of them. That kind of cackling, crazy kind of laugh. When the adrenaline turns the dreadful into comical. He's done it. All of the insanity, the loneliness, the fear, he did it. He doesn't know how, but he's returned the sky to its rightful glory. Everything is how it should be. Why are they back? What could he have possibly done to return the stars?
"Beautiful, da?"
Simon screams at the sudden sound of something other than his voice. It is not Ava's, it's not… whatever that was… Something soft and elegant, with a heavy accent that he can't place, but knows he's heard before. Looking around, there is nothing nearby him. No other sign of life. Oh God. Did that thing take up another voice just to taunt him? Is he prisoner of whatever ate him? Is he just doomed to live in the belly of the beast?
"No, no no no no no," he puts his head between his hands, pressing his temples together as hard as he possibly can. "No no no no, I don't want to be back there, I won't!"
"Back where?" the voice asks quietly. Now, his ears can hone the sound to something right in front of him. Glancing up, suddenly, appears a… a dog? A tiny thing, it probably couldn't even reach his knees mid-thigh standing on it's hind legs. It's got big brown spots over its chest and left hind leg, and its face is mostly that dark brown with sputtering white hairs. It's floppy, big dish-ears perk up. Around its torso is a strange vest. Burnt and charred in some places, with writing in a language he doesn't understand.
It's very rare to see anyone owning pets, especially after the Quiet Rapture. Animals are considered secondary and irrelevant to the preservation of humanity. He only knows of one because of the stray he and his brothers took care of on Filament Station. A tiny, emaciated little furball, but jumpy and a bit of a rascal. Until… until it was all gone.
"Where don't you want to be?" it says. Well, doesn't exactly say, it doesn't open its mouth and speak, but its like a voice soothes appears between his two ears, like the sound doesn't have to travel. Simon jumps back, unable to contend with the being in front of him.
"What- what are you!? What the hell are you!?"
"Bozhe-moy, please calm down, you are very loud," the dog shakes its head, its floppy ears slapping against it's head. "I am Kudryavka. But you can call me Laika. What is your name?"
This is too much. It's all too much. No, he wants to go back to a few minutes ago when there was only nothingness. Hell, he wants to go back to the Filament Station. He shouldn't have stopped his brothers from killing themselves, he should've gone with them. This is just too much, it's too-
"You are shturman?" Laika asks. The tiny terrier comes up to Simon, burying her nose deep into his legs, at his feet, his hands and arms. "You are like me, but you do the sea. I do the sky."
"Do the sea? What the hell are you talking about, what-"
"Oh, you do not understand what has happened to you, have you?" Laika's voice softens, pitying the poor man. "I am so sorry. You… I'm afraid you have died."
"Died? I'm dead?" Simon touches his face and arms. He can touch his body, he can sense that he is there. But there's no sense of being present. It's such a strange feeling. It makes him feel sick. But then again, he goes back to the moments on the SM-13. His last moments. He feels his body being ripped apart once more.
"It must have been very scary. I know, I was scared," Laika comes over and sits patiently at his side. Not touching him, not sniffing him, just sitting beside him.
"No, I don't want to be dead, I-!"
"But you just said you didn't want to go back?" she tilts her head curiously. If she had eyebrows to furrow, she would've. He did say that, it's true. He doesn't want to go back, he'd give anything not to go back. He wouldn't wish that kind of hell, that purgatory on anybody. That was not punishment, that wasn't serving his sentence. He wouldn't even call it an execution. It was torture.
"What is your name?" she asks again, same inquisitive tone like before.
"S-Simon," he mutters, finding a moment to ease his mind, slow his breath. "My name is Simon."
"Simon," Laika repeats the word, "I like. You are very loud, but I am too. They told me, my bark gets very loud. Watch—" Laika hops back up to all fours and lets out one big bark. Not a ferocious one, not one that would scare even a fly away. But she's right, it's loud. "See? I learn when I was pup, loud means food."
"Uh-huh." He can't wrap his head around it. He's dead. Who is this Laika? Why is only she here? Is this what the afterlife is? This fucking sucks.
"Come, we walk. You will tell me about you, and I will tell you of me," Laika says, trotting, paws never touching the ground, along the crater landscape. With nothing else to do, Simon rises, and follows her.
He tells her about Filament Station. About his brothers, about a man he considered his father, although he never got around to knowing his real one. He tells her of the good times he remembers growing up with his band. He tells her about Eden. He tells her about the last tree. He tells her of the crimes that got him imprisoned. He tells her of the mysterious group of people who came to him, in his cell. Offered him freedom for an expeditionary mission. "You'll be in a vehicle taking some pictures for us." Those are the exact words they used. The exact phrasing that made him agree, and condemned to the SM-13.
"They put me in handcuffs, through me in this metal tin of a submarine. And then they welded me inside. I was never supposed to come out," Simon says as he takes a big step over boulders that jut from the ground. "They wanted to execute me from the beginning."
"You are sacrifice for science, I understand," Laika says, keeping a steady pace at his side. "I am too. So, what happened next, on podvodnaya-lodka?"
The more they talk, the more he starts to understand the strange words she says in a different language. He tells her about being welded shut inside, about sent down with only a flimsy map, a couple manuals and a piece of charcoal to guide him. Take some pictures. He got something good, they pulled him up. He thought that he fulfilled his contract. He thought it was enough for his freedom. He thought… he thought he would get to live. And then they sent him back down again. And they left him there that time. He tells her of the things he saw, of the voice on the broken radio. Of the light. He tells her everything. Because who cares if he tells her everything or nothing? He's dead. He just wanted to live. He just wanted to be free. The thought of being abandoned the way he was, the way they never even bothered to ask his name until it was far too late… It enrages him.
"I just wanted to live!" Simon exclaims, voice crumbling over the weight of his own desire. "Is that so wrong? Doesn't anybody else want that?"
"Of course they do," Laika says softly. "Anything that tastes what it is to live will always want it. Any dog on my street who ever had a treat will forever want a treat."
Simon stares at this dog. If he is dead, then what is she? A figment of his imagination? has this whole conversation been the last few electronic signals firing in his brain before he dies?
"Where are you from?" Simon asks, finding his voice now quieting just like hers.
"I am from this cold little spot called Musk-va. On Zemlyah. Always cold, always," Laika explains as she steps off the surface of their moon into the deepness of space. Simon finds himself following her, as they float off their little moon.
Musk-va, Simon rolls the word off his tongue silently. Zemlyah.
"Cold, but… in the end, I was very warm, too warm," she laughs while she remembers. Like it's all some elaborate joke. "They too, weld me inside. You see, they wanted to know if their people could go up into sky and stars. So they send me. I was only little pup in Musk-va, they trap me and put me in cage, very tiny cage. They spin me, around and round. And then, on my last night, they take me home. And the little ones, they take me and kiss me and tell me I am good dog. I never had home. I never had a chelovek. I always wanted one."
He was a prisoner, and they took him and put him in a tiny cage. And at the last minute, they brought him up. They promise him a home. They promise him what he always wanted.
"Then, they put me in tiny box. They tell me, 'Laika, in. Laika, lay. Good girl. Wait. Stay.' They close door, shut me inside."
Then they shut his hopes inside the sub with him and sent him back down.
"They send me up to stars. By myself. Very lonely. I miss it, my little sem'ya. I think about them often," Laika says as they move at incomprehensible speeds like it's nothing more than a brisk walk to the next planet. To the next sun. The next galaxy cluster. Laika goes around to all of these, sniffing the celestial bodies as they pass them by. They are not of physical form anymore, they simply are because they want to be.
"I hope they are good. I hope they are happy," Laika says as she finds a planet, as blue as the eyes of the man Simon irradiated and probably killed. She paws it around, before taking the blue ball in her tiny, sharp jaw. She trots up to Simon, dropping the planet at his 'feet,' or whatever could be considered the feet of a constellation. The feet of a celestial being.
"Why would you want them to be happy?" he asks as he takes the blue planet into his hands and throws it, as far as he possibly can, into the empty spaces between star clusters. Little Laika runs after it, her back legs springing far ahead of her front ones, over and over. She barks loud as she chases the blue rock into the black. She swoops the planet back into her mouth and happily skips back to him.
"Aren't you mad at them for leaving you behind? For torturing you? For putting you in a death trap and pretending like they were going to bring you back? They teased you, showed you what it's like to be free—to have a family—and they took it away from you and killed you."
"Oh, Simon," Laika laughs as Simon takes the ball from her again and throws it even further. "Of course I was angry. At first, I was full of hate and rage. And then I realize that I have given them more than anything I could have ever given them if I stayed on Zemlyah."
She comes back and puts the ball back in his hand. She seems disinterested in continuing fetch, and instead goes to sniff around the other elliptical galaxies that surround the both of them.
"What's that?" Simon asks.
"Nadeyat'sya," Laika says. "I gave them hope. Even if no one gave me any hope, even if no one was going to save me. I find joy that I give them hope for better future."
He nods, quietly turning and squeezing the planet in his pocket, thinking for a moment. "So, what happens now?"
"We guide the next svyatoy who will journey on the same one we have. From the cold to freedom. I have guided you, so we will guide next one together, yes?" Laika says. "We are patron saints of one way trips."
Simon never considered being a saint in his plans for his life, in fact, as the Butcher, he's the furthest to deserve it. But if that's what has to become of him, so be it. This way, he will always have his freedom to roam the universe. Besides, she isn't bad company. As long as she doesn't leave him the way everyone else has.
"You will not leave me, yes?" Laika asks, her voice as quiet as the stars that illuminate her vest. "I never had a chelovek. Human."
"Of course, Laika," Simon reaches and ruffles her coarse fur with a reassuring pet. "Of course I'll stay."