Chapter Text
Simon dreams of a world of blood at the end of a universe. He walks through it, wades through it, swims through it. It boils, tearing pieces of him away inch by inch, he knows that soon there will be nothing left but he refuses to stop. If he stops he’ll die, and he can’t, he can’t- He just wants… wants-
Do you want to live?
Yes! Yes, he wants to live! It’s the only thing he’s ever wanted. Why doesn't anybody else want that?
Would you give all?
What does he even have to give? Nothing belongs to him.
IT WAS MEANT FOR US!
Something races by under his feet and he tumbles head over heels, down, down down. The blood is all around him. Crushing pressure and burning heat, in his eyes, in his nose, in his lungs.
GIVE IT BACK!
He struggles to right himself, resisting every impulse to breathe, just pawing blindly in the dark.
Would you give it?
He doesn’t even know what “it” is! He doesn’t want it! Take it! Take it and leave him the FUCK alone!
AGREED.
—
The world was blurry when Simon opened his eyes. He was also… floating? Was he in zero-g? The air around him felt thick, and warm. Not hot, like the Iron Lung, but nice. Warm. Warmer than they’d ever bother to make it on a ship. If you were cold, you scrounged up another layer. But not here. Here, it was warm, and blurry but still light, and nothing hurt. Was this heaven?
The Father always described heaven as The Grove, the place where the trees of their blood stretched up to the sunlit sky, the place where they would all meet again in the warmth and light. There were no trees here, not that he could see, but it was warm and it was light. So… maybe? The bigger question was why would Simon be in heaven, after everything he’d done?
Psycho Eden fuck.
He thrashed a little, trying to turn and get a better look at the area around him. The back of his hand felt cold for a moment, and he suddenly felt very sleepy.
I’ll figure it out… later…
—
The next time Simon woke up, he was laying on a… cot? The air was cool and smelled like medical sterilizer, and bright, white light was seeping through his closed eyelids. His body was… wet? The moisture on his skin created patches of cold as it evaporated. There was noise- people talking, machines beeping- but it sounded muffled, like it was happening in the next room over. It was like after Fillament, when his eardrums got blown out in the explosion.
Oh fuck, did something explode? Did he get blown up again? He tried to think back but there was just-
Blood.
Heat.
Pain.
Fear.
AGREED.
We had a deal you said it would be over you said you promised I go down and back up don’t make me go back you can’t ask this of me I can’t do it I want to live I want to live I want to live no no no no-
The muffled beeping and the voices got louder. Suddenly there were hands on his body, holding him down. He strained and thrashed against them, working his jaw, trying to get his mouth to cooperate enough to beg them not to put him back. For some reason, no one was holding his left arm. He lashed out with it, waited for his fist to hit flesh and bone but nothing happened.
He pried his eyes open and fought against the nauseating pain of the light. He could see his body, covered in a stiff white sheet. He glimpsed an IV running into the back of his right hand between the brown hands restraining him. He looked to the left. Nothing. His arm was gone.
Oh God. The flesh, rotting, growing, festering, fusing into the ship. He had to pull it free, he had to get to the black box, it was bigger than him. It’s bigger than me, Mom, please I have to, I have to-
There was a spot of cold at the side of his neck, and everything…faded… a w a y…
—
Consciousness came gently the third time. He was warm, and dry, with something heavy and soft laid across his body. It was quiet, and not so damn bright anymore. Simon scrunched his face and opened his eyes to see a plain, white ceiling, a light panel in the center set to a dim, yellowish glow.
"Saluton!: said a voice to his right. “Toki a!”
Simon roughly flopped his head to the side. A man was sitting in a chair next to his bed. He was clean, dressed in some kind of weird-ass brown robe thing with his hands folded in the sleeves like the Old Earth monks, and his hair and beard (both rusty orange) were neatly trimmed. If this was the blood making him hallucinate, it was definitely the weirdest one yet.
"Mi jan Obi-Wan Kenobi. Mi jan li lawa e ni tomo pi mun tawa. Ona li nimi ilo Interotorakotano. Ilo pi kulupu lawa mun. Sina nimi e seme?"
Cool, so that’s not a language Simon knew how to speak.
The red-haired man waited a second and then continued. “Sina toki ala e toki pona mun?”
“I have no idea what you’re saying, man,” Simon croaked. His voice sounded rough, even to his own ears, but probably not as bad as it should given the… events he sort of half remembered. “If you’re that eel trying to fuck with me this is a weird fucking strategy.”
The man frowned and stroked his beard in contemplation. “Jan pi toki ala e toki pona mun li lon? Nasa…”
“Can we just get to the part where you say cryptic shit and try to kill me?” Simon managed to sit up slightly to get a better, less sideways look at the man. This revealed nothing useful. He was just a normal, very clean, guy.
He looked back at Simon and raised an eyebrow.
God, Simon was so sick of the mind games. “Look, do you- Do you speak English? Can we just… talk?”
“Mi sona ala e toki sina, jan pona.”
“STOP FUCKING WITH ME!” Simon shouted. His lips curled back from his teeth in a snarl and his hand shot out like he was going to… fucking… grab this dude who probably didn’t exist, but if he DID had done absolutely nothing wrong.
“Well now!” The man stepped backwards neatly.
Simon let himself fall back and closed his eyes. “S-sorry. I’m- I’m sorry.” He brought his hand up to wipe at his forehead and tried to focus on calming his heart, which was rattling in his chest like a shuttle on entry.
Something touched his hand.
It was the man. Simon watched as he delicately grabbed Simon’s hand, inspected the IV, and slowly, gently, directed Simon to lay it back down on the bed at his side. His fingers were calloused and dry.
“Misikeke li suli,” the man said firmly. “Tawa mute li ike.”
“I’m really sorry. It’s just been- Kind of a lot has happened, lately, and I just really want to pretend any of this is real and just talk to someone. Okay?”
The man sat back down and studied Simon.
“Okay.” Simon took a deep breath. “Obviously no English but… How about, uh… Nǐ huì shuō zhōngwén ma? Vy govorite po-russki?” English was Simon’s best language, the one he was raised in on Eden, but he knew a little of a few others. As he listed them, and the red-haired man’s expression didn’t change, he could feel panic growing in his chest. “Hangug-eo hal jul aseyo?” That was a reach, as far as he knew no one outside Eden knew Hangug, certainly no one in the C.O.I. had, but he was getting desperate.
“Great! Wonderful. We can’t fucking talk to each other. Awesome.”
The man gave Simon a brief, tense smile. “Tenpo pi kama lili la ilo pi toki mute li jo kama. Tawa ni toki…” He gestured at himself. “Obi-Wan Kenobi.” He said it slowly, like he was speaking to a particularly stupid child.
“Yeah, okay. I got it. You’re Obee Juan Kenohbee. Lotta names for one guy, but what do I know? Maybe that’s normal for eels.”
The man, Simon was just gonna call him Juan, gestured at Simon.
He gripped the sheet under his hand tightly. “You already know my name. You’ve been fucking screaming it at me for days.”
Juan repeated himself, exaggerating the gestures even more. “Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
I don’t think we ever got your name…
Simon jolted. Ava hadn’t known his name either.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me.” He was starting to believe this might be real.
Okay, if it is real, does he tell this guy his name? He considered it for a long moment. 62 people died on Filament Station, and he was the C.O.I.’s scapegoat for the whole thing. Simon the terrorist. Simon the fanatic. Simon the Butcher. Surely, even in whatever isolated, unaligned corner of the dying universe this was, they’d heard about it? Heard about him. But if they had, then his face would give him away anyway. Keeping his name secret wouldn’t do him any good. And he really just… fucking space him but he wanted to be called by his damn name.
“Simon,” he said, finally. “My name is Simon.”
Juan smiled, brighter than before. “Mainehmis Saimon?”
Simon huffed out a laugh at the mistake. “No, no! Just ‘Simon.’ Got that?” He flopped his head toward Juan. “Obee Juan Kenohbee.” He flopped his head the other way. “Simon.”
Juan nodded. “Simon. Mi jan Obi-Wan. Sina jan Saimon.”
“Whatever you say, man.” Fuck he was tired. He fought the urge to sleep with everything he had. If he slept, would he wake up back in the Iron Lung? God, he couldn’t handle that. Not after this whatever-this-was where someone bandaged him and spoke gently to him and gave him a fucking pillow. Maybe that was the point. There’s only so bad it can get, right? So you show your victim a little kindness, and then you snatch it away. Really rub it in that they can never have it.
Well it’s not gonna work on me, you fucking bastard. I did my bit. I did more than my bit. And no matter what you do to me I am NOT going to give up and die. I’m going to live. Whether you like it or not.
Just as sleep pulled him under, a voice echoed from somewhere distant, but also deep inside.
Understood.