its cold and im mad

---

In and out, Simon tells himself. In and out, and then he's free.

He sits across from a boy no older than 20 as the crew welds the two of them into the submarine—the SM-13, according to the logo he glimpsed on the side.

Simon feels a phantom itch on his neck, where his old tattoo used to be. Eden had marked all their "brothers" that way. A reminder of purpose. C.O.I. had burned it off when they took him in, a searing, acrid smell that had made him gag.

He shifts in his seat, the metal groaning under his weight. The boy across from him stares at the floor, his knuckles white where he grips the edge of his chair.

"Almost done in there," a muffled voice crackles through a speaker. "Just sealing the main hatch now."

The sound of the welding torch stops, replaced by a hiss of pressurization and then a series of heavy, metallic clanks. A final, resonant thud echoes through the tiny compartment.

"Sealed and secured," the voice says. "SM-13, you are clear for descent. Godspeed."

Simon looks at the boy. "You got a name?"

The boy flinches, then looks up. His eyes are wide. "Mai."

Simon nods. "Simon. You know why you're here, Mai?"

Mai's eyes glaze with fear, like he's been given a pop quiz he didn't study for. "To... take pictures?"

There's a sort of slur to his words, a softness that makes him sound younger than he is. One of the scars on his face, a thin white line that bisects his right eyebrow, pulls his eyelid up slightly when he's nervous, which seems to be always. Another, deeper scar drags the corner of his mouth down on the left side, giving him a permanent lopsided frown.

"That's right," Simon says, his voice level. "We take pictures of things the C.O.I. thinks are important. Then we come back up. Simple as that."

Mai nods, but the fear in his eyes doesn't fade. He looks like a child lost at a market, the roar of the crowd drowning out his mother's voice.

---

They continue for what feels like hours. The silence in the sub is broken only by the hum of the engines and the occasional whir of Mai taking a picture.

The navigation is slow and tense. Simon finds himself wanting to fill the silence with conversation.

"So, how'd they catch you?"

"Hm? Who?" Mai looks up at Simon with those wide eyes.

"Consolidation of Iron, Mai. Why'd they put you on the SM-13?"

"They said I'm a criminal."

"Right, yeah. We're both criminals. What did you do?"

Mai frowns. "I didn't. My brother... got me more food, and..."

He trails off, looking down at his hands. The scars on his face seem to deepen in the dim light of the console. He seems lost, like he's trying to find the words.

Simon tries to picture a family living on the other Stations. He's always found them claustrophobic, too crowded. The walls always feel like they're closing in.

"I didn't mean for him to do anything bad or for anyone to get in trouble," Mai mumbles.

"You didn't know," Simon says.

Mai nods. "I didn't know he stole. He just gave it to me."

Simon nods. He knows that kind of pain, the guilt of association.

"That wasn't your fault," Simon says. He means it.

"I shouldn't have told him my stomach hurt, I think."

"Wasn't your fault, Mai," Simon repeats. "Not yours."

Mai's mouth twists, his frown dragging his expression further. He stares at the dark screen, his gaze unfocused.

"You're a criminal?" Mai prompts after a long moment.

"Yes." Simon shifts uncomfortably. He's been trying not to talk about this, not to let the thoughts of Filament Station creep back in. "They think I..." Does this kid even know? "... did something really bad, but I didn't."

"Oh," Mai says. "Why do they think that?"

Why indeed.

Simon's stomach tightens, a cold sweat breaking out across his skin.

"I don't want to talk about it, if it's all the same to you," he says, forcing the words out. "Let's focus on the mission, alright? Take some more pictures. We should be getting close to the bottom."

---

Simon can feel his blood run cold. They have to go back? After it grabbed them once, they have to go down again?

He can't believe this. He can't do it.

"Hey!" he calls, and the captain steps back up to the window. "It's... it's not worth it. I'll live out my sentence in prison, okay? It's not worth it. Not for me, not for you."

"I don't think that's your call, convict," the captain responds, her face expressionless.

Simon clenches his hands into fists, trying to stop himself from punching something, from lashing out in impotent anger.

Mai shuffles up to the porthole, wringing his hands nervously. 

"Um... Miss? Can you at least tell me if Quỳnh is okay?" he asks, voice small.

"Who?"

A beat. "My brother. You shot him. I... I didn't see if he got up before you took me away."

The captain frowns. "I wasn't there. I don't know anything about your brother."

"Oh."

"If you cooperate, maybe we can look into that for you," she offers.

---

Mai is quiet for the moment, probably still recovering from the drop. He's a good kid, even if he's not the brightest. He doesn't deserve to be down here.

"The picture hurt them?" Mai asks in the hushed tone of a child asking about a scraped knee.

Simon doesn't turn from the porthole. "It was an accident," he says, the words tasting like ash. "I didn't mean to."

"I know," Mai replies easily, more confidently. "I didn't know it would hurt them either. They didn't tell us."

"They don't tell us anything." Simon's voice is low and dangerous, a rumble of barely contained fury.

---

Simon wakes to darkness, sobbing, and weight on his chest.

The events come back to him slowly as the faint light from the camera button illuminates the edges and pipes of the submarine, his eyes adjusting.

His head is pounding. He can feel a lump forming on his temple, sticky with blood. The weight on his chest is Mai, his face buried in Simon's shoulder. The sobbing is coming from him, a high, thin sound that vibrates through Simon's bones.

"Mai," Simon says, his voice rough with sleep and pain. He tries to push the boy off, but his arms feel like lead.

Mai pulls back with a gasp.

"Simon!" he sobs in equal parts relief and lingering distress. "You woke up! You wouldn't wake up for hours! Are you okay?"

Simon groans, pushing himself into a sitting position. The world spins, and he has to close his eyes against the vertigo.

"I'm fine," he lies, his voice slurred. He forces his eyes open again, blinking against the dim light. "What happened? Where are we?"

Mai sniffles, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. "The lights went out. And the sound. Everything went dark and quiet for a long time. I was scared." He looks at Simon, his eyes wide and pleading. "I thought you were dead."

"I'm not dead," Simon says, a little more sharply than he intends. He immediately regrets it when Mai flinches. "I'm sorry," he adds, softer this time. "I'm just... disoriented."

Simon looks around the cockpit. The main screens are dark. The only light is the faint glow from the camera button. They're adrift. Dead in the water.

"Why are the lights out?" Mai asks. "I tried every button, but they won't turn on. Except the camera, but that fades after a few seconds..."

"The power's out," he says, his voice flat. "Completely."

"What's supposed to make it on?"

Simon doesn't answer. He's already moving, his hand trailing along the wall, looking for an access panel to the sub's emergency systems. He finds something, a small, recessed handle he has to pry open with his fingernails.

It's a locker. Inside is a toolbox, a medkit, and a life vest. Not helpful.

He keeps searching, his movements becoming more frantic. He's starting to panic. He can feel it, a cold dread seeping into his bones. They're trapped. They're going to die here, in the dark, at the bottom of an ocean of blood.

"Simon?" Mai presses. "What's supposed to make the lights on?"

He stops. He forces himself to take a deep breath, then another. He needs to be calm. He needs to think. "The engine."

"There's an 'emergency engine restart' under the floor," Mai says with some difficulty, as though reciting the words. "Is this an emergency?"

Simon stares at the boy. "How do you know that?"

"It's in the books." Mai points to the little bin next to the controls, full of manuals Simon was too impatient to read.

Right. The kid read over every bit of text down here, down to the instructions written on the sides of both fire extinguishers.

---

Note: Context: Post-canon. After the events of the film, the C.O.I. kept Simon around to do work as a glorified prisoner member of the Consolidation, but sent Mai away to the general population aboard the Station. After enough hard work and good behavior over the course of a few months, Simon was permitted to visit Mai. Upon finding him being abused by the locals, Simon refused to leave Mai on his own and insisted he be moved into Simon's cell quarters. This takes place the day after Mai is moved in with him.

After his shift, a guard comes to collect him. They reach the cell, and the guard slides open the door. "Get in."

Simon steps inside, and the door slides shut behind him with a final, definitive hiss.

Mai is sitting on the cot, huddled in a corner. He looks up as Simon enters, his eyes wide with relief. He's on his feet in moments, rushing to him, though he keeps a small distance, his posture uncertain.

"Simon," he says. "You came back."

"I told you I would," Simon says, his voice a low, gentle murmur. He looks at the boy, trying to see any change, any sign of new distress. He seems... calmer than before. A little less haunted.

Mai shuffles from foot to foot. "I missed you."

"I know," Simon says. He hesitates, then reaches out and rests his hand on Mai's head, a clumsy, awkward gesture of affection. "Did anyone... Did anyone else come in here while I was gone?"

Mai leans into his touch. "Just the doctor guy."

"And he said you were okay?"

Mai stills, shrinking back. "I... don't think I'm sick."

"Kid," Simon says, pulling his hand away and bending to be at Mai's level. "What did he actually say?"

Mai looks at the floor. "He said he wanted to look at my throat with a light, but..."

"But what?" Simon presses, a knot of ice forming in his stomach.

"I didn't want him to," Mai confesses, his voice a small, ashamed whisper.

Simon's breath catches. The medic. The one he'd pleaded with, the one he'd almost threatened, had wanted to look at Mai's throat. And Mai, in his terror and trauma, had refused.

"It's okay," Simon says, his voice tight with an emotion he can't name. "You don't have to let anyone touch you if you don't want to."

He thinks about what that refusal might mean. Had the medic seen something in Mai's manner that confirmed Simon's suspicions? Or was it just routine, a standard check for a persistent cough?

He leads Mai over to the cot and sits down beside him. The boy immediately curls up against his side, his head resting on Simon's shoulder. It's a familiar, comforting gesture, but tonight it feels different. It feels heavier.

"Are you from Eden?" Mai asks suddenly, his voice muffled by Simon's jumpsuit.

The question catches Simon off guard. He hasn't thought about Eden in... he doesn't know how long. It feels like a lifetime ago, another man's life.

"Yeah," Simon says, the word a rough, ragged sound. "I was."

"Quỳnh took me there once."

Simon freezes. "What?"

"Just for a little while," Mai clarifies, sensing Simon's sudden tension. "That was when Dad died. I was little. It smelled weird there. But not bad weird. Just different."

Different. Simon knows what he means. The smell of damp earth and decaying leaves, the cloying, sweet scent of death. It was the smell of home.

Mai rubs at the bridge of his nose. He has a scar there, a thin white line that Simon has never really noticed before among all the rest. "It smells bad-weird when your nose is hit, though. Kind of like the submarine did, but less."

"Did someone hit you at Eden, Mai?"

"Quỳnh," Mai squeaks. He clearly tries to say it with warmth, forcing the happy little smile he always gets when talking about his brother, but it comes out choked and watery. "He had something, like a spoon but big and sharp. A 'shobel'?"

"A shovel," Simon breathes. "Quỳnh hit you with a shovel?"

"Mhm," Mai affirms. "He hit me a bunch of times. He wanted me to die, but he changed his mind. He was nicer after that. Usually."

Simon's world tilts on its axis. The perfect, golden brother, the protector, the martyr... he tried to kill Mai? He buried a shovel in his face? And then he risked it all for him anyway? He stole rations for him?

The questions pile up in Simon's mind, a chaotic jumble of contradictions and half-truths.

The scarring all over Mai's face suddenly makes a new, horrible kind of sense. Every one of those deep, jagged lines is from the impact of the edge of a shovel.

"Simon? You're crying," Mai says, his voice small and confused. He reaches out with his remaining hand and touches Simon's cheek, a hesitant, gentle gesture. "Why?"

"I don't know," Simon lies. He does know. He's grieving for the boy he thought he knew, for the brother who was a hero, for the simple, comforting lie that has been shattered into a million pieces.

He turns away from Mai, wiping the tears from his face with the back of his hand. He can't let the boy see him like this. He can't let him see the monster cry.

"It's nothing," Simon says, his voice rough. He takes a deep breath, forcing the emotions down, burying them deep inside him. "Just... just tired."

He stands up and walks over to the small window in the door, looking out into the sterile, white corridor. The guard is standing there, a silent, watchful presence.

He thinks about Eden, about the Tree, about the bodies buried in its soil. He thinks about Quỳnh, the boy who tried to kill his own brother and then died trying to save him. He's a paradox, a walking contradiction.

He turns back to Mai. The boy is watching him, his eyes wide with a mixture of fear and concern.

"Mai," Simon says, his voice a low, gentle murmur. "Tell me about Quỳnh."

"He was smart," he says, lighting up. "He could read and write. He knew how to fix things. He knew numbers really good, like you. He was brave."

"He hit you with a shovel," Simon says, the words a raw, ragged sound.

Mai is quiet for a long moment. He looks down at his hand, picking at a loose thread on the blanket. "He didn't want to stay with me always. But he changed his mind. Sometimes he got angry and hit me and said he should've killed me back then, but he always said sorry later."

The words are a knife twisting in Simon's gut. He can feel the rage, the Butcher's rage, bubbling up inside him, a cold, deadly fire. He wants to find Quỳnh, to wrap his hands around his throat and make him pay for what he did.

But Quỳnh is dead. And even if he wasn't, killing him wouldn't fix Mai. It wouldn't erase the scars or the memory or the pain.

"He took you away from Eden," Simon says, changing tack.

"Yeah," Mai says. "He said it was a bad place."

"Did he... do you think your brother ever hurt anyone else? Before?"

Mai thinks about it. "Sometimes he brought girl friends around. Sometimes the girls hit him. Sometimes he hit them, too, but not like he hit me. He used his palm instead of curled up."

This is too much. It's too much information, too much pain, a tangled web of love and violence that makes Simon's head spin. He can't process it. He can't make sense of it.

"They usually stopped coming to see me after that. It made me really sad, because they were nice," Mai laments. "They played with me and talked to me. Not even Quỳnh did that, usually."

Simon sits on the floor, his back against the wall. The cool metal is a faint comfort. He feels hollowed out, empty. The image of Quỳnh he's built in his mind—the selfless hero, the devoted brother—is a shattered ruin.

He closes his eyes, trying to remember the face of the last person he killed in Eden. It was a woman, young and pretty, with hair the color of straw. He can't remember her name. He can only remember her screams as he dragged her to the Tree.

He's a monster. And so was Quỳnh.

But Mai... Mai is not.

"Come here," Simon says, opening his arm.

Mai shuffles over and buries himself against Simon's side, a small, fragile thing seeking shelter from the storm.

"Your brother," Simon says, his voice a low, rough whisper. "He did something bad. He hurt you."

"He was nice sometimes," Mai insists.

"I know," Simon says. "But that doesn't make it okay."

He strokes the boy's hair. He doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know how to fix this. All he can do is be here.

"When we were at Eden... they taught us that hurting people was good," Simon says slowly, feeling his way through the dark labyrinth of his past. "They said it was for the tree. They said it would save everyone."

He pauses, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat. "They were wrong."

Mai looks up at him, his eyes wide and searching. He's trying to understand, to make sense of this new information.

"I think... I think Quỳnh was wrong, too," Simon says, the words a struggle. "But maybe... maybe he was trying to be right, in the end. When he took those rations for you."

Mai is quiet, processing this. He looks down at his empty sleeve. A single tear traces a path through the grime on his cheek.

"He said he'd take care of me forever," Mai whispers, his voice a small, broken sound.

Simon wraps his arm tighter around the boy. He can't promise forever. He can barely promise tomorrow.

"I'll take care of you," Simon says, the words a raw, ragged sound. "For as long as I can."