(TW: Mentions of growing up in a cult, ritualistic murder, being pressured into murder, and cancer. Dissociative episode ? kinda ? VIVID description of vomiting. And gratuitous amounts of blood. Obviously.)

Ava turned to continue walking, but Simon couldn’t tear his eyes off the unconscious welder.

He had done that. He’d hit the button — activated the fucking radiation gun that they stuck to the front of the ship and called a camera — in a furious, desperate attempt to do anything he could to just get them to listen for five seconds-

He was angry and scared and he lashed out in the only way he could, and in doing so had blasted a man point-blank with so much radiation it basically deep-fried his internal organs.

That man — Jack. His name was Jack — was going to die because Simon was careless. Because he didn’t bother to think.

He’d killed for Eden, because they told him it was necessary. That it was good. For the Tree. For his brothers and sisters.

He... didn’t think he believed that anymore.

It made him nauseous now, thinking about the amount of blood he had on his hands. Even before they dropped him in a literal fucking ocean of the stuff.

Simon the Butcher.

He never wanted that. He never wanted to hurt anyone. The Father told him it had to be done, that it wasn't a choice. Simon had believed him... until he had started to wonder. Until he had started to question.

Until Filament Station.

But now someone was dying - not because it was “necessary” or for a “greater purpose” - but because Simon lashed out and hurt him because that was what he did. He hurt and killed and destroyed because he was good at it and he was never given a choice in anything and he was so tired of killingpeople-

He-

He was-

He didn’t-

Simon didn’t want him to die.

The world slowed, sound warped. Everything outside his immediate surroundings blurred like a camera out of focus. The medbay shifted around him and Simon didn’t realize he was the one who had moved until he was suddenly next to the bed, reaching out his remaining hand.

People were talking. Something grabbed his injured shoulder. It hurt, but it didn’t matter. His palm flattened in the center of the man- Jack’s chest and he reached out-

Oh. He could see it. Feel it? The sickness. The cancer. The places of wrongness where the cells were damaged and had started clumping together unnaturally.

Shouting. Movement around him. The hand on his shoulder tightened and tried to pull him away-

No!

No no, he could- they- he could fix it if they justLET HIM-

The hand let go. The shouting got louder. It didn’t matter.

He had a hold of it now.

He pulled, unraveling the knotted mass and drawing it up, up and out.

When he was sure it was gone — that nothing but healthy, living tissue remained — he was left with a gap. A tear in the fabric of the body where sickness had been removed. So he reached and pulled the edges together, smoothing it down gently and coaxing the seam to close.

He moved onto the next place that felt wrong, then the next. And the next. Until there were none left, and he knew it was done and he could pull away-

Simon blinked, coming back to himself all at once. His chest rose and fell on a breath. He felt the chill of the medbay settle on the exposed skin of his neck and arm. Saw his own hand where it laid on the other man’s chest, solid, and streaked with-

Horror shot through his system like a flash of that damn camera though the sub and he jolted back, panicked breath picking up even more when the fabric tried to stick to his hand and then fell away with a glistening wet, red stain-

Blood.

That- that was-

He- that- oh god, what had he-

Before the thought could even register, white-hot pain shot through his stomach and he doubled over, arm flying up to clutch it reflexively.

Fuck. Fuck. Tears gathered in his eyes and his whole body shuddered as he retched, a horribly familiar metallic tang bubbling up his throat and out of his mouth in a stream of red-red-Red. He heaved, gagging and gasping as blood and- and clumps of something splatted to the floor between his boots.

God, god. What- what was happening to him? What had he-?

He blinked- swayed- found himself on his knees. His single, bloodied hand barely managed to catch his weight and keep him from fully hitting the floor, still choking on whatever the fuck was coming out of him.

He- oh god, had he even made it out of the sub? Was he- was he still there? Trapped in that goddamned metal coffin, suffocating? Drowning? Dying? Was all this — the explosion, being found, getting out — was it all just another fucked up hallucination??

Tears trailed down his face uninhibited as he fought his own body desperately for air, the sharp pain slowly, agonizingly slowly, receding to a low throb as the seemingly endless stream of blood thinned with bile.

By the time he managed to stop himself from coughing up more, his arm was shaking and his vision flickered like a bulb with faulty wiring. With what little awareness he still possessed, he tipped to the side and managed to land beside the puddle of gore instead of in it.