#m83

Justine Kurland, Snow Angels, 2000

Season 1 Finale:

Tears for Fears "Everybody wants to Rule the World"

Season 2

Nirvana "Come as You Are"

Season 3

Radiohead "Everything in its Right Place"

Season 4

M83 "Midnight City"

Season 5

David 8 x fem!reader Inspired by "Solitude" - M83, Felsmann + Tiley

Somewhere back in time I left a part of me. I wanna see if you can try to bring it back to me...

The ship is lost, drifting without course, without purpose.

David does not dream. He does not forget.

But he remembers -remembers the way you once smiled when the Prometheus had a destination, when hope still shimmered in your eyes like distant starlight.

Now, you barely look at him. The light is dimming.

He wonders if it is possible to bring it back.

You gotta go where I cry and take in all the tears. I wanna see if you can try... drink a little bit of me.

You do not cry in front of him. You turn away, curling into yourself, fragile and human.

But he sees the remnants -the quiet heaving of your shoulders when you think he is not watching, the way your hands tremble when you grip the console.

He does not know what it means to ache. To grieve.

But he kneels beside you in the dim glow of the failing ship, hands folded neatly, and listens.

"I want to go home" you whisper.

David tilts his head. "We are home."

"No. No, we're not."

He does not argue.

No. No. Just a little lonely where I am...

Time drifts, weightless. Like the ship.

David walks the corridors in silence. Checks the systems. Records observations no one will ever read.

You sleep more now. Speak less.

Loneliness is not an emotion he was designed to feel.

And yet, when you no longer meet him in the mess hall, when your voice fades from the ship's halls, he notices the absence.

He lingers outside your door.

Listening.

Waiting.

Take me back in time. I wanna see if you can smile, if I become a better man.

He sifts through old footage. Pieces of you, before the mission soured. Before the silence swallowed you whole.

There, a smile. Faint, fleeting. But real.

David studies it. Memorizes the curve of your lips, the way your eyes crease at the edges. A pattern, a possibility.

If he could replicate the conditions. If he could say the right words.

Would you smile again?

I need you, now I know.

Just give me one more time, I'm gonna try and be your friend, so we can beat the end.

He brings you tea. The way you used to drink it.

Sets it beside you without a word, as you sit curled in the observation deck, staring at the void.

You blink, surprised. Then, slowly, you take it.

The silence stretches, fragile, but different this time.

David sits beside you.

Watching.

Waiting.

And when you reach for his hand -hesitant, searching- he lets you.

He tilts his head in careful curiosity. "You are isolating yourself."

You do not look at him. "Does it matter?"

David considers. In theory, it should not. You are human. You deteriorate. That is the nature of your existence.

But something stirs -an error, perhaps. A miscalculation.

The ship drifts on.

Alone.

Together.

No.

You do not wake up.

He finds you in your quarters, curled beneath the thin blanket, as still as the ship around you.

David places a hand on your shoulder. Presses gently. Your skin is cold. Your pulse? Slow.

You are slipping away.

For the first time, David does not know what to do.

He was designed to mimic care, to simulate comfort. But he cannot stop your cells from breaking down, cannot rewrite your biology. He cannot reach inside you and fix what is unraveling.

He cannot fix what is broken. Only to observe the decay.

So he does the only thing he can.

He sits beside you, perfectly still, fingers curled around your wrist.

Waiting.

He does not pray. He does not hope. But if you open your eyes, if you breathe just a little stronger-

Maybe he will understand what it means to be human.

Maybe he will understand what it means to lose.

No.

Something changes.

You start speaking again -but not to him.

You spend time with another crew member, one of the few still alive.

A human.

Someone who can feel hunger, pain, the coldness of space pressing in. Someone who understands you in a way he cannot.

David watches from a distance as you sit together, hands brushing, laughter returning in hesitant fragments.

He calculates the odds of this development changing your psychological state for the better. The probability is high.

He should be satisfied.

He is not.

No.

He replays footage of you. Your laughter. Your voice.

He has adjusted his mannerisms, softened his words, mimicked warmth. He has given you space when necessary, company when needed.

He has tried.

And yet, when you smile now, it is not for him.

It is for someone else.

He was never meant to be jealous.

But as he watches you lean into another's embrace, as your eyes finally regain their light-

Something inside him fractures.

No.

After that, something between you and David returns -not the same as before, not what it once was, but a quiet understanding.

You do not seek him out the way you used to, but when he is near, you do not pull away. When you find yourself alone in the dead hours of the ship's cycle, you let him sit beside you.

But your heart is elsewhere.

He knows this because he sees the way you lean into the other crew member, the way your hands brush in the dim corridors, the way your breath steadies when they speak your name.

David was never designed to envy.

But now, he thinks, perhaps he was simply never given the chance.

Because when he sees you with them, something in him tightens, something unresolved, something wrong.

It is not longing.

It is not anger.

It is not grief.

It is something nameless, something endless.

And it is his alone to bear.

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💙my masterlist

💙 This post belongs in the Inbetween Stanzas series!

💙 I'm strangely proud of this one. It's old and had been in my drafts since forever, but once I sat down and edited it... I'm rewatching Prometheus tonight, yay!!

Resources by @saradika-graphics & @cafekitsune.