Fallen Down -- A huge cross stitch project that took me almost one whole year to make! Stitched on 18ct aida with this free pattern. Happy 10 years, Undertale!
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Now Melkor began the delving and building of a vast fortress, deep under Earth, beneath dark mountains where the beams of Illuin were cold and dim. That stronghold was named Utumno.
And though the Valar knew naught of it as yet, nonetheless the evil of Melkor and the blight of his hatred flowed out thence, and the Spring of Arda was marred.
Green things fell sick and rotted, and rivers were choked with weeds and slime, and fens were made, rank and poisonous, the breeding place of flies;
and forests grew dark and perilous, the haunts of fear; and beasts became monsters of horn and ivory and dyed the earth with blood.
A/N: Right, FINALLY giving an update! If you're looking for someone to blame, blame Simon, who would not SHUT UP and then had the audacity to sound wrong in dialogue that I then had to go back and fix. That, and real life is trying to shank me with complications right now, which is just great. Also this is. the longest part I've written so far. I'm sorry for your dashes.
Grace stares at the screen readouts for the hull. None of this is good. They lost panels of their radiation shields during their ill-advised fishing trip. The fuel tank is empty now and that leaves them with a gaping hole in the side of the ship. They can get the fuel tanks back but they will still need to patch it.
He runs a hand through his hair, frustrated, and leaves the cockpit. Now that he’s actually going to go home, he has to think about these things. Staying alive is hard. Stupid survival, messing up his science time.
Simon is curled up in the doorway from the lab to the little corridor, where he can watch Rocky work but not be too far away from the window.
He looks up when Grace enters, and Grace sighs. “Well, we’ve got issues. But I quite frankly don’t want to deal with them just yet, so let’s figure out your clothes situation.”
Simon curls up a little tighter, his fingers worrying the edge of the blanket subconsciously. “’S fine, I-I don’t— ’s not important, this is enough—“
Grace just gives him a Look over the top of glasses. “I’m offering because I want you to be comfortable.”
He’s starting to figure out how Simon works, he thinks. Maybe.
He passes by him into the hallway to head down to the medical bay. Everyone’s personal bags are stored in there, where they’d have been able to get at them when they first got up, and Grace has only moved his own bag into the dormitory.
He pulls all three of the others’ bags down and sets them on the floor as Simon follows him into the room, trailing the blanket. Rocky seemed to be completely engrossed in his work and has not followed him.
Grace sits down on the floor and gestures to the bags.
“These were supposed to be for my— for my crew, but they, uh— yeah. We can go through these and you can pick some things that will work.”
Simon steps forward and lowers himself slowly to the floor. Grace doesn’t miss the wince when he accidentally lands on his injured wrist.
Simon tilts his head, examining Grace and the bags scattered around him curiously. “Where’s… the rest of your crew?”
Grace swallows, his throat suddenly tight. “Um… it was. Three of us. Originally. We had to be put in comas to get here. I… woke up, alone, and… yeah. They didn’t—“
He gestures half-heartedly.
The feeling of Yao’s waxy skin still haunts him, even though he wants to remember the man as he was —warm, and full of life, contemplative and wise and stoic and kind. “They didn’t survive the trip.”
He reaches out and taps Dubois’s bag. “Dubois was our science specialist, originally. But there was an accident, and he and the backup specialist, Annie Shapiro, died in the explosion, which is why I ended up on the ship.”
He exhales shakily. That part is… still painful, but… less, somehow.
Maybe it’s because he didn’t see them after. He just wishes he could remember how he ended up saying yes to going, it doesn’t make any sense and it’s just a haze of black.
Grace sniffs and wipes his eyes. Simon is watching him, his eyes dark and solemn. “‘M sorry,” he says simply.
Grace gives a pained smile and fumbles in his jumpsuit pocket for a moment. He pulls out the photograph he had found a few hours before this whole rescue business started and has been meaning to hang up and shows it to Simon.
“That’s them. Yao and Ilyukhina. I think— I think you’d have liked them.”
Simon takes the photo carefully, like it’s made of glass instead of paper, and examines it.
It shows the two of them, matching in their golden flight suits, and it must have been taken just before they went into their comas because they’re on the Hail Mary, in front of the window looking down at Earth.
Ilyukhina’s hair is a ruffled mess, and she’s got one arm around Yao’s shoulders, her crooked smile shining bright.
He’s making a silly face, of course, giving the camera double thumbs up in a pose that sort of looks like an “ayyy!”
It’s so them that it hurts.
Grace had wanted to hang it up by his bunk, with the small number of other pictures he’s let himself keep, so he feels a little less alone.
Simon hands him the photo back, and Grace thinks he sees the hint of a smile cross his face. “They’re wonderful.”
Simon seems to be the type to think before he speaks, because eventually he asks, “So you were… alone?”
Grace nods. “Yeah, for a couple weeks. I woke up here, with… their bodies. And had to figure out what to do from there. I had some memory loss, coming out of the coma, and I’m still getting things back. But… not long after, I found Rocky!”
He ruffles a hand through his hair.
“He’s saved my life —literally— he’s basically my best friend. That being said, we’ve got a lot of work to do before we’re ready to say goodbye. The ship lost some of her radiation shielding, so I need to fix that so I don’t— well, we don’t— die on the way home. And because we were being reckless we lost a fuel tank. So, we’ve got to go get that back.”
Grace really hopes it’s not blindingly obvious that he doesn’t want to talk about the weeks alone before he met Rocky.
Simon goes with it. “’S not a lot to fix…”
Grace shrugs. “Yeah, it’s just that I’m not an engineer and Rocky can’t go outside because of the aforementioned radiation. So, it’s gonna be a long and aggravating few days where he tries to direct me on how to fix it.”
Simon tilts his head. “Do you have welding equipment?”
Grace nods, and at that Simon seems to be thinking. “I… might be able to help. D’ya still have the Iron Lung tethered?”
To Grace’s surprise, he’s more confident somehow, his shoulders a little straighter.
He hums an affirmative. “Yeah, uh, it’s still there. If that’s bad, we can—“
Simon shakes his head. “No, ’s— ’s good. We can use that.”
Grace straightens up. “Oh, I forgot, I have something for you!”
***
Simon watches as Grace hurries over to a table in the corner and returns with something small. He offers it, and Simon cups his palms to accept whatever this offering is.
It drops into his hand, and he stares at it for a minute. It’s bone, the very point of what he knows must have once been a fang larger than he was. It’s the tip of one of the eel’s fangs.
He holds it up to the light and examines the grooves scored into it. It’s about the length of his index finger, widening out from a razor sharp point into a base about three centimeters across.
Grace drops back down onto the floor. “I found it stuck in the hull while I was dealing with the whole— submarine situation. I thought you might want it, but you don’t have to keep it if— well.”
Simon turns the fang over in his hands again, thinking. He’d not seen this, not seen how close the eel had come to actually consuming him, but…
he’d taken this off of it. He had hurt it, before they escaped it. He’s not sure anyone else has gotten a piece of flesh off it before. He glances up at Grace. “Thanks… ’s- thank you.”
How does he convey to him why exactly this matters? It’s an old practice of Eden’s that he’s grown used to long since, but he knows that to someone from another planet it would seem strange.
Simon runs a hand through his hair. “On Eden—“ he begins without thinking, and second guesses himself.
He doesn’t want to do anything that would upset the balance they’ve reached, that would make Grace decide he is too dangerous after all, and talking about his home is a surefire way to do that. But he can still feel the tingling sensation of Grace’s hand on his neck, protecting and cradling the soft, vulnerable skin there.
Grace has shared things with him that clearly hurt, has told him about losing his crew. Simon can reciprocate, at least a little.
He exhales and starts again, worrying the smooth surface of the fang with his thumb.
“On Eden we were taught that unless it was for a purpose, we weren’ supposed to help each other. It— Eden doesn’ have much to spare.”
This is hard. He doesn’t look up at Grace while he talks, he doesn’t want to see what he thinks before he’s done or he might not be able to finish his thought.
Simon tries to remind himself to breathe. “We’d have to fight to work our way up. People higher up’d get better rations, medicine, things like that. It was hard, ‘nd I had to— to do things ‘m not proud of.”
He twitches the hem of his shirt up just a bit to show the scar above his right hip that’s still oddly puckered, a remnant of a stab wound caused by a younger brother in an attempt to kill him in his sleep. “’S how I got this, an’ all the rest.”
He exhales. “But we had this thing, where if you won you’d take somethin’ off the other person. Teeth, patches, whatever.”
Simon hums noncommittally. “I got… banged up a lot, doin’ that, but…”
He can’t help but smile, sharp and humorless. “I never lost a fight.”
Grace shifts across from him, leaning forward, and Simon fights the urge to move away. He has a point to this.
“No one’s ever— taken a piece off that fuckin’ thing before. No one’s ever survived.”
It must mean something, he thinks. Maybe Simon doesn’t want to be the Butcher anymore, but the Butcher protected him down there, allowed him the determination to stand up and fight.
That has to mean something.
Grace is quiet for a while, and Simon lets him think. It’s… a lot, to process, he knows.
Where he comes from everyone already knows about Eden and so he doesn’t talk about it, but… it wasn’t all bad. There were pockets of light.
He just— doesn’t know how to talk about things like a normal person.
Eventually Grace speaks, his voice even. “Thank you for telling me about it. It’s— I know it’s hard, to talk about our pasts, but…”
He shrugs, like he’s not sure where the sentence is going. Simon exhales shakily.
Grace looks up and gives him a little smile. “You don’t have to do that here.”
Simon knows instinctively that he means he won’t have to fight for every little thing, won’t have to scrape by and survive on scraps.
He just wishes he could believe it a little easier. He… wants to, wants to trust, but it’s so very hard.
They sort through clothes for a while, and Simon hesitates just a bit, because these are someone else’s things, someone that Grace cared about, but he tries to make himself believe that it’s alright.
He finds two shirts that can work, one more that will fit him if he adds a bit of fabric at the side panels, and two pairs of pants. That will be in addition to his original pants.
There are also hair care supplies in the bag belonging to Ilyukhina, and Grace insists that Simon needs them. It is a relief, to get his hair up and off his face with one of the hair ties.
Simon has a small pile of clothes by the time they finish, and they return to the lab. He’s found a small sewing kit, too, so that he can alter the shirts he found.
They settle at one of the tables, and he can feel Grace watching him as he tries to figure out where to start these alterations.
Simon exhales slowly. He needs to tell him the rest.
He’s scared and there is something twisting in his stomach but he needs to tell him about… about everything. Prison, Filament Station, Eden, all of it. Grace deserves to know exactly what it is he’s dealing with.
***
Grace watches, entranced, as Simon selects a shirt and begins examining it. He rips the side seams apart slowly and methodically with the little seam-ripper in the kit, his brow furrowed in concentration.
His dark hair curls gently around his ears, now that it’s pulled back from his face. He looks… a little softer, like this.
Grace feels like he should be doing something but he doesn’t really know what that would be so he’s just sort of sitting here, watching Simon’s callused hands move over the fabric.
He clearly knows what he’s doing and Grace can’t help but lean a little toward him, fascinated. It’s almost like Simon has a gravity of his own, a warmth and a pull that Grace can’t resist.
They sit in silence for a while, and Grace startles just a bit when Simon speaks. “I wasn’t— I’ve had a long time to… think, since— the station. ‘Nd I’m still not sure there’s anything I could have done differently.”
Grace startles a bit, surprised. Is he actually going to talk about where he came from?
Grace hasn’t wanted to push him, but he’s almost unbearably curious, he has like a million questions he’s wanted to ask since they found Simon and he’s been biting his tongue hard.
Simon doesn’t look up from where he’s threading a needle.
“My mom was a seamstress, ’s why I can—“ he offers, gesturing at the fabric in his lap.
It seems like he’s having a hard time forming the words, and Grace understands. Just from the scar on the side of Simon’s neck that he can see now, he can tell he’s come a long way and been through a lot.
The scar is raised and branching, lines of dark ink peeking out from underneath it. It looks like it hurt, and Grace bites back the urge to reach out. He’d tried to avoid it entirely when Simon had laid his head in his lap.
Eventually Simon continues, haltingly, like saying every word is painful. “Eden’s small, maybe three hundred, three hundred an’ fifty, but… we never had enough of anything. The tree was always the first priority.”
His voice is bitter. “Had to keep it alive, so it’d seed a thousand trees ‘nd restart the universe.”
A pause. “It doesn’t matter now.”
Grace leans on the table, pillowing his head on his arms to listen. He doesn’t really know what he can say, but he can listen if Simon’s going to talk.
It’s the least he can do. He can sense Rocky in the corner of the lab, half-listening as he works on something else.
Simon sighs. “’S— I didn’ tell you this part earlier, but the Father preached that our bodies would become the soil. That we’d feed the tree ‘nd let it outlive us.”
He doesn’t look up at Grace, instead hunching over his work.
Grace reaches out and puts a hand on his arm.
This is clearly difficult for him to get out (even though Grace now has additional follow up questions). “You don’t have to tell me, if—“
Simon shakes his head. “No, you— you deserve to know.”
He grimaces when he sticks himself with the needle on accident. “Shit, ow.”
He shakes his hand out absently. “I know ’s— I know ’s creepy.. It’s— I don’t know.”
Grace shrugs. “It’s… morbid, maybe. But the concept isn’t that strange. It makes sense, in an apocalypse. There are religions out there with more bizarre ideas.”
Simon examines him for minute, and Grace gets the distinct impression that he is trying to figure out how likely he is to metaphorically run for the hills.
“’S kind of what it was. Is. Whatever,” he finally continues, returning his focus to the shirt in his hands. “We’d have hymns and sermons ‘nd stuff.”
Simon knots off a row of stitches. “Mom tried to… let me grow up normal, much as she could. I don’t know how much of Eden’s bullshit she believed, but she was there during the Rapture.”
He shakes his head. “I was… two, maybe three. I don’ remember any of what happened. But mom’d… she was too kind for them, to be honest. She was always helping people, doing them little favors.”
Grace frowns sadly. “She sounds lovely,” he says.
Simon nods, reaching for the thread scissors. “Yeah. Yeah, she was. But that’s— Eden’s got this whole thing ‘bout sin. We’re not supposed to— to want for anything, ‘cause unless there’s a good reason it’s a waste, and it’ll damage your soul.”
Grace props himself up a bit and stares at Simon, feeling his brows pinch together now in the middle. “Simon, that… that kinda sounds like a cult,” he says hesitantly.
Simon doesn’t really react, and Grace silently berates himself for saying anything. Of course he wouldn’t want to deal with that realization, of course, stupid Grace—
Simon exhales shakily. “I didn’— I didn’ know, any of it, I jus’ was trying to survive…”
He grits his teeth for a moment. “it’s— complicated. I know what they are now, but…”
He closes his eyes for a moment and sets the shirt down, stretching out his hands. He does not look at Grace. “I told you— about the fighting, before. But my first mission— it was a test, a trial to prove I was worth the effort it took to keep me fed.”
There is a clunking noise from behind them as Rocky rolls over from his corner. He comes to stop beside Simon, seemingly looking up at him.
Simon reaches down and rests a hand on the top of the ball. “I was nine. ’S early, usually they’re eleven, but… it didn’t matter, in the end.”
Simon doesn’t look at either of them when he next speaks. “That was the first time I- I—killed someone. He was so much bigger than me, it was… almost an accident… but the Father was so proud.”
***
In the silence Simon wonders why he even bothered to start talking. He shouldn’t be telling Grace this, shouldn’t be dragging the twisted shadows of his past into Grace’s world of light.
He taps against the xenonite glass absentmindedly with one finger and looks away. He knows how it sounds. Eventually, the silence is broken by Rocky.
The Eridian trills slowly. “On Erid we have—“ he breaks off and chitters something that sounds like a proper name.
“Is First Hunt. Eridians predator species. We not hunt actively anymore but still have tradition. Test of skill. Scary, to be sent too young, and to hurt another when not prepared.”
Simon looks down at the alien and gives half a smile. “…yeah.”
He’s a little surprised, but yeah, that’s… that’s it. It was scary, it was fucking terrifying, and there are times when he’ll wake up and he’s nine years old again, nothing in his hands but the sliver of a knife his mom had given to him.
The man had not been good, necessarily. He had hoarded rations, had kept them from the Tree and from the others. He had been caught, and this was punishment. This was vengeance and test of loyalty all at once. Waste not, want not.
Simon’s mission had been to find the man where he was hiding, and kill him. He did not know the man’s name when he stumbled into the room, unsteady on too-young legs, and he’s never learned it.
He had almost been beaten in that fight, had been pinned down and nearly choked to death by the man’s much larger hands, but he had hissed and scratched and bitten and managed to get away, only to end up driving the knife into the man’s gut and watching him open like a flower beneath the blade, everything drenched in red red red.
The thing that has haunted Simon, though, is what he thought as the man died.
The intestines had still been steaming, the body cooling slowly even in the cold room, and the blood was warm against his skin.
His hands and his clothes and his hair were drenched with the stuff, but Simon remembers very clearly considering ripping the man’s chest cavity open further and climbing inside, curling up inside the cradle of his ribcage where the lifeblood could keep him warm.
It is a thought that has haunted him for decades.
It’s not so much that he was forced into killing a man that gets to him.
It is the fact that he had been trained so well and lived in such cold that he not only completed the task assigned but he almost reveled in it, because only when he was drenched in blood had he felt truly warm for the first time.
Simon’s been running from that thought for years now.
Rocky chitters softly. “Rocky First Hunt went badly too. Not ready. Got hurt, bad bad.”
He taps his smallest leg on the ground twice. “Leg never healed same. Still hard to move around sometimes.”
He leans against the ball. “Is okay.”
Simon pats the ball. “Thanks,” he says softly.
Grace looks like he wants to reach out to Simon, and he tries, stretching a hand across the table, but Simon pulls back.
He tucks both hands under the table out of reach and shakes his head. “‘M not done, you should— you shouldn’t, until you know.”
Grace frowns at him, his eyes sad. “Please don’t start giving me the means to hurt you again.”
Simon winces. He hadn’t even thought about what it must be like for Grace, to be handed another’s life without protest, to have that life entirely in your hands and to have to decide what to do with it. It was such a common thing, on Eden, he didn’t think about how it might seem to someone else.
“…sorry. I didn’t—“ He sighs.
It will do no good to give excuses, he’d better just keep talking. “I know now what Eden is, but… I didn’t then. Not really. An’ what I grew up being told was that the Quiet Rapture took all the worthy souls and left the rest of us behind to rot, unless we repented through Eden. That everyone that was left was selfish for wantin’ to stay alive.”
Simon shakes his head, hunching his shoulders. “They taught me how to fight ‘nd left me to fend for myself when anyone on that station would have let me starve. When I proved myself useful enough to keep… they turned me into their attack dog.”
He lets out a long breath, shuddering. “We’d run raids, attack ships an’ steal shit from the COI to get whatever supplies we could. I ended up leading a buncha them, ‘cause I was one of the best pilots Eden had. An’ I was scary.”
He laughs bitterly. “Their Butcher. ’S all they called me. Like I was some trained dog.”
It feels like he shouldn’t be sitting on the furniture, it feels wrong, and Simon doesn’t fight it, just slips off the chair and curls up on the floor instead, leaning against the table leg.
He exhales. “…’bout five years ago Eden got desperate.”
Everything in him is screaming, is telling him not to keep talking, and it feels like he’s eviscerating himself as he forces each word out, but he can’t stop now.
He can’t.
Grace deserves to know. He has to know.
Grace ought to know exactly what kind of monster he has taken into his home, ought to know exactly what Simon is and what he has done.
This has been coming ever since he pulled him out of the ocean, and despite knowing it was coming Simon is scared.
He hasn’t talked about what happened on Filament Station in the five years since it happened.
On a practical level, there’s no point. Everyone he’s come into contact with has known, many were even there.
Everyone left knew what he had done, what he was.
But Grace doesn’t. He’s from somewhere else, another world.
And he’s actually listening to Simon. No one has ever listened to him when he tries to explain what happened, not Ava, not the prison guards, not anyone.
It’s… good, he thinks, but it’s so strange that he feels like he shouldn’t keep talking. Like any second, Grace will deem him too far gone to be saved and just toss him out the airlock.
…he trusts him. Simon can still hear his voice, soft and quiet, saying that he trusts him.
It has to be earned, he has to deserve that trust, and the first step to earning it is to tell Grace the full story.
He will do whatever it takes to earn that trust.
He will rip himself open, will crack open his ribcage with shaking hands and unspool the truth from inside his chest, one painful word at a time, will place his story, stained crimson and still dripping blood, on the altar of Grace’s regard, and he will await whatever judgment comes once he knows the truth.
Simon takes a deep breath and starts talking again. “Filament Station’s the biggest place the COI’s got, ’s where a lot of their civilians live… lived. It was an easier target than the medical center, Horizon’s Reach, ‘cause the Falcon usually stays close around that.”
He fiddles with the sleeve of the shirt he’s wearing, trying to think about how to phrase this in a way that makes sense. “Eden’d been running low on supplies for years, but it was gettin’… bad. People were starving, we’d had more funerals in a month than we’d had in two years. The Father gave a big sermon, said we were gonna enlighten all those poor misguided souls on Filament Station, but everyone knew it was ‘cause they had supplies we needed.”
He shakes his head. “It was a mess. There were… six of us, who went, ‘nd I’m the only one who lived. It started out like a normal raid, jus’ get in, get the stuff, get out, but we came up against some people who weren’t gonna let us past an’ things… devolved. Quickly. From there.”
The floor is uncomfortable like this and he shifts, curling up his knees into his chest and wrapping his arms around them. “I think the others had been given different instructions, ‘cause they went after the reactor, tried to sabotage it, while we were fightin’ off all those people.”
Simon shakes his head. “It— I-I realized these were jus’ a bunch of people who wanted to keep living, an’ they were scared. But it was too late.”
There is complete silence for a moment, and he closes his eyes.
He doesn’t want to see the look on Grace’s face.
“The COI’s soldiers showed up not long after, ‘nd then there was fighting. The battle lasted nine days. I- I don’ know exactly how many people I— it was hard to tell, ‘nd some coulda just been injured. But what happened was the other brothers succeeded in damaging the reactor powering the station, ‘nd it kinda exploded. Made the whole station uninhabitable.”
Simon can’t stop his fingers from moving, but he takes another breath and forces the next part of the story out. “I was the only one the COI found. The others— the others had killed themselves, like Eden’s gospel says to do, but I— I couldn’ do it. All I remember is that my hands were shaking. I surrendered instead, ‘nd the COI took me and threw me in solitary.”
He swallows. “After… after, I found out that there were sixty-two dead. And… well, everyone seems to think it was entirely my doing, that I killed every single one of those people with my bare hands and I didn’t— but it doesn’t matter. Might as well have, ’s still my fault.”
He grits his teeth. “If I’d figured it out, if I’d been a little less of a coward and stopped my brothers from—“
Simon sighs. “Eden doesn’ value human life, they believe we all deserve to die. An’ for so long… I believed them. Until that mission.”
He physically cannot say anything else, he’s exhausted everything he has, and suddenly he feels very, very tired indeed. He leans his head back against the leg of the table and waits.
Some part of him is still expecting a kick to the ribs or something. Or maybe fear.
He doesn’t want to know if Grace is scared of him now, now that he knows the truth.
Because that is the truth of what Simon is. He’s a killer, a murderer, and he knows that if it came down to it he’d kill again, and that’s what scares him.
They call him the Butcher, yes, but Simon has earned it.
***
Grace’s head is reeling. He feels a little dizzy. The story Simon’s told him is… well, to put it simply it’s horrible, and he doesn’t know what to do, what to say.
He exhales shakily and folds his glasses, setting them on the table, then slips off the chair to sit cross-legged on the floor.
He bites his lip. “… thank you for telling me,” he starts quietly, and immediately second guesses himself because why the heck would he say that??
What is he thinking? He doesn’t know what to do.
He tilts his head. “What about… before?”
Simon pries open his eyes and stares at him, looking a little lost. “…what?”
Grace shrugs, wondering if this is a bad idea. “Well, you mentioned when you were nine, and then… five years ago, and I was just wondering… what happened in between. Did you—? You know. Anyone else.”
He wants to bang his forehead against the table. What was that sentence???
Simon exhales, his gaze dropping back to the floor. Grace doesn’t think he’s imagining how he curls up a little tighter, and he has the feeling that if he wasn’t sandwiched between Grace, the table, and Rocky’s ball, he’d be trying to back into a corner.
Simon shakes his head. “I-I didn’— I never wanted to hurt people, when they’d send me out. I was supposed to be the leader, the pilot, an’ yet somehow their name for me got around. ‘Everybody’s scared of the Butcher, he’s got no mercy,’ that type shit. But… I tried.”
He exhales, and his hands seem to be trembling just a bit. “There was one woman… I-I don’ know what happened, I must’ve hit her too hard, I didn’ mean to kill her, but she just—“
He shrugs. “But I was more careful after that, I didn’—“
Simon trails off again, and this time Grace can almost see him starting to spiral. His expression gets darker, and Grace bites his lip, wanting to reach out but not sure what to do.
Eventually Simon glances at him. “You saved me, and… I’m grateful, but— ‘M not worth it. Would’ve been better if you just let me die, I think.”
Grace can’t stay still at that. He scoots closer and reaches out, trying to move slow and telegraph where his hand is going, and touches Simon’s arm. “Hey, no, don’t say that.”
Grace isn’t good at talking to people his own age, not really, unless he’s got some kind of common ground with them.
Stratt was always easy to talk to, she was direct and she always listened. They just seemed to click somehow.
The other scientists on the Hail Mary project… they were harder, but they were still scientists. They shared a common language there.
But this… Grace doesn’t know what to do.
Rocky actually gets to it before he figures out what to say. “Good Simon not die,” the Eridian says, pushing himself up from where he’d been curled and pressing a hand flat to the glass next to Simon’s shoulder.
“Would miss knowing you. Eridian word for this is _____, means missed friends.”
Simon glances at the alien and Grace briefly wonders why he’s more comfortable looking at Rocky than at him. Maybe it’s the lack of eyes. “‘M dangerous. I could hurt you both.”
Rocky trills, shaking his carapace. “No. Simon protect Grace. Simon keep Grace safe from strange humans when Rocky could not.”
He stamps a foot on the ground for emphasis. “Simon helpful.”
Grace can’t help but smile a little bit, as Simon reaches up carefully and presses his hand to the xenonite barrier over Rocky’s.
He reaches to adjust his glasses but forgets that he put them on the table, then sighs, and tries to say something coherent. “I mean, it’s not like you want to hurt either of us, right?”
Simon shakes his head without looking up. Grace can’t help but fidget, but he says, “Well, then I’m going to say it again, I trust you.”
***
Something akin to a full-body shudder washes over Simon at those words, and he looks up at Grace, not quite able to comprehend what he’s saying.
After all that, he trusts him, he is looking at him with brilliant blue eyes warm and soft and kind and he trusts him.
Simon doesn’t know what to do with it, it feels foreign against his skin, like there’s some hidden trick that he hasn’t noticed yet.
Maybe it hasn’t sunk in yet, just what he did, had to do, or maybe he didn’t describe it in enough detail for Grace to understand exactly what kind of sinner he’s saved.
Simon’s sure he’s not an angel now, but… he’s still important, still the hope of a whole world, still so much better than Simon can ever be.
He hasn’t earned his trust.
Simon examines Grace, his tousled hair and his ridiculous shirt and the flight suit, always the flight suit.
He seems… soft, in a way that Simon has never experienced before. He wonders what would have happened if he’d grown up on Earth, if he’d been allowed to be soft like that.
***
Grace lets Simon think for a while, sure that he’s tired from recounting his history. He fidgets with the sleeve of the jumpsuit tied around his waist.
He doesn’t want to let on that the reason he wants Simon to stay, to be okay here, isn’t because he believes in the goodness of humanity, or because he thinks everyone deserves a second chance.
(He does, he really does, it’s just— that’s not the main reason and he knows it isn’t. He can do a lot of things but he can’t lie to himself.)
He wants Simon to stay because he is desperately lonely, is so tired of being out here in the infinity of space on his own with no one but Rocky for company.
Rocky is amazing, is the best friend Grace has ever had, but there’s only so much he can do, and Grace is lonely.
He is scared of the moment coming ever nearer when he and Rocky will have to part ways, and he’ll be on his own again, will be trapped in a space ship millions of miles from home and won’t have anyone at all.
The thought terrifies him, scares him so much that he can feel panic clawing at his chest just thinking about.
He can’t let on how desperate he really feels for human connection, in case he drives Simon away.
But he wants to beg him to stay, to fall to his knees and plead until he cries because he is so very scared of being alone.
If he’s alone all he’s got are memories, and the ghosts of his dead crew.
Loneliness is a feeling that Grace is very familiar with, one that has been his constant companion for decades. It feels as though there are walls between him and the world, that muffle any attempt he makes to reach out.
He does not want to be alone, so very badly, and he’s noticed it’s been getting worse since Simon showed up, that pull toward him, that instinct to cling to this strange man and not let go.
His skin aches. It seems to be spreading deeper, too, down into his bones.
Grace forcibly pulls himself back from where he’s been leaning toward Simon and tries to think of something to say. “I mean… if it helps we could go off brainwashing rules.”
Wow. So helpful.
Simon tilts his head in confusion, and Grace takes it as a victory that he now looks ‘confused-by-his-nonsense’ instead of ‘shelter-dog-waiting-to-be-kicked.’
Simon raises an eyebrow. “What?”
Grace shrugs. “Brainwashing rules. It’s this thing on Earth —mostly in stories, but still—, if you’re brainwashed and made to kill people it doesn’t like… count? Kinda like the Winter Solider.”
He shouldn’t be talking.
“I should show you the Captain America movies, I think you’d like them, we do have them because Stratt pirated like everything ever. You kind of remind me of Bucky, to be honest.”
Okay, wow, that’s really enough. Shutting up now.
Grace cringes a tiny bit as Simon examines him. Eventually he shakes his head. “I killed people. ’S not— you can’t just—“
His eyes are glistening just a bit. Grace reaches forward without thinking about it and takes his hand.
It’s hard to make eye contact, but he tries.
“Simon, you were raised in a cult and told they were god.”
He needs this to work. This is important.
***
Simon can’t help but feel a little overwhelmed by the sudden force of Grace’s earnest attention, and he shudders. He feels drawn in by those mesmerizing blue eyes.
Grace seems pained, but he squeezes Simon’s hand gently with both of his own. “They made you fight and would have let you die if you didn’t. You were just trying to survive.”
There is a lock of golden hair draped over Grace’s forehead, brushing his eyebrow, and Simon has the bizarre urge to reach up and push it behind his ear. He takes a breath, and tries to fight back the urge to cry.
He feels startled, unsure what to focus on, and he wishes desperately that he believed the things Grace is saying. He’s had far too long to think about it, there was nothing else to do in solitary, and so he knows that it isn't really true. But... it's a nice dream.
Grace tilts his head and smiles at him. “What about some food? Might make you feel better?”
Simon shouldn’t be taking more from him, he shouldn’t be here— he nods slowly.
Grace’s hands are warm.
He helps Simon up from the floor and he follows him, his legs weak and shaking like a newborn lamb. It doesn’t feel like a rebirth, not really, but something has shifted, he thinks.
Yeen Fact #448:
"Spotted hyenas' calls can travel over 5 kilometres, especially their iconic 'whoop.' Each whoop is unique, allowing clan members to recognise individuals by voice alone—even from far away in the dark."
This has been another fun Hyena Fact.
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okay i have a request !! maybe being on inside with george 👀 and a friends to lovers happens but also like drama??
Inside Trouble.
(A George Clarke x Reader fic set on Inside) notes at end of fic!!
You never expected reality TV to be this intense.
Sure, you knew Inside was about strategy, social manipulation, and surviving weeks locked in a house under 24/7 surveillance—but you didn’t realize just how personal it would get.
Especially with George Clarke in the mix.
You and George had been friends for a while before the show. Maybe even best friends. You always joked around, filmed videos together, and people constantly asked if there was something more between you. You always denied it.
But in here? With cameras watching, emotions running high, and George acting weird—it was getting a lot harder to pretend.
Day 8
"Y/N, admit it, you’d be lost in here without me," George teased, flopping down beside you on the couch.
You shot him a look. "Please. I’d be thriving without you weighing me down."
He gasped dramatically, hand on his chest. "That hurts. You love having me around."
You rolled your eyes, but your lips twitched. "Keep telling yourself that, Clarke."
Someone from across the room chuckled. "You two do realize the entire internet is shipping you, right?"
You froze.
George, on the other hand, smirked. "Yeah, well… they might be onto something."
Your stomach flipped.
But you laughed it off. Because that’s what you always did.
Day 13
Lately, George had been distant. Not in an obvious way—he still joked around, still sat next to you at dinner, still teased you in the group challenges—but something had changed.
And you weren’t the only one who noticed.
"He’s jealous," one of the contestants whispered to you one afternoon.
You blinked. "Of what?"
She smirked. "C’mon, Y/N. You’ve been spending more time with Matt. And George? He’s fuming."
You glanced across the room. George was talking to someone, but his eyes kept flicking over to you. And yeah, now that you were looking for it—he definitely wasn’t happy.
So, of course, you had to test the theory.
You laughed a little louder at Matt’s joke.
And that was when George stood up and left the room.
Day 14
You found him in the kitchen later that night, leaning against the counter, looking pissed off.
"Alright," you said, crossing your arms. "What’s your deal?"
George scoffed. "I don’t have a deal."
"You’ve been acting weird all day."
"I’m fine," he muttered, avoiding your gaze.
You stepped closer. "George—"
"Do you like him?"
You blinked. "What?"
His jaw clenched. "Matt. Do you like him?"
You stared at him, heart pounding. "Why do you care?"
George exhaled sharply, running a hand through his hair. "Because I—" He stopped, shaking his head.
"Because you what?" you pushed, stepping even closer now.
George’s eyes darkened, frustration flickering into something else. Something intense.
"Because I can’t stand watching you with someone else." His voice was low now, rough. "Because I’ve spent years pretending I don’t feel this way, and this stupid show has made it impossible to ignore. Because I—"
You didn’t let him finish.
You grabbed his shirt and kissed him.
It wasn’t careful. It wasn’t hesitant. It was weeks of tension, months of denial, and every single moment leading up to this one.
George groaned against your lips, hands gripping your waist, pulling you closer like he’d been waiting for this. Like he was desperate for it.
You melted into him, your fingers tangling in his hair, tilting your head to deepen the kiss. The kitchen, the cameras, the whole show? Gone.
When you finally pulled away, you were both breathless.
George swallowed, eyes flicking between your lips and your eyes.
"Well," he murmured, a slow grin spreading across his face. "Guess that settles that."
You laughed, still catching your breath. "Yeah. Guess it does."
And just like that—Inside had never felt more dangerous.
notes:
i would be lying if i said that requests without much infomation don't freak me out HELPP. i kind of just assumed you were talking about that one show 'inside'
I wasn't sure if your "VSMP ask preview" meant that your asks were open or not??? Buttt, I do have a few queries (mainly about Owen-) :)
1. What's Apo and Owen's relationship like?
2. Are Legs and Owen still freaks about each other?
3. What's Owen relationship with Oakhurst?
4. What's Owen's stance on vampires/Vampirism?
Sorry, if there's alot!!!!
Asks are definitely open, though aside from those with fan poll reciepts, few will be drawn out lol.
Anyway, more Starter Swap AU Lore time! Putting Question two at the end because it's LONG.
APO AND OWEN'S RELATIONSHIP:
Apo and Owen are way more chill in this AU, though they've still got their issues. Since they're both aligned with the town they don't really have that conflict that canon Owen and Apo have over siding with the town vs. the coven. It's more just the "why us versus them" thing. They get to bond over having someone at home waiting for them to return. Though, Owen fails to mention that his someone has been dead for ten years. Whether or not Apo takes that well I'm not sure, since I haven't seen much of her POV.
Also Owen ends up being the medic for the militia, so they hang out a lot.
OWEN'S RELATIONSHIP WITH OAKHURST:
Owen's not from Oakhurst in this AU. Simply because the gap of time between him leaving, it being abandoned, and found again by the townsfolk wouldn't make much since. It's been ten years since Louis died here, that's not a lot of time for things to go to ruin.
After Louis died, Owen killed the peopel responsible and was institutionlized for five years. (it would've been prison, but the systematic ableism chimed in and decided that the Leprosy made him kill those people or something stupid). He escaped, and then for the five years before Oakhurst he was on the run. He got into contact with some of Louis's relatives at some point and was told they'd give him the deed to the property where Louis was buried in exchange for him going to retrieve some stuff that got stolen from their manor post-investigation. Which led him to Oakhurst.
OWEN ON VAMPIRES:
He thinks they're people. People with a condition, much like himself. He's pretty staunchly against the vampire hunting stuff because it reminds him of Louis getting invesigated (and killed). Also, because he figures since vampires are people, they have families and loved ones to return to. You know, like how Louis had Owen to go back to. Granted, he wasn't a vampire here, but in Owen's mind killing a vampire because they're odd would make him no different than the bastards that killed his fiance. He's killed people before. But he would need a REASON to do it. And it would need to be a REALLY GOOD reason since he's trying to do better in Louis's name. Doesn't stop him from fantasizing about killing Avid, but what goes on in his head tends to stay there.
DOC AND OWEN'S RELATIONSHIP:
I've written this over a few times and deleted it again and again because I'm having a hard time explaining what I mean here. Sorry in advance.
They are definetly FREAKS oh my god. Obviously Doc has the whole vampirism-as-a-cure-for-evil thing going on. And from the moment he walks into town he can smell the blood on Owen's hands. But then they talk, and Doc sees that this guy whose almost certainly killed people before is trying to atone for his sins and whatnot. And he starts to see him in this... odd light, I guess? Legs starts subconciously putting Owen on a pedestal to a degree that's fully dehumanizing (which he doesn't see as an issue since he hates humans lol). Especially since Owen's desire to seek redemption is oddly selfless? Like he doesn't want to be forgiven and he doesn't feel bad about what he's done, but he knows Louis would want him to be better and he trusts his judgement so much more than his own.
Legs offers Owen the "cure" because he thinks it would be the end game for his path to atonement. Like, this is what you want, right? I have the solution (TM) to the problem of evil right here. And also. Legs starts to wonder if mayyyybeee just mayyybee Owen is more deserving of being a saviour of humanity than he is. You know, since this guy actually tried to be better without having to become a vampire first. Doc sees death as the root cause of all evil in humans. Their fight to avoid it, to survive, is what leads them to do awful things. I've seen what hunger can do to people, and all that. But Owen's two steps off from death's door during his time in Oakhurst and he's using it to do the opposite. He sees the end and marches towards it trying to patch things up for those behind him instead of scrambling to avoid it and leaving everything in his path destroyed. And not even because of his own desire to change, but because he sees that as the only right way to keep going and is willing to disregard his own thoughts and opinions in the name of a man whose been dead for a decade.
As for Owen. He kinda sees himself in Doc a bit. Both his current self and the way he was when Louis died. On one hand, you've got the misanthrope whose been wronged so many times by humanity that he can only see the worst parts of it when he's staring it down. For Legs, it was soldiers and nobles, for Owen it was bigots and men who shouldn't be practicing medicine. But the end result is the same. And then there's the part of him that wants to do better. And is trying to, as much as it's obvious to anyone that isn't Legs that what he's doing is kind of insane and also making things worse. He kind of admires it to, because Owen wants to better because he thinks Louis would want him to be (God knows that's the only reason he keeps going, because Louis would want him to), whereas Doc is deeply remorseful for the things he's done. Pragmatism vs. Penitence, something like that. And in the good old fashion method of trying to mimic Louis, he tries to focus on the good that's clearly present in the Doctor.
But also Doc's view of humanity as a disease in need of curing is deeply disturbing to Owen. When Doc looks at humans, he clearly only sees sickness, in the same way people looked at Owen and couldn't bother to look past the boils on his skin. And he knows Legs sees him as something to be fixed, or in his case, perfected. It makes him uneasy.
There's definetly more layers to this but I've already yapped too much lol.
