Archive of Our Own ^beta

Vincent chokes on a sudden breath. He's alive. Around him, the others at the table wake up ("wake up" is an inaccurate term they-) and, after Gordon starts laughing, cheer. Ramirez pats him on the shoulder and beams. Vincent tries to grin back. He can't focus. It's too bright.

"Hey!" Ryan shouts, barely audible. "HEY!" Everyone quiets down. "Good round."

That sets off another set of comments, things like "I'm proud of you," and "Fuck, that hurt," and "Didn't think you had it in you."

Ryan doesn't have much of a commanding air, so he waits for the rest to calm down naturally. Or, at least, Vincent thinks that's why he sits there, silent for a while. Eventually, though, he does speak again. "The betrayal was a little bit much, but I get the hustle." Then he walks over and claps Vincent on the back, grinning. "Don't suppose we'll have you for future rounds?"

Off-balance, Vincent defaults to agreeing. "You'll have me."

"About time!" Gordon shouts, to scattered laughter and then scattered footsteps as they split up.

Vincent takes a moment to rise from his chair. He died. He's died a lot, sometimes to the ship exploding, but this one felt almost final. If not, then like a conclusion. He killed everyone. They were gone. Phantoms and him. He could've stayed in the ship until they touched down, maybe. Not to leave the ship, that never worked, but could've reached the planet.

He's dead, isn't he? Maybe he always was. Or this is his mind playing tricks on him, in the moments before his death. He focused, but nothing changes. He's still onboard the ship. Vincent pauses, slouched, and hesitantly pads towards Medical.

The rote action of setting chemicals to mixing isn't exactly calming, but it needs just enough attention to keep him from thinking. He doesn't want to stand in front of the tubes as they mix. Must be something else he can do. Tasks aren't really set, they've just accepted that you do a number of them and hope no one else has gotten to the ones you like. Vincent wanders the wing of the ship, looking for something to occupy his mind.

It takes a moment of listening to a blaring noise for Vincent to startle, realizing what it means. Death has taken up residence on their ship. He shudders, suddenly cold, and staggers back to the table. Once there, he lands in his seat, twisting his thumbs together.

Eddie never shows up. There's no blood on the air. A clean kill? Speech floats in and through Vincent's mind. There's no smell. Spaceship-scent, no bodies. He wonders if any of them have enough time in these rounds to develop body odor, then snorts under his breath. Of course they do. Running for your life will do that.

Ramirez taps him on the shoulder, gesturing at everyone looking at him. He clears his throat. "Uh, skip." They've gotta notice that something is wrong, right? He's not acting like himself. If someone asks, he'll tell them. He'll say that all this feels like wet paper and staring at stars.

Should he be paying more attention? They take Adrian to the airlock. Vincent watches his boots, steady and sure as they go. He stands up and watches the man he strangled not too long ago fall into space, flailing limbs out of his control.

He doesn't wait for everyone else to leave the table before he's getting back to Medical and checking the chemicals. They've finished mixing. He wonders if he'd have it in him to kill someone without being the impostor. He's done it once, could he do it again? Delicately, he picks up a tube from the machine. Then he throws it at the wall. The tubes are plastic, and don't break. The mixture within, some fertilizer, splatters onto the wall. The tube hits the ground. Fertilizer drips.

Vincent leaves it behind.

Most of the ship is bright, even if sightlines are awful. He thinks he needs a minute. He passes Kate as he wanders, and takes a moment longer than is probably socially acceptable to wave a hello to her.

She grins at him. Vincent thinks it feels an awful lot like a wild animal baring their teeth. He prepares to run. "Shame I missed the last round."

Nervously, Vincent nods. "I didn't like it too much." Kate gestures for him to go on. "...but I've already said I'd do it again? Uh. Was your nap last round any good?"

"Very. I feel clearheaded now."

"That's... Good?"

Kate's grin gets smaller and sharper. She takes a single, over-large step towards Vincent. He runs. She chases after him, footsteps pounding and echoing as they go, spiraling until they sound like they're in front of him. He's fairly sure if he gets to the cafeteria, he'd be able to get Kate voted out, basically immediately, and from there, the chances of a crewmate victory become just about certain.

A loud bang rings through the wall, and Vincent flinches away, nearly tripping. He scrambles to stay upright. Where is the rest of the crew? Surely someone is hearing all this? He looks back for a moment, just before a corner, and sees he's pulling ahead. He puts on a bit more speed and swerves into Electrical when Kate is sufficiently far enough from him to not see him enter. He pulls wires over himself, laying low to the ground in the dim of the room. If he stays still, no one should see him. The cable management is awful back here.

Pounding steps continue to echo oddly, dampening as the sound leaks into Electrical. Vincent stays still. This isn't going to work. Boots come into view as Kate rounds the corner, tapping her nails on the server banks Vincent has buried himself under. She's quiet, aside from her harsh breathing, and something she's saying that he can't make out. She's always been quiet, but he doesn't really have the wherewithal to listen in when he's about to die.

But then she leaves, and Vincent stays right where he is, a bit shocked. That worked? She wasn't just humoring him? There's no way to know other than to ask, and he is not about to get out of his dubiously safe spot just to go ask if she noticed where he was hiding to escape death. Not a chance.

He stays put. Another death alarm goes off and he thinks about actually attending for a bit, but wouldn't it be better to just... Work things out for a bit? Yes, he decides. He's staying here until someone finds him or until the round ends. So the alarm stops ringing and he stays under the wires, thinking.

This might be real. There's a good chance, but there's also a good chance that they're all dead, and he killed- Stop. Stop. That's not helpful. Everyone else has killed pretty much everyone onboard, the only exceptions being Hal and his boyfriends, probably. Hal doesn't kill them, that is, not that they don't kill him. It's weird. But Arlen and Kate seem to make a game out of it, so...

Fuck. Got off-track again. Point is, there shouldn't be any reason why this isn't just another normal loop, aside from the nagging in the back of his head that insists that he was the last one to get onboard with the whole murdergame, and maybe that's what some thing holding the loop together needed to break it. But that's absurd. It weighs on him, though. He's sure it's just guilt. It has to be.

Another blaring alarm.

Eventually the ship is going to be empty, save for him and whoever the remaining impostors are. Something nags at him, though. The end of the last round, when everyone was dead but him, the loop didn't restart. That holds for when the impostors are both dead, the loop keeps going. They land on... He can't remember the name of the place they were meant to be heading to before all this. Doesn't matter. They land, then when the doors open, they're back at the table. Maybe that's true for the impostors too? The end condition being landing or the death of everyone onboard.

It eases the guilt a bit, that thought, which immediately sets him on edge. He shakes his head slightly, careful to not move the wires too much. It's fine. He can feel okay about himself, can't he? If anything, he should feel guilty for making everyone else's game that much worse for a while.

...maybe he shouldn't come up with new reasons to feel guilty.

He settles in and stops thinking so seriously for a while. Two more alarms go off, with a few people entering Electrical in-between them. Vincent holds still, and they pass him by. Eventually, the ship is quiet for what must be an hour. He dislodges the wires and crawls out, wincing at all the grime on him. He needs a shower.

On his way to the bathroom by Medical, he nearly trips over Felix's body. Remembering his own recent complicity in the murder of this exact man, he puts a careful hand in Felix's stiff one. "I'm sorry," he sighs. Then, adjusting his grip, he picks Felix up and throws half the corpse over his shoulder, keeping a firm grip on the legs. To the airlock. Felix's stiffness makes working him into the small space a bit difficult, but Vincent manages. He sighs again and readies himself to fetch the rest of the bodies.

Why is he doing this?

No response is forthcoming from his mind. He doesn't care too much. This is the course of action he's taking now. The next body he finds is Kate's, which raises questions about her whole hunt for him earlier. Doesn't matter, really, but he will be thinking about it. She goes in the airlock too. Then Arlen, and then Ramirez. Vincent holds Ramirez's body a bit gentler than the rest. He'll have to hug him once he's alive again.

Alright. Time to clean up. The bathroom is spotless, as usual, and Vincent lets the shower steam and fog up the mirror. He considers washing his own clothes to get all the dust and new bloodstains out of it, then thinks about the damp aftermath of that. It'll be fine. He rinses his clothes off underneath the spray, then steps in and enjoys warm water for the first time in what has to be months. He may get clean every time a round starts, but there's nothing quite like the feeling of hot water over skin. Eventually, though, the water starts running cold. He stays in until that becomes unbearable, and steps out.

The room is thick with steam. He breathes deep, and coughs as the water vapor gets in his lungs. Shallow breaths it is! He dries off to the best of his ability, wrings out his clothes, and puts them back on. Immediately, he can tell he's going to be unreasonably cold if he takes too long to do anything. Fortunately, he intends to die before that becomes a serious issue.

Upon reaching the airlock, he realizes there there was a bit of a flaw in his piling all the bodies in here. He'll have to practically stand on them in order to eject himself along with them. It's a bit gross. He does it, though, sealing himself inside with the bodies of his friends, and Felix. Alright, that's unkind to Felix, but Vincent really isn't too close with him. Maybe he should put in the effort. With everyone, not just the people that aren't actively abrasive. He's stuck with these people.

Alright. Time to bring them back. His hand trembles on the manual eject. He hasn't done this before. He's always known how to willfully eject himself into deep space, but it really isn't something he's ever had reason to do. A couple of the crew put in the code in here before anyone else can eject them. It's a bit of a game to them. Can they die before someone kills them? Makes no sense.

...but the bodies really do smell bad. Vincent punches in the code and tumbles out into the void alongside the other bodies. In his last moments of painful consciousness, he grasps at where he thought he saw a flash of motion, a stray hand.

Quiet. Peace.

Then sucking in a deep breath, happily warm once again, bright lights and people around him. Fuck, being ejected disorients him. He listens to the pre-game chatter, as he always does. Kate leans across the table, grinning.

"So, who got you?"

Caught a bit off-guard, Vincent shrugs. "I don't know. I never saw whatever killed me. Just went outside." There, that's technically true, right? Can't exactly see a vacuum, and he very much went outside of the ship.

Kate nods, seeming satisfied. Vincent leans back in his chair, finding that he'd leaned forward to respond. He feels... A lot better. The loop is still going. Everyone is acting like themselves, but not so predictable for him to be too paranoid about them all being fake. The doubt still clings to him, but he thinks if he's careful, he can be okay about it.

It doesn't really matter if everything going on is real or not. They've all had the "is this hell" discussion ages ago, and landed on basically the same conclusion. It doesn't really matter why he's in this situation, or what it is, just that he is in it, and has to deal with it as it comes. Certainty would be nice, of course, but he doesn't strictly need it. He stands up at roughly the same time as the rest of the group, joining Felix.

"So, uh, what are your tasks?" He offers.

Felix blinks at him, before breaking into a wide smile. "Well, I wanted to do all the trash ejection, I like seeing it all drift out into space, but if you want, you can pull a lever? Not the one in Storage, though, that's my favourite-" And on he goes. Maybe everything can be okay.