Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

SOS SIGNAL DETECTED. Curly watched the red text blink endlessly at the top of the Tulpar’s primary communication panel, accompanied by a tinny, high-pitched beeping. Below it was written the approximate coordinates of the stranded vessel and it’s distance in relation to the Tulpar’s current position, a number that has been steadily ticking down for the past two weeks since they had first received the distress signal.

It was practically unheard of to receive a distress signal like this so far into deepspace. Even ignoring the fact that it’s very rare to run into other ships in general, only manned ships could send an SOS signal of this type. With how most shipping companies have been switching over to completely automated vessels in the past few decades, coming across another manned ship was beyond unlikely. To the point that if Curly was less studious he may have been unsure on the protocol for a situation like this. As it is, though, after he and Jimmy got over the initial surprise of the alert popping up, Curly knew that this trip was going to have a little more excitement than their usual year-long hauls.

By astronautical law, once an SOS signal is received, the recipient ship is required to respond and provide aid in any way possible - Curly vaguely remembered some muddy details about certain exemptions, but he didn’t care to check. The idea of being stranded, floating, this far away from any colony or hope for rescue … It sent bone-deep chills down his spine. It was practically a one in several billion chance that this other ship’s signal reached anyone at all, and he wasn’t about to squander their luck by trying to squirm out of the responsibility of helping them.

The Pony Express executives weren’t all that convinced when he had contacted Home Base for permission to temporarily divert course, but they had reluctantly provided clearance when he reminded them, politely, that it was the law. An almost defunct law at this point, but still. Their new course will add several weeks to the shipment duration, possibly more if they need to make an emergency detour to the nearest colony to drop off survivors or buy more supplies to help them. Curly supposed the execs can be a little grumpy about that as long as they continue to provide clearance without docking the crew’s pay - that’s all that matters in the end.

The continuous beeping was going to give him a headache. Curly sipped the coffee he was holding, only to pull a face as the tepid liquid slid down his throat. Damn, he must have been spacing out again. How long had he been sitting here? Curly put down his mug, stretching to get some of the aches out of his muscles as he gave the cockpit’s other informational screens a quick once-over. They still had 26 hours before they would reach the stranded ship. Seeing nothing that needed immediate pilot attention, Curly set about getting a fresh mug of coffee.

The ship was quiet except for the hissing and buzzing of its internals chugging along. The atmosphere on the Tulpar had been tense with anticipation ever since they diverted course, with everyone on edge as they all pondered what awaits them when they reach the stranded ship. Curly did his best to keep everyone in a good headspace, but it’s difficult when this is uncharted territory even for him.

He found Jimmy in the lounge as he beelined for the coffee machine, dumping his old mug on the counter as he did.

“Any news?” Jimmy asked as he flipped through one of Daisuke’s strange magazines. The coffee machine gurgled and groaned as it filled his cup - it must have been nearly out of coffee grounds or something.

“Nothing new.” Curly answered, joining his co-pilot in the sunken sitting area. “I doubt we’ll hear anything from them until we get there, maybe not even until we dock. There’s a large chance their comm system is down, I can’t imagine why else they wouldn’t be responding to us.”

“Well, there is one other possibility,” Jimmy said coyly, and Curly took a long sip of his coffee. Scorching hot and bitter, the way he likes it.

“Don’t speak stuff like that into existence,” Curly said.

“I didn’t even say it! I just think we should be prepared for the possibility that this ship has been sending out this SOS signal for years already and whoever was on there has long wasted away. It’s a bigger chance than you think,” Jimmy said, holding up his hands in surrender.

“We’re prepared for if there’s no survivors. We’re not really prepared for if there is, but I have to hold out hope that what we’re doing here is going to help. At least let me have that, Jim.” Curly responded, and Jimmy just shrugged and leaned back against the backrest of the sofa. There was an easy silence for a few moments as Curly took another drink. When he spoke again his voice was quieter, just a smidge more vulnerable. “I keep imagining what it must be like, to be stranded this far out.” When Jimmy didn’t respond immediately, Curly continued. “A ship in these parts of space is probably equipped for long-haul travel, so they would have had supplies to last them a long time. Nothing to do but wait for the tiniest chance someone is close enough to come to your rescue before your food or air runs out. The hope of that slowly dying. I feel like I would go crazy.”

“I think that kind of situation would drive anyone to do crazy things,” Jimmy agreed easily. “Hey, I’m hoping these people are still alive too. I just think we should be ready in case it turns out we’re too late. Anya has been driving herself up the wall trying to prepare to treat any and all kinds of injuries she’s imagining these survivors could have - wasn’t pleased when I suggested she might want to save her strength.” He continued with a half-smile, standing.

“Anya is anxious about all this. Ah shit, that reminds me, I was going to check how she’s been holding up earlier.” Curly stood as well, finishing his drink. He really needs to get at least a few hours more sleep a night because this brain fog is starting to become problematic. “Can you head to the cockpit and keep an eye on everything? I’m pretty sure we’re all clear until we reach the stranded ship, but it never hurts to be vigilant.” Curly asked and Jimmy nodded. Curly thought he caught a bit of amusement in the quirk to his friend’s lips as he turned away and huffed, knowing what Jimmy was thinking - that Anya isn’t the only one this situation is making anxious. This was the first time in a long time on a haul that Curly felt unsteady, but he didn’t get this position through panicking when unexpected things came up and he’s not going to start now. Right now what he needs to do is make sure his crew is well, he can worry about what the following day might bring when they reach it.

He quickly washed up the mugs he’d used and loaded them back into the machine before promptly heading to medical. Anya was, as Jimmy had mentioned, preparing medical supplies - gauze, pills, IV bags, sutures, surgical glue, as well as many things that Curly didn’t know the name of. Anya looked up at him as he entered.

“Hi, Captain.” She greeted as she checked the label on a bottle of some sort of medicine.

“Hey, Anya. How are you holding up?” Curly asked, peering curiously at her work. The nurse paused, glancing at him from the corner of her eye.

“About as well as can be expected, really,” she said, slightly more reserved. “I’m trying to prepare, but it’s hard when I don’t know what I’m going to be dealing with. Maybe malnutrition if they ran out of food, if they crashed into something there could be burn injuries or impact-related injuries. There’s just too many possibilities.”

“Well, we can only wait and see. I’m glad I can rely on you. You’re a good nurse, Anya. I don’t think I tell you that enough.” Curly replied, and Anya turned to him in surprise, looking genuinely touched.

“Oh stop it, I’m just doing what I can,” She dismissed, waving a hand. She then paused, brows drawing together. “Jimmy is convinced that all we’re going to find is corpses. He keeps telling me I’m wasting my time.” She said, looking pensively down at the bottle of paracetamol capsules she was holding. Curly looked away.

“Just ignore him. He’s pessimistic by nature, and besides, we need to be prepared for all possibilities.” He said. Jimmy had been acting a little off since they had received the SOS alert. Despite his grim outlook on their chances of finding survivors, his anticipation had felt more eager than nervous. He was probably just excited that something had broken up the day-to-day monotony of long-haul shipments.

“Okay, Captain.” Anya responded quietly. There was a beat of silence. Curly awkwardly continued.

“So, uh, thanks for all this. You never know, it could save someone’s life.” And that, at least, managed to get a small smile out of her. “If you need anything you know where to find me.” And with those parting words, he left her in peace.

~~~

Curly took a deep breath to steady himself as he watched the number that showed the few AU they had left to travel dwindle away to nothing. They were only a minute or so away - the autopilot was set to stop a safe distance from the floating ship, but both Curly and Jimmy were on high alert in case something went wrong. Jimmy was silent beside him, but Curly appreciated his grounding presence nonetheless. In less than an hour they would know if their several week-long detour has made them heroes or if all that awaits them is a ghost ship.

The Tulpar gradually slowed to match the speed of the floating vessel, the sensation strange after travelling at such high speeds for over four months. Curly isn’t sure he’ll ever be entirely used to it. He flicked on the external cameras as soon as they were in range - both he and Jimmy leaning forward in sync to squint at the grainy footage. Curly could only make out a small smudge that he guessed was their target - but as they drew closer the image became clearer.

The ship had definitely collided with something - tears of white emergency foam stretched across the ship, mostly centered on one end that Curly guessed was the point of impact. The ship looked similar to their own - around the same size and shape, likely another freighter. In fact, it looked …. Practically identical to the Tulpar.

“Shit…” Jimmy remarked, almost awed. “Well, at least it’s mostly in one piece.”

“Does… Does it look like the same make as the Tulpar, to you?” Curly asked, a pit starting to form in his stomach. Jimmy leaned closer to the screen displaying the live feed.

“Huh… Now that you mention it, yeah. I didn’t think any company but Pony Express still used old rust-buckets like this anymore.” He said. Curly tapped a finger against the console idly, needing some way to release the nervous energy pent up inside of him.

“Maybe we should get Swansea for a second opinion. He knows this ship better than anyone.”

Swansea was perturbed looking at the camera feed, to say the least.

“It’s not only the same make, that’s the same fuckin’ model as the Tulpar.” He said gruffly, but Curly could see he was similarly unsettled. “They stopped being manufactured over fifty years ago. Most are defunct by now.”

Curly set his jaw.

“It’s a weird coincidence. But we can’t get distracted.” He said as he pressed a few buttons to open their telecommunication panel. Once again, he sent a request to call. Once again, there was no response. He sent a request to dock and board. No response. The only communication from the ship was the same droning SOS signal.

“We will have to dock without permission. Either their transmission gear is busted or…” Curly trailed off. They were all thinking it, anyway. He dismissed Swansea back to the lounge where Daisuke and Anya were waiting anxiously so the pilots could concentrate, and he went with only a bit of a grumble about how this entire situation better not affect his paycheck.

Between him and Jimmy, docking the two ships together was as quick and painless as possible. Once they were safely attached, Curly had to prepare to board. He gingerly retrieved the protection kit from the cockpit’s utility locker, causing Jimmy to do a double-take.

“You’re taking the gun?” He exclaimed, shocked.

“You’re right about one thing, Jim. We don’t know what’s waiting for us there. I have to be prepared for anything - if there’s someone dangerous aboard I can’t let them endanger the crew.” He snapped the code into the combination lock after a quick check with the code scanner, opening the case and tentatively loading the pistol. The basics of using firearms was taught to him in training, but it still felt odd. Wrong. He didn’t like holding a tool that could so easily end a life.

“You think the survivors might be dangerous?” Jimmy asked, eyes trained on the pistol as Curly attached it to his belt. Curly shrugged helplessly in response.

“Ships don’t just crash, Jim. We’ve spent countless years in space, modern autopilot is practically infallible. If this ship collided with something, there’s a non-zero chance it wasn’t an accident.” Curly said. Jimmy processed this, looking back at the camera feed of the wrecked ship. Curly followed his gaze. “It’s better to be prepared.”

Anya and Daisuke practically bombarded Curly with questions when he and Jimmy entered the lounge, talking over each other as they questioned if everything went alright and why the stranded ship was so similar to theirs. Curly didn’t know why he hadn’t expected that Swansea would immediately spill that little detail.

“Okay, okay, that’s enough.” Curly said, holding up a hand. They both went quiet, looking at him with wide eyes. “Yes, we are docked safely to the stranded ship. We still haven’t heard anything, but are hoping that’s just because their communication system is broken. Me and Anya are going to board in a few minutes to see if there are any survivors.”

“Her?”

“Me?”

Jimmy and Anya both spoke in unison, one irritated, one surprised.

“Curly, I thought I was going with you? I’m the co-pilot, after all.” Jimmy cut in from beside him. Anya looked at her feet. Curly turned and blinked at Jimmy.

“I would like Anya to come in case there are any survivors that need immediate medical attention. It can be difficult to move patients when they’re badly hurt, right Anya?” Curly turned to Anya for confirmation, who gave a shy nod, not looking up from her shoes to meet Jimmy’s annoyed glare.

“Well, I-”

“Jimmy, look.” Curly glanced at the others, waving them off and taking Jimmy to the side so they could speak with relative privacy. “I need someone to keep everyone calm and in line here on the ship while I’m gone. This is a stressful scenario, and the last thing I want is something bad happening while I’m not here to sort it. I can trust you to be the stand-in Captain when me and Anya are gone, yeah?” Curly asked.

He wasn’t lying, not really. It did make him feel a little better that Jimmy would be making sure everything ran smoothly on the Tulpar while he was away, but he didn’t really expect Swansea or Daisuke to run into too much trouble in the - at most - couple of hours he was off-ship. Truthfully, he needed an excuse to deny Jimmy from tagging along that wouldn’t set him on a defensive streak. Curly was well-aware Jimmy could be volatile when he suspected Curly didn’t trust him to do something, but he’s learned ways to manage the man’s moods over the years they’ve been friends. It’s not even that Curly doesn’t trust Jimmy - he does. He’s been his co-pilot for many years and his friend for even longer, but he hadn’t missed how strangely eager Jimmy was to explore the stranded ship. Curly knew that he needed everyone in a good headspace if this rescue was going to be smooth, and right now, he wasn’t sure Jimmy would remain calm and focused if they found something unexpected. With Anya, Curly was certain she would remain level-headed - she had surprising resilience when it came to high-pressure scenarios.

Jimmy chewed on his words for a short while, but seemed mostly mollified.

“I guess I can keep everyone in line here. Just don’t keep me in the dark for too long, yeah?” He finally responded, to which Curly smiled and reassured him that they won’t be gone for long.

They returned to the others, who were exchanging anxious words amongst each other. Curly looked to Anya.

“Are you ready?” He asked.

“Uhm, just a moment. I need to grab some supplies.” She replied, ducking out to medical. When she returned, it was with a backpack full to the brim. Curly and Anya headed down to the Tulpar’s exit, Curly typing another scanner-protected code to allow for the airlock chamber to be accessed.

“Didn’t expect to be in here again this soon,” Anya commented, presumably to lighten the tense and serious mood as they entered the airlock chamber, the heavy door shutting with a thunk behind them, clicking as it seals. Curly couldn’t think of anything to respond with. Except -

“What do you think’s going to be behind these doors?” And he immediately regretted the words. What good would come from more speculation? Especially when they were this close to discovering what awaits them.

Anya blew out heavy breath.

“It’s as you said, Captain.” The airlock chamber hissed as it equalised the pressure between the two space vessels. “We can only wait and see.”

The external door slid open with a series of mechanical whirs.

As Curly and Anya stepped onto the stranded ship, all Curly could focus on was the faint smell of blood.

Chapter Text

This ship was deathly silent. Curly had grown accustomed to the constant humming and buzzing of the Tulpar and it grew to be a source of comfort to him - like the ship’s beating heart, the background noise was a reminder that she was working as intended. In contrast, the utter lack of noise on this pretty much identical ship was suffocating. His and Anya’s footfalls clanged loudly throughout the corridor as they walked.

The inside of the ship was bathed in a mix of nightmarish red from the emergency lights and watery patches of white light from a few strategically placed flood lights hooked up to manual generators. That gave Curly just an inkling of hope - if the people on this ship had lasted long enough to run out of their main power supply, maybe they had lasted long enough to be found.

The faint hope quickly dwindled as they reached the slightly ajar door to Utility, the distinct metallic smell intensifying. Curly cast a single distressed look back at Anya, whose brow was lowered and jaw was set as she clearly steeled herself to see something upsetting.

He stepped into the room, having to step over a large patch of emergency foam on the threshold and immediately saw where the smell was coming from - the body of a man, half-hidden in the shadows against the wall, his shoulder and arm absolutely caked in dried blood. Curly had to press a hand against his nose to try in vain not to breathe the putrid, cloying smell of decay. Anya stepped in behind him and with a strained, quiet gasp, started hurrying over to the corpse, presumably to certify death. Not that it was really in question.

Curly’s attention was pulled away to the quiet hum of one of the cryogenic stasis pods - active. He approached warily and flinched back in fright when he was close enough to peer inside. A single, unnaturally wide eye stared back at him, and it took him a moment to get a hold of himself and realise that the person was indeed frozen, but didn’t appear to have the eyelids to close their one visible eye beforehand. They were severely disfigured - their face was wrapped almost entirely in bandages, but the skin Curly could see was blister-red and burnt away around their eye and mouth, exposing teeth and gums.

Curly flinched again when a shrill shriek cut through the air, whipping around to look at Anya who was scrambling back, away from the corpse that was still slumped against the wall.

“Anya?!” He called in alarm, quickly striding over to her.

“It’s Jimmy!” She yelled, eyes wide as saucers and face ashen as she stared at the dead body. Curly crouched in front of her, trying to break her line of sight.

“Hey, hey. It’s okay. It’s okay, Anya. Jimmy is back on the ship, that’s not him,” he reassured her, hands half raised, unsure whether touching her would help or freak her out more. Her breaths were still heavy but her eyes snapped up to Curly’s face before leaning to peer around him at the corpse.

“N-no, I, I swear- I saw…” She trailed off and Curly sat back on his haunches to give her some space. He glanced at the corpse, and could definitely see what she meant. It did resemble Jimmy, to the point where it was uncanny, even past how decomposition has sunken the man’s features. In any case, lookalikes were uncommon, but not unheard of. Anya took a deep breath.

“Yes, you’re right. Sorry, Captain, it just… Startled me, is all. It looks like he died from a gunshot to the side of the head. Probably self-inflicted.” She mumbled out eventually, and only then did Curly see the man’s right hand, palm up, and the pistol lying right beside it. It was a carbon copy of his own, albeit with much more grime and blood smeared over the handle. Swallowing around the lump in his throat, he looked back at the cryopod.

“Do you think he’s still alive?” Curly asked, and Anya approached the glass to look, face twisting in pity, a hand coming up to cover her mouth.

“I… I think he must be. Why else would someone put him in the cryogenic pod?” She said, voice wobbling. “He was clearly treated, but his injuries are so severe… We won’t know for sure until we un-freeze him.”

Curly nodded. “We should explore the rest of the ship, first. Then we can get a gurney in here to move him to our ship if he’s still alive.”

They continue down the halls, an ever-building sense of horror cloying the air like the lingering stench of decay. Across the walls and crowding the corners of the corridors were large plumes of emergency foam, as well as boxes and boxes of mouthwash that were strewn haphazardly around. Curly didn’t even have time to ponder that before they were passing the large airlock that led to the cargo bay, and the sight of it open shocked Curly more than he liked to admit. It was hard, when the layout of the rooms on this ship was identical to their own, to not constantly compare the two. In all his years on the Tulpar he had never seen the cargo bay doors open on this end.

“I suppose they must have got desperate and hoped their cargo was useful,” he commented. He stepped in, looking at the rows upon rows of industrial shelves holding, presumably, metric tons of mouthwash. It didn’t bode well to consider the many empty bottles that littered the floor. Anya gestured to them, echoing his thoughts.

“What do you think they used all this mouthwash for?” She asked, and Curly chewed the inside of his cheek. He doubted they were using it to keep their teeth clean, that’s for sure.

It also squirmed in his mind uncomfortably, that large-scale shipments like this of a single commercial product was Pony Express’ bread-and-butter shipment strategy. With that and the use of old, manned ships… Curly stepped further into the room, turning to look at the wall above the cargo bay door.

And sure enough, with bright red emergency lights casting the letters in stark relief, was the logo of Pony Express. Anya followed his gaze.

“I… Didn’t realise that we had another shipment moving through this section of deepspace.” Anya said, quietly.

“We don’t.” Curly replied, sweat dripping down his back. Pony Express was not a large company, and they had been meaningfully downsizing their business over the last few years. Curly would have - should have known if there was another Pony Express vessel anywhere close. He had no idea what to make of this, so he just moved on, wanting this entire situation to be over as quickly as possible. A pressure was building in his chest, and he was slowly finding the thin, foul-smelling air getting more difficult to breathe. Anya, to her credit, followed after him without a word.

They looped around to medical, and Curly noticed the metal grating of the floor turn tacky. When he looked down, he saw that this section of the floor was covered in blood. Opening the door to medical revealed more, and the stench of blood and vomit rolled over them, making Anya gag behind him. Notably, despite the large amounts of blood in this room - a large pool by the door, a single cot dyed red, a puddle of what seemed to be several bodily fluids - it was sans any corpses. Curly guessed this cot would have been where they had treated the disfigured person in the cryopod - the way the blood was smeared and packed in layers into the stiff fabric spoke to months of suffering. Judging by all the empty painkiller bottles and general lack of supplies, Curly had to wonder for just how long they kept this man alive. Something about it disturbed him.

“Captain…” He turned at Anya’s voice. She was hunched over, arms crossed protectively over her chest as her eyes roamed the destroyed cabinets and messy shelves. “I really don’t like this…” Curly tried to spot what had disturbed her exactly, but was at a loss. Not there was a lack of things to not like about this entire situation - Curly’s head was spinning and his heart was in his stomach. Everything was getting stranger by the minute. She continued, “this stuff… these books - they're all identical to mine! This room is set up- set up exactly how I would do it.” She reached up to chew on her nails anxiously, walking slowly over to the cork board which was partially covered in foam. “I think something weird is happening here. I don’t know how it possibly could be so, but … this is our ship.” The silence that followed was thick.

Curly didn’t want to admit that in the back of his mind he was fighting against the same conclusion she had come to. There were only so many times you could ignore crazy coincidences before they caught up to you. But what could possibly be the alternative?

“Let’s … Discuss it when we’re off the ship and everyone has calmed down.”

“You think I’m crazy.” Anya accused flatly. Curly was shocked she would think that.

“No! I-I think you’re onto something, it’s just… Well, impossible isn’t the word, but I don’t understand how this is happening. We could be being tricked or something - I just, I want to make sure we’ve thought through every possibility.” Anya didn’t look like she fully bought his words. “C’mon, there’s only a couple rooms left to check.” He said and stepped out of the room.

The door to the lounge slid open with a horrid scraping noise and Curly was immediately blinded by the shattered spider-web array of colours that was once the day/night cycle screen. Once his eyes adjusted, he wished they hadn’t.

Several corpses - cheeks sunk in, skin pallid and wet - were propped up, deliberately, slumped over on chairs around the dining table with birthday hats adorning their heads like some sort of macabre, revolting imitation of a celebration. The stench of decay was even thicker in this room. The corpses were familiar.

Curly distantly heard the retching and splashing of Anya throwing up behind him, sobs of terror sounding through the stagnant air.

“-Tain? Captain? Please tell me you see this too. Please. Please.” Curly felt himself be shaken by the shoulder, and dragged his gaze to Anya’s crying, frantic expression.

“I- I see it.” He stammered out, feeling detached. He looked back. Swansea’s glassy eye stared back at him. Blank. Leaking. The other side of his face was caved in, flesh a mottled green and orange. Beside him, body listing to the side, a familiar brown mop of hair atop a face that had a festering black split, one half falling away from the skull. Anya - Anya stumbled forward, her face sheet-white as she looked at one of the corpses that was slumped backwards over it’s chair, black hair cascading down. Her own face, caked in dried gore and vomit, looked blankly back at her with unfocused eyes. Clear liquid slowly dripped down from the corpse’s eyes and nose, hitting the metal floor with a plink. Anya’s rattling breaths, sobs catching on each inhale, were increasing in tone and volume, until Curly realised he was just staring.

He shook his head violently, swallowing down bile as he grabbed Anya’s hand and dragged her away from the sight, the nurse stumbling back and turning, quickly following him as he led her down the way they came, beelining straight for the airlock to get them away from this nightmare.

In the airlock they were both dead silent. Curly thought he should say something. A reassurance, maybe? Nothing came to mind. Anya was mopping at her face with her sleeve, breaths still hitched but quieter. As the door back to their ship slid open, the familiar humming and bright, friendly lighting did little to make Curly feel more settled. They walked back to the lounge, three pairs of expectant eyes immediately snapping to them as they walked in. Anya ducked her head, speed-walking past the others to medical. Curly couldn’t meet any of their eyes.

“So?” Jimmy prompted, impatient. He opened his mouth, then closed it. He tried to focus on the pressure of the floor pressing up into his feet to ground himself, but his mind still felt a little to the left of his body.

“There’s… We found a person in a cryostasis pod, but they’re badly injured. The rest of the crew is dead. We… We’re going to regroup and go back in later to extract this person and assess their condition.” He said eventually. He couldn’t look at any of them. He half expected them to be gaunt and rotting if he did.

“There’s something you’re not telling us,” Jimmy said, and god-damn it, he really chose the worst times to be perceptive. Curly’s lack of a response didn’t go unnoticed, and he saw the others turn to look at each other in his peripheral vision.

“Look, we’ll have a proper meeting later.” He settled on saying, “Swansea, if you could accompany me and Anya back to the ship to extract some of the local data for an official report, that would be appreciated. We should … try to figure out what happened there.” Swansea huffed in response, but obediently went to gather some tools so he could interface with the damaged ship. Jimmy narrowed his eyes at Curly, unimpressed. Curly didn’t meet his glare.

Sensing the tension, Daisuke stammered out an excuse to leave and jogged to catch up with Swansea, leaving them alone.

“What aren’t you telling us?” Jimmy demanded immediately.

“I said we would discuss it later-”

“Bullshit! I’ve never seen you this freaked out before. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Jimmy said, voice raising a few decibels. Curly finally looked back at him, eyes wide as his friend continued. “I told you we needed to be prepared to find bodies-”

“It was worse than-”

“I should have been there-”

“I couldn’t have expected-”

“I would have been-”

“Jimmy!” Curly raised his voice, cutting them both off as they tried to speak over each other. He pressed his fingers over his eyes, breathing a deep, shuddering breath. “Look, whatever happened on there… It was the result of someone deeply disturbed. I’ll discuss it in more depth later, but right now, I just need a few fucking minutes.”

Jimmy didn’t seem all that pleased, but he relented, giving Curly some space by retreating to the kitchen to make some soup.

Curly sat heavily in one of the chairs at the dining table, trying not to imagine spectres of his crew slumped in the other seats.

He didn’t want to think about it. In his mind’s eye it was all he could see. The implications sulked in the back of his mind, gnawing away at his conscious thoughts.

He could feel Jimmy’s stare in the back of his head and stood suddenly, feeling hot and light-headed. He walked unsteadily to Medical, knocking on the door lightly before sliding it open.

Anya was fighting with a light, portable gurney that she had stored under one of the cots, and Curly wordlessly helped her unfold it to set it on its wheels. Curly looked over the nurse - her skin was shiny with sweat and her lips were pressed tightly together, and there was something desperate and haunted about the way she was preparing for the incoming patient. Curly wasn’t faring much better, he supposed.

“How are you holding up? You don’t have to go back if you don’t want to, I’m sure me and Swansea will manage.” He said in a low voice and Anya swallowed, running a hand through her hair.

“No, I should be there. Coming out of cryofreeze can be dangerous… I’m sure I have a book about it somewhere… I…” She trailed off, starting to rifle through her shelves.

“If you’re sure…” Curly said, “let's aim to leave in ten?” Anya nodded her assent. Curly hesitated. He always felt there was more he should say, when talking to Anya.

“I’ll leave you to it,” he said eventually.

Chapter Text

“So what’s on this ship that’s got you lot so out of sorts? Figure I oughta’ know if I’m going to be seein’ it in person,” Swansea said in the airlock as the three of them prepared to re-enter the stranded ship. Curly looked at Anya as she looked at him, neither of them volunteering an answer. It was cramped in this transition chamber with the three of them and the full length of the gurney, and Curly was really feeling it.

“It’s disturbing,” Curly answered eventually, “it’s not just the ship that's similar to ours, the corpses we found… are as well.”

Swansea raised an eyebrow at him, clearly confused. Curly thought he might feel better when he finally said it out loud, but somehow he felt worse. It felt more real now - a real place they were about to return to instead of some shared feverish nightmare.

“The hell are you on about?” Swansea huffed. Curly rubbed his neck.

“The corpses we found look uncannily like our crew, we’re not sure what it means.”

Curly swallowed heavily, saved from having to stumble through any more explanation as the door opened up. He led the way into the darkened, wrecked ship, heading straight for Utility. Swansea did a double-take at the person in the cryopod.

“Wait, this is the guy you said was alive?” He exclaimed. Anya worried at her lip.

“Well, we won’t actually know for sure until we unfreeze him,” she said.

“Holy fuck, if I were him I’d hope I’d never wake up,” he said casually, shaking himself out of his surprise, pausing and staring at the slumped corpse for a short while without comment. He activated the Utility Console which was already hooked up to a generator, turning to look back at the Jimmy-lookalike a few times, almost as if he had to keep checking that he saw it correctly.

Curly approached the active cryopod as Anya readied medical supplies. After the nod that she was ready, he pulled up the metal lever set into the side of the pod to deactivate it. The internal fans and heaters of the pod whirred to life, streams of some sort of gas hissing into the pod, blocking the frozen man from view.

A tense and quiet ten minutes passed before the de-freezing process was complete, and the pod clicked itself open. Curly pulled open the door, peels of clouded gas furling out and dissipating. The man didn’t … look alive. He sat limp, head lolled to the side, his wide, unblinking eye unfocused. Nevertheless, Curly reached into the pod and hooked his arms around the man’s shoulders and under his legs, the bloodied bandages warm to the touch from the de-freezing process.

He carried him bridal style, but just as he was about to lay him gently on the gurney, the body sprang to life. Curly had to brace, holding the man tighter so as to not drop him as he writhed and threw the remnants of his limbs around, making choked, gargled noises. Then his eye, which was frantically ping-ponging around the room, stilled on Curly’s face and he fell silent, freezing.

Curly hurriedly put him on the gurney, hands up to catch him in case he managed to roll himself off. Anya blinked, mouth open, before jumping into action, taking the man’s vitals. She spoke to him, explaining what she was doing, but he didn’t seem to hear her; he was entirely preoccupied with intensely staring at Curly with his one remaining eye. He stood back a little as she worked, feeling a little uncomfortable. Swansea spoke up from off to the side of them, where the maintenance console was.

“So I’ve downloaded most of the salvageable data I could find, Captain,” he said, voice uncharacteristically quiet, “including some CCTV footage. It seems mostly corrupted but I could see if I can fix it up. It just, uh, seems pertinent to mention…” He trailed off, ejecting a disc from the console before turning and looking back at them. “The dates and times in the metadata of the footage are off. Some of the footage thinks it was recorded, like, 6 months into the future from now.”

Anya and Curly shared a knowing, distressed look.

“Thanks, Swansea.” Curly choked out eventually, “I’ll, uh, take a look at that once you’ve fixed it up. Let’s get back to the ship.”

As they made their way carefully back onto their ship, not once did the survivor’s trembling gaze leave Curly’s face.

After they had transferred the man from the gurney to a medical cot, Swansea quickly took his leave, saying he had some ‘stuff to do and shit to think about’. But Curly lingered, wanting to make sure both the survivor and Anya were doing okay. Anya didn’t seem to mind, occasionally filling him in on what she was doing as she focused on caring for her new patient. She was treating something urgent - fresh bleeding. She talked about hydration, something about cryofreeze - Curly was trying to pay attention, but his mind was preoccupied. Mostly on what their next steps were going to be, now that they had a charge to take care of. He was most decidedly not thinking about anything else. He didn’t know if he could handle it right now.

The survivor had, at some point, given up his death stare and his eye was staring blankly upwards. His body was completely limp and his breath was slow.

“Is he… asleep?” Curly asked, quietly.

“I think so? It would make sense, lethargy and tiredness are the most prominent after-effects of coming out of cryofreeze. Plus, I can’t imagine this hasn’t been stressful for him.” Anya’s brows drew together as she stared at the man. “Not being able to talk, or move properly. Everyone else decides what happens to you. We just want to help, obviously, but it’s probably hard to believe that given the situation he probably came from.” She continued, a strained note in her voice.

Curly looked at the man with a renewed sense of pity, but had to glance away. He felt bad for thinking it, but he found the patient’s face unsettling in a visceral way.

“Captain… Can I - can I talk to you about some-” Anya was interrupted by the patient, who woke up loudly with a throaty series of noises, his right arm jerking as if he was trying to move it. His eye rolled in its socket, finding and freezing on Curly’s face once again. His arm moved out towards Curly, and Curly had to stop himself from trying to take the stump into his hands comfortingly - he can’t imagine that wouldn’t hurt, given how inflamed his skin was in the gaps between the wet bandages. Anya jumped, adjusting his IV drip which had been inadvertently jostled. The patient’s movements and sounds died as he ran out of energy, but his eye, disconcertingly alert, looked between him and Anya.

“Can we… Talk to him? Try to figure out why … Try to figure out what happened?” Curly started and Anya glanced between Curly at the survivor unsurely.

“Well…Maybe in a day or two, I put him on some pretty heavy painkillers, I doubt he’s going to be all that cognizant for a little while. And even then, we can try to give him movements to mean ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but it’s going to be hard to try and set up anything more complicated than that with the tools that we have,” she admitted and Curly nodded in resignation.

“Even that little bit of communication I think will help a lot,” he said. The survivor stared up at him with a single, baby blue eye. A stark contrast to the red of his damaged skin. Curly tried to convince himself that it wasn’t familiar.

~~~

That evening, Curly gathered all the crew for a meeting, but instead of their usual set-up around the dining room table he pulled up some of the chairs in the sunken sitting area closer to the sofa so they could sit and talk down there. If anyone was curious about this change, they didn’t mention it. Curly just couldn’t stand the thought of them all sitting around that table right now.

“So,” he started, breaking up the quiet chatter that had started as they all gathered. Jimmy fixed him with a glare. So he was still angry, then. Great. Curly had hoped he would have cooled off a little by now. “As you all know, around 2:30pm today we reached the stranded ship we’ve been travelling towards for the past few weeks and boarded to look for survivors. And as I told you then, most of the crew were dead except one badly injured man who was frozen in a cryogenic pod.” He wondered if they could tell he was stalling. Daisuke and Jimmy’s eyes were bright with burning curiosity; Anya was curled into herself, eyes trained on the ground; and Swansea had his usual guarded expression that betrayed very little about his thoughts. He went on, “we have recovered the survivor and he’s currently in Medical being treated by Anya. Anya?” Curly looked to Anya expectantly, who was a bit flustered at being expected to speak.

“O-oh, um. Yes, I think he’s recovered from the after-effects of cryo-sleep alright, but it’s a bit hard to tell… Most of his injuries were pretty old and half-healed, probably got them when the ship crashed, uh. Except his leg, which looked like there was some attempt at amputation recently, so I had to use a tourniquet. Other than that he’s stable,” she said, quiet. Curly nodded.

“Thanks for the report. I’ll be contacting corporate to see if they’ll provide clearance to divert course to the nearest allied planet so he can get full medical treatment,” he paused, unsure exactly how to begin what he had to say next, “as you all also know, the ship is the same model as the Tulpar. As we explored.. We found that wasn’t the only similarity. It appeared exactly like our ship, given with more damage. Even the medical bay was set up exactly how Anya has hers. I wanted to brush this off as a coincidence, but the corpses we found also bore striking resemblance to… Our crew. Suffice to say we were disturbed.” Jimmy scoffed, looking beyond skeptical. In contrast, Daisuke was stunned into silence and an air of discomfort was seeping through Swansea’s unflappable facade.

“Okay, what are you saying? That we've been cloned? Get real, Curls.” Jimmy chucked. When no one laughed along or met his eyes, he became more agitated. “What? You guys actually believe this bullshit? There’s no way.” He insisted.

“Jimmy…” Curly started, “I know it’s a lot to process, trust me, I know. I don’t know what’s going on, either. But we can’t ignore the facts.”

“The software on the ship was the same as ours, too. Same regi number and everythin’.” Swansea chimed in, looking away. “Was creepy as hell. Not even to mention the CCTV footage thinkin’ it was recorded in the future.”

“This is ridiculous.” Jimmy scoffed.

“Maybe it’s, like, an alternate universe version of us! Other universes exist, right?” Daisuke spoke up for the first time.

“Well- theoretically, yeah-” Curly was cut off by Jimmy, who stood suddenly.

“We’re really entertaining this? Let's be realistic, here. Maybe there was just a gas leak on board and it made you all think you were seeing things.”

“All of us? Having the same hallucination?” Curly tried to coax Jimmy into sitting back down. “Sometimes things happen that we don’t understand, but we can’t deny reality, it won’t get us anywhere.” Jimmy fixed him with an even glare, but seemed to be considering something.

“... I’ll have to see it to believe it. If you’re going to ask me to believe something like this, you could at least give me the grace of letting me see it for myself.” An awkward silence settled.

“Are you sure? It’s… A lot. Not a sight I’ll be forgetting any time soon,” Curly shuddered. Unbidden, the image of all of his friends, dead and rotting, flashed behind his eyes. But Jimmy wasn’t swayed.

“I’m sure.”

“Wait, I want to see, too!” Daisuke added, looking between the two eagerly.

“Absolutely not.” Curly said, feeling guilty as Daisuke shot him a crestfallen look.

“He’s right, kid. You don’t need to be seein’ any of that. Hell knows I’d rather avoid it.” Swansea seconded, and Daisuke sunk back in his seat, dejected.

Curly looked back at Jimmy, sighing. He supposed it made sense for Jimmy to want to verify the wild claims that Curly was frankly still having trouble believing himself, but he really didn’t want to go back onto that ship a third time. He tried to reason with himself. Even if it was some sort of alternate version of themselves, or something, it’s not like anything on that ship could hurt them now. There’s nothing left but corpses. Those corpses looking like his crew is practically incidental in the grand scheme of things.

“Okay…” He breathed. “Okay. But we will have to go now, and not stay too long. We need to set off again before it turns night, I’ve already pushed our luck with Pony Express by responding to the distress signal in the first place, I can’t guarantee any further hold-ups won’t cost us.”

~~~

Jimmy had taken the lead as soon as the airlock opened, marching straight up the stairs to the lounge before Curly could say a thing, almost like he was trying to lose him. Curly jogged to keep up, but Jimmy had already shoved the door open and was staring down the sight Curly couldn’t bear to look at again.

“For fuck’s sake, slow down!” Curly hissed at his friend, who slowly walked further into the room, ignoring him. Curly kept his head turned to the side, deliberately looking anywhere but there. He could still see some of the room in his peripheral as Jimmy approached the table.

“Holy shit…” He heard Jimmy breathe.

“Believe me now?” Curly huffed, “we should get out of here.”

“What’s this on the plates?” Jimmy asked, and Curly, despite his better judgement, looked back at the table. He hadn’t noticed when he and Anya stumbled upon this scene earlier that day, but in front of each corpse there was a plate, and on those plates was dark lumps of… something. It almost looked like dried, raw meat. The rest of the table was stained dark brownish-black in liquid splatters.

Like … old blood.

“I… don’t know.” Curly said, fighting a rising nausea. “Some kind of steak?”

“Anya said that the survivor’s leg was recently amputated, right?” Jimmy pointed out, sounding far too nonchalant. Curly was originally worried about him not keeping an even head, but the reality was almost more unnerving. Curly didn’t have time to think of a response before Jimmy rounded the table, staring at the corpse that resembled Anya’s slack, dripping face.

“I wonder where my one is…” He mused. Curly shifted uncomfortably.

“It’s… In the Utility Room,” he answered, nervously scratching the back of his neck. The fetid taste of the air was beginning to overwhelm him, his skin prickling and feverish as he desperately tried to avoid looking at the-

Rotting, blank-eyed, limp,

-Corpses.

“Hm,” Jimmy said and moved off, doubling back to go to utility. Curly followed in silence, feeling the same sense of detachment from earlier begin to coat his brain like a film. When he and Anya first saw that room, he was overwhelmed with the desire to leave this nightmarish ship as fast as possible. Jimmy, in contrast, seemed more than willing to explore the rest of the ship. Compared to Curly, he was handling the situation with impressive stoicism and courage, and Curly, unbidden, felt a surge of … insecurity?

He hadn’t felt insecure about his capability as a Captain for a long time, having had a shining record of flawless shipments that had granted him many commendations over his career. With so many people telling him he was a perfect Captain, it was easy to just… Fall into that role. But here his ship and crew had been presented with a completely unprecedented scenario, something a good Captain would handle with poise and leadership - and here he was, feeling fragile and sick, scared of his own thoughts. And Jimmy, for all his faults, was coping perfectly well. Curly started feeling vaguely ashamed for having doubted him so much, when Curly was the one struggling. Maybe Jimmy had a right to be so frustrated.

Utility was exactly how they left it, cryopod hanging open and deactivated. Jimmy whistled when he saw his own corpse-lookalike, striding up and sinking to his knees in front of the bloodied body for a better look.

“Damn. Bullet to the head. Not a bad way to go, all things considered.” He said, and to Curly’s surprise and disgust, gently pulled the body so it was lying flat on it’s back on the floor.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Curly exclaimed as Jimmy brushed the hair off of his own dead face, bringing his hand to his chest as he stared down at the emancipated body.

“I just want a better look,” he answered mildly. “I guess this means the injured amputee is you, Curls. Congrats on being the only one to make it out alive.”

“You’re not funny,” Curly answered, unsettled, a heady pressure building in his chest. Panic?

“I’m not being funny, I’m serious.”

There was a stretch of silence then. Unbidden, Curly thought of the medical room in this ship, with the cot smothered in months and months of old blood. He thought of how when they had extracted the survivor, he had stared at Curly like he was something incomprehensible.

“I just wish we could talk to him. Maybe we could find out what’s actually going on here.” Curly responded eventually. He tried to think of some aspect of the survivor that would contradict Jimmy’s conclusion, but there wasn’t a lot left of him to compare; maybe his teeth were different? His eye colour? Curly felt himself starting to grow nauseous as each thing he thought of matched up to his own features perfectly. Surely not…

“Isn’t it obvious?” Jimmy said. Anya said that the survivor’s leg was recently amputated, right? Had someone tried … Eating him? Curly’s chest grew tight, breaths reduced to silent, shallow gasps. “Swansea said the ship’s date was set into the future… So, this is probably our future. Absolutely no clue how it’s possible, you were always the one who was better at physics. But everyone knows there’s space fuckery that humans haven’t figured out yet.” Jimmy said, pondering. He glanced back at Curly and looked surprised, standing and putting a grounding hand on his shoulder.

“Dude, chill out,” Jimmy said roughly, but his familiar gruff demeanor managed to drag Curly’s mind back into the present and away from the bottomless pit of panic he was sliding into. Curly locked eyes with Jimmy. I think that kind of situation would drive anyone to do crazy things.

“This can’t be our future. How could things even go this wrong? I wouldn’t- I can’t-” Curly choked out, feeling faint, unsteady. Jimmy smiled at him sadly. Ships don’t just crash, Jim.

“We can figure it out together, yeah?” He said. “I guess the most important question being…” Jimmy looked back at his corpse, “... if this is some sort of ‘alternate universe’, or our literal future. Because if it’s the latter … I’m not sure anything we do will stop it from coming to pass.”

Chapter Text

Curly was rushing through the twisting corridors of the ship - when did they get this confusing? He didn’t have that much time before-

Before-

What?

Curly felt like he couldn’t breathe. He rounded a corner and Daisuke was splayed out on the floor, black blood leaking from his mouth and staining his bright pink shirt.

“Captain…” He croaked out and Curly pulled the boy into his lap, attempting to scan him for injuries.

“It’s going to be okay, Daisuke, don’t worry,” he assured, frantic. Daisuke tensed in his arms, and when Curly glanced to his face his features were screwed up in a look of hurt and betrayal.

“Liar.” He hissed and with sudden strength, reached up and yanked Curly down by the back of his neck. Suddenly he was falling, vertigo making him dizzy as he plummeted through the void. He landed square on his back, winded and disorientated as the world faded into focus around him.

The familiarity of his quarters calmed his racing heart, the hot and smothering presence of his sheets pulling him to reality. Curly breathed deeply and tried to kick his sheets off, but his legs felt like they were made of lead, weak and numb and unresponsive. His heart jumped to his throat, trying to pull up his arms which he found were similarly heavy. He managed to wrench one up in front of his face and saw red skin and bandages- no-

Curly yelled out in terror but found he didn’t have a voice, lungs heaving as mere groans and gurgles left him.

Curly bolted upright, overbalancing and falling heavily out of bed, slamming into the metal floor of his quarters and stunning himself for a moment. The ambient buzzing of the Tulpar and his own loud, panting breaths filled the air, and groggily, he lifted an arm and saw only the pale skin of his forearm and the blonde arm-hair that caught the light of the night-time bulbs. He slumped back into the cool floor, relieved, and carefully extracted his sweaty body from his bedsheets. He stumbled into his desk chair, waiting for his heart-rate to calm down.

He still wasn’t sure how he felt about yesterday. Jimmy had thoroughly examined the other ship, checking every nook and cranny that hadn’t been blocked off by emergency foam. This included the cockpit, which had by far the worst of the damage. Disturbingly, they found the utility axe discarded on the floor there, bloody.

After they left, they had to promptly undock from the ship and speed back up to travel-speed to get back on course for delivery - even after everything, Pony Express needs their shipments.

Curly had meant to fax the report of what happened last night after securing the pistol away, but exhaustion had weighed him to the point where Jimmy had to intervene, insisting that it could wait until the morning.

Curly checked the time. 04:28. He supposed he should get started. He quickly showered and changed, trying to convince himself he could scrub the lingering traces of his nightmare from his mind.

He shuffled to the lounge, the entire ship quiet and empty at this time of day. He tapped his black coffee order into the machine only for it to whine and gurgle before popping up with a notification that it was out of coffee grounds. Only halfway into the trip? It must not have been restocked since their last voyage. Curly let his head fall forward to rest on the plastic of the machine.

He really needed to decide how much detail he should go onto in his report. His first instinct was to be complete and exhaustive, but… He’s aware of how insane this situation sounds. Space Psychosis is very real and something Pony Express takes seriously, which is why they have the crew take such frequent psych exams. Would they even believe his report? And if they didn’t, would it affect the care they could give to - to - the person they found alive.

Best case scenario, Pony Express gives them clearance to divert course to the nearest colony so the man they recovered could get proper treatment and possibly organise a ticket for a passenger ship to take him back to Earth. Then they could all move on from this horror of a situation.

Except… Jimmy’s words from the day before disturbed him. If this situation was some… omen, if it was the result of a temporal mishap that gave them a glimpse into their own future… How much power do they have to change it? Would they end up like that other ship no matter what, with all of his crew meeting a grisly fate as he was rendered violently and painfully useless, unable to do anything to stop it?

He desperately needed that to not be the case. He had to believe that they could change things. Besides, there could be countless differences between their reality and the reality that ended up occurring on that other ship - there was no reason to catastrophize.

All he needed to do right now was write up the official preliminary report. He could deal with the rest … Later.

Curly, in the end, decided to omit some of the… harder to believe details in his report. In plain, simple prose, he described what they found and the steps they had taken, vague but with enough detail to not raise suspicion. It felt wrong - filing an inaccurate report like this went against all of his training. Curly was beginning to seriously question his own judgement at this point. He emphasised the necessity of getting the survivor to a real hospital, requesting clearance under the ‘extreme exceptions’ caveat of Pony Express’ general policy that late shipments result in docked pay for the entire crew. Surely, even they would see sense. A human life was worth more than avoiding a mere few weeks delay - whatever they were transporting. Hopefully not mouthwash. Curly thought, then bit his lip. If they were transporting something different, it would be a clear difference between their reality and the other ship’s - a pretty good sign their future was not set. But if we are?

It wasn’t a good thought to dwell on. They weren’t allowed to open the cargo bay, in any case. Just more useless pondering.

He sent it off and sighed, shutting his eyes for just a moment, already exhausted. He wished he had some coffee right now.

He barely noticed a moment pass before the sound of the cockpit door sliding open startled him awake, and he whipped around to see Jimmy walking in with a bowl of noodles. Jimmy raised an eyebrow at him.

“Did I scare you?” He joked, sitting in his chair and slurping some noodles as he looked over the informational screens. Curly rubbed his sore eyes, chuckling.

“Of course not. I must have drifted off, though. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“I’m not surprised, after everything we saw.” Jimmy said and Curly gave him a sidelong glance.

“You didn’t seem too disturbed?” Curly said, accidently pitching his voice so it sounded more like a question than a statement. Jimmy turned to him, eyebrows drawn together.

“What? Of course I was.” His focus drifted. “It’s not every day you see a vision of your own death. And we still don’t even know how it happened.”

“That’s true. I didn’t put all the details into my preliminary report for Pony Express, I didn’t want them to think we’ve gone crazy,” Curly said.

“What?! You, gold-star Captain, lying on a report?” Jimmy exclaimed, genuinely surprised. Curly felt himself getting defensive.

“Look, the execs at Pony Express are greedy and impatient. They scrape for any reason to deny my requests, and we are not equipped to treat someone with that level of injury for the next 8 months. If they suspected I wasn’t of sound mind they would use that as an excuse,” he explained. Jimmy hummed, understanding.

“Right, I get it. You needed to lie so we could help the other-you, I respect the self-interest,” Jimmy said, earning himself a tired glare.

“That- that isn’t the reason. And please don’t bring that up, I find it- upsetting.” Curly muttered, pretending to be reading a print-out of their ship’s diagnostics to distract himself from how Jimmy was staring.

“What was it you said to me yesterday? ‘Denying reality won’t get us anywhere’? You aren’t usually this hypocritical,” He responded. What was with his crew parroting his words back at him recently? He didn’t appreciate it. He sighed.

“I just…” Curly started, grappling with his turbulent emotions around the subject. He just… what? He hates that he was the only one they found alive? He hates how he didn’t prevent what happened to his crew? He’s scared of being rendered unable to help, even if he wanted to? He’s scared that it was his fault?

“I’m just… Gonna go get breakfast.” Curly said, standing up and trying to leave, only to be stopped by a hand on his shoulder. He looked back at Jimmy.

“You’ve got to get a hold of yourself, Curly. The whole crew is looking to you for answers right now, it’s your responsibility to take care of them. You’re meant to be the perfect Captain, so act like it.” He growled.

“I know that.” Curly said back, trying to hide how Jimmy’s words struck him deeply as he shrugged his hand off. “And I’m- I’m fine. I promise.”

Jimmy raised an eyebrow. “This entire situation is affecting you, that’s fine. I can pick up your slack. I meant what I said yesterday, we can figure it out together, yeah? Just me and you. But you have to trust me, " he said. Curly nodded absently.

“Of course I trust you. Now watch the screens while I go eat.”

Daisuke and Swansea were eating in the lounge, caught up in some debate about something or other. Curly dispassionately mulled over what to get from their company vending machine.

“Captain! I know you’ll agree with me, favourite gaming console?” Daisuke called over as he clicked the button for the risotto.

“What?” Curly said, perplexed. “I don’t play video games.” The vending machine hummed as it microwaved his meal.

“You’ve forsaken me, Captain.” Daisuke said dramatically as Swansea barked out a laugh.

“See kiddo, no reasonable person has an opinion on that crap. And even my kids prefer their hand-hold games!” The machine chimed and dropped the plastic food container down. Curly picked it up and went to join them at the dining table, feeling a wave of nausea as he sat down. He tried to focus on Daisuke’s energetic gesturing to banish any unpleasant memories.

“Don’t get me wrong- I adore the Game Kid. But arcade machines are where it’s really at, you just can’t beat the classics! Man, I could go on for hours about the different cabinets you can get.”

“Whatever. I’m tired of your yapping.” Swansea huffed, then turned to Curly. “You look like shit.”

“Wow. Thanks.” Curly deadpanned. Swansea eyed him for a second as he ate.

“Aw, don’t listen to him Cap’, any news on the alternate universe debacle?” Daisuke chirped, tapping at his empty food container with a finger. Swansea interrupted before Curly could even think of a response.

“Quit stickin’ your nose in places where it doesn’t belong!” He barked, to which Daisuke raised his hands in faux-surrender. “That bein’ said, I have managed to salvage some of the CCTV footage, Captain. It’s a bit warped and jumps but it’s the best I can realistically do.”

“Alright, great. I’ll probably take a look at that today, if that works for you,” Curly said, despite the fact he was questioning at this point if he even wanted to watch it. He’s definitely not going to like what he sees.

“I’ve left the disk on the side in Utility. Grab it whenever,” Swansea shrugged, “I think you’ll find it… Illuminating.”

Later, Curly returned to the cockpit with said disk in hand. Jimmy glanced at him as he entered and he waved the floppy black rectangle at him.

“Swansea’s recovered some of the footage,” he announced and clicked to open the FDD built into the ship’s navigational console, inserting the floppy disk carefully. Jimmy perked up, tense.

“Oh, he has?”

Curly nodded as he took his seat and typed away, navigating the interface so he could open the files. Jimmy was dead silent beside him as he set it up.

There were quite a few video files - most dating from between 3 months into the future to 5 months into the future. Each file was 6 hours long. Curly chewed on his cheek as he opened the first file.

He and Jimmy watched the grainy footage with rapt attention, searching for identifiable figures. Curly clicked through the five different cameras on the Tulpar - in the lounge, in the cockpit, in the utility room, in the medical room, and in the hallway just outside of the cockpit and utility. The cockpit camera was entirely busted, with just the default text of ‘no signal detected’ when accessing that room, which made sense considering the state they had found it in. This specific clip showed Swansea sat outside the utility room, what looked like the red utility axe propped up beside him. Flipping through the cameras showed Utility empty with the one undamaged cryopod sans an occupant. His counterpart could be found in medical - on his back on the very bloodied cot Curly had suspected had housed him. Anya was sitting in medical also, at the back of the room on the floor. She was curled into a ball, and as Curly scrubbed through the footage, he could see she barely moved an inch for hours.

In contrast, both Jimmy and Daisuke’s counterparts could be seen in the lounge, mouthwash bottles scattered about, appearing to be fluctuating between chatting and sitting in silence, with Daisuke occasionally taking swigs from the electric blue bottle.

It was incredibly surreal, seeing all of them like this. Surrounded by emergency insulation foam and bathed in the unbroken red light of the sunset simulation screen. Everyone seemed so… hopeless. Existing only because there was nothing else they could do. Curly swallowed and switched the feed back to the medical bay. There his counterpart lay, motionless. If you looked really close, you could see him squirming vaguely with discomfort.

Curly felt sick.

“So I guess though you were hurt when the ship was damaged, everyone else died later.” Jimmy commented, and Curly had almost forgotten he was there.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he responded, a little choked up. “It’s just us here.” He said, and Jimmy looked at him from the corner of his eye.

“Yeah. Who did you think would be here?”

“I don’t know, I just- Maybe some alien, or an unfamiliar person who could be responsible, or- something to make this make sense.” Curly admitted, feeling a little ridiculous. He just couldn’t imagine a scenario where what they had seen wasn’t a cause of some outside force. Jimmy looked back at the screen, having nothing to say to that.

As they looked through the other video files, not much else was obvious. The crew was just loitering around the available parts of the ship, drinking mouthwash, eating and generally looking like they had given up on all hope of a rescue.

In the most recent file Swansea was able to revive, the scenery was a little different. The day/night cycle screen in the lounge had been shattered, the sunset replaced with an array of red emergency warning signs, similar to how Curly saw it in person when he had explored the ship. The footage was glitched, but even through the distortion they could see how the bodies of the crew were propped up around the dining table, exactly how Curly and Anya had found them. The one new detail was that this footage caught who appeared to be Jimmy’s counterpart carrying Curly’s injured counterpart bridal-style through the hallways of the ship towards Utility. As the pair entered utility the footage glitched and stuttered before restarting.

Even so, it was clear Jimmy was the one who put Curly’s counterpart in the cryopod. Then shot himself with the emergency defense pistol.

“Do you think-”

“It wasn’t my fault.” Jimmy interrupted immediately and Curly glanced at him uncomfortably.

“I wasn’t going to say that. But… Why do you think you put the- ah- other version of me in the cryopod instead of getting in yourself? It seems illogical considering my- his- uh, state…” Jimmy drummed his fingers against the metal of the console, chewing on his cheek. He took a moment before huffing a deep breath.

“I have no idea. None of this makes any sense,” he said with an odd edge to his voice. Curly rubbed the back of his neck, beginning to sweat.

“...It seemed like-”

“I had clearly run out of hope. Who could blame me? Look at the state the ship is in. I had to watch everyone die. That would drive anyone to do crazy things.” He hammered on, voice raising in volume, eyes glued to the screen. Curly could tell he was getting upset. He needed to interrupt the clear mental spiral Jimmy was going down because an upset Jimmy was an angry Jimmy. And an angry Jimmy was… unstable.

“Jim, it’s okay. I know this looks bad, but we’re in this together.” Curly said, leaning over the separation between their chairs to grab his shoulder. Jimmy just pulled away.

They were interrupted by the whirring and buzzing of the fax machine beginning to print a message, and Jimmy took the opportunity to stand.

“I’m taking my break,” he muttered as he left. Curly watched him go helplessly.

He sighed and closed out of the footage, approaching the fax machine to read the missive.

As his eyes scanned the overly-corporate text, he felt his blood pressure rise and his grip on the paper tighten, causing it to scrunch in his hand.

Those bastards.

Chapter Text

For a minute or so he just stood there, stewing in his own fury and dawning hopelessness. Then, with the crumpled missive still clutched in his hand, he started making his way to medical. If he was being honest, he had been avoiding the room for the majority of the day. He could barely reconcile the idea that the injured man they had picked up was in all likelihood some version of … him. It seemed obvious now - the simplest solution is usually the best, and this solution was essentially a child’s game of odd-one-out. Still, the concept disturbed him more than he was willing to admit, and going into medical felt like coming into a reality he wasn’t fully prepared to confront yet.

He wondered how his counterpart felt about this entire situation. How would he feel, after experiencing some untold horrors, coming face-to-face with an unmarred, oblivious version of himself? Would he feel mad? Envious? Hateful? Did he see the same potential in Curly that led him to fail his crew in every way? Curly had no idea.

In any case, they needed to brainstorm their options. As conflicted as his feelings were about the guy, he was a person, he was gravely injured, and they needed to give him the best care they could theoretically provide. Anya jumped as he opened the door with a little more force than necessary.

“Sorry,” he said, forcing himself to calm down a little.

“Not at all,” she said quietly, relaxing. Curly was momentarily distracted by the patient - he always forgot just how severe his injuries were. Just how inhuman he looked. Curly swallowed and dragged his gaze away, focusing on Anya.

“I have bad news. Pony Express denied my request for a detour,” he stated bluntly.

“What?! Why? They can do that?” She said, alarmed. Curly shrugged helplessly.

“They said by ‘voluntarily’ amending our trip to respond to an SOS signal we bear responsibility for any of the fallout. They said if we arrive at the destination planet any later than the projected date the crew’s pay will be docked by orders of magnitude depending on how many days late we are. Bloody assholes.”

Anya looked back at her patient, crestfallen.

“But I…” She chewed on her nails, curling an arm around her belly. “Curly- I, th-there’s no way I can treat this man for the rest of the trip. I was going- I was planning on…” Her eyes darted to the door. “Surely you can appeal? I don’t have the supplies here- I’m not even- I’m just a nurse!” Curly felt his heart twist at her distress, his despair beginning to win out over his anger.

“I can try, but…” He trailed off. It was hopeless trying to reason with them once they put their foot down. Curly couldn’t bear to look at the patient. If that was really him… What would he want? To continue in that pained existence, no hope for any restorative treatment for 8 more months? Or would he just want it to end?

He felt sick to his stomach at the thought. None of them were trained for this. They were fucking delivery crew personnel!

Anya retreated to her desk and slumped into her chair, rubbing her forehead. There was an air of exhaustion about her.

“What am I going to do…?” She whispered, voice cracking.

“I’m sorry,” Curly said, though it sounded hollow. He found himself looking back at the patient. He hadn’t stirred their entire conversation, limp and quiet in the way that betrayed the fact he was unconscious, despite the wide-eyed look was giving to the ceiling. Curly had to focus to even see the faintest rise and fall of his chest. “How.. How is he doing?” He asked. Anya took a little while to respond, but her voice was a lot more steady when she did.

“Not well. I think he has an infection in his leg - he’s been feverish and unresponsive.” Her eyes glazed a bit as she looked at the broken body on the cot. “Sometimes, when he’s like this, I think he’s dead, then suddenly he’s looking at me.”

“So I guess finding a way to try and talk to him is off the table, for now?”

“Sorry Captain, not today. I can come find you if he improves.” She anxiously rolled an orange painkiller bottle in her hands. “I was trying to wean him onto the oxycodone - we’re already nearly out of morphine, since I put him at a pretty high dosage. I thought it would make him a bit more aware, but we only have that in tablet form and… Well, he didn’t seem to like taking the tablets,” she looked a little green. The bright blue-and-white glare from the day/night cycle screen buzzed neutrally into the silence of the medical room, washing the inflamed skin of Curly’s counterpart a sickly grey. He really did look like a corpse.

“Do you think… That’s the future-me?” He said, eventually, the words feeling like they had to be dragged from the bottom of his lungs. Anya was quiet for long enough that Curly found himself tearing his eyes away to look at her, only to find she was intently staring at the painkiller bottle she held, not having nearly as strong of a reaction as Curly half-expected of her.

“Do you really think this is our future?” She responded finally, throwing him.

“I, uh-...” He started, “...No, not- not in any way that matters.” He said, insisting to himself that he believed his own words. Anya looked at him through tired eyes.

“Truthfully, I was already suspecting… About the patient.” She said as she put the painkiller bottle back on the desk with a click. “I didn’t really want to- you know… Think about it too deeply, because I guess it’s easier for me to forget what we saw if I imagine I’m changing a stranger’s dressings, not…” She trailed off, but Curly knew exactly what she meant. Thinking about the subject felt like walking into a minefield - one wrong step, one wrong thought - and suddenly all that’s left are broken pieces. Curly thought back to Jimmy, earlier. If his reaction was anything to go by, he had stepped on a mine that had affected him deeply. Anya continued, “the way he looks at me, sometimes. There’s something so desperate, so … broken, there… Imagining you behind those eyes, it just- makes me nauseous…”

Curly approached her hunched form, and she looked up at him.

“Look, Anya. I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere, yeah? Whatever happened in that - alternate reality, or whatever it was- it doesn’t matter to us, here. Okay?” He said gently. She looked away from him.

“Yeah. Whatever you say, Captain,” she mumbled.

There was a beat before she continued, “I've been behind on doing the crew’s psych evaluations,” she said out of nowhere, and Curly vaguely remembered they were on the itinerary for this week.

“Oh- right?” He said, “of course- take as much time as you need. I'm sure you have your hands full with… ah..”

“I just didn't know whether I should perform them here in medical like usual, considering…” she said.

“Right. Well- you could maybe do them in the crew's private quarters if you need a private space?” He could see clearly from her expression how much she hated that idea, “or, maybe you could do them in the lounge? We could…always ask the crew to steer clear of it during the assessments,” he suggested and Anya seemed to find that more favourable, shoulders relaxing.

“Yeah, that would work.”

Curly honestly really wasn't sure he wanted to undertake a psych evaluation, anyway. He had half a mind to tell Anya to forget about the whole thing for the month - but it wouldn't do to start cutting corners, especially with the thin ice they were on with Pony Express at the moment. He had all his answers memorised - of course - most of the assessment was straightforward with clear ‘right’ answers and Curly knew all the talking points to play to the assessment criteria to get that golden result of sane. With the last few Anya had tried to convince him to be a bit more personal, but he would hate to unload all of his mid-life crisis baggage onto her, even if he ignored how it might flag up on the reports.

Now, of course, things were different. They were all bound to be more frazzled for obvious reasons, and Curly was frankly afraid Anya would see straight through his faux-resilience as soon as she started asking questions.

If she hadn't already.

Curly left medical with amicable parting words and a prolonged glance at the patient, still silent as the dead.

So his leg was infected, huh? Thinking back to earlier in the day, he knew exactly why Jimmy had become so freaked out. Curly leaned heavily against the wall, pinching his nose bridge as he let his tired eyes slip shut for a blissful moment.

Anya had said his right leg was recently amputated - slabs of unidentified meat sat, incriminating, on plates at the center of a corpse party. Jimmy being the last one alive. Putting him in the cryopod.

It was easy to draw the worst possible conclusion. In fact - there was little other scenario he could even imagine. Jimmy was definitely the one who had chopped up his counterpart like a prime cut - and in all likelihood sampled some of the spoils before some overwhelming sense of guilt drove him to put Curly in the cryopod and take his own life. The kind of desperate cannibalism you only see in movies and maybe a single isolated incident from 40 or so years ago. To think it could happen in a reality so close to their own - it was sickening, to say the very least.

Jimmy was clearly not handling it well. Curly couldn't even begin to consider how he himself should be handling it; he thought maybe he should feel angry - righteous in the face of how his defenceless other-self had been treated. But what would that solve? The actual perpetrator was dead by his own hand, and Jimmy wasn't his counterpart, as much as Curly wasn't catatonic lying just on the other side of the door. The more they find out about the ship they found the more it felt like some horror-themed fun house mirror and less like their future.

Would Jimmy really be capable of something like that? He wanted to think- of course not! Jimmy could be an asshole and was bad at respecting boundaries, but a crazed cannibal? That was ridiculous.

But….

I think that situation would drive anyone to do crazy things.

It wasn't entirely clear how long the ship had been crashed by the end, but they had lasted long enough for their electricity to shut off. Had they been running out of food, out of oxygen? Curly thought back to his time on the ship - and sure enough, he remembered the air being so thin he had constantly felt like he had to catch his breath. In those circumstances? Delirious from oxygen deprivation, driven mad with hunger? He hated to admit it, but he doesn't find it as unthinkable as he should.

Still. Jimmy wasn’t his counterpart, and couldn’t be penalised for any of his alternate version’s transgressions. Curly owed a lot of where he was in life to Jimmy, and despite the existential dissatisfaction he had been dealing with for the past few years, he was eternally grateful for that.

Curly and Jimmy had been childhood friends - inseparable in their early school years. But as they grew, their different life paths had caused them to drift. Curly had been preparing for finals, projected to get into a top college to study physics, while Jimmy had started neglecting school to switch from working as a part-time labourer to a full-time labourer. When Curly had moved halfway across the country to begin his university career, they had all but become strangers to each other.

Then, a few months into his second year, when Curly had freshly turned 19, he received a call that informed him his mother was sick. Really sick. Before he was even able to organise a trip to visit her, she was already gone.

Curly had not dealt with that loss well. He remembered the weeks he spent devastated - spiraling, to put it mildly. He had stopped going to his classes, he had started over-indulging in alcohol and drugs to try and put a chemical distance between himself and the pain he was completely unprepared to parse. He had fallen out of contact with all the new friends he had made, one by one. Eventually it had reached the point where most days he could barely see a reason to get out of bed.

It wasn’t a surprise to him when he wasn’t permitted to return to study for his final year, after all he hadn’t showed up to any of his exams. His father, in contrast, took this information like a slap to the face. He had called Curly pathetic, pitiful. He told him that as a man he needed to learn to take tragedy on the chin and carry on, no matter how he felt inside - and that by letting his grief control him to the point he pissed tens of thousands of credits down the drain was downright shameful. He had then declared, with very little fanfare, that Curly would not be permitted to return to live under his roof - and just like that, Curly had nowhere to go. No real money to his name, no friends to lean on.

The only person he could even think to call was Jimmy. At this point they hadn’t spoken for years, but Jimmy had picked up. He had listened. He had given Curly his current address and told him he was welcome to crash for a while.

Curly had never forgotten that simple kindness. When he had arrived at the address Jimmy had given, it was nothing like where they had both grown up. On the outskirts of one of the major cities of the province, streets dirty and covered in refuse. People bundled in heavy layers huddled on every street corner, faces drawn and miserable. Many of the buildings were poorly maintained, Curly had passed more than one that seemed fully abandoned. If not for the semi-occasional drones that whipped low across the streets, it was a place that could have almost been mistaken for a street from a hundred years ago.

Curly had struggled a little bit finding the flat, but immediately felt better when the door opened and there Jimmy stood - looking slightly older and rougher with more stubble than when they had been friends, but his familiarity helped soothe Curly’s nerves all the same.

Sliding back into conversation and playful banter was so easy it was almost like they had never spent any time apart at all. They ended up being roommates for 3 years - Curly had picked up a low-level administrative job in a local repair shop so he could chip in on the rent, and Jimmy’s ratty sofa became his permanent point of residence.

It was one random night out of many they spent smoking various substances, whiling away their lives as painlessly as possible. Curly never remembered how the topic came up, but they had stumbled into talking about their lives and their futures.

“Nah, I totally get it,” Jimmy had said, taking a deep draw of a cigarette. “My parents sucked ass, too. They didn’t kick me out, but they really didn’t need to. Rented this place the second I turned 18, and never looked back.”

“Still…” Curly pushed himself up to sit against the edge of the sofa, gesturing with his can of lager. “Don’t you ever wish we were doing something better? Something more fulfilling than just, this? Forever?” He said, and Jimmy scoffed in response from his position flat on his back on the stained carpet.

“Showing your rich kid privilege again, Curls. Not all of us have the luxury of fulfillment.”

“I don’t know,” he muttered, intently picking at the tin lip of his can, feeling insecure about this topic all of a sudden. “I’ve … been looking into going to flight school.”

Jimmy blew a cloud of smoke up into the room. “Flight school?” He said, tone skeptical. “Why?” To which Curly shrugged.

“I dunno, I guess I just like the idea. The ability to fly anywhere in the universe? Visit the colonies? I’ve never seen an alien in real life before. Plus, we’d be able to escape this shit-hole.” He slurred slightly, gesturing a little too enthusiastically and spilling some beer onto the carpet. Jimmy snorted.

“That’s my flat you’re talking about, dickhead,” he responded, but his tone wasn’t angry. “... I guess I see what you mean, though. Our ship could be our own little planet, no asshole parents or bosses to tell us what to do.”

Curly crawled over to his friend to look down at him, staring him dead in the eyes.

“Let’s do it. Really. The school in town is actually really well-regarded, and all of their applicants are accepted based on an entrance exam, no prior experience or qualifications required,” he said with a sudden air of intensity.

“An exam? Curls, you know I’m not good at any of that stuff,” he said, sitting up and scooting away to put a bit of space between them.

“I could tutor you! We should at least try. If it doesn’t work out, no harm done. And if it does, we can build a new life in the stars!” Curly was getting a little too excited, he knew, but the alcohol was dampening his shame and letting genuine passion seep through. Jimmy looked conflicted, but shrugged.

“Whatever. I guess if nothing else it’ll be something to do,” he said, scratching his sparse stubble. Curly grinned, pulling his friend into a firm hug. He laughed when Jimmy shoved him away with an irritated huff.

“Dude! Personal space!” He griped, but his prickly nature couldn’t dampen Curly’s joy. This dream of learning how to fly a ship had given him quiet comfort as a daydream for the past few years, but the idea of actually chasing it was enough to send him into a fit of delight.

A new life in the stars…

Curly huffed wryly. Nothing ever turned out to be as exciting or freeing as it seemed when it was just a child’s dream. Working for Pony Express, a company that valued profit over employee health or safety for getting on for 15 years was as disillusioning of an experience as you can really get. He once thought space travel would be his escape from Earth, but now his life on Earth was his escape from the mundanity and repetition of long-haul shipments. Ironic, how these things turn out.

Still… He should find Jimmy. It had been a little while since he stormed off, and they desperately needed to talk.

~~~

He couldn't find Jimmy in any of the communal areas, so he went to his room and rapped on his door.

“Fuck off,” came the quiet, vaguely irritated voice from inside. Curly opened the door anyway. Jimmy was sitting on his bed, taking a drag of a cigarette, not even bothering to look up as Curly entered. He shut the door behind him before leaning against the wall, arms crossed.

“You know that’s prohibited. How long have you been smuggling those onboard?” He said, tone flat. Jimmy puffed a breath of smoke out towards Curly.

“Report me, then,” Jimmy scoffed. Curly’s lack of a response served to prove Jimmy’s lack of precaution.

“I just wanted to talk about what we saw on the CCTV footage. I know it… looked bad,” he said haltingly. Jimmy sent him a dark glare.

“What are you saying…?” He growled. Curly raised his hands, adopting a more friendly stance as he walked further into the small room.

“Just that I think we should talk about it.”

“What’s there to talk about? I already said what I wanted to say,” Jimmy said, looking away.

“... You think the alternate version of you… Was responsible for some of the things we saw, don’t you?”

Jimmy flicked some ash onto the floor and took a long drag instead of replying.

“I think you're right, for the record. Whatever the alternate version of you was thinking, you clearly weren't in your best mind.”

“You mean I was ‘deeply disturbed’?” He replied, and Curly squinted at him in confusion.

“What?”

“That's what you said yesterday, when you came back from the ship. It was the result of someone ‘deeply disturbed’.”

“Wh- Well, yeah. You took the corpses of our crewmates and propped them around the dining table. That's pretty… insane,” Curly said, haltingly. Jimmy fixed his dark glare on Curly.

“I didn't do anything.” He said through gritted teeth.

“Yeah- no, I'm sorry. That isn't what I meant,” Curly scratched the back of his head sheepishly, tugging on his blonde curls. “But you have to admit, it's disturbing. I was thinking that by the end, everyone was probably starving to death, it makes sense that… You know…” his voice trailed off into the oppressive silence of the room. Jimmy didn't say anything in response to that, so Curly continued awkwardly. “In any case, whatever version of you that was thinking … Obviously you felt bad enough about everything to end your own life. That has to count for something.”

Jimmy hunched forward, rubbing his temple.

“... I guess so. I just don't understand why.” He said and Curly shrugged in response.

“It’s pointless to try and understand the actions of someone that far gone - whether it was Space Psychosis, or just a breakdown from the stress of the situation, or what. We still don’t know what happened to prompt whatever went so wrong on that ship… Some of the deaths looked … violent.” The sickening image of Daisuke’s bisected skull flashed into his mind and Curly stifled a wince. Jimmy lifted his head to lock his dark eyes with Curly’s pale ones.

“I will not become the scapegoat of all this,” he growled. Curly blinked at him in surprise and frowned.

“You’re not going to be. I promise.”

Chapter Text

It had taken a few hours for Jimmy to return to the cockpit after their conversation. They weren’t quite back to their usual rapport, but Jimmy made a few comments here and there about the projected flight-path and some minor warnings that popped up, so Curly was just counting his blessings that the man seemed to have drawn back from the possibility of flying off the handle. Curly eventually excused himself to grab a bite to eat for dinner to which Jimmy hummed in acknowledgement. As Curly made his way to the kitchen, he was interrupted by heavy footsteps running up behind him - Swansea, red in the face, approached him hurriedly. Curly was immediately at attention, hundreds of worst-case scenarios flitting through his mind before the large mechanic could even get a word out.

“I swear that moron was brought on just to raise my blood pressure!” He barked out.

Swansea explained the situation succinctly with a significant amount of irritation - apparently Daisuke had somehow triggered emergency foam to be released underneath the broken vent in utility and got himself encased in the stiff material in the process. As they entered the room Daisuke looked up at him with a guilty, embarrassed expression. Curly felt his shoulders relax. He wasn’t hurt.

“I was just trying to help out!” He said immediately, like he was trying to get his excuses out before Curly could say anything. “This vent has been broken forever, I just figured maybe I should take a stab at fixing it. How did that trigger the emergency foam?!”

“Don’t panic, Daisuke. We’ll get you out of there,” Curly said and Swansea rolled his eyes.

“I woulda dealt with this myself but we need the captain’s scanner to open the axe case. I swear every goddamn thing has to go through you,” Swansea complained, his irritable tone coloured by an inflection that suggested this was bothering him more than he let on. Curly glanced at the man, but his face gave nothing away. Maybe he imagined it.

“Hang in there, Daisuke,” he said and made his way to the axe case, fishing the code scanner out of his pocket to remind himself of the code. Once he was approaching the scene again, the smooth wooden handle of the utility axe in his hands, he suddenly felt light-headed.

Both Swansea’s and Daisuke’s eyes were on him as he readied the axe to break apart the foam, just to notice it was shaking noticeably in his hands.

Once again that image of Daisuke’s face falling away from his skull burned in his mind. He remembered finding the very axe he was holding now in the wrecked ship, abandoned in the cockpit and covered in blood.

Seconds that felt like minutes passed as Curly stood frozen, feeling sweat drip down his temples. He was vaguely aware of Daisuke looking from him to Swansea, who cleared his throat. Curly flinched back, broken from his trance. Daisuke was staring at him uncomfortably.

“Um, you alright there, Captain?” He asked with a strained half-smile. Curly blinked and shoved the axe in Swansea’s direction, who took it without comment.

“Yeah, sorry. You… Know what to do with that, right?” He addressed Swansea, who was also looking at him strangely.

“..Yeah,” he said gruffly. Curly looked away as Swansea carefully hacked the foam apart until Daisuke could peel himself out of the tough, sticky substance. Curly breathed a subtle sigh of relief as he made it out with only a melodramatic yelp as the foam tore away from his skin.

“Oof. Strong stuff, huh?” Daisuke joked weakly.

“Get it through your goddamn skull! That vent is strictly off limits!” Swansea huffed, looking like he wanted to give Daisuke a reproachful cuff around the ears.

“He’s right, Daisuke. We can’t go taking risks, especially now.” Curly seconded. Daisuke crossed his arms, avoiding eye contact.

“I was just trying to help,” he repeated, “everyone’s been so wrapped up about that ship we found, and nobody will even fill me in on what’s actually going on! If I can’t help with that, I figured I could at least try to sort out this busted vent.”

“This again, I told ya you don’t needta concern yourself with that! Let the adults handle it,” Swansea griped.

“How am I just meant to shrug off that you guys found a ship that was filled with dead people who looked exactly like us?!” Daisuke retorted immediately; this argument clearly wasn’t new, “and also, I’m 22! I am an adult!”

“You’re practically fresh outta the womb. Now scram, and don’t go touching anything, ya hear?!” Swansea glared his intern down and Daisuke relented moodily, pursing his lips before leaving. Curly watched him go, conflicted. It was so strange seeing the usually cheerful guy so down.

“You don’t have to be so hard on him. I don’t think it would hurt to fill him in on what’s going on, if only to sate his curiosity,” Curly said as Swansea closed the utility door behind Daisuke.

“Kid doesn’t know what’s best for him. Space travel can drive people crazy at the best of times, and the sitch’ we’re in now can destabilise even people with a life’s worth of experience, wouldn’t you say?” Swansea said, and there was something pointed in his words. Curly looked at the metal grating of the floor, vaguely embarrassed.

“Sorry, I guess I just- I didn’t feel comfortable swinging that axe around. I think… That’s how he died, on the other ship. It looked like someone cut his face in half.” Curly couldn’t see Swansea’s expression, but he did hear him suck in a tight breath of air through his teeth.

“...Shit,” he hissed under his breath. There were a few moments of silence and Curly couldn’t help contemplating - once again - what kind of scenario could possibly warrant such an action. Who would even be able to stomach it? Daisuke wasn’t much of an engineer, but he was a font of cheer and optimism even in the face of the frankly lukewarm introduction he had had to this crew. None of them had expected suddenly being saddled with an inexperienced intern, and Curly had been so frazzled at the time with the busywork of preparing for departure he hadn’t even managed to organise to have the correct number of cryopods - nevermind ensure that Daisuke could get to know the crew a bit before committing to an entire year in the same cramped living quarters as them. Even despite that, he had kept his head up and been friendly, staying optimistic even when Curly could tell he was struggling with being so far away from home.

To think that someone on their ship was capable of ending him in such a way… It was hard to fathom.

“Did you watch the footage I left you?” Swansea asked eventually, tearing Curly from his thoughts. He nodded in response. Swansea stared at him expectantly.

“And…?” He prompted.

“And what?”

“And what the hell are you gonna do about it?” Swansea said, getting irritated. Curly stared back, feeling like he wasn’t fully comprehending him.

“What? What do you want me to do about it?” He asked. “It’s still not really that clear what went down over there.” Swansea gave him a skeptical, baffled look.

“It really ain’t that hard to put it together. One minute everyone is waiting around, then the next clip I could salvage has your co-pilot bein’ the last one standin’, playin’ with corpses like dolls. That ain’t suspicious to you?”

“Sure, but it’s not like that’s enough to know how it got to that point.” The look Swansea was giving him bordered on flabbergasted, so he hurriedly continued, “and anyway, what could I even do? We don’t even know if what we saw on that ship actually means anything. There’s a possibility nothing will come out of this situation at all.”

“There is no fuckin’ way you actually believe that,” Swansea said. He was right, of course, but Curly didn’t appreciate being called out. He rubbed his eyes tiredly, opening his mouth to respond but he was interrupted by the mechanical whir of the door opening, the sound obnoxiously loud in the tense silence.

Jimmy stood in the doorway and Curly tried to cover up how much his stomach dropped at the sight of him. How much did he hear? Jimmy looked between them, eyes growing sharper.

“Jimmy! What’s up? Did you need something?” Curly said, a little too loud.

“... I was just wondering where you had gone off to, since you weren’t eating like you said,” he said carefully, measured in a way that usually meant he was trying to hide his emotions.

“Daisuke accidentally triggered some emergency foam to be released and got stuck in it. Swansea called me over so I could unlock the axe case,” Curly nodded to the case, still hanging on its hinges.

“Right. You coming, then?” Jimmy asked, turning. Curly moved to follow him but was distracted by the glare of the lights being reflected off of the shiny head of the axe, still clutched in Swansea’s hand. The sight was hauntingly familiar.

“Keep the axe until you’ve cleaned all of this up, yeah? Just remember to lock it back up, afterwards,” Curly said. Swansea stared at him with a hard, even gaze.

“Of course, Captain.”

Jimmy waited for him outside the room and they walked up to the kitchen together.

“What were you two talking about?” He asked. Curly weighed his words carefully.

“Just that it sucks that we don’t really know how to move on from what we saw on the stranded ship. It’s hard to know what to do, you know? To prevent whatever happened there from happening to us.”

“What did Swansea think you should do?” Jimmy asked as they entered the lounge. No one else was here, Daisuke must’ve gone to his quarters.

“...He didn’t really say,” Curly answered uncomfortably, to which Jimmy gave a clipped hum. “I hope Daisuke didn’t choose to skip dinner. He seemed pretty upset earlier,” Curly deliberately changed the subject, internally debating whether he felt bothered to make some fancy meal with the Culinary Auto-mixer™ before once again defaulting to the vending machine.

“Everyone treats Daisuke like he’s made of glass, I’d be annoyed too if I was kept out of the loop on something important,” Jimmy responded. “Don’t worry, I’ve been talking to him. He’ll be fine.”

“You’ve been talking to him? Swansea will get jealous if he notices you’re trying to steal his intern,” Curly joked, trying to lighten the mood a little. Jimmy didn’t even crack a smile. Curly sighed and clicked a random button on the vending machine. “Anya will be conducting psych evals in here over the next few days, by the way, so if you could spread the word that everyone should avoid coming in here outside of mealtimes that would be appreciated.”

“Whatever.”

~~~

That night, the ship rumbled and buzzed quietly around Curly as he struggled to sleep. The entire day he had been fatigued - why now, during the allotted 5 hours of rest he was allowed, was sleep evading him? Worries and concerns flitted about in his skull like insects, the incessant noise keeping him from sleeping. Images flashed on the back of his eyelids - the wide-eyed stare of his other-self, teeth bared, up at him. What was that look in his eye? Vitriol? Anger? Desperation? The images of the wrecked ship- the future of their ship?- plagued him, and flashes of the scene around the dining table muscled it’s way into his consciousness like a bully, the gored versions of his crew- his friends- filling his head.

They were all his responsibility - everything that happened on this ship was. How did he let that happen? How could he fail them all so severely?

With a sudden wave of nausea, Curly shot out of his bed, skin hot and sweaty, rushing to the ensuite bathroom that was provided with the captain’s quarters and hunching over the toilet, dry heaving.

After a bit, he sat back and slumped against the cool wall. He must be ill. Curly pressed his hand to his forehead, breathing heavily.

How did he fail them all so severely? Was that the question he had to answer? Curly had been frantically swapping between dismissing everything they saw on the ship they found as irrelevant and neurotically trying to figure out if this future - their future - was even preventable at all. Is it all going to happen again? Is he going to fail them again?

Is it already too late?

Curly started to feel sick again and pressed his shaky palms over his eyes. He really didn't know what to do. Tensions had been rising on the ship, his crew drifting into being insular and unsocial. Daisuke was sulking more than usual, spending less time in Utility chatting Swansea's ears off and more time sitting in the lounge, re-reading the same few gaming magazines he had brought with him. Curly got the impression he had been trying to lighten the mood by being blasé and chipper, but even he had been affected by the general sullen atmosphere, even despite Swansea’s attempts to shield him from the worst of it.

It had been quiet. Curly hated it. It felt like they were all waiting for their doom to arrive.

Curly pushed himself to his feet, trudging back over to his bed. He lied down, but his mind was racing and he knew the possibility of falling back to sleep was hopeful at best. He kept on thinking - if only they could have accepted his detour request. It was illogical, but Curly felt like that one small win would turn their luck around, ideally to the point they could shuck this grave omen and return to normal. After a fruitless 15 minutes of lying there with his eyes closed, Curly got up and started getting ready for the day.

He headed straight for the cockpit as soon as he was washed and decent, planning on writing a half-desperate appeal to Pony-Express’ cold refusal to let them detour. He struggled with his phrasing as he wrote, unsure what angle would be most convincing to the soulless executives that ran this company he had devoted so much of his life to. He rubbed his eyes, struggling to think clearly. As long as they could detour, everything would be fine. As long as he got that bandaged freak off of his ship, everything would go back to normal.

Curly startled back at the venom in his own thoughts, staring blankly at the dim screen in front of him. That was a horrible thing to think, did he think that? They were trying to help the injured man they had recovered. Despite the fact he had failed his crew to the utmost degree. Despite the fact a captain had no right to not go down with his ship once the crew had.

He was being ridiculous. He knew the other version of him hadn’t had much - if any - autonomy at all in the months leading to everyone’s death. If anything he had been the one who had been gravely mistreated, so why did he feel such … Anger?

Curly leaned back in his chair, pressing a palm to his feverish forehead. After a quick once-over of his appeal, he sent it off, hoping beyond anything that someone at Headquarters had a speck of humanity to spare for their plight.

Curly continued to work through the early hours of the morning in a lethargic daze, cursing whoever failed to refill the coffee machine while the Tulpar was being serviced. It’s not even like he was actually sleeping any better now that he was cut off from his caffeine addiction cold turkey, which really wasn’t fair. Getting restless, he decided he needed a breather. Of course, walking in circles through the cramped, windowless hallways of their ship wasn’t great for clearing one’s head, but it’s the best they had.

Curly wasn’t sure what drove him to pause outside the door to medical. He similarly didn’t really understand why he quietly pushed the door open to the dark room so he could see the injured man on the cot.

He looked so … small. The light from the hallway glittered on his exposed eye as Curly’s counterpart turned to look at him, silent as the grave. Curly was surprised he was even awake and suddenly felt awkward under his watch.

“... Sorry,” he muttered quietly. The man on the cot made no sound or movement in response, just continued to stare. Curly’s mouth felt dry. He felt like he had so much he wanted to say, so many emotions in regards to the sorry individual that lay before him. But it all died on his tongue.

“...Captain?” A soft voice sounded from behind him and he nearly jumped out of his skin, spinning on his heel to see Anya blinking sleepily at him.

“Anya! …You’re up early,” he greeted awkwardly, mentally scrambling to come up with a justification for loitering outside the medical room at such a time.

“... It’s eight thirty. I always go to my office at this time so I can prepare before clocking in at nine,” she said.

“Right,” Curly said. He hadn’t even noticed the time pass. “Sorry, I, uh, I’ll get out of your hair..” he stammered and perhaps a little too quickly walked past her, feeling her staring into his back as he walked away.

Curly re-entered the cockpit, surprised when he saw Jimmy was awake and leant against the middle of the navigational console, arms crossed, a crumpled piece of paper in his hand. Hostility radiated from him as he glared daggers directly at Curly. He felt his heart sink.

“Jim? What’s the matter now?” He questioned hesitantly. Jimmy’s eyes narrowed.

“Been chatting a lot with the head office, have you?” He sneered.

“I … I’ve been requesting clearance to divert course. Why?” Curly answered, tense. Jimmy gritted his teeth, holding out the paper he had clutched in his hand. Curly took it hesitantly, eyes flying over the printed text, a pit growing in his stomach as he read.

It was a response to the communication he had sent only a few hours prior, a record response speed for any communication he’s ever had with the Pony Express higher-ups. The actual body of the message was strange, lacking the overly-corporate style most messages he received sported, instead having a direct, vaguely rude tone. The message detailed, in no uncertain terms, that there was no possibility of the clearance he requested being granted. It went on to say how Pony Express was currently in the process of filing for bankruptcy and all ongoing deliveries being successfully and promptly completed was of utmost importance. Then, almost as an afterthought, it warned to not disclose the information of the closure of the company and termination of all employees until they were at least 48 hours away from their shipment destination. The message ended with a frankly condescending offer of a full commendation from the company for any future endeavors for the ‘Tulpar Captain Curly’, as long as this final shipment is completed on time.

Curly bit his tongue, looking back at Jimmy who was still staring.

“... I guess congratulations are in order?” Jimmy said nastily.

“Jim, I had no idea- I… ” he trailed off. This, on top of everything? The timing couldn’t possibly be worse. Curly’s mind started racing. Had this happened on the other ship? Could this information have contributed to the horrid scene they found?

“Why did you read this? You know official correspondence is only meant to be read by the captain,” he said slowly and Jimmy clicked his tongue.

“Please, we practically captain this ship together. It’s fucking bullshit. Pony Express only cares about their golden boy, can’t even spare a thought for the rest of us,” he sneered.

“God… What am I going to tell the others?” Should he tell the others? The letter said not to, but he wasn’t sure he could stomach keeping something like this from them. Besides, Jimmy had already violated that stipulation. Curly rubbed his eyes, exhausted. His shift hadn’t even technically started yet. Jimmy was silent but remained in the middle of the room with his arms tightly crossed, like he wanted this to become an argument. Like he wanted Curly to say something so he could latch onto it and use it as an excuse to redirect his anger onto him.

Curly really didn’t have the energy to deal with that, though he did sympathise with his distress. Jimmy has had a lot of trouble finding stable work throughout his life due to complications from his past, Curly was the one to pull a lot of strings behind the scenes to even get him this co-pilot position in the first place. It surely must feel like a gut-punch to lose it after only a few years.

Curly, on the other hand, felt numb. Getting back to Earth felt so far away, it was hard to concern himself with it right now. It definitely felt like he had more pressing things to be worrying about.

“So that's it?” Jimmy said, cracking first.

“... I guess so,” Curly replied. Jimmy drummed his fingers against his arm, face twitching slightly with unspent energy.

“Fuck. Fuck! Of course you don’t care. I’m sure you’re planning on moving on to bigger and better things, huh. Set with a commendation and everything,” he accused.

“Jimmy…” Curly trailed off tiredly. His friend scowled before storming past him, roughly hitting Curly’s shoulder with his own as he did.

It was going to be a long day.

Chapter Text

“...Are you listening?” Anya’s voice broke through the haze of Curly’s mind and he blinked, looking back at her only to see a concerned crease to her brow. He internally cursed, he had no clue how long he had zoned out for.

“Yeah, yeah, damn. I’m so sorry. Couldn’t sleep again,” he said. They were sitting together in the lounge. Anya had arranged two of the plush chairs so they were facing each other and dragged the coffee table between them like an impromptu desk. It was way too low to be practical, so Anya was making do by using her knee to prop up her clipboard as she scribbled down the answers he had given to the psych eval questions. The same answers he gave every time, which definitely hadn’t escaped the nurse’s notice. Anya seemed particularly unconvinced this time around. She had even shot him an unimpressed look that he had nearly missed when he answered ‘no’ to the question, ‘Have you been experiencing any difficulties or complications in regards to falling asleep, sleep quality, or waking at the suggested times in the Pony Express Official Employee Schedule?’ He supposed it was obvious that wasn't exactly true. Especially since he followed the exam up with immediately admitting he was having trouble sleeping. Smooth.

“I passed the eval though, right?” He said, trying to get them back on track, hoping she'd ignore that little blunder. What had Anya just been saying? Something she said had distracted him - some reference to when we get home.

I need to tell her.

Anya stared at him with a frown.

“You know, Captain, it's okay to not be okay. I wish you would open up more about what you're thinking, especially after everything we saw…” She had a certain haunted look in her eyes then - looking through him and staring at something unseen. He understood the feeling well. He thought of the version of Anya he saw in the CCTV footage, curled up, awake but unmoving for hours and hours on end. It suddenly occurred to him that though it was policy for the ship’s nurse to give each member of the crew this evaluation every month, she herself received no such thing.

“What about you?” He asked suddenly.

“Hmm?” She hummed inquisitively, eyes focusing back on his face.

“How are you holding up? I know this entire situation is… a lot to process. On top of everything else,” he said and Anya looked away.

“Respectfully, this is meant to be your evaluation, Captain,” she said, weary.

“Yes, but as the nurse you don't get a psych evaluation. I can't believe I haven't thought of that before, but it definitely seems like an oversight.”

“That’s Pony Express for you,” she murmured. “It’s fine. I know what everyone thinks of these evaluations, anyway. None of you take them seriously.”

“That’s not true,” Curly said.

“Oh, please.” Anya clicked her pen shut and placed her clipboard on the coffee table, leaning back and closing her eyes. “You’ve been rattling off answers to everything I’ve asked for the past hour like you’re reading off of a teleprompter. I would have hoped you respected me enough to not lie to my face, at least.”

“I’m not- It’s not like that,” he sighed, reaching up to rub the back of his neck, tugging slightly on his hair.

“Is it not?” She said with a subtle, but unmistakable, note of sarcasm.

“No! I just don’t want you to have to worry about me, without it compromising your duties as a nurse,” Curly said. Anya didn’t respond, blinking at him in apparent surprise. “I … know you must be dealing with a lot right now. And I know you have to complete these evals as part of your role here, and that you will always try to complete them to a gold standard that the tests themselves don’t even measure up to, but it isn’t fair for you to have to deal with everyone’s problems on top of your own. You don’t have to worry about me, I’ll be fine.” He would be fine. He had to be. Anya sighed but seemed to accept his words.

“Well, then there’s only one eval left to do, I guess,” she said uneasily and Curly swallowed, guessing the source of her discomfort.

“Jimmy?”

“I’m worried about him. He’s been… Erratic, ever since we found that ship,” Anya tucked her legs up onto the chair, resting her chin on her knees as she stared at nothing. “He’s more disturbed than usual. He’s trying to hide it, but I can tell.”

“He’s unnerved,” Curly said. “We all are. He’ll be fine too, I can manage him. Tell you what, what if I take his eval off your hands?”

“Really?” She asked, shoulders relaxing.

“Of course.”

Anya nodded slowly, gaze drifting up to the day/night cycle window screen that shone brightly to the side of the pair. The image slowly shifted from the blue skies of midday to the somber oranges of late afternoon.

“It’s not only that,” Anya said, “he’s showed up in medical once or twice, just to ogle my patient. I have no idea why… But yesterday he was awake when Jimmy came in and…” she trailed off, glancing at Curly uncomfortably.

“...And?” He prompted, growing nervous.

“Well, he was hysterical. He even managed to throw himself off the bed and tear out his catheter - I didn’t even think he had the muscular strength capable of that…” Anya said. Curly shifted in his seat uneasily. It made sense, considering what they guessed had happened before he was frozen, but to hear that he had such a strong response to just seeing Jimmy… It made it feel much more real. There was a tightness in his chest that grew the more he thought about it.

“How did Jimmy respond?” Curly asked, despite himself. Anya shrugged, hugging her legs tight to her body.

“He just stood there. Then he left. He hasn’t been back since.”

That can’t be good. The fact he hadn’t told Curly about that incident was even more troubling. Did Jimmy not trust him? After everything? Or was it something else, maybe he was feeling guilty about his theoretical actions in this other timeline, especially since Curly was implicated as his victim. He felt hot bile rising in the back of his throat.

It doesn’t matter. That wasn’t us. It isn’t us.

He stood suddenly, then feigned an unbothered stretch to try and hide his nerves.

“Don’t worry, I’ll talk to him. I’ll make sure he steers clear of medical to prevent any, ah, further upset,” he said and Anya stared at him, eyebrows drawn together.

“And if you need someone to talk to… I’m here,” he added. Her lips pursed and she looked away, seeming almost frustrated before the distinctive noise of a door sliding open sounded through the large space. Curly turned to the culprit in irritation. Had Jimmy not told everyone to steer clear of this room today?

“Is it true?!” Daisuke said as he rushed into the lounge, head whipping around until it landed on the both of them in the sitting area.

“Daisuke, this is meant to be a private session,” Anya said flatly.

“Is it true?” He repeated, looking to Curly with wide brown eyes. Curly tensed his jaw.

“Is what true?” He asked, though he suspected he already knew. Swansea strided into the room behind his intern, his ever-present scowl twisting his features.

“Dammit, I told ya not to bother them!” He growled, crossing his arms. “Jimmy’s full’a shit. He’s just trying to get a reaction out of you.”

“He seemed serious! I think he was telling the truth,” Daisuke insisted and Curly watched them bicker with a sinking feeling in his stomach. This isn’t how he wanted this information to come out.

“Well I guess there’s no helpin’ it now,” Swansea sighed, turning towards Curly. “Jimmy’s been saying that everyone’s been let go. That Pony Express is finally kicking the bucket. He’s made that up, right? Why would he even know that?”

Curly spent a little too long deliberating how to respond and Daisuke’s eyes widened, looking back at Swansea in alarm.

“Oh my god! It’s totally true!” He exclaimed. Swansea sent an aggravated glance at Daisuke before looking back at Curly, his glare demanding a response.

“...It’s true,” Curly said softly. Anya looked between them, slack-jawed with an alarmed look in her eyes. “I-I was going to wait until we were all together to tell everyone but… Yeah. We will get the paycheck for this delivery, but after that, I can’t promise anything.” There was a period of silence where a growing sense of despondency became palpable.

“What a joke,” Swansea scoffed. “... I s’pose the writing’s been on the wall a long time. Not many manned freighter companies left. Maybe it’s for the best, there’s less chance of inexplicable tragedy when it’s all run by bots.” The implication of that statement rubbed Curly the wrong way, especially with how Swansea was looking at him. Daisuke rubbed his arm, clearly unsure how to respond now he had a concrete answer to his question.

“I don’t have any savings… What am I supposed to do…?” Anya said in quiet dismay. Curly didn’t have a good answer to that. No empty consoling would change their situation.

With nothing much else to say, everyone returned to their own corners of the ship to mentally process their imminent unemployment. Curly was left feeling drained and decided to try for an early night. He figured Jimmy’s psych eval could wait one day more.

~~~

The exhaustion of the past few days must have caught up to him, because when Curly lay down to sleep his mind shut off like a light as soon as his head hit the pillow. He didn’t dream. It felt like only a second had passed before he was startled awake by a quiet tap, tap, tap. Blinking sleepily, Curly pushed himself up and looked at the closed door to his quarters, wondering if he had imagined the noise. Almost too quiet to make out, he heard hushed voices before a louder, more insistent knock, knock. He blinked and struggled out of bed, trying to shake off the clinging dregs of unconsciousness as he pulled on his blue dressing gown.

“Coming, give me a minute,” he called as he did.

When he opened his door Swansea was standing there, arms crossed. Anya hung back a little way behind him, posture hunched and eyes averted.

“Uh,” he said intelligently as he pulled the sash around his waist tight, “hi?” He looked between the pair, waiting for one of them to explain what on earth they wanted from him at arse o’clock in the morning. Swansea looked at Anya, who continued to look away. He turned back and leveled his stare at Curly.

“We need to talk about Jimmy.”

The silence was suffocating. He unconsciously glanced down the hall, towards where Jimmy’s room was. He gestured them inside with a curt hand gesture.

“...What about him?” He asked, once they were all standing around his desk, door safely closed.

“Are you genuinely this slow or do you just pretend to be?” Swansea snorted and continued before Curly could even start to be offended. “You watched the footage I did, right? Jimmy was the last one alive. Hell, he probably killed the rest of us. An’ I, for one, don’t want to give him the opportunity to do it again.”

“Now hold on, you’re leaping to conclusions. W- the people on that ship survived for what, probably months after they had the initial collision? Who knows what everyone would be thinking at that point. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of us decided to go out fast instead of dying slowly from oxygen deprivation,” Curly noticed Anya fail to fully stifle a flinch as those words left his mouth, and immediately felt his earlier concern for her mental health quadruple and sit like a stone in his stomach. He continued on, stumbling over his words, “I-I just don’t think we should take any drastic action based on this - my point is any number of things could have resulted in what we saw. We can’t blame any one person. Tensions are high right now, but I’m sure as soon as we’re back on solid ground things will seem a lot clearer.” Swansea raised an eyebrow.

“If we ever get back to solid ground, you mean. Even if we’re out of a job I’ve still got a wife and kids back home, I want to make sure I actually survive to see ‘em again,” he said and Curly raised a hand to tug on his blonde curls, feeling like he was reaching the end of his tether.

“Of course we’ll make it back. You would know if the Tulpar had any critical issues that would cause a problem, right? You’re the mechanic.”

“Tulpar is old, but she’s a sturdy steed. I’d wager that other ship didn’t crash on her own. So unless you’re feeling awful homicidal right now, I maintain my original point,” he growled.

“Besides, we know for sure that Jimmy was the one on the other ship to move everyone’s corpses to make it seem like they were having a party. So it would follow that if he’s disturbed enough to do something as- as grotesque and nonsensical as that, he may have been disturbed enough to do other horrible things,” Anya spoke up, voice quiet but with a steady, determined undertone, “not even to mention how the one survivor from that ship reacted to him.”

“Well- I mean, I agree that it was probably his counterpart that set that scene up, but- he could have been dealing with some psychosis, or something-” Curly had to wonder how when he had said this same thing to Jimmy, it had sounded so reasonable, but here under Swansea and Anya’s stares it read as a desperate, feeble set of excuses. “I just- in any case, that ship isn’t ours. We aren’t them. It’s not like I can punish Jimmy for something he might do! We know our Jimmy. Do you really think he would be capable of killing people, of- of eating people?” He managed to spit out eventually. The confused and appalled looks on their faces made his stomach drop as he immediately realised that they hadn’t been there when he and Jimmy had noticed the slabs of flesh on the table. They hadn’t connected the same dots that they had, that day. Curly stepped back, crossing his arms and covering his mouth with his palm.

“What do you mean?” Came Anya’s wobbly and horrified voice. Curly closed his eyes against a splitting headache that was starting to bloom in his temples. “Curly, what do you mean?” She stressed.

“When me and Jimmy went back into the ship…” He started, tense, knowing that this information was just going to make the situation worse, “in the lounge, where the corpses were, there were plates with something on them. It was hard to tell, but it looked like - like meat… I had no idea where they would have gotten meat from… Then we remembered what you said, Anya, about-” Curly felt his throat close up as he struggled on his next words. About the patient. About my counterpart.

He didn’t need to get the words out, in the end, because the realisation dawned in Anya’s eyes shortly after he cut himself off and she went grey, a hand covering her mouth like she was going to be sick.

“The patient’s leg had been amputated… I thought- I thought it was weird, I didn’t know… He- he regurgitated some stuff as well - a lot of blood and chunks of something- oh god- you don’t think?” Swansea looked revolted and Curly felt much the same way, stomach churning.

“That’s fuckin’ sick. That’s - what the fuck,” Swansea said, sounding truly disturbed.

“I-I, we still don’t know the whole story…” Curly said, almost reflexively, but his heart wasn’t in it. He felt dizzy and sick and his head hurt and he couldn’t stop picturing his counterpart’s wide eyed stare.

“Oh come off it! We all know it’s YOU lying on that gurney, waiting to die. If you don’t want that prophecy to get fulfilled maybe you should start thinkin’ long and hard about when it’s time to sit on your hands and when it’s time to act.”

And it was true, wasn’t it? That man was him. How different the amputee looked from him created a convenient barrier of cognitive dissonance that he could hide behind, pretend they weren’t being directly confronted with a reality where he existed in that much pain, where unspeakable things had happened to him. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that he had been some way responsible for it. He was the Captain, he should have prevented it.

Is he making the same mistakes now? Was Swansea right? The promise he made to Jimmy the other day to not let his friend become a scapegoat cast a cold shadow over him.

“... Like I said before, our Jimmy is not his counterpart - there is no way he’s capable of any of that! He couldn’t - he wouldn’t -” Curly choked on his words. His voice was failing him more and more these days. He wouldn’t hurt me like that, right?

“Yeah. Of course our Jimmy isn’t capable of doing horrible things,” Anya said, tone sarcastic and quietly bitter. Curly felt himself blanch, blindsided.

“I- no, that isn’t what I- Anya, you know I didn’t…” Curly’s words caught in his throat, face hot with mortification. “Of- of course he can- You know I- there’s nothing I could do,” he stammered. Anya stared at him, jaw set, but eyes turbulent with suppressed emotion. He felt like the scum of the earth - of course Anya would see this from a different perspective. She knew intimately how Jimmy could be cruel, how he could take advantage of the vulnerable. With everything that had happened, that situation had been pushed to the back of his mind. Swansea’s head whipped between the two of them, alert but clearly confused.

“What? What the hell are you two on about?” He growled. Anya looked away, visibly withdrawing into her shell, face scrunching with discomfort. Curly was mute with guilt, throat tight. Swansea turned to Curly aggressively, teeth clenched.

“What?” He hissed, obviously wanting to raise his voice but restraining himself in an attempt to keep from waking the others. Curly swallowed, forcing himself to speak.

“I- About- about a month or so ago, there was an … incident. There was- uh, an altercation between Jimmy and Anya-”

“Stop,” Anya said and Curly snapped his mouth shut. She stared at the floor for a few seconds before speaking quietly in a blank tone.

“Jimmy raped me.”

The harsh words were left to settle in the air, only accompanied by the ever-present buzzing of the ship around them. Curly saw Anya’s uncharacteristically venomous glare towards him before she looked away again, wrapping her arms tighter around herself. The silence stretched as taut as a piano string. Swansea’s head whipped around to look to Curly for confirmation, but he couldn’t meet his eyes.

“What?!” He exclaimed, “and you knew about this?!” Curly could feel his accusative glare despite the fact he couldn’t bear to turn his head to face them.

“I-I talked to him! I reprimanded him! I changed the shifts around so they wouldn’t see each other- It wasn’t okay- not at all- what he did, but what was I supposed to do?! No formal charges can even be pressed until we return to earth - under Pony Express any HR violations are classed as ‘poor team synergy’, everyone’s paycheck would be docked-”

“Are you serious?! That is what you’re concerned about?!” Swansea barked, furious.

“Of course not!” Curly snapped, finally looking back at Swansea, “but there’s no protocol for this! I-I-”

“You’re a goddamn coward. How is Anya meant to feel safe on this ship- if, if someone like that is here polluting it with his presence?!” Anya flinched again, pale-faced and looking like she regretted bringing this up, “This is who you’ve been defending?!”

“What would you suggest?!” Curly retorted, voice similarly raising, “what am I meant to do? Tie him up? Lock him in a closet somewhere? Throw him out into space? We still need a co-pilot! What if something happens to me? What if I can’t fly the ship anymore, and we still need a way back planet-side?!” Curly could only picture his counterpart, skinned, limbless and utterly incapable of much of anything at all. He knew his insinuation wasn’t lost on Swansea and Anya. There was a beat before Swansea responded, voice low.

“Well, if something like that did happen, I don’t think we would really be needing a pilot anyway, right? Considering the ship wouldn’t be in a state to fly,” he said, his demeanor almost making his words come off like a threat. Curly clenched his jaw. He didn’t know what to say. Swansea, with uncomfortable, prolonged eye-contact, backed away from Curly before turning and leaving the room. Anya lingered for a moment and the vague feeling of guilt that had been lingering in the back of his mind for weeks was suddenly razor sharp as it stabbed into his stomach.

“Anya- I’m sorry, I really am-” Curly started.

“Don’t,” she said quietly, “just- don’t.” Then she turned and similarly left the room without sparing a glance back at him.

Shit.