Archive of Our Own ^beta

At the end of it all, it’s Charlie and David.

The Prometheus is in pieces on the ground, and so is the engineer dreadnought.

David’s head is detached from his body somewhere in the wreckage and Charlie is lying on the dirt outside, in the carbon dioxide-argon gas air, trying to come back down to reality.

There’s soot and ash snowing onto his helmet, covering him in the same fine powder of death that the entirety of the planet was.

They burned Fifeld, Charlie thinks, and wonders how much of him is raining down onto the ground.

The captain and his copilots could be part of the ash too. Elizabeth, her corpse still in the med-pod, could be as well. Particles of his crewmates are slowly covering his spacesuit.

There’s something under his eye, itching next to his nose. Charlie’s hand comes up clumsily and slaps against the surface of his helmet, streaking the ash in a sad-looking handprint. He realizes there’s probably blood on his face.

That big fucking lug slapped the lights out of him back in the ship. Makes sense that it would bleed. Makes sense that he’s suddenly all weak physically because of David trying to poison him.

David, that goddamn psychopath. Charlie’s never drinking anything offered to him again.

“Doctor Holloway?”

Speak of the devil.

“Doctor Holloway, are you there?”

Charlie’s eyes fall closed like plastic blind slats covering a window. He’s pretty sure if he focused he could hear his skin creak.

“Yeah.”

It unnerves him how relieved David’s crackling voice sounds when he hears him say, “I was afraid you were dead.”

“You have no idea what afraid is.” Charlie sighs, thinking back to looking at jaundiced eyes in the mirror, at his Elizabeth pale and bloodless in the pod. To hearing Meredith go crunch as the ship flattened her beneath it. David had no fucking clue what fear was.

“I know we’ve had our differences,” David pipes up again from some corner of Charlie’s helmet. “But please. I need to ask you for your help.”

Something about that makes Charlie want to tear his helmet off and smash it against the ground, or go find David’s head and smash it against the ground. “Why the fuck would I help you, you fucking maniac? You tried to kill me.”

“Because without me, you will never leave this place.”

And damn it, Charlie thinks, because the robot has a point. Whether it was through death or something else, he wanted to get out of here. This place only held death and destruction and the lost hopes of civilizations past. It dared to make the crew of the Prometheus hope for the future, and dashed all of those hopes just as quickly.

Because everyone was dead. Everyone except Charlie and David.

“Neither of us are leaving. Not unless we bite it.” He groans. There’s a crick in his neck.

“It’s not the only ship. There are many others.” David adds, and that’s enough to get Charlie to open his eyes again. He doesn’t dare hope for anything good ever again, but… “I can operate them.”

Charlie struggles to his feet on the uneven ground. The only thing he hated more than the prospect of spending the rest of his life with the robot was spending it on LV-223.

He spies an overturned yet salvageable ATV over a chunk of broken rock that might’ve also been broken spaceship. “Before that thing ripped your head off,” Charlie starts, having to work hard to find breath with the limited oxygen his suit still held. “What did he say?”

“Doctor Shaw considered them as gods, not things, Doctor Holloway.”

Now’s not the time for philosophic banter, Charlie thinks, growing more infuriated by the second. How is David still alive, anyway? Are Weyland androids just that stubborn?

Charlie snorts humorlessly, stumbling over gravel to get to the ATV.. “I don’t think God would try to kill anybody like this. Now what did he say, where’d he - where’d he come from.”

David sounds pensive as he continues - “There is no direct translation, but several of your ancient cultures had a word similar to it.”

Charlie’s glad David can’t see him roll his eyes, because he might have had some kind of smart-alec quip to say about it. He thinks he’s bordering on the edge of hysteria.

“Paradise.” David murmurs, almost reverent in tone. Charlie stops from trying to push the ATV right side up.

“Charlie?”

If only Ellie was the one alive, and not him. He didn’t do the religion stuff - she did. But now she was dead. Dead, and with her work left unfinished. Her dreams left unfulfilled.

Charlie never claimed to be a good man, or a logical man, or even a sentimental man. Nevertheless, it felt wrong to leave everything Ellie wanted behind on this barren planet. Charlie loved her more than he loved his work, and if she was the one stuck here she wouldn’t call it quits - and that meant he couldn’t either.

He climbs sideways into the ATV and revs it up. The treads pull the vehicle back onto its wheels and chugs over the dirt, with something in the engine clicking uncertainly. “Doctor Holloway?” David asks again inside his helmet. He sounds nervous.

Charlie doesn’t care enough about the robot’s feelings to dignify him with an answer. For all the stress David had put everyone through, all the physical pain the poison had given Charlie, he deserved at least to be anxious for a little while. The broken-off hull of the dreadnought looms closer as he maneuvers the ATV over to it.

He barely remembers the route that he and Weyland took to find the sleeping engineer, but all the echoing tunnels seemed to lead to the same destination. The old man’s bloody body still lies on the floor, and David is there to its left.

“Doctor Holloway, over here.”

David’s spine hangs out of his neck like a macabre anatomy display and the gaping hole where it was torn out of his body sparks and flickers, yet he is somehow still talking. Albeit his voice is garbled, glitching, and stuttering, he’s still just as creepily coolheaded as he always is. His arms on his body are waving weakly, as if Charlie somehow can’t see him. He has no right to sound so relieved.

There’s only one thing on his mind when he gets a good look at the dismembered synthetic: the eerie bareness of Elizabeth’s neck Charlie had noticed when he had seen her body. The last person who had interacted with her before her death was David.

“Where’s her cross.” Charlie asks of him, every breath between his words suffocating in his suit.

“The pouch, in my utility belt.” David replies, and Charlie reaches up to remove his helmet before kneeling down to look. The air in the ship was dank, wet, and cold, but it was better than whatever circulated shit was going through his suit.

Sure enough, when Charlie feels down David’s waist and looks in the different sections on his belt, a glint of metal catches his eye and he pulls out Elizabeth’s necklace. It dangles in his hand, dancing in the scattered light. It felt wrong not to see it around her neck.

He puts it on.

“Don’t tell me you’ve started to believe?” David pipes up, almost teasing. Charlie grips the cross and slides it under his suit so he wouldn’t have to look at it.

“No. I just don’t think you should have it.” He grunts, getting back onto his feet. “You said you could figure out their navigation. Use their maps.” He kneels beside David’s head, a simulacrum of humanity in an utterly inhumane environment.

“Yes, of course. Once we get to one of their other ships, finding a path to earth should be relatively straight-forward.”

If only it were that easy. After what happened here, living on earth without Elizabeth or any of his friends would be a purgatory Charlie didn’t want to endure.

He shakes his head. “I don’t want to go back to where we came from.” The words leaving his own mouth sound foreign. “I want to go where they came from. To paradise.”

If Elizabeth was still alive, she’d want to go too. That’s all Charlie has to hold onto. She had always been more of an explorer than he was.

Judging by David’s thoughtful silence, he knows that’s Charlie’s motive.

“Can you do that, robot?” He asks him, as a bead of dark liquid rolls off of his cheek and falls to the floor.

“Yes. I believe I can.” And as Charlie leans back on his knees, satisfied, David continues - “May I ask what you hope to achieve by going there?”

Obviously, it’s just as much of a puzzle to him as it is to Charlie why he’s suddenly the one who holds the mission in such high regard.

“They created us, and then tried to kill us.” He starts. “They changed their minds, and I want to know why.” He deserves to know why, a voice that sounds strangely like Ellie says in his mind.

“Does it matter why they changed their minds?” David asks him.

Charlie nods, exhausted. “Yeah. It does.” He wipes his bleeding nose with the back of his hand. “You asked me how far I’d go to get my answers, remember?”

“Yes.”

“This is how far I’ll go.”

“I don’t understand.” David murmurs, tone troubled despite his face remaining its perfect mask of calmness.

Charlie gets to his feet. “I guess that’s because I’m a human being. And you’re a fucking robot.”

And before David can protest any of that, Charlie picks his head up by its perfect blonde hair and shoves it into a bag he had brought from the ATV. The android’s muffled protests go unheard as Charlie picks his body up from under the arms and starts to drag it toward the nearest exit.

There’s something like an exhaust vent close to the engineers’ cryo-chamber that leads back out into open air. Charlie can see the ATV on the ground nearby and slowly lowers David’s prone body onto the dirt with cables in the bag. There’s something hilariously undignified about seeing the robot (or at least the robot’s body) stiff and unarticulated like this - it’s almost like karma.

Charlie rappels down afterward, lugs the body into the ATV, and drives off on David’s directions to the nearest working ship.

Sure enough, there are multiple, all built in that same biomechanical way that makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. David’s unable to do anything useful except guide Charlie through the launch sequence, and even then it takes him a few tries to get the damn flute to blow the right notes.

Eventually, the ship rumbles and rises out of the ground. Charlie isn’t a pilot, but surprisingly enough the engineers’ technology isn’t too hard to work, and thank god they’ve got autopilot.

He doesn’t know where they’re going, but David has some idea, so he lets the android tell him what numbers to plug in and what weird squishy buttons to push, and soon enough they’re drifting out of LV-223’s atmosphere and away from the wreckage of the Prometheus. Off to paradise.

They last around two weeks in standard earth time before David brings up the subject of the future of the mission.

This is after he had very patiently instructed Charlie on how to reattach his head to his neck, using both tools already on the engineer dreadnought and what was on both of their persons when they left planetfall. Being so close to the robot was uncomfortable enough to make Charlie avoid David for a good while after he was functional again, and David seemed to be fine with it and go about his own business, until now.

“What will we do when we get to paradise?” He asks Charlie one day, standing impeccably groomed as usual in front of the bunk he had taken as his own in the sleeping quarters of the ship. Thank god that engineers really were so similar to humans.

Charlie blinks one eye open to look at him, and sighs, readjusting his hands under his head. “I don’t know. Mostly I just want answers. You asked me this already.”

David seems to consider that for a moment. Charlie had noticed that he blinks exactly every three seconds, a few days ago, and had subsequently stopped looking at his pale green eyes.

“What will we do after you get your answers?”

Charlie closes his eyes again. Better not to look at David’s forgery of a face. He was handsome, but in a terribly eerie sort of way. “I don’t know that either, buddy.”

He half expects the android to become impatient with him, or bored, and leave him to his own devices again, but he doesn’t. “I have a suggestion.”

The thought of that is somehow amusing. Charlie pushes himself up on an elbow, ready to entertain David’s thoughts (or how thoughts were written in code, at the very least). “Do you? By all means, man, tell me.”

“If you do not plan to return to earth, and if paradise truly is what the engineer had described to me, I believe it would be a model location to build a colony.”

“A - colony? Of what?” Charlie asks him haltingly. Where the hell did this come from?

David replies “Humans.” like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “So that should we perish, Weyland Corp.’s goals and ambitions can continue to be worked toward.”

It’s honestly still hard for Charlie to comprehend what he’s talking about right now. “I don’t care about any of the company’s ‘goals.’”

“What about Doctor Shaw’s goals?” Charlie fixes his most dangerous glare on David, but he doesn’t stop talking. “To learn about where you came from? How better to learn than to raise a community of humans in the same place your creators once flourished?”

He’s talking about - a glorified social experiment, of all things. It brings a bad taste to the back of Charlie’s throat for some reason he can’t quite explain. “You want to settle down on some alien planet forever?”

David’s expression doesn’t change. If anything, he looks even more confident in his proposal. “I think it would be interesting.”

A shiver goes down Charlie’s back. Something tells him that David asking him for permission to create a colony in paradise was only a formality. Charlie doesn’t think he’d listen if he said no.

“Why are you asking me this?” He says, attempting to hide the unsteadiness in his voice. “You can - do whatever you want when we get there, I don’t care. As long as you don’t try and kill me again.”

David smiles, like Charlie was making a lighthearted little joke. “I’m asking you because I would be honored to have your genetic profile to use for the colony members.”

A beat passes. David’s words run through Charlie’s head once, twice, three times, and still he can’t quite grasp what he’s being asked.

He says as such; “My - what? Explain to me exactly how you even plan to make more humans from nothing in the first place.”

Something occurs to him then, and while David opens his mouth to answer Charlie shoots up from his bunk and gets up in his face. There were no mirrors on the engineer ship but they were close enough that David could count all the lingering black veins still highlighted against Charlie’s skin. “I swear to god, if Ellie’s - if her death, her death was your doing too, some kind of sick fucking breeding plan, I’m not letting you get anywhere near my--”

“That will not be the case, Doctor Holloway.” David interrupts him, staring him down unflinchingly. He places a firm hand on his shoulder and guides Charlie back to sitting, and then sits next to him.

David leans his forearms on his knees and his eyes fall somewhere to the floor near Charlie’s feet. “When I was being outfitted for the Prometheus mission, Mr. Weyland ensured that I would be updated properly to take advantage of every possible situation the crew might encounter. One of these situations was the event of either almost everyone on the mission dying, or the event that your creators’ world was habitable and was decided upon being settled in.” The corner of his mouth pulls up as David turns his head minutely to meet Charlie’s eye. “As you can see, we have entered one of these situations.”

Charlie doesn’t return his smile. “I told you, I don’t give a damn about what Weyland thinks is ‘taking advantage’ of the situation.”

“And I told you that it would be interesting.”

“So - what, you’re asking me to help you with a little science experiment? Because you’re bored? You wanna play God, create life?” He scoffs, fixing David with a look of utmost scrutiny.

The synthetic’s expression remains as placid as ever. “If that’s what you would like to think of it as, then yes.”

A shiver runs through Charlie’s veins, bones, muscles, and mind. No normal human being could admit to that and stay so casual about it.

He was stuck on an alien spaceship with a robot who had a god complex.

Wonderful.

“You still haven’t told me what the update was that gives you the ability to somehow create humans.”

David blinks, and his eyebrows go up. “Why, I thought you’d be able to ascertain how I’d do it by now. Very well. Let me demonstrate--”

And then he leans closer into Charlie’s field of vision and kisses him.

David’s lips are cold, colder than Ellie’s, colder than his mother’s’ against his forehead, and they move with bruising pressure against his own. Charlie’s eyes shoot open as wide as they can go and he shoves against David’s shoulders, pushing him away. The android regards him curiously after they break apart, still leaning forward.

“Doctor Holloway?”

“What the fuck was that?” Charlie sputters, scuttling further back on his cot. “Why’d you kiss me?”

“I assume you’d be more comfortable if I was to initiate foreplay before we had intercourse.”

“What?”

“Sex. Reproduction. Birth. You have taken anatomy classes, have you not?”

Suddenly a disturbingly large part of David’s ‘experiment’ becomes clear in Charlie’s mind, and he can feel the blood rush out of his face as he goes pale with fear. “What -” He stammers, lips and teeth suddenly feeling useless and limp. “- What was the update. What did they do to you?”

David slowly cocks his head to the side and a serene smile overtakes his features. “They gave me the ability to create life.”

Charlie gulps. “Oh, god.”

David advances toward him, putting one knee on the bed and leaning further into his space. His eyes are calm, but eerily blank. “Doctor Holloway, it would mean very much to me to have the first colony members of paradise share your DNA.” He places a firm hand around Charlie’s wrist, not so dissimilar to a metal shackle. “I can make it easy. Pleasurable, even. I can modulate my voice, and you can close your eyes and pretend I’m Elizabe--”

Charlie wrenches his hand out of David’s grip and slaps him across the face. The android’s head snaps to the side, smile all but gone from his porcelain skin.

“No fucking way.” He grits out through his teeth. “I’m not doing that to her. She deserves more than that. You’re insane.”

David touches two fingers to the corner of his mouth as if checking for blood. Obviously, there’s none, but he seems disgruntled nonetheless. The amicable facade he had put on for Charlie had left.

“Charlie.” He starts, slowly turning his head back to face the human. “I don’t need you to create them.”

At Charlie’s confused-terrified look, he pauses for a moment, then quirks one perfect eyebrow up and continues. “I am in possession of both human sperm and eggs in my internal storage, all given by past donors.” Internal storage, Charlie thinks hysterically. How much am I willing to bet that he means a uterus? “I can artificially inseminate if you are unwilling to provide. The colony will come into being whether you want it to or not. I thought, out of my infinite consideration for you, that because you could not have children with Doctor Shaw that this could be a close second.”

Charlie’s mouth hangs open the entire time David’s talking, growing slowly more and more disturbed with each word that left his mouth. Anger sparks in his mind when he mentions Ellie, but just as quickly it fizzles out.

There’s only one thing he can think to ask, in response to David’s unsettling monologue: “Would they look like you?”

He doesn’t want to be surrounded by little blonde, green-eyed clones of his robot companion for the rest of his days. Especially if he had a hand in creating them out of the remnants of his past desires, twisted into something selfish and unknown.

David shakes his head. “No. They will look like you.”

The confirmation makes something lift off of Charlie’s chest, albeit it’s very small. His fear of David’s actions, thoughts and plans still remained.

Every part of him is screaming to just jump out the airlock already, he was willing to go far but not this far, but there’s that little Elizabeth impostor in the back of his head again. They were going to adopt or find a surrogate, back on earth. She had wanted kids, and so had he. When she died, all hopes of ever starting a family were dashed in an instant.

This is the worst possible opportunity to have those hopes again, and Charlie hates everything about it, but. But. He was selfish and maybe a little insane at this point, and he hated having David as his only company. Who knew how long it’d be until they got to paradise, wherever that was - it could be years. Bringing someone, anyone else on board would be a relief, no matter who it was.

And it would happen eventually, like David said. Charlie had no choice in the matter. The only effect he’d have on the colonists would be whether they would be his children or not. He had always dreamed about a kid with his mother’s big brown eyes and Ellie’s wild auburn hair, and he had wanted them with her so much…

But she was dead.

David was offering him something entirely, completely self-absorbed. He was appealing to a damaged man’s fractured psyche in an attempt to create an alliance, or a bond, or something similar that would make him less likely to turn on him in the future. Charlie wasn’t dumb - he knew that was what David was doing.

It was a shame that with every second that ticked by with the robot’s pale green eyes fixed on him it was feeling more and more within the bounds of possibility. He’d gotten him.

David must’ve noticed how hard he was thinking, and for how long, because his arms relaxed and he lowered himself back down onto the bed, folding his hands in his lap. It’s been quiet in the hollowness of the ship for a good minute now, but neither of them are saying anything. He does that infuriating robotic head tilt again, blinking like a curious cat.

Charlie blows an angry breath out through his mouth and drops his shoulders, which he had just noticed were up near his ears. He feels like a wild animal in a cage, isolated and alone. Even with David around, he was still alone.

Someone, anyone…

“Fuck you.” He chokes out, and the moment the words leave his mouth he feels a horrible burning in his eyes. He’s ashamed, that’s what he realizes - he’s ashamed of ruining Ellie’s memory and being so desperate for any sort of comfort that he’d have sex with a robot who tried to kill him - for the robot’s twisted breeding project, no less. The only thing that might make the act bearable would be David’s physical appearance, greek and chiseled in its stature as it was, but even then... “I’ll do it, but fuck you.”

David smirks, the expression mocking and foreign on his face, and nods. “Very good, Doctor Holloway. Do notify me when you would like to begin.”

And then he gets up, and walks away, back down the echoing halls of the ship.

Charlie’s left alone in his bunk with his thoughts. He stares into the far-away darkness long after David’s disappeared, and unbeknownst to him a single shocked tear falls free of his eye and rolls down his face.

Even though he’s planning to stay as far away from David as possible after they...seal the deal, so to speak, he feels like he’s just signed away his soul.

He hates that David’s assigned him the role of instigator. After a few day-cycles of ducking around the subject Charlie almost wishes the robot would approach him himself, but unfortunately he was the one who told Charlie to ‘notify him’ when he was ready.

Charlie was fairly sure he’d never be ready to have sex with a robot like this. He’d been with men and women in the past, but never a synthetic - and certainly not one he was so terrified of. David was intimidating for more than one reason, and for the entire time between their first talk and their next one Charlie spent hating himself for agreeing to participate in the ‘colony project’. He was caught between the lifelong dream of being a parent and the carnal desires of his own body, isolated in space for too long.

He sees David on the bridge of the ship one day, standing in the middle of the projected star maps, and while the robot isn’t looking at him he apologizes silently to Ellie.

“Hey.” David’s head snaps to his left to the sound of his voice. “You got free time?”

Already, this is out of the regular for him: Charlie doesn’t like talking to David unless he’s especially lonely.

“Yes, Doctor Holloway. What for?” David replies, though he probably already knows the answer to his own question.

Don’t make me say it, Charlie thinks. “The, uh. Thing.” He rubs a hand over his face. “Colony thing. I’ve braced myself enough.”

David promptly switches off the hologram - “Wonderful.” - and glides across the bridge to Charlie, smoothly turning him around with one arm around his shoulders and leading him back to the ship’s residential quarters. His hand is so cold on Charlie’s bicep and he can’t hear David breathe while he walks because he doesn’t.

It was astounding how much Weyland Corp. had given him in production, in the effort to make him the perfect humanlike companion, and yet they had missed so much that would make him really seem like it.

Charlie wraps his hand around David’s wrist and removes his hand from his arm.

David guides him back to the barracks and pushes him unceremoniously onto the closest bunk to the entrance. The backs of Charlie’s knees hit the cot and he falls onto his ass, barely having time to brace himself with his arms before David is upon him.

The robot’s got one leg on either side of his hips, long fingers undoing the button of his pants and sliding the zipper down so he can get at his groin. Charlie bats him away just as he’s shimmying the waistband of his trousers down past his backside - “I can do it myself, jesus. Take care of your own clothes.” And while David’s knelt above him, still, he gestures angrily: “And get off of me.”

“Very well.” Is all David answers him, and he moves to Charlie’s right on the cot. While he shucks his pants off and kicks them onto the cold floor, he sees David undo his jumpsuit with deft hands, exposing planes of lean, pale skin under his dark regulation uniform. He’s built like a runner, athletic. Without the suit his limbs seem longer.

Charlie tugs his hoodie off, as well, leaving him in just his t-shirt and underwear while he waits for David - he isn’t too keen on having his dick out in front of him yet, even though he knows he’s going to do that and much more pretty soon. He tries to seem nonchalant, leaning back on his hands, but his eyes keep wandering over David’s body with a hunger he hates feeling.

He’s beautiful, and he hates it.

David was Weyland’s magnum opus, its Adonis. Of course he’s beautiful. The bad part is that he’s beautiful and he’s insane. He’s insane and Charlie is still willingly going to fuck him, because he has absolutely nothing left to lose.

His clothes are tossed in piles on the floor, and David’s jumpsuit soon joins them, folded neatly. Charlie feels naked in front of him even though he’s still wearing clothes, by the way David’s staring at him, all severe curiosity, like he was a bacteriophage under a microscope.

“Aren’t you going to undress?”

“I can have sex just fine without taking everything off, man. How do you wanna do this?”

David nods clinically. “Very well.” And then he shifts, leans back, and stretches his long legs out so that they pass Charlie on the bunk.

Oh god, Charlie thinks, struggling to his knees and placing his hands on David’s thighs. The skin is soft and supple, like a human’s, and there’s something that feels like corded muscle underneath. Experimentally, he digs his thumbnail into David’s skin: there’s no mark or bruise that forms when he takes it away.

“Would you prefer to engage in foreplay beforehand?” David asks, snapping him out of his reverie, and Charlie shakes his head, muttering a negative. He shuffles in-between David’s legs, and they wrap around his waist as he slips his hand into his boxers to palm his cock into hardness. It fills and tents his underwear quicker than he’d like - betrayed.

David seems to notice. “Your internal temperature has gone up point five degrees.”

“Stop talking.” Charlie mutters, focusing on getting himself hard before focusing on any part of David’s anatomy and what he’s to do with it. He closes his eyes and thinks of Ellie: not Ellie as she was in the med-pod, bloodless and limp, but her in life, energetic and beautiful. Flushed and gasping in their bed at home. Sweating and laughing and biting the shell of his ear. It’s enough to get him hot and he takes his cock out of his underwear, blushing red and firm.

David looks at him, and it, approvingly. Charlie shoots him a ‘not a word’ kind of look and hoists one of his legs up by the meat of his inner thigh to see what he’s working with.

“Jesus christ, you have a cunt.” He whispers in a breath, looking down at what is definitely a glistening wet pussy beneath a similarly impressive cock. When David said he was properly equipped for any situation he wasn’t kidding. “What do I--?”

The android slides one of his hands beneath his head to pillow it. “Just as you would a woman, Doctor Holloway. No need to worry about preparation, I’ve taken care of it already.”

Charlie barks out a hysterical half-laugh. “You what?”

“It’s automatic. In layman’s terms: I can turn myself ‘on’ and ‘off’ whenever I want to.”

That makes more sense than what Charlie had thought David did, but he still doesn’t like it. He roughly slides his hand up and down his dick, coaxing it to stay hard - the task was monumental in the face of what he was about to do, to contribute to, what it meant. He just had to do it and then he could go hide in some remote corner of the ship and feel ashamed for the rest of his miserable life.

“So I just - go for it?” He asks, mouth pulled up in an open wound of a smile. He feels like he’s losing his mind.

David nods patiently. “Whenever you’re ready, Doctor Holloway.”

He shakes his head, trying to look down at his cock and the pussy he was positioning it at the entrance of and not anything else. “Please, just fucking call me Charlie.”

“Whenever you’re ready, Charlie.”

Charlie briefly wonders if David will stay the same while he’s fucking him, placid and indifferent, or if he’ll put on an act of gasping and moaning like a normal human would. He doesn’t know which would be worse.

The soft sigh David lets out when the head of Charlie’s cock breaches him is somehow worse than either of those options.

He lifts his eyes up to the synthetic’s face and watches blonde eyelashes flutter closed, sees just the ghost of a smile lift David’s lips up just slightly enough that the white of his teeth is visible. This isn’t what he was expecting. This is human.

David’s hips shift toward him on the cot, and the jolt of friction Charlie gets from it makes him remember to keep moving. He inches his cock into David slowly, amazed at how wet and accommodating his cunt is, and the delicious slide almost makes him forget where he is and lose himself in the feeling.

Almost.

But he presses on - literally. Charlie’s eyes fall shut to the shifting darkness inside his head as he bottoms out down to the hilt inside of David, now holding both of his legs up at the base of his thighs. The android wraps his legs around Charlie’s torso and is warm and slick inside, tight and unyielding, just like a human. Maybe too much so.

“Charlie,” David false-breathes like a prayer, like a confession, like he can actually feel Charlie’s cock inside of him. Charlie actually had no idea how much David could feel in the first place. “You don’t have to be afraid.”

“Who said I was afraid?” He asks him, opening his eyes to fix the synthetic with an incredulous look. This was not the time, obviously, but David hadn’t seemed to get the memo - or perhaps it’s just his lack of social programming.

David’s tall enough that his hand can still reach Charlie’s torso even when he was lying down and Charlie was sitting up. His fingers ghost over the planes of his stomach, where under his shirt fading grey veins from the pathogen remain crawling up his sides. Charlie thinks there’s something like fondness in David’s eyes, but for what, he doesn’t know. “I know better than to hurt you again.” David insists, voice soft, almost kind. “And I know this must be taking a toll on you.”

Charlie bows over David, hiding his face from blue eyes.

“It will be done soon if we just get it over with.” David murmurs regretfully, hand still stroking Charlie’s side, and there’s something in his voice that’s so painfully human that it makes him want to cry. It was almost like he actually cared about how Charlie felt, when he knew it wasn’t true. Robots were perfect liars.

“I know, I know.” He pants under his breath. “Just let me -” He looks down at where the root of his cock is buried inside David, where David’s own curves up proudly over his belly. “- Give me a second.”

If David was human, and if this was just some bar back on earth, Charlie would take him home - but this wasn’t earth and David wasn’t human and Charlie has lost everything.

He inhales and lifts his head back up to see David meeting his eyes. His expression is slack, like someone’s would be while in the throes of pleasure, but affectionate. Charlie grits his teeth.

“Okay.” He shifts his knees so that he can get better leverage against David, draws his hips back and his cock partly out of him, and then presses back in. A shiver runs through his entire body, and he does it again.

David’s head lolls back against the cot as he gets going, and Charlie doesn’t lift his eyes up to look at his expression because he’s scared of what he’ll find. Simulated pleasure, an open mouth and upturned eyebrows? Or even worse - placid indifference? Either way, he’s not keen on knowing, and so he leans over the android’s body and fucks him into the cot.

David is pliant and open for him, muscles resisting the intrusion in his cunt but not too much that Charlie can’t move around at all, adapting to his cock like he was specially-designed for it. A terrifying thought about Peter Weyland fucking David enters Charlie’s mind and he shoves it away before he can lose his arousal completely from it.

Charlie’s heartbeat echoes in his ears as he repeatedly thrusts into David, over and over again, fast enough for it to feel good but also so that he doesn’t have to think about what he’s doing too hard. His chin is pressed to his chest as he keeps his eyes either closed or resolutely focused on where his and David’s bodies joined, watches his cock slide in and out of David’s hole to the rhythm he had built up. There are still no markings on his thighs from where Charlie is grasping them.

He can still hear David breathing. He draws air in and out of his poly-fiber ribcage like he was as desperate for it as a human would be, makes little keening noises when Charlie impales him deep upon his cock that sound strange in his usually-composed baritone, and the sheets on the cot rustle as he grasps them in his fists and writhes around in Charlie’s grip, like he’s trying to get into a better position.

He has no idea how much of what David’s doing is real and how much of it is an act.

Charlie hefts his hands further down David’s thighs, built like a runners’, and lifts him up so that his cock can drive deeper into his insides. Everything is a numb haze of pleasure, and it could stay that way until he came and it was all over, if he just didn’t look at David’s face -

Something that sounds like a staccato exhale of breath and a sob comes out of David’s mouth, and Charlie can’t resist snapping his eyes up to see.

David looks pained. His jaw is tight, mouth half-open, and his eyebrows are pulled so tightly inward it looks like it’s hurting him. Charlie can see the pale green beneath his partly-closed eyelids staring up into nothing, can watch the column of his throat shift as he swallows and then gasps for air that he doesn’t need, notices that his hair is finally mussed and untidy.

Not too close, I hope, David had told him an eternity ago. Bullshit. Weyland androids were so human you couldn’t even tell they were anything but.

Charlie blinks back angry tears, focuses on finishing himself off because he was so close, just a little more, and keeps his eyes on David’s face.

The synthetic huffs, chest heaving. “Full.” He manages to get out.

That’s what gets him.

Charlie groans, ducking his head again and keeping the image of David’s blissed out expression front and center in his mind while his thrusts grow quicker, harder, more desperate, until his orgasm is flooding over his body and making him shiver while he empties himself deep into David, cock sheathed to the hilt inside of him.

Once it’s over he tilts to the left, letting go of David’s legs and leaning against one of his bent knees for a few seconds. He can’t seem to hear anything but his own breathing and can’t register anything but his own guilt.

Baby, I’m so sorry, he thinks to Ellie’s spirit. Don’t forgive me.

“Charlie.” David’s voice murmurs, snapping him out of his delirium. Charlie looks up to see the robot looking up at him with that same fondness he had before, almost like a worried mother. “Are you alright?”

He sniffs, swallowing the rest of his misery, and nods jerkily, pulling himself out of David with a lewd pop. Cum leaks out of his used hole obscenely but he doesn’t seem to pay attention to it.

Charlie curls up on the other side of the cot from David and tucks himself back into his underwear, straightening his shirt and bending down to grab his pants. All he wants is to be left alone, now that the deed has been done. David can do whatever he wants now and Charlie will stay far away from him.

Unfortunately, David doesn’t seem to feel the same level of shame he does, because of course he doesn’t. Out of the corner of his eye Charlie can see him clean himself up with the sheets on the cot, then slide back into his jumpsuit like he was getting dressed for work in the morning. He pulls his fingers through his hair to straighten it again and then turns to Charlie.

“Thank you for your help.” David says to him, and Charlie grunts in response.

“What happens now?”

The synthetic looks up toward the ceiling as if pondering something. “Now we wait to see if it took, of course. I’m monitoring insemination as we speak.”

Charlie presses his forehead to the cold wall of the ship and closes his eyes.

“Don’t worry, you don’t have to involve yourself any more with the colony project than you already have. Remember? Yours and doctor Shaw’s dream - you can have it.”

If that’s his attempt at being comforting, David has a lot to learn. “This isn’t what she would’ve wanted, and you know it.” He snivels, shooting a piercing glare toward David, sitting prim and proper on the side of the cot.

He takes a breath in to imitate exasperation. “Maybe. But she’s not here to judge you for it.”

Charlie grasps his head in his hands, blunt nails scraping over skin and buzzed hair. “Get the fuck out of here.”

He nods. “Very well. I’ll notify you when I receive results.”

Without another word, David rises and leaves the barracks with nary a sound. It was like the past fifteen minutes or so never even happened, for him, but it will haunt Charlie forever.

In the end, David doesn’t even give Charlie enough time to repress the memory of their sex before he gets his ‘results.’

He finds Charlie during the next day-cycle, wandering the twisting halls of the ship. His steps are so light Charlie can’t hear him approaching, and jumps when he speaks up. “Charlie?”

Charlie covers his panic with an over-exaggerated groan, rolling his head on his neck as he turns around like David interrupted something. They both know Charlie’s been doing nothing but drifting, afloat in an endless ocean with no thoughts about the next day, week, month, or year.

“What.” He spits at David, nervous of anything the android might tell him after what they did.

He was right to be - the news is exactly what he was fearing. “I’m pleased to tell you that the insemination has been successful. Thank you for your contribution to the new colony.” David says, with a smile curling up his lips not unlike the cat that swallowed the canary’s.

So this is really happening, Charlie thinks. He just played into David’s god complex beyond anything sensible.

He had never really matched the entire process to the right words before now, out of some desire to keep himself disconnected from what was happening around him, but now it seems all the more obvious that he can’t hide from the truth forever.

“Jesus.” He draws a hand over his mouth, eyeing David fearfully. “So you’re pregnant.”

Somehow, David’s expression becomes even more smug. “Indeed.”

Charlie knows why. Even if he wasn’t there to provide his genetics, David could have done this anyway. He’s taken humans out of the equation for reproduction - he’s rendered them obsolete. He is, effectively, a god.

The engineers’ ships, like the engineers themselves, were huge. If you didn’t know your way around you could easily get lost in one for hours at a time.

Unfortunately for Charlie, it seems to have shrunk to a size just large enough to hold him and the robot, who was exactly the last person he wanted to see at any given time, especially now. Especially now that said robot was unbelievably, impossibly carrying his child.

That glow that everyone talks about turns out to be very real, much to his chagrin. Every time he sees David around the ship he can almost feel the good mood radiating from him. He walks around with a bounce in his step, with a pleasant grin on his face, nods politely to Charlie in the halls like he hadn’t tried to kill him a short while ago. It’s infuriating.

It’s terrifying. Charlie wonders if David is planning to produce the first generation of the paradise colony completely by himself.

David seems to take an interest in notifying Charlie of the zygote-embryo-fetus’s development over the weeks that pass after its insemination. “Charlie,” He approaches him, not minding any glares or scowls the human sends his way. “The placenta has fully developed in utero.” Charlie grunts, shrugs, waves him off, but every time David doesn’t seem put off at all. It’s a big change from the stoic, passive aggressive android who was on the Prometheus.

“Charlie, the fetus now has a detectable heartbeat.”

“Charlie, the fetus is now around one fourth of an inch long.”

“Charlie, the fetus is now growing bones.”

He’s sick and tired of hearing it. He didn’t want any part of this, he has the urge to remind David, and every time he tells him about what’s going on with their pseudo-child he thinks about Elizabeth and wants to vomit. He was grateful Heaven really didn’t exist so that she couldn’t be looking down on him in disappointment.

By the time they’re a few months into it, Charlie knows a lot more about fetal development than he’d like to. To make matters worse, he’s starting to develop questions of his own about it, but he’d be damned before he let David know of his interest in the - the pregnancy. Does he need to eat to provide nutrients for the fetus? Where’s the amniotic fluid coming from, if David’s not a biological being? Who from earth donated the egg that made the fetus?

He doesn’t ask, and so he doesn’t get any answers.

Charlie observes David and the fetus’s gestation from the point of view of an outsider. Whether it was his brain trying to disassociate him out of reality and into some plane of existence where his every waking moment wasn’t a nightmare or not, he didn’t know, but for the majority of time he spends on the engineer dreadnought he spends it either watching David, from a distance, eating the tasteless rations stored in frozen packets, or sleeping dreamlessly in the barracks.

The latter usually happens directly after the former.

David had stopped trying to seek him out after a while of persistence when he realized that he wouldn’t get any kind of satisfying reaction out of him, and so seemed to be content with leaving Charlie alone.

Charlie thinks David’s more infatuated with the fetus, anyway. The baby.

He hates thinking about it all. It’s wrong. It’s unnatural. It’s strange to see David, an android who was built with such a strapping, masculine face, coo over sonograms and hold a hand over his belly when he thinks Charlie isn’t looking at him. Despite being something that was built to be entirely identical to a human, David is becoming more and more alien to him.

One cycle when Charlie decided to shave his face clumsily with a tactical knife from his suit, he nicks himself and bleeds all over his hands. He goes to ask David (reluctantly) where the medical supplies are, and finds him in the orrery - just like he always was.

Standing in the doorway, he stares silently as David unzips his jumpsuit from the neck to the waist and ties it around his hips. He has a Weyland Corp. t-shirt on underneath it, that his arms fill out just enough to make the sleeves pull tight around his biceps, and for a second Charlie feels a flush of arousal make its way up his cheeks - and then his gaze travels down as David smooths a hand over his shirt at the base of his stomach and it all leaves. He had said he was carrying small, but the curve of his abdomen is all Charlie can focus on.

His shocked exhale of breath makes David turn his head and notice him standing there - notably, he doesn’t drop his hand. “Yes, Charlie?”

“Where’s the medkit.”

David shows it to him without another word; Charlie thinks his bad mood was palpable enough to finally shut him up.

After he patches himself up in the privacy of the barracks, Charlie goes to sleep again. He’s so tired, and wants so badly to escape from what he now calls a life, so he sleeps for long hours every day.

Unfortunately for him, the dreams his subconscious entertained him with are nothing like what they had been in cryosleep.

Charlie dreams about monsters.

Monsters slithering down peoples’ throats, monsters melting faces with boiling acid. Monsters getting torched by a flamethrower but getting up and stumbling forward again. Monsters bursting out of someone’s ribcage with an unholy screech. Monsters emerging from sleep chambers and ripping the head off of the person most near. Monsters being born, bloody and squished, killing their mothers with sharp teeth and jagged claws. Monsters with beautiful faces and green eyes and blonde hair. Monsters that give birth to other monsters.

Sometimes, when he wakes, David is sitting at the foot of his cot. He usually asks Charlie if he’s alright, because his heart rate had elevated quickly and he had begun to perspire in his sleep. Sometimes, after David asks him that, Charlie looks at him and watches his torso. Somehow, after everything, he still expects it to move in and out with breath. It never does.

Instead he sees David, and sees the horrible thing he and Charlie had created shift under his synthetic skin. David huffs and covers that area with his hand, with an expression on his face that is both amused and fond, and asks Charlie again if he’s alright.

Charlie says nothing, and eventually, after a silent moment of looking each other in the eyes, David leaves. If Charlie falls asleep after that, his dreams are usually as dull as an endless road.

He’s not sure if living on the ship would be better or worse if David wasn’t there.

It’s the worst in the final days leading up to the fetus’s birth. It helps Charlie’s soul to not refer to it as a baby, but that’s getting increasingly harder to do because it’s all David refers to it as in the final months of gestation. He has everything scheduled in his internal calendar down to the minute, and until it’s time for the thing to actually be born he’s cooing over it while it’s in utero (or pseudo-utero, as it was) like an actual human would.

And for some reason, when it was Time, he felt the need to notify Charlie about it.

He enters the barracks, somehow retaining the graceful stride and perfect posture he possessed before the pregnancy affected his center of gravity, and leans into Charlie’s bunk. “For your own comfort, you might want to vacate the residential area for the next five to eight hours.” He tells him, and Charlie, who had been rudely awakened from a dreamless sleep, stares at him blankly.

“Why.”

David blinks. And then blinks again after three seconds pass. “Because I am going to induce labor.”

It takes a second for Charlie to register that, but once he does he groans and rolls out of bed with the intent to shuffle off to the bridge and sleep in the navigator’s chair instead. He feels David’s eyes on his back as he goes. “Good luck, I guess.”

The android’s voice follows him out. “Thank you, Charlie.”

Unfortunately, Charlie doesn’t get a lot of sleep during those five to eight hours, no matter where he tried to curl up and sleep. For most of the time, he just stayed silent, unbreathing, straining his ears to try and catch any sound from the barracks that may have told him how things were going back there. He had never bothered to learn any more than the basics about reproduction and childbirth, not beyond what he learned in school - he had little idea of how David was...going about things.

He didn’t like to think about it but he sat and listened anyway. He sat, and he held Ellie’s cross that still hung around his neck, and listened. All he heard was the rumbling of the ship’s engine and the whisper of his own breathing.

In the end, Charlie somehow musters up enough gumption to go back to the residential area and see if it was all over and done with. He meanders through the ship’s winding, curving halls in a path he had walked almost every day since he and David commandeered it, from the orrery to the barracks, and once he gets there he peeks in through the open doorway to look for any signs of...anything.

There are none, and honestly, he should’ve expected that.

He takes a hesitant step in, then another, then another. It’s just as calm and quiet as it usually was. No - no screaming, or whatever the hell he was expecting. No weird smells or blood splatters, either. He wasn’t even sure if David had blood. The fetus had to, it had to to live, but how that worked Charlie didn’t know.

“...David?”

The synthetic doesn’t answer immediately, which definitely scares him, but he does answer. “Over here.”

Charlie follows his voice. David didn’t sound stressed or in pain or any kind of strained at all, really.

Could robots feel pain? Could David feel pain?

When the engineer tore his head off, did he feel it?

Charlie clears all his turbulent thoughts from his head and finds David in the back of the barracks, calm as ever.

That’s probably the only normal thing about him, however, seeing as he’s burrowed into the combined blankets of about five cots like they’re a nest and is only wearing his Weyland Corp. t-shirt - the rest of him is bare, pale and lithe as ever.

He’s also holding a baby.

Charlie’s jaw drops.

David smiles. “Apologies for any inconveniences, Charlie. Though I am impressed at your timing. I’d like to introduce you to your daughter.”

Charlie swallows, and sits down on the side of the cot before his knees buckle and bring him to the ground. He had almost forgotten that he had had any part in creating the child in the first place, and David just bringing it up so casually made something inside of him - break.

He looks at the baby. She’s light-skinned, but that’s definitely his nose, and even though her eyes are closed and she’s got barely any hair yet Charlie is shocked to see that there’s a dusting of auburn on the top of her head. She feels like a curse.

“Oh my god.” Charlie breathes, rubbing his hand over his mouth.

David adjusts her in his arms and sits up straighter on the cot. He’s clean, perfectly clean, and so is she. It was almost clinical. “Are you alright?”

The only words Charlie can manage to say from behind his hand are “Why does she have red hair?”

David thinks for a moment, and then shrugs, his expression taking on an apologetic look. “The donated egg that was fertilized must have come from a woman with red hair. I had no role in choosing her genes.”

Charlie breathes out a sigh of relief, but David doesn’t stop talking. “I think it’s quite fortunate she does, anyway. Almost like she’s yours and Dr. Shaw’s child, yes?”

“Don’t -” Charlie curls his hand into a fist, planting it down onto the edge of the cot. “- mention her right now. Okay? Not now. I can’t -”

David looks at him in that same concerned way he had whenever he woke him up from a nightmare, in the way he did before they had sex, in the way he had when he asked Charlie what the future on Paradise would look like and when he was a decapitated head on the floor of the first engineer ship.

“But Charlie,” He says, voice soft and gentle, so gentle. His smile shows teeth when he turns it to him and it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I have already named her Ellie.”

Charlie meets David’s gaze with vitriol and anger. The jig was up, apparently - David really didn’t care about how he felt. To Charlie it should feel like a victory to get him to show his true colors, but he’s certain he’s lost.

“She’s yours. Not mine - not my daughter.” He chokes out, near silent. “I never wanted any part in the colony. The rest of that shit you do on your own, you understand me?”

David nods serenely. Charlie has a feeling that was the answer he wanted to hear, anyway. “Yes.”

He sighs, runs a hand through his hair, and looks away to the floor. He can’t imagine living on this ship for a day longer with both David and now Ellie, and only David knew how long he’d have to suffer through that for.

“How long until we get to paradise?”

David seems to be surprised by his question, but answers anyway. “I estimate about a year.”

Charlie sucks in a breath - the choice of what he’d rather be doing for that year is easy to make. “Can you put me into cryostasis?”

Ellie chooses that moment to make a little cooing sound and turn around in David’s arms. The android looks down at her and strokes the back of his index finger delicately along her cheek, making quiet shushing sounds. After a long moment, he finally answers Charlie: “Yes, I can.”

Charlie lets himself look at Ellie one more time, at her tiny scrunched up face and chubby limbs, at everything she was and what she meant for the future, and then he stands from the bed and leaves the barracks.

He swears he hears David laughing under his breath as he goes.

David reconfigures one of the engineer cryopods for Charlie a week after Ellie’s birth. No sooner, he had said, because flying the ship was one thing but learning how they worked their biomechanics was another entirely. Charlie spent that week like nothing out of the ordinary: sleep, eat, try not to listen to Ellie when she cried, repeat.

But the week passed nonetheless, and soon enough David approached Charlie with the news that the pod was ready for him.

Finally, he thinks. It’s going to be the end of an era - or the start of one. At least he doesn’t have to be cooped up in this ship with David and Ellie anymore.

As for what will happen between the three of them in Paradise...he’ll cross that bridge when he gets there. For now, all he wants to do is sleep.

“How long will it be, again?” Charlie asks David, looking at the engineer pod. It’s huge, and could easily fit two of him. David has layered its inside with blankets, and for some reason that surprises him.

“A year.”

An entire year of (hopefully) dreamless sleep, far away from anything and everything that had happened in the past months. Charlie hopes he won’t spend that entire time trapped in a nightmare.

He climbs in, lays down. It’s unexpectedly comfy.

David stands over him, watching, just like always.

“What if they’re no better than humans? The engineers?” Charlie asks him. Paradise could be a blessing, but it could just as well be a curse. He doesn’t know what they’ll find there and refuses to believe that David does.

The synthetic leans down and braces his hands on the edge of the pod. “So long as they are no worse.”

Charlie finds that hypocritical, coming from David, but says nothing. One thing that both he and the android agreed on was that humans were cruel. Hopefully the engineers who created them weren’t more so. He couldn’t hope for much, but he hoped for that.

He bites his lip and looks up at the ceiling of the ship, looming high above his head and arching like a church’s dome. He was ready.

David presses a button at the head of the pod as a smile grows over his pale lips. “Sleep tight,” He whispers, as the sliding door of the pod begins to close over Charlie’s body. “I’ll wake you when we arrive.”

Charlie closes his eyes, and through the clouded glass of the pod, he hears David’s voice continue.

“Ellie will be so happy to see her father.”

Artificial sleep overtakes him with a shudder.

Ten years later, Charlie and David are on Paradise, and the starship Covenant sends its crew down to the planet’s surface.

They aren’t introduced to the local fauna well.

“Follow me.” David calls out to them, after finding half their numbers dead. They follow him like lost children, the humans and the android who looks identical to him.

David has made himself a home among the wreckage of the engineers’ dead civilization. He knows the path to take through the forum so that his feet don’t touch charred, blackened bodies, but the humans are clumsy and stumble their way through piles of corpses.

It’s perfectly safe on Paradise, and he should know. Those new to the terrain only cause themselves harm, and David has had a decade to learn the whims of the planet as well as his own central processor.

He explains the situation to them as best he can: “Ten years ago, Doctor Charlie Holloway and I arrived here... the only survivors of the Prometheus.”

A few of them gasp quietly. By the patches on their uniforms they are Weyland Corp. employees, and have likely heard of the disastrous mission to LV-223.

David continues on about the failed landing of their stolen engineer ship that released the deadly alien pathogen onto the residents of Paradise, Charlie’s death. It was a horrible tragedy, obviously, and by the looks on the humans’ faces he knows they believe him.

“But I am not marooned alone here.” He reassures them. A smile threatens to twitch up the corners of his lips.

One of them, a young woman, takes a hesitant step toward him. “What do you mean?”

David reaches up and pulls the hood of his cloak off of his head. The shadows his long hair casts over his face hides the beginnings of his grin. “I’ll show you.”

He turns back to the shadows in the citadel where they stood. There, in the darkness, stand a group of figures. Watching him. Watching the humans.

“It’s all right,” David reassures them. “You can come out now.”

A young girl with red hair and dark eyes emerges into the light, dressed in heavy, rough-hewn clothes. Behind her trail a slightly younger boy, who holds the hands of a pair of toddlers. The girl is holding a baby.

“Oh my god,” He hears the young woman murmur under her breath. The children gather at David’s side.

One of the men in the group speaks up, then. “Who are they - ?”

David places his hand gently on the girl’s head. Fondness is in his gaze, down at her auburn hair. “They are my children.”

Charlie’s mutilated body lays in David’s lab. Two thousand colonists wait in the Covenant. Monsters skitter around the citadel. The remains of a people David killed are piled up outside. An embryo grows inside of him.

He watches the humans’ gazes turn from cautious relief to horror and he smiles.