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"I do wish you'd open up a little more, Captain."
She had meant those words when she said them, truly from the bottom of her heart. She wanted nothing more than to listen to her Captain spew out all of the worries and troubles rattling on inside his head.
His job was a difficult one. It wasn’t easy to be responsible for people doing their tasks, much less an entire ship and its resources. She knew he must have had some level of stress on him. Stress that could destroy his mind if he let it consume him.
He was a good captain. He wasn’t the type of person that would allow that to happen, much less be as irresponsible as to have it control his actions. Everyone always had an unexpected side to them though. She could never tell if the weights on his shoulders felt like they were nothing or if those weights made him feel tied down when he always kept up his guard, acting as composed as he could be.
"These evaluations aren't just about you," She softly said.
She hoped that her words would be reassuring, that maybe they could break her captain's walls so she could take one real good look at him. An actual look that wasn’t just him as the captain.
Just him as Curly, that’s all she wanted, really.
She bit her lip. She liked to think they had become friends during the years they had worked together. It would be hard for her to not think of him as one. A part of her wondered if he saw her the same way.
"As long as I'm fit to fly in your eyes, Anya,” He smiled at her with his pearly white teeth.
She couldn’t help her own reaction to such words.
“Oh, stop it," Anya murmured with a small laugh.
His sky blue eyes crinkled, and she had let it slip by. She pretended that what he said was a real answer to her reaching out to him.
It wasn’t.
Now, all she could do was stare at him as he laid on top of the bed, wishing that she had pushed him harder to open up to her. If she could have prevented the ship from crashing, if his head really did swirl around poisonous thoughts that made act rash and impulsive. The weights on his shoulders must have been too much for him.
She always knew there was a breaking point for everyone, and he must have found his. Even then, that thought didn’t seem quite right to her either as she furrowed her eyebrows together.
His piercing blue eye stared back at her, unable to blink back. It was almost like he was trying to communicate to her, to say something, but she just couldn’t understand him.
“Oh, Captain,” She whispered.
There was nothing she could say. She wondered why he had done it. If he had planned to take them all down with him.
But she didn’t want to think that of him.
A person’s worst moment doesn’t make them a monster.
Curly wasn’t a monster.
She thought of him as a friend, she still does. Despite everything, her heart is aching deep and it makes her eyes sting so hard that they burn to see him in a state like this.
She had done the best that she could with him when they had found his body. It was awful, everything was just so terrible.
His whole body wrapped around in bloody bandages, she tried to keep it clean so that he wasn't uncomfortable in them. Though the bandages always soaked up regardless. His skin was completely gone, burnt away as a mass of red muscles was left in it's place instead. He was so exposed, even the bandages must have felt scratchy and wrong against his vulnerable and sensitive nerves. He was in constant pain. He was just hurting all over, he groaned and made noises of agony as if he was in living hell.
Maybe he was. He was twitching all over, he couldn’t stand up, much less even talk to her with his lips gone.
When she had wanted him to open up to her, she hadn't meant it like this.
She had to softly open up his weak jaw when he was unable too. She wished she could have wiped away his pain.
But, even the painkillers caused him to writhe and shake when they were gently pushed into his mouth. His breathing would turn into harsh wheezes and rasps.
She couldn’t stand the noise.
The quiet gurgles that became a silent shriek when the pill would go down as if he was choking on it rather than swallowing it. Even the gentlest touch would cause him to shudder violently as if a lightning strike had gone through him and he couldn’t stop tossing and turning.
It was difficult for her to tell if his noises started to turn into cries or if that was just her own noise bleeding into his.
She should have kept her mouth shut when Jimmy approached her about Curly.
"He doesn't want to keep still anymore."
She only said it because she was concerned over him.
Jimmy glared at her like she was stupid, his mouth twisting in disgust before he decided she wasn't fit to take care of Curly.
He swiped her own damn job from her.
She couldn't even do anything about it. But, God- did she want too, when he kept insisting on feeding Curly those painkillers instead of her, saying he'll take care of it in that snare of his. Always insulting her in some form, reminding her that he was now the captain again and forcing her to repeat it, making her feel so powerless-
Distantly in her mind, she could hear Curly's soft gurgles become louder as if they echoed across the ship. Sometimes, his gurgles would transform into raw screams that felt like they were the same type of screams Curly gave when his body fully blasted forward in the crash. The noises haunted her like a ghost hovering over her shoulders.
It made her shudder to her bones.
Originally, she always thought that the noise was the worse.
Until the noises would suddenly stop, quieting down, as if Jimmy found a solution to keep them locked up.
And, then she thought, the silence was much worse.