Chapter Text

9 MONTHS BEFORE RESURRECTION

Curly vigorously rubs the sponge over the surface of the plate, slowly removing the remains of sugar and sticky flour. He sees the water running and turning pink for a moment in the sink, before getting lost with the rest of the suction in the pipes. Where will all that end up? Water full of waste. Surely they explained it to him in his classes at the academy... a lifetime ago now.

That's how it feels, at least.

The plate is completely clean. It drips, and on the shiny surface he can almost make out his own reflection. Just a shadow, even with that ridiculous birthday hat on. He raises his right hand and rips it off, the cheap cardboard sinking under the pressure of his fingers as if it were paper mache.

The party is over.

“I wouldn't want to get into your brain now for ten thousand severance pay.”

That voice.
Curly drops his eyebrows a little, forcing his expression to soften as much as humanly possible and exhales, moving away from the sink to make room for Anya. He notices the nurse trying to offer him a smile, but the glint of the gesture rises and dies in her eyes, before moving to clean her plate, her glass, and the spoon she used to eat the cake.

“You know, for my eleventh birthday, the whole party my mom had organized was ruined by the weather,” he murmurs, so that only she is able to hear his words, barely louder than the whisper of the water, “it was a beautiful decoration in the garden, but the water swept everything away, and the wind blew it to pieces. It was the worst birthday party of my entire life… a bit exaggerated on my part. We just continued with the party inside, without decorations but, you know, childish exaggeration. Now I can say "it's the worst birthday party of my entire life."”

“It doesn't help much to want to blame yourself for something that isn't your fault” Anya shakes the plate a little on the sink, clicking her tongue “listen, I know your tendency to self-torture. Forget about it.”

“It's my responsibility” Curly moves a little closer to her, taking charge of drying the plate that Anya had just left on the drainer “the last Pony Express trip before closing its doors is being captained by me.”

“And do you think it would make any difference if you or someone else were leading it? Look around you!” the nurse takes care to fill her words with some impetus, despite continuing to speak in whispers “this ship, this company, are far from their glory years. It's a shame, but it is what it is...I don't think it was anything you did.” She cocks her head slightly, giving him a smirk, but a real smile. “If you'd just get your head out of your own ass every once in a while, maybe you'd be able to notice. Your need for bombast isn't doing you any favors.”

“I don't have a need for bombast.”

“Of course not. Depression counterbalances you. You'll never be okay, never completely wrong, but in limbo. Look now...we all lost our jobs and here you are, cleaning up the dirty plate of your birthday cake and wondering "How can I make this about me?””

“Anya, I'm not that-”

“Egocentric?” she waves the spoon over the sink like it's a faulty magic wand, before bringing it closer to him. Grant dries it “maybe not, but you still manage to try to redirect the weight of the situation on you.”

“...you were at the table. Didn't you hear Jimmy? He said it...”

Anya lets out a snort that sounds over the running water, before stopping it. From the other side of that sort of wooden bar that separates them from the rest of the main lobby, he can hear the music Daisuke has put on. A modern playlist that Grant doesn't quite recognize, perhaps in an attempt to scare away some of the bad thoughts floating around in everyone's heads there.
He tries to keep a conversation going with Swansea, but the older barely seems to be paying attention, more interested in making sure he gets every last crumb and layer of frosting off his plate. Sketching such a dismayed posture, the birthday hat still on his head makes everything look twice as depressing, like a brightly colored coffin.

“Aren’t you mad?” Curly drops his gaze on Anya’s face. She keeps an arched eyebrow, holding the glass over the sink, upside down. It drips “it sounded like he was quoting you. Did you talk to him about…the same kind of things you talked to me about?”

“A while ago, while I was…doing the evaluation, so he wouldn’t have to bother you with his stupid jokes. Why would I be mad?”

“Are you listening to yourself?” Anya shoots her gaze to the table again, as she leans forward. Towards him. Jimmy left a while ago through the door, without saying anything to anyone, and still showed no signs of returning “it’s clear that he tried to hurt you with what you told him in confidence. Doesn’t it bother you? He took your own words and twisted them into weapons against you.”

“Anya, it’s not that bad…”

The woman lets out a snort, snatching the cloth from the blond’s hands to finish drying the dripping glass. She leaves it on the drainer and rests her hands on the wooden surface, her gaze lost somewhere. Far from him. Curly tries to sketch a smile, an action he performs as an accessory in his daily life, but he doesn’t succeed. He doesn’t even feel a tickle on his cheeks. His eyes fall, and he whispers the only thing that comes to mind.

“I’m tired, Anya.”

“More than you can imagine,” he raises his blue eyes again. She is looking at him and, although she doesn’t smile, he knows that she is not angry with him. It's... the kind of look you'd find on a mother's face, rather than a subordinate's face “and you're not just tired because you can't get the five hours of sleep we're allowed... you can't sleep because you're tired. Your insomnia isn't your only enemy aboard this spaceship. Curly... things that are said in confidence are not repeated in front of other people, even less so at such a delicate moment like this.”

“But, Anya, everything Jimmy said is true. I told him so” the black-haired shakes her head, tries to move away... but Curly reaches his right hand forward, grabbing her arm so she can't go any further “please, listen to me. I've told you too. You can't look me in the face and lie to me about it. It's not fair.”

“Don't joke, Curly” two wrinkles form between the nurse's eyes...but she remains still, without removing the hand that holds her arm “you haven't said any of that nonsense to me.”

“Of course I have. I've told you about how dissatisfied I am with this job...about how much I want to start over, try new things, find a real meaning in my life. And look where all that got us” he doesn't speak: he exhales. He's tired, more than a full week of rest could cure. Maybe he needs a more substantial rest “it’s...it's not fair, Anya. It's good news for me. I'm forced to take a path that I would never have dared to take otherwise. But what about you? You...you're not as lucky as I am.”

“Are you listening to yourself? How do your desires make firing us something to blame yourself for? You didn't write to our superiors to have us fired. Fax contact is one-way. So unless you have telepathy...”

“Anya...”

“You can be extremely maddening. It almost seems like you're trying to be” the woman shakes her head, barely, before gently pulling away from his grip. Grant hadn't even realized he was still holding her arm. He whispers an "I'm sorry," but Anya just shakes her head again “I wish you could take all that guilt you feel towards yourself and direct it at the real culprit. Look on the bright side, since we won't be Pony Express employees once we get home, at least we can sleep more than five hours a day. There's no point in maintaining a work ethic anymore if we're going to be fired, right?”

“I suppose so...” but Curly barely makes out the nurse's attempt to cheer him up. A glimmer of hope for a friendly environment in the torturous months of travel that lie ahead. The blond leans his lower back against the kitchen island, avoiding Anya's scrutinizing gaze by a long shot.

“Hey,” Anya raises her hand, gently hitting him on the chest. He barely lifts his chin, trying to hold the nurse's gaze, “I don't blame you. Maybe the voices in your head are telling you that I do, but here I am, on my own, telling you that I don't blame you for anything. I may not know either of them very well, but I'd say that Daisuke and Swansea also know that none of this is your fault. The only one offended is Jimmy...what a best friend he turned out to be, huh?” Curly makes a point of saying something to defend him, but the reality is that his brain refuses to formulate a single word. Anya also raises her hand and shakes her index finger in his face, “he's not a good friend. Using part of a conversation you had in private with him is not a good friend.”

“It's not that big of a deal.”

“Of course it is that big of a deal. You tried to defend him in my face several times during these almost five months, and you've never told me anything about him beyond the simplest things. You haven't told me about his dreams, his thoughts, his childhood... you understand the concepts of privacy and loyalty. He doesn't. I admit that a part of me was waiting for you to smash the cake plate over his head so he'd shut up once and for all.”

“Conflicts aboard a spaceship aren't solved that way, Anya. We're adults. Things are fixed by having conversations.”

“Yeah. I'm sure having conversations with him has always paid off.”

Anya rubs the bridge of her nose, and Curly instinctively remembers the conversation he had with Jimmy inside the cockpit the day before, his nose still a little sore. That day, while he was having the psych evaluation, a part of him was afraid Jimmy was going to hit him again... but no. He seemed to be in a good mood despite everything... until it was time to cut the cake, that is.

«And what did you expect to happen? That it would be the happiest day of his life when he just lost his job? Don't be cynical.»

“Anya” Curly makes sure to take an even lower tone of voice as he leans over her. The nurse doesn't look back at him “I can't blame Jimmy for getting angry. Ever since we were kids, he's always had a really bad life, you have no idea. This job was his first secure job in years, and now he has to return to Earth to have nothing.”

“So what about that?” the black-haired woman arches an eyebrow in his direction. Curly, dejected by the answer, doesn't even know what to say. “...it's normal for him to be angry. It's...normal, to a certain extent, for him to be angry with you, because you'll be luckier and he sees you as a...representative of the company aboard this ship, but it's not true. You're not the boss. And it's not fair, you didn't get us all fired. And you know what else? It's not consistent for him to spew shit about you, bringing up things you told him in private. In confidence. That's not justified. How much longer are you going to allow him to manipulate you as he pleases, twisting the same words you tell him?”

“I'm sure he didn't do it with bad intentions...”

“Oh, there's no point in talking to you.”

Anya throws the rag they used to dry plates, glasses and cutlery into the sink. She crosses her arms, just like him, and her gaze is lost on the other side of the wooden divider. The blond feels like a small child next to her. Small and strongly scolded. He opens his mouth only after a long while.

“...and what about you, Anya?” the aforementioned woman looks at him out of the corner of her eye “How do you feel?”

The woman returns her gaze to the front. Then, she falls back down.

“I'm... afraid” her tone of voice loses its severity then, and her arms uncross, stretching them out until they are on the wooden surface “I was supposed to use the salary to support myself during my entrance exams for school. These trips...were ideal. I'll take the test when I get home. I'll study while I'm in here. As soon as I get in, I'll quit the company. But now...”

“I ask you because...” Curly tries to smile a little, raising his golden eyebrows “I don't forget what I promised you a while ago. Help you with school. I meant it.”

“Are you kidding?” the blond shakes his head vigorously while Anya tries to deny it, with a little more vigor than him “there's no point now. I won't have a secure job to pay you back someday.”

“Anya, I already told you. You don't have to pay me anything back. Let me do you this favor, okay? I...” Does he want to do it for the sake of healing a wounded ego? To stop feeling guilty about the termination of employment? Or maybe he wants to help Anya so insistently because… “...just let me help you. It won't cost me anything to find another job. I think that's part of the reason Jim was so angry. Maybe I can even help you move to a place closer to school.”

“Stop, stop” the nurse puts her hands on her cheeks while shaking her head, but smiles. It's a relief “don't go too far.”

“No! I don't mean to, I...”

“I'm messing with you” Anya smiles a little more, letting her gaze drop “You know? If I had to choose...in the distant future, I'd say that I've always wanted to live near the beach. Something cliché?”

“Not at all” and Curly suddenly forgets several things. He forgets that he's not a big fan of the beach, despite what his appearance might lead one to believe. He forgets that his favorite season of the year is winter. He forgets that he loves the mountains and the snow and that he despises the heat with all his being. Suddenly, nothing seems more appealing to him than the sun reflected in the sea, the breeze, and bare feet sinking into the grains of hot sand. From one moment to the next... “...it sounds like the best life possible.”

Anya smiles. Her brown eyes shine, or at least he convinces himself that they do. Curly wanted to say something else... but he stops.

“Curly!”

Jimmy walks around the kitchen entrance, approaching them. Anya's relaxed posture turns into a more apathetic one, of course. Curly has already lost the battle of trying to prove Jimmy isn't that bad, but the nurse doesn't seem to have given up yet on her own battle to prove otherwise. She gives him a look of considerable vigor, tries to move away without further fuss, but the co-captain blocks her way a little, stopping her in place, before approaching him.

“Let me have your magic flashlight for a moment.”

“What for?” He doesn't wait to hear the explanation either, reaching into his uniform pocket to take the scanner, extending it towards him. When Jimmy takes it, he almost seems to rip it out of his hands.

“It won't be a complete birthday if we just eat cake.” He slides his gaze to his left, noticing Anya only then. She holds his gaze back, and Curly feels like he could cut the air with the spoon he used to eat the cake. “What are you two talking about?” Jimmy smiles as he asks that, his eyes fixed on Anya. “Making plans for the future?”

“We don't...”

“If I wanted to chat with you too...” Anya cuts Curly off before he could explain. He sees her raise her chin, and Jimmy, who surely didn't expect an answer from her, seems to lose a bit of the glint of mockery in his features. “… I would have done it at the table, don't you think?”

Grant is far from being a genius when it comes to reading other human beings. Surely Anya, despite only being trained through the books offered by Pony Express, was much better than him in that area. Still, he almost wanted to turn around and walk away at a fast pace, whistling, because the air around the three of them could have turned red at that moment. The nurse usually takes the trouble to hide her anger (the Captain has already learned to figure out when she feels that way... more or less), but in front of Jimmt, she didn't. She didn't care about being rude.

And Curly would have to reproach that action.
He reminds himself as he feels the weight of Jimmy's gaze falling on his face. Grant is unable to return his gaze. He waits... but, as soon as Anya clicks her tongue and walks off towards the table, without paying any more attention to Jimmy and his gestures... Curly follows her without saying a word, leaving the brown-haired man behind. He doesn't feel like he's going to be much help either. If he wants to make the mocktails, Curly’s presence would only bother him.

Anya turns to look at him before sitting at the table in the main lobby, and smiles.

Curly isn't quite sure why, but he imitates her.

“Everything in order, Captain?” Daisuke is the first of the two to speak, leaning just over the table “never in my entire life have I seen a person eat so sad on their birthday” the intern stretches an arm forward, giving the blond a few soft taps on the left shoulder, with a smile “calm down, calm down. None of this is your fault.”

“You tell him, Daisuke. Maybe he'll listen to you.” Anya, sitting in front of him, smiles at the young man and raises her eyebrows in the Captain's direction, as if encouraging him to dare to contradict the boy.

“I'm the Captain of this ship, Daisuke, and you're my responsibility.” Grant turns to look at him and tries to sketch the softest look he can. “This... well, the dismissal... in one way or another, falls on my qualities as a leader. It's undeniable.”

“Don't be so cynical, Cap.” Swansea has a slightly more carefree way when speaking to him. It must be strange for him. Curly is younger than him and yet he must refer to him by that kind of name, acknowledging his leadership. He didn't care if he called him Curly. In fact, he'll always prefer to be called Curly rather than Captain, even if they're workers he's just met. If they call him like they're lifelong friends, it's almost easier to... overlook everything. Forget everything. Pretend “this has nothing to do with you. Most companies were already automating their shipping system. It was just a matter of time before Pony Express closed.”

“And you're not angry?” Curly barely wrinkles his eyebrows as he asks that “you have two daughters, right? Besides, at your age...”

“I'm not going to cry at the table of the company that just fired me via a damn fax. If I have to cry, I'll cry because we can't eat more than two fucking pieces of birthday cake.”

“They wouldn't be able to find out if we eat three pieces either, would they? The fax is one-way... and unless we enter the radio reception area of ​​a space station or a planet, we are totally cut off, boooo” Daisuke waves his fingers in front of his face as he says that, adopting a tone of voice that is a bit more terrifying. Cartoonish, almost. Curly sees, however, how Anya hugs herself and lowers her gaze a little. So he turns, leaving a hand on the boy's shoulder.

“Daisuke, that's enough.”

“... I'm sorry” he quickly lowers his hand again, trying to smile a little “but it was so you could see how much I've learned.”

“How much have you learned?” Swansea repeats, after letting out a dry laugh “What you just said I have told you an hour and a half ago!”

“But Daisuke is right, Curly” Anya settles a little more, leaving her hands on the table “we are incommunicado until further notice. We can only receive messages, and it has been that way since we took off from Venus. The decision made by Pony Express to throw us out and close the company could not have been due to a criticism of your performance as Captain. They have no way of knowing how it was, right? Besides... there are behavioral warnings in the form of salary reductions, and you have not had any.”

“How do you know that?”

“I have access to your file” and she shrugs her shoulders, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. Daisuke lets out a breath, leaning over the table again.

“What does my file say, Anya? Tell me!”

“Nothing, Daisuke. It's empty. This is your first trip with the company” the intern steps back with an indignant exhale, and Anya smiles a little “hey, even if I had something written down, I couldn't tell you anything about it either.”

“But you just told Curly that he doesn't have any misconduct notes on his!”

“... that's right, oops” the nurse puts a hand to her cheek, closing her eyes for a moment, as if she had made the slip... on purpose. She opens her eyes and Curly, a little more cheerful, smiles at her.

Anya returns the gesture.

Maybe he is exaggerating... a little, at least. Curly can't completely shake off the feeling of guilt. The thought entrenched in his brain that there must be something he could have done for his crew to prevent everything from going straight and non-stop to hell for the four of them.

And what fuels the flames of guilt the most is... relief.

The relief of finally being able to get rid of that life that caused him so much trouble. To be able to shake off the poisonous routine he forced himself to become addicted to. Shock therapy, in a way. Maybe he'll spend the next few years missing being cooped up in a ship, months away from the nearest space station...but, in time, maybe he'll get used to going back to a life he no longer remembers.

Maybe he'll be able to fall in love with his days, again.

“I hope you're thirsty, troop!”

Jimmy finally emerges from the kitchen, and loads all five glasses of mocktails onto a tray. The colorful, artificial liquid bubbles inside each glass container.

He sets one glass down in front of Swansea, not looking at him. The next glass, the one in the center, in front of Anya. He circles the table and sets a glass down in front of Daisuke, who smiles. The smile fades at Swansea's "They don't have any alcohol, brat." Then, he stops to Curly’s right, leaning down beside him. Swansea and Daisuke had begun to talk in a rather airy manner. Jimmy's whisper went unnoticed by anyone... except Curly.

“Did you hear how she treated me?” his voice is like a needle, an invisible thread attached to it. It sinks the sharp point into his head, easily passing through his skull and stitching a dot through every line of his brai “I thought you were my friend. Why didn't you defend me?” the material of the glass can be heard with the roar of a rocket taking off when Jimmy takes it “What kind of Captain allows mistreatment in his crew?”

Curly lets his gaze linger on the surface of the mocktail. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't do anything... except follow Jimmy with his gaze. His best friend sits at the head of the table and raises his own glass above his head. He smiles.

“A toast” his eyes never leave Curly's “Happy birthday, Captain!”

The only comfort brewing inside his chest is knowing that things can't get any worse.

8 MONTHS BEFORE RESURRECTION

He only hears one thing: blood. The blood is rushing furiously in his ears, a sustained beeping that pulls vigorously at his insides and rises, rises, rises...

His palms are sweating, and he stands at the top of the stairs, unable to gather the oxygen he needs before descending. Going down, down, down, like a professional diver without an oxygen tank. With the flesh of his body as the only weight of descent. Don't move. Just think.

He hasn't done anything but look and think.

It must have been about a month ago now, when Anya told him, he could only do one thing: nothing. Even though Anya hadn't said it explicitly, he didn't need to be a genius to know that she expected something from him. Action. Protection. She told him in the infirmary, and Curly left the medical room with a tremor that, just like in the present, he believed nothing could match, much less surpass.

He was wrong, of course.

That day he acted on autopilot, making the same journey he is trying to make now, but without any pause along the way.
He descended the metal stairs, the clack clack clack sounding like a shower of shrapnel in his eardrums. He walked, and walked, and walked until he entered the only place that, until that day, felt like returning to his childhood bedroom. To a soft bed in his mother's house.

The cockpit.

He was there, of course. Settled in the chair that Curly should occupy. He didn't even turn to look at him when he entered but, as soon as the Captain sat down to his right, static as an automaton, he let out an exhalation that Curly felt stuck in his diaphragm, unable to emerge from his body.

“You're officially four years away from turning forty. How do you feel, Curly?”

He had to do something. He had to do something. He promised he would do something.
And he just spoke.

“Fucking tired.”

They didn't speak. In fact, he'd swear it was the first time in all his years of having Jimmy as co-captain that they spent a whole chunk of the day without saying a single word to each other.
The brunette was fine with that, of course. He'd never been a man of too many words. Most of the silences in the cockpit were thanks to Jimmy telling him to shut up.
Curly has always hated silence. Silence leads him to sink into his thoughts and, for some time now, the inside of his mind is not a place he likes to inhabit. He can't rest. And of the five hours allotted for rest and leisure, he spends most of it spinning around in his own head, which he does for the rest of the nineteen hours of the day when he is supposed to be focused on the task at hand.

Today, however, he was almost grateful for the silence.

He needed to think carefully, perhaps more than ever before in his entire life. Sunk in his seat, nails sliding over the blue fabric of his uniform, eyes lost in some dark corner of the room. A silence only interrupted by the occasional hiss of steam pouring from the pipes, or a whistle from Jimmy to his left. He remembers feeling genuine dread at the idea that Jimmy, thanks to years of knowing each other, would be able to read his thoughts.

«What are you going to do, Captain? How are you going to fix this?»

Does Anya want me to kill him?

«I don't think so, big man. She's not a cold-blooded killer, and neither are you. We're not talking about a bar fight. Death is inevitable. Listen, even if you were to seriously consider killing him, it's all over for you once you get home. You killed a guy in cold blood. You wanted to be judge, jury, and executioner. Are you noble enough to accept the consequences of your actions knowing that it's for the greater good? Of course not. You don't want to go to jail. Who would want to go to jail? Even if you don't end up behind bars for life, your life is ruined. You're not the hero of a fairy tale. Forget about it. You're not going to kill anyone. You're not the hitman for a criminal organization. I find it laughable that you're even considering it.»

Okay, then. I could go to the other end of the bridge: talk to him.

«And what would you talk about with him, exactly? I don't think it's a good idea to ask him if what happened is true. There's a chance he'll confront Anya. There's no point in putting her through that. Or he might not confront her. He might decide to do something worse. I know you don't think of him as a killer, but the reality is staring you in the face. Your best friend is a criminal.»

Jim's always been a troublemaker, ever since they were kids. He'd get into fights all the time in the elementary school yard, and then as adults, Curly was always the one to drag him out of bar fights. He seemed addicted to the idea of ​​some guy giving him the beating of his life. Addicted to getting into fights he couldn't win. Maybe it was a way to self-harm, under the illusion that someone else was doing it. A more "dignified" way, under his twisted lens, to continue those terrible acts he did to himself in high school.

Now as adults, Curly finds himself imitating his teenage self. When Jimmy wears a short-sleeved shirt, or when he rolls up the long sleeves of a T-shirt, the blond's eyes always go to the inside of his arms, to those pale marks where nothing grows, some more bulging than others. He remembers that, when they were in high school, he knew the exact number of scars on Jimmy's arms so he could always guess if he had hurt himself again. When the brunette found out, he began to cut over old wounds so as not to add new scars, but Curly was not an idiot: he also learned to differentiate colors. It was a bit morbid, twisted... but Grant loved him. He loved him very much. He got sick at the thought of one day not seeing him again.

From those years Jimmy still has a lump on his nose. It was broken by a punch and it never healed properly. He knows he is capable of getting into fights. Of hurting other guys. Of being rude and violent. A liar. But he never thought he'd be capable of...

«It doesn't matter what you think. It doesn't matter what you think anymore. Reality doesn't conform to your wishes. It never did.»

He couldn't kill him, the most violent of options.
He also can't talk to him to solve anything, the most innocent of options.
What is he supposed to do then? Lock him in a cryogenic capsule?

«It's a good option, if he had a lesser position. If he were the intern, instead of Daisuke. If he were in charge of cleaning the latrines, an unpleasant task you could rotate in his absence. The reality is that he's the co-captain, and you need him. If something happens to you with him locked up, there's no one else on board this ship capable of piloting it. Not Anya, not Swansea, much less Daisuke. They'd have to remove him from the capsule in that case, and God knows what kind of attitude he'd return to the world of the living with, after being forcibly locked in the capsule. It's dangerous for everyone. The idea of ​​credit deductions for misusing the pod is the least of your problems... for you. It would be a double mark on everyone's record. They'd lose even more money. They'd put their lives at risk. Plus... what if the worst happens, and everyone needs to use the pods? There are five of you, and there are only four pods. Who's left out? If Jimmy is taken out of his pod for someone else to use, he could sabotage all four. If he dies, they all die. Would you be capable of doing such a thing? Is it worth the risk? No, no. Although, of course, you could leave Jimmy in and one of the four of you stay out. You, Captain. Are you willing to go down with the ship? No, are you? You're not capable of making that sacrifice. If there's one thing this last voyage as Captain of the Tulpar has taught you, it's that you're a selfish man. But is it selfish to want to live? At the expense of others? Do you even have a spare life? You're not going to resurrect after this.»

What if they keep him in some sort of... coma? Maybe Anya has medicine to put him in an induced coma. Something stronger than the sleeping pills she gave him a few months ago.

«It's likely, but of all the options, it's the worst for her. Not only will it be deducted from her salary... which, at this point, is a severance package, not a salary, but it's also going to trigger all the possible negative aspects of locking him in the cryogenic capsule. And even if nothing bad happens and we return to Earth safely, do you think he won't turn on her? You don't know anything about biology, but after so many months drugged, do you think it wouldn't be easier to prove that than any marks left by abuse? Do you think Anya will be happy if you approach her with an idea that will lead to her going to prison when you five return home? You're terrible at making plans. Whoever promoted you to Captain should be removed from their position. Although, well, there won't be any positions when we get back to Earth. Pony Express doesn't exist anymore.»

Maybe...maybe not put him to sleep, then, but…

«What? Tie him to the stretcher? Again. You need him. He might get loose. He could ruin your lives when you get home. If you attack him, it'll just blow up in your face. You, Anya, both of you, and all of you.»

He... wants...

Curly looked away slightly. He remembers that the seat only made a soft creak. In the semi-darkness of the cockpit, Curly guessed Jimmy's profile. He knows it by heart, burned into his eyes. He could recognize him at a quick glance in a crowd, and never be wrong. His best friend didn't turn to look at him, more interested in the screen and his own thoughts. Calm. As if nothing bad had happened. As if he hadn't done anything.

Curly wants to beat him up.

«I'm sure it will help a lot.»

They've been friends since they were nine years old and they've never beaten each other up. Surely a good beating in the past would have fixed a lot of things in the present.

«A very logical vision and not at all blinded by testosterone. It seems like a perfect idea to me. Because, of course, Jimmy is in an ideal mood. I'm convinced that beating him up can't make things worse in any way, right? Go ahead, champ, beat up the guy you know is a criminal and who, should I remind you, is also your best friend. Get to work. Let's see what happens. The anticipation is killing me!»

“If you keep looking at me like that, I'm going to charge you” and it was Jimmy's voice that broke the silence of the cockpit that day. He smiled, looking at him from the side, and Curly just stopped the rhythmic movement of his hands “What are you thinking about? I can hear the buzzing of your neurons and, frankly, it's kind of annoying.”

Curly was able to return his gaze somehow. And he knew, in that moment, that all he could do was the meager consolation he offered Anya in the medical room: "I'll always keep an eye on him. He won't bother you again."

“I think... I don't know. I just think.”

He was convinced, that day, that his decision would eventually return the waters to their course.

He was wrong. For the umpteenth time.

And now there he is, descending each metal step as if his feet were sunk in cement. The palm of his right hand slides slowly over the handrail, and the air enters his lungs in short gasps, his throat narrowing to the width of a needle.

It wasn't just the wound, oh no. The wound has spread. And if he almost breaks down and sits on the steps to cry, he can't commit the cruel act of trying to imagine how she must be feeling.

Everything is worse now.

Was there anything to do on board? He considered asking her. Some pill that could harm the fetus? Although, if there was, wouldn't Anya have already decided? Perhaps the risk of dying hand in hand with the fetus is so high that the nurse doesn't want to take the risk, and how can he blame her. Choosing between the gruesome consequence or a painful death...and he...must choose. He must make a choice, now more than ever before.

Each step feels like a painful eternity, and when he makes it all the way down...he turns, glancing back at the top of the stairs. He doesn't quite know what he expects to see, but no idea comes to him like a drop from Heaven. No miraculous, unexpected thought makes its way into his mind. There's nothing but the white noise of a television with no signal, and the static of a poorly tuned radio. Nothing helps but the fear in his belly and the roar of blood in his ears.

Will he have to? Will he have to...?

What he has to do first is talk to him. He knows the kind of man he is. He knows the kind of thoughts he might form.

“Never so terrible,” he once told himself. “Never so terrible. Never so bad. Jimmy isn’t so bad. I’ve known him for years. He’s not as bad as he seems. He’s my best friend.”

A little girl crying by the stream. A mound of dirt. A call recorded by his answering machine. Smoke. His own blood on the palm of his hand. Tears on Anya’s pale cheeks.

What a fucking idiot.

And he hears laughter. Childish laughter. Youthful laughter. Adult laughter. An echo that could scare away smoke, blood, death. Guilt. They seemed honest to him when they shouted them out once. Childhood games. The smell of sweet popcorn. The starry skies of the night. The smell of cheap beer. Had all of that been real? Had none of it been real? Does he have anything left to hold on to?

Why is he so desperate to do it?

«Because you are, deep down, too good. And even deeper down, in the Mariana Trench of your soul, the reason behind all the problems in your existence: you are a coward. A damned bystander of your own life. Your inaction has led you to the unthinkable. It may be time for you to pay the price.»

Jimmy is there, arms crossed by the cockpit access doors. Nothing can be heard but Grant’s footsteps. Again, the same clack, clack, clack on the metal floor. The co-captain doesn’t raise his gaze from the floor even once. Too deep in thought to pay attention right away, or unwilling to.

“Jim,” the word slips from his lips with the ease of habit. He fears that making a wrong move, using the wrong intonation when saying a word, will throw everything away. Only then does the brunette look up. He's very used to looking back at him “I can fix this.”

Can he?

“What do you think is going to happen when we get back? Hm?” Jimmy could be cynical about the whole situation, but he must know that, at this point, there's no point in being so. If he had already committed a terrible act almost a month ago, now he fucked up big time. He remembers Anya's shattered tone of voice, and rubs his palms on the sides of his thighs, wiping away the sweat.

“We can fix this. You and I.”

Can they?
The reality is that his brain is empty. Not a single logical idea, like a fish poking its face out and breaking the surface, emerges from the dark waters of his mind. He failed to decide anything before, and now it seems like night has taken over the ocean. He sees nothing. He hears nothing. He's alone.

“All I ever hear is how great a leader you are” Jimmy smiles slightly, clicking his tongue “God, it's so annoying. But now... What do you think will happen now when we get back?”

He fears retaliation. And even if said retaliation doesn't happen, he'll fear even still being a victim of the consequences. The future without a job. Going back to the well. Having nothing and then...

He should face the consequences of his own actions. The consequences of his DECISIONS. Decisions made by him. By no one else. Not even by you. Not for anyone. You've already whitewashed his shit enough over the years. The guilt will weigh on you, but there's still something you can do.

And whose voice was that?

“We'll fix this together.”

“Everything you and I have worked for in our lives. Accomplishments, changes. None of it will matter.”

This was never HIS dream. It was YOUR dream. He just followed you. He clung to your arm, tooth and nail. Like a rabid dog.

“You've been through difficult times before. This time won't be any different. Work on it, one day at a time.”

“It's not just me, is it? You were supposed to be the one who had it all together. You said so yourself. This ship. This crew, everything that happened here...this was your responsibility, Captain. That is what you're going to hear for the rest of your life.”

You woke Jimmy up in the night, and whispered an idea in his ear? Did you take him by the hand and lead him to her door? No. No, you didn't. The inaction of the punishment falls on you, but the act itself...did you think it through? Did you execute it?

No, he didn't.
And his chest, with every passing minute, feels colder and colder.

“Or all of this can be remembered as a tragedy, despite what should have been the best efforts of their acclaimed Captain. The crew of the Tulpar was never found. No one survived to tell the tale” a furious beeping takes over the blond's ears. So loud, that the next words of that ghostly alien voice inside his brain become a little clouded. The palms of his hands sting, as if he had brought them too close to the fire, and it was already too late to pull them back “...you are standing at the top, feet in cement. I get it now... Right?”

Curly was about to breathe out a "right" back, but the word got stuck in his throat.
Jimmy then approaches him, with the diligent smile he's seen him flash a dozen times already. In the past, that simple gesture would cheer him up for the rest of the week, helping him to more easily overlook any bad time Jimmy gave him. Now...however, the hand he stops on his arm causes Curly nothing more than a violent shiver. The brunette smiles, on his face, but even that smile seems foreign to him. As if he were rehearsing for a role in a play.

As if he were smiling at someone else.

“I'll take care of this.”

The brunette takes a step back...but Curly shoots his right hand forward. He catches him by the wrist, and draws a gasp of surprise from the brunette's insides, stopping him in place. Jimmy's green eyes widen, and when he looks at Grant...it's like he's looking at him for the first time. Like he's a violent stranger. One of those men from the bars he used to go to pick fights in. Someone he's just now realizing will be able to hurt him especially easily.

I'm sure having conversations with him has always paid off for you.

Again.

How much longer are you going to let him manipulate you as he pleases, twisting the very words you say to him?

That voice isn't his, but he knows it.

Trying to torment you by using your private thoughts against you as weapons. He's sharpened your fears, your doubts, and your unfulfilled dreams and he's throwing them back at you in the form of stabs. Arrows. Punches. And here you stand. And he'll walk away. As if nothing had happened. As if he hadn't done anything.

It's a voice smarter than him. Braver than him. It circles him and guides him, like Athena to Odysseus, and points forward with her index finger when deciding where to hit the arrow. Anxious. She squeezes his shoulders.

Don't take the long way back home.

“You're not going to fix anything, Jimmy.”

“What?”

“You heard me perfectly” the brown-haired man tries to get away from his grip, but the blond's hand is heavy as lead and doesn't allow his wrist to move in any direction “you're not going to fix anything. There's nothing you can do now... except take responsibility for your actions.”

“What are you...?”

“You're right about one thing: I'll feel guilty. Guilt is going to eat away at me for a long time when we get back home...and I accept that. It's only fair. But you?” something unknown until that moment flashes in Jimmy's eyes. A different glow. Curly doesn't know what to call it “you'll have to accept the consequences of your actions and bow your head. Whatever happens when we get back to Earth isn't up to you. And it's not up to me either.”

«It depends on Anya» is implied in the air «and the choice she makes.»

“Curly…”

“I think I've had enough, you know?” a tired smile stretches across the Captain's lips, and Jimmy's pupils shrink “...you're my best friend, Jimmy, but I've had enough.”

He lets go, and Jimmy pulls his hand away as if Curly had forced him to submerge his arm, up to the elbow, in boiling water. He even breathes heavily, and steps back a step.

“Wait for me in the cockpit” the blond spits “there's something I have to do first.”

He steps back and, again, it was like when he approached: nothing can be heard but his own footsteps, echoing from the cockpit access to the stairs. Now, instead of going down, he goes up, and his feet feel lighter. His chest lighter. He shouldn't. The situation is still terrible. Dark. But at least... maybe he can...

The door to the medical room is closed.

“Anya?” The blond knocks on the heavy metal door with his knuckles. He lowers his hand, tries to open it... and his blood freezes in his veins when he notices that it is locked. She wouldn't... she wouldn't do something terrible, right? She wouldn't... “Anya? Are you in there?”

Hearing footsteps on the other side of the door brings his soul back to his body. An engine that seems broken and suddenly begins to purr again. He exhales even in relief, letting his shoulders fall, passing into the medical room as soon as the door opens for him.

“Anya, I have to...” He lowers his gaze to the nurse's face, and his heart is crushed. Someone stabbed him treacherously.

The black-haired woman has a red face, swollen eyes and a wound on her lower lip. Thin, probably self-made from biting herself. Her cheeks wet with tears, and a general trembling, hunched over herself. Curly reaches out a hand towards her, wanting to hug her the same way he did when she told him what Jimmy did to her, about a month ago. But she moves away, moving towards the stretcher.

“Anya? Are you okay?”

“Okay? Of course. Nothing bad happened. Everything is okay.”

“Listen...” the blond, embarrassed, turns around so he can close the door a little. Why on earth does he think of asking her if she's okay? Of course she's not okay “I already talked to Jimmy, he...”

“Did you?”

“Yes... well, something like that. I...”

“You didn't try too hard, did you?” Anya's voice slides into his ears like burning bile. Curly feels his tongue dry. He wants to deny it. Explain. But... she looks at him, and he can't hold her gaze “...he told you everything you wanted to hear.”

It's not true. But how to explain? How...?

“Anya...”

“And now you're calm. Everything will be okay. Your little friend will fix things. Because it's the best you can do in a situation like this, right? Pretend nothing bad happened, and expect the rest of us to do the same.”

“That's not fair” he slides a hand through his blond hair. He can't have the cynicism to blame her for anything. She's a victim. He smiles heavily and snorts. Where to start? “Anya, you can't just expect...”

“Expect what? Can't I expect you to do your job?”

“I do my job!”

“Of course, and look how well it turned out! You told me yourself, didn't you? You've been working as Captain for years and you've never had a single argument on board... Because there were never any problems, or because you always made sure to turn a deaf ear?” Anya then gets off the stretcher, carefully approaching him. He's taller. Stronger. Her superior. And yet... seeing her approach him like that pushes him back “it's always been much easier to demand from your crew a similar behavior to yours. Look at the bigger picture, right? Whatever it takes to prevent Captain Curly from growing a pair and act as expected of him.”

“...that's not true, Anya. No...” the last thing he wants is to insult her, or make her feel bad, but he feels like he's about to lose his temper. So he walks away a couple more steps. Haven't he thought as much as he could about all the possible options? Haven't he thought about everything that could go wrong in each and every one of them?

«Thought is not the same as act.»

“You have no idea how difficult my job is, or how to handle this situation.”

“Oh no? I don’t?” Anya smiles, putting a hand to her chest “I'm so sorry, Curly. How could I have thought of that? You're right... I may be pregnant against my will right now, but I'm not taking into account that that means you have to... do your fucking job. Holy crap, I'm so sorry. Do you need someone to talk to?”

“You think this is easy, Anya?” he turns, approaching him, but Anya doesn't move from her spot “in my situation you wouldn't have any idea how to react correctly either. What is the correct way? No, no. Do you think captains are given an instruction manual on what to do in every hypothetical event that can happen on board a ship? No. You should know better than anyone what kind of disaster these trips are. Besides, from what position do you judge me? You couldn't possibly know what to do next. You don't have the proper training to...”

“Forget that crap. This has nothing to do with job qualifications or psychiatric evaluations, Curly. This isn't about us as Pony Express employees. I wasn't the victim of a workplace accident, why don't you understand me? Don't you believe me? You didn't try to defend him when I told you then. You believed me. And if you believed me... it's because a part of you already knew what that man is capable of, even if it was a tiny, remote part of your subconscious. You knew it. You could suspect it. And now you can do something about it. Curly, you have to...”

“Anya, I'm going to have to ask you to stop right now.”

He needs silence. He needs to think, before he loses his mind completely. Anya covers her face with her hands, and Curly fights back an almost primal impulse to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. She has to listen to him. She has to stop.

«Can you blame her? She's pregnant, Grant. Pregnant. You've heard the horror of a wanted pregnancy. She's pregnant by force. She should be worse off. She should have to break the safety on the gun and run in to kill Jimmy, and you stand by and watch. Like always. By what right would you force her to stop? Maybe she does expect you to kill him. To lock him up somewhere. To kill him. You decided to sanctify Anya of your own free will. This woman has more balls than you.»

“You're not going to tell me what to do. You're not going to advise me, or guide me. I haven't had any disputes in the past as Captain, that's true. It may have been because no one really had a bad time, or because I convinced myself that nothing was going on. Either way...if I'm here, right now, in this position, it means that I am capable of taking care of whatever happens in here, and that's what I'm going to do. My way, Anya. I'm going to take care of this. I already told you. You don't need to lecture me, nor do I care how you stop to judge my work style, you know why? Because, at the end of the day, I'm your damn Captain. That's what I am.”

The blond brings the palm of his right hand to his chest. His throat hurts a little.
Has he ever spoken so airily with a subordinate? Almost, almost. But with her...

Anya turns around. Her brown eyes have always looked at him with concern. With sweetness. With grace, when he's able to make her laugh. With frustration, more times than he would like.
That time, when he looks into her eyes... he doesn't see something familiar.
He doesn't see anything.

“I'm sorry” Anya's voice is just a whisper. Her face remains inert. But she looks into his eyes. It's more than he could say about himself “I thought you were Grant.”

Grant.

An invisible knife sinks into the pit of his stomach. An invisible bullet pierces his chest and blood floods, drop by drop, his thoracic cavity.
Anya doesn't need a Captain. An alien and indifferent superior. They already have enough. Anya needed him.

And he wasn't able to say anything.
He wasn't able to do anything.
He failed her.

“And what would you do, Anya?” inhaling takes him longer than normal. He could explode into a thousand pieces.

“It doesn't matter what I would do, I'm not the Captain, am I? And I know nothing about leading people. In fact, I'm underqualified in the middle of outer space... you said it. I know what everyone on this ship thinks of me.”

“Anya...” Curly drops his eyebrows. He meets her gaze, but Anya ignores him. She waves her hands. Her legs. She seems to be itching for the chance to get out of there. But where to, if there's nowhere to run?

“A nurse who failed eight times to get into medical school. A cheap copy of a psychology major. I know that very well, Captain. You know what else I know? That there's nothing I can do against this company! Pony Express will be gone by the time we get home! And even if I did, even if it was there when we got back... What good will the report do? They're just going to dock my salary, and if the salary is already crap... as if I wanted that guy to sneak into my room to... to...”

How can she think that way about herself?
Hell, what does med school matter? Curly's seen it firsthand. He knows the passion she has for learning. The interest in every little thing. And even if she failed med school over and over again, that doesn't mean anything about her as... Anya. No.

She's a good advisor. A good friend. She's sweet and caring and honest. She genuinely cares about him. By extension, she genuinely cares about (almost) everyone aboard the Tulpar. She would make fantastic medical personnel on Earth. But she's there because she's had bad luck. Bad luck doesn't qualify you.

Also... she's kind to everyone, but who's looking after her? There's no one to perform psychological tests on her. There's no one on board to treat her wounds. She's trapped inside a monolith with no one to help her. To assist her. No one but him, on the scale of powers.

And he hasn't been able to lend her a helping hand.

“Anya, listen to me...”

“NO. You” she points at him with her index finger, then brings her thumb to her chest “listen to me. You've talked enough. I know you can't kill him. You're not going to lock him up anywhere. You're not going to give me anything to defend myself with, either. We've got eight months left on this journey. You told me that yourself, a few days ago. Eight months. The only thing I'd like is to be able to travel as safely as possible for the remaining eight months. That's all I care about. I won't have a life when I get home, so... I'd love to keep the problems to a minimum. You told me you'd help me, and now you're here giving me the eyes of a kicked dog trying to make me put myself in your shoes. There's nothing you can do for me. I'm screwed and I'm very clear about that. Don't make things worse for me, wanting to put yourself in the role of... that I have no idea how difficult your life is. Not now, God” and she covers her face with both hands, turning her back on him “just go, Curly. Get out of here. Leave me alone. Please, leave me alone.”

“Anya...” he takes a step towards her, but she doesn't seem to like the gesture at all.

“LEAVE ME ALONE!”

Grant raises his eyebrows. His hand remains, static, superimposed in the void.
But he can't just leave her alone. He has to help her. He has to... explain. He didn't just listen to Jimmy's words. How can she think something like that?

«And how can she not? A month ago, when she told you what happened, you took the same stance. It's too late to make arrangements. You could make an alphabetical list of all the ideas you've had about what to do with Jimmy. Kill him, beat him up, drug him to sleep, lock him in a capsule. Hell, at this point you only need to add the option of lobotomizing your best friend. But it doesn't matter if you do it or not, do you know why? Because any option you would have taken, no matter how bad the consequences were, for her... it would have been enough. You would have proven your worth. You would have shown her that you are capable of taking care of the shit that rots under your nose, instead of looking the other way.»

He needs to... make her listen to him.

«Of course. Hold Anya by force, after she told you no. Let's see how well it works out for you.»

Curly drops his hand. He no longer feels the agonizing beeping that attacked him a while before, when he left the medical room after learning that Anya had just told Jimmy the truth about her pregnancy.

No. Now everything is... silent, as if an entity had taken charge of the rattles of the machinery. As if the Tulpar, all of it, was holding its breath, attentive to its next move. A beast of metal and fuel, crouching. It has all the time in the world... but, sooner rather than later, it's going to jump.

Grant doesn't suspect how much.

He goes down the stairs towards the cockpit, now two at a time. Lighter on his legs. Not much lighter on his chest. He has to talk to Jimmy as soon as possible, and make things clear to him. Not a talk, but an intervention. He can't make him angry either, with eight months to go before returning home. Good heavens... if all goes well, he'll never get on a spaceship again in his entire life.

He takes three steps away from the end of the stairs...when everything around him goes dark.

It's sudden. So sudden, that Grant barely realizes what's happening when the first jolt sends him sprawling to the ground, letting out a cry more of surprise than pain. All the regular lights had gone out, turning on the flashing red emergency lights. The crash-imminent alarm went off. He can recognize the sound of each different type of alarm, and the numbers of the most common errors on the part of the autopilot. That sound was the worst of all, since it was a mix. One of his instructors used to call that siren "Gabriel's trumpet", the last thing you hear before doomsday looms over you.

Not only was the autopilot failing, but they were headed straight for their doom.

The walls, floor, and ceiling shake violently. He crawls a few inches before he is able to stand up, letting out a cough and running, almost head first, until he is able to stand upright.
With all the regular lights off and the red lights flickering heavily in the darkness, he feels like he is plunging down a staircase to hell as he runs to the cockpit.

“Jimmy!” The hallway grows darker and darker. The screens in the cockpit flash red. Bold black letters. A repeated sentence.

BRACE FOR IMPACT

BRACE FOR IMPACT

BRACE FOR IMPACT

WARNING

BRACE FOR IMPACT

BRACE FOR IMPACT

BRACE FOR IMPACT

Jimmy sits there. His head in his hands. A first impulse makes Curly want to grab him by the arms and lift him into the air. He could, but he doesn't. He can't. The world is about to end.

“Jim, tell me you didn't do it,” the blond's voice breaks into a thousand pieces, barely audible beneath the roar of the alarms. He grabs him by the arms, but the brown-haired man never takes his hands off his head. “I should have... I didn't... What the hell did you do!?”

But Jimmy never looks up from the ground. He never takes his hands off his head. Grant runs and almost trips over his own feet as he dives into the cockpit, flooded by the red lights... and the crash.

Curly holds on with both hands to the controls of his chair, the left one, while an expansion of heat completely burns the fabric of the arms of his uniform, and all the hair on his face. He screams…but his hands clench tightly against the wheel, he gasps and pulls hard to the right. He pulls, and pulls, and pulls. They won't be able to avoid all the fragments but…

«Don't let them die, Captain.»

“CURLY!” Jimmy's scream is barely drowned out by the roar of the fire that takes over the cockpit from above. A tongue that descends with force and looms over them. The blond feels the burning of the fire on his flesh and chest but, when Jimmy tries to grab him and pull him away from the controls, Grant pushes him back hard, away from the flames. The brown-haired man falls backwards and Curly closes the door, returning at full speed to the controls.

The roar of the alarm is louder now, and the fire takes over the entire cabin.

Curly was able to see the first spark, a failure of the dashboard that was possible to monitor as long as the steering commands were not overly demanded. The temperature gauges were shaking back and forth, an overheating warning so severe that the scent of burning rubber was the last of the memories his nose could have given him.
The material of the rudder was still holding together as Curly clung to it. Each metal plate was heating up until it glowed an unrepeatable shade of red, and all around him, bright yellow tongues fought to take him from this plane.

Oxygen is one of the fastest burning gases, yet the advance of the fire felt like meeting the presence of a furious deity, some kind of judge at the gates of hell who would make him pay for every one of his sins.

The screens were torn.

It was as if millions of invisible blades were slicing through his skin, eager, desperate to reach the bone. Grant screams, his arms shaking, but he doesn't take his hands off the rudder, yanking hard to the right and then up.

A more modern ship would have magnetic mechanisms designed to repel the course of a body containing a percentage of its mass and weight, but the Tulpar was not designed to be manned automatically: all its mechanisms are manual. The autopilot was installed after the fact, by force.

Each command has it engraved in its brain with such precision that even when the engine covers are consumed, Curly can see the manual internal cooling mechanism. A mechanism that can only be used once, and from which no damage can be recovered, isolating the passage of fire and stopping the heating of the rest of the systems.

If the material degrades enough, there is no way to isolate them again. If the pressure inside changed in the slightest, if the joints collapsed due to an uncontrollable thermal fluctuation, the Tulpar would end up being nothing more than a crushed beer can in the middle of the vacuum.

He clenched his jaw, as he felt that he still had it. Soon, his face disappeared. The flesh of his cheeks and lips filled with an incomparable white, his arms trembled, but he did not take his hands off the helm as he felt how the flesh stuck to a red-hot iron handle.

He never needed the helm to his right to move. His chair was the important one. His.

Now he sees it. Now he…

“What an idiot I was, James!” he screams. Tears evaporate from his eyes, gritting his teeth. The fabric melts off his legs, his hair falls out. Another explosion inflates his left with synthetic foam, and he feels the flesh of his leg being consumed. He cries, and pushes all the strength he has left forward, screaming like a newborn baby. “She was right, now I see it! Now I see you!” the surroundings of his eyes darken little by little. That was it. He no longer feels the rudder between his fingers. He has no fingers to hold on to it with. He no longer feels his legs either, he is only aware of a creaking, of an incredibly more fragile material. He can smell his own body cooking: water, flesh, hair, everything coming to him. He has never felt so alive. The cleansing with fire that would take place at the end of time “I SHOULD HAVE KILLED YOU WHEN I HAD THE CHANCE!”

Maybe that has always been the only way out for him, the only avenue of vindication. Death.

A furious beep.
And only then, silence.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

There is a calendar on the furniture in the break room. When he carefully opens the door, it is the first thing the light from the hallway illuminates. DECEMBER, 1966. That particular day, the thirteenth, marked with a red marker. Grant doesn't notice it at first, letting go of the doorknob. He reaches out with his left hand and turns on the light…

“SURPRISE!”

The blond lets out a scream, bringing his right hand to his chest. In the small break room at Pony Express headquarters, the table is surrounded by five people. Evelynn, from accounting. Alexander, who used to be his co-captain before he was placed as a consultant. Elliot, a fellow pilot in charge of shorter distance trips. Miguel, a mechanical consultant. And his best friend, Jimmy. They inflated balloons and placed streamers of various colors between the window and on the furniture, as well as a ribbon with the letters forming a huge HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

“What is this?” The blond smiled from ear to ear, rubbing his chest, now with more curiosity than fear. They all wore their cone-shaped birthday hats.

“And what is it going to be? An intervention?” Jimmy leans forward slightly, sitting at the table, but he smiles.

“Happy birthday, Curly!” Alex and the other four clap and whistle, as if the blond has just returned from a successful mission. But he barely wrinkles his nose, looking back at the calendar.

“It's true...”

“Did you forget your own birthday?” the only woman in the group crosses her arms, leaning forward slightly “Read the warning signs!”

“Ugh, let's not talk about that now” Miguel points with his hand to the cabinet under the calendar, with several bags and packages “Your gifts! Open them now if you want.”

“No, no! Open them when you get home” Elliot cuts them off, drawing a cross with both arms for a second “I'm sure my gift is rubbish compared to the rest.”

“Don't say that...I appreciate all this very much, really” Curly enters, closing the door behind him and sighing carefully “although...I don't know if it's allowed to do this during work hours.”

“The supervisor left two hours ago, Curly. Who cares?” Jimmy doesn't erase his smile, waving his hands gracefully over the table “look at the crap we made you.”

“Don't call it crap” Eve scolds him, but the brunette rolls his eyes for a second.

“Be logical, accountant. This must taste like horse shit.”

In the center of the table there is a pink cake. It looks as plastic and colored with artificial components as it can be. So much so that it seems straight out of the props of a children's cartoon. But Curly smiles, leaving a hand on one of Jimmy's shoulders.

“Thank you...” and then he raises his gaze, contemplating the other four “thank you all, really. You didn't have to do this.”

“Of course! You're our friend” Miguel approaches the kitchenette in the break room, taking a knife and thin, disposable plastic plates “come on, let's feast...”

Evelynn places Curly's own birthday hat on him, and everyone is soon chatting. The mechanic cuts a slice of cake for each of them, and plates are passed around. Grant finds it easy to get lost in the bubble of other people's conversations... until his gaze falls on the face of his best friend, both of them with spoons in hand. Jimmy holds his gaze, eventually clicking his tongue.

“We should have some,” the blond smiles, and his best friend rolls his eyes.

“Why? It's mediocre at best. Obviously.”

“Sometimes you can only have subpar stuff. That's what makes really good stuff... well, good, right?”

“Why bother?”

“Hey...” The smile on the blond's lips turns tired then, lowering the volume of his voice. His gaze wanders, beyond the break room. It covers the entire building. He looks down at it all ruefully, as if his eye were the moon that night. “…we all tried to escape. It didn’t work for any of us. I’ve thought many times, “Is this what peace feels like?” “And is it good enough?”” He waits for a classic Jimmy comment, cutting him off in the middle of his rant. The comment, for better or worse, never comes. “…if I’m being honest, it’s certainly not the best. So all I can do is try to make my life one that I don’t have to run away from all the time. Sometimes I’ll get promoted…buy a house, fall in love. But other times I’ll just eat a fucking horrible cake with my friend. Right now, that sounds pretty brilliant, doesn’t it?”

Jimmy doesn’t respond, but after a few seconds, he takes his hands off the table and leans slightly toward him. Toward his face. Curly stands rooted to the spot, frozen, as if someone had suddenly shot him in the head. A sniper with little respect for other people’s birthdays. The brown-haired man smells of cigarette smoke and aftershave…and he hears him inhale sharply.

“Curly, are you drunk?”

“Not yet,” and he moves his head slightly forward. “Will you do the honors, Jimmy?”

The brown-haired man mutters something under his breath, but obeys. The two take their respective plates and a bit of cake. He brings it to his mouth and savors it…before his eyes fill with tears, forcing himself to swallow. This gesture does not go unnoticed by anyone, and the four burst into laughter, all with pink frosting stains on the corners of their lips.

Smiling, Curly turns to look at Jimmy who, like him, looks like he just took a considerable bite out of a decomposing corpse.

“This tastes like shit,” the brown-haired man spits, and Curly smiles from ear to ear.

“You were right.”

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AUGUST 20, 1969

THE PRESENT

He's just coming to from the anesthesia. His whole face hurts, but…it's a different kind of pain. The morphine has gone back into place, he can see the new IV tube attached to his arm through the hole left in the bandages for his eye. Slowly he starts to focus, and then, for the first time in almost a year…he does it.

Blinks.

His chest heaves, almost as if he were the victim of a heart attack. He does it again: he blinks. And blinks and again. Blinks. Blinks. The tug on his skin is somewhat annoying, but it's here... his world darkens at will, and he feels something else: tears. They are few, but they flow again.
He blinks. It's a sensation he'll never forget.

“Everything went as well as it could, Mr. Curly. I already spoke to the surgeon...” Sandra, the family doctor who has been with him and Anya since they were admitted, is in charge of adjusting his bandages better. He feels a gentle pressure and lets out a moan of pain, but feeling that pain also encourages him to the point of satiety. The day before, after noon, he had his first reconstructive surgery. Now he has a nose, a new eyelid, thin cheeks, a jaw, and lips. Thin, very thin... but he has them. He feels them, barely moving his mouth and pressing that skin together. Teeth covered, mouth completely closed.

He doesn't think anyone can understand how he feels. No one who hasn't been through a situation like his.

“Does your eyelid feel a little heavy? Like it's a little... sticky?” Curly nods carefully, and the doctor nods too “it's normal. Like every muscle in the body, it will have to be trained again. Once the healing stage is over, we can move on to the more complex reconstruction surgeries. You still have a lot of time left in the hospital, Mr. Curly. But it's... a hopeful outlook” the blond nods again.

«But that's not your nose. It's not your eyelid. Those are not your lips, nor the skin you were born with. With each passing day, after each reconstruction, you'll be more and more like a rag doll, made from more than one scrap. The piece of a shirt. The stuffing of another coat.»

A man of Theseus.

“I'll let you rest... it's going to bother you for several days, okay? Maybe it even stings, but… it’s normal, try not to…” Sandra raises her eyebrows and stops mid-sentence. Grant doesn’t need to be a genius to know that she was about to tell him “Try not to scratch”, a very complicated task for him…still “…anyway. Rest. The nurse will wake you up to bring you lunch. With your lips covered by surgery, you will need help to eat, okay?” Curly nods one last time and, with an animated smile, Sandra leaves.

And Curly drops his gaze on the television.

They focused on a live reporter, talking about the activities organized by a recreational center for the last weeks of those summer vacations. He sees children running through inflatable games filled with water, as well as mothers and fathers taking care of them, and one or another grandparent. When they return to the news set, next to the reporter on the table an image opens with a logo that Curly has seen to the point of disgust.

The Pony Express logo.
Grant shifts, forcing himself to pay attention.

“…as we told you last week, the Pony Express scandal has escalated and, despite multiple attempts by the company’s lawyers to get the judge to dismiss the case, the relevance of the event has escalated to the Supreme Court of Justice. There have been few cases of private relevance that escalate to such a point, but the Tulpar ship declared lost has raised a question of national importance. For more than two decades now, the laws passed on the treatment of human personnel in outer space have been placed under the eye of public criticism, and recent events have been the straw that broke the camel’s back for more than one member of the committees in charge of fighting for the rights of space workers. As you well know, of the three survivors of the Tulpar ship, the last cargo ship under the Pony Express brand, two are still hospitalized with confidential evaluations. The trial will have to wait until both parties are discharged. To discuss the matter, we invited a lawyer to the set today, Mr…”

The voice of the news anchor fades over his head. Curly pushes down on his left stump hard, pressing the button to call the nurses' room. It doesn't take long before one of them appears in a hurry. Of course. He knows that they live waiting for the poor ex-Captain to suffer a failure of…any organ, from the brain to the bladder.

“What do you need, Mr. Curly?” The nurse approaches him carefully, and the man uses his barely recovered ability to blink in the direction of the table, where the brain wave transmitter awaits. The woman nods and carefully removes the bandages around his head, leaving a space for the electrode. She presses it and turns on the machine, managing to get the words out quickly.

“WATCH-THE-TV” she obeys, turning to watch the interview that was taking place with the lawyer “THE-TRIAL-AGAINST-PONY-EXPRESS-WILL-GO-TO-THE-SUPREME-COURT.”

“What a miracle” he sees her raise her eyebrows. Surely more than one of the health personnel feared that all that scandal would come to nothing. It wouldn't be the first time.

“PLEASE-TELL-ANYA” if he could smile at that moment, he would “SHE'S-IN-ROOM-TWENTY.”

“Miss Musume? Of course” the smile that he can't muster is sketched by her, nodding once “I'm sure she'll be very happy to know that outside of this hospital things are moving in a favorable direction. Do you need anything else?”

“NO.”

He stays very still, while the nurse removes the electrode from his head and turns off the transmitter, leaving. Curly drops his gaze to the TV screen again, trying to pay attention to the interview.

He doesn't know much about law, but what he does know is that the sentences handed down by the Supreme Court can't be appealed. Which is good, in part... if things take a positive turn for them. But if they end up deciding something false... for all parties... then they wouldn't be able to seek justice again. He tries to settle down better on the mattress... but the nurse returns in record time, somewhat agitated.

“Mr. Curly, I'm very sorry, but your request will have to wait a while.” The former captain blinks in her direction, and the nurse takes a little more air before continuing to speak. “Miss Musume has just gone into labor.”