Chapter Text
The Tulpar is barely a blip on their stretched out airspace. Curly half-muses over the possibility that no ATC ever notices them, idly tracing the nickel edge of his revolver. He hunkers down in the cockpit and pretends he’s doing something that can change the odds. He has a feeling the others are relieved to play along.
It takes over a week before the broken VHF transceiver gives a weak chirp. He stares at it for a long moment, watching as it fizzles out. His fingers tighten unconsciously around the gun, and he’s powerless again, only able to wait. He could’ve changed things, long ago, with Jimmy.
It doesn’t matter now. No one can change the odds here.
He hunkers down in the cockpit, stifling an almost hysterical laugh (most because that would hurt-) and grabs for the CMU. Another beat of silence, before a flicker of green text starts to just barely show up.
Curly stares at the broken pixels until his eyes turn red, but he only realises he’s crying when the tears sting his healing skin.
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He tells the crew right away, this time. He carefully pronounces every syllable that grates his throat, ignoring Anya’s death-glare. A few raspy words with no room for misinterpretation. It’s easier to let them do what they want with it- that way he has no chance of playing with their hopes.
They all react as expected, of course. Curly watches their face morph with a twinge of fondness. Anya’s the only one who seems perturbed rather than hopeful. Daisuke smiles widely, his eyes ecstatic. “That means that really was a satellite! Woah, Swansea, how’d you call that?”
“Easier to believe than it being a meteor, considering most of space was an empty void until we turned it into the shithole.” Swansea says, voice flat. “Now close your damn mouth before you swallow a fly.”
Daisuke, predictably takes the bait, and Anya’s shoulders relax at the familiar chatter. Curly reminds himself to thank Swansea later. Or, at the very least, stop encouraging his mentee to play tetris with him instead of doing fuel checks.
Anya turns her eyes to him, her gaze warm.
“What do we do now?” She asks, and Curly’s hands move on their own in his eagerness, albeit with a few misspellings.
“We prepare for a rescue, hopefully.”
“...What do we say about our lack of a co-captain?”
“…Okay, so we prepare for a rescue and pretend he fell through an A-I-R-lock.”
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This time, they do end up changing their routine. Curly joins, and then very quickly leaves Swansea and Daisuke to their maintenance, after nearly being electrocuted when trying to fix a circuit.
“Never said I was a mechanic.” He grumbles to Anya, once they’d both been tasked with avoiding the wrath of their HR department.
“…If you’re implying that Swansea’s a plumber, do it quietly enough that he doesn’t hear you.”
“What? No, a M-E-C-H-A-N-I-C. Read the room, A.” He quickly flashes a half-smile before Anya can start over-apologising. It’s a habit she’s been steadily unlearning, but he still finds himself guilty every time she hesitates.
“Would be a lot easier to figure that out if you didn’t just waltz in here and start complaining.” She says, instead.
“Not True. I haven’t exactly been able to W-A-L-T-Z for a while.” He retorts, keeping his face as deadpan as possible, if only to watch Anya get caught off guard before stifling a laugh.
“Just finish that incident report.” She sighs, but she doesn’t sound tired, just amused.
Overhead, Daisuke’s soft laughter echoes from down the hall. It’s oddly soothing.
Curly didn’t have siblings close to his own age growing up, but he liked to think that it would’ve been something close to this.
They’re both just about done with the reports by the time the screen in the lounge shows a flickering sunset. Curly puts away the last form, resolutely ignoring the empty paper lined with the words Sentinel Event Report. They’d both barely gotten past the first lines before feeling sick, Anya going unusually silent.
(…intended to disclose and describe an unexpected event that results in the death of an employee , or serious temporary or permanent injury (physical or psychological) of an employee…)
He can’t begin to even start, really. He doesn’t even know how Jimmy died. Swansea hadn’t said much, except to explain his reasoning. That Jimmy was a liability that he could take them all down, that he didn’t really know the guy would go down so easily.
That he made it quick.
No, he doesn’t know. And selfishly, he doesn’t want to know.
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[OBJECTIVE: GIVE CURLY HIS FUCKING MEDS]
Anya jolts awake from where she’d dozed off in the lounge. She knew she’d forgotten something. For a while, apparently— she can’t remember the last time Curly actually took any pain relief.
Grouchily, she shoves Daisuke’s arm away from where it rests on her shoulder. He predictably doesn’t stir, only mumbling incomprehensibly in his sleep about his Neopets collection.
She watches him enviously for a moment before getting up. She’s barely had a a proper night of sleep these past months, waking up at every tiny sound no matter how much she told her brain to stop thinking about it.
She shoves the thought away to the back of her mind, and steps forward into the hallway. Curly was likely in the cockpit, a fallen charm from his crutch resting outside the door. He’d complained when Daisuke kept adding them on, and plastering stickers everywhere, but she had to admit that his decorations made it a lot more easy to find any of the crew.
“Curly?” She calls out, quickly receiving a half-hearted wave from behind the pilot’s chair.
He’s still staring at the forms, re-reading them to make sure each report lines up.
“I don’t want any of us getting in trouble. Trouble with the law, that is. I’m responsible for the crew, so I can’t let anyone here take the fall.” — It’s what he said when she’d asked him earlier why he kept going over them.
Anya gets it, she really does. A bitter part of her, though, wishes that he’d chosen to be this vigilant a lot earlier.
She reads over his shoulder amicably for a while, before clearing her throat.
“You’re due for some more pain meds.”
Curly only glances at her for a second before shaking his head.
“No thanks, A. I’m not in pain.”
“…I’m a nurse, Curly. That won’t work on me.” Especially because burns hurt like a bitch, she thinks with a wince.
He finally looks up properly, and gives her a half-smile.
“It’s night time— I think? You should go back to sleep. But thank you.”
Anya crosses her arms and nudges him lightly. It feels a lot like her trainee days, before Curly’s promotion made him a lot more distant from the rest of them.
“Don’t change the subject,” She scolds lightly, brandishing the pill bottle in her hands. “I’m not sleeping unless you take them right now, Captain.”
“Using the rank card against me?” He asks, bemusedly, but his hands shake even as he jokes, and he startles as the rattling of the container echoes around the room.
“Why are you so reluctant to take them?”
“I just told you.”
And, okay, maybe Anya’s getting a little more than frustrated right now.
“Do you want to be pain? It that— is that it? I didn’t ever believe you crashed the ship but right now you seem to be completely okay with letting us be a crewmate down.” She stares at him, at the crinkles under his eyes. Even with the scarred skin, she still thinks of him as the one with the most power here. “…Like it or not, you’re the captain, and you’re the only one with the training for what to do here.” And your co-captain is rotting away somewhere we don’t know.
Curly’s shoulders drop, and he suddenly seems exhausted.
“It’s not that-” He tells her, before his fingers shake so badly that he needs to pause before he can continue. “I’m not great with taking them. P-I-L-L-S, I mean.”
He might as well have screamed it in her face, because as she watches him deliberately sign out the word instead of the alternatives— a sudden realisation hits her.
She remembers it all too vividly- bile rising in her throat as Curly wailed when she pried open his jaw. How she’d pressed the pills into his hands instead, ignoring the fear as his arm brushed past her, because she couldn’t take seeing a crewmate in so much pain and—
Anya knows, firsthand, that Jimmy’s idea of care was violent. He wasn’t gentle with her, how could she expect him to be with Curly?
(I hope this hurts.)
But he was. Or maybe it was the crash— he just waited until his victims were more vulnerable.
“Oh.” She says softly. She watches Curly swallow heavily, still clutching at the paperwork. “Well— I could try grinding them down…or something?”
He nods, his gaze softening in relief.
“I guess.” He shrugs noncommittally. His expression is warm, when he looks back at her. “You really should go back to sleep, though. We can talk tomorrow.” Even with his tone, it’s clear she isn’t getting any more out of him tonight.
Anya lets herself give a soft smile back. “Only if you rest, too.”
“I’m just doing some damage reports.”
“That… sounds worse than watching paint dry. You and Swansea should try and fix some of it up, less paperwork.”
“I could probably make it better than it was before the crash.” Curly replies, eyes scrunched in thought, before his gaze lingers on her contemplatively.
“Anyone could. Pony Express loves to cut corners.” She says dryly.
(Hey, why do you think they didn’t put locks in the sleeping quarters? —)
“You sure you’re okay, though?” She asks, already turning to leave.
“I’m fine. The pain helps me focus.”
His fingers clench, the warped skin must hurt.
She wants to tell him how unhealthy that is. No, she wants to tell him a lot of things. Instead, she opens the door to step out.
(Pain is how we know we’re alive.)
It’s something they must both know for sure.