oh blue, if only you knew
SUMMARY: Once upon a time, I think, a hero saved a spaceship.
But that was a long time ago. Now, I only save myself.
It’s night shift on the Skeld but no one is sleeping. The emergency alarm is blaring, lighting the corridors with that strobing red light that used to give me headaches. The crew’s been running wild, trying to figure out what’s going on; by now, they’ve figured out all the malfunctions have got to be originating from one initial error, but no one has the slightest clue what that first error might be.
I’ve spent the last three hours hanging out in the vent system. It’s more spacious in here than you’d think, and no one else has the access code to get inside. It’s been my go-to hiding spot whenever I’ve needed some time alone. Or like, if I need to sleep and a certain someone starts snoring in the bunks. (I won’t name names but he always dresses in a colour that rhymes with dead, if you know what I mean.)
Anyway. Point is, I’m avoiding the chaos by hanging out in the vents as per usual, overlooking one of the corridors to keep an eye on things.
As I wait, I tell myself a story:
Once upon a time, there was a spaceship. Big and bold, daring to traverse systems never before witnessed by mortal eyes. Crewed by a brave set of heroes.
(Or at least, that’s how they thought of themselves.)
Once upon a time, this brave ship fell into a little bit of trouble. A reactor malfunction, or something like that. Nothing a little panic couldn’t solve. Really not a big deal, in the end. A hero saved the day, same as every other story.
A crewmember clad in orange stomps passed my hiding place, wrench in one hand. I watch with interest as she disappears into Admin.
Once upon a time, I think, a hero saved a spaceship.
But that was a long time ago. Now, I only save myself.
#
It’s every bit as chaotic in Admin as anywhere else on the ship: blaring sirens, blinking lights--plus, like, five little mini crewmates hiding under the central table. (Honestly? I’d forgotten they’d be here.)
As I slide up to the vent’s grill, I can see the three crewmates spread out across the room like players taking their positions: a yellow suit hunches over the number pad, furiously tapping to turn the oxygenation systems back on; our friend in orange hulks in the doorway, and--
Well, there you are: dressed in your familiar blue suit, knee deep in a tangle of wires, as trapped as a fly in a web. Not that you know it, yet. You’re so busy sorting through the mess that you haven’t even noticed Orange enter the room, and you certainly haven’t noticed that wrench in Orange’s hand, and--holy fuck, how do you not notice Orange use the wrench to smash open Yellow’s helmet and--
Actually? It’s probably better that you miss that whole thing. It’s pretty gruesome. Not even time for Yellow to scream. Lots of blood and brain matter.
Gross.
If the minis under the table saw any of that (and god, I sure hope they didn’t), they’re wise enough to keep their mouths shut. Their silence saves them; Orange ignores them entirely in favour of going after the trapped fly next.
That’s you, remember? The trapped fly is you.
So that’s the situation.
You: in the wires.
Orange: with the wrench.
Minis: under the table.
Me: in the vent.
There’s only one way this thing can play out.
#
“She’s dead,” you say, too stunned for anything beyond stating the obvious.
“As a doorknob,” I agree.
“You killed her.”
“With my own two hands,” I say, even though my hands are more like claws. Close enough.
“She was going to kill me.”
“With that very wrench, yup.”
And this is the part where you lift up your helmet to puke. I pat your back helpfully until you’re done, and then remind you to seal the lid again after because the oxygenator still hasn’t been fixed and asphyxiation is not anyone’s favourite pastime. You look across the room at the keypad while trying not to look at Yellow’s body underneath.
“I should fix that,” you say.
“Okay.”
#
You take the number pad, I finish the wires. Not that I actually care about the wiring, exactly, but the job’s important to you. Plus, it’s a lot easier to complete since I know which wire was causing the problem.
“How did you do that so fast?” you ask, unable to hide your astonishment.
I shrug. “The green wire needed a quick patch, is all.”
You continue staring at me like you’re seeing me for the first time--which is hilarious if you think about it. Because you’re not seeing my face at all, right? Just the vague shadows of a face half-hidden behind the glass window of my helmet, and the shape of a bipedal humanoid in a purple suit.
I believe this is the point when it occurs to you that you’ve never seen the person who inhabits the purple suit outside of that suit in like… months, at least. Which means the person inside the purple suit now might no longer be the person who chose this suit way back when the Skeld was first leaving on its mission.
Oh Blue, I think, if only you knew.
It’s a sign of your awesomeness that you manage to swallow down the fear. None of that oh god I’m gonna die crap. Hardly even a quaver to your voice when you ask, “What do you want with me?”
What a goddamn difficult question. What do I want with you? What don’t I want, you should be asking. I could give you a thousand different answers and they’d all be correct in their own ways.
What do I want with you?
To save you. Hug you. Be honest with you. Lie to you. Lie with you.
I want to stop you, change you. Or stop from changing you.
But I’ve taken too long to answer, or maybe you never actually expected anything to come from your question; you’re already moving on to more important matters. “Do you know what’s going on? What the real problem is with the ship?”
You have no idea how much I am wishing, at this precise moment, that I did not. Because I came here for you, not the ship. Except I choose this moment right here to glance down at the minis hiding under the table, and they’re all staring up at me like the worshippers of some god, and--damn it all, turns out this is a truth I cannot hide from you.
#
I’ve always thought the reactor was intimidating. Just look at it and you’ll know what I mean. It’s this towering container filled with glowing, radioactive energy that… well, okay, I never actually paid enough attention to the science to know exactly how this thing drives a ship, but the fact that it uses radioactive energy to do so? That says more than enough, in my own humble opinion.
Anyway, staring up at this huge glowing reactor core is enough to set your knees knocking on a good day. I can practically hear your teeth chattering away inside that helmet of yours. And you don’t even know the worst of it.
You don’t even know what that reactor can do to you, if you let it.
Your teeth are chattering? I don’t even have teeth anymore. Just a nice and friendly mouthful of bone shards. So like… enjoy those teeth while they last.
“It’s in meltdown,” I tell you, as if the core’s ominous red warning lights aren’t enough of an indicator. “We have maybe thirty seconds to shut this off before the whole ship is toast.”
You take this information quite well, given the circumstances. Square your shoulders, march right up to the hand scanner, remove your glove.
And--look. I’m not a coward, okay? There’s plenty proof of that by now. But I don’t want to do this. I don’t want you to do this. God only knows where the others are--we saw absolutely no one else on the way from Admin, and it occurs to me now that Orange may have killed the others before getting to Yellow. We could be the only two people left on this ship capable of stopping the meltdown. If it weren’t for those minis hiding under the table, I’d consider whether it better to just give up on the Skeld and--I don’t know. Dying would be better than--
But again, the minis. I never signed up for killing those kids. Turns out I’ll do anything to save them.
So I walk over to the second scanner and pull off my own glove.
(You see my claw, I know you do. You see the radiation burns on my skin. You wonder what you might find if you could look beneath my helmet.)
“Are you ready?” you ask.
No. No, I am most certainly not ready. Except I don’t have time to not be ready. So I let you count down from three. I lower my claw to the scanner. The panel blinks in recognition.
#
And there’s this one moment when it’s just us, you know? Blue and Purple, crewmate and imposter, human and inhuman. Everything that’s the same about us and everything that’s different, I sense it all. Like, I can feel it all through my burned skin and right down to my warped bones.
I remember with astonishing clarity exactly what it feels like to be standing in your shoes. I remember what you think of me, the ominous stranger at your side. I remember how your hand is sweating when you put it down on your scanner, how you look up at the reactor core as the meltdown halts and the system reboots, how you notice the crack on the core’s container just a millisecond before the energy ripples out and surrounds you.
I’m watching it happen even as I’m remembering it happen, and isn’t that a trippy head game? Because you black out, like, almost immediately. Which means you don’t know what the energy looks like when it twists around your body and sends you shooting back several weeks into the past. But I do know, now. Because the second time I go through this event, I’m watching from across the room. And it doesn’t really help to know that it doesn’t hurt (thanks to the radiation burning away your nerve endings) because I also know how it feels (like, on the inside where your heart used to be).
And also, I know what you’re going to do to Purple--the original Purple, RIP buddy--before you take his suit and become me. But let’s not think about that.
#
The minis are still under the table when I return. They look up at me silently, like they’re asking for permission to come out. And who am I to tell them no?
“Good job,” I tell them, after shepherding them past the cooling bodies still on the Admin floor. “Now, I’m gonna tell you kids a secret just in case the alarms ever start going again, okay?”
They gather around me, all so trusting and hopeful. Like they already know everything I have and will do to save them.
So I gesture to the grill in the wall and I tell them the access code to make it open. Because the vents are more spacious than you’d think, and they sure make a damn good spot to hide.