A/N: I've been meaning to write an Alien fanfiction for a while, and as Kane is one of my favourites from the movie, this is what came out of it: a little missing scene where he gets to find out what happened to him after the events in the Derelict. I'm not sure if it would particularly fit into the movie timeline but here we go...
Warning to anyone concerned: True to the style/themes of the movie, the attack of the facehugger is described in the way of a sexual assault/rape (as you might have guessed from the title. I wasn't sure whether 'Succubus' or 'Incubus' was more appropriate, considering the gender of the facehugger is never established, if it even has one, but I went with Succubus as the victim is a man)
Succubus
"Steady now, easy."
As soon as he tries to move, he is pushed down again. His back hits against something hard. Shockwaves of pain shoot through him. With a groan, Kane cracks open one eye, only for white light to burst into his face. Inch by inch, he cranes his head away from the horrible glare. The world is swarming. Somewhere in the bright, revolving haze, there are muffled sounds of high-pitched beeping and deep whirring.
It is as though he has been dropped into a strange, unknown land. His memory refuses to come back to him in anything but vague, taunting snatches. Each time he grasps at them, they retreat further away. An eerie sense of amnesia smothers his every thought.
Tentatively, he feels along the uncomfortable surface he has awoken upon. He tries to push himself up but his limbs are like lead. It takes a few attempts, each time getting harder than the last. When he finally emerges to a sitting position, his mind rewards him with a worrying lurch. The room totters and jerks unstably. He exhales slowly, then collapses into a fit of coughing as his chest constricts. It makes his pain even worse - everything inside and outside of him is consumed in an agonising, feverish heat.
"Welcome back." That same voice floats out of the throbbing illumination. He rubs at his sore eyes and looks up. Forms finally start to appear out of the void. Consoles and screens flicker. Harsh, electrical lights beam down. He is sitting on a stretcher in the middle of a medical bay, rid of everything but his underwear. A dull panic tugs at his heart.
Someone is standing by the desk across the sterile space. He recognises Ash, calmly peering into a microscope and adjusting the dials. He does not glance up.
"What happened to me?" Kane tries to ask. Nothing comes out. It feels like he has swallowed a hundred razor-sharp daggers. He coughs, wincing.
"What happened to me?" he attempts again. This time, it comes out as a raspy whisper.
"How are you feeling?" Ash questions, still intent on his study.
"Awful. Everything aches. My head, my throat, my chest -"
"Well, that is to be expected." Ash drags himself away from his work and emotionlessly comes to stand before Kane. "Let's have a look at you."
He angles Kane's head up and searches his eyes. Without a word, he makes him open his mouth and peers in. Kane flinches away in mild horror as he inserts a spatula to push down his tongue. Ash ignores his discomfort and examines his neck. His probing, pressing fingers cause pain to spark through his nerves. "Why does it hurt so much there?" he breathes.
Ash does not reply. He moves to his chest, bending to listen to his heartbeat. For a moment, he hesitates. It is no more than a second, but it sends chills down Kane's spine. "What is it?" he asks.
Ash shakes his head, standing again. "It is nothing. You have sustained no major physical damage. Only heavy bruising around the throat and neck."
"What?" Kane raises a hand to his throat, touching it gingerly. Ash returns to his microscope. "Are you going to tell me what happened?"
"What do you remember?"
He pauses. He tries to think back to before waking in the white, aseptic cocoon of this room. But he can recall only darkness. Vague words and hazy images appear then vanish. It is as though he has been reborn, casting away all attachments to his previous life. His pulse thuds sickeningly at the disorientating feeling. "I remember nothing," he whispers.
"Do you know why we are here?"
Kane is going to shake his head, but then glances at one of the screens on the wall. It unhinges a trapped memory. He is sitting in the cockpit with blurred figures, listening to garbled static. "There was a distress signal," he says.
"Well, it turned out it wasn't quite so simple as that but essentially, yes, there was a distress signal. You, Dallas and Lambert left to investigate it and find its precise source. It led to a derelict, crashed ship. That's where we lost you."
"What?"
"Your video links failed as you went inside. But, from what Dallas told us afterwards, what you discovered was quite remarkable. You stumbled across an ancient fossil of some sort of extraterrestrial creature, sitting upon what he described as a disc-like control panel. Nearby was a hole leading downwards into another chamber. You volunteered to see what was there, and they lowered you in. Dallas said you told them it was full of leathery eggs, sustained in a kind of stasis."
Kane has been sitting quietly but at this, he cannot stay silent. "Why don't I remember any of this?" he asks with a shiver. He thought it might ease his worry having Ash orientate him again, yet it is making it worse. Having someone dictate actions he has no recollection of is as disturbing as it is bizarre. It feels like he is listening to someone else's life. And he doesn't like where it is going. But he is powerless to change anything. "I can't even picture it happening to me -"
"When you approached an egg, something moved inside it," Ash continues, regardless. "Organic life of some description. It opened up and it would seem, curious about it, you moved closer. Dallas and Lambert lost contact with you after that. But when they found you, you had an organism attached to you."
Kane goes cold. "An organism? How?"
"It broke through your visor."
"Oh God -"
"Dallas and I tried to remove it from you, but its grip was so strong, we feared we would do more damage to you," Ash speaks relentlessly, ignoring Kane's rising panic. "We attempted to cut it off but its defence mechanism was very powerful - it bled acid from any incision. We had no choice but to leave it. And eventually, it detached itself, with none of our efforts."
Kane takes a shuddering breath, trying to keep himself together. Horrifying images of what Ash is describing repeat over and over in his mind. His skin is crawling, like that thing is still on him. "It just - detached?" he asks. "Just like that? Why? Did it die?"
"I have some theories. I am still studying it -"
"You still have it? You did not get rid of it?"
Ash finally turns back to him. He frowns, as if that is a ridiculous question. "Of course not. This is a prime opportunity to research an alien life form. It has to be taken home so tests can be run on it."
The notion seems preposterous, but he doesn't have the strength to argue with Ash. He looks around the room, as if the creature will jump out at him again. The idea of it being somewhere nearby makes him shudder. "I want to see it," he says. Ash raises an eyebrow.
"I don't know -"
"No, I want to see it. It cannot be any worse than what I am imagining."
Ash still hesitates, but eventually, he leaves his microscope and moves over to a locked storage cupboard. Kane haltingly pushes himself up from the medical table. His legs tremble and threaten to buckle. Even taking a few steps over to Ash's desk is a challenge - it is like learning to walk all over again. He steadies himself against the unit, the short excursion robbing him of breath and making him wheeze and cough. He rubs his sore throat tenderly.
In the blank console screen before him, he finally gets a glimpse of himself. The sight is not a comforting one. His face is a ghostly ashen white, with deep, black circles stamped around his eyes. Hair, still damp with sweat, clings to his forehead. His lips are split at the corners, cracked and bloody. And around his neck is that glaring, ugly, purple and blue bruise. He looks as though they have dug him up from a grave.
He doesn't realise Ash has returned until he lays a sealed, glass box down on the counter. He starts to unlatch it. With every unlocked corner, Kane begins to regret his decision. He would have rather gone without seeing how traumatised he looks. Maybe it would be best if he didn't see the creature -
It is too late now though. Ash slides off the lid. Before he can stop himself, Kane peers in. He immediately draws back in horror.
Long, spindly legs grope out of the container. The thing has been placed on its back, revealing a gaping hole in its underside. A mass of red, dripping muscle and sinew is evidence of Ash's examinations. Even as he looks at it, it seems to throb and pulsate, as if it is still alive. Or maybe that is just his heart pounding in his head. The thought of that creature attached to him brings bile to his throat. He wants to turn away but cannot stop staring.
It is infinitely worse than anything he could have imagined. "My god," he whispers. "That was on my face?"
Ash nods. He carefully extracts the animal from the box and lays it on the table. It has a resemblance to a hard-shelled crab or spider, curling in on itself now it is dead. Ash pulls apart the legs again to expose the glistening, scarlet gash. "How did I survive that?" Kane is not sure if he wants to know. But he has come too far now. There is no going back from what he has seen.
"That is an interesting question," Ash says. "Dallas and I pondered over it for some time. It seemed implausible that you could be alive, but you still maintained a regular breathing pattern. We put you through the scanner, which revealed a fascinating answer."
Ash taps some buttons and a hazy snapshot appears on the screen above him. Kane frowns as he tries to make it out. The image seems to show a dark tube against a backdrop of red shapes. "When the organism attached itself to you," Ash explains. "It wrapped its tail tight around your throat, starving you of oxygen. This rendered you unconscious and would have killed you, had it not fed you air itself."
Kane swallows. It makes no sense to him. None of it does. "I don't understand -" he says helplessly. "Why did it - How?"
"For such a small creature, it has a multitude of remarkable facets available to it." Ash retrieves some tweezers and eases open the beast's fleshy lips. He delves inside and pulls out a thick, wet shaft. Kane's nausea returns. "This oxygen tube was forced down your throat."
The breath stops in Kane's lungs. The world suddenly seems to close in around him, and all he can feel is the agonising pain in his chest. He stumbles away from the creature. He wants to be as far away from it as possible.
He catches himself on the bed before his knees buckle. For a horrifying moment, he thinks he is going to vomit. Nothing comes up, only another fit of coughing that sends searing fire all the way through him. He cannot breathe, cannot even manage a single gasp.
His air-ways are tying themselves in knots. It feels like thing is still inside of him, choking him, violating him. He wants to tear out his throat just to rid the thought of it. Sickening ideas of what he has been put through flash before him. He cannot shake the awful sensation that he has been held down and raped.
Ash is not making it any easier. His voice continues in a reverent drone, in awe of the organism. "It is quite remarkable," he is saying. "It injected just the right amount of acid to break through your visor, but without damaging you. You are four or more times its size and yet it overpowered you in seconds. You had no chance against it. There was no choice but to submit - for hours, your very existence depended on it."
He cannot help thinking that he should not still be alive. That creature - its violent assault on his throat, his forced asphyxiation, how he had been knocked out cold... It doesn't make any sense. Why had it attacked him so fiercely and then simply dropped off, shrivelled and died? The endless stream of questions, each one more confounding than the last, is just as insufferable as his pain and humiliation.
He has to calm down. His frantic heartbeat is making the aching in his chest even worse. It feels as though all his stress and anguish has bundled itself into a tight ball, pushing to erupt through his ribcage. He closes his eyes and tries to concentrate on his breathing. Ash rambles on, but somehow he manages to block him out. One, two, three, four...
Gradually, the worst of his anxiety ebbs away. It is over now, he tells himself again and again. That thing is dead, and he is still alive. Ash has said he has sustained no major physical damage. It is over. It is over.
He slowly manages to right himself from the doubled-over position he has curled into. Everything in the room goes back to where it should be. His panicked shakes fade. For the first time since awaking, a shred of normality returns.
Ash, as if oblivious to his fright, is absorbed again in examining the creature, leaning over it with his set of tweezers. Kane turns away and pulls himself onto the stretcher. If he tries hard enough, he can almost pretend that thing is not behind him, and the past hours never happened. Almost.
"Put it away," he says. "I don't want to see it anymore."
He hears Ash obeying, depositing the animal back into its container. As soon as the lid clicks down, he breathes a sigh of relief.
"Shall I contact the others?" Ash asks. He circles back round to his front, still acting the aloof officer. Kane hopes he will get more sympathy from the rest of the crew. He nods.
"Yes." He attempts a smile. "And then I think I will get something to eat."
A/N: Feedback is always appreciated :)
To anon: Thanks for the info on the facehuggers! The detailed biology of the stages of the different xenomorphs' development is an interesting subject, and I may explore it in future stories. Anyways, thanks for pointing it out :)