Chapter One: Necessary Repairs

The second ship was identical to the first. Identical in gloom, in layout and in suffering. While it looked more less intact there were bodies on this ship as well. Engineer corpses strew here and there. Some intact, others torn apart and some that looked as though they had been melted. All of the bodies where the exosuit had been compromised had rotten down to bone or desiccated to scentless dry husks that seemed so much smaller, so much more insignificant than the giant she had ran from and left to fight the closest thing to a child she would ever have.

The pain killer was beginning to wear off as Elizabeth dragged David's headless body through the corridors of the ship, his head in the heavy duffle bag that was slung over her shoulder. The sting and pull in her stomach was the first thing that registered, not helped by the heavy blow from one of Weyland's goons. The slow trickle of warm fluid she had felt had formed a crust on her stomach and down one leg, crumbling a little more with each step.

After what felt like a life time she reached the door way to the control room her whole body burned. A hot sweat coated her skin as she unceremoniously dropped David's limp body. Panting and her limbs shaking, Elizabeth unzipped the bag. David's serenely smiling features quickly turned to a frown that came close to mimicking concern.

"How do I open the door?" she asked, her breath coming hard and fast and her mild Scottish accent shining through a little harder in her pain.

"The panel on the left," he said, his voice calm as ever, though a little faster than she had heard him speak. "Run your finger down the slight groove." She followed his instructions, swaying and with an unsteady hand. She made a few mistakes, but he stayed ever patient with her, probably used to bumbling humans by now. Eventually she got the door open and placed his head carefully inside the large round room before looking to the impossible weight that was the rest of him. "Doctor Shaw?" Her eyes drifted to him, her focus slipping for a moment blurring the room. She wiped at her eyes and found them wet. "I understand that you have been though many traumatic events in last few days, but we really must hurry. Who knows how long the Engineer will be held off by the creature you removed from yourself. Just a few more feet and then a simple necessary repair and I will be able to properly care for your wounds and get you to safety."

It must have been the shear amount of pain killers she had taken, or perhaps she was simply too tired to properly out think him, but what he said made sense. She needed him and she needed him whole. She was sure it was a terrible, awful idea to give the android what it wanted, but she simply couldn't see another way in the here and now. So she stumbled towards his immobile form and reached down, pushing through the pain, the exhaustion, the soul weary ache that told her to just give in and lie down and die.

She grabbed his collar with both hands and began to drag again. Against her will, a cry of pain escaped her, a sob wracking her body. But she wouldn't give up. Even as she could not stop herself from crying loud ugly tears under the gaze of the android. Every step she took, every inch she dragged him hurt more and bit harder than the last. Eventually she had him inside the room and with one last pull, she shoved him against the wall, his body almost sitting up but not quite.

She collapsed by his side, damn near the last of her will power and strength worn out. Still crying, she curled up into a ball. David's voice reached her, speaking guttural language she didn't understand. She heard the doors shut and saw the pleasant green lights come on, illuminating the room, but she didn't care. Pain was all that mattered to her. Her body throbbed with it and her mind ached as though it had been set alight.

"Doctor Shaw, please, just a little more." David again, that lilting pleasantly ambiguous voice. She had grown to hate it and love it in equal amounts. Right now it was the most beautiful thing she could have heard. Using his shirt, she pulled herself up. Her legs had gone numb and she doubted their integrity enough to not even try to use them. She pulled herself into his lap and while still trying to control herself leaned over to grab her bag and by extension David's head. The angle was awkward and the harsh pull on her abdominal wound made her cry out again. But her fingers closed on the strap of her bag and she pulled it toward her, David's unnaturally blue eyes on her and his jaw clenched with something that could have been apprehension on a real human.

"Tell me what to do," she said, her voice shaky but determined and hard. David's eyes flicked to his body and then back.

"In the neck there should be something resembling a spinal column, but made of a titanium alloy and multiple wires running where the spinal cord should be." Focus on the task, focus on the voice. Focus on anything but how much it hurts. After taking a deep breath, she pulled herself up a little further into his lap and leaned forward against his eerily still chest. Tubes and wires in a grim mockery of human biology, even down to the white blood that David had assured her wasn't corrosive or toxic unless ingested in large quantities.

"I see it."

"Good. The wires should all be different colours. The first step is to reconnect them with the automatic soldering iron. Matching colours obviously. There should be some considerable give in the wires to allow work to be done, don't be afraid to pull them further out." She took hold of the wires and pulled, gently teasing them from whatever they were coiled around, her hand already coated in the grim white substance. About a foot of wire came free before she met any real resistance. She didn't pull them any further, didn't want to cause even more damage that she didn't have the strength to fix. She picked up David's head again and placed it in her lap, the android carefully avoiding eye contact with her. Perhaps embarrassment was another emotion he had been programmed to mimic, or perhaps he had some understanding of how inappropriate their positioning was. Either way she was too worn down to care.

The automatic soldering iron was in the bag as well. The devise was only really useful for repairs like this. The old fashioned method was still a more all round way of fixing things, but wire snaps like this were apparently common enough for it to become popular. The look of it reminded his of eyelash curlers. She fixed one end of the wire, the one protruding from David's head to the instrument, then did the same with the end uncoiling from his body before clamping down. There was a hiss as the tool did its job.

David's body spasmed. He balance fled her and with a yelp she fell. Only for strong arms to fly up and catch her. Long and delicate fingers gripped her waist and jerked her back into place with painful speed. And then froze. She sat for a moment, panting and trying to catch her breath from the shock before looking down to David's head with a half hearted frown. A single grim thread now connecting his to his body, the androids brown knitted together for a moment in something that looked like concentration coupled with mild confusion.

"Oh dear," he said eventually and as evenly as always. "I'm afraid I am unable to let go. I apologise Doctor Shaw. Perhaps a wire or two more will restore more of my bodily control." She gave him a nod before reaching up to wipe at her eyes with the back of her arm. The surface of her space suit rough and itching as she did. The more wires she reconnected, the more gruesome he began to look, like a parody of a nearly headless corpse, tendons and blood vessels somehow still intact. His legs twitched once or twice beneath her, responding to his renewed connection, but his hands never let go of her.

His face twitched as if in pain with the fusion of the last wire and she jumped at the sight of it. Not expecting something so base, so purely animal in origin, on something synthetic. "Are you alright?" she asked, worry pushing down her own agony and tiredness. He blinked a few times before putting on that serene smile once again. If it was meant to reassure her, it failed.

"Quite alright Doctor Shaw. I have just been made aware of the full extent of my damage, I am running a proper diagnostic now. Until that is complete there is little more to do other than to properly attach my head. If you would please hold me closer to my neck I will begin to reel in the wiring. Once that it done you should be able to simply click me back into place with one sharp twist." Like breaking a neck in reverse, she thought.

Her arms barely responding to her anymore and heavy like lead, she let the automatic soldering iron fall from her fingers. It clanged loud and echoing against the metallic floor. It took all that was left of her to lift his head from her lap and raise it. Perhaps sensing that she couldn't keep going much longer, David began to pull in his mockery of a spinal cord, a clicking whir sounding from his chest as she struggled to play her part in this grim mimicry of medical attention.

Eventually his head was resting on his neck and the whirring stopped. She turned his head slightly right, metal scraping on metal until she felt it click down, one false vertebrae finding its way to connect to the next. "Just one sharp turn and you can rest." She nodded, David's eyes on her with their usual impossible placidity. The fringe of synthetic skin that edged his neck was pushed up by the collar of his suit the only real clue that David was a fake. It distracted her for a moment, somehow seeming more alarming, more unreal than the wires and the white blood.

"Doctor Shaw?" She blinked and shook her head at the sound of his voice.

"Sorry," she said, her voice on the verge of breaking. Another smile, another attempt to reassure as she held his head in place.

"That's quite alright. If you please," he trailed off, glancing down to her arms.

A deep breath, one final push, this was it. After this she could stop for a moment, simply sit, sleep. Cry and bleed in the darkness without worry. The last of her strength went into the last sharp twist. There was a clunk rather than a crack and David twitched again, jerking her closer to him. She didn't fight the movement. Instead she slumped against him, limp like a rag doll. He remained as still as a corpse for a moment, his hands still on her waist as she cried, curling around him like a child around their mother.

Then one hand gracefully moved to encircle her back, the other hooking under her legs. She felt him rise smoothly to his feet and the distinctive bob of his walk, but she didn't care. He could rip her limb from limb right now and she would simply be glad that it was over. Instead he came to a stop, said something in the language of the Engineers and then took a seat.

One arm still holding her steady against his chest, he leaned forward and removed his hand from her legs. Green flashed before her eyes and she hid from it, burying her face him and squeezing her eyes shut. Sounds and lights invaded her senses and she wished that she could shout and scream at them until they went away, but all she could do was hiccup and cling to the android for any small comfort she could snatch.

Tiredness swarmed over her like a colony of ants. Claiming her bite by bite, washing through her and meeting no resistance. Her muscles loosened, her grip on David slackening as unconsciousness lurked on the edges of her mind, even as David's grip on her shifted to compensate for her own fleeing.

Her eyes snapped open as he picked her up bridal style once more and rose to his feet before carefully but quickly placing her back into the pilots chair. It was hard and uncomfortable, but it may as well be a feather bed for all she cared.

The android crouched at her knees, looking up to her earnestly, examining what he saw. The green light was still present, but dim, casting much of David's face in shadow.

"It seems the combination of painkillers and adrenalin are taking their toll on you, Doctor Shaw," he said, one hand giving her a small and not quite impersonal pat on the arm. "You'll be safe here while I go and salvage what I can from Miss Vickers' life raft. I won't tell you to rest. The conditions within this room will ensure that you simply sleep. I will attend your wounds when I return with medical equipment."

She wanted to stop him as he stood and turned his back to her. She wanted to cry out to not be left alone, not here, anywhere but here. He strode towards the door as the edges of her vision faded from green to black and began to close in. He hovered at the door frame once it had slid open before looking back to her over his shoulder, the fringe of fake skin twisting unnaturally as he did so.

"Thank you for administering this repair work Doctor Shaw. I assure you I will repay you in kind."

Elizabeth barely heard his words. The darkness of sleep hard earned overwhelmed her.


A/N Oh I'm going to enjoy this one. I've never poked at a dynamic like this before. Yes this will be heavily David/Doc, but after reading most of the fanfictions in this section I noticed something strange. There really isn't much about the Engineers culture. I intend to prod at this, as well as the unique set up that's been handed to me.

Also, just a warning. The start of this assumes a very slightly AU end to the movie. Consider this story to start while the Engineer is harbouring that beautiful parasite and before the ship with David and the good Doctor on board takes off.

Oh, and I don't have much of an eye for typos. If you spot one let me know and I'll fix it.