I just love everything about this fic. I don't even care.

No hangover could compete with the sheer pain pounding through my head. I felt as though my skull would split at any moment. My hand found my way to my face and clutched my temples. It was the only thing holding me together.

I felt hyperaware of every sound, even the slightest noise. The hum of the ship was no longer a comforting presence; instead, it sounded like a roar. Some sorts of machines pumped and hissed by my ears. An occasional beep was like lightning through my head. Even my own stuttering gasps for breath threatened to empty my churning stomach as the pain swelled.

I winced against someone saying my name. The tentative voice belonged to Kei, my abused mind informed me. I felt her hand press to my shoulder as she continued in a whisper. "I'm going to give you some pain medication, even if you don't deserve it, idiot."

I'd done something to upset her, I guessed, not that I could remember what. My memories felt like a puzzle with pieces missing.

As I forced my breathing to slow, I worked through anything I could recall that might have invoked her ire. I had missed breakfast. And now I was getting drugs in a noisy room, so the infirmary. If I was waking up in the infirmary, something had gone wrong. I was injured or sick.

"Did I pass out?" I breathed. With how exhausted I'd felt, I'd expected something like that might happen. In confirmation, Kei tugged at my ear.

"Of course you did," she hissed. "That's what happens when you fill an enclosed space with an asphyxiant. You almost died, Yama."

By brows pinched against my palm. "I did what?"

She heaved a sigh. "You don't remember. Of course you don't. You opened the valve on that ethylene canister and just left it open. The whole room reeked of the stuff, and you didn't even notice. God, Yama, I know the captain said you were out of it, but I thought you were more careful than that."

My hand flew from my face as I jerked upright. I ignored the rush of pain in my head as I grabbed Kei by the arms. "Ethylene?" I gasped. "No, no, it couldn't have been ethylene. I'm always careful with it. I swear! I never even used it today! I would know!"

She winced, either against my shouting or my crushing grip. With my chest heaving, I released her, my eye darting back and forth as I tried to recall ever touching the ethylene tank. I didn't even want the damn thing, but I needed it with the odd effects the dark matter had on the plants. I would never have been careless with it, not after what happened with the greenhouse.

Kei's hands appeared on my shoulders again, pressing me back. "Whoa there. Take it easy," she said. "Don't go hyperventilating on me. We just got you conscious again."

As she settled me back against the pillows, I limited myself to deep, harsh breaths through my nose until I felt steady enough to not slur my syllables. "I'm not the one who turned on the gas," I said. "It must have been someone else."

Kei patted my head with a soft sigh. "That's not possible, Yama. The tank valve was completely open. The whole thing would have emptied in about twenty minutes. Harlock said he didn't smell any gas when he went in, and unless you left at some point after that-"

"But someone locked the door!" I spluttered. "It was locked from the inside. I remember. The light was red, and I wouldn't have locked it."

She stared at me, baffled. "Yama, you're not making any sense. If the door was locked from the inside, you would have been in there when the other person did it, and they would have passed out too. Besides, the door was unlocked when I found you. You were just lying in front of it. I don't think you remember too well. You were completely deprived of oxygen."

I tried to explain, but words caught in my throat. I had no explanation. I hadn't done this to myself. Of course not. But Kei was right. I wasn't making any sense. Maybe I was remembering it wrong, what little I could remember. But I was always so careful with ethylene.

"But there was someone else there," I whispered, rubbing my fingers over my eye. "I swear there was someone there when I passed out."

"You were sleep deprived and asphyxiating," Kei murmured. "It's understandable that something could go wrong. We won't give you any grief for it. But the captain has ordered you to start taking these." She smacked something plastic onto my bedside table. I turned a wary eye that way, knowing what I would see but not wanting to.

I didn't need to read the handwritten label to know they were sleeping pills. "Captain says he won't let you return to your usual ship duties until you're well-rested," Kei explained. "That's his way of saying he's worried you'll get yourself hurt again." She offered a sympathetic smile, but I couldn't force myself to return the gesture.

"I'll try them out," I muttered. No nightmares assaulted me when I was half-dead from ethylene, so I hoped the drugs would have the same effect. "What time is it?" I asked as I took them from the table, holding the bottle over my eye. The lights overhead turned orange through it. "Did I miss lunch?"

"Afraid so, but dinner will be served in a couple hours, and we can go sneak a snack before then. I expected you to be out much longer with all that gas in your system, but what was it? Four hours? You sure didn't sleep long."

"Yeah," I sighed. "I never do."

I was happy to escape the infirmary until I started walking the halls. Everyone had at least one question for me, and their eyes all pinned me with curiosity. To escape them, I went back to my lab, but I found that far worse than any interrogation from my crewmates. The plants were an absolute mess. They'd been given too much ethylene too fast, and with that on top of their already-confused cycle, I doubted they would survive much longer. My heart sank as I read over my charts. I would need to start almost from scratch. Today was not my day.

Then again, I couldn't recall any day that had been.

More people tried to question me during dinner, but I didn't have the energy or patience. I dealt with their curious glances in silence and answered questions with blinks or nods. Harlock was nowhere to be found.

After I slipped away from the galley, I considered taking him up on that offer for drinks. But now that I had the pills, well, maybe that wasn't a good idea. Returning to my lab again was an option, but just ending the day early sounded preferable. I couldn't bring myself to deal with tossing out any of those plants tonight, not after all the work I put into raising them. Instead, I went and grabbed my long-cooled sheets from the dryer.

Returning to my room, I knocked back one of the pills and dropped myself face-first into a freshly-made bed. Maybe if I thought about things other than the dream, I would sleep well tonight. All I needed to do was remember something better, something relaxing.

Instead, my thoughts wandered like a bee buzzing aimlessly through my head. By the time sleep took over, my head was muddled with smears of thoughts. And once again, I found myself on the bridge, scared and sweating.

I went through the usual roll call. Kei nervous, Yattaran contemplative, and Harlock difficult to read. They gave their lines as though this was a play I watched each night. My lines came to me with ease, though I couldn't recall them beforehand.

"I'll get it!" I yelled on cue, so desperate to prove myself, to do something other than sit there. "Let me run down there!"

I wished, for once, Harlock might say no, or Kei might argue against it fast enough. As always, my wishes did nothing. Once again, I went down the lift to the main hall. Once again, I ran to the energy control room. And once again, fear and despair pooled in my gut. Something was coming, something horrible. I couldn't scream or move away from it. I was a prisoner in my dreams, forced to see them through to the end.

And the end came with those white gloves on the red valves.

I remembered.

I wished I hadn't.

An explosion of blinding heat erupted from the pipes. I couldn't see anything but white, but I could feel everything. Shards of red-hot metal jammed through my shoulder as my back found the wall. More of the metal ate into my left cheek and eye.

I waited to scream, to wake up in my room as always.

This wasn't right. The explosion was supposed to kill the dream just as it killed my form within it. I found myself able to open my working eye. The room was ablaze around me, the shattered metal melting in front of me. I couldn't see my left side, but my attempts to move confirmed my worst fear. Pain tore through my shoulder at the action, the metal pinning me to the wall. Instead of a scream, I only managed a whimpered cry. Along with my shoulder, the left side of my face was melting. As I clawed away the pain, the fingertips of my gloves burned through. Blistered red fingertips shone in the firelight, but I couldn't feel that pain. The rest was too much. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think.

"H-help," I choked. "Oh God, please help." Even with the room melting around me, my tears still felt hot as they rolled down my cheek. Only my right eye would cry for me.

I managed to press my fingers to the communicator in my ear, but I couldn't find the right words. I could only feel the pain from my wounds, the way hot air hissed freely between my teeth and my gored cheek. "Please," I whispered in what was left of my bruised voice. "I don't… I can't… Captain."

I felt myself relaxing against the wall, as though I could fall into it, away from all of this. There wouldn't be any more pain if I just let go. I urged myself to give in, but my traitorous body continued fighting.

"I don't…want to die," I murmured into the crackling air. "Please…"

I was so hot I felt cold. My entire body was numb with it, that sickening cold. I thought, maybe, I heard a door open, but it was all so far away.

I didn't scream when I woke. I jolted upright in silence. The warmth of tears stained my cheek along with the usual sweat. My gaze drifted toward my bedside clock to find I was awake just in time for breakfast. I felt a laugh bubbling in my throat, but it came out as a wheeze.

At least I didn't feel as tired as usual as I went through my new morning routine. Even if I literally had to go through hellfire, I'd been allowed a full-night's sleep. I couldn't say the sleeping pills didn't work.

Breakfast was standard, everyone grumbling "morning" around the rims of their coffee mugs. I felt myself answering them with a nod, my mind elsewhere. Despite getting onto me for missing breakfast, Harlock wasn't to be found there either. I rarely saw him in the galley at all.

As I stepped onto the bridge, I heard his voice from the throne. "How did you sleep?"

I bit my tongue against complete honesty. He didn't need to know I bolted out of bed every night like a little kid with nightmares. "I slept," I answered instead.

His eye appraised me as I stepped into view. I looked back, my arms crossed. This was all his fault. "Is that a bad thing?" he asked.

I gave a soft huff, turning my head away. "No, it's fine."

"You know you don't have to hide anything from me."

"I'm not." But I couldn't look at him. I'd always had skill at lying through my teeth, but Harlock could see through me in an instant. I wasn't sure why I bothered.

"Very well. Take your station as you like."

Once I took my seat, things were normal. Miime lounged in someone else's seat, staring at the stars ahead of us and sipping a bottle of alcohol. I almost asked her if she wandered the halls at night, but the other men began to file in. Of course, it was best not to disturb the normalcy of it all.

It was best to ignore the glimpses of a green uniform I saw walking ahead of me in the halls, even when I left Miime behind on the bridge, even when the hall ahead was empty once I turned the corner. It was best to ignore the strange laughter bubbling out from the empty computer room, best to ignore the glowing cat eyes that sometimes shone my way from the end of a darkened hall.

Above all else, I had to ignore the flashes of someone behind me when I looked in my room's mirror. There was no one there when I turned around because there was no one there at all.

I was just imagining all of it.

It was the pills.

Or I was still tired.

Of course.

But along with the hallucinations came that dream every night, played out in full. It was too much. My gut constantly rolled and twisted with anxiety. Along with the nightly sweating, I broke out in cold sweats each time I glimpsed something that wasn't there.

And every day Harlock asked how I slept. And every day lying became more and more difficult, until he looked at me with concern. Still, he never pressed me for an explanation. Perhaps because of that, I found myself knocking at his door. I didn't care if he was asleep like everyone else. I had to talk to someone. Now the dark halls of the night did terrify me. My hand shook as it remained raised toward the door, my heart pounding in my chest.

Just as I was about to bolt back to my room, the door opened. Harlock blinked down at me, though he didn't look surprised. He wore a t-shirt and cloth pants like me, though his were all black. I expected nothing less from him.

"Yama," he greeted.

"Uh, hello." I had no plans for what to say. I could only stare and wait for my mouth to work.

A smile graced his features for a moment as he placed his hand on my shoulder and nudged me inside. Once he had me through the door, he closed it behind me. Still, I only stood there. My face burned with my frustrations.

"Come here," he said, turning toward his table. I trailed after him without thought.

"Sit down."

I dropped myself in the chair he pulled out for me. He pulled the one beside it out to face mine but grabbed two wine glasses and a bottle from a cabinet before returning to sit.

It took watching the red fill the glass in front of me to switch my brain back on. "I shouldn't drink that before I take my pill," I said.

"One glass," he retorted.

I could have refused, and yet I couldn't. I took the glass and sipped it. The warmth of it eased the twisting in my stomach. Harlock seemed more interested in his own glass than me. I took no issue with that.

"Hope I didn't wake you," I muttered.

He shook his head. "It's no matter if you do."

It seemed he wasn't going to ask. Any normal person would want to know why I'd showed up in their room in the middle of the night, but this was Harlock.

"I've been seeing things," I blurted out as he knocked back the last of his drink.

"Is that right?" he asked, grabbing the bottle to pour himself another. "What sorts of things?"

I would have preferred some sort of feedback, shock or irritation or happiness – anything. His calm was mind-numbingly frustrating.

"Like, I don't know," I huffed, "glimpses of things. People in the halls who aren't supposed to be there, who aren't there. Weird images. Just flashes of things, and sounds. But none of it's really there. I think I'm losing it."

"Hm." He rested his cheek against his knuckles. "Sounds on their own? That's a new one."

I wasn't sure what to make of that. It was only then I noticed he'd refilled my glass as I'd been drinking it. "So this has happened before?" I grumbled. "People just start hallucinating?"

A smile tugged at his lips. "I'd like to give you a proper explanation, but I'm afraid I don't have one. I don't know if I'd call them hallucinations, per say, but you're certainly not the first to see these sorts of things. Our best guess is that the dark matter energy traps moments in time, just the smallest fragments. Occasionally, it replays these moments at whatever whims it possesses. I've heard stories of many 'ghosts'. But they're always short, harmless things, blink and you miss them."

Relief and wine warmed through my chest. Breathing came easier. "Have you ever seen one?" I asked.

"I can't say I have." His words were soft with disappointment. "I may be a different case. The dark matter is different for me."

"Maybe," I breathed. With my anxieties dissipated, fresh exhaustion overpowered me. "Well, thanks." I set down my half-empty wine glass and stood. "This was…a good talk."

His shoulders bounced with a silent laugh. "Get some rest, Yama. But tell me more about these ghosts of yours sometime. They do interest me."

"Sure, captain," I answered with a lazy wave over my shoulder. I was certain he waved back.

The walk back to my room was a breeze. Despite my exhaustion, confidence surged through me. I felt no fear toward the dark, though thoughts of the dream still ate away at my nerves. Maybe tonight I could be free of it. Maybe tonight, with my other fears banished, I would be safe.

I ran my fingers through my hair as I stepped into my room, breathing a sigh. I still wanted nothing to do with those pills, but I forced myself to my sink, where they sat. As I popped off the cap, I caught my own eye in the mirror, rimmed in dark smears of purple. Even with sleep, I looked dead.

I blinked, and there it was again, another brown eye slightly behind me. But it wasn't there. It wasn't real. I spun around to prove it to myself, to make it disappear as it always did.

The eye remained, mirrored to my own. But my gaze was drawn to the melted, mutilated burn where the other eye should have been. It was nothing but a weeping, twisted mess of scarred flesh. Below it, teeth shone white through a gaping hole in his cheek. My heart pulsed as though someone had reached in my chest and squeezed it. It was all framed by dirty blond hair - the face of a mere child.

His uniform mirrored Miime's in teal, black boots hovering almost a foot from the ground. Another gaping wound pierced his shoulder, blackened around the edges but clean all the way through. I could see the back wall of the room through it. My stomach churned once again, my heart pounding in my throat. It seemed the only thing keeping me from puking was my inability to move.

The loathing in his eye faded to surprise. We simply stared wide-eyed at each other until he slowly parted his lips. "Can you see me?" he asked at length.

Another cold sweat broke out across my skin as the blood drained from my face. This wasn't happening. It was another dream. It wasn't real.

"What?" I wheezed.

His nose crinkled, lips curled toward a snarl. "This is my room, you know," he snapped, stabbing a gloved hand to his chest. "I don't want you in it."

"Wh…what?" My breaths came in more sharp wheezes.

He huffed a breath through his nose, and with another blink, he was gone.

My legs fell out from under me, and I stumbled back into the sink. I couldn't get those burns out of my head, or those gloves – those damning white leather gloves on his hands, the tips of the fingers burned away.

Screeches. I haven't written Daiba in forever. I'm just so happy to finally write him again.