It seemed as though Elizabeth's time on this planet had been spent leaping from crisis to crisis, each of increasing magnitude and seemingly designed to test her structural integrity with increasing brutality. While nothing could have prepared her for any of this, what struck her was how well she seemed to absorb the blows.

The scientist within reasoned that each disaster she survived taught her new things, etching increasingly spectacular survival skills into her very being as the current emergency waned and left her with just enough space to reflect – but never quite enough to properly mope. Realistically, she was a different person to the Dr Shaw that almost cried whilst lying in the stasis pod awaiting sleep. She was certainly a different person to the Dr Shaw that had hurled her guts up waking up from that two-year hypersleep fiasco, and bore only physical resemblance to her innocent, absent-minded namesake back on Earth.

The rest of her was something akin to the remnants of a high-speed crash, twisted metal and shattered glass in the wake of tragedy, frayed nerves and overtaxed faculties. Her hands still shook against the straps of the backpack as she marched across the dusty landscape, sand and silica whistling about her ankles in the dying light of dusk, rocks beneath her toes stained an otherworldly orange from the gas giant setting against the horizon. Her ears still rang, unable to claw from them the alien, incomprehensible shouts that had boomed across the Bridge and engraved themselves into her psyche. Her breath rattled in her throat with every gasp, though she wasn't sure if it had more to do with the weight of David's head in the pack behind her, or the residual terror that raked at her chest on the wake of the afternoon's turn of events.

Their march back to the lifeboat had been in stony, heavy silence, with the enormous Engineer remaining several paces ahead of her at all times and damn-near refusing to look at her unless he absolutely had to. After distracting himself with several consoles on the Bridge and, she presumed, downloading as much data as he could, he had finally returned to the issue of the broken android with as much reluctance as she'd ever seen in a man.

Communication had been predictably patchy around the issue as she avoided saying anything that had a snowball's chance in Hell of pissing him off and he intimated he would avoid answering any of the questions she might have had on the subject, but a solution had nonetheless been reached. She'd quickly realised that David's power source must be in his body rather than his head; she'd also realised immediately afterward that he was much heavier than she was. Even without the pack slung over her shoulders he was all but impossible to move beyond dragging across the floor, and despite his previous ranting outburst, Za'il had begrudgingly intervened before she'd managed to wrangle the decapitated body halfway across the Bridge.

His mighty sigh and grim expression hadn't been lost on her, nor had his refusal of eye contact.

With the android body slung over his shoulder, the Engineer had made short work of exiting the crashed vessel the way they'd come in, apparently unencumbered by the extra weight even as they abseiled back down to the planet's surface. He needed only one arm to shift the deadweight about, and did so as if he were lightweight cargo; Elizabeth had hardly been able to move him.

Like she needed any of these constant reminders of the Engineer's obscene strength.

Who knew how much time their disagreement had lasted; the sun was gone by now, with only residual light hanging about the sky as they reached the lifeboat airlock. She didn't quite know what to make of him standing by the door as she struggled to catch up. He'd followed her inside after a breath, barely making it past the piano before unceremoniously dumping the headless body in the middle of the floor beside it and nudging it aside with a boot as he pulled his helmet off, expression still lingering on the sour, offended side of inscrutable.

Shaw dropped the pack alongside the body with far more grace than he'd bothered with, lips pursed in thought for a moment before sauntering back to the airlock to remove the suit that had all but adhered to her sticky, sweaty flesh. The cool, crisp air aboard the lifeboat was a welcome change to the increasingly moist, stuffy microcosm beneath the scuffed polymer dome, but not cool enough to make sitting about in the scant clothing beneath the suit uncomfortable. It tugged at her limbs as she extracted herself from its confines; tonight's shower was going to be bloody well-earned.

The Engineer hadn't made himself at home yet, she noted as she watched him pace. He'd barely stood still for a second as he pried the heavy armour from its fixings along the biosuit below, pacing all the while, and only moved across the room to place it back in the crate it came from after she had exited the airlock alcove and set about freeing David from the pack sitting alongside his body.

Still refusing eye contact, it was safe to assume he remained tremendously unhappy. She had noted on several occasions to date that he preferred space between them, but this was a significant increase to the point of metres keeping them apart at any given moment.

How she wished, she wished she could simply ask him what she'd done wrong. She hadn't created David; was merely fraternising with him a cardinal sin amongst Za'il's people?

This did not bode well for any attempted mission to the Engineer homeworld; if she'd so seriously offended just one member, how many other faux pas would she stumble upon in her travels?

David's head was heavy and cool to the touch, though his skin – if it could be called that – was upsettingly realistic beneath her fingertips. Unseeing eyes open but glazed, in the brighter and more familiar setting of the lifeboat he seemed far more like a corpse than she'd cared to notice whilst aboard the Engineer vessel. It took all her might to suppress another visceral shudder, actively reminding herself with every heartbeat that he was an android, not a dead body, and that this was just fine.

Just fine.

Placing the head down mere inches from its correct place, it became far easier to see the extent of the damage; while didn't appear to have a recognisably Human skeleton per se, what stood in its place appeared to have sheared off during the decapitation process, twisted metal split between what passed as vertebrae. Every single cable had snapped in kind, torn upward and hanging loose both from the gaping hole between the shoulders and below what remained of the neck. A significant volume of coolant, or android blood in a manner of speaking, had flowed out of the severed pipes to the head and flooded the damaged components throughout the torso.

This was going to take a lot longer than she anticipated. Not that one could accurately anticipate the significant damage left after decapitation.

A quick trip to the medbay yielded a few basic tools after a quick rummage; she'd recalled, in the distant vestiges of her mind, stumbling upon some repair equipment as she hunted for ways of sealing her own horrifying wound days earlier. David himself would likely end up doing the majority of the repairs once he was able, if he was able, but for now this would have to suffice.

The Engineer, she noted at a glance, had settled on the couch in a tense, hunched crouch as he fiddled with equipment of his own, still pointedly ignoring her. At the very least, perhaps he was restraining himself, or preparing to with the knowledge that the abomination would soon be alive once more; she was not looking forward to the inevitable firestorm when David choked to life.

Pulling on a pair of thick, insulated rubber gloves, she set about making some sense of the matted mess of torn wires and conduits dangling from both pieces of android. The brief crash course in Weyland Android maintenance had seemed excessive at the time, but she had been quite impatient to get the mission underway in the days leading up to takeoff. As determined to pay attention as she had been, a frustrating amount of knowledge had slipped from her grasp and into the abyss that was the pacing, over-thinking, planning, hand-wringing slurry of the final preparation for Prometheus; brief, she noted in hindsight, had been exactly that.

Still, it was enough to allow her to identify the android's power management. A thick rope of conduit hung from the centre of something analogous to a spinal cord, torn upward as the head had been snapped from its body; while some of the cabling had been ripped and left frayed, this cable's severed ends seemed far more uniform. It was as if they had been sliced all at once with an incredibly sharp blade.

Or, she remarked, as if they had been pulled out the end of a plug.

A quick scout in the android's neck found exactly that. Round, metallic, the plug had remained with its mate during the violent disassembly, the cables on the body's end ripped free of their fixtures.

Could be worse.

As she worked on popping the plug halves apart, the Engineer had apparently busied himself with the results of the scan aboard the other vessel. A projection of the smaller vacant ship, far more blob-like in its semicircular form, hung above the coffee table in significant detail, showing every nuance of the hull and each internal system snaking below its surface in shades of white and cyan; his dark eyes drank it in with almost artificial intrigue, tracing every feature as if it were the only thing in the room, checking and re-checking system after system.

Choosing to follow his example, she decided to ignore what he was doing. They may be able to straighten out a few things once David functioned again, she reasoned; until then, it was no use doing anything to make matters worse.

Once she was sure the plug had correctly seated itself, she prepared to snap it back in place; this was the moment of truth, the moment everything would change, the moment two became three. Her hands shook as they lingered between the two halves of the plug. She hoped she would not regret this.

Nothing for it.

With a metallic click, the two halves unified between the tangle of wires and shredded edges of bioskin, and…

...nothing happened. The android's head remained frozen in time, staring at nothing, transfixed upon the ceiling. It was if he was too far gone, too broken to save – or, perhaps, simply too broken to have been so easily fixed. There had to be a manual for these confounded things in that pile of books, there had to be some kind of bloody instructions for how to reassemble–

A faint artificial whirr snapped her from her cascade of consciousness as she was about to stand; nothing followed for a few seconds, leaving her hovering between kneeling and crouching until an electrical pop echoed about the deck, startling both her and the giant on the couch, leaving them both in a wide-eyed gawp as the android's pale gaze finally found focus. Moments later his lips fluttered, words fading from them the moment they formed, stammering silently as his pupils shrank to the size of pinheads then wildly dilated. Frozen in shuddering catatonia, the android fought the brink of death for an indeterminate period as Elizabeth held her breath.

The part of her that considered David to be a person – and it was, she conceded, a significant part of her – found the process to be disturbingly grotesque. If he could feel, he would undoubtedly be feeling substantial pain. If he hadn't already, soon he would realise he was still severed in two and could do nothing about it. It seemed inhumane.

"Elizabeth, y-you're alive." The voice below was a series of mechanical croaks, disjointed and almost incomprehensible, slow and deliberate and clearly forced. Silver eyes had finally focused on her, moving from their fixated, forward-facing gaze. His mouth still quivered. Yes, if he were Human, he would be in absolute agony.

But he wasn't; projecting that onto him would serve no useful purpose, she scolded herself.

She smiled gently. "Yes, I am."

A lengthy pause ensued as the android continued to analyse his surroundings, analyse himself. "You've r-reconnected my p-power supply."

His voice hadn't improved; she took a moment to interpret the crackling, low-fidelity sounds he'd ejected at her. "I have. You're really badly damaged, it's going to take me a while to put you back together."

"I unders-s-stand," he croaked, shivering mouth finally finding purchase and pulling itself into the faintest quirk of a smile. "I will be more useful once m-my b-backup has some charge."

Slipping from her crouch, she eased herself onto the cold, polished floor below. "How long do you think that will take?"

"Perhaps a-another thirty s-seconds," he stammered; there was a more Human tone to his voice by now, despite the metallic crackle that remained. "My s-secondary systems a-are c-coming online now."

Shaw drew a heavy breath, daring to cast a glance toward the Engineer; as she could have expected he was still staring intently at the holo over the table, but there was a deep, irritated scowl that lingered. For some reason, that annoyed her. There was no doubt he was perfectly aware of what was going on around him, that there was a new person – person! – in the room, but he refused to acknowledge either of the smaller beings.

"Elizabeth," the android started again after another long pause, his voice by now recognisably his, "I have quite a few questions to ask, if I may."

"Sure," she quickly replied, tugging the gloves from her hands and placing them on his chest.

The first apparently took a while to form. Perhaps it jostled for pride of place at the front of the queue. Regardless, he took his dear, sweet time in asking it. "Am I to assume circumstances have changed, given the presence of the Engineer aboard the lifeboat?"

If he was perturbed by this discovery, he hid it well. She offered a humourless smile. "You could say that."

"Is he friendly?"

Is he friendly… to be honest, she didn't know. Patiently offering her medicine before mending his own broken arm had seemed pretty friendly at the time, as had sharing a much-needed meal and a drink afterward. The direct, unyielding line of questioning the moment they discovered a common-enough language hadn't been kind, nor had his reaction to her sharing perhaps a little too much of her objectives with him. His manhandling of her in the immediate aftermath had been downright hostile, but seeing him collapse in a catatonic heap in finally learning his own fate had damn-near broken her. Perhaps she had been a fool, but their sharing of music had given her hope they had common ground, that they could be friends...their teamwork and negotiation afterward had reinforced that, only to have it smashed to smithereens when she'd tried to recover the blasted creature asking these questions. A heavy sigh escaped her. "Friendly enough."

His icy eyes pried at her with an astuteness that left her uncomfortable. The polite gentleness in his voice only multiplied the effect; he probably didn't realise just how patronising it would come across. "I can see an awful lot has happened while I was non-functional. Are you alright, Elizabeth?"

"I'm fine," she scowled. "I'll fill you in when I have the time. I don't mean to be rude, but we're running to somewhat of a schedule. We're planning on leaving this planet tomorrow, and I need your help. First, I need to help you – where do I start with repairs?"

"It's complicated," he eventually stammered, gaze once again upon the ceiling. "The broken sections of my spine can be replaced easily enough, but every major system going to my head has been severed, as you can see. I imagine many of the conduits are torn in a manner that could make reconnection challenging."

"They are, yes," she responded glumly. "Lots of ripped parts. They look too fragile to do much with."

"Quite all right," he enthused with a forced smile. It was odd, watching his facial features move entirely normally with his head fixed in place. After a moment's reflection, the smile became palpably genuine. "Perhaps we'll start by replacing the torn ends with new joints and connect them that way, should you be able to find the master repair kit. Far less fiddly work for everyone."

"That sounds like a good idea," she nodded. "Where do I start?"

"In the medbay there should be a tool kit in a blue metal case." He struggled to follow her as she stood to begin her search; she quickly left the range of his gaze, unable to turn his head to track her. A series of opening and slamming cupboards followed, interspersed by determined rustling. "It should be on the bottom shelf of one of the instrument cupboards. It's quite large."

A surprised, strained grunt immediately followed the scrape of metal against polymer and a heavy, bassy thunk. "You don't say."

"I would help you if I could," he offered with an apologetic smile.

"Of course you would." Her voice couldn't hide the strain as she hoisted the case off the ground and quickly shuffled across the hall back to the separated android. She placed it down by his chest with a grunt. If there was ever a time to be immensely grateful for her fully-healed state, it was now. "Right. How do I go about this?"

"In the second tier, there should be an assortment of titanium connectors," he stated, jarringly matter-of-fact. "There is also an assortment of blades. The best place to start would be my coolant conduits; slice a clean edge at each end and affix a connector, it'll make reassembling me on the fly quite straightforward."

"Roger that," she quipped, and immediately began rummaging about in silence.

The silence dragged on, with the android's gaze darting about the full dome of view available to him; both living beings went about their tasks wordlessly fixated on the technology they were tasked with, a tension about both that was not lost on David. He was left to presume what might be normal behaviour for an Engineer, but this he knew was out-of-character enough of a Human like Elizabeth that it warranted further investigation. As connector after connector fell into place, he finally dared to break the silence. "Elizabeth, your survival instinct is quite remarkable. May I ask – how is it that you've come to be uninjured?"

"Our new ally had a hand in that," she eventually murmured as she severed another shredded, messy conduit end. "Engineer medicine is remarkable."

"He offered you medicine?" His intrigue was overshadowed by grim nuance. "Mr Weyland would have been so pleased to have seen it. It was what he was see–"

"Say that name again and I'm sticking this scalpel right into your power cord," she spat darkly, albeit barely above a whisper. The Engineer's gaze snapped to her, briefly wide-eyed and questioning, darting between the woman, the blade and the startled android head beneath her. "It's his fault we're all in this mess. He's dead, David. Isn't that what you wanted?"

"I-I…" the android stammered, prying at the sudden, determined fury that stained the woman's expression. There was little doubt she would make good of that threat if pressed. "I was just observing–"

"Don't," she growled, lips downturned into a sneer. "Everything that transpired here was thanks to his self-absorbed obsession for power. Worship. Eternal life. He doomed us all to die. It makes me sick. The only reason either you or I are alive right now is because I've been the exact opposite of him for God-knows how long it's been since…"

Prone as he was, all he could do was watch as Dr Shaw's righteous rage melted into something far more sullen as she trailed off. "I think I understand, Elizabeth. I apologise. Perhaps some good may have come out of all this after all, though; those objectives led us to your friend on the couch."

"Who led every last survivor of this stupid expedition to their deaths," she fumed, anger once again twisting her features.

"Except you."

Her breath caught in her throat before words could form, though they tore at her lips in an ugly grimace. This wasn't the conversation she wanted to have right now – or ever, to be fair – but here they were. Her friend hunched over the table at the other end of the room had by now all but forgotten his task, clearly startled into complete absorption by the sudden change from passive dialogue into quick-fire, black, one-directional hostility. For the briefest of moments she found herself tumbling into those dark, inhuman eyes, seeking fleeting solace in the only living being left on the planet, refusing to acknowledge that he was as alien to her as David, until he finally pried his gaze away and hastily resumed his intense study of the hologram before him.

"Elizabeth," he whispered. Pleaded. "Elizabeth, I am sorry – I don't know what to say without upsetting you, but I feel we have much ground to cover before I can be useful."

Whatever response had begun to crystallise quickly shattered into dust as his words echoed about her skull and back at her in her own voice. He was now the lost and confused, prone and scrambling for words; she was pale and enormous, towering over him and fighting through fury to find the words for her disgust. This time, words should not be so damned hard to find. They shared a common language!

They didn't share empathy, compassion, or emotion though, did they? The Human condition in and of itself was a language in its own right, and damn-near impossible to translate into the sort of rational, empirical language that machines understood. It was the only thing that kept the tenuous fibres of peace intact between herself and the Engineer. The creature before her had only spoken words, devoid of their Humanity.

"I know," she finally whispered, gaze fixed on the blade between her busy, fussing fingers. "I'm sorry. It's been an extremely hard few days, and I'm struggling to put it all into words."

"May I ask, then," he began gently, "What happened immediately after I contacted you? The comms went silent after that, and I assumed you had died. He intended to find you and kill you."

In that, she had no doubt; she knew her choice of cowardice had been the only thing leaving her alive now, but with as many brushes with death as she'd had of late, it had never eventuated, had it? As much as she wanted to push the memories from her mind, the events of that day had burned tracks into her psyche that would undoubtedly leave permanent scars. Pressing her eyes closed, she recounted the events that had transpired after killing her comms: hiding from the Engineer; awaiting in increasing horror as he discovered, then battled the monster-sized Trilobite locked in the medbay; deciding to go out with a bang when she could no longer tolerate his terrified screams, and joining the fray with an axe; extending the proverbial olive branch by splinting his broken forearm; stitching herself together once he'd dragged the carcass from the lifeboat and disappeared.

Even in retelling stomach-churning tale, she had lost count of just how many days had lurched by in the never-ending series of crises merging into one, vulcanised only by fleeting glimmers of hope and Humanity.

"Is it after you fell asleep on the couch that he returned with his own medical supplies?" David asked, matter-of-fact and a little too gentle.

"Yes, it is," she murmured, casting the creature a brief glance. At some point he had stopped pretending to focus on the holo, instead defaulting to blankly staring through it with his head in one hand, likely listening to the alien exchange whilst lost in his own world. "It's just a substance that heals wounds; he used it on my incision, then on the burns on his face. No idea how it works, but all I have left now is a faint, white scar – nothing more."

"I see." Not the fabled, presumed Elixir of Life per se, then. "I'm curious. How did you manage to coexist in peace with him until now? As I understand it, I was the only member of the Prometheus crew that could speak any language common to both species."

"Brute force and ignorance," she grinned grimly; she'd wanted to use that phrase for a while now. "I found a stack of magazines on board that had articles about quite a range of ancient ruins. I made a few educated guesses, showing the spreads with photos of anything with text until he responded. Apparently, of all things, he can read Sumerian with some modicum of fluency. Wasn't the one I would have picked first, but at the same time, I'm not surprised."

"Sumerian," the android mused quietly. "That's two Earth languages he can speak, then. This is fascinating – I really would like to know more."

"So would I." She paused to snip another ragged end, quickly slipping a connector over it and snapping it in place. "That's why I need you, actually. Can you still translate?"

"I'm afraid I can't, at the moment," he sighed. Apparently his Human-like affectations were synthetic; without lungs, it ought to have been impossible. "I'm sorry. Much of my long-term data storage and the secondary processing required for the task is where your liver would be; my connection to that resource has been severed. I have some vocabulary, and I'll likely be able to understand some of what he says, but I fear I will struggle to accurately verbalise what's being said."

"Brilliant." Pursing her lips through the disappointment, she set about cleaning up the frayed pipes dangling from his neck. "To be honest, I don't know it would have worked, anyway. He seems pretty offended by you."

"I gathered as much," he mused, his apparent amusement seeming oddly black. "I still don't understand why he beheaded me."

"Neither do I. From what I can tell, his people abhor your kind. He called you an abomination. Damn-near refused to help me carry you back here. But given our communication difficulties and the fact that he seems to fly off the handle if I give him too much information or ask too much, I don't actually know why and I'm not sure asking him will keep me in one piece, either."

"I'm surprised you're alive at all," he responded thoughtfully. "Not a comment on your remarkable survival skills, mind; if he's so temperamental, it's even more of a feat that you've managed to befriend him."

"I wouldn't say befriend." Her eyes found the floor; her fingers pawed at the blade. "I wish it were so; if anything we've struck a truce, perhaps an alliance of sorts. He's found two abandoned Engineer ships, and we've been preparing to take them. Safe to assume he doesn't exactly want our company. I get the sense he's just been tolerating me out of necessity."

David's thoughts lingered a moment as his limited resources ploughed through every inch of data available to him. Something about that assessment just didn't seem right. "What could he need from us? He has an advanced warship at his disposal. Propulsion and weapons are damaged beyond feasible repair, but life support is more than functional aboard his ship."

"It's also full of dead bodies," she mused with a grim huff. "I don't know. I'd assumed there was some reason he didn't stay aboard his own ship. He's had plenty of opportunities to abandon this one."

"I did hear him come and go once, before my cranial batteries died."

True; that would have been when he returned for medical supplies. She had been completely out-cold by that point. "I don't know – there must be more to the story. Frankly I still know next-to-nothing about him. I have a name and a job title, and that's it; everything else I know is to do with the layout of the base and that it's infested with some mysterious alien life...and not the sort that we've encountered yet."

"A name and a role is a great start," he enthused gently. "Perhaps when I'm assembled, it will be easier to communicate with him."

"Doubt it'll happen in time. We're meant to be going our separate ways tomorrow." There was a resigned disappointment tainting her voice; as much as she wouldn't admit to such a thing, it felt far too early to be parting ways from the mysterious, tempestuous creature.

"What else have you been able to discover about him – in the absence of language?"

"He's argumentative," she quickly responded with a grin that felt somewhat inappropriate. "He's intelligent, but very focused on the task at hand. Seems uninterested in the Human race, but strangely drawn to anything to do with our art or culture. That ring of books in the middle of the floor – that was him, not me. He figured out how to play the piano while I was asleep. Had a rather unexpected reaction when I played it for him, like the rest of the world stopped existing around us for a moment. They're violent, that much I can assume, but he seems to restrain that tendency around me – for the most part. They do mourn just as we do, which was strangely reassuring...he was a mess when he came back from his ship a second time. Figured out just how long he'd been asleep. He's been a little subdued since then, but...I suppose that's hardly a surprise, is it?"

"Indeed. A wealth of knowledge, if you consider how little you've been able to communicate." The rattle in his voice had not improved; time would tell whether it was due to the damage of his beheading, or due to simply being such. "What is his job? I get the sense that this is a military installation."

"It is a military base, yes. What kind, I don't know. His name is Za'il, he's the ship's pilot – he didn't give me anything more to go by than that."

A deep, agitated grunt of a sigh came from the couch; she immediately knew what she'd done wrong. Rather than fury beneath his heavy scowl, there was something far more akin to insult – it was the second time today she'd had to contend with that particular, sour expression. Of course; if they were going to converse in a language he didn't understand, his own damn name would have been outrageously familiar amongst the chaos. He spat something in his own tongue in a trite tone, annoyed gaze flitting between the woman and the blonde-haired head beside her.

The android fumbled for words, lips flapping uselessly as the pale-skinned giant returned to his work with a heavy frown still etched into his features. When words finally formed, they were as robotic and barely-recognisable as they had been in English in the moments after she'd resurrected him. Painfully slow and staccato, the inhuman response yielded a startled jump from the Engineer, followed by a deeper scowl and an indignant response spat with obvious vitriol.

David's pupils dilated to pinheads once more as he struggled to process what had just transpired; Za'il returned to his work once more with a grimace that she couldn't quite place, lips contorted with barely-restrained emotion as he stabbed at the projector controls. The smaller ship faded from view, replaced by the warship which bore far more resemblance to his own.

"What did he say, David," she whispered, unsure where to place her gaze at this point.

"I can't translate it word-for-word, I'm sorry," he drawled, his overtaxed language systems apparently fading beneath the multitasking required of it. "He is unhappy we're talking about him. And he doesn't want to talk to me. He was far more articulate than that, though."

The overwhelming urge to apologise, yet again, had her in its grasp; for once, she knew why he was so offended. Damn this language barrier, damn it to Hell. "Is there a way I can help you access some of your other resources?"

"I think there is. Let's try." His voice had returned to its borderline-Human rattle, having abandoned translation duties. "The blue-and-black fibre-optic cable running alongside my spine. There are larger connectors that will automatically bond to the end of the fibres, you'll just need to trim the torn ends as you did with the coolant conduits."

"On it," she nodded, snatching at the larger connectors in the repair kit before returning her attention to the mass of shredded conduits dangling from both severed ends of the android. "I suspect it'll be difficult to get him to actually talk instead of argue once we do get your functioning correctly, he's not exactly the talkative type. But I guess if our roles were reversed, and I was marooned on a planet, alone, with only an alien whose race I despised, I wouldn't be overly chatty either."

"Do they despise us, though?"

"Your kind, yes," she replied softly. "He'd said as much. Mine, I'm making the assumption. I don't know his motivations around that, either. Any theory I manage to form gets blown out of the water not long after. I've had ample time to sit on my chuff and think about it, but I still can't make heads or tails of it – what we did to earn our fate, why they suddenly decided they hated us after tens of centuries of contact. His fascination with our things but not our people makes so little sense. I keep finding new ways of upsetting him too, but he never quite gets around to killing me like he did the others."

Much fiddling preceded a series of stiff clacks as the thick ends of the data conduit finally came together with the aid of its new plugs; the android flinched momentarily, pupils dilating to unnaturally wide, black hoops, before slowly retracting and grappling with the chandelier above. A soft squeak escaped him, lips twitching. There was something about his dignity being stripped from him that left her pitying the creature far more than she'd like.

More catatonia followed before Shaw finally shifted her weight from her knees to her rear, placing one hand against the android's chest. "David, are you alright?"

"I believe so," he whispered after another drawn pause. "Thank you. I can access some of my data – enough to hold a rudimentary conversation, I suspect. Is there anything you would like to say to our guest?"

Damnit. Every time the opportunity arose to unload any of the thousands of questions darting about her head, they all dissipated in a flash, leaving her alone and wordless. Exposed. It was infuriating – exhausting. She scowled. "I have no idea where to start. Maybe we should ask him if he would like to talk – if he was willing to talk to me."

"Understood, ma'am." Ma'am? Since when did that happen?

The words that followed weren't English; though the distortion in his voice remained, David's control over the language spilling forth was vastly more fluent with the newly-repaired cable in place and doing its job. Gone was the juddering, stuttering staccato that left any language feeling alien and vaguely upsetting; surely these words would be comprehensible, despite how badly Za'il thought he spoke them.

The latter visibly stiffened upon hearing words in a language he understood, ripples of sinew flowing along his cheeks and jaw as he clenched his teeth and pressed his eyes closed. David's expectant gaze remained on the roof as silence enveloped the room; Za'il's was firmly fixed on the projection in front of him. Drawing it out far longer than necessary, he finally responded with a short, sharp syllable that she'd come to recognise as negative, perhaps 'no', followed by several more grumpily-ejected words.

With the impossible politeness she'd come to recognise, David meekly pressed again; this time, she heard her own name amongst what he had to say. The Engineer froze in place upon hearing it, its syllables foreign and jarring against the far more guttural language presently being exchanged. This time, troubled black eyes flitted to her after a heavy pause, prying at every inch of her with a frustratingly unreadable expression tugging his pale features taut. He stared for an age, a thousand thoughts prying at his psyche; she couldn't tell if he was as lost for words as she was, or whether he was torn as to what to say first. At this point, even if it was an outburst of rejection, she would take anything.

Finally, he mumbled something with vastly less venom than she'd expected, casting his gaze down at his own hands; David's eyebrows quirked upward at the remark, glancing up at the woman sitting beside him. "He doesn't have a lot to say, he reckons."

Typical. With a frustrated huff, she fidgeted against the cold floor and rearranged her legs into a schoolyard crossed position. "Neither do I, to be honest. Nothing that won't get me punched across the room, anyway. I don't even know where to start building his trust – I think I shattered it to pieces when I insisted on dragging you back here. I guess...I guess we should ask him if there was a way to make our presence here less intolerable for him."

"I will try." And try he did; as polite as ever, he gently offered another question in that foreign tongue, only to be cut off by a loud, indignant razz from the couch and a distinctly irritated response. The Engineer briefly caught Elizabeth's eye as he spoke, quickly returning it in all its scornful glory to the android. David's second attempt to speak was also cut off before he could finish, politeness overwhelmed by the larger being's scornful tone. She ought to have predicted this sort of response, but what she was left with in place of surprise was cold, hollow acknowledgement that she simply did not know this man at all.

An awful lot of conversation flourished for someone proclaiming no interest; back and forth they continued, the android's infinite patience matched only by the Engineer's barely-restrained, simmering hatred. Strings of one-word answers, snapped at the floating head through gritted teeth, littered the space between longer diatribes; one huge, pale hand gripped the couch cushion with enough force to nearly tear at the fabric while the other alternated between frantic gesticulations and gripping at his head in abject frustration. Though he was hardly shouting – enthusiastically emphasising his point was probably more accurate – Elizabeth was still left with heavy, nagging hammering in her ears as adrenaline flooded her veins and tugged at her chest. She didn't even know where to begin in analysing just how much she didn't want to be here right now, doing this.

She soon lost count of the oscillations of conversation between the two men, struggling as she was to distill any kind of meaning from the Engineer's body language in the absence of the spoken word; David's mild-mannered assertions faded into the shadows of Za'il's more forceful castigations, though she caught her name amongst the lengthy proceedings – twice. Along the way, it became easier to discern more granular emotions from the immense creature – or, perhaps, his rage had faded into something more subtle. The jitters of adrenaline made it difficult to tell. Either way, as the two bantered on, it appeared more like Za'il was scolding a naughty child than resisting the urge to tear him limb from limb.

Something about that bothered her.

Though she couldn't understand a word of what was happening, she most certainly understood the tone; it was that same impatient rudeness as multiple Prometheus crew members had directed at the android throughout the mission, a poorly-masked disdain for a supposedly inferior form of life. Did he possess the sentience to be as troubled by it as she was? Did he appreciate that she refused to treat him the same way, despite the many things she needed to discuss with him that had weighed on her mind for days?

There was a key difference, she noted, as Za'il launched into another ill-tempered diatribe. There had been a dismissive, disinterested manner in which many Prometheus crew members had treated David that was, on reflection, missing here. Za'il had by now taken to letting him finish before interjecting, maintaining as much eye contact as possible with David's head rendered motionless despite the immense distaste twisted into his skin. What had seemed like yet more of the near-mechanical disregard one reserved for mere appliances hadn't lasted much longer than the first few interactions.

He was treating David as if he were stupid, but not inanimate.

The deep, booming voice had by now lost its gruff, alien tone, yielding to longer pauses and a change of emotion that she couldn't quite place. Some of David's comments appeared to leave a hint of confusion about the Engineer's sour expression, and as they continued, Za'il's own responses gradually grew quieter and quieter, the pauses between lingering longer, his eye contact all but severed as he gazed through the wall opposite the couch. She flinched as she heard her own name again; the mention of it had a similar effect on Za'il, snatching the words from him and leaving him in silence. The only reply he offered to whatever was asked was a hesitant shake of the head.

"What on Earth is going on, David?" She had tolerated enough exclusion, she reckoned; twice today, the shoe had been on the other foot, most certainly with the right on the left. It was, if nothing else, a lesson in humility.

"He's given me some...background on his hatred of my kind," David replied meekly.

She found herself chewing on her bottom lip, heart once again in her throat. "Did he say anything about mine?"

"No. He changes the topic whenever I ask. But he apparently has no problem with you."

"But you came from us," she protested quietly. "What's the bloody difference?"

"I can ask," he mused brightly – and did just that.

The response, predictably, was snapped loudly and indignantly, the pale giant raising both hands in exasperation. It would never be anything short of startling, she was forced to admit as she flinched away from the noise; he just had so much more capacity for noise, and the confines of the small vessel where a spectacular echo chamber. After all this dialogue she was relatively sure she wasn't about to meet a grisly end, but as the old theories went, Humans were not so far up the evolutionary tree from animals.

The animal within had just about hit the roof with fright. She quickly became aware she was all but cowering.

Silence, deafening silence followed; she squeaked an eye open after a few panicked breaths, catching a glimpse of the Engineer from under the refuge of one pale forearm.

She'd expected many things, but watching his expression twist into one of afflicted realisation had been the last on her list. He was staring right at her. She'd seen that look on his face before, too; the black hand-marks on her arms had wrung it from him the moment he'd laid eyes on them.

Seconds ticked by before he finally found his breath, his gaze trailing to the floor as he scraped for words. The fight left him as his eyes fell closed, shoulders slumping – with a soft sigh, he murmured something quietly, cautiously, then promptly pushed himself to his feet, and, with his head lowered in one hand, marched from the couch to the door leading to the bedroom, sliding it shut behind him.

Elizabeth's own hands gripped at her hair through the quiet that ensued. Dark eyes watched the android expectantly.

David painted on his best sympathetic smile. "He apologises for 'constantly scaring the shit' out of you – his words, not mine." He paused for a synthetic sigh. "Might I presume your dealings with him to date have been this...tempestuous?"

"Not quite," she laughed bitterly, shaking her head as she leaned against one thigh with a claw-like grasp. Her breath rattled in her chest, limbs still jittering with adrenaline. "Not like that, anyway. At least, not until this afternoon. What did you say that got him so worked up?"

"I simply rephrased your question," he responded in a matter-of-fact tone. "Before that, we were discussing...I suppose what might pass as a brief, subjective history lesson."

The distant hiss through the ship's pipes preceded the tell-tale clatter of water falling against the shower's floor. She pressed her eyes closed and shook her head, amused by the fact that she desperately wanted to hide in there now it was occupied and off-limits. "The history of what, exactly?"

"His kind's interactions with lifeforms much like myself." He paused a moment, studying the ceiling as he assembled his thoughts. "What he described seemed like artificial life far more advanced than anything we've created on Earth, but it also seemed as though it existed in the distant past by the way he referred to it. He'd never encountered one until we'd awoken him. It seems his people...experimented with more than just biological creation – and it appears that creation may have, perhaps, gone to pot."

That echoed wording was not lost on Elizabeth; she nodded, a thoughtful grimace forming as she recalled the horror of seeing thousands upon thousands of cylinders aboard the Engineer ship, all presumably loaded to the brim with black, liquid death. "Seems like they may not have a perfect track record with their creativity, huh?"

"Seems not, indeed." Something about the whole scenario seemed to amuse David; he made no attempt to hide the faint smile that had grown from mere intrigue once the two of them were alone. "Admittedly, much of what he said was simply berating me for existing – or, more specifically, berating my creators. He kept referring to me as a lifeform, though, Doctor. Life – not a mere gadget." His smile grew. It was almost wistful.

Shaw found herself mirroring the expression. "You do tick a few of the boxes, though, don't you? You're self-aware, for one."

"Yes," he enthused quietly. "But I was designed for a purpose, to serve others. Humans. Mr Weyland and Ms Vickers, specifically. I have been treated as such almost without exception."

"Out of curiosity, who were those exceptions?"

"The Engineer," he responded, gaze lingering by the bedroom door for a moment, before drifting back to Elizabeth, "And you."

A broad, involuntary grin overcame her. "For what it's worth, that probably has something to do with the fact that I always considered you to be a person, David. A troubled one, mind. One I need to have a long talk with." She patted his chest with her palm, shifting against the polished surface as her thighs threatened to stick to it. "But for now, I can't bare to leave a person in this state of disrepair. Obviously it's going to take a bit of work to get you back in order, and we might have to transport you in two pieces. What's your recommendation for preparing for that outcome? Shall I continue capping the damaged conduits?"

"Yes, please." With the quirk of a brow, his manner was all business once more. "It will make it far easier to assemble me once every torn end is replaced with connectors; that will leave replacing the broken vertebrae as the only obstacle to my proper functioning. It would be wise to refill my coolant reservoirs and clean the residue from what leaked out if possible – I cannot function properly without it."

"Understood," she nodded, tugging on the gloves as she set about her work. "I should be able to get most of that done tonight."

"Wonderful, Doctor," he grinned. "I do very much appreciate your efforts."

"You're welcome, David." How nice it was, she mused, to be exchanging pleasantries with someone. Anyone.

"Once you're done for the evening, I might power down." One eye twitched shut as gloved fingers trimmed a thin, torn conduit amongst many leading from the base of his skull. "The battery reserves in my head can hold three days' charge, and they will recharge more fully if I am...unconscious. There is a hidden switch below my right ear that you can use to reactivate me whenever you wish."

Shaw pulled a face as she paused to observe him. "Whenever I wish? When would you like to be reactivated, David?"

That question kept him occupied for a few moments; eventually he, raised both brows. "Perhaps just before you are ready to leave. Earlier, if you would like me to...help…" He trailed off. "Not that there's much I can help with, I'm sorry."

"It's alright," she grinned. "We'll handle it.


It had been dark for a few hours by the time Elizabeth had capped every broken wire in the android's neck and found both his coolant reservoirs and the fluid to fill them with amongst the hubris in the medbay. By the time she had emptied two entire bottles of the milky gunk into a hidden port below David's chest, tidied up the mess and packed the immense toolkit away, she was utterly exhausted. A gaping yawn elicited a loud crack from her jaw; she all but swallowed her fist as she sought to silence it.

She'd wondered when the Engineer would be finished with his shower; it had been over an hour since he'd stepped in, and once again she'd almost reached the point of wondering if she ought to check he was still alive and conscious in there. At this point she was too exhausted to follow suit with a shower of her own – the exhaustion gripped her bones, and all she could think about was curling up somewhere quiet and sleeping the sleep of the dead.

David had by now wished her a good night and powered down, this time closing his eyes as every hint of life drained from his synthetic features. She wasn't sure if it was any less off-putting than the glass-eyed, dead stare she found him wearing aboard the Engineer ship; it would be better, she reasoned, once his damn head was connected to the rest of him.

Water glass in one hand, edge of the bar in the other, she was inches from nodding off where she stood when the bedroom door finally slid open. Predictably back in his biosuit, the only sign that Za'il had spent all that time in the shower at all was the strange limbo between refreshment and complete exhaustion written all over his features; he cast her a fleeting, bloody unreadable expression as he quietly sauntered across the floor toward the couch before sinking down onto it with a drained huff, quickly followed by a jaw-popping yawn, and a soft murmur of something she had no hope of understanding.

Draining the rest of her glass, she resisted a second, copycat yawn as she headed for the bedroom. She offered the pale, hunched figure a gentle nod and a quiet 'goodnight', not bothering to slide the door shut behind her as she killed the lights, collapsed into the bedsheets fully-dressed and almost immediately succumbed to the warm, cosy tendrils of sleep.


Skitter skitter skitter.

In the furthest vestiges of her sleeping mind, she imagined a large animal darting across the roof of her father's caravan, one with the cool, dry night as it sought refuge amongst the clutter of Human settlement. Theclickety-click of sharp claws against the metal surface had her picturing a large bird of some kind, perhaps a vulture; she'd heard similar sounds many times in the past, remembering to stay clear of whatever it was making the noise and avoid drawing attention to herself. Humans were not the biggest, most dangerous animals in the Savannah.

K-tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

Her mind slowly, gradually faded toward wakefulness as the sounds continued, bringing with them somewhat different spectres from the past; these were footfalls of some kind, that much was obvious, but the pacing was wrong for any sort of bird that had found itself on the roof. No, this was something larger. Far larger. The only creature her mind could conjure up to fit the paws above and find itself on the roof was a large feline, trotting about in search of its next target. The only cat she could think of that stalked about with its claws out was a Cheetah, stealthy and lethal. Nothing she wanted to toy with.

She recalled her father's words, repeated on many an occasion, warning her to stay quiet and out of sight of creatures skulking about on the roof. There was no reason for her to step outside and take a look; it would be all the more straightforward for them to ambush her from above, or at the very least take a panicked swipe at her if she startled them. Don't be an easy meal, Ellie.

Click. Click. Click.

Scrape.

There was no cat alive that could pry at fixtures with such pointed determination. Both eyes flew open.

This was not her father's caravan.

Adrenaline flooded her system with a discernable thud once again; arms and legs electrified, heart in her throat, she silently scrambled to her feet and padded through the black of night, the cold, shiny floor sending chills through her bare feet and into her bones.

The Engineer was huddled on his side and snoring softly, one arm drooping over the edge of the couch with the other cradling his head, both legs curled to fit within the confines of the couch. With her pulse pounding in her ears, she reached with one cold, clammy hand to grasp as the sinew of the huge, porcelain forearm dangling just above the floor, unsure if he could even feel the contact underneath the biosuit.

Skitter skitter skitter skitter skitter.

Involuntarily, her grip tightened. The snores ceased. As she desperately searched his features for signs of life, he finally peeked one black eye open, squinting in the darkness. She was somewhat certain he was looking at her, and somewhat more certain he wasn't in the slightest bit amused.

Scraaaaaaaaaaape.

In an instant, both dark eyes snapped open as he baulked in realisation. In another he was half-seated on the couch, half-crouched ready to burst from his position. Mouth agape, his gaze darted about every inch of the room as the noises yielded to silence once more; finally, that gaze caught hers. Wider than she'd ever seen them, there was something in the black of his eyes that she didn't want to see, that she'd never seen in him.

Fear. It was fear.

Reaching up to grip her shoulder with one hand, he placed the extended index finger of the other against his lips, his gaze refusing to leave hers. She hoped it meant the same to his people as it did hers, and offered a solemn, terrified nod as she sucked in her bottom lip.

In the next breath he had crossed the room with both speed and silence that she had never dreamed possible for a creature of his size. The moment he reached the crates, he reached down with both hands and snatched the immense, rifle-like contraption he'd brought on board, slinging the strap of one over his shoulder as he marched back toward her.

The word he whispered to her as he crouched in front of her was meaningless, but the sheer intent etched into his pale face was not.

They were no longer alone.


Author's Note:

HEY GUESS WHAT STUFF IS HAPPENING.

Also, yeah. The ~60 hour weeks continue. At least the upshot is soon I'll be buying a new machine with this blood-money that'll allow me to write this all in far more stimulating environments.

I'll probably revisit the Shaw-David dialogue at a later date. It's not come together quite as I want it given it's taken twice as long to get this chapter out and it's been in several hundred word snippets at any given time rather than my bulk sit-down-and-work periods. But hey, that's what postscript is all about, amirite. This story is going to get a massive spitshine as I write Za'il's version of events.

Next one will probably be about as far away too, I'm afraid. Another several weeks of bedlam in meatspace...