He sits in the dark of the tent the Reapers have given them, cross legged on the thin bedroll, Kelly and Peter asleep across a pace away. He swallows a mouthful of the vodka they refilled his flask with, grimaces at the burn as it goes down - he's never been a fan of this. But it works.
The sweater prods at him mentally.
"Mm?"
you drink that a lot, it says. stuff like that.
"It helps," Central says, because it does, even if it's not… healthy. He hopes he does not have to explain further.
Confusion from the sweater is chased away by concern, and his gut twists as it asks: it doesn't make you less sad, does it?
"It dulls it, a little," he says.
but not enough.
Central takes another drink in response.
you should sleep. no more of that.
"It helps with sleeping too," he says.
it gives you nightmares.
"I'd have them anyway."
you're not making my job easier.
"Is that really you?" he asks. "You ward off nightmares?"
i try.
"Thanks," he says. "For trying."
The sweater is quiet for a while; he takes sips from the flask and sits silently in the black, reaching out energetically toward his gun now — he gets a sense of it slumbering, but when his energy grazes it, it does the equivalent of a hound dog opening a eye and thumping its tail.
it loves you, says the sweater.
Central reaches back behind himself with a few hand and hefts the gun from across his back into his lap; he settles it onto his legs and runs his fingers along the gun, up over the scope, down the barrel. The sense of a tail wagging continues.
"Do you talk?" he asks the sweater. "I mean, you and it."
sometimes. it doesn't say much.
Central sets the gun on the ground now, lies down, brings it to his side, lets one hand rest on it while the other still holds his flask. He feels the sweater tighten around his form.
"Is something wrong?"
you're shivering.
"I hadn't noticed."
you should get in the bedroll. it's warmer there.
He makes a noncommittal grunt and complies, wriggling into the bedroll as best he can - it's made for a much smaller man then he is, and is cramped.
He tugs at the collar of the sweater. "Loosen up, please."
your breath is foggy. that means it's cold. i will not.
"I'm gonna overheat," he says, although some tiny part of his brain is screaming he only thinks this because of the false warmth of the alcohol.
it's going to snow.
The sweater somehow grows even tighter.
"It's not going to snow, it's spring," he says, but it's a wavering answer. He can clearly remember snows in summer, heatwaves in winter, weather disturbed and distorted since the aliens came.
can i ask you a question?
"You just did."
how long was i gone?
Central takes a long breath. "At least ten years," he says slowly. "Do you not have a concept of time?"
a loose one. time is not as important to objects. we spend so much of it in reverie it blends and twists.
"I'm guessing being locked in a stasis tank doesn't help very much with making temporal sense," he says.
when i saw you, i felt a lot.
"Feeling's mutual," he says.
you grew up. i wasn't there to help you. you got so sad. you're still so sad. you're hurting.
"It's a lot better now that I have you back, though," he says, carefully avoiding direct address of anything it just said.
i wish i could have done something.
In his mind he sees fire, sees flashing lights, hears screaming and his own breath. Central shakes his head. "Hey, only one of us needs any kind of survivor's guilt," he says, and he laughs a little, but the sweater doesn't laugh with him.
do you remember what happened?
After the fall, he knows it means. The memories are blurry, hazy and pocked with black outs that were not of his own doing. Central remembers… being cold. He remembers struggling. He remembers pacing. A lot of pacing, in a small room, locked in. He remembers needles.
"Not really," he says finally.
how did you escape?
He remembers it had been sudden. He had been disoriented, possibly still drugged, tugged along barefoot down dark hallways. He remembers arguing, adamant they had to try and look for the Commander too, and that his desperate pleading had been ignored.
He remembers he had stumbled after his rescuers into the light as they engaged in a firefight behind him, squinting, and was pushed up a ramp by the single frantic hands who weren't occupied with ensuring their escape.
When he realized it was the Skyranger he'd been herded onto, and that the person enveloping him was Shen, and the soldiers that hurried behind him to clamber into the seats as the ramp raised and the Skyranger lifted were the last survivors from the base, he'd dropped to the floor of the ship and sobbed.
do you think you would have found them? if you'd been allowed to stop and look?
Central shakes his head. "It would have been stupid, to have us so close together," he says. "I wouldn't have done that, if I was the aliens."
we'll find them.
He wants to believe that. He really does. He takes a breath and realizes it's shuddering, realizes he's blinking away tears.
im sorry. i didn't mean to make you cry.
"It's not you," he says. "It's just remembering."
i shouldn't have asked.
"No, you deserve to know what's happened." He pauses. "What happened to you?"
The sweater gives him a couple of images: first, one he already knows from his own memory— being stripped of his clothes; then the image shifts to being under a bright light, a feeling of prodding and poking; then there is the stasis chamber, and then everything is purple and glowing and endless and terrifying.
He trips up on the last emotion. "You were scared?" It's less a question, more a statement.
it was not my first ever feeling, but it was my first alone.
"Did it… hurt?"
not like it would for a human.
"When we showed up, did you know we were there?" he asks. "Shen said you were reacting like you did. It…" He hesitates. "It made me think maybe 'artifact' meant person. Just for a second."
the psionic womb heightened my senses. i could pick up on your energy. it had changed, but only in its outer layers - the core remained the same.
The sweater relays the equivalent of a person lowering their head and looking away in shame.
im sorry i got your hopes up.
"No, it's ok, I … should have realized they really meant object when they said object," he says.
you had no idea. it was ok to hope.
Central hmms at that. "Maybe," he says at last.
it's still ok to hope.
"Hope's all I've really got, which honestly doesn't feel so great," he says as he adjusts, trying to curl into a comfortable sleeping position.
hope is good. you are good.
"You've said that before."
it's still true. it's always true.
Silence falls between them for a few heartbeats. Then: "Thank you. For protecting me earlier."
The sweater answers by squeezing him just a smidge tighter as it emits love and love and love.