Chapter 3

She lay on a narrow bed inside some dark structure-sometimes she thought it was a hut, sometimes a vehicle-where the air felt heavy and oppressive and smelled of dust and rain and decaying vegetation. The air around her was stiflingly hot, but she couldn't stop shivering. She was terribly thirsty, and yet her stomach was so upset that the thought of drinking anything was unbearable. The pain in her joints was unpleasant, but it paled in comparison to the splitting ache in her skull. She was terribly sick, and far from home and safety and comfort. She knew that much, even if the rest of it was hazy.

She moaned softly, needing to put a voice to her discomfort and fear, useless as it was, and suddenly heard the sound of someone approaching. Large, gentle hands steadied her, then reached up to brush the hair off of her damp forehead. The man (she was suddenly sure it was a man, due to the size and rough texture of the hands) seemed to tower over her, even though he seemed to be kneeling. She looked up at him but could only make out his silhouette. But when he leaned over and placed a soft, gentle kiss on her forehead, she found herself smiling, a great deal of her fear and uncertainty gone.

"Daddy?" she asked softly.

"It's all right, Lizzie," came her father's voice. "I think the fever's finally breaking. You'll feel better soon."

She nodded slightly and closed her eyes, feeling relieved. She knew where she was now. She knew what had happened and why she felt so sick. She was with her father somewhere in Africa (she never quite knew where, since they traveled frequently and she still wasn't very familiar with the geography of the place at her age, but he knew, and that was enough for her). She'd gotten sick again, not an unusual occurrence for her since she'd started living there. She'd been vaccinated against all the really nasty diseases, of course, but there were still various illnesses and parasites and infections that a child could catch if she wasn't careful. Which children, of course, seldom were.

She was getting better though. Her father had told her, and he knew these things. She just had to wait a little longer, and everything would be all right again. In the meantime, she knew he would take care of her, so there was no need to worry.

Still, she wondered if there was anything that could be done about the pain in her head. She considered asking if there was any medicine for it, but the idea seemed to fade in and out, and even when she could remember it, she found it hard to figure out how to form the right words. The idea was there, but putting voice to it just took too much…effort.

Instead, she could only lie there, feeling a touch of frustration as time seemed to jump around fitfully and yet, not move forward an inch. Sometimes the pain was fresh and intense, other times it seemed as though it-and the rest of the world-were very far away. Sometimes her sleep was peaceful, other times it was plagued with restless dreams of having strange arguments with people she didn't know, strange frustrating arguments that never seemed to be resolved. She'd wake from them angry and wanting nothing more than to get up and away from the discomfort...and of course, being unable to. What was real and what wasn't began to blur into a frustratingly confusing mess. And through it all, she never really felt any sort of change in her discomfort. Or her surroundings. The hazy idea that she was going to toss and turn forever in this confusing hell occurred to her more than once, but thankfully, that was one bit of unpleasantness she knew needn't trouble her. Because her father was there beside her, and as long as that was the case, she knew everything was going to be all right.

He kept trying to give her water though. She had tried to tell him that she didn't want it, that her stomach was still so painful she was sure she would throw it up, but he had ignored her, almost as if he didn't understand. That was silly though, so she told herself he must be insisting because she was dehydrated. The thought of throwing it up was almost too painful to imagine though, so she kept pushing it away. On what felt like his hundredth attempt, she had finally gotten frustrated at his refusal to listen to her and smacked the bottle out of his hand. She had heard it hit the floor and spill, and this made her feel bad, since she had it in her head that water was scarce where they were right now. Perhaps they were in the desert. She had tried to apologize, but her father had seemed mad anyway.

After that, he had…gone away.

She'd tried moaning, she'd tried crying, she'd tried calling his name, but nothing had made him come back to comfort her. She must have done something really bad when she'd spilled the water. He must be very angry. Maybe even angry enough to abandon her completely, and leave her out in the jungle, or the desert, or wherever they were, to die. The thought was frightening, but mostly it just filled her with an intense loneliness. A loneliness so strong she almost felt like she must be the only being left in the world.

She couldn't do anything about it though, so she waited. For him to come back. Or to feel better. Or to die. For something to change. She knew it had to eventually.

And then, after an indeterminable time, something did.

She woke from another fever-dream to find herself surrounded by an intense cacophony of loud crashes, howling wind and rumbling thunder. Things hit the walls of her shelter with loud thunks! Some of them hit hard enough to make the room shake. The roaring of the wind was so loud it seemed as if it might lift her shelter off the ground and carry it away. It both felt and sounded like the end of the world.

She screamed and tried to sit up, her only thought being, sick or not, that she had to get away and find someplace safer. Sitting up, however, caused her aching head to spin so violently that she thought for a moment her fears had come true and she was being carried away by the windstorm. She cried out in terror and the action caused the pain in her head to spike, going from "uncomfortable" to "unbearable" in a matter of seconds. This fresh wave of pain caused her to fall sobbing back onto the bed, while around her, the walls of her dwelling rattled and shook with the promise of failure…and of letting the storm have her.

Then, suddenly, underneath the din of the storm and her own wailing, she heard the sound of someone approaching her. She opened her eyes once more and saw a tall figure coming toward her. He had returned.

She tried to cry out her father's name, but pain and fear had dulled the connection between her mind and her body, and all that came out was a low, terrified moan. He seemed to understand though. He knelt down beside her, and one of his hands touched her shoulder. She reached out and grabbed his arm and was startled to find it had a strange, rubbery, ridged texture. The sensation made her cry out in confusion and she cringed away from him, suddenly feeling uneasy. She wanted to ask him what was happening, but was too afraid.

Then he spoke to her.

From his actions, he seemed to be trying to reassure her, but there was nothing reassuring about the low, raspy, grating voice that came from his mouth. There was nothing human about it either. It sounded like the voice of a monster from a horror movie. Or a demon from a nightmare. It spewed a string of snarling gibberish that made her cower against her bed, her arms breaking out in gooseflesh.

She stared up at her father in horror, too dumbfounded by this terrifying turn of events to even act. What had happened to him?

Then there was a flash of lightning from the storm outside, and the entire room was illuminated for a split second. Long enough for her to see that the being kneeling beside her was not her father.

It was a gigantic, hairless, chalk-skinned ghoul with deep black holes where its eyes should be.

She screamed again, terror and revulsion washing over her so strongly that, for a moment, they threatened to steal her sanity. The monster spoke to her again, still in that horrifying rasp, its words still menacing nonsense, and she cringed away from it, curling herself into a protective ball, knowing it would do no good, knowing it wouldn't stop the monster from killing her, but unable to help it regardless. It put the monster from view, and that was all she could do right now. It may kill her, but at least she wouldn't have to look at it.

She felt its fingers touch her back and she whimpered. It pulled away immediately. The action only confused her. Why wasn't it attacking?

There was no other action from the monster for what felt like several minutes, although she could still feel it there beside her. She wanted to look back over at it to try and figure out what it was planning on doing with her, but she was too afraid.

Finally, the creature reached over, took hold of her shoulder, and rolled her gently onto her back. She cried out in fear, but all the monster did once she had been turned over was reach out and place a gentle hand onto her stomach. It pressed down lightly and she winced in pain when she felt its fingers trace a long, thin wound there.

It was the familiar pain of the wound in her abdomen that finally broke her out of the fever-dream and snapped her back to reality, jogging her memory about where she was and what had happened. She was aboard the escape pod. She was lying on one of the couches in the living area, recovering from the wound in her abdomen that had torn open earlier. The creature beside her was not a demon from a nightmare but the Engineer, who had brought her here and was now looking down at her with a worried expression.

Relief flooded over her so strongly that she began weeping, covering her face with her hands childishly, heedless of the storm outside or the pain in her head and abdomen or the Engineer still kneeling beside her. She cried in relief, but eventually, relief changed to fear and despair at the realization that she was not a small, sick child who was safe in her father's care and waiting for a certain recovery. She was badly wounded and trapped on a dangerous planet, while a violent storm raged outside, a storm that she didn't know if the escape pod could survive. And she was alone…or nearly so, her only companion being an alien who she could not understand and who barely knew how to care for her and who hated her entire species. Everyone else who had accompanied her to this place was dead.

And her father was dead too.

As fear changed to grief, her sobs increased until she was bawling. For a brief moment, even if it was only due to a fever dream, she had thought he was there beside her. And now, waking from the dream tore her away from him and reminded her that he was long dead, and what she had thought was him had probably only been the Engineer taking care of her. All the grief she'd tried to repress since she was young came flooding back, and in the midst of her pain and fear and despair, she didn't have the strength to hold it back.

She heard the Engineer saying something to her, and while its voice no longer seemed menacing, it still brought her no comfort. Not only could she not understand it, but its voice was so alien that it simply seemed unsuited for the task. If that was even what the creature was trying to do, anyway. There was no way for her to know.

When its words had no effect, the humanoid must have decided to try a new tactic. She felt it turn away from her and a moment later she heard a clatter. Then, one of its hands seized hold of her shoulder and shook her. She opened her eyes, tears still spilling out of them and saw that it had a handful of medical supplies. They might have been the same ones she had used earlier (perhaps the creature had had enough foresight to set them aside so the two of them wouldn't have to pick through that huge pile again), but she was crying too hard to get a good look at them. It held the handful of them practically in her face, and the look its own face was almost a hopeful desperation.

Somewhere, in the now buried rational part of her mind, she knew it was trying to figure out how to help her, but right now the uselessness of the gesture only pissed her off. Like a child having a tantrum, she pushed the Engineer's hand away with an angry shout.

Or tried to. The huge creature's hand stayed where it was and she only ended up bruising her own hand trying to smack at something so much larger than herself. The Engineer got the idea, however, and it turned away and set the supplies back on the table with a clatter.

Then it turned back toward her and she saw it was holding that infernal water-bottle.

"NO!" she screamed at it, an irrational fury beginning to take hold. "I don't want any more goddamn water!"

The Engineer stared at her with wide, dark eyes, looking almost taken aback.

Suddenly feeling embarrassed as well as angry and sad and miserable, she turned away from the creature and hid her face in her hands while she cried. She felt its hand touch her shoulder again, but she ignored it, knowing there was nothing the creature could do to help her and hating it for that. And for putting her into this mess in the first place. And for not being her father. She almost thought that that was what made her hate the creature most of all.

There was suddenly a loud crash outside as something (a large rock, most likely) struck one of the windows of the escape pod, shaking the entire ship.

She cried out in terror, her anger and grief forgotten. Once again knowing there was nothing she could do, she curled into a frightened ball and waited for the end.

The end didn't come though. The only thing that happened was that, after a few minutes of watching her cower like that, the Engineer leaned over her once more and slipped its arms around her protectively.

It didn't pick her up, or even truly embrace her, but it did encircle her with its arms and lean over her, creating a protective little shelter for her with its body. The flashes of lightning dimmed and the noise of the storm was muffled as she was encased in warm, soothing darkness.

She reached out and clung to the creature instinctively, almost without realizing what she was doing, and she felt it draw its breath in sharply. Ignoring its gasp, she wrapped her arms around it (not exactly an easy feat, given its size, but she managed) and pressed her face against its chest. It let her, and she nestled against it, while around her, the sounds of the storm faded into the background as she concentrated only on the strength of its arms and the warmth of its body and the loud, steady beating of its heart.

Shaw lost track of how long she stayed there like that, clinging to the Engineer while the storm raged outside. The humanoid still didn't hold her, or caress her, or do anything else to comfort her, but it stayed with her and protected her with its body. The gesture was more symbolic than anything, since the powerful winds outside would have surely swept even a creature of its large size away easily, but it soothed her nonetheless. It may not have technically been any safer, but it was better than lying alone and exposed and frightened on the couch.

She sniffled against the creature's chest, her tears sliding easily down the slick, rubbery material of its suit. There was a rumbling against her cheek as the creature spoke to her, revealing her earlier belief about its voice to have been wrong. Whatever it said did indeed sound gentle and comforting. The words were different and the sound was much, much deeper, but the tone was the same one that her father had used to soothe her in the dream. To soothe her in her memories.

"It's all right, Lizzie," she heard him whisper. "Everything is going to turn out all right."

She smiled slightly, even as a fresh wave of tears welled up in her eyes and slipped down her cheeks. She still missed him terribly, even after all these years. She had done her best to move past the grief of losing him, even managed it most of the time, but there were still times, times like this, when it all came boiling to the surface, fresh as it had been on the day he'd died.

She hadn't been able to see him at the end. They wouldn't let her, for fear she'd be infected too. Instead, they had taken him, still conscious and lucid, into a large cafeteria that served as a makeshift infirmary, and she had never seen him again. He had disappeared from her life as if someone had flipped a switched and eradicated him from existence. They had told her it was for the best, that she didn't want to see him toward the end, with blood leaking from every orifice and his face a swollen, blotchy purple color, but it only made things worse for her, because then she had to imagine what his last moments were like. She often doubted that the reality, horrific as it was, could be any worse than the ghastly images that appeared in her mind when she cried over him…or when she woke from nightmares in the middle of the night.

"Daddy…" she whimpered, missing him, grieving for him, wishing her were there to make everything all right.

And this time, at the sound her voice, the Engineer's arms tightened around her, until it really was holding her. Its hand came up and rubbed her neck…a bit roughly, true, but she could tell that was only due to clumsiness and inexperience, not malice or carelessness.

The action brought a fresh wave of sobs, these almost as powerful as the ones before, but strangely, the reason behind them was much different. They were relieved sobs…almost contented. She realized she was crying in gratitude.

The being may have been dangerous, unintelligible, and all but useless when it came to understanding what she needed, but it was still here, still beside her, offering whatever comfort it could. It may not have been much, but it was better than nothing.

"I'm sorry," she whispered softly to it, tightening her arms around it. Sorry for the way she had acted toward it a moment ago. Sorry for getting angry at it. Sorry for being such a disappointment to it and the rest of its people.

But mostly, she was just sorry for hating it. Because she now realized she couldn't.

She needed it too much. Not only to take care of her while she was incapacitated, but also to simply be with her. She was almost completely alone on this hellish planet…in fact, she was almost completely alone in her hellish existence. All her loved ones were as dead as the crewmembers who had accompanied her out here. This being, unintelligible, violent alien creature, was the only companionship she had during this ordeal. The one tiny speck of comfort she still had left in the world.

No, she couldn't hate it. She didn't have the luxury.

Instead, she nestled against it once more and allowed herself to place all the faith she'd once had in her father into this powerful creature. Even when the thunder crashed outside and the windows of the little craft shook and rattled, she remained calm. The ship would hold. She knew it would, because the Engineer was not afraid. She detected no fear in its posture, its heartbeat, its breathing. It was not afraid because it knew the little craft was sturdy. How it could possibly know that, when it had no knowledge of the ship or how anything worked, and therefore no ability to tell if anything was damaged, remained a distant, academic concern. It knew. Knew because it was older than her, stronger than her, wiser than her. It knew because she needed that to be true. She needed something she could place a childlike faith in right now. It was the only way she was going get through this

They were safe. She was safe. It was going to be all right.

Finally letting go of the Engineer's chest, she laid back down on the couch, curling into a fetal position as she nestled against the creature. To her relief, it remained the way it was, huddled over her, protecting her from the noise and the cold and her fear, creating a warm little shelter with its arms for her to huddle in while she waited for the storm to subside. She yawned, suddenly feeling sleepy in the warm, cozy darkness, and she shut her eyes. She still felt pain in her head and a bit of nausea in her stomach…she probably should have some more water and inject herself with more painkillers and maybe some antibiotics as well, but all that seemed unimportant compared to staying snuggled up next to the Engineer, safe and warm. Right now, she didn't want to do anything that would require leaving the shelter of its strong arms.

That only left sleep, and so, with a soft sigh, she closed her eyes once more and drifted off into slumber surrounded by warmth and the sound of a gentle, steady heartbeat.

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

Elizabeth's going through a rough time right now, but I promise she isn't going to stay a damsel in distress for the entire fic :P

Also, I was very lucky to have someone enjoy this fic enough that they drew some fanart for it! If you want to see it, check out this link (take out the spaces)

: / nuclear-metallity . deviantart gallery/#/d5bw2sr

I can't thank you enough, Nuclear-metallity, it's just lovely. You're all kinds of awesome! :D