Not that things ever seemed to go to plan if she had anything to do with it, but this had been more of a blow than she was prepared for.
Having paced the perimeter of the vessel until the shadows had shifted, swinging from one edge of the rocks scattered throughout the valley to their opposite side, each pass seemed to bring more bad news. Bent and scraped, the outer hull had sustained significant damage along its port side when it landed, trading paint with the crumbling rocks behind the vessel. It was nothing that she could repair, but it wasn't breached. Perhaps it would still fly, though re-entry would be a gamble. It would have to do, but perhaps it simply couldn't.
Worse had been discovering the shattered remains of one of the FTL nacelles; it had simply coughed up errors when scanned from inside the vessel, listing a litany of failed sensors, broken conduits and potential breaches, but it hadn't told her it was all because the engine had been sheared off the hull. Its twin, closer to the bow of the ship, had taken a beating in the crash, but as twisted as its casing was, it might yet fly. The errors it produced seemed far less serious – though, arguably, 'engine is missing' made everything else seem trivial.
Atmospheric thrusters hadn't fared much better in the process, with two of them so badly twisted they'd caved in on themselves. Unfortunately, they were also positioned on the belly of the ship; there was no feasible way to reach them.
The only good news she'd discovered in this dreary process was that the ferocious winds had dragged the hulking carcass the Engineer had dumped outside away, rolling it several hundred metres toward the base of the mountains and clear of anywhere they needed to be. She imagined it was now rotting in the sun. Pressure suits and atmospheric helmets certainly had their advantages – that was a stench she could live without ever experiencing.
Thinking about the task at hand, she found herself wondering if it was possible to ease the ship up using a combination of all of the remaining engines, babying the damaged hull into orbit with the sort of skill and patience she simply didn't possess, and setting course for...for…
Minor detail, she grumbled. The closest known inhabited planet is Earth.
This is not looking good.
Maybe her fantasies of exploring the galaxy were a little far-fetched. The lifeboat only did what it said on the label; it was designed to take its occupants to the nearest safe-harbour, which in this case, was back to Earth. It was no starship. Both of those had been rendered inoperable in the crash, to varying degrees. Without a vessel with longer legs, entertaining the idea of travelling the galaxy was clearly folly.
Dread had been nagging at the pit of her gut from the moment she set foot outside; she was very much staring down the barrel of last resort. The idea of sending an SOS to Earth and awaiting rescue in stasis was unconscionable for a variety of reasons, not least of which being her distaste with stasis in the first place. Worse was the Human propensity to stick fingers where they don't belong; she knew any rescue party would be overwhelmed by the temptation of exploration, no matter what dire warnings she might send ahead of her. They might even start looking around the wreckage of the alien ship before finding her, or even do exactly as the Prometheus crew had, and enter the towers. With Human bodies to discover, their risk of sating curiosity and thus encountering the things that had befallen the crew would increase by an order of magnitudes.
A rescue party would be little more than a suicide mission. They may even meet their doom before reviving her from stasis.
An involuntary shudder wracked her from head to toe. She would find herself quite literally in the same predicament as the last living Engineer – a fate, she realised in that moment, worse than death.
She was slowly realising that teamwork was her best bet if she intended to leave this place alive.
Completing one final loop of the vessel, she set about adapting her game plan. She needed to find out more about where Za'il intended to go, what technology was left behind, and what skills he could bring to their escape efforts; between the two of them, they would be able to cobble together a solution.
Realistically, he could probably cobble a solution together on his own, she scowled as she pulled herself up onto the platform outside the airlock. He doesn't actually need a Human underfoot. You are the one that needs him.
The airlock hissed open on command. She set about lifting her helmet the moment it slid shut behind her. If he doesn't need me, then why's he still hanging around? He's come and gone of his own free will several times now.
Soft snores echoed about the silent, still atmosphere within the lifeboat; sure enough, the immense body of a sleeping Engineer was still sprawled over the couch right where she'd left him. This was good news; she hadn't disturbed him with her crashing and banging, and he hadn't slipped out unnoticed and disappeared.
A yawn erupted from her unsolicited, damn-near dislocating her jaw in the process. Half an hour had blown past in the blink of an eye, and she knew that hours had passed as she circled the bent and battered ship; like she'd predicted, she had gotten lost in the details and allowed what she found to overwhelm her. More than anything, she knew it was time to 'sleep on it', as it were – she was in no state to be of any use right now, let alone making any decisions. Yawning again as she placed the tablet down on top of the piano with one hand and tugging at the suit zipper with the other, she found herself staggering toward the bathroom to cash in on that shower she'd promised herself earlier.
The Engineer's old suit had been discarded in the far corner of the room, she sleepily noted as she began to shed her own. It had been neatly folded, regardless of its state, placed below the towel she'd handed him, hanging high on the wall out of her reach. Tossing her suit and clothing aside in a messy heap beside the far larger apparel, it struck her as a remarkably orderly thing to have done; her sleepy mind reflected on the similarly-folded duvet he was now passed out on top of and the brief spurt of cleaning and sorting he had engaged in while they were both still wounded, idly wondering if it was a cultural thing or whether he was just irritatingly tidy.
Stepping into the warm drizzle pouring from the ceiling was akin to stepping into pure relief, and for a moment she found herself unashamedly standing stock-still, face-up as countless heavy drops gently pummelled every inch of her exhausted body. Eyes squeezed shut, it was surprisingly easy to cast her mind from this deadly moon to places far friendlier, places of fleeting happiness conjured up from her tumultuous past; in a breath she was standing beneath the rainy gush of the outdoor shower she'd fallen in love with in Bali, listening to the soft bubble of tropical waves lapping at the powdery, pale beach mere metres from their oceanside cabin as the evening breeze delicately tugged at the many palm fronds lining the waterfront and ringing the resort.
Charlie had pulled up a deck chair one starry evening, sipping from a tall glass from his perch in the garden as he watched her shower. It had been particularly warm that evening, and she hadn't been shy about hogging the faucet to stave off the heat. Heck, she hadn't been shy at all; that evening, as she recalled, she had been strikingly free of the constant, lingering shame that trailed her in her shadow, whispering about her small breasts, her thick, muscular torso, her unusual cheekbones, chiding her for being so different from the tall, leggy, beautiful women she was so often surrounded by, interjecting with good girls don't every time she felt a stirring in her belly, burning beneath her husband's gaze. That night, she had been free.
Perhaps it was the wistful gaze of the man that evening, admiring every single moonlit detail as she teased the knots and sea salt from her hair. He had so patiently admired her, raising his glass to her every time she bashfully turned to see if he was still there, grinning gleefully until he could no longer take it. She recalled with a flushed smile as he'd plopped his drink aside, stripped his clothes off, and wrapped his arms around her. Her skin tingled from head to toe beneath his embrace as she tugged him beneath the stream, arching upward to bury her face in his neck…
...and now he was dead.
Goddamnit, Elizabeth, she silently raged, breath hitching in her throat. Thinking about him isn't going to bring him back, is it?
It was the silence, the utter silence, that drove home the sheer abandonment of being the sole survivor of the Prometheus disaster. Nothing could ever cleanse from her mind the memories of watching her husband burned alive, taking his last breaths as she struggled against the grasp of several crew members holding her back, damn near pushed to the brink of insanity in her desperation to save him in any manner she could. She couldn't even confide in anyone about it – and she wouldn't be able to for years. Her destiny, apparently, was to be left to marinate in her own grief, ambushed in staccato stabs as time plodded on, never truly healing.
She swallowed the sob that threatened to break loose. For now, Doctor, you need to focus on un-marooning yourself, and stop dwelling on the past.
What she needed, clearly, was that damn sleep she'd been looking forward to for hours. A tired, stressed mind was of little use – especially one apparently hell-bent on self-destruction.
Wringing her hair out as the rain slowed to a trickle, she set about quietly drying herself off as she dug through the archives of her mind for memories untainted by sadness, loss, humiliation or shame; if she could have just one memory, just one memory to cling to as she drifted to sleep, she reasoned she might be allowed a relatively peaceful eight hours where she might regain lost ground in the recovery game.
Idly, her fingers tugged at the edge of the skin-like film hanging from her wounded belly as she stared at her haunted reflection in the mirror; dark rings hung below her eyes, matching drawn lips and a damn-near soulless squint. One singular benefit of being totally alone, she mused blackly, is that there's no one here to see you looking like total arse. Heaving a sigh, she thumbed at the edge a little long–…
...skin-like film?
Flinching, she reflexively shot a look downward; the thick glue that had sealed her shut for the last few days appeared to have thinned to a white sheet not unlike a masque, edges having peeled back and frayed as they hung free of her. Her stomach churned as she experimentally pinched one edge and tugged at it, ears ringing at the mere suggestion of intentionally hurting herself. Should she be doing this, or should she be asking the Engineer if it was safe to do so? Should she really be trusted with such a task considering how injured she was, is this–…
...the entire patch slid off in her grasp, revealing perfectly undamaged skin below, apart from the faintest of scars embossed in white where the incision had once been.
Stunned, she gently pawed at her belly with one hand as she discarded the film with the other. It was as if she'd not carved herself up days earlier, as if she'd never given birth to the vile monstrosity festering elsewhere in the canyon. The thought of it all left her retching violently and scrambling to swallow the immediate aftermath.
Her arms ached as she gripped her biceps with opposing hands, suddenly aware of just how cool the lifeboat's atmosphere remained; squinting at her reflection in the mirror, she noted the deep, dark shadows beneath her fingers, at odds with the room's diffuse lighting. Lifting one hand, the cold chill of understanding ran down her spine – purple-and-yellow imprints of four huge finger-marks stained her upper arm, with matching bruises on the other side. The Engineer's handling of her had been rough, but she hadn't assumed it to be that rough; swallowing as gooseflesh rippled about her, she decided to take it as yet another sage warning that she was not the one wielding the power here.
After downing a glass of water and hastily brushing her teeth, she set about hunting for more clothes before climbing into bed; upturning the underwear drawers yielded no noteworthy results other than the realisation that she would be traipsing about in a size-too-small for a while yet. She resigned herself to that reality with a frustrated huff, tugging fresh items on with a few strained grunts, before tugging back the sheets of the enormous bed and clambering in, nuzzling her face into the soft down pillow that greeted her and bunching the thin blankets that remained around her.
She barely had a chance to call upon an untarnished memory before she was fast asleep.
Dreams were a funny thing. Sometimes they were a wild, unrealistic reimagining of recent events, twisted into something familiar and unique and given fresh context when run through entirely different scenarios with entirely different variables. Sometimes they were simply memories, resurrected in a rose-tinted glow, all nostalgia and warmth tickling the senses. Sometimes they were the exact opposite; twisted, horrifying phantasms that preyed upon every weakness, every regret, every fear and twisted the knife through the floor until one woke up screaming and sobbing.
And sometimes, they were a cryptic reimagining of seemingly unimportant happenings, a smattering of feelings drawn together into a scene that had never happened, but ought to have.
Elizabeth had been drawn into one of the latter, engaged in a snowglobe world as she sat behind an old, rickety piano whose stained ivory keys had been adored by many hundreds of hands before her own. Its sweet, warm notes were hesitant beneath her fingertips, intimidated by the sheer amount of sound that erupted from them as she stroked key after key under the watchful gaze of…
It was her father sitting beside her, she realised. Calm patience radiated from him as she plucked notes at random, his gaze full of the sort of love and safety she hadn't felt in years. How had she only just noticed him?
Her tiny fingers couldn't quite reach an octave, as hard as she tried. Regardless, she played on; random stabbings gradually gained cohesion, slowly evolving from haphazardly-plucked notes to broken bursts of hesitant melody, playing songs she had never heard with fingers she barely recognised. One-two-three, one-two-three, music flowed as it burgeoned with confidence, all as her father watched in silence, his reassuring smile enduring and kind.
It occurred to her that she was watching all of this from the third-person, not from within her own skin as she had initially assumed; the small, cherubic child, no older than six, was without question her, the man sitting beside her undeniably her father, but here she stood, watching them as her child-self delicately plucked at the weathered keys before her. Her hair had been so curly as a child, she remarked; she'd hated it at the time, but she would kill for those ringlets now. She would kill to be sitting alongside her father, too, but it wasn't exactly an option.
It also occurred to her, after a breath, that she was grasping the neck of a violin with one hand, and its bow with the other. When had she picked the confounded thing up?
None of this made any sense; she had never sat with her father by a piano in this manner, and certainly not at that age. She had never heard any of the songs her child-self was playing, let alone played them herself, and yet there she was, watching the scene unfold.
She felt compelled to join them.
Hefting the violin to her shoulder, she raised the bow and played. The songs she had never heard flowed from her fingers as if she knew them by heart, following her child-self's lead and matching the flourishing passion that flooded the snowglobe world, breath hitching in her throat as the melody became her. It had been so many years since she had played, and yet she played as if it had just been yesterday. Where had all this come from?
In the next moment, she wasn't quite so sure it was her child-self playing the piano after all. Whatever was being played had evolved beyond the skillset of a mere child despite the occasional fumble that seemed to only add to its spirit. Fingers stretched too far to be those of a little girl; perhaps it was her father playing all along. She couldn't be sure – the whole scene had become somewhat unclear, with only her own hands properly visible before her, the rest a haze of heart and melody. Whoever it was, they seemed to pluck from song to song, not entirely sure of themselves or the instrument, but played with warmth regardless. In her dream state, it was easy to play along despite the odd pauses and morphing from melody to melody on a whim; the music had become her, she could feel it in her belly.
Such was its warmth that she felt completely swaddled, balled up in a world of cosy bliss, gripping at the pillows and blankets in a sleepy stupor. As the world around her faded to sepia-tinged bokeh, she slowly, grindingly came to the realisation that she was lying down in a tangle of sheets, her arms locked around a thick, plush pillow cradled against the length of her body. An enormous yawn overcame her as she clawed the hair from her eyes and stretched, sliding her legs free of the bedding bunched around her ankles and rolling onto her back as she grappled with consciousness.
What a bizarre dream. She couldn't argue with its pleasantness in light of recent happenings, though. Being lost in a world of music and childhood nostalgia was refreshing beyond belief compared to the myriad of other possibilities, and she had to admit, she felt genuinely rested. God knows what had prompted any of it, but she found herself more than pleased it had happened. Even with the clarity of wakefulness she didn't recognise any of the melodies that still rang through her head, and having never been particularly creative with music in her own right, she was left somewhat perplexed as to what it all meant.
She paused in thought, listening as the music continued to flow through her mind, unbidden. What games was her overtaxed head up to this time?
Sitting up as she pawed at her eyes with both palms, it occurred to her that perhaps the distant tinkle of fingers over keys was not a figment of her imagination; it sounded real, too real, to simply be a mere earworm. She clambered to her feet with a thoughtful frown, as confused as she was curious.
Having found fresh clothes that seemed to fit – supposedly loose jeans, and another turtleneck – she ran her hands through her hair in an effort to bring some semblance of sanity to the red mop on her head and sauntered out of the bedroom.
As much as her mind had picked over the options – had Za'il found a way to activate the entertainment system, was there a hidden speaker somewhere playing music, was the piano the kind that came pre-programmed with its own music? – she hadn't prepared herself for the sight of the Engineer's enormous frame perched precariously on the far-too-small stool in front of the piano, eyes firmly closed as he plucked away at a strikingly complex, austere melody from hard-wired memory. The music from her dream...it hadn't been a dream at all.
She stared in open-mouthed fascination as he played on, oblivious to her presence; again she pondered just how little she had expected to be greeted by the sight, having not the slightest clue what to do with this newfound information.
Padding past him with all the silence she could muster, she cast her eyes about the room for any clues as to how this moment had come to be; night had since fallen, which meant that she'd been asleep for at least eight hours. He could have easily been awake for half of that.
The magazines she'd scattered across the table were no longer spread in an unkempt manner, having since been neatly stacked in two piles to one corner with the well-used pad of paper sitting by the other below a handful of pens. Their breakfast had since been demolished, with the cutlery piled in the middle of the empty plate and multiple mugs and glasses sitting tidily alongside it; elsewhere, it appeared some progress had been made in stacking books back on the shelves, though apparently he'd been distracted early in the process, because there were many more scattered back onto the floor, open, arranged in several stacked arcs radiating from where he must have been sitting.
She cast him a quick glance as he played on, quietly shuffling closer to the carefully arranged material strewn across the floor. It didn't take her long to figure out what he'd spent his time doing while she was asleep; books and magazines of all shapes and sizes lay open on pages colourfully depicting every facet of Human culture imaginable, from the classic masterpieces hanging in museums around the globe to bright abstracts, from full-sized formal orchestras to flamboyantly-dressed rock stars, wedding cakes, vintage cars, fashion models strutting the catwalk, vibrantly-painted faces of indigenous tribes from far-flung communities, propaganda art from the multitude of post-industrial wars, close-ups of the artwork on the fuselage of historical aircraft. It seemed as though he'd sought to absorb any aspect of Earth's finer points, with special attention reserved for the innermost ring of books. Every single one of those depicted musical instruments of all descriptions, from guitars to oboes, church organs to trumpets, drumkits to cellos.
And on he played.
Grinning with more pride than she intended, Shaw folded both arms against the lid of the baby grand and leaned in, watching with intrigue now that she had context. Finally noticing she was awake, his eyes shot open with a start, fingers freezing against the keys. Her grin broadened as she offered him a nod, urging him on; after a breath his expression softened from its startled fluster to one of bashful acknowledgement, and after stealing a quick glance back down at his hands, he began something new.
Shaw would have expected to be more uncomfortable than she was, locked in his dark gaze, but there was something there she was struggling to put her finger on. Gone was the lost, soulless, haunted look that had dominated his features the night before, having been replaced with something that much more...wise? He was certainly more lively, almost relieved, soothed, with an intensity about him that she didn't recognise. Stealing a glance over his shoulder toward the scattered books ringing the floor, a thousand new questions flooded her mind as to what this bloody enigma was up to, and what the significance of all this was to him. There was so, so much more to any of this than she could begin to comprehend, and it left her failing to puzzle together how she'd gone from hiding from a murderous alien to marvelling at how he had simply sat down and begun to play an instrument that was, for all intents and purposes, alien to him.
When she looked back up at him, she was met with the tiniest of quirks of the lips, the faintest of smiles; those dark eyes, it wasn't relief in them, it was understanding. All but black in the dim lighting, they seemed to gaze straight through her skin and into her soul, brimming with newfound knowledge and a gentleness that seemed uncharacteristic in light of their interactions so far.
He murmured something in his own language, his deep voice almost Human in its softness, the alien tone she found so disquieting hanging in mere wisps about a handful of the vowels. If she had a superpower, she mused, it would most definitely have to be that of an omniglot, able to understand any spoken word. Oh, how she wished she could understand the things he said.
And just like that, he was done. Trailing off as his eyes found the keys again, he sucked in his bottom lip as his expression grew pensive; hesitating for a breath, he momentarily caught her gaze before pushing himself to his feet, stepping aside, and sauntering back toward the couches.
She had barely begun scrambling for something to say, anything, before she realised he was reaching for the pad, brushing aside all of the pens bar one. Idly flicking at the plastic button end with his thumb, he paused to admire the rings of books between them, lingering about the piano for a moment, then sighed softly as he scrawled a note across the page and held it out to her.
Plucking the tablet from the piano, she padded across the floor and took the note from him, sinking down onto the couch with a soft huff. Quickly setting about decoding the message, she barely noticed the Engineer drop the pen against the table and head for the crates he'd left by the airlock; words were by now becoming somewhat familiar, needing only to be double-checked rather than frantically searched for. She realised early on in her translation that he was most likely not repeating what he'd said earlier, as much as that disappointed her, but she had little doubt the message was of some significance given what had unfolded in the last few minutes.
Over by the airlock, it was apparently business as usual; his stern demeanour had returned as he occupied himself rifling through the larger of the two crates, sorting and re-stacking items with the strong, almost military poise that had become so familiar in the past few days.
As she deciphered the last few words, it all became rather obvious – the grief, the research, the piano, and now the endless rustling at the far end of the vessel.
Enough moping. Let's find a way off this godforsaken rock.
Author's Note: A wordy one this time. Hold onto your butts.
Machine-gun updating: I'm riding an unusual situation whereby weekdays are coming up free, weekends are full of work, and I'm stuck doing nothing in front of a 27" iMac and a very nice keyboard indeed. Needless to say I've written 10,000 words in the last two days. Please don't expect this sort of pace all the time, I'm just making the most of it while it lasts!
The voice: Much of my choice to write this story in the first place is exercise. Re-teaching myself how to build and then FINISH a story, moderating pace, selecting and constructing language in a multi-faceted way that becomes an experience rather than just words...and trying to write from a female character's perspective. The latter I struggle with immensely, but Shaw is proving somewhat easier than most. She wears her heart on her sleeve, and it makes it far easier to place myself in her shoes. It's going to be far, far easier for me to write from the Engineer's perspective in the next story but I am actually enjoying this for once.
This chapter: It's a strange one. Think of it as somewhat of an intermission, given how little happens in it aside from Elizabeth staggering around, trying but failing to be useful. It does play a poignant part in the way I'm setting up future stories, though; thinking about how the Engineers used a flute of sorts to activate various things on their...I want to say Bridge because I'm a hopeless Trekker. Add in the deleted scene where the Engineer is distracted by the video of a little girl playing a violin, and fluffs around with a book...we end up with this scene, where Za'il has an epiphany about the nature of Humans and distracts himself with research instead of sucking his thumb.
I'm absolutely adoring your kind reviews. Please, keep me in the loop as to whether you're loving or hating it; this is as much about the readers as it is me!