The scratching and scuffling had been absent for far longer than she'd liked. Silence was no way to identify the location of unseen monsters in the abyss of night.
There was a familiar expression etched into the Engineer's visage, grim and twisted in determination; with all the strange places she had found herself throughout her early life, she'd had the dubious honour of seeing that same expression burned into the faces of soldiers amid crises, marching up and down the dusty paths of half-abandoned, ruined towns in heavy armour and laden with weapons, eyes drinking in the most minute of movements as fingers lingered over triggers. For a brief moment, her mind could not distinguish between those Human soldiers and the pale-skinned alien, his stance broad and deliberate as he silently stalked about the ship a mirror of moments of conflict interspersed throughout her unusual childhood.
Wherever her mind had taken her in that brief, reflective spell, it hadn't registered that she was one with the present; her breath hitched in her throat as she realised he was standing right in front of her, handing her one of the lifeboat's flamethrower units. Scrambling for composure, her shaking hands grasped the weapon. The strap dug into her shoulder as she slung it across, her hand fumbling with the trigger.
Bang!
Blunt force yielded to a horrifying screech as something slammed against the vessel's hull from below; both pairs of eyes snapped toward the medbay, following the source of the sound as it trailed off, its remnants echoing against Elizabeth's ears as she fought for breath. Whatever was out there was big.
The sound of bending, crumpling steel followed soon after, sending faint oscillations underfoot as something, something in the vicinity of the engines, was torn away from the vessel. With an almighty, clattering crash, silence once again fell upon the darkened room, the sound of her own laboured breath hoarse in her throat. Her hands tingled. Her legs were coiled springs.
It was truly remarkable how silently the immense Engineer moved. His feet barely made a sound against the polished floor as, wide-eyed, he disappeared across the foyer and into the bedroom in somewhat of a determined crouch. His finger never left the trigger of his weapon, held erect in one hand as the other quietly pried at the bulkheads, checking anything that could pass as an entrance, tracing the walls one after another where they had noticed weaknesses in the hull during their last reconnaissance mission.
Her own bare toes gripping the cold floor, Elizabeth found herself holding her breath as she crept toward the windows beside the couches, picking at every single detail that showed beneath the nighttime haze from the Gas Giant beyond. Nothing about the purple-hued landscape seemed amiss – for a barren wasteland of rocks and debris. She knew it was hopeless; anything out there would see better than she did in the dark, and would undoubtedly avoid standing in plain sight.
A faint clatter-clatter echoed between the base of the hull and the rocks below – it suggested the chatter of bones, or enormous claws. There was little doubt it was the latter, scratching about from a similar location below them that had yielded the almighty crash from earlier. The Engineer's gaze remained on the source of the sound beneath them as he stalked past, swapping the rifle to his left hand as he crouched beside the coffee table to carefully, tentatively shuffle through the growing stack of used, scribbled-on pages of paper strewn throughout its surface.
Shaw followed, casting a glance toward the airlock as she padded closer. He had located his earlier illustrations of the insectoid monstrosities, pausing to make lingering, intense eye contact with her as he pushed the page toward her; drawing a breath, he plucked a pen from the table, then hastily scribbled a message on the base of the page before flipping to a fresh leaf and hurriedly penning what quickly became more of a letter than a mere note. Every few lines he would pause, stock-still as he examined every corner of the room, then resume with renewed determination.
Even in the dark, with little ambient light, she managed to quickly translate his first message.
If I don't kill it, it will kill both of us. These are instructions for reaching your ship if I can't escort you.
She became aware that her jaw was hanging slack. He wasn't...no, he couldn't. She searched his face for anything that belied humour, hoping he didn't just suggest he would sacrifice himself for her sake; she was met with a grim stare, lips pursed thin below fearful eyes.
Shaking her head, she quietly snatched the page from him and flipped it to a fresh page. She knew she'd written the question before, but it warranted reiteration.
What kills them?
His response was short, passing the page back to her as he stood.
Heavy weapons and fire. Yours won't do much damage.
Surely, surely, there must be a better way of dealing with the threat than one of them risking death; she knew he was strong, far stronger than her, but if these things were anything like the tentacled horror that had almost killed him, there was little to be gained by facing it head-on. Besides, what was there to do? Open the door, let it in and gun it down as it came screaming aboard? Leap out and hunt it down the old-fashioned way?
Her heart sank. Rifle gripped with both hands, he was slowly, stiffly making his way toward the airlock.
She knew what would happen; she'd seen it before. The hunter, stepping out into the dark to take care of a threat to everyone else in the vicinity, doing what needed to be done to ensure the safety of others – invariably that threat was in and of itself something far nastier, faced off with weapons as the only line of defense. The moment he stepped outside, there was little doubt he would instantly become prey.
"No," she whispered hoarsely as she scrambled to her feet, one hand desperately reaching for him.
The Engineer turned on a heel, raising his left index finger to his lips in an effort to quieten her. Instead, she beckoned with both hands, shaking her head; she couldn't be a party to this folly.
Casting her an incredulous squint, he kept the rifle trained on the airlock as he turned toward her. Shaw grabbed at the pad as quietly as she could, her eyes refusing to break contact until she found herself thumbing at the note he'd just written, urgency returning to her in light of what was effectively a suicide note.
There was no time to play the translation game.
Elizabeth was no artist. In fact, she was hardly a creative at all. With the exception of music and daydreaming, her forays into any kind of art had been negligible, relegated to recreating symbols and site maps where necessary and little more, foregoing the paintbrush and exchanging it for far more practical ones designed for unearthing artefacts and ancient secrets alike. It left her hideously unprepared for this moment where, under pressure, she would need to somehow leverage what little skill she had for her point to have any hope of being understood.
The pen faltered as her shaking fingers pressed it against the pad.
Outline after outline fell into an approximation of their respective places, hurriedly and awkwardly forming what perhaps passed as the rear of the vessel, airlock doors parted with two stick-figure forms standing on the platform beyond. The larger held a weapon. Above the stick figures, hunched on the roof, she scribbled something large and bug-like, staggering into questionable territory as she reached the limits of her imagination; its form was beside the point, she knew he had far more of an idea as to what was out there than her.
The point, as it stood, was the arrow drawn between the creature and the gun-slinging stick figure.
She watched as he scowled at the sketch in the near-darkness, sucking in his bottom lip with grim concession; her stomach twisted as he simply handed the pad back, offering what was far more a grimace than the reassuring smile she knew he intended.
"No," she shot again, barely above a whisper. Her fingers grabbed at the immense, pale digits of his left hand as he tried to turn toward the door again, a ferocity forming on her face that she hadn't a hope of mirroring within. Lips parted as he wrestled with just what he would retort with, he gently tugged his hand away–
BANG.
A bone-jarring screech followed the resounding blow against the airlock. Both Human and Engineer flinched violently, with both the rifle and flamethrower immediately trained on the doors; a distant hiss echoed through the night moments later, claws scrabbling at the seam between the panels. Shaw's breath froze in her throat. Za'il had forced entry in exactly the same way. It had, in his case, proven trivial.
Bang. Hiss.
Metallic blunt force echoed about the deck as claws paced about the platform outside, paused, then with a high-pitched, tooth-twisting scrape of sharp points against alloy, faded to the faint patter-patter of broad strides against the dirt beyond.
The hammering of her own heartbeat in her throat rang against the static hush in the room. There was little doubt in her mind that should either of them step outside, they would die swiftly and horribly.
Switching the flamethrower for the pen, pad and tablet, Elizabeth hunched against the arm of the couch as she scrabbled about the furthest vestiges of her mind for a safer resolution than marching to their deaths. They had an entire vessel at their disposal, surely there was an alternative to gunning the monstrosity down.
The thought ricocheted about her mind for a lingering moment – an entire vessel at their disposal, and they were running about it like rats in a maze.
Could we crush it? Could we fly away?
Surely either option would be almost as effective as weapons and flames. At the very least, perhaps either option may serve to prompt the pale giant into a less...military resolution.
Fingers still gripping the enormous weapon, he stared blankly at her scrawl for a painful moment, eyes unseeing as they darted between the lexicons in the dark. Though, she admitted, it was too dark to presume what he was thinking, or if he was at all; even his features were obscured by the night.
Out of nowhere, a deep gasp erupted from his chest. The rifle swung free against its strap by his waist as he snatched the pen from the couch's arm, eyes wide as he set about frantically scrawling a response…
...then stopped dead, briefly examining her startled, expectant gawp before hastily scratching it out and opting for long, sweeping lines, much as she had earlier.
After pausing twice throughout his sketching to pry at the silence hanging thick in the night, fingers reaching for his weapon each time, he finally handed the pad back to her with an intensity in his eyes that had, by now, begun to grow familiar.
His sketch was less ambiguous than her own, that much was undeniable. She immediately recognised the plan view of the vessel's belly, complete with the shattered nacelle on the port side; the creature stalking the shadows outside was readily apparent too, crouched beneath one of the hull-mounted engines amongst billowing, radiating pen lines. He had taken apparent creative license in drawing the pillars of flame from all four engines and the three remaining nacelles, though it was still perfectly clear what he intended. How had he whipped that up so quickly?
And what were those radiating lines?
Heavy weapons and fire, her mind churned over and over, looping back and forth over the translation in the distant purple glow of the Gas Giant. Heavy weapons and...
The beast was on fire.
It was all she could do to get an enthusiastic nod in before he had turned to sprint silently across the room, swinging the rifle in front of him as he crammed his shoulders into the narrow stairwell leading to the cockpit. She followed as quickly as she could, clutching the pen, paper and tablet as she rushed up the stairs on tiptoes, unable to keep pace as the immense creature wrestled with the narrow passageway and forced his way into the cramped, Human-sized cockpit with an energetic huff.
He had already begun prepping the ship's systems by the time she leapt into the copilot's chair, panel after panel heaving to life in a rainbow of light that was blessedly dimmed for night-time operations; she had no idea how to fly the blasted thing, even after the day's earlier demonstration, but she knew she had to help somehow; their survival was too important, and too much in peril, to simply sit around.
Where is the damned creature, anyway?
Her hands darted toward the controls before she'd finished forming that thought; she had the power to answer that question. There was an almost imperceptible pause in Za'il's haphazard tinkering as he silently observed her stabbing at the sensor interface in determined, sweeping strokes; his gaze didn't linger long, given her side of the console remained unlabelled, and hurriedly returned to preparing the vessel for flight.
A faint blip echoed about the cockpit as rings and rivers of yellow lines burped across the centre of the console, highlighting the terrain below them in relief. For several square kilometres sharp ripples of rocks littered the land in loops of gold, flattened only in the path of the enormous crashed ship outside and otherwise strikingly uniform in its staccato smatterings of material. She let out a long, tense sigh as the yellow lines seared into her vision. Too good to be true – it would be impossible to spot a living creature with such low fidelity–
A ripple of movement fluttered amongst stagnant arcs.
Both pairs of eyes immediately fell upon it; it was but a mere blip amongst the detail, but once seen, forever it remained.
Za'il's finger lingered over the thruster controls as they watched, intently, for another sign of movement. The creature was lingering between the two starboard-side engines, writhing closer and closer to the stern. Elizabeth tapped one index finger against the rear-most of the starboard engines, their white outlines almost obscuring the creature as it moved again with a burst of momentum, distorting the terrain as little more than a flutter amongst the lines. Za'il offered a solemn nod. Judging by his expression, he was holding his breath as much as she was.
A distant scree of claws against sheet metal echoed about the deck below as the blip suddenly surged below the rear-most engine. In a heartbeat, the Engineer's fingers hit the console and slid upward; the rumbling, bassy thrum of heat flooding the engines followed in the next instant. Plumes of thick dust coughed upward from the terrain beneath the lifeboat, staining the purple-hued night a grey-brown and obscuring the landscape beyond as the vessel lurched upward and slowly, terrifyingly, to port.
One, two, three, four, she counted, breath caught in her throat. Four, then as quickly as it had begun, it came to an end; both hands wrestling the console, the Engineer set about throttling back and setting the vessel back against its landing gear with as much grace as his shaking fingers could muster. Two soft thuds quickly ensued as it returned to the moon; clammy hands gripped the seat bolsters as the first threw her left, the final jarring her right. Two more crashes of shattered glass downstairs followed in the aftermath. She would worry about it when daylight came.
While night remained, she would focus on whatever had been trying to gain access to the vessel. Snatching a gasp for air, she set about trying to discern the shifting rubble from the larger blip that had taken to tearing the engines to ribbons. Nothing its shape appeared to be moving amongst the smaller displaced rocks near the vessel. Nothing its size remained even close to where the engines hung.
Had it been incinerated?
Shutdown happened swiftly and in mere approximation to any sort of order; the console lights hadn't even faded by the time Za'il was on his feet, snatching his weapon from the deck and clutching it to his chest as he darted toward the staircase. Shaw was mere paces behind as she followed suit, pen and pad in hand.
David had shifted during the impromptu takeoff and landing, but not by much; half his body was now underneath the piano, head cocked to the side as it met one of the instrument's legs. Another thing that could wait until morning.
Mere seconds of stalking about the deck took place before a throaty gasp hitched in the Engineer's chest. Elizabeth's eyes followed his as they seized toward the floor-to-ceiling windows at the rear of the vessel, staring at a stab of light in startling orange against the night.
Flames. There were flames in the abyss.
Fists balled, palms cold and sweating, she paced closer to the window, lingering by the couch as her eyes struggled to focus. The blaze cast a ring of light against the rocky landscape, flickering with obvious heat as it consumed its fuel, stinging her eyes as they grappled with the brightness amongst the black.
The fuel twitched. Limbs groped at the ground, hunched on all fours, shuddering with one final burst of desperate movement before collapsing, succumbing to the blaze and crumpling into a searing, horrifyingly humanoid, defeated heap.
In the distant vestiges of her memory, the telltale, hissing rasp of a flamethrower clawed at her psyche. She had seen this before. She had seen this before, and she was seeing it again, and…
Charlie.
His final words clawed at her soul, clamping down on her throat, choking the air from her lungs.
Charlie.
She couldn't be sure where the scream had come from; it felt so real, but it was most certainly from memory – recent memory, but it seemed like so long ago.
The slumped figure outside burned against her. Nothing but black surrounded it, consuming her as she replayed, over and over, the writhing end of a man's life, a Human effigy to the failure of Prometheus. More screams followed, raking her flesh; her own words, begging and pleading for mercy, begging for sanity, echoing in her ears over the howl of the flamethrower.
She was distantly aware of a deep, booming voice speaking to her above the hubris. It was incomprehensible; all she could hear was the chaos unfolding before her. Vickers ordering Charlie to stay back. Charlie urging her, daring her, challenging her to follow through. The shouts of her crewmates. Her own screams.
Her hands darted forward, reaching for the corpse beyond. She would do anything to save him, to take his place, suffer his torment so he could live. The strong, impossibly strong hands of her crewmates snatched at both arms as she surged forward, scrambling toward her husband's fallen body, fighting against their grasp with every ounce of strength left in her battered, exhausted body.
Charlie.
By now she was aware she was screaming; her throat was raw, the cold air burning her lungs as her voice cracked, choking on the flood of tears that followed.
The blazing body before her was still; it was over, she was too late. Over and over, she was too late. The flames had finished what the infestation had started, and she was, finally, alone.
With one final, desperate lunge toward the fire, her legs lost all cohesion and she crumpled to the deck as thick, suffocating sobs burst forth in fitful screams that sounded oddly alien to her ears. Her body fading to numb lifelessness, she felt for an ethereal moment that she was simply watching all of this unfold from elsewhere, standing back and silently watching as she collapsed to the planet's surface mere inches from the Prometheus' loading door, bent and broken before the smouldering body of her beloved. What a wretched sight.
Darkness engulfed her as her forehead pressed against cold, hard polymer.
And still, and yet, strong hands clung to her arms as she lingered in the void.
Charlie.
By now only choked, sobbing whispers made it past her lips. She would live in this moment forever, doomed to repeat the flames, eternally stuck on this foetid world metres from salvation.
Lee-zuh-beh.
Amongst the burning silence beyond her torment, his voice seemed distorted and foreign. Had he somehow survived the flames? Surely not. And yet, and yet – he had called for her. With every fibre of her being drained, she pushed forward with what little was left and raised her head toward him.
The smouldering corpse was slowly being consumed by the ebbing flames.
Another entirely foreign noise escaped her as she collapsed back down into the abyss.
Lee-zuh-beh.
That was not Charlie.
Deep and alien, the awkward fumbling with the syllables of her name was nothing like the voice of her late husband – and yet, it was strangely familiar. Familiar enough that–
This was not the surface of the planet she was gripping with both hands.
The hands around her biceps, cautiously shaking her to her senses, were much, much too large to be Human.
Breath catching in her abused, wrecked throat, her body fell limp as she twisted her head to the side and gazed upward through the haze of tears. Reality returned with a discernable thud; illuminated by the flickering flames beyond, the darkened main room of the lifeboat was devoid of any movement apart from the steady rise and fall of the immense chest above her. The Engineer had followed her as she'd fallen, crouched on his knees and hunched over her as he gently, gingerly cradled her arms. What little she could make out of his face was the picture of concern, clearly as confused as he was worried by her sudden, inexplicable outburst.
While the tears had not stopped for a moment since they started, this newfound grasp on the present wrenched them from her with renewed fervour. He murmured something in hushed tones, handling her limp body as though she were made of glass as he pulled her from the floor.
Charlie was dead, and she was still alone on this godforsaken rock with an oversized alien and a beheaded android as company.
She was vaguely aware that her sobs sounded more like choked screams as he slowly, delicately set her against her knees. He needn't have bothered; she crumpled against his grasp the moment he tried to right her.
Charlie.
His name escaped her one final time as she descended into the abyss of the Prometheus' aftermath; before she knew it she had grabbed handfuls of something, anything, sobbing into the solid surface she found herself pressing her face against. She howled as she collapsed against her hands, clinging to the warmth before her, fingers prying at the sinew they'd looped around as time swallowed her whole.
An eternity seemed to pass before two huge, warm hands tentatively grasped her quaking frame – but her concept of time was, by now, completely shattered. It could have been mere seconds, or it could have been hours. Regardless, the hand against the small of her back easily spanned her width; the other encompassed her from her spine to her shoulder. Distantly, it left her realising just how bloody cold she was, the clammy, gooseflesh skin of her shoulder twitching against the heat of his fingers.
With time an unknown quantity by now, her mind oscillating between fervent, frantic replays of one disaster after the next and deafening, absolute nothing, she had become one with the horrifying noises escaping her chattering jaw. Slowly, as the orange flickers in the room faded to a dull red and finally, glacially succumbed to the dull purple tainting the sky beyond, she became aware that the smooth surface in her grip was the lowest rib of the Engineer's biosuit, and it was his chest her face was pressed against as she knelt, cowering, between his knees.
There was something strangely soothing about the air in the lifeboat; warm and familiar, yet equally as alien, the scent sought to gradually slow the spinning wheels in her mind, sopping up the pain it chose to drown in and instead enveloping it with an ethereal salve that battled the darkness tooth and claw. As time scraped on the sensation had begun to soak into every inch of her being, flooding her with a sense of comfort and warmth that seemed wholly inappropriate for the trauma that had befallen her from the moment she'd set her eyes on the burning monster outside. By now her eyes were almost swollen shut, her mouth dry as the sobs had faded to reflexive whimpers as her diaphragm spasmed in her gut, and the spinning, surging mass of memories in her mind had fizzled into stagnant, cold realisation of the moment she stood in right here, right now.
Drawing a shaky breath, she finally sat back against her ankles as she pawed at her puffy, inflamed face with one sweaty hand. Two enormous hand-shaped patches of warmth on her back bucked against the cold as the giant released her from his grasp, instead reaching for her shoulders as she sat upright. Through the haze of her abused vision, it seemed his expression had changed little; as worried as he was before her inevitable collapse, it seemed he had, at least, patiently waited for her to cry it out.
In that moment, she remembered it wasn't the first time one of them had fallen apart at the seams aboard this vessel.
He had offered her an explanation when he'd returned to the lifeboat in a similar state. She realised he ought to offer him the same.
Fumbling for the pen and pad still sitting against the arm of the couch quickly proved useless; her coordination was, at this point, completely shot.
As soon as she'd managed to bat both items onto the floor, the hands gently cradling her shoulders instead shifted to pick her up off the floor and place her on the couch. A whimper escaped her as her knees and hips protested; just how long had she been hunched against him, wailing?
Ringing, thick and persistent, had begun to displace the fog in her mind as the Engineer placed the pen, paper and tablet in front of her on the coffee table then knelt back down against his knees beside her. There was a patient, reserved air about the expectant look he cast her. Distantly, it reminded her of the expression she'd cast him as he crumpled against the glass metres away only days earlier.
Her fingers rattled too violently to grip the pen, no matter how hard she tried to still them. After several noisy attempts amongst breathy whimpers, she abandoned the idea of scratching any meaningful information against the abused pad and instead briefly turned her attention toward the tablet, fingertips fumbling with the glossy surface before realising that her overtaxed, swollen corneas simply wouldn't allow her to see clearly enough to discern text anyway.
Bloody useless.
She had thought, until that moment, that she'd cried herself dry, that she'd wrung out every bit of what she had to give and finally, finally descended into the clammy, ringing numbness that followed the crippling throes of dissociative grief. She thought it had been brought to a close, heralding the return of normalcy in any form – but the mere reminder of her own uselessness, alone and at the universe's mercy, brought a choked, wet whimper from subterranean depths she was previously unaware of.
Rather than any semblance of an answer, the Engineer would have to make do with a single word. One last time, his name escaped her. Charlie.
Once again she found herself watching from afar as her body succumbed to wracked sobs, buckling against the shoulder alongside her as she twisted to grab at whatever fell within reach. A soft sigh followed to her right a moment later, followed by the familiar warmth of a hand resting against her opposite shoulder, drawing her closer with a torque that seemed not quite Human.
Her face hurt, God it hurt; her chest spasmed above a churning, twitching stomach, both protesting her descent back into choked whimpers for the umpteenth time this evening. The very last vestiges of rationality lingering in the back of her aching head had long since had enough of this folly; it was exhausting, utterly exhausting, and so pointless – it was done and gone; this achieved nothing.
That exhaustion had long since twisted at her bones, sapping what little remained of her cohesion as she slumped heavily against the body beside her, limbs falling limp against strong arms as her eyes refused to stay open a second longer.
It was the loneliness that would kill her, she decided. Stripped bare to the whims of fate, there was nothing standing between her and the void.
Nothing, that is, apart from the steel bands enveloping her, cradling her before the event horizon.
There was nothing quite like waking up with a mouth like the Sahara and a head that pounded hard enough to make noise with each pulse.
Searing yellow clawed at her vision as she winced away from the morning light, blinking away the thick crust that all but sealed her swollen eyes shut. Her chest spasmed as she stole a deep yawn; it caught in her throat, briefly leaving her choking and spluttering into the pillow clutched between her arms. Opposite, a soft, incomprehensible mumble followed.
Gripping the pillow with one hand, she arched upward from it as she forced her eyes to comply, squinting through the amber haze. Finally cooperating, her vision focused on the couch opposite; still dozing, the Engineer lay slumped across the entirety of its confines, legs tucked awkwardly against one end as one arm draped toward the floor by the other. He was in almost exactly the same position as she'd found him last night as she shook him awake, only he was facing the opposite way.
Another yawn erupted from her. Shook him awake?
Scowling as she fumbled with the heavy duvet enveloping her, she fished through the jumbled molasses clogging her mind; had last night actually happened?
The room around her was in a state. Half of the clutter on the table had been knocked onto the floor, and there were fresh scribbles across multiple sheets of paper that hadn't been there before she went to bed. More books had flown off their shelves and several bottles had detonated against the polished floor opposite and, on further inspection, David appeared to have migrated under the piano. It all seemed consistent with the previous rough landing – perhaps the horrifying patchwork of half-formed memories strung together with smatterings of incomprehensible grief hadn't been a dream.
Refusing to give those thoughts purchase, preferring to leave them behind in the night in which they'd formed, she instead focused on the mystery of the blankets she was presently tangled in. Of all the things that had happened last night, she had absolutely no memory of curling up on the couch. When had she dragged the duvet out here? Why wasn't she in bed where she'd put herself after sorting out David?
And why did this pillow smell so damned delicious?
Whatever. Falling apart aside, she had a job to do – the sooner she left this place the better, although she was even less sure of where she was headed next than she was before the nightmare that last night had been.
Forcing herself to her feet, she indulged yet another yawn as she leaned backward, popping one joint after another along her spine before seeing to her stiff, sleep-addled neck in a similar fashion. Speaking of David…
After a brief circuit of the freshly cluttered room, she knelt beside the android and set about hunting for the hidden switch he'd mentioned hours earlier. Below his right ear, he'd said, but where? Probing about with the fingertips of her left hand as she crouched over him, she sought to cover as much of the pseudo-skin in the area as she could in an effort to find–
Silver eyes snapped open without warning beneath her. "Good morning, Doctor."
Squeaking, she recoiled in surprise, clutching both hands against her chest. Behind her, the creak of solid panels against leather preceded a mighty, deep yawn.
David's expression was briefly pleased, almost smug, until he stole a moment to observe her; immediately, his smirk twisted into something resembling concern. "Elizabeth, are you alright?"
"I…" she began, unsure whether the lie would pass muster. She hesitated, quickly running a handful of options through her coffee-deprived mind, before settling on less of a lie with a sad smile. "I'll be alright."
The android frowned, pale gaze refusing to leave her. "What happened?" The pause that lingered between them was almost too perfectly-timed. "Did he hurt you?"
"What?" Her eyebrows shot up with genuine surprise; casting a quick glance over her shoulder, she noted the creature in question had pushed himself into somewhat of a dazed seated position, pawing at his eyes with one hand as he gripped the couch with the other. Why had he assumed that? She returned her attention to the android with a scowl. "No, of course not."
Another perfectly-timed pause. "Something happened last night, Doctor."
"Something did happen, David," she mused with a sigh. "We had an uninvited guest. We're probably going to have to review our plans and get the Hell off this planet with haste. It's been a long night. I need a shower. Za'il can probably fill you in. Sorry to wake you and run, but he's more coherent than me right now." The Engineer flinched upon hearing his name as she pushed herself to her feet.
"If you say so, Doctor – but I doubt he's any fonder of me this morning than he was last night…" he trailed off as she sauntered toward the bedroom, clawing at the matted mess on her head with both hands. He feigned a sigh. "Wonderful."
Silence was never entirely silent to David; while the Engineer predictably said not one thing as Elizabeth slid the bedroom and bathroom doors shut behind her, he could hear the immense creature rustling about behind him. At the very edge of his vision, he noticed him folding the blankets on the couch he presumed Elizabeth had slept on; on the other side of the wall, the hiss of water flooding the ship's pipes preceded the clatter of water falling several metres from the shower-rose to the floor.
The Engineer completely ignored the android as he stretched, then paced toward the bar, fishing a clean glass from the dishwasher and filling it with water. Without Shaw as a buffer, it occurred to him that misfortune might once again befall him; regardless, there were questions that needed to be answered.
Clearing his throat, he slipped from English to the one language he had confirmed was mutual. "Good morning."
The Engineer stiffened, glass freezing halfway to his lips. He released a sigh, responding with what almost passed as a growl. "Is it, though?"
"It's a turn of phrase," David mused cheerfully, though his smile faded as he paused. "I suppose in light of last night, it may not be."
"Not exactly, no." Za'il's disinterest was palpable, alien or no.
"May I ask what happened?"
The Engineer shot him an irritated scowl, ripples of sinew forming along his cheeks as his jaw tensed. He seemed to consider his answer for a fair length of time; David was unsure whether it was a struggle to articulate the events, or whether he was struggling to tolerate him. "I'm working with the assumption that creatures have overrun this moon – or had, at least. You wouldn't have encountered them. No one would be alive to speak of it. Needless to say, one of them tried to gain access to this ship last night." He lingered on that thought for a moment, pausing to half-drain the glass still pinched between his fingers. "Explains why the doors of my ship were all sealed shut, in retrospect."
"I assume it was unsuccessful," the android quipped, aware he was stating the obvious.
The Engineer offered a singular nod. "Thankfully."
Had he not been synthetic, flesh-and-blood rather than a feat of programming, he might have found the ensuing silence uncomfortable. It had long been obvious he would have to initiate any conversation between himself and the mighty alien. "May I ask – what's the matter with Elizabeth?"
There was a subtle shift in the creature's expression that was not lost on David – again. The moment he mentioned her name, irritation almost completely yielded to something far closer approximating worry. "I don't know. She couldn't tell me." He drew a sigh, shifting his weight against the counter; inhuman as it was, his voice became far softer as he, David imagined, sifted through the events of last night. "She broke down, well and truly – I've seen it happen before, in others, but this was extreme. She was traumatised. Inconsolable. It must have been an hour, perhaps longer, before I could even get her off the floor. She just kept repeating the same word, over and over…"
A scowl had formed on David's face; he, too, had seen similar. He had a hunch. "May I ask what that word was?"
"I don't know," he shot. "I can't speak her language, remember?"
"What did it sound like?" The android's patient demeanour never faltered.
Za'il drew a breath, pressing his eyes closed momentarily. "It sounded like...chah-lee. Or something. I don't know."
The faintest hint of a knowing grin fell upon his face. "Charlie. That would be Dr Holloway."
Something twisted in the Engineer's expression; realisation, perhaps, David considered. Several thoughts seemed to appear then fade before he gathered his thoughts. "Someone important to her?"
The grin found further form. "Charlie was her husband."
Author's Note:
Wow, it's been a while. So those long weeks? Totally got worse. Sorry for leaving everyone on that horrid cliffhanger.
Also sorry for munting our protagonist. As consolation, have some dialogue from the Engineer after all this time!