Chapter Text

0 DAYS UNTIL THE MIRACLE

How much time has passed? Locked up there, it's easy to lose track. She can't remember the last time she bothered to mark a cross on the calendar, and all she has to keep track of time is the life growing in her womb. It pushes her insides outward, and she can already feel the movements. Her feet hurt, her back is killing her, but she can't take aspirin with such a developed pregnancy. They would both die a horrible death.

What else is left for her?

Locking herself in the infirmary seemed like a final act of desperation. In all of the Tulpar, it was the only safe place, and if she dies anywhere else... if she dies right there, with the door unlocked... Curly would be next. Maybe that's what he wants. Maybe it's his greatest wish since the accident: to die. To stop suffering there, condemned to a stretcher, with his skin reddened and his muscles complaining of pain all the time. Once the aspirin wore off, she hears his crying and couldn't trust anyone else to give him his medicine.

After the last time she trusted Jimmy to give him his pills, she found open wounds, bandages dirty with fresh blood and out of place. Curly complained more, in a festival of broken voices, and the woman had no trouble understanding that, however the new captain was giving him the pills, it wasn't in a kind way. How could he see his friend in such a state...and treat him so cruelly?

«Because he's a cruel man. That's all he is. He's not even a man, he's a beast! We didn't know, and now that we do, it's too late. Curly, Swansea, Daisuke, me. The four of us are locked in the fucking labyrinth of the minotaur, floating in the immensity of space.»

“I'm so sorry... I won't let him give you the aspirin again.” She calmed her voice as much as she could while changing Curly's bandages for clean ones. By then, she was sure that the worst thing Jimmy could do...he had already done.

She was careful with the burned skin, although some patches of skin were less red and more similar to pink. In the infirmary there were no medicines or creams to treat burns or anything more serious than a superficial wound or a simple cold. She was surprised to see the months go by and her captain still alive. How is it possible that they send them away for a year without real treatment methods?

“I'm sorry I can't do more for you, Curly... listen, when we get back to Earth, you should sue Pony Express. It doesn't make sense that they force me to work with so few medical supplies. You could afford all the treatments you need to... get better, at least a little. Prosthetics, perhaps. A glass eye…I'm sure they could give you new skin grafts, sculpt a nose and lips…rich people's medicine is fascinating.”

But he just stared at her, perhaps trying to discern if she was serious or mocking him.

Anya has been there before.
Burdened with guilt.

When the accident just happened. When the foam saved them from being thrown into the vastness of outer space. While he screamed in pain and she covered his burns with the simplest bandages and creams found on board…when he was finally still, badly injured, without hands, without legs, vulnerable…the nurse looked at his only good eye, and carefully rested the palm of her hand on his bandaged chest. Something, someone, took hold of her insides at that moment, and she opened her mouth in a whisper that only Curly was able to hear.

“Now you know how it feels.”

Her palate went dry, and the next second the guilt sank so deep that she apologized hastily, sniffing. She doesn't know if she's too good or too stupid, but despite everything... she didn't see cruelty in him, but trust. Of all the Tulpar, they were the two most vulnerable and the woman thought, at that moment, that when push came to shove they would only have each other.

And she wasn't wrong.

“Ugh!” the thing writhes like an unknown creature inside her body. Unable to find shelter anywhere. Aware, perhaps, that only death awaits itself. She presses her forehead hard against one of the cold, metal legs of the stretcher, her face and her entire body beaded with sweat. It wouldn't make a difference being outside. They no longer have water for showers. No soap. She twists the leg of the stretcher in an attempt to stand, but slides back to the floor the few centimeters she was able to raise herself.

From the other side of the door she hears only screams. She knows that, a while ago, they tried to access the infirmary using the ducts. Only Daisuke would have been able to cross them and now... his voice does not reach her. All she hears beyond, in the main room of the Tulpar, is horror and disgust.

“... he drove him to die...” her voice comes out in drops. She trembles, but she stands carefully, finding Curly's bandaged and badly wounded face. After so many months, his words went from being simple babbling, like those of a baby, to broken and hoarse parodies of a human voice. She still does not understand what he says, but he still sounds better than before. Would he be able to recover his speech? Medicine is capable of miracles, advanced as it is...but they needed an even bigger miracle first, and it didn't seem like it was about to happen. He follows her movements with his one good eye, and Anya's eyes fill with tears, bringing both hands to her lower back with a stammer of pain “...and he's not... the only innocent condemned for his fault. We're going to die inside this damned piece of flying junk and all to satisfy one man's damned vulnerable pride...”

The nurse sweeps her gaze around the infirmary, until her eyes stop on the aspirin bottles still stacked on one of the tables, waiting to be used. Her shoulders fall carefully, but she hears a growing moan to her left: Curly.

“What's wrong? It hurts too much now?”

Turning around, he seems to be searching for something with his one good eye. Something inside her, in her face, inside her skull.

“If I die, he'll kill you, how he tried to do in the past and failed... I've thought about the matter. I don't think it was you who turned off the autopilot, right? It was him. Jimmy tried to kill us” Anya doesn't need Curly to regain his ability to speak out of nowhere to confirm what she already suspected. She remembers bandaging Curly's body and thinking about the filth of saving the life of someone who tried to kill them all. But a bitter aftertaste grew on her tongue. Why would he do such a thing? With what motives? It was so unbecoming...and of everyone on that ship, the only one who was instantly convinced of the matter was Jimmy.

He didn't curse out loud. He didn't wonder about the why behind his best friend's actions. He took control as captain in an instant. He didn't even hesitate.

Good God, she was so stupid.

No... she was fooled. Just like everyone else.

The only one who always knew the truth was Curly, lying there... unable to warn them. Unable to save them.

“... do you want us to die together, Curly? A peaceful death... it's more than whatever he could give us.” Her voice cracks with terror. A while ago, Jimmy tried to break down the door to the infirmary, and failed. He tried to get Daisuke to get in, but the poor boy... his screams of pain echoed throughout the duct and reached her. If she had opened the door, perhaps the young man would have been saved, but... “Didn't you want to keep the peace, until the end? Sometimes, to do something like that, you have to get your hands dirty. It doesn't matter. It's too late. As long as Jimmy keeps hanging around, it's impossible for us to leave without suffering, I wish I could...”

It's as if the blood were forming stalactites inside her veins. She slides her fingers under the stretcher and pulls it towards her, opening a sort of drawer that only she discovered its existence. Advantages of having spent hours in the infirmary, without doing anything useful. It was easy to feel that each minute passed with the same speed as an hour once you have run out of things to do.

Inside the plastic box was the gun. Anya exhaled, looking up at Curly, her eyes bloodshot.

“...we have nothing to lose now. I could kill him, but... there's no way I can figure out the code in time. I need to get to the cockpit, but if Jimmy has that strange flashlight on him, there's no way I can...”

Curly shook his head slightly. His frustration was palpable, wanting to say something and not being able to communicate. He looks at the box containing the gun and then looks back at her. Anya doesn't know how she knew it but...she knew.

“Do you...remember the code by heart? It's been almost eight months since then, and you remember?” Curly makes a sound again. A morbid vigor extends invisible hands until it reaches the nurse's heart. That was, at the end of the day, a promise of death. The key to a dignified end. Such a strange joy to feel. Anya never thought she would feel happiness and relief at the open possibility of dying from a gunshot to the head. She left the box with the gun on the table. A three-digit code “Curly... I'll say the numbers one through nine. Stop me when I say the right number, okay? Here I go...”

First seven.
Then three.
And finally...

“Nine...” Anya's voice turns into a whisper at the click of the safety lock being opened. She swallows heavily and carefully lifts the lid. The gun and a box of bullets. Never in her entire life had she seen a gun so close, but fear was not something she could allow herself to feel now. Intuitively, she loaded the ammunition, shivering as she raised the gun. She flicked her wrist, stretched and contracted her arm back, trying to get used to the sensation.

And, solemn and gun in hand, she approached the stretcher. Her belly is heavy. She is hungry and thirsty. Both sides of her head are throbbing, and the thing decided to choose that moment to move inside her womb, as if it knew what was about to happen.

«Look on the bright side» Anya thinks, rubbing a hand over her swollen belly «You'll die without having to suffer a single day. Believe me. If you had been born and we were still on board... everything would have been terrible for you. I'm sorry things had to be this way.»

“I'm sorry things had to be this way” she repeats, now loudly, but not too loudly. She looks at Curly and lets her shoulders slump. “If I knew anything about taking care of the machinery, even the basics, I could... kill Jimmy and clear another cryogenic capsule. One for each of us. But I'm afraid I'll break the foam too much and we'll go to hell...” Curly shifts. He stretches one of his severed arms towards her, pressing the wounded skin against the nurse's pale arm. Anya smiles a little, sniffling. “I don't hate you, Grant. Everything will be okay. Despite everything... you're the only friend I had on board the Tulpar. I'll be happy to die by your side, but first...”

Anya turns to the door.

“I know you think divine jurisdiction ends once we're in space, but... pray for me.”

She unlocks the door to the infirmary and slowly raises it. She grits her teeth. She hopes with all her might that Jimmy hasn't been able to hear the creak of the lock being released, wherever he is, and she hears the rustle of the metal door sliding open.

The hallway on the other side looks like a path to hell.

It's dark, with nothing but flashing red lights to illuminate their progress. What's causing the lights to flicker? She has no idea. The information screen in the cockpit has broken down. The autopilot is barely working, and although the external communicator is still working, there's no one to communicate with out there. No one but the stars.

A few inches of water rise from the hallway, perhaps from a leak in the bathrooms, and Anya's flip-flops barely splash as she walks through the layer of water, gripping the gun so tightly she's afraid she'll fire it by mistake.

The alarm for the malfunction sounds low and soft, a distant reverberation. A silent copy of the alarm that sounded before the collision with those meteorite remains. She remembers the roar, the unbearable sound of the foam as it inflated and went solid, thus preventing them from being sucked into the infinity of outer space. The screams of panic, and then the screams of pain. Curly's screams. The stench of burning flesh.

It was Swansea who helped her carry him to the infirmary. She had to cut the fabric of his uniform and pull it away, taking pieces of skin with it, breaking apart like paper. He couldn't stop crying and her hands shook so violently that she remembers fearing only making him feel worse.
Jimmy was standing in the doorway back then, screaming that if the captain died it would be because of her incompetence. Swansea was screaming too, but at him, snapping that if he treated her like that she wouldn't be able to work in peace and then Curly would die. That may have been his intention. To get Curly out of the way and put the death on her. But Curly didn't die... not until now.

The nurse grips the gun tightly, inhales in horror that her breathing is louder than any other sound. She moves forward with one shoulder pressed against the metal wall, and trembles at the slightest noise. Drips. Sparks from wires about to faint. She can't see more than a metre or two ahead, and the meager red light doesn't help because it's not perpetual. Anya is convinced that after the light stops and returns, Jimmy will emerge from the shadows like a demon bursting from the bowels of Hell. Fear will freeze her in place and she won't be able to shoot. He will take the gun out of her hands, and then…

“No,” she exhales. The volume of her voice is no louder than the dripping of the hallway. She forces herself to place a finger on the trigger, just in case. She is aware of the beads of sweat on her palms, the chattering of her own teeth. She aims to kill at the end of each hallway, and only then does she reach the main lobby.

Enters, presses her back against the wall, and a moan escapes her lips.

The screen is cracked, an empty hole. From the center, like an infection, thick lines of dead pixels spread, flickering or completely black. She lifts her chin. In the upper right corner it remains, the same as always. Now that the screen’s background is red, it stands out as if it were the only light on in a dark hallway. Surely Curly would see it now. It’s too late.

Everything is a mess. Dozens of mouthwash bottles decorate the floor, and as she walks she feels the sticky pull of sugar on the soles of her flip-flops. One glance to her left was all it took. She couldn't bear to look too long.

On his makeshift bed, in a pool of blood...still...Daisuke, with a gash in his face that must have reached his skull. A quick death. But what about the wound in his chest? His clothes are soaked with blood. It must have been the first wound inflicted on the ducts, and the second...a merciful death. A forceful, gentle blow. The acceptance of loss. It wasn't Jimmy. No, no. That mercy requires a gentleness that man doesn't know. His eyelids were closed. His hands crossed over his chest. Careful. Mercy.

That had been Swansea's doing.
But he wasn't there either.

Anya backs away from the beds as if the place was on fire. Almost. She remembers having placed her bed far from the others, trying to take hold of a false sense of security that did little to nothing. The worst was already done, and the memory hurts like poison injected into her veins. The pain. The dizziness. The panic gripping her throat with two hands. If she had had another doctor on board, perhaps...

It was too late.

«You accepted the drink he gave you» she scolded herself many times, while trying to sob silently, kneeling on the floor over the toilet into which she had just vomited «You didn't even stop to ask yourself where he got the code for the sweetener and the drink. You drank it and crawled, almost like a worm, to your room. He came in behind you. You had nothing to lock the door with. If you had been sober...».

No.

She rubs her teeth and the memories sink invisible needles into her head. No.
She should be able to have a drink without anything happening to her. She should be able to do her job in peace. She should be able to socialize without feeling dread and discomfort. She should be able to live without the throbbing fear that the worst might happen.

The worst has happened. She is broken. Doomed. And as she stands there, her body cramped by the weight of her belly, hunger and thirst, she realizes that her situation is ideal: she has nothing left to lose. As her final wish, death. A death on her own terms. A final act of autonomy.

The lower table is turned over, with the cards and board of the board game strewn everywhere. Anya tries not to think too much, even though she spent hours sitting there, fighting Daisuke, so good at every game. She still believes he cheated. She has no way of knowing now.

She moves forward. Her flip-flops make a soft ch-flop, ch-flop noise that, although she knows it is silent, in her strained ears it sounds like bullet shots. She lowers the barrel of the gun and jumps at the spark of the destroyed food vending machine. Another spark flies, like a shooting star. Her heart begins to consider the option of slowing down a bit.

“Anya?”

She screams. Now she does scream. She turns around, raising the gun to her own face, almost kissing the slide.

He's there, standing at the other end of the main lobby. His feet on one side of Daisuke's pierced head, to whom he doesn't spare a single glance. If at any moment Anya might have had a doubt, a remote possibility that Jimmy in a moment of crisis would open his heart and allow himself to be gentle and empathetic, she has completely dismissed it.

She just had to look at him.

His shoulders slumped, in a posture of unease, not tiredness. His hair is plastered back, his face, the chest of his uniform and his arms soaked in blood. His? He was too upright for most of that blood to belong to him.
She can see wounds on his arms, but not too deep. The worst part, however, is in his hands: he holds the axe. Yes, it's a contact weapon. Yes, she has a firearm. But Jimmy has used the axe before. She's never fired a gun. She's never even thrown a punch in her entire life...and she's had plenty of reasons to do so.

The worst thing about Jimmy wasn't just the blood, the posture, the axe not shaking in his hands.

It was his eyes.

Empty. Dark. Black, against the meager, flickering red light of the main lobby. Anya's eyes open wide. Her mouth trembles so much that her teeth are exposed. He's a scared dog, but isn't that when they get wilder?

“What are you doing, Anya?”

“Whose blood is that?”

She manages to scream that without shaking, standing firm in place. Jimmy lowers his gaze with absolute calm, as if he only then realizes the scarlet gallons soaking his body and his work clothes. Former work. He won't need to use them anymore.

“This?” A tiny smile forms on his scarlet-stained face. Just the ghost of one. Anya's mouth tightens, almost cutting herself with her teeth, the barrel still close to her face. “I... I went to get something from the cockpit, but...Swansea got nervous.”

“Did you kill him?” the black-haired woman twists her face. Her hands shake too much “Jimmy, did you kill Swansea?”

“And what was I supposed to do?” his bushy eyebrows come together, and the axe handle makes a whisper as it slides through the co-captain's palm. The usurper's. He waves it as if it were nothing “he was after me, Anya. He was going to kill me first. It wasn't murder, it was...self-defense.”

Jimmy speaks as if Anya were a small child, terrified, in need of an adult voice and guidance to feel better.
But Anya is no small child, and the terror she feels would not be stronger than her fury. As soon as Jimmy took a step forward, the sick woman's arms did the rest, stretching out and pointing at the man, making sure the safety was off. A gesture of conscience. Seeing her, he stood still, but he didn't look scared, despite staring at that third, dark eye, looking back at him.

“Why did you leave the infirmary, Anya?” again, that damn sweetened tone of voice. Hearing it makes her feel sick “the door wasn't stuck, was it?”

“You know very well that it wasn't” the woman shakes her head barely, in a poor imitation of a genuine denial. She can't afford to look away from Jimmy, not even for a second “the infirmary is the only safe place in the entire Tulpar.”

“Oh yeah?”

“It was the only place you couldn't enter. Once locked inside...you had no choice but to cry and threaten from the other side to let you in. But no. Not again.”

“And do you hear yourself?” the brown-haired man barely drops his head. A drop of blood falls from his hair and rolls down his face, but he doesn't even seem to notice “...poor Daisuke, dead because of the selfishness of the woman who should have healed his wounds. He saw you as a friend, and you...”

“Shut your fucking mouth!” her voice bounces off the metal walls of the Tulpar. She almost seems to have surprised him “Daisuke got into the ducts because of you! Because you're a fucking manipulator and a liar! You told him he'd be okay. You led him to his death and you didn't give a shit. That's all you know how to do. It's all you've ever done. Curly was the first...” she pointed the gun in the direction of the infirmary “...Daisuke, Swansea, and now...”

“And why aren't you locked up with your dear Curly? What are you doing here, exposed... like that?” he stretches the axe forward. The sharp head points at her “fat as a fucking whale. You can't fight or run and you're holding a weapon you've never used.”

“I promised Curly that we would die in peace” the nurse sniffles and, all at once, caresses the trigger with the tip of her index finger. Jimmy doesn't miss the gesture, but he doesn't care “...and we won't be able to do it if you keep hanging around here.”

“So... to fulfill a suicide pact with him, you go looking for me, to kill me... how romantic, nurse Anya. You should have been a poet, instead of humiliating yourself trying to get into medical school. Look where you ended up... floating in the middle of outer space... Do you also have some deep reflection to give me on this matter?”

Anya shakes her head.

“Throw away the axe, Jimmy.”

“So kind, so sweet…” but ignores her. She watches him run his tongue over his teeth, the spaces between them stained with scarlet. His blood, or Swansea’s? He looks past her. His eyes don’t even seem able to focus. “You really…risk yourself like this for Curly?”

“Yes.”

“Even though he turned his back on you, like a dog?”

“He couldn’t protect me like he promised…but it doesn’t mean I can’t protect him.”

“…you care about him…”

“Of course I care about him.”

Jimmy is silent, his head still bobbing like a rag doll’s head. She notices only then that he’s taken another step forward, and an anguished tug pushes her to kick the ground. The gesture causes a second, stronger jolt of pain to shake her body from head to toe, and the gun almost falls from her hands.

“STAY STILL!”

“Have you ever...” the axe hangs from his left hand, as if it weighed nothing. It must not weigh anything. He has strong arms. Suffocating. Jimmy raises his right hand and stretches his fingers near his face, a gesture that seems more like a spasm than anything else “Have you ever stopped to meditate on my responsibilities?”

“What?” a total uneasiness is the loudest thing out of such a short word. Anya would drop her arms at that moment, if it weren't for the fact that the gun is all that separates her from life and death “Jimmy, what are you talking about now?”

“In all these months of...of hiding like a rat and crying, have you ever stopped to think about my responsibilities? Has it ever crossed your useless mind how important it is to act as I should in front of our superiors?”

Anya's hands shake for just a second. Jimmy doesn't seem to care at all that he's being pointed at by a gun, he moves forward. She steps back, swallowing. A robotic voice repeats for the umpteenth time the damage to the Tulpar. A cry for help into the void.

“Did it ever occur to you that I agreed to do my duty by boarding the Tulpar, knowing that if something happened to Curly, the good, the famous, the perfect Captain Curly, I would have to take his responsibilities? Have you stopped to think about what it means that our superiors have placed their trust in me? Have you?”

Jimmy takes a step forward. He squeezes the axe, and the tendons in his arms tense under the red light.

Anya takes two steps back.

“Has it ever occurred to you, Nurse Anya, what would happen to my future…my reputation…my life…if I prove incapable of fulfilling my responsibilities? Have you? Do you have any kind of moral and ethical sense, Anya? Do you? What do you think will happen if I fail to bring this ship to Earth? If I prove myself incapable of being a good captain? Do you have any idea what will happen to me?”

The woman opens her mouth, but it's not an answer she offers him. Not one he wants to hear, at least. Anya... smiles, exhales a laugh, and shakes her head, licking her dry lips. Severely dehydrated as she is, she barely makes sense.

“You're... fucking crazy,” she denies, still smiling. Jimmy's eyes drop slightly, and an even louder laugh bursts from Anya's chest. “Fuck... and to think that I've been terrified of you for months. You're nothing but a pathetic guy, like all the other pathetic guys in this fucking world who can't deal with hardship and rejection with dignity. You think I don't know what you did? Because I do. Swansea knew it too, I'm sure Daisuke did too, but he's so good that he denied it! And now he's dead. And you're here alive, Captain. I think it's time for you to go down with the ship.”

“You're not going to ruin me! You already tried once! And somehow you managed to keep that fucking shit inside you, the source of all our problems, alive. You will die next to a charred man. You are pathetic, Anya.”

“Are you listening to yourself? Do you think your real fault here was getting me pregnant?” if she felt panic when leaving the infirmary, now all she feels is anger “You are a fucking abuser Jimmy, that is all you are. You abused me. You abused Curly's affection for you. You abused Daisuke's trust. You crashed this ship on purpose, why? To erase the traces of your first crime? Or to erase your greatest fault, the greatest of them all? The knowledge that you were born to always be second fiddle. That is what you are. And so you will die: Jimmy Zaci, the eternal co-captain.”

It is as if a fuse has blown inside the other's brain. Any trace of sparkle in his eyes is completely consumed. He has seen through it. She's hurt him. She's fucked him deep inside and she didn't even have to pull the trigger. He bares his teeth and grips the axe handle with both hands, screams, raises the axe above his head and runs towards her.

Only then does Anya stifle a scream, and fires.

Her ears ring, and the recoil is so unexpected that the gun almost flies out of her hands. She squeezes the grip tightly.

The boom of the detonation wasn't loud enough to hide the scream Jimmy let out. He brings both hands to his chest, the axe slipping from between his hands. Did it hit his heart? No... he pulls them away, soaked in blood, and only then notices that she aimed more to the left, towards his arm, and the bullet hit his chest. It must have punctured a lung, or part of it, but the bullet is closer to his armpit than the center of his chest.

“What...” He clenches the blood-soaked cloth tightly, his hands balled into fists. He looks up at her, his face beaded with sweat “What...did you do? What...the...hell...”

Anya aims, now at the man's face. She shoots, and hears a strange click.
She shoots, and another click.

The gun was jammed.

“I’M GONNA KILL YOU!” Jimmy lunges at her, grabbing the axe in both hands. Anya screams, and, seized by some primal fight-or-flight instinct, grabs the gun by the hot barrel and hits Jimmy in the face.

She hears a soft crack and a curse, before she turns and runs.

She closes the door behind her, even though the ship is a circle. He can reach her from anywhere. The clock is ticking.

“What are you running for, Anya?” Jimmy’s voice echoes behind her. He doesn’t run. He takes his time. Even with a weaker weapon, he knows he has the advantage over her. Tired. Hungry. Terrified. Not the slightest clue how to fight, and too pregnant. She hisses, clutching the thick blue fabric of her uniform, and marches toward the only place, other than the infirmary, with a lock: the cockpit.

Jimmy won't go after Curly. Not yet, at least.
Not until he's killed her.

“Why are you doing this? Why do you always have to make things harder for me?” The man's voice grows closer, and with every step, the fury recedes inside her chest and gives way, once again, to dread. Anya kicks empty mouthwash bottles, splashing in the inches of water, empty boxes, foam. She doesn't know where Swansea's body is and is grateful not to see it. She wouldn't want that to be one of her last visions before she goes back to the infirmary and frees Curly and then herself “always telling fables to the captain, in your fake-contrite voice. We wouldn't be in this situation if you kept your fucking mouth shut.”

“We're alone on the Tulpar, Jimmy,” Anya glances over her shoulder, the man's shadow appearing and disappearing according to the presence of the red light. Her chest inflates and deflates rapidly, swallowing heavily before each word is out. “Daisuke is dead. Swansea is dead. Grant will be dead soon. You’re not going to fool anyone but yourself.”

“I love your cheap psychoanalysis, Anya. It did you a lot of good with me, didn’t it? You should have given reverse psychology a try. Maybe crying “Yes, yes, yes!” at me would have done some good.”

Laughter bounces from down the hall, but the black-haired, for once, doesn’t allow herself to be intimidated. She doesn’t even turn around. She rushes into the cockpit, slamming the door behind her and pulling down the heavy red lock, in time to hear a kick against the metal sheet.

“WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO IN THERE, ANYA!? ARE YOU GOING TO LEAD THE TULPAR BACK HOME!?” Another blow, even louder. She approaches the metal locker, thinking of moving it towards the door to cover the glass oval in the center. She snorts as she barely tries to move it, and the thing comes up with no better idea than to kick forward from inside her belly, ripping an insult from within her insides.

“Not now! Not now, more than ever!” she bellows, and, leaning her body against one of the controls, she makes sure to fix the gun and, once again, release the safety. The room is filled with foam, and, cynically, something is still held in one piece on the radio wave fax: the dismissal letter. The infamous dismissal letter. Her captain cries in pain from burns on a stretcher, and the letter, the fucking letter...

“ANYA!” the nurse raises the gun, letting out a moan as she sees a crack stretch across the surface of the glass.

“Get out of here!”

“OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR, ANYA!”

“I'm going to kill you, Jimmy! I'm going to put a bullet in your twisted head!” Anya leans the lower half of her body against the controls “You're not going to achieve anything! STAY STILL!”

He doesn't listen to her. And if he does, he doesn't care. Anya hears louder and louder bangs against the glass, and the gun shakes in her hands, her arms stretched out. She should have shot him in the head as soon as she saw him in the main lobby. He barely peeked out with the axe, when he was still somewhat calm, before rage made the blood run strong in his veins. Now it's too late. If he kicks down that door and she misses a shot, she won't have time to try another. She'll suffer. It will all have been in vain.

The axe blade shatters the glass and draws a scream from her. Jimmy pulls it back and the rest of the thick window shatters, scattering its fragments all over the floor. Eyes wide, Anya watches Jimmy poke his face through the opening, grinning from ear to ear, almost as if he's just discovered a hidden option. A way out back home.

“OPEN!”

Jimmy slides his arm through the opening, groping, stretching his fingers, trying to grab the latch to lift it. Anya hears her moans of effort, the blood pouring from the bullet wound and soaking his clothes red.

“I'LL HELP YOU, ANYA! Isn't that what you wanted? I can fix this. I'm going to open your stomach in two and rip the creature out of you. It's going to hurt so much. It's going to hurt more than it hurt to put it where it is now. But it's what you wanted. It's what you want. Fuck me. It's all you know how to do. Filthy whore, good-for-nothing nurse, you were desperate for some attention. I gave you just what you wanted. I gave you just what-”

Anya closes one eye. She pulls the trigger, and the bullet hits Jimmy's hand, who screams and pulls it back violently, hurting his skin even more thanks to the few glasses that, like shark teeth, stick out from the edges of the window. More prepared for the roar and the recoil, she doesn't suffer from that bullet as much as from the first one and, without delaying too much, she closes one eye again and aims.

“Look me in the eyes, Jimmy. It's over. But don't feel too bad. It's over for me too. And for Curly. You did what you wanted with all of us for too long... and dying is the last thing we have left.”

“Anya...” she hears the voice as if it were a spoiled, hurt child. A sick dog looking for shelter. She can't help but laugh. One last laugh.

“I'll do it quickly, Jim. One shot to the head. I won't miss. It'll be a painless death. More than you deserve.”

“...Anya...”

“Dying like a dog is what you deserve.”

Maybe he would have poked his face out, giving in to his fate. Maybe he would try to get his good hand back through the opening, only to lose it too. Anya waits for him to get too close to the hole, whether with good or bad intentions, and shoot.

But a sound interrupts everything.

“This is Lindsey Harrt from the commercial space station in Denver, Colorado. Please quote your ship code. I repeat. This is Lindsey Harrt from the commercial space station in Denver, Colorado. Your presence is not listed in the records. Please quote your ship code.”

She hears a creak from the other side. The weight of Jimmy's body leaning against the shattered door and his whisper as he slides down to a sitting position on the floor.

Anya is aware of many things at that moment. Strongly.
The exhaustion. The hunger. The sweat. The fear.
Still, she turned and pressed hard on the button on the external communicator. One of the few things that survived the explosion. She remembers hearing Jimmy rant about the uselessness of the controls left in good condition, little would he know...

“Hello! Hello! Do you copy me!?” she can't help it. Dread takes hold of her. She presses the controls with her right hand, and keeps the gun pointed at the door with her left. She can't miss. Not now.

“Loud and clear, miss. Could you give me the code for-”

“I don't know it, I'm the nurse!”

“And what are you doing occupying the controls, nurse? Over.”

“We suffered an accident due to sabotage! Heavens, neither our captain nor our co-captain are in condition to pilot right now! Please, I beg you, access the external controls and guide the ship to landing...” Anya remembers how to allow access to navigation to external radio controls. Curly explained it to her. He explained many things to her. It's been months now, a lifetime ago...but she remembers, pressing the relevant buttons “...our navigation system was also affected. I beg you. There's a murderer on board, do you hear me? I have the captain's gun to protect me from him, but you have to contact an ambulance and a patrol now. Over.”

“Did I hear you right? You say there's a murderer...”

“YES. JIMMY ZACI, CO-CAPTAIN OF THE TULPAR SHIP. HE'S ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR. LAND THIS SHIP, PLEASE. PLEASE.”

She hears silence. Dread takes hold of her, sure that everything will go to hell...until a message in yellow letters appears on the screen.

"SUCCESSFUL ACCESS OF GROUND CONTROL."

She needs to cry. She needs to scream. She needs a bath, clean clothes, and ten months of uninterrupted sleep...but she won't get any of that until they land. Until she sees Curly on a gurney. Until she sees Jimmy getting the lethal injection.

There will never be a nurse who wants death as much as she does.

They take care of everything from Earth. Anya, trembling, goes to the radio fax machine and retrieves the paper with the dismissal announcement, putting it in one of the inside pockets of her work clothes. She still trembles, but she unlocks it and opens the door.

The dark, red hallway no longer seems like a nightmare, but the final path.

Life, death, and then life again.

“Jimmy,” she looks down. He sits, head down, a small child caught in his misdeed. He bleeds from the wound in his chest and hand, and he doesn’t try anything when Anya leans over to retrieve the axe. She holds it in her left hand. The gun in her right hand. She hits Jimmy with the butt of the gun, and he moans in pain. “Stand up. We’ll go to the infirmary. You’ll carry Curly and bring him down when we get to Earth.”

“Anya...”

“It's over, Jimmy” she smiles, dried blood and sweat pressing the skin of her face. He doesn't even reply “it's over.”

When the infirmary door opens, Curly let out a noise of anguish so genuine and terrifying that Anya's eyes almost filled with tears. He saw Jimmy at the door, after all. The culprit of all his hardships. Seeing her, pointing the gun at Jimmy, the barrel stuck to his back, he didn't know how to continue reacting.

“We entered Earth's atmosphere, Curly” if she weren't so tired, so sick, so fed up, she's sure she could have smiled. Even with his skin burned and his eyelid battered, her captain manages to make the expression on his face show perplexity “ground control took command of the ship. Do you remember? You explained everything to me eight months ago, and I remembered how to do it. We're going home.” She presses the barrel hard against the man's back, standing in front of her, her tone abandoning any trace of kindness. “Hold Curly, and be very careful with him. You've made him suffer enough.”

Maybe he formed some scathing comment in his mind. Hurtful words. But he only thought them, limiting himself to obeying the nurse's orders in the most absolute silence.

Curly moaned in pain. How could he not, when every square inch of his body must have hurt like hell? But he didn't moan as much as he did all those months, just breathing deeply, held by Jimmy, and the three of them advanced towards the exit area, a decompression room and antiseptic rain to eliminate any trace of space bacteria.

“Cover his eye,” she demands, and she hears Jimmy let out a sound.

“What?”

“He has no eyelid, the chemicals will get into his eye, and then the sunlight will blind him. Cover his eye.”

The Tulpar trembled normally, descending deeper and deeper into the layers of the atmosphere, until a red light lit up above the double doors in front of the three of them.

It's been a year and a few weeks since that light last came on.

Jimmy covers Curly's eye just like Anya told him to, and all three of them get sprayed with that odorless spray until the ship comes to a complete standstill. And finally...

The light.

It's dusk outside, so the sunlight isn't too strong. It's summer. The air coming in from outside is warm, and Anya pushes Jimmy forward, her heart hammering hard in her ribs.
The dome above their heads is covered in hues she thought she'd die before seeing again. Red. Orange. Yellow. Pink. Violet. Thick clouds and patches of clear sky. Stars visible thanks to the approach of night. His eyes swell with tears, sweeping the dirt from his face. Warm tears. Tears that aren't of pain or anger or fear, for the first time in months. Jimmy doesn't make a sound. Curly doesn't either. For a split second, all three are human again.

They're home.

The landing platform reaches them in record time. Gulping, Anya peers over Jimmy's shoulder, studying the surroundings. There are three ambulances, a group of members of the trading station, clearly intent on sniffing out the developments, and a police car. She sees a stretcher ready, another being lowered from the second ambulance, and exclamations of surprise and horror at the sight of the badly wounded captain in the arms of the usurper.

“You did your job right in the end, didn't you, Anya?” Jimmy's voice sounds tired. He drags out the words like sticky candy on his tongue, sticking to the roof of his mouth and the inside of his cheeks. She just sniffs, smiling.

“It's the welcome gala that a captain deserves, isn’t it?” the black-haired woman leans forward slightly, and he lets his greenish eyes fall on her brown ones “congratulations Jimmy. You fucked up big time.”

Anya doesn't have to give directions. The two of them carefully descend the metal steps, emitting a "clack, clack" that, to Anya's ears, sounds like classical music. The reception of the angels in paradise. The return to the protected Earth, because there is no way for a God to rule the dark, empty and cold space. The true no man's land.

Two nurses take Curly from Jimmy's arms, placing him on one of the stretchers. She points her gun at Jimmy one last time, before one of the officers takes the gun from her hands. She doesn't resist.

“He left our captain in that state! Him!” she points fearlessly at Jimmy with her index finger. She can't let the officers get away from him. The communications officer must have passed the information on to the police officers, as two of them approached Jimmy. He didn't seem to resist their actions, just moving forward, his right hand pressed against his chest wound while his other hand, the one hit by the bullet, was handcuffed to one of the metal poles of a third transport bed. “Him...!”

“Miss,” Anya exhaled at the closeness. So many new, unfamiliar faces. She was about to break down, but they held her and helped her onto one of the stretchers. “We have to take you to the hospital, do you understand? Do you know Saint Luke's Military Hospital? We'll go there.”

“You can't let Jimmy go to the same hospital!” the black-haired woman holds one of the nurses tightly by the fabric of her blue uniform “He has to go somewhere different! It's dangerous! He'll kill Curly, he's capable of doing it! He'll look for me! Please...!”

“Please calm down” the nurse rubs her hands. Warm “we'll notify the agents, okay? But we have to get going right now. One of your colleagues is in a terrible state, and you're pregnant. We need to attend to both of you urgently. Lie down. Everything will be okay now. Everything will be okay.”

The nurse looked almost fifty years old, owner of a warm voice and firm hands. She never let go of Anya's hands, rubbing them insistently while the black-haired woman began to cry but, finally, she lay down on the stretcher. The other nurse closed the doors of the ambulance from the inside and, finally, they started moving.

Cuddled by the purring of the engine, the nurse with the warm voice encouraged her to fall asleep. She felt a bitter heaviness in every muscle of her body, eager for a rest that was not coming. Her eyelids were heavy. Her throat burned. She felt like an eternity had passed, until the doors opened again, with a wheelchair ready for her.

Above their heads the sky was black, again, and the sight caused her such unpleasant anguish that she closed her eyes tightly. She is fed up with the immensity of space. She needs the sun... the real sun, not the sun made up of millions of pixels... to come out again.

A little girl, terrified of the night.

Between each heavy blink, everything happened. White corridors. Faces. Female faces, thank God. They moved her to a room with only one gurney, unaccompanied, and left her some clothes to remove from her filthy work uniform: a gown, wool underwear, and a pair of flip-flops so thin she could feel every roughness on the floor.

“The room has a shower. Please change into hospital clothes. If you need help, a nurse will come to assist you without any problem. We will return in half an hour to perform the check-up.”

Anya found herself, once again, alone.

She looks at the white color of that room. Clean. Fresh. The air conditioning beating down the hot air from outside.
She looks down at the thin, blue fabric of the gown. The white cotton of the underwear. Clean. Spotless. No stains. No...

She runs to the bathroom.

The shower has no curtains. She places the clean clothes on the closed lid of the toilet, and turns on the running water. Warm water. There is soap. Shampoo. She takes off her uniform, piece by piece. The nasty flip flops. The belt. The pants. The jacket. Her shirt. Her underwear. She shivers and, as soon as she steps into the shower, as soon as the water hits her and soaks her body, she bends over and vomits.

The shower drain takes everything with it. Acidic bile. No food. No water. An empty stomach.

She follows with her eyes the way the water washes away the filth. The blood. The dirt. The sweat. The vomit. Everything is gone, as she clings, trembling, to the cold wall of the shower, doing nothing but crying as the water soaks her body.

They didn't have mirrors at the Tulpar, but there they are.

In plain sight.

She sees her naked body. The marks of bruises that never quite healed. But above all her belly, so enormous. She slides her fingertips over the stretch marks of the stretched skin, on her belly and on her breasts, swollen with milk. She can smell it. She's had leaks. Every time that smell reached her, she would dry furiously, as if her nipples were oozing poison. Malnourished as she is, perhaps she was. Perhaps her breasts are only capable of producing spoiled milk. Perhaps the baby will die as soon as it drinks a single drop of that miasma.

She presses her hands between her thighs. Bruises, now almost completely yellow. He hurted her that night. A lot. It hurted to sit. It hurted to pee and she couldn't let anyone hear her sobs. Remembering it now sends adrenaline through her veins and, cursing, she squeezes the bar of soap and begins to scrub her body furiously.

Her face. Her neck. Her chest. The pressure pulses, hurts, but it doesn't stop. It doesn't makes her any kinder.
It removes old grime. Sweat. Dried blood. Everything is melting away beneath the simple white color of the bar of soap. All the dirt she's been carrying for so long, lying on the floor of the infirmary.

She presses the soap against the bruises but, of course, they don't go away. She swallows heavily and drops the bar of soap, shaking and clenching her teeth against the end of one of the shampoo sachets, forming an ingestible amount of foam in her hair. Her eyelids hurt. Her eyes. All of her. When was the last time she washed her hair?

She couldn't stop crying.

Ten minutes later, already dressed in her gown and sitting on the edge of the bed, she received the doctor. The woman also looked a bit older, and her voice was as sweet as the voice of the nurse who attended to her. Anya looked at her as if it were the first time in her entire life she had seen another human being.

“I need to ask you some questions...” she speaks slowly, carefully. She presses the end of the pen and smiles at her. “What is your full name?”

Anya lowers her gaze, hugging herself.

“Anya... Musume.”

“Is it written as it sounds?”

“Yes.”

“Well... How old are you, Anya?”

The nurse opens her mouth, but closes it again.

“What day and year is it?”

“It's...August 6, nineteen sixty-nine.”

“I'm twenty-five years old. I was born on...March 9, nineteen forty-four.”

“Did you have a final medical checkup before you left your point of origin? Did you notice anything strange?”

“Yes, a year ago in the infirmary of the commercial space station on Venus and...no, everything was fine.”

“Any allergies to any medications? Any previous surgeries?”

“Nothing.”

“Before we begin the medical checkup, is there anything you'd like to tell me?”

“I...” Anya opens her mouth, and it's as if an invisible hand were ripping all the oxygen out of her lungs. She presses her hands tightly against the mattress beneath her, and although she knows that there must be an emotional barrier between a doctor and their patient, she is able to see a worried glint in the woman's green eyes. Her hands tremble, but she is able to keep them on her belly “...I was... a victim of abuse, aboard the Tulpar.”

“...right, thank you for telling me. Tomorrow, first thing in the morning I will make sure to bring a gynecologist to make sure that there are no open wounds. An obstetrician will check the baby. And with your permission, we will do blood tests to rule out any sexually transmitted diseases.”

“Yes, please, and...” she feels so pathetic, but she is not able to speak without drowning in her own voice “Can the gynecologist be a... a woman?”

“Of course” the doctor makes sure to smile a little “I will do everything in my power so that every doctor who comes here to treat you, even the nurse who brings you food, is a woman. Don't worry.”

Anya squeezes her eyes shut, nodding once. She tries to speak, but all that comes out is a sob.

“Relax, Anya,” the doctor rests a hand on her shoulder, giving it an affectionate squeeze, “everything will be okay now. The nightmare is over.”

Anya wanted to believe her. She was only able to do so a little.

The doctor studied her eyes, her throat, her reflexes. When they brought her water, she drank eagerly and had to retreat to vomit hastily.

She drank the second glass more calmly.

Two nurses came in to take blood samples, and to put her on an IV. They gave her pain pills that she could take, and food. Soup. Anya was so hungry she could eat one of those damn Pony Express horses whole, but she understands that her stomach would not tolerate going from liquids and starvation to solid food well. The soup was more than enough.

“...and press, please” Anya squeezes the piece of cotton, only then directing her gaze to the clock above one of the windows. Almost ten at night. Time had passed too quickly. They already had several tubes of blood for various tests. The entire evening passed with infernal speed.

“Tomorrow we will take you to the ultrasound room” the doctor's voice sounded distant, as if Anya had her head submerged in a bucket full of water. The woman placed both hands on her belly, slowly “I became a mother decades ago, but this is a belly of eight, almost nine months. Do you have any idea how long ago...” it was obvious that she was not sure what words to choose to address the issue. The black-haired woman just dropped her shoulders.

“Yes, it was eight months ago. More or less.”

“It would be better if you stayed in the hospital while things calm down. Down there” the doctor points to one of the windows “there is an armed commotion.”

“A commotion? Why?”

“The news reports are talking about a space miracle. It seems that your superiors gave up the Tulpar as lost as soon as the connections were lost, but there is still very little information. I am not surprised that things have turned out this way. I have colleagues with acquaintances within the company and it is... an unpleasant matter. Terrible. It is very likely that this will escalate.”

“Will something happen to us?” Anya squeezes the blankets on the stretcher. The doctor drops her gaze on her shaking hands and the IV that leads her to a serum bag, and exhales.

“To you? I don't think so. Something should happen to them, to your bosses. Well...former bosses. I am sure that you have more than enough reasons to take them to court. You, the survivors.”

“Terrible things happened inside the Tulpar that had nothing to do with Pony Express” she mumbles, and the doctor nods.

“I didn't mean to say that, I just...I think you should hurt the company. You were close to dying. Getting a large sum of money out of them is the least. Or getting them to close down permanently, perhaps. It's likely that...people will come to interrogate you tomorrow.”

“Interrogate me?”

“Detectives from the NFSC, for example. In a case like this, it's logical.”

Anya closes her eyes carefully. Of course: members of the National Federation of Space Crimes. She's never dealt with them.

“Doctor, excuse me...” every time she opens her mouth, she feels that the words have a harder time coming out “Do you know where...Curly is?”

“Captain Curly? Of course...he's in this same hospital, but in the intensive care unit. He'll need a lot of reconstruction surgery. The poor soul was writhing in pain. I imagine you had very little to go on board the Tulpar to help you heal him...and yet you were able to keep him alive, as badly injured as he is. Miss Anya, that requires an almost impossible talent. Have you considered entering medical school?”

“...yes. In fact, that's why I was working, to make money and keep trying to get in. I tried eight times, twice a year... once each semester. I failed twice in sixty-five, twice in sixty-six, twice again in sixty-seven... in March of sixty-eight and in May, again, before I left Venus. On the Earth base on Venus they have a medical school and I tried my luck there, but nothing. I don't know if...”

“Don't throw in the towel now” the doctor raises a fist, a confident smile on her face “squeeze every last penny out of your exploitative bosses and keep trying. Maybe the ninth time will be the charm, who knows?”

“I suppose...” but the weight of reality returns to her as the Doctor takes the papers with her records. She has just lost her job, and has no savings. She shared an apartment with two other nursing students who, she supposes, will take her back without problems. Or so she agreed before leaving for Venus two years ago.
But she's not alone anymore.
She's about to give birth, and time is running out. How is she supposed to keep studying with a baby? How is she supposed to keep living with a baby? An eternal reminder of the trauma. A constant reminder of him.

It doesn’t matter if the baby is born and it is a girl. A girl identical to her, with black hair, brown, drooping eyes, an oval face, pale, somewhat haggard since birth. It doesn’t matter if she inherits her exact mannerisms and calm personality. It doesn’t matter if her voice tone is identical and her gestures copied to a T.
One day she would do something. She would say something. It would be something that would make Anya remember what other blood runs through her veins. Who she shares DNA with. She would perish in pain. And how could she blame the baby? Innocent. The second victim. And yet...

“I want to call my mom” her voice almost completely breaking, she feels ridiculous. It even seems that she caught the doctor completely off guard, rubbing one of her arms. She's so thin. How much longer could she have held out in that state? “...I want to call my mom. Do you have phones?”

“Leaving your room, the third door on the right is one of the break rooms. There's a payphone. You can use it, at this hour most of the nurses are in the break room on the second floor” Anya held her gaze. The embarrassment was stronger than her, unable to say what she was thinking at that moment...but the doctor, intelligent, was able to deduce it. She put a hand in the pockets of her pants, leaving a not inconsiderable handful of coins on the table next to the head of the stretcher.

“I'll give them back, I promise...” she begins, but the doctor denies it.

“Don't worry about that now” and, as if there wasn't a clock above their heads, she checks the time on her wristwatch “I have to go now. I stand by what I told you, that I'll try to make sure that most of the doctors who will be in charge of assisting you are women. Rest now, okay? You need to sleep to recover. We'll see each other in the next few days.”

The doctor left, and Anya lay there for a few more minutes. She could turn on the television, listen to what was being said about the Tulpar's return...but she didn't want to. She couldn't. She didn't feel like reliving the horror. Not now. Not yet.

With a groan, she rises from the gurney and grabs a handful of coins, holding the IV stand with her left hand and moving toward the door.

Outside, the fluorescent lights were still on, but everything seemed quiet. Nothing but distant voices on the lower floors and the occasional noise of an appliance or television. In comparison, the whisper of the small wheels as she walks was a roar in this empty hallway, as was the click of the break room as she enters and turns on the light, approaching the phone. She raises the receiver, presses it to her ear, and inserts a couple of coins, before dialing a number she hasn’t dialed in two years. It’s muscle memory. She could never forget it. First the phone code, two-oh-six, and then the tone…

“Hello?” a female voice, husky and heavily accented, answers from the other end of the line. Anya twists the coiled cord between her fingers. She could burst into tears…and she does. Tears spill out of her eyes and, as soon as she opens her mouth, she can only let out a broken, stifled cry. “Good night?”

“Mom,” Anya’s voice is a painful whisper, and there is silence. Just for a second.

“ANYA! My baby, thank God you’re okay! The TV doesn’t talk about anything else. Honey, what happened? What happened?”

“It was Hell, Mommy,” a sad smile spreads across the brunette’s lips, closing her eyes tightly. Tears soak her cheeks. “I’m in the hospital now. They’ll treat me well. But it was terrible, Mommy. All this…I…I was convinced I would die.”

“My girl, don’t say that. Never say that. You’re strong. So strong. And you came back. You came back home. You’ll be okay, everything will be okay…” Anya twists the cable with such force that she’s afraid she’ll break it. She hears the fear in her mother's voice. The anguish. “Are you very sick? I imagine you're very hungry. Are they feeding you? Be careful when you eat. Honey, you have to come home. Come back. We...”

“...I'm not alone, Mom. Not anymore.”

“What do you mean by that?”

How could she tell her something like that over the phone? She opens her mouth, but the words refuse to come out. She just exhales, sniffling.

“When are you coming home?” Her mother encourages her on the other end of the line, but Anya is unable to respond.

“Mom, I'm... very tired. So tired... I wanted to call you to let you know that I'm okay, but I'll call you again tomorrow, okay? I promise.”

“Of course, honey, of course! It's so good that you called me, I was nervous as hell watching TV. Honey, you have to report them, that terrible company!”

“The doctor told me the same thing, but... I want to recover first. I'm...”

“Yes, sweetheart. Go to sleep, okay? What hospital are you in right now?”

“In the... uh...” the black-haired girl presses the pad of her thumb against the tip of her nose. She rubs “...the Saint Luke military hospital” she hears the rustle of a pen or pencil on the other end of the line, the sound of paper.

“Go to sleep, honey. I'll call you tomorrow.”

“No! No. I'll...I'll call you, okay? I don't know when I'll be free. I have to run a lot of tests.”

“Are you really bad?” Anya squeezes her eyes shut, her knuckles pale. Really bad? Terribly bad.

“...no, just...it's what has to be done. Goodbye, Mom.”

She hangs up, before the woman can answer, and after a soft rattle, she receives a few cents in change. She takes the coins and walks back to her room.

She sees the gurney, with the sheet rumpled. The TV off. She glances down the hall, suddenly feeling so cold. She wants to go find Curly, talk to him, but...with any luck, he'll be up to his neck on morphine, asleep, pain-free for the first time in months. He deserves it. She doesn't want to go bother him, but suddenly she feels so...alone.

Her work clothes are in a ball on the bathroom floor. The doctor told her the nurse would come for them later in the morning. Anya lifts the heavy, dirty cloth and is overcome by an unbearable urge to pee. Of course.

She sits on the toilet, dragging her uniform and searching through her pockets, until she retrieves the only thing she had saved: the infamous letter. She unfolds it, stretching her legs with a groan. It's a strange thought, but she's missed peeing for more than two seconds. The magic of no longer being dehydrated and about to die.

Anya presses her palm against the paper. That fax had the embossed Pony Express stamp on it. She doesn't think she'll ever be able to look at a horse again without being overcome with deep revulsion.

[INSTRUCTIONS FOR TERMINATION

Tulpar Captain,

This letter is the official confirmation of the clousure of the PONY EXPRESS SHIPPING CO. As Captain, it is your responsability to convey this news and information to the members of your vessel.

!!!WARNING!!!
DO NOT DISCLOSE CLOSURE UNTIL. < 48 HOURS REMAIN OF SHIPMENT DURATION.

Please ensure you maintain crew morale after delivering news of employee contract termination.

Questions and concerns can be referred to HR once the active contract period is concluded. Crew is still expected to complete the remainder of the haul to PONY EXPRESS standars – failure to do so will lead to fines and legal action. Please be reminded that the shipment contract is active until completion despite immediate termination of employee contract.

CONGRATULATIONS!
You have lived up to Pony Express’ high employee standards and will be promoted by the end of the Tulpar’s current shipment contract completion. PONY EXPRESS always aims to encourage work-loving and efficient employees by acknowledging and rewarding such behaviors even in these trying times.

LIST OF AFFECTED EMPLOYEES:
Captain, Curly.

Please enjoy the rest of your contract and thank you for years of exemplary work.]

Anya's tongue feels dry, and she's close to using that fax as toilet paper. It's important, though, so she folds the fax tightly, gritting her teeth, until she leaves it on the sink. She already knew she would be fired. She heard it from Curly's mouth. She already knew that this firing didn't affect him, and the detail didn't surprise her too much either. Not with a man of his fame and career. But the way it was drawn up...

“Failing can lead to fines and legal action!” she mocks loudly, adopting a high-pitched tone of voice, almost pulling her own hair. Legal action for failing to be sent on board with a fucking psychopath? Had Anya made a mistake by failing after being raped, pregnant, terrified and forced to almost commit suicide? Would they have expected such an exemplary attitude from the crew they left to their fate in the immensity of space, in a broken ship, without food, without the necessary means, without a way to escape, without enough cryogenic capsules for the five of them?

She gasps and stumbles out of the bathroom, climbing onto the stretcher and lying on her side, her back to the windows, being careful with the IV and the serum bag.

She couldn't bear to look at the night sky. To be watched by those billions of stars.

She hears the humanity to which she has returned. The sounds of the street. The footsteps. The honking of cars. The flashing of neon. The laughter. The screams. The human vibration.

She is hurt.

But she is alive.

Chapter Text

11 MONTHS BEFORE THE MIRACLE

“Daisuke, are you listening to me?”

The soft hum of the fluorescent tubes and the rustle of the pencil is all that comes back to her. She has spent so many hours locked up in there that she should have gotten used to the sound of the light and its strength by now, but the truth is that she hasn't.
Whoever designed the infirmary for the Tulpar spaceship, managed to get the atmosphere right. It looks like any other terrestrial or planetary infirmary, so white and tidy. The only thing missing was the smell of antiseptic, but she was able to conjure it up in her thoughts.

Sitting across the desk from her, Daisuke, the intern, was more interested in scribbling something on a post-it than in answering the nurse's last question.

“Daisuke...”

Again, nothing.

In addition to making sure to treat any injuries sustained by the members of the spaceship, Anya was also required to conduct psychiatric assessment questions once a month.
That was laughable, to say the least.
She took advantage of Daisuke's utter ignorance to look down at the question sheet. General and ridiculous. The training to be a Pony Express nurse was so simplistic that they didn't even have remotely good psychological training. How is she supposed to understand whether an answer is an indicator of risk or not, if she hasn't gone through training for it? Again, she even had to assess herself. Her studies for each successive and failed attempt to enter medical school had more content than the medical training required by Pony Express.

But she needs the job. She needs the money. Was the money worth more than her personal ethics?

“And...done!” Daisuke's cheerful voice makes the nurse raise her tired gaze from the question board and towards him. The boy smiles, proud of himself, and hands her the post-it “I'm so sorry, Anya. It seems I received a mental electric shock with a fantastic idea and I had to put it on paper before it vanished from my brain. Look at that absolute genius!”

The black-haired woman wrinkles her eyebrows and, with nothing else to do, studies the drawing on the post-it that Daisuke returned to her.
It was a face. Long nose. Thick eyebrows. It looked forward with a bizarre expression and, in the small blank space above, Daisuke had written...

“Yimpy?” As soon as Anya read that out loud, the young man let out a poorly concealed laugh with a cough, like a high school student trying to hide that he's laughing in class. Well, she couldn't expect maturity from an eighteen-year-old boy either. A few months ago, he was a high school student and, if she had to bet, she would swear that he was one of those who talked in class and poorly concealed his laughter.

“That's right, Nurse Anya. Yimpy.”

“But what do you mean by Yimpy?” the laugh Daisuke exhales is even more genuine this second time, as if Anya were trying to psychoanalyze something in Daisuke's mind through the scribble he had just made “What is this?”

“It's the co-captain, Miss Nurse Anya.”

The woman blinks and, taking that second look at it, now with Jimmy's face, the co-captain, in mind, the air leaves her lungs in a laugh that she kills by force, bringing a hand to her mouth. That poor attempt to hide the humor that the drawing gave her only manages to make Daisuke start laughing now without any kind of restraint, while Anya blinks vigorously, swallows saliva and forces herself to breathe calmly.

“Daisuke, this is...”

“With that drawing you could diagnose me with schizophrenia!”

“No” Anya makes a strong will to load that 'No' with all the forcefulness she is capable of. She hopes she has sounded convincing “this is very unserious, okay? It’s not something that you should do in a workplace, and much less on a superior.”

“...I know” for an instant, it seemed that all the colors had left the young man's face. He takes more interest in studying the tips of his shoes for a moment before looking back up at her. All, perhaps, in an attempt to look pitiful. Or was it genuine regret? Maybe a mix of both. “Are you going to add this to my monthly report? I mean, I understand if you do, but…”

Anya lowers her eyes. Yimpy, from the post-it, looks back at her, with his ridiculously long nose and ridiculously thick eyebrows.

She sighs and, before Daisuke’s puzzled face, the nurse stands up. Facing the corkboard, with a calendar and basic instructions for better care in the workplace, she stands on her toes and sinks a thumbtack into the top of the small paper, lowering her heels and bringing her hands to her hips with a satisfied smile.

“I don’t want you to get distracted again in your psychological evaluations with me, do you hear me?” She drops the complacent tone of voice at that moment, turning to look at the young man. He nods and puts a hand to his forehead in the typical military salute.

“At your service, Captain Anya!” The nurse takes her seat again, contemplating an attempt by Daisuke to get up “Can I go now?”

“No” then, he falls down with a groan, while Anya presses the end of her pen so that the tip stretches, with a small smile “you still haven't answered the last question. Tell me, if you could summarize your experience working for Pony Express so far in a few words, what would they be?”

“Hm...” Daisuke puts his index finger to his lips, although Anya doesn't need to be a genius to understand that he wasn't thinking about it too much either “interesting... fun... rewarding... tasteless...”

“Tasteless?” The nurse arches an eyebrow, writing down the words said by Daisuke, and he nods.

“The food on board is really bad, even with that food-creation apparatus. I understand that it has to be dehydrated for the duration of the trip, but... it's disgusting.”

“It is,” Anya agrees, and Daisuke smiles, leaning back in his chair with a grin from ear to ear.

“Ugh!, when I get home I’m going to raid my mom’s fridge! As soon as she finds out how badly I’ve eaten, she’ll stuff me up to my eyebrows with homemade food…and it’s only been a month.”

“As soon as you get used to it, the passage of time won’t feel so heavy.”

“That’s what Swansea tells me, but I suspect he’s just doing it to shut me up a bit.”

“In that case, listen to me, I’m telling you this to comfort you…and because it’s true.” Anya removes the sheet with the answers and places it in the intern’s evaluation folder. Her gaze, however, rises again to the post-it. It reminds her of those artists who stand on the boardwalks and doodle for passersby. A cartoon version of their faces. “Daisuke, do you like to draw?”

“Like it? I love it” he raises his chin. His entire body language seems to change in that instant, dazzled by the idea of ​​being able to talk about something that causes him a genuine interest “since I was little. Art was the only subject in high school that I did excellent in, for the rest… but, well, you can't dedicate yourself to drawing. It's not a real job. That's what my mom says, at least.”

“Your mom clearly hasn't met Walt Disney” Anya gives him a smile, and Daisuke exhales a laugh. The woman's comment, however, doesn't manage to make much of an impression on him, and she notices it instantly.

“Uh-huh, but Walt Disney was Walt Disney. I...am Daisuke, and Daisuke can't dedicate himself to draw for a living. Not completely. You know, I've come to think… if I understand machinery well enough, maybe I can design new components. Better spaceships. And to design something, you have to draw it, right? It's a way to...well, turn something I like into a decent job.”

Anya draws a line with her lips. She could go on and on about how many people put bread on the table thanks to their art, but she is, in Daisuke's eyes, just the nurse at the Tulpar. And he, on the other side of the desk, has become a sounding board for all the hurtful comments he's received regarding his passion. Surely a real psychologist would know how to guide the boy in a better direction...but she is not one.

“...Daisuke, can you go find Captain Curly, please? He's next.”

“On my way!”

He jumps up, as if the chair were on fire. It's strange to have an element as full of energy as he is. He then speeds away, leaving the infirmary, and Anya sighs deeply, taking out a new evaluation sheet and writing down at the top the rank and full name of the next member: CAPTAIN GRANT CURLY.

It's been a month since the Tulpar took off from the Earth base on Venus. Barely a month. Time in there goes at a snail's pace. She should be used to it by now after her trip the year before, but this was a passenger transport ship: there were a lot more people and, by extension, she had a lot more to do.

The Tulpar was a cargo ship, and all that mattered was that the transport arrived at the designated port. Everything else was a bonus: there were very few on board, with little to do to pass the time.
Inside the infirmary she had several books on medicine and psychology. With a whole year of travel ahead of her, she would at least have plenty of time to prepare and try her luck with the entrance exam for medical school for the...ninth time. Thinking about it only makes bile rise from her stomach to her throat. Frustration and anger, along with disappointment, three ingredients mixed in a poisonous cocktail that would make anyone throw in the towel.

Anya drops her gaze on the calm surface of a glass of water, contemplating her reflection somewhat agitated by the soft hum that the Tulpar emits as it moves at full speed through the emptiness of the cosmos. Maybe she should...

“Knock knock” she hears a male voice and the soft knocks with his knuckles on the thick metal sheet of the infirmary. Anya stifles a gasp of surprise, covering the opening of the glass as if the water were revealing to her the deepest secrets of the entire world. She looks up and, peeking through the door, she sees the man's somewhat embarrassed face. “I'm sorry, did I scare you?”

“No! No, I just... I was startled. I was thinking too much.” She removes her hand from the glass with a sigh as he slides the chair back, sitting down carefully. “Don't worry, Captain.”

“Captain?” The blond repeats that word with a smile and a question in each pupil, as if it were the first time in his entire life that he has heard it. He has eyes with light blue irises, the kind of blue eyes that cause some disquiet when you look at them too much, as if it were an unnatural coincidence that human eyes take on the same color as the sky. The sky on Earth, of course. The sky on Mars is reddish. The sky on Venus, which they have just left behind, is urine-colored. It's not a pretty sight to behold. “Anya, I told you... you don't have to refer to me as "Captain." Call me Curly, just like everyone else.”

“It's a matter of... respect.” Anya shrugs her shoulders a little, and he sighs.

“You haven't changed a bit since we last flew together.”

About two years ago, or so, Anya had her first trip as an official Pony Express’ nurse. She felt ridiculous, wearing that uniform earned with training as superficial as the one offered at the company's training centers... but she needed the money urgently and couldn't start looking for faults in that situation, not when the prospect of long trips with hours of study available was ideal for her, who seemed addicted to failing the entrance exams for medical school.

The trip was ridiculously short in comparison: three and a half months to the UK space station. On board were only Captain Curly, an engine officer and herself. It was such a short transfer that they didn't even have to rely on the services of the co-captain, so Anya was more nervous than she let on from minute one because what if something happened to Curly? What if the autopilot failed? Then what would they do? Anya had no idea how to fly a ship. She wasn't calm until they reached their destination and, she's sure, her nerves almost gave her an ulcer.

Although she didn't meet Captain Curly in person until that trip, she already knew his name and face.

He is famous on Earth, and will surely be forever. He carries on his shoulders a record of kilometers traveled in space, and has visited each and every planetary port and space station ever. A sort of rock star, but from space. Orion made a human being again.
Anya has read several articles about him, and always came to the same conclusion: despite the number of questions, more or less personal, and despite his answers, more or less long, Captain Curly was an enigma. A planet that refuses to be discovered. A star hidden among the dust of the cosmos, far from the most powerful of all telescopes. What was he hiding? But did he have something to hide, at all?

Those three months aboard the small ship, christened Valkyrie, did not manage to shed any light on the enigma that Curly was. Between her first-time nerves and the anguish of being around someone so famous, she wasn't able to hold conversations that were too transcendental, and they didn't go through many situations that lent themselves to sitting down to talk about life and her deepest thoughts.

«But you're a nurse, Anya Musume, not a journalist. Your primary interest is to keep this man physically healthy. His personal thoughts. His dreams. His fears. All of that doesn't have to stop being a secret from you.»

Although, if she's supposed to keep his body healthy, and nothing more than that, how is she supposed to keep his soul healthy?

He never opens up about what he really feels or thinks. He's always so... distant. Even now, sitting on the other side of the desk, less than a meter away. Anya is sure that if she reaches out her hand to him, her fingers will pass through the flesh without hitting anything, as if the man weren't real but a figment of her imagination. A hologram. The icon that is worshipped on every planet where a human being inhabits, and nothing more than that.

“What do you mean by that?” Anya barely wrinkles her eyebrows. She doesn't move her hands, at all. She's not that crazy. Curly, however, smiles.

“It's comforting to see a person so professional when they're just starting out.”

“I don't think I'm a professional, I just...” I just have to prove myself continuously, I just know they would study my mistakes with a magnifying glass, I just have nowhere else to go if I lose everything I have now. It's a constant anguish that would only disappear, perhaps, if I manage to get into medical school. But, then again, how could she pay her share of the rent in the apartment she shares? Her study materials? Everything a person needs? They are a series of anguishes that she highly doubt he's capable of understanding. Maybe he felt them at some point, but... not anymore. Definitely not “...I'm trying to keep my job. I'll ask you the first question, Captain.”

“Go ahead” a sort of resigned sigh comes from Curly's chest, very long, barely letting his shoulders fall. He must have realized that he won't be able to get Anya to stop referring to him as "Captain." At least, for now.

“On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your general experience so far?”

“It's been a month since we left Venus, hasn't it?” At the nurse's nod, Curly smiles and lets out a soft whistle “a whole month... time went by too fast, don't you think?”

“Not really” Curly narrows his eyes a little, as if he thought Anya was trying to tease him by offering him a contrary answer. She felt like laughing at that expression, but she held it in perfectly “the monthly evaluations are the most I do on this ship and... well, they're only once a month. I'm bored stiff the rest of the weeks.”

“It can't be that time goes by so fast for me, who is almost all day locked in the cockpit, and not for you, who are free to go wherever you want and have so many things to entertain yourself with” the man raises his chin in the direction of the cabinet full of books behind her, and Anya sighs.

“I'm taking care of them. If I rush to read them, I'll really have nothing left to do for the rest of the year.”

“Mhm, there are people who are very afraid of outer space... normal, of course, but one of the worst things is not the danger of the trip but... boredom. In the end, the fear that the ship might decide to explode out of nowhere fades away with time, but what do you do with boredom?”

“... One of the worst things?”

“Uh?”

“That's what you said. Boredom on board is one of the worst things” Anya taps the tip of the pen on the sheet of paper “so, what are those other worst things? Besides the food... Daisuke has already complained about it.”

“Phew! The stomach gets used to it. Did you know that eating space supplies was one of the tests at the training academy? Several were unable to tolerate the components, so they were unable to pass the tests either. It was a shame...my generation would have made fantastic pilots, but their stomachs forced them to stop halfway. You can't put a person behind the controls of the ship who would die from eating a packet of dehydrated food.”

“Captain,” Anya arches an eyebrow at the confused expression on the blond's face, “On a scale of one to ten...?”

“Oh, yes! Well...” Curly crosses his arms, almost as if Anya had just asked a life or death question, “I'd say a nine.”

“Could you explain the reason behind your choice?” The nurse fills in the number nine box with a pen. Now she can't help but smile at the sound of frustration Curly makes. “Captain, with your years of experience, I refuse to believe that you're not more than used to these kinds of questionnaires. It's protocol.”

“I know! That doesn't make them any less boring. I mean, how much can a person's mindset change in a year?”

“It can change a lot” Anya raises both eyebrows, but her confident tone of voice does nothing to diminish the look of frustration on Curly's face “a year is easy to say, but it really is a long time. More than three hundred days. A lot can happen in three hundred days. It only takes one thing... a traumatic event, for a person's mental health to plummet completely.”

“Anya, be honest with me, what traumatic event could happen in here?” Curly stretches his arms and his right hand reaches the wall. Painted like this, it looks like it's made of plaster, but it's metal, just like everything else. He rubs it, almost as if it were the back of a well-behaved dog, and not part of a large flying metal machine “I've traveled on the back of the Tulpar a dozen times already. It's a relic, yes, but it remains in operation and has passed all security controls. We'll be fine.”

“So, why a nine and not a ten?”

“Because it can always be better” the blond smiles, and Anya lowers her gaze, scribbling something on the space below that question.

"Cliché phrase of self-improvement as an answer. An attempt to mask hidden concerns with superficial optimism?"

“Very well...next question. From one to ten, how would you rate the crew's performance?” She only receives silence as an answer. Anya looks up, finding a smug smile on the Captain's face. She blinks and ends up dropping her eyelids and eyebrows “...a nine again, right?” Curly just nods, and Anya clicks her tongue, filling in the square next to the number nine “Should I write down the same cliché self-improvement phrase as an explanation?”

“...You know what? Make an extra square for the number eight and say that that's my opinion of our health personnel” Anya bites the tip of her tongue to keep from laughing, but pretends to obey him and draw an extra square, only for Curly to open his eyes wide and lean towards the desk “I was joking, I was joking!”

“I know” she smiles, proud of herself, and looks down at the next question “Have you had any unexpected problems when it comes to carrying out your activities normally?”

“No” Curly shakes his head, and Anya draws a straight line with the pen in the box for the answer.

“Have you had conflicts of ideas, verbal and or physical with any of your crew members, or have you feared the possibility of suffering them?”

“Nothing. It's funny. I've been captaining spaceships for years and I've never had a single fight.”

“That speaks well of you” Anya draws another line with the pen “...or perhaps, once, one of your subordinates has had a conflict of ideas but you intimidated them too much for them to be able to say anything to you.”

“Intimidate? Me?” he makes an attempt to look at himself, lowering his gaze and exhaling
“I don't think so... I mean, I don't look like the kind of man who could have a fistfight, do you think?”

“...I’m having a hard time imagining you punching someone.”

“Besides, fighting on board a ship, so far from Earth... it's not ideal. It's... incredibly dangerous, the very idea of ​​a conflict escalating. Can you imagine all the things that would go wrong?” as each word leaves his mouth, it's as if he suffers a sequence of uncomfortable and terrifying shivers. Anya lowers her gaze, a little more serious, and goes back to writing.

"Conflict anxiety. Constant need for control. Denial?"

“Human nature is conflictual at times,” the nurse murmurs. Curly nods as if a ghostly voice had ordered him to do so. “Things won't always go well. One day, perhaps, you'll have to call order in a very complicated situation and trying to keep the peace and looking at the bigger picture wouldn't be the ideal option.”

“I know, but... there's not much point in getting anxious in the present about a future scenario, right?” Anya murmurs an “I guess not”, and Curly clears his throat. “Do you think... I wouldn't be able to cope with a situation like that?”

“What do I think?” Anya wrinkles her nose slightly, before shrugging her shoulders. “I don't know... we don't know each other well enough for me to decide something like that.”

“It's not the first time we've traveled aboard the same ship.”

“I know it is not, but... when we made that trip to the UK space station, we barely talked. I was too... intimidated.”

“Again, intimidated? So, am I scary?”

“Not scary, it's...” the nurse closes her eyes and takes a minute to inhale carefully and exhale just as calmly. Would it be worth trying to explain her situation to him, or would it be like having a conversation with an unfathomable abyss? Who knows. She just taps the page with the end of her pen “...it doesn't matter. The point is, if you want to ask someone for an analysis of how you would react to a hypothetical situation, you should try the co-captain.”

“Jimmy?” for a moment, his tone of voice seemed to indicate that he thought Anya was trying to play a joke on him. She just arches an eyebrow “he's not the kind of man who stops to think about that kind of thing... or to think, in general. He was always simpler than me, less anxious. It's good, really... to keep that balance in our friendship. He doesn't seem to get upset by anything at all, he has a poise that I come to admire sometimes” something turns inside the Captain's pupils. Something that Anya couldn't put into words. Is there more to it than what he says out loud, or are the things he says out loud not entirely true?

“And another friend...?”

Curly looks up at Anya's question. Again, as if the nurse is pulling out more bizarre questions from her sleeve. Anya doesn't know what to think about it. Have his previous evaluations, with other nurses, been even more superficial than that? Has no one been interested in asking deeper, more personal questions? Or has he not even stopped on his own to think about the things Anya asks him?

The tapping of the pen on the paper becomes a little louder.

“Another friend? No, I... well, he's... I mean, Jimmy is... my only friend.”

“Really?” It was probably an unprofessional answer, but the black-haired doesn't have a psychology license or a proper education. But she also didn't want a psychological evaluation to be more like a meeting of friends who exchange gossip. She's supposed to be distant from her own feelings while talking about other people's, so she quickly clears her throat with a soft cough. “I mean, with how popular you are on Earth and in every Earth station, I would expect you to have a lot of friends.”

“No... well, I have acquaintances. Coworkers, but nothing more than that. They're superficial relationships. Jimmy is the only person I consider a friend, a real friend, and it's the same for him. Ever since we met in elementary school, we've only had each other. I swear more kids tried to be friends with us at school, but... it never worked out in the end” Curly frowns for a second, but eventually relaxes with a small smile “plus, it's hard to maintain friendships outside of my work area. I spend more time on a spaceship than I do on Earth, or any other planet. Who could maintain friendships with someone like that? No, no... I'm lucky, you know? Jimmy is my only friend and my co-captain. It's like fate put us in each other's paths on purpose. I don't think it could have been any other way... but don't tell him I got so melodramatic, okay? Or he'll get too cocky, and he's just as capable of being cool as he is of being a little more... wild, in a way.”

“Psychological evaluations are secret, Captain, don't worry,” Curly smiles, relieved. Well, it was a secret that included her and whoever inside the Pony Express offices in charge of reading their evaluations once they return to land. Anya takes advantage of that moment to write down something else.

"No social relationships. Somewhat unsatisfactory reasons. Why?"

“... and as complicated as it is, wouldn't you like to have more friends?” Anya lets her gaze wander to the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling “more transcendental relationships too, I don't know... a wife, children...”

“It's incompatible with my lifestyle”, the words come out of Curly's mouth as if someone pressed a button. A pre-recorded catchphrase, like the Polle doll in the main lobby that repeats those damn phrases over and over again every time you touch it. They've only been aboard the Tulpar for a month and Anya knows them all inside and out.

She can only think of Polle when she hears Curly, and she's not quite sure how to feel about it.

“...I've trained very hard to be a space fleet captain” he continues, with the same mechanized tone of voice...or as if he were trying to convince himself of something “it was my dream since I was a child and I've finally been able to fulfill it, I...”

“Are you satisfied?”

Curly stops mid-word. His voice is lost, his thoughts seem to explode inside his skull and disappear forever. Anya presses her lips, drawing a line with them. Has she said too much, again?

She waits for a "yes" in response, but all Curly can do is stand up carefully, the metal chair making a soft creak as it is freed from his weight.

“Anya, I'm sorry... Can you excuse me for a minute? I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Sure! Sure. Don't worry, I'll wait here.”

Curly nodded once before retreating, and the slam of the infirmary door closing felt almost angry.

Anya chews on the end of her pen, before jotting something down at the very end, beyond any designated box for elaborating on a question.

"Lonely. Distressed. Needs to get what's inside him out. Doesn't know how to do it"

--------

[AUGUST 7, 1969

THE PRESENT]

“...yes, it looks in good shape. A little small, perhaps, but nothing out of the ordinary... Would you like to know the sex, miss?”

«I wish it weren't there.»

“No.”

Her reply must have left the woman in charge of the ultrasound somewhat stunned, since she felt the pressure of the transducer for a few seconds longer than expected, before resuming movement. The gel she applied to her belly was cold, and even though the pressure from the technician was light, Anya felt the urge to urinate more and more with each passing minute. Being told to drink a liter of water before the test and hold the liquid as long as possible without urinating wasn't helping her much either.

“Just study the baby's health” near the door, arms crossed, was the doctor who had assisted her the day before. Her name is Sandra. It is easier to thank her every five minutes once she had learned her name. Having her close by comforts the nurse much more, and saves her from having to repeat what happened to her on board the Tulpar over and over again “the details will be known in due time”.

“Very well...” again, the three women in the room sink into a more or less comfortable silence. Anya has the ultrasound screen to her left. If she moves her head a little, she will be able to see the same thing the technician is looking at. She won't understand anything. She doesn't know anything about obstetric health. She can't interpret the images from a uterine scan...but the baby is big, almost fully formed. If she looks at the screen she'll be able to identify it for sure but...she can't. She doesn't dare. Not when she's wanted so much for it to die before birth “well, the baby is in a good position. We won't know until the inspection during delivery if the umbilical cord is positioned in a risky area, but its head is already pointing downwards. You should be due near the end of the month...or beginning of September. It's a good thing, you know? That the baby is born in the summer. It will be a few months old by the time winter sets in. It would have been better to be born earlier...at the end of May or beginning of June but, of course, you were still in outer space.”

The technician takes some notes on a piece of paper. She comments something to the doctor, and Sandra nods carefully, turning to look at the black-haired girl and giving her a kind smile.

Anya wants to pee. Throw up. Cry. In that order.

She wants to scream at the technician to shut up. She can’t stand this ridiculous motherly talk. Oh, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if the baby is born in August or September. It doesn't matter if it's born in summer or winter. It will suffer the same way, no matter what happens.

“Well, I'd say that's it!” ignorant of everything that's brewing inside her brain, the technician wipes the gel off the surface of her belly with a smile, pulling down the white fabric of her shirt. The hospital gave her clothes, besides the gown, so she wouldn't have to go around in such light clothes. It's hot, of course, but...

“I don't think we need to run any more tests, Anya” the doctor carefully approaches the stretcher where the former Pony Express nurse lay, helping her to sit down and then to stand up “the blood tests were all negative, fortunately. You'll gain weight again after giving birth. You're healthy.”

“Should I go? I mean...out of the hospital”.

She can't help her voice breaking a little as she asks that. Adult as she is. She feels so... ridiculous. Good heavens.

Sandra must notice it. She doesn't comment on it, however, but she puts a hand on one of her shoulders.

“I stand by what I told you yesterday: stay. If you go out, just... you'll become a target for media harassment. With such an advanced pregnancy, and such a delicate mental state, it's the last thing you need right now.”

“Reporters are a plague. There are several wandering around this building and others...” the ultrasound technician joins the conversation, turning off the machine and collecting the papers with her observations “it's fortunate that the commercial space station hasn't given the exact name of this hospital... but they are standing guard around the police station, and there are at least five near each hospital. If it were only because they wanted to shed some light on the terrible things that this company has allowed, fine, but they are... piranhas. They want the first statement from any of you three, the survivors. Well... you four”.

Anya barely caught the words spoken by the technician. Her attention is still on the doctor.

“Sandra... What do you mean by delicate mental state?”

“It's nothing to be ashamed of” the aforementioned woman gives her the ghost of a smile “you lived through hell in space. It's normal that you still don't notice too many things, maybe you're in a kind of... state of shock after returning. Of denial. I don't know, a mix... but once you're discharged, you should seek psychological care. Both of you. Look, we have a psychologist here. With your permission, I could arrange an appointment. He usually only sees the staff, but I'm sure the hospital director will make an exception for a case as exceptional as this.

Anya doesn't respond. Her neck feels like a thin thread, and her head a titanium sphere.
Her hospital room is all the home she has right now, and she still can't conceive where she'll go once she leaves its pristine walls and white clothes and eternal stench of antiseptic. Its air conditioning. Its views of concrete ceilings. Its engine of human sounds. And even if she does go back to where she always was, how will she fix her life from now on? How would she earn money for a psychologist?

“Sandra hasn't stopped bothering herself for you. Don't be selfish. Don't get her into trouble that has nothing to do with her”.

And what is she supposed to do with all that frustration?

“...I'll think about it. About going to the psychologist, I mean” Sandra smiles at her, and the guilt Anya feels only grows a little more “Can I use the payphone in the break room again?”

“Sure! As many times as you want” Anya puts on her flip-flops. Her feet hurt like hell. But if she lies down, her back hurts like hell. Her hips and pelvis always hurt, whether she's standing or lying down. It's a never-ending torment “in a little while they'll bring your lunch to your room.”

Anya wanted to ask if she couldn't have her lunch in the hospital cafeteria, see more people... but the prospect seemed a bit distressing, so all she did was nod once and head full speed towards her room and then to the bathroom.

If the media is so insistent on covering the events that happened the day before, and for months in outer space, maybe more than one person will turn to look at her as soon as she enters the hospital cafeteria. Maybe some member of the news will try to enter the hospital to ask her something, and if they are live, with a camera in hand... if in that moment her mother is watching television and sees her physical condition... fat as...

"Fat as a fucking whale"

...no, Anya was fine there. Safe, inside her hospital room. She was on the third floor. From there, no one could reach her. No eyes. No cameras. No hands. No one but them, the doctors. A woman brought her food. A woman took care of her health. A woman took her dirty clothes. It had been a whole year since she last saw a woman.
For a year, she was the only one.

She could have gone crazy.

What if she is already?

“Excuse me...” she pushes open the door to the break room with her shoulder. Just like the night before, it was empty, but the trace of human life was more noticeable. Anya could see dirty coffee cups waiting to be washed, and the aroma of coffee floating in the air. A half-drunk tea on the table, along with a pile of papers. The tea must be cold by now, but with the heat of August, she doesn't know who would be capable of drinking hot tea.

The smell of coffee, so strong, causes her a lacerating disgust. She advances to the sink in the small kitchenette, leaning over and vomiting the little she ate for breakfast. Anya can't stand the smell. The smell of coffee, now.
The smell...
...the crying, the smell of burning flesh, so strong...

«The smell is so strong that it repulsed me. It made me dizzy. I couldn't tell him that, however. Go, give him the fucking pills, the smell of blood is making me this nauseous BECAUSE OF YOU».

It was impossible not to remember.

The Tulpar had five cups, five plates, five plastic cups. Five knives, five forks, five soup spoons and five small spoons. Nothing had a real taste, and although the machine in charge of preparing the food worked in perfect conditions, when taking the last bite or sipping the last drink, Anya was usually able to feel the dryness in the back of her throat. The lie.

Coffee, cookies, stew, all made from dehydrated origins. Like Pony Express were trying to poison them or... no, maybe not their former bosses, but something else...

Her mind forms an image that makes no sense.

A whale, floating in the emptiness of the cosmos. Mammal that it is, it feeds the babies it carries with its milk, but it hates them. And they hate the mother. The milk, then, turns into venom. The babies drink. They are dying. They won't know until it's too late.

Maybe she should start a journal of her twisted thoughts. Maybe Jimmy was right and she should have taken up writing poetry, not failing her never-ending race to get into medical school.

«What? Are you hearing yourself, Anya? Are you hearing anything you're thinking?»

Anya picks up the phone, puts coins in the slot, and dials a few numbers. A different phone number than the one she called the night before. She can't call her mother again, no. She needs to talk to her in person, but that...

After two rings, a voice picks up. Female. Younger than her mother's voice.

“Good morning?” again. It's been two years since she last heard that voice. Unlike with her mother, she doesn't cry, but she smiles.

“Lily... Lily, it's me”.

“ANYA!” the exclamation of happiness from one of her only two friends is shrill. When was the last time someone called her name with such joy? On the other end of the line she can hear background noise. Footsteps. Voices. Her other friend, for sure. Lily and Soledad shared an apartment with her. If her calculations are correct, they are two years away from graduating.

“And you're still in the same damn spot. The fucking starting box”.

“Anya! Anya! Is that really you?” Soledad's voice overlaps Lily's voice. She asks things. Anya hears an "Ask her where she is! Ask!" and subsequent complaints from Lily for her to move away so they can talk calmly “We've been terrified since yesterday! When we came back from college, we turned on the television and there was the name of your ship. Tulpar! And I said to Soledad "Hey, wasn't that the name of the ship Anya left on?", and Soledad said "I have no idea!". But then they said the names of the survivors, and there you were! Holy shit, Soledad and I started crying as if the reporter had said you were dead... Now, now!” she hears Lily move the phone away for a moment “tell me where you are or Chole* is going to lose her mind.”

“At Saint Luke's military hospital. I've been here since yesterday”.

“Are the other two with you? They don't say anything on TV!”

“Curly is with me, yes, but...the other one is at the police station”.

“At the police?” at that word, she hears more shouts from the other end of the line “What the hell happened up there?”

“It...it's something I'd rather talk about in person, okay? No offense. It's just...complicated.”

“Sure, we'll come see you as soon as we can! Tomorrow!”

“No! No. I...I don't know if I'm in a condition to receive visitors.”

“...gosh. Anya, did you hurt yourself badly?”

“I just...I mean, I feel...” Anya leans half of her body against the side of the wall “...I feel really bad, Lily. You'll understand when I explain it to you two, I hope. But I...I don't want to see anyone. I can barely hold myself back”.

She hears an exhalation, as if Lily had opened her mouth without being able to formulate a single thought with which to respond. She also hears Soledad's muffled voice, asking something. Finally, Lily clears her throat.

“Don’t worry. We’ll see you when you feel like receiving us, okay? When you’re discharged, are you going to come back to the apartment with us? Your room is still as you left it, spotless. Well…we aired it out and waxed the furniture, but we left everything exactly as it was!”

“Thank you”, a sad smile weighs on Anya’s lips, rubbing her forehead and letting out a moan as she feels the baby’s movements. Lily asks, but Anya pretends to be deaf, “I don’t know what I’ll do yet. I think my mom will come to see me”.

“From Cleveland? Are you going back home with her? It’s a good idea. I know you haven’t gotten into medical school yet, but for God’s sake, you deserve a break after whatever happened to you up there”.

“I don’t know if I’ll go home with Mom or if I’ll be able to rest or live normally again, Lily”.

“Why? Do you think the media will bother you too much? Soledad thinks you should file a lawsuit against the company, but what does she know about laws...” again, Lily moves the phone away to address her friend “You heard me! You don't know anything about laws or separating clothes by color!”

“It's not that... well, partly, but...” Anya glances around, as if someone were spying on her. Where could someone hide in such a small room? In the microwave? “... Lily, listen to me”.

“What's going on? You’re starting to scare me, Anya”.

“I'm... I'm pregnant”.

Silence. From the other end of the line comes a silence so heavy that Anya fears for a moment that the line has dropped, or that she has run out of coins to continue with the call. But no.

“Of course” Lily's voice comes out clear as the water of a stream “of course you're pregnant, of course”.

“I'm serious, Lily. I'll probably give birth at the end of the month”.

“Wow, a baby with the sun in Leo. They're the worst”.

“Lily...fuck” Anya brings a hand to her forehead, squeezing her own skin hard “Should I fax you the ultrasound notes? Should I get close to one of the TV cameras? Should I put the phone tube to my stomach, see if you can hear the heartbeat? I'm pregnant, Lily. Very pregnant”.

“...it can't be…Anya, what the hell? Who did you have sex with?”

“I didn't have sex with anyone”.

“Sweetheart, I regret to inform you that sex is how babies are made. Or what, did you have a fertility clinic on board?”

“Lily...”

“What?” again, silence. Anya hears whispers. A muffled cry. When Lily speaks again, her voice sounds much more affected. “Anya…?”

“Yes?”

“You…? Were you…?”

“Yes”.

Lily’s voice cracks, like a broken mirror. She hears a muffled cry, which must have belonged to Soledad. Whispers. More whispers. She must be updating her on the situation in fragments, but if Anya had to bet, she’d say the first thing Soledad thought of when she heard the news that she was pregnant was the truth.
She had a tendency to be too pessimistic.
Too realistic.
It was a relief to know that she hadn’t changed.

“Anya, I’m so sorry! I’m so, so sorry! I love you. You must have been through hell. Please, let us come see you! We’ll keep you company. We can leave as soon as you get fed up with us and we’re not going to complain. Please. You need company, you can’t be alone at a time as awful as this”.

“Lily, don't worry... don't worry, okay? I'll be fine... my doctor is on top of everything. She's helping me in every way she can. I'll be discharged as soon as the baby is born”.

“You said it'll be born at the end of the month... it's too late now to...”

“Yes” Anya nods once, as if Lily could see her.

“Are you sure you don't want us to come visit you? We don't have to talk about what happened, just... keep you company, so you don't feel alone, so...”

"So you don't do something crazy."

“I'll be fine” I hope. Lily sighs and hears the quick, yet whispery voice of her second roomie “and tell Soledad not to worry too much about me. I'll be fine.”

“To not worry about you? She'll probably force me to go to church with her tomorrow after we finish our internships”.

“Internships? Are you two already...?”

“Didn't I tell you? Well, of course, how would I do it? You were in outer space. But...yes. It's a full day, so it's like working but for a fifth of what we would earn with a real contract but, well, that's how school works...two years of internships between classes. In September we finish the first year...but that doesn't matter now. When will you call us again?”

For a split second, it was as if Anya completely forgot what language she speaks, where she is geographically located, and what her damn name is. She looks at the alphanumeric keys on the phone, fixed to the wall, and her hands shake a little. Her feet almost give out for a moment. She wants to twist around herself until her mass is zero and disappear from the face of the Earth. So far. Her two friends have come so far, and she...

“Lily, I have to go. I'll call you tomorrow or...or when I can. I promise. Try not to believe everything they say on TV, okay?”

When she starts to hear Lily's voice saying something, and the robotic voice asking for another coin to be inserted to continue the call, Anya hangs up.

She shuffles back to her room.

It hasn't even been twenty-four hours since the Tulpar's return to Earth. Not until that evening, at least. She was granted by fate a night without unpleasant dreams, just a familiar image. A memory. A glimpse into the past, when nerves didn't exist yet, when she was no longer able to sleep peacefully in her own room, when her favorite sport before falling asleep was to cry without making too much noise.

She couldn't have guessed anything during her first psychological evaluation of Curly... but it's not about him that she should have tried to understand something.
Someone more knowledgeable about psychology, perhaps, could have read the warning signs that Jimmy was giving off right away. But she wasn't a psychology professional. Good heavens, she wasn't even a medical professional! But she was stuck fulfilling tasks that were beyond her skills.

“Miss Anya? Excuse me...”

A nurse in a white uniform. A tray with her lunch: plain broth, fresh water and a gelatin, the most solid thing she's eaten in a long time. She had to put the IV back on when she came back from the break room and, in the silence, she can still hear that ploc, ploc of each drop as it falls. In the morning, another nurse came into the room to change the IV bag for a fuller one. She looked at Anya's face and smiled, saying that she had some color back in her cheeks. That in no time she would feel like her old self again.

Like her old self? It's been so long that she doesn't even remember how she felt before she climbed the stairs into the Tulpar.

But no, she can't go back to that normality. Never again.

The sun sets behind the tall buildings of that big city in Colorado. Little by little, the hospital is losing its human presence until only the emergency room staff and the patients in the hospital remain...like her.
She wasn't able to see her doctor all day, so she couldn't ask about Curly either. She spent most of the day sleeping. She had nothing else to do...and she still didn't feel ready to turn on the TV and hear the version created by the media about the arrival of the Tulpar.

Anya has seen everything on the screen, and she knows that there are only two options: either they deliver a washed-out and overly light version of the events (surely because Pony Express decided to pay in exchange for the complicity of the media) or they take care of making the whole story even more twisted and violent, although... How could that be painted in worse colors? She can't imagine it.
She doesn't want to try too hard to do it either. Perhaps every media outlet has a person in charge of making the already sensational news worse, hoping that in its morbidness it will attract more attention from viewers. If that is the wish, they must be tearing their hair out: they have not been able to speak to her, or to Curly. Perhaps to Jimmy, forced by the police officers, but...

Curly...

Anya removes the tray from her lap, already empty. She finished her entire glass of water and her bowl of soup, but she could only eat half of the gelatin before she felt too full. Full with a menu based on water. Between a diet based on starvation and the sporadic intake of mouthwash, her entire digestive system was badly injured and needed to recover. Hunger and fatigue were already at their peak and, although Anya dreamed of eating something else, she couldn't, for now. She doesn't want to think about food. She doesn't want to think about hunger. And she definitely doesn't want to think about mouthwash.

Carefully, she gets up from the gurney and walks outside, being careful not to make too much noise. Twenty-four hours ago, she was just changing out of her scrubs. She doesn't know what the nurses did with her Pony Express uniform, but if you asked her opinion, Anya would say that she cared little if they decided to wash and put it away, throw it away, or burn it. She'll never wear it again, after all. She'll never get on a spaceship again.

Anya, immersed in the solitude and silence of the hallway, could hear her own heartbeat. It was a good thing the hospital hallway was so white and so well lit. If it were just a little darker... if the walls were a duller color...

«I'm in there again. Locked in. Dead. My corpse floating inside the iron stomach in the vacuum of space. Forever».

Her feet stop in front of one of the doors to the intensive care wing. She presses her nose against the cold glass of the door and, on the other side, she sees him.

The light from a nearby table remains on. The bulb is yellow, so it casts a warm light on the right side of her Captain's body.

Captain?
Former Captain.
He is no longer her captain (or anyone else's).

The warm lightbulb looks almost like a candle. Anya presses her right cheek against the glass, and makes out Curly's body on the stretcher.

The bandages covering his pink skin look thicker and in better condition than the cheap bandages they had on board on the Tulpar. He wears a mask to help him breathe, a urinary catheter, and a urostomy bag. From his right arm comes an IV into a bag containing serum, just like hers, and another into a different bag. Anya presses her forehead against the glass, trying to read what the bag says.

"Oxycodone"

“Curly?” the warmth of her exhaled breath in that whisper draws a cloud against the cold glass. It disappears in a second. He, on the other side of the door, doesn't move. “Curly?”

He can't hear her, clearly not. Not just because she whispers, or because she's on the other side of a door: He sleeps. A morphine-induced rest. How much must he be getting? Industrial quantities... or at least she hopes so.

Anya doesn't have to hear his moans of pain anymore. She'll remember them forever, though.

Will those who tend to his wounds know everything he's been through? Will they have the serenity to treat him with care? Anya was barely able to change his bandages. When Curly's skin, now pink, was still burnt and exposed flesh, the mere act of peeling off a dirty bandage to change it hurted like hell. Grant sobbed, his throat sore. He moved as little as he could, lying on that stretcher. His only healthy eye, the left one, open forever, soaked in tears that, when they fell on the battered skin, must have hurt like Hell.

Like squeezing lemon on an open wound.

“Rest, but not too much...” Her hand grips the still cold doorknob. She tries to turn it to open the door, soon discovering that it was locked. If it's intensive care, she had no business there. Maybe one of the nurses had the room key on them, but there's no point in asking for it. They won't let her see him. Not yet. He's delicate and she... in a way, too. Caught, both of them, in the same loop, and yet... “...I feel alone, Curly. So alone... Can you hear me? Do you know I'm here?”

Both of her former Captain's eyes are covered now. A cotton park covers his good eye, until they can do something to give him a new eyelid. How much can they reconstruct his face? Could they give him lips? An attempt at cheeks? A new nose? The nose is cartilage. It would be, perhaps, the easiest to sculpt... and would cover the most damaged areas of his body with donor skin.

Would he feel whole? A doll, made of several parts?
Would he look at those grafts of foreign skin in five, ten, fifteen years, and feel like his own?
Or would he feel like carrying something that doesn't belong to him?

Suddenly, it's as if oxygen is having a much harder time reaching her lungs. Anya lowers her hands to her belly, swallowing heavily. Carrying something that doesn't belong to her? She presses her lips together and walks back to her room, darker than Curly's room. Whoever was the last person in charge of checking on him had left the television on, and a flickering blue light kept Grant illuminated.

She's in the dark.

Anya turns on the light on her own bedside table, bringing both hands to her lower back with a groan. She yawns, and her eyes fill with tears. How much longer will she have to stay in the hospital? Yes, until the baby is born. She doesn't even want to protest, not when just two days ago she was...

“Anya?”

She stifles a scream, almost throwing herself onto her gurney. She turns, eyes wide open, but behind her there's...there's nothing. Just the closed door to her room.

She swallows heavily, the hairs standing on end. She can feel the beginnings of hundreds of beads of cold sweat between her shoulder blades, sticking to the thin white fabric of her nightgown on her back.

“Hello?” her voice is nothing more than a whisper, pathetic and shaky. She gets nothing back. Jaw set and eyes fluttering in their sockets, she takes one step, then two, carefully inching toward the door leading to his bedroom's bathroom.

Anya grabs the handle and carefully turns it, flipping on the light immediately, letting out a gasp.

Nothing.

There's nowhere to hide in there. No closet in the corner. The shower has no curtains and there's no screen of any kind anywhere. She carefully lets out the breath she's been holding in her lungs until now, turning off the light again and moving away from the door frame. Maybe she should go back in and splash some cool water on her face, it's too-

The baby writhes inside her.

“Do you think that place can save you from me, Anya?”

“No, no, no, no...” she stammers, stumbling away from the door. She presses her back against the nearest wall, looking around. “There’s no one here”, she whispers, staring into every corner. In every shadow. “There’s no one, there’s no one, there’s no one…”

“You can’t see me, but I can see you. I’ll be there soon. Back again. You know me too well already. You know enough about me. I know everything about you”.

“No!” Anya puts her hands to her head, covering her ears with her forearms. She opens her mouth, but all that comes out is a silent wail. A dull cry. Her lungs have dried up.

“I know the warmth of your palms. I know the dark shine of your eyes. The moles on your hip. How soft your skin is. How firm your flesh is. Shredded. Poor thing. You’re crazy. You’re pitiful. I feel sorry for you. They'll see my teeth marks, and no one will give a damn”.

“I'm going to kill you” Anya feels like her head is going to fall off her shoulders. She walks until she reaches the windows of her room. She presses her forehead against the cold glass and shivers. Her fingers curl. She digs her nail so hard into the palm of her hand that she hurts herself and blood soon stains the floor “I'll kill you. I will. With my bare hands. I'll tear you apart. But not now. You're not here. You speak in my mind. You have no control over me anymore. You will never have control over me again. Locked away. Far away. Far away, far away...”

Anya's gaze wanders down the street, on the other side of the glass. She watches the cars go by, occasional demonstrations of life beyond her grief. She sees the lights of the apartment buildings, dozens of people who remain indifferent to what is boiling inside her brain. She sees the brighter lights of the distant commercial space station, where the Tulpar still rests. She recognizes its silhouette, lying in the darkness. A sleeping animal, caged, but hungry, eager to demonstrate its skills in the next big show. Further down, no trace of the press, perhaps they would continue trying their luck the next morning.

A figure, however, catches her attention. The darkness protects the individual. It advances from one of the points that the street lights do not reach. Blind eyes.

The figure is fast, dodging the passersby (few) without even touching them, until it stops standing right in front of her window, but from the street, three floors down. Slowly, with a slowness that seems like an eternity, it raises it’s face. Carefully. Millimeter by millimeter. The thing locks eyes with her. It’s lips stretch upward. It smiles with all it´s teeth. It points at her.

It's him.

Anya strains her lungs. Something has to come out of her mouth. A cry for help. A curse.

All that comes out is air, as she returns to the gurney and furiously presses the nurse call button. Again and again. She presses it so many times she could have broken it, while a furious beeping takes over her ears. Her palms are so sweaty, and her hands in general are so shaky, that the object falls from her hands to the mattress once or twice.

It may have only been five minutes, five hours, or five years, but the door finally opens. A nurse steps in, her shoulders rising and falling. She must have run to the third floor, and who knows where she started from.

“Miss Anya? Is everything okay?” The nurse’s shoulders rise and fall as she tries to catch her breath. Anya notices her gaze scanning her, trying to find any injuries, or…

“No! No! Nothing is okay!” The nurse frowns, as Anya waves the nurses’ station call button as if it was some object she can use as a weapon. “He’s here!”

“He? Who is he?”

“Jimmy! Jimmy, the man who got off the Tulpar with Captain Curly and me! He’s here!”

“Miss Anya…Captain Curly and you got off the ship with him yesterday…and since then, he’s been locked up in police quarters. It’s impossible…”

Anya screams. She’s fed up. Fed up with that pseudo-paternal tone of voice, explaining things to her as if she had no idea. As if she were stupid. Incapable. She throws the device with the button hard at the nurse, and the woman screams and covers herself. She aimed badly, however, and the object crashes into the wall. A small cover flies off and the object loses its batteries, which roll across the floor and crash against the legs of the stretcher.

“I'm very serious” Anya hears her own voice coming out slowly, painful as sandpaper. Careful. She points with her left hand towards the window “I saw him from there. He's on the street. The guy ran away, do you understand? He's probably in here right now, going up the stairs, with a gun, ready to kill me, and you're doing absolutely nothing!”

For a few seconds, the woman remains with her arms raised. She fears, perhaps, that Anya might find some other object to throw. She just nods, however, and moves quickly towards the door, saying that she would call the police department. Anya wanted to go after her, but she turns and approaches the glass again.

Noises. Life. Lights.
She lowers her gaze.
On the opposite sidewalk there is no one anymore. Well, some people pass by every few minutes, but he is no longer there. What if he had already entered? What if he was going up in the elevator right now? Maybe he'll kill Curly first, and then come and get her. At least Curly would die in a peaceful sleep. He wouldn't remember anything. He wouldn't have to suffer even a bit.

But she...
Once again, once again, she...

“Miss Anya...” the door opens again. It's the nurse, who no longer looks very eager to go back into her room “I've already called the police”.

“So? Will they send someone? Or...or is a patrol already on its way here? Jimmy may be armed. Maybe he stole a gun from...from one of the policemen. I'm sure he knows how to shoot, he...”

“Miss Anya” the woman's voice sounds firmer then. Her eyelids drooping. A body posture that doesn't exactly inspire sympathy “no one will come”.

“What do you mean...?”

“He's still there, in his cell. The officer who answered my call confirmed it. He's sleeping. Maybe you should imitate your old coworker”.

“No, but... that... that can't be true. I...” Anya points to the window, again “I... I saw him, I...”

“You're under a lot of stress” the nurse chews every word she says “and the after-effects... will be difficult to deal with. It will take time. You're tired and you're scared. There's nothing wrong with that, but it leads you to fight your own shadow. You see things where there aren't any. There's no one out there, Miss Anya. No one. Not that man you mentioned, at least. He's still locked up. I asked the officer, in case he's released, to call the hospital to notify the decision, okay?”

“Release him? No... no, no!” Anya looks around, clasping her hands together “They can't let Jimmy go. They can't. He's a loose cannon. He'll do whatever he wants, he...”

“Miss Anya” by that point, the nurse's voice had lost all remaining sympathy. She's done with Anya. The black-haired can sense it “I have more patients to attend to than just you. I can't stay to perform a psych evaluation. Take my advice and go to sleep. That's all you can do right now”.

“How am I supposed to sleep knowing he's out there, on the loose?”

“Miss Anya, for God’s sake, he's not on the loose! You're imagining it!”

“That’s not…”

“Would you like me to hand you over? I can get you a sedative, if that will help you sleep better. Melatonin, for example. Considering your pregnancy, I don't think...

“Relax, Anya. I'll drink one too. Give it a drink. What harm can it do? If they didn't want us to drink alcohol, they wouldn't leave the recipe on board, don't you think? We still have months of travel ahead of us. Don't be bitter”.

...that I can give you something much stronger than that without putting your health at risk. There are patients who manage to fall asleep faster with some white noise. Would you like me to turn on the TV for you? At this time of day, there should only be teleshopping, but at a low volume, maybe you can...Miss Anya, are you feeling okay?”

Shivering, Anya climbs onto the gurney. Soon she feels cold flesh. Cold blood. Her legs are killing her. Her back is killing her. The thing is killing her. He is killing her.

“...please don't bring me anything. Don't give me anything. I'll go to sleep by myself. I'm sorry to bother you. It won't happen again”.

The nurse drops her gaze. She looks, almost, like a mother listening to a child’s promise that they won't do anything wrong again when, deep inside, she knows that the child will make the same mistakes again and again. Anya doesn't like that look, so she turns and, unlike the night before, lies there looking out. The black sky. The stars. She's going to throw up.

“Are you sure, Miss Anya?”

“...I think so”.

Silence.

If the nurse thinks about saying anything else, she doesn't. She whispers something, but Anya can't understand it. She looks young. Maybe she's not quite used to dealing with difficult patients yet... and now she has two in her wing. Maybe...

“The door to your room doesn't have a lock, Anya. Are you expecting me tonight? Do you want me to visit you again?”

Anya lets out an anguished bellow and soon starts crying. She babbles between cries, leaving a trail of tears like drops of blood flowing from an open wound, climbing down from the stretcher.

She grabs the table on the side of her stretcher and drags it towards the door. The lamp cord tightens and releases, sending the object to the floor and breaking the bulb. Anya gasps, as if the table weighs a ton or two, and presses it against the door. She can't bring herself to bend down to pick up the lamp or the pieces of the broken bulb, so she doesn't even try. Will the table do anything to stop someone from entering? No, but at least it would make some noise, and she'd wake up before something terrible happens.

Before something terrible happened again.

Would he be able to do it again? With her pregnant? In pain? Broken?

«He made a cocktail to get you drunk and rape you. He had more than one chance to think about it, and he didn't stop. What difference would your current state make? That man doesn't hold within his soul a single shred of respect. Of care. He doesn't care about the baby, of course. But he would care about you even less. And Curly? He was able to drag his broken body through Hell. That man is cruelty formed in a man. And he's coming for you».

Anya climbs back onto the gurney, carefully. Legs shaking. Face soaked with tears up to the neck of her hospital gown. And she turns, facing the door.

She couldn't do anything to defend herself.
There's nothing there even remotely similar to a weapon, of course. No needles, no scissors, no fucking scalpel.
Well, why would they leave something like that within her reach? The doctor must have told the entire medical staff that she's completely unhinged until further notice.

And what could the institution's psychologist tell her? Nothing. He can't undo her trauma. He can't erase her memory. The last thing she needs right now is a man with a career and a steady job explaining to her why she, raped, unemployed, terrified, pregnant, wasn't in such a bad situation and that everything would be okay in the end. Nothing will be okay in the end. Not for her, anyway. And if her entire life is going to Hell, the least she demands is that Jimmy's goes too, hand in hand.

«Are you sure there aren't any needles?»

Anya blinks, her gaze dropping to the IV on the inside of her arm, held in place by a piece of tape and covered by gauze. The tube, thin and clear, runs to the IV bag. In an emergency, she might be able to... rip it out. Anya couldn't kill him with that needle, but maybe... blind him. Threaten him. Maybe...

“You can't fight, doll. I'll just hold your arms above your head. You were drunk before. You're pregnant now. You're fucked for real. There's no place you can hide from me. There wasn't in the Tulpar. There won't be in this world. Wherever you go, I'll find you. Who's going to protect you? Curly? He didn't then. He won't now. You could never run away from me. And you never will”.

Chapter Text

Jimmy's house was on the block. He went there every day in the summer to pick him up and walk home together. Grant asked him more than once if he wouldn't rather play in his yard, but his friend didn't want to.

They were nine years old.

In front of the blond's house, on the other side of a wide street, a dirt path began parallel to the road. If you followed it, you ended up finding a refuge between the twisted trunks: a small riverbank. The shore, so thin, was made of an almost homogeneous mixture of sand and dirt, small stones and frogs that only peeked their eyes above the surface of the water. His mother became hysterical at the prospect of them playing there, so they always had to lie, cleaning the soles of their shoes of any trace of grains of sand before returning home.

That July morning was like any other. Curly would turn ten in a few months, and fifth grade was about to start. The summer holidays slipped through his fingers like water. It couldn't be a morning like any other, because he can still remember it almost thirty years later.

“What are you doing today, honey?” or sweetheart or darling. His mother only called him sweet words. What was she doing while he was having breakfast? Watching television, perhaps. Fixing an indoor plant. Reading. He doesn't remember.

What he does remember perfectly are sensations. Sensations that, at nine years old, one never expects to miss. Not at nine years old, not at thirty. He wouldn't have imagined it then, and he wouldn't have imagined it a year ago either.

Feeling the warmth of the sun filtering through the glass and falling on his skin. The pressure of the spoon between the fingers of his right hand, the ability to hold the cutlery tight, firm, to gather a handful of cereal and bring it to his mouth. Sipping and chewing. Swallowing food, without being victim to the overwhelming urge to spit it out, or worse, to vomit it out. Allowing himself the luxury of keeping his back curved in a very unpleasant position, without feeling an ounce of pain in his bones. Shaking his legs. Rubbing a cheek and feeling, against his fingertips, the softness of the skin. Scratching his head and finding golden hair in clumps. Hearing his mother's words with absolute clarity and being able to respond accordingly.

“I'm going to play with Jimmy, Mommy.”

“Just Jimmy? And why don't you invite ▇▇▇▇ too?”

Who?
He can't remember the name his mother suggested. Some boy. Some girl. From elementary school, surely, or some neighbor's son or daughter. It must not have been anyone important, if Grant couldn't remember their name. But he could remember their actions, present later that day.

He just finished his bowl of cereal as slowly as he could, taking all the time in the world. He was a nine-year-old on summer vacation, of course he had all the time in the world.

“Jimmy doesn't get along with ▇▇▇▇”.

Playing with a person Jimmy didn't get along with was out of the question. After all, Jimmy was his best friend. They decided that one afternoon, climbing up Curly's tree house. They had covered each opening of two empty, clean jam jars with a tied piece of thin cloth. With a pencil, they poked holes in the cloth. That night they would go out and lock as many fireflies as they could inside the jars.

“If we lock up a lot of them, we can use them as lanterns” Jimmy decided out loud, and Curly nodded, before the brown-haired boy brought his eyebrows together “What is the lifespan of a firefly?”

“Millions of years” Curly affirmed that, nodding his head, more than sure of the crap he had just said. Something worthy of a nine-year-old boy. And Jimmy, like another nine-year-old boy, also nodded.

“Grant” at his friend's call, the blond stopped that stabbing of the fabric, looking up “Are you my best friend?”

“Your best friend?” he repeated, as if he didn't know the meaning of the word.

Curly had several friends. But, what was a best friend?
He tried to define at that moment what it could mean, although he didn't have much to take as a point of reference.
No one, before him, had called him his ‘best friend’. What if it was just that? A title, like the title of king or queen, duke or duchess, that you give away and that's all it takes? The brown-haired boy calls him his ‘best friend’, and he doesn't need anything beyond that to be one anymore.

Of all the kids he knew back then, Jimmy was the one who lived closest to his house. He was the one he played with the most, both during breaks in elementary school and during summer vacation. Jimmy may not have known him as long as the others, considering he'd moved in less than a year ago, but in a short time... they did everything together, played together every day, and were on the verge of starting to think about the same things and finishing each other's sentences. Maybe he didn't need anything else, then, to decide that his friend must be right.

“Yes, I am”, he said then. Curly would swear that, with each passing minute with his mind bursting with thoughts, the expression on the brown-haired boy's face became less and less pleasant. But when the answer finally came out of him, Jimmy smiled, lifting his chin and finishing dipping the pencil into the thin fabric to make the holes.

“Great.”

Everyone in the neighborhood knows Curly, his mom, and the flickering presence and absence of his father. He was a busy man, so Curly rarely saw him. During the summer months, rarely was reduced to never, since that was when he was busiest.
His mom also worked at home all the time. He always saw her doing things. Cleaning, cooking, shopping, taking him to the doctor if he needed it, and yet she always made time to go to his school meetings, help him with his homework, and play with him. By the time they sat down at the table to pray before dinner, giving thanks for the food, his mom looked so tired that Curly, in his tender childhood, couldn't help but feel a certain way.

Guilt.

His mom had been born in another country, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. England. That's where his parents met, and when his mother was carrying him in her womb, his father took her with him to America. Curly doesn't know anything about his mother's country, but he spends so much time with her that his voice tone, his accent, is different from the rest of his friends. They've made fun of him, but he doesn't care at all. He's happy having the same accent as his mother.

But he is getting off track.

After finishing breakfast and washing his bowl, spoon, and cup, he was ready to leave when his mother called him from the TV room, pointing at the set. Curly was still a little curious that they could go to the moon, but not make bigger TVs. And, speaking of which, they were showing a video of a large ship that took off the night before from Cape Canaveral.

“Your father was going to leave in that ship, but they changed it at the last minute,” his mother explained. Curly, with effort, read the letters that were scrolling down the bottom of the TV: ‘FIRST MANNED SHIP TO VENUS HAS TAKEN OFF SUCCESSFULLY. FIRST GREAT MILESTONE OF THE YEAR OF OUR LORD “94”.’ The woman, blonde like him, stretches out a finger and touches the screen with her nail. “Can you imagine? So far away...I can barely stand it when he goes to the moon, I can't imagine him on Venus.”

“Dad is capable of going anywhere.” Curly wrinkles his nose at his mom's words, but she just smiles, nodding once.

“I'm not saying that he isn’t. I just...I miss him so much when he's gone.”

“Me too.” His mother smiles and leans down, stroking the soft blonde curls on his son and leaving a loud kiss on the top of his head. “Are you going to miss me too when I become a space captain, just like him?”

“Oh, Curly...I already do.”

“What do you mean?” The woman who gave him life just smiles a little longer, before moving away from the TV screen, as if someone had called her name from another part of the house.

“Be careful when you're playing, okay? And don't go to the riverbank. You know it makes me so nervous when you play there.”

Curly just nodded and ran out of the house.

Most of the homes in that neighborhood remained silent of adult voices. Only the children were able to muster enough energy to want to play so early, despite the heat and the power of the sun. Grant, running, was splashed by some of the sprinklers turned on in the front yards of the houses, and he heavily combed his golden curls back. Those curls were also inherited from his mother.

When he becomes old enough to begin his training as a space pilot, he would have to shave that hair. His father always keeps his head shaved, and only at the beginning of winter was he able to guess a shade of light brown hair, almost blonde, like his mother. Speaking of her, she knows that she loves the curls that Grant has and, when she had to seriously consider the idea of ​​her son following in his father's footsteps, she cried. She cried at the idea of ​​seeing him less. She cried at the thought of losing his curls. And his father, uncaring as he is, simply put his hand on one of his wife's shoulders and said, “They'll grow back, and everything will be as before.”

Everything will be as before.

“Jimmy!”

As if he were strictly forbidden to come closer to speak in a normal tone of voice, instead of standing as far away as possible and shouting, Curly puts both hands on either side of his mouth to increase the power of his voice as he guesses the brown head of his best friend near one of the trees in his front yard.

Jimmy's house was very similar to his own, just like most of the houses in that neighborhood. But it had only one floor instead of two, and only one yard: the front one, with several trees.

His friend didn't turn around, but waved a hand to encourage him to come closer. The blond quickened his pace until he stopped next to him, trying to guess what he was looking at until Jimmy deigned to move a little to the right: it was a pair of dead birds.

“What is that?”

“Those are two birds” Jimmy turned to look at him as if he had just asked the most idiotic question ever asked on planet Earth.

“Are they...?”

“Dead? Yes. They're a male and a female.”

“What happened to them? Did Honey attack them?”

Honey was Jimmy's mom's cat, a fat old animal, already somewhat blind in one eye, who left hair everywhere. Jimmy hated that cat, claiming that she hated him and that his mom loved her pet more than her own son. Curly can't speak for his best friend's mom's feelings, but he's seen the cat and Jimmy in the same room, and the disdain was obvious: they couldn't stand to look at each other. Whether the cat had hated Jimmy for no reason since she'd known him, or whether Jimmy had done something to earn the cat's dislike, are things Curly no longer knows at all.

At his question, Jimmy let out a snort.

“That good-for-nothing fatty? No. I killed them. Look at this.”

From inside of one of his pockets, Jimmy showed him an object Curly had only seen in cartoons: a slingshot. Just seeing it, Curly took a step away, and Jimmy snorted a laugh.

“Are you scared?”

“My mom says those things are dangerous to play with. That you can poke your eye out.”

“If you’re an idiot, yes. You won’t poke your eye out if you know how to use it.”

“Where did you get it?”

“My mom’s boyfriend gave it to me. He has a gun, and he said he’s going to teach me how to use it when I’m strong enough to shoot and the recoil doesn’t blow the gun out of my hands…whatever that means” the boy shrugs, before pointing his finger at the two dead birds on the ground “the female was the easiest to kill. There’s a nest in the tree, so she was sitting still on her eggs, her head sticking out. I only used one rock, but it stayed dead on the nest, so I had to climb up the trunk a bit and shake the branch to make it fall. Then the father appeared. Well... I guess it was the father.”

“And the baby birds? Who's going to feed them now?” Jimmy just shrugged his shoulders, and Curly, puffed up with childish indignation, shook his head vigorously “don't do that again.”

“Why not? They're birds. They're not people.”

“I said don't do that again!”

“Ugh, you sound like my mom!” the brown-haired boy threw his arms over his head, before putting the slingshot in one of his pockets “if you don't want to play what I play, then let's do as always and play what you say, Captain Fun.”

“Nobody's forcing you to play with me” Curly turned around, walking towards the place his mother forbade him: the riverbank. Five steps forward and he heard Jimmy's footsteps behind him, following him wherever he went, as always. He smiled, but he didn't let Jimmy notice the gesture. He can get angry at something like that.

He understands his mother's fear of them playing on the bank, but it's an amazing place, better than the playground equipment or either of their houses.
They can play on the bank. And when it gets too hot, they can jump in the water. Plus, there's no one there. Adults who go fishing there wait for the sun to set, and no child knows about it better than the two of them. For some reason even mosquitoes avoid it, and it has the best view: just in front, beyond an interstate highway, there was a space station. A launching point for exploration ships.

The building next to the launch pad was rectangular and white. When the sun shone directly on it, it was like a piece of bone polished by time, like the cow skulls in the Wild West movies. A huge red radar rotated continuously, and to the right was the platform. Empty on a normal day, now a red and white rocket stood out, accommodated and with a vehicle going back and forth between the space station building and the rocket's tail.

Many people from nearby cities or towns moved there to watch the occasional takeoffs. But those two, who live there, are already used to it. Curly, with a captain father, should be the most accustomed of all of them to takeoffs, and yet...

“Look!” he remembers having smiled from ear to ear, pointing with his finger in the direction of the space station “it surely takes off at dusk. Most exploration rockets are launched at the same time.”

“Is your dad on another planet?” Curly denied, energetically.

“He's on a trip to the national space station.”

“I wish my father were a pilot” Jimmy leans over, taking one of the stones that decorate the edge of the coast on that shore. He throws it, and it bounces three times on the surface of the water. Curly, with an exclamation, tries to imitate him, but the stone sinks as soon as it hits the water, cutting the surface and emitting a loud GLUP.

“And what does he do?”

“No idea. Lies.”

“Never mind. My dad's job is great and...I want to do the same when I grow up, but...I miss him all the time. I think it'll be better if I never get married. If I don't have kids, there won't be anyone on Earth to miss me so I can be happy in outer space without feeling guilty. Well...without counting the family I already have…”

“What about me?”

The question catches Curly off guard. He can't help it. He smiles a little, still, pushing Jimmy by one of his bony shoulders.

“What are you talking about? You're coming to outer space with me, you better! There won't be anything cooler on Earth for the two of us.”

Jimmy drops his gaze. He seems to be thinking, pondering something that Curly can't even remotely grasp.
They like a lot of things in common. They're alike in many ways. But, at the end of the day, their souls were opposites of each other. When Jimmy shuts himself away, Curly can't get anything out of him.

He couldn't do that then, when they were both little boys, with childish dreams and feelings fueled by thoughts they couldn't explain, lacking the intelligence to do so.

As they grew up, Jimmy's personal ‘World’ only became more and more alien. Darker and darker. What things would Curly have heard, had he been able to press an ear to his friend's head? Thoughts Jimmy never dared to express, conversations that were born and died in his mind. The passage of time only filled that inner world with more and more tar, stifling its outpourings, until it was too late.

For everyone.

But that day, Curly and Jimmy were nine years old. That day, neither of them would stop to dream of the kind of things they would be able to do twenty-six years later. They are just boys now, and Grant smiles before pulling his best friend by the arm.

“I'm not going to outer space without you, nor in a million years. Listen, we have to stay here until the sun sets...to see the takeoff, and then we'll go home.”

“My mom is going to be mad...”

“Yeah, and mine too. Who cares?”

Curly's confidence inflames Jimmy with confidence too, as always. The brown-haired boy smiles and nods once, before starting to play with him.

The hours pass, without any problem.

Those were good months. Happy months. That's why, when remembering them, Curly used to fall into thinking about ‘most days.’

Most days were good. With Jimmy and him hanging around the riverbank, or playing at one or the other's house. Sinking into the cool water when the heat became too much to bear. Climbing a tree house. Watching cartoons. Dreaming of the future.
The fun was harder to carry out during the school months, but Curly was never without someone to play with. On the days Jimmy missed school, someone always showed up. Another boy. Another girl. He played all the time during recess, and never had any trouble with his classwork. He was good. He was smart.

‘You're perfect,’ his mother would tell him, stroking his blond curls. ‘And you can do anything you put your mind to.’

She was wrong.

The particular reason for bringing that memory to the surface then, however, sunk in unbearable darkness, came after the sun set.

He and Jimmy were soaked, their legs drowning in water, their shorts and T-shirts dirty with river water, sand, and dirt. Mom would be furious when he got home, but he didn't have to worry about that now. With water dripping from his hair, and Jimmy sitting to his left, they both stared at the rocket, as the crown of the sun disappeared completely over the horizon. The launch zone was completely clear... except, of course, for the rocket.

A loudspeaker was transmitting the information to the last stragglers near the launch zone. Thanks to the distance, watching them run towards the central building was like watching a bunch of ants. On one side of the road, several cars were parked, and Curly could see a lot of people getting out, ready to watch the exploration rocket take off.

“Can you imagine the rocket suddenly taking off?” Jimmy whispers. There's no need to whisper, though: the sound of the engines preparing reaches the two of them, so much so that not even a person standing next to them could hear the words Jimmy says to him.

“That can't happen. There are many safety procedures.”

“Like what?”

“... Dad explained it to me once, but it's very complicated. I'll learn it when I'm older... It's going to take off! Cover your ears!”

“I know!”

Both children put their arms to their heads, pressing their ears to cover them from the roar generated by the takeoff.

A large cloud of fire begins to sprout from the tail of the rocket, and smoke pours out. Red, orange, yellow. The ground beneath the two of them shakes a little, and the surface of the water draws constant waves, as if someone were throwing dozens of small stones on its surface. Soon, the amount of fire sprouting from the tail of the rocket increases, and the object begins to move. To ascend. It goes up and up, with its nose pointing at the already purple sky of the sunset, and takes off without difficulty.

Curly and Jimmy throw their heads back, following with their eyes the trail of smoke left by the titanic object. The blond opens his mouth and smiles, he couldn't help it. It's the umpteenth time he's seen a rocket flying, and it wouldn't be the last time, but... maybe it's something that's in his blood. Maybe he's inherited it from his father. Whatever the case, he can't wait to be an adult.

“It's fantastic” the exploration rocket gets smaller and smaller, until it disappears from sight completely. Curly, still smiling from ear to ear, turns to look at his best friend.

On the other side of the road, the people who stopped to watch the takeoff applaud and whistle. Then, one by one, they climb into their cars and continue their journey.

“Aren't you scared?” Jimmy turns to look at him with some doubt, and the blond wrinkles his nose.

“Scared? Scared of what?”

“Of space. It's so... huge and dark. And if something bad happens, it's very difficult for help to arrive in time. It will...never.”

“If you only think of the worst, you'll never do anything! That's what my mom says. Don't be a chicken!”

“I'm not a chicken!” the brown-haired boy gets up, giving him a push so hard that he sends him sitting near the water. Curly lets out a whimper “You're a chicken!”

“... hello.”

A soft, childish voice makes them both move away from that little immature squabble. They both turn their heads to the right, where a little girl is standing.

It was her, it was... ▇▇▇▇. The girl his mother mentioned to him earlier that day. Curly is able to remember that day, but he can't remember her name. He doesn't remember her face either. It's just a mist, an abstract figure that more or less imitates the shape and size of a little girl's body. She then stretches a hand forward: she was holding a scale model of the first ship to reach the moon, decades ago.

Curly’s toy.

“How do you have that?” Jimmy was the first to notice, moving a few steps away from Curly to approach her. The little girl, whose name and face Curly completely lost, walked away and the toy slipped from between her fingers.

“Grant left it behind at my house.” The little girl's voice is also an empty echo. The volume of a song on a player that is about to run out of battery. Her face, a gray mist, turns to the blond then. She trembles. “Your mom said you'd be here, and she was very angry. I wanted to give you your toy back before I left...we're going on vacation until August.”

“Why were you playing at her house?” If the little girl's voice was a whisper affected by the passage of time and the difficulty of memory, Jimmy's voice was loud and clear. Furious. As if he were yelling in his ear. “Is she your new best friend now?”

“I don't...” Curly remembers looking at her. What expression would she have put on? Doubt? Fear? “I think... I think it was that day you had the flu, Jimmy. Your mom told me you couldn't go out to play, so...”

“So you replaced me right away, without hesitation.”

“I didn't replace you! What are you talking about?” Curly does remember feeling some anger at that moment. Or frustration, at least. Why did he always have to escalate things so quickly? “I wasn't going to sit around my house bored. Just because you're my best friend doesn't mean you're the only one.”

Something sparkles in Jimmy's eyes.
Something that sparkles and then dies.

Curly remembers feeling a weight burning in his stomach. Writhing. Jimmy exhales something and retrieves the toy from the ground, already stained with sand and dirt. He spins, toy in hand, and hits the girl hard in the face, drawing a scream from the depths of her lungs. It was hard plastic, and in the center of the blurry spiral that was her face, something red oozes out. Blood. Jimmy had broken her nose.

“Don't do that!” Grant tries to get closer but Jimmy raises the toy, threatening to hit her again. The boy remains rooted to the spot, frozen. He only notices at that moment how dark it has become. There are no lights near the shore, and the sun has long since disappeared on the horizon. “Don’t hurt her, stop that already!”

“What’s wrong? Is she really your best friend now?” The brown-haired boy makes a move to hit her again, and the girl lets out a frightened cry. The sound only makes him smile and turn to her. “Or do you like her? Curly, do you like her? Is she your girlfriend?”

“STOP THAT ALREADY!”

Curly pulls him by the shirt, and the two of them fall to the ground. The girl takes advantage of that moment to stand up and run away, crying, back the way she came.

“Are you crazy!?” Jimmy pushes him to the side, pointing in the direction where the girl had gone, his clothes also dirty with sand. “She’ll tell my parents!”

“Well, you deserve it! Why did you hit her? What did she do to you, Jimmy?”

“Why are you defending her? You’re my friend! Aren’t you?”

“Of course I am, you moron!”

“If you’re my friend, act like my friend and not like an idiot.”

Curly drops his arms and finally extends a hand in his direction. Jimmy takes it and sits up with a groan, brushing sand off his shorts.

“Are you okay?” The blond swallows heavily when Jimmy offers nothing but silence in response. “Are you mad at me?” His lower lip trembles as he speaks, until the brunette shakes his head.

“No. Now, let’s go back, or your mom’s going to freak out.”

Grant smiled, and when Jimmy offered him a hand to climb the slope of the river back to the street, he accepted it.

Nothing bad happened to him when he got home: he had mastered the fine art of lying to his mother. He didn't like doing it, but he preferred it to making her nervous, and he didn't lie to her much, except when he stayed up until night on the riverbank with Jimmy...just like that day.

Her mum asked about the girl, and Curly lied. He said he didn't see her. He had the toy hidden behind his back.

He took a bath. He had dinner with his mom, and tried to stay up watching TV with her...but he woke up in his bedroom the next morning. His favorite magic tricks his mom was able to do.

Another July morning.
The next morning.
Why does he remember it?

Because of the rocket?
Because of the blood?

Because of the girl?

If he has to make a particular effort to remember her, the haze doesn't take on a more meaningful shape. Trying to guess something between the twist of memories, he can give her a pair of brown eyes, black hair, but he knows the girl didn't look like that. No, no.

That was someone else's look.
A newer guilt, a fresh anguish.

He remembered her when he went to Jimmy's house and, when he knocked on the door, neither his friend nor Jimmy's mom answered, but Jimmy's mom's boyfriend did. He was tall, and stern-faced. Curly had to take a step back to look him in the face. His mother told him that it is important to look adults in the face when speaking to them, as a sign of respect.

“Good morning, sir.” Under that heavy, dark gaze, Curly felt tiny. The man just looked at him. “Can Jimmy go out to play?”

“No.” Faced with the refusal, Curly only managed to pout slightly. It came out instinctively with his mother, ideal for always getting what he wanted. She couldn't resist it. That man, on the other hand, didn't look too impressed. “He's grounded until the end of the summer.”

“Until the end of summer!?”

The horror. Repeating those words out loud pushed him to writhe in anguish, as if he had just intoned an ancient curse that should not be said, and now he would be the next to suffer that confinement that, in the eyes of a nine-year-old child, was eternal and cruel. But that man, indifferent to his feelings of childish anguish, nodded heavily.

“He hit a little girl yesterday. Did you know anything about that?” Before Grant had time to decide whether to tell the truth or lie, the man continued speaking. “Anyway. Her parents came here at night, a while after he arrived, so his mother punished him. He got angry and threw a tantrum, so I extended the punishment even further.”

“A tantrum? What did he do?”

“...What's your name, kid?”

“Grant...” he didn't understand what his name had to do with anything. The man just exhaled.

“You look like a normal kid, Grant. Get yourself some help and stop hanging out with this brat, huh? Find some normal friends, just like you.”

“But Jimmy is my friend. My best friend.”

He wanted to take a step forward at that moment, as if he had something to do against a man as tall and broad-shouldered as that one. Jimmy's stepfather just gave him a slight push back, moving Curly away from the door.

“I wish you luck then, brat. He's going to drag you with him.”

Was that all?
No.

Curly pretended to leave, but he just circled the house, approaching one of the windows: the one that looked into Jimmy's room. Leaning over, trying not to be seen from any other point, he tapped the glass with his index finger a couple of times until the window opened to the side and his friend, his best friend, poked his head out.

The blond stifled a scream.

“He told you to go. I heard him. Go, Curly. If he sees you, he’ll take you home and
talk to your mom.”

Grant didn’t even know what to say.

Jimmy’s voice had come out in a high-pitched thread, because half his face was swollen, his right cheek and right eye almost completely closed, as if his face had been hit against a wall or something. He held an ice pack, wrapped in a towel, against his face. If that’s what the cold-beaten swelling looked like, he doesn’t want to even imagine what it would look like without it. He looks at him from his only fully open eye: the left one.

“What happened to you?” Curly is unable to keep his words from being full of anguish when he asks that, and Jimmy just drops his gaze.

“That stupid girl's parents...they came to talk to my mother. They told her who knows what...they must have exaggerated things, so she punished me...it's not fair. It's not fair! She sent me to my room and...the damn cat was here, lying on my bed, as if it were hers. I tried to get it away and it scratched me, look!” Jimmy extended his left arm, showing Curly the three scars. Thin wounds, with the skin around them reddened “and I...I was...I-I was angry, I don't know...”

“What did you do?” Curly thinks that he wouldn't like to know the answer when he finishes asking the question. And Jimmy doesn't answer with words but with a gesture, pointing to something at the foot of the tree closest to his window: a mound of earth, and some flowers placed on top.

An improvised grave.

“I killed her.”

Honey, Jimmy's mom's cat.

“...she had been provoking me for years...”

A mound of dirt. A couple of flowers.

“...if I hadn't been so angry, I wouldn't have done it. But she made me angry. It's her fault.”

Dead.

“...you're not angry with me, are you, Curly? Are we still friends? Best friends?”

He closed his eyes that day, and began to cry.

Now?

Now he opens his eye, wide open.

A robotic voice, devoid of name and reason, repeats the same phrase in a loop that does not make his existence any less painful: ENERGY DEPLETED, IMMINENT COLLAPSE.

A red light came from each spotlight. It flickered, heavy, drawing a false film of blood over the entire room of cryogenic capsules. False, except for his own. Scarlet drops splash the right side of his capsule, drops that have had twenty years to dry completely.

He has no arms or legs. He can't move much, beyond what his torso allows him. Those twenty years locked in the capsule have not fixed his ailments or his losses, and his whole body screams as he lets himself fall to the left, although it is not the kind of desperate cry he used to utter when lying on the stretcher.

His only eye open (forever), the left one, falls on the figure that remains on the ground. Between the flickering of the red alarm light, and the ravages that the passage of time has left on his body, Curly is almost able to convince himself that it is someone else. That it is all a deception of his senses. That nothing he has seen, heard and felt has been real, but a nightmare perfectly designed by his brain to torture him and gloat when he wakes up sweating, shaking, crying, scared to death.

He doesn't wake up.

And that was Jimmy's corpse.

He still has the gun hooked to his right thumb, and the blood has dried two decades ago. Under the alarm light, it looks like a copper halo around his head. A trace of rust. A mark of the crime, committed against himself. A proud escape, that's how he would see it. A method of redeeming himself from everything he did. The way to get away from the blood spilled because of him and leave the world of the living as a hero.

If Curly were able to gather liquid in his mouth without writhing in pain and vomiting, he would try to spit in his direction. If he were capable of formulating a coherent sentence and not just bellowing in pain from his shattered vocal cords, perhaps he would try to utter empty words to the remains of a rotting corpse. A laugh. If Curly were capable of feeling anything at that moment, he would cry. A wail. But he is not capable of anything, however.

Anything more than to observe.

The robotic voice repeats the warning.

He has heard that voice before, a long time ago. During his training as a space pilot, happy and sure that, once his first rocket took off from Earth, everything would make sense. He is eighteen years old. His head barely shaved. A golden shadow. Without stopping to suspect for a second what the future held for him, he hears the examples of the warnings. That was the end, the last of the line. In broad terms, the announcement that served as the trumpet of the apocalypse. The monotonous robotic voice taking the place of the archangel Gabriel. And he, alone, just awakened from a cryogenic capsule.

ENERGY DEPLETED, IMMINENT COLLAPSE.

Spaceships were not airplanes. Once the energy came to an end, the object would simply continue... floating. It would make its way in the vast cosmos, cold and silent. The oxygen would run out in no time and he would die, finally, like lost astronauts or solitary divers die. Like the first men who dared to go beyond the limits known to the human race die. A momentous death, if that were a story and he was a character who pushes it forward. No, no... Who is he trying to fool? It is nothing more than the delirium of his last moments.

It is a simple and empty death, without meaning. A lonely and ridiculous death. A sad death, sadder than any other death.

«Well, that's what you deserve, don't you think, Captain Curly?»

His voice sounds like Jimmy's voice. He shouldn't be surprised: it's been twenty years and several months since he was last able to hear his own voice. He no longer remembers what it sounds like. Does he still have an accent? The accent his mother inherited? The same rhyme? The same nonsense? He opens his mouth. He tries with all his might.

«Hello, my name is Curly»

“...”

«Hello, my name is Curly»

“...h”

«My name is Curly»

“...m...”

«Hello»

“...”

«My»

“...”

«Name»

“...”

«is»

“...”

«Curly»

“...”

BATTERY OUT. GOOD NIGHT.

The red light stops blinking and goes out completely. He hears a hissing sound coming from the air ducts, taking care of keeping the oxygen clean and circulating. A heavy invisible iron curtain falls over the entire Tulpar, and the silence is so loud that Curly can hear the blood running softly through his veins. It passes through his ears. It returns to his heart.

That's all.

They're all dead. At least, now, oblivious to pain. Having died outside of God's jurisdiction, where have their souls gone?
But he can't be so cynical. That's his way of seeing that immense journey of cruelty. No. They found rest, finally. Free from fear and guilt.

Except for Jimmy.

What thought had crossed his mind before pulling that trigger? Did he think that keeping him alive until the end freed him from everything?
Fear, guilt, regret.
No, no, no.
Jimmy would never feel any of those things.

Curly was sure he had never known cruelty when, in truth, cruelty had been standing by his side since he was nine years old. Cruelty played with him on the shore of a river and stayed overnight at his house some weekends. Cruelty cheered at his birthday parties and screamed, angry and already drunk, things he could never address when sober. Cruelty got him into a hundred troubles, claiming that this would be the last time. Every single time it was the last time. And Curly always believed, always fell. A gullible bastard. A fucking idiot. A...

A heart too big, placed on the wrong person.

Grant truly loved Jimmy, since they were children. But he did not deserve all the dedication of his love.
Yes, Curly realized that too late. Jimmy, on the other hand, always knew. He always knew he was holding him in the palms of his hands. And now he's lying there, in front of his one eye. He loved him too much, and now...

Curly closes his one eye, letting out a breath.

And now, good night.

-----

AUGUST 14, 1969

THE PRESENT

The first thing that hits him is the smell, a new and almost unfamiliar scent. It is no longer the metallic stench of his own blood, oozing from open wounds. Nor is it the bad smell of confinement, and of ventilation ducts that are about to enter a state of hibernation. No. It is antiseptic. Lavender, and something else... no, the almost absolute absence of something that has accompanied him for months.

The absence of pain.

He still feels it, but not with the same force. If before the pain was a scream held against his ear, now it acted like an old radio located at the end of a very, very long and dark hallway. Only if he concentrates is he able to hear the sound.

He is comfortable, but he feels the pressure of something sunk into his flesh, and total darkness over his only healthy eye: the left one for him, the right one for anyone looking at him from outside.
Has he gone completely blind? Where is he, even?
It may have all been little more than a dream... a whirlwind of wishes that would never come true. Anya has left a piece of gauze over his good eye, and when the pain hits, he will appear with the pills. Curly is unable to help himself: he opens his mouth and, as soon as a muffled sound comes out, someone removes that object from above his eye with a soft, sticky peeling sound, like someone tearing off a careful sticker.

The face that greets him on the other side is not Anya's, or Jimmy's... or anyone he knows.

“Good night, Mr. Curly... I'm Dr. Sandra Johnson. I have been in charge of directing your medical care since your hospitalization.” The woman speaks very slowly, carrying weight with each word she says. But she doesn't talk to him like he's a little kid, which he appreciates “I imagine you must be feeling pretty confused right now, so I'll fill you in on everything... you were one of the three survivors of the Tulpar ship. You three landed here in Colorado on August six. It's now August fourteen, nineteen-sixty-nine. You've spent the last few days in an induced coma, to allow for your recovery. You required extensive surgery, and you're still a long way from recovering, but we managed to stabilize you. Your internal organs responded well, except for your kidneys and liver, so we had to operate on you and install the catheter you're wearing right now. We'll leave it in until you're able to go to the bathroom, for your comfort and safety. Do you understand me so far, Mr. Curly?”

How do he say yes, or no? He tried to move his head in a poor imitation of a nod, and the woman nodded back.

“Well... you were in a very serious condition, although it's nothing you didn't already know. Loss of right eye, third degree burns, amputation of all four limbs... from elbows to knees. Excessive intake of painkillers and mouthwash led to tissue damage in the stomach, liver and kidneys. We've taken care of that, but the post-op will be long. The amputation wounds were infected and inflamed as a result, but we've taken care of that too, although they haven't fully healed yet. A nurse comes daily, twice, to clean your amputation wounds. With time, they should get better... the diagnosis is favorable, despite all the damage your body has suffered” the woman had both hands buried in the pockets of her white coat, and removes her right hand to point to two bags with tubes connecting to his IV “you are receiving serum and a fairly strong opioid painkiller. That's why it may be a little difficult for you to feel you body. Now that you has woken up, we will gradually reduce your dose.”

«If it were up to me, I could easily increase it» he thinks, but doesn't say anything. The doctor lets out a very, very long sigh.

“About your current condition... there's a lot that can be done. We have very good reconstruction surgeons. We can make you a nose, eyelid, cheeks, lips... reconstruct the missing skin areas with donors, and receive transplants for your arms. For your legs, however, you'll have to use prosthetics. Physical therapy for everything, of course... and your vocal cords were damaged by the burns on your throat, so you'll have to resort to speech therapy as well. Even with everything that's happened to you, Mr. Curly... here you are. It's incredible. You had an incredible desire to continue living.”

No.

«Not at all» Curly decides to himself, while the doctor turns her back, searching for something in a box. He hears a metallic click, but of course, from that distance it is completely impossible for him to guess what it is. «In fact, I would say that there was nothing I wanted more inside that ship than to die. It was what I deserved, of course. But life dragged on. Every day worse, more painful than the last.» If he is alive right now it is because of some twisted whim of fate, and not because of his own desire to live. If his desires really had such a strong impact on reality, he would be dead now.

He would have been dead a long time ago.

“We have this for you...” the woman places a strange box next to him, on the nightstand next to the head of the stretcher. She turns it on and then approaches him, pressing something against the side of his head “...so that you can communicate for now, until you are able to receive speech therapy. It is a fantastic device... capable of transforming your brain waves into words. It works very slowly, however. I recommend that you think one word at a time. If you want to form a long sentence...”

“ANYA.”

Curly replies before the doctor is able to finish her explanation. A robotic voice comes out of the device, and the name takes over the silence of that room. The doctor blinks and, just in case, Curly repeats.

“ANYA.”

“Miss Anya is fine, she is out of danger” the doctor smiles a little, turning to look at him at that moment “I am taking care of you two. She is in another room. She also required a lot of care, but less than you... although we cannot approach her in the same way. She is pregnant, after all. Most interventions are dangerous for the baby and, by extension, for her.”

Curly does not think anything for a moment. Then, he forces himself.

“ABORTION.”

“...she is about to give birth, Mr. Curly. An abortion at this point would be unthinkable... unless the birth means a risk for her. Perhaps, due to the harmful conditions in which she carried out her pregnancy, the baby could suffer some condition. Growing up or...at the time of birth. If we had to choose between the life of the mother or the life of the baby...”

“ANYA.”

“...of course” the doctor offers him a somewhat dull smile, before assuming a somewhat more tense posture “...another thing. Mr. Curly...while you were in the coma we performed, of course, a thorough physical check-up, and...”

The doctor's voice turns into a haze. Curly hears her words, knows well what she means, but prefers not to think about it. He doesn't even want to think about something by mistake, and trigger a response from the machine. He tries to keep his mind blank. He tries not to cry. He doesn't pay attention, until the doctor decides to end this with a question.

“...same person as Miss Anya?”

Curly waits, and then...

“YES.”

“I feared that” the doctor's gaze wanders. Realizing what happened to him must have been terrible for her. Seeing him, in general, must have been terrible for her. Curly swears her voice is a little more broken when she continues speaking “don't worry, Mr. Curly. He is locked up in police quarters. He will not hurt you anymore. Neither of you two. You will stay here. You will receive your transplants, your prosthetics, everything you need... and when you regain your physical autonomy, I hope that Miss Anya and you will bring down the company that put you through all this. They do not deserve forgiveness or impunity.”

He is tired.

Fighting in court requires a strong will, and he does not know if he has it. Staying alive, adjusting to whatever transplant they were going to put in him, learning to walk with prosthetics, regaining control of his speech... it all requires energy that he is not quite sure he has. Why strain himself? For what?

The doctor continues talking, but Curly is no longer able to pay attention. He has not been awake for an hour, and he can already feel the fatigue that the doctor spoke of. The weight of the opioid.

He doesn't have the desire to stay alive that the doctor told him about. He doesn't know why...

«Anya».

Curly studies the white color of the ceiling. The lack of marks or moisture stains. In another room, there was Anya. The doctor said it: about to give birth. Would she have someone else in the world? Anya has told him about her mother, about the friends she lived with, but he doesn't know what kind of curve the story would take for her... especially after all her stumbles when it came to being in medical school. She entered Pony because there was nothing else for her.

Now not only is there nothing for her, but she's having a baby. Will she give it to someone else? Whatever she does, the trace of what happened in space will live by her side forever, and Curly...

He can't leave her alone. He already did it once. He can't repeat that mistake. If Anya wanted to throw herself furiously against the company, Curly would go to her side. If she wanted to find another way to get her life back on track, he would be there for her. It was the least he could do.

«She was going to kill herself. Climbing on that ship, she was going to kill herself. And you're going to say that you weren't at fault at all?».

He was. Even if it wasn't the direct enemy. What does that matter now? He can't leave her alone again.

“DOCTOR.”

“Yes?” Sandra turns to look at him, her dark eyebrows arched.

“ANYA.”

“Would you like to see her? It's quite late already...” the woman lifts her sleeve a little, moving it towards her elbow, to check the time on her wristwatch “she must be sleeping already. Tomorrow, when I come to check on her, I can tell her that you're awake and she'll come to visit you. Is that okay with you?”

“YES.”

“Perfect... I imagine you're tired. I know you must be feeling very frustrated, Mr. Curly, but right now... there's not much you can do but rest. And that's just what you need, okay? To rest.”

He's done nothing but lie there. He's been that way ever since the Tulpar took off from Venus. First figuratively, then literally. Unable to see things. Unable to call to order. Unable to protect those he's supposed to protect. Unable. Unable. Unable.

A nine-year-old boy, again, crying beside a mound of dirt.

You're not mad at me, are you, Curly? Are we still friends? Best friends?

”Yes”, he said that day in the summer more than twenty years ago. He repeated it many times throughout his life. Yes, yes, yes, of course they were still friends. Nothing would break that. Nothing could hurt their bond... except him.

Except himself.

Are we still friends? Best friends?

He wished he had killed Jimmy.
He wished he himself had died.
He wished they both had died.

“...then, once all your wounds have healed completely, we can begin the reconstruction and transplant surgeries” the doctor's voice reaches him like a psychophony, joining her hands together “well, then... I will put the patch back on your eye. It is temporary, until we can operate to give you a new eyelid with donor skin. The human body is a wonder, Mr. Curly. Throwing in the towel should never be the first alternative.”

She lets a few drops fall to moisten his eye, and then puts the patch on. The darkness returns to him in that instant, but not the disorientation.

“Well, I'm leaving now. If you need anything, the button to call a nurse is right under your left hand” he also feels the electrode being removed with a soft suction sound “don't worry, the nurses know how to work this device. They will help you communicate, and with everything you need. I know that... it's a very difficult situation, but the last thing you should allow yourself right now is to feel ashamed. We are all here to help you.”

«But I don't deserve it. I don't deserve your help, or anyone else's.»

Sandra doesn't speak again. He hears the soft echo of high heels, clack clack clack, and the sound of the door opening and closing. Soon, everything is silent.

Almost.

He is used to the hum of the fluorescent light tubes in the Tulpar infirmary, to the soft music that Anya used to play on the radio, and to the careful static of one of the screens presenting the image of a clear day or a sunset.

The sounds are different. Unable to see, he has nothing else to remind himself that he is no longer locked in the Tulpar infirmary. That he has returned home...

«And my mother? It's been days since we returned... she must have seen it on television. Maybe she's been calling all the hospitals in Colorado, asking for me... and she can't hear me. I couldn't even answer her. She would have to come here but... no, she can't see me in this state. Under no circumstances. Her heart will break. She will feel guilty. She must have wanted to break my legs the night before I moved to college. But this is not her fault. None of this is her fault. And I can't even bring myself to tell her that this is all my fault.»

For running after a missing piece. For believing, so many years in the past, that an unfulfilled childhood dream was what he needed to feel complete. And now...

>Captain Curly? Do you copy me?

The former Captain holds his breath for a second. It may have been a figment of his imagination...the opioids have made him hallucinate more than usual. It's likely. Yes. Maybe...

>This is Ground Control to Captain Curly, do you copy?

Loud and clear.

The sounds in his mind are nothing more than a forgotten frequency, and that strange, alien voice comes out to his left, affected, as if it were really a communication picked up by a spaceship's radio. It comes out of the communicator that the doctor left him. Well, now he can say that he has completely lost his mind.

>We lost contact with the long-haul space freighter Tulpar. What happened? Over.

There was an accident. They survived by a miracle. Now it's broken, what's the point of fixing it? Or even trying to. It's nothing more than an immense flying metal sarcophagus. A moving scar. A materialized trauma. It must be destroyed and melted. The event erased from collective memory. But that's not how things work, and Curly knows it very well. That's not how guilt works.

>You've been in cargo transportation for years, Captain Curly. Exploring. You’ve built quite a reputation for yourself. How could you fail at such a simple task? Over.

The bitterness reached an unbearable point for him. He could no longer see a future in his own life, but he also couldn't let go of the rope he held so tightly. His reddened palm. His broken nails. Open wounds that could never heal if he didn't let himself let go. He couldn't do it. He never did. Something always happened. A new ‘What if...?’ always formed in his brain. A hollow hope. At least, Jimmy thought the same as him. He believed that. He convinced himself of that.

He was wrong.

With his thoughts, with his feelings. With everything, he was alone.

Fucking alone.

>You had not one, but two casualties. An attempted murder and total destruction. An abuse. It's all been cooked up under your nose, Captain Curly, and you haven't stopped it. Over.

‘He's my best friend and he loves me’ a mantra that no longer holds any kind of value. ‘We've been through worse, we'll work through it together’ impossible. Impossible for Jimmy.
Curly always had a simple way of convincing himself of things that were never going to happen.
There's something wrong with him. Something's missing from his body. His soul. Something more than his missing limbs and ruined past. Inside his soul there's a hole...
(A dead pixel)
...wormhole, and it's sucked everyone into it.

Nothing good has ever come back out.

> What will you say to Daisuke's parents? With what expression will you look at the faces of Swansea's wife and children? When life for Anya becomes hell, do you really think you'll be able to help her? Will you be able to tolerate it if Jimmy doesn't get punished? Punishment will fall on you, Captain Curly. Your hands are soaked with blood. Over.

«Sorry», he thinks. The cotton on his eye patch slowly grows damp. His chest heaves, and the points where the IVs are sunk throb in protest. Maybe he's not completely numb yet. Maybe he's gone mad. It may be a side effect of the opioid, but his brain isn't creating some false story for him. This isn't a glimpse into a parallel life. It's his.

«This is all my fault...this is my fault, I'm sorry...oh God, please forgive me...if I could just...die and...go back...sorry, please...» Terrified of conflict. Terrified of change. Pathetic and broken. Sad. Broken, forever.

«I'm a coward. I'm a fucking coward. This is all my fault. Daisuke, I’m so sorry. I couldn’t save you. Swansea, I’m sorry, I wasn’t there to stop ir. Anya…oh, Anya…hate me. Don’t come see me. Never speak to me again. Get out of this hospital as soon as you can and don’t look back. I failed you. You needed my help, and I screwed it up. The last vision you had of me as a healthy man…is how I look now. A sham. A twisted imprint. You could see it then, and now you only confirm it. Anya, I’m sorry…I’m sorry…»

>What's the point of apologizing now, Captain Curly? Your apologies are empty. Your guilt is of no use to you anymore. It's too late. You can't apologize if you won't be able to make up for your mistakes. It's true that you can't repeat them, but you can't heal anyone's wounds anymore. The material and human damage is incalculable. Millions of dollars in cargo, and... What price would you put on a life? Whose soul is worth more? Swansea's, or Daisuke's? The old man was experienced, but the young man could work longer. Be useful. Now, nothing is of use anymore. Nothing is of use anymore. Not even you, to yourself, are of use. No arms. No legs. No speech. A poor parody of the man you used to be. That's what weak men deserve. The price to pay for cowards. Jimmy diverted the ship but you were too late, Captain Curly. Every cry of pain. Every plea for death. Did you want to be the first to die? Abandon your crew to their fate? The true nature of men comes out in the most difficult moments, and you have made it clear to us, Captain Curly. Clearly. Those born cowards die cowards. In some ways, you and your friend are not so different, but at least he has been able to act on his desires. Death wishes. And you, Captain Curly? Empty, and unable to act on them. To step aside. To stop. Is there anyone on Earth who would have lost the sparkle in their eyes if you had stopped being a Captain? Not anymore. Not for years. Your father is dead. Cancer took him. This was not a family legacy you were forced to uphold, Captain Curly. No. It was pride. It was cowardice. What were you looking for in outer space, Captain Curly? What were you lacking on Earth, Captain Curly? Over.

«The same as everyone else.»

Suddenly he is nine years old again, laughing as he opens a Christmas present. A toy spaceship. He runs around, barefoot and wearing a pair of thick socks, lifting the spaceship above his head. He sticks out his tongue. He makes the sounds of a spaceship that has taken off, at last. He is on his way. He will be home soon.

«The same as everyone else.»

He is nineteen now, and he climbs behind the simulated flight controls for the first time. The outer space before his eyes is made up of millions of pixels.

Reality is different (it has to be).

He smiles. He only knew how to smile back then. He makes a perfect flight and his instructor congratulates him, but his palms feel cold. The darkness before his eyes did not inspire any vigor in him, nothing remotely similar to childish excitement. But that nine-year-old has been dead for ten years. He is chasing the dreams of a rotting corpse.

«The same as everyone else.»

He is now thirty-five years old, and his life is over. He is in a hospital room in Colorado, lying on a gurney. He has no arms or legs, and he cannot remember the sound of his own voice, the same one that has accompanied him for thirty long years. He smells of antiseptic and he cannot close his one good eye naturally.
On the same floor, but in another room, there is a pregnant woman. She cannot sleep, but she cannot get up from the gurney either. Her gaze wanders out the window, studying the night sky, with the same attention she used to pay to the main lobby screen in outer space. One arm over her nine-month-old belly, the side of her cheek sunk into the pillow, anguish eating away at her insides. What does she want? She knows it: to live. To live again. To be able to live, despite everything.

«The same as everyone else.»

He waits a moment.

«…meaning.»

> But meaning wasn’t waiting for you in the stars, Captain Curly. It wasn’t waiting in the emptiness of the cosmos. Nor is it hiding behind a heated prayer to a Heaven that will never answer back. You knew it. You knew it long before. You convinced yourself otherwise. Happiness was somewhere else. Maybe you should have quit and become a teacher. Maybe meaning was waiting in the eyes of an excited student, and you would find fulfillment at last. Maybe the life you hoped for was being a parent, and nothing more than that. Holding a child in your arms and feeling, only then, the sweet realization that your life is complete. Your mother did that. She used to be a teacher, in England. She found fulfillment in the children she raised. The world is big, Captain Curly, but you thought it right to decide that the meaning of your life waited outside the atmosphere into which you were born. Cynicism? Pride? Perhaps just fantasy...the reality, Captain Curly, is that every time you discouraged yourself by telling yourself “It's too late to give up on all this,” it wasn't too late. It was never too late. It never is, Captain Curly. But...now? Now it is “too late.” You have pushed yourself into this. To your destruction. To your ruin. We at Ground Control will pray for you, Captain Curly. We suspect, however, that your empty soul has already been lost among the stars. A piece of floating junk. It will never fall back to Earth. If you think the control room is wrong, if you think your life isn't over yet...you have only one way to prove it.

Over and out.

Chapter Text

[10 MONTHS BEFORE THE MIRACLE]

“It can't be! It can't be!”

Anya's indignant cry could have been heard from any corner of the Tulpar. She puts her hands on her head while Daisuke, on the other side of the table, lets out a joyous exclamation and jumps to his feet, throwing punches in the air. The boy's piece rested, victoriously, in the center of the game board. The finishing point. He just beat the nurse for the third time in a row.

“In your face, Anya! I'm the best!” the black-haired woman covers her face with her palms, while Daisuke walks around the table briskly, proud of himself “I warned you. I'm really good.”

“How is it possible...” Anya carefully removes her palms from her face. Her gaze is fixed on the game board, a Ludo, as if that cardboard square painted in four different colors was the culprit of all her problems “ ...that you win three times in a row? It doesn't make sense.”

“The brat is cheating, Anya,” Swansea replies before Daisuke is able to do so. Sitting on that long sofa, he decided not to take part in the game (very clever) after Daisuke's first victory. Anya was indignant, and wanted a second chance. Then, a third. And there she is now, sitting on the floor and defeated “there is no other explanation.”

“I don't cheat!” indignant, Daisuke points at the mechanic with an accusatory index finger “you are jealous of my incredible skills for board games.”

“Incredible skills?” he arches his eyebrows, and ends the sentence with a dry laugh, getting up carefully “if your incredible skills were useful, maybe I would be jealous but, this? Forget it. I'm going to sleep.”

“Yeah, I'm tired too...” the young man rubs his eye with the back of his hand, and turns to look at Anya. The black-haired mumbles, retrieving the dice from the center of the board, “Good night, Anya.”

“Aren't you going to help me put all this away?”

“Hm... you lost, didn’t you? The loser puts things away and the winner goes to sleep like a baby.”

Daisuke walks away before he can hear any of the expletives Anya mutters under her breath.

She can't help but feel a little silly, putting the colored chips and the dice away in one of the small plastic bags. Behind her, the huge screen in the common room has changed to the classic nighttime image: a dark, starry sky, with a moon that's always full. The darkness doesn't help her feel any less tired, folding the cardboard. There are even more things scattered on the couch, like a deck of cards and another box with the Snakes and Ladders game. For God’s sake, was it really that hard for him...?

“Do you need some help, Anya?”

“Huh?” The nurse blinks heavily. All the darkness in the world, however, wouldn't make her confuse a voice she's been hearing for two months now, almost three. Curly walks around the long couch and down the stairs until he reaches her. He's not wearing his uniform anymore, but a simple white t-shirt and grey pants. His sleeping clothes, perhaps “no... don't worry, Curly. You were going to sleep already, weren't you?”

“Yes, but it doesn't matter. I'm not that knackered.”

Anya wanted to protest, but the blond just gave her a smile. He was very good at the art of being helpful. If it bothered him to be like that, he didn't let that annoyance show even a little. Illuminated by the blue light of the huge screen behind them, he looked almost like an apparition, paler and with his hair losing all its golden magic. He quickly takes the cards from the deck and, when he looks at her out of the corner of his eye, Grant can't help but smile.

“Is something wrong?”

“No! No...” Did she just stare at him, still and silent? The mere thought is enough to make her face burn with shame “I'm sorry, I think... I'm just really tired” and before allowing herself another slip like that one, she finishes putting the Ludo board back into the box, along with the dice and all the colored pieces.

If she knew that the unwritten punishment for losing three times in a row against Daisuke in board games was making a fool of herself, she would never have agreed to play in the first place.

“Swansea must be right... Daisuke is cheating, I can't find any other explanation” Of the two, Curly was the tallest, and the only one able to easily reach the top shelf, where the board games were. Standing in front of her, putting them back in their place, Curly lets out a chuckle. His shoulders shake, and the board game box nearly slips from his fingers as he pushes it back into place “…or maybe I’m just terrible at board games.”

“Hey, you’re the only one who makes it all the way with Daisuke. I don’t think that makes you terrible, but…second best?” Once the box is back in its place, Curly puts both hands on his hips and turns to her, smiling and walking back to the couch.

“…You never play. Or almost never.” Anya makes that observation without much interest, and Curly lets himself sit down on the couch with a long groan coming from his chest.

Anya sits down next to him.

“It’s just that I’ve played those games a zillion times…I’ve read the books an infinite number of times too. I know them all by heart, even the most complicated ones. Now, if you ask me to explain them to you…I don’t know if I can.”

“No need,” Anya shakes her head, a smile barely stretching her lips. “Doesn’t Pony Express update its book catalog between trips?”

“Not at all. And consider yourself lucky! You have all those books to read…and all for the first time. You won’t get enough of them. Look, if I can give you one piece of advice…next time you’re going to board an interplanetary transport ship, with scheduled trips as long as Pony’s, bring your own stuff to entertain yourself with. Manuals to learn new things, even. A colleague of mine learned basic Italian during a fourteen-month transfer. I, uh…” Grant puts a hand behind his head, scratching the back of his neck. Nervous? Anya raises her dark eyebrows, leaning slightly to the right, towards him, noticing the way his voice has dropped “…tried to learn crochet.”

“Crochet?” Anya repeated that word and narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing Curly with her gaze. Not because the concept of learning crochet was ridiculous to her, but because she wanted to make sure if he was trying to pull her leg with it or not.

Curly shrugged.

“Nothing masculine, innit?”

“I wasn't joking!” the nurse shakes her head several times “I am just... surprised. I have a hard time imagining you doing anything with crochet.”

“Yeah, uh... I wanted to learn something complicated, I guess. I needed something that would keep me really focused. You know... yeah, being a captain is a complicated job, but long transfers like these are full of dead moments where nothing happens. You don't even have to change the direction of the ship; the autopilot takes care of that. Sometimes I'm afraid that rubbish is going to put me out of work” Curly smiles for a moment. Anya might be wrong, but she would swear the Captain didn't sound too distressed at the prospect of losing his job. “...but, yes, I wanted to entertain myself with something other than the same books and board games Pony Express provides. I suggested the same thing to Jimmy, trying to pursue a hobby during the long trips, but he wasn't too thrilled by the idea.”

“He doesn't seem to be too thrilled about anything,” the black-haired woman's words come out like a mist. She feels the weight of Curly's gaze on her face, and just snorts. “If you don't talk much during psych evaluations, Jimmy does even less. Trying to talk to him is like talking to a wall. He doesn't take my job seriously, and sometimes it's...”

Anya bites the tip of her tongue.

It's not a good thing that she's saying these things out loud, outside of the infirmary. She's not supposed to. Psych evaluations, as precarious as they are, are still private. Whatever the co-captain says to her in the infirmary should stay between him and her, no matter what. No matter how unpleasant she knows he is. She still has to decide if he behaves that way without knowing that he is acting like an idiot, or if he knows it and decides to act accordingly. It is still too early to decide, but if she is forced to decide now, she would lean more towards the second option. He is, broadly speaking, odd. There is something odd about him.

“He sometimes is...?” Curly tries to get her to finish the sentence she started, but Anya just clicks her tongue.

“Forget it. What I am trying to say is that he talks even less about himself than the little that you tell me about yourself, and that is saying something.”

“What can I say, Anya? The Tulpar's living area is as small as it seems...we see each other all the time, every day. You see everything that I see, almost. You know everything that happens to me, except when I'm sleeping, or in the cockpit...or in the bathroom. There aren't many changes inside my brain, or anything interesting to say about me.”

“Nothing interesting to say about you? Are you kidding? Someone with dozens of fan clubs on Earth can't say that their life isn't interesting.”

“Fan clubs?” Anya must have made an “Are you kidding me?” face so loud at that moment, Curly quickly clears his throat at her expression “I mean…yeah, I guess my job can be exciting, but…”

“But?”

Anya presses her fingers against the thick fabric of the couch. So much so, that for a moment she fears she’ll rip holes in the surface with her nails and feel the stuffing against her skin. Those tears would surely be deducted from her pay…if anyone even noticed them in the first place. Would a Pony Express worker inspect everything so thoroughly when they got home?

“…my father was a captain, you know? He…died of cancer a year and a half ago. Leukemia. It’s lucky that it was right when one of my trips changed dates…I was able to come back from space as soon as I got that news, and be with my mom and the family before getting back on a ship.”

“I'm sorry” Anya reaches out a hand, resting her palm on Curly's left shoulder. He drops his gaze first to the nurse's pale hand, then to her face, and smiles.

“Thanks...don't worry, I'm fine now. I mean...I miss him, but I'm able to talk about it without...starting to cry like a little kid. And my dad and I were never too close, but...”

“Wasn't he very affectionate?”

“He wasn't very present. He spent a lot of time away, between space trips. When I was a kid I saw him very little, only on holidays, and I had become an adult when he retired, so our relationship was never ideal. We got along, but my connection was more with...maybe I sound cruel, but I think I felt more connected to the idea of ​​my father as this authority figure, a captain, than to my father himself. My father as the man who helped give me life.”

“I don't think you're cruel for thinking that way. The presence of our parents is paramount during the first years of life. If all you had from your father was the figure he represented, then it's normal that that's the only thing you feel a connection to.”

“...I wish I'd met you sooner, Anya.”

A tired smile stretches across the Captain's lips. Anya isn't quite sure how to feel, but she takes that compliment with grace and nods a little, stretching her hands over her own knees.

“So, you decided to become a space pilot because your dad was a Captain?”

“Something like that. As children we all wanted to be one...most of my generation, at least. Then, as we grew up, everyone became interested in other things. But when I was nine, I married the idea that as an adult I had to be a captain just like my father. I couldn't be anything else, and yet...Do you believe in signs, Anya? In destiny... in all those things” the black-haired woman remained silent, realizing that it was a rhetorical question. Curly leaned back carefully, his gaze lost in the computer-generated night sky “I... well, I'd like to think not, but the signs were there. The thing my father loved most was the thing that killed him. The radiation in outer space is high, you know. He knew it, and he didn't care. It was like... throwing yourself headfirst into the lava-filled pit of a volcano, with a rope tied to your waist. That rope is going to burn more and more with each jump you take... and, one day, you're going to take one last jump without knowing it. The rope is going to burn completely. You're never going to return home. My father died on Earth, in a hospital, with all his family near him... except for me. I was on the international space station... and I came back as soon as I could as soon as I received the telegram with the news. When he needed me the most, I couldn't be there for him...the roles of childhood were reversed at that moment. I should have understood it then, a year and a half ago, but the reality is...I realized it before I even took off behind the controls of a spaceship.”

“What did you realize, Curly?”

“That space is empty and cold. That I won't find anything I need. But it's too late to abandon ship now, isn't it? And a Captain...a Captain can't leave his crew behind.”

A cold silence falls between them. He's said more outside of therapy than in it, and it's not like Anya's going to stand up and run to the infirmary to write it all down before she forgets it...although she highly doubts she will.

She carefully lets her gaze fall on him. His blue profile. His eyes, always a clear blue, now look the same color as the ocean at midnight. So far away...studying the screen of the night sky as if it were a real vision.

It's nothing she'd ever been able to think about him. Anya couldn't have imagined Curly feeling this bad about his job. Uncomfortable. Anyone would think he was born to be a space captain. Anyone but him, apparently. She wants to open her mouth, to tell him that it's not too late to look for meaning elsewhere, but... Isn't that the same thing she does? Hasn't she clung tooth and nail to a goal that, with each passing day, seems more and more distant?

“What about you, Anya?” When Curly speaks again, he is especially careful. His voice is barely higher than a whisper, as if he is aware of the surface tension that has settled between the two of them. Hopefully not. “Did you always want to be a nurse?”

“I want to be a doctor, actually,” Anya smiles a little, adjusting a lock of black hair behind one of her ears. It is so straight that it slides out. The effort has been fruitless. “...but I am having a hard time getting into medical school. I don't have money for tuition, not even close, so I need the scholarship. I got half of it done because of my high school grades…two hundred years ago,” Curly exhales a laugh through his nostrils, “…but I need to pass the entrance exam, and I’ve failed every time so far.”

“How many tries…?”

“Eight.”

Grant lets out a whistle, and Anya shakes her head, hugging herself.

“It sounds terrible, I know, but…I can’t throw in the towel. I have nothing else.”

“And why do you want to be a doctor? Is it a…family thing, too?”

“…something like that. I owe it to my mom,” she swallows heavily, dropping her gaze to the small round table, “she went through so many hardships to raise me…she left her home country to give me a better life. She was alone then, and she’s been alone all her life. If I can get into a good college and get a job, I’ll be able to repay her for everything.”

“Your mother isn't from here?” Curly looks around, remembering that, at that moment, "Here" was a point in the cosmic void between planets “I mean...”

“She's from Hungary. My father too. They were both going to leave together but...he died first. A work accident, I think. He was a firefighter. I wasn't born yet, so my mother had to leave, pregnant, widowed and all alone.”

“She was very brave” Anya nods once.

“That's why I need to go to medical school, Curly. I refuse to believe that...that all my effort has been for absolutely nothing.”

Only then does Anya notice the way she presses her fingernail against her thumb. The skin has reddened. She relaxes her hands and Curly, sitting next to her, clicks his tongue.

“Comparing our lives, I feel extremely selfish for feeling the way I do.”

“And feeling guilty about how you feel won't help you either” the nurse rests her arms on her thighs, turning to look at him with absolute affirmation in the sparkle of her eyes “you don't... control how you feel, but you do control the way you decide to act as a result. An upbringing can lead you to be a certain way... our past defines us, but we are not slaves to it. Nor can we blame it for everything. That's cynical. Being a cruel person with others because others were cruel with you is a choice, for example. Feeling unhappy, no. You don't choose to feel that emptiness despite everything, Curly. If human beings could voluntarily choose how to feel about every little thing, life would be fantastic. What we can choose is how to react. You feel how you feel, but you choose to do nothing about it.”

Again, silence floats between the two. Curly holds her gaze for a moment, before looking away. And Anya, after a few seconds, feels her own ears start to burn.

“I...I'm sorry, Curly. I didn't mean to sound like a mother scolding a child.”

“No, no. You're right,” the man shakes his head, a small smile on his lips. “...when I first took the controls of a ship as co-pilot, I was twenty-two. As strange as it may sound, most of my family isn't involved in anything remotely similar to outer space, not counting my father. Well...one of my cousins ​​is an astrologer, but I don't think she falls into that category.” Anya lets out a small laugh, shaking her head, and Curly smiles a little more. So fast, that Anya could say she imagined it. “...anyway. They told me I was very brave for doing what I did, but I didn't feel brave. It was just a formality, the fulfillment of what was supposed to be my dream. Outer space didn't scare me, I was desperate to see it, and yet... now I know what I am: a coward.”

Anya holds on for a few seconds. Curly opens his mouth, but she beats him to it.

“Maybe we should never have left Earth.”

“Never? Maybe another planet...”

“I'm not talking about us” Anya crumples the fabric of her uniform between her fingers “I'm talking about the human race. Have you ever thought about it? Man reached the moon in nineteen twenty-nine, and that already seems too risky to me. But now here we are... we took off from Venus and traveled to Earth again, why leave the planet we were born on? Why have to... leave a shoe print on every planet in the solar system? I know I must sound super cliché, but...”

“I've thought that too” Curly's voice sounds deadly serious at that moment, as if the topic of discussion was life or death “I don't know about you but I was... raised in a religious home. Not fanatical, but... my mom was a big believer, so I used to be too. But you know what I thought the first time I stopped to look out? At the Earth, getting smaller and smaller...”

“What did you think?”

“...that God's jurisdiction was over. That outer space is a neutral zone for everything good and everything terrible. I can't explain it in words, Anya, but... at that moment, at that precise moment, I think it was the loneliest I've ever felt in my entire life. I think it says a lot about me that, even feeling that way, I'm just... only able to work outside my own planet.”

Anya is careful, but she moves. She reaches out a hand to him and touches his shoulder again. She rubs it, more carefully than when she heard the news from his father.

“I don’t think it’s too late for you, Curly.”

He smiles without looking at her, but it’s a heavy smile. A mere grimace. He digs the fingers of his left hand into his golden hair, combing it back and letting out a moan.

“There’s something…wrong with me, Anya. Something’s missing and I think…I feel…that what was waiting for me is tired of waiting. I had something precious in my hands and I just…let it die. And I can’t blame anyone. No one but myself.”

“You’re talking like you’re a dying old man, Curly. Think about that when we get back to Earth. If there’s meaning waiting for you, dare to look for it at once. You’re not going to accomplish anything by just…getting on a different ship each time. Farther and farther away, each takeoff. You failed to fall in love with routine, and that doesn’t mean any condemnation. It's not too late for you yet.”

Curly seems to make a conscious attempt to smile in response to her words. All he manages, however, is to slump his shoulders a little.

“Do you like outer space, Anya? The stars?”

“They're pretty... although one gets bored very quickly. I'm not here out of passion, after all” Curly nods once, almost embarrassed at the memory “... things in space look prettier in textbooks.”

“What's your favorite planet?” Grant smiles like a little boy as he asks that.

«Good heavens, that's as silly a question as 'What's your favorite color?' or 'What do you like to do in your free time?' Nonsense.»

«No, not 'nonsense.' They're the kind of questions you get when you're asked out on a date.»

«Are you kidding? This is not a date, we’re two coworkers having a conversation.»

«Well, it’s still the best date you’ve ever had in your entire life. What other man tells you about his biggest terror right off the bat? He must be desperate, or really tired. Either way, don’t ruin it.»

“My favorite planet? Hm…” Anya lets her gaze wander across the screen of the fake night sky, slightly wrinkling her nose “Jupiter, I think.”

“Jupiter?” Curly shakes his head “we’ll never be able to meet it…it’s like Saturn, its surface makes landing impossible.”

“I’m not interested in landing there, but it’s…well, it’s deflected many meteorites heading for Earth, hasn’t it? It’s our savior” the nurse shrugs her shoulders with a small smile “plus, I’ve read that in that…spot on its surface, there’s room for ten Earths, or was it five? I don't know, but... it puts things into perspective on how huge it is.”

“I hadn't thought of it that way...” the blond man narrows his right eye just a little, smiling “I was going to say something else, but now I think I'm going to choose Jupiter, just like you.”

“No, don't copy me!” Anya shakes him by the shoulder with false indignation, and Curly laughs shamelessly, a little louder “say the planet you were going to say, be honest.”

“Fine! Fine...” Curly raises both hands, just above his shoulders, in a sign of surrender, before lowering them to his thighs again “...I was going to say Earth.”

“Cheesy.”

“That's why I wanted to copy you!” now it's Curly's turn to push her just slightly to the left, and Anya's to laugh “I think you're right. Maybe we humans should never have left the planet we were born on... I mean, aren't there many things about that huge rock that we still don't know about? And we already have a terrestrial base on Neptune...”

“No one has gone to the absolute bottom of the ocean, where sunlight never reaches” the nurse makes an effort to load her voice with melodrama, like a preschool teacher telling a silly Halloween horror story to her students. Grant gets into character in the same way, pretending to tremble with fear “...and it's always the same size, unlike the universe, which is constantly expanding.”

“Scientists hate that. They hate not being able to measure the full size of the universe... I like it.”

“Oh yeah?”

“If something is constantly expanding, it changes all the time. Eternally. You'll never finish discovering everything the universe has to offer, and that's what makes it interesting. You'll never learn all its secrets. Is it weird that I talk about the universe like it's a... huge monster, Nurse Anya?”

The woman almost rolled her eyes.

“That was believed before... more or less, when they said that the Earth was at the center of the universe and everything revolved around us.”

“A very narcissistic vision of life.”

“Well, it occurred to a man.”

Curly smiles from ear to ear, as if he had been flattered, rather than irritated by the comment.

“Centuries ago, when that celestial vision of the universe was stronger...many people committed suicide when Galileo found out that the sun had spots on its surface” Anya nods once. She may have seen it, or read it, somewhere.

“I hope you don't follow in their footsteps after becoming disenchanted with outer space, Curly.”

“No, no...the idea is terrible. I mean...it requires a courage that I don't have. But I understand them. You believe in one thing too much, throughout your life. And suddenly, from one moment to the next, you have to discover that it's not so. That it's a lie. That the truth is completely different... it must be a brutal shock. Anya, don't worry. The idea of... ending my own life has never crossed my mind. It wouldn't change anything, would it? I'd still be the same empty man, but dead.”

“It's normal to be disenchanted and distressed,” Anya shrugs, looking at the tips of her flip-flops.

She's been there, hundreds of times. Crushing the leather strap of her trusty bag, digging her hands deep into her pockets or furiously biting her nails. She's been there eight times, making her way to a bulletin board listing the names of those who managed to pass the entrance exam. She looks for the letter K of her last name and, when she finds it, her name is never on the right.
She prefers the times when there isn't even a letter K present on the list. That fraction of emotion that bursts in her heart when she sees the letter vanishes when the name isn't hers. And then the pain of disappointment is even stronger. Disappointment seems to eat her alive. She leaves the medical school crying, her gaze fixed on the floor, refusing to look into the eyes of any smiling, happy-to-have-entered person. She walks, crying, to the same cafeteria where she looks for the most remote table and orders all the heavy, sweet, junk food she could buy at that moment, along with a cappuccino. Waffles, pancakes, donuts, slices of cake. She cries and, when she has eaten so much that they could use her tears as a sweetener for coffee, she leaves.

All the workers in that cafeteria already know her, and none of them make the mistake of asking Anya "So? How did it go? Did you pass this time?"
She must be the laughing stock of the staff.
Or, perhaps, they all feel deep pity for her.

She doesn't know if the idea of ​​mockery or compassion hurts her more.

“...Curly?” The blond man lets out a sound “What story did your mother tell you when you lost a baby tooth?”

“Huh?” Curly's expression changes completely. A poem. He's so confused that Anya can barely stop herself from laughing, limiting herself to smiling “well...the same thing they tell all the kids, right? I'd leave the tooth under my pillow, the tooth fairy would come at night, while I was asleep, take my tooth and leave me money in exchange.”

“Yes, but... Did she tell you what the tooth fairy did with that tooth she took away?”

“No?” With every second that passes, her poor Captain looks more and more confused. Anya stretches her legs, smiling, like the only person who knows the correct answer to a complicated question in high school.

“My mom told me, when I was little, that the tooth fairy took children teeth to form the stars in the sky. Then I had to brush my teeth well, because if I didn't, they wouldn't shine enough and wouldn't be visible as brightly as the rest of the stars in the night sky. As a child, the idea fascinated me... I remember that the night after collecting each fallen baby tooth, I would spend a while looking at the sky through my window, trying to decide which of those stars was the tooth that had just fallen out. At the time, it seemed like a lovely idea, of course, but... Can you imagine a sky where each star is the tooth of a little child?”

Grant is silent for a few seconds, before shaking from head to toe. At the gesture, Anya is unable to stop herself from laughing, hastily covering her mouth: she didn't want to wake anyone from a deep sleep.

“It sounds like a tale from a book of horror stories for children” Curly denies, completely rejecting the idea of ​​a calcium night sky “...my mom is normal, Anya” he smiles as he says that, only making the black-haired woman laugh again “I think she would be scared too if you told her that story.”

Well, it's not like Anya'd have an excuse one day to meet her Captain's mother.

“Scaredy-cat. You're not afraid of a constantly expanding universe, but you are scared of a bunch of teeth.”

“Hey, at least I'm honest. Honesty isn't very common around here. I've had the misfortune of working with a lot of men who would never accept feeling fear, doubting something or having made a mistake. When you're floating in the middle of nowhere, there's no extra seat on the ship for bloody pride. Pride is the unwelcome passenger that will ruin everything sooner rather than later.”

“...You know, Curly? I wish you'd talk as much during psych evaluations. I knew you had more to say than just...simple phrases of personal motivation.”

“Uh-huh” again, a hand behind his head. With that kind of gesture he looks, almost, like a teenager, and not like a grown man. Maybe he's less used to saying everything he thinks out loud than he seems “I guess I get anxious. Isn't it all in a report, after all? I don't want my superiors to know that I'm a chicken.”

“Well, this is a normal conversation, not part of the date” the last thing she wants is to break his confidence. Anya smiles and then clears her throat “...the psychiatric date.”

“You're a very good listener, Anya. I must have you fed up.”

“Don’t be silly. We've been locked up in here for so long, and we only have each other. If we don't get what we have inside out...we're going to explode, one way or another.”

“So...what do you think?”

“About what?”

Curly leans forward, resting the weight of his forearms on his thighs. He crosses his fingers and turns his head to look at her.
He looks at her for real.
He locks his eyes with hers, and Anya has nowhere to run. She doesn't know what else to do...besides holding his gaze back.
He doesn't look that dark. The blue of his eyes reminds her no more of a lost ocean on any shore in the middle of the night, but of a beach at dawn, when the blue tone of the surface becomes a little lighter as the sun rises. Even his voice sounds more animated. Tired, yes, but not destroyed.

“Am I fit to fly in your eyes, Anya?”

«Good heavens.»

For a split second (a tiny, tiny, so small that it takes no time at all to convince herself it was all just a figment of her imagination) Anya believes in divinity. In an energy larger than herself. In signs. In destiny. In absolutely everything. She opens her mouth, and all she can manage to deliver at first is a stammer. She’s sure she’ll get a sneer in return, but the expression on Grant’s face doesn’t change for a second. He keeps the same smile. He keeps looking into her eyes. He doesn’t allow himself to criticize her in any way. And yet, boy has he managed to affect her.

The next second, however, Anya reminds herself of who she is: an underpaid nurse, having to perform duties she’s not qualified for, analyzing the capabilities of her superiors being one of them. This is just her job. And nothing else.

“I think you can be Captain for one more month before you lose your mind. We’ll see next month.”

Curly's eyes wander away then, as if he's suffered a fierce depression. The smile doesn't fade, though.

“Have you thought about being a psychologist, Anya?”

“A psychologist?”

“Yeah. Maybe your desire to work in healthcare is...misguided. You read a lot of those psychology books in the infirmary, don't you? Maybe you should try it.”

“No, no... And all the effort I've put in so far to try to get into medical school? I can't...”

“It's not too late to find the meaning of your life.” Curly doesn't bother to hide a smile as he says those words, and Anya throws a slap in his direction. A slap that Grant dodges without any problem, letting out a laugh.

“Don't use the advice I give you against me!”

“It's not against you, it's for you” Curly is silent for a few seconds, making a clear effort to slightly hide the smile that remains still on his lips “...Anya, can I have your identification card?”

“My card...?” Browning slightly, the nurse puts a hand in the only external pocket of her uniform. There is her identification as a Pony Express worker, with her photo not looking at the camera lens and the unintelligible signature. She hands it to him and Curly receives it carefully, studying the photograph at that moment “For what?”

“Maybe I can help you when we return to Earth. Give you a hand with the admission to medical school, so you have more time to prepare. Whatever you need.”

“What?” It's as if someone had lit a fire near his face. Help her? Him, her? His throat feels dry. The palms of his hands begin to sweat. In retrospect she must have been looking like an idiot, but she couldn't help but smile. She didn't even try to contain the gesture. It was too good to be true, almost as if...

«He's a powerful man, Anya. In exchange for giving you his help, he'll want something in return.»

“I can't accept” she stands up at that moment, increasing the distance between the two. Curly arches his eyebrows, turning the card between his fingers “I... I couldn't reward your help in any way.”

“And who said I'm doing it because I want you to give me something in return?” Curly stands up at that moment, shaking his head carefully.

“Why would you help me, then?”

“Because that's what friends do, right? They help each other, without expecting anything in return.”

Anya smiles, but she can't help but doubt. Friends help each other without expecting anything in return? Well, it's true... in part. Like any relationship between two human beings, to remain healthy, it must be mutual. They must give and expect to receive something in return of what they offered. It should be quality time. Help. Trust.
If one party only demands and the other only delivers, it is not a relationship: it is parasitism.

“I will leave your identification inside the locker in the cockpit, so I do not forget what I just told you. My brain often deceives me. It will be there whenever you need it.”

“Yes” Anya places a hand near her own face, a gesture she always makes. A tic, almost. She smiles “thanks, Curly.”

“Don't thank me now, I haven't done anything yet” the blond smiles from ear to ear. He only manages to make the nurse's smile spread much more.

“Hm... I think I remember that you had told me that only Jimmy was your friend.”

“Well...” Curly shrugs his shoulders, then waves a hand “I will have to tell Jimmy that-”

“Am I interrupting something?”

Anya lets out an exclamation. Curly takes a step back, almost instinctively, and the two of them turn to the right door.

Standing in the doorway was Jimmy, staring at the two of them with his eyebrows drawn together and a befuddled expression. He squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing his lids slowly, while Curly searched for his words.

“No! I... well, I was talking to our nurse” not “Anya”, no. Our nurse. Anya swallowed heavily “and I think I lost track of time.”

“Go to sleep. If you fall asleep in the cockpit I'm not covering for you.” Jimmy shifts his gaze from him to her. His eyes are dark. The irises are grey-green, but dark, almost black. She holds his gaze, and waits “... and you should go to sleep too, Anya. We need you awake in case something happens, not wasting time with nonesense.”

“I have my duties very clear, Jimmy. Thank you.”

There's fierceness in her voice. As if she needed that guy to remind her of her duties aboard the Tulpar! She's not a child.
Jimmy just smiles, rubs the metal door frame, and walks down the hall. Anya waits until the echo of his footsteps has completely faded before turning to Curly, making an effort to lower her voice as much as possible.

“But what an idiot!”

“He's not a bad man” Curly smiles a little, looking away from the door to turn to her “he's just... not the best when it comes to relating to other people. A bit gobby, if you ask me” Anya rolls her eyes.

“I'm not saying he's a bad guy, but he acts like one.”

“Hm...”

“I don't need to be reminded of my duties on board, or bossed around like I'm a little girl, you know?”

“Well... Jimmy is your superior at the end of the day, Anya. And as Captain... if something happens to me, he'd be in command of the Tulpar before we get to Earth.”

“In command of the Tulpar? Him?”

Anya turns her head toward the door, almost afraid to meet that dark face again. But no: the frame remains empty.

What is it about Jimmy that causes her such a...uneasiness? She can't decide. If Curly doesn't talk much during therapy, Jimmy just spouts nonsense. He doesn't take psychological evaluation sessions seriously, and if Anya were to bet, she'd put all her money on him not taking her seriously either.

Being an idiot wasn't synonymous with being a bad person either. She knows so little about him that it wouldn't be fair to make a value judgment with so little information...but there's something that gives her a bad feeling, and she can't say what it is.

“I don't know if Jimmy is qualified to be a captain, Curly.”

“What?” Anya looks into his eyes, and sees something she hadn't seen all night...or in the two months they've been aboard the Tulpar. A stern expression. Almost, but... “Anya, don't be offended, but I don't think you have the power to decide something like that.”

“Well, in a sense I...”

“I know you do the evaluations, but be honest with me, are they really that important, or just a bureaucratic formality? I've been Captain for years with Jimmy at my side, and I assure you he's more than qualified.”

«Don't talk to me like I'm a superior you're trying to convince, after making a scathing comment.»
Anya frowns. Curly seems about to say something else, but Anya doesn't let him.

“Good night, Captain. Go have some rest.”

Anya walks away from him, before Curly could return the wish. She leaves the Tulpar main lobby and heads to her room, ready to brush her teeth, put on her nightgown, and go to sleep.

The sooner she is able to fall asleep, the less she will have to think about.

------

AUGUST 15, 1969

THE PRESENT

To her right lies the lunch tray. Anya has leveled up. She was now able to eat a vanilla muffin, as well as compote and water. Feeling something solid go down her throat gave her a vitality she thought was lost forever.

And she was also able to turn on the television.

It has been more than a week, nine days, since the Tulpar landed. She was careful to tune into a channel more dedicated to entertainment than a major news channel. She wants to hear other voices, but she is still not too sure if she wants to hear how the news are being transmitted.

The agents of the National Federation of Space Crimes would arrive to talk to her that afternoon, according to the words of the nurse who left her lunch...and a hardcover book with laminated pages. Anya holds it in her hands, but is unable to open the first page and start reading...as if it were Pandora's box or worse.

It was a maternity book.

“Sandra told us that you liked to read,” were the nurse’s words that morning. Anya, reading what was written on the cover of the book, didn’t know how to react. “She marked some important chapters, and also to tell you not to feel obliged to read it if you didn’t want to.”

Does she want to?

She is lulled by the voice on the television. A presenter talks about the rumours of a possible wedding between a couple of Hollywood actors, while Anya studies the colours of the post-it notes that Sandra placed at certain points in the book, each one a different colour. She sighs, she can't help it... and opens it to the first mark, finding an unpleasant title: "Poor nutrition and how it affects pregnancy".

>>Maternal nutritional deficiencies that lead to IUGR can alter the expression of some genes, causing abnormal programming in the development of organs and in the structure and functionality of tissues. These epigenetic modifications do not modify the genetic code, but they do modulate its expression. In response to intrauterine malnutrition, the fetus adapts to this situation of scarcity and may have difficulty adapting to an abundant consumption of food after birth, thus increasing its propensity to obesity and the suffering of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases in adult life. These maternal malnutrition-induced changes in fetal gene expression appear to be associated with decreased DNA methylation, chromatin remodeling, and histone acetylation. The micronutrients whose deficiency can modify epigenetic processes are: zinc, selenium, iron, folates, vitamin C, and niacin.

«Do you want me to feel guilty?»

No. Actually, maybe... she is preparing her for any situation.
It was nothing Anya could not have deduced by simple logic: if the human body behaves erratically during periods of famine, what can she expect to happen to a fetus? It continues to survive far too long, much longer than Anya would have expected. Between the dehydrated and artificial food, even the mouthwash and the rations counted on the fingers of one hand, Anya expected the inevitable: to be the victim of unbearable pain in the womb one day, and for the fetus to come out on its own, having thrown in the towel in the face of malnutrition. If she died with the fetus inside... she would eventually expel it. A twisted scene to watch.

Well, she wishes he had seen such a scene of ingestion. She wishes he had seen it and the ghost of what he did would be with him forever.

But Anya is alive, and so is he.

When they were still aboard the Tulpar, when Anya made the conscious decision to lock herself away inside the infirmary, the only room on the entire ship that was safe for her, she took with her as many bags of water and dehydrated food as she could. There wasn't much left for the others, but would any of the other three have decided to sacrifice themselves for her? No. No... she couldn't think with the mind of a devoted person anymore. A part of her, tiny and remote, wanted to live... for as long as she had left. And, when she could no longer live, die on her own terms. Die alone, undisturbed. Quiet.

Only with Curly.

«What a horrible sight Curly would have had. My corpse, rotting on the floor beside him. What would Jimmy have done with me? Would I have even moved? Would he have had a touch I never knew in life? Would the son of a bitch have softened his heart just then, seeing me pale, cold? Dead? But I'm alive... for better or worse.»

The members of the set of that gossip show burst out laughing, and those canned laughs echo off the walls of her brain as she moves on to the next mark left by Sandra in the book: "Stress, Anxiety and Depression in the Mother."

>>Anxiety is related to the appearance of worries or fears, and pregnancy is precisely a period in which women must face adaptive changes, with fluctuations in hormonal levels and other physiological changes, in which concerns about fetal well-being and fear of childbirth, among others, also appear.
Stress and anxiety are relatively common during the prenatal period and affect both the mother and the newborn. It is estimated that around “5% of pregnant women have some symptoms of anxiety.
The effects and consequences of anxiety disorders or prenatal stress can affect both the mother and the fetus. On the one hand, anxiety disorders can reduce the ability of the pregnant woman to care for herself, which in certain cases leads to inadequate nutrition, with the consequences that this entails for the fetus. On the other hand, at a physiological level, high levels of stress or anxiety can increase the production of cortisol in the body. This increase in cortisol can have a negative effect on both the mother and the fetus.
Among the various complications associated with anxiety during pregnancy, we highlight: intrauterine growth restriction, premature birth, low birth weight and risk factor for developing postpartum depression.
In addition, there are studies that evaluate how high levels of stress and anxiety on a continuous basis can negatively affect the psychological development of the child, compared to children born to mothers who have not experienced stress or anxiety during pregnancy. It has been observed that in these cases children are more likely to develop disorders such as attention deficit and hyperactivity, which can produce behavioral disorders, depression and/or anxiety in the future when they grow up.

Anya raises her gaze from the laminated pages. On the right, a photograph of a pregnant woman, lying on a bed and with her head in both hands in the cliché posture of anguish. Has she ever really felt that?

No, no. Now is she going to judge the hypothetical suffering of a pregnancy photo model? What was the doctor trying to achieve by making her read something like that? Make her feel some kind of sympathy for the fetus, or...?

«Sandra wants me to know as much as I can. Sure...get all the facts on the table and make an informed decision. It's not that I don't know anything about pregnancy, but I know the basics. I've never been too interested in the subject. None of my friends have had children, and I...wanted to study and graduate, before I even considered being a mother. Have a steady job. Money in my pocket. Not having to count change. Have something to offer a child. What am I supposed to do now?»

Death.

On board the Tulpar, death was the only viable option. Even if she wasn't pregnant...they were all trapped on a flying piece of junk, in the middle of the void, certain that they would be left with nothing, certain that they wouldn't make it home in time.
She didn't even think of a second option. There wasn't a second option, nothing but the choice between instant death or torture. Anya found refuge there, locked in the infirmary. She didn't dream of living again. She didn't allow herself to fantasize about feeling the breeze on her face again, the sunlight on her skin, the water of a river soaking her feet...things she never appreciated because they were common. Mundane.

She never missed simplicity so much until she was starving, trembling, about to die. When she was sure it was too late for her.

“It’s not too late for you.” Her own voice floats towards her in that instant, reaching out with cold, ghostly fingers. A memory, months before the impact. A late-night conversation, lazy but honest. The blue light of the screen. The pixel hadn’t been discovered yet, but now…

“Shut your mouth, Anya” she shakes her head. She’s able to formulate in her mind the face of her past self, looking back at her, raising her dark eyebrows, wrinkling her nose “you have no idea what will happen to you in two months. You have no idea the hell you’re going to go through. Don’t give me your cheap psychoanalysis bullshit. You know nothing about psychology. You know nothing about medicine. You know nothing about anything! YOU’RE A DAMN WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT! YOU COULDN’T EVEN DEFEND YOURSELF! YOU’RE WORTHLESS!”

She hunches over the open pages of the book, as much as her nine-month-old belly will allow. Small drops of saliva and tears have splattered the pages, and the former nurse's shoulders begin to shake carefully, sobbing over those open pages. Her past self, sad, limits herself to closing her eyes a little, to barely bending her head. Her voice, however, sounds very firm when she speaks.

"You're still alive. Your body heals, every day. You can force them to make up for the damage they caused you. Now you can choose what you want to do."

Anya presses the pads of her thumbs against the plastic pages, before loosening her grip a little and letting out a very, very long sigh. The movement stole a furious tug from her, resting her back against the pillow again and, as if it had heard her thoughts, the thing inside her belly moves and the black-haired woman sees, in great detail, the silhouette of a foot pressing up against the skin of her belly, before returning to the spot.

“Aren't you comfortable in there?” a tired smile stretches across the woman's lips. Carefully, as if she were dipping a hand into a cauldron full of boiling water, she releases the book with one hand and rests it on her belly. She feels a movement against her palm, and sighs “don't be in a hurry... I know you want to get out of there right away. It can't be a nice home, huh?” Anya rubs, but her companion seems to have decided that they manifested enough for one day “... I'm sorry. I assure you that, if you had decided to be born earlier, everything would have been worse.”

Anya looks back at the pages of the book, flipping through the various marks Sandra had left for her: chapters on recommended postpartum nutrition, how to breastfeed properly, warning signs in a newborn baby, suggested care if one chose to sleep with the baby in the same bed as the parents.

Photos and more photos of pregnant women or women with babies in their arms, breastfeeding them or bathing them in small tubs. In most of the photographs, the women were alone, but in others, they appeared in the company of a man. Their partners, of course. Anya didn't pay much attention to these photographs, flipping through the pages quickly.

A handful of the psychology books she read aboard the Tulpar mentioned one of the most terrible details: postpartum depression. Anya was already feeling distressed enough to burden her mind with more terrible possibilities. She flips the pages to the end, where the background changes to a more lively color. The section title, in capital letters and bold, says "CURIOSITIES". On one side, a cartoon of a smiling baby's face, and several text bubbles with brief information on interesting facts about pregnancy.

Anya drops her eyes to the pages, skipping between text bubbles.

> Improved sense of smell:
During pregnancy, the sense of smell is heightened. Scientists believe this is a form of protection for mothers, as they will quickly smell toxins and therefore not have to expose themselves to them.
Pregnant women are very sensitive to alcohol, cigarettes, and caffeine, so this theory seems to be true.

«Caffeine and burnt flesh,» she decides to herself, carefully turning the page. «Antiseptic and blood.»

If she concentrates hard enough, she can still conjure up the stench of the day of the impact in her mind. The entire infirmary was filled with the smell of blood and burnt flesh, like a welcome to a burning slaughterhouse. If she thinks about it too much, she’s going to throw up. And she’s sick of throwing up.

> The so-called linea nigra appears:
In the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy, you may find yourself with a dark, hyperpigmented line that runs from your abdomen to your pubis. It is a phenomenon related to the increase in hormones and disappears spontaneously after delivery, after a few months.

Anya frowns, and puts the book aside for a moment, lifting the fabric of her robe to one side to expose her belly.
Yes, there was the infamous line the book spoke of. Not that she hadn't noticed it before (she showers every day, almost religiously, in the morning and at night, before going to sleep), but she didn't know it had a name. She carefully slides the tip of her index finger along its entire length. She feels the tension of her skin. The thin, almost transparent hairs. Her bulging belly button. Hopefully it won't take too long for her body to return to its normal shape.

She clicks her tongue, ready to close the book and continue flipping through it later, when a title draws her back to the pages.

"Permanence of paternal DNA."

She almost holds her breath as she begins to read.

> In the event of a pregnancy, the baby inherits the man's DNA permanently. Certain cells from the baby can pass through and enter their mothers' bloodstream even after delivery. This is called microchimerism, leaving the woman with some fetal DNA for the rest of her life.
Fetal cells also pass through the placental membrane and into the uterus during pregnancy. Fetal cells have been found in the blood of women up to twenty-seven years after giving birth to a baby. Thus, a woman can retain the DNA of her baby's father for several decades after delivery.

Several decades after delivery.

Her eyes flutter. It's not the desire for crying, but something different. Stronger. The air refuses to pass through her throat and into her lungs. Anya looks down, and all the speech bubbles have disappeared. There is nothing but two blank sheets of paper and some handwriting. The handwriting is shaky, but legible, done in the blue ink of a regular ballpoint pen.

> “Several decades after delivery.” Did you read that, Anya? Twenty-seven years with me, or more. It doesn’t matter what you decide to do, nurse. Keep the baby, or throw it in the trash. Do you think I care? My mark will remain on your flesh either way. A part of me will live inside you forever. If you want to get rid of that so badly…I’ve told you before, haven’t I? Months ago…when you shared the good news with me. You’re worth more dead than alive. You might as well listen to me now.

She blinks, and the pages of the book fall back into place. The speech bubbles with the curiosities of pregnancy. The pastel yellow background. From the TV, the presenter makes a comment and the whole set applauds loudly, before cutting to commercial breaks. She hears the opening tune of one of them, and then an offer of a flu medicine.

As still as she is, she can feel it. Not just the thing, but something beyond it. Invisible nails digging into her flesh. A hissing sound that makes its way through her bloodstream. The sickening weight of a hand on her throat... the certainty that it will be there, forever, until the day she dies. Not just in her mind anymore, but in her body as well. Completely in her body. In her blood. In her hair. In her nails. It has managed to break through and will remain there longer than Anya was even aboard the Tulpar.

What what she supposed to do? What...?

“Miss Anya?” but she is spared from having to think about that, at least for the moment. A voice calls her from the door, and the aforementioned woman turns her head slowly. Everyone in the hospital (the staff she recognizes now, at least) must believe that she is really unbalanced. Maybe she is. She may be broken forever “Doctor Sandra asked me to notify you that your partner is conscious. He woke up from the induced coma.”

“What?” the woman's words catch Anya off guard, leaving the book on the table to her right “Curly woke up? And is he conscious?”

“Yes. Well... he is somewhat dazed because of the opioid, but he can hold a more or less reasonable conversation. His prognosis is favorable. Doctor Sandra believes that reconstruction operations can begin this week.”

“Can I go see him?” a strange anguish takes over her stomach then, moving her legs out from under the sheets. The nurse nods, approaching Anya.

“That's the reason I was sent to notify you, Miss Anya, so that you can see him and talk to him.”

“How could I talk to him? His vocal cords must have been badly injured. In... in outer space, he could only stammer and cry.”

“We have a method you can use to talk to him. Follow me... wait, I'll get you a wheelchair.”

“No, you don't have to. I'll walk.”

Anya bites the bullet, getting up from the stretcher with effort. First one leg, then the other. Her belly weighs horribly, but if she was able to advance through the Tulpar, gun in hand, looking for Jimmy with the determination to kill him, in that physical state... then she will also be able to advance to the room where they had Curly without fainting in the process.

She presses a hand against her lower belly. If she had a little more faith and strength in her arms, perhaps she wouldn't have to rely entirely on her back to bear the kiss of the thing.

«You were able to hunt Jimmy inside the Tulpar. To shoot him like you were a hunter on safari and he was some pathetic animal. But now you read something and cry? You hallucinate with his voice and his handwriting is enough for you to start shaking? Where did all that bravery go, Anya?»

She's not sure.
Aboard the Tulpar, acting especially obsequious around Jimmy was nothing more than a desperate attempt to keep him happy. To avoid another outburst of rage. To save herself from that happening again.

But when the reality of impending death dawned on her, Anya realized that there was no point in playing the role of docility anymore, or she would die. She would die a cruel death. She had to take the bull by the skin, or it would shatter. When you feel the sentence is so clear, you lose all fear.

That was for her, at least.

Now she is no longer aboard the Tulpar. Away from danger, it would make sense for her to feel safe, but... He is still out there, and as far as Anya is concerned, only two people can make sure he gets what he deserves.
One is her.
The other is there, on the other side of the door.

Anya turns the handle and carefully opens it. On the other side, she is greeted by the breeze from the fan and the soft sounds of the television on. He is there, covered in clean bandages. He is no longer bleeding. His once red skin now looks pinkish, and he no longer moans in pain. His one good eye looks in better condition, no longer bloodshot, and he has something attached to the side of his head: an electrode.

“Grant?”

Her voice seems to be an injection of adrenaline into her former Captain's body. He shakes his head. His eye, light blue, falls on her. He takes a moment to locate her, perhaps (the nurse told Anya that the medications could have him in a somewhat groggy state), before moving his eye in another direction, away from her.

The black-haired woman swallows carefully, before moving a little closer to him. She rests her palms on the cold steel of the stretcher, and sniffles.

“...if you can't even see my face, why did you ask the doctor to tell me to come see you?”

Silence again, but not absolute. From on top of the adjacent table, an object, similar to a radio, lets out a strange noise, like that sound that radios make when they navigate through white noise until they are able to tune into a station's frequency. Anya wrinkles her nose, clinging to the stretcher as she turns and leaves a finger on that thing.

“What is this?”

“ANYA.”

The black-haired stifles an exclamation. From the device, with a soft purr of interference in the background, her name came out. Loud and clear. She looks back at Curly and focuses, again, on the electrode. Everything makes sense then.

“Can this device... capture your brain waves and transform them into audible words?”

“YES.”

Anya opens her mouth, but the sound silences her again.

“ANYA. I'M-SORRY. I'M-SO-SORRY.”

“No, listen-”

“I-COULDN'T-SEE-IT-THEN. I-ALWAYS-CONVINCED-MYSELF-OTHERWISE. I-ALWAYS-SO-TERRIED-OF-CONFLICT. I-TOLD-YOU-I-WILL-HELP-YOU. I-TOLD-YOU-I-WILL-DO-ANYTHING. I-TRUSTED. I-TRUSTED-MYSELF-TOO-MUCH. THAT-NEVER-WORKED-FOR-ME. I-RUINED-IT. I-MADE-YOU-SUFFER-THEREFORE. I-TRIED. IT-WAS-NOT-ENOUGH.”

“…Curly” the tears have begun to roll down her cheeks. There is something…especially raw about having to hear him communicate with her like that, as if he were on the other side of a wall that neither of them would be able to cross, in any direction. He is there, though. Lying on the stretcher. His good eye, again, red from tears. Anya coughs a little and reaches out with her right hand, carefully wiping away, using the pad of her thumb, the tear that falls from Curly's eye.

“Do you remember that conversation we had at the Tulpar? It feels like a lifetime ago...” Anya draws a line with her lips, bringing her hand to her chest “...when you told me that your father died, and everything you thought you would be... and everything I thought I would be...”

“YES.”

She smiles, keeping a hand near her face.

“We were sure of so many things then. First, that we would have to change our lives. Then, that we wouldn't even have a life to live anymore... dead in outer space. But now here we are, alive. And I don't know if... if we should be.”

White noise pours out of the device, until it's Curly's turn to break the silence.

“YOU-HAVE-TO-LIVE-ANYA.”

“And you don't?” A smile stretches across Anya's lips. It's not a happy smile. She holds on to the steel bar of the stretcher with both hands; she almost bares her teeth. A rabid dog. No...a terrified dog “after all the effort it took me to keep you alive on the Tulpar, it would be very selfish of you to decide to throw in the towel and die in a hospital on Earth, do you hear me?”

“I-DON'T-DESERVE-IT-ANYA.”

“Shut up! We've been through hell up there and we came back alive! I'm not going to let you go on a suicide walk. Even if...” she pauses for a moment, licking her lips “even if something terrible happens to me, I want you to keep going, okay? And if you don't want to do it for yourself, do it for me.”

“SOMETHING-TERRIBLE?”

“I have to give birth, Curly, and there's a chance it could all go wrong for me” Anya drops her gaze to the light blue sheets, stretching her lips into a grimace “...but everything will go wrong for me, no matter how good the birth is. I'm clear about that, but...” her eyes wander, until she finally removes her hands from the stretcher “I don't want to go through all this alone. I can't go through all this alone. So...let's try to stick together, okay? Let's try not to abandon ourselves. There's a...chance it will be like this for the rest of our lives.”

Grant is silent, and Anya carefully hugs herself, resting her forearms on her belly. Is it a matter of selfishness? Does a part of her think that if she has to suffer for the rest of her life, then it's only fair that Curly has to suffer too?

But he's not the real culprit, directly responsible for all the shit she's been through. No. The real culprit is out of the hospital and calm...or as calm as one can be inside a police cell.

“What have they told you?” her gaze falls on Curly's eye “about your health, I mean. Will they be able to perform reconstruction surgery? Give you transplants, prosthetics...?”

“YES.”

“...I'm glad.” Her voice comes out in dribs and drabs, as if she were the one with her vocal cords almost burned. Curly would also have to learn to speak again. He would have to learn to do everything again, like a baby. He was already one then, on board the Tulpar. He needed help with everything. To drink. To eat the little that he could afford to pass down his throat. To ingest the painkillers she couldn't inject him with. To clean himself. Anya did everything for him, everything she could. If she could feel the guilt emanating from Curly back then, now that he can communicate it's... even worse “...it'll take you a long time, but...”

“ANYA.”

“Yes?” the woman drops her gaze on Curly's face. He, only then, was able to hold it back.

“IT-WAS-MY-FAULT.”

“...you know what? I can understand you, can I tell you why?” Anya looks up. Her eyes are lost beyond the glass of Curly's room. There was no window facing outside, why? She saw, from time to time, some nurse or doctor passing at full speed down the hall. That was the intensive care wing, after all. If only there was a window to look outside. If only something to distract herself with. Anya misses the screen of the false night sky more than ever. A shattered sense of longing. She would slit her wrists open rather than climb back up the Tulpar “I've come to feel... that it was my fault too.”

That transmitter nearly explodes. A loud salad of white noise and broken words. Curly's brain must have turned into a circus at that moment, desperate to say something but unable to decide what. He even seems to try to sit up on the stretcher, has he gone mad? Anya stops him in place, pressing her hands firmly against her former Captain's shoulders.

“He spiked my drink. With zolpidem pills...pills to sleep. The night of your birthday... there was a blister missing from the infirmary. I wanted to tell you, but between all the fuss about the birthday and... the news of the firing, I just forgot. We all drank the same stuff. You mustn't remember. All of us, except him. I tasted it strange. I should have guessed at the time, but I didn't. I guess I'm... a fourth-rate nurse, at the end of the day.”

“ANYA-NO.”

“It doesn't matter, you know?” she sinks her upper teeth into her lower lip, holding it there for a moment “it doesn't matter if I wasn't able to recognize the taste...even if I had asked for another glass. Even if I had drunk myself to the brim. One shouldn't fear that kind of retaliation, as if it were a...punishment for having done something wrong, don't you think?”

“YES.”

“And you shouldn't have to punish yourself forever as a result, Curly. I know it's true, but...I don't know if I can...”

“ANYA.”

“Hm?”

“NEVER-FORGIVE-ME-IF-YOU-DON'T-WANT-TO.”

“...I'm aware of it” she puffs out her cheeks before snorting “although I don't know if I want to carry this grudge for the rest of my life. And if I have to hate someone with all my might right now...it's Jimmy.”

The mere act of saying his name burns in her throat. If there's a chance of making him pay for his crimes...she can't take care of that alone. Not when Curly has also been a victim. She rests the palm of her hand, carefully, on Curly's bandaged arm. She wishes he had a hand to hold, it would have been the best thing at a time like this.

“Stay alive, okay? I don't want...to be the only one to get out of here. I know I'll be leaving before you, but...”

“Excuse me” a click on the door makes her remove her hand from Curly's arm as if it were burning. She turns around. It's another nurse, normally in charge of bringing her breakfast. She stops standing in the doorway, looking at Curly and then looking at her “Anya, you have a visitor” the black-haired woman opens her mouth, but the nurse leaves the way she came before she's even able to ask who it was.

“Okay... I'll go. Maybe I'll come back later” Anya turns around. Curly seems to be burning with the desire to say more things, but the method of communication wasn't ideal “...don't worry too much. Not while you don't have the ability to speak, so I can answer that you only know how to say crap.”

He tries to nod his head. Anya can't help it: seeing him improve like that makes her happy deep in her soul.

There were twisted moments in their past. She can't forget. Curly probably hasn't forgotten them either. Maybe he's thinking about them right now. But Anya never thought, not for a second, that Curly deserved what happened to him.

The very idea disgusts her to the core of her soul. She wouldn't be able to look at herself in the mirror. Not when she was there to clean up his blood, to peel the shreds of clothing from his skin as they fell away in shreds, to cover his face with a wet towel while she listens to him scream, cry, beg for something without words, locked in an agony that seems eternal. Stripped of everything. Dependent on nothing.

A baby.

She shuffles back to her room, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

They must have been the NFSC’s agents, ready to hear in great detail (as much as she could give them) what had happened aboard the Tulpar during all those months. She should have taken advantage of those days of dead hours to force her brain to make a chronological line. The dates are probably mixed up, and she curses at the thought as she carefully opens the door to her room. How many months after takeoff was it that they crashed into...?

“Why are you reading this, Anya?”

The voice stops her in place. A somewhat old, feminine voice. Standing next to her stretcher, with the maternity book in her hands, was her mother.
She is short, with blonde hair that is more gray than anything else. She looks up at her, but the vision of her daughter does not seem to fully form in her pupils. Not right away, at least. Anya presses the palm of her hand against the frame of the already closed door, while the book slips from her mother’s hands, falling with a thud to the floor, face down, pages open.

For a few seconds, neither of them says anything. It's been two years since they last saw each other in person, but they're unable to react. A part of Anya wants to initiate the classic reunion scene: run to her, smile, cry, desperately seek some warmth from the woman who gave her life.
Her mother, however, adopts a stranger and stranger facial expression with each passing second. As if she's realizing she's entered the wrong patient's room...or worse, as if she's watching someone do something deeply out of character, and knowing she's powerless to do anything to stop it.

All that desire. All that longing. Everything... seems to be falling apart before the black-haired woman's eyes, and there's nothing she can do to stop it.

“Mom...” Anya's voice comes out like the last will of a convalescent. She slowly approaches the stretcher, towards her, but her mother steps aside. She doesn't get much further, though, and Anya is able to climb onto the stretcher with effort.

“Anya...” she doesn't know how to define her mother's voice at that moment. The old woman leans over with a slight groan, picking up the book from the floor and leaving it on the nearby table. “Anya, it can't be... it can't be, what happened to you?”

“... well” the aforementioned woman drops her gaze on her bulging belly, her swollen breasts, the pain in absolutely every organ and every bone, before opening her hands and turning to see her mother “...I guess I'm pregnant.”

“How could you do something like that?” her mother's voice is loaded with an emotion she had never heard before: disdain. If the question had ever generated some amusement in Anya, that amusement was fading at full speed “Anya, getting pregnant? How could you even think of that?”

“Mom...I didn’t think of that” the woman who gave her life only exhales a question, and Anya feels her throat dry. Her tongue like a piece of sandpaper. Talking about it hurts “...it was forced, mom. The...the co-captain gave me sleeping pills to drink. I...I...I didn't want to, he...”

She doesn't know what she expected from her mother, other than the compassion that one would expect from a normal human being towards another human being who has suffered something terrible.
Especially her.
Especially being her daughter.

The truth is there, obvious and brutal. Anya's eyes fill with tears. Why is she no longer able to speak clearly? Why can't she say the word with certainty? He raped her. He got her drunk and raped her. She opens her mouth and all she manages to do is let out a bellow of pain, filling herself with more and more tears.

“Mom...” she reaches out a hand towards her, her voice shattered. She's tired, she doesn't want to get out of bed again. Her back hurts. Her legs. Her feet. She needs her close, now more than ever. To help her shower. To listen to her. To tell her what to do now. What to do with her life “please... please, mommy, listen to me...”

“I can't believe you would do something like that. You're not married. You have nothing, Anya.”

“Mommy...” but her mother avoids her hand as if she had the plague, shaking her head. The brunette's chest heaves. She will vomit. She will die “...stay. Please, I understand...that you are angry with me, but, please...please, I don't want to go through this alone. I will give birth soon. I don't want to be alone. Please...I have been alone for so long, I have had nothing, or anyone, and now...”

“Anya...”

“I'm scared, mommy. I'm really scared. I don't know...I don't know what...”

“You should have thought things through more carefully.”

“HE GOT ME DRUNK, MOM!” she is unable to follow the anxious thread of her own voice. It rises, like thunder, raising her fists above her head and letting them fall on either side of her body, on the thin mattress. But her mother shakes her head, as if she were accusing someone very dear to her. “Why don’t you believe me!? I have never lied to you! I never deceived you with anything! I have been the best daughter I could be!”

“Anya…” her mother takes a careful exclamation, as if the black-haired woman were a teenager caught red-handed, who still has enough cynicism to resort to trying to declare herself innocent of something she knows she is guilty of. The woman who gave her life smiles a little, even. A weary smile. It is lucky that the nurse has taken the empty tray, because it is likely that Anya would be able to grab it and smash it all over her mother’s head. “…you are not a fool. How could you not have been able to... I don't know, taste the pills in your drink? It doesn't make sense. You drank too much, and then... well, they already said it on TV: Pony Express is closing its cargo ship department. Why would you do that, Anya? Did you really... think that sleeping with a superior was going to secure you anything on Earth? That's not how men's minds work. He took what he wanted from you and you fell...”

«Mom,» she thinks. She can’t even bring herself to say it out loud to shut her up.

“...and now here you are, pregnant and out of work. The news is talking about an investigation, but how can you go out like that, Anya? What are you going to do with that baby? Get rid of it...don’t even hold it in your arms when it’s born. Don’t form a bond. If you keep it, don’t bother coming home.”

“I’m your daughter” Anya doesn’t know what to say other than that. A plea. Her hands shake, clinging to the collar of her robe. So much so that the fabric tears a little between her fingers. The threads separate and twist into little spirals. Tears sting her eyes. She’s tired of crying “no...you can’t do this to me.”

“No, Anya” the black-haired guesses a redness in her mother’s eyes. She cries. So cynical. She starts crying, in front of her daughter “you can't do this to me. After everything I've sacrificed for you... years of torment to get you through, so that... so that you can't do anything at all... nothing but allow some guy to f-”

She doesn't manage to finish the sentence. Not because of the weight of guilt or anguish, but because of the weight of her daughter's hand.
Anya moves her right hand in a quick arc, from the left, slapping her mother with her knuckles. It hurts more than a slap with the palm of the hand.

She has experienced it firsthand.

Her mother stifles an exclamation, bringing a hand to her face and stumbling two steps back. She squeezes the skin of her cheek and looks at Anya as if she doesn't know her, before shaking her head once.

“How dare you…?”

“I've been through hell” she doesn't even feel strong enough to scream anymore. She has lost all her strength. She's so tired... “...I was sure I was going to die, Mom. It was all clear then. But here I am...alive. I was about to die. You were about to lose me. But it didn't happen. And here I am now, by your side...alive...and all you care about is refusing to accept what happened to me. I feel...I feel enough guilt, Mom. I swear. There's nothing you can say to me that will make me feel worse.”

Something changes on her mother's face. For an instant. If she hadn't been looking at her face, she probably would have missed it. A gleam of contemplation. The look of guilt. Anya holds her breath and waits, impatiently, for her to realize her mistake...for her to cry with real remorse and come closer between sobs to apologize for the horror she just let out.

She does none of that.
The look of possible guilt fades away from where it came. It only survives for an instant. Her mother appears to take a very long moment to compose herself, before turning her back.

“I've already told you what I think, Anya. You're my daughter and you always will be, but even a mother has a limit...and I can't bear to go through all that pain. It's not fair. If you want to go home when you're discharged...you know what you have to do. In that case, I'll wait for you with open arms. But if you don't come back...I won't go looking for you either. Not anymore.”

“When did you look for me?”

Her mother just looks at her, but doesn't answer.
She won't leave. Anya longs to believe that she won't leave...and all she gets back are her steps towards the door. She turns the handle, opens it and goes out into the hallway, closing it behind her.

She doesn't turn to look at Anya one last time.

The woman sinks her back into the stretcher slowly, and her eyes go up to the smooth white color of the ceiling. To her left, ahead, the television is still on. The words rise and form clouds, losing more and more meaning with each passing minute.
She doesn't want to move. In fact, she's sure that not a single muscle in her body would respond if she tried to move. No. She'll stay on that stretcher for the rest of the day. Each minute passes slowly, becoming an hour. The clock ticks forward, and the bright light of day slowly turns into the warmth of the afternoon.

She may have fallen asleep. She may have cried, or not. She can't get the tears to come; something stops them in place. It will all come crashing down on her. All the pain will lead to something terrible, but when?
If she had a date written above her head, she could at least prepare for her imminent end, but...

She hears a knock on the door.

How much time has passed? She blinks heavily, turning her head to the left: the clock almost says six in the evening. Maybe it was the nurse with the dinner tray.
Anya digs her palms into the mattress, letting out a very, very long moan as she drags her hips back, trying to sit up better. Her throat feels dry, her neck is too tense. She wishes they could give her a stronger painkiller. Something to help her stop feeling completely.

“Come in.”

The door opens, and on the other side she sees not the nurse, but a man and a woman. They are both wearing elegant clothes, and the woman is carrying some papers. They both have, hanging from their necks, a gold badge that, once they get close enough, Anya can see has a small planet Saturn drawn on it, the most identifiable of all the planets in the solar system.
They were the NFSC agents.

“Good afternoon” the woman is the first to speak, pointing first with one hand to herself, and then to her partner “I am Agent Hill, and my partner is Agent Foster. We are from the NFSC. You know we were coming to talk today, right?”

“...yes” neither of them looks particularly intimidating or dangerous. The woman's voice is calm, but firm. Still, even aware of everything she has experienced aboard the Tulpar, Anya can't help but feel intimidated by the presence of the two agents “what... What do I have to tell you? I've never been... interrogated, in my entire life.”

“Stay calm, okay?” Agent Foster speaks then, and the woman approaches her. She takes something from inside her dark blue jacket: a tape recorder. She turns it on, and Anya hears the whisper of the tape starting to record. “Can you give your full name, please? It's for the record.”

“Uh...yes” Agent Hill brings the tape recorder closer to her “my name is... Anya Musume.”

“What was your job aboard the long-haul space freighter Tulpar, owned by Pony Express?”

“I was a nurse. The only medical staff.”

“Prior to the moment of the mechanical failure, did any relevant event occur?”

“I...wait, mechanical failure?” Anya wrinkles her nose. She had been staring at the recorder all this time, as if someone was going to shoot her if she dared to look away. She fixes her eyes on Agent Hill, however “What do you mean by mechanical failure?”

“Well…” the woman looks back, meeting Agent Foster's face. He looks confused for a second “the malfunction that led to the Tulpar crashing into the meteorite fragments.”

“Who the hell told you…?” but logic takes over her mind at that moment. Of course. Who else but him? “it wasn't a mechanical malfunction, it was Jimmy who diverted the ship's controls and deactivated the autopilot. Curly…the captain, Grant Curly, ran to the cockpit to try to divert the impact, and he got the worst of it. Have you seen how he is? He lost his arms, his legs, him…!”

“That's not what Mr. Zaci told us” despite having heard everything she was telling them, Agent Hill looked almost apathetic, as if Anya was speaking in a language unknown to her. Shit. Did everyone that day agree to screw her? Was it World Trying to Ruin Her Existence Day? The ex-nurse lets out a dry laugh, frowning.

“And what did he tell you?”

“We can't share information from other interrogations with you, Miss Musume. Don't be offended.” Anya has to fight to keep from rolling her eyes at Agent Foster's voice, gritting her teeth so hard she could have broken a tooth.

“Well, this is the truth: Jimmy bypassed the controls and turned off the autopilot. He did it. When Curly is in a position to give you his version of events as well, he's going to confirm it.”

“Bypassing the controls and turning off the autopilot was going to kill him too.” Anya knows they're just doing their job, but she has a hard time not despairing at the absolute parsimony in Agent Hill's tone of voice. “Why would he do something like that?”

“Because he's a fucking narcissist! Because he's crazy! I don't know what problems he has, have you brought a psychiatrist to his cell? You need to do an evaluation, and you'll see that I'm right. The guy wanted to take everyone down with him, even if he had to die too, so he wouldn't have to take responsibility for his actions.”

“What actions?”

“What actions?” Anya almost chews the words as she repeats Agent Hill's question “first, we got a fax about the layoff. I know it's been news that Pony Express is about to close. Today was the first time in over a week that I turned on the TV. Well, all of us were going to be out of work because of that. But Jimmy hung himself on a cross after that. I don't know, maybe he thought that since he was going to be on the street, he could do whatever he wanted on his last trip out... and now, second, this” the black-haired girl places her hands on her belly. She opens her mouth.

Not a sound comes out.

“…Yes?” Agent Hill arches an eyebrow, and Anya has to swallow.

“He... he... well, he...” What the hell is wrong with her? It's finally time to push the truth into the light, to drag the guy into the hole where he belongs, but the words refuse to come out, as if they were false. As if she needed to suffer more of that disgusting martyrdom “…the night we knew we'd be out of work when we returned to Earth, he…he sneaked zolpidem into my drink, those are sleeping pills, and he…he sneaked into my room, and he forced me to have…”

“He forced you?” Agent Foster repeated that word with an arched eyebrow. Anya dropped her gaze, almost furious, on Hill's face. She expected she to turn to him, to shut him up, to defend her…but she didn't say anything, limiting herself to holding the recorder “that wasn't what Mr. Zaci told us.”

“Good heavens, of course he didn't tell you that! Why the hell would he agree to have raped me? Are you kidding?” the air escapes in torrents from her lungs every time she opens her mouth. That can't be true “Are you going to believe him? He's lying!”

“It's not up to us to believe or not believe anyone, Miss Musume” Agent Hill's voice sounds alien. Absent “we only collect information. The one in charge of believing or not and passing judgment will be the judge, in due time. Our opinion has no weight.”

“And the trial will be held when you and Mr. Curly are able to attend” Foster joins the conversation, but the black-haired woman doesn't even turn to look at him “for now, we need your testimony. Please, continue. What happened after the alleged rape and the accident?”

“Alleged?”

“Miss Musume, please” Agent Hill's voice is no more pleasant than her partner's, barely shaking her head “don't make things more complicated and continue the testimony, okay?”

Anya opens her mouth. To snap. To scream. She wants to snatch the recorder from her hands and hit it hard against Hill’s face, but she stops herself, rubbing her palms on the sheet and, only after putting in the effort, is she able to continue the story.

She talks about the months caring for a convalescent Curly on the stretcher, believing that he had been the one to blame for the accident. She takes it upon herself to explain the motivation behind her docile attitude, certain that the son of a bitch might want to hold on to that in the future to try to remove the blame from his shoulders.
She talks about how much the rations were running out, and the why behind her confinement in the infirmary, away from everyone else. The bad conditions of the ship. How they were five on board, with only four cryogenic capsules.
She explains the increasingly erratic behavior of the self-proclaimed new captain of the Tulpar, the manic flare of everything he decided to do, how he ordered Daisuke to die because of his pride, and what he did to Swansea afterwards. Every word came out of her mouth with absolute automatism, as if someone had pre-recorded them inside her brain, as if…

Like she's the fucking Polle doll.

She pushes the words out and throws them away. She wants to throw them all away. Part of Anya hopes that by the end of the interrogation, she won't be able to feel anything at all. None of that dread. None of that pain. But when Agent Hill clicks the button to stop the recorder, the weight of it all comes back. Reality is still the same. The pain is there, and it's never going to leave her.

“You're not going to let him go, are you?” As Agent Hill and Agent Foster head for the door, Anya quickly raises her voice. The two of them freeze in place, exchanging a glance. “To…to Jimmy. He's going to stay locked up, right?”

“…as a precaution, yes,” Agent Hill's voice is little more than a whisper, “he admitted to murdering Mr. Swansea. In self-defense, he claims, but that won't be known until the trial. Once the trial is held, well…the judge will decide.”

“You liked his version better, didn’t you?”

“Excuse me?” Agent Foster slightly bows his head.

“You liked Jimmy’s version of the events better.” Anya’s lips stretch into a grimace. A pathetic imitation of a human smile. “He knows…how to inspire pity. He has been torturing a good man for years, and he was never able to get rid of him. He is doing the same to you. He will do the same to the members of the jury. I can almost see it, and it is unbearable.”

Agent Foster and Agent Hill exchange a meaningful look, as if they are thinking about exactly the same thing. Something Anya doesn’t know, and isn’t quite sure if she would like to know.

“Oh, I almost forgot!” Agent Hill approaches her again, taking something from inside her pocket: a piece of paper, folded in four parts. She places it in the ex-nurse's hands, and Anya frowns. “Mr. Zaci asked me to give it to you. We had to read it first, but it's a short message. He said... you'd know what he meant.”

Anya doesn't respond. She doesn't even look at her.
Her gaze remains fixed on that piece of paper.

The agents' voices fade into a distant haze. If they've said anything else, Anya can't register it. She remains silent, as the two of them finally leave the way they came. The door opens and closes, the echo of the final thud bouncing off her eardrums.

Only then does she gather the courage to unfold the paper... and read the words. The message is short. The intent is obvious. She can almost hear Jimmy's voice screaming those words inside her brain.

[GET RID OF THAT THING]

Anya rubs her palms together, balling up the paper, and carefully gets up from the stretcher. She tosses the paper into the wastebasket where the cotton balls go, and walks over to the window, standing on her toes until she reaches the latch and slides it aside, opening the glass.

She is embraced by the warmth of the summer air. The sounds of the street now reach her room more easily. Anya holds on to the arch of the window with both hands, leaning forward: the cars look tiny, and the people even smaller. She is only on the third floor, but the hospital is very high. It doesn't matter that it is the third floor. If she jumps, she will be able to make it.

«Maybe Mom is right. Maybe a part of me, desperate, agreed to this. Maybe I thought I would have a chance on Earth, and even more so when I got pregnant. This is all my fault. I had to cause a scandal on board. If I hadn't said anything to Curly…»

No.

«If I hadn't told Jimmy I was pregnant, he wouldn't have lost his mind. He wouldn't have diverted the ship, and we would all have made it to safety. No one would have had to die.»

He would eventually find out. He would see her belly grow.

«I should have killed myself earlier. If I had died…everyone else would have been saved. The sacrifice of the medical staff, isn't it? The desperate humanistic desire to give your life for the life of another. I didn't have that desire. How can I want to be a doctor without that desire? What am I made for then?»

To ruin things. To ruin everything. Two have died on board the Tulpar, how can she deny that it was indirectly her fault?

«I could have taken the risk. I could have screamed for help. Doesn't it mean anything? Maybe, deep down…I wanted this to happen. But things didn't go the way I expected, and I couldn't turn back now. Curly feels guilty, and he got the brunt of the whole thing.»

She can still fix her mistakes. She can still do what she failed to do before everything went to hell.
Wasn't she going to do it, after all? After killing Jimmy with the gun, she was going to go back to the infirmary, shoot Curly, and shoot herself. She made up her mind to do it then. Why not do it now?

«I can get rid of this thing.»

Anya tenses her muscles. She squeezes her eyes shut. Her throat itches, her eyes burn. The air completely escapes from her lungs when she opens her mouth, and only then…

“…inspired by the cosmic miracle we experienced a little over a week ago.”

When Anya opens her eyes, two thick, warm tears slide down her flushed cheeks and drip down her chin. The voice of a talk show host comes from the television screen. The black-haired woman sniffles, squinting and blinking away more tears that keep coming.
On the television screen she sees two men sitting. One on a vermilion-colored couch, and the other behind a bulky desk. The man behind the desk is wearing a simple suit, and the man sitting on the couch is dressed more extravagantly, and he nods at the words the boring man just said. Anya doesn't remember the host's name, but she knows who the man sitting on the couch is: David Bowie.

“That's right...” Bowie nods carefully a little more “it struck me deeply, and I was able to compose this song in a day and a half...although I don't plan to take on other people's pain. I think...how much must they have suffered, certain of dying in outer space? We have given ourselves over completely to the fascination of what awaits us beyond the stars...and we have never stopped to ask ourselves, is it even waiting for us? Perhaps it waits maliciously to devour us completely. It is a horror unknown to anyone who has not lived it, a fear impossible to conjure in words or horror stories. One can get close, that's for sure, but only those who survived it can know it. The certainty of death...I think one is only capable of understanding how much one wants to live when the only certainty one has is that you are about to die.”

Anya exhales. She carefully drops her shoulders.
She remembers her screams against the Tulpar's communicator. The rage for life that stirred her heart when she heard that woman's voice announcing their proximity to Earth.

She remembers the evening sky opening up before the three of them after a whole year locked in outer space, certain of death.

Her first night in a bed. The morning sun. The warm rain of a hot shower. Fresh water. Clean sheets. Life. Life. Life.

“And if I could tell the survivors of Tulpar something right now, what would you say?”

“Oh, what can I tell them that they don't already know?” Bowie smiles, looking at the camera that focuses on him. His eyes pierce the screen. They reach her “live.”

The live audience applauds, as Bowie makes his way to the stage set up for that talk show. Anya has started crying again, and her hands shake as she hugs herself, leaning her left shoulder against the window frame.

She doesn't want to do it.
She doesn't want to jump.
He wants her dead. Everyone wants her dead. They hope she dies, and takes the presence inside her belly with her.

Anya is sick of dying.

And the window slams shut.

“Ground Control to Major Tom…Ground Control to Major Tom…Take your protein pills and put your helmet on…”

Chapter Text

His mother and Curly's mum met before the two of them. The cynic who gave him life used to go to church every Sunday, until it stopped giving results. But Emma Curly, with an unpronounceable maiden name, sat in the middle rows. Without her son, since she saw no point in forcing him to a place of worship.

The cynic talked at length about Emma Curly with the man of the season, always sitting in the places that belonged to his father but that, in his absence, remained empty waiting to be soiled by some intruder: the head of the table, the sofa in front of the television.

His mother's mattress.

It was the cynic who sent him to knock on the Curlys' door one day. He heard so much about Emma in his tender childhood that he hoped it would be her who would open the door and finally meet the protagonist of the cynic's monologues. It wasn't her, however, who was waiting for him behind that white door. The color irritated him. White doors were for the rich, with their doorbell, their knocker, and that upper arch made of thick, colorful glass.

A boy greeted him on the other side.
They were both seven years old at the time. Grant was a few months away from turning eight.
Jimmy had barely turned seven.

It didn't take them long to become friends.

The boy had everything. Things Jimmy had only seen in movies, from two bathrooms, with a tub in each, to a huge backyard and a treehouse.
In his room, Curly had a bunch of old model airplanes and spaceships, made of hard plastic, so durable that he could play with them without fear of breaking them.

If Jimmy had toys like that, he's sure he'd put them in a safe and never take them out to play. But Curly lent them to him. He shared everything with him. From toys in elementary school, to homework in high school. Everything that belonged to the blond was also his, and even on the rare occasions that Grant didn't want to give him something, Jimmy would just...take it. He always knew that Curly would never make a big fuss about him. He was never wrong.

Almost.

As a guarding eye from his friend's library, there was the ever-present copy of the Bible. He remembers that first day in his newly acquired best friend's room, he wrinkled his nose as he took the book in his hands. It had a thick cover and some drawings in the margins to make the reading more enjoyable.

“Do you really read this garbage? It's so boring,” the brown-haired boy turned to Curly. He just smiled, embarrassed, shrugging his shoulders as if he had been caught in the middle of a prank.

“My mom says that I'm not old enough to read and understand what it says, so she reads me some passages sometimes. But it's true that it's a little boring. I prefer it when she reads me other stories...or when she makes them up. Doesn't your mom read you bedtime stories?”

Jimmy didn't answer, just opening the book and traveling to the mark Curly's mother had placed. That Bible must have been the woman's, as it had pencil marks and some of the paragraphs marked with special care. He remembers how Curly came closer to him, trying to guess something over his shoulder.

“What does it say?”

The brown-haired boy took special care when reading that out loud.

“...Cursed be the man who trusts in a man...and who makes flesh his arm...”

The echo of the lid closing brings him back to his own mind.

He hears the hiss of the cryogenic capsule closing. From the other side of the glass, Curly looks back at him. His one eye follows him like a beacon, and Jimmy shuffles to the left, his back sweaty, his hands shaking.

His last chance to fix everything he did wrong.

A smile stretches across his lips carefully, little by little. He leans one side of his hip against the hardened foam, slipping his index finger into the trigger. He sweats so profusely that he fears the gun will slip from his hands and, after a final gasp, he sinks the barrel of the gun into his mouth, the hole pointing to the roof of his mouth, and fires.

A pathetic, plastic click comes out of his mouth. He pulls the trigger a second time, a third time...and all he gets is the repetition of that sound. Click. Click.

He reaches out with a chewed curse, removing the load of bullets, sure that they might have been placed wrong...only to realize in that moment of doom that…

He has no more bullets left.

“...you have them all...Swansea, you got...” the man slowly raises his head, turning back, towards the open door of that room. But his eyes search for something beyond that hallway, to the main lobby, where the other three are waiting. Invited to an eternal birthday party. Jimmy can feel the trembling in his eyes, finding it useless to try to focus even a third time “...all my bullets...”

He was the last of the three to die, and the last guest at the party.

The first was Anya.

When he stepped into the infirmary, the stench of blood and decay took over his senses like an avalanche. She was there, lying next to the stretcher, surrounded by the empty pill bottles and all the blood that came out of her nose and mouth. A painful and lonely death, pathetic.

When he put his hands under her armpits, Curly began to make noise, like a fucking dog locked in a yard one square meter in size. Grant seemed to try to move, to get up, to do something... but all he managed to do was make his wounds bleed again.

Anya's body was heavy. She was slightly robust, more than most women he had met, but that robustness never helped her at all. She could do absolutely nothing on an entire trip, and she died with the same spirit with which she boarded the Tulpar.

Curly makes more noise. Jimmy doesn't even feel it's worth trying to say anything to him, as he begins to drag Anya's body under her armpits, out of the infirmary and towards the main lobby. The tips of her flip-flops were scraping the metal floor of the ship as she was dragged, emitting a clacking sound that seemed almost eternal, until...

In front of the double doors, opened towards the almost completely consumed storage area, Jimmy heard a strange sound.

A disgusting sound.

He looks down, discovering how the blue color of the uniform, in the area of ​​Anya's pants, little by little, is changing color. Between her legs, the fabric swells scarlet. The space against her pelvis bulges a little, and that's where the red tone swells and moistens the fabric even more. Something has sprouted, dead, from her body, and it longs for an escape route but the fabric of her clothes prevents it. Jimmy swallows heavily, barely resisting the urge to push the nurse toward the cargo area, and watch her body roll down the flight of stairs to the bottom.

Safe, at last, from that thing.

She doesn't complain, which is a relief for a change. She doesn't protest. She doesn't smother her tears against the palm of her hand or try to run away from the birthday party. She's kind and docile, like she always should have been.

“You see, Anya? Everyone should learn from your example,” he murmured, as he sat her down at the table and, smiling, placed the ribbon of her birthday hat under her chin. Her skin was cold, white as a sheet of paper. Her lips were blue and her eyes were forever bloodshot. “...if they had just listened to me in everything, none of this would have happened.”

Daisuke was the second, and because of the proximity, his transfer to the table was much less laborious. He was smaller in size, and weighed less. Besides, his death had been a short time ago, so he could feel the warmth of his skin still present, and the tension of the infection.
Jimmy sat him down at the table, and the brat dropped his entire head hard against the empty plate. The brunette muttered a curse, making him sit up straight again.

The wound on his face was still oozing blood, and he had left something on the plate when he hit it: the upper half of his eye.

“So impatient... Are you that hungry?” He took the upper piece of eye between his fingers. It was slimy, and before it could slip, he slid it into the boy's mouth, sinking his index finger until it reached the uvula. “That’s it, now wait for the others, all right? Starting to eat alone is rude, Daisuke. How did your parents raise you?”

The worst of the three was Swansea.

He had managed to kill him too far from the main room, and it took him much more effort to drag his body from the dark corner where he had let out that useless monologue, to that moment where he could finally end his life. He took care of all the loose ends, the way a good Captain would do. And now, when he was finally going to close the whole matter with a flourish...when he was finally going to get rid of the last pending issue and receive the hypothetical embrace of the future as a hero...as a Captain who did the best he could for his crew…

Why do they have to make things so hard for him? Why can't he get off one last shot in peace? Now he shuffles, tapping his right thigh with the barrel of the gun as he makes his way from the utility room back to the main lobby. His hand is shaking so much that even if he wanted to stop the twitching, he couldn't.
If he takes one of the bullets embedded in Swansea's rotting flesh...if he gets hold of just one of them and makes it useful, then maybe...

"It's your own birthday party, and you were the first to leave. What a bad move on your part, Jimmy. Now everyone's mad at you!"

The Captain stops standing in the doorway. His eyes study the main room and the table, for longer than it would take a normal human being to comprehend anything of what's happening in front of his eyes.

The table is empty.

“...what?” He can barely hear his own voice, licking his dry lips. He hasn't had any clean water in days, and though the alarm hasn't gone off, he's convinced that the oxygen movement through the ducts isn't ideal either. How could they be warned, anyway? Most of the alarm transmission is connected to the cockpit, which is now more foam than anything else.

Maybe they've been surviving on tainted air for weeks, and they have no way of knowing.

“Hello?”

Jimmy stands up very straight, looking back. The door is still open. The table is empty, just huge blood stains where a corpse had once sat. Where had they gone? How did they go?

«Dead people don't walk, Jimmy. Everyone is in their place. You'll have to move all three of them again.»

Daisuke's body isn't where he died though, writhing in pain on his sleeping bag, killed by a proud Swansea unable to stop and wait for orders from a superior. There's nothing but blood and mouthwash stains on the black cloth. Nothing to tell him where he's gone. Not him... not Swansea, not Anya.

“Hello?”

Jimmy hears his voice bouncing off the empty walls of the Tulpar. No one answers him. There's no one who can answer him. Not now, not ever. Curly's body awaits possible rescue twenty years in the future, and he's left alone, perched in an empty room, with no way to get out of this world before madness takes over his senses.

He can't wait for death.
He doesn't want to wait for death.
He has to kill himself.
He has to find a way, and fast.

He pokes his head out into the hallway, ready to head to the infirmary. A dim light still shines from the now empty room. It's dimmer than the hallway lights, though: a painfully slow, red flicker. In the split second it takes for the hallway lights to come back on, Jimmy is plunged into absolute darkness, as if he were being devoured by a massive wolf, unwittingly stepping into its jaws.

The gun spins in his palm, holding it by the barrel. Without bullets, the stock is more of a weapon than the trigger.

Maybe he needs just one pill from the infirmary to get the job done, maybe...

«Then Saul said to his armor bearer: Draw your sword and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised men come and thrust me through and mock me. But his armor bearer would not, for he was too afraid. So Saul took his sword and fell upon it.» A cold, feminine voice, affected by years of tobacco addiction, stops him still in place. His eyes are lost in the emptiness of the hallway, there where the darkness devours the metal and nothing remains but the gloom. «Your father killed himself, Jimmy, and his soul was claimed by Satan. He will never return home, and neither will you. Look, you look so much like him... and you never met him. You will soon. At least you'll have a familiar face waiting for you in Hell. Maybe that place was always your real home, and not the world of the living.»

“...shut up.”

«You tried hard for more than thirty years, Jimmy, but it was too late for you. I knew it from the moment I had the misfortune of carrying you in my arms. I didn't even want to be a mother, but I didn't have a say in that. I had to stay with you by force, and I guess my bitterness cursed you. There was no place for you in the human race. This was going to happen, sooner or later.»

“Shut up!”

«You're not the prodigal son. There's no one waiting for you at home.»

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

He throws the gun hard, it bounces off the floor, against a wall, and falls, as useless as if it were a hard plastic toy. He clenches his teeth hard, victim of the pangs caused by hunger in the depths of his gut. He hunches over, leaning his weight on his knees, and stammers words that even he doesn't understand.

Maybe he really is crazy. Maybe he really has lost his mind. He was convinced he had forgotten what his mother's voice sounded like, the cynical one. But it comes back with absolute clarity, tormenting his mind the way it did in life. He rubs his closed eyelids with the inside of his arm, letting go of a curse. He can still fix things. He just has to...

“Pssst!”

He stands still.

Frozen to the spot, Jimmy is unable to make a single movement. An almost deadly cold creeps up his bones and takes over his entire body. He drops his gaze to the gun, still a few feet ahead. It's useless, though: it has no bullets.

“Pssst! Cap! Hey, pssst!”

With abominable slowness, the brunette slowly turns his head. A few meters away, down the hall, someone leaves the main lobby. He moves heavily, as if the flesh of his legs were made of gelatin, and when the dim light of the hall reaches him, Jimmy guesses his face.

“Daisuke?”

“We can't start the party without you, Jimmy! We can't...” Daisuke's head moves forward, he seems to bring his chin to his chest... but no. It's only the upper half of his head that moves, detaching itself from the lower part and falling to the ground with a wet thud “fuck... I'm sorry, Jim... I mean! I'm sorry, Captain, I'm... dirtying the whole floor...” Daisuke bends down to retrieve the lost part of his body. He only keeps half of his nose and mouth. He sees pieces of brain dripping out when he bends his neck, the exposed muscle and the piece of skull sticking out. Blood pours out, like a broken pot, and he balances the newly recovered top of his head, all with one hand. The other is busy, holding the cake knife, dirty with Curly's blood.

Jimmy is unable to conjure a single word in his mind.

“We had everything ready... but you took Captain Curly and left...” Daisuke advances slowly, dragging his feet. The wound, so deep, soaks the rest of his face with blood, but the boy doesn't seem to care. Daisuke shakes his right arm to both sides, cutting the air with that cake knife. “Captain! Captain! Come eat with us, Captain!”

“You are...” Jimmy notices his dry throat, and the extra effort he must make to get each word out of his mouth. That couldn't be real. But it was. He hears each step on the metal floor. He hears the hiss, even, of the knife blade. He sees Daisuke, walking towards him, and guesses the smile that forms on the brunette's lips “...dead.”

“I can't be dead, Captain. You promised me, remember? You told me...” Daisuke throws his head to one side. His mouth hangs like a puppet's mouth. He doesn't move it anymore, and yet, he's able to speak. The voice that comes out is no longer his own, but the Captain's. It's Jimmy's voice, loud and clear “climb into the duct, Daisuke. We need your help. Nothing bad is going to happen to you, I promise. Trust me.”

“I...”

“I'm fine, Captain!” the young man recovers his own voice then, bringing both hands to his head, the blade of the knife near his ear. He seems to try to hold both parts, the upper and the lower, in place, to prevent it from falling again “you were absolutely right. You have everything under control.”

“It was Swansea's fault! He decided to execute you! He wouldn't let me try anything else!”

Daisuke stands still, carefully bringing a hand to his chest. His yellow Pony Express shirt, soaked with blood...but when he lifted the cloth, the sight was a thousand times worse. An open wound, oozing a whitish-blue liquid. Jimmy grits his teeth, and the boy carefully shakes his head.

“Mouthwash has too much sugar...she said so. Anya could have helped me, but...” Daisuke drops the cloth of his shirt, and a broken cry swells his chest. “...it hurts...so much. It hurts. It hurts. It stings. It's hot, and it burns...it burns...I felt nothing but pain until Swansea freed me. He was good to me. He was gentle. Of all of us here, Captain, you're the only one who hasn't felt pain. It's not fair. It's not fair. You have an unpaid debt...”

“That's not true!” his voice almost breaks as he screams. He takes a step towards him, caring little about the fact that Daisuke was holding a knife “You have no idea about anything, you son of a bitch! You don't know anything about me! You have no idea how much I've suffered!”

Daisuke falls silent then. A silence that, if he must be honest at that moment, pissed him off even more than a scathing response. He expected him to lower his head, just like he did in life...but instead, a grimace began to appear on his face.

A smile.

Daisuke threw his head back, both hands on his bloody chest. The laughter grew louder with each passing second, high-pitched. It was impossible to differentiate it from a scream. Jimmy put his hands to his head, covering his ears, barely managing to shield himself from the roar. The indignation was no stronger than the pain in his eardrums.

“Is that what you're going to tell my parents, Jimmy? When my mom screams in your face for leading me to death, are you going to cry and complain about how terrible life has been with you? You're fucking useless, man! Ladies and gentlemen, here's THE VICTIM!”

A bright light shines from the ceiling, from a place where there's nothing that can provoke such a light. Still, like the main spotlight in a theater following the movements of the protagonist of a play on stage, the fucking light falls on him and blinds him for a second, before he hears the metallic clink of something at his feet, guessed only by the projection of his shadow.

Daisuke's knife, blood still staining the sharp blade.

“Finish the job you left half done, il capitano. Or someone else will do it for you.”

The spotlight goes out as Jimmy touches the handle of the knife with his fingers. He hears a dry thud and, when he looks up, Daisuke is no longer there. There are no stains where he saw the blood spill. Nothing but the slow, flickering red light, and the feel of the knife settling into the palm of his hand.

He carefully uncurls and uncurls his fingers, filthy with other people's blood and grime. Where did all this filth come from? In such poor light, he can barely tell. He hasn't showered in weeks, as has the rest of the crew, with no water, much less soap. The stuffy air of the Tulpar is heavy and disgusting, and it follows him like a ghost as he drops his arms, heavy as a pair of full sacks, before moving towards the maintenance room.

«Finish the job, or someone else will do it for you.»

Someone...?

«Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.»

“Wait!”

Twenty years ago, he was leaving high school when the street lights were already on. Static, non-blinking lights. White. The cool autumn breeze made him grumpy, but the distant summer heat makes him even more angry. He had been born in summer, and his cynical mother always reproached him for it, talking about how disgusting summer birth was. What could he know? He had not chosen to place himself on Earth. But it is never too late.

The only good thing about going to high school was Tuesdays, when he was forced to do extra homework so he wouldn't bring home red marks and get beaten up like he was asking for it. When he got home on tuesdays, the son of a bitch of the season was already fast asleep, so Jimmy could go about his business without fear of any reprimand fueled by boredom or alcohol. And when he woke up, it was because it was already dinner time, with no room for boredom. Jimmy always locked himself in his room as soon as he cleaned his plate. What happened next didn't matter to him.

He just wanted peace, just one day a week.

“Wait!”

And he waited, standing still in place with his hands buried deep in the pockets of his pants. He exhaled white breath, visible in the already somewhat cool air outside, and turned his head to see a figure of his same age, but taller and better looking, running towards him.
Any other living being in the vicinity of the high school would have grinned from ear to ear at the sight of Grant Curly approaching at full speed. Sure, why not? Jimmy, however, frowns as if Curly had been the one who tied the rope around his father's neck, then took away his chair. Shit. Grant, just like Jimmy, was three or four years old when that happened, but a part of Jim thinks he'd be able to convince Curly that he had something to do with the suicide of a man he didn't even know, being a preschooler himself.

The only good thing about going to high school were Tuesdays...and Curly.

“What the fuck are you doing here? Didn't your training end an hour and a half ago?” Curly didn't seem to have enough with being smart, strong, and attractive, as good as he could be at fifteen, almost sixteen, but he also had to be involved in every single thing that would earn him a point more on the popularity scale. Among them, the high school football team. The blond teen wasn't even a little saddened by his best friend's less than warm greeting, just smiling and scratching the back of his head. Jimmy hates that tic of his with all his soul. He looks like a damn idiot.

“Yeah, but... when I was leaving, I saw that you were still in the extra support classes. It's already quite dark, so I thought I'd wait for you to walk home together.”

Silence. He hears the whistle of the wind, and the rustle of dry leaves being dragged down the street. Jimmy clings tightly to the straps of his backpack, holding back a much kinder response than the one he ended up letting out.

“Do you think I'm afraid of the sunset or what?”

“No, no!” the color red takes over Grant's face, as he quickly shakes his head vigorously “but... well, we always come to class together and we rarely return together. I figured there would be no problem in... returning together this afternoon.”

The brown-haired boy lets his gaze wander beyond Grant's face. Jim's known him since they were both little brats. Is there anything about him he doesn't know? Impossible. Jimmy knows him like he's a fucking open book. He knows Curly better than any of his other low-level friends. He knows him better than all the whores he's had as girlfriends. He knows him better than anyone, and it makes no sense that Grant seems to be looking for more people to fill a space.

Jimmy covers them all.

He clicks his tongue and turns on his heels, resuming the tired pace back to his house. It's not a direct invitation, but a silent acceptance. He hears Curly gasp, before quickening his pace and catching up to him, slowing down to walk beside him, slowly, almost shuffling.

“How's your tutoring going?” Curly grins from ear to ear as he asks that. It's funny: he's the only person who's asked him this question. The cynic hopes he doesn't come home with failing grades, but she doesn't try too hard to figure out how he manages to fix his bad grades. Jimmy should be glad of the interest, but he just clicks his tongue.

“Never as good as you, right?” Jimmy grins back. But when he turns to look at his friend, he sees what he was expecting to see: Curly had stopped smiling, and was now making a somewhat embarrassed face. “Hey... I didn't tell any lies. Keep it up and they'll put you on the fucking honor roll.”

“There is... there isn't an honor roll, Jim.”

“What does it matter? They'll make one up just for you.”

A cool breeze runs down the street and reaches them, stirring the straps of their backpacks. Curly is wearing the coat of his football uniform, but Jimmy took a short-sleeved shirt that morning. Anyone would think that, after fifteen years of life, he would already be used to the way the weather works... but he was too confident.

In the morning it was a little warmer, and he didn't expect the cold of the night. He didn't even take his jacket. Going to high school in short sleeves, however, meant a single positive point being near his best friend, and Jimmy could see it at that moment.

Immersed in silence, with nothing but the footsteps of one and another, the occasional sound of cars and the rustling of a dry leaf, the brown-haired boy noticed the sly glances Grant would occasionally cast at his arms. He tried to discern, in the midst of the afternoon gloom, if any of the wounds on the inside of his arms were newer. Any that he hadn't seen before, so recent that they hadn't even finished healing. When Jimmy has all that trash in sight, Grant is more docile than a puppy. He wishes that obtaining that docility was the only reason behind marking his own body.

He despises his scars with all his soul. Are they anything other than the sign of eternal weakness?
However, from time to time a new one appears, and the anguish in Curly's eyes is so palpable that Jimmy can only hope that Grant never finds himself in a situation where he must lie to save his own life.

Maybe he could, with a lot of effort, slip a lie to someone else, but... To Jimmy? Never.

“What are you looking at, huh?” with the morbidity that comes hand in hand with habit, the brown-haired boy turns his arms so that they face the street light. Some scars are more prominent. They were deeper cuts. Others are lighter. Curly can't even hold his gaze on them for more than a second “don't worry, it's the same amount as last week. Do you want to stop and count them?”

“You've never...” Grant's voice drops a little at that moment. He sees him search for words with almost pathetic nerves. But who could he fool? He loves it. Jimmy loves that the blond is so distressed for him. He's the only one who does it, after all “...you've never thought of... doing something worse than that, right?”

“Are you afraid that I might kill myself, Curly?”

“Of course I am! You're my best friend. I don't want you to die.”

“Hm...” Jimmy drops his gaze, as if it were a more complex question “I don't know. I guess if life ever gets even shittier, I'll seriously consider it. I'll throw myself headfirst down some stairs or something. Don't worry. If I do, it'll be because, definitely, you're not there for me anymore.”

«Damn the day I was born; may the day my mother gave birth to me not be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, saying, “A son has been born to you!” and made him very happy. Let that man be like the cities that the Lord destroyed without mercy; let him hear cries in the morning and screams at noon, because he did not kill me in the womb so that my mother could have been my grave, and her womb pregnant forever. Why did I come out of the womb to see pain and affliction, and for my days to end in shame?»

“You can still fix it. You can still fix it.”

It all comes back to him in a rush. The tiredness. The light weight of the knife in his right hand. The stench of blood and filth, and that intense red color of the Tulpar lights, the only thing that drives away the darkness for a moment.

He turns to the right, to the open doors that lead to the cargo section. On the other side, darkness is all that greets him back. A disgusting darkness. The blind beast is there. He doesn’t want to go down again. He can’t face it again. But... Whose voice was that?

“They're waiting for me at home, Captain. Unlike you. But their wait will never be satisfied.
I'm never coming back. I met my death in this flying doom. My blood has turned to gasoline. My bones to charcoal. I'll never see the light of the sun again.”

The voice bounces off the massive walls, an echo fueled by the absence of cargo. Jimmy makes no mistake, though, standing between the open doors. Was it...?

“Swansea?”

“Say 'Hello' to him for me, Cap!”

The unexpected voice behind him made him turn, but too late. He barely managed to make out one side of Daisuke's face before he was pushing him down the stairs, rolling down the metal steps toward the floor of the cargo area. The edge of each step dug into his back, his belly, his legs, until he reached the bottom, both hands shaking and in pain, covering the back of his head all the while.

He let out a loud PAF as he finally fell to the ground, free of the ladder, and fell silent.

He feels his eyes fill with tears. Frustration. Anger. Desperation. Pain. It has all become a cocktail, and they have forced him to drink its contents without first warning him of the ingredients, with absolute cruelty. He rolls and crawls, trying to guess something in the deep darkness of the loading area. The darker silhouettes of the shelves that used to hold the boxes with liters and liters of bottled mouthwash.

Where's the knife?

The sound of his feet hesitating and his knees dragging is all that can be heard... until a light suddenly turns on, drawing a scream from him.

It was a transistor television.

The screen lights up to an untuned channel. There's nothing but snow on the screen, but the brightness is enough to make Jimmy notice the presence of the knife in front of the television screen. With a creaking of tired bones, he manages to finally stand up and reach over to retrieve the object, letting out a careful gasp.

He's barely holding the knife by the handle when a program suddenly comes on the television screen.

Jimmy sees a man, in his late sixties, wearing a shirt that, because of the black and white of the screen, could have been any color. He sat in a carefree position at the edge of a desk, located in a room that looked like a director's office, with a lit fireplace and rows of books behind him, all of them thick-backed. Despite having a firm posture worthy of a man who knows how to earn respect... he smiled, and his smile seemed genuine, although, what does he know?

The channel seemed to have tuned in halfway through the program, however. Trapped.

“...When you show courage and character to your children” said the man, always maintaining the same affable expression “saying "I was wrong", "Forgive me", "I must not make destructive criticism in this house", you are showing them that they are also capable of having character. That they can also ask for forgiveness when they do something that hurts another person. And by giving that example to your children you build them a foundation of high self-esteem, of self-confidence. And you enable them to spend their entire life understanding their potential, instead of compensating for their deficiencies. It's the best gift you can give a child, and I know it will be for you, too. But never say, "You're a bad boy," "You're a bad girl," or "You're trash," or "You're useless," or "You're a liar." Never say anything to your children about themselves that you don't want to be part of their personalities. Because don't forget that it goes from the conscious mind to the subconscious, is programmed there, and is accepted as truth because you said it, perhaps in a moment of anger. So don't use destructive criticism on your children.”

“No, Jimmy, don't take her away! It's her place!”

Jimmy's eight years old again. A lifetime ago. He reaches under her mom's cat, Honey, and the monster scratches him and growls in his face. She's old and her joints hurt. The only one who can pick her up without repercussions is his mother.

“It's my place!” he remembers shaking the sofa, trying to irritate the cat and make it go away, but the vermin doesn't pay any attention to him, just hissing and settling back down in its spot “I want to watch cartoons.”

“Sit on the floor.”

“I don’t want to sit on the floor, I want to sit in my seat!” he remembers turning to his mother. She’s just a blur. It’s not that he doesn’t remember her face, but he doesn’t want to remember it. Her voice, however, sounds clearer in his mind than it did back then, when he was a little boy. When he still lived under her roof. When she was still alive. He remembers her laugh. The cynical laugh “you love Honey more than you love me.”

“That’s because Honey is obedient. If you weren’t such a bad boy, I’d love you more than I love her.”

That summer, Honey died. Or was it the next? He can’t remember, but he does remember how he killed her.

It would be incredible to be able to say that it was a bloodthirsty act. That he enjoyed doing it. That he didn’t regret it. That he didn’t shed a single tear. The truth is that he cried and cried and coughed between hiccups as he held the cat's head down in the toilet, drowning her in water. Honey covered his arms in scratches, some so deep that it took a long time to heal completely.

«Mommy's going to love me at last,» he encouraged himself. His crying was so loud that it covered the cat's bubbling meows. He could barely see anything beyond the tears, his childish chest heaving in desperation. «She won't have anyone else to love, and then she'll only want me. Everything will be okay in the end.»

Nothing went okay in the end.

Jimmy still has those scars. He drags up the white cloth that covers his arms. There they are. They greet him back, the scars of eight years, and the scars of adolescence.

His mother buried the cat at the foot of the tree where Honey used to climb to hunt birds, until old age made her bones too sick to allow her to continue acting like one of the lionesses that appear in National Geographic documentaries.
She would not stop crying while she removed the dirt, helped by the boyfriend of the season. Jimmy remembers that guy with special affection, since he broke one of Jimmy’s tooth (a baby tooth, fortunately) with a punch, leaving the right half of his face swollen for the rest of the summer. Locked in his room, hidden under the bed, he panted through half his mouth and heard his mother's threats, outside.

“YOU'RE GOING TO HELL, BRAT! YOU'RE GOING TO GO TO HELL LIKE THE BASTARD, THE COWARD OF YOUR FATHER! What have I done? What have I done for life to curse me with a devil for a son?”

Jimmy digs the nail of his index finger, dirty with someone else's blood, into the inside of his arm. He moves it back and forth, as if he were searching for something, until the flesh opens on both sides and a gasp of pain, of release, springs from his mouth. A thin thread of dark blood flows from the wound, which, little by little, changes. It becomes less thick... until it is no longer blood that flows, but a different liquid. Jimmy brings his arm closer to his face, and sticks his tongue in the wound, hurting himself even more by sticking it through that opening made by his own hand.

It was mouthwash.

“We come into this world without the slightest idea of ​​how to raise children” the man from the television got down from the desk. It was as if he had... waited for Jimmy to return from the mist of memories before bothering to continue speaking “without the slightest knowledge of parenthood. And the tragedy is that most people don't make the effort to learn, and it is quite possible these days to learn a lot about how to raise healthy, happy, secure, fulfilled, loving, wonderful children. What you put into your children you reap in your children. Whatever you put into your children you get out later. Positive or negative. But if you put in the right things, the wonderful thing is that children blossom like flowers.” The man's gaze falls then. He is silent for a considerable moment, before raising his chin... and staring straight into the camera. Beyond the screen. At him “if you put in the wrong things...” silence, again. The picture on the television begins to corrupt, snow begins to fall. The man continues to look at him “...I'm sorry, Jimmy. It's too late for you. I would wish you luck, but... you're not a child anymore. You don't deserve it.”

The image is completely lost then. Just white and black dots superimposed. The only light in the entire loading area.

“I have two daughters waiting for me at home.”

“What?” Jimmy stifles an exclamation, standing up almost in one movement. He squeezes the handle of the knife tightly, looking from right to left. That light projected by the television doesn't illuminate much. Just a hand or two forward, and barely to the sides.

“Two girls. Well, now they are two women. One of them is already married, pregnant. I was rotting to meet my grandson. I thought... "Well, when I get home, he'll be a few months old." I would have liked to be there for her, after she gave birth. Her husband is a good man, but I am her father. A father always has to be there for his children. A father has to educate, with rectitude but with love and patience, a lot of patience. Because if you don't, the kid gets twisted...and if you don't straighten them out in time, they break forever...like you, Jimbo. Your father threw in the towel from minute one. That tells me everything I need to know about you.”

“Let me see you!” just like he saw Daisuke do before, Jimmy cuts the air with the knife. The darkness is absolute and the only thing Swansea gives him back is a mocking laugh, worse than his intern's.

“You're not a kid anymore, Jimmy! You can't blame everything on your parents anymore! You grew up and saw the world! You knew there was something very wrong with you! And you never cared to fix it. But it's easier to blame others, isn't it? Yeah...it's the easy way out. You've taken it all your life, Jimbo. Look what you've reduced Curly to. He's an idiot, with a heart bigger than his brain. You didn't hesitate once before taking advantage of him. Before ruining him. You went too far, son! With him convalescing on a stretcher, the world fell on you. You had to accept it: you are good for nothing. A damn parasite. I pity the child you once were. I'm sure he would despise the man you are now.”

“Shut up! SHUT UP!”

The television rises above his head. He barely makes out Swansea's face, with bullet holes oozing blood and a maniacal smile on his lips. The brunette stifles an exclamation before the mechanic screams and throws the television at him.
Jimmy utters a scream. He doesn't manage to crawl away in time, and the device breaks against his back. Sparks and pieces of metal fly in all directions, plunging the loading area into absolute darkness.

“I can fix it. I'll fix it. I'm going to fix it” Swansea's voice rises, mockingly, above his head. Jimmy shivers, dragging himself towards the stairs, before he feels a kick so hard on the side of his ribs that a cry escapes him. “Go on, Captain, fix this!” Another kick. Jimmy tries to cover himself, and the next kick is a stomp on his stomach. He breaks over himself, vomiting what little he has in his stomach into the darkness. His throat burning. His eyes filling with tears. “You left a father and a mother without a child, Jim. My wife is now a widow, and my daughters are orphans. I will never meet my grandson.” At the end of each sentence, Swansea landed a blow. A stomp. A kick. Jimmy pressed his fingers against the first metal step, and Swansea stomped on his hand with such force that he managed to break more than one, stealing a loud cry from him. “Go on, Captain, fix things! Bring us all back to life!”

“I-I'm sorry...” Jimmy crawls, sliding his belly on the metal steps as he tries to climb, like a snail on a rough branch. His arms shake every time he puts weight on them to try to climb, coughing up blood and spitting tears “I didn't... I never wanted... for things to turn out like this...”

“No, no. You never wanted to cause harm, did you? No... it's fate. It's life. The world is against you.”

“You’re very pathetic, Cap” he hears footsteps descending the metal stairs, accompanied by Daisuke's voice. The man slightly tilts his head, crawling up a couple of stairs “you should have thought things through better. Trying to kill us all just because you were going to lose your job... pretty pathetic, if you ask me. Didn't you stop to consider what would happen if we didn't all die? You’re quite an idiot when you act under pressure!”

“It wasn't just because he lost his job, Daisuke” Jimmy tries to get away as best he can. He hears Swansea clicking his tongue “this guy took advantage of Anya, and got her pregnant.”

“He did what?” the brunette clenches his teeth tightly. His fingers tremble, so he leans on his elbows. He no longer crawls up the stairs, but walks on all fours, trying to leave them behind as soon as possible “Since when did you know that!?”

“A few weeks. Anya told me.”

“And you didn't do anything? We could have killed him!”

“Death is too benevolent, Daisuke. Guys like him deserve worse than going away from their problems.”

“Well, he's going away right now...”

“Leave him. He won't go far...not here, not on Earth...I feel sorry for your little girl, Jimmy!”

The Captain reaches the exit, panting and snorting like an old, broken racehorse. He presses his hand against the rectangular panel, lined with buttons, and the double doors to the cargo area slide shut with a hiss.

He's lost the knife down there. He doesn't care anymore.

Jimmy hunches over the panel of buttons, shaking. His body cries out there where Swansea has kicked or stepped on him, and he's sure he's broken some bone. God knows how long he's been waiting for an excuse to hurt him...and he gets it only now, dead, cold and pale, dirty with his own blood.
He feels his teeth chattering, and as he steps back, he almost falls into a sitting position, his back hitting the back wall. He mutters something, rubbing his face with the palms of his hands...until he hears it.

A song.

He can't make out a single word, but he knows it's a tune. A lullaby. He has nothing left to arm himself with. No knife. No bullets for his gun. Badly wounded and destroyed to the core, he can only force himself to breathe...and walk, following the sound of that voice.

The hardened foam has disappeared, and the lights seem to grow darker and darker with each passing second. That song, however, is growing in strength. It's a feminine voice, sweet...and when he reaches the end of the hallway, he's able to make out something: a large pool of blood is gushing out from the door frame.

Jimmy barely raises his eyes.
That was Anya's room.

He moves forward, and his foot splashes in the blood. The sole is soaked. Inside the room it's almost completely dark, but...he can see her. He can see her, kneeling on the floor, her shadow covering something on her sleeping bag. It's the source of that chant, and when Jimmy stands still in the doorway, he's struck by a pain even more terrible than the torment of being beaten by Swansea.

She should be dead.
Dead.

“Anya?”

That sweet lullaby is interrupted then. He expects a reaction like Daisuke's or Swansea's, but the black-haired woman carefully brings her index finger to her lips, before making a gesture with her hand inviting him to come closer to her.

“Come...come, but slowly...don't make too much noise, or you'll wake them up...”

Wake them up?

His jaw feels so tense that his teeth could break, approaching her slowly, almost dragging the soles of his shoes on the ground. His eyes were getting used to the darkness and, when he's finally standing next to her, Anya still kneeling on the floor, he sees them.

They're two things.
The longer Jimmy studies them, the heavier and heavier his stomach feels. They're two animal skeletons, the skeleton of a colt and the skeleton of a filly.

How the fuck does he know the difference?

And even though they're a pair of skeletons, they have... something inside.

“I had a hard time putting them to sleep... they're so restless. They won't stop crying... it's the hunger,” Anya stretches out her right hand, caressing each creature's skull as if it were the soft skin of a newborn baby, “... I can't breastfeed them. I've been so hungry. I don't have enough milk. Blood is coming out of my breasts. Dark. It would kill them. But it hurts... hunger hurts them so much... come closer, Jimmy. Look at them carefully. They have your eyes…”

And so he does.

Without breathing, he leans forward just a little. The metallic stench of blood is almost unbearable, but in the mist something else floats...reminiscent of a butcher's refrigerator. His eyes are able to finally shape that inside the two creatures.
Locked behind the bones of the rib cages are, piled up, human entrails, organs that should not look like that inside a baby horse. Pink and purple tissue is pressing out. Kidneys, livers, meters of intestine, slipping through the cracks between bone and bone.

“They're not babies, Anya. You're insane,” the man shakes his head vigorously. He lets go a laugh. The nurse had started singing again at that moment but suddenly falls deathly silent. “...they're two beasts. You never gave birth. You're insane, and you're dead.”

Anya opens her mouth, but not a single sound comes out of her throat.

“I'm fed up. Sick of all this shit” Jimmy's chest heaves between every gasp, every broken cry, every laugh. It doesn't make sense, but he's not going to bother looking for it either. He shakes his head and staggers back, away from that pitiful bloody copy of a manger “first Daisuke with his shitty parents, as if I were the person who forced him to take the damn internship at a nearly dead company. Then Swansea, with his pathetic paternal life story. And now you... you had time to take care of your shit, Anya. I'm not touching one of those things. I'm not... I'm not going to be anyone's father. I'm not anyone's father. I'm not...”

“You sank your seed into the ground” Anya cuts him off. Her voice is calm. It contrasts sharply against his own, agitated and terrified. Fed up, more than anything. He just wants to die “...and a plant will grow. You left a mark. I'll have to take care of it. I decided that. I'll try to make it a good plant. I'll try to make it bear flowers and fruit. Let it grow and live a long life. Let it know no pain. But you won't feel pride in its name. You won't see a single petal of it. You won't even step on the ground in which it grows and spreads its roots. You won't breathe near it. Not while I'm alive to prevent it.”

“What...?”

Silently, Anya stands up. At her feet, the two creatures begin to emit a strange sound. The cry of a baby, mixed with the cry of an animal that Jimmy is unable to recognize. He ignores them, however, a dry metallic blow shakes the ground when the woman has fully stood up: the head of the axe welcomes him, while she holds the metal handle with both hands.

“Didn't you decide to name yourself the traitor of this ship, Jimmy? You bought the position of Captain for thirty silver coins...” Anya advances, Jimmy retreats. The axe head clatters against the ground “...you offered yourself only to the position of martyrdom. You completely chose the role of the Tulpar's final victim...”

“Anya, listen...”

“Poor thing Jimmy. Poor you, caged and misunderstood” indifferent, she raises the axe above her head and smiles, smiles widely. He has never seen her smile like that. He has never seen her smile“I'll give you a hand with that, old man!”

Anya doesn't crawl like the other corpses. She doesn't falter. She doesn't hesitate. She doesn't whisper.
Anya screams and, with all the vigor and strength of a normal human being, runs towards him.

Jimmy can't stop to decide if this is a hallucination or not. The wounds from Swansea's blows hurt as much as real wounds, and the shine on the blade of the axe looks too real, too.
He hits his shoulder hard as he runs out of Anya's room, and she brings the blade of the axe down hard on one of the metal light panels. The scarlet spotlights slowly go out, causing Jimmy to almost slip, and in that tiny delay, he feels it.

“You told me to kill myself, Jimmy! When I told you the truth! I don't want to die alone, honey! COME WITH ME!”

The axe blade slams into his back, and Jimmy screams like he's never screamed before in his entire life. He feels every inch of the weapon, and he collapses forward, crawling as best he can to keep from staying still, surrounded by the echo of the other's laughter.

“No, n-no...” his back is soaked in sticky, warm blood, stumbling towards the room with the capsules “Anya no...no, please, no...”

“No, no! Anya no, please! No!” again, the black-haired woman slams the axe hard into his back, sending him face-first to the ground with a second cry of pain. His stomach pulses upwards and he vomits copiously on his own face, crawling again. The surroundings of his field of vision darken more and more with each passing second “Is it only your No’s that has value? You didn't care when I was the one who told you that. Don't even try to apologize to me. What's the value of that now? It wouldn't have been then, but now?”

The man takes courage, raising half of his body to run, kicking like a drowning man, until he stretches his right hand against the door of the maintenance room.
He casts a crazed glance back. Anya holds the handle of the axe with both hands, and follows him with her gaze, her work uniform soaked with her own and his blood. A grimace of sorrow adorns her features. Not because she feels sorry for him or guilty for what she's doing... but because she knows that, after this, there will be nothing left.

Everything will be done.

“You're trapped, Jimmy...” Trembling, the aforementioned man locks himself in the room, turning the key to secure the door with trembling wrists. From the other side, comes the metallic blow of the axe blade. Anya doesn't hurry. Like a lioness who has dealt a fatal bite to a zebra, she knows it's only a matter of time before Jimmy drops. Until death consumes him.

“There's no safe place!”

“No, no...” again, the sickening hiss of the axe blade against the metal door. A knock, and the tiny window there draws a wake. Jimmy steps back “you're trapped in the vast womb of your mother. You've been there all your life. You'll never be able to escape...”

“What?”

“...a whale floating in the vastness of space...hates its children, and they hate the mother...the metal walls are the endometrium. The cargo area is the uterus...every mile of wiring...every water pipe, every drop of fuel...a man-made womb. The pinnacle of the human ego. Only life can spring from this filth. Life, again. A second chance... I'll have it. We'll have it. But you, no...no, no...you'll be sure you got away with it...but an empty, bitter life is all that awaits a traitor. In the end...in the end, Jimmy, in the end...you're going to wish with all your might that you'd died before you were born.”

The axe blade finally penetrates the glass of the door. Jimmy falls to a sitting position, panting, and Anya's pale face, bloodied and swollen with the passage of time, peers up at him from the hole, smiling. Every space between her teeth is stained with blood.

“Open the door, Jimmy. We'll be together forever.”

His voice breaks, and she barely stands up. His legs give out and he slams face-first into the lid of the cryogenic capsule, clutching with both hands the strange protuberance that served as the machine's door handle.
Jimmy gasps, holding on to it with both hands. On the other side of the capsule, Curly remains static, the glass fogged by the cold inside. His knuckles tremble, the phalanges of his right hand are minced, and the floor beneath his feet is soon soaked with tears and blood. He won't be able to open the door.

“Are you crying? Poor, poor Captain…crying, heartbroken…” he hears the pieces of glass falling as Anya slips her arm through the door opening, catching the keys. The swan keychain is soaked with blood, and he hears the heavy metallic click as the door lock is released “…you will be in Hell until you die, Captain.”

His hands lose strength then and slowly, very slowly, he slides until he falls to his knees on the floor. He drags the mark of blood with him.

His hands will be stained for the rest of his life.

———————

AUGUST 7, 1969

THE PRESENT

On the palm of his right hand he has a red star. The scar is identical on the back, more or less circular...but a star, at the end of the day.

He covers his face with it when he opens his eyes.

It is bulging.
If someone had told him a few years ago that he would have bullet scars (not one, but two), he would just shake his head and laugh because there would be no reason on the face of the Earth to believe that he would be so stupid...that he would stoop so low...that he would get into such a lot of trouble...

He rubs the index finger of his left hand over the mark. It stopped bleeding soon, so he didn't need too many bandages either. Just some cotton, which he removed in no time.

The bullet that hurt him the most was the one near his shoulder. Apparently, it didn't hit any important tendons...just barely. The proximity made it so that when he moved his left arm, it hurt horrors. And if it was so because of simple proximity, how much would it hurt if the bullet had hit his bone?

Of all his physical ailments, the worst part was the IV.

Serum drips from a bag near his bed. The tube is thin, too thin to be of any use to him. And by any use he means ripping out the needle and somehow threading it through the gap between the lights, tying the tube around his neck and hanging himself. Getting rid of himself on his own and not giving anyone the pleasure. Didn't they want him dead? Jimmy himself would do them the favor.
Even if the IV tube was thick enough, he couldn't do anything about it: in one of the corners of that room there's a camera.

The dark lens is pointed at him, and the man stares back.

He's been in cells several times, always for one night. Always for unimportant shit.

This cell looked more like a room than a cell. It has no bars. The walls are white, and above, a rectangular window is always open. Barred, of course, but open, letting some cool breeze in to beat away the summer heat. The bed wasn't the worst place he's ever slept in his life, and there was a sink next to him.

The door was heavy and, of course, it was locked all the time. Through a crack below they fed him food, which, since he was treated by a doctor there, was simple food: water, broth, gelatin. He's not a damn fool, he understands that his stomach has been very badly treated. If he eats something too solid, his intestines would surely explode.

No.
The worst part since they got off the Tulpar yesterday, besides the uncertainty, is the boredom.

At times, he hears footsteps outside. In the hallway behind the door, and near the open window. Judging by the rushed questions that they don't have time to finish, it's the press. Maybe they want to ask him questions, or get crumbs of information from the police. Anything to develop a good headline. They were presumed dead, so the news of their triumphant return, almost like a ghost ship, must come in handy for the media.

He never thought he would think this but... he's dying to talk to someone.

He's spent the last year locked inside the bowels of a fucking floating old woman, seeing the same four faces as always. In life. In dreams. When they landed, they took Anya and Curly somewhere, and him...
Of course, she kept screaming that he was a murderer...
His hands tremble, so he forces himself to open and close them, achieving nothing more than the pain of the open wound, where the bullet hit him, to shoot out at that moment and his eyes to fill with tears. The white color of the bandage soon turns scarlet.

The presence of that woman has no head or tail.

An absolute useless person on board the ship. Crybaby. Complainer. Good for nothing. So docile at times that it made you want to grab her by the hair and slam her head hard against one of the walls of the Tulpar.
And the next moment...erratic. Completely unhinged. Shooting. Screaming. As if some unknown beast had taken over her body. She had the gun. Maybe she had been planning this particular moment for a long time. Maybe she hoped that, eventually, Jimmy would find the gun and shoot himself. Surely she was hoping to die...but death never came for her. They were lucky.

Lucky?

And even alive... her bloody, pale body, that vision of her face transformed by his brain to torture him, haunts him in his dreams. If he closes his eyes, he can replay the scene again, over and over, like the climax of a horror movie.
He hears her words, so twisted and ridiculous. The song to the two bony fetuses that had nothing in common with a newborn human baby. Above all else he remembers the pain... the axe wounds felt too real... her laughter and... the panic.

«A nurse made you run and cry in your sleep. She made you shake. You almost pissed your pants and would have woken up in a puddle of your own filth. A man your age. You're pathetic. There's no way out of this now.»

They can't prove anything.

«No. There's a lot they can't prove, but this? You got her pregnant, and even if the vermin is stillborn, it has your DNA. There you are. You fucked up big time.»

Jimmy hopes Anya wants to die as much as he wants her to die right now.

He leans back, lying on the not-so-uncomfortable mattress offered in that peculiar cell. His green-gray eyes get lost in the white of the ceiling, almost trying to travel beyond what his senses allow him to contemplate, moving to the hospital where the two of them were admitted.

Anya.
Curly.

With any luck, something would fail. Maybe some important organ in Curly's body would decide to throw in the towel, with all the irony in the world, admitted to a terrestrial hospital with all the machinery at hand. It would be ideal. One less witness. Only she would be left.
And is there anything in the world for her? Jimmy has heard those two talk at length during their ridiculous conversations in outer space. The laughter, and that wide grin on Curly's face, his eyes shining…

He wants to yank the IV out and plunge the needle into his jugular. Stop this nonsense. He lifts the tape holding the bandages in place under his arm when he hears a rattle on the metal door.

He pulls his hand away as if someone caught him trying to steal.

On the other side, one of the precinct officers removes a thick metal key from the lock. Jimmy hears the clinking of handcuffs and keys against each other before the officer approaches him.

“Mr. Zaci, I need to take you to the interrogation room. Do you need help standing up?”

“No,” he exhales, and grips the tripod-like thing holding the serum bag tightly. His body shakes and the officer makes a move to approach him, reaching out his hands, but Jimmy jerks back. “I told you no.”

“All right...I can't put the cuffs on you while you have the IV. Follow me and don't do anything stupid, okay?”

“Don't worry, officer. I'm not stupid.”

The police department looks pretty dark inside for how huge it is. Maybe it was some kind of psychological decision about the architecture or something: not allowing too much light into the cell area in order to demoralize the inmates.
In front of him, the officer walks at a slow pace. He almost wants to yell at him to hurry up, but he's not the Captain of anything in this place, and there's no point in trying to move faster anyway. If he goes any faster, he's convinced he'll pass out.

When the officer stops, Jimmy rests his right shoulder against one of the walls for a moment, before he opens the door that leads to an adjoining, even darker room.

“Come in, Mr. Zaci.”

Inside, as if it were a cliché scene from one of those television series, he sees a metal table with a lamp hanging from the ceiling, lowered. A tape recorder on the table and a folder. On one of the walls there is a reflective glass, and maybe there is another agent on the other side. In case he decides to act erratically, perhaps.

Sitting in one of the chairs is a woman with brown hair, neatly tied back in a bun. And, standing next to her, a guy with black hair and a somewhat elongated face. They both wear dark blue suits, almost black, and from their necks hangs the famous golden plaque with the planet Saturn in the center. The most identifiable of all the planets in the Solar System, blah, blah, blah.

“Mr. Zaci, please take a seat” the woman was the first to speak, putting a hand to her chest “I am Agent Hill, and my partner is Agent Foster” the man leans his head slightly forward “we are from the…”

“From the NFSC, yes” he silences her, dragging the chair to sit down with a small groan of pain. Hill frowned.

“Are you sure you are in a condition to give testimony, Mr. Zaci?”

“I am at my best, Miss...”

“Agent.”

“Miss Agent” Jimmy nodded once, carefully, before sniffing.

“Do you know your rights, Mr. Zaci?” Foster asked, taking a small step forward “you can decide not to talk, request a lawyer, not testify until the day of the trial...”

“I have nothing to fear” he carefully lets his shoulders fall, gritting his teeth at the tug near his left shoulder “...I'm going to talk, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and all that...”

“Very well...” the woman reaches out her hands towards the recorder, pressing the start button. Soon, he sees how the small cassette inside the device begins to spin, and the hiss emitted by the recording tape “Can you give us your name, and the position you held aboard the long-distance space freighter Tulpar, owned by Pony Express?”

The brown-haired man smiles for a moment, before leaning slightly over the table, his face close to the recorder.

“Jimmy Zaci. I was Co-Captain and Captain on the Tulpar.”

“How long have you been working for Pony Express, Mr. Zaci?”

“Ugh...” he leans back in his chair, eyes narrowing. What year did he start? What year was it when Curly showed up at his home?

Home was a sweeter way of saying it.

It was nineteen fifty-nine. He was twenty-five years old and he was convinced that he should return home to his mother. It was his. As the only living relative, it belonged to him...but there was no force in the universe capable of bringing him to live there.
He also couldn't muster the necessary courage to sell it, or tear it down, so his childhood home slowly rotted away over time. Maybe, when nature does its thing...when the weeds take over the land completely and the foundations of that building decide to fall once and for all, Jimmy will be able to do something about it. But back then he was incapable, with his head hanging by a thread and Curly's presence at his side, sitting on the couch.

By that time, Grant was already known throughout the country. Twenty-six years old and his life resolved forever. If he wanted to settle down, neither his children, nor his grandchildren, nor his great-grandchildren would have to lift a finger ever, insured for life with the Captain's money.
Grant could be anywhere on planet Earth or in the galaxy at that moment...but there he was, rubbing his shoulder, with the same anguished expression he had at fifteen, and at ten. Always present. He was an idiot, but he was his. Jimmy saw the glint of concern in those oceanic blue eyes and it made him want to scream.

He was more than aware that Curly was in love with him.

“Jimmy, listen…” and anguish also shone in his voice. The brunette didn't even have the strength to take off the hand that was rubbing his back. Let him do what he wants, damn it. That night he could have let himself die. “I think… I think I can help you.”

“How?” Jimmy didn't even take his hands off his face. His voice was heavy and dragged out. He was convinced that that had been it for the rest of his life.

“I got a secure position in this space transport company… Pony Express. My first trip is next month, to take a shipment of supplies to the Earth base on Mars. I know it doesn't sound very exciting, but maybe you need to… leave Earth for a while. Get a change of scenery. The co-pilot they assigned me got off the ship at the last minute. If you accept, it would be amazing. It's a great opportunity. Easy money, just a trip or two…”

“Are you crazy?” he remembers burying his fingers in his hair and remembers, of course, being nine years old again. Guessing the excited sparkle in Curly's eyes as he watched one of the rockets take off from the space launch pad. That was Grant's dream, not his. But he was desperate and anyway...working with him would be ideal.

He could always keep an eye on him.

“Hey, I know change hurts...but worse things fester for a long time. Think about it, okay? I...would be very happy to be able to work with my best friend.”

Jimmy didn't have to think about it. He called him the next morning, and after a kind of crash course, he was ready to assist Curly as his Co-Captain.
He was fine with that.
For a while.
Then...

“...ten years” and, back in the interrogation room, Jimmy finally answers the question “ten long years.”

“Could you explain the incident that led to the crash of the Tulpar ship, causing it to drift off course and lose navigation radar?”

The man almost drills into the recorder with his gaze. He thinks. There's no point in blaming Curly. That didn't go any well for him, did it?
He has to stop and lie about things that can't be fully proven, and gloss over things that are more likely to be proven true. He's no genius, but he can't be too confident either. Not anymore. Not again.

“...the ship's auto-navigation malfunctioned,” he begins, using the most plaintive but believable tone of voice he can conjure up, “...the radar went crazy and the entire Tulpar began to hurtle towards the meteorite fragments. I tried to regain control of the ship, disabling the autopilot, but I couldn't. The Tulpar is old, very old...it was just a matter of time. And then Curly showed up! Good old Captain Grant Curly...he told me to run, that he would take care of it...but it was too late and...well, I imagine you've heard the state in which he got off the Tulpar. It was terrible...but he wanted to sacrifice himself to save us. They've given decorations to other guys for less. I hope they sculpt my best friend's face on Mount Rushmore or something. Did George Washington try to avoid a space collision? I don't think so. Of course... let it be his face before the accident. He didn't emerge very handsome from the Tulpar.”

He hears Agent Foster exhale a laugh, and the ghost of a smile appears on Agent Hill's lips.

“After the accident, did you take command as Captain of the Tulpar?”

“Naturally. Who else would, if not? I did the best I could, but... when your entire crew is convinced of fatality, there's not much you can do, is there?”

“Hm...” he watches her turn pages, perhaps data collected from the ship itself “you began to run out of resources... neither water nor food, is that right?”

“Of course.”

“Well, we'll jump forward in time... according to forensic studies, the death of intern Daisuke was the first of two casualties aboard the Tulpar. Isn't that right? Could you please explain what happened?”

Hill turns a report over on the table, facing him: photographs of Daisuke's body, lying on the sleeping bag that used to be his coffin, the deep wound oozing blood, the area around his face swollen and red. He makes a special effort to swallow. It's not that he isn't shocked by the sight of a corpse, but... he's seen Daisuke many times already. Too many times. The sight of his lifeless body no longer affects him at all.

“Well, you see... a month or so before the rescue...” he makes an effort not to smile, inhaling carefully “... our nurse on board, Miss Anya... Have you talked to her yet?”

“We can't share that information” Foster exhales, but Jimmy clicks his tongue. No, of course they haven't talked to her. She must be worse off than him, malnourished and with that thing writhing in her insides. Maybe she's completely lost her mind and decided to jump out a window, or copy his idea and hang herself with the IV tube. Who knows. I wish.

“Whatever. A month before, Anya locked herself in the infirmary. For several weeks she began collecting supplies to barricade herself there... and, well, as Captain she owed me obedience. I demanded that she unlock the door, but she didn't want to. She was erratic, of course... so I was very scared, you know? Because Curly was inside the infirmary with her. I was afraid that, in a fit of delirium, she might hurt my best friend... I didn't know what to do. Then Daisuke told me that he knew another way to get to the infirmary, through the ventilation ducts. The one that connected to the infirmary was in bad condition, like everything inside that damn spaceship. I told him no, but he... I guess he wanted to play the hero. He went in anyway, and... he didn't make any progress before he hurt himself terribly.”

He falls silent and, as if a light bulb had gone off inside his brain, he decides to rub his closed eyelids and let out a moan of anguish, or something like that, as if remembering everything had made a bad impression on him.

“We can take a little break if you need it, Mr. Zaci...” he almost bursts out laughing at Hill's words. He keeps his false spirits, however, shaking his head.

“Don't worry, it's just that...ever since it happened, I haven't stopped thinking that it was my fault.”

“The wounds that ended Daisuke's life weren't caused by the duct, however” Foster takes a step forward, leaving an index finger on the brat's face on top of the photograph “he was killed with a heavy, sharp object...”

“An axe” Jimmy nods once “Anya came down with it. The axe in one hand, the gun in the other.”

“Are you suggesting that she was the one who...?”

“No, no, nothing like that. It wasn't her. It was the mechanic, Swansea. I tried, uh...I did something stupid. I mean...any medicine was inside the infirmary, and we had no way of getting in there, remember?” Jimmy rubs his closed eyelids, letting out a heavy exhale “...so...I don't know, I thought that...maybe I could use the mouthwash as an antiseptic. It kills ninety-nine point nine percent of bacteria.” He smiles cynically as he says this, then shrugs his shoulders. “...it didn't do the poor kid any good. Maybe... no, I'm sure I would have thought of something else to help Daisuke, but Swansea didn't give me any leeway. He decided to do it himself, to... stop his suffering, he says. Savage, if you ask me.”

The feds exchange a look then. Jimmy can't see it, and it bothers him quite a bit. It's Hill who picks up the thread of the conversation.

“Did Mr. Swansea have violent attitudes before this particular incident, or...?”

“If he had violent attitudes?” Jimmy has to resist the urge to lick his lips “the guy was a fucking drunkard here on Earth. It seems that he had been sober for years, but he started drinking the mouthwash bottles as if they were water. He didn't even hesitate. That guy was a time bomb. Too bad the kid had to pay the price for his superior's incapacity. At the end of the day he was a...”

Silence.

“A?” Foster encouraged him.

“...a cowardly, selfish motherfucker.”

“And how did Swansea die?” Hill tilts her head slightly, and Jimmy holds her gaze back. He has her in his pocket...almost. Almost “his body was killed with an axe. Could you explain what happened?”

“Of course” the brunette shrugs, looking down at the IV needle “…I went to the cockpit…I wanted to find the firearm on board. You can understand that after seeing him act like that, I feared for my life. Well, the gun wasn't there. I had no idea where it was…and Swansea lost his mind at that moment. Drunk as he was…he was dangerous. We struggled. I managed to take the axe from him and kill him. It was self-defense. That's all.”

“Good…” Hill drops her gaze to the papers.

«You've done very well, Jimmy. Better than very well in fact» he congratulates himself but, when he tries to stand up, Foster takes a step forward and the woman stifles an exclamation.

“Where are you going?” the man's voice suddenly becomes stern, but Jimmy doesn't allow himself to shrink, wrinkling his nose.

“Well…to my cell, right? This is over.”

“This isn't over, Mr. Zaci, there's still one thing left” Hill raises her brown eyebrows.

“What?”

“Miss Anya.”

Shit.

Jimmy clicks his tongue and lets himself fall back into the chair.
Suddenly, all the calm he had been feeling disappears from one moment to the next. He shivers. He feels his back, little by little, beading with sweat. What the fuck? The blood is running faster and faster. His ears are ringing. He doesn't feel so safe anymore. He's not so comfortable anymore.

“You have two bullet wounds... one in your right hand, in the palm, and another in the upper corner of your left pectoral. Those two bullet wounds were inflicted by her, or was it not her?”

“It was her” Jimmy grits his teeth remembering it. She cornered him. She pushed him to the ground. She ordered him, as if she were the Captain and he was just a cabin boy…

«How exciting.»

“Anya had the gun hidden in the infirmary. I imagine she...did it at some point after the crash, to make herself safer, I guess. She's not to blame. You know...she was just one woman on a ship with four other men. Poor thing.”

“You don’t seem to hold too much of a grudge against her.” Hill arches an eyebrow again and Jimmy just shakes his head.

“Like I said, we were adrift and sure we were all going to die, sooner rather than later. Plus...well, no offense, Agent Hill, but women tend to be more...sensitive. I guess it was just a matter of time, huh? She was going to barricade herself in the infirmary and shoot in the air because we were stranded in space or because she got her period. It didn't matter.”

Foster lets out another chuckle. Hill, more frowning, seems about to say something, but her partner beats her to it.

“So... Miss Anya got off the Tulpar calling you a "murderer" because... being locked in the infirmary, she had no way of knowing the true course of events, right?”

“Just like that. I couldn't have said it better myself” Jimmy shrugs, but Hill clears her throat to be able to speak

“And what about the pregnancy, Mr. Zaci?”

“What about that?” the agent only seems to frown more at his question.

“Miss Anya is heavily pregnant. Nine months, practically. Doing simple math, that baby must have been conceived on board the Tulpar.”

“So?” ​​Jimmy twists his mouth in a gesture that not even he could interpret, and his indifference makes her more and more angry.

“Who is the father of that baby?”

“Hill, what does that have to do with anything?” Jimmy doesn't even have to think of an answer. As Hill looks on in astonishment, Foster begins to sort the files again “we are dealing with an important case of negligence and homicide, not a search for paternity.”

“Ask Miss Anya if you are so interested, Agent Hill,” Jimmy shrugged. “I am not one to intrude on the privacy of a co-worker.”

He ends his sermon with a small smile and finally stands up.

No one stops him.

«Indeed, ‘He who would love life and see good days, let him refrain from speaking evil and his lips from uttering deceit; let him turn from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it.»

He almost grits his teeth, like a dog. He limits himself, however, to returning to his cell and sitting carefully on the edge of the mattress. On the other side, the officer drags the heavy door and closes it with a resounding CLACK, leaving him plunged into the heaviest of silences.

Carefully, he places his legs on the bed and lies on his back, returning his gaze to the grey ceiling. He is dehydrated. Malnourished. It must be normal for him to feel as fucking tired as he feels, and yet…

«When will you conjure me in your mind? Not even your subconscious dares. You cannot even contemplate me as a monster in your nightmares. Jimmy. Look at me. I will bear the weight of what you have done forever.»

The man closes his eyes, almost against his will. In the heavy darkness of tiredness, between the pangs on the sides of his head… he sees it, floating in the void. A planet. Curly. And he, his fucking satellite, doesn't want to get closer... but he has no options. The gravitational force pulls him strongly towards itself, towards him. His face is wounded, his only eye open and attentive. Surely he will heal. He will recover.

“I don't want to see you again” Jimmy hears how his own voice loses all confidence. All strength. He can lie to anyone, but he can't lie to him. Not anymore. And Curly, so incapable of pretending around him, now sketches a face that is an inert mask. Cold and far from everything he once was. From the man Jimmy knew and learned to move “I don't want... to hear your voice again.”

“We're home now” Grant's voice is barely louder than an exhalation. There is no place Jimmy can run to now. Nowhere on Earth can he hide from his gaze. He will never be able to run away from guilt “Guilt?” Curly repeats his thoughts out loud, as if it were Jimmy's turn to become the open book of the relationship now. Grant Curly has been the Sphinx's enigma to everyone... but not to him. Ever to him.

Until that moment.

“You're not capable of feeling guilt, Jimmy. Real guilt” the blonde's voice floats around him. He can't shake his head. He can't walk away. He can't do anything useful “and now...you're doomed. You're trapped. The ghost that has haunted your own life. We'll see each other. Many times. We're doomed to that, you know? You tied yourself to me and I must pay for your sins...but you won't live a good life. You won't live. From now on, this is all you are...and all you'll ever be...”

An echo.

An empty shell.

An eternal question of What if...?

Chapter Text

AUGUST 18, 1969

THE PRESENT

“...and that would be all, Mr. Curly. I am very sorry to have to...make you go through all this bureaucracy when you are in such a delicate state of health, but it is...important.”

“DON'T-WORRY.”

The afternoon has already passed for quite a while, it is almost dusk. Or so he assumes.

Inside his room in the intensive care wing, Curly has no windows that look outside. If it is some measure to reduce any possible contagion, he does not quite understand it. He is aware of the passage of time through any television channel that shows the time. And even so, without windows, he feels freer than lying on the Tulpar gurney, always irradiated by the light of the false screen. An invented daylight. A non-existent dusk.

Everything here is real.

He hears the footsteps of the medical staff through the window that looks out onto the hallway. Men and women dressed in white or blue walked calmly or at full speed. Every few hours, someone showed up to tend to his wounds and change his bandages…or remove them entirely. The opioid in his IV was wearing off, leaving him with uncomfortable shivers and cold sweats. He felt something similar at the Tulpar, when all they had for the pain were Paracetamol pills.

He may have become addicted to the medication and is now going through withdrawal pains.

The nurse who checked on him before his first visit took care to raise the stretcher so he could sit up, more or less. She also removed the bandages from his arms and legs. Grant watched her, waiting for her to cut off more clean bandages…but she never did. She gave him a cheerful smile instead.

“All the burn wounds on your arms and legs have healed, Mr. Curly. It’s wonderful. You'll be able to have your reconstruction surgery soon. Aren't you excited?”

Is he?

Out there, most of the world doesn't have the opportunity he has. They'd have all the surgeries they needed to be able to live a relatively normal life...and he, right now, has to be the person who needs the most surgeries in that entire hospital, and perhaps in all the hospitals in the entire state. According to Dr. Sandra, he was in a position to undergo all of them...go to therapy and slowly regain control of his life.

Seeing himself like that only makes him feel an even stronger tug in the pit of his stomach as he selfishly recalls his same old anchor: Why live?

His heaviness from the past seems so endearing now...he can only feel envy and disgust for his past self. The Grant Curly who brushed his teeth with difficulty, who ate boredly at the lonely table in a house too big for one man, who played as many sports as he could and went out with as many people as would go out with him, all to get away as fast as he could from the concept of “thinking.” Every time he stopped to do it…every time the reality of his situation dawned on him…there was only bitterness and that empty core inside his own body.

If he was like that before, when he was healthy, it was even worse now.

Curly was able to function on autopilot. But that way of life, for his current self, was no longer possible. It wasn't that he had to live with a black cloud hanging over his head at all times, but that he had to learn to live again.

Talk, walk... use his fucking hands... keep his balance. Jump. Run. And all of it, for what?
"To make them pay for what they did." They deserve it. It's true. Pony Express, Jimmy, both of them must pay for the whole mess. He can't leave Anya, alone, traumatized and with a baby to deal with the whole thing.

«If the baby survives.»

And even if it doesn't, it would be terrible. His brain gives him a very clear image of Anya in a courtroom, alone. She tries to declare what happened to her at the Tulpar, but her voice breaks. She's nervous, she's scared, and every broken word she says will be counted as a shred of a lie in her testimony. She'll be pointed at by the fingers of dozens of men, and she'll finally break down upon hearing a terrible verdict. All of course, under the same roof as Jimmy. She alone? No...he can't let that happen.

«And what are you supposed to do to protect her, man? You couldn't help her aboard the Tulpar, being a good-sized and strong guy. Now, anyone would think that she's the one who has to protect you. Unless Jimmy has developed apotemnophobia overnight, nothing you can do will affect him. You'll just go to court to look sorry for yourself. Who knows? There's also the possibility that your presence will only make Anya's mood worse. Good heavens, you really should have died. Only then would everything be better for her. You've done nothing but watch TV since the nurse decided to turn it on... always the same channel, of course... and every day there's a mention of the Tulpar's return. It's an unprecedented event. Some fame-hungry, relatively decent lawyer would want to come help Anya for free, just for the pleasure of being on TV. And if it were a guy with a twisted spirit like Jimmy, but focused on legal defense, all the better. But here you are, alive and rotting away like in the Tulpar, just on a different stretcher.»

He's healing now. His wounds have closed. His body doesn't hurt as much as it used to. Objectively, he feels better than ever.

«On the outside, of course. But on the inside?»

Now, all he does is watch as Agent Hill stands up. Her partner, Agent Foster, was near the door.

He couldn't say much. That must have been, he's sure, the most bizarre and complicated interrogation to carry out in the lives of the two agents. He devoted himself, more than anything, to confirming or denying parts of the statements of both Anya and Jimmy... it was not explained to him in that way explicitly, perhaps due to some confidentiality clause, but Grant is convinced that the sensible questions were part of Anya's statement, and the overwhelming and twisted suggestions, part of Jimmy's statement.
There were many things, however, that he was unable to confirm or deny. He has no idea what was happening in the corridors of the ship during his months in the infirmary. He only knew the things that Anya told him... and, before barricading herself in the medical room with him, the black-haired woman had stopped talking much.

Throughout the interrogation, the expression on the faces of the two NFSC agents was one of absolute anguish. They did not bother to hide it. Foster, the man, looked him up and down and swallowed, a cycle that he repeated every five or ten minutes. And Hill, the woman, never once adjusted her drooping eyebrows or smoothed out the wrinkles of concern between her brows. They both stopped every so often to ask him if he felt fit to continue, and Curly always nodded, a little more wearily each time.

If they reacted that way to his current state, who knows how they would have reacted to seeing him during his first week on the stretcher.

Foster reached for the handle, but someone opens the door from the other side before he is able to do so: a nurse. She stops in the door frame and looks at the two of them, putting a hand to her chest.

“Visiting time is over, officers.”

“Agents, and we know, we were just leaving.” Foster gives the nurse a somewhat tired smile, who carefully steps aside. Hill follows in her partner's footsteps, but suddenly stops in place, turning to look at him one last time.

“Take care of yourself, Mr. Curly.”

The robotic voice comes from the brainwave receiver.

“YES.”

Foster and Hill leave through the open door. The nurse, still standing near the door, leans back slightly to watch them go and, only when the sound of their footsteps has completely faded, approaches him, letting out a whistle.

“Take care of yourself,” she repeats, her voice slightly higher. “As if you could do too much, in that state! Should I say something, Mr. Curly? It's sad to say this out loud, but you'll have to be very patient. Not just to carry on with your recovery, but because of... people and their reactions. People aren't used to it. Have you ever seen a small child overreacting to seeing a person without a leg, for example, because it's the first time they've seen someone like that? Well, it's similar. With children, you understand: they're children. Their reactions are always ones of surprise, not malice. You'd think that once they became adults, those kinds of reactions would fall by the wayside... but it seems not. Believe me, Mr. Curly. I've had to treat a multitude of amputation patients. Unfortunately, of course. And I've seen a lot of adults acting like little children... it's embarrassing to see. I'm not saying that everyone will treat you like that, but... in the eyes of many people, even if it's unconsciously, you'll be seen as if you were a little child, at the peak of your brain capacity. It'll take a while before other adults see you as an equal. It's as terrible as it sounds! The worst part is that these people never stop to think that they or a loved one could end up in that situation. If they are unable to feel empathy towards a stranger, then at least try to do it through imagination. Anything can happen. A car accident, or at work, or at home... I'm sure none of them would like to find themselves one day on a stretcher and everyone around them treating them as if they were newborn babies! Don't be discouraged, Mr. Curly. You'll see: everything will be fine. Dr. Sandra told you so, didn't she? She's not one of those doctors who lies to keep patients' spirits up. If she thinks you'll be able to recover, then there's nothing more to say. Sure, it will take time, but it's like any recovery... and besides, you're not alone. The lady in room number twenty is a friend of yours, right? You both got off the same ship. At least you have each other. Poor girl... so thin and nervous. I'm surprised her baby has been holding on for so long. I'm afraid it might be a difficult delivery. But I don't want to cause you any distress. You can't do anything for her, lying here. And it's not up to you, it's up to us. Do you want me to put the patch on? It's late. You can go to sleep now if you want.”

The nurse made this speech without taking a breath, but at the same time without staying still for even two seconds.

She paced back and forth across the room. She lowered the volume of the television, but did not turn it off, having discovered that the soft hum of analog voices helped Grant fall asleep. She turned off the overhead lights, so white and harsh at this hour that they hurt his eye, and turned on the light to his right, smaller and weaker, to allow him to sleep. She replaced the IV bag and the opioid bag with another pair with more content, adjusting the speed of the drip. She lowered the stretcher, so that Curly could be semi-reclining on it again, and placed the drops in his left eye. His tear duct was slowly healing, but he still needed all the help they could offer him.

“YES,” his voice comes from the device. The nurse carefully places the patch, but her words still short-circuit the ex-Captain's brain “DIFFICULT-DELIVERY.”

“Well... it's a genuine fear. You see, simplifying everything a bit, a woman who gives birth very uneasy, only makes the adrenaline in her blood increase. The contractions are delayed, and the birth takes longer than it should. I'm convinced that this baby will be small and thin... perhaps it will be necessary to put it in an incubator, but that will be seen in due time. We can only hope that Miss Musume is calm the day her water breaks.”

The transmitter only emits a white noise, similar to that emitted by a radio trying to tune into a frequency. The nurse simply turns off the device (Curly hears the click before the silence), and removes the electrode from his head. With the eye covered by the patch and no way to communicate, it's like lying at the bottom of a pool.

The transmitter is unable to interpret and make the laughter sound.

The nurse couldn't understand ir. And he knows that she speaks from a deep desire for everything to go well. Childbirth is terrible. Dangerous. Bloody. Deadly in so many situations. Traumatic, even for women who greatly desired the baby growing inside them.

Curly is not a father. He has resigned himself to the fact that he will never be one. But having heard about two births was enough for him: his mother's, and that of one of his former colleagues.

His mother tended to adopt a more melancholic tone of voice when talking about childbirth. Of her sisters, she was the eldest and the first to become a mother, so she didn't have much to rely on or too many people to ask for advice. Her concerns as a first-time mother were manifested in walking from one point of the house to another, even with an advanced pregnancy belly, refusing to comb her hair and wearing nothing but loose nightgowns, refusing visitors the closer the date that the doctor had estimated at the time came.

“At the end of the month,” he said, but Curly decided to go ahead.

On that May second, a horrible storm, not typical for the season, had hit her hometown. His mother says her water broke and they couldn't get out by car, as the exit was completely flooded. The idea of ​​giving birth at home terrified her, so Emma Curly, twenty-two years old, suffering from the pain of contractions and dying of fear, forced her husband to hold an umbrella over her, soaking himself to the teeth in the process, to get out to the next house, two hundred meters away, and call for help. That exit was clear, so the neighbor was able to lend them his car.

Her mother bled a lot. The labor took too long. She claims she was even able to hear a nurse telling her husband that he should start preparing for the worst. A very twisted scene, seen in full light. Life gushing out on one side, and the Grim Reaper looming on the other. A birth was an absolute battle against death.

She survived, of course. Curly was quite fat at birth, in his mother's words. "So big, I'm not surprised I lost so much blood. You took after your father! And I'm so thin... woe is me."
And he cried. He cried non-stop, as if the idea of ​​being alive caused him profound indignation. His crying calmed down over time, and by the time he was a year old, he was so cheerful and well-behaved that his aunts, uncles and grandparents joked that his mother gave birth to an angel.

The only other birth story he knows of was about Evelynn.

Eve was an accountant, one of the few on the Pony Express payroll. During the short periods of re-orientation to piloting between flights, Curly looked for an excuse to go out, have coffee, eat and find someone to talk to, and Evelynn was always the only one free. Jimmy would either miss these meetings or fall asleep next to him, condemning Grant to being the one to pay attention and then offer him a summary version of all the information provided.

Curly would let him to sleep every time he came out for some fresh air and a conversation with her.

She wasn't free all the time because she was lazy, not at all. Eve was so good that she finished her tasks in record time. She claimed she wasn't a genius, but the other accountants were so pathetic and slow at their respective tasks that she seemed to move at the speed of light, keeping up with them. Grant is convinced it was a mix of the two.

He can't remember how the matter came up. What were they talking about? Maybe Curly mentioned in passing his desire to one day get married and start a family.
He knew Eve was married because the redhead wore a ring around her left ring finger, and because on her desk she had a framed photograph of her posing with a man hugging her and a little girl of about five or six in her arms.

“And why do you want to be a father?” she asked him then. The two of them were on the balcony closest to the conference room, in case Curly had to run back to make up some excuse for his absence. The entire building that was Pony Express headquarters was nothing more than a tall, yellowish-colored rectangle that was already old. If you walked down the street you could see how intense chunks of color seemed ready to peel off every surface.

Hundreds of graffiti covered the facade, but no one bothered to pay to have them cleaned and the walls repainted anymore. Inside, most of the water and coffee dispensers had long since been empty, with no signs of receiving refills. The carpets were yellowed. The windows were dirty. The more flights of stairs you climbed, the more you could sense the neglect. Chronicles of a death foretold. He was an idiot not to have noticed much earlier. About the company's closure. About everything.

“Well...” but back then, he had no idea about anything. He had just turned thirty, immersed in a crisis that he thought would go away with time. Little did he know that it would only get worse. He rested his arms on the iron railing of the balcony, and Evelynn leaned on her lower back, not once turning to look down, not afraid of slipping and falling. Grant felt dizzy just looking at her “Is there an explanation that doesn't sound selfish when said out loud? Because I always wanted to be a father... because it's what I have to do... because it's what I'm supposed to do…” he exhales a laugh, twisting his expression slightly into a grimace “yep, they all sound horrible.”

“Do you know why I ask you?” she clicks her tongue, getting his attention “because for you all it will always be simple.”

“We…all?”

“Can I tell you something without offending you, Curly? An honest account of the world around you.”

“...I don't think I’m too soft-skinned to get offended. Go ahead.”

Eve smiles a little, before stepping away from the balcony railing.

“When a couple wants to have a baby, for the man everything is easy. From minute one. How do you impregnate a woman? You come inside her, and that's it. That moment, for the man, is the whole fertilization. An instant. And for the woman? For the woman, the implications of fertilization never end. Not even for women who never have babies. The uterus is there, forever, even when it stops producing eggs. And it marks everything. It's a clock of flesh and blood. Hidden. The baby grows inside that clock. It drives it crazy. The hands are running at full speed. One hand is life. Another hand is death. Every day you wake up with the shock of life and every night you go to sleep fearing you'll never open your eyes again. The baby is indifferent to this terror. It keeps growing. The hands spin faster and faster. Life and death accelerate. Every organ in the body is pushed backward. The intestines. Miles of intestine. The stomach. The liver. Everything is pushed backward. The bones are shifting. Your skeleton, which was born to be a cage with no way out, must now create an opening. The skin gives way and the breasts fill with milk. All hurting. Everything smells too strong. Everything moves too fast... until the day comes. The baby is born, makes its way through life and death, covered in blood. How many times in your life will you see a person covered in blood, without a single scratch? From head to toe. It leaves the cage and faces life. Selfish reality. The mother is losing blood. Her muscles have given way. Her organs have gone backward. Her bones have opened up. The baby cries loudly, because the mother is so tired she can't cry anymore, and when they rest the baby's head on the mother's bare chest, it's like being one again. And what does the mother do? She returns to her original form, little by little. Over time. With much pain. Now, her title has changed. Even if the child is cruel. Even if the child dies first. The woman will never stop being a mother. And despite all the suffering, the life, the death, the horror and the love...no one will stop to offer a moment of sympathy. No one will feel the need to do so. Sometimes...many times...not even the fathers themselves. Because they wanted to be fathers, and that's all. Now there's a boy or girl with their blood, and nothing else interests them anymore. They wanted to be fathers, not to raise. They think there's a difference. The mother must take care of it, but in the eyes of the man, oblivious to the woman's suffering so often, that baby will always be more theirs than the mother’s who gave birth to it. Of the mother who felt like a piece of her life was bursting out of her body. We will get no help. We will get no sympathy. They will just look at us with utter normalcy and cynical passivity, because that risk of death is what we “have” to do. What we are supposed to do. The woman willingly subjects herself to the risk of death. Is it selfish that she wants the baby to live? Is it selfish that she wants the baby to die? It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, no one stops to look at a woman with a child in her hand, going to school, and thinks that this woman had life and death running a race inside her, and life won.”

For a few seconds, the sounds of the city are all the accountant gets in response. Curly remembers his mother at that moment, he can't help it. Alone and terrified in the middle of a storm. All the blood she lost during childbirth. How close she was to death. And Evelynn, at his side, who apparently wanted to be a mother on her own, but spoke of pregnancy as a near-death experience.

«Because it is. It is, and no one knows it better than them.»

“I...”

“Hey, I didn't mean to traumatize you with the horror of the human body” Evelynn slapped him on the back, stealing a groan from him “just to make you think seriously. When you meet a woman and think she's the one, remember what I just told you, okay? It's not as simple as saying "Let's be parents." For you, yes. For her, no, okay?” The redhead wrinkled her nose then, shaking her head once “although if you don't stay away from that guy, I doubt you'll ever get a girlfriend.”

“That guy?”

“Your copilot. The brown-haired one, who looks like he's always, always smelling shit.”

“Jimmy?”

“Wow, he even has such and idiotic name...” Evelynn searches inside her pockets, until she pulls out a pack of cigarettes. She takes one and places it between her lips, extending the box towards him, but Grant shakes his head.

“No thanks. I don't smoke” she shrugged, lighting her own cigarette and placing herself to the right of the blond so the smoke wouldn't blow over him. Curly frowned “...Jimmy's not a bad guy.”

“Oh no?”

“...he's not a bad guy to me.”

“Really?”

He wasn't so dumb that he couldn't detect sarcasm. He just exhaled heartily and Eve laughed, removing the cigarette from her lips.

“I've seen it every time some superior comes up and just talks to you. I've seen it on his face. That guy is furious. Frustration is normal, huh?, and human. But he looks poisonous...or worse. Did you know that there are snakes with the colors of poisonous snakes, just to protect themselves from predators? Well, he's kind of like that but...in reverse.”

“Eve, you don't know him as well as I do.”

“Maybe...but I'm rarely wrong about people. You know who he reminds me of? The typical spoiled, jealous brat. He must break everything you have, like a kindergartener.”

A childhood friend whose face he no longer remembers. An old scar that the burned flesh has purified from his body. An understanding of reality that he wouldn't have gained any other way.

He...
It has always been there.

“I'll let you rest now, Mr. Curly. The surgeon will probably stop by tomorrow to talk to you.”

With that sweet voice, the nurse takes care of bringing his mind back to the present. That hospital gurney. That city. That pit where he is right now, sunken up to his chin.

He hears her footsteps heading towards the door, and the click of it closing. The hospital is never completely quiet, which is a relief: Grant is so used to the hum of machinery that he could never quite get used to sleeping in absolute silence.

Of all the corners of a ship, that was always the quietest. The smallest and warmest, most comfortable. The only one where he could settle down and relax. Pretend to be not human. To be nothing more than the axis that steers a ship. One more nut. You don't expect anything from a nut beyond its function, and that's all. A nut on the... clock. What did Eve say?
One hand is life.
The other hand is death.

The cockpit was the womb.

—————

9 MONTHS AND 1 DAY BEFORE RESURRECTION

“Look what I get back from Venus. I almost forgot I bought it.”

Jimmy's voice echoes the sound of the metal door opening. Curly turns around in his chair, lost in the almost inert green screen in front of the two chairs, above the controls. Sometimes he wishes the Tulpar had windows to the outside, but that requires an extra (more than considerable) cost for security. It's not a passenger ship that wants to contemplate the stars, at the end of the day: it's a cargo ship. There's no need to see the cosmos passing by outside.

The brunette walks around the chair and lets himself fall, with a grin from ear to ear, waving a magazine in his hands. Curly hears the laminated pages and, when he guesses the face on the cover, he throws a hand in his direction to try to tear the magazine from his hands, but Jimmy is faster, pulling his arm back.

“How...? Fuck, why do they take those magazines to Venus?”

“Maybe there's a print shop” a smirk spread across Jimmy's lips before he cleared his throat “it cost me a dollar fifty. You're losing your relevance, buddy.”

“All magazines cost a dollar fifty.”

Jimmy just snorted.

On the cover, smiling, was him: Curly. He's never quite gotten used to posing for a normal photograph, even less when, as he poses, he's aware that that photograph would end up on the cover of a magazine. A magazine that would be printed in hundreds of thousands of copies and read, by extension, by hundreds of thousands of people. Every time he answers a series of questions or is subjected to the same jokes, he feels like he's repeating the same answers over and over.

"People are going to get sick of this and I can just be a Captain, that's all," he thought, as he was given a sample copy and reread the empty, simplistic nonsense that came out of his mouth. But it never happens. People always want more from him and assume, of course, that it's what he's supposed to do.

Sometimes he'd like to replace his brain with that of one of those people who only knows him superficially. He'd be able to point himself in the mirror and decide right away what decision to make about his life. Now, however, life happens, and the only right decision he's made...has been to make no decision at all.

“You pose for pictures as if someone were pointing a shotgun at you from behind the camera.” Jimmy flips through the pages with an impossible-to-erase smile, and Curly tries to concentrate on anything else...but fails. All the gauges are at normal numbers. There are no dangerous objects approaching the Tulpar at full speed. He's fried, in short, like a fucking fish “...and the questions, heaven bless” he hears his best friend clear his throat before starting to speak, adopting a tone of voice that sounds a little higher and nasal, a poor imitation of the tone of voice of a real woman “Where do you imagine yourself in ten years, Mr. Curly?, well in a spaceship, where else? What do you think will be the next step in human evolution? Who do they think you are? Darwin?”

“They're just doing their job...” despite his embarrassment, Curly can't help but smile at the brown-haired man's imitation. He tries for the second time to snatch the magazine from his hands, but fails “now, stop. I swear I'd rather clean the bathrooms and free Daisuke from that task than continue listening to you read the questions. I never read my interviews.”

“You don’t?”

“They make me quite embarrassed...but it’s like, self-second-hand-embarrassment.”

“Self-Second-Hand-Embarrassment” Jimmy arches an eyebrow, smiling a little “well, then... Why don't you refuse? Are you afraid that it'll give you a bad reputation as a person who refuses to give interviews?”

“I don't know... I guess I'm not capable of saying no.”

“At your age? I'd be pissed off...” he wrinkles his nose, turning the pages and barely shaking his head “and I thought Anya's questions were already crap. These are insurmountable.”

“The questions for psychological evaluations?” Jimmy only makes a sound of affirmation “they're simple, but she doesn't write them. Besides, Pony Express doesn't bother to invest in a complete training... don't expect a professional psychiatric profile.”

“Not at all, Curly. I'm not that gullible. What can we expect from a woman who hasn't even entered medical school?” the blond tries to say something, but Jimmy keeps talking and interrupts him “it's not a lie. She said it herself, huh? During dinner. Eight times. Hey, the training to be a nurse on board the Pony Express ships must be horrid for her to have been able to pass. I hope we don't have any accidents that require more serious intervention than some ice or a cough drop, because in that case we're screwed.”

“Hm...”

“Besides, she doesn't even have a sense of humor. During the last evaluation, I said something stupid to her, and she seemed to take it seriously. She stared at me as if I had sprouted a third eye in the center of my forehead. It's like having a nun on board, although...”

“You could take her job seriously and respect it, you know?”

Curly has no idea what Jimmy was going to say. A nonsense, if he had to bet. The reality is that his friend falls silent then, sitting to his right, and closes his mouth.

The silences inside the cockpit are usually comfortable, the fruit of a friendship of years. They don't need to be talking all the time in order to keep the good mood. That particular silence, however, only managed to make the air around them a little muddy. For a second, at least. The next, the ringing in the blond's ears disappeared again, and there were the same old sounds. Constant. Eternal.

“You really care about her that much,” Jimmy speaks again. There is no longer as much mockery in his tone of voice, arching an eyebrow. “Huh?”

Grant clicks his tongue.

“I am the Captain of this ship, Jimmy. It is my duty to-”

“No, no. Don't give me shit” he made a tube with the magazine and hit his palm, the way an angry father would do with a newspaper before hitting a dog “you know very well what I'm talking about.”

“Not really.”

“You don't talk to Swansea or Daisuke half as much as I've seen you talk to her, practically all the time, and laughing. You laugh, at least. She seems to be embarrassed to show any kind of human reaction.”

“Swansea is not a man of many words, and what am I supposed to talk about with someone as young as Daisuke? I don't understand half the slang he uses... and every time I ask him about the meaning of a word, he laughs in my face.”

“ ... you always know what to say to cover your back, huh?” Jimmy raises an eyebrow. Curly, however, doesn't feel like he has to cover his back for anything. He hasn't done anything wrong...although he probably does talk to Anya more than the rest. But he finds it enjoyable to do so, so why not? As long as she doesn't feel uncomfortable with his presence... “Hey, don't look at me like that. If you like her, go ahead.”

“I don't like her, Jimmy. You talk like we're still in high school” the brown-haired man chuckled “besides, it would be very unprofessional, not to mention that I'm her superior...and we're not in an ideal place for that kind of thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that we're on a spaceship traveling in the middle of the cosmos, not on Earth, where she can go home if she suspects that I'm a jerk. It would make her extra uncomfortable, or even scare her. There's no need to go through that kind of thing.”

“Only you think about things that much, I assure you!”

“It's what I have to do at the end of the day, right? Take into account all the possibilities, always...and this time it's a small crew...Do you remember the trip to Mars three years ago?”

Jimmy lets out a whistle.

“How many were we on board? Like...fifteen?” Curly nods with a tired smile, and Jimmy clicks his tongue “Shit. From fifteen to five. Pony Express is really about to kick the bucket.”

“Maybe it would be for the best if it does, you know?” Curly leans back slightly in his seat and, as if it were all a scene planned by fate, the chair emits a metallic squeak. Jimmy knits his eyebrows.

“You might not be doing too bad. The rest of us aren't famous.”

“Hey, you've been working for Pony Express for almost the same number of years as me. It's a sure recommendation. It wouldn't take us long to find work again... knowing how to fly a spaceship, maybe we could be airplane pilots. Do you like the idea of ​​working in a shirt?”

“Ugh” the brown-haired man throws the magazine aside “it doesn't matter. The airplanes already pilot themselves with the autopilot. It's been years since human assistance was needed for landing or takeoff. The same thing will happen with spaceships.”

“We'll have to work as stewardesses, then. Serve breakfast to passengers and wear heels.”

“Idiot,” but he hears Jimmy exhale a more genuine laugh, which manages to put him in a better mood, “...keep talking like that, and you're going to make me believe that you hate the life you have.”

The smile on Curly's lips trembles a little then, letting his gaze fall on the controls and the blank dashboard. Neither of them says anything, but he is almost able to hear how the expression on his best friend's face changes, little by little.

“Curly?”

“Can I have a...” the aforementioned inhales carefully, before letting out all the air at once, more than aware of the kind of answers he could end up receiving “...transcendental and boring conversation with you?”

“Fuck...” the brunette looks to the other side, to his right, and clicks his tongue. Knowing him as he does, Jimmy must have held back the impulse to spit on the ground for a fraction of a second. That's what he calls these kinds of conversations. They can talk about anything...almost...but, when Grant tries to dive into the depths of his own mind, he'd swear that his best friend's hair stands on end “Do I look like a psychologist?”

“You look like my best friend.”

Jimmy narrows his eyes for a moment, before letting himself fall back.

“Fine. Spit it out.”

Curly concentrates for a moment. How long has it been?

“Remember...when I invited you to drink on Thanksgiving night? That morning I had taken off from the atmosphere and returned...and you said ah, let's celebrate the first trip of the new-”

“Neil Armstrong” Jimmy nodded carefully. He remembered what he had said back then, and the detail filled his chest with warmth “but we didn't celebrate shit and it was just you drinking yourself dry at a bar, complaining all the time. Luckily by that point I was fried too.”

“Do you remember anything I told you that night?”

“Are you kidding? You were already two or three drinks in when I arrived. You were bad, man. It seemed like your wife had just left you and taken your children to her sister's house in Canada, or some kind of fictional drama of that sort” the brown-haired man leans back in his chair, letting out a laugh “between the alcohol, your slurred speech and the fact that you drank each sip as if it were water, I didn't understand anything beyond the fact that you were crying for something. It was like drinking with my fucking mother, and I've never drank at the same table as her, so...I'm taking this moment to thank you for that paranormal experience.”

“It's just that...” Curly realizes at that moment a detail that is still uncomfortable: in the main lobby he was able to talk about the matter...not without shame, of course, but he was able to do it...with Anya. With a woman he only knows from a previous transfer to an international base. And with Jimmy, who is his best friend since elementary school...Why does he feel so ashamed? “I realized...something I wouldn't want to have known. I'm sure that if I hadn't gone out drinking that night, maybe... I would have had the courage the next morning to say no.”

“Say no to what, Curly?”

“To this life,” the blond smiles ruefully, turning his head to look at his best friend. The expression on Jimmy's face is a poem, with his eyebrows barely furrowed and his mouth in a strange gesture. “...the morning of takeoff, I was beside myself with excitement. I'd been waiting for this all my life. I was in the pilot's seat, my instructor on the right. The ship took off... it shook, it began to rise, rise, rise...” the blond puts his weight on his heels and leans his back a little back against the seat, almost instinctively. Muscle memory, perhaps. He's done it a thousand times. “...until we left the atmosphere. There was only outer space... dark. Absolute blackness. The moon over there. The sun. Venus, in the distance. All the stars. And behind us...the Earth. I was finally...where I always thought I wanted to be, wasn't I? I talked about it all the time, ever since we were a couple of kids in elementary school. How...I wanted so much to become a space pilot, just like my dad. To rise up and be a Captain, just like my dad. I am now. I've been for years. I should be happy, shouldn't I? It's what anyone who sees their childhood dreams come true should feel...happy” Curly holds his breath for a moment, playing with his own fingers, like an embarrassed teenager “...the problem is that that day, finally facing the vastness of outer space, after years, I...realized how terrible it really was. How alone I felt. I didn't stir up any emotion in my chest. There... there was nothing there, Jim” Curly shakes his head slightly, smiling sadly “...You know, it was like... that time my mom let me sleep in my treehouse, because it was a safe place. It was summer. She felt safe. I felt safe. It was easy for me to fall asleep... and I woke up to find the treehouse on fire, remember? I jumped out and broke my leg, but I could have burned to death in my sleep or... worse. It was a place where I should be safe, but suddenly everything's on fire. It's... kind of. I... never thought I'd leave the planet. I figured I'd be happy as long as I could fly. Back then, space seemed endless. Now it's empty.”

The cockpit is covered in silence. Nothing can be heard but the soft purr of the machines, and the general warmth that comes from the tubes next to the locker.

Neither of them says anything, but for Curly it's almost better that way. He's more than used to the fact that, whenever he tries to touch on these kinds of subjects with Jimmy, he gets nervous, as if his pains about life and his purpose in it were going to rub off on him.

He doesn't expect the brunette to be able to give him a solution to the problems in his life either, but it was nice to be able to get what he had inside his chest out without receiving a reprimand or a mockery in return.

Almost everything that's inside his chest, of course. There are things that he himself can't reach.

“...thanks for-”

Jimmy suddenly sits up, approaching him. Curly raises his blond eyebrows, opening his eyes wide and with doubt decorating his face. He starts to open his mouth to ask him, the first syllable of his name spilling from his lips, but Grant isn't able to ask him anything before Jimmy throws a punch at his face.

The surprise is stronger than the pain. His head snaps to the right, feeling the moisture that wells up and settles at the beginning of his upper lip. Blood, warm and sticky. He brings his hand to his face, and sees the scarlet color that dirties the tips of his fingers.

“Don't fuck me, Grant” Jimmy never calls him by his name. It's always Curly. Always Curly. Grant only comes out when he's particularly upset, and that seemed to be the current occasion “Have you seen everything you have, and yet you have the nerve to complain? You're a... ungrateful piece of shit. A high position. Fame. Recognition. Do you know how many people would kill to be where you are right now? And yet you have the nerve to cry for your life as if you were miserable. Poor Curly and the burden of his life! Don't fuck with me!”

“I...” the man lets his gaze wander further. His brain refusing to form a thought too complicated. “...I'm sorry, I...”

“You want to know what a burden of a life is, for real? You want me to sit here and pour my heart out to you? Or maybe not, because then, besides being a whiner, you'd feel guilty. And somehow, you'd make that guilt you feel my fault.”

“No, I didn't mean to, I just...”

“What? You just what, Curly?”

“...I wanted to talk to you.”

Jimmy falls silent. Finally, he mutters an insult and walks away backwards, swiping the chair around with a slap, but stopping it in place a second later. The creaking was unbearable, after all.

“Go get Anya to put some cotton in you and give you a little kiss on the tip of your nose so you feel better, huh? Between pathetic lamentations and shitty talk it seems like nobody has any interest in working inside this fucking rotting corpse.”

Curly doesn't say anything. He doesn't feel it's necessary either. Carefully, he gets up from his chair and, breathing through his mouth, walks towards the door and then beyond, towards the infirmary.

It's still early in the pseudo-morning, so everyone was busy with various tasks. From inside the service room he can hear Swansea giving Daisuke instructions to do who-knows-what. Fortunately for him, neither of them turns to see him pass by and so he avoids having his bleeding nose noticed. He raises his right hand, collecting the drops of blood that fall on the palm of his hand, to avoid dirtying his uniform or the floor.

He reaches out with his left hand once he stops in front of the infirmary, knocking on the door. It was open, but he has never really liked walking into other people's places.

The medical room was Anya's place.

“Yes?” He hears the sound of a book closing, and only then does he enter, his hand still near his nose. Anya takes off a pair of reading glasses, leaving them on the top of her head. She blinks once, and her eyes widen, sitting up suddenly. “Curly! What happened to you?”

“I was clumsy,” he snorts, and Anya points her index finger at the stretcher. He doesn’t need any further explanation, coming over to sit down while she leaves her glasses on the desk and begins to move. “Do I throw my head back?”

“No, no! Keep your head straight.”

The nurse carefully wiped the blood from his lip, around his nose, and his hand. She handed him a paper so he could carefully blow his nose until the blood stopped flowing. She touched around the septum and on top, so carefully that he didn’t feel the slightest bit of pain, until she had to squeeze her fingers a little harder and, when she removed her hands, she finally smiled.

“The septum didn’t deviate. You’ll be fine. The scare was worse than the blow.”

“Thank goodness. I work with this face.” Anya lets out a laugh, a detail that managed to ease his bruised morale a little. Curly follows her with his gaze as she throws the dirty tissues and paper into the trash can, along with the gloves, going over to write down the materials used. They deduct it from his credit, after all. “How much can two pieces of cotton, a piece of paper and a pair of gloves cost?”

“Hm...” the woman brings the end of the pen to her lips, wrinkling her nose as she turns to look at him “A dollar, at most?” she leans in, finishing writing something down “I still find it extremely degrading that they deduct medical supplies from our salary... as if we hurt ourselves on purpose. I understand the deductions for damage to cargo, but this is ridiculous.”

“We won't hurt ourselves more than a few blows. The most prone to injury is Swansea, and I haven't seen him come through here even once” Curly drops his hands on the stretcher. He presses down, and snorts “this is... terribly uncomfortable.”

“Yes, right? I admit that the second or third day I lay down on the stretcher to test it and it's like sleeping on a rock. They got the cheapest mattress on the market. I could feel every iron bar pressing against my spine.”

“Don't tell Swansea, or he'll force Daisuke to sleep here as punishment” the nurse exhales a laugh and Curly stands up, looking at the hallway. He should return to the cockpit, but... “...hey, Anya. If I don't bother you... Do you think I can stay here with you for a while?”

“Here?” Anya seemed about to retrieve her reading glasses from the table, but ended up leaving her hands still “Sure! Besides, you don't bother me at all, what are you talking about?”

“Hey, I don't want to bother” the blond sits in the chair on the other side of the desk, as if it were another psychiatric evaluation, but with his back pointing to the wall of the infirmary, in order to take some of the heat off the matter “we don't have to talk if you don't want to. You read, and I'll immerse myself in my thoughts.”

“Your favorite sport” Curly smiles a little, shaking his index finger.

“Actually, snow skiing is my favorite sport.”

“Skiing? I've never skied, it's…” no need to finish. Curly knows that.

“Very expensive, I know. Hey, every winter after Christmas and New Year's, some cousins ​​and I always go skiing for a week. I could take you with us one day if you want.”

“No, no! I wouldn't want to get involved in a family outing.”

“Anya, it's not that family-centric, everyone brings their...” girlfriends he thinks spouses, kids, but understanding the implications, he brings his hand to his mouth with a fake cough “...friends, other people.”

“I don't know...” the woman smiles a little, letting her gaze fall on the cover of the last book she was reading. For a fraction of a second, however, she looks up at him again.

Her smile looks happier then.

And Curly, in that instant, imagines a scene. A scene that he thinks he will never be able to share with anyone. An imagination that should be taken to the grave.

They usually rent the same cabin, a nice, spacious place where everyone fits comfortably. They light the fireplace and must wear short sleeves. Anya is with them. She takes off a thick purple coat and fluffy earmuffs. She talks about something with one of his cousins ​​near a window, laughing. He watches her break up pieces of chocolate and then pour the drink, sweet and hot, into several cups. She drinks carefully. The liquid steams. She laughs. She smiles. Outside, the night sky is decorated with an aurora borealis. She sticks her head out the window for a second and, when she comes back, her jet-black hair is covered in snowflakes. Curly shakes them and she smiles. She says something to him. Her voice doesn't sound. Curly repeats exactly the same words. He knows them perfectly.

“...Curly?”

“What?”cThe blond man leans back. Back to the present. He's not in the family cabin, but inside the Tulpar. Anya smiles a little gracefully, raising her dark eyebrows, and he snorts, embarrassed, bringing both hands to his face “I'm sorry, it seems that...”

“You really got lost in your thoughts, huh?” Anya doesn't sound surprised, but mocking. Better this way. Curly just snorts “about what you were saying... don't worry. I was reading, yes, but the truth is that I'm enjoying the book so much that I'd rather take a little longer to continue reading. You know... so I don't finish it so soon.”

“What were you reading? This morning I saw you take a book from the main lobby.”

“Oh, yes! It was terrible! I mean, it was well written, but I found it extremely depressing. The one about animals! I had to read some horrible things... Did you know that swans kill their babies when they suffer from an injury? That already depressed me, but when I read that otters expose their babies to the aggressor animal in order to save their lives, I thought, Okay, enough reading!, and picked up one of the books from here. I had my eye on it before, but hadn't started reading it yet... until now. It's fantastic. And creepy.”

Anya takes the book in her hands, turning it so that it was facing him: it had white covers and a title in red letters, "HOME SWEET HOME", a house drawn in the center, and a subtitle below: "The trauma that is brewing under the same roof", along with the title of the doctor in charge of writing the book.

“It's mind-blowing, I'm telling you” despite the spooky title, Anya smiles from ear to ear, as if she had written it and had just been given a Pulitzer Prize in exchange “and terrifying, because it's all true” she opens the pages on the desk, turning them carefully “they are notes taken by a psychologist with patients who suffer from various types of trauma... all caused by their close family environment. I'm on the longest chapter... about an adult man who unconsciously transformed his trauma into the idea that his house is haunted. It's written in certain parts as if it were a novel. I love it!”

“A haunted house?” Curly draws his eyebrows together a little, resting his arms on his thighs to lean slightly forward. The nurse smiles so much that the smile almost doesn't fit on her face.

“Of course he doesn't try to convince you of the existence of ghosts, but what he gets out of each supposed paranormal experience that his patient tells him is super logical.”

“And writing a book with your patients' sessions isn't...unethical?”

“It's a bit strange, yes, but he uses pseudonyms. He even used one to publish the book” Anya barely seems to pay attention to him, although he doesn't mind too much “...I've always liked this, you know? Reading...literature and history were my favorite subjects in high school...biology too, of course, but...the human brain is fascinating. Its capacity for creation...incalculable. They can write a story and then, when you stop to analyze each paragraph, discover even more. And so, reading it all for the third time, it's like reading a completely new story. If many years pass and you read it again...you're already a different person. You see new things, that weren't there before” the black-haired woman raises her dark brown eyes to him, clearing her throat “...sorry, I don't want to bore you with my stuff.”

“I'm not bored at all” Anya smiles. Even if it wasn't an absolute truth, it would have become one right then and there “but I admit that as a child I never had the concentration to enjoy reading, but I did like my mother reading to me. I was that level of lazy.”

“If someone had read this to me as a child, I would have definitely developed psychosis” Anya wrinkles her nose, and Grant watches as her eyes slide over the letters at full speed, like an efficient detective studying the notes of an important case “...I believe a little in all this, you know?”

“In haunted houses?”

“Yes, and no. In the house as an...organ. Is a house a house if there's no one inside? If a house becomes uninhabited; does it stop being a house?” Curly is sure that confusion is painted on his face, but Anya is not discouraged by his gesture: she smiles a little more “Didn't you hear noises during the night? When I was little, my mother used to tell me that furniture creaked because the heat from the sunlight was swelling it all day, and only in the cold of the night were they able to let go of some of that heat...that's why it creaked.”

“My mother used to tell me the same thing, you know?”

“Like a person who stretches at the end of the day and their bones start to creak.”

“...well, Anya. That does give me the creeps.”

“Have you ever moved?” Curly shakes his head, and Anya touches the pages of the book with the tip of her nail. “What happens when a house changes hands? It's more momentous than buying second-hand clothes. People argued, shouted, laughed, and cried in the same room that you now call home. Humans can get used to even the most terrible of environments, it just takes time and a routine to follow every day, but... Will the house ever accept its new tenants as if they were the originals, or will it see them as stowaways until the day its foundations give way completely? And when a house falls, doesn't it remind you of a human skeleton? The body of...?” she seems to want to say something else, but she doesn't dare. Maybe she's afraid that Curly is really getting bored.

The reality is that he's thinking about things he's never thought about.

“... the foundations of the house are the bones. The spine” he suggests, and Anya's eyes shine “... the spine, yes. The ceiling beams are the ribcage. Each window is an eye.”

“The meters of cable that run inside the walls are the nerve endings. The pipes are the arteries and veins” she nods calmly, as if she were a teacher taking an oral exam “... and the house maintains life, being life in itself. But it is not a mother, it is something smaller. A more unique element, a...”

A hand for life.

“A uterus.”

Anya raises her eyebrows. Her eyes shine, as if someone had just given her a new car. Grant also smiles. If he knew that for her to feel so happy, they only had to talk in depth about fucking weird things, everything would have been much more bearable from day one.

“Who would have thought, Curly? You only needed an accidental hit on the nose to awaken your interest in analysis.”

“You tricked me and brainwashed me. Now I am deeply disturbed” he manages to say those words with absolute seriousness, so much so that Anya lets out a laugh so loud that it sounds, almost, like a scream. The blond smiles, infected by the gesture “but it's okay. This is much more interesting than my... talks about finding the motivation to live.”

“Curly” Anya shakes her head once “yours is heavier than simple motivation.”

“Do you think so?”

“It's reality. I can't tell you anything right now that I haven't already told you... a month or so ago, right? Gosh... time sure seems to be passing faster now.”

“I told you,” she lets her gaze fall to the table and then back to the pages of the book.

“... listen, unless you find passion in thinking about the why behind every decision... maybe you should take a break. The inscrutable emptiness of existence is not something we can deal with, and I don't see why it should be something we have to deal with.” Anya looks up. The expression on his face must be a poem, as she smiles almost from ear to ear. “... let's have this conversation again when we get back to Earth and you finally decide to make a decision that matters to your life, okay?”

“Sure... Can we talk about haunted houses again?” Anya exhales a laugh. Well, Curly probably lied a few years ago, when he told Evelynn that he wasn't thin-skinned. He's not offended by anything, but he's deeply disoriented “you've obviously read a lot of psychology books.”

“Yeah, and too bad you can't have these conversations during psych evaluations, huh? It'd be nice to be able to fill out a report with more than two lines of text.”

“Make something up to fill space” Curly waves a hand across the table, and Anya rolls her eyes “that's how I used to do my high school literature exams.”

“Of course.”

“And the Tulpar?”

“What about her?”

“Is she a candidate for a haunted house?”

Anya wrinkles her nose, but the smile never leaves her face. The blond only then notices a strange, almost childish emotion: it was like being a little kid again, asking himself silly questions to pass the time, dreaming of the future, sure that he would walk on Saturn.

Now he would like to be able to bring a little bit of Jupiter with him.

“Surely, why not? It would be like a haunted mobile home, but on a larger scale,” the black-haired woman glances around. “Who knows? Maybe old Tulpar is already haunted. She’s been running for years. She’s a retiree forced to keep working to put bread on the table. Years and years of transporting cargo and passengers across outer space. She must be fed up. It’s an aggressive house.”

“Aren’t they all? Infested with spiteful spirits?”

“A person doesn’t necessarily have to die for a house to become a haunted home. Living in one is enough. And you don't even have to live and die there, but...of course, dying in a house is the easiest way to haunt it. Are you taking notes for when you're an old man? With all that free time, there's sure to be nothing left to do but haunt the living.”

“And what happens when someone dies in space? Does their soul stay in the ship?” Curly's gaze rises, stopping at the ceiling above their heads.

“Probably, yes.”

“I've never heard of haunted spaceships, and it's strange, don't you think? We've been transporting human beings for years...and I know that people have died on board ships, but...I've never heard any ghost stories. Just the classic discomfort in outer space. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except for...the knocking.”

“Knocking?”

“On the windows.”

“What are you talking about?” The nurse leans slightly over the desk. Her eyes shine so brightly, eager and curious, that Curly is very clear that if he doesn't answer soon, she'll be able to rip the answer out of his brain with her bare hands.

“It never happened to me, but I have colleagues who have made short trips inside simpler ships. You know... the white rockets?” Anya nods once, quickly, and Curly has to hold back the urge to laugh “more than one has told me, and I've also heard it from other men and women I don't know in person, that sometimes they hear knocks on the other side of the window panes.”

“Knocks?” Anya leans back carefully in the chair, hugging herself and rubbing the sides of her body. Victim of a shiver, that was for sure “well... it could be a sound from the ship, right? Or... space junk. It's full of it.”

“That's true, but after years of experience, you learn to differentiate sounds. You know what a pipe sounds like, a piece of metal, the knock of a small piece of special junk... you identify them with relative ease. But those knocks? They sound like this...”

Curly suspends his knuckles on the wood, and knocks twice, like he does with the door of the medical room every time before he wants to enter. The sound is enough to steal a gasp from the nurse. Even ready to hear the sound, it didn't seem to be enough to save her from the shock.

“...A call from the other side” the blond smiles a little “not the thud of space debris or the creaking of machinery. Many people have heard it. That knock on the glass, calling them.”

“Calling them for what?”

“No...not for what, Anya, but to where. To home. The thing is...if an astronaut opens the door of a ship and goes out to return home...Where would they go? Up, to the stars? Down, to Earth? Up or down?”

“And where would you go?”

“...I have no idea, and I think that's the problem” a sad smile stretches across his lips then “...I haven't received the call yet. Maybe it's not my turn. Many haven't heard it. It may be my turn to be the...first ghost from outer space.”

—————

AUGUST 18, 1969

THE PRESENT

He remembers that night, after talking to Anya, he became convinced of the spaceship curse.

And of being an idiot.

The conversation of the haunted house came back to him before. Long before. When the ceiling of the infirmary on the Tulpar was all he had to see, along with Anya's face. Bitter. Growing paler by the day. More miserable. More of a friend of death.
When she helped him eat and drink. When she cleaned his reflux and changed his bandages. When her voice was getting weaker and weaker.

He couldn't bear the thought of her dying before him. It didn't make sense. It wasn't fair. So every "night," when she was asleep and too far away to attend to any failure, Curly directed all his will in the direction of a single wish: to die.

Was it possible to force death with his own mind? Surely not. And no, it wasn't, but no one could blame him for not trying.

He sank into his thoughts and wished for death with a passion he'd never put into anything else before. At times, he was convinced he heard it: a chorus of heavenly angels. The cold caress of death on his face. But no, it was always the delirium of pain or the after-effects of being doped all the time. He preferred that mental sinking, though, to pain. The burning of water on exposed flesh. The dryness of a lack of tears.

The horror of his presence.

He was fine with the idea of ​​dying, but Anya never let him. With the saddest pair of eyes Curly had ever seen, Anya became a pillar of life. She kept death at bay for him, like a figure holding the only lit lantern in the middle of a nighttime snowstorm. The flame flickered, wavered, swerved and flashed many times, but it never went out. She made sure it didn't, and it didn't. With the bare minimum. With her chest swollen with fear and hatred.

Who knows what kind of wonders she would be capable of, then, with her chest swollen with love.

«Nothing you deserve to know. You've already tried and hurt her enough. Maybe not directly, but you have. And Anya, what has she offered you in return? Life. All life. A life back. A chance for improvement. And you, what have you given her? Fear. Pain. A broken heart. This suffering you go through is only fair. Only through pain do we know we're alive, right? And beyond...bleeding and dying and living again to prove you're worthy of paradise. The one here, not the one promised to you in the pages of a book. Your savior awaits behind a room at the end of the hall.»

Death came for him in the form of a violent wave of fire, but Anya snatched him from her hands.

If he has to raise his head and turn to see God...he could only see Her.

Who else has saved his life? Who else has been responsible for resurrecting the dead? Healing the wounded? Making the paralyzed walk again? Anya would hate Curly if he tried to share his comparisons with her. He'll keep them to himself. He'll be selfish about it, like with the dream of snow and hot chocolate. The northern lights and her smile.

And only then does Curly hear it. There, in the intensive care room, with the television whispering to him and his eye covered by the patch: two soft knocks on the glass to his left.

But on the other side of the glass, there's no outer space above him. No Earth below.

There's only a hallway. Beyond it, a closed door with a number twenty on it. On the other side, the face that looks back at him as he looks up, desperate to find something divine. Heavenly. Goodness. A guide. Life. Destiny.

On the other side, his home.

Anya.

Chapter Text

8 MONTHS BEFORE THE MIRACLE

Immersed in the silence of the infirmary, the noises have never felt so strong as at that moment. She crosses her arms over her chest, clutching the blue fabric of her uniform between her fingers. Her fingertips are damp with cold sweat, and a tension hardens her jaw. If she keeps biting her teeth like that, she'll end up breaking one, but if she tries to relax just for a second...

Anya lowers her right hand, feeling the thin surface of the cheap mattress that the stretcher supports. She opens her mouth, and the most pathetic sob she's ever heard in her entire life bursts out from there. She raps her knuckles on the metal, just as she saw Curly knock with his knuckles on the wood of her desk about a month ago, and the soft echo of the hidden box comes back to her. The Captain doesn't know what's there. He doesn't know the gun is there. No one knows... except for her.

She squeezes the thin, blue fabric that covers the mattress. It could barely function as a sheet. She leans her weight on the side of the gurney and looks around, studying the cabinets in the medical room, the posters, her own scribbles decorating the corkboard, the books on medicine and psychology, her radio... She exhales, and with each breath of oxygen that leaves her body, she wonders if she could even do it, if she could even try... if she was that crazy.

What would she need?

A general sedative, and a local one. Stirrups to keep her feet elevated. Dilators for her cervix. And a catheter to suction out the fetal tissue.

Needless to say, she only has the sedatives.

A part of her wants to give in to despair, but all she does is lean slowly, like a very thin tree branch bending under the weight of an overgrown animal, until her thighs reach the ground. The fabric of the uniform is so cheap that she feels the cold biting into her knees.
She brings her hands to her mouth, covering any moaning with her palms. It hasn't been a smart decision. It seems that the air has a harder time reaching her lungs when she's writhing like that on the ground... so able to hear every furious beat of her heart.

He was there, after she fell victim to the compelling need to get the gun before anyone else could.

Anya called out to him. If she's a victim of anguish now, she was worse a while ago. Forced to breathe through her mouth, like a dog abandoned on a rooftop in July. She rubbed her palms over her pants, an invisible beast nibbling at her intestines, her stomach, and her kidneys. Beads of cold sweat covered her face, her chest, and her back, and she was convinced that if she opened her mouth, she would start vomiting.

Why talk about it, though? She's already called him, but she can come up with any other reason behind calling him in the medical room. Pushing forward the psychological evaluation, perhaps. Hiding the truth from him would be...

No. He might get angry.
The problem is there because of him. He was responsible for putting her in such a predicament. If she tries to hide from him what she's going through...what will happen...
Maybe he's already gotten a hold of her skin. Maybe he thinks he deserves to know what's going on inside her flesh, or else he'll get angry. He'll get angry, and maybe he'll cause it to happen again. He'll get angry, and maybe the second time will be worse than the first.

Anya doesn't think she can survive a second time, and so she decided that telling the truth would be the best thing to do. Tell the truth, and then... And then... what?

«I can't do anything, just face what's coming. If there were more medical personnel on board, you wouldn't have anything to worry about. I'd just be wasting your time. I'm sorry. If I had even one more nursing student around, we could try something. Improvise something. Get rid of that thing. But there's no one else on board the Tulpar with any medical training, even basic. No one but me. Maybe, with a little luck, my body will take care of getting rid of the fetus on its own. It usually happens with first pregnancies. But if it doesn't... if it doesn't, I'll have to give birth here on the Tulpar. I'm still a little over eight months away from Earth. I won't have time for anything else. And I don't want you to be affectionate with me. I don't want you to be sweet with me. I don't want you to love me. I don't want anything from you...but your help. The help you would give another human being out of decency. Don't leave me alone with this. Don't ignore what's happening. Help me when my body hurts, please. To move. To stand up. To do my chores. And when the day comes, please stand by my side. Let me squeeze your hand. I'll be scared to death. I am scared to death. Once we get back to Earth, you'll never see my face again. I swear. You'll never hear my name again, or know anything about me. This will be all. I don't know what I'll do with the thing, but you won't even have to think of a name for it, or give it your last name. I don't know what will become of him or her, but it won't be your problem. I swear it won't be your problem. Just don't leave me alone. Please...I couldn't handle this alone. Please.»

She inhaled carefully then, taking in two details at once: that she was crying her eyes out, and that she was, completely, broken.

He pushed his way through, ignoring her pleas. He hurt as much as he wanted to. He turned a deaf ear to her muffled cries and her pain. He didn't care enough...
"Don't worry, it’s not gonna hurt."
...to realize what he was doing. And now she's the one crying. She's the one scared to death. She's the one rehearsing inside her brain the right words to say, over and over again. Desperate for...help. Desperate for compassion.

She expected compassion from him. She was screwed beyond any kind of salvation.

She is.

The door was open, so Jimmy didn't knock when he burst into the medical room, sitting down on the other side of the table with the classic huff of annoyance he's been letting out since they started monthly psych evaluations. Anya is unable to look him in the eyes, as if it were just another day, more entertained by her own knuckles and the tips of her short nails scraping the surface of the desk. She summoned him. She should be the first to speak, but...

“Well?” the brown-haired man's voice broke the silence, as he crossed his arms and leaned his body back slightly in the chair “I would swear that less time has passed between evaluations. Do you enjoy doing them this much?”

“It's not for fun, it's f-for protocol” her voice came out in a stammer, and she forced herself to look up and meet his face “...but I didn't call you to do the evaluation.”

“And what the hell am I doing here then?” Jimmy raised a hand, encompassing the entire medical room in a simple gesture “I have more important things to do.”

“I...”

“Besides, I'm not the type that enjoys chatting. That's more Curly's thing. Do you want me to call him so he can come talk to you for a while, huh?”

“No, I need to talk to you” Anya filled that last word with all the impetus she could, and seeing the absolute confusion on Jimmy's face just... infuriated her. She wanted to scream. She wanted to throw herself over the desk and start choking him to death. How could he have looked so serene, bored even, as if nothing bad had happened between the two of them? “...it's about my period.”

“Your period?” a mocking smile stretched across the brown-haired man's lips “I know there aren't any other women on board, but I don't think I'm the right guy to talk about that.”

“...I haven't had my period for a month.”

“And what about that?” his voice shakes a little more then and suddenly he became the one who couldn't hold the other's gaze. Her gaze “surely you have something in here to fix that matter.”

“Jim, I'm pregnant.”

He knew it, she's convinced of it. From the minute she mentioned her period, he knew it, but he preferred to pretend to be an idiot. To demoralize her, perhaps, and prevent her from telling the truth?
But the truth would come out sooner rather than later. The truth would be revealed, very revealed. It's not something she could hide from him to save him from the displeasure, and she's convinced that trying to hide it would have been even worse.

Jimmy didn't answer. His eyes wandered beyond the medical room. Anya waited for him to muster enough cynicism to ask "And who's the father?" But, fortunately or unfortunately, he didn't. The woman stared at the brunette's face, waited and waited, but not a single word came out of him... so she inhaled carefully, ready to speak again.

Her pathetic rehearsed speech.

“I can't do anything-”

“Take care of it” before Anya could continue speaking, he cut her off. The lazy tone of voice had completely abandoned his words and, turning around, the nurse found herself face to face with an absolute absence in Jimmy's green-grey eyes “surely you have something in here to get rid of that thing.”

“T-that's what I wanted to tell you. I can't. It's a procedure that requires materials that I don't have and... I'm alone here. If I had someone else, another nursing staff, but... anything I try on my own could kill me.”

“Do it.”

Anya raised her black eyebrows, her dark brown eyes wide open. She lifted her chin, hoping to find something on Jimmy's face that might indicate that that last bit was simply a tasteless comment on his part.
She found nothing.

“What?”

“And if you don't want to risk dying in pain, I can do you a small favor. But let me get out of the way, wait here. Don't bother me again. I'll fix this on my own.”

He didn't say anything else. He stood up, left the room...and once Anya was unable to hear the sound of his footsteps, the realization came to her like an electric shock.

Hiding the gun, a few days ago, involved running into Curly. And she had to tell him the truth.

Again.

It's been about a month since she told him. Sitting on the edge of her evaluation chair, she couldn't stop crying as she recounted, between sobs and broken words, what had happened. She trusted him. She trusted Curly. She was sure he would take her side, that he would be able to do something to help her feel safer, but...

“I'll be close to him as long as I can. You try to stay away from him, okay?”

Anya remembers lifting her head, her crying lost somewhere. Not finished, but paused. She swallowed heavily and stared at Grant, his face, the way his eyes seemed... vacant, unable to meet her gaze when he spoke. He seemed more interested in looking at anything else. The closets. The walls. The fucking screen with the sunset image.

“Grant?” she swore she could see his jaw tense for a moment. “Do you think you can... leave me... something to defend myself with?”

“Something to...?”

“The onboard firearm, for example.”

“What? No!” The scream came so suddenly that Anya couldn't help but gasp a little, raising her dark eyebrows and throwing her body back. “Are you crazy?”

“I need something to defend myself from him! I'm not going to run through the corridors shooting in the air!”

“Anya, you're asking me for something impossible” and he walked away, running his hands through his hair in an almost furious way, as if Anya hadn't just given him a solution, in her opinion, more than simple. She hugged herself and he, as if everything had been the easiest of procedures, simply walked away “it's for security reasons, Anya. I can't. Listen... he won't bother you again, okay?”

«Bother me? BOTHER ME?»

“I'll keep an eye on him all the time, I promise. But don't ask me for something I can't do, Anya. It’s...it's not fair. I have to guarantee the safety of everyone on board this ship, and leave you the weapon...I'm sorry, but I can't. Do you understand me?”

“Oh, of course...” and she pressed her fingers against the fabric of her uniform tightly, leaning forward slightly, a cynical smile had appeared on her lips. With her long black hair covering her face, Curly could no longer guess anything from her “...I understand you perfectly.”

Anya hid the gun a month later, and it was Curly who was in charge of finding out about the baby before Jimmy did.
"We'll tell him together," he told her. "Wait for me." But, if Anya was able to get anything out of Jimmy during all those months, it was that Curly's presence telling him she was pregnant would only make things worse. So she decided to do it alone.

Curly said he would talk to him.

And there she is now, on the floor of the medical room.
Alone.

She swallows heavily, forcing herself to stand up. She slides her flip-flops over the cold floor, and hears the soft crunch of her bones until she's able to fully sit up. She rubs her palms over her uniform, wiping away the sweat for the umpteenth time. She should take a shower, but the idea of ​​seeing... something, of noticing a... change in her body... twists her insides more and more with each passing second. It's only been a month. It's not even noticeable. She doubts it would even be visible on an ultrasound screen. She'd only be able to tell by a blood test...or by the absence of her period blood.

«What are you waiting for to happen? Curly won't do anything for you.»

No...there must be something he can do.

She knows Jimmy doesn't have access to the gun. It's a relief, on one hand, but if he wants to hurt her...if he's serious about hurting her, then he wouldn't care if he didn't have access to the gun anymore. He'd find another way. He'd get the axe, while Curly was sleeping. Or he'd take the knife from the kitchen.

Curly might not want to give her the code to the gun, but maybe he could give her the cords that are kept inside that metal cabinet in the cockpit. If she wrapped that around the handle of her bedroom door, she could form some sort of lock. It would prevent Jimmy or anyone else from getting in.

«He won't. If he lets you have anything, it's just going to make Jimmy more nervous. It's like being locked in a spaceship with a rabid dog. Any wrong move. Any backroom conversation. Consider yourself lucky so far, but your luck's gone. Whatever happens after that conversation, it won't be good. Especially for you. Especially for you.»

It doesn't matter how he approaches it. Doesn't she trust Curly? He's been a ship Captain for years...and in none of those years has he had any disputes on board. He told her so himself, during the first psych evaluation, right there. Grant has never had to deal with arguments of any significance. He's never had to be forced to calm the waters of a fight. Didn't he tell her something like that himself a day or two ago?

“I tend to see the whole picture.”

But Anya isn't the whole picture. Anya is one person, one last breaking point in his last journey as Captain for Pony Express. A side effect of stress. An event relegated to the footnote of an official report, if anyone even bothered to make a report at all. A fucking number, quoted by a monotonous voice that no longer cares about the information it is spouting: "During all the trips made by cargo spaceships with female personnel, more than half have reported advances and/or harassment from a male member of the staff. This number is an estimate that does not take into account that part of the female staff who do not dare to report to their superiors. Of the number of incidents reported, very few make it to trial. And of the tiny number of trials held, in most cases the accused is acquitted due to lack of evidence. In an almost ironic turn of events, the accused man continues with his job, while a mark appears on the woman's file that points to her as "problematic." This mark makes it much more difficult for the woman to get a new job, so she must choose two options: remain in the same position that she shares with her harasser, if she has not been fired, or resign and face unemployment, worsened by that mark on her employment record. Although the accused man's name may appear in search records for people with a history of harassment, this is often easily overlooked if the man has a significant employment history, is a power broker, or both. Women, on the other hand, gain a bad reputation for being "difficult to deal with," and their years of experience and job qualifications come to bear virtually zero weight. Needless to say, the situation is even worse for young, unprospected women. For a good job opportunity or due to fear of being out of work and on the street, women who have just graduated are willing to tolerate harmful work environments and decide not to report the crimes of which they are victims."

That's not life. That's not fair.

Anya trusts Curly. She trusts him, but... What's the point of trusting him, if she has no idea what he's saying? If she has no idea what he's doing? What he's thinking?

He didn't deny that it had happened. He didn't call her a liar. Maybe, deep down, a part of him already knew that Jimmy had always been capable of doing something terrible...

«Maybe he's done it in the past.»

...that it was just a matter of time before he decided to do something worse.

«And if he always knew what his best friend was capable of, why put him on board a ship, in the vacuum of the cosmos? Why turn a deaf ear? Why cover his eyes, ears, and mouth around his mistakes? What does it matter if he believes your words, if he won't do anything about it? What the hell is Jimmy doing on board the Tulpar?»

He's a stowaway. An intruder on humanity. And Curly has always known it, and, just as much, has always chosen to ignore it. Doesn't she know it?
Hasn't she read psychiatric cases of this kind until she's bored?

Anya lets go of the hand that firmly holds the stretcher, forcing herself to move towards the door of the medical room. She feels her body static, it moves with the flexibility of a robot corroded by rust... but it moves, sliding the palm of her right hand along the cold metal wall beside her, as if she needed the sensation of guidance from her fingers to reach the cockpit.

It's the only place she thinks they can be.

She carefully descends the metal stairs. She presses lightly on the sole of her flip-flops, holding on to the handrail with both hands as she descends. She swallows so heavily that she is sure the sound will descend, emitting an echo that bounces off the walls until it reaches the bottom of the stairs and announces to everybody that could hear that she is approaching and that she is trying to do so secretly.

When she reaches the last step, she leans forward, listening as hard as she can physically. She curls her toes together and tries to keep her flip-flops from making a sound, moving toward the pilot room until she stops next to the last wall. If she turns now, if she peeks out...they'll be able to see her. Whatever is happening, she's going to interrupt it, and nothing will go right. Nothing will go right for her.

Anya presses her head against the wall, bringing her face as close to the edge of the wall as she can without looking out into the hallway. She hears Jimmy's voice in the distance. She can't make out a single word coming out of his mouth...but after a few seconds, she does realize one detail that's no less important: Jimmy is the only one talking.

Curly's voice can't be heard for even half a second.

Has he asked for an explanation and he was silent, listening to the monologue of a twisted lie?

She presses her fingers against the wall and leans out, slowly, until only the left half of her face extends beyond the edge of the wall. From an external point of view she must look ridiculous, but since she can't see herself... she doesn't care too much.
The two of them are there, at the end of the hallway, next to the access door to the cockpit. Curly's back is all she sees, but Jimmy is facing him, and he doesn't look at all dejected, angry or uncomfortable with the conversation. Was it a good sign, or a bad one? Suddenly, Jimmy moves away from the wall he was leaning against, taking a few steps closer to close the distance between Curly and him... and he leaves a hand on Curly’s arm.

The Captain doesn't move away.

Anya has stopped breathing. That's how she feels, at least. Her knees almost betray her for an instant, sending her face downwards to the floor. She presses her hand hard against the wall and... she feels it.
Jimmy's eyes stop looking at Curly's face, and head towards the end of the hallway. For a second, the black-haired wonders if Daisuke or Swansea have appeared without her noticing until that moment...but no. As she stands very still in place, she notices how Jimmy's eyes linger on her face.

She thinks about moving away. About running away. But she stays still, holding the brown-haired man's gaze...until the other's expression changes. It only lasts a second, but she knows she saw it. She knows she's not crazy.

He... smiled.

Anya doesn't know what else they said to each other. What else they did. Suddenly, the whole ship, always with sounds emitted by some engine, has become very silent. Nothing is heard. Nothing but the internal echo of her own steps when she returns from where she came, a clack, clack, clack as she advances towards the stairs, again.

The ship rocks. Her bones, she feels, are going to fall apart and she will fall backwards like a house of cards, her body parts scattering in all directions. She is forced to use her hands, and not just her feet, on the steps as she climbs, and climbs, and climbs, like a fucking wounded dog looking for a dark corner where it can lick its wounds and die, perhaps, with a little dignity.

She reaches the top of the stairs and hits her shoulder against the wall as she turns. She must have been breathing through her mouth for the last few minutes, her eyes bulging. Someone appears at the end of the hall, and freezes as watches her move forward in such a state. Daisuke? Swansea? Anya doesn't turn around. When the figure speaks, it sounds to her ears like her head is buried in the bottom of a bucket of water, so she keeps staggering forward, reaching out with both hands toward the door to the medical room.

Anya opens it and leans her back against the door as she closes it, pulling down that heavy lock and moving away toward the sink. Toward the gurney. Her palms itch, her head spins, and for a moment she considers hitting her head hard against the wall. Opening the decommissioned vent and throwing herself through it, into that tangle of high-tension wires and jutting bits of sharp metal. Such a death would be kinder to her than the fate that awaits.

Tears begin to flow in torrents, forcing herself to breathe through her mouth. She grabs a blue rubber band, among all the objects she has scattered on her desk, and ties her hair into a ponytail, approaching the sink to splash some cold water on her face. She presses her fingers against the edge of the cabinet and unzips her uniform, splashing cold water on her neck too, trying to inhale and exhale, a simple exercise. The simplest of all exercises. She can't.

The water keeps running.

One scream after another bursts from her lips. She exhales an almost silent scream, nothing but air. She shakes her head and steps away from the faucet, putting her hands on her head and then... she stretches her hands forward, clenches her fists... and hits herself as hard as she can in the lower abdomen, drawing a groan of pain from her insides.

The tears build and she curses under her breath, hitting herself again. Her skin protests, her muscles complain, but she does it again. And again. With any luck, that thing would crumble under the force of the blows. It's still small, tiny, the size of an apple seed. How much force could something so small tolerate?

She can't go home like this. She can't allow it to grow in her insides. A long parasite, long as a tapeworm. She can... feel it. She feels it crawling around her womb, inside her womb. It extends tiny white arms, which move like tiny worms. Thousands of them. They stir and sink into the pink flesh of her womb, sucking her blood, feeding the parasite. Swelling, more and more.

“No.”

Anya lifts the fabric of her sweater, her pale belly exposed. She digs her thumb into her belly button and squeezes as deep as she can, moving the finger up and down. Up and down. Then she presses her four free fingers hard beneath her belly button…and digs all five in hard, trying to reach her womb. Grasping it from the outside, shaking it, pulling it loose, expelling it, parasite included. Furious as a fox capable of tearing off its leg stuck in the trap with its own teeth, knowing that it is better to bleed to death and hidden than to be caught by the hunter.

Her chest swells and deflates. She opens her mouth and only a moan comes out of it, the ground around her wet with tears and saliva. She knows she is making a fool of herself. She knows she won't achieve anything. The body doesn't work like that. Anya falls to the ground, sideways, and the cold metal freezes the exposed skin of her belly. Thin. Still thin. Not for long. No, not for long.

She reaches a hand over her belly, imagining how much bigger the thing will be. Once it gathers all the blood it needs, it will start to move. It will. It will climb from her womb and make its way to her stomach, and then up, retracing all the path made by her intestines. It will go up her throat until it reaches her mouth, and then…

Anya spins around. She tries to stand, but falls to her knees on the first try. She forces herself to stand again, collapsing over the sink, vomiting hard, spitting, holding on to the faucet with both hands.

Her body is no longer hers. She suffers a tenant now. And in time, it will take over more parts. Her organs will move back. Her bones will start to open. Her breasts, towards the last trimester, will fill with milk. Her skin will stretch. Her flesh will give way.
Her body is no longer hers alone.
Her body has long ceased to be hers alone.

Marked. Stained. And soon... destroyed.

“Anya?”

She rests her cheek against the cold surface near the sink, turning her head in the direction of the door. She watches it move, slightly, forward. It's heavy, metal, and the lock is on. It won't open until she decides to. How wonderful.

“Anya? Are you in there?” Curly's voice precedes the soft knocks he gives to the metal door. Knock, knock, knock. The woman drops her gaze, her throat burning with bile and the skin of her lower belly taut. Red.

She steps away for a moment, pulling down her sweater and pulling up the zipper of her uniform again. She makes the water run again and rinses her mouth, spitting and closing it, before approaching the door. She lifts the lock and opens it, finding the blond on the other side.

“Anya, I have to...” He takes two steps inside, until his blue eyes fall on her face. Instantly, his mouth drops a little, as do his golden eyebrows. He reaches out a hand towards her, but the nurse steps back, turning her back and approaching the stretcher “Anya? Are you okay?”

“Okay?” she repeats that word heavily, sitting on the edge of the stretcher and resting her hands on her thighs “of course. Nothing bad happened. Everything is okay.”

“Listen...” Curly turns around for a second, closing the door a little before approaching her “I already talked to Jimmy, he...”

“Did you?”

“Yeah... well, something like that, I...”

“You didn't try too hard, did you?” Anya's fingers tremble on her thighs, sliding the pads from her knees up, clenching both fists at the end. She looks up, only able to catch a flash of blue in Curly's eyes before he looks away “...he told you everything you wanted to hear.”

“Anya-”

“And now you're calm. Everything will be okay. Your little friend will fix things. Because that's the best thing you can do in a situation like this, right? Pretend like nothing bad happened, and expect the rest of us to do the same.”

“That's not fair” Curly slides a hand through his blond curls, shaking his head once. A sad smile appears on his lips. Stiff. In any other situation, Anya would feel guilty about the whole scene...but, at that moment, she doesn't feel the slightest bit of shame. Quite the opposite, in fact “Anya, you can't just expect me to”

“Expect what? I can't expect you to do your job?”

“I do my job!”

“Sure, and look how well it turned out! You told me so yourself, didn't you? You've been working as a Captain for years and you've never had a single argument on board... Because there were never any problems, or because you always made sure to turn a deaf ear?” Anya then gets off the stretcher, carefully approaching him. Grant was her superior. A much taller and stronger man than her... and yet, when Anya began to approach him, determined, Curly took a shaky step back “it has always been much easier to demand from your crew a similar behavior to yours. Look at the whole picture, right? Whatever it takes to prevent Captain Curly from growing a pair and act as expected of him.”

“... that's not true, Anya” her golden eyebrows almost touch each other. In the blue color of his eyes she no longer guesses any kind of shine. But the nurse doesn't feel guilty. She doesn't have to deal with his feelings tactfully. That wasn't a psychological evaluation, and she has the nagging feeling that they'll never have one again “no...” Curly steps back a few steps to the side, hands on hips “you have no idea how difficult my job is, or how to handle this situation.”

“Oh no? I don’t?” Anya smiles, bringing a hand to her chest “I'm so sorry, Curly. How could I have thought of that? You're right... I may be pregnant against my will right now, but I'm not taking into account that that means you have to... do your fucking job. Holy crap, I'm so sorry. Do you need someone to talk to?”

“You think this is easy, Anya?” The man's eyes almost spark as he turns to her. He quickly closes the gap, but Anya doesn't back down. She doesn't even blink “in my situation you wouldn't have a clue how to react correctly either. What's the right way? No, no. Do you think captains are given an instruction manual on what to do in every hypothetical event that could happen on board a ship? No. You should know better than anyone what kind of disaster these trips are. Besides, from what position do you judge me? You couldn't possibly know what to do next. You don't have the proper training to...”

“Forget about that crap” the black-haired girl shakes her head several times. She doesn't know what to do. Smile. Cry. Scream. Laugh. Throw herself at him and strangle him, a thought repeated before... or better, run away and strangle Jimmy. If there is a high probability that she will die giving birth, far from proper medical assistance and with no other health personnel than to be able to help her at the time of delivery, the least she can do is take him first. She would leave behind only two bloody footprints. And if the baby survives, let them consider orphanhood as a last gift from their mother. It would have been better not to have learned about the man with whom they shares blood through a brief news article.

Not to mention living without ever hearing the sound of his voice.

“This has nothing to do with work qualifications or psychiatric evaluations, Curly. This isn't about us as Pony Express employees. I wasn't the victim of a work accident, why don't you understand me? Don't you believe me? You didn't try to defend him when I told you then. You believed me. And if you believed me... it's because a part of you already knew what that man was capable of, even if it was a tiny, remote part of your subconscious. You knew it. You could suspect it. And now you can do something about it. Curly, you have to...”

“Anya, I'm going to have to ask you to stop right now.”

The man's voice comes out, dry and fast, like the shot of a gun. She doesn't know what to do in the face of the indifference that appears on his face. Nothing more than bringing her hands to her own face, pressing the tips of her fingers hard against her skin.

“You're not going to tell me what to do,” the blond's voice comes from afar, as if they were each at the end of a corridor several dozen kilometers long. He doesn't even flinch at her gesture, his heart doesn't soften. “You're not going to advise me, or guide me. I haven't had any disputes in the past as Captain, it's true. It may have been because no one really had a bad time, or because I convinced myself that nothing was happening. Whatever it is... if I'm here, right now, in this position, it means that I am capable of taking care of whatever happens in here, and that's what I'm going to do. My way, Anya. I'm going to take care of this. I already told you. You don't need to give me any sermon, nor do I care how you stop to judge my work style, do you know why? Because, at the end of the day, I am your damn Captain. That's what I am.”

Anya carefully removes her hands from her face, looking up.

The man in front of her is not the one she met on a previous transfer, nervous as hell. The man in front of her is not the one who joked about fate or true purpose. The man in front of her is not the one who heard her ramblings about horror stories, ready to jump in and talk about it with absolute seriousness. The man in front of her is her Captain, yes, but...

“I'm sorry” her voice comes out as just a whisper, and only then does he look down at her, holding her eyes “...I thought you were Grant.”

His eyebrows rise, his lips turned down in a pained grimace. His pupils narrow. If she had moved in to punch him, she's sure it would have hurt a lot less.

So what? He won't do anything for her. Curly just shakes his head, and when he looks back up at her, only then is he able to meet her eyes.

“And what would you do, Anya?”

“It doesn’t matter what I would do, I’m not the Captain, am I? And I know nothing about leading people. In fact, I’m underqualified in the middle of outer space.” With a humorless laugh, the black-haired woman raises her arms to either side of her body and lets them fall again, with a thud. “...you said it. I know what everyone thinks about me on this ship.”

“Anya…”

“A nurse who failed eight times to get into medical school. A cheap copy of a psychology major. I know that very well, Captain. You know what else I know? That there’s nothing I can do against this company! Pony Express will be gone by the time we get home! And even if I did, even if it was there when we got back... What good will the report do? They're just going to deduct my salary, and if the salary is already crap... as if I wanted that guy to sneak into my room to... to...”

“Anya, listen to me-”

“NO. You” she points at the blond with her index finger, then bringing her thumb to her chest “listen to me. You've talked enough. I know you can't kill him. You're not going to lock him up anywhere. You're not going to give me anything to defend myself with either. We have eight months left of travel. You told me that yourself, a few days ago. Eight months. The only thing I'd like is to be able to travel as safely as possible for the remaining eight months. That's all I care about. I won't have a life when I get home, so... I'd love to keep the problems to a minimum. You told me you would help me, and now you come here giving me the eyes of a kicked dog trying to make me put myself in your shoes. There is nothing you can do for me. I am screwed and I am very clear about that. Don't make things worse for me, wanting to put yourself in the role of...that I have no idea how difficult your life is. Not now, God” and she covers her face with both hands, turning her back on him “just go away, Curly. Get out of here. Leave me alone. Please leave me alone.”

“Anya...”

“LEAVE ME ALONE!”

For a moment, she's afraid he'll insist. She's afraid he'll do something stupid, like go over to hug her or something similar.
She hears him take a breath, but he doesn't say anything else. What could he say? And when he leaves the medical room, he does so in a hurry, as if he has something very important to do.

His steps fade down the hallway, and Anya locks the infirmary door again, her hands shaking and tears threatening to flow again. God, she's sick of crying. Is there nothing else she can do for herself?

How many combinations of three numbers can there be?

From zero to nine and only three digits...maybe she'd have time to try them all before she goes home. Eight months is enough time, if she only dedicates herself to that...
She can sleep in the medical room from now on. Put the only stretcher on board to good use. It wouldn't be as comfortable as the bed in her room...but she has the lock on the door. She'd be safe at night, and during the day...she could just try to figure out the code for the gun. Nothing more than that. She doubts Curly would refuse even to let her sleep in the infirmary. He has no good reason to. No...

«Where did the man you liked so much go?»

She must have convinced herself. Maybe all the self-persuasion she's used since she can remember to never give up, now translates into being stupid enough to believe that a superior sees her as a friend...or that, at least, a superior has enough respect for her to act for her as would be expected of someone in his position.

She's never considered herself a gullible woman. But here she is now, thinking about taking possession of a firearm, believing that the worst is over for her...how bad could things get from here?

Maybe Jimmy will calm down.

Maybe... maybe Curly will tell him to forget about her, that she's not worth it, that Anya would figure out how to solve the matter herself. "She's not going to report you. It would be counterproductive for her" or something like that. "And don't worry about the baby... she's so distraught that she'll probably have a miscarriage, and if the baby is born, she'll leave it in some orphanage. What kind of life could a woman like her give a child?"

“Fuck...” she covers her ears with her palms, as if Curly's voice didn't come from within her. Everything she's decided about him, her thoughts, their shared dreams... it seems to have been nothing more than her own desire to connect with him. To become close to him. To find in the other a comfort that she didn't seem to find with anyone else. Because Anya wasn't capable of having that kind of conversation with anyone else on board, and Curly seemed to feel like a stranger even near the one who claimed to be his best friend.

But all that security she built around him, the high position she placed him in, everything she... thought she had begun to feel for him, was nothing more than a reflection of her own desperate feelings. Because she is alone. Because she grows in solitude. Because her near future, even before the disaster, already seemed too grey for her liking. Because she felt such brutal desperation that her bones shook and, more than one night, she has gone to sleep crying when she still had no reason to do so. When the door to her room did not feel like the portal to a cave. When she had not yet felt the weight and pressure of the palm of a hand against her mouth.

She was an idiot. Maybe she always has been. And now she will pay the price.

She sniffles, removing her hands from her head, and drags a foot towards the stretcher. It is uncomfortable, yes, but perhaps she can doze a little before having to continue with her obligations. Before having to rush out to assist, surely, Daisuke, for having made some blunder again. Before she has to go back to fulfilling her Captain's fantasies and pretending nothing bad had happened under his command.

She takes another step.

And her whole world turns red.

An alarm goes off in the medical room, and the screen, which a few seconds ago showed a blue sky with a few clouds, turns red. Anya lets out a scream, stumbling backwards until she hits the chair in front of her desk with her back, falling to the floor.
The walls, the floor, the ceiling, everything starts to shake, as if the hand of a cosmic titan were holding the ship from the outside, shaking it up and down and sideways, the way a baby would shake a rattle. The background of the screen is now black, and the red letters flash violently.

BRACE FOR IMPACT BRACE FOR IMPACT BRACE FOR IMPACT WARNING BRACE FOR IMPACT BRACE FOR IMPACT BRACE FOR IMPACT

The sound of the alarm is so loud that it pierces her ears, covering her right ear while using her left hand to try to get up. It was like forcing herself to stand up in the middle of an earthquake. She coughs, rubbing her lower back as she walks away towards the door.

“What the hell is going on!?” Daisuke’s scream reaches Anya as soon as she opens the door. He appears running, perhaps from the maintenance room. Upon seeing the nurse, he runs towards her, but Anya steps back. “Anya!” He catches up to her, however, holding her by the shoulders. “What is this?”

“N...N-No, no…”

“Are we going to die?” The boy’s voice shatters as he asks that. Anya feels, thanks to the touch of the hands on her shoulders, that he is unable to stop shaking.

“Calm down, the Tulpar has a-a protection system in case of impact” she makes a brave face, however, filling her tone of voice with all the confidence she can muster. The woman takes Daisuke's hands off her shoulders, but squeezes them between her own “we're not going to die, but we have to...we have to get into a safe position. Do you remember the safety training, before taking off from Venus?” Daisuke nods violently “well, let's...”

“There you are!” Swansea emerges from the main lobby then, with a red and sweaty face. He makes gestures with his hands, calling them “Come here at once! Don't stand in the hallways! Come here, now!”

Daisuke ran and Anya hurried after him, following Swansea's steps to the lower part of the main lobby. Kneeling on the floor, head down, covering herself with her arms. The main lobby was the largest area of ​​the ship.
In the event of a crash, the greatest danger was not the impact itself but the possibility of being trapped between tons of synthetic foam and pieces of a collapsed wall. The corridors were death traps, in this case.

All the lights are off, and the only light comes from the huge screen. The blue sky has disappeared, just like in the medical room, and only the emergency message is repeated.
Anya pulls her hair, her head buried between her knees. She hears Swansea breathing violently. Daisuke, at her side, trembles like a leaf and stammers oaths, promises all the good things he will do if he survives the impact, if he returns to Earth, if he is able to tell the tale. The shock is so strong inside her flesh that Anya is barely able to feel fear... she only feels pain, pain because of the trembling of her body, and the violence of her heartbeat. Her teeth chatter as the ship twists, and that's when her eyes widen.

“Where's G--”

A violent crash sends them tumbling out of the lower area. Anya sees the table fly over their heads, along with the cushions not attached to the couch. Bags of dehydrated food, objects of all kinds, fly through the air. Daisuke rolls up and Anya reaches out to him, grabbing him by the forearm, before the entire ship jerks and spins, moving everything forward now. The nurse rolls across the floor until she's clinging to one of the sides of the couch, and a creaking sound resonates in her bones as part of the kitchen's wood gives way, and a huge cloud of foam takes over the gap, climbing to the ceiling like a pillar. Her back stops against the screen, and she crawls as fast as she can back forward, eyes red from crying.

The ship shakes again, but less violently. Daisuke runs to her, helping her to her feet with a groan. Anya notices that his arm is bleeding a little, but it seems to be a simple scrape. Swansea stands up on his own, breathing like a raging bull, and looks around at the walls and ceiling of the main lobby. Trying to make sure, perhaps, that that was all.

“Are you okay?” The young man shakes his hands by the sleeves of her uniform, and Anya closes her eyes tightly for a moment, before opening them again.

“That's what I should ask you... you're bleeding.”

“What? This?” Daisuke raises and twists his arm, proceeding to click his tongue. “Nah! It's nothing out of the ordinary, just a scrape.”

“Are you okay, Swansea?” The black-haired woman takes a step closer, but the man dismisses her without even looking at her, waving a hand in her direction.

“In one piece... I've had worse hits” and, without saying a word, he heads for the lobby door.

“Where are you going?” Daisuke tries to follow him, but the mechanic points his finger at him to make him stay still.

“I'm going down to the pilot room and find out what the hell just happened. You don't touch anything. We'll have to do a safety inspection of the entire ship in a moment. Anya” she raises her chin “...go to the medical room, see how it's left. If there's too much foam, don't even try to go through. It's too dangerous.”

“Yes.”

Anya leaves Daisuke behind, who, without orders, looks uncomfortable in his own skin. She quickens her pace, turning down the hall as Swansea heads for the stairs. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a huge foam wall in the hallway leading to the rooms, but she doesn't head over there to check it out... yet.

Inside the medical room, there's a large piece of synthetic foam in one of the corners, covering part of one of the pieces of furniture and the back of her desk... but not too much. The screen now showed a sunset as an error, since the time was different. Outside of that large cloud of foam, the medical room didn't seem to be in too bad condition... the foam hadn't reached the stretcher, so...

“ANYA!”

The scream, terrified, almost guttural, leaves her rooted to the spot. She raises her hands to her own chest and turns around, eyes wide open. She just sees, in the distance, Daisuke's head poking through the door to the lobby.

“Was that Swan-”

“ANYA! GET DOWN! QUICKLY!”

Yes, it was him. His screams were so loud that they managed to make it all the way from the lower floor to them. The panic was almost tangible in the terrified roar of his voice, and the nurse wasted no time, leaving the medical room and running towards the stairs that led, once again, to the cockpit, taking the steps two at a time, the palm of her right hand sliding along the handrail.

The first thing that hit her was the smell.

Disgusting. Burnt. Something had burned, but what?

“Swansea!?” she cried when she reached the bottom of the stairs, just to see the man running towards her...with his hands and forearms covered in blood. Seeing the stains, she couldn't help but raise her eyebrows, quickening her pace. “Are you...”

“It's not my blood! Quick, we have to get him up! The useless bastard is in shock and won't get up from the ground! You'll have to put up with the shock, Anya.”

“Put up with the…?”

They turn their pace, and she finally guesses the door to the cockpit. The floor and walls have blackened stains that are still steaming, and through the open door she can guess that the room is dark and full of synthetic foam bubbles.

Lying on the floor, half sitting, half lying down, is Jimmy. He trembles, with his head buried between his arms, and two scorched stains on the chest of his uniform. Swansea shouts at him to stand up, but the brunette doesn't even move his head. He doesn't make a single gesture to show that he has noticed that he is no longer alone. Nothing.

Anya follows Swansea's gesticulations, looks down...and her own voice fades away.

She screams.

She has screamed only a few times in her life, but the scream that bursts from her lungs at that moment is a beast made of sound. More violent than the alarm. Inflamed with horror.
Swansea screams, indicating something, but Anya's ears are suddenly covered. Her mouth drops, her eyes almost popping out of their sockets, and she loses control of her legs completely, falling to her knees on the ground. The stench fills her nostrils. Now she understands what the source is.

Curly.

He screams alongside her. Their screams are in time. They go hand in hand, like a twisted chorus guided by the same hell.

His skin has melted. Blue pieces of the uniform are now mixed with his flesh. From the elbows down and from the knees down, his limbs are the color of coal, his hands and feet just pieces of twisted, burned bone. One of his eyes is gone, and patches of golden hair barely hold on to his skull. He bleeds, and the burns have penetrated so deep into his flesh that the nurse can see yellowish chunks of fat bulging outward between his wounds.
And of all his burned body, the worst part was his face: one of his eyes was missing, his nose had melted away, along with the arch of his ears and his lips, leaving his teeth exposed and his jaw caught in a scream he couldn’t stop uttering. His one good eye, his right one, staring at her. Bloodshot. Trembling. Desperate. Twisted. Begging for it to stop. To end. To stop. To stop. To stop. To stop…

“ANYA!” Swansea grabs her by the shoulders at that moment, shaking her back and forth violently “Stand up and help me carry him! Do you hear me? Stand up right now!”

“Swansea...” he barely pays attention to her, limiting himself to grabbing her arms and pulling her violently upwards. She feels her own muscles made of jelly, and she almost falls a second time. She can't look away from Curly's face, and he can't look away from her “no...we can't touch him, look at him...look at him, it'll hurt too much, we can't...”

“And you think he's not hurting now? Look at him! Can't you hear him screaming? We have to take him to the medical room, and fast!”

“B-But...”

“He's going to die here, Anya! Stop shaking and do something useful for once! Grab him by the legs, now! Go!”

Her brain sank into a lake of ice water, forcing her muscles to execute orders automatically. To not stop and think too much about the implications.

Her throat burns and her cheeks itch, wet with tears that keep pouring like a broken fountain. Anya moves, though, and places her hands under Curly's thighs. His muscles feel warm to the touch, sticky with blood and exposed flesh. How much must it hurt? All the nociceptors exposed, screaming at the same time, pressed further by her hands and Swansea's hands under his back. He screams something and raises the Captain's body, with Anya following close behind. It was like flipping an invisible switch: Grant's screams became louder than the alarm announcing the impact, now turned off. Anya spits out a scream and is close to slip Curly out of her arms.

“You better get stronger, Anya! You're going to drive him crazy with pain if you let him fall! Run! Run!” Swansea starts moving towards the stairs, with a naturalness that turns the woman's insides, as if it wasn't the first time he had to carry someone in such a terrible state. Anya bites her lower lip hard, Curly's blood dripping between her fingers and the metallic taste of her own blood taking over her tongue.

Jimmy stays behind. He doesn't make a move even once. He doesn't speak. He doesn't say anything. He just follows them with his eyes, but that wasn't something Anya could notice.

The climb up the stairs is tortuous. There are no words in the dictionary that could explain the first twenty-four hours after the impact. Anya would make an effort, a long time later, but at that moment she just runs.

Because of the scandal, Daisuke was standing in the doorway to the lobby. He hears the footsteps of the mechanic and the nurse and approaches, but seeing Curly between them, Anya is almost able to see in person how the soul leaves the body of a human being. Swansea doesn't even have to waste oxygen by saying anything to him: Daisuke throws himself back violently, covering his eyes and cursing loudly, walking away back to the lobby.

Anya, Swansea and Curly, carried between the two of them, rush into the medical room.

“Turn him, turn him...” Her jaw trembles as she speaks, but at least she is able to do it. Anya goes to the foot of the stretcher, Swansea to the head, and between the two of them they place Curly on the stretcher. Swansea steps away, letting his gaze fall first on him... and then on her, asking out loud something she was wondering to herself.

“What are you going to do?”

What is she going to do?

“...go get the axe, Swansea.”

“What?” Anya runs to the desk, rummaging through the box of disposable gloves so she can put on a pair. She turns a second time and looks at his face, forcing herself to stop shaking. To stop crying. To act by force.

“Go get the axe!”

Swansea didn't have to ask her to repeat herself, leaving the medical room as quickly as he could. Anya walked over to the gurney then, putting on her gloves with a very, very long sigh, before stretching them out a little further and stopping, shaking, near Curly's face.

He kept yelling and shifting in place, looking back at her.

“I know it hurts a lot” her words come out in dribs and drabs, sniffling and letting out a moan “...I'm going to put you on an IV and an opioid. We don't have much, but it's the strongest we have and...you need it. You need it. If you keep moving...”

Her brain dives back into the same pool of ice water again. Anya has no choice but to act on autopilot. This wasn't a written exam, but a practical test. Against the clock.

With death as a failing grade.

She moves as quickly as she can, the armpits of her sweater and her back damp with sweat. Anxious at first, then terrified.
Underneath the cabinet is a small container for the material that must remain at a colder temperature, mostly bags of electrolyte serum and oxycodone. Anya moves the support of the stretcher and carefully hooks up both bags, then goes on to attach a tube to each of the two bags, with the needle at one end.

Her gaze falls on the flesh of his arms.

How could she find the vein in reddened skin like that?

“It will hurt...but I have to. Curly, you need to stay still...and you won't stay still until you stop feeling pain. And I-I...”

Anya presses her fingers against the burned flesh on his arm. He has no hand she can ask to squeeze to make her work easier, nothing but a charred piece of flesh, useless and an infection waiting to happen.
At the touch of her fingers he only moves more, of course, and Anya has to grit her teeth and force herself not to pull her hand away instantly.

«It’s for his own good. You’re helping him. Hang in there. Do it.»

She continues to press the fingers of her left hand, using her right to adjust the IV needle and plunge it in. She repeated the action with the IV bag, guiding its contents into the vein, her lower lip trembling more than the Tulpar had a few moments ago.

“There... there, it'll start to take effect. It'll hurt less...” she twists the small opening under the bags, thus lightening the drip. For the moment everything remains the same. He doesn't stop complaining and thrashing, crying and screaming. She has never heard anything so terrible in her entire life. It is impossible for her to stop crying. “Curly, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It will... it will pass. I swear. I will...”

“There, here's the axe!” Swansea returns at that moment. If Anya feels hot and sweaty, the man beats her by far, with his face flushed, beaded with sweat, and wet marks on his yellow shirt. He carries the axe in his hands, and his breathing could be heard for miles. “What do you want it for?”

“Give me a moment…”

Anya steps away from the stretcher, her brain buzzing as if she had a wasp nest trapped inside her skull. She wets a small towel and places it over Curly’s face, covering his one good eye.

“The arches of his ears were burned. It’s likely that his eardrum was affected.”

“You say he went deaf?”

“I don’t know if his eardrums are affected that much, only that they are probably affected. His throat was burned, so I can’t test him to see if he can hear, either,” Anya puts a hand to her forehead, pressing her fingers against her own skin. “…it’s good that he feels pain, it means that the fire didn’t destroy his nerve receptors. Those are third-degree burns, but not everything was melted. The… the areas with exposed muscle are at the end of his limbs. We have to...we have to amputate his arms and legs.”

“Amputate?” The man wrinkles his mouth and raises his eyebrows. He looks down at the axe and then back at her, suddenly snorting. “With this?”

“And with what else, Swansea? I don’t have anything here to amputate, for heaven’s sake! The fire reached the muscle and bone, everything charred. It doesn’t even bleed anymore. It’s an infection hotspot waiting to happen. I need you to help me cut it. The flesh is so burned it will give way easily. The problem is the bone.”

“How can you talk about this so casually?” The nurse removes her hand from her forehead then, her eyebrows knitting together as she turns to him.

“Someone has to do something.”

The sedative began to take effect by the time Swansea settled near the gurney. Curly just stammered between spasms, his chest rising and falling deeply, unaware of what was about to happen.
Swansea raised the axe above his head and, after Anya pointed her finger at the exact area, he brought the axe down hard, repeating the action for the other arm and both of his legs. The positive side was that the bone gave way on the first try every time...the bad side was that Curly's screams rose to the sky and beyond, reaching the stars.

“Fuck! I don't want to do anything like this fucking shit again!” he bellows, while Anya collects the pieces of burned flesh between tremors, removing them from the stretcher. “You're crazy!”

“Crazy? You'd rather I let him get infected and die in even more pain? I'm trying to save his life!”

“For what? Look at the state he's in, Anya! Do you think that's life? You better increase the dose and let him die painlessly. Wanting to keep him alive like this is unnecessary cruelty.”

“And who the hell are you to decide when someone should die and when they should live?” her eyes almost pop out of their sockets as she shouts that, turning to him. The mechanic must not have even dreamed that Anya was capable of screaming, swearing and all the other capabilities of a normal human being. At times, even she is capable of forgetting it “I took this terrible job to keep you all healthy, not to let you die. Even...” her voice dies inside her mind and, at the end, she points with her index finger “go away.”

“What?”

“Isn't there a need to carry out a safety assessment of the entire ship, after the impact? Go do that. I can't work with you wanting my patient to die so go away and leave us alone.”

Swansea opens her mouth, but says nothing, limiting himself to mumbling something that the nurse doesn't understand and doesn't bother to try to elucidate either. The mechanic leaves them alone then, and Anya moves to close the door. In silence. Just her. And him.

She has to act fast.

Curly no longer writhing in pain was ideal. She changes her gloves for a clean pair and approaches him again, this time with a syringe. She moves the man's body carefully, leaving one of her metal trays near the gurney. She plunges the needle into each ampoule she finds, pulling the plunger back to slowly suck out the contents of each one and expel it into the tray. She repeats this until she has taken care of debriding all the ampoules.

She tosses the tray into the bio-waste bin and grabs a clean one, as well as a pair of tweezers.

Curly's entire uniform had been consumed by the flames. His silly cowboy belt. His boots. But scraps of blue cloth still cling for dear life to the burned flesh, and Anya peels them off one by one until his body is free of marks. She doesn't look at him too much. She focuses on one part of his body at a time. Despite everything, the last thing she wants is...to feel like she's going too far.

The scraps of cloth also go into the trash.

Now came the worst part.

With antiseptic soap, water and a piece of gauze, she cleans the areas of his body superficially. They don't have antibiotic ointments, they're all in pill form, so she can only hope that he doesn't get infected and that cleaning with soap and water is enough. In theory, bacteria shouldn't survive in a controlled environment in the middle of outer space, but the risk is always there.

Once clean, Anya took all the meters of gauze she could find. It was non-stick, so she only had to be careful when moving Curly's body from side to side, wrapping his body with special care. She keeps her mouth tight, her eyes bloodshot, consciously refusing to blink. What if she makes a mistake and covers something she should check first? What if she lifts already badly injured skin? She hears the fury of her own heart pounding in her ears as the man's reddened flesh is covered by the white gauze.

She was very careful in wrapping the ends of his severed limbs, twisting the yards of bandage over and over until almost all of Grant's body was covered…except for parts of his face.

His mouth.

His eye.

Anya pulls off her gloves, throwing them into the trash. Sweat beading on her body. She grabs her desk chair and drags it over to the gurney, sitting down and leaning forward.

It's not until then that she realizes how tired she is.

Her arms rest on her thighs, her hands drooping between her legs, just like her head. Her skull feels like it's hanging by a loose, frayed thread, about to fall off completely. She closes her eyes for the first time in…what? An hour, two?
How long has she been locked up there, treating her Captain's wounds?

She inhales carefully through her mouth, exhales slowly...and looks up.

Curly's eye remains open.
Anya raises her hand above the other's face, moving it close to him and then away, but Curly's eye doesn't follow her movements. It's asleep, despite the lack of eyelids. Without anything to cover it, it would surely dry out...she has to cover it to rest it properly...moisten it on her own with serum, a few drops...though she can't waste it like that. She needs it to feed him. He can't drink by mouth, after all. Not until his throat has fully recovered, and who knows when that will happen. Grant has to receive treatment in a real hospital...there's not much she can do for him until they get home.

«Will we ever get home again?»

“Hello?” she hears a shaky voice behind the door of the medical room, and the handle trying to move. She slides her head to the right and, after a short inhalation, slowly stands up. Anya hears the creaking of her bones as she stands up carefully. She needs to take a shower. Cry from exhaustion. Sleep for fifteen hours straight.

She does none of the three things, shuffling to the door to unlock it and open it with a clatter. Daisuke greets her on the other side, his hands twisting together. Anya must have the most unfriendly expression she has ever had the opportunity to sketch in her entire life, because the young man is unable to look her in the face.

“What?”

“How is the Captain?” Daisuke leans slightly to his left…but Anya moves to the right, covering the intern's field of vision. He clears his throat “I…I didn't want to scream when I saw him, but I…I was quite shocked, can you tell him?”

“Don't worry. He probably didn't hear you. His…ears were compromised during the fire, so he doesn't have any bad thoughts about you.”

“It's…a relief, I guess.”

“Don't worry about it, after the impact... anyway. Go take a shower. I can check your wounds after that, if you think you're bleeding too much, or if something hurts too much.”

“Shower?” the brunette raises his eyebrows slightly, an embarrassed smile stretching on his lips “no... well, bad news: we can't shower anymore.”

“What?”

“The... the hallway to the rooms and the bathroom is covered in synthetic foam. Swansea says it's... too dangerous to try to remove it, so... well, I don't know what we're going to wash ourselves with. With the water to drink? I guess we're going to have to clean ourselves less often so that the water lasts longer, otherwise...”

“Daisuke” Anya raises a hand in front of her face, before rubbing the bridge of her nose with her thumb “...I had a very long day. We'll talk tomorrow, okay?”

“Oh, yeah! Yeah, no…I don’t want to bother you…I already…the Captain is alive, right?”

“Yes,” Anya nods once, and Daisuke follows suit.

“Okay, just…that’s it. I’m leaving.”

And without another word, he turns on his heel, leaving the way he came. Anya considers closing the door again, but there’s little point: it’s just a matter of time before everyone has gotten a glimpse of Curly…like he’s a fairground animal.

Anya also retraces her steps, picking up the towel she used to cover Grant’s face a moment ago. She twists it over the sink and wets it…more carefully, now that she knows the showers are out of reach, and by extension, most of the water supply. She twists the cloth over the sink and returns to cover his face, lacing her fingers together and resting her hands close to Curly’s body…but not making the mistake of accidentally touching him.

He doesn’t answer, but she knows he’s breathing. She recognizes the hiss of air coming in and a hoarser note coming out.
She brings her face close to his chest, and his heartbeat is an almost faint echo, fading away from her…beating at the end of a hallway.
He will need help with absolutely everything from now on.
Anya will have to change his bandages, clean him…feed him…help him go to the bathroom…

«Sing him to sleep? Change his dirty clothes? Teach him to talk again? Breastfeed him?»

He rests in the palm of her hand, completely dependent. Anya stands by his side. Curly could die…by her choice. A person's life in the tired, stiff palm of her hand.

«He's all ours.»

That's not fair. He's not hers, Curly's her patient and he depends on her.

«You just repeated my words. He failed us. He left us to our fate…and now we are chained to each other. It is a disgrace, but you know what? Whenever he follows us with his gaze, he will remember what he did to us.»

“I am not like that…” she exhales in a small voice, and her eyes scan Curly with her gaze. Lying down. Incapable of anything…anything that she does not allow him to do.

Before, he was like a planet that refused to be discovered. Now, he is like a universe, developed and scattered, of pure creation of Anya, the closest that a human can feel to God.
Curly was prone to prayer anyway.

She stretches out a hand, sliding the tip of her index finger along the fabric of the bandages. If she avoids looking at his face, she is almost able to pretend that he has not been left in such a terrible state. But she cannot fool herself, in the silence of the infirmary his cries return to her, desperate and dying of pain. Yearning for a merely superficial peace. Now what?

“How…how did you get into this state?” Anya leans forward slightly, as if to whisper to him. Curly breathes through his mouth, and his exposed teeth tremble as his jaw drops each time. He can’t hear her, and yet…“Jimmy’s clothes are only slightly singed. How did you…?”

“Because it was all his fault.”

Anya gasps, jerking away from the gurney and twisting back.

Jimmy stands in the doorway.
He had pulled the top of his uniform off, tying it around his waist. He had also pulled up the sleeves of his white T-shirt, revealing red marks above each elbow. Did he need to have it bandaged? She could ask him…but she didn’t, just arching her eyebrows as he approached, sliding to the side.

“What are you talking about?”

“Curly diverted the ship’s trajectory, Anya. He tried to kill us all.”

The nurse opened her mouth, but not a single sound came out. Her gaze lost focus for a second, before she pulled back as Jimmy stopped beside her, dropping his gaze to Curly's body.
Anya stared into the brunette's eyes. Green-greyish. The pupil widened, the spheres shaking sideways for an instant, as if someone had suddenly shaken his skull. His eyes traveled to Curly's face, then back to his chest, which rose and fell carefully.

“Divert the…?” Anya shakes her head slightly, removing one hand from the stretcher and moving back “that doesn't make any sense, why would he do something like that?”

“I imagine death seemed better to him than assuming the responsibility expected of a Captain” he murmurs, and raises his eyes. Jimmy focuses on the screen with the false sunset, not on her “…anyway, it's lucky his hands were burned before he could make us hit all the meteorite fragments.”

“That doesn’t…” the nurse slides her eyes to Curly's face, covered by the wet towel. Her lower lip trembles and Jimmy, standing next to him, exhales a laugh “Jim, that doesn't make…”

“captain.”

“Huh?” she turns her head towards him, but Jimmy moves forward towards her. He lunges, almost, like a hunting animal. Anya gasps and steps back, a second before Jimmy draws a smirk on his lips.

“I’m not Jim, Anya. I’m the captain now.”

“But…” the nurse drops her gaze on Curly, as Jimmy steps to the side, clicking his tongue.

“Captain Curly has been rendered incapacitated. Are you seeing that? We can’t afford to be left without guidance at a time like this, and as co-captain…I think it’s clear who must take Curly’s place.”

“Were you ever a Captain, like him? Have you ever had to lead a crew in times of crisis?”

Jimmy doesn’t answer. He stands still, his back to her…before turning carefully, a heavy smile forming on his lips. But it’s not a happy one, oh no. Anya wonders if the man has ever known anything like this. She hugs herself. The second it takes him to deign to answer feels painfully eternal.

“And you, Anya?” Jimmy shakes his head in the direction of Curly, lying on the stretcher “Have you ever had to treat a victim of such horrible burns? Without arms or legs? Have you ever done anything in medicine, beyond going to take an exam that you were going to fail anyway? Over and over and over again?”

“I-”

“Did you treat anyone? Do you know how to do anything?” he turns, advancing towards her again. His eyes, almost, sparking “because, as far as I know, you are here working because Pony Express was the only company with a training program so pathetic that even a useless person like you would be able to pass it” he points with his index finger at the stretcher “our Captain is a piece of charred meat crying in his sleep, do you think he can lead in that situation? I have been working for this company for years and I assure you, Anya, that I know perfectly what I have to do. Better than you, for sure. Better than anyone aboard this fucking flying corpse. So just take care of him as much as your limited abilities allow, and until further notice, do as the other two will and obey my orders. We're adrift, you hear me? And all thanks to your beloved Captain Curly. Well, you know what? Your dear Captain almost killed you, and now I am your captain. Is that clear? Do you have any questions? Should I repeat it eight times?”

She clenches her jaw so hard she feels it shaking. Her teeth might pop out of her gums from how she tenses. She wants to scream. She wants to throw herself at him and slam him into the ground. She wants to…
Who is she kidding?
Having him so close makes her feel sick.

“Are you going to cry?” Jimmy leans just above his own knees, like a parent trying to catch up with a child in the middle of a tantrum. Anya doesn't answer “cry if you want. It's what you do, right? Cry, but don't just stand there criticizing me like you have a clue about anything, okay?”

Again, she doesn't answer him. What's the point? She reaches out with her left hand, squeezing the protruding fabric of the stretcher's thin mattress between her fingers. Fucking uncomfortable. About a month ago, Curly tried it. He sat there. He pressed it down. “I hope no one ever has to use it,” he said, or something like that. Maybe she thought of that herself: I hope the stretcher never has to be used. I hope nothing worse than a blow to the nose happens on board the Tulpar.

Maybe she didn't wish hard enough.

“You won't be doing him any favors if you just stare at him like that,” Jimmy's voice flies over her head. Anya doesn't even answer...or turn her head. She doesn't make a single gesture that would show that she's paying attention to his words. “...you...do you care that much about him?”

Anya clicks her tongue, and when she turns her head to look at Jimmy, for a second...just for a fraction of time...all fear leaves her gaze.

“Of course I care about him.”

—————

AUGUST 19, 1969 THE PRESENT

Lily is standing to her right, arms crossed. Soledad is sitting on the edge of her cot, and she can't stop staring at her face. It's been two years since she last saw her roommates, but they haven't changed at all... except for Lily, who had her hair cut short, like Janet Leigh in Psycho. After finishing speaking, Anya rested her hands on the bottom of her belly (she's unable to reach her own lap for now, after all) and remains silent.

For a long minute, none of the three of them say anything. The only sounds that manage to break that uncomfortable silence are the voices from the television and the sounds of the street. A horn sounds and reaches that room on the third floor, and only then, Soledad gets up and moves away from the stretcher with a tearful cry, bringing both hands to her brown hair.

“Vieja puta, malparida, desgraciada!” she shouts and, although Anya does not understand a word in Spanish, she does not need it to understand the feeling that emanates from one of her two best friends.

“How could she have said all that to you? Your own mother!” Lily drops her arms, approaching her. Anya perfectly notices how uncomfortable Lily feels to handle herself around her with her obvious pregnancy and all the shitty situation that has enveloped it. But she fights against that feeling and takes Anya by the face delicately, the same way a mother would. She will not feel it again.

As far as Anya is concerned, she's completely an orphan now.

“There's no point in arguing about it…”

“What do you mean there’s no point?” Soledad turns around, her hands still on her head, and her face red and somewhat swollen from crying “Anya, what are you going to do when you get out of here?”

“What do you mean, what is she going to do, Chole?” Lily turns to look at her and points at her with her index finger, then points at herself with her thumb “she'll come back with us to the apartment.”

“Don't decide for her. It's a complicated situation, Lily.”

“Would you rather leave her behind!?”

“For God's ​​sake! Who said anything about leaving her behind? I'm not talking about leaving her behind, she's not a dog, Lily!”

“Girls…” Anya tries to intercede, but her voice is nothing more than a whisper placed next to the tsunami that are the voices of the two of them.

“And what else can she do? She can't go home, but she can't stay in the hospital either! When she leaves the baby, the best thing we can do is help her get back to normal.”

“You don't even know if she wants to keep the baby or not.”

“Are you messing with me right now? Good heavens, of course she's going to leave the baby in... in an orphanage or something! Like if it's stillborn! It would be for the best if it's stillborn!”

“How can you say that?” Soledad twists her hands against her chest and, when Lily rolls her eyes, she only gets angrier “Anya has had to survive by having to choose between a terrifying thing or death. She hasn't done anything else for a whole year. Now that she's here she can really choose, choose, the last thing she needs is to listen to you rant against one of her possible decisions. Shut your mouth and, above all, stop yelling! We're in a hospital!”

“You started yelling at me!”

But the warning seems to have an effect, as Lily lowers her voice considerably. Anya realized, in the middle of the argument, that trying to calm them down was pointless, so she preferred to stay quiet.

She has been living under the same roof as the two of them since she was eighteen, so she is more than used to her best friends' modus operandi: the two of them start an argument, and the only person capable of calming one is the other. There is no other force of nature capable of calming the waters of their disputes. The same thing has just happened before her eyes and, despite the nature of the argument… Anya can't help but smile. It's like coming home, at last.

Almost.

“… Anya, don’t mind us. We're here screaming in your face... as if we were the ones truly affected by the whole situation” Soledad approaches her carefully, bringing her hands close to her face to take some hairs and place them behind her ears. She could fall asleep in the middle of the gesture “Have you thought about what you'll do? Will you come back home with us? The city feels empty without you.”

“No... I haven't thought about it too well...” she lets her gaze wander. If she has to think about the near future, the future that looms when the sun peeks over the horizon, she tries to skip the baby part and think about the next important point: the trial. They landed there, so it only makes sense that the trial takes place, too, there, in Colorado. Going back home with the two of them could complicate things even more... especially because of the baby. The baby. She hasn't even decided what to do with the baby yet “not even... good heavens, I need more days. More time.”

“What did they tell you your due date is?” Lily crosses her arms close to her, but her gaze is as soft as Soledad's.

“…the end of the month.”

It's the nineteenth. “End of the month” is just around the corner.

“We don't want to pressure you into making a hasty decision” Soledad's voice comes out like a thread, and Lily nods “we just want you to... to know that you can count on us, okay? For whatever. Seriously, whatever. Whatever decision you make... none of us are going to judge you for it. Really. Coming home with us, staying here, giving the baby up for adoption, raising it... forgiving that witch of a mother, even. We're not going to judge you.”

“You've been alone for a whole year” Lily lets go of that comment in a single second. Soledad turns to look at her and, if she puts on a disgruntled expression, Anya isn't able to guess it. But the tallest of the three doesn't flinch, shaking her head once with pursed lips “no one... no one on board that ship helped you. They expected more from you than you could offer... none of them were afraid to demand. In the end, you had to take care of a wrecked and destroyed man on your own, with…that disgusting son of a bitch hanging around, near you. And the other guy…the mechanic, you told him, and he didn't do anything either! If you all already thought you were going to die, he could have at least chopped him up, but not even that!”

“You have a tenacity that we could only dream of having” Anya looks at Soledad, who carefully takes her hand “…you suffered hell, Anya, and you survived. If that's not a sign that you deserve to live a very, very long, and very good life until the last of your days, I don't know what is.”

Anya drops her gaze on her belly.

Is that true? Is the path to happiness only achieved through suffering? As a…way of proving that you deserve that happiness.
Maybe it's that way because only those who have known suffering are capable of truly valuing a good life.

«Curly had that need to martyr himself with pain. Look where it got him.»

“Ladies?” The door to the room then opens carefully, and the three women turn back. A plump-faced nurse peeks through the open doorway, holding a hand to her chest “visiting hours are over.”

“We'll be right there!” Soledad offered the nurse her best diligent smile, and once the woman left, both she and Lily turned back to Anya “We'll stay in the city until you give birth, even if you don't decide to come back with us.”

“But...” Anya blinks, unable to keep her eyebrows from falling “What about your internships at the hospital?”

“Fuck internships, Anya! This is much more important than any internship!” Lily waves a hand as if she were shooing away invisible flies “we're staying a few blocks from here... in a hotel called The Blue Fountain. Room twelve, so you can call us when it happens. We'll come see you every day, though, but...”

“It's a motel, technically” Soledad felt the need to clarify, shrugging a shoulder at Lily's snort “hey, half a salary really hurts.”

“Before we go... there's something we wanted to give you” Lily walks over to the visitor's chair, where she left her bag. She puts the strap over her head and opens it, starting to rummage around for something. Soledad, standing in front of her, knits her eyebrows for a second before opening her eyes a little wider. Well, she probably forgot for a moment what Lily had brought. Her friend takes a very pretty envelope from inside her bag and approaches Anya to leave it on her bedside table. “Don’t read it yet…read it when the baby is born.”

“We thought about telling you in person,” Soledad takes the reins of the situation then, shrugging her shoulder, “but really…if we write it down, you’ll be able to remember it every time you need to.”

“I’m dying of anxiety,” a tired but honest smile spreads across Anya’s lips. Soledad and Lily exchange a much brighter look then, and the latter speaks up.

“Read it now, if you want.”

“No! I’ll hold back…there are so few things I can do while I wait to give birth, that holding back the urge to read a letter will help me kill time.”

“Ladies?” the nurse pokes her face through the door again, and this time it’s Lily who replies, with much less diligence than her best friend.

“We will leave in a minute!”

“Don't be rude, she's doing her job. You've done the same thing” Soledad pushes her with her elbow, before approaching Anya “Annie, we're leaving... don't even think about mortifying yourself while we're not here to comfort you and stop you from thinking terrible things, okay?”

Anya thinks terrible things all the time. Soledad's words wouldn't be enough to contain those kinds of thoughts inside a cage... but she can't say something like that to her. So Anya just smiles and nods, barely, stretching her arms to receive the hug that Soledad, and then Lily, give her.

“Rest...” is Lily's last greeting, before the two disappear through the door, leaving her alone.

Anya slides onto the table, her gaze fixed on the white ceiling of the room. At this point, the vision of the ceiling must have been burned into her eyes, accompanying her wherever she goes for the rest of eternity. She exhales and, inside her womb, it stirs, as if it had hiccups. She feels the silhouette of the palm of a tiny hand pressing outwards from within, and she rubs her index finger against that hand. They touch, with the skin of her belly as the only barrier, before the baby retracts its hand.

It's as if someone had squeezed her heart hard.
As if a cosmic, titanic hand had grabbed it and shaken it violently.

Again.

She needs more days. She needs more time…dropping her eyelids, trying to get into a comfortable position to doze off a little.
A few more days. One more week.

One last sign from the universe.

Chapter Text

9 MONTHS BEFORE RESURRECTION

Curly vigorously rubs the sponge over the surface of the plate, slowly removing the remains of sugar and sticky flour. He sees the water running and turning pink for a moment in the sink, before getting lost with the rest of the suction in the pipes. Where will all that end up? Water full of waste. Surely they explained it to him in his classes at the academy... a lifetime ago now.

That's how it feels, at least.

The plate is completely clean. It drips, and on the shiny surface he can almost make out his own reflection. Just a shadow, even with that ridiculous birthday hat on. He raises his right hand and rips it off, the cheap cardboard sinking under the pressure of his fingers as if it were paper mache.

The party is over.

“I wouldn't want to get into your brain now for ten thousand severance pay.”

That voice.
Curly drops his eyebrows a little, forcing his expression to soften as much as humanly possible and exhales, moving away from the sink to make room for Anya. He notices the nurse trying to offer him a smile, but the glint of the gesture rises and dies in her eyes, before moving to clean her plate, her glass, and the spoon she used to eat the cake.

“You know, for my eleventh birthday, the whole party my mom had organized was ruined by the weather,” he murmurs, so that only she is able to hear his words, barely louder than the whisper of the water, “it was a beautiful decoration in the garden, but the water swept everything away, and the wind blew it to pieces. It was the worst birthday party of my entire life… a bit exaggerated on my part. We just continued with the party inside, without decorations but, you know, childish exaggeration. Now I can say "it's the worst birthday party of my entire life."”

“It doesn't help much to want to blame yourself for something that isn't your fault” Anya shakes the plate a little on the sink, clicking her tongue “listen, I know your tendency to self-torture. Forget about it.”

“It's my responsibility” Curly moves a little closer to her, taking charge of drying the plate that Anya had just left on the drainer “the last Pony Express trip before closing its doors is being captained by me.”

“And do you think it would make any difference if you or someone else were leading it? Look around you!” the nurse takes care to fill her words with some impetus, despite continuing to speak in whispers “this ship, this company, are far from their glory years. It's a shame, but it is what it is...I don't think it was anything you did.” She cocks her head slightly, giving him a smirk, but a real smile. “If you'd just get your head out of your own ass every once in a while, maybe you'd be able to notice. Your need for bombast isn't doing you any favors.”

“I don't have a need for bombast.”

“Of course not. Depression counterbalances you. You'll never be okay, never completely wrong, but in limbo. Look now...we all lost our jobs and here you are, cleaning up the dirty plate of your birthday cake and wondering "How can I make this about me?””

“Anya, I'm not that-”

“Egocentric?” she waves the spoon over the sink like it's a faulty magic wand, before bringing it closer to him. Grant dries it “maybe not, but you still manage to try to redirect the weight of the situation on you.”

“...you were at the table. Didn't you hear Jimmy? He said it...”

Anya lets out a snort that sounds over the running water, before stopping it. From the other side of that sort of wooden bar that separates them from the rest of the main lobby, he can hear the music Daisuke has put on. A modern playlist that Grant doesn't quite recognize, perhaps in an attempt to scare away some of the bad thoughts floating around in everyone's heads there.
He tries to keep a conversation going with Swansea, but the older barely seems to be paying attention, more interested in making sure he gets every last crumb and layer of frosting off his plate. Sketching such a dismayed posture, the birthday hat still on his head makes everything look twice as depressing, like a brightly colored coffin.

“Aren’t you mad?” Curly drops his gaze on Anya’s face. She keeps an arched eyebrow, holding the glass over the sink, upside down. It drips “it sounded like he was quoting you. Did you talk to him about…the same kind of things you talked to me about?”

“A while ago, while I was…doing the evaluation, so he wouldn’t have to bother you with his stupid jokes. Why would I be mad?”

“Are you listening to yourself?” Anya shoots her gaze to the table again, as she leans forward. Towards him. Jimmy left a while ago through the door, without saying anything to anyone, and still showed no signs of returning “it’s clear that he tried to hurt you with what you told him in confidence. Doesn’t it bother you? He took your own words and twisted them into weapons against you.”

“Anya, it’s not that bad…”

The woman lets out a snort, snatching the cloth from the blond’s hands to finish drying the dripping glass. She leaves it on the drainer and rests her hands on the wooden surface, her gaze lost somewhere. Far from him. Curly tries to sketch a smile, an action he performs as an accessory in his daily life, but he doesn’t succeed. He doesn’t even feel a tickle on his cheeks. His eyes fall, and he whispers the only thing that comes to mind.

“I’m tired, Anya.”

“More than you can imagine,” he raises his blue eyes again. She is looking at him and, although she doesn’t smile, he knows that she is not angry with him. It's... the kind of look you'd find on a mother's face, rather than a subordinate's face “and you're not just tired because you can't get the five hours of sleep we're allowed... you can't sleep because you're tired. Your insomnia isn't your only enemy aboard this spaceship. Curly... things that are said in confidence are not repeated in front of other people, even less so at such a delicate moment like this.”

“But, Anya, everything Jimmy said is true. I told him so” the black-haired shakes her head, tries to move away... but Curly reaches his right hand forward, grabbing her arm so she can't go any further “please, listen to me. I've told you too. You can't look me in the face and lie to me about it. It's not fair.”

“Don't joke, Curly” two wrinkles form between the nurse's eyes...but she remains still, without removing the hand that holds her arm “you haven't said any of that nonsense to me.”

“Of course I have. I've told you about how dissatisfied I am with this job...about how much I want to start over, try new things, find a real meaning in my life. And look where all that got us” he doesn't speak: he exhales. He's tired, more than a full week of rest could cure. Maybe he needs a more substantial rest “it’s...it's not fair, Anya. It's good news for me. I'm forced to take a path that I would never have dared to take otherwise. But what about you? You...you're not as lucky as I am.”

“Are you listening to yourself? How do your desires make firing us something to blame yourself for? You didn't write to our superiors to have us fired. Fax contact is one-way. So unless you have telepathy...”

“Anya...”

“You can be extremely maddening. It almost seems like you're trying to be” the woman shakes her head, barely, before gently pulling away from his grip. Grant hadn't even realized he was still holding her arm. He whispers an "I'm sorry," but Anya just shakes her head again “I wish you could take all that guilt you feel towards yourself and direct it at the real culprit. Look on the bright side, since we won't be Pony Express employees once we get home, at least we can sleep more than five hours a day. There's no point in maintaining a work ethic anymore if we're going to be fired, right?”

“I suppose so...” but Curly barely makes out the nurse's attempt to cheer him up. A glimmer of hope for a friendly environment in the torturous months of travel that lie ahead. The blond leans his lower back against the kitchen island, avoiding Anya's scrutinizing gaze by a long shot.

“Hey,” Anya raises her hand, gently hitting him on the chest. He barely lifts his chin, trying to hold the nurse's gaze, “I don't blame you. Maybe the voices in your head are telling you that I do, but here I am, on my own, telling you that I don't blame you for anything. I may not know either of them very well, but I'd say that Daisuke and Swansea also know that none of this is your fault. The only one offended is Jimmy...what a best friend he turned out to be, huh?” Curly makes a point of saying something to defend him, but the reality is that his brain refuses to formulate a single word. Anya also raises her hand and shakes her index finger in his face, “he's not a good friend. Using part of a conversation you had in private with him is not a good friend.”

“It's not that big of a deal.”

“Of course it is that big of a deal. You tried to defend him in my face several times during these almost five months, and you've never told me anything about him beyond the simplest things. You haven't told me about his dreams, his thoughts, his childhood... you understand the concepts of privacy and loyalty. He doesn't. I admit that a part of me was waiting for you to smash the cake plate over his head so he'd shut up once and for all.”

“Conflicts aboard a spaceship aren't solved that way, Anya. We're adults. Things are fixed by having conversations.”

“Yeah. I'm sure having conversations with him has always paid off.”

Anya rubs the bridge of her nose, and Curly instinctively remembers the conversation he had with Jimmy inside the cockpit the day before, his nose still a little sore. That day, while he was having the psych evaluation, a part of him was afraid Jimmy was going to hit him again... but no. He seemed to be in a good mood despite everything... until it was time to cut the cake, that is.

«And what did you expect to happen? That it would be the happiest day of his life when he just lost his job? Don't be cynical.»

“Anya” Curly makes sure to take an even lower tone of voice as he leans over her. The nurse doesn't look back at him “I can't blame Jimmy for getting angry. Ever since we were kids, he's always had a really bad life, you have no idea. This job was his first secure job in years, and now he has to return to Earth to have nothing.”

“So what about that?” the black-haired woman arches an eyebrow in his direction. Curly, dejected by the answer, doesn't even know what to say. “...it's normal for him to be angry. It's...normal, to a certain extent, for him to be angry with you, because you'll be luckier and he sees you as a...representative of the company aboard this ship, but it's not true. You're not the boss. And it's not fair, you didn't get us all fired. And you know what else? It's not consistent for him to spew shit about you, bringing up things you told him in private. In confidence. That's not justified. How much longer are you going to allow him to manipulate you as he pleases, twisting the same words you tell him?”

“I'm sure he didn't do it with bad intentions...”

“Oh, there's no point in talking to you.”

Anya throws the rag they used to dry plates, glasses and cutlery into the sink. She crosses her arms, just like him, and her gaze is lost on the other side of the wooden divider. The blond feels like a small child next to her. Small and strongly scolded. He opens his mouth only after a long while.

“...and what about you, Anya?” the aforementioned woman looks at him out of the corner of her eye “How do you feel?”

The woman returns her gaze to the front. Then, she falls back down.

“I'm... afraid” her tone of voice loses its severity then, and her arms uncross, stretching them out until they are on the wooden surface “I was supposed to use the salary to support myself during my entrance exams for school. These trips...were ideal. I'll take the test when I get home. I'll study while I'm in here. As soon as I get in, I'll quit the company. But now...”

“I ask you because...” Curly tries to smile a little, raising his golden eyebrows “I don't forget what I promised you a while ago. Help you with school. I meant it.”

“Are you kidding?” the blond shakes his head vigorously while Anya tries to deny it, with a little more vigor than him “there's no point now. I won't have a secure job to pay you back someday.”

“Anya, I already told you. You don't have to pay me anything back. Let me do you this favor, okay? I...” Does he want to do it for the sake of healing a wounded ego? To stop feeling guilty about the termination of employment? Or maybe he wants to help Anya so insistently because… “...just let me help you. It won't cost me anything to find another job. I think that's part of the reason Jim was so angry. Maybe I can even help you move to a place closer to school.”

“Stop, stop” the nurse puts her hands on her cheeks while shaking her head, but smiles. It's a relief “don't go too far.”

“No! I don't mean to, I...”

“I'm messing with you” Anya smiles a little more, letting her gaze drop “You know? If I had to choose...in the distant future, I'd say that I've always wanted to live near the beach. Something cliché?”

“Not at all” and Curly suddenly forgets several things. He forgets that he's not a big fan of the beach, despite what his appearance might lead one to believe. He forgets that his favorite season of the year is winter. He forgets that he loves the mountains and the snow and that he despises the heat with all his being. Suddenly, nothing seems more appealing to him than the sun reflected in the sea, the breeze, and bare feet sinking into the grains of hot sand. From one moment to the next... “...it sounds like the best life possible.”

Anya smiles. Her brown eyes shine, or at least he convinces himself that they do. Curly wanted to say something else... but he stops.

“Curly!”

Jimmy walks around the kitchen entrance, approaching them. Anya's relaxed posture turns into a more apathetic one, of course. Curly has already lost the battle of trying to prove Jimmy isn't that bad, but the nurse doesn't seem to have given up yet on her own battle to prove otherwise. She gives him a look of considerable vigor, tries to move away without further fuss, but the co-captain blocks her way a little, stopping her in place, before approaching him.

“Let me have your magic flashlight for a moment.”

“What for?” He doesn't wait to hear the explanation either, reaching into his uniform pocket to take the scanner, extending it towards him. When Jimmy takes it, he almost seems to rip it out of his hands.

“It won't be a complete birthday if we just eat cake.” He slides his gaze to his left, noticing Anya only then. She holds his gaze back, and Curly feels like he could cut the air with the spoon he used to eat the cake. “What are you two talking about?” Jimmy smiles as he asks that, his eyes fixed on Anya. “Making plans for the future?”

“We don't...”

“If I wanted to chat with you too...” Anya cuts Curly off before he could explain. He sees her raise her chin, and Jimmy, who surely didn't expect an answer from her, seems to lose a bit of the glint of mockery in his features. “… I would have done it at the table, don't you think?”

Grant is far from being a genius when it comes to reading other human beings. Surely Anya, despite only being trained through the books offered by Pony Express, was much better than him in that area. Still, he almost wanted to turn around and walk away at a fast pace, whistling, because the air around the three of them could have turned red at that moment. The nurse usually takes the trouble to hide her anger (the Captain has already learned to figure out when she feels that way... more or less), but in front of Jimmt, she didn't. She didn't care about being rude.

And Curly would have to reproach that action.
He reminds himself as he feels the weight of Jimmy's gaze falling on his face. Grant is unable to return his gaze. He waits... but, as soon as Anya clicks her tongue and walks off towards the table, without paying any more attention to Jimmy and his gestures... Curly follows her without saying a word, leaving the brown-haired man behind. He doesn't feel like he's going to be much help either. If he wants to make the mocktails, Curly’s presence would only bother him.

Anya turns to look at him before sitting at the table in the main lobby, and smiles.

Curly isn't quite sure why, but he imitates her.

“Everything in order, Captain?” Daisuke is the first of the two to speak, leaning just over the table “never in my entire life have I seen a person eat so sad on their birthday” the intern stretches an arm forward, giving the blond a few soft taps on the left shoulder, with a smile “calm down, calm down. None of this is your fault.”

“You tell him, Daisuke. Maybe he'll listen to you.” Anya, sitting in front of him, smiles at the young man and raises her eyebrows in the Captain's direction, as if encouraging him to dare to contradict the boy.

“I'm the Captain of this ship, Daisuke, and you're my responsibility.” Grant turns to look at him and tries to sketch the softest look he can. “This... well, the dismissal... in one way or another, falls on my qualities as a leader. It's undeniable.”

“Don't be so cynical, Cap.” Swansea has a slightly more carefree way when speaking to him. It must be strange for him. Curly is younger than him and yet he must refer to him by that kind of name, acknowledging his leadership. He didn't care if he called him Curly. In fact, he'll always prefer to be called Curly rather than Captain, even if they're workers he's just met. If they call him like they're lifelong friends, it's almost easier to... overlook everything. Forget everything. Pretend “this has nothing to do with you. Most companies were already automating their shipping system. It was just a matter of time before Pony Express closed.”

“And you're not angry?” Curly barely wrinkles his eyebrows as he asks that “you have two daughters, right? Besides, at your age...”

“I'm not going to cry at the table of the company that just fired me via a damn fax. If I have to cry, I'll cry because we can't eat more than two fucking pieces of birthday cake.”

“They wouldn't be able to find out if we eat three pieces either, would they? The fax is one-way... and unless we enter the radio reception area of ​​a space station or a planet, we are totally cut off, boooo” Daisuke waves his fingers in front of his face as he says that, adopting a tone of voice that is a bit more terrifying. Cartoonish, almost. Curly sees, however, how Anya hugs herself and lowers her gaze a little. So he turns, leaving a hand on the boy's shoulder.

“Daisuke, that's enough.”

“... I'm sorry” he quickly lowers his hand again, trying to smile a little “but it was so you could see how much I've learned.”

“How much have you learned?” Swansea repeats, after letting out a dry laugh “What you just said I have told you an hour and a half ago!”

“But Daisuke is right, Curly” Anya settles a little more, leaving her hands on the table “we are incommunicado until further notice. We can only receive messages, and it has been that way since we took off from Venus. The decision made by Pony Express to throw us out and close the company could not have been due to a criticism of your performance as Captain. They have no way of knowing how it was, right? Besides... there are behavioral warnings in the form of salary reductions, and you have not had any.”

“How do you know that?”

“I have access to your file” and she shrugs her shoulders, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. Daisuke lets out a breath, leaning over the table again.

“What does my file say, Anya? Tell me!”

“Nothing, Daisuke. It's empty. This is your first trip with the company” the intern steps back with an indignant exhale, and Anya smiles a little “hey, even if I had something written down, I couldn't tell you anything about it either.”

“But you just told Curly that he doesn't have any misconduct notes on his!”

“... that's right, oops” the nurse puts a hand to her cheek, closing her eyes for a moment, as if she had made the slip... on purpose. She opens her eyes and Curly, a little more cheerful, smiles at her.

Anya returns the gesture.

Maybe he is exaggerating... a little, at least. Curly can't completely shake off the feeling of guilt. The thought entrenched in his brain that there must be something he could have done for his crew to prevent everything from going straight and non-stop to hell for the four of them.

And what fuels the flames of guilt the most is... relief.

The relief of finally being able to get rid of that life that caused him so much trouble. To be able to shake off the poisonous routine he forced himself to become addicted to. Shock therapy, in a way. Maybe he'll spend the next few years missing being cooped up in a ship, months away from the nearest space station...but, in time, maybe he'll get used to going back to a life he no longer remembers.

Maybe he'll be able to fall in love with his days, again.

“I hope you're thirsty, troop!”

Jimmy finally emerges from the kitchen, and loads all five glasses of mocktails onto a tray. The colorful, artificial liquid bubbles inside each glass container.

He sets one glass down in front of Swansea, not looking at him. The next glass, the one in the center, in front of Anya. He circles the table and sets a glass down in front of Daisuke, who smiles. The smile fades at Swansea's "They don't have any alcohol, brat." Then, he stops to Curly’s right, leaning down beside him. Swansea and Daisuke had begun to talk in a rather airy manner. Jimmy's whisper went unnoticed by anyone... except Curly.

“Did you hear how she treated me?” his voice is like a needle, an invisible thread attached to it. It sinks the sharp point into his head, easily passing through his skull and stitching a dot through every line of his brai “I thought you were my friend. Why didn't you defend me?” the material of the glass can be heard with the roar of a rocket taking off when Jimmy takes it “What kind of Captain allows mistreatment in his crew?”

Curly lets his gaze linger on the surface of the mocktail. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't do anything... except follow Jimmy with his gaze. His best friend sits at the head of the table and raises his own glass above his head. He smiles.

“A toast” his eyes never leave Curly's “Happy birthday, Captain!”

The only comfort brewing inside his chest is knowing that things can't get any worse.

8 MONTHS BEFORE RESURRECTION

He only hears one thing: blood. The blood is rushing furiously in his ears, a sustained beeping that pulls vigorously at his insides and rises, rises, rises...

His palms are sweating, and he stands at the top of the stairs, unable to gather the oxygen he needs before descending. Going down, down, down, like a professional diver without an oxygen tank. With the flesh of his body as the only weight of descent. Don't move. Just think.

He hasn't done anything but look and think.

It must have been about a month ago now, when Anya told him, he could only do one thing: nothing. Even though Anya hadn't said it explicitly, he didn't need to be a genius to know that she expected something from him. Action. Protection. She told him in the infirmary, and Curly left the medical room with a tremor that, just like in the present, he believed nothing could match, much less surpass.

He was wrong, of course.

That day he acted on autopilot, making the same journey he is trying to make now, but without any pause along the way.
He descended the metal stairs, the clack clack clack sounding like a shower of shrapnel in his eardrums. He walked, and walked, and walked until he entered the only place that, until that day, felt like returning to his childhood bedroom. To a soft bed in his mother's house.

The cockpit.

He was there, of course. Settled in the chair that Curly should occupy. He didn't even turn to look at him when he entered but, as soon as the Captain sat down to his right, static as an automaton, he let out an exhalation that Curly felt stuck in his diaphragm, unable to emerge from his body.

“You're officially four years away from turning forty. How do you feel, Curly?”

He had to do something. He had to do something. He promised he would do something.
And he just spoke.

“Fucking tired.”

They didn't speak. In fact, he'd swear it was the first time in all his years of having Jimmy as co-captain that they spent a whole chunk of the day without saying a single word to each other.
The brunette was fine with that, of course. He'd never been a man of too many words. Most of the silences in the cockpit were thanks to Jimmy telling him to shut up.
Curly has always hated silence. Silence leads him to sink into his thoughts and, for some time now, the inside of his mind is not a place he likes to inhabit. He can't rest. And of the five hours allotted for rest and leisure, he spends most of it spinning around in his own head, which he does for the rest of the nineteen hours of the day when he is supposed to be focused on the task at hand.

Today, however, he was almost grateful for the silence.

He needed to think carefully, perhaps more than ever before in his entire life. Sunk in his seat, nails sliding over the blue fabric of his uniform, eyes lost in some dark corner of the room. A silence only interrupted by the occasional hiss of steam pouring from the pipes, or a whistle from Jimmy to his left. He remembers feeling genuine dread at the idea that Jimmy, thanks to years of knowing each other, would be able to read his thoughts.

«What are you going to do, Captain? How are you going to fix this?»

Does Anya want me to kill him?

«I don't think so, big man. She's not a cold-blooded killer, and neither are you. We're not talking about a bar fight. Death is inevitable. Listen, even if you were to seriously consider killing him, it's all over for you once you get home. You killed a guy in cold blood. You wanted to be judge, jury, and executioner. Are you noble enough to accept the consequences of your actions knowing that it's for the greater good? Of course not. You don't want to go to jail. Who would want to go to jail? Even if you don't end up behind bars for life, your life is ruined. You're not the hero of a fairy tale. Forget about it. You're not going to kill anyone. You're not the hitman for a criminal organization. I find it laughable that you're even considering it.»

Okay, then. I could go to the other end of the bridge: talk to him.

«And what would you talk about with him, exactly? I don't think it's a good idea to ask him if what happened is true. There's a chance he'll confront Anya. There's no point in putting her through that. Or he might not confront her. He might decide to do something worse. I know you don't think of him as a killer, but the reality is staring you in the face. Your best friend is a criminal.»

Jim's always been a troublemaker, ever since they were kids. He'd get into fights all the time in the elementary school yard, and then as adults, Curly was always the one to drag him out of bar fights. He seemed addicted to the idea of ​​some guy giving him the beating of his life. Addicted to getting into fights he couldn't win. Maybe it was a way to self-harm, under the illusion that someone else was doing it. A more "dignified" way, under his twisted lens, to continue those terrible acts he did to himself in high school.

Now as adults, Curly finds himself imitating his teenage self. When Jimmy wears a short-sleeved shirt, or when he rolls up the long sleeves of a T-shirt, the blond's eyes always go to the inside of his arms, to those pale marks where nothing grows, some more bulging than others. He remembers that, when they were in high school, he knew the exact number of scars on Jimmy's arms so he could always guess if he had hurt himself again. When the brunette found out, he began to cut over old wounds so as not to add new scars, but Curly was not an idiot: he also learned to differentiate colors. It was a bit morbid, twisted... but Grant loved him. He loved him very much. He got sick at the thought of one day not seeing him again.

From those years Jimmy still has a lump on his nose. It was broken by a punch and it never healed properly. He knows he is capable of getting into fights. Of hurting other guys. Of being rude and violent. A liar. But he never thought he'd be capable of...

«It doesn't matter what you think. It doesn't matter what you think anymore. Reality doesn't conform to your wishes. It never did.»

He couldn't kill him, the most violent of options.
He also can't talk to him to solve anything, the most innocent of options.
What is he supposed to do then? Lock him in a cryogenic capsule?

«It's a good option, if he had a lesser position. If he were the intern, instead of Daisuke. If he were in charge of cleaning the latrines, an unpleasant task you could rotate in his absence. The reality is that he's the co-captain, and you need him. If something happens to you with him locked up, there's no one else on board this ship capable of piloting it. Not Anya, not Swansea, much less Daisuke. They'd have to remove him from the capsule in that case, and God knows what kind of attitude he'd return to the world of the living with, after being forcibly locked in the capsule. It's dangerous for everyone. The idea of ​​credit deductions for misusing the pod is the least of your problems... for you. It would be a double mark on everyone's record. They'd lose even more money. They'd put their lives at risk. Plus... what if the worst happens, and everyone needs to use the pods? There are five of you, and there are only four pods. Who's left out? If Jimmy is taken out of his pod for someone else to use, he could sabotage all four. If he dies, they all die. Would you be capable of doing such a thing? Is it worth the risk? No, no. Although, of course, you could leave Jimmy in and one of the four of you stay out. You, Captain. Are you willing to go down with the ship? No, are you? You're not capable of making that sacrifice. If there's one thing this last voyage as Captain of the Tulpar has taught you, it's that you're a selfish man. But is it selfish to want to live? At the expense of others? Do you even have a spare life? You're not going to resurrect after this.»

What if they keep him in some sort of... coma? Maybe Anya has medicine to put him in an induced coma. Something stronger than the sleeping pills she gave him a few months ago.

«It's likely, but of all the options, it's the worst for her. Not only will it be deducted from her salary... which, at this point, is a severance package, not a salary, but it's also going to trigger all the possible negative aspects of locking him in the cryogenic capsule. And even if nothing bad happens and we return to Earth safely, do you think he won't turn on her? You don't know anything about biology, but after so many months drugged, do you think it wouldn't be easier to prove that than any marks left by abuse? Do you think Anya will be happy if you approach her with an idea that will lead to her going to prison when you five return home? You're terrible at making plans. Whoever promoted you to Captain should be removed from their position. Although, well, there won't be any positions when we get back to Earth. Pony Express doesn't exist anymore.»

Maybe...maybe not put him to sleep, then, but…

«What? Tie him to the stretcher? Again. You need him. He might get loose. He could ruin your lives when you get home. If you attack him, it'll just blow up in your face. You, Anya, both of you, and all of you.»

He... wants...

Curly looked away slightly. He remembers that the seat only made a soft creak. In the semi-darkness of the cockpit, Curly guessed Jimmy's profile. He knows it by heart, burned into his eyes. He could recognize him at a quick glance in a crowd, and never be wrong. His best friend didn't turn to look at him, more interested in the screen and his own thoughts. Calm. As if nothing bad had happened. As if he hadn't done anything.

Curly wants to beat him up.

«I'm sure it will help a lot.»

They've been friends since they were nine years old and they've never beaten each other up. Surely a good beating in the past would have fixed a lot of things in the present.

«A very logical vision and not at all blinded by testosterone. It seems like a perfect idea to me. Because, of course, Jimmy is in an ideal mood. I'm convinced that beating him up can't make things worse in any way, right? Go ahead, champ, beat up the guy you know is a criminal and who, should I remind you, is also your best friend. Get to work. Let's see what happens. The anticipation is killing me!»

“If you keep looking at me like that, I'm going to charge you” and it was Jimmy's voice that broke the silence of the cockpit that day. He smiled, looking at him from the side, and Curly just stopped the rhythmic movement of his hands “What are you thinking about? I can hear the buzzing of your neurons and, frankly, it's kind of annoying.”

Curly was able to return his gaze somehow. And he knew, in that moment, that all he could do was the meager consolation he offered Anya in the medical room: "I'll always keep an eye on him. He won't bother you again."

“I think... I don't know. I just think.”

He was convinced, that day, that his decision would eventually return the waters to their course.

He was wrong. For the umpteenth time.

And now there he is, descending each metal step as if his feet were sunk in cement. The palm of his right hand slides slowly over the handrail, and the air enters his lungs in short gasps, his throat narrowing to the width of a needle.

It wasn't just the wound, oh no. The wound has spread. And if he almost breaks down and sits on the steps to cry, he can't commit the cruel act of trying to imagine how she must be feeling.

Everything is worse now.

Was there anything to do on board? He considered asking her. Some pill that could harm the fetus? Although, if there was, wouldn't Anya have already decided? Perhaps the risk of dying hand in hand with the fetus is so high that the nurse doesn't want to take the risk, and how can he blame her. Choosing between the gruesome consequence or a painful death...and he...must choose. He must make a choice, now more than ever before.

Each step feels like a painful eternity, and when he makes it all the way down...he turns, glancing back at the top of the stairs. He doesn't quite know what he expects to see, but no idea comes to him like a drop from Heaven. No miraculous, unexpected thought makes its way into his mind. There's nothing but the white noise of a television with no signal, and the static of a poorly tuned radio. Nothing helps but the fear in his belly and the roar of blood in his ears.

Will he have to? Will he have to...?

What he has to do first is talk to him. He knows the kind of man he is. He knows the kind of thoughts he might form.

“Never so terrible,” he once told himself. “Never so terrible. Never so bad. Jimmy isn’t so bad. I’ve known him for years. He’s not as bad as he seems. He’s my best friend.”

A little girl crying by the stream. A mound of dirt. A call recorded by his answering machine. Smoke. His own blood on the palm of his hand. Tears on Anya’s pale cheeks.

What a fucking idiot.

And he hears laughter. Childish laughter. Youthful laughter. Adult laughter. An echo that could scare away smoke, blood, death. Guilt. They seemed honest to him when they shouted them out once. Childhood games. The smell of sweet popcorn. The starry skies of the night. The smell of cheap beer. Had all of that been real? Had none of it been real? Does he have anything left to hold on to?

Why is he so desperate to do it?

«Because you are, deep down, too good. And even deeper down, in the Mariana Trench of your soul, the reason behind all the problems in your existence: you are a coward. A damned bystander of your own life. Your inaction has led you to the unthinkable. It may be time for you to pay the price.»

Jimmy is there, arms crossed by the cockpit access doors. Nothing can be heard but Grant’s footsteps. Again, the same clack, clack, clack on the metal floor. The co-captain doesn’t raise his gaze from the floor even once. Too deep in thought to pay attention right away, or unwilling to.

“Jim,” the word slips from his lips with the ease of habit. He fears that making a wrong move, using the wrong intonation when saying a word, will throw everything away. Only then does the brunette look up. He's very used to looking back at him “I can fix this.”

Can he?

“What do you think is going to happen when we get back? Hm?” Jimmy could be cynical about the whole situation, but he must know that, at this point, there's no point in being so. If he had already committed a terrible act almost a month ago, now he fucked up big time. He remembers Anya's shattered tone of voice, and rubs his palms on the sides of his thighs, wiping away the sweat.

“We can fix this. You and I.”

Can they?
The reality is that his brain is empty. Not a single logical idea, like a fish poking its face out and breaking the surface, emerges from the dark waters of his mind. He failed to decide anything before, and now it seems like night has taken over the ocean. He sees nothing. He hears nothing. He's alone.

“All I ever hear is how great a leader you are” Jimmy smiles slightly, clicking his tongue “God, it's so annoying. But now... What do you think will happen now when we get back?”

He fears retaliation. And even if said retaliation doesn't happen, he'll fear even still being a victim of the consequences. The future without a job. Going back to the well. Having nothing and then...

He should face the consequences of his own actions. The consequences of his DECISIONS. Decisions made by him. By no one else. Not even by you. Not for anyone. You've already whitewashed his shit enough over the years. The guilt will weigh on you, but there's still something you can do.

And whose voice was that?

“We'll fix this together.”

“Everything you and I have worked for in our lives. Accomplishments, changes. None of it will matter.”

This was never HIS dream. It was YOUR dream. He just followed you. He clung to your arm, tooth and nail. Like a rabid dog.

“You've been through difficult times before. This time won't be any different. Work on it, one day at a time.”

“It's not just me, is it? You were supposed to be the one who had it all together. You said so yourself. This ship. This crew, everything that happened here...this was your responsibility, Captain. That is what you're going to hear for the rest of your life.”

You woke Jimmy up in the night, and whispered an idea in his ear? Did you take him by the hand and lead him to her door? No. No, you didn't. The inaction of the punishment falls on you, but the act itself...did you think it through? Did you execute it?

No, he didn't.
And his chest, with every passing minute, feels colder and colder.

“Or all of this can be remembered as a tragedy, despite what should have been the best efforts of their acclaimed Captain. The crew of the Tulpar was never found. No one survived to tell the tale” a furious beeping takes over the blond's ears. So loud, that the next words of that ghostly alien voice inside his brain become a little clouded. The palms of his hands sting, as if he had brought them too close to the fire, and it was already too late to pull them back “...you are standing at the top, feet in cement. I get it now... Right?”

Curly was about to breathe out a "right" back, but the word got stuck in his throat.
Jimmy then approaches him, with the diligent smile he's seen him flash a dozen times already. In the past, that simple gesture would cheer him up for the rest of the week, helping him to more easily overlook any bad time Jimmy gave him. Now...however, the hand he stops on his arm causes Curly nothing more than a violent shiver. The brunette smiles, on his face, but even that smile seems foreign to him. As if he were rehearsing for a role in a play.

As if he were smiling at someone else.

“I'll take care of this.”

The brunette takes a step back...but Curly shoots his right hand forward. He catches him by the wrist, and draws a gasp of surprise from the brunette's insides, stopping him in place. Jimmy's green eyes widen, and when he looks at Grant...it's like he's looking at him for the first time. Like he's a violent stranger. One of those men from the bars he used to go to pick fights in. Someone he's just now realizing will be able to hurt him especially easily.

I'm sure having conversations with him has always paid off for you.

Again.

How much longer are you going to let him manipulate you as he pleases, twisting the very words you say to him?

That voice isn't his, but he knows it.

Trying to torment you by using your private thoughts against you as weapons. He's sharpened your fears, your doubts, and your unfulfilled dreams and he's throwing them back at you in the form of stabs. Arrows. Punches. And here you stand. And he'll walk away. As if nothing had happened. As if he hadn't done anything.

It's a voice smarter than him. Braver than him. It circles him and guides him, like Athena to Odysseus, and points forward with her index finger when deciding where to hit the arrow. Anxious. She squeezes his shoulders.

Don't take the long way back home.

“You're not going to fix anything, Jimmy.”

“What?”

“You heard me perfectly” the brown-haired man tries to get away from his grip, but the blond's hand is heavy as lead and doesn't allow his wrist to move in any direction “you're not going to fix anything. There's nothing you can do now... except take responsibility for your actions.”

“What are you...?”

“You're right about one thing: I'll feel guilty. Guilt is going to eat away at me for a long time when we get back home...and I accept that. It's only fair. But you?” something unknown until that moment flashes in Jimmy's eyes. A different glow. Curly doesn't know what to call it “you'll have to accept the consequences of your actions and bow your head. Whatever happens when we get back to Earth isn't up to you. And it's not up to me either.”

«It depends on Anya» is implied in the air «and the choice she makes.»

“Curly…”

“I think I've had enough, you know?” a tired smile stretches across the Captain's lips, and Jimmy's pupils shrink “...you're my best friend, Jimmy, but I've had enough.”

He lets go, and Jimmy pulls his hand away as if Curly had forced him to submerge his arm, up to the elbow, in boiling water. He even breathes heavily, and steps back a step.

“Wait for me in the cockpit” the blond spits “there's something I have to do first.”

He steps back and, again, it was like when he approached: nothing can be heard but his own footsteps, echoing from the cockpit access to the stairs. Now, instead of going down, he goes up, and his feet feel lighter. His chest lighter. He shouldn't. The situation is still terrible. Dark. But at least... maybe he can...

The door to the medical room is closed.

“Anya?” The blond knocks on the heavy metal door with his knuckles. He lowers his hand, tries to open it... and his blood freezes in his veins when he notices that it is locked. She wouldn't... she wouldn't do something terrible, right? She wouldn't... “Anya? Are you in there?”

Hearing footsteps on the other side of the door brings his soul back to his body. An engine that seems broken and suddenly begins to purr again. He exhales even in relief, letting his shoulders fall, passing into the medical room as soon as the door opens for him.

“Anya, I have to...” He lowers his gaze to the nurse's face, and his heart is crushed. Someone stabbed him treacherously.

The black-haired woman has a red face, swollen eyes and a wound on her lower lip. Thin, probably self-made from biting herself. Her cheeks wet with tears, and a general trembling, hunched over herself. Curly reaches out a hand towards her, wanting to hug her the same way he did when she told him what Jimmy did to her, about a month ago. But she moves away, moving towards the stretcher.

“Anya? Are you okay?”

“Okay? Of course. Nothing bad happened. Everything is okay.”

“Listen...” the blond, embarrassed, turns around so he can close the door a little. Why on earth does he think of asking her if she's okay? Of course she's not okay “I already talked to Jimmy, he...”

“Did you?”

“Yes... well, something like that. I...”

“You didn't try too hard, did you?” Anya's voice slides into his ears like burning bile. Curly feels his tongue dry. He wants to deny it. Explain. But... she looks at him, and he can't hold her gaze “...he told you everything you wanted to hear.”

It's not true. But how to explain? How...?

“Anya...”

“And now you're calm. Everything will be okay. Your little friend will fix things. Because it's the best you can do in a situation like this, right? Pretend nothing bad happened, and expect the rest of us to do the same.”

“That's not fair” he slides a hand through his blond hair. He can't have the cynicism to blame her for anything. She's a victim. He smiles heavily and snorts. Where to start? “Anya, you can't just expect...”

“Expect what? Can't I expect you to do your job?”

“I do my job!”

“Of course, and look how well it turned out! You told me yourself, didn't you? You've been working as Captain for years and you've never had a single argument on board... Because there were never any problems, or because you always made sure to turn a deaf ear?” Anya then gets off the stretcher, carefully approaching him. He's taller. Stronger. Her superior. And yet... seeing her approach him like that pushes him back “it's always been much easier to demand from your crew a similar behavior to yours. Look at the bigger picture, right? Whatever it takes to prevent Captain Curly from growing a pair and act as expected of him.”

“...that's not true, Anya. No...” the last thing he wants is to insult her, or make her feel bad, but he feels like he's about to lose his temper. So he walks away a couple more steps. Haven't he thought as much as he could about all the possible options? Haven't he thought about everything that could go wrong in each and every one of them?

«Thought is not the same as act.»

“You have no idea how difficult my job is, or how to handle this situation.”

“Oh no? I don’t?” Anya smiles, putting a hand to her chest “I'm so sorry, Curly. How could I have thought of that? You're right... I may be pregnant against my will right now, but I'm not taking into account that that means you have to... do your fucking job. Holy crap, I'm so sorry. Do you need someone to talk to?”

“You think this is easy, Anya?” he turns, approaching him, but Anya doesn't move from her spot “in my situation you wouldn't have any idea how to react correctly either. What is the correct way? No, no. Do you think captains are given an instruction manual on what to do in every hypothetical event that can happen on board a ship? No. You should know better than anyone what kind of disaster these trips are. Besides, from what position do you judge me? You couldn't possibly know what to do next. You don't have the proper training to...”

“Forget that crap. This has nothing to do with job qualifications or psychiatric evaluations, Curly. This isn't about us as Pony Express employees. I wasn't the victim of a workplace accident, why don't you understand me? Don't you believe me? You didn't try to defend him when I told you then. You believed me. And if you believed me... it's because a part of you already knew what that man is capable of, even if it was a tiny, remote part of your subconscious. You knew it. You could suspect it. And now you can do something about it. Curly, you have to...”

“Anya, I'm going to have to ask you to stop right now.”

He needs silence. He needs to think, before he loses his mind completely. Anya covers her face with her hands, and Curly fights back an almost primal impulse to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. She has to listen to him. She has to stop.

«Can you blame her? She's pregnant, Grant. Pregnant. You've heard the horror of a wanted pregnancy. She's pregnant by force. She should be worse off. She should have to break the safety on the gun and run in to kill Jimmy, and you stand by and watch. Like always. By what right would you force her to stop? Maybe she does expect you to kill him. To lock him up somewhere. To kill him. You decided to sanctify Anya of your own free will. This woman has more balls than you.»

“You're not going to tell me what to do. You're not going to advise me, or guide me. I haven't had any disputes in the past as Captain, that's true. It may have been because no one really had a bad time, or because I convinced myself that nothing was going on. Either way...if I'm here, right now, in this position, it means that I am capable of taking care of whatever happens in here, and that's what I'm going to do. My way, Anya. I'm going to take care of this. I already told you. You don't need to lecture me, nor do I care how you stop to judge my work style, you know why? Because, at the end of the day, I'm your damn Captain. That's what I am.”

The blond brings the palm of his right hand to his chest. His throat hurts a little.
Has he ever spoken so airily with a subordinate? Almost, almost. But with her...

Anya turns around. Her brown eyes have always looked at him with concern. With sweetness. With grace, when he's able to make her laugh. With frustration, more times than he would like.
That time, when he looks into her eyes... he doesn't see something familiar.
He doesn't see anything.

“I'm sorry” Anya's voice is just a whisper. Her face remains inert. But she looks into his eyes. It's more than he could say about himself “I thought you were Grant.”

Grant.

An invisible knife sinks into the pit of his stomach. An invisible bullet pierces his chest and blood floods, drop by drop, his thoracic cavity.
Anya doesn't need a Captain. An alien and indifferent superior. They already have enough. Anya needed him.

And he wasn't able to say anything.
He wasn't able to do anything.
He failed her.

“And what would you do, Anya?” inhaling takes him longer than normal. He could explode into a thousand pieces.

“It doesn't matter what I would do, I'm not the Captain, am I? And I know nothing about leading people. In fact, I'm underqualified in the middle of outer space... you said it. I know what everyone on this ship thinks of me.”

“Anya...” Curly drops his eyebrows. He meets her gaze, but Anya ignores him. She waves her hands. Her legs. She seems to be itching for the chance to get out of there. But where to, if there's nowhere to run?

“A nurse who failed eight times to get into medical school. A cheap copy of a psychology major. I know that very well, Captain. You know what else I know? That there's nothing I can do against this company! Pony Express will be gone by the time we get home! And even if I did, even if it was there when we got back... What good will the report do? They're just going to dock my salary, and if the salary is already crap... as if I wanted that guy to sneak into my room to... to...”

How can she think that way about herself?
Hell, what does med school matter? Curly's seen it firsthand. He knows the passion she has for learning. The interest in every little thing. And even if she failed med school over and over again, that doesn't mean anything about her as... Anya. No.

She's a good advisor. A good friend. She's sweet and caring and honest. She genuinely cares about him. By extension, she genuinely cares about (almost) everyone aboard the Tulpar. She would make fantastic medical personnel on Earth. But she's there because she's had bad luck. Bad luck doesn't qualify you.

Also... she's kind to everyone, but who's looking after her? There's no one to perform psychological tests on her. There's no one on board to treat her wounds. She's trapped inside a monolith with no one to help her. To assist her. No one but him, on the scale of powers.

And he hasn't been able to lend her a helping hand.

“Anya, listen to me...”

“NO. You” she points at him with her index finger, then brings her thumb to her chest “listen to me. You've talked enough. I know you can't kill him. You're not going to lock him up anywhere. You're not going to give me anything to defend myself with, either. We've got eight months left on this journey. You told me that yourself, a few days ago. Eight months. The only thing I'd like is to be able to travel as safely as possible for the remaining eight months. That's all I care about. I won't have a life when I get home, so... I'd love to keep the problems to a minimum. You told me you'd help me, and now you're here giving me the eyes of a kicked dog trying to make me put myself in your shoes. There's nothing you can do for me. I'm screwed and I'm very clear about that. Don't make things worse for me, wanting to put yourself in the role of... that I have no idea how difficult your life is. Not now, God” and she covers her face with both hands, turning her back on him “just go, Curly. Get out of here. Leave me alone. Please, leave me alone.”

“Anya...” he takes a step towards her, but she doesn't seem to like the gesture at all.

“LEAVE ME ALONE!”

Grant raises his eyebrows. His hand remains, static, superimposed in the void.
But he can't just leave her alone. He has to help her. He has to... explain. He didn't just listen to Jimmy's words. How can she think something like that?

«And how can she not? A month ago, when she told you what happened, you took the same stance. It's too late to make arrangements. You could make an alphabetical list of all the ideas you've had about what to do with Jimmy. Kill him, beat him up, drug him to sleep, lock him in a capsule. Hell, at this point you only need to add the option of lobotomizing your best friend. But it doesn't matter if you do it or not, do you know why? Because any option you would have taken, no matter how bad the consequences were, for her... it would have been enough. You would have proven your worth. You would have shown her that you are capable of taking care of the shit that rots under your nose, instead of looking the other way.»

He needs to... make her listen to him.

«Of course. Hold Anya by force, after she told you no. Let's see how well it works out for you.»

Curly drops his hand. He no longer feels the agonizing beeping that attacked him a while before, when he left the medical room after learning that Anya had just told Jimmy the truth about her pregnancy.

No. Now everything is... silent, as if an entity had taken charge of the rattles of the machinery. As if the Tulpar, all of it, was holding its breath, attentive to its next move. A beast of metal and fuel, crouching. It has all the time in the world... but, sooner rather than later, it's going to jump.

Grant doesn't suspect how much.

He goes down the stairs towards the cockpit, now two at a time. Lighter on his legs. Not much lighter on his chest. He has to talk to Jimmy as soon as possible, and make things clear to him. Not a talk, but an intervention. He can't make him angry either, with eight months to go before returning home. Good heavens... if all goes well, he'll never get on a spaceship again in his entire life.

He takes three steps away from the end of the stairs...when everything around him goes dark.

It's sudden. So sudden, that Grant barely realizes what's happening when the first jolt sends him sprawling to the ground, letting out a cry more of surprise than pain. All the regular lights had gone out, turning on the flashing red emergency lights. The crash-imminent alarm went off. He can recognize the sound of each different type of alarm, and the numbers of the most common errors on the part of the autopilot. That sound was the worst of all, since it was a mix. One of his instructors used to call that siren "Gabriel's trumpet", the last thing you hear before doomsday looms over you.

Not only was the autopilot failing, but they were headed straight for their doom.

The walls, floor, and ceiling shake violently. He crawls a few inches before he is able to stand up, letting out a cough and running, almost head first, until he is able to stand upright.
With all the regular lights off and the red lights flickering heavily in the darkness, he feels like he is plunging down a staircase to hell as he runs to the cockpit.

“Jimmy!” The hallway grows darker and darker. The screens in the cockpit flash red. Bold black letters. A repeated sentence.

BRACE FOR IMPACT

BRACE FOR IMPACT

BRACE FOR IMPACT

WARNING

BRACE FOR IMPACT

BRACE FOR IMPACT

BRACE FOR IMPACT

Jimmy sits there. His head in his hands. A first impulse makes Curly want to grab him by the arms and lift him into the air. He could, but he doesn't. He can't. The world is about to end.

“Jim, tell me you didn't do it,” the blond's voice breaks into a thousand pieces, barely audible beneath the roar of the alarms. He grabs him by the arms, but the brown-haired man never takes his hands off his head. “I should have... I didn't... What the hell did you do!?”

But Jimmy never looks up from the ground. He never takes his hands off his head. Grant runs and almost trips over his own feet as he dives into the cockpit, flooded by the red lights... and the crash.

Curly holds on with both hands to the controls of his chair, the left one, while an expansion of heat completely burns the fabric of the arms of his uniform, and all the hair on his face. He screams…but his hands clench tightly against the wheel, he gasps and pulls hard to the right. He pulls, and pulls, and pulls. They won't be able to avoid all the fragments but…

«Don't let them die, Captain.»

“CURLY!” Jimmy's scream is barely drowned out by the roar of the fire that takes over the cockpit from above. A tongue that descends with force and looms over them. The blond feels the burning of the fire on his flesh and chest but, when Jimmy tries to grab him and pull him away from the controls, Grant pushes him back hard, away from the flames. The brown-haired man falls backwards and Curly closes the door, returning at full speed to the controls.

The roar of the alarm is louder now, and the fire takes over the entire cabin.

Curly was able to see the first spark, a failure of the dashboard that was possible to monitor as long as the steering commands were not overly demanded. The temperature gauges were shaking back and forth, an overheating warning so severe that the scent of burning rubber was the last of the memories his nose could have given him.
The material of the rudder was still holding together as Curly clung to it. Each metal plate was heating up until it glowed an unrepeatable shade of red, and all around him, bright yellow tongues fought to take him from this plane.

Oxygen is one of the fastest burning gases, yet the advance of the fire felt like meeting the presence of a furious deity, some kind of judge at the gates of hell who would make him pay for every one of his sins.

The screens were torn.

It was as if millions of invisible blades were slicing through his skin, eager, desperate to reach the bone. Grant screams, his arms shaking, but he doesn't take his hands off the rudder, yanking hard to the right and then up.

A more modern ship would have magnetic mechanisms designed to repel the course of a body containing a percentage of its mass and weight, but the Tulpar was not designed to be manned automatically: all its mechanisms are manual. The autopilot was installed after the fact, by force.

Each command has it engraved in its brain with such precision that even when the engine covers are consumed, Curly can see the manual internal cooling mechanism. A mechanism that can only be used once, and from which no damage can be recovered, isolating the passage of fire and stopping the heating of the rest of the systems.

If the material degrades enough, there is no way to isolate them again. If the pressure inside changed in the slightest, if the joints collapsed due to an uncontrollable thermal fluctuation, the Tulpar would end up being nothing more than a crushed beer can in the middle of the vacuum.

He clenched his jaw, as he felt that he still had it. Soon, his face disappeared. The flesh of his cheeks and lips filled with an incomparable white, his arms trembled, but he did not take his hands off the helm as he felt how the flesh stuck to a red-hot iron handle.

He never needed the helm to his right to move. His chair was the important one. His.

Now he sees it. Now he…

“What an idiot I was, James!” he screams. Tears evaporate from his eyes, gritting his teeth. The fabric melts off his legs, his hair falls out. Another explosion inflates his left with synthetic foam, and he feels the flesh of his leg being consumed. He cries, and pushes all the strength he has left forward, screaming like a newborn baby. “She was right, now I see it! Now I see you!” the surroundings of his eyes darken little by little. That was it. He no longer feels the rudder between his fingers. He has no fingers to hold on to it with. He no longer feels his legs either, he is only aware of a creaking, of an incredibly more fragile material. He can smell his own body cooking: water, flesh, hair, everything coming to him. He has never felt so alive. The cleansing with fire that would take place at the end of time “I SHOULD HAVE KILLED YOU WHEN I HAD THE CHANCE!”

Maybe that has always been the only way out for him, the only avenue of vindication. Death.

A furious beep.
And only then, silence.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

There is a calendar on the furniture in the break room. When he carefully opens the door, it is the first thing the light from the hallway illuminates. DECEMBER, 1966. That particular day, the thirteenth, marked with a red marker. Grant doesn't notice it at first, letting go of the doorknob. He reaches out with his left hand and turns on the light…

“SURPRISE!”

The blond lets out a scream, bringing his right hand to his chest. In the small break room at Pony Express headquarters, the table is surrounded by five people. Evelynn, from accounting. Alexander, who used to be his co-captain before he was placed as a consultant. Elliot, a fellow pilot in charge of shorter distance trips. Miguel, a mechanical consultant. And his best friend, Jimmy. They inflated balloons and placed streamers of various colors between the window and on the furniture, as well as a ribbon with the letters forming a huge HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

“What is this?” The blond smiled from ear to ear, rubbing his chest, now with more curiosity than fear. They all wore their cone-shaped birthday hats.

“And what is it going to be? An intervention?” Jimmy leans forward slightly, sitting at the table, but he smiles.

“Happy birthday, Curly!” Alex and the other four clap and whistle, as if the blond has just returned from a successful mission. But he barely wrinkles his nose, looking back at the calendar.

“It's true...”

“Did you forget your own birthday?” the only woman in the group crosses her arms, leaning forward slightly “Read the warning signs!”

“Ugh, let's not talk about that now” Miguel points with his hand to the cabinet under the calendar, with several bags and packages “Your gifts! Open them now if you want.”

“No, no! Open them when you get home” Elliot cuts them off, drawing a cross with both arms for a second “I'm sure my gift is rubbish compared to the rest.”

“Don't say that...I appreciate all this very much, really” Curly enters, closing the door behind him and sighing carefully “although...I don't know if it's allowed to do this during work hours.”

“The supervisor left two hours ago, Curly. Who cares?” Jimmy doesn't erase his smile, waving his hands gracefully over the table “look at the crap we made you.”

“Don't call it crap” Eve scolds him, but the brunette rolls his eyes for a second.

“Be logical, accountant. This must taste like horse shit.”

In the center of the table there is a pink cake. It looks as plastic and colored with artificial components as it can be. So much so that it seems straight out of the props of a children's cartoon. But Curly smiles, leaving a hand on one of Jimmy's shoulders.

“Thank you...” and then he raises his gaze, contemplating the other four “thank you all, really. You didn't have to do this.”

“Of course! You're our friend” Miguel approaches the kitchenette in the break room, taking a knife and thin, disposable plastic plates “come on, let's feast...”

Evelynn places Curly's own birthday hat on him, and everyone is soon chatting. The mechanic cuts a slice of cake for each of them, and plates are passed around. Grant finds it easy to get lost in the bubble of other people's conversations... until his gaze falls on the face of his best friend, both of them with spoons in hand. Jimmy holds his gaze, eventually clicking his tongue.

“We should have some,” the blond smiles, and his best friend rolls his eyes.

“Why? It's mediocre at best. Obviously.”

“Sometimes you can only have subpar stuff. That's what makes really good stuff... well, good, right?”

“Why bother?”

“Hey...” The smile on the blond's lips turns tired then, lowering the volume of his voice. His gaze wanders, beyond the break room. It covers the entire building. He looks down at it all ruefully, as if his eye were the moon that night. “…we all tried to escape. It didn’t work for any of us. I’ve thought many times, “Is this what peace feels like?” “And is it good enough?”” He waits for a classic Jimmy comment, cutting him off in the middle of his rant. The comment, for better or worse, never comes. “…if I’m being honest, it’s certainly not the best. So all I can do is try to make my life one that I don’t have to run away from all the time. Sometimes I’ll get promoted…buy a house, fall in love. But other times I’ll just eat a fucking horrible cake with my friend. Right now, that sounds pretty brilliant, doesn’t it?”

Jimmy doesn’t respond, but after a few seconds, he takes his hands off the table and leans slightly toward him. Toward his face. Curly stands rooted to the spot, frozen, as if someone had suddenly shot him in the head. A sniper with little respect for other people’s birthdays. The brown-haired man smells of cigarette smoke and aftershave…and he hears him inhale sharply.

“Curly, are you drunk?”

“Not yet,” and he moves his head slightly forward. “Will you do the honors, Jimmy?”

The brown-haired man mutters something under his breath, but obeys. The two take their respective plates and a bit of cake. He brings it to his mouth and savors it…before his eyes fill with tears, forcing himself to swallow. This gesture does not go unnoticed by anyone, and the four burst into laughter, all with pink frosting stains on the corners of their lips.

Smiling, Curly turns to look at Jimmy who, like him, looks like he just took a considerable bite out of a decomposing corpse.

“This tastes like shit,” the brown-haired man spits, and Curly smiles from ear to ear.

“You were right.”

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

AUGUST 20, 1969

THE PRESENT

He's just coming to from the anesthesia. His whole face hurts, but…it's a different kind of pain. The morphine has gone back into place, he can see the new IV tube attached to his arm through the hole left in the bandages for his eye. Slowly he starts to focus, and then, for the first time in almost a year…he does it.

Blinks.

His chest heaves, almost as if he were the victim of a heart attack. He does it again: he blinks. And blinks and again. Blinks. Blinks. The tug on his skin is somewhat annoying, but it's here... his world darkens at will, and he feels something else: tears. They are few, but they flow again.
He blinks. It's a sensation he'll never forget.

“Everything went as well as it could, Mr. Curly. I already spoke to the surgeon...” Sandra, the family doctor who has been with him and Anya since they were admitted, is in charge of adjusting his bandages better. He feels a gentle pressure and lets out a moan of pain, but feeling that pain also encourages him to the point of satiety. The day before, after noon, he had his first reconstructive surgery. Now he has a nose, a new eyelid, thin cheeks, a jaw, and lips. Thin, very thin... but he has them. He feels them, barely moving his mouth and pressing that skin together. Teeth covered, mouth completely closed.

He doesn't think anyone can understand how he feels. No one who hasn't been through a situation like his.

“Does your eyelid feel a little heavy? Like it's a little... sticky?” Curly nods carefully, and the doctor nods too “it's normal. Like every muscle in the body, it will have to be trained again. Once the healing stage is over, we can move on to the more complex reconstruction surgeries. You still have a lot of time left in the hospital, Mr. Curly. But it's... a hopeful outlook” the blond nods again.

«But that's not your nose. It's not your eyelid. Those are not your lips, nor the skin you were born with. With each passing day, after each reconstruction, you'll be more and more like a rag doll, made from more than one scrap. The piece of a shirt. The stuffing of another coat.»

A man of Theseus.

“I'll let you rest... it's going to bother you for several days, okay? Maybe it even stings, but… it’s normal, try not to…” Sandra raises her eyebrows and stops mid-sentence. Grant doesn’t need to be a genius to know that she was about to tell him “Try not to scratch”, a very complicated task for him…still “…anyway. Rest. The nurse will wake you up to bring you lunch. With your lips covered by surgery, you will need help to eat, okay?” Curly nods one last time and, with an animated smile, Sandra leaves.

And Curly drops his gaze on the television.

They focused on a live reporter, talking about the activities organized by a recreational center for the last weeks of those summer vacations. He sees children running through inflatable games filled with water, as well as mothers and fathers taking care of them, and one or another grandparent. When they return to the news set, next to the reporter on the table an image opens with a logo that Curly has seen to the point of disgust.

The Pony Express logo.
Grant shifts, forcing himself to pay attention.

“…as we told you last week, the Pony Express scandal has escalated and, despite multiple attempts by the company’s lawyers to get the judge to dismiss the case, the relevance of the event has escalated to the Supreme Court of Justice. There have been few cases of private relevance that escalate to such a point, but the Tulpar ship declared lost has raised a question of national importance. For more than two decades now, the laws passed on the treatment of human personnel in outer space have been placed under the eye of public criticism, and recent events have been the straw that broke the camel’s back for more than one member of the committees in charge of fighting for the rights of space workers. As you well know, of the three survivors of the Tulpar ship, the last cargo ship under the Pony Express brand, two are still hospitalized with confidential evaluations. The trial will have to wait until both parties are discharged. To discuss the matter, we invited a lawyer to the set today, Mr…”

The voice of the news anchor fades over his head. Curly pushes down on his left stump hard, pressing the button to call the nurses' room. It doesn't take long before one of them appears in a hurry. Of course. He knows that they live waiting for the poor ex-Captain to suffer a failure of…any organ, from the brain to the bladder.

“What do you need, Mr. Curly?” The nurse approaches him carefully, and the man uses his barely recovered ability to blink in the direction of the table, where the brain wave transmitter awaits. The woman nods and carefully removes the bandages around his head, leaving a space for the electrode. She presses it and turns on the machine, managing to get the words out quickly.

“WATCH-THE-TV” she obeys, turning to watch the interview that was taking place with the lawyer “THE-TRIAL-AGAINST-PONY-EXPRESS-WILL-GO-TO-THE-SUPREME-COURT.”

“What a miracle” he sees her raise her eyebrows. Surely more than one of the health personnel feared that all that scandal would come to nothing. It wouldn't be the first time.

“PLEASE-TELL-ANYA” if he could smile at that moment, he would “SHE'S-IN-ROOM-TWENTY.”

“Miss Musume? Of course” the smile that he can't muster is sketched by her, nodding once “I'm sure she'll be very happy to know that outside of this hospital things are moving in a favorable direction. Do you need anything else?”

“NO.”

He stays very still, while the nurse removes the electrode from his head and turns off the transmitter, leaving. Curly drops his gaze to the TV screen again, trying to pay attention to the interview.

He doesn't know much about law, but what he does know is that the sentences handed down by the Supreme Court can't be appealed. Which is good, in part... if things take a positive turn for them. But if they end up deciding something false... for all parties... then they wouldn't be able to seek justice again. He tries to settle down better on the mattress... but the nurse returns in record time, somewhat agitated.

“Mr. Curly, I'm very sorry, but your request will have to wait a while.” The former captain blinks in her direction, and the nurse takes a little more air before continuing to speak. “Miss Musume has just gone into labor.”

Chapter Text

Antigone is the little one sitting over there, saying nothing, staring intently at nothing. She’s thinking. She’s thinking that she is about to become Antigone, that she’s about to emerge from the dark, skinny, brooding girl that no one in her family ever took seriously and stand up alone to face the world, to face Creon, her uncle, who is the king. She’s thinking that she’s going to die, that she’s young, and that she too would’ve wanted very much to live. But there’s nothing she can do. Her name is Antigone, and she will have to play her part through to the end.

ANTIGONE: I spit on your happiness! I spit on your idea of life, that life must go on, come what may! You, with your promise of a humdrum happiness – provided a person doesn’t ask too much of life. I want everything of life, I do, and I want it now! I want it total, complete: otherwise I reject it! I will not be moderate, I will not be satisfied with the bit of cake you offer me if I promise to be a good little girl.

—Sophocles’ “Antigone”

———

9̶̧͇̱͔̌̆ ̷̧̫̹͉̠͎̗͚̇̑͌͊͆̽̚Ḿ̴̢͇͎̐̾̒͊͋̇O̴̘̬͋́̆͒̽͜N̸̡͙̝̗̙̭͉̓͐̔̓͜Ṱ̴̐̕Ȟ̷̨͕̀͗S̷͖̭͂͒́̏͆̈̔͆͜ ̸̻̰̬̗̙͚͓͗͠ͅB̴̢̧̬̦̣̌̓͑͐͋̄É̷͚̳̱͇͎́̄̎̀͋F̶̨̥̲͖̬̐̌͑̉͜͝Ơ̶̢̢̡̛̜̝̪͚̣͊̀̓̈́̚Ŕ̸̛͕̼̗̫͔͎̤̅̒͋̕͘E̸̯̹̻̲͆̈́ ̸̛̣̂͂̃̔͆̄T̵̪̖̒͂͗͂́̚H̷̘̩̩̼̣̺͂̍̓̐̇͠ͅȨ̵͍̪̫͍̙̩̏̆͆̑̾ ̷̡̛̱̟͉͇͇̤̓́̃͐͌̌͝M̷̡̛̥̯̙͐̔͘͝ͅI̸̤̮̟͖̐̃̃́R̷̢̥̆̔̀ͅĄ̸̧̝̻͚̙̄͒̊̄̈̽̎͘C̵̹͚̈́̾͌͜Ḽ̸̗͑̂̔̏́́̕͝Ȩ̸̬̣͇̪͔̳̭́̊͒̓

A sort of deep beeping continues in her ears, and her tongue dries out like a piece of cardboard left under the harsh sunlight. She gathers saliva and licks her lips every two seconds, automatically, to the point where she doesn't stop to think too much about it.

It's the sweetener. That's her self-diagnosis. Her poor liver must be working overtime, just like her. All because of the mocktail. It wasn't even that good. It tasted like water with gallons of sugar and a strange bitter aftertaste.

She feels a pang in her stomach. Acidity, for sure. She won't consume that disgusting sweetener again...now more than ever she can't afford discounts on her final check...and the severance pay, which will surely be little more than a pittance.

Anya inhales carefully, and exhales even more slowly. Her head is heavy, her whole body feels alien, scratching at her chest above the fabric of her shirt. She doesn't have any pajamas, just old, baggy shirts and underwear.
She used to be heavier, but the months of stress from medical school, job hunting, and poor nutrition aboard the Tulpar have caused her to lose weight considerably. It was something she once sought, but now? It's not very encouraging to see how baggy shirts she wore well a year ago are now.

She stretches her arms out on either side of her torso, and it's as if they slowly sink, inch by inch, into the mattress. She lies back, looking left, then right, toward the door, and then looks up again, letting out a snort...and her arms and legs sink again.

Her room isn't too big, though none of them are. Pony Express allowed a limit on the number of personal items one could bring on board, including the basics. She didn't want to sacrifice an extra change of clothes for the sake of decoration, so she did what she could.

She has two sets of uniforms, both hanging on hangers in the closet built into the wall. On the lower shelves, rows of sweaters, long-sleeved T-shirts, and her nightshirts. Underwear is still in a bag in her suitcase, along with important documents. A pair of safety boots, a pair of slippers, and two pairs of flip-flops. Soap, shampoo, and conditioner line up next to the T-shirts.

Her reading glasses rest on the nightstand beside her, with her contact lenses in their case to one side. She took one of the books from the infirmary, ready to continue reading before going to sleep, but the nerves of the news are such...

And the overwhelming tiredness.

She doesn't usually make use of leisure time. The time allowed for it was part of the five daily hours granted. She prefers to sleep those five hours than play board games or read fiction novels. Surrounded by four other crew members with wildly disrupted sleep schedules, she feels lucky to have made that decision from the start. Although it didn't matter if she had slept five, eight or twelve hours straight: the news of her dismissal hit her with the same force, making all her future plans explode in her face.

And now? She has nothing...or almost nothing.

Her eyelids fall like a pair of iron curtains, though sleep takes a little longer to arrive. It's like her brain falls into a blender. Painless, but a blender nonetheless. Thoughts float out of her skull, and all she has left to hold on to are loose ideas and a vigorous hope that, once a strong fire, is now the weak flame of an almost totally melted candle, about to go out completely.

Perhaps her friends understand her. It's not the first time she's lost a job, but she was sure that this would be a permanent one. So much so that Lily and Soledad on Earth, her two best friends, threw her a warm party to welcome her after Pony Express called announcing her acceptance into the medical training course. Simple, basic. Pathetic. But worse than that was nothing.
She kept so much hope for the future inside her that now she's not sure which path to take...and she doesn't want to go back home to her mother. She couldn't bear that look of poorly concealed disappointment in her eyes again.

Hers has been a life of sacrifice. Of loss. She lost her husband, and Anya can't even mourn the death of her father, being born months after his passing. She's only known him through her mother's stories and the photographs brought back on the trip from Europe.
Anya’s father was identical to her.
In fact, if someone told her that she doesn't have her mother's genes and that she was born from her father by mitosis, she might believe it. The thought always struck her as somewhat ironic: you carry a life in your womb for nine months, with all that implies... and, at birth, your baby has the nerve to look identical to its father. Terrifying.

The thought makes her snort a laugh, even with her eyes closed.

Anya always had high grades in school. She always had something to say about the topics given in class, to the point where her classmates got to bother her quite a bit. But she was also relatively good at making friends, so she always had a group of three to five girls to give her some moral support.
Her elementary school teachers weren't shy at talking about how gifted she was, and how far she would go. It was easy for Anya to believe it... until she got to high school, surrounded by a hundred thousand other students with the same myth brought from home. All so that, in the end, her overinflated gifts would be of no use to her.

Eight is usually considered a lucky number. At least she was convinced of that, when she went to try to pass the medical school exam for the eighth time. She had already had seven "This time is the charm” in her head, and she was beginning to believe that it was time to throw in the towel, or at least go to the entrance exam without any expectations.

What's wrong with her?

She didn't mind reading. Her favorite subjects in high school involved long days of study and many hours of reading. She came to have a favorite place to study in her school library. So much so that if one day that chair was occupied and she had to take another, Anya felt like she was studying worse than if she were studying in her spot.

She spent hours sitting at her desk, reviewing the same notes and textbooks over and over again. It was day, afternoon or night. She was careful not to lose hours of sleep; a tired brain would only lower the quality of her study, and all the hours she spent awake would have been worth absolutely nothing in the end.
While she prepared for tests, she learned to take her breaks. She went jogging in the mornings. She watched the most cliché and funny reality shows on television that were broadcast at the time. She gorged herself on junk food and then, cynically, reviewed her notes on adipose tissue. She spent more time studying than doing anything else...but she failed the entrance exam, again and again.

The only thing she passed was the reading comprehension test. Damn, is there any student currently in medical school who was on the verge of failing the entrance exam because of the reading comprehension test? If she found out, Anya would tear her hair out one by one. Such an opportunity... lost because of the simplest of tests...

Soledad has told her many times that, perhaps, she should try another career. "You're running out of time" she told her, taking Anya by the hands and looking at her with a small, kind smile, as if she weren't saying something that sounded like a death threat. The woman knows that you can study at any age... but people older than her in college usually have several things: a stable job, a house, a partner, a family, things that Anya doesn't have. They took a step and then they could afford to want to go back to school.

Pushed aside, closer to turning thirty than eighteen again, innocent and fresh out of high school and thrown headlong into the adult world, Anya knows Soledad was right: she's running out of time.

And her thoughts always return to her mother.

Studying medicine has always been a thought flickering inside her brain. It seemed...it seems the most logical thing to do. A good job so she can give back to her mother everything she's given her. All the sacrifices she's made.

For as long as she can remember, they've always lived in the same small house, and although Anya has never had to suffer from hunger, cold, or untreatable illnesses, they never had money to spare. She remembers staying up late more than one night, reading a novel or listening to music, and hearing her mom at the front door just returning from a second shift at work. Instantly, she'd stop whatever she was doing and roll over on the mattress, pretending to be asleep. Not because her mother would punish her if she saw her awake, but because she was overwhelmed by a feeling that was already very familiar.

Guilt.

The woman who gave her life, the one in charge of making sure that she didn't lack anything, couldn't afford her luxuries. She couldn't stay up late reading any stupid novel, or listening to music. She didn't have any hobbies, because "Hobbies are for people who can afford them." And although she didn't blame Anya for any of hers, the black-haired remembers feeling that look on her face all the time. The poorly concealed disdain, or the wait... for some reciprocity. Being younger, she was only able to return the effort her mother invested in her by being the most exemplary daughter she could be: good grades in school, well behaved, helpful. An impeccable repertoire. But she could only stand and watch her dreams of adulthood burst like balloons, and with each explosion, her mother seemed more disappointed in her than Anya was in herself.

Couldn't her mother see how desperate she felt? And it was getting worse with each passing year.

A turning point was during Christmas dinner after failing the entrance exam for the fourth time. They had no family but each other, and considering that her two friends were going to spend Christmas with their respective families, Anya was going home.

Both Soledad and Lily offered Anya to go with them and join their family celebrations, but Anya would feel deeply guilty about leaving her mother alone during the holidays, unless it was for a major reason.
So there they were, sitting at a table facing each other, eating and with a movie of the season on the TV, a few presents under the tree waiting to be opened the next morning. Anya remembers having her eyes swollen from crying so much when telling her mother what had happened. And the woman, on the other side of the table, was only in charge of not making too much noise when chewing.

“Mom” Anya had taken that moment to speak, but her voice was nothing more than a whisper “... sometimes I think that, perhaps, I should try to get into another school.”

“I told you, try for the entrance exams to nursing school and then try for medical school... and if you fail those exams too, I don't know what will become of you, my love.”

“No, I'm talking about... studying something else. Still within medicine, but... psychology, maybe, or...”

“Psychology?” Her mother put down the fork at that moment, looking at Anya and repeating that word as if the brunette had invented it from one minute to the next. She smiles, but Anya notices that it's not a very cheerful smile “that's a waste of your potential.”

“I-I don't know, mom, I...”

“Besides, it’s a deplorable job. Tell me, have you forgotten that you were always talking about your dreams of being a doctor since elementary school? The degree lasts six years. I remember you telling me "Mom, I'm going to finish my degree when I'm twenty-four and buy you a house." You're rapidly approaching twenty-four, Anya... and I have to keep sending you money.”

“I do the best I can, mom” her voice coming out in dribs and drabs. It's not a pleasant memory. Why does she have to go back to it now? “I swear. Studying for the entrance exam is all I do. I review my notes at work. I barely take breaks beyond sleeping hours. But it seems that at the end of the day, no matter how hard I try... maybe I'm not made for this, Mom. Wouldn't you rather I could get into another school? One that was a little... better for me?”

Anya looked up, trying to crack a smile. And she succeeded, but her mother's face that night was far from offering a smile back.
Leaning against the back of the chair, her mother just looked into her eyes. She didn't make any gestures. She didn't smile. She didn't grimace. Her eyes didn't move, inert as a pair of obsidian stones. She had merely raised her eyebrows, and at the gesture, the smile on Anya's lips slowly faded, leaving nothing but the ghost of what was once the hope of maternal understanding.

What would have to happen to her for her mother to give her sweet words? For her to treat her with a little more affection? She remembers thinking, that night, at that moment, that if she ever became a mother, she would never allow that kind of disdain to reach a child of hers.

What she could learn from her mother was everything she shouldn't do.

“Anya, you know I love you. You are my whole life...” "But" Anya thinks, and the word soon comes “but I worry about you. I worry a lot about you. I see you far away...without a place of your own, with unstable jobs, wasting all your skills...and time passes, my princess. You can't sit at a table and cry. Do you think that will help you? I know you think you're trying hard... but it can't be true... Not when your effort isn't bearing any fruit. You'll have to try a little harder” and she remembers that her mother smiled at her. An almost plastic smile, like the one a lipstick model is forced to sketch “Haven't you thought about where you'll go back to if I suddenly die? I never finished paying off this house, and I highly doubt you can, so the bank will take it. You're approaching thirty and you don't have any place to call home. I've been worrying about you, Anya. Ever since you were born. And you're already an adult. It doesn't seem fair to me.”

Anya turns slowly on the barely comfortable mattress that Pony Express offers them, inhaling some of the lavender scent that still wafts from her clean sheets.

Her room in the apartment she shares with Lily and Dolores must remain just as she left it. Spotless. She still remembers where she put everything. It was a small apartment, but it was a place to return to. Her mom made a mistake. She does have a place to call home...

«Who am I kidding? That apartment is not a place to call home. Maybe for Lily and Dolores it is, but not for me. In that place, I am an intruder. More than once I have not been able to pay my share of the rent, and I do everything in my power to make up for that. I clean. I do the shopping. I cook. I even learned to fix the most common plumbing and electrical problems. I know I am capable of learning quickly, but why do I fail at the only thing I really set out to do? They have forgiven me many times. This was the chance, and now I don't have it anymore. I lost it. What am I supposed to do now? What face will I have to put on when I go home and tell them this job is gone too? I'd feel better if they both lost a job even once...»

Not true. Despite the drowsiness, the guilt turns into an aggressive bone cancer at that moment. Of course she wouldn't feel better seeing one, or both of her best friends suffer like that! The helplessness. The despair. That absolute feeling of disorientation, like a newborn human baby thrown into the real world.

Of the animal kingdom, they have it the worst. The baby of a shark, of an eagle, of a gazelle, are born knowing by instinct what they have to do. The human baby spends years in the nest, ignorant, and even at twenty-five Anya still feels like she's five again, needing to use a little pink plastic stool to reach the sink and brush her teeth every morning. Just as ignorant as the first day. Just as lost as ever. A failure...and now she has nothing.

«That's not true. I have Curly.»

She turns over on the mattress again, a strange warmth prickling at her chest. Not uncomfortable at all. Not so much like a rash, but...like locking eyes with a handsome actor during a romance movie, or like when the protagonists finally confess their love for each other in a romance novel. She's not particularly a fan of them, but she's read a couple that are so well-written that she can't be so cynical. Now, though, she feels like an idiot.

She can't be in love with her Captain. Firstly, because she's convinced it's not mutual, and secondly, because she doesn't think her morale could recover from a rejection anytime soon, and she needs all the morale she can muster to face what awaits her at home.

She might be able to wrest a letter of recommendation from some sweet-natured member of HR (Sweet? HR? Antonyms), but she doesn't think it's worth much referring to a one-year job for a company that will be shoving fresh dirt on it’s coffin by the time they get to Earth. There has to be more to her than crawling around for a piece of paper. Always damned for a piece of paper…

«Curly said he'll help me with medical school. He even invited me to go skiing with him and his cousins. Good heavens, how am I supposed to fit in with all these rich people? I'll stick out like a scarecrow in a cornfield. But...if they're as sweet as Grant, maybe I can feel a little more at ease. Maybe I'll carve out a little space for myself in his world...of course, I wouldn't be "carving out a space" if he opened the door for me.»

With Curly's help, everything would be better. She'd feel more pressure, of course, as an athlete with her first sponsorship. How many more times could she fail before Grant decided that helping her get into medical school was as fruitful as taking bills and throwing them into the crackling flames of a fireplace?

«He's so nice that if I talk to him about how I feel, he'll surely be able to allay all my fears. But there's something inside his head that doesn't quite fit... What he offers to the world is the bright, airy, well-decorated foyer of a Victorian mansion. Beautiful. Elegant. Expensive. I walk into that place and feel perfectly comfortable... until I notice something. A dark door. It stands out from all the other gilded doors.
This door is black wood, somewhat chipped. It has marks and a slightly rusty handle, with a heavy padlock holding it shut. It's obviously an impenetrable lock: the only way to open that door is with a key, and that key is hanging around my host's neck. Why would I want it? Grant has welcomed me in his finest finery... but even when we're having a nice time, he keeps glancing at that dark door.
Eventually, I do the same. I ask him what's behind that door, and he always tells me the same thing, with a bright-toothed smile: "Nothing."»

All the variables of that "Nothing" bombard Anya at that moment: "No," "Nothing," "Nothing's wrong," "I'm fine," "I'm fine, just a little tired," "We've talked about it," "Don't worry about me, I'm the one who should worry about you four," "I'm your Captain," "Everything's fine," "I'm really tired," "Everything will be fine when we get back to Earth and I can sleep for ten hours straight," "Relax, Anya," "Don't worry, Anya," "Don't worry about me, Anya," and "I'm the one who worries about you."

The few glimpses she's caught into her superior's mind are enough for her to know that it's not fatigue, and in fact, Anya is almost glad that he's lost his job, too. Doesn't that mean that he can finally be free of the life that causes him so much bitterness? It is, perhaps, a rather abrupt method of leaving an unpleasant life, but she has read that, in some cases, abrupt exposure therapy has beneficial results.

Perhaps it is for him.

«And he will take me skiing in Canada. And we can drink hot chocolate. Have a moment of happiness after so many terrible months.»

With her eyes closed, she can imagine it in great detail, like a blockbuster movie: a nice cabin in a ski area. In the distance, the beautiful blue and gray peaks of the mountains, crowned with tons of snow. The path to the front door is clear, and the interior is warm. Anya sees herself surrounded by people she doesn't know, men and women a little older or a little younger than Curly. In most families, they all have children not too many years apart. She doesn't know any of their faces, but she imagines them all blond and blue-eyed. Some a little brunette. A few black-haired cousins.
The only face she recognizes is Grant's, sitting near an open window.
When night falls, they make hot chocolate. She has a mug in her right hand, and she pushes her mug from her left hand toward him. Curly takes it, smiles at her, and Anya leans her head out the window under the pretext of studying the northern lights. If she holds his gaze any longer, she might faint.
The lights dance on the black slate of the night sky, and as she turns her head, the blond man shakes snowflakes off her head. They look like stars in her jet-black hair.
And what does she say to him?
I love you.
And what does he say to her?
I love you.

Anya lets out a laugh. Tired, but a laugh nonetheless. Even with her senses dulled by sleepiness, she can hear the soft echo of that laugh off the walls of her room, the smile frozen on her lips.

Until she feels the hand press against her mouth.

Her eyes snap open, inhaling sharply through her nose. Already accustomed to the darkness, it doesn't take much for her to be able to identify the darkest shadows. To her left is a long, blue emergency light, dim enough to allow her to sleep without problems, but giving her room to orient herself in case she has to run in an emergency evacuation. But where is she supposed to run to in that case? They travel through outer space. She has nowhere to run.

She remembers now. Cold sweat beads up her back. Her pupils dilate. She doesn't have to be a genius to discern the face that remains a meter or so away.

It was Jimmy.

She doesn't know what he's waiting for. Still, silent, with only that hand pressed against her mouth. Anya tries to move, to scream, but all she can do is exhale a kind of watery cry against the palm of his hand. Too weak and short. She only manages to make the man press his hand even harder against her mouth. Her eyes must be bulging, because he looks at her strangely when he drops his gaze on her face.

“Can't you move?” Jimmy whispers, and the whisper is enough fuel for her body to make a second attempt to repel him... without any success. Anya is only able to wiggle her fingers, and barely. Her knees shake and he snorts a laugh, then clicks his tongue. “I was a little afraid that I had gone too far, no... I did’nt plan it. I'm not good at planning. I was scared to death. I thought you were going to die of an overdose. It would be too obvious that it was me. We'd have to travel with a dead body on board. It's not pretty, Nurse. Don't worry. You'll get over it. I read it on the paper...the paper that explains the side effects. You might not remember anything tomorrow morning, it said that too. It'll be for the best, who would want to remember the night they found out they were going to be fired? And what a horrible birthday party...no. I know you think I'm stupid, Nurse. Maybe I am, yes...but not the kind of stupid you think I am. I'm taking responsibility right now, okay? I'll respect your work, like Curly says. How about that, Anya? Let's have a therapy session right now.”

«This can't be happening.»

Anya is aware of every corner of her body. Every particle of her being. At that moment, she is able to recognize, if she concentrates hard enough, all the fragments of her flesh and blood that were once pieces of stars, everything that was once part of the meteorite that crashed into Earth and the once famous star dust. But the atoms join together to form sand, a material that crumbles and crumbles as if it had no resistance, rotting little by little under the pressure. The nurse forces herself to swallow heavily and, when Jimmy squeezes the fabric of her old shirt and lifts it, her heart shatters in her chest.

«This can’t be happening.»

“This has nothing to do with you, Anya. No… look, I’ve traveled with women before. I’ve never had problems with any. But on Earth… a man is freer where he was born, isn’t he?” Jimmy’s fingers are like knives, and with each passing second, the tears gather more and more behind the woman’s eyes. Thick, they fall back, over her ears, and hit the pillow. She notices the tremble and hears another laugh. “Why are you crying? I haven’t done anything to you…we’re just talking. You talk to Curly for hours and you don’t start crying like this. No…Curly’s never made you cry. He’s too perfect to make a woman cry. He’s the type that cries. Have you ever seen him cry, Anya? Does he cry during your therapy sessions? Does he talk about how much he misses his dead daddy, or how his high school girlfriend dumped him all of a sudden? Do you want me to tell you a secret, Anya? A confession in confidence…therapist and patient. I doubt you’ll remember any of what I’m telling you tomorrow when you go out pretending to work. That girl dumped him because of me. It was the first time I did anything like that. She thought he did it. She was always afraid to report it…which was a good thing, in the end. And, finally, she killed herself. She was pathetic. They were doomed to fail anyway. Curly has a thing for pathetic women. Don't trust me too much though, ok? I'm the worst guy in the world.”

«This can't be happening.»

“...I've just taken care of him, all these years. He's soft. Too soft. He was raised in fucking cotton wool...his mother with her smiles and her nun's voice, and his father who was always far away but he knew he was there. Has he told you about himself? He doesn't have any siblings but an absurd amount of cousins. That house was full of people at Christmas. I saw him, I saw me and it was pathetic. Curly has always wanted me to believe that we are equal...he has always seen me as such. But it's not true. He sees it that way because he's a fucking idiot. He always needed to meet someone who could toughen his shell a little. I guess we were meant to be together. Yeah...one Christmas, his older uncles stayed for a few weeks and built him a tree house. We spent hours playing there...and I got jealous. He kept gloating in his fucking tree house. One day he told me he was going to sleep there, and I told him it would be dangerous. He didn't listen. I ran away from home that night and set the treehouse on fire with my mother's lighter. By the time I got back home, Curly's treehouse was burning so much it looked like a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean. A volcano erupting. I almost peed my pants...I thought what could happened if he didn't wake up in time. But he did. He only broke his arm when he jumped, but the treehouse burned to ashes. He told me about it and I said, "See, you should have listened to me." I've been telling him that over and over again...but he's been acting different for a few years now, and I don't recognize him anymore. Ever since he got promoted to Captain, of course. He's someone different. I don't recognize him. My best friend is dead.”

«This can't be happening. For God's sake. For God's sake.»

Anya, even in the midst of this sort of sinking in waters affected by God knows what medicine stolen from the medical room, makes a considerable effort to discern any trace of affectation in Jimmy.
He sounds tired, but that's normal: it's been a long and terrible day of work. He doesn't smell of alcohol, which they don't have on board. Nor does he look affected by the same medicine as her, which tells her that, even though he didn't stop to think about it enough to fear the possibility of killing her by overdose, his five senses aren't out of control. Not because of any medicine, at least. His mocktail was a non-alcoholic cocktail. There are no drugs running through his veins. Everything he does right now comes from a brain with no external artificial modifications. It's clean. Twisted. In a trance.
Crazy.

“But I don't expect you to understand. It has nothing to do with you. Curly's been like this for a while now, and I don't think he's going to be able to put his feet on the ground unless something terrible happens to him...yes, being fired might be that terrible thing, it might be...but he seems too happy. He sounds too calm, and I can't stand it. One time, like two or three years ago...we threw him a birthday party. I bought him a stupid present. I put on a stupid birthday hat. And we baked him a cake that tasted like shit. And yet, surrounded by fucking idiots who would go to all that trouble for him without expecting anything in return, I had to listen to him whine like a spoiled little child...someone who gets everything but always wants more. It's unbearable. I promise you it's unbearable. Hearing your lifelong friend treat you like...like you're a dead weight hanging off his shoulders. Something he's dying to push aside and run away without looking back. Leaving me behind, just like that, after all these years... it's not fair. No. He's the Captain of the Tulpar, Anya. Our superior, isn't he? And, as he's our superior, he's responsible for us. Everything that happens on this ship is his responsibility. Everything we do on this ship is his responsibility. And he'll have to answer for it when we get back to-”

“Jim.”

He must have been convinced that Anya wouldn't be able to make a sound all night, since the whisper the nurse exhales is enough for him to almost remove that hand from her exposed belly. She hears him gasp. In any other context it would have been funny, but Anya can barely focus her vision beyond the tears. She cries like a broken fountain. She feels like she's about to faint.

“I'm...just...like...you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When...we...get...back...home...I...won't...have...a...job...anymore” saying each word, even in a whisper, was a pain. She tried to lick her lips, but she could only move her tongue and stick it to the roof of her mouth for a fraction of a second “I...won't...have...anything...None...of...this...it's...my...fault. We...are...equal. It’s...” her voice stopped for a fraction of a second, drowned in tears “not...fair.”

Jimmy doesn't say anything. He stays so still that Anya actually gets excited about the idea that he was going to stop and leave. What would he do next, then? Would he be so cynical as to act like he hadn't come into her room during the night after spiking her mocktail to talk about trash and more trash while pushing any moral boundaries?
Her illusion, however, lasts less than her job. A tired, almost mocking smile stretches across the brunette's lips, before he clicks his tongue.

“That's my point, Anya. We're in the same boat. We're equals. Who's going to understand me on this ship, more than you? You're here to give us advice. To make those ridiculous, empty assessments. To give us moral support, aren't you? Like a very wilted version of a cheerleader. There's no other place on the entire ship where I'd rather be than here, with you” she can almost hear his smile stretching.

And the pressure of that hand on the side of her body, when he climbs onto the mattress. The creaking of the support is heard like a scream. His voice thunders, as if he were shouting those words inside a cave.

“Don't worry...”

IT'S NOT GONNA HURT.

IT'S NOT GONNA HURT

IT'S GONNA HURT

IT'S GONNA HURT

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

WARNING

WARNING

WARNING

STOP TENSE UP!

WARNING

WARNING

WARNING

YOU'RE JUST MAKING IT HARDER FOR YOURSELF, ANYA!

WARNING

WARNING

WARNING

IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?

WARNING

WARNING

WARNING

“Okay, nurse, in that case...”

I HOPE THIS HURTS

Darkness closes in on her. She is nothing but a lifeless mass and her throat closes. She will die that night and her throat closes. There is nothing she can do and her throat closes. What was the last word she said? What will be on her epitaph? Will her body wash up on land? Will she be thrown into a shredder and her flesh used as fish bait? There are few fish left. The oceans have been polluted. The blue water has turned red and her eyes crack like they are made of glass. She can't see anything but the ceiling of her room. She will grow to hate the darkness. She was never afraid of it. She never needed to go to sleep with a light on even when she was a little girl. Her mom never told her stories about monsters. Anya always knew there was never any beast hiding under her bed, inside the closet or in the darkest corner of her room. There is nothing to fear. There never was anything to fear. You never go to sleep thinking about that kind of thing.

Anya will grow to hate the darkness and it hurts and it hurts and it hurts and it hurts ả̵͎ń̴͓͊d̵͚͕̂ ̵̲͆i̸̡͕̾͐t̶̻̗̓̉ ̷̨̓̿h̵̛͚ų̷̈́̑ŗ̷̋ţ̵͎̀́s̵̤̻̀̀ ̶͍͑͝ȁ̷̛͓͙n̴̗̠̍͗d̶̳͋̇ ̶̮̟͗̂i̵̯̓ṯ̷̐ ̸̝̝͋̊ḫ̸͖̎ų̵͊r̴̛͎͚t̴̙͉̿s̶͈̔̌ ̷͎̥̈a̶̢̱̾̏n̸̟̯̄d̴̯́ ̴͈̲͋ị̴̯́͝t̷͍̅ͅ ̸̺̞̿h̶̤̒ṵ̸̎̚ŗ̴̝̿t̸͔͋͜s̵̮͌̇ ̴̧̿̇ä̸̦́̎n̷̙͓̓d̴͎͖͝ ̸̧̽i̷̜̾͘t̵͔̏̓͜ ̴͍̂h̶̩̟͂̽u̸̼̭̓r̴̰͂ṫ̵̲͛ͅs̶̯̆͊ ̷̺͓͘ą̸́̑n̵̯͠d̴̜̲̚ ̸̣̠̔͛ï̶͙̃t̵̝̉ ̶͓̎͜h̴̨̞̍u̶̪̅r̵̼̊t̷̜͈͊s̷̳̜̃̕ ̴̳̝͐̃a̴͓͎͆͠ń̷̘̂ḍ̴̤͂͘ ̷̡͚̄̀ì̵̙̝͌t̸̡̬̊̔ ̵̺͓̂ḫ̴͉̐ụ̵̼̐r̶̦͛t̷̛͓̹ṡ̸͖͎͂.̵̤̙̚

IT HURTS

IT HURTS

IT HURTS

IT HURTS

IT HURTS

IT HURTS

IT HURTS

U

I HATE YOU

I HATE YOU

I HATE YOU

I HATE YOU

PLEASE STOP

STOP

YOU'RE HURTING ME

YOU'RE HURTING ME

STOP

STOP

STOP

I HATE YOU

I HATE YOU

I HATE YOU

«I'm sick.»

MAKE IT STOP.

PLEASE.

JUST MAKE IT STOP.

PLEASE STOP.

I'M BEGGING YOU, STOP.

IT Ḫ̵̨̛̈́͒͋͗̀͘͝U̸͖̤͕̕Ṟ̴̮̅͊Ţ̴̠͊̀̉̄̈̍͠S̷̛͙̙̎̓͆͗̎̈́̏S̷̡͓̳̱̏̒͊̾̀Ŝ̵̘̋͆͌͜S̷͎͍͙̞̖̯̣̈́͝Ś̴̪͕̘͎̺S̷̝̎͜S̷͉͔̯̗̫̐͒̈́̂̒͜͜͜Ş̶͉͖̥͗̀̃͘S̸̪̄̽́͊̋̈́̐́Ś̷͕̠̩̣̺͉̋̋̚S̴̮̘͓͒̎̂̅̄͊͜S̵̮̺̪͚̏̂̽͆͂͜͠Ş̶̠̖̻̫̾͊͜S̶̙͖͇̦̓̃͋͊͠S̵̘̉̇S̶̖̝̥̪̺̯͛̃͆͛̉͘͘S̵̢̼̲̠̮͈͍͍̔̈́́S̴̡͙͎̈́̏͆́S̷͈̼̙͙̩͈̬̓̕S̷̛̯͑̂͊̆̔̉̈́Ś̷̲͇̭̐́́̽̚S̷͔̲̾̓͂̚S̶̜͍͕̲̥̹̎̈́̐͗̋̉͋̊S̷͕͔̐͜͜

«Just kill me. Kill me right now.»

WARNING

WARNING

WARNING

YOU ARE DIRTY

YOU ARE BROKEN

FOREVER

WARNING

WARNING

WARNING

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?

YOU ARE ALONE.

YOU ARE DOOMED.

YOU ARE

Ḑ̷̰̠̫͎̆̈̃͗́È̵͕͆̋̽͜͝A̷̰͛̌̇D̵̨̢̹̻̘̐͒͗̾

Maybe she still has time to fix what just happened. Maybe she can throw herself headfirst into the medical room's ventilation duct and end it all in the most twisted way possible. The air barely reaches her lungs. Her fingers press so hard against her face that it's pointless. She knows it's pointless...until she hears the tune. A bell. A double tone she's heard dozens of times in the main lobby already. Now, the ghost of the fucking horse looms over her cynically, as if it were all little more than a scene planned by a twisted writer.

«POLLE SAYS! Pay attention to the symptoms! In the last hour have you felt any of the following ways listed below?: Raped, degraded, used, robbed, stained, abused, ruined, defiled, destroyed, humiliated, hurt, dishonored. If you see yourself reflected in two or more, congratulations! Pony Express recognizes your merits as an employee, and we have decided to award you with a companion for the rest of your life, the trauma! It will be by your side, forever! You will never feel full and happy again! It's what you deserve! This is all your
F
A
U
L
T»

.

.

.

.

Stifling a gasp, Anya opens her eyes again.

There is no one there anymore.

She takes a sharp breath, suffering from a coughing affliction. The light are still off, everything is in its place, and for a split second, she is able to convince herself that none of what she just experienced really happened.

A certainty that dies the second it takes for her to become aware of her own body.

But no longer the remnants of star dust, the atoms that created the world. Now it is remnants of charred coal, damp old fabric that has become home to a thin layer of fungus, and moss eating away at the trunk of a tree, creeping upward. Anya sinks her right elbow into the mattress, shivering. She raises her right hand and slides the palm across her chin, letting out an exhale and bringing her hand closer to the blue light to her left. Her teeth chatter.

It shines under the light. Saliva.
Saliva that is not hers.
And there it is again.
The ringing of the bells.

«POLLE SAYS! Oh, oh! Looks like you just found something that shouldn't be there! The saliva must stay…inside the mouth! Do you know how many unwanted friends can come to visit you because of someone else's saliva? Infectious mononucleosis! Herpes! Hepatitis B! Cheer up, Anya. If you're disgusted by the saliva on your outside, I BET YOU WON'T GUESS WHAT YOU HAVE
I
N
S
I
D
E!»

She jumps out of bed and screams as if the sheets have suddenly caught fire. She falls sideways to the floor but manages to get up quickly, her eyes filling with tears and her lips parting to let out a broken cry, covering her mouth with her right hand and clenching her thighs tightly.
A tug burned from her vagina, as if invisible teeth were coming down to tear the fragile skin of her vulva and then, inside, as far as they could reach. The muscles in her thighs complain and almost send her face down to the floor again. A bruise decorates the pale skin and she sees scratches near her left knee, the skin around it red and swollen. She reaches forward with both hands, rubs the palm of her left hand on the covers to remove the saliva, until she drops her gaze to the center of her sheets.

Blood, trails down.
And just a few drops of semen.

Anya's pupils narrow, and she forcefully rips off the covers. The sheets. The comforter. Even her pillowcase.

«This did happen. Yes it did. It happened. Yes it did. It's real. It's real. This is real. It happened. He did it. He did it. It wasn't a dream. He was here. He did it. Good God. He did it. He did it.»

Everyone must be asleep, so Anya doesn't bother crying softly. She pushes all the dirty bedding down the duct that connects to the Tulpar's only washing machine, and drops to her knees beside it, turning to look at her bed. Only the mattress looks back at her. White and stripped of everything, like a bone dried in the sun that has had every last bit of flesh gnawed off.

She has been gnawed too.
And stripped of everything.
All she needs to do is rot under the sun.

She won't stand this for another second.

They have a set schedule for using the showers. Using hot water outside of those hours deducts credits from their paycheck…now severance pay…but Anya doesn’t give a shit about paying more. As she searches for some clean clothes and her towel…as she moves and her thighs rub together and everything burns and everything throbs and everything hurts…she can feel it. She can feel what he left behind. And she’ll kill herself if she feels it for five more minutes.

Anya scrunches the clean clothes and towel against her chest…but her hand stops on the metal lever that pulls inward and slides open the door. Same from outside.
The doors to the rooms don’t have locks.

«What if he is on the other side?»

She feels her heart beating faster and faster with every passing minute. Anya presses her right ear against the metal door, but it’s too thick and dense to hear any sound coming from the hallway, soft as breathing or the action of shifting one’s weight from one foot to the other. She might be able to hear something, maybe, if the ship were absolutely silent...but the Tulpar is never absolutely silent, always rocked by a low, gravelly, constant hum, like a wordless song, just a tune, that a mother uses to lull her baby to sleep.

Her time may have finally come.
Death may be waiting on the other side of the door.
No, it isn't.
Death has already arrived, anyway.

She pulls the door open and slides to the right, finding herself in a dark hallway, lit only by the dim lights of the break time. All the doors are closed, and no light filters through any of them, no sound. Everyone is sleeping...or pretending to be. Resting as long as they can during the five scant hours Pony Express allows them.

Anya doesn't know if she'll ever be able to sleep again.

But she walks. She pushes away from her bedroom door and walks into the bathrooms, slipping through the lock and collapsing over the sink.

The bathrooms are tiny, and not at all designed with the privacy of its workers in mind. There is no curtain separating the two showers, which are fixed to the wall. Just a raised floor to stop the shower water from going everywhere, and running straight down the drain. Both toilets do have stalls, but, heavens, would it really have been so terrible to put up two shower curtains, and a wall separating them? The thought of someone trying to open the door by mistake while she's using the shower has always terrified her.

Now more than ever.

«He can't open this door. It's locked. He can't.»

Anya clings to the bathroom door, trying to open it without unlocking it. She can't. And if she can't do it from the inside, then neither can someone from the outside, right?

«He's stronger than me.»

Her fingers tremble as she pushes away from the door, her hands moving to her shirt. Dirty. She wants to burn it. Burn all the clothes she's wearing right now. Throw the ashes into the void of outer space. Keep nothing from tonight. Clean herself of everything. Forever.

In that case she would have to tear her skin off in strips. Burn every inch of flesh he's touched. Seek atonement in the fire.

«I'm sorry... I'm sorry...»

But he can come back at any moment. She can't waste any more time.

Anya shivers off her clothes, thankful there's not a single mirror in which to reflect her naked body. Tonight, more than ever, she doesn't want to see herself. She couldn't. She feels the pressure of bones against her skin and kicks at the dirty clothes as if they were poisoned, turning on the hot water. It falls on her with barely decent pressure, soaking first her hair and then the rest of her body. She squeezes her hands tightly against the two faucets, holding on and leaning her forehead against the cold wall in front of her. She squeezes the shower handles and looks down.

Blood. Blood. Filth. Blood. It runs between her legs and is sucked up with the rest of the water and heads towards the drain.

Drowning in the fury of the water, she allows herself to cry.

She rubs the bar of soap, thin and with barely a trace of scent, over her body. Furiously. She shivers and drops it a couple of times. She barely sees anything as it slips through her fingers. She gathers water between her palms, and each attempt to rinse between her legs steals a louder and louder wail of pain from her...but she can't stay like this. Filthy and dirty. The blood won't stop coming out. That won't stop gushing out. The shower floor turns pink in no time...and her legs have had enough.

She slides her right hand down the wall, slowing her fall, until she's sitting sideways on the flooded shower floor. She puts all her weight on her right side, terrified of the pain that sitting upright would mean. She coughs, shivers, and never lets go of the hot water tap, covering herself as best she can with her left arm. Who could see her? There's no one there. No one...

«He might have eyes. Eyes. Eyes everywhere. There are no cameras at the Tulpar, but he could be watching me. Through the holes in the shower. Through the drain. Maybe he's standing on the other side of the door, waiting for me to come out. I woke him up. He's furious. Even more furious. He's going to do it again.»

She lets go of the shower and covers her mouth with both hands, pressing her fingers tightly against her skin. Her shoulders shake, rising and falling with each sob she lets out, and she arches her back forward, then throws her head back with a wail of blinding pain. Her mouth opens and arches downward, vomiting copiously. The pink frosting on the birthday cake, mixed with greenish liquid and more filth from lunch… it all goes down the drain. She would spend all night vomiting to purge herself of the filth completely. If only the filth could just pour out of her mouth and go away through the pipes. Get lost in the tanks. Get thrown into outer space. She vomits, the water sticking her soaked hair down, as the water washes away the vomit, the filth, the blood.

«This happened. This really happened.»

Anya squeezes her eyes shut, a silent scream coming from her mouth... until the mist surrounding her changes little by little. The water becomes warmer. Heavier. She coughs, and carefully opens her eyes, then raises her eyebrows and leans back with a gasp.

It's not water that's pouring out of the shower, but... blood.

Litres and litres of blood.

“What?” She forces herself to blink, but it's no use: the image doesn't change. Litres and litres of that scarlet liquid rain down on her body, and a heavy bubble swells over the drain hole before bursting... and covering itself. Trembling, Anya grabs onto the shower handles to stand up again, sticky with that liquid. She shivers, turns the handles hard, and the rain of blood doesn't stop. In fact, it increases. The blood has nowhere to go and rises, rises, above her own heels.

Everything was going to flood.

“I'm crazy” she decides, moving away from the showers. She takes the towel and tries to clean as much of that liquid as she can, shaking so much that the towel almost fell from her hands two or three times. She drags the liquid while she dresses hastily, and only then does she hear the metallic clatter.

The two faucets of the sinks were shaking violently... until they fly into the air, like the cap of a bottle of champagne that is too bubbly. The woman stifles a scream, covering her head with her arms and moving two steps away when she sees that, from the pipes of the two sinks, blood is also gushing out. The place is flooded and drips onto the floor. Blood is gushing out, in the same way, from under the toilet cubicles... and it rises, with nowhere to go.

But no, that couldn't be blood. It doesn't make sense. It must have been some other liquid. Reddish oil. Some component of the ship must have rusted too much, staining the water with that reddish residue. Anything but the illogical reasoning of that internal bleeding. Panting, Anya throws the towel away, useless because it's so dirty with blood, and lunges for the door to open it.

She can't.

The lock is off. She makes a second and a third attempt, but the door doesn't move an inch... and the blood has risen, like inside the shower, above her heels. Anya looks down, breathes heavily, and proceeds to pull even harder on the opening lever. She makes sure for the umpteenth time that the lock is off. Everything was done, but the door doesn't move.

And the blood doesn't stop flowing.

“Hello!?” Anya slams the palm of her hand against the door. The metallic plack-plack-plack reverberates outwards. She doesn't hear anything from the other side “Please, someone! I need help!”

She hits even harder, screaming and ducking just in time to dodge a shower faucet that shoots towards her. More blood gushes out of the hole left by the object, and it doesn't stop rising.

“HELP, PLEASE!” the fear of waking someone up and receiving anger is less than her fear of drowning. She screams, going from hitting the door with the palm of her hand to hitting it with her fist “Whoever it is! Wake up! I need help! Please! Someone!”

“Anya?”

She gasps at the voice on the other side of the door. For a moment she longs to hold her breath and not give any sign of life for even a second, but... no. It's not his voice. It's Grant's voice.

“Curly!” Anya bangs on the door again with vigor “please, you have to help me. The door is stuck. I have to get out of here. Open the door!”

“Why?” compared to hers, the man's voice sounds too calm. She can almost hear the questioning tone in his voice as he asks that question “What's wrong with you? You're screaming like there's a monster locked in there.”

“There's... something coming out... from the showers, and the toilets, and the sinks! The... the liquid is rising and I have to get out of here or I'm going to drown. Open up now, Curly!”

“Drown?”

“This looks like blood!” she almost scratches the door with her nails, looking down only for her own blood to freeze in her veins. The liquid was about halfway up her calves “IT'S blood! Curly, open the door. Try it! Go find Swansea! I'm going to die in here!”

“...Anya, you understand that what you're saying doesn't make any sense, right?” the nurse opens her mouth, but the impact is so great that she can't get a single word out “that the bathrooms are flooding with blood... it doesn't make sense” she looks down, noticing how a little of that blood was seeping under the door. Too little to stop the rise up her legs, but...Curly must be seeing that. There's no way he could ignore blood running between his feet “...I don't know if I believe you, Anya. I think you've been under too much work stress. Believe me, I understand it better than anyone. But I can't believe what you are saying. Can you prove that it's blood that's coming out of the showers? No, right? Understand me, Anya. It's not that I don't want to believe you, but...”

“OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR FOR FUCK’S SAKE!”

Anya unleashes a shower of blows on the door. Fists clenched. Blood reaches her knees, and the racket is such that she can almost hear the Captain gasp from the other side of the door...and a new voice.

“What's going on here? What's all that yelling?” it was Swansea.

“Swansea! Help me open the door! I'm trapped here! Please, open! Please...!”

“Anya says there's blood coming out of the showers and toilets” but Curly interrupts her in the middle of her plea, and she is able to guess a flash of humor in the blond's tone of voice when he shares the news with Swansea. The mechanic materializes the humor, letting out a dry laugh.

“Blood? Anya, could it be that you are...you know...in those days of the month?”

“You're so stressed.”

“You imagine things.”

“Blood coming out of the showers? Really? Anya, please be consistent...”

“Whenever you want to admit that you're lying, we'll be here.”

“I'm going to die in here! I'm going to die!” she doesn't stop, slamming her fists on the metal door, but hwe voice loses vigor and clarity with every passing second. The blood has reached her hip, and the door still shows no desire to open “Open up now! I...I'll apologize! I swear! I'm a liar! I-I'm terrible, yes! But open up, please. Open the door. I need to get out of here. I beg you.”

“I hear the screams from the main lobby, why is there an official meeting outside the bathroom doors?” Daisuke's younger voice joins the conversation. Barely audible, as if the boy was talking to the two of them as he stood at the end of the hallway. His voice reverberates so much so that even “Anya... What are you doing in there?”

“Daisuke! Help me and open the door! Do it!”

“Don't pay attention to her, Daisuke” but the voice of the intern's mentor is sharp. She hears him clicking his tongue “Anya has completely lost her mind. She says meaningless things. It seems that she has gone crazy.”

“Oh...”

“IT'S NOT TRUE!” Anya unloads all the weight of her body on the metal door. The blood has risen so much that she floats, moving her body away from the door, and getting closer and closer to the ceiling with each passing second “Daisuke, open! Please! Please, open the door!”

“I...”

“That's enough.”

One last voice rises above all the others, and Anya opens her eyes wide, only then moving away from the door. The whisper of footsteps. A knock against the door, but now from the other side. It was his voice. It was him.

“Bad things happen to people who lie, Nurse Anya. Very bad things. It's not good to tell lies, is it?” she can almost guess his features. She can almost hear the smile on his lips. Jimmy is there, on the other side of the door, and the blood has already completely taken her away from it. But the brunette's voice is loud and clear, as if he were standing next to her right now. Around her. Inside her “and now you're going to pay the price. For trying to screw me over. For butting in where you're not called. For meddling in matters that don't concern you. You didn't fight back. You didn't fight me. But now you cry. But now you scream. Good heavens, nurse, how cynical. Have you ever thought that maybe you
LIKED
IT?”

Anya screams, and her scream echoes through every room and every hallway in the Tulpar. From the main lobby to the loading dock. She kicks, spins around, but the blood moves violently, like the sea in the middle of a storm. She screams, raises her hands, and her fingers crash against the metal ceiling. She kicks. The blood moves. It throws itself at her body. It swirls across her skin, like thousands of sticky, warm fingers, pulling her down hard, yearning to submerge her. To kill her. Anya takes furious gulps of air as she hits the ceiling, presses her lips to the metal, takes a deep breath through her nose, and squeezes her eyes shut, the roar of terror screwing her eardrums…

And the silence.

Warm. Scorching, but soft.

It doesn’t take too long before her throat starts to burn.

She turns her head to the right, to the left… but she sees nothing. Nothing but an ocean of reddish darkness. She can't make out any of the objects in the bathroom, not the door. Not the light. She doesn't know which way is up or which way is down, lost like a fish stripped of its senses. She flails her arms, moves her legs. The painful pull returns, a sharp like a furious stab runs up her spine, and red bubbles burst from her mouth and rise as her lungs swell with fire.

She will die.

Her head rocks back, and her body rises in the middle of that ocean of warm, sticky blood. She rises, and keeps rising. She exhales the last breath of air she had left, and her ribcage feels like it's about to throw in the towel.

«This is how I'm going to die.»

Will there be anything left of her to bury in Earth?

«I'm sorry, Mom.»

She couldn't keep her promise.

Up, up, up... until her face breaks the tension of the surface.

A breath of fresh air. The sensation of the sun on her skin. Anya opens her eyes wide, and finds herself facing a blue sky.

The dome of the Earth. The same color as always. A few clouds. She coughs, forcing herself to breathe and inflate her lungs with warm air, waiting for her eyes to get used to the brightness. She has just emerged from a lake, more or less circular. Its waters are clear. So much so that she can make out her legs and the ridiculous pajama pants she is wearing. There are no traces of blood anywhere. Not on her clothes, not in her hair, not on her skin.

She kicks and moves her arms, swimming to the edge. She pushes herself up, letting out a moan of pain as she sits sideways on that tall, soft, emerald grass. The lake was surrounded by a lush forest, tall trees with large leaves and thick trunks. Every few minutes, a bird sings or a squirrel rustles through branches as it climbs between them at top speed.

And finally, she breathes.

She presses a hand against her chest, waiting for the furious beating of her heart to settle.

Is she dead?
Maybe she really is, and this is heaven. A well-deserved rest at last. Strange, though, since her mother was never devoted to God. Anya knows nothing about Heaven or Hell. She doesn't even know how to pray. But she can't be the worst person in the world, if she finds rest in a place like this.
Or maybe she's dreaming. Maybe she'll wake up, and it was all just a twisted dream. The blood from the showers, the firing, the forest, the...the r…

A crunch of grass on the other side of the lake brings her out of her thoughts, bringing her to her feet very, very slowly.

From between the trunks emerge two animals, both with copper hair and pretty white spots: a doe with her baby fawn at her side, following closely behind her. Anya, a woman born and raised in the city, had never seen animals like these up close, let alone in their natural habitat. She keeps her hand on her chest, moving a few steps away to her right, as the mother and her calf approach the lake water, leaning in to drink. The mother takes a more confident stance, but her calf still shivers a little as it leans in and drinks.

The nurse isn't quite sure why, but she can't stop watching them. She smiles a little, even...until a wind a touch colder rises from between the trunks, stealing a shiver from her lake-soaked body. Anya hugs herself, her teeth chattering for a second...and only then does she notice the third figure.

A twisted copy of a wolf.

It barely qualifies as such, huge like a grizzly. You could mistake it for one if you looked quickly, but it was definitely a wolf. The elongated snout, the fangs, the stretched back, the tail, the poisonous amber eyes. All the oxygen left her lungs at that moment, and she opened her mouth to scream. If she made any noise, she would draw the attention of the doe and her fawn. They would see the predator. They would run away. Anything, except...

«Too late!»

With a bestial, hoarse roar, typical of an animal that knows it is victorious before it has thrown its first bite, the wolf looms over the fawn. Anya falls back, the shock stronger than the pain of the impact, as she watches, helpless, as the animal's fangs sink between the hindquarters of the little fawn. The fawn's mother utters an almost human cry, shakes her head... and runs away, leaving her fawn at the mercy of the beast.

“Stop!” Anya slides her feet across the grass, until she is able to move forward for good. She stifles a bellow and grabs everything her fingers can reach: rocks, thin branches. She throws them, but most of them fall into the waters of the lake, while the bestial wolf tears the small animal apart with bloodthirsty determination.

That's life. The strong eat the weak. There's nothing that can be done.

“LEAVE IT ALONE!”

Finally, she is able to send a rock with enough force to clear the lake and hit the wolf hard on the head. It opens its jaws, and the fawn's carcass slides, limp, into the lake, sinking slowly, turning the water around it scarlet.
Anya puts her weight on one knee, gasps...and her blood runs cold when she notices that the beastly wolf has turned its head.

It is looking at her. What if...?

She doesn't have time to finish forming the thought in her mind. The wolf lets out another of its guttural bellows, before running... straight towards the lake. The nurse gasps, expecting to see the wolf sink and be forced to swim, thus slowing down. But no: the creature runs through the water as if it were frozen, and Anya takes a second longer than she would have liked to react, running in the opposite direction.

The tree trunks are getting thicker, and the treetops are getting more and more leafy. Thick roots stick out of the ground like the bones of a gigantic skeleton, forcing the brunette to use her hands and not just her feet, leaning her body for a moment on each trunk in order to avoid a resounding fall. She feels like Snow White, fleeing from the hunter through a ghostly forest.

Behind her, the panting of the beastly wolf is heard getting closer and closer.

“HELP!” but her cry for help is lost again. She is lost as always. No one will come to offer her help. Why is it so hard for her to understand? She doesn’t stop running, but she throws her head back for a second, and the wolf’s bright amber eyes are the last thing she sees before her foot gets caught on a protruding root, screaming and rolling non-stop down a slope in the ground.

Her body hits branches, rocks, trunks. Anya scrambles to cover her head with her arms, but there's nothing she can do to protect the rest of her body. She stops after what feels like an eternity, panting, parts of her body throbbing and dragging herself forward.

She struggles to focus, but when she does, she notices two things: she's in a clearing in the middle of the forest...and, in front of her, something stands tall.

It was the door to the medical room.

She hears the wolf howl at the top of the slope. She bites the bullet, sobbing and moaning in pain as she stands up. She drags her left foot and stomps hard with her right, reaching out with both hands to open the door. There should be forest on the other side, but when she opens it, she finds the infirmary. Quiet. Warm.

Safe.

She runs inside and pushes the door shut, locking it.

She leans her forehead against the door, gasping in terror. She breathes through her mouth, noticing the sweat hiding in the lake water that still soaks her clothes. Her left foot complains, her legs protest, and when she takes a few steps away from the door, she finally notices it.

Anya has the belly of a woman who is about to give birth.

«It's always here. Even now.»

Still panting, Anya looks around. There's nothing in the infirmary. No books, no medications, no gauze. Nothing. There's no corkboard with her scribbles and the photos she's taken and brought with her to liven up her workspace, no papers, no radio. Nothing but the furniture, the stretcher, the screen in a static sunset...and the emergency axe, with the security door that keeps it out of reach of anyone but the Captain...open. She wrinkles her nose. Shouldn't it be in the utility room? Is that...?

Something creaks.

Breathing a little calmer, she presses a hand against the soaked fabric of her clothes, standing in the center of the medical room.
Another creak. Pieces of paint peel off one of the walls, falling like snowflakes to the floor, revealing a second layer of rusty-looking paint, as if someone had tried to hide the poor condition of the metal on the walls. Little by little, several sections of paint on the walls come off, as if someone were shaking the medical room by force. White dust floats in the air for a few seconds, until a rusty metal is exposed, somehow covered in mold. What could they feed on on a metal surface like that?

“What's going on here...?” Her voice is a whisper that is lost when her heartbeats, once again, shoot up. Her pulse and blood rush violently in her ears. “Where...?”

A very strong pull in her stomach sends her face down to the ground, letting out a scream.

It's blinding. She coughs, barely able to take a breath before a second blow twists her insides, pushing her to the ground. She snorts, faster and faster, and those shocks of pain only attack her with increasing fury with each passing second. It's similar to the pain of menstrual cramps, but multiplied by a thousand. Never in her entire life has she experienced pain like this.

Her bones split open to the sides.
Her organs push back.

Anya screams, snorts, gasps. Sticky wetness gushes between her legs, soaking the other pair of clean pajama pants she put on after getting out of the blood-soaked shower. She knows now that it was her blood, and another liquid, similar to water, soaking the floor of the medical room.
She yanks her clothes down. Her hands shake, the back of her neck and back covered in a heavy, cold sweat. Her gaze darts back and forth, unable to focus properly, until one last violent tug forces her to her knees, her body bending forward.

Something is birthing.

“No, no, no.”

Blood is gushing from between her legs, and it doesn't look like it's going to stop anytime soon. She gasps, screams, and snorts, clenching her muscles and using all her strength to push, bringing one hand between her legs. Her fingertips feel something solid, just the beginning of something making its way from her womb, desperate to see the light.

She screams.
Anya wishes she had a third hand to pull her hair out. The pain was so intense that she is sure she will go crazy. She will not achieve anything. She will die there, bleeding to death...

Broken.

Dirty.

She screams again. Her belly turns and she vomits, adding the vomit to the mix of substances that dirty the floor of the medical room. With each scream that bursts from her lungs, her muscles contract and it emerges a little more each time, making its way, pushing her skin to the sides, hurting the flesh. The walls of the room shake in tandem, pieces of paint fall and holes open in the metal walls, eaten away by rust. She gasps, snorts, repeats, while she pushes hard and screams, the lights flickering and a spark jumping from one of the light tubes. A more prominent jet of blood is expelled and, finally, the thing slides out with even greater ease.

Like a fucking slide.

The blood forms a puddle on which it falls off and makes a soft splash.

Anya stays there, kneeling. Hands on her thighs, longing to regain her normal breathing rhythm. She inhales, counting to four, holds her breath, and repeats the same as she exhales.
Opening her eyes is like opening the doors of a pair of dams, tears flow freely and she loses focus for a second, capable of passing out from exhaustion and blood loss. But she remains in one piece, pressing her nails against her bare skin and finally looking down.

It takes her a little longer than usual to understand what she is looking at.

On the floor, just below her legs, there is a Polle doll.

Two dolls, in fact. Two heads, four pairs of forequarters and hindquarters. Two shirts. Both fused together, like a twisted version of Siamese twins.
Pieces of a pinkish film remain stuck to the surface of the creature, dirty with blood and something similar to a thin layer of fat. In the middle of the fusion of that toy, something extends and remains sunken still inside Anya. A long tube. Pink and reddish.

The umbilical cord.

She considers gathering all her strength to touch it... but the cord begins to move on its own. Slowly, it extends towards the toy, disappearing inside it. Something stirs in the woman's entrails... until something else falls to the ground with a second wet snap: the placenta.

It crawls, retracted towards Polle's toy, while the cord continues to sink into the plastic... like a toy that says phrases when you pull a string. As soon as the umbilical cord is completely sucked into the toy and the placenta touches the double horse, a tune emerges from it. It sounds dated, like it was recorded years ago, or in terrible quality. Two chimes, and the voice she's heard over and over again.

“POLLE SAYS!” and, the next second, the voice changes. It's no longer the pet's voice, but a corrupted mix. The voice of a little boy? A little girl? A mix of both in unison. Just as terrified. Just as desperate. A scream that you know is being expelled into the void “He's here!”

A fraction of a second later, the knocks on the door return.

“Anya?”

It's him.

The sick woman gasps, pulling up her clothes. The wool is swollen with blood, her face soaked with tears. She crawls to the side, away from the pool of blood, but she's already too dirty. Polle's double doll remains inert then. If its only mission was to warn her, it did it too late.

“Anya, I know you're in there. Open the door.”

She swallows heavily, trying to get to her feet...although all she manages is to half sit down, with only the sole of a flip-flop on the floor. Then, the knocks start to sound against the door of the medical room. Punches, and something else... scratches, like the ones a beast's paws would make when scratching the floor.

It's him. It's him.

“Why are you hiding from me, Anya? What are you trying to do with all this? Get my attention? It's a pretty pathetic way to look for someone to pay you some attention, don't you think?” more knocks, much more insistent. The black-haired woman bites the tip of her tongue, making a second attempt to stand up: she doesn't succeed “it's ridiculous... since you got on this ship you've done nothing but waste time. The ship crashed and you weren't able to do your only job on board. And now you have to do this shit... What the hell is wrong with you, Anya? Who told you that this lack of professionalism was a good thing? You looked for the slightest excuse to stop doing your job... complaining about everything... don't make me angry. Open the door.”

«He'll do it again. He's going to do it again.»

Anya crawls forward, sliding her knees and palms, before making a last effort to stand up. Her entire body from the waist up sways back and forth, and she nearly falls on more than one occasion until she grabs onto one of the pieces of furniture.

The knocks against the door increase in intensity.

“Do you like to play hard to get, Anya?” the woman inflates and deflates her chest erratically, while she hears Jimmy's voice escalate. He hits the door violently, the same energy that covers his tone of voice when he shouts “You should have closed the door to your room with something, nurse! Don't try to make me believe now that you weren't wishing for any of the four of us to sneak in one night!”

Anya closes her eyes tightly, clenches her teeth. She puts her hands on either side of her head, but Jimmy's voice sounds from inside and from outside. It's happened before. Something tells her it will happen forever.

“But you wanted it to be Curly, yes... if you were given the option to choose, you would have preferred him, right? Your beloved Captain Curly...if it had been him, I'm sure you would have loved it. I can see you now, legs open in a second, not tensing up. Not crying like a fucking baby. Not trying to bring your knees together. What a pity, Anya. A frigid with a body like yours. What a fucking waste.”

The nurse digs her thumbs into her ears.

“I’ve seen every corner of your skin, from your mouth to your cunt. You’re burned into my head. You’re all mine.”

“NO!”

Her scream is louder than Jimmy’s, and everything freezes for a moment. The man’s words fall silent. The furious banging on the door stops. Her face wet with tears, but her gums bruised from angrily clenching her teeth, Anya pushes herself away from the furniture and moves forward, taking something that shouldn’t be there. Just like her. Just like him.

The axe.

“No matter how much you deny it, nurse! You’re marked!” Anya wraps her hands around the axe handle, letting out a gasp as she lifts it and steps away “You’re broken! Rotten! Forever!”

«Forever?»

“You're wrong, Jimmy” unlike the man, the nurse's voice comes out with absolute calm. Tired. Exhausted to the bone. Fed up. The axe head points towards the door. The claw scratches on the other side stop “I know you think...that I'm a good-for-nothing, too gullible and stupid...you wouldn't be the first, and you won't be the last either...but I've lived my life very clearly, James, you know? Sure...of every single thing I've done. Every step. Every word...and I know the world I live in. I know...what guys like you are capable of. But you didn't do what you did to me because you're superior to me, oh no...you did it because you're weak and incapable of behaving like a normal human being. You think you're the only one in this world who has suffered, and you're sure that that suffering gave you a free pass to be a miserable, filthy rat to everyone around you...well, you know what? I've been through it too...really bad, Jimmy. Maybe...maybe it's time for me to play your game for once. Maybe I should...put aside the Hippocratic oath. Put myself in your shoes. Do your job. Do it right.”

“YOU'RE NOTHING, ANYA! YOU'RE THE DIRT ON THE SOLE OF MY BOOTS! A USELESS CRYING WHORE! DIRTY, BROKEN, MISERABLE! YOU'D HAVE BEEN BETTER JUMPING OUT THE WINDOW THAT DAY! YOU'RE GOING TO BE MINE FOR THE REST OF YOUR-”

“I'M NOT WHAT YOU MADE ME!”

Anya slams the door lock hard with the head of the axe, and it rises with a metallic thud that silences Jimmy's screams. He's on the other side, and she's going to kill him. She will. She can't expect anyone to do the job for her.

«You will become the wretchedest of women.»

“Then let it be.”

The door opens with a heavy metallic creak, emitting a reverberation that is sucked away by the darkness. Anya tightens her grip on the axe and faces the pair of glowing eyes. She walks forward, panting. He leans back, crawling like a worm. He still takes the form of the beast, but the voice that emerges from between those sharp fangs is human. Heavy. Deserving of a special effort to sound terrifying.

“Don’t come near me! You know what awaits you!” Jimmy’s voice rings out loud and clear. He snaps forward and Anya gasps, gripping the axe tightly. “I’ll do it again! And again! Until you understand!”

“Until I understand WHAT?”

He shouldn’t have expected Anya to act so soon. She describes an arc with the axe and hits the animal hard on the head. It sobs like a dog and falls back, blood splattering the ground. Absolute darkness surrounds them, but the woman doesn’t need light to see it. She would recognize it anywhere. Such is the anger. Such is her hatred.

“What is it that I have to understand, Jimmy? What great discovery about life have you made to explain anything to me?” A tired smile stretches across her lips, the axe head dragging on the ground. The beast recoils “…you raped me, and you’re such a coward…you can’t even acknowledge it. Honey, honey…so bad for you. So bad for you. Everyone will see it but you.”

“ANYA, N-”

She draws a second arc with the axe, and screams. Pieces of hide fly out along with the blood, sending the beast spinning back with a second dog-like sob.

Underneath, there’s no blood, but a second layer of skin. Human skin, not the beast’s thick, black fur. Anya kicks at the bloody pieces of skin she snatched away as she shuffles toward him. The wolf shrinks in size, but his voice still desperately seeks to sound terrifying.

“All this way you have led me. To destroy me again?” Beads of sweat break out on her forehead, rolling down her flushed cheeks. No longer tears, at last, but the heat of rage. Anya shuffles and grits her teeth. Her fury grows, and he shrinks. Her footsteps echo in the darkness “for months...you've been the perpetual nightmare I always woke up from. To find you there. To laugh at your jokes. To find something to occupy my routine and keep you far, as far away as possible. Sentenced to death...because of you.”

“You couldn't do your only job on board!”

“Curly's stench was too strong, Jimmy. Very, very strong. And I had to do everything for him...” Anya raises the axe above her head “...change his bandages...” she brings the axe down hard. Jimmy cries, a shower of blood soiling Anya's pants. More blood. Other people's blood, for a change “...clean up his blood and burnt flesh...” another blow. Pieces of skin and fur fly into the air. He screams. His voice sounds more human with every blow “...stick needles in him...” blow “...clean up his piss…” blow “...wash his shit...” blow “...all, all for the man I thought had doomed us all. When the real culprit was always there. Right under my nose. Whining for a pill. And I never complained. I never protested. But you know what? I had to take care of him...and I had to take care of you. Give you jobs. Make you feel useful. You were the Captain of a dying troop. You weren't Captain of anything. Just a fraud. You only knew how to...complain...and you were sure you were ready for anything. But it wasn't Curly's position you wanted, was it? No. Being a Space Captain never mattered. You didn't have dreams when you were a kid. It was easier to believe you weren't allowed. The point was Curly. It was always Curly. You didn't want to have what he had, you wanted to be him. Reality came too late. Without him by your side, you're worth nothing. And now you have no one. The only guy good enough and dumb enough to have you by his side and love you for so many years... has finally opened his eyes. He's seen through your disguise. It's too late for you now, Jimmy. There's nothing for you out there.”

“And for you?!” the werewolf makes one last effort. He tries to get closer to her, so abrupt that Anya takes a small step back “Do you think there's something out there for you? In your current state? Do you think you'll be able to get your life back? Be happy? You'll see me in the corner of your eye forever, Anya!”

“...I may never be able...to forget you” Anya sniffles, gripping the axe handle tightly, using both hands “...I may feel a fragment of terror for the rest of my life, but I'm not just fear. I'm not just your victim. I'm nothing of you.”

“And what will you do with the thing, huh?” a laugh entangles itself between Jimmy's letters, desperate to sound confident “it's better that it dies...that the umbilical cord strangles it...nothing more than a jumbled ball of flesh and skin...”

“It's the only way you know how to deal with things, isn't it? Violence...cruelty, and death. But I'm not like you, Jimmy” the nurse stops standing over him. Absolute horror shines in the man's eyes, and there's no trace of the beast left “...life doesn't terrify me, you know? You want the baby to die...but if it survives, I'll keep it.”

“Why...why would you do something like that?”

“Because I'm their mother, even if I die. I think...that only one good thing can come out of all this. I have no appreciation for death. And I don't expect you to understand that. Moving on despite everything? Despite the fear, the horror, the dread? Make a decision with hope? Face your demons? No... you don't understand. I wonder if you ever will.”

“I WILL ALWAYS LIVE IN YOUR FLESH! EVEN IF YOU KILL ME, I WILL ALWAYS BE THERE!”

“...shall I tell you something, Jimmy?” a peculiar smile stretches across Anya's lips, as if she knew something he didn't. The punch line of the joke of the century. The winning lottery numbers “…I have two friends, Lily and Soledad. They left me a letter, and they told me to wait until the baby is born to read it. I told them I would, I was convinced...but last night, before going to sleep, I read it, and you know what it says? How about we have an express class in human biology, right now? If I shave my hair, each strand will be completely new. Skin cells renew every twenty-eight days, and a complete nail...six months, more or less. Blood is completely renewed in about four months… the body produces two million red blood cells every second to replace those that die. Platelets live only a week, and white blood cells a few hours. The skeleton is renewed every ten years, fat cells every eight years… the walls of the uterus shed accumulated blood every twenty-eight days… in a general rounding, the human body is completely new every seven years. In seven years, there will be no trace of you left. Not in my flesh. Not in my blood. But I don't have to wait that long. I can decide. I can choose when to kill you with my soul. I can do it right now.”

Anya raises the axe above her head, and Jimmy's eyes almost pop out of their sockets.

“NO, DON'T DO IT!”

“Oh, be quiet” the smile on Anya's lips stretches much more “Endure what you deserve.”

Brings the axe down hard. With a scream. The darkness stirs and the blade sinks hard into his skull. A crunch. A wet snap.

And everything goes black.

———

AUGUST 20, 1969.

THE PRESENT.

Whiteness floods her gaze as she suddenly opens her eyes, stifling a gasp. She slides her hands over the mattress of the stretcher and gasps, searching for some air.
The white ceiling above her eyes, the light of dawn seeping into the room from her left. The white walls. Her hospital room.

Anya swallows heavily, turning her face to the right: it was almost eight in the morning. Her heart beats furiously in her ears, and only little by little can she get her breathing to adopt a calmer rhythm. She rubs her chest, lets out a moan and her gaze is lost in the ceiling, as always.

God, she really has to pee.

She lets out a lazy moan, clinging tightly to the side iron of her stretcher. Little by little, she turns to the right, until she sits on the mattress and, carefully, stands up. She manages to slip on the flip-flops they gave her on her first day there. How long has she been here? Two weeks, almost? She rubs her forehead, the bridge of her nose...and the sensation hits her all at once.

A tug between her legs.

Anya stifles a scream and instantly amniotic fluid gushes between her legs and spills onto the floor around her. She can't react right away, raising her right foot for a second and letting out a gasp before twisting the blue fabric of her gown.
She manages to walk two steps before a furious tug sends her nearly to her knees on the floor. A pair of giant hands sink their fingers, boiling, into the muscles of her lower abdomen and pull, and pull, and pull. In her dreams she has no idea. The hallucination was a walk in the park compared to the pain that fills her eyes with tears.

“No, no... not yet... not yet, please...”

She walks as fast as she can towards the bathroom. The contractions are exaggerated, fast. She snorts, forcing herself to breathe as she pulls a towel from the laundry basket. Maybe she can...

“Miss Anya, good morning. I brought your...”

The black-haired emerges from the bathroom, towel in hand, just as the door to the room opens and the nurse who always brings her breakfast shows up. Both women lock eyes.
The nurse drops her eyes on Anya, the stain on her gown and the amniotic fluid on the floor. It takes her only a second to stifle a scream and almost drop everything she has on the breakfast tray.

“Get on the gurney, Miss Anya! I'll get the midwife and Dr. Sandra! She was just going to see Mr. Curly, so she'll be here soon! Get on the gurney please!”

The towel falls from her hands. She thinks, "No, not yet," but can't say anything, crying out in pain and dragging herself back to the gurney. She hears the hurried footsteps of the nurse down the hall, and a growing general hubbub. There's no point in pretending. There would have been no point in cleaning up. Anya understands then as she lies down, panting, shaking, scared to death.

This is going to happen.

She drags herself backwards with terrified grunts, raising the top of the gurney so as not to be lying flat. The contractions are so painful that she doesn't understand where her body has gotten the strength to generate such traction.
As the days have passed, she has noticed the changes in the mirror. She looks healthier, no longer so haggard. Her bones are not visible, her head and limbs are not heavy when she moves. She is well fed and hydrated. Now, all the strength her body had regained seemed to have decided that the time had come to play against her.

She would be lying if she said she had not fantasized about that day in the past, years ago, when she had not yet failed her first attempt to enter medical school.
When the future was painted in bright colors and dreaming did not seem like an act full of cynicism. When the true face of motherhood was still something she could fantasize about in rose-colored glasses, hand in hand with ignorance. In those dreams she was a fulfilled and happy woman, with a man at her side who loved her to hold her hand during childbirth. But this August morning, Anya extends the fingers of her right hand, and receives nothing in return but emptiness.

The door opens again, and she hears a stampede of hurried footsteps. The pain of the contractions is such that it is difficult for her to focus her gaze, the medical staff are nothing more than blurs of light blue uniforms. Two nurses. The midwife, with a different color uniform, and Sandra.

“Anya, honey, how many seconds apart is it…” the ex-nurse has no good way of answering, and Sandra is not able to finish asking the question, when Anya shouts in the doctor's face when the contractions shake her “your water broke, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want me to give you the epidural, or do you prefer-”

“Yes.”

She did not want to see the catheter, or the size of the needle. She just closed her eyes and, trembling, leaned her head forward, arching her back. Sandra gave her local anesthesia and, after a few seconds, she barely felt the pressure of a very, very long needle, sinking into her lower back.

For several minutes, the contractions continued to be terrifying... until a sort of mist fell over the lower part of her body. All that furious pain turned into simple pressure, and Sandra approached to gather her long black hair into a bun, drying the sweat from her face.

“We'll take care of everything, okay?” Sandra took her hand, giving it a firm squeeze “everything will be fine.”

«She can’t promise me that.»

But, just as she had promised Anya the day she was admitted to the hospital, all the medical staff present were women. The midwife spoke to her with special care, while the other two nurses assisted her quickly and efficiently.

Anya snorted in rhythm with the contractions, one foot on either side of the gurney as the midwife placed a hand on her right knee.

“Breathe, breathe, breathe” and “Now, push!” were the rhythmic repetitions of the woman. It didn’t hurt, but Anya could feel things. The pressure of the muscles…and the dread. She twisted Sandra’s hand more out of fear than pain, screaming as she pushed each time, as if something was tearing her insides apart with each desperate action.

“I’m going to tear you open part like a cow and tear that fucking thing out of you.”

“N-no,” she sobs, and shakes her head, looking around. Her mind is a haze, lost between the midwife's voices, the nurses' comments, the pressure in her body and the horror that squeezes her heart tightly. All the courage that burned in her soul during that strange nightmare... Where has it gone? Did she ever have it inside her, even? She parts her lips in a second cry as she pushes, and Sandra's voice reaches her, broken by the midwife's instructions.

“...and look how far you've come” Anya is able to pay attention to her only then. Sandra smiles at her confidently “I know you can do this. You've achieved even harder things. There's not much left...”

“I can see it’s head!” the midwife exclaims, and Anya twists Sandra's hand with such force that, had her mind been a little more focused, she would have burst into tears of guilt “Push, there's not much left!”

How much time did it take?

The morning light slides before her eyes. Voices. Noise. Sensations. The rhythm of breathing and the act of forcing herself to push overlap with her thoughts. Everything blurs and clears, blurs and clears. She convinces herself that she will die, or that she will be trapped there forever. An eternal loop of dread and pain. No death, yes, but no life. Nothing but anguish and memory. Nowhere to stop and reflect on herself. Nothing but...

...a cry.

It is loud and clear. Angry, almost. Or...victorious. A desperate, insulting cry. The demonstration of life that overrides any desire for death.

Anya looks down, and sees it in the midwife's arms.

A baby.

The whole scene happens in slow motion. So much so that any negative emotion that the medical staff feared to trigger does not even muster the energy necessary to manifest itself.
One of the nurses cuts one end of the umbilical cord, and the feeling of emptiness is so brutal and abrupt that Anya lets out a gasp, bringing her hands to her chest, as if an invisible hand had just ripped out an organ essential to life.

The baby cries, but its cry is a distant echo, as if Anya's head were in a pool. Sandra, to her right, says something, but Anya can't pay enough attention to her to make out her words.
She can't take her eyes off the baby, frozen.
The midwife comes to her, and Anya puts her left hand to the collar of her gown, pulling the thin fabric down to reveal her breasts. No one tells her to do this, but she understands what the midwife implies. And she does it... she places the newborn on her chest, and warmth falls over her.

She waits to be the victim of violent revulsion. Sandra, standing to her right, must be more tense than she's ever been in her entire life, ready to stop her from trying to grab the newborn and throw it against a wall or the floor, to hold it down and choke it, screaming. But Anya doesn't feel a violent impulse... nor an equally violent maternal call. There is no almost novelistic maternal instinct in her... but an almost frivolous automation.

She moves it carefully on her chest, and that small, thin-lipped mouth surrounds her nipple. As if it were all part of a scene rehearsed to the point of exhaustion, the baby begins to drink without anyone telling it how to do it. Mother Nature's programming.
Anya feels the humidity of the blood and the amniotic fluid. She leans over, takes one of the baby's hands... and smells it. It's a strange smell.

“... it smells like... cheesecake” Anya's voice comes out hoarse. She is not able to take her eyes off the baby, but she hears Sandra exhale suddenly to her right, as if she had been holding her breath for centuries “and it is very... very light, it's like... having a kitten on your chest.”

“He looks very thin, it's true... I think we'll need to put him in the incubator, although it was nothing I hadn't already suspected. It's logical that he's thin.”

“She is thin” the midwife interrupts them, writing something down on a sheet of paper. She had removed the placenta, and Anya hadn't even noticed it “we have to weigh her... and, judging by the remains in the placenta, she came with someone.”

“What do you mean?” Anya asks the question before Sandra, with her mouth open to her right, had time to say anything.

“From the beginning, you were pregnant with twins” the midwife's tone of voice lowers its vigor then, adopting a sweeter tone “but... at some point, when you had to reduce your food intake...one of the two, the baby girl in this case, chose to reduce its nutrient intake from you and decided to...well, consume its twin sibling. It absorbed him, or her. Vanishing twin syndrome is very common, but it's difficult to keep track of because it's not usually noticed unless you have weekly ultrasounds from the first week of pregnancy. There isn't usually that much left in the placenta.”

Anya looks down, just in time for the baby to pull her mouth away and start crying. The woman doesn't move her arms, but she doesn't need to: the midwife comes over and carefully takes the newborn from her chest, rocking her and gently patting her back to make her burp. She mentions something about an incubator and Sandra nods, telling her that they're going to bathe her, weigh her and give her her vaccines.

Anya can barely nod.

She was pregnant with two babies aboard the Tulpar...and that baby absorbed its twin sibling.
Because of hunger.

Two babies.

«Thank you. Thank you for eating your twin sibling.»

Anya is the victim of a relief so violent that no one would ever make her feel guilty about it.

On her nightstand rest the papers, a few hours later (The color of the room has turned a soft blue. How many hours did her labor last?). At the beginning, a large blank space and, at the end of the line, her last name, "MUSUME." Only her last name, nothing else.
"FEMALE" marked in the sex section. Complete pregnancy cycle, practically. She weighs two kilos, below the normal weight of a newborn baby. The date, August twentieth, nineteen hundred and sixty-nine. And the time, eleven in the morning and forty-one minutes. Almost five hours of labor. Although, what good would it do her to know the exact time of her birth?

A pen sits waiting, next to the sheet of paper.
Waiting for Anya to decide on a name for her.

But now she rests both hands on her chest, tilting her head slightly to the left.

The baby remains in an incubator, feeding through an IV just like Anya did when she first arrived at the hospital. She sees her little chest rise and fall, sleeping a well-deserved rest. Coming into life must be extremely traumatic. It's a good thing no one remembers it.

It's not that far from her. She can guess her face, although there's nothing about it that reminds her of anyone. A newborn baby's face has to adjust to the gravity of the world, after all. She'll have to wait a few months to see similarities or differences. Her eyes would change color. She doesn't even have hair.

She could look like anyone.

«What if she looks like him? Or not... even worse... What if she is like him?»

The looks are not eligible, but the soul...

Anya closes her eyes, and gives herself over to the darkness of a chosen nightmare. She tries to form in her mind a girl she doesn't know. A teenager, or her age already? Adult and formed. Lost of any kind of redemption. That look, those dull eyes... the absolute certainty that the world has been put before her to do and undo as she pleases. And not out of ambitious vigor, but out of a violent desire for destruction and death.

Things will be as the nameless woman decides, or they won't be. Cruel and deceitful, cynical, manipulative and abusive. Evil put on Earth, crawling out of her womb.

«But it's hard for absolute goodness to exist, just as it's hard for total evil to exist. What if it doesn't? What if she grows up... and looks like me? What if she grows up and is like me?»

The teenager who looks back at her from the other side of her mind changes then.

Her anger turns to confusion. Her rage turns to determination. Her disdain turns to frustration at failure. Her hatred turns to fear and doubt at a life that is difficult to navigate.
And each small mistake does not lead her away from the path: it makes her more human. Because that is how a person is forged… through their failures and their successes, and not at the expense of pretending perfection and guiltlessness.

“How are you feeling, Anya?”

Sandra's voice reaches her, soft as a mother's caress. Anya moves her head carefully to look at her, and the doctor sits down next to her. She lets her gaze fall on the papers on the nightstand for a second, perhaps trying to make sure if she had already decided on a name for the girl or not and, seeing that the blank space... was still blank, she turns her attention back to her.

“...it hurts” the black-haired woman murmurs, and Sandra nods carefully.

“The effect of the epidural is wearing off... and the midwife had to make a small cut to help the baby come out.”

“A cut?” Anya wrinkles her nose with some effort “I didn't even notice it.”

“Eventually you will, she had to put a stitch in you. I brought you something.” Sandra sits up for a moment, pushing aside the things on the bedside table (the birth papers, the Pony Express termination fax that is evidence at the end of the day, and some medications), until she places a white box that looks like it’s made of thick polyethylene. She sees some cold steam rising and shows her something similar to a diaper. “It’s cold, and it’ll do wonders to reduce vulvar pain. Do you want it?”

“…good heavens,” Anya smiles heavily. “Rich people’s medicine is a world apart.”

The cold pressure reduces the growing discomfort between her legs, but does nothing to reduce the tense knot in her chest. Sandra puts the lid back on the box, and when she sits down, she does so with the posture of someone who knows she’s dealing with a complex issue.

“What are you thinking about?” she murmurs, and Anya swallows heavily, carefully turning her head to the left again. The baby sleeps peacefully, completely unaware of everything that happens outside the incubator that, right now, is her entire known world “…you know you don’t have to keep her. There are many people on the waiting list in this city wanting to adopt a baby. After a reasonable amount of time has passed in the incubator, I would take care of everything for you. You can choose a couple of parents that you like, ask them questions…or have no contact with anyone, however you would like to approach the matter. And if you are afraid of creating a bond through breastfeeding, we can take care of that too. Collect your breast milk and let one of the pediatricians feed her once she can be removed from the incubator. You just…”

“No” the word comes out from between her lips with such determination that she surprises herself. But that certainty only lasts a second, before her throat closes and her eyes fill with tears. She's so tired, she's sick of crying, but inside that hospital, she can't seem to do anything but cry “…Sandra, there's something wrong with me, really wrong.”

“What do you mean, Anya?”

“…up there, in space, feeling her grow terrified me. If I'd known from the start that they were two babies…I know I would have completely lost my mind. I'm not sorry that one of them died, I don't care. I was going…to kill myself. I was going to shoot Jimmy, free Curly from his suffering…and kill myself. I was convinced that I would die of hunger and thirst, Sandra, I had nothing else…and this is the first time I've said all this out loud, besides the interview with the feds” she pauses briefly, waiting for the doctor to want to add something, but Sandra doesn't say anything and allows her to continue talking “…every day…every fucking day…I was terrified of him. Not Curly, the…the man who did this to me. I could barely sleep at night, convinced he would do it again, and he wouldn’t indulge in just repeating it. I was convinced he would kill me, you know? We all thought we were going to die. Freed from a homecoming and future punishment, he would do whatever he wanted. But even though he didn’t, or try…the damage was already done. Every time I saw him, I remembered what happened…and I saw him all the damn time. So much pain, so much disgust…I should hate her, shouldn’t I? I should…resent seeing her. I should scream at you to get her out of this room. But…I can’t. I’m convinced of it, you know, convinced that…that I don’t want her to die. That I don’t want her to suffer. What was all this pain for, then, Sandra? Was all my suffering fake? All the horror I felt, was it a lie? I was five minutes away from shooting myself, and it was all inside my head? I can't yell at her, or hate her... it's the only clarity I have. Did a part of me want to...?”

“Anya.”

Sandra stops her voice at that moment, leaving an affectionate hand on her right shoulder. The brunette holds her breath for a second, before almost breaking down and coughing, letting her gaze fall on the sheets of that stretcher.

“Whose expectations are you trying to fulfill, Anya? Who is waiting on the other side of the door to decide if your suffering is valid or not?”

“I…”

“There are no indicated steps to follow after a trauma, other than those suggested for filling out a police report. There is no police report here, Anya, just you, your life and the decisions you want to make, and the responsibilities you want to choose” Sandra places her hands on either side of her face, with such care that she barely feels the touch of her fingertips “you decide how you are going to act from now on, but you cannot decide how you are going to react inside your mind. In your soul. You have no control over the path your feelings will take. Every… person out there who has been the victim of something terrible is different. Different life experiences, different thoughts on morality, life, death, what’s right, what’s not… but you have to understand that the life you’re deciding on right now is yours, Anya. No one else is going to decide for you. It’s your choice, completely yours, and I know there are people out there who will help you no matter what your choice is. But you have to understand, Anya. You don’t owe anyone anything. Your reaction to pain doesn’t make you any more or less deserving of it. Just because you’re not… crying all the time, that you had to make terrible choices aboard that ship to ensure your survival, whatever you did… it doesn’t minimize what you went through. It doesn’t make you guilty, in any way your reactions to that abuse mean anything about whether you deserved it. No one deserves that, no one. It wasn’t your fault, Anya. It wasn’t your fault. You don't have to believe that all you deserve is suffering and death for that to be true.”

Anya shivers, but nods heavily. Sandra stands still around her, clearly unsure of whether to hug her or not, so she just rubs her shoulder carefully. The former nurse is aware that there must be some emotional barrier between a doctor and their patient, but, good heavens, she would love for Sandra to give her a good hug right now...she can't remember the last time someone hugged her.

«Even though she's already broken the barrier, she's told me a lot of things that are true...and I wonder how long it will take me to believe them.»

“I don't want them to take her away,” the black-haired woman murmurs, and Sandra nods carefully, “...I know that...I know that it doesn't make any sense. No dormant maternal instincts have awakened in me, or anything. I'm not sure what I feel...but I'm sure I don't hate her, and I'm sure I don't want to lose her.”

“And no one will take her, Anya, unless you change your mind. You have time…she will have to gain about five or six hundred grams of weight before I even consider discharging you two.”

“I am sick of this hospital” she huffs before stopping to think about it too much, but Sandra lets out a soft laugh, apparently indifferent to any offense.

“I know. I know you want to get out of here…things outside seem to be taking a positive tone for the two of you, but for the sake of the baby…”

“Yes, yes…besides, she can't just leave here with a last name.”

“Don't think about it now, okay? Rest…they'll come to bring you dinner later. Now, try to sleep.”

“I haven't done anything but watch TV, sleep, and eat since I got here, Sandra.”

“Well, there's no need to brag.”

Anya’s chest heaves with laughter. Her throat burns, and yet the sound comes out. A genuine laugh. How long has it been? It's brief, but it's there, and the doctor's eyes shine before she takes the empty polythene box and leaves, suggesting that she ask for a nurse's assistance when she feels the need to go to the bathroom.

Anya moves her face again. The baby is sleeping. No emotion fills her chest yet, but she supposes that something will come eventually. Something good, hopefully, or something neutral.

«I'm completely crazy, I must have lost my mind completely. There's no way I could have climbed down the rope from the Tulpar… something must be wrong inside my brain. But I don't want to die. I don't want to hold on to the pain.»

She doesn't know what to call her.

«I'm scared, but…»

But she knows she doesn't want to lose her.

Chapter Text

4 MONTHS BEFORE RESURRECTION

There is no lever. There is no other track. You cannot stop this in any way. Either close your eyes or watch. The outcome will not change.

For four months now, everything has come back to him in waves. Scenes from the past that in the present translate as slaps, kicks, screams in the face of a blurred vision of himself. He can't hate a little boy, but he can lose his head with a grown man. Especially when that grown man is himself, unable to see the darkness where it once was, and in torrents.

What was wrong with him? Is he really an idiot? He's been beating himself up too much about it, and in the little time he probably has left to live, he knows he's going to twist his metaphorical insides until the last minute. Grant doesn't understand why he couldn't heed the signs, and all he can think of is that he never really knew anyone he could compare him to.

He's crossed paths with bad people, especially men. There are plenty of bad men in this world, and cruel, twisted men, too.
Grant, however, tended to pigeonhole bad men in particular and bad people in general into different sub-groups of human beings. He unconsciously drew a line of evil inside his brain that separated vile acts from good acts, and it never occurred to him that perhaps that line might look more like a zigzag or a maze than a straight line.

As a teenager, bad people lived up to the clichés his God-fearing mother used to quote to him. Grant had to be very careful of boys who skipped school to stand outside smoking or bullying anyone they passed in the halls. She could barely tolerate teenagers with tattoos. He never cared about those things, except for his mother's closed mind, but he was able to recognize negative attitudes in several of his classmates in high school, or in boys he passed in the hallways.

Never in Jimmy, because Grant never talked to his mother about Jimmy.

Emma Curly was more than aware of the boy's existence, of course. He was her son's best friend since they could remember, although he knows very well how much his dear mother has tried, actively and passively, to stop him from being friends with Jimmy or at least to find another boy to call "best friend." As a teenager, those attitudes on his mother's part always put him in a bad mood. He saw his mother as a negative agent, eager to cause harm to his best friend just because, because she wanted to, because she did not consider him worthy of being her son's friend for some twisted reason.

Curly convinced himself of this, and when Jimmy started to feel bad, Curly felt bad at the same time, keeping inside everything his best friend confided to him, knowing that his mother would force him to get away from him with an ultimatum if she knew the kind of negative reactions the brunette aroused in her only son.

The kind of things his son felt for him.

The blond remembers turning on the mattress, to the right and to the left, scared to death and sweating cold at the idea that that would be the night, that Jimmy would follow in his father's footsteps and commit suicide. He also imagined that Jimmy's mother would somehow inexplicably discover that Curly knew and blame him for not helping her son. She would point a finger at him and shout "MURDERER!" with such vigor that, like the mark of Cain, the word of the crime would appear burned into his forehead, the flesh stained, swollen and pink. It would be like the branding of a piece of cattle, ensuring that Curly would live with the guilt until the last of his days. Inside and out.

Even if the message didn't appear, he would feel it that way.

Jimmy wore long sleeves all year round, even in the last, muggy weeks of May, and in the first weeks of September, when the chill of autumn hadn't quite set in yet.
He felt guilt and disgust at the marks on his wrists and the insides of his arms. Guilt and disgust more like someone who is being punished for an act. For a crime. It's not the kind of feeling you should have for something you decided to do to yourself, is it?

He has no idea. He knows nothing about that state of mind. Oh, he's sunk. He's sunk too much, now more than ever but, apparently, there are different kinds of sinking. Curly has spent hours in the past staring at a blank wall. The wall of a boardroom. The wall of his bachelor pad. The metal wall of a spaceship.
In the void he has found the hollow of his meaningless, empty life, and he has assured himself that, to continue living like this, he would be better off dying. When Anya spoke to him about death during one of their talks in the main lobby, he dismissed the subject. He told her that he has never thought about death. He lied to her. And although all that was true, and all his animated words a tasteless lie, Curly would not be able to hold a knife and open a line in his flesh, ready to see the blood sprout like flowers after a furious rain in the desert.

What does he find there? What answers could pain offer him?
Jimmy seemed to be full of questions and, in turn, always dissatisfied with the answers.
Dozens of marks with the same ignored answer: You will never feel better if you do not solve what is wrong with you.
It did not matter where in his flesh he looked, he would always find the same words.
What did he expect to find? What kind of answer could satisfy a mind like his?
Curly likes to believe that Jimmy wasn't completely lost in high school yet. That there was still something someone could have done for him... some teacher who was more concerned about the mental health of his students, for example, or a school psychologist who wasn't a hollow idiot placed to fill the position.

No, Curly doesn't know anything about psychology, but when his father's brain tumor was diagnosed, he was sixteen and was dragged almost by his hair to the school psychologist's office. Grant hadn't asked to see him. In fact, he didn't feel he needed to... and if he wanted to talk to someone, he would do it somewhere else. He didn't even feel, that day, that he was in a particularly low emotional state... just a little taciturn. More than usual. "Normal," considering that he found out the day before that his father had one of, probably, the most horrifying cancers in existence.

The word "cancer" made him sick then and even now, two years after his father's death, with his flesh more infected and his mind more lost, it still provokes the same feeling.

The psychologist tried to talk to him but Curly, between the scene created by the math teacher in class and all the stupid obligation behind his presence in that office, was not in the mood to have any conversation.

He tried to give Grant a talk about illness, life, and death, which his mother had already given Curly the day before, after telling him the news. He was sixteen at the time, and he wondered if his father would live to see him graduate from high school and go on to college. The last thing he needed was a complete stranger trying to step into his shoes, or worse, his father's shoes.

«But your father lived almost twenty more years. He saw you graduate from high school, college, and become a Captain almost on his deathbed. He was happy, proud, but that pride shining in his dying eyes aroused nothing in you but guilt. You hated your job and you couldn't say anything to him. You were almost relieved that he died. You were almost relieved that he wouldn't see you lose your job and be, at last, happy. All of this falls on you because it's what you deserve. You're a bad man, Grant Curly. The kind your mother warned you about in high school...or worse.»

Jimmy would never find guidance in a guy as idiotic as the student psychologist, Curly convinced himself of that. Looking back, maybe he was right in that regard. The guy wasn't qualified...but neither was Grant.
He convinced himself, at the same time, that he could give his best friend the support he needed. He would find a way to get through it, eventually. Everything would work out for Jimmy...because everything always worked out for Grant in the end, and why not for him?

«You were always under his control. Maybe when he was a teenager he couldn't see it that way completely. Maybe he wasn't completely covered by that twisted malice yet, but he found a way to make you act as he wanted: guilt. You felt responsible for him, and he liked that, because it was something he couldn't find anywhere else. He was convinced that there was something wrong with him and, maybe at first, it wasn't his fault...but he allowed himself to be dragged by the thought, until it devoured him completely. If Jimmy ever had the chance to acknowledge his mistakes and improve as a human being... a lot of water has passed under the bridge.»

What could he have done?

He goes backwards. He thinks. Condemned to that stretcher, thinking is all he can do. The oxycodone ran out after a month and a half, and the pills did little to stop the pain. Nearly delirious in such a terrible way, the inside of his brain was all he had left. He has lost entire weeks doing nothing but pray.

He has prayed to every saint he knows. He has chanted in his mind every song he learned at home. Many of the cries that Anya thought were laments of pain were nothing more than supplications to the God he has been told waits between golden clouds. He prayed for a rescue that will never come, for a miracle for his crew even at his own expense if necessary, for a victory against death that seemed to be the only end waiting around the corner for all of them. He prayed for some terrible accident, some stumble, something that would take the new captain below the level of becoming a threat.

When prayers for rescue never came true, Grant changed his plea and began praying for something new: death.

It's been four months since the fire consumed his flesh, and he doesn't understand why he's still here. Paying the price for his ineptitude is the only reason he can think of. He knows of people who have died after much lighter accidents. All around him, metal turned to fire and the smell of his own boiling blood reached his nostrils. Any doctor, no matter how award-winning, would have written him off and left him for dead in a hospital emergency room, waving a hand and declaring there was no point in wasting time, effort and resources on a man who would die within the next twenty-four hours.

“A strong sedative and a plea to guide your soul to Heaven.”

It’s been two thousand nine hundred and twenty hours since the accident, and he’s still here. He couldn’t get away from the IV and he can’t get away from the pills. He couldn’t get away from her. He can’t get away from him.

What could he have done?

Before the Tulpar. Before, long before everything.
What could he have done?

When they were a couple of little kids, playing on the riverbank even though his mom had told him a thousand times that she was scared of them playing there, so close to the water. Jimmy hit a little girl with Curly’s hard plastic spaceship toy. Then he hit him. All…all so that the next morning Grant would come looking for him to play again and hear how he had killed his mother’s cat.

Curly never told anyone. He never told his mother. He was aware, despite his young age, that telling the truth would mean not seeing Jimmy for good. A terrible prospect. Whenever he went out that summer morning and said he was going to play at Jimmy's house, Curly went somewhere else, to play with other children, always lucky that his mother trusted him enough not to call Jimmy's mother and confirm whether her son was really there or not.

Perhaps, if Curly had said something at that moment, he would not have been able to play with Jimmy anymore... but he knows his mother. Despite her fear, she could not stop thinking about that poor child, with such a sad life... she would talk about it with his father, who would tell her not to stick her nose where she is not wanted, but she, categorically ignoring her husband, would call social services.

Grant is sure that one look at Jimmy's swollen face, caused by the blow from his mother's boyfriend, would be enough to know that they would have to get him out of that house as soon as possible. Badly hurt. Swollen. Sick. Sad. He would be taken somewhere safe, and eventually he would find a home where he could be raised with respect and love. But...he would be taken away, and Curly would never be able to see him again.

He can't remember if he had the mental capacity to formulate such a scenario when he was only eight or nine years old...but the image forms so vividly in his brain right now that he wants to shiver.

Every little movement of his body hurts as if he were being unstuck right now.

And what could he have done when they were teenagers?

Curly tried to convince him to seek help elsewhere. Anyone, except the school psychologist. The blond was unable to shed any light on the inside of Jimmy's mind, in more ways than one. Not only was he unable to help him feel better, but he was also unable to understand the nature of his pain and, much more than that, he had a hard time putting himself in his shoes. He doesn't believe he's not an empathetic man, but his big problem is that Curly, at sixteen, has never in his entire life felt as bad as Jimmy.

Or so Jimmy kept telling him, whenever Curly tried to offer some suggestion. Some way out. It all came down to an annoying, chewed-out "You have no idea how I feel."

And it was true, but that didn't stop the anguish that sizzled inside Curly because of his best friend's emotional state from being any less true. Curly didn't know what to do to help him, and the desperation grew inside him more and more. He didn't do as well in his penultimate year of high school as the rest of the time, and none of his teachers were surprised. None of them scolded him too much or decided to demand more from him, knowing that he could give more. They surely thought that the news of his father's illness had affected him too much, and that none of them had the agency to stick their noses into the wounded soul of a sixteen-year-old boy.

Almost, almost.

And what could he have done when they were adults?

«If it wasn't up to you to try to fix Jimmy's emotional ailments when you were teenagers, even less so when you became adults. He had plenty of time to decide that there was something wrong with his head, and plenty more time to decide not to do something about it. Surely he could have fixed it, but he didn't want to. You had your own problems, and a career you had just finished. When you had just graduated as a pilot, the first thing you did was get drunk in a bar with him, so he would have to drag you like a dead weight back to the apartment where you lived. Your parents had organized a proper party for you that weekend to celebrate your graduation as a pilot. You invited Jimmy, but he didn't go. You had seen him at the bar before, but your hangover was so bad that you don't remember what you said to him, if anything. You didn't drink again that weekend, nothing but water and lemonade, while your family partied as much as they like. They love getting together for good reasons so much that Jimmy wouldn't have had any place there.»

Curly remembers being twenty-four years old and sitting on the first step of the porch of his house. It was a very pleasant summer night. Warm, but a cool breeze that made everything much more tolerable. He was sipping his glass of lemonade when the door behind him opened and closed. The two seconds it took for the person to sit on the step to his left, he remembers thinking, "I hope it's not Mom, and for God’s sake I hope it's not Dad, I'm going to break down, tell them the truth, and ruin their view of me forever."

But for better or worse, it wasn't his mother or father. It was Scarlet, one of his cousins.
Scarlet was two years older than him, part his uncles' (one of many) family who moved to Texas. Her parents had a ranch and a huge team of horses, and Curly always traveled with his parents there for at least a week during summer vacation. He hasn't been able to set foot in the place for the past four years because of his pilot training, but maybe he can come back...at least for a couple of days.

“And that face? It looks like you saw a ghost.” Scarlet sat down next to him with a grin from ear to ear. All of his relatives on that side had a very strong Texan accent. They had lost any trace of the English accent. “Congratulations, Curly. What are you doing out here? A little overwhelmed by so many congratulations? And I've come to give you a couple more.”

“Hm... something like that, I guess.” The blond put the glass of lemonade aside. His cousin never took her eyes off him, even wrinkling her nose.

“There's something else going on with you, isn't there?” Curly began to shake his head, but Scarlet shook her head much more emphatically than he did. “And don't tell me you don't. I have three brothers, Grant, I can perfectly identify when a man is distressed about something and doesn't want to talk about it. Hey, I'm your cousin, but I'm also your friend. I won't tell your parents anything if you don't want me to.”

“It's nothing important, it's just that...” the blond's eyes had begun to walk down the street. The night was carefully settling into the neighborhood of his childhood, common like the classic suburban neighborhood used as a setting in the classic television series “...you already have a job, Scarlet, you're married...you have a son...but, don't you sometimes feel that at some point you had a precious opportunity in your hands, but that you decided to let it die for something else, something worse, and you'll never get it back?”

Scarlet held his gaze for a couple of seconds, before raising an eyebrow.

“Does a life crisis seem like something not important to talk about to you, Grant? Why are men like that?”

The blond didn't know what to do other than shrug his shoulders at that moment. His cousin exhaled, as if she was really very used to that kind of situation, before resting her face against the palm of her left hand.

“Listen... life is like... the trolley dilemma, you know it?” Curly shook his head “well... imagine a trolley comes and the track splits in two. On one track there are four people tied to the rails, and the trolley comes at full speed to run over the four people. You have the lever at hand to guide the trolley to the other track, where there is one person tied instead of four. What do you choose? Pull the lever to save the four people, or do nothing and save that one person?”

“I...” Curly must have had a very sad expression at that moment, because his cousin puffed out her cheeks in a poorly concealed laugh “I... I have no idea, what is the correct answer?”

“None, Curly. It's a dilemma, not a riddle. There is no correct answer. Everyone will have one that they consider best, according to their morality, their vision of ethics... someone can decide to save the four people because four deaths seem worse than one, and another person can decide that it is unfair to kill that one person, that their life is not worth less because that person is a minority in comparison... and life is like that, Curly. But, in life, you are inside the trolley, you pull the lever, and you are tied to all the rails. Different versions of you will die when you pull the lever, that is how things work when making decisions. There were different versions of you at twenty-four. One who made a mistake in high school and became a teenage father, another who entered law school, another who sold all his possessions and used the money to buy a cabin in the Alps and escape modern civilization, another who decided to run away from home and was never heard from again... every action has its inevitable reaction. But you know what is beautiful about life, too? It is never inflexible. Whatever opportunity has passed, it can arise again. If you don't feel completely happy now... don't worry. Life is in perpetual motion, and you can always get off the tram at the next stop if the ride isn't to your liking. No one is going to stone you for it. Life goes on and on and on... there's no point in living it on a ride you don't like.”

Scarlet was right. She was so right.

«But you never listened to her. The ride began to wear you down, and you never got off the tram. One more year. One more year. And now, look at yourself. You have no voice to shout at the driver to stop, no legs to jump off the moving tram. You are not the driver anymore, either. A shadow has replaced you. A mirage.»

He himself made life stop and sink. Capable of the impossible, except for what he needed to do. What kind of tragedy is that? How would his dilemma be baptized?

«The dilemma of the bystander. He who chooses to contemplate problems instead of acting, will be condemned to watch for the rest of his life. To pay the price until his last vital breath. What do you say? That dilemmas do not have an express solution and that the answer is mutable? Not your dilemma, Grant. Yours does have a clear answer. Congratulations! You can add it to your wall of achievements, next to your "Terrible Captain" trophy and your "Shitty Friend" medal.»

Some days, the pain was so strong that his deliriums could not even allow themselves to be memories, much less reflections. The water had gone down, and going down his throat hurt anyway, it hurt like he was being given acid…but the IV was no longer viable. The oxycodone ran out first, but the saline solution too. Unless he wanted to die, he had to bite the bullet and take whatever Anya, trembling, shoved into his mouth.

She is always so careful with him, more than he deserves. And Grant tries not to moan in pain, but it's impossible. On the oxycodone it was just moans, but at this point…the moans are just an echo of what he used to be able to bellow out. He can't even cry anymore, with his tear ducts burned out and his eye dry, chained to the vision around him. Stuck, forever.

And she always comes back.

"Anya, please, kill me" is the only thought that fills him as the woman repeats the same routine as always. Curly can barely see anymore, and he doesn't hear anything unless someone yells at him...and she doesn't yell. She whispers, and for some time now, her voice has become quieter and quieter. He wishes she would be angry with him just to recognize some vigor in her tone of voice. What did her laugh sound like? If he were left alone completely, he fears he would forget the sound of her normal voice, and that would be it for him. He knows that if he stopped to think about it, he would realize that his own voice seems like a withered memory, but he is capable of giving up all his memories in exchange for saving them, or saving her. Only her. One last act of selfishness...but he has already committed too many. He has exhausted all his options.

Anya changes his bandages, tries to feed him, moistens his eye...but she doesn't speak to him anymore. Jimmy is the one who gives him the pills, and since what happened last time, a violent horror takes over his body and everything hurts more. Everything is harder.

"Just kill me. Get rid of this. You don't have to help me. Everyone thinks they're trapped because of me. No one is going to complain if you let me die. Not even Jimmy will. Why are you holding on? What are you holding on to?"

She has no room to demand anything from him, though. Not when they're in this situation because of him.

«Scared. Coward. Unable to pull the lever.»

Maybe Anya's decided to keep him alive because she's concluded that this horrible suffering is what he deserves, in the broken belief that he decided to crash the ship into the meteorite fragments, and because of his utter failure to help her.
She must see him there, lying on the stretcher, badly injured, suffering, and have decided that it's fair or even a small price to pay for his sins.

Now, the echo of the infirmary door opening and closing takes over his senses. He hears something else: a thud. Perpetually illuminated by the sunset screen, Curly can do nothing but suffer a series of spasms perpetually, until the recognizable image of Anya enters his field of vision. Pale, more haggard than ever before, tired, with hair too long and tangled. She makes a soft whistling sound when she breathes through her mouth, and trembles when she holds on to the stretcher. Up close, and despite his vision atrophied by dryness and pain, Grant can see more closely all the marks of time on Anya's face in great detail.

The black bags under her eyes, like sacks of coal. Both sclerae reddened, surely from fatigue and crying. How much has she cried, with no one willing to take the trouble to comfort her? A barely perceptible tremor in her head, and a thin film of sweat on all the visible skin. She fixes her gaze on him insistently. She seems to wait for... something, until she blinks and turns her face away a little. Her voice, however, sounds absolutely clear, as if she had read her former Captain's thoughts and wanted to refresh the database of his memories.

Or, on the other hand, she may be too tired.

“I hope I haven't fed you up with my presence yet, Grant, because I'm going to stay in here with you until my body allows me to” her words sound somewhat distant, bubbly. She sinks her fingers into his jet-black hair and combs it back, a tired smile stretching her lips. She leaves both hands there and closes her eyes tightly, a couple of tears falling down her cheeks until she dares to let her hair go again “...I don't want to die, Curly. I don't want to die. I...I can't believe that my life is really going to end like this. Trapped, sick, and alone. It's not fair. Why does this have to happen to me?”

He doesn't answer. Being at the top of his physical faculties, in that situation, he wouldn't know what to answer either, and he's pretty sure Anya already knows that. She searches for encouragement in a deserted, barren terrain. She's not going to find anything but scorched earth and smoking seeds.

“It's not fair... out there they're all two days away from completely losing their minds. Every minute of every hour is... a silent wait. We're waiting for one of the four of us to completely lose it, and it's just a matter of time. I don't want to be near them when that happens. I don't want to. I want to be selfish, for once... for once, think about myself. We're about to die. At least, I'd like to die peacefully... peacefully, that's all I ask. I think it's the least a human being deserves, isn't it? To breathe their last breath in peace... but I can't be cynical. This is bullshit, this is all fucking bullshit. It's been four months now and I've always been trying to find the logic behind... why you did what you did. Why you tried to kill yourself and take us all with you. I considered that maybe I've misjudged you all this time. Maybe I saw you in too benevolent a light and... You know what? It's true. I did. I expected something from you, and you never did it... but that makes you incompetent, not a potential murderer. Not suicidal. It doesn't... it doesn't make you the kind of man who tries to murder four other people just to get rid of the weight of guilt. It's true that I don't have any kind of training in psychology, but... I hadn't seen any of that in you. And it was this afternoon, I admit... or this morning, or this evening, we don't know what time of day it is anymore... but I was in the main lobby, and I realized the truth. It was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I wish I had figured it out sooner, but it doesn't matter anymore to realize the truth. Before. After. Now, or never. We're all going to die anyway. What does it matter if you have the real culprit in mind or not? Maybe it's important to you, but it's not important to me. It's not important anymore. We'll never be able to go home.”

He would trade the truth for a chance for her. He would become the culprit of the accident if in exchange he could save her.

«Because you really care about her, or to free yourself from the burden of conscience?»

May he never be free! May she never forgive him! He doesn’t care.
Begging, praying, everything soon proved to be utterly futile. He can do nothing for his own life, much less for Anya’s.
He can do nothing but watch.

“…all I have left is to stay here and wait for…to gather enough courage to do what I have to do. If I’m going to die, I want it to be on my own terms. It’s only fair…that’s what I believe. I don’t want to die at…at the hands of any of the three of them in a fit of rage. I’m sick of them. I’m…sick of everything. Sick. It can’t be that…that my life is going to end this way. So many years of effort and failure and fear…for what? All this pain for absolutely nothing. This can't be...this can't be...this can't be my life. Born, failed, and died in the worst possible way. And you know what's worse, Curly? There isn't even a reason! I wish I could believe in something, if I believed in some fucking god at least...at least believe that I deserve it for some ridiculous sin, or because it was the will of the deity in question, it would give me at least some comfort, a remote amount of relief, something to hold on to...but there's nothing. This is it for me. And why? just because. I failed at everything I set out to do just because, I suffered what I suffered just because, and I'll die on a fucking ship in the middle of nowhere just because, and that's all.”

It's his fault...he wishes he could tell her that. Curly wishes he could grab her by the shoulders and yell in her face that none of this is just because.

«Her regret goes deeper, Grant. It's something much broader. She's lived an unfulfilling life and was unlucky enough to end up here. Even if Jimmy hadn't crashed the ship, no one could take all that pain away from her. That's what she's getting at, or at least I think so. If she wants to feel that way, at least let her be the owner of her own feelings... although you couldn't do anything about it either. You can only accompany her. I hope your presence can give her soul a small drop of relief.»

Curly doesn't think there's anything worse than dying completely alone. If Anya decides to breathe her last breath locked in the medical room, at least he'll be there to accompany her.

Assuming his silent presence could bring some comfort to her soul. Assuming Curly doesn't serve as a reminder of everything bad and terrible she's experienced aboard the Tulpar.

Anya moves off to the right, disappearing completely from his field of vision. Grant lets out a worried exhale, until he senses her presence to one side, sitting at the head of the stretcher, like a faithful nurse waiting for death to take the soul of a wounded soldier. Still, so that the boy so far from home does not die alone.

During the first world war, many soldiers sent to the war fronts called the nurses who tended their wounds "Mother." Of course, many of them were barely old enough to enlist, and those who weren't lied, desperate for an ounce of honor that would later explode in their faces. Pride. The feeling of victory. None of that matters once you've lost everything and you're burned, amputated, and badly wounded on a stretcher, without even a hand to squeeze while you wait for nature to do its work.

He was the one who should have offered her comfort, and now Anya is the light he turns to for warmth and calm. Useless until the last of his days.
And what was she thinking? The same thing? She'd be regretting all her decisions, all those that led to this point, no matter how tiny they seemed at the time. Not regretting at the last minute accepting the job at Pony Express, taking nursing training, failing the medical school entrance exam eight times, deciding to study medicine, finishing her basic education, being an exemplary daughter, and being born in that country.

«She also pulled the lever, and the trolley came off its tracks. It moved sideways. It ran over all the Anyas tied to the rails. There's nothing left but rivers of blood on the turned earth. A gruesome crime scene. No one will go to find out what happened. No one will go that far.»

“...I wish I could be cruel” Anya's voice reaches him from afar. A drip “I wish I had been cruel then, violent... I wish I had had the courage to kill him that day, here, when I told him I was pregnant... everything would have been terrible anyway, but at least I would have a place to go back to. A life to live, as horrible as it could be... Did I go completely crazy? I don't know... I talk about killing as if I were really capable of it, and maybe you're listening to me and thinking no, that it's a cruel and inhuman idea... but no, no one manages to be good for that long. Not even you, Grant. I guess you're very sorry, and that you feel a lot of guilt. I hope you do... I... I don't think you deserve what happened to you. Fuck, only he would deserve something like that, but... guilt?” the echo of something climbs into the air. A laugh “... I'm sorry, Curly, but I wish... I wish guilt eats you alive. I hope you feel guilt until our last breath inside this prison.”

Anya has had to take care of him every day, since the day of the explosion. Not content with ruining her life the way it was ruined, she has also had to be chained to that gurney, almost like him. Forced to attend to everything necessary to keep him alive, as if he were a newborn baby.

Now she sobs, and it is the feminine sobs that fill the medical room. A soft, watery echo that in no way resembles the vociferous and broken laments that Curly emits every time the pills completely end any remote bit of calm that they could provide to the pain of his body. If even when crying he had to find a way to sound above her, as if the nurse were not allowed to have her cries heard by anyone but herself.

She must have cried many times alone, with no one to try to calm her pain. He cannot do it. He can't do anything but watch.

«You're wrong, you can do only one thing for her: fulfill the most selfish of her wishes. Allow yourself to be consumed by the guilt you feel right now. You didn't help her in any way. You didn't know how to stand up to the culprit of the whole situation, and look at the mess he's plunged us all into. Jimmy is out there, and you can't even guarantee that Anya will be forever safe from him in here. But forever? The only certain 'forever' inside this ship is death. Stop focusing on yourself and, for the time you have left, which depends solely and exclusively on the time Anya has left, just suffer and writhe in guilt. It's all you deserve.»

“Anya, kill me” but the plea dies in a moan of pain, and he hears the curse the woman spits out. It's pointless now. And he has no right. He will not escape what he deserves.

———

AUGUST 23, 1969

THE PRESENT

“Almost! Mind the vibration, Mr. Curly...and gesture as much as you need to. Try again; Hello...”

“Hello, my...name is G-Gr-Grant C-Cu-Curly.”

“Good job” the therapist carefully places her right hand on the blond's neck, near the jaw. She presses her thumb against one side, gently, and her index finger on the other “Could you repeat your name a couple of times, please? Just your first name, not your last name.”

“G-Gr-r-ant, Gr-Grant, Gr-a-nt, G-Grant, Grant, Gran-t...”

“That's good, thank you” she removes her hand from his neck, moving away from the table “repeat the exercises a couple of times a day, but no more than two or three times. The last thing we want is for your vocal cords and throat to be injured again, right? Don't hold conversations for more than ten minutes during these months, use monosyllables or words as short as possible. Daily training is important, but it's useless if you over-fatigue a muscle that is still recovering from months of burns, stillness and intoxication” Curly opens his mouth to answer, but doesn't, limiting himself to nodding carefully “I'll see you next week.”

"Do I still have a week left in here?"

Something tells him that he has many more weeks to go. He hasn't had surgery for the arms transplant yet, but in Dr. Sandra's words, it won't be long. Three days have passed since the first reconstruction surgery, and Curly has only been able to guess glimpses of her in the hallways, always in a hurry and never having time to stop in his room. Thus, he is unable to shed any light on the anguish that has been eating away at him since the morning of the twentieth: Anya's health.

His only source of information are the nurses. None of them know what Anya plans to do in the near future, if she has said anything at all, and the rest is information dripped from the mouth: she gave birth to a girl, the labor was prolonged and the baby turned out to be so thin that she is now recovering in an incubator, like the ones used for premature babies.

“A baby from this season? Bad business,” one of the nurses told him and, when Curly gave her a doubtful look, she looked back at him as if Curly were an idiot. “She was born on August twenty, so that baby is a Leo. Bad business.”

Curly wanted to tell her that to say that kind of stupidity she would be better off staying quiet... but, with the start of his speech therapy still to come, the one who stayed quiet and looking at the nurse in a bad way was him.

And the guilt came back in waves. It had never left him, but now it was a different kind of guilt: with the indispensable and explicit point that Anya could recover from the whole affair in the best possible health, Grant has done nothing but wish that the black-haired would suffer a miscarriage. She would recover from it and would no longer have to worry about a forcibly placed baby, or a future hindered by its unplanned presence.
Neither one thing, nor the other.

Maybe it's because the baby is now three days old and breathing inside the incubator. Maybe it's because it's now part of the world of the living and will surely live many more years than him...but Curly doesn't know if he would be able to look Anya in the eyes, or that baby if she ever leaves the hospital healthy and grows up to be a healthy woman. How to look her in the eyes, after wishing her dead?

In his defense, when he wished it, the baby was nothing more than a dark threat inside Anya's womb. A bird of ill omen. A latent threat. The worst probability in the game of life. He never stopped to imagine the thing as a human being...because it wasn't. Enclosed in the walls of pink tissue, it was as much an organ of Anya as her stomach or her right lung.

But now she's born, and Grant can't help but feel like he did something similar to holding a baby upside down by one of its feet and swinging it over the edge of a cliff, until he got bored of its presence and threw it into a safe zone again.

«Don't give yourself so much credit. Surely Anya wanted it more than you did.»

“Mr. Curly?” he hears a warning knock at the door and then a nurse opening it “you have a visitor.”

Visitor? He can't help but frown. A visitor after so many weeks? Maybe it was the federal agents, wanting to ask him more questions... or some other state investigative agency. Or worse yet, the press. Maybe some television station threw a good wad of bills on the hospital director's desk and now, without really knowing how, he will suddenly have a spotlight pointed at his face, a camera and a live microphone, victim of a flood of questions when he has barely been able to articulate his name without bursting into tears of frustration.

But he doesn't think he can do anything about it, just nodding once.

The nurse disappears...and then he hears footsteps. Quick, anxious footsteps in high heels. Footsteps, still, sure, as if they's walked this path a thousand times. He doesn't hear a single tremor or creak, and when the door opens again, Curly opens the new lid of his left eye so far that the eyeball nearly pops out of its socket.

And the person at the door lets out a shriek. Of terror. Of relief. Of joy.

It was his mother.

“Grant! Grant, my God, Grant. Oh my boy, my boy...”

The hospital room has no windows, but when she walks in, it's like the sun is finally peeking through the clouds after a week of torrential rain. A little, not quite...but all bad and terrible aside, it was a good thing. Emma Curly was almost fifty-nine years old, she had been a mother at a very young age, and now, standing next to her badly injured son, she looks like a Greek deity who has descended to Earth.

His mother stops beside the stretcher, and takes him by the face. Curly waits, because the face she sees right now is not the same face she said goodbye to two years ago. It is not the same face of the child she gave birth to. It is not the face of the son she loves so much.

"What happened to you?" he thinks, forming his mother's voice inside his brain. "Why do you look like that? When will you look normal again? Please don't tell me this will be your face forever. You look so…"

“Grant...” but a smile of very white teeth breaks his mother's face, tanned and wet with tears. She closes her eyes tightly and leans very carefully, resting her face on her son's shoulder “... I'm so happy that you're alive.”

At that moment, something stops working inside the man's brain. A rusty nut. An insidious voice falls silent. He closes his left eye, his right eye for his mother, who watches him from outside, and notices the warmth of the tears wetting that new skin. That foreign face. When was the last time he cried? He came to convince himself that, despite the optimistic forecasts of the doctors, he would never be able to cry again.

But there it is.

“I'm so sorry, Grant. I'm sorry it took me so long to come see you, forgive me. I swear... The doctors didn't let me! I called every day in the morning, sometimes they didn't even take the calls and I had to insist throughout the day. And they always told me the same thing! That you were in a delicate state and that they couldn't afford to risk you having visitors yet...” the blonde carefully moves away from his shoulder, sliding the back of her hand down his cheeks to wipe away the tears “...until yesterday at noon, when they told me I could come. But, when I got here, visiting hours were already over. I had to wait until now, in the morning...and, once again, I was almost scared to death when I saw so many police stationed at the hospital doors. I didn't have anything strange in my bag, of course, but I thought "What if they deny me access for some stupidity?", but no. They asked me a few questions, I showed them my ID and they let me through.”

“Police?” the word comes out of his mouth, broken and hoarse. His mother stretches her lips downwards, shaking her head, surely in an attempt to prevent her son from making the effort to speak “Why...why?”

“I don't know. I was scared that something had happened to you, so I tried to talk to them. They told me it was a security issue, that they have to make sure who comes in and who goes out of the hospital. Then, when I asked at the reception desk for your room number, I tried to get some information from the nurse, and she told me she had no idea, but that there was always a guard at the door to block access to the press... but that this morning there were many more, with two patrol cars. That something had happened, but that she has no idea... and here I am.”

Curly lets out a pained exhale, his gaze wandering for a second beyond his mother's face. What had happened? Maybe because of the news that the case would be taken to the Supreme Court, the businessmen with a lot to lose got nervous and... no, did they really have enough power to... send someone to liquidate them? The idea seems so fantastical to him, more worthy of a mobster movie than real life.

«Fantasy like having a terrible accident in outer space…and surviving?»

“Curly…? How do you feel?”

The question sinks like a knife blade into the center of his brain, and when he turns to see his mother’s face, with her blond eyebrows almost touching and her clear eyes soaked with tears, something breaks. A weight inside his chest disappears. For the first time in more than thirty years of life, he has nothing left to pretend about.

“Mom…I’m…I’m a f-fr-fraud.”

“What are you talking about?” She shakes her head, but her son beats her to it.

“I never... I never wanted to be a captain, mom, t-this d-didn't... I never... I never wanted t-this to be my l-life... I co-convinced myself, I fo-forced myself to... to get used to it. I forced myself... b-but I ha-haven't... I haven't been ha-happy in... years, mom. Years. I...”

“And why didn't you leave it, honey?” Emma denies emphatically, leaving an affectionate hand on her son's forehead “if you wanted to leave everything and start over, you would always have a place at home. I could never close the doors in my son's face. Were you afraid of disappointing your father? Was that it?”

“...no...I d-don't h-have any idea...” a tired smile stretches across his lips. If only it had been that. If only it was all a matter of living up to the inflated standards parents place on their children. If it had been, maybe Grant would have been able to throw it all away the moment his father passed away, as terrible as it sounds when you think about it that way “it's something... beyond that, mom... no, I don't k-know how to expl-explain it” he was starting to feel an itch at the base of his throat but couldn't keep quiet, not now “I was a... fucking co-coward and now... fo-for God’s sake, mom, I wish I was d-dead.”

“Don't say that!” his mother's eyes almost pop out of their sockets, anguish breaking her voice, but Grant nods.

It doesn't matter that it was a cowardly escape. A chosen redemption. If he could die and return the lives of Anya, Daisuke and Swansea to their respective channels, he would do it without hesitation.
But Anya has no way out now, and both Daisuke and Swansea are dead. A boy with his whole life ahead of him, and a family man. He is no one's father. And his life is over.

“I refuse to let you say those things” but his mother continues to deny, as if she could undo years of suffering with just words “Grant, it was an accident...”

“NO!” the violence of the scream makes him worthy of a coughing affliction. Small drops of blood fly into the air, and his mother stifles a scream, bringing the glass of water on the nightstand closer to his lips. Curly drinks carefully. He had forgotten how good it feels to drink fresh water without being overwhelmed by the vomiting reflex.

“Please don't scream... you'll only hurt yourself...”

“... it wasn't an a-accident, Mom” he licks his thin, almost alien lips, and smiles heavily again “... he d-did it.”

“He? Who is he...?”

She doesn't need to finish the question. His mother knows the names and faces of all the people he works with. She has a prodigious memory that he is capable of feeling envious of more than once, and Grant is almost able to see how the faces of all the people she knows appear in her brain like instant photographs. One, after another, after another... until she stifles an exclamation and, carefully, sits down on the free chair next to the head of his bed. Her hands move from her mouth to her cheeks, her teeth chattering.

“On... on television they say it was a mechanical accident...”

“It wasn't. It was a h-hum-human inten-tion.”

“Honey, if that comes out, I…I don't know if they can declare the company guilty. They'll walk away with clean hands of this whole affair.”

“We c-can t-talk about it at l-length, bu-but…it wouldn't have been the…the only m-m-mistake m-made by pony or by…him.”

“What else did he do, honey? Don't demand too much of yourself, but what…What happened?”

And so, categorically ignoring the instructions given by the therapist, Curly starts talking.
In a halting and slow manner, but he tells his mother everything. A declaration of a life that felt like a weight, and everything that happened within his hand. Fights, negative signs that he refused to acknowledge. He kept several events from previous years to himself, but he focused on what was important. He told her what Jimmy did to Anya, and that she had given birth three days ago. He hasn't seen her yet. He can only hope that she is as well as possible. He failed her, and he admits it to his mother's face... only to pay the consequences, spending eight months chained to a gurney, paying the price for redeeming his sins.

And who says he did it? Anya would make that decision.

Emma doesn't say a single word, keeping the heaviest silence Curly has heard since he has had a consciousness of his own. He waits too, breathing slowly, giving his vocal cords some rest. It's too much information to take in in too little time: his son's suffering, his mistakes, and his current state. Maybe she needs to rethink too many things. If perhaps she failed as a mother. If perhaps she really still loves him, despite everything.

When she raises her chin to continue speaking, she doesn't say any of that.

“…he wasn’t my son, but I’m a mother too. I knew he was in pain, and I didn’t do anything to help him. I mentioned it to your father once, but he told me not to butt into other people’s problems.” An annoying tug made an appearance inside Grant’s chest at that moment, and he barely tolerated the pain without uttering a single moan. “…that that was none of my business. You know I’ve never been shy about arguing with him when I think he’s wrong about something, your father isn’t… he wasn’t the kind of man who couldn’t hold an argument without losing his temper and reacting like a fool, but I accepted his words and let it go. If I had decided to ignore him and act at that moment, to help that child…we’d be somewhere else now. On vacation, perhaps. You two might still be friends, but good friends…and he’d be a happy man, not the kind of child who grows up to be a man…capable of doing things like that. Mistakes. Mistakes. You weren't the only one who turned a blind eye, Grant, honey. This road is paved with eyes that look the other way.”

“It...i-it wasn't y-your f-fault…”

“It wasn't my fault?” his mother looks back at him, a sad smile stretching her lips “maybe not, but it's all just a...big blanket of guilt, that envelops many, many people…” the woman who gave him life stays silent for a couple of seconds, before looking back at him “of course, honey, I think you should have beaten him once you knew what he did. A good beating.”

“Ma…”

“You're a huge guy. Bigger than him, at least. I think you would have beaten him so good that he wouldn't have wanted to act like a jerk around you anymore. Maybe if you had beaten him when you were teenagers, it would have solved a lot of things. Don't men solve things like that, since they're so averse to the idea of ​​sitting down and talking like civilized people...but words don't work for everyone.”

“Ma, you...y-you've always...told me to...avoid p-problem-problematic boys...”

“When you were a boy in high school, Grant, not now that you're a man! Besides, the boys I warned you about in high school smoked and skipped school. They weren't...rapists.”

Silence falls between the two of them again, cold, regretful. Curly sniffs, and his mother carefully rubs her cheeks.

“That poor boy…the intern, barely an adult…a whole life ahead of him. Have you seen his parents?” Curly shook his head carefully, and his mother exhaled “Of course not, you've barely seen me. Do you even know what their names are?” a sort of moan comes from the blond's throat, and Emma puts a hand on his shoulder “…there's a chance that they'll blame you for the death of their son. The man's wife, his daughters…they will too. There's talk of an accident in all the media, but, until the truth comes to light during the trial, you're still the guilty face for having been in command of the troop before the supposed accident. Do you understand that, Grant?”

“Yes, and I'm…I'm w-willing to accept it, you c-can't b-blame me more than I already b-blame myself.”

“Let's hope everything turns out well... I mean, it's two versions against one, and liars always end up falling. He could come up with some story to make everything fit into his lie but, well, Jimmy was never exactly a bright boy” his mother arches an eyebrow, before approaching and carefully touching the top of his head. Like sprouts in the earth after it has been stirred by war, she notices that his golden hair is growing back. With his skin still pinkish because of the burns, he must look ridiculous “Curly, what will happen with her?”

“W-With Anya?”

“Of course. You told me that she gave birth a few days ago...what will she do with that baby? Will she raise it?”

“No...I-I have no idea...we o-only s-spoken once...I-I just know that the b-birth was long and that it's a g-g-girl.”

“Ah, I always wanted to have a girl. When you were seven or eight, I got pregnant again. Did I ever tell you?” Curly shook his head carefully, stunned. A sad smile had stretched across his mother's lips. “Yes... but it was more of a daydream than anything else. It barely lived a month and a half, and I lost it. It hurt so much that I asked your father to have surgery, because I didn't want to go through that pain again. Maybe if we had tried a second time, I would have a girl now, but... that's life. You make decisions, and you live with them, don't you?” Grant nods, again, slowly. His mother seemed to have gone somewhere far away for a few seconds, before returning to him. “... maybe she should come with us.”

“Anya?”

“Of course, Curly. It's her we're talking about, isn't it? We don't live too far from here…and it's ideal, because I don't think they'd let you two go too far knowing the importance of the trial. With a newborn baby, she needs all the help she can get…it takes a village to raise a child.”

Curly opens his mouth, but remains silent. He wanted to tell his mother that she surely had somewhere to go after all. Home with her mother, for example, but Anya's mother was…a very particular woman, and he doesn't know if Anya would find comfort with her.
From the little Anya has talked to him about her relationship with her mother, Grant didn't like the lady very much. He doesn't know her in person, he wouldn't have any reason to judge her, but still…it seems like the only good thing that woman did was put Anya on Earth.

«And for what? So that she would suffer so much?»

“Is she too apprehensive? Maybe she's afraid she's taking advantage of our good will… you have to tell her not to, okay? Tell her that I came up with the idea, that the house is too big for a widow like me… I imagine she'll be discharged before you, so I'll stay in town until that happens. When you talk to her, ask for me to be notified by phone and I'll come get her” Emma is silent for a moment, drawing a line with her lips “…I know she probably feels out of place, or even trapped in a home that isn't hers. She's been trapped in that ship for a whole year… she needs a place where she can feel safe, a space that she can love as her own. It will give me some comfort to be able to be close to help her in everything she needs… I hope that, with time, she can understand that I do it from the heart.”

“No… y-you don't have to d-do anything, mom…”

“Maybe not, but you won't feel all this guilt alone. You couldn't help her, but I'm the mother of the man who couldn't help her. I should have raised you a little more quarrelsome, perhaps…although it wouldn't have changed what she lived through. Now, I can do something for her, and you will too. This world is very cruel to women, especially when they are pregnant…and even more so when everything had to happen in such a terrible way.”

“I-I know…”

“No, you don't know” his mother shook her head a little, before carefully placing a hand on his shoulder “but you will live through something similar anyway. My child…What have they told you? Can they operate on you?”

“I-I'll h-have to h-have arm transpl-plants b-but not leg-legs, I-I'll h-have to use p-prosthetics…” Emma nods carefully, and Curly licks his lips, trying to get some extra air to continue talking “and m-mountains of t-therapy…”

“He'll pay for what he did to both of you, and to the families of that boy and the man… he'll pay, he has to…” his mother's gaze wanders for a few seconds, before stopping on her son's face “I know that guilt will eat away at your conscience for a long time, Grant, but you can't let it eat you alive. Take it and use it as gasoline if you need to, honey. Your life isn't over yet. If you came back to Earth, that means something. I know you're not as devoted as I am, but I hope you at least believe in me… or believe in yourself, at least… believe in her, if that's what you need. Do it for her.”

“O-of c-course I'll d-do it f-for her, Mom” a spasm shakes the blond's chest, and his mother rests there, carefully, the palm of her hand “ Anya i-it's…it's…”

It's all he has left.

———

AUGUST 27, 1969

THE PRESENT

Inside the hospital, there is a sustained hum, so similar to that which comes from spaceships that, many nights, the man wakes up with a lump pulling hard in his throat and the pit of his stomach. He opens his eyes wide, convinced that everything has returned to the same poisoned channel of yesteryear, that they were never rescued, that he is still tied to the stretcher, with the amber light of the false sunset irradiating him from the left, and death waiting to the right.

And every night he reassures his soul by reminding himself that he is fine…or as fine as he can be in a mishap of his level.

But the hum of the hospital is different from that of the Tulpar.
Drip, different machinery, and the muffled sound of the street in the distance. Police sirens, ambulance sirens, music that comes from some car that passes near the hospital with the radio at full volume. So loud that even he, from inside the intensive care area, can hear it.

He knows he doesn't have much time left in that wing. Not after the transplant operations, at least. Tomorrow afternoon. And, for now, silence. Almost darkness.

A dim, bluish light shines from his bedside table, similar to the one that accompanied him in his room inside the Tulpar. That light does give him the creeps. In front of him, the television. He has become so accustomed to the whisper of voices, that he gets on edge every time he tries to fall asleep in absolute silence. An occasional drip that springs from the open door of the bathroom, which he always has to use with the help of the nursing staff. At this point, he has lost any remote fear or decorum towards his own body. An immense amount of people have seen him naked and have had to shower him. Far gone are his occasional nightmares from his teenage years, in which he suddenly found himself naked standing in the hallways of high school.

Even after the operations and the prosthetics, it will take time for him to be able to do normally all the things that once seemed so commonplace. Lifting a fork to his mouth, brushing his teeth, shaving, combing his hair, holding a fluid conversation, peeing standing up, cutting food with a knife… masturbating, although it’s not as if his libido is too high right now.

«Is it even possible? Is your penis supposed to be able to act normally again?»

He hasn’t asked the doctor. Part of him is afraid of the answer.

And he clicks his tongue, reproaching himself… only to click his tongue again. The therapist was talking about these kinds of exercises. Opening and closing his mouth, trying to whistle, turning his tongue back and forth… inside his mouth, just so he doesn’t look like an idiot. Anything he could do to mark the steps of his advance, one after the other… he tries to do it now, turning his tongue backwards, aiming for the uvula with the tip of his tongue, when some soft knocks against the door almost make him jump, as if they were about to catch him doing something terrible.

Then, the whisper. Feminine, low. Tired.

“Curly? Are you awake?” It was Anya.

It’s been days since he last saw her. Two weeks, maybe? Ever since he heard she gave birth, he’s wanted nothing more in the world than to see her, but now, knowing she’s standing on the other side of the door, waiting in the hallway…a part of him wants to close his eye and pretend that he’s not, that he’s fast asleep, in the deepest pit of REM sleep. He doesn’t answer, hesitant, and waits…until the door handle turns carefully and the wooden panel pushes forward.

There she is.

Unlike the last time he saw her, she’s now wearing a hospital uniform divided into two parts. A white T-shirt, and plain light blue pants, her long jet black hair styled in a somewhat loose braid. She walks, dragging those slippers with such thin soles, and as she goes around the stretcher to approach the only chair in the room, Curly realizes how...strange it is to see her without the huge nine-month belly. She looks, almost, like the first day they boarded the Tulpar.

Or almost. He remembers that Anya was much less thin then and, in a comment that he planned to keep to himself, she looked better back then. Not because she was ugly now, but because before she looked more... alive, with round cheeks and shining eyes. Of course, he can't expect that, after having lived through everything she lived through on board the Tulpar, Anya would come down smiling, healthy and happy. He's not that reckless, or that stupid.

She doesn't look as bad as she did when they got off. Not as pale, haggard and malnourished, but sad. He follows her with his gaze, until she sits down carefully on the chair and her gaze swings around the entire intensive care room. The walls, the TV on…and finally, him. Curly considers speaking first, but he has no responsibility to do so, until Anya beats him to it.

“We'll leave tomorrow.”

“To-tomorrow?” Anya gasps, raising her dark eyebrows, and it takes Curly a second longer than expected to understand why: the last time they saw each other, Grant still needed the brainwave device to communicate.

“Can you talk now? Oh, Curly…” the black-haired leans forward, barely, a sad smile on her lips. “That's…very good.” She understands that the blond's attention is still a little behind, so she clears her throat. “Yeah, yeah…well, it was a long and tedious birth, and the baby was too thin. More than she should have been. Now she weighs three kilograms, between the serum and the milk…she gained weight quite quickly. A whole kilogram in a week.”

“Th-that's g-good” Curly feels his tongue heavy as he speaks, and the access of air to his lungs is injected with an almost parsimonious slowness. He swallows heavily, and his gaze falls carefully “I-I f-feel gui-guilty, I-I th-think I... I h-have never wished for the d-d-death of a-anyone so m-so much as that of...”

“Don't flatter yourself too much, I'm sure I've far outdone you” Anya carefully slides back into the seat. She wrinkles her nose, groans and makes herself more comfortable, sitting sideways with her left arm on the armrest of the chair “but... now that she's born, and that she's more than a week old... I can't help but feel guilty. Sandra says that I shouldn't blame myself for feeling that way, that any other person in my shoes would have felt the same way, but still...”

“She's r-right” the blond murmurs, and the ex-nurse nods carefully, before exhaling through her nose “b-but no... I won't tell you anything y-you already know...”

Anya remains silent, before placing both hands on the armrests of the chair. She sits back up, carefully, letting go of a chewed curse. She says nothing, she clarifies nothing, and walks to the door of the medical room and leaves...but leaves the door open.

Curly waits, and waits...until the rustle of slippers sliding on the floor returns from the left, and something else. The echo of a soft, somewhat high-pitched sound. A gurgling moan and a peaceful silence right after.

When Anya returns, she doesn't arrive alone: ​​she's with the baby in her arms.

Curly almost tries to hold his breath, but the foolishness only makes him worthy of a short coughing fit.

Anya moves closer to the chair again, and Curly carefully rocks his back left and right to move and better accommodate his upper body against the slightly raised head of the gurney.

In Anya’s arms, the baby looks as tiny as she is, considering she is barely a week old. Wrapped in the light blue hospital blankets, she looks even paler, with a thin bracelet wrapped around her left wrist for safety reasons, although the man highly doubts that there is another woman other than Anya in the intermediate care wing who gave birth at the same time as her. He doesn't guess anything about her face, but he does guess her head, with just a shadow of hair around the crown, thin and fine. He is unable to guess the color.

“And here we are...” Anya, sitting back in the chair, carefully lets her chin fall almost to her own chest, her gaze lost in the baby's face. She doesn't say anything and Curly imitates her. He doesn't think it's up to him to carry the thread of that conversation. “You know, it's... kind of mind-blowing to think that this baby was inside my womb for nine long, disgusting months. The human body is strange and terrible. Look at her now... if you were to stand in front of the maternity ward of a regular hospital and see all the nurseries and all the babies, you'd never guess the story behind her in particular, huh? She looks ordinary.” The former Captain is unable to unravel the nature of Anya's tone of voice. She sounds tired, that was clear, but the man can't decide if besides tired she's angry, sad, desperate or downright crazy. She slides his right hand over the baby's face, almost fearfully caressing her ear with the tip of her index finger. She only does it for a few seconds, before stopping and raising her face to Grant. “...she had a twin sibling.”

“What?” The news is so abrupt that Curly is able to speak without hesitation.

“Yes, it seems so. They were two babies, but she ate her twin sibling... so as not to consume more nutrients” Anya's lips move and, soon, her sad and dark eyes fill with tears “it's... so pathetic. The fetus noticed that my food intake was reduced, so she decided to eat her twin so as not to take nutrients from me. I was starving to death trying to kill her, and she decided to starve to keep me alive...” her chest heaves with an empty laugh, shaking her head slowly “Why would you do something like that? Did you really want to live so badly?” and her gaze then lowers, looking closely at the baby in her arms “maybe you know something about life that I don't know, because the future doesn't look too good for the two of us. You were going to be born in the middle of outer space, and I promise you that everything would have been worse then. If you'd allowed yourself to consume me completely... perhaps things would be easier now. But you're here, and... I've already decided how I'm going to try to make things work from now on.”

“Anya” Curly tries hard to speak as clearly as possible, especially when he notices that only one part of Anya seemed to be paying attention to him, as if one hemisphere of the woman's brain was looking at him, and the other was attending to the needs of the baby who, right now, sleeps, undisturbed and ignorant of everything that happens around her “Are you going to s-stay with her?”

“...yes. I know that it may surprise you, but that's what I've decided.”

"Why the hell would you do something like that?" is the thought that overwhelms him then, but it dies like a bubble that is born and bursts at the beginning of his throat. It emerges dying like a sigh.

«And who do you think you are to blame her decisions? To intrude your thoughts, which were not requested, behind Anya's ideas? The only thing you have to do is help her in everything you can. That's what you promised your mother, and what you swore to her without words. Make up for the way you couldn't help her aboard the Tulpar and do something good and noble for the first time in your fucking life.»

“It's just that... when I walk out the front door of the hospital tomorrow morning, I'll be alone.” Anya can't take her eyes off the baby. Now, in the silence of his hospital room, Curly can hear the newborn's breathing. She makes soft sounds and stays very still in place. “My friends, Lily and Soledad, want me to go back with them to the apartment. It's a place to stay, relatively close, before the trial, but it's still in another state and I... I don't know if I want to put this weight on them. They want to help me, they've told me. They support me, and I believe them, but... what I don't believe is that they've put all the implications on the table when offering to help me, you know? I just don't... I don't think a student apartment is the ideal place to raise a baby” Anya's chest heaves with a tired laugh, closing her eyes for a moment “it seems like a joke... years of being the same one that fails at everything she sets out to do. They've always helped me, out of the goodness of their hearts... and now I come back to the apartment empty-handed and with a baby. The same old cycle. I just need to become my...”

“And y-your m-mother?” Curly realizes that he has suggested a terrible idea the moment Anya opens her eyes again and lets her gaze fall on him. He exhales and the baby makes a cooing sound, as if she were the nestling of a bird that has not yet learned to chirp.

“She came to see me a few days ago...and she didn't believe me” the expression on Grant's face must have been a poem at that moment, since Anya just looked at him and nodded “according to her, the idea of ​​returning home and not having money terrified me so much that I made the decision to get pregnant by a superior in order to take money from him when I returned home, but now I regret it...and I have decided to formulate a false victim story.”

“T-Th-that's n-not...!”

“Calm down. No insult you can throw at my mother will be worse than the ones Soledad threw at her” Anya moves slowly to the left, settling back down. The baby against her chest in an action more mechanical than maternal, but careful at the end of the day “I think...that's what I have to face. In this, I'm alone.”

“No.”

Curly hears his own voice filled with such determination that he surprises himself. Under Anya's contemplative gaze, the man forces himself to sit up fully against the raised back of the stretcher. There, he breathes copiously through his mouth, forcing himself to articulate clearly and confidently each and every word that comes out of his mouth.

“My mother c-came to see me f-fo-four days ago,” he begins, forcing himself to look Anya in the face through his one good eye. “She's still in the city wa-waiting for them to discharge you. She w-wants you to go home with her. She w-wants to h-help you. We want to help you.”

“What are you talking about?” Anya smiles, but there's not a hint of encouragement in that smile. “Grant, I appreciate your mother's intentions, but I don't really think it's right. I...”

“P-Please, Anya” he silences her. If he could, he would twist his fingers in the sheets of the stretcher but, lacking fingers, he chatters his teeth “please, let me t-talk. Please, listen to me.”

The black-haired woman opens her mouth but, the next second, she closes it again. That acceptance is implicit.

“Up there, in space, I couldn't help you. I failed you, Anya. I...I fucked up big time and look at everything that ha-happened. I was an idiot...even before, b-before, many years ago. Many. I was an idiot...over and over again...be-because I was in love. I was in love. And I was an idiot as a result.”

Anya just looks at him, but doesn't say anything, so he keeps talking.

“I never acted...and a-part of me wants to convince myself that, in the past, it wasn't my re-responsibility, but it's not true. If you...if you saw o-one of your friends right now acting...badly...you'd help her. You'd make her see her faults, you wouldn't ig-ignore them or worse, you wouldn't cover them up so you wouldn't notice them. But I wasn't like that. I w-was never like that. When I was a kid, I d-didn't k-know how to act. And now that I'm an a-adult, I decided not to. I-I believed in myself too much at the worst of mo-moments when, if I'd done it before, much sooner, none of t-this would have happened. It's so...many things...so many things...and I-I'm sure that ma-many more people were hurt in the past because of my cowardice. For them...I don't know if I can do anything but for you, Anya...I must make up for everything.”

“Curly...”

“I couldn't help you, Anya. I left you stranded, when you trusted me the most. Now I can do it. Now I can c-compensate for all the harm I did to you by not knowing h-how to help you, by not being there for you. You don't n-need to go out there alone, Anya. Please. I c-can help you. In whatever you n-need. Go against P-Pony and Jimmy, together...” Anya looks like she's about to speak, but Curly shakes his head vigorously “...Anya, you saved my life... even before the accident.”

Years a slave to his pain and his mind, already completely given over to the idea that his life would be a painful and overwhelming routine until the year of his retirement.
Convinced, moreover, that there was something wrong inside his own brain. A blown fuse. A broken circuit beyond any hope of being fixed.

«Something precious in your hands. Something you let to die.»

And then Anya came.

How could he explain what he feels? How, without the overwhelming feeling of knowing she's almost canonized dragging her away, pushing her to run without looking back?

“I've never been able to put my thoughts in order, to reflect on myself, to see beyond the pain that I convinced myself was all there is in this life. Nothing, until I met you, Anya. You're the first real friend I've ever had in my entire life, the only person who's ever made me feel un-understood. I don't know if I could help you in any way but e-even if I could, I blew it all. You didn't have the responsibility to try to help me, and yet you did. You did everything on your own. I d-don't c-care if you think I'm selfish, if you think I'm doing all this more to ease my own conscience than for you. Believe the worst of me if you want, b-but let me help you. I wouldn't have been able to stand up to Jimmy without you. I'd be dead, right now, if it weren't for you. You resurrected me and I paid you with a betrayal. You were my only guide. I owe you.”

The black-haired woman opens her mouth to answer, but all that comes out of her mouth is an exhalation.

“We suffered all this fucking shit and we came back alive, Anya!” he bellows. His throat burns and it pulls at his flesh to close his mouth, but he can't do it. Not now. “All the pain, the horror, the suffering... it must have been for something! I refuse to believe that a-all this pain is for nothing!” Curly denies emphatically, his eye filled with tears. “...we can't accept pain and live clinging to it. Life has to be more than this. There are many days out there, and I want you to live them. Despite everything. I don't want you... to live that way, Anya. Not you. It's not fair. Please...”

“Do you really want it that much?” Anya's brown eyes fill with tears as Curly nods carefully “Do you really want to help me so desperately?”

Curly takes a few more breaths.

“...as long as I'm fit to, Anya.”

An incomprehensible sound comes from the woman's chest. She inhales carefully, tears rolling down her cheeks. Curly might get sick if he keeps seeing her cry. Heal if he hears her laugh again.

Anya looks at him, looks at the baby, and looks around, before dropping her gaze on him again.

“Grant...I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive you.”

“I know” he nods just once. A soldier accepting his fate. It's not her forgiveness he seeks, after all. But he doesn't add anything else, the message implicit in the air, until Anya lets out a second sigh, leaning back in her chair.

“...I'm being discharged tomorrow, and I haven't thought of a name for the baby yet.”

“I-Is that a yes?” At his question Anya arches an eyebrow, and Curly then understands that it's true. Almost as if he were a little kid again, afraid that too much partying would make his parents change their minds about something, he decides to lie back down on the mattress of the stretcher, emitting an almost cartoonish sound of thought “What if you name her after yourself?”

“After me?” The nurse almost smiles, shaking her head once “I think I lack a little ego to do something like that…Curly, what's your mother's name?”

“E-Emma, ​​why?”

“I could name her after your mother, as a way of thanking her for her help.”

“Oh n-no, don't do something t-like that, I know her, she'd feel t-too guilty...” Curly shakes his head carefully, and hears Anya click her tongue “W-What was your fa-father's name?”

“Laszlo” Anya shakes her head “I don't think there's any... female version of his name that sounds good.”

“This is very difficult” Curly squints his only good eye, letting his gaze fall on the end of the stretcher “Have you ever playfully thought, in the past, about w-what your children would be called?”

“No, have you?” Curly nods, almost embarrassed, and Anya almost smiles again “And what names did you like?”

“…don’t go ma-making fun of me” Anya nods, and Grant isn’t quite sure if it was a “Relax, I’m not making fun of you” or an “Oh, I am going to do it,” but decides to go ahead anyway “co-constellation names and so on…”

“Very original, Grant.”

“You said you weren’t going to make fun of me” he protests, like a teenager, and then he succeeds: Anya smiles. It’s barely the ghost of a smile, and it lasts a few seconds…but she does it, and the gesture is enough to help him feel better “but y-yes, constellation names, you know…if it was a boy Orion, Atlas, Altair…”

“I highly doubt your wife would let you name her son that.”

“Girl names sound better…Cassiopeia, Miranda, Bianca…”

“Bianca?”

“One of the thirteen moons of the planet Uranus, just like Miranda. Cassiopeia is a constellation. Helene, like one of Saturn's moons. Or Nova... you know, when a star is about to die, it releases such a strong amount of energy that it shines and is visible from very, very far away...”

“I like Nova.”

The two of them remain in careful silence then. Anya barely picks up the baby, who is still sleeping deeply. Isn't that all they do during their first months of life, after all? Sleeping, eating, crying when they are woken up... interactions with a baby barely a week old are not that many.

“Nova Musume, do you like it?” still in her sleep, as if she could hear the voice of the woman who brought her into the world, the baby emits a soft moan, and Anya nods carefully “I hope you do like it, because that's what you're going to call yourself.”

“T-tomorrow I'll ask one of the n-nurses to call my mother.” Curly's voice comes out almost carefully, as Anya slowly sits up. She nods a little, almost oblivious to his words “w-when you go home, p-please don't feel guilty. It was my mother's idea. S-She said that...that it takes a village to raise a baby.”

“What a smart woman…” but her words come out almost automatically, as if they had been pre-recorded “Curly… I'm very tired.”

“Go to sleep.”

“Yes…” again, she nods almost automatically. She walks towards the door, with the baby in her arms, but she stands there for a few seconds, before turning to him again “When… When will they discharge you? Has Sandra told you?”

“I still have a few… a f-few more surgeries, so I d-don't k-know. Then, all the therapy… I-I suppose I can do it from h-home, or… going so-somewhere, I d-don't k-know… I ho-hope my mother and you get along while I'm he-here. I promise you that she's a very g-good woman, I'm not just saying that b-because she's my mother.”

«It’s not like you’ve shown the best judgment in the world when it comes to classifying people as good or bad, Grant.»

Anya is probably thinking that very thing at that moment, but she keeps her thoughts to herself. Again, she nods, and her gaze returns to him.

“That life beyond pain you talk so much about… I hope you don’t think I’m the only one who deserves it.”

Curly doesn’t know what to say to her, but Anya doesn’t give him any room to act either. She retreats at that moment, back into the dimly lit hallway. And Curly stays there, stretched out on the gurney.

The darkness and the stars return to him in no time.

Chapter Text

SEPTEMBER 21, 1969

THE PRESENT

A cool breeze runs down that main street, while the sharp whisper of the wind sneaks into the underground parking lot. It echoes back, like the song of a beast, and bounces away beyond the cars of the medical staff. Posted in the space between a pay phone and the heavy metal door that says "AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY", a man waits patiently, because patience is what he has cultivated the most all these months. All these years.

Grant Curly wears a black sweatshirt and baggy shorts, leaning his weight back so as not to strain his prosthetics too much, a pair of crutches leaning at his side. In theory, after physical therapy and training, he will be able to walk, stand, sit, even run, without needing to use crutches... but that autumn morning he took his first steps outside the hospital in more than a month... in more than a year, if you add the months condemned to the Tulpar stretcher.

A restless tingle drives him to want to move, but the last thing he wants is to push himself too hard, hurt himself, and have to go back before he's even left. During the care instructions and the list of medications prescribed for his stomach, liver, and kidneys, still somewhat sensitive after months of starvation and mouthwash poisoning, one of the nurses gave him a last injection of oxycodone so he wouldn't feel pain during the trip.

“Sandra...” he remembers that, when the nurse left his room, he was abruptly attacked by an embarrassed affliction. The doctor looked back at him, raising her dark eyebrows in an implicit question. “Won’t I become…addicted?”

“To oxycodone?” Sandra raised her gaze to where his bags of saline solution, blood, and opioid once hung before looking back at him. “Don’t worry. We’ve been reducing your dosage since you were recovering from your injuries, and this was the last injection. You’ve likely developed an addiction in space. Anya gave you too much oxycodone in too short a time…although I don’t blame her. She lacked optimal training, and must have felt desperate for your condition.”

“Anya did the best she could with the little she had on hand.” He jumped inside himself at that moment, he couldn’t help it. “I-I’m sure that with any other medical personnel on board, I would have died.”

“I don't doubt it, in fact... I need you to give this to Anya, when you get home.”

Sandra gave him an envelope, an envelope that he now keeps inside his black sweatshirt. He doesn't have any more luggage than that, and the crutches. He would buy the medicines once he got home, and then... they would have no choice but to wait for the start of the trial.
In his family, money had never been a problem. They would find a good lawyer. They would do things right. Curly promised Anya, almost a month ago, that they would make those responsible for all their suffering pay. And although Sandra recommended that he rest for a while before moving on to the legal implications, Grant did not want to return home just to stay lying in a bed again. He is convinced that he was close to suffering from some kind of hives on his back from spending so much time lying on the stretcher, if it weren't for the optimal care of the nursing staff.

Another breath of air blows strongly inside the underground parking lot. Curly exhales. He inhales slowly, inflating his lungs. Sandra told him he would need a CPAP to sleep, on the off chance that his airway might fail him during sleep...and he may have been clinging to some sort of pathetic male pride at the moment, but he's still weighing whether he'll opt to buy the machine as well or just take his chances with his lungs.

«All this time in the hospital, almost a year on the stretcher inside the Tulpar, and you're going to let yourself die in the most pathetic way. Bravo, Grant.»

The watch around his wrist reads eight in the morning and five minutes and, just as they agreed a week ago on the phone, the payphone next to him starts ringing. Curly inhales again, coughs (no, no CPAP, thanks) and picks up the phone, bringing it to his ear.

“Mom?”

“Sure, who else if not?” on the other end, his mother's voice reaches him, barely modified by the static of distance “Curly, are you already waiting in the parking lot?”

“No, ma. I answered the phone and I'm talking to you thanks to my combined powers of telepathy and telekinesis.”

“Wow, from what I hear you're in perfect health! The radiation from outer space gave you super powers!” the blond presses his lips at that moment. On the other end of the line, his mother laughs, coughs a little, clears her throat, and continues, “I hope you didn’t have too much trouble standing up so early… Are you sure you can move?”

“I’m going to move from the exit to the car door, it’s going to be just a meter or so… yeah, I think I’ll be able to survive the effort.”

“Did they give you crutches?”

“Yeah.”

“Well… anyway, Austin will help you get into the car. He should be there soon.”

“Yeah.”

Austin, his cousin, for a change, was the closest relative with a car that could take him from the hospital in Denver all the way back home. His mother has called him several times throughout the month since she left with Anya, and she has told him that more than one relative has called her on the phone to check on his health and visit him, but she has asked all of them to refrain from going to the hospital. She was afraid that so much family presence could overwhelm him, especially because of his physical condition...and she was right.
His mother knew how to react calmly, but Grant is not sure how the rest of his family would have reacted seeing him like that, with the new skin still healing, a face that he still had to feel as his own, without arms and without legs. No one would start screaming, but it is impossible for everyone to be able to keep their composure...to be honest, he preferred the company of the nurses, more than accustomed to his appearance.

He raises his left hand, pulling with some effort the hood of his sweatshirt, until he is covered.

“Mom...” he hears a questioning sound from the other end of the line. “Have you... have you told him how I look now?”

“Hm, well, just a little.”

“Mom...”

“Grant, everyone knows you survived an explosion and its subsequent fire. No one expects you to look the same as you did before...if they're a little bit smart, that is.”

Curly exhales, he can't help it. Like a bad joke from the universe at that moment, "his" right arm, holding the telephone receiver, shakes, and he has to lean the weight of his body against the wall in order to hold himself up and prevent the object from falling from his hands.

He's aware that his mother talks about the subject lightly, perhaps, in an attempt to downplay the matter and not push him to think too much about his current physical appearance...but it's impossible not to talk about the elephant in the room.
He doesn't look nearly as horrible as he surely did lying on the stretcher in the Tulpar medical room. He never looked in the mirror, he couldn't, but he didn't need to be the god of imagination to formulate in his mind the kind of Dantesque vision that would be for anyone to contemplate him in such a state. If he had the possibility of traveling back in time and looking at himself, he would reject it instantly.

Even after his skin heals completely, after the still somewhat reddened colors become pinker and the scars fade their presence on his flesh... even then, Grant will still find in the reflection of the mirror a parody of the man who used to look back at him.

Sandra says that he will be able to recover his hair, that he will have autonomous mobility again. That he will even be able to regain a little more muscle mass... but never as much as before. Never as much as before.
The doctor has mentioned so many things. In addition to physical therapy, of course, she has mentioned dozens of places where he can go, in addition to classical therapy. There were support groups for victims of serious accidents who were physically disfigured, groups of men and women who would understand him better than anyone else in the world, who wouldn't look at him strangely or judge him for the thoughts that are attacking his brain right now.

«And you will? Will you listen to her? Look how far you've fallen... not long ago, you were getting a promotion. Everyone was applauding you. Do you remember the uniform? Thick navy-blue cloth, buttons as white and shiny as ivory. The medal was heavy. You were blinded, for a second, by the flashes of the cameras. But now here you are, needing a wall to support your weight, with arms torn off from another guy. Victor Frankenstein's monster, brought back. The modern Prometheus, two point zero, hiding under a hood. What a pity.»

And what the hell is remembering his promotions supposed to do for him? His decorations? It was a job he hated, an empty life he forced himself to get used to.

«But it was something. You used to have a lot and now you have nothing.»

“H-How is Anya?” Curly exhales the question in an almost rushed manner, desperate to silence the voice that echoes loudly inside his brain. It sounds suspiciously like him.

“Fine, fine... as fine as a first-time mother can be” And what is that supposed to mean? Curly has no way of elucidating his mother's comparisons “She recently cut her hair, and she looks lovely, even younger. She and the baby could be sisters.”

“And how is she...?”

“Nova? Oh, she's an angel...luckily. Maybe it's because she's so thin and small, but she didn't cry too much...although she has gained quite a bit of weight this month. It's a good thing, her cheeks are rosy now and it's a wonder to look at her. Of course...she's entering the stage where she cries incessantly. It's a good thing that it's just when you're leaving the hospital, honey, because Anya hardly lets me help her.”

“R-Really? Mom, you have to insist...”

“And what do you think I do? That as soon as she rejects my help I accept and just stare with my arms crossed? No, no...but she insists. I look at her and I get desperate, I swear. I feel like yelling at her "Anya, let me help you or I'm going to lose my temper"! Even though the baby hasn't cried much this month, Anya must not sleep much, because she has scary dark circles under her eyes...and she usually falls asleep while breastfeeding. She's embarrassed about it, even when it's just the two of us in the house...but I understand. I understand that her intimacy terrifies her, even at such a beautiful time as feeding a baby. But for the love of God, I could give her a bottle while she's napping, or distracted by something else. Change her diaper. Rock her...I know I'm not a young woman anymore, but I can perfectly hold a baby...But she doesn't want to! No, no, no, all the time one refusal after another. She neglects herself too much. Don't be mad at me, honey, but I've had to pretend to be angry and tell her that she smells very strongly of milk so that she'll let me hold the baby for a moment and she can go take a bath. The last thing I want is to upset her Grant, but she won't listen to me! She won't let me help her! I hope you can make her see reason...”

“I'm not mad, mom...” the blond couldn't help but close his eyes during his mother's entire story, especially because the scene could be perfectly formed inside his brain. Of course Anya would feel such a great mix of guilt and horror that she wouldn't allow his mother to help her even in the simplest tasks of caring for the baby. And if it seems that Nova is abandoning the season of behaving like an angel, God knows what awaits her later... when Nova begins to form a personality and must receive scolding and behavior corrections “...but you have to understand her. She lived a horror for months, she doesn't know anything about being a mother, and all the support she once had she lost... she is very scared, she needs you to put yourself in her shoes.”

“But of course I understand her, Curly! I'm not angry with her, no, no, it's just... it's just frustration. I want to help her and I can't, that's all. And I've been in her shoes... well, not with such a terrible context in my past, but I've also been a first-time mother. I felt a lot of fear, a lot of doubts... I want to support her, and I need her to understand.”

“Mom, speak quietly, aren't you afraid she'll hear you?”

“She's not at home.”

“And where is she?” a violent nervousness takes over his body at that moment, sending him almost to the ground. But his mother's tone of voice was completely carefree.

“You see... when your father died, I started going to appointments with a therapist who has his office nearby. It helped me a lot, you have no idea. I used to go once a week but, after a few months, it was extended to once every two weeks. Now I go very occasionally, more to gossip than anything else... and I was convinced that Anya needs something similar. So I talked to him on the phone, I told him the situation very briefly, because I don't know if I should talk about potentially sensitive details for a trial that hasn't happened yet, right? Well, I don't know! The thing is, I told him about Anya, and he told me that it was clear that she would need therapeutic support to cope better with the whole situation, but that it would be better, for her comfort, to have a female therapist. He recommended an acquaintance of his, and today Anya went there. I'm surprised it's so early in the morning...but hey, it's a good start to the day, I imagine.”

“How long has she been going?”

“Oh honey, today was her first session. She'll be back in half an hour or so...so I'm here with Nova. Well, she's sleeping, but I'm watching her...she's finally growing some hair. She didn't have a single one when Anya and I got home.”

“And what co-color is her hair?”

His mother answers, but her voice is drowned out by the roar of a car engine. The lights bathe him first, and then he makes out the license plate and the red color of the car that slides into the underground parking lot. The echo of the engine bounces off the walls and into the background, in the same way as the whisper of the wind, and the blond brings his left hand to his head, shaking, covering his left ear so he can hear his own voice and the voice on the other end of the line better.

“Mom, Austin is here. See you in a few hours.”

“Okay, try to get some rest on the trip. I want you to get home already...we want.”

Not without a muscle tremor as intermediary, Grant returns the phone receiver to its place, stretching to retrieve the crutches and clinging to them as if his life depended on it. He still has trouble moving even with that extra help.
The car stops carefully next to him, and Austin gets out, surely wanting to help him get in if necessary. As he approaches, the glow of surprise crosses his cousin's face. It's a quick flash, yes, but Curly finds it impossible not to notice it.

“Brother...good to see you” Austin, however, approaches and gives him a careful hug, surely afraid of hurting him more. Curly nods and pats him on the back. He doesn't have enough strength to return a proper hug. He still can't clench the fists of that new pair of arms. “Do you need help getting in?”

“N-No, I can do it myself.”

The black-haired man opens the passenger door for him, and Curly, trembling, doesn't quite know what to do. He approaches carefully, but once he's ten centimeters from the seat, he considers leaning on his knees, only for his arms to shake too much and he falls to the floor. The crutches make a clicking sound as they hit the floor, and in the blond's ears, the noise is so loud that all the hospital staff and patients have just learned that Grant Curly is a fucking useless piece of crap who is no longer able to even get into a car.

“Hey, it's okay, come... let me...” Austin reaches out an arm towards him, but Curly pushes it away with a slap to his hand. He mumbles words under his breath and grabs onto one of the crutches with effort, gathering all his strength to try to get up. The new arms are fine. They're not going to pop out of place like a doll with interchangeable parts, are they? He grits his teeth, tries to push himself up. He's been weightlifting for years. Some boxing, even. He used to go for a run every morning when he was still on Earth, before the accident...and now, his body spins around the crutch like a merry-go-round, and instead of landing on his back, he lands face down, the crutch slipping through his fingers again and making an even louder clacking sound in his ears.

“Curly...”

“It can't be...” the blond tries to raise the upper half of his body with his hands. He's not able “t-this can't be true...”

“Curly, you've just been discharged, what do you expect to happen? It's going to take time to regain control of your body.”

“Oh, don't lecture me” he spits. He tries to get up again and, again, he can't do it. He hears Austin sigh and open another one of the car doors, picking up the crutches from the ground to place them in the back, closing the door again “What are you doing?”

“Grant, there are two options here. Either you let me help you get into the car, or you take your pride and use it as gas to drag yourself back home, huh? I can follow you closely with the car, but we're going to generate some traffic.”

“Son of a...”

“Just shut your mouth and stay still.”

Austin crouches beside him, taking his right arm and draping it over his own shoulders. He lifts him up, and Curly leans back on his prosthetics before turning and finally falling into the passenger seat. Once there, it's easier to turn and finally sit in his proper spot.

His cousin closes the door for him and walks around the car. The interior smells pine-like, clean, like the car just came off the lot, and a local radio station plays "In The Year 2525" in the background while quoting statements about God-knows-what from President Nixon. Curly has spent so much time locked away in his hospital room, only interested in Anya's health and the news about Pony Express, that he barely paid attention to the rest of the world.

He wants to ask, but... he's convinced that even outside his little bubble, it's all just one bad news story after another.

“How's the fa-family?” is the first thing he asks as soon as Austin climbs back into the car, sitting behind the wheel.

«In the co-pilot seat again, Grant.»

This is not the time to make those kinds of comparisons. He is not crazy enough to want to get behind the wheel of that car.

“Fine, and worried about you. Mom was upset that your mother didn't let us come visit you even once but... I think it was for the best” the man turns the key in the car's ignition, clicking his tongue “so much family presence would have overwhelmed you, for sure.”

“It's the same thing Mom told me”, he murmurs, almost to himself. It takes him two tries to slide the seat belt over his chest, and two more tries to hook it into the clasp. He searches through the pocket of his sweatshirt until he finds the envelope Sandra offered him for Anya, leaving it safely inside the glove compartment in front of him. When he turns to Austin, his eyebrows are raised.

“What's that?”

“A-A letter for Anya, the...the woman who survived in the Tulpar with...”

“I know her...well, I know her voice. Two days ago I called your house to talk to Aunt Emma, ​​and she answered the call.”

“And what did she sound like?”

“I don't know, tired?” the black-haired man shrugs his shoulders and puts the car in motion, turning to head towards the exit of the parking lot “I talked to her for less than five minutes. She told me that Emma had gone out, that she would be back around three, and she hung up before I could say goodbye. Is she shy?”

“W-with everything we’ve been through, you don't expect her to hold a conversation with a stranger, do you?”

“I guess not.” Austin shrugged again and, finally, they went outside.

Grant closes his eyelids tightly, almost overwhelmed by the amount of light on his one good eye. He's spent more than a month locked in a room without windows and now, finally, the sunlight reaches him. He knows he's pale as a corpse, but he lowers the window a little, allowing some of the breeze to sneak into the car. They leave the block where the hospital is located and the blond snorts, turning to look at his cousin.

“Did you have problems with the police?”

“Police? No... Why? Should I have had any?”

“It's just that... w-when mom came to see me a few weeks ago, she... they stopped her at the door and asked for her ID.”

“That's strange...” Austin frowns slightly, glances at him and then returns his gaze to the street that opens before the two of them “I didn't see anyone. I mean... they've already discharged that girl, and now you, there's no point in trying to keep the press out of the hospital anymore” Curly lets out a careful exhale, before leaning back in the seat...and then forward. He carefully removes his prosthetics, arranging them in the empty space between his seat and the dashboard. They make a rattling sound that, again, sounds like an explosion in his ears.

«Congratulations, champ. You're a Mr. Potato Head now.»

“Grant” the blond sniffs before turning to his cousin, who slightly lowers the volume of the radio “How about you try to sleep? It's a very long trip. I can wake you up when I stop at a gas station, in case you need to use the toilet.”

The prospect of having to receive help with something as basic as peeing, being out of the hospital already, is unbearable for him. Even as a small child he didn't need much help, just a plastic stool to climb onto the toilet and do his business. Now, Austin would have to carry him, held by the back while he trembles to the toilets. He can't even pee standing up without making a mess because of the control of his arms. The shaking is still so unpleasant, that he can't even hold his own member when peeing, forced to do it sitting down.

«And does it hurt your honor as a man?»

He wishes it were all a superficial and pathetic question of manhood. No, it was more than that... he doesn't feel like a less of a man.
He feels like a less of a human being.

“Yes... I suppose you're right.”

He doesn't say any of that, of course. How could Austin understand that it's not about getting help from him that hurts him, but from any person? Known or not.
Well, known hurts even more. A nurse is used to supporting patients who need assistance to perform the most basic of activities. But someone like his cousin has known him for years. He's seen him in his prime. And now...

Grant rests the side of his head near the glass door. Outside, every building and every store is giving way to movement. He carefully closes his left eye and soon the purr of the car engine lulls him.

It brings him to other things.

.

.

.

.

“It's exactly minus two degrees Celsius, dear radio listeners. How about we warm up the night a little with some upbeat music? I'll leave you with the latest song from...”

Curly shoves his hands into the pockets of his blue nylon coat, leaning back onto the sidewalk after slamming and locking the door of his car, the voice of the radio announcer falling silent completely only then. Above his head, the streetlight that flashes from side to side on the sidewalk sparks, drawing a small jump and a gasp from his insides. He is grateful to himself that there is no one on the street to see such a pathetic scene.

All the shops are closed, and the few inhabited buildings remain dark and silent. The only source of sound in the neighborhood is the bar to his left, its amber-tinted, twisted windows. From inside, it seems like dawn is breaking, but when you go outside, it is pitch black. At a certain point you ignore it, drink and drink without worrying about a passage of time that you cannot keep track of. And when you finally deign to go outside, you are greeted by a genuine sunrise.

Curly has never gotten drunk there, but Jimmy has. It's his favorite spot, and also the spot where Curly has to drop by almost every weekend, as long as he's on Earth to take care of his best friend's problems. For some time now, the blond doesn't even have to ask "Who is it?" when he gets a phone call from an unknown number after midnight.

He snorts, watching the icy steam of his breath, before moving toward the bar's door, which opens with a rusty metallic creak and pushes the small bell hanging from the top, emitting a tinkling sound drowned out by the din of old rock and heated conversations.

The place is warm as the gates of Hell, between the human heat and the muggy heat of liters of beer, whiskey and whatever else was on hand to drink. The lights are dim and equally warm in tone, so you can barely make out the faces of the men around you. There are circular tables set up, surrounded by low chairs, and a slightly more open area where the drunks usually bet money on who can beat the other at a little strength or play a game of poker, of course, lacking any kind of regulations. Now, however, the one guessing near the table is a rather large and broad-shouldered guy showing a right hand with open knuckles. Blood surrounds the back of his hand and runs down the palm, but on the face of this unknown man he guesses nothing but pride. He must have felt someone's gaze, because his eyes fall like two bullets on Curly's eyes, and the blond simply looks away in the most pacifist way he can, moving to the right and instantly calling the bartender's attention.

“Look who dropped by... I was wondering when you would come to look for the dead man, Goldilocks” the guy's voice sounds loud and clear, mocking. They already know the faces, but not the names. Perhaps he is being prejudiced, but Grant wants to have as little contact as possible with the kind of people who frequent this bar, and even more with those who work there.

He already hangs out with one man, and that seems more than enough.

“The dead man?” Anxious to divert attention from himself, he pretends to be more distressed than he feels, which is quite a lot. The bartender merely shakes his head slightly to the right, his right, before looking back at Curly.

“I'm exaggerating, but you know what your little friend is like. When Billy...” he nods again, and Grant follows his gaze, until they both see the guy with the bleeding knuckles, and then themselves “...had him on the ground, just finishing up giving him one of the worst beatings I've ever seen him take, the faggot started screaming "Kill me! What are you waiting for? Kill me!" Terrifying. I don't know what he's doing here, he could play a big lead in a drama movie. He needs to give Hollywood a chance. Anyway, of course Billy didn't kill him, he just laughed in his face. We all laughed. I'm sure that hurt him more than any death at the hands of the big guy. I don't understand why he keeps coming back to the same place where he has a reputation for being a masochist, but listen, it's a free live show. They rip a guy to pieces on the floor of my bar and I don't have to pay anyone anything for the entertainment.”

“Where is he?” Curly is barely able to pay attention to most of the words he spits out. What would he like more than to give Jimmy an ultimatum that he knows he'll be able to keep. That he'll do something better with his free time...because anything was better than going to a bar to get drunk and get into physical fights that he knows, from the start, he won't be able to win. Yet, every time Curly walks into that bar, he finds him in plain sight. Waiting, slumped over the bar, or lying on the floor near the door. Sometimes Jimmy'll be waiting outside, smoking a cigarette, and he'll motion with a perfunctory smile to please come in and pay his bill. And Curly, who by this point in the scene is always dead tired and worried, does so and drives him to his apartment, and that's it. Never, until that night, had he walked in only to not see him anywhere.

It's impossible not to worry... especially when it's him.

“In the restrooms, touching up the mascara smeared by tears” the blond clicks his tongue and, as soon as he takes his wallet out of his jeans pocket, the bartender shakes his hand “by some miracle from Heaven, you don't have any debts to pay today.”

“Did he bring money, for a change?”

“No, it's just that...” a sharp knock comes from the end of the short hallway, on the left. There are two doors. One has a piece of paper taped to it and AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY written on it in marker. The other, by force of logic, leads to the restrooms “...forget it. You better go make sure he's not trying to slit his wrists with the bar of soap.”

The bartender said something else, but Curly didn't stay still to listen to him, moving away from the bar and moving towards that short hallway. A disgusting stench of cigarettes, vomit, and drunken urine (which, for some reason, was worse than the stench of regular urine) permeated the walls and floor, barely diluted by the smell of bleach that was reluctantly used to clean. With the restroom door ten centimeters away, he can only deduce that either they were unable to hold back their urge until someone left the restroom, or they simply didn't care to do their dirty work right there.

He grabs the handle, not without a hint of disgust, but no matter how much he turns it, he can't open it.

“Jimmy, it's me.” He approaches the wooden piece, pressing his ear against the door. He tries to hear something over the noise of the music and the shouts of the drunks. “Jimmy? I'm Curly, I'm here to take you home.” As if he was his fucking personal chauffeur. He could make a list of a hundred more important things to do than being there, looking for the bag of bones and meat that is his best friend.

But he's his best friend. He's not going to leave him stranded.
And he'll come a hundred times if he needs to, but he'll come.

“Jimmy? Are you there?” He reaches down to try to open the door again, but the brunette gets in front of him. He hears the rustle of the lock sliding, and then the dim whitish light from inside the restrooms.

Curly enters and closes it behind him, without Jimmy having to tell him anything.

The bathroom is as cold as a butcher's freezer inside. The long mirror is missing a piece, and of the two sinks, one doesn't have a faucet. To his right are three urinals fixed to the wall, and a separate toilet inside a cubicle with moldy wooden walls and dirty with a multitude of writings and drawings typical of a bar where the population is one hundred percent men. Grant doesn't think he's seen a single woman in all the times he's picked Jimmy up from that spot, and it wouldn't take a genius to figure out why.

The fluorescent light vibrates slightly, emitting a humming sound that reminds him with a slight tremor of the more subdued hums typical of a spaceship. There's a puddle of water seeping under the cubicle, the trash can overflowing with dirty papers and trash, and a general stench of urine so strong that Grant is sure he'll get hepatitis if he stays there five minutes longer than necessary.

Standing between the sinks and the stall is Jimmy. Still, as if he were trying to appear to be part of the restroom decor. Judging by his current appearance, he could easily pass for a hyper-realistic statue of a down-and-out drunk.

“Jimmy?” He approaches him carefully, but the brunette barely reacts. He just looks away, but doesn't move his face. Curly frowns and grabs him by the shoulders, before bringing his right hand to his face and forcing him to move it to the side, carefully, so that the light hits him. Jimmy offers so little resistance that it's as if he had stayed still in place even longer, and the blond lets out a hiss of pain.

His lip is split, from above the upper lip and down, forming a line. He would surely have a scar. It doesn't bleed anymore, but the slight depth of the wound was noticeable.

“Fuck... Does it hurt a lot?” Jimmy doesn't answer. “Does it hurt?” again, nothing. If it weren't for the man's occasional slow blinks, Curly would think he was dead. But no. The alcohol must have played havoc with his brain “come on...let's get out of here.”

Most of the times when Curly has to show up to drag him home after one of his routine bar fights, Jimmy puts up some resistance, out of shame or pride or a mix of both. That night he let himself be led without doing anything more than nodding carefully, as if he had completely forgotten how to speak or as if his mind was really too clouded.
Had he been hit hard on the head? But blood didn't seem to be coming out of anywhere other than his busted lip. Maybe that was the point: He had never been left with such a terrible blow behind. It's always been broken noses or bruises on his eyelids.

That wound was really deep.

“Are Romeo and Juliet going home already?” was the comment released in a mocking shout from the guy with the bloody knuckles, eliciting a chorus of laughter and whistles from the rest of the drunks surrounding him, like a pack of wolves around their leader. Curly waited for a violent reaction from his best friend and, more than usual, held Jimmy tightly, surrounding his back with an arm and pressing his fingers against his hip bone, pulling him steadily towards the exit. Jimmy didn't try to get away or shout anything back, but the blond was able to feel him tremble with rage against his fingers, surely wanting to run towards his aggressor without gathering the courage or stupidity necessary to carry out the wish.

Outside, the night greeted them with a cold even stronger than when he entered the bar.
Jimmy broke free from his grip, walking with somewhat wobbly steps to the car. He leaned back against the glass of one of the back seats, and Curly heard laughter behind him, turning around.

Lying on the side of the door, under the only window in the bar, a guy was lying on the floor. Half lying, half sitting. He must have fallen on the way out, and judging by the red color of his nose and cheeks, he must have such a high blood alcohol content that he hasn't been able to muster the necessary skill to get back up.

“What happened, Jimbo?” he exhales, his breath forming a gray mist in the cold air outside. “Did you have to call your boyfriend to come save your ass?”

More than aware of the possible outcome, a "No..." begins to emerge from the blond's mouth, but it comes too late. Emboldened by a fresh-faced man's brio, Jimmy steps away from the car and approaches the drunk with the speed of an arrow, kicking him in the head so hard that the crack of the guy's nose breaking echoes in Curly's ears. He grits his teeth and runs to grab James by the arms, pulling him away from the drunk who had let out a cry of pain. Blood gushes from his nose and his teeth are dirty with blood as he bares them, like a rabid dog.

“Don't you come back here, Jimmy! I'll kill you the next time I see you!”

“Not if I do it first, you damn son of a bitch!” Well, at least the theory that Jimmy has forgotten how to talk has just been proven false. He tries to throw himself at the drunk again, but Curly is preoccupied with his wound and too tired to give him anything. So, he grabs tightly onto his best friend's clothes and back, pulling him back into the car without much difficulty. He lifts him a few inches in the process, and hears the brunette let out a surprised exhale. “Get your hands off me!”

“For what? So you can get into another fight when I just got you out of one? Not a chance. Just get in the car and shut the fuck up.”

He almost pushes him when he opens the passenger door, but there's no need. Jimmy sits down, chewing on his words, while Curly hurries to climb back in and get behind the wheel, a part of him fearing that his friend was going to try to escape the car in those few seconds. But no.
As Grant retrieves the key from his pants pocket and starts the engine, the purring taking over the entire vehicle, Jimmy lets out a bellow and leans against the door to his right, his cheek pressed against the cold glass with no apparent sign of feeling the icy surface.

The wound on his lip looks worse up close...as does the stench of alcohol coming from his mouth.

“Does it hurt?” Curly hears the sweetness of his own voice, and wants to hit himself. He barely presses the accelerator. He knows Jimmy will never agree to his suggestion of going to a hospital, so he has no choice but to improvise with what he finds in the first aid kit in his bathroom. The brunette doesn't answer, just letting his gaze fall on his face “that...does it hurt?”

Not a sound comes out.

All the radio stations, at that hour, were already abandoned, and slow songs play on a loop while the dawn slips by with the slowness of winter. He doesn't see a soul walking around the streets at that hour, and even less in that neighborhood.
After a few minutes of driving in absolute silence, Curly stops the car in front of Jimmy's apartment building. He sighs, without removing the key from the ignition and, while he waits for his friend to get out in a hurry and leave, as he does every time he leaves him at home after a bar fight, he begins to consider the idea of ​​suggesting a hospital anyway. Jimmy, however, leaves his hand on the door lock and turns his face towards him. His eyes are fixed on the ground, but it was clear to whom he is talking. There is no one else but the two of them inside the car.

“Curly...” the blond raises his golden eyebrows, in a sign of attention “will you... will you join me inside?”

“S-Sure!” he can't help but trip over his own tongue as he speaks, turning the key in the ignition to turn off the car and getting out behind him. He dreads the thought of leaving the car out there for a second, but he cares more about following Jimmy's shuffling steps toward the front door of the building. He waits, hands buried in his pockets, bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet in an attempt to stave off the cold, while Jimmy rummages through the pockets of his pants for his keys, before turning the key in the lock and pushing that old door in.

He follows him. He's made that journey a few times. They climb the flights of stairs in silence interrupted only by the voices that come from some apartment, or the sound of televisions, until they reach the door of Jimmy's apartment and enter, after a second wait for the brunette to insert the key into the lock.

He knows that Jimmy does not appear to be a very tidy man, but his apartment was neither dirty nor messy. Something dark, perhaps, due to his mania of never moving the curtains and only opening the windows to allow air to circulate.
That night, because of the cold, all the windows were closed tight. Curly closes the door, and Jimmy leans against it, letting out a moan so pitiful, almost cartoonish, that the blond smiles and exhales a laugh through his nose, sliding an arm under his best friend's armpits, beginning to walk gropingly in the dark.

“Where are you taking me?” Jimmy seems to drag his tongue as he speaks, and Curly rolls his eyes for a second.

“To bed.”

“Huh... buy me dinner first...”

He would have been capable of biting his own teeth. His face burns so much at that moment that he might as well be drunk too.

Jimmy's room was small. Nothing but his bed, the closet and a nightstand for a solitary lamp that Curly does not deign to turn on, aware that the light would only worsen his best friend's physical ailments. He leans over, trying to lay Jimmy down on the mattress, but the brunette remains clinging to his body and pulls him with him to the bed, drawing an exclamation from the depths of the blond's chest. The two of them barely fit on a mattress designed for only one person.

“Jimmy...?”

“Keep quiet” he sounds sick, as if he had caught the worst strain of the worst of all colds. And perhaps, with that cold and the light clothes he is wearing, he has. Maybe he has a fever and the heat from the alcohol is preventing him from realizing it. Damn, he should have tricked him into going to the hospital and stopped being stupid. “...I feel like my head is going to explode into a thousand pieces. I swear I'll never get drunk again. It's a... desperate feeling.”

“Maybe you have the flu.”

“Flu? What, do you think I'm an eight-year-old boy?” He seems to spit out the words, and Grant barely resists the impulse to turn around in bed and turn his back on him, trying to get away from a possible contagion.

“You should stop drinking, you have a problem.”

“I'd have a problem if I drank every day. I only go out drinking on the weekends.”

“And every time you go out, you get into fights. It's not normal, Jimmy...”

“Fuck, why do you talk like you're a fucking psychologist?”

“You know that if something's bothering you, you can talk to me about it, right? I'm not your best friend just because.”

“Jesus Christ, what got into you? Why are you talking to me like a social services agent?”

“Why did you ask me to go up to the apartment with you then?”

Jimmy doesn't answer. He just covers his eyes with his arm and waits, silently, for something. Curly could have taken that moment to stand up and walk away, leave him alone once and for all...but no.

He chose.

“Jimmy...” silence again “...Jim...” he sees him wrinkle his nose and lips “tell me what's wrong. If it's something I can help you with, I will do it without hesitation.”

“How kind. My hero” James's tone of voice drips with sarcasm, but Grant doesn't allow himself to be mortified. After a few seconds, Jimmy clicks his tongue and removes his arm from his face, letting his gaze fall on the blond's eyes and wrinkling his brow even more “don't look at me with those eyes.”

“It's the only good pair I have” the blond smiles, letting out an exhaled laugh, and Jimmy mumbles something, but the ghost of a smile crosses his lips.

“Are you this frustrating on purpose, or does it come out unconsciously?”

“Only with you. With no one else do I have the confidence to be extremely frustrating.”

Jimmy clicks his tongue but, again, smiles. He seems to be about to turn his back on him, but he stays still, staring at the ceiling above their heads.

“... you're not desperate, do you know what you are?” the alcohol forces him to drag his tongue when he speaks and Curly, more than accustomed, waits with the patience of a teacher fresh out of training school “you're a... a fucking idiot.”

“Very well, I'll be a fucking idiot. What does that make you?”

“Me...” Jimmy remains silent for a few seconds. He surely didn't expect an answer like that, before clicking his tongue and covering his eyes with his arm again “... makes me the... biggest wretch on the face of the Earth.”

“Why?” Curly exhales a laugh, but the brown-haired man seems to have lost the thread of the conversation. When he uncovers his eyes, the smile slowly leaves the blond's face. His best friend's eyes are covered with tears “Jimmy? What happened...?”

“They fired me” he says that with the ferocity of a whiplash, and a rock weighs inside Curly's stomach. The brown-haired man smiles. A very cynical smile “it's... sure, it would happen eventually, but... damn, how many more will I be able to recover from it?”

“Why did they fire you?”

“Does it matter?” Jimmy gives him a sideways glance and Curly quickly denies it before his friend rolls his eyes “it doesn't matter. Even if I have an exemplary attitude, they always end up cutting staff everywhere. And since I'm always one of the newest and my severance pay is the one that will take them the least money to pay me, they kick me out and see you never. I don't expect you to understand, but it's unbearable.”

“Jimmy, you could have called me...” the aforementioned man begins to shake his head slowly, smiling with all his teeth, like a shark. Or a dog. Curly swallows “I... would have come to keep you company.”

“For what?” he spits, sinking his index finger hard into Curly's chest “To come sit on my couch and look at me with...with those fucking eyes, as if I were a kicked and abandoned dog on the side of a road? I'm not interested in your pity, Grant.”

“I don't pity you, the pain I feel is because you're my best friend” he almost spits, and it's his turn to hit him in the chest. It wasn't too hard, but Jimmy is so drunk that he falls back onto the mattress with extreme ease “and, you know what? If you had called me you wouldn't have had to go to a bar to fight like an idiot, nor would you have a split lip.”

“Yeah, right? You would have come to save the day, like always. Well, you know what? There's something here that you can't save. You're never going to save. Keep trying, if you want” Jimmy smiles, sniffing. Watching him cry was a very distressing image for Curly. He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he's seen his best friend cry. He must be very drunk, very desperate, or a poisonous mix of both “...but you're not going to achieve anything. Get out of my apartment, Curly. Get in the car. Drive. If...if I call you again, don't answer me. Delete my number. Change yours. Change your name. Move to another state. To another country. It'll be better...it'll be the best thing you could do. Do it now...do it now. Go away.”

He couldn't have thought of it at the time, but his mind takes care of doing it now.
He is unable to see himself and at the same time, he can, a man over thirty years old. Standing in that same room, ten years later. On the other side of an impenetrable glass that he hits. That he kicks. At which he screams, desperate.
"Go away, Grant!" he screams. Screams at him. His heart is beating faster and faster. So much so that it could jump out of his chest. "Listen to him! Get up and go! Save yourself! Save them! Save her! Save me! Go away, Grant! Get out of that room and don't look back!"

He didn't. Of course he didn't. Curly's nails from the future are bleeding from trying to scratch the glass surface, while his ten-years-younger self rubs Jimmy's shoulder and arm, smiling a little.

“I'm not going to abandon you,” he says, “you're my best friend. I'm not going to stand up or go anywhere,” he lets go, carefully getting up. “I'll go get you some aspirin. Tomorrow, when you've recovered a bit, we'll talk. I can help you get a job, in fact. A secure job... We'll fix it, Jimmy. Together.”

The creaking of Jimmy's bedroom door as it opens sounds like the floor must sound if it ever opens to let in the infernal hordes. Now, all that remains is a darkened room. A poorly concealed cry.

A horror that awaits.

.

.

.

.

“Curly, we're here...Curly...Curly?”

The faint voice and a jolt on his left shoulder is all it takes for Grant to open his eyes again.

The last few months…the last year…have been such a hell that he has to take a few minutes to remember where he is. Inside, the heat is on. He remembers how good the car smells as he blinks heavily using his good eye, the right one covered by a gauze patch.

He looks to his left, where Austin is waiting patiently for him to wake up, and then to his right, guessing the neighborhood of his childhood and a completely dark sky already.

“Here we are,” his cousin taps his fingers on the steering wheel as Grant leans forward, putting his prosthetics back on, “I’ll help you out of the car, and don’t try to fight it.”

“…okay.”

Once his prosthetics are back on, he waits for his cousin to come around the car and open the back door, retrieving his crutches and extending his left arm towards him, helping him to stand. Curly lets out a groan, but stands up, putting all his weight on the crutches.

“Look on the bright side,” the black-haired man begins, “you'll have some tremendous biceps after a few months of carrying the weight of your body like that.” Curly rolls his left eye, before stifling an exclamation.

“T-The letter! It's in the glove compartment…”

“Right away.”

Austin walks over to retrieve the letter Sandra gave Grant. A message for Anya. He places the letter inside the sweatshirt and Grant thanks him with a careful whisper. His cousin tries to convince him to get help walking to the door, but he shakes his head and, before he cousin could insist again, Curly walks with a weary step towards the front door of his childhood home.

The Curly house was then, and still is, the largest in the entire neighborhood. A small but well-kept front yard and a huge backyard where his tree house once stood, may it rest in peace.

His home is three stories high, and all the exterior walls have always been painted a pristine white, as well as the doors that lead outside. Inside, the house was a bit more colorful but it didn't lose its characteristic elegance. When he was little, he loved having such long, wide hallways with such high ceilings. He could run everywhere and get tired without even having to leave the house, although he couldn't do it too much without getting on his mother's nerves.

The main room, two bathrooms with a shower and another one without. A huge living room. A kitchen near the entrance and another one at the back, smaller, that his mother used in the summer because it had more windows and allowed for greater air circulation. His room and another room for guests, who used to be his grandparents, all of whom have passed away, aunts, uncles or cousins ​​to celebrate Christmas or New Year's. When they were little, his uncles would set up a tent in the backyard and all the cousins ​​would sleep together.
He remembers laughing until his cheeks hurt, laughing until tears flow. The smell of warm wood from the fireplace. The perfume his mother placed in every room, a different scent for every season of the year. It is the smells that bring back most of his childhood memories.

And that is all they are now: memories.

He pushes down on the door handle, using the palm of his hand, since clenching his fingers is still too difficult for him. He is overwhelmed by the delicious aroma of meat and potatoes, as well as the sound of his mother's voice, humming a song, and the sound of the television. He closes it behind him with a gasp of effort, and drags himself to the kitchen, his crutches making a tuck, tuck, tuck sound so loud that it is impossible for his mother not to have noticed him.

“Sounds of laughter shades of life are ringing...” when Curly arrives at the kitchen, he guesses his mother's back, checking the cooking status of something inside the oven “...Through my open ears inciting and inviting me...”

“What are you cooking, mom?” the blond's unexpected voice makes her stifle an exclamation. Well, maybe she really didn't hear him. Emma closes the oven and turns around, letting out an exclamation of surprise and a smile, approaching him in a hurry and giving him a hug that the blond can't reciprocate. If he lets go of his crutches, he'll fall face first onto the floor.

“Honey, you're finally here! Dinner's almost ready, how nice... Let's see those arms!” and, before Grant can refuse, his mother lifts the black sleeves of that sweatshirt, letting out a third exclamation “bless God for medical technology. Look at this wonder... And can you move them? It's great, honey...”

“I just need to...go to therapy.”

“I know. Your family doctor called” his mother steps away from him, going to the living room and returning at full speed with a notebook in her hands “I took notes on everything. She gave me the medications you should take from now on, and until your next checkup. She also gave me the address of the physical therapy center you need to go to. It's a fifteen-minute drive away, don't worry. Oh, and the shower safety. Actually, there are several things I already have. Your dad used to use them.”

“What are you talking about?” an annoying bitterness climbs up the blond's throat, and his mother looks up from the pages of the notebook only then. She inhales carefully.

“Well, honey... I'll have to help you in the bathroom, of course.”

“What? No. Mom...”

“Grant, there's no discussion” Emma shakes her head “with therapy you'll regain the autonomy of your body but, for now, you need assistance from both... devices to sit and stand, and human assistance. And I'm your mother, honey. I bathed you when you were little, and I'll do it now.”

“You bathed me when I was a baby, Mom, not now!” the blond shakes his head. Suddenly, it's as if all those months had never happened. Again, there he is: lying on a stretcher. Helpless. Useless. He tries to swallow, to make that lump disappear. He can't “I don't want to go back to that, Mom!”

“Back to what? What are you talking about? Of course you're an adult, but you need help.”

Grant opens his mouth again, but doesn't say anything. He's not able to say anything. He leans over his right crutch and drops into one of the chairs at the small kitchen table, dropping both crutches and letting them fall to the floor. They clatter. He doesn't care about the noise anymore, collapsing onto the table with a cry that shakes his back and shoulders, wringing a hiss from the depths of his lungs.

His mother says something, he feels her hands gently rest on his back. He can't pay attention to her. He can't stop crying.

This is his life now. He can't walk. He can't use his arms properly. He can't go to the bathroom and urinate on his own, or stand up and bathe himself. No. Once again, he's lying there, helpless. A mere piece of meat, in need of assistance. Doomed to uselessness for the rest of his filthy life. This is it.

“Honey...honey, please listen to me...” hearing the broken tone of voice in his mother's words only makes him feel worse.

“Mom, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, I'm a fucking coward. A fucking coward. This is all my fault” he raises his face, soaked with tears. He presses the palms of his hands against his cheeks, feels the tears and snot wet the beginning of his sleeves, a few drops on the tablecloth “if I had left everything years ago, if I had had the courage to start from scratch again... but I didn't and now look at this mess. All, all of this is my fault. It's my fault, mom, I'm sorry. You... y-you shouldn't be doing any of this. You've had enough with dad and now I, I... I only know how to make you suffer, I'm tired, mom. I'm sorry. Please, mom... mom, forgive me. Forgive me. Please, forgive me...”

“Grant, don't say things like that. Stop asking me for forgiveness. That’s enough,” his mother shakes her head vigorously, holding him by the cheeks. Seeing her cry breaks his heart. This was not the kind of homecoming a son imagines. “Honey, if I had wanted to leave your father when he was diagnosed with cancer and then...when he got worse and needed my help for practically everything...Do you think I wouldn't have done it? That I don't have the means to do it? But I stayed. Because I loved him. I told him at the altar "Until death do us part" and it wasn't a lie. It hurt. It broke my heart every morning...waking up and seeing him worse and worse, but I thought...that I wanted to be by his side. That I had to be strong, for him. I didn't want him to die alone in a hospital, and for the face of a stranger to be the last face he saw when he died. No...I wanted to give him peace and calm, even in the midst of pain. And when the time came, I was able to hold his hand...and it's something that, despite the pain of losing him, gives me a lot of peace. I loved Graham Curly from the day I first saw him. I loved him in life and in death, and I had the immense good fortune of being able to accompany him throughout his life. That, Curly, is something immense and I will never... never... regret having loved him and having gone through all that ordeal at his side. That is what you do when you love someone. If you have the courage... if your soul allows it... and mine, fortunately, allowed it.”

Emma takes her hands away from his body at that moment, noticing that the blond's crying has calmed down a little. She walks over to the drainer, taking a glass, filling it with water and returning to her son. Curly's hands are shaking so much that he doesn't even try to hold the glass to drink alone or to stop his mother from helping him drink a couple of sips of fresh water.
He barely lets his head drop, trying to escape from his mother's gaze, his left eye red with tears. But the blonde holds him by the cheeks carefully, smiling a little.

“I did everything I did for love, Grant. And if the love I feel for your father seemed infinite to me, the love I feel for my son goes much further. From the moment I held you in my arms, that morning, I knew I would die for you. But dying is very simple. I would live for you, until the last of my days. Because after giving birth, one never stops being a mother. It's a beautiful thing in some cases, in others... not so much. But, for me, you were and continue to be the greatest joy of my life, how could I turn my back on you, when you needed my help the most? If it's within my possibilities to help you, I will always do it. Now, for example. Your father was the same. I imagine that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree... he didn't want to know anything about help or medicine... he was against chemotherapy. You got to see him complaining, when you weren't even going to university yet. Over the years, he ended up giving in to help. I don't want you to do the same, do you hear me? I want to help you and that's what I'm going to do and, you know what? There's no point in trying to stop you from suffering by your own decision. Graham was my husband but you're my son, and my resistance to stop you from suffering by your own decision is much higher” his mother presses her lips against the top of his head, as if he were a small child, and sighs carefully “Curly... you are also a victim of everything that happened. Don't feel guilty about your current state, my love. I'll remind you of it every day if I have to.”

“…Thank you, Mom,” the words come out heavily from his lips, but they are honest words. Emma smiles and carefully slides her palms under his left eye, wiping away his tears. “How... How is Anya? You told me on the phone that she went to therapy today...”

“Yes, but we don't talk about therapy sessions. Unless she wants to, of course. She looked pretty serene during lunch. Today her things finished arriving. She told me it wasn't necessary, but I paid a moving company to bring all her things from the apartment where she used to live to here... you know, maybe if she decorates the room a little, it will feel more like home. Nova fell asleep after lunchtime, so Anya studied a little and then went to her room with the baby. They've been there for an hour or two... I hope she's napping, because she needs to rest. Can you go up and tell her dinner's ready, honey? Use your father's chair. Good thing I was always too lazy to call someone to uninstall it.”

Sure...Dad's chair.

Picking up the thread of the song, his mother returns to tend to the food. Curly holds on tightly to his crutches and half-walks, half-shuffling, toward the stairs.
The three floors he loved so much as a child are now an odyssey to navigate. However, there is his father's chair, fixed to the wall and with the lever to slide up or down the stairs by means of a metal spring. He would never have expected to have to use it. Yes, he always knew that one day he would be so old that he would need help to do things...but he didn't expect to be in his thirties and have to resort to it...to still be at home...to be this badly injured.

He sat down and, placing his crutches on his lap, he activated the lever. The chair made a soft clatter and began to rise and rise, until it reached the second floor where, among other rooms, was the guest room.

He heard Anya before he saw her, a rather novel detail.

He muttered an insult under his breath as he gathered all his strength and lifted himself out of the chair. He pressed the base of his crutches against the floor and moved forward, approaching the door of the guest room. He heard shouts and, above all, the crying of the baby.

“…you want! I don’t understand what you want!”

Curly opened the door with effort.

Inside, the room had all the lights on so that anyone who passed by in five minutes could go completely crazy. Despite the cold of that autumn night, the window was wide open and the curtains fluttered like a pair of flags. The closet is open and full of clothes, folded badly and packed in a bad way. The bed is unmade, with the bottom of the sheet pulled out and the quilt crumpled at the foot, the pillow stuck to the wall and the pillowcase almost removed.

On the desk are several thick books on medicine and biology, as well as notebooks full of notes and a glass of juice lying on its side. The liquid soaked one of the pages and dripped onto the floor, creating a stain already sucked by the wood. Next to the overturned glass are two open, but unused, clean diapers. Next to the foot of the bed, a jar of baby powder also lying on its side, dirtying the wood of the legs and the floor.

Anya is curled up into a crib, which Curly recognizes as his old baby crib, with the "GRANT" even carved into the wooden headboard. And, from inside, Nova's cries are so loud they could reach the sky.

Hearing the door slam open, Anya leans back and stares at him, her eyes wide.

Her hair is cut short, just below her ears. It's the first detail Grant notices, even though his mother already told him so on the phone. Even though it was short, she wore that little hair tied back in a messy ponytail. She's wearing a long-sleeved shirt rolled up to her elbows and pajama pants. On the fabric of the shirt were wet stains that he soon realized were milk, oozing from her and dirtying her clothes. Curly doesn't know what she'll do next, but she backs away from him, hugging herself and approaching the bed, sitting on the edge of the mattress before covering her ears with the palms of her hands. Her eyes, still wide open, are fixed on the floor. She doesn't look at him. She doesn't turn around. And Nova doesn't stop crying.

Curly bites the bullet, approaching the crib. Inside, on a thin, colorful mattress, she is. Nova is wearing a cream-colored onesie, and her face is red from crying.

“Hey, hey…” the blond tries to make his voice come out as sweetly as possible. He leaves the crutches next to the crib and leans down, taking advantage of the fact that the piece of furniture could support the weight of his body back. He moves carefully, carrying the baby in his arms and slowly bending them, holding Nova to his chest and gently rocking her from side to side. “What’s wrong, hm? Why are you crying, Nova? Are you hungry?”

“She's not hungry” Anya's voice comes out sharply. Grant looks away at her at that moment, but the woman keeps her gaze fixed on the floor “her diaper isn't dirty, she's not hungry, she just woke up from her nap, it's still too early for her teeth to start growing. I don't understand what's wrong with her.”

“What if something else hurts?” at his question, Anya stretches her lips into a smile. A grimace. She clicks her tongue. She shakes her head.

“That's what I always think..."What if something hurts?". Yesterday your mother...went out. A few minutes, to the supermarket, and Nova started crying. She wouldn't stop crying. She didn't want milk. Her diaper wasn't dirty. Nothing. I got terrified and...there's a hospital about ten minutes away. I called a taxi and went... and the emergency pediatrician looked at me like I was a fucking idiot” Anya looks at him only then. Crying, she looks even more haggard and tired. It reminded him of the face he saw every day in the Tulpar medical room, and the comparison was about to break him “... she told me that it was always the same with us, first-time mothers. The baby cries a little and we want the doctor to calm it down. "Take care of your daughter and you'll see how she stops crying" she told me. I think a "Fuck off" would have been a little more humane. I came back and your mom had already come back. I couldn't stop crying, and Nova didn't either. What a terrible scene... I went to take a shower, came back and your mother had already put her to sleep. And she told me not to worry, that what a horrible pediatrician she was. But I wanted to die at that moment. It's unbearable. I cause nothing but trouble to Emma. Curly, I should never have come here...”

“What are you talking about?”

Nova's inconsolable crying had by this point become just a moan and a pitiful babble.
Curly takes shaky steps forward, using the crib as support. Each step is more careful than the last, until he reaches the end of the crib and reaches the bed. He sits down, with the baby in his arms, and pushes himself back, leaning his back against the wall. He has never stopped rocking her, slowly.

“Anya, this is why my mother wanted you to come here... so she could be close to you and help you in any way she could.”

“I know, but...”

“If you were alone, or with people with no experience of motherhood, it would have been worse. Don't feel guilty, she... wants to help you. Why don't you let her help you?”

Anya doesn't answer his question, just sniffling for the umpteenth time. He can't make out anything about her other than the back of her head. Her ponytail. Sweat stains on her shirt. Beads of sweat, too, on the back of her neck. He hears her click her tongue before turning to him, her gaze falling on his face and his one good eye. Then her eyes go to his bare arms and finally to his prosthetic legs.

“...it's official then,” the ex-nurse slurs her tongue slightly as she speaks. She smiles slightly, and the smile lasts less time than it takes Grant to blink. “We're out of the hospital.”

“Not really, I have to...go to therapy, keep taking medication...”

“Me too” a dry laugh barely shakes the woman's shoulders “for my stomach and kidneys, for a while longer. Most of them are medicines for children, not so invasive...because of breastfeeding and all that. By the time weaning comes around, I'll surely be completely cured, so it doesn't matter” Anya returns her gaze to the floor, and Curly looks down as well, at the baby in his arms.

It's not the first time he's held a baby. Most of his cousins ​​have been mothers, and he's visited the closest ones when they gave birth, or a few days later when they returned home. He's posed for several family photos with his cousins' babies in his arms, and each time he was the victim of an uncomfortable apprehension thinking about when it would be his turn to hold a baby of his own.

«Never. Never. Give up your dream.»

I know.

«…the baby, does she look like him?»

Silence.

Nova has stopped crying, her tiny fist close to her mouth. She doesn’t seem to have a pacifier, and it’s just as well anyway. Curly remembers that her mother used to swear at little kids with pacifiers, claiming that they deform teeth and are useless. Maybe Anya thought the same.

“…you were right, Grant,” Anya’s voice comes out in a whisper, drawing his attention back. The woman has climbed onto the bed, her back against the wooden headboard and her knees close to her chest. She rests her cheek on them, facing the wall. “Your mother is an angel. She is…one of the sweetest women I have ever had the good fortune to meet.”

“I know. I’m very lucky that she is my mother,” the blond nods a little, before returning his gaze to Anya’s face. She avoids him with apprehension. “…and she wants to help you honestly, from the heart.”

“I know it's true, I...” Anya moves her face away from her knees, rubbing her hands together and letting out a moan “I just wish I was an easier person to help, do you understand?”

“Now? More than ever before.”

Anya seems to hesitate for a second, before extending a hand towards him. She rubs his arm carefully, smiling barely, before returning to the spot. At no point does she make any move to take the baby from his arms, but Grant doesn't try to force her either.

“My mother says that dinner is ready... you could go take a shower after dinner. A good bath before bed always works wonders” Anya nods slowly, although Curly fears that she isn't paying much attention to him. Then, he raises his eyebrows “Ah! Anya, Sandra gave me a letter for you.”

“A letter?” the black-haired woman frowns.

“It's in the pocket of my sweatshirt. Take it.”

Not without trembling, Curly raises his arms, allowing Anya to access his pocket more easily. He watches her take the letter, open the paper on one side and remove a somewhat thick paper from inside. She unfolds it. Grant sees an elegant calligraphy written in black ink, as well as a seal and a signature. Anya's hazel eyes slide eagerly between lines and, with each second, the shine in her eyes seems to recover a little more each time. By the time she reaches the end of the letter she looks ready to scream... but the sight of Nova asleep is a strong enough reminder to make her fold the letter and put it inside the drawer of her bedside table, turning to look at Curly with bulging eyes.

“What's wrong?” he asks, more anxious now than when the doctor handed him that letter. “What does it say?”

“Curly...” Anya's voice slips into a whisper, with wide eyes and shaking hands. She doesn't need to shout for the blond to understand that an emotion overwhelms her... although it still takes him a little while to decide what kind of emotion it is “...to the southeast is Saint Asclepius, it is... one of the most important medical schools in the country, and they have a very complicated access. Most enter through family legacy, because they have exorbitant amounts of money to pay the tuition, or they are one of the lucky few who manage to pass the entrance exam... they also have another way of entering, but it is drop by drop and most years no one qualifies to apply for it. If a person shows impressive achievements in medicine, with little or no medical training, they can become eligible for a scholarship. Sandra studied at Saint Asclepius and she believes that... that the fact that I have managed to keep you alive in space for so long could make me eligible for that scholarship, along with her letter of recommendation.”

“Anya...” the information takes a few seconds longer than expected to take shape inside the blond's brain. When he does, however, Curly grins from ear to ear, and the smile is instantly contagious to Anya's face. She smiles. Maybe not as much as he does, but she does, nodding vigorously “that's... it's fantastic.”

“The school year has already started. Even if I bring the letter now, I'd have to wait until September of next year to start studying” Anya brings her hands to her mouth, and soon her eyes look around. Grant knows her. She's looking for everything that could go wrong in that moment “...if they accept me. One look at my academic record is enough to know that I failed the entrance exam for medical school eight times... and that could lead them to refuse. Saint Asclepius has a reputation to maintain, after all. And even if I win that scholarship, I'd have to move state and I... What would I do with Nova, Curly? Don't expect me to be able to leave her here with you two without feeling any guilt, because there's no way. I have to... think it over.”

“How about we have dinner and then talk about this some more? This is very good news.”

The black-haired woman smiles a little and then stretches her arms towards him.

“Let me put Nova in her crib…you've already made more efforts than they probably allowed you to” an embarrassed smile decorates Grant's face, while Anya carefully gets out of bed, taking Nova from his arms and carefully laying her down on the crib mattress. The baby lets out a moan, a sound that freezes them both in place, afraid she'll wake up…but she goes back to sleep right away and, in unison, they both let out a sigh “I'm sorry…your mom gave me this room and it's a mess. I had no idea milk could smell so strong. I wanted to clean it up, but every time she starts crying it's…so strange. I feel like my brain is blocking.”

“Don't worry...”

Curly struggles to his feet, moving to the windows to close and lock them. Anya picks up the glass and uses a dirty t-shirt, crumpled at the foot of the bed, to mop up the remaining juice. She takes the garment with her, tossing it into the laundry basket in the nearest bathroom. She also arranges the baby powder and puts the two clean diapers inside a diaper package. She looks around and sighs at the unmade bed and the closet with all the clothes in a mess, turning off the ceiling light and leaving only the dim light of the nightstand on.

“I'll fix everything early tomorrow morning” she exhales, turning to look at him, and he nods.

He makes a move to use the chair again, but Anya insists on helping him down the stairs. With each step, the delicious aroma of dinner fills his nostrils. Accustomed to the simple food served to him in the hospital, the fact that his first meal out is a dish prepared by none other than his mother makes him happier than he can explain.

In the center of the table is a tray. Potatoes and chicken, although Curly came to believe it was red meat. His sense of smell must not be as sharp as he thinks. His expression must have something drawn on it because, seeing his face, his mother shakes her head.

“You're still in treatment. The both of you are. We won't eat anything but light things until you two no longer need medication.”

“All the food you make is delicious, Emma,” Anya intercedes, and the blonde smiles warmly.

“Thank you, dear. Cooking for the people I care for makes my food even more delicious.”

The three of them sit at the table and, after waiting for his mother to say a quick prayer to thank God for the food, they begin to eat. Emma is overjoyed to hear the news of the letter, even though it's not official yet.
Since Anya spent the first half of the day with the psychologist, and the second half at home, and Curly was locked in a car sleeping all day, Emma was the only one who had things to tell them. And so, she was in charge of keeping the thread of the conversation between her son and her guest, until half of the plate of chicken and potatoes was gone.

“Ugh, I'm stuffed!” Anya leans back in her chair, a hand on her belly. Curly sees her close her eyes for a few seconds, remaining silent before opening them with the same gentleness “Nova is still sleeping. I don’t hear her cry.”

“How about you take advantage and go take a bath, Anya dear?” Said by any other human being, that suggestion would sound like an insult disguised as good intentions. But, coming from his mother, Grant knows that it doesn't mask any cruelty. Anya must be thinking the same thing, as she just smiles and nods, getting up from her chair.

“Dinner was delicious, Emma. Get some rest. You too, Curly. I hope Nova doesn’t cry too much tonight…”

“And if she does cry too much, we’ll help her get back to sleep.” Emma waves a hand, making light of the matter. Anya smiles slightly, nods, and, at a somewhat hurried pace, heads back to the stairs, taking the steps two at a time.

A few seconds of silence pass before his mother speaks again.

“Can you help me clean all this up, Grant?”

“Yes, but… I don’t know how much I can clean with this pair of arms.”

“No need. I’ll clean and you dry. Come.”

The woman clears the table of objects in the time it takes Curly to stand up, grab onto his crutches and walk towards the kitchen, approaching the sink. His mother puts away the rest of the food for lunch the next day, and approaches the sink with the empty bowl, plates, glasses and cutlery.

“Grant…” once his mother stops standing to his left and turns on the water, he adopts a facial expression that is far from being the friendly face of a good hostess, a face she had throughout the dinner “there is something I had to tell you, but I had to wait for Anya to leave.”

“What?” the blond furrows his eyebrows, leaning a little closer to her. His mother washes a glass first, rinses it, and brings it to him. Curly dries it. “What’s wrong with her?”

“It’s not about her… well, partly yes. And about you, too. Listen… do you remember when I went to visit you at the hospital, there were more police officers standing at the doors than any other day? And the nurse at the front desk told me that was unusual.”

“Yeah…” a knot begins to tighten inside Grant’s intestines, drying the second glass his mother hands him.

“Well… when I picked up Anya and Nova, the day they were discharged, an officer approached us and said she needed to speak to me privately. This was a little less than a week after I went to see you, remember? And by that point there were no police officers left… not too many. Anyway. The officer asked me where I was taking Anya, I had to show her my ID again, and all that. I asked her if all this was because they were afraid that Pony Express would send hitmen or something. I think she almost laughed in my face, but she said no, it was something else… I didn't quite understand if it was the same day Nova was born, or the next day, and I didn't quite understand how… maybe they didn't understand it well at that point… but Jimmy escaped from the cell where they were holding him.”

The news hits him like a bucket of ice water. He almost drops the glass his mother had just given him from his hands, but Emma eagerly retrieves it and saves him from death. On the second try he is able to take the glass more confidently and dry the water that soaks it without difficulty. What he has a little more trouble with is breathing.

“What? H-How come…?”

“Listen to me, all right? They soon realized that he had escaped, and he stole a car parked nearby. They were afraid he was going to drive to the hospital where you two were…but he didn't. He drove for hours, and they found him two days later.”

“Where?”

His mother places the plate in his hands, and raises her right hand, turning it in the air and pointing towards the living room, but Grant understands that she is going further.

“In his house.”

“In his house?” Emma nods “but…isn't it technically abandoned?”

“Yes. He ripped some wooden planks off the kitchen window to get in. They found him curled up, according to what the police officer told me. Talking to himself, raving, and with some wounds that he gave himself, apparently. I think she was going to tell me a little more, but she stopped herself because it was official and classified information, and all that nonsense.”

“And A-Anya knows?”

“No. When I got back to the car, I told her a lie. I don't remember which one. I didn't want to scare her more…as if she didn't have enough anxiety already.”

“Yes…”

“Poor Nova…” his mother shakes her head “I would say that I hope she never finds out the truth, but it is inevitable. I can't imagine a worse discovery than knowing that your own father…”

“Mom,” he silences her. That word falls from between his lips dryly, and Emma understands in a second that, perhaps, she was saying too much too soon. Grant can't go up those stairs, see Nova and think about who her father is. The idea is unbearable.

He's not. He's not. Jimmy doesn't even fall into the category of “father.” In basic terms, maybe, but a “father” is much more than the man you share your blood with. And yet…when pain knocks at the door, blood is thicker than water. Even if she never meets him, she'll feel his genes as a burden. She can never know the truth.

But the truth, like the pain, always ends up knocking at the door.

“Jimmy thought we'd be here already?” his mother shrugs.

“If he did, he didn't make any attempt to find out either. The neighbors say they didn't see anyone hanging around the house, and there's no sign of anyone trying to force a door or window open. This house is very secure, though I don't think he'll be able to escape from that cell again...and it's a long way from Denver to here. No, don't worry. You won't see his face until the trial...be careful drying the tray. It belonged to my great-grandmother.”

Curly stops by the bathroom before going to bed. He can't get his mother to convince him to get help, but he can't do anything about the fact that he needs to pull out a chair and sit down, shower head in hand, to be able to clean himself without difficulty and also to be able to dry himself and get dressed.

He feels like an old man. Good heavens, there are even a multitude of old people who live their lives without needing (yet) chairs to shower or help to get dressed. But there he is, juggling to put on his underwear, his shirt, his pajama pants, his socks. With her golden hair still slightly damp, she leaves the bathroom and drags himself, crutches in hand, to the top floor, where his childhood bedroom is.

It remains just as he left it when he left for college.

A dark blue blanket. His rows of high school textbooks, notebooks with writing on them, pictures with his cousins ​​skiing in Minnesota, and his high school graduating class photo.

“Don’t do it,” he urges himself, and yet…he does it, dragging his crutches to the cabinet that holds the pictures and taking his high school photo.

There, between rows and rows of students, wearing different clothes, with different hairstyles, he is. Sitting up straight, smiling at the camera. And, sitting to his right…

«Maybe it was always meant to be.»

He turns the picture frame over in his hands, and the object almost slips out of his grasp. Trembling, he slides those tiny wooden latches sideways, until he removes the cover and the stand and takes the picture. He puts the frame back on the shelf, and tears the photograph to pieces between his fingers, until it is nothing more than chopped up pieces that fall to the floor like snow. He steps away from the pile and walks over to the bed that has been his for almost twenty years, sitting on the edge.

He carefully undoes the hooks on his prostheses until they are standing upright, leaning against his nightstand. His crutches stand beside them, and he lies on the mattress. His hands are on his stomach, his gaze fixed on the ceiling, a position to which he is more than accustomed. Beyond his knees, the fabric of his pajama pants falls inert, like a stuffed animal without filling.
And then, everything is silent.

He blinks slowly. He opens and closes his eyes. The light from the streetlights enters through the windows of his room, and the mats barely move with the occasional gusts of the autumn wind. A dog barks from time to time, and in the distance you can hear the roar of a car or the barking of another dog much further away from the rest. Some furniture creaks. It's a familiar environment, a feeling that was his for many years. It's like being fifteen years old again, restless on the mattress, desperately trying to get tiredness to come and take him away, because tomorrow he has to wake up at seven in the morning sharp and go to school. Despite all the years that have passed, he still remembers the sensations.

He had never stopped to think about the lost time, until that moment.

“Officially it's five years until you turn forty, how do you feel?”

Absolutely defeated.

He didn't miss the past a few years ago. He shouldn't miss it now. But he does. He does it so hard that he wants to tear out his hair one by one, and having dreams like the one he had on the trip from the hospital to home doesn't help much. No…he may be condemned to a spectator's chair for the rest of his life, and what kind of life is that supposed to be? What role is he supposed to play now? What role is he supposed to play to…?

A new sound.

Crying.

Curly doesn't have to think about it too much, his body responds automatically, as if it were waiting for this to happen. He slowly sits up, reaching out a hand to put on his prosthetics, sitting on the edge of the mattress. He blinks slowly, chasing away the superficial haze of sleep that has fallen on his face, before retrieving his crutches and standing up with effort and a groan.

He leaves the room at a slow pace. He goes down a single flight of stairs using his father's chair, which, fortunately for him, wasn't as noisy as it seemed, and arrives back at the second floor.

The whole way, he was carrying the thick blanket from his bed on his shoulders.

“Anya?” Curly enters the room carefully, and there she is, sitting against the headboard of the bed with the baby in her arms. She rocks back and forth slowly while she breastfeeds her, and when he notices it, Grant stifles an exclamation and turns towards the hallway. “I...I'm sorry.”

“Don't worry, did she wake you up?” Anya's voice is nothing more than a whisper, and he shakes his head.

“The truth is...I have a hard time falling asleep, now more than ever.”

“Me too…even if Nova slept through the night without waking up even once, I would keep tossing and turning in bed until I wore out the mattress…it's unbearable. I don't understand when it will stop.”

“When everything else stops, I guess.”

Grant dares to look back only then. Nova was asleep again, leaning on Anya's shoulder while she gently pats her back, until she hears a soft burp and, again, she lowers herself down to have her close to her chest, rocking back and forth, like a rocking chair.

“The truth is, when she cries for a reason, calming her down is very simple…” Anya sniffles, bringing the gaze to him and, noticing the blanket in his hands, she frowns “Why do you bring that?”

“I thought that…maybe you needed some help with her.”

“No need…”

“Yes, you do.”

“We're not on board the Tulpar anymore, you know?” the black-haired woman raises an eyebrow “ you can't give me orders anymore.”

“I know, but… I want to help you. The next time she cries, I'll be in charge of putting her to sleep.”

“I don't know if it's a good idea for you to sleep on the floor in your condition, Curly.”

“I won't sleep on the floor. There's a mattress behind the closet.”

Anya raises her eyebrows. She sits up carefully. Nova, already asleep, returns to the crib. Once lying there, Anya approaches the closet and stifles an exclamation as she peeks out from behind, dragging that extra mattress from its hiding place to the space between her bed and the window, letting it fall. Curly throws the blanket over it and carefully lays down there. It will take him some extra effort to stand up, but at least he'll be able to help with something. He might not feel so useless.

“Did you think about it a little more?” in response to Anya's silence, once again lying on the mattress, Curly continues talking “about…college, I mean.”

“Yes, but…all the ideas I come up with seem impossible. I mean, it's…ideal. It breaks my heart to think that I can't do it, but it's not just me anymore, you know?”

Curly exhales and puts his hands back on his belly, stretching his lips in a straight line.

“The biggest problem is that college is somewhere else, right? Where is it?”

“In Florida.”

Curly clicks his tongue…but, after a few seconds, he smiles.

“There's a simple solution to that, Anya.”

“Which one?”

“The trial.”

Anya moves on the bed, until she's lying on her right side, her cheek on the back of her hand, looking at him.

“What about the trial? We don't even know when it will take place.”

“I don't think it's too far away... but, Anya, look at it this way. We have everything to win... it's a highly publicized trial. When we win, because that's what we will do... you could buy a house near the university.”

“A house?” the black-haired woman exhales a laugh, and Curly smiles at the same time.

“One house, two, ten. You could hire the best nanny money can buy to take care of Nova while you go to classes and study. A person to take care of the cleaning, another to take care of the kitchen...”

“Don't exaggerate... I suppose that, living near the university, would be enough for me, although...”

“Although...?”

“I'd rather you be near me than hire people.” The two remain silent for a few seconds, and when Anya speaks again, her voice shakes a little. “I-it's a good city, you know? With such an important university there, they also have a great hospital. You could continue with your physical therapy and it would be... it would be great.”

“It would be great.” Curly says, smiling, although he doesn't think Anya can guess his smile in the darkness of the room. But he guesses a second laugh.

“There's a beach near the city.”

“You told me you've always wanted to live near the beach. Maybe your dream can come true, Anya.”

“It sounds too good to be true. I don't want to think of it as an eventuality. I don't want to…get my hopes up. It'll hurt too much if things don't work out that way.”

“Anya…”

“Curly, you don't understand. Good things don't…don't happen to me. Never. My life has been normal all the time. I haven't suffered terribly…before I got on that ship. Before, my life was just monotonous and full of failures. Good things like being able to buy a house, living near the beach, being attacked by one miracle after another…don't happen to people like me.”

“Maybe it's time for that to change.”

For a few seconds, neither of them says anything. The silence is so great that Curly can hear the soft breathing and the slight moans Nova lets out in her sleep. Why do babies do that? Maybe it was some sort of infant snoring, he has no idea. It's when he's starting to think Anya has fallen asleep that he hears her sigh again.

“Grant?”

“Yes?”

“She... has brown hair.”

Curly doesn't need to ask him who she is, just inhaling carefully and exhaling just as slowly.

“And she has your eyes,” he adds, earning a moan from the black-haired woman.

“I don't know... I don't know what I'm going to do when she grows up. What am I supposed to tell her when she asks me about her father, Curly? The only thing I can think of is... lie to her and tell her he died or something. I think that's sweeter than telling her he's gone. It's not a nice idea to believe that your father didn't love you enough to stay, is it? Or I don't know, no... any idea seems better to me than telling her the truth.”

A thought crosses Grant's mind at that moment, so selfish and pathetic that he dismisses it with absolute violence.

“It's still early to be distressed by that kind of thing, Anya. Nova doesn't even know what that word means, nor can she say it. She can't say anything, really. Maybe you can ask your psychologist about it... Mom told me you started going. It's a very good thing.”

“I guess... I didn't do anything but cry today, I barely said two or three things.”

“Hey, it was your first session with the psychologist, you said so. Besides... I'm sure she must be more than used to seeing people crying a lot and saying little, don't be too upset about it.”

“I know” he hears her roll on the mattress a little, before staying still “the only thing…the only thing that calms me down a little is thinking that…he wouldn't try to do something like keep her, right?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Jimmy won't try to do something like take Nova away from me through the trial, right?” the sound that comes out of the blond's mouth is incomprehensible, and Anya lets out a cry “I…I mean, I don't think he wants to be a father, fuck, he just…maybe he'll try to do it to hurt me. As revenge, that's what I mean. In his twisted mind he could see her as an object that has to be under his power, for sharing his blood. Curly, I…I could go crazy at that moment.”

“I know.”

“I could kill him if he tries to do something like that. Kill him in front of the judge and the police and the members of the jury.”

“I know.”

“Do you think…he might try to do something like that?”

“His mind is pretty much the same as you just described, I'm not going to lie to you. He's always been like that, and I've always been the biggest jerk on the face of the Earth by sticking by his side all these years, despite everything. But…I don't think he'll try. And even if he does, they wouldn't grant it to him. There's no way he'll get out of the courts without his next stop being a state prison, Anya. I refuse. So don't worry. He'll never be near her, as long as we can prevent it.”

“What if…she grows up and wants to meet him? When she's already an adult and…and there's nothing we can do to prevent it.”

“Well…in that case, we can only hope that she's grown up to be a woman with a head on her shoulders, smart enough not to be affected by anything that guy can say or do.”

“I guess…”

Curly falls silent again…long enough for Anya’s words to slip through his ears a second time.
“And there’s nothing we can do about it.”
We?

“I lived in terror of the present, and you live in terror of the future. We make a good balance” Anya exhales a laugh at his words “but, Anya…seriously, there’s no point in worrying too much about things that may happen in…what? Twenty years? The important thing now is…to recover.”

“And the trial.”

“And the trial,” he says back.

Again, a few silent minutes pass, one after the other…until he hears the rustle of sheets on Anya’s bed, and a soft touch near his shoulder.

“Grant?”

“Yes?”

“Can you…Can you hold my hand? I think… I need something to anchor me to sleep.”

“Of course,” he agrees with all the naturalness in the world, as if they had been doing the same thing for years. Curly raises his left hand, and Anya takes it, letting her arm drop so that he doesn't have to make too much extra effort either. “…if Nova cries, I'll take care of it, okay?”

“…very well.”

“Rest, Anya.”

“You too, Grant. Sleep.”

And the blond falls asleep almost immediately.

Chapter Text

AUGUST 20, 1969

THE PRESENT

“In two hundred meters, turn right on Poena Street. Your destiny awaits three hundred meters away.”

The cold stench still stabs the needles in his nostrils. His neck stiffens and his back straightens. If he opens his mouth, a lumpy metallic layer of blood covers everything. It comes out of nowhere, from the heavy air. Salty, almost. Not an atom of oxygen is able to sneak into his lungs through his nose, so he squeezes the steering wheel of the car hard, trying to get something back. A ground wire. A divine signal that pushes and pulls him by the hair. Backwards or forwards. Up or down. Any corner, in motion.

“In one hundred meters, turn right on Poena Street. Your destiny awaits three hundred meters away.”

Roaring, the engine grabs at his organs and sinks its teeth into his stomach, tearing holes in the thin flesh. Gastric juices pour into his insides, melting everything down, down, down, like a lava leak on the roof of a building.
The fragments of floor open, slowly but surely. Thick drops like tears of fire fall, the liquid crackling red hot. It consumes everything. The walls. The floors. The floor is nothing but the ceiling of the apartment on the floor below, and that too is consumed. Soon, nothing will remain. No wallpaper, no cables, no furniture.

Not a single memory.

“Turn right onto Poena Street. Drive three hundred meters down Poena Street to the intersection with Themis Road. Your destiny awaits.”

He turns the steering wheel almost like a blow to the right, and the tires make a screech on the pavement.

At that hour, there is no one. No one but the heat of the sticky summer night. The houses remain with their lights off, and between the temperature and the nerves, his whole body feels sticky in the same way. On his back and chest, the fabric of his shirt sticks to his skin, and the bullet scar near his shoulder takes advantage of that moment to give him a painful sting. A memory. He can conjure up in his mind an invented image, a false scene. The nurse smiles and digs her finger into his open flesh. She digs that index finger in and twists the nail inside, filling his skin with blood. He screams, but his scream only encourages her to continue, and when he looks at her, she smiles back at him.

A nightmare from which he has just awakened.

“Turn right onto Poena Street. Drive two hundred meters down Poena Street to the intersection with Themis Road. Your destiny awaits.”

He squeezes the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turn white, leaning forward and slamming his foot down on the accelerator. He's driving through a residential area, and he's more than aware that he's going way over the speed limit. But there's no one outside. There's no light other than the car's headlights. And when he screams, his scream is lost in the interior of iron and leather and gasoline. It bubbles and is exhaled with the smoke that comes out of the exhaust pipe. Only he can be heard. He can't escape now. Where is he driving? Where is he going?

“Turn right onto Poena Street. Drive a hundred meters down Poena Street to the intersection with Themis Road. Your destiny awaits.”

It appears everywhere. Behind him, as he approaches a mirror. Her voice calls his name, a dangerous echo like a mermaid's song climbing up from the bottom of the drain in the showers of the police station. He swears he hears her knocking on the tall, tall glass, the small rectangle, the window of his cell. He can hear her, a knock, knock of her knuckles on the glass, but when he looks up, there's nothing. It doesn't matter if it's morning, afternoon, or pitch black. She calls, knock knock, and runs away before she can be seen.

The worst part, though, are the nightmares.

Oh, the nightmares...

You’ve reached your destiny. You’ve reached your destiny. You’ve reached your destiny. You’ve reached your-

“I KNOW, DAMMIT!”

He brakes suddenly, and his body moves forward a few inches. He slaps the small screen above the radio with his palm, and the robotic female voice of the GPS emits a staccato bellow and crumbles, like a puzzle that is shaken until all its pieces are lost.

In the movement, the decoration fixed to the rearview mirror bounces back and forth. It was a thick plastic sun with dark glasses and, on the other side, a message that read "I ♡ FLORIDA". The radio was also on, and the brunette barely manages to hear that "And I'm going back to New Orleans to wear that ball and chain" before turning the key out of the ignition with the desperation of someone who cuts the last wire needed to deactivate a bomb one second before detonating. Thus, the entire car is plunged into silence. There is no sound. There is no light.

Nothing but the stammering of words he doesn't understand. The furious pounding that roars in his eardrums, pushing his body into motion.
He lowers his hands to his lap, fingers shaking. He turns to the right, and has a hard time unclipping the seat belt from its clasp, before leaning all his weight to the left, on the door, as if that would magically cause it to open.
He lowers his hand. His head is heavy, and it makes a loud thud when it hits the glass as he leans back as best he can, pulling up the door lock and pushing it out, letting go and falling with a roar unlikely of a man who hasn't had a drop of alcohol in ten straight years.

The sidewalk of his childhood greets him with a rough, cold kiss. Hours have passed since sunset, and there has been plenty of time for the heat that has been absorbed during the day to be exhaled far, far away, until the next morning. He remembers being a small child and running around barefoot, only too aware of the warmth of the sidewalk and that standing still in one place for five full minutes would be akin to shoving your feet into a deep fryer. By late afternoon, the soles of his feet would be red and scarred where pebbles had been pressed into them.

What did he see when he closed his eyes, back then? What was waiting for him on the other side?

Pure shit. Pure shit. There's no point now.

He mutters, summoning all his strength to slowly push himself up to sit on the sidewalk. He stares at the open car door, the key left behind by some fucking idiot dangling against the ignition. There's no point in locking the car: it's not his. They're going to find it. If he wanted to run, he'd run south, maybe. He'd run across New Mexico to the border and run, never to be seen again.

He'd have gone anywhere in the world but there.

He leans forward, guessing the little green neon numbers on the GPS screen. Eleven at night, fifty-two minutes past. It was still August ”0th.

“Happy birthday, Jimmy,” he murmurs, before blinking heavily. “...I almost forgot. I'm sorry. I'm tired. I'm hungry. I'm sleepy.”

He slams his right hand hard against the handle of one of the car's rear doors, holding on and staggering up before coughing, rubbing his chest. Did he hit himself? He has no idea. How long has he been driving without stopping once? He's lost count. When he's had a drink of water, or when he's eaten. Was it night when he ran away? Was it day? Who knows, who knows, who knows…

“We're the same age now.”

Standing, at last. He puffs out his chest slowly, and exhales just as slowly, until he clicks his tongue and lets his gaze fall on the object he's been avoiding all this time, like a disfigured corpse lying in the middle of the road. You don't want to look, but a morbid curiosity seems to guide the movement of your eyes in the direction of the thing.
No, no. That was worse. The corpse catches your attention. That thing, no. He wanted to avoid it, but...he drove toward it. And now there it is, his gaze fixed on the tree and the long-withered flowers at his feet.

His house.

Jimmy stifles a gasp. He inhales as best he can and rubs his chest again, where the window glass pressed too hard. He's sure he's bled, but the blood stopped flowing hours ago. There's no point in worrying about it now, so he just walks, shuffling. He could head for the door first, but like a jerk at a ship's helm, his steps lead him left, until he stops and bends, kneeling, beside the mound of weeds and dead flowers.

He digs his fingers into the ground. His nails are filled with dirt. He digs, pulling up clumps of dried soil and thin, yellowed roots. Because of the nature of the material and the months out of shape, he hurts himself. His knuckles split and his nails bruise until he's able to dig deep enough, letting out a gasp when his fingertips hit something too hard, something he can't so easily undo. He slides his fingers in until they sink into a couple of holes and pull upward, toward the dim light of the sparse streetlights.

In his hands he holds the small skull of a cat.

He sees the fangs. The eye sockets are huge, bigger than in a human skull. But the space for the brain is, of course, very small. She used to say that the cat was much smarter than him. And shit. Now, Honey is dead and he is alive, alive and well. Well and fine, dropping the skull and bringing his right foot up to bring it down and shatter the bone with a furious stomp. Years of decay do it no justice, and Honey's bones crack under the sole of his prison shoes, kicking the bones back into the looted grave.

No, he hasn't looted it. He hasn't gotten anything out of it but a nagging pain in the sole of his foot.

There are weeds growing everywhere, the grass overgrown and dry. The boards covering the windows, keeping out potential thieves (there's nothing there to steal) or vagabonds, look swollen and moldy, darker and damper than the last time he saw them. A rotting corpse, disowned by the hand of its owner: him.

The breeze blows and ruffles the edges of his white T-shirt, the uniform provided by the police station. He's not wearing the orange uniform he's seen on TV shows, much less the cartoonish black and white striped uniform. Nothing distinguishes him as a fugitive. Nothing jumps out at him.

«Fugitive? I can't be a fugitive. What have I done? I was almost killed in outer space because of the disinterest of my bosses, and now I have to stay locked up in four walls, waiting for other people to decide if I deserve to be free or not? That's not fair. They weren't there. They don't know anything about what happened. What would they have done in my shoes? No one would know how to act. No one would know what to do. How easy it is to judge from the quiet of Earth... safe from any kind of need. I did the best I could with what little I had, and that's all. I don't deserve to be locked up. I don't deserve to have fingers pointed at me like I'm some kind of twisted monster. I don't deserve any of this. It's not fair.»

A sound roars in his ears. It shatters his eardrums. It boils his blood. His bile bubbles. He brings his palms to his ears, rubbing them up and down, but when he pulls his palms away, the sound is still there. He walks, and the tall grass crunches under his feet as he goes, circling the house now to the right. He's made this path hundreds of times, returning late from playing at Curly's house. His mother, at that point of the night, would have already fallen asleep.

The problem was the seasonal boyfriend.

So he always came in through the kitchen window, the only one that was open at that hours, and tiptoed to his room.
No matter who the man was, they were all cut from the same cloth. He remembers being a little boy and seeing, out of the corner of his eye, a multitude of men of different appearances and names, all asleep in front of the television, sitting on a single-body sofa, the remote control or the beer can dripping from between their fingers. A monolith. The perfect signature.
How many times did he study the profile of a piece of man, blinking in the dark thanks to the light of the television, and decide that he would never grow up to be like that?

And he did. He did. Congratulations, little Jimmy. The adult version of you is not drunk in front of the television in a woman's house. The adult version of you is not beating up a child that isn't even his, only to leave after six months and give up the spot to the next idiot who wants to come in and dig the hole in the sofa deeper. Are you proud of yourself? Are you? I hope you are, because that's where you're going.

Never as bad as them. Never as terrible.

He rests his left hand on the kitchen windowpane. All the windows are boarded up tight, except for that one. The space below is larger. He doesn't know who did the work. Why leave that window a little more exposed, but Jimmy slides his hands under, grabs onto the boards, and lets his body fall back, clenching his jaw until he rips the wood off by the roots.
He falls into a sitting position, the aged boards in his hands, as the glass makes a snapping sound as it shatters, shards of glass raining down and falling in and out of the house. A little further away, someone's dog is disturbed by the noise and starts barking, but he highly doubts anyone will call the police worried about someone breaking into the abandoned house on the corner. No, no. His home is his. That house is his.

He slides his arm carefully along the window frame, pushing aside the protruding pieces of glass that, like teeth, point towards the centre of the gap left by the broken window. Once he is sure he will not hurt himself, he sneaks inside carefully, his shoes making a crunching sound as he steps on the pieces of glass on the floor inside. The kitchen is narrow, but dark. The whole house is fucking dark, and it is only when his eyes begin to adjust to the darkness that he can see everything.

The short kitchen counter, where he used to sit and have a hasty breakfast before going out to wait for the bus to go to primary or secondary school. Sitting there, it was much easier to pretend that the rest of the elements and people around him did not exist.

On the other side, the living and dining room was tiny. The sofa. The television. A table with three chairs. A hallway with four doors. His room. His mother's room. The bathroom. The basement. That's it. Nothing more.

The glass decorating the floor creaks again as Jimmy moves forward. Just one step. Then another. And another.

The sound grows louder and louder, until it drives an invisible drill through his skull like a thin skewer.

Fixed to the wall, the phone never stops ringing.

It's not that the line is disconnected, or that there's no power in that house. The line doesn't exist, no wire runs from the phone into the wall. But the phone rings continuously... until Jimmy finally dares to pick up the phone. It makes a plastic click as it moves away from its wall mount. He exhales and presses it to his ear. Waits. Waits.

On the other end of the line he hears the creak of a chair, and the sigh of someone sitting down. The rustle of papers, and the clack of a metal clip holding papers in place, perhaps. More rustling of papers, topped off by the click of a pen and the whisper of this object as it writes, sliding across a sheet of paper.

“How have you been sleeping?”

The question hangs in the air, barely a whisper. Static squeezes the quality of that voice hard, shattering any chance of recognizing the sender at a moment’s notice. His palms are sweating so much that the phone’s receiver might have slipped, but he’s not an idiot. No, no. That voice is familiar. What’s oozing from his palms isn’t sweat, it’s blood. He cut himself as he slipped through the window. The pain hasn’t made a dent in him so far.

“How have you been sleeping?”

“Anya?”

A smile stretches across his lips. Stunned. Cynical. The nurse has found a way to reach him through a phone with no line. Through a house with no windows or doors. Far away. So far away. Her voice is affected by the distance, but it's her. He'd know that tone of voice anywhere. Awake. Asleep. In dreams. Hell, mostly in dreams. She's been driving him completely insane.

“How have you been sleeping?”

“I saw you. This very morning. Your face was the last thing I saw before I woke up. You'll be happy. You're here all the time now. Every time I close my eyes. In my dream, I...I was a wolf. A huge wolf. When you saw me, you ran from me. You ran and ran. You left bloody footprints in the middle of a desert. You hid and when you came out...I was something else. I wasn't a wolf anymore. I was a fucking dog, and you were armed. With the axe, like Swansea, and you killed me. You cut me down. You'll be happy. Only in dreams. Nothing but dreams. Because I'm alive, do you hear me? Alive, and there's nothing you can do to change it. I know it pisses you off, Anya. It must piss you off a lot. Well fuck you, nurse! I don't see an iron wall every time I look ahead anymore!”

“And what do you see when you look ahead?”

Jimmy raises his chin, his gaze fixed on the end of the short hallway. No lights. No sounds. Nothing but a darkness so heavy that it sucks everything around it, like a damn black hole that leaves nothing. Not the light. Nor the stars.
He waits, and the darkness looks back at him. It waits, patiently and with a smile, for an answer that is already well known.
The brunette squeezes the phone receiver tightly, so that it doesn't slip from between his hands. On the other end of the line, Anya's voice is slow. She knows she has all the time in the world. She knows his answers before he can even think of them. A priestess of Apollo who knows what will happen next.

She knows she's already won.

“And what do you see when you look ahead?”

“Nothing.”

Silence, but only for a few seconds. Soon, the rustling of paper and pen writing fills everything. He hears, deep in the background, the shitty music Anya used to listen to aboard the Tulpar, inside the medical room. He can barely make out a few words, beyond the interference on the phone line: "Sometimes you sulk, sometimes you burn. God rest your soul."

“Another question awaits in the living room.”

A click, and the next second, the phone call has been completely cut off. Nothing comes from the other end of the line but a dull, sustained sound, until it hangs loudly... in absolute nothingness.

There is no phone on the wall anymore, and the handset has vanished between his fingers.

Jimmy walks over to the living room, where the squeaking of the phone starts ringing again. Surrounded by the sofa, the television and the space where the cupboard where his mother stored the dishes once was. Each space projects a shadow on his back and chest. No beam of light manages to penetrate the interior of the home and yet...the clearest darkness behaves differently, breaking any physical norm. There are no laws. Only existence.

And the phone rings.

The brown-haired man is about to sit on the edge of the sofa, but remains standing. His fingers tremble so much that he cannot pick up the receiver on the first try. In front of his eyes, the phone rests in the center of the table. Once again, with no line connecting it to anywhere. Nothing but the tube and the tone that rings insistently over and over again. Over and over again...until Jimmy picks it up.

“What!?”

The silence only lasts a fraction of a second.

“Describe your relationship with your mother.”

Jimmy smiles. His skin has suffered the ravages of confinement, stress, thirst and hunger, just like the rest of his body. When he smiles, it's as if the surface of his skin opens a few extra inches. Like trying to force a piece of hardened cardboard to become malleable. Only air escapes through his lips. He doesn't say anything. What could he say?

“Describe your relationship with your mother.”

“Fantastic” he licks every syllable “when I was born, the midwife told my mother that she was the luckiest woman in the whole world. During my first years of life, she didn't even want to send me to kindergarten because she couldn't leave my side for more than five minutes. And when I finally got to go to school, she was the envy of all mothers. They saw me enter classes and showered my mother with praise. We've gotten along like that, since day one. My mother loves me. She's the best mother a child could wish for. Why don't you call her, nurse? Ask her and she'll tell you the same thing. She might tell you everything in the same order I did. She's probably going to tell you about school, and...”

“Where is she, Jimmy?”

“She's dead.”

“Liar. Another question is waiting in the bathroom.”

“What do you mean by-?”

Nothing. Nothing but the sustained sound of the call ending. The man throws the phone down hard, but, like a minute ago, everything plays out the same way. There's no stand anymore. There's no phone stand anymore. There's nothing but the rickety coffee table, and the marks where time has been doing its thing for a long time.

Liar? Why would her call him that?

Jimmy backs away. From the left, the sound of the phone stand echoes at him, coming from inside one of the closed doors. But he doesn't come. Not in a hurry. He gasps, licks his lips, and digs his fingers into his brown hair, combing back the strands. Yes, he knows he's not a liar. He's no liar. He's never told a single lie in his entire life, and on top of that, he has a pearly memory. If he closes his eyes...or even squints...he can hear the sound of the front door opening and closing, the voices, the rustle of the little wheels of a...

A stretcher?
A wheelchair?

...wheeling out of the house, and the...

The deathly silence?
The airy insults?

...as he holds something between his fingers, eleven or twelve or so years ago. A colorful, laminated triptych of sheets he'd picked up from the display inside a gas station convenience store, after buying a pack of cigarettes while Curly was filling up his car. He studied it. He read what was written there a thousand times and, when the blond saw him with that paper in his hands, he smiled and said "I'll take you home so you can... it's a good decision, she's very old, I think...". What? What did he think?

“My mother is dead.”

There's where she always used to be, and the room creaks. The wood exhales, as if the news has just reached it, so loudly that Jimmy fears for a second that the beams are going to crack and everything will fall on top of him. It's just the sigh of the walls and furniture, like the short bellow a person might let out when they first hear something terrible. But the mourning for the loss doesn't continue, and the ringing of the phone doesn't stop loudly. Jimmy takes a couple of steps away from the coffee table, and the end of the loveseat where his mother always used to sit still takes on the shape, the weight of a human being, the unevenness of the fabric and the stuffing. Near the floor, Honey's scratches have forever scarred the purple upholstery of the couch. Scars. His mother always complained about the age of that couch, saying that she should buy a new one. The reproach stretched out over the years, but the woman never made the decisive act of buying a new sofa and removing this one.

Because of the scratch marks, perhaps. A need to preserve the memory of the vermin she used to keep as a pet.

Every time she saw the scratches on the tapestry, she would remember the old fat cat. And every time she remembered Honey's death, she would remember in turn that it was he who killed her. Thus, the presence of the scratches becomes a cross from which he has never been able to escape. Not even now, with his mother locked in a box like a philosopher's exercise, and the remains of the cat being nothing more than bones, like a fucking dinosaur skeleton recently discovered.

«It's not my fault, it's her fault. How many times did she stop to compare that fucking shit cat to me in my face? As if Honey were her daughter, instead of me, and all for what? To teach me some empty lesson about bad behavior, or to make me feel guilty in the most pathetic way possible? Well, it backfired. There's nothing left of Honey but the bones, and it's all because of her. I was a little boy. I was eight years old. Who wants to stop and beat up an eight-year-old? Her, no one but her, and I have to endure this? Her voice still there even now. So far away, so far away…»

Jimmy slowly opens the bathroom door, finding himself in darkness even heavier than the rest of the small, one-story house. He makes out the darker silhouettes of the toilet and sink, but sees nothing discernible, like the sink faucet or the cistern hanging a few feet above the toilet, next to the shower. Nothing but darkness. If it weren't for the roar of the phone, he wouldn't be able to guess its location so quickly. Despite the music announcing an incoming call, the light doesn't flicker and the screen displays nothing. There's nothing to give away about the object's life. Nothing but the music. And it hangs, nailed to the wall just in front of the door. The music only stops once Jimmy has lifted the phone, bringing it to his ear.

“This is ridiculous!” he bellows into the phone's handset, before Anya, on the other end of the line, could say anything. “Your fucking psychological tests were absolutely useless in space. Why are you doing them now? What do you want to find out about me? Why are you so obsessed with me, dammit? Did you fall in love? Did Curly reject you and you're crawling towards me?”

“Do you have-”

“You're pathetic, nurse. Is this what you do now? Stalking me through the phone? I've had enough of your fucking nightmares. I don't know what you think you're doing, but stop right now. Stop this fucking nonsense and stop wasting my time. I don't want to be stuck in my childhood home. What the hell am I doing here to begin with, Anya? I'm not going to find anything I can't find elsewhere. I'm going to find even less than anywhere else in the world. There's nothing but memories and they all lead to emptiness and voids, so take your shitty questions and shove them up your ass one by one. Stop calling me. Stop looking for me. You and I have nothing in common anymore.”

“Do you have thoughts of ending your own life?”

A tinkling sounds to his right, a moan begins to erupt to his left.

His eyes slowly slide to the right. Something new has appeared next to the sink, on the table surrounding it. He approaches it, barely making out the rectangular shape in the dim light of the bathroom. It doesn't make sense that he's able to see anything, absent of all light...but he can, and his eyebrows barely rise as the edge of the small knife stares back at him.

Years ago, he would remove the plastic bits from his mother's razors and take the blades himself, before throwing the plastic into the trash can and covering it with wadded-up pieces of toilet paper.

Behind him, the sound grows louder. A muffled, insistent cry, longing not to be heard by anyone on the other side of the door.

In his right ear, Anya's voice comes through the phone's mouthpiece.

“Do you have thoughts of ending your own life?”

“I...”

The cries sound a little louder, a babble. The moans melt into tears until he hears a louder scream, and a drip. Something touches the toes of his shoes, he notices the three taps, and the stench of iron reaches his nostrils.
A dry thud. The toilet lid comes down with a plastic thud and, soon, a sustained cry. More dripping. The blood could leave a trail until it is found, but no one would want to follow it.

“Do you have thoughts of…?”

“If I die, she will feel guilty. She will realize, at last, all the harm she has done to me. But what will it serve in the end? Is this what I was born for? To teach my mother a lesson in morality and love? It's not fair. It's not fair. My life has barely begun and it's already a damned ruin. There's no way I was born a means. If she hates me so much, why give birth to me? Why raise me? She could have found an abortion facility, or left me on the doorstep of an orphanage. No one could treat me worse than she does, could they? And why? Whose sins am I paying for? If Dad killed himself and his soul went to Hell because of it, now I have to go through this martyrdom? To save his soul? So the coward can atone for his sins through me? The bastard couldn't even last any longer on Earth, why should I? That's what Mom says all the time, though: it was my fault. She must know everything, deep down. She must know I want to leave, and she's desperate for me to. She doesn't care about the method. She doesn't care if one night I run away without a trace, or if one morning she opens my bedroom door and finds me hanging from the ceiling. That's how he died, anyway. Maybe she's right and it's written in my blood, maybe that's what I have to do. Go out peacefuly and on my own terms. If I couldn't choose to be born, at least I can choose when to die. Curly says good things might come, but if life is suffering in the midst of an eternal wait for better things...I don't know if I want to live it. I'm tired of waiting for those better things. I try to tell myself to wait, still. That I'm still young. But when I'm not young anymore, what will I tell myself? What's left for me? Every time Mom catches me crying, she says I haven't known true suffering yet. I'm not interested in that kind of life. I'm not interested in living it. But that's where I'm headed, it seems. That's all there is for me. Pain. I could fight it. I know a lot of people do, but I don't have the strength. Maybe I was born to die, and that's all there is for me. Maybe...maybe happiness isn't for everybody.”

On the other end of the line, all that comes back to him is silence... and then a whisper. A pen.
Pain.
He holds the phone's receiver in his right hand, but brings his left hand to his arm... and feels it, letting out a moan at the moisture that soils the palm of his hand, and the burning that explodes on his skin because of the pressure. In the flesh of his arm, the wounds bleed and drip, opened out of nowhere, like they did years ago. More than ten. When was the last time he...?

“Another question awaits in your room.”

He is no longer surprised when the phone disappears from his hands, limiting himself to dropping his gaze on the sink again.
There is nothing.
No knife, no blood. His arms have stopped hurting. His old crying has stopped. There is nothing but the cold of a bathroom abandoned many years ago.

Jimmy slowly turns his gaze away from the wall, turning to face the door across the hall that slowly opens. The creaking sounds pierce his eardrums, offering him nothing but the pitch black, barely discernible, of an abandoned room.

He turns away from the bathroom, swallowing heavily as he approaches the cold frame of the door he has walked through a hundred times in the past. Still empty of furniture, he remembers the location of every little thing inside his childhood room. Now, however, there is nothing. Not the bed, not the closet, not the shelves, not his nightstand, not the toy chest. Not even the fucking lampshade, nothing but a dangling cord, missing its bulb. The blue paint on the walls is slowly peeling away, falling like the weak, thin hair of a very old person. The only thing alive within those four walls is the telephone, with the tiny red LED light now, blinking at each tone, anxious, calling it over and over again... until Jimmy picks up the phone and brings it to his ear.

He drags his tongue as he speaks.

“What now? Can’t you ask me all the questions in one place?”

Silence.

“Do you talk to your father?”

He gasps, there’s no other way to describe the sound that just came out of his mouth. And then he smiles, before shaking his head.

“You know the answer, Nurse, Curly told you. They talked and talked. When you got bored of making up ridiculous stories about haunted houses, he told you. Part of it, at least, but he cut himself off mid-word. Or do you think I’m an idiot? He probably thought that…that he was breaking some unwritten rule of confidentiality and loyalty between two lifelong friends, but it was only necessary to read between the lines. Why are you asking me? You already know everything! And I can only guess at the kind of things he must have told you while I…”

“How do you know that?”

“What?”

“The nature of my conversation with Curly…no. I know. Nothing was ever enough for you, was it? Curly loved you, and yet loving you was never enough. No. Grant couldn’t even discuss his fears with you. Further intimacy terrified you. You always responded like a frightened child or a very immature teenager. But you’re an adult now, and you could never quite cope. What did it take to possess him completely? Devour him? You couldn’t accept him, and you couldn’t tolerate the idea of ​​him stepping aside after you refused and seeking shelter with someone else. So terrified…unable to face reality. You followed him into the medical room. Were you listening, on the other side of the door? Like a voyeur. How pathetic. A pathetic, jealous little boy. An immature brat. Do you talk to your father?”

“MY FATHER IS DEAD!”

“Do you talk to your father?”

“How? How could I?”

“Do you talk to your father?”

“Of course not! Why the hell would I want to waste my oxygen talking to the guy who chose death over his own son?! I was four fucking years old! If he had done it two years ago, maybe...!”

His voice dies, and Anya's voice follows close behind. Nothing but silence comes out of the other end of the line. Anya inhales carefully and then clicks her tongue, he hears it, just as he hears the rustle of the fucking pen.

“Another question awaits in your mother's room.”

Jimmy has every intention of ripping the phone off the wall, and throwing it out the window, so it bounces back into the room on the wooden floorboards. He can't, of course. The phone is no longer there once he hangs up. Nothing but a blank wall with peeling paint...and the distant echo of the phone starting to ring again, at a considerable distance because of the walls. Thick. Thicker.

He leaves his childhood room, ready to grab the handle of the next door. His fingers, however, bump against a rough surface. He feels a scrape on his knuckles and, as he pulls his hand away, he realizes. The door to his mother's room is gone.

And the phone won't stop ringing...from somewhere else.

“I've had enough! I'll be back! Okay? I learned my damn lesson. I'll turn myself in and say I should have let myself die, that's what you want to happen, isn't it? The fucking moral of...”

From where he entered the house, a blackened wall stares back at him. Jimmy forces himself to blink insistently, rubbing his closed eyelids with the palms of his hands and looking again. Yes, his eyes do not deceive him: the kitchen window is no longer there.

“What...?” He turns to the right. In the living room, all the windows have disappeared as well. The wooden rods from which curtains once hung are still fixed to the walls, but there is no glass on the other side. Nothing but the wall eaten away by time, impenetrable.

It takes him a second longer than expected to realize that the main door is not in its place either. How is it possible that he can see? Where is that dim light coming from? That semi-darkness?

He stumbles backwards, bringing his hands to his head. He swallows heavily and feels how, little by little, his throat closes. Sweat beads on his back and his throat closes. The blood freezes in his veins and his throat closes. He falls to his feet and tries desperately to take a breath but his throat closes. He throws his head back hard and his eyes travel to the end of the hallway where the door to the backyard has also disappeared. Surrounded by walls and floor and ceiling that become thicker and thicker. He falls face down and presses his cheek to the floor, warm. It trembles beneath his body and... no. No. No, it doesn't tremble... it inflates, just a few millimeters... and deflates, just as slowly, under the weight of his body.

“Sweetie?”

A voice.

It's smooth and trembling. Sweet and attentive. Jimmy doesn't want to answer her.

“Sweetie, I know you woke up. I know you're in the living room. I can hear you.”

The man doesn't move. His teeth chatter, and it's only after a few seconds that he's able to lift his cheek from the ground, pressing his palms down to slowly stand up, his gaze trailing forward...to the first step, and then the rest of the steps that lead up to the floor above.

“Come up, honey.”

From the outside, and ever since, his house has never had a second floor.

But he obeys. He obeys as if some sort of primordial neural connection inside his brain has been forever fused. One step, then two, until he reaches the first step of a staircase that seems damn tall to him.
He takes one step, and an echo seems to follow him a second later. He wrinkles his nose and drops his gaze. At this point, he surely expects to see something terrible at his feet...but he sees nothing but a step.

He climbs another step, and the sound repeats itself a second later. He has no choice but to ignore it.

The phone's trill grows louder and louder.

There's a whole second floor up there. A whole second floor that Jimmy doesn't know about, but, guided by the sound, he stops at the door closest to the stairs, turning the handle and carefully opening it, a light without origin that still seeps into the room. He takes a couple of steps inside the place, and his right shoulder slides against the wall until his eyes can adjust to the darkness, and...

«There's a woman sitting on the bed.»

Sure enough.

Jimmy stays still in place, deathly still, eyes wide open. The room was decorated with teddy bear wallpaper, a small closet, a nightstand, a desk (on which the phone won't stop ringing), a toy chest, and a bed.
The headboard is carved in such a way that it looks like a heart, and above it is that classic painting of a guardian angel watching over the walk of a boy and a girl. Below him, sitting on the edge of the bed with her back to the man, leaning just above her knees, is a woman.

She is wearing a light nightgown with straps, and her long hair falls forward. He sees her rubbing her hands together, her shoulders shaking and the first bones of her spine marked against her thin skin. Was she thin because of hunger, or for some other reason?
She won't stop crying, or emitting a murmur so incomprehensible that it easily passes for crying. Jimmy swallows and slides back, but the woman, at that moment, stifles a cry.

“I didn't want to do it... I didn't want to, I didn't want to...” the unknown woman doesn't turn around, but denies it, shaking her head from side to side “Maggie... Maggie, you have to believe me, my baby girl... she left me no other choice.”

Jimmy opens his mouth, but not a sound comes out from between his lips.
Maggie, Peggy. Margaret. That was his mother's name.

The phone rings.

“You'll understand when you're a mother!” The woman raises her fists above her head. She clenches them so hard that they turn pale under the dim light that projects into the room. “Oh when they try to tear from your hands the only thing you have!” Her voice breaks as she digs her nails into her face and slides her fingers up. Standing behind her, Jimmy can't make out anything, but those fingers reach her eyes...and the volume of the screams increases in cadence. “Before losing my daughter, I'd rather kill you myself! That ungrateful son of a bitch! If I gave birth to you myself, I'm the only one with the right to erase you from this Earth! You don't own anything else in this world but your children, Maggie. Nothing else. No...” the woman falls forward, cold and limp as a mannequin. Her knees creak as they hit the ground, a broken wail pours from her mouth. The darkness hides her, but not entirely “...we have nothing else. Our land is salty. Our sky, cloudy. Don't lose the only thing you have. No...they will come for me...come closer. Don't cry, my child. Come closer to mommy. Come closer...you won't feel pain. You won't feel anything. Nothing at all. Nothing…”

"Nothing". She repeats. A cyclical "nothing", and that's it. It's only after a few seconds that Jimmy is able to stop clenching his jaw tightly, the bottom of his mouth barely giving way and his hand coming off the wall. The woman, now on the ground, has never turned to him. She hugs herself, repeating that word. She seems to either believe him to be his mother or has no interest in checking, rubbing her bony arms and not flinching as Jimmy walks to the desk, his right hand drenched in sweat, before picking up the phone and bringing it to his ear.

“Y-Yes?”

“Does your family have a history of mental illness?”

“...it...” Jimmy's gaze sweeps through the darkness until it reaches the unknown woman. He didn't need to be a genius to deduce that it is his maternal grandmother. He never met her. None of his four grandparents “...it seems so.”

“Does your family have a history of suicide?”

“You know that it does, yes... You know that the answer is a yes! Why are you asking me again?”

“How did he do it?”

“He hanged himself!”

“...another question awaits in your father's room.”

Anya, on the other end of the line, hangs up.

The phone disappears. The fact no longer surprises him. What worries him is the sudden silence, but it has a more than simple explanation: the woman is no longer kneeling on the floor, crying next to the bed. Nor does she seem to be in any other corner of the room.

She could be waiting in some other room in the house.

Or not.

Something tells him that she has already done what she had to do.

He leaves the room slowly, poking his head very slowly through the door frame. The sound of the phone comes from the hallway below, and that is where he is heading now, his feet shaking a little, his heart reaching the top of his windpipe. He slides the palm of his hand over the wall to his right, a sort of guide in the middle of a place as new as this one. Each step weighs on him like a ton. He is more than aware that he will not be able to hold out much longer.

And he turns the handle.

On the other side of the door he is greeted not by a room, but by a small patio.
It is daytime, but the sky is so overcast with clouds and there is so much fog that he can only see a meter, or less, ahead.

He advances, his only guide being the continuous ringing of the phone, ringing somewhere in that unexpected garden, until he is surprised by a figure darker than the heavy fog that surrounds everything. For a few seconds, he has trouble discerning what it is... until he begins to circle the object slowly.

A rock fountain.
Inside, devoid of water, the phone keeps ringing. Still, he... is not able to reach out to pick it up.
Not yet.

“...allow it, Maggie! Don't think I will!”

The male voice scares away the fog, but not too much. From somewhere, a flock of birds leaves the top of a tree, intoning a musical complaint in unison. Someone kicks a ball, he would recognize the sound anywhere, and the reverberation of the blow reaches his ears, leaving a hand on the rock of the fountain. His eyes, however, guess nothing, and the voice sounds so close... male, barely raspy. Firm.

“...something wrong with you...” the words are lost. Like a man trying to walk home in a snowstorm, the message twists and turns, spinning around and around on its own axis. Jimmy heads into the mist, but only makes it five steps before he runs into the stone fountain again “…ignore it, we can’t, it’s…”

A female voice echoes a barrage of words, and Jimmy can’t make out a single one of them.

“…me, then! If this is how it has to be, by…” another echo. The mist seems to thicken around him. Turn to foam. No, not again. Jimmy crouches near the fountain, clutching the rocks, wet and cold beneath his palms and fingertips. All around him, shades of gray, some lighter, some darker, twist and twist. He can’t make out anything.

And the phone rings.

“Fuck…” he reaches forward with his right hand, until he catches the phone tube. It trembles, and the wire dangles over the hole that opens downwards, in the heart of the fountain. Jimmy holds the phone tube to his ear, and his breath forms a steam as it emerges from between his lips “Anya… A-Anya, please, get me out of here…”

“Do you have any phobias?”

“W-What?”

“Do you have phobias? Obsessions? Compulsions? Anger issues?”

“I-I don't even know what the fuck a… means!”

“A phobia is a fear of situations or things that are not dangerous and that most people do not find annoying. An obsession is a repeated thought, impulse, or mental image that is intrusive, unwanted, and causes anxiety in most people. A compulsion is a repetitive behavior that a person feels the need to perform, often in response to an obsession. And anger problems can be caused by low frustration tolerance, mental disorders, substance abuse, impulsive personality, and/or learned behavior patterns.”

“I don't have any stupid fears.”

“You've been terrified your whole life, Jimmy. Terrified of taking charge. Terrified of looking in the mirror. You can't look us in the face...you can't see me in the face. You're afraid to look at yourself, to understand the true extent of your actions, aren't you? To accept...that you are that terrible person I've told you you are. You had plenty of time in the past to do something...and you didn't. You expect some sweet redemption now, hm? A higher-up to give you a hug and tell you everything's okay...that you have a second chance at life...no, Jim. That's not how things work out.”

“Y-You said...you said our worst moments don´t-”

“Oh, shut the fuck up” Anya trails off. The brunette thinks it's static, but it's not: the nurse laughs, without mincing words “You think that's all? You think that everything that happened was just you having your worst moment? You are a worst moment. You have been for years. You have been the worst moment of every person who has had the misfortune of getting too close to you. What do you have inside your skull? You did not make a mistake, Jimmy. Knocking over a glass and breaking it is a mistake. Being late for work is a mistake. Forgetting your wedding anniversary is a mistake. Trying to kill everyone… putting five zolpidem pills in my mocktail glass… blaming everything that happened on Curly… allowing Daisuke's death… killing Swansea… are not mistakes, they are deliberate actions. And you know what's the worst? You are not deranged, Jimmy. No, no. You don't have that relief. Your brain works perfectly. You knew it was all wrong, and yet you did it… your power of conviction is so strong… that if you had directed it into something positive, you would have gone far. So far. What a pity, Jimmy. What a pity. You are pathetic… but your obsession led you to cling tooth and nail to that which you would not find anywhere else.”

“Anya…”

“I read it somewhere… the most exquisite of pleasures is domination. Nothing compares to the feeling. Mental sensations are even better than physical ones. Knowing you have all the power, the greatest comfort. It is complete security, protection from getting hurt. When you dominate someone you are “doing them a favor”, right? People beg for someone to control them, to take their mind off their problems. You help them and help yourself at the same time. Even when they get angry, deep down they have to like it. Sometimes they get angry and fight back, but you can handle it. They always remember what they need, and you always get what you want.”

“I…I d-don’t…”

“Who conditioned love for you like that? Was it your mother? I wouldn’t be surprised…you were an ordinary child, but you never deserved her love. Love isn’t deserved, it’s given…it’s just given…and she didn’t give it to you. That blind, endless love, you only found it in him, right? But you didn’t want it, no…loving a human being involves an immense amount of vulnerability. When we love a person, we risk all the time, every day, being hurt in a terrifying way. They’re never mortal wounds, but almost…healing takes a long time, and you weren’t willing. You didn’t want to give him anything back, but you did want to take everything from him. A parasite. Curly was all you had, and at the thought of losing your only possession…the only person with unconditional love to offer you…and even more so when you realized that he was already capable of seeing you in that clear way that you refused to face…you couldn't bear it. You went completely mad. We all had to pay the price for your cowardice. Is that your phobia, Jimmy? Do you have a phobia of love? Of hurt? Of honesty? Or maybe you have an intrinsic, twisted horror of yourself…the absolute dread that your mother has always been right about you. You've been very shallow-minded up until now, so…”

YOUR DESTINY AWAITS IN THE BASEMENT.

Jimmy tries to hang on, but he can't.

From within the fountain, breaking through the rock and revealing an infinite, dark space under it, dozens of arms, with pale skin and twisted nails, cling to his arm tightly. He screams, but the fog seems to suck all the oxygen from his lungs, leaving nothing but a cold echo inside his ribcage. He is pulled hard into that vast dark hole, the phone tube falling apart in his fingers as he falls into absolute darkness.

He doesn't guess anything. Above him, the point of light that reveals access to the outside through the hole in the fountain grows smaller and smaller, until it is the size of a star seen from Earth, and then disappears. He is aware of the fall by the whisper of the wind in his clothes, the way the fabric and his hair stir.

How much time has passed? Five minutes? Ten hours? He awaits a gruesome death, slammed into the ground like a lump of flesh and blood…but when he finally reaches the ground, it's like he's fallen out of bed from moving too far to the edge.

It barely hurts.

His house, unlike Curly's, the largest and most ornate in the entire neighborhood, only had one story…but it did have something Curly didn't: a basement. As a child, he hated that basement. The light bulb cord was always missing a bulb, and his mother never had the money to finish fixing it…and God knows there's nothing more terrifying to a nine-year-old than an unfinished basement.

The stench of dampness, confinement, and mothballs attacks him like three bullets of different caliber, his cheek on the somewhat soaked floor. He leans his palms against the ground, gritting his teeth as he hears the incessant roar of the phone, of course. Not even there could he…

When his gaze adjusts to the darkness, a scream finally manages to rise from the depths of his chest, compensating for the scream he was unable to utter in such a free fall.

A man hangs from the ceiling.

Panting, Jimmy drags himself backwards at full speed, until his back hits a wall, his hands shaking and his feet doing the same like someone dying of cold.
The man is hanging in such a way that his back is to him… and he swings gently, when there is no way in the world that a current of air can reach down there. He wears a starched white shirt, black dress pants, a thick leather belt, or something similar, and elegant shoes… very well dressed, as if he had been about to go somewhere very important… but had thought better of it.

Now, he hangs from one of the wooden beams of the ceiling. A thick rope, blackened by the passage of time, surrounds his neck and holds him while, slowly, he swings. His head hangs, or at least that's what Jimmy assumes, and his arms and legs remain inert, pointing downwards.

Beneath the tips of his feet, the phone doesn't stop ringing.

“No, no... please, please...” Jimmy shakes his head. He tries to stand up, but his legs betray him and send him to the ground again. “That's enough, that's enough, please...”

The hanged man doesn't answer.

“Anya, stop this! Whatever you're doing, stop!” He sticks his hands to the wall behind him, and only then, trembling, is he able to stand up. To his left should be the crumbling wooden staircase to ascend back to the house, but needless to say, there's nothing. No staircase, no door. Just him. Just him. “Stop all this! Stop it, already! Stop...!”

A creaking sound.

It's so soft, that at first he thinks he imagined it. His brain must have been reheated. Maybe they put something in his prison food or drink to drive him mad and manipulate him at will at the trial. Is there anything in this world that can drive you mad? A drug that strong? He's heard that one can stay on an LSD-induced trip for a long time, but why would the cops do that? Did they drug him to get something out of him? To…?

«The man is moving.»

Jimmy gasps, his chin lifting, his lower lip quivering. It was true. So slowly that if he weren't paying attention he wouldn't even notice, the hanging man slowly turns. He doesn't move any part of his body, the rope seems to have taken on a life of its own, twisting the guy around until he's facing Jimmy.

His hair is dark brown, darker than his own, and combed back. But his face is featureless. He has no eyes, nose or mouth, a smooth surface.
He suddenly stretches his right arm forward, pointing at the former co-pilot with his index finger, and Jimmy grits his teeth and pushes himself back, as if he could knock down the basement wall and run away.

A second later his arm comes down, pointing at the phone at his feet.

The brunette tries to say something. To formulate a word that he has refused to utter for years. He is unable to.

He trembles, peeling himself off the wall and approaching with careful steps towards the hanging man who, almost indifferent, continues pointing at the floor. The plastic creak that the phone's tube emits when it is peeled off its base resonates loudly inside the basement, and Jimmy has to take a breath three or four times before he can say something out loud.

“He-He's my...my father?”

He gets nothing back but silence.

“A-Anya? I-Is he my...?”

“What do you think is wrong with you?”

“Intruder.”

The voice booms loudly inside his ears. Jimmy barely holds the phone to his ear. He doesn’t need to raise his face to know it’s the man speaking to him. No mouth. No lips. But he speaks. His voice rings inside his brain… infected, twisted, loud and like a radio with interference.

“You left Earth with an empty soul, devoid of desire. You would find nothing in space that you didn’t already have where you were born. Denied and hidden. Terrified. You’re not a child anymore. But you had dreams. Don’t you remember them? Don’t you remember the little good things? The glimmers of hope? The things honest people cling to so they don’t fall and give themselves over completely to the bottom of the hole…fireflies on a summer night, a thick blanket on a winter morning, the taste of ice cream, the scent of warm wind…Do you remember the taste? Don't you remember the scent of your childhood?”

“I don't remember anything.”

“You had something precious, son...we all have it when we're born. Most take that something and cultivate it, others let it die...you killed it. Your dreams, your desires, your possibilities...”

“I don't have dreams.”

“All humans have dreams.”

“I guess I'm not human, then.”

“Your humanness makes you capable of hurting, and you've hurt a lot. Too much. You've caused indelible damage on this Earth, in the lives...of so many. Some wounds will heal, others will never...and in the wounds you've opened to yourself, there's nothing time can do, but infect them and spread the disease. You'll have to accept that, Jimmy. You'll have to live with what you did.”

«What do you think is wrong with you?»

“There's no way out now, no turning back…what's done is done. All you can do is face reality. You can't run anywhere. There's nowhere to hide! This is the truth. Face it.”

The walls shake. The corpse above his head stirs. On the other end of the line, Anya laughs, and repeats the question.

“What do you think is wrong with you?”

Jimmy shakes his head angrily, his face wet with tears. When had he started crying?

“When did you last cry? When did you last laugh? When did you last hug? When did you last realize your mistakes? When did you last take responsibility?”

“SHUT UP!”

Chunks of dirt and dust fall from the ground. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, everything shakes furiously. The light that comes out of nowhere and everywhere at once turns red, violent. He blinks, as an alarm blasts his eardrums loudly. It doesn't matter that he's let go of the phone. It doesn't matter that he covers his ears with his palms. There's nothing he can do to stop the noise.

“When did you last kill? When did you last lie? When did you last want to kill yourself? When did you last beg for forgiveness? When did you last feel guilty?”

“Get out of my head!” Jimmy sits up, shaking, and grabs onto the corpse's legs. He lets his weight fall down, screaming, pushing... until he hears a crack and the corpse collapses. Above him, the wooden beam snaps, but the rope is, strangely, intact.

And those angry red lights keep flashing.

And the alarm keeps screaming.

“When did you realize that something was wrong with you? When was the last time guilt consumed you? Did guilt ever consume you? When did you realize you were doomed for the rest of your life? When you escaped from the cell? When we were rescued? When I cornered you with the gun? When the ship crashed? When I told you I was pregnant? When we found out we were going to be kicked out? When you got the job? When you never received love? When you were born?”

Jimmy doesn't answer. He couldn't.

Lying next to the faceless corpse, he digs his fingers into the ropes. The skin is swollen with time, and the sensation is disgusting, slippery. Cold. The knot is tight, and he hurts his fingers in his rapid odyssey to undo that knot. Something tells him that if he doesn't do this quickly, between the shaking of the basement, the lights and the noise, he will die.

When the wet, rough material of the rope reaches his neck, a new sound joins the scandal. From the other side of the mental line, it comes from the same place as Anya's voice. It's softer, and yet... it manages to make his stomach turn. A constant babbling. The babbling of a baby.

“When did you decide that destroying everything was the best option?” The house seems to lean, like a man kneeling to be at the height of a child. Suddenly, the ceiling beams don't seem so far away and, immersed in desperate longing, it takes him three attempts to pass the free end of the rope over one of the thickest beams. “When…?”

He pulls hard on the rope, securing the knot around the wooden beam. The alarm doesn't stop. The scarlet flicker doesn't stop. He thinks Anya has finally fallen silent…but it was all a relay. When the voice comes back, it's not her anymore.

It's him.

“You caused all of this, and you won't be forgiven.”

“Curly?” Jimmy's voice comes out like a wail, both hands around the top of the rope. He knows that once he lets go, he will die. A chosen death. A death like his father's death.

«A coward's death.»

“You knew the difference between right and wrong, and you still did it. Now, you're going to have to learn to live with this. You have no way out now, man. You took and took until there was nothing left. This was all your choice. Now, take responsibility and…you know what?”

I HOPE IT HURTS.

A sharp thud. The rumble of tension…
A crack.
And silence.

If everything around him was breathing, now it has run out of oxygen.

.

.

.

.

.

“...aci?3

Nothing.

“…breathes, see his…”

Silence.

“…the handcuffs, carefully. Did he try…”

You failed.

Chapter Text

12 MONTHS BEFORE THE MIRACLE

She places her hands under the faucet, and the motion sensor expels a generous, steady stream of cool water. She clasps it between her palms and leans over, cooling her face and neck a little. She shakes off the sleep, chases it away completely, before rummaging through the small closet below for her comb, undoing the few knots that form in her long jet-black hair.

Her room is tiny, like most rooms for employees waiting for takeoff. Of all the things she has brought from Earth, most of them are already resting in her suitcase. After all, the cargo ship leaves Venus tomorrow morning. It was time to go home.

She doesn't want to even think about the year-long journey ahead of her.

She ties her hair into a low ponytail and, wearing comfortable clothes and her Pony Express nurse ID, closes her apartment-room and heads out of that building, being greeted by the air of that planet. The urban bubble of Venus, first colonized by China, is evident in its architectural style and in the relief designs of the titanic, kilometer-long dome that keeps them all safe from the lack of oxygen, large enough to allow the protection of buildings up to ten stories high. Each country with the necessary resources to finance the journey has a small embassy and delimited areas agreed upon through a multitude of congresses. On Venus, Mars, Uranus and Neptune they have had to grant each other an almost utopian communion. Not because of an excess of affection between nations, but because of an immovable reality: a war is impossible within a planetary colony, and peace is the only thing that guarantees the survival of all parties.

For now.

The sky beyond the thick protective glass is urine-colored, and the clouds are gray like mountains of soot. But the worst part is the smell. The planet's atmosphere is mostly composed of sulfur dioxide, and she still remembers, as the passenger ship that brought her here passed through that layer, the disgusting stench of rotten eggs that attacked everyone, even when they were safely inside the shuttle ship. She'll have to face it again, because all shuttle and cargo ships, due to their size and obviously their need to land and take off, stay outside the Venusian dome.

«Okay, girl, your first big job. For God's sake, don't screw it up!»

Anya reaches into her pants pocket, removing the ID she was given a few months ago, along with her report and a bunch of paperwork to sign that she urged herself to read but never found the time for, and when she finally did have a free afternoon, the HR office at Pony Express's small Venusian headquarters was never open. Good grief, there's not much to do to pass the time on Venus without the workers ever being in their places!

She should be used to it. It's not her first job for them. She's already traveled on a tiny shuttle ship, but that trip was very short and it was just the Captain, the chief engineer, and her. She thinks she remembers being told that this woman retired from the company, but the Captain is still the same for this particular trip.

Grant Curly.

Anya stops on one of those relatively new sidewalks, turning the ID between her fingers. A familiar nervousness runs through her from head to toe. It will be the second time she travels with Curly as her direct superior, but not even a hundred trips would make her feel any less nervous. Could anyone blame her? If she already has some misgivings about traveling with people who are veterans in their positions, Curly has the added bonus of being a celebrity...and a man of very few words once you have the opportunity to get close to him in person...although "getting close" wasn't even what she did.

How many words did they exchange during those few weeks? Twenty, at most? Twenty-two? Anya talked more with the chief engineer than with her Captain, and the woman herself (Anya feels terrible for not being able to remember her name) told her not to feel sorry for the blond's almost penitent silence. "He's a man of few words," she told Anya in a whispered voice one afternoon as the two sat in the ship's recreation room. Because of the small size of the flying craft, they didn't have much to entertain themselves with, other than a couple of books and a projector with two or three movies that they'd had enough of watching over and over again. "He thinks too much, though, I'm sure of that. He's carrying a lot of baggage in his brain. He needs to meet someone to share some of the weight with, or it'll end up crushing him."

Just as she felt guilty now for not being able to remember the chief engineer's name, she felt guilty then for whispering about the Captain without him being aware of it. Or was he? Being famous, he's probably more than used to the idea that many people might be talking about him without him being there, but Anya supposes that there's a difference between commenting on the man's attractiveness when seeing a picture of him in some space exploration magazine, and being a person under his command and secretly talking about him on the very ship he captains. She thought about it at that moment too, so many months ago, and decided that she wouldn't talk about Curly with that woman again. Fortunately, they had more interesting topics than the Captain's silence...although not talking about him didn't stop Anya from thinking about him.

He's a man who dedicates himself to an extremely solitary job: traveling for long periods of time in the middle of outer space. Even with a large troop of personnel on board the ship on duty, it's a job that requires a very powerful mental strength. Anya is convinced that she wouldn't be able to carry the burden of leadership on her shoulders. She doesn't think she would lose her mind in the process, but as soon as the ship landed after completing its journey, the black-haired would hand over her Captain's badge, her ribbon, or whatever they give them, never to lead anyone again.
Grant Curly has been working in outer space for years. That's something everyone eventually knows...everyone who wants to fully dedicate themselves to space exploration, of course. His father was also a famous man in his field, and one of the first American astronauts to set foot on Venus and then inside the Martian dome, the second to be erected after the dome on the moon, used solely for research purposes. If Curly holds the position he holds, it's because he's proven he's capable of doing it...or because his superiors believe he's proven he's capable of doing it.

If they confirmed it through some sort of analysis similar to the psychological tests Anya has been forced to memorize...

«Of all the people in this world, it is not up to you to judge whether the staff has been chosen well or not, only to attend to the health area and carry out the tests when the time comes.»

And the time will come soon.

There are several entrances to the interior of the kilometer-long dome, some larger than others. You can't leave through any of them, of course, and the vast majority of residents (all temporary) of the Earth base use the same exit on the way to the spaceship boarding area. There are no civilians on vacation at that time of year, and there's not much to do on Venus anyway.

Anya is aware that, many years ago, it was believed that each planet concealed paradise areas that humans could exploit for their own benefit, creating the most expensive vacation packages the human race has ever seen. However, neither Mars, nor Venus, nor much less Uranus have their own version of the Caribbean Sea, nor snowy mountain ranges or any construction erected by the hands of some now extinct civilization. Nothing more than kilometers of an uninhabitable area with an atmosphere not compatible with life.
You can pay for a tourist trip to one of the three fixed bases or to one of the space stations of various countries floating in outer space (Anya knows that Japan has a base that is basically an amusement park held thousands of kilometers above the Earth), but there is not much to do other than look at a sky the color of urine, or red, or gray-greenish.

Most of the humans in the bases are either scientists or workers on cargo ships (like Curly and her) or permanent representatives of interplanetary companies or ambassadors with their respective security committees. Pure and hard bureaucracy encapsulated millions of kilometers from the corner of the Earth in which it was created.

Anya exhales barely. The gravity on Venus is lower than that of Earth, but only just. In front of her, the most important exit stretches before her eyes. A semicircle, with a worker stationed on one side and a woman sitting on the other side of a thick glass, inside a booth. The nurse approaches them and, before the man can ask anything, hands him her ID.

“Good morning, my name is Anya Musume. Tomorrow I take off with Pony Express long-haul space freighter "Tulpar", and today is my acclimatization session. I need a protective suit to approach the ship.”

The man doesn’t say anything, although Anya doesn’t think he has much to say. He just nods and hands the ID to the woman standing inside the booth. She checks her ID in third position and nods, disappearing from their sight and returning with a suit in her hands, which she hands Anya and points with her head to another booth near the door.

“You can change in there.”

In the old days, protective suits were thick and heavy and required a lot of time and extra help to get into. The helmets were huge and circular, the size of a fish tank, and on the back hung an oxygen tank that could weigh, if lucky, twenty kilos. Twenty kilos of weight on the spine at all times. Although she is not a space fanatic, she has had to read a lot of things to absorb the basics of the history of outer space exploration, the earthly settlements and the machinery created, all very superficially. In the end, her job was one and only one, not very different from her application on Earth: health.

Now, however, the protective suits are much lighter and easier to put on by a single person. A double layer, with a special fabric to reflect UV rays (it is important to put on a good amount of sunscreen before wearing a suit like that), thick but allowing some mobility. Everything is kept in one piece by pulling up a zipper in the front, and then pulling a small cord that goes inside. The helmet is, of course, circular (the shape of the head of a human being has not changed in a thousand years, nor will it for another thousand years) but much smaller than the space helmet of it’s predecessor suits. There is no tank on the back, nothing but a diffuser that transforms unbreathable air into oxygen at a slow rate, covering her mouth and pressing her nostrils shut to prevent any toxic substances from passing through. And finally, a pair of thick spiked boots, although the spikes on her boots seem to have worn away long ago.

“...finally the Tulpar” she hears the voice of the woman talking to that sort of security guard, once she emerges back from the booth. The guard clears his throat and stands very straight, perhaps trying to pretend he wasn't talking, as if Anya were part of his superiors. The woman, on the other hand, just looks at Anya. Her eyes express a very clear message: dare to scold me for talking during work hours.

The nurse doesn't care.

“We're talking about the Tulpar” but, as if she had been able to read her thoughts, the woman on the other side of the glass smiles, leaning forward. At the bottom of the glass there is a perfect rectangular hole. She must have decided that the best option, just in case, would be to open a window so that Anya could decide whether to join the conversation if she wanted “that piece of junk is on its last legs. I'm surprised that Pony dares to send it on a trip for so long.”

“If they do, it must be because they’re convinced it’s a safe ship,” Anya’s voice comes out almost like a whisper. Almost like it’s not hers. The woman just shrugs.

“I guess, I’m not trying to imply that they don’t care about the likelihood of mass death either. No. It’s been many years since there was a major accident. It’s just that… the old tin lady has been here for almost a year and a half, hibernating, and I’ve rarely seen any Pony Express maintenance personnel take care of her, that’s all.”

Anya doesn’t even know exactly what to say, but she doesn’t have the chance to either. The woman points something out to the man and he enters the booth. Then he looks at her and presses a button on the control panel in front of her.

“Turn on the oxygen, Miss Musume,” she warns, sliding his ID under the gap in the glass before closing it. Anya retrieves the card and turns a tiny valve, soon feeling the oxygen entering the fish tank-like hull.

In front of her, the exit door to the hangar area slowly rises, until she is able to advance out of the dome of Venus, giving herself over completely to the arid and toxic exterior of the planet.

With the lower gravity on her side, she hops lightly, like a happy rabbit, towards the Tulpar. Unmistakable. Red and yellow, the two hideous company colors that make Anya think more of the mustard and ketchup of a fast food chain and less of a galaxy-wide delivery company, the Tulpar is less a ship and more of a sleeping beast. With one polished side of its nose facing away, it looks like an animal with only one eye open, on the lookout, sure that something terrible will eventually happen.

She climbs the heavy metal stairs. It was a day of acclimatization for everyone who would be part of that trip, separated by different schedules. Although she doesn't know the others in person (yet), she doubts there are too many of them to not take a single group trip... but who knows. The Pony Express members conduct themselves in ways that are very strange and, frankly, borderline unethical in terms of workplace mental health.

«A few years, Anya. A few years until you're able to get into medical school, and then, bye-bye, Pony Express! Goodbye to you, your low salary, and your lousy health insurance!»

During her previous trip, the person in charge of the acclimatization session was a Pony Express employee who looked much younger than Anya herself. The kind of employee who you look at and it's obvious that she got the job through influence. Would she do something like that if her mom or one of her friends had an acquaintance or some power over any medical school, or company better than that one? She probably would, but since she can't, she only has one thing left: complain to herself.
She thinks she's going to meet the same girl, as she puts her ID on the Tulpar's external reader and the heavy metal door slides to one side... but no. With his back against one of the walls, his arms crossed and his gaze lost somewhere on the floor, was the one who will be her direct superior during the long year of transfer that she has ahead of her.

“Go-Good morning!” the black-haired woman feels like an idiot as she stammers near the door, taking a couple of steps while removing the helmet of the suit, holding it under her arm. Curly looks up and, instantly, Anya is sprayed by the motion-sensing disinfectant, stealing a terrified scream from her throat. She completely forgot about it, what an idiot she must have looked like! She waves her right hand in front of her face and, convinced that the man must not remember her from their previous trip together about two years ago, she clears her throat “my name is Anya. Anya Musume. I will be the nurse on board.”

“I'm glad you're here, Anya. I was beginning to fear that I had made a mistake with the schedule” the smile on her lips becomes somewhat uncomfortable. Did it really take that long? Did she forget to change the clock from Earth time to Venus time? But they told her the thing changes itself! Ugh! You can never fully trust artificial intelligence “my name is Grant Curly, and I'll be taking over as Captain... but please call me Curly. Everyone calls me that.”

«Like Laika?» Anya thinks to herself as she smiles and nods once. Curly reaches out a hand towards her and the black-haired woman shakes it kindly. «The Soviet dog, the patron saint of one-way trips.»

Because once we return to Earth we will never return to outer space... or because we will never get to Earth at all?

«Who knows, but don't say your comparisons out loud. He doesn't have to know that you're putting him on par with that poor dog who died more than forty or fifty years ago.»

Of course not, just as she won't tell him that she'll probably never call him "Curly," demanding a level of trust from Anya that she's not quite sure she'll be able to muster...or that she already knows he'll be her Captain, because is there a person alive in the dome of Venus who doesn't know him, at least by hearsay? She, on the other hand...

“It's a pleasure to work with you again,” Curly's words, as he lets go of her hand, throw her off a bit. She blinks, trying to decide if perhaps his voice was a figment of her imagination or if the blond was trying to play some kind of joke on her...but no, he looks and sounds sincere “...because we've worked together before, haven't we? I could be wrong, but I’d swear that...”

“Yes! Yes, it's been... a little over two years ago, more or less. It was a short trip, barely a month. There were three of us as a crew, including me.”

“That's it, you see? I never forget a face... although names are another story. I swore your name was Anna.”

“Well, you're almost right” the black-haired woman can't help but smile, just as she can't help but feel like an idiot for the happiness that surrounds her just because he remembers her, even though he said he doesn't forget anyone's face. She'd like to think that he remembers her for her immense medical skills, but the reality is that she didn't have to bandage a single wound during those handful of days. What a fiasco “I hope this trip is as calm as the last one, although knowing that it will be a whole year...”

“Yes, it's some consolation, I've been working in companies that transport merchandise and supplies through space since I was twenty-four. In a few months, it'll be... eleven years of work. Eleven years, and I've never had a single problem on board... serious enough to require a report. Nothing. I'd say the cards are in our favor” Curly takes a step away from her, inviting her to follow him with a gesture of his arm “Let’s begin. The Tulpar is huge and there's a lot to see.”

Anya nods and follows in his footsteps, the helmet of the protective suit under her arm, since inside the ship you can breathe normally. Their steps emit a metallic echo that climbs the walls and runs to the end of those very long corridors, before bursting like a soap bubble.

She tries not to think too much about how huge Curly is.

She's tall. She's always been one of the tallest in her generation at every school, taller than some of her male classmates even in her last year of high school. Curly, next to her, was just a few centimeters taller...but between his confident walk and the width of his body, he looks like he's a whole meter taller than her.

He's wearing the company's short-sleeved yellow and red T-shirt. Over that is the blue work overalls that are also the required uniform. But since they haven't started work yet, he's got the top off and tied around his waist like someone tying a sweatshirt during the warmer hours of fall or spring.

Grant's got firm muscles. He must work out a lot on Earth, unless he has something to do it with on board the Tulpar, like a pair of dumbbells or a bed with heavier weights.
The yellow fabric of the T-shirt seems tighter at chest level, as if the threads are having a hard time keeping the entire cargo in place without spilling out.
Anya smiles to herself and shakes her head. The last thing she needs is to let out a laugh and have Curly ask her what she's laughing about, then proceed to die of embarrassment and jump out of one of the ship's windows, never to return. Without putting the helmet back on, just as long as the nature of outer space takes its course and all.

“Our first stop, Anya…this is the main lobby.”

After moving down a long hallway, he comes to a large room. Curly spreads his arms, adopting a tone of voice more similar to a real estate agent who needs to get rid of a poorly located and overpriced house.

The lobby is huge, with barely curved ceilings. A table with six chairs, some furniture, a long sofa on a wide slope and a shelf full of books and board games in their respective boxes. The kitchen was somewhat small and spread out in a semicircle. In front of the sofa, a set of thin screens form a single immense screen that, for the moment, remains off.

What most catches Anya's attention, however, is the huge statue of the horse Polle, the emblematic mascot of Pony Express. She wrinkles her nose, approaching the horse carefully but, at a distance of two or three steps, a very loud bell bursts from inside the object, drawing an exclamation of surprise from her and making her jump on the spot.

“Polle says, rise and shine! Sleep is the best rest after a long day of work, earn that rest!”

“Jesus!”

“The little bastard has a motion sensor” when Anya turns around, she finds a particular gleam in Curly's eyes. Amusement. He was probably expecting her to freak out at the sudden sound of the robot horse.

«Idiot» she decides to herself, but she's not too angry.

“I wouldn't exactly call him little.”

“Make sure you don't get too close to him if you get up at night to drink water or something. With the racket you might wake everyone up, and...”

“With so few hours of sleep allowed, it doesn't seem like the best idea to me” Anya shakes her head, and Curly takes the reins of the tour.

He leads her through another door, descends, and shows her the way to the cockpit, ridiculously small for how important it is. Two doors lead to the cargo area, which is already closed tight. They go back up and turn right, showing her the hallway with the doors to the rooms and the access to the bathroom, as well as the maintenance room. Once the door opens, the blond stays standing in the doorway for a few minutes longer than expected and she, somewhat confused, looks inside the room and then looks at him, barely wrinkling her eyebrows.

“Is something wrong?”

“It's just that... in theory, there were going to be four people for this trip. The chief engineer, my co-captain, you and me. But, at the last minute, they notified me that we'll also be taking an intern who's been here for two weeks now.”

“And is there a problem?” Curly doesn't answer, but barely raises his head in the direction of the maintenance room.

Anya studies it.

There are tools, objects that she doesn't quite understand what they're for, and the emergency cryogenic capsules, as hopeful as they are frightening. One is grateful that they're there, but hopes to never be forced to use them. Two against the left wall, two against the right wall. Will they be in bad shape? However, a spark inside her brain immediately explodes. She barely has a second to realize it, and she can't help but feel a little clumsy.

“There are only four capsules, and there are five of us.”

“Aye.”

“Isn't it... too unsafe? What if there's an accident? One of the five of us would have to stay outside” Curly doesn't answer, and an uncomfortable anxiety attacks Anya's entrances. She's not afraid of flying. In theory, she's not afraid of outer space either. She had to travel a year to get from Earth to Venus, and now she'll have to redo the trip. When you spend a whole year locked in a ship, at some point you have to lose your fear of the dark, the stars, and the occasional huge cargo ship. It's like being a little fish swimming among a bunch of blue whales... She's read ad nauseam the explanations and comparisons about how it's more likely to have an accident driving on a highway than flying in outer space, but, now aware of the unexpected difficulty, she almost believes that everything that could go wrong, will go wrong. “Pony Express should cancel the trip, or send another ship.”

“They can’t do either.” Curly steps away from the door, running his fingers through his wavy blond hair. “Sending another ship would be the same as canceling the trip. This has to be on Earth within a year, and it would take a whole year for a new ship to get to this port. They’d have to remove all the cargo and risk a lawsuit. Don’t expect it. They might be able to afford the costs of a lawsuit, but it would be the final bullet.”

“I’d heard Pony Express was on the rocks, but not that much.” Anya forces herself to smile a little, as if she actually found the situation amusing. Not at all. The idea that she’d put her faith in a job that might be terrible and last less than she expected gets on her nerves in five seconds. She needs to keep that job and the money coming in for a couple of years at least. She has no savings, she’s owed her share of the rent to her friends for a few months, and she hasn’t been able to get into medical school yet. But Curly, oblivious to all his inner torment, smiles and regains his teleshopping voice in five seconds.

“Don’t worry. It’s true that they’re going through a difficult period, however, it’s not an ultimatum or anything like that. But they need these long trips, and canceling at the last minute is not something they can afford. Of course, they’re not in such a bad way that they would say that this will be their last trip as a company or something like that. Don’t worry.”

Anya just nodded, not sure whether to believe him or not. But Curly seems convinced by his own words, as if someone else had told them to him.

“Now, the most important part of all… for you.”

Of course, the medical room.

It’s a good size. A desk with two chairs, a couple of cabinets with shelves, small doors and plenty of space to hold all the medical supplies. Baskets for biological waste. A stretcher. A sink. And, next to the stretcher, one of those huge screens, turned off just like the screen in the main lobby.

“So? What do you think?” Curly stands near the door, hands on hips and a somewhat clumsy bright smile. Again, as if he were trying to sell her something. Safety, perhaps?

“It's a good medical room. I was afraid it would be smaller...although what worries me are the medical supplies, not the work” she brings a hand to her face, a gesture she has unconsciously sketched for as long as she can remember “I've read the list of medications and other tools on board, and it's somewhat... scarce. Also, knowing that there are only four capsules...”

“I should have complained more when them notified me of the fifth passenger” Curly blurts that out. Anya understands that he's talking to himself, not to her. He clicks his tongue and shakes his head once, before smiling again. But that smile, unlike the previous one, shines a little less “don't worry. The Tulpar is old, it's true, but she's an old lady who refuses to throw in the towel. We'll be fine. She's passed the last safety check, so everything should go smoothly. Don't worry. Did you know that it's more likely to have an accident on the road than in space?”

“I didn't know that” she lies, almost wanting to give him the possibility of feeling that he's managing to calm her down. Isn't that what a Captain is supposed to do, at the end of the day? Keep the morale of his crew up. Anya doesn't feel that her morale is at rock bottom, but she does feel much less encouraged than when she woke up that morning... along with the alarm clock music, of course.

“Everything will be fine. Both in the machinery and in the group. I don't know the intern, but the chief engineer, Swansea, is a veteran of Pony Express. He's a bit unfriendly and a bit rough, perhaps, but he's not an unpleasant guy. You know... he's the type to mind his own business and not meddle in other people's. He'll be fine. Jim... my co-captain, I mean, is a lifelong friend of mine. We've known each other since elementary school. I'd say he's even more withdrawn than Swansea, but... still, everything will be fine. As long as you don't mind losing at board games, of course. He's quite competitive at that nonsense. I've already given up trying to beat him at Ludo. If anything were to happen to me... which nothing will happen to anyone, I assure you... he'd be in charge, and you don't have to worry. I have complete confidence in his abilities.”

Anya just nods, knowing that there's no point in passing judgement on people she doesn't know anyway. She doesn't really care about Ludo or any other board game, but as she follows Curly's steps towards the exit, she remembers the bitter nerve she felt when she found out she would be the only woman on board a ship full of men.
"There are only four of them," she urged herself at that moment, "and nothing bad has to happen. Why would anything bad happen? Yes, there is always a risk, but I may also be worrying too much. Nothing bad is going to happen. I won't lose this job. No one will hurt me. Nothing bad will happen to the ship. I'm sure I'll even forget that a capsule is missing."

“The Tulpar is very large and somewhat labyrinthine, but as the days go by, you'll surely become capable of navigating it with your eyes closed and in the dark.”

“There's something that worries me...” Anya stands near the exit door, and Curly imitates her. The black-haired woman glances at the interior of the ship and then looks back at him, drawing a line with her lips “this place feels... apprehensive.”

“In what sense?”

«Like a beast in hibernation. An old, tired, angry beast that doesn't want to be woken up. That must not be awakened.»

“...it has no windows. It's like being on board a submarine...or worse, because shallow submarines have windows. This ship doesn't.”

“You know, I honestly prefer it that way. I've made long voyages on ships with windows all around, and one gets sick of seeing the stars. If you don't have contact with the outside of the vacuum of space, it's easier to pretend you're somewhere else, doing something else.”

“I guess...pretending must be easier for you anyway. You've been doing this for years, Captain.”

Curly nods once.

“Don't beat yourself up too much, though. Look on the bright side. At least you won't be the only technically newbie on board, knowing that the intern will be there. I know you made that short trip, but...it was nothing compared to how long it will take us to get to Earth.”

“I know. Anyway, even if I'm not the only technically newbie on board, I'm still the only woman on board.” Anya smiles a little instinctively, a silent attempt to make light of an issue that is important to her. But when she looks up at Curly, he smiles and brings his eyebrows together. Confused, not angry.

“So what? Don't take credit away from yourself, Anya. You're still as capable as any male medical personnel.”

She holds his gaze. For a few seconds, she doesn't say a single word.
Was he trying to tease her, or...? But no. Honesty is all she sees in Curly's eyes. Sure, he doesn't feel he should see her any differently because she's a female coworker. Good. But that's not the point.

Anya opens her mouth but quickly understands something else: there's no point in trying to explain herself. At least for now.
Curly wouldn't be able to understand her.

“Forget it.”

Anya puts her helmet back on, and locks it. Curly, aware of the thickness of the helmet, speaks a little louder.

“You have to sign the papers before tomorrow morning. You should do that now. Then, you have to be here at seven-thirty in the morning for takeoff. Make sure you have the time set correctly. Is your watch set to Venus time?”

“Yes,” she lies, again. Fixing her watch is the first thing she'll do when she gets home.

“Well, in that case... all the preliminaries are said. I'm looking forward to flying with you, Anya...again, and this time remembering your name.”

The nurse exhales a laugh.

“I hope this isn't the last time we travel through space.”

Curly smiles back.

“With any luck, we'll be seeing each other for a long time to come.”

———

OCTOBER 3, 1969

“...my intention, Mrs. Akida, I just...”

Anya squeezes her eyes shut, tightly. The first thing she feels is the tension on her left side, the classic pain of a bad sleeping position. How could it not be, when she's sleeping against a wall? Her eyelids flutter open carefully, finding herself sitting on a soft brown loveseat. She moves her head carefully and rubs where the muscles in her neck protest, before taking a second look around.

Where is she? In a waiting room. In a waiting room where? At a law firm, of course. And, along the same lines of "of course", recommended by Curly's mother, as well as the hairdresser who cut her hair and the psychologist who sees her every Wednesday morning. What case did those lawyers handle that brought their existence to Emma Curly's attention? She's sure her kind hostess told her about it, but, tired as she is, she forgot.

How does Emma meet so many people? She once wondered, during those windows of time when Nova is sleeping and Anya is too tired to do anything but sink into a sofa next to her and drink some of the tea she offers her, as if she were the walking stereotype of an English woman...which she is.

For years, since her husband was the one working, Emma could enjoy a comfortable life and take care of the household chores and raising Grant, the couple's only son. But she didn't just spend all her time inside the house.
Some nights, she paid a babysitter and went out to important parties. She could label Emma as a socialité (She even showed Anya a photograph in which she was sunbathing next to two women, one of them being a still very young Jackie Kennedy!), a label that she herself cut when she began to think that she spent too much time with stuffy people and not enough time near her large family.

But Emma Curly has a natural magnetism and an innate grace. You could have seen her for the last time fifteen years ago at someone's Christmas dinner, and if she decided to call you on the phone fifteen years later to ask you a favor, it would only seem logical to accept instantly. So she sent them, Curly and Anya, to the office of those two lawyers. The trial was to take place near the end of the year, and they needed to start preparing for it as soon as possible. Anya exhales, noticing the gold letters of the two lawyers' last names fixed to the wood of the door: ELSON & WOODCOCK.

The waiting room is elegant. The walls are made of wood on the lower part, and a hideous maroon wallpaper that, however, is obviously expensive. In addition to its loveseat, there is another for one person, a couple of chairs, a cold water dispenser, a coffee maker, a stack of polyethylene cups, a container with sugar packets and a bookshelf full of books and magazines. In the background is the receptionist's desk, who seems to be arranging her bosses' schedule while Curly stands next to her with two crutches, the phone against his right ear.

“As I was saying, I... no, I don't think so, I just...” despite the distance, Anya guesses Grant's expressions with absolute ease. Anguish. Shame. Guilt. They all revolve around his face. She doesn't know who he's talking to, but it can't be anything good “We're all in the same boat, ma'am, and I... No, I didn't mean that! I want... well, yes. It's okay. In that case, I wish you...”

The person on the other end of the line hangs up abruptly. She doesn't hear it, but Curly removes the phone's handset from his ear and stares at it for a few seconds, so she can only assume that's what just happened. The blond man shakes his head slightly and puts the handset back in the phone holder. He whispers something to the receptionist (thanks, perhaps) and walks back to Anya on his crutches. His steps are a little more sure-footed than the first time she saw him walk with them attached, although he still has a long way to go…

He's been going to therapy for less than a month, and he comes home exhausted three days a week. He has to practice using supports and then walking in shallow pools, trying to cope with the pressure of the water. Despite his exhaustion, he manages to draw energy from somewhere after a short nap to help all three of them.

At night, he wakes up as soon as Nova makes the slightest noise, ready to rock her, bottle-feed her (he insists Anya use the nights to rest), change her diaper if necessary, and put her back to sleep. Some mornings, Anya wakes up surprised that the baby hasn't woken up all night, only to discover that she did cry two or three times, but Curly took over to put her to sleep without her even waking up. She doesn't have time to feel guilty, either. The blond always looks at her, shakes his head, and says "It's the least I can do."

Last night, however, she cried so much that it took twice as much effort. Anya fell asleep while breastfeeding her, sitting against the wall, and when she woke up and saw her asleep in her arms, she almost had an attack of thinking that she could have fallen asleep in a bad position and drowned in her sleep.
Emma has talked to her about sleeping with the baby in the bed, because it would be a thousand times easier to breastfeed her and fall asleep again, but the black-haired is still very scared of the idea of ​​moving and covering her with a sheet or suffocating her in any other way. She may have read overly fatalistic motherhood books, but it almost seems that children between zero and two years old are continually looking for some method to die by drowning or suffocation.

“How are you?” she murmurs, once Curly sits down again to her right. She rubs her right eyelid, before looking down at a magazine on her lap that she doesn't even remember picking up: "MOTHER: The Magazine for Young Parents" with the titles of three of it’s articles on the side ("Give Your Child the Foundation for a Happy Life," "How to Deal with Tantrums," and "Cotton Dresses for Girls Ages Zero to Ten, Knitting Guide.") Does she still qualify as a young mother if she's closer to thirty than eighteen?

«Do you even qualify as a 'mother'?»

“Who were you talking to on the phone?” She speaks a little louder, trying to drown out the volume of a voice that only sounds inside her head.

Curly sighs as he sits down, as if the distance between the couch and the receptionist's desk is dozens of miles instead of a few feet. And then he lets out a second sigh; he adjusts his crutches to his right and rests his arms on his thighs. He doesn't look at her. It's a gesture he does too often.

“...with Daisuke's mother.”

“Gosh...” "How did you get his number?" She thinks, but she's sure it's the least important question to ask at a time like this “Why?”

“I was going to tell her...I don't know, but I thought it would be a good idea if we were all represented by the same lawyers. It would be easier to carry out an attack on the company...in my opinion, at least. I suggested it, but she got angry. Anyway, as soon as I told her my name, I wasn't able to say more than two or three words without her interrupting me...” Curly is silent for a few seconds, before nodding carefully “...it's only fair.”

“Curly, the guy who ordered Daisuke to get into some faulty ventilation ducts is currently in a cell in Denver.”

“I know, but... Who allowed that guy to get that far in the first place, Anya?”

The woman doesn't answer. She just looks away, and Curly clicks his tongue.

“Anyway. In short, she told me that she didn't need my charity, that she and her husband have enough money to hire their own lawyer. And... she told me more things, which are not relevant right now.” Anya was about to say something too, but it must have been on her face, since Curly looked her in the eyes and shook his head. “Don't waste energy, Anya. It's something I had expected. Even though I was on a stretcher while everything else was happening around me...I was the man in charge around the bomb, and I didn't know how to deactivate it. My mother told me that, when she came to visit me in the hospital. She told me they were going to blame me. It's a blame I'm willing to bear, if it means the legal blame will fall on him” the blond gives her a sideways glance, before a sad smile stretches across his lips “hey, if it's any consolation, I called Swansea's wife first, and it was even worse.”

“You called her too?” Anya blinks, looking around for the third time “How long was I asleep?”

“Not long, not long. About fifteen minutes. I didn't expect you to be so sleepy... it's true that we had to get up early, of course...”

“Nova cried a lot last night. I'll catch up on sleep by taking a nap after lunchtime... if she doesn't wake up again” Anya hugs herself, rubbing her arms “I hope she's not giving your mother too much trouble. I can't wait for this stage of crying over everything and nothing to pass.”

“Don't get too upset. Mom has a golden voice to calm a crying baby, and the two of them understand each other very well.”

«Like a grandmother and a granddaughter.»

“I suppose you're right...” but all she achieves with that thought is to fall victim to an impulse to run away. She represses it, of course, but she doesn't want to stay silent again either “I imagine that the conversation with the wife... well, the widow of Swansea, must not have been too long.”

“Not at all. But, again, I don't blame her. I don't want them to feel that I'm offering my help out of pity or charity, it's just... it's something I know I have to do. I have to make up for my failures somehow, even if it's with something as superficial as money to pay a lawyer. I understand that Daisuke's parents have plenty, but in Swansea's case he was the head of his family, the only one working...and I assume his daughters have their jobs too, but his wife is now a widow and Swansea hasn't reached retirement age. The compensation would be a godsend for her and it would be easier to get it if all the affected parties joined together.”

“Almost all the affected parties,” Anya murmurs, and Curly nods carefully.

Knowing that it is true, under the judicial lens, that Jimmy is also a victim of Pony Express and that he is also entitled to compensation, does not diminish the disgust that it gives her to think about it. Anyway, no matter how much money he makes, what good will it do him, if he is locked up in prison? And even if he is not locked up for life...the sum will not be the same as it was when he entered prison. A lot of money will have disappeared, surely in bank commissions…unless the bank decides to freeze his account the moment he enters jail and until he gets out.

«If he ever gets out. If life behind bars doesn’t take care of him first.»

“…they’re all hurt, Curly. One family lost their father and husband, another their son. They’re devastated, and there’s no choice but to bow our heads and accept whatever decision they make.”

“I know! I know, I would never dream of being offended and complaining to them, but I feel painfully helpless. I want to help, and I can’t help. I want to help, and I don’t know how to do it. Although…maybe that’s what I deserve.”

Anya sniffles. She puts the maternity magazine aside, then turns to him again.

“You know, despite how little sleep I had, I had a dream…well, technically, a memory.”

“A memory? About what?”

Anya doesn’t have time to respond before the door in front of them opens.

She raises her face.

Standing in the doorway is an outrageously tall woman. Six feet, for sure. Anya looks down and discovers that she isn't wearing heels. She's wearing smart navy blue dress pants and a white blouse. She's pale as a milk cup, with red hair floating around her face in outrageous waves like a storm cloud, and she bears a killer resemblance to Nicole Kidman. The lawyer's gaze falls first on Anya, then on Curly, and finally reaches out a hand to Anya.

It takes the black-haired a second to realize that she's offering a greeting. She jumps to her feet and shakes her hand, surprised by the woman's verve. From what Emma told her, she must be closer to sixty than forty, but she has the energy of a teenager.

“Victoria Elson. Nice to meet you, Miss Musume” the two wait for Curly to sit up, helped by his crutches, and once ready, Victoria extends her hand to him as well “nice to meet you too, Mr. Curly. I've seen you on television.”

“I imagine so” he murmurs. Anya puts a hand on his back for extra security support when he drops his right crutch to shake the lawyer's hand. She smirks and steps aside.

“Please come in and have a seat.”

If the waiting room was elegant, the office is even more so. There's a huge window facing the street, as well as thick, shiny wooden shelves filled with thick law and philosophy books. Thick metal cabinets, labeled "PENDING" and two doors. One with a sign that says "ARCHIVE" and another that, perhaps, leads to a small restroom. There is a fax machine, a copier, and a computer on a separate desk.

On the wall by the front door to the office, Anya sees a multitude of photographs. Of Victoria pregnant, very young. She couldn't be more than twenty. Another of Victoria and her husband with a red-haired little girl. The same red-haired little girl at, what appears to be, an opera performance. Victoria and her husband with two dogs. Victoria pregnant again, now looking to be in her forties, and a more recent photograph of the two of them, their red-haired daughter, now in her late twenties, perhaps thirty, and a little girl sitting on the man's lap, her hair so blond it was almost platinum.

"The man" is sitting on the other side of the desk, checking something. Victoria gives him a strong slap on the back, between the shoulder blades, and he raises his head and stands up quickly, approaching to greet them. His hair is impeccable and long, completely white now, and he wears clothes that are just as elegant as his wife's.
He is shorter than her. About the same height as Anya, if you judge by eye. It may be a somewhat silly thought, but the fact that this man has decided to marry without problems and start a family with a woman much taller and more imposing than him, managed to make him, right off the bat, enter the former nurse's perception with a right foot.

“Manfred Woodcock, Miss. Sir. Delighted” he shakes each one's hand, before going around the desk again “please take a seat... Do you need help, Mr. Curly?”

“No, no... I'll take care of it myself.”

It takes him a while, but he does manage to do it himself, moving his chair with the end of one of his crutches until he collapses with a groan. Victoria sits on the other side of the desk, next to her husband. Anya isn't quite sure how they should start the conversation, but she doesn't have to worry too much about it.

“It's a good thing my husband and I have been keeping tabs on the Pony Express fiasco since you landed in Colorado in August,” the redhead begins, slamming her palm on the table, pumped up with such vigor that Anya and Curly jump in place. But she smiles defiantly. “You two had no way of knowing about it in outer space, but when Pony Express announced it was closing and terminated all but the highest-ranking employees, it was a mess of lawsuits that couldn't be processed. I know this sounds terrible, but if it hadn't been for the accident, you might have come to find out that there's nothing you can get out of the company but the severance pay. I wish I could have gotten my hands on one of the termination letters... most of the employees tore them up in fits of rage. I can't blame them, of course, but...”

“I have the letter.”

Manfred raises his eyebrows and Victoria stifles an exclamation before smiling. Anya reaches into her jeans pocket and takes the paper folded in four parts, handing it to the lawyer. It's a little dirty, but it reads perfectly.

“...this is pathetic. Manny, read this” she hands it to her husband, before turning to Anya “Where did you get it, miss?”

“The...the day we arrived on Earth, after having managed to make contact with ground control. I was...locked in the cockpit with a gun and, before leaving...I took the paper. I don't know. It was a hunch. I kept it close the rest of the days.”

“It's not a cornerstone, but it will surely help us” Manfred nods carefully, putting the dismissal letter inside a folder “you see... Pony Express has been hermetic since you returned. Only one of their lawyers has dared to give a television interview, and he hasn't said anything relevant. Mr. Curly, you have been working for Pony for years. You know how it worked. They didn't have the most expensive ships, but they had been in the market for years and their cargo routes were the cheapest compared to the competition, despite the... risks. They made a powerful name for themselves. Criticized, but powerful at the end of the day.”

“As a citizen, you have the right to information, especially if you're a lawyer. And we, well...we have a hard time settling for "I'm sorry but I can't give you that information, it's confidential." Ha! You don't know how much the most loyal employee crows once you get to the right price. That's how I've been able to extract information from the guts of many people, and with Pony Express it won't be any different. The ship is sinking, and all its employees are desperate for a final slice before jumping into the lifeboat, even if it means stabbing their long-time coworker in the back. The fantastic capitalist world we live in, of course. An eternal "Every man for himself!" And you, of course, are the ones who deserve to be saved the most. The affected workers. If we manage to pull out the bosses' teeth with compensation, this will set a precedent. That's why it's been taken to the Supreme Court. It could make a difference, from now on, with space worker contracts, their rights, and the risks a company is willing to take. Because, if I may be so malicious, I had access to a Pony Express contract, and when I finished reading it, I didn't know if I had just read a work contract from the year sixty-nine or a contract from the industrial revolution. And in the industrial revolution there were no contracts, gentlemen, children worked in the mines!”

“I needed the job, Mrs. Elson” Anya spits out, almost chewing the words

Victoria turns her gaze towards her. To her right, Curly seems ready to say something in her favor, but Anya denies it. The lawyer looks at her husband, and when she turns her face towards Anya, her gaze has softened considerably.

“I'm sorry, Miss Musume. I didn't mean to offend your intelligence with my words, not at all. All offenses are directed exclusively towards Pony Express. This is what they do. They take advantage of people who need a job urgently, and who can't afford to read the fine print in a contract. You are a victim of the indifference of men with more money than they could spend in ten lifetimes. They hire college students or people who are barely qualified. If you go to Pony Express with a Master's degree, you'll get nothing. Overqualified, they'll say. Do you know what it means to a company when an applicant is overqualified? They surely know they deserve more than minimum wage. They can't lie to your face. Pony Express has not hired qualified people for years, from what I could find out, and I honestly think there's a chance that underqualified personnel were in charge of checking the condition of the Tulpar. Direct negligence on the part of the superiors, of course. They are more than aware that they hire cheap, poorly trained labor” her bird eyes then turn to Curly and he winces. Anya notices that Woodcock hasn't said a word, but he seems perfectly comfortable letting his wife take the reins of the conversation. “Mr. Curly, are you a graduate?”

“Y-Yes, Mrs. Elson. I did six years of aerospace engineering and then the year of training as an astronaut pilot.”

“And all in exactly six years? You weren't just a youngster hungry for the world, but also a little genius. How wonderful. Innocent, of course. It must have been easy for them to convince you. Right now you could be doing extremely interesting things, but life is nothing more than the consequences of decisions we make every day.”

Victoria puts her hands on the table again, with equal impetus. At that moment, her husband speaks and places something in the center of the desk: a tape recorder.

“Now, both of you, I need you to concentrate. We need to recap the events. If you have any memories of any event that seemed strange, even if they happened a whole year before the Tulpar took off from Venus, please say so. If you can mention dates, or estimates, even better. And something even more important...” Manfred looks at them with his gaze, and neither of them is able to tolerate it “we need you both to tell the truth. Even if you did something that could be detrimental to the trial, we need you to tell everything, up to the moment you were able to land safely in Denver, okay? Which of you wants to start?”

Anya glances at Curly and, after clearing his throat, he begins to speak.

He tells them about some previous trips with Pony Express, which had anomalies but nothing that set off too many alarm bells at the time. Then, he talks about the trip up to the day they received the dismissal letter and the bitter event during his birthday party. She glances at Anya and, after a nod from the brunette, mentions what happened next, the night of the abuse. Grant uses brief words, perhaps in an attempt not to put more pressure on Anya or unconsciously lead her to relive the events.

The woman's gaze falls to the tips of her toes. Beyond the panic attacks and nightmares in the hospital, she has not suffered from regressions. Not suffering has led her to be eaten up with guilt, just like the morning Nova was born and she decided she wanted to keep her. That absence leads her to ask herself, against her better judgment, if everything has really been as terrible as she convinced herself it was.

«Yes, it was. It was. It was. He did it. He did it. He did it.»

The psychologist has told her that the brain is guided by a very complicated recovery path, even more so than the rest of the body after suffering an accident. You can go through a good season, or a normal one, and suddenly be in pain so twisted and rotten you wonder if you ever healed in the first place.
And then comes a continuous season of peace, punctuated by two days of nightmares in a row. An anxiety attack. Five years of no problems. An entire year so awful you wish you could die. In the words of the therapist, there is nothing set in stone about recovery and PTSD. Nothing but the malleability of its aftermath because of how unique each brain is.

"I can't fix you, Anya, like a cast might fix a broken bone. That's not what you came here to do...and deep down, you know it. But you can get the tools you need to know how to act the next time you feel this way." She told Anya that during one of her last sessions, as Anya cried her eyes out. She's tired of crying. She's sick of the uncomfortable swollen feeling that remains on her eyelids after the crying has passed. The worst part, though, was crying at night and waking up with a swollen face like a blowfish, trying to get the swelling down with cold water and some fresh air.
And, as if that wasn't enough, she knows that it's bad for both her health and Nova's to cry while nursing her...and yet, she can't help it.

«If she develops a disease, it'll be your fault. If she grows up to have some chronic ailment for the rest of her life, it'll be your fault. If she resents you as an adult, it'll be your fault. How could she not, when every time she looks into your eyes, they're full of tears? You don't want her to grow up to be like him but you're not trying too hard to stop it either, don't you think?»

“...ya? Anya?”

That unexpected pressure of a hand on her right shoulder draws a gasp from her. She jumps up in her seat, leaning to the left and breathing as if she had just arrived after running and running who knows how many blocks. She has done nothing but sit, though. Sit and think. The aforementioned woman lets her gaze fall on the patient faces of Manfred and Victoria, and then on the blue eye of Curly who, carefully, withdraws his hand back to his own lap.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you.”

“What's wrong? Have you...have you finished telling us what happened?” Curly opens his mouth, but Victoria shakes her head.

“Mr. Grant told us until he was incapacitated on one of the stretchers in the medical room, Miss Anya. For obvious reasons, he can't tell anything about what happened afterward, beyond what was happening near him in his isolation. You have to continue the story.”

“...ah,” Anya clears her throat. She looks at Curly one last time and tries to remember everything.

The months. The lack of food. The cargo area filled with gallons of mouthwash that had been the key to a complete upset, both stomach and mind. The increasingly heated tempers and her eventual confinement in the medical room, to the exit and the attempted murder of Jimmy, before seeking refuge in the cockpit and the battered radio, somehow miraculously, managing to intercept the message sent by the commercial space base in Denver. If she closes her eyes she can remember everything, from the brief spark of static before the voice came out of the radio, to the flickering darkness of the Tulpar when she came out and pointed a gun at Jimmy from behind, forcing him to carefully carry Curly's badly wounded body to the exit. It feels like a lifetime ago, but it was only... What? Three months?

“...and when we got out, there were already some ambulances and police cars waiting for us. Curly and I were in the same hospital for a month...well, Curly was there for a month. I was there for less time. Jimmy was taken to the police station, and there he is. That's all.”

“Do you think we have a chance?” Curly swells his voice with the same excitement a little boy would feel about the arrival of Christmas. Victoria exhales.

“We have more than a chance, Mr. Curly. Miles. Pony Express is a joke, and they've abused not only workers' rights, but human rights. I dare to think that, perhaps, they would have preferred if you never came home to tarnish their image. Too late, of course. In that case they wouldn't have been able to send a rescue team and, under the law, they would have had an excuse. But you two are here, and...”

Victoria glances at her husband, and he quickly understands whatever his wife is trying to convey to him.

“There are two possibilities here, and we will give you the choice. Whatever you choose, we will try to contact the lawyers of the other two families to all outline the same story, but you need to know one thing” Manfred rests his hands on the desk “...option one is to go completely with the true version of what caused the Tulpar crash. In this case, it was a human action. An attempted multiple murder. It could qualify as such... How do we blame Pony Express?, pointing to its poor recruitment system and its lack of interest in the mental health of its employees and the superficial evaluations to which they are subjected. Yes, it is possible that the members of the jury will like the blame...or maybe not. The press is handling the version of an error of the machine itself. That would take the blame off Mr. Zaci, true, but it would put more blame on Pony Express. It's not the first ship of the company to fail... if the Tulpar had failed, that is. What do you prefer to do? Stick to reality, or tell a more... safe version, shall we say? Not that telling the truth will take away all chances of winning, but...”

“When hell freezes over” before Anya can answer, Curly leans forward in his chair, barely “Jimmy was responsible for the Tulpar crashing, and he's not a lunatic. I mean... yes, he was mentally ill, but he's not the kind of person who can't separate right from wrong. He was going to kill us all and he didn't waver for a moment. He needs every possible charge brought against him.”

“And so it will be” Victoria nods decisively, crossing her arms “it will be a complicated case, but if we attack ferociously during the session, things will turn out well. I got my degree almost forty years ago and I haven't lost a single case.”

“And what about Jimmy's lawyer? What if he's as good as you guys?” Anya murmurs, but Curly beside her lets out a laugh that, however, sounds more like a moan.

“He couldn't afford such an expensive lawyer. He had almost nothing when we took off from Earth two years ago” he says all this in such a low volume that Anya barely understands half a word of what he says. Victoria, however, sighs.

“I called the police station after talking with Emma. I'm afraid he's earned the right to a rather infamous guy, a lawyer who really enjoys being in front of the cameras decided to contact him personally to take the case. Given the immense exposure he's going to receive, he'll surely charge him a lot less and, like a good Samaritan, he'll wait for him to receive his share of the compensation. He doesn't care if he defends the innocent or the guilty... but he's very good and has a fantastic gift of the gab. He could make you doubt your own name” Victoria's gaze fixes on Anya intensely at that moment, as if she were trying to read her thoughts. The ex-nurse barely holds it “you have to know that, if we point to Jimmy as the guilty one that he is, his trial would take place the next day, after Pony’s. And the trials held in the Supreme Court, in addition to setting precedents, are final. If Pony Express, Mr. James, or both parties are found innocent, no matter how hard we try...we're not going to get anywhere. And I hate to be blunt, Ms. Anya, but you of all people need to prepare yourself. That lawyer is a snake, and I'm convinced he's going to poke and prod you until he tries to break you completely. He's not just going to try to convince the jurors that Jimmy didn't do anything...he's going to try to convince you that you didn't experience what you did. He's going to ask you insidious questions. He's going to try to get you to mix up facts, to get confused. He's going to say hurtful things that dance on the edge of witness harassment, and he's going to demand evidence that he knows you won't be able to bring to the jurors.”

“Evidence? You want “evidence?””Anya chews on the words, pointing behind her with her thumb, “because Evidence must be sleeping right now, unless he needs a diaper change.”

“I don't think it's a good idea to push Anya any further, Vi-Victoria” Curly drags his tongue a little, and the black-haired woman closes her eyes “the day of the trial...”

“Curly” Anya turns her head slightly towards him, silencing him only with her voice “I can take care of this, okay? I'm not going to run away as soon as they ask me the first question.”

“No...that's not what I wanted to say! I was just trying...”

“Don't try anything.”

There is silence for a few seconds. Curly holds her gaze carefully, but Anya sees the reflection of guilt in the sky-blue color of his irises. Across from them, Victoria and Manfred exchange a glance before the latter clears his throat. He reaches out and presses the "PAUSE" button on the recorder.

“Very well, we will go with the absolute truth. First to sink the company, and then to try to lock up a second criminal. Loading Mr. James with the blame for everything he has done will not take the weight off Pony Express' shoulders. It will add to it, rather.”

“They had a potential criminal working for them” continues Victoria, leaning back in her chair “and they were not concerned enough. Sure, a potential criminal does not come out of nowhere, but those details are no longer Pony Express's responsibility. They should be responsible for the safety of their employees...and their indifference and negligence will cost them dearly. It doesn't matter that Mr. James has a clean criminal record.”

“The escape will leave a mark on his record, of course. I have no idea what he was thinking...” Anya blinks. It takes a second longer than expected for Manfred's words to settle inside her brain, but when they do, she suddenly sits up very straight, and feels all the oxygen stored inside her lungs leave her as she retorts.

“What escape are you talking about?”

“Well, Mr. Zaci's escape. He escaped from his cell on the morning of August twentieth and made it to his old house. They found him the next morning. It's all in the report.” Victoria places an index finger with a scarlet-painted nail on a stack of papers, as if Anya had access to them.

All she has access to right now is an uncomfortable tremor. Her blood freezes in her veins and her back fills with tiny beads of cold sweat. Trembling, she turns her head very slowly until her brown eyes lock on Curly who, like a little boy who knows he broke something, trembles back but doesn't look at her, his eye fixed on nothingness itself.

“Curly? You knew about that?”

“I'll...I'll tell you in the car, okay? It's...I...if it makes you feel better, I also found out what happened much later...obviously. We...we were both in the hospital, Anya...”

“I think that's all for now” Victoria stands up while Anya shakes her head slowly “we'll see each other several times before the trial, of course. We'll definitely have to do some rehearsals...so come with a cool head, okay? A trial is held in pursuit of the truth, of course, but everyone needs a certain dose of theatrics.”

“Some lawyers would call it twisting the facts” Manfred adds, standing up as well “but we don't tell anything but the truth. It's just that sometimes some jurors need the truth to be a little poetic to understand it.”

“Shall I walk you out?” Anya knows there's no point in refusing, so she nods. Curly stands up slowly, holding on to his crutches a little more loosely. The two of them walk to the office door. The brunette goes out into the waiting room, but Grant stays still at the door. He glances at her and then looks inside the office, towards the two lawyers.

“Excuse me...before we go, can I tell you something?”

“Sure,” the redhead blinks. Anya makes a move to follow him back into the room, but Curly puts a hand out to her to signal her to stay still.

“Will you wait for me in the car, Anya?”

“Are you going to keep more things from me?”

She would have tried to modify her tone of voice, but she can't help it. Her lower lip trembles.

Curly looks back at her, and although she reads guilt in his eye, she doesn't see a single drop of inflection. He told her to leave, and he's not going to budge.

“Fine” she spits, before turning around and storming out of the law firm.

It's cloudy outside, and the cold autumn air has completely settled in. She rushes to Curly's car in which she, for obvious reasons, is the designated driver. She turns off the lock and gets behind the wheel, sinking into the seat.

Outside, two teenage girls leave a record store and head down the avenue, laughing out loud. On the right, a car drives a little over the the speed limit. A little boy is perched on his father's shoulders, the two of them leaving a barbershop. A shop assistant puts pumpkin and spider stickers on the window, with Halloween just around the corner. The world goes on. Anya, locked up first in a hospital and then in a house, has come to convince herself that the whole world stopped around her tragedy.

A huge display of egocentrism, of course. The world doesn't stop for anyone.

«The psychologist is right: I have to go out more. But where would I go? My friends are far away and, although they said they would come to see me for Christmas, I have no one else. Maybe I can make new friends at college…if I get the scholarship…but that’s a whole year away. And if I’m going to leave, there’s no point in making friends here, is there? Although, to better endure the months, it would be good for me…but where would I go? Besides, with the trial around the corner, they might recognize my face and…»

Nothing disgusts her more than the idea that, when a person looks at her, they will only be able to recognize her tragedy.

She is more than a fucking tragedy.

«I’m alive. I was brave. I’m brave. I did what I had to do to ensure my survival. I was in a dangerous and compromised position. I can’t blame myself because none of what happened was my fault. I will get the tools to get through it. I’ve made a decision. A decision that is mine.»

The psychologist’s words come back to her in waves, and she remembers a small notebook she bought that still rests, blank, inside one of the drawers of her nightstand. "Write down every good moment, no matter how small," she said, "or your thoughts. It's a simple exercise to help you organize your mind." She hasn't written anything yet. She dreads the prospect of opening it and having her mind empty of thoughts.

“I survived childbirth, and I don't have postpartum psychosis... despite having such a high chance of suffering from it” she murmurs, and her gaze falls on the glove compartment. It's true. It's probably one of the many reasons why Emma wanted her around: the idea that Anya would have an outburst and hurt the baby or herself.

Many years ago, she remembers having read a particularly high-profile case, where a woman had killed her six or seven-month-old baby, claiming that it had the face of the man who had abused her. A cruel act, but did anyone care about her then? Did she have anyone by her side after the birth? Did someone hold her hand, the day she gave birth, or did the whole society completely ignore her until it was time to punish her?

She mutters under her breath, rubbing her forehead with the palm of her hand and closing her eyes tightly. It gets bitter, of course it gets bitter. Sometimes she feels like her brain is on the verge of exploding when Nova cries, and she's terrified of the idea of ​​her face taking on the features of...of him. But Anya thinks her arms would fall off, she's sure the flesh would fall off her bones, if she even realized she was about to hurt her daughter.

Her daughter.

The more time passes, she supposes, the less likely she is to hurt her. If Nova turns one, and then two, and then seven, and Anya has never had the urge to hurt her because of some whisper in her brain, that would be cause for celebration. She wouldn't want to hurt her for other reasons, either. She doesn't want to be like parents who raise their children by hitting them. Her mother never hit her, not that Anya gave her any reason to...but, knowing how their relationship ended, she almost wishes she'd slapped her rather than tell her the things she said.

Before she left the hospital with Emma months ago, she left her phone number in case her mother wanted to call the hospital and ask about her. It's been two months, no news. She doesn't think she'll ever hear from her.

«I could join a book club. Maybe... that might be a good place to start. Introduce myself under another name... no, that's silly. Under my name and hope they're decent people and treat me like they haven't seen my face on TV. Or go to the movies... a film club? I don't know that much about movies. What would I say? "Oh, sure, I love Agnès Varda. Who else? Well..."»

The passenger door swings open, and the black-haired jumps in place, reaching for her own door lock. But it's only Curly. He smiles a little, embarrassed, and sits down beside her carefully, putting his crutches on the back seat and putting on his seat belt.

“I'm sorry, did I scare you?”

“Just a little, don't worry” Anya shakes her head. Curly must be waiting for her to start, and that's what she does. She turns the key in the ignition and starts the engine, pulling out of the small side parking lot and heading in the direction of the Curly house. There is silence for only a few seconds “...now, are you going to tell me what that whole running away thing was about?”

“Mom told me a few days ago...she didn't want to tell you anything so she wouldn't upset you more, it's just that...”

“Why do you always do that?” Anya snaps, barely raising her shoulders and eyebrows “you shield me from things when I've never asked you to, it's unbearable.”

“I-I know, but...”

“No! You don't know, Grant! I don't know why you decided to burden me with...with vulnerabilities. I'm sick of it. I'm not fifteen years old. I can deal with all this because it's my problem too, why don't you understand?”

“I just think I should be able to spare you from having a bad time as much as possible!” he exclaims, turning up the volume again. Anya doesn't remember when was the last time he...

«Because, at the end of the day, I'm your damn captain!»

...yes, she does remember.

“I don't need you to spare me anything. This isn't a competition of which of us suffered more aboard the Tulpar, but we both bear the consequences and I want justice as much as you do. I'm willing to face this just like I faced everything while you were in the med room.”

“I was in the med room because I couldn't move, Anya! They amputated my legs and arms! I couldn't even talk!”

“And I'm not calling you out for that, you idiot! I just want you to take me seriously.”

“And you think I'm not taking you seriously?”

“I know the way you look at me. You walk around me like you're stepping on broken glass. You live in fear of...I don't know, saying one wrong word and me breaking down and crying. I don't live on the edge of a nervous breakdown, Grant! I'm capable of absolutely all of this!”

“Capable? The first day I came home you looked like you were about to throw Nova out the window!”

Anya swerves to the right. Curly moves to the side and hits the side of his head on the glass, letting out a groan. Behind her, someone honks the horn violently (and rightly so), before continuing on and shouting an expletive. But Anya cares little or nothing. She pants, as if she had run, and before Curly could say anything, he is hit with blows.

She barely has any strength. She didn't train before she was starving in space, and even less now. The blond barely flinches and, after looking at her for a few seconds, he turns in his seat and grabs her wrists as if they were nothing.

“You want to play hero, Grant!? Is that what you want?” she feels her face warm, her cheeks wet- Her voice breaks with every single screamed word. “Do you think it's easy? Do you think it's easy to be around her all the time? Around her. Taking care of her knowing that she can grow up to be like him...but what do you know about that? No, no...you calm her down a little when she cries and you're already the man of the year, right? My hero. Is that what you want, Grant? Playing dolls? I'm the mommy, you're the daddy, and Nova's the baby, right? And I can barely handle it. I can barely handle the judgment. I can barely handle the truth. Isn't that how you see it? So I might as well stay locked up at home, just like I was locked up in the hospital, just like I locked myself in the medical room. The less you see me, the less you'll remember what happened. The less guilt you'll feel, right? So you might as well not let me do anything at all!”

Anya flails her arms, but Curly doesn't let go of her wrists and... «Even now, as badly injured as he is, he could do whatever he wanted to you.» ...he holds on, until the woman drops her head and shakes in tears. The blond removes his hands from her wrists and she slides to the left, leaning on the steering wheel and covering her face with her arms to cry.

Neither of them says anything. For several minutes, Anya's sobs are the only thing that can be heard. Curly says nothing until Anya, tired, swallows and stays very still, trying to regulate her breathing.

“... I'm sorry, Anya. I'm selfish. I thought I was doing well, but... I see that I'm not” Anya barely opens one eye, looking outside. People walk through the streets, indifferent to what happens inside the car “the reality is that I feel guilty. A lot of guilt. And I accept it. But I don't just want to feel it, I want to...do something about it.”

She doesn't say anything, just breathes carefully.

“I'm sorry, Anya, I didn't mean to take away your pain, I just...I don't know, I just...I want to help you, I want to help everyone. I have to, I...”

“Do you want to help me because you really want to...” Anya's voice comes out in a whisper “...or because you feel like it's what you have to do?”

Curly lets his gaze wander beyond the car's glass. He rubs the right side of his head, where it hit when Anya swerved before parking, and ends up looking back at her, exhaling slowly.

“Does it matter?”

Anya looks at the speedometer.

“I guess not.”

Slowly, she moves away from the wheel, wiping her tears with the sleeve of her sweater. She turns the key in the ignition again, starts the engine, and heads back to the house. If Curly were fit to drive, she's sure he would have suggested it. But he doesn't say anything, and neither does she.

It's not until they stop at a traffic light that Curly speaks again.

“You didn't tell me what you were dreaming about,” Anya wrinkles her nose slightly, “...before, in the waiting room...”

“Ah,” the black-haired woman leans back slightly, leaving her hands on the wheel, “...I dreamed about the day before the Tulpar took off from Venus. You know, the acclimatization session...”

“I remember,” he says. Is he lying? Anya turns to scrutinize his face for a second, but looks honest, “...and I remember that I didn't remember your name. What did I call you?”

“Anna.”

“Hm… almost” Curly tilts his head, barely, and the ghost of a smile flutters on Anya's lips “but, you know what I remember perfectly?, that you understood in a minute everything that could go wrong and I decided to ignore it.”

“You said it yourself at that moment, didn't you? We had no other way out” the traffic light changes from red to green, and Anya accelerates carefully, putting the car in motion again “Pony wasn't going to send another cargo ship to Venus, and they weren't going to cancel the transfer at the last minute either. Sooner or later, we would be out of a job” a few seconds of silence, and only then does she dare “What did you say to Victoria, when we were leaving her office?”

“Something important for the trial, perhaps.”

“What?”

“Anya, I… I'd rather not tell you.”

“Because you don't think I can handle it?”

“…because it was hard for me to say it out loud once, and I don't want to repeat it unless I have to.”

“What are you…?” Anya tilts her face towards him, and what she finds reflected in Grant's face doesn't please her very much. Not for herself, but for…the lack of brightness. The anguish. She's seen that same expression before, many times.

In the mirror.

“…fine, I won't insist. But tell me what happened with the escape.”

“They found him at home…in his childhood home. They don't know what he was thinking. From what little the police officer told my mother, he was delirious or something. Maybe he had a panic attack or something like that.”

«Well deserved. I'd love to see him in a straitjacket locked in a padded room.»

“Do you think that will take away credibility at trial?”

“Probably. I mean…if he really had nothing to lose, he wouldn't have tried to escape.”

“What if his lawyer tries to present some kind of… mental imbalance to get his sentence reduced?”

“Jimmy is not mentally unstable.” Curly carefully lowers the window to his right, before raising his eyebrows and looking at her. “I mean, he's not… he's not a good guy, but he's not mentally ill… in the clinical sense. I don't know what the correct terminology is, not by a long shot. What I'm trying to say is that he's known what's right and what's wrong, all along. In order to argue for a sentence reduction for mental disorder or whatever, he'd have to go through a psychiatric evaluation first, and anyone who spends five minutes with him would know he's lying.”

«Anyone who spends five minutes with him, except you.»

“And is there something else you're keeping from me?” Anya leans forward slightly on the wheel, but doesn't take her eyes off it. Curly looks at her for a second, and she instantly realizes that he is thinking about something else, and about whether or not he should tell her “Curly? Just…”

“Jimmy's birthday is on August twentieth.”

For a fraction of a second (maybe a full second), Anya wonders what's so fascinating about that. She has time to turn to the right, peering into the whiteness of the Curlys' immense house, when realization shoots through her like an arrow in the center of her chest, and she almost crashed the car into one of the streetlights. After all, on August twentieth, at eleven in the morning, she hesitantly held a newborn Nova in her arms, crying her heart out, who didn't receive a name until more than a week later.

“Amazing” she spits “we can save up and just buy one fucking birthday cake.”

“I shouldn't have told you…”

“Forget it. I'd rather it was you, here…than anyone else” and with that 'anyone else' she means, of course, Jimmy. Because it's something he would use to try to hurt her, if he even knew that the girl was born the same day as him, or her name, or that she's a girl, or that she decided to keep her, or that she was even born alive “…this will be terrible for her” Curly opens his mouth, perhaps to say "I know" but, already aware of the kind of reaction he would get from the woman, he doesn't say a word. Anya parks the car in front of the house's garage, turns off the engine, removes the key from the ignition and her fingers shake so much that she drops it with a clink “her father is a... a murderer, a rapist, Grant. She can't know, she can't...I don't want her to live with that. If she grows up to look like him, if she has his face...if she knows, every time she looks in the mirror she'll see him and I don't...I don't want her to hate herself because of me.”

“Because of you? Anya, you didn't want any of that to happen.”

“But I decided to keep her close to me!” she exclaims, slamming her hands on the steering wheel. The horn is activated for a moment. “If I had given her up for adoption, perhaps the couple would have moved to the other side of the world. To the southern tip of the continent. To Europe. To the very center of China. Anywhere, far from here! And she would grow up to be who she wants to be, without having to carry on her shoulders the weight of knowing that she is in this world against her mother's will...oh, Grant.” Anya leans back, sinking into the seat. She slides, until the steering wheel is facing her face, and her lower lip trembles, her eyes bloodshot. If she weren't so tired, she's sure they would turn into tears. More tears. When will she be able to stop crying? “…I don't want Nova to live with guilt. I want her to be happy…even when a couple wants to have a child, it's a selfish act…you bring a person into this world against their will, and you don't know what their life will be like. It can be very good or it can be terrifying, and right off the bat it's your fault. You put them in that situation.”

“You don't qualify for that guilt, Anya, because you didn't want to get pregnant and…I'm sure you did everything in your power, aboard the Tulpar, to try to stop that pregnancy. In this case, I think all the blame falls on him. Not only did he…force you, but her as well, and he didn't think about the consequences for either of you two.”

Anya is silent for a second, before she is overcome with a rage so violent that she could have run to Colorado at that moment.

Nova is only a month and a few days old, and she is already a victim.
From the moment she was conceived she has been a victim.
A victim of her father.

“It's terrible that we had to become close like this.”

She thinks it was Curly who spoke, but no: it was her. She blinks, as if her words surprise her more than they should, before turning her face to the right. Grant holds her gaze, before daring to smile. A tired smile, but honest at the end of the day.

“I just wish everything would go back to normal…” she continues in a small voice “…now, to take care of her, and also… watch television, read horror novels, listen to the rain, go for walks… listen to music and sing as if I were really capable of singing.”

“You can still sing,” Curly places his left hand on her shoulder. She doesn't flinch “besides… the night is always darkest before the dawn.”

That afternoon, after lunch, Anya sat on the edge of her bed, right next to the nightstand. She slid the drawer out, into which the notebook slid to the end and the pen rolled out as well. She took the notebook and opened it, removing the cover and scribbling before feeling too stupid to stop.

October 3, 1969
I think the sun will be up soon.

Chapter Text

12 HOURS BEFORE THE TRIAL

The autumn night is full of stars. Lying on the lounge chair, Anya stretches the sleeves of that thick white sweater, covering her pale fingers with pink knuckles. Her color has returned and she swears that she has been able to gain a little more weight, now that she can eat more often and in larger quantities than in the hospital.

Following strict dietary instructions, so as not to do too much damage to a set of organs that are still recovering after months of hunger, thirst and excessive intake of mouthwash, Emma prepares culinary wonders that would have nothing to envy of dishes in expensive restaurants.

With an excused mix of "These are the doctor's orders” and "You can't afford to go hungry while breastfeeding" along with "You need to gain weight," Grant's mother does not allow a single attempt by Anya to not eat to pass her by. In addition to the four main meals, she always brings her something else throughout the day: chopped fruit in a bowl, along with oatmeal and honey. Or a loaf of bread, still steaming, spread with butter. Or a fruit smoothie. Or a yogurt. A part of Anya almost feared that the blonde would not be happy until she saw her rolling down the stairs.

She looks at her hands like that. Healthy, despite the paleness. Her nails no longer break, and her muscles do not tremble.

Due to the famine, Anya even suffered from lanugo on board the Tulpar. Uncomfortable hairs covered her shoulders and neck, driven by the lack of fat and the need to still keep her body warm. Between the famine and the hormonal disorder, she cannot explain how she was able to hold out for so long.

Her hair grew tangled and fell out in clumps, between hunger and overwhelming stress. Now, the bald patches aren't as noticeable and have grown back. The unwanted hair is gone, and there are few marks left on her body that she was ever pregnant. Few visible marks, of course. But inside, beyond...

«The father's DNA can stay in the mother's body for years.»

Anya squeezes her eyes shut.

Seven years.

And now, just a few hours until the first blow. Then...

«If Pony Express is found innocent, we can't appeal. If Jimmy is found innocent the day after tomorrow, we can't appeal.»

“Are you cold? If you're cold, we can come in... I don't think we should stay much later. Tomorrow is the big day.”

Grant's voice sounds tired, of course. Dragged. Anya carefully opens her eyes and turns her face to the right, where Curly is lying next to her, on a different lounge chair. He is bundled up in a thick dark blue coat, and Nova is sleeping on his chest. He keeps one hand on the baby's back, and the baby sleeps with her tiny knuckles against her lips, as if she is pondering something very important. "She looks like that statue of a thinking man," Anya decides to herself, lacing her fingers together. Sometimes she finds herself studying the baby as if she were a piece of contemporary art. Something to be studied closely, and once you formulate your own interpretation, the creator of the piece will simply tell you, "It means whatever you think it means."

The difference is that she is the creator of that piece, and she hasn't the slightest idea of ​​what it means.

As if aware of her mother's thoughts, Nova babbles in her sleep. She stirs and Curly waits, afraid she's woken up but unable to secure himself in that position without waking her in the process. The black-haired shakes her head carefully and he exhales.

“I'm not cold, I was just... thinking” Curly doesn't even have to ask her the reason behind her thoughts. It's obvious, and Anya is convinced that the blond's brain must also be eating itself away... but he is a greater expert in the fine art of immersing himself in a darkness of his own making without anyone around him noticing. “...she's already two months old.”

“Yes, and I notice how much weight she's gained” he smiles as if he were the one in charge of breastfeeding her, and Anya rolls her eyes for a second. Grant snorts a laugh, and her expression of false indignation doesn't last long. “When do you think she'll be able to talk?”

“Talk? Grant, she's barely two months old. Don't expect anything more than crying and babbling from her... and no laughter until she's four months old, more or less. Babies talk after a year or so, a little later, perhaps... in Nova's case, who knows.”

“Because of the incubator?” The blond's tone of voice has lost much of the curious grace that comes with having a baby's development nearby, and Anya nods carefully.

“She wasn't conceived in the best conditions. She had to choose to feed off her twin fetus, inside a woman eaten away by stress, hunger and thirst. Sandra...” Anya looks further. The Curlys' backyard is huge. There's a pool, now covered, a few trees, and a barbecue area, over a blackened patch of grass where it doesn't grow. She figures something big burned there. Her nose wrinkles, her gaze floating, trying to guess what. Why does she have this angry feeling that she knows, but...? She finally pushes her thoughts away from the matter “she told me that, until Nova grew up, we would have no way of knowing what conditions she might have. If she was born with any, leaving aside her low weight.”

“And what could she have?” now Curly's voice radiates pure anguish, and Anya regrets having brought up the subject... but she is also consumed by the anguish of thinking that Nova might not only suffer from eventually understanding the truth of her conception, but also suffer physically and, by extension, worsen her mental suffering in that way. The blond caresses the shadow of brown hair on her small head, and the thick, light red onesie that Emma bought her. Indifferent to the two adults' concern, she sleeps soundly. She even snores. Do babies snore? “She looks very healthy... although I know nothing about babies. Don't you, Nova? How do you feel, hm?” he sweetens his voice eight hundred decibels, and Anya almost wants to tell him that it was a joke and that, in truth, the baby's health is not in danger in the near or distant future.

The reality is different.

“Well, being stillborn was the biggest risk, and she's already overcome it. Sandra mentioned vascular diseases, attention deficit, depression... schizophrenia, type two diabetes...” each option comes out like poison from her lips, and she ends up closing her mouth. Not only because she notices how dull Grant's only healthy eye is becoming, but because she herself is afraid of crying. If she cries, she will sleep badly, and she needs to sleep as best she can tonight, to rest as much as she needs. He too “look, the...the positive thing is that I have to take her to pediatric appointments on a regular basis...more regular than the rest of the babies, for obvious reasons. If there's something wrong with her, they'll surely be able to catch it in time” she doesn't know if she's trying to reassure herself, Curly, or both, but every word feels like sand rising in her throat. She has to believe her own words, what other choice does she have? They can't allow themselves to be eaten up by guilt for the next two days...not when so much is at stake.

For a few seconds, neither of them says anything. It is Anya, however, who makes the obligatory comment.

“I hope I don’t go crazy once the plane takes off,” she murmurs, and Curly nods slowly, both hands on the baby.

The Supreme Court building is in Washington, D.C., and a regional plane would take off with them and ninety-eight other passengers headed for Dulles International Airport and from there they would go to the huge, elegant building where the trial would be held. Anya assumed they would take a bus from the terminal, or rent a car. But, of course, Curly has family in the nation’s capital. Anya begins to imagine that she could travel to the most remote corner of Alaska and meet some distant cousin of Curly’s or, at least, some acquaintance of her mother.
She finds this impressive because her family was always two parts: her mother and her.

And now it is two parts again: Nova and her.

“Have we developed a fear of f-flying?” he murmurs, and Anya draws a line with her lips. Her brain has probably developed trauma to a multitude of things. Windowless places, giant screens, dehydrated food, the smell of antiseptic, red lights, mouthwash, cartoon horses, and of course, rooms with unlocked doors. Whether they’ll freak out as soon as the plane takes off or not is something they won’t know until they’re in that situation.

“Is it safe for you to fly?” she murmurs, and Curly shrugs.

“In theory. I called the hospital today after lunch, and they don’t think I’ll have any problems. I mean, as soon as I was discharged, flying wasn’t an option. It seems a lot safer now.”

Anya just nods carefully. She suffers a strange ringing in her ears, almost like a biological warning of danger... while Curly turns his head towards her and tries to smile a little, his thin lips forming a grimace.

“Don't worry, Anya. I'm sure everything will be fine.”

«Breathe,» she commands herself, but all she does is carefully sit up from the lounger, turning to look at Curly as if he had grown a third eye in the center of his forehead.

“Don't say you're sure, there's no way you can be sure. Have you ever been involved in a trial?”

“No, but...”

“So, don't try to give me false hope. Everything would be worse then.”

“I'm just... trying to stay optimistic. We don't know if things will turn out well, it's true, but we also don't know if they will turn out terribly wrong... so, given the choice, I'd rather have hope.”

“And wasn't it your overly optimistic attitude that got us into this situation to begin with?”

What's wrong with her? She has no idea. At every little jump inside her brain, she feels the almost unfounded impulse to jump even higher. At every tiny indignation, she screams, and while she might be able to shed some light on the matter, it's not something she feels like doing right now. She doesn't have the energy to do so.

«Curly's just trying to cheer me up,» she knows it's true, but his track record isn't the best in the world when it comes to remembering how many times he's tried to cheer her up.

“I don't think the second option is the best option,” Curly replies in a tone of voice so dry that she can barely hear what he says. And she knows he's right, but a part of her is almost sick of hoping for the best all the time. What good has it done her? She hoped for the best in her life, and now...

«I survived certain death, and that's no small thing. I had every chance of dying aboard that ship. If the commercial space station in Denver hadn't picked up our frequency in time, or if the radio had broken down completely, I'm convinced they would have boarded the ship to find it full of corpses, and good luck trying to put the pieces of the puzzle back together with no survivors and no surveillance cameras to use as a guide. Absolute carnage. But none of that happened, and here I am. Maybe all the pain I lived through...»

No! She's not going to fall for that terrible speech of believing that all the pain was necessary!

She has talked about it with the psychologist, at length, so many times that she begins to fear that the woman will get fed up with her... although it doesn't seem that way. The concept of pain as a price to pay for future happiness has been put on the table several times. Her psychologist, Helen, suggested it to her more as an option than a fact, surely waiting to find out what that idea meant for her patient.

“For some people, especially in their old methods of praising their respective deities, it was a deep-rooted belief that purification could only be obtained through the ecstasy of suffering.” She spoke of deep subjects with the ease of experience, a cup of lemon tea in her left hand. Helen and her entire office smells of citrus, between the tea and her perfume, but Anya likes the aroma quite a bit. It brings humanity to their sessions, none of the usual frivolity that exists in a medical consultation forced to always maintain a clear distance between doctor and patient. “Those who suffered the most saw their souls cleansed and forgiven. The greater the pain, the closer God was. Some people today even compare it to the feeling of an orgasm. The more violent the suffering, the more powerful the release.”

But that would only imply a universal cruelty that Anya is not sure she wants to accept. If only through pain can one know healing, what ethereal hand chooses that? Because the woman is convinced of the existence of thousands of people who live a peaceful and comfortable life without having suffered from things even remotely similar to hers even a single day of their lives. She would put herself in a miserable position, asking herself: Why her? Why did she have to be condemned to suffer until she achieved the blessed spiritual cleansing? What crimes is she paying for?

It's better to believe that it's all just a terrifying fluke. The kind of fluke that happens when a person dies in an accident because they thought they didn't need to wear a seatbelt, or the kind of fluke that leads a person to take a different shortcut one night and be murdered for whatever they were carrying.

It was a whim of probability that Anya made all the decisions in her life that led her to board the Tulpar ship the day it took off from the Earth base on Venus, and what she lives today is nothing more than the consequences of her decisions.

Is it her fault that she suffered what she suffered? No. The wounds on her flesh are not there because she "made bad decisions," the cheapest excuse in the book when it comes to wanting to blame a victim like her in order to protect the invisible honor of a man.
But that she had to suffer was not written in a biography of her life at the hands of some twisted deity. The idea is extremely unbearable to her.

At the end of the day, this is it: she lived through Hell because things went wrong this way. But she won't let the perpetrator get away with it. He won't find any cleansing for his soul.

Disgruntled, tired, she leans toward Curly. She hears the blond gasp, perhaps in surprise (Does he believe her capable of hitting him? After the fight they had in the car over a month ago, after leaving the law firm, she wouldn't have to be outraged by his surprise if that were the case either), but all Anya does is pick Nova up and carry her in her arms. The baby stirs, but instantly recognizes the furious beating of her mother's heart. She continues to sleep in absolute peace. Grant, however, doesn't take his eyes off her, as if a part of him fears that Anya is going to fail and drop her... or drop her on purpose.

She knows it's just her own assumption, a figment of her mind, but she still bristles at the prospect and purses her lips, pushing away from the two lounge chairs.

“I'm going to sleep, and I recommend you do the same. The flight leaves very early tomorrow.”

Inside, Emma seems to have already gone to sleep. She wouldn't go with them, since Nova wouldn't travel: barely three months old, she feels the prospect of locking her in a plane is too cruel. It would be terrible for the baby and all the passengers to suffer cries of pain all the way to the airport in Washington D.C., not to mention that, once there, she wouldn't have anyone she trusted to leave her with. Even if Curly would put his hands in the fire for his family... Anya hasn't had the chance to meet them in person, and she wasn't going to leave her daughter in the care of a complete stranger.
There, in Emma's care, she would be better off than anywhere else in the world.

The whole house is dark, except for the light from the stairs. Anya leaves it on once she goes up to the second floor. From the third floor, the sounds of the television in the master bedroom reach her, muffled. Emma is a stoic woman, but Anya is sure that, inside, she is scared to death. Her son has already survived a disaster, and the former nurse knows that he would improve both physically and mentally with the passing of months and years.
But the trials, however, were a matter of honor. And although Curly does not express it out loud, she knows it: if they lose either trial, Grant will believe that he has failed her, and he will never forgive himself.

«I should go back down and apologize to him. At the end of the day...we only have each other.»

She leans over the crib very carefully, placing Nova inside and making sure there is nothing dangerous within reach. Part of her fears that she will be cold at night, even though she looks most comfortable in her woolen overalls and has a good color. The heating heats the whole house, so there is little point in risking a suffocation scenario by covering the baby in blankets.

Nova stirs only once, and continues sleeping as peacefully as she did on Curly's chest. Anya leans her arms on the sides of the crib, resting her left cheek on her hands and looking at her for a long time.

She does not long to cry, or laugh. But she is not the victim of any uncontrolled desire for violence. She is at peace, and honestly, that is enough for her. It is much more than she could have supposed three months ago, when she held her in her arms, completely lost from her own axis. She does not feel that she has found it yet, but she does not feel as lost as she did at that moment.

The baby still has the lack of defined features that you would expect from a three-month-old baby, but Curly was not wrong at the time: she has her eyes.
A beautiful pair of big, round eyes, expressive like hers, with dark brown, almost black irises. Although she cannot speak, nor laugh, she looks at everything with absolute attention and, although she lacks knowledge about it, she likes to imagine that the baby's dreams are just as vivid, colorful and noisy. Maybe that's why she sleeps so much. If Anya had beautiful, vivid dreams, she wouldn't want to wake up from them so easily either.

“Maybe next year we'll move to the south... near the beach. Would you like that?” whispers the black-haired woman, smiling a little as she looks at her “the warmth of the sun... although the storms worry me. If I manage to get into college and graduate, I'll have a good job. I'll have to work a lot, but you won't be alone, you'll have Curly...and we can always go out on the weekends, to make up for my absence a little. When you grow up and go to college...if you want to go to college...you won't have to go through the same thing I did. I can cover the tuition for the place you want, and you can study whatever you want. I won't tell you what to do...you can be whoever you want to be...there's a chance things will be too hard for you even then, and I don't want you to suffer any more. Oh no. I want you to be as happy as you can be...with what I can give you. It's more than my mother did for me...yes, she raised me and gave me everything but you know...she was always expecting something in return. It's not right. You don't have to give me anything in return...although it would be nice if you listened to me when the time came, okay? Unless something bad happens to my brain in a couple of years, I would never scold you in order to cause you pain. No...I don't know if I'm a mother, Nova. I gave birth to you, that's true. Anyone you ask would say that I am a mother, but...am I? I don't hate you, I don't, but...I'm not sure I love you either. And I've read that that's normal. Helen has told me that it's normal. That many mothers today who love their children so fiercely that they would kill for them, started out resenting them. It's the kind of thing that you don't talk about...I shouldn't feel guilty, then, but I can't help it. The last thing I want to do is cause harm, but for some time now it seems that's the only thing I know how to do...”

She looks back at the stairs and silently considers the possibility of going down to apologize to Grant.
She still hasn't heard his footsteps on the stairs (which, due to the use of crutches and the still present difficulty in moving his muscles, are quite loud), which means that he must still be lying in the backyard, looking at the stars, or in the living room. But she doesn't move from her spot, hesitant or too terrified, just moving away from the crib.

If she wants to accomplish half of the things she has told the baby, she needs a good dose of rest. Standing there feeling guilty would accomplish absolutely nothing.

————

NOVEMBER 27, 1969

THE PRESENT

“Welcome to Washington D.C., Miss Musume.”

Anya retrieves her ID from under the window, proceeding to slide her bag through the security detectors, out into the airport past security and waiting for Curly to show any signs of life. Neither of them had any suitcases, considering that tomorrow night, after the second trial, they will be flying back home. All she needed was a few clean clothes, hygiene products, and a change of shoes, plus nursing pads because damn the nursing period knows how to be annoying.

The pediatrician told her that it was best for the baby’s health to breastfeed until she was two, but Anya will hold out as long as she can, holding on to the added bonus that while she is breastfeeding, she won’t have a period. She doesn’t think she can handle an extra physical ailment right now.

When she handed her ID to the woman on the other side of the customs checkpoint, she is sure that she recognized her. She looks significantly more haggard than in the photo on the card, but it's obvious that they're the same woman. Anya waited for a barrage of questions about her experience in outer space or the trial that was to take place later that day, but the woman acted professionally and didn't comment.

The problem was Curly.

Anya pulls her scarf up a little, covering the tip of her nose. To her left, she's noticed a man and a woman near the line for the toilets who stare at her for a long time before muttering to each other. Typically, people in an airport are too nervous to stop and look at each other's faces, but this couple seems to be waiting for someone else to leave, and they have all the time in the world. So she pulls her woolly hat down a little, too, to cover her forehead, and waits, and waits, and waits.

Does it need to be said that Curly's face doesn't look at all similar to the face on his old ID? He had to apply for a new one, and although his was still within the validity period, both his face and his fingerprints were new. A whole new world. She can only hope that he hasn't had too many problems when...

Laughter floats above her head, and she takes a second look around. A group of young women is walking away from a gift shop, the wheels of their suitcases clattering on the airport floor. They laugh. Are they laughing at her? Have they recognized her? But between the woolly hat and the scarf, no one should be paying too much attention to her face. Besides, why would they laugh? What's so funny about being a survivor?
Her fingers tremble against the wool of her scarf, and she doesn't look away from them until one of the group decides to turn around and Anya, terrified of being caught red-handed, rolls her eyes away. Have they noticed? Maybe they have. Maybe they're turning back now to surround her and ask her why she was staring at them. In a few minutes, they'd all realize that she was one of the faces that have been so much in the spotlight on television for the past few months. And what would they do then? Pound her with insidious and terrible questions until she breaks down and starts crying in the middle of the airport?

Her bag almost falls from her hands when she sees Curly finally leaving the customs area.

The black-haired woman moves diagonally towards the exit, and Curly instantly notices her, quickening his pace in her direction. Anya waits a few seconds...but he keeps going, moving at full speed towards where, according to the signs, the parking lot was.

“Curly...” Anya quickens her pace, hugging the thick strap of her bag. For a man who needs a pair of prosthetics and crutches, he has left customs and walks with an almost enviable brio. She has to snort and run around a bit to keep up with him. “Curly?” Again, nothing. It's like trying to have a conversation with a wall. The last thing she wants to do is shout, cause a commotion and attract the attention of everyone around her...but she needs the blond to stop. So she does the only thing that comes to mind, even though the prospect of faking ailments is quite repugnant to her.

She stifles a scream and remains still, as still as she can. The noise is enough to pin Grant to the spot, almost like an animal trained to react to the sound of a whistle.
She turns her back on him and walks over to a free metal bench, sitting down carefully and hugging herself, her bag on her thighs. Curly approaches her, slowly. She can hear the way he breathes, labored, and the snort of exhaustion as he sits next to her on that bench. He has lashed out at the outside of the customs house more than was logical given his physical condition, and all for what?

“What happened in there?” Anya, with a serene face and without a single ailment, grabs Grant by the arm. He, realizing he has been tricked, makes a move to try to stand up. He can't “you ran out of the customs house as if you had... «As if you had been engulfed in flames» she thinks, but doesn't say it. She doesn't think that's the most accurate comparison.

“Nothing...”

“Oh, please! I know perfectly well that you're lying to me! Don't even try. What happened? Were you held back for questions or something? I don't think you have a suspicious name.”

“I wish it had been that” he shakes his head in denial, closing his only good eye for a second “...they recognized me, and they started talking, and talking, and talking, as if we were lifelong friends, just because... they saw me on television. I assure you that I am way less extroverted than I seem, I swear. I know how to handle myself among people but, for some reason, the rest of the world looks at me and concludes that I have a gift for people. It's not true. I've always been kind, maybe it has worked in my favor more than once... but my old self is another man. Now, I just...wanted to get out of there, escape from that conversation. The customs agent called two more and they started talking about how bizarre it is to have body parts you weren't born with and then each decided how long they could endure living through what we lived through before deciding to shoot themselves.”

“Grant” Anya's eyes widen, but he just smiles. A smile that doesn't hold anything good “good heavens, how can they be so tactless? We're not circus freaks!”

“You're not. I, on the other hand, am Doctor Victor Frankenstein's monster, apparently” he turns his face away when Anya tries to say something else, slowly getting up from that seat, his knuckles turning white from the strength with which he holds on to his crutches. He'll end up developing fantastic biceps. Anya wishes he had the personality that comes with physically fighting with the rest of the idiotic people you come across in life.

«No. If he were that kind of man, you wouldn't even like him to begin with. Who are you trying to fool?»

“Listen” when Anya puts a hand on his shoulder as she stands up alongside him, Curly obeys her, staying very still and turning to look at her “I... I know how you feel, more than you think. Maybe I don't look different on the outside, but on the inside...” the end of that sentence hangs in the air, and Grant is unable to hold her gaze.

Up there, in space, and the first weeks back on Earth, Anya dreamed of getting rid of her own body. Ripping it off piece by piece. Removing any area of ​​her skin that he had touched, even if it meant dying. It was a repulsion that went beyond the presence of the fetus…of Nova. A filth that seeped into her soul. Even if she had suffered a miscarriage during the first weeks of gestation, the mark would still be there. On her skin. The palm of that hand pressed against her mouth, so that she couldn't scream... the scenes of that particular night are blurry. Because she was drugged, of course, and fucking terrified. Memories move in storm clouds that suddenly unleash a furious torrent on an unwary woman who has forgotten her umbrella at home before leaving.

She threw up every time she showered and had to study her naked figure in the hospital mirror, and even today she avoids the reflection in the bathroom of Emma's house, despite bearing almost no trace of her time in the Tulpar.

No visible trace, of course, because inside...

“I know you don't see me as a broken woman. And if you are able to recognize that, you will understand me when I tell you that you are more than your physical appearance. The man I know is still there inside, even if sadness tries to crush him. If others are not able to look beyond that, well, fuck them, you know? One cannot... lament the cruelty of heartless people. They have never encouraged me to become a worse person, only to improve. It's silly...maybe, but it's a philosophy of life I adopted in high school, and it's worked for me...sort of.”

It works until the unpleasant person does something worse than not return your casual "Good morning."

Curly doesn't respond, so she has no choice but to hope he's paying attention. She steps closer to him and gives him a light, but cheerful, punch in the middle of the back.

“Come on. I don't want your eight hundred and fifty-second cousin to have to wait too long for us in the parking lot.”

The comment brings a smile to his face, and Anya scores a mental point.

Outside, perhaps in an imitation of the man and woman's feelings, the sky is heavy with gray clouds. Any more, and it would look like a summer storm in the middle of November. People are hurrying everywhere, and she hears the blare of car horns in the distance, and the even louder rumble of trucks.

Curly points to a gray car. Leaning against the passenger door, Anya watches a woman smoking nervously, judging by the way her wrist is shaking. She's black, tall, and wears her hair in a beautiful afro. Seeing them, Anya fears an apprehensive reaction to Curly's appearance, but the woman lets out a squeal of happiness that can still be heard in the distance, tosses the cigarette away, and stomps on it as she runs over to the two of them and gives Curly a super tight hug.

“Oh, Grant, Grant, Grant, so good to see you! I'm going to kill your mother! The way she wouldn't let us go visit you in the hospital! How cruel! I wanted to go see you at home when you got out, but then I had to be up to my neck with work!”

“Don't worry...” Curly blinks. He was probably expecting a different kind of reaction from his cousin too. But he smiles, returning that hug until the woman pulls away, turning to look at the black-haired woman “Anya, meet my cousin, Patricia.”

“Nice to meet you! I've seen you on television” Patricia reaches out her hands and takes both of Anya's, giving them a good squeeze and smiling from ear to ear. She has an contagious smile, so much so that the former nurse feels a tug at the corners of her lips and soon smiles back “but you look prettier in person. I really like your haircut.”

“Thanks” Anya feels an itch on her cheeks, until Patricia lets go and heads to the car, gesturing for both of them to follow her, and they do.

“You have no idea how much traffic there is because of the trial. Of course, the... supreme judges are coming, or whatever you call them. There's even a small roadblock. Some space workers union leaders are coming. It's quite an event!” Patricia climbs into the car and opens the doors for them both. Anya expects Curly to sit in the passenger seat, but instead he sits in the back, next to her. “Don't you want me to open the trunk for you to leave your stuff?”

“No need, we didn’t bring much.” Anya leaves the bag at her feet and Curly does the same, placing the crutches between them.

“I didn't expect... so many people to come to the trial,” Curly begins and Patricia whistles, turning the key against the ignition and starting the engine.

“Are you kidding? It must be because you were locked up in the hospital for so long, and then at home, but I swear your return was quite an event. For weeks the news on television talked about nothing but the Tulpar and Pony Express and you two... well, you three. Didn't another guy survive?”

“Will it be difficult to get to the Supreme Court?” Curly asked, elegantly changing the subject, and his cousin clicked her tongue.

“Are you kidding? Don't you know who you're talking to? I know this district better than the back of my hand. We'll get to your hotel so fast you two won't even have time to put on the seatbelts.”

She didn't lie.

Maybe it was because of the nerves that, like an invisible but furious beast inside her, Anya barely noticed the passing of time, immersed in a kind of autopilot. Her ears were blocked as when the plane took off hours ago, and she was barely aware of the voices of Grant and Patricia flying over her head.

When they arrived at the place where they would stay for those two days, more of the same. She said goodbye to Patricia, limiting herself to not removing her hand when she took it, following Curly's heavy steps towards the interior of that small hotel. Her own voice sounded alien as she answered the receptionist's questions, and she headed toward the elevator, keys in hand. Curly had the room immediately to the right of hers, so she was alone as she unpacked her few things and went into the bathroom to take a shower.

As she left and returned to her room, it had started to rain.

«It's time.»

The thought falls on her hard, making her tremble and fall, sitting on the edge of that double bed. She has just showered, but all her skin is beaded with sweat and, soon, she begins to sob and slides until she is sitting on the floor, trembling, her right hand clutching the white duvet.

“I can't,” her voice comes out high-pitched, shattered. Tears rain out of her eyes, and she twists her left hand on the white fabric of her starched shirt, because Victoria told them to be well dressed. Shirt, an elegant jacket, dress pants, and low, flat-heeled shoes. She stammers, and wipes her saliva with the duvet, burying her face in the fabric. She is not wearing makeup. She should be. She has bags under her eyes and marks that anguish must have left as a souvenir. She can't. She won't. All the vigor she had been carrying for months, the confidence, the desire for revenge... everything has burst like a bubble inside her brain and her heart.

The prospect of having to stand in front of so many people to relive what she experienced in space, not once, but twice... everything being put into question... and if today, which was a general trial, on all the members of Pony Express, is already unbearable... What would happen tomorrow, when her attack was directed at Jimmy? Having to see his face, hear his voice, listen to him tell a chopped-up version of reality and have all the men on the jury listen and nod because, of course, he is a man just like them. How can he be lying?

“I can't do this...”

It doesn't matter. Let them keep the money. Let it all go to hell. For her it's all the same: she will carry that cross until the last of her days whether they believe her or not. She will remember the horror she lived until she dies, whether they believe her or not. And she won't bear it. She won't be able to sit down and remain composed. She won't be able to answer anyone's questions without stuttering and looking like a complete moron. She'll just ruin everything for everyone else. For Swansea's family, for Daisuke's parents, for Grant...

“Anya?” Suddenly, a soft knock sounds at the door. The black haired is tempted to pretend that there's no one in the room, or that she's fallen asleep. What would Curly do in that case? Would he go to the courts alone? It would be for the best. “Anya, we have to go now. Victoria just called me on the reception phone. Manfred and her are already there.” His tone of voice sounds too animated, and she almost wants to scream. Has he forgotten where they're going, and everything that's about to happen? Anya throws the idea of ​​putting on makeup to hell and stands up, in a storm, heading for the door. She opens it, just to discover Grant with his hand raised, ready to knock on the wooden door again.

“Grant, I-I…” she opens her mouth, determined thanks to an imaginary indignation, but her lower lip trembles too much and, in a fraction of a second, Curly’s eye swells with worry. “I don’t know if I’m capable of doing this.”

“You won’t be there alone, Anya,” Curly tries to raise his tone of spirit, she can tell, but it doesn’t have much effect. “There will be Swansea’s and Daisuke families, there will be me… and so many people affected by Pony Express. We outnumber them by far,” the blond is especially careful not to mention Jimmy, but the absence of his name only makes his presence louder. He’s the only person she can think of right now.

“This isn't about getting money or making a change anymore, it's... I'm sorry, I'm selfish. I am. I know this means a lot not only to us, but to space labor history, and yet... I don't...”

“You don't owe anyone anything, Anya. If there's someone out there who can tell you to put aside your pain for the greater good, I...”

“I know! I know, but I can't help but feel that way. It's... God, what can I say to you, Curly? You lived through something even worse than I did aboard the Tulpar.”

“It's not a competition of who suffered more” he snaps, reciting something she herself told him some time ago. Anya snorts, but can't bring herself to look him in the face “Anya, listen... I know you're scared. It's okay to be scared. Anyone in your shoes would be. But, beyond that, I know you want to get justice. I know, because you told me so yourself some time ago. Now everything seems terrifying because of fear, but I promise you that, once the situation starts, everything will be much... easier to handle. It would be terrible if the Supreme Court rules that Pony Express is innocent, but we know what happened, and the truth is unshakable, no matter how much you try to erase it or cover it up or change it. It will be there and, sooner rather than later, it will blow up in their faces. But now, Anya, we have a chance. Today, to punish those who put us, directly and indirectly, in this situation. And tomorrow, to punish him directly. Come on... come on. If you stay here, you will never find the courage. Come on.”

And, almost as if her legs had decided to become independent of her brain at that moment, she obeyed Curly. She closed the door to her room, put the key in her bag and followed Curly's slow steps, aided by crutches, towards the double doors of the elevator.

With each step she took, her heart beat faster and faster. Maybe it was some sort of defense mechanism that she would tell her psychologist about when she returned "home," but her brain sank back into a bucket of invisible water. A taxi was already waiting for them outside, although they had to get out of the vehicle a block earlier anyway, since the area near the Supreme Court was cordoned off and several journalists were milling around the main entrance.

“How are we going to...?” Anya looked around, trying to guess something above the crowd, clinging to one of Curly's arms, when a familiar figure materialized in the corner of her eye.

Victoria.

She was at the top of the stairs, her voluminous red hair, now straightened, falling like a waterfall of blood to the middle of her back. She had seen them, and was pointing at them with her finger, saying something, furious, to a police officer. The officer in question nodded hastily, head down, as if Victoria were his absolute superior, before putting a hand on the radio around his neck and saying something.

“Did he call for backup?” Curly murmurs nearby, until someone calls out their names. A much taller and more muscular officer pushes the crowd aside to open a passageway for them to approach the entrance. The good news is that they could finally move towards the entrance.

The bad news is that now they had the full attention of the press on them.

The policeman shouts at the journalists to get back, but these men and women barely pay attention to his words. Without a shred of respect for personal space, Anya and Curly are showered with camera flashes and shouted questions that become unintelligible, drowned out by the more strident voice of another journalist, and so on.

The ex-nurse is unable to understand anything other than noise, the noise of incessant shouting that ends in the typical tone of a question. She walks following the steps of the policeman and without letting go of Curly, who advances as fast as the crutches allow him, until they pass the cordoned off area and can move with a little more freedom. She sweats, but Curly looks worse than her. The officer seems ready to move away, but Anya blocks his way.

“Excuse me, could you help me with my partner to go up the stairs? He has prosthetics and a pair of crutches, as you can see.”

The man looks upset, but does not protest. Although Grant loudly states that he does not need help, neither of them pays attention to him.

“It's good that you are here, at last! The trial is about to begin” Victoria gives them both two kisses on the cheeks. Unlike Anya and Curly, the lawyer looks impeccable and fresh as a lettuce, but no less upset for that. “I find it incredible that they haven't sent an official car to the hotel to bring you here. What a mess! But oh well, that's the least of it. Did you have a good flight?”

“I'm going to throw up, Victoria,” is all Anya can answer, with absolute sincerity. And the redhead, who has countless cases on her back, doesn't make the foolishness of asking her why her stomach is in such a mess. Instead, she draws a sweet, almost maternal smile and puts her hands on her shoulders.

“Anya, never, in all these years of life, have I taken on a case that I feel there's even the remotest possibility of losing. I like to help the innocent, it's true, but I also have a certain ego, I admit it. And I've also been at the head of countless trials for sexual crimes. I helped my best friend separate from her abusive husband... who, unfortunately, is now a chief prosecutor in California. The world is full of abusers in high positions of power, and then they want us to believe that we are exaggerating! No, no. This will not stop there, Anya. Today, we will take every last penny from the negligent bosses who placed you two with a monster in outer space. And, tomorrow, we will make sure that beast does not get away with it. You have nothing to fear, Anya. They are the ones who should be scared to death, and I assure you that they are.”

The black-haired woman nods once, almost automatically, and follows Victoria and Curly's steps into the Supreme Court building.

“I don't know if Curly told you, but I have good news...” the lawyer's words float above her as Anya leans her head back to study every corner of the interior of that immense building. Good God, how much money must it have cost to erect it? She can't even imagine a number “...I managed to convince the families of Daisuke Akida and Swansea Hotard to allow themselves to be represented by me.”

“Really?” Anya's eyes widen and Victoria nods, smiling, proud of herself.

“Grant had very good intentions when he called both families to offer the deal, but...for such a delicate matter, perhaps they needed a neutral voice, external to the whole mess. And that was my voice. Of course...they are not in the best mood regarding the Captain, but their greatest indignation is, of course, against Pony Express” Anya thinks about something she doesn't say, but Victoria must feel it, since she turns to look at her “they don't have bad faith with you either, Anya. They...are aware of what happened to you on board.”

“Fine,” she murmurs. She knows there was no point in hiding the facts if they are going together, and even more so when there is a chance that they will be exposed during the trial. She doesn’t feel indignation towards her privacy, but a fear that the families of her former colleagues will look at her and she will see only pity in their eyes.

She doesn’t want pity from anyone.

The place is packed with people. Most of them, surely, were those who managed to gain access to watch the trial from the spectator points. Anya doesn’t know who the members of the jury are, and she doesn’t want to find out either. She rubs her hands against that elegant suit jacket, trying to get rid of some of the impregnated sweat, as they follow Victoria and, finally, she sees a group of people near one of the doors.

The first one she recognizes is Manfred, dressed in the same elegant navy blue clothes, matching his wife and work colleague. He chats with a slender brown-haired asian woman, who looks at him but doesn’t seem too enthusiastic about answering. Standing beside her is another man, also asian and shorter than her, who takes one of the woman's hands.

On the other side, she sees five people. Three women and two men. The two younger women could be Anya's age, or a little older. They both have light brown, almost blonde hair. One wears it long, the other quite short. The men beside them seem to be in the same age range, so Anya assumes they must be the boyfriends or husbands of the women. Of the two, the older-looking one is carrying a one or two-year-old child in his arms. They must not have had anyone else to leave him with.
The third woman looks much older. She is blonde, but her hair is covered in gray and she twists her hands nervously, her eyes fixed on an unknown point. In total, they were, of course, Daisuke's parents, Swansea's widow and her two daughters, along with their partners and the small son of one of them.

“Ah, Vicky, how good that you're here!” Guessing his wife, Manfred has no qualms about moving away from the one-sided conversation, taking a step back. At that moment seven pairs of eyes land violently on Grant and her. Anya can't help but stumble on her own feet.

“Blame the feds. My God, not sending official cars... What? Are there only rookies in charge of this?” Victoria takes it upon herself to speak loudly so that anyone in a high rank of power is able to hear her and, with any luck, feel guilt. She drops her arms, while Swansea's family also approaches. Anya stays so still that, if someone were to push her at that moment, she is sure that all her bones would break “well... Mr. and Mrs. Akida, may I personally introduce you to Mr. Curly and Mrs. Musume. I understand that you spoke with Curly on the phone...”

“Yes” Mrs. Akida snaps sternly. When she looks at Curly she can't hide her disgust and surprise at his physical appearance. Once her gaze falls on Anya's face, her eyes barely soften. Her husband doesn't say a word. “Were you also on board the ship?”

“Y-Yes, Mrs. Akida.”

“She was the nurse, they said it on television.” Swansea's widow approaches at that moment. She has a somewhat heavy accent that Anya can't place, but what she does place is the absence of disdain in her eyes. “Oh, girl, you looked like a living dead in the photographs on television. You've regained some color.”

“The dead are my son and your husband, Christine” before Anya can thank her, Daisuke's mother spits that out, turning to look at the blonde as if she were an idiot. But Christine gives her an angry look.

“I don't even need you to remind me why I'm here!”

“Ladies” Victoria loads her own tone of voice with severity, achieving the magical act of silencing them. One of Christine's two daughters approaches her, leaving a hand on her mother's shoulder “I must remind you that everyone here has been affected by Pony Express. Everyone here is affected by the same bosses, so it would be good for the morale of the group if we don't fight each other.”

“The morale of the group” Mrs. Akida mutters under her breath, but doesn't refute. Victoria puts her palms together, like a teacher about to start class, when a new voice, male, makes her frown.

“Vicky! Manny! Nice to see you, when was the last time we saw each other?” everyone turns around.

Approaching, with a thick folder under his arm, Anya sees a tall man with scruffy brown hair. His clothes were more colorful than anything, but it's obvious that they're expensive brands despite how...horrible they are to look at. He smiles at the lawyers and then at everyone else, putting his hands on his hips. He looks more like a TV show host than a...

“Amazing” Anya hears Victoria mutter under her breath, full of irony, before turning to him “looking good, Robert. You don't look sixty at all.”

“Yes, I'm in the prime of life! And of my career. Just when I'm about to retire, Bam!” he claps his hands together, smiling from ear to ear “something happens, unmistakably. It's like... a sign from the universe for me to never leave” without stopping smiling, he sweeps everyone present with his gaze. He ignores Daisuke's and Swansea’s families without a hint of dissimulation, until stopping at them two “Wow! Ah, I was dying to talk to you two, but there was no way to get your phone numbers out of Victoria. She is very jealous of her clients.”

“We have nothing to talk to you” Grant snaps dryly. Which is a relief, in part, because Anya feels like she has lost all her words. She doesn't feel like she can formulate a meaningful sentence around this man, despite how many simulations they have rehearsed in the law office. He was Jimmy's lawyer.

“Well, I think so, Mr. Curly” Robert, surely more than accustomed to awakening bad vibes, is not intimidated at all by Curly's venomous reply. He smiles, showing all his teeth, like a shark that has just sniffed a drop of blood a hundred kilometers away “you see... we all want to get a slice of Pony Express here, or am I wrong?”

“The thing, Robert, is that Pony Express are not the only guilty ones of everything that happened aboard the Tulpar. If you've talked for more than five minutes with your client, I imagine you've more than assimilated it” it was Manfred's moment to join the conversation and, when the brown-haired man turns to him, the shark smile does not falter.

“Don't sweat on me, Manny. I'm totally cool with the case we're going to be handling today.”

“Today? Sure,” Victoria spits out. “Tomorrow? We'll see.”

“Will we repeat the appointment, Vicky? It's like being in law school all over again...”

“What you're going to repeat is a defeat. Savor today's victory, Bob, because the sweetness won't last in your mouth for more than twenty-four hours.”

“Mrs. Woodcock, Gillian, Elson?” Anya doesn't miss the fact that they mention Victoria's last name at the end, even though she's sure that she's the one who has the most control within the entire Supreme Court. The entire group turns in the direction of the opening door, where a very well-dressed woman signals them with her hand “it's time for you to come in.”

The group fills with anxious voices, but they all move towards the interior of the room. The black-haired woman turns, meeting Curly's blue eye. She squeezes his arm firmly and he smiles back, letting go of his left crutch for a second so he can wrap his arm around her shoulders and give it an encouraging squeeze.

“It'll be okay. Come on... it'll be over before you know it.”

The room was huge, packed with chairs and tables. The judges' stand was even higher, and as Anya sat down at the table, with Curly to her left and Victoria to her right, she's sure this is how a king's subjects must have felt hundreds of years ago. She can hear voices everywhere. To the left of the stand, she sees the stenographer, who gives her a half-smile. She turns in her seat and studies everyone present, trying to guess a familiar face, but no. Are they curious? More relatives? She's inclined to think that each blonde spectator is a relative of Curly's, but keeps the thought to herself. As the room fills up, she feels her stomach shrinking.

Her "group" is sitting on the left so she leans forward slightly, guessing a group of stern suited men who must be the top brass of the putrid Pony Express. None of them look in the direction of the table. Amid the din of voices she hears a soft jingle, and guesses Robert's colorful clothes, smiling with absolute confidence, closely followed by...

Anya swallows heavily, digging her fingers into the fabric and skin of her knees.

He's wearing an elegant suit, just like Curly but, unlike him, his hands are cuffed by a type of chain a bit longer than conventional handcuffs, allowing a little more mobility. There must not be a barber in the cell, as his brown hair is tied in a half ponytail and he has a few days' growth of beard. Perhaps he only had access to a razor a few weeks before the trial, and was not allowed to repeat. Did some police officer have to shave him, for fear he'd use the razor to slit his throat or something? No...no, he's a fucking coward. He wouldn't dare even hurt himself.

He sits at the table on the right, a different one than the ones at Pony Express, of course. With his lawyer on the right and a police officer on the left, who would block his field of vision if he tried to look in their direction...but he doesn't. He's deathly still, as if his brain has shut down. The anguish? The now impossible to ignore weight of guilt?

“How do you feel, Anya?”

She is so used to hearing Victoria's stern and sharp voice that when she addresses her in that much softer tone of voice, it is almost as if she were another person. The black-haired woman blinks but nods carefully, leaning slightly towards her as she whispers.

“I want to get this over with, and it's only the first day. Is it very selfish if I tell you that I don't even want to testify?”

“It's not selfish at all. You lived through something terrible... everyone lived through something terrible,” the redhead replies in the same whispering tone of voice, “but it is necessary. These people have to pay for what they did to you and your families.”

Anya nods softly... until the sound of a microphone at low volume silences, like a gunshot, everyone present.

“I ask that everyone take their corresponding seat and remain silent,” says the man in judge's clothes sitting in the middle of everyone else. He looks very old, and Anya secretly wishes that he won't be the one to lead the trial the next day “today... Thursday, November twenty-seven, nineteen-sixty-nine... by order of the United States government, a hearing is being held in the Supreme Court against the private space transport company under the name Pony Express, accusing said company of the following crimes, and I quote: Labor violations, health and safety violations, negligence and reckless endangerment, in addition to crediting them with two deaths due to said negligence” during the man's reading, the silence in the room was so heavy that it could be cut with a knife. Nothing but the sound of the stenographer, tick clack tick clack, pressing buttons at full speed. The man raises his gaze from the sheet in front of him at that moment “well... the defense of the workers has the first word, would you like to begin?”

“Pleased to do so, Your Honor.” Victoria stands up at that moment, with an agility unbecoming of a woman of almost sixty. She moves away from the table and Anya guesses a proud smile on the face of Manfred, sitting to her right. Something tells her that he smiles that way whenever he sees his wife working “as you have very well mentioned, the charges against Pony Express are not only terrible, but expected. You see, I took the liberty of gathering the testimony of several of its workers who, as all the members of the jury will already know, were fired almost a year ago... and the scandal that it entailed.”

The redhead goes on to cite a long list of experiences of various people who, like them, received their dismissal letter from one day to the next and without any notice. Among the papers that Victoria holds, Anya guesses the dismissal letter that arrived to them on board the Tulpar. She charges every word that comes out of her mouth with firmness, and the former nurse exchanges a glance between herself and the row of men on the top dais. She knows they must keep their expressions indifferent for ethical reasons, perhaps, but Anya half expects to see them gasping and clutching their heads, dying of indignation at the kind of things the workers have had to endure.

“But this disdain for the physical and mental well-being of Pony Express towards its workers should not surprise us. The human resources office houses an inordinate amount of complaints of both sexual and workplace harassment, complaints that have been filed. Filing a complaint with human resources is, by the way, very complicated. Pony Express has taken it upon themselves to design a bureaucratic hell. If I may be allowed to be poetic, a flaming labyrinth. The worker who wishes to file a complaint will find themselves in an extremely vulnerable position. Pointing out, for example, a lack of necessary materials, leads to an immense amount of paperwork and this, of course, is not covered by the salary.”

“Objection, your honor!” From the Pony Express table, one of the men raises his right hand. He is plump and balding, and looks uncomfortable stuffed inside that thick, ugly brown suit. His forehead is beaded with sweat and at that moment Anya turns to her left, meeting Curly, attentive.

“She’s really good” she whispers, and the blond nods slightly, as if breaking his concentration at that moment would ruin it for the rest of the trial “I think the lawyer for Pony Express's bosses is nervous to death.”

“He knows they're going to lose” Manfred murmurs to her right, a smile still stretching his lips “what he'll try to do is to get the bail as low as possible... but I'm not sure he'll succeed either. This case is a scandal. If it had been celebrated in the Colorado courts, perhaps... but here we are.”

The judge had allowed the Pony Express lawyer to intercede. The man stood up, approaching the bench with animosity and leaving a copious amount of papers under the judges' faces.

“Everything is crystal clear in the contracts, and I will not allow anyone to try to play with the intelligence of those present. The handwriting makes it very clear how risky each and every Pony Express trip into space is. Everyone here knows that we are a cheap cargo shipping company! I wonder if the former employees are trying to shift the blame to their former employers for the decisions they voluntarily made with their lives.”

Anya waits for Victoria to implode on the spot. What she does, however, is smile carefully, as if the Pony Express lawyer and she were part of the same team. That smile only makes the sweat decorating the man's forehead increase in volume.

“It's good that you mention the employment contracts, because I wanted to talk about that... Pony Express is capable of showing a lack of ethics and humanity even in writing, and not just through its actions. Had they decided to invest in a horror film production company, instead of a freight forwarding company, I'm convinced they would have made a fortune… but here we are. Your Honor, I'd like to hand the floor over to my colleague, Manfred.”

“Go ahead,” the judge in the middle exhales. Despite the obligatory tone of his voice without affection, Anya would swear that he leans forward slightly, like someone watching an important football match.

Manfred, to her right, smiles. Anya is convinced that he would have rubbed his hands together, if it weren't a somewhat cartoonish gesture. He stands up and clears his throat, approaching the bench while Victoria returns and takes a handkerchief from inside her bag, gently dabbing the few beads of sweat on her forehead, then takes a long sip of water.

“Anya, get ready,” she murmurs, and the woman's words almost cause her to have an arrhythmia. “You're going to be called to testify.”

“To testify what?”

“He'll ask you questions about the poor concern for the mental health of his employees, which led them to hire a maniac. Don't worry, he'll say the most difficult things, but try to add some drama to your statement, okay?”

“I don't need to exaggerate” she murmurs, turning her gaze to Manfred “dramatic is too loose a word to describe the situation we live in space.”

Victoria just nods again, giving her a second squeeze on the shoulder.

“Your honor, members of the jury, and others present... I think the time has come for me to tell you the events that occurred on board the Tulpar” Manfred shows a pile of papers. They must have made a sort of story with their statements, joining them into a more or less comprehensible one, with the approximate dates of each event. A short horror story “it has come to my attention that one of the three statements is not too... accurate, so I will take the liberty of naming this particular story as the truth” Anya waits for some sort of exclamation from the table where Jimmy, his lawyer and the police officer are sitting. She doesn't hear anything.

Manfred tells everyone present what happened. Anya, Curly, and Jimmy have experienced it all firsthand, but the rest, including Daisuke and Swansea’s families, have been able to learn nothing more than the bare speculations of the news and whatever the feds and top Pony Express members have said. Now, the truth is unfolding before them, and Anya feels an anxious touch on her left hand.

Curly's right hand.

He can move it with greater ease, of course. The black-haired woman presses her lips together and intertwines her fingers with Curly's, giving him a good squeeze, almost twisting his fingers. Hopefully it doesn't hurt too much.

From the left, she can hear the voices of the two families. The cries, the stifled exclamations of indignation. Hearing the driven murder of one, the decay of the other... by the time Manfred has finished speaking, Swansea's daughters and widow are sobbing as quietly as they can. Mr. and Mrs. Akida remain as stoic as possible, but the former nurse can see a reddish tint in the woman's eyes. A cloud of indignant and angry whispers floats around them, and she only has to glance at Jimmy's desk to see his lawyer whispering something to him at top speed, while the brunette answers only with terse monosyllables. Did Robert know that his client had lied to him? How many things has Jimmy changed in his statement?

“I foresee that the Pony Express lawyer will then want to take all the blame that belongs to his clients and put it on Mr. Zaci. You see, even if he was the one in charge of crashing the ship... he wouldn't have been able to do it if he hadn't taken off inside the Tulpar in the first place, right?” Manfred's tone of voice is filled with the confidence that can only come from speaking the truth “they mention that our clients signed their contracts on their own free will, that's true, but just as they are responsible for that, a company is equally responsible for the people it hires, and for the security it promises its employees. One cannot…”

“Objection!” Pony Express' lawyer exclaims, but the judge brings down the gavel with force. The crash silences both the lawyer and the whispers that still floated around him.

“Denied! Continue with your declamation, Mr. Woodcock.”

“Thank you very much, Your Honor.” At this point he could have smiled, but decided that would be too counterproductive to what they were trying to do. “Now… as I was saying, you can’t make your future employees sign a contract that says, ‘If you die working for us, we are exempt from any blame that can be attributed to us.’ That kind of statement has no validity. Now, the question is, are Pony Express’ superiors to blame for Mr. Zaci crashing the Tulpar? The short answer is, of course they are! But here we need to go in the direction of the long answers, so that everything is clear to everyone. We know that it was not a Pony Express boss who ordered Mr. Zaci to try to commit suicide and kill his crew with him, but… what was such a man doing on the ship? And what’s more, what was such a man doing in such a high position? Because I must remind you that Mr. Zaci served for almost ten years as Co-Captain for Pony Express. He and Mr. Curly were the only two aboard that ship with enough knowledge to divert the direction of the Tulpar and deactivate the autopilot, steps I just explained to you. For Mr. Zaci to be where he was, a series of notable labor negligences had to occur, which then makes all those who approved not only Mr. Zaci's access to the company, but his promotion, complicit and guilty of second-degree murder. What were these poor selection methods like? In what way were the Tulpar employees trapped at the mercy of the decisions made by their superiors? Your Honor, I would like Ms. Anya Musume to come to the stand to ask her a few questions, if you will allow me.”

“Go ahead” the judge doesn't even hesitate, and everyone's gaze falls on her.

“Don't worry, take your time answering each question. We're not racing against the clock” Victoria whispers at her side, and Anya nods “Manfred is on your side, he knows very well what to ask you. We've already rehearsed.”

“Y-Yes…”

“You can do it” Curly whispers to her left, rubbing her arm once. Anya slowly stands up, her legs feel like jelly, and when she tries to move away, she remembers at that moment that she hasn't let go of Curly's hand yet.

She lets go, and it's like letting go of a limb. She's left her arm, metaphorically, in that chair. He smiles at her in the most encouraging way he can, but Anya can't even manage to make an attempt at a grimace. She walks away with a shaky step, moving away from the table and approaching the stand. Manfred smiles encouragingly at her too, but feeling the weight of hundreds of eyes on her doesn't help.
It's a blessing that the press isn't allowed in there.
She stares ahead and then to the left, refusing to even glance at Jimmy's table out of the corner of her eye. She was able to chase him with a gun, and now...?

«Don't think about that right now.»

And she obeys herself without question, sitting down on a higher chair. To her right, a glass of water. In front of her, a thick bible and a microphone. She places her left hand on the cover of the bible and raises her right hand once the judge turns to her.

“Miss Musume, do you swear to give testimony in the case at hand that is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”

“I swear,” she replies firmly, letting her gaze fall on the cross embossed on that thick leather cover. What a liar. She won't tell any lies, but no one descended from the Tulpar believing that God exists. Not even remotely.

“Mr. Woodcock, you may begin.”

“Thank you, Your Honor” Manfred smiles with all his teeth, approaching the podium “so that everyone present can be aware, could you introduce yourself and briefly explain what your duties were on board the Tulpar, Miss Musume?”

“I…” Anya forces herself to stare at the surface of the glass of water. Still, static. Not moving. Not looking back at her. And so, she tries to regain a more or less calm thread of her breathing “…was the nurse on board the Tulpar. I was assigned to treat any illness or injury of the crew…in addition to carrying out a bi-monthly psychological evaluation.”

“When obtaining a job at Pony Express…were potential candidates also subjected to a psychological evaluation?”

“Yes.”

“How would you describe it?”

“Somewhat…no. It was a very poor evaluation. The classic exercises of…drawing a person, and simple questions that anyone could lie about.”

“You mentioned that you also had, among your duties, to carry out psychological evaluations of the crew on board… Do you have training to carry out such evaluations?”

“Well, they were… simple questions. Have you had difficulty falling asleep?, for example, or Have you had difficulties with teamwork? If one were to lie when answering in order to appear healthier, I would have no way of noticing it, of course. And no, I do not have psychological training.”

“And medical training, Miss Musume?”

“Just the… the basic nursing course that Pony Express offers” she feels an intense itch on her cheeks. She is not stupid, she knows that Manfred does not ask her these questions to humiliate her, but to demonstrate to the members of the jury how the bosses of Pony Express were so disinterested in the well-being of their employees that they did not mind hiring personnel with little or no training, and then trying to put them in charge of shallow evaluations. An attempt to set up scapegoats, of course. A person with little training to ensure a ship is in good operating condition. Another person with zero psychological training to assess whether someone is fit to pilot a ship. They could always be targeted if something goes wrong, in a poor attempt to wash their hands of it. But, as with Jimmy, who put them there in the first place? At least she has a clear conscience: no one has died indirectly by her hand, unless…

“Many may think at this point that, perhaps, Miss Musume could be pointed at and accused of medical negligence…psychiatric, let's say, and, consequently, of allowing Mr. Zaci to crash the Tulpar” Manfred seems to have read her thoughts, as he cries out loud what she was thinking at that moment “but I'm afraid that would be a misconception. Miss Musume's case is special because of how terrible it is. She had become hostage, unwittingly, to the negligence of her superiors. An untrained woman put in charge of choosing who was right and who was wrong, and without the proper knowledge to differentiate truth from lies. We're forgetting something important, especially since, let's say they had a real maniac on board, someone who was clearly mentally ill. Were the psychological evaluations private, Miss Musume?”

“Of course.”

“In the middle of work hours?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have anything to defend yourself with, Miss Musume? Or did the Tulpar have a place to put potentially dangerous individuals?”

“No…to both questions.”

“I ask the members of the jury to put themselves in Miss Musume's shoes” Manfred walks from one end of the room to the other, gesturing with his face and hands. All the members of the bench and the members of the jury follow him with their eyes “you are a young lady… Miss Musume will be twenty-six years old on March 9th. You are a young woman, then, with no medical or psychological training, locked in a ship in the middle of outer space… aware that the crew member you are evaluating is dangerous, and with no way to defend yourself. You do not have a weapon, you do not have any kind of cell, and you do not have anyone nearby to shout for help, since the evaluations are carried out during work hours. She was betrayed by her superiors who, I'm sure, wouldn't have hesitated to point to her as the real culprit of everything that happened to her on board that ship. Let's not sin against human intelligence, your honor. Pony Express handed over access to their ship on a silver platter to a lunatic, and they didn't care one bit.”

The room fills with indignant whispers, which the judge silences by hitting the small wooden plate with his gavel again.

“Order in the room! Order!” Anya sweeps them all with her gaze, trying to read the mood of the room in general. She understands that many are trying to maintain as calm a demeanor as possible, but most are already whispering among themselves. Several look suspiciously in the direction of Pony Express's table or Jimmy's table, a gesture that fills her heart with hope, despite how little confidence she had had when she got off the plane a few hours ago. “Please, let those present repeat tomorrow,” she wishes to herself. “Let these be the same people in charge of the direct trial against Jimmy.”

“Your Honor, I would like to…”

“Wait a minute, Mr. Woodcock!” the judge seems tired of banging the gavel, without obtaining results “seeing how heated the mood is, the courtroom will take a short ten-minute break. I hope those present behave!”

Anya steps away from the stand, approaching the table again where Victoria receives her with a smile from ear to ear, affirming that everything went perfectly and that she did not need to continue tormenting herself. She wishes!
Curly also smiles, repeating Victoria's words while Anya sits next to him, affirming that he could not have done better. The black-haired woman hesitates, but she does not have the energy to start arguing with him on a day like that.

The room empties a little. Only one of the men in the upper stand stands up, along with a few jurors, perhaps to stretch his legs, get something to eat, or go to the bathroom. Countless murmurs rise throughout the room. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Jimmy talking to his lawyer…or, rather, the lawyer saying things to him, to which Jimmy responds with a nod or a shake of the head. He never takes his eyes off the table. He looks, almost, like he's a different person. Like he spent ten years in a terrible maximum security prison, instead of a simple cell in a Denver police station.

“Anya…” a female voice brings her out of her stupor. She turns her head and finds herself face to face with Swansea's wi…widow, approaching her carefully. She squeezes her hands together again, nervously, like before entering the courtroom. “Is…Is what that man said true? That Swansea was erratic? That…”

“The mouthwash poisoning got to him, I guess because of his… history. But we were all on edge. If it hadn’t been him, it would have been any of the three of us. That doesn’t make him a murderer, Mrs. Hotard.”

“What that… poor excuse of a man said about my Swansea… Do you think that’s a lie?”

Anya draws a line with her lips. No, she doesn’t think what Jimmy said is a lie. In fact, she’d say it’s one of the few truths that came out of his mouth during the deposition.
It was Swansea who killed Daisuke, and then proceeded to try to kill him before he could get his hands on the firearm. But what Christine Hotard is hoping for is not a retort that bloody. And Anya, who is not a psychologist at all, but has been forced into the posture of sweetness to save her life, knows a thing or two about reciting what the other person wants to hear.

In this case, thinking the same thing as she says, it is much easier for her.

“Your husband, Mrs. Hotard, was able to find the courage to have an act of compassion in the midst of a mind… intoxicated by stress and hunger. What he tried to do next was… an act of justice, if I may be selfish.”

Christine blinks. When Anya tries to guess what she feels, she finds a certain glint in the woman's brown eyes… until a new figure approaches: Daisuke's mother. There is nothing but darkness in her eyes.

“Compassion? You call ending my son's life an act of compassion?” Her tone of voice is loaded with tons of venom, and Anya shifts in place. Christine turns to look at her, overcome with anger.

“The boy was dying! He was going to die anyway!”

“How easy for you to say, Christine! You have your two daughters here, with you. The most important people, you still have them. You have no right to refute anything!”

“Daisuke didn’t even want to be at Tulpar in the first place. You forced him to take that internship.”

Anya spits that out before stopping to think about it. She couldn’t help herself. She holds her breath for a second, stunned by herself. Victoria, to her right, starts to say something. A call for peace, perhaps, but Anya’s words already made a dent in Mrs. Akida’s spirit. She turned to look at Anya with bloodshot eyes, slamming her palms down on the table with such vigor that the former nurse jumped a little on the spot.

“Shall I tell you something, Anya? I don’t care what happened to you up there. I don’t care not even a bit. Do you know why? Because you’re here now, alive, and you’ll get better, and you’ll go home rich, with a million-dollar compensation. You’ll get your life back on track. You’ll be happy, but Daisuke won’t have any of that. No. My boy died when his life was just beginning” she has the woman’s face so close that she could count her pores, her wrinkles, guess the fire that twists in her pupils “he won’t have a second chance. He won’t have anything. He’s three meters underground, in a closed coffin so that no one could see the state in which he was removed from the ship. There was no one to ask for our forgiveness when we went to see him at a morgue, but what do you know? You were locked in the medical room with the only weapon on board, you selfish piece of…”

Curly stands up at that moment with such vigor that no one would suspect that he has no legs from the knee down, and that his arms are not originally his. Her theory of biceps development thanks to crutches seems to take a step towards reality at that moment, as the blond gives Mrs. Akida such a strong push that she falls to the ground.

“What's going on there?” the judge exclaims, but the blond doesn't say anything. He doesn't even notice the fact that he was able to stand up without the need for crutches. Several of those present direct their gaze towards the scandal, just to hear Grant pointing at the woman on the ground, erratic.

“You've never ever experienced anything as terrible as she did! So don't you dare judge her for what she did! You have no idea about anything!”

“Ladies and gentlemen, please…” Manfred approaches quickly, trying to stop the altercation before it escalates, especially since Mr. Akida was already approaching, surely to confront Grant. The lawyer stood in the middle, while Anya pulled Curly's arm to make him sit again “this is not good for any of us, okay?” one of Swansea's daughters, the youngest, approaches to ask her mother to sit again, and Christine agrees “fighting each other will only make all of this have been for absolutely nothing, okay? I don't expect you all to become friends, but don't do this, especially here. Especially now.”

The words seem to have an effect. For now, at least.

Mrs. Akida stands up, without giving a single glance to Christine, Grant, or Anya. She returns to her table with her husband, blurting something out at top speed in Japanese. A string of insults, for sure, but the black-haired doesn't care.
She looks to the right, discovering that the table occupied by Jimmy was very attentive to the events. The lawyer, Robert, smoothes his suit as if he had been the one who fell to the ground. A tendency to the drama, perhaps. Jimmy, on the other hand, raised his eyebrows and barely sketched a smile, the most human gesture he has had in all the trial.

“That wasn't necessary” Anya murmurs, leaning towards Curly. He doesn't look back at her, and Anya knows that he doesn't think the same as her. For him, that gesture had been extremely necessary “...but thank you.”

“You're welcome. If they already think that I am a cruel and idiotic man, I should at least prove them right.”

“You’re not cruel,” Anya says, rubbing his arm. She reaches up with both hands and straightens the collar of his suit, which barely moved due to the push. It’s a good thing he has that buzz cut, or it would have gotten messy too.

«I miss his curls,» she decides to herself, and smiles a little before taking her hands away.

“And idiotic?” He looks at her sideways with a small smile, and Anya clicks her tongue.

“A little. Before, much more than now.”

“What a relief.”

“What will Manfred do now?” Anya then turns to her right, finding Victoria. The whole scene of the dispute seems to have made her a little nervous, considering that she keeps touching herself, again, with the handkerchief. Now not only on her forehead, but at the beginning of her neck.

“He’s going to question Jimmy.”

“What?” Curly is the one who takes the floor, barely wrinkling his nose “Why?”

“We have already made clear the lack of interest in the mental and, consequently, physical health of your employees. Now we have to demonstrate the lack of interest in the state of the ship.”

“If it is mechanical issues, you could ask me. I am the Captain...I was the Captain.”

“We would, but look at it this way. The trip that matters most is the last one, and you were on a stretcher in the medical room for almost nine months. It was Jimmy who was walking around the spaceship during all that time. We would ask Anya, too, but she lacks the knowledge.”

“Victoria is right, Curly” the black-haired woman lets her gaze wander to Jimmy, who continues to focus on the surface of the table, and little on what is happening around him “I wonder if he will tell the truth.”

“There is no point in lying. He already knows that, at least today, no one will attack him. The danger, for him, comes tomorrow. For now, what he's after is the same thing we're after: compensation. He'll only get it if he proves his bosses' ineptitude when it comes to the ship's mechanics. They sent you on the Tulpar with the promise that it had passed all the safety checks… but, as with the signature on the contract, it's no use blaming you if they were aware of the sorry state of the spaceship. And they were, I assure you. We have the proof, but this has to be done right, thoroughly, or not at all. Robert must be clear about that, too. He knows we'll win this.”

“He barely said anything…”

“That's because he knows what his client has done, Anya. He knows that if he goes out into the eye of the storm, he'll be exposed to more than he should be, and that's not good for him. That's fine… if you ignore the handcuffs, Jimmy almost looks like a well-behaved man, with a spotless record. Bob is worried about tomorrow, of course. Believe me, I know he looks charming, but… Robert is a viper. Don't be fooled by his silence today.”

The judge bangs his gavel again, as people return to their seats. Anya stands up very straight again. So much has happened in that ten minute break that it could easily have been ten seconds.

“The trial resumes,” he says, perhaps for the time stamps the stenographer needs. Manfred, back in his position ten minutes ago, clears his throat.

“As I was saying, Your Honor, I would like to ask permission to question someone else, before I give way to Pony Express's lawyer to explain what he thinks is appropriate.”

«As if he could explain anything.»

“Of course, Mr. Woodcock,” the judge nods solemnly, and Manfred turns to Jimmy's table. Judging by Jimmy's expression, he looks stunned. His lawyer, on the other hand, just smiles at the white-haired man. He was surely waiting for that moment.

“If Mr. Gillian allows me, I would like to question his client.”

“Of course!” Robert raises and clasps his hands, as if he's been waiting for this moment for ever. Jimmy, sitting next to him, opens his eyes so wide they could cover his entire face, turning to look at his lawyer. But he nods encouragingly “go ahead, James. We're all in the same boat.”

The police officer removes the handcuffs from around his wrists. Anya holds her breath, afraid he'll take advantage of that moment to stand up and run away... but he doesn't do any of that.
Not again.
He stands still and, once free, rubs his wrists and circles the stand to take the same seat Anya occupied a while ago. Like her, he rests his left hand on the cover of the Bible and raises his right hand, his gaze fixed on a dead center. Something tells her he believes as little in God as she does, or maybe even less.

“Mr. Zaci, do you swear to testify in the case before us that it will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”

“I swear” he replies heavily, and sits down carefully.

“I will ask you a few questions, Mr. James, as I believe that this case is perhaps easier to solve than all those present in this room might consider” Manfred walks back and forth, gesturing with his right hand and with his left hand placed at the back of his back. He moves with the same confidence and ease as his wife and, when Anya turns to look at Victoria, she sketches the same smile she saw Manfred wear when it was the redhead's turn to speak in front of the jury “before the Tulpar took off from Venus, you received confirmation that the ship was in optimal conditions for takeoff. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

Jimmy's voice is slightly amplified by the microphone. Not too loud, as the room wasn't titanic enough to require better sound equipment.

Anya swallows carefully, without taking her eyes off him. She's not quite sure what to call the emotions that are shaking her insides right now. As she sobbed in her hotel room, she was convinced that she was going to faint or vomit and cry as soon as she saw Jimmy in court. Hasn't she suffered, and still suffers some nights, from a disgusting multitude of nightmares? Didn't she hallucinate with that man's voice during her second day in the hospital, convinced that he escaped from his cell? She could almost hang herself a medal as a fortune teller for that detail.

But there she is, able to look in his direction without feeling like she's going to faint from fear.
It's true that they're in a room full of people, with more than one person who could stop him if he wanted to attack her... it would be a different story if she had to be in a place alone with him, but for God’s sake there will never be a reason that justifies something like that. Besides, he doesn't seem to be wanting an excuse to jump off the stand and run towards her.

Curly had said it a long time ago: Jimmy is not a lunatic. He is not a Machiavellian villain, nor a clever psychopath worthy of a Hitchcock movie. He knows very well what he did, but there is something wrong inside his brain... and it doesn't even cause him any amusement.

She turns his head just barely, enough to study Curly out of the corner of her eye. Like her, he is very attentive to whatever Manfred is going to ask and Jimmy is going to say. What's cooking inside his brain right now?

«Jimmy hurt me terribly, and I'm sure no one in this room expects me to have the slightest respect for him, much less compassion. We're all in this shit because of him, and because of Pony Express. But he was his friend. I know he sees him for who he really is now, and that there's no force of nature in this world or the next that can make them forgive each other... of course. But that doesn't erase the years of knowing each other. Their years of friendship. Curly's best friend is dead, and he's probably only now having some time to think about it.»

Anya swallows and rubs his arm, the same way he did with her. It's enough for the blond to drop his gaze to her face, his one good eye slightly red.

«It's going to be okay,» she murmurs, the same way she heard him say, and Curly nods. Anya leaves her hand on his arm, and the blond doesn't make any move to remove it.

However, she had to pick up the thread of the questioning.

“...antique. How old is the Tulpar since it was built, Mr. James?” despite treating him with the respect that comes with speaking to a witness in court, Anya notices the way Manfred refers to him by his name, while he called her by her last name. Maybe it wouldn't bother someone else too much, but she's sure that once Curly mentioned to Manfred that Jimmy hates being called by his first name.

If the detail is causing the brown-haired man annoyance, he's good at pretending.

“It could easily be almost thirty years old. I think it was one of the first ships manufactured for shipments to the base on Mars... that piece of junk didn't even have an autopilot navigator. It had to be installed later. It didn't even have windows.”

“And what was the communication system like?”

“A piece of junk, of course. One-sided. We were getting messages, but we couldn't send them. It didn't make any sense, but as you said earlier, winning the presidency of this country is easier than filing a formal complaint with Pony Express's HR. It was a miracle that the radio received the messages from the Denver base” that 'miracle', of course, was loaded with sarcasm. It was a miracle for Anya and Curly, of course. It was, in part, for Swansea and Daisuke’s families, who at least got the bodies to give them proper funerals. But him...? Anya is sure he would have preferred to kill himself in outer space.

“You mean if you needed to send a distress message, you wouldn't have the means to do so?”

“Exactly” Jimmy's statement raises more whispers. "On our side," Anya wishes to herself. "Let them be on our side, please."

“Speaking of safety on board...as reported, when the Tulpar hit the asteroid fragments, safety foam inflated to cover any openings. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“Would you say the ship was safely covered?”

“Listen...the foam protected the ship, that's true, but in theory that should have helped us too, us first, and it didn't. The hallway to the rooms was filled with foam, so we had no access to the rooms or the bathroom. In the kitchen, the foam ruined the dehydrated food machine, so we lost that too...we didn't even have the necessary amount of supplies, because we ran out of food and water long before the agreed date for the shipment to be transported. Anyone would believe that they sent the five of us on a suicide trip with clear intentions of killing us. More than negligent homicide, I would say it was a premeditated murder attempt that went wrong.”

“Objection, your honor!” The terrified voice of Pony Express' lawyer can barely be heard above the chaos that breaks out in the room at that moment. Dozens of voices overlapping one another. Terrified. Outraged. The judge violently strikes with the gavel, and barely manages to silence them. “The witness has no right to...!”

“Given the situation, one is open to suspecting that the company's intentions were very dire from the very beginning” the judge silences him, showing a hint of his inclination for the first time all morning. The lawyer, trembling, sits down, and Anya notices how pale the bosses around him are. They know very well what is about to happen in that room.

Justice.

“...but the worst were the cryogenic capsules, of course” continues Jimmy, who had not lost the thread of the conversation despite the annoying interruption of the lawyer “I think it was the detail that most jumps out at me when recalling any hint of supposing that they wanted us, apparently, dead.”

“What happened with the capsules, Mr. James?” asks Manfred, bringing both hands to his lower back. The lawyer knows perfectly well what Jimmy is talking about, but he needs the rest of the people to understand.

“From day one there were only four capsules, and there were five of us. If the worst happened, one of the five of us was going to have to stay out. All, of course, because they accepted the intern at the last minute.” More whispering. Anya hears Mrs. Akida gasp from her seat “I don't know if the bosses knew we only had four capsules and didn't care, thinking nothing would happen or not caring if something bad happened. I also don't know if they really had no idea... in which case they could have asked, which they didn't either. Pick the explanation you like best, because the moral is the same: no one took responsibility for making sure of anything at all. Also, the capsule room was also rendered unusable because of the foam. We were, and excuse my vocabulary... in the most absolute and undeniable shit.”

“Thank you, Mr. James. That's enough.” He nods once, as if indifferent, before standing up and stepping down from the stand to have the handcuffs put on him again. His lawyer, Robert, is grinning from ear to ear, proud as a father after a football game, and he gives him a few slaps on the back, which Jimmy hardly seems to be bothered by.

The judge has to call the court to order with his gavel for the umpteenth time.

“I doubt that much more needs to be said, your honor. It must be abundantly clear to all members of the jury how cruelly negligent Pony Express was, and how it caused irreparable damage. One family loses a son, another family loses a father. Mr. Curly will live with the brutal physical after-effects of the accident for the rest of his life” Manfred resumes his rant, while Anya secretly hopes he doesn't mention what happened to her and, fortunately, he doesn't “while the people who owed them security try to shift the blame and dump everything on them. It's been like this for many years, since the beginning of space work... but I think it's time to put a stop to the story, your honor. The men and women who travel to space to work... we owe them the advancement of our country. They risk their lives in an exaggerated way, and this is how we return the favor? Pony Express needs to pay for all the damage it has done which, even if it is considerable this time, will never be enough to cover everything they have done since they founded the company so many years ago. And that would be it.”

“Very well” before any voice of complaint can be raised, the judge slams the gavel against the wood again “given the events and the crimes pointed out to Mr. James Zaci, a special trial will be held tomorrow at the discretion of a few. For now, everyone who is not part of the judges must leave the room. It is time for us to decide.”

“Already?” her voice is almost indignant, which was not without humor. But yes, already. Everyone stands up and marches towards the exit. Except, of course, for the members of the jury. Beyond them, she can hear the moans and angry voices of the Pony Express bosses, unloading on their lawyer, although, to be fair, there was not much the man could have done to clear their names.

“Already” Victoria nods, before slowly standing up, putting the papers back into her leather bag. Manfred approaches them, sweating but smiling.

“Will they decide today?” Curly is standing just like her, clinging to his crutches. Manfred and Victoria exchange a look, and it is the redhead who ends up nodding.

“Given the importance of the case, yes, they will decide today.”

“And how long will it take?” Anya sees Daisuke and Swansea’s families leave the room. They should hurry. Curly, the last one sitting at the table, walks towards the hallway. The other three follow him.

“Uh...” Manfred glances at his wristwatch before shrugging. Force of habit, perhaps “After lunch, perhaps? It would be good if we could eat something.”

“Lunch? But it's hours away!”

“It's almost two in the afternoon” Victoria replies with a smile, and Anya opens her eyes wide “come on, come on. Manfred and I are paying.”

The truth is that, due to her nerves, Anya couldn't eat anything other than a vegetable soup and mineral water. So tense, that if she ate something a little more difficult to digest, she would have been forced to run to the bathroom to vomit.

Curly imitated her, of course. Between his still delicate organs and the tension of the trial, they would be crazy to have ordered anything else from the menu.

“What do you think will happen?” Curly broke the momentary silence of the meal, scrutinizing both lawyers with his gaze “be honest...”

“This is won, Grant” Victoria replies with a smile, after taking a sip of her glass of wine “what worries me most is tomorrow's trial.”

“Proving rape is harder than proving... the disaster that happened up there?” Anya mumbles, and Victoria exhales carefully.

“You know the kind of world we live in. Plus... the press has resurfaced, now that the trial is taking place, and they were handling a very diverse story that the public has loved. I know it's in order to sway popular opinion in favor of the workers, which is positive, but...”

“What are you talking about?” Curly frowns with effort.

“They made up this story, about the supposed accident caused by the machinery, of James and you as a couple of heroes... American heroes, who survived a disaster and managed to lead their battered troops home. We are in years of cold war, it's a story with a hook, huh?”

“I don't give a shit about the cold war” Anya spits under her breath, while Victoria takes another sip of wine. Curly, sitting to her right, looks too stunned to say a word. “Jimmy is no hero. It was his fault we ended up like this.”

“We know that, Anya,” Manfred wipes his lips with the napkin near him, “but... the story has a hook. Space heroes, of course. Then... we will have to make the judge see that the punishment a criminal deserves is more important than any message that can be sent to the enemy.”

“Besides,” Victoria twists her face, “there is the possibility that, if Jimmy eventually gets out of prison, people will remember him more as this hero and less as the murderous abuser that he is. Maybe he will believe the story himself. This country has a tendency to remember only what suits them about a certain group of people... all men, of course. Television, movies, the senate. Men like Jimmy are everywhere, and if you ask anyone, they will just shrug their shoulders. "That's the way the world works," they'll say. "You've got to let a couple of bad apples through. Somebody's got to do the work."”

“But we're not just going to shrug our shoulders and say that's life, right? Because somebody's got to do the work, and that's us. Just... don't be surprised if tomorrow, during the defense, Robert comes up with that stupidity to try to win the court's sympathy.”

“Everyone loves Flash Gordon” Victoria rolls her eyes, but Anya is barely listening now, her gaze fixed on the center of her plate.

«I’m screwed.»

No.
Not yet.

“We can’t expect ten million dollars, not with a company that’s been in decline for years” Victoria raises a hand, calling to the waitress who served them when they arrived “but if we can get seven figures a head, I’ll be satisfied… sweetheart, can I have a caramel flan? I’d like to eat some dessert. Anyone want one?”

No one, except Manfred, said yes.

If before the start of the trial the tension was noticeable, now it is so much that it could be cut with a butter knife. Any conversation between those present has completely died down as, little by little, they occupy the same seats they occupied hours ago.

Anya sits between Grant and Victoria. To her left, she sees Swansea’s daughters and widow holding each other’s hands. The daughters' partners are also, both of them, eaten away by nerves. Even the two-year-old boy seems attentive, as if he roughly understood that it was an important matter.
Daisuke's parents are holding hands as well, the woman with her right cheek on the top of her husband's head, so close that it would take industrial machinery to separate them.
To her right, further away, Jimmy makes a subtle display of nervousness, tapping the floor with the soles of his feet in a disjointed rhythm. His lawyer, however, seems very calm, as do Manfred and Victoria. He has not had to say a word, which, in any case, does not mean that he has not instructed Jimmy well how to behave, how to sit, what to say when questioned. She will not know his true nature as a lawyer until the next day.
At the Pony Express executives' table... well, it looks like a photograph taken during a funeral.

The judge calls for order with the gavel, even though everyone is silent. Any whispers that might have been raised are now completely silenced.

“Before we announce the verdict, we want to remind everyone present that the decisions made in the Supreme Court are final. A bill will most likely be submitted from here to the United States Senate for an urgent modification of space labor rights.” Grant, on her left, takes her hand and squeezes it. A furious electric shock almost makes her jump on the spot. "That can only mean one thing…" “Very well, because of the right and responsibility that has been inferred upon us today, and after a long deliberation with a practically unanimous result…” Anya looks around the room. Everyone is attentive, almost holding their breath. Higher up, on one of the upper platforms, Anya makes out a woman sitting in front of a canvas. Of course, photographs are not allowed inside the courts, so she must be drawing everything. The woman notices Anya looking at her and she smiles, giving Anya two thumbs up and raising her eyebrows in a clear gesture of encouragement, her fingers dirty with graphite. Could she have been drawing her? “...the Supreme Court of the United States of America declares Pony Express guilty of double reckless homicide, serious physical accidents and damage to morality, aggravated by labor exploitation and negligence. The superiors in charge of the Tulpar ship's takeoff permit must pay with fifteen years in prison, and Pony Express will deliver compensation of two point five million dollars to each member on board the ship, and to the families of the deceased. The session is closed.”

The judge slams the gavel down furiously on the wooden board, silencing any attempt at contradiction. Not a single one went up.

What did go up were cheers. Anya stood up, light as a feather, and didn't even think before hugging Grant tightly. The spasm of happiness was so intense that she couldn't even cry, and Curly had to put some of his weight on her to keep from falling, his arms busy hugging her and not holding the crutches.

To her right, she hears more exclamations of happiness. She closes her eyes tightly, hearing Grant's heart beat so close. Behind her, Victoria and Manfred are equally celebrating in their righteous way.

“It's done, everything would be fine...and everything was fine.” Curly's body is warm. Squeezed in his arms, Anya would never have suspected, if she hadn't experienced it first hand, that the blond spent months condemned to a stretcher, unable to move, literally fighting for his life. Now, a whole year later, more or less, he stands up with difficulty and hugs her tightly, moving his face until he presses his lips to the beginning of her forehead.

Anya parts her lips, and all that escapes from between them is a trembling moan.

“I'm sorry...” she whispers, pressing her face against his chest “I spoke badly to you last night, I'm sorry...”

“Don't apologize, forget about it. It doesn't matter. I'm not hurt” Anya is sure that he is lying, that she did manage to hurt him with her words, but he will not allow her to feel a drop of guilt. He will bear the full weight of the guilt of both of them, like Atlas. She wonders if he will have enough strength to bear it without breaking “...but we can't be too happy either. Not until tomorrow is over.”

Anya knows he's right and only then does she step away, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. Victoria and Manfred begin to explain to them on their way out how access to the money would work, but Anya couldn't care less about any of that right now. The main entrance is packed with the press, so they exit through a side door and get into Victoria and Manfred's car.

“I'll contact Mr. and Mrs. Akida and Swansea’s family as soon as we get to the hotel. Tomorrow, after all, we have to go back to the second day of the trial, and make sure that everyone involved gets the punishment they deserve,” Victoria begins, starting the car's engine. Manfred sits in the passenger seat. “Good heavens, I promise you that tomorrow an official car will pick you up. What happened earlier today can't happen again.”

“It's okay,” Curly nods once. Anya guesses a large number of reporters trying to get a statement from the Pony Express members. A few meters away, smiling, Jimmy's lawyer speaks to the cameras. She doesn't see the brown-haired man anywhere. Maybe they drove him to a cell at the local police.

“The judge mentioned that tomorrow's trial would be reduced…”

“It means that there will only be one judge, instead of seven, and many fewer members in the jury body. In addition, access to the audience will not be allowed, this so that it is as quick as possible. It is an extraordinary case…” Manfred turns around slightly, smiling a little “given the nature of it, we will try to have the court be made up of as many women as possible, although it will not be an easy task.”

“What if the judge is a woman?” Curly suggests, and Victoria lets out a laugh that is hardly jocular.

“There are no female Supreme Court justices.”

Victoria and Manfred continue talking, but Anya notices that Curly soon tires of the conversation and sees no way out. Which is funny. All her life she has believed that Grant, because of his fame, would be the kind of man who enjoys being the center of attention and talking to ten people at once…now she knows that is a lie.

«Because I really know him. Because he has allowed me to look beyond the face he shows to the rest of the world. It's not that he is a liar, it's not about that. He just… believes that other people expect something from him, and he is obliged to give them that something because, otherwise, he is a cruel person and does not deserve any of the good that has happened to him. Is that, in part, why he decided to stay in a job that he hates for ten long years? Namely. I don’t want to talk about work with him. I’m sick of talking about work with him. We’ve done nothing but talk about work for months and months and now…well, there’s something much more important waiting for the two of us out there.»

What thing?
Life, of course. A whole life, waiting for the two of them. Anya can almost see her, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised, like a mother when you come home late.
“About time,” she’ll say, tapping the floor with one foot…but unable to maintain the image of the angry mother for too long. She’ll eventually drop her arms with a sigh of defeat, and lean in to press her lips to your forehead. A loud kiss. She’d stay up late a thousand times more, just to make sure you got home safely. “Go on in…go to sleep. I’ll make you something to eat when you wake up.”
And, when you wake up, you’re no longer tired. You’re no longer sad. You’re no longer afraid. You know you’re exactly where you need to be.

When they get to the hotel, the first thing she does is take a long, hot shower, undoing every aching pulse of tension. She dries her hair (luckily for her, there's a hairdryer in the hotel bathroom) and, ready, she goes out and lies down on the bed. It's broad daylight, but her muscles are aching and her head is heavy. She needs to sleep, but…

She stares at the ceiling for a few seconds. Seconds that turn into minutes. Time passes with a maddening slowness and, as she turns her face, she slowly looks at the clock. A full half hour has passed, and she can't fall asleep.

She mumbles, carefully getting up and walking to the door, the ends of her short jet-black hair still slightly damp. She goes out, locks the door, and, before she changes her mind, knocks on Curly's bedroom door.

«He's already asleep,» she decides to herself. «And I'm going to wake him up.»

“Yes?” From the other side of the door, Curly's voice emerges, somewhat lazy, but not so much that you'd assume he was sleeping until five seconds ago.

“It's me,” she replies, and she hears the distant creaking of the mattress.

“Come in, it's open...I don't want to get up.”

Anya clicks her tongue, but a smile stretches her lips. She goes in, closing it behind her.

Grant's room smells good, like men's deodorant. She sees the open bag at the foot of the bed, and the television on at a low volume. Of course, him and his still persistent inability to fall asleep in absolute silence. After so many years of sleeping lulled by the constant hum of various spaceships, it wouldn't surprise her if the mania never goes away.

“They're already talking about it...the press seems to have expected this outcome” he whispers. He's lying on the bed, on top of the covers. In the room, with the heater on, there's no need to cover himself “Did something happen?” Anya clears her throat.

“I can't sleep, and I'm dead tired” she begins and, after licking her lips, points with her index finger to the bed “Do you think I can...?”

“Sure” Curly opens his left eye, moving to the side. The crutches and prosthetics rest standing near one of the nightstands “s-sure, come on…I can't fall asleep either.”

Anya takes off her slippers, stretching out beside him, her head resting on the pillow. She stays like that for a few seconds…but then, as if she were one pole of a magnet approaching its opposite pole, she rocks, slowly, to the left, settling the side of her head on the side of Grant's chest. And he, as if she were a somewhat surly cat that has just made herself comfortable on his lap, doesn't move a single muscle.

“I have to call your mother…” she whispers.

“She must already know the news.”

“Yes, but…I want to know how Nova is doing.”

“Better than ever. She's going to the best university in the south, and she doesn't even know it” Anya lets out a soft laugh.

“I told her… Is it silly for me to talk to her, like she can understand what I say?”

“Not at all. In fact, I read one of those magazines in Victoria and Manfred's waiting room, and a child psychologist says that talking to your babies normally is the best for their brain development. I'm sure brain development isn't the word she used, but oh well…”

“She's right. I told her that she'll go to whatever university she wants, just…before she even knows the truth about what happened, because I know that hiding the truth from her is nothing but a time bomb… I don't want her to owe me anything, you know? I don't want her… to study a career that she hates because she thinks she owes me. She doesn't owe me anything. She's not here of her own free will, terrible things could happen to her… in her body, in her mind… I don't want her to suffer more than necessary. I'll shield her from that as much as necessary.”

“You already sound like a mother.”

Anya sniffles, moving closer to him, but she can barely manage to smile. Grant moves slowly, as if he were stepping into a vat of boiling water, until he puts his right arm around her, resting his hand on Anya's right shoulder. She doesn't protest, doesn't even consider doing so.

“That's what I am, I guess.”

“Don't push youself too hard, I…I want to apologize to you, again. Even if you tell me it's not necessary, I will. I treated you badly. Even if I didn't mean to, I did. I don't know anything about babies, and that's why I should…shut my mouth. I do understand that there are mothers who have difficulties with their babies even when it's a wanted pregnancy, so you shouldn't have to tolerate any crap from my side. Tomorrow is a complicated day, even more so than today…and I don't want you to have guilt in your mind. Nobody expects you to be a cliché mother from a movie…mothers like that don't exist. I'm sure that not even my mother was one. She had postpartum depression, despite everything. I know that many times she couldn't stand having me around. I guess…I guess being a mother is something that takes practice, and it will take you years to get better. It's like learning to pilot a spaceship, I guess, but…much more complicated, of course. Don't get me wrong.”

“Relax” she whispers, and her eyelids are so heavy that she finally closes them “it's true that I will learn every day…I will never stop being a mother, not anymore…”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“…my psychologist says that loving Nova is not the same as…getting rid of what happened to me. It's like what we talked about in the car…she's a victim too. And she has her weirdness…few babies are born or conceived in space, it's dangerous because of the radiation…”

“They told us about that in one of the law classes, during my last years of training…” she doesn't see Curly's smile, but she hears it “a child of the stars…it's almost pretty.”

“That's what we have to do, right? Hold on to the few pretty things. She's pretty…maybe the only remotely good thing that came out of that space hell.”

“In a few years she'll need to hear all that.”

«She'll need to hear all this when she knows the truth, and she thinks she should be dead.»

Anya would nod her head, but the tiredness is too much. There, between the warmth of his body's proximity, the whisper of the television and the distant noise of the city, she finally manages to fall asleep.

Chapter Text

12 HOURS UNTIL JUDGEMENT

Anya stomps her feet in the hotel's elegant foyer, trying to get rid of as many raindrops as possible. Neither of them anticipated rain, so she had to borrow a raincoat from one of the girls at the front desk. With her short hair plastered to her forehead by the sweat of that dizzying run, she returns her garment to the woman and goes upstairs, hugging the still-warm takeaway packages she brought to her chest for dinner that night. The hotel only serves breakfast, after all, and although she suggested the option of going out to eat, Grant didn't want to hear about it.

"You go out," he told her. Anya is aware that he wouldn't really have minded if she went out to dinner alone (he surely believes he has no right to feel angry about anything for the rest of his life), but she didn't want to. Since they left the courts that morning, she has done nothing but lie in bed after waking up from the short nap she had. How long did she sleep? Half an hour?
The truth is that, when she woke up, she felt fresh as a cucumber... but not enough to go out for a walk when a couple of hours ago she was the protagonist of one of the most important trials in the history of labor rights.

When she woke up, she went down to use one of the pay phones in the hall, with a fairly considerable amount of coins. Feeling cloistered in the building and using the pay phone reminded her with some bitterness of her month locked up in the hospital. While she heard the ringing of the phone on the other end, her left hand almost instinctively went down to a flat stomach.

“Yes?” Emma answered almost immediately, and Anya managed to forget for a second all the inventions in her mind. “Anya?” The blonde stepped forward before the aforementioned woman could say anything.

“Yes.”

“My goodness, I'm so glad! Congratulations! I'm watching it on TV right now. I'm so glad! Can you put Grant on the phone for me? I want to congratulate him!”

“I can't... he's in the room and hasn't put his prosthetics on yet. I went down to use the reception phones.”

“Ugh! Well, tell him to call me as soon as possible! When they announced the verdict I screamed so loud that poor Nova woke up and started crying, but I managed to calm her down. It's lucky you're only going to be away for one night, because she's drinking more than I expected. There won't be enough bottles.”

“She must have understood Sandra's voice when she told me she was underweight” Anya smiled to herself, and heard Emma sigh on the other end.

“It's not that it's the most important thing, but I'm curious... How much money did you manage to get out of Pony Express?”

“Two and a half million.”

“Really?”

“For each member of the crew.”

“Good heavens! Anya, it's much better than I expected! I mean, we don't need the money, but... for the families of the deceased... at least they can live in peace for the rest of their lives. And for you, honey! You wouldn't even have to use the doctor's recommendation for that scholarship. You could pay for medical school entirely! Or so I think...”

“I guess, but that special scholarship has its merit... so, everything's okay?”

“Perfect, and Anya... lots of strength for tomorrow, okay? I know that this is the trial that made you the most nervous of the two, and with good reason. I just want you to know... and I know that I've already told you, but I'll repeat it as many times as necessary... that you're not alone in this. Curly is with you, your lawyers are with you, and if there are women among the jury members, I'd bet a lot that several of them, if not all, have experienced similar things throughout their lives. You know you're telling the truth, and don't let yourself feel ashamed for anything in the world. That's what they're going to try to do... Don't let them! No one seeking justice should feel ashamed, especially in a situation as terrible as this.”

“...yes” a part of Anya wanted to answer "I know" but, did she really know? Was she really as sure of herself as she wanted to appear to everyone else? She didn't want to make Emma nervous either, so she preferred to cut it short.

“I would call you tomorrow before the trial, but something tells me you two won't have any time.”

When night fell, after an afternoon of doing absolutely nothing but pacing around her room like a caged animal in a zoo, Anya suggested to Curly to go out to dinner and that was when he, bluntly, said no and "Go out to eat by yourself if you want."

“But why not?” she looked out the window at that moment, peering outside. Some fine, icy rain began to fall over the capital, which made her press her lips together, barely. “We can call a taxi to get out of the rain and ask for it to take us somewhere nice...”

“I don't want anyone to see me like this.”

Hearing this, Anya raised her eyebrows and turned to look at him, but Curly wasn't looking at her, his only healthy eye fixed on the television. It was probably because she was already totally used to the blond's physical appearance, but it's true that anyone who hasn't seen him right away could be... surprised, to use a kind word. Or worse. Even if the rest of the people around him acted normally, Grant knows perfectly well how he looks like. When Anya looks at him, he barely slumps his shoulders and turns his body, hiding himself from her vision completely.

The unsolicited opinions of those idiots at the airport customs must have affected him more than necessary...

No, she didn't sin of such outrageous cynicism. That went beyond that. It goes further. Curly resents the body he possesses with a fury that is difficult to quantify. Anya can't decide if he would rather be dead than live like this, but she can say that he feels uncomfortable in his own flesh. He doesn't even see it as his own flesh. It's a borrowed outfit. An eternal rented suit. She's considered the idea of ​​feeling alienated from his own skin for the rest of his life, and the idea is maddening.

So Anya didn't insist. But she slowly moved away from the glass, approaching him and placing an affectionate hand on his right shoulder, giving it a squeeze.

“Then I'll go buy dinner and bring it here. We'll eat together.”

Curly understood at that moment, from her firm tone of voice, that he would have no room for protests.

And there she is now, getting out of the elevator, with the hot food in her arms and her gaze fixed on door number fifteen. She pushed down the handle, and noticed how Curly had moved the only free table to the edge of the bed, placing a chair on the other side. Eating in a hotel room is never comfortable, but the roof of the building closed after eight, and it was already late for the two of them.

“I hope you like Italian food...” the ex-nurse begins, approaching with the two steaming bags. Curly smiles. He tries, at least.

“I love it.”

She opens the two takeout containers. Soon, that hotel room is filled with the aroma of pasta and bolognese sauce. She couldn't tell if it was homemade or frozen, but she's hungry enough to eat a horse and she's in no position to complain. She settles into the chair, Curly on the edge of the bed, and picks up the plastic cutlery before twirling the pasta between the tines of her fork, glancing at the TV. It's not the most comfortable position, but they can't eat any other way either.

“Did they say anything else?” On the TV, the news about the advance of the armed front in Vietnam was playing. Anya could name a thousand things she wanted to watch right now before that.

“No... well, while you were out, they aired some snippets of that short talk Jimmy's lawyer gave.”

“Did he say anything important, or just flatter himself?”

“Hm... half and half. I hope this food doesn't upset our stomachs.” Curly stares at the pasta tangled between the tines of his fork, before taking a sizable bite. Anya nods, absently. “…when asked about tomorrow’s trial, he changed the subject rather gracefully. He’s very good at talking.”

“Victoria told us…that he hasn’t proven anything of what he can actually do. I know that…under the law, everyone is entitled to a fair trial, even scum. It doesn’t stop me from getting goosebumps around him. He’s…he gives me the creepiest vibes. He looks like the kind of man who’s willing to do anything for fame or the right price.”

“Even commit a crime?”

Anya nods with absolute sternness, as if she’s known the lawyer, Robert, all her life. She doesn’t tend to prejudge people, but she trusts her intuition and Victoria’s good judgment…plus, something tells her that Curly trusts her judgment. As for her negative feelings toward the man, they’re both in the same boat.

They let the voices on the TV fill the silence for a few minutes as they eat dinner, interrupted only by the occasional catchy song during commercial breaks. It's not until they switch to a review program that Anya picks up the remote and starts flipping through the channels, one after the other... until she gasps.

“Wha-What's wrong?” Caught off guard, Curly still trips over his tongue as he speaks. He turns around, surely expecting to see some horrible news covered... but nothing could be further from the reality.

“Audrey Hepburn got married secretly in January?” Anya blinks, while the screen plays those almost year old photos that had just been released to the press “but what a strange dress...”

“I didn't know you liked that kind of shows” Anya takes a big bite of her dinner, turning to meet Curly's small mocking smile, before rolling her eyes and pointing her fork at the TV.

“Gossip shows and ridiculous reality shows are the only thing that kept me sane while studying for the entrance exams. Try memorizing every tiny step of glycolysis and the Krebs cycle for three hours and then watch a documentary. No, no, I needed to rest my brain, to empty it completely...”

“Okay, okay! It's not criticism...” the blond raises both hands in a gesture of defeat, but he keeps smiling. She understands him, in part. It feels so out of place... a whole year safe from death, and returning to Earth for everything to continue as she left it behind. The apartment where she used to live. The music she used to listen to. The shows she watched... she should feel out of place there, finding out that what was served at the catering of a Hollywood actress's wedding... but, what is she supposed to do? She needs to think as little as possible about tomorrow, but... trying to avoid the subject only leads her to it again and again. Again and again. She has no escape.

They both fall into a second silence. Anya has already finished her meal, so she tries to pay attention to the program... but she can't. A memory comes to her then, a sort of flash in the back of her brain, and she waits for the blond to take a long sip from one of the two bottles of water she also bought, before clearing her throat.

“Curly...” Anya barely lowers the volume of the television, hearing the affirmative sound coming from the man “Can I ask you something? At this point it may be a bit ridiculous to do so, but...”

“Ask me whatever you want.”

“... well” the woman turns, facing him. The gesture reveals that it is, perhaps, a more serious question than he expected, so Curly leaves the fork still against the little pasta he has left to eat “months ago, when we were still in the hospital... the night you convinced me to accept your mother's help. Do you remember?”

“Yes” it is a very sure "Yes". She would not be offended by a negative answer either. She saw the amount of opioid Curly was receiving daily through the IV. In fact, she finds it mind-blowing that he is able to remember so many things and that everything is nothing more than a salad of lights and sounds inside his brain. Maybe there are many things he doesn't remember...close to the date he woke up from the induced coma. He won't know until it's necessary.

“You were asking me for forgiveness, and you said something like...that you were an idiot, before and after, because you were in love...” again, silence. Curly barely holds her gaze, but not for long. He drops his gaze back to his food, and Anya swallows carefully “...you were referring to him, right?”

Curly doesn't need to answer. His posture has said it all. Unable to look up from his plate. Anya clears her throat, trying to decide what she should say next, but the blond steps forward gracefully.

“I know it doesn't make sense, but it's true...from high school until a couple of years ago...or maybe before high school, but what's an elementary school kid supposed to know about love? I just felt like he was my best friend, and that was it. But over the years, it was...” Curly shakes his head. “Anya, I just wish you wouldn't see me in a different light.”

She raises her eyebrows. How could she? In a way, being raised in a non-religious home has saved her from more than one harmful idea. Not that atheists are by default good people. There must be worse ones than the believers themselves, but Anya, among all the things she could blame the woman who raised her for, never heard her say a negative word to a stranger just for something so ridiculous. She shakes her head then, trying to soften her gaze.

“It's unexpected, but... I don't care that you're gay, Grant.”

“I'm not gay!” genuine surprise flashes in the blond's only healthy eye, raising his thin golden eyebrows “I had girlfriends in high school.”

“I'm sure there are many gays married to women, and fathers of two or three children...”

“Y-yeah, but... I liked them. I was attracted. I don't just like men, I'm...fuck” he shakes his head once, rubbing his face with the palm of his hand “I feel like I'm fifteen years old. What's wrong with me?”

“I imagine you feel that way because you never talked about it with anyone...Or did you?” Curly shakes his head, still holding his face in the palm of his hand, and Anya can't help but smile “maybe that's why. Well, you like men and women, that makes you a...”

“Masochist?” the blond suggests, taking his hand away from her face, and Anya rolls her eyes.

“A very romantic man” Anya shrugs her shoulders, the ghost of a smile on her lips “And did your high school girlfriends know?”

“No...I'm telling you, it wasn't something I talked about...”

“Did you never mention it to Emma?” Curly shakes his head emphatically.

“At first I was terrified, but then...I didn't see the point. My mother is much more religious than I am, but she's not...well, you've already lived with her. She doesn't harm the rest of the world based on her beliefs. In fact...mom was always very sociable, but many of the people in high places were somewhat...despicable men and women. You know, the kind of people who look down on people who don't have as much money as they do... or who don't look like them. My mother always told me the same thing when she came home angry from some run-in with stupid people, this lesson about how...God made us all in his image and likeness and that he never makes mistakes, and that the human is an idiot to try to rate other human beings as worthy or unworthy, something like that. Of course, if you tell a young, dying person that God didn't make mistakes with them, they might tell you to fuck off, but... well, the lesson was clear: all human beings are equal and deserving of respect. So I thought that, if, in the words of my mother, God made me the way I am and he didn't make mistakes with me, then there was no point in going and confessing anything to her. Maybe it was me being cynical... but I'm not a believer anymore. It's impossible for me to be. I don't think anyone can live through what we live through and still believe in a God. What I do believe in is my mother's lessons.”

“She's very smart...and very sweet. People like her aren't common.” Anya nods slowly.

“And like you, neither.” Curly tries to smile a little, but another question comes to Anya's mind.

“And did you ever tell him? Or did you try?”

That sort of brief smile disappears completely from Curly's face. Anya begins to consider telling him that he doesn't have to tell her anything if he doesn't feel like it...but Grant, once again, gets ahead of her.

“No, I never told him anything, but I'd bet everything I have that Jimmy knew. He was clear about it. I don't know since when and I don't know since when he started to take advantage of it. Maybe he expected me to believe that one day he would reciprocate my feelings and that, because of that, I would never leave his side...and he wasn't wrong. For a few years, at least, I would have done whatever it took to have him by my side, to help him in whatever way. I swore to myself that he felt the same way about me, but surely it was just my imagination or him pretending on purpose. Maybe, in his twisted view, that's what love was. We lasted for years like that, of course... until the thread broke in half, I guess. And everything went to Hell.”

Anya doesn't say anything. You wouldn't have to be too suspicious to know that Curly was right.
Jimmy was aware of the love his best friend felt for him. Whether it was, in his vision, platonic or romantic, it didn't matter. He knew that Curly would do anything for him and he didn't hesitate to take part in the situation.
But she can't criticize Curly too much for it, considering that she sees everything from an external perspective. It's like the friend who lives hooked to a toxic boyfriend from whom she doesn't know how to get rid of. Would he be able to see it too, or...?

“You were his victim too. You know that, don't you?” Anya loads her voice with intention, but Curly is unable to raise his gaze from the food on the table. The black-haired swallows and extends a hand over the table, leaving it on one of Curly's two hands “look at me” he is unable to “Grant... I know you think that for not... for not having helped me, you deserve what happened to you, but it is not like that. He spent years doing what he wanted with you. Even if at the beginning he did not realize it, as an adult he was surely aware, and continued to be immersed in the same. Please...”

“I know you are right, Anya. I just... it's just that...” his eye trembles, unable to focus. He opens his mouth, looks like he is about to say something... but thinks better of it and snorts, closing the lid of the container. It was already empty “Forget it. It's late, we have to sleep.”

“Grant...”

But it was no use. He no longer looks at her. Curly stumbles out of bed, using only one of his crutches to clear the trash off the table.

“Go to sleep. I'll take care of throwing this away.”

She knew there was no point in trying to dissuade him.

———

6 HOURS UNTIL JUDGEMENT

“Anya.”

A persistent whisper, like the noise an annoying mosquito makes buzzing around you, refusing to go away no matter how many times you wave your hand. Sunk in the mist of sleep, she barely hears it, and if she does, it doesn't make enough of a dent.

“I know you're not asleep, Anya.”

She opens her eyes slowly, and it's like pulling back the curtain on the dirty screen of an abandoned movie theater. Damp marks and a color closer to yellowish than white. Slowly, the silhouettes and shadows of the objects around her take shape in the shadows, helped by the very little light that manages to filter through the curtains, giving everything a grayish tone, like an old movie.

It takes her a few seconds to get used to the idea, to get her bearings. She's in a hotel room in Washington, D.C., all right...and in a few hours she'll have to go through a second trial before she can go home, and then...
She tries to move her head, but she can't. All she can see of her face is ahead of her and out of the corner of her eyes. Lying down, she can make out her feet beneath the thick white covers of the bed, and beyond them, the cabinet with the television turned off. Out of the corner of her right eye, the window. Out of the corner of her left eye, the wall and the cabinet on which she left her open bag and some belongings. She makes a second attempt to move...to move her head, at least...but she can't do anything. She's awake, but it seems like no one has told the rest of her body that she's awake.

“Anya?”

That voice again...with a doubtful clarity, as if it were calling her name from the end of an echoey hallway. She swears she heard soft knocks to her left, but it could have been the rhythmic pounding of her heart in her ears. «If I can't wake up, I could at least fall asleep again», she decides, but it stays as a thought since she can't even bring herself to close her eyelids. Maybe...

A creak. Footsteps? But it's not possible, there's no one in her room and there's no way anyone could open the door without her knowing. Not content with locking it, she's positioned a chair underneath it and a small, empty vase in a dangerous position. If anyone moves the handle even a millimeter, the chair will shake and the vase will fall. It's made of some kind of metal, so Anya isn't afraid of breaking it, but it will make a loud noise that will wake her up in a second. Good heavens, she's been so tense that she could wake up to the sound of a needle falling. No, those footsteps have to be from the hallway, the room upstairs, or the room next door. Yes, that has to be it, and, still somewhat distressed at not being able to move, but with nothing she can do until she gets rid of the numbness, she looks ahead, where the bed ends.

A hand reaches up from the foot of the bed.

Anya's eyes widen. She doesn't know how, but she manages it. She feels the pull of skin and muscle to the sides, and the way her heart, already somewhat upset by the current state of her body, begins to pound. She tries to scream, but can't. No sound comes from her lips as the hand moves up and up and up to reveal a shoulder, reaching forward to grab hold of the fabric of the covers. To her right, another hand, an arm, an elbow, fingers squeezing the fabric. Anya lets out a choked sob, and that's all, before the broken, battered face appears along with its hands, staring into her eyes through the grey gloom.

“Anya, I finally see your face” Daisuke's voice comes out haltingly, low. She can't answer “What's wrong? It's like aboard the Tulpar, again... but, this time, I was able to reach you. I did my job.”

«Wake up, Anya! Wake up!»

“Do you remember when you found me crying in the hallway? What a pathetic scene... I couldn't sleep. Locked up, the days, the hours, the allowed rest schedule, the perception of time... it turns into a salad. I didn't know how many days had passed since the accident. I only knew that the days passed and no one came for us. Maybe I was already crazy, but I had convinced myself that I wasn't. I expected to be taken care of, and that was my mistake. We were all adults aboard that ship. Being the youngest didn't save me from anything.”

«Wake up!»

“But anyway... you found me crying, and you comforted me. You told me everything would be okay, that they would surely come to save us soon, and I believed you... but not for long. I was afraid that Swansea would find me crying and scold me, but, given what I've seen, I wish I had asked him for advice. The old man would have said "No one will come to save us, brat! We're doomed!" And I would have surely lost my way, but you know, at least he would have been honest with me. Not you. Ever since the accident, you were never honest. You were an actress. You're a... leech...”

«This isn't Daisuke. Daisuke would never say these things. Daisuke is dead.»

But the voice sounds crystal clear in her ears. The entity, ghost, sleep paralysis demon or whatever, rises and crawls across the mattress towards her, closer. All the air around her is filled with the metallic smell of blood, the stench of rot, and that mouthwash aroma that she will never forget. This close, Anya guesses the opening in the flesh of his face and how something, little by little, seeps out until it comes loose and falls on the bed covers with a splashing sound. A piece of brain.

“You knew there was a monster on board, and you didn't care to warn us. You locked yourself in the medical room, and left us with the beast outside. My mom was right. Maybe you deserve what happened to you. You're not as good as you think you are. No. You're a cynical and selfish bitch... and now everything will turn out fine for you. It's not fair. Why do you have more right to live than me?”

«Wake up!»

“Why didn't you let me in too? Why didn't you open the door? Did you blame me because I couldn't help you? It's not fair, what was I supposed to do against that guy? It's the Captain who should have helped you and he didn't. But here you are. It's all nonsense. You should go to prison, just like Pony's bosses. Just like Jimmy. If you'd let me into the medical room, I'd be alive right now. I'd be fine, with my parents...stop looking at me like that. Do I scare you, Anya? Are you scared right now? What do you think I felt when I was about to die?”

«Wake up!»

A wet crack, and then a thinner one, like a tree branch breaking. Before her stunned gaze and her eyes filled with tears, with her furious breaths going in and out of her lungs, the side of Daisuke's head comes loose, falling on her own face. She swears she could feel the wetness of blood and brains against her skin, as well as being flooded by the stench of blood and rot... but, whether or not it was more realistic, the truth is that it was the last blow she needed to fully wake up.

She sits bolt upright in her spot, blinking heavily and gasping. She drags her body backwards so fast that she hits her back against the headboard, letting out a groan of pain and falling sideways onto the mattress, her right hand reaching for her spine a second before, reinvigorated by horror, she rolls to the right and leaves the bed, gasping and turning on the bedside lamp.

There is no one there, of course. No one but her. There is no blood or organs strewn across the covers, no hands sticking out. Trembling, as if she were five years old, she gets on her knees and peers under the bed. Nothing. The wooden boards are very close to the floor anyway. Not even Nova could fit in there.

She sits up again, shaking and putting her hands to her head, combing her short hair back until her hands rest on her shoulders. She feels the cold sweat on her back, the nerve that tenses her whole body.
It's ridiculous. Of course there's no one there. Ghosts don't exist. No one has followed her since the Tulpar. Daisuke and Swansea's bodies have been laid to rest and now rest in peace... although, who could rest in peace after such a violent death like that?

«I didn't kill them. This isn't fair.»

In the bathroom, she pours plenty of cold water on her face, using one of the towels to dry the sweat superficially. But, in the mirror, her pale and haggard face reminds her of the red face, and bloodshot eyes, of Daisuke's mother. Her fury. Her disdain. The guilt she let fall on her for having abandoned her son to his fate, fully aware that it would mean, sooner or later, death for him.

«I couldn't do anything to save him, and it wasn't up to me. It was a desperate situation and I had to save my life.»

She knows it's true, but could she really not have helped him?

She presses her hands against the cold marble of the sink. She has to go to sleep. The trial is coming up, and yet...her thoughts drift back. Back, back, back. Would she have managed to keep her wits, locked in the medical room with Daisuke and a convalescent Curly? Had Swansea and Jimmy been left alone early, Anya is sure that either of them would have lost their temper early. One of them, as it happened, would have died, and the survivor would be trying to get into the medical room. Whoever it was, they would be erratic...and Anya knows that the face staring back at her from the mirror is one of utter desolation.

«Would I have done things differently if I had the chance to travel back in time?»

The answer is painfully obvious.

———

NOVEMBER 28, 1969

THE PRESENT

When Anya and Curly get out of the official car that picked them up at the hotel, the first thing the woman notices is the complete absence of press. Of course, the important trial was the one held the day before, the one that would make a difference for the labor rights of outer space workers and the whole thing. She is aware that today's trial may receive coverage on the midday or evening news, but that absence of press, as contradictory as it may sound, makes her hair stand on end.

«Nobody cares.»

Curly gets out slowly, aided by his crutches, and Anya thinks about everything Victoria and Manfred told them both during lunch, before they learned the official verdict. That pathetic story handled by the press, about how Curly and Jimmy were heroes, as if it were all just a mythological epic or something. Now the truth is served on a silver platter, everyone knows that one of the two supposed heroes was in charge of crashing the ship of his own free will, but... Did they really pay attention?
And if the trial that day doesn't receive the same coverage, will anyone even find out how many cruelties Jimmy committed on board the ship?

«But, what does it matter? I don't want to be famous. I want that idiot to go to prison.»

Yes, but what if everything is forgotten when he gets out of prison? What if it doesn't cost him anything to rebuild his life with so much compensation money? What if his going to prison is nothing more than a bad vacation in a seedy hotel?

“Anya? We have to go up.”

“Uh?” The black-haired woman shakes her head and nods, almost automatically following Curly's slow steps into the Supreme Court. Anya has come to hate that place. After the trial, she will not set foot in the District of Columbia again unless it is a matter of life or death.

Just like the day before, Victoria and Manfred are waiting for them near one of the three access doors. The day before, all three were open, but on this particular day only that door remains open, perhaps because of the small size of the trial. Their lawyers are dressed in the same clothes, but Victoria wears her hair in a braid that falls over her right shoulder. Next to her is Swansea's widow, but there is no sign of her daughters (perhaps she decided that they had had enough exposure to pain the day before, and that was all). There is also no sign of Daisuke's parents.

“We had two casualties” perhaps reading the thoughts of the former nurse, Manfred greets them in this way, clasping his hands behind his back solemnly “Mr. and Mrs. Akida told us that they prefer to retire to grieve for their son in peace and do not want to have anything to do with legal matters anymore. They did not even accept the compensation money.”

“But he's their son...” Anya's voice comes out barely in a whisper, and Manfred just closes his eyes for a second and shrugs his shoulders, as if to say “And what can we do about it?”

“People deal with these events in different ways. Manny and I have seen everything. In fact, comparing it to other trials of a similar caliber, we expected it to be much more chaotic than it is turning out to be” Victoria turns her gaze to the widow from Swansea. Christine, at that moment, raises her gaze to Anya and resumes the nervous gesture of rubbing her hands together.

“I wanted to tell you...perhaps after hearing those horrible things that Mrs. Akida told you, I don't...hold resentment in my heart towards you.”

“I don't blame Mrs. Akida.” Anya rubs her closed eyelids. She remembers the whisper during sleep paralysis. The very real feeling of wet blood on her face, only to wake up for real and find it all to have been nothing more than a product of a mind torn apart by pain and guilt. How many more nights like this does she have ahead of her? All of them, perhaps. A lifetime “...my suffering is real, and hers too. If I were in her shoes, I would...”

Anya tries to imagine it. She tries to imagine Nova, alone and at the mercy of a lunatic. Dead from neglect, and returned to her arms as an emaciated corpse. Very young, a lifetime ahead of her... She could have returned alive if they had opened a door for her, but that wasn't the case. And the person who denied her salvation is now alive and well and intends to live as if nothing had happened.

No...she would have been just as enraged. The same, or worse. Maybe that's what she has to do. Live with that guilt for the rest of her life. She owes it to Daisuke, at least.

“I just want to see the bastard pay for what he did,” the widow’s voice trembles as she cries out, her fingers clenched and her knuckles pale. “I know the executives put him there, but he…even if he doesn’t pay for what he did to my Swansea, I…want him to go to prison. For what he did to you, girl, at least…he deserves to pay for what he did to you.”

“For what he did to us,” the black-haired woman corrects her at lightning speed, glancing around. Being a trial without a hearing, the Supreme Court looks much quieter and, from what she can make out, there are already some jurors inside the room. “…this is awfully empty.”

“It’s positive. We won't see that idiot Robert until the trial starts, and in fact...” Victoria takes two steps away, waving her index finger “Anya, will you follow me for a moment? There's something I have to tell you.”

“Yes.”

The black-haired woman presses her hands against the fabric of her dress pants, following the lawyer a few steps further. Behind her, she hears Manfred trying to outline the beginning of a conversation with Grant and Christine, but neither of them sound in much of a mood for a chat, and she doesn't blame them.

“First of all, how are you feeling?” Victoria stops in front of her, leaving a hand on one of her shoulders “Did you get any sleep last night?”

“I had a nightmare” she murmurs back, although "nightmare" is a very loose way of classifying what she experienced. That's enough for Victoria, however, as she nods a little. Anxiety, nausea, stress, nightmares...she must be used to all of that by now.

“You have to know that, even though the press and the judicial system itself seem to be taking today's trial lightly, neither Manfred nor I will take it lightly. We will go with the same seriousness as yesterday's trial.”

“I-I know, I would never think...”

“I wanted to make that clear to you anyway. To calm you down, more than for any question of honor. And that's what I was getting at... Do you feel capable of going through with today's trial? It's not too late to back out, and I promise you that between Manfred and Grant we will bring the matter to a good end.”

“I'm not going to chicken out now, Victoria.”

“It's not a question of cowards or braves, Anya. It's a complicated thing and I don't want you to torture yourself any further. It will be mentally exhausting and, by extension, physically. Robert will ask you a lot of insidious questions and there's a chance the judge won't interpret most of them as witness harassment. Do you understand what I mean? There's no need between guilt or innocence for you to go on the stand. If you don't want to, I'll understand.”

“What about Curly?” she can't help but ask “he also suffered a multitude of horrors at the hands of Jimmy.”

“I've told him the same thing, many times throughout this month, but he's never wanted to give in...and, from what I can see, neither have you.”

“Victoria, I almost shot him. I'm scared to death, but I've been longing for this for a long time... any punishment they give him will be too little in my opinion, but I can't stand him being free for another day. Not after what he did to us.”

Victoria looks like she's about to say something else, but ends up nodding. She seems ready to go back to the door, but Anya grabs her arm and makes her exclaim in surprise.

“What's wrong?”

“And Nova?” the concern on Anya's face must be palpable, since a similar glint shines in the redhead's eyes “whenever we talked about her in the witness rehearsals, you told me that you weren't sure if I should lie or tell the truth...well, it's time. What do I say if they ask me about her?”

“It would be best if you lie,” Victoria ends by saying, “if Jimmy gets out of prison, at some point, and thinks she's dead, it wouldn't even occur to him to look for her.”

“Do you think he would want to do something like that?”

“I have no idea, but better safe than sorry, don't you think?”

Anya isn't too convinced, but she ends up nodding...just when the same young woman from the day before, who she now recognizes as the stenographer, appears at the door.

“Ladies? Gentlemen? You can come in now...”

Everything happens more quickly and with less fuss than the day before. Instead of seven judges there is only one, the same one from the day before, and the seats in the audience are empty. Christine sits near them, a handkerchief in her hands, and the members of the jury gradually fill the seats. Anya, in an act perhaps not too good for her anxiety, counts heads. The women were fewer by one, but it was still a fairly considerable number.

“Do you think they have to repeat everything from yesterday?” Curly approaches to whisper to her in a low voice. It's the first time he's spoken in a while, and Anya can barely exhale.

“Maybe, to keep an accurate record of the...”

Her voice trails off. Again, the damn jingle of chains. She swallows hard and, unlike the day before, she is unable to turn and look at Jimmy. Robert, however, takes over the periphery of her vision due to the flashiness of his formal clothes, looking like a die-hard technicolor fanatic.

“He looks like a clown” she hears Victoria mutter, and Manfred sighs.

“That way of dressing is already his trademark. Like it or not, every time you see a man dressed in colorful clothes you will remember our dear Bob.”

“Fuck.”

“Attention, order…”

Finally, the judge hits the gavel against that flat wooden circle. To one side, below, Anya sees the stenographer. She looks up and, just like the day before, the girl hired to do the drawings is in the top stand. Hastily, she ties her hair up with a pencil between her teeth.

«Maybe this will make the papers after all,» she thinks to herself. «But on the second page instead of the front page.»

“Today, Friday, November Twenty-Eight, Nineteen-Sixty-Nine, in a private trial held at the Supreme Court, the charges against Mr. James Zaci are being heard, and I quote: attempted murder, first-degree murder, accidental death, and sexual abuse. The prosecution may give its opening statement.”

Victoria rises silently from her seat. She approaches the stand and looks at the members of the jury. From the movement of her eyes, Anya suspects that, like her, the lawyer is counting her allies. Not that all the male members of the jury are enemies per se, but... the possibility was greater, and with each passing second, her palms sweat more and more.

“Your Honor, I know that all those present here were, in turn, present during yesterday's trial... or must already be aware of the events narrated,” Victoria begins her speech with the firmness that characterizes her. She knows that she speaks the absolute truth, and that is what she plans to show to anyone who is willing to listen to her, “but I have to tell you the story again... and with much more care.”

The former nurse does not expect that hearing a story that she knows by heart, that she lived, again, can hurt her so much. Yesterday she barely felt a nervous tremor, perhaps because her agitated mind distanced her enough from the lawyer's words. Now, however, everything unfolds before her eyes as if on a movie screen. Clear. In full color. With all the sounds.

The alarms, the crying, the screams...

Victoria mentions every gruesome detail and leaves nothing out, creating scenarios that must be more real than anything else about what Anya couldn't see firsthand, because trusting Jimmy's judgment was not an option. When she finishes, she turns to look at the judge one last time.

“Any punishment this man receives will be small compared to all the harm he has caused, but we cannot allow him to live free for another day.”

The ghost of a smile crosses Anya’s lips, but she trembles at the judge’s voice.

“Mr. Gillian, it’s your turn to offer your response.”

“More than pleased, Your Honor.”

Robert rises from his seat with a confident smile, after giving Jimmy a light pat on the back. He walks around the table and holds a notebook in his right hand, perhaps with a verbatim copy of the statements.

“For the members of the jury, I would like to start with attempted murder. Chronologically speaking, the second of the charges that falls on my client.” Robert leaves the notebook on the small table that the witness usually sits on, now empty. With his hands free, he gestures like a tv host, exchanging his attention between the judge and the members of the jury. “As my colleague, Miss Elson, specified a few seconds ago…” He turns to look at Victoria and slightly bows his head. Anya hears the woman growl under her breath, weary. “Everyone here was at yesterday’s trial. Your Honor, could you remind me what the official ruling was? The Pony Express bosses were punished for their carelessness in recruiting, weren’t they?”

“They are,” the judge exhales, nodding slightly.

“Well,” the lawyer smiles like a TV shopping presenter, showing all his teeth, a gesture that knows how to make Anya’s hair stand on end. “Should my client really be burdened with the blame for the men who opened a door for him? Mr. Zaci was in dire straits. Everyone here may have heard how bad the country has been lately, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better anytime soon. All our taxes go to space technology and military force…we hurt ourselves by proving how powerful we are, and who cares about the common people? Mr. Zaci got a secure job in years, and with all the coldness in the world, he is sent away! He had to return to a place where he would have nothing, and although he is not an old man, he is almost forty years old. I do not expect you to understand. Everyone here has secure jobs, but make an effort to put yourself in his shoes... the desolation, the anguish, the absolute hopelessness... Can you really blame him for wanting to choose death over a ruined life? Suicide is not for cowards, dear members of the jury! In fact, I would say it requires courage out of this world!”

Anya hears whispers above her head, coming from the seats occupied by the others, and she leans slightly to the right, unable to stop herself from shaking, whispering to Victoria.

“He is not saying anything.”

“And so he has won all his trials,” Victoria replies in the same voice, “saying nothing and saying shit, but with elegance. If he has the evidence on his side, that's already a plus.”

“And we have it on our side?”

“That's the thing, Anya. There's barely any evidence, for either of us, except for…”

“I know that everyone could assume that the rest of his troop wouldn't accept death in the same way as he did, but I'm inclined to deny that,” the lawyer's voice climbs again with vehemence, shaking the notebook with the written testimony above his head. “In fact, I'd say that the members of the Tulpar were weighing the same thing. I could quote something said verbatim by the former Captain Curly himself, here present.” Anya turns to the left and, from the expression on Grant's face, she understands that he feels just as disoriented as she does. “The day he notified them of the dismissal letter, they all darkened, in his own words. They expressed their lack of resources on Earth and how hopeless the idea of ​​returning to being unemployed without resources to support themselves had made them…and we all know that the severance pay that Pony Express would have given them would not have been very large. We are talking about nothing and less!”

“That's not-” Anya stands up at that moment, but Victoria pulls her arm just as the judge slams the gavel hard against the wooden board.

“Order! You will speak when you are called to testify!”

Shaking like a leaf, Anya sat down again. She turned to look at Grant, eyes wide open, and then at Victoria.

“He's lying!”

“He's saying things he can't prove, and neither can you. But he has Curly's testimony, something he himself has sworn is authentic” Manfred rubs his forehead with two fingers “we should have thought of that, damn it...”

“How could we?” Victoria whispers back, letting go of Anya's arm only then “Robert's brain is a constant machine of the biggest garbage you can think of.”

“Besides, do you want to hear the best part? It's too late now, and there's no appeal against the Supreme Court's decisions in court, but we have no evidence other than the testimony offered by Mr. Curly and Ms. Musume to assume that Mr. Zaci is to blame for the Tulpar crash. There were no cameras inside the spaceship, nor a black box like in airplanes, but you know what we do have? Reports of the study of the ship after its landing in Colorado. The Tulpar shouldn't even have taken off from the Earth base on Venus, and it's a miracle that it was able to reach Earth at all. If they tried to take off now, even without the damage caused by the crash with the meteorite fragments, that piece of junk would have exploded in the process of trying to leave Earth's atmosphere. They were doomed from takeoff. Yes, we may not have exact clarity on what happened either, but if I have to choose, I'd rather lean towards this option... you've heard it in the media, haven't you? The Tulpar suffered a malfunction and the two men in charge of the cockpit risked their lives to save it… of course one came out better than the other, as you can see…”

At that moment, all the faces of the jury members, including the judge's face, turn in Grant's direction. The blond man sinks slightly, his gaze lost to the left, trying to hide from the gaze of the others, until Victoria stands up vigorously.

“Objection, your honor! I do not concede that you try to demoralize my client! If you want to include Mr. Curly, let it be by calling him to testify, and not in this way!”

“I concede” the judge hits the gavel “Mr. Gillian, avoid involving the clients of Mr. Woodcock and Mr. Elson unless it is to question them.”

“Of course! Of course, I apologize…3 the lawyer raises his hands with a very false smile “it was not my intention to make anyone uncomfortable.”

«Bullshit,» Anya decides to herself. She couldn’t have said it out loud because of the way her teeth are chattering.

“Therefore, I’m inclined to say that my client was nothing more than a victim of his circumstances. In fact! You know what I think? Faced with the imminent need to divert the direction of the Tulpar so that it wouldn’t hit the asteroid fragments, my client was the one who was in the cockpit at the time. It suffered a mechanical error, due to a ship that has already been established as defective, which caused the imminent crash! At the time of the events, it would seem that he was the one who screwed up the ship’s direction…but nothing could be further from the truth.” Anya drops her gaze on Jimmy. She expects to see him smiling, or looking in her direction, or both at the same time…but no. The brown-haired man follows Bob with his gaze attentively and, almost, with surprise, as if he had just woken up in a room after a monumental drunken binge, and he didn't remember absolutely anything about his life before the amnesia. In that case, his lawyer would be like a teacher explaining to him things that happened and that he doesn't even remember having done. She would almost prefer to see him smiling sarcastically. She has rarely seen him smile... although there were not plenty of reasons to smile inside the Tulpar. “Of course, I have heard the statement that there was a belief inside the ship that it was Mr. Curly who caused the deviation and the crash, but this can only have been the classic shame. Mr. Zaci felt immense guilt for not having been able to redirect the ship and, consequently, of causing the injuries to his partner. But, how can he be blamed? He was piloting a time bomb!” Robert spreads his hands out to the sides, looking around, before clearing his throat “now, your honor, to deal with the matters of negligent murder and accidental murder…I would like to call Miss Musume to the stand.”

Victoria whispers something in her ear at that moment, and she swears Curly does too, but her brain is unable to transform either whisper into words. She blinks with difficulty, her eyes suddenly drying out, almost falling over the table when she tries to grab onto something and manage to stand up. Below her, a one-person earthquake tries to throw her to the floor, but she manages to get up completely and walk, over that earthquake, away from the table and towards the stand, all after hearing the statement from the judge.

Robert smiles at her, but the expression on Anya's face must be a poem, since he doesn't insist too much on kindness either. She circles the bench and takes the same chair she occupied the day before, her left palm falling on the cover of the Bible. The judge, to her right, asks her if she will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

What other option does she have?

When she removes her palm from the cover of the Bible, a wet handprint remains on the leather.

“Thank you, Miss Musume,” Robert slightly bows his head. His extreme chivalry only succeeds in getting on her nerves. “I was dying to be able to talk to you.”

“I am not.”

That reply comes from within her, provoking a general response of jocular whispers among the members of the jury. She sees Manfred smile, Victoria shake her head and, to her right, the judge hits the gavel, silencing them all in a second. Anya knows that it was not the best reply she could have made, but it is enough for her to have gotten that out of her system.

“Everyone here knows what your work was inside the Tulpar” Robert, masterfully, doesn't even seem to notice the derogatory comment “You were the nurse on board the Tulpar. The nurse with no further training than that provided by Pony Express, which, if we were to assume, we can say was quite pitiful. You also failed to get into medical school, but boy did you try... How many times did you try to get into medical school, Miss Musume?”

“Objection!” Victoria bellows at that moment, getting up “Mr. Gillian is just trying...!”

“Calm down, Victoria! Are you going to get upset at every question I ask your client? It almost seems like this is your first trial!” Robert smiles from ear to ear and, despite the distance, Anya can hear Victoria sliding her teeth “but well, since answering a question that simple could...”

“Eight” Anya exhales that into the microphone, silencing the lawyer's voice at that very moment. Instantly, more than one murmur rises and he, who knows for sure what she is referring to, does not miss the opportunity to sink the knife a little deeper.

“Eight what, Miss Musume?”

“I tried to enter medical school eight times, and I failed.”

“And don't you think that the universe was screaming in your face to dedicate yourself to anything else, except the health field?” he raises his dark eyebrows, and she does not know what to do but hold his gaze “I understand that Miss Musume's lawyers have managed to take all the blame off of her during yesterday's trial. I will not try to appeal, I am aware that it is not possible. The decision has been made, but today I cannot help but bring this back to the surface, because, what was someone like you doing, Miss Musume, attending in the medical room? Poorly educated in both physical and psychological health, did it never occur to you that perhaps you would have to be anywhere else but on a spaceship millions of miles away?”

“…as you said when defending Jimmy's choice to almost kill us all…I was unemployed and desperate. If that defense covers him, I imagine it would have to cover me as well” whispers rise from the jury members, and Robert rubs his hands.

“So you agree, Miss Musume, with my defense? Do you think it is logical and truthful? If you decide that it covers you as well…”

“I don't…”

“Or! You could also dismiss it and consider it pathetic. It would take away credibility from my client, at least from your point of view, but also from you. It would put on your shoulders all the responsibility that comes with knowing that you are an incapable person who voluntarily accepted a position for which you were not at all qualified. What do you prefer, Miss Musume? Choose.”

Anya opens her mouth, but closes it quickly. Her tongue feels dry, her throat closed. Her eyes tremble and she barely resists the impulse to look in the direction of Victoria's table, certain that the gesture would only embarrass her further. The silence lasts less than ten seconds, which seem like hours, until Robert clicks his tongue.

“Okay, Miss Musume, you have the right to remain silent” the man smiles so much at that moment, that the former nurse was close to fainting “with that covered, and before starting the interrogation, I would like to make another matter clear. During the alleged accidental murder and the alleged homicide, you were the only person to give testimony at that time, right? Mr. Curly was lying in the medical room since the day of the accident and, for obvious reasons, he could not move. Therefore, we only have your version of the events and my client's version, of everything that happened during those months until the return of the Tulpar, is that true?”

“…yes.”

“Good. I wanted to clarify this because Mr. Curly's testimony covers events from the past, long before he and my client started working for Pony Express, and I wanted to dismiss all that extra information.” Victoria seemed about to sit up at that moment, but Robert pointed his finger at her, like a teacher scolding an insolent child. “Do you have proof, Victoria? Proof that your client's statement about his past and any facts that might reveal any kind of information about my client's psychology is true? Or are we just supposed to believe it because you swear on God's behalf that it's true? Do you have that proof?” Victoria doesn't answer, just purses her lips and Robert, happy with himself, turns on his own feet and walks, animated to the other end of the stand. “Which is curious, my friends, if I may say so. In the holy scriptures, swearing in the name of God is punished, but here we are... Anyway! To begin with, Miss Musume… according to the statement filed involving the charge against my client for involuntary manslaughter… the alleged victim, Mr. Daisuke Akida, suffered from injuries… severe lacerations, according to the autopsy, from protruding metals and electrical burns. I will not ask you if the nature of the injuries is correct, because that is what the medical professionals who performed the autopsy on his corpse are for, is that not so? However, the members of the jury should know that it was not the injuries that ended the life of young Akida… barely an adult, but a fulminating laceration to the head executed by the axe on board. Does all this resonate with you, Miss Musume?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see the state the young man was in?”

“B-Bearly, I…”

“Stop!” Robert raises a hand and remains silent for a second or two, before smiling “sure… let's go back. Roughly the moment before the accident that almost claimed young Akida's life. Where were you in those moments before, Miss Musume?”

“In the medical room.”

“And what were you doing there?”

“I was locked in tight,” she almost spits into the microphone, leaning forward slightly, “because I was dead scared to be out near the deceased and, above all, near your client.” She hears whispers in the courtroom area, but not too many. Robert is not intimidated, smiling a little and waving a hand, dismissing the extra information like someone shooing away a fly.

“Do you know how young Akida was injured?”

“He went through one of the Tulpar's ventilation ducts… he entered from the maintenance room, but that duct was in bad condition.”

“And you heard Mr. Akida say that he would do this?”

“Dai… Mr. Akida and your client talked about it by the door of the medical room, so yes, I heard everything very clearly. Jimmy wanted to enter the medical room, but I didn't allow him, so he tried to force his way in or find another way, and the only other way into the medical room was through the ventilation duct.”

“And why would he be so desperate to do something like that, Miss Musume?”

“I don't know! Ask him!”

“What I suspect… is that my client feared for the life of Mr. Curly, his good friend” the lawyer's words almost push her to tear her hair out “my client would be more than aware by that point of your lack of skills and the… erratic nature of suddenly locking yourself in the room with a dying man on the stretcher. Anyone would be scared.”

“I don't think I had such a lack of skills if that dying man is now alive!” she can't help but shout into the microphone. More whispers rise from the crowd in the courtroom, and the judge has to call for order with the gavel again. Robert, unaffected, shakes his head.

“Of course, Miss Musume, but right now we are talking about Mr. Akida's death. Can you not talk about yourself for a moment?” The words hit her so hard that she can barely hold back her urge to stifle an exclamation “Could you reproduce, as accurately as possible, the words of the conversation between my client and Mr. Akida?”

“They… well, they wanted to enter the medical room, as I said. Daisuke mentioned that there was another entrance through the ventilation duct, but it was too dangerous, something that Swansea himself had already told us back then…” “I think” she thinks to herself, but does not commit the imprudence of saying it out loud “…so they were both aware of the danger of going into that place. But Jimmy urged him to do it. Daisuke hesitated, but finally agreed.”

“So, in your own words, Miss Musume, Mr. Akida chose to go through the ducts of his own free will.”

“Of his own free will?” She feels the color rise to her face “Are you not hearing me? At that moment, your client was our captain. He was aware that he was sending Daisuke into a death trap and he had no interest in his well being.”

“Your Honor…” Robert clasps his hands together, then turns to the others. “…members of the jury, if you are trapped in a ship in the middle of outer space, with the highest probability being a slow and painful death, would you really care to follow the orders given by a superior? Wouldn’t you believe, sooner rather than later, that all that stuff about ranks, in the vastness of space, with the grim reaper breathing down your necks, is stupid and pointless to continue? Because all this wasn’t during the first months after the accident, when they could still harbor a hope of rescue… no, no. Everything had already gone to hell. What was Mr. Akida doing following orders? What was the alternative? Losing his job? He had already lost it. Dying? He was already doomed!”

“He was a boy!” she can't help but scream into the microphone, his eyes bloodshot “It was the first time in his entire life that he was so far away from the care of his parents!”

“Being a mama's boy is no justification for wanting to condemn an ​​innocent adult, Miss Musume.”

“What!?”

“Your Honor, please, this is an outrage!” Victoria stands up for the umpteenth time, pointing at Robert with the palm of her hand “He is going too far with my client! Simply…!”

“Denied” the judge replies, bringing down the gavel. At the redhead's altered look, the judge worsens his tone of voice “Mrs. Elson, Miss Musume is the only witness we have about these events along with the testimony given by Mr. Zaci. It is pertinent that she answers these questions. If you think she is not ready to testify, you would not have brought her to today's trial” and although Anya knows it is true, she cannot help but grit her teeth, while the judge returns his gaze to Robert “continue, Mr. Gillian.”

“With pleasure, your honor” the lawyer nods once, returning his attention to Anya who, trembling, took a short sip from the glass of water. It was warm, as if it had not been changed since the day before. Would that be possible? “resuming before the annoying interruption… you claim that Mr. Akida sinned of innocence. Whatever the case, it is a fact that he decided to go to the ventilation ducts on his own. Do you intend to refute this with any feasible fact, Miss Musume? Do you have evidence that leads us to believe that Mr. Akida was threatened in some way to commit the acts he committed, or will you try to push us into some sort of… cyclone of morality that has no place in a courtroom?”

«Stop losing your temper» she urges herself «If you behave erratically, you will be giving the jury members reasons to believe that your opinion is biased or, even worse, that you are crazy. Answer his questions as calmly as possible. You'll have time to insult him when you get back to the hotel.»

“Silent again? Fine,” Anya just squeezes her hands together, aware that she's being covered by the wood of the stand, “let's speed things up... Mr. Akida climbs up the ducts, he's badly injured, as I had already assumed. He doesn't reach the medical room and is taken away from there, let's assume, by Mr. Zaci and Mr. Hotard. He's taken to the main lobby, where my client's and Miss Musume's statements agree. In my client's words, Mr. Akida was very badly injured, a fact that is corroborated by the post-mortem inspection. It could be said that, after his injuries, his death was a fact. There was still time to return to the Earth's atmosphere, he would bleed to death before arriving... the fault attributed to my client is having tried, in a moment of desperation, to use mouthwash to disinfect Mr. Akida's wounds. Mouthwash is, on average, about twenty-seven percent alcohol in its contents. So it is understandable that my client would try to help his subordinate in this way. Yes, the alcohol percentage is low, and anyway, the sugar in mouthwash negates its disinfectant effects… but can we blame him? He had nothing else at hand because, as already mentioned, there was no way to access the medical room. My client did not order Mr. Akida at gunpoint to get into the ventilation duct, he did it of his own free will. And then he tried to save him from injuries from which, even without the mouthwash, he would not have been able to escape death. As far as I am concerned, my client did what little he could to save the boy's life… and he should not be blamed for failing in an act that was not his responsibility.”

Robert remains silent, approaching his table to take a long sip of water. Anya takes advantage of this window of time to glance at her desk. Unlike the day before, when they were looking at each other with confidence, a shadow seems to have fallen over her side of the courtroom. Grant keeps saying something to Victoria in a low voice. The redhead nods slowly, but looks almost absent, just turning the pages of her file. And Manfred, on the far right, is the only one who looks at her and clenches a fist tightly within her field of vision. “We have rehearsed” he seems to say. “Hold on.”

“But it wasn't the loss of blood that ended up taking Mr. Akida, and so, we come closer to the second crime that my client is trying to be charged with. The murder of Mr. Hotard” out of the corner of her eye, she guesses the exclamation that Swansea's widow lets out “it was he who was responsible for killing, since there is no other word to describe it, Mr. Akida. This is in my client's words. I could ask you your view on this fact, Miss Musume, but you were locked in the medical room, so you have no way of corroborating it or denying it. Neither that, nor any of the events that followed.”

“I wouldn't try to deny it either” Anya exhales. A phrase that could mean support for Robert, but nothing could be further from the truth. Pulling a person out of their suffering requires a certain level of bravery and, above all, sweetness. She is sure that Swansea, despite how much he denied it, ended up taking a liking to Daisuke. He probably couldn't bear to see him writhe in pain, bleeding and suffering, and decided that a quick death would have been more dignified for the boy.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, in the words of my client and without denial from Miss Musume, it was Mr. Hotard who killed young Akida. How, you ask? With a blow to the head with the ship's axe. A single blow, accurate and deep, and the boy was dead. We can sit and debate whether it was an act of kindness to put him out of his suffering, but the truth is that I am not Mr. Hotard's lawyer, nor is this a high school debate club. But why was Mr. Hotard capable of committing such a cold-blooded act? Because he was already deeply disturbed, esteemed members of the jury! Miss Anya... I gather from your testimony, corroborated by my client, that you had to feed on the mouthwash that was part of the cargo arriving at Earth. Is that true?”

“Yes” the black-haired woman draws a line with her lips. She still has to take medicine for her stomach, kidneys and liver. Of course it was true.

“And, as already mentioned, the mouthwash contains a certain percentage of alcohol. What kind of alcohol? Well, ethanol, the same type of alcohol used in alcoholic beverages. And do you know who had a long history of alcohol addiction problems? Mr. Hotard, of course” a murmur rises, again, from the jury seats “Miss Musume, Mr. Hotard consumed mouthwash, right?”

“We all consumed mouthwash” she replies, although the truth is that, of all of them, Jimmy seems to have been the only one who refrained from putting the liquid in his stomach, at least in the faces of others. She kept the fact to herself, however. It would give him an image of self-control that she does not want him to have.

“But not everyone on board had a history of alcohol addiction, unlike Mr. Hotard, of course. It’s a dangerous mix, ladies and gentlemen, like drugs and alcohol. Locked in a terrible environment with a bleak future and gallons and gallons of alcohol at their fingertips…like clean addicts who relapse, overdose is almost a certainty. In an almost fanciful way, we could say that Mr. Hotard’s last glimpse into his heart was to recognize, in some way, the suffering that Mr. Akida was going through” to her right, she hears Christine try to say something, to complain. Let out an expletive, perhaps. Any attempt is silenced by Grant, aware that they are in no position to demonstrate disorder “…after murdering Mr. Akida, my client claims that Mr. Hotard began to rain expletives on him and to chase him, axe in hand, to the end of one of the corridors. They struggled, and my client managed to wrench the axe from his hands and use it to defend himself. Are we now going to blame a man for using his right to self-defense?”

“Can I say something?”

Anya's voice causes a slight pop in the microphone on the stand. She has managed an almost miraculous act: catching Robert off guard. She sees him blink, surely without expecting Anya to intercede, aware that she did not see the event and that she has no proof of what happened. She will not try to act as if that were the case either, but…

“It is true that I was not there to see the deaths of Daisuke and Swansea” she continues, without waiting for permission from the lawyer. But the judge does not tell her to shut up, a detail that is enough for her “but I did live with them for months, and that is a fact. A fact, like the ones you like so much, Mr. Gillian” she almost smiles, but she resists the impulse “Daisuke was a young boy who was forced to take the internship by order of his parents. Even so, he tried to show the best of himself when it came to work. He may not have had much interest in mechanics at the beginning, but as the days went by he tried to take his internship more seriously. He failed, but he had a good heart. He tried to project an image of security that, of course, was not true, because he was a young and inexperienced boy surrounded by adults with more experience in life. This, of course, makes him highly impressionable. We all, when we leave adulthood, think we have things figured out. But, as the years go by, we only realize how wrong we are. Nobody has anything figured out between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine, except the fact that they seem to have been following an upside-down map their whole life. And Swansea, like his mentor, was stern, it's true... but he wasn't violent. Not at all. He disowned Daisuke and sometimes insulted him, but the two formed a bond, almost like father and son. In Swansea's outbursts, when we thought all was lost, Daisuke was never one of his targets…and in fact, he had been carefully removing the synthetic foam that covered one of the cryogenic capsules for months, in order to give the boy an extra chance of, perhaps, being rescued at some point in the next twenty years. Swansea knew very well who he shared a ship with, so it makes sense that he tried to attack Jimmy. He knew he had tried to kill us all, that he had no qualms about placing all the blame on Curly, and he knew that Daisuke's death was his fault. He knew the kind of cruelty his client was capable of long before, I told him so myself!”

“What did you tell him, Miss Musume?”

“That your client RAPED me!”

The charge against Jimmy had been cited by the judge at the start of the trial. However, the reaction of those present was gasps and giddy whispers. Anya waits for some reaction from Jimmy, anything, but the guy barely shows any signs of having heard her words. She looks away to the right, and sees the table of her allies in relative stress, although not too much. Victoria seems to be on the lookout for the slightest opportunity to sneak into the conversation, but that whole scenario is nothing they haven't anticipated and rehearsed to the point of exhaustion. However, the rehearsals at the law firm were somewhat different from Robert's tirade. Manfred and Victoria are excellent lawyers but, as they mentioned, trials require a certain level of theatricality and smooth talk... and Robert is in the big leagues.

“Very well... I suppose that's the only thing we have left in the inkwell...” the brown-haired man puts his palms together and brings the tips of his fingers to his lips, as if he were wishing, praying for strength to some deity of his preference. Who would support the prayers of a man like that? Satan? No, not even him. He's supposed to be in charge of punishing people like Gillian “…that was the first thing that happened, in theory. Miss Musume, when did the alleged abuse happen? The night after you found out you were going to be fired, right?”

“Yes” Anya doesn't know what to answer anymore. She doesn't know if an affirmation or a denial would be better for him or not, but what she does understand is that lying after having affirmed something in her statement would not help her at all. She has to stick to the facts as narrated. It's too late to back out now, and she is aware that when a witness asks to modify a given testimony, a red flag goes up before the eyes of the members of the jury.

“And how is it possible that my client was able to commit, in theory, such an act without attracting attention? The rooms were all in the same hallway. All you had to do was scream a little for help for someone to come to your aid.”

“Because he drugged me” she spits, and hears more and more whispers “in the recipe book in the kitchen there was a step-by-step instruction on how to make mocktails with the dehydrated ingredients on board. The day we found out about the firing was also Grant’s bi-birthday, so your client…he asked Curly for the code reader so he could access the sweetener and make the drinks. None of us were looking. He slipped zolpidem into my drink, a higher than recommended dose…I don’t know if he chopped up the pills first, or if he threw them into the drink and they dissolved. The point is, that’s what he did.”

“And did you see Mr. Zaci when he put those…those pills in your mocktail glass?”

“No, but that night my body went completely numb. It listed at the bottom of the list the effects of an overdose and its side effects. And I know what you’re going to say!” she raises a hand, just as Robert raised his mouth “you’re going to suggest that I’m lying because, despite having been given several sleeping pills, I wasn’t asleep. As illogical as it may sound, one of the side effects of sleeping pills is insomnia, so it was nothing out of the ordinary. You can ask any pharmacist.”

“And how could Mr. Zaci have access to the medication, Miss Anya?”

“Because he left the main lobby for a while, after we heard the news!”

“This zolpidem… they are sleeping pills, I imagine. Had you prescribed them to Mr. Zaci before?”

“No.”

“Zolpidem pills… do they specify their function on the box?”

“N-No.”

“So, how could Mr. Zaci possibly know which medication to take?”

“Because I did prescribe those pills to Curly. He had been having trouble falling asleep for weeks, and we were only allowed five hours of rest, so he couldn't afford to lack sleep in a position like his. Curly and your client spent hours in the cockpit, so there's a chance Curly mentioned it to him. And don't you dare say it's not possible.”

“No, no… you're right, Miss Musume, it's possible, but… I'm having a hard time formulating the idea in my mind” Robert rubs his hands, and Anya forces herself to hold on to the edge of the table “I mean… in a desperate situation, I understand the erratic impulse to prefer death over nothingness and defeat, but… Why would Mr. Zaci do something like that? Suddenly, act on an impulse, suddenly remember the name of the pills, drug you and then go to your room and rape you…”

«I don't know» she decides to herself «Ask your fucking client for explanations, not me.»

“Also, it's strange especially because… in your statement there's no mention of sexual harassment of any kind on the part of my client towards you. Comments in bad taste, inappropriate approaches… Or is there something you've left out?”

The nurse's lower lip moves, sweeping the room with her gaze. Her gaze falls on the lawyers and Curly, who nods slowly. It's stupid. She'll just look ridiculous. They'll either take her for an idiot or a particularly sensitive woman, and she doesn't like either of those options in the least. But if she had to say something...

“Your client enjoyed dismissing my work, especially during the psychological evaluation sessions,” she replies as quickly as she can, clinging to the thin thread of courage that takes hold of her, “and in one of the sessions he answered my questions by saying that he felt a sexual impulse towards cartoon horses.” A cloud of comments rises, again. Robert blinks, and beyond that, Jimmy snorts something and brings his chained hands from the front to the back of his head. The judge calls for order with the gavel. “I know this place is full of men and you'll find it totally stupid, but it's not. Because I was alone in the medical room listening to that kind of crap. I don't know what interpretation of sexual harassment the people present have…”

“Miss Musume…”

“I haven't finished answering your question!” she shrieks, before he can interrupt her any further “I don't know what idea of ​​sexual harassment the majority of the men present have!, but I assure you that it's not just the…the most violent version of a man that can qualify as sexual harassment. It's those kinds of comments…glances, personal questions…it may have been the only comment, and perhaps most of you don't even take it seriously, but it was something that came out of his mouth and was recorded in one of the psychological evaluation papers. And if I'm lying, you can call your client and ask him to explain how much of a liar I am. If you dare.”

More whispers. Robert spins on his feet, looking at Jimmy, surely waiting for some sign that would indicate that Anya is lying or exaggerating. But the brunette looks away, limiting himself to licking his upper teeth. When Robert turned to look at her again, however, the stunned expression had completely disappeared from his face.

“Very well. As you claim, if that sentence is written in medical records, it would be something that could be proven… I won’t argue with its veracity, but going from a silly comment to sexual abuse is too big a leap, especially for a man with a clean record.”

“I doubt he has a clean record. No one would dream of drugging a person’s drink overnight. I’d hazard a guess that he’s done it before.”

“But your view on that aspect has no validity, Miss Musume. Your assumptions have no validity when it comes to a person’s criminal history. You can assume all you want, and for your convenience, you will of course want to paint my client in a harmful light. But it is a fact that my client has no prior complaints, much less a more serious criminal record, of sexual abuse. Not even harassment. Just as it is a fact that there is no evidence that he drugged you. There is no medical evaluation, and the count of missing pills in the medical room… Well, you said it yourself. Mr. Curly had them prescribed to help him sleep. And you will say that, of course, you have no proof that you were drugged with these sleeping pills because it has been a long time… and, exactly, that is a fact that you have to accept. You also have no physical injuries. Nothing that could prove…”

“Your client got me pregnant.”

If before the whispers were almost automatic, now they rise with greater vigor. The judge has to bang the gavel more than once to get silence, and that's even though the room is much emptier than during the trial the day before.

“Order!”

“That's true, there is that...” Robert affirms without looking up from the palm of his hand, as if it were a matter of no importance to the trial “...my client got you pregnant. That, however, proves that there was a sexual encounter between the both of you, not that it was forced by the adulteration of a drink.”

“What do you mean...?”

“Miss Musume, where is that baby? If you didn't lose it on the trip.”

“You know very well that I didn't lose it. When we got off the Tulpar, I was nine months pregnant. I was two weeks away from giving birth” her teeth chatter, and she remembers her lawyer's words at that moment “...but it was stillborn. Dehydration and hunger got the better of it. Now, if you dare to suggest that your client is not to blame for it’s existence...”

“I wouldn't dare to suggest such a thing” when Robert looks up from the palm of his hand, he smiles. A shark smile so violent that Anya almost, almost, falls on her back “but I dare to say something else... Why are you trying to dissuade the intelligence of the members of the jury with that lie, Miss Musume?”

“What... what are you talking about?”

It's as if someone put a hand behind her back and ripped out her heart. Robert, smiling, turns on his heels and approaches his folder, removing a few papers. Photocopies, with the unmistakable blue logo of the hospital where Anya was admitted for almost a month. She is unable to hide it, opening her eyes wide and turning to look at Victoria and Manfred, who lean over the table and copy her expression. At that moment, Anya remembers one of the phrases that Victoria herself told her when they met at the law firm, at the beginning of the previous month: “You don't know how much the most loyal employee crows once you get to the right price!” Apparently, it was not an unethical technique used only by the two of them.

“Here it is… yes, issued from the hospital where they were present for a month… and under all legal criteria, requested for evidence in a trial…” Robert clears his throat, looking at the paper “yes, here it is… birth certificate. Nova Musume, female… born on August twentieth, nineteen sixty-nine, at eleven in the morning… wow, she shares a birthday with her daddy. What a lovely coincidence!” Anya slightly tilts her head, until her eyes focus on the trembling palms of her hands. Little by little, her throat is getting smaller and her eyes are filling with tears “born in Denver, yes... she weighed two kilos, poor thing... and in observations... Vanishing twin syndrome? What a pity. Were you pregnant with twins and lost one, Miss Musume? I'm so sorry.”

“Objection!” Not content with shouting, Manfred slams his palm hard on the table. The roar of a much deeper voice draws an exclamation from the judge “He is clearly using a traumatic situation of our client to pressure her! It is disrespectful! Do your job, damn it!” Robert must have managed to touch a sensitive nerve in the lawyer, since Anya did not expect the man to be capable of reacting with such vigor. The lawyer hits the gavel and points his hand at Robert, who barely seems to have flinched from the shout.

“Mr. Gillian, just…”

“No need, this point is covered” smiling, Robert returns the copy of the birth certificate to his folder of papers, clapping his hands together “well, this is curious, yes… Why would Miss Musume dare to lie about something so stupidly obvious? I have a theory. I don't want you to think I'm trying to insult Miss Musume's humanity. No, no…we all make mistakes, men and women alike…we screw up. Sometimes, we believe in ourselves too much. Other times, we are too selfish. Let’s back up a bit and allow me to explain my view on one thing…Do you really find it so impossible to think that my client decided to make that sexual comment in front of Miss Musume because he felt…comfortable with her? Confident? And tell me, is it really so impossible to think that Miss Musume decided to create this whole…story of sexual abuse to feel less ashamed of the fact that she had a sexual encounter with my client thinking that, perhaps, she would have better opportunities upon returning to Earth? This has happened many times, in any line of work…when you see a person for so many hours, for so long, it is normal for love to blossom. Neither my client nor Miss Musume were married to anyone on Earth, so why not? Of course, the idea of ​​becoming pregnant didn't cross her mind... and I imagine, too, that my client wouldn't be happy about the idea of ​​being a father when he just lost his job. Who would be? So, resentful of this unrequited love affair, Miss Musume decided that the most logical thing to do would be to invent this story of sexual abuse in order to shield her tarnished honor a little... I'm not stoning you for that, Miss Musume, not at all! But understand... we can't punish a man in a trial for a moral error... If my client broke your heart, I'm afraid it's something you should deal with yourself on your own. Have you tried therapy yet? I've heard it works wonders on women's hysterics.”

Anya falls behind the stand, covering her face with her arms. She lied to Victoria, she can't conceive of another explanation. She's unable to understand it. «It’s not fair» is the only thought that takes hold of her, biting hard on the fabric of her suit sleeves so as not to start screaming «It’s not fair, I’m telling the truth. This is the truth. They can’t believe what he is saying, can they? This can’t be happening, God…»

“Your Honor, members of the jury…” Robert’s voice comes to her from afar. She feels like she’s about to faint “…I know it’s a depressing scenario, but the truth must always prevail over everything else. If there was something that could prove my client’s cruelty… but there’s nothing, isn’t there? I’m sorry, but… it’s a fact that my client is not an abuser.”

“Order! We’ll take a fifteen-minute break!” the judge also sounds like he’s outside the room, speaking in a barely audible way “please, someone come over to assist Miss Musume…”

With her head buried in the bottom of a dark, cold sea, Anya can barely manage to move when she feels Victoria's hands under her armpits, helping her to stand up. Her knees betray her and break forward, almost making her fall flat on her face if it weren't for the redhead's strength. She whispers words of encouragement in her ear, but the former nurse barely understands any of what the lawyer is saying, stumbling on her own feet as she steps down from the stand, and allowing herself to be dragged along as she walks out of the room.

Outside, the silence of the Supreme Court doesn't offer her much help either. Her knees move back and forth as she walks, and she can barely manage to murmur "Restroom," although that seems to be where Victoria was taking her all along. She tells her to splash her face, but Anya rushes into one of the stalls (luckily for her, they were all empty, and spotless), and falls to her knees, clutching the toilet bowl as she begins to vomit.

It's like going back in time. All over again, all back. The darkness of her room, the numbness of her body, the sticky male voice quoting a string of shits. It comes back with the clarity of water, almost drowning between the vomit she expels and the hiccups of crying, coughing before resuming vomiting.
The pain of her body being defiled, the flesh withering and the blood oozing from the depths of her entrails. The trace of filth, following her wherever she went. The lacerating pain, like red-hot nails in her bones, every time she sat down. The coldness of the shower as she washed herself, desperate, unable to do it properly because of the pain. When it touched her skin, the water burned like acid and she couldn't stop crying. Or remembering. "There's nothing I can do," practically the same mantra Curly repeated to her in outer space, comes back to her now with force. "There's nothing I can do," and Victoria will tell her the same, she's sure. She just waits for her to stop vomiting. "There's nothing I can do."

“Calm down, calm down...” but the lawyer only caresses her back and brushes her short hair off her face, soaked with sweat, without a hint of disgust. She arranges the short jet-black locks behind her ears. “He's an unscrupulous and cruel man. Don't let him do this to you...”

“You d-don't u-understand Vi-Victoria,” she stammers, spitting against the water already loaded with filth from the toilet. Her nose and throat burn. “It wa-was too far.”

“He's just as cruel as he is intelligent. He knew how to pressure you. He called you to testify first against the other two charges, just to exhaust you and be able to destroy you with the one he really cared about denying” Victoria's voice is full of anger, but her hands only purify sweetness, holding her shoulders “however, he made a mistake... by stating that there is no proof that James is an abuser.”

“I don't think so” Anya stretches her lips upwards in a grimace, before pressing her fingers against her nose and exhaling air out forcefully, trying to clear whatever was left there “there is no...”

“I'll call Curly to testify when we return from break. I don't know if I can... make them doubt the other two murder charges. Maybe I can sow doubt in the minds of the jury, and worse is nothing. But the sexual abuse will be a fact, and he will go to prison for a long time.”

“Curly? Bu-but he didn't see anything, Robert will say that he colluded with me to lie about my abuse or some crap like that. Curly has no proof other than what I told him in space… And that's not even proof, just testimony! What good is testimony without…?”

“You wait, Anya. Anyway… it's going to be a terrible thing to hear.”

She takes her time, wetting her face and rinsing her mouth, before returning to the courtroom. She no longer has anything in her stomach, and yet she feels a miniature hurricane trapped inside, spinning around at full speed. Her head goes from here to there and, when she sees Curly waiting for them both at the door, she collapses on his chest without the strength to do anything else.

“I'm sorry, Anya.”

“No, shut your mouth” she barely mumbles. Inside her mouth, a candy that Victoria gave her dances back and forth. She shakes her head and barely moves her bloodshot eyes away “this is all his fault. It's his fault. I can't stand it anymore…”

“It will end soon” the blond affirms this with all the vigor of his heart, taking Anya's pale and haggard face between his trembling hands “and I can swear to you that.”

As they walk back into the courtroom, Anya watches as the stenographer sets something up in the middle of the room, pointing at the blank white wall next to the witness's testimonial area. As she passes by, she notices that it's a slide projector. To one side, a manila folder with the hospital's blue seal. Manfred stands by the projector, like a professor about to show old battle photos, while Victoria, Grant, and Anya return to their seats. Christine, Swansea's widow, has decided to move her chair closer to them. She looks extremely distressed as she takes one of the black-haired woman's hands, and even though she can't get a single word out, Anya nods. She instantly understands what she's trying to say.

“Your Honor,” Victoria approaches the stand. She looks more composed, but no less furious. Anya turns her face away, before thinking about it too much, towards Robert and Jimmy's table. The two of them are expectant, as if the redhead were there to put on a personal show for the two of them. The only one who looks more serious is the police officer guarding Jimmy, sitting between him and his lawyer “before we went to recess, we all witnessed a cruel and repulsive disparagement of my client, Miss Musume. Mr. Gillian has used our time to try to insult the intelligence of the members of the jury. I do not blame him, understanding that he does his job, but it is not my ethical duty to allow him to get away with it. He states, without mincing words, that my client's complaint is nothing more than an attempt to hurt a man out of spite. This statement, as violent and distorted as it is, is based on soggy foundations. And this is proven by a single testimony and the evidence that confirms it, evidence as my colleague, Mr. Gillian, loves so much. Your Honor, I would like to call Mr. Grant Curly to the stand.”

“Go ahead” the judge nods slightly. Curly, who didn't even sit down, aware that he would be called to testify, walks slowly towards the stand. She follows him with her eyes, noticing how the members of the jury look at him, still stunned by his appearance, and whisper among themselves. Good heavens, don't they have the respect to hide their reactions? But Grant doesn't look at them, limiting himself to taking the seat, ascending the two steps with express difficulty. Anya swallows and looks, again, at the enemy table... only to notice the uncertainty on Robert's face. Whatever Curly is going to tell, it's clear that James didn't tell his lawyer.

“Mr. Curly...” once the blond places his left hand on the cover of the Bible, the judge turns slightly towards him “Do you swear to tell the truth, only the truth and nothing but the truth?”

“I swear” and without further ado, Curly crawls close to the microphone, his voice distilling an enviable firmness “this happened, more or less, a month before Miss Musume sought refuge with me inside the medical room. It was…”

———

…late at night. Or at least that’s how it feels. Lying on the stretcher, devoid of any stimulation other than the screen, fossilized in the perpetual dusk, Grant has lost track of time. He understands that “the night” happens during the absolute absence of human sounds…because there is always a sound on the Tulpar. The low, almost gravelly hum, like a mother singing a lullaby. A convalescent mother, starving and cold, aware that soon she will not have the strength to calm her son’s cries.

And the son begins to cry. He has been enduring the pain for a long time, claws that sink into his flesh, into every tiny corner of his being. The bandages, soaked with blood and swollen with oozing pus, cannot be changed, basically because there are no clean bandages left and there is nothing on board to clean the used bandages with.
He does not want to cry, or scream, but it is impossible for him to hold back. So, even in the pain of it, he writhes on the gurney and screams, his wail echoing off the metal walls of the ship, like the monster at the end of the tunnel. A baby in the room down the hall. What he would give to be able to treat his pain on his own! But the opioid in the bags is gone and everything seems to hurt even more now, almost like some sort of side effect of withdrawal, of an addiction he never even willingly approached. And now he writhes, screams, cries… until the echo of the furious footsteps bounces back and silences his crying, causing a new emotion to replace the pain in his chest.

Fear.

“Why are you still crying?” Jimmy’s face looms over him. His beard and hair have grown out, for lack of anything to cut them with, and he lets out a sigh as heavy as lead. His grey-green eyes have lost all their shine “Why do you cling to being a nuisance until the last day, Grant? We're going to die and you keep crying for your fucking pills... you'll hold on until the end being a fucking selfish man.”

Curly doesn't answer. He can't and, anyway, he wouldn't know what to say at a time like this. If he had all his physical faculties, he would have reduced his best friend to a battered mountain of bruised flesh a long time ago, strapped to a stretcher or locked in one of the cryogenic capsules. Fuck the latent dangers and fuck the repercussions of returning to Earth. He would expel him through a duct to the outside of empty and dead space if only they had something like that on the ship.

Therefore, he just cries, his heart twisting hard inside his chest. The man disappears from his field of vision and, just when Curly had begun to relax, he appears again, with one of those terrible pills in his hand.
He opens his jaw, tense as never before… but, as soon as Jimmy's fingers slip inside his mouth, his throat closes. It's automatic, a reflex of the flesh. He hears the brunette click his tongue and try again… but he achieves nothing more than to snatch muffled noises and gags, increasing the volume of his crying.

“Fuck! Swallow the fucking pill, Grant!” he feels the pressure against the burned flesh, and his only eye fills with tears that, sunken in the aftermath, hurt like acid “This is all your fault! Nobody forced you to run into the cockpit! I tried to get you out of there, but it seems you wanted to die more than I did. Couldn't you be a coward for once? Couldn't you not be a fucking hero like a normal guy!?” out of his mind, perhaps. Absolutely indifferent to the prospect of being heard and discovered in the lie he's been dragging around for months. He removes his hand from his mouth and hits him with his fist in the throat so hard that drops of blood fly out of his lips, panting as if he had tried to perform a very exhausting task “very well... You know what? Very well... you asked for this. And if you don't want to take the pill the easy way, then it will have to be the hard way...”

Jimmy disappears from his vision again, but not completely. He notices the silhouettes. More than anything, the red light from the screen reflecting off of him and bouncing off his only functional pupil. He feels the fabric of his robe peeling off, below his waist, and it hurts like ripping off a band-aid but multiplied by a thousand.

“Curly, I promise you…this hurts me more than it will hurt you…”

Like red-hot irons, Jimmy's fingers sink hard into the wounded flesh of his thighs, almost peeling off the skin that is trying to heal with difficulty. The blond sees nothing, but feels everything.
He screams, cries, and the pain only peels off when, with the pill held between his index and ring fingers, Jimmy forces his way inside him.

Everything around him catches fire.

IT HURTS.

Jimmy forces those fingers deeper and deeper.

IT HURTS.

“It doesn't matter how much you cry, Curly. No one will come. Anya hates the sound of crying, she thinks I'm giving you the pills...and that's exactly what I'm doing, isn't it?”

STOP.

“Stop crying. It'll hurt more like this.”

I WISH I WAS DEAD.

He doesn't know how long it lasted. If anything, Jimmy, amused, decided to force through not just one pill, but more than one. Two, three. One hundred. The pain was so terrible that, even when Jimmy's face returned to his field of vision, he was still victim of a pain so unbearable that he couldn't stop screaming.

The metallic smell of blood floods everything, and he doesn't even understand how he is able to perceive it. Something fragile has broken inside him forever. He will die this way, outraged and dirty. And even if he were rescued, he knows that…

———

“…the pain and shame will be with me for the rest of my life.”

Curly breathed out the story in one breath. Without pauses. Without stopping. Without shaking and without hesitation. He forcefully slams some papers in front of the judge's nose, who, stunned and trembling, is barely able to follow his gesture. On the jury members' chairs, there are nothing but expressions of pity, pain and horror. And, at Jimmy's table, it almost seems as if they have just seen a massacre. Jimmy has not said a single word of this to his defense attorney. Anyone would bet, from his expression, that he did not even believe he had committed a crime, unable to envision that kind of cruelty as the martyrdom it means…able to excuse it inside his brain not once, but twice.

“You can read the medical examination I had when I arrived on Earth, after being put into a coma. It's all here, including that” Curly slams his index finger down on the papers in front of the judge, before pointing at Manfred “and if I look awfully bad to all of you now, do you want to see what I looked like when this happened? Because there are photographs in the record, too. Please…”

From the upper stand, the artist seems to have abandoned her place in order to provide assistance to Anya and Curly's legal team, dropping the curtains and plunging, at that moment, the entire room into total darkness. Manfred turns on the slide projector and, one by one, places the small photographs taken by the hospital's medical staff for Curly's medical record.
Each photograph raises an exclamation from the members of the jury, while Curly's silhouette, sitting in front of the microphone, is projected onto the smooth white wall used as an improvised screen. The exposed flesh, the bloodshot eye. Victoria, who has seen those photographs countless times while preparing that blessed coup de grâce, still shakes at the sight of each one, and Anya…

Anya is unable to raise her gaze, her face buried in her arms. She is unable to cry. Absolute desolation has taken over her soul.

“A part of me feels that I deserved everything that happened to me on board the Tulpar” the blond's voice picks up the thread of the conversation, once the curtains rise and the light falls on a deathly silent room “…for having failed as Captain, but I cannot allow myself to fail completely and for James Zaci to walk out of these courts as a free man.”

Curly steps away from the microphone, letting out a soft beep and, in that moment, it is as if something external to Anya takes over her body. She loses the trembling, the anguish, the churning inside her stomach. It all goes away as she stands up in one movement, dropping her chair with a clatter of wood. She dodges Victoria, who tries to grab her arm and, against her better judgment, and the proximity of a police officer, crosses the distance between her table and the other's table in a single stride before throwing herself, hands first, on top of James.

A terrified gleam flashes in the man's eyes a second ago.
She's seen that flash before, in the mirror, hundreds of times.
It's good to get something identical back.

“Anya, no!” Victoria screams, but Anya has already grabbed Jimmy by the hair and pulled him to the ground. She had surprise on her side, so she managed to hit him over the head before the police officer, a microsecond slower than her, put an arm around her and pulled her away from the convict.

“Order! Order!” The judge almost shatters the gavel with blows, while all the members of the jury stand up, trying to get a clearer view of the fight. Jimmy puts his hands on his head while Anya, before being dragged too far, delivers a second and final blow with her heel to his stomach, hard, so much so that her skin vibrates with satisfaction at hearing the moan of pain that comes from the brunette.

“You're going to pay for what you did to me, you son of a bitch!” she screams, offering no resistance as the policeman drags her back “Try to deny this now! You bastard! You're going to live in hell, I swear! I swear! There's no room for you in any happy ending!” she moves forward but the policeman, without effort, pushes her back “You're going to pay! Do you hear me? You're not getting out of this, Jimmy! Never!”

Aware that continuing to shout “Order!” was not yielding any results, the judge remains silent as the events unravel on their own. The police officer releases Anya, who runs to assist a shaken Curly. The blond steps away from the stand and stumbles, walking back to his table. Anya feels, against the palm of her hand, the furious way in which his heart does not stop beating.

Jimmy takes his seat back as Robert, red-faced, whispers things to him at top speed.
«The guy had no idea about that» Anya decides to herself, and understands that Victoria's words contain the whole truth: the assumptions that Robert was trying to sell as true to the jury members were based on wet cardboard.

“Does anyone else have any doubts about the cruelty of this individual?” Victoria's voice, in a room as silent as that one, resounds like the screams of a beast. “Does anyone dare to doubt the veracity of the facts related by Miss Musume and Mr. Curly? Perhaps Mr. Zaci did not commit similar acts in the past before the Tulpar, but something inside him decided to break with everything at that moment! And it is not a matter of being a victim of sexual abuse to understand my clients, it is a matter of having a single ounce of empathy. Besides, do you want to know another fact? We are dealing with perhaps the only crime on the face of the Earth that has no justification whatsoever. One can steal out of hunger, one can kill in self-defense, but there is no logical reason under the sun to justify abusing another human being in this way! Anya was drugged, Grant was convalescing, Mr. Zaci had no qualms about taking advantage of two vulnerable people! Two people who would not be able to put up a fight and try to defend themselves from their grievances! If there is anyone in this room who wants to risk their neck and credibility trying to defend such a cruel being, I would like to hear the lies that person has to tell!”

The arrows, aimed at Robert, hit the target squarely. The man, static, does not say a single word while Victoria, puffed up in self-importance, clicks her tongue.

“Before we end this trial, your honor, I would like to call Mr. Zaci to the stand.”

Anya holds Curly by the arm. She doesn't even know what to say, her brain has gone completely blank... but she's one of those people who could look him in the eye and say "I understand you" with the absolute certainty that she's serious. The blond must be thinking about that, because he just nods and lets his gaze fall on the table again. He doesn't cry, his eye remains healthy, but something is simmering inside his soul and Anya knows that, sooner rather than later, it will explode.

Jimmy shuffles to take his seat, performing the godforsaken pantomime of the bible in a whisper.

“Mr. Zaci,” the redhead's voice comes out inflated with venom, “I would like to know...”

“Can I say something?”

That interruption stops Victoria standing on her own words. Anya just presses her hand a little harder against Curly's arm, looking around. The judge remains stunned, and at Robert's desk, the lawyer looks as lost as everyone else. A part of the ex-nurse tells her that he's thrown in the towel, at least mentally, regarding his client.
Victoria quickly regains her composure, and the look she gives Jimmy is barely decent.

“Yes?”

“…when Curly read us the dismissal letter, I was furious. I won't say I lost my mind, because I wasn't crazy, but I was furious. I went into a strange trance, and I was just thinking about how, again, I lost everything, and he saw another opportunity. Because, yes, he was fired too, but do you think a man like Curly would have trouble getting another job? No…no, he would be fine. He would be fine. I wouldn't. So I got mad and thought I wanted to hurt him, really hurt him... hurt him, make him feel the way I felt... I could try to hit him. I've hit him before. But he's used to it. He didn't care about that kind of reaction. He'd feel sorry for me, like a dog, and I'm sick of him feeling sorry for me, so the only thing I could think of was to hurt him in another way, through another channel, and that channel was Anya. Robert says she and I were in love, but no... no, no. I always found her to be an extremely boring and infuriating woman. The one in love was Curly, of course. Those two were in love, even a fool could tell. Of all the things I did, that was the most planned. Curly told me the name of the pills our nice nurse had prescribed for him, so I went and took them. The rest was easy. Raping Anya was easy. I didn’t even enjoy it, if that means anything at all…I didn’t get any carnal gratification out of it beyond thinking about how much I would screw Curly over that way. Not only by hurting someone he clearly thought important, but also…by trying to replace me. He removed me from my spot, and he expected nothing bad to happen? No…no, no. I had no interest in Anya, and I never approached her with similar intentions after that. Once done, her only useful function on board was fulfilled. And I nearly killed her with the overdose I saw her take, she couldn’t move. She was still, like a blow-up doll. She passed out, and she stayed passed out until I left. I thought she would have died, but no, there she was in the main lobby the next morning, as if nothing had happened. I didn’t take into account, however, the obvious consequences. To me, it had all been little more than a formality, but then one day, a month later, she called me into the medical room to tell me she was pregnant, and I was terrified. That fucking fetus has lived in the back of my mind ever since I found out about it, and honestly, I wish she hadn't lied about it being stillborn. It was then that I realized I was screwed, and I had to take my sin with me, so I rerouted the ship and turned off the autopilot. We were supposed to die...but we didn't, because Curly got all high and mighty and ran into the cockpit. And here's the result. When my impulse didn't go the way I wanted, I lied that Curly tried to kill us all. It made sense. We found him burned outside the cockpit, so it had to be him. Anyway. We lived in that lie for a few months, until...I don't know, tempers got too high. I told Daisuke to get in the duct, and I didn't care if he died or not. Then Swansea knew everything that had happened, of course...the fat bastard was no idiot. And after I killed him, when I was heading back to the main lobby, ready to find the gun to finish the job…I found Anya. I was furious. She shot me and then dragged me to the cockpit…I was mad as hell. A pregnant bitch knocked me down and then dragged me to carry Curly…and now, she’s there and I’m here, forever. That’s all.”

A cloud of murmurs rises again around all the members of the jury. Unfazed, at least from the outside, Jimmy stands up and steps down from the stand. He doesn’t wait for Victoria to ask him anything, which the redhead doesn’t do either, and he drops into his chair. Robert, sitting on the far right, just rubs and pinches the bridge of his nose. How could he not? He just gave the show of his life, and it was all for absolutely nothing.

“…ladies and gentlemen, we will take a ten-minute break to discuss and decide the verdict” the judge, who at that moment seems to remember his role in the trial, hits the wooden plate with the gavel “please leave the room until then.”

The group on the left leaves the room first. Anya almost feels that letting go of Grant's arm would mean death for her, so she walks close to him, keeping up with his slow pace. Victoria and Manfred lead them to one of the small side rooms, followed by Christine who, unlike everyone else, is able to turn her thoughts into words.

“He will recieve his punishment.”

The woman's firmness is sentencing.

Anya doesn't know what to think. Maybe her point was made clear thanks to Curly's confession, but what about everything else? She looks at his face, but the blond is not able to raise his gaze from his hands, and she doesn't want to force him either.

Never.

Despite the anxiety that time might make it slower than it really is, the ten minutes of waiting pass in the blink of an eye. The stenographer (hopefully they are paying her enough to have her assisting with more than her fair share of tasks) rushes to find them inside the waiting room, and soon the procession returns inside the courtroom, where the judge and all the members of the jury are standing.

“As was made clear yesterday, before announcing the verdict, we want to remind everyone present that the decisions made by the Supreme Court are final” the judge's voice echoes in a deathly silent room “because of the right and responsibility that has been imposed on us today, and after a deliberation with a completely unanimous result like few times in the history of the Court, the Supreme Court of the United States of America declares Mr. James Zaci guilty of the charges of reckless homicide and a double charge of sexual abuse, with the relevant aggravating factors due to the manipulation of the drink with medicine and physical torture. Therefore, he must pay with an effective prison sentence of twenty-five years in the Florence High penitentiary in Colorado. The session is closed.”

———

“Will you miss this place?”

“I don't want to set foot in Washington again in my life.”

Grant gives her the ghost of a smile, arranging the prosthetics as best he can in the space below his airplane chair. The crutches were on top, and it was a blessing that they were foldable.

“He didn't say Jimmy wasn't eligible for parole.” She feels somewhat ungrateful, although even if he had said it, her thought persists: twenty-five years is very little.

“I know what you're thinking” Curly leans back in his seat, letting out a sigh. Down the left aisle, people continue to board the plane, arranging their things “but look at it this way... the trial has resonated quite a bit. The press is hating itself for not giving it live coverage. He may get out in a few years, but it's been a long time... and everyone knows the crimes he committed. Outside of prison, and inside of it.”

“He'll have two and a half million dollars waiting for him when he gets out of prison, and everything will be the same.”

“I don't think he'll get out of prison the same.”

They both fall into a comfortable silence, only interrupted by the chatter of the various passengers. After a few minutes, Anya turns to him again, placing a hand on one of his.

“Curly...” he turns to look at her, raising an eyebrow “Why didn't you tell me anything? If it's because you thought I couldn't bear to hear it, I...”

“Partly, but partly it's also... Anya, the idea of ​​saying it out loud hurt too much. Telling it is almost like reliving it, and I don't...”

“I know” Anya nods once, trying hard not to burst into tears at that moment “but I would have liked to know, even so. I-I think...”

“Would you have treated me differently? Would you have been sweeter to me? No need. I wanted honesty from you, Anya, not tact. I may have been guilty of that myself, but... it was never with the intention of putting you down. Anyway, I preferred you to insult me ​​than to look me in the eyes with pity and bite your tongue around me. I want you to treat me like a normal guy.”

“You are a normal guy, Curly. What happened to us is not…” she understands, at that moment, the blond's intentions with the words he chooses to answer her. Thus, she rubs his back and smiles barely, opening her arms “…come here. It's over.”

A spark seems to start a fire inside Curly's mind at that moment. From one second to the next, his only healthy eye fills with tears and, before anyone else could see or hear him cry, he seeks shelter in the black-haired woman.

She hugs him tightly, while the blond buries his face in the hollow of her neck, wetting her skin, crying, his back shaking, both pain and relief taking over him. Anya blinks through her tears, but smiles just the same, caressing his back and whispering the same thing over and over, over and over again. Gospel truth.

“It's over, Grant. It's over. It's finally over.”

Chapter Text

DECEMBER 29, 1969

THE PRESENT

Early in the morning, the heater in the small office had been on for an hour, keeping out any trace of cold from outside. The night before, almost four inches of snow had fallen between sunset and dawn, waking everyone up with slippery roads and the need to shovel snow and pour kilos of salt. She wanted to help, but they wouldn't let her. Curly may not yet be able to walk freely without crutches, but he is able to operate a snowplow slowly but efficiently.

So the light that filters into the office is pale. The sun is nothing more than a mark covered by thin clouds, and not a trace of the blue color of the sky can be seen. But Anya has always loved winter (she'd say she doesn't feel a particularly negative emotion towards any season) and that particular morning, attending one of her last appointments with the psychologist before moving and finding herself in need of starting a new one, she decided to take the cold and the snow as a good sign.

With her feet frozen and her hands a little paler than usual, she didn't refuse the hot cup of tea that her psychologist, Helen, offered her. The woman always wears long-sleeved, high-necked shirts, under neutral-colored sweaters and corduroy pants. Her wardrobe could be that of a renowned university professor who is approaching retirement age, or that of a teenager in love with other times. But the style suited her, as did the minimalist-decorated office and the citrus perfume.

A part of Anya came to the consultation expecting some sort of substantial difference because it would be one of the last, but she found nothing out of the ordinary. But what was she expecting? A giant sign outside with the inscription "WE WILL MISS YOU, ANYA!"? A farewell cake and a gift? No, no... but she felt a touch disappointed and, a second later, she went from feeling disappointed to feeling ashamed of herself because, what was all this nonsense about waiting for a farewell party? These are thoughts that remain with her, as she remains silent and takes a long sip of tea, moving her feet up and down, cold and somewhat stiff.

“So... it's a fact” at the end of that sentence, the psychologist raises her eyebrows and directs her gaze at Anya “you will move to Florida.”

It sounds incredible said out loud, but it is as true as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. Anya nods a little, almost embarrassed, and Helen does not change her expression of animosity.

“It's good news. I know that the location is due to its proximity to the university but, did you ever imagine living in the south?”

“Not at all” Anya takes a few seconds. It was like what she told Curly, up there inside the Tulpar. If they were to dream, she could always wish to live near the beach. Wake up one weekend and go down to sit on the sand just because. Of course her ideas took her to an island in the middle of the Caribbean Sea or something like that. She doesn't say anything about that, just taking another long sip of tea “but... I suppose there are worse places to live. I've never been there.”

“New beginnings are always scary, of course. It's a new place to live. A new house. New environment, new faces, a school...”

“I still don't know if they'll accept me, Helen.”

“Hey! You yourself told me about the eccentricity of that scholarship for...the display of fantastic medical skills without prior access to training. If they deny it to you, I wonder who they would give it to!” Anya just sweeps the office with her gaze and Helen, more than used to her momentary absences, does not do something stupid like shout her name or snap her fingers in front of her face “Do you want to go over your planning with me? The last time you told me you were quite excited.”

“Sure” Anya raises her gaze from the surface of her tea only then, barely squinting “I... we'll leave when the snowfall calms down a bit. We found a very nice house on the outskirts of this city called Cocoa... where the university is. But not too far from the center. There is a space station launching nearby, so it's a fairly large and modern city. The house is... mid-century style, very nice, and it's already furnished. It's...” the black-haired woman shakes her head before looking up “Helen, none of this makes sense.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Everything...everything I lived through, I...”

“You lived through it, that's a fact. You survived it, too. And now you're here, you're going to move, you're going to go to college. You're going to graduate, be a doctor, and fulfill all your dreams.”

“You don't understand! It's...I was about to die, and I...”

“And nothing, because you're not dead. You're alive, right? Very much alive” Helen gently taps the armrest of the elegant single-body sofa she sits on, raising her eyebrows behind those thick-glassed glasses. Anya snorts and leans her head back, just barely. Her psychologist doesn't speak with fancy words or philosophical meanings beyond all human understanding. She's accurate, down to earth, and gives the kind of blunt answers that leave the former nurse with no room to maneuver...because she knows Helen is right. She lived through what she lived through and almost died but survived, and living in the now and thinking about the future is much healthier for her than living immersed in the "after" of all the traumatic events of her young life.

“...I'm going to be an old lady in medical school” she mumbles, and she can almost hear a laugh inside Helen's brain, a laugh that the woman doesn't give permission to come out “I know there will surely be many people in my age range, but there will also be some who have just graduated from high school. Impossible not to feel like a mummy that way.”

“Anya, you're not even thirty yet and you've already lived much more things than several people who live to be seventy-five, or more! There will be time...you've accomplished a lot in a very short time frame. In a very specific and terrible situation, of course. The thing is, a new door is opening for you now, and there's not much point in refusing to open it because you're stuck thinking about the past. If you don't open the door, you'll bury yourself in the snow. It'll be a little warmer there.”

“I know...” Her gaze wanders again. She tries to imagine herself standing in front of a door, her desired future waiting on the other side of the wooden door. The doorknob is unlocked. All she has to do is reach out, turn the doorknob, and...

But she turns around and all she can hear are the screams, the pain in those screams, the crackling of the flames dancing over her face, and the stench of burnt and rotten flesh. An impression that is too strong that pins her to the spot and prevents her from opening the door, despite the insistence with which someone calls her name from the other side.

Only a masochist would rather contemplate the suffering of the past, confident that this is what they are supposed to do. Is she one of them? Maybe a little, although that's what she's been able to tell Curly so many times... she's too used to good things always happening to others.

“That's true, Anya. Next year, you're going to move into a house that will be entirely yours. No rent. Plus, you're going to go to college. It's sure to be pretty exhausting, but listen, ever since you started down this path to try to get into medical school, you've been very aware of the fact that college life would be exhausting.” Helen nods slightly, more than satisfied with her own words. Anya doesn't answer, although there's nothing logical to refute the psychologist's words. “How did you spend Christmas? I didn't have a chance to ask you. Did you celebrate?”

“Yes! It was... so strange.”

“Why?”

“Because of everything it involves! Decorating the house, decorating the tree, cooking... all those... normal things... I was just stretching out a snowflake-patterned tablecloth on the table and thinking, What the hell am I doing decorating for Christmas with Curly's mom? It's not that I was upset about it, but it's... I don't know.”

“And what would you rather have done? Because decorating the house for Christmas sounds like a fantastic plan to me” Anya just clicked her tongue, because it's true: Where would she be if she wasn't there? “Do you remember what we talked about a few weeks ago? All that... guilt you felt for believing that you were taking advantage of Grant and his mother's kindness, do you still feel it?”

“No. It's... different” the former nurse drops her gaze to her teacup. Months ago, the night before she was discharged, Anya went to visit Curly and he, aware of her situation despite the haze of physical pain and opioids, practically begged her to accept the help her mother was offering her. A place to stay for a while. Help, both for herself and for the baby. And the woman, aware of the absence of any alternative, ended up accepting.

But guilt soon began to eat away at her.

From the first day Nova and she set foot in Emma's house, the blonde made sure by all possible means to make her feel comfortable and to make it clear to her that, if she was offering all that help, it was because she could and, more importantly, because she wanted to do so.
Emma Curly spoke to her (and speaks to her) as if she were a lifelong friend and was very happy to offer her help to without expecting anything in return. It may be that Anya hasn't had much luck getting close to people in her day-to-day life, but that quality of "good-samaritanism" struck her as out of this universe. She doesn't think Emma is the last good person on the face of the Earth, but she's sure there are few as good as her, and most of them she'll probably never meet.

As the days went by, however, routine replaced the feeling of guilt with a newer sensation: strangeness.

Anya supposes that, of all the things she could feel in a situation like hers, being a victim of strangeness was one of the best alternatives. She was distressed with anxiety at times, to the point of shaking and chattering her teeth despite being under thick blankets with the heater on. Other times, while Nova cries, Anya falls victim to a dull desperation. She doesn't get upset, but she might contemplate her crying for two or three seconds too long before trying to reassure her, as if Nova were someone else's baby, and Anya needed those seconds to remember that, in fact, that baby was hers.

And that ownership of the baby, inside her brain, translates into the kind of possession one has for an object. “Nova” she thinks and says, but never “My daughter”. She has never referred to her out loud as “My daughter”, to anyone. And, even though Nova is four months old and would be incapable of understanding anything, that is when the guilt surfaces again.

There are mothers who suffer worse things. She knows it, and tries to hold on to it, but it is hard. She does not believe that she has to yell at her or insult her or try to hurt her to be a victim of that emptiness and, when she stops to look back and try to remember how much it encompassed, she wonders if at some point it will shrink in size until it disappears completely.

But the feeling of strangeness, at the end of the day, always manages to be stronger. And a violent “What am I supposed to be doing?” shakes her from time to time.

“I have mentioned it to you, but I do not mind repeating myself. In my line of work, there is a tendency to reiterate” Helen extends her right palm towards her, as if she were offering something “normality, routine... all these things... going for a jog, paying the bills, decorating the house for Halloween... are ideal for getting through moments of grief and difficulty. That's what you need, Anya. You've been locked up for too long. First in that spaceship, and then in the hospital. Moments of reflection are good, but limiting yourself to them will do you more harm than good in the long run. It will make it impossible for you to lead a normal life once you settle into your new home! You need movement, people, voices... without putting too much pressure on yourself, of course. Once you feel the onset of deep anguish, it's pertinent to find a quiet place where you can catch your breath or return home. But the less you go out, the greater the possibility that episodes like these will repeat themselves. You don't have to go to a shopping centre, but something as simple as shopping at the supermarket is a step in the right direction. When you're done moving in and sorting out everything college-related, you might want to try some of the things I suggested... I know you told me you found it depressing, but I promise you that no one at college is going to pay too much attention to your age. I'm sure there will be more people in your age range, so it won't be too hard for you to socialize. If you feel uncomfortable, remember, there's nobody and nothing holding you back from going away of a place where you feel uncomfortable...” she just finished speaking, but her speech gradually fades in volume. Something in the former nurse's facial expression must have given her away, since Helen barely arches an eyebrow before returning her hands to her lap “Is there something you want to tell me, Anya?”

There is silence, but only for a few seconds.

“The morning before Christmas... Emma asked me to go to the supermarket to buy some things. I think she's like you in that respect... she thinks I'll feel better the more I get out of the house, or something like that. They were only a few things and the supermarket is three blocks from the house, so yeah, why not? I wasn't nervous. I feel especially revitalized in the mornings. Anyway, I took a cart and started walking through the rows of products and... I accidentally bumped into another woman's cart.”

“Yeah...?”

“And she... she had a little boy in the cart. Not very big, couldn't be more than two years old...” the black-haired pauses briefly, almost waiting for some kind of alarmed reaction from Helen. Once again, her psychologist just looks at her, and Anya understands again the lesson that must be repeated over and over again: the alarm only exists inside her brain “...and he was surprised by the blow. It wasn't very abrupt, but he started to cry and I apologized... she told me not to worry, that he had been crying easily lately. She said, "It's like when they're a few months old and cry for everything, but worse because now they can cry and run at the same time," and I said, "I know." Then she looked me in the face and said, "Do you have any children?" And I... I'm sorry, Helen, but... I-I was tempted to say that no, I didn't have any children.”

“First, you don't need to apologize for anything, okay? This is a therapy office, not a church confessional. It's not my place to judge you and atone for you, just help you as best I can” Anya nods, not looking up from the carpet at her feet “and secondly... you were tempted. But what did you do?”

“I told her... yes, but the issue was the way I said it. I answered "Nova is four months old," as if she had the slightest idea who Nova is. Of course, considering I was answering her question "Do you have children?", it was obvious to deduce. Anyway. Her eyes lit up, as if I had given her the winning lottery ticket, and she started telling me stories about when her son was four months old. That he weighed almost nine pounds when he was born and that the birth was hell because of it, but that when she cradled him in her arms she realized that it had been totally worth it...she gave me some advice from the goodness of her heart. She told me that she would try to have a daughter when her boy was a year or two older, and she left. That conversation felt like... like a thousand hours had passed.”

“Did you dislike the repetition of not being able to refer to Nova as your daughter, the reminder of the lack of affection the first time you held her in your arms, or...?”

“Everything” a sad smile stretches across Anya's lips, sniffling “and I'm the first one who realizes how logical it all is. I would never have wanted to be a mother in a situation as terrible as this... without a job, without studies, and in such a... you know, Helen. I thought I was going to give birth inside a locked ship with the bastard who did that to me. I couldn't allow it. Dying was the only alternative, and then…we arrive on Earth, and the day she's born, I decide to keep her instead of giving her up for adoption. No one would have judged me for making that choice, but no. It's been four months and I still don't understand why. Why did I do that? And why do I beat myself up for not acting like cliché mothers? It could have been worse…given everything I've been through. The desperation and anguish I feel should translate into…into attempts on my part to hurt her. I should be hallucinating with the face of that fucking wretch James superimposed over Nova's face. Maybe by this point another mother would have tried to hurt her…and I wouldn't. And it's not like I want to! I just…I can't be okay with the lack of violence. I'm a passive agent. I mean, I do what I have to do…I dress her, I bathe her, I breastfeed her, I talk to her…but I don't feel any unbearable fire burning inside my chest. She's little now, but what will happen when she grows up? I know what it feels like to not have your mother love you, Helen, and to actively and passively seek ways to prove that you deserve that love, to beg without words for her to give it to you... and I can't stand the idea of ​​her growing up and living the same life I lived, but... What am I supposed to do? You can't force love in any way. It would be just as damaging as what I'm doing now, or more! So exhausting that, when it exploded, it would be hell. What's worse? Your mother never showing you love, or discovering one day that all the love your mother expressed to you was nothing more than a farce to stop feeling guilty?”

Anya is silent only then, contemplating the trembling in her palms. She feels so... useless, as if she had been sent to war with a fork as a weapon. A dessert fork, with three prongs, not even four. A part of her, the most childish and hopeful, is still waiting for Helen to open a magic door and offer her all the answers she needs. Key steps, fantastic ideas. But reality is different. Life is not like that. The human mind is so complex...she wishes the solutions could be as accurate and fast as the beginning of the problems.

Helen breaks the silence only then, turning around to take one of the boxes of tea bags that she has at her side. She opens it, catching one of the lemon tea bags between her fingers, raising it until she leaves it in sight of her patient.

“Let's do a little exercise of imagination, shall we? Let's imagine that this is a magic tea bag. If you drink it, you will have the opportunity to travel to the past, with your memories of the present. You will return to that August morning, when Nova was born, and you will have the possibility of choosing the alternative that Sandra offered you. Give her up for adoption to a family that, you know, will be good to her. She will have a pair of loving parents, a brother or sister, perhaps. She will live in a nice house, she will do well in classes, she will study at a good university, she will meet a good boy or not, she will get married or not, but she will live happily until her time comes. She will be happy, that's for sure, but she will no longer be your daughter. Would you do it? Would you accept that alternative?”

“I...” Anya tries to put herself in that situation. She tries to imagine that Helen's words are honest, even if she knows deep down that they aren't. Would she? She closes her eyes and her brain takes care of formulating a scenario like that, where Anya is lying, again, on the gurney in her hospital room. A faceless couple enters the room, and walks straight to the incubator. With each step the faceless woman takes, a dark anguish stretches invisible tentacles from her stomach towards her heart. Up, up. The faceless woman opens the incubator and the faceless man leans down, taking the baby in his arms. Anya tries to say something, and all she can do is watch, helpless, as the faceless couple take her baby out of the room, indifferent to everything else. To her anguish. To her pain.

When Anya opens her eyes again, she smiles, sadly, and feels the moisture of a couple of warm tears rolling down her cheeks.

“...I'm not a good woman, Helen. I'm selfish.”

“Why?”

“I can't say I love her, but I can't stand the idea of ​​losing her either.”

“And who said that the relationship between a mother and a daughter was simple, Anya? This is nothing more than years of brainwashing. This image of innate love, of maternal instinct...this idea that a mother and her daughter form a kind of symbiosis, as if all women were part of an immense hive mind...these are nothing more than inventions of men. Always men. Alienating ideas, which have only done more harm than good” Helen gesticulates, returning the tea bag to its respective box “Anya, I have treated dozens of women, and most have been mothers. Mothers with planned children, some. Others, with children who arrived by surprise...and a few in a situation similar to yours. And even fewer have been able to look me in the face and tell me that they loved their children from the moment the midwife put them on their chests. But, with the possibility offered, you don't want to hear about the idea of ​​going back in time and taking another route regarding what to do with your daughter. I think that should calm you down a bit regarding the prospect of subconsciously hating her or something. She's only four months old, just like you, who's only been a mother for four months. Give yourself time.”

“What about the future? I don't want to...it's not her fault what happened, Helen. It's not...it's not her fault who her father is. I don't want to be upset with her if she...if she grows up and looks like him or...or acts like him. There are personality traits that are inherited, aren't there? And...and there's also the whole issue of the after-effects of malnutrition, I'm afraid that...”

“Anya” Helen interrupts her always tactfully, barely shaking her head “it is true that some personality traits are inherited, but it is...well, I don't know the man, so I will assume. If Nova were to inherit psychological characteristics from her father, I could assume that, perhaps, she will not be a very extroverted child. She could have a certain tendency to disobedience or frustration. If the man was an addict, she could also have a tendency to consume. However, Anya, genetics are not the only thing that forms a person. The environment where that person grows up and upbringing are key factors, and you have to take that into account. It is true that many times complicated people are born from environments with concerned parents but, in most cases, they do not usually grow up to be very difficult adults. Also, Anya, consider everything that had to happen for that man to do everything he did. I am unable to imagine the kind of environment in which he must have grown up, nor the kind of values ​​that his parents must have instilled in him. While there is a chance that Nova will struggle, especially at key developmental stages like early childhood and then adolescence, she will not grow up in a negative environment. She will grow up in a home without financial hardship, and her caregivers will be people with good values. She has you, and she has Curly. I know you fear you won’t be the kind of mother you imagine you must be, but I also don’t think you could be the mother you’re terrified of being. That shows in moments like these. It doesn’t make you a monster to lose your temper every now and then, Anya. At the end of the day, you are a human being who survived a horrific situation. What matters is how you react, and you haven’t had any reaction, so far, that would make me consider you a latent danger to your daughter’s life. You don’t imagine cruel scenarios, or hit her. You just scream and cry and need to take time alone—totally normal needs, especially when there’s someone else who can take care of her while you focus. A woman is not supposed to raise a baby alone, another imaginary impossibility set up with harmful intentions behind it. It takes a village to raise a child.”

The psychologist is silent for a few seconds, seconds that Anya takes advantage of to take a long sip of her cup of tea and finish its contents.

“I don't feel too proud of myself either, having to bother Curly like this.”

“Wasn't he the one who offered to help you? And he even insisted on you.”

“I know! But... he's been through hell too, and he deserves to limit himself to going to his physical therapy and resting between sessions, not...”

«Not investing time and effort in raising a child that isn't even his.»

“... but he's been determined to help me. I know he does it because he wants to... or at least that's what I try to convince myself of. But a part of me fears that he's doing all this out of guilt. I'd feel... pretty miserable, in that case.”

“I think he helps you because he really wants to. From what you’ve told me about him, I doubt he would have been calm if he hadn’t offered to help you at the hospital. I know he seems to have…this tendency to get himself into situations he secretly hates because of this strange need for compensation. There are plenty of people like him in the world. However, he’s been through a bit of a comeback, so I doubt he’ll still be acting the way he used to. Besides, if it were all a matter of moral obligation, he wouldn’t even move to Florida with you in the first place. You have enough money to hire Mary Poppins to take care of your daughter, and to take care of college without fear. If that were the issue, it would be all over…but no. I don’t think there’s any point in feeling guilty and anxious. That man acts the way he does because that’s what his heart wants, or at least that’s what I dare to assume. I may not be his therapist, but a big change of scenery and the establishment of a routine will do him good after so many months of confinement. If he has the opportunity to continue his physical therapies and also help you with the baby, which he seems to be very happy about, then even better.”

Anya doesn't know whether to fully believe Helen's words, but she's aware, almost with annoyance, that she doesn't have any solid arguments to refute her claims either. All she has are her opinions and the pain they cause her, but she can't get anything logical out of her mouth wrapped in a blanket of pain-affected opinions.

She thinks about how well Grant has learned Nova's routine. She does nothing but sleep, drink milk, and need a diaper change several times a day, but the blond seems ready, close to her, to fulfill the function according to her need even before it happens. He's never too far away when Nova starts crying, and once the sound reaches her and she turns around, he's already there. She doesn't understand the nature of these coincidences, but it's almost as if an invisible biological clock has stretched around the blond's wrist, with three needles indicating three different things when the time comes: "MILK," "BATH," and "CRIB."

“He acts more like a father than I do, and he isn’t...” she doesn't finish the sentence, it seems too cruel to her. Helen just nods.

“I suppose he is more than aware that the girl is not his daughter, but it seems that that detail doesn't matter enough to him either” Helen waits a few seconds, scribbling something in the notebook that she always has at hand during her sessions. A part of Anya wants to reach out and snatch it away to take a look, and another part of her doesn't want to know, even remotely, what kind of things she must have written on those pages “Does it bother you that he acts that way with Nova? Maybe you're jealous of the normality with which he is able to act. If that's the case, you shouldn't feel too guilty either. It happens even in the best of families.”

“We are not a family. I mean...Nova and I are family, he...” but she can't finish saying it out loud either. Not because it was a painful reality, but because saying it, for some reason, didn't feel right.

Saying they're not a family feels, almost, like a betrayal.

“Anya” Helen's gaze is impossible to scrutinize “Do you remember what I told you a while back? About defenses...”

“I know.”

“You don't need to express pain or anger if you don't really feel it. Happiness and calm don't mean that nothing bad happened. Not being defensive isn't a symbol of not having felt real pain.”

“I know” she repeats with a little more intention, although does she really know? She doesn't hold her head too straight, but she does raise her gaze “Can we talk about something else? Like that therapist you told me about...”

“Oh, yes! Here, here...” Helen turns and takes something else from the table next to her, extending a slightly hard paper card towards Anya. There was a name, phone number, and address listed “I have no acquaintances in Florida, but a colleague recommended this therapist to me. I have your consultation records. With your permission I can send them to her, but if you want to start without that, I won't send anything.”

“No, yes... yes, send them to her, it doesn't matter” the black-haired woman rubs an eyebrow and then the space between her eyebrows “...I'm terrified of the idea of ​​starting from scratch.”

“From scratch? Not at all. You never start from scratch when you start a treatment with another therapist. I know we've only seen each other for a few months, but everything you've talked to me has been helpful, or at least I hope so. When you start talking to the new therapist, you'll surely notice it. Here...” Helen brings her the box of tissues, and Anya blows her nose, noticing then the warm tears running down her face. She nods once and takes a handful of tissues, drying her eyes and blowing her nose “now, how about you tell me a little about your Christmas? Your friends came to see you, didn't they?”

The change of subject came in handy.

On the twenty-fourth, a few days ago and after lunchtime, Lily and Soledad came to visit after a flight that was the victim of "hellish turbulence" in Lily's words and "it was barely a jolt" in Soledad's words. They were both very happy to see her, since the last time they saw each other was when Anya was discharged from the hospital.

Then, between their studies and their internships as medical interns at the hospital, it was impossible for them to go see her. The Christmas holidays came like a gift from Heaven.

“Annie, you look so healthy!” Soledad exclaimed after all the hugs and kisses. It may have been an unusual compliment, but after everything she's been through, she takes it much better than a "You look very beautiful!" “You have better color and your cheekbones aren't as prominent.”

“Were they too noticeable?”

“You looked like a ghost” Lily nods, ignoring the look Soledad gives her “but now you look better. That haircut suits you like hell.”

She introduced them to Emma. Soledad and Lily thanked her a thousand times for allowing them to stay at her house that weekend, and suggested for the umpteenth time staying at a nearby hotel. But Emma didn't want to know anything about it, stating that she was too happy to see her house so busy after many years of silence.

She felt much more tense when she introduced Curly.

The blond didn't even want to greet them in the first place, too self-conscious about his appearance. Anya didn't want to force him into anything, but the idea of ​​refusing to be seen by her two friends implied, by extension, that he wouldn't be present during Christmas dinner either. Despite her mental refusal to put him through uncomfortable situations, the idea of ​​Curly locked up as if he had some contagious disease, alone on Christmas night, while the five of them were in the dining room, was unbearable to her. She swore by Soledad and Lily and explained that he would have to deal with new people where they were moving anyway. The real estate agent, the physical therapists, and other agents of a functioning society.

As he gained more control over his own body, he could do more things. Go for a walk. Go shopping. Live as normal a life as possible.

All the awkwardness that hung in the air as Anya introduced her former captain to her two best friends had less to do with Curly's appearance and more to do with the judgment the two women had made of him. Soledad believed Grant was a victim of terrifying circumstances who didn't know how to act in the right way. Lily, on the other hand, despite believing that the accident he suffered was not something he deserved, couldn't bear it too much. She seemed to be burning with desire to say it, for, as soon as they had a moment alone a few minutes later, settling into a somewhat cramped position in the Curlys' guest room, she let out a bellow.

“I can't believe you're going to live with him, knowing everything he did to you” Lily spits softly, and utters an expletive as soon as Soledad elbows her “What? Anya lived through what she lived through and this guy did nothing to help her.”

“And what did you want he to do? They were in the middle of outer space. He couldn't just eject the idiot out of the ship.”

“And why the fuck not?”

“Can we not talk about this, please? Especially now” Anya raises her hands in a call for peace, barely shaking her head “Lily, I understand how you feel. I've been feeling this way for a long time. Too long. Now, I... I just think I've felt rage, fear, despair and hatred for too long now, and I'm tired. Very tired. I'd like to focus on other things. On healing, for example. If I wallow in pain every day I'll never be able to do it, and... I can't live alone either. With the baby, there's no way for me to study properly. I need his help, and I couldn't go back to you either. You have your jobs and your schedules and you have to finish studying. A baby doesn't fit into that scheme.”

“And why don't you hire a babysitter? You have so much money that you could have Maria from The Sound of Music as her babysitter” Anya exhales a laugh, but shakes her head.

“Call me stupid if you want, but no... I wouldn't feel comfortable leaving Nova with a stranger. I don't know anyone in Florida. I know that babysitters and daycares do wonders for many mothers, but...” and almost as if she heard them talking about her, a cry emanates from the crib. Anya turns around, but her two friends approached first. Lily stepped aside and it was Soledad who carried the baby in her arms, letting out a whistle.

“Anya, she's so fat! And very pretty. When she was born she was very skinny.”

“I haven't stopped breastfeeding her. She drinks as if the world were going to end tomorrow” the observation seems almost funny to the brunette, approaching them only then. Soledad rocks the baby carefully, while Lily looks at them as if Soledad were cradling an atomic bomb.

“I'm surprised” Lily nods solemnly, and something similar to the ghost of a smile stretches across her lips “judging by your appearance in the hospital, anyone would say that you would be producing powdered milk.”

“Asshole!” Anya gives her a push with her arm, but smiles. She remembers the shine of her naked body the night they landed in Denver and, to be honest, what options does she have? Laugh or cry, there is nothing else. Nova, irritated by the talk of the adults and desperate in the arms of a woman she doesn't know, manages to cry even harder. Soledad gives up and returns her, with Anya taking the baby in her arms. She refuses the breast, and her diaper isn't dirty either, so Anya just cradles her in her arms, moving slowly around the room.

Feeling the gaze of the other two on her makes her feel like the lead actress in a drama.

“She looks a lot like you” is the observation that finally comes out of Lily's mouth, and Soledad nods calmly “she has your long nose and doll eyes... but her face is rounder than yours, and her cheeks are fuller.”

Neither of them exclaims anything even remotely similar to "Maybe she inherited that from her father," something that Anya is grateful for. She couldn't bear even a phrase similar to those spat out by the lawyer during the trial. It's enough for her to know that they share the same birthday and hair color.

«And physical features. And DNA. And, who knows? Maybe this baby will grow up and ruin the lives of a lot of people. The blame will come back to me because I was the one who put her in this world.»

The thought is so violent and cold that, taking advantage of the fact that the baby had finally fallen asleep, Anya quickly returns her to the crib. Nova, feeling the comfort of the mattress, moves and sleeps at ease, indifferent to the bitterness and ignorant, above all things, to the kind of thoughts that poison her mother's brain.

“Hey” the pressure of a hand on her right shoulder brings her back to reality. Lily, standing next to her, tries to sketch a smile. Anya understands at that moment the emotion that shakes her friend's body: shame “I know that when we went to see you at the hospital I... uh... told you that you would have to abort or give her up for adoption, and although I don't understand why you decided to keep her, I promise you that I'm happy to see her healthy. Seriously. It caused me a lot of anguish to see her when we visited you the day you were discharged. Now she looks healthy and well, and I'm really glad. I mean, now that she's someone real...”

“You don't need to clarify anything for me, Lily. I know you wouldn't be able to wish ill on a four-month-old baby” Lily nods slowly, and Anya dares to smile a little more “when she's a little older and you come to visit, and she gets excited because Aunt Lily is coming, I promise not to say to her "Nova, did you know that Aunt Lily wanted me to leave you in an orphanage?"” Soledad lets out a short laugh before covering her mouth with both hands to stifle any sound. Lily tries to feign an offense that she doesn't really feel and, during the three days that the two stayed at home with her, they managed the odyssey of not mentioning any complicated subject. And, of course, both Lily and Soledad behaved around Curly the same way they would have behaved around any other human being.

Anyone would say that, four months ago, neither Curly nor Anya had gotten off a spaceship.

As she leaves the therapist's office, Anya is greeted by the biting cold, which, after an hour and a half spent locked inside a comfortable, warm office, feels like a slap in the face. She pulls her scarf up over her nose and quickens her pace, shoving her hands into her coat pockets to feel the presence of the card Helen gave her. They would see each other again at the end of January, as her therapist would be away for a few weeks to rest, but they didn't have too many sessions left before they had to formally say goodbye.

«As long as I remember her advices, we'll never be completely separated.»

She's managed to grow fond of Helen in just three months of therapy. Perhaps it was a strange observation, but she likes the prospect. She's healing, or at least she thinks so. So she quickens her pace, being careful not to slip. The decade would be coming to an end in two more days.

———

DECEMBER 31, 1969

THE PRESENT

That house was not hers. Those parties were not under her command. She is merely a guest and therefore forced to lie.
Curly told her that there were not too many relatives, although of course, for a man who has lived his entire life surrounded by uncles, aunts and cousins, the definition of "too many" would be different than Anya's, and that was exactly what happened.

The main floor of the Curlys’ house was full of uncles, aunts and cousins. In Emma's words, there were not even half of them, but there were enough to form a soccer team with substitutes and technical equipment included. Add to that the fact that Curly's cousins ​​brought their partners and their children, some teenagers and others barely older than Nova.

That night, New Year's Eve, Curly's room was transformed into a sort of nursery for all of his cousins' younger children. Boys and girls who succumbed to sleep, still unaccustomed to staying up so late at night. Midnight was near and, below, Anya hears the loud conversations and the sound of dessert. She endured as best she could in order to have dinner, and almost thanked Heaven when Nova began to cry and had a good excuse to leave the table and almost run upstairs.

Curly's family was lovely and no one treated her badly. In fact, they had the lovely gesture of not treating her as if she had lived through what she lived through. No one asked her questions that, because they were too curious, ended up being hurtful. No one asked her, with wide eyes, what it felt like to be about to die. And, above all things, no one put a hand on her shoulder, shook their head and said "I know what that man did to you, I'm so sorry!", like a clichéd and repetitive phrase at a funeral. No.

And despite their kindness...they were too loud people, and spending so much time with them ended up being more overwhelming than she could bear. Realizing that Emma would understand her disappearance before dessert, she left to seek refuge in the improvised nursery.

There are two small children sleeping in Curly's bed. A boy who could be five years old and a girl who is two years old. At the foot of the bed is another girl, also five or six years old, with the adorable party dress cut in a way that made her look like a flower.

One of Curly's cousins ​​brought a sort of folding crib where a baby who could be a year old sleeps, and Nova's crib was moved there as well. Anya rocks her, singing softly, so as not to wake any of the other children. The blond's room is large, so she has room to walk from one end to the other. Nova, in her arms, had already calmed down, but she was far from falling asleep, dying of curiosity about everything around her.

“What's wrong? Why don't you go to sleep? You already burped...” the baby looks back at her from those huge pair of brown eyes. Anya snorts and mutters to herself “Good heavens, don't be so demanding. I only know two lullabies by heart. I can sing you other songs slowly and quietly... I guess that will do” again, Nova does nothing but emit soft sounds “hey, I'm aware that I sing badly. If I had a nice voice I wouldn't be wasting my time here, would I? I would be a leading star on Broadway” a laugh escapes her in the middle of such an invented stage...and the sound is repeated in front of her.

At the sight of the smile on her mother's face, Nova imitates her, smiling and letting out a noise that could only be a laugh.
The black-haired woman stifles an exclamation, opening her eyes wide. The gesture must have been hilarious to the baby, as she laughs again in her arms with absolute clarity, waving her tiny hands in her mother's face. It's such an unusual sight that Anya doesn't know what to do, but the sound is contagious. Her cheeks itch, and as soon as she laughs, Nova laughs again, this time with much more vigor.

“What's up? What's up?” she repeats in that somewhat silly tone of voice, barely shaking her face. The little baby laughs even louder “What's so funny, huh? What's so funny?”

«Is she laughing at me?» the thought is as ridiculous as it is definitive, eliminating the jocular expression from her face in one fell swoop «Will she be able to mock, despite how young she is? Will she feel my pain, my desperation, my rejection? It can't be, right? It's impossible for a human being to be born evil, isn't it? She's barely four months old. She doesn't understand anything about human behavior. She won't feel pain unless I yell at her or hit her, and I won't do either of those things.»

She's just giving her time so that, when she grows up...when she's taller than Anya herself, perhaps, and even stronger...she'll be the one to yell at her and hit her.

«If I raise her right, she won't do any of that. I don't expect her to always obey me, but I don't expect her to be cruel either. I can't go so far as to raise... a monster, can I?»

She could work herself to the bone and still watch her world fall apart.

Nova, indifferent to her mother's thoughts, lets out another laugh that sounds almost like a doubt. An attempt to get her mother to continue the game, to keep laughing so she can laugh back and get more laughter in return.

Anya doesn't laugh.

«Helen told me. Some personality traits are inherited, but what's important is the environment where the child is raised. I'm going to raise her the best I can. She won't be perfect, but she won't be like her... like her...»

Blood is thicker than water. Maybe everything is written in stone. Maybe it doesn't matter what Anya decides to do from now on. Unless...

Her arms flail, her palms beaded with sweat. Nova has lost interest in the laughter, clutching the wool of her mum’s sweater, indifferent to the trembling that fills her mother's body, and the anguish that drives red-hot needles into her stomach.

She had her inside her, and not just her. Oh no, not just her. For a time, there were two of them. A filthy beast intertwined. An animal with two heads, two pairs of arms, and two pairs of legs. Fingers that reached out from her womb and up, seeking something to seize, infecting her flesh and shattering her bones.

But Nova destroyed and fed on the weaker side of her own body, and now it's just her, in his arms. She looks like a baby and sounds like a baby, but there's something wrong inside her. Something evil that waits for the right moment to hatch and show its true face. Maybe she will hurt a child when she grows up. Maybe she'll take a knife and try to kill her in her sleep, as soon as she's old enough to hold the weapon without dropping it. Maybe she'll long for a life where everything has to obey her wishes. And maybe she'll hate her mother. Hate her deeply, until the end of her days. For daring to put her in this world knowing, deep down, that her mother doesn't love her either. Maybe…

The soft creak of the door makes her turn on her heels, turning her back on the wooden panel to approach a single-seat couch Curly keeps near the window. She has never seen him sitting there, but perhaps he frequented it when he was younger. Who knows. Nova has finally fallen asleep, but the dread has not yet left Anya's body, sitting there carefully. She expects to see Curly peek through the door, who would be able to notice in an instant that something very bad was, perhaps, about to happen. But no.
Entering the room and half-closing the door, Anya saw two children. A boy and a girl. The girl, the older of the two, looked to be about ten years old and the boy, perhaps eight. Both were brown-haired, with the curly hair that was almost a trademark of that family.

From the hallway, emanating from the floor below, Anya can hear The Beatles singing Come Together.

“Sorry! Did we wake her up?” the girl exclaims all this in a low voice, leaving a hand on the shoulder of the youngest child. Anya only blinks, before realizing that she is referring to Nova.

“Oh no, no... she just fell asleep.”

“We came to see our little sister” imitating the whispering tone of voice that belongs to who must be his older sister, the boy points with his finger to the bed, where that girl who looks two years old is sleeping, along with two more of her cousins “mom thought she had woken up with all the noise.”

“No... the music barely reaches up here” with each passing second, Anya feels the furious beat of her heart relax. It makes her uncomfortable to be in a room surrounded by children, as if each and every one of them were going to notice what she feels and point their fingers at her, furious. But those two children don't seem to have any kind of telepathic fantasy, approaching Anya with the innocence that only children know.

“She's very pretty,” the girl smiles, looking at Nova with her green eyes wide open. The little boy, standing next to her, nods, “Uncle Curly told us her name is Nova when we called two days ago. What a strange name.”

“He came up with it,” Anya is almost able to smile. She finds it endearing that Grant is referred to as their uncle, even though he wasn't their parents' brother, but a cousin. For an only child like him, his cousins' children must be the closest thing he'll ever have to a nephew.

“My name is Violet,” the brunette points her finger at the boy, “he's my brother Nicholas, and our little sister Grace,” she finishes, pointing her finger at the little girl sleeping on the bed. Nicholas seems more interested in the baby, barely wrinkling his nose.

“If you have black hair and Uncle Curly is blond, why is the baby brown-haired?”

Before Anya could say anything, Violet had given her younger brother a not-too-hard smack on the crown of his head.

“Nick, don't be so nosy, Mom says it's rude. Besides, Uncle Curly's dad was brown-haired, don't you remember?” the boy shrugs his shoulders.

“The last time I saw him, he didn't have any hair, I think.”

“Because he was very sick!” Adopting all the required role of an older sister, Violet turns to Anya, shaking her head “sorry, my younger brother is a fool and only talks nonsense.”

“Don’t worry” Anya keeps the obligatory question to herself, deciding to wait until she finds Curly to ask it. Now that all the nervousness has left her body, there's only room for an overwhelming tiredness “Are you two having fun? I know that adult gatherings tend to be a bit boring.”

“Aunt Emma's house is nice, but New Year's parties are more fun at Aunt Scarlet's. She has a ranch! And she lets us ride horses. It's super fun.”

“Maybe we'll have New Year's parties there next year” Violet nods, seconding her younger brother “You should come! Although... I haven't seen Uncle Curly anywhere. Is he here?”

“Of course he's here” Anya nods, and the two children puff out their cheeks, irritated.

“And why is he hiding? We haven't been able to say hello!”

“...you know that your Uncle Curly had an accident, right?” for a fraction of a second, Anya fears that she has screwed up big time, but, to her good fortune, the two children nod almost in unison “it was a very serious accident, which left him with many scars. Now he uses a pair of prosthetic legs, and his right eye is missing. He is alive, which is what matters, but he...your uncle is ashamed of how he looks, and that is why he does not want others to see him.”

“What are prosthetics?” asks Nicholas, slightly tilting his head, and it is his sister's turn to answer again.

“When you lose a leg, they put another metal leg on you so you can walk, like a robot” maybe it was not exactly that, but the answer made the child choke back an exclamation.

“Does Uncle Curly have robot parts now? That’s so cool! I want prosthetics too!”

“Don't say that, Nick! Don't you hear? They had to put them on him because he had an accident! Fool!” his sister's words manage to generate enough of a warning, leading the boy to bow his head in shame. But Violet looks much more tense, turning to look at Anya again “but... I don't understand why he's ashamed. Does Uncle Curly think we're going to make fun of his scars? We would never do that!”

“I'm sure Curly knows that you two would never laugh at his scars. Maybe he thinks that no one in this house would laugh. It's not the fear of mockery that terrifies him, but... pity. Looking at a person with pity can hurt them as much as pointing at them and laughing. Your uncle surely wants to be treated like any other year, but he feels that won't be possible. Not this year, at least. Maybe by next New Year's Eve everyone will be so used to his presence that no one will look at him differently, but for now the idea makes him very uncomfortable. I know it's hard to understand. It's not that your uncle thinks you'll hurt him, but he's trying not to feel worse than he does.”

“...Is Uncle Curly feeling really bad?” Violet has just lost all the vigor in her voice, and Anya bites the inside of her lower lip, unsure of what to say next.

“Yeah, but he won't feel really bad forever. We'll all feel a little better each time.”

“Are you feeling really bad?” Nicholas sounds genuinely distressed, as if Anya has been a vital part of his family for years. An aunt, almost. What's the point of lying? The black-haired woman nods.

“Some days I'm happy, other days I feel a little bad, and other days are terrible. Sometimes they happen like that. Sometimes they mix.”

“It sounds horrible” Violet murmurs, and Anya has no choice but to nod.

“That's life, but it doesn't matter. You two are still very young. You don't have to worry about adult matters, okay? Enjoy your Christmas holidays and don't worry too much about your Uncle Curly. I assure you that everything will eventually return to normal.”

«I hope it's not a lie. I hope so. I know that a child could never forget the lying adult who gave them false hope.»

“Thanks” Anya isn't quite sure why they thank her, but she just smiles back as Violet straightens the already stretched long sleeves of her dress “Mom never explains things too much to us. She always says we're too young.”

“You are young, and I imagine there are things you don't have to learn yet, but everyone of all ages feels sad and cries. If I can help you feel a little better by explaining that to you tow, all the better.”

“Nova is lucky” the boy says, pointing at the baby with his index finger and nodding his head slowly “you're a super cool mom, Auntie Anya.”

“I don't think...” but her voice trails off into a thinner and thinner thread, stuck on the last two words exhaled by the little boy. The two of them, indifferent to the mess in her brain, nod.

“Aunt Becky and Aunt Nicole are making hot chocolate” Violet points to the door “you should go and drink some, Auntie Anya. Besides, it's not long until midnight.”

The former nurse can't think of anything more logical to do at a time like this, so she nods and asks them, of course, to keep quiet when they leave the room.

With Nova asleep in her crib, Anya heads downstairs. Since everyone will be sleeping nearby, spread out between sleeping bags, the couches, and the hotel in town, more than half of the house's population is currently wandering around with obvious drunken gestures and voices. The black-haired woman goes into the kitchen, somewhat dazed from sleep, and guesses who Aunt Becky and Aunt Nicole must be, both blondes although Nicole, later identified, has brown roots. They stir a pot full of sweet, thick hot chocolate, chatting animatedly with Emma, who, seeing Anya walk into the kitchen, is as happy as a little kid seeing Santa Claus.

“Anya, honey! Come, come... pour yourself a cup of chocolate. It's delicious.”

“Are you going to stay here for more than five minutes?” Becky asks, as Nicole uses a soup spoon to fill an empty cup. Anya stammers but the blonde laughs, taking her by the shoulder to shake her. “Oh, honey, I'm just messing with you. Anyway, Emma's told us so much about you that I think I know you as well as she does.”

“Now I just need to move in for free at your house, then” Anya shoves her hands in her pockets, encouraged by the laughter of the three of them. Emma gives her a look in between her laughs, though. Too serious. It's clear she's saying "This better be a joke, because you know that offering to help you was my idea. You're not a pushover. Don't believe it for a second!"

“Ah, I've been divorced for years, sweetheart! I could use some extra company for the worst tasks.”

“Go shovel snow and see how your creative light bulb goes on” Nicole turns slightly to Anya “How many marshmallows for your hot chocolate?”

“Two” Anya raises her middle and index fingers, turning to Becky again “Creative light bulb?”

“I'm a writer. Well... my formal job is as a Spanish teacher, but I write in my spare time. I've been trying to finish a manuscript for a while now.”

“About what?” The black-haired stretches out her hands to receive the mug, her nostrils filling with the smell of hot chocolate. Nicole had also added a considerable amount of cream.

“It's noir. Well... Have you seen "Alphaville"?” Anya hadn't seen it, but she nods “something like that, only I'll try to make it have a bit more of a female lead. Of course the main character is a man, that's how these things work. But, when I have a bit more fame, maybe I can write a full novel where all the main characters are women.”

“Can you go give this mug to Grant? He hasn't come down to eat anything” Nicole hands her another mug “nor have I seen him all night.”

“I turned his room into a nursery for all the kids, so he's probably gone to look for some peace and quiet in my room” Emma shrugs, rolling her eyes “when he was little he did that all the time at parties. There came a point in the night when the amount of people became too overwhelming for him and he would run upstairs” Anya's alarm bells were going off, but she didn't want to lose her temper in front of his mother either “now that I think about it, he's been a bit taciturn for a few days... Don't you think so, Anya?”

“I-I suppose” the truth is that she didn't even stop to contemplate any difference, feeling terrible at that moment. Becky, standing between the two, shook her head.

“Grant is an adult and he's heading towards forty, Emma, dear. If he wants to lock himself in your room like a little kid in the middle of a tantrum, so be it.”

“I highly doubt it's any kind of tantrum” Anya protests back, stretching her lips into a line “he's just terrified of being seen. Imagine, it hurts him to look in the mirror, and here you are talking about him as if it were a five-year-old's tantrum. It doesn't seem fair to me. In fact, you're proving him right about wanting to stay locked up and not go down to see his family. I hope that, by next New Year's Eve, you'll be able to treat him with a little more decency.

Anya didn't want to lecture Emma, her words were mostly directed at the other two women, but she didn't see the need to pause to clarify either. So, she turns on her heel and heads for the stairs, a cup of hot chocolate in each hand.

With each step she takes, she notices the increasingly furious hammering of her heart. When she stops in front of Emma's bedroom door, the roar of her heart is so intense that she hears it in her eardrums.

“Curly?” Juggling, she is able to hold both handles with one hand, using her left hand to knock on the door “it's me, can I come in?” There is silence for a few seconds, until Anya hears a soft "Yes" from the other side of the door. She uses her free hand to push the handle down and enter, freeing her right hand from the weight of one of the cups, taking it again with her left hand, passing through and closing the door with her back.