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2025-09-18
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2025-09-25
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2/?
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As Real As You Need Me to Be

Summary:

Your fingers interlace with his. In the cool darkness of your quarters, heated only by the shared warmth of your bodies underneath the blanket, you can almost delude yourself into believing nothing bad will touch you. It’s a childish dream, even more fantastical than the idea of Neverland. Still, you settle in closer to Kirsh. You let him wrap his free arm over you and draw you into the protective cradle of his body.
You think you might love him.

Notes:

I never expected to be enthralled by Alien: Earth so hard I've ended up writing a fic for it, but here we are. This story will progress alongside the show. Canon divergences are afoot.

Chapter 1: Empathy

Chapter Text

───※ ·❆· ※───

It shouldn’t still be rattling, you thought.

The Maginot had plummeted under the weight of greed and human ego to gouge a smoking wound into the soil of mankind’s home world. Gradually, you realized that the ship isn’t still spasming in its death throes. The one shaking is you. You don’t know how to stop—aren’t even sure you can.

Your mind plays the events of the final hours over and over. With every shuttering of your eyelids, you can see the way the Xenomorph had gone after Zaveri all over again. You weren’t sure if it was a mercy that you’d not born witness to her final moments. The noises had been so terrible. But maybe your mind is conjuring up an even greater horror than the nightmare that had actually transpired.

Voices drag you out of your looping spiral. You stir for what seems like the first time in thousands of years. Your body lights up with pain that had lain dormant as you twist and push at the metal grate that had kept you sealed away in your sanctuary. It clatters to the floor like the doors of a gallows. You drag yourself free. You try to stand only to get knocked down to all fours when your knee rebels—nerves twisting with fire. You don’t make another attempt.

Stinging with open scrapes, you crawl in the direction of the unknown voices.

The first thing you see when you drag yourself over the threshold of the specimen lab is the ship’s cat. His back is to you, and you think nothing of Johnny’s presence. He’s been a fixture off and on during your waking hours for the past six and a half decades. Looking away from him, you see legs. There’s three people in room, young, all wearing the same uniform. You open your mouth to ask for help but something twists strangely in your peripheral vision. Johnny has turned to face you. There’s something wrong with his back legs. He looks… broken.

His face seems to bubble and distort while blood clots in his orange fur. You stare, uncomprehending, until his eyeball pops free and dangles like a grotesque Christmas ornament against his cheek. It hangs there for a frozen moment before landing among the wreckage on the floor.

Without thinking, you lunge at the animal. The thing that had once been Johnny doesn’t fight you. The multi-pupiled eye stares intently at your face. Distantly, you’re aware of raised voices and bodies trying to cross to the other side of the room away from you and the overtaken cat. You ignore them, not daring to look away from the specimen that had been given the designation Trypanohyncha Ocellus.

“Please stay put,” you tell her, “Just… please.”

The creature’s eye dilates and contacts at your words, but doesn’t move to strike. All but holding your breath, you shakily get to your feet and carry T. Ocellus’s host body to an undamaged containment canister. You place your fingers in a cage around the eye socket, fingertips pressing firmly against the still intact orbital bone. The bulbous body of the alien presses wetly against your palm.

“Good girl,” you breathe and carefully slip the unresistant creature into the canister before locking it.

Unable to stand any longer, you turn and sink to the floor. Johnny’s body is cradled in your arms. The wall is inhospitable against your back. Somewhere by your head, one of the other specimens clatters against the reinforced glass of its prison.

A sensation like water trickling down your back trails over your spine. You struggle to make out the faces of the strangers now crowding around you, fear evidently having given way to curiosity. Blinking doesn’t clear your vision. You have the vague sense that they are talking at you. It reminds you of the time you had crouched with your ear against the wall, desperately trying to make out the words of one of your parents’ argument, but liquid rushing from the pipes above had drowned their voices down to an indistinct smear of language.

With a sensation like falling, you go under.

───※ ·❆· ※───

A firm hand on your shoulder drags you back to the waking world. You open your eyes to see a man down on one knee in front of you. His expression is blank, dispassionate, as his mouth moves. Johnny is no longer in your arms and there's a part of you that mourns the slight weight of his cold body.

You drag a noise from your throat in the effort to tell the man you can’t hear him. He doesn't seem to be dissuaded. His thumb presses harder into the breakable bone of your clavicle. The starburst of pain from the pressure makes something in your ears pop. Your hearing dials back just in time to catch the tail-end of his sentence.

“—r role on the ship.”

“I’m a science officer,” you manage. Something shifts about his expression, a softening of the lines around his eyes. Belatedly, you offer up your name.

“What—”

“She saved us from the thing in the cat,” pipes up a young man you haven’t seen before—he must have arrived with your would-be interrogator, “It was going to get Nibs.”

Around the man’s shoulder, you can see one of the strangers cross her arms. Her face is so rawly upset that you think she would protest in any other setting. It’s odd, you realize, how the only one to display truly adult mannerisms so far was the pale haired man.

He signs, accepting the interruption with the grace of someone who made an agreement with themselves to hang on to patience by only their fingernails if they must. His face relaxes into something more natural. He looks almost approachable like this.

“You are you?” you ask, voice hoarse.

Before he can respond, one of the others crowds in and jostles the hand the stranger still has on you. He doesn’t let go.

“He’s Kirsh, and I’m Smee. That’s Curly, Tootles, and Nibs,” Smee says, pointing at the others in turn.

Kirsh raises his eyebrows and tips his head. “There you have it… Can you stand?”

He eases back, letting you make the attempt to rock forward onto your knees in order to get upright. You have to suppress a yelp, turning it into a choked sound as you fight to not lose the ground you slowly make. Kirsh adjusts his grip. He wraps secure hands around the backs of your upper arms and all but lifts you upright. Your fingers catch on something underneath his sleeve. He has a port built into his forearm. He’s a Synth.

You might have recoiled once. There had been a time, years ago, where you might have been disgusted at what he is, but the only emotions you can dredge up is relief that there is no meat inside of him to be contaminated by the horrors you and your team had brought onto the Maginot and gratitude that his facsimile of humanity is bringing you comfort. He is careful with you as he guides you to one of the chairs not overturned in the chaos. You have to make an effort not to clutch at his arms when he withdraws.

“So fragile,” he murmurs when he lowers himself to examine your swollen knee.

Kirsh’s fingertips are too smooth against your skin. You know that if you were to take his hand in yours and tilt it to the light, there would be no sign of fingerprints. He had been painstakingly constructed, not born of a mother.

Under his scrutiny, you remember that your outerwear consists of nothing more than a thin-strapped tank top and a pair of pants. You had lost your shirt somewhere in the scuffle. Your boots had been tossed for fear that heavy steps would betray you to the creatures roaming the halls. Everything you still have on is some degree of filthy and ripped. Irrationally, you feel your face grow warm.

The white-haired man neglects to comment on the biological tangle he must be picking up on. Instead, he speaks in a level voice. “Smee, go to the cargo hold and assist Wendy.”

“But—”

Kirsh glances skyward, “Go.”

The young man lets out an exaggerated sigh. His shoulders droop dramatically and he lets his arms dangle at his sides like a puppet with its strings cut. He slumps out of the room.

Again, you’re struck by how childlike everyone but Kirsh seems. It’s uncanny but it’s enough to divert your attention. With the receding tide of embarrassment, you shiver. The latent heat of the crashed ship is doing nothing to combat the way your body wants to forfeit. You wrap your arms around yourself, fingers digging into the soft tissue of your biceps.

“There’s one of the adult specimens on the loose,” you tell Kirsh.

He does not seemed to be bothered by this information. “It’s dangerous, I suppose?”

“Very.”

He hums and straightens up. With perfunctory gestures, he dusts off his knees. It seems as though he’s done poking around your myriad of injuries.

“Where are we? I mean, where did the Maginot land exactly?”

“The USCSS Maginot crashed into Prodigy City, a metropolis located in the Prodigy owned Earth-region of New Siam. The vessel is currently located in the basement levels of a commerce tower with residential floors in the lower levels.”

Your throat goes dry and you have to close your eyes against the sting of your tear ducts. The population density is worse than you had dared think when Dinsdale had broken the news in the mess. How many will lose their lives over Yutani’s project before all is said and done?

“Who is Prodigy?” you ask woodenly.

Kirsh’s response is immediate. You wonder if he can sense your need for distraction. Probably. Morrow had an uncanny ability for reading emotion and he was less artificial. “The Prodigy corporation was founded by Boy Kavalier in the year 2110. A little after your time.” He pauses, then continues, “You have been in space a very long time by human standards, haven’t you, Officer?”

“Sixty-five years.”

“The world has changed in your absence,” he acknowledges.

You’re sure it has. You are not the same person who boarded the Maginot in 2055 as you are now so it stands to reason that the world you have finally come home to would not be the same either.

Your eyes feel heavy with the weight of all that you’ve experienced during a trip that should have taken four months but instead had taken a mere handful of hours due to the uncontrollable speed with which the ship had raced towards Earth. You can’t help but shiver again. It wracks your body so strongly that your teeth clatter together like a wind chime.

Kirsh cocks his head in the same way that you’ve caught him doing. It must be an unconscious reflex when he’s processing. Strange, that Synths can have mannerisms just like a human. You wonder if he knows he does it and if he resents what could be considered a flaw. You don’t know him well enough to ask.

“Shock is a behavior exclusively limited to animals,” he remarks.

You give him a twist of your lips, not quite a smile but close. You can’t manage anything more. “Normally the whole hairless ape thing isn’t so bad but…” you shrug.

He raises an eyebrow, a smile of his own teases the corners of his mouth. Before he responds, something changes. His eyes grow distant. That same detachment you’d witnessed when you’d first opened your eyes settles back over his face. It strips the human out of him.

Kirsh presses a finger to the implanted comm link behind his ear and speaks in an even tone. “Yes… Yes, I remember. I am on my way. Stay right there.”

His gaze flickers to the others in the room.

“Tootles, Nibs, Curly.. stay and make sure this room remains secure. I am leaving for a moment.”

He ignores their protests and focuses back in on you. You don’t argue when he gives you your order of “Stay. You are under Prodigy jurisdiction now.” Besides, where would you even go? Any effort for escape would only end up disastrous. You’re injured and Yuanti would see your head roll for the failures of the Maginot’s crew.

No, you decide, it is far better to sit in this uncomfortable chair and wait for Kirsh to get back. He had not been unkind. Perhaps you could still scratch out a life if you cooperate with Prodigy.

Chapter 2: Patience

Chapter Text

───※ ·❆· ※───

Footsteps and the rattling of wheels on metal casters betray Kirsh’s return. He strides into the room but he is not alone. Personnel spread out from behind him—remoras flanking a shark. They set themselves upon the specimens with silent indifference. While they work, the Synth comes to stand at your side. He rests his hands on his narrow hips, shoulders curved inwards. Despite the almost vulnerable slant to his body, his affect is one of measured distance. A casual observer.

You study the proceedings with him. It gives you a strange feeling to watch the creatures that you had bled for and that your team died for be taken away as if they were toys being removed from the room of a grounded child. You look away, turmoil in your throat, and examine the still machine on your right. He does not react to your scrutiny, though you’re sure he must be aware of it. He must be aware of a great deal of things.

The children, as you had discovered, had been eager to share truly too much information about themselves and Prodigy to you the moment the Synth had left the room after declaring you company property. You weren’t truly a stranger after that, just a family member they hadn’t properly met. They had been even more excitable when you had walked them through catching the escaped tick. Curly in particular had glowed with a quiet pleasure under your praise. All of them seemed to be starved for acknowledgment.

You wonder if Kirsh knows they think of him as a parental figure. The David units were still so new when you were a child that you remember the protests about letting Synthetics be a mentor to the youth based on their lack of humanity. Now, there’s one fulfilling the duties of a responsible caretaker to a bunch of terminally ill kids placed in undying artificial bodies of adults. There’s a joke in here somewhere.

Under your watchful gaze, Kirsh stiffens. You would have missed the tightening of his artificial muscles if you hadn’t been paying more attention to him than anything else in the room. He shifts to the side, blocking your view of the recovery team. His back raises and falls with the mechanical process of his inorganic lungs. The tension does not fade.

“Take them to the aircraft. Load them,” he says to the figures now standing by with your life’s work slotted into place.

A flash of movement catches your eye and your gaze flickers to one of the stowed containers. T. Ocellus stares back at you. Her pupils have merged into one dark abysses. She raises a tendril and taps the fibrous appendage against the glass. You blink at her, uncomprehending. She repeats the gesture, adjusting to tap in the same direction as heavily insulated men begin wheeling her and the other specimens out of the ruined lab.

You turn in the direction she had indicated and see the twisted corpse of Johnny laying on one of the rolling instrument tables where he had been placed after being taken from your unconscious arms. Beside you, Kirsh is instructing the children to walk with the asset personnel to the landing zone.

“Follow them. Smee and Slightly are already on board with Wendy. Go straight there.”

With a pained expulsion of air, you get to your feet. Your knee threatens to buckle under you but you manage to grab one of the sheets used to cover dissected specimens. Struggling, you cross the scant distance and cover the cat with the cloth. The white fabric wicks up the coagulating blood and rust-colored stains bloom across it like ink into water. You tuck in the edges, a final goodnight.

Kirsh clears his throat—an unnecessary action for a machine—and speaks. “My employer has informed me that you will be coming with us to the island for further study of the alien creatures.”

You turn around to look the Synth in the eye. “Your boss is going to get everyone killed at the location he’s having them taken. It was a mistake to capture them in the first place.”

“Fear cannot be the ruling class in the endeavor for scientific enlightenment. Reason distinguishes man from animal.”

“Well, I am an animal and I am very much afraid. I have seen firsthand what happens when you don’t treat them with an appropriate level of caution.”

He tilts his head. You stand still as he narrows in on the shrouded bundle before dragging his stare sideways and upward to rest on your face. “You are quick to agree to your biological shortcomings.”

“And you are quick to claim no similarities. You were made in our image after all.”

That struck a nerve. His lips grow thin and his eyebrows reach for the stars. There is a long silence before he nods, making his peace with your words. Amusement catches the corners of his mouth.

“You are more fascinating than I might have assumed,” he murmurs.

Abruptly, you have the distinct sensation of being an insect pinned to a microscope slide. You don’t have a response.

Kirsh offers one hand to you, palm upwards. Not allowing yourself to think too hard about it, you take it. His fingers tighten just enough to lock you in place while he raises his unoccupied hand to investigate the exposed span of your ribs where your tank top had ripped during the commotion. Gooseflesh erupts over your skin at the attention, tempered only by the burn of his printless fingertips passing over a barely sealed cut.

“They were looking at you,” he comments, “That was not conducive to their assigned task. It was… inappropriate.”

Exhaustion makes you cranky. “Great. I got enough of men gawking after being around Teng for six and a half decades.”

His head tilts, telegraphing a question. You sigh. “Teng was the navigation officer. He would jerk off to the woman in cryo.”

“How crass... Did he receive punishment?”

“The security officer did say he wouldn’t get his pay didn’t knock it off, but the whole thing was treated like a joke. Boy’s club, you know.” Anger feels hot on your tongue.

There’s a sound of acknowledgement from Kirsh, and then the Synthetic is removing himself from your space. You feel cold in the absence of the warmth you hadn’t even realized he was radiating. His hands find the snaps connecting the top half of his jumpsuit to the bottom. With ease, he undoes his shirt buttons and pulls the long-sleeved garment off.

Alarmed, you try to form the sentence to ask him why the hell he’s getting naked in the very recently vacated lab, but the words keep getting stuck on the way out. Your face might as well be on fire. Right now, you would be the easiest target a Manumala Noxhydria has ever had.

Without a word, he offers the shirt to you. You take it, feeling unsteady. It fits loosely over your shoulders and the sleeves extend past the balls of your thumbs. Kirsh is far larger and broader than his lanky form suggests. Something about this newly won fact makes your stomach flip and you avoid looking at his bare arms. The exposed port in his forearm looks almost obscene in this low, flickering light. It is perfectly sized for curious fingers.

As if driven by muscle memory, Kirsh reaches out and cuffs the sleeves to reveal your hands. It’s even clearer than before that he has been a caretaker for a while. No wonder the kids view him as a parental figure. You don’t think that’s his directive though—playing dad for a bunch of adolescents who had become artificial parodies of their original selves.

Whatever his true purpose, whoever had made Kirsh had been meticulous. He’s flawed—speckled with human imperfections and lined with age you’re sure he has not existed through. He could be five months activated or fifty years.

“Thank you. I—” you stop yourself and give him a small smile. You think it might be the only genuine one you’ve had since the grim reality of the Maginot’s cargo set in.

“You’re welcome.” There’s a strange expression being played out across his face, toying with the lines etched into his forehead. He is intent on you, so much so that you want to squirm under the scrutiny. Like a lantern shuttering, it’s gone. You might as well have imagined it for the traces of it that remain.

“Now,” Kirsh says, offering his hand to you for yet another time, “Come.”

Again, you take it. He leads you through the broken body of the only place you have ever truly called home. The others had been desperate to return to Earth, lamenting the passage of every month spent onboard, but you had found solace in the endless, glittering sea. You had not left anything or anyone behind worth coming back for.

A lifetime seems to pass while you escape the twisted wreckage. The only thing keeping you sane is the firm grip that the Synth keeps around your hand. The familiar is turned alien from the destruction. Once free of the ship and into the cavernous maze of the tower, there was a moment where you wanted to give up and lay down to meet your own extinction next to a corpse partially trapped under fallen concrete. The body was already tagged, It would have been so easy to keep her company until the removal teams came to clear the site.

Kirsh seemed to recognize your weakness and forced you to keep going. Now, the tears you’ve been trying to bite back are making a sluggish escape. He is polite enough to not comment, merely anchors you as you fail to lift your ruined knee high enough and stumble over debris. The others have gotten so far ahead that you no longer hear the echo of their passing. You could strangle yourself with your own guilt and self-pity for taking so long, for being damaged, for being a part of Weyland-Yutani’s endeavor. So much for the indomitable human spirit.

───※ ·❆· ※───

The sunlight on your face is unexpected and abrasive. You stop in your tracks as it threatens to burn your eyes in their sockets. Kirsh stops alongside you, allowing himself to be tugged into stillness. If he weren’t a Synthetic, you’re sure that you would have bruised his hand with how hard you have been holding onto him.

Despite the dizzying bursts of color cascading across your vision like the paraffin wax and carbon tetrachloride mixture inside a lava lamp, you look up at the sky in wonder. It has been sixty-five years since you’ve felt the touch of organic light. It’s almost enough to distract from the pain that has settled into the very fibers of your being. The sensation of it is so different from the SAD lamps. You close your eyes, reveling in it as the salt from your tears dries across your cheeks.

It takes Kirsh’s voice softly saying your name to bring you crashing back down to the ground all over again. You turn to him, spell broken.

“They’re waiting on us,” he says.

“Right,” you agree and let him take you into the crowd bustling around the loading area.

They are loading the last stretcher onto the waiting aircraft.

Around you, the voices of dozens of men rise and fall. Some of them speak directly to Kirsh, others to each other. You are numb to it all. The specimens and hybrid children have already been sorted into their places, which only leaves you and the Synth who has become a comforting presence on a planet that is no longer for you.

“Go take a seat,” Kirsh requests.

He releases your hand. It tingles as it becomes only yours once more. There is an urge inside to give into blind animal panic and cling to him. You swallow it down and hold onto yourself for stability. Your nails bite into your arms through your borrowed shirt. You can’t move.

The Synthetic’s knuckles press into the curve of your back, nestling against the vertebrae. He applies enough pressure to coax you into taking an unwilling step forward. He does not let up after the small amount of progress and your second foot drags itself forward.

“Keep going.” He pauses and with a level of familiarity that should make you cringe, leans over your shoulder. His chest brushes against your back. In barely more than a whisper, he adds, “I will be there shortly. Speak to no one else.”

His breath against the side of your neck is warmer on your skin than the sun had been after stepping out of the darkness lit only artificial light. The Synth’s thumb brushes over your lower back. It’s not quite a caress, but it is a flustering simulacrum of a fond gesture all the same. To escape the cluster of feelings forming a Gordian knot underneath the protective plate of your sternum, you listen to him and board the craft.

You’re greeted by the sight of two stretchers wedged into the narrow aisle. One contains the body of what must be another transhuman child if the age and presence of white fluid are any indication. The second inert body is that of a human. The messy redness of organic tissues and fluids is a dead giveaway. You shudder, squeezing your own arms. Despite wanting to quit on the way to your next place of captivity, it is a miracle that you weren’t crushed into a bloody puddle or on a stretcher yourself after getting passed over by the specimens that had been on the Maginot.

You gingerly drop into a seat in the corner by the aircraft’s door. Most of the children are withdrawn into their own minds and don’t pay any attention to your presence. Smee is the only one inclined to make noise. He sways back and forth making quiet popping noises with his lips but trails to a stop when he notices your presence. He nudges the boy sitting next to him.

They’re too young, you think.

The two boys stare at you with wide eyes that only grow wider when Kirsh steps on board and sits at your side. You are grateful for the barrier that he creates between you and the others. You don’t have any energy left to give.

The aircraft takes off with a roar and a stomach-dropping lurch off the ground. Your eyes squeeze shut. This sensation of being airborne is so unlike the controlled propulsion necessary to move a vessel in space that it makes you nervous.

Giggling and the shushing coming from deeper in the craft draws your lids back open. Slightly is pushing Smee’s hand off his mouth while they whisper to each other. You catch broken snatches about a shirt and parents and love. Slightly catches his friend in the ribs with his elbow and they dissolve into wrestling. The others ignore them. It must be a common occurrence.

Oh, right, you realize. You’re still wearing Kirsh’s shirt.

Risking a glance at him, you discover that his eyebrow is raised, but he does not appear to be upset. You drop your gaze before he notices you watching him. It was a mistake. Your eyes snag on his arms, and you finally allow yourself to look.

In the crisp light of the aircraft, you appreciate how solid the Synth appears to be. Morrow had had a translucence to his enhanced arm. The mechanics were readily visible underneath the silicone skin. It’s strange how someone—something—entirely Synthetic could appear more real than a human with augmented components blending with their biological form.

Sagging further into your seat, you let yourself fold into the corner. Your head rests against the wall. Even if he would be more comfortable than an inhospitable sheet of steel, you weren’t so presumptuous as to lean against Kirsh. You surrender yourself to a restless doze.