Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Pressure. Pressure like a living thing on his chest. Pressure like an inevitability as gravity fights against fire. 

But gravity has been slowly losing its impact a long time ago. Ever since the first of them had gone into space, drawn endlessly upwards by the allure of the night and burn of the stars. Not that the metaphorical loss of significance changed the way that it presses against him now, flattens his lungs and steals away at his breaths - as powerful as anything else he’d ever experienced, and almost as painful. 

. 

And then he was waking. Blinking up at the clean white of the ceiling above him, not knowing why he felt disappointed in waking up to the same image he’d passed out to. It wasn’t as though he’d been expecting the stars before him, was it? Nor any glance of that endless, unknowable darkness.

It was a job. It was his job as Black. He had to remember that. Had to keep it in mind as he’s transported through colourless corridors to his destination. No matter the allure of the stars outside, the temptation of that endless darkness. He was here to fix the ship, to keep everything working. 

And above all, to survive. 

The sound the sirens make is cutting. It digs into his skull, shuts down every sense but pure panic. 

THERE IS ONE IMPOSTER AMONG YOU

.

The meeting with his team is tense. They’re all brand new, fresh faced and pale with anxiety. Stories of intruders are as common as anything now, of course, but to come face to face with your crewmates, knowing that one of them was not who they seemed and that they wanted nothing more than to kill you-

Well, there’s something different about it. About being there in the room yourself, staring into the blank reflective surface of the helmets around you, wondering and not knowing. It has a way of sending chills down your spine, of stopping the words cold in your throat. 

Across the table, White meets his gaze briefly, his fingers drumming a steady beat on the clean, colourless table. For a moment, Black finds himself calmed by the motion, the steady vibration of the action across the table providing another point of focus.

But the worry is still there, in the back of his mind like it’s sunk its hooks in. And now it whispers that anyone present could be the imposter. That anyone present around the table could be plotting his death at this very moment, knives tucked into pockets and deviousness hidden behind smiles. He’d seen it happen, once, watched live footage of a murder. The imposter had been more bloodthirsty than even usual, tearing into the body when they’d realised that nobody else was around to endanger them. Rabid. Animalistic.

It haunted his nightmares for days. Weeks. Those fingertips stained with a red that isn’t - cannot - be found anywhere else but after pain, but drained from living things. That knife, glistening sharpness tainted now by blood, plunged again and again into something that was no longer living. Wielded for the sake of it. Hurting for the sake of it. 

Imposters. Borderline inhuman. It’s easy to wonder if they had morality, had sentience at all beyond mechanical killing.

Chapter Text

White knows what being an imposter means. Was brought up to know. Was born with the weight of it on his shoulders and the thirst for blood snaking through his veins. 

But the killing comes later. He also knows that. He’d been taught to play the long game. Some of the newer imposters, less experienced and never taught properly, killed early and was thrown out just as fast. Tossed into that endless expanse of space. 

The first time he’d infiltrated with someone, as two imposters assigned to the same ship, his partner had been one of those. She’d killed too early, and was found out with blood on her suit, literally red handed. She got ejected just as fast, and ended up suffocating slowly in that endless darkness that lingered outside the window.

White had tried not to watch her, the one spot of bright colour amongst that dark and vast expanse. But he’d turned, for just one second, to look out the window - consumed with some unspoken need to hold vigil, to bear witness. And he’d caught a blurry glance of her as she’d floated away, terror written into every line of her face, her skin pale and clammy with devastation or suffocation.

It had struck some terrible fear in him, haunted his dreams ever since. Not that he’d show it. Not that his fingers had even trembled when he’d killed the rest of that group, methodically, steadily, mercifully. 

Born for it. Born for the role. 

.

The first sabotage goes wonderfully. The oxygen supply system crashes like it was made to break, like it was made to kill them all. 

White can’t help but feel some wicked sense of endearment towards it at that thought.

The alarms start blaring in seconds, red light flickering through the hallwalls and rendering the entire ship nightmarish, and he snaps out of his thoughts, starts running as though on his way to fix the issue, fixing an expression of vague concern over his features. 

The sound of his boots hitting the floors echo loudly through the halls. For a moment, he seemed entirely alone, the emptiness of the spaceship somehow pressing in on him. Claustrophobic. Smothering. How long has he been running? And yet the alarms are still loud in his ears, the rooms sickening in their repetition. He wonders if this was how she’d felt, as she was chased down the halls, scared and lonely, blood on her hands.

It’s almost a relief when another form, emerging from an adjacent hallway, barrels into him and sends him stumbling backwards in shock.

Black. Gazing at him with panic in his eyes and apologies streaming from his lips. White barely listens as he rights himself, as he thinks about taking his first kill here. Now. The knife strapped to his hip would be easy to reach. It would be easy to swing his arm forwards and let momentum bury the blade deep inside that dark suit. 

But it’s not worth it. They were standing too close to the oxygen supply controls. Anyone could swing by. 

“I’ll fix the system in that room,” White ends up saying, pointing at the console closest to him. “You get the other one.”

Black nods, quiet and solemn, and sprints for it. The lights change a few seconds later to signal that he has done his job, and White sighs, hearing the echoes of other footsteps coming from the halls, and goes to fix the rest of the system. 

At least he’s gained some trust. That should come in handy later.

.

Black smiles at him later that day, as the group gathers around the table, and there’s something gentle about it that unsettles him, makes him feel awkward and out of place. Makes him restless and sets his teeth on edge. Reminds him that he isn’t something people are supposed to smile at and conjures the sharpness of the blade in his mind’s eye.

He only barely smiles back, barely stops his own face from contorting into some grotesque grimace. 

A beat. He finds himself holding Black’s gaze for a few seconds, suddenly angry and suddenly worried that the anger will become apparent in his eyes, will lay out all that he is.

Pink is the first to speak, spreading her fingers over the table as she leans forwards to address everyone. 

“No deaths today,” she starts, and relief is soaked into every word she says. “Brilliant job, everyone.”

By her side, Yellow looks around with a grin like the sun, bright and without a shadow of anything even approaching insincerity, and raises her gloved hands to offer two thumbs ups. For a moment, the table relaxes, and it’s as though they’ve forgotten that there was, in fact, an imposter amongst them. 

“We have some time to relax now,” Pink says, and she smiles back at Yellow with a shrug. “Get excited! I know you’ve all been working hard around the ship, but now is the time to take it easy and check out the premises! Remember that you shouldn't have to travel alone anymore now that all the tasks for today have been done in time, and stay safe!”

With a last grin, she waves merrily at the group and turns to answer a question from Yellow, leaving the rest of them to scatter and talk amongst themselves.

Chapter Text

Pink really needn’t have worried. Most people linger around the common area after the tasks are done, anyway. It doesn’t make the most ideal case for a murder. 

It’s an aimless cycle, in White’s opinion. The orders get sent through in the morning, the crew blusters around, murders happen or sometimes don’t, and everyone settles in after everything’s due. Presumably the ground crew has to do something with the information they send through, so that the cycle continues. 

He doesn’t care much, never really had to bother learning the routines that the crewmates were normally subject to - nothing much beyond what was necessary for infiltration, the basic knowledges all crewmates knew. 

He should be thankful, probably, that the Company kept so much of their crew in the dark and gave them so little training. It was probably a decision made just as the intruder problems were getting worse - to make sure that everyone was easy to replace, that no death would constitute too great a loss of collateral. 

It was likely that even the lowest level intruders got more training than the average crew member by this point, White thinks.

He snaps from his thoughts in time to see Black approaching tentatively from his left, one hand raised awkwardly in something approximating a greeting. White doesn’t bother with waving back, nodding his head slightly instead, hoping that Black will just pass him by. 

He doesn’t. In a predictable but unwelcome act, Black pauses in front of White and smiles again, taking a hesitant step forwards before stopping, shifting his weight to one leg. 

“Hey,” he says, and his voice is softer than when he’d been blurting apologies earlier, amongst the blaring sirens. Now, in the calm, White could make out some slight trace of an ambiguous accent amongst his words, a slight curl in the way he said his vowels. “Sorry again for colliding into you, by the way. How have you been?”

“Pretty much the same as normal”, White says, making himself smile and hoping that it wasn’t the stiff grimace it feels like. “And you? Have you been up to anything?”

“Not much, honestly.” Black shrugs, casting his gaze nonchalantly around the dining hall and the small groups forming amongst the other crewmates. And then he smiles again, this smile more excited and mischievous than his other, softer ones. But it, too, alights on his face like it belongs there, softens the curves of his features with the familiarity of a well-worn expression. 

It was a face that seemed made to smile, White decides - and then realises that he hadn’t heard what Black had just said. Realises that he’d been examining the other man just a little too closely.

“What was that?”

“Oh, I was just wondering if you wanted to check out the observation deck with me. I haven’t gotten a chance to yet, and Yellow said she might come along if she had time but…”

He trails off, pointing a finger vaguely towards the direction of the kitchens, where Pink and Yellow were leaning in close to each other, discussing something over a huge map spread over the counter. Yellow seems to notice them, looking up and waving briefly before clapping her hands together, as though she’d just thought of something, and diving back down to gesture at one particular part of the map, excited. 

“You know,” Black continues, “Yellow and I actually sort of knew each other beforehand - during training, that is. It’s pretty lucky that we were assigned to the same ship. I’ve heard that given the amount of recruits out there, the chances of being assigned to the same crew as someone you’ve met during training is pretty much zero. Something about efficiency and self-preservation, actually. Wait- but that’s off topic. Wanna come along? Buddy system?”

White considers the concept for a second - the trust of the crewmates was one of the best tools an imposter had in their arsenal, the best way to get away with what he had to eventually do. But, on the other hand, he wanted to accompany Black even less than he normally wants to mingle with the crewmates. Something about that smile, about feeling transparent under that steady gaze.

He hesitates, blurts out “but what if one of us was the imposter?” in an attempt to stall, and immediately curses himself. It was a risky joke - but one that Black apparently doesn’t take to heart, instead throwing his head back and chuckling. 

“Hey Yellow!” He yells across the room. “I might be going to check out the observation deck with White! If either of us go missing, you know who the imposter is!”

White smiles in spite of himself. 

“Ok then,” he relents, “I guess I’ll come along.”

Chapter Text

The journey to the observation deck is a largely quiet one. Black isn’t quite sure what to say, and White seems okay with the silence, his gaze skimming the plain walls and doors as though committing them to memory, the very picture of calm and grace.

The room is large, plain and unlit and messy - the way that it normally is, on these ships. Black had heard once that the spaceship design had originally set this room aside for recreation, but that the lack of funding and low prioritisation of entertainment over all had meant that, as the time went on, it became more of a storage room than anything else. 

The design, however, still remained. Smooth panels across the floors where flush carpeting could have been laid, lightly coloured walls that gave the room, even dark, a sense of openness. 

And of course, above all, the wide window that lined one wall, stretching from ceiling to floor to reveal the darkness of space behind it, to reveal the stars stretching across the dark fabric of the sky. 

Black finds himself drawn in immediately. He’d dreamt of seeing that dark spread of space since he’d first signed up. It was one of the reasons he’d signed up in the first place, to be honest, even in spite of the warnings that his mother had given him. 

“It’s a terrible job,” she’d said, “just look at the mortality rates they have! It just isn’t safe.”

And throughout the years, his reply back to her had gone from “space is cool” to “the Company’s only doing what they have to help and I need to do my part” to “I’ve really done too much to stop now”. 

But even still, even as his views of the Company’s actions had become more and more disillusioned, two things never changed. 

The first, he tried not to think about too much - the war effort that loomed consistently over them and the casualties that kept getting updated, the lists of horrific stories told about the imposters that kept expanding. 

The second was simply that call of space. Of the stars that were, by all accounts, simply lights amongst a dark fabric, and yet which held a depth to them, that drew your gaze further and further into those depths as though straining to see stars even beyond what could be seen at first glance. It was no wonder that the stories of the constellations, that tales of the stars, have captured the human imagination for so long. It was something about the sky - so close, so everlastingly present and yet so ephemerally evasive. 

And closer now than ever, as Black raises one gloved hand up to the thick glass, feeling the chill of space even through the thick layers of insulation. It seemed to envelope him, both comforting and terrifying at once. 

It takes him too long to remember that he is not alone here, that there was someone else to whom his extended wonderment may be strange or inconsiderate. So he forces himself to look away, turning his gaze towards the other figure in the space, expecting White to be next to him, marvelling at the endlessness of possibility behind that glass. 

Instead, he finds White standing far away, his back to the door and his face almost pale with fear. His arms are crossed over his chest, not carelessly or casually, but rather with that characteristic tightness that signalled at self-comfort. 

Black curses himself for not noticing, turning quickly from the draw of the windows to walk closer, anxiously thinking about his next actions, his next words, and coming up with almost nothing. 

“Are you alright?” He ends up saying. And it’s cliché, it’s nothing. White nods, because of course he does, and they stand for a second facing each other, awkward with the view of space behind them. 

White seems to pick up on the awkwardness, shifting slightly on his feet. 

“I’m fine,” he confirms, again. “I’ve just never really been that fond of space, to be honest.”

“Oh, can I ask why? I’ve personally always loved space and astronomy and stuff - though it’s totally understandable that you don’t, of course. I just, uh, wanted to ask? To be honest, it was one of the reasons that I’d signed up. Not that the war effort isn’t important, of course. Not that I’m making light of it.”

White doesn't speak for a long while, and Black bites his tongue, turning his gaze slightly away. He’s teetering dangerously on the edge of blurting out more words when White finally speaks, breaking the awkward silence that had threatened to overwhelm them once more. 

“I didn’t really make the decision to join,” he says slowly, as though choosing each word with purpose, “it was a mix of factors, to be honest. And I, well, didn’t really think about it when I signed up, at first, it just - got worse.”

“That must be difficult,” Black says, and gasps suddenly in horror. “Holy shit, I’m so sorry for dragging you here. I didn’t know that - and obviously that’s not an excuse but - yeah. Sorry.”

“No, don’t worry about it. I agreed to come.” White says, and looks for a moment as though the words have surprised even himself. “Face your fears, right? And, to be fair, it’s a good view.”

And he takes a hesitant step forwards, and then another, continuing until he was standing in front of the window where Black had been only moments earlier, raising his gaze to those dark, endless skies.

Chapter Text

The first thing that White had noticed, entering the observation room, was the way the shadows shifted between the boxes, as though they were alive, stretching across the high-ceilinged room as though in a desperate attempt to make up for the looming emptiness that nevertheless remained.

The second thing that he had noticed was that window. 

It seemed to stretch before him like the jaws of some terrible thing, yawning open to reveal glistening teeth and a terrible, terrible darkness. And the sight had rooted his feet in place even as Black had approached the window with some sense of – of almost reverence. 

He couldn’t stop thinking about it. About suffocation. The thought permeated his very being, restricted the breath in his throat and tightened his chest. 

And then Black had noticed, but instead of turning suspicious or confused, he’d just been…

Understanding. That was the word. Understanding, with that soft, terrible smile on his face, his expression warm even cast in the coolness of the cold starlight. 

And how the hell does he do that? It wasn’t even the brightness of a smile offered by someone who’d never had anything bad happen to them, not naive nor wizened. Just… warm. Open. 

So now here he was, standing so close to the window that the view threatened to swallow him whole, the panic rising even faster in his throat. His reflection in the mirror peers back at him, eyes wild, as if asking him what the hell he thought he was doing.

White no longer knows. 

A slight shift in the air. Black has joined him by the window. 

For a moment, they stand there in silence, watching the stars. Watching that endlessness. 

“You know,” White says, and the sound of his voice surprises even him. “I always knew, logically, that the stars wouldn’t wink when you look at them outside the atmosphere, but I’d never really realised just how still they’d look.”

Black hums quietly. “I like it, to be honest,” he says, “it feels… more sincere, somehow. Just distance between you and the stars, or where the stars used to be. We’re so small, but in some sense, in being able to see them, we can… hold the memory of long dead gas giants in the smallness of our minds.”

White can almost feel Black smiling, beside him. And he looks, sneaks a gaze over his shoulder. Tells himself that he’s just making sure to stay aware of his surroundings. 

“I think that’s part of what always annoyed me, actually,” he says, “I don’t understand how you can talk about it so beautifully. It’s all…”

He pauses for a moment, looks for the words and finds too many, none of them speakable. 

“It’s all just filled with dead things,” he settles. “It’s filled with ghosts. Empty and overcrowded at once. Haunted.”

“Full of history,” Black agrees, quietly. “There’s… a lot going on out there. Isn’t there?”

White feels his fingertips digging into his palm. Bites down hard on the inside of his cheek. Some tiny part of him, at that thought, feels almost as though it were experiencing whiplash, flung back into reality from wherever other place it may have found brief respite in. He wonders how Black would react if he knew the truth about the man standing next to him. If he knew that White had killed, and will kill again. 

And that this conversation, this whole stargazing thing, was just the next stepping stone in his infiltration plan. 

He breathes in. Breathes out. 

“We should probably head back,” he says, “the rest of the crew might be wondering where we are.”

Chapter Text

White doesn’t - well, he doesn’t really avoid anyone the next few days. But he does stay out of the way. Makes sure that he’s in the shadows enough to avoid standing out, but not enough that he’s suss. And it’s really been enough days now that he should be looking at more long term sabotages or - of course - murder itself. 

Anything to upset the process of the ship, to get the crewmates anxious and disorganised so that they’d be easier to pick off one by one. Until he could take control of the ship and fulfil his duty.

But to be fair, there is -  there is a sense of discord blooming. There hasn’t been a murder, but White can sense the crewmates watching their backs, wondering why something hasn’t happened yet. It was a different form of chaos, a different flavour of fear. Sometimes, he’d see crewmates flinch hard whenever they see someone else in a room, or duck away from the sounds of someone else walking down the hallways.

The failure rate for ships staffed full of first-timers are sky high. And this ship isn’t even a high-profile one, just an older vessel relegated to running messages between more important ships. For cases like these, there was almost a 90% chance that the imposter would have either taken over or been ejected into space within the span of the first week. 

And White knows this. White has been on ships before - have done things like this countless times by now. He is, after all, still one of the best in the business.

Born for it. Trained for it. A ship like this should only take him a few days, and yet here he was, stalling. 

He doesn’t know why. Doesn’t know why he keeps hesitating, running from task to task as though trying to help. There have been chances to kill, too many chances. Just yesterday, he’d ran into Yellow in electrical - electrical, of all places - and had known that he had a golden chance to kill uninterrupted and slip into the vents he’d pre-hacked.

It would have been so easy. And Yellow was so… beloved, in the group. Her death would have devastated the entire crew, especially Pink, who’d just officially accepted the leadership role she’d been unofficially taking on since the first day. It would have thrown a wrench into the very heart of the machine that is this small, insignificant off-branch of the Company. It would have made them beyond vulnerable. 

It was just that… 

Well, every night during meal times, Black would make sure to place down his meal tray at the table White was sitting at, and wave Pink and Yellow over. And the three of them - Black, Pink, and Yellow - would go on to chat about everything and nothing, at times waving their hands with such excitement that it often threatened to knock over the trays themselves. And White had found himself somehow unable to slip easily into that mask he usually wore to get closer to crewmates, unable to play along in fake merriment. But they hadn’t minded, just kept talking about Company training and life back on the home planet. Rowdy, happy, alive .

“When we make it back,” Pink had said, at one point, as though that when was a given as opposed to an improbability. “I’m going to make sure you all come visit my hometown - and that’s a promise. I am not above blackmail.”

And so White had - well, he’d ran into Yellow in electrical, and the knife strapped to his hip had called to him with all the power of years of elite training. But he’d also seen, just for a moment, an image of what the cafeteria would look like that night. The silence. The mourning. Black’s normally calm and smiling face wracked with devastation.

Would he stop smiling, after that? Would he ever smile again in the few days between the first kill and the last? 

For just one moment, he’d felt, unreasonably, for no reason, sick to his stomach. And it had been one moment too many. Yellow had finished up with her task and passes him by cheerfully, waving one gloved hand as she headed out.

She didn’t even bother to look over her shoulders to make sure that he wouldn’t sneak up behind her. 

White had never been trusted like that before. He doesn’t know what to do with it.

Chapter Text

Black almost jumps out of his skin when he sees the figure sitting at the desk in the admin room, and berates himself for being so on edge only a second later, reminding himself that, even though the Company equipment had detected an imposter onboard, at least some level of trust was always required to keep a team working smoothly. 

At least, that was what his mother had told him before he’d set out, her knuckles pale where her fingers were twisted into her shawl. She’d said it as a quiet afterthought, though, and perhaps only because was against Company policy. Because the Company always warned against attachments. In case of messy priorities. In case of someone accidentally protecting an imposter. 

But...

What is the point of it all, if there isn’t at least a few people that you could find yourself trusting? What is the point of the battles and the deaths, if they’re not ultimately fighting for some sense of rightness and community? And, after all, White was… White. Just this side of awkward whilst still somehow effortless cool. Just vulnerable enough that it seemed genuine.

White seems to hear him coming, and raises a lazy hand in greeting, only turning from the security cameras briefly to check his identity before turning his sharp gaze back to the screens. He’d lounged in the chair, a little too tall to sit comfortably, with his feet up on the dash and his arms folded over his chest. His neck ever so slightly arched to get the best look at the scenes playing out over the security feed.

“Done with all your tasks?” Black asks, still standing by the door, wondering if he was wasting time by being here. Wondering if he should be moving on yet somehow reluctant to. 

White nods, narrowing his eyes at one of the screens - where Green just ran past - before turning around in the chair, lowering his feet to the floor and stretching his arms over his head. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Want some company for your last tasks? These monitors haven’t been the least bit helpful.”

“Sure! I’ve just finished one in the Reactor, actually, and I have…” Black checks his map and grimaces. “One last task in Navigation. Jeez, trust me to leave two tasks that are literally across the ship from each other as my last ones. Not the best display of forward planning, huh?”

“You’ll probably get better at it as you go on more missions,” White responds, rolling his shoulders backwards and standing up. “Knowing you, you’ll be a pro at it in no time.”

He heads for the door in long, elegant strides. But just for a second - before taking his second step - he seems to pause, staring at nothing in particular with the slightest trace of a frown on his face, as if just realising something. 

Worried, probably. Black guesses. Worried about the imposter situation and whether any of them will make it out alive, whether any of them will ever have a second mission. 

But the hesitation is only momentary - barely perceptible. White is soon out the door and Black hurries to follow, casting one last quick look at the live footage - which remained unchanged in its lack of noteworthiness.

They barely chat as they make their way through the cafeteria - largely uninhabited in the middle of the day - and the weapons room - laughably empty. Black is vividly aware of the time and vividly aware of each second ticking by.

At least he doesn’t have to worry about being brutally murdered now that White was by his side. And having one less thing to worry about, under the strict Company schedule, was a blessing. 

Thankfully, they’re able to arrive there with some time to spare, and Black doesn’t hesitate, diving headfirst into the mess of wires protruding from the wall in order to connect each in the order that the message from the Company had noted they should be in today. 

When he’s finally done, having won a fight with a particularly stubborn pink wire just in time, he turns his head - ready to say something - only to see White standing, still as anything, behind the center chair, his hands digging into the back of the plush seating and his eyes fixed on the slow-moving stars ahead of them.

Chapter Text

It takes White much too long to realise that the sounds behind him - the quiet complaints about the wires and the tinkering of metal - has stopped, and he snaps his attention from the windows at the realisation, suddenly alert and suddenly afraid. 

For no reason, really. He was the scariest thing on this ship. That he could be sure of. 

And, of course, it’s only Black, his gentle features twisted in something that almost looked like worry, his hands held in front of him as though approaching some terrified animal. 

“Are you ok?” He asks, and of course he would. Of course he would be here, in Navigation, with his hands raised not in fear but in reassurance, talking to an imposter as though nothing was out of the ordinary, as though the defence systems aboard the ship haven’t declared already the fact that this was no place for trust. 

It’s a wonder he hadn’t been killed yet. Friendships lead to nothing but danger. Attachments were synonymous with risk. He’ll probably learn that as he started going on more missions, though - 

He wouldn’t be. Would he? Going on missions, that was. Not if White’s plan goes the way it should. And it really should . This was a tiny, insignificant ship manned by amateurs. It has basically been destined for destruction the moment it had been assigned. The information they were transporting had no doubt been replicated countless times, ready to be sent through on other ships as soon as this one reported an error. 

The one thing that the Company was good at was playing the numbers game. 

So why, then, does White keep trying to refer to Black’s future? Why does he feel - at times - simply unable to imagine carrying out his plan - his purpose - the way he’d been able to visualise other tasks? 

For fuck’s sake. Nobody even knew he was here with Black right now. It would be so simple to just-

“I’m fine,” he says. Too loud. Too sudden. 

And Black is still looking at him, his expression so, so gentle. And White suddenly - can’t look back. Can’t hold that warm, steady gaze.

So he turns his head away, and his gaze lands on the windows again, lands on the wide expanse of the nothingness in front of him. And then - and he thinks he might be trembling. And it’s inexplicable. It shouldn’t make sense. He’s looked out windows before and been in space before. He’s even pretended to do the steering before. There was nothing setting this moment apart from all the moments before.

Except, perhaps, that inability to keep pretending. That slow dissolution of the mask of caution he’d spent his life wearing.

What happened to it? 

And he knows, vividly, that he'll have to watch out - for his newly developed habit of blurting things out, of revealing personal history. It wouldn’t exactly take a genius to put everything together if he kept offering these pieces of information up. And yet… some part of him wanted to talk about it. Some part of him reached out to that sympathetic expression the same way that the first vulnerable fronds of a vine plant reaches towards the sun. Delicate and aching. 

“My best friend,” he ends up starting, treading cautious, seized by a sudden image of being tossed into space, and of having no-one to carry on the memory of it all, of having nobody else to bear witness to her life. “my best friend died in space.”

Black gasps, his eyes going round with sympathy. 

“I’m so sorry,” he says, “that must have been just… awful.”

And he - steps closer. Puts one gloved hand over White’s arm as if looking to comfort him. His gaze is still fixed on White’s face, careful and understanding, and the sight of it was - enraging and terrifying and comforting all at once. 

“She was probably still alive when it happened,” he continues, choosing his words carefully, fighting the urge to shrug off Black’s hand, to shove the crewmate backwards and go running for the nearest vent, where he might at least get some peace. “She was just trying to do the job she’d been raised to do, trying to serve the cause she’d been raised to believe.”

He wonders how Black would react if he knew that she had been an imposter. That she had killed, and been killed in turn. But in the moment, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the horrible relief of speaking, of offering even a modified truth. 

“That’s terrible,” Black murmurs, voice quiet and head downturned. “That’s just - horrific.”

He breathes out after those words, seems to think for a while. 

“Tell me if I’m overstepping, but… at least she went out fighting for something, right? She’d been fighting for a better universe, for a better reality. And… in some sense, she lives on in the cause. In every image of a better future. In everything we’re trying to do.”

And White feels - like he’s going to puke. Like he’s numb. Like he’s hot and cold at once. His teeth are digging hard into his cheeks, filling his mouth with the metallic tang of blood.

He says the next words anyway. 

“And has the Company ever told you what that better future is going to look like?”

Chapter Text

There is… a burning kind of quiet. A discomfort in the air, waiting to snap like a rubber band pulled too tight. 

Black tries to speak, tries to think of something to respond with, to comfort with. But finds nothing, finds the well of words drawn dry.

“Don’t,” he ends up saying, voice just this side of hoarse. Like having a mouthful of dust. Ridiculous, on some level, but there was something disquieting in White’s eyes. “It’s… don’t.”

And White falls silent, turns his head again, looking out the windows as though those small specks of light held some kind of answer - even an answer that was, Black supposes, ultimately hopeless and macabre. And Black takes this chance to examine him. The elegant lines of his face. The play of the lights over his lashes. That look in his eyes. 

Dangerous. 

Sad .

“They’re doing their best, you know?” Black murmurs. “It’s… natural that they’re not perfect, but nobody is. They’re not at fault for the war.”

And he notices, almost absentmindedly, his hand moving again, reaching out. He pulls it back just in time, suddenly afraid that the act would be seen. Not the type of fear he’d feel running through the hallways and wondering if anyone was behind him, but rather the fear of seeing someone else on the edge of a bridge, looking down into tumultuous waters. Where any movement is dangerous, any contact a gamble.

But he needn’t have worried, because White’s gaze remained fixed on the windows, even as he seemed to tense at the words, shifting backwards with his arms coming tight and defensive across his chest.

“Then who is?” He says, voice sharp and upset. And in that moment he looked almost wild, feral. “I don’t know what they’ve been telling you, but the imposter groups had barely enough manpower to maintain their borders when the first serious battles first started. Half the earliest imposters were barely adults, for fuck’s sake. Why would - why would they start a battle they had so little chance of winning?”

“Well they seem to be doing just fine now, so they clearly knew something we didn’t. Didn’t they? And who says they wouldn’t have been just fine sending out kids to do their dirty work? Nothing else they’ve done so far seems to suggest any sort of strong moral compass.”

Black can feel his own tone turning too harsh, too sharp, and he hates it, hates the bitter taste it leaves in his mouth and the tightness in his throat. But at the same time, the image from the video he’d watched in preparation for the mission arises, as if seared into his brain. 

The imposter, knife raised, blood splattered across their cyan suit. Teeth bared behind the dark glass of their helmet, eyes crazed. 

He watches White exhale, watches him turn his gaze finally away from the stars and nodding. But almost half hearted, as if - as if something had slammed shut, left the space inside empty. 

“You’re right,” White says, his fingers playing over the fabric of his sleeve. And he takes a step back from the window, inclining his head towards to the door in something akin to a nod, gaze still averted, arms still crossed over his chest.  “Yeah. That’s a good point.”

And as suddenly as the bitterness had arisen in Black, it fades. Back into something approaching trepidation, approaching concern. And he’s stepping forward, boosted by some fleeting shred of courage, a need to stop that emptiness from locking in, from staining. 

“Hey,” he starts, and only barely faulters as White turns back towards him, those eyes still guarded, emotionless. “I’m sorry. I know it’s all - it’s all terrible right now, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” A grim smile. “Yeah. Listen, I’m sorry too, I’ve just been on edge lately, what with all the uncertainty. Don’t think anything of it.”

And he turns again, a solitary figure against the hallway lights peeking through the open door. 

“We should probably head back,” White adds, and starts walking before Black has a chance to answer, to question or to explain.

And Black pauses, before following. And it’s stupid, and he doesn’t know why, but he’s aching, aching.

Chapter Text

White can’t sleep. 

He’s tried, lied down and banished all thoughts to the back of his mind like he’d been taught to. But still, the apprehension had remained, had clinged to the back on his mind like something holding on for its very life. 

Or like something trying to drag him down with it.

So he doesn’t try, doesn’t bother with the tossing and the turning that he can faintly hear coming from the rooms occupied by the others, and he gets up, quietly, putting his training into practice in what must be one of the most inane ways ever. 

Still, he knows how important it is to be cautious, knows how suspect he could look is he’s caught sneaking out of the crew quarters so late at night - not even because of the opportunities for sabotage, but just for the bravery to do it, to venture out alone at night. 

White always used to find it funny, how scared and on edge the crewmates used to get.

The doors to the hallways slide open silently. The hallway beyond is dark, the entire ship almost in hibernation but for the energy spent to keep the ship moving through space. It was important to keep time up here. It was all too easy to lose yourself against that endless darkness, without the steady markers of dawn and sunset. 

And for the first time in a long time - maybe forever, White feels entirely… lost. 

It was all because he waited too long to make the first kill, he berates himself. But the thing about starting murders - he knew all too well - is that it becomes a force of inertia. That once the first murder has occured, there was no stopping the perpeptuating cycle of accusations and deaths, all until it inevitably comes to one of two ends. 

Victory or death. Those were the options. No bowing out gracefully. No graceful losses or agreed-upon retreats. Just winning or that endlessness of space - always outside, always a reminder. 

So he - turns the corner, activates the door and descends the stairways to the observation deck. Feeling like he’s half dreaming and entirely irrational. Overwhelmed and listless at once.

Nestled in the belly of the ship, the window is still mawlike, exposing the reality of space, and White finds himself walking forwards, as if drawn in. 

Fate, some tiny, vicious voice inside him murmurs. Drawn forwards by fate. Which is written in the stars, as they say. 

And it might be right. Might have a point if he doesn’t get a move on soon. But the thing was - the one thing that kept making him hesitate was - 

He shakes off the thought. Makes himself stare out into the darkness instead. Imagines the glass fading away and the vacuum of space pulling him in. No warm smile or comforting hand, this time. Nothing to distract him from that ceaseless horror of the universe, of the battlefield that both birthed and ignored the conflicts brewing within. 

He thinks about the sharpness that had permeated Black’s voice at the mention of imposters. Thinks about seeing them drag his friend away, her suit splattered with blood and her eyes brimming with tears. 

I wish they’d just hand over the ship. She’d told him, when they’d still been planning the infiltration, and her expression had made her seem heartbreakingly young. Which she really had been. It had been White’s first double-imposter mission, but it had been her first mission full stop. 

Not enough manpower to assign jobs strategically - that had always been the problem.

And anyways, she had always been eager, ready to prove herself by taking on a ship full of veteran crewmates. He vaguely remembered watching her - and the others born after the war had already settle into its bloodthirsty groove - take to the training like a duck to water. 

He’d been much less confident when he was being trained. Back then, infiltration had seemed nearly impossible, a last resort to gain an equal footing in border skirmishes that had expanded too fast. That was what he had been told, anyways, when he’d been drafted for training, barely a teenager and desperate to prove himself. 

And he’d tried to look after her, really. But sticking together would have been suicide at best and he didn’t know any other ways to help.

One thing crewmates and imposters had in common - connections were equivalent to weakness. It was trained out of them at the earliest opportunity. 

He had been trained to do a lot of things. And he was good at them. 

But right now, he found himself staring into the darkness, wondering about endings, about what he would find easier to come to terms with. And it should be an easy choice, between his own death and killing a crew who were most likely destined for tragedy anyway. If not on this mission, then the next, or the one after. A crew fighting for the enemy, no less.

Somehow, it didn’t feel easy.

Chapter Text

White was… avoiding him. That was one think Black was vividly, uncomfortably aware of. There were polite nods in the hallways, yes, and smiles of acknowledgement when they ended up in the same rooms for the tasks. But he ate fast, at meal times, and made careful excuses that would almost be believable if he didn’t make them so often. 

On the other hand, Black kept feeling like that shouldn’t be something that he spent so much time dwelling on. Not when the ship sabotages had gotten more and more common, with barely a few hours going by without the harsh sounds of sirens cutting through the air. 

“They might be getting anxious,” Pink had noted, one night, during a crew meeting. “Maybe they’re new? Or our organisation had been better than they’d expected? Then again, they might just be playing the long game. Carrying out a really complex plan. We all have to stay vigilant.”

And Black had, almost unstoppably, found his gaze turning towards White, taking in the anxious lines framing his expression and hoping desperately for some solution, for some sense of logic, to descend like an epiphany. 

Failing that, just some way to offer comfort, to stop White, at least, from being worn down by the ceaseless stress that this job entailed. 

Setting all that aside, though, the sabotages were getting in the way of the tasks. They’d barely gotten everything done in time just last night, and had even ended up leaving some tasks uncompleted just a few days before. Headquarters had been really upset about that. 

Today, at least, they’d been able to get everything done in time.

A flash of movement pulls him from his thoughts, and he feels some ridiculous sense of hope that vanishes as the actual colour made itself known. He doesn’t have time to feel guilty before Yellow has already dropped herself down into a chair by his side, a dramatic sigh declaring her presence in case her movements weren’t enough. 

“Thank fuck we won’t get chewed out by MIRA again today,” she declares, before grimancing at her own words. “The Company, I mean, or whatever else they want us to call them on missions.”

She pulls her helmet from her head - somehow with even more drama than she had been able to integrate into her prior sigh - and shakes out her hair, or attempts to, anyway. Her hair was shorn so short that it barely made a difference. 

“Whatever. Screw that, right? How have you been?”

And she accompanied this last question with a sly grin, raising her eyebrows and lowering her head to peek out at him through her lashes in a mockery of coquettishness before bursting into gentle laughter, bright and bubbly. 

“And by that, of course, I mean to pry into your personal life. Don’t think I haven’t noticed your thing with tall, quiet, and handsome.”

“There’s- there isn’t a thing.”

She smiles again, leaning back in her chair and raising her hands in faux surrender. “Firstly, I want to establish the fact that I don’t want to be invasive, so please tell me to fuck off whenever you want. With that being said. I’m not blind, dude.”

And Black - hesitates. Considers saying something, considers the loud, comfortable presence of Yellow next to him and the presence of another perspective. 

“There really isn’t a thing,” he ends up sighing, “and I don’t want to be presumptuous. I don’t even know if he likes… I mean…”

Yellow nods sympathetically at that, inclining her head as if to encourage him to speak further. You poor, gay disaster, her gaze seemed to say, and it would almost be patronising if not for that other look that said been there. 

“And anyways, I messed up. Somehow the Company came up, and it must have been a sore subject, and I think I said something wrong, and now I’m just… lost. And I feel like it shouldn’t even be bothering me, right? Like, there’s an imposter somewhere on this ship biding their time, and I’m here thinking about this?”

Yellow says his name quietly, softly, then pauses, hesitant, before she speaks again. 

“The Company has been kinda screwing us over, though, you know that, right? It's just that... you sometimes get defensive and I know that they're taking the only course of action they have right now, but that doesn’t make it more comforting for us as the people they’re actually sending out. Maybe he just… needed to talk about that?”

He sighs, doesn’t look at her, but nods. “I should probably try to talk to him, huh?” 

“Yes,” Yellow grins, that bubbliness once again rising to the surface, like torches dispelling the fog. “Don’t worry about the mission that much for now. Seriously. Take some time for yourself.”

Black hums. Turns a pensive gaze towards her. “And speaking of that, how’re you and Pink?”

Yellow blushes hard. 

“THAT,” she says, “is totally different. Sure she likes girls, but we’re just friends , y’know?”

Chapter Text

Black corners White before the daily tasks are even sent through the next day, as the crew milled about the cafeteria, picking at what could, under a very generous interpretation, be called a full breakfast. 

And he- obviously he doesn’t want to think about it in terms of cornered . More like, addressed, really. Making sure not to be overbearing, if possible. Met, maybe. Approached. 

White turns his gaze towards him, and his eyes are friendly, polite, impersonal. 

“Hey,” White says, “getting ready for the tasks today?”

Black doesn’t even acknowledge the question, just gathers up some modicum of courage and speaks, his words coming through too fast and his heart drumming in his chest. “Can we talk? After the tasks? I wanted to apologise, if possible.”

And White tries to sidestep him, subtly enough that it seemed a careless action, and yet deliberate enough that Black suddenly needed to turn his head to meet his gaze, caught off guard. 

“You don’t have anything to apologise for?” White says. And his voice is still so distanced, so polite. “And I’ve been pretty tired lately, in truth, but I’d be happy to chat if we get a chance.”

It was said with every air of truthfulness. It didn’t even have a shred of the tone you’d normally associate with deceit. Nevertheless, Black knew, somehow, that it was a lie. He smiles anyway, not pushing the issue and instead inclining his head and nodding before moving away, feeling somehow empty, hollow. 

The tasks are sent through moments later, listed neatly on the screen of his device. And there are less tasks today, less yellow exclamation marks fighting for attention on the 2D map. Mainly just maintenance tasks, making sure that the ship remains functioning smoothly now that they’re getting closer and closer to the destination. 

And the thought is relieving and stressful at once. Comforting in its reminder of the amount that they’ve been able to navigate and survive the journey, and yet terrifying in its implication. 

They’ve been traveling for such a long time now, and still the imposter hasn’t made a move, with everyone accounted for each night after the tasks have been completed. Even the sabotages seemed half hearted by this point - with the crew so used to them now that it only took moments to resolve the issues popping up. So what next, then, except for murder? 

Black… thinks about it, in the moments rushing between one task and the next, tries to put himself in the mind of a murderer whilst still staying alert of his surroundings. 

If he was infiltrating a ship, if he was used to and in charge of brutal murder, if he was bloodthirsty and cunning. And if the ship was nearing its destination, was full of new recruits, academy-fresh, on edge and yet unready to cast suspicions on anyone without there having been a murder first - which must be ridiculous on some level and yet feels like the only okay course of action…

By the time he’d finished with the tasks, he was no closer to any sort of insight than he’d been when he had begun. And he takes a moment to center himself, stopping by the admin room to peer through the displays on the walls and the movement of colours across the screens. And he’s trying to convince himself that he isn’t actually searching for White when he sees him on one of the lower screens, walking through the hallways, collected and alert. 

It’s only for a moment, a flash of movement across the screen as he moves from one place to the next, but Black can’t seem to tear his gaze away from the screen for a long while after, as if hoping for another sighting, as unlikely as that might be. 

He doesn’t even see White during dinner. And a brief asking around only surrendered the information that White had claimed to be more tired than usual from the tasks, and had retired to the crew quarters without eating.

Chapter Text

White is in the storage room, heading again towards that observation deck, when Black emerges from the shadows, as though created from it. 

And White’s first reaction is abject fear - a chill tracing its way down his spine and freezing him to the spot. He wonders how suspicious he looks in the moment, and mentally searches around for any valid excuse that would make sense of his being out here, sneaking around the ship in the dark, alone and unafraid. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” he says, and cringes hard at his own words, hoping that the darkness around them could disguise the sense of desperation he was almost sure lay just under the surface. He’d gotten so good at avoidance these last few days, at making sure to keep his distance from the crewmates whilst being friendly enough that he didn’t stand out. And it had felt the whole time like waiting for something that might never happen, waiting for the moment his training will snap back into place and drive him to reach for the weapon he carried with him. 

It also meant that he found himself, now, ill prepared for the suddenness of confrontation. 

Black smiles, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and White notes, almost distantly, that whilst he’s wearing the sanctioned black space suit, he didn’t seem to have bothered with tugging on his helmet or gloves.

In the half darkness, the dim lighting, Black looked even more vulnerable than he usually did, sleep-mussed and half-tired, boot laces untied and loose enough that it would be near impossible to run in them. 

“Yeah,” Black starts, averting his gaze briefly, with the light shifting across his lashes. “Sorry - I mean, I couldn’t sleep either, and I heard your door open and I kind of really wanted a chance to speak to you and-” 

He cuts himself off. If White didn’t know better, he would swear that Black was blushing, cheeks darkening in a strange trick of the light as he shifts his head to look back up. 

So gentle. So fucking vulnerable . 

And White is suddenly breathless, suddenly discomforted and upset and senselessly irritated. And that last sense - that irritation - is something he can cling to, so he does. Digs his heels into familiar ground against the unknowable. 

“ Really ?” He says. “You just heard me heading out and decided you’d follow? For fuck’s sake. What if I was someone- someone planning to kill you? What if someone had found some way to unlock one of the crew rooms and had just finished killing me in my sleep? Your boots aren’t even tied!”

Black just… shrugs, somehow carefree and careful at once. The expression on his face has barely changed - like someone looking at a feral animal, apologetic and comforting. 

Stupid. White thinks, half heartedly. But, to be fair, less stupid than I’m being right now. 

“I was pretty sure it was you,” Black says, “and you don’t have to worry so much, you know? I’m pretty sure I can take care of myself at least a little.”

“I don’t worry.”

Black hums. “Either way,” he continues, “if you had a destination in mind, please don’t let me stop you. I just really wanted a chance to talk.”

It was like being caught between two impossibilities. On one hand, to continue through to the observation room, to that incomprehensible darkness of space, was unthinkable now. He doesn’t know if Black might ask to follow - for safety or companionship - and he couldn’t stand the thought of it, of watching Black, again, move through the space as though it was something wonderful. Of having the one fearful place in which he’d been able to feel some semblance of cold normality reframed, if only for a moment, by warm smiles and curious eyes. 

On the other hand, the other choice was to lie. Either say that he didn’t have any destination in mind, and open the door to further interaction, or to make up some believable lie on the spot for why he was out here, alone, in the middle of the night. 

He sighs, taking the helmet off his head and hating the feeling of his hair still pressing against his skin, and sinks against a nearby stack of crates until he’s sitting on the floor. 

“What did you want to talk about?” He asks. And he should be concerned, probably, about the slight flicker of happiness against his ribs. 

Right now, though, he was too tired to care. 

Chapter Text

Black seems to hesitate before joining him on the floor, before stepping forwards and turning so that their backs leaned against the same stack of crates, and White has enough presence of mind to shift sideways slightly, leaving a sliver of space between them.

“I mainly wanted to apologise for how defensive I get about the Company sometimes,” Black exhales, breaking the silence. And thankfully, he doesn’t seem to notice how White tenses, instinctively, at the name. “And - obviously it’s not an excuse, but I’ll try even harder to do better with it, unlearn some stuff, y’know?”

Suddenly, White was beyond thankful for the fact that they were sitting side to side, that he didn’t have to worry as much about his expressions coming under introspection. Because he’s almost sure that anyone looking at him, now, would be able to see through the carefully constructed calmness on his face so easily that it might as well not be there at all.

“You really don’t have to apologise,” he says, and to his own dismay, the words come out too quiet, too sad. “It’s not like you were wrong about anything.”

“You know that’s not true.”

And White almost expects the anger to reappear, to return like a swelling tide at the mere idea of a crewmate thinking that they understood any of what was going on, but he reaches for irritation and dredges up nothing but more of that bone deep weariness. 

“I don’t know if any of us really knows anything, to be honest,” he ends up admitting, twisting his gloved hands together until they hurt. “I certainly don’t understand anything anymore. And I hate it. And I’m tired.”

And Black shifts quietly beside him, staying silent and only raising a hand to rest tentatively where White’s forearm meets his wrist, the comforting weight of it stilling the anxious movement of his fingers. 

And White is probably - delusional from doubt or loopy from the lack of sleep or something , because he swears he can feel warmth radiating from Black’s skin even through the insulated gloves that he himself, at least, was still wearing. Sending sparks skittering up his arms.

“You know,” he continues, hushed, “I didn’t sign up for this. I didn’t sign up for any of it.”

“Were you…” Black inhales. A soft, sharp sound. “Were you drafted? I thought they didn’t do that anymore.” 

And White… searches for a way to talk about it. Because he’s a dead man anyway and because he wants to. Wants to be remembered, maybe. To be recollected, even if not mourned. 

“Kind of, yeah” he responds. “I was… younger than I maybe should have been, and there were… circumstances. It was complicated. And horrible. And I tried so hard to understand, at first, but nothing came up and nothing makes sense. I still don’t understand why the imposters would start a war they weren’t prepared to win over what was basically a border skirmish over a desert planet, and I don’t understand why the home planet would waste so many resources over something like this when they’ve already got Polus.”

Black frowns in confusion, turns to look at him, and White makes sure to keep his gaze fixed straight ahead. One small, persistent part of his mind instinctively starts calculating escape routes again, considering how long it would take to reach for a weapon. To kill and to clean up before anyone notices. It should be easy, as long as he makes sure it’s silent. For fuck’s sake, nobody else was even awake right now. 

And yet, even as the plan solidified itself in his mind, the larger part of himself knows that it’s hopeless. Evasive as someone else’s daydream. 

“During training,” Black starts, “they always told me that it was because they were focused on protecting the research bases on Polus, because the imposter groups had suddenly acquired a lot more weapons from somewhere, and were sending more and more spies into the Outposts. And the best course of action was to push the other skirmishes harder. Did you hear something different?”

And… White can’t help himself. He turns his head, meets Black’s gaze. 

But he’s not prepared for the intensity of it, the warm curiosity of it. For a moment, he feels for all the universe like… like a deer under the headlights. 

No longer the hunter, but not the hunted, either. Just something solitary and fragile standing in the way of some unstoppable emotion, frozen and unable to do anything but watch as all the forces of fate and circumstance beared down on him and reduced all traces to his prior goals and plans to nothing but blind hope. It’s a form of failure that was intensely personal and impersonal at once. No traps or hunting knives. Just the toughness of the asphalt underfoot and a single point of terrifying brightness as ceaseless and unknowable as the sun.

Oh . He thinks.

And he says- 

“Polus was never part of our plan.”

Chapter Text

Black freezes even before the realisation fully hits him. 

And his mind is racing, racing. Trying to think of some way to make it all make sense, to put the discordant pieces together whilst avoiding the one explanation that was right there in front of him, right within reach. 

Been within reach for a while, maybe.

“White?” He whispers.

Belatedly, he realises he’s trembling, and that his hand, still on White’s sleeve, had twisted into the fabric with a grip desperate enough to drive the colour from his knuckles. And he’s dizzy enough with panic that it suddenly seemed the funniest thing in the world.

Just look at him. Sitting on the floor. Helmet gone and boots unlaced and holding on as if for dear life to the one person in the ship that could kill him with less than a thought. Fuck. Under different, less dire circumstances, his mom would probably have a field day with it. 

“White?”

It seemed the only word that made any sense, in the moment. He recovers enough sense to draw his hand back, but can’t seem to make himself stand up, can’t seem to recover enough from the shock to make himself run for the emergency buzzer. He probably wouldn’t be able to make it in time, anyway, not under these circumstances. 

So White ends up being first to move, standing up in one smooth, fluid motion. And Black flinches hard, shrinking back against the crates and drawing his knees tightly to his chest in a hopeless attempt to protect himself.

It was strange. He knew the rates of collateral damage before he signed up. Had basically bid farewell to his mother before leaving. But it had slipped his mind, somehow, throughout the journey. The fear of death had been pushed from his mind by the long periods of silence and the endless beauty of space and those small smiles White kept sending him.

So different from the look on his face now. Looming and half-swaddled in shadow. Elegant brows low over his burning gaze.

“And now you know,” White whispers. And he smiles - this terrible grin caught halfway between threatening and hopeless.

And then he - 

He turns, posture still ridiculously poised - well trained, Black’s mind supplies - and face fading back into a cold mask of indifference. 

And he leaves the room. Steps somehow silent. His white suit somehow fading entirely into the darkness that lingered beyond the weak storage room lights. 

Black doesn’t move for a long while. Even though he’s still shaking. Even though he still felt, not entirely illogically in his opinion, that any wrong move could lead to his imminent death. And maybe that’s why, he tells himself, maybe he’s just afraid that White might be waiting just outside the door in some sick game, waiting for the moment he runs for the emergency meeting button. 

He keeps telling himself that, even after he hears the sharp, definitive click of White’s room door locking echoing through the hallway.

Chapter Text

White spends the next two days avoiding everyone, spending too much time in the vents, waiting for the sound of the sirens.

It doesn’t come. But it’s not a blessing. He wonders if this is the way crewmates feel at the beginning of missions. Waiting for the murderer, not knowing when a friendly wave might turn to an unfriendly blade. 

But unlike them, he knew who his death would come at the hands of. And it had been comforting, somehow, to rip off the bandaid and confirm the one inevitable destiny he’d been barrelling towards ever since the first time he’d seen Black smile. 

All he can hope for now, he guesses, is that they end up throwing him out of the airlock instead of handing him over to the Company. He’d heard rumors of what they did to the imposters they deemed important enough to capture alive, and it made his stomach turn to even think about it. 

What’s done is done, anyway. 

It was just that they were approaching the destination later today. And he can see the space station through the windows, looming like a tangled spider’s web across the expanse of space, glittering spaceships hanging to the various ports like twitching bugs. 

It was somehow even more awful than the macabre endlessness of space. Embodying a more present form of danger where it lounged, backlit by foreign suns. 

Not a single imposter had ever been able to infiltrate a space station. None of them had even entered one on their own terms. The scanners were too keen. Too different from the more general machines installed on the ships.

Normally, the spaceships didn’t have enough resources to test every single crewmate by themselves. Naturally, the most expensive machines were generally sent to the floating space stations - the robust marks of Company territory where the most important members of the ‘home planet’ were sent to sit over long white tables and debate endlessly about what collateral damages they could take next. 

He wonders what they might decide to do to him, when they find out. 

The sudden echo of the intercoms coming to life doesn’t surprise him, but the voice that comes through them does. 

CREWMATES OF THE SKELD. PLEASE GATHER IN THE CAFETERIA TO AWAIT YOUR NEXT INSTRUCTIONS.

An authoritative, toneless voice, and not the harsh sounds of the emergency meeting alarm. He’s terrified and confused, before it occurs to him that this was most likely the standard greeting that incoming spaceships receive. 

It also occurs to him that he might be one of the first imposters to have ever heard it. And then he’s terrified all over again. 

He makes his way to the cafeteria anyway, and takes a seat, keeping his eyes locked on the table. He’s painfully aware of how awkward he looks, and wonders how many eyes are on him, how many people know the truth, how many people Black has told. 

Are they biding their time? Waiting to turn him in? It was ridiculous that he was even here for the meeting, anyway. As if he’s still looking forward to the information that would be coming through, as he wasn’t a dead man walking, an imposter who no longer fits in. But what else could he do? Wait in the vents to be dragged out kicking and screaming? No. Better to embrace it. Better to keep some semblance of dignity.

He catches figures moving in his peripheral vision, vague colours moving by as more and more of the crewmates arrive to take their seats around the table. And the effort to not move his neck, to not look up for that one familiar shade, feels like a weight on his neck, a noose around his throat. 

Pink is the first to talk, raising a small device to the side of her head and speaking up in a loud, clear voice, making sure that the crew could hear the words she was sending through to the station. 

“The Skeld reporting! Permission to land?”

There’s a long silence before the radio crackles into life, and the voice on the other side is ridiculously professional, bordering on the edge of annoyed. 

“Information shows that you had an imposter aboard. Please report on the situation.”

And Pink… hesitates. For the first time in the entire journey, she looked uncertain of herself, brows furrowed and a corner of her lip downturned. 

“We don’t know who they are,” she says, “they haven’t… killed, and we have nothing to go on. In fact, these last few days, there hasn’t even been any cases of sabotage. I was thinking… that we can rely on the better tests aboard the space station? Or maybe our system was just somehow faulty?”

And White… knows he can’t focus too much on that thin wisp of smoky hope rising inside him. 

This was the worse outcome, and he has to keep that in mind. Being found out on the space station was a worse fate than getting ejected. 

There’s a while before the voice on the radio speaks again. And this time, the coldness of the voice feels like a physical blow. Like a slap to the face even to White, where he sits half a table away.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible currently,” it states, “unfortunately, we will have to request that you either identify the imposter, or return to home base. Do not contact us again until one of the two has been completed.”

A click. 

The room explodes in sound, declarations of disbelief and of anger ringing through the space of the cafeteria. Around him, White can see some of the crew members standing up, moving in futile efforts to get closer to the radio, to make their voices heard through the dead machine. 

He doesn’t need to listen to know what they’re saying. He’s been part of the meetings, seen the resource and ship integrity logs. 

Being forced to leave right now is a death sentence.

Chapter Text

The radio doesn’t crackle back to life. 

White isn’t surprised by that. But he is surprised by the reactions, by the sheer devastation on the faces of the crewmates around him. The look of utter helplessness on Pink’s face as she sinks back into her chair, face grey with horror as the deathly silence settles around them.

As strange as everything else was right now, this was at least familiar. Failures meant death, and it was easier to get rid of complications than solve them. He was raised knowing this. Apparently the company was better at hiding that particular truth, though. 

“There’s no way we’ll survive a journey back.”

Green is the first to speak up, and his voice is shaking with anger, too loud and too quiet at once in the confined space of the cafeteria. And he’s just giving voice to what they all already know, but half the crew flinches at his words.

And nobody responds for a long, long while, so White does, before he has the opportunity to regret it. 

“We need to find the imposter, then,” he says. And unstoppably, inevitably, he finds his gaze finally landing on the one person he’d been trying to divert it from all this time. 

Black looks back, gaze steady, jaw set. He is, in that moment, utterly unreadable. And White feels something akin to an electric shock shooting up his spine. 

Fear, he supposes. But fear of what? Of the power behind what Black could say, or of the fact that it was as though something had drawn shut behind those normally warm eyes? The fact that he seemed unusually still and entirely distant? 

“I don’t know how we can do that,” Pink sighs, finally, “we don’t have anything to go on apart from sabotages, which can be done from almost anywhere on the ship. And… this might be naive, but I really don’t want to start drawing straws. So unless anyone has any clues...”

And Black is still looking at him, still quiet. Not speaking up. Why?

“I’m sure someone’s probably seen something,” White pushes, blindly reckless and feeling, strangely, as though he was falling from a great height, as though the ground was already coming up to meet him and nothing mattered anymore. Which, he supposes, is halfway true. “We should, I don’t know, discuss anything strange we’ve seen. It’s not like the imposter has anywhere to go, or any more options. Most of the main tasks have already been done. There’s probably no good opportunity for them to kill. No good way to take control of the ship.”

And his gaze is still fixed on Black. Almost a challenge. Almost a dare. 

Just say it, he wants to shout. Wants to lunge across the table. To just do something. To just do anything to stop the falling, the process of the slow collapse. Say something.

Around him, someone agrees with what he has said. Someone else brings up that they should take the night off to try and recall anything suspicious they might have seen, and regroup in the morning. 

But White barely has it in him to listen. His focus is fixed on Black’s, and they are both silent, and he is still falling, falling.

Chapter Text

Black finds himself at the observation deck. Like a bad habit. He’s lost count of how many times he’s found himself here these past few days. Sometimes in the middle of the day. Sometimes late at night, with the ship humming around him, strangely dark and lonely compared to the bustle of daytime. 

He guesses that there isn’t anything to be scared of in the dark, anymore. Nothing that isn’t just as present in daytime, just as present during the mornings. And he doesn’t know why it feels like that now, doesn’t know why the knowledge of it made the darkness less frightening. Something to do with awareness, he supposes. With knowing what lurks in the darkness. 

Not that it was a case of lurking, anymore, it seems. It was… standing face to face with danger, gazing into the very eyes of what could kill you. 

And having it gaze back. Mirror images. 

He’s not even surprised when he hears the door behind him open. If he’s being honest, he thinks he’s been waiting for this, the reflection of that familiar white suit against the window, silhouetted in the hallway lights, for two days now. 

Maybe that was why he kept coming back here, to the observation deck. Maybe that was why he hasn’t been able to sleep, haunted endlessly by that horrible, heartbreaking look on White’s face as he’d turned to leave the storage room.

“What the fuck are you planning?” White snarls.

In spite of himself. In spite of the harshness of the words coming from behind him, the familiarity of the voice feels, inexplicably, like a gasp of air after eternities underwater. Like being able to breathe again. Finally . 

“What do you mean?” Black responds, and the steadiness of his voice surprises even himself. He doesn’t turn his gaze away from the window. Doesn’t need to. Can see White’s every movement through the reflection of the window and doesn’t feel the need to keep track of him anyway. 

White walks fast, his long strides carrying him across the room in moments. And Black is painfully aware of that sharp gaze on the side of his face but he doesn’t turn around to meet it. Doesn’t know whether that tugging ache in his chest wants him to stay or to run. 

He thinks he might be afraid to know. He thinks he might be afraid, full stop. But it was a different form of fear from the type that had kept creeping up on him in those first few weeks on the ship. Different even from the type that had frozen him to the spot only days ago. 

“When are you going to tell them?” White snaps. “Why didn’t you already?”

The harsh edge to his voice. The bare touch of a growl on the edge of his words. If Black didn’t already know that he was the imposter, he thinks that this alone would be enough to inform him. And he thinks there might be something akin to irritability rising fast and heavy inside him. Another form of the same drowning tide he’s been treading. Impatient and annoyed and rising to meet the challenge. 

“When are you going to kill me?” He echoes. And there is some savage joy in the way he can feel White’s gaze shifting away from him.

And fuck it. He’s feeling reckless. He’s finally breathing again and now he just has to get rid of that heavy weight on his chest somehow. So he turns his head, he fixes his gaze on White and realises, belatedly, that that seemed to be what the strange pull in his chest had been looking for all along. 

So he keeps pushing his luck. Keeps his gaze focused on the profile of White’s face the entire time. 

“You were wrong about the imposter not having other options, by the way, and you know that. Kill me now. Play the room and see how many crewmates you can get ejected before taking on the last few people. And you’d probably win. The space station isn’t going to send help or check in on us, and we know that. So why not do it?”

He sees White grimace. Knows, even more than before, that White has already considered everything he’d just said. Every truth he’d just laid openly between them. 

“I asked first,” White finally says. Quieter, almost defeated. 

“It didn’t seem like my place to tell.”

And he watches White’s gaze snap towards him, sudden and shocked.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It wasn’t like I’d figured it out,” he shrugs, “you told me. And you haven’t killed yet. That’s not exactly how this is supposed to go, is it? Not exactly fair.”

Still staring back at White. Like staring down the barrel of a gun. Like some twisted game of russian roulette, waiting for someone to land on the chamber that will end it all. 

The worst thing about a game of chance like that, however, was the stubborn, lingering hope.

“Fair?” White spits. And he turns. Steps closer so that there were only inches between them, and Black finds himself suddenly distracted. Preoccupied by the very notion of distance. By the thought that, if not for the helmet visors between them, they would be breathing the same air. “It’s life and death, not a fucking game.”

“Which is why you’ve all but tossed yourself out of the airlock already? If it was about survival, White, I’d be dead right now, if not two days ago, or in the first week of this damned journey.”

Silence. Like the quiet before something dangerous pounces from the shadows. 

Strangely, though, Black thinks he can feel the weight lifting from his chest.

Chapter Text

There is no easy way to tell someone that you’ve decided to die for them. No way to frame it logically or without melodrama, without it seeming like some planet-shattering decision made in the stupid heat of the moment. 

And it wasn’t that. It was… natural. As though fated, as though there was no other choice. And of course there were other people involved, too. Other factors that have caused his decision. 

But it all came down to Black., didn’t it? Impossible to ignore and with eyes that were at times so warm that for moments it would seem impossible that anything bad could possibly exist in the same universe. 

It would be laughable, if the whole situation wasn't so horrible. 

"How do you know I'm not planning something?' He asks. Evading and challenging. Always evading and challenging. "Maybe I've set something horrible in motion, and you're dooming your whole crew by not turning me in. You're already on the edge of it. I've done this shit for a long time, Black, and I saw the looks on their faces in the cafeteria. You're the only person on the whole ship who even suspects me right now."

And he, almost instinctively, tries to take a threatening step forward. And it's then that he realises the closeness of their faces. Finds himself enthralled entirely by the lines of Black’s jaw and the curve of his cheekbones and the hint of freckles across his nose.

Finds himself hating, absurdly, the layers of glass between them. 

And Black doesn’t say anything, just keeps looking at him, gaze moving subtly back and forth across White’s own eyes, as though searching for something, pupils round and dark in the limited light. 

“You know what the situation is,” White finds himself continuing, voice heavy, too quiet and too serious now. “You have to tell them, because the other option is waiting for every single one of us to starve out here, or-”

“Or we keep voting on it until the vote lands on you. And by then, who knows how many crewmates will have already been killed? And by our own hands.”

“I’m sorry the responsibility falls to you,” White says, and hesitates. “I know we were… friends… or acquaintances at least, and I didn’t mean for it to come to this point but I don’t think I can just tell them, Black. I’m ready for whatever happens next but I don’t think I can just say that I’m the imposter outright. I had it trained out of me.”

“So-”

“So I’m telling you to just do it, I think. Asking you.”

The moment of silence presses in on them. Thick and discomforting. So White does what he does best, and turns on his heel, and strides toward the door. 

Or he would have, if not for the subtle weight of Black’s hand suddenly around his wrist. Light enough that he could break away with barely a second thought and yet somehow as immovable and as grounding as an anchor might be. Steadfast against the tides. 

“You didn’t answer my question,” Black whispers, and White finds himself drifting back closer unwittingly, as though led blindly forwards by the touch on his wrist. “Why are you doing this, White?”

“Don’t.”

But Black keeps talking. Because of course he would. And White keeps… not moving. Not leaving. 

“You said you’ve been doing this for a long time. So why not once more? What if I asked you to make it fair? What if I asked you to make it so that I didn’t feel like I was killing you in cold blood?”

“The very act of me sneaking onto this ship was provokation enough. And you may be willing to risk your own life, but what about the lives of your friends? What happens when the plan expands to include them?”

Another pause. Outside the window, the aimless drifting of the spaceship had shifted so that the lights cast by the space station were bordering the windows, harsh and painful and threatening to drown out the very stars themselves. 

“What in the universe do you want out of this situation, Black?”

“I don’t know. I think I just want you to survive. I think I want everyone to survive. I think I want us to… to get away from this whole situation together somehow, make a living on stardust and to hell with the war.”

He stops. Horrifyingly, more than anything that has ever happened, White thinks he can see the glint of tears forming on Black’s lashes.

“But you still haven’t answered my question,” Black continues, and in spite of the tears, there’s a soft, weak smile forming across his lips. Fragile and brilliant at once in its self-deprecation, his face turned slightly away now to face that dark, wide window.

“I don’t think you need me to.”

And he slides his hand from Black grip, but only enough so that he can catch Black’s fingers in his own, gloved hand against gloved hand.

Chapter Text

Silence, again, but somehow softer this time, somehow different in the way that it filled the space around them. The kind of silence that comes from withholding. From something unsaid as opposed to an absence of things to say.

And White’s hand was in his. And it must be phantom warmth that he can feel against his skin through even the thick layers of the gloves, but it feels real nevertheless. Like it could leave a mark, bright as harmless flame, if he only wanted it to. 

He thinks he might want it to. Can feel something strange in the air, as though the universe had somehow settled, unknowably, onto the rails of some new future. Or maybe he was just overthinking it. Too absorbed in the expression on White’s face, vulnerable and tender in a way that was entirely new - or maybe had been there all along, just under the surface. 

The doors to the observation deck opens behind them, gold light spilling into the room, silhouetting their shadows against the clean light of the stars. 

White squeezes his hand, soft and steady, before he turns, and Black tries not to miss it, tries not to reach right back for him.

“Sorry,” Yellow says, “didn’t know anyone else was awake.” 

And Black catches the look on her face. Sadder and more withdrawn than he’d ever seen and grey with sleeplessness. And he feels his blood run cold with sudden and helpless despair, somehow reminded even more of the impossibility of their situation, of the other people involved in the messiness of it all.

“Come join us,” he says, quieter than he’d intended. “Maybe we’ll even be able to figure something out together, yeah?”

Yellow nods, letting out a shaking breath before stepping forwards and drawing both Black and White into a brief hug. 

“Fuck, and here I thought I was looking rough,” she says, as she pulls away, sharp gaze darting between their faces. And Black knows that her mind is at work. Even despairing, even terrified, there was a quickness to her that would border on frightening if not for everything else about her. “I really wish we could talk about happier things, but - what have you guys been thinking?”

And Black feels, more than sees, White tense slightly behind him, so he speaks before White has a chance to. 

“Not much,” he says, “or, we’ve been thinking a lot but finding nothing at all. I just know that I trust just about everyone here, and I don’t want any of us to die just because the Company doesn’t care enough about us to even take a second glance at our situation.”

“Fuck,” Yellow says, and she sighs, sinking to the floor and looking up through her fingers at them as they both sat to join her. “It all comes down to the Company, doesn’t it? I mean, even you’ve accepted it at this point. It’s like they don’t give a damn how much they’re fucking us over as long as its convinient for them. You know, I was lying there awake, and I just couldn’t stop thinking about what percentage of the casualties every year were people like us. People they could have saved. Fuck, I think even the imposters treat their own better.”

“Like more valuable tools, from what I know,” White says, and Black reaches out before he has time to think about it, placing his hand over White’s and feeling the subtle tremors in his fingers settle with the touch. “But just tools. Always tools.”

Yellow sighs again, a sad, sharp sound. 

“Awful,” she just says. And there’s a question on her lips, about who they’re suspecting, that Black can see forming. She doesn’t get a chance to ask it, though, before White speaks. 

“This could all be solved if we just… ejected the imposter.” 

“Really?” Black snaps, and he thinks his voice might be too loud, too emotional, but he can’t find it in himself to care right now, can’t find the energy to do anything more than say the first thoughts coming to mind. “Because I’m not convinced that that’s going to do anything, White. Even if we survive today, it’s only a matter of time before all this, or something like it, happens again. Not to mention, the imposter hasn’t even done anything . In what way does any of this make sense?” 

“Because you’ll get to survive today,” White responds, and his face is - again - annoyingly calm, like he’s taken some familiar wall and built it right up again. “Because this is how the world works.” 

“Fuck that.” 

White has the gall to smile, a weak and ephemeral thing, but there nevertheless.

“I thought we’ve been through this,” he says, “it’s war. We’re all just trying to survive, day by day, until we’re not.”

Chapter Text

The look on Black’s face makes every word ten times harder to say, but they had to be said. Anything to stop the hope he was trying to hang them both with, the hope White can feel threatening to invade him, too.

He can’t let it, can’t let himself believe, even for a moment, that they might be able to both get out of this alive. He can’t risk having that, even for a moment, and having it torn away. Worse, can’t risk having this empty hope somehow becoming the reason they both end up dying. 

For a moment, he thinks about telling Black exactly what he’s thinking. Considers laying it all out in the open, even with Yellow present. And if he’s lucky, she’ll have the strength to do what neither he nor Black seems to be able to, and take the only course of action that’s still available to them at this moment. 

He tries not to think about it too much beyond that. Tries not to think too much about the persistent and hungry darkness just outside the window. Lurking. Haunting. 

Better to die for this than for some senseless war, he supposes. Better to have something you can apply a true meaning to than a violence that never bothered to explain itself to you. 

So he opens his mouth, and he’s going to say something, but Black cuts in first, voice soft but strong, a steely undercurrent under his words that was near intoxicating, persistent with hope. 

“No. There has to be another way.”

“What do you mean?” White asks, but he has a feeling, and he can see Yellow’s expression change in the background - a miniscule, thoughtful adjustment that was concerning, not in the way that life or death on the Skeld was concerning, but in the way that a child holding a water hose was concerning. 

“He means we do something about it,” Yellow says, and her eyes are suddenly shining in the darkness. “He means we take it to them, whatever happens. I mean, fuck, maybe there’s someone in a position of power who doesn’t actually know how fucked up everything is, or - or, seeing as they can do something like this so easily, there’s probably worse things that we can use as blackmail - at least enough to get back to the home planet or somewhere safe and-”

“And find yourselves stuck nowhere anyway. You can’t defect, because both sides just kill defectors. You can’t escape the scope of an entire interstellar war. And you might be doing exactly what the imposter wants.”

“Better than sitting here and waiting to die, isn’t it?” Black contributes, and his gaze has taken on a type of stubborn determination that made White ache, deep in his chest. 

“Exactly”, adds Yellow, and she hesitates before her next words, brows ever so slightly twisted in an uneven frown as she turns her gaze to White. “Besides, we’re not gonna eject you or turn you in if I have anything to say about it.”

White freezes before he even fully processes the words, and he watches Black’s head snap up - mouth opened in a little ‘o’ of surprise. 

And there’s - well, Yellow knows, and that shouldn’t be that surprising, he supposes, given the way everything has been happening. And she’s not planning to kill him, which is surprising, and something that he’ll have to process later. 

Just being. Just being, and being known, and yet not needing to fear for his very life.

He should probably address the issue at hand first though, he thinks, and is momentarily amused by how distanced his own thoughts seemed - shock, he supposes. A reminder that the rest of the universe had kept going whilst he had found himself so fixated by everything about Black.

“When did you find out?”

“Just now,” Yellow shrugs. “I mean, to be fair, you really weren’t suspicious at all, but go about the tasks long enough and you start to eliminate some people just by running into them at the right times, y’know? And I-I was wondering whether I should bring it up because it didn’t seem right to but I didn’t know what else to do. But I hadn’t been anywhere near sure until I heard you both talk like you knew who the imposter was, and I thought I might as well take a chance and...”

She trails off, suddenly quiet, almost ashamed. 

“And now I don’t have to make the tough decision anymore, I guess.”

Chapter Text

The meeting, in the morning, is awful. 

Or, at least, it seemed so for Black, and he supposes it’s because he’d already made up his mind. Already looked at the war outside the window and at White’s sad sad eyes and found the decision made for him, sitting quietly in the corner of his mind as though it had been waiting for him to catch up. 

Maybe it had been, ever since he watched the blinding brightness of White’s immaculate suit disappear into the darkness, all those nights ago in the storage bay. 

Sitting by the table, White’s presence a comforting weight beside him, his teeth are gritted as he watches the others gather slowly, half-drowsy with what must have been near sleepless nights. It’s all too easy now to look in the reflective surface of one of those other helmets and imagine ill intent behind them. Somehow even more so than when he had been desperate to try and find the imposter. 

There were - there were eight of them on the ship, in total. He recalls. And it’s too few and too many at once. Too few to take any action against MIRA - the Company - even if they all agreed to, and too many to be sure that none of them will just find some way to turn them all in for what they’re planning. Too many to fight their way out of, if that was what it came down to. If the choice became that or losing White forever. 

And maybe White can sense the stress radiating from him, because he moves, stretching out his left hand to hook Black’s fingers in his, the touch comforting and electrifying at once. And Black is far too aware of the fact that neither of them are wearing their spacesuit gloves as he shifts his grasp so that their hands fit more comfortably together. Palm against palm and fingers entwined. 

It distracts him, alright. And he’s halfway breathless with it, half lost in the soft, simple touch of fingertips to skin, the gentle glide of White’s thumb against his wrist in an act of absent-minded comfort. 

He exhales, tries to let the tension drain from his shoulders and feels White squeeze his hand briefly. And he’s right there but Black can’t seem to look at him, can only squeeze his hand back and wish that his face didn’t look as warm as it felt. 

Across the table, Pink shuffles the pile of papers before her aimlessly, her eyes fixed on the table in front of her. Yellow, next to her, blinks at them owlishly, her fingers tapping a rapid staccato on the tabletop. 

“There’s no use trying to find the imposter,” she says, and Black watches half the table flinch at the sound of her voice before the meaning even registers. And it’s a blind gamble, but they had agreed - they couldn’t just say it. They couldn’t just say it after everything the Company has been spreading, after decades of war. 

“What do you mean?”

Black can’t see who spoke from where he’s sitting on the table, but can feel himself tensing at their voice. It’s quiet, almost emotionless in spite of the questioning, and he can’t make head nor tail of the intention behind it. 

He instead turns his head, as gently and as innocuously as he could, to the right. Tries to sneak a glance at White’s face and meets his eyes instead.

And there’s - a softness to his gaze. A vulnerability that might normally have made him smile back, but just made him worried all over again right now. 

How do you tell someone that you’ll make sure everything is ok, even though the chances of it actually ending up fine was miniscule? How do you tell someone that you simply couldn’t comprehend a universe without them ending up happy in it? 

He just squeezes White’s hand, once, again. Hoping that some form of meaning, at least, could be conveyed through it. Through the gentle touch of palm to palm.

Chapter Text

The problem was that Black had made it clear that sacrificing himself was not a choice. And maybe White was selfish for it. Maybe the sheer fact that he was willing to do this, to protect himself by putting at risk the people he - and he could admit this, at least - cared about at risk, was evidence enough that murder was the only thing he was good for. The one thing he’d been raised to do. 

But Black wouldn’t agree with that. And neither would Yellow, apparently. And they had been insistent that this was the best way to go about it, for now. That whatever other pathway there was, they couldn’t keep being pawns in a war that did not seem to care and no longer made sense.

And he’s trying to understand it, and he thinks he’s on his way to understanding it. The ability to turn against the company that raised you then wronged you, no matter how much you’d once believed in their cause, and still keep hope.

And he’s trying to learn it, too, that there were more ways of rejecting what he’d been brought up knowing than resigning himself to death. 

Black’s hand is in his, and he feels like he can breathe properly for the first time in his life. 

“I’m saying that there might not even be an imposter,” Yellow responds, her voice bubbly, and yet with a hidden steel. “And I’m saying that the Company doesn’t care about us, and that there’s no reason we should sit here and wait for death, ejecting people one by one.”

“And there might be a way for us to get somewhere safe. Maybe even somewhere where we could go through some tests to identify the imposter.” Black adds, and his voice is reluctantly thoughtful but his hand is warm and trembling where it grasps White’s under the table. “Or some other way to get this mess sorted out. I mean, who knows how many crews they’ve done this to? Or worse?”

“I’m sure they have a reason for making this decision, though,” someone says - Red, White thinks - but they sound uncertain. Faced, no doubt, with the threat of their own mortality. “It’s… probably a calculated loss. Shouldn’t we be happy to sacrifice ourselves for the right cause?”

“Collateral damage, and all that,” Green adds, but his voice is dry, almost sarcastic with it. “Guess it’s harder to be on the other side of it, though, isn’t it?”

There’s a silence, after Green’s words. And in that tense, lingering silence, White can feel the attention of everyone, subconsciously and individually, turning to Pink, where she still sat silently. 

As though feeling the the collective attention, she raises her head, still silent, to meet the eyes of her crew, and when she speaks, her voice is low, but still clear in that way that she had. The way that seemed to command attention effortlessly. 

“I signed up for this mission as just another crewmate,” she begins quietly. “And I signed a contract, just like everyone else did, that said we have the obligation to do anything necessary to ensure the sanctity of the mission and the sanctity of the Company in general. That we are supposed to give our lives, if necessary, to ensure that everything goes smoothly, for the Company and for everyone back on the home planet.”

She takes a breath, and now her eyes were no longer on the crew, but on the table in front of her, the papers that were nearly blank.

“But you guys also chose me to take on the leadership role. To be the captain of this ship, in whatever form that takes given that we’re all hired first and foremost by the Company. And that’s not anything I signed a contract for, but it’s something that I’m honoured by, and something that I take very seriously. And that means having a duty to the lives of my crew.”

She stops again, grinning weakly, shoulders lifted slightly in a near-shrug.  

“And I’m choosing to put that first. I think I have half a plan forming. I don’t give a damn right now whether or not there’s an imposter. The space stations have ways of finding them, even when one gets in. So anyone who wants to leave can head for the space station. Tell them that you found the imposter by process of ejection but the ship was damaged in a scuffle in the process. Anyone who wants to stay can, and we’ll see if we can figure out a way to get this scrapheap to the nearest MIRA hub.”

And White- White notices two things. 

First, that Yellow, as soon as the speech is finished, turns swiftly to look at Pink, raising one of her eyebrows in a movement so slight that White would hardly have noticed if not for the, well, years of training to pick up minute details. And he watches her lean in close, shifting through the papers in front of Pink before picking two out, checking briefly with Pink before absent mindedly shredding them into long pale strips.

Second, the name MIRA itself. He supposes that it must be the name that the Company was so secretive about keeping, given the quiet echoes of startled surprise that had rippled through the crew as the name was said. And that alone was noteworthy. That alone was information he thinks has never been given to an imposter. But there was something about it, something that seemed to tug at some long forgotten memory in his brain.

Something important, he feels. And he makes a mental note to bring it up some time, when he has the chance.

Right now, however, Black was tugging on his hand, leading him out of his seat to round the table towards where Pink is sitting.

Chapter Text

“I’m staying,” is the first thing Black says, and he’s talking to Pink but he’s looking at White, willing him to understand the meaning behind the words. “I’m staying on the ship.”

Apart from them, Pink stays, of course.

Green also stays, his face strangely unreadable, but Yellow does not, and she’s uncharacteristically quiet as she announces it, her eyes darting across the table until they meet Pink’s. 

“Ok,” Pink says, “alright. We should probably consider staying a little while more before contacting them, to make sure that the timeline matches up with what they’ll be expecting. After that, everyone going back to the station can return to life as normal. I only ask that you keep this secret, and give us a chance of making it out of this alive.”

She pauses, and shrugs.

“We’ll meet back here at midnight to contact the space station.”

Black feels White’s hand slipping from his grasp a moment before he sees him turn away, and he’s quick to follow, matching White’s steps. Behind them, the crew dissipates slowly, the hum of discussion like a quiet stream of white noise. 

And White keeps refusing to meet his gaze. Keeps his gaze focused ahead of him, passing through the doors and winding a long and illogical path through the uncomfortable hallways. 

“I’m trying not to feel guilty,” he says, finally, after a long time, and his voice is so quiet that Black barely hears it. “But I can’t stop thinking about all the ways this could go wrong. All the things I could do instead. Like, stay on the ship myself. Tell everyone the truth.”

“Everyone had a choice, White. Let us choose for ourselves. And besides, we’ll have a chance to tell Pink and Green the truth once everyone else is safely off the ship - if that’s something you want to do.”

Black pauses, squinting up at the fluorescent lights. And he feels, more than sees, White stop walking too, pulling his helmet from his head and leaning heavily against the grey walls. 

“Besides, you can’t even operate the ship, can you?” Black finds himself adding. And he’s almost taken off guard by the quiet delight that seemed to suddenly rise inside him at the realisation. “Not even because it takes multiple people to run, I mean. Like, you’d never gotten the chance to learn the ins and outs?”

White grumbles, quietly, low in his throat. But there’s a disgruntled smile softening the corner of his mouth and Black can’t quite seem to tear his gaze from it. 

“I have picked up some stuff along the way, you know,” he mumbles.

“Nope. No way. Oh my God. How did I never notice that you couldn’t do any of the tasks? 

White dips his head, letting the smile creep across his entire face.

“You were too preoccupied with trying to get to know me, I guess” he says, and he sounds half teasing and half bashful. “Didn’t even realise that I just kept hanging out in security.”

“Oh my god. You totally did. I guess you were just too interesting, you know, what with all the brooding and everything. Distracted me from the fact that you were just slacking off whilst the rest of us were running around like headless chickens, trying to get all those tasks done in time.”

“I think I’ll choose to take that as a compliment.”

Black barks out a laugh, and closes his eyes, feeling the lightness rush through him and letting himself bask in it. Shifting his weight, he lets himself fall against the wall next to White.

And he- lets his arm brush White’s. Lets his head fall, slowly and deliberately, onto White’s shoulder.

“I think it’s all going to turn out ok,” he says. Half whispers. And here, now, he thinks he really means it. “Besides, it’s, uh, it’s probably a long time coming.”

“Yeah,” White breaths, his breath a gentle disturbance in the quietness, and Black thinks he can feel it stirring his hair. “You might be right.”

And Black looks up, turning his head slightly, feeling the thick spacesuit material against his cheek. 

It strikes him, too suddenly, how close White’s face is. And from here, he examines the delicate curves of White’s lashes. Feels nearly enthralled by the gentle lines around his eyes and the darkness of his pupils as he shifts in an attempt to look over his shoulder. 

Like religion, in a person. Like- if he looked deep enough into those pupils, he could find everything he’d ever loved about the universe hidden just behind those eyes.

And Black follows that gaze, raising his head just enough for their gazes to meet.

For a moment, they’re just looking at each other. Too close. Too close but not close enough. And Black wonders if the blush is as obvious on his face as it feels, but the thought is gone in an instant, as he watches White’s gaze dip gently. The way a bird may dip softly in a gentle breeze, unwitting yet natural. Right .

And the moment holds. Too long and not long enough. Eternity condensed down to seconds. 

White is the first to turn away. Softly inclining his neck to look down at the floor in front of him and running a hand across the back of his neck, lashes sweeping low, casting warm shadows across his cheeks. 

“I just- uh. Just remembered. I wanted to ask you about that name Pink mentioned in the meeting? The other name she gave the Company?”

Chapter Text

White is a coward. He is a coward, and he knows this. 

But Black’s face had been so close to his. Each freckle illuminated, the harsh fluorescent lights somehow soft with it. Soft on his features. Or maybe that was just him . Maybe that was just how he was.

And it had felt like the moment before taking the final step off a cliff’s edge - or, no, not that. 

Like the moment before pulling the trigger on the gun in his hand. A gun he’d already unwittingly aimed, on the mark and inch perfect. 

Like dragging someone else down with him.

Black exhales, leans his head back against the wall, and White tries not to miss the closeness of him, instead rolling his shoulders and trying to focus on the words that followed. 

“Yeah, it’s technically the name for the Company. They sent out a message talking about how we shouldn’t use it anywhere but the home planet a while back. I don’t even remember if I was signed up for training back then, to be honest. I think this was just before they were assigned the majority of the war efforts?”

“Did they ever explain why?”

“Something about not letting - well. Something about not letting the imposters gather too much information on the chains of command? It seemed like another one of the unnecessarily complicated plans they’d just hatch sometimes. Why do you ask?”

“I’m not sure,” White responds, and the fact that that’s true annoys him to no end. He turns his gaze to the helmet hanging from his hands instead, running his fingers across the smudged surface. “I just keep feeling like I’ve heard it somewhere before.”

“From another crew?”

And White- struggles to answer. Not because he doesn’t know the answer, but because of the- of the implications of the question. 

The space between them seemed suddenly filled with that. With the unspoken. Too many imposter missions assigned and too much bloodshed in the process.

He wonders what kind of person can forgive that. Wonders what kind of person he is, to want to be forgiven for that so desperately.

“No. It feels like something that happened before the- I mean. Before all that.”

And he fights the urge to flinch back as Black turns again to face him. But Black just looks at him, a tinge of realisation and regret in that steady gaze, which is still warm - still so, so warm. 

“Sorry for bringing it up. It just- seemed a fitting question.”

“You don’t need to be sorry. In fact, you shouldn’t be. You should be-”

He spreads his arms wide, turning slightly and taking half a step back with a dry laughter suddenly choking his throat, strangling him from within like thorns. “The opposite of that, I suppose. I did a lot of horrible things. I- I’ve killed people, Black. The fact that I get to be here, talking to you, feeling like- this… how is it right?”

“What else is there? You told me that you were brought up with the war. And now we’re - finally breaking the cycle. That must count for something.”

“Does it? For me. Does it?”

He didn’t mean for the words to come out the way they did. Had aimed for confrontation and landed too far left into desperation. And the little corner of his brain, the cool and logical machine trained into him, cringes at the hint of brokenness in his own voice. 

He pulls back again, another step deeper into the depth of the hallways. 

“I would have killed everyone on this ship, too.”

“But you didn’t!”

“Because you were here! Because you were here and you made me want to be better than that. Can’t you see? I’m the same terrible thing I’ve always been. I just lucked out, meeting you.”

And Black takes half a step toward him before stopping himself. Not pressing forwards, just lingering in the space between them, eyes aflame.

“And if we had killed you, instead? If I’d gone on, kept on as a pawn in this war, ejecting imposter after imposter - and crew members, too? What would that make me?”

White barely perceives the pained sound wringed from his own throat. 

“That’s not the point. Everything I’ve done- they’re not things that should be forgiven.”

And Black takes another hesitant step forward, and the flame in his eyes is still there, still vibrant, but gentle. A controlled hearth instead of a wildfire. 

“It’s not about forgiveness,” he says, “at least, I don’t think it is. We can’t regret, forever, everything we’ve been forced to do. And no one person can offer absolution. We can only try to make up for it as best as we can going forwards. We’re not things, White. We’re all constantly changing. Evolving. ”

“Black-”

“Listen,” Black continues, and he does take another full step forwards, a steady presence in White’s space. “Trust us on this. Trust me, that I’ve thought this through.”

And his hand brushes the back of White’s palm as he speaks. And, naturally, as inevitable as the erosion of the shoreline, their fingers entwine, an anchoring point in the endless unknown.

Black smiles, gentle. 

“There are still a few things around the ship I wanted to check on before the meeting at midnight. So I’ll see you then, okay? Try to get some rest?”

He smiles again, and lifts their entwined hand, brushing lips softly over the curves of White’s knuckles before slipping away, spacesuit dark as the night, disappearing into the lengths of the hallways.

Chapter Text

The sending off is somehow underwhelming.

One by one, the crew members step from the ship, into the airlocks. And almost none of them look back, spare Yellow, who casts an unreadable, sweeping look over her shoulder as steps through the airlock doors. And then they’re gone, and the ship is cut loose from the station as debris. 

It reminds White too much of the peculiar silence before an imposter would be sent on a mission. A certain quiet understanding laced with uncertainty. 

He pushes the memory back. Tries not to think about the last time he’d looked back at the small group sending him off. They had believed in him then. Enough that almost nobody had been there apart from the perfunctory workers setting up the infiltration.

The doors to the airlock have barely even fully closed when Green turns to them, eyes wide and serious. 

“So what’s the real plan?” 

It’s almost more of a statement than a question, and Pink makes a motion like flinching. 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, we’ve all been working on this ship for ages now. I’ve seen the ledgers. We barely had enough resources to get here, and I know you knew that when you gave everyone on the ship a chance to stay. So what’s the actual plan?”

Pink exhales, a sharp sound. 

“I promise I wasn’t trying to deceive anyone, okay? I just thought that it would be safer if nobody returning to the station actually knew about it - just in case. And it’s not even set in stone. If nobody here is willing to take the risk - I mean, we’ve been doing pretty well with resource management and it's not like it’s impossible for us to get somewhere and survive. And I, at least I hope, everyone was aware of the risks before making their own decisions - like you said, we’ve all been…”

She trails off, and it was the closest to rambling White had ever seen her. There was something a little wild and a little lost in her eyes, and she kept casting glances towards the sealed airlock. 

“We all knew the risks,” he says, quiet. And Pink casts a glance in his direction, meeting his eyes.

Her shoulders relax, a fraction, and she inhales, serious, before continuing.

“It’s possible to access the cargo bay doors from outside, I think. Technically, it’s a really bad idea without someone on the controls inside. There’s a, what, 90% chance of ruining our ship for good? But it’s possible. I noticed the quirk in programming just after our ship got assigned. It probably got a pass because of how tightly everything is defended anyway and the risk, but…”

She sighs, leaning back against one of the grey walls with a grimace, and the contemplative silence is a cold thing in the space between them, sharpened by danger. 

“You noticed something like that ?”

There’s a tinge of humour that colours Black’s voice, and White finds himself turning, almost reflexively, to knock their shoulders together gently.

“Are you surprised?” he quips, “can’t believe it still took her ages to accept that leadership role. This is probably the most in character thing ever.”

Black grins back, and Pink buries her head in her hands. 

“Not the time,” she says, but there's a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Anyway, both options are probably equally risky, if I’m being honest. So whatever the hell the majority wants to do, I’m all for it, and I’m gonna damn well do the best I can.”

It would be a moment filled with more silence and tension, if not for the speediness of Green’s reply.

“I kinda wanna fuck them up as much as possible, if I’m being honest.”

Chapter Text

The cargo bay doors they’re aiming for are a dark stain smeared across the spotless chrome of the space station. Somehow dark and foreboding, now that Black was actually looking at it. As though the designer had made it with destruction in mind. 

Or maybe that was just the loop his mind was stuck in right now. Projected desperately onto whatever was around him. 

He breathes in, watches the reflection of their ship, shadowed by artificial light, appear twisted and ugly on those reflective walls. Closer than ever to ruination. And the fact that he couldn’t do anything right now drives agitation up his throat. Acid-bitter.

Just an act of chance, really. But really, wasn’t that what he’d signed up for? A badly-thought out decision that seemed a world away right now. Some bold and allegedly patriotic act that seems so false and flat in hindsight. And, somehow, this still felt so different. Risk nevertheless, and death lingering, nevertheless, but somehow sharper in his mind. Different from the fears he’d already made peace with in that brief training program.

The ship lurches, and Black stumbles, pressing one shoulder hard against the adjoining wall. He’d volunteered to stand near the doors in the storage room themselves, and refused to let anyone convince him to stand anywhere safer. Something about being closer to the place of potential catastrophe, perhaps. The overwhelming feeling that he simply wouldn’t be able to stand the moments between failure and result. Cause and effect. 

The sound of the landing gears activating - rusty and nearly unfunctional, is awful. Grating. And he wonders, briefly, what must be going through Pink’s head in the navigation room. What she must be thinking as she urges this ship, slowly gaining in speed. Pure velocity. 

He finds himself wondering, also, what sounds space must make when it starts invading the interior of a ship, when the vacuum takes over and drowns materiality in all the weight of nothingness. 

He’s wholly unprepared for the sudden presence at his side, but finds himself leaning into it, subconsciously, even before recognition has entirely set in. Familiarity seeping in even before confirmation itself. 

“Hi,” White whispers. And his eyes are tight with tension, but somehow still gentle.

“Figured you’d be patrolling the ship like Green’s doing.”

White shrugs, self-conscious smile lighting up his face.

“I tried, but- and I think we’ve already had this conversation. I probably wouldn’t be of much help.”

“Right. Because you don’t know how to do anything,” Black jokes, a little desperately. And his hand finds purchase in White’s, clinging probably just this side of too tight. 

“Maybe you’ll just have to make sure to teach me. Not that any of it seems that difficult or useful, honestly. I still can’t believe anyone ever thought these scrap-heap ships were a good idea.”

One of them laughs, a tight, quiet laugh, and Black raises his hand instinctively, suddenly bold, to the bolt of White’s jaw. Lets his hand trail against the line of it.

Watches White blink, eyes locking onto his. And he’s suddenly speechless with it all, feeling the corners of his mouth lift uninstructed, the ship and the whole universe somehow sliding away sideways into inconsequentiality.

“Hi,” he manages to whisper, after a brief moment. And it’s nonsensical, most likely, but he can’t find it in himself to care in that singular moment. 

And it doesn’t seem as though White notices, anyway. 

“Do you mind?” he whispers, again, and he can’t tell which one of them moves first, but their faces are suddenly close, close enough that he thinks he can count his individual eyelashes if he wanted. Could trace the soft patterns of colours in his eyes. 

He huffs out a laugh, giddy, before closing those last few inches, pressing their lips together, gently. A quick, soft touch that manages to send shivers up his spine nevertheless.

He pulls back, laughs again, trailing his hands over the bend of White’s shoulders-

And pauses, casting his gaze toward the door.

“White,” he asks, “is it just me, or are the cargo bay doors opening?”

Chapter Text

The light comes first, as though impatient, clawing its way between the doors through sheer will alone. And it’s not overly strong, but it is somehow blinding, too cold and too clinical.

Too harsh, Black thinks, to comprehend. 

The figure establishes itself later. Solitary, dwarfed by the cargo bay doors. A single shadow silhouetted in the wide doorframe. 

Yellow smiles a weak, quiet smile as the spaceship docks, the creaking metal settling silently around them. And she doesn’t speak at first, just watching them with tired, careful eyes. Face somehow greyer, somehow sallow. 

“Yellow?” White asks. And despite the utter confusion, despite the strangeness of the situation, Black can hear a tone of genuine delight in his voice. Small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Yellow seems to soften, gently, at the sight, some tension seeping from her shoulders. 

“Hey,” she says, finally, and takes a small, shuddering breath. “Listen, I have a lot to explain and apologise for. But right now - there are alarms on the station, and I think they suspect that there’s still people on the ship - maybe it’s not the first time it’s happened. But we have a bit of time - I think. Enough to haul in some crates. But-”

“What the fuck just happened?”

The sound of hurried footsteps echoes through the hallways, Pink’s voice loud and panicked in the moment of silence. And Yellow cuts herself off immediately, eyes wide as she watches Pink round the corner in a state of utter movement and disarray, Green at her heels, her helmet discarded and hair looking like the fur of a startled cat. 

And Pink stops dead. Deer in the headlights. As though the lights, still inconceivably alien, had somehow frozen her in place. Petrified her entirely. 

And Yellow bites her lip hard. Still standing, alone and somehow hollowed out by the harsh lights overhead, casting dark shadows over her face, deepening the shadows already there. 

“I saw the plans,” she blurts, something akin to panic creeping into her voice. “The plans you wrote - for this one. I’m sorry. I probably should have told you, but I wanted to be a surprise at first and then I didn’t even know if I was going to do it - just kept thinking about how I could just stay on the station and be safe. Even when the alarms started sounding. Even when I was sitting there, some part of me just seemed to be hoping that you’d somehow end up deciding against it, even though it would mean nearly certain doom and-” 

But Pink has shaken off her stupor, and she walks forward, hesitant at first before gaining in confidence, arms half outstretched. 

And Yellow cuts herself off. Turns away abruptly, gesturing vaguely behind her instead. 

“We really should start moving in some of those boxes,” she says, voice a little hollow. 

A peculiar sort of silence follows. More of that strange and cold stillness of being, as if seeping into the very air between them, rendering their faces sallow and strange. Somehow less alive. 

Green is the first to move, raising his shoulders in a miniscule shrug before stepping quickly into the cargo bay, beckoning the rest of them along. And the tension seemed to fade from his face the further he stepped into the space station itself, being slowly replaced instead by what seemed a sense of pure chaotic delight, nose wrinkled in a careless grin. 

“I’m not going to lie,” he says, finally. “I honestly think that I’ve just come to the epiphany that I’ve been waiting my whole life to do a heist on MIRA.”

Someone laughs. Pink, most likely, or maybe even Yellow. And when the silence falls again, it’s a little less heavy. A little less mechanic.

Chapter Text

They’d just about managed to drag half the crates through to the ship before the doors on the other side slide open, revealing a group of armoured guards. 

The chaos is immediate, Pink moving almost on instinct as she shoves one of the smaller crates towards the open door, sliding it across the floor with her foot with the harsh squeal of metal against metal echoing through the small room. 

“Time to go!” she shouts, as the guards scramble to right themselves and pull their weapons from their holsters. 

At almost the exact same time, Green screeches “time to fucking scatter!” and sprints for the spaceship. beckoning them with frantic hands. And they follow, Pink swearing under her breath as she charges forward for the ship controls, disappearing into the depths of the hallways. 

One of the guards recovers. Extracts their gun from the holster and aims it towards the doors, and White reacts on instinct, turning his mad sprint toward the spaceship into one headed for the doors, sweeping one guard’s legs from out under him, shoving the crate Pink had kicked earlier into the kneecaps of the second guard, who stumbles back, yelling incoherently. 

He can hear the sounds of other boots thundering down the hallways, distant. More guards. Had been checking other storage bays, maybe. Or lying in wait, as though hunting. As though it were a sport.

He panics, slams an elbow into the throat of the guard clawing his way up from the floor. And in the moment, something deep in his psyche screams, every instinct urging him to go for the weapon that should be in his pocket. That should be strapped to his hip, just under the outermost layer of his spacesuit. And he starts to follow the instinct blindly. Starts to reach the blade that isn’t there. That he’d left in the cupboard in his cabin so many nights ago. 

He thinks, distantly, as his fingers close around empty space, that he might as well be thankful for it. Not that weird, gaping space left by something that was once almost the body but is no longer, nor that strange realisation that maybe, in spite of it all, there are some things not so easily unlearned or so easily divorced from the self. 

No, not that. Rather, the simple lack of fatal weaponry on his person. The simple fact that, as he swings his arm out again, disoriented and off balance, there would be nothing to regret either way. No sudden reemergence of history to be unprepared for. No reminder of what he was. 

His fist makes hard impact anyway, sending numbness echoing down his arm and the guard sprawling. And every instinct in his body screams that this is the time to hide. To slink behind the crates unseen and wait until their guard is lowered. Until they turn, ready to run for the emergency meeting buttons.

He swallows down the sudden sense of nausea. Focuses instead on the guard still standing, the guard with his gun drawn and aimed. ( How long has that gun been aimed? ) And then the nausea is gone just as quickly as it arose, replaced by pure fear. The repeated image of the gun firing. Hitting someone behind him.

He ducks and lunges for the door, shoving the other guard back hard and hammering his fist on the closing button. And the doors are shutting just this side of too slowly but he doesn’t have the time to think about that. Barely registers Black shouting something from the storage bay of the ship over the sound of his own blood pumping in his ears, but he turns anyway, sees them panicked and waving from the door and realises that the ship is about to take off. That they would not take off without him and that any additional second spent not taking off is one more second in which more guards could appear. 

White turns, again, runs for the doors and grabs Black’s hand, letting himself be pulled into the ship, hearing the doors close behind him and the engine of the small ship humming with frantic effort. And he slumps against the hallway by the door. Grins breathlessly at Black upon hearing one last shot bouncing off the spaceship door before the ship flies out of range. 

It takes him too long, dizzy with adrenaline and relief, to realise that Black wasn’t returning his grin. 

“Ah,” he says. And with a sense of strange distance, he raises a palm to the wound, feeling a dull spark of pain shoot through his body, watching the blood pool between his fingers.

Chapter Text

White is leaning, heavy, on his shoulder. White is leaning, heavy, on his shoulder and White is bleeding out. And White is bleeding out and Black can’t think straight. Can’t seem to get his thoughts in order. 

Can only keep stumbling forward, keeping one arm steady around White’s shoulder - don’t let the fear take over, don’t let the tremor take over, he can panic once White is safe and stabilized, which he will be, which he must be - as they inch their way - too slowly, are they moving too slowly? - in the direction of the medbay. And he can feel the blood staining. Can feel it dampening his own gloves where he’s keeping pressure on the wound. 

“Help,” he calls, and it’s a low croaking sound, caught in his throat by raw terror, so he tries again, shouts it so it’s echoing down the hallways. And some part of his brain must not have processed the situation yet, because he suddenly feels so hysterical he could sob with it, could go mad just with the thought of the sight he must be making right now, stumbling down the hallway screaming with a bleeding imposter by his side. An imposter he- 

By his side, White flinches, says something quiet and mumbled. 

“Sorry,” Black says, and he doesn’t quite know what he’s apologising for, but he can’t seem to stop thinking the word. Can’t seem to stop being too aware of the warmth of the blood against his palm. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. 

“Been through worse,” White says, louder now and with something like levity flitting at the edges of his words, “don’t worry”.  And Black doesn’t know whether it would be better if he was lying or telling the truth, so he just pulls White closer to him, tries to walk faster and steadier. Tries to ignore that dark pit of dread pooling inside him. 

“Could swear I’ve seen those boxes before, though,” White continues, and his voice, still quiet and hoarse, turns contemplative. “Thought they looked familiar the first moment I saw them there, all stacked up in that stupid storage bay. Didn’t have time to put it together but I’m thinking about it now and I think I saw one when I was real young, once. Maybe something captured from one of these ships? Weird that I haven’t seen one since, though, if they’re still getting used. Do you think they switched the-”

“ White .”

His own voice, too desperate. His own voice, too alien. 

“Sorry,” White says, and there’s something almost sheepish in his voice. “I promise I’m not just rambling. I just feel like I’m missing something important, or something-”

“You’ve been shot . That’s what’s fucking important right now.”

His own voice, too sharp and too bitter. And he regrets it almost immediately, can feel the shame rising like bile, similarly sharp and similarly bitter. And he turns his head to apologise - still walking, still making his way forward because time is important - but White’s already looking at him and he meets White’s eyes instead and- 

And there’s something like wonder in them. Something vulnerable and open and impossible because Black’s done nothing but panic and fuck up since he first noticed White was shot and- 

And White smiles. And there’s no doubting, now, that it is wonder lighting up his face, soft and warm enough to almost override the awful paleness brought on blood loss and pain. 

“Oh,” he says, “you’re worried about me.” 

The sound of footsteps saves Black from having to answer, and he looks up in time to see Green and Yellow round the corner. To see the look of distress sweep over their faces at the sight of blood. And it’s as though time, once momentarily stilled, restarts, overtaking them with all the chaos of alarm and planning, as Yellow runs ahead to prepare the medbay, and Green silently takes place to support White's other side.

Chapter Text

It’s blood and the too long journey to the med-bay and all the while White is too silent. And Black’s seen people hurt, wounded to various degrees during the haphazard training mandated by MIRA, sometimes so badly they never returned to training again, but he’s never seen anyone so quiet with it. And he doesn’t know whether it should be sending the fear racing down his spine in quite the way it is, but it is, and his hands are shaking uncontrollably. Have been shaking uncontrollably ever since Yellow and Green had shifted the weight of White away to carry him better. 

By the time they move him into one of the beds, White’s suit is saturated with blood, made all the more vibrant by the contrast against the paleness of the fabric. And it keeps spreading, creeping insidiously across the starched sheets, staining the gloves of Yellow and Green. 

Something about existence and ephemerality and the breath caught in Black’s throat, like a sob, that won’t let up. Something about White’s hand lying limp on the blankets and the fact that every muscle in his body wants him to take that hand and make sure that it’s still warm, wrap his fingers around it and hold tight and never let go. But he can’t seem to do it. 

He heads for the cupboards instead. Pulls out the saline and the gauze and he doesn’t quite know what else to do so he returns with those and hisses with sympathetic pain as he watches Yellow cut the fabric away from his shoulder, pulling the fabric away from the open wound. 

And he doesn’t remember much from his medical training either - can’t remember if they’d even bothered to teach anything surgery-related or if they’d just assumed that anyone who’d get hurt to that extent would no longer be worth the effort of saving. But at least he knows how wound cleaning is supposed to work. Fumbles with the bottle for far too long before he remembers his gloves and pulls them off, leaves them on the ground as he pulls on the disposable gloves Green passes him. 

Saline to the gauze pad and gauze pad to the skin. And White is still silent, his jaw clenched tight and his brow furrowed. In pain. Half-present. 

Let him be okay. Dear God, let him be okay. 

“I don’t think the bullet shattered,” Green finally says, after a long moment of assessment and as he drags a tray of surgery equipment from… somewhere, pouring disinfectant over the sharp metallic implements and stinging the air with the sharp scent of alcohol. “But the bone might have - and there’s no exit wound. Might be able to drag him to the scanner but those were made for crewmate health profiles and I honestly have no idea if they’d even planned them for injuries. Fucking MIRA.

“At least we can probably get the bullet out and set the bone. I don’t think it went through any of the major arteries in the area - which is very lucky - but it might have nicked one. Uh, this is probably a good time to mention that I don’t actually know that much about medicine, but I used to read up a lot on surgery procedures and processes when I was a kid and unless anyone else has more training, I can probably try patching him up a little?”

Black nods absentmindedly and sees Yellow do the same out of the corner of his eyes. And he dabs a fresh gauze pad over the wound and watches the blood soak through again. 

Raises a hand slowly, hesitantly, and entwines White’s fingers with his own. Feels it in his chest like a breath, at last.

The smile White sends him is weak, but it somehow cuts through the grimace of pain like a hot knife through butter. 

“Can I stay and help?”

Green hesitates just slightly before nodding, thoughtful. 

“I definitely don’t wanna risk using anything stronger than mild localised anesthetic, so you might as well stay as emotional support. Just - and I say this in the kindest way, Black - please don’t get in the way.” 

White breathes out a laugh, and his eyes are still closed but there seems to be something soft around the lines of his eyes. Relaxed in spite of the pain. 

Yellow stands up, claps her hands together with a crisp decisiveness. And for a moment, she’s herself again, comforting light in her eyes and the corners of her lips twisted slightly upward in something resembling relief. 

“Great. Take care of him, you guys. I’ll go catch Pink up on what’s happening and see if she has anything she wants to bring up.”

She leaves the doors open as she exits the medbay, and her footsteps echo as she makes her way through to navigation. 

“Ok,” Green says, running the tweezers through the alcohol soaked rag again, pulling the light closer. “Ok. I’m awful with my bedside manner, so I’m just going to say that this is gonna hurt - and that I can’t do anything fancier than a running stitch - well, it’s not even going to be a full stitch or whatever because the wound is  - well. Doesn’t matter. I’m rambling.”

He takes a deep breath. Snaps the thin tweezers again before using one hand to move the gauze away, inhaling sharply through his teeth as the blood resumes flowing. 

Black looks away before the tweezers enter the skin, fixes his eyes on White’s face. 

Impulsively, he lifts the hand not in White’s. Cups the side of White’s head and draws his thumb across the line of tension forming across his forehead, across the knot in his brow.

Chapter Text

White wakes up in the medbay. And there’s something important – something familiar – nagging at the corners of his mind, but when he looks over Black is asleep in the chair by his bed with his hair sleep-rumpled and his lashes low over his cheeks and his hands in White’s and suddenly there are more important things to think about.

More important. Better. More pleasant. Whatever. He’s nauseous with blood loss and everything hurts and the wound on his shoulder is at once too cold and too warm and entirely numb. He’s allowed another moment of peace. He’s allowed another moment of pointlessness.

Black stirs, blinks the sleep from his eyes before focusing on White with a wave of alarm.

“Fuck. Are you feeling alright? I’m not sure how much you remember but Green stitched you up some. Hopefully you won’t bleed through but the shot nicked an artery and there were some fractured bones. Or- shattered? Something about shards? He had to pick some out and try to set the rest but-“

He untwines his hand from Black’s, raises it to cover Black’s mouth instead, enthralled briefly in the meanwhile by the soft puff of breath against his hand, the quiet sound Black makes in the base of his throat. And he was going to say something, he was sure about it, but for now his mind is pleasantly blank.

“You’re pretty when you’re rambling.”

Black huffs, half-protest and half-smile, and leans forward, perches himself on the edge of White’s bed and catches White’s hand in his again.

“Are you feeling alright, though?”

“Yeah.” White pushes himself up into sitting, almost losing his balance at the sharp burn of pain across his chest before recovering, taking into account the new injury and compensating for the new limitation. Hiding the grimace. “I wasn’t joking when I said I’ve been through worse, you know. You don’t have to worry.”

He grins, and he’s expecting Black to grin back, but the expression he’s suddenly faced with is so disquieted and sombre it catches him entirely off guard, wipes his own smile from his face.

“Fuck. Sorry. Did I say something wrong?”

A long, shuddering breath. And he’s not sure who it comes from. Not sure what to think as Black’s face falls even further, filled with an expression so soft it makes his chest ache.

“No. No, of course not. It’s just that…”

He trails off, makes a low humming sound in his throat, sad and thoughtful.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that, White. Was this-”

“No,” he blurts out, and only realises after that the exact light that such a revelation newly casts him in. Monstrous, dangerous thing. So he jumps in again, fills the silence with words and barely knows what he’s talking about. 

“Honestly, I got hurt much more during training than anything else. Which is pretty funny, really! They’d teach us about all these things that might happen, all these situations that might occur, and make sure we could deal with it, you know? At least until we could get somewhere safe enough to sew ourselves up. Never anything that would incapacitate you for too long, of course, but they had this way of stabbing clean through your shoulder that wouldn’t sever anything, in order to teach us what to do in case a mission goes awry and we have to hide a wound after a struggle and-”

He had the unique feeling of someone digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hole. And when he sneaks a glance at Black out of the corners of his eyes, the horror on Black’s face sends a fresh wave of terror through him, so cold he thinks it might paralyse him forever.

“Fuck. Sorry. I know that I’m-”

“They did that to you?!”

“I- What?”

“How young were you?”

“I don’t… remember.” He’s never felt more unmoored, high on painkillers and finding no way to make sense of the conversation. “Long ago? During training? Why-”

Black makes a low, distressed sound in the back of his throat. And White barely has time to process that before Black’s arms are around him. Careful to avoid the wound but holding tight.

Steady. Safe.

For a moment, White just… sits. Raises his arms reflexively to wrap around Black in turn and rakes his fingers through the soft hair at the nape of his neck. Tries to process the situation and feels a low irritation at his own inability to comprehend. And it takes him too long to realise that Black’s trembling, eyes damp where his face is buried in the crook of White’s shoulder.

And-

“Oh,” he says, stupidly.

Black laughs tearily at that. Raises his head a little to draw his nose across White’s cheek, and it’s as easy as breathing for White to turn his head, slowly, carefully, to slot their lips together.

Black hums quietly, presses himself forwards against White cautiously to deepen the kiss, and his mouth is soft and wonderful, accompanied by the soft scrape of teeth and chapped lips. And White rakes his hand through his hair, relinquishes to the comforting weight of him, leaning backwards into the stacked pillows.

They’re interrupted by the smooth mechanical sound of the med bay doors opening, and White flinches instinctively at the sound, tries to push himself up, but calms at the gentle smile Black sends him before looking up towards the source of the sound, where Pink stood, her hand resting on the doorframe and her eyebrow quirked with a quiet amusement. 

“Yellow mentioned that there were some things we should talk through as a crew,” she starts, after a short while. “So the others should probably be coming around in a while after they double-check some stuff. You guys need a while too?”

White laughs, ignoring the blush rising to his face, and pushes himself up as Black stands up beside him. 

“No need for that,” he says. “I can make it to the cafeteria. We actually have more than one chair there, yeah? And I won’t be forcing all you guys to stand around the whole time.”

Black’s response is gentle but immediate. 

“Oh, absolutely not. I, for one, would be more than happy to stand, and worst comes to worst, we can pull some of the other beds over and-”

“Come on,” he protests, propping himself up, trying to ignore the renewed flare of pain, “let’s-”

He puts too much weight on his other arm, maybe. Or he moves his shoulder wrong, or something. Because the next thing he feels is warmth blooming along the bandages, blood staining the fabric entirely.

Chapter Text

White’s hand is in his. 

White’s hand is in his, and it is cold with blood loss, almost lifeless in a way that Black cannot bring himself to think about. Instead he focuses on the faint pulse there, beneath the smooth curve of his wrist. The faint pulse that is still there . 

Beside him, Green’s face is ashen and his hands bloody. Seemingly incapable of staying still even when there was nothing else for him to do, he was currently disinfecting the surgery equipment again, muttering under his breath as he dragged a cloth over the implements for what seemed like the hundredth time. Yellow, standing slightly to the side, was helping him, a slight tremble in her hands. 

The worst thing, Black thinks, apart from all the other, more horrible things, is how fragile White looks. How small and vulnerable the hospital sheets make him look. And it’s a cliché but it’s true and Black can’t stop thinking it, can’t stop his thoughts from circling back, always circling back to how utterly useless he himself feels, now, watching passively and uselessly. 

“Hey.”

White’s voice is a reedy whisper, and Black tightens his grasp instinctively, as though trying to hold on firmer, to anchor him to this horrible little sanitised medbay. 

“Yeah?” he says, and, horrifyingly, he hears his own voice crack midway through the single syllable. “You should really be resting, White, just, be-”

“Hey,” White whispers again. Only now it’s more to soothe him than anything else. And the irony of it makes Black want to scream. “It’s okay. It’s alright, Black. But I just needed to- I just need to talk about this one thing before it drives me mad, yeah?”

Black takes a slow breath. Gathers himself. Drags his hands across White’s knuckles softly and raises their entwined hands to press it to his lips. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here. What is it?”

White smiles, a slight, private thing that makes Black’s breath catch in his throat, before his expression smooths out again into seriousness, a frown twisting his brow. 

“Is Pink back in Navigation?”

“Yeah. I can go get her, though?”

“No, don’t worry about it. We can relate it to her later. I just need to talk this through - for now. Get some sense of it.”

Black looks up, and, catching the eyes of both Green and Yellow, beckons both of them over. And they approach quickly, silent and careful, Yellow putting one hand comfortingly on Black’s shoulder when she’s in close enough proximity. 

White takes a breath. Smiles again, quickly, before he starts, hesitantly. 

“It’s the crates, Black,” and he’s addressing all of them but his eyes are fixed on Black’s, wide and uncertain. “I’ve finally bloody remembered, and it’s because I haven’t seen them in a long time. Since… before the imposter thing was even properly implemented, back in training, I think.”

A short pause, and Black’s mind is spinning - parts of the pieces coming together to make an image that didn’t seem to make sense. 

“It was back when we were about to fail. When the pride that had kept us fighting over the border skirmishes was failing under the strings of losses. That was when we started getting the shipments. Weapons. Information. The whole reason we were able to get the spies into the outposts in time. And it had just been pride, at first, but then - we had the information. We had the means to do more and go further, all thanks to-”

“MIRA.” Yellow blurts, and slaps a hand over her mouth, eyes wide and horrified as all eyes turned to her. “It’s- when I was on the ship- there were-”

She gnaws at her thumb. Takes a half step back and looks, for a moment, as though she’s contemplating escape. 

“Plans,” she says, finally. “ Experiments . Now that they have what they wanted - power - they were looking for ways to end the war quickly. Erase what they’d done to both the home planet and the imposter planets.”

White nods. 

“Polus,” he says. “Excuses and secrets.”

“Dissections and torture,” Yellow adds, hollowly. And her face is pale, her gaze vacant and distant. 

Chapter Text

There is a silence, after her words.

The hollow kind. The kind that seemed to consume both words and thought. 

“Torture,” Green echoes, finally. And Black starts at the sound, soft as it was. 

Yellow nods. Something new sweeping over her face now. A bone-deep kind of revulsion flashing across her expression before being replaced once more with simple dread. Anger. 

“There’s a reason they don’t let people just wander around the station,” she says. Forcing the words out through clenched teeth. “They’re doing things that--”

She cuts herself off, swaying for a moment on the spot, off balance with it all. And Black has just enough presence of mind - the rest of his thoughts still spiralling uncontrollably - to cross the room over to her, steadying her with a hand on the shoulder as Green did the same on her right. 

She sends a shaky, thankful smile at the both of them, raising one arm to give both of their hands a quick squeeze. 

“I don’t know,” she continues. “I think they’re trying to figure out easier ways to identify imposters. Or- or other ways to wage war. They had - laboratories.”

Another shuddering breath. 

“I sneaked through one night - when I was trying to find out how to get to the cargo bays. There were bodies - under the sheets. I had to hide when the patrols came through. And everything smelled like blood and chemicals and-”

She trails off, stepping away to lower herself heavily onto one of the other med bay beds. Untethered now, Black takes a few hesitant steps back, turning finally back again to where White sat in silence. 

There was no rage or shock on his face. Just a deep, almost placid kind of sadness as he gazes back, turning a fragile smile towards Black. 

Reaching out as soon as he was in range, twisting their hands together like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Warm. Anchoring.

“So they were fuelling the war,” White says, finally. “They were pushing the border skirmishes, supplying weapons to both sides. And now they’re in charge, they’re hiding what happened.” 

Somehow, it’s the most vulnerable he’d ever looked. The quiet acceptance of it. The way his thumb traces the back of Black’s hand. 

There was a long stretch of silence before Pink finally moved, stepping forward to sit carefully next to Yellow, burying her head in her hands. For once, there was nothing controlled and put together about her. No sense of leadership. For the first time since they started the journey, she looked just like another person, small and scared and tired, and when she spoke her voice was muffled. 

“That’s… a lot.”

“Yeah,” Green responded, with a thin, humourless laugh. “It’s pretty shit, isn’t it?”

It was as though Black could see Pink pull herself back together piece by piece. Still human, still tired, but making a decision. 

“We’ll have to do something, won’t we? We might as well be dead men walking right now. How long before they track us down? No, we’ll have to do something. But that can wait until we all get rest and have time to think. We have a whole journey to do it, after all.”

She stood, brushing herself off and offering one hand to Yellow, who took it gratefully. 

“It can wait until the morning, and until we’ve at least tried to get some rest. We’ll get through this. I promise.”

Something about the way she said it made Black believe it.

Chapter Text

Black wakes to darkness. 

White’s arm is wrapped loosely around his waist. He’d made the decision to sleep in the medbay, last night, and Green had helped him push two of the beds together with a grin that had seemed altogether far too cheerful for the occasion. 

For a while, he just looks up into the night, trying to push away the thoughts that keep coming. It’s easier with White pressed against him. Easier to focus instead on that comforting, grounding warmth. Like a tether. Like something linking him to the shore when the unceasing tides of thought otherwise threatened sweep him away out to sea. 

The ocean. Now there’s a strange thought. He hasn’t seen an ocean since he joined MIRA’s training program. He wonders if he would still recognise the beach his mother used to take him to. One of the rare few beaches that had still been open to the public on the home planet. The sand had been warm and pale, pale gold beneath his feet, and the horizon had seemed to stretch on forever. 

He’d like to go back someday, he thinks. And it feels like a strange fit of madness. A sudden, crystallising intention to live, given weight by the clarity of a single point of focus. He would like to live, and he would like to go back to that beach, and he would like to take White with him. To sit together under that endless sky. 

A quiet puff of breath against the crook of his neck as White stirs, and for a while Black thinks he’s still asleep until he speaks, quiet voice a low, comforting whisper. 

“Can’t quite sleep either?”

Black laughs quietly, lets his eyes fall closed as he turns to White, nuzzling into his loose, messy mop of hair. 

“Guess not,” he murmurs back.

White hums in acknowledgement, and Black can feel the quiet vibrations of it where White’s chest is pressed against his. For a moment, he’s struck by the simple fact of their closeness, a voiceless fondness closing up his throat and quickening his pulse. 

“Hey,” he says, finally, when he can speak again, “I was thinking…”

“Yeah?”

It comes out of him like a flood. “I was thinking we have to live through this, White. We have to. Because when it’s done, and when we can breathe again, I want to show you what the stars look like where I grew up. To introduce you to my mother. To show you a beach I loved as a child and the rockpools I used to explore. So we have to, yeah? Promise me?”

A beat, and he’s just starting to wonder whether he’d somehow overstepped when White’s hands are suddenly cupping his face, thumb dragging along the bolt of his jaw, pulling him into a soft but fervent kiss. 

Black grins against White’s lips, and White takes that as an opportunity to rake his hands through Black’s hair and pull him closer. Kiss him deeper. And his mouth is warm, his canines just this side of too sharp. 

“I promise,” White whispers, when they break apart for breath. “I promise, love.”

When Black finally falls asleep - a deep, dreamless sleep - it is with that sentence echoing in his head.