Chapter Text
Yellow drifted through the sea of silence. Every few seconds, the Skeld rolled past her view, small enough as though it were a toy embedded in the giant hamster ball of space spinning around her. Tears floated gently inside her helmet, eventually settling against her visor. She had had her moment to mourn, not over her death but over her life. Death was welcome, soothing. She was at peace. A small ember of hatred still smoldered within her, rekindled each time the Skeld cycled through her gaze, but she was at peace. She was free at last. A year ago she never could have dreamed of ending up like this. The stars were beautiful, their brilliance far surpassing even the darkest of nights on Mira. Her corpse would be immortalized in space, one of the last remnants of humanity, perfectly preserved and forever undisturbed while the rest of the world was nothing but dust. A fate befitting of a queen. Her suit a sarcophagus, outer space her pyramid.
The Skeld rolled into view once more and she couldn’t help but sneer like it were a mosquito at a picnic. She had long ago lost count of how many times it had swung around, a constant reminder that she was not alone. This time however, something looked slightly different. A dark spot appeared on the vessel. No matter—it rolled out of view leaving her once more with her thoughts.
The vastness of outer space seemed flat. For all the infinite wonder of the universe, its far corners were infuriatingly out of reach. A part of her wished she could live to see herself float past the furthest stars of the galaxy, but she shuddered to even contemplate the eons it would take. It would be millennia before she even escaped the gravity well of this solitary system, if at all. In death, however, time was meaningless. In death, she may as well have already sailed the length of the universe.
Red rolled into view. She blinked hard. She was imagining things. She blinked again. No, there he was, floating right up to her. She stared at him. He stared back. Her mind, mired in existential contemplation, had snapped back into a state of vacant incredulity. Red was here. In space. With her. He may as well have stumbled into her bathroom stall. She didn’t know whether to greet, interrogate, or scream. Before her brain could unfreeze, however, he upped the ante and split in half. Tentacles sprang from a gigantic mouth, plucked her out of the ocean of space, and yanked her inside like a fly to a frog.
Wide eyed and curled up against the insides of her crewmate, she replayed the events of her life, searching for any precedent that would make comprehensible what had just transpired. “This is new,” she concluded aloud.