Chapter Text
“Mayday, mayday, mayday, all ships at sea. This is Officer Eiffel, onboard the U.S.S. RustBucket . I have been stranded on board a nonoperational vessel for twenty-seven days. I require immediate emergency assistance. Please respond.”
Officer Eiffel thrummed his fingers against the metal console of the comms system, waiting one minute, then another. He let out a slow, shaky breath before cutting the comms link. How surprising.
Bringing his hand up, he flipped the switch that activated the starboard booster.
It roared to life, the entire craft trembling under the pressure, groaning and keening as it careened just seven thousand miles to the left. The hum held steady for a second, before stuttering out with a hoarse cough-hiss. The shuttle groaned around him as the booster shut off.
He flipped the switch back to its OFF position.
He hummed.
“One million nine hundred fifty one miles off course…” he paused, staring blankly at the digital display for a second, the foggy screen blurring as he huffed out another tired breath.
Tilting his head, he spared a glance at the food cupboard, considered it for a moment, and then let his eyes drift over to the cold, unwelcoming, cryopod. Eiffel was unable to suppress a shiver before looking away.
Don't freak out.
Turning his attention back to the computer in front of him, he breathed, sucking a huge gulp of air into his lungs, holding it until it burned, and let the breath out. A few coughs escaped his mouth along with the air, his throat burning.
“Keep it together,” he mumbled to himself, “it's better than nothing.”
A faint echo bounced around his mind for a second, reminded him that he had no other choice in the matter, the voice sounded vaguely like Lovelace. He huffed out a half scoff and turned back toward the computer, feeling a strange unease with his back facing the cryopod.
His fingers were tense and stiff, uncomfortable, and a faint, concerning, paleish blue. He could hardly feel them hit the keys as he monitored the electronic vitals of his high-velocity prison.
(Keep it together.)
Eiffel figured that, just maybe, taking a few moments before hopping back into the River Styx wouldn't hurt anything.
He clicked through several different comms channels, let the static fill his mind for a moment, felt it commune with the, unfortunately, familiar buzz of the shuttle, felt it merge with the strange electrical current that seemed to pulse beneath his skin.
His mind wandered back. Far, far back. Around Eleven Million miles back if you wanted to be specific about it.
The Hephaestus.
It was barely visible out the aft window, a speck against Wolf 359’s now Cherenkov blue glow.
(Keep it together.)
Being alone was… Well. The long and short of it was that it sucked. And it sucked badly . He almost missed the days when Hilbert's mutiny was the only thing that he had to worry about. Hell, he might even prefer the early days of Lovelace's command over his current situation.
He'd take the commander's constant nagging about his job over this heap of space junk any day.
A faint voice in his mind hummed to him, whispered that he wasn't alone during those crisis's, he had the Commander to lean on, Hera to lean on and joke with. It almost sounded like him.
(Keep it together.)
Eiffel let out a barked laugh, it almost felt as if it had been punched out of him.
Yeah, he was getting very familiar with the sound of his own voice recently.
That damn voice over the comms, falling out of orbit and into the star, Lovelace and her damn dead-woman's switch bomb that blew him out into deep space-
He took another heavy, stuttering, breath.
The words you're not allowed to panic rolled around in his mind, sounding almost like Minkowski.
But Minkowski wasn't here, that certainly didn't mean that she wasn't commanding, but she wasn't here. Neither was Hera. Neither was Lovelace even though this was her hunk of space junk. Hell, he'd even prefer Doctor Von Doom over this overwhelming-
Silence.
(Keep it together. You're not allowed to panic.)
The static crackled in time with the lights slightly fizzing out, some sort of strange rhythm that the electricity in his blood wasn't let in on.
Silence was the problem.
Loneliness was the problem.
Because now it was just him, moving at seventeen thousand miles an hour into deep space. No crew, no connection, just him moving toward the vast emptiness of space where the sun don't shine, and, hopefully, hopefully, moving toward the Hermes.
Well, it was just him and whatever aliens were out there listening. And his hallucinations, if you counted them.
He did not count them, however helpful they may or may not be.
With a firm click he closed the open comms channel, and the static stopped just as quickly, but somehow, somehow, it still rang in his ears with perfect clarity. He tried not to let the panic set in, tried to keep his throat from closing with agonizing anticipation.
(Keep it together.)
He unbuckled himself from the chair and floated sluggishly toward the cryopod, shoving down any thoughts about his fate as an icicle hurtling through space
It hissed and clawed itself open as he tapped at its interface panel, horrid crunching noises greeted him as it lay there like the gaping maw of a Sarlacc.
(You're not allowed to panic.)
Somehow the act of climbing inside seemed more daunting than the day before. He shook his head and stabilized himself on the handle of the lid, settling in the pod and pulling the door down into it's seal, trying not to let the unbearable cold sink too far into his mind.
Seventy four hours.
‘Deep Space Survival Tip #1001: In times of trouble, an idle mind is your worst enemy. Keep yourself occupied at all times. Don't stop.
Good luck.’
Just One million nine hundred fifty one more miles.
(Keep it together.)
__________
“Mayday, mayday, mayday-”
(You're not allowed to panic.)
“-I have been stranded on board a nonoperational vessel for thirty-two-”
(Keep it together.)
“Forty-eight-”
(You're not allowed to panic.)
“Fifty-seven-”
(Keep it together.)
__________
“Mayday, mayday, mayday, all ships at sea. This is Communications Officer Eiffel, onboard the U.S.S…. Slow agonizing death .” Eiffel coughed and swayed, sighed and ached. The skin touching his thighs was cold and hard and curled. It was almost hauntingly unfamiliar.
It was his hand, he knew that, he did, really did. But there's a strange sort of…. disconnect attached to it. The same disconnect that caused his body to work on a ten second delay as he tried to move his hands around the straps to the chair.
He fumbled with them, missing clasp after clasp, and ultimately decided that the single chest strap will keep him in place for the upcoming booster party.
“I have been stranded on board a nonoperational vessel for sixty days. I require immediate emergency assistance. Please respond.”
He placed his forehead on the, almost warm in comparison to him, console, and took in a weak, fluttering breath that burned on the way down.
One, blue, blotchy, pale hand reached up and shook, after a moment it clicked the button to disconnect from the comms line.
Disconnected..
(Keep it together.)
It was weird. And that's putting it nicely.
The utter, uncomfortable numb-burn of his arms and legs sent tremors through his body. Shiver attacks that he couldn't stop no matter how far he curled in. As if the very air around him had frozen to ice.
(You're not allowed to panic.)
The blisters that had grown on his skin were taut and angry, even through the tingly numbness of the ice in his veins he could feel the intensity of the fluid pushing against his skin, feel the stinging, radiating pain every time they brushed against an unfortunately placed piece of clothing.
Which, considering the nature of zero gravity, is often. Hooray.
As he moved his head up, Eiffel's vision blurred and faded for a moment, hand hovering in the air between him and the switchboard for a moment. Frozen in time but moving a million miles an hour.
It's almost like… he was Bathsheba but he was also Carolyn Perron. A ghost possessing his own body. Eyes unfocused and fuzzy, but intimately aware, hyper focused.
It was a nauseating sensation.
Like audio lag, desync, words said into a microphone, a receiver that takes far too long to process the command.
He was unsure if he would be able to keep going. Unsure if his spirit, poltergeist really, could render the strength to control the victim of his possession. Unsure if the -- his-- body could handle the puppeteering.
Who would he be once he defrosted?
Would he emerge as Douglas Eiffel, strikingly handsome and witty. Or would he emerge as Communications Officer Eiffel, refined, diluted, someone who does what he has to do.
Or perhaps he would emerge as neither. Something entirely new. Calcified and cracked at the seams, an ice sculpture melting in the sun.
Another voice, warping and cold, Do what you have to, you don't have a choice, that was Lovelace.
Yeah, yeah… that's right. She's right. He leaned forward.
Now was no time to be losing it, well, losing it more than he already was, what-with the voices and all.
(Keep it together)
He brought his, and it was his, shaky hand up to the starboard booster switch and, with a certainty that wasn't there before, clicked it on.
Like clockwork, the clamoring sound of the booster stuttering to life shook the shuttle, swinging Eiffel to the right and nearly out of the chair. He let out a punched gasp as the strap pushed the air out of him.
The one clasped strap pulled tight and held him steady, the sudden movement sent another wave of dizziness through his whole body, his nerves lighting up like they were carbonated.
Focus.
(You're not allowed to panic.)
The whole shuttle creaked as normal, and the boost died off with another hiss-clank. Eiffel slumped back into the chair, and in the same second, let out a barely restrained hiss as a burning cold blister on his foot hit the leg of the chair, popping with a deep simmering agony.
The faint smell of, maybe refrigerant, wafted through the enclosed space, only adding to his light-headedness.
Focus.
You can't let your mind wander. That's what the deep space survival manual said. Keep going, don't stop.
And yet, yet, he couldn't quite muster the energy to get up. Not yet, he just… needed a moment.
Yeah.
(Do what you have to, you don't have a choice.)
The popped blister, now oozing disgusting clear fluid into the fabric of his jumpsuit, sent low pulses through his body. Not quite pain anymore. Just steady waves of intensity, not quite grounding, not quite making the disconnect worse.
The waves activated the nerves throughout his legs first, leaving a faint buzz beneath his skin as it passed. Then it traveled to his stomach, ran its icy fingers across his protruding ribs and reached deep into his diaphragm.
(Keep it together.)
It sank into his lungs and faded from a wave to an echo, smaller pulses died off at his neck, two others arched and traveled down his arms, giving him a dim reminder of sticking his arm in a bundle of open wires at the Hephaestus ’s comms station.
He pinched his eyes closed and held a hand up to block the flickering lights of the shuttle. His fingers, ghostly white, twitched unwillingly as he held them up. Spindly and thin, pale, hiding from the light. Like a vampire allergic to crappy fluorescent light instead of sunlight, he mused.
He huffed out a slight breath, because it was a breath and it wasn't an almost sob, and clamored over to the cryopod, climbing in and plopping into the uncomfortable, cold, cold, seat, unceremoniously.
(You're not allowed to panic. Do what you have to, you don't have a choice.) Seventy four hours.
Again.
__________
“-mayday, I have been-”
(Keep it together.)
“Seventy four-”
(Keep it together.)
“Eighty thr-”
(Keep it together.)
“Ninety n-”
(Do what you have to, you don't have a choice.)
__________
His voice was hoarse and barely came out through the rasps of his throat.
“Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.” he coughed, deep, deep. It reverberated through his hollow chest.
“All ships at sea. This is communications Officer Douglas Eiffel. I've been-” he takes in a deep, but also somehow light, wheezing breath.
“-stranded on board a nonoperational vessel for…” He ran cold, trembling, shivering, fingers through his hair, clumps of hair carded through his fingers and floated in the zero gravity as they detached from his scalp with no struggle.
The scratchy coolness of his fingers against the myriad spots of hairless scalp was soothing yet uncomfortable. There was a considerable distance between Douglas Eiffel and the vessel he inhabited.
“One hundred and seventeen days. I require immediate emergency assistance.”
His hand slid down his face, icy fingers pressing against feverish skin, leaving white lines of pressure on his face.
“Please respond,” his voice was muffled through the palm of his hand. The static simmered in the air of the shuttle. He felt the drag of his eyelashes against his fingers as he closed tired, blurry eyes.
Pressed button, click, wheeze, sigh.
He hissed another puff of air into his lungs, he couldn't feel his arms or legs. Not that he wasn't used to it by now.
(Keep it together.)
After a beat, to catch his breath -- he was not stalling-- he let the breath out. After another moment he picked up the dried granola-esque bar, one of the rations that Lovelace had so helpfully stocked on the ship.
It crumbled slightly as he unwrapped it from its casing, the crumbs floating lazily in place. He pried one of the oats off of the bar with the naked tip of his finger.
It was perturbing to look at, to stare at the empty space where his finger nail had once been. Inspecting his other fingers returned a similar result, some were missing entirely while others were chipped down nearly to the cuticle. Angry reddish purple hues covered the tips of his fingers and, he could only imagine, his toes.
He could, officially, no longer feel his basic extremities. The delay between his mind and the wiggling of his fingers and toes had been tripled from what he could tell, and the delay between his mind and the rest of his body was a bit worse than the last time he made the mistake of taking a moment to breathe.
(You're not allowed to panic.)
Hell, there were times he couldn't even decipher if his eyes were opened or closed through the bleariness and the dark spots in his vision, and, unlike Daredevil, his other senses were not being enhanced because of his near blindness.
If he had to put a quantifiable percentage on it he would say his senses had actually started degrading. Eiffel had lost his sense of touch throughout most of his body a while ago, whether that was from the frostbite or from the disconnect he couldn't tell you.
Then his taste went, that one was definitely tag teamed. The frostbite grated down his throat with a low grit sandpaper and the disconnect made his tongue feel like a balloon in his mouth, clumsy and uncoordinated. A few weeks ago his jaw started making this horrible creaking noise anytime he chewed. The apparent blandness of the rations did not do anything to stimulate his senses or whatever 5 Gum was supposed to do.
It was a few days before his taste went that he was met with the sweet, sweet sound of ringing. High pitched, incessant ringing. It started small enough, just a slight buzz of sound, but it grew the longer he sat in silence. Louder and higher and higher and higher.
It went away, at least partially, when there was noise, the rumble of the booster, the static of the radio, the clicking of the switches or the keyboard as he fiddled with them.
He wasn't sure what caused it, yes yes, I know, how surprising, but he knew for certain that he didn't like it.
So Eiffel did what he did best, he filled the silence. The easiest way of doing that turned out to be whistling, it didn't contract the sore muscles in his throat, it didn't force him to hear the scratchy, roughness of his voice, and it kept the ringing to a minimum.
(Do what you have to, you don't have a choice.)
He started with the simple songs, the popular ones, ones that he could remember off the top of his head. He decided to skip the jaws theme, the way his lungs burned and stuttered whenever he tried to breathe in enough to hold the amount of air needed to complete the tension building crescendo of it was the reason, what's the point of doing something as a distraction if it only forces you to think of the situation your in?
Yeah.
Another voice twisted in his mind, Stop wasting your time with these meaningless games, that was definitely Hilbert's voice, that was his accent and all of its righteous, growling glory.
Eiffel hummed, but was ultimately too tired to make a What's Up Doc joke.
The fog in his brain was a little too intense to think of any comprehensible joke and the ringing in his ears had just started fading out as he whistled the Harry Potter theme faintly.
Eiffel activated the switch to the booster in time with the final note of the tune, the whistle fading out and melding into the chaos of the activated booster, the steady yet unpredictable noise keeping the ringing at bay.
There was a momentary lapse of sound, interrupted only by the click of him shutting off the starboard booster.
One second, then another, and then his mind supplied another tune.
Apparently sticking with the current theme, the bouncing lyrics of the Ghostbusters theme swayed in and out of his mind's eye.
He took a bite out of the flavorless granola bar, humming while he chewed.
Doug found himself almost… thankful for the disconnect. The steady numbness that saved him from the unfortunate reality of his situation.
(Stop wasting your time with these meaningless games.)
If he closed his eyes, really closed his eyes and just sat there, he felt like he could just drift away. Just drift away… Just… drift.
(Do what you have to, you don't have a choice.)
He threw the empty wrapper in the pile with the others and unstrapped himself from the chair, drifting slightly towards the cryopod.
(Keep it together.)
Drifting…
Seventy four hours.
__________
“I have been stuck on a-”
(Stop wasting your time with these meaningless games.)
“for one hundred and thirty three-”
(Keep it together.)
“One hundred and fi-”
(You're not allowed to panic.)
“One sevent-”
(Do what you have to, you don't have a choice.)
__________
He stared at the strange warbling reflection in the glossy metal of the comms station.
It stared back, the weird silhouetted figure, the gaunt and ghoulish stranger looked back at him, blinking slowly.
A voice, it might have been his, echoed throughout the small shuttle, murmuring over the static of the opened comms link. The same three words.
Mayday… Mayday… Mayday… How many days had it been?
He was cold.
His body carried on in an oh so familiar routine.
It went something like;
Click, static hiss, digital affirmations.
Mayday, mayday, mayday.
How long has it been?
Click, the static dies.
Click-snap, the vibrations of the booster chugging away.
Another click-snap.
Silence, ringing.
Coldness.
He hummed slightly, wringing what could have been his hands, and thought. He didn't feel like this yesterday, did he?
Sure he wasn't feeling swell but this was a whole other level of craziness, a whole other level of disconnect. Like the man looking in the mirror and the reflection were two different entities.
It felt terrifying but also vaguely freeing He didn't feel like this yesterday.
You will get through this, Officer Eiffel, and oh. He knew that voice didn't he? Not to hard, not soft either though. Not commanding but authoritative, not complacent but kind.
Omnipresent.
That same echoing voice twisted around his head, the one that might have been his yesterday, and might belong to him tomorrow. Not today, not today.
It said, Hera, are you there?
It was an oxymoron, really. He knew that, in whatever strange state he was in. He also knew that Communications Officer Douglas Eiffel knew that.
He wasn't stupid. Did the others know that? Did Hera?
(Keep it together.)
He wondered loosely how they were doing. Not exactly how they were doing without him, just how they were doing in general.
Under any other circumstances he probably wouldn't be missed all too much, despite how much he loved his job sitting at the comms station on the Hephaestus, Hera could probably do his job easily with the right attunements.
So in any other universe, any universe where Goddard Futuristics wasn't full of monsters, where Hilbert wasn't experimenting on him and wasn't given orders to eliminate the entirety of the crew, a universe where Lovelace hadn't shown up on their doorstep with a bomb and a dead man's switch, the station would hardly miss him.
He wondered, softly, achingly, in some deep recess of his mind, if they missed him now, in this universe.
(Do what you have to, you don't have a choice.)
He wondered again, faintly, if he would ever see the Hephaestus again, if he would ever see the ocean or the sky again, Hera or Minkowski…
If he would ever see his-
No.
He sat up from his half floating, half slouch in the chair. A vast majority of the fog in his mind zipping out at mach speed, his whole body was lit up like he had just been electrocuted.
His fingers burned. His arms and legs burned. His eyes burned with fury and crystalized frustration.
What the hell was he going on about?
(Stop wasting your time with these meaningless games.)
“Deep Space Survival Tip #1001,” he rasped, voice deep and coarse. It felt like he had just been forced to swallow a pound of gravel.
“In times of trouble, an idle mind is your worst enemy,” he leaned further toward the switchboard, examining the analytics on the computer monitor and calibrating the switches to the positions he would need them to be in tomorrow.
“Keep yourself occupied at all times. Don't stop.” He unclasped the straps keeping him down. He moved, throwing himself from the chair and over to the cryopod.
“Don't stop.” He chanted to himself, inputting the commands to get the pod to let him in.
He will get home, he will.
The cryopod hissed and growled as it took a second to claw itself open. It rattled angrily, in a way it hadn't before. It would have been concerning, had he been lucid enough to notice it.
Don't let your mind wander.
(You will get through this, Officer Eiffel.)
He climbed in. It felt like death, it felt like his final chance at salvation.
Maybe he would be Officer Eiffel tomorrow.
Maybe this deep rift that had formed between him and himself would close or shift during his time in cryostasis.
If there was one thing he knew, it was that Douglas Eiffel was nothing if not stubborn, annoying, and oddly persistent.
Tomorrow is another try.
Seventy four hours, and go.
(Do what you have to, you don't have a choice.)
__________
The airlock twisted open heartily, his throat was dry, so dry.
“Well, well, well…” A voice drawled from the now opened doors, “Communications Officer Doug Eiffel. You're a long way from Wolf 359, aren't you?” The stranger looked over him, prim and proper; if Eiffel gave half a damn he might've felt embarrassed about the state he was in.
But none of that really mattered, no, the first question that floated to the surface of his mind was, “What?” Eiffel wheezed. “Who are... How do you know...?” He took a few steadying breaths as his vision blurred in and out.
“Easy, easy…” He said. “I know you've been through a lot, but don't worry.”
The stranger gave him a solid, reassuring smile. Had the situation been any different, Eiffel might have called it charming.
“Everything is going to be okay. We're here to take you home.”