Pairing: Dom/Elijah
Disclaimer: No profit is made nor offence intended.
Rating: PG13
AU, angst, character death
It was on a Sunday that I looked on your face for the first time and knew I loved you. Perhaps two o'clock. In the arboretum. The sun was shining and birds were singing and you were sitting on a bench in dappled light, reading. I approached you with nothing more in mind than to get your signature on a docket. That was all. Your name on a piece of paper clipped to a board. Your name.
Elijah J. Wood
And you looked up from your book, a big old fashioned novel that looked too large for you to comfortably hold, and you looked into my eyes. And I knew I loved you.
I lied.
It wasn't a Sunday. It was some indeterminate day of the week. And it wasn't the arboretum, it was the maintenance bay and you were on your knees, scrabbling around trying to repair a filter. Your uniform was filthy, your hair was covered in dust and you smelled of sewage. I had never seen an officer down in the maintenance bay, certainly never seen one getting his lily white hands dirty.
"You need a hand with that, sir?" I asked you. This was going to be good. I had heard there was a new man on board but I had never laid eyes on you. My kind don't usually get to go on the bridge and mix with the high-ups.
You turned, still on your knees. There was a smear of oil - or something else - on the bridge of your nose. "If you know how to get this -" and you held up a snaking length of hose - "into this -" you pointed at the unit - "I would be grateful."
I could have enquired why an officer was even thinking of repairing a sewage unit, why you hadn't just issued an order to have it done... could have bamboozled you with my superior mechanical knowledge, stored it all up to tell the lads back in the mess later. I could have. I didn't.
It was some non-descript day of the week in the maintenance bay. It was dirty and smelly and wondrous. I realised I was on my knees beside you, didn't remember getting down there, had to be nearer to you. You dropped the pipe, wiped your hands nervously on a rag and I knew you were trying to find your way back to normality. You were an officer, new to the ship, I was a crewman...
"I - I thought I could fix this and not bother anyone," you said, softly. You looked flustered, the faintest of blushes creeping up to your ears. Realisation of proximity and procedure, perhaps, made you edge away a little.
"I can see to that, sir. Leave it with me," I said, never looking away from your face for a moment.
It should have been the arboretum. It should have been a Sunday. Even in space, even here, these things count for something.
And now you lie deathly still and pale. And this is not a Sunday either, and this is not the arboretum. And I have to let you go. There is so much I never said, so much I concealed from you, so much about you I never learned, even whilst I was learning your body and you mine. And now I never will. You did not want to leave me. I did not want you to.
I will close the lid on you and cast you adrift, Elijah J. Wood. There should be some kind of ceremony for this, some protocol but if there is it is lost to me. I'm just maintenance crew, not an officer, not good with words. So I will let you go and you will drift. Away from me.
And I will pretend this day is a Sunday and this is just farewell. And not goodbye.
End transmission.
Dominic Monaghan stands at the porthole and watches the capsule drift. It is tiny, shockingly vulnerable, illuminated only by the reflections from the crippled mother ship, and soon it will be in darkness. No light will shine within its cocoon, none is needed.
Only a beacon will signal its presence. A steady pulse to alert passing craft that a scrap of humanity is adrift in space.
Dominic Monaghan, last serving crew member of The Valimar, thinks of trees and dappled sunlight and lazy Sundays.
And as the great ship dies around him, he has only one thought - that one day, Elijah J. Wood will wake from his stasis.
And this should be on a Sunday.
The End