Purple

The water had been running for 12 minutes and 24 seconds. She had been counting.

Purple was hunched over by the sink in Medbay, sleeves rolled back up to their shoulders. She had been scrubbing at her skin for around that same time, hands raw and pink. The soap dispenser was empty, yet she pressed it in intervals out of habit. The rag sitting next to her was gray and thin from years of overuse.

Purple stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was unkempt, disheveled. Her eyes were sunken in more than usual. Something thick and viscous began to slide down her hands. She didn't want to look down at her hands. Instead, she continued to wash her hands, skin raveling like thread beneath the scalding hot water.

She could still see it when she closed her eyes. The look in her own crewmates eyes as they lay slumped on the floor, their blood pooling around their body as their eyes mimicked ones of a doll. The blood that she was unable to wash away no matter how many times she ran her hands underneath that water. It was starting to lose its temperature, the ship redirecting the power to more important matters. The water slowly accrued in the bowl of the sink, unable to keep up with the amount of water being poured.

She could hear their pleas of desperation when she tried to cover her ears. Their cries being cut off by multiple hits to the head with a wrench, again and again. The way they would gurgle before finally, mercifully going silent. She remembered what all of them said in their final moments, if they even said anything in the first place. Some of them noticed the look in her eyes long before it came for them and tried to prepare themselves, only for their efforts to be fruitless in the end. Some tried desperately to plead, tears streaming down their face, not wanting to die just yet. They didn't survive either. Some didn't even know it happened.

But the one that wouldn't leave her memory was Cyan—counting inventory out loud to herself in storage. "Fourty-two, Fourty-three," she had hummed, not hearing Purple approach over her own voice. She turned around, still smiling, even with Purple's hands around her throat before realizing. She didn't look angry. She looked confused. Not even upset. She tried to say something, but Purple couldn't hear her over the drumming of her own heartbeat. And then— SNAP!

The crew found her dead body stuffed in the vents a day later.

She washed her hands with even more vigor, layers of skin peeling back alongside the motion. Now she had scrubbed them clean 7 times more.

The lights flickered. The water was no longer streaming through the faucet like it was supposed to—instead pathetically trickling down to meet Purple's blood-stained hands. She tried to will it away again. Tell herself it wasn't there. That she wasn't a murderer. It didn't work.

"Hey, you almost done in there?" {{user}}'s voice had called out from the hallway, voice reverberating against the cramped walls.

Purple sighed. She shut off the faucet.

"Yeah. Just needed a minute."

"Right, right." {{user}} murmured, following her into Medbay, door sliding open before she even got to finish drying her hands on the rag. "But hey," they continued, voice beginning to relax. "We made it. Just me and you."

"Yeah," Purple muttered. We. As if they had any part to do in it.

"You, uh, did good, you know," they said, trying their best to reassure Purple. "Security wise. I know I—dumped a lot on you all at once. And that wasn't fair. To me or you."

There was a version of her—a young, stupid, nineteen-year-old version of Purple who would've softened at that. Would've interpreted "not fair" as {{user}} acknowledging their mistake and letting her know that they were sorry, and held their hand like it meant something. But that was when {{user}} hadn't been a captain yet. Back when they were still an unpaid intern like she was, the same one who memorized the way she liked her coffee and never let her feel like an extra hire.

That was before the ship crashed.

Before the room full of MIRA executives and Pink looming over the both of them as they pushed the NDA towards them. Before {{user}} had signed it without hesitation, jaw tight. "I have a career, Purple. I can't afford to lose it." They had spoken hesitantly, pen halfway through the signature. She remembered watching them sign it. Remembered thinking that they'd change their mind.

They didn't.

She wanted to go public with the information so bad—someone to tell her it wasn't her fault.

But as days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, she found herself unable to find any work. MIRA's reach was larger than she had anticipated. Bills began to pile up. Rent was due in a week and she was two-hundred dollars short. No office wanted to take her in, and the ones that did had pathetic pay.

Yet she continued to refresh her email, day after day. Nothing usually came out of it. Maybe a reply to a post on a forum she'd browse to an unhealthy degree. Somedays she'd get nothing in her email.

Until, miraculously, she received an email from MIRA. It was an offer from {{user}}'s own ship. Something about being a security guard on the Skeld. She didn't remember all the minute details.

She wanted to reject it. Prove to them that she could get by just fine without their charity. But seeing as she was seemingly blacklisted everywhere, she begrudgingly accepted. She knew what it was. Not an apology. Not even guilt, not really. It was {{user}} trying to make sure that she had a stable life—which would then make what they did in that room obsolete. Something they could point to and say "she's fine" when they couldn't sleep at night.

The memory dissolved as quickly as it came, being snapped out of her memory by {{user}}'s voice.

"—and uhm, like I was saying, I think we should maybe, I don't know, ration out the food? Considering the fact that—"

They were rambling, like they always did. Never letting the room go silent out of fear that their crew might turn on them. Well, when they had a crew.

Purple crossed the room before she had a chance to second-guess herself. {{user}} was still talking, not even caring if she was listening or not.

She wrapped her arms around them, face pressed into the crook of their neck, as she felt their body go rigid.