Carrion Dawn

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As it happened, Mal found the hallway where she'd killed Tex en route to the kitchens. She knew it only by the blood spattered across the walls, great splotchy ropes of it, and while she could hardly remember killing him, she could somehow see very clearly in her mind's eye how it had been. She had been cold, relentless. A monster, no matter what Foka said. He didn't know. How could he? And yet...hadn't Benny's body been a garish pulp of red and flesh?

She shook the thought from her mind. She had wanted to scrub this place clean, too, as if by the small conciliatory action, she could clean herself, forgive herself. But it hadn't worked with Benny and the Professor. Why would it work here? Her hands were stained red from their blood; the bucket of hot water she'd received from the kitchen had gone cold and was so dark with gore she couldn't see the bottom.

No. Cleaning here would do no good. She had to leave this ship, this place behind. Perhaps after a shower.

She started back toward the kitchen making a wide circle around the blood stains Tex had left. She was in the doorway before she realized there had been no body.

The thought made her frown as she went about dumping the water and scrubbing the sink under water so hot her hands almost blistered. She didn't mind the pain. After the brand, other burns seemed mild. And her mind was elsewhere. Obviously, Foka had moved Tex's body. But where? Why? For her sake? Why had he left the corpses of the men he'd killed, and taken care of the blood on her hands? Some part of her whispered and answer borne of nothing less than affection. She blushed and quickly shoved the thoughts away. Perhaps he had only been trying to help her. He would have seen what she'd done to Tex's body, would have removed it, for her sake, if not for his. Maybe she owed him an apology, or some gratitude.

She started to rinse the rag she'd cleaned the first room with, until she realized it would never lose its faint pink tinge. With a shudder, she went to the trash compactor and opened it.

And screamed.

There was Tex, lying inside, staring at her.

Or rather...there was what was left of Tex.
 
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His calves had started to burn, so he had slowed his pace for a moment. Then there was another scream, and he bolted a second time, the ache and the burn coming back as soon as he made his legs work harder. Foka skidded to a quick stop at the kitchen door, punching the panel to have the door slide open. Four steps inside, and he froze. The thought had never occurred to him that he would need to hide the carnage better, as it was just him in the kitchen to begin with. Blue eyes were transfixed on Mal, staring into the garbage. Her reaction stung, hurt deeply for a moment before he remembered that he was supposed to be a cold hearted sociopath.

A scowl crossed his face. Shoving the tinge of pain aside, he strode up behind her, reaching out and slamming the lid of the can closed. He stepped around her, looked down into her face, her eyes. "You vere not supposed to see that."
 
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Mal didn't start when she heard Foka entered. She was getting used to him coming up behind her, or else she was just too distracted otherwise. Or maybe starting to trust him. It didn't matter. She couldn't think now anyway. She could only see the mutilated remains of Tex's body lying atop mounds of garbage, waste, and food scraps. The bucket of blood-reddened water dropped from her hand to land at her feet and douse the dirty floor all over again.

The spell was broken when Foka slammed the lid shut, and then she did jump a bit, turning to stare at him. His expression was one of unexpected irritation, annoyance, or distrust. She couldn't tell. And she couldn't tell what her own might be. She only felt shocked. And faintly suspicious. Betrayed.

"Why?" she said slowly. "Why not? What...what did you do to him?"
 
Mind racing, he tried to think of an explanation. A right of passage. No. Vengeance. No. Justice. No. Because, for those two nights, I saw myself in you. It was something I had to do. Good God, no. His scowl deepened in frustration. The look of dumbfounded shock on her face did nothing to help. Mal, you know nothing of being a monster. "You do not need to kno'!" He snapped, anger bubbling up into his voice. For the first time since he had struck Sean, he felt the sudden kind of need to vent. Not in front of Mal, even if he couldn't compare her to his younger self any more.

The same word returned to the front of his mind over and over again, and he couldn't force it away. It was the look in her eyes. Rejected.
 
The cold that swept over her at his words -- his words, not his anger, because she could see, somehow, he was just as terrified as she was -- was nothing like what she'd ever felt before.

Well, no. That wasn't true. Long ago, back in the mines she had worked with her brothers. The night Ash had died. The night that very first nameless man had taken her. The moment he looked at her and she knew what he meant to do, though sex had been a foreign concept to her at that age. She had known he meant to do something sinister, something that would go deeper than physical hurts. Something almost magical in its ability to make her something she was not. A monster, perhaps.

She had felt that same biting cold then. Fear and confusion, and a deep, dark knowledge she shouldn't have. She was about to learn of something very, very dark.

His perceived anger stung her, though she barely felt it. She only stared at her and wrapped her arms around herself. She was shivering again.

"Yes, I do," she said quietly, without breaking her gaze. "I don't want to know. I wish I hadn't asked. But I need to know. I have to. Foka, please. What did you do?"
 
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An irritated twitch scrunched up his brow for a split second. He wasn't breaking away from her gaze, wasn't taking his eyes off of her. Rejected. Rejected. Rejected...

His blue eyes seemed even more like ice right then than ever before, when he finally looked away. Those cold orbs came to rest past Mal, focusing on the large stew pot. It still had food in it; he had been the last one to dish anything out from it. Maybe a single serving.

It felt like his skull was going to explode, between the anger, the anxiety Foka felt as he put a hand on Mal's shoulder, pushing her out of the way as he went to the stove. He reached that same hand into the pot, reaching down to the very bottom and scooping out a chunk of the meat he had used. The secret was out. Sure, it hadn't been fair that he knew so much more about Mal than she knew about him, but... Things would have just been so much better if it had stayed that way, he simply knew it.

Hesitantly, Foka came back to Mal, holding out his fist that was covered in the flour-based thickener he had used to make the meal. For just another second, he looked her over, examined the way she stood there, with her arms crossed over herself. Foka looked away and held his hand open, the lump of browned meat in his palm, in the open for her to catch his hint.

He settled on a previous, rather vague explanation. "You kno' nothing of being monster..." There was the smallest hint of shame that rode in his thick, Russian accent.
 
For one blessed, wonderful moment, she could convince herself he was lying to her.

That had to be it. Mal had upset Foka, something she'd said or done, and he was trying to get even with her by...by lying. Withholding whatever truth he could from her regarding Tex. Tex's body. His corpse. His carcass.

Why he would choose such a gruesome lie was beyond her, but he was lying. She knew it. He had to be. Because...because if he wasn't...God, if he wasn't...

And it was strange. Any other day, any other time, she might have felt bad for him. The way he stood there, his expression a tense mixture of anger and anxiety, while every fiber of his being screamed for...what? Acceptance? Understanding? Empathy? It was...heart-breaking. She might have cried...if he hadn't been lying to her.

But he had to be. Right? They hadn't been close, sure. Their meeting had been chance, and an ugly one at that. Both prisoners of a war spanning far beyond them. Coincidence upon coincidence. But then they'd run together. They'd survived together. He'd helped her through his nightmare, he knew what Tex was to her, knew how her owned her body, mind, and soul. Knew he owned her, he existed everywhere...inside and out.

For a moment, the sting of betrayal was worse than anything else. The sudden realization of what Foka -- what she had done to Tex -- the cold, the horror. She began to shake. A little at first, and then more violently. She had bared everything to Foka, and he had repaid her with this? By giving Tex one more horrible dominion over her?

Perhaps it was only the look he gave her, or the one he didn't give her as he finally looked away. Maybe it was the fact that she had started to feel for him, that she had ceded to some vulnerability, and now --

She wanted to ask. Wanted to ask how and when, and most of all why? Why had he done this to her? Had he hated her so much from the beginning? Or maybe he was right, and she knew nothing of being a monster.

Except, yes. Now she did. She had become her creator in every way possible, and Foka had sealed it. He had as much a hand in her dark creation as Tex had, only he had pretended to be her friend first.

Finally, her eyes dropped from his face to his hand, coated in the thick brown stew she had eaten twice now. It congealed around his fingers, thick and dark as...as...

The bloody water had soaked into the hem of her overlong pants, creeping slowly up her legs as if to consume her. And again she heard, felt Tex's voice in her head, his hands on her stomach. He was everywhere. There was no escape.

There was nowhere else to go.

"No..." she said quietly, her voice little more than a whimper. "No...no, please no...God, no, please no. I...I can't..." She didn't finish. She couldn't. She couldn't breathe, and she couldn't stop shaking, and she couldn't -- couldn't --

Her legs went out from underneath her, and the fact that she sat in a veritable puddle of blood didn't seem to even occur to her.
 
She fell to the floor. Rejected. Rejected! Foka felt his throat close, his head pounding with the stress of trying to stay calm. It felt almost as though his heart was constricted by wires and thread, cutting into him. It felt so heavy. His fist closed back around the chunk of meat, his own hands shaking, though not as violently as Mal. He waited, hesitated, looking down at her. He had helped her, had bound her wounds, had roused her from her delirious nightmare, had held her like he had never held anyone before. He had sang to her, for fucks sake! And what was he? Rejected! He began to crack, the violence wanting out through his closed fists.

"He vas scum!" He bellowed when he could finally breathe again. She thought he was scum, he could nearly taste it. "You kno' nothing! You call yourself monster, but you kno' nothing! Nothing of being monster! Monster are Tex, monsters are me!" His chest heaved from the outburst, from the shouting. A sneer crossed his face and he threw the meat in his hand in a sweeping motion, a wet plop! sounding as it hit the kitchen floor. "Are you so veak? Get up!" The trash came next, the blood water staining the bottoms of his feet as he stepped closer to grab the thing. What was left of Tex's corpse spilled onto the floor, all the usable meat having been stripped from his body. "Get up! Or maybe you loved him, and that is vhy you can not stand?" There was more to that statement that was insinuated, and oh how he wanted to say it. Perhaps she had liked having him on top of her. Perhaps she had liked having that scum inside of her. It's what she had done for a living, after all.

Yes, logic had flown out the window, but Foka didn't care. He was furious, hurt, how could he care?
 
He was angry, furious with her, and if she hadn't felt so...empty was the not the right word. Empty would have been far preferable. Whatever it was, it protected her from his anger, from the hurt she could have read so clearly otherwise, from the things he said. His meaning, the insinuations were not lost on her. It would have enraged her otherwise, or even hurt her, but she couldn't think of anything else but the fact that...

And he had thought he was helping. Somehow, she could see that. He had attacked, mutilated, cooked Tex because he'd wanted to help. That much sank in somehow. Suddenly, his words made sense. There was nowhere else to go. He didn't think she was a monster -- but only because he was comparing to himself.

Mal wanted to be angry. Or sympathetic. It would not be so hard to find either in herself. There was pity there. Maybe not understanding, but empathy. A desire to help, to soothe, and beyond that to rage and scream, because he had only succeeded in making her the monster he thought himself to be. Or something near enough.

Anything, all of it would have been easier, but none of it would come. There was only a buzzing in her ears. Foka raged over her, and she heard none of it as spots swirled in her vision. She was going to pass out. Would he kill and eat her then, too? Would it be vengeance, or anger, or something else? She should have been afraid. She wanted to be afraid. Or angry. Or sad. Or even cold again.

Instead, she only felt sick.

It was the remainder of Tex's body that did it. Not the gruesomeness of it, but the cleanness, the care and perfection and time so clearly put into it. She understood then what he had been doing in those hours while she showered, tried to removed Tex's influence from her outsides, while he prepared to put the monster back inside the man. Straight lines, professional cuts. Experienced, solid as a butcher.

Mal knew why Foka had been in prison.

She stared blankly at Tex's butchered self for a moment, then nodded once before lurching to her knees. She didn't want to be in the kitchen anymore. She could smell sweat and blood and the stew he'd made -- and she was hungry, and that was all she needed.

She clutched the edge of the sink and half hauled herself upright. Her legs wouldn't take her weight -- she was shaking too hard -- but there was enough of a mess on the floor without her adding to it. She'd wanted to go to the bathroom, to leave this place behind, but she knew she wouldn't make it before her body betrayed her and she heaved violently into the sink.

Once it started, she couldn't stop. She could hardly breathe, and she felt dizzy with the force of the vomiting, but it didn't seem to matter, because she could puke until her entire stomach was in the sink. She'd never be clean again.
 
Her vomiting irritated him. She was always vomiting, always sick, never well. He didn't need to know why she always emptied her stomach at one point or another, he just knew that she did. Maybe, she really wasn't like him, not even like his younger self. Foka doubted the way he had seen her before, huddled against the wall. If that was the case, that he had just been seeing things, then why hadn't he killed her? Why hadn't he cooked her up right alongside the man she had fornicated with? Was there an actual reason? Foka found himself doubting everything.

Once Mal stopped heaving, stopped vomiting into the sink, Foka came up behind her one more time. He pulled her hair, keeping it out of her face as he made her turn and look up at him. He held her chin with his free hand, the same way he had seen Tex hold her. There was still so much rejection in her. Foka was done telling her what she was and what she wasn't. He was done trying to change her mind. Now, he wanted her to know. Now, he had things to say.

"I could have done things to you," he growled, a little more calm than before, if just ever so slightly. "I did not fuck you, vhen you covard in corner, vhen I vas on you, vhen I fixed your shoulder. I did not kill you vhen I had knife. I could have taken you so many times vhile you slept." Just a quick pause, let that sink in. "But you still vreak of disgust!" Cold eyes stayed locked on hers, though he had stopped looking for expressions, for hints of how she felt. He didn't think he wanted to know.

For so long, the tactic had just been to not think of it, to not judge. Mama had not judged him, had not shown him so much rejection and disgust. It had been all he needed to forget the shame of what he had done. Yet, there he was, his head still pounding with the effort it took to not simply break down. He wasn't like Mal.
 
Mal didn't flinch when she felt his hands at her back, and it was only now, hunched over the sink, head spinning, stomach churning, that she realized it wasn't that she was just not afraid of Foka. She trusted him. She didn't know when or how it had happened. She supposed she could guess, but it didn't really matter, because if what he had just told her didn't make her afraid, she figured it would stick.

It didn't make her feel any less nauseas.

She turned to face him, her expression effortlessly blank. She stiffened when his grip shifted, but she didn't flinch away. She braced herself against the sink and waited and listen a breathed and made her stomach be calm. And when he was finished, she laughed.

"That's it? Is that everything, then? We cross half the galaxy in a jailbreak you orchestrated. People -- monsters -- are hunting us. We almost died two days ago, and that's what you're afraid of? My reaction? My disgust?"

She shook her head slowly and reached up to push his hands out of the way. One was still sticky with stew. She swallowed hard and ignored it. Her own hands were still red with blood.

She could have run then, could have backed away, fled. There was another ship somewhere, and evading the prison or going back to the prison didn't seem to matter anymore. She only knew she had to be away from this place.

But she didn't. She reached behind her with shaking hands and pulled herself up onto the counter. It was easier to sit than it was to run or walk. And she wasn't done here yet, anyway.

"You're right about Tex, you know," she started quietly. Her voice quavered when she said his name, but she didn't look away from Foka. That felt important somehow. "About all of them. They made a living, just like you. Like me. And then they came back here and did horrible things after work. They just got lucky in that some of those horrible things were their work."

She shook her head. Shivered. She didn't even feel cold anymore, she just couldn't stop shaking.

"You think I don't know what he was? What he did? That you're the only one allowed to hurt, and to hate? I know he's a monster, Foka. I know. And I'll never forget it as long as I live. Him being dead or alive or whole or in pieces or -- " Her breath hitched. She swallowed convulsively. She had to close her eyes as another wave of nausea swept over her.

"What is it you want from me?" she said wearily after a long moment. "Pity? Sex? Do you want to kill me? Use me to remake another pot of mac-n-cheese?" A delirious thought flitted through her mind: Mal-n-cheese. She clapped one hand over her mouth, uncertain whether it was to keep from laughing or being sick again.

"What I told you before, about Frankenstein creating his own monster...about what Tex did to me..." She trailed off, found her words, started again. "You wanted understanding? You wanted me to know what a monster is? I did it. You made me do it. So, there. There's your pity. There's your understanding. Don't fucking tell me I don't know, Foka. I'm right here with you."
 
She understood now? Good. Foka stepped back, the dirty water shifting around his feet when he moved. He didn't say anything else, kept his mouth shut and he just... Watched her. The rage left him, he hadn't been able to hold on to it and listen to her at the same time, for whatever reason.

Slowly, he mulled over the words that had been presented to him. Pity? Pity didn't feel right, it wasn't something he craved. It was close, but Foka knew he could live without it. Sex? Sounded nice, but... Wrong, at the moment. He didn't need it. Maybe he didn't even want it, not then. Blue eyes shifted to the pile of Tex on the floor, laying in some of the spilled water. So, did he want to kill her? No. It was as simple as that. Foka didn't want Mal to die, by his hand, or by any others. If that meant anything other than the obvious, he didn't bother to try and figure it out. In the end, these thoughts boiled down to one thing: what did he want?

Foka turned back to Mal, his expression turning soft one more time. "You understand? You vanted to kno' vhat I vant? I vant you to forgive yourself." He took back that step, came closer to her as she sat on the edge of the sink. The room stank intensely of vomit, of that tang that always accompanied everything that came up. It bothered him some, but not enough to really keep him away. He let his hand hover over the exposed bandages, the ones that he had tied into place. "This is vound, nothing more. Realize that, Mal. If I held on to every vound, I vould be long dead." His hand dropped back to his side. "Forget about being monster. Leave it behind, until it catches up to you again. Deal vith it then. That is vhat I vant."
 
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His answer surprised her just slightly less than her own reaction to it.

Mal wasn't sure what she'd been waiting for. More anger, maybe? That much she was used to, from others, if not from Foke. Men were always so excited to prove how little she meant to them, how much control they held over her, always without realizing they were the ones who allowed themselves to get so violent. Except Tex. Tex was different. Of course he was.

She hadn't expected him to say pity or sex, either, though both of those things would have been infinitely easier than what he actually asked. Not just forgiveness, no. That, too, she might have mustered. Eventually. But that wasn't what he'd asked for, and that, she realized, was what she had expected. Maybe he didn't want her pity or understanding. But he'd wanted forgiveness. She could see it in every line on his face.

And yet all he'd asked for...

She didn't flinch away until he put a hand out towards her belly. The only thing that kept her from running then was the fact that he hadn't actually touched her, had hardly even grazed the bandages he'd applied. She wondered idly when it had happened. She couldn't remember it, so it must have been while she was unconscious, or high on an overdose of pain medication. He could have killed her instead. He'd just told her as much.

Mal was...confused. She didn't know how to feel. Expressions flickered across her face as cleanly as they did through her mind and her gut -- surprise, shock, suspicion, anger. Sadness. She wanted to rage. She wanted to yell at him, tell him he didn't, couldn't understand. It might have been 'just a wound' from any other man, but this wasn't any other man, this was Tex. He had taken her, claimed her, broken her like an animal, and now she was his, and would be his forever, even now that he was dead, and Foka...Foka...

She could feel her eyes burning, the back of her throat constricting traitorously and she hated herself for it. She thought maybe she hated him for it a little, too.

"I can't," she said finally. "I can't forgive myself. I can't forget. That's what this is. It's a fucking memory. It's not supposed to leave." She put a hand to her stomach with none of the gentleness Foka had used, felt her nails dig in, and relished the pain. A small, mirthless laugh dropped from her lips.

"That's why he put it there, you know. So even when...if things go back to normal, when I go back to fucking strangers for a living, every time I'm flat on my back, that's all they see. Even if I forget, they won't."

She swallowed again and lay her other hand down across the bandages before slowly raising her eyes to meet his again. "So, I'll make you a deal, alright? I'll 'forgive' myself after you do the same."
 
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For once, the softness in his features didn't dissipate, didn't fade or fluctuate as he listened. It was impulse that he nearly forced her hand away from the bandages, to keep her from hurting herself, but he realized that it was what she thought she needed. She needed the pain, the reminder.

Mal did fuck strangers for a living, he knew that. Foka couldn't help but wonder how long she had been living that way. When had she started? Had she become addicted? Addicted to sex the same way he had become addicted to murder. A thought occurred to him, something that he hadn't intended to think up; he didn't want her to go back to fucking strangers. He didn't want her addiction to continue. Would that be fair? For her to abandon her craving, and for him to go on killing? There was no way. Foka looked over to the pot that still stood on he stove, still had the last of Tex's edible body in it.

What Mal said next though, caught his attention, surprised him. I'll forgive myself after you do the same. Forgiveness, that's right. That's what they had been talking about. He wanted her to forgive herself. He wanted her to change, and for him to go on as he was. But then, things had always been ok for him. He had never thought about it before like this. The surprise showed in his eyes.

What was he supposed to do? What was his next move supposed to be? Mal was sitting in front of him, reeking of vomit, there was the bandage that wrapped around her entire middle. She had cut up her shirt so it wouldn't touch the wound, but, she was the one to dig her nails into it.

After several moments, thinking, trying to figure out what to do, Foka gave up. He let his heart go first, then his feet as he took just the one step closer. He tilted his head, tangled hair shifting as he moved, leaning down to be at her eye-level. Looking into those eyes, Foka hesitated, unsure. "Do you forgive me?" He asked, sincerely, his face just a few inches from hers.
 
"No."

Her answer was quick and concise, springing forth so carelessly from her lips, even Mal was surprised. And she recoiled in horror, because she hadn't meant to say that. And then because she realized she was afraid -- not of Foka, but of losing him. And that was something she'd never agreed upon.

She wasn't supposed to care. She staked her entire life on that single, simple fact. She couldn't afford to care. It was how she got by so easily, lying and tricking and stealing. Willing to buy treason flat on her back, in a different bed every night. Because she'd decided to stop letting stupid shit like that bother her one night almost twenty years ago. It was why Tex had hurt so much -- because she'd forgotten not to care. She'd let him get to her, and now she was paying the price thrice over. That much she could live with. But this? Foka, too?

How? She'd met him not even a week ago. She didn't trust anyone, and yet here they were, crouched in a kitchen drenched in blood and vomit. A corpse lay in the corner, a murderer had fed her pieces of the man who'd raped her. And she couldn't think about anything but what he'd thought of her.

She didn't recognize herself anymore. Maybe she really was a monster.

He'd asked her to forgive herself. Then he'd asked if she forgave him. And she'd answered without even thinking. She'd said no. She'd thought she hadn't meant it, but she had.

It took her a long time to figure out why, and yet the moment passed, a mere instant between him. She tried to remember the last time she'd been this close to someone she wasn't in bed with.

Foka thought himself a monster, a creature outside of his own control. How long, she wondered, had he been living that way? How had it made it so far with this creeping self-loathing inside of him? She had only just recently discovered this new monster inside herself, and already she was ready to give up, to run from what she had become, what Tex had made her. Foka had claimed disgust in her actions, but the truth was she saw him no differently. He had killed the Professor, offered Benny to her, cooked Tex into a fucking stew, yes. All for her. And he had held her when she was half out of her mind with fear and pain. And he had forgiven her when she couldn't forgive herself. And she knew -- knew -- what they had was twisted and wrong. She knew it, because it had to be, and she knew she'd never see it as anything but natural.

Maybe it made her a monster, too. But Tex had done that, first.

She shook her head slowly, and she didn't pull away when Foka leaned in close.

"No," she said again, more gently this time, but more cautiously, too. "There's nothing to forgive. You didn't do anything wrong."
 
At first, he had recoiled, the finality of her answer stinging like rubbing alcohol in an open wound. But then, she said something that wasn't quite so perplexing. Had he heard her right? Had she really just told him that there was nothing to forgive? No one had ever said such nonsense to him, not even he one person he had always loved from the bottom of his heart. Was Mal's head really so messed up? Was she trying to spare him from something? There was no way that there was nothing to forgive.

But, what if that's what she really thought? It became apparent, they were self-absorbed. One was always worse than the other, one didn't understand the other, until just recently. What if, they tried to understand more? He couldn't admit it openly, not yet, but he didn't want her to leave, didn't want her to move on. He wanted to know more, he wanted her near, to go with him. They had traveled this far together, why couldn't they go the whole way?

Foka hesitated, hopefully for the last time, before he placed his own hand on the edge of the sink. He leaned back in, searching her eyes. "No von ever needs to see, ever needs to kno'," he told her, his voice soft. "Ve go to colony, in Sectid space. Unless they are vorking together, it vould be safe. You vouldn' need to fuck strangers, you... Ve could heal."
 
He didn't believe her.

Mal could read the doubt in his eyes plainly as if it were spelled out in ink. She didn't really blame him. If he'd told her everything he'd just revealed a week ago, even a day ago, she'd have run screaming from the room, abandoned him to bounty hunters or worse. She almost had as it were.

But Mal had stopped believing in objective truths years ago. When her six-year-old brother had tried to do what was 'right' and gotten killed for it. When the man who murdered him, raped her and just got away with it. It was hard to believe anything was 'right' or 'wrong' when the world punished a little girl by sending her only remaining family member to die in a war that had claimed her parents.

And besides...maybe Foka was right. Maybe she wasn't a monster. Maybe the brand was just a brand, a scar that would remain with her forever, sure, but no one's business but her own. Maybe healing was possible. Maybe people made mistakes. She couldn't condone Foka's actions, maybe. But she couldn't condemn them, either. Not anymore. Not now.

She hardly heard the part about the Sectids and NUN working together. She'd already forgotten that, cast aside as the drunken mutterings of a man who'd killed himself when the authorities had come for her. She hadn't told Foka that part. She didn't think it was important. It wasn't important. What was important was Foka was offering her a way out, for as long as it lasted. He'd said 'safe'. That was all that mattered.

Or that was what she told herself.

"Okay," she said quietly after a long moment. "Okay. We go to this colony. We forget...all this. We just...start over, keep a low profile, and...and see what comes of it. Let's see how far we can get without a plan."

She didn't realized she'd said 'we' until she'd finished speaking.
 
Mal actually agreed withy him. Not that it was a super uncommon occurrence, but... This time, he felt all the pain leave him, the pressure that had been building in his skull receding. She was going to stay with him, and it brought him joy. The corner of his mouth tilted up in a half smile, and he reached up with his free hand to touch the side of her face. No, it wasn't a good idea; he stopped. He had already touched her enough, on top of what the last two days had done to her.

Foka stepped back and turned to the stove. He picked up he pot and hauled it over to the sink, gesturing for Mal to move over before he dumped what was left. Using his bare hands, he scooped out the scraps, pushing them down the drain. The water came on, and slowly but surely, everything was washed away. They needed to start over. No more fucking strangers, no more eating human flesh. Right then, it didn't seem like it would be too hard of a thing to do, but, in the back of his mind Foka understood that there would be a time where the both of them would have to face their "addictions" again. Until then, they would just have to see how far they could get.

Running his hands under the cool water, Foka glanced over to Mal, then back to his hands. "It vill be okay..." Tex's remains were still on the floor. He turned the faucet off before moving to the spilled trash, crouching down to scoop up the garbage and put it back.
 
Mal didn't move when he reached for her, not until she told her so, and then only slowly. She forced herself to watch him dump the rest of the stew he made. She didn't know whether or not it would help, but she figured she only really had one shot, and if they were going to start moving on, she had to commit early on, and all the way.

And watching him wash everything down the drain did give the sensation of a slate wiped clean, though the kitchen was still anything but. She wanted to ask how far away the refugee camp was, what they'd do when they got there, if she'd ever be hungry again, and a hundred thousand other things, but now didn't seem the time. Things were fragile between them, exactly, but neither were they resting easy yet. If they'd both made this massive commit to change their lives, start over in a new place in the middle of a war...then gentle was maybe the way to go. At least until they were off the ship. After all, they still had to make it to the camp. They'd escaped one group of bounty hunters, and that only just. There was still a galaxy full of people looking for them.

She jumped a little when he spoke and only then realized her mind had been wandering again. She looked at him and nodded in answer though she wasn't sure yet she agreed.

It would be a lot of things. Hard, mostly. And scary. Different. And they would survive. She was almost certain of that. If they could fight their way through, keep their stupid little promises to each other...remember to give, then yes. They would make it. But would it be okay? That still seemed too far to fathom.

"You should get some sleep," she said after a moment. She'd meant to ask about the ship's charted course, their route to the refugee camp, whether they had enough fuel...or food...to get there. She'd given unsolicited advice instead, and for the life of her she couldn't guess why.

"I can fly the ship a while. There's..." She half smirked, then shrugged. "There's nowhere else to go."
 
With all of the commotion, Foka had forgotten that he actually had only had an hour and a half, maybe two hours of sleep for the night. He picked up the last of the trash, placed it back on the ground. There was still bloody water everywhere, and he wasn't about to let it stay where it was. On top of that, Mal still hadn't eaten. Sleep could wait another hour, perhaps.

"I vill clean, give you coordinates if you vish to fly. Then sleep." His voice had a gentle finality to it. He had made up his mind then. The trash can was placed back against the wall, then Foka moved to a cubby where there had been a broom, mop, some rags. The bucket had already been removed. The mop and rags were next, pulled out and placed against the wall next to the trash while he reached for the emptied bucket. His mannerism was still soft as he started to work, all the traces of anger having left him a while ago.
 
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