Chapter Text
It’s weird. A minute earlier, Curly knew and saw himself sitting inside a cryogenic pod. He felt it activate; almost like a pressure washer did the cryo-pod spray the confined space with a sharp, ice frosty-air substance put at -circumpolar degrees that was meant to preserve his (and three other crewmates) mind and (whatever was left of it) his body for two decades with the hope that Pony Express would care enough to send rescue services to recover them safely back to earth. Curly had been a slave for Pony Express long enough to know that wasn’t going to happen even before the moment his body had been numbed by the cold, his perennial agony finally palliated, and now he was stuck inside of the Tulpar, as was the Tulpar stuck inside drifting in sempiternal void.
So when Curly felt a change; not subtle by any means as it felt like his body literally grew a new set of limbs and the temperature changed from Negative degrees to Pony Express room temperature (cheap air conditioning) in a blink of an eye, he was quick to assume he was dead. His skinless and wounded body couldn’t realistically survive in cryogenic temperatures, even with present technological advancements. But if this is what it was like being dead, he didn’t feel…dead. He felt alive. He felt the need to breathe. He must be dreaming, or having a nightmare because his heart is racing 200 beats per minute and he can’t breathe and he’s about to be sick–
He sat up without any thought, thankful to find his ass cushioned on his bed inside his sleeping quarters–sleeping quarters?..
What the fuck???
He had to be dreaming. This can’t be fucking real. It feels real. It feels too real. Too real he feels nauseous.
Curly looks down at himself and finds himself in his familiar sleeping attire; boxers. Not only is he wearing boxers, he has his legs back. He has his skin back. He can feel himself touching his face and blinking both his eyes and patting his hair as if to check it all returned; but it fucking did.
It returned and he needs to look at himself immediately. He sits up and staggers to the adjoined bathroom in his room and sees his reflection. His pale-toned skin glistening with sweat that could either be from him panic or the hot sweaty room, his blonde hair still curly and oh so difficult to take care of puffed and fluffed out from tossing and turning in his bed, and his eyes; both of them still so, as Jimmy once said, stupidly blue and wet and red and he starts to cry because it’s all too much. He was stuck between being excited, relieved, scared or paranoid because he could wake up any moment, or he could walk out and find his crew all dead–
His crew. He completely forgot about-
Curly immediately runs out of the bathroom, not caring to dress and he’s awake too early so it’s unlikely, if they aren’t all at the table dead, that nobody will see him anyway, but he has to check.
Turning the corners and feeling his own footsteps underneath him shouldn’t make him feel so good and alive but it does, but he has never run so fast in his life because he makes it to the lounge in under a minute. He has to stop and breathe momentarily and listen to the hydraulic doors hiss and allow him entryway, but he rushes inside the moment there’s a gap big enough for him to enter through.
He’s never been so fucking happy to find the lounge empty and everything put in and out of place, just like the crew left it before the crash. The table is empty and there aren’t plates serving his slices of his damn leg, or birthday balloons and birthday hats placed on lifeless corpses. The light isn’t a blaring red either; it’s a warm natural tone that momentarily soothes his racing thoughts, but he still feels so sick he has to gather himself and look away from the scene and go to the sink and vomit whatever the Pony Express poison he ate yesterday.
Saliva and puke dribbled down his sharp stubble and slowly slunk into the sick mixture of undigested foods and liquids. He ran the tap and splashed water onto his mouth and wiped it as dry as he could with his bare arm. He heaved and felt his abdomen clench uncomfortably tight like it was trying to puke his own stomach out. When his body felt like it settled down, he leaned forward and cupped the running water and drank from his palm, feeling it pour down his throat like slime and funny enough, he felt like the water had a strong taste. He could either blame it on the water filter being faulty or him going so long without drinking or eating from tubes that drinking water feels surreal to him.
He pulled back gently so as to not stress out his body and slowly retreated out of the kitchen. He wanted to walk around and use his legs again but he felt weak and his legs were shaking wildly he feared they might give up on him. He carefully steadied himself and walked to the couches, eyeing the giant screen simulating an early sunrise back on earth that made him yearn for the couches more. He plopped himself down and curled in on himself, not bothering to retreat back to his room for a blanket. It wasn’t cold, and his body temperature felt 2x warmer than it should have been.
His heart was still racing, however significantly less now and that fight or flight response began to die down. If it weren’t for Pony Express permitting a max of 5 hours of sleep, he wouldn’t have been too exhausted but within two minutes of laying and a mind and body demanding rest, he fell deep in slumber. His body lax like a corpse and his right eye wide open.