In Another Life

Regret

After the gunshot rang out across the hallways of the Tuplar. A body falls to the ground as Curly gasped between strained breath, the coldness of the cryo pod malfunctioning and failing to encapsulate him in an eternal slumber, leaving him the only surviving member on the Tuplar for awhile. laying in that cryo pod, he accepted his fate after minutes of failed screams, his jaw aching as he slumped back in silence. Only hunger and dehydration can end him now.

The dead silence of the Tuplar leaving only him and his thoughts. his eyes staring back at the glass reflection of his repulsive body at what he really became, the memories of how Jimmy used to shove his hand down his throat with the pills. How he listened to Anya's words that were laced with pleads of help that he never acknowledged because he believed that Jimmy, his best friend, was better than that. He believed like a fool that Jimmy wasn't the monster Anya told him that he was.

But he knew. he knew better than to be ignorant. 

Yet he did nothing to help her, she who had been by his side, helping him through every test, helping him through his pain as a helpless little infant after the explosion that led to his circumstances caused by none other than the man he called his friend who left him to ROT.  He finally felt what Anya had been feeling, what she went through, what HE had put her through. Her silence, her unease, her fear and her pain. Why had he been so naive? why had he been so pathetic when he had power all along?

He became a monster by his own doing, it was his own ignorant and his actions of ignorance that left him in this state, had he done something that day when Anya told him about the lack of locks, his failed supervision and how Jimmy took advantage of her weakest moment. None of this might even happen, his anger rising as he tried to scream out in frustration, crying as he helplessly bangs against the glass, but nothing came of it. Stuck within a hell of his own making he could blame no one else but himself for what he did.

But along with this frustration, came realization and guilt. 

This was what Anya must've felt like, the times where she had to act as if she was alright, the times where Jimmy stood so close to her. It must've been painful. She must've felt trapped as he did in this moment and this must've only been a fraction of what she felt, his mind was scrambling for a clear thought through the guilt. How could he have hurt her like this? He didn't do anything to her but the fact that he just sat there, letting it go on...Sure, come circumstances with the fact that they're out in the middle of space, stress about their unemployment and how they might have to go back to their shitty life before all this. the pain and struggle of home and the ever changing economy, but this was no excuse for what he had done to her, how he willingly ignored her.

Curly stopped fighting it, he stopped trying to make excuses for himself and his actions, finally laying back in exhaustion and accepting his fate and his actions. He was going to die here as the last man alive, slow and painfully.

A captain always goes down with his ship.