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mxromanoitaly · 2 years

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✰ "in space, no one can hear you scream" ✰

hetaween—day one

"Space is a sheer and horrifying blackhole—gloomy, terrifying, finality. The deeper away from Earth’s gravitational influence, the darker and yet darker it grows."

CW: Death, Character Death, Mentions of Death, Murder, Mentions of Murder, Blood, Descriptions of Blood, Vomit, Descriptions of Vomit, Angst, No Romance, No Relationship, Use of Human Names, Reader-Insert, Gender-Neutral Reader.

Word Count: 3k

Rating: Explicit for Blood and Death

Event: @hetaween-event-2022

There’s absolutely nothing around for miles except for the desolate and deserted blackness that stares back with a wide gape through the long, horizontal front window of the ship. There are stars that glitter like spilled sparklers far off in the distance, but they offer no solace to the dawning terror of the emptiness. There are no suns, no moons, no planets in sight. There are maybe some stray rocks scattered haphazardly through the blankness, but they are nothing but hidden debris lost to the ages of time. The blackness swallows all.

Space is a sheer and horrifying blackhole—gloomy, terrifying, finality. The deeper away from Earth’s gravitational influence, the darker and yet darker it grows. Nothing could survive out here, realistically, it was just too cold and spacey. The ship moans quietly.

You try not to think about it too hard whenever you cast your eyes downward towards the heavy clipboard in your grasp.

There are lots of papers present, all written in multiple different languages. It is your duty—and your sole one—after all, to translate these pages for the other crew members of the ship so that any possible mishaps and misconceptions don’t accidentally get misconstrued. You keep things running smoothly. Any possible examinations, interpretations, and opinions are kept word for word, and the other crew members stay happy little campers.

That’s why you’re currently on the other side of hyperspace’s boundaries, surrounded by nothing but cold aerospace-grade aluminum metal and the humming electricity from the ship’s engines and transmissions.

This mission is meant to test the atmosphere and the theoretical liveability of other organisms, to run a physical experiment about the bodily and mental effects of living in such a sunless place for a prolonged amount of time. That’s also why there’s so many different people from so many different countries currently tucked aboard. America, Canada, China, England, France, and Russia—all smart people who are too smart to be on planet Earth for a second longer and your only talent is that you happen to speak all of the differing languages. Anyone would be elated to be a part of such an important mission to their fellow man, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows whenever you see the other crew members skirt around in the docking range or whenever they go into the main awning to handle exploding stray asteroids orbiting in close contact. It feels sobering, remorseful somehow.

You sometimes feel like you just aren’t clever enough to really fit in, but the crew seems to accept you into their little clique anyway. You’re thankful for it, lest you accidentally lose yourself to the forlorn openness of this austere ship.

Really, it just feels so unreal.

You glance up at the front window and lose yourself to deep space once again.

A tap on your shoulders jolts you from your senses and you gasp.

“Woah! Woah, sorry, dude, I didn’t mean to startle you. Sometimes my presence can be a little intimidating, so… I’ll just take a step back.”

Alfred F. Jones, the American on board that should currently be buried by wires and motors as he performs a daily checkup, is currently lamely grinning at you whenever you pivot around. Your heartbeat is a mile a minute in your ears and you swear your blood is rushing all the way to your skull whenever you look at him and his pretty sky blue eyes.

“It’s fine,” it’s not really, but you don’t say that because it sounds rude. “I’ll be okay. Did you need something?”

Alfred laughs one of his boisterous and cheerful laughs. One that, if you weren’t forced to be in his sometimes overbearing presence, would make you feel all warm in the face and you wouldn’t be able to help yourself if you happened to giggle along. He then rubs the back of his neck sheepishly.

“Aw, c’mon, can’t a guy just come chat up our very cool—but not as cool as me—person that keeps the others from imploding whenever they talk?” Alfred rocks on the balls of his feet and you realize that his uniform looks darker than usual.

The jumper suits are meant to be black, with patches that signify rank, field of work, and country of origin. The patches rest on the left breast area, just a little underneath the collarbone. You know Alfred. He’s one of the mechanics that constantly runs diagnositic tests on the ship, while also being a part-time pilot. If it weren’t for him, your crew would go shucking off into oblivion. But… but there’s something wrong with one of Alfred’s work patches:

a speck of deep maroon.

Your brows furrow as you regard such an odd thing, but you don’t comment on it just in case it stems from a place of contempt. One of the others could be behind it, or maybe Alfred accidentally stained his uniform. There wasn’t really any bleach in space now, was there? Might as well not bring it to light if it’s not necessary for the mission. His suit is wet, though. Why is his suit wet?

“You know very well that you need something, Mr. Jones.” your voice is barely above a deadpan. Alfred notices your tone and winces away with a goofy smile and another laugh that seems to really splinter in your ears. His upper body tilts away from you as he shrugs.

“You’ve got me there, bro.” another bout of laughter that feels just a little too strained now that you really think about it for a second too long, “I really just wanted to come talk to you.”

You sigh, but it’s not like you’re in that big of a pinch. The only thing you had planned for the next hour was to organize these papers full of reports, essays about stars, and mathematics and science that give you calculations and hypotheses that completely go over your head. You’re supposed to put them in folders that belong to their respective owner, then hand the folder back to them. You’ve finished with the British man, Arthur Kirkland, but you still have about five more folders left to do. If all Alfred wants to do is chat awkwardly, you might have to pass. Something doesn’t feel natural about this, either.

A shake of your head causes Alfred’s whole body to fall.

you don’t like that twinkle in his eyes.

“Sorry, Mr. Jones, but I’m a little busy.” You wave the clipboard around a few times. “See this? I’ve still got to do Francis’ latest controversial opinion about ‘the temperature of two contrasting stars’, since his papers seem the easiest to translate right now. Don’t even get me started on Matthew’s maths! You know, you guys could speak in simpler terms whenever you write these essays. It would make my job a whole lot easier.”

You halfheartedly chastise the empty expression leering down at you, but it’s all meant to be good fun to lighten the weird mood settled in the atmosphere between the both of you. Alfred apparently finds the humor in it and that grin on his face seems to curl just a little more to the left. He gestures with a wide sweep of his arms as he speaks. There’s something about his face.

“If we wrote like that, then just about anybody could do our jobs! But we’re way too good to do that. We need our big vocabulary.”

Annnnd just like that, you can’t help but finally crack a genuine smile. But it feels off. It feels so forced that you feel saliva collect atop your tongue in a dull weight.

“Sure, sure, I get it.” You shake your head softly, a nervous feeling tickling right about your stomach that feels like a flock of birds flying in a dispersed vee. “Normal people don’t need to understand.”

Alfred nods once boldly, still emotionless, then gives you a thumbs-up, “Right-o, broski!”

Another chuckle slips past your lips as you glance down at your feet before you shuffle the toes of your pointed shoes around a little bit to let some of the tension clear up. It feels tense. Like something’s not right. Laughing with him like this, it feels like Alfred’s being purposefully too upbeat and you can tell. You’re not usually with the group of men often, but you’ve been around them quite a few times to know that Alfred’s usually full of more snark and sarcasm than this. If you had to guess, you’d say Alfred was being purposefully agreeable with you—almost like he was trying to lull you into submission, to draw you in with a gentle lullaby. It’s so uncomfortable that your shoulders shrink inwards a little and you play with your feet again.

“Right, well, then I should go ahead and start doing these now. Once I send these back digitally to base, I’ll need to give out translated copies—you know the shtick by now.” You say as a hint for him to depart before your hand stretches forward and starts leafing through the sheets stacked up, but you stop dead in your tracks whenever Alfred says one last thing.

“Nah, there’s not really a point for that anymore.”

He said that as if he didn’t want you to leave.

Your brows furrowed hard and you cock your head to level Alfred up. His uniform still hasn’t dried. Is it water? What is that droplet on his patch? What did he do to even get himself in such a mess?

“Unlike you,” there’s an air of buoyancy in your voice as you speak, light and carefree, “I work seventeen hours out of the day. It must be nice to put the ship on auto-pilot and just occasionally check the motherboard.”

Alfred stares at you for a long time, a really long time. It almost feels like he’s sizing you up, like he was staring down at his momma’s pie and figuring out how he was gonna cut the pie to get the biggest serving of that gooey goodness. You shudder, but you cover it up by readjusting your lab coat and tightening your grasp on the clipboard.

Then,

“Haha, yeah, you’re right. Sorry about that, dude.”

And then Alfred steps out of your way to let you through. You thank him by curtly nodding your head and mouthing the words as you walk on by, head focused on the ground and eyes wide as saucers as you go past. Once you’re halfway there, you mindlessly lift up one hand to pat his chest in a friendly gesture. Raise, move, pat pat—-stop.

His uniform is still wet. You forgot about that. What you just touched was whatever was on his jumpers. That’s all that was. But whenever you withdraw your hand, the vitriol scent of iron fills your nostrils and you distinctly taste copper in the back of your mouth. You gape a little, floundering like a fish out of water, and you stumble away in confusion. The scents die away by a fraction, but the memory lingers and you just have to look at Alfred again.

He’s still watching you with that regarding smile.

You clamber a few more steps back and your hand slips off of Alfred’s chest. Whenever your arm falls limp to your side, you splutter for another fleeting second as you hastily bring your hand to your face to examine it. There! There there there! On your hand, right there!

Blood

It’s everywhere! It’s all over you. It’s dripping down and it stains your palm and it smells so bad, you can’t help but gag as the world goes a little loopy around you and you feel so dizzy like you can’t quite comprehend why the fuck there was blood on Alfred’s uniform. Spin and spin. You try to find your balance as you look up at Alfred with shaky limbs and fuzzy eyes. There’s tears in your eyes. You’re crying!

Alfred just smiles vigorously.

“I should have probably warned you about that, too, sorry. At least the cat’s out of the bag now, huh?” Alfred has this shit-eating grin plastered across his face and you don’t fucking understand why the hell he’s looking at you like that. What’s so funny? What did Alfred do?

“What cat? Alfred, don’t you speak in idioms whenever there’s fucking blood on my hand from your jumper. Be serious! What in the hell is this?”

Alfred puts both of his hands in his pockets slowly and cat-like, almost as if he were teasing you about how erratic and blown-out you sound. There’s a hint of delirium to your voice, but you can’t really help it whenever you flex your hand and then the blood there glimmers beneath the glossy light of the ship. You gag again and throw your hand away from your face so that you don’t have to look it in the eye anymore. The world feels like it’s rocking side to side, and then you realize that that’s your body that’s swaying in the breeze of the ship’s coolant.

“It’s simple,” Alfred nods. “That’s the blood from Ivan. You know, that one Russian guy? Yeah. He’s dead now.”

It feels like the floor gives out beneath you whenever you hear that. The image of Ivan flashes in your mind, tall and hunking and bulky and how the hell did you manage to kill someone so sweet? Your body feels lighter than a feather. It feels like you’re walking on tons of clouds, but those clouds are sinking beneath you and your feet are dipping into quicksand that seems to want you, need you. It seems so surreal and you feel bile in your throat as you pinch in the middle before barreling forward to vomit. Hot steam and fluid spat from your mouth makes a nice squelch on the ground as you empty the contents of your anxious stomach. You gag and gurgle and you feel so terribly small compared to Alfred now. The same Alfred that lets you get sick against his work boots.

Then, whenever your chest heaves a few more times and you’ve managed to catch your breath again, you’re able to say through the smoke and the flames and the unrelenting ignorance that seems to billow around the pins and needles of your limbs,

“Why?”

Alfred leans forward as he hums and lets his head go a little askew.

“I thought this mission was dumb from the get-go. Like, totally ridiculous. I didn’t even want to do it, but my boss said something about firing me if I didn’t go, so here I am. Those other guys didn’t help. They were… kind of, in nice words, annoying, but like not you. You were fine, I guess. I liked chatting with you because you didn’t want to do anything except for your job, too. The others wanted to constantly talk and talk about this mission, and well, whenever you don’t even really want to be here—you see where my frustration comes from?”

You swallow with chapped lips and let your eyebrows wrinkle upward in disbelief.

Alfred’s body seems to droop as he straightens his posture and looks down at you over the bridge of his glasses.

“‘Course you don’t. You don’t even fully understand the mission.”

Alfred flippantly waves a hand around before he gestures to the spacious window at the front of the ship. His eyebrows are arched as he talks and his jaw looks taut. He doesn’t look at you now. You stare deeply at him.

“I only agreed to this mission so that I could watch it crash and burn and go to hell and back.”

You blanched. Your fingertips flex and then unfurl, they shimmer by a fraction and it feels like your tendons are splitting in two as you weakly attempt to ground yourself. There’s this horrible and suffocating dread that runs through your veins like pure quicksilver, like liquid nitrogen and you feel yourself ignite whenever you mull over Alfred’s statement for even just a brief moment. He inhales to say more, and then that’s whenever you raise your bloody palm print to interrupt Alfred. He pauses, then he glances at you from the corners of his eyes. He seems intrigued.

The words linger at the pad of your tongue, but your palette is dry and parched as you smack your lips a few times and scrounge up the words you want to say. The visages of the other members flash before your mind, and then again, you feel absolutely wretched and sick once more. You have a fit where all of their memories come to the forefront of your mind and you have to close your mouth to avoid vomiting like a sick puppy again. The man in front of you feels so foreign. A ghost of a man, the reflection of someone long gone. How long has Alfred been like this? Was every moment with him nothing but a lie? Had he wanted to kill everyone this whole time? Was he going to kill you next? You retch.

“Wh-Why did you… did you kill them for it? What was the point? What did they do to deserve that? Why did you…”

You can’t even finish—the pain is just too much, insurmountable. Tears stream down the apples of your face in torrential tracks and you can’t even clearly see Alfred anymore. He looks blurry. But he’s solid enough that you can see a wicked smirk cross his face and he belts out one final laugh that tells you everything you need to know as he throws his head back and then yells to the Heavens with a hint of insanity tinging his voice that leaves a hollow feeling in the cavity of your chest. And all you can do is let Alfred level you with swirling eyes down the ridge of his nose, as he exclaims

“Because! My good friend, in Space, no one can hear you scream!”

#hetaween 2022 #cw character death #cw blood #cw vomit #cw murder #hws america #hetalia #hetalia x reader #america x reader #hws america x reader #mentions of hws russia #hetalia america #aph america #this is not a happy ending kind of story lol #cib writes sfw

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