"Because... every person that dies is a terrible loss for everyone else. And if people are alive, the circumstances can always change, and their situations can improve. But if they're dead, that's kind of it."

"Nothing will ever get better."

"Well, I think 'ever' is a long time for absolutes. And it's not like either of us have seen the future, hm? Why not try our best and see how it goes?"

Everyone is going to die.

It's his fault.

He doesn't say that and just shakes his head, looking down at his cuffed hands.

The room he's taken to is in fact a cell, and once he's in it, the door locks and there isn't a way to get out.

But there is a bed, so. That's nice, right?

Sure. Nice. He supposes.

He killed... all of those people...

He's trying to, to hold onto the same mindset as earlier, trying to remember why he did it, the way humans are, but without Zash around for him to be angry at and try to argue with he's just left alone in his head with his own thoughts.

He's all alone.

He was still mad at Zash, and he let Zash run, and it wasn't until later that he noticed that he hadn't ever been alone in his head. And there aren't any plants nearby, any of his sisters, so it's just... just him. Just him, in his head. No one else.

Many plants probably died because of him, too. It wasn't just humans.

It wasn't going to be just humans. He wanted, wanted to save the plant carriers, but every ship had plants, the carriers only had more of them than all others.

And, and he didn't mean to include Rem...

[Zash] he calls with his mind, reaching out as far as he can get, as far as his mind can go, [please come back, please, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, I didn't, I didn't want it this way, I'm sorry, please come back—]

He did. He did mean it. He just, he hadn't, hadn't really thought—and he can't think, he's running and he thinks he's running in the direction of Zash but he can't see and he doesn't know because it's a desert and every direction's the same.

[please, Zash, please forgive me, please, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—]

And the ruins litter the landscape, pieces of debris and escape pods that didn't manage to land the crash, and the first time he saw a dead body he wanted to throw up.

It didn't, actually, feel any different than looking at Tesla's body.

[I'm sorry...]

Nai stops running at some point, he's sure he isn't going in Zash's direction anymore if he ever was and if he won't find Zash then what's the point? He thinks about trying to find one of the plant carriers, one of the ships that should have survived the crash mostly intact, and it feels hollow. He thinks about his sisters, about their judgment—and he realises that there will be none. That they'll look at him and they'll forgive him.

He doesn't know if he can forgive himself. The only person who could forgive him is Zash, and Zash isn't there.

Or Rem, but Rem also isn't there.

The humans... they're not there, either. He killed them all.

Nai stops running at some point, but he doesn't stop walking. Nowhere is better than anywhere else, but anywhere is better than here.

He hears a noise.

There are many noises, mostly of crackling fire and crumbling metal and the occasional explosion, but this sounds like... a voice? Like someone is...

Before he starts moving he is actually genuinely uncertain whether he'll move towards the voice or away from it, but something, maybe the part of him that's still a plant and not a human who destroys and destroys and destroys with nary a thought to consequences, could not actually ignore the cries of pain.

They're coming from an escape pod, with two ocupants. Its braking mechanism failed and more than half of it ended up crushed; one of the ocupants seems to have been reduced to barely more than a pulp while the other, still alive, seems to have a badly broken left hand and her left leg is crushed by the same damage that killed her companion. She's managed to get the door open but her motion caused something to get further crushed or dislodged and now she seems to have started to bleed rather a lot and she looks to be delirious with pain.

...it would be a kindness to kill her.

The thought feels repugnant. He can't kill more people, not, he, he just can't.

Rem told Zash and Nai to not use their powers in front of others, and Zash explained to him why. He understood, sort of, and he did promise he'd try to avoid it.

But...

She's dying. Whoever this woman is, she's going to die without his help.

He climbs into the pod, leans down, and heaves the bit of metal that's crushing her.

This proves a mistake.

Without the metal keeping the bleeding mostly contained she is starting to bleed out, copious amounts of blood starting to ooze out of her femoral artery. Her leg seems to have been sliced almost clean through, with only various bits of flesh and skin still connected, but the metal and gore make this very hard to see.

oh

He.

He's glad he doesn't like to eat. He knows it's a purely sympathetic response, the heaving in his stomach, a way his body is pretending to be human right now, but it's still very hard to focus on that when he's looking at, at, at what he did.

No. No, he can't allow this to happen.

He stops the bleeding. He tells it to stop and it stops. He doesn't need hands, doesn't need a tourniquet, he just needs to make it stop and it stops.

Once that's done, he... summons a knife into his hand. A very, very sharp one, so that when he cuts the rest of the woman's leg off it will take a single stroke.

Then he pulls her out of the wreckage, using mostly his mind. She's hallucinating heavily anyway, she won't... know what's happening. But he, he's remembering things he's read in books about how to care for humans. He knows the escape pod should have something to help, he's also read about it, there's a first-aid kit—here.

Antibiotics for the likely infection—is it likely? does this planet have microbes?—and a bag of plasma to replace the lost blood and hydrate and painkillers and—

Regardless of whether there are microbes on this planet, there definitely were some aboard the ships, and the woman does spend most of the next day slipping into and out of consciousness, blabbing incoherently or moaning in pain or crying.

When she finally wakes up, with a fever but cognisant of her surroundings, it's night again. She blinks her eyes clear of tears and tries to sit up, then notices the imbalance and startles when she pulls the blanket away to stare at the stump where her leg used to be. And then she notices her left hand is immobilised. And then her memories start coming back.

"I had to burn your leg," says the small child sitting a few yards away, leaning against the ruins of the escape pod and hugging his knees in. "To stop the bleeding."

"...the bleeding..."

The warning. The blaring alarms, far too loud. They were crashing. Incorrect navigation data had been tightbeamed to all ships simultaneously, causing some to crash into each other and most to accelerate much more than was safe towards the planet. The planet which is... not entirely terraformed. A desert. The air is very low oxygen, there isn't an ozone layer, and they—

The escape pod. Im Jaehee...

She looks at the escape pod, at the other blanket that's covering the half of it that Im Jaehee had been in, but there's dry blood there and the metal...

She wails, a deep primal sound from the pit of her stomach, piercing the silence that had dominated the night until now.

"We need to find other people," the boy says, almost heedless of her pain. "There isn't enough food."