Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Crewmates
Characters: Percival Crawford
Race: Genetically Modified Human
Age: 27, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 549 words
He’s always been high energy and I’ve never really been able to understand where it all comes from. He’s a tiny ball of wonderfulness and it’s been something to learn more about him and the crew when I first landed with them but all that extra energy, and I gotta say anger in certain situations, has a source that I’ve yet to discover, despite the fact that we’ve been together for more than a decade, now.
The one thing that does bother me is that he doesn’t always think things through, he’s very impulsive but it does get things done. I’ve had to learn to be his voice of reason most of the time. I mean, it’s not so bad, it really isn’t.
Though since we’ve come to this planet, after the initial issues, things have calmed down in a way I never really thought would be possible. In pairs, we still go out there and back into the darkness of space every now and again, mostly for small things that we can’t get anywhere else but otherwise, we’re settled here, we leave a life that I never thought would be mine.
I haven’t really had to be his conscience since and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it at first. It was such a foreign sensation. I mean, for months, years really, I’d had to keep an eye on how things were and reason with him to think twice about the plans that were being set out because he would have gone right in there, guns blazing and ready to get it on… but what about the very high and real possibility of getting hurt, of not coming back to me, of not coming back to any of us?
I mean, I get it. We were—are?—space pirates (so to speak!), it was what we did. Transport goods and people, not always legally, ensure their safety; get everything from departure A to landing point B so we could get enough credits to get by and enough credits to feed the crew and all. We don’t do that a whole lot anymore. Still a little but not much, money isn’t really a necessity when we can grow most everything we need and meat isn’t very difficult to come by.
I still remember seeing his eyes light up when I gave him that plate of his favourite wood; it had been worth the mock-slaving I’d done in the kitchen that day just to see him smile like that. I think I’d do almost anything for him and it was frightening at first but not so much anymore. What’s still somewhat frightening is just how deeply I still feel for him. I’d heard so many horror stories while still stuck where I’d been born, stories about the flames of love diminishing until completely extinguished over the course of usually not that long. I was a little afraid this would happen to us but it didn’t. A decade later and I still can’t get enough of cuddling up next to him when we sleep or waking up at his side in the mornings.
No, this has nothing to do with the fact that he’s a little furnace and I crave the heat—well, maybe just a tiny little bit.
Works of JD Beckett 