Simon was awake again. The room was dark, the only light coming from the dim light you had plugged in on the nightstand. You'd gotten it specifically for nights like these. Nights where the dark was too much.

He was free now. He brought C.O.I their pictures and their stupid bone sample. They were probably welding another poor prisoner into that sub to drop down. But it wouldn't be him, never again. He was in bed, in a room without bars. He had a girlfriend in bed with him. There wasn't any sticky sweet blood coating his skin, getting in his eyes and burning at his skin. No whispers from the deep. He was clean, he was clean, he was--

"Shhh..." your voice cut through the haze. Simon was suddenly aware of how heavy he was breathing. He'd sat up at some point and wrapped his arms around his waist. His stomach flipped and his eyes ached in his skull. Memories of the decompression sickness from C.O.I pulling the sub up as fast as possible making him shiver.

You couldn't understand what he'd been through. You never could, and he wouldn't want you to. Simon loved you too much to subject you to the cosmic horrors that had burned themselves into his memory. Simon would never forget. But you made it easier. You were the only nurse willing to treat him after the sub surfaced. His sentence may be served, but he would always be a convict to the rest of the station.

But not to you. Never to you.