The silence was a black void, and he was falling endlessly.
The silence was death, and the silence was deafening, louder than any shriek could ever be, because with the silence came faces. Every face he'd ever seen, called easily to his mind, so happy and contented with life, suddenly cut short by some cruel fate. His mother, his father, strangers he'd passed on a busy day. The soft murmur of the silent talk was gone, leaving a gaping hole where it had once been. He felt like he would drown in the inky black silence.
However... for some reason, he wasn't dead. He should have died, out in the endless expanse of space, and he should have found his family waiting for him, but he knew that he was still alive. He knew it like he knew the silence.
Although his world was darkness and quiet, he could tell that he was alive—he could feel it in the sting of his wounds and the ache of his battered muscles, but the overwhelming quiet drowned out everything else. He was being crushed under something heavy and oppressive, utterly overwhelming everything inside of him.
It was a long time—or maybe it was no time at all—before he finally shook himself from his stupor. He wasn't dead. There was no use denying it now. Even though he didn't have anyone to live for, anything to live for... Giving up would now be a choice, and it wasn't one he was willing to make. He'd never given up in his life. He wouldn't start now.
He would live for them, rather than with them. He would live for his mother, if for no one else. He knew that she wouldn't approve of his laying down and letting himself die when he'd clearly survived for a reason.
He tried to move, then, but his legs were tied down—all four of them. He could feel the edge of something hard and cold with the chilled touch of metal over his face and eyes. Slowly, ever so slowly, his senses returned to him as if they, too, were drifting on an endless, dark fog. What he found in the waking world almost made him wish he had not made up his mind.
He tried to open his eyes, but more blackness greeted him. Either there was something blocking his vision, or he'd gone blind. His hind legs felt strangely numb, and there was an ache at the base of his skull that flared with a burning pain with even the slightest of movements. Several smaller cuts, scrapes and bruises dotted his body, but the wound at the base of his skull overshadowed them all. His right wing didn't respond to his efforts to move it, and the other one was tied down along with his legs. He slowly shifted and flexed, trying to asses the damage. Where was he? And why?
Someone had saved him; that fact was apparent, but he was slow in coming to the realization. He was still breathing despite there not being any air in the vacuum of space—where he should be. It was only logical. If only logic didn't make his head pound.
He tried to lift his head, and a pain like none other flashed through him like a white-hot star. His head was chained down so that he couldn't have raised it any higher if he tried, but that wasn't at all the reason he went limp, his head falling back to the hard surface it had previously been resting on. The reason was the pain. The blackness over his eyes clouded with white, and he was gone again, back to the world of silence and faces and numbness.
**********
The next time he awoke, his legs were still without feeling, but his right wing was working again. He discovered—now that he could feel it— that it was tied down along with the other one, so he still couldn't move it much anyway. He could tell that some of the smaller injuries had healed slightly, leaving faint stinging in their places. He'd been out for longer than he'd first thought. He shifted, trying to dispel a cramp in his shoulder.
Every movement was another mountain he had to scale. He fought the urge to slip away again. It would be so easy to just...
Just stop.
"See! I told you it moved!" he heard the exclamation as if he was under water, but he could hear, which was at least a tiny bit of good news. He wasn't deaf. It was hardly any consolation.
"I never said it didn't." another voice answered, this one slightly quieter that the first, and with an odd rasp to it. Both voices sounded female. It took him longer that it should have to figure out how he understood them when they weren't silent talking. His brain had been automatically translating their words with the stored knowledge in his mind, but when he tried to remember what the language was, his thoughts screeched to a halt.
He couldn't seem to remember much of anything that he'd learned, now that he thought of it. He'd never had the problem at all, and having anything less than his usually perfect memory was... worrying. He added it to his ever-growing list and choked back his panic.
He concentrated on what the voices were saying.
"We don't know anything about it, except that it's a shifter. It could be hostile. We could die." This was the first voice, the louder one. His hearing seemed to have improved, but the voice still seemed far away. It dimly occurred to him that they were talking about him.
"I'm not dangerous." He said groggily, not waking up fully no matter how hard he tried.
Several moments passed.
He didn't immediately understand why they didn't respond. Once again, it took longer than it should have to realize why. He had spoken silently, as he was used to doing. They couldn't understand silent speech. He tried to repeat himself in the language that they were speaking, but his mouth didn't move. His body didn't seem to want to cooperate with him. Mutiny.
"There, it moved again." person two said, the rasping voice slightly harder to understand. "Maybe we should untie it?" she suggested tentatively.
"No! Are you crazy? It could kill us both!" this sentence was the easiest to understand yet, seeing as it was spoken rather loudly. Once again, he tried to tell them that he meant no harm, but the words refused to form in his mouth.
Remembering the pain from before, he cautiously lifted his head a couple inches into the air. There was a dull, throbbing pulse, but nothing like there had been before, so he lifted his head a bit farther. His neck groaned against his efforts, the joints shifting against each other with creaking and popping. He was stopped by a short length of rattling chain that was connected to whatever was covering his face and eyes, jerking his progress to a halt.
He heard a short, high pitch shriek, and something metal clattered onto the ground nearby. He angled his ears towards the sound, feeling faintly nauseous.
The loud bang seemed to clear his ears of whatever had been blocking them, and he could hear as well as he was used to. At least, according to his best recollections. Either way, it was too loud compared to what it had just been.
His head was still partially lifted, and he opened his mouth as far as it would open with the odd mask over his muzzle. He managed to let out a low, gravelly groan, but he still couldn't form words. His tongue felt swollen, too large for his mouth. It wasn't clear to him if he tasted blood or something else in his mouth.
"Maybe it's nice?" the quieter, raspy voice suggested, ever cautious. He moved his head up and down slightly, trying to confirm what the person had said as best he could. The movement sent bolts of pain down his spine, and into his numb legs, but if it got him out of the restraints, he didn't care. His legs were twisted beneath him in a less than comfortable position. His movements were jerky and stiff, but he was able to make them. Barely.
"See, look! It nodded." There was just a hint of triumph in the throaty rasp that came from somewhere to his left, rather than his right. She had moved. "I don't care what you think, and you can leave if you want to, but I don't think it's mean. I'm taking this off." The words sent sweet relief through his foggy mind, and he let his head drop again with a silent huff of breath.
The sounds were stifling him: humming machinery, soft footsteps, and even the faint rasp of breathing. They surrounded him and crowded his head. His throat closed over his breathing until he collected his thoughts, blocked it out, and made himself calm down.
He felt warm hands working at the straps of the mask. The metal had been cutting uncomfortably into his scales, forcing a few to lay the wrong way, and he was glad when it finally fell away. He blinked his eyes open, trying to adjust to the light that now streamed into his darkness-sensitive eyes. There was more pain. He heard a small gasp.
Najma was finally able to look around the room.
He was on a hard metal table, low to the ground. The walls were off-white, and the shelves and tools were made of a dull metal. There was a similarly dull metal door that hung ajar on the far side of the room. He searched out the faces that he knew he would see.
Closer to the door, there was a tall, lanky woman with long hair that matched the dull silver of the room. Her eyes were a cloudy grey color that was hard to make out from his distance. He tried to pull on the memories that he knew he had, but the best that he could come up with was that her species' name started with "L." Just on the edge of his mind, but stubbornly refusing to come to light.
He tried not to move his head as he searched for the other one, and he was about to give up entirely when he finally spotted her, just barely at the edge of his blind spot.
She was rather short—at least two feet shorter than the other woman. She had long, almost-green, almost-blue hair that seemed almost oily with the way the light bounced off of it. Her skin was light blue, splotched with faded greens. Her eyes were like her hair in color, but they lacked the sheen. She clutched onto a bottle of liquid— probably water— like her life depended on it, and as he watched and she stared at him, she took a sip of it. The bottle was vibrant pink, sharply contrasting with her blue flesh. She was backed against the wall, but when he turned his head back, he watched out of the corner of his eye as she came closer with small, cautious steps. He could tell that she was afraid, even though she was the one that supposedly believed him to be harmless.
He felt her fingers working as she began undoing the straps that held his front legs in place. He shifted his position, wincing in pain as the ache at the base of his skill flared to life. His head swam. He saw the girl flinch away briefly before she resumed her work.
Through the numbness, he could barely feel her hands on the rear restraints, but as soon as she moved to the ties on his wings, he tested his legs, praying and hoping that they weren't permanently paralyzed. They moved slowly and stiffly, but they moved. He breathed a silent sigh of a sweet, momentary relief that was quickly crowded out.
His wings were freed within the next few minutes, and then she undid the big strap that went over his body. He struggled to his feet as soon as she was done. His many wounds flared in protest, and his bones creaked and popped with a stiff, painful reluctance, but he was standing nonetheless. His legs were still numb, but as he gingerly climbed from the table, some of the stiffness sort of cleared. He braced himself before he gave himself a quick shake. Every minute movement hurt all over.
He turned to the blue skinned woman with the water bottle and dipped his head, a gentle rumbling in his chest. He would have preferred to thank her with words that she could understand, but she seemed to understand his throaty message well enough, because she stopped pressing herself against the wall so tightly.
She sent a withering glare over to the woman by the door. "Told you so." She said smartly. Her voice was even more quiet and raspy than before, and she took another sip of water.
The woman rolled her eyes. "It needs somewhere to sleep, and I don't think it will appreciate the table." she said, examining her nails. She began to walk through the door without another second glance Najma's way. "And I'm not sharing my bed." She threw over her shoulder as she left.
He turned back to the other alien, feeling ready to fall apart.
She sighed. "I guess you're sharing my bed." He vaguely remembered that her expression was pleasant, but he was tired, and his foggy head frustrated him endlessly when it didn't give him any answers. He could only hope that another nap would help, despite the fact that he'd just woken up.
The woman showed him through the spaceship that he had no memory of ever boarding, but his brain was too broken and battered to try and take in everything she said. He was distantly aware that the two aliens were the only ones aboard the ship. Unless there were others that were hiding from him throughout his tour.
He collapsed onto the indicated pile of fluffy pink blankets as soon as the tour ended. He heard a quiet laugh just before he fell asleep.
He couldn'thave stayed conscious any longer if his life depended on it.