Starman: Epilogue 2 of 2 - Alfred

Warning for: Tony's language and a return to science.

Alfred

Alfred's initial optimism about surviving on earth was rapidly dwindling. He could see why his species had adapted to live in such tight groups together (as opposed to some, such as the Grréh, who only saw their mates, the lilGüreen-meyn once or twice in a lifetime to exchange sperm) . While in the hospital, Earth had been comfortable enough, and he had almost begun to believe the faint unhappy memories he recalled from so long ago in his existence were the exception rather than the rule.

Now he simply believed Earth was wet, cold and miserable, as well as dark and filled with a variety of creatures that he'd never seen before. At night it got even wetter, colder, more miserable, and darker.

Mr. Williams— Matthew, as he'd said his pseudonym was— had fewer problems, having a highly adaptive immune system that worked diligently to guarantee him his several hundred year lifespan. Tony had an advantage over the both of them, being able to feed off most anything around him, though he found eating in his disguise to be a rather difficult affair.

Alfred, on the other hand, had no such adapted immune system or ability to feed off air particles should he so choose to, but was forced to do as the rest of his species did, eating the animals he had typically only helped transport and drinking water that came out of the ground muddy and cold.

For what seemed like the hundredth time since his escape with Mr. Williams, Alfred was ill with a headache and churning stomach.

He rather vaguely recalled such symptoms affecting him at the hospital and his nurse, Toris, clicking his tongue and muttering something about 'sensitivity', and afterwards his food had tasted different but his irritated stomach and head had not been so bad. He had assumed it was just something all earthlings had to deal with when they ate.

He supposed not, now that he had rediscovered the wonderful protective mechanism of throwing up. He simply couldn't figure out how to eat without the uncomfortable side-effects.

Now, with a foul tasting throat and pools of churning water where his stomach and head should have been, he was reduced to being carried by Matthew through the forest in which they'd taken refuge. If Matthew minded, he didn't mention it, for his bodysuit was strong enough and Alfred was growing far too lightweight. Tony trotted along by Matthew's heels. The days seemed to be getting colder, but Matthew's suit, while warm, just didn't produce enough body heat to keep Alfred comfortable. Instead he was covered in all the clothes they could spare while still allowing Matthew to look something like a human, just in case.

They rested by a low-hanging tree that evening as the clouds rolled, gray, above their heads.

"Alfred, I think we're going to have to stop," Matthew said. Alfred blinked up at him blearily. "I mean, I think there's something very wrong with you, and we're going to have to talk to the other humans to try and fix it."

Alfred made the most disgruntled face he was capable of and curled under his pile of clothes. Tony chimed in beside him, furry face all scrunched and angry. "No, the fucking fuckity fucks will fuck so there."

(it sounded strange, but in Tony's language there was one particular word that could be used to replace most other words in a statement, and yet in the closest human equivalent was considered something of a taboo. Alfred really was rather confused by the rest of his species sometimes. )

Matthew's fleshsuit scowled with his hidden body, as he'd gotten much more used to controlling its functions and no longer even thought about it, though his voice was still the main-space of his emotions. Alfred's body relaxed against the tree he'd been leaned against and tried to focus on the words rather than the sensory input from Matthew's voice, which radiated a quietly buzzing sound of fondness and concern.

He missed most of the words anyway, but was snapped out of the lull when Tony spoke again. "Fuck no. Fucking fucking limeys here like fucking with my fucking fucker."

Tony also sounded oddly fond on that last 'fuck'. It was likely Matthew's voice getting to him as well. Alfred tried harder to listen.

"And what will you do if you lose him then, because you didn't want to bring him to a someone who might actually know how to help him?"

This time, Tony merely growled.  Usually, Tony's growl was terrifying, and a sign that Alfred should go run and hide very quickly in the cargo bay. In his new furry form however, it was oddly… less intimidating.

It didn't help Tony that Matthew had never quite had the same knee-jerk response to things that Alfred did. The only things Matthew knew that growled like Tony were the Poobe'rs, and when a Poobe'r growled, you stood your ground and growled right back. Which is exactly what Matthew did.

"Are you regretting coming to save him, Tony? Is that why you won't stand a little risk?" Matthew said.

The argument spiraled into a series of fuck fuck fucks and ended soon after. Tony went out to scout the area for some sign of intelligent human life while Matthew watched over Alfred, trying to keep him comfortable and humming out soft and comforting sounds when he couldn't think of the proper words.

It was very dark when Tony returned.

Alfred had fallen asleep shivering and Matthew, while awake, maintained the appearance of sleep beside him. About twice a year, Matthew would simply fall into a very deep sleep and that was all, and he'd taken one of his naps before descending to Earth. Consequently, he was fully awake and attuned to the night sounds as the quiet crunches and clatter of Tony's paws returned with new footsteps behind him.

The makers of those new footsteps were indeed very human. There were two of them, and they held bright lights in their hands, one vertically cylindrical, which illuminated all around, and the other horizontally cylindrical, with the beam of light going forward wherever it was pointed.

"Hello?" the shorter of the two said.

Matthew jolted up from where he pretended to sleep, called "Hello?" back and tried to remember the rest of the English Alfred had been helping him with.

The two figures came closer, along with Tony. Matthew hoped they were some of the better humans as he hovered over Alfred's covered form.

"Are you alright?" The shorter one said. As the human got closer and held his vertical light up higher, Matthew could see more clearly that he was one of the very light earthlings, like Alfred and his disguise, with the same colored skin and hair. The tall one behind him was the same, but more geometrically square. A square jaw, squared shoulders and squared gait all set upon light features. The tall one wore metal strips that held glass over his eyes. Matthew had seen the metal strips several times before, and worn fake ones as part of his disguise to the hospital. He'd lost them somewhere along the way. He thought he remembered them being called 'glasses'

"Um, no," Matthew said.

The short one grew close enough that his light fell on Alfred. Until then, the taller one had looked more threatening, but as the short one saw the wrapped form, his face turned into a troublesome expression that Matthew couldn't place.

"What happened to him?"

"He…" Matthew searched for the word. "Um. He is not… feeling well. And he is cold."

The short one nodded and set his cylinder down and knelt beside Alfred, gently pulling the blankets away from his face.

"How'd you wind up in this forest?" the man asked.

"It is very… long thing to say."

The man nodded. "Alright. Fine. We'll hear it later. You're very lucky for that dog you have there. He nearly sent Hanna into a fit, but didn't go away until we went after him. Your friend will need help though…" he squinted down at Alfred in the dim light. "Are you brothers?"

Matthew shook his head and said "No," not recognizing the word, in which case he might have agreed.

Alfred had woken by then, and blinked up blearily at the stranger, who shushed him. "It's alright, we're going to get you somewhere nice and safe and warm, alright?" the stranger said, gently touching his face and peering into his eyes. "Berwald, could you come over here? You might need to carry him."

The larger man approached. The short one spoke to him softly and quickly, using words Matthew didn't know or had trouble recognizing. A little while later, though, the large one, Berwald, was wrapping his arms around Alfred's cocoon of clothes and gently lifting him off the ground. Not three feet away, Tony paced, growling softly. Matthew shushed him, and the short one held out a hand to help Matthew up off the ground.

Matthew lifted Tony off the ground, carrying him much like Berwald was carrying Alfred, though Alfred was much quieter and protesting much less then Tony was.

The two humans led them to the smallest house they'd seen yet. It was made out of the trees that Matthew assumed must have either grown very large and been hallowed out, or grown very oddly with no branches.

The short one opened the house's door for Berwald, who had to stoop down while carry Alfred in order to get them both in without cracking their heads. Matthew followed quietly.

The room they entered was small, but spacious and cozy all at the same time. A fire burned in a small stone inlet, most of the floor was covered in a large, ornate rug, and there were copious amounts of soft furniture and fuzzy pillows lying about. A small red table in the center of the room was the only surface besides the walls and ceiling not covered in something soft.

It was very warm. Matthew only realized Earth's cold had begun affecting him as well as Alfred when he stepped inside. Tony had finally stopped growling soft insults in his arms and relaxed.

The giant Berwald set Alfred down gently on the large plush couch, gently unwrapping him from the coats and setting them aside. He pulled Alfred's shoes and socks off and wrapped him in a large red blanket instead. Matthew saw his eyelids flutter as he curled into it.

The short one had vanished when they came in, running off to another room in the house through a small opening, and reappeared not long later with a bowl of something yellow and smelling, a cup and a pitcher of water. Berwald pulled the small red table closer to the couch, and the little one set the meal down on it.

"Something for you to eat. We can make toast too, if you need something more solid," he said, and then turned to Matthew and ushered him to a dark plush chair beside Alfred's couch. "Sit down, you've been sleeping in the forest, get comfortable. Are you hungry?"

Matthew shook his head. The little man ignored him, walked off to the hidden room once more, and returned with a similar bowl of soup.

"It'll warm you up," he said. Then, he fetched another blanket, gave it to Matthew, and a large white towel that Tony grudgingly curled up on.

Then, the short one sat himself down on one of the other chairs across the room, and Berwald situated himself on a similarly padded bench beside the door.

"Everyone's comfy? Great," the short one said, "I'm Tino. Now what's everyone's name?"

Matthew named them curtly. "Thank you," he added.

"Thank your dog," Tino said. "He was quite eloquent in explaining the situation. I don't think I've ever seen a dog do that before."

Tony grumbled in his native language, and Matthew almost admonished him for doing it so loudly when Tino spoke again.

"Yes, like that," he said. "But in English."

Alfred squeaked from where he was still wrapped in blankets and had hesitantly begun sipping his soup. Matthew braced himself to run.

But Berwald was sitting by the door.

"You can calm down," Tino said, a little smile peeling over his features. Matthew hated human faces. He hated their faces and their voices and how he could never tell if they were being honest or not. "We're not going to hurt you or turn you in. We'd just like to hear the full story. Once you're comfortable with it, of course. A talking alien dog isn't something that we come across often."

Matthew didn't think enough to speak words. He merely let out a low, irritated hum that grew into a throbbing anger at Tony. Tony growled back.

"You were so fucking desperate to get my fucker help. They wouldn't fucking follow me, so fuck I had to do some fucking thing."

Matthew continued to buzz angrily. Alfred hid under his blanket on the other side of the room, likely not wanting to get in the middle of a fight with them when he still felt so bad.

Tino looked between the two and cleared his throat loudly. They ignored him. Berwald cleared his throat exceptionally loudly from the doorway. Tony stopped growling. Matthew's buzz persisted, but more quietly.

"We aren't going to throw you out," Tino said. "We already brought you in knowing, so that would be a little bit pointless I think. So can you all just relax?"

Matthew's face stiffly tried to find a suitable emotion, but his tone was still trapped somewhere between irritated and worried. "It was not our want for you to know."

"I know," Tino said. "But I'm sure you'll have quite a difficult time finding someone else with a little medical experience to take care of you all at this time of night, in the middle of the woods, who isn't concerned about why you're in the woods with a very ill man, and won't turn call the cops on you because of it."

At this point, Matthew was becoming rather tired of not understanding everything Tino said. He turned to Alfred and asked for a translation in his native tongue. Alfred didn't respond from beneath the blanket.

Matthew called his name. Alfred still didn't respond.

By this point, Tino seemed to have caught on to what Matthew wanted and had gotten up from his seat to investigate. Delicately, he pulled the sheet away from Alfred's face.

At some point between pulling the blanket over his head and Matthew trying to speak with him, Alfred had fallen asleep.

It was not a very pretty type of sleep. His chest rose and fell quickly and his eyebrows furrowed lightly. His lips were still blue and his cheeks were bright red.

Tino tuned to Matthew and annunciated very slowly. "It isn't good for people to eat things outside without cooking them properly, or even just drinking the water. He will keep getting worse unless you want me to help him. That means I may need to talk to a professional, er, a hospital. If I say he's my son, they won't be allowed to do anything to him without my permission. Do you want me to help him?"

Matthew's face finally settled on an appropriately distressed expression that matched the growing hum around him.

Tino repeated himself again.

Tony growled out curses in English in his corner, along with something that sounded suspiciously like he's not in charge but Tino only glanced in his direction before his gaze returned to Matthew.

"Well?" he asked. "I don't have to kick you out to save your friend, do I? Please don't make me. I'd feel like a mean person and it's not a particularly nice feeling to have this late at night."

Matthew's suit blinked and scowled. "What?"

Tino smiled. "It's really more of a question if I'm going to help all of you or just him," he said.

"We are staying together," Matthew said firmly.

"Wonderful," Tino said. "Sit down while I take care of him, then. I'm sure we'll get to understand each other eventually."

Matthew scowled and retuned to his seat. Berwald, who had disappeared from his mind temporarily, entered with a large red bag that Tino opened. He began looking through little capsules and more long (but much thinner than before) cylinders and setting some of them out. He took one particularly long cylinder and slid it partway between Alfred's lips and checked a strap on his wrist constantly as he continued to arrange to contents of the bag. Eventually, he took the cylinder out of Alfred's mouth, but never stopped pulling out odd and ends.

"So tell us about how you all wound up on earth looking like you do?"

Matthew processed it slowly. "Um," he said, "We… do not know English so well to tell you. Alfred can speak better. We are only here until Alfred is gone."

Tino nodded. "Well," he said, "I'm sure we can persuade Alfred to tell us the story when he wakes up."

Tony made an odd noise. Tino rolled his eyes.

"Relax. He will wake up. That's one of those things you just don't need to worry about."

Matthew seemed to find it in himself to buzz a little louder and a little more irritably at that as he slowly found the human words he needed.

"If he… does not we will be very not-happy."

Tino smiled and patted his shoulder.

"Well I have nothing to worry about," the little man said. "Because he'll be fine."

000

Alfred died, eventually, as all creatures did.

He died young by human standards, at fourty-two years of age, when the stress of living on an unfamiliar planet finally took its toll with a bad strain of flu.

By Matthew's and Tony's standards, he died an infant.

Tino and his companion Berwald had kept them all the years they'd stayed. Tino and Berwald kept them even as the pair grew old and wrinkled, helping wrap the pale body in a white bedspread and driving the body out to an open field where Tony would be able to call down and land his ship more easily.

Matthew had not yet shed his body suit when the takeoff occurred, and so with a slightly fraying human figure, Tino and Berwald saw them off.

Takeoff was noisy, ear-splitting. No one was worried about explaining it to the governments, who would excuse it with a rogue hot air balloon exploding, despite the utter lack of debris and the lightly scorched earth.

Takeoff was only noisy until they broke the atmosphere; the heat surrounding Tony's hull dissipated. All was silent, and all directions were up.

The ship ghosts soundlessly through space, slipping through the cloud of debris surrounding Earth and weaving seamlessly through the almost utter nothing that followed.

All was quiet.

It was ninety-three million miles to the nearest star.

And Alfred was finally home.

000

The End.