Having spent what felt like an age turning the vessel upside-down, at first shuffling from location to location to carefully sift through the clutter but gradually surrendering to impatience and doing her best impression of a stomping, grunting Human jackhammer as she shoved aside piles of mystery components and upturned drawers, Elizabeth finally happened upon what she was looking for completely by accident. The Engineer had settled back on the couch with an armful of equipment and calmly watched as she raced about the lifeboat in an increasingly frantic manner and, much to her chagrin, had stifled a snort of laughter against a closed fist as she'd tripped on the edge of the coffee table as she'd rushed through and vaulted forward with melodramatic flair, wrenching it open on the edge of her calf and leaving a gouge in the flesh that remained intent on bleeding for at least a few minutes thereafter.

While she noted he had fascinated over the injury, apparently as curious as he was vaguely horrified by it, she had spotted a silvery glint amongst the miscellaneous crap that had spewed from the drawer amid the chaos; pressing a dish towel against the gouge with one hand, she plucked the palm-sized metallic device from the floor with the other, cursing at it emphatically before tossing it onto the table with a loud enough clatter that it had startled her guest from his intent gaze.

Casting the bloodied rag further down the table, she turned her attention back to the hard-won device sitting between the two of them; fingertips brushing over its bevelled surface as she hunted for the controls, she reached for the tablet with her free hand and brought up the lifeboat schematics she'd been grappling with earlier.

Za'il had apparently happened upon a similar thought, and had set about fumbling with a somewhat smaller device of distinctly non-Human origin as he stood and paced toward the glass windows nearby. He paused intermittently to cast her a brief glance or two as he worked, holding the device in the general direction of the crashed Engineer vessel looming in the shadow of the mountains; she barely noticed, focused on her own task of forcing her own technology to sync despite its best attempts to refuse.

Brute force and ignorance once again proved to be the day's victor, with the tablet yielding to her commands and the panel beneath her hand finally lighting up with an affirmative green. Breathing a triumphant huff, she set about calibrating the device as the Engineer paced past her and back over to the storage crates, gently dropping his own technology on the table along the way. When he sat back down she was still working on unearthing the contraption secrets, resisting the urge to resort to percussive methods as the display burped up errors in red.

The Engineer had commandeered the pad as she worked, watching her troubleshoot with as much calm as she could muster before pressing the nearest pen against its surface, by now quite heavily embossed through multiple pages and somewhat warped from being grabbed, dropped, leaned against, slid across surfaces, fiddled with and flipped through. He scribbled a quick note and slid it across the table with a deliberate, restrained grace that was beginning to grow familiar. It had since become reflex to swap the tablet back to the Sumerian dictionary perpetually running in the background, and she set about decoding his message with speed that both surprised and impressed her. A painful process, gradually becoming less so.

Your blood is a strange colour.

She couldn't help but chuckle below her breath. All this time she had been so intrigued by him, oscillating between fear and awe with dizzying frequency, so intensely aware that she was now the only living Human in recent history to have encountered a non-terrestrial person, that she'd almost completely forgotten that he, too, was in the presence of an alien creature of a species he'd likely never encountered before.

It struck her that he'd paid very little interest in her up until this point; sure, he had offered what passed as medical care while she was still in pieces and had made sure she was warm while she was sprawled across the couch, wounded, but apart from dragging her across the room as he prohibited her from following him, his interest had been chiefly on his own ship and, later, the reading material and art around the lifeboat. He had barely acknowledged her presence unless he was required to.

She had to admit, the attention left her feeling a little bare. Would he judge her entire race by this one example oozing red before him?

Of course he will. I'm doing the same of him.

Perhaps it was worth capitalising on this sudden interest. Flipping through the translations again, she penned a response.

And yours?

He observed her for a breath after reading her response, then reached for one of the items he'd brought to the table with one hand, picking it up and twisting the base until a broad, black, somewhat teardrop-shaped structure popped free. After a brief bout of staring she finally recognised the object, the shape and size of it recognisably a jar just like the one that had contained the fire-and-ice goo that'd sealed her caesarean scar like glue. Whether or not it was the same thing was beyond her, but at least she could guess what it was. Still watching her, he ran the tip of the black blade against the tip of his middle finger for just a few millimetres; the edge split his translucent skin in a thin, clean line, and the resulting incision needed little encouragement to bleed.

The bead that rose to the surface of his marblesque skin was obsidian black, or so damn near it she couldn't tell either way. He let it drip onto the dishrag below, the viscous droplets that fell quickly absorbing into the fabric alongside the deep red mess she'd left behind. At their outer edges, the Engineer's blood drops faded to a deep indigo - if not for the harsh lighting above, she would have still assumed it to be black, starkly contrasting the vibrant crimson soaking the towel in heavy smears.

No wonder he'd felt the need to comment.

"That's quite something," she breathed as he twisted the top half of the jar, holding the incision at the tip of his finger away from the contents as the lid popped free; she was not at all surprised to see iridescent white goo bubbling within the thick, grey walls of the vessel, and watched with intrigue as the substance gradually stilled after he placed it on the table.

After smearing a quick dab against the cut he'd inflicted upon himself for mere demonstration, he murmured something in his own tongue and motioned with the other hand with a 'come here' gesture as he scrutinised the mess she'd made of her leg. When she offered little response, attention torn between the mending wound on his finger and the device demanding input an arm's reach away, he said something else unintelligible with a little more firmness and pointed at the gouge on her leg with an index finger, then repeated the first gesture.

Ah. That should have been obvious, she mused as she rotated on the couch raised her leg onto the table; at this rate she was certain they would be leaving a dent in the supply of whatever-the-stuff-was, but if he wasn't shy about chewing through it, she reasoned there was little need to worry.

The sensation of an enormous hand grasping her ankle sent a jolt of electricity through her body, ricocheting from her head to her toes and demanding just about all of her self-control not to flinch. Once again she found herself marvelling at the scale of the creature - his fingers had no trouble in completely encircling her limb, holding her in place effortlessly while his free hand retrieved the sharp implement that had fallen from the bottom of the jar.

As strange as it was, and despite knowing better from the brief, sporadic encounters of touch she had experienced thus far, her mind had long since decided that the Engineer's appearance, sharing more than just a passing resemblance to the myriad of stone statues marking Earth's many cultures' passage through time, meant that he must also feel like marble - cold, smooth, and hard. The hand grasping her ankle was anything but, with an alarmingly familiar soft warmth about the digits gently holding her still. Idly, her mind plucked at the theories that had brought her here in the first place; despite him clearly being from nowhere near Earth, there were enough striking similarities between the giant and her own hairy, fleshy species that it simply made sense that they were somehow related. As cagey as he seemed about interacting with her, what little he'd shown her only further convinced her that somewhere, somehow, they were distantly of the same flesh and blood.

Oblivious to the cogs turning in her mind, Za'il set about dipping the blunt end of the implement into the jar of goo then set about running a thin strip of the substance over the length of the gouge along her calf. She supposed it wasn't necessarily normal practise for one to dip their fingers into medical supplies and smear it around, though with a broken arm and a torn belly between them, she supposed there was little either of them could have done differently when they first addressed their injuries several days prior.

Having released his grasp on her ankle, the Engineer set about cleaning the instrument up with an unmarked section of the dish towel; the chill of the substance going about its work had already begun, and having placed her foot back on the deck, Shaw sucked in a breath and surrendered to the impending, inevitable sensation overload awaiting her.

Murmuring a few words in a slow, deliberate manner, Za'il caught her gaze as he mimed a bracing motion, demonstratively gripping at the edge of the coffee table for a drawn moment before resuming his tidying. The searing pain of her last experience with the stuff would remain forever etched into her mind, and it took little imagination to interpret his message. Grasping the cool surface with both hands, she squeezed her eyes shut and impatiently waited for the icy sting to explode into fire.

It did not disappoint; within a breath the searing cold gripping the gouge had burst into veritable flames, the muscles in her leg quaking uncontrollably as the overwhelming sensation of someone pressing her calf against molten steel gripped every inch of her psyche. Though it elicited an agonised cry from her throat, though she clung to the table as if it were a life raft, a tiny, calm voice in the back of her head observed that the pain simply wasn't as tremendous as the first time, likely owing to the vastly more superficial wound and the meagre slick of the stuff at play compared to half the damn jar spewed throughout her innards. It did little to distract from the searing heat, however.

"Goddamn," she cursed despite herself, immediately swallowing the pangs of guilt for her blasphemy, "God, it hurts..."

Having reassembled the jar, complete with its applicator device, the Engineer cast her what looked, through a mist of tears, like a brief sympathetic glance, then busied himself with other pieces of equipment. She barely registered it as the fire clinging to her flesh gradually dulled, filling the spaces in her mind that finally revealed themselves beyond the haze of agony with the task at hand. Once she was done being a mess, it was time to do exactly as Za'il had suggested earlier and begin planning a way off this foetid world.

Muscles throughout her leg took turns cramping painfully as their uncontrollable shaking reached critical mass, intermittently locking up her thigh and calf with stabbing sensations that rivalled the fierce flames against her skin. What remained of the intellectual portion of her mind, arguably as overwhelmed as the rest of her, found itself pondering the processes that were going on with the healing substance that caused so much goddamn pain; was it forcing damaged flesh back into place, or was it stimulating the body to do it all on its own? Was it leveraging her existing biology, or was it re-writing it? Though she would likely never find out, she yearned to unlock its secrets - if only for the satisfaction of having at least some answers.

As it had before, without warning, the burn morphed into a significant tugging sensation, albeit significantly milder than it had been the first time. Less to tug on, she reasoned, finally releasing her breath and her grasp on the table to look down at her spasming, cramping calf. Indeed; the substance had dried to a thin film this time, rather than a thick, translucent band of glue-like goo. Stealing a moment to mop the confounded tears from her vision with the back of a hand, Shaw raised her leg back onto the table with the aid of her other arm and coughed softly to get the Engineer's attention.

Pausing in his work, he took a quick look at the white, flaking film and, with practised nonchalance, tugged it free by its lower edge. Aside from the remaining smears of blood in the area, it was of course though she had never ripped herself open in a fit of clumsiness; only the faintest of white, shiny scars remained, still cool and tingling from the onslaught. With little more than a subtle nod of approval, the Engineer simply went back about his business.

Time for her to do the same.

The clumsiness had extended to her troubleshooting, she realised with bashful disdain; if the tablet wasn't searching for the device, then it was unlikely to find it. Rolling her eyes as she lamented her sloppy handiwork, she set about rectifying the problem with deft, impatient hands and sat back as the device in the middle of the table finally flickered to life.

With a faint electronic beep, a projected, glowing image of the lifeboat flickered into existence above the table; the crisp, white blueprint sat almost a metre from bow to stern and half a metre high, its crystalline wireframe faintly illuminating the immediate area.

The Engineer jerked backward with its sudden appearance, dark eyes wide for a drawn moment before relaxing with amused understanding. There was the faintest echo of laughter about his voice as he muttered something under his breath, shaking his head as he pressed the tips of two fingers against a panel of one of his own devices he'd placed not far from the projector.

Elizabeth's reaction was no different from his as a similarly white shape exploded into pearls of light, its wispy holographic edges emanating from the black, circular device further along the table. Reflexively recoiling back against the couch with an undignified yelp, she stared in wide-eyed awe at the horseshoe-shaped ship that had materialised alongside the projection of her own. He really had stumbled upon the same idea, hadn't he?

Unsurprisingly, her somewhat panicked scuffle across the furniture had elicited another huff of laughter from the immense alien. Shaking his head again, his attention drifted between the two projections, dark eyes drinking in the stark differences between the utilitarian lines of the lifeboat, and the intense, elaborate detail of the Engineer ship. Colour was all the two images had in common.

"Good thinking," she mumbled as she willed her heart to still with a grin. Right hand once again fumbling with the projector controls, she reached up with her left to trace her fingers across the lifeboat wireframe in a sweeping wave, rotating it about its central axis so the bow pointed toward her. "Let's see how bad this really is."

A press of a button added a flourish of colour to the hologram, with damage showing as a gamut of yellows, oranges and reds; the port side of the ship was peppered with smatterings of red, much of it focused on the largely missing FTL nacelle and the abused thrusters along its belly. Other sections of the hull remained unmarred and glowing white, particularly the uppermost regions and much of the starboard side. The damaged nacelle, she realised, had been rendered by the hologram in its present state, rather than simply highlighted as requiring attention as it had when the data had been displayed on the tablet before her most intense scans. As nice a touch as that was, it wasn't confidence-inspiring.

Having apparently drawn enough information from briefly observing her fiddling and swiping, Za'il reached one large hand toward the lifeboat hologram and cautiously swiped in the same manner, twisting the vessel about to examine the torn nacelle more closely. Leaning closer with an intent scowl, he seemed to scrutinise every little detail for quite some time, rocking the ship back and forth intermittently as one thing after another caught his eye; scowl deepening, he murmured something in his own tongue whilst casting Shaw a grim, thin-lipped glance, punctuating his words with a heavy sigh.

Seemingly uninterested in dwelling on the crumpled red mess for long, he spun the vessel around to examine the entrance by the stern; though he had passed through it several times by this point, seeing it in miniature must have given him context he lacked before. Asking what sounded like a question, though she hadn't a hope of understanding it, he rotated the ship around so the main airlock faced her, and traced a pointed index finger around the outline of the lifeboat's docking port.

At a wild guess, she assumed he'd recognised it as belonging to part of a larger ship. Couldn't hurt to provide him with that information, could it?

After a brief argument with the tablet, she fed the projector the schematics for the rest of the ship and sat back and watched as the lifeboat quickly shrank to less than a tenth of its size, its outer reaches replaced by the far more robust, mitred outlines of the Prometheus.

Wide-eyed realisation flooded the Engineer's expression as he openly gawped at the ship; after an extended moment his gaze darted to the bay windows beside them, tracing the landscape beyond in the wake of his own crashed ship, trailing the debris field scattered for miles between the lifeboat and the towers and well beyond. Little was left recognisable, such was the totality of the Prometheus' destruction, but the tell-tale circular hoop of the rear of an FTL engine had fallen within view of the window. His eyes lingered for an age, picking apart the charred and twisted metal sprawled before them as if he'd finally noticed its existence in the first place. Perhaps, in fact, he had.

Swallowing hard, he finally returned his attention to the projection of the larger vessel; an index finger traced the tail end of one of the Prometheus' FTL nacelles, quickly locating the wreckage in situ, its remains outside glowing a faint purple beneath the gas giant's glow in the pre-dawn haze. He openly drank in the ship's scale, flitting between the lifeboat tucked safely away and the rest of the vessel dwarfing it, twisting the hologram to and fro with obvious apprehension as much as awe, wide eyes struggling with vastly more than what was merely presented before him.

He drew a breath and reached for the pad, fumbling with a pen whose nib refused to stay in place the moment he pressed it to paper. Another found favour after several tries; he scribbled a note, then flipped the pad around for her to read.

She had already flicked the dictionary