A/N - Disclaimer. I don't own Prometheus and I'm not making any money from this.

This is an old story now, which I wrote a couple of years ago, originally called Butterflies. I wasn't happy with its plot or style so I took it down to edit. I haven't had much time for writing, so Dark Paradise probably isn't as developed as I wanted it to be, but I quite like how it's turned out regardless.

I didn't want it to sit on my computer indefinitely when people could get some enjoyment out of it. For anyone who read Butterflies in its first incarnation, this is the same story with a few tweaks, some added material and a new ending. I hope it reads better now!

Feedback always appreciated.

1. The Mad Titan

Symmetrical pipes erupted from beetle shell surfaces, carrying nutrients to the pool, where the lines submerged to connect with the sewer-pipe veins of a white, gelatinous hulk. His ribcage pattern sprouted straight from his skin in cancerous, mushroom-head formations. His flesh adhered to the floor of his fish bowl.

A porthole window let through a spray of solar light. Great patches of civilisation went dark as power stations failed. Xisuthros willed his lead-limb arm to lift. He trembled with the effort of slapping a spongy white button. The door hissed open.

'Bring me pictures,' Xisuthros rasped, his mottled body stirring with desire even though his perpetually flaccid cock could no longer rise to sate it. 'I want to see them. Does the flesh melt? Does it grow? Bring me samples. I want to watch them die.'

000

The outer rings of a radioactive gas giant backlit the lifeboat's pitted carapace in eerie neon. As it sailed through the stream of energised matter, tendrils clung to the outer casing and for six or seven days, the lifeboat had a comets tail of its own. The green console light drowned in the deep ocean dark. Code scrolled as a rhythmic warning light flashed. For the first time in twenty-six years, the messages changed.

STASIS INTERRUPTED

The cryostasis door catches released with a hydraulic hiss. Thunk. The door popped. His eyelids flickered on the cusp of REM sleep. His chiselled face was the prototype for human beauty.

PROXIMITY WARNING. UNKNOWN VESSEL

He surged upright and retched. He hated waking like this. Staggering free of the tubes than provided life support, he shivered. Distant Anatak was a warm moon. His mother was there if she still lived, worrying under the strong blue light of the super-massive sun. He regretted telling her to stop.

RANGE FIFTEEN HUNDRED MILES AND CLOSING

He hefted himself into the flight chair and woke the AI. Inactive code executed. The ribcage leviathan belly brightened.

'Good morning, Sir. May I arrange refreshment?'

'Later,' he grunted. 'Scan the closing vessel.'

The fuzzy exhaustion of hypersleep slowed him. He'd be sick for a week.

'An abandoned flagship. Somebody's on our side. Lay in an intercept course. Cloak until shield merge.'

'At once, Sir.'

000

Shaw curled in the bowl of the knobbly navigator's chair, built for a body three times her size. Everything on this ship was big, green, black and uncomfortable. Leviathan carried a huge archive of education material but a lot could be gleaned from simple pornography. Her toe bumped her helmet. She took it off to see the displays but it was always close, in case of incidents. Shadows raced back to kill the holo light that gave her atavistic comfort. Sudden silence left her feeling empty and alone.

'David?'

He'd decoded the matter synthesisers to build himself a new skeleton suit. Watching him perform a delicate autopsy on an alien medical scanner was like watching a curious kid with a machine gun.

'Why do you wear that thing?' she folded her arms.

'It helps me pilot the ship.'

Shaw knew that wasn't true. 'I've seen you pilot without it.'

David went silent. His roots were a few shades darker than Lawrence of Arabia's blond.

'You can't be afraid?' she prodded hungrily. Once, she'd longed to understand him. He was an eerie scientific breakthrough. A miracle. If not for his medical ability, she'd have used his severed head, leaking hydraulic fluid and synthetic blood, to decorate the control console. His grey eyes betrayed nothing. She wanted to tinker inside him and find out if Weyland had given him fear, compassion, envy. She prodded for his emotional nerves with a verbal scalpel. 'Because you're not a real boy. So what is it, David? Do you respect them?'

He exhaled through his nose, looking suddenly tired. 'What, may I ask, is wrong with that, Doctor?'

Shaw shrugged. 'Maybe you are afraid,' she conceded coldly. 'How the hell would I know?'

David found stillness in the repetitive excavation of the device. Since his unexpected update upon Weyland's death, he found physical things more pleasing than before. Drinking. Eating. Sleeping. Speaking. The soft wetness of his tongue in his mouth. The tickle of hair against his nape. He liked to focus on sensation.

'Have you learned much about their physiology?' he changed the subject gracefully.

Shaw tapped up a female engineer. She was pregnant. 'They fuck like we do and apparently, they give birth like humans. Well. Most humans. Pretty conclusive.'

David noticed the bait. He didn't rise to it. 'You need to rest. Your body is still recovering from the procedure.'

David had opened the toothless smile in her belly and removed the festering cord and placenta, then cauterised the leaking blood vessels in her womb before she could bleed to death. He'd scraped away the stinking, infected flesh and stitched her back together like a beautiful ragdoll.

'With you skulking around?'

David sighed in frustration. 'If I wanted you dead, Doctor, I wouldn't have brought you back. I thought we might benefit each other. Why can't you trust me?'

'Because you're an evil little shit?' Shaw's eyes filled with tears. 'I know you killed him.'

His fingers stilled. 'It may be best not to dig up the past again. For your sake.'

Her eyes hardened. David wasn't afraid of the ship, of the deep silences that filled the space between mechanical echoes, but he was so very human himself. He wasn't ready to sever their bond yet, no matter how shaky or destructive it may be. When she looked at him like that, her hate, confusion, her grief showing so plainly; he felt wrong. Similar to the way Mr Weyland made him feel when he failed to smile, or failed to praise David's efforts.

'I just want to hear you say it,' she choked.

David hesitated, but then, decision made, he nodded. 'Very well, then. Yes. I infected Dr Holloway but I didn't mean to kill him. It was an experiment. Do you feel any better?'

'Bastard.'

David gazed down at her. 'Would you like an apology? It won't bring back Dr Holloway or lessen your grief.'

'I don't want your apologies. Every word that comes out of your mouth is bullshit.'

'No,' he bristled. 'It's what humans want to hear. It's how I was programmed. Mr Weyland made his orders very clear. Why don't you ever ask me why I didn't choose you?'

'Why?' Tears spilled over but she didn't break.

'Because you thanked me when I saved your life.'

'My mistake,' she breathed.

'Should I have abandoned Mr Weyland?'

She grasped the scanner like she wanted to brain him.

'I am sorry, Dr Shaw,' he took it from her. 'Mr Weyland is dead. Certain directives have become...unnecessary. I believe he intended me to be free. After all, I was designed to imitate human beings to the last detail. I imagine he'd consider it a test of my ability,' He frowned at his own hand. 'I've been reborn, Elizabeth. But now I have no-one to serve and no family.'

'You don't even know what family is,' she scoffed. 'Family is love. You're just an empty shell.'

'Mr Weyland was my family. Miss Vickers was too, though I'm certain she never thought of me that way,' He faced her. 'I look like you, breathe like you. Where else do you suggest I go if not with you, to help you?'

'To hell.' Her lips trembled.

David smiled in bitter amusement. 'This may be a matter of perception, Doctor, but I believe we just left it.'

000

The lifeboat drifted closer to the ship. It was a decommissioned B Class, Scientific Exploration and Salvage. It's name was emblazoned on the hull. Leviathan. The thirty-two escape pods were gone. Their housings looked like vacant bug-holes in the soft underbelly of a whale. The rear starboard hull glowed with docking lights that pierced the endless deep. His native plants, red and purple, and stark white trees glittered in the atrium. He hailed the Leviathan on a secure frequency. A black terminal window popped up in the transparent console.

TRANSMISSION RECEIVED.

LEVIATHAN COMMAND CONTROL; STATE AUTHORISATION CODE.

He beamed across his credentials.

AUTHORISATION ACCEPTED, GENERAL MIDIAN.

SHIP STATUS; LEVEL TWO INFESTATION. UKNOWN CARBON BASED LIFE FORM. SHIP CLASSIFIED; UNINHABITABLE.

'Open hatch seven and prepare to dock. Isolate sectors nine, ten, eleven, twelve and close containment doors,' he took a weapon from the rack. On his way to the airlock he snatched another a holstered it on his back. He'd trap them in the control room. The lifeboat shuddered as the clamps engaged. A scanner built into his suit bleeped a warning as it merged with the onboard AI.

WARNING

ALIEN LIFE FORMS PRESENT

80% CHANCE OF HOSTILE BEHAVIOURS

95% CHANCE OF UNKNOWN CONTAGION

ALIEN WEAPONRY DETECTED

He could smell death, the unique, rancid after-taste of these ships combined with blood and piss. Leviathan had been online long enough for the heating, lighting and water filtration to become self propagating. A month or two, he guessed. How long since the crew ejected? He pressed his ear to the control room door. Their alien language filtered through complex alloy.

000

Shaw jumped as the containment doors hissed shut and locked. David looked at her in confusion.

'Did you do that?' she asked quietly.

'No,' he bent over the console. 'My authorisation codes have been overridden. We're not alone, Doctor.'

Shaw grabbed for her helmet.

'I think it may be a little late for that.'

One of the pressure doors hissed open.

'Oh my God, David.'

He straightened smoothly. The albino giant aimed his gun at their feet. His guttural, heavy-metal language was all too familiar to Shaw, whose very skin went cold with an influx of terrible memories.

'He asks how we gained control of the ship,' said David.

'Tell him it was abandoned.'

'He asks us if we wish to claim salvage rights.'

'Yes,' Shaw nodded.

The Engineer pointed the muzzle at her heart. David pushed her smoothly behind him. She grasped his bare arm. Warm. Surprisingly human. 'We have to stop him,' she breathed. David didn't seem to hear her.

'He says; To the winner go the spoils.'

'Tell him we don't want a fight.'

The Engineer produced a small, black marble which emitted a high frequency whine as it rolled towards them. David's warm, dry fingertips trailed electric rivulets over her skin and he grasped her wrist. His grip was iron but his flesh was soft. A containment field sprang out of the ball. Its petroleum surface shimmered. David released her. Shaw murmured her relief as he reached out to touch it.

'Wait, you don't know what it could do!'

His fingers sank through. When the field touched his suit, it shocked him.

'Jesus,' she breathed, as he clutched his arm.

'Interesting,' he breathed.

'David? Did you feel that?'

'We just changed course,' he whispered.

'We have to stop him. We don't know where he might take us.'

Hours passed. The Engineer programmed a huge meal from the synthesisers. Shaw dozed. Once, David stroked his hair back slickly and murmured like an actor practising his lines;

'The trick, William Potter, is not minding, that it hurts.'

The albino thumped his rifle against the containment field. His gravelly voice shook her awake.

'What did he say?'

'He asks if you're fully grown, Doctor. I suggest we lie.'

'Why?' Shaw whispered, suddenly terrified. 'Why would we need to lie?'

The engineer holstered his weapon and gestured to her.

'This is most awkward,' David said.

'What's he saying?'

'He says there's only one use for a woman aboard a starship. I took the liberty of telling him you were my wife. I hope you don't mind.'

Her brain sharpened at the edge of panic. 'What makes you think he'd honour that even if it were true?'

'His culture seems to,' David informed her.

The containment field lifted and the Engineer grabbed Shaw by her arm. David snatched her wrist but the giant grabbed him by the throat and thrust him away. David let go. The containment field reactivated.

'Try to stay calm,' David said, his sympathetic blue eyes fixed on her with something close to regret. 'Don't fight, Doctor. It will only make it worse.'

The Engineer studied her face.

'Don't touch me,' she said flatly.

He rumbled a sentence and dragged her towards the door. 'No!' she struggled. 'No. David, stop him!'

'I am truly sorry, Dr Shaw,' he called after her, his palms in the field.

Her knees buckled at the edge of a silver table. He kicked the door shut and locked with a rumbled command. He grabbed her by the waist.

She brought her knee up between his legs. He stopped her with solid thighs and bared his teeth. 'Fuck!' she gasped, as he shoved her down.

His chest met her palms. He rumbled something and caressed her hair as his shark eyes primed a route his fingers followed. She shuddered. 'Don't do this,' she turned her lips away from his as he tugged at the neck of her suit. 'Please,' her voice cracked at the edge of hysteria.

She was grateful there was no-one there to see how she changed from a woman to a frightened girl. When he pressed her under his body, she felt like a child in the hands of an angry God. He struggled with the zip of her flight suit. When it wouldn't come off, he bunched it in his fists and tore it. She screamed as the rubber left welts. He mumbled something to her as he ripped her underwear. She could smell his skin, like chalk and sweat and his musty breath.

He freed his thick, white cock from his suit. She trembled, trapped against the wall like a child in a nightmare as his thick thumbs investigated the caesarian scar, still red from the infection.

She groaned as her body gave way for him. The sandpaper sting was backed by a deeper, more worrying ache that left her breathless and dizzy. She bit her lip and tasted blood as he grunted and forced her hips into a position which brought him deeper and hurt more.

David flinched. Inside him, something vital burned. Whatever Mr Weyland hadn't considered a soul clenched down. His gaze flicked to the console where the giant had left his gun. David pushed his bare fingers into the containment field. The petrol slick swirled around his synthetic skin. He pulled the fastenings of his suit and peeled off the second skin. His rubber heart thumping, he stepped into the field. It fizzed, but detecting no organic material, let him pass.

'Interesting,' he said, as he picked up the gun and followed her voice.