Title: Astronaut Lost
Author: Rysler
Date: 10/03/04
Rating: PG (obligatory four letter word usage)
Pairing: Sam Carter/John Crichton
Category: Angst, Triple Drabble
Notes: Challenge response. Crossover: Farscape. Thanks to B-J for helping me with Cape Canaveral geography.
They did math in bed. They did math in the steamed glass doors of their shower. They traced equations on each other's skin.
The night before they lay together in the sand at Cape Canaveral. They'd met flying experimental aircraft in the desert. John beat her to flying through space. Sam owed him 20 bucks.
"Come with me."
"Ship's only built for one."
"Design oversight." John gazed at the sky. "Look upward."
Sam did. "How does it feel to be fulfilling our fathers' dreams?"
"Fuck them." John laughed. "I get to touch the stars."
The rocket ignited its engines. The control room was behind her. Sam wanted the heat and the sound of spaceflight in the Florida afternoon.
She'd been 20 years old, in her third year at the Academy, when Challenger had gone up. She hadn't even watched, just remembered her father unexpectedly showing up outside her classroom.
"Sam, there's been an accident…"
The rocket bored its way through the atmosphere, fighting the resistance of the clear sky--Icarus defying Apollo. John's space plane would touch its wings to Earth and slingshot into astrophysical theory, like something out of an old Star Trek movie.
"Sam!"
She turned her head, away from the Atlantic. General Carter was trotting down the steps toward her.
"Sam, there's been an accident…"
Captain Carter hunched over a laptop in a vault underneath the Pentagon. She'd taken a desk job in hopes of getting into space. She was studying wormholes. Wormholes didn't exist. They were only a convenient plot device, like transporters that a hack writer had invented to save budget costs on a B-rated television program.
Only, someone had invented transporters. Sam was going to invent wormholes. She would follow them into the corners of the universe, and wouldn't rest until she found him.
FIN