Varro wakes with an overwhelming sense of urgency - the absolute certainty that something catastrophic is about to happen.
The panic fades into disorientation within moments, before he can even think of moving, as his body makes its assorted grievances felt. His head is pounding, and he knows the sensation of broken ribs. He's felt this particular pain before, what seems like a long time ago - but time is still lurching about drunkenly in his mind. His next, not entirely coherent thought is to wonder if he's imagined the majority of his adult life. If he was, in fact, just out hunting with his brother this morning, if it was only hours ago that he was caught in that rock slide -
- but it smells wrong, not like his childhood home, and something in the memory of falling jars more recent events back into the front of his consciousness. The bunker. The ladder giving way. The alien smells resolve themselves into things he can identify; the distilled air of space travel, a faint tang of blood and sweat, metal, the strong potato liquor that Tamara uses for disinfection.
Tamara.
He blinks his eyes and tries to lift his head; his vision swims. He hears a clatter - something put down quickly, and approaching footsteps. There is a soft hand on his shoulder.
"You should lie still," Tamara says.
"I figured that out," he agrees, closing his eyes. When he opens them she's still a little out of focus, but smiling ruefully.
"How do you feel?" she asks, sitting on the side of his bed. Varro manages to lift the hand nearest her, and she catches it, fingers wrapping around his tightly enough to tell him quite a bit.
"Better than I have any right to, I suspect," he replies; his brain is slowly supplying details of the events immediately preceding his fall - pieces that don't quite fit together the way they should yet, but it's coming clearer. "Who carried me up?" he asks.
"The Colonel went down after you. He made a rope harness, and we pulled you up - Greer, Scott, some others," Tamara explains. She quirks her lips a little to one side. "That probably didn't help your ribs."
"Beats the alternative," he says, and has to give up looking at her for a moment; keeping his eyes focused is making him dizzy. He stares at the grey blur of the ceiling overhead.
"Yeah," Tamara agrees, and squeezes his hand.
"How long have I been out?" he asks.
"About sixteen hours," she says. "You have three cracked rips, a hairline fracture of the pelvis and another at the back of your skull, but your brain didn't swell. You're very lucky."
Something in the somber tone of her voice makes another memory click into place. The dizziness is receding; he looks back to her face.
"Did they get the cure?" he asks urgently.
She's quiet a little too long, so that he knows the answer even before she looks away and says, "No."
On one level it sinks in immediately, two decades of military experience assessing the situation while he tries to catch up; no, a critical piece of data was not retrieved. Mission unsuccessful; go to contingencies.
But she'd said there were no contingencies. No cure within the knowledge of her people.
Unacceptable.
"We'll find something else," he says, and tries to project all the calm confidence of what he knows damned well is denial. He'll deal with that later, when he has to; for now it's useful.
"Yeah," Tamara agrees, and gives him a tremulous smile. "Eli said they'd keep looking, that maybe with Ginn and Dr. Perry we'll be able to find the ships from Novus, but - " She takes a deep breath. "It's a long shot. I'm just . . . just trying to keep positive," she concludes; it wasn't what she was first going to say.
"How are you?" he asks, though the answer is obvious; sometimes it helps to say it.
"Scared," she admits. Then, after another deep breath: "You didn't sign on for this."
It actually takes him a minute to realize what she means; she said the disease wasn't contagious, so how is this any new risk to him? Then he understands.
"Like hell I didn't," he says, and tries again to lift his head, to get himself to eye level with her; it's not as bad as last time, but then the throbbing goes blinding, and there's nothing he can do to stop her when she takes her free hand and gently pushes his shoulders back. The soft bedding exerts all the gravitational force of a planet, pulling him down.
"I'm just saying I wouldn't -" she begins.
"And I'm saying forget it," Varro cuts her off.
The span of silence is long enough for him to get his vision back; he turns his head back toward her, on the pillow, slowly.
"You have a pretty severe concussion," she points out.
"I'm not going anywhere," he tells her.
"It doesn't seem fair," she objects quietly.
"Yes, it is," he argues. "Tamara - you deserve loyalty. Someone to stand by you."
She flushes and looks down at their joined hands and says nothing - and Varro suddenly wonders if he's missed the point.
"He did that," Varro offers carefully. Tamara looks up, questioning. "Colonel Young," he clarifies. "He stood by you - the other you."
She licks her lips. Looks down again. Asks, "That bothers you?"
"It raises my opinion of him," Varro says. It's honest, though it's not an answer; it seems like the fairest thing he can say. He doesn't let go of her hand, though. He's not giving up, and doesn't want her to think he is; he just wants her to know it's her choice. It's clear she's feeling trapped enough as it is.
She smiles, just a little, still looking down. "He's a good man," she says - it sounds sad, and weary, and a bit like an apology.
His hand tightens on hers before he help it; her eyes flash up to his, and he wills his fingers to relax.
"I can see that," he says, keeping his voice level.
She studies his face for a long moment. Varro considers whether he should let her go - let go of her hand, at least, though the gesture seems too significant. He can't do it.
"Did you know that twins, identical twins, start life as the same person?" Tamara says; it's not really a question and he's not sure what point she's making, and so he doesn't answer, just watches her face.
"The same fertilized ovum," Tamara's saying. "And at some point, very early on, the embryo splits. Becomes two embryos. Grows into two whole people. The TJ who married Colonel Young -" she stops, licks her lips again, gives him half a shrug. "Maybe we only had a few months of different life experiences before she made that choice, but it's still - it's enough," she concludes. "She wasn't me by then, and I'm not her now. We're . . very belated twins. My sister, his brother. But they aren't us."
Her fingers tighten on his this time. "And it doesn't -" she stops and looks away a moment. He tugs her hand just a little closer, and she looks back, her eyes wet and bright. "It doesn't seem fair," she whispers, in that slight, softly rounded accent of hers that he loves so much, the way she's capable of sounding so hard when she needs to be, but then other times, so warm. "To ask you to watch me die."
"Tamara -" he starts to object.
"But I'm all out of fair," Tamara goes on, and it's soft, quiet words with jagged stone underneath. Her eyes are filling up, but not spilling over; he thinks she's made of things stronger than steel. "None of this is fair. And maybe that's childish but I don't care. So if you'll still have me -"
"I'll have you," he interrupts, blunt and unequivocal.
She smiles that sad smile again, though there's a faint blush to go with it; she bites her lip in the middle of it. "Okay," she says simply. Sighs. Repeats, "Okay."
Then she tips to the side, toward him; a slow curl of movement that makes him think of growing things, leaves furled for the evening. She tucks their hands carefully between them, so that she just fits on the narrow edge of the bed, her legs still dangling off the side, half-sitting. He'd like to move over and make more room, but suspects he'd just embarrass himself if he tried. Tamara settles her head carefully on his shoulder.
"I thought you were gone," she murmurs. "For about . . two, three minutes, I guess. It seemed a lot longer."
"I'm hard to get rid of," Varro quips; he feels her smile.
Then, in a decided tone, she says, "Me too."