The Deep Dark Heart of Space
By eternitywaits
*Originally posted on LiveJournal December 19, 2009
Camille would like to consider Nicholas Rush a friend. At least, she would like to think that she's been a friend to him, as much as possible.
It's difficult to read him, though, to gauge his opinions of her. He's tight-lipped, and while he yells at his science team, and belittles the military personnel, he's laconic around her.
At Icarus Base, he at least smiled and attempted to conform to social niceties. Since they've been stranded on Destiny he's shed everything that was fake. He's become brutally sincere.
He glances at her when she joins him on the observation deck, but he doesn't leave. Camille takes it as an invitation to stay, and joins him in watching the lazy swirl of color that washes over them, like the Northern Lights, viewed through a kaleidoscope.
Beyond the light show is nothing but the deep, dark blackness of space. Bone-chilling emptiness stretching out over unimaginable distances in every direction. It's lonely, and black, and it strips away things like time, and it defies things like measurement.
"You're up rather late," he says finally. He doesn't turn to look at her.
"How do you measure time, in space, Nicholas?" she asks him.
"The twenty-four hour clock is a convenient form of measurement," he says, crossing his arms and finally turning to face her. "I'm sure I could think of something more scientifically appropriate, but trying to get this crew to understand it, let alone use it, would be a colossal waste of time and effort."
That's the most he's said to her at one time since they've been stranded. She smiles, even though her heart's not really in it. "They're good people."
"I didn't say they weren't. But they wouldn't have been my choice."
"They wouldn't have been anyone's choice for this mission," she says, and neither would you, she adds silently. They both know it, though and it hangs in the air, unspoken, between them.
They go back to watching the oppressive darkness wrap itself around Destiny. They are so far away from anything, and everyone, they've ever known.
For the first time, Camille is envious of Nicholas Rush - he has left nothing and no one behind. He can exist wholly in the present. He can move forwards, into the deep, dark heart of space without fear, or regret.
Camille wonders if he's envious of her, for inverse reasons. She wonders if he even thinks about things like that, anymore.
*****
The day is spent drawing. The day feels like nothing so much as an extension of night, she can't rouse her body into a degree of wakefulness, she can't think of anything useful or productive to apply herself to.
Camille draws the picture hanging in her living room. A dream home, she and Sharon were going to retire and move to such a place. She draws palm trees swaying in a blistering breeze, and waves rolling off the ocean. A hazy shoreline disappears into the froth, and birds wheel in the sky overhead.
She doesn't draw Sharon. She's afraid she'll start drawing, and realize she's forgotten something - the length of her nose, the shape of her mouth, the distance between her eyes. That would be too much. So she doesn't try. If she doesn't try, she doesn't have to know, doesn't have to face it, how much she's lost, even memories slipping away from her like froth on the waves.
Sleep has become a poisonous enemy.
Her dreams are always about Sharon - sometimes they are full of bright colors, the red-golds of her lover's hair, the liquid amber of her eyes, the scarlet red of her lips. Then there are the sensations, so cruel - the warmth of being wrapped in loving arms. The smell of her perfume.
When Camille wakes, the shaking starts. One day she's scared it won't stop. One day she's scared she won't wake up.
She's taken to wandering around the ship, late at night, when most of the crew is asleep. Camille's never been much of an explorer, but soon she has a map of the ship in her head, at least of the fraction of it they're using.
Often, around midnight, she joins Nicholas on the observation deck. Sometimes he's not there, sometimes she doesn't go, but often they meet there. He always acknowledges her, with a nod, and once with the thin ghost of a smile, but he doesn't speak, and neither does she. There really isn't that much to say.
Space looms around them, deep, impregnable, vast. She tries to form a picture in her head of just how far she is from Sharon, and she can't. She doesn't have the imagination.
They have been separated so completely, like the divide between life and death. Camille wonders if what she's going through - the longing, the pain that is so much like grieving, the dreams, and her terror of the false comfort they bring - is what he went through. But she doesn't have the guts to ask him.
*****
It's all over the ship - Rush has found record of an Icarus-type planet buried in the Ancient database. In a year, they'll reach it. In a year, they can go back to Earth.
In a year, Camille can be with Sharon. Really be with Sharon - no body switching, which is itself like a dream, giving her the taste of a life she can't cling to. She's always forced to give it up at the end, to wake up to the lonesome desperation of her reality. But this news changes everything! Her separation from Sharon is not death. Or if it is, she has the chance to be reborn, to rise out of the ashes like the Phoenix. They all do.
Camille cries tears of joy when she hears the news. She hugs Nicholas. He pats her arms awkwardly and disengages from her as quickly as he can. He avoids her after that, but she doesn't care. She doesn't care about anything, except planning mentally, in minute detail, exactly how she and Sharon will celebrate in a year, when she gets home.
All around her, the ship buzzes with the noise of happy people talking and laughing. She doesn't know how long it's been since she's heard genuine laughter, and now the ship's full of it!
They even have a sort of party in the control room - with lots of hugging and crying. All around her, Camille sees smiles.
That night she doesn't stay up until midnight. She wraps herself in her blanket, lies back on the hard, alien bed, and allows her mind to slip through space and time into the deep dark landscape of dreams, where Sharon wraps her arms around her and kisses her hair and whispers sweet nothings in her ear until morning.
*****
These tears are not the tears of joy, but bitter, horrible, aching sadness. She wishes she could stop them, but they keep coming, sliding down her face in messy rivulets. She doesn't think she can possibly have any more tears left to cry, but still she weeps. She hates being weak, being emotional, but she can't stop. The tears just keep coming.
Her face is still blotchy and red when she goes to the observation deck that night. She doesn't know why she goes, but it's midnight and she's not sleeping tonight.
Never again, she tells herself. Never again to the deep sleep and the dreaming. Never again to hope and optimism and joy. Never again.
Nicholas is there, facing the window, when she arrives. He's watching space move all around them, swallowing them whole. They must be in the belly of the beast, she muses, or it's deep dark heart.
Turning at her footsteps, he looks genuinely surprised to see her there, but Camille looks past him, at the running colors and dancing lights of their faster-than-light flight that's still too slow for her to ever see Sharon again with her own eyes, to touch her with her own hands.
"Why?" she asks finally, struggling to keep her voice steady. "Why, Nicholas, why?"
He doesn't answer right away. Maybe it's the sight of her blotchy, tear-stained face. Maybe her unkempt appearance, her hair a mess, her clothes crumpled, the opposite of the cool, composed professional they're all used to seeing. Maybe it's her voice, and the shrill edge of hysteria in it. Whatever it is, he looks stricken, pale and speechless. He backs away a step. She follows him.
"Tell me why! Damn it, Nicholas! You owe me that much!"
He swallows. Holding up his hands in surrender. "I wanted you to have something to believe in," he says quietly.
"Look out there, Camille. Space is deep and dark. The people here are lonely, afraid. And they don't do anything but wallow in those feelings. They've forgotten how to move forwards."
He faces her, calm and serious. "I wanted them to have hope."
She feels the pain contract in her chest, icy and dark. "God damn it, Nicholas! You didn't have the right! You didn't have the fucking right to play with our emotions like that!"
"But we will make it back," he says, an infuriating calm seems to have settled over him, and he regards her evenly. "I don't know how or when - yet. But it's merely a matter of time, and of productivity. I was trying to utilize these people, make them better, more efficient. Isn't that part of your job, in human resources? You should understand what I was trying to do."
"Selfish..." she says, her voice coming out a raspy hiss. "It was selfish of you."
His eyebrows raise at her. He blinks.
"You didn't want them to keep blaming you, right? You didn't want to have to hear them complain, didn't want to hear about their homesickness, or their problems. You just wanted them to be pacified, and quiet," she's raising her voice, but she can't help it, "you wanted everyone to shut the hell up and let you get back to work!"
He thinks about that for a moment, and nods. "...Aye, there may be some truth to that," he admits, scratching the back of his neck.
Then he turns back to looking at the stars. And she's lost, there's nothing she can do, she can't even make him understand how much he hurt them.
It's after midnight. On Earth, she and Sharon would be asleep, curled together below soft covers, or cuddling on the couch watching a movie, or...or sweet kisses, warm touches, pleasure like flying above the clouds in the sky.
Longing pulls through her body so powerful and intense it's like a string being pulled taut, like a deep, reverberating hum. For a few hours, she really thought she was going home. She thought she'd be back there, in Sharon's arms. She thought everything was going to be alright.
Camille crosses the floor and touches his arm. They're not friends, after this. They can't be friends. They're not strangers, either. They're not enemies. She can't play the damsel in distress waiting to be rescued, and it's not his job to be her knight in shining armor, anymore than it's to play the evil, cackling villain. They're just people, and people are her job, people are her life.
"I'm not sorry," he says. "I would do it again."
She feels her mouth twist into a grimace. "The next time you decide to do something so selfish, Nicholas...I hope, for your sake, you don't get caught."
He makes a noise that's almost, but not quite, a laugh. He looks tired. It's past midnight, always past midnight when they meet like this, so maybe she's not the only one who hates going to sleep.
She remembers how great it felt to think, to really believe, for only a short while, that they were getting through this, that she was going home. She remembers the first good night's sleep she's had in weeks, memories of Sharon, smells of perfume and tastes of wine and sounds of wind, and water and all the things they don't have on this ship.
Camille sighs deeply. Nicholas isn't looking at her, and she leans forward quickly and kisses his rough, stubbled cheek. His whole body tenses in surprise, and he looks at her in shock but she's already pulled away from him.
"It was also very sweet," she says.
She walks to the edge of the corridor and turns back, brushing a few loose strands of ebony hair out of her face. She tries to bring back, once more, that cool, professional mask she's worn so well, for so long. She knows now they're in this for the long haul. She knows now she can't trust anyone, she has no friends. She'll need the mask, need to be strong. For Sharon. For all of them.
"I do understand the need to raise morale, Nicholas. And if you think of anything they're going to believe from you, after this mess, fine. But you better tell me, first. Lie to me again, and I swear, whatsoever happens to us, you won't make it back to Earth."
She's Camille Wray. She's intelligent, she's a professional, she's fully capable of being in charge of herself, and others, and she's going to do whatever she has to do, to get back to Earth. To get back to Sharon.
He studies her for a second. He seems to see something of that in her eyes, because he nods once, briefly.
Camille turns and begins the walk slowly back to her quarters, where she'll lie half-awake in a bitter, dreamless limbo until a time they will call morning.
She wishes she could trust Nicholas, but she knows he's already factoring this into his next plan, his next scheme. She'll never be his confidant, or his partner or even his friend.
Part of her wishes she didn't mean what she just told him.
But oh, she did.
FINIS