Across the Horizon

A Prologue

Time weighs heavy on Dr. Brand.

As far as Brand knows, Time is not a physical entity. Sure, it can be observed, it can be measured, and it can be bent...but Time it is not an object that you could hold and touch. A watch only allowed you to see time pass, not to harness it. Yet somehow, more than anything, Brand can feel it, and the more Time that passes, the heavier it feels.

She feels it in the stiffness of her bones, reminding her that she had probably overstayed her time in cryo sleep. She feels it blow gushes of wind in the canyons of her mind, as she tries to piece together her erratic and broken thoughts . Amelia feels Time weigh heavily down on her heart and mind, a force on her emotions stronger than Gravity.

Time. It passes with such complexity that she wants to forget it completely.

Floating through the vastness of the unfamiliar galaxy towards a once familiar man, it feels as if Amelia has infinite time. Infinite time to reflect on her past mistakes. The further she drifts from Gargantua, from Miller's and from Mann's, the more prominent Amelia's past mistakes become. The tragedies follow her like a shadow, hanging behind her every move.

There isn't one day that goes by that she does not think about her blunder on Miller's planet, and how she may have contributed to the end of the human race by messing it all up, by wasting time.

The more time passes, the less she thinks about Wolfe Edmunds. Well, this isn't entirely true. She thinks about him every day. However, Amelia's thoughts regarding Edmunds are no longer centered around hopeful reunions, but are rather conceived as an afterthought. She's grateful to him, no doubt. He was the love of her life, but that life had long ago ended as she watched the people she cared about get taken by the Universe. With each passing day aboard the Endurance, she realizes that she may very well be the last human left alive, including Edmunds.

The less she thinks of Edmunds, the more she thinks of Cooper. Ironic, considering she's literally drifting closer to Edmunds and further from what may remain of Cooper. Though she cannot stop her mind her mind from drifting to the latter.

She's angry with him. Furious! Angry that he left her to drift through an unfamiliar galaxy, headed to an unknown planet that may or may not be the key to re-establishing the human race. Angry, that he left her alone to bear the pressure of being the one responsible for all of mankind! Just thinking about it causes her to break down. Random Intervals in time, the gravity of the situation pushes her to the floor, crumples her into a ball and forces the tears as she gasps through each sob.

CASE, the only thing keeping her sane (if you could call her that), starts accounting for her mood swings. Months away from Gargantua, and months out from Edmunds, Brand's mood worsens by the day. CASE deciphers the mood swings as depression, and tries to counter her moods by making more conversation.

"Knock Knock," the robot tries to mimic what his former companion, TARS, might have said, though it doesn't elicit a response; not even a charismatic chuckle that CASE had come to associate with Dr. Brand in the past escapes her lips. Conversation becomes strictly professional and sparse.

In reality, the Endurance has been heading away from Gargantua for a total of twelve months, eight of them spent Dr. Brand had spent in cryo sleep. She feels guilty for already feeling so hopeless. Even Mann, for the coward that he was, lasted years before he succumbed to the weakness of human nature. Wasn't it her own ignorance that had doomed Romily to spend 23 years floating around in the Endurance, left to wonder if he would live the rest of his life alone. It seems fitting that she suffer the same fate.

So Amelia progresses on, letting herself slowly slip into insanity. She won't let herself be a coward, like Mann. Like her father.

She wants to be mad at both of them. She wants to curse their names and cast them to the wind. Yes, she considers her father's lie as unforgivable. Still, she wishes he was there with her all the time, holding her and telling her that everything would be okay. What Mann did was even more unforgivable, yet she finds it hard to blame him. She often wonders if she had a button that would send people coming her way no matter the circumstance, would she press it?

In a heartbeat.

As time passes, the images in her head of her father holding her, cooing her and protecting her, morph into the image of Cooper. He embraces her, holds her, tells her he's sorry and tells her that she never has to be alone again. She can feel his calloused hands as his thumb rubs soothingly across her temple. She feels his chest rise and fall as he holds her.

Amelia opens her eyes afters dreams such as this, tears rolling freely down her cheeks as she realizes that it merely a fantasy.

She briefly ponders if she may be in love with him, though she banters with herself, first asking how that could ever happen in the first place. Because of what you've been through together. Because he's smart and caring and SO brave. Because he saved you and made such an incredible sacrifice. She shakes off the thought when she realizes that there's no point arguing with herself, as she's never going to see him again anyway.