Disclaimer: I do not own seaQuest DSV, seaQuest: 2032 or the characters.
**Originally, this story was written as a songfic, but due to the rules surrounding songfics on this site, I have taken those lyrics out. In lieu of them, I encourage you to look up the lyrics to "Winter" by Bayside as this story was based on that song, or to search the song and YouTube and listen to it. For this song/story combination in particular, I feel it is needed and am saddened to have to take the lyrics out of this here.**
Winter Angel
She couldn't understand why it hurt so much, why she needed to have him around.
No, that was a lie. Henderson knew why there was so much pain, she just didn't understand it. It all happened so fast. One minute she was about to die and the next…
Losing a fellow soldier was never easy but losing a close friend, now that was downright excruciating. Especially given the circumstances. Especially considering everything. Especially when she knew that it could have—should have—been the other way around.
Why should Brody have died so that she could live? Why did he have to be so damn determined to save her?
She shook her head into her pillow again, no sound coming out as her tears flowed. She'd lost her voice soon after the Captain came to talk to her. She found she had nothing new to say, nothing that would do anything but make it all hurt that much more. Nothing would bring Brody back, so why would talking make it any better?
It wouldn't.
And so she kept her head in her pillow.
He paced the floor of his room, forever marking the space in between the set of small lockers and the stairs to the door. Lucas didn't really know why he was pacing, of all things, but kept doing in anyway. It kept his mind off of the day's events. It kept his mind off of the somber mood of the boat.
One, two, one, two, he thought, focusing his mind on simply the task of walking and nothing more. If he thought of just that, maybe, just maybe, he could set all of this aside long enough to—
Oh, who was he kidding?
He stopped suddenly and cursed loudly, looking upward toward the ceiling. "Why Brody, huh? Why not me! Why not the one who started all of this! Why not Alexander Bourne? Why? Why…"
He trailed off into silence as every question of 'why?' brought him closer to a whisper. Sure, he'd seen death before but…
…it was never someone he knew. Never someone he was so close to.
He had never seen the impact so immediately.
Sure, Hyperion had been one thing. All of the seaQuest's crew was dead in a few seconds except for he, Dagwood and Darwin, but he hadn't seen the impact of it.
Even when they showed up back on Earth, he found it didn't faze him as much as it should have.
He needed to talk to someone. Anyone.
Well, not anyone. Not Henderson or the Captain. Not Tim or Ford.
They were already all dealing with it. He didn't want to have them worrying about him during a time like this.
He could have called Bridger… but he didn't know if he should have. Then again, the words of a father figure weren't exactly what he wanted to hear right now.
He sat in front of his computer and quickly typed in a sequence of keys. The Vidlink was brought up and was dialing.
He held his breath.
Maybe she'd answer… maybe she wouldn't. Maybe she wouldn't really know how to react. I mean, she knew. She had to know that they were all back. The whole world seemed to know.
He crossed his fingers as well.
The screen lit up to a nice, warm-looking home and a woman came onto the screen.
He didn't say anything, completely unsure of what to say in the first place.
"Lucas?" she asked, shock written all over her face.
He nodded.
"I'd like to ask you first what happened to the seaQuest but… I do not think that is why you called me."
He shook his head, hands shaking.
"What can I do?"
He let a beat pass before saying. "Listen?"
"Of course."
He told the good doctor everything.
Ford stared at the wall his desk was resting on. He stared at it mostly because he wasn't sure of what else to do. No one was on the Bridge right now, and no one would be on it until sometime tomorrow. The seaQuest was at dock, and there was nothing to do.
Nothing to do but stare at the wall and force himself to deal with this, anyway. After all, how could he help lead a boat full of grief-stricken soldiers if he couldn't face what happened for himself first?
He couldn't.
And so he stared, using the blank wall as a TV-screen for his mind, replaying his memories of the day and the one before that.
It'd all happened so quickly that he still couldn't quite believe it.
He was sure that if he walked down the right corridors on the seaQuest that he'd find Jim Brody's quarters with him inside, watching some ball game or playing poker with Piccolo and Lucas.
His fists clenched in a sudden wave of anger and frustration.
He couldn't be gone. He just couldn't. Brody wouldn't die like that—so quickly, so unannounced.
His head ached as it tried to wrap around the idea of not having Brody around anymore. He was, dare he say it, one of Ford's best friends. And now he was gone. KIA. Lost to the world.
Dead.
The word didn't sit well with him and he stood up and threw his fist into the wall, destroying the images of his memories that danced there.
Captain Hudson's hand let the pen fall before his mind did. Signing his name at the bottom of his report felt like signing away his life. He didn't know the crew too well but losing someone under his command was not his favorite thing in the world.
And now he had to figure out how deal with a grieving crew, a hurt crew. Soldiers or not, they were also people, and had every right to be angry and sad. He was, too, but he refused to let it show. He refused to let himself feel the extent of the hurt. That wasn't a Captain's place.
A Captain was supposed to run the boat, not clean up the crew's messes.
He knew it was total bullshit, but said it to himself anyway.
It was easier than trying to figure out what to do next.
Piccolo kept walking. He'd circled all of the decks of the seaQuest twice by now, and was going for a third time. He didn't know where to go. In the mess hall, he'd just see everyone being quiet, awkward and sad. There was no one on the Bridge. Lucas was in their room. He couldn't see the Captain, and didn't want to see Henderson or Ford or Tim or… anyone, really.
All he wanted to do was get out and get away. He couldn't take the atmosphere of the boat. He couldn't stand to see another person cry over this. It wasn't that he wasn't hurt by it at all—quite the opposite, actually—he just couldn't take it anymore.
The need to escape came to him stronger than the need to stop and grieve over Brody's death, and so here he was, walking the corridors of the seaQuest over and over again.
Eventually he made his way back to his quarters and found Lucas gone. He went immediately to his locker and pulled the door open, stopping to look at the source of his search.
He tugged the picture from the locker and held it up closer to his face, squinting to see the smile on everyone's face in the picture. It was from a few months prior, the first time they'd gone out anywhere fun since coming back to Earth after a ten-year disappearance.
Him, Lucas, Brody and Tim. All at a club or a bar—he couldn't remember now—and all smiling. Everything in this picture was okay. No one was sad. No one was dead.
He hated the picture.
The seaQuest went back into action after three days. Everyone attended the pre-sendoff memorial service, and they were all still quiet as they took their positions on the Bridge after it. When Captain Hudson came in, he did so with caution, afraid that one wrong move would set off a chain of emotions he didn't want to deal with.
When he approached his Commander, though, he found a happy crew—not like they were before Brody died, but not completely somber and quiet either. He found he liked the improvement and was even proud of it. To recover that quickly—
He stopped the thought. There wasn't any recovery yet, he knew that.
But they seemed okay, and that was more than he could have asked for so shortly afterwards.
He nodded his head at Ford who then turned to the Bridge crew of the seaQuest, giving them all disembarkation orders. And once again, the seaQuest was off.
END