Chris Beck
Mission Day 694

Beck knocked at the corner of the lab door, but Watney didn't stir. Beck decided earlier that he would not wake Watney just to do medical checks, so he was about to turn on his heel and leave him alone, but Watney's mumbling caught his ear. He couldn't make it out, but Watney was curled on his side, hands twitching against the covers.

Beck remembered the Missed Orbit scenario, remembered spending three days with this crew in the MAV. He knew everyone's sleep patterns, and Mark's was 'fall asleep wherever he is and never wake up.'

Now, it seemed like his body barely maintained sleep, despite Watney's insistence that his sleep was deep. One of NASA's papers said that in victims of solitary confinement, sometimes sleep patterns degraded. In other words, people couldn't stay properly conscious, but they couldn't actually fall asleep either, stuck in limbo. Beck would bet anything that that happened to Mark, that the nightmare he was currently trapped in was the most meaningful sleep he's had in weeks.

Marking 'sleep degredation' on Watney's chart, Beck tried not to think about what that actually meant. Days of laying half awake in the rover, staring at the ceiling, unable to wake up, unable to sleep, unable to think, unable to function. A brain so damaged it couldn't sleep anymore, couldn't be awake anymore, couldn't do anything but run itself into the dirt.

Something in Beck's chest solidified; he was going to do everything he could for Mark.

After a moment, he could make out Watney's mumbling. "I'm going back to Earth, back to Earth, back to Earth…" Was Watney awake? How did he not notice him?

Beck decided to quietly retreat out of the room before he found out.

—

Log Entry
Mission Day 695

I've spent the last few days on the floor of my lab, eating and sleeping, mostly sleeping. It's actually not my lab, Beck and I share it, but Beck doesn't have any more science and everyone's really respecting my need for privacy. The lab doesn't have a door but the crew seems to be avoiding the entrance, and any time they are around here they're super quiet. I still hear them, of course, but it's a nice effort.

Every time I wake up I feel pasty and confused, and I think 'maybe this time I won't sleep for twelve hours,' and then I do anyways.

The acute excitement of being not-on-Mars is wearing off. Don't get me wrong - I'm still excited, but I've stopped repeating it to myself every thirty seconds. It's only on a near-constant loop in my head, not a near-constant loop out of my mouth.

What I feel now is… fuzzy. I haven't really explored the Hermes outside of the lab yet. I mean, I doubt it's changed since I left. Beck checks up on me regularly, poking me with needles and prodding me and taking my blood pressure every thirty seconds. I can't summon the will to do anything but lay here in bed. I don't know what anyone is doing for science, because they're all sneaking around like mice. I'm just laying in my nest of comforters, drifting in and out of sleep. Frankly, I've been doing backbreaking labor for over a year and a half straight, I don't feel bad taking some time off. I'm just wondering when laying here and being on the edge of sleep is going to get boring. Beck told me that sleeping a lot is a side-effect of fucking destroying your body.

Not in those words; he said something much more smart and doctor-ly. Sleep cycle degredation, he said.

I'm going to talk to everyone who saved me, that's definitely on my list of things to do, but for right now I just want to sleep. I'm sure that people who spent three billion dollars and all of their waking hours saving me would want me to just take it easy, instead of compromising everything they did. Besides, I spent 549 Sols on Mars, I probably represent some sort of valuable Mars research all on my own. I'm sure soon enough Beck will be up my ass with medical instruments and attempts to study me, on behalf of doctors everywhere.

—

Mark Watney
Mission Day 695

Later That Day

Everyone is off doing something important or sciencey, so I'm floating around the 0g ship section like it's my mission to rediscover every single part of it. Everything hurts, but I have a bunch of drugs in me and I want to get reacquainted with the ship. I won't write this in a log since NASA probably would disapprove, but… being in 0g high is great. It's as comfortable as sitting in a gigantic squishy chair and you can move while it's happening. I've got a big stupid grin plastered on my face, I can actually feel it there.

It's not a large ship, so I make a point of lingering in every single uninhabited nook and cranny. The ship has lots of access closets and corridors. Some of those corridors are only small enough for one person because they are for maintenance. It's easy enough for me to find one under the hull and just slide in. It's just for an electrical access panel and a good view of the underside of the Hermes, but something about the coziness of the space makes me feel better.

I float there a long while, just looking at the Hermes. I'm glad to see this ship again. I'm glad to see the inky blackness of space, too; it's not the horrid red atmosphere of Mars.

Being in space helps you put your problems in perspective. Everything is small next to the vastness of space.

Eventually, I leave. I see the crew as I drift by doorways, and my heart leaps whenever my eyes land on them, but I don't linger. I'd love to stand at the door and stare at them - I do as long as I can without being weird. But… I don't want to talk to them.

I'm not ready to talk to them yet, at least outside of routine conversation. I've tried to talk to them, a little, but if I am in their presence more than ten minutes the conversation goes there, and I don't want that. I'd love to just sit in their company and listen to them carry on conversation with each other, love to just sit and listen to the sounds of their voices.

But I settle for floating outside the door of the room they're in, listening to the sounds of their movement or listen to them mutter to themselves about science.

Hopefully nobody notices me doing that, but I realize that I'm probably not going to get what I want here.

—

Crew
Mission Day 696

Johanssen and Beck were in the lab, Johanssen running Hermes condition checks while Beck ran 0g bacterial studies.

"Chris," Johanssen said quietly, "I don't mean to annoy you, I know everyone must be asking you this, but…"

Beck sighed. "He hasn't come out of his room since the other day, is anything wrong, is everything okay?"

Johanssen shrugged. "You're the only one who sees him, and you see him multiple times a day."

"Not for long. I just ask him questions about pain and he mumbles his answers before flopping back on the bed…" Beck leaned over the table. "He's a victim of starvation and his sleep cycle degraded on Mars. It's completely expected for him to be sleeping fifteen hours a day for a couple weeks."

"Yeah, but what about the time he's awake?" She asked expectantly.

Beck heaved a sigh. "I don't want to speculate on his condition, but… If he doesn't come out of his room soon, we'll do something about it, Beth. I promise."

"So he's not, like, going crazy in there?" She asked, a laugh covering how uncomfortable she was with the question.

Beck had no answer.

—

Chris Beck
Mission Day 697

"Knock knock," Beck said, standing at the corner of the lab.

Watney was dozing, and pried his eyes open at the sound of Beck's voice. "Hello Doctor," he mumbles, back to Beck, no longer even bothering to sit up.

"I have news back from NASA about your condition," Beck said, brandishing his tablet.

He groaned, and rolled over to face the doctor. "Fun fun. So how broken am I?"

Beck looked down, swiping through pages. "I suspect you already know. We can't come to any firm conclusion on the back pain, but we've ruled out broken bones and misalignments, so we're all betting on herniated disc, but we can't diagnose that on board. You've got osteoarthritis, which is why your joints hurt, and NASA scientists are going to have a field day figuring out how you got that. Nutritional deficiencies, low level, starvation, bone density loss, muscle mass loss," he swiped through a couple more pages.

Beck looked at Watney for a moment, considering his appearance. Stark cheekbones poking out of his face, tired eyes peeing up at him from under the sheets, face discolored and bruised. "I feel obligated to mention that, as a doctor, I have no idea how you're alive."

Watney gives a crooked grin.

He rolls his eyes, continuing. "Sleep disturbances, sleep cycle degradation - your circadian rhythm has lengthened to the length of a sol, doctors are gonna love studying that too…" swipe through a couple more pages. "Uh, they're concerned about infection due to the fact that you were isolated in what amounts to a cleanroom, but you were isolated with us before you were isolated on Mars, so the bacteria you were exposed to in the Hab is extraordinarily similar to the bacteria here, so they aren't too concerned…" More swiping.

Beck shoved this on the end of a paragraph, couching it in a casual mention to gauge Watney's reaction. "That's it, for now. They're eager for me to do a full psych evaluation, no matter how many times I've assured them you aren't going to go crazy."

Watney laughed a dry, humorless laugh. "Don't bet on anything yet."

Beck expected a 'what the fuck,' or 'we're out of the danger zone, aren't we?' Not… that.

He rolled his eyes. "Even if you are gonna go crazy, NASA psychiatrists are less than helpful at ten light-minutes away - Oh yeah," Beck remembered, swiping to another page. "And they think you probably suffered from radiation on Mars, but they have no idea how much. The Hab wasn't a perfect seal, and NASA decided that astronauts were exposed to a safe level on a 31 day trip, but said that 'levels for 549 sols would not be safe.' NASA, helpful as usual. However, they aren't exactly sure how much protection the Hab offered over time, with wear and tear, e.t.c…."

"So I'll die of radiation poisoning after all?" Watney quipped.

Beck sighed dramatically. "You'll experience low levels of radiation effects for 3-12 months. You're probably already experiencing them. Nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, abdominal pain, fatigue due to anemia, dizziness, headache, changes in consciousness, any of those ringing a bell?"

Watney nodded from his position on the bed. "Almost all of them, been happening for a couple months now."

Beck tutted. "The doctors at NASA won't like that."

Something leaves Watney's expression, and suddenly it looks distant and cold. "Will I live?" He asks calmly, too calmly.

Cold settles in Beck's heart. "If you were going to die from it, you'd have already done so," Beck reassured him. "It'll only get better from here." He was hoping it would appease him, but instead he just nodded as if it were of no importance.

He's is still exhausted, struggling to keep his eyes open. "Any word on why I'm so tired?"

"Well, radiation, but also the sleep degredation, remember? Basically, you can't stay awake, but you can't get real sleep either. When's the last time you remember sleeping well?"

"Define 'well.'"

"Uh, not waking up feeling like you didn't sleep in the first place."

Watney stared at the ceiling for a moment, exhausted. "Sol 5?" he laughed. "Ha ha. No, uh, before I got to the MAV? No, probably before the rover flipped…" Watney started muttering to himself.

Watney's muttering was really beginning to creep Beck out.

"Probably before Pathfinder lost contact," he said a moment later.

The cold seeped further into Beck's chest. His sleep cycle might have been fucked up for months. "That was quite a while ago," Beck says, working to keep his voice light.

Watney shrugged. "I'm sleeping now, so who cares."

Beck clipped the pen to the tablet, shaking himself off on the inside. "That's true. I'll let you get to it. Radio if you need anything," he said, standing from the chair he took.

Watney waved lazily, flipped back over, and pulled the covers up as Beck left.

—

Log Entry
Mission Day 697

Long-term space travel is really hard on a person. The Ares I mission received a lot of attention for this reason, because they anticipated that some never-before-seen psychological consequences of space travel might arise.

They were right, too. One of the members of Ares I, Michael Haber, got delusional on the way home, thought that he could just take a walk outside the Hermes without a suit. He was actually tackled outside an airlock door, and on all Ares missions since there has been a restraint chair in storage just in case.

The restraint chair, by the way, is exactly what it sounds like. Should someone crack like a gourd, we are to strap them into the chair for the duration of the mission. You basically get covered with so many restraints you'd barely be able to move, so that no one can break out. Once someone is locked in the chair they are not allowed out, no matter how sane they appear to be, because once they're in the chair we have to assume they're crazy enough to sabotage the ship. I do not want to be in the restraint chair. Well, it's more of a restraint recliner, it flattens so the person in it can sleep, but the point still stands.

The entire time on Mars I had this recurring nightmare that I would just get up one day and walk out the airlock, too.

I feel like the entire crew is just waiting for me to pull a Haber. I haven't really come out of my shell to talk to anyone yet, and I know I could reassure them if I just did that, but… Fuck, I just can't. They're here, taking care of me, and I'm resting, and that's amazing, but… I don't know how to talk to them. Or what to say if I could.

I wish I could just sit around them without talking, listen to them with no pressure. I think that every day. But I can't, because everyone is making it their job to pry things out of me. And I know, hiding and not talking to them is only gonna make them want to pry more, which makes me want to hide more, it's a bad cycle. But why is it my job to deal with all this shit?

I haven't spoken to anyone in years. Literally, years. Years I've been sitting in silence, with nothing my own thoughts. Now I finally have people to talk to but I don't want to say what they want me to say, and I'm reduced to hiding from them all over again. I can see them though, but I can't talk to them, the sight is fucking taunting me.

I'm going to just try to fall asleep again, forget about it.

—

Log Entry
Mission Day 698

I guess it took 6 solid days of 10 hours a day of sleep and 5 hours a day of being half-asleep for my body to decide I was done sleeping. Also, Beck is stepping down my pain meds, which means I won't be high as a kite anymore, which is probably why I was sleeping. It was great, and I needed it, but now it's time to get back to sobriety. Man, I haven't been completely sober in a while.

Also, it's 3:00, and my body decided to let me know sleep wasn't an option anymore by giving me a nightmare of the antenna stabbing straight through my EVA suit. Except this time, I was conscious as I listened to the MAV lift off, and the radio in my EVA suit go dead. It was horrifying. I don't know if unconscious brains can record that sort of information, but I damn well hope not.

I'll tell you what, it wasn't the pain that woke me.

I hurt my back sitting up ramrod straight from the shock, and then my back was excruciating, and I had to bite my hand to keep from crying out about it because I have no door and they would definitely hear. After that pain danced through my body like a fat drunk guy at a bar, I couldn't get back to sleep.

That dream rattled me. I feel like I'm vibrating. I'm tempted to go wake someone up just to make sure I'm not alone on the Hermes. But I know damn well I'm not, where would they have gone? I'd get up and walk around, except that my back and legs and front and pretty much everywhere is telling me that's a horrible idea.

It's not helping that this ship is so quiet. The engine doesn't make any noise, since it's just expelling ions, and these walls are well insulated because they are insulated with the vacuum of space, so the noises of the machinery are faint. Which I'm learning is not something I enjoy, because it's only increasing my temptation to go get up and make sure everything is okay. A quiet Hab is a broken Hab, after all.

The memory of the shut down Hab flashes in my mind. Utterly silent. Dark. Dead. Everything on this planet is dead.

I shiver, and thrust the memories away. I'm just going to lay down here, on my side, curl up, and try to forget about it. The shaking in my hands is going to make that difficult, but what are you gonna do. Eventually, eventually, I'll fall asleep.

—

Mark Watney
Mission Day 698

I haven't gone to sleep by the time Beck comes to check on me, four hours later. The shaking stopped a couple of hours ago and I got sort of drowsy, but I kept reflexively wanting to get up and check on the crew. I wasn't fully awake though, the time passing in 25-45 minute chunks. I laid here on top of the covers, reminding myself that there was nowhere the crew could have gone. My body didn't care.

"Are you awake?" Beck's quiet voice invaded my consciousness, peeking around the door frame.

I jerked back at the unexpected sound of his voice, and I know damn well that was visible. "Yeah," I mumbled, still staring at the wall. He didn't knock, probably expecting me to be asleep.

"How much sleep did you get?" he queried.

My response is flat. "Not enough."

Beck made a tutting nose. "I'm your doctor." How does he always know when I'm holding something back?

"Three or four hours, I don't know."

He starts fluttering about the lab in doctor-mode. "Why?"

"Had a nightmare, woke me up. Laid here the rest of the night."

"That's not surprising," came Beck's professional-doctor voice. "Since you're up, you should come have breakfast with us. It will do you good to get out of bed."

Now that Beck was here and I knew they didn't abandon me, I really didn't want to get out of this bed. You'd think after ten straight days in bed I'd want to get up, but the idea really didn't appeal to me.

It didn't specifically repulse me, either, so I sat up and groaned. "Okay, let me get a shower."

Beck waved his assent and left the lab.

I was alone in the room, and suddenly there was that anxiety again, fluttering against the inside of my chest. Something is about to go wrong.

If I was being honest with myself, I'd say the constant anxiety of being moments away from death on Mars did something to me, something bad.

But, I am not being honest with myself. I am employing the tried and true 'deal with it later' method of coping, my personal favorite.

I trudged down the hall to the shower. Sitting in the MAV before takeoff, I acknowledged that there was going to be difficulty after being picked up, and now I'm seeing what it is. They left behind Mark Watney, stable, confident botanist-engineer-astronaut. But… I really don't know who they picked up.

Who am I?

Near the end, of Mars, I felt dead. Like my body was on autopilot, and I wasn't the one inside it anymore. Like I was just watching myself from above. The feeling was coming over me again, standing in the hot shower. The temperature of the water felt muted, as if everything had been turned down. Mark's not in right now, come by later.

The ten minutes of Hermes shower water ended too soon. I felt myself towel off, avoiding looking at myself in the mirror. I brush my teeth until my gums bleed, and then I keep brushing some more, because I haven't brushed my teeth in two years and if I have a cavity there is jack shit we can do about it on the Hermes.

I came downstairs to find everyone already seated, although they hadn't started eating yet. "Nice of you to finally join us," was Lewis's dry retort.

I know what kind of response a dry retort calls for. Time to bust out my whiny voice. "Beck made me do it. I'd still be in bed if it wasn't for him."

"You've been in bed 10 days man, you gotta get up sometime," Beck admonished.

"I could sleep ten more days," I admitted, feeling my lower spine. I put my hands against it, rubbing, as if that would relieve anything. "It was just nice to wake up for once and not have anything to do." I'm exhausted, thank god the rec room is in 0.2g.

"Yeah, we only were assigned scientific work for one Ares trip, not two, so some of us have already finished all the assigned work," Vogel said.

"It's Vogel," Johanssen supplied promptly. "Vogel has finished his work, and has been keeping your flowers alive. Martinez has taken over your engineering duties, since Martinez doesn't do anything."

"So same as usual?" I quipped. Martinez's eye roll made me feel at home.

I turn my eye to Vogel. "You didn't kill my flowers, did you?"

"Your flowers are still alive, despite my ministrations," Vogel said in his thick accent.

Martinez, however, had something else on his mind. "Johanssen, you can criticize real engineering when you become a real engineer."

Ah yes, the time-honored software/hardware debate. Hardware guys are pretentious because they're the ones making a physical thing, software devs are pretentious because without their code the physical things wouldn't work. Hardware guys consider themselves the real engineers (that's me and Martinez) and software devs consider themselves artists who paint with code.

Johanssen scoffed. "Whatever, I don't need this. It was my code that let us go save Watney."

Martinez was quick to retort. "It was my piloting that got him on board!"

"What?" I asked, confused about what Johanssen said. Why would they have needed code to save me? Well, besides the sysoping. It didn't sound like they were talking about her routine mission duties.

"We…" she looked at me with new eyes. "Didn't NASA tell you?"

"Tell me what?" I said, putting the silverware down. My heart sank, in exactly the way it always did when NASA fucked up.

Wow, there is a 'way my heart always sinks when NASA fucks up.' When did that become a part of my life?

"Is there any way we can save this conversation for later?" came Beck's imploring voice. "This is only his second time out of bed."

That didn't inspire me. God fucking damnit, NASA. "No. What didn't NASA tell me?" I can feel my face already turning sour and pissy.

Everyone looked to everyone else, wondering who would take the bullet. Lewis put her head in her hands, clearly tired, and spoke. "The maneuver to swing around earth was proposed by an engineer, Rich Purnell, while they were working on Iris 2. They originally intended to send it to you, as you know. They proposed it to Kapoor, Sanders, Bruce, the whole rescue-Watney team." Her voice turns hard. "The motion to do it was denied. Someone snuck it to us, I believe Mitch, in a file disguised as a photo. We committed mutiny by executing it. NASA pretended it was their idea to the public."

Johanssen joined. "Yeah, I had to take down half the computer so that they couldn't override Vogel's course. By doing it we forced NASA's hand, so they sent Iris 2 to us and we got to come back for you."

"You forced NASA's hand?" I asked tonelessly.

On the one hand: Go team! Screw NASA, fuck those guys.

On the other hand: "You could have died!" I find myself yelling, standing. "What if they couldn't get the Taiyang Shen to you!?"

Johanssen immediately covered for the team. "It's not like we surprised them. They had over a month of lead time once we altered the course -"

I pinch the bridge of my nose, breathing hard through my teeth, and she falls silent. I'm suppressing the urge to throw something across the bridge. Now that I'm back with civilization, I can't just have a temper tantrum and storm around the Hermes and throw things off tables like I usually do.

"I'm glad you came back for me," I said harshly, trying to empathize with their situation, "But…" Our pre-flight emotional training echoed in my mind. Acknowledge their situation. Don't judge. I'm pinching the bridge of my nose, still. "But I wouldn't want you to die rescuing me!"

"The risks were the same, mutiny or no mutiny," Johanssen insisted. "They had so much warning that it was ridiculous. They already had authorization for the Taiyang Shen. All they had to do was change the payload and make Iris 2 not a crash-lander. We were actually making their job easier."

There's a ridiculous double standard in my head; I get to disobey NASA and disassemble the water reclaimer whenever I want, but they don't get to move an inch without NASA's command. And I know why it's there: I don't care if I die, but I care if they do.

But I didn't die. They didn't die. Nobody died. Johanssen's right; mutiny or no mutiny, it's the same maneuver.

"I was terrified when I heard you were coming back," I admit angrily, now wringing my hands, looking up at them. "I was thrilled, because, duh, but I was terrified. I know the Hermes could break down. My life isn't worth all of yours. And now I find out it was mutiny, so you might not have gotten the resupply…"

"The ship is doing fine," Lewis said firmly. "We are having routine maintenance problems, and Vogel and Martinez are handling them spectacularly. We are planning to get back to Earth without even needing to do any more maintenance."

I gave her a flat look. "In my extensive experience with unplanned space travel, there is no such thing as a plan that survives first contact with the enemy."

They all look highly disturbed at that. Afraid. Good, they should be afraid, this shit's terrifying.

New Mark Watney Personality Trait: Jaded.

I float up the rec room ladder, leaving them to their horrified expressions.

—

Crew
Mission Day 698

The comment Mark left them with was unsettling, sitting heavy like lead in their stomachs.

"He's right," Johanssen said heavily. "Something else will probably go wrong."

Lewis shrugged. "We can't do anything but handle problems as they arise. NASA has sent us all the information we need to prevent things. There's nothing more we can do."

After a moment of silence, Martinez "What was that about? We did that to save his life, you'd think he'd be thanking us."

"You really don't know what that's about?" Lewis asked quietly.

Martinez rubbed his forehead, deflating. "I do. But you'd think since it was already successful, he wouldn't be mad."

Lewis shrugged, nonchalant. "We rescued Mark successfully. I still feel guilty."

Martinez looked up uncertainly. "I don't want to pile on, Commander, but… that's different. We actually did cause damage leaving Mark behind. But our turning back for Mark hasn't caused any damage!"

"I find it amusing you'd say that," Beck threw in, "since you're the one with marital problems because of our change of plans."

Martinez's face turned defensive. "That's not the same thing as a year and a half alone on Mars. Not at all."

"Space travel has not insignificant psychological effects," Beck reminded him. "Effects that we are all suffering from, even if we're not talking about it."

Martinez looked up. "The effects of Mark's death were worse."

"But he isn't seeing it like that. He's just seeing the damage it caused us, not the benefit. That's what guilt does."

Martinez leaned back in his seat, rubbing his face again. "I know, I know."

"So I guess he's gonna be this way, huh," Johanssen said after a moment.

"What?" Martinez asked, thinking she meant him.

"No, Mark," she said. "I guess he's gonna be this way…" she trails off.

"Just give him some time," Beck assured. "We're all anxious about him, about the mission, jumping to conclusions, but we can't do that to him."

Lewis sat back. "Beck's right. I know he's our mission, and now keeping everyone intact until we get home is the mission, but nagging after Watney won't help. Just like with the ship, we'll handle problems as they arise."

They wrap up in the rec room, head off to their work.

—

Beth Johanssen
Mission Day 699

Johanssen walked into the Rec room to find Watney standing in front of the window, watching Mars fade into the distance.

They had all caught him doing things like this by now, standing in corridors or outside doorways staring into the distance. His ability to notice whether or not they were there seemed patchy at best.

But Beth didn't think anything good could be going on in his head, with his eyes fixed on Mars like that. She didn't know what she was going to say, but she couldn't leave him like this.

"Watney!" She called across the room.

He gave no response, still staring out the window. Well, that's not unusual, ever since he got back his ability to zone out had multiplied a hundredfold.

Johanssen bounced over to him. "Watney," she said, gently shaking his shoulder.

He gave no response again, and she began to get a little worried. "Mark?" She gripped his shoulder hard, speaking loudly in his ear.

He started, jerking away from her suddenly, eyes roving across the room until they landed on her. "What?" he asked, panting.

"I was going to ask if you wanted to come hang out with Beck and I," she said doubtfully.

She could see his answer in his eyes before it even happened.

"No, uh," he said, rubbing his neck. "I'm exhausted, big surprise. I think I'm gonna go take a nap."

She didn't think it was a lie, exactly, but she could sense the rejection in the words and it stung nonetheless. "If you want company," she began to say.

He was already floating up the rec room ladder. "I know where to find you," he finished.

As soon as he was gone, Johanssen turned to the view he was looking at. The red planet.

For a spiteful moment, she thinks 'why the fuck did you take Mark from us?'

Then she remembers that it's them who left him there, it's her who wasn't close enough, it's her who didn't warn him in time, her who didn't catch him.

The image of him flying into the darkness flashes in her mind. She imagines him landing in the darkness, waking up alone in that Hab, all alone. They abandoned him there.

Standing alone in the hallway, tears leak from Johanssen's eyes.

—

Mark Watney
Mission Day 703

Escaping Mars is supposed to be great.

But I don't feel so great, hauling my sorry ass out of bed at 7:00 to go get breakfast with everyone. I tossed and turned in my sleep all night, and all I can remember from my dreams are the howling winds of Mars and the desolate sight of a bunch of frozen potatoes in the martian night, like still images. It doesn't make for a cheerful morning.

Dragging my sorry ass through the shower, it strikes me as odd that I'm not hungry. I sort of feel empty inside, physically, in my gut (and in my chest, like usual) which means I should eat, but the will to eat just isn't there. I'm starving half to death, shouldn't I be more excited about food?

I brush my teeth, trying to avoid looking at them in the mirror. Toothpaste is one of the first things we ran out of, and while NASA did medical tests for people with good dental histories (i.e. people who won't get cavities), not brushing your teeth for a solid year and a half eventually yellows your teeth. Combine that with the terrible haircut and skeletal frame, and what I see staring back at me in the mirror looks more less like Mark Watney and more like a deranged homeless man.

I don't want my teeth to be the color of a smoker's nails, but no matter how furiously I brush I can't remove that in a day. Fuck this.

I throw the toothbrush down in the sink, and watch it clang to the bottom. I trudge back to my room, not bothering to shave today. I'm barely growing any facial hair, something about starvation reducing nail and hair growth or some other medical shit. I used to love my own five o' clock shadow, but now I'm just glad I don't have to perform the tedious task of shaving every day.

I grab some more identical NASA clothes (Johanssen's) and don them. In the mirror, the clothes hang off of me like rags. I look like shit, and shame pools in my gut over it. I would wear baggier clothes, but I know baggier clothes just make everything worse. I throw on a Beth Johanssen sweatshirt and some heavier weight pants, and it makes it look less like rags and more like pajamas.

My eyes focus in on the NASA logo. Fuck NASA. Fuck all of this.

It's time to go eat breakfast, so I bounce over to the rec room and take my daily slow climb down the ladder. I am not strong enough to catch myself when sliding down anymore, so I have to climb the last few steps and take it slow. Just another idiotic thing I have to deal with because of Mars.

The rest of the crew sleepily comes in and eats breakfast, and I can't bring myself to do anything more than push my eggs around the plate. I never liked rehydrated eggs all that much, but hey, not potatoes.

I can see that Vogel is still eating sausages every morning, and I'm appreciative of that tiny slice of normalcy.

This ship supposedly has a heating problem, but I would swear it's too cold. My toes are curling in to hide, and I'm glad Beck left some of those hospital socks for sick people in my lab-bedroom. I don't have an EVA suit to regulate my body temperature anymore, and I'm not alone in the building so I can't set the temperature to whatever I like.

I force another mouthful of eggs down my throat. They are slimy and unappealing.

They're making conversation about the day, but I'm not really listening.

Every morning on the Hermes every crew member is supposed to report for breakfast, where everyone states their goals and planned activities for the day. The schedule is premade by NASA, but we have to verify it daily to account for unexpected changes and adjustments. NASA intentionally overloads this schedule to prevent laziness or boredom or existential thoughts. But, they didn't provide enough materials for 2 Ares missions. They've tried all kinds of mathematical gymnastics to come up with more but, alas, there just aren't enough materials on board.

"Watney?" comes Lewis's questioning voice. Right, my turn. What am I going to do today?

I look at Mars out the window, 16 days away. "Rest, recover, e-t-c," I trail off, knowing that they won't assign me any work. Lewis gives me a sideways look, but doesn't say anything more. She dismisses the crew, and everyone gets up, including me.

Very cleverly, I act like I have a purpose until Lewis leaves the room. I want to hang around in front of the giant window.

Once she leaves, I just sit in front of the view of Mars. It's still so enormous, even though it's 16 solid days away. Within 200 days it'll be a pinprick in the sky, and I'm never going to see it again.

The image looks like any you might get when Googling Mars, but something about the reality of the sight captures me. Nothing can compete with the richness of things seen with your own eyes. The thin orange haze around the planet that is made up entirely of red dust and rock, and my eyes capture it with incredible detail. The red planet, desolate and lifeless once more.

Something in me pulls for the planet. Honestly, something perverse in me is going to miss it. I signed up to be an astronaut because I wanted to see the stars. I was born in the nineties, not the year 3000, so the only planet I can come see is this red shitty one. I settled. I am the modern explorer, charting new and unknown terrain for the human race.

There's something ethereal about being on another planet. I hate that planet, that particular planet, but at the end of the day, the vast horizons still inspire something inside of me, the same thing that's inside all of us.

I stare at Mars, watch it fade ever so slowly into the distance.

—

Crew
Mission Day 703

No one can ignore the way Watney looks today. He's hunched over his eggs, taking small bites, and they would swear he doesn't look thrilled about the quality of the Hermes food. His face is drawn, and there are bags under his eyes. Nobody says anything though, focusing on the routine they are trying to reestablish.

"All right, report," Lewis says.

Vogel starts. "Continuing Mark's botanical experiments. I believe today is just plant maintenance, so it is a light day. I will spend the rest of the day engaged in a productive hobby."

It is ship policy that all crew members spend at least 8 hours a day being productive, filling the time with productive hobbies if there is no work to be done, because being engaged in meaningful work is the difference between thriving and depression.

"Johanssen?"

"Running reactor sims, measuring the rate of decay to make sure it holds steady, performing tests on all the Hermes components with a focus on the vanes to make sure they hold their rate of decay…"

"Beck?"

"Continuing to track Watney's condition, reading the papers NASA sent me, tracking everyone's health on board for…" he goes into a long winded medical explanation.

"Martinez?"

"Maintaining the outboard electrical…" Martinez, too, goes into some long winded Hermes explanation.

Everyone's eyes turn to Watney, who doesn't look up from his food. It doesn't appear that he's even listening to the conversation.

"Watney?" comes Lewis's questioning voice.

Watney looks up, a little startled, but then looks out the window. "Rest, recover, e-t-c," he trails off quietly.

It's hard for everyone not to look at Watney with worry, his gaze still fixed above everyone else and out the window. It's not hard to guess what he's staring at.

"All right, dismissed," Lewis says. Everyone dumps their dishes in the bin and, with long looks at Watney, leave the room.

—

Mark Watney
Mission Day 705

Another rousing morning, starting off with a nightmare about Mars and me jerking awake in a cold sweat. Something about the dead crops again, I think.

I'm never going to forget the sight, the green plants and rich dirt against the harsh and dead martian night. It will haunt me forever.

It's comfortably warm in the botany lab. The heat lamps are pointed towards me, and I'm curled up in a nest of blankets. The clock says that it's 6:00, which is actually not too dreadfully early. Alarms go off at 7:00 and everyone is down in the rec room to eat by 8:00.

We're the only people on this ship and all the lights are artificial, but even here 6:00 is too fucking early to wake up.

I'm 'recovering,' so I have no alarm to wake up with, no schedule to keep, but I find myself keeping to their schedule anyway. There's just not a lot else to do. You'd think I'd be all over my personal effects, but no. I'm not interested in listening to any of my music, or watching my movies. I will at some point, because duh, but the urge hasn't quite struck me yet.

That leads me to my next thought. I was hoping I'd be able to get on this ship and just go back to being Mark Watney, but it's not panning out that way. I knew there would be some friction, but it's more than that. I'm just not the same fucking guy anymore. Before, I laughed a lot, I joked a lot, I was always annoying someone. I was chosen for the mission in part due to my 'outgoing nature' and my 'determination to make everything lighthearted,' according to my psych report.

Since I've gotten back, all I've done is lay around the Hermes, look out windows, and fail to make small talk before fleeing to somewhere where I won't have to do that. I lurk a lot, rifle through things, read the Hermes reports, but I don't actually do anything.

Where it gets really weird is that I had an urge to listen to Lewis's music yesterday when I was bored. I didn't give in, of course, but it was fucking weird. It's like my personality is still how it was when I was on Mars, set to equal parts depressed sulking and existential terror.

I'm banking on it being an adjustment period, like I've got to acclimate my subconcious to the fact that I'm not alone on that hellscape anymore. Yeah, brain, there are people to talk to and things to do now. There's even a data dump that can fit music if I throw a fit to NASA. You don't have to wander around like a crazy person anymore.

At least I'm emailing my parents long, detailed emails every day. I'm not having trouble talking to them, because it's always easier to text then it is to talk. I've always been a momma's boy, too. Just like on Mars, I'm holding on to those emails, rereading them every day. I can't wait to be home.