For disclaimers etc, please see part 1
While it wasn't what Scott had expected the rest of the universe to be like, he couldn't say that they hadn't discovered anything. They'd found a new universal constant, no man, or as it turns out alien, could sleep well on jury-rigged bunk beds.
But they made do with what they had. While they had just about survived the last battle, and taken a lot of the Hyperion stormers down with them, it was still touch and go, especially given the energy and effort they'd had to use to send the Seaquest back to Earth. They'd done their best to round up the survivors, and to bury the dead. They thought it best to bury them here because they couldn't swear when or where they rest of the Seaquest's crew would end up. It was one of the few times that Scott had ever seen Tobias unsure about, well, anything really. Tobias had always been one of those people who threw himself into things, certain that he was right and that, therefore, everything would be okay. But this time he really wasn't sure. It was a mixture of the size of the Seaquest, and the bits and bolts nature of the equipment.
Tobias had offered him the choice to go back with the Seaquest.
"The way things are here, now, this is going to be the only planet you will be seeing. I promised you more planets, but I don't think I'll be able to deliver on that promise. If you want to go back, I completely understand."
"I knew I was signing on for trouble when I came. We'll kick out the bad guys and you can teach me the physics behind the transporter as we go."
"I mean it. There might never be any way of getting back."
"I know."
It was different when not going back to Earth was forced on him, compared to when he'd chosen it, but he had already chosen it and he wasn't going to go back on that. He was still glad that they'd managed to find Lucas and Dagwood before they sent the ship back, he didn't want either of them involved in what would probably be a long war of attrition. Returning them had been a close run thing, they'd only found them the day before the Seaquest was returned. Ortiz had been less lucky. They'd only been able to check the island he'd washed ashore on a week after the Seaquest got sent back. It had been bad enough that it had taken them that long, he'd been making do with fish and not-quite coconuts, but to have to tell him that home was now out of reach, for the foreseeable future, that was worse.
Ortiz had dealt the news incredibly well. He'd taken to the people of Hyperion and was probably teaching them poker right now.
It had been organised so that Scott and Tobias has a room to themselves. It was still only a set of bunk beds and a washbasin but it was slightly grander than the dorms everyone else was staying in. Scott liked to look at it as a perk of command rather than just because no one ever wanted to be in the same room as their commanding officer.
Tobias had the bottom bunk as a concession to his blindness, and as often as not, they'd spend their free time sitting on it, talking and catching up on the time they'd missed out on. Despite Scott knowing now, and them having spent seven months here already, he'd never seen Tobias as anything but himself, even at his weakest points, he'd always kept up the illusion. Not that Scott wasn't grateful, a Hyperion stormer was the last thing he wanted to see in the morning, but he couldn't help but think that it must have been a drain on Tobias's energy, when he really needed it all to recover, which he still hadn't fully. And they needed Tobias on tip-top form, and Scott wanted to see him well.
Not that Tobias was letting on that he wasn't fully recovered, but Scott had learnt to be near Tobias at the end of the day, and any other time when anything strenuous was being undertaken. Tobias had kept himself upright using Scott's arm twice today, and his grip was like a vice.
"You could change back, you know, here, I wouldn't mind." They were lying on Scott's bunk, and Scott was stroking Tobias's hair. He did wonder if he could do the same if it were Stormer tentacles, would he even want to? But if it made Tobias healthy, then he thought he could try.
"I'd much rather not." Scott twisted around so he could look Tobias in the face, while his hand stayed where it was. "If any of them saw me, it would be … what's only weird to you is twenty generations of slavery to them. Plus, it's been years since I didn't look like this for more than a few moments."
"What, never, not even when you left the programme?"
"No. I always assumed that there were cameras."
"Oh there were, but only for the first five years."
"Only?"
"After that we realised that you preferred sleeping with your grad students to selling our secrets to the enemy."
"Oh." Tobias looked uncomfortable.
"Don't worry, they didn't make me watch. I only ever heard things second hand." Tobias didn't look any less embarrassed. "You know that I don't mind. Not now, anyway." He carried on brushing Tobias's hair, oddly thankful, for the only time he could remember, that Tobias was blind and so he couldn't see anything on Scott's face that might not agree entirely with what he'd just said.
"I'm sorry that you ever did mind, but I never intended to be a monk while I waited."
"I know that now. It was just at the time you didn't make it clear.
"Was there anyway I could have explained?"
"Yes." Even Scott had to admit he was being stubborn. "Okay, no, but there should have been."
"And what would you have done if I had told you I was an alien, I'm mean, after you tried to get me to see a psychiatrist and then forced me to. Would you have handed me over to the military?"
"No." Scott probably wouldn't have. He stretched out, as much as he could on this bed, decidedly uncomfortable.
"Anyway," from the tone there was no way that Tobias believed him, "you'd never have forgiven me if someone else got to be the first man on Mars." That much was true. If he'd never gone to Mars, he'd just be another missing person. Now, well, he was probably keeping the conspiracy nuts busy at home, but he'd left his mark, and could vanish with no work left undone. He'd trained the man they should have brought in as his replacement well, and he could handle everything without Scott.
"So it's not like we wasted the time. I can't be unhappy with how my career has gone. I do wonder though, how much tech did you hold back? I mean, there was the beam and your ship, but how much further did you push us than we would have gone on our own?"
"Not that far. Not out of any misguided sense of it being right or wrong, it's just not as much fun if you don't do the hard work yourself. I'm not going to say I did nothing, Earth's probably fifty years ahead of where it ought to be, but mostly I just stopped people going down blind alleys, wasting time on things that would never work."
"That isn't what you were like at NASA."
"I was younger then."
"Weren't we all." This wasn't what he'd imagined, none of it, Tobias, the aliens, being on another planet, the fighting, but it wasn't any worse than what he had expected his retirement to be like, and with Tobias, it might even be better.
The End
Author's Notes: I'd like to apologise to anyone who's been waiting for the final part of this, unfortunately, I lost the disk with the fic on from Christmas till Easter, and then I got writer's block. I hope you like the ending, and thanks to everyone who's given me feedback previously.
