From Beginning to End

After the pilot had checked over her head injury to make sure she was okay, flashing her pupils with a penlight to check that she didn't have a concussion, he stuck on an adhesive bandage—or a stitch plaster, as he called it. Adena was then given a change of shirt to replace her burned one and sat her down with A.J. and Oscar.

"It's a good thing we have extra suits in case anything happens to someone's on board," Oscar was saying as he trying to keep himself sitting down while the zero-gravity was making him float in the air. Adena snickered and reached over to pull him down again.

"He's right," A.J. commented as he watched Bear as he tried to control himself in the weightless shuttle to get over to where they were sitting. The cosmonaut was over with the pilots speaking with Houston, their conversation lost on the other passengers since they weren't wearing their helmets or earpieces. "We'll need your help outside once we land; can't do that without a suit."

"Order me around like a dickhead and I'll beat you," Adena warned as she pointed at him challengingly. A.J. just smiled back at her, knowing that she was serious but unable to take her seriously when her eyebrow was slightly swollen and turning a deep blue and purple as the bruising set in around the cut there. "Oscar, put your damn harness on," she ordered finally, yanking the cowboy down for the last time.

Bear finally joined them and kept a careful hold on his seat to stop him from floating up like Oscar, reaching out to clasp Adena's knee as she smiled back at him in assurance. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"Just fine," she answered as she reached forward to take his hand in return, her hand so small in comparison to his large palm and long fingers. They contrasted in size and colour, but they didn't give a care about it. "Not off to the best start, are we?" she mumbled a moment later, glanced to A.J. next to her.

"No, we're not," he agreed in a soft voice, sounding as troubled as she felt. "But we're gunna do this, Adena. I swear, we're gunna save the world and go back home. We'll get you back with your Colonel, and I'll have Grace back at my side."

The fellow rid-worker gave a soft smile, appearing more feminine than the guys had seen in a while. "If we save the world, there's nothing Harry would do to stop her from marrying you. And he'd never dishonor her by refusing to walk her down the aisle," she assured, getting nods of agreement from the other two men. "If for nothing else, we'll save that planet because Grace is still standing on it, waiting for all of us to come home."

Bear smiled as he looked between the three friends that sat before him. "Never let you down yet, General. Can't start now."

Grinning from ear to ear, Adena grasped Bear's large hand in both of hers and gave it a tight squeeze. "Good to hear."

As the passengers of the shuttles tucked themselves into their sleeping bags for the 'night', Harry Stamper was sitting behind Colonel Sharp's seat, Watts having gone to catch a couple of hours before she switched with Will. In his lap sat the photo album that his daughter had given to Adena that morning, having discovered it as he was going to get his bag for a book he had brought along with him. Unable to sleep, he had been intending to read until he got drowsy, but as soon as he had seen Adena's bag he had opened it to see what she had brought with her that the NASA specialists had not wanted to clear because of its weight.

Opening the front cover of the book, Harry smiled at Grace's near writing on the inside; telling Adena to remember what she was trying to save. What they all were trying to save.

"Hey, Stamper, come up here," Will called back in a calm, low voice. Neither wanted to wake the other crew members, knowing that it was difficult to try and fall asleep when filled with nerves and floating in zero gravity.

Closing the album, Harry unharnessed himself from his seat and carefully manoeuvred his body up to the front of the cockpit, taking Watts' seat and staring in amazement at the view of the stars before him, the moon growing ever larger as they approached it. "Almost makes it worth it," he whispered in an awed tone, seeing Will nod out of the corner of his eye. He was thinking back to what Adena had said; that at any other time she would have loved to see the stars.

"What's that?" Will asked after he spotted the album in the other father's hand. Harry harnessed himself in loosely to stay seated before he opened up the front again, revealing a picture of the entire group of oil rig workers on their first day on the rig in China, all standing together on the Heli-Pad while a worker had snapped the picture from one of the catwalks.

Adena and Grace were standing together in the center, surrounded by the men that had grown to call their family over the years. Contrasting from tan and pale skin, they still appeared like they could have been family because of the resemblances they shared. "Gracie gave this to Adena before we left for the shuttles. It's…our story."

Flipping to the next page, Will smiled at a much younger looking Adena, her hair far shorter and her face rounded slightly with her youth. It must have been recent after she had begun working for Harry; the beginning of the story. Page after page was filled with pictures of the oil workers, together and alone. Watching as the pages turned, Adena grew more mature and into the woman that he presently knew her to be. He saw her after she returned from boot-camp, on her graduation, working on the rig in her dirty uniform and oil covered face.

"She loves the life you gave her," Will told Harry when the father stopped at a candid of Grace and Adena, the two woman sitting on the metal railing of a rig that was sitting on an ocean of bright blue water, the colour making Grace's eyes shine. Adena wasn't as tan and had a faint trace of freckles on her cheeks and nose, but she only looked a year or two younger than she presently was. What had stopped the father was that they were holding a piece of paper that had black marker on it, spelling out 'Happy Birthday Dad'. "And she loves you."

"Sometimes I regret it," Harry admitted. "Taking away the future that she could have had. But I'm selfish, and I didn't want to lose her to some university career or a wealthy man that would never let her visit us low-life oil workers. May not be blood, but she's my daughter."

"Doesn't have to be blood," Will responded as he glanced out the glass window of the shuttle, staring at the moon and vibrant stars. Glancing down when Harry turned the page again, four more pictures were revealed, this time of the crew in their daily lives, clearly while they were on leave from the rig. In one of them, Adena was sitting next to Oscar on a porch of what he guessed was a farm, each holding a beer in their hands. They were laughing at something off camera, and Adena had been caught just as she was glancing at the camera, laughter filling her eyes and making them appear so warm.

When Harry stopped next it was the oil crew standing in front of the hanger that housed the Armadillos, no one realizing Grace was holding a camera a couple of yards away. They were speaking with one another after they had gutted the Armadillo, making plans as they stood tall in the setting sun with their NASA jumpsuits on. Most had adapted to the style Adena and Bear used and had the top portion tied around their waist from working in the heat.

Adena was sitting next to Bear on a cleared table, the tools having already been put away. Will smiled fondly at the sight of her falling asleep against the large man, Bear mirroring his smile in the picture as he carefully kept Adena from falling off the table.

Even Truman was in the shot, standing with Harry and Quincy.

Below that picture was one that made Will truly smile. It was the group on the day they went up in the fighter jets, standing in a circle with their gear behind them as they were lectured by Chuck Jr. Only Adena seemed at ease with the entire situation.

"Did you know your daughter took so many pictures?" he asked Harry when he glanced up at the father that was smiling faintly.

"She always has," Harry confirmed. "When she was younger she used to try and get us together for group shots, but after a while she just started to take pictures to capture the moments as they were."

To further support his words, the next photo was a full paged image of Adena and A.J. They had clearly been goofing off, standing on open tarmac that Will guessed was outside the Armadillo hanger. Adena had jumped onto A.J.'s back and had one arm thrown into the air in some sort of victory celebration as A.J. tried to grab onto her legs before she fell off while also trying to maintain his balance. Even though it was clear she had taken him by surprise, A.J. was laughing up at her with his welding goggles left lopsided on his face.

"That's the guy that's gunna marry my little girl," Harry said after a moment of staring at the picture, seeing that both of his little girls got along well with A.J. Adena and A.J. had been known to have a rocky relationship, especially when Adena got more strict after boot-camp, but they still acted like a brother and sister would. It was only fitting for them to become indirect in-law siblings.

"When I first saw you and your team, all I could think about was how this could never have worked," Will admitted as he leaned back in his chair to look out at the moon, bright from the sun behind them. "But, over the time that I helped you all train for this, I realized that I was wrong. More and more, I came to realize that even though your crew acts immature or doesn't take something in complete seriousness, they make up for it in spirit and determination. I saw it in Adena plenty of times, and in you whenever you had to regain control of your crew whenever they started acting out."

Harry looked up to the Colonel as he was speaking, even as he looked away and out the windshield of the shuttle.

"He might be more the man for your little girl than you realize," Will finished.

"What about you?" Harry asked in an even tone, not sounding as though he was pressuring the pilot in any way, but still leaving a weight on Will's shoulders. "Could I trust you not to damage Adena? That girl's been through more in her life than she deserves-"

"I know," Will interrupted as he thought back to when she had told him how she hadn't cried at her birth-parents funeral. "A couple of days ago, we were talking about what we wanted to do, what we haven't done and may lose the chance to. She said that she wanted a son, and when I asked why she didn't want a daughter, she said it was because she was worried that being around men for so long had messed up her intuition in regards to kids.

"But I took her the night we were let off base to go and see my family, so she wasn't left alone at NASA. She made a promise with my youngest that she'd bring me home safe." Smiling in such a sad way, Will shook his head at her actions even if they were only in his memory and his words. "No matter what she's been through, she'd still make a perfect mother. And I'd be damned if I changed that in any way."

Meeting Harry's strict eyes, he could see in the soft blue that he had gained a respect with the father figure.

In the Independence shuttle, Adena had already woken up for the 'day' and had curled herself up in one of the free seats to try and keep busy. The munitions specialist had lent her the book that he brought while he was sleeping, saying that he was too nervous to focus on a book.

It wasn't what she would usually read; it was military based, telling of the struggles of a man trying to meet his father's expectations. She was quite picky in her usual book selections and had a habit of only choosing books with main female characters. It was a bad habit, she knew, and probably led her to lose out on some very well written books, but she couldn't help it.

She never realized how annoying the zero gravity would be until she was actually sitting, trying to remain comfortable, and flipping through a book as it constantly threatened to float away.

"You should be getting as much sleep as you can," A.J. said as he floated his way into the seat beside her, looking like he was having far too much fun with the lack of gravity.

"You're the team leader, dude, not me. Besides, it's hard to sleep when you're tits keep floating up," she added on as she thought back to Rockhound's question.

"What tits?"

Reaching over to smack his roughly, A.J. just laughed as he looked away from her for a moment, unable to stop from laughing at her reaction. He was trying to keep quiet since the others were still sleeping, with the exception of one man that was still piloting the shuttle toward the moon. Adena's smile fell into a frown when she thought about what was to come. There weren't enough seats in the cockpit of the shuttle, so she was going to be with Lev down in the hanger with the Armadillo.

It was a deep feeling in her stomach, a dread that seemed to grip her. It was almost as though, if she wasn't there, something was going wrong.

"Would you rather be on the Freedom shuttle?" A.J. asked suddenly, a hidden meaning to his words that had Adena frowning.

"Yes and no," she answered eventually, closing the book in her hands and turning complete attention to her team leader. "Yes, I wish that I was with the team I trained with and on the shuttle with my suit and other supplies. But…it was either this shuttle, or deep space. I won't let this weird fuckup get in the way of us finishing our job, and doing it properly. I'll help you just as I would if I was on Harry's team."

Pausing a moment before reaching over, Adena gripped A.J.'s arm tightly. He looked to her in surprise, having been thinking over her words.

"I never thanked you properly for grabbing me," she began again, smiling in gratitude. "Thank you, A.J., so much, for what you did."

Grinning out his quirky smile, A.J. nodded back to her. "Anytime."

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to drop off the face of the Earth for so long! That was totally not intentional and I am so sorry. It's great to hear that people love this story so much, however, and I just couldn't keep myself away from it. I watched the movie again—once more bawling my eyes out, mind you—and I got back in the mood to keep writing this story. Listening to the soundtrack also helps to give me a motivation boost and the scores are amazing.