Hermes

Let's watch a movie together, Beth had suggested, after that first time she'd come to him in the lab. She'd been showing all of the early warning signs of depression, and Chris had been worried about her. As her doctor, yes, but also as her friend. They had been a couple of weeks out from Earth; pretty early in the voyage. She was missing her family, her friends, and she was feeling the weight of having her world shrunk down to the same five people, the same cramped quarters and the same tightly regimented schedule, day in and day out.

She'd said she needed something normal.

A movie, some cuddle time, it would be like body psychotherapy, right? Good medicine. It could help her. He could help her. Make her smile again.

And oh, he never should have said yes. Should never have met with her in private. Should have known what torture it would be, as well as being ethically questionable. And in flagrant disregard for NASA's no fraternization policy. And Lewis's. But it had been too much for him to resist. And they'd kept it clean, really, they had.

They might not have been following NASA policy, but they'd made their own, and they followed that, instead.

Hugs were okay. Sharing a blanket was allowed. Friendly conversation, yes. He would put one of his arms around her waist, as they were curled up in his bunk. That was allowed. Reassuring one another. He'd massage her back, or her shoulders, if she was sore after a workout.

Nothing romantic, though. No kissing. Nothing intimate. No flirting. The arm that wrapped around her waist, carefully, must never accidentally brush anywhere… else. The temptation to pull her against his body, full-length, and grind his hips into hers, and… nope. They behaved themselves. Well, he behaved himself. Beth had never shown the slightest bit of interest in any potential rule-breaking activities.

She'd hug him, say good-night, and go back to her quarters when the show was over. While he, more often than not, would be badly in need of a cold shower. Which was, more or less, the only kind one could get, here on Hermes. Tepid, if one was lucky. So it all worked out, he thought, wryly.

And that was where they'd left it, for a long time. A really long time.

The surface mission, though. The fucking surface mission.

Losing Watney.

In the aftermath, at first Beth had tried to push him away; after they were safely aboard Hermes. She'd been Watney's ground partner; she'd been the one that had seen Watney take a direct hit. Carried away into the swirling black winds, impaled by their com array.

Days later, Chris had seen it for himself. When Commander Lewis had begun the process of figuring out exactly what had happened, she'd played back the uplink footage from Beth's EVA suit. Horrifying wasn't even a strong enough word for it, and he hadn't even been the one to see it play out, first-hand. As soon as the report was finished, he'd turned on his heel and he'd gone straight to find Beth.

But she'd coldly turned him away. Said she wanted to sleep.

Then they'd made their eulogy for Watney's funeral, back home. Beth had hovered in the background and said nothing at all. She was traumatized, he knew she was. Her neurotransmitter levels were in the toilet, after the next round of test results. Her dead-eyed countenance, frankly, had scared the hell out of him.

So he'd forced his way back in, tossing aside her protests that she was fine, that she didn't want to talk about it. Didn't need him to hold her hand. Bullshit, he'd said. And he'd held her while she cried it out. Listened, when she started talking, haltingly at first. Held her all that night while she slept, cradled against his chest. After that, how could he ever possibly let go? Back away from this woman, and pretend like he didn't need her just as much as she needed him?

Inevitable, he thought. No getting away from it. That had been the first night that rules had been broken. His arm hadn't stayed carefully around her waist. Instead, it had been joined by his other one, and they'd held her close against his heart as she cried for Mark. As they both had.

It had just added another facet to their already-complicated relationship.

Their need for one another had been acknowledged. No more plausible deniability. She needed him; he needed her. They were way past friendship, at this point.

And yet, nothing had actually happened. Not yet.

Chris knew that eventually, even as careful as they were, sneaking around, they were going to get caught. Lewis, or Martinez, or Vogel, one of them was going to figure out that he and Beth slept together every night, now.

Gotta be stealthy-like about it, Mark had quipped.

God, he missed that guy.

It hadn't happened yet, but it was just a matter of time.

Houston

"Mr. Watney," the reporter asked, trying to make herself heard over the crowd of people gathered there on the courthouse steps, "is it true that your petition to have your son declared legally dead was withdrawn by the judge, today in court?"

Richard held the document out in front of him, grinned at the cameras, and then, deliberately, slowly, tore it in half, without comment, as he made his way down the courthouse steps, smiling, without talking to any of the press.

Mindy was a little embarrassed to have Richard cooking dinner, in her kitchen, but he'd insisted. They made good house guests, even if Mindy hadn't really been able to spend very much time with them over the weekend, what with her crazy work hours and the fact that she kept to the odd sleep schedule of someone that lived on Mars.

She'd impulsively offered her guest room to them, when Caroline had said they would be staying in Texas to be on hand for some media appearances on behalf of NASA.

Ever since the summons for a meeting in the executive boardroom later that afternoon had arrived in her inbox, Mindy had been scrambling to get any possibly useful information compiled, just so that she could feel prepared. Still, it was a more than a little bit nerve-wracking to think that in a couple of hours she'd be participating in a meeting with the Director of NASA.

She didn't feel prepared for it, at all. And what would she say if Henderson asked her why he'd seen her at the funeral talking with Mark's parents? That could get messy, quickly. She had decided that she wouldn't lie about it, but that she wasn't going to volunteer any personal information, either.

Caroline and Richard were already familiar with several of the players; Annie Montrose had accompanied Richard to the courthouse that morning, as a matter of fact. And they knew the Flight Director, Henderson. They didn't know Dr. Kapoor, and Mindy had never had any dealings with Bruce Ng, although he'd apparently been drinking buddies with Mark.

Dr. Kapoor was currently collecting any and all project ideas on how NASA might be able to contact Mark, via any method that anyone cared to put forward, but so far, Mindy hadn't heard about anything promising.

"They'll throw something together," Caroline reassured her, over grilled chicken at dinner. "There has to be a way to contact him. Someone will think of something."

"A lot of smart people, there at NASA," Richard noted.

"Well, I'd like to think that I'm one of them," Mindy quipped, "but I'm pretty sure we'll have to wait for that probe to get a new radio out to him, before we'll get a chance to talk to him."

"Even if you're right, though, and it takes a year." Caroline said, smiling, as she was doing so frequently, these days. "Well, it's a lot better than never. Just sayin'."

"I just hope he's got the wherewithal to be rationing," Richard mused. "It's going to be tight."

"I'm pretty sure he will be," Mindy said, thoughtfully. "It'd be standard operating procedure. Plus they included the Thanksgiving box, in addition to a redundant pallet of rations. It should be enough to hold him for over a year. He'll pull through."

"Poor kid, I guess he actually had to eat the green bean casserole this year," Richard chuckled. "He's not going to be happy about that!"

"Nope!" Caroline shook her head, laughing, too. "Probably cursing you with every bite!"

"Wait. What?" Mindy asked. Richard's exceptional long-game for trolling was a new, heretofore unappreciated facet of his personality. "You didn't send that as his personal…"

"Sure did! And here I was, thinking that my prank had gone to waste!" He burst out into laughter once again.

Mindy giggled, too.

"Think he'll complain about it in his first message home?" she teased.

"Think it? Oh, I'm betting on it," Richard laughed. "First thing he says to us. Guarantee it'll be about the beans."

"He was still complaining about the cake, last email we got from him on Hermes," Caroline smiled. "That one was my prank."

"Yeah, but he blamed it on me!" Richard pointed out.

"And that, my darling, is why I am the master." Caroline informed him, with one arched eyebrow.

"Who the hell is she?" Henderson asked Dr. Kapoor, staring at Mindy in a very unwelcoming manner.

"Mindy Park, SatCon." She attempted to smile at him, not sure if he were being deliberately unpleasant, or if this was just his personality.

He looked at her, squinting, obviously trying to remember where he'd seen her before.

"Where's Bob? Shouldn't he be here, instead? Are you a director, or something?"

"He's pretty busy," Mindy began, looking down, "and no, I'm just staff."

Henderson frowned at that, as though he were now completely certain that someone was trying to waste his time by foisting some incompetent peon on him. She had to hold back a smile; her boss, Bob, was ridiculously busy with about ten other projects and didn't have the time or the inclination to take another role with Watney Watch duty.

Dr. Kapoor swiftly corrected him, anyway. "Mindy is the one that discovered that Watney was still alive."

"So she gets full rein to sit in on Head of Department meetings, now?" He shook his head in disbelief.

"Exactly how do you think this thing would have gone if she hadn't noticed?" Venkat countered. "And you're being an ass, Mitch," he pointed out.

Silence settled over the room for a moment.

Suitably chastened, Henderson apologized. "Sorry."

Mindy managed a small smile and shrugged, not willing to make eye contact with him again, lest he remember her from the funeral, or, less likely, from the photo that Caroline had sent to Hermes. She straightened up at the sight of Director Sanders, as he swept into the room and sat at the head of the conference table.

He didn't start in on her, right away, and she was grateful to get a few minutes reprieve to watch him mow down a couple of other department heads, first. They might have been used to presenting information to the head of NASA, but Mindy had never so much as spoken to the man before.

"They think he's dead," Henderson was saying, belligerently, to Sanders, glaring at him much as he'd glared at Mindy. "How much longer are we going to keep up this damned charade? The crew needs to know, already. I want to tell them. Today."

"Mitch," Venkat began, with a patient voice, "It won't make it any easier on them. It'll make it harder."

"And I don't give a flying fuck. The crew needs to know."

Sanders frowned at both of them. "And as we discussed, the last time this came up; when we have a workable plan to rescue him, we'll tell the crew."

They still don't have a workable rescue plan?!

Mindy was next, as Sanders turned to her and started throwing questions at her. He wanted the satellite coverage gap down to four minutes? She had promptly promised to make it so.

It would certainly be the biggest technical challenge she'd had, working in SatCon so far, but at least it actively involved orbital mechanics, and not copy/pasting images and emailing them around. She was already plotting how she would do it, too, as she listened in on the rest of the meeting.

She already had the coverage gap down to seven minutes by midnight the next evening, and with some more fine-tuning she was certain she could have it down to six within another day. It was a lot better than seventeen, for sure.

The images of the Ares III site were arriving in a constant trickle now, as the end of her shift approached, instead of in larger clumps as they had been.

The satellites were cooperating, but Watney certainly wasn't.

He'd gotten into the Rover he'd been working on, and just drove straight on, away from the Hab, and right out of viewing range for the next two satellite passes.

Damn it.

Where the fuck are you going, Watney?

Between juggling her calculations to predict where he was going to be, and figuring out which satellite could be nudged to be passing overhead as he got there, she had her hands full for the next few hours. And then, the rover stopped, but didn't turn around or head back to the Hab.

Nope. Mark had apparently decided to make camp for the night. In the middle of nowhere.

Fantastic.

The solar cells were unstacked and began to appear, in a semicircle around the rover, in groups of threes and fours, as the satellites returned the images.

She had to face facts; it was becoming evident that this was no ordinary test-drive. He had evidently been prepping for a long journey for some time now, and apparently he was setting off. For Schiaparelli? Already? It didn't seem logical, and really, he didn't seem to even be going in the correct direction.

She hated to bother Dr. Kapoor, but there was no getting around it.