Interstellar: Revivisco, Part II
Chapter 15: Malum

Just like the multiple times before, Cooper woke up with half of Amelia on top of him, but he wondered if she had done that on purpose. Her face was right next to his, facing down as usual.

We're definitely staying out here more often. He felt her stir against him, moving her hand to his face. "Good morning."

"Good morning." She rolled over and stretched her arms. "I'm so tired."

"Go back to sleep. No rush today," he told her.

"But we're going to see the baby." Oh shit! He'd forgotten. "We have time to sleep, though. No worries."

"Look at that," she whispered, pointing to the bag, how it had popped up more since the last time they were here. "Seven months. I don't know if I can wait that long."

Cooper laughed, standing beside her, looking in. "It'll go by pretty quick." He just hoped he would have more than 10 or 15 years with this one.

"I hope so," she replied innocently. "I've never wanted to hold anything so terribly in my life." She felt him put a hand on her shoulder.

After another thirty minutes of just staring into glass, Cooper and Amelia left for home. "We could stay here some, you know."

She shook her head. "Not now," she replied as they got into the small plane-like craft. "I like having you to myself."

Cooper smiled. "You've got me to yourself most of the time, anyway." They smirked at each other.

"I know. I just like being out there where we can walk wherever we want, do whatever we want... and no one is there to see it. It's just us." She strapped herself into her seat.

"It won't be just us for too terribly much longer." He thought about things that he used to do with Tom and Murph. When Tom was a toddler he used to put him on his shoulders on in the fields so he could see everything. Murph never seemed to care about that kind of thing.

"That's why I'm going to spend these seven months with you all to myself." He laughed at her remark. "You'll be too obsessed with her to even think about me."

"Now that's not true," he assured her, she smiled, "well it's not."

She's definitely not a romantic.

"Why are you staring at me?" she asked, grabbing his attention.

"I like to stare at you," he responded quickly, watching her smirk before looking back at her tablet.

"How do I not find that creepy?" Amelia said, not looking back up.

"Because you know it's a compliment." She laughed and put the tablet down. "It's also coming from me, Dr. Brand."

"I like when you call me Dr. Brand," she admitted as he held out his arm for her to scratch. "Combines back at their hub yet?"

"TARS sent for them to go back about an hour ago." He watched her long, elegant fingers glide up and down his arm.

"Shield's up?" He nodded. "Good. Just being safe."

"You know I've got it under control," Cooper explained, "The shield starts so far out that you can't hear the barking."

"I know, they're just scary. Those poor little cat-rabbit creatures are probably a light snack for those guys." Cooper chuckled at her concern.

"That's the food chain, Amelia." She huffed and quit scratching his arm.

"We've had this discussion before," she replied, looking into his eyes. "I know how the food chain works." She smiled gently, moving her fingers across his forehead, just how he liked. "I'm not completely blind to the ways of the world." Amelia smiled gently, continuing to move her fingers back and forth across his hairline. "I don't always feel strong," she admitted, watching him watch her, "but it's confusing to feel strong yet to need someone so terribly. I shouldn't feel that way... what man has ever said that to himself? It's something drilled into women as children, that you're not complete without a man by your side and that if you're too strong you'll scare them away, or that men like women who aren't as smart as them."

"I hope you know you don't need to dumb yourself down to please me. You're smarter than I am by far." She shook her head.

"With biology, okay, yeah I am, but there are so many things that you do that I couldn't be nearly as good at even if I devoted years to perfecting them." Amelia knew she could never pilot like he could, but that's what life was, watching others' skills and appreciating them, knowing that they appreciated yours. "We are different and that's why this works." Her hand moved to his cheek and she kissed him sweetly, quickly pulling away.

"We work," he whispered, kissing her again.

Breaking the kiss, Cooper leaned back, pulling Amelia down with him, her head on his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and she seemed content to stay there.

"Cooper, when the baby gets here, are you going to put us in the unit?" TARS asked, referring to himself and CASE. "If you do, know that won't be acceptable and I will retaliate." Cooper laughed.

"Okay, Hal, we get it," Cooper replied. "I'm not moving you into the unit, are you crazy? I've only locked you in there once."

"I know." Cooper and TARS walked along to the barn. "We've come a long way, Coop."

"That we have, Slick, that we have." Cooper looked up at the sky, admiring the warmth from the sun. "You like it here?"

"I don't have much of a choice, do I?" TARS stated.

"Those trees are just springing up. That fertilizer really is something," Cooper said as he came into the house, wiping the sweat off of his forehead. "We could have better, though."

"That doesn't sound chemical-y at all," Amelia replied, looking up from her stack of papers, "but, it's better than what was going on on Earth. I guess beggars can't be choosers."

He slipped off his jacket and put it into the closet. "I don't think heirloom seeds exist anymore, but hey... who are we to complain?"

She agreed. "We got more pictures today, by the way." Cooper rushed to find the tablet. "Kitchen island," Amelia directed him.

"This is so amazing," she heard him say. "She's just truckin' right along there." He put down the tablet and walked back toward the kitchen table where Amelia was, watching as she put her hand on her lower back. "What's wrong with your back?"

"It's just killing me. I don't know if it's because I was leaning over a microscope for an hour, but that's nothing new. I must have pulled a muscle somehow and just don't remember it, or I slept funny. I don't know." Cooper stood behind her and rubbed her shoulders. "God, that feels amazing."

"Muscle spasms at all, like before?" he asked, making her think back in time, not long after he'd arrived there.

"No muscle spasms, just pain. I can't describe it." She leaned forward, putting her head down on the table. "Maybe I should start using your desk to read all this stuff at."

"That's fine with me," he replied, still kneading her shoulders. "Come on, upstairs."

"Why?" Amelia asked him. She stood up, confused.

"'Cause I can't rub your back from here, and no back rub feels good when you're standing." She shrugged, agreeing, and followed him upstairs.

"Thank you so much." Amelia laid on the bed, face down, rolling up her shirt a bit. "Like, really dig in there, okay? This isn't a back scratch session."

"Will do." Cooper heard her sigh. "Anything on your mind?"

"For once, no," she laughed softly. "Thank God."

He woke up before her, as usual, dressed, and brushed his teeth. The sun woke him up every day, like a stereotypical farmer, but not Amelia, since she slept on her stomach, facing away from their windows.

Cooper decided to sit down on the bed next to her. She looked so peaceful, something that he was seeing on her more and more every day. She began to stir, and he knew she was waking up. "Good morning." She rolled over

"Do you know how nice it is to wake up like this? It's like something from a book," she said, cupping his face.

"You sayin' I'm Prince Charming, Brand?" She giggled, shaking her head.

"I'm not into fairytales, just good stories." Amelia sat up, eye to eye with him "I had a bad dream. Not a nightmare, but a bad dream," she said softly. "You were gone. I was here alone, again; back at the beginning."

"I wish you'd stop having these dreams. I know there's not much either of us can do about it, but I wish you didn't have to go through that." He knew that she probably dreamed about things like that more than she let on.

"But it wasn't real," she reminded him. "I know that these dreams that I have really bother you, but I talk about them. You don't talk about yours too much, Cooper. I hear you at night..."

"They're hard to explain. The crash, the black hole... it's all bizarre." She shook her head in disappointment.

"And you don't think I would try to understand the best that I could? You do that for me." Cooper wasn't sure how to explain it without sounding harsh.

"It would just be one more thing for you to worry about, and you're a worrier," he said, watching her face go blank.

"You worry, too. You just shield it from me, trying to protect me. Well, there are things that I want protection from, but this isn't one of them," Amelia replied, taking a large breath, exhaling loudly.

"Look, Amelia, I'm not tryin' to hurt your feelings." She got up on the other side of the bed.

"Too late."

He had never hurt her like this, not since outing her feelings for Wolf to Romily. He wanted her to trust him with her fears, but he didn't trust her too much with his own, it seemed. She could count on one hand how many times he had really told her what he feared and what he regretted, and she was sure that her fears and regrets were an open book to him. He shouldn't feel the need to not be vulnerable around me. I could handle it.

Amelia got herself ready for the day and quickly went outside. Good day for a walk, she thought, but not too far out. She kept her radio on her hip, just in case Cooper had anything to say.

Wolf had looked at her that way: young and weak. Cooper just looked at her as weak. She could cry if she thought about it too much. Maybe those two were more similar than she had previously thought. He's just going to try and make it up to you somehow and not really correct the problem. She knew how he operated.

How could someone so perfect be so flawed? she asked herself. Maybe that's what made him perfect to her: their similar journeys, their mutual respect for the other, the acknowledgement of their sacrifices. She didn't choose to love him, it kind of just happened.

"Amelia, come back to the house. I saw you leave." She tugged her radio from her hip.

"No," she replied. "You need to think about this."

"I think about it all the damn time." She huffed, stopping in her tracks.

"I'm not coming back to the house simply because you want me to." Amelia heard him sigh.

"I'll come out there if that's what you want. I can still see you. You haven't gotten too far," he said, his voice soft.

"No. Just give me a little space, please? I need to think." She had no idea how a statement like that could scare him.

"Alright."

"I am no one's damsel in distress," she said out loud as she walked back toward the house. You are a strong, independent person and sometimes you are vulnerable.

It was only midday and she knew that there was a lot of work to be done in the lab. "There's some rain coming toward us, Dr. Brand, Cooper," CASE said over the radio. She picked up her pace and was on the front porch in no time.

"Cooper, are you in the house?" she asked, the radio to her lips. She heard the echo coming from down the hall in his office. "I'm guessing that's a yes." She took off her boots and hung up her jacket before she walked toward his office.

"So you're back. How was your thinking time?" she heard as she opened the door. Amelia couldn't tell if he was joking or not. Cooper looked at her as she walked toward him. "Well?"

"It was okay," she replied, sitting in a chair in front of the desk. "I just needed to be alone."

"I hope that you're not mad at me," Cooper continued, trying to make her lock eyes with him any way that he could. "I can't handle you being angry or not talking to me. You know that." She looked up, finally making eye contact.

"It's not that I'm not talking to you, it's that you're not talking to me. Your lips are moving, but you're not telling me what's going on. You can't ask me to be an open book when you conceal so much of yourself. It's not fair and you know it." He watched as she prepared to continue. "And if you're scared of me judging you, I wouldn't. You should know that I wouldn't."

"I know that." She looked at him again, trying not to show the hurt on her face. "I'm sorry."

"Okay," she replied softly, reaching across the desk for his hand. "You are forgiven."

Cooper was happy to see a little smile appear on her face.

That night a plane landed two miles away from the house, at the edge of the forest.

"Release them here. According to their data this is where the creatures live." The crew, dressed in thick suits that completely encased them except for their eyes and mouth, released crates and crates of the beasts.

Looking out the window, watching the crew was a sight, and it brought a smile to her face as she watched the animals run toward the woods.

"Amelia won't know what hit her," Dr. Hart said.

Above the Earth, Endurance Mission

"It's hard leaving everything. My kids, your father." Amelia looked back toward Cooper, taking her eyes off of the green and blue marble below them.

"We're going to be spending a lot of time together..." she reminded him.

"We should learn to talk." She put her eyes back on the Earth, wondering what her father was doing right at that moment.

"And when not to," Amelia stated, trying not to look him in the eyes. "Just being honest."

"Maybe you don't need to be that honest," Cooper replied; through every little interaction he was able to find out a little bit more about her. "TARS, what's your honesty parameter?"

"Ninety-percent." Cooper seemed shocked.

"Ninety? What kind of robot are you?" Amelia suddenly turned to look at Cooper again.

"Absolute honesty isn't always the most diplomatic, or safe form of communication with emotional beings." Cooper noticed he had Amelia's attention again. He shrugged as he turned toward her.

"Ninety-percent it is then, Dr. Brand," he said with a smile, watching her try to suppress her own... unsuccessfully.