Author's Note: From StarTraveler, "...what if Tom was selected for the trials instead of Jeter and when things go south I'd love Rachel's thoughts about how she feels about him her despair that he'll likely die". See End Notes for more information.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
They weren't supposed to be so feverish. They weren't supposed to show the middle stage signs of the virus. They were supposed to be better.
But like all things in the world, what is supposed to happen, and what will happen are two highly different things.
She watches them languish, and all she can think is that her greatest achievement thus far would end in total failure, costing the lives of six more souls, six more brave and honest and good people.
Her failure is going to kill him.
She had protested his involvement - hell, they all had - but in the end he had fallen back to that stubborn, self-sacrificing nature of his and bulled his way into the trial. She'd nearly begged him to rethink his choice, to remember that he was the captain, that he had more responsibilities to his crew than to humanity at large, and he was needed more than any other man or woman on the ship.
That went about as well as one would expect.
So now she watches behind a panel of plastic, surrounded by a pressurized suit, as his stern, kind face is coated with sweat, and his lips move with words she cannot comprehend; he is in delirium and it breaks a part of her she didn't know existed. This man...he is strength personified, he is unwavering and passionate, a fixed point they all revolve around, yet here he is, suffering for her hubris, suffering for her crazed need to be right about something that could save millions.
He is suffering because she was wrong.
They are all of them - The Six as he calls them - in pain, but his torment twists something deep within her, something she was sure couldn't exist, not because she is a cold woman but because she simply didn't have time or room in her life for such an emotion. Every time his lips move to speak words she doesn't want to understand, every time his fingers ghost over her arm when she changes his meds, every time his eyes close and for a second they are all certain he has finally succumbed; these sharp, bladed moments rip into her, bringing on an agony she is fighting, but losing to.
If he dies, he will take with him the part of her that drives her doggedly to the cure.
If he dies, it will kill her.
She realizes that too late, realizes her mistake in quantifying her emotion as simply respect. She has put a man - a great man, an extraordinary man, a beautiful man - in a sealed room with a virus designed for one thing, and it is certainly doing its job. She is killing him for her pride, and she feels the weight of it in her shredded chest, not just because he is the captain, but because he is the one her heart is bleeding raw for.
She doesn't know if it is love, but it pounds a white hot nail ever deeper in her chest, in her mind, in her soul with every ragged breath he takes.
He is dying for the highest cause.
She is dying from his sacrifice.
And she knows it is all her fault.
Author's End Note: I wanted to say thank you again to IfUKnewUCouldNotFail and StarTraveler, as well as thank you to newer reviewers lizb1813, vampoof94, and AtoZee.