Chapter Six

Entry 145

The Starship: Seattle Grace
Destination: The Colony World of Homestead II
Status: Autopilot
Crew: 258 asleep
Passengers: 4,998 asleep, 2 awake
Year: 3487
(38 years to go...)

ENTRY 145:
This is Mark Sloan, passenger 1498 on the Seattle Grace. It's been two years now. April has just come around again. Four months since Lexie found out I woke her up. I guess I'm making this entry because I feel broken. I don't know quite how long I can go on if she doesn't talk to me again. I wish I could just see her smile. Everything was fine so I didn't see it coming, I feel... like this is all my fault. I don't deserve her. I deserve for her to ignore me for the rest of her life. But it hurts. And I'm angry.

He was standing in the elevator, heading down to the cafeteria for lunch. Everything was running so smoothly, and then it wasn't. The lights flickered red, then a hidden alarm began sounding all around him. The floor shuddered to a fault and he fell flat into the back wall. The impact sent pain up through his spine and he felt the bruise already forming. Mark rubbed his head and looked around him, the elevator wasn't moving now at all. He was stuck. He wasn't exactly sure how far down the elevator shaft he was, there were no windows because this was a maintenance lift.

He took three quick breaths and rubbed his back, hauling himself back up onto his feet. He tapped aggressively at the screen showing each floor, but there was nothing, no response. He yelled for a few minutes but hushed himself after realising the only person who could help him didn't want to see him. He slumped back into the corner of the silver box. Lexie was right, every inch of the place was a delightfully dull space grey. He thought about her to appease his mind but all it did was make him close his eyes and pretend he wasn't stuck.

An hour later the elevator alarm stopped blaring and the red lights turned back to an artificial white. Mark's eyes fluttered open as the elevator whirred back to life. He banged his fist against the steel wall in triumph, smiling to himself as he felt the elevator moving again. He didn't stand up until the doors opened at the other end.

Lexie stood by the breakfast stand. She'd out in her order but the machine wasn't dispensing anything. She scanned her wristband again, thinking that might be the problem but nothing happened. Then she stood back away from it for a moment, her fingers resting beneath her chin. Frustration and boredom bubbled up inside her until she raised her arm and thwacked the useless machine until her frustration was aired and a bruise was forming on her hand. The stand whirred. It was another minute before the tray opened, "ahh finally." Lexie said a little too soon. Cereal was spewing out of the tray at high speed.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." She said, her hands thrusting forward as she tried to stop the flow of mini wheats. But it was too much, too powerful. Lexie put all the weight behind her hands and tried to push the tray shut. It didn't work. The cereal kept spewing out at every possible angle. Lexie just put her head in her hands and began to laugh. She didn't think about what this might mean for the ship. But then it wasn't her job to worry, even with all the safety briefings they hadn't gone into issues like this. Normally, you were just supposed to find a member of the crew to fix it. But she didn't have that luxury, so she went back to her room without breakfast.

She walked past through the Grand Concourse and almost walked into Mark because she wasn't really looking where she was going. "Breakfast machine isn't working," she said, a blank expression on her face. She kept walking but Mark stopped and just looked at her. Although the words were or informational purposes, they were words. He watched her walk away, her hair falling down her back, her feet plodding a little. She was grumpy about breakfast sure, but she didn't seem mad at him. She just seemed, sort of... indifferent. Which was better than mad.

Lexie walked back to her cabin and the door locked automatically behind her. She wanted to alone with her thoughts, she wanted to write in her diary and read and stare at the stars until she forgot his face. The lines of his worry etched into her mind. She couldn't close her eyes and rest because when she did all she saw was his face, over and over again. Speaking to him wasn't a big deal, she was just telling him something was broken, just because he should know, you know? It didn't mean anything. As she settled into the window seat and held her book up for her eyes to glaze over, she started to drift off. His face lighting up her dreams.

When she woke up it was like nothing had changed. The room was the same but she was different. Something in her dreams was making her smile, so she forgot where she was for a second, she forgot when she was and she forgot what Mark had done. For a split second, before she opened her eyes and accepted being awake, she was looking forward to seeing him later. In her dream they had a date planned and it was almost time for him to pick her up. But then her eyes fluttered open and she saw the diary entry open in front of her, the book abandoned on the floor. And everything came flooding back. She was angry all over again, all she wanted to block it out. So she got up and walked towards the door. She scanned her wristband and expected the door to just slide open. But it didn't.

The scanner pinged but the door stayed firmly shut. Locked. She scanned her wristband again, making sure that the little metal tab with her name on it was at the front. Nothing. She banged on the door with her fists and shouted at it. More out of anger and sadness than for any practical purpose. She tried a third time before deciding it was hopeless, things were breaking today and that's how it was going to be. Her back rode the door down until her butt hit the black linoleum of the floor. Everywhere in this place was metallic. She was sick of it, sick of all the space grey and black and silver. She longed to see red, or orange, or pink. Warm tones. Her eyes fell upon one of Mark's roses. She'd kept the petals pressed under a heavy book, now they were framed above her bed. The pinprick of colour stifled a sob out of her as she called his name a final time.

Mark was walking past her cabin, pacing because his mind was full of questions. He would walk from one end of the hallway to the other, the full hundred feet. It still wasn't long enough. So he walked it another four times before knocking on her door. He wanted to know what it meant, he knew he shouldn't chance it by going and talking to her, but he couldn't help it. He had to know. He knocked and waited in the silence that followed. Maybe she wasn't even in there, he hadn't check the entire ship. He'd checked her favourite places, but that didn't mean she was here. He did another lap of the hall and knocked again. This time there was a small noise coming from inside. It didn't sound like anything the ship could produce. It sounded human, female, sad.

He banged on the door with his fist the next time. "Lexie! Are you in there? Are you okay?" He pounded the white metal and rested his forehead against it. The surface was cold and fake, the whole ship was artificial without her. She was a rose breaking through concrete. She must've mumbled something back because he heard a muffled voice. "Lexie?" He said more desperately, banging again to try and get her to open the door, but then he heard her more clearly.

"It's stuck Mark." He knew she meant the door, but he couldn't focus because she sounded so helpless.

Then he snapped back into the moment. "Well have you tried-"

"I've tried everything."

"Okay, stand back away from the door." He took a run up and smashed his shoulder into the wall. It hurt like hell but he did it again anyway. He didn't care about himself now. How long had she been in there? The door make a squeaking sound and budged about an inch. Mark forced the edge back until it was wide enough for him to squeeze through. His face was flushed and angered, a vein was popping out of his forehead as he cradled his arm like a baby. He looked so pitiful. He found her standing in the middle of the room, she was pale and thin, frail. She looked almost erratic, her hands on either side of her head. Even though she wasn't crying now, her cheeks were puffy. Her hands were peeling and raw, she'd clearly been picking them because there was nothing to eat in here.

He said her name softly, walking towards her, his hand waving in front of her face to try and get her attention. "Lexie? Are you okay?" He tried to reach for her but she backed away. She sat back on the window sill and rocked herself gently. It didn't help, nothing helped, and now he was here, looking at her, asking her questions.

"Yeah," she let out with a gasp of air. Maybe she was having a panic attack. "I-I'm fi-fine." She was shaking a little, more tears welled in the corners of her eyes. Mark bent down beside her and took her hand, she let him. Her knuckles were bruised from what he assumed was her own attempt at beating down the door. She clearly wasn't strong enough.

"What would you have done if I hadn't been outside?" He didn't expect an answer, he was just thinking out loud. She shook her head, so he squeezed her hand. "I'm here Lex, I'm not going anywhere." They sat there for some time. But eventually Lexie opened her eyes and looked at him, she leant forward and rested her head on his shoulder. It didn't matter how much he'd hurt her in this moment, all that she needed was him comforting her. Her face nestled into his chest, her sobs making their own wet patches on his shirt. She let everything go, all her anger and frustration and hurt. She was just with him because she needed him. The past didn't matter.

Was it fate? Did I go to her because I knew instinctively that something was wrong? Or was it just a coincidence? Divine intervention? I don't believe in anything anymore, life happened and push me out of religion. So I don't believe God made it happen. She might, I don't know if she's religious, I never asked. There are so many things I never asked her, now I might never get to. Was it worth it? Was it worth three months of blinding happiness for years of regret? I don't know if that's a fair trade. But it's better than being alone. Being here to help her when she needs me, is better than being alone.

Sometime the next day, after some needed sleep and a cup of coffee, Lexie was okay. A little shaken, so Mark decided to accompany her to breakfast. He said he didn't have to sit with her but he wanted to make sure she ate something. He didn't want to push her, but he wanted to know how long she'd suffered in there. How long she'd left it before calling him. How long would she stay suffering so she didn't have to see him? Did she really hate him that much?

They walked side by side, a few feet apart, through the Grand Concourse. Everything was space grey and empty as usual except for the cleaning robots. Which were glitching a little, crashing into walls and stopping mid-cycle. Then one drove off the second floor deck and smashed into the floor by Lexie's feet. She shuddered and gasped loudly, stepping back. Mark looked up at the second deck and then down at the smashed robot. He bent down to inspect some of the bigger pieces but it was pointless. The thing was smashed to smithereens.

"This is Flight Captain Calliope Torres. Who the hell planted a tree on my ship?"