After getting through Granderson, she stayed down at the lab to help everyone create the virus. While it was not ideal, she decided to stay in the Avocet building. And she asked Tex to stay with her. He had tried to go and see his daughter before everyone understood what was really going on in Baltimore.
He relented. It was a private room with a bed bigger than anything that they could have had on the Nathan James bar none.
It was a two toned room with a bed with bright white sheets, with complementary pops of color in some of the throw pillows and blankets. It had some comfortable chairs and a big window that allowed plenty of light to come through. Executive wing, the accommodations weren't bad as far as it went, but it had been horrible to hear what had been done to make it all possible.
"Well now, Ms. Scott, you got some fancy digs," He said with a smile as he closed the door behind him.
She chuckled and looked around. "That they are Mr. Nolan," She replied back.
He didn't do anything just yet, getting a sense of who she was here. She was much more relaxed since the trial. And here, she was practically glowing. Tex loved that about her.
"So, Tex," She started nervously.
"Yes, Rachel," He said, smile still on his face.
"We have something we need to talk about," She said seriously, and clearing her throat. "In the vaccine trial you said, 'I think I love you' and then we haven't really had any time to talk about it since."
He nodded his head and grinned, "Well, this definitely seems like a sit down conversation, so make yourself comfortable," He said.
She sat on the bed, carefully smoothing over any ruffles that might have happened when she sat down. She was nervous, he thought. She hadn't been in a relationship like whatever they had in a long time, maybe ever and this was not the rodeo she intended to be on. He hadn't exactly planned it himself, but he was a ride the wave kind of guy and when it came down to it, he knew.
He pulled up a chair and sat right in front of her.
"I said 'I think I love you' and I meant that," Tex said. "I don't want this to be just something between us. I don't want it to be hidden," He told her.
She nodded. "I don't want to hide anymore either," She said as she took his hand in both of hers. "In the trial, you were so sick and you weren't getting better and I thought what a terrible world to be in without you." Her face screwed up and she was almost in tears when she said it.
"So we're together?" He asked.
She nodded and then put up a finger. "I have something I need to share in the interest of full honesty. You told me that the woman in the locket was your daughter and you care very deeply about her. That's why I need to tell you about Michael. He was a journalist. I don't know if he's alive or dead, but I loved him very much. Last I heard he was in China reporting there when the virus broke out so-" She gulped. There was so much to say in this moment about her life and history but she just wanted Tex to know that there was also a potential someone else out there in the world. He deserved that much., "So now you know,"
Tex looked at his worn hands in her perfectly smooth ones. They were total opposites in so many ways. She was so smart and while he was not dumb, he was not like her. She was wound so tight and he went with the flow, but it worked to balance each other out perfectly.
He saw the picture of her with another man in her stateroom. He'd been there several times, practically knew the layout of it perfectly, how she preferred her books organized, and what sort of tchotkes were important to her. He knew that she kept a bible even though she didn't believe, it was buried at the bottom of one of her lockers. He wasn't as dumb as everyone thought he was.
He nodded. "Rachel, I knew." He said as he looked up to her for the first time since studying their hands, "And if he is still alive, we, all of us, will work through it. But right now, I really do think, from the bottom of my heart that I love you,"
She stood up from the bed and locked her arms around his neck, a move that startled him so much that it took the chair out from underneath him, and they went flying backwards, but they were here and they were happy and that was all that he needed right now. He chuckled at the way they had landed and he looked into her eyes and she was so undeniably happy too.
He loved seeing her eyes light up and her smile gleam, it was something special, something he'd never been able to do with someone before. But here she was in his arms, on the floor of a very fancy hotel room.
She kissed him slowly. It was the first time since the Vyerni that they had been able to kiss and now they were alone, truly alone, in a big room that they didn't have to worry about someone coming into. The kiss was soft and deep and lacked the showy passion of the Vyerni kiss, but it felt more real, like more of her was in and into it. He thought there was so much that they could do in this room and probably would if she felt in the mood.
When they came apart for a breath, she blushed deeply and threw her head into his shoulder and chest, hiding her face. There was still some stuff to get used to for both of them. He cradled her for a few minutes, letting her catch her breath too.
Then he pushed his legs underneath him and pulled her up bridal style, which shocked her. She even gave him a little surprised noise that he was so happy to learn about. Surprising her would be his dream from now on.
He put her down on the bed and sat down beside her. "So what does that mean for us now?" He asked.
"Hmm?"
He shook his head with laughter, "Well, we've been pretty quiet about whatever it was that we had before. We always kept our relationship a little walls up around other people," He said, tripping over some of his words. "And what I'm trying to ask is are we going to show off that we're a couple?"
She grabbed his chin in her hand and grinned, "If you think that I could be stopped from saying that you are mine, you have another thing coming." She kissed him, this time more passionately and he could see now what the Vyerni kiss did not have focus. When she kissed him, he was the only thing in the world at that moment. There was nothing else. And when she gently probed for him to open his mouth, to make the kiss more intense, there was no worrying about how it would be perceived or passing notes, no this one was about the emotions. It was slow but it was fiery.
When they came apart, he was out of breath and she grinned and blushed. He could spend forever doing that and more if this is how day one went.
"Stay the night, here, with me," She said as once again fused their hands together. He nodded. He wanted some time off from the ship anyway. He had gone back to see the damage and it was brutal. They would need time to feel their losses.
Three days of laying in a real bed and she didn't want to go back, but Tex looked at her and grinned, "We'll be even closer in your own bed on the ship," He told her.
She conceded his point and hauled herself up to sitting position, "This was just so nice," She said as she looked out the window. Eventually, it would be all fluorescent light again. She took a big breath and felt the sunshine on her skin.
She looked to him. "Don't tell me you aren't going to miss the space,"
"Oh, I definitely will, but we make sacrifices for saving the world," He said as he kissed her on the head and picked up the bag that they had gotten, with just a few changes of clothes for the both of them. He handed her the CDC box which she gladly took and then got off the bed, to take all of the materials out of the fridge and back into her box before heading out.
Back on the ship, she took her stuff to the lab and Tex took the bag to her stateroom, where he would quickly put it down before going down to CIC to see what the next assignment was.
It turned out that they were going to DC, a town not to far off from Baltimore, and only a few people would be going in. Tex was allowed to stay on the boat and make sure that he was ready for when they got to Norfolk, because he would definitely be going out on search team.
He did not return to the lab when he was released to get ready for Norfolk and so Rachel bega working on doing a entry for her log.
"The lab in Baltimore proved to be as valuable as we had hoped." She smiled. "We've been able to get it up and running in a matter of days. As of Today, more than 10,000 doses have been manufactured. And word has spread up and down the eastern seaboard. Everyday trucks and boats arrive in baltimore to pick up new doses and distribute them to the populace.
"We are transporting twelve other doctors and scientists to the naval base in Norfolk, Virginia where we hope to find pilots and planes and determine whether or not there are functioning labs to mass produce the cure,"
It took several more hours to get to Norfolk and the scientists came in and out and asked her various questions on the cure, which she would answer and they would get slightly giddy about. It was a great miracle that they had the cure to begin with. And she was happy to share her knowledge with people who just wanted to care for other people with it.
Tex arrived in the lab, gave her a gentle kiss and grinned. "I love doing that," He said to her with his boisterous voice, "But uh, Commodore and XO need you. I was sent to escort," He said as he handed her his elbow.
She rolled her eyes at the idea that she needed some escorting, but they would never do without that now. And at least it was Tex and not someone who came in and barked that she needed to finish up and come with him.
She took off her lab coat, put it up, and took his arm as he escorted her down to the Slattery and Chandler. He opened the door for her where she was waved in and he stood outside. While the wardroom was plenty big enough that he would not be squeezing in. It seemed important enough to have Garnett who was third in command too. He figured they would tell him when they were ready.
It was about fifteen minutes before all of the raced out of the room and to the CIC, with Rachel being the last one out and taking his whole head in her hands and kissing him right there in the hallway. "Finally!" She told him. "Something goes right," And then she raced down the P-ways with the others, trying not to get too far behind.
He went to the stateroom that he technically shared with Danny, though for all intents and purposes, he now mainly lived in Rachel's cabin. His clothes did live in here though, because they needed to at least make it look like they didn't have a couple living on the boat for now. Also he wasn't Navy, but he had been with them long enough that the rules were a gray area now. Danny didn't give him shit for it though. Course, he got his girl pregnant.
CIC was abuzz with voices, all of them calling the various labs to see if they were operational, when they could be operational, or if it wasn't an option at all. Many of the labs didn't even pick up, which made sense given the amount of damage the virus had done. But there were not an insignificant amount of labs that actually were ready or close to ready, basically fully operational.
"Dr. Scott!" Mason called, "I have Dr. Hunter in Florida,"
A huge wave of relief flushed her body as went over to him and he gave her the mic and headphones, the cans, they called them, but she didn't know if she would ever be able to call them that.
"Dr. Hunter?" She asked. When he replied, out of shock, her voice broke, "Yes, it's me!" She said to him.
They talked for a minute about how they were shocked to hear each other and how good it was that they were alive, "Not only am I alive," She told him, "We have the cure," It was still incredible saying that. She almost couldn't believe it every time she said it, but it was true. They had the cure. It was being produced everyday.
The next morning, she woke up and Tex was gone from the room. This she knew was because he was training with Bacon, whom she was rather fond of. It had been awhile since she'd gotten down to the gym too, so she decided to join them.
"Twenty pounds in twenty days, that's what the XO said," Tex was shouting over the thumps of Bacon's walloping on the bag. He was doing quite well, she thought, but she didn't understand the need to lose weight.
"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee," He said, trying to encourage Bacon who admittedly was doing pretty well although he was getting lazy with movement, "Move the feet, Move the feet!" He barked and Bacon charged at him through the punching bag. "Come on!" He said. After a few more punches they were both laughing. "Ah, you did good. You did real good," Tex told Bacon.
Bacon pulled away from the bag and picked up his things when he noticed Rachel in the gym. "How are you, ma'am?" He asked.
"Amused," She replied.
"I'm serious," He told her. "I got to get down to regulation weight,"
She had never exactly been understanding of their regulations and ones around weight, well that would have to wait for another time, because Bacon was a solidly nice man. He did not need the dissertation about why it seemed illogical to control people's bodies like that. "I meant with your trainer" She added.
Bacon looked between them and gave her a small and devious smile, "Mm-hmm," He said as he headed out.
"You've been oddly unavailable," She told him.
He nodded and looked at her, "That is the pot calling the kettle black, my dear," He told her with a grin as he tried to undo his gloved hands, not having much luck with getting the strings untied.
She motioned with her hand for him to give his hands to her and he raised an eyebrow at her. And she simply motioned again, to which he gave her a gloved hand which she started undoing. "Well, you know, getting the labs up and saving the world, it's important," She told him as she pulled the first glove off his hand.
"Yeah, I get that. I'm also training up with the guys to make sure that we're ready to arrive in Norfolk," He told her. "Who knows what we're going to see out there," He told her as she undid the other glove and gave it to him.
"Aren't we the working couple?" She gave him a smile.
He nodded. "If I'm ever in the ring, you can work my corner," He said to her, "I'm sorry I have to cut it short now too, but Danny said he had some stuff he wanted to go over," He said.
She gave him a quick kiss and he left and she went to work, getting a good run in and maybe some weightlifting, just to make sure that she took good care of her body. She didn't want to overdo it. Afterall, there were some pretty big plans for the next week or so.
On the open air deck in the port of Norfolk, Virginia, Tex and Rachel stood together, while the Slattery and Chandler signaled to make sure the people they met were friendly and indeed they were. They got off the gangway last as people started putting boxes of the cure into trucks. Tex gave her two light kisses, one on the forehead and quick peck, before he went off with his group, which included Slattery.
She stood with a box of cure to give vaccinations along with Bertrise, Rios, and Kelly, to all the brave service men and women who came out of the woodwork to support their mission. She was truly inspired by how many had heard the call and said, we believe and we want to help. She made sure to say thank you to each and every one of them.
Tex drove one of the vehicles of cure, a scientist, and Slattery to the airfield. Rachel, Chandler, pilots, and the other scientists were all divvied into other trucks which all had an equal amount of cure, along with drivers.
They made sure all the planes were gassed up and ready to go and then Chandler needed to make a speech to the pilots. "We have labs, we have scientists, and we have you. We get this right, with our ship covering the south, and everybody spreading not just the cure, but the knowledge of how to make it, we can turn the tide," He paused for a moment and wasn't that a thought, beating the Red Flu, something that had decimated the world, "Not just here, but in Europe, and then the world. We've all waited a long time for this day to come. It's here," He said.
And scientists, soldiers, and pilots got into their various planes to get the cure out there in the world.
"I can't ever than you enough," Neustader, the statistician from Avocet, who wanted to make the world better, said.
She licked her lips and looked at him, "Just do your part," She said, shaking his hands before he got on the plane.
And then the miraculous started to happen, the planes started to leave. She watched them first, get wheels up and then really fly away. They were going to have the cure in more places than just on the ship and Baltimore and it was something. She felt the tears run down her face.
Tex and Slattery went to the sector with Deer Park, a supposed safe zone that Slattery's wife had told them they had gone. It being a safe zone, came from Lieutenant Norris, in Baltimore, who they had no idea if they could trust anything he said anymore. Slattery looked rough as swept through the beginning stages of it.
Tex informed people where they were and kept up the back for the most part. The place had been cleared by people in front, people who didn't have families in the area. It was easier that way, they promised, although Tex wasn't so sure it was going to be easy any way they sliced it. He couldn't imagine having to search for his family like this. Hell, it was hard enough helping a friend do so.
They walked through the park and it was empty, save for some wildlife and trash in the entrance. As they got closer to the actual park, they saw some tents and waited. Slattery looked through some binoculars and Tex looked out for anything that might be dangerous to them, keeping his weapon at the ready, but it was mostly just birds around them. They hadn't seen any other people since the last safe zone they'd been to. They gave out shots there and it had been fun. This most certainly was not.
There was no sign of human life in the tents and so they went forward. Even if there was, if it had been friendly they also would have gone forward. When they approached the tents, everyone looked through things, trying to find any sign of who might have been here and where they might have gone.
"XO, you're going to wanna look at this," Tex said as he stepped into the tent, and gave him a binder. The XO flipped through it quickly to see his family photos.
"Where did you find this?" Slattery asked him as he practically rattled the thing
"In the other tent," Tex said. If this wasn't such an important moment, he would have laughed at how Slattery was so anxious about the thing, but Tex knew. Family was important. He would get back to his soon enough.
"Show me,"
"Right here," Tex looped around to the other tent, showing Slattery around.
Slattery rifled through belongings, but that didn't make people appear. It never would. That magic trick had never been quite figured out, "Why did they leave? Why did they all leave?"
"The only thing I can think of is somebody got exposed and everybody just took off." Tex told him as he put a firm hand on his shoulder. "They could have gone home?" He asked. Slattery nodded and pointed him in the direction as the rest of the team still went house by house and safe zone by safe zone. They would meet up later.
She was escorted back to the ship with Captain Chandler and Russell. She was allowed to go down to the CIC where they got the video feed working with Dr. Hunter.
"We haven't had any contact with Washington since September,"
She shook her head, "How are you holding up?" She asked.
"Well, besides the fact the whole world is dying, I haven't left this compound in four months, with the same six people-"
"Well, it seems like we might be seeing you sooner than we thought, now that there's no lab here,"
In between the standard conversation with her mentor, she did hear Mason yelling out that various planes had landed with the cure and were taking the scientists to the labs. It was a beautiful thing to hear that everything was going smoothly.
She got to more serious topic with Dr. Hunter now.
"The thing is I seem to have lost track of Michael. I don't suppose he's reached out to you? He said that he might," She said, the regret in her voice for not making Michael take her more seriously about the virus in her voice. It mingled with the weird tinge of insecurity she thought about when she thought about how it wasn't ended with Michael when she said yes to Tex. How it was all very complicated.
"I did hear from him," Dr. Hunter said, he looked down for a minute, "But that was months ago,"
"Well, where was he?" She asked, steeling her voice.
"In China," He said, and she could hear the apology in his voice. He didn't need to do that, but it was unspoken that they were honest with each other
"Still in China," She burned through the tears. This shouldn't be so hard, she thought. They didn't get to see each other very often anyways. And she had Tex. But still something about it, well it was hard.
"He was covering the story there," Hunter gulped, "which was horrific,"
"Was he gonna try to get out?" She asked, on the verge of tears.
"I encouraged him to. Believe me Rachel, but I don't know I'm so sorry Rachel. I know what he meant to you," They said a few more things but ultimately but they were both getting fogged down by the looming specter of Michael and in the end, they just tabled it for another time, when they were both more interested on the topic at hand.
In the end, while the other servicemen carried on with the sector, Tex and Slattery went to his home. "They could still be out there," Tex told Slattery as Slattery wistfully looked at the home that now held no family. "You were a cop, right? A detective?" He asked, Slattery, trying to bring him back to the present.
"So I should just abandon the mission, CO, and the crew?" Slattery asked, the pain in his voice, it was someone who had two families. And couldn't figure out which one he needed more.
"Captain would understand. Talk to him."
"He knew his family was alive, and he turned away to serve the mission. Lost his wife because of it. I can't bring this to him." Slattery said, still looking at the house.
"You want to stay,"
"I want a lot of things,"
Ultimately Slattery decided that he could not stay to find his family. Maybe they would come back to this house though, so he went inside while Tex stayed out, to give him a few minutes alone. He saw the XO go into the house with a few doses of the cure. It took him about ten minutes to come back out. He gave Tex a nod and they joined back up with the team, which was returning to the Nathan James.
Rachel was in the lab, working on producing some more of the cure when she saw a picture of her and Michael on one of her computers. He had always been hope in times of crisis in her race towards finding the vaccine, but now she felt despair. He was well and truly gone.
She closed the computer and that chapter of her life. She didn't cry, but she thought it wouldn't be so bad if she did. Everyone had looked for families today and the only person she had really ever considered family before, well he was gone. When she turned around, she saw Tex.
Tex wrapped her up in his arms. He couldn't imagine having to go out there and look for her and hope she wasn't dead or gone somewhere he couldn't find her. He opened it a little to see her face, clearly sad. "Bad day?" He asked.
She shrugged and looked up to him, "How about yours?"
"Better now," He said as he gave her a kiss.