Post by solaris on Aug 11, 2007 16:55:08 GMT -5
I wrote this one back in March, a little bit before the movie premiered in London. I had avoided spoilers, for the most part, and based this on what I suspected might happen. I know now that I made some assumptions about a LOT of things that turned out to be incorrect, and now, this story is essentially AU. I don't care. I'm still kind of proud of it. I've spent most of the day today spit-shining it, but I tried not to make too many essential changes.
Just think of it as a "what if?" I hope to write some fanfic that is less AU eventually, but all of my ideas are so angsty.
This has not really been beta'd yet, so if you have constructive criticism, I'm open to it. Just understand that it is AU, and it is Capsie, so please don't flame me. Please let me know if you like it! ;D
______________________________________________________
The explosion rocked the ship.
From where she had been huddled, waiting nervously, Cassie sprang up and ran toward the oxygen garden. Had she heard a scream the instant before? Her stomach was in knots.
The door opened, letting her know that the first compartment of the room had been successfully sealed off.. Sure enough, through the heavy Plexiglas plates, she could see the debris of the last two compartments spinning slowly away from the ship, flames extinguishing in the vacuum of space.
She immediately turned her attention to Capa. He lay crumpled on the floor next to the door, where he had been thrown by he explosion. From him came an unmistakable, ragged sound.
“Breathe; breathe slowly,” she said, stooping and putting one hand on his shoulder. “You’ve had the wind knocked out of you.”
The sound subsided as he regained his breath.
“Cassie...”
“Yes. Can you--” but he pre-empted her question by scrambling to his feet, bracing one arm against her and pushing up with the other. Her racing mind registered that as a good sign--it meant that he hadn’t broken any extremities, and that his back was probably okay, too. He didn’t seem to be bleeding, either. She cursed the bad luck that deprived them of Searle and his medical knowledge.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Nothing’s broken,” he said, still breathing hard. There was a frightened edge in his voice, and terror in his expression. That’s when she noticed something strange about the way he was focusing on her...or not. “But...Cassie...”
“What is it?”
“I can’t see.”
* * * * * *
More than a year later, Cassie and Capa found themselves in a park at the heart of a major American city. She carried a picnic basket, and he carried a blanket.
“How about...here?” she asked, choosing a spot.
He shrugged, smiling wryly. “I’ll take you word for it”
Cassie flinched as she took the blanket and spread it out. Neither time nor medical science had given him back any of his vision. He found it ironic that on a mission to the Sun, he should be blinded, not by that star, but by the light and heat of that unexpected explosion. His eyes--those striking eyes, which everyone inevitably mentioned--looked exactly the same; but there was only enough nerve activity that a beautiful, clear day like this one would have caused discomfort, if not for the charcoal gray sunglasses that he wore.
Still, Cassie knew that his rare moments of gallows humor belied a sense of acceptance. “It’s a small price to pay“, he had told her once, “for the success of the mission...for the lives of everyone else on the planet. It’s certainly a smaller sacrifice than the others made.” Here he referred to their five fallen comrades. The ones who went mad and the ones who they hunted were all equally victims of circumstance in his mind, and Cassie’s.
As they settled down on the blanket, Capa’s Labrador retriever, Sirius, investigated the picnic basket. Capa warned him off with a whistle and snapped fingers. “Wait your turn,” he told him, then “Good dog!” as Sirius sat down, looking like a statue of Anubis, at the edge of the blanket.
Cassie distributed the sandwiches they had brought, not forgetting to give Sirius his treats. For a while, they ate in silence.
Cassie had known early on how much Capa loved that dog. On their first meeting, they had developed an immediate rapport, and he had surprised her with a groaner of a pun. Yes, I have a lab at my house. Would you like to see a picture? That joke--and the fact that he had brought that picture--had been her first insights into the personality of the crew’s physicist. Behind that painfully quiet--many would say standoffish--demeanor, she correctly glimpsed a warmth, compassion and humor that resonated with her.
Capa’s sister had taken care of the dog in his two-year
absence, and Cassie had brought him to pick up the animal soon after their return. Sirius was had been simply elated, not seeming to have forgotten Capa at all. She remembered watching them, thinking about what a different experience “dog” must be without vision--his nails clicking on the hardwood floors as he gamboled about them in circles, the high pitch of his whimpers for attention, the warm breath and wet tongue as he licked the hand of the master he probably hadn’t expected to see again.
“I have a favor to ask you,” Capa had said to Cassie as he scratched the back of Sirius’s head. His voice was choked, and she knew that it couldn’t be good.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Now that we’re back, I feel like I have to learn my way around all over again. I was wondering if you could…take Sirius for a few weeks? You know, until I get settled it. It would be much closer than he is here, and he’s been here long enough. I’m just afraid that I can‘t…it just doesn‘t seem fair to him.”
His sister’s face had been grave, and she had slipped away to give them privacy. It was obvious that he was trying not to cry. Something like fire spiked within Cassie.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “We live in the same city., like you said I’ll come over, every day if I have to. I’ll help walk him for as long as you need me to. But he can stay with you.”
“You would do that?” he asked, his face betraying a powerful mix of surprise and relief.
“Of course.” She dropped her voice. “It’s not like I’m not going to be there a lot anyway.”
* * * * * *
Cassie remembered that day as her mind wandered. Finally, she spoke. “I visited Corazon yesterday.”
“Oh, really? She can have visitors now?”
“It was only the second day, I think, but yes.”
“How is she doing?”
“Great. Amazing, in fact. She wants you to visit her as soon as she can.”
“Absolutely. She’s still at Sacred Heart, right?”
“That’s right.”
The botanist of the Icarus II had been badly injured during the catastrophic events that had almost derailed the mission. One of the last things that Searle, the ship’s physician, had done was to put her into an induced coma. Fortunately, all that had needed to be done for her after he died was to keep her clean and fed intravenously, and Cassie could do that. Corazon had been given an infusion or robotic nanocytes to prevent muscle atrophy.
Once back on earth, Corazon had been rushed into surgery. She’s been brought out of her coma roughly two weeks ago, more than a year after going into it.
“I’ll stop by tomorrow,” Capa said reflectively. By this point, they were done with their meal and he had started on one of the jars of iced tea that she had made for them. “I actually meant to call and look into that yesterday. I just...” he sighed impatiently. “I actually went got caught up in things at the Institute again.”
Cassie’s heart sank. “Oh, no. More trouble?”
“Just more of the same,” he said. “They’re still dragging their feet.”
Since they had returned to Earth, Capa’s interactions with his immediate supervisors had been characterized by vociferous shouting matches over the timing and manner of his return to work. Then again, previous to the mission, he had found himself at the focal point of an internal dispute over whether there should be a second mission and whether he should be part of it.
“Can they even do that? Legally?” she asked.
“Not really, he said. “But they’re trying.”
“They have egg on their faces, that’s all,” she said, her protective instincts rising within her. “You were right, they were wrong; we saved...well, let’s see, everybody, and now they’re scrambling to save their careers.”
“Let them scramble,” he said evenly. “I won’t be working under them, anyway. I’m ready to go back to work; I want to use what we learned out there. I’ve gone over their heads, and it seems to be working.”
Cassie raised one eyebrow. “How far?”
“Far enough,” he replied.
Robert Capa actually had the hint of a reputation for his temper, but Cassie had concluded that he usually applied it judiciously. There had only been one occasion when she could say that she had been on the wrong side of his temper, and she forgave him for that, because it had been right before the accident, when both of them had felt their sanity slipping away If anything, he had been in more danger than she had. She had been the one holding the crescent wrench at that moment, after all.
“Well, good luck with that,” she told him now. “Let me know if I can help at all.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re a better person than I am,” she said, eager to change the subject. “I am still all about some time off.”
He nodded. “It is something to thank about. I‘m sure I‘ll take it easy at first.”
Her own plan was to take a year’s sabbatical, then go back to work as a flight instructor for fighter pilots. The spaceship was so large that she had felt isolated most of the time from how fast they were going. She missed the exhilaration of flight in small crafts, and she felt that sharing that with the next generation made the most sense for her career after the mission. At the same time, she recognized that she needed time to rest, and heal. She had expressed to Robert that this might be a good idea for him, too.
It upset Cassie that the higher-ups at the institute were using Capa’s limitations as an excuse for delay. It was part of a pattern that disturbed her. Her name, his, and Corazon’s were known all over the word--saviors of the Sun, the lone survivors of the Icarus II. However, there was an unspoken sense that Cassie was the only one who had come back in once piece. She couldn’t have disagreed more. Most of the time, she would contend that Capa and Corazon were whole. Like her, they had gone to the brink of madness, but had been able to turn back, for reasons that were not fully understood, and might not ever be. The rest of the time, however Cassie wondered if she were as whole as everyone thought--if she didn’t bear her own deep, intangible scars.
Cassie wasn’t yet ready to tell him how alone she’d felt. She might not ever be.
After the time of the accident in the oxygen garden, Capa had had to walk her through the releasing of the bomb, explaining the readings from instruments that hadn’t mattered up until then. The resulting explosion in the Sun had created an cosmic tailwind of sorts, a burst of energy all but throwing the ship backwards through space.
By that time, however, they had been alone in the ship with the comatose Corazon. Kaneda and Mace were lost to the blackness of space. The rest of the fallen were in the cold storage unit. That small room had been built for that purpose, and stood, a silent reminder of mortality.
Capa had, of course, been in a lot of pain initially as a result of his injury. Fortunately there was still plenty of medicine onboard the ship. Soon enough, he had no need of it, which was just as well, because Cassie required a lot of help. It was a constant job to keep the already battered and singed ship together as it did a controlled free-fall through space. He was soon able to use the computer to operate the ship’s external temperature regulation. However, when that didn’t work, or when it didn’t work quickly enough, it was left to Cassie to run around the Icarus II , manually operating sections of the shields, or activating sprinkler systems and fire extinguishers.
The journey that had taken sixteen months going out only took twelve months coming back. A rescue ship from Earth responded to the distress signal that Cassie sent out, and rendezvoused with them on the near side of Venus. They were transferred to the other ship, and the Icarus II was towed home for the remaining three months of the journey.
They returned home to great fanfare, and international media attention. They were whisked almost directly from the ship to the hospital. Cassie understood that the Institute wanted to make sure that they were both okay, and that there were probably things to be learned about prolonged time in space. Yet their stay had dragged on for over a month, despite their protests, and they’d both had to argue against being given unnecessary narcotics. The whole thing had seemed strange to her, and made her uncomfortable.
Even now that she was out of the hospital, Cassie was having a hard time. Once the Icarus II had gotten down to a crew of three, she had had nightmares--nightmares of waking up all alone, or that the bomb had not been deployed yet and she had to do it herself. They still haunted her. Gruesome images from her actual past still sometimes forced themselves upon her waking mind. She found herself expecting trusted friends and acquaintances to turn on her, physically, for no reason, like her crew mates had. She suspected that having each other was a great help to both her and Capa in keeping themselves together.
"Cassie? You all right?" He asked her now.
She snapped out of her reverie, back to the present moment and place. She realized that she hadn't said anything or moved for a few minutes
"Yeah," she said. She grinned. "Sorry. Just kind of...lost in thought."
"Oh, well, I wouldn't know anything about that."
"No, of course not," she agreed, in the same teasing tone.
"Say," he said, starting in on a slice of the meringue pie that he had brought for their dessert, "it sounds like there are a lot of kids here today."
She nodded. "A lot of families."
"That's nice," he said.
"It is," she agreed.
It was usually hard for either of them to go anywhere without being recognized; but today, with what seemed like the whole city trying to enjoy an afternoon at the park, it was easy for them to put on civvies and blend into the crowd. It was good to sit back and get an anonymous look at what they had all been fighting for. Cassie knew that the whole planet regarded the three of them as heroes. She also knew that there was certain whispered speculation about her and Capa‘s relationship...although there was probably just as much speculation about the dead.
The thing of it was, in their case, it was true.
It had started early on in the mission, on the journey out, with late-night discussions about their fields, their work. They would meet first under the harsh, narrow light of the dining area, and then, as the weeks dragged on, within the payload, or in either of their rooms. Like Cassie, Capa was still enamored of old-fashioned pen and paper, and they had filled numerous yellow lined pads with equations. In hushed tones, to avoid waking the others, they shared the sacred riddles which made the bomb work and the ship fly. On one humorous occasion that she recalled, the equations had spilled over onto the walls of her room. (She knew she had brought that sidewalk chalk for something; it had come off easily enough with warm water.)
These discussions allowed her to see the enthusiasm and uncharacteristic inhibition that she had known was there. The other thing that impressed he was the fact that he didn't condescend to her at all because she was female. He explained things to her as he would to any colleague, and listened to her with interest. Everyone on the ship was so intelligent--Corazon with her botany, Searle with his knowledge of the human mind and body, Kaneda with his leadership skills, and so on. With Capa, however, Cassie found someone whose knowledge and passion overlapped with her own. They were both pleased, but not surprised, when the nature of their connection changed.
Cassie had told Corazon about her changing feelings, her suspicion that Capa shared them. She had to talk to someone. As it turned out, the botanist had been watching them sagely for some time, and had noticed perhaps even before the erstwhile couple had. Cassie had been burned by love very recently, in a way that had almost derailed her participation in the mission. It had ended in a difficult choice--one that she did not regret, but that changed the colors of her whole world. Suddenly, though, she felt ready to trust someone again--even if their circumstances, as well as good sense, forced them to take things one day at a time.
“He seems so shy though,” Cassie had protested to Corazon. “Even if you’re right, if he does like me…”
“Oh, honey, don’t worry about it,” the other woman had said. “Just drag him into a dark corner somewhere. He’ll figure it out.”
Cassie laughed so hard at that. She would never forget that moment. As it turned out, however, Corazon had more or less been right.
With the rest of the crew around, she and Capa had shown a measure of discretion, even though everyone probably knew what was going on. They wouldn't stay together every night, and whoever had stayed over would usually slip away to their own cabin early in the morning, sometimes grabbing another half hour of sleep. After, though--after the deaths, after the accident, after the bomb--they abandoned the pretense of separate rooms. They stayed together every night, except when one or the other needed to be alone. For every time they embraced as lovers, however, there were many more nights when they could only collapse together, exhausted, like littermates
The former did not even happen for the first time for a while--a week or two, it was hard to tell. It had been a stressful day for both of them. Cassie hadn’t seemed to get a moment’s rest in her struggle to keep the ship flying. The crowning blow, however, had to do with Capa. They had done so well for so long adjusting to what had happened to him. It was not something that one just forgot about, after all, especially if one was unused to it. That day, however, he had happened to trip over a box that should have been stashed safely underneath a counter, three feet to the right. Cassie’s initial terrified, guilty thought was that she had been the one who left it out. As it turned out, he had been the one who had forgotten to put it away. He had found it impossible to conceal how discouraged he was, or how angry with himself.
Alone in her room, Cassie had broken down crying. She had just come in, without turning on the lights, and she didn't know that Capa had come in until he startled her with a hand on her shoulder.
"Hey," he whispered, "those aren't for me, are they?"
"For all of us, I guess," she answered in a strangled voice
"That's certainly fair," he said. "There's...something I've been meaning to ask you, though.”
"Yeah?"
"Everything that has happened...this," her eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and she saw him gesture to himself. "Does it...change anything? For us? Because honestly, if it does...I'll understand."
Her first thought was that she had never heard anything so absurd. Her next was to wonder, terrified, why he would ask.
"It doesn't for me if it doesn't for you," she said.
He breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank God!"
She realized that she, too, had stopped breathing for a second.
"Yeah," she murmured. "I was afraid maybe you--"
He shook his head. He stepped closer, and she put her arms around him. Their foreheads touched in the dark.
"We've come this far," she said. "I think we can make this work, if we ever get back I really do."
With her eyes, closed, she felt, rather than saw, him nod.
Cassie had once read somewhere that pheromones allowed humans to kiss in the dark...guided them instinctively to each others' lips. This phenomenon unfolded again for them at that moment. Close to her ear, he whispered her name, which started out as an interrogative but trailed off as it changed into something different. Looking back, she would never be sure who had kissed who first, but she initiated the next one.
* * * * * *
In the park, so many months later, they sat together in companionable silence. “Penny for your thoughts,,“ Cassie said, wondering how close his reflections were to her own.
“You know," he answered., "they say that it was quite a light show...when the bomb went off."
"That's what I hear, too," she said. "I wouldn't know, either, though."
Ironically, despite her front-row seat, the collision of the bomb and Sun had been unsafe to watch, even through the strongest of the ship's filters. The descriptions she had heard ranged from a rainbow corona around the sun to the Forth of July in broad daylight. It was odd to think that whatever it had been, it had taken eight minutes to be seen on Earth. She could only imagine the happy pandemonium in the streets, the joy and relief--followed by breathless anticipation: the bomb had made it. Was the q-ball gone?
It was.
It had only taken the Institute a few days to confirm that the Sun was no longer being eaten away. With that determined, the original Icarus craft was piloted remotely into the star. Without the q-ball, it did not matter where the second bomb went. A bomb containing dark matter and half of the Earth's Uranium was way too dangerous to bring back home and store indefinitely, and the odds of another q-ball were judged to be too low. Together, the bombs were actually able to add some fuel to the star, reversing some of the damage that the q-ball had done in the forty years since it had first been detected.
The result was all around them today. Ordinary human life went on, with hope for the future to be found in something as simple as a trip to the park. Diatoms, algae, fungi and microorganisms which had lain dormant--and many of which had been feared extinct--were blooming, deep in the earth and the sea. Crops which could not have survived the cooler temperatures were being planted again. Forgotten seeds of the same plants were awakening, sometimes in abandoned fields, but it at least a few cases, breaking through suburban sidewalks. Jet streams and other global wind currents which had shut down were churning to life again to ruffle the waves and play among the mountaintops. The Earth was front-page news, and for once, the news was good. It was a balms 71 degrees in the park that day--the warmest day many of the children around them had ever known.
In silence, Capa and Cassie finished up their lunch and packed it away. He stretched out on the blanket and rested his head in his hands. She slipped her sandals off and cuddled in the crook of his shoulder.
Closing her eyes, she gave reign to her other senses. She felt the warmth of the Sun, almost uncomfortable if she stayed still to long; but she also felt the breeze; She heard the voices around her, and smelled the new, rare smell of fresh-cut grass. She sensed the steady breathing and heartbeat of her partner. She felt another warm body--this one covered in stiff, smooth fur--as Sirius plopped down against both of their feet, seeming to crave contact with both of them.
Cassie smiled. "Robert?"
"Yeah."
"We did it."
"I know."
Just think of it as a "what if?" I hope to write some fanfic that is less AU eventually, but all of my ideas are so angsty.
This has not really been beta'd yet, so if you have constructive criticism, I'm open to it. Just understand that it is AU, and it is Capsie, so please don't flame me. Please let me know if you like it! ;D
______________________________________________________
The explosion rocked the ship.
From where she had been huddled, waiting nervously, Cassie sprang up and ran toward the oxygen garden. Had she heard a scream the instant before? Her stomach was in knots.
The door opened, letting her know that the first compartment of the room had been successfully sealed off.. Sure enough, through the heavy Plexiglas plates, she could see the debris of the last two compartments spinning slowly away from the ship, flames extinguishing in the vacuum of space.
She immediately turned her attention to Capa. He lay crumpled on the floor next to the door, where he had been thrown by he explosion. From him came an unmistakable, ragged sound.
“Breathe; breathe slowly,” she said, stooping and putting one hand on his shoulder. “You’ve had the wind knocked out of you.”
The sound subsided as he regained his breath.
“Cassie...”
“Yes. Can you--” but he pre-empted her question by scrambling to his feet, bracing one arm against her and pushing up with the other. Her racing mind registered that as a good sign--it meant that he hadn’t broken any extremities, and that his back was probably okay, too. He didn’t seem to be bleeding, either. She cursed the bad luck that deprived them of Searle and his medical knowledge.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Nothing’s broken,” he said, still breathing hard. There was a frightened edge in his voice, and terror in his expression. That’s when she noticed something strange about the way he was focusing on her...or not. “But...Cassie...”
“What is it?”
“I can’t see.”
* * * * * *
More than a year later, Cassie and Capa found themselves in a park at the heart of a major American city. She carried a picnic basket, and he carried a blanket.
“How about...here?” she asked, choosing a spot.
He shrugged, smiling wryly. “I’ll take you word for it”
Cassie flinched as she took the blanket and spread it out. Neither time nor medical science had given him back any of his vision. He found it ironic that on a mission to the Sun, he should be blinded, not by that star, but by the light and heat of that unexpected explosion. His eyes--those striking eyes, which everyone inevitably mentioned--looked exactly the same; but there was only enough nerve activity that a beautiful, clear day like this one would have caused discomfort, if not for the charcoal gray sunglasses that he wore.
Still, Cassie knew that his rare moments of gallows humor belied a sense of acceptance. “It’s a small price to pay“, he had told her once, “for the success of the mission...for the lives of everyone else on the planet. It’s certainly a smaller sacrifice than the others made.” Here he referred to their five fallen comrades. The ones who went mad and the ones who they hunted were all equally victims of circumstance in his mind, and Cassie’s.
As they settled down on the blanket, Capa’s Labrador retriever, Sirius, investigated the picnic basket. Capa warned him off with a whistle and snapped fingers. “Wait your turn,” he told him, then “Good dog!” as Sirius sat down, looking like a statue of Anubis, at the edge of the blanket.
Cassie distributed the sandwiches they had brought, not forgetting to give Sirius his treats. For a while, they ate in silence.
Cassie had known early on how much Capa loved that dog. On their first meeting, they had developed an immediate rapport, and he had surprised her with a groaner of a pun. Yes, I have a lab at my house. Would you like to see a picture? That joke--and the fact that he had brought that picture--had been her first insights into the personality of the crew’s physicist. Behind that painfully quiet--many would say standoffish--demeanor, she correctly glimpsed a warmth, compassion and humor that resonated with her.
Capa’s sister had taken care of the dog in his two-year
absence, and Cassie had brought him to pick up the animal soon after their return. Sirius was had been simply elated, not seeming to have forgotten Capa at all. She remembered watching them, thinking about what a different experience “dog” must be without vision--his nails clicking on the hardwood floors as he gamboled about them in circles, the high pitch of his whimpers for attention, the warm breath and wet tongue as he licked the hand of the master he probably hadn’t expected to see again.
“I have a favor to ask you,” Capa had said to Cassie as he scratched the back of Sirius’s head. His voice was choked, and she knew that it couldn’t be good.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Now that we’re back, I feel like I have to learn my way around all over again. I was wondering if you could…take Sirius for a few weeks? You know, until I get settled it. It would be much closer than he is here, and he’s been here long enough. I’m just afraid that I can‘t…it just doesn‘t seem fair to him.”
His sister’s face had been grave, and she had slipped away to give them privacy. It was obvious that he was trying not to cry. Something like fire spiked within Cassie.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “We live in the same city., like you said I’ll come over, every day if I have to. I’ll help walk him for as long as you need me to. But he can stay with you.”
“You would do that?” he asked, his face betraying a powerful mix of surprise and relief.
“Of course.” She dropped her voice. “It’s not like I’m not going to be there a lot anyway.”
* * * * * *
Cassie remembered that day as her mind wandered. Finally, she spoke. “I visited Corazon yesterday.”
“Oh, really? She can have visitors now?”
“It was only the second day, I think, but yes.”
“How is she doing?”
“Great. Amazing, in fact. She wants you to visit her as soon as she can.”
“Absolutely. She’s still at Sacred Heart, right?”
“That’s right.”
The botanist of the Icarus II had been badly injured during the catastrophic events that had almost derailed the mission. One of the last things that Searle, the ship’s physician, had done was to put her into an induced coma. Fortunately, all that had needed to be done for her after he died was to keep her clean and fed intravenously, and Cassie could do that. Corazon had been given an infusion or robotic nanocytes to prevent muscle atrophy.
Once back on earth, Corazon had been rushed into surgery. She’s been brought out of her coma roughly two weeks ago, more than a year after going into it.
“I’ll stop by tomorrow,” Capa said reflectively. By this point, they were done with their meal and he had started on one of the jars of iced tea that she had made for them. “I actually meant to call and look into that yesterday. I just...” he sighed impatiently. “I actually went got caught up in things at the Institute again.”
Cassie’s heart sank. “Oh, no. More trouble?”
“Just more of the same,” he said. “They’re still dragging their feet.”
Since they had returned to Earth, Capa’s interactions with his immediate supervisors had been characterized by vociferous shouting matches over the timing and manner of his return to work. Then again, previous to the mission, he had found himself at the focal point of an internal dispute over whether there should be a second mission and whether he should be part of it.
“Can they even do that? Legally?” she asked.
“Not really, he said. “But they’re trying.”
“They have egg on their faces, that’s all,” she said, her protective instincts rising within her. “You were right, they were wrong; we saved...well, let’s see, everybody, and now they’re scrambling to save their careers.”
“Let them scramble,” he said evenly. “I won’t be working under them, anyway. I’m ready to go back to work; I want to use what we learned out there. I’ve gone over their heads, and it seems to be working.”
Cassie raised one eyebrow. “How far?”
“Far enough,” he replied.
Robert Capa actually had the hint of a reputation for his temper, but Cassie had concluded that he usually applied it judiciously. There had only been one occasion when she could say that she had been on the wrong side of his temper, and she forgave him for that, because it had been right before the accident, when both of them had felt their sanity slipping away If anything, he had been in more danger than she had. She had been the one holding the crescent wrench at that moment, after all.
“Well, good luck with that,” she told him now. “Let me know if I can help at all.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re a better person than I am,” she said, eager to change the subject. “I am still all about some time off.”
He nodded. “It is something to thank about. I‘m sure I‘ll take it easy at first.”
Her own plan was to take a year’s sabbatical, then go back to work as a flight instructor for fighter pilots. The spaceship was so large that she had felt isolated most of the time from how fast they were going. She missed the exhilaration of flight in small crafts, and she felt that sharing that with the next generation made the most sense for her career after the mission. At the same time, she recognized that she needed time to rest, and heal. She had expressed to Robert that this might be a good idea for him, too.
It upset Cassie that the higher-ups at the institute were using Capa’s limitations as an excuse for delay. It was part of a pattern that disturbed her. Her name, his, and Corazon’s were known all over the word--saviors of the Sun, the lone survivors of the Icarus II. However, there was an unspoken sense that Cassie was the only one who had come back in once piece. She couldn’t have disagreed more. Most of the time, she would contend that Capa and Corazon were whole. Like her, they had gone to the brink of madness, but had been able to turn back, for reasons that were not fully understood, and might not ever be. The rest of the time, however Cassie wondered if she were as whole as everyone thought--if she didn’t bear her own deep, intangible scars.
Cassie wasn’t yet ready to tell him how alone she’d felt. She might not ever be.
After the time of the accident in the oxygen garden, Capa had had to walk her through the releasing of the bomb, explaining the readings from instruments that hadn’t mattered up until then. The resulting explosion in the Sun had created an cosmic tailwind of sorts, a burst of energy all but throwing the ship backwards through space.
By that time, however, they had been alone in the ship with the comatose Corazon. Kaneda and Mace were lost to the blackness of space. The rest of the fallen were in the cold storage unit. That small room had been built for that purpose, and stood, a silent reminder of mortality.
Capa had, of course, been in a lot of pain initially as a result of his injury. Fortunately there was still plenty of medicine onboard the ship. Soon enough, he had no need of it, which was just as well, because Cassie required a lot of help. It was a constant job to keep the already battered and singed ship together as it did a controlled free-fall through space. He was soon able to use the computer to operate the ship’s external temperature regulation. However, when that didn’t work, or when it didn’t work quickly enough, it was left to Cassie to run around the Icarus II , manually operating sections of the shields, or activating sprinkler systems and fire extinguishers.
The journey that had taken sixteen months going out only took twelve months coming back. A rescue ship from Earth responded to the distress signal that Cassie sent out, and rendezvoused with them on the near side of Venus. They were transferred to the other ship, and the Icarus II was towed home for the remaining three months of the journey.
They returned home to great fanfare, and international media attention. They were whisked almost directly from the ship to the hospital. Cassie understood that the Institute wanted to make sure that they were both okay, and that there were probably things to be learned about prolonged time in space. Yet their stay had dragged on for over a month, despite their protests, and they’d both had to argue against being given unnecessary narcotics. The whole thing had seemed strange to her, and made her uncomfortable.
Even now that she was out of the hospital, Cassie was having a hard time. Once the Icarus II had gotten down to a crew of three, she had had nightmares--nightmares of waking up all alone, or that the bomb had not been deployed yet and she had to do it herself. They still haunted her. Gruesome images from her actual past still sometimes forced themselves upon her waking mind. She found herself expecting trusted friends and acquaintances to turn on her, physically, for no reason, like her crew mates had. She suspected that having each other was a great help to both her and Capa in keeping themselves together.
"Cassie? You all right?" He asked her now.
She snapped out of her reverie, back to the present moment and place. She realized that she hadn't said anything or moved for a few minutes
"Yeah," she said. She grinned. "Sorry. Just kind of...lost in thought."
"Oh, well, I wouldn't know anything about that."
"No, of course not," she agreed, in the same teasing tone.
"Say," he said, starting in on a slice of the meringue pie that he had brought for their dessert, "it sounds like there are a lot of kids here today."
She nodded. "A lot of families."
"That's nice," he said.
"It is," she agreed.
It was usually hard for either of them to go anywhere without being recognized; but today, with what seemed like the whole city trying to enjoy an afternoon at the park, it was easy for them to put on civvies and blend into the crowd. It was good to sit back and get an anonymous look at what they had all been fighting for. Cassie knew that the whole planet regarded the three of them as heroes. She also knew that there was certain whispered speculation about her and Capa‘s relationship...although there was probably just as much speculation about the dead.
The thing of it was, in their case, it was true.
It had started early on in the mission, on the journey out, with late-night discussions about their fields, their work. They would meet first under the harsh, narrow light of the dining area, and then, as the weeks dragged on, within the payload, or in either of their rooms. Like Cassie, Capa was still enamored of old-fashioned pen and paper, and they had filled numerous yellow lined pads with equations. In hushed tones, to avoid waking the others, they shared the sacred riddles which made the bomb work and the ship fly. On one humorous occasion that she recalled, the equations had spilled over onto the walls of her room. (She knew she had brought that sidewalk chalk for something; it had come off easily enough with warm water.)
These discussions allowed her to see the enthusiasm and uncharacteristic inhibition that she had known was there. The other thing that impressed he was the fact that he didn't condescend to her at all because she was female. He explained things to her as he would to any colleague, and listened to her with interest. Everyone on the ship was so intelligent--Corazon with her botany, Searle with his knowledge of the human mind and body, Kaneda with his leadership skills, and so on. With Capa, however, Cassie found someone whose knowledge and passion overlapped with her own. They were both pleased, but not surprised, when the nature of their connection changed.
Cassie had told Corazon about her changing feelings, her suspicion that Capa shared them. She had to talk to someone. As it turned out, the botanist had been watching them sagely for some time, and had noticed perhaps even before the erstwhile couple had. Cassie had been burned by love very recently, in a way that had almost derailed her participation in the mission. It had ended in a difficult choice--one that she did not regret, but that changed the colors of her whole world. Suddenly, though, she felt ready to trust someone again--even if their circumstances, as well as good sense, forced them to take things one day at a time.
“He seems so shy though,” Cassie had protested to Corazon. “Even if you’re right, if he does like me…”
“Oh, honey, don’t worry about it,” the other woman had said. “Just drag him into a dark corner somewhere. He’ll figure it out.”
Cassie laughed so hard at that. She would never forget that moment. As it turned out, however, Corazon had more or less been right.
With the rest of the crew around, she and Capa had shown a measure of discretion, even though everyone probably knew what was going on. They wouldn't stay together every night, and whoever had stayed over would usually slip away to their own cabin early in the morning, sometimes grabbing another half hour of sleep. After, though--after the deaths, after the accident, after the bomb--they abandoned the pretense of separate rooms. They stayed together every night, except when one or the other needed to be alone. For every time they embraced as lovers, however, there were many more nights when they could only collapse together, exhausted, like littermates
The former did not even happen for the first time for a while--a week or two, it was hard to tell. It had been a stressful day for both of them. Cassie hadn’t seemed to get a moment’s rest in her struggle to keep the ship flying. The crowning blow, however, had to do with Capa. They had done so well for so long adjusting to what had happened to him. It was not something that one just forgot about, after all, especially if one was unused to it. That day, however, he had happened to trip over a box that should have been stashed safely underneath a counter, three feet to the right. Cassie’s initial terrified, guilty thought was that she had been the one who left it out. As it turned out, he had been the one who had forgotten to put it away. He had found it impossible to conceal how discouraged he was, or how angry with himself.
Alone in her room, Cassie had broken down crying. She had just come in, without turning on the lights, and she didn't know that Capa had come in until he startled her with a hand on her shoulder.
"Hey," he whispered, "those aren't for me, are they?"
"For all of us, I guess," she answered in a strangled voice
"That's certainly fair," he said. "There's...something I've been meaning to ask you, though.”
"Yeah?"
"Everything that has happened...this," her eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and she saw him gesture to himself. "Does it...change anything? For us? Because honestly, if it does...I'll understand."
Her first thought was that she had never heard anything so absurd. Her next was to wonder, terrified, why he would ask.
"It doesn't for me if it doesn't for you," she said.
He breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank God!"
She realized that she, too, had stopped breathing for a second.
"Yeah," she murmured. "I was afraid maybe you--"
He shook his head. He stepped closer, and she put her arms around him. Their foreheads touched in the dark.
"We've come this far," she said. "I think we can make this work, if we ever get back I really do."
With her eyes, closed, she felt, rather than saw, him nod.
Cassie had once read somewhere that pheromones allowed humans to kiss in the dark...guided them instinctively to each others' lips. This phenomenon unfolded again for them at that moment. Close to her ear, he whispered her name, which started out as an interrogative but trailed off as it changed into something different. Looking back, she would never be sure who had kissed who first, but she initiated the next one.
* * * * * *
In the park, so many months later, they sat together in companionable silence. “Penny for your thoughts,,“ Cassie said, wondering how close his reflections were to her own.
“You know," he answered., "they say that it was quite a light show...when the bomb went off."
"That's what I hear, too," she said. "I wouldn't know, either, though."
Ironically, despite her front-row seat, the collision of the bomb and Sun had been unsafe to watch, even through the strongest of the ship's filters. The descriptions she had heard ranged from a rainbow corona around the sun to the Forth of July in broad daylight. It was odd to think that whatever it had been, it had taken eight minutes to be seen on Earth. She could only imagine the happy pandemonium in the streets, the joy and relief--followed by breathless anticipation: the bomb had made it. Was the q-ball gone?
It was.
It had only taken the Institute a few days to confirm that the Sun was no longer being eaten away. With that determined, the original Icarus craft was piloted remotely into the star. Without the q-ball, it did not matter where the second bomb went. A bomb containing dark matter and half of the Earth's Uranium was way too dangerous to bring back home and store indefinitely, and the odds of another q-ball were judged to be too low. Together, the bombs were actually able to add some fuel to the star, reversing some of the damage that the q-ball had done in the forty years since it had first been detected.
The result was all around them today. Ordinary human life went on, with hope for the future to be found in something as simple as a trip to the park. Diatoms, algae, fungi and microorganisms which had lain dormant--and many of which had been feared extinct--were blooming, deep in the earth and the sea. Crops which could not have survived the cooler temperatures were being planted again. Forgotten seeds of the same plants were awakening, sometimes in abandoned fields, but it at least a few cases, breaking through suburban sidewalks. Jet streams and other global wind currents which had shut down were churning to life again to ruffle the waves and play among the mountaintops. The Earth was front-page news, and for once, the news was good. It was a balms 71 degrees in the park that day--the warmest day many of the children around them had ever known.
In silence, Capa and Cassie finished up their lunch and packed it away. He stretched out on the blanket and rested his head in his hands. She slipped her sandals off and cuddled in the crook of his shoulder.
Closing her eyes, she gave reign to her other senses. She felt the warmth of the Sun, almost uncomfortable if she stayed still to long; but she also felt the breeze; She heard the voices around her, and smelled the new, rare smell of fresh-cut grass. She sensed the steady breathing and heartbeat of her partner. She felt another warm body--this one covered in stiff, smooth fur--as Sirius plopped down against both of their feet, seeming to crave contact with both of them.
Cassie smiled. "Robert?"
"Yeah."
"We did it."
"I know."