Chapter Text
Venkat gave Mindy the rest of the week off and told her not to tell anyone until Teddy, legal, and the med staff figured out if they were legally obligated to disclose Watney’s status. Teddy told her that he had personally seen that the overtime she accrued over the past five hundred odd days had been transferred. She also earned an additional fifty-two days of PTO, and her company upgrade would be finalized by the time she was comfortable returning to the center.
On the way to get Chaya and hopefully not have to explain why she was no longer up to dinner Mindy and Venkat ran into Annie and Mitch. Annie told them in a hushed tone that if anyone could beat cancer’s ass it was Mark Motherfucking Watney. Mitch didn’t say anything, but his eyes were bloodshot, just took his tie back from Venkat and went back to Mission Command.
Hours later Mindy was frozen slouched over on the velvet green couch in her living room, Elena had wrapped her in a heavy comforter and Tamika put the lights on dim and had a cup of peach tea in her hands the minute Chaya and her walked in the door.
Mindy couldn’t stop the silent tears running down her face, and only Chaya had a hint of why. Venkat had apologized to Chaya saying something came up and he was planning on staying to work longer, Mindy could barely mumble out her disinterest in eating. Chaya didn’t push nor did she impose, just walked Mindy to the car and headed home quietly catching her up on the impressive stuff the so-called ‘late’ JWST was still capable of imagining.
Now in their living room with the lights dim and the broadcast of Watney’s rescue turned off, Chaya and Elena stayed with Mindy talking to her softly, asking her questions that they received exclusively head nods or broken murmurs.
She felt useless, actually, she felt worse than useless, she felt helpless.
She could feel something digging her heart out of her chest.
Stage Two wasn’t a death sentence; she knew that, a 80% survival chance for IIA to the 50% survival of IIC, but that was the issue. To a math nerd who hated statistics like herself, those numbers could have been 30% and still mean the exact same thing, that there was a chance that all that time and effort was for not. That there was even a chance that Watney fought tooth and nail only for the Sun and Mars and God Himself to kill him on the way home anyways. That statistics, the evil mistress she was, cared not for the collective hard work and dedication to the mission to save one man from the worst imaginable isolation meant nothing more than the dirt under her feet.
He wasn’t even guaranteed to step foot on Earth after all.
He wasn’t even guaranteed home.
Mindy started sobbing at some point between the stats calculation and her final realization. Elena held her through the worst of it, two years of grief for that man had built up to critical mass and she was shaking with the force of it.
Mindy didn’t hear Tamika come back nor her and Chaya debate what to do. She didn’t hear them searching her tote bag then her room for her anxiety meds nor Chaya’s horrified realization Mindy had been missing her daily dose of it since Sol 104. Mindy didn’t hear Elena tell her that it was going to be alright nor did she hear the argument Tamika and Chaya were getting into about how to deal with the situation.
All Mindy heard was the buzzing sound in her head, like her body was just a hive of a million terrified bees. She heard the blood rushing in her ears and the horrific flutter of two million wings in her stomach.
She held her eyes closed and tried to focus on her breathing, it wasn’t working. She could only hear the buzzing.
With her eyes closed she could see the rolled-over trailer, the popped Hab, Iris’ explosion, most of Sirius Four, all the scary things Mark Watney did and none of them stacked up to the concept of cancer to her.
She shook forward and finally felt Elena’s arms around her.
It was still all bees but she could feel her best friend next to her.
∎∎∎
When Watney woke up nearly 14 hours after passing out Beck told him to take the day slowly. He wanted to take at least the next two days to monitor Watney for any imminent changes before allowing him out of the sick bay.
Since Watney wasn’t able to move his feet properly, Beck ordered him to stay in bed and read his emails until the numbness wore off. And oh boy did he have emails. Sure he got emails when Pathfinder was up and running but in the long run, it’s not the same as having unfettered access to the data dumps.
Looking at the staggering number of backlogged messages, 8983, oh so tantalizingly close to 9000, shocked him. Seconds later, Watney realized these were just the accepted sent emails and transmissions.
“It will get worse when I have the true uncensored internet back,” Watney mumbled to himself as he scrolled down his inbox.
There were several dozens of emails from Venkat and a whole heap from NASA as a whole, most he was saving until he was slightly less overwhelmed. It just so happened that the first email he actually read was Annie Montrose and her team of PR consultants informing him of his fame. Along with all that was public prior to his departure on the mission, many incredibly personal things had been dug up and put on display for the consumption of the world. On top of social media posts and public records, they had some leaked texts and DMs of his from all over the place, mostly exs. He was sometimes framed as a bit of an asshole to date but none of the confirmed receipts made him look that bad, just sometimes more than a little hyperfocused on school and then astronaut training. Annie got a kick from informing him that he was a bit of a heartthrob, and sent him a metric ton of fan edits.
The unstated fact was his life hadn’t been private in any form since Sol 6. Watney was the most famous man in the solar system, and Earth knew everything about him. That was the thing about fame, the world knew everything about Watney the Astronaut and they thought they knew everything about Mark the Man too. That was weird as hell.
The public knew his parent's address, they knew he lived there since he was three. They knew his preschool was a mile away from his kindergarten and that was two miles from the city public school he went to. They knew he got detention in middle school for punching a kid for calling Pokémon a ‘gay thing to be into’, they knew he joined a robotics club at 12 and that he was president of the botany club he started in 2017.
They had his (still city public) high school yearbook photos therefore they had photos of him and his first real girlfriend and the second and third girlfriends as well. They knew about his childhood best friend Ben, they also knew about the weird time they may or may not have dated.
They knew that in high school he was a straight-A honors student with the exception of AP Physics and Public Speaking but that he also wracked up 7 detentions for various bad behavior or minor fights he’d jump into.
They knew about the car crash he got into in the middle of senior year, they also knew about his arrest at a climate protest the same month.
Watney read a line from a journalist last year a little before he fried Pathfinder, “ It’s a miracle he was considered the ‘chillest guy around’ to almost everyone that studied or worked with him . Yeah, well have you considered that I’m awesome and fun to be around?”
They had access to all five essay competitions he competed in (and lost) and they had analyzed his college entrance essay to high heaven and back. They had his full college transcript including the modern poetry class he took and withdrew late from.
They had photos of his last high school girlfriend who became his freshman girlfriend, they had photos of the roommates he had all eight years, and they had a list of the other brief relationships he had before Ares 3 left.
They had his PHD thesis on hydropedalogy and sustainable water sourcing for agriculture, along with all 47 papers on water irrigation in drought areas. His two years in the Peace Corps were dug up alongside the photos of him with dozens of dozens of starving children in the Critical Zone.
They had his anger over preventable famines, they had his rants about the water management crisis in cities from Johannesburg to LA to Dubai, and his never-ending grief over extinct species of crop foods.
“Ah, shit they know about my secret bleeding heart, here lies my stoic bad-boy persona.”
They had the Vine he had in middle school, the Instagram he had in high school, the TikTok he had in college, the Twitter then X and Bluesky and Mastadon he used the same username for, both of his Reddit accounts… they even had his ‘secret’ Tumblr account for Christ’s sake. They had everything he ever posted online, they had all of his public thoughts and feelings from the ages of 11 to 31.
“Dear God, they have all of my thoughts and opinions since I was fucking 11. Sure they don’t have the Mission Logs,” but he knew that was a yet and not a never. “ Fuck, I never found out how to delete those.”
There was more to those personal leaks, his parents' address was obviously doxxed when he was still dead but they stayed there, and now a historical plaque stood out front.
“Chicago loves a good historical plaque.”
He lived in Houston’s astronaut quarters or rented short-term for the better part of the last decade so there was no apartment of his own to dox. A few of his exes and friends were outed by legal name but aside from his ‘Highschool Sweetheart’ none of them made a big fuss about it.
“Of course, she would talk to the media,” Watney mumbled more to himself as he continued down the chain of emails.
His family’s backstory of sorts was everywhere, Polish-Italian teacher for a mother and Irish-Scottish Chemist turned Professor for a father. The Watneys were painted as a thoroughly All-American family, hard-working but still barely middle class, total nerds dedicated to the pursuit of education just as much as the success of their favorite baseball team. They had his father’s Chemical Engineering PhD thesis on the Efficiencies of Acids in Rendering Oil for Small Machine Use and his mother’s twenty-nine and half years of teaching Junior Year and AP Biology at his intercity High School. Both of his parents were teaching at the time of Ares Three’s departure but his mother was planning on retiring when he got back, both of them took a sabbatical when their son ‘died’ and almost two months later that sabbatical became somewhat permanent.
Last time he read correspondence from his mother she had expressed her displeasure at not being able to end her teaching career on her own terms but thought it best to stay home after his ‘undeath’. His father on the other hand had been itching to get back to his professorship and was counting the days until he could walk out of the house and there were zero reporters or well-wishers to push out of the way to the mailbox. Sure they had both also prayed the fly-by pick-up would work and they could hold their living and breathing son again in seven months but NASA must have severely limited what they could and couldn’t say outside of that.
Watney made a mental note to check on any more emails from them that he might have gotten during his accidental self-imposed communication blackout. Distantly he thought he should be scrambling at the opportunity to tell them just how much he missed them and couldn’t wait to see them. The problem was he wasn’t quite sure what to say aside from I AM NOT ON MARS and TELL ME YOU GOT ANOTHER GOLDEN RETRIEVER AND WEREN’T ALLOWED TO TELL ME THAT FOR FEAR I WOULD FEEL REPLACED.
Within the briefing about his parents’ doxxing and his fame were all the memorial slides and dedication presentations that included practically everything ever posted on Facebook by his parents. A metric shitload of baby photos and home videos of toddler Mark to the uploaded Blackberry photos of elementary school and early iPhone photos of middle school to the many slightly higher quality photos of his participation in school activities and college.
Every photo included was a different snapshot of an inventive white kid from the South Side of Chi-town who was obsessed with everything nerdy possible. Photos of Watney as a young boy with missing teeth and bandaids on his legs in an oversized Cubs jersey overtop retro Voltron merch popped up alongside photos of a slightly older Watney with chapped lips and bloody nails wearing a Chullo hat with patterns of leaves on it, a Doctor Who shirt and khaki shorts standing outside Wrigley with his friends in the snow.
He looked like the very picture of the American dream came true, a smaller-than-average nine-year-old in the tiny front yard with an old golden retriever named Leia, planting orchids while the dog dug holes. He was a poster boy, twenty-two in his post-grad program for Plant Biology in the dorm with a ratty-old Star Wars ( A New Hope ) tee-shirt and a pair of grey sweatpants smoking something, probably weed, as he was clearly ranting about the kind of people that smoked. He was a tall tale, barely thirty-one in the bulky white EVA suit, helmet in hand with a striking smile and badass pose.
But now, he was thirty-five, one birthday in the mission training Vomit Comet, one birthday floating in space, and the other stranded on Mars from the man he was in the Ares 3 promotional material. He went from 227 pounds of pure muscle and NASA training to 145 soaking wet. His soft-cropped blonde hair was now a long greasy dirty dishwater, and his clean-shaven mostly smooth face became a map of cuts and scrapes with the remains of the patchy beard he shaved off. His dark but sharp blue eyes are now a bit paler, and hollow now compared to the determined look he had in all these press photos. The Mark Watney on the screen had a naturally bright white smile with braces-straight teeth, the Mark Watney hunched over the data screen had five cavities and two cracked teeth, all 32 of them yellowed beyond repair.
In photos from a beach trip he, Martinez, and two of their AssCan buddies from a few months before the Ares 3 crew started isolation he looked like an Adonis. He had a discrete six-pack in the photo (so did the other three) he looked good (so did the other three). He would likely never look like that again. Watney knew he’d mourn his twenties, he didn’t know he’d mourn his thirties before they were even halfway over.
Watney sniffled back tears, “ Fuck I’m pathetic and I’ve barely been onboard for a Sol… a Day. ”
He started to record a log.
Watney sat in front of the data screen, the bright white of the Mission Log recorder lighting up his splotchy face. The screen glow cast strong contrasts between the sickly pale of his shallow skin and the blues and purples of his eye bags, bruised jaw, and cut-up face.
Martinez watched him from the doorway into Beck’s bunk room, now Watney’s sleeping quarters, formerly Martinez’s. Commander Lewis was giving him and Johansen busy work cleaning up the Hermes station as Vogel and Beck did outside repairs. He knew why, logically it made sense to give Watney time and space to recuperate, he went from zero human contact for over four months to a trickle of mind-numbing correspondence with JPL and a pittance of emails back to zero contact with Earth for around half a year and now suddenly he had five live humans in the flesh and blood along with nearly three dozen redundant communications systems with direct access and contact to multiple agencies connected to and including NASA. It had to be a shock to the system. The most isolated living being in human history to the world's most famous man alive or dead.
Martinez watched as his best friend in the entire universe sat in front of a camera and lied.
Watney lied, he said he was fine with the diagnosis.
That he was excited about what it meant to be the most famous person in the solar system. That he was looking forward to rubbing it in the nose of every astronaut, alive or dead, that he was the first true Martian and will hold the title of Pirate King of Mars until he sires an heir to replace him.
That he couldn't wait to see his mom and dad, was dreaming of deep dish pizza and making the first pitch at every Cubs game for the rest of his natural life.
That he was never going to eat another potato in that timeframe and that if never heard a disco song again it would be too soon.
He went on and on with all his optimistic thoughts he hadn’t included in his rescue log from yesterday. He only mentioned the cancer twice, once to say he was fine and the second to say it might make him even cooler than before.
Martinez was digging his nails into the palm of his hand, he was pissed and he didn’t even know what the main problem was. Sure he knew he built up so much grief and rage about Watney’s death and then an extra helping of self-loathing and guilt when Watney was revived but stranded and even more after Iris failed. After the rendezvous yesterday he was feeling like the best damn pilot this side of the Milky Way but something deeper inside of himself was rotten and he had no clue what it was.
Watney signed off his Mission Log with a forced smile, “In the end, I’m just glad to be alive— God am I glad to be alive and on my way home. The first thing I do out of quarantine is eat some fucking deep dish, holy fuck.”
“Done bullshitin’, Watney?”
Watney clicked a key on the keyboard in front of him and turned his face to Martinez. He looked even worse than yesterday, pale and exhausted with a dash of broken and battered.
“Hello to you too, Martinez.”
Martinez shook his head but couldn’t help himself from smiling, “Howdy, Potato Princess.”
“Were you planning on just staring at me like a creep?” Watney was giving him that fake smile again, “If you’re playing hooky with your duties why don’t you join me?”
“Beck said to leave you to rest and whatnot,” Martinez leaned against the doorway, “You feeling rested ‘nough to chat or?”
“The good doctor sees it fit to pump me full of happy drugs and strange liquids,” Watney vaguely gestured to the IV drips hung above him, “But I’m awake for now so sure.”
Martinez walked-bounced into the room, he debated closing the foiled curtain behind him for privacy but remembered if he was caught ‘harassing’ Watney before Bossy Beck cleared him that he would be screwed either way. Martinez sat down on the corner of the bed, next to Watney’s right foot, “Not gonna start talking Martianeese to me, right?”
“Never could pick the dialect up,” Watney gave his friend a real smile.
“Heard you picked up hex code though, Johanssen and Vogel got nerd boners about it so it must have been something.”
“Wait ‘til you hear about all the old programming gobbledigook I had to pick up and then butcher.”
“Ramble away My Spud Bud.”
“Not a fan of that one either.”
∎∎∎
Mindy felt numb after the decent three hours of crying like she drained her body of at least one stage of her grief. Her ears were still buzzing with the whole nest of terrified bees but she wasn’t as mortified of them anymore.
“Would you like me to run a bath for you?” Elena’s soothing voice broke through the buzzing, “Or maybe a shower if you don’t feel like sitting anymore.”
Mindy nodded slowly, she felt distant from the decision, not quite sure how it would help. She had been taking weekly showers in the crew center at NASA, not her preferred schedule for showering but surprisingly it wasn’t the worst she’s had. She had a rough go of third-year undergrad.
Elena hummed as she helped Mindy off the sofa and up the stairs, really just keeping a hand on her upper back. Elena had told something to Tamika when they walked past her but Mindy wasn’t paying enough attention as she was led into the shared bathroom.
“Want me to pull out anything specific to wear or just something comfy?” Elena asked as she ushered in the door.
“Anything without the NASA logo.”
“Roger that,” Elena turned the corner in the hall to Mindy’s room.
Mindy looked around the room, attempting to pick out five things to see, hear, smell, and touch. She probably should have attempted it when the panic attack was happening, not when she was in the downswing.
One - The cute fluffy multicolored towels that were from an actual home essentials pack, wildly overpriced to be clear but adorable nevertheless.
Two - Novelty zebra and giraffe soap dispensers.
Three - The nine different hair dye bottles along with the hair bleach only Mindy cared for.
Four - The pretty JSWT photo of deep space printed on the shower curtain.
Five - The auto-cleaning cat litter box that doesn’t really work.
One - Said auto-cleaning cat litter box’s faint motor hum.
Two - The steam vent fan in the ceiling.
Three - The subtle humming from Elena down the hallway.
Four - Creaking on the stairs as Chaya or Tamika went back downstairs.
Five… The million terrified bees trapped inside of Mindy.
Mindy sat on the closed lid of the toilet, the buzzing in her ears made her lose concentration on calming down.
She had dedicated all her time, effort and thoughts of the past eighteen months to the man on Mars and it might have been for nothing. She had never once met Mark Watney, she had of course watched pieces and parts of the Ares 3 mission prior to Sol 6. In fact, she’d been one of three SatCon to label and categorize the storm cell that started late Sol 3 that led to Watney’s situation.
At one point before that when the Ares 3 crew was announced she had thought Watney was unfairly hot. The pieces of NASA PR for the mission she had seen either due to following everything Space News or because she went looking for it all showed this obscenely attractive funny astronaut. Not to mention the Under Armour ad she couldn’t stop getting every other Youtube video. The whole crew was carefully chosen to have a bit more interest than the Ares 2 crew who were all above the age of 35 and incredibly talented scientists but not quite heartthrobs.
Sure Chris Beck and Beth Johanssen were both cuties too but something about Watney had always made something in Mindy stir.
And it’s always been ridiculously stupid , Mindy thought. Downright insanely stupid. She was no better than those hopeless girls and boys posting Watney-imagines online, compulsively watching The Watney Report and checking every app’s #WatneyWatch feed. A fangirl with direct access to the seventeen imaging satellites that watched over him obsessively and someone managed to get paid for it. A salaried stalker for all intents and purposes.
Sure deep down Mindy knew that was an unwarranted and cruel judgment of herself but that didn’t stop her from thinking it was true. Still, part of herself sparred against her self-loathing, powered by the knowledge that she was considered a vital component in Watney’s rescue.
She had perfected the art of reading satellite images for minute details and became the go-to expert in discerning what Watney was physically doing every day. She had taught herself binary by the end of the week from Pathfinder’s loss to the point she hadn’t needed a reference chart since. She was to her best knowledge the only one that strictly kept Watney time the entire time, to the point that when he had injured himself and temporarily stopped leaving the Hab she had inapplicably gotten a bad migraine that lasted those four days.
Mindy only barely caught the sound of Elena’s footsteps before she was joined in the bathroom again. Elena had a stack of clothes in her hands as she came in.
“Alright, I found a pair of soft PJ bottoms and a large Sonic shirt, that work?”
Mindy nodded, so Elena sat them down on the countertop.
“Want me to start the shower for you?”
“No,” Mindy shook her head as she stood up, “I’ve got it.”
“Alright, do you want me to make you anything specific for dinner?”
“Not really,” Mindy didn’t want to admit she just wasn’t hungry.
“I’ll see what Chaya wants then, there will be plenty either way.”
Mindy nodded in acknowledgment.
“Okay,” Elena clapped her hands, “I’ll leave you to it, take as long as you need.”
Mindy heard the door shut as she turned to the shower, she turned the hot water all the way on and put her hand under the faucet for just a second before turning the cold water on slightly. Gauging it as just to the side of scalding she wiped her hand off on her leggings before taking them and the rest of her clothes off.
She took one of the fluffy towels off the rack and draped it over the curtain bar as she climbed in.
As the steam began rising from the tub she found her shampoo, conditioner, and body soap on the metal shelf below Chaya’s and above the bottles of bath bubbles and shrink-wrapped bath bombs. At least she wouldn’t have to deal with the tiny complimentary hygiene products from the staff showers anymore.
She lathered her hair in shampoo, but couldn’t get herself to start listing smells.
She was still stuck in a mental three-sided battle between feeling gross for her obsession with Watney, pride for her dedication and mastery of multiple systems, and temporally-displaced grief for Watney. There were more underlying feelings but they got drowned out by the main three and the buzzing in her head.
She stood under the spray of water, it was almost too hot for her to stay under but she was more stubborn than self-preservational.
Leaning her head back, Mindy shut her eyes and held her hands out, and desperately tried to focus on the feeling of the water. It hadn’t cooled down any further in her daze but her skin had gotten used to the warmth, it was a subtle sting that brought her back to her physical self.
She was unbelievably hungry and exhausted, she was slightly shaking, and bottom line she felt like shit.
“Fuck.”
∎∎∎
Watney spent a decent hour talking with Martinez about pieces and parts of his journey of teaching himself programming. Slowly he began getting tired but he did his best to keep it coherent and engaging, Martinez was helpful in prompting questions and needing further clarification. It was beyond simple for the two friends to slip back into their teasing nature.
“I’m surprised your voice isn’t all fucked up and squeaky.”
“Probably all the talking to myself.”
Martinez did his best to keep a neutral face at the admission, “Go crazy down there?”
“I did lick the walls.”
“Seriously?” Martinez’s eyebrows shot up.
“It was only once and for science.”
“For science of course.”
Watney snickered remembering the time he stood next to the tarp separating the pop-outs and the main floor of the Hab, “Water condensed all over the place when I had the hydrazine burni-“
“THE WHAT!?” Martinez bolted up from the cot.
“Eh- The hydrazine burning to mak-“
“THE FUCKING WHAT?!” Martinez was fully on his feet.
“Hmm,” Watney hummed, not a reaction he was expecting or comfortable with, “You seem disturbed by my burning of the hydrazine inside the Hab.”
“Why in God’s good name would you do that?!”
“To make water,” Watney replied simply.
“Oh fucking of course you need it to make water— WHAT THE FUCK,” Martinez moved to the wall and buzzed the coms button, “Did anyone else on board know Watney burned fucking rocket fuel to make water?!”
Watney leaned forward to pull the data screen back towards himself over the cot, “It only almost killed me twice which all thi-“
“Oh my fucking God Watney!” Martinez’s eyes were wide, “You did go insane!”
“Watney did what?!” Johanssen’s voice was shrill as it came through the speakers on the wall.
“Martinez, I thought you were suspiciously absent from the mess cleaning,” Lewis was already in the crew quarters corridors so her voice was doubled as it came over the speaker.
“Howdy Commander!” Watney did his best at a cheerful greeting but he was becoming increasingly tired despite only being awake for less than three hours.
“Watney,” Lewis was in the doorway, “Do you need us to get Beck?”
“Nope,” Watney popped the ‘p’ at the end of the word, he looked back at the screen clicking out of the emails from Annie Montrose, “I was checking my email and it turns out I’m the world’s favorite guy.”
“I can’t believe I missed this asshole,” Martinez faced Lewis, “He burned hydrazine!”
“I heard,” Lewis nodded before shaking her head instead, deciding she needed to know, “Actually why? And in the Hab?”
“Needed to make a shit-ton of water, took me a little while to come up with a plan to get a decent bit of Hydrogen and Oxygen. Early on I remembered the MAV’s fuel plant was literally made to collect CO₂ but the hydrogen was a bit harder to figure out the MDV’s leftover hydrazine was well over what I nee-“
“Oh, so you used two kinds of rocket fuel? Great!” Martinez’s arms were in the air.
“Martinez, take a walk,” Lewis gestured to the corridor down to the gym, “You need to calm down.”
“Hey if it helps, Rick, you were very helpful in the process. Landed that puppy wonderfully close by and left me enough hydrazine I could take a number of baths.”
“I don’t wanna know,” Martinez dropped his arms and started to walk away, “Crazy motherfucker!”
“Don’t forget it!” Watney joked as his friend walked away before looking back to Lewis as she took a seat in Beck’s chair in the room, “You were also a great help, I used your suit as a water tank.”
“You— No, doesn’t matter at the moment, how are you feeling?”
Watney ignored the question in favor of his own, “Did you guys actually not know about the hydrazine?”
“No,” Lewis folded her hands in her lap, “NASA didn’t tell us a lot of things about your survival.”
“Yeah,” Watney shook his head, it made him feel dizzy, he gritted his teeth, “Still can’t believe they waited that long to tell you I was alive.”
“They had their reasons.”
“Shitty reasons,” Watney practically whined as he said it looking back at his email, at least 178 new ones since he looked at all the stuff Annie sent, “Speaking of shitty reasons, I am very famous.”
“Impossibly famous actually,” Lewis watched Watney as he seemed to focus on his emails.
Watney scrolled down until he noticed Venkat had forwarded him a handful of emails with the subject line ‘When He’s Rescued’ and he reacted out loud as he had with everything for the last two years with, “Oh, well that’s not ominous at all.”
“What?” Lewis asked from her seat.
Watney was a little confused that she was still there, he had a brief moment of forgetting her presence and then the immediate relief that she was, “Venkat being Venkat, think he’s made it his personal mission to see me handled.”
“You certainly made his life very difficult,” Lewis unfolded her hand and ran them up her thighs, a little bit of pressure to focus on.
“Director of Mars Operations demoted to my personal devotee,” Watney let out a weak chuckle, “Guess a lot of NASA was demoted to a similar position.”
“We all were,” Lewis gave Watney a genuine smile.
“Of course,” Watney nodded looking away from the daunting number of emails, “Anything you wanted in particular, Commander?”
“Not in particular no,” Lewis frowned as she looked at the small monitor attached to Watney’s IV drip, “Beck and Vogel are still doing haul analysis for the next few minutes, he was under the impression you might fall asleep before he returned.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“Not at all,” Lewis shook her head, “You’re doing exceptionally well, all things considered.”
“Do you mean the not dying on Mars thing or the handling of being diagnosed with cancer thing?”
“Both— neither…. some combination of the two and everything else,” Lewis took her time with her answer, “You’ve been through the wringer, Watney.”
“That explains the bruising.”
“Very funny,” Lewis narrowed her eyes at him but softened remarkably quickly as she watched his foot under the blanket twitch, “Are you in any physical pain?”
“That’s between me and my doctor, Commander,” Watney was getting steadily more exhausted but after being told he was expected to fall asleep again he wanted to fight against it, “If ye must know I’m too wacked out on Beck’s cocktail of meds to know.”
“No you aren’t,” Lewis stood up and went over to the IV bags, “I’m not a doctor but he had to clear most of it with me for posterity, no morphine or anything to make you loopy.”
“Maybe I'm natural loopy, Commander,” Watney looked up at Lewis but she was looking at the vitals on the stand.
He felt a bit more dizzy and closed his eyes to damp it down. He works out that it’s probably the faux gravity, in the crew cabin it’s nearly triple that of Mars it’s not has bad as the kitchen or gym would be which he’d have to work his way up to. There’s a question for Beck, can I hold my own body weight up in Earthlike gravity?
“Hmm?”
Watney was shaken from his thoughts, by Lewis’ questioning hum.
“What?” His voice had lost some of its strength.
“You mumbled something,” Lewis looked away from the vital’s screen.
“ Oh ,” Watney realized he must still be saying all his thoughts out loud, “Do you think I could hold my own body weight up? My muscles got so used to Martian gravity and Beck said I lost significant muscle mass but I was fine putting on the EVA suit on practically every day. I mean some of that has to equal out.”
“Not sure,” Lewis shrugged as she went back to the chair, “You did a lot of manual labor I assume.”
“In the last seven months or overall?”
“Well I’m under the impression all the modifications to the MAV was quite the workout,” Lewis folded her hands in her lap again, “Beck did say you have a herniated disc, any chance that’s recent?”
“Maybe?” Watney shrugged, the effect was lost in the fact he couldn’t quite lift his right shoulder that high and winced at the movement regardless.
“And apparently injured your right shoulder,” Lewis unfolded her hands nervously, “I asked you earlier if you were in pain.”
“So you did,” Watney grimaced as he ran his left hand up the front of his other shoulder, “Nothing I can’t handle, Commander.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
The room went quiet, for the first time in a long while a quiet moment wasn’t just filled with his own breathing and the subtle noise of life support systems running. The screen next to Watney made a slight buzz that his sensitive ears could keen into plus the Hermes was also far more insulated than the Hab or the Rovers. Watney could just barely make the sound of someone climbing the ladder into the corridor, the soft clank of the metal as hands pulled up and off the bars.
It would take some getting used to, other people making noise, even soft and inconsequential noise in distant rooms.
Watney slowly turned his head to the open door so that Beck’s arrival wasn’t much of a surprise. Dimly he thought to say something but Watney couldn’t quite manage to communicate his awareness into words, he must be truly exhausted.
“Already let Beth know but the VAL is fully popped, it might be okay for attachment to the station but it’s toast for anything else,” Beck said to Lewis as he walked in before heading straight toward the back of the room, “I would say it’s possible okay to stay pressurized but Vogel’s convinced there’s a hairline fracture in the starboard side wall along with the actual nozzle of the airlock door so it’s not worth the air loss.”
“Could that hairline fracture expand at all?” Lewis put pressure back on her knees to focus on Beck’s commentary.
“Hypothetically sure but the only one here with firsthand airlock leak experience is currently incapacitated.”
“I resemble that!” Watney weakly dissented the idea.
“Resent,” Beck corrected, not looking back at him as he grabbed a tablet from the work desk, “You’re awake clearly, have you napped at all since I left you alone seven hours ago?”
“It’s been seven hours?” Watney was sure it had at most been three and a half.
“Semi-conscious then,” Beck typed something on the tablet and then scrolled down, “How’s the numbness?”
Watney attempted to wiggle his toes and got some movement in the left leg but felt only pins and needles in the right, he could barely feel anything on that side that wasn’t sharp pains or numbness, “Right sides asleep for sure.”
“Hmm,” Beck made a note and walked over to Watney’s cot, since it was repositioned to make it easier to access both sides he shuffled into the spot between the data screen and the wall, “Can you point to the numbness or is it all over?”
Watney stretched forward slightly, it made him dizzy so he closed his eyes briefly, then he pointed to his foot and followed it all the way up to an inch or two past his knee and then up to his upper chest, shoulder, and neck.
Beck leaned down and put a small amount of pressure on Watney’s right foot, “Can you feel that?”
Watney tried but it didn’t really feel like much, “Not really.”
“Okay,” Beck tapped at the tablet and moved up Watney’s leg until the knee making note of the lack of response throughout the exam, “Right, the shoulder still in pain on top of the numbness or is it canceling out?”
“Nope, still a bitch and half,” Watney said as Beck glided his hand over the sore spot.
“Tomorrow you’ll probably be bruised there,” Beck nodded as he noted the pain and then set the tablet on the bed so he could move Watney’s blanket down slightly, “Lean back, gotta check the ribs again.”
Watney leaned back with little fanfare, too tired to make a joke out of his predicament and too excited at the notion of other people nearby him for the rest of his life to care.
Beck pressed lightly on his bandaged ribs, quick painful breaths from Watney made the extent of his pain clear so Beck moved lower to check his concave stomach. It had only just barely been a day of IV feeding so there was no chance of any further progress in his weight. Beck made a note of it to keep Watney from accidentally overfeeding himself, the only reason he hadn’t stopped in to give real food… or at least the stuff they send in the foil packages for the kitchen.
Watney’s eyes had fluttered closed briefly and Beck made note of his resistance to sleep naturally, he would have to query the other Med staff if this could potentially develop into something. Beck already knew he’d wait for the immediate future to question Watney's general state of health on Mars. The Psych portion of the Med staff were somehow still in the theory stage for Watney’s mental state and strongly warned against bringing up Mars until further notice.
Beck had know for a fact Watney was a strong man physically, mentally, emotionally, and morally. Watney has been, currently is and hopefully will always be the toughest cookie around. He’s diametrically opposed to melancholy and that most certainly saved his life. A lesser man would have killed himself, as soon as Beck thought it he reprimanded himself for the dismissiveness of suicidality, Projection maybe.
“Okay that’s the physical bill of health.”
“Still fucked?” Watney asked with eyes drifting closed.
“You’ll live,” Beck gave him a weak smile, “I’ll let you get some sleep, do you want me and the Commander to leave or would you prefer the company?”
“As long as you don’t climb in bed with me,” Watney mumbled as he twisted slightly to lay in the cot more comfortably, “Or play any Disco.”
“Promise to keep Cheryl Lynn and Blondie away from your sensitive ears,” Lewis gave him a weak smile.
Watney made a sound of acknowledgment and closed his eyes to fall back asleep
∎∎∎
Freshly showered and redressed, Mindy sat in the kitchen with a bowl of bisque and a toasted baguette slice in front of her.
Chaya sat across from her with her own bowl, and dragged her slice of bread around in the soup, “Hypothesis: You can’t talk about it.”
“Evidence: Not at all, Venkat and Annie suggested needing Legal to know one way or the other,” Mindy enjoyed Chaya’s silly scientific way of talking about things.
“Clarifying Hypothesis: It’s got something to do with Watney,” Chaya scooped up some of the soup with the bread to eat, “He’s alive but something’s up.”
“Assumption: He’s alive,” Mindy ate some of her bisque with her spoon before following up with, “Refine: He’s not dead.”
“Ah,” Chaya sat her bread back in her bowl and leaned forward, “Expand Hypothesis: Your breakdown had something to do with his health.”
“Always has,” Mindy ate some more soup, “I think— Hypothesis: I was a little hyperfocused on him.”
“You don’t say,” Chaya chuffed as she went back to her food, “Gave El and Tam a heart attack and half over the last two years, had to keep them in the loop as best as I could.”
“That’s my fault,” Mindy nodded loosely as she stirred her bowl, “After Venkat figured out where he was going on Sirius Four… well I was about to come home for a nap but he figured it out and I just went back to the room and kept an eye on him until I fell asleep. Didn’t wanna to leave after that.”
Chaya whistled, “No kidding, that’s early.”
“Yep,” Mindy cracked her piece of bread to dip it in the soup, “Napped a lot on Venkat’s futon or in the sleep rooms.”
“I hate those rooms,” Chaya scrunched up her nose, “So chilly and dark!”
“That’s kind of the point.”
“Yuh-huh,” Chaya was dismissive, “Why the fuck would anyone wanna freeze while napping?”
“Some get overheated when asleep, plus you could bring a blanket.”
“Boriiiiiing,” Chaya rolled her eyes before finishing the last of her soup and standing up to put it in the sink, “You wanna glass?”
Mindy looked up from her food, Chaya was holding one wine glass and leaning towards the freezer drawer.
“Maybe,” Mindy wasn’t she getting wine drunk while this exhausted and emotional was a good idea.
“Maybe,” Chaya mocked as she opened the drawer and grabbed a re-sealed bottle of rosé, “You deserve it regardless of whatever fucked up Martian Virius Watney may or may not have picked up.”
Mindy snorted a bit, “Be pretty ironic if he brought back the water demon things from Tennet’s run.”
“Oh god,” Chaya laughed, needing to grasp at the counter to calm her shaking, “Did you read some of his papers on water management?”
“No comment,” Mindy snickered as she stirred her soup some more, “In unrelated news, I think I should apologize for being so distant the last two years.”
“Nonsense,” Chaya walked back over to the table and sat the two wine glasses down, “You had a hard job and a lot of dedication for it.”
“I missed everyone’s birthdays,” Mindy pointed out quietly.
“And we missed yours,” Chaya grinned at her friend, determined to win the argument, “I forgot to check in as often as I should’ve, but NASA was a mess even outside the focus on Watney.”
“Doubt there was a branch untouched in the process,” Mindy said as she ran another chunk of bread into her soup, “Ares Four team probably had it the worst.”
“Heard they didn’t mind it so much as being trampled over by the Ares Three team,” Chaya poured herself a full glass and Mindy half, “A tad territorial that lot.”
“I haven’t even asked Venkat how that’s gonna work out.”
“How do you mean?”
“Ares Four and Five,” Mindy took a bite of her bread before continuing, “The team for Ares Four theoretically would be in isolation prep and Ares Five should be starting finalization for crew selection and MAV launch.”
“Ah,” Chaya nodded, “But all of that’s been indefinitely postponed since what? The week after you found him?”
“Probably beforehand, all things considered,” Mindy stirred her soup again, feeling mildly queasy, “Doubt they want to announce a halt to scheduling that close to Christmas.”
“Hmm,” Chaya hummed as she took a sip of her wine.
“I think Annie was asked maybe two… three times in the last year what the plan for the rest of the missions were but it’s been a pretty consistent, ‘our focus is on the rescue of Mark Watney and the safe return of all six members of the Ares Three Crew’ and that make sense,” Mindy did a decent impression of Annie’s ‘that’s ass fuck dumb question’ face as she spoke.
Chaya frowned, “You don’t think they’ll indefinitely postpone, do you?”
“Well, we got the Taiyang Shen because of a deal to put a Chinese-picked Tychnonaut on the crew.” Mindy shrugged and set her spoon down as she grabbed the wine glass left on the table for her, “The Ares Four mission would need a new MAV and the supplies would need sent, I’d wonder— Hypothesis: they could combine the final two missions to get it out of the way but… Alternative Hypothesis: Venkat could get funding for a revamp of the Hermes and get several additional missions.”
“Kapoor had been pushing for a sixth even before Watney.”
“He’s very pro-boots-on-the-ground,” Mindy nodded before she took a sip of her wine then added, “He never said it but Hypothesis: Venkat was very excited about Watney technically colonizing Mars.”
“Think that’s the next step?”
“Probably,” Mindy shivered a bit at the idea, “There’s still so much to learn about the effects of Martian gravity on the human body, the effect of that kind of isolation even without the communications blackout Watney had there’s only so many people we could support in Habs. So on and so forth.”
“Assumption: there’s no way Watney comes back unscathed,” Chaya said it mostly to herself but noticed Mindy flinch at the idea so she added, “Nothing anyone could have done would have stopped it, I’m sure NASA won’t let their new poster boy for the spirit of invasion and survival spoil any farther.”
Mindy nodded, not knowing how to respond, she went back to her food finishing it in a few bites.
“Speaking of not going unscathed, you need to find a new therapist and get on your meds again.”
“Sure thing, Mom,” Mindy smiled, “I’ll fix both of those things this week.”
“HR could help you out with it, find someone in network and everything.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Mindy’s smile fell as she thought on it, Venkat had shrugged it off but she was sure the HR team was a wash with health and mental claims of the overworked employees, “Venkat gave me the week off.”
“How many of those did he give you off during all this?” Chaya had a look on her face that Mindy always understood to be a challenge of sorts.
“He offered a few, forced the one for Christmas.”
“I know, you missed Chanukah,” Chaya smiled at her before taking another sip of wine, “And then slept most of the time you were home.”
“Was a weird time watching him,” Mindy frowned remembering the time between Watney’s final prep for the Schiaparelli trip and the actual first days of the trip, “I was more afraid during the three days it took him to get back online after the airlock popping. And I was certainly more nervous when we flagged the duststorm that could have overtaken him. And I was downright neurotic about the rollover but at the start of the trip I was… hopeful I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Hypothesis,” Mindy scrunched her face up at the call-out, “It wasn’t exactly excitement… I need a therapist for this.”
“No kidding,” Chaya laughed as she stood up and went to the living room calling after her with a, “You should get some rest before you get one.”
Mindy followed her, but before she could respond something rubbed against her leg, she looked down in shock to see her delightfully stupid orange cat, “Kirk, my son!”
She swooped down to pick up the large orange beast who immediately started to purr.
“Yeah take that monster back,” Chaya grumbled she switched the TV over to be able to play her game, “Got mad you weren’t home so he started sleeping in my bed since Tam and El were already asleep half the time.”
“My poor boy,” Mindy squished her cat into her chest, “I’m so sorry for abandoning you but in my defense there was an incident, several in-fact.”
Kirk made a sound half way between a yawn and a meow and Mindy was back to head over heels for her cat.
“I’m taking my son and going to bed.”
“Crazy cat lady,” Chaya mumbled as she grabbed her game controller and a pair of headphones from the TV stand.
Mindy made a mocking sound as she took Kirk up to the stairs, “Goodnight Chaya.”
“Yeah-yeah, night-night.”
Mindy made her way back to her bed for the first time since Christmas, she left the lights off and sat Kirk down at the end of her unmade bed. Kirk moved in a circle as he made himself comfortable while Mindy went back to the bathroom to brush her teeth.
She made a mental note that she should have a travel toothbrush in her bag along with a whole cacophony of nonsense she needed to survive during her self imposed lockdown in SatCon. She had gotten used to using her precious free hours when she knew Watney was passed out in the Hab before her own exhaustion crept over her to eat and take care of her hygiene.
When she was done brushing her teeth she looked at her face in the mirror properly, her eyes were still a bit bloodshot and shadowed with deep eyebags. Her hair had grown out considerably with the bleached part now past the top of her ears and her natural black hair at the top. Maybe it’s time to re-bleach… later, tomorrow maybe… Maybe.
Mindy turned off the lights in the bathroom and made her way back to her room, closing the door behind her before climbing into bed.
To say sleep came easily upon her would be a lie, for more than twenty minutes Mindy just petted Kirk’s soft fur. A low rumble of his purring was burrowing its way into her chest. She vaguely remembered him purring this hard a little over five months ago when she was home but she was half a zombie then.
Mindy snuggled Kirk in closer, “My poor little boy.”
Kirk made a noise between a chirp and a meow in response.
“I know, I was focused on a different spaceman, my apologies to you, James Tiberius.”
Kirk purred as he pushed against her hand. Mindy fell asleep petting him after a many long and silent minutes.
In the recess of her dreams, frantic tapping on keyboards and confused chatter over repositioning aging satellites flowed into pacing behind chairs and writing nearly incomprehensible emails then into more images of the red planet and all its terrible nonsense.
Hours later Mindy woke from a half-remembered nightmare and her heart beating faster than a stampede.
A world away, after all this time.
∎∎∎
The grand distance between Earth and Mars is nothing compared to the distance between both and the stars in the sky. It can be said that the constellations are the same on both planets with differences in a hair or needle off.
The sun still rose in the east and Polaris was still up north.
The main difference between the two night skies was just how much you could see. Mars had 26 satellites to the 12 thousand orbiting Earth, so sure every now and then you could see the blinking of something humanmade but you could also see the arm of the Milky Way. It was a nearly perfect clear night, every night… except for the storms.
Of course, even the storms on Mars were so faint that the strongest winds were barely louder than a light breeze.
They only sounded louder in the Hab, the sound terrible in there, the wind making its presence known as it threw gram after gram, pound after pound on the canvas. A canvas that was only ever meant to withstand the lower level of Martian storms.
He survived a few of them. More than any other human being that was on Mars but that didn’t mean much. He only narrowly avoided the larger dust cloud that once, he got lucky by being sub-par at navigation.
He stared up at the sky looking for the pale blue dot, a world away after all this time.
Watney was woken up by a beeping noise. Beeping noises were nice things much better than the blaring of the fire alarm he triggered for nearly a week and it was just barely noticeable compared to the low oxygen alarm or water reclaimer’s alarm. Or the half dozen other life support things he had broken in his stay on Mars.
He wasn’t sure what it was this time but of course it was always something, if it wasn’t an alarm it was rarely important but to be fair nothing screamed at him about frying Pathfinder . He screamed about it, only once sure but he only let himself scream about a death sentence once per 30 sols.
Watney tried to slowly get up to check on whatever system was beeping at him. He was aware of a baker’s dozen aches and pains and he wasn’t quite conscious enough to remember what he had done to trigger such things.
“Ah, just in time for check-up,” A familiar voice called out from the distance.
Now Watney knew he had heard a few voices over his time on Mars, but he never acknowledged it beyond Third-Man-Factor bullshit, so he elected to ignore the oddly toned spector of Beck he must have conjured and laid back down.
“No sleeping in,” The cruel auditory hallucination snickered, “That’s the timer for your pain meds.”
“Nah’sn’t,” Watney slurred his words, not on purpose of course but he didn’t really mind it either way.
“Oh, but it is,” That voice sounded closer and Watney wasn’t a fan, “C’mon sit up again.”
Watney wasn’t sure why his subconscious would make a Beck for him just to make him as bossy as he remembered the real thing. He wasn’t a fan of being told what to do either way, He lifted his left arm to cover his eyes completely and possibly fall back to sleep.
The feel of something pinching the back of his hand though cleared all hope of sleep and he sat up ram-rod straight. His eyes snapped open to look at the acute pain and he was struck with the image of an IV contraption attached to the hand.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” the voice sounded almost bored of his antics.
Watney blinked a few times trying to make sense of his situation, he knew for a fact what IV equipment was in the Hab he hadn’t dared to touch so he hadn’t done this.
“Mus’be a dr’m,” Watney mumbled.
“Nope,” the ‘p’ popped at the end of the word and Watney looked up to see a very convincing recreation of Beck in front of him, complete with disheveled short brown hair and eye bags to rival any undergrad’s, “Are you having a problem waking up all the way?”
Watney blinked more, confused as to when he started visually hallucinating and mildly terrified his mental state had gotten that far without his input.
“Dilated pupils seem normal,” This apparition of Beck said more to itself than to Watney before it moved closer, “How about sigh? Can you see alright still?”
Watney started blankly at the vision and frowned.
“I’ll take that as a maybe.”
All of a sudden the hands of the hallucination were very physically real as they cradled both sides of Watney’s jaw. His spine jumped a bit as he shuddered.
What the fuc-
“Maybe a bit delayed but you did sleep another eleven and half hours,” Beck moved Watney’s head one way then the other, “No real tension in the neck. Shoulder still hurt?”
Watney made a noncommittal sound as he felt the hands leave his face and one lightly pressed his right shoulder. It was painful but Watney was still processing what was going on.
“Alright…” Beck trailed off as he moved slightly away, a sense that he must be real and that meant-
“ Oh ,” Watney glupped for air as he came back to awareness, he wasn’t on Mars, his crew came back for him and he was back on the Hermes, alive.
Beck was back in front of him and he had a tablet in his hand that he was typing on, “Can you move your toes today?”
“For a price,” Watney joked because he didn’t know what else to do.
“Ha-ha,” Beck tilted the tablet a bit down as he scowled at Watney.
It was going to take some time to get used to being around real people again, and believe it wasn’t an illusion. Watney mentally noted he should keep that to himself.
“Okay smartass,” Beck dropped the tablet on a clear space on the cot, “You pick we do some cataloging of your mobility as is or I get you your daily doses.”
“Drugs, please.”
“I should have guessed.”