Work Text:
As the time that she spends on the Hephaestus grows longer and longer, Minkowski finds herself constantly needing to redefine the definition of the phrase “It’s been a long day.” After having experienced mutiny, murder, stellar flares, an alien duplicate resurrection, and another honest-to-God instance of clear alien contact, all within an extremely brief temporal window, she thinks she may have finally reached the peak level of “long day.” Until, that is, the next disaster strikes and makes every other problem that she has faced seem small in comparison. She has not quite ruled out that possibility yet.
Logically, she knows that she should get a few hours of sleep while she has some downtime in between assessing the damage that the station has recently taken, but despite how exhausted she feels she cannot bring herself to close her eyes. She is too afraid that she will see the split-second look of terror that had crossed Maxwell’s face before she pulled the trigger of her gun, an image that is an inescapable reminder of the act that she has committed. In her waking hours, she can shut that memory out whenever it threatens to overwhelm her, but she does not trust her sleeping mind to be able to protect her from what she has done. She therefore remains awake after retiring to her quarters for the evening, desperately trying to find something to keep her thoughts occupied and away from everything that has happened. It’s a losing battle, if she’s being honest with herself. Between the metaphorical blood that is all over her hands and the revelation that the woman whom she loves has never been human for the entire time that Minkowski has known her, it’s an accomplishment that she is able to hold herself together so well in the first place.
A knock sounds against the door. At Minkowski’s invitation of “Come in,” the door opens and Lovelace enters the room. The wonder of seeing Lovelace alive against has not yet left Minkowski. The feeling had been horror at first, when she’d seen the movement inside the body bag and heard the gasping sound of her breaths, and then confusion when Kepler had patiently explained that the only Isabel Lovelace she has ever known is a clever alien duplicate of the original, but none of that compares to her relief that someone she loves is alive again. If Minkowski didn’t know better, she’d think that the very strange events of the past several hours have been nothing more than a dream. Not even her subconscious could conjure up something this surreal, however, and so she has no choice but to accept it as her reality.
“You’re not going to go for the ‘awkwardly floating in the doorway’ thing?” she asks Lovelace.
“Not really my style,” Lovelace replies. “Figured I’d do the courtesy of knocking, though.”
Minkowski makes a murmur of acknowledgement to her words, but after that she is at a loss as to what to say next. This is not the first time she has been alone with Lovelace since the surprise funeral resurrection, but during those prior moments Minkowski had been more focused on business matters--first putting a not entirely lucid version of Lovelace to bed, and then telling her a few hours later that she should take temporary control of the station. She has not prepared herself for the inevitable conversation about what recent events mean for their relationship, as much as she knows that they need to discuss the whole alien thing sooner rather than later. Minkowski’s gut feeling is that it doesn’t matter who or what Lovelace is, because she is still the person who Minkowski fell in love with. In the back of her mind, however, a quiet whisper of makes her wonder whether things between them will be able to pick up exactly where they left off after everything that has happened.
Lovelace moves closer to her. She reaches out to touch Minkowski’s cheek in a tender gesture, as if nothing has changed. Her hand is warm against her skin, feeling no different from any other human touch even though that same hand had been glowing with alien energy earlier in the day.
“You look exhausted,” Lovelace says. “When was the last time you slept?”
“I don’t have to answer that,” replies Minkowski. She has gone much longer periods without sleep, after all. Sleep deprivation is an unfortunate part of life on the Hephaestus, as much as she tries to stick to a standard sleeping schedule when she can. “What about you?” she asks. “You were…” She trails off there, not sure of how to continue.
“You can say ‘dead,’ you know,” says Lovelace, sensing Minkowski’s hesitation. She takes her hand away from Minkowski’s cheek after a final brush of her thumb against the corner of her mouth. “And being dead is surprisingly less restful than you think. Although that might have just been the whole alien regeneration thing putting a damper on everything.” She hesitates before continuing with “I’m surprised you’re not freaking out more about that, by the way. I thought you would have been… I don’t know.” Lovelace gestures vaguely. “Not sure whether you could trust me. Or terrified that the woman you’ve been sleeping with can get possessed by aliens and burn off a man’s goddamn hand.”
“Oh, there was definitely terror,” Minkowski assures her. Between the resurrection, the babbling gibberish, and the alien possession, she has experienced enough heart-pounding fear to last her a good long while. “But Hera’s right. You’re still you, and you’re one of our people, no matter what you are. You’re still the person I fell in love with, and nothing’s going to change that.”
“Good.” Lovelace gives a quiet sigh of relief. “I mean, that’s what I was hoping you’d say. But it’s nice to hear it all the same.”
Minkowski takes hold of her hand in a reassuring gesture. Their fingers intertwine together in the familiar way that they had done the last time the two of them had a private moment to themselves. The kiss that they had shared a couple of hours before the mutiny began feels like it happened a lifetime ago--which it did, technically, for Lovelace. Even after her body has put itself back together again, her hands feel the same as they did before, down to the same rough patches of skin that brush against her fingers. Nothing has changed, even though in many ways everything has changed.
“So… We’re okay, then?” Minkowski asks
She hesitates around her words, unsure of whether “okay” is the right word for her to use. She herself is currently further from okay than she has ever been in her life, and she doubts there will ever be a time when she stops feeling the guilt over the results of the mutiny. Part of her wonders if she should take some time away from personal relationships while she deals with the emotional fallout of her own actions, but she refuses to let Lovelace go after having so recently gotten her back from what she had assumed to be irreversible death.
“Yeah,” replies Lovelace. “I think we are.” She tightens her hold on Minkowski’s hand. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Minkowski echoes her.
She closes the small amount of distance that exists between her and Lovelace and meets her lips with a kiss. There is a certain amount of desperation in the junction of their mouths, the unbridled passion that comes from that first kiss after a period of uncertainty. She yields to the push of Lovelace’s tongue and the gentle pressure of her teeth grazing against her bottom lip. A murmur of contentment leaves her mouth at the familiar exchange of their intimacy. Maybe she has never kissed the real Lovelace before, the woman who she now knows to have been dead for years, but this version of Lovelace is real enough for her.
Eventually they break their kiss. In the quiet moment of calmness that passes between them there is only the quiet sound of their breaths as they regain themselves after the heat of a passionate kiss. They have drifted together, aimless in their embrace, and so when Minkowski finally lets go of Lovelace she must reorientate herself. She pushes off the nearest surface to have a less sideways view of her quarters, floating idly in a more relatively upright position.
“So. Potentially weird question,” Lovelace begins once she has righted herself as well. “When I was really out of it and you put me to bed before I passed out again, did I say anything that would have probably embarrassed you if I said it in front of everyone else? Because I’m not entirely sure if what I remember actually happened or if it was just part of the hallucinations.”
“Well…” Minkowski clears her throat in a measure of forced dignity before continuing on, even though Lovelace should be the one who is more embarrassed by her next words. “After I got you settled, I asked you if you remembered who I am. And you just muttered something about flashy lights, so I said ‘It’s me. Minkowski. Renée.’ And then you looked straight at me and said ‘Right, you’re the one who really likes my boobs.’”
Lovelace laughs. “Yeah, that sounds about right.” At Minkowski’s raised eyebrows, she adds, “Come on, it could have been worse. I could have said it in front of everyone, and I could have been a lot more explicit.”
In spite of every other emotion that lurks in the back of her mind, Minkowski allows herself to crack a brief smile. “You officially have the worst priorities when your brain is figuring out how to work itself again.”
“You know it’s true, though,” Lovelace teases.
Minkowski does indeed appreciate many things about her, both physical and mental, but she upholds a strict belief that there is a time and place for everything. Right now, when she is unsure whether the Hephaestus will be able to stay in orbit long enough to prepare the Urania for a return trip to Earth, it is certainly not the time for her to affirm any physical admiration she has for Lovelace. There is that temptation to flicker her eyes downward, to take in everything about the person whom she loves, but for now she resists.
“So is there anything else you need?” she asks Lovelace. “Or did you just want to make sure that everything was still okay between us now that we’re… Well, I don’t want to jinx it and say that we’re completely through this whole alien contact thing. It feels more like the eye of the storm than anything else.”
“Well,” replies Lovelace, “now that everything has kind of calmed down a little, I thought we could go on a spacewalk together.”
“But I already checked the exterior structure of the station for damage a few hours ago. There’s no reason to go out again right now.” It had been one of the first tasks that Minkowski had done after Hera had confirmed that conditions outside the Hephaestus were safe enough for someone in a spacesuit. She had wanted an opportunity to get away from everyone, from everything, even though being alone with her thoughts is the last thing she needs right now. Having a task to do had kept her mind occupied, however, and in that moment as she walked across the hull of the station she could push everything else away in favor of focusing on her work.
“Yeah, maybe there’s no business reason to go outside the station,” says Lovelace. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t have any other reason to.”
Minkowski’s mouth twists into a disapproving scowl before she can stop herself. “Are you seriously suggesting that we go out on a spacewalk for fun? Because Pryce & Carter Deep Space Survival Tip number three says that spacewalks are a serious matter and--”
“Oh yes, Pryce & Carter number three, a.k.a. no fun allowed, ever,” Lovelace interrupts her. “Besides, isn’t the exception to that tip that you can use spacewalks as a source of entertainment when you’re bored? It’s not like they’re completely forbidden.” She nudges Minkowski’s shoulder in encouragement. “Come on, it’s not like we have anything better to do besides worrying about how screwed we all are.”
Minkowski lets out a sigh of acquiescence. “Fine,” she agrees. “Just for a little while. I need to…” She trails off, unsure of what excuse she is trying to give. What else can she do right now, after all? Sit around waiting for the ticking time bomb of guilt inside her to go off? Anything is a better use of her time than that.
“Great,” Lovelace says. “Let’s go.”
They leave the crew quarters and head to the main airlock to suit up for a spacewalk. The station seems oddly empty after the fluster of activity that came with the contact event and inspecting the damage from the latest stellar flare. Kepler and Jacobi are locked up in the observation deck, Eiffel is probably asleep (or at least trying to sleep), and--well, there’s still that guilty whisper in the back of Minkowski’s mind that reminds her that the station is now short two people due to her actions. She pushes that thought away as she pulls on her spacesuit and checks its systems. It has only been a few hours since she last used her suit, but she can never be too careful when it comes to preparing to go outside the station.
“Okay, Hera, we’re heading out,” says Lovelace. “Things are still okay out there, right? No weird star stuff happening?”
“No, there hasn’t been anything strange since the contact event,” Hera replies. “But I’ll keep an eye out. Be careful out there, Captain. And you too, Lieutenant.”
“We will,” Minkowski assures her.
After the pressure exchange has been completed, Hera opens the airlock. Minkowski floats through it, propelling herself with her last push-off from inside the station toward the outer hull of the Hephaestus. Her mag boots engage, holding her in place against its surface and allowing her to walk across the length of the hull for as far as her tether will take her.
“Follow me,” Lovelace says, her voice coming through the comms link set up between their helmets. “Let’s walk for a bit.”
They begin their aimless trek across the hull, moving with slow and careful steps. “Are you going to tell me why we’re out here?” Minkowski asks. “Other than as a distraction from how screwed we are?”
Lovelace glances back at her as they continue their pace. “During my first mission, I’d come out here a lot. Usually in between rotations when most of the crew was asleep. It was relaxing, I guess. To just turn off my mag boots and float for a while. I even figured out how to hook up some music to play through my suit’s comms. I thought about setting that up with Hera before we came out here, but she probably has enough to take care of right now.”
“Yeah,” Minkowski agrees. She is surprised that Hera has been holding herself together fairly well since the funeral, especially because she is sure that Maxwell’s betrayal and death continues to weigh upon her. Hera has always been stubborn in her insistence that everything is fine even when it’s clearly not, however, and Minkowski is intimately familiar with the necessity of soldiering on and pretending that nothing is wrong. She cannot criticize Hera for not confronting her emotions head-on when she herself is doing the exact same thing.
“Did you ever bring anyone else out here with you?” she asks Lovelace. “Or am I the first one?”
Lovelace’s footsteps halt in her path across the hull. Minkowski slows her pace so that she does not overtake her. “I…” Lovelace hesitates before continuing on. “I dragged Lambert out here sometimes. Especially when I found out that he was kind of terrified by the idea of free-floating. Once I even got him to disengage from the hull for a whole ten seconds. Huge accomplishment, I know.”
Minkowski isn’t used to hearing Lovelace talk about the members of her first crew like this. It has been all too easy for her to forget that they had been actual people and not just a series of names that Lovelace had wielded against Hilbert like a weapon to remind him of the hell that he’d put her through. These people had been Lovelace’s colleagues, her friends, and apart from the bits and pieces that Minkowski has heard from old audio logs, she knows very little about that part of Lovelace’s life before everything in that mission went wrong.
“How much further?” she asks Lovelace as they both resume their pace.
“Not far,” Lovelace replies. “I want to go up toward the solar panels. There’s a good view from up there.”
They continue their trek in silence until they have reached the spot that Lovelace has described. From their perch on top of the raised paneling, Minkowski does indeed have a perfect view of Wolf 359 and the blue light that emanates from it. In the three years that she has spent in orbit around the star, she often finds herself taking the view for granted, forgetting in the mess of everything else around her that very few people in the universe have seen a sight like this firsthand. Her younger self would have certainly been amazed by the view, and sometimes Minkowski wonders what the ten-year-old Renée would think if she were standing here, observing a star that has changed color despite all scientific precedent while being in the company of an alien presence whose true nature is completely indistinguishable from that of a normal human. She probably wouldn’t believe any of it, claiming that it sounds like something out of a science fiction story. One of the many things that Minkowski has learned during her time on the Hephaestus, however, is that the truth is often stranger than fiction.
She glances over at Lovelace. She cannot see her face very well through the visor on her helmet, but something in her quiet stance tells Minkowski that she is deep in contemplation--about her own existence, about the memories that she has of the other times she has been outside the station like this. Minkowski cannot even begin to wrap her head around everything that must be going through Lovelace’s mind since she came back to life, and the way that she has stayed so calm in the wake of everything speaks volumes about her strength. That bravery and resilience was what first drew Minkowski to her, even during that uncertain period of distrust after they first met, and if anything those qualities seem to have doubled since Lovelace came back in her determination to be more than the person that Command turned her into.
“Tell me about him,” says Minkowski, breaking the silence between them. “Officer Lambert, I mean. Or anyone else on your old team. It’s just that you never really talk about them, and I know it must hurt to think about them after what happened, but…”
She trails off there, unsure of how to continue. She cannot shake the feeling that she is crossing a line here, poking too insistently at old ghosts that Lovelace would rather leave dead. Her immediate instinct is to backtrack, to apologize and say that maybe they don’t have to talk about this after all, but before she can do so, Lovelace begin to speak.
“No, it’s fine,” Lovelace replies. “I guess it helps me remember that those memories are still mine, you know? Even if they didn’t really happen to me. God, that sounds ridiculous. That was me--is me. I’m still her. I have to be.” She exhales a breath, and in that sigh Minkowski hears the unraveling of her calmness, like she is tugging at a loose thread as she puzzles out the new reality of her own existence.
“Anyway,” Lovelace continues on, “take Eiffel and give him a nasally voice, a seriously over-productive work ethic, and an enormous stick up his ass, and you’ve got Sam Lambert. I think he liked Pryce & Carter even more than you do, and that’s saying something.” At Minkowski’s noise of indignation, she gives a slight laugh. “Sorry, babe. You know I say that with love.”
The casual term of affection sends a wave of warm fondness through Minkowski. It’s not the first time Lovelace has addressed her as such, of course, but it further reinforces how nothing has changed between them despite recent revelations. “He sounds like the anti-Eiffel,” she says.
“Mm. Maybe he was. But even with all the time we spent at each other’s throats, he still cared. About the mission, and about the crew. And somewhere in all of that, he ended up being my friend.”
Minkowski knows that feeling well--spending years with someone who constantly establishes himself as the bane of her existence, and yet gradually growing fond of him in a way that she never realized until she found herself throwing her arms around him in an embrace after two hundred days of him being lost in space. Perhaps it’s the fate of all deep-space mission commanders to be at odds with their communications officers but somehow emerge from their mission as friends after everything that goes wrong.
“There’s nothing like being on a space station where there’s one disaster after another to make you change your opinion about a person,” she says.
“That’s for sure.” Lovelace turns her head to face her, and through the visor of her helmet Minkowski sees the faint outline of her face. “I remember when I met you--and keep in mind that this was only my first impression and has absolutely no bearing on how I see you now--my first thought was ‘Oh God, this is what it would’ve been like if Lambert had been in charge.’”
“I’m sure I wasn’t that--” Minkowski begins, but she stops before she can finish that thought. After hearing for most of her life (and about half a dozen times a day from Eiffel) that she’s too uptight and needs to learn to loosen up, she cannot exactly deny that point anymore. She continues on with a resigned huff of breath. “I mean, I guess I can’t really talk. I think my exact words after Eiffel and I heard your logs from the early days of your first mission were ‘She sounds terrible.’”
“And look at us now,” says Lovelace. “I don’t think either of us would have expected something like this to happen.”
Minkowski murmurs in agreement. She isn’t sure whether Lovelace is referring to how they have fallen in love, or how they both now know of Lovelace’s true nature as an alien duplicate, but both scenarios prove how unexpected their lives have become since their paths first crossed. If nothing else, their love has proven to be a strange and wonderful thing in the midst of every disaster that they have encountered.
“Okay, Hera, how are our environmentals looking?” Lovelace asks. She shifts her weight between both of her feet in a restless motion. “Anything out of the ordinary?”
“No, Captain,” comes the sound of Hera’s reply through the comms. “Everything’s still nominal with the star, and all of the systems in both your and Lieutenant Minkowski’s spacesuits are in the green.”
“Great. Thanks.” Lovelace turns off her mag boots and floats off the structure, disengaging from the magnetic force that has previously kept her anchored in place. “Come on,” she encourages Minkowski. “Or am I going to have to drag you off the hull?”
After three years of being in space, standing on a solid surface is far more of an unfamiliar feeling to Minkowski than floating is, but that does not stop her from feeling a flutter of apprehension in the pit of her stomach at the thought of taking that first step into freely floating in space. It’s not like she has never done it before. Throughout the dozens of spacewalks she has done she has inevitably had work to do that requires her to float to a place that she cannot reach with her mag boots, but free-floating for fun, however, is an entirely different matter. She cannot prolong this anticipatory moment forever, though, and so with a deep breath she turns off her mag boots and allows weightlessness to carry her away.
Lovelace is right, as it turns out: there is something relaxing about floating freely in space with her tether as her only lifeline to anything solid. Even in the zero-gravity conditions inside the Hephaestus, Minkowski cannot float too far in one direction or another without hitting a wall, but here her only limits are the end of her tether and the hull of the station. If she wanted to, she could close her eyes and pretend that she is drifting away, as if she is being carried by the sea. The star looms large and blue in front of her like it always has, but she cannot take her eyes away from it. The sight reminds her that despite everything that she has gone through here in deep space, the view of a star shining in the infinite blackness can still be beautiful.
She cannot direct her trajectory very well with no surface to push off from, but she tries her best to float towards Lovelace’s position. Once they are close enough to each other, Lovelace reaches out a hand to her. Minkowski takes hold of it, tightening her grip as well as she can between the bulky material of the gloves of their spacesuits. They float together, two figures set adrift in the light of the star as they savor the rarity of a quiet moment.
“Why come out here now?” Minkowski asks finally. “You’ve been back here on the station for over a year, and as far as I know you haven’t been on any spacewalks that aren’t part of maintenance work. So why now?”
Lovelace adjusts her grip on Minkowski’s hands into a more comfortable hold. “Before I… came back, there was this moment where it was like all my memories were flowing back into me,” she explains. “From when I was a kid, from when I served with the Air Force, pretty much everything. Even things that I hadn’t thought about in years. It was… It was a lot to handle all at once. So I decided to focus on just one thing. And it was a memory from my first mission here, back when all of the crew was still alive and nothing had gone too terribly wrong. It reminded me that I used to do this a lot before everything on that mission went to hell. It’s amazing how easy it is to forget the little things after so much has gone wrong. And how much I’d forgotten about who I was back then.”
Minkowski remembers that first log of Lovelace’s that she had found, from early in her mission when she’d been joking about alien invasions and complaining about stick-in-the-mud communications officers. She is sure that her own logs from the first few months on the Hephaestus must also reflect a much different woman than who she has become over the last three years. For a long time she has been aware of the widening gulf between who she was on Earth and who she is now, and recent events have made that divide even larger. Maybe Lovelace finds it easy to return to who she used to be, as she had declared to Kepler with her grip clamped around him to restrain him, but Minkowski cannot yet separate herself from the person who did not hesitate to put a bullet in Maxwell’s head. Part of her wonders how any of her crew can still trust her after losing control like that, or how she will ever be able to face everyone she left behind on Earth after everything that has happened. The now-familiar guilty thoughts rise within her once more, sneaking through her mind and tying her stomach in knots. Her exhale of breath trembles on its way out at the inescapable reminder of what she has done.
“You okay?” Lovelace asks her.
It should be so easy for Minkowski to lie and tell Lovelace that she is fine and that she cannot be anything but fine when she floats here in her company. The lie does not come, however, and instead the truth comes out with another shaky breath. “No,” she replies. “But I don’t think any of us are really okay right now, are we?”
“No, I suppose we aren’t.” There’s something quiet and resigned in Lovelace’s voice, as if she is reluctant to admit the extent to which she has been affected by being killed and discovering that she is an alien duplicate. “But we’re going to find a way to go back to Earth. We’ll figure out whether we can get the starboard engine running again, get the Urania ready to fly, and then get the hell out of here. I promise you.”
Earth has never felt further away to Minkowski than it does now, and the part of her mind that plays the question of “What have you done?” on repeat reminds her that maybe she doesn’t even want to go home anymore, at least not without knowing that everything she has gone through has not been for nothing. She finds herself nodding along with the fervor in Lovelace’s words regardless, encouraged by her determination if nothing else. She squeezes Lovelace’s hand, feeling the reassurance of the weight of her hand in hers.
“Okay,” she says. And then again, more softly: “Okay.”
They float in silence for a little while longer before Lovelace speaks again. “You ready to go back inside yet?” she asks. “We probably shouldn’t run down our O2 supplies too much.”
“I just need a little while longer,” Minkowski replies. “You can go in if you want.”
“Nah. We’re in this together,” says Lovelace. “Just let me know when you’re ready.”
Maybe Minkowski will never be ready to face whatever uncomfortable truths and shocking revelations await her inside the Hephaestus, but for now, none of that matters. She closes her eyes, finally allowing the sensation of free-floating to fully take her away. With only her tether and her grip on Lovelace’s hand as her anchors, she breathes deeply and drifts, and somewhere beneath the mess of guilt that continues to build toward a climax inside her, she finds a fleeting moment of peace.