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Eiffel doesn't look like him at all.
He's finally fallen asleep, after hours of feverish muttering and heavy breathing.
Eiffel’s lying there, strapped to the infirmary bed and curled in on himself, and he looks so small. That's just how he had been lying and yet they don't look alike at all.
Still, when Lovelace looks at him and counts his breathing, all she can think of is Sam Lambert.
Lovelace remembers those last few weeks of his life as the longest weeks she's ever lived through. The world had gotten even smaller than the confinement of the Hephaestus. For those weeks, the world had only been this; only the infirmary, Doctor Selberg's stern eyes and Lambert's closed ones, and Lovelace.
(And Fourier, but Lovelace remembers her only ever at the edges of it, at the door to the infirmary, watching from afar.
Lovelace couldn't blame her. She had been right in the middle of it when Kuan had died, after all.)
Selberg hadn't changed one bit. Lovelace kept wanting to take him by the shoulders and shake him until frustration, fear, grief, anything started showing on his face.
She didn't. And he kept looking at her the same way.
He also looked at Lambert the same way.
Every rotation started with a Good morning, Officer Lambert. Every rotation ended with a Good night, Officer Lambert. It made Lovelace want to scream. But she figured it made sense.
There were not many comforts Sam Lambert granted himself. One of them was protocol. This was something the entire crew of the Hephaestus (or at least what was left of it) knew very well.
If Lovelace had asked Selberg about it, that’s probably what he would have said. He would have looked at her for a very long time, like he always did when she made him think about something uncomfortable, and then say just that.
It made this easy, for Lambert. To be talked to like nothing was wrong. To be treated like they hadn’t considered themselves a family, a family that already watched Hui die and was now about to watch the next one fade away into nothing.
It made this easy, for Lambert. Lovelace had a feeling that it didn’t hurt that it also made this easier for Selberg.
Lovelace was there, when Hui had died. She’d watched her crew around his bed. She’d watched Victoire hold his hand through the entire thing, and the way she’d whisper to him when he couldn’t even hear her anymore, call him Kuan.
Everyone else in the room followed her with that. Soon there was no Doctor Hui on the station anymore. There was only Kuan, and Kuan was their friend. And he was dying.
(The only one that hadn’t gone along with this was Lambert. Lovelace had always wondered if he regretted that now. She never asked him about it.)
And yes, even Selberg went along, partly because Fourier would shoot anyone that tried to keep it formal a terrible glare that would have made Lovelace laugh if everything around them wasn’t falling apart with such a force.
Selberg called him Kuan, and he held his hand, and forgot all of his opinions on bedside manner and scientific detachment.
Kuan had died anyway, of course. He'd fallen asleep and his heart stopped, and Selberg had put his arms around Victoire until she stopped crying, until her breathing evened out and Lovelace had stood next to them to make sure they were both still breathing, and Lambert-
Lambert had made sure they'd gotten back to work after. And now it was his turn.
And Fourier was too afraid to get this close again, and Selberg kept his shoulders pulled up and Hui was dead just like Fisher, and Lovelace-
Lovelace.
Lovelace had listened to Mace die. Lovelace had watched Kuan die. Now Lovelace was watching Sam die. She was watching everyone grit their teeth and keep going.
So Lovelace dropped any pretenses Lambert wasn't her friend as soon as he got sick.
She stayed by his side, and she'd hold his hand even when he was protesting.
She said, 'How are you, Sam?', and Sam said, 'Captain, I must insist that you don't address me in an informal manner,' and Lovelace said, 'Shut up, Sam.'
He would always, inevitably, shut up. Lovelace took it as permission to go on.
Not that she wouldn't have anyway if he had insisted. She was way too scared to call him Officer Lambert.
'Captain,' Sam breathed one of those days, with very serious eyes, 'don't you have work to do?'
There was always work to do on the Hephaestus.
There was always something breaking, always something that needed Lovelace's attention. Today, that something was lying in Selberg's lab and concentrating very hard to keep his breathing even in front of his commanding officer.
'You think there's something more important than this right now?', Lovelace asked.
This, specifically, was the cold piece of cloth she was pressing against his forehead. His eyes looked like they'd love to go unfocused, but they stayed fixed on her stubbornly.
'You never know when the station is about to crash out of orbit,' Sam said lightly in one of his rare attempts at something like sarcasm. It made Lovelace smile.
She was sincere though, when she said, 'The station isn't going to crash out of orbit, Sam. Not as long as you need me, at least.'
Sam didn't say, 'I don't need you.' Lovelace could see the sentence on his face, like he thought it would be appropriate. Like he thought he should say it.
Maybe he should have. But he didn't.
Instead he closed his eyes and said, 'How is Doctor Fourier?'
Lovelace didn't hold his hand, but she put it on his forehead and she answered his questions.
She remembers the day Sam stopped protesting the way she treated him. He fought his way through so many lectures and Lovelace couldn't tell if it was good for him or if it only made him more tired but he soldiered on anyway. Until that one morning.
Lovelace had passed by Fourier on her way to Selberg's lab, looking like a ghost. She had given her arm a very tight squeeze, too afraid that Victoire would just crumble to nothing like wet paper if she hugged her.
It was hard to think of touching her without remembering her and Selberg after Kuan's organs had shut down.
Fourier had nodded at Lovelace. She hadn't looked at her, of course.
The captain rolled her shoulders and made her way into the lab.
'You awake, Sam?'
'Captain, you can't call me-'
'Alright,' Lovelace interrupted him. 'Taking that as a yes. Good morning, then.'
She had a look around the room. 'Where's Selberg?'
'Asleep,' Sam answered. His voice was already hoarse again. He cleared his throat. 'He's been here the whole night, he could barely keep his eyes open by morning. I told him it was fine. I thought you were going to come by pretty early anyway.’
He almost smiled. Many things were uncertain for all of them, at the moment. It felt good, to know that there was no doubt about at least some things.
Space was cold and empty, Wolf 359 stared at them through the window like some kind of unyielding god, and Isabel Lovelace was going to spend as much time at her second in command's side as she could.
Lovelace smiled. ‘My, officer Lambert,’ she said, ‘isn’t that a breach of protocol?’
Sam’s smile was tired and impatient, but it was a smile nonetheless. ‘Yes, Captain, I get it.’
‘No, really, I think that’s definitely something you should be written up for, you know, leaving the medical facilities of a station such as this without the corresponding expert present is quite- ’
‘Okay, fine, I’ll get him back,’ Sam interrupted her. His eyebrows were raised, this was clearly a challenge. ‘Rhea, could you please-’
Lovelace held up her hands and Sam shut up. ‘Yes, yes, you called my bluff, congrats. Let’s let the doctor sleep for a few hours more.’
She pulled the book she'd been carrying around from her pocket and flipped it open.
'You're not going to get bored, don't worry. I've got something prepared.'
Sam pulled a face. 'You do?'
'Mh-hmm, no worries at all.'
'Captain, I don't-'
Lovelace cleared her throat and looked down onto the page.
'Congratulations,' she read out loud, 'on your assignment to a deep space outpost.'
Sam gave her a very confused frown. 'What-'
'Wether your stay is of a scientific, exploratory, or disciplinary nature, we hope that you enjoy a peaceful, restive-'
Her voice got caught on the next few words, and she cleared her throat carefully, wondering if maybe this whole thing was a stupid idea after all.
She went on anyway, because she and Lambert were alone and she was too scared to do anything else.
'-minimal-casualty residency in your spacecraft of choice.'
A noise interrupted her. Lovelace eyes shot up, looking at her communications officer.
'Lambert, are you-'
Hmm. No. He wasn't choking. He wasn't coughing.
'Are you-'
A tiny smile snuck its way on Lovelace's face.
'Are you laughing?'
Lambert shook his head, but he didn't stop. Lovelace grinned. Then, she snorted.
And then they were both laughing like stupid little children, until they couldn't breathe, and then some.
'I didn't even know you had a copy of this,' Sam said later. He was now sitting up and he was finally smiling at his captain properly.
Lovelace grinned at him. 'Oh, come on, Lambert,' she said. 'I'm the commanding officer of this station. You think I don't have the means to steal a copy of any book I want from one of my crew members whenever I want to?'
Sam snorted, and Lovelace felt ten pounds lighter than she did this morning.
'Sam,' he said then, taking a very deep breath, 'Captain… Sam is fine.'
Lovelace opened her mouth to answer something, no doubt something witty and funny, but she found herself lost for words. She took one breath, took another, and then asked very quietly, ‘Really?’
Sam didn’t laugh at her. He probably should have, in hindsight. Maybe that would have made everything easier.
God knew they could use things to be easier.
Instead he just nodded. ‘Really.’
This, of course, didn’t change much. Because Sam was still dying. But now at least Lovelace had something to remember later, when Fourier disappeared and she started really looking at Selberg, like she should have months ago. Something to hold onto, even if it really didn’t make anything easier.
‘What do you miss most about Earth?’, Sam asked her a few days later.
It was a particular bad day. Sam hadn’t managed to eat anything, and the fever had been steadily rising. It wasn’t good. All that Lovelace could do was keep talking.
She didn’t give the question much thought, simply answering the first thing that popped into her head.
Unfortunately that thing was, ‘Cheeseburgers.’
Sam snorted, so Lovelace booked it as a success, even if it made her flush in embarrassment.
‘Shut up,’ she said, no bite in her voice. She had trouble keeping it in the past few months, anyway. Everyone on the Hephaestus was too tired for bite these days.
‘What about you? What do you miss the most?’
Sam took a lot longer to think about the question than Lovelace did. It was… a dangerous question, probably. Nobody wanted to think too much about the place they might not actually ever return to.
'I think,' Sam mused, 'I think I miss the birds the most.'
That gave Lovelace pause. 'The birds?'
Sam nodded. 'Yeah. The birds.'
'Any birds in particular?'
'No,' Sam said, a patient smile on his face. 'Just birds. I miss looking out of the window and just-'
'Seeing them,' Lovelace finished for him. 'Yeah. I get it.'
Living things. That's what Lambert was missing. Looking out of the window and not being the only living being in a huge soup of nothing.
'Who knows,' Lambert said softly. 'Maybe I'll get to see some birds, wherever it is I'm going next.'
Lovelace's chest tightened. 'Lambert,' she said, 'don't.' She put a hand on his wrist. 'You're going to be fine. I promise.'
He smiled. 'You can't promise that, Captain. It's not in your hands.'
'Then I'll take it into my hands,' Lovelace snapped. 'I don't care what I have to do, I'm not gonna let anything take you away. I'm gonna protect you. I'm gonna-'
'Captain.'
Lovelace shook her head.
'Isabel, look at me.'
She didn't look at him.
'Please?'
She did.
Sam didn't look afraid. That was all Lovelace remembered later. That he didn't look afraid, and that it didn't make any sense, because Lovelace was so scared.
'It's coming,' Sam said softly. 'I can feel it.'
'I'll stop it,' Lovelace said, trying to keep her voice firm.
'You can't,' Sam said. 'And you don't have to. It's okay.'
She shook her head again. Sam twisted his wrist out of her grip and took her hand instead. 'Just go home,' he said. 'That's all you have to do. Just go home.'
'I'm not gonna leave you behind,' Lovelace muttered. Sam simply ignored it.
'Can you promise me that you'll go home?', he asked. Lovelace wanted to shake her head, to shake some common sense into Lambert, to find Selberg and yell at him until any of this started making any kind of sense again.
Instead she squeezed Sam's hand and promised it. And his smile almost made it worth it.
He never called her Isabel ever again. Lovelace sometimes wondered if she'd just imagined it. If her tired and paranoid brain had made up a memory to keep her going until everything snapped.
Sometime after her crash into the star (or wherever it was she came back from, with years having passed and nothing having changed), she decided to simply believe it. She was never sure how much of a choice she really had with it.
She had asked Selberg the same question later that day. Sam had eventually eaten, had eventually fallen asleep, and now the two of them were just standing there, watching him.
It didn't quite feel right, but neither of them had any idea what to do with themselves.
'This doesn't make sense,' Selberg said. Lovelace looked at him. He looked almost as tired as Lovelace felt. She didn't say anything.
'This wasn't supposed to happen,' he added, talking to himself much more than actually to his captain. 'It doesn't make any sense.'
'I know,' Lovelace said. She didn't know yet that that wasn't true.
'I shouldn't do this anymore,' Selberg said, 'should I? Last names, titles, protocol. It doesn't matter anymore, does it?'
And then: 'He's my friend. Isn't he.'
He was making fists with his hands, but Lovelace could tell that they were shaking. She knew because her own hands were, as well.
Somehow, somewhere, in some messed up, cosmic way, this was probably funny, or at least ironic. Lovelace just was too small, too close, and too scared to understand the joke.
‘I don’t know,’ she told him, because she had no idea what Selberg would do if she said yes. He let out a breath that might have been a laugh. It was barely shaky anymore. It didn’t fool Lovelace.
Maybe it should have, in hindsight, at least.
Lovelace didn’t think much when she asked him, ‘What do you miss most about Earth?’
It wasn’t an unfamiliar question, of course. Back when they still had been a crew, a big one, with a mission, it was something they’d talk about regularly.
Rhea would ask sometimes, at the end of their cycle, because she hadn’t known much about it and because she liked hearing the others talk. Everyone always had an answer for her.
Everyone except for Lambert, and Selberg.
Now Lovelace had asked him, and he looked ahead with empty eyes and only thought about it for a short moment.
Then he said, ‘Certainty.’
Lovelace thought about that answer for a long time. It never really made sense to her, not when she cleared out Sam’s quarters, not when she and Fourier taped together the shuttle, not when Victoire disappeared without a trace and Lovelace never saw her again, not when she watched the station get smaller and smaller in the window of the shuttle.
It does make sense now, with her standing in the same infirmary watching a different communications officer fight himself to sleep. Or at least she thinks it does.
Not that it matters, of course.
When he said it, she blinked once and then took his hand into his.
They both pulled away just a second later, but there was a moment where they were just standing there, next to each other. Looking at Sam. And Selberg squeezed her hand.
It was the first thing Lovelace was thinking about when Minkowski took her to the observation deck and he was right there, handcuffed and smug and alive. That moment, where neither of them knew what was going to happen next or what they were going to do without Sam. Lovelace always felt like it mattered, somehow. Like it should.
It didn’t feel that way when Lovelace stepped into the room and the only thing that was on Selberg’s face was fear, and nothing else.
Lovelace always wished the only thing on her face in that moment had been fury. But it wasn’t true.
Selberg had apologised for that moment, later. He’d called it unprofessional. Unacceptable. He’d promised he’d take better care of Sam, and make sure things were going to be fine. He’d apologised for scaring Lovelace.
He didn’t apologise again, not for any of the other things he’d done to her. Lovelace told herself she’d stopped expecting it.
Now Lovelace is standing in the doorway, and she’s quiet.
(Like Victoire, all this time ago, when she was still alive and didn’t have any more tears left inside her.)
'I think he's asleep,' Minkowski mutters. She's standing right next to Selberg. Every bone in Lovelace's body tells her to pull her aside, away from the man with the dead eyes that took everything from her.
But Eiffel is breathing. And Selberg just looks tired, maybe even as tired as Minkowski.
'He is,' he agrees. 'He- should be fine, for now, I think. Vitals are stable.'
Minkowski releases a long breath that sounds like it's hours old. She puts a hand over her eyes and stays still for a moment.
'He looks so small,' Hera says, her voice riddled with glitches. She sounds much different from the way she had earlier, when she dragged Lovelace back into the lab to try and save a life one last time.
Now she sounds very young and not much else.
'It doesn't make sense,' she says. 'Why does he- why-'
She doesn't make it through the sentence. 'I don't know, Hera,' Minkowski answers softly. 'I really don't know. But he's going to be fine. I promise.' She turns to Selberg and it makes Lovelace's skin crawl. 'Isn't that right, doctor?'
And he looks up at Minkowski and holds eye contact (something he's gotten better at, it seems). He even gives the camera above Minkowski, the one Hera is watching them from, a look.
'Yes,' he says, firmly. 'Eiffel will be fine, Hera.'
He sounds honest, like he's gotten ahold of some of that certainty when he was back on Earth for his few months, and took it up here with him. Still, Lovelace can tell when he's lying. Now, at least, she can.
Hera ponders on this for a moment, then, very quietly, she says, 'Okay.'
Minkowski gives her the smallest hint of a smile.
And Lovelace is here, braced against the doorway, and in this moment, she misses Sam so much she thinks she's going to cry.
Because she's here; she crawled her way out of the station, doing everything she could to survive, and then she came back, standing upright, like some kind of messed up angel of death. She came back, and it still doesn't change anything, because everyone is still dead and everyone else is still together. And she isn't.
There's always work to do on the Hephaestus. There is always something breaking, something that needs Lovelace's attention.
Except, no. There isn't, not this time. Because Eiffel is already here, and he's already sleeping, and he's already taken care of by his crew who loves him so much, and Lambert is dead.
Lambert is dead, and Lovelace has no one left.
'You should go to sleep, Commander,' Selberg says now, looking at Minkowski. 'You've been up for hours. You look very tired.'
Minkowski shakes her head. 'No,' she says, 'no, I'm fine, I'm gonna-'
'There's nothing more you can do for Officer Eiffel at this time.' He almost smiles, but probably knows well enough that he isn't safe to do so anymore. 'Will be here all night, do not worry.'
'So will I,' Hera chimes in. Lovelace says nothing, but Minkowski looks at her for a moment anyway.
She looks like she's forgotten she's here. She also looks very tired.
'Alright,' she says, and then she's only looking at Eiffel.
She makes her way to the bed he's still strapped to, breathing slowly and evenly. She reaches out, like she's going to touch his face, and then she doesn't.
'Alright,' she says again, now turning to her crew. She's back in commander mode. She's much better at that transition than Lovelace was. 'I'll be back in six hours. If anything goes wrong, and I mean anything, you call me. Understood?'
Selberg and Hera both say, 'Yes, sir,' and then Minkowski is gone.
Hera doesn't speak up again, either. Lovelace supposes there's not much to say to her or to Selberg.
That, she supposes, is something they have in common. The cold and calculating glance this eye in the sky spares them.
Lovelace looks up into one of Hera's cameras. She thinks about saying something, something foolish, something like, Thank you for bringing me back.
She doesn't, because Sam's voice is still ringing in her ears - can you promise me that you'll go home? - and Lovelace doesn't think she has the strength to speak to the living right now.
That's why she makes her way through the lab until she's next to Selberg, and they're standing in silence.
Lovelace looks down at the doctor's hand right next to hers. He moves it steadily, making fists and opening them back up.
Eiffel is asleep. Hera is quiet. Lovelace is undead, and Selberg is-
Something else. Something both closer to and farther away from the others.
'You should try and sleep as well, Captain.'
His voice almost startles her, but instead of flinching, she just scowls. Selberg doesn't look at her. 'You lost a lot of blood today. You need rest just as much as the commander, no?'
Lovelace hums. 'You don't look all that peachy, either,' she comments. 'Maybe you should take your own advice.'
Selberg releases a breath. He pushes his glasses up and drags a hand over his face.
Lovelace wonders how much he's slept since Eiffel and Minkowski locked him in the observation deck.
(Or maybe since he boarded the Hephaestus for the second time.
Or maybe since he killed Fourier and Rhea.
Or maybe, just maybe, since Hui first got sick and there was only one person on board that understood why.)
'I'll stay,' he says, and Lovelace thinks to herself that he looks like a ghost. She remembers that look from Victoire.
She pulls up her shoulders on instinct, not wanting to associate the tired face of her friend with this- creature, next to her.
Selberg isn't her friend. Lovelace doesn't miss him. And she can keep lying to herself about this until she finally gets off this station and its hellish orbit and yes, she really believes that.
It doesn't make sense, but that's a given.
'I'll make sure his vitals stay stable,' Selberg adds, and then they're both looking at each other and Lovelace knows they're thinking the same thing, which must be, haven't they had this conversation before?
Before Lovelace can remember that she's not supposed to feel like she knows this man anymore at all, she finds herself asking, 'Do you ever think about him?'
Selberg doesn't avert his eyes. Sam's blood is on his hands, and he doesn't look away from Lovelace. His face doesn't soften. But his hands, ever so slightly, are trembling.
Selberg clears his throat and takes a deep breath. It's an old habit, so familiar that Lovelace's throat closes up.
(For a second, she wants to turn to the bed and shake Eiffel awake. I felt safe up here once, she wants to tell him. This was my home once, and I wasn't afraid of anything.
You have to believe me. )
'Every day, Captain,' Selberg says then. 'Every single day.'
Lovelace believes him.
And she doesn't ever want to feel easy around this man ever again. But that doesn't mean she doesn't wish this would make it a little simpler.
'Yeah,' Lovelace says. 'Me too.'
They both turn to Eiffel. He's stirring in his sleep but doesn't wake up. His breathing is heavy. He doesn't look like Lambert at all.
Lovelace counts his breaths throughout the rest of the night, until Minkowski comes back and gives her a quiet thanks and then orders her to bed, and she wonders which number she needs to get to to stop missing them. Missing Sam, and Kuan, and Mace, and Rhea, and Victoire, and…