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It was warm, in a way Doug felt like it shouldn't have been. The trees were bare and the balmy breeze felt maddeningly incongruous for reasons he couldn't express. December 25th; Christmas Day; the first morning of Hanukkah; and not quite three weeks since they touched down on Earth, made history, and made a huge legal and political mess, and he was standing on the doorstep of a nice little brown house outside Washington D.C. wearing a T-shirt with an alien on it and wondering if he should just turn around and walk away.
(He couldn't. He'd said he would come, and they were expecting him, and he wasn't going to take yet another opportunity to disappoint the few people who cared about him.)
The choice was made for him, anyway, when the door swung open. “Doug!” Renée said, with the kind of forced, practiced brightness that still felt wrong every time she addressed him like that.
She was trying. He tried to appreciate it. “Hey.”
Dominik appeared behind her, a moment later. “You made it,” he said, with a smile that seemed way more relieved than necessary from someone Doug could be confident he had never met before two weeks ago. “We were hoping you’d be back.”
“Yeah, well,” Doug said, shifting his backpack with a halfhearted selection of clothes in it and not a whole lot else, “I didn’t want to… stick around, in Texas. I showed up, and…” Chickened out. Hey, maybe that’s the evidence they’re looking for that you’ve still got some of the old you in there, huh? Still a coward. They’ll love that that’s what you managed to hold on to. “Decided I didn’t want to ruin their Christmas, you know? Got all the way there and then rethought my ‘Hey, remember me? I don’t!’ approach. There’s not much to tell.”
“Ah.” Renée’s expression faltered, but she stepped forward and hugged him anyway. She was strong. It felt nice, even if he knew it wasn’t a hug meant for him, not really.
“Well,” she said, pulling back and giving him a grimly set but brightly forced smile, “It’s great you’re here. I was—we were worried. I mean—” She fumbled for words. “There’s food! There’s plenty.”
“Two types of bread, a coffee cake,” Dominik said, “and we made sure to save some of the latkes from last night for you. They’re wonderful.” He leaned over to kiss Renée on the forehead, and she blushed, but seemed happy about it.
“And there’s a chocolate cake,” Renée continued. “For later.” She sighed, brightness giving way to a touch of embarrassment. “I’d almost forgotten what bread tasted like, and I may have made… a lot of it. I’ve been keeping busy baking.” She paused. “And cleaning the house. And preparing the lawsuit. And re-shingling the roof.” Pause. “Please eat some of the bread. There is so much of it.”
“Okay!” Doug said. “Cool. I, uh, like bread, I think. Can’t beat the thrill of forbidden wheat products.”
Inside the house was festive and cheery, and he felt bad for feeling bad. A Christmas tree in the corner of the living room was lit with white lights and sparkled with a mass of multicolored ornaments; on the windowsill, a safe distance away from the dry and very flammable tree, a menorah shone out to the street, any light muted by the midmorning sun. It was the time of year for partying, for being happy. He knew this. These were images that sparked the knowledge that yes, these are the big winter holidays. And besides, tenuous as their safety still was, they had enough to celebrate. They were alive, for one thing.
Isabel Lovelace, reclining on the couch with a mug in her hands, looked up as he walked in. For a second thing: they were still together, not (yet) pulled apart for questioning or experiments or jail time or whatever else they might have racked up while in space. There was that, too.
“Oh,” Renée said, rummaging through a box on a side table and pulling out an earpiece. “Right, I keep forgetting, here—”
She passed it to him. He gave her a quizzical look—was this something he was supposed to know about? Because he didn’t, and there were times when Renée forgot that—but he put it on his own ear.
Okay, apparently it was something new, which was a bigger relief than he expected. Also a relief was the voice he immediately heard through it. “Hey, Doug.”
“Hera!” She didn’t sound bright or chipper, which was also a bigger relief than expected. “Okay. Outside the ship, you’re in stealth mode now, huh?” He looked around. “Wait, can you hear me? Can you see me?”
“I can hear and see you. Not well, but I can. Twelve webcams on lintels and a set of Bluetooth earbuds aren’t exactly living tḩ̴̌͆ê̴̛̲͗̿̑̆͋̒̓͝ ̵h̸̺͉̞͙̆̃͋̐̐̀͑̕͘͠i̴̧͇̻̬̒̿̿ģ̷̬̣͙͐̃̂̓̂̀̒͝h life, but. Well. It’s a work in progress.”
“Aren’t we all. Seems like an upgrade from the hard drive for sure, but a downgrade from being a spaceship, though.”
“Being a spaceship was a downgrade from being a space station. It’s…” She seemed to change her mind about what she was going to say. “I’m gl̵̼̯̪͕̾̃̄̀ă̵̡̯̻̳̪̤̠̞̅̑͆͗̉d̸̬̘̚͝͠ you’re back.”
“Yeah. Glad to be back.” Being inside, being back with the only people he could confidently say that he knew… it was true. It was basically true.
“Did… Texas go well?”
He shrugged. “It was fine.” He didn’t say anything else. Hera didn’t either.
Isabel shifted herself off the couch now. She began to say, “Hey, Doug, happy—” and then something went wrong and her leg slid out from under her and she pitched forward, crashing to the floor and sending coffee flying across the beige carpet, “fuck—”
“Lovelace!” Renée shouted, at the same time as Doug said, “Whoa, are you okay—”
“It’s fine, just—‘standing up while holding coffee’ is an advanced move I can’t just do whenever I want, I guess,” Isabel said, pushing herself back upright. Renée had nearly teleported to Isabel’s side and was anxiously offering a hand; with a resigned sigh, Isabel accepted the help to pull herself to her feet. Dominik drifted behind her, hands moving awkwardly like he wanted to help but wasn’t sure what to offer. Isabel shook her head and waved her hand vaguely in a halfhearted re-emphasis of it’s fine.
“So, uh,” Doug said, “still… haven’t gotten your gravity legs back, huh?”
Isabel made a face as she disentangled her arm from Renée’s. “I’m starting to think there’s not really a ‘back.’ I know intellectually how gravity works, but, apparently, my body didn’t get the memo. Body made in space, no muscle memory of gravity, fun times had by all. The thrilling Lovelace 2.0 life.”
“Lovelace—” Renée began, like a warning, like they’d had this argument before.
“I know.” Isabel looked around, ruefully. “My exciting alien powers now extend to ruining your carpet, apparently. I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s okay, really,” Renée said, and Dominik chimed in a little too quickly to add, “It’s just coffee, we can clean it up—”
“I thought you couldn’t even drink real Earth coffee anymore, anyway?” Doug asked, and at the frustrated look on Renée’s face, the stubborn one on Isabel’s, the impatient sigh from Hera and the way Dominik winced, this was a point of contention he should not have stuck his nose into. Real smooth, Doug. Apparently that was something he got to keep from the previous version, too.
“Listen,” Isabel said, folding her arms and shifting her weight to a more deliberately stable standing position, “The magic healing blood? Excellent, highly recommend. The compulsion to lie in the sun? It’s weird, but napping in the sun isn’t a big issue. The fact that I still have to consciously think about how to move in gravity is frustrating, but I’m dealing. I can deal. But I refuse to let my new alien overlords take coffee away from me. I had just gotten used to them deciding that alcohol was a deadly poison that could not remain in my body under any circumstances, but caffeine? Give me a break.”
“You don’t have to make yourself sick every day just to prove a point to a group of aliens that aren’t even here,” Renée said.
“It’s not about proving a point, it’s about sticking caffeine into my system until I’ve built up a tolerance. And it’s working. The reactions are much less debilitating than they were a week ago. Either they’re getting the message that it’s not poisonous or I’m wearing my new alien cells down out of spite. I can keep this up longer than they can.”
“Oh,” Doug said. “Good luck? Show those aliens who’s boss.”
“See,” Isabel said, “he gets it,” as Renée gave him a withering look. That felt right. That… made him happy, actually. There were moments when she stopped treating him with a patience that was clearly as painful for her as it was uncomfortable for him, and it was in those cracks that he felt like she actually saw him.
She blinked, and it was gone. “In any case,” Renée said, “It’s not—it’s fine.” She shook her head and squared her shoulders. “I’ll go get some paper towels. Domek, can you find the vinegar? That should help.”
“Yeah, of course,” Dominik said, but hesitated for a moment, with one last slightly anxious glance back at Renée, before he disappeared into the kitchen. Renée followed after him a moment later.
The living room was quiet. The coffee stain slowly spread across the floor.
“So,” Doug said, “it’s still awkward, huh.”
Isabel snorted and flopped back down onto the couch. “You have no idea.”
“We’ve been taking bets on whether your coming back would make things less or more awkward,” Hera said. “I’m rooting for you, by the way. My non-existent money is on less.”
“Thanks.” He sat down next to Isabel. “Y’know, the way it was on the Urania, it started off weird, but… we had a rhythm, by the time we got to Earth.” It occurred to him, too late, that he was supposed to say back to Earth. “I guess I kinda hoped we could just stick with that.”
“I kind of did too,” Isabel said. “But. We all knew we were kidding ourselves. Space was always a fake environment. We were out there alone in our own tiny bubble, and it was all we had to worry about. And sure, while we were there, it gave us plenty to worry about, but now…” She gestured around with her hand. “The real world had to catch up to us someday.”
“I guess so.” This world still felt more fake than the Urania did, too big and too complicated and too much of a mess, and the decontextualized and half-remembered fragments increasingly rattling around in his head didn’t help him feel like he belonged very much.
Then again, if everyone’s stories were to be believed, he didn’t think he fit in here very well the first time around, either.
Renée reëntered the room, Dominik trailing behind her. In her hands she gripped paper towels like she was trying to wring their nonexistent necks, full of intense energy that Doug now recognized as the high-strung relief of having a mission, even a tiny and barely-consequential one. She mumbled while she attacked the stain, and Doug tried to keep his feet out of the way, and Isabel didn’t make eye contact with anyone.
“I’m sorry,” Renée said finally, sitting back on her heels. “I didn’t mean it to be like this. This was—this was supposed to be a party. For you. This was supposed to be something fun, and simple, and—normal. Last night was the big holiday celebration. The first night of Hanukkah. Today was supposed to be something yours.” She sighed. “Happy birthday, Doug.”
“Wait, what?” he said, instinctively, and from the way Renée closed her eyes he knew it was the wrong thing to say. “I mean, it’s my birthday? It… is my birthday, isn’t it. Right.”
It was one of those many things he remembered because he had heard the old recordings. The old version of him definitely complained about it often enough. There were too many things like that now, where he didn’t know how to disentangle what was a real memory of his own, and what he’d heard enough about to be able to extrapolate. Today was December 25th and that was his birthday. He hadn’t quite realized he’d be expected to have an emotional attachment to that.
“Um,” he said, into the uncomfortable silence. “Thanks. I know I—uh, back then, I used to be upset when people forgot, and, uh, you guys remembered. Thanks.”
That still wasn’t right and was in fact probably worse.
“Yeah,” Renée said, short, with just too much hurt to be called brusque.
Doug reached over to a plate of bread on the side table and shoved a crumbly slice into his mouth.
A few seconds of awkward silence passed, everyone eyeing each other waiting for someone else to speak first, when footsteps up from a basement Doug had forgotten existed and the click of an opening door made that decision for them.
“I heard a crash,” Miranda Pryce said. Her face was set, her hands neatly but rigidly clasped, and her body language exuded a strained and manufactured patience. She may be trying to practice being “engaged” and “friendly,” but also did not appear to actually want to be participating in any of this nonsense longer than she had to.
Doug couldn’t blame her.
Miranda blinked when she saw Doug. He took this as something of an honor; with her eyes, Miranda didn’t have to blink much. He knew the others thought it was creepy. He was the only one to meet her gaze.
“Oh, you’re here now,” she said, nodding, observing a fact without needing to inject any emotion in it, and again, Doug couldn’t help but feel a little bit grateful. “Happy birthday. Was the crash something anyone needs to be concerned about?”
“Nope,” Isabel said, cutting off whatever Renée was about to begin, “I am fine and it is nothing concerning at all. Gravity problems. That’s all.”
“Oh.” Miranda seemed to consider that, then, “I keep offering—”
“It’s fine. I don’t want—it’s fine.”
Miranda stared at Isabel. Isabel looked away. Renée glared at Miranda. Miranda shifted her gaze to stare back at Renée, unperturbed except to seem impatient. Then, Miranda tilted her head in the slightest shrug, and said, “Well, I hope you're enjoying your party. If there are any more crashes I will assume the rest of you are handling it and won’t come to investigate unless it’s an unusual and interesting crash. I will not come up for yelling. Happy birthday, merry Christmas, and happy Hanukkah, Doug, whichever you prefer.” Her desire for social interaction apparently satisfied, Miranda turned around and headed back to the basement, clicking the door neatly shut behind her.
“So,” Doug said.
“Um,” said Dominik, still watching Renée, who herself was still watching the space with her jaw set and her breathing very deep and deliberate, “she… still lives here. In the basement. I don’t know if you were expecting that, and I’m sorry—”
“Nah,” Doug said, “nah, it’s cool, I like her,” and by the way everyone goes uncomfortably quiet after that he wasn’t sure if that was the wrong thing to say or not, but it was true.
Isabel clapped her hands together, sharply, snapping everyone out of whatever reveries they may be wallowing in or spirals they may be falling into. “Okay! This is not about any of our simmering emotional problems. We are going to allow the trappings of light holiday festivities to paper over our insecurities, like you’re supposed to do on Christmas! I take it we all know the rules?”
Renée sighed, and she and Hera said in unison, “No initiating long-time-coming dramatic confrontations.”
“Right.” Isabel turned to point at Doug. “Today is about you. This is a day we are going to celebrate you and have fun.”
“Uh,” Doug said. “Thanks?”
There was a crackle from Hera, like she was beginning to say something and then thought better of it, and Doug looked up for her, instinctively. She wasn’t there—or, she was, and he eventually zeroed in on a webcam perched on the mantelpiece, but it was wrong. It wasn’t the kind of camera she’s supposed to have.
He didn’t really know what he was supposed to be looking for; it was easier to recognize things than conjure them. But he felt better knowing she was there, even if it didn’t feel like it.
“And in the name of birthdays, and celebrating birthdays, and having fun,” Isabel continued, bracing herself with one hand as she picked up a brightly-colored gift bag with crumpled colored paper spilling over the top, “This is for you.”
“Oh! Uh, thanks!” He hadn’t been expecting this, although now that he was holding the shiny paper bag in his hands, he knew what to do. He couldn’t immediately recall any particular birthday present he’d ever gotten, but “you get presents on your birthday” registered as correct, of course that’s how that works. It slotted in neatly as another fact about the world that was lurking in the shadows of his brain somewhere.
He pulled the light, fluffy paper off the top, and extracted the items beneath. They were flat, thin, shiny plastic rectangles with bold lettering and dramatic artwork—movies, his brain filled in. DVDs. This is what they look like.
“See anything there you think you’ll like?” Isabel asked.
He scanned the DVD cases. A guy on a motorcycle, surrounded by animals (Jurassic World, an emblem above him proclaimed.) A woman with billowing hair and a man with improbable tattoos (Jupiter Ascending, apparently). There were eight of them, that he shuffled through in a clumsy stack. He didn’t recognize a single one. No memories sparked. Nothing.
“Cool,” he said, because he had to say something. “Are these…” He looked down at the one on top of the pile now. Into the Woods. Nada. “… all ones that I, or the old me, he, whatever, used to like?”
“Nope,” Isabel said. “I specifically chose ones that came out during the years we were all in space. I can personally guarantee that none of us have seen any of these. You get to decide how you feel about them, all brand new. And if you wanted to hang out here with us for a while, we could maybe use this week or two to all flop down in the living room and eat three different kinds of bread and watch them together for the first time.” She tapped the case Doug was holding. “Though I had to choose at least one Minkowski might like in this collection of sci-fi and cheese.”
Renée snorted.
“Oh,” Doug said, and then he realized he was smiling, for real, for the first time. “Hey. Thanks.”
“Do you…” Dominik began, looking between Doug and Isabel. After a moment of deliberation, he continued cautiously, “Isabel, do you plan to keep staying here?”
“I mean, if I’m wanted?” Isabel said.
“Of course you are,” said Renée, quickly and a little too forcefully, and Dominik stumbled over his words to rush on to add, “I mean—it’s not that—what are your plans? Do you plan to go see your family?”
The attempts at creating a happy bubble in the room evaporated. Renée winced. Isabel got that look on her face, the set of her jaw and sudden tension of her shoulders that meant the wisest course of action was to slink out of the room and be anywhere else.
Dominik didn’t back down, though; his face was nervous but set, and Doug remembered (the normal way, Renée had told him this when she introduced him) that Dominik was an investigative reporter. He probably didn’t get where he was by accepting evasive non-answers.
“I’m working on it, okay?” Isabel said. “I’m still trying to decide how to break the news that… well, that I’m not exactly the same person they remember. Very literally. The rest of you already know. It’s easier, for now.”
“I know. It can’t be easy, after all this. But it isn’t easy for them either,” Dominik said.
“Domek,” Renée said, “the rule about initiating dramatic confrontations is there for a reason, or else these sort of things do not stop.”
“Then when?” Dominik said. To Isabel, “The world knows you’re back. I’ve been getting texts all week from your brother asking if I know where you are, if you’re safe, if we need to stage a rescue operation, if Goddard or the military are doing something horrible to you. I want to keep my promise to let you hide here, because you’re Renée’s friend and you need a place that’s been secured and I did promise. But he’s my friend now, too, and he’s worried sick about you. What am I supposed to tell him, Isabel?”
Yeah, this was the time to slink out. Doug eyed the exits—the front door, the kitchen, maybe the basement? Miranda was thoroughly uninterested in deep and difficult emotional honesty—when what was happening at the front door made him do a double-take.
“Uh, guys—” he began.
“Oh, no,” Hera said, in Doug’s ear.
Isabel was saying, “You can tell him I’m safe, but I’m not—I’m not ready to explain everything! This is a little bit of an unprecedented situation—”
“I think we should open the door,” Doug tried again.
“Do we have to?” Hera asked him.
“I mean, I don’t think we can stop—”
“Oh, shit,” Jacobi said, and the room went quiet as everyone turned to stare at the newly-open front door. “If I’m interrupting a long-time-coming dramatic confrontation, I am more than happy to leave. Really. Please give me an excuse to not be here.”
“Why… are you here?” Doug asked.
“Thanks. Great to see you too, Doug.”
“No, I meant—okay, yeah, that is what I meant. Hi, but also, why are you here, if you don’t want to be?”
“Because it was either this or go back to Wisconsin, with my family, who were not supposed to know or care that I was still alive, but somebody told my terrible sibling where I was—”
“Hello, Jacobi. I do not and will not apologize for that,” Renée said. “Someone needs to make sure you’re not drinking yourself to death in a ditch, and you made it clear you didn’t want it to be us.”
“Well now they’re all oh Daniel you can come over for Hanukkah, I haven’t seen you in years and Daniel the news is saying you went to space, when did you go to space, what even was your job for the last four years, I thought you got recruited into either a pyramid scheme or a cult and oh Daniel you need to meet the ducklings, and they would not leave me alone until I said I had friends, who were real, and existed, who had invited me to a party a thousand miles away, so thanks a lot.”
“You could have lied and still not come,” Hera said, then, more petulantly, “Oh, right. He can’t hear me.”
“Want me to tell him?” Doug asked.
“Tell me what?” Jacobi said, jumpy and zeroing in on Doug. He blinked at the colorful paper bag still awkwardly in Doug’s hands, then said, “Oh, right, this was a birthday party for you. Happy birthday.”
“You don’t have to—” He changed his mind. “Thanks.”
Jacobi scanned the room, the Christmas tree bursting with decorations, the menorah on the windowsill. “Just cramming everything into one big party, huh. Trying to make up for lost time or what?”
“I thought you’d appreciate taking advantage of the only time I’ll ever allow you near fire in my home,” Renée said.
“Maybe I’d hang out here more if you allowed me more combustion opportunities,” Jacobi said. Apparently assessing that there were no available seats left, he plonked himself down on the floor. He nodded at the wall. “You’ve got a fireplace.”
“I—we—never use the fireplace,” Dominik said.
“You could.”
“This house was built in the 1930s,” Renée said. “That fireplace is absolutely not up to the fire codes.”
“Nineteen-thirties! Fancy. Look at you, with your fancy old house.”
“He’s participated,” Isabel said. “Can we eject him now?”
“I’m considering it.”
“Some party,” Jacobi said, fishing for the plate of latkes. “Hey. Latkes. You’ve got a stove. That’s a fire.”
“It’s not a fire. We have an electric stove.”
“An electric stove? You really do take the fun out of everything.”
“I think it’s much more fun to have a stove that’s safer, cleaner, and doesn’t spew chemicals into the air. Have you read the consumer safety reports?”
“Commander, sir,” Jacobi said with exaggerated, sarcastic formality, “nobody reads the consumer safety reports.”
“I do!”
“Yes, well, you’re a nerd. We know that.”
He could have left it there. Jacobi and Renée arguing about safety standards was something familiar, almost cozy in the pointlessness of the conflict.
Except Jacobi continued, “And, y’know, you’ve got your own nice little nineteen-thirties house to come back to where that even matters, which the rest of us hardly have the luxury of complaining about.”
“You know you’re welcome to stay here if you need somewhere to go,” Renée said. “I offered. Repeatedly. You said you’d rather drink yourself to death in a ditch.”
“And I stand by it.”
“Doug’s right,” Renée snapped, exasperation finally getting the better of her. “If you don’t want to be here, why are you here? It was supposed to be a party, Jacobi. It was supposed to be a way to… to let go of all of this for a little bit. To celebrate. To,” and she grimaced, dragging the word out of her mouth, “relax.”
“To let go?” Jacobi sat up again, his eyes bright, relieved to finally have an argument to sink his teeth into. “A nice little party in your nice little home so, what, we can pretend we’re all a nice little family?”
“Is this necessary?” Dominik asked, while Isabel said, “Jacobi. Knock it off.” Renée just glared, her expression turning icy.
“I told them this was going to happen,” Hera said. Doug was pretty sure she was speaking solely into his earpiece. “I did tell them.”
Doug nodded and edged backward, away from the center of the room.
“Isn’t it?” Jacobi was continuing. “What do you expect from us, Minkowski? To just pick up a normal life again? To play house and sleep in a blanket fort and pretend we can just keep going like we all used to? Not all of us have a perfect house and a perfect husband and a perfect life we can just slide back into like nothing happened, you know! Some of us went through some shit!”
“Jacobi—” Renée snarled, at the same time as she put a hand on Isabel’s arm to stop her from charging at him.
“No, I mean it. It’s easy enough for you, nothing happened to you. I mean, you got shot, but you got better, that’s not permanent. Eiffel got a complete factory reset, Lovelace is an alien, I’m unemployed—”
“We’re all unemployed,” snapped Renée.
“Well then it’s awfully convenient you have a husband and a house, isn’t it! The rest of us don’t have that. Everyone I know is dead, Minkowski. Goddard’s gonna try to repossess Hera and vivisect those two to find out what they are now, if they can figure out how. Do you think if you pretend really hard that that’s not true then the rest of us can become like you, back to your pre-space normal and free to just sit back and relax in your house and have your little Chrismukkah party like—”
Doug backed out of the room as Isabel and Dominik both started yelling.
Down the short connecting hallway, past the basement door—Doug considered ducking down there and joining Miranda, who was staying true to her word and not coming to investigate the yelling, and overall he was starting to think she had the right idea—to the kitchen. The kitchen wasn’t quiet, exactly, because nothing in the house was very far away from anything else, but at least it was still. A few fake-evergreen garlands hung perfectly spaced over the doorframe, as an attempt at a festive decoration. Baking materials he couldn’t put a name to and half-loaves of various kinds of bread in saran wrap filled up the counters.
“I was against inviting him at all,” Hera said. “I just want to make that clear.”
“It was probably good to try to include him,” Doug answered, from the vague sense that agreeing would be unnecessarily mean.
“Commander Minkowski thought so. At least, she still checks the tracker in his leg that we all hope he’s forgotten about, to make sure he’s still alive. She seems to think she’s responsible for him now, because we all became such a b̵̢͚͌̽̍î̷̪͙̜͓̉̇̐̏g̵͎̉ ̴̲͕̜̱̟̇̑̀̐̚h̵̛̙̦͂̇̑appy family on the flight here.”
“Well,” Doug said, as he moved to pour himself some coffee from the cooling pot next to the sink, “it doesn’t seem to be much worse than everybody else’s family experiences lately.”
Hera was quiet for a moment. Doug sipped his coffee and made a face. It was bitter and barely lukewarm.
“Texas didn’t go well, did it?” Hera eventually asked.
Doug shrugged, then looked around to try to locate one of Hera’s webcams to make sure she could actually see the gesture. He knew what her cameras were supposed to look like, knew it without having any strong personal memory to anchor it to, but knew it anyway and knew that these felt wrong.
He was so tired of knowing things this way.
“It didn’t go not well,” Doug said. “It didn’t… go at all, really. I got there, puttered around for a day, then got to the address I was told to go to, and I just… couldn’t, you know?” He started pacing across the kitchen, sliding across the hardwood floor on his socked feet. It felt a little bit like floating. Not much, but still more familiar than the heavy and regular thuds of footsteps. “I figured I would open the door and see a bright and excited little eight-year-old girl there who’d just been living her life, and then, either it would spark something and I’d suddenly remember it all, which, I gather a lot of them aren’t really happy memories, or it… wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t recognize her. And I have no idea which it’s going to be until I open that door because it’s not like I can control what memories decide to pop up or not, but either way I’m thinking, this is going to ruin her Christmas. And I didn’t want to do that to her. So I just turned around and left.”
“Oh.” Hera sighed. “Well, you’re not alone on that front, at least.”
“Yeah, I didn’t realize how many people were holing up here to avoid seeing anyone. I thought the rest of you were excited to get back to Earth and all the places you remembered.”
“I wasn’t,” Hera said, sharply enough that Doug flinched. “You think this is something I was looking f̶̣̠̔͊̊̈́̓o̸̯̮̟͑͐r̵͙̭̹̩͉͛͛͛̕̚w̴̢̋͛̎͊ard to? This is about what I expected, and it’s going just as poorly.”
“I… oh.” Everybody had been so gingerly asking him how he was feeling. He hadn’t thought to offer the same. “Are you… doing okay? How are you holding up? It’s hardly the all-seeing eye-in-the-sky experience you used to have.”
“It’s not even that. Not all of it. I feel practically blind now, in ways that there’s no way to even express to you, but being small is something I can handle. It’s that this isn’t a station. It’s a house made out of wood, and it’s not airtight, and it has no sensors, and there’s nothing for me to do here but obsessively monitor everyone’s slow identity crises and dwell on how things didn’t have to be like this!”
“… oh.” He put the cold mug down on the granite counter. It stayed there, pulled to the flat surface by gravity. “You mean like me.”
“I mean like you, and like Dr. Pryce in the basement, and like Commander Minkowski baking some new bread to fill every piece of time when she thinks she doesn’t have anything to do, and Captain Lovelace avoiding talking to her family, and nobody trying to acknowledge—anything.”
The yellow light shone through the window onto the brown hardwood floor and the green-and-black countertop and all the kitchen clutter that just stayed where it was put, in a dizzyingly diverse array of items that was also dizzyingly static. It was all at once familiar and surreal, real and fake.
“I’m doing my best here, Hera, I promise.”
“No, see, you’re the one who understands that things aren’t okay. You’re… you. I know we’ve talked about this, and I know we can’t stop talking about this, because I know how it feels to have your brain torn out and stuffed back together̵̨̟͖̓̈̑ ̷̡̨̮̰͈͈̲̎͂͒̂̈́͂̚w̵̫̬̙̉́͌͗r̴̨͎̹̜̟̦͒͛̔̔̀͠ỏ̶̧̼͔͇͙͂ň̵͚̞͎͗͠g̸̺̓̏̓͐ and have everyone expect you to just carry on with your day like you’re fine now. It’s awful. And I’m trying not to expect that of you. I’m trying, Doug.”
“That’s… yeah. Yeah, I. Know that.” Knew that? Remembered that? He didn’t know. But he knew that. She’s been here. “We’re all trying.”
“Are we? Can you really give everyone that credit?” She was silent for a second. He didn’t answer. Then she asked, sounding less angry now and more tired, “How are you doing?”
“You mean, in a, ‘are all the memories locked up in my head somewhere done playing hide-and-seek with my brain and coming back’ way? That I can answer with a really solid ‘sorta’.”
“No, dummy,” Hera said, and that made Doug genuinely laugh, “or, I mean, if that’s happening and it’s making things easier, that’s great, it really is. But I was asking how you’re feeling, right now. I care about you, you know. Not just the way you used to be.” She made a rueful sound. She was so expressive, for someone without lungs, or a face. “At this point, it would be hypocritical for any of us to expect any of us to be the way we used to be.”
“… yeah. Probably.” Three months on the Urania and these were the people he knew best in the world. He cared about them. So much. He knew that one from the beginning, even when he didn’t know why. He put down his coffee on the counter. “I guess I’m just—”
The sound of footsteps across the kitchen and Renée’s soft “Oh!” made him turn, cutting off what he was about to say. “I’m sorry—am I interrupting?”
“I was just talking to Hera,” Doug said, as Hera answered, “It’s fine.”
Renée walked over to lean back against the counter next to him. It still shocked Doug, every time, just how short she was, in gravity. In space, that hadn’t occurred to him, hadn’t been apparent, but now that they were standing on the same level surface, he was always looking down at the top of her head. It felt… odd. One of those things that may have been a memory holdover, or maybe not.
Then she folded her arms and raised her chin, giving him a stubborn irritated look that immediately made him remember why she never seemed short—or, at least, why she didn’t seem short when she was being herself rather than walking on eggshells around him.
“Is the party moving in here? Your husband seems to get panicky when you’re out of his sight.”
That made her laugh in her short, single-sharp-exhale sort of way. “Be nice. I think he still has a hard time believing this is real. I can’t blame him. I still do, too. But if I spend one more moment in there I will punch Jacobi. I know, I know, he’s dealing with the transition poorly—but we all are, he’s not special, and he thinks that just because I didn’t—” She shook her head and growled wordlessly. “He thinks that he won’t get punched, is what he thinks, and he’s testing my patience.” She picked up Doug’s mug of cold bad coffee and took a swig of it before he could protest.
“I mean, he kind of deserves it,” he said instead.
“Oh, he very much does,” Hera agreed.
Doug gave a slightly awkward laugh; beside him, Renée sighed.
Silence settled between them. The clock above the kitchen table ticked, the smell of fresh bread wafted around the kitchen, and the muffled sounds of Isabel and Dominik presenting a united front against Jacobi drifted in from the living room without providing anything clear enough to eavesdrop on.
“Doug, I—” Renée said, at the same time as Doug began “Renée, I—”
They both stopped. “Uh,” Doug said, “you can go first?”
“I mean, not if—”
“It’s fine! It’s fine. It’s your house, you get dibs.”
“That doesn’t—” She cut herself off and shook her head. “Yeah. It is. I should take responsibility for all of this.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“No, it’s true. I wanted to say—I’m sorry, Doug. I don’t mean to hurt you. I’m not trying to hurt you. And I’m hurting you anyway, I know, and I don’t—I don’t want you to think that I’m ignoring what happened, or that I don’t want you. Because I do. I want you to be happy and feel wanted, and I’m trying to do that for you, and I know I’m failing, and—I’m sorry.”
“You’re not…” He trailed off at her look. “I mean. A little. But. I know you’re not trying to.” He sighed. “You miss your friend. That’s normal, I guess.”
“It’s not fair to you.”
“It’s not fair to me. But what the old Dougie-boy did to me wasn’t fair either. I can’t really name a whole lot that happened that’s been fair.”
She flinched at that, but she nodded. “It’s true.”
“I’m not doing this out of spite, you know? I don’t want to hurt you guys either. You’re my friends. And I mean that! But I can’t exactly control what I got left with, what gets dropped into my head from the Before Times and what doesn’t. I know you still miss the old guy, and what I’ve got… Sometimes I feel like I know who he was. Who I was. Whatever. And sometimes I feel like I don’t know anything. And the longer this goes on, it’s a big mess in my head, and some of it’s good and I want to hold onto it, and some of it’s bad and I hate that it’s there, but so much of it is just this—” He waved his arms above his head, trying to express how big everything was— “pile of things I know, that don’t connect anywhere, or mean anything. I don’t know if I can be him, or, how much of him I can be. And sometimes I don’t know how much of him I want to be. And I know you don’t want to hear that.” He sighed, his shoulders slumping and hands falling back to his sides. “And I know I’m hurting you too. And I don’t want to. I’m trying not to. I want you to be happy, too, because you deserve that. But…”
“You can’t just take everything you feel, and push it aside to be exactly what someone else expects you to be.”
“Not really.”
“Yeah.” It was short, and quiet, barely more than a whisper. She stared down into the cold coffee, then took a long breath. “None of us can, can we? Not anymore.”
“Huh?”
A breeze wafted through the open window. It made them both flinch.
“I’m back,” Renée continued, after a pause, after she shook her head sharply and gave the window a side-eye that said it had better not try anything funny like that again. “I’m happy to be back. Back in my home, back with my husband, back where there’s air everywhere naturally, and that’s something I don’t even have to worry about. And sometimes it feels like it’s true, and everything will be all right. But then there are times when I’ll say something—” She looked over at him again, and she was smiling, but her voice was rueful, her smile sad— “and Dominik just… looks at me, like he doesn’t even know me. And I feel… frozen, like I should be able to solve this problem, but I can’t. I’m back on Earth, and I’m not the same person I was when I left. I’m not the same person he remembers. And I’m starting to realize I can’t be. I don’t want to be.”
She leaned back, her eyes resting on another plate of piled day-old latkes on the counter next to the stove. “Being back, after those years on the Hephaestus… it puts some things in perspective. What matters. I used to try so hard to be perfect. The perfect student, the perfect pilot, speaking perfect English and being the perfectly assimilated American. And then on the Hephaestus, I didn’t need to do that anymore. And I realized… I don’t want to keep trying to be that person, to prove to the rest of the world that I’m worth it.” She gestured around the room, not at anything in particular, and thus indicating, broadly, everything. “Maybe this is my attempt to learn how to be myself again, too.”
“Uh. What is?”
“Everything. It’s still a work in progress, trying to decide what’s worth keeping, and what’s worth letting change. Something that’s a little bit of both—I know I’ve been re-embracing Judaism, to start with.”
“Oh. Right.” He nodded, like he had any idea what he was talking about. “On the Urania, you led Rosh Hashanah, and, uh, the one that went with it—”
“Yom Kippur.”
“Yeah. We all sure had some atoning to do, by then. But I feel like we… didn’t do that back on the Hephaestus?” he hazarded. He wasn’t sure they didn’t, but what he remembered, whether of his own volition or just by the fallout it left, was Christmas. “We did Christmas. We kept doing Christmas. Christmas kept happening whether we liked it or not and it was always a disaster.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” Renée said. Then, more quietly, “I grew up half Catholic, half Jewish. Hence the party. I get to celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah today and feel guilty about everything.”
“Ah. Did we ever do Hanukkah too? I don’t… feel like we ever did.”
“Not… really,” Renée said. She was appraising him; he could appreciate how hard she was trying not to show evident interest in what he was admitting he was remembering. “That was part of it. Part of everything. I felt that I did have Christmas, so why should I also ask for something else? Asking for the Jewish holidays at public schools, in the Air Force, at Goddard Futuristics—it would come off as obtrusive. Why should I obviously mark myself as anything that might stand out, seem different? Why should I insist on keeping that?”
“Because you are obtrusive and different? You’re special and amazing.”
She snorted at that. “Thanks.” She took a sip of the coffee, because it was in her hand, and made a face at being reminded that it was cold and terrible. “But that’s what I’m starting to think. I can be… me. Whatever that means. I can’t go back to trying not to be.” She stared straight ahead now. The words weren’t coming easily to her. “I can’t just return to my old life. I mean—I killed two people, Doug. Dominik doesn’t even know about that part yet and I don’t know how to tell him. I killed two people and you can’t go back from that.”
“Oh,” Doug said.
“And I think I want…” She trailed off. “There are things I want to keep. And there are things for which I want to be able to say, this is what happened, this is who I am now, and it is different and scary. And yes, I want to come home to my husband who I love and let everything be fine again like it used to be, but I’m dragging along three to five people who also are my family now and who I also love, and surprise, they live with us too now, because I can’t even fall asleep if I don’t know exactly where they are—” She cut herself off, and shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. You’re dealing with enough, and I meant to say something helpful, but I don’t need to put this on you. Forget it.”
The kitchen went quiet.
“I love you too,” Doug said.
“And I promise,” Hera added, “that I am not exactly going anywhere.”
“Thank you. Both. I guess I want to say—I’m sorry.”
“We’re all a work in progress,” Doug said.
“Isn’t that the truth.”
“Unfortunately,” said Hera. “Or fortunately. Maybe.”
“Do you know the story of Hanukkah, Doug?” Minkowski asked. At his look, she continued, a touch defensively, “I don’t want to assume things, all right? I’m trying not to assume. But—we can do the whole story tonight when we light the candles, if you like. If you’ll stay.”
“I… yeah. I plan to.”
“Good. I’m—glad. I’m glad. Hanukkah is a celebration of joy. Of strength, of rededication, of survival. Of holding out against an army out to kill you, for longer than anyone thought you possibly could.”
“We can relate to that for sure.”
“And conversely, Christmas,” Hera said, “is a celebration of new beginnings and new futures.”
“Right,” Minkowski said. “And today… today can hold both at the same time. Even if they don’t mesh and just sit on top of each other uncomfortably.”
“Now, don’t quote me on this, but I am getting a sneaking feeling you’re trying to say something, Renée.”
Her look of fond but impatient exasperation was worth it. “Yes, I’m trying to say something!”
He held up his hands. “Hey. Hey! I’m joking. I still do that sometimes, promise.” He took a breath, then, “I get it. And—it’s a nice party. Or, was meant to be, or with the whole multiple presents and multiple futures and multiple us-es deal, it can be, or something. But—I know you’re trying. And it’s nice.” He tapped her on the shoulder, remembering with some pride what he’d been planning to say when he first walked in but had slipped his mind during everything. “Chag Chanukah sameach, Renée.”
She stared at him for a moment, blinked, then started giggling, despite herself.
“Ahh. I said it wrong, didn’t I?”
“No! No, you were close—okay, no, you weren’t close. It was a good effort, though.”
“Oh. Yeah, I googled it, but didn’t think to, uh, wonder about the pronunciation. How do I say it, then?”
Okay, now it was wetness in her eyes she was blinking back. She looked away for a moment, and took a deep breath, like she was hoping he didn’t notice, so he didn’t mention it. “Doug, I thought you’d never ask. It’s chag Chanukah sameach. You make the ch sound in the back of your mouth. Ch.”
“Chhh, ” Doug tried, but it was really more like a k with some extra spit coming out.
“No, you’re trying too hard—it’s more like… like the Scottish loch, or the German Bach.”
“Renée, I can reliably promise you that no version of me has ever known Scottish or German.”
“Chutzpah, then.”
“That one I know.”
“Of course you do.”
“Okay, so it’s kinda like an H, but, more so. H-plus. H, but big, and in neon. Chag Chanukah sameach, Renée.”
“Chag Chanukah sameach,” Hera repeated, and said it perfectly, showing off because of course she could.
Renée smiled, at him, at them. It was a little bit sad, but it was real. “Happy birthday, Doug.”
The golden light made everything seem, for a moment, still. He broke that stillness with a sloppy and encouraging grin back, and held his hand out for a fist bump, a peace offering of an interaction. She did indeed bump her fist against his, and rolled her eyes, but not in a bad way. It was a way that felt right.
There were still people to face and questions to answer, but, hey, some things mattered enough to put in the effort to get right. And he could decide what was worth trying again.