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“Vitya. Relax.” Mila took Viktor’s hands away from his hair and gave them a squeeze. “Your hair looks great, like always, and Lenka won’t care. She knows what you look like, and while she’s very proud of her handsome father, she’d love you no matter what you look like.”
“I know, I know, it’s just… I thought I was prepared for anything to go wrong on this mission. I was fine all through launch and the mission itself and even through reentry, I was fine.” He went back to staring in the mirror at himself. “I promised Lenka that no matter what happened, I would trust her to do her job, and trust Roscosmos and the ESA to get her home safely. I was not expecting the worst of it to be waiting for the rescue ship to bring her back after splashdown when there wouldn’t be time to properly compose myself before she got here!”
Mila smiled, pulling Viktor closer for a kiss. “I could distract you, if you like. We’ve got twenty minutes, plenty of time.”
“Twenty minutes until they’re expected, and we’re supposed to be on the docks with our clothes straight and our hair not giving away how we’re passing the time and what if they’re early, Mila, I can’t have Lenka coming back and us not being there because we’re too busy…” Viktor caught himself. “Wow. It’s been a while since I’ve had catastrophization that bad.”
Mila shrugged that off with, “It’s been a while since you’ve been under the stress of we’re supposed to be on a video chat with our daughter and can’t because the ship is having technical difficulties.” She kissed him again. “Besides, that’s why we’re together, because I can snap you out of the bad thoughts. I love you.” Viktor met her eyes, a soft smile erasing the worry, and Mila stuck her tongue out at him. “Now that just leaves the question of what to do with the next ten minutes. Since we probably should plan on being out there early, but not too early. Too early is just inviting press to come bother us since, after all, there’s plenty of time before our daughter needs us.”
“Did Yuuri come?”
“Of course he came. He and Kenjirou are as much Lenka’s parents as we are, why wouldn’t he be here? Especially since he can’t be on that video call either; he’ll want to see for himself that she’s all right and ready to talk us all to death about her time in space.”
Viktor nodded, dropping his gaze. “When we talked last week, Yuuri wasn’t sure about coming. Press and waiting and all, he could be on the video call from Japan just as easily as he could from here, so he was thinking about skipping to where if he catastrophized himself into a meltdown we wouldn’t have to run interference while Kenjirou got him out of there. Where he couldn’t feed my demons or feed off of them.”
“Well, someone talked him into coming, and I’m betting on Kenjirou but could be Yuri and Beka. Maybe he decided the risk was worth getting to hug his daughter.” Mila gently turned his face up to where she could look into his eyes. “Want to go say hello now, while we still have a bit of privacy for it?”
Yuuri was thrilled to see them, giving them both a big hug. Kenjirou was a bit more skeptical, but once he saw that both Viktor and Yuuri were fine, welcomed them both enthusiastically. “I know Lenka’s going to want to sleep for a while, rest and recover from the ordeal, but Phichit gave me four tickets to Thailand on Ice. Obviously Yuuri’s going for free since he did a lot of the choreography, so I was thinking I’d give my other three to you two and Lenka. Think she’ll be up to going?”
“Are you kidding? For Uncle Phichit’s show? Lenka would haul herself out of her grave if that’s what it took to get there!” Viktor hugged Kenjirou. “Thank you.”
An alarm went off on Yuuri’s phone. “Time to go. Her ship will be arriving soon, and if it’s early, we can still be there.”
Since they made it up there early, naturally, Lenka’s ship came in fifteen minutes late. She looked impatient with the person rolling her chair, which got even worse when she saw her parents waving to her. She tried to get up, but fell back into the chair halfway through. “Stupid gravity… look, I got so used to being able to just leave things where I put them.” She pulled out a pen and put it in the air, where it promptly clattered to the ground. “Gravity sucks. I know it’ll just take time to be back to normal, but I don’t wanna wait.”
“Always impatient,” Mila teased. “Just like your mother. Welcome home. Tell you what, do good and rest up and work hard at rehab and the four of us will take you to see a figure skating show, hmmm?”
“Mama!” Lenka stuck her tongue out at Mila. “I’m not ten, you don’t have to bribe me, I’ll work hard because I’m a freaking professional and that’s what we do and if I want to go back out there I’ll need to get back into spaceworthy shape!”
“Go back?” Viktor yelped. “I thought you were going to retire! Stay on Earth!”
“They want to see how well people can handle a second long-term space mission. Long-duration is great, but are astronauts one use only? Yeah, three went to the moon twice, but those missions were pie compared to spending six months in space.” She paused. “Well, Jim Lovell’s wasn’t, but you know what I mean. One to three weeks in space, with the longer of those including time on the Moon where you’re not in freefall the whole time, is a lot easier than six months in zero g. I volunteered as test subject, and if I keep making my physical fitness and mental fitness benchmarks, I’ll be going up again in three years.” She reached out for Yuuri’s hand. “I’ll be fine, Dad. If they don’t think I’m able to regain that level of fitness, they won’t let me go. When I go up again, it shouldn’t be any different from this one, and if I do start losing muscle mass faster than expected or something, they’ll bring me home early. I want to do this, and there’s nothing on Earth you could bribe me with to keep me out of space. You know that. You all tried.”
Kenjirou coughed. “Well, for now, we’re just glad you’re home, sweetie. Three years, you said? That gives us a lot of time to get our heads around it and to see for ourselves that you’re going to be awesome and help humanity go to space for good some day.”