Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kepler was being kept prisoner again. The trip back to earth would be long enough for them to figure out what to do with him, but in the mean time… this storage room made for a good makeshift cell. Three times a day he was brought food, usually by Lovelace, but the whole crew cycled through, visiting him, asking him questions. Except for Jacobi. Jacobi never showed his face.

It took a week for Kepler to break. He knew Jacobi had survived their rebellion, but beyond that he had no idea what had happened to him. So he did what he did best and came up with a plan. He waited until Eiffel was the one to bring him his meal, as he had always been the easiest to manipulate.

“What’s on the menu today, Eiffel?” He asked in his most calm, cool, and casual voice.

Doug hadn’t heard him speak the entire time he’d been here so he was a bit surprised by the question, nearly dropping the tray with Kepler's meal on it. He “Uhhh.” He hesitated “I'm not really supposed to talk to you.”

Kepler raised his eyebrows. “Fine, don’t talk. Can I have the food at least?”

Eiffel only then seemed to realize that he was still just standing there holding the tray. “Oh. Yes. Right.” He placed the tray down on the table they had set up in the makeshift brig, and pushed the meal across it towards Kepler.

“Thank you, Eiffel.” Kepler said, giving him a smile.

Doug frowned in return. “It’s Doug.” He said back.

The colonel cocked his head to the side, food forgotten. “What?” He asked.

Only then did it dawn on Eiffel that this man had no idea he had lost his memories. Doug sighed, “Never mind. I’m just going to go.” He started to turn around to leave, but Kepler spoke again, freezing him in place.

“I’m surprised you of all people are ok with locking me up again.” Kepler said slyly. “After I let you go during your little mind prison break, you should’ve known I was on your side.”

This wasn’t something Eiffel had heard before. He turned back around, slowly. “After you let me…?”

Kepler picked up the spoon on the tray and dipped it into the soup “I knew you had gotten out of your restraining bolt somehow. I could have turned you in and halted all your plans, but I didn’t. And still, you all don’t believe that I was trying to help you, let alone thank me.” He began to eat his soup, attempting to come across as nonthreatening as he possibly could given the circumstances. Kepler didn’t know how much it would help given the fact that Eiffel had seen him shoot Lovelace in the head, but he played the part.

“Why should I believe anything you say?” Eiffel asked quietly

“You were there. You know what happened.” The Colonel insisted.

Doug shook his head. “No, I don’t.” And with that he turned around and left the room, door locking behind him.

Kepler waited a few moments to make sure he was really gone before letting out his anger and frustration by slamming his hand into the table, making the tray and everything on it jump. He couldn’t even manage to manipulate Eiffel? God, how far had he fallen? He didn’t touch the rest of his meal.

Chapter Text

The next day Lovelace and Minkowski both showed up in his cell with breakfast and a round of interrogating questions about what he had said to Eiffel. Kepler realized very quickly that there was something off about the whole situation.

Lovelace was leaned over the table like a detective in some old noir film, asking him question after question about what had happened while Minkowski stood arms crossed behind her. He rotely answered every question the same way. “You should ask Eiffel.”

After several rounds of this, Lovelace was fed up and Kepler had come up with a working theory about the situation.

Minkowski put a hand on the other woman’s shoulder and Lovelace backed up with a sharp sigh, letting Minkowski take center stage for the audience of one. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Alright, I’ve known you long enough to recognize that expression. Whatever smug obnoxious thing you have to say, just spit it out because this is getting us nowhere.”

Kepler chuckled to himself. “All of the questions you're asking me should be able to be answered by one Douglas Eiffel. But you're asking me instead. Which means, either you trust me more than your dear communications officer, which I find extremely unlikely, or for some reason he isn’t able to answer. He was acting strange last night.” Kepler shook his head and trailed off. “What happened to him?”

Lovelace and Minkowski looked at each other, a silent conversation passing between them. Finally Lovelace nodded and Minkowski turned back to their prisoner.

“He lost his memory, Kepler.” Minkowski said. “He doesn’t remember anything from before we left the Hephaestus.”

Kepler let out a low whistle. “Well I’ll be damned. That explains why he was asking to be called Doug, then. Must have gotten some mighty head trauma crashing the Sol to go complete amnesiac on us.”

“Oh no, don’t put the blame on him.” Lovelace interjected “It was Pryce’s brain scanner machine-thing that did this to him. Not that you care.”

Kepler didn’t respond to that.

Renee continued to play good cop. “Would you just tell us what happened when you found Eiffel after he broke free of the mind control? We are trying to figure out if we can… well not trust you because I think that ship has long since sailed, but at least work with you. Just answer the questions.”

He considered for a moment. “Fine.” He said.

Lovelace raised an eyebrow. “Fine?” She asked.

Kepler nodded. “I can explain what I know.”

“Finally.” Minkowski sounded relieved, “So what—“

Kepler interrupted, “But only if I can tell it to Jacobi.”

“No.” Lovelace immediately shut the idea down. “Not happening.”

The former SI-5 head shrugged, “Then you don’t get to know.”

Isabel smacked her forehead and said to Minkowski “This is pointless, let’s just go.”

Minkowski nodded “just give me one minute with him. I’ll be right out.”

Lovelace looked slightly concerned but didn’t question the commander. She just slipped out the door.

When Captain Lovelace was gone, Minkowski shook her head at Kepler. “What game are you playing this time, Colonel?”

Kepler put on an innocent face. “I don’t know what you mean, commander.” He said, pointedly using her title back.

“This is… when you first boarded my ship, what was it you said to me? The thing about us being like whiskey?”

“Nice to have, but nothing more.” Kepler quoted, pulling the line he had used a number of times.

Minkowski nodded. “That. You’re the whiskey now, Colonel. I don’t mean that as a threat, but as a reminder. We may not be able to kill you but we don’t need you either. It’s not like we actually have to know what happened with the un-mind control meeting you stumbled into. This is about us deciding what to do with you, and you’re not making yourself look better by coming up with useless ultimatums and trying to sweet talk Doug. Whatever game you're playing, stop it. And maybe we’ll decide to keep you around.”

Minkowski turned to leave, had made it halfway across the door when she heard Kepler quietly ask “What does Jacobi think?”

She paused. “Why do you care?” She didn’t look at him.

Kepler didn’t respond, and so with a sigh, Minkowski exited.

Chapter Text

The next few meals came and went without incident. Kepler thought maybe they had given up on him when he heard Hera’s voice come over the speaker.

“Warren.” She said.

Kepler didn’t even startle. “How can I help you, Hera?” She had spoken to him a few times over the week he’d been on board the Urania, but mostly to berate him. He wondered if this time would be any different.

“If I had eyes I would be rolling them right now.” She snarked. “I don’t believe your nice guy act one bit.”

Fine, Kepler thought, he could change tactics. “You spoke to me first, Hera. You clearly want something from me.”

“I do.” Hera agreed. “I want to know if you feel guilty— or maybe not even guilty, if you feel bad in any way, even a tiny amount, about Maxwells death.”

Kepler leaned back in his chair and thought about what he wanted to say. “Her death was… regrettable. Unfortunate. Certainly a loss for SI-5 and the field of AI development.”

A brief moment of silence came over the room and then “What is wrong with you?” Hera asked.

The man scoffed, “How exactly do you expect me to answer that question?”

“I— ugh!” Hera let out a noise of frustration “I don’t know why we bother with you. You killed Lovelace, you tried to kill me, you sent Maxwell to her death and yet all of us are still trying to find some shred of humanity in that messed up head of yours.” She simulated a sigh before adding, “You know, Alana didn’t have a family. Or, she did, but she wasn’t in contact with them. You and Daniel were the closest thing she had to that. And you can only think of her as your employee, as an asset. Maybe Daniel was right and you really are incapable of caring about other people.”

The colonel was a bit stunned by the rant but he didn’t let it show. “Hera… of course I cared about her, but there was a bi—“

She didn’t even let him finish the sentence, “You have to stop saying that like it justifies all your actions, Colonel. You have to stop saying it, period. You’ve lost sight of the trees for the forest. If you really, truly, cared about her you wouldn’t couch it in your bigger picture bullshit. You would grieve and mourn like Daniel and I have been doing for the past months.”

Kepler opened his mouth to respond but Hera didn’t give him the chance.

“I think I’m done with this conversation.” She admitted. “This was a mistake. Goodbye, Kepler.”

Kepler put his head in his hands. The stuff about Maxwell hadn’t felt great to hear but the line about Jacobi… He didn’t know why he was surprised that Jacobi thought he didn’t care, he had said as much during his little mutiny, but Kepler thought that… well he didn’t know what he thought. At some point over the past several years Jacobi had become his right hand, his best employee, and something else too, because despite his best efforts the ballistics expert had wormed his way past the walls he kept up and Kepler had started to care about him in a way he hadn’t since… well, maybe ever. He remembered the concern and worry he had felt when Cutter separated them, the anger he had to force deep down when he saw that his boss had used the restraining bolt on Jacobi like he was some disposable toy. Before then, the way his heart had sunk into his stomach when Jacobi told Minkowski to shoot him. After everything they’d been through, how could Jacobi think he didn’t care?

Kepler shook his head, trying to clear his mind of these useless emotional thoughts. It didn’t matter he tried to tell himself. He tried to pretend he believed it.

Chapter Text

Another several uneventful days passed. Kepler had no idea what the others were doing and hated being out of the loop, but he could be patient, when he had to be.

Lovelace showed up with the usual breakfast stuff that morning, but instead of just dropping it off, taking the old plates, and leaving, she just stood there. Staring.

Kepler stared back.

Finally Lovelace spoke. “You must hate this.”

He let out a wry laugh. “Why would I? I have shelter, three meals a day, a cot and a table and a chair… These are by no means the worst accommodations I’ve stayed in.”

“Not the cell.” Lovelace said, her voice even but cold. “Being a duplicate. A dangerous alien. You must feel some sort of way about it, and based on the ways you’ve talked about me… you’re probably not thrilled.”

Kepler blinked at her. The elephant in the room finally addressed. “I’m alive aren’t I?”

She gestured to the room they were in. “I wouldn’t exactly call this living.”

“And who’s fault is that?” Kepler asked, leaning in, “You all are the ones keeping me in here.”

“Can you blame us? After everything? You murdered me.”

“Would you rather it have been Eiffel?” Kepler replied, referring to his hostage situation during the Hephaestus crews coup.

It only took a moment for Lovelace to close the distance between them and smack Kepler in the face. “Don’t you dare.” She growled at him. “Sure, I goaded you and took the bullet for Eiffel. I’d do the same a hundred times over. But that does not protect you from blame.” She took a few steps back and shook her head. “I’m never going to forgive you for it, you know. Even if we both live forever, you can’t take that back.”

Kepler nodded. “I know.”

“But that doesn’t mean we have to be enemies.” Lovelace continued, to his surprise. “We are likely the only two people who are whatever it is we are, and that means… something.”

“Mutually assured destruction.” Kepler agreed. “If one of us tells people about the other being an alien, they could drag you down with them.”

Lovelace furrowed her brow and widened her eyes in confusion and horror “What? That’s not what I meant at all. God, only your mind would go there first.”

Kepler was growing tired of this conversation. “What then?” He snapped.

Lovelace’s expression softened into resignation as she answered “We are probably the only two people alive who know what it’s like to die, to be gone, to come back in this way. How painful it is, how disorienting. I was hoping the experience would teach you some empathy, give you some kind of new perspective, but you’re still you.”

“That’s how this works.” Kepler said. “You know that. We still feel like and act like us.”

Lovelace smiled sadly. “That’s true. Neither one of us wanted this, Warren. To be… whatever we are. But I made the choice to be the old Isabel Lovelace. You can make the choice to not be the Colonel Warren Kepler that Goddard made you into.”

“And why should I?” He asked. “You said it yourself, none of you are ever going to forgive me. Even if I did change, would any of you believe it? No, you would always be waiting for the other shoe to drop. So forgive me if I don’t drop everything I’ve worked to become in order for you all to still despise me.”

The words hung in the air for a long moment, as if suffocating everything else.

She finally responded “We don’t all despise you. Or, some of us do, I certainly still do, but Doug has no first hand memory of any of the things you did, and Daniel… well he claims to hate you but he never shuts up about you so I really doubt that’s true. Even Minkowski and I haven’t really given up on you. We still come in here to bring you food and talk to you. I don’t know what will happen once we are back on earth but you’ve been given another chance and I think you should take it.”

Kepler swallowed hard, pushing down all the pesky feelings building up in him. “I want to talk to him.” He admitted. “Jacobi.”

“I know.” Lovelace replied. “He knows too. But you really did a number on him, and he needs time. Don’t tell him I said that.”

Kepler turned away from her, full of an emotion he couldn’t quite place but didn’t want her to see on his face.

Lovelace took that as her cue, said goodbye, and left.

Chapter Text

By the time Jacobi finally came around, Kepler had been in the cell for two weeks.

He didn’t show up at a normal meal time either, just slipped in in the middle of the night, watching Kepler breathe in his sleep. He looked far more vulnerable this way than he ever did awake. After a few minutes of watching though, Kepler began to stir, blinking awake to see Jacobi on the other side of the room. He nearly thought he was dreaming.

“Jacobi?” Kepler muttered, sitting up and rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Is that… you?” His voice was soft and tentative, maybe from sleep, maybe something else. Kepler wasn’t even sure himself.

“Yeah.” Jacobi replied.

“Took you long enough to visit.” Kepler said in a tone he hoped was humorous.

Jacobi didn’t respond, just leaned back against the door behind him and looked over Kepler, still laying in his cot. There was a chain on his ankle keeping him on that side of the room, but Jacobi was never really worried about Kepler trying to hurt him. Not physically anyway.

“Are you here to talk to me or are you just going to stare?” Kepler asked instead “I already have Hera keeping an eye on me at all times, I don’t need you doing it too.”

Jacobi only said “Hera’s offline right now. You’ve just got me.”

More silence passed and then Kepler said “I’m going back to sleep. Wake me up if you actually want to talk.” He turned over in the cot, facing the other direction.

Minutes passed. Kepler was doing his best to pretend to sleep, but he was too acutely aware of Jacobi’s eyes on his back.

Jacobi broke the stalemate. “Do you remember, two or so years ago, our mission in the Himalayas?”

Kepler sat up somewhat. “Yes? You blew up the side of a mountain, that’s hard to forget.”

“But I got lost in those stupid caves and didnt make it out of the blast radius in time.” Jacobi added.

Kepler nodded slowly. “Your incompetence notwithstanding, the mission managed to be a success.”

Jacobi narrowed his eyes. “I woke up a month later at a hospital in India. You were gone, I didn’t speak the language, and I had this nasty scar and, oh yeah, I should have been dead. Eventually someone who spoke English showed up and said that I had been found by a mountaineer and dropped off there.”

“So what?” Kepler asked. “You’ve been building up resentment because you got hurt on a mission and I wasn’t there to kiss your boo-boo?”

Jacobi didn’t dignify that with a response and continued “It never made sense to me how I survived that day. Our target was a hundred miles away from the nearest town, and no one went mountaineering that late into the season. Protocol stated you would leave the rendezvous point without me if I wasn’t back within three hours, but no one else could have been near enough to find me in time to keep me from freezing to death, especially not without hearing the explosion and compromising the whole mission.”

“What’s your point, Jacobi?” Kepler asked coldly.

“I read the report, you know.” Jacobi chuckled softly. “Alana uncovered it for me. You were two days late returning back to HQ from that mission.”

Kepler shrugged “Something came up.”

“Something like breaking protocol to find your half-alive subordinate in the mountains and drop him off somewhere he would actually be rescued?” Jacobi asked.

Kepler kept his mouth shut.

Jacobi laughed. “Wow. Still can't bring yourself to admit it, even after all these years. Cutters dead, he can’t punish you for breaking the rules anymore.”

Kepler still didn’t reply.

The younger man didn’t mind. He kept talking. “You went against protocol and saved my life, but never acknowledged it. Still won’t acknowledge it. Before all that happened, I thought you didn’t have feelings. Not real ones. But afterwards… I realized that deep down somewhere inside of you, you must care. Because you wouldn’t have ever risked your life, your job, or the mission if you didn’t care about me at least a little.”

“Jacobi.” Kepler tried to interrupt, to stop this line of thinking before it went somewhere they couldn’t come back from. But Jacobi didn’t listen.

“I felt so honored at the time.” He continued “This man I idolized cared enough about me to save me and was humble enough to not hold it over my head.” He laughed again. “But you weren’t being humble, you were saving your own skin. And knowing you were capable of caring only made it hurt every time you chose not to do so. Every time we slept together and you were gone in the morning, every time you yelled obscenities at me because I made a mistake, every time I thought we were having a moment and then you pulled away. It hurt. But still I saw flickers of it sometimes, of you caring. When you showed up in the med bay on the Sol claiming to be concerned about me. When you called me Daniel to say goodbye. When Minkowski pulled you out of that shuttle and you wouldn’t stop muttering my name in your delirium…”

Kepler hadn’t known about that. He repeated again, “Jacobi, stop this—“

Talking right through him, the ballistics officer said “We thought you were dead, gone for good, for two weeks. And I spent the whole time being angry at myself for mourning you. I kept replaying our last conversation. Me begging you to stay, you telling me thank you and calling me by my first name, something you never do, and then you leaving. And getting yourself killed. I kept wondering if there was something I could have done or said differently, and beating myself up for still caring about you after all the shit you put me through. Because unlike you I can admit that I do care about you, despite everything. I wish I didn’t, but I do. And now you’re back and it makes everything more complicated.”

Jacobi stopped talking, finished with his monologue. Kepler just sighed. “Go back to bed, Jacobi.”

“No.” He answered. “Now it’s your turn.”

“What exactly do you want me to say?”

Jacobi clenched his fists angrily. “I don’t know! Something, anything! Be vulnerable for once in your life, you sanctimonious bastard!”

Kepler sat all the way up and ran a hand through his hair. “Fine. You want me to be vulnerable? I didn’t want to come back. I knew what I was walking into and that it would probably get me killed and I made my peace with that. Coming back to life wasn’t exactly a part of the plan. I have nothing back on earth outside of Goddard Futuristics and I get the sense I’m going to be out of a job soon.”

“Goddamnit, Kepler, you’ll have me!” Jacobi argued, “And the rest of the Hephaestus crew too, if you let them. But I— I’m not losing you again, OK? I’m not losing anyone else.”

Kepler stood and tried to cross the room towards Jacobi, to do what he didn’t know, but the chain on his ankle pulled taut a few feet from the door. He cursed at it.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Kepler said. “Couldn’t even if I wanted to,” he gestured at the chain.

That made Jacobi crack a smile. “Guess not.”

They looked at one another for a long moment.

“I’m still angry.” Jacobi said softly. “I may never stop being angry.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything else.” Kepler replied. He wasn’t in a place yet where he could apologize. Maybe he never would be.

Jacobi nodded. “Good.” A beat passed. “I should go.”

Kepler nodded. “Probably.”

Jacobi didn’t move.

Neither did Kepler.