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Chapter Text

Beth Johanssen knew that there was something significant happening — something that somehow involved her — long before the meeting request arrived in her inbox. The first inkling she’d had was when she’d arrived early for work.

As had become her habit since the launch of the Ares IV mission, she’d wandered past Mission Control as soon as she’d arrived. Though she wasn’t directly involved in the mission, checking in every day — just to see that the crew was still okay — eased something inside her that had been broken since Mark’s death.

It didn’t make all the pain go away.

Nothing did.

Not the extensive grief therapy she and the rest of the crew had undergone, not the time off she’d taken to go home and be with her family, not the joy of a new role at NASA, not even the brief (but ultimately ill-advised) relationship she’d had with Chris.

Thank God it hadn’t ruined her close friendship with him and the rest of the crew.

They were the only thing, sometimes, that kept her together after the nights spent dreaming of Mark being blown away from her in an endless loop, his scream following her into her waking hours.

The nightmares had come more frequently since Ares IV launched and now that they were actually on Mars…

It helped, to check.

Normally she could pop her head into Mission Control and get a thumbs up or a brief update from one of the on-duty personnel — usually one of her fellow sysops — and get on with her day.

But today when she opened the door, the room was conspicuously silent.

Not the silence of busy people working, but the awkward silence of a conversation abruptly cut off when the subject of the conversation walked into the room.

Both would have written it off, except...

There were only half-a-dozen people in the room — much less than there should be for this time of day, Beth realized suddenly — but they were all not-so-subtly watching her or conspicuously not looking at her. She shifted on her feet and tried to catch the eye of Evan Larson, the sysop regularly assigned to the overnight shift and who usually gave Beth her morning update, but the man was staring intently at his blank screen, shoulders hunched as if aware of Beth’s gaze.

That nebulous feeling of wrongness was settling into actual worry.

Her mind began to churn, listing everything that could have possibly gone wrong. A sick crewmember. An equipment breakdown. A problem with the satellites. A communication loss.

A storm.

Please no, she thought. Not again.

“Beth?”

The soft question jerked her from her thoughts and looked up into the face of Brendan Hutch.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Brendan said. “Everything’s—“

“Don’t.” Beth said. “Don’t lie to me. I can tell that something’s wrong.”

Brendan sighed.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, then put a hand up when Beth opened her mouth to protest. “Nothing’s wrong. You’re right, something did happen and we did have an unexpected message from the Ares IV crew early this morning. But nothing is wrong.”

She studied his face, searching for truth in his eyes. Finally, she nodded and felt something in her stomach loosen.

“Then… what?” She gestured to the tense room behind him, unable to articulate her question.

Brendan shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I can’t tell you. It’s privileged information until Sanders clears it for public release.”

Beth swallowed and bit her lip. She knew that the last time NASA had implemented this kind of information black-out had been right before announcing Mark’s death, even though she hadn’t been on the planet at the time. Beth’s tense expression must have been obvious to Brendan, because he took pity on her.

“I imagine the information will be released internally in a while,” he said. “It really isn’t anything bad.”

Beth nodded slowly, trying to wrestle the fear in her gut.

She let Brendan guide her quietly out of Mission Control and walked off to her small office in a daze. She slumped behind her desk and stared blankly at the framed photo of the Ares III crew sitting next to her monitor. The photo, a candid shot of the six of them at a barbecue at the Martinez’s house, had been taken just days before their departure. Near the middle of the photo, Mark grinned at her from his place sandwiched between Chris and Rick.

Beth wanted to smile, cheered by the memory of Mark’s irrepressible humor. But the tense faces in Mission, the sideways looks in the halls, and the broken-off conversations gnawed at her mind.

No matter what Brendan had said, Beth knew that there was something wrong and that somehow that something involved her and Ares IV crew.

When her computer chimed briefly to notify her of a new meeting request — a request for an after-hours meeting that included her, the remaining Ares III crew, Mitch Henderson, and Annie Montrose — she knew her feeling was right.

She accepted the meeting request with shaking hands, then dug through the top drawer of her desk for her therapist’s phone number.

She had a feeling she might need someone impartial to talk to very soon.

Chapter Text

Rick Martinez hated the monument that NASA had erected for Mark: a giant block of mottled grey marble with a solemn iron plaque. It was ostentatious, grand, and serious. Nothing like the way his friend was.

Had been.

Even four years after his death, it was still hard some days to really believe that Mark was actually gone.

Rick sighed and sat at the base of the monument, his back against the cool marble.

“I miss you buddy,” he said.

It had become a habit, in the last few years, for Rick to come out to the monument and talk to Mark. He knew that it didn't bring him physically any closer to Mark, whose body was long buried in the Martian sand. And the giant stone monument in no way reminded him of his vibrant, goofy friend.

But somehow that made him feel spiritually closer to Mark.

Like, somehow, his friend would hang around just to haunt the ridiculous monument NASA had erected for him.

(Rick hoped, sometimes, secretly and barely acknowledged, that if he kept showing up at the stupid thing, he might catch Mark' ghost hanging around making faces.)

"My son turned seven yesterday," Rick said. "We bought him a puppy."

He sighed and closed his eyes, tipping his head back against the stone.

"I know, I know," he said. "I swore we'd never do it and you bet we'd cave eventually. You were right; we caved."

He imagined the delighted glee on Mark's face, the smug knowing look his friend would toss his way, and felt his throat tighten.

"I guess I owe you twenty bucks," he said. "But we named the dog after you, so that should make up for it."

Imagining Mark's flailing happy dance kept the smile on Rick's face for a few minutes despite the tears that threatened. And kept him from thinking about the real reason he'd come out to talk to Mark today.

But that didn’t last for long and the crinkle of paper in his jacket as he shifted positions brought his mind sharply back to the decision that had driven him to his friend’s grave.

“They asked me to pilot the Ares V mission,” he said.

He pulled the paper from his pocket and spread it out across his bent knees. His eyes traced over the words, as he had done a hundred times since he had received it. It wasn’t anything special — just a written notice of the mission Sanders had outlined to him the day before.

But it felt weighty in his hands in a way that a single sheet of 8.5 by 11 inch paper shouldn’t.

It was a tough decision to make. All Rick had ever wanted to do was fly, and becoming an astronaut had felt like the pinnacle of that achievement.

Until the disaster on Mars.

If anyone had asked him, before that, if he would be willing to take on another mission, he wouldn’t have even thought about it before saying yes. The danger, the isolation, the long separation from his family — all that was worth it to fly.

He was lucky that his wife had always understood that.

But since Ares III, Rick had felt a pall every time he stepped into the cockpit. That hadn’t stopped him from flying missions to the ISS and the SpaceX Station and hadn’t driven him from the NASA astronaut program.

But the joy of it was diminished and every time he strapped in, he felt the weight of Mark’s empty seat on that last Mars ascent.

He didn’t know if he could bear to go back to that planet. And he didn’t know if he could bear not to go, knowing that he’d left Mark there.

There’d been rumors around NASA that they were planning to send an Ares mission back to Acidalia Planitia to retrieve Mark’s body and finish the scientific work the Ares III crew had been forced to abandon. Those rumors had hit a nasty speedbump three years earlier when NASA had finally pointed a satellite back at their mission site and discovered that the Hab had been destroyed. They were still planning a return to Acidalia Planitia, but it definitely wouldn’t be the Ares V mission.

“It would be easier if it was,” Rick said aloud. “If they were asking me to pilot a mission to get your body back, I would say yes without hesitating. But…”

He sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair.

“I don’t know if I can leave you there again,” he confessed in a low voice. “I don’t know if I can go back to that planet and take off for a second time, knowing that I’m abandoning you.”

He sniffed, surprised to find his eyes wet, and shook his head roughly.

“You’d probably tell me I was being stupid,” he said. “That it’s just a body. That you’re dead and gone and couldn’t possibly care anymore. That leaving your body doesn’t mean abandoning your spirit.”

He forced himself to relax and unclench his fists. The NASA letterhead was starting to look a little worse for wear, and he’d only had it a day.

“I just don’t know that I can,” he said, scrubbing at his eyes with his sleeve.

He sighed and leaned back against the monument, staring up at the clouds rolling across the blue sky.

He was still staring when a musical ringtone yanked him back down to Earth. He blinked in surprise then hurriedly pulled the phone from his pocket. It was ringing to the tune of Elton John’s “Rocket Man,” the unique tone he’d programmed in for members of the Ares III crew.

His eyebrows rose as he found a text message from Beth. They rose even further and a pit opened up in his stomach as, on her direction, he opened his email and found the urgent meeting request for him and rest of the crew.

What the hell is going on? he wondered, pushing himself to his feet. He paused for a moment to lay a hand on the monument, then strode rapidly back towards his car.

He needed to get back to NASA as soon as possible.

Chapter Text

Brendan Hutch was waiting for Chris when he got out of surgery. It was enough to make Chris stop in shock, staring at the other man.

It’s not that Chris didn’t regularly interact with Hutch. They didn’t work together — Chris being in NASA’s Medical unit and Hutch being the Hermes flight director — but Chris saw the other man around the Johnson Space Center and knew Hutch from when Chris and Beth had briefly dated. He knew Beth saw him more regularly when she checked in with Mission Control on the Ares IV mission.

But Chris hadn’t ever expected to see Hutch waiting for him anywhere.

Especially not at the hospital.

The hospital was Chris’s refuge when he couldn’t take it at the Johnson Space Center anymore. It was where he went when the memories of Mark become too much to handle, when he started to see his dead friend around every corner, when his hands started to shake and that last day on Mars played out every time he closed his eyes.

The hospital had been something his therapist had recommended when things had gotten so bad that Chris hadn’t been able to even walk through the front doors of the space center.

A place where he could still be a doctor without being haunted by the day all his skills had been absolutely useless.

One of his old mentors was Chief of Surgery and had been able to get Chris a part-time position in the hospital’s free clinic. That had morphed, over the years, into lending a hand in the general surgery department, and now Chris worked one or two days a week at the hospital.

NASA had been very accommodating, eventually positioning Chris’s work as ongoing professional development and community outreach — even though both he and NASA knew very well that someday the hospital was the only thing keeping Chris from curling up in a ball in the corner and never leaving.

The hospital had been a blessing and for all that his co-workers knew exactly who he was, they had been remarkably understanding, never bothering him about his time on Mars or the last disaster of the Ares III mission.

Chris was unspeakably grateful for that.

So the last thing he expected was to see NASA’s Ares IV flight director waiting for him in the staff breakroom.

He stopped in the door, staring blankly at the other man.

Hutch grimaced at him, an apology in his eyes, as if he knew what he was doing invading Chris’s safe place.

“Dr. Beck,” he said, “do you have a moment?”

Chris swallowed and nodded. He stepped into the breakroom and closed the door behind him, glad that the room was empty.

“What’s going on?” he asked. He felt an icy claw of fear in his chest. “What happened? Who’s hurt?”

It was the only reason he could think of that Hutch would be coming out to see him.

“No one’s hurt,” Hutch said.

Chris blinked in confusion.

“Then why…? What’s so urgent that you couldn’t wait until I was back at NASA tomorrow?”

Hutch sighed.

“We’ve had some news from Ares IV,” he said. “We have to release it to the public tomorrow morning, and it’s important that you know before the public does.”

“What—“ Chris started.

“There’s a meeting scheduled in an hour at Johnson. Henderson will brief you then.” He paused and saw the stunned expression on Chris’s face. “I really can’t tell you now, but it’s important that you’re at that meeting.”

“It must be,” Chris said, “for you to have come all the way out here.”

Hutch shrugged, looking uncomfortable.

“You weren’t answering your phone. And it’s really important that you’re at the meeting.”

Chris nodded absently even as he pulled his phone from his locker and saw dozens of missed calls from the rest of the Ares III crew. His fingers curled around the phone and the pit of dread grew in his stomach.

There was only one reason NASA would want to urgently speak to the entire Ares III crew after receiving information from Ares IV.

Mark. It’s about Mark, he thought and didn’t realize he’d said it out loud until he looked up and saw the expression on Hutch’s face.

“It’s about Mark,” he repeated, staring intently at Hutch. “What is it?”

Hutch sighed and shook his head, but didn’t deny Chris’s statement. Chris felt dazed, like the world was tilting under him, like he’s back in zero G.

“Tell me,” he demanded.

“Henderson will brief you at the meeting,” Hutch said. “I can’t tell you any more than that,” he added firmly when he saw the mutinous expression on Chris’s face. “Just… get over to Johnson.”

Chris nodded and jerkily grabbed his things from his locker. He didn’t even bother to change out of his scrubs, needing to get to the space center as fast as possible. Moments later, he turned away from his locker, belongings haphazardly gathered, and found Hutch still in the room.

“I have a car,” Hutch said.

Chris nodded mutely and followed the other man out to his car. Chris’s own car was still in the lot, but Chris didn’t think it would be a good idea to drive right now. He was grateful, distantly, that Hutch had waited, but his mind was consumed with worry.

It’s about Mark.

The phrase rolled over in his head again and again as they made the drive back to the Johnson Space Center.

Neither man said a word until Hutch pulled in near the back door and Chris was halfway out the door.

“Chris,” Hutch called and Chris stopped.

Hutch almost never used his first name, preferring the more formal Dr. Beck.

Chris turned back to see Hutch watching him with a sad expression.

“I’m sorry,” Hutch said.

He rolled up the window and pulled away while Chris was still gaping at him.

Chapter Text

Melissa Lewis was not a stupid woman. Nor was she unobservant.

You didn’t get as far as she had — especially not in the US Navy’s submarine program — without being able to put together the pieces.

When the meeting request had arrived in her inbox, she’d known immediately that it had something to do with Ares IV and something to do with Mark. What other reason would there be to call an urgent meeting of the surviving Ares III crew a few days after Ares IV had touched down on Mars?

She felt a great pressure around her heart and lungs at the thought, as she always did when that terrible moment came up. Melissa had been to war, seen things most people couldn’t handle, but that last day on Mars was easily the worst day of her life. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths to re-center herself.

It had become a familiar ritual in the years since Mars.

By the end of the work day, she’d heard about the press conference scheduled for the next morning — a conference, she’d heard others say, that was being scheduled with the same speed and obfuscation as to its purpose as the conference scheduled to announce Mark’s death. Rumours and hushed conversations had raced through NASA all day, and though Melissa remained aloof from the gossip, she’d seen enough sideways glances — especially from the personnel assigned to Mission Control — to confirm her suspicions.

It was about Ares IV. It was about Mark.

By the end of the day, maintaining a stable distance from an emotional breakdown had become difficult. The whispers and stares pressed on her from all sides, making her want to scream.

It was ironic, she thought darkly, that she could sleep like a baby on a submarine that could easily be crushed like a tin can or on a spaceship with only thin walls protecting her from the vacuum, but the constant observation at NASA was undoing her.

It was everything she'd expected to experience after Mark's death, magnified by a thousand-fold because she was experiencing it in person and not the confines of her guilty conscience.

What she couldn’t figure out was what Henderson and Montrose were going to tell them.

It couldn’t be a body recovery. Melissa knew NASA was talking about recovering Mark’s body on the Ares VI mission, and anyway the Schiaperelli Crater was much too far from Acidalia Planitia to make recovery even a remote option for Ares IV.

The only thing Melissa could guess was that something had gone wrong with the mission, some kind of catastrophe that was reminding everyone of the Ares III disaster, and NASA thought it best to inform the Ares III crew so they wouldn’t be surprised by it when NASA announced it to the public.

It was a chilling thought.

Melissa had friends on the Ares IV crew, particularly its commander Blair Ortega. She hadn’t been able to help getting close with them because she’d spent so much time drilling and working with the crew before the mission. She wasn’t going to let them lose someone the way she and her crew had lost Mark.

The idea that that had happened, that the crew who’d tolerated her obsessive safety drills had been through their own horror, made Melissa feel cold inside.

But she couldn’t quite believe that that was the news they had gathered her crew together for.

She couldn’t put her finger on it, but the emotional tone of the building and of NASA’s response was wrong for the kind of disaster Melissa was imagining.

She was still chewing over the problem when she arrived at one of the Johnson Space Center’s fourth floor conference rooms nearly 30 minutes before the meeting started.

She was surprised to find that she wasn’t the first one there.

Beth was sitting in the corner. The other woman’s laptop sat open in front of her, but she was staring off into the distance and as Melissa came around the table, she saw that Beth’s screensaver — a slideshow of images of the crew — had engaged. The image on the screen at that moment was of all six of them with the heads crammed together for an oddly angled selfie.

Mark had cajoled the crew into taking it the day before the disaster.

Melissa remembered being annoyed with Mark’s insistence on the picture. It had been a tough day, trying to complete their work in strong winds. One of the rovers had required maintenance and the solar farm needed more care than usual. No-one had gotten as much done that day as they planned and they’d all been a little touchy and less welcoming of Mark’s eternal good spirits.

But somehow he’d entreated and begged and whined and bribed and joked and teased and gotten them all together into a picture. They’d spent the evening afterwards having an impromptu movie night and Mark had made a point of emailing them all the picture “for posterity.”

It was the last picture they had taken as a crew.

It was the last picture anyone had of Mark.

She tried to shake herself from the melancholy and guilt that descended whenever she thought about it, though she knew it would be a futile effort. Three years of wrestling with these feelings had taught her they weren’t going away, and no matter what the NASA-assigned therapist told her, Melissa honestly didn’t think they ever would.

The day she no longer felt guilty was the day she stopped accepting her responsibility as commander for the lives of her crew.

And that was a day she hoped would never come.

Chapter Text

Alex Vogel was the last to arrive at the fourth floor conference room. This late in the evening, the Johnson Space Center was much quieter than usual, though it certainly wasn’t deserted. NASA, as an organization, never really slept — especially not with an active mission on the surface of Mars.

But the space center felt quieter.

The dark sky outside was mirrored by the darkened offices inside, and Alex’s footsteps echoed in the empty corridors. He hurried through the building, glancing down at his watch. His grimaced and sighed.

Late already.

He hadn’t meant to be late, but the kids had been difficult to settle down this evening and Alex hadn’t wanted to leave them to Helena to deal with. His wife had been remarkably accepting of Alex’s long absence during the Ares III mission and had consented to move to the US after the mission when Alex wanted to be closer to what was left of his crew.

It had been exceptionally difficult, when they got back to Earth, to leave the rest of the crew behind and return to Germany. He’d found himself frequently on phone calls and video calls with them, becoming unsettled if they went too long without speaking.

It was a feeling shared by both of the previous Ares mission crews, so Alex hadn’t been surprised by it. When you spend that long in each other’s company, you either develop an incredibly close bond or never want to see each other again.

The Ares III crew had developed that close bond within the first months of the mission, so none of them had been surprised by the desire to remain close and in contact when they got back to Earth.

But their crew had found themselves more challenged than either of the previous two crews, and while none of them said it, they all knew why.

Mark and his death on Mars.

While another crew might feel mildly unsettled not to be in frequent contact, the Ares III crew felt genuine fear and panic. To them, a missing connection with the rest of the crew was a stark reminder of the hole that still ached in their ranks, of the man they had lost on Mars.

It had been even worse for Alex, half a world away from the rest of crew, who’d all settled within the Houston area.

Helena had been the one to suggest they move their family to the US after the third time she’d found Alex having a panic attack, and it had helped a great deal. Being able to see the crew in person had soothed tension Alex hadn’t even realized he was carrying.

And NASA had been more than happy to have Alex working for them.

While he was officially listed as a liaison between the ESA and NASA, everyone on both sides knew it was more of a permanent transfer.

The move had made Alex feel much more secure and eased, but it had been challenging for his family. They’d adapted in the last few years, but Alex still did everything he could to support them, his wife especially. Family — an expanded one that included the Ares III crew and their families — came first.

But sometimes that meant slinking into a meeting late.

He murmured apologies to Mitch Henderson and Annie Montrose as he slipped into the open seat. He glanced around the rest of the crew, surprised by how tense they seemed. Beth’s hands were clasped together, her knuckles white. Chris looked pale and shocked, still wearing hospital scrubs with a splatter of blood on the hem. Rick was biting his lip, worrying the corner of a letter between his fingers. Melissa’s face was hard, her lips drawn together.

For a moment, he thought his late arrival was the cause of the tension in the room, but a glance at the faces of his fellow crewmembers showed that all their focus was on Henderson and Montrose. A knot of tension formed in his own stomach. He’d been so caught up in the business of his day that he’d had no time to consider what NASA wanted with the survivors of the Ares III crew.

Maybe he should have been paying more attention.

At least he would be getting answers soon. Unsurprisingly, their commander was taking charge of the meeting.

“Will someone tell us what’s going on?” she demanded.

Everyone leaned forwards as Henderson took a deep breath, traded a nervous glance with Annie Montrose, and began to speak.

Chapter Text

“Mark Watney is still alive,” Mitch Henderson says.

The words echoed in Rick’s ears.

Mark Watney is still alive. Mark Watney is still alive.

Mark was alive.

Around him, he could hear the rest of the crew expressing their shock and disbelief, their overlapping voices making the words indistinguishable. He could hear Henderson and Montrose offering explanations. But it was muted, like he was underwater. A pressure wrapped around his head, sound wavering through it.

Mark was still alive.

He knew that Henderson was still speaking, and he could hear the words. Words like miracle and extraordinary achievement and Ares IV. But he just couldn’t process them. All he could do was stare at Henderson, watching the man’s mouth move, and try to reconcile that first statement with the hell they’d all lived in for the last five years.

“What the fucking hell do you think you’re playing at?”

Someone sounded pissed.

Oh look, that someone was him.

His angry words put a sudden stop on the babble of voices from his crew and on Henderson’s nervous monologue. Everyone was looking at him. He had no idea what he was going to say, but somehow the words just came tumbling at.

“No really,” he said. “What the hell are you playing at? You think this is a good idea of a joke? Because it’s not funny.”

It had to be a joke. It had to be.

Because if it wasn’t.

If Henderson was telling the truth. If Mark was alive.

Then they had left—

He didn’t let himself finish that thought.

He wanted to shout that it couldn’t be true. They couldn’t have left Mark behind, abandoned him alone on a deserted planet. Left him.

He wanted to beg for it to be true. For Mark to be alive despite everything.

The words caught in his throat, two voices, two impulses warring on his tongue.

“It’s not a joke,” Henderson said. His voice was firm, absolute, certain. “Mark is alive.”

Rick came back to himself in a rush, sound and sight pouring back in with a sudden laser focus.

He met Henderson’s gaze and read in the man’s face the truth. It wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t a mistake.

It wasn’t the kind of wishful daydreaming he indulged in on the long nights when he couldn’t sleep, on the anniversaries when it was all he could do to keep going.

It was the absolute, complete truth.

Mark was alive.

And they’d left him behind.

Rick could feel the grief clawing at his throat even as Henderson laid out the information they had and played back Ortega’s message. But that grief was tempered by the sheer joy he could see on each of his fellow crewmembers’ faces.

Mark was alive.

And had apparently spent the last few years living in the Ares IV MAV.

“How did no-one notice?” Rick asked wonderingly.

Henderson and Montrose traded nervous glances; Rick’s gaze sharpened on them and he instantly tensed up. He’d asked it as a rhetorical question, one he knew everyone would be asking in the next few weeks as NASA and the world tried to come to terms with Mark’s miraculous survival.

He’d expected to get mad at someone, at some point.

But he hadn’t expected NASA to already have an answer already.

“How did no-one notice?” he asked again, leaning forward with intent.

On either side of him, the rest of the crew went just as still, five pairs of eyes focused on the NASA executives.

It was Montrose that answered.

“We’re still rechecking the satellite imagery and the investigation is still ongoing,” she said with a sigh, “but it’s been suggest that it could be a combination of poor visual acuity on some of the older satellites and blurry evidence dismissed as signal noise.”

Rick frowned. It sounded reasonable; some of the satellites orbiting Mars were starting to show their age and the technicians responsible for interpreting Martian imagery did sometimes have to do more guesswork than NASA liked to admit.

Still though, something was off about the explanation.

It sounded… too much like PR.

He shifted his gaze to Henderson and raised his eyebrows, silently demanding more from the man who was responsible for the Ares crews in flight, their advocate on the ground.

“We did get a signal early on from the Ares IV lander,” he began, then winced. From the tightening of Montrose’s eyes and mouth, Rick guessed that she wasn’t happy that Henderson had spoken. She’d probably stomped on Henderson’s foot with her spiky heels to prevent him from saying more, Rick guessed.

It was an idle thought. The rest of Rick’s brain was trying to work through the implications of Henderson’s half-made statement. They’d gotten a signal from the Ares IV lander. Where Henderson had just told them that Mark had taken refuge. Mark had sent the signal. But if they’d gotten a signal, why hadn’t they known—

“You ignored it,” Melissa said, a few steps ahead of Rick. “You got a signal, and you ignored it.”

The world went white and staticky around the edges.

Montrose was glaring at Henderson, trying to communicate something to the man, but Henderson’s complete attention was on the Ares III crew.

“Yes,” he said. “It was a regrettable mistake—“

Rick never really remembered what happened after that, but the next thing he clearly recalled was his fist connecting with Henderson’s face.

Chapter Text

“How bad is it?” Chris said quietly.

After Rick’s rather dramatic reaction, the room had split with the Ares III crew huddling together in one corner to trade disbelieving smiles and murmured exclamations, and Montrose and Henderson retreating to the other. But much as Chris wanted to join the rest of the crew, there was something he needed to know first.

Henderson, evidently lost in thought, startled and swore briefly when the movement jarred his twice-broken nose. He turned to look at Chris and winced.

“It’s not great,” he said. “Mark’s mother broke it this morning, so Martinez didn’t do me any good.”

He raised a hand towards his face, but seemed to think better of the idea.

“Not my best day,” he said.

Chris raised his eyebrows.

“I wasn’t talking about you,” he said. “Frankly, I don’t really care how you’re doing right now.”

He should care, he thought, but the doctor part of his brain was drowned out by the Mark’s friend part and that part was both loudly worried and furious.

Henderson winced, but nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. “I assume you want to know how Mark is doing?”

Chris nodded and Henderson sighed.

“It’s also not great,” he said warningly, but didn’t hesitate to hand over the tablet he was carrying.

Chris took it up eagerly and found it held a file with Dr. Ashley Newman’s initial medical assessment. The Ares IV flight surgeon’s notes were meticulous, but blunt. While Chris appreciated her medical professionalism, seeing words like starvation, dehydration, and near death applied to his friend was difficult. And the pictures were worse. Chris had to close his eyes and practice calm breathing for a few moments after seeing Mark’s hollow, gaunt face in the last one.

The joy that had lit inside him at hearing his friend was alive was tempered by the leaden realization of how bad Mark’s condition was and the very real struggle ahead of them.

“They can’t bring him home right away, can they?” he asked softly.

Henderson shook his head. “Our initial assessment from Medical is that his body couldn’t handle the strain of a MAV lift-off if they tried now. They’re working on a plan to address that. And yes,” he added before Chris could do more than open his mouth, “you can be on the team.”

Chris nodded and closed his mouth, relieved.

He would never be able to be as objective as needed about Mark, but he’d be damned if his friend in the hands of people who didn’t know him.

Still…

“No-one’s going to take news of a delay well,” he said, eyes flitting over to the rest of the crew who were talking in low, awed voices on the other side of the room.

Henderson grimaced. “I know,” he said.

Montrose, looking up for a moment from the rapid typing she was doing on her phone, caught their gaze and broke away to join them.

“How are you doing Dr. Beck?” she asked with obvious concern.

Chris startled a little, not used to seeing Annie Montrose drop her professional mask that thoroughly. But then he remembered that she had been friends with Mark and good friends too if Mark’s stories were anything to go by.

“I’m… okay,” he said. “Glad that Mark’s alive. I can’t express…” He shook his head, lost for words.

“But?” Montrose prompted.

“But…” He gestured wordlessly to the tablet of medical data still in his hand. “I can’t help but worry about where we go from here.”

Montrose grimaced. “It’s obviously not going to be an easy road,” she said.

Chris nodded.

“What can we do to help?” he asked.

“Well, we definitely want to crew to be involved in this process—“ Montrose started.

 “We’re going to need the crew to be ready to answer questions from the press,” Henderson said bluntly.

Chris felt a flare of anger. Really?, he thought. They’d just been told NASA had screwed up and not realized Mark was alive on Mars for four years, and now they were talking about press conferences? Chris wasn’t a violent man by nature but Martinez’s approach was looking better every second.

Before he could say anything, Montrose huffed under her breath and elbowed Henderson firmly in the ribs. As he gasped in surprise and stumbled sideways, she stepped smoothly into the gap.

“We understand that it’s awful timing,” she said. “And we understand that it’s probably the last thing you want to be thinking about right now. Frankly, we’d rather be focusing on Mark as well.”

Chris nodded slowly, beginning to feel appeased.

“To be honest,” Montrose continued, “we’re doing this because we know that if we don’t, the press will just hound us. And you.”

That, Chris knew, was unfortunately true. When the crew had gotten back from Mars, they’d been incredibly reluctant to stand in front of the press. Mark’s loss had still been too fresh. That hadn’t stopped the press from tracking them down outside the NASA offices, at the homes, and even when they were out grocery shopping or getting coffee. It had been intolerable and invasive, and had only fallen off when the crew had finally spoken with the media.

Chris certainly didn’t want to go through that again.

From Montrose’s expression, she knew exactly what Chris had been thinking about.

“We just want to get this out of the way so we can go back to concentrating on getting Mark home,” she said.

It was a nice sentiment, and exactly what Chris needed to hear. Even if he knew that Montrose’s actual reasoning was likely far more complex and far less sentimental, he appreciated the polite fiction.

“I’ll talk to the crew,” he said, “but there’s going to be some things we want as well.”

Montrose nodded. “What do you need?” she asked.

“We need to be involved in bringing Mark home,” he said. “Not just part of the information loop. An active part of the team.”

Montrose nodded slowly. “We figured you would be,” she said.

Chris nodded, feeling relieved. He didn’t know yet how closely NASA would let them be involved, but at least they had that much of a guarantee.

“Anything else?” Montrose asked.

“Yes,” Chris said, nodding firmly. “We need to talk to Mark.”

Montrose smiled. “That we can definitely do,” she said. “We’re preparing a response to send back to Ares IV. If your crew puts something together, either individually or as a group, we’ll make sure it’s included.”

Chris smiled. “I’ll let the crew know,” he said.

Montrose nodded and Chris turned away.

As he headed across the room to his crew, Chris heard Montrose begin a conversation with Henderson.

“Well, that went well,” she said bitingly.

“Annie,” Henderson sighed.

“This is clearly why you’re not in public relations,” she said. “In fact, I’m setting down a new directive. You are never doing any kind of public relations or communicative work ever again. You’re clearly very, very bad at it.”

Chris grinned at that and felt the tiniest flickering of pity for Henderson. He didn’t let himself dwell though. He had the rest of his crew to think about and their lost crewmember to bring home.

Chapter Text

They decided to record their message to Mark from the comfortable astronaut’s lounge on the third floor. It was still a NASA space, but the whole crew had many fond memories there from the long days leading up to their Mars mission.

But when they got there, they spread out across the worn sofas and stayed far away from the computer and video system at the far end of the room.

Rick was the one to break the heavy silence.

“What the hell do we say to him?” he asked.

The crew shifted uncomfortably, but no-one answered.

“I mean, seriously,” Rick continued, “what could we possibly say? I’m sorry we left you behind?”

Everyone winced. They were all thinking it, but Rick was just the first one to say it.

They’d left Mark behind.

Alex sighed and rubbed his temples, even as the crew began quietly debating how to address the elephant in the room. He’d also been thinking about the same question Rick had posed, even before Chris had told them they could send a message to Mark.

How could they ever possibly apologize for leaving Mark behind?

“We cannot,” he said, in sudden realization.

The room dropped into silence and Alex looked up. The crew stared back at him.

“We cannot apologize for leaving Mark behind,” he said. “Yes, we are sorry. Yes, if we had known he was still alive, we would have stayed to find him, no matter that it would have meant all our deaths.”

The crew winced, but no-one disagreed.

As much as they might know NASA procedure and as much as they might say, to anyone else, that they had made the only possible decision for the safety of the remaining crew, in their hearts they all knew the truth. They would never have left Mark if they hadn’t thought he was already dead.

“We know this,” Alex said. “And Mark knows this. He has said so himself.”

He stared down the rest of the crew, waiting for their reluctant acknowledgement. Mark did know them. And according to Ortega, he didn’t blame them.

“But he might still blame us,” Rick said mutinously.

Alex nodded. “He might. But that is not a conversation we can have through a recorded video message and 225 million kilometers apart. And not when Mark is so fragile.”

He turned to Chris. “He is, yes? Fragile?”

The whole crew swung to look at Chris, who nodded slowly.

“Henderson gave me the medical data,” he said. “Mark is… Mark is in rough shape. Ortega was right. They can’t bring him home right away. Right now, there’s no way he would survive an orbital launch.”

Rick looked away, hands clenched, and Beth made a small, wounded sound before pressing her hands over her mouth.

“So we cannot talk of blame and guilt and apologies,” Alex said slowly. “Not now.”

He looked around, meeting the gaze of each member of his crew. His family.

“Now,” he said, “what Mark needs from us is joy. We are happy that he is alive. We love him. We want him to come home safe. We are happy that he is alive. Because we are. Happy. We have gotten our friend, our brother, back from the dead in an unlooked-for miracle. All the guilt and the questions and the problems, we will still have to deal with those. But for right now, we can be happy.”

Slowly, the rest of the crew nodded.

“Well said.” Melissa nodded to Alex. “Right now, we need to provide Mark with all the encouragement he needs to come home safely.”

She turned to Beth.

“Can you set up the recording?” she asked. “I think we’re ready.”

Chapter Text

Beth was stuck.

Her laptop sat open in front of her, the cursor blinking at her from an empty document. The pre-dawn light cast wavering shadows across the kitchen table of her tiny apartment, reminding her that she’d been staring at this all night and hadn’t written a single word.

The problem was, she didn’t know what to say.

After recording their group message, the crew had decided to also write individual ones, but it had been late at night and they’d collectively opted to retreat to their homes. There was only a few hours to sleep before they were due back at NASA for the morning’s press conference, but Beth had figured she could easily sacrifice one hour to write a short message to Mark.

So she’d gotten home, sat down at her computer, and written nothing.

All night.

The problem was, she thought, it should have been easy.

While Beth hadn’t been a habitual letter writer since her childhood, she’d become one again in the wake of Mark’s death, finding it soothing to write down the things she found herself wishing, every day, that she could say to Mark. Over the last five years, it had helped sooth her grief to feel that she was still talking to Mark, even if he could never answer.

Except that now he could.

Now she could send him a message, could send him every letter she’d ever written, and get a response.

And suddenly she had nothing to say.

It had been easy enough, with Alex’s words in her ears and the crew around her, to record their heartfelt, joyous, boisterous team message. But sitting alone in her apartment, the doubt crept back in.

What could she possibly say to a man she had left on Mars?

(She was supposed to have been his partner. His friend. His scream as he was blown away from her still haunted her. Maybe worse than ever before now knowing that it had been condemning him to five years struggling to survive alone on an inhospitable world, rather than the relatively quick death of a punctured space suit.)

In desperation, she had started flipping through the letters she’d written in the last five years, hoping for inspiration.

The problem, she now realized, was that she’d written every single one of those letters to the Mark she knew, an idea of him frozen in time from her memory of those last days on Mars.

But that wasn’t — couldn’t be — the Mark that existed now.

He would be a different person now, and Beth didn’t know that person. Didn’t know how to talk to that person.

(The first letter she’d written, one that had made her smile re-reading it in the years after, was written right after the first time she’d seen Mark’s memorial in person after the crew had made it back to Earth. She’d made jokes in the letter, to hide from her grief, about its gaudiness and grandeur and how hilarious she’d thought Mark would find it. The old Mark would have found the notion that that statue would now have to be torn down, that he had a gravesite for him that he could visit, a hilarious one.

But she didn’t know if the new Mark would find it funny.)

So she sat in front of an empty document, still grieving for the man that had died and not knowing how to talk to the man that was coming home.

Chapter Text

They held the press conference at 9:00 a.m. It was pushing the boundaries of the legal requirements. By law, they should have released the information within 24 hours of receiving it, but the work of informing the Watneys and the Ares III crew, getting the journalists coordinated, and preparing a statement had taken the whole day and most of the night.

NASA was facing something unprecedented and wanted to get it right, especially in the face of their abject failure years earlier to realize that they’d left Mark behind on Mars.

They were going to be facing enough questions about that.

They’d wanted to make sure they had their ducks in a row this time.

Melissa understood that.

As a military officer and having commanded the Ares III mission, she understood that better than most.

But she couldn’t help but feel the wear of the information.

Now that she knew, she needed the world to know too.

Part of that was for her own absolution.

She hadn’t completely failed as a mission commander. She hadn’t gotten a crew member killed. There was still a chance that all of her crew could come home to Earth safely. She wanted — needed — the world to know that.

It had been hours now since Henderson uttered those words.

Mark Watney is still alive.

Melissa could still feel the weight of them, settling like stone in her bones, filling that empty space that had existed inside her since she’d given the order to leave Mars without Mark. The weight of responsibility was a comfortable thing and she ached now that that hole has been filled.

She let herself dwell on it, on Mark’s miraculous survival, because if she didn’t, she’d have to think about the fact that she left Mark behind.

That he was alive and she’d left him, stranded and alone, on an alien planet millions of miles from home.

So she understood NASA’s hesitation is revealing his survival. She understood the stressed looks on the faces of Sanders, Henderson, Montrose, Kapoor, and all the personnel that her crew had dealt with in the last 12 hours.

She understood because she felt it too.

Even if she couldn’t let it show.

But the time for delays was over. Just through the door in front of her, only a few feet away, sat press from around the world, waiting for the announcement, only a few minutes away, that would again reshape how the world saw NASA’s space program.

Melissa waited just to the left of that door with the rest of her crew, standing stiff and upright in her pressed and polished military uniform. They were all in their best with their faces marshalled into professional masks.

Only Melissa, who knew them so well and knew intimately and personally how hard this news had hit them all, could see the lingering shock in their eyes, the tiredness they refused to show, having spent the night awake preparing themselves to wade back into the media storm.

And, somehow, in all of that, trying to deal with the news that their lost crewmember wasn’t so lost after all.

Mark is alive, she reminded herself, because every time she said it, every time she thought, she felt a surge of strength. Felt more prepared, more settled, more able to take on what was coming.

“Mark is alive,” she said and watched her crew straighten, watched the guilt and sadness beaten back again for a little while.

“Mark is alive,” they echoed back, sharing smiles and drawing strength from the simple words.

Behind them, Annie Montrose entered the room followed by Kapoor and Henderson.

“Are we ready?” she asked.

Melissa didn’t have to look at her crew to know they felt the same as she did, but she looked anyway. In their faces she saw strength and family and a stubborn will to do whatever it took to bring Mark home.

Mark Watney is alive, she thought.

“We’re ready,” she said.

Chapter Text

The dark screen lights up, resolving into the smiling faces of two women and three men.

“Hi Mark!” they say in unison, arming waving frantically. “Where have you been?!”

Here, I’m here!

“We missed you so much, and we’re so so glad you’re alive.”

“And that you’re coming home.”

Their voices and faces are overwhelming and also the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Thing have been… quieter, sadder without you around.”

Me too.

“But don’t worry, you haven’t missed all that much,” say the dark-haired man with a round, happy face.

Rick.

“The Cubs still haven’t won the world series,” he continues.

“Our space nerd still likes computers more than people,” says the other dark-haired man and is promptly elbowed in the gut by the tiny woman next to him.

Chris. Beth.

“Dr. Beck is, believe it or not, an even worse mother hen then the last time you saw him,” she says and the man sputters.

The bald man slants a sly glance towards the ginger-haired woman in the center and says, “The Commander’s music is still terrible.”

Alex.

The woman sighs but smiles.

“And Martinez’s jokes are still awful,” she says.

Commander Lewis. Melissa.

They’re all here.

Lewis stares directly at the camera.

“We’re glad you’re back Mark,” she says. “We’ll see you soon.”

The crew murmurs their own goodbyes, voices overlapping in his mind in a way they haven’t since…

“Come home safely.”

“See you soon.”

“We miss you.”

The video freezes there, on that image, five faces with warm eyes and soft smiles.

We miss you.

225 million kilometers from home, Mark Watney stared at the smiling faces of his crew and cried.

He was going home.