Chapter Text
Christina has always considered herself to be a calm, collected person. She has a routine and she goes about it. She has experience. She’s been trained for thousands of situations. She has not been trained for this.
She has not been trained to listen to the sound of Jeremy’s cry of pain, over and over and over, as he gets stabbed by a piece of equipment moving much faster than it should be.
She has not been trained to handle the sight of her best friends in critical condition for the fifth time.
She has not been trained to know what to do when time keeps looping around one of the most horrific sights she’s ever seen, and no one else can see it but her.
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It starts that morning. It’s one of the later days on the mission. She wakes up, goes through her routine, does everything she’s supposed to.
Then the problems start.
Mission control alerts them to a cosmic storm. Too late. Reid flies over to the controls to try and figure out what to do. There’s a collision as they hit something, some sort of meteor or other. Reid gets flown into the controls, right on his chest. Victor gets pushed to the ceiling and hits his head. It bleeds. Jeremy is the worst off. He’s thrown against the wall and pinned under something large. A piece of equipment, large and jagged and broken, flies towards him and plants itself into his stomach. A camera hits Christina in the shoulder and it bruises and almost dislocates, but otherwise she’s fine.
Christina pushes herself over to Reid first, reaching out towards him. He’s coughing, breaths shallow and painful.
“Reid?” She questions, placing her hand on his chest. He winces, coughing violently once more. She tries to calm her shaky voice into a steady sound as she talks, but it feels impossible, “Are you okay? What hurts?”
She asks like she has the power to take away his pain, like she has the power to fix whatever’s broken. Like she could press her lips to his forehead and kiss it better, like she could promise his girls she’ll keep him safe and know that she truly can. She wishes she did. She wishes she could fix things like she’s always done. She wishes she could look his daughters in the eyes and promise that they won’t lose their dad too, that their dad will make it back home with no problems and know it to be 100% true.
“I’m okay,” Reid coughs out, but Christina doesn’t believe him. He can tell she doesn’t truly believe him because he touches her shoulder and smiles the most reassuring smile he can muster, “I’m okay, Tina. I promise. We need to check on Jeremy.”
He doesn’t even joke, doesn’t try to muster up something like “Jeremy’s worse off than I am” or “It’s our poor Canadian’s first time in space and it went like this.” There’s nothing. He pulls her into a hug and she resists the urge to bury her face in his neck and cry because she knows that if she starts she’ll never be able to stop, and they need to help Jeremy before he gets even worse.
The hug doesn’t last long before Christina is pulling away and pushing her way over to where Victor is trying to help Jeremy. Reid checks on Victor while Christina grabs a couple of their med kits. Victor’s fine. As far as Christina and Reid can tell, he’s just got a small cut and maybe a minor concussion. Jeremy is their biggest concern right now. His hand grips around the thing that stabbed him, not pulling it out, he knows better than to remove the only thing keeping his blood inside him, just holding.
“Jeremy,” Christina says, her body going into overdrive while she tries to assess how bad he is. While she presses gauze to his wound with one hand and rummages around in the med kit for something. She doesn’t know what yet; her body's working on overdrive, working like this is just a training back on earth. Behind her, she can hear Reid trying to contact mission control. Victor is next to her, quickly putting a bandaid on his cut before focusing on Jeremy.
“Nana,” Jeremy replies simply, his breaths shallow and shaky. He’s tired, she can see it in his eyes, in the way they droop a moment before blinking back open.
“I know you’re tired,” She presses harder on the wound, apologizing under her breath when he winces in pain, “But you need to stay awake.”
Christina turns her head and all but shouts to Reid, “How close are you to getting to mission control, Reid?”
“No good!” He replies, trying over and over to get a signal, “I think that collision messed up our communications.”
“Fuck,” Victor whispers under his breath. He’s halfway through asking Christina if they should take out the thing that stabbed Jeremy when the second collision comes.
Christina is thrown against the wall, letting out a curse as something large hits her in the chest and knocks the wind out of her. Jeremy lets out a scream of pain as he’s pushed onto his stomach, the jagged equipment embedding itself further into his abdomen. Victor is thrown into Christina, his head once again hitting a wall, knocking him unconscious. Off to the side, a garbled, painful noise comes from Reid; he’s been hit in the throat by the radio.
Christina is pushing her way out from underneath Victor, trying to be careful with him, when the third collision hits. There’s so much blood floating in the air around Jeremy, Reid is gasping for air, and Victor’s floating in an unconscious silence. Christina grabs Reid’s arm, pulling him to her, but she knows that without Mission Control guiding her, there’s nothing she can do other than keep a hand on him. She flips Jeremy onto his back to try and help him, but blood is blocking her vision, painting their clothes a dark red.
“Chris-” Jeremy whimpers out, tears welling in his eyes. “Reid-”
There’s nothing she can do. Victor’s floating around with who knows how bad brain damage, Jeremy’s clutching his stomach, and Reid is gripping her arm in a painfully tight hold as he gasps for air. The nearest humans are miles away, and she can’t she can’t she can’t and Mission Control is gone and Jeremy is sobbing in pain and Reid’s turning purple and Victor won’t wake up!
Wake up.
You need to wake up, Christina.
Christina.
Christina!
LOOP 2
Christina’s eyes pop open.
She’s floating in front of her computer, doing her work. She thinks she must’ve accidentally dozed off while working, but then she remembers. She remembers everything. The collisions, the screams, the sight of Victor clutching his bleeding head, the sound of Jeremy’s cries, the feeling of Reid’s hands gripping her arm as he gasps for breath.
She can’t breathe.
Reid touches her back as he passes behind her to grab something, and it shocks her out of her thoughts. She wants to scream, but she doesn’t know what’s going on. It had to have been a dream.
Yes! A dream! That was all it was, just a dream.
Until it wasn’t.
Until Mission Control comes on again to tell them about the storm. Until they’re colliding with something and Jeremy gets stabbed again. It’s like Christina has no control over her body. She does the exact same thing as the dream-not-dream. She goes to Reid first, then Victor, then Jeremy. The blade slices further into Jeremy’s stomach. Victor gets knocked unconscious. Reid’s lungs give out on him. Jeremy is crying and Reid is gasping for air and Victor feels colder than normal when he bumps into her.
And then it goes dark again.
LOOP 3
Christina wakes up.
Reid passes behind her, just like last time.
When the warning from Mission Control comes, she’s ready… she thinks. She grabs Jeremy under the pretense that she’s moving him to grab something.
The collision comes.
And this time, it’s not Jeremy who gets stabbed, it’s her. The jagged edge imbeds itself into her body. It hits her carotid artery, the major artery in her throat. She can see the blood pumping out in spurts as she coughs and gags for air. She grasps at her throat, trying to keep the blood in, to no avail. Somewhere around her, one of the boys curses, another one shouting her name. Her vision starts to go fuzzy, black spots filling the edges. She wants to scream, but all she can get out is a garbled noise.
And then…
LOOP 4
She wakes up again, looking at her work tablet for the fourth time. This time, she actually does scream, startling her fellow crew mates.
“...Tina?” Victor questions, concern written on his face. She keeps screaming, tears welling in her eyes and floating into little balls in the air around her. She can’t stop, and it means that Mission Control isn’t able to get in contact with them because the sounds of them calling is drowned out by the sounds of her screams and cries and the noise of the boys trying to comfort her. But she just can’t stop crying.
The storm hits and everything passes in a blur.
This time, Reid doesn’t get hit in the chest.
This time, it’s so much worse.
This time, the piece of equipment, instead of hitting Jeremy in the ab, it goes right for Reid’s throat.
Reid’s head gets chopped off.
Like almost all the way off.
Christina screams.
Screaming doesn’t help.
LOOP 5
Christina wakes up staring at her computer. Again. This time, she warns Reid.
“Reid?” She calls, reaching out to tap him on the shoulder.
He turns, “Chris?”
How is she even supposed to word this? ‘Hey Reid, we’re all gonna fucking die because there’s a cosmic storm coming’? They’ll think she’s insane! They trust her, but there’s no way they trust her that much.
“I- I have a really bad feeling that something bad is going to happen,” She chooses to say instead. Reid gives her a look, one of confusion but overall trust in her. He reaches for the radio and calls Mission Control.
“Houston, this is Reid,” He says into the microphone. “Just wanted to check and make sure that our trajectory is good and our path is clear.”
“Copy, Reid, we’ll get that checked out,” CapCom replies. There’s a moment of silence while they check the path. Jeremy and Victor are looking up from their work, giving her and Reid a confused look while CapCom responds. Christina must have some sort of look on her face, because Victor reaches out and places a hand on her shoulder.
“Christina,” He questions, his grip on her shoulder tightening just a little, as if he’s trying to comfort her and ground himself at the same time. “Is everything okay?”
She nods hesitantly, “I- something feels wrong, Ike.”
CapCom finally responds, “There seems to be a cosmic storm coming up ahead. Secure everything that is loose and get to your seats.”
Christina is already moving before CapCom replies. The first thing on her agenda is tying down the thing that has hurt her and her crew, over and over again, that stupid, jagged piece of equipment. She ties it down, reaching for other things to tie down as well. She’s just getting to her seat when the storm hits.
She gasps as her foot hits something on the “floor” (or whatever part of the ship is underneath her feet at the moment), and catches. The collision hits, and she’s twisted in such a way that her ankle twists and… SNAP!
Christina whines as her face turns pale, trying to hold back the pain. She screams as the pain actually hits her, like genuinely screams. She almost blacks out from the pain, that’s how bad it is. Her foot is still stuck, but now it’s stuck in a weird, crooked position it shouldn’t be in. Tears well up in her eyes, floating in the microgravity.
“I-I can’t-” She whimpers. She wants to go home. She wants her husband and her dog. She wants her mom.
“Tina?” Jeremy reaches for her, carefully guiding her to her seat. He helps buckle her in, then sits in his own and buckles himself in. Then, once he’s secure in his seat, he takes her hand in his own and squeezes it.
.. / .-.. --- ...- . / -.-- --- ..-
She can barely feel it over the pain shooting through her body, but she still understands it. He told her he loved her, and right now, with her ankle broken and her heart pounding and her vision going white from the pain, it’s a lighthouse in a storm.
She doesn’t even notice Reid and Victor moving around her.
“It’ll be okay, Nana,” He reassures, his voice soft. “Just focus on me.”
And she’s trying, she truly is trying to focus on Jeremy and the feeling of his large, warm hand enveloping her own, but it’s so difficult. Tears float around her face, and she squeezes her eyes shut like that’s enough to make everything go away.
The second collision comes as Victor is getting into his seat. He's not fully buckled in, so he's vulnerable.
Fate uses that to taunt her.
When the second collision comes, Victor is thrown in such a way that his neck snaps.
Christina screams.
The pain from her ankle and the shock from both her ankle and the sight she's seeing become overwhelming.
Everything goes black.