Chapter Text
For the crew, the trip had gone according to plan.
There had been no hiccups, no accidents, and certainly no universe-ending wormholes or horrible, nightmarish time loops.
None of them had struggled to save everyone else.
None of them had ended up working alongside the Captain for what had to be centuries of strange, looping time.
None of them had died, over and over and over again.
None of them were to blame.
Mark leaned his forehead against the bridge viewport with a heavy, exhausted sigh. He had done all of those things, and it weighed heavily on him. Even though it had been nearly a year and he had been reassured by the Captain a thousand times over that he was forgiven, the guilt was still overwhelming.
He had, singlehandedly, destroyed the universe.
Multiple times.
Squeezing his eyes shut, the Head Engineer tried to force the awful, guilty, cyclical thoughts out of his head.
It didn’t work very well.
“You’re thinking too hard again,” a gentle voice murmured suddenly, and arms wrapped loosely around his waist from behind. The hugger’s chin came to rest on Mark’s shoulder, and he glanced back at her.
“Sorry, Captain.”
“Oh, shush,” she scolded, smiling slightly. “What have I said about the unnecessary apologies?”
“Don’t.”
“You’ve got it.”
She laughed quietly and pressed a light kiss to the corner of his jaw.
Mark melted back against her with a sigh, as he always did when she got affectionate with him. She laughed softly and drew back to walk over to the control console.
They had only been dating for three months, but after everything they had been through together, they felt almost like they had been together for decades. Mark was fairly certain they actually had been married in one of the loops, but he could never remember it, no matter how hard he tried.
Mark turned around, away from the window and the planet beyond, looked back at his Captain as she tapped a few things on the control panel, and let his thoughts wander down far more pleasant paths.
Redmayne Martin and Mark had met each other in college, before they had been inevitably separated after graduating and being deployed by the Space Force. Mark had become an ensign engineer onboard a small frigate, and she had slowly begun working her way up the ladder toward becoming a Captain.
When they had been reunited, nearly a decade after saying their tearful goodbyes, he almost didn’t recognize her. It wasn’t so much the Captain’s hat, or the stiff way she held herself, as much as it was her eyes.
She had always had a fire in her eyes, but it had sharpened in the time they had been apart, tempered by the years of fighting for a higher position in a universe that saw women as incapable of reaching higher stations.
The gentleness that had once been in her voice and mannerisms had been wiped away by the steel of years spent fighting, and she treated him like any other lower ranked crew member.
Mark had been confused by it at first, then frightened by it after the first few disastrous loops. She treated him like a tool rather than a friend, and he was almost glad when they were separated and he found himself alone in the warp core.
And then he started having awful dreams whenever he slept.
Mark lived a hundred thousand lives with her, and watched her turn desperate the longer they were apart. It was only when he woke up that he truly remembered who she was, and who he was, but the names and places stayed.
He had been a prisoner, an explorer, a pirate, a madman, a monster, and a thousand more, and each time he woke, he was more desperate.
So, Mark fought to build the warp drive from scraps and bits and pieces. He had been so determined to fix things that he had hurt her when she actually arrived, his exhausted mind telling him she was just another dream.
He remembered so many things about that day.
She let him go.
She held on.
She trusted him
She held him back.
The universe burned.
The universe healed.
He died.
He lived.
And one thing stayed the same no matter what outcome he remembered.
The green eyes of his Captain held his until the end, full of forgiveness and grief.
When they had woken up, safe and whole, their new home outside the viewport, the only thing Mark could think to say had been “thank you.”
They had settled in on their new home world, the colonists coming out of cryo and being ferried down to start building their new homes. It had been wonderful, watching the city spring up. Mark had worked with everyone to make it possible.
And the Captain had been right there to help, the whole time.
Slowly, “thank you” had become “do you want to do something tonight?”
And the Captain, to Mark’s joy, had said yes every time.
“The Captain” slowly became “just Red” for the first time since college, and Mark had never been happier.
Once the colony was stable, they eventually headed back to the Invincible II, the ship needing her crew, and more things had changed.
Small things changed, like hugs and little kisses snuck on breaks, and coffees made before the other had to even think about it.
Bigger things changed too, like how whenever one of them had a nightmare, the other was always ready to be there with hugs, or just to be a quiet presence; and how they were both ready to stand up for the other, no matter what.
They were a unit, more so than they ever had been before, and it made Mark so happy.
“You’re staring,” Red’s voice broke him out of his thoughts, and he jumped a little when he realized he was, indeed, staring.
“Sor—ah, I mean, yeah. I am, aren’t I?”
Red laughed, a bright, happy sound, and Mark found himself grinning helplessly. He loved that sound.
“You really are,” she chortled. “You want to take a picture? I hear they last longer.”
Mark rolled his eyes and pushed off the window to walk around the console toward her. Before she could protest, he swept her up in a tight hug, swinging her around.
“Why would I take a picture when I’ve got the real thing right here?” He teased, pressing little kisses to her cheeks. She giggled, pushing on his shoulders fruitlessly.
“Get off,” she laughed, eyes nearly closed with mirth, “you monster!”
“Mhmm,” he hummed an agreement, kissing her properly, then caught one of her hands and swung her away from him in an impromptu dance.
She laughed and went along with it, and they ended up circling slowly, just holding each other.
“Sometimes, I can’t believe this is real,” Mark murmured to her. “It’s all so wonderful.”
Red hummed an agreement and leaned her head down against his chest.
“I love you,” she murmured against his jumpsuit, and Mark dropped a kiss to her hairline.
“Love you too, Red.”
Yeah, he had screwed up pretty badly.
But his Captain loved him, so maybe he could learn to live with that.
—————————
There were alarms blaring when he woke up.
It had been two days since the little dance on the bridge, and everything had been going well…until now.
Mark scrambled out of bed, already reaching for his communicator.
“Head Engineer to Bridge, what’s going on?!”
“Captain to Head Engineer, I have no idea, Mark! The ship just went haywire!”
“Right! I’ll be up in a jiffy, just hang on!”
He dragged his jumpsuit on over his sleep clothes, suddenly glad he slept in tank tops, and then he spun and sprinted for the bridge. The air in the corridor smelled like electrical fire and something sickly sweet.
Mark raced onto the bridge, heart pounding, and found the Captain frantically trying to figure out what was wrong. The console was glitching badly.
“Captain!”
“I don’t know, nothing’s working!” She cried, eyes wide with panic.
Mark caught her shoulders gently.
“Hey! Hey, Red, look at me!” He barked at her, shaking her gently. “We are out! We are not in there anymore, okay? We fixed it! You fixed it! And we’ll fix this.”
She reaches up to hold his arms for a moment, then nodded once, sharply. That old fire lit back up in her eyes.
“Alright,” she replied, voice steady.
“Alright!” Mark grinned, giving her a quick squeeze.
He turned to look at the console as soon as he pulled back.
“Okay,” he ran a quick list of what was easily seen as wrong. “Console’s not working. That’s not good. The corridor smelled like electrical fire and something sweet. That’s also not good.”
“Sweet?” Red looked over at him. “That could be the oxygen reclamation system’s coolant? It smells sweet when burned, right?”
Mark stilled for a moment, mentally running through where all the wires and piping were in the ship, and then nodded rapidly.
“Yes, it could absolutely be that,” he agreed, “which sucks because if the oxygen system goes then we suffocate. Maybe tell everyone to put masks on? I need to check the tanks on the engineering deck!”
Red caught his wrist as he turned to run, mind already moving at a thousand miles per hour.
“Mark—!”
He stopped.
“What?”
Red let go of him slowly, eyes wide with fresh fear.
“Please, be careful,” she begged softly.
“I promise,” he nodded. “I’ll stay in contact the whole time, I promise.”
She nodded once, and he ran, grabbing an oxygen tank and mask on the way down. He heard her send out a ship wide PSA about the oxygen, and crewmates began grabbing masks.
The lifts weren’t working, so he had to take the maintenance tunnels and accessways to get to the engineering deck. There were already several dozen engineers working there, but he cut through them quickly. Sliding down the railings to the oxygen reclamation system’s tanks, Mark rushed to search the main connections and output valves.
He reached for his comm, planning to tell Red that he had made it down safely, and the entire ship suddenly went deathly silent.
The alarms stopped.
The lights stopped flashing.
The crew members stopped yelling.
And Mark froze.
A faint blue light caught his eye from behind the third tank, and he crept toward it cautiously. There was an odd humming coming from it, a sort of low buzzing that set his teeth on edge.
Mark lifted his comm.
“Engineering Deck to Bridge, do you copy, Captain?”
Nothing but static.
“I’ve got…an anomaly? I think? I can’t see very well yet, but it’s a sort of glowy blue light that’s coming from—oh.”
Mark stopped.
The portal in front of him hummed louder. He could already feel it pulling on him, and he fought it.
“It’s a portal, Red,” he desperately tries to warn her. “I can’t get out of it, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I will find you, I promise I will, I love you, if you can hear me, I love—“
The portal dragged him through its mouth and snapped shut. His communicator dropped to the floor, useless.