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Chapter Text

SOL 7

Beth Johanssen hated waking up.

She hated waking up on Earth, on Mars or anywhere in the roughly 225 million kilometers between the two. As a night owl with tendencies towards insomnia, she was not what anyone in their right mind would call a morning person. Once she was asleep she liked to stay asleep and would fight consciousness with every bone in her body. For the last 131 days and 6 sols it was only Commander Lewis’ insistence that got her out of her bunk with the rest of the crew.

Which is why, as she slowly woke, it registered as an anomaly that she was waking up on her own.

She also wondered why is was so bright.

And why was she so uncomfortable?

Was she in her EVA suit?

Beth’s eyes snapped open and she sat up with a gasp, it all coming flooding back. The storm coming in faster than anyone expected, scrubbing the mission and subsequent emergency evac. They’d gone out in pairs and she and Watney were buddied up as they left the airlock and the relative safety of the Hab.

After that it got fuzzy.

She remembered walking out into the storm, the noise and lack of visibility was disorienting even though she could use her monitors to lead her to the MAV. She remembered reaching out to grab Watney’s wrist, wanting the physical anchor as they made their way safety. But before she could touch him, something slammed into her upper back, and that was all she wrote until she woke up on the surface of Mars, half buried beneath the red sand. 

Her head was killing her, she was dizzy, and she had to bite back a wave of nausea, but her survival training kicked in and the first thing she did was check the read out from her suit.

Which promptly informed her she was dead.

Huh.

She certainly didn’t feel dead. No, she felt too shitty to be dead. So she quickly concluded that whatever hit her must have knocked out her bio-feed. Good news was that the rest of her suit was intact and pressure and oxygen levels were good.

Climbing to her feet she realized that her shoulder didn’t feel too great either. Her head was spinning so bad that she hadn’t noticed it at first, but the second she put any weight on it she felt a grind and then a pop as her arm slipped back into place. She groaned in pain when she realized it must have been partially dislocated all night.

Once she was fully upright she took in the lay of the land. Of course the first thing she immediately noticed was that the MAV was gone.

“Fuck.”

That really summed it up.

On the bright side, at least the Hab was intact, and she couldn’t help taking a moment to thank a god she didn’t believe in for small miracles. The Rovers were where they had left them as well, but that wasn’t a surprise, JPL had made them tanks. Everything else was a mess though, a mess that she would worry about cleaning up later.

Since there was no point in standing there looking at where the MAV should have been feeling sorry for herself, when she could be inside nursing her obvious concussion and sore shoulder from the comfort of her bunk, she slowly started to make her way towards what was now her home for the foreseeable future. She’d only taken about ten steps in that direction when something white caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. At first she dismissed it, assuming it was debris from their last scheduled EVA, maybe a storage container, blown about in the storm.

A few more steps and she realized it wasn’t debris at all.

“Oh my god! Oh my god. Please don’t be dead. Don’t be dead,” she muttered as she skipped (the fastest mode of getting from point A to point B on foot when in 0.4 gravity) as quickly as she could at was now clearly the body of one of her crewmates. He was face down, but as she got closer she could plainly see WATNEY printed on the back of his helmet.

“Please don’t be fucking dead,” she repeated again as she flipped him over, revealing the length of antenna impaled in his side. “That’s not good. That’s actually really bad.”

“Watney. Watney! MARK!” she shouted, shaking his shoulder trying to get any kind of response. “I swear to god, if you’re dead I will kill you!”

Her heart about stopped with relief when she heard a groan, followed by a pained gasp as he jolted into consciousness. He tried to sit up, but she kept her hands pressed on his shoulders to keep him laying down. It looked like the antenna and the clotted blood had formed a weak seal around the puncture in his suit and she didn’t want him ripping it open by moving wrong.

“Johanssen?” he asked disoriented, blinking up at her. “Fuuuuuuuck, what happened?”

“Nothing good,” she told him honestly.  “No, no, don’t do that,” she said when he reached to grab at his puncture wound.

He lifted his head to look at where his stomach felt like it was on fire. “Oh fuck me,” he whimpered letting his head fall back again when he saw it.

“Yeah you’re a shish ka-Mark,” she said as she pulled out her breach kit. He groaned and she honestly wasn’t sure if it was from pain or at her bad joke.  “I’m gonna have to pull it out so I can patch your suit before we go inside.”

He nodded his agreement even as sweat started to bead on his forehead and upper lip.

“Are you ready?” she asked once she had prepped the kit so she would be able to seal the hole as quickly as possible.

“Yeah,” he nodded again. “Wait, wait!” he stopped her, as she reached for the antenna.

“What? What’s wrong!?” she asked worriedly, frozen where he had interrupted her, searching desperately for the reason he stopped her.

“Sorry, I wasn’t ready,” he admitted.

“For fucks sake Watney don’t scare me like that. My adrenaline is pumping enough as it is,” she said as she exhaled shakily. She was already feeling queasy about pulling it out, blood wasn’t really her thing, there was a reason she wasn’t a doctor. And she knew it was going to hurt like a bitch and she didn’t relish the idea of causing him more pain, but she also knew had to do what she had to do. She’d scored high in staying calm during crisis situations, of course they all did, they wouldn’t astronauts otherwise. It didn’t mean she was happy about it. “I gotta get it out man, it’s a miracle your suit hasn’t breached completely as it is.”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Do it.”

“Ready now?” she asked again.

He took a couple of quick panted breaths to steel himself. “Okay. Go.”

“On the count of three,” Beth said, watching his face as he braced himself. “One—”

“AGHHHHH!” he screamed in agony as she pulled the metal rod out of his side in one smooth movement. “MOTHER FUCKER! WHAT HAPPENED TO TWO AND THREE?!”

“Two, three,” she deadpanned as she patched the hole in his EVA suit that the antenna left behind, grateful that the process had been drilled into them before they left Earth so she didn’t even have to think about what she were doing. “You’re not gonna pass out on me, are you?” she asked sparring a quick glance at his face as she finished up. She’d never seen someone look so pale.

“No, I just need a minute,” Mark moaned, just as the O2 alarm on his suit started blaring.

“And we don’t have a minute,” she replied, squatting down to get under his arm to help him stand.  “Up and at em’ Watney.”

He wanted to scream again as he stood and felt a rush of warm blood seep into his under suit, but he managed to keep it to a pained grunt, leaning heavily on Beth’s shoulders.

“Getting impaled sucks, Johanssen,” he sighed, as they slowly started making their way towards the Hab. “0/10 would not recommend.”

“That’s some solid advice Watney,” she replied, trying to subtly shift his weight off of her bad shoulder and onto her good one. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

They were almost to the Hab when Mark finally noticed the elephant in the room. Or more accurately the elephant not on Mars. “Hey Johanssen?”

“What’s up Watney?”

“Am I hallucinating from the pain, or is the MAV gone?” he asked really hoping he was hallucinating.

“The MAV is gone,” she confirmed.

“Fuck.”

“Yep.”

 “And the rest of the crew?” he asked, already knowing the answer but needing to hear it just the same.

“I assume on The Hermes already on their way home.”

“We are so fucked.”

“So very very very fucked.”

Chapter Text

SOL 8

Mark woke up bright and early on Sol 8 and for a cruel moment forgot the events of the two sols prior. At least until he tried to roll over and felt the staples pull on his skin. And that’s when he remembered.

He and Johanssen were stranded on Mars.

He turned his head to look at his fellow castaway asleep in the bunk across from him. His actual assigned bunk was the one above hers, but after she patched him up yesterday (thank god they were all required to learn first aid and not just depend on having Beck there) he commandeered Lewis’ bunk. He just wasn’t up to climbing into one of the top bunks and it wasn’t as if she needed it any more.

Gingerly, he rolled out of bed and wandered over to the coffee maker in the kitchen and set a cup to brew. If things had gone to plan, Lewis would be waking everyone up right about now. But things had not gone to plan, the Commander wasn’t here, and Mark saw no harm in letting Johanssen sleep in. Especially since after she patched him up yesterday, she admitted that the dish that had tried to kill him, went after her first and left her with at least a moderate concussion. So letting her sleep as long as possible was the best thing for her.

The coffee maker dinged its completion and he made quick work of doctoring it up with powdered creamer and sugar. Taking his drink to the table he sat down and started to work the problem. He lost track of the time as he thought, and it was late morning before Beth shuffled in, making a bee line for the coffee maker just like he had.

“Trying to read your coffee grounds like tea leaves?” she asked, wincing at the sound of her own voice.

“What?”

“You were staring into the bottom of your mug pretty intensely when I walked in,” she explained with a yawn, leaning against the counter as she waited for her cup of caffeine to brew. “Was wondering if you found the answers to all our problems in the dredges of your coffee.”

“If only,” he scoffed lightly. “I’ve been sitting here all morning trying to figure out what all of our problems are, before I even start trying to figure out some solutions.”

“After you went to bed to sleep the sleep of the heavily medicated, I was up all night doing the same thing” she admitted, moving to sit across the table from him. After she patched him up and they made sure that the Hab had weathered the storm okay and was still structurally stable, he had raided Beck’s supplies for the good drugs and crawled into his bed while the sun was still up and slept through the night.

“You should have been sleeping too,” he chided, pushing a bottle of acetaminophen across the table to her when she started rubbing her temples, her head clearly still bothering her.

“I tried,” she said washing the pills back with a big swig of her black, unsweetened coffee, something that made Mark cringe. “Every time I laid down I got dizzy and I can’t sleep sitting up. So I figured I might as well do something productive with my time.”

“What did you come up with?” he asked, curious to see how his own thoughts on their situation lined up.

 “Well,” she began slumping deep into her chair, “most of our potential problems we can’t do much about, the water reclaimer or oxygenator breaking, the Hab breaching, another fucking storm. Those we’ll just have to take as they come and hope for the best but prepare for the worst.”

Mark nodded, he’d come to those same conclusions.

“But there’s two immediate problems that we have that we can at least be proactive about trying to solve,” she said, pausing to take another swig of her coffee. “One, we’re going to starve if we don’t figure something out. And two we need to figure out a way to let NASA know we’re not dead. We can’t get rescued it they don’t know we need rescuing,” she said with a shrug.

“Can’t argue with you there,” Mark agreed.

“As far as food goes, I got no idea, so I hope you’re thinking about it,” she admitted freely. “But I might have part of a plan about how to get NASA’s attention.”

“How much of a plan?”

“Like 12% of a plan.”

“That’s not much of a plan, that’s barely a concept.”

“It’s better than 11%”

“You are the biggest nerd I know, and that’s saying something,” Mark said with a grin.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about since you fed me the reference and responded correctly,” Beth retorted, one eyebrow arched.

Mark laughed, and then immediately regretted it when the damaged muscles in his stomach protested aggressively. But she had him there, however, at least he was in college when the movie came out. She was in the third fucking grade. “But seriously though, what’s your plan? Because with the Hab’s com dish deciding to make a break for freedom, only after trying to kill us both and taking a detour through my spleen, and all of our back up com systems leaving with the rest of the crew on the MAV, I’ve got nothing other than for us to go outside and wave our arms and yell as hard as we can.”

“That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Beth said, shooting him a wide grin before hiding it behind her coffee mug.

“Oh ha ha,” he said dryly. “Wait are you serious?” He asked when her smirk didn’t waver.

“Well that’s the equivalent of what we’re going to do, but ya know, with more science.”

“I’m not following,” Mark admitted truthfully.

“Well you’re right that without the com dish, or the backup systems there is no way we could contact the Hermes which depending on how quickly they left orbit could already be,” she looked up at the ceiling as she crunched the numbers, “approaching roughly 1.5 million kilometers away, let alone Earth. But!” she said her grin returning. “We don’t need to get a signal 1.5 million kilometers. We just need a signal strong enough to get 250 to 316 kilometers away,” she sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest clearly impressed with herself.

The wheels in Mark’s brain where churning furiously but he still couldn’t figure out what she was talking about. The Schiaparelli Crater where the Ares 4 MAV was sitting in the ball park of 3,200 kilometers away and that was the only other com system he could think of on the planet. And that was when Beth, who clearly saw his struggle written on his face, pointed up. And then it clicked.

“Satellites!” he practically yelled.

Beth nodded, “The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter specifically.”

“The MRO?” Mark’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. “That’s got to be older than you are.”

“Yeeeeah,” she drawled in confirmation. “It has been up there for 30 years, but it still works, and after thinking about it all night, of the twelve satellites NASA has in orbit I think it’s our best bet. I’m gonna hack it.”

“We can do that?”

“Well, you couldn’t, but I bet I can,” she said with no small amount of pride.

“You are a nerd goddess,” Mark praised effusively. “I would bow at your feet if I wasn’t afraid of ripping the staples out of my side right now.”

“Well don’t get too excited. It’s not going to be an ET phone home situation. There’s still a lot of problems that we’re gonna have to figure out and variables that we’ll have no control over. Not to mention we’ll have no idea if it actually works,” she admitted her earlier smugness evaporating as she came back down to reality.

“Break it down for me,” he said, knowing that one of the best ways to problem solve and find unforeseen problems was to talk it through out loud.

 “Okay, so the first problem obviously will be communicating with the satellite to begin with,” Beth began. “It’s not something that we should have ever needed to do. But since the Hab is still pinging back and forth with the Rover I know the system in there is still good, so I think we should be able to cobble something together to boost the signal so it’s strong enough to reach the MRO. Which leads me to why I chose that satellite in particular.”

Mark nodded to let her know he was following and to prompt her to continue.

“Part of the reason I chose the MRO is because of its age. It’s already so beyond its mission life that NASA doesn’t like to mess with its trajectory too often other than minor course corrections in its orbiting altitude. On the course as I last knew it, flies directly over us every 112 minutes. So depending on what range we get on our cobbled together signal booster it gives me a potentially very small window to actually hack into its programming and override NASAs commands. If I don’t finish by the time it’s out of range again I could potentially bring the whole orbiter down.”

“That would be bad.”

“That would be very bad,” Beth agreed.

“Okay, so say you get control over the MRO, then what?” he asked leadingly. “Like you said, it’s not like we can phone home with it.”

“That’s where your idea of standing outside and screaming as loud as we can comes in,” she said with a small smirk curling up one side of her mouth. “Metaphorically of course. I was thinking about this last night, and as far as I can figure the crew thought we were dead, there’s no way they would have left us behind if they thought otherwise.”

Mark nodded his agreement.

“So NASA thinks we’re dead, laying out there in the Martian dust. And there is no way that they would risk projecting those images to the world. The bad PR alone could shut down the Ares missions.”

“Annie Montrose would have a fucking stroke,” Mark contributed. “There’s no way they’re taking any satellite images of Acidalia Planitia,” he continued following her train of thought.

“Exactly.” Beth said. “So what I’m proposing I do is that I override whatever imaging programing NASA currently has the MRO set on and have it take a photo every time it passes over us. I figure we can get some rocks and literally spell out the fact that we’re not dead.”

“What do you think the odds are of them noticing?” he asked leadingly. “And what are the odds of it not working at all?”

“We have a couple opportunities in this plan to get their attention,” she continued. “I have to assume that SatCon will notice someone is fucking with their Satellite since that is in fact their job. We have to hope that they investigate what is going on and not just override my overrides.”

“But as long as at least one photo gets taken though, we should be golden, right?” Mark interjected. “Since everything has to be released to the public within 24 hours you know they’d be scouring those images for our bodies in case they have a potential PR shit storm on their hands. And they would have to see our message.”

“Precisely,” she grinned. “But then that leads us into our next problem. Once they know we’re alive they’ll keep watching us, but that’s all they can do, it’s a one way system. I wish I could think of a way to hack into SuperSurveyor 3, use it as a relay to have real communication with Houston, but without a legitimate com array, the math just doesn’t work,” she frowned.

“But they’ll know we’re alive,” Mark said earnestly when a discouraged look passed over Beth’s face. “And that is a HUGE step in us getting off this planet. Even if we don’t know what they’re doing, NASA will be doing everything they can to get us home.”

“Yep, so that’s what I’ve got,” she finished with a shrug, taking another sip of her coffee.

“I’d say that’s a fair bit more than 12% of plan. And if anyone could make it happen it’s you,” he told her, having full confidence in her abilities to carry out her idea.  

Beth smiled and pushed her chair back from the table. “I should go suit up and check out the situation outside. At the very least get the solar panels cleaned off,” she said standing and then immediately grabbing the back of her chair to steady herself as a dizzy spell washed over her.

“Yeah, because physical labor is the exact thing you should so when you’re healing from a bruised brain,” Mark deadpanned. “And if you’re that dizzy just standing up, what are you going to feel like bending over and hauling shit around. If you hurl in your EVA suit, I’ll never let you live it down.”

Beth’s face crumpled in disgust at the very thought. “I think that could be the only thing that could actually make this week worse.”

“Don’t tempt fate,” Mark scolded quickly.

“Knock on wood,” she quickly added, reaching over to rap the top of his head lightly with her knuckles.

Mark rolled his eyes. “I think we both can afford one day to heal a bit before we get to work,” he said, admitting that he wasn’t feeling up to physical labor either. “I vote we get into everyone’s personal computers and see what our options are in terms of entertainment.”

Beth wanted to protest, she really wanted to get started on her project as quickly as possible but she knew Mark was right. They had to be smart, they only had each other, and neither of them were doctors. If either of them pushed themselves too hard, they would not only be endangering themselves, but each other.

“Yeah I can get behind that plan,” she conceded. “I’m pretty sure Beck had the entire run of Scrubs on his drive,” she added, draining the dredges of her coffee as she stood to go hunt down her crew mate’s laptop.

“Of course he would.”

Chapter Text

SOL 10

Mark was waiting by the door, bouncing lightly on his toes, as soon he heard the telltale sound of air cycling in airlock 2, indicating that Beth was coming inside. Despite the fact they had been in almost constant communication though the Com on her EVA suit, he didn’t like the fact that she had been out on the surface by herself all day.

They’d had the argument yesterday when she’d gone outside to clean off the solar panels, dig out one of the Rovers, and see if there was any sign of the wayward com dish. He tried to point out that it was against regulations to perform any EVAs without a partner. After all, if something happened to her while she was out on the surface it would take him ten minutes to suit up, and another ten minutes to cycle through the air lock before he could even attempt to come to her aid. And while she agreed that under normal circumstances, the standard operating procedures were there for a reason, she also pointed out that it was against regulations to get yourself left behind on Mars when the rest of your crew left.

She followed that up with the fact that she hadn’t been stabbed less than 36 hours prior and now that her concussion symptoms had subsided, she was in better shape to do physical labor required to clean up from the storm. He tried to protest and insist that he would be fine to help out, but once she reminded him that as the mechanical engineer his time would be better spent inside making sure the oxygenator, the water reclaimer, the atmospheric regulator and all their other vital life support systems in the Hab were in good working order, he had to admit defeat, since she was right on pretty much every point.

 So while Johanssen tended to the homestead yesterday, he spent the day running diagnostics, and running them again. Then he ran a diagnostic on the backup systems they had, just in case they were needed in the future. And then he ran diagnostics on the mains a third time just for good measure. He was an engineer after all, he refused to let them die because of mechanical failure due to an oversight on his part. That would just be insulting.

This morning over her cup of coffee, Beth informed him of her plans to do another EVA. He’d opened his mouth to rehash the entire argument, but she had shut him down before he could even get started. She suggested that while she was outside he should do a complete inventory of the supplies they had available. And not so subtlety reminded him that she was counting on him to come up with a way for them not starve since she was still coming up blank on that front. 

And so they spent a good portion of the afternoon chatting over the coms while he made his counts and babied his injury, while she scavenged the MDV, the base of the MAV and three of the weather stations for the parts she would need in her attempts to boost the signal to reach the MRO.

She had only been outside for maybe an hour before he had made his discovery, but he waited to tell her until she came inside, wanting to see the look on her face when he shared the news. After what felt like forever, but was really only a few minutes, the airlock finished cycling and he opened the inner door for Beth to step through, a box of miscellaneous parts in her arms. He waited for her to put the box down before stepping forward to help her take her helmet off.

“I haven’t had anyone this happy to see me come home since I was in high school and Gus used to wait by the front window every day watching for me to get off the bus,” Beth joked at the energy that was practically radiating off the man.

“Who’s Gus?”

“He was my goldendoodle.”

Mark wasn’t sure if he should be insulted that she just had just compared him to her childhood family pet or if he should be making a joke about wagging his tail and licking her face. But he managed restrain himself either way, in lieu of telling her his news.

“Guess what?” he prompted excitedly as he put her helmet on the rack next to the others and then started on her gloves.

“What?” she asked, her curiosity more than a little piqued.

“I figured out how we’re not going to starve!”

“Really! How?” she asked equally excited.

Without giving her time to strip out of the rest of her EVA suit, Mark took her by the hand and practically dragged her into the Hab’s kitchen where a storage container that said “DO NOT OPEN UNTIL THANKSGIVING” was sitting on the table. Reaching into it, he pulled out a bag with a flourish.

“Potatoes?” Beth asked confused, not following his excitement at the discovery. “There’s only twelve of them.”

“The number isn’t important. The important thing is that they’re not frozen or dehydrated,” he said with a wide grin. “Which means they are viable potatoes. Which means they can germinate and I can grow more!”

“Oh my god!” Beth exclaimed matching his enthusiasm. “You can do that? On a world notorious for being a place where nothing grows?”

“I don’t want to brag or anything,” Mark replied, totally bragging. “But I am the best botanist on this planet.”

Beth laughed. “I can unequivocally agree with that statement,” she said her eyes full of mirth. She had what her gardening grandmother had called a brown thumb. “I have the inexplicable desire to kiss you right now.”

Mark laughed before giving her his most charming grin. “Hey, don’t let me stop you,” he said opening his arms wide.

Beth rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t keep the smile off her face as she stood on her toes to plant a loud smack on his cheek.

“We’re going to get through this,” Beth said with a bright smile, feeling for the first time like that might actually be true.

“Hell yeah we are,” Mark agreed. “And do you know why?”

“Why?” she asked still beaming at him.

“Because fuck Mars, that’s why.”

Beth laughed loud and freely, she couldn’t disagree with the sentiment in the slightest. “Damn straight!” she concurred, still laughing. “You know, I’m really looking forward to not starving to death.”

“You and me both,” he replied quickly. “I really didn’t want to make a reservation for Donner Party of two.”

“Yeah, cannibalism really isn’t on my list of life goals,” she agreed.

 “I have to be honest though, Operation Tater Triumph —”

“Operation what?” she interrupted to question.

“Operation Tater Triumph,” he repeated with a shit eating grin. “I’m not married to it though, I was also kicking around Operation Potato Party, or Operation Spud Sprouts. However, I’m also willing to hear suggestions, if you’ve got anything better.”

Beth shook her head in amusement, “I’ll have to get back to you on that one. I don’t know if that one is possible to top. Anyways, continue.”

“As I was saying, Operation Tater Triumph is not without its obstacles,” he admitted.

“Alright, break it down for me,” she prompted, just as he did a few days prior when she had outlined her MRO idea.

“Okay so I figure we can use the kitchen as our greenhouse,” he began gesturing to the part of the Hab they were standing in. “Clear everything out and it gives us the most floor space.”

Beth looked around the room gaging the space, “Roughly 90 square meters in here.”

“92,” Mark corrected shaking his head in awe, amazed as always at the super brain in Beth’s head. “I measured.”

Beth shrugged one shoulder negligently, “I was close. Go on.”

“So despite being a barren desert, Martian soil actually has most of the chemical building blocks necessary for plant growth. What’s missing is bacterial activity, and biomatter and nutrients for the plants to feed on that exists in Earth soil.” He wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t at least vaguely know since they were all aware of each other’s research experiments even if they didn’t all understand the specifics. But talking it through out loud from the beginning would help them both find any potential holes in his plan. “As you we’ve got some Earth soil here for my experiments, but obviously not the 9.2 cubic meters that I’ll need to fill the space.”

“Obviously,” she repeated to let him know she was still listening as she wandered over to where they stored their suits, Mark following behind her.

“So what I’ll need to do is bring in the dead Martian dirt, mix up my soil with some extra fertilizer to really get that earth bacteria going, then I’ll seed the dead dirt with the Earth soil and the happy little bacteria will continue to reproduce and spread like… well like a bacterial infection,” he continued to explain as he watched her strip out of the rest of her EVA suit. “Once that initial soil is good to go we’ll add more lifeless soil until it’s infected and from there its rinse and repeat until the space is covered and all the Martian dirt is viable farm land.”

“What are you going to use for fertilizer?” she asked as she hung up her suit next to the others.

“The only extra biological material we have,” he told her not looking overly excited about it. “Shit.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” she replied her nose scrunched up at the thought.

“Yeah well, we don’t exactly have a lot of options at our disposal.”

“Isn’t that dangerous though?” Beth asked sincerely. “I mean, can’t that make you sick?”

Mark shrugged noncommittally. “It’s not ideal,” he admitted. “People have been using human waste as fertilizer for centuries, of course for many of those centuries people didn’t realize that pathogens are a thing, and growing crops in them is a fantastic way to spread disease. I’m counting on the fact that NASA made sure we were as healthy as humans can be before we left, and the fact that we’ve been living in such close quarters for so long that any pathogens I have, you already have and vice versa.”

Beth considered this for a moment. “Fair enough,” she said agreeing to his logic. And as he said it wasn’t like they exactly had a wealth of options. “What about water though?” she asked, she didn’t know a lot about botany, but she knew plants needed water to grow. “Do we even have enough to farm with? We’ve only got what, 300 liters?”

Mark opened his mouth to reply and then shut it again so fast that Beth could actually hear his teeth click. “I admit, I hadn’t thought that far yet,” he finally said, visibly deflating. “I was just excited about potatoes. 300 liters won’t be enough and that’s before subtracting what we need to hold aside for ourselves.”

They both fell silent as they turned their newest problem over in their heads. How does one make water?

“We’ve got time to figure it out though, right?” she said after a moment, hating to see him so discouraged after he was so enthusiastic. “You’ll have to prep the dirt first, and then it’s going to take a while to turn those twelve potatoes into enough plants that you’ll need the entire kitchen floor.”

“You’re right,” he agreed. “Even if we start tomorrow it’ll take weeks before the dirt is viable soil, and then even longer before these potatoes grow enough to use them as seed for more plants.

“I think we should start tomorrow,” Beth said decisively. “At the very least start bringing in dirt. We’ll put the MRO project on the back burner, I can work on it at night. But the sooner you can start growing the better. Earth can keep thinking we’re dead for a few more days it’s not that time sensitive, but not starving to death is. At least, that’s my vote. What do you think?”

“You’re the boss,” Mark replied easily.

“Do you disagree with my reasoning?”

“No, not at all,” he assured her. “In fact, I agree with you completely. But you are. The boss, I mean.”

Beth quirked her head confused, until understanding passed over her face. Technically she was now the highest ranking member of the crew on Mars, indeed making her the one in charge.

“Barely,” she scoffed. In all the years of training and preparation for this mission she had never conceived a scenario where she would be in command, since she was the second lowest member on the crew hierarchy. It just so happened that Mark was in fact the last on said chain of command.

“What do you think the odds are of the two lowest ranking members of the crew being the ones left on Mars?” she asked.

“What are the odds of two members of the crew being left on Mars at all?” he countered.

“At the moment,” she replied, one eyebrow arched. “One in three.”

“Well,” Mark conceded with a wry sort of grin, “you’re not wrong.”

Chapter Text

SOL 11

“This is the worst!” Beth exclaimed sitting back on her heels, being careful not to overcompensate for the extra weight of the pack on her back which shifted her center of gravity. “These spades are not meant for actual digging.”

“I know,” Mark agreed with huff. “Taking 100 gram soil samples is a very different undertaking then 9 cubic meters.” They had barely gotten started, only a few hours into what was sure to be a multi-day undertaking, and already his back was starting to noticeably ache and the still healing wound in his side was sorer than it had been in a couple days.

“It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s so fucking compacted,” she complained, stabbing at the ground with the tip of her trowel to break up the dirt. There was a fine layer of sand and dirt on the top of the surface, but under that the dirt was baked hard by time and the sun.

“A horse and a plow would be really helpful right about now,” Mark agreed, dropping another trowel full of dirt into the storage container sitting next to him.

Beth giggled.

Mark glanced in her direction, not used to such a girly noise coming from her. She laughed all the time yes, but she generally was not a giggler. “What’s so funny?” he asked curiously.

She giggled again. “I’m sorry, I can’t stop thinking about a horse in an EVA suit.”

Mark took a moment to picture it and then he was laughing too. They worked in silence for a while only punctuated by Beth’s occasional giggle as she was still occupied with the idea of a space horse.

“You know what, fuck this shit,” Beth said some twenty minutes later, tossing her trowel to the side. “I’ve got a better idea.”

“Wait what?” Mark asked looking up from the hole he digging. “What are you talking about?”

Beth didn’t reply, instead standing and marching out into the Martian plains towards the MDV.

“Where are you going?!” Mark tried calling again. “Johanssen?! Seriously, what are you doing Beth?!”

“You’ll see,” she finally replied mysteriously.

Mark was muttering all kinds of impolite things under his breath when Beth’s voice sounded in his ear again.

“You know, just because I’m walking away from you, doesn’t mean the com you’re wearing isn’t any less sensitive,” she said sounding amused. “I can still hear everything you’re saying as if I was standing right next to you.”

“I was counting on it,” Mark retorted easily, wishing she was standing right next to him so she could see him sticking his tongue out at her.

Beth laughed, but still didn’t fill him in on what she was doing.

Mark’s brow furrowed when he saw Beth reach the MDV, grab one of the angled steel panels that she had pried off the exterior when she had scavenged it for parts for her MRO project, and start dragging it back towards him.

“What the hell are you doing with that?”

“You gave me an idea!” she replied brightly.

“I did?”

“Yep! We may not have a horse, but we do have a rover,” she told him. “And we don’t have a plow, but we have plenty of scrap metal and an engineer. You think you could put together a makeshift plow?” she asked him.

Mark sat back on his haunches and considered her idea critically. “You know what. I think I could,” he said after a few minutes of thinking it through. “That would certainly make life so much easier. And we’d be expending much less energy which is something we really need to conserve.”

“Work smarted not harder,” she quipped with a shrug.

“You. Are. A. Genius.”

“Nah,” she said dismissively, “I just really didn’t want to spend the next 2 weeks trying to dig up a literal fuck tonne of dirt with gardening tools. When I was growing up my mom always used to say that she could never decide if I was really smart or really lazy,” she admitted with a laugh.

“And what was the final verdict?” he asked amused.

Beth shrugged unabashed, “I always told her that I thought it was a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B.”

Mark laughed as he tossed his spade to the side and stood. “I’m gonna go grab my tool box and some spare Hab canvas, I’ll be right back.”

“Do me a favor and use Airlock 3,” Beth said gesturing to his left when he was already headed to the much closer Airlock 1 on his right.

“What?” he asked curiously. “Why?” 

“Because I was thinking about things last night in bed before I fell asleep, and I thought that we should probably try to split using all three airlocks as evenly as possible,” she told him. “We’re going to be here a hell of a lot longer than the 31 days the Hab was designed for and I figure it would be for the best if the three airlocks wear as evenly as possible. And since we’re going to be bringing all the dirt through Airlock 1, we should probably be using 2 and 3 for now.”

“Makes sense to me,” Mark said, immediately spinning on a heel and switching directions, heading for the airlock Beth had suggested.

He could admit, that the thought hadn’t even occurred to him but she was absolutely right. While he knew that in theory the Hab itself should have no problems lasting long beyond its original 31 day mission life, it would behoove them to be proactive now in making sure they’re home really far away from home stays in as good of shape as possible.

It took the rest of the day, a great deal of trial and error and cannibalizing one of the chairs from inside the Hab but by the time the sun was setting they had a functional, if not pretty, plow. They may not have gotten the amount of dirt they had originally wanted to move today but they both agreed that the delay would pay off in dividends in both overall time and physical exertion saved.  So they were feeling pretty accomplished when they headed back inside the Hab for some dinner and a few more episodes of Scrubs from Beck’s drive as a reward for a job well done.

SOL 12

“Ready to give frankenplow a try?” Beth asked on their second day of Operation Tater Triumph, or as she was personally calling it, Operation Starving Sucks Let’s Not Do That.

“Yes Ma’am,” Mark replied easily as they stood outside surveying the work they had done the day before. “Do you want to drive the Rover? I want to make sure that the plow doesn’t start coming apart.”

“Yeah sure,” she agreed easily heading over to the Rover they had hooked their makeshift plow up to the afternoon before.

“Now remember I’m walking behind it so don’t start doing any crazy donuts or anything in there Johanssen,” he warned teasingly once they were both in position.

“I’ll try to keep the impulse to a minimum,” she assured him as him she started the ignition and let up on the brake just enough that the Rover started to roll forward. “How’s it going back there?” Beth asked after a couple of minutes, not able to see anything from the driver seat of the Rover.

“It’s totally working!” Mark called back excitedly. It took a little bit of muscling to keep the share of the plow dug in, but it was easily breaking up the compacted Martian surface into much more manageable loose dirt.  

Beth laughed, “I know it was my idea but I wasn’t entirely sure it would actually work. Who’d a thunk we’d need to make primitive farm tools out spare parts from a space ship.”

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” Mark quoted. “Wait hold on I need to move a rock,” he warned as he grabbed a largish rock that was in the way of the plow and tossed it towards the pile they were making that they would later use to write their message for the MRO.

“Why do I feel like that is going to be the mission statement to our entire stay on the fourth rock from the sun,” she said wryly, as she pressed down on the brake until he gave her go ahead to keep moving.

“I need to move a rock?”

“Yes, that was exactly the phrase I was talking about,” Beth replied, her sarcasm as dry as the dirt they were plowing.

 Mark laughed, able to see the face she was making and the roll of her eyes in his mind. “You feel that way, because it already is our mission statement and we’re only a week in.”

“You make a valid point.”

“Technically Plato made a valid point.”

“Whatever,” she scoffed good-naturedly. “You about ready to turn around yet?”

“Yeah let’s do it.”

For two hours they plowed back and forth in front of the Hab until Mark decided that they had broken up enough dirt, at least for the day, and it was time to start moving it into the Hab. Beth couldn’t have been happier since driving in circles at literal walking speed for hours was an exercise in patience that had quickly run thin on.

It didn’t take them very long to figure out the most efficient way to work and settle into a rhythm. One of them would use one of the small rigid sample containers as a bucket, scoop up the loose dirt displaced by their plow, and dump that into a medium rigid sample container until it was full. Then the other would then push that container over to Hab and dump that dirt into one of the large storage containers waiting inside Airlock 1. Once those were full they would let the airlock cycle, and move the dirt into the kitchen cum farm. Then they would switch jobs and start all over again.

They finally called it a day from hauling dirt when the sun started to dip on the horizon. On Mars there was no dusk, there not being enough atmosphere for the light waves to bounce around in. So when the sun went down, the sun went down. Neither of them wanted to be caught outside when that happened so they made their way back to the Hab with their last load of dirt, well before they lost the light.

“Hey Watney?” Beth asked as she poured the last load of dirt of the day into the airlock. “How much does a cubic meter of dirt weigh?”

“On Earth the average cubic meter of topsoil would weigh somewhere between 1,200 and 1,700 kilograms, depending on the exact composition of the soil and how compact it was,” Mark answered readily.

“So we split the difference and call this 1.5 for arguments sake, multiply that by 9.2 cubic meters, that’s 13.8, adjust for difference in gravity and we’re looking at roughly 5 and a half metric tonnes of dirt we’re moving.”

“Yep,” Mark said with a sigh and he dragged the now empty medium containers back outside where they would be wait to be used again later. “Your point?”

“I don’t really have one,” she admitted, having to stop herself for the umpteenth time that day from trying to wipe the sweat off her brow. At least this time she stopped herself before she whacked the face plate of her helmet. “Just wanted to verbally validate that I’m totally within my rights to be super sore in the morning.”

“I promise you, I will not think any less of you if you decide to skip leg day tomorrow,” he joked reentering the airlock and closing the door behind him, leaning heavily against it as they waited for it to cycle.

“You’re such a gentleman,” she said wryly.

Mark just smirked at her. “I try.”

They were both quiet as they waited for the pressure to equalize, tired from their long day of physical labor. Once back inside the relative safety of the Hab, they made quick work of the last load of dirt before giving each other a hand with each other’s helmets and gloves before working on the rest of their EVA suits. Beth had already pulled the top of her suit off up and over her head when she looked over to see the grimace of pain on Mark’s face as he struggled to do the same.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, already moving to assist him.

“Just sore,” he replied his voice sounding far away as she helped him lift the suit over his head.

Beth’s eyes zoomed in on the large damp patch on Mark’s undershirt, right over where his injury was. “Liar,” she said, the accusation clear in her eyes.

Mark’s hand came up to touch his side tenderly, wincing when his fingertips came away red. “I guess I pulled a staple.”

“Ya think?” Beth responded sarcastically. “Come on, let’s get your pants off and get you up on the table so I can get a good look at you.”

“That’s what she said.” He couldn’t help himself, he knew she meant his EVA pants, but the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.

“Really Watney?” she asked unamused. “2010 called it wants it’s meme back.”

“Sorry,” he replied, mostly unrepentant as he shed his suit pants and shuffled over to Beck’s exam table, laying back while he waited for Beth to get out of the rest of her suit and collect the items she would need to repatch his side.

“So how long ago did you do this?” she asked pulling his shirt up to inspect the damage.

Mark shrugged, “I dunno, I guess it started to hurt more than normal, maybe a couple hours ago.”

“And it’s still actively bleeding?” It was a statement as much as it was a question, she was clearly unimpressed with him at the moment. “It must hurt like a bitch, so why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because I knew you would bully me into coming inside, and I wanted to stay outside and help,” he admitted honestly.

“Damn straight I would have bullied you into coming inside,” she snapped.

“And it would have taken twice the amount of time it took to get all this dirt inside if you were out there doing it by yourself,” he retorted. “You said it yourself, every day counts in getting these potatoes in the ground and growing if we’re going to make it out here.”

“And those potatoes aren’t going to grow themselves if you push yourself too hard and we have to delay the whole project while you recover,” she countered.

“I’m not a child Johanssen,” he replied sullenly, “If I needed to come inside I would have. I know my own limits.”

“Clearly you don’t. For fucks sake Watney, you need to heal. You were impaled last week!” She doused a gauze pad liberally with antiseptic and pressed it against his wound, looking none too sympathetic when he flinched away from the stinging sensation as it did its job. “You lost too much blood last week, you looked like complete shit for days. You’re just finally getting your color back, you can’t really afford to be losing any more blood.”

“You have a shitty bedside manner Johanssen,” Mark teased in an attempt to disarm her and maybe make her relax a little.

“You’re damned right I do!” she retorted, not at all swayed. “Because I’m not Beck, I’m not a doctor. What if you get this infected? It’s so close to all your internal organs, what if the infection spread and you went septic?! Would you know what to do? Because I sure as hell wouldn’t know what to do!” All the while she was yelling at him, she was also cleaning the injury, removing the damaged staple, replacing it, and taping fresh clean gauze over the wound.

“But hey, look on the bright side, if I die from infection your food would last twice as long,” he said in a poor attempt at a joke.

Beth’s eyes snapped to his, cold and humorless. “Fuck you Watney. That’s not funny.” She picked up a nearby pill bottle and pushed it into his chest, “And don’t forget to take your fucking antibiotics.”

Turning away, she picked up the bottoms of both their EVA suits, and stomped over to the other side of the room to hang them up where they belonged. Feeling like an asshole, Mark sighed and carefully swung his legs over the side of the table and slid to his feet before hobbling after Beth to make peace.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized once he caught up to her where she was standing in front of the EVA suits, her back to the room and to him. “You’re right, that wasn’t funny.

“Damned right it wasn’t,” she spat still facing the wall.

“And I should have told you when I realized I’d hurt myself,” he continued. “I just didn’t want you to worry.”

“Of course I’m going to worry Watney,” she replied turning around to look up at his face, the earnestness shining in her eyes. “We are stranded on Mars, 140 million miles from home. All we have is each other. We need to take care of ourselves for each other.”

“You’re right. You’re right and I’m sorry,” Mark apologized again sincerely, effectively chastised. He reached out and pulled her in for a hug, “I’ll be more careful.”

“I need you Mark,” she said into his chest, her own arms coming up to wrap around his middle, careful of his injury. “I can’t do this without you.”

“Sure you could. You’re Beth Johanssen Super Nerd. But, you won’t have to,” he assured her. “We’re in this together. And we’re going to get through this.”

“Together,” she echoed.

“Together,” he agreed.

Chapter Text

SOL 14

Mark looked up when he heard the airlock cycling, but for once did not move to help Beth get out of her EVA suit. He figured she would understand and forgive him this one time since he was literally elbow deep in… well he’ll just call it fertilizer. He watched though from the other side of the Hab as she pulled off her helmet and immediately gagged.

“Oh my god!” she exclaimed, accidently smacking herself in the face with her helmet when she instinctively brought her hands up to her nose to block the smell. “It smells like shit in here.”

 “Yes, that’s exactly what it smells like in here,” Mark replied more than a little amused at her reaction. After all he’d been suffering alone for hours and misery does love company.

“It’s like we live in a Porta-Potty at the county fair,” she said gagging again as she backed up to the wall, as if putting more space between her and his box o’ crap would actually help. “The smell is in my mouth. It’s in my mouth Watney!”

He couldn’t really blame her, it was so bad his eyes were watering even with the earplugs he had shoved up his nostrils in an attempt to block out the smell.

“Well, I would open a window, except….” He trailed off and arched a brow in her direction.

Beth shot him an unimpressed look as she continued to strip out of her EVA suit as far away from him as possible.

“If it makes you feel any better, the worse it smells the more its working!”

“What would make me feel better is if you told me where the earplugs are so I can shove them up my nose like you did.”

Mark laughed and pointed to the counter where he had left them. “It’s ironic that we brought them to block out Martinez’s snoring and now we’re using them to block out his smell.”

“Was Martinez the worst?”

“Ohh yeah,” Mark confirmed his eyes wide at the very memory of the smell when he had cut open that particular packet. “Something died in that man’s digestive system. I hope Beck checked him for that at some point.”

Beth laughed as she ripped open the packet of earplugs and shoved them up her nose.

“It’s all bad though. Part of the issue is our high protein diet, that’s always going to make shit stink worse,” Mark continued, having had far more time than he would have liked to contemplate about this while he worked. “Once we’re eating a mostly potato based diet the smell won’t be nearly as bad.  Of course we’ll probably be used to it by then and not be able to smell it at all.”

“I don’t know if that’s reassuring, or horrifying,” Beth replied, suddenly sounding like she had a cold now that she had closed off her nasal passages.

“Did you get the booster wired into the Rover’s system?” Mark asked. They had gone outside together earlier, but after he had retrieved the desiccated shit left behind by their crewmates he’d come back inside and left Beth to install the signal booster that she had been diligently working on every chance she had for the last four days.

“Sure did,” she confirmed. “I’d like you to take a look at it next time you’re outside, just to give it a second pair of eyes, but it should be good to go once I get the override program written.”

“You’re awesome,” Mark praised.

“I know,” she agreed with a joking grin. “Speaking of, I’m going to go work on the code for the MRO hack now….” She glanced down at his container of crap. “In the other room.”

“I’m doing this to feed you ya know!” he called to her already retreating back.

“And I’m very appreciative!” she called back. “I’m just going to do that appreciating as far away from your box of horror as possible!”

Mark rolled his eyes and shook his head at her, but was amused all the same. He didn’t blame her in the slightest and quite frankly he wished he could join her, because it was about to get even grosser. It was time to add his mixture to the Martian soil he had prepared yesterday, then he had to mix it all together and spread it back out again.

He worked as quickly as he could, but it still took longer than he would have liked. But he only had to force himself not to throw up once, so he considered that a win. Once he was finished he sprinkled what little earth soil he had on top of all it and took a step back to survey his work.

“Godspeed little bacteria,” he said giving the soil a halfhearted salute. “We’re depending on you.”

Even though it was more work and they had to build the plow to do it, he was glad they went after the dirt they did and not the loose, coarse sand that was further from the Hab, but would have been easier to move. Once it was infected with all the needed earth bacteria it would make far superior soil for farming than the sand would have.

Having done all he could do for the day, he went looking for Beth. He laughed when he found that she had climbed up into Vogel’s bunk with her laptop. She was literally as far away from the kitchen and their new farm as possible without suiting back up to go outside.

Not wanting to interrupt, he stood and watched her for work for a moment while he waited for her to notice him. Her fingers danced across the keyboard at an absurd rate and she had that little furrow between her brows that he had come to learn meant that she was concentrating hard. After a minute or two she either felt his attention on her or caught his movement out of the corner of her eye, because she looked up and yanked one of the earbuds out of her ear, the tinny, far away sound of Day Tripper making its way to his ears.

“Well, it’s up to the bacteria now,” he announced, at her questioning expression.  “I have about 5 square meters all set and doing its thing. Now we have to wait a week or so and then we can double it.”

“You’re awesome too,” Beth said returning his earlier complement.

“As long as we both know it,” he smirked, before he wandered over to his bunk to find a different sweatshirt. Despite the fact that he had been wearing gloves, his sleeves still smelled distinctly of shit and would need to air out for a while before he wore it again

She looked up over the edge of her computer to return his grin with one of her own. “So will mixing the fertilizer with the dirt mellow out the smell?” 

Mark shrugged, “Sure.”

“Really?” she asked hopefully.

“Probably not,” he admitted, as he pulled his shirt over his head and replaced it with another. “I think we’re just going to have to get used it for a while.”

“Great,” she drawled slowly making Mark laugh.  

“I see you abandoned your nose plugs though,” he pointed out. He’d removed the earplugs from his nose as well, but that was more because they were starting to hurt his nostrils, then the smell dissipating.

“I have a cousin who is a homicide detective, and I remembered him saying once that they use vaporub under their nose when there’s an extra ripe body. So I looked through the med supplies and found a topical analgesic that had menthol in it,” she said holding up a tube that was sitting next to her on the bunk. “I put a tiny dab of it on the collar of my sweatshirt and now it’s all I can smell. Want some?” she said extending NASA’s version of Icy Hot towards him.

“Yes, yes I do,” Mark said without thinking twice.

 “It doesn’t take a lot, which is good since I feel bad about not using it for its original use,” she shrugged. “And you know, in case we need it for its actual purpose in the future.”

Just like Beth had, he squeezed out a pea sized amount and rubbed it into the neck of his sweatshirt. It would probably stain but that was the least of his worries. The important part was that the fabric would retain the smell far longer than his skin would.

“Oh by the way I want to do an EVA tonight after sunset,” she mentioned as she watched him breathe deep of the clean minty smell. “You wanna join me?”

“Sure,” he agreed easily. “What for?”

“I want to get eyes on the MRO, watch it come around a couple times and get exact timestamps. I want to be able to do the math so once the patch is ready I’ll know exactly when it’s going to be over us.”

“Makes sense. When do you think the code is going to be good to go?” he asked, sidling up to the bunk she was in, looking over her shoulder at her screen. What he saw meant literally nothing to him. He didn’t have any problem admitting that the things she could with a computer was practically witchcraft in his eyes, he knew the basics of coding but what she could do was magic.

“I’m shooting for the day after tomorrow,” she replied, her fingers still flying across the keys. “Building the booster was the hard part. This is easy. But I want to build a simulation for myself and run through potential problems for a while before we do it for real.”

“Nerd,” he teased fondly, as he walked away leaving her to concentrate.

“Don’t be jealous that my version of science didn’t have me elbow deep in a box of shit all day,” she teased back.

Mark didn’t reply verbally, but he did toss the smelly sweatshirt that he had taken off at her head.

“Gross Watney!” she cried as she bat away the offending garment. “What’s wrong with you?!”

But Mark just laughed and left her to her work.

 xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

“Okay as long as nothing’s changed in the last couple weeks, the MRO should be travelling from south to north,” Beth informed him as they stepped out of Airlock 2. “So I figure we can chill out on this side of the Hab and keep an eye out for it.”

“Works for me,” Mark agreed easily.

It was awkward trying to sit down on the ground with any sort of grace in their EVA suits, but they managed to get themselves situated, leaning against the side of the Hab. It made sense to go ahead and get as comfortable as possible since they were planning on being out there for hours.

At first neither of them said much, both of them focused on the sky looking for a moving blinking light somewhere on the horizon that would signify the MRO’s arrival. They had to be alert because it could literally show up any second, or if they had just missed its passing then it could be two hours before it came around again, and they didn’t want to miss it. Lucky for them, they didn’t have to wait too long, and only twenty minutes after they sat down, Mark’s arm shot up, making Beth startle at the sudden unexpected movement.

“Is that it?” he said pointing out into the distance. “I think that’s it.”

Beth followed his eye line and sure enough there was a little twinkling light heading in their direction. “Yep that’s it!” she confirmed happily, as she tapped at the computer on her wrist to record the timestamp. She carefully watched the approaching satellite until it was directly above them and recorded that as well.

Now there wasn’t anything for them to do but wait, since they had at least two hours before the MRO came around again. They sat in companionable silence, both of them lost in thought as they took in the wide expanse of the Martian night sky.

“I like that all the constellations are the same as at home,” Beth said softly breaking the silence some time later, leaning the back of her helmet against the edge of the Hab as she looked up at the stars.

“It’s nice to see something familiar,” Mark concurred, “even if they are all in the wrong place.”

Beth hummed her agreement as the watched the constellations wheel across the sky in different paths then they were used to, since the north and south poles of Mars were oriented differently than on Earth.

“You realize we’re the first people to be seeing this,” Mark pointed out a few minutes later. It was against NASA protocols to be outside of the Hab once the sun went down. It was deemed an unnecessary risk.

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Beth admitted. “Okay, that’s pretty cool.”

“First!” he grinned holding out his hand for a fist bump. “Come on Johanssen don’t leave me hanging.”

“First,” she laughed, bumping his knuckles, and exploding away from it. “Boom!”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get over how bright they are out here,” Mark mused a little while later. “Talk about a complete lack of light pollution.”

“You’ve got that right,” she smirked. “They weren’t even this bright when NASA dumped us in the middle of nowhere Nevada for two weeks during training. But they were pretty bright when we were on Hermes though,” she pointed out.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But there’s just something different about being on a planet and looking at the stars then being out amongst them.”

She considered it for a moment. “I see where you’re coming from.”

“Plus if I tried to stargaze too long from the Hermes while we were rotating I’d get dizzy after a while.”

Beth chuckled lightly, that was a mistake they had all made at least once. After they had gotten their so called sea-legs, it was very easy to forget that you were actually spinning while you were in the centrifugal portions of the ship. When you’re in gravity, up is up and down is down. At least until you try to pick out a fixed point outside the window. Then your eyes pick a fight with your inner ear until your stomach is the one that suffers for it.

“I feel like we need a campfire and some s’mores out here,” Beth mentioned, thinking back to bonfires at the beach when she was growing up.

“Or brown sugar baked apples,” Mark added, thinking to his own family camping trips in the woods as a kid.

“What are those?”

“Oh, they’re awesome,” he said practically salivating at the very memory. “You core out and apple and then fill it in with brown sugar and butter, then you wrap the whole thing in foil and stick in the fire until is cooks all the way through.”

“That sounds amazing,” Beth agreed.

“It is. The apple just absorbs the butter and sugar and turns it into pure delicious,” he continued. “I always used to burn the shit out of my mouth every year when my parents took me camping because I could never wait long enough to let it cool before I started eating them.”

Beth laughed, having no problems believing that. “I’d love to try that,” she said sincerely. “We’ll have to go camping when we get back to Earth so we can make them.”

“Are you sure you’re ever going to want to go camping again?” Mark asked, amusement clear in his tone. “This is already basically the worst camping trip ever. We’re isolated, more than just a few miles away from civilization, living in a glorified tent, eating dehydrated food.”

“I see your point,” Beth shrugged. “But I always felt like this was more Gilligan’s Island in space. A three hour tour that went terribly wrong after we got caught in a storm.”

“Okay,” he conceded, “you win that one, Mary Ann.”

“Mary Ann?!” Beth exclaimed. “Excuse you, but I am clearly the Professor in this scenario.”

Mark chuckled at the honest offence in her voice. “Is that right?”

“Obviously. I mean I am the one who is trying to make a radio out of two coconuts and some fishing line.”

She was so serious about it, that he laughed so hard that he was afraid he was going to pop a staple again. As it was he almost tipped over where he sat. “Okay Professor, so who am I then?” he asked once he had calmed down enough to speak again.

“Oh well that one’s easy,” she said attempting to sound serious, but unable to keep the humor completely out of her tone. “You’re Gilligan.”

“Gilligan?!” it was his turn to exclaim. “How am I Gilligan?!” 

“Trust me.” He couldn’t see her smirk in the dark, but he could definitely hear it. “You’re definitely Gilligan. Would you rather be Ginger?” she offered teasingly. “I mean your Ares Live videos did go viral. And let’s not forget your very impressive Under Armor commercial.”

Mark couldn’t completely withhold his groan at the familiar ribbing. Sure the whole crew admitted that the commercial had actually come out really cool, and we’re excited for him when they saw it, but that didn’t stop the teasing. Going so far as to text or call him every-single-time they saw it on TV in the months leading up to their launch.

“Well what about you, little miss my poster outsold the rest of the crew’s combined?” he countered. “Sounds Ginger like to me.”

“Not combined,” she corrected, rolling her eyes. “And this isn’t about me, it’s already been decided I’m the Professor. This is about you Gilligan/Ginger.”

“Oh look, here comes Phobos,” Mark pointed towards the western horizon where Mars’s larger moon was rising, not even trying to hide the fact that he was blatantly changing the subject.

Beth laughed at Mark’s avoidance, but let the subject go. For now at least, they had plenty of time to revisit it in the future. Instead she watched the oddly shaped moon rise for a few minutes before she spoke. “Do you think it’s going to crash land on the surface or break apart and form rings around the planet?” she asked curiously, referencing the fact that Phobos was caught in the planet’s gravitational pull and was moving closer to the surface with every passing year.

“Rings,” he replied without hesitation. “At least I hope it does, how awesome would that be.”

“I know right?” she agreed enthusiastically.  “Can you even imagine what that would look like from the surface?”

“So awesome,” he grinned. “If you’re not busy in a couple million years we should totally road trip back here and check it out, see it for ourselves.”

Beth laughed. “Yeah okay, I’ll put it on my calendar.”

“I’m going to hold you to it.”

“I’ll make sure to keep that week free,” she assured him. “Now start paying attention because the MRO should be coming around again soon.”

Chapter Text

SOL 16

Beth sat in Rover 1, transferring her program from her personal laptop to the rover’s onboard computer. Once that was complete she went over all the code again, making sure there was nothing out of place, and ran a diagnostic making sure the rover was communicating with the booster like she had designed it to.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come out and help?” she asked watching through the windshield, as Mark moved rocks to form a message for the MRO to take a picture of.

 “Yeah I’m good,” he assured her as he set another red rock in place. “What you’re doing is important, I got this.”

It really wasn’t too bad since they had made a pile of rocks as they were moving dirt in for the farm, so it wasn’t as if he was searching all over kingdom come looking for enough rocks to write a single letter let alone a whole message.

“How big do you think the letters need to be?” he asked her opinion.

Beth considered that for a moment. “It doesn’t have to be the Great Wall of China and visible with the naked eye, but I figure it should be a fairly good size because it’s not like the contrast is going to be great,” she reasoned aloud. “But they’re going to be inspecting the image pretty close when they get it I’m sure, so you don’t have to be absurd about it. I dunno,” she paused. “Like three meters?”

“Works for me,” he agreed easily, already moving the rocks he’d already placed to make the letters a little larger. After all, it wouldn’t do them any good if they did all this work and their message wasn’t legible from space. “Is that better?” he asked once he’d made the adjustment.

Beth peered out the window, taking a look at Mark’s handiwork. “Looks good from here,” she let him know. Mark threw her a thumbs up before they both went back to their respective tasks.

“Hey, do you think I should put a happy face or a frowny face at the end?” Mark asked a little while later, as he carefully constructed a capital T. And by careful, he was tossing rocks in the general direction and then kicking them into place with edge of his boot.

“Excuse me?” Beth asked looking up at him through the windshield, not sure if she had heard him correctly.

“Happy face or frowny face?” he repeated while he continued to move rocks. “Which is the message we’re trying to convey. Happy face – we’re happy to be alive. Frowny face – boo it sucks we’ve been left behind on Mars. What do you think?”

“I think your millennialness is showing, and an emoticon is probably unnecessary all together,” she replied amused. “It’s not exactly a text message we’re sending here.”

“It’s kinda a text message,” he replied thinking about it.

“Actually I think it’s more of a selfie?” Beth countered.

“Yeah, it’s close enough to the Hab, that even if we’re inside, we’ll technically be in the frame,” he reasoned.

“That was my thought too.”

“So I’m thinking frowny face,” Mark announced, going back to the beginning of the conversation. “If only because I don’t think I could make a poop emoji and actually make it look like poop and not just a pile of rocks.”

A surprised laugh burst out of Beth’s chest. “A poop emoji?” she asked incredulously.

“Yeah, I think that is what would really convey the message I want to send about being left behind on Mars,” he informed her. “The whole thing has been shitty. Both metaphorically and quite literally.”

Beth laughed again, he wasn’t wrong. “Why don’t you worry about making sure you have enough rocks to actually finish the message before you worry about making even more work for yourself,” she suggested.

“Fair enough,” he shrugged, both of them going back to focusing on their respective tasks.

Mark was about three quarters of the way done when he started running low on rocks, and since Beth was as prepared as she was going to be at this point, she climbed out of the rover to give him a hand gathering up the last of the rocks he would need.

“Its funny how priorities change,” she mused as she walked towards him with a rock under each arm.

“How so?” he asked curiously, gesturing to where she should drop her delivery.

“Well when we were taking geological samples for Commander Lewis we were so careful about documenting where each little bit of dirt and rock came from,” she explained. “We were precise down to the millimeter, taking the utmost care not to cross contaminate samples. Could you even imagine what the commander would say if she saw us making an unorganized pile of rocks from two hundred meter radius, with no consideration of their geological implications?”

“I can see the exact look on her face that she would have,” he without hesitation. “The one she gives you that makes you feel all of about 2 inches tall.”

“Ugh,” Beth groaned at the very thought. “I hate that look. It makes me want to start confessing to crimes I didn’t commit. Like yes, I drank the last of the coffee and didn’t refill the pot! I’m sorry! I’m the one that froze all of Martinez’s underwear! And Jack the Ripper, that was me too! Oh and the Bermuda Triangle, that’s my bad!”

Mark laughed so hard he had to drop the rock he was carrying to hold his side. “Oh god, stop!” he pleaded through his laughter. “Martinez’s underwear, was that really you?”

“What?” Beth asked looking up from where she was placing a rock in formation. “Oh, yeah, that was me.”

“To this day he’s convinced it was me,” he told her. “There was nothing I could say to convince him that I was innocent despite the fact that I actually didn’t do it.”

“I know,” she replied, the devious smirk on her face telling him all he needed to know about that.

It had begun a prank war that had lasted all the way to Mars. “Well played Johanssen, well played,” he commended. “Now let’s finish this up and get back inside. It’s going to be a late night, we should probably try to get a nap in beforehand.”

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

It was late. It was so late that technically it was now early, but since neither of them had actually gotten that nap that they had intended to take, the two astronauts were calling it late. The MRO would be directly overhead in exactly 8 minutes and sunrise was exactly 42 minutes after that.  

Despite the fact that they could easily determine each time the MRO’s orbit would cause the satellite would cross their path with a little basic math, they’d decided to make their attempt on the last orbit before sunrise so that they could get the visual confirmation of its arrival as well. While technically unnecessary, there were enough variables that could ruin their plans, eliminating one made them both feel better.

“Are you ready in there?” Mark asked from where he was standing next to the booster, already scanning the horizon, waiting for the MRO’s approach.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Beth replied sitting at the computer in Rover 1, the program she’d built up and running, waiting for her first command.

“Okay, I see it!” Mark called from his position. “It should be in range any time now.”

Beth tensed, her game face on as she sat on the literal edge of her seat her fingers poised above the key board, her eyes glued to the screen waiting for the ping back from the satellite that would tell her the signal booster connected and she was in range.

She got the ping and her fingers started flying, but she only got three commands in before she lost the signal for just a second, but it was enough that she had to start over. The second time she’d barely typed out the first command before she had to start again. The third time she thought she had it, but once more she lost communication with the satellite. She could hear Mark’s voice in her ear, keeping her apprised of the satellite’s position in the sky, relative to their location, but she funneled it to the back of her mind as she focused on the task in front of her. She tried once more, but she lost signal yet again as the MRO started moving away from them and was soon out of range once again.

“GOD DAMNIT! MOTHER FUCKER! SON OF A GOAT LICKING WHORE!” Beth shouted slapping the console of the rover with open palms.

“I’m going to take that to mean it didn’t work,” Mark’s voice sounded dryly over the com.

“Ya think?!” Beth snapped angrily. She took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. “Sorry,” she apologized for her anger, not meaning to direct it at him.

“Its fine,” he assured her quickly, not taking it personally. “Hold on a second, I’m coming inside.”

It only took a moment before the airlock in the rover cycled and he came inside to sit next to her.

She was still taking deep steadying breaths as he took his helmet off, so he gave her a few minutes before he spoke. “So what happened?” he asked once she made eye contact.

“The signal just isn’t strong enough. It’s reaching the MRO, but it keeps flickering in and out,” she explained. “I need to communicate long enough to give me time to hack the satellite so that it will accept the new code, and then long enough to upload the packet. Once it’s uploaded the patch will auto execute. I just need a solid couple of fucking minutes,” she said her frustration levels rising again.

“Is it even worth trying again when the MRO completes orbit and circles around again?” Mark asked sincerely.

“No,” Beth threw up her hands irritably. “Without a reliable connection it’s pointless.”

“Okay so then we have,” he looked down at the readout on his arm for the time, “96 minutes to figure out how to boost the signal,” Mark said calmly.

“And how do you plan to do that?” Beth asked brusquely. She blinked a couple times as she replayed her own statement in her head. “I didn’t mean that to sound as sarcastic as it came out,” she said with a wry sort of self-deprecating smirk. “I honestly want to know.”

Mark chuckled lowly. He didn’t begrudge Beth her frustrations, she had poured all of her energies into this project for the last week, and she was so close. Like she could brush it with her fingertips, but just couldn’t grab on.

“I don’t know yet,” he told her honestly. “But I was checking out the booster while I was watching for the MRO, and there might be something, but I’ll have to take a closer look.” He started putting his helmet back on. “Suit back up, let’s go take a look.”

Beth put her gloves and helmet back on and followed Mark into the tiny rover airlock. It was a tight squeeze with both of them in there at once, despite the fact that it was technically made for two people to be able to use at a time. Luckily it didn’t take as long to cycle as the Hab airlock did, so the lack of personal space wasn’t terrible. Once back outside the pair circled the rover until they made it back to the booster that was currently mounted on was used to be one of the weather station stakes.

Using the flashlight he’d been carrying, Mark took another good look at the booster, with new intent. Beth had done a good job building it, she’d done everything right, that couldn’t be denied. She may be a software designer by trade, but she certainly knew her way around the hardware as well. But as his eyes traced all the individual components, an idea began to form.

“I think I can do it,” Mark finally said. “I can give you the extra power you need by bypassing the circuit breaker here,” he continued pointing out what he was talking about.

“If you do that, the amount of amperage it’ll pull will eventually fry the whole booster,” Beth countered, following his plan.

“Yes it will,” Mark agreed, “that’s why you didn’t build it that way originally. But before it fries, I think you would get the boost you need to talk to the MRO. But you’re only going to get the one chance.”

“How long do you think it would last before it shorts out, and what percentage of success do you give the booster actually being strong enough to connect?” she asked before considering the new plan.

“I give it maybe a 70% chance of it actually working, and anywhere from 90 to 180 seconds before it shorts out completely,” he said honestly.

“Those aren’t great odds, and a minute and a half is a very different scenario than three minutes,” Beth sighed.

“I wish I could give you a surer answer,” Mark shrugged. “But I’m a mechanical engineer not an electrical one.”

“I know,” Beth said absently, already running multiple scenarios in her head. “If this doesn’t work, we won’t get another shot at it. We don’t have enough spare parts left over to make a second one.”

“I know the odds aren’t ideal, but I think they’re the best we’re going to get,” Mark replied. “Could you do it in a minute and a half if that’s all you got?”

Beth exhaled heavily as she considered it seriously. If she wasn’t comfortable with this they could postpone their attempt another day or two while they attempted to figure out a different way to boost the signal. There wouldn’t be any shame in that, it would be better to wait than to destroy what could possibly be their only chance to let NASA and all of Earth know that they were still alive.  

“I can do it,” she said firmly.

Mark clapped his hands together, “I knew you could. Alright let’s do this. I need my toolbox.”

“Where is it?” Beth asked.

“I left it in the airlock.”

“I’ll grab it for you,” she offered, already heading in that direction.

It didn’t take her long to retrieve Mark’s tools and was back at his side in a matter of moments, handing him tools as he needed them and holding the flashlight so he could see what he was doing. It would have been easier to take the booster inside to make the adjustments in the Hab, but they didn’t want to spend the time it would take to so. Instead they just disconnected the booster from the power supply so he didn’t electrocute himself and worked on it where it stood.

“Hey, Watney,” Beth called trying to get his attention.

“I’m almost done,” he said still focusing on what he was doing.

“No, Mark look,” she said pointing to the eastern sky.

He looked up and immediately saw what she was talking about. The sun was rising over the horizon. “Oh,” he said softly.

They stood quietly shoulder to shoulder, the first humans to ever personally watch the sun rise from another planet. The majority of the lightening sky was a pinkish-red, but right around the direct vicinity of the sun, the sky was blue. It was the opposite of what it was on earth, and an unfamiliar sight on Mars as the daytime sky was a butterscotch color. Eventually, Mark saw movement from the corner of his eye, glancing over at Beth he saw a fist extended in his direction. 

“First,” she said when she saw she had his attention.

“Boom,” he replied, bumping his fist against hers.

They watched the sun rise for a little while longer before they turned back to the task at hand. Before long they were done and they were back in their original positions as they waited for the MRO to complete its orbit. Beth, inside the rover poised and ready at the computer, and Mark standing next to the booster. Except this time his job wasn’t to spot the satellite’s approach since they wouldn’t be able to see it in the brightening sky, but to reconnect the booster to its power supply once the MRO was in range. Once he did, Beth would only have a matter of minutes to complete her work before the whole thing fried.

“Are you ready Watney?” Beth asked as she watched the time tick second by second. “Two minutes and thirty seconds til go.”

“Ready and waiting,” he replied, poised and prepared to act. “Just give me the word.”

“Two minutes…. 90 seconds…. One minute…. 45 seconds…. 30…. 15…. 10 seconds… Go!”

Mark did his job and as soon as she received confirmation that she was connected to the Orbiter, her fingers started flying. Reflecting on it later, it would all be a blur, her fingers knew what to do without her having to think about it and before she knew it she was slamming the enter key with more force than necessary sending the patch up to the MRO. Her heart was in her throat as she watched the upload status bar tick towards complete. It stalled at 96% and Beth had to keep herself from screaming at the screen. And just when it started to move again, there was a popping sound and everything electronic in the rover went black.

“Johanssen?” Mark called questioningly over the coms when Beth didn’t immediately give a status report.

“Yeah, hold on, I’m coming out,” Beth replied, already moving towards the door.

“Did it work?” he asked anxiously, waiting next to the rover’s wheel, ready to give her a hand down.

“I think so?” she told him honestly. “It was just about complete, but I didn’t get to actually see the upload hit 100% before it cut out.”

“The booster held on for almost two minutes before it short out,” Mark mentioned.

“You did a good job,” Beth commended. “It didn’t cut out once this time.”

“You did all the hard work,” Mark insisted. “I just plugged it in.”

Beth just hummed noncommittally. “Do you think it worked?” she asked looking in the direction the MRO went in, despite the fact they couldn’t see it now that the sun had risen.

“Oh yeah,” he said instantly. “You’re Beth Johannsen Nerd Extraordinaire, of course it did. NASA’s probably already wondering what the fuck just happened.”

“Definitely,” Beth said with a halfhearted smile. “I’m sure it worked.”

Neither of them sounded overly convinced. 

They stood there for another minute until Mark’s yawn broke the silence. “I am so fucking tired,” he sighed.

“I’m actually still okay,” she shrugged, a natural night owl. Before joining NASA, all-nighters were a regular occurrence in her life. 

“Well I don’t know about you, but I’m going inside and going to bed.”

Beth was all keyed up from her work and knew she wouldn’t be finding sleep any time soon, but she also knew if she didn’t want her sleep schedule to completely flip that she needed to try to nap for at least a couple hours.

“Hey Johanssen,” Mark said as they made the short trek to the Hab.

“What’s up Watney?”

“Happy Thanksgiving, Beth,” he said throwing and arm over her shoulders.

“Thanksgiving was yesterday,” she pointed out.

“We haven’t been to bed yet, so it still counts,” he insisted.

She looped an arm around his back, completing the side hug. “Happy Thanksgiving, Mark.”

They broke apart as they stepped into the airlock, both of them desperately hoping they had something to be truly thankful about.

SatCon, Johnson Space Center. Houston, Texas

Mindy Park slid into her seat at her station, to go mug of coffee in hand, ready for another routine night. It was Thanksgiving so the already light overnight crew was even more sparse than usual with the holiday, so she expected a quiet eight hours ahead of her. But she had barely settled, before an alert sounded making everyone in the room take notice.

“We’ve lost communication with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter,” one of her fellow techs announced as he pulled up the pertinent information.

“Is it a glitch on our end or the Orbiter?” her boss asked the room at large.

“I’m looking into it right now.”

“Well the satellite is on year 30 of its 2 year mission, so it might just be its time.”               

“Sir, MRO just came back online,” Mindy announced as the Orbiter’s status went green, swiveling in her chair to face her boss.

He looked over at Mindy. “Park, keep looking into what happened and keep an eye on it tonight, see if happens again.” He pulled on his jacket and picked up his briefcase. “I’m going home, but I want an email update in my inbox before you leave in the morning.”

“Yes sir,” she said, pushing her glasses up her nose.

Mindy went back to her normal work, putting the MRO’s glitch on the back burner for now until she noticed the first irregularity. She was sorting through incoming imagery and forwarding them to their correct recipients when she noticed that the MRO did not take pictures of the North Pole like it was scheduled to.

Assuming that when they lost communication with the Orbiter it reset its directives, she went to correct them, but before she could even pull up the program, a series of images from the Orbiter started coming through. At first she thought that maybe there was just a transmission delay, but as the images started displaying it was clear that it wasn’t the Pole. Looking up the longitude and latitude of the images she gasped.

31.2°N, 28.5°W

That was Acidalia Planitia. The site of the Ares 3 mission.

“Oh…” she mumbled to herself. “Uhhhh….”

There had been a memo after the Ares 3 mission was scrubbed from way up the food chain that there was to be no satellite images taken of the site until further notice, so she did not want to have to be the one to tell her boss that the Orbiter had gone rouge and went directly against orders.

She knew she could call her boss right away, never mind waiting to send him a status email for him to find in the morning, but the same part of her that couldn’t help but slow down and rubberneck at traffic accidents had her scouring the images looking for any sign of the two lost astronauts. The first image had nothing, just the relatively flat landscape of the Martian Plains. The second showed what was left of the MAV base. It was in the third where she found the sign she was looking for, but not the kind she had expected.

“What the fuck,” she whispered passionately.

She enhanced the image as much as she could, making it as clear as possible. That was technically someone else job, but she wasn’t wait around for someone else to do it. As the image sharped the message didn’t change, not that she expected it too, but there was no denying what it said, staring at her in high definition color.

Forget calling her boss, she needed to go jump straight to the top of the hierarchy. She picked up the phone on her desk. “Yes, hi. This is Mindy Park from SatCon. I need the emergency contact number for Dr. Venkat Kapoor. Yes, it’s an emergency.”

Chapter Text

SOL 17

Having pulled an all-nighter and staying awake long past sunrise, the two tired astronauts on Mars slept easily, late into the day. Completely oblivious of the chaos they had inspired back on earth.

Teddy Sanders Office, Johnson Space Center. Houston, Texas.

Teddy Sanders, Mitch Henderson, Venkat Kapoor, and Annie Montrose were all pulled from their beds early that morning and were currently sitting around a conference table staring at a single image projected on the screen on the wall. It was a satellite photo of the Ares 3 Hab and about 10 meters from it, written clearly in Martian rock, two words, one beneath the other.

NOT
DEAD
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

“Fuck!” Annie exclaimed, saying what everyone was thinking. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me right now.”

“Not helping Annie,” the director of NASA said sternly to his director of media relations. “How did we even get this image?”

“The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter went off line this morning for about twenty minutes. Two hours later these started coming through,” Venkat explained, slumped in his chair absently cleaning his glasses.

“It has to be Johanssen,” Mitch said. “She must have survived the storm. She’s the only one with the know how to reprogram a satellite.”

“And what the fuck is that underneath the not dead?” Annie asked, walking right up to the monitor to take a closer look at the image. Whatever it was, wasn’t written out in rock like the rest of the image, but looked like it had been carved into the dirt, and as a result wasn’t as legible.

“Mindy said she believes it’s a shrug emoji,” Venkat sighed, the headache that had started from the moment his phone rang that morning only growing as the day progressed.

“Who the fuck is Mindy,” Mitch asked, his head cocked sideways as he picked the emoji out of the Martian sand.

“Mindy Park, she works in SatCon,” Venkat said. “She’s the one who brought these images to my attention.”

“Is she the only other person who’s seen these?” Teddy questioned.

Venkat nodded.

“Let’s keep it that way for now.”

“I’ll speak to her,” Annie said, still staring at the image on the wall.

“What about Watney?” Teddy asked. “Any idea if he is also alive or is Johanssen alone?”

“We don’t know,” Venkat shrugged. “Things have clearly been moved around outside of the Hab, but there’s no indication if it was by one or two people. Since neither appear in the images.” The subtext of that statement was that while there wasn’t a body in any of the photos, that might not necessarily mean anything. If Watney had in fact been killed, Johanssen might have chosen to bury him.

 “Of course it would be our two most popular astronauts we’ve had since Ares 1. And their popularity mainly stemmed from the fact that they were the first team on Mars,” Annie grumbled mainly to herself, her mind already going a million miles a minute as she tried to develop a game plan for the inevitable fallout.

“For fucks sake Montrose,” Mitch grumbled.

“Oh don’t give me that look Henderson,” she snapped when she saw the way the Flight Director was looking at her. “I’m not saying I would have rather had two of the others left behind. I’m saying that the fact that even though he’s been a pain in my ass since day one, Watney is the most successful media relations specialist we’ve had in space for years. He’s funny and charming and brought causal public interest back to the program like we haven’t seen since the first mission. Every tweet, vine, and YouTube video he put on the internet went viral. The world felt like they knew him personally and they took news of his death even harder because of it. And Johanssen is gorgeous, brilliant and the youngest astronaut we’ve ever sent to Mars. Girls want to be her, boys want to date her. We’ve never had to order as many reprints of an astronaut’s official poster as we did hers. And since we’ve announced her death ten fucking days ago, they’ve been on backorder. This is going to be a PR clusterfuck.”

“Yes, thank you Annie,” Teddy interrupted before she could keep ranting. “I think we’re all aware of what the ramifications are going to be. However, it is what it is, and now we have to deal with it. Which is why the clock starts now and we need to get as far ahead of the situation as possible.”

“Fine,” Annie said opening up her laptop. “How soon do you want to go public with this?”

“We only have,” he looked down at his watch, “20 hours before we have to release this image and I want to know if I’m announcing that we left one or two of our astronauts behind on a deserted planet,” Teddy said, sitting back in his chair. “I want every satellite we have in orbit pointed at the Ares 3 site. Hopefully we get visual confirmation of one or both of them on the surface, and we can release the images together. Put together a statement for either contingency.”

“That’ll be fun,” she grumbled.

Mitch and Venkat glanced at each other, they might not always get agree on everything but a look of understanding passing between them.

“The airports the day after Thanksgiving are going to be a fucking nightmare,” Mitch sighed already resigned to it. “Kapoor, do you want San Jose or Chicago?”

“What, why?” Annie asked looking between the two men.

“Watney and Johanssen’s parents,” Teddy explained. “They deserve personal explanations before they hear it on the news.”

Meanwhile, Venkat paused and considered it.  Neither conversation was going to be fun. Whoever went to San Jose had to tell Johannsen’s parents that while their daughter is not actually dead, which is wonderful news, their daughter was left behind on Mars and would almost surely starve before they could do anything about it. And whoever went to Chicago, had to give Watney’s parents potentially false hope since they were no longer able to definitely say he was dead. Opening them up to the possibility that they might have to confirm his death all over again in upcoming days, or if he is still alive then just like Johanssen he too would starve before anyone could help them. Overall, Chicago was a more delicate conversation, which knowing Henderson meant that he should probably do it himself.

“I’ll go to Chicago,” Venkat finally said.

“Good I hate O’Hare.”

SOL 18

MISSION DAY                                                                                                         TIME 11:32
SOL 18                                                                                                                   LOG ENTRY > WATNEY #004

PRESSURE
12.48 PSI

OXYGEN
20.71%

TEMPERATURE
20.20 C

ENVIRONMENT
HAB > TERMINAL

Mark Watney fiddled with the keyboard in front of him looking distracted until he looked up at the camera at the top of the screen in front of him with a grin.

“Hey Johanssen,” he hollered over his shoulder. “Get your butt in here, I’ve got it going!”

“Slow your roll Watney,” Beth called back as she wandered into the room wearing an oversized sweater that clearly did not originally belong to her, cradling a mug of coffee between her hands. “I’m right here,” she said settling into the chair next to him, sharing the frame.

“Alright, let’s do this,” Mark announced rubbing his hands together, looking directly into the camera. “Mark Watney here with…” he trailed off looking at Beth expectantly.

She rolled her eyes over her mug which she was currently drinking out of. “Beth Johannsen,” she supplied her name once she had swallowed her sip.

“It’s currently Sol 18,” he picked up, “and, obviously, we did not die on Sol 6.” He waved his hands for the camera, “Surprise!”

“Excellent use of Jazz hands,” Beth smirked.

“Thank you,” he grinned. “Anyways, as of yesterday it is our hope that Earth is now aware of our very much alive status. Put a pin in that, we’ll get back to how Johanssen managed that later,” he said as an aside. “But it occurred to us that we should probably be taking steps to document our experiences as the first long term, hopefully only semi-permanent inhabitants of Mars. Either as a record of our actions in case things don’t break our way, or to make debriefing when we get rescued a hell of a lot easier.”

“Ugh, debriefing is the worst,” Beth grumbled into her coffee.

“That’s just because you always fall asleep half way through,” he pointed out teasingly.

“Just the ones with the physiatrists,” she said defensively. “They always ask the same question ten different ways, like they’re trying to catch you in a lie. It feels more like a Homeland Security interrogation than a mission debrief.” She sighed heavily, “It’s exhausting.”

“I like how you say that like you know what it’s like to be interrogated by Homeland Security,” Mark smirked.

Beth’s only answer was an enigmatic smile.

“You have not been interrogated by Homeland Security,” he said surely. “Have you?”

Beth grinned at him before turning back to the camera. “So we thought now would be a good time to update everyone on what we’ve been up to the past couple weeks while it’s still fresh in our minds.”

“Don’t think we’re done talking about this Johanssen,” Mark interrupted, still hung up on this new potential information. “We’re going to revisit this conversation later.”

“Whatever makes you happy Watney,” she smirked. “Can we get back to this now?” she asked pointing to the screen, her eyebrows raised.

“Oh right, go ahead,” he said with a sweeping hand gesture. He wasn’t lying though, he would definitely be investigating the topic further once the camera was off.

“Thank you,” she rolled her eyes at Mark before turning her full attention back to the camera. “First thing we want to get clear is that it is NOT our crew’s fault,” Beth began vehemently, Mark nodding enthusiastically beside her. “They had every reason to believe we were dead and only followed protocol. When we evaced on Sol 6 we left the Hab in pairs, Watney and I were partnered up, and were bringing up the rear as we made our way to the MAV. Unfortunately, the Main Communications Array was ripped loose from its mooring and stuck me in the back of the head, knocking out my bio sensors, before hitting Watney who was standing next to me as well.”

“I was impaled by the antenna from the dish which then broke itself off in my side. So not only was my bio feed knocked out as well, the crew also would have potentially seen my suit decompression alarm go off,” Mark added, wanting to make sure their crew didn’t receive any of the blame for their marooning.

“I still think it’s an odd coincidence that the dish managed to knock both of our bio sensors out,” Beth mused, getting slightly off topic. “I can’t help but wonder if there is a design flaw somewhere in the flight suits. We know that they’re built to withstand the building G forces of takeoff and landing, but a single sharp blow destroyed them both.” 

Mark considered her statement for a moment. “Something for the people at home to figure out before they send Ares 4 out here with the same tech,” he addressed the camera and their future audience.

“I remained unconscious throughout the night,” Beth said picking their story back up from where she left off. “And by the time I woke up on the morning of Sol 7 the storm had abated. I had received at least a moderate concussion and a partially dislocated shoulder-“

“You dislocated your shoulder?” Mark interrupted.

“Only partially, it popped itself back in as soon as I put weight on it when I tried to stand up,” she said turning to the man beside her. “Didn’t you know that?”

“No!” he exclaimed. “You never told me.”

“Oh,” Beth said with a one shouldered shrug. “You were injured so much worse than I was, it must have slipped my mind.”

Mark looked both doubtful and unimpressed. “So all that time you were nagging at me for trying to do physical labor while recovering from an injury, you were hiding the fact that you had dislocated your arm?”

“I wasn’t hiding it. It just didn’t come up. Like I said, it wasn’t that bad, some aspirin to reduce the swelling and cut the soreness and it was fine,” she insisted. “Can we get back to Sol 7 please?” she asked gesturing to the recording camera.

“We will be revisiting this later as well, Miss do as I say, not as I do,” he informed her, mentally adding it to the list of things they’d be talking about once they turned off the camera.

“I’ll look forward to it,” she deadpanned, looking straight into the camera like she was letting the whole world know just how much she wasn’t looking forward to it. “Anyways, once I regained consciousness, I quickly noticed the MAV was gone and was able to figure out what had happened. On my walk back to the Hab I found this one,” she gestured to Mark with her thumb, “lying face down in the dirt half covered with sand.”

“The antenna from the array had enough force to punch through my suit and me, but was stopped by my pelvis,” Mark continued, picking up his part of the story. “When I rolled down the hill and landed face down it forced the rod into a strongly oblique angle which put enough torque on the hole in my suit to make a weak seal. Then my copious bleeding did the rest of the work by sealing the rest of the hole as the water evaporated leaving enough gunk behind that the suit could do its job to hold pressure and keep me alive.”

“So once I realized he wasn’t dead, I wanted to keep him that way,” she glanced over at Mark who smiled back fondly. “So I pulled the antenna out-“

“Which hurt like a bitch,” he felt the need to interject.

“So I could patch the suit, before getting him up and back to the Hab-“

“Which also hurt like a bitch.”

“Where I was able to get the wound cleaned up and stapled shut-“

“Which really hurt like a bitch.”

“Oh, quit your whining,” she admonished without any heat. “You lived.”

“Look at this terrible bedside manner I’ve had to put up with,” Mark addressed the camera. “Really makes me miss the tender love and care of Dr. Beck,” he added wistfully.

Beth laughed, “If you thought my mother-henning was bad, can you even imagine if it was Beck here instead of me? You’d still be on bed rest.”

Mark didn’t even have to think about it. “You’re probably not wrong,” he admitted. He leaned forward towards the camera like he was about to reveal a secret. “Doctor Bossy Beck is Bossy,” he said sotto voice.

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “It’s been healing well other than the time he pulled a staple by being stubborn and not accepting his limits,” she glared at him from the corner of her eyes. “But there’s been no sign of infection so that’s a relief.”

He ignored her glare, instead leaning back in his chair and pulling up his shirt to reveal the wound site, still a little red and sore, but not inflamed and scabbing over nicely. “We removed the staples yesterday, which by the way, also hurt like a bitch,” he smirked, “but it’s nice to have them out.”

Beth reached out and poked him in the side, which made Mark flinch away, ticklish. “Stop showing off your muscles,” she teased. “We all saw the Under Armor commercial. We all know you’re ripped, ya know, for a botanist.”

“Well I’ve got to show them off while I still have them,” he grinned back at her. “The way we’re eating they’re not going to last much longer.” He turned back to the camera. “Speaking of that and of my mad botany skills, I guess now would be a good time to transition into Operation Tater Triumph.”

“I’ll give you three guesses who came up with that name,” Beth said one eyebrow arched. “And the first two don’t count.”

Press Room, Johnson Space Center. Houston, Texas.

Annie was not looking forward to the next few minutes, but she was a consummate professional and this was her job so she steeled herself before stepping out onto the podium. It was disgustingly early in the morning, but they’d already pushed it as late as they could, past the 24 hour limit of holding imagery as it was. She’d really been hoping to get satellite imagery of Johannsen, or Watney and Johannsen outside of the Hab before her first announcement to the press, but she and/or they were not cooperative.

“Good morning,” she addressed the assembled press. “I know it’s early so thank you for being here. We have an important announcement so if you could please take your seats.”

“What’s this about Annie?” Bryan Hess from NBC asked. “Something happen with the Hermes?”

“Please take your seats,” she repeated, holding firm while she waited for the reporters to settle. “This is going to be a short, but very important announcement. There will be no questions at this time but we will have a full press conference with a Q&A in about an hour.”

Waiting for the murmurs to die down, she took a calming breath and continued. “Twelve days ago we were aggrieved to have to announce the deaths of astronauts Beth Johannsen and Mark Watney. However, we have since received satellite imagery from Mars that confirms that at least one of them is still alive.”

Behind her on the monitor, the image in question lit up in violent color. The room was preternaturally silent as the press took in the NOT DEAD emblazoned across the screen.

And then the room erupted into chaos.

Chapter Text

SOL 19

“How does it look?” Beth asked, sideling up to where Mark was peering into a microscope.

“Looks like a single-celled organism dance party,” he said, looking up from the scope with a pleased smile. “Go ahead take a look.”

She did as he said and peered through the eye pieces at the slide of dirt that he had prepared. Sure enough there were little microbes moving around on the glass. She was certain that what she was looking at was more meaningful to Mark than it was her to her, since biology was not really her forte. But if he was excited, then she was excited. 

“Well would you look at them go,” she said with a grin, moving away from the microscope and letting Mark resume his position.

“It’s better than I expected actually,” he said happily, as he replaced that slide with another sample taken from another place on the ground. “I was going to give it a couple more days, but I think I’m gonna go ahead and do the first dirt doubling today. Then I’m going to take a little corner and get the potatoes in the ground to seed. I would rather wait and do one more doubling and have more soil to work with before planting, but I think it’s more important to get them in the ground now, even if means having to do an extra doubling later. What do you think?”

“Awesome, and I trust your judgement,” Beth told him sincerely. Being ahead of schedule for Operation Tater Triumph was nothing but a good thing. “And while you’re doing that, my plan for the day is to go outside and get the solar farm cleaned off, it’s been a couple days since we’ve done it.”

“You just don’t want to be in here when I open the waste box,” he smirked knowingly, talking about the container half full of wet dirt they had been dumping their crap into for the last five days. Before Mark doubled the dirt, he would use that to fertilize the new dirt to really give the bacteria something to grow in.

“Abso-fucking-lutely,” she confirmed shamelessly. “Although the panels really should be cleared off today. Having enough power is the one problem we don’t have. I’d like to keep it that way.”

Venkat Kapoor’s Office, Johnson Space Center. Houston, Texas.

“You’ve got nothing?” Venkat groaned, leaning back in his desk chair. “So you’re telling me that Johanssen managed to send us a message with a 30 year old satellite, a pile of rocks, and whatever spare parts she could cobble together, but we can’t send her a message back with 20 experts working round the clock for three days with a multibillion dollar communications network at their disposal?”

“Um, yes sir,” Chuck confirmed, fidgeting where he stood in front of the Director of Mars Missions. “That’s correct.”

“We don’t even know how she managed to communicate with the MRO to hack it,” Morris added.  “She shouldn’t have a transmitter strong enough. Not without a working com dish.”

“And without a dish we can’t send a message back,” Chuck continued. “We’ve got the entire SETI network focused on Mars today. To see if she’s sending anything else out.”

“But it’s been a couple hours and so far no dice,” Morris picked up. “Whatever it was she was using to communicate with the MRO isn’t broadcasting anymore.”

“Will someone please explain to me how a single windstorm removed our ability to talk to Ares 3?” Venkat said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Failure of imagination,” Chuck said simply.

“Totally didn’t see it coming,” Morris agreed.

Venkat opened his mouth to speak again, but was interrupted by the ringing of his phone on his desk. “Kapoor,” he answered brusquely. “Yes, Ms. Park what can I do for you today.”

He dismissed the two scientists with a wave of his hand. Chuck and Morris who were all too eager to be out of their boss’s office, quickly fled before he asked any more questions that they only had bad news to answer with.

“She did?” Venkat exclaimed sitting straight up in his chair. “When? She’s still outside? I’ll be right down,” he said quickly already sliding his arms back into his suit jacket.

SOL 20

“I wish we had popcorn,” Mark mused as half way through another episode of Scrubs that they’d stolen off of Beck’s personal drive.

“Mhmmm,” Beth hummed in agreement. “With extra butter.”

They were relaxing in front of the biggest screen in the Hab as they watched. Mark was completely stretched out with his socked feet propped up the edge of the desk, his arms crossed lazily over his chest, while Beth resembled an egg with a head, her legs tucked up into her sweatshirt and her arms banded tight around her knees.

“The really terrible movie theater kind, that’s really just butter flavored oil,” he continued.

“And super salty too,” she added. “None of that kettle corn crap.”

“You don’t like kettle corn?” he asked surprised.

“No not at all,” she replied her nose scrunched up. “Popcorn is supposed to be salty not sweet. If I want sweet, I’ll have candy.”

“What about cracker jacks?”

“Are you going to turn this into a baseball thing?” she asked warily, one eyebrow arched, knowing how seriously he took his Cubs.

Mark opened his mouth to reply, but was distracted when a gust of wind made the canvas of the Hab ripple over their heads.

They glanced at each other for half a moment before Beth extricated herself from her sweatshirt cocoon and grabbed the laptop she had left on her bunk. There was only one weather station left completely intact after her booster project and they had moved it so it sat right outside the Hab. It wasn’t doing them any good a kilometer out since they couldn’t communicate with it, but after hard lining it to the Hab’s systems, they could at least get limited information about the weather conditions in their direct vicinity, without having to go outside.

“It doesn’t look bad,” Mark said from where he had gotten up to look out one of the small Hab windows. “It’s definitely kicking up some dust, but it’s not even blocking out the sun that much.

“You’re right,” Beth confirmed, looking up from the data on her screen. “It’s only blowing 25kph and gusting 35, not very much power behind it at all. No way to tell how big it is or how long it’ll last, but at least it’s not very strong.”

Mark felt his pulse, which had kicked up at the first sign of wind, start to slow back to normal. “Glad to hear it,” he said honestly, wandering into the other room to grab a spare blanket to wrap around his shoulders before sitting back down to continue watching TV.

Several episodes later, Beth glanced at the laptop she had brought over and kept in her peripheral vision. “Looks like it’s just about past,” she announced after reading over the data.

“That was fast,” Mark commented, standing to go back to the window. “Yep, its back to clear butterscotch skies out there.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t bad at all,” she agreed. “Of course it was just bad enough to cover the solar panels with dust after I spent several hours clearing them off yesterday,” she grumbled annoyed at Mars in general.

“I’ll take care of it,” he offered. “You can hang out inside.”

“What? Are you sure?” she questioned.

“Yeah I’m positive,” he assured her. “You’ve cleaned them off by yourself the last three times, it’s my turn.”

“I don’t mind coming out to help,” she offered again.

“I know you don’t, but I’ve got this one,” he insisted, already heading over to his EVA suit. “Just don’t watch any more Scrubs without me.”

Beth laughed. “I think I’m done with TV today anyways. I think I’ll just read a book while you’re outside.”

SatCon, Johnson Space Center. Houston, Texas

Mindy Park sat slumped low in her chair, her feet kicked out straight in front of her, snacking on some granola while she flipped through the latest imagery from Mars.

“Hello Ms. Park,” a familiar voice sounded from right behind her.

“Dr. Kapoor!” she exclaimed, scrambling to sit up straight while not spilling her snack. “I wasn’t expecting you. There hasn’t been any activity outside the Hab today or I would have called you.”

“That’s fine Mindy,” Venkat said, trying to put her at ease. “I was informed there was a dust storm in the Acidalia Planitia today.”

“Um yeah,” she said pushing her glasses up before pulling up the imagery. “It was just a little one and it’s already over. It only lasted a couple of hours, it was just enough to kick up some dust and it passed over them pretty quickly.”

“That’s good news,” Venkat said as he pulled up a chair and sat down beside her.

Mindy side-eyed her boss’s boss’s boss warily, not sure what he was doing in SatCon when she was sure there was about 1000 better uses of the Director of Mars Missions’ time than watching her flip through dozens of images of the same exact thing.

“Is there something I can do for you sir?” she finally asked.

“Oh,” Venkat said surprised, not realizing he hadn’t said why he was there. “Now that the storm has passed, she – or they – will need to clean off the solar farm again.”

“Oh, okay,” Mindy nodded. That made sense. Except… “So you’re just going to wait here with me?” she prodded further. “I can call you if someone shows up, if you have something else you need to do.”

“To be honest, I might also be avoiding Annie Montrose,” he admitted. “She wants me to do another press conference this afternoon and I don’t have anything new to say since the press conference this morning. So my presence here is twofold. She won’t think to look for me here and I’m hoping that we might get some new information for when she does manage to track me down.”

Mindy nodded knowingly. That made more sense. She had only met the director of media relations in person once, and that was a only a few days ago when Ms. Montrose came to her to basically warn her to keep her mouth shut about what she’d found in the imagery until NASA made an official statement. Mindy had left the encounter not knowing is she was more terrified or attracted to the older woman. She was still trying to figure it out.   

“So I take it if you’re here looking for news,” she said making conversation, as she remembered her snack on her desk and poured some into her hand before wordlessly offering to share. “You haven’t had any luck trying to establish communication?”

“No, thank you,” he said, before pulling his glasses off to clean. “Unfortunately no, without a working com array on Mars it seems to be a dead end,” he said. “I still have people looking into it, but right now we need to focus on finding a viable rescue plan and figuring out a way to keep her or them alive until said rescue plan.”

“And I guess those would be very different equations depending on if you’re dealing with one or two people alive on Mars,” she said, brushing the crumbs off her hand before leaning forward to open the new imagery that just came through.

“Exactly,” he said slipping his glasses back on his face. “Which is why if Mark is alive I really need them both to leave the Hab at the same time.”

Mindy took a moment to peer at the new photos flipping back and forth between a couple of them. “Unfortunately today is not that day, Dr. Kapoor,” she said pointing to a figure on the image. “You’ve got someone cleaning the panels, but it’s still only one person.”

Venkat ran a hand down his cheek as he looked at the images, slumping back in his chair.

“It’s only been a couple days,” she offered pacifyingly. “It’s way too soon to start making assumptions.”

“Try telling that to the press,” he countered. “They don’t seem to care about that. And I’m not going to be the one to tell them Watney is dead if there is any chance he might not be. I can’t handle one of my astronauts coming back from the grave twice.”

Mindy tossed another handful of granola into her mouth. “He’s Schrodinger’s astronaut,” he mused sagely as she munched.

Venkat’s head slowly swiveled in her direction. “What was that?”

“I said he’s Schrodinger’s astronaut,” she repeated. “Until we look inside the Hab he is both dead and not dead.” When Venkat didn’t immediately reply Mindy kept talking. “Until they either leave the Hab at the same time, or we can contact Johanssen and get confirmation that he didn’t survive Sol 6, as far as we’re concerned both realities exist. Schrodinger’s astronaut.”

“I suppose that’s an apt analogy,” Venkat said after a moment.

“For what it’s worth,” she said. “I think Watney’s alive.”

“And why would you think that?” he asked, honestly curious at her answer.

“Because of the –” she lifted her arms up and shrugged mimicking the drawing in the sand. “I mean I’ve never met Watney or Johanssen. But from what I know of them through the media at least, that seems like the kind of thing that Watney would contribute,” she shrugged again, but for real this time. “Just my thoughts.”

Venkat considered it for a moment. Mindy did have a point, it was something that he would expect from Watney. But Johanssen was a bit of a dark horse personality and humor wise. While he had no problems believing a 100% that adding an emoticon to a message like that would be something that Watney would do, he couldn’t 100% say that it’s something Johannsen wouldn’t do and therefore couldn’t take it as irrefutable evidence that Watney was still alive.

“You make a valid point,” he conceded. “Unfortunately I’m not willing to make a definitive public statement to the world solely on the merits of Watney’s terrible sense of humor.” 

“Fair enough,” Mindy shrugged, turning back to the screen.

They fell silent as the watched the progression of the cleaning of the solar farm through the images coming through every few minutes. Eventually the figure finished their job and reentered the Hab and Venkat’s attention drifted over to the rock message still sharply visible, even though the emoticon had been wiped clean from the sand in the wind storm earlier that day.

“I wish she would change the message,” he sighed. “Update us on her condition.”

“Yeah,” Mindy agreed. “But I get why she hasn’t. However she managed to hack the MRO was obviously a Hail Mary.”

“And she has no idea if it worked,” Venkat continued her train of thought. “She has no way of knowing that we received it.”

“But she’s smart enough to know that even if the MRO didn’t take her reprogramming, that we’d have to take imagery of the Ares 3 site eventually,” she added.

“Who knows how long that would have taken,” he muttered to himself, knowing that Teddy with Annie’s backing would have wanted to minimize the PR fallout as much as possible and wouldn’t have green lit imagery of Acidalia Planitia for months, maybe even longer. Possibly too late to do anything for their marooned astronauts. 

Mindy just hummed lightly, to indicate she had heard him, having the feeling that he wasn’t actually looking for a response.

“What must it be like? He continued to ponder. “She’s stuck out there. Even if Mark is alive with her, they think they’re totally alone. That we all gave up on them and left them for dead. What kind of effect does that have on a person’s psychology?”

He turned to look at Mindy, “I mean, what are they thinking right now?”

SOL 21

Tucked into her bunk, blankets pulled tight beneath her chin, Beth was only moments from sleep when Mark’s voice called from across the room.

“Hey Beth,” he said in a shouted whisper. “Are you still awake?”

“Barely,” she replied sleepily, not opening her eyes. “What’s up?”

Mark hesitated. “Never mind, go to sleep.”

“What is it Mark?” she asked again with a heavy sigh. If he just left it there it was going to bother her and then she’d never fall asleep.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll ask you tomorrow.”

“For fucks sake, just ask your question!” she said frustration clear in her tone.

“How come Aquaman can control whales?”

“What?!” she exclaimed rolling over and opening her eyes.

“How come Aquaman can control whales?” he asked again, looking back at her from across the dimly lit room.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” she said lifting her head to look at him.

“Whales are mammals, it doesn’t even make sense.”

“You don’t even make sense,” she retorted surly, dropping face first back down onto her pillow. “Go the fuck to sleep Mark.”

The Hab fell into silence except for the ever present hums of the life support systems. This time it was Mark who was almost asleep when Beth spoke.

“God damnit Watney!”

“What?” he asked not bothering to open his eyes.

“Why can Aquaman control whales?!”

Suddenly wide awake again, Mark rolled over onto one elbow to face her. “I mean I understand if you’re gonna say, alright well kids might not know that a whale is a mammal,” he continued as there hadn’t been a fifteen minute gap in the conversation.  “And if Aquaman needs a big fish the kids are gonna say well why didn’t he call a whale and you’re not going to stop the show to explain that whales are mammals. Because the kid doesn’t know the whale’s a fucking mammal.”

“I hate you so much sometimes,” Beth said dryly.

“You love me,” Mark countered with a shit eating grin.

“Whatever.” She pulled the blankets up over her head. “I’m going to sleep.”

Beth did not go to sleep. But Mark did, which is why she was throwing an empty plastic bottle across the room at him forty five minutes later.

“What the hell?” he asked groggily when said bottle bounced off his forehead.

“I figured it out.”

“Figured what out?” he asked confused, already half back to sleep.

“Why Aquaman can control whales!” she announced.

“Are you serious right now?”

“He’s Aquaman not Fishman,” she explained. “It’s so obvious it’s stupid I didn’t realize it right away. My only excuse is that I’ve always been a Marvel girl not a DC girl. Anyways, he can telepathically control anything that has aquatic evolution. So that would include marine mammals, aquatic reptiles, cephalopods, as well as fish.”  

Mark cracked an eye open to look at the time. “Have you seriously been laying there this whole time thinking about this?”

“Not the whole time,” she said defensively. And it was true, a lot of it was spent trying to go back to sleep, and even longer cursing his name for putting these questions into her brain when she didn’t have access to google.

“Go to sleep Johanssen.”

“You’re welcome!”

Chapter Text

SOL 22

Beth stretched in her bunk as she slowly woke up on her own. The absence of alarm clocks and 6AM wakeup calls, was the silver lining of being marooned on Mars. Rolling over she cracked her eyes open to find Mark sitting on the floor, leaning against the bunk across from her, a tablet forgotten in his lap as he beamed at her.

“Good morning sunshine!” he greeted with far more enthusiasm then she could deal with before she’d consumed any caffeine.

“Ugh…” she groaned, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Were you watching me sleep? Because I’ve got to tell ya, that’s totally creeper status.”

“No, I was just waiting for you to wake up,” he corrected with a roll of his eyes. 

“By watching me sleep?” she said again, one eyebrow cocked. 

Mark arched his own eyebrow right back as he lifted the tablet from his lap, giving it a shake in her direction.

“A likely story,” Beth said with a yawn, still struggling to fully wake up. “So tell me, why were you being a creeper?”

“I was waiting for you to wake up,” he repeated drolly, “because I had an idea that I wanted to run past you.”

“I swear to god Watney, if you are about to ask me why the Incredible Hulk doesn’t end up pantsless every time he transforms I will make you sleep in the Rover for a week,” she grumbled, still not over last night’s Aquaman nonsense.

“Silly woman, that’s easy, Reed Richards invented super stretchy pants for Bruce to wear that would expand and contract with him when he transformed,” Mark replied easily. “No, this isn’t a comic book science thought, it’s a real world science thought.”

She groaned, pulling her blanket up over her head. “Please don’t make me science before I have my coffee,” she pleaded, her voice muffled by the fabric between them. 

Mark couldn’t help but laugh at her, he’d never known anyone in his life that was less of a morning person than Beth Johanssen. He climbed to his feet and headed towards the kitchen. “How about I go make you a cup while you say your tearful goodbyes to your pillow, and then I’ll tell you my idea.”

“You are my favorite person in the world,” she said sincerely as she poked her face out from beneath her covers.

“I’m the only person in the world,” he called over his shoulder as he left the room.

“Semantics!” she yelled at his retreating back.

Mark prepared her usual cup of black coffee and took it with him into the lab, sitting down at the station that they were using as their dining table now that they’d turned the majority of the kitchen into a farm.

Beth finally shuffled in blurry eyed, a few minutes later. Mark had to repress a smirk when he saw that she hadn’t seemed to be able to manage pants since she was still in her sleep shorts, but at least she did get a sweatshirt on. She also had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders that she was trailing behind her. Slumping into the chair across from him, she made grabby motions at the mug which he helpfully slid across the table until it’s within her reach.

He knows better than to start speaking right away. Until the caffeine hits her blood system he might as well be an adult in a Charlie Brown special for all that she would process. Whomp whomp whomp whomp whomp. He’d seen the glazed over look in her eyes many a time when Commander Lewis would try to brief the crew during breakfast. Beth would always have to double check with one of them afterwards to make sure that she hadn’t missed anything critical.  Instead, he waits until she’s had a couple sips, amused as always that he can actually see the alertness growing in her eyes as she consumes more and more coffee.

 “So, I had a really bad idea about how to make water,” Mark announced, once he had deemed her awake enough to science.

“You did?!” Beth exclaimed, he eyes widening excitedly.  “Wait, how bad of an idea?”

“A really terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea that you’re going to hate.”

Beth sighed and closed her eyes a moment to steel herself. “Alright, break it to me.”

“Hydrazine,” Mark said confidently.

“Hydrazine?” she repeated questioningly.

“Yes, I want to turn it into water.”

Beth blinked at him once, and then again. “You want to convert rocket fuel into water.”

“Yes,” he confirmed with a firm nod. “I mean break it down. What is water, but hydrogen and oxygen? We know the recipe, take hydrogen add oxygen and burn. Voila instant H2O.”

“And each molecule of hydrazine has four hydrogen atoms,” she said rubbing at her temples, seeing where Mark was going with this. “Which means for every liter of hydrazine that is left in the MDV we could make two liters of water.”

“Exactly!”

“So your plan is to set rocket fuel on fire,” she said evenly. “Inside the Hab, the place where we live.”

“Yes,” Mark nodded again. She was actually taking it better then he thought she would. He’d taken it worse and it was his idea.

“You’re right, it’s a terrible idea and I hate it.”

“But –” he said leadingly, he could tell there was a but coming.

“But,” she sighed, “you’re right. It’s a good idea, it should work. I mean it’s a horrible idea and it has a very real possibility killing us horribly, but it’s a good idea.”

Mark just shrugged, she wasn’t exactly wrong. But they also didn’t really have another choice. They were due for another dirt doubling for a couple days and they were already low on available water that they weren’t holding out for emergency reserves. If he tried doubling the dirt without wetting it first, it would all die. Then they would be royally screwed.  

“And I assume you also figured out where you’re getting all the extra oxygen from and still leaving us enough to breathe?” she asked, resigned.

“Yeah,” he nodded again, “the MAV’s fuel plant.”

“Of course.” She quickly connected the dots, “Feed the CO2 to the oxygenater and let it do its job.”

Mark snapped his fingers and tapped the tip of his nose, pleased that she was so easily able to follow his train of thought.

“At least that part of the equation doesn’t lead to potential death by fiery explosion,” she sighed. She hadn’t even been awake an hour yet and she could already feel a headache building up behind her eyes.

“I try to limit any plan of mine to only one step that could possibly end in instant death,” he joked. “Some people might say to me, come on Mark go big or go home. Show the universe what extremely botany is all about. But I would reply, no I don’t want to show off. Keep the death defying stunts to a minimum. Give other botanists a chance to hope that they could one day be as cool as me.”

“How magnanimous of you,” she replied drolly.

“Thanks,” he said breezily. “I try.”

Beth rolled her eyes even as she hid her grin behind her coffee mug. “So how do we start getting this absolutely insane idea rolling?”

“I want to do an EVA to get the fuel plant in the MAV turned back on so it’ll start sucking CO2 out of the air again, and then I’m gonna check how many liters of hydrazine are left in the MDV,” Mark said snapping back to the scientist he was. “See exactly what we’re working with.”

“There’s tons,” Beth said. “I don’t remember the exact numbers because descent was the most terrifying 23 minutes of my life, and I was too busy trying not to pee myself to remember the data, but I know that he spent well under expected fuel usage. Martinez is a bad ass pilot.”

Mark laughed, he couldn’t disagree with either statement. “Hell yeah he is. And he quite possibly may have inadvertently saved our lives because of it.”

“Let’s never tell him that,” Beth said, her eyes wide. “His ego is big enough. Can you imagine how insufferable he’d be?”

“Agreed,” Mark replied without even thinking about it, extending his hand so they could shake on it.

“Do you want help dealing with fuel plant or the hydrazine?” Beth asked, once they had sealed their pact.

“Nah,” Mark shook his head. “It’s just a matter or restoring power to the MAV base since it turned itself off once the rest of it took off. And I’m just going to see how much hydrazine is left so we know exactly what numbers we’re dealing with, then come back inside. Shouldn’t take me very long to do either,” he told her. “I think it’s best to leave the extremely volatile and very combustible rocket fuel outside and as far away from the Hab for as long as possible.”

“I’ll second that decision,” Beth agreed easily.

“See,” he said flashing her a shit-eating grin, as he got up to begin the process of putting on his EVA suit, figuring that there was no time like the present, “keeping the death defying science confined to one step.”

Beth rolled her eyes as he walked away, calling after him “Try not to jinx us will you?!”

SOL 23

After Mark had come in from checking how much hydrazine was left in the MDV – 292 liters, which was almost 600 liters of water. Way more than they needed! – Mark and Beth spent the rest of the day brainstorming and planning.

Like how would they store the hydrogen and oxygen? They wouldn’t, it makes more sense to turn it into water as they go.

What would they use as a catalyst? Iridium that they could steal from the MDV engine.

How long will it take to create 600 liters of water? A long time. The MAV fuel plant can create half a liter of liquid carbon dioxide every hour. Which means it will take at least 25 days to make the oxygen they’ll need. Although Mark might be able to beef up the fuel plant compressor to make CO2 faster and save time, but he wouldn’t know until they went back outside again and he could take a closer look at the MAV base.

What would they create their reaction chamber out of? Lots of plastic bags, duct tape, and parts of Vogel’s butchered EVA suit.

In a Hab full of inflammable objects, what would they use as their pilot light? Martinez’s personal item would do the trick. Sorry Rick, you should have taken your shit with you when you left Mars if you didn’t want anyone touching/taking/destroying your stuff.

And perhaps most importantly, how they would liberate the hydrogen from the hydrazine? Answer: carefully.

But that was yesterday.

Today had been all about fabrication.

They had spent the vast majority of the day getting their cut and paste on. Beth focused on chopping up the largest bags they had and duct taping them back together to create plastic tarping. Then using a small table that she dragged around the perimeter of the kitchen, she ignored all of Marks plentiful short jokes while she taped it to the ceiling so it would surround their little farm. If all went according to plan, they were creating their own little makeshift greenhouse, keeping as much moisture inside of it as possible.

Meanwhile, Mark worked on building the actual setup they would be using to convert rocket fuel to water. Another couple plastic bags were cut apart and taped back together to create a tent they would put over their reaction chamber. The air hose liberated from Vogel’s EVA suit hung from the ceiling by thread he cut out the already ruined shirt he had been wearing on Sol 6 created a chimney. All he needed was the iridium catalyst from the MDV and the hydrazine itself. Both of which they would be retrieving the next morning.

They only took a break when then gnawing in their stomachs became too much to ignore, and after a late lunch they went right back to it.  This time they could sit at the table as they worked, Mark making sure the math was right in his chemistry equations, while Beth worked on desecrating Martinez’s crucifix.

“I feel like I’m going to hell for this,” she sighed while she manipulated the pliers and screwdriver in her hands to get another long sliver of wood from the cross.

“Aren’t you an atheist?” Mark said looking up from the screen in front of him, one eyebrow quirked. “You don’t believe in hell.”

“Yeah, but even if I don’t believe it, I know what it means to Martinez,” she explained. “Feels wrong.”

Reaching across the table, Mark picked up the small metal Jesus figure that she’d pried off the cross first thing. “Well, to be fair, Jesus once turned water into wine just to keep the party going at a wedding and because his mother asked him too,” he countered, spinning the corpus between his fingers.

He wasn’t practicing, and was more agnostic than anything else these days, but he’d grown up catholic and knew the stories. He looked down at the figure and spoke directly to it. “Although if you could do us a solid and turn rocket fuel into wine, I’ll be in church every Sunday when we get home.”

Beth laughed. “You and me both!”

“Regardless,” Mark continued, “as someone who knew the importance have having the right refreshments, I’m sure Jesus would be alright if we used a crucifix to turn hydrazine into water so we don’t die.”

“I guess,” she shrugged, still concentrating on turning the small cross into smaller splinters.

“And there’s that whole, God helps those who help themselves. Besides,” he continued with a smirk as he pressed the corpus into her hand, “it’s not God you need to worry about.”

Beth looked up at Mark and took in the look on his face. She knew he was just waiting to say something smart-assed, but she just couldn’t help herself. “Okay,” she sighed, “I’ll bite, what do I actually need to be worrying about?”

“Martian vampires obviously,” he said, the duh clear in his tone. “But I suppose it’s a risk we’ll just have to take.”

She looked down at the figure in her hand. “Do you see what I have to put with?” she asked metal Jesus. “I guess it’s a good thing you don’t exist or you’d probably be rolling your eyes at him from heaven or where ever it is that the son of God hangs out in his spare time.”

Mark laughed as she set the figure down, and they both went back to their respective jobs.

“Yo, Johanssen,” Mark said, getting Beth’s attention, after working in silence for a few minutes.

“Yeah, what’s up?” she asked, looking up from her sacrilegious whittling.

“Can you do me a favor and double check my math?” he asked, gesturing the laptop that was sitting in front of him.

In all honestly he probably should have just let her do it from the beginning since she was the one with the fancy math degree from MIT, but since this was all his idea she was letting him take lead on the project. Of course that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to have her give her approval on everything before they started playing with rocket fuel and fire.

“Of course,” she said, carefully gathering up all the splinters she had made and dropping them into a small plastic bag, before pulling the laptop across the table so she could see it. She took her time and went over the equations multiple times, looking for any mistakes or oversights while Mark waited patiently. “Looks good,” she finally said once she was confident there weren’t any errors. “We just have to make sure that whoever ignites the catalyst is wearing their EVA suit. Other than the fact that hydrazine is uber toxic, we wouldn’t want the oxygen we’re exhaling to upset the chemical balance,” she said with a laugh.

“That’s a really good point,” Mark said, the look on his face making it clear that it was only just now occurring to him.

“Oh my god Watney, really?” Beth asked aghast. “You would have blown yourself up!”

“Well then, it’s a good thing I have you here isn’t it,” he offered placatingly.

“Okay that just makes me really worried about my second point since I thought the first one was obvious,” she said shaking her head.

“Yeah what’s that?”

“Well, while your equation to turn the hydrazine into water is technically correct in its pure mathematical form, not all of the hydrogen is going to perfectly convert, some of it is going to escape into the room as a gas, so we need to deal with that excess hydrogen so we don’t turn the Hab into the Hindenburg.”

Mark bit down on his lips and didn’t make eye contact. “That’s also a really good point.”

“For fucks sake, Mark!” Beth exclaimed her hands coming up to sink into her hair. “So you would have blown yourself up and then you would have turned the Hab into a bomb, blowing both of us up?!”

“Chemistry is hard!”

Beth picked up the tiny metal Jesus and spoke directly to it. “Maybe I should start believing in you so I can pray for a miracle that we’re both still alive this time tomorrow. How does that sound to you JC?”

Chapter Text

Press Room, Johnson Space Center. Houston, Texas.

Teddy Sanders was not having a great day. It would in fact, be a stretch to even call it a good day. Although that was just par for the course these last few weeks. Ever since the Ares 3 mission scrub on Sol 6 and the subsequent emergency evac, each day presented a new challenge to solve, another fire to put out, or another god damned press conference to hold. He was so tired of holding press conferences.

“Yes, you,” the director of NASA called on the correspondent from the BBC.

“Do we know what the purpose of yesterday’s EVA was?” she asked in a sharp London accent.

“At this point in time we can only speculate,” he answered honestly. “All we saw was someone approach the MAV struts, then a short time later travel to the MDV, and then move back inside the Hab. It was a short EVA and she didn’t seem to bring anything inside. So no, we don’t know the purpose of said EVA at this time.”

“You said she,” the reporter from MSNBC pointed out. “How could you tell it was Johanssen?”

“That was my error,” Teddy admitted. “We don’t know for sure that it was Johanssen, but it’s easy to default to saying she since we know that she is currently alive. It’s Watney’s status that we are still unsure of.”

“Why are you so confident in saying that Johanssen survived, but not Watney?” the New York Times reporter asked.

Teddy had to force himself to hold back his exasperated sigh. He felt like he had answered this question at every press conference he’d spoken at for the last week. “Because as the computer expert on the crew, Johanssen is the only person with the technical knowledge to reprogram the MRO in order to alert us that she did not perish in the storm on Sol 6,” he explained yet again. “So we feel confident in announcing her survival at this time.”

“What are the odds that Watney is also alive?”

“If you would have asked me ten days ago if either astronaut could have survived past Sol 6, I would have said it was impossible,” he said frankly. “I have since been reminded that nothing is impossible.”

“How long without any sign of life, before you declare him dead?” the reporter from Fox News jumped in.

“It’s only been eight days since we received the first image proving that there was anyone alive on Mars,” Teddy reminded them. “It’s too soon to be making any declarations.”

“But we’ve seen only one person come out the Hab, three times now,” the same reporter kept pressing.

“Yes, only three times, in only eight days,” Teddy said pointedly.

“But isn’t it against regulations for astronauts to leave the protection of the Hab by themselves? If Watney was alive wouldn’t they perform EVAs together?”

“Under normal mission parameters yes. But this would be classified under extenuating circumstances. There could be any number of reasons why one of them is staying behind while the other performs EVAs of which we can only speculate at this time.”

“It sounds like you’re saying you believe that Watney is alive?” That was the reporter from Huffington Post.

No, that’s not what he was saying at all and he certainly did not want to be quoted as saying that. “I’m saying that it’s simply too early to be making a declaration either way,” he repeated. “Until such time as we receive proof of life or confirmation of his death, we will continue to take both scenarios into account as we continue to build our action plan.”

Even as he called on the next reporter, Teddy was distracted when Venkat slid in through the doors at the back of the room, and quickly sidled the edge of the crowd making a bee line towards Annie Montrose. He answered another question even as he kept half of his attention on the hushed conversation between his two directors on the side of the room. When Annie’s eyes went wide at something Venkat was showing her on the tablet in his hands, Teddy had to ask the reported from CNN to repeat her question. But before she could, Annie was crossing towards the podium, something that Director of Media never did mid press conference.

He motioned for the assembled press to give him a moment, and held his hand over the microphone so that whatever it was that Annie needed to tell him wouldn’t get picked up and overheard. He kept his face carefully schooled as she spoke lowly in his ear, only nodding once to show he had heard her before stepping back up to the podium.

He cleared his throat before speaking. “We have just received confirmation that Mark Watney is alive,” he said as he glanced at Annie, giving her the go ahead to project the new image on the screen behind him. “There are currently two astronauts alive on Mars.”

The room dissolved into chaos as everyone started shouting questions at once as they took in the new satellite photo of two distinct figures leaving Airlock 2.

“That is all for now, we will release more information as we receive it,” was all Teddy said before stepping away from the podium, and exiting the room. Venkat and Annie falling into step beside him.

SatCon, Johnson Space Center. Houston, Texas

Mindy couldn’t help but wonder how this had become her life. Just when she had gotten used to, and almost comfortable with, having Dr. Kapoor hovering around her workstation, she now had the Director of NASA standing over one shoulder and the ever impressive and intimidating Director of Media Relations over her other shoulder.

“Catch us up Ms. Park,” Teddy requested once the three directors had gathered around her chair.

Once Mindy took a moment to breathe past the fact that Teddy Sanders knew her name she pulled up the first images up on the big screen on the wall. “They exited the Hab forty two minutes ago. They seem to be following the same path of whoever performed the EVA yesterday with the exception of them taking the rover rather than walking.” She stopped speaking to show them the series of images that demonstrated what she had just told them. “They stop first at MAV base, and if you look closely you can see that they’re removing something from the struts,” she said zooming as far in on the image as she can without completely degrading the picture quality. “And they take it with them into the rover.”

“Any idea what that is?” Teddy asked.

Mindy and Venkat glanced at each other. “It’s hard to tell with the angle and the distance,” Venkat admitted. “It’s not the first time they’ve raided the MAV or the MDV for parts. From the first images we took of the site after we realized they were alive it was clear that they had already taken parts out of both vehicles. We assume for whatever device they built so that Johanssen could communicate with the MRO.”

“You can’t get it any clearer than that?” Annie asked squinting at the screen.

“Not really,” Mindy answered honestly. “The quality of the image depends a lot on the satellite that took it. We’re just not going to get the same definition from the MRO that we’re going to get from SuperSurveyor 3,” she shrugged referring to both their oldest and newest active satellites in Martian orbit.  “The resolution on these next images are a lot higher but it’s just them heading over to the MDV.”

Mindy continued to click through the images, showing the two astronauts getting out of the rover near the MDV, remove one of the access panels and remove six objects of similar size from the craft and set them in the shade before going back into the craft to try to remove something else that was obviously taking a considerable more time and effort.

“Ms. Park,” Venkat said getting her attention. “Forward this image to Bruce Ng at JPL please,” he requested already pulling out his cell phone and moving to the back of the room.

The others continued to scrutinize the imagery while Venkat called Pasadena. There was a whole series of images of both astronauts half inside the toppled MDV, until they finally emerged apparently getting what they were after.

“This is the last image that we received 12 minutes ago,” Mindy announced as they all took in the picture of the two astronauts frozen in what appeared to be a celebratory fist bump. “And we’re not going to get our next image for another 5 minutes,”

“Why so long?” Annie asked.

“Because every 41 hours there is a 17 minute gap in the satellite images. The orbits just happen to work out that way,” Mindy explained. “And unfortunately that gap is happening right now.”  

“Unacceptable. I want you to get that gap down to four minutes,” Teddy said decisively. “I’m giving you complete control over satellite trajectories and orbital adjustments. Make it happen.”

“Uh, yes sir,” Mindy said having no idea on how to make that happen.

“Bruce said he thinks those are the six hydrazine tanks,” Venkat announced rejoining the group after hanging up the phone.

“What could they possibly be doing with hydrazine?” Teddy questioned.

“They might have just removed them so they could get to whatever Watney has under his arm,” Mindy proposed, when no one else offered up a suggestion as to why they would even go near the caustic and dangerous rocket fuel. “It looks like it took some effort to get to. They might not have wanted to risk puncturing the hydrazine tanks.”

“How do you know that’s Watney?” Annie asked. From the aerial view and in their bulky EVA suits they looked exactly the same to her.

“Look at their shadows,” she said pointing to the screen. “He’s a lot taller than her so his shadow is longer.”

“Excellent observation Ms. Park,” Teddy praised.

“Thank you sir.”

It was a tense five minutes while they waited for the next batch of images to come through. When Mindy opened up the first image she couldn’t help but sink down in her chair. Even though she had only just now been given the authority over satellite dynamics, she could help but feel retroactively responsible.

The rover was parked in front of Airlock 3 and neither astronaut was in sight. They had clearly missed something very important.

“What the fuck did they do with the hydrazine?” Annie asked, saying what they were all thinking. “Did they put it back in the MDV or did they take it with them?”

“If they did bring it with them,” Teddy asked Venkat, “what use could they possibly have with six canisters of unspent hydrazine?”

Venkat was clearly at a loss. “I don’t know.” 

“Get the team on it to figure it out,” Teddy ordered. “And Annie we’re going to need a new statement to release before the six o clock news. Do not mention the hydrazine.”

“Obviously Teddy,” Annie said sarcastically, already furiously typing away on her phone. “This isn’t my first rodeo.”

And then as quickly as they swept in, the three directors were gone. Once again leaving Mindy wondering how this had become her life.

MISSION DAY                                                                                                         TIME 12:46
SOL 24                                                                                                                   LOG ENTRY > JOHANSSEN #005

PRESSURE
12.44 PSI

OXYGEN
20.73%

TEMPERATURE
20.10 C

ENVIRONMENT
HAB > PORTABLE

The video flicked to life as the recording began, only two feminine socked feet propped up on the edge of a table and a wide expanse of white Hab wall in the picture. Then the image spun wildly for a moment as the camera was turned, it only took a moment for the auto focus to do its job as Johanssen’s face came into frame.

“Johanssen here,” she began, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear with the hand not holding the camera out in front of her. “It’s been about a week since we last checked in and we’ve been busy little astronauts since then. Today is a big big day as we’re going to be making water and hopefully not blowing ourselves up. But before we get to that, I figured I’d catch you up on what we’ve already done while Watney finishes setting things up for today.”

The picture spun again as Beth climbed to her feet and flipped the camera so it was seeing what she was seeing as she walked into what once was the Hab’s kitchen and main gathering space.

“As you can see we’ve done some redecorating,” she narrated from behind the lens. “You know I’m from California, so we’re really into indoor/outdoor living spaces, we’re all about bringing the inside in.”

Her hand came into view briefly as she pushed aside the improvised plastic tarping so she could step into their makeshift farm, revealing Mark who was sitting on a stool dissecting a flashlight. “Say hello Watney.”

“Hello Watney,” Mark said looking up at the camera with a shit eating grin.

“Oh har har,” Beth said dryly.

“Welcome to ground zero for Operation Tater Triumph!”

Beth flipped the camera around to show the long suffering expression on her face, “He’s still trying to make that happen.”

“I don’t need to try to make it happen Johanssen,” he countered as she turned the camera to face his direction again. “It’s already happening! Don’t think I didn’t hear you say it yesterday.”

“A temporary lapse of judgement I assure you,” she said firmly.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Mark smirked.

Beth ignored him and slowly panned the camera to take in the dirt covered floor. They’d discussed the plan in their last log but hadn’t shown it in action.

“As we already said, it took us three days and some creative engineering but we ended up bringing in over 9 cubic meters of dirt,” she narrated as she focused in on the still dry Martian dirt that was still sitting in piles on one side of the room. “Ugh, it makes me sore all over just looking at it,” she groaned, making Mark laugh from off frame. “But that dirt there is also why we’re making water today, since it needs to be wet before we can double it with that dirt over there,” she said as she panned over to the nicely spread dirt that had already been doctored with earth bacteria.  “So that Farmer Mark can use it once the Thanksgiving potatoes grow,” she explained panning to the small corner of their farm that was the nursery for their seed potatoes. “As you can see nothing is visibly growing yet, but Watney assures me all kinds of exciting things are currently beneath the surface.”

“You’re so impatient,” Mark laughed, making Beth spin on a heel so that he was in the picture. “I only planted them five days ago. We’ve still got another week, week and a half before they start to sprout.”

“And I’m looking forward to it,” she said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the color green.”

Mark grinned fondly and nodded his agreement. 

“Since it was your idea, do you want to explain what we’re doing today?” she prompted, getting their log back on track.

“We’re making water!” he told the camera brightly.

“I already said that. Want to explain it again but with more science?” she asked amused.

“It’s actually remarkably simple for all that it’s incredibly dangerous,” he said with a shrug.  “We very slowly run hydrazine over the iridium catalyst that we liberated from the reaction chamber from MDV. That will turn the fuel into hydrogen and nitrogen. The hydrogen with be hot from the reaction and go up into the tent we made out of our very high tech plastic bags and duct tape, and up the air hose chimney where we’ll burn it as it comes out.”

Mark paused while Beth carefully panned over their cobbled together chamber. When she swung the camera back over in his direction he continued.

“We’re using the fuel plant from the MAV to create CO2 that we’re just bringing inside and venting into the air so the oxygenator can do its thing and turn it into oxygen. The only missing ingredient to the plan is fire, which is what I’m working on now,” he said gesturing to the project on the table in front of him.

Beth flipped the camera around on herself. “Sorry NASA, I know how much you hate fire,” she shrugged. “And you really did your best to make sure we couldn’t start one, but you underestimated the fire making abilities of that pyro over there.”

When she turned the camera back on Mark he was grinning, as he turned the knob on the canister of pure oxygen so he could test that the flashlight he had pulled apart could create a large enough spark to actually set the splintered remains of Martinez’s cross on fire.

“We’re actually going to need to set a lot of fires before we’re done making water,” he said pausing what he was doing to explain. “We’re going to have to repeat this whole process every 20 hours as we vent more CO2 into the air since we don’t want to run too low on oxygen since we kinda need it to breathe. And then we’ll have to frequently do hydrogen burnings to clear out the excess gas that escapes the initial reaction so we don’t accidentally turn the Hab into Hydrogenville population two.”

“I bet someone really smart figured that part out,” Beth teased from behind the camera.

“Alright, alright, I’ll admit it,” Mark conceded. “When I was doing the math I completely forgot to take into account that it wouldn’t be a perfectly clean reaction and that some of the hydrogen wouldn’t burn off and escape into the environment. Luckily for the both of us, Super Nerd Goddess Beth Johanssen came to the rescue to point that out.”

“I can already see the look on Vogel’s face when he finds out,” she said with a little laugh, thinking about what their crew’s resident chemist would say had he been there.

“Chemistry is messy,” he said defensively. “And I would have caught my mistake eventually.”

“Before or after you turned the Hab into a bomb?” she asked, the smirk on her face audible in her voice.

“Before,” he said surely. “Probably…” he amended. “Okay, hopefully.” Beth laughed while Mark rolled his eyes good naturedly. “Anyways let me test this real quick so we can get this show on the road.”

Mark went to ignite the spark, not realizing how long he’d been talking with the oxygen venting.

 “Hey Watney, do you think that maybe you should-”

Beth never got to finish telling him that maybe he should let the pure oxygen that was pooling in the air around him dissipate for a moment, since he was already sparking the flashlight and said oxygen quickly ignited into a small fireball that went off in his face. 

The oxygen quickly burned itself off, leaving Mark red faced and looking rather shocked.

“Holy shit! Are you okay?!” she asked quickly.

Mark turned his wide surprised eyes in Beth’s direction. “Do I still have eyebrows?”

Beth was still cackling as she cut the feed and the recording stopped.

MISSION DAY                                                                                                         TIME 14:13
SOL 24                                                                                                                   LOG ENTRY > JOHANSSEN #006

PRESSURE
12.46 PSI

OXYGEN
20.81%

TEMPERATURE
20.19 C

ENVIRONMENT
HAB > PORTABLE

The video flickered back to life with Mark and Beth sitting side by side, the image shaking for a moment as Beth set the camera down on the table in front of them so she didn’t have to hold it while they talked. Mark was now wearing his EVA suit sans helmet, so his slightly pink face, like he’d been out in the sun too long, and crispy tips of his hair and eyebrows were on full display.

“Welcome back to MythBusters, Mars edition,” Beth said directly to camera. She pulled the Jesus figure out of her pocket and lifted it so it was in frame. “You’ve heard the story of my little friend JC here turning water to wine, but can you turn rocket fuel into water? That’s what we’re going to find out.”

The surprised laugh that bubbled from Marks chest showed that he had no idea she was going to say that. “MythBusters? Really?” he asked still chuckling.

“Come on, tell me you didn’t grow up on that show,” she countered with a grin.

“Of course I did!” he confirmed without a second thought. “But usually the goal on MythBusters was so get something non explosive to blow up. Instead we’re trying to get something extremely explosive to not blow up today.”

Beth rolled her eyes. “The show wasn’t always about blowing shit up, they did several specials on just making something totally awesome out of duct tape. And you have to admit we wouldn’t have gotten this far without exploiting the mystical properties of duct tape. And you already almost set yourself on fire today so I think we got that requirement out of the way.”

“Yeah you got me there,” he said, reaching up to tug on the crunchy tips of his hair. “And duct tape is magical and should be worshiped, I’ll fight anyone who says differently. Did you know I actually met Adam Savage once when I was in college?”  

“What? No way!” Beth exclaimed, having clearly forgotten the fact they were filming this conversation.  “I’m so jealous! I’d love to meet him. I still watch the reruns whenever they’re on TV, even though I’ve already seen every episode multiple times.”

“Beth, we are currently scienceing the shit out of surviving on Mars because against all odds, we got left behind,” he said with a crooked grin. “When we get home you’re going to be able to meet anyone you want. Hell, the president is going to want to meet you.” 

“Who cares about meeting the president,” she scoffed. “I didn’t even vote for him. I want to meet a MythBuster.”

Mark laughed so hard he had to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye. “Sometimes I wonder what happened to shy little Johanssen who barely said a word to anyone.”

“She left all the fucks she had to give back on Hermes which is currently headed back to Earth without her,” she smirked with a careless shrug.

Mark practically doubled over in laughter. “I love that you just said that on an official log,” he said gesturing to the camera still recording on the table. “And yet I was the one who got all the lectures about being professional in official documents during training.”

Beth glanced back at the camera the whoops written all over her face. “I’m sure everyone will come to the correct conclusion.”

“Which is what?” he asked still laughing.

“That you’re clearly a terrible influence on me.” 

“Poor little innocent Beth,” he said sarcastically. “So easily led astray.”

Beth just smirked and stood. “Come on let’s go make it rain.”

He put on his helmet and gloves while she picked up the camera and they both walked back to where the hydrazine was set up. Mark took his time making sure that everything was where it should be and that the aperture to the chimney was good before picking up the flashlight and oxygen tank. While Beth found a spot a couple yards away that gave her a good angle to record the action.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go wait out in the rover while I do this?” Mark asked, giving Beth one last chance to get out of the Hab before he ignited the hydrazine.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Beth replied without thinking. “We’re in this together remember. Besides, even if this does go south, I’d rather not die of thirst alone in the rover in a couple days. If you blow up, I’m blowing up with you.”

“You just want to make sure they name the memorial crater after you too,” he joked making light of their very serious situation. 

“Absolutely,” Beth agreed easily from behind the camera, knowing it was his coping mechanism and playing along. “The Mark Watney and Beth Johannsen Memorial Crater does have a ring to it.”

“You don’t want your name first?”

“Nah, I figure you’ll be the one actually creating the crater and this is all your idea so you deserve to have your name front and center,” she replied.

“That’s so kind and generous of you,” Mark deadpanned.

“I try,” she replied teasingly. “But joking aside, this is going to be fine. We both went over this plan forward and backwards,” she said reassuring herself as much as him. “We’re not going to blow up. And do you know why?”

It took him half a beat to get what she was referring to and remember what he’d told her just a few weeks ago, but when he did a wide smile spread across his face. “Because fuck Mars, that’s why.”

“Damn straight.”

“Alright, let’s do this.” He glanced up at her, “Back up a little more? I don’t want you anywhere near the hydrazine while you’re not suited up.”

“Fair enough,” Beth said easily, as the video backed up several feet as she moved towards the edge of the room. “Chemical burns aren’t on my list of things to do today.”

“Alright here we go.”

Much more carefully than earlier he vented oxygen a splinter of wood, sparked the flashlight and gave a small whoop when it ignited just as it was supposed to. So far so good. Then came the tricky part. Mark carefully started the drip of hydrazine which fell into the iridium bowl, sizzled and disappeared. Soon there were short bursts of flame sputtering from the chimney. Everything worked exactly as it was supposed to.

“WHOOOO!” He cheered throwing his hands up in celebration.

“HELL YEAH!” Beth shouted from behind the camera.

“And that’s why I’m the King of Mars!” Mark shouted enthusiastically as he practically ripped off his helmet.

Unable to restrain his excitement he rushed Beth, grabbed her around the waist, picked her up and spun her around in a circle. In her surprise, she dropped the camera, it landing lopsided in the dirt, capturing only their spinning feet and joyous laughter.

Chapter Text

SOL 25

Good god Mark was tired. Using his own knees for leverage he pushed himself to his feet, standing from the chair he had been camped out in for the last few hours. He took a moment to stretch his arms above his head and groaned with pleasure as his back popped and cracked as his spine realigned itself. Throwing his helmet over his head but not bothering with the latch he grabbed a wrench and went to turn off the flow of hydrazine. He stood and waited, watching as the fire extinguished itself. Once that was out he carefully used the ripped apart flashlight as a torch being careful to burn off the excess hydrogen in the air before taking off his helmet once more and peeling out of the rest of his EVA suit.

Emboldened by their success, he and Beth decided that they were willing to use half of their reserves of oxygen in their initial run of water making. It was a long process that had run all night. They could have finished faster but they didn’t even have to discuss it to decide that caution was the order of the day and so they had taken turns babysitting the reaction chamber. Neither one of them stupid enough to leave a fire burning rocket fuel unattended inside their home.

As he put his suit away he yawned so hard his eyes watered. He had tried to get a nap in during Beth’s last shift but the cacophony of the fire alarm, the low oxygen alarm, and the high humidity alarm sounding in chorus made that all but impossible. As he trudged tiredly towards the bunks he wondered if Beth had had better luck trying to find sleep since he’d taken watch a couple of hours ago.

He may have been dead on his feet as he shuffled into the bunk room and very much looking forward to reuniting with his pillow, but he stopped short in the doorway at the sight in front of him. He blinked once, twice, and then again as his tired brain tried to process what he was seeing.

For some reason he had yet to decipher, Beth had decided to strip down to her sleep shorts and sports bra and was laying starfished in the middle of the Hab floor. At least, he noted absently, she had put a sheet down first. She also had what appeared to be socks rolled up and tucked between her ears and the com station headset and had a folded up t-shirt draped over her eyes. Mark was confused to say the least.

He wasn’t sure exactly how long he’d been standing there before Beth sensed his presence and lifted the shirt off her eyes, cracking an eye open to see him hovering over her.

“Do I even dare ask?” he questioned when she met his gaze.

“WHAT?!” she shouted as she sat up. “WAIT, HOLD ON!”

Mark watched and waited, a bemused smirk ghosting around his mouth, as she pulled the headphones off making the socks fall to the floor and bounce somewhere behind her, then remove the ear plugs she was also wearing. “Oh is a little bit quieter now,” she observed.

“Well the fire alarm stopped once there was no more fire. The low oxygen alarm should stop pretty soon too. The high humidity alarm is gonna take a while longer,” Mark shrugged.

Beth just groaned and flopped backwards onto her pillow.

“So what, may I ask, are you doing on the floor?” he asked.

“Melting,” she sighed dramatically.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m melting,” she repeated. “It’s so fucking hot in here.”

“Its 30°C in here,” he informed her. “Which yes, is a lot warmer than we’ve gotten used to, but it’s not that hot. And you’re from California, aren’t you supposed to like warm weather?”

“Sure I can do 90 plus degree California weather standing on my head,” she confirmed. “But 90 at home is a lot different than this 90 degrees. California is a dry heat. This humidity is killing me. I mean I know that was the whole point of this endeavor, but I’m still melting like I’m the Wicked Witch of the West.”

“Well we did dump 50 liters of water into the air,” he pointed out needlessly. It was indeed incredibly humid inside the relatively small Hab, but having grown up with muggy Chicago summers he was somewhat used to it. Mark accepted her reasoning for a moment before he thought of something. “How did you possibly survive living in Houston then? Texas summers take humidity to a whole other level.”

“Watney, how long have you known me?”

Mark didn’t answer at first, thinking it was just a rhetorical question until he realized she was waiting for an answer. “I guess about three years now.”

“Have you ever known me to spend more time outside than absolutely necessary, regardless of the season and/or weather? I’m the computer girl, I like being inside. Just multiply that by ten during the summer. I went from my air conditioned apartment, to my air conditioned car, to JSC’s air conditioned campus. And even then I hated it.”

“Okay fine,” Mark said accepting her explanation with a laugh, she had him there. Even when they were doing their daily PT during training Beth always campaigned to do it inside the gym rather than out on the grounds. “But none of this explains why you’re melting on the floor instead of your bunk,” he pointed out.

“Come on now Mark, I know you think chemistry is messy, but you’re an astronaut, I know you have the basics of thermodynamics down,” she sassed. “Heat rises.”

Well, if she wanted to be like that. “Actually heat doesn’t do anything but diffuse until it reaches thermodynamic equilibrium, warm air is less dense than cold air and is displaced by the heavier cold and is pushed upwards.”

“Oh fuck you,” she said without any heat. “I mean I deserved that, but still fuck you.”

Mark just laughed at her.

“You can lie down here with me as long as you promise not to touch me,” Beth offered, in what she felt was a magnanimous way.

Mark didn’t exactly feel the same. “Are you afraid I’m going to give you cooties?” he asked, one eyebrow arched dubiously.

“What?” she asked confused. “No, I didn’t mean it like that!” she exclaimed, throwing one of the rolled up socks that had landed beside her at him. “I just mean I’m already hot and sticky I don’t want any of your body heat infecting my personal bubble.”

“Well, when you put it like that.” He tossed the sock back at her. “How could I resist such a tempting offer,” Mark said drolly, even as he grabbed his pillow and tossed it on the floor next to her.

Mark stripped out of the clothes he had sweat though while wearing his heavy EVA suit, and slid on a pair of loose shorts.  He was going to put a t-shirt on, but it really was uncomfortably hot and humid. He glanced over his shoulder at Beth who had already set the precedence of less is more when it came to clothing at the moment, and tossed the shirt back onto his bunk. While he was preoccupied with getting ready to hopefully get at least a couple hours of sleep, Beth had turned over on her stomach, her arms out and away from her body, the embargo on skin to skin contact apparently even applying to herself. She seemed to be trying to make as much physical contact with the ground as possible. When he laid down beside her, he understood why. The Martian cold was seeping through the Hab floor and it felt amazing.

“Slumber party on the floor was definitely the right idea,” he sighed happily.

Beth turned her head on her pillow so that it was facing his direction. “And that is why I’m not in my bunk.”

“I’m sorry I ever doubted you, oh wise one,” Mark teased, letting his head flop to the side to he was turned towards her. “Are you feeling okay?” he asked once he got a good look at her.

“I’m fine.” Her brow furrowed. “Why do you ask?”

“Your eyes are all glassy,” he told her, “like they get when you don’t feel well.”

Beth recoiled the slightest amount in surprise. “Oh shit, and here I thought Beck was the doctor on the crew.”

“You’re the one who just pointed out how much time we’ve spent together the past couple years,” he said rolling his eyes. “You pick things up about people after a while. Also I’ve seen you hung over on more than one occasion, it’s a very similar look.”

“Fair enough,” Beth laughed lightly.

“So are you feeling okay?” he asked again.

“Yeah, I’m alright,” she repeated. “I’ve just got a massive headache. I can feel my heart beat in my temples.”

“What from?” Beth looked at him like he was a complete moron, which he suppose he kind of deserved. “I mean is there one thing in particular that caused it,” he amended.

“Take your pick,” she sighed, letting her eyes fall shut for a moment. “Actually I think it’s more of a perfect storm situation. If they ever reopen Guantanamo they should look into this because I’m pretty sure this qualifies as torture.”

Mark couldn’t help but agree. Between the heat, the humidity, the constant blaring of three different alarms and the flashing lights that went along with them, and the smell of ammonia in addition to the fertilizer smell that they were still not completely used to, it was a constant assault on all of their senses. When you added in the fact that they were sleep deprived since neither of them were able to sleep through all of this, it actually was in line with several different torture techniques. All in all the Hab was not the most comfortable environment at the moment. 

“When we get home I’m writing a strongly worded letter to the UN,” she continued. “I’m pretty sure this is against the Geneva Convention!”

“And who is the UN supposed to go after?” he asked amused. After all they had done this to themselves, only out of necessity, but it was a situation of their own doing.

“I dunno,” she said shortly. “Mars.”

Mark laughed. “So the United Nations is supposed to bring an entire planet up on war crimes?”

“Humor me Watney,” she said one eye popping back open. “My head hurts.”

“Think about it this way,” Mark offered. “We successfully made water from rocket fuel. That’s pretty fucking metal right there.”

“Hell yeah.” She lifted up and arm and extended a fist in his direction.

Mark bumped it. “Boom.”

The sudden blaring of a new and different alarm had them both shooting upright.

“What now?” Beth groaned.

“No, that’s a good one,” Mark assured her as he climbed to his feet. “It’s the water reclaimer shouting at us that it’s full.”

“Did you want help?” she asked already starting to get up.

“No I got it, I’m just going to use a bucket to dump it into Vogel’s suit,” he told her waving at her to lay back down.

Beth didn’t have to be told twice, her head really was killing her and the only thing that seemed to be helping was the cold that was radiating off the floor.

Mark didn’t think it took him very long to transfer their freshly made water, but by the time he made it back to Beth, her exhaustion finally overcame the noise, lights, smell and her headache and she was asleep sprawled out on the floor. He thought she had the right idea and laid back down next to her, it wasn't long until he did the same and fell asleep.

SatCon, Johnson Space Center. Houston, Texas

It was midafternoon in Houston, but Mindy was just getting her day started. Since receiving her promotion to chief space-stalker she had begun to align her work schedule with days on Mars. If she had thought adjusting to working the night shift was hard, adjusting to working on a 40 minute sliding shift was harder and it wasn’t even two weeks in. 

She was busy analyzing the newest imagery and stifling a yawn, when a cup of to go coffee unexpectedly appearing in her line of sight made her visibly jump.

“Sorry Mindy,” Venkat apologized. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s okay,” Mindy assured him. “Sometimes I get tunnel vision when I’m focusing. What’s that?” she asked about the cup that he was still extending in her direction.

“It’s coffee,” he said blandly, with just a hint of a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. “I brought it for you. It’s the good stuff from the coffee cart, not the crap that’s in the breakroom.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Mindy took the paper cup, pleased surprise written all over her face. She watched as Venkat pulled up the chair that she was starting to think of as his. He didn’t show up every day, but the Director was definitely starting to become a regular fixture in SatCon. “I saw you on the Martian Report last night,” she mentioned casually as she took a sip of her drink.

“What did you think?” he asked curiously.

“It was good,” she told him, not sure exactly what he was asking her opinion on.

 “Annie said I shouldn’t say ‘bring them home alive’,” he mentioned. “She said it just reminds people that they could die.”

Mindy quirked an eyebrow. “Because people are likely to forget that?”

“That’s what I told her,” he said clearly feeling vindicated. Venkat cocked his head a little as he looked at her. “Wait, weren’t you still here last night when that was on?”

Mindy’s cheeks colored slightly before she answered. “I DVR it every night and watch it as I get ready for work in the morning,” she admitted.

“Because you don’t get enough of it here?” he asked amused.

Her blush deepened. “Well I see all the raw imagery, but like you said I’m here all day. I’m just the photographer, I pass the images along to everyone else who does the analysis. I know everything that is said on CNN is filtered and censored for the public to a point, but between what I see here and what I hear on there I get a more rounded picture on what’s happening in the other departments,” she explained with a shrug.

“That’s very smart Ms. Park,” Venkat said looking impressed. “Being able to see the bigger picture, and cross disciplinary interest is very important if you’re looking to move up through the ranks.”

“That’s not why-”

“I know,” Venkat cut her off, with gentle smile. “Doesn’t make it any less true. Anyways, what’s going on on Mars today?” he asked bringing them back to the reason he was there.

“Basically the exact same as the last three sols,” Mindy said getting back to work as she pulled up the imagery. “They got a bit of a late start this morning,” she explained why is was only basically the same. “Someone exited the Hab at about 10 am Mars time instead of 9 like the last couple days, but they still drive to the MAV struts, take the tank of CO₂ back with them to the Hab. The other thing different this morning is that they both exited the Hab about half an hour later instead of just one of them.”

Venkat leaned towards the screen to take in these new images. It was the first time that they had both left the Hab at the same time since they’d first both been spotted out together four days ago. However that didn’t mean they weren’t leaving the Hab. No, they were now outside more than ever. Twice a day, once in the morning and once at night someone traveled to the base of the MAV removed what they assumed were the CO₂ tanks from the fuel processing plant, took them back to the Hab with them, and then promptly returned them within 30 minutes.

“I believe that it’s Johanssen that went to return the tank while Watney went to clear off the solar farm. Then she drove back and is now helping him,” Mindy concluded. “See,” she added pointing to them on her screen. “He’s broader across the shoulders than she is.”

“Yes, I do believe you’re right,” he agreed with her assessment. “Did you already forward these to everyone?”

“Yes sir,” she nodded, “already done.”

“Excellent.”

“So have you figured out what they’re doing with all the carbon dioxide?” Mindy asked curiously.

“We think they’re using it to make more oxygen,” Venkat answered half of his attention still on the photo up on the screen. “As long as the oxygenator is functioning they could create O₂ with the CO₂ the fuel plant collects indefinitely.”

“Why would they need more oxygen?”

“It’s possible that their oxygen reserves were depleted somehow,” the director posited. “For all we know the Hab may have breached in the storm on Sol 6 and they repaired it before we started collecting imagery. Or there could have been an issue with one or both of the oxygen reserve tanks.”  

Mindy considered that for a moment before she remembered the other question she wanted to ask. “Oh, and did you ever figure out what the deal was with the hydrazine?”  

“No,” he answered honestly. “We still don’t even know if they actually brought it inside, and if they did why they would need-” he cut himself off abruptly something finally clicked.  “Mindy, you’re a genius,” he praised already standing up and out of his chair.

“I am?”

“I need to go talk to the chem department,” he continued gathering up his things. “Call me if they leave the Hab again before their usual evening EVA,” he called over his shoulder as he swept from the room.

Mindy looked back at the image of the two astronauts who were still busy sweeping of the solar farm. “But what did I say?”

SOL 28

The two astronauts had settled into a routine over the last few days.

After the initial 50 liter burst, they decided to slow down and only make water at the rate they made O₂, neither of them willing to go below the 25 liter oxygen reserve they had set for themselves.  Mark had managed to soup up the fuel plant by increasing the voltage to the pump and as a result it now only took 10 hours to capture a full tank of CO₂ instead of 20 hours.  So now, twice a day one of them would go out to the MAV bring the tank inside, vent it into the Hab, and then return it for refilling. They came to an unspoken agreement that Mark would take the morning shift, since she usually wasn’t even out of bed yet by the time he was back from his EVA, while Beth would take the evening shift.

Then every other morning they took a few hours to reduce the hydrazine and burn off the hydrogen. There was the temptation to make water every time they brought CO₂ inside, but they discussed it and agreed that the fewer times they had to start a fire over the volatile rocket fuel the better. The fewer times they had to do it, the lower the odds something could go wrong. It also meant that they got a break from the blaring alarms that went off for hours every time they made water.

But other than that, they didn’t really have a whole lot else to do.  Mark had completed another dirt doubling yesterday, and just this morning they’d taken the time to clean off the solar farm before they made water, but those weren’t every day activities which meant they had a lot of down time.

A lot of down time.

Mark looked up from the Agatha Christie novel he was trying to read but he was having a hard time staying focused. Setting the tablet down, he got up to go see what Beth was up too. He found her sitting sideways on her bed with her computer on her lap, her back up against the wall and her feet tucked underneath her. Whatever she was watching seeming to be amusing her since there was a hint of a smirk playing across her face.

“Whatcha watching?” Mark asked nosily, since he couldn’t see the laptop screen.

“One of Vogel’s movies,” Beth answered not looking up from the screen. 

“He has something not in German?” he asked surprised.

“Oh no,” she corrected. “It is in German.”

“And since when do you speak German?” he asked confused, he was pretty sure this was information he would have been aware of.

“I don’t,” she answered simply.

Mark waited for more information, but apparently there wasn’t any more forthcoming. “And so you’re watching it why?” he finally asked. It wasn’t as if they still didn’t have a lot of media in English that they hadn’t watched yet.

Beth looked up at him like she was just now noticing that he was there. “Oh, I just make up what I think the plot and dialogue is as I go,” she explained. “My older sister and I used to do this with telenovelas when we were kids,” she grinned. “Vogel’s movies aren’t nearly as melodramatic as anything on telemundo, but I’m doing my best to pick up the slack with my plot.”

Mark laughed. “That’s an awesome idea.”

“Right?” she agreed with a bright smile. “Come here,” she waved him into her bunk so he could see the screen.

Mark crawled onto the bunk with her, his head barely brushing the bottom of the bunk above hers and his feet dangling over the edge.

“Okay so,” she explained the action playing across the screen as she saw it, “that’s Inga and Henning. He’s a musician and she’s an up and coming lawyer. They’re brother and sister who stand to inherit a big fortune from their father when he dies, but they have to make sure their step mother dies first so they’re plotting to kill her.”

“Wait the brother and sister who just started making out?” Mark said dubiously.

Beth cocked her head as she watched, quickly coming up with a way to fix that. “Well they’re step siblings, his mother was her father’s second wife. Which just makes their love all the more forbidden.”

“Now who’s this guy who just showed up?” Mark asked.

“I dunno yet, this is the first time I’ve seen him.”

“Okay, he’s Lukas their father’s best friend and step mother’s secret lover, and they have no idea that they’re actually planning to kill them as well.”

“Well done Mark,” Beth grinned. “Should have known you’d be a natural at this.”

“We’re going to have to remember to ask Vogel what the actual plot to this movie when we get home,” he said. “Something tells me we’re way off.”

Beth scoffed. “Something tells me our plot is way better. Now pay attention because you’re missing important stuff.”    

Chapter Text

SOL 31

The first thing Mark did when he woke up, was the first thing he did every morning, glance over at the bunk across from him and look for Beth. He didn't think too much of the habit, it made sense that with only one other person on the planet he would want the visual confirmation every morning as he started his day that she was in fact really there, and he wasn't actually alone.

So he was understandably concerned when he looked over at her bed and found it conspicuously empty for the first time ever. In 131 mission days and 31 sols, Beth Johannsen had never willingly woken up and gotten out of bed before him.

Swinging his legs out from under the covers he dragged himself out of bed and began his one person search party. It didn't take long to find her, the Hab wasn't exactly overly spacious and her EVA suit was still hanging up where it belonged, so it wasn't as if there was anywhere for her to go. Even so, he almost walked right past her, but he noticed the chair at his desk wasn't pushed in like he's left it. Bending over he found Beth tucked under the table ,earbuds tucked into her ears and her back against the wall of the Hab. She was curled up into a ball, with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her shins. Sensing his presence she looked up from where she had been resting her forehead against her kneecaps and he was able to see her red puffy eyes.

He didn't say anything, instead crawling underneath the desk to join her, sitting close enough that their hips were touching as he settled next to her. Reaching over he pulled the speaker out of her far ear and tucked it into his own so they could share the music. It was the Beatles of course, it was the only music they had been listening to for the past three weeks since he'd left his media back on the Hermes. But he liked it well enough, so he closed his eyes, let his head fall back against the wall and let Blackbird wash over him. He stayed in that position through Because, Across the Universe, and Let it Be, with each song it became increasingly more clear that Beth had put together a very specific playlist to match her mood. When the opening chords of Yesterday began to play he broke his silence.

"You're up early," he said gently, softly bumping his shoulder against hers.

"More like up late," she sighed, pushing back and leaning into his side.

"You haven't been to bed at all?" he asked concerned.

"Couldn't sleep," she shrugged, letting her head tilt to rest against his shoulder. They fell back into silence until Yesterday faded into Strawberry Fields and Beth spoke again. "We should be going home today."

This time it was Mark who sighed, "Yeah." The thought had occurred to him too.

"It's not fair," she practically whispered.

Mark let his head fall to rest against the top of hers. "No, it's really not," he agreed.

She didn't speak again for several more songs, but at the end of While My Guitar Gently Weeps she sat forward and tapped a key on the laptop that was sitting open in front of her, silencing the music.

"I think we should pack up everyone's personals today," she announced turning her body to face Mark more fully.

Mark sighed again, "Yeah, we probably should. It's time."

It was something that up until now that both of them were pointedly ignoring. Unless they were looking for something in particular, the pair had left their crewmates' personal belongings mostly where they had left them on Sol 6. With their things scattered around the Hab, is was easy to make believe that they were out on a scheduled EVA while he and Beth were left inside to man things from there. But in their hearts they knew it wasn't true and it wasn't healthy for them to keep pretending.

It was going to suck beyond the telling of it, adding insult to injury, packing up their things on the day that they should have all been leaving together as a team. But Beck probably would have called it closure and the psychs back at NASA would probably have said it was something like it would be the physical manifestation of their acceptance that this was their new reality. Mark didn't really have much use for the psychobabble.

"Lemme go get the tank from the fuel plant really quick and then we'll get started," he said climbing out from under the desk, before giving her a hand up as well. "Are you going to be okay while I'm outside?" he asked sincerely.

Beth shot him an unimpressed look that told him exactly what she thought of his concern.

He held his hands up in surrender. "Fair enough, I was just making sure."

While Mark went outside to do the morning CO₂ run, Beth pulled herself together. After splashing some cold water on her face and having a cup of coffee she was feeling more like herself and more prepared to face what was sure to be a difficult day.

She'd retrieved four empty totes and was writing her crew mates' names on them when Mark reentered the Hab after returning the empty tank back to the MAV fuel plant.

"How do you want to do this?" Mark asked standing in the doorway, ready to follow her lead.

"I guess just pick a tote and start packing," Beth sighed.

Mark picked up the one nearest to him which happened to have Martinez's name written on the lid and got to work. "Are these going to be big enough?" he asked since she had chosen four of the smaller storage containers.

"Yeah well we don't actually have that much stuff when you really think about it," Beth replied. "Especially when you take clothing and toiletries and all the other stuff we're going to end up using ourselves out of the equation."

"Yeah I guess you're right," Mark said pulling the sweatshirt he'd just put in in the bottom of the tote out and instead folding it and putting it to the side.

He assumed that he would take Vogel's clothing since they would dwarf Beth's small frame, while she would take the commander's items for equally obvious reasons. Then they would simply divide Beck and Martinez's clothes as they saw fit.

"I was thinking that we should pack up the spare clothes and the extra bedding until we need it though," she mentioned. "They'll stay cleaner that way. And I was also thinking about the best way to wash our clothes too. Because I don't know about you, but I'm not about to wear dirty underwear for the next four years."

"Until they can stand up on their own, they're not really that dirty," he joked.

"That's fucking gross Watney."

Mark just laughed. "What do you want me to do with the electronics?" he asked, glancing over to where Beth was sitting on the floor holding Lewis's hair brush in her hands.

"Oh, just set them aside for now," she said tossing the hair brush onto her own bunk, it being much nicer than her own. "I'll make it my project tomorrow to go through and pull out everyone's media and entertainment and anything else that might be useful."

"The fact that we all put passwords on these things means nothing to you does it?" he asked amused as he set Martinez's personal laptop and tablet to the side.

"Nope!" she replied popping the P. "Not at all. But whatever made you guys sleep better at night," she said looking across the room at him with a smirk playing across face.

It didn't take long for him to inventory and finish packing away Martinez's things, having already gone through it all once when they were looking for his crucifix. Once he was done he carefully sealed the lid and slid the container underneath the bunk where it would be out of the way and out of sight.

Reaching out for the next tote Mark took a moment to look at Vogel's name written by Beth hand. "You even write like a computer," he mused allowed.

"What?" she asked looking up from where she was putting affixing the top to the container of Lewis's belongings.

"You write like you're a computer," he repeated flipping the plastic lid around so she could see her own handwriting, like she already didn't know what it looked like. "Look at this! If I didn't know you had written this I would think it was typed."

Beth looked at her own handwriting and shrugged lightly. She supposed he had a point, her letters were all neat and uniform, even the round letters were slightly squared off. "You learned my secret, that's the reason I'm so good with computers. I'm actually an android so binary is my first language."

"I knew it!"

"I'd say that now I have to kill you," Beth smirked as she slid the box Lewis's personals next to where Mark had stashed Martinez's and grabbed the last empty tote. "But who would you tell?"

"Lucky for me we're trapped on Mars," he replied as he started sorting through Vogel's things.

"Yes, lucky you," she replied dryly. If her response came out a little more sardonic than she intended, he didn't call her on it.

They worked quietly for a while longer, until he found something beneath Vogel's clean underwear that made a wide smile spread across his face. "Thank you Herr Vogel," he said as he picked up the small rectangular pack.

"What did you find?" Beth asked curiously from where she'd once again parked herself on the floor, this time amongst Beck's things.

"We now possess our very own deck of cards," he revealed, having no doubts that they would get hours of entertainment from them. "We should play some poker later."

"I don't know how to play poker," she revealed casually.

"What?!" Mark exclaimed. "How do you not know how to play poker?"

"I don't know," she shrugged. "I just never learned. I mean I think I know the basic rules, but I never really had the opportunity to play."

"Oh well we're about to change that," he said vehemently, excited about the idea of teaching Beth something new. "Is it just poker you don't know how to play, or do you not know any card games?" he asked.

"I know all your basic kid card games," she explained. "War, speed, crazy eights, egyptian ratscrew. I just wouldn't know what to do if I ever went to Vegas."

"You've never been to Las Vegas either?!" Mark exclaimed disbelievingly. "You're from California, Vegas is right there."

"You make is sound like I'm some kind of freak because I never went to Vegas," she said, jokingly offended. "I'll remind you that I've been a little busy since I turned 21."

"Of course, Beth Johannsen super nerd was too busy overachieving to take a weekend trip to Vegas," he teased as he slowly peeled the pictures of Vogel's children off the wall, taking care not to damage them. But when Beth didn't immediately reply with a snappy comeback to his teasing, he glanced up to see her looking intently at a picture of her own, the expression on her face was inscrutable.

"You okay over there Johanssen?" Mark called across the room. "Beth?"

When she didn't answer he crossed the room to see what had captured her attention so fully. Standing above her he was able to see it was a picture of the two of them along with Beck. He recognized the moment immediately. Martinez's wife Marissa had taken the photo at their going away party and he remembered it like it was yesterday. He and Beck had been teasing her that it was just going to be a picture of them and the top of her head because she was so short. So they had jokingly solved the problem by having her drape her arms over their shoulders and lifting her up so she was sandwiched between them. Finally taller than them both, her feet dangling over a foot off the ground.

"That was a fun night," Mark said as he sat down beside her. "I don't think I've actually seen that picture before though."

"Me either," Beth agreed, reflexively leaning into his side. "I found it tucked hidden inside his tablet case. Along with this."

Mark took the scrap of paper that Beth was handing him, his eyes widening in surprise when he realized that it was a ticket stub from when the three of them had gone to see Avengers: World War Hulk. It was the first time that the trio had ever done anything social outside of training without the rest of the crew.

"How unexpectedly sentimental of our Dr. Beck," Mark said softly.

Everybody assumed that Martinez was his best friend amongst the crew, mainly because they were the two jokesters and took so much joy in teasing each other and the rest of the crew. And while they were close, Mark wouldn't necessarily call Rick his best friend.

With Lewis having a husband, and Martinez and Vogel having wives and children, the three married members of their crew quite understandably wanted to spend as much time with their families before embarking on a year long mission into space. But the three single members of their crew didn't have those familial ties, and with none of them native Texans, only having moved to Houston after being accepted into the astronaut training program, they didn't have pre established friendships with people outside of NASA either. So it seemed only natural to gravitate towards each other in their spare time. Most people would have thought that they'd get sick of each other after spending so much time together training, but it wasn't the case at all. Instead they became thick as thieves, often spending their days off in each others company, or going out to dinner after work or out for drinks on a Friday night.

It was this behavior that Mark was pretty sure led to Lewis's threatening speech about pushing them out the airlock if they even so much as thought about laying a hand on Johanssen. But the men had assured her that she had nothing to worry about, they were professionals, they just also happened to be friends.

"I miss him," Beth practically whispered. "I mean I miss all of them, but I miss him the most."

"Yeah me too," Mark agreed wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

"Is it weird that I miss the crew more than I miss everyone on Earth?" she questioned. "Even though it's only been three weeks since they left?"

He considered that for a moment before answering. "Maybe because we'd already been mentally prepared not to everyone back home for another ten months," he reasoned. "But we never expected to be separated from the crew."

"That makes sense."

"Martinez kept trying to take bets on how long after we got home before Beck asked you out." Mark wasn't sure why he said that, and he kind of wished he could take it back.

Beth's head popped up and over in his direction. "What?" she asked surprised. "But I always kind of thought that you and Beck…." she trailed off.

"What?" he asked equally confused.

"Never mind, don't worry about it," Beth shrugged. "It's not like any of it matters anymore anyway."

Mark sighed softly, he supposed that she was right. "Come on let's finish this up, have something to eat and then I'll teach you some grown up card games."

She scoffed and rolled her eyes, but there was the shadow of grin playing around the corners of her mouth.

"I'm just going to grab some water first," he mentioned as he climbed to his feet. "Do you want some?"

"Yeah sure grab me a water bottle if you don't mind," she called after him, putting the picture aside and going back to her packing.

He was only gone a minute before she shouted at her from the kitchen. "Beth! Come here!"

She dropped the last of Beck's things into the tote haphazardly, springing to her feet and running in the direction of his voice. "What's wrong?!"

"Nothing's wrong," Mark said from inside their makeshift greenhouse, holding back the tarp so she could join him inside. "Come look."

Stepping within the confines of the plastic sheeting, it only took a moment to see why he had called for her. There, springing from the red martian dirt, against all possible odds was the smallest of green leaves. Their potatoes were growing.

Beth launched herself at Mark, who caught her easily, hugging him tight.

"You did it!" she exclaimed into his chest. "You really did it!"

"It was totally a team effort," he corrected. "We did it."

Even on this day where everything that they had lost rubbed raw, they suddenly felt like everything was going to be okay after all. And if the picture of the three of them didn't get packed away with everything else, and instead got tacked up over the workstation that they used the most often, well neither of them felt the need to talk about it.

CNN Local Affiliate Studios. Houston, Texas.

"Welcome back to the Martian Report," Cathy Waters said to the camera. "We're now sitting with Dr. Irene Shields, flight psychologist for the Ares Missions. Dr. Shields, welcome to the program."

"Thank you for having me," Irene said graciously.

"Now it may be December 5th here on Earth, but on Mars today is Sol 31. The day the Ares 3 crew was supposed to be leaving the Martian surface and returning to the Hermes to being their long journey home."

"Yes, that is correct."

"Instead Commander Lewis, Major Martinez, Doctor Beck and Astronaut Vogel are all three weeks into their return trip, while two of their crew members are still stranded on Mars for the foreseeable future. How do you think they are handling today?"

"I can only imagine that they are handling it much like they have every day since they left Mars' orbit. Their schedule will keep them busy for the majority of the day. Not to mention that to be chosen for an Ares mission, the whole crew has to be able to compartmentalize and stay focused on their mission even under adverse conditions. But I'm sure they will all take a moment out of their day to mourn."

"Yes, because the crew on board Hermes still believes Watney and Johanssen to have died on Sol 6, correct?"

"At this current time, yes," Irene confirmed.

"But wouldn't letting the crew know that their crew mates are alive be a great boon to morale?" Cathy asked.

Irene pursed her lips for a moment before answering. "The decision to keep this information from the crew was made from higher up than me," she said not answering the question either way. "I'm sure it wasn't an easy decision to make."

"Alright, let's talk about the astronauts still on Mars for a moment," Cathy said switching gears. "As someone who knows them personally what can you tell me about them?"

"They're both incredibly intelligent. All of them are of course, but the two of them are particularly resourceful and excellent problem solvers."

"That could very well save their lives."

"It very well may," Irene agreed. "But even more importantly I noticed in their evaluations that they often come at said problems from completely different angles, even if they arrive at the same solution. I think that will be invaluable to them as they try to navigate long term survival on Mars."

"It's been mentioned that they were the two lowest ranking members of the crew. But now Beth Johannsen would be in command on Mars. How do you think she's handling that?"

"They were yes, but I wouldn't say that has any impact on their chances for survival. They are both extremely talented and capable astronauts. And while technically Johanssen is now in charge I don't see her flexing that power. Part of the reason they are the lowest ranking members of the crew is because neither of them are natural leaders. Instead they're excellent team members. I have no doubts that they're approaching their problems working together as partners."

"Obviously, one of the things you look into when choosing a crew is how they're going to work together," Cathy said, moving the conversation along.

"Of course," Irene confirmed. "An Ares crew has to spend thirteen months together. Social compatibility is a key factor when assembling six disparate personalities."

"So you've said that you think they can work well together, but how do you think Watney and Johanssen are handling being stranded on Mars together on a more personal level?"

"It's actually very interesting that out of all the possible combinations, that it is the two of them in particular that are together," Irene began.

"Why do you say that?" she prompted.

"Well on paper, they're probably the two most opposite members of the crew. For example, Watney is the oldest, Johanssen is the youngest. He is about as extroverted as can be, where as she is by far the most introverted member of the crew."

"Do you think this could cause problems between them, it being such a high stress situation?" Cathy interjected.

"Quite the opposite in fact," Irene corrected. "I think this will be more of a case of opposites attract, or at the very least complement each other. Her strengths play to his weaknesses and vice versa. I don't think there is much that they couldn't accomplish if they set their minds to it."

"So you believe that they stand a good chance of survival from a psychological point of view?"

Irene considered the question seriously for a moment before answering. "Yes from a pure psychological point of view I believe that Johanssen and Watney stand an excellent chance for surviving being stranded on Mars. The important thing is that they don't give up hope. I think that's where being together will really be essential. Because if they believe that there no chance of survival, they'll stop trying."

"But we're okay for now right?" Cathy asked. "They seem to be keeping busy with some sort of project and surely having each other will help keep them going."

"I agree, but the danger is that without being able to communicate with them they don't know that NASA is sending a supply probe. They're both highly logical and pragmatic people. They're not going to want to starve to death. There is enough morphine in the medical supplies for a lethal dose for both of them."

After several seconds of complete silence in the studio, Cathy turned to the camera. "We'll be right back.

Chapter Text

SOL 46

“Two pair! Kings high!” Mark said laying down his hand with a flourish.

“That’s real cute, but they don’t stack up against my full house!” Beth grinned as she spread her cards on the table.

“God damnit!” he exclaimed, as he lost his fifth hand in a row, he really thought he had her that time too.

“So that’s another 20,000 dollars to little ol me,” Beth said tapping at the tablet sitting between them to transfer the imaginary funds into her ‘bank’. Her latest win meant that she was now up over 2 million Martian dollars. They were still working on figuring out the Mars to Earth money exchange rate.

Once they realized there was a lot of card games in their future, she had taken the time to throw together a program that would help them keep track of their bets and winnings. Some days Mark wanted to throw the tablet out of the airlock. But Beth ever so kindly reminded him that it wouldn’t help since the program was backed up the Hab’s main computers.

“You’re cheating!” he accused. “You have to be! You’re stacking the deck.”

“How?! You’re the one dealing!” she pointed out with a laugh. “Now quit your bitching and deal again. Mama needs a new pair of space shoes.”

Mark grumbled to himself as he gathered up the cards, knowing she was a monster of his own creation. Two weeks ago she didn't know a flush from a straight before he got to her. She had a disturbingly steep learning curve.

“We’re going to Vegas the second we get home,” he informed her. “We’ll have to be careful at the blackjack tables though so you don't get us kicked out for cheating, you card shark.”

“I don't cheat,” she said, playfully throwing a card he missed at him to shuffle into the deck.

“You count cards,” Mark retorted. “That’s what they call cheating .”

“But that’s not my fault, it’s an accident,” she insisted. “I can't help it!”

“How do you accidently count cards?” he laughed disbelievingly, as he shuffled.

“It’s just,” she sighed as she tried to think of a way to explain it. “I see the cards and I know the odds already, the math just happens in my head. I can't stop it anymore than you can stop reading a sign you see on the wall. It’s just instinctual.”

Mark set the stack of cards to the side before propping his elbows on the table and setting his chin on his interlaced fingers. “So tell me, what’s it like living in the head of Beth Johanssen Math Wizard. Because now I’m imagining it's like the movie Rainman.”

Beth rolled her eyes. “I never saw that movie,” she informed him primly, even though she understood the reference.   

“Really?” Mark asked. “It’s a classic.”

“I don't like Tom Cruise. You know he only has one front tooth,” she said pointing to her own incisor as if that answered everything. “Seriously, if I had access to google right now I would show you.”

Mark inhaled sharply, clearly about to ask for more information, then seemed to reconsider and simply shook his head, letting it go. “Wanna play something else for awhile? I’m tired of losing the metaphorical shirt off my back.”

She laughed unrepentantly. “We could play egyptian ratscrew again?”

Mark unconsciously rubbed the back of his hand. “You slap so hard. There is so much pent up rage in your tiny little body. I mean the fire in your eyes when you go in for the sandwich is terrifying. Did the psych evals pick up on that at all?”

“Don’t be a baby about it,” she tsked, rolling her eyes. “And it’s not rage, it's just a perfectly healthy competitive streak.”  

“No, but you slap so hard ,” he felt the need to repeat.

Beth stuck her tongue out at him. “I play to win,” she shrugged.

“I mean I’ve always known you’re super tough because ya know, astronaut.” Training had been anything but easy, and definitely quickly weeded out the weak of mind and body. “But you might need to look into another outlet for that.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Beth replied sarcastically, shaking her head.  

“What are your feelings about roller derby?” he asked after taking a couple minutes to think about it.

“Roller derby?” she repeated, her eyebrows shooting up towards her hairline.

“Yeah I bet you’d be awesome at it,” he said enthusiastically. “You’d need a really good derby name. With some kind of space pun or twist. You could be the Mars Attacker.”

“Oh my god.” Beth couldn't believe they were actually having this conversation.

“Vomit comet?” he offered.

“Ew no.”

“Ace of Space?”

“Lame.”

“Lizzy Stardust?

“Literally no one calls me Liz.”

“Sonic Boom? Afterburn? Astroblaster?”  he suggested in rapid succession.

“Meh.”

“Reactor Hardcore Tech?”

“Kinda a mouthful.”

He snapped his fingers. “I got it… Sasstronaut.”

She shook her head. “No, that would be your name, if you decided to take up roller derby.”

“What about Astronaughty?” Mark offered, looking exceedingly proud of that last one.

“Aaaaaaaand now we’re done,” Beth announced, even though she was trying and failing not to laugh. “You are a ridiculous man and I don't know why I put up with you.”

“Because I’m the only other person around for millions of miles?” he offered shamelessly.

“Ah yes, that’s right,” she said trying to smother her grin. “Besides, if I was going to be a roller girl, my name would obviously be either Hot Piece of Asstronaut or Fatal Error: 404 Not Found.”

Mark laughed so hard he almost fell out of his chair. Once he got himself back under control and wiped the tears of mirth out of his eyes, he picked the deck of cards back up and gave it another shuffle. Still chuckling to herself, Beth slumped down in her chair and lifted her legs so her socked feet were propped up on his knee where he sat across the table from her.

“Do you know how to play Whist?” he asked shifting his leg slightly so her heel wasn’t digging into his thigh, but didn’t stop her from using him as a foot rest. “It’s usually a four person game, but there's a two person variant.”

Beth’s nose scrunched up as she thought. “Isn’t that a grandma game?” she asked. “Like something you play with other retirees while drinking Arnold Palmers in Boca.”

“I’ll have you know it was actually Great-Grandpa Watney that taught me how to play and he lived in Key West not Boca,” Mark retorted.

“I stand corrected,” she said once she stopped laughing enough to answer. “But no, I don’t know how to play whist. However, I’d love to learn.”

“Why don’t I believe you,” Mark said watching her closely as he continued to shuffle absently.

“I am offended that you would doubt my sincerity,” she replied loftily.

“I’m sure you are,” he grinned running his thumb nail down the arch of her food. When she didn’t so much as twitch he shook his head disbelievingly. “I can’t believe you’re not ticklish at all .”

“Nope,” she said popping the p. “Sorry.” She wasn’t sorry at all.

“It’s not natural, are you sure you don't have neurological damage or something?”

“Hey!” She lifted one foot to kick him lightly on the knee. “I’m not damaged, I’m just not ticklish. And if it makes you feel better I used to be really ticklish, but I stopped.”

“How do you just stop being ticklish?” he asked dubiously.

“I have four uncles, and they’re the type of people who thought it was funny to tickle me and all my cousins until someone either peed their pants or cried,” Beth explained. “But I realized that if you didn’t react they would get bored and leave you alone. So I got really good at pretending I wasn’t ticklish, until one day when I was probably about eight or nine I actually stopped being ticklish.”

Mark just sort of looked at her with wide eyes, like he was trying to decide what he thought of her story. “You stubborned the ticklishness out of yourself?” Even he wasn’t sure if it was a statement or a question.

She shrugged lightly.  “I always considered it the power of mind over matter.”

“Even at eight years old, you were so strong willed you decided you didn’t want to be ticklish anymore, so then you just weren’t ?”

“Basically, yeah, I guess,” she confirmed, she’d never really dwelled on it that much. “Is that weird?”

Mark laughed so hard that he dislodged her feet from his lap. “Yes that’s weird!” he exclaimed through his laughter. “But it’s also the most quintessentially Beth Johanssen thing I have ever heard.”

“I’m so glad I amuse you,” she said dryly, even as she made no attempt to hide her smile. “Now are you going to teach me this grandma game or what?”

“Alright, alright, let me teach you another game to kick my ass at,” he grinned self deprecatingly. “You’ll like this one, there’s more strategy to it than you would think.”

It took a couple go arounds before Beth really got the hang out of it, but it wasn’t long before she figured which tricks she wanted to go for and which she wanted pass on. They were so involved in their game that Mark was actually surprised when he noticed how much time had passed.

“I think I’m going to get ready for bed,” he said stretching his arms above his head, working out some of the kinks that had formed from sitting in a chair for so long.

“Wait, before you do that I want to go outside,” Beth announced, climbing to her feet and heading towards their EVA suits..

“What? Why?” he asked, his brow furrowing in confusion, even as he followed behind her. They hadn’t been outside at night since Sol 16. There just hadn’t been any reason to be.

“I just want to see something,” she replied vaguely, as she began the process of suiting up.

“What's that?”

“Trust me?” she asked in return.

“Of course,” he said without hesitation. He was still curious, but would let it go for the moment, as he too began to suit up without further explanation.

Twenty minutes later they were stepping out of the airlock and into the dark Martian night.

“Do I get to know why we’re out here yet?” he questioned once they were outside.

“Wait…” she replied absently as she scanned the sky.

Following her line of sight, he assumed she was looking for their old friend the MRO, and began to scan the night sky as well. It didn’t take long before some movement from the corner of his eye captured his attention.

“There it-” he gestured to it as realization hit him. The MRO travelled from south to north. The blinking light his eyes were currently tracking was moving east to west. “That’s not the MRO,” he said barely above a whisper.

“No, it’s not,” Beth confirmed just as softly. “Keep looking.”

It was only a matter of minutes before there was yet another satellite streaking across the sky. And a few minutes after that another and another.

“Do you know what this means?” Mark asked, even though he knew she did.

“It means they know,” she said a smile lighting up her face. “NASA knows we’re alive.”

“Your MRO hack worked,” he said his voice filled with a small amount of wonder as he continued searching the sky for satellites that just seemed to keep coming. “Why didn’t we do this before?” It was a question to himself as much as it was to Beth.

“It only occurred to me a couple of days ago that we should,” she admitted. It was a little embarrassing how long it took her to realize that there was such a simple way to confirm that their message to NASA had gotten through. “But I was feeling optimistic, so I thought I would save it for tonight.”

“Why tonight?” he asked confused, not sure why this particular night was any different from the past 40 that they’d been alone on Mars.

Beth turned to look at Mark, slipping her gloved hand into his. “Because even on Mars, I thought we deserved some Christmas lights.”

A small gasp escaped his throat before he could stop it. “Is it really Christmas?” He had long since stopped keeping track of the days as they corresponded with Earth.

She nodded. “It sure is.”

“Best Christmas present ever.” He squeezed her hand gently. “Thank you.”

She squeezed his hand back. “I didn’t do anything.”

He felt more than saw the delicate shrug  of her shoulders. But what she said wasn’t true. She gave him the best present there was, and she gave it to him in small ways every day. Hope.

They stood there for a long time. Two astronauts, hand in hand, a long long way from home. Silently watching lights streak across the sky, their only connection to the world they’d left behind. It wasn’t until Mark’s neck started to ache from looking up that he made any motion to stop.

“Come on,” he said, giving Beth a gentle tug so she would follow. “I have an idea.”

Building One, Johnson Space Center. Houston, Texas.

Venkat sat in his office pouring over the never ending paperwork that seemed to just materialize on his desk each day. Shift schedules, fund allocations, project juggling, out and out looting of other projects, he’d never pulled so many stunts in his life. And it just never seemed to end.

He could have taken the day off, no one would have blamed him, but he didn’t feel much like celebrating, and besides he was only half Christian after all. Instead he was taking advantage of the holiday quiet to try to catch up, figuring there would be no one to interrupt him on Christmas. Which is why he couldn’t hold back the sigh when he heard a knock on his door.

Looking up he was surprised to see Mindy standing on the other side of the glass waving at him. Perplexed, he quickly gestured her to come inside.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought you were going home for the holidays?”

“Yeah I was, but then with the blizzard and all they grounded all the flights, there was no way to get there so I stayed here. Figured since I wasn’t doing anything today, I might as well come in for a couple hours,” she shrugged as she crossed into the room and sat down in the visitors chair across his desk.  

“There was a blizzard?”

Mindy laughed lightly. “Yeah, the entire eastern seaboard is effectively shut down right now,” she told him. “You really need to watch some not space related news.”

“Who has time for that these days,” Venkat sighed, slumping back in his chair.

“Are you even aware that it’s Christmas today?” she asked teasingly. “Or were you just wondering where everyone is?”

“Well there was a memo about it,” he replied, taking her ribbing with good humor.

“Yeah I got that email too,” Mindy smirked.  

“So you didn’t say, what are you doing here?” he asked meaning his office.

“I didn’t know if you’d be in today, but I thought I’d take a chance,” she shrugged. “I have a Christmas present for you.”

“What?” he asked taken aback. “But you didn’t-”

“ I didn’t,” she quickly corrected seeing where his train of thought went. “Watney and Johanssen did. Actually I think Ms. Montrose is going to enjoy it the most, but here you go.”

Venkat took the tablet that Mindy was extending across the desk and looked down at the picture that was displayed. It was a familiar one, of the Ares 3 site, but it only took him a moment to spot what she was talking about. Where for the past month it used to say not dead , it now said-

MERRY
XMAS

Venkat looked up at Mindy with wide eyes. “When did they do this?”

Mindy shrugged. “It was done when I came in, they had to have done it sometime last night,” she explained.

“They were out of the Hab at night?” It was a rhetorical question, but that didn’t stop her from answering anyways.

“I think they might have been looking for satellites, maybe I’m just biased, but it was the only reason I could think of for why they’d be outside at night,” she proposed. “They’d have see all the lights, they’d know we altered their trajectories. Which means they know we’re watching them. Which is why they finally changed the message.”

“No, that makes perfect sense.” Venkat felt the first genuine smile he’d had in a long time cross his face. “This is an excellent Christmas present. Did you already email this to Annie?” he asked.

“Sure did,” she confirmed. “All the usual parties already have it in their inbox.”

“Efficient as always,” he praised. “I’m gonna call her and make sure she checks her email today. She’s going to want to make sure this hits the press before the nightly news.”

He picked up the phone on his desk and quickly hit the speed dial for the Director of Media Relations. “Hey Annie is Venk, have you checked your work email in the last twenty minutes?”

He rolled his eyes in Mindy’s direction as he waited for Annie to stop talking on the other end of the line. “Yeah yeah Merry Christmas to you too. I wouldn’t have interrupted your holiday if it wasn’t important. Watney and Johanssen sent you a Christmas present from Mars, so I think you should check your email and open it. Yes, I’ll wait.”

He tapped his fingers in rhythm on his desk while he waited for Annie to find the image on her phone, Mindy still sitting across from him looking bemused. “Yes I figured you would,” he smirked when Annie came back on the line. “That’s why I called you. Ms. Park said she believes that they might realize that we’re watching them now, so you we might be getting more messages from them in future. Yeah Merry fucking Christmas to you too. I’ll see you when you get back in town.”

He hung up the phone and grinned at the young satellite tech across from him. “I haven’t heard Annie that happy about something in weeks,” Venkat told her.

“That’s the real Christmas miracle,” she smirked.  

“You’re not wrong.” He paused for a moment and then spoke again. “Have you had lunch yet?”

“Um… no?” Mindy answered, not expecting that question.

“Do you like Chinese? It’s a total cliche, but there’s a place down the street that’s pretty good, and it should be open today.” When Mindy didn’t answer right away, he continued. “It’s Christmas, we deserve a half day off. And if Watney and Johanssen were up all night they’ll probably stay inside today.”

Mindy smiled. “Yeah, okay. Lemme just swing back through SatCon so I can get my stuff.”

Chapter Text

SOL 58

Mark was having a good morning.

He wasn’t setting anything on fire, he wasn’t using highly specialized equipment for something other than their intended purpose, Mars wasn’t doing anything in particular to try to murder him. Other than the fact that he couldn’t currently get off of it of course.

Instead he was working with plants.

Botany was simple. Botany was soothing. Botany didn’t try to kill you.

Well… most of the time.

Either way, he was happily spending the beginning of his day kneeling in the dirt, harvesting the first edible food crop ever grown on Mars. And that was pretty fucking cool if he did say so himself.

It had been thirty nine sols since he initially planted them, which was about forty days back on Earth so it was time to reap and resow. If they had been planning on eating these particular potatoes, he would have given them a little bit longer to mature and wouldn’t be digging them up yet. But these were his seed potatoes so he just needed them mature enough to support growing more plants. His plans for the rest of the day involved cutting them up and replanting them so they could finally take full advantage of the still mainly untouched soil they had painstakingly created.

He was humming absently to himself as he worked when some movement from the corner of his eye caught his attention. Looking over his shoulder he found Beth, still in her pajamas, standing in the opening of the tarp, bleary eyed and clutching her daily cup of coffee with one hand and holding on to  the blanket she had draped over her shoulders with the other.

“Morning sunshine!” he greeted with a grin.

Beth just kind of grunted in response. “You’re up and working early this morning,” she finally said, her voice still tired.

“Yeah, I got up and got straight to work,” he admitted. “I guess I was just excited to get started.”

Beth quirked an eyebrow and looked at him speculatively. “So it this like some sort of Botanist’s Christmas morning?”

“Well,” he started, as he carefully reburied one of the plants after removing the potatoes from its roots, “I’m the first person to successfully grow a sustainable food source on another planet. So yeah … it kinda of is.”

Beth scoffed, but the smile playing on her lips was fond. “Nerd.”

“Oh excuse me, Miss I have Leather Goddesses of Phobos on my computer,” he shot back with a smirk.

“Whatever,” she retorted, completely unashamed of the media she chose to bring to Mars. “There’s an awful lot of judgment in your tone for someone who literally spent an entire day last week playing it. And don’t think I also didn’t notice that you played it on the LEWD setting.”

“Well I wasn’t going to play it with the TAME settings on,” he responded, the look on his face telling her just how ridiculous he found that particular idea. “I mean you have met me. And ,” he continued accusation laced heavy in his tone, “it wouldn't have taken me all day if someone would have helped me out after I was lost in the catacombs for three hours !”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Beth asked lightly, hiding her grin behind her coffee.

“You mean your fun in watching my growing frustration?”

“You figured it out eventually,” she giggled. “And didn’t you get more personal satisfaction from knowing you figured it out on your own?”

“Not really, no!” he exclaimed shamelessly. “The only reason that I didn’t just quit or toss the laptop out the airlock was because I had already been trying so long it had become personal. And even so I’m pretty sure I only figured out through dumb luck. I’d never be able to do it again.”

“Yeah,” she nodded, a shit eating grin slowly spreading across her face. “It’s pretty tricky unless you have the map.”

“THERE’S A MAP?!”

Beth laughed so hard she was holding onto her side. “So how do they look?” she asked once she had calmed down enough to speak, nodding to the bucket of potatoes he had next to him, knowing it was the best way to distract him.

To her a potato was a potato, something she generally prefered to eat in a fried crispy and lightly salted state. She didn’t know if there was something in particular to look for in a superior specimen. But since they were going to be saving her life, and keeping her from a long and painful death via starvation, she figured she should show some interest.

Her distraction worked. “Actually they surpassed all my expectations,” he informed her with a happy grin. “It’s amazing what they can do when they’re not dealing parasites, insects or blight and with the Hab keeping  ideal temperature, moisture and lighting conditions.”

“Awesome,” she grinned, happy to hear it. “And I’m sure it helped they have the best botanist on the planet taking care of them every day.”

“I thought that went without saying,” he replied with a smirk as he moved down the row to the next plant.

Once he got back to work, Mark fully expected her to wander off after a few minutes. While she always listened when he talked to her about their crop, she pretty much left him to his own devices when it came to the tending of the actual plants. If he really thought about it, he didn’t think she’d actually crossed the barrier of the tarp since they’d finished making water. So when she just stood there, her sock clad feet carefully outside the dirt boundary, slowly sipping her coffee while she watched him work, he was both surprised and a little confused.

“Did you want to help me?” he asked when he looked up and noticed that that she was watching what he was doing with genuine interest written all over her face.  

Beth’s eyes went wide. “What?! No!” she exclaimed, taking a horrified step back like he had asked her if she wanted to kick a puppy instead of dig up potatoes.

“Come on Johanssen,” he coaxed teasingly. “Learn a new skill, expand you horizons.”

“No!” she called through the tarp. “Trust me, you don't want me helping, I’ll just do something to fuck it up and they’ll all die!”

“You will not,” he called back. “I won’t let you kill anything. I promise”

“You don't know that. You can’t promise that,” she retorted accusingly. “You don’t understand. I’m really good at killing plants. And then we’ll starve and it’ll be all my fault.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” he told her, not able to hold back his laughter at her dramatics  “It’s not that hard, and I’ll teach you exactly what to do.”

“Noooooooope!” she called walking away.

He could hear her rinsing her coffee cup in the kitchen. “Come on Beth! It’s not rocket science!”

“I know it’s not rocket science!” she retorted, walking to the hole he had cut in one section of the plastic sheeting so he could look in on the plants whenever he wanted. But it was for his height not hers, so she was standing on the tip of her toes and even then she could only barely see through it. “I can do rocket science! I’m a fucking astronaut, rocket science makes sense! This I can’t do.”

Mark rolled his eyes even as he laughed. He supposed he walked right into that one.

“No, but really Beth, you should learn how to do this,” he told her once he stopped laughing.  His suddenly serious tone was enough to get her to poke her head back through the tarp again. “What if, for some reason, I’m not here to do this, or I get sick or break a leg or something? You need to know what to do.”

A frown spread across Beth’s face. A part of her wanted to stamp her foot and insist that that would never happen. But she was too pragmatic for that and knew he was right.

“Fine,” she sighed heavily, looking down at the sock clad feet. “Let me go put on shoes.”

It only took her a few minutes to return shuffling her feet, and he noted absently that she had also gotten dressed, putting on clothes that were already dirty.

“Well come on then,” he said gesturing her inside when she hovered just outside the tarp like she had before. “They’re just plants they don't bite. Unless they’re Dionaea muscipula or Aldrovanda vesiculosa, but even then I think you’d survive it.” At her blank look he gave her the common names. “The Venus flytrap or the Waterwheel plant.”

“Nerd,” she said again, rolling her eyes as she made her way to his side, kneeling down in the dirt beside him. “Alright, I’m here, let’s do this,” she said sounding none to pleased about that fact.

For all of her complaining, Mark didn’t think he’d ever had a more attentive student as he walked her through the steps of harvesting potatoes. She listened and watched intently as he showed her how to dig up the plant without damaging its roots, and how best to rebury it so it could continue to grow more potatoes. She even listened how he explained that if he hadn’t been able to give them so much personal attention that they’d have to make sure than none of the tubers had gotten uncovered as they grew and exposed to the light, since that would make the potato skins turn green and toxic and they would no longer be suitable for consumption.

First Beth watched Mark harvest a plant, narrating what he was doing as he worked, then he watched her do the same as he talked to her through it. Once he was confident that she could fly solo, he moved to the other end of the row so they could eventually meet in the middle.

However, Mark couldn't help but keep watching her work from the corner of his eye. If there had been anyone there to call him on it, he would just say he was supervising to make sure that didn't self actualize her fears and actually do damage to their plants. But really it was just because he couldn't help himself.

Beth was one of the most capable, self-possessed people that he knew. From the moment he met her back at the very beginning of their journey at NASA, from the first day being chosen for the same candidate selection class, to the last bit of mission specific training, there was not a single challenge that she didn’t throw herself into 100%, there wasn’t a single obstacle she didn’t overcome with aplomb. Her hyper analytical mind soaked in information and spat out solutions. There was a reason she was the youngest person to ever set foot on Mars.

To see her so unsure of herself and her abilities was a novel experience in of itself. But that wasn’t why he couldn't stop watching her. No, that was because despite her hesitance and the coaxing it took to get her to give it a shot, she was still trying. She had the same look of utter concentration and sharp focus that she had when writing complex system code. She was taking such caution that it took her about three times as long to harvest a plant as was strictly necessary. And she was handling each plant with the same care she would handle an egg instead of the hardy potatoes that they were.

It was… charming.

“What are you grinning at?” she asked, looking up up catching him smiling  in her direction.

“You’ve got a bit of….” he said vaguely pointing to his own forehead where she did in fact have a bit of dirt clinging above her left eyebrow.

She swiped at it with the back of her hand, not accomplishing anything but smearing the martian soil into a red line across her forehead. “Better?” she asked.

“Much,” he lied, his grin only growing. “Come on, let’s finish this up so I can teach you how we’re going to replant them.

Beth just sighed heavily, but didn’t try to weasel out of it. She was starting to think this was punishment for letting him get lost in the catacombs for so long.

SatCon, Johnson Space Center. Houston, Texas

Mindy didn't have to look up from her screen to know who dropped heavily into the chair next to her with an audible sigh, but she swivelled around in her chair anyways.

“I take it the meeting went well?” she said wryly pushing her glasses up her nose.

Venkat sighed again, and even if she hadn’t been CCed on the email announcing the interdepartmental update meeting, she would have known where he had just come from. She was actually feeling pretty grateful that since Johanssen and Watney hadn’t been leaving the Hab for the past few weeks except to sweep off the solar panels, her presence in Sanders’s office hadn’t been required. Those meeting weren't very fun to sit in on when nobody had good news, and good news was in short supply these days.

“All the ideas on how to modify the Ares 4 MDV are still ridiculously dangerous and JPL is behind on the supply probe,” Venkat said dropping his glasses on the workstation so her could press the heels of his palms into his tired eyes. “Which is already a complete hail mary as it is, and won’t even matter if Mark and Beth haven’t figured out a way to extend their food supply.”

“It was only sixty six years to get from the Wright brothers flying the first plane for twelve seconds in Kitty Hawk to when we put the first a man on the moon,” Mindy said.

He lifted his head to look at the sat tech, not sure what that seemingly non sequitur had to do with anything.

“You’ve got almost four years before you have to get Watney and Johannsen from Acidalia Planitia to Schiaparelli Crater,” she continued. “You’ll figure it out.”

Venkat considered that for a minute.

“And they’re smart, and they know that we know that they’re alive,” she added. “They have to know we’re doing something to save them, they’ll keep themselves alive until then. They’re survivors.”

“I hope you right,” Venkat sighed again.

Mindy really hoped she was right too. She had to keep telling herself that, it was too hard to keep watching for them every day to believe anything different.

“Do you have anything new to report?” Venkat asked, getting to the reason he was there. If they continued to stick to their routine, Mark and Beth should have been outside to sweep off the solar cells today.

Mindy sucked in air through her teeth which didn’t make Venkat feel very good about whatever she was about to say next.

“I was actually just about to email you when you arrived,” she admitted. “I’ve got good news and bad news, which do you want first?”

“I’ll take the good,” he said. “It's been too long since I’ve had any.”

“They changed the message again today after they cleaned off the panels,”  she said pulling the image up onto the big screen.

Venkat couldn't help the chuckle that escaped his chest. “ Hi Mom ,” he read shaking his head slightly. “Annie is going to love that.”

Mindy grinned too. While she knew that most of NASA really wished they would make their updates more informative to their personal status or their survival plans, she enjoyed their little messages back to Earth. And she knew for a fact that Annie Montrose did too, public support which was already at an all time high managed to spike even higher every time Mark and Beth switched up their message. It was amazing how a few words, spelled out in rocks, helped remind the world that they are living, feeling, people inside those suits, and not just names and official photos splayed across the nightly news.

“And now what’s the bad news?” Venkat asked already sounding resigned to whatever she was going to tell him.

Mindy tapped at her keyboard for just a moment, bringing another series of satellite images up on screen. “That minor storm heading towards them that was in this morning’s briefings?” she began. “It got upgraded. A lot.”

“How bad?” he asked even as he read the data for himself.

“Sustained winds of eighty kph,” Mindy read out loud. “Gusts at over a hundred.”

“Not as bad as Sol 6,” Venket mentioned.

“No,” she agreed. “But they’re still in for a long night.”  

SOL 59

A storm raged outside of the canvas walls of the Hab. Their one lone weather station assured the two astronauts that it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the one that left them stranded on Mars, but it definitely wasn’t a gentle breeze.

Mark looked up from where he was watching a selection from Commander Lewis’s wealth of 70s television and over at the other side of the room where Beth was curled up in her bunk with her tablet, by all appearances completely absorbed in what she was reading. She looked calm on the outside, but she was gnawing on the nail on her thumb, which Mark knew for a fact was one of her tells when she was anxious, stressed, or worried.

“You okay over there?” he asked after watching her for a moment.

“I’m fine,” she said brusquely, not looking up from her book.

He didn’t think she was fine at all, but he went back to watching the exploits of Bo and Luke Duke in the General Lee.

“Are you okay over there?” Beth asked glancing up at his side of the room a few minutes later, when it occurred to her that she should reciprocate the question.

“What? Oh yeah totally,” he assured her quickly, even as he turned up the sound on the laptop in a futile effort to drown out the howling Martian wind.

And he totally was okay, at least until five minutes later when a strong gust of wind made the Hab shudder and the lights flicker.

“You know what fuck this, I’m not fine,” Mark said detangling himself from his blankets. “I’m coming over there so scoot over and make room.”

Beth looked more than a little relieved as she made room in her bed and held the blankets open for Mark to slide in.

“Did you want to keep reading or do you want to watch Scrubs with me?” he asked once they were smooshed together in Beth’s bunk, the only way two of them fitting was with their sides pressed against each other.

“Let’s watch more Scrubs. I think we were on season seven episode nine,” Beth replied turning off her tablet and placing it on the ledge that served as her nightstand.

“Sounds good,” he agreed easily as he closed out of the Dukes of Hazzard episode he had been watching and cued up the episode of Scrubs they had left off on, since that was the show they made a point of watching together.

As they watched they slowly shifted into more comfortable positions. Beth had turned on her side and curled around Mark, her head resting on his chest. And Mark had brought an arm up and around her shoulders holding her close. It was much easier to ignore the rattling of the Hab around them now that they were together.

They had already watched one episode and were half way through another before Beth spoke again. “Thanks, I wasn’t fine either,” she said not looking away from the screen they were watching.

Mark didn’t respond verbally, instead just dropping a kiss to the top of her head and gave her a gentle squeeze. They didn’t speak again, simply watching the old medical comedy until they both fell asleep. Neither of them would admit it later, but even despite the raging storm outside, they both slept better than they had in a long long time.

Chapter Text

SOL 61

“So, I’ve been thinking,” Mark announced, sitting in his bunk with his laptop, occasionally glancing up at Beth as she went through her morning routine of light yoga.

“Do I even want to know what you’re thinking about when you’re staring at my ass?” she asked with a smirk, looking at him upside down from between her legs.

“If you didn’t want me looking, you would have done Upward Facing Butt in the other direction,” he retorted shamelessly.

Beth laughed as she shifted into what Mark called The Sprouting Potato. “So what were you thinking about?”

“That it’s time that we really start thinking long term about how we’re going to get off this godforsaken rock.”

“We’re going to have to meet Ares 4 at Schiaparelli,” she said feeling the stretch in her back.  “Even if NASA knows we’re alive, we can't assume they’ll be able to rescue us from here.”

Mark nodded, he’d been thinking the same thing. He was happy to hear that even though they hadn’t discussed it yet, they were clearly thinking along the same lines. “We’re going to have to modify one of the rovers.”

“I assume you already have a game plan on how we’re going to do that?” Beth said as she pushed back up to her feet, stretching her hands high above her head. “Because there is no way we’re going thirty-two hundred kilometers in one of the rovers the way they are now.”

“You are right about that,” he agreed easily. “Luckily,” he continued, flipping the computer around in his lap so that she could see the screen, “I have all the tech specs right here and while you’ve been busy contorting into positions the human body was not made for, I’ve been doing math.”

“I’m just stretching and it’s a good way to keep up my much needed muscle tone and strength while burning as few extra calories as possible,” she told him not for the first time while she once again switched positions. “And you really should be joining me,” she added, also not for the first time.

She was right, and he knew she was right, but he’d given it a pass anyways.  He was sure that Beck would give him hell for it once they were all back home, but he just really did not enjoy yoga.  

“You’re not the boss of me,” he said playfully.

“Except that technically, yeah I am,” she retorted.

Okay, she had him there. “Are you going to order me to start doing yoga?” he asked challengingly.

Beth snorted as she folded her body in half. “God no. All you would do is bitch and moan the whole time and there’s nothing more pathetic than a grown man whining,” she teased.

He waited until she looked up at him, before he stuck his tongue out at her.

Beth just laughed. “Okay so what’s your grand plan to trick out the rover?” she asked getting back to more important subjects.

“I don't have it all figured out yet,” he admitted.

“That’s okay, we have almost four years to workshop it,” she interjected encouragingly, as she sat up and crossed her legs, done with her stretching for one day.

“The first problem to solve is power,” Mark said, catching her up on what he’d already sussed out. “The rovers are only designed to go thirty five kilometers on a single charge, so that’s obviously not going to work.”

“It’ll take us almost a hundred sols to get there at that rate,” Beth agreed.

“The most obvious way to extend that is to loot the battery from the other rover. Ta-daa,” he made Beth smile with his jazz hands, “doubles our range right off the bat.”

Beth climbed to her feet. “No time like the present. Let’s get started.”

They suited up quickly with practiced efficiency and it wasn’t long before they were standing in front of the two rovers.

“Do you have a preference?” Mark asked, shifting his tool box from one hand to the other.

“I don’t trust the electronics in Rover 1 after the power surge from the MRO project.”

“Rover 2 it is then,” he agreed easily.

It didn’t take long to pull the battery from Rover 1, just a couple of clamps to remove and some unplugging of cables. Once it was out though, they were faced with another problem.

“Hey Watney?” Beth said, her feet slipping in the loose sand as she pushed the detached battery towards Rover 2.

“What's up, Johanssen?” Mark replied, pulling in the same direction.

“So this thing is fucking huge and really heavy,” she pointed out, putting her weight into it as the battery slid forward a couple more feet.

“Is it really? I hadn’t noticed,” he retorted dryly.

She ignored his sarcasm in favor of asking her pertinent question. “Where are we gonna put it?”

“That’s actually a really good question,” Mark answered, standing up straight and stretching his back once they’d reached Rover 2.

“I know, that’s why I asked it.”

This time Mark ignored Beth’s sass as they both looked at the Rover appraisingly.

“We could put it on the roof?” she suggested hesitantly, since she was already imagining the nightmare it would be to get the oversized battery up there.

“No,” he shook his head, “we’re going to have to use the roof for the solar panels we’ll need to bring to recharge the batteries.”

“There’s no room for it in the undercarriage or inside the cabin,” she pointed out, thinking out loud, “and it wouldn't fit through the airlock anyways.”

Mark hummed an acknowledgment that he had heard her as he continued to mull over their problem. “I have an idea,” he said suddenly. “But it’s going to involve getting crafty.”

Beth turned towards Mark, one eyebrow arched curiously. “Consider me intrigued.”

“Come on, let’s go back inside and I’ll explain.”

SatCon, Johnson Space Center. Houston, Texas.

Mindy was bored. Like counting ceiling tiles bored.

When anyone outside of NASA found out that she was in charge of tracking all of Mark Watney and Beth Johanssen’s movement, they assumed her job was exciting and glamorous. After all they were the two most famous and talked about people on Earth. Everyone wanted to know what they were doing and how they were surviving and Mindy got to find out first .

Well, those people were wrong. Nothing about scanning through countless copies of the same patch of Mars was exciting, and nothing about her completely out-of-whack sleep cycle and coffee stained sweater was glamourous.

It was even worse the past few weeks because neither astronaut seemed inclined to leave the Hab much these days, except when they were sweeping off the solar farm.  Which meant that Mindy often spent three or four days in a row looking at a whole lot of nothing.

She couldn’t help but be reminded of the summer that her neighbors had gone to Europe for six weeks and asked her to house/cat sit. It wasn’t a problem except that the cat absolutely hated her and hid every time she came over. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the food that she was leaving out every day was gone by the time she returned, she would have been afraid that she was going to have to tell her neighbors that their cat had run away from home while they were out of the country.

If you traded food for the solar farm and cat for astronaut it was eerily reminiscent. Or maybe it wasn’t similar at all and that was just her absolutely destroyed circadian rhythms getting to her.

Reaching for her jumbo sized coffee mug, Mindy saw that it was once again empty, without any memory of actually finishing it. With a shrug she climbed to her feet wandered towards the break room to get a refill.

“Oh, for fuck's sake,” she muttered under her breath when she saw that once again the pot was empty. “If I find out who keeps taking the last cup without starting a new pot, I’m going to go straight to Sanders and getting them fired.”

She didn’t actually have that kind of power, but she liked to pretend she did. And honestly, she didn’t really mind making a new pot of coffee either; it wasn’t as if she had anything else to do. But it was the principle of the matter! If the person to finish the pot doesn’t start a new one, then what was to keep the fabric of civilized society from completely breaking down and the world from spiraling into anarchy?!

Okay, maybe the tipping point for the destruction of mankind wouldn’t be caused by overlooked office niceties.

Mindy sighed to herself as she watched the dark liquid drip into the carafe. She really needed a vacation, but at this point she’d settle for a nap. In reality, she was going to drink yet another 32 ounces of terrible break room coffee and then go back to her station and and look at the same patch of dirt for another mind numbing four hours.  

Fresh coffee finally in hand, she took the long way back to her desk taking a few minutes to talk to some of her coworkers before finally sitting back down in her chair. Setting her oversized travel mug down where she wouldn’t accidently knock it over, she settled in to look over the imagery that came in while she wasn’t at her station. The first batch was the same as they had been all day, but a dozen or so images in, things changed.

Both Watney and Johannsen were out of the Hab. And they weren’t just sweeping off the solar farm again. She squinted at the photos scanning through a dozen more. It looked like they were messing with the rovers, but she couldn't tell exactly what they were doing with them. Well, there were whole teams to figure that out, regardless of what they were doing it looked like their wayward astronauts had a new project.

Reaching for her phone she hit number one on her speed dial.  It still amazed her some days that she had the Director of Mars Missions’ number at all, let alone that he was the first person on her speed dial. She couldn't help but smile to herself as the phone rang.  The rest of her day wasn’t going to be so boring after all.

SOL 61 CONT.

Beth watched as Mark cut apart their spare Hab canvas with the confidence of someone who knew exactly what they were doing. It turned out that his idea was making saddle bags for the rover, large enough to hold the extra battery. She had immediately agreed that it was a great idea and since there was no time like the present, they started fabrication right away.

Well that is to say that Mark  started fabrication, Beth just used the resin to glue the edges she was told to glue together.

“How’d you learn do this?” she asked curiously, taking care not to glue her fingers to the canvas as she worked. She had not exactly taken Home Ec in high school and she had no problem admitting that she was not what anyone would consider a crafty person. It would have taken her a lot longer and probably some wasted canvas to do what Mark had patterned and started cutting out in about five minutes.

“Do what?” he asked looking up curiously.

“All of…” she waved her hands at the floor between them, they were currently camped out on their bedroom floor since it had the most empty workable floor space since the kitchen was a farm, “this.”

Mark looked at her like he wasn’t sure what to make of her question. “It’s just a couple bags with some straps to throw over the top of the rover,” he shrugged. “It’s not that complicated.

“But seriously, is it an engineering thing?” she continued. “Being able to see how the pieces need to come together?”

“Uhh, I guess so,” he shrugged, the tips of his ears turning pink.

Beth narrowed her eyes. “You’re lying.”

“No I’m not,” he denied with a scoff.

“Yes, you are,” she countered, turning her full attention to him. You didn’t spend as much time with someone as they had spent together without knowing each other’s tells. It was also how she kept beating him at poker. “You’re definitely lying. But why are you lying? What are you trying to hide?”

“I’m not trying to hide anything,” he insisted, even as his ears went completely red.

“There is definitely something you don't want to tell me,” she said with a shit eating grin. She could tell that whatever it was he was hiding it was because he was embarrassed, which automatically meant she was about 100 times more eager to know what it was. “You might as well tell me because you know I’m not going to let it go.”

An unhappy groan escaped Mark’s throat, knowing she was telling the truth. “Fine!” he threw up his hands. “My mom taught me some basics of sewing because when I was in highschool... “

“When you were in high school you what?” she prompted when he trailed off.

“I used to akemywnospaatonvention…”

“What was that?” she asked when he didn't do much more than mutter under his breath. “Maybe this time in English.”

“When I was in high school I used to make my own cosplays and go to conventions,” he admitted with a sigh, resigning himself to Beth’s inevitable reaction.

She didn’t disappoint. “WHAT?!” she exclaimed her face bright with excitement. “This is brand new information! And you give me a hard time because of my video games! This is waaaaaaaaay nerdier.”

Mark looked up at the ceiling as if asking for strength.  This wasn’t going to go away any time soon.

“That is fantastic!” she grinned, enjoying this more than she probably should. “Who did you cosplay as? Wait. No, don't tell me. I want to see if I can guess.”

He rolled his eyes, but there was a hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Fine, see if you can guess,” he relented, letting her have her fun.

“Okay so high school, which means early 2010s,” she mused aloud carefully watching Mark’s face for any indications that might lead her in the right direction. “What would baby nerd Mark Watney dress up as in high school.”

Mark just shrugged his shoulders and went back to finishing the bag he was working on, he could get teased and work at the same time.

“Okay, at least tell me if I’m looking for something mainstream or more obscure,” she requested.

“It was pretty mainstream,” he admitted.

“Okay, that makes it easier. Was it a character from a video game? Someone from a book?” she pondered. “No,” she decided when Mark didn’t so much as twitch. “Was it either movie or television character?”

When Mark glanced up at her, she knew she was on the right track.

“Alright, what was popular in the 2010s.” She paused a moment to think, flicking through their past conversations about old pop culture in her mind for clues.

“I’m thinking…. Doctor Who,” she guessed. “Eleven? No, I see you more as a Ten.”

Mark snorted and shook his head as he finished the last seam to their saddle bags, then sat back leaning his weight on the heels of his hands. The resin hardened almost immediately but it would take an hour before it completely set, so they had some time before they needed to go back outside to test them out.

“Star Trek rebooted, right about that time,” she recalled. “Did you want to be Captain Kirk? I could imagine you wanting to be Captain Kirk.” The look on his face told her she was way off-base so she moved on. “Or maybe you were a Star Wars kid instead. Poe? Finn? I can’t see you as a Kylo Ren fan. Oh please tell me you didn’t dress up as Crylo Ren!”

Mark laughed, “No, I wasn’t Kylo Ren. And besides they didn’t start making more Star Wars movies again until I was in college. And before you ask I wasn’t anyone from the original trilogy either.”  

“Aww that’s a shame, I bet you would have made a perfect teenage Luke Skywalker with that blonde hair of yours,” Beth replied smiling ear to ear when Mark’s cheeks turned pink.

“I may or may not have had my own lightsaber,” he admitted. “One of the nice and expensive ones too.”

“Of course you did,” she giggled. “What about Harry Potter?”

“I never really got into Harry Potter,” he revealed. “I mean I read all the books and watched the movies, but they were never my favorite.”

Beth gasped looked shocked and appalled. “How do you not like Harry Potter?!” she asked horrified. “Those books were my childhood! I was Hermione Granger for Halloween when I was 7 and 8. She was my hero.”

“I bet you were an adorable mini Hermione,” he grinned brightly,

“Of course I was,” Beth laughed. “Although the first year I got my wand taken away after three blocks of trick or treating, because my mom was afraid I was going to take someone’s eye out.”

Mark laughed having no problem picturing that in the slightest.

“Hmmm, what else was big back then,” she said, only momentarily distracted from her original mission. “Oh duh, Marvel.” The look on Mark’s face told her she was on the right track. “Now we’re getting somewhere! Were you Iron Man? Thor? Captain America? The Winter Soldier? Hawkeye? Phil Coulson? A random SHIELD Agent?” she asked in rapid succession. “Okay no one from phase one then. What about the X-Men? Were you one of the X-Men? One of the Fantastic Four? Deadpool? Spiderman? That’s it isn't it?!” she exclaimed practically bouncing up and down where she sat.

Mark sighed but relented. “Yes, when I was in high school I cosplayed as Spiderman.”

“OH MY GOD!” she squealed, absolutely delighted. “Are there pictures?! Please tell me there are pictures!”  

“God, I hope not,” he laughed. “But there are probably some buried somewhere at my parent’s house.”

“The first thing I’m doing when we get back on Hermes again, is emailing your mother,” she told him giggling.  “I need to see if the picture I have in my head lives up to the real thing.”

“Hey now,” Mark replied, laughing as well, “I was proud of my Spidey suit. I worked really hard on that thing.”

“And I have no doubts that it was fantastic,” she said agreeably. “I just need to see it for myself.”

“I don’t know if I like the idea of you and my mom having direct contact,” he said, using the edge of the nearest bunk to help pull himself off the floor.

“What, why?” she asked. “I thought your mom liked me when we met.” The whole crew had all met each other’s families at different points throughout training when they had come to visit.

“She did, she loved you,” Mark assured her. “Which is the problem; I have visions of both of you ganging up on me.”

Beth just laughed, but didn’t bother trying to deny it.

“Come on Ms. Granger,” he said offering her a hand up. “Let’s suit back up and test this baby out.”

“Whatever you say Mr. Parker,” she grinned taking his hand and letting him pull her to her feet. “So tell me, are EVA suits more or less comfortable than the Spidey suit?”

Nope, Mark thought as they walked through the Hab, it wasn’t going away any time soon.

Once they were back outside it didn’t take them long with both of them working together for them to get the new saddle bags situated over the top of the rover. It took a little more time and some basic laws of physics to move the battery from Rover 1 into the bag on one side, and the rocks from the I and the M of their last message, which now read H MO, into the other. That accomplished, Mark unplugged Rover 2’s battery and plugged in Rover 1’s before they climbed into the cab to make sure everything was working properly and taking it for a test drive.

Mark was finding some largish rocks to drive over to make sure that the harness held and nothing shifted out of place when Beth started laughing quietly to herself.

“What’s so funny?” he asked curiously.

“It’s just that NASA sent us up here with some of the most sophisticated scientific equipment in existence and we ended up having to make a plow to farm with and now we just made some saddle bags for the rover,” she pointed out.

Mark chucked as well. “This is some Oregon Trail shit right here.”

“Oh man I loved that game as a kid,” she said nostalgically.  “Too bad there's no buffalo to shoot. I could use some more meat in my diet these days.”

“Yeah, but the tradeoff is that we won't have to fjord any rivers on the way to Schiaparelli,” he pointed out helpfully.

“And hopefully no dysentery either.”

“ Definitely no dysentery.”

Chapter Text

SOL 62

“So, I think it’s officially safe to say that I was wrong and you were right,” Mark admitted through chattering teeth, while driving the Rover around the Hab in an aimless circle.

“Uh huh,” she ground out through her clenched jaw. “I think so too,” Beth agreed her whole body practically convulsing as she shivered violently, for once taking no pleasure in telling him ‘I told you so.’

After the previous sol’s success with getting the second battery hooked up and how to best secure the solar panels to the roof, today’s project was figuring out how to best conserve all that precious energy and make it stretch as far as possible. The math told them that simply running the Rover’s heater all day would suck nearly half their available power every charge and that kind of loss margin simply wasn’t acceptable if they wanted to make it to Ares 4 in a reasonable time frame.  

Mark had been convinced that their combined body heat inside the insulated cab of the rover would be enough to keep them warm on their journey to Schiaparelli. Beth hadn’t been as sure. And so of course an experiment and a side line bet had been in order.  

So they went for another ride, just like they did the day before, this time with the heater off. Mark had initially thought to disable the heater from the onset, but Beth convinced him to at least turn on the heat for a few minutes until the cab was a comfortable temperature, giving the rover’s insulation a fighting chance. She still didn't think it was going to be enough, but she figured it would give them a good idea of how quickly the temperature dropped as the heat leached through.

And at first it wasn’t so bad; they had both worn extra layers underneath their EVA suits in anticipation of cooler temperatures and the rover did in fact make an admirable attempt at keeping the residual heat in. But by the end of the first hour it was definitely on the chilly side, and as they neared the two hour mark it was almost unbearably cold.

As per the terms of their wager that morning, Beth was now another five million Martian dollars richer, but right now all she wanted to be was warm.

“I can't feel my face,” she complained, covering her numb nose with her EVA suit’s gloves which she had put back on half an hour prior in a futile attempt to regain feeling in her tingly fingers. “There’s no way we could do this long term.”

The fact that he could see his breath with every exhale only further confirmed that she was right. “That’s it.  I can't take it any more, I’m calling it,” he announced, lunging for the heater control and turning it back on with a flick of a switch, much to Beth’s relief. “Let’s just go home and we’ll try to figure out a new solution from there,” he said sulkily.  

As he steered the rover back towards the Hab, Beth could see the funk he was already settling into, dissapointed his idea didn’t work and they had to go back to the drawing board. “The laws of thermodynamics strike again!” she cried dramatically, trying to joke him out of his bad mood before it could stick.

It worked. “Damn you, entropy!” he joined in, shaking a fist at the ceiling.  

Despite the heater going full blast, the rover was only just starting to warm up when they pulled up in front of Airlock 3. Barely waiting to make sure Mark was keeping up, Beth made a mad dash from the rover to the Hab, wanting nothing more in that moment than to be warm again. Once the airlock finished cycling, she stripped out of her EVA suit leaving it in a pile on the floor before dashing once more, this time into their bedroom. She practically dove into her bunk, burrowing under a pile of blankets while she waited for her frozen extremities to thaw.

For his part, Mark took the time to store his EVA suit properly and took care of Beth’s as well before going to track her down. Walking into the bunk room he actually didn’t see her at first, mistaking the lump on her mattress for the usual mass of blankets sitting on her perpetually unmade bed.

“Hey Beth, you planning on coming out any time soon or should I just talk to the lump?” he asked amused.

“There’s no Beth here,” she said, her voice muffled through the various layers of fabric. “Only blankets.”

A startled laugh burst from his chest. “Excuse me?”

“There was a Beth here, but the blankets accepted her into their society as one of their own,” she added in explanation. “This is her life now. But she wishes you the best of luck on your continued existence as a non-blanket being.”

Mark laughed again, shaking his head. She could be so weird sometimes, but he couldn’t help but love that about her. If nothing else it certainly kept things interesting.

“That seems like a valid life choice,” he said with faux seriousness. “Actually,” he continued, a shit eating grin crossing his face, “maybe I’ll join you.”

Beth knew that tone and she did not like what it meant. “Don’t you dare!” she exclaimed as she immediately started scrambling to extricate herself from the tangle of blankets she had wrapped herself in. But it was futile as he flopped right onto the pile she and the blankets made.

“Ufffff,” she exhaled heavily when he landed on top of her. “For fuck’s sake Watney, get off. You weigh a friggin ton!” He might have actually listened to her if she hadn’t been laughing so hard.

“What, I can't join your blanket party?” he asked with an innocence that no one would have believed had they been there to witness it.

“Oh my god, why is this my life!” she grumbled as she tried to shift out from underneath him, but not having much success, pinned as she was by her cocoon of blankets and Mark’s weight.

“You know, that’s not the first time a woman I’m in bed with has said that to me,” he joked self-deprecatingly.

“I hate you right now,” Beth laughed as she stopped struggling wildly and started shifting more strategically under the blankets.  

“I think I’m going to take a nap while you and the blankets try to come up with a solution to our battery problem,” Mark informed her, having no idea what she was up to underneath the covers.

Finally getting the leverage she needed, Beth used the decreased gravity to her advantage and pushed hard with both her hands and feet, launching a surprised Mark off of her bunk and onto the floor. When he landed with a grunt and a thud, she finally managed to untangle herself from her pile of blankets enough to poke her head out.

“What if we just turned down the heater instead of turning it off completely?” she suggested, looking over the edge of her bed at Mark who was looking rather nonplused from where he was laid out on the floor. “Or just turned it on for fifteen minutes every hour and a half or so?”

“You mean so we’d just be cold, but not actively freezing to death?” he asked, sitting up and propping his elbows on the edge of her mattress while he considered it.

Beth nodded.

“It would help,” he said sucking air through his teeth, “but it would still probably use about a quarter of our battery charge per day. And I have to admit, for all the game I was talking about being able to tough it out and deal with the cold the whole way to Schiaparelli, it’s not a good idea. Shivering is the body purposely burning extra calories in an attempt to warm up,” he pointed out. “And that’s the last thing either of us need.”  

“So what we need is a heat source that doesn’t need energy to produce said heat,” she sighed, sitting up on her elbows. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing like that on Mars.” She trailed off for a moment. “Well, I mean except the RTG,” she amended flippantly.   

“The RTG!” Mark repeated his face lighting up.

Beth’s eyes widened. “Mark, no!”

“Mark, yes!” he countered, smiling brightly.

“That was an observation, not a suggestion.”

“It was an observation, that could also be a solution,” he pointed out.

“That’s insane!” she exclaimed. “We’re not seriously going to solve our heating problem by digging up the radioactive box of death.”

“Yes, yes we are,” he insisted, climbing to his feet to grab the tablet that was sitting on his own bunk quickly pulling up the schematics he needed. “The RTG contains 2.6 kilograms of plutonium-238, which would make it our own personal radioactive 1500 watt space heater,” he read off as he crossed back to Beth’s bunk perching on the edge next to her hip.  

“They key words in that sentence being plutonium and radioactive ,” she replied pointedly. “And we don't even know where it is. First thing Lewis did when we got here was dump it somewhere. Mission parameters didn’t specify where, just that it had to be at least four kilometers away with a warning flag on top of it so none of us would be stupid enough to go near it again ,” she reminded him.

“Ah, but I was outside with Vogel assembling the solar farm when Lewis drove off,” he countered. “I saw her head due south. We both know the Commander, I’m sure if we drive south for exactly four kilometers we’re going to find it no problem.”

“I didn’t think it was possible, but this is actually worse than setting rocket fuel on fire inside the Hab,” Beth said throwing her hands up. “It’s a terrible idea.”

“It’s a great idea! I mean you’re right it’s a terrible idea,” he conceded fully aware of how insane this plan was,  “but it’s also a really good idea. And it’ll be perfectly safe as long as the box doesn’t crack.”

“And if it does?” she asked sensibly, even though she was already more than aware of the answer.

“Then our faces will melt off like the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark,” he shrugged. “But then we won’t have to worry about being cold anymore.”

Beth groaned and flopped back down on to her bunk, pulling the blankets back up and over her face. “Okay fine, we’ll go get it tomorrow.”

SOL 63

“You sure do know how to show a girl a good time,” Beth joked, dumping another shovel full of dirt off to the side.

“Well you’re always complaining that I don't take you anywhere nice anymore,” he teased back. “I thought all the girls liked a nice Sunday drive out to a radioactive dumpsite.”

“I don't know what kind of girls you’re used to, but I grew up in San Jose, not Pripyat,” she retorted.

“Well I would have taken you to the beach, except….” he trailed off gesturing to the landscape around them.

“We’re surrounded by an endless desert so old it’s literally rusting?” she finished his sentence, scuffing one boot against the ground kicking up a small cloud of fine red dirt.

Mark barked a laugh, “Yeah, that.”

“So what do you think NASA is thinking about us digging up the RTG right now?” Beth mused pausing her digging to look up at the sky, where she could only imagine the satellites were currently passing overhead.

“Well, I can't imagine that they’re thrilled,” Mark replied, as he continued to dig. “They’re probably going to be hiding under their desks cuddling with their slide rules for comfort.”

Just like Mark had predicted, they’d found the burial site for the RTG quickly. Commander Lewis had buried it on top of a small hill, probably wanting to make sure everyone could see the green flag from a distance and would know to avoid it. Of course, the duo being who they were, did the exact opposite and made a beeline for it instead. Needless to say, Lewis would have given both of them her disappointed face.

When the tip of Mark’s shovel clinked against the top of the RTG they both tossed their tools to the side and started using their hands to dig out the rest of the sand around the generator. Sure NASA had designed the outer casing to be tough enough that they should not be able to accidently crack it open, but when you were dealing with an incredibly unstable isotope it was better to be safe than sorry. Working together it didn’t take them long to pull the RTG out of the sand and get it buckled safely into the third seat of the Rover.

“Is it just me, or is it weird being so far out here?” Beth asked gazing absently out the window from the passenger seat as they made the slow journey home. “We’ve never been out of eyesight from the Hab before.”

“It’s not just you,” Mark reassured her quickly. In fact he was glad that he wasn’t the only one, since the Hab disappearing behind them as they made their way to the RTG made him him more uncomfortable than he’d like to admit. “Yeah, I didn’t think it would make as much as a difference as it does. I think it’s because the Hab is our little bit of civilization here on Mars. It’s like our Earth embassy,” he joked weakly.

Beth didn’t reply immediately, still staring out the window at the endless empty desert stretching out in every direction. “It’s just, we’re really completely alone out here,” she eventually said. “I mean I knew that, but this is the first time I’ve really felt it.”

“Hey now, don't think that way,” he told her, despite the fact he had much the same thoughts running through his brain.  He let go of the wheel with his right hand and extended it out towards Beth, smiling gently when she took it in her own.  “You and me, we’re in this together,” he said giving her hand a soft squeeze. “Neither of us are alone as long as we have each other.”

“Literally you and me against the world,” she said with a wry half smile, squeezing his hand back. “Because why?”

“Because fuck Mars, that’s why,” he grinned. “And think of it the way I have, that we’re just out on a Sunday afternoon running some errands, picking up parts for a renovation project we’re working on.”

Beth turned her head to look at Mark curiously. “Why do you keep saying it’s Sunday?” she asked him after the second time he had mentioned it. “I don’t think it’s actually a Sunday back on Earth.”

“Yeah, I have no idea what day it is back on Earth. I stopped keeping track… actually I’ve never kept track,” he admitted freely, making Beth chuckle. “I guess I just picked Sunday because growing up it was always the day that my parents and I would run errands as a family. After church we would go get lunch and then we were off to the hardware store, or the nursery, or if my mom got her choice we’d go through the antique market that she loved.”

“That sounds really nice,” Beth said with a smile.

“No, it wasn’t. I hated it as a kid,” he corrected her chuckling. “As an adult I can look back on it fondly, but as a kid it was bad enough it was bad enough that I had to lose my whole morning to church but to have to lose the afternoon to antiquing was just adding insult to injury. What a waste of a weekend day.”

“Well if it makes you feel any better, it’s actually,” she paused as she did the math in her head, “Friday back on Earth. So you’re not wasting your Sunday working,” she teased.

“Oh good, or else I’d turn this rover right back around and rebury this thing,” he joked. “It’s funny though, we’ve pretty much done the Martian equivalent of all of those things in the last couple weeks.”

“We’ve certainly picked up plenty of hardware form the the MDV and MAV including the RTG,” Beth agreed. “We got soil for our gardening project. And I think the MRO counts as an antique.”

Mark laughed, “It definitely does. My mother would be so proud she always did try to instill in me the love of finding old junk and repurposing it into something useful. It’s a shame we don't have more stuff laying around, considering everything we’ve done with what we do have.”   

The beginnings of a thought started to form in Beth’s head, but before it could fully form, Mark spoke again.

“Hab sweet Hab,” he said as they pulled up in front of their home.

“Yay,” Beth sighed, as a drop of sweat rolled down the back of her neck. “I think the RTG might work a little too well.”

“Yeah,” Mark agreed. “I think we’re going to be spending the afternoon stripping some of the insulation out of the roof until we can find a happy medium.”

“Alright then.  Let’s get to it.”

SOL 64

Beth couldn’t sleep. And it was more than her usual night owl tendencies. It was well past midnight and Mark had been asleep for hours, but she just couldn't get her mind to shut down. There was an idea teasing, forming at the edges of her consciousness, but every time she tried to grasp at it, it shot further out of reach.

Sighing, she flipped over in her bunk, punching at her pillow a few times before flopping heavily onto her stomach. Squeezing her eyes shut tight, she tried to focus on Mark’s slow, even breathing across the room punctuated by the occasional soft snore. She hoped that maybe if she could match her breathing to his, she might be able to drift off too.

Her eyes snapped open. Of course! Mark!

Untangling herself gracelessly from the blankets she stumbled across the room to Mark’s bedside.

“Mark,” she said shaking his shoulder gently. “Mark! Watney !”

Mark’s eyes shot open and he sat up, looking around the room in concern, “What? What’s wrong?! What’s happening?!”

“No, nothing’s wrong,” she assured him quickly. “I had an idea and I wanted to tell you.”

Once he realized that there weren’t any of the alarms sounding that would be going off in the event of an actual emergency he calmed his thundering heart, and turned to the woman sitting on his bunk. “What?” he asked looking at Beth with bleary and confused eyes. “What time is it?”

Beth just shrugged. “Late… early… somewhere in between.”

“And why did you wake me up?” he asked, laying back down and closing his eyes.

“I want to tell you my idea.”

“And it couldn’t have waited until morning?” he asked tiredly.

“I got excited,” she admitted. “And you gave me the idea so I wanted to share.”

“Wow.  I must be pretty good to manage that while I was sleeping,” he said, sarcasm still strong even while only half-conscious.

Beth rolled her eyes. “No.  What you said this afternoon, about going antiquing, and repurposing old junk.”

“You found a Martian flea market?” Mark asked, clearly drifting back to sleep.

“We don’t need a whole market if we know exactly where the antique we need is,” Beth said excitedly.

“What are you talking about?”

“ Pathfinder .”

That one word was enough to get Mark’s eyes to pop back open. “Pathfinder,” he repeated.

Beth nodded enthusiastically. “Yup! I’ll need to check the maps for the exact coordinates,” she continued. “But it’s close. It’s doable. And if you can get it up and running again, we’ll have a working relay and will be able to communicate directly with NASA.”

“You’re a genius Beth Johannsen and I adore you,” he said sincerely. “But can we please go back to sleep and finish talking about this in the morning?”

“You go back to bed,” she told him. “I’m too wired to sleep. I’m going to go do some research.”

She moved to get up, but before she could, moving faster than he should for someone who was still half asleep, Mark snatched her around the waist and pulled her into his bunk.

“No, you need to sleep too,” he informed her, as he tucked her into his side.

“For fuck’s sake Mark,” she grumbled into his chest, “lemme go.”

“Nuh uh,” he disagreed, throwing one of his legs over hers. “You do too many all nighters as it is. It’s not healthy. We’ll figure it out in the morning.”  

Beth tried to extricate herself, but Mark was like an octopus. “I’m not your fucking teddy bear.”

“You’re about the same size as one,” he countered, his breathing already starting to slow as he went back to sleep. “My teddy Beth.”

Beth snorted and rolled her eyes, this was the second time in as many days that she’d found herself in this predicament. She knew she could get away if she really wanted too. As ticklish as Mark was, one well-placed poke to his side and he would push her out of his bunk as fast as he had pulled her into it. But for all that she’d done it to him last time, she didn’t really want to get shoved onto the floor, and sleepy Mark was so warm and snuggly.

It was actually kind of nice.

Her back was cold though, that wasn’t as nice. She held out as long as she could, but eventually she tried to carefully untangle herself from Mark’s grip without waking him so she could grab the blanket that had gotten tossed aside when he had pulled her into the bunk.

She was only semi successful.

Mark made a discontented noise. “Sleeeeeeeeeep,” he mumbled.

“Shhhh,” Beth said. “I’m just grabbing the blanket.”

Mark loosened his grip, and Beth knew this was her chance to get up, but instead she did as she said and simply grabbed the blanket and pulling it over them before snuggling back into Mark’s side. It wasn’t long until she too was asleep.

Chapter Text

Teddy Sanders Office, Johnson Space Center. Houston, Texas.

Mindy sat at the conference table in the director of NASA's office, tapping her fingertips in rhythm against her knee while she waited for the meeting to start. Now that Johanssen and Watney were spending time outside the Hab again, she'd been called back up to the big leagues and her presence was once again required at the interdepartmental update meetings.

It was hardly her first time in attendance, and nobody thought twice about her being there, but she still couldn't help feeling grossly outranked every time she sat at a table with the upper echelon of NASA personnel.

She thought she was doing a good job concealing her anxiety, but when Venkat reached out underneath the table and stilled her hand, giving it a reassuring pat before pulling his back so he could continue to scroll through the information on the the tablet in front of him, she knew she wasn't as self-contained as she had been hoping.

"Sorry I'm late," Annie apologized, as she blew into the room. She didn't bother looking up as she typed away furiously on her phone as she made her way to her usual seat. "I was re-confirming that the public hasn't figured out they dug up the RTG. But other than that, public support remains strong and the ratings for The Martian Report continue to be an all time high for CNN. Have I mentioned how much I love having all the major news networks sucking up to me for once?" she said with an almost predatory grin. In her tenure of director of media for NASA, she was more accustomed to having to wheel and deal to keep the space program in the mainstream news. She didn't love the circumstances, but she adored the position of power it afforded her. "They all want an exclusive, Franklin over at the BBC keeps sending me flowers."

"Maybe he just enjoys your sunny disposition," Mitch drawled sarcastically. "Maybe he wants a date not an exclusive."

Annie scoffed. "Fuck that, I'd rather give him an exclusive. I'm already paying alimony to two deadbeat ex-husbands, I'm not looking for a third."

Mitch laughed as Teddy rose from personal desk and crossed to join the others at the conference table.

"As thrilling as this conversation is," Teddy said taking his seat at the head of the table, "can we focus on the relevant portion. There's been no talk about the RTG."

"None," Annie reiterated. "We're obligated to release the photos, not to offer our analysis. We framed it as just another incremental test of the modified rover and no one has contested that."

"Excellent," Teddy turned his attention to Venkat. "Do we have any idea why they dug it up in the first place?"

"Heat, I think," Venkat answered. "Aren't we going to wait for Bruce?" he asked looking up at the flatscreen on the wall where Bruce usually video conferenced from JPL with the rest of the Pasadena team.

"Scheduling conflict," Teddy explained. "But his last email assured me JPL is keeping up on their end with the supply probe. Now why would they need the RTG for heat?"

"They're obviously prepping the rover to make long trips. It uses a lot of energy just to keep warm," Venkat reasoned logically. "The RTG will heat up the rover without draining the battery. It's an ingenious idea, really."

"How dangerous it that, really?" Annie asked, attempting to gauge the potential fallout if the public did figure out what Mark and Beth were doing in those pictures. "I don't really need 'Astronauts use deadly radioactive waste as portable space heater' as tomorrow's headline."

"It's not dangerous at all, as long as the capsule remains intact. Even if it didn't, they'll still be okay as long as the pellets inside don't break open also," Venkat said. "But if those break too, they're done for."

"Fantastic," Annie said sarcastically.

"We'll just have to hope that doesn't happen," Teddy said before turning his attention to Mindy. "Ms. Park, can you please give us a quick overview on what Johanssen and Watney have been up to this week?"

"Of course," Mindy responded quickly, glancing down at her notes. She wasn't sure exactly why she needed too since everyone in the room was CC'd on her far more detailed daily update emails, but she did as she was asked. "On Sol 61, they removed the battery from Rover 1 and created a sling out of Hab canvas to attach it to Rover 2. They also removed 14 panels from the solar farm and attached them to the roof. On Sol 62, they drove in circles around the Hab for almost two hours, presumably to test the modifications on the rover. Sol 63, they drove the 4 kilometers out to the RTG, dug it up, and drove back to the Hab. They spent several more hours that day inside the rover while parked at the Hab, performing some unknown modifications inside the cab. Then, on Sol 64, they left the Hab at sunrise, drove for two hours in circles around the Hab, stopped, did an EVA, we think to switch the batteries, and then drove for another two hours. They then did another EVA to set up the solar panels, waited 12 hours and then drove directly back to the Hab. Yesterday, they didn't leave the Hab at all other to take what we think was one of the Hab's oxygen tanks and several other storage containers out to the Rover."

"Thank you Ms. Park," Teddy said. "So they're obviously preparing for a longer journey, but where do they think they're going?"

"Ares 4," Mitch said simply. "Where else could they go? They don't know about the plans to modify the MDV, so they're operating under the assumption that they're going to have to get themselves there eventually."

"But why would they go now?" Teddy asked. "They have to know that there's nothing there yet."

"Maybe they're bored," Mitch smirked. "It's not like they have much else to do."

"The MAV is there," Venkat pointed out, ignoring Mitch's comment. "If they can get to that, they could communicate with us directly."

"They know we're watching them," Annie interjected. "They've proven that by changing their messages. They have to know that we're doing everything possible to help them. Would they really risk going however far it is-"

"Thirty-two hundred kilometers," Mindy supplied.

"-just to have a conversation?"

"I hope not," Teddy sighed. "But what if they do?"

"We could always land the pre-supply there," Venkat offered. "But that's still a year out. I don't know how they would survive there until then."

"If they are planning on going to Ares 4, how long would it take them to get there?" Teddy asked, massaging his temples.

Venkat turned to Mindy and they quickly conferred in soft voices.

"Thirty-two hundred kilometers-"

"Traveling four hours a day-"

"Closer to three and a half, and that's in Acidalia Planitia where it's flat-"

"There's a lot of terrain on the way to Schiaparelli-"

"Only eighty kilometers a sol, on a good day-"

Venkat did some silent math. "At least forty days, but most likely more."

"Forty days of two people living inside the rover," Teddy shook his head in disbelief. "Is that even possible?"

"They'd have to turn it into a mobile Hab," Venkat shrugged, he supposed it was possible but it wouldn't be easy or comfortable. "They'd need the oxygenator, the water reclaimer and the atmospheric regulator, to survive that long in a rover."

"Have you seen anything to indicate they might be moving those to the rover?" Teddy asked.

"No sir," Mindy answered. "Other than a single oxygen tank, nothing like that."

Teddy sighed again. "Then we have to hope they've got the sense to stay put." He spoke directly to Mindy once more, "Keep an eye on them, let me know immediately if they start driving anywhere but aimlessly around the Hab."

"Yes sir," she nodded, as if she would have done anything but that.

"Alright, I think that's it for now." Without Bruce's usual update on JPL's progress, the meeting was much shorter than usual. "Unless anyone has anything else to add?"

Annie shook her head, everything was solid and stable on the media front, and she was already halfway out of her chair when Mitch spoke.

"Yeah. I've got something," the flight director said. "When are we going to tell the crew?"

There was an almost unanimous sigh, and a few rolled eyes from those gathered around the table.

Teddy pinched the bridge of his nose. "We've been over this, Mitch."

"Well I want to go over it again," Mitch stated. "It's been months, Teddy. Moral is not improving on Hermes."

"And we've already discussed all the reasons that the crew is best left in the dark," Venkat interjected.

"No you've discussed it. I've never once agreed with you, and I'm telling you that the crew will be better off knowing," Mitch insisted. "It's cruel keeping them in the dark like this. You said weeks ago that we'd tell them once we have a viable rescue plan. We have one. We have plans on top of plans."

Mindy didn't even realize she was nodding her agreement, until the flight director called her out on it.

"Mindy agrees with me."

"I don't really want to get in the middle of this," she said quickly, glancing at a frowning Venkat, whose attention had snapped to her when Mitch drew her into the conversation. "But... I'd want to know, if I was them," she admitted.

"Ms. Park has no authority on this decision," Teddy replied.

Mindy sank down in her chair.

However, Mitch wasn't deterred. "The longer we wait, the worse their reaction is going to be. It's going to be bad enough when they find out that we only thought they were dead for ten days, while they've believed their crewmates have been dead for two months. If we keep holding out on them, they're going to stage a bloody mutiny when we do tell them."

"There's no need for dramatics, Mitch," Teddy said, exasperated. "They're professionals, they're not going to mutiny." Mitch opened his mouth to continue his argument, but Teddy cut him off. "Once the probe launches, and we know that they're not going to starve to death, we'll tell the crew. And I don't want to hear anything more about it today. That's all for now, you're all dismissed."

Mitch stomped out of the room ahead of everyone else, grumbling under his breath, "I still don't like this."

SOL 66

"I still don't like this," Beth said, not for the first time, as she watched Mark go over his checklist one last time before leaving the Hab, as he prepared to depart on his solo road trip to Pathfinder.

"I know you don't, but it's the perfect dry run for when we both have to make the trek to Schiaparelli Crater," he told her, also not for the first time.

"Yeah, but at least then we'll be together. I don't like the idea of you all the way out there by yourself. If something happens I won't even be able to come and get you, because you're taking the battery from the second rover with you," she said with a frown, her arms wrapped around her middle.

"But the rover's life support systems won't be able to support the both of us for a trip this long with bringing the oxygenator, atmospheric regulator and water reclaimer, and I don't want to pull any of those out of the Hab until we absolutely have to. Not to mention that the plants need them," he reminded her, gently. He knew she was only so anxious because she cared. "And besides, I'm a mechanic, remember? If something breaks, I'll fix it," he said with a charm-filled grin.

Beth sighed heavily; she knew he was right. They'd spent the the last two days doing nothing but planning this trip. They'd poured over terrain maps to plot out the best course to Pathfinder and the best way to navigate it. They ran all the numbers to make sure he would have enough oxygen, CO₂ filters, food and water to make the twenty day journey. They thought about potential problems he might face and brainstormed on how best to solve them. They had gone over the plan backwards and forwards. This is what made the most sense. The batteries were charged, the solar panels secured, the supplied were all loaded up, he was all ready to go. But it didn't mean she had to like it.

"You know I'm going to go absolutely crazy being stuck here by myself with nothing to do for the next three weeks."

"You'll have plenty to do," he countered brightly. "After all, who else is going to care for our potato children?"

"Okay. One, please don't call our only renewable food source our children," she told him, shaking her head. "It opens up all kinds of creepy doors that I don't want to think about. And two, what if I fuck something up and kill them all while you're gone?" she asked, genuinely concerned.

Mark brought his hands up to rest on Beth's shoulders. "You're not going to kill them. We won't need to harvest again until after I get back, and they're pretty self-sufficient in the meantime," he reassured her. "All you need to do is keep breathing so you give them carbon dioxide to absorb, make sure the tubers stay covered in dirt, and water them just like I taught you. They're hardy plants; you and they are going to be fine."

"I once accidently killed a potted bamboo plant," she admitted flatly.

"What….? Really?" he asked, legitimately taken aback by this information.

"And on a completely separate occasion, I killed a potted cactus," she added.

She could actually see Mark's brain stutter as he tried to comprehend this. "How?!"

"I don't know!" Beth exclaimed, throwing up her hands. "But after a while I wasn't allowed to house-sit for my grandma anymore, because every time she came back from vacation all her house plants were dead. She said I had the brownest thumb she'd ever known. I excel at many things in this world," she said plainly, not bragging, just stating the truth, "gardening is not one of them."

"Okay, then maybe you can just watch over our potato children," he said, warily. "From outside the tarp. Ya know, just make sure they don't have any rowdy parties while Dad's not home."

Beth laughed and rolled her eyes. "You're ridiculous, and they're not our children."

"Shhh. Don't say that where they can hear you. You'll give them a complex. They're still young and impressionable. Don't worry, little potatoes, she doesn't mean it!" he called over his shoulder towards their little farm, while he put on the gloves to his EVA suit. "Be good for your mother while I'm gone."

"I take back everything I said," she said, shaking her head as she picked up his helmet. "I'm glad you're going by yourself. I'm not going to miss you at all."

"That's a lie," Mark replied confidently.

"Yeah it is," she sighed, crossing over to stand in front of him so she could help him with his helmet.

Mark leaned down to make it easier for her to reach over his head, but Beth took advantage of his proximity and stood on her toes to plant a soft kiss to his mouth. "For good luck," she whispered against his lips.

Taken by surprise, Mark only blinked at her before Beth's cheeks colored with embarrassment at her own impulsiveness.

"That was stupid. Don't tell anyone I did that," she muttered, not making eye contact as she slipped the helmet over his head and busied herself with making sure the latches were engaged properly.

"Fuck that," he replied quickly. "If I run into Marvin the Martian out there, the first thing I'm gonna do is tell him all about the hot super nerd action I just got." Beth once again rolled her eyes at him, but she didn't look embarrassed anymore so he considered it a job well done.

He pulled her helmet off its shelf and helped her into it, just as she'd done for him. She insisted on going outside to see him off, and refused to be dissuaded; and so once they were both fully suited up, they stepped into the air lock.

Beth stood by and watched while Mark did one last walk around the modified rover, making sure the panels he'd borrowed from the solar farm were securely fastened and the saddle bag with the second battery was correctly balanced, before he walked back over to her to say their final goodbyes.

"You remembered to pack your toothbrush and extra clean underwear?" she asked teasingly. "You wouldn't want to get in an accident and be embarrassed because you're not wearing clean underwear."

Mark laughed, "I'll drive extra careful, I wouldn't want to get a ticket. We still don't know what the Martian to dollar exchange rate is, but I bet it would be expensive."

"Don't get yourself into any trouble while I'm not there to bail you out of it," she told him, throwing a playful punch to his shoulder.

"I should be telling you that," Mark retorted. "Out of the two of us, who has been questioned by Homeland Security?"

Beth smiled, but it didn't completely reach her eyes. "Stay safe out there," she said, more seriously.

"I will," he replied solemnly. "And you stay safe here."

"I will," she echoed.

"Good." He took a step forward and pulled her in for a hug. It was awkward in their bulky and unwieldy suits, but the sentiment was there, and that's what counted. "I'm going to be fine," he assured again before letting go. "Because why?"

"Because fuck Mars, that's why," Beth replied, giving the now familiar call and response.

"Damn straight," he agreed, giving her one last squeeze before releasing her.

It only took Mark a few minutes to swing up into the rover, wait for the airlock to cycle, strip out of the top half of his EVA suit, and then he was on his way. The rover was already becoming smaller on the horizon when Mark's voice came over the com.

"Hey Johanssen?"

"Is everything okay, Watney?" she asked, concern tinging her voice. She knew Mark well enough to hear the underlying anxiety in his tone.

"Yeah. I was just wondering if there is there anything else you want me to pick up while I'm out running errands?" he asked, trying to keep things light, as he got further and further from the relative safety of the Hab.

Beth chuckled and played along, "Well, if you could stop at the store and pick up a dozen eggs and a gallon of milk that would be great."

"Eggs and milk," he repeated back. "Anything else?"

"And stop at the cleaners on your way back and pick up the dry cleaning. I think it's way overdue."

Mark laughed, "You got it. Hey Beth?"

"Yeah Mark?" He didn't saying for a long moment and she wondered if maybe he had passed out of the coms range. "Mark?" she prompted again.

"Keep the home fires burning for me, will ya?"

"I'll even put a candle in the window so you can find your way back."

"Awesome - - - I'll - - - you can - - - pathfinder - - - potatoes." He was cutting out, she was hearing more static than words.

"Watney?" she called back. "Watney? Mark?!"

But he was out of range.

She stood outside the Hab until she could no longer see the rover, even as a white speck on the red Martian horizon.

And for the first time, they were both truly alone on Mars.

Chapter Text

MISSION DAY                                                                                       TIME 10:13
SOL 66                                                                                                 LOG ENTRY > WATNEY #031

PRESSURE
12.46 PSI

OXYGEN
20.98%

TEMPERATURE                                                                                      CABIN PRESSURE
30.59 C                                                                                                12.46 PSI

ENVIRONMENT                                                                                      MODE
ROVER 2 > DASHCAM                                                                           DRV

"Alright, here we go! Big day today!" Mark addressed the camera, as soon as he started recording. He needed something to keep his mind off of how quiet it was by himself in the cab. "We have officially begun Day One of the first inaugural Martian road trip."

With nobody to engage with; nobody to listen to his smart-ass remarks, he turned to the camera instead. He figured that making a vlog under the guise of recording his trip for posterity was better for his mental health than talking to himself just to fill the silence.

It did not escape him that this was the first time that he'd truly been alone on Mars. He'd had Johannsen at his side, or within comm range at least, since the storm. Since Sol 1, really, and even before that. She'd been a constant presence on Hermes, and during three years of training leading up to their mission. Beth had always been right there when he had wanted to talk to someone (or even when he didn't).

He kept turning to speak to her, but the passenger seat, where Johannsen usually sat when it was his turn to drive, was instead piled high with the items he wanted to keep nearby during his trip. The smaller toolbox. His laptop. A bottle of water.

No Beth.

"So you know that nagging feeling when you start off on a road trip, and you're convinced that you've forgotten something?" he asked the camera. "When you're trying to decide if you should call your neighbor to ask if you left the garage door open? Or you're trying to remember if you packed socks? Well, it turns out that that feeling follows you no matter which planet you're on. Unfortunately, there's no neighbors to check in with, and no corner store to run to if it turns out I forgot toothpaste."

He fell silent, a small frown curling one side of his mouth down until the quiet started to get to him again.

"I'm sure it's nothing," he said, more in an attempt to convince himself than his hypothetical future audience. "Johannsen and I went over the planning for this trip backwards, forwards and sideways."

It was the truth, too. They'd spent days ironing out the fine details, wanting to leave as little to chance as possible. While it was true that they didn't have access to any really detailed topographic maps outside the immediate area of Ares III, they still had pretty decent satellite imagery, which they had to trust would suffice. They'd calculated and recalculated how much food, water and other supplies Mark should bring. They had brainstormed game plans for possible scenarios, should anything go wrong. Making sure that he brought along the tools he'd be most likely to need if the rover threw a tire or one of the seals developed a leak.

He felt confident that he was as prepared as he could reasonably be.

"I guess I just have to get used to the quiet," he finally shrugged.

He just wished he could talk to Beth. He knew that would make him feel better. She had been such a big part of Mark's comfort zone for so long now, that her absence, even though he'd just seen her a couple of hours ago, was really jarring. But the Hab was much too far away now for the comms to work now. And if he was being honest he knew that his last few transmissions probably hadn't even been received. He was on his own for the next few weeks, and he was just going to have to get used to being alone.

If only it wasn't so quiet in the cab.

Very quiet.

So quiet.

"Shit!" he exclaimed, slamming his hands against the steering wheel as he suddenly realized what he'd forgotten. "I did it again!"

He stewed for a moment before explaining his outburst to the camera. "I meant to bring a copy of Beth's music with me, so I'd have something to listen to on the trip. And you know where I left the thumb drive?" he paused for dramatic effect. "In her laptop. You wanna know why I was going to bring her music instead of my own?" he paused once more. "Because I left my personal drive plugged into my workstation back on Hermes when I was packing my kit for the surface mission. I can't believe I screwed myself over twice."

A deep frown settled over his face as he navigated around some scattered boulders. "I'm almost tempted to go back and get it," he admitted. "Almost. But that would set me back half a SOL. An entire SOL, actually, because I've already used more than half the battery. I wouldn't be able to make it back to the Hab without camping for the night."

"I'm just have to deal with it." He huffed in frustration.

He reached out to turn off the camera. "This is going to be a really long trip," he muttered before the screen cut to black.

MISSION DAY                                                                                      TIME 21:47
SOL 67                                                                                                LOG ENTRY > WATNEY #032

PRESSURE
12.46 PSI

OXYGEN
20.94%

TEMPERATURE                                                                                     CABIN PRESSURE
28.87 C                                                                                               12.46 PSI

ENVIRONMENT                                                                                     MODE
ROVER 2 > DASHCAM                                                                          PRK

Mark's face was alight with excitement as the camera began to roll.

"So I was settling in for the night," he began, launching right into his story, "poking around, doing an inventory, out of boredom more than anything else, when I found myself a few surprises. First, I found this in my toolbox, courtesy of one Beth Johannsen."

He held up a notecard to the lens, showing off a message of PATHFINDER OR BUST! with a cartoonish sketch of the lander drawn underneath it. His grin widening, he tucked it into the lining of the driver side window where it would be visible in the background of all his video logs.

"Thank you for that, Johannsen. But these were the real prize," he continued with a grin, holding up a protein bar, still sealed in its foil wrapper, and a small data drive. "I found them in JPL's version of a glove compartment. I don't know how we didn't find them before now. It took me a minute to figure out how they got there, but my best guess is that when Commander Lewis took this Rover out to bury the RTG on Sol 1, she brought along some tunes and a snack and then she forgot them in there."

"It's even one of the chocolate peanut butter ones," he grinned as he inspected the foil packaging again. "My favorite."

"Thank you, Commander Lewis," he said enthusiastically, throwing the camera a smart ass salute.

"Alright, let's see what music the commander brought along and subsequently left behind," he said, plugging the drive in, eager to see what the soundtrack to his next three weeks was going to be.

His enthusiasm shifted to amusement when the the first song played, and the sound of the Bee Gees filled the Rover's interior.

"Of course the woman who has nothing but 70s sitcoms on her laptop would also have disco on here," he says good-naturedly, reaching out to flip to the next song.

Gloria Gaynor.

Next.

Donna Summer.

Next.

ABBA.

He started flipping through songs faster, his grin fading.

Chic. KC and the Sunshine Band. Diana Ross. Kool & the Gang.

"It's all disco!" he exclaimed in horrified disbelief.

He continued to scan through the songs, looking for something, anything, that didn't give him images of polyester leisure suits, light-up dance floors, and the Hustle. He was only listening to the first fifteen seconds of any song, before moving on in desperation for a song recorded before 1966 or after 1981, to no avail.

"Seriously?" he groaned, sitting back heavily in his chair, as the chorus of Disco Inferno mocked him from the speakers.

He rolled his eyes in the general direction of Hermes, many millions of kilometers away by now. "Thank you, Commander Lewis."

SOL 68

All the lonely people where do they all come from?
All the lonely people where do they all belong?

Beth made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat, before reaching out to change to the next song. Eleanor Rigby was usually one of her favorite songs, but she couldn't help but feel like Paul McCartney was taunting her and she wasn't in the mood.

She skipped over Across the Universe and Yesterday since neither song would improve her mood, only settling back down once shuffle started playing Norwegian Wood. As she let the sounds of John Lennon and the sitar wash over her, she went back to staring at the bottom of the bunk above her, rolling the data drive Mark had accidently left behind, back and forth between her palms.

Beth had no doubts that Mark would be going nuts without it. And while most of her felt bad for him, she couldn't help the small bemused smirk that curled at the corner of her mouth, as she imagined his reaction when he realized he'd left his music behind again. It was a well-established fact that Mark didn't do silence well. And she had long since figured out that it was part of the reason he talked so much. She had found the drive almost immediately after coming back inside from seeing him off, but there wasn't much she could do about it at that point. It wasn't as if she could call him to let him know he'd forgotten it, since he was already out of range, and she certainly couldn't chase after him. All she could do was be ready to tease him about it once he returned. An event which she still had a long time to prepare for.

It had only been three days since Mark had set off towards Pathfinder, but it felt like it had been at least two or three times that long. She wouldn't have thought it possible, but the Hab managed to feel cavernously empty and claustrophobic simultaneously without his presence.

They had been living in each other's pockets for so long now, that his absence ached like a phantom limb. And it didn't help that she had nothing to do to pass the time. Mark may have been driving in silence, but at least he was going somewhere.

He had a mission, a goal, a destination.

Mark had some control over his own fate. She had nothing to do but walk the metaphorical widow's walk. She had nothing do but sit around all day, her whole day free to worry about things she had absolutely zero control over.

If only she had a project of her own to keep herself busy, but unfortunately it wasn't even lunchtime yet and she'd already done the negligible amount of daily chores required to keep the Hab running smoothly. She wracked her brain, trying to think of something that could keep her occupied for at least a few hours. Idle hands and all that. But the crops were watered, the solar panels were cleared, her laundry was rinsed, and she'd even spent the previous evening dusting and sweeping, fighting the ever losing battle of containing the red martian dust that left a film over everything in the Hab.

She was considering the cost benefits of trying to take a nap out of sheer boredom, if only to skip past the next few hours, when she was struck by an idea. She sat up so quickly, she nearly whacked her head on the bunk above hers, but she didn't let that slow her down, already heading into the other room so she could suit up.

SatCon, Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas

Mindy stared up at the satellite images on the big screens, sliding so far down in her chair that what she was doing could hardly be considered sitting anymore. She flipped back and forth between pictures, but there just was nothing to go off of, as she once again tried to puzzle out what was happening. For the third day in a row, the rover's path seemed unchanged, an alarming straight shot away from the Hab and towards nothing good, as far as she could tell.

Venkat appeared in the doorway so soon after he'd been notified that the rover was on the move, that Mindy had to wonder if he had already been heading her direction. He was making his entrance just as the flashing light indicated that there were more incoming images from one of the satellites that now crisscrossed the site of Ares III.

"New images," Venkat nodded towards her desktop. "That's good."

Mindy shrugged, and turned her attention back to the monitor.

"That batch is images of the Hab," she told him offhandedly, knowing without having to verify. She couldn't find her car keys most mornings, but she knew where every satellite orbiting Mars was at any given moment these days. Especially now that her job had gotten exponentially more difficult trying to get comprehensive coverage of two locations, one of them moving, with a finite number of satellites. "A place where Watney and/or Johanssen apparently no longer are. Very useful." She couldn't manage to keep the smallest touch of sarcasm from her voice, and Venkat smirked.

That didn't stop her from immediately opening the images, however. Nor did it stop Venkat from sighing and pulling up his usual chair, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees while they waited for the thumbnail images to load.

"Why would they leave?" he mused, not for the first time, voice quiet, apparently thinking out loud. "Why now?"

Mindy couldn't help but throw her arms up in frustration. It was a fair question, and the same one she had been asking herself for the past three days. The Hab represented the only relatively safe haven for humans that Mars had to offer. What could possibly have compelled them to leave it?

"I bet Watney was getting on Johanssen's nerves," Mindy quipped, as she manipulated the image of the Hab, choosing that as the new centrepoint for the image. "He was probably always hanging the toilet paper the wrong way, and she just snapped. She couldn't take it anymore. And she either just tossed him out of the Hab, or she got in the Rover and started driving just to get away from him."

Venkat chuckled, as he watched her proceed to the next image, again setting the Hab as its centrepoint, orienting it to match the previous one.

"You're assuming a lot there, Park," he said, as he watched her efficiently cycle through the images with the ease that came with weeks of practice and repetition. He grinned, and added, "and besides, they've got bigger concerns when it comes to their toilet paper than the way it's hanging. One of which is the fact that they're going to run out of it sooner rather than later."

Mindy rolled her eyes. Gross. He wasn't wrong, though. But it did make her wonder, not for the first time, about the dynamics of being stuck with one person in such a small space for such a long time. How did Watney and Johanssen deal with that?

Venkat was staring intently at the third image now, tapping at it with one hand.

"It's just changed, hasn't it?" He pointed to the area where the rock message had previously read H MO, the remnants of their HI MOM message.

There was an EVA suit visible, smack dab in the middle of the rock formation.

Clambering at her armrests for leverage, Mindy hauled herself upright in her chair, leaning forward to match his posture as they both peered at the same photo. She nodded hesitantly, as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Venkat was right. One of the astronauts had been moving the remaining rocks around, right as the satellite had passed overhead.

"I think that's Johanssen," she guessed, pointing to the shape and length of the shadow, as her practiced eye picked out all of the subtle differences between the two astronauts.

"So that would confirm that it is Watney in the rover, then?" Venkat nodded, even as his hand went for his cellphone.

"That's an arrow she's making, right there," Mindy realized, as a new image loaded, replacing the old. "She's standing on the other letters."

Venkat was on the phone, with Director Sanders, she assumed, but he was still following her as she cropped and zoomed in on the pertinent portion of the image.

"Looks like a P? And I think that's an F," she said. "And the arrow. And that's it." She looked up at Venkat, "What does that mean?"

"I have no idea."

SOL 70

SatCon, Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas

"Power Failure?" Venkat guessed again, playing what felt like the hundredth round of the world's worst game of Wheel of Fortune. "Pressure Failure? Primary Failure?" If only he could buy a vowel.

"None of those would explain why one and only one of them would leave the Hab," Mindy replied, leaning back in her chair until she was staring up at the ceiling.

"Obviously, there was some sort of problem, or they would have stayed in the Hab," Venkat reasoned. "But if there was a problem why would Watney leave Johannsen behind?"

They had been going in circles for the past two days, and they both knew they were going nowhere. Unlike Watney, who had been steadily going somewhere for the past five Sols.

"The message came from Johanssen specifically," Mindy said eventually, trying to come at this from a different angle. "She's the computer specialist, what could PF mean from her?"

Venkat was still staring at the outline of rocks that formed the letters P and F, and the shape of an arrow. His brow furrowed while he considered that hypothesis. "It could stand for Packet Filter, which is for firewalls. Or PF keys which were a type of function keys on old keyboards. Page fault… Page file… No, none of those make any sense either."

Mindy dug the heels of her hands into her eyes, exhaustion warring with her frustration. In just over an hour there would be an early morning meeting of the department heads; after that, Mindy was counting on being able to go home for at least six hours of sleep before Watney was likely to be on the move again late in the afternoon. It would be nice to have some sort of workable theory to offer Sanders, who was getting increasingly impatient by the day, as to why Watney had suddenly taken off in the rover, solo.

Two letters and an arrow wasn't a whole lot to go on, though she knew what she felt like it stood for at the moment. "I bet it stands for Probably Fuuuuu-" she trailed off as her brain caught up with her mouth. She let her hands drop from where they were covering her face, and cracked one eye open, to see that Venkat had finally turned away from the screens and was looking at her with one eyebrow arched. "I think I need a coffee refill," she said picking up her empty mug, her excuse for her slip of professionalism. "I'm half-asleep."

"Of course," he replied, not bothering to conceal the amusement in his tone.

"Can I bring you back something?" she offered, as she stood from her chair and stretched, groaning when her back cracked as her spine realigned itself.

"No, I'll come with you," he replied. "I could use a walk and some air. I've been here since…" he trailed off, unsure of when he had actually gotten to work.

"You were already here when I checked in, yesterday." Mindy tried, and failed, to cover her yawn. "And that was eighteen hours ago."

"I've been here more like twenty, then."

They walked in companionable silence, both of them lost in thought. They purposely took the longer route to the break room that took them outside and around the building, rather than cutting through the interior hallways, letting them breathe the bracing early morning air. The sun which was barely cresting over the horizon, lit their way, as the exterior building lights started to flicker off.

The carafe was empty when they arrived, as usual. Mindy frowned, but was too tired to raise any real ire, as she went through the familiar motions of starting the coffeemaker. Since a watched coffee pot never boiled, she turned her back to the appliance and let her mind wander while she waited for the caffeine that would get her through the next few hours.

Kapoor really did look exhausted, she thought, when she glanced his direction. He was staring at the wall, with a blank expression, at a framed satellite picture of Mars that had hung in the breakroom for longer than Mindy had worked for NASA.

The coffeemaker was gurgling away, and the first drops of hot coffee were just beginning to fill the pot, when he took a sudden step back, and Mindy could hear the sharp intake of breath he'd made.

Venkat lurched across the room suddenly and grabbed a break room chair from beneath a nearby table.

Before Mindy could even formulate a question, namely, what on Earth was he doing, Venkat had already climbed atop the chair, snatched the framed poster from the wall, and was taking off down the hall with it.

"I think I know where he's going," he yelled over his shoulder.

Coffee forgotten, not that it mattered anymore as a jolt of adrenaline surged through her veins, Mindy hurried behind in his wake, heading back towards his office, which was closer than SatCon.

"What direction was that arrow pointing?" he asked, grabbing a dry-erase marker from a can on his desk. "Was it south-southwest?"

"I think, yeah, that sounds about right..." she trailed off, as she began to understand what he was saying. He'd crossed off the approximate spot in Acidalia Planitia on the old poster, and was now drawing a line across the poster to Ares Valles. "PF! Pathfinder!"

It seemed so obvious in hindsight.

Venkat thumped the poster in agreement. "He's going to get Pathfinder!"

"He's going to get Pathfinder!" she echoed in excitement. It was brilliant. Watney and Johanssen could fix whatever was wrong with it, surely, and then they could finally be in contact with NASA.

Pathfinder, and all that it meant… the possibilities that Watney and Johanssen had opened by thinking of it.

She smiled, her cheek against the white cotton of Kapoor's button-down shirt. Mindy hadn't even realized that she had made any such move, but apparently she had just seized her boss's boss's boss and was giving him a hug.

Awkward.