fic: that ends the night (SGU, PG-13)
Title: That ends the night.
Author: carmencatalina
Fandom: SGU
Pairing/Characters: Young/Rush, Scott, Greer, Brody, Eli, T.J.
Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be.
Rating: PG-13, for language (seriously, my airmen swear like, well, sailors).
Spoilers: Through 1.10, “Justice”.
Author's Note: The ending of “give me your hand” is just that, an ending. But Lt. Scott said he wasn’t flying down there to pick up bodies, and Greer, well, Greer’s got a plan.
Summary: “How long ‘till morning?”
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A flash, an explosion of light and sound, and Young jerks awake suddenly. The wind is howling around them now, and he realizes that he’s fallen asleep, has been asleep for a while. Rush’s face is cold against his neck.
Goddammit, not yet. Don’t leave me here alone.
He tries to find the calm he felt earlier, the sense of peace, but all he feels is the panicky staccato beating of his heart. He forces himself to shift his hold on Rush’s hand, moving his grip to the wrist, searching for a pulse. His own hand is numb, he can’t make the fingers move to the right position, and then all he feels is cold skin, and the bones beneath.
No. Not yet.
For a moment the panic rises through him, closing his throat. The wind keeps pressing at him, it feels like someone pushing at his back, like a crowd hemming him in. He can’t catch his breath. He pulls the other man closer to him, his grip tight.
I left you to die, and you didn’t.
He forces the calm to come, closing his eyes, counting his own heartbeats. He moves his free hand to Rush’s throat, trying to remember where to press. The skin under his fingers is so cold.
There.
The faint thrum-thrum that tells him there is still time. The relief that floods his body feels almost like pain, like blood rushing into a limb gone numb.
“Hey, wake up. Come on, talk to me.”
He shakes Rush roughly, and Rush’s head moves a bit against him.
“Rush.”
Head dropping back, the scientist coughs once and then looks up at him. His lower lip is bleeding where it has cracked - the wind is relentlessly dry. He is mumbling something, but Young can’t make out words.
“Talk to me, Rush. How long do you think, before sunrise?”
Rush coughs again, and grimaces as the movement splits his lip further. Says something indistinct.
“How long before sunrise?”
Rush is shaking his head, and looks directly at Young, his dark eyes squinting against the wind.
“We can’t - we aren’t going to see those suns rise, Colonel.”
“Christ, Rush, can you fucking humor me for - ,” his words are interrupted by a second explosion, a flash of bright light making both men bend to shield their eyes, the cracking boom of sound following a few seconds after.
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Scott feels an ache in his jaw, from holding his face still, from keeping everything inside, instead of just spilling out where everyone can see.
Brody is looking at the display in front of him, a hand absently rubbing at his face, his eyes flicking from line to line of the Ancient code that Eli has managed to coax from the ship’s computers. Eli is next to him, working on one of the laptops, glancing now and again at Scott.
“There isn’t any way to bring the shuttle down through that storm, Lieutenant,” Brody’s voice sounds almost pleading, apologetic. “The shear forming between the atmospheric layers will rip it in half. You can’t do it, you have to wait for it to settle down, and that won’t happen until the suns rise, and the surface air temperature warms up.”
Scott sees Eli look away, his hands clenching the laptop until his knuckles show white.
“How long before sunrise?”
But Scott knows the answer before the words leave his mouth. He can see it in Brody’s face, in Eli’s hands. Too long. Too many hours, the temperature dropping too fast, the wind scouring the surface of the ground. And he won’t be there in time, he will be too late.
“I’m not flying down there at sunrise to pick up bodies.”
Scott looks at all of them, seeing how tired they are, how tightly they are trying to control their own faces. They had managed this much, had made Destiny return to the planet - they could see it from the viewscreens. The day side bright like a beacon beneath them, reflecting the light from the system’s twin suns. The night side just beyond the curvature of the planet, hidden from sight.
“Give me some ideas, people. Give me something.”
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A thousand ages in thy sight
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“What the hell is happening?”
Rush pulls away from Young, rubs at his eyes, trying to sit up straight. “I don’t know, Colonel. Lightning strikes? The storm is likely building up a great deal of - .”
His next words are swallowed by the flash-boom of another explosion, the light and sound close together now, almost simultaneous. Both men wince and bend down, trying to blink away the afterimage of the flash and clear their vision.
“Ok, that’s definitely closer. Maybe one hundred meters, max.”
“Each strike has been closer,” Rush says, the words coming out hoarse and barely audible over the howl of the wind. “And the last few, at least, have been on a direct line towards this outcropping.”
Young squints his eyes, trying to look up through the wind and blowing grit, up at the sky.
“That’s not lightning. That’s weapons fire.”
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“And then what? We can’t get through the shear layer, Brody says it’s impossible.”
“A drop.” Greer’s voice is calm; he is leaning over Brody’s shoulder, looking at the display that shows the planet’s atmosphere in concentric layers
“Are you insane? Even if we could drop someone from that distance, the shear would - .”
“Not personnel. Gear.”
Scott looks at the other man for a moment, a faint frown on his face. Then he starts smiling, and Greer’s face breaks into a matching grin.
“The emergency shelter! The one that got included in the evac from Icarus. And some supplies. Greer, we can -.”
Brody interrupts, “How the hell are we going to get something through that shear layer?”
The smile on Greer’s face gets even broader.
“Shuttle’s weapons systems. We’ve got those big hard-cased explosives, right? In addition to the laser weapons? How about we empty out a case and use it to fire down the gear?”
“How do we keep it from getting destroyed on impact?”
“We rig a delayed ‘chute deployment. Fire high enough so it just makes it through the shear, then pop the ‘chute.”
Eli interrupts, “You can do that?”
Greer turns, crosses his arms across his chest, and gives him a look.
“Hey, I’m the guy who made the flame thrower, remember? Trust me, I can rig it.”
Brody gives Greer an incredulous look.
“And they are going to find this thing, how exactly? In the dark? In a storm? We have no way of communicating with them, to tell them to where to look - .”
“We get their attention first. Fire the shuttle’s weapons systems.”
Scott shakes his head, feeling the tightness in his chest ease for the first time in hours, and laughs. “Greer, you really do solve every problem by shooting at it.”
“Yeah.” A pause and another brilliant smile. “It’s a gift.”
“Um, guys? We are going to be careful not to, you know, hit them, right?” Eli interrupts.
Scott places his hand on Eli’s shoulder.
“That’s where you come in, Eli. I need a bead on the exact location of the only two human beings on that planet from approximately ten thousand meters. And I mean exact location. Think you can do that?”
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Are as an evening gone
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Come on. Come on. You’ve got our attention. Now what the hell are you planning?
Young gets up, moves on unsteady legs a couple of paces away from their shelter against the rocks, trying to look at the sky above the last strike.
“Weapons fire? From what?”
“From our shuttle, that’s what. They’re up there, above the storm, I can fucking feel it.”
“They aren’t going to be able to land in this storm. There’s atmospheric instability at about - .”
“Jesus, Rush will you give it a rest? They’ve got a plan. We just don’t know what it is yet.”
Rush is silent, either out of things to say, or more likely running out of the adrenaline-fueled energy that had roused him from his exhaustion. Young could see his eyes dropping closed again.
“Hey, keep your eyes open! I need someone else helping me look.”
Rush opens his eyes again, but Young can see that he’s fighting a losing battle.
“Look for what.” The words are a mumble.
There. A light, coming down quickly, blinking.
“Yes! See that, Rush? That’s a location beacon.”
“What?”
“On a ‘chute. They’ve made a drop.”
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T.J. watches as Greer and Brody work on the explosives canister.
“This is going to work?” she asks Scott, without turning her head. All her attention is focused on the two men kneeling on the floor, tools spread out around them.
“Yes,” Scott’s voice is tight; he sounds on the verge of something, of anger or laughter, she can’t tell which. Now she turns to look at him. His lips are pressed together, tight. Holding back, holding in. God, right now, like this, he reminds her of Rush.
“Because it’s a good plan, or because you want it to work?”
“Because I’m not flying down there to pick up bodies.”
She closes her eyes. Bodies. Everett.
No. A deep breath, and she looks at Scott straight in the eyes, makes him look at her. Makes him see her.
“They won’t be dead. We thought Rush was dead before, and we were wrong. You won’t bring back bodies.”
Scott nods his head. This will work. And when the suns rise, he will go get them.
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Short as the watch that ends the night
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It takes Young the better part of an hour to walk out to the drop, get the gear, and come back. He slowly follows the steps for assembling the emergency shelter, letting the rocky overhang of the outcropping shield him as much as possible from the wind. He can hear his own words at the training session, back on Icarus.
Remove the shelter from its storage bag. Allow it to unfold, remembering to stand back; that frame is under a lot of tension. Find and hammer in the six stakes with the included folding mallet; you’ll find both in the net bag. Stabilize the shelter with the guy lines; remember people, guy lines are strongest when at 90 degrees to the support pole. You’re not likely to get that unless there’s a tree or something nearby to tie it to, but the further away you stake it in, the better the angle.
Finally, he tosses the supplies into the shelter.
Standard supplies for one-man emergency shelter: emergency blanket (1), water canisters (2), energy bars (4), chemical heat packs (4), chemical light sticks (2), location beacon/flashlight/compass (1). Are you getting all this, people? Some day your life’s gonna depend on it, airman.
He turns to get Rush, whose eyes have closed again, huddled against the rocks.
“In you go, Rush. Come on.”
He pulls Rush in, half-dragging him, and shuts the opening. Inside, the sound of the wind is muffled, but the walls of the shelter shake again and again.
“Ok, water first. Slowly, and just a little bit.”
Rush chokes on his first swallow, coughing and spitting the water back up again. Eventually, he gets some down, and then Young drinks as well, and recaps the canister. Slowly, slowly, but he keeps moving, removing his boots and then Rush’s, breaking the seal on one of the heat packs and placing it near their feet, covering them both with the emergency blanket. He pulls Rush against him, opening both their jackets and sliding his arms around the other man’s waist. Rush coughs and presses his head against Young’s shoulder, and then he is still. Young just lies there, holding him, his face against the top of Rush’s head. Listening to the wind, listening to his heart beat as it finally, finally slows down.
“Ok, stay with me here. How long ‘till morning?”
A long silence, and Young isn’t sure Rush is still awake. Then he feels a puff of air against his neck as the other man lets out a sigh.
“It was - it was maybe eight hours from when the suns were at their zenith to the last sunset, so I suppose that puts the total daylight here at about sixteen hours.”
Rush lifts his hand to his head, rubbing at the cut on his forehead. Young grabs his hand and pulls it down, away from his head.
“Leave that alone, you’ll just make it bleed again. Ok, so maybe another sixteen of dark?” He waits for an answer. “Rush. Sixteen hours?”
The only sound for a few minutes is the wind outside. He runs his hands up and down Rush’s back, trying to rub some warmth into the other man. Rush moves against him, pulling his arms in against his chest, trying to warm them. Young grabs another heat pack, breaks the seal and places it between their torsos.
“Sixteen hours assuming we’re at the equator - we’re not,” Rush’s voice is a hoarse whisper. “Or that we happened to show up here at one of the equinox, if this planet has a rotational tilt. Judging from the path of the suns relative to the horizon, we’re maybe halfway between the equator and one of the poles.”
Rush’s words leave a pattern of breath and warmth on the skin of Young’s throat. He pauses for a moment, thinking, then continues, speaking slowly.
“I have no idea where we are with regard to the solar year here - if we are in this hemisphere’s winter, it could - it could be a lot more than sixteen hours.”
“Fine, worst case scenario.”
The scientist pulls his head back a bit, and looks at Young. There is something there, in his eyes, that Young can’t read.
“Worst case scenario, this is the dead of winter, and the solar day here is forty-eight hours long. Thirty-two hours of dark.”
Young moves his arm so that he could see the glowing numbers on his watch.
“Second sunset was eight hours ago. Damn. That’s another twenty-four hours ‘till sunrise. Ok, how ‘bout you give me the best case scenario.”
Rush tiredly closes his eyes, and lets his head fall back down again to Young’s shoulder.
“We arrived on a lovely midsummer’s day.” Young can feel the other man give a soft laugh. “We should be wearing flowers in our hair, and there are only twenty-four hours in a solar day, as on Earth. Night should last about eight hours, and the suns will be rising any minute now. Do you suppose Lieutenant Scott will bring coffee and toast?”
Young smiles into Rush’s hair. “Not likely. So the sunrise could happen anytime between now and twenty-four hours from now.”
“That’s about right.”
“Perfect. So all we have to do is lie here, relax, eat a delicious energy bar or two, and wait for sunrise. Sunrises, I mean. It’s practically a vacation.”
Another laugh into Young’s neck. “Stuck in here together. The perfect holiday.”
Young let his lips press against Rush’s head. Lies still there, breathing, his hands pressed against Rush’s back. He felt a fine tremor go though him, relief, anger, something else. Something like want, something like regret.
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“So those two green blinking lights, that’s them?”
“Yeah,” Eli fiddles with the controls again. “You should be able to keep a constant reading on them, the whole time.”
Scott looks at the shuttle display, at the two lights. He turns and calls over his shoulder to Greer.
“Almost ready?”
“Yeah, we’ve just about got it. Give us another fifteen.”
Turning back to the display, he watches the lights blink green, calculating course trajectories in his head. As he watches, one turns to red, briefly, before blinking green again.
“What the fuck, Eli? What just happened?”
Eli is pressing buttons, reading the Ancient text that scrolls along the display.
“I think - ,” he doesn’t finish.
“What?”
“I think that one of the readings is, um, borderline. The sensors are using body temperature, maybe his body temperature is dropping.”
Rush, probably. He is smaller, less mass. Scott tries to imagine bringing back just one of them. Young is the one he cares about. Young is his commander, his mentor, his friend. He would do anything for Young. Anything. He imagines Young, waiting on that planet to die, watching Rush die first.
“Greer, Brody, now. Now. We need to go now.”
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Before the rising sun
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The second sun clears the horizon, and the entire valley below them is flooded with clear, bright light. Young moves Rush further away from the shelter, into the sunlight where already the temperature is rising, half-carrying him.
“Ok, there’s the second sun. Fourteen hours of dark, so I guess it was spring after all.”
Rush doesn’t answer him, his eyes closed, his breathing ragged. Young looks at the sky, squinting against the sunlight. The wind had died down a few hours before, finally. He leaned his face against the top of Rush’s head, closing his eyes for a moment, glad of the quiet.
The second sun rises further, and he starts to feel warm, finally, after thinking he would never feel warm again. He searches the dark blue above him. A glint of gold in the sky.
“Rush. Hey, look up.”
He shakes the smaller man gently. Rush’s eyes open.
“Look up, Nick.”
Rush turns his head and looks, and sees the small gold shape against the blue, trailing a cloud of vapor behind it. He lets out a long breath, closes his hands tightly, opens them again.
“Apparently you were right, Everett, about you and me,” he says and smiles, face to the sky, and Young wonders if that was the smile that Eli saw, when Destiny flew through the sun.
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A thousand ages in thy sight
Are as an evening gone
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun
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Author: carmencatalina
Fandom: SGU
Pairing/Characters: Young/Rush, Scott, Greer, Brody, Eli, T.J.
Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be.
Rating: PG-13, for language (seriously, my airmen swear like, well, sailors).
Spoilers: Through 1.10, “Justice”.
Author's Note: The ending of “give me your hand” is just that, an ending. But Lt. Scott said he wasn’t flying down there to pick up bodies, and Greer, well, Greer’s got a plan.
Summary: “How long ‘till morning?”
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A flash, an explosion of light and sound, and Young jerks awake suddenly. The wind is howling around them now, and he realizes that he’s fallen asleep, has been asleep for a while. Rush’s face is cold against his neck.
Goddammit, not yet. Don’t leave me here alone.
He tries to find the calm he felt earlier, the sense of peace, but all he feels is the panicky staccato beating of his heart. He forces himself to shift his hold on Rush’s hand, moving his grip to the wrist, searching for a pulse. His own hand is numb, he can’t make the fingers move to the right position, and then all he feels is cold skin, and the bones beneath.
No. Not yet.
For a moment the panic rises through him, closing his throat. The wind keeps pressing at him, it feels like someone pushing at his back, like a crowd hemming him in. He can’t catch his breath. He pulls the other man closer to him, his grip tight.
I left you to die, and you didn’t.
He forces the calm to come, closing his eyes, counting his own heartbeats. He moves his free hand to Rush’s throat, trying to remember where to press. The skin under his fingers is so cold.
There.
The faint thrum-thrum that tells him there is still time. The relief that floods his body feels almost like pain, like blood rushing into a limb gone numb.
“Hey, wake up. Come on, talk to me.”
He shakes Rush roughly, and Rush’s head moves a bit against him.
“Rush.”
Head dropping back, the scientist coughs once and then looks up at him. His lower lip is bleeding where it has cracked - the wind is relentlessly dry. He is mumbling something, but Young can’t make out words.
“Talk to me, Rush. How long do you think, before sunrise?”
Rush coughs again, and grimaces as the movement splits his lip further. Says something indistinct.
“How long before sunrise?”
Rush is shaking his head, and looks directly at Young, his dark eyes squinting against the wind.
“We can’t - we aren’t going to see those suns rise, Colonel.”
“Christ, Rush, can you fucking humor me for - ,” his words are interrupted by a second explosion, a flash of bright light making both men bend to shield their eyes, the cracking boom of sound following a few seconds after.
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Scott feels an ache in his jaw, from holding his face still, from keeping everything inside, instead of just spilling out where everyone can see.
Brody is looking at the display in front of him, a hand absently rubbing at his face, his eyes flicking from line to line of the Ancient code that Eli has managed to coax from the ship’s computers. Eli is next to him, working on one of the laptops, glancing now and again at Scott.
“There isn’t any way to bring the shuttle down through that storm, Lieutenant,” Brody’s voice sounds almost pleading, apologetic. “The shear forming between the atmospheric layers will rip it in half. You can’t do it, you have to wait for it to settle down, and that won’t happen until the suns rise, and the surface air temperature warms up.”
Scott sees Eli look away, his hands clenching the laptop until his knuckles show white.
“How long before sunrise?”
But Scott knows the answer before the words leave his mouth. He can see it in Brody’s face, in Eli’s hands. Too long. Too many hours, the temperature dropping too fast, the wind scouring the surface of the ground. And he won’t be there in time, he will be too late.
“I’m not flying down there at sunrise to pick up bodies.”
Scott looks at all of them, seeing how tired they are, how tightly they are trying to control their own faces. They had managed this much, had made Destiny return to the planet - they could see it from the viewscreens. The day side bright like a beacon beneath them, reflecting the light from the system’s twin suns. The night side just beyond the curvature of the planet, hidden from sight.
“Give me some ideas, people. Give me something.”
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A thousand ages in thy sight
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“What the hell is happening?”
Rush pulls away from Young, rubs at his eyes, trying to sit up straight. “I don’t know, Colonel. Lightning strikes? The storm is likely building up a great deal of - .”
His next words are swallowed by the flash-boom of another explosion, the light and sound close together now, almost simultaneous. Both men wince and bend down, trying to blink away the afterimage of the flash and clear their vision.
“Ok, that’s definitely closer. Maybe one hundred meters, max.”
“Each strike has been closer,” Rush says, the words coming out hoarse and barely audible over the howl of the wind. “And the last few, at least, have been on a direct line towards this outcropping.”
Young squints his eyes, trying to look up through the wind and blowing grit, up at the sky.
“That’s not lightning. That’s weapons fire.”
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“And then what? We can’t get through the shear layer, Brody says it’s impossible.”
“A drop.” Greer’s voice is calm; he is leaning over Brody’s shoulder, looking at the display that shows the planet’s atmosphere in concentric layers
“Are you insane? Even if we could drop someone from that distance, the shear would - .”
“Not personnel. Gear.”
Scott looks at the other man for a moment, a faint frown on his face. Then he starts smiling, and Greer’s face breaks into a matching grin.
“The emergency shelter! The one that got included in the evac from Icarus. And some supplies. Greer, we can -.”
Brody interrupts, “How the hell are we going to get something through that shear layer?”
The smile on Greer’s face gets even broader.
“Shuttle’s weapons systems. We’ve got those big hard-cased explosives, right? In addition to the laser weapons? How about we empty out a case and use it to fire down the gear?”
“How do we keep it from getting destroyed on impact?”
“We rig a delayed ‘chute deployment. Fire high enough so it just makes it through the shear, then pop the ‘chute.”
Eli interrupts, “You can do that?”
Greer turns, crosses his arms across his chest, and gives him a look.
“Hey, I’m the guy who made the flame thrower, remember? Trust me, I can rig it.”
Brody gives Greer an incredulous look.
“And they are going to find this thing, how exactly? In the dark? In a storm? We have no way of communicating with them, to tell them to where to look - .”
“We get their attention first. Fire the shuttle’s weapons systems.”
Scott shakes his head, feeling the tightness in his chest ease for the first time in hours, and laughs. “Greer, you really do solve every problem by shooting at it.”
“Yeah.” A pause and another brilliant smile. “It’s a gift.”
“Um, guys? We are going to be careful not to, you know, hit them, right?” Eli interrupts.
Scott places his hand on Eli’s shoulder.
“That’s where you come in, Eli. I need a bead on the exact location of the only two human beings on that planet from approximately ten thousand meters. And I mean exact location. Think you can do that?”
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Are as an evening gone
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Come on. Come on. You’ve got our attention. Now what the hell are you planning?
Young gets up, moves on unsteady legs a couple of paces away from their shelter against the rocks, trying to look at the sky above the last strike.
“Weapons fire? From what?”
“From our shuttle, that’s what. They’re up there, above the storm, I can fucking feel it.”
“They aren’t going to be able to land in this storm. There’s atmospheric instability at about - .”
“Jesus, Rush will you give it a rest? They’ve got a plan. We just don’t know what it is yet.”
Rush is silent, either out of things to say, or more likely running out of the adrenaline-fueled energy that had roused him from his exhaustion. Young could see his eyes dropping closed again.
“Hey, keep your eyes open! I need someone else helping me look.”
Rush opens his eyes again, but Young can see that he’s fighting a losing battle.
“Look for what.” The words are a mumble.
There. A light, coming down quickly, blinking.
“Yes! See that, Rush? That’s a location beacon.”
“What?”
“On a ‘chute. They’ve made a drop.”
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T.J. watches as Greer and Brody work on the explosives canister.
“This is going to work?” she asks Scott, without turning her head. All her attention is focused on the two men kneeling on the floor, tools spread out around them.
“Yes,” Scott’s voice is tight; he sounds on the verge of something, of anger or laughter, she can’t tell which. Now she turns to look at him. His lips are pressed together, tight. Holding back, holding in. God, right now, like this, he reminds her of Rush.
“Because it’s a good plan, or because you want it to work?”
“Because I’m not flying down there to pick up bodies.”
She closes her eyes. Bodies. Everett.
No. A deep breath, and she looks at Scott straight in the eyes, makes him look at her. Makes him see her.
“They won’t be dead. We thought Rush was dead before, and we were wrong. You won’t bring back bodies.”
Scott nods his head. This will work. And when the suns rise, he will go get them.
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Short as the watch that ends the night
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It takes Young the better part of an hour to walk out to the drop, get the gear, and come back. He slowly follows the steps for assembling the emergency shelter, letting the rocky overhang of the outcropping shield him as much as possible from the wind. He can hear his own words at the training session, back on Icarus.
Remove the shelter from its storage bag. Allow it to unfold, remembering to stand back; that frame is under a lot of tension. Find and hammer in the six stakes with the included folding mallet; you’ll find both in the net bag. Stabilize the shelter with the guy lines; remember people, guy lines are strongest when at 90 degrees to the support pole. You’re not likely to get that unless there’s a tree or something nearby to tie it to, but the further away you stake it in, the better the angle.
Finally, he tosses the supplies into the shelter.
Standard supplies for one-man emergency shelter: emergency blanket (1), water canisters (2), energy bars (4), chemical heat packs (4), chemical light sticks (2), location beacon/flashlight/compass (1). Are you getting all this, people? Some day your life’s gonna depend on it, airman.
He turns to get Rush, whose eyes have closed again, huddled against the rocks.
“In you go, Rush. Come on.”
He pulls Rush in, half-dragging him, and shuts the opening. Inside, the sound of the wind is muffled, but the walls of the shelter shake again and again.
“Ok, water first. Slowly, and just a little bit.”
Rush chokes on his first swallow, coughing and spitting the water back up again. Eventually, he gets some down, and then Young drinks as well, and recaps the canister. Slowly, slowly, but he keeps moving, removing his boots and then Rush’s, breaking the seal on one of the heat packs and placing it near their feet, covering them both with the emergency blanket. He pulls Rush against him, opening both their jackets and sliding his arms around the other man’s waist. Rush coughs and presses his head against Young’s shoulder, and then he is still. Young just lies there, holding him, his face against the top of Rush’s head. Listening to the wind, listening to his heart beat as it finally, finally slows down.
“Ok, stay with me here. How long ‘till morning?”
A long silence, and Young isn’t sure Rush is still awake. Then he feels a puff of air against his neck as the other man lets out a sigh.
“It was - it was maybe eight hours from when the suns were at their zenith to the last sunset, so I suppose that puts the total daylight here at about sixteen hours.”
Rush lifts his hand to his head, rubbing at the cut on his forehead. Young grabs his hand and pulls it down, away from his head.
“Leave that alone, you’ll just make it bleed again. Ok, so maybe another sixteen of dark?” He waits for an answer. “Rush. Sixteen hours?”
The only sound for a few minutes is the wind outside. He runs his hands up and down Rush’s back, trying to rub some warmth into the other man. Rush moves against him, pulling his arms in against his chest, trying to warm them. Young grabs another heat pack, breaks the seal and places it between their torsos.
“Sixteen hours assuming we’re at the equator - we’re not,” Rush’s voice is a hoarse whisper. “Or that we happened to show up here at one of the equinox, if this planet has a rotational tilt. Judging from the path of the suns relative to the horizon, we’re maybe halfway between the equator and one of the poles.”
Rush’s words leave a pattern of breath and warmth on the skin of Young’s throat. He pauses for a moment, thinking, then continues, speaking slowly.
“I have no idea where we are with regard to the solar year here - if we are in this hemisphere’s winter, it could - it could be a lot more than sixteen hours.”
“Fine, worst case scenario.”
The scientist pulls his head back a bit, and looks at Young. There is something there, in his eyes, that Young can’t read.
“Worst case scenario, this is the dead of winter, and the solar day here is forty-eight hours long. Thirty-two hours of dark.”
Young moves his arm so that he could see the glowing numbers on his watch.
“Second sunset was eight hours ago. Damn. That’s another twenty-four hours ‘till sunrise. Ok, how ‘bout you give me the best case scenario.”
Rush tiredly closes his eyes, and lets his head fall back down again to Young’s shoulder.
“We arrived on a lovely midsummer’s day.” Young can feel the other man give a soft laugh. “We should be wearing flowers in our hair, and there are only twenty-four hours in a solar day, as on Earth. Night should last about eight hours, and the suns will be rising any minute now. Do you suppose Lieutenant Scott will bring coffee and toast?”
Young smiles into Rush’s hair. “Not likely. So the sunrise could happen anytime between now and twenty-four hours from now.”
“That’s about right.”
“Perfect. So all we have to do is lie here, relax, eat a delicious energy bar or two, and wait for sunrise. Sunrises, I mean. It’s practically a vacation.”
Another laugh into Young’s neck. “Stuck in here together. The perfect holiday.”
Young let his lips press against Rush’s head. Lies still there, breathing, his hands pressed against Rush’s back. He felt a fine tremor go though him, relief, anger, something else. Something like want, something like regret.
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“So those two green blinking lights, that’s them?”
“Yeah,” Eli fiddles with the controls again. “You should be able to keep a constant reading on them, the whole time.”
Scott looks at the shuttle display, at the two lights. He turns and calls over his shoulder to Greer.
“Almost ready?”
“Yeah, we’ve just about got it. Give us another fifteen.”
Turning back to the display, he watches the lights blink green, calculating course trajectories in his head. As he watches, one turns to red, briefly, before blinking green again.
“What the fuck, Eli? What just happened?”
Eli is pressing buttons, reading the Ancient text that scrolls along the display.
“I think - ,” he doesn’t finish.
“What?”
“I think that one of the readings is, um, borderline. The sensors are using body temperature, maybe his body temperature is dropping.”
Rush, probably. He is smaller, less mass. Scott tries to imagine bringing back just one of them. Young is the one he cares about. Young is his commander, his mentor, his friend. He would do anything for Young. Anything. He imagines Young, waiting on that planet to die, watching Rush die first.
“Greer, Brody, now. Now. We need to go now.”
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Before the rising sun
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The second sun clears the horizon, and the entire valley below them is flooded with clear, bright light. Young moves Rush further away from the shelter, into the sunlight where already the temperature is rising, half-carrying him.
“Ok, there’s the second sun. Fourteen hours of dark, so I guess it was spring after all.”
Rush doesn’t answer him, his eyes closed, his breathing ragged. Young looks at the sky, squinting against the sunlight. The wind had died down a few hours before, finally. He leaned his face against the top of Rush’s head, closing his eyes for a moment, glad of the quiet.
The second sun rises further, and he starts to feel warm, finally, after thinking he would never feel warm again. He searches the dark blue above him. A glint of gold in the sky.
“Rush. Hey, look up.”
He shakes the smaller man gently. Rush’s eyes open.
“Look up, Nick.”
Rush turns his head and looks, and sees the small gold shape against the blue, trailing a cloud of vapor behind it. He lets out a long breath, closes his hands tightly, opens them again.
“Apparently you were right, Everett, about you and me,” he says and smiles, face to the sky, and Young wonders if that was the smile that Eli saw, when Destiny flew through the sun.
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A thousand ages in thy sight
Are as an evening gone
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun
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