forbidden - chris beck

Chapter 27

A few months after leaving Mars, I'm glad to say that things got sort of back to normal. The first month or so was the worst. It was so depressingly quiet on the ship without the occasional witty remark from Watney. But I think we were all thankful for the butt load of work that NASA kept giving us for our journey home. Without it, we would have had nothing to distract us from the pain we felt.

Out of us all, Lewis was most defiantly taking it the worst. She had wanted The mission to go so successfully that the thought of losing a crew mate killed her inside. Little did she fail to realise, it was completely out of her hands.

Following a morning of draining research tasks, I took a break and headed down to the main lounge area to find Lewis aimlessly gazing out the window to the galaxy as her hands hugged the mug in her lap.

I walked over to the couch opposite and sat down. "Hi, Commander." I said timidly in attempt to bring her back to reality.

She shook her head and looked at me. "Oh," She broke out of her daze. "Sorry Collins. I didn't see you there."

"A...Are you okay, Commander?" My eyes filled with concern. She still wasn't eating as much as she should be and she definitely wasn't getting enough sleep.

"I guess so." She looked down at her lap. I didn't want to push her further. She tended not to talk about the whole situation and I understood why.

"Lewis," I leaned forward slightly so that her tired eyes would meet mine. "No matter what you think of yourself, I just want you to know that the entire crew admire your strength."

She opened her mouth as if to counter my words, but I didn't let her.

"I don't know how you've done it, but within a matter of hours after departing from Mars, you've had us back on track and I don't think we could have done that without you."

"It's my fault you're that we're one less crew member in the first place." She pursed her lips. "But thank you." She smiled for the first time in a long time.
"It's nice to know that I'm not a complete failure."

"You can't blame yourself for Watney's death. There was nothing you could have done."

"I think it's gonna be a while before I accept that." She bit down on her bottom lip.

"Of course." I leaned forward and placed my hands on my thighs, about to stand up when Lewis spoke.

"I'm sorry for being harsh on you and Beck all the time. It's just-"

"You don't need to explain, Commander. There's nothing going on...anymore."

I'm not quite sure why I said those words. I mean, we never really discussed what was going on between us, we kind of just went along with it. But for the last few months we had been getting on as just friends, and so I had to assume that nothing was going on.

"All I'm saying is that I might not agree with anything during the mission, but you guys would make a really cute couple on earth."

We both let out small laughs as to how odd the phrase sounded, but it made me happy, knowing that she was secretly ok with it.

"Thanks, Commander." I stood up and gave her a warm smile to which she returned. "I should probably get back to work."

After passing through the familiar halls and the low gravity mid sections, I made it back to the research lab to find Johanssen on her laptop.

"You look suspiciously happy." She glanced at me and then back at her screen.

"I just made Lewis smile." I walked to my station behind Johanssen's computer.

"Sounds like she's coming back to us. Slowly." Johanssen said as I nodded in response.

She spoke through her receiver, "I'm coming." She stood and walked to the control room. "Mail's here."

"I'll be there in a sec." I said while I finished off my recordings for the plant experiment I was doing.

"Emails have come through, you coming?" Beck said as he approached me, walking in from the other side of the lab.

"Yeah," I said as a quickly scribbled down some last notes and then dropped my pencil. "Done." I muttered to myself.

I looked up to find him looking at me with an odd expression on his face. His eyebrows were furrowed and his jaw slightly clenched. To me, it looked as if he had a thousand words to say, but couldn't find the way to say them.

"What's wrong?" I looked up at him.

"It's nothing." He shook his head.

"C'mon tell me." I stood in front of him, blocking his path so that he wouldn't try to escape the question.

He took a step back as he looked down at me lips, then suddenly he leaned down and pressed his soft lips against mine, catching me completely off guard. He snaked one arm around my waist and placed his other hand on the back of my neck, pulling me in closer to him.

I didn't want to admit it, but I had been waiting so long for him to do that. I reached my hands up into his soft brown locks and kissed him back with the same passion, causing him to pull me in closer.

After a few moments of absolute bliss, we pulled away from eachother as he rested his forehead against mine, both of us softly panting.

"Wha-" I started, but he cut me off.

"Let's go check that mail." He smirked and pulled me along with him down the hallway.

I hated the fact that I loved that so much. I thought we were done, at least it felt like that for months. I realised to  just enjoy the moment and play along. It was obvious that he didn't really want to talk about it so I purposely changed the subject.

"Um, so are you expecting anything in particular?" I asked as we walked down together, trying to cool down my flushed cheeks before the crew saw me.

"Nothing special," he said. "Peer reviews of a paper I wrote a few years back."

As we met the rest of the crew, Johanssen stated that there was a voice message addressed to all of us.

After confirmation from Lewis, Johanssen opened the message then sat back as we all crowded around the screen.

We listened to the video from Mitch Henderson eagerly, as it was suspicious that he was talking to us directly without CAPCOM.

"I have some news," Mitch's voice continued. "There's no subtle way to put this: Mark Watney's still alive."