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“It was a shell game,” Smith says, her eyes dancing with amused respect, but Judy doesn’t stick around to enjoy it. As soon as the fraud turns back to the chariot, she slips around the corner of the corridor and makes sure to tap Penny’s arm to signal her sister to follow her lead.
They need to get back into the subsystem and then get back to the med bay…back to Don.
“Okay, what’s next?” Penny asks as they slide past the storage containers loaded down with OGS filters.
“Med bay,” Judy says, keeping it to the point. “If we’re going to get Mom and Dad back on the ship, we’re going to need some mechanical help and…”
“And Don’s got the codes to bypass any system access we need.”
“Exactly,” Judy says as they wind around the twist and turns of the interior of the ship, checking for the markers Samantha made for herself in the time she spent here alone and hiding.
“I thought you said it was crawling with security?”
“I’m hoping they pulled most of them out to chase us around the ship. If there are only a few left, it shouldn’t be too hard to get around them.”
Penny snorts. “The universe is so lucky you decided to use your powers for good and not evil.”
“Mmmm,” Judy hums her agreement. “Speaking of, do you think Smith is really working with Hastings?”
“Probably,” Penny says, “She’s a pure opportunist, probably thinks helping him gets her a pass to Alpha Centauri and…she’s probably not wrong, even though saving four lives wasn’t enough to get Don out of trouble.”
Judy glances back at her sister, though she can’t quite see her in the dim lighting. “None of you are Hastings.”
“Small mercies.”
Judy holds back a laugh. They’re getting closer to the med bay now and they don’t need to alert anyone to their presence. She puts a finger to her lips and Penny nods.
Don was in a private room on the interior of the facility which should be on the other side of this wall…somewhere. The hall is long and she can’t quite be sure just how far down she needs to travel to get to him and they can’t risk exposure.
The muted sound of beeping machines manages to slip through the layers between there and the corridor and Judy glances around, trying to find any sort of indicator about where they are in relation to the rest of the medical facility. If they pop open any of the wall panels the odds they’re seen are high.
She looks up and examines a grate about nine or ten feet above the floor. That’s gotta be an access vent. She could climb up there and crawl through the ceiling without being seen.
“God, I hate it when you get that look,” Penny mutters around a groan.
“What look?” she asks, already examining the wall for toe holds.
“The I have a plan that requires super hero level physical fitness look.”
Judy grins widely and then stretches her neck back and forth. “Stay here. I shouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes. If we’re not back by then find Naoko at their Jupiter. She’ll hide you and she’ll help figure out a plan for mom and dad.”
It’s a sobering thought that if she gets caught and hauled away, Penny will be on her own.
She reaches over and yanks her little sister into a crushing hug. “Fifteen minutes,” she says, pulls away and gets a good grip on a short ledge, lifting herself up against the wall, pulling herself up with a quick toe hold against it and then she’s over the top into the ceiling access area where it’s nearly pitch black.
Okay, like dad says, accept the unexpected, though she probably should have expected this. The barrier between her and the rooms below is thinner up here, she can hear a little better. Directly below her is a bunch of chatter, probably the hallway she’d made her way down earlier. There’s a bit of dim light up ahead and when she reaches it and peeks down, it’s a sea of navy blue security uniforms in the main waiting area and a few mechanics still milling around.
Pulling in a breath, she holds it as she gingerly crawls over the grating without a sound. She’s oriented now. Don is down this hallway, second room on the right side. With extreme care and her ears still open, she heads in that direction.
She hears him before she sees him.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Don's voice echos up through the vents a few feet ahead of her.
“There’s going to be massive damage down at the OGS,” a female voice retorts, “and I need to get back down there before Andre gets it into his scrawny head that he’s in charge.”
Ah. Ava. The woman he was trapped with. The woman he nearly died beside.
That pang of jealousy from earlier is still there, but accompanied by a tiny lump rising in her throat at how close she came to losing him and how, at least, he had a friend with him in those last, terrifying moments. It crushes the jealousy instantly. If Ava’s his friend, then she’s Judy’s friend too.
Sliding the lever that secures the grate down, she lifts it softly and then silently as she can, lowers herself down into the room.
“Holy shit,” Ava yelps from her position leaning against the far wall, as Judy drops to the floor landing catlike in a crouch and immediately lifts a finger to her lips to keep things quiet.
“Nice entrance,” Don quips from right where she left him, sitting up on his bed as she stands. The oxygen filter is gone now and the color is back in his face. A weight she hadn’t realized was still on her shoulders lifts immediately. She sends him a little side-eye for his effort at a joke and then gestures toward Ava. “Oh right, Judy, this is Ava, my boss, head of Mechanical for the Resolute. Ava, this is Dr. Judy Robinson…”
“She the one that’s an expert on your nose?” Ava asks, one eyebrow lifted in amusement.
“Is that what I am?” Judy asks, lifting an eyebrow of her own while Don’s eyes widen in panic.
“Yeah, I like her,” Ava says simply.
Don simply looks back and forth between them and then with a helpless shake of his head, he changes the subject. “I heard you went for a little chariot joy ride. Security in here was losing their minds. Please tell me you blared Panama. I would have paid good money to see that.”
Judy waves him off, feeling a flush in her cheeks at the memory of that first joyous ride across an alien planet with him, before things turned to shit. Instead, she focuses on Ava. “You really should get back into bed. Your hypoxia was so much worse than his and Don and I are headed down there anyway.”
“We are?” he asks, reaching for his work boots and sliding them on.
“We are,” Judy says. “My parents are—”
“Yeah,” he cuts her off. “I have an idea about that. We can probably sneak them back in through the intake valves. No orbital geometry necessary. We just have to make sure they stay open and once they get back into range, I’ll signal them from my radio. They’re probably still monitoring yours.”
Judy furrows her brow and plays it out in her head. The maintenance pods were meant to do work inside of those massive valves and both her parents are decent pilots. They both should be able to navigate back up to the garage from there.
“Okay yeah, let’s do it. I need to go back the way I came. There are storage cabinets all along this corridor. Meet me behind them.”
Don levers himself off the bed and stands in the center of the room and holds out his hands, one on top of the other for her to boost herself back through the ceiling vent. Reaching out, she braces her hands on his shoulders and looks down, his eyes meeting hers and holding for a moment and then two before Ava lets out an uncomfortable cough.
Judy turns and meets her eye and the other woman looks incredibly amused, but then Don clears his throat. “See you in a minute,” she says, stepping onto his hands and letting him practically jettison her up through the vent.
She carefully replaces the vent cover, but she’s still there when the other woman's laugh rings into the air and up to her.
“Oh, you are in so far over your fucking head,” Ava says. “Punching way above your weight class with that one, West.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. “I know.”
And suddenly Judy likes Ava just a little bit less.
She’s never seen Don as anything other than her equal and in some ways, she thinks, he outclasses her.
She grew up privileged, knowing where her meals were coming from and where she was laying her head at night and that she was loved. Her only real concerns for a long time were whether her grades would be good enough for medical school and if her cross country splits would be good enough for another state championship.
If she’s pieced together his childhood as well as she thinks she has, he pulled himself out of poverty, put himself through school—if sometimes through dubious means—and then qualified for the mechanical space program through sheer force of will. He didn’t have John and Maureen Robinson standing behind him while he did all of that, waiting to catch him if he fell. He had to do it on his own.
He is so much more than the world believes him to be.
It’s one of the things she loves most about him.
Shit.
Somehow, in the midst of the last few minutes, she forgot how she left him before, with those words on her lips echoing behind her while she fled to find her brother and sister. And he didn’t say anything about it back in the med bay, but…Ava was there, it wasn’t the time or the place, really.
Still, the awkwardness creeps over her skin as she climbs down the wall she scaled earlier, Penny right where she left her, sitting down against a large electrical box, waiting and chewing on her lip in anxiety.
“Thank God you’re back,” she says, standing. “I heard security pass this spot like ten times. They’re looking for us.”
“I bet they are,” Judy answers and then turns toward the storage units waiting.
“Did you find Don?” Penny asks, looking up from where Judy came.
“Yeah. He’s meeting us."
“Where?”
“Here,” Don’s voice, a raspy whisper, responds for her from a few feet down as he shifts the storage unit he used as his cover back into place.
“Don!” Penny shouts and in two bounding steps she’s leaping into his arms and Judy doesn't even bother to shush her as something in her chest flips pleasantly.
He’s already part of her family in so many ways.
“Hey kiddo,” he says, his voice muffled by Penny’s hair, but he meets Judy’s eyes over her sister's shoulder and she can feel the heat in his gaze as he just looks at her, brown eyes nearly black in the barely there lighting.
“You’re okay?” her sister asks as he lets her back down to the ground.
“I’m okay.”
“Okay, great because I don’t know what Judy told you, but Mom and Dad are, I don’t know in orbit somewhere still and Will went down to the planet and we have no idea how he’s going to get back and…”
“I know, Penny and we’re gonna figure all of that out,” he says, edging around her, striding straight for Judy whose heartbeat goes into overdrive at the feral intent in his gaze, “but first I gotta do one thing.”
“What? What could possibly be more important than…oh,” Penny, finally, stops talking.
Don’s arms wrap around Judy, his lips lower to hers. She’d never fantasized about being kissed this way, but it couldn't possibly live up to Don bending her over his arm, his mouth hot and hard against hers, tongue deepening the contact, one hand buried into her hair, the other snaking around her body, taking nearly all her weight and crushing her to him like a man possessed. His mouth reassures her with every flick of his tongue and even a brief nip of his teeth. He’s here. He’s alive. They’re together.
Their mouths part and he pulls in a rough breath then rests his forehead against hers, that hand in her hair sliding around to cup her cheek, the callused pad of his thumb brushing reverently over her bottom lip before dipping his head again to kiss her softly. Her hands rise to his face, the scruff of his beard soothing against her palms, his body, warm and hard and strong, pressed against her.
“I love you too,” he murmurs so only she can hear, an answer to her words from hours ago, trailing his lips across the line of her jaw and it sets her entire body aflame.
She has never felt a rush like Don West in her life. Nothing has ever compared to it and she’s pretty sure nothing ever will.
“Ahem,” Penny clears her throat and when Judy pulls away and looks over Don’s shoulder, her sister’s blush is so bright it nearly matches her hair. “Not to interrupt this, frankly, traumatizing moment, which now, somehow, ranks up there with hurtling through space in a jerry rigged cooler, we still have to go rescue mom and dad.”
Don pulls away and Judy untangles herself from him slowly and they turn together to face her sister.
Pennys mouth pulls into an amused smirk, tinged with clear joy in her eyes. “Are you my new brother?” she asks with faux innocence.
Don snorts and then shrugs into a sheepish grin and Judy feels her heart flip again. She loves him so much and part of that is how much her family loves him too.
“C’mon,” Judy says, brushing her fingertips lightly against her own lips, swollen and tender after a kiss that will be burned into her memory until the day she dies. “Let’s go.”
“Oh, now she’s in a hurry,” Penny protests, but falls into step with Don as they both follow her lead down into the bowels of the ship toward the maintenance level where they’ll be able to save her parents.
And she is in a hurry, a hurry to get her family back together, to get away from this godforsaken planetary orbit and get to Alpha Centauri, because Judy is tired of waiting for her life to start, now she’s going to make it happen with her family and the man she loves by her side.