Last Morning

Posted on Sun Jul 27th, 2025 @ 6:48am by Ensign Madelyn 'Madi' Moore & Ensign Duncan McManus

Mission: Remnant
Location: Planet
Timeline: Day 410
2985 words - 6 OF Standard Post Measure

In the end, Madelyn had slept better than she'd expected. It had been a long and physically strenuous day, so perhaps that wasn't much of a surprise, but she'd fallen into her cot with a headful of thoughts and feelings to match, and just enough lingering muscular ache that it had seemed more likely she'd toss and turn. When the sound of movement outside had finally roused her, Madelyn was comfortably curled into a ball, burrowed beneath her blanket, and was startled not only by the time when she finally coaxed herself from bed, but by how refreshed she felt. Technically, she hadn't missed breakfast, which meant she had somehow succeeded in not sleeping half the morning away. The other bed was empty, and Mercy's absence was motivation enough to rug up and peer out into the pale sunshine to see what the day had in store.

She hadn't expected to see people packing up.

Now, an hour later, Madi wasn't sure how she felt about their imminent departure. There was so much about the first inhabitants they still didn't know, so much of the planet still left unexplored, and yet there was an undeniable boost in morale knowing that they were leaving because they'd got what they came for. Part of her had wanted to protest at being in the first shuttle to return but there wasn't really a good reason to stay and she'd been the one to put herself on limited duties for the next day in the first place. Rather than get in the way, she had helped take down her tent and pack away her things and then wandered to the periphery to perch herself on a rock facing the run-down buildings still holding fast to all their secrets. With her chin resting on a bent knee, Madi closed her eyes and tried to commit the sensation of wind and the warmth of sunshine across her back to memory. If she tried hard, it almost felt like home.

Duncan had been moving stuff from where they were finalising the fuel analysis when he spotted the woman packing down her tent and found himself smiling and just watching her. It took him a moment to realise how creepy it was, so he quickly went back to his duties until he could find her an hour or so later, sitting there just enjoying what he could imagine was the sun on her face. He hurt all over from carrying cargo containers so he was eager to just relax for a moment or two, hopefully in her company. "Are you savouring alone or fancy some company?" He wondered.

Unlikely to ever be destined for a career involving discretion, Madi jumped at the interruption and pressed her hand against her sternum as the breathless laughter of relief broke the tension. Pink-cheeked, she was still glad to see the man, even if there seemed no escape from doing something goofy in his presence. She shuffled over and patted the spot beside her. "Always room."

As Duncan settled, Madelyn combatted the distraction of his proximity by returning her attention to the view. "It feels weird to be leaving," she admitted. "Saying goodbye to Realia was hard at the time, but this more like..." She tilted her head as she regarded the distant buildings. "...like we're leaving something unfinished."

The man nodded. He could understand that viewpoint; he had come down to find fuel and he had completed that mission, but others had not found the anwsers that they had needed. "Well we could go for a walk and see if we can find you some anwsers?"

The offer redirected Madelyn's gaze and left her studying the engineer's face before her own expression broke into a smile. If she was honest, there was very little chance of finding answers amongst the ruins, that kind of work took a long time without any context to work from. Still, a final exploration would at least give her time to pay last respects to a group of people she'd never meet and yet felt some sort of connection to. "Are you sure?," she asked, already rising. "You've been working all morning already."

“I am designed to work.” He assured, smirking as he untied the arms of his flight suit from around his waist and started to shove his arms back into them. “Plus it’s all been my arms doing the work so a nice little walk will be fine. Pick a direction.” He offered jumping to get his flight suit where he wanted it.

The dance of her gaze across the ruins eventually landed Madelyn on a target her attention kept returning to. "Let's go look at the residential area."

They had no way of knowing for sure, of course, what any of the structures' prior functions were. With the pressing need for fuel acting as their primary motivation, most of the attention offered to the ruins had been by the forward party in making sure there were no imminent threats. Madelyn had accepted her role was to assist Mercy in the identification of new food sources but it was hard not to feel a pang at the lost opportunity to explore and chip away at some semblance of an explanation. Nevertheless, she had speculated from afar, and gave name to one of the handful of theories she'd come up with.

"Residential area sounds like a good idea. I do not believe I have been in that area as I have spent most of it crawling around in tunnels." Duncan nodded and smirked a little as he pulled out a scanner and held it out to her. "We had to keep one handy just in case." He explained when they knew that most of the science equipment was already stowed away on the shuttlepod or back on the Atlantis.

The look of surprise on Madi's face very quickly gave way to a beaming smile that lit up her eyes in a way that had been a little harder to provoke over the last little while. Taking it gratefully, she kept her focus on activating it and setting the local calibration, for once managed to move through the field that separated the settlement from their camp without stumbling or, as was her latest trick, falling in a hole.

Whilst the bigger prize was further in the distance now, the larger metropolis having receded somewhat into the fog now that the last of the team's relocations had placed them well and truly beyond the outskirts, the smaller settlement told a fascinating story simply by dint of existing in the first place. Part of the appeal of investigating was the oddness of the township, so far removed from the city and yet not seemingly connected to it in any meaningful way. Madi's pace slowed as they approached, in reverence but also caution.

"Do you know if they found any remains?" Her question was quiet, reflective, and her intent was derived both from a sense of respect and slight squeamishness.

Duncan shook his head. "No, that anyone has mentioned, but I do believe that if there was any hint our favourite Vulcan would be all over it." The man commented as she slowed down, and he nearly bumped into her. He grinned and stepped aside, and just looked at what she was looking at, it was the first time he was actually seeing the settlement.

Very tentatively, Madelyn moved forward to step over the rubble that had once formed part of the barrier fence. It was a cruder design than she'd expected, though if there'd been time to analyse it properly, she might have been bold enough to call it familiar. Most of the structures in the vicinity were little more than foundations, riddled with weeds and water damage, but she gazed between them with as much awe as if they'd been made out of gingerbread.

"You know, they're a little out of place." It wasn't often that Madi spoke up with any authority but she managed it with the same quiet gentleness she usually displayed. "This whole area is, actually. At least, from what I can tell, the city's a little far away to make much sense out of. Just the location, though, so far away..."

“Any hypothesis on the way?” Duncan wondered pulling out a torch to shine into some of the larger weed patches as he stepped to the left to look at one of the foundations. It was a simple layout even inside the building. Communal area, bed area but no washing area in his opinion but he could remember seeing similar ruins back home when he traveled to areas that had, had Roman occupation.

"It's hard to say." Glancing down at the scanner, Madi then left it to do its work and reverted to what information she could glean just with her eyes, and as she reached out to brush against the crumbling stonework, her hands. "Even a site this size would take weeks to properly analyse and I'm not sure many conclusions could be drawn without some sort of deeper investigation into the city itself. They seem to have been permanent structures."

Stepping beside Duncan, the young ensign turned to survey the ground at their feet and unexpectedly dropped to stretch out on her back, her feet firmly pushed up against the tallest point of what remained of a wall. "Doesn't look like they were anywhere near the size of their statues, at least."

“Aye… well thank goodness for small mercies. I do not want to see any more of those statues, was like being back as the Academy after gym.” He laughed as he lay down beside her using his larger frame and height to assist with the measuring. “Pretty short.” He agreed getting straight to the point of her realisation.

It took Madi a moment but, twisting her head to notice the comparative difference in their sizes, and realising that she tucked pretty nicely into the space without any need to bunch up, her expression suddenly crumpled into gentle indignation and she laughed as she poked him in the side with her elbow. "Watch who you're calling short."

The man turned on his side and smirked at the woman. "Just you cause compared to me you are short and small." He said quietly before he lay back down and put his hands behind his head and stared up at the sky.

There wasn't a lot of arguing with that, though Madi wasn't really sure what to say next. In every way, she had felt dwarfed by the man for a long time, and that had very little to do with the height difference. Though the intent had been to keep exploring, she found herself settling with her hands on her stomach to stare up at the sky with him, wondering if either of them really had cause to consider their size when compared to the clouds rolling overhead.

"I'm at least going to try to stop being weaker for it," she murmured out of no where once the silence had stretched into its first minute. "I think I've had enough of this existential crisis for now."

The man had been staring at her instead of the clouds, seeing the emotions flicker across her face and raised an eyebrow as she finally spoke up. “How can I help?” He offered simply as he leaned out a brushed a stray lock of hair out of her face and offered a smile.

It took a great deal of concentration to stick to her guns and not kept swept up by the sudden circus act her insides were trying to perform. There had been a lot of time for thinking overnight, however, and in her own way, once Madi has finally made a decision, she was pretty tenacious about sticking to it. She smiled back and lifted her hand so that the backs of her fingers tapped gently against his arm. "You're already doing plenty."

The man found himself chuckling a little as he glanced down at her gentle touch on his arm. "There is always more I can do." He said as he turned on his side and properly looked at her. He leaned out and cupped her cheek.

It sent her pulse-rate scattering but the newer voice inside Madi's head, the one that was upping the volume to chastise her in moments of ridiculous self-indulgence, forced herself to maintain eye contact. You can't just keep expecting him to chase you in circles. Are you actually going to start living or go back to hiding?

Her tongue snuck out to wet her suddenly-dry bottom lip.

"All I meant," she replied softly, "was to keep doing what you're doing. And...don't give up on me." Though she actually managed to maintain a gentle tone, the words felt very blurted from an emotional standpoint. The application of force to push past a blockage. "I do want..." The final word stuck in her throat but the look in her eyes, which had never managed to tell a falsehood yet, at least tried to substitute. You.

The man smiled a little as she faltered, but he got what she meant as he leaned forward and kissed her softly. It was an almost chaste kiss, but it was a kiss either way. "I do not plan on giving up." He said firmly.

In an odd way, it was a relief, an easing of a tension built from anticipation that was never really quite sure if it was going to experience resolution. It didn't feel like that at first, not with the way her chest seemed tight, and her head was suddenly vacant of any coherent thought, but Madi remembered how to breathe just in time to catch the hint of bereavement as Duncan pulled back. It wasn't strong enough to tempt her to pull him back down but the niggle of it was there. Boldness, perhaps, for another time.

A few seconds into her just gawping up at him like an idiot provided ample time for Madi to become aware of a sharpness digging into her left shoulder. As much as it broke the moment, she squirmed sideways enough to crane her neck in an attempt to investigate and eventually sat up entirely when the protrusion failed the definition test for 'just a rock'. It took the yanking out of some grass, and the careful excavation of dirt from the edges to produce any kind of movement to permit extraction, and even then, Madi struggled to work the piece of ceramic free.

"See if you can," she asked gently, committed to worrying later about the fact her curiosity had inserted itself into a pretty monumental moment. Duncan's had never complained before about her tendency to become absorbed by things that fascinated her, there was always hope of forgiveness.

The man was not sure what to do for a few moments as the woman moved around beside him trying to dig something out of the earth. The man sat up, the moment broken, which was for the best seeing he had stunned her a little. He pulled out an old fashioned screw driver and dug it out for her holding it in the palm of his hand.

More to the point, the timing wasn't right for Madi to lose herself in the impulse of a racing pulse. It didn't stop her from bringing her forehead to rest against Duncan's as she gently settled her hand beneath his and just sat, in reverance, to appreciate the significance of the find. It wasn't much of a revelation in terms of function; perhaps the carved end of a utensil, or simply a figurine meant for decoration, but the skillmanship resembled the statues she had once clamboured over even though the motif was far less clandestine.

A small bird-like creature, relatively intact but for the tiniest portion missing from the tip of one fully-spread wing.

"It's beautiful."

The awe in her voice was matched by a lowered volume to respect the enormous privilege this represented. Custodians of a forgotten memory, pulled from the earth to bear witness. Madi isn't sure if she can keep it, but also can't see a reason why she shouldn't. It doesn't appear to be a ceremonial piece, just a scattered casualty in the right place at the right time.

"Certainly is." Duncan flirted with a grin before he looked at the figurine again and smiled. "I think you should take this as a reminder of this planet, and when we get back to Earth, it will never be forgotten because it will be put into one of our museums and talked about forever as one of the many adventures we have had." He pressed a soft kiss to her forehead before he slowly got up and held a hand out to help her up.

It felt a lot lighter than it looked. With the little figure now resting in her own palm, Madi hesitated for only a short moment. There was etiquette to excavation of sites like this and, without a lot of knowledge to draw from, it was difficult to say for sure that they weren't removing something of a sensitive nature from the final resting place of a now-extinct population. There wouldn't be a way to return it but then it was highly unlikely that they'd ever find out more about it than they already knew.

Very gently, she closed her fingers around it and stood up, accepting Duncan's hand but extending the boldness of her choice into the brevity of a simple returned kiss. If anything, it was more of a thank you, but the slightly sheepish sunshine of her smile acknowledged the possibility of something more.

"Let's go, before they leave without us."