Lost and Found (Part Two)
Title: Lost and Found
Artist: liliaeth
Author: hunters_retreat
Other Pairing(if applicable): Jared/Jensen
Rating: PG
Warnings/Spoilers: Boys in space
Summary: Jensen was the first captain to see this side of the universe. His ship was the most advanced made, an experimental beauty, with a crew ready to explore. Of course, they hadn't counted on second rate backup generators (thanks corporate douche bags!) or a rapidly disappearing crew.
Jared was a space treasure hunter. When he comes across an antique ship, he takes it back to his own and tries to figure out who the ship belonged to (and if he can make a profit from towing it back to port).
Things aren't what they seem and somehow Jared has to put the pieces together because the strange cloud he brought back to the ship might be the key to everything.
**
It was the warmth that drew him back to wakefulness. For the first time in … well he didn’t know how long … there was warmth. Jensen slid away from the blackness of sleep and felt around him for the radiation that had caused him so much pain. He sighed in relief when he found it was gone. Of course, it had left the Blade off and on also so Jensen didn’t put much faith in that. Still, he ventured away from the core of the rock and allowed himself to feel the space of his new confines.
The new holding bay was larger than the ship he’s last been on. The Cosmic Blade had been state of the art (minus the short cuts) but it has also been an exploratory ship, made to discover quickly, and pass on anything that needed a quicker look to other, larger science vessels. Those vessels would have taken twice as long to get there, but that had been the point, really. If Jensen had found anything that needed study immediately he could have taken it back, or gone back to Earth and brought the proper scientists along with him until the other vessels could arrive.
This, was unlike anything he’d seen before. Jensen didn’t recognize a single thing. The holding bay was clean but it wasn’t a sterile space like the last one. This one was well lived in. There were things hung on the walls, star charts and equations, pictures of galaxies that Jensen didn’t know. He moved further out of the rock but left the tail end of his cloud touching in case he needed a quick escape.
The one thing he could sense was that there was no radiation leaking into the ship. Even when the Blade had been in perfect working order there had always been a little. Here, there was nothing. They were either far away from everything or the ship’s shielding was far better than had been available when Jensen left Earth.
The door opened with a soft shhuuu sound and Jensen turned towards the intruder. Wide eyes greeted him in surprise and Jensen fled the safety of the rock before he could think of anything else to do.
“What the hell was that?”
A second body moved into the holding bay. “What was what?”
“There was something in here,” the first said. It was a man. Jensen barely remembered what it was like to have a body of his own, but he remembered the feel of hard muscles under his hands and the taste of warm skin on his tongue. He’d dreamed of companionship for almost as long as he’d wished for his body back.
“Explain.”
Two men then. “It was … like a rainbow colored cloud, circling the room. It was just swirling. It was … beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Where’d it go?”
“As soon as it noticed me it stopped moving. Then it got sucked up by the rock.”
“It noticed you?”
“I guess? It took a second to stop moving and then it disappeared into the rock. It… went into the pores.”
“Are you seeing things, Jared?”
“I swear, it was right there, swirling around the ceiling.”
“We should suit up then. If there is something in there, it could be dangerous.”
“Relax, Misha. We ran the tests and there is nothing harmful in that rock.”
“We tested it for life forms too, and yet you said something came out of it.”
Jared sighed. “Nothing that interesting happens to us, Misha. This is just a junk pick up.”
“You think we’ll find a registry on this ship?”
Jensen watched the two, frustrated that he couldn’t add to the conversation. He thought about trying to come out of the rock again, but he needed to know more. Whatever they had sprayed him with before had sent him to sleep. He didn’t want to know if they could do worse.
“The outside hull was in pretty bad shape and the identifying markers are unreadable but I should be able to get the information from the ship’s computer once you get the systems running again.”
“And the information on the space rock?”
“It should all be in the system. So go get to work Misha and leave me to this.”
“Yeah, yeah. Let me know if anything weird happens again though. You know I don’t like to leave you alone while you’re studying something.”
Jared waved a hand at Misha as he moved to sit at the desk across from the main doors. The other man watched Jared for a moment while he started up the computer, then realized he was truly dismissed and left.
The door slid closed behind Misha, leaving Jensen alone in his rock, with Jared.
The other man hadn’t seemed freaked out by his form. Jensen decided it was worth the risk. They might put him back to sleep, but that was better than the isolation he’d lived with for so long.
He crept out slowly, just the faintest trace of himself on the outside of his rock. The other man was working at his computer, fingers typing away at the console without any notice of Jensen. He spread himself out a little thinner, curiosity getting the best of him.
The hum of the Cosmic Blade’s system could be heard and Jensen understood then that his own ship had been brought aboard a much larger one. His curiosity drug him even closer and he hovered over Jared’s shoulder. The computer lit up with information about the Cosmic Blade and their journey.
The article Jared read told Jensen what he needed to know. The ship hadn’t had time to send out a last known location after its last journey through a space fold and it had been lost. The company had taken a turn for the worse after the mystery and no one knew if it was the space fold technology or something else that had happened to them.
“250 years… wait this article is… wow. A 300 year old mystery. That’s one for the books. Looks like we should be making some money on this expedition after all. Let’s see what that rock was about.”
300 years. Jensen had been lost in space, stuck in his rock for 300 years. Stuck out of his own body.
“Nothing special about… oh hey. That’s weird. Hey Misha,” Jared called over the comm system to his shipmate. “can you hook up the bay we found in the rock in? I wanna get Kim on that right away.”
“You found something?” Misha called back.
“We did. The Cosmic Blade.”
“No way!”
“You know it?”
There was banging in the background and Jensen heard Misha moving over the intercom. “My great grandfather’s sister disappeared on that ship.”
“Seriously? How did I not know that?”
“She was a scientist. It’s a family legend that my grandfather dreamed of her one night. She showed up as a ghostly figure and said she was sorry she wouldn’t be coming home. They never heard from the ship after that.”
“Stop with the ghost stories. You’re giving me the creeps.”
“Um… Jared,” Misha was in the doorway again, but his eyes were on Jensen. He realized he hadn’t been paying attention to the background noise and Misha had been making his way towards Jared the whole time. “I’m beginning to wonder if it was a ghost story.”
Jared turned to see what Misha was looking at and Jensen dove back into his rock, burying himself so deep that he couldn’t see what was happening on the outside.
“What the? Misha, do you … I think…”
“It swear it was watching over your shoulder, Jared.”
“Did you scare it away?”
“What the hell is this thing?”
Jensen was hesitant to come out, but neither of the two men seemed to want to hurt him. He wondered about the ghost story Misha spoke of. Was it really possible that one of the crew’s soul clouds had made its way back to Earth on its own?
“Hey, little rainbow cloud, come on out. We’re not going to hurt you.”
Jensen would have huffed at the tone if he had a body to do it with. He was compelled to listen though, to end the loneliness that had filled him for … 300 years.
He slowly came forward, inching out until he was just a small puff of cloud outside of his rock.
“Holy shit,” Misha said with his eyes wide.
“It worked. It listened. It’s … its sentient life, Misha.”
“Kim, I think we need you in the holding bay,” Misha said into the comm.
“Hey, do you understand me?” Jared was looking at him. Actually looking at him. Talking to him. Jensen didn’t have a voice, but he wiggled up and down to approximate a head nod.
Jared’s mouth hung open, then closed. Then opened again. Jensen waited but the room was silent. The tension grew thicker so when a third person came running into the room, Jensen was so started he dove back into the rock.
“No, come back!” Jared called out.
“Misha, I don’t have time for your shit. What the hell is going on back here? I just got the lab data and whatever they had in the bay is fascinating.”
“It’s here.” Jensen could see Misha pointing at the rock. “There’s something inside it.”
“Something?”
“Please, come back out,” Jared said softly as he got closer. He seemed like he was trying to find Jensen.
Jensen decided it was worth the chance again. It had been … going well. Even if he couldn’t communicate, he was with people again.
He slid out of the rock again, more than before, but with a tail still attached around the rock. He came forward and Jared smiled at him.
“Hey, no need to worry. That’s just Kim. She’s our scientist, weapons specialist, and all around kick ass jack of all trades. This is Misha. He’s engineering, communications, and, sadly chef.”
Jared didn’t say anything about himself, so Jensen pointed. Or tried to point. He thought of making a finger shape to poke at Jared and it seemed to work. The other man looked startled but laughed softly. “Me? I’m Jared. Pilot, medic, and well… it’s my ship so anything else we need that these two don’t cover.”
“Jared, what the hell is that?”
“It understands, Kim.”
“Of course it does. How did I get saddled with the only captain in the entirety of space that could find a pet space cloud to follow you home?”
“He’s not a pet!”
“So you weren’t going to name him and try to keep him?”
“Well… we gotta call him something.”
“If it is a boy,” Misha pointed out.
“Right,” Jared agreed. “Something non-gendered.”
“How about you let me take a look at it before you decided it’s a harmless pet?” Kim asked.
Jensen didn’t like the sounds of that and he pulled back closer to his rock.
“No! Look, you’re scaring him Kim!” Misha called out.
“Hey, hey, no one is going to hurt you. Kim is just sorta protective. She wants to make sure you aren’t here to hurt us. You aren’t, are you?”
Jensen moved from side to side. He felt like a snake but it seemed to get his answer across. Jared beamed at him.
“Jared, even if that thing could hear you, how could it understand English?” Kim asked.
“I don’t know, but it does.”
“Then maybe we should try to get some answers. Like what does it know about the crew of the Cosmic Blade? There were no bodies. Does it know what happened?” Kim asked.
Jensen nodded and Kim startled back. “You do? Did you… take the bodies? I don’t know … eat them or something?”
Jensen shook his head.
“Did you kill them?” Misha asked. Jensen shook his head again.
“Are they alive somewhere?” Jared asked. Jensen didn’t know how to answer that one. He was still alive, but had the others found some way to survive elsewhere? The ghost story made him ache, wonder if somehow the others had gotten free in another manner. He had seen Jake die though. He didn’t doubt that.
“Jared, they can’t be alive. That was 300 years ago.”
“I don’t know. Cryo-freeze or something?”
“Alright, so this is a yes and no only kind of thing,” Kim said as she pulled the gloves from her hands and pulled up a chair. “Let’s see what we can learn.”
**
Jensen didn’t know how long it lasted. Misha disappeared somewhere for food and came back with three plates. They ate as they spoke and Jensen did his best to answer. In the end, he did the best he could. They still had no idea who he was. There wasn’t any reason for them to ask if he was one of the crew and he didn’t know how to tell him that he was. They knew the crew had died of radiation and the shields had failed. When asked, Jensen was able to tell them that, yes, there had been a captain’s log on the private system so Misha had disappeared again to find them.
In the end, they’d gone off their separate ways, except Jared who turned back to the computer to listen to the logs when Misha had them.
“You gonna come watch too?” Jared asked him.
Jensen pulled further away from the rock and did just that. He hovered over Jared’s shoulder as he watched the logs of the journey from beginning to end. They were all Jensen’s personal logs and it was odd to see his face again after so long.
“Jesus, the poor Captain. Experimental equipment and it was faulty to begin with. Wonder what happened to him.”
“Not too bad on the eyes,” Misha said as he entered the lab again.
“I noticed that too,” Jared said with a smile. “Good voice too. I don’t know what happened here though. He kept good records, but his people were just going missing. How do you lose people on a spaceship, Misha? And his last report said there were 7 people left. Then nothing.”
“You have that look.”
“What look?”
“The Jared’s-gotta-get-to-the-bottom-of-this look.”
“Well…”
“Kim is already on the science logs. Looks like the engineer was lost pretty quick so I’ve been trying to make my way through his replacement’s logs. He was just a kid, Jared. Plenty of smarts and he did the job well, but he made a log about everything. I’m gonna be a while.”
Jared nodded. “Thanks Misha.”
“Don’t stay up too late. Where are you gonna start?”
“I think I need to do a little research on the Cosmic Blade, but first I’m gonna hit up the medical logs.”
“Good night, Jared. Cloud? Don’t let Jared fall asleep at the desk, ok?”
“I can’t believe you just told an alien cloud to take care of me.”
“I can’t believe we’re having a conversation with an alien cloud creature at all, so I’m just going to go with it for now.”
Jared let out a heavy sigh but Jensen moved so that a ripple rolled through his form to let Misha know he’d keep an eye out for the other pilot.
Misha’s eyes widened. “We need to name him. Him? Not to offend, but are you male? We don’t want to keep making assumptions.”
Jensen made a nod and Misha smiled. “Alright. See you at breakfast, Jared.”
Jared didn’t seem to be listening to Misha as he walked out. Instead he was back at the computer. “The medical logs don’t seem to be too long. I guess with no bodies to take care of, there wasn’t much for them to say? Let’s check it out.”
Jensen watched sadly as the face of Dr. Ferris took up the screen. She’d been a fine doctor, and one of the first to disappear.
Her logs were short and to the point, much like she always was. When she had disappeared, her nurse, Rob had taken over. His logs were longer, more rambling and whimsical. Jensen had been alone for 300 years, but his grief hadn’t quite hit the way it was now.
“Hey, whats wrong?” Jared pulled him out of his thoughts. “You… your color got dark. Dimmer. Are you … did you know them?”
Jensen nodded again.
“Were you part of the crew?”
Jensen almost forgot his grief at the question. He hadn’t been able to get them to ask the right questions to explain who he was. This might be it.
He nodded frantically.
“Oh my god. You’re…. you’re one of the crew members. How the hell did that happen? Alright, so we’ll figure this out. OK, how can I figure out who you are?”
It was an odd chance that behind the logs was an early news report about the Blade. Jensen didn’t realize he’d pulled away from the rock entirely until he began to swirl closer to the screen. Jared moved out of his way and Jensen swirled until the article was the only thing visible on the screen.
“Alright I get it. You want me to see something there.” He pulled it up on his screen and Jensen was able to find what he needed. He swirled the console again, leaving three words visible.
Jared gasped. “Captain Jensen Ackles.”
He pulled away from the console then and waited.
“You’re… you were the captain. How the hell did this happen to you? What happened to your crew? How did you survive like this for 300 years?”
He felt the enormity of it hit him then. The pain and grief mingled with the comfort of finally having a name again.
“Jensen, Jensen, don’t fade away on me, man. I don’t … I know you can’t answer yet. We’ll figure this out though. We’ll figure something out, Ok? Just … don’t dim yourself out okay?”
Jensen pulled back towards the rock but he didn’t bury himself in it this time. He rested on top of it and looked back at Jared.
“Can you… I need to take a walk man. Need to get my legs and think about this. You wanna come with me?”
Jensen didn’t, but he wasn’t ready to be alone again either. He nodded and took a minute before he left the rock entirely. He peeked out of the lab with a feeler and knew there was no radiation there.
“It’s safe,” Jared said as he stood at the door. “This is gonna seem really strange to you. I mean, design-wise things look the same. The tech changed but we hit the limit on design really. Once you get to the top of the efficiency rating you just can’t get any better. It might not take too long to find your way around. And you can go anywhere you want. I mean, Misha and Kim might not want you in their personal quarters, but I doubt they’ll care, once they know. I know radiation was an issue with your old ship but we’re good here. Best quality shielding you can get. Plus, I put us in the middle of nowhere as soon as I got the Blade onboard. You don’t have anything to worry about.”
Jensen nodded and moved further out the door. Jared was right. The ship didn’t look that different from the inside of any other vessel. Jared began to walk down the hallway and Jensen followed. It was all or nothing now, he decided and he spread himself along the walkway around Jared. He’d been cramped up in the core of the rock for too long. In fact, since he’d taken this form he’d never tried to see just how large a cloud he was.
He tried to take everything in, but after a short walk, he already felt like it was too much. Jared spoke as they walked, but Jared began to talk about changes to the navigation systems and even the antiques Jared spoke of were beyond Jensen’s understanding. Whatever his place in the universe had once been, Jensen had lost everything.
“Hey, you’re doing it again,” Jared said softly. “Do you… need to take a break? I need some sleep man. Didn’t realize how long I was at it. Come on, you can come see my quarters. See what you think of the accommodations.”
Jared led him down another hallway and Jensen followed at a slower pace. He didn’t know why he was dragging his metaphoric feet, but in his loneliness Jensen had turned to the blackness around him and numbed himself to the rest. Now, here, he was less than alive and aware of it all.
When the door opened and Jared slipped inside, Jensen followed. Sleep would be good. He wondered when he’d last needed sleep. When he’d last done anything to warrant exhaustion and he realized that his lack of activity all these years meant very little stamina. Just answering questions (Okay, that had taken forever) had tired him out.
“Wow, I’m an ass. I just assumed you’d stay here. I mean, I assumed you didn’t want to be alone anymore. We can go back to the lab if you want. Did you want to return to the rock?”
It was more a panic reaction than anything else when Jensen swarmed around Jared and blocked him from the doorway. He didn’t want to be shut into his rock again. It has helped him survive but it was a prison as well.
“Yeah, okay, I got it. Sleep here then,” Jared said with a small laugh as he ran his hand through his hair. “Alright, well, you hang easy while I get ready.”
Jensen eased back and began to float around the room. There were pictures on the wall of Jared and his crew, of random people who looked vaguely like Jared. People he had his arms over and people he was laughing with. Whatever else Jensen knew about Jared, these photos spoke of a man who loved his friends and family and knew how to show it. He was affectionate and seemingly generous with his attention. Jensen noticed other things as well. The ship was clean and Jared’s workspace had been uncluttered, but his desk in his quarters was decorated with knick knacks from all over the universe. The walls had a mix of ancient art and space photography.
He heard Jared rustling around and turned back to watch as Jared stripped off his shirt and pants. He tugged on a pair of loose pants to sleep in and pulled back the blanket on his bed. When he dropped down onto the mattress, Jared looked up at Jensen.
“So I don’t know how you sleep. Do you need to sleep?”
Jensen nodded and Jared smiled.
“Good. It might be kinda creepy if you just watched me all night,” he teased. “I… uh… whatever you need to do, feel free. If you need me for anything just get my attention. Somehow.”
Jensen nodded again, then thought of what to do. He’d slept just fine in the rock, but even if he didn’t have a body as he had before, he could remember the feel of a soft mattress. Without any other thought, he moved onto the bed beside Jared. Jared’s eyes grew into large ovals as he watched Jensen settle there.
He knew the colors of his shifting body were still moving but it was as slow as he could get.
“You okay then?” Jensen nodded. “Alright if I turn off the light? The overhead will still leave a small emergency light on just in case.”
Jensen nodded again, though he was grateful that it wouldn’t be pitch dark.
“Jensen,” Jared said as the lights went out and he closed his eyes. “We’ll figure this out. Until then, you aren’t alone anymore.”
Jensen would have sighed if he had the lungs to.
**
“Jared! He’s gone!”
Jensen tried to blink away the sleep but he hadn’t felt this heavy in years.
“What?” Jared’s voice was sleep scratchy as he sat up in bed.
“The cloud is-” The light turned on overhead and Jensen blinked at the brightness.
“Jared, what the hell is in your bed?”
“It’s just Jensen,” Jared said as he looked at Jensen. “Jensen?”
Jensen turned over to look at Jared. And realized that for the first time in 300 years, he had an approximation of his own body. It wasn’t his, wasn’t the form he’d been born with, but in his sleep, stretched out next to Jared, his cloud had formed a body-like casing.
He realized that Jared was still looking at him for an answer and he nodded.
“Jensen?” Misha asked.
“Captain Jensen Ackles,” Jared answered, though his eyes were still on Jensen’s new form. “I found out last night.”
“Before or after you took him to bed?”
“Misha, stop. I was tired. I didn’t think he’d want to be left alone after 300 years of isolation. But he was still a cloud when I went to sleep.”
“So, uh, I came to tell you the cloud - Jensen - had disappeared. But apparently he just followed you to your room and … took man shape.”
“Apparently,” Jared said, his voice shaking slightly as he looked at Jensen. “Have you done this before?”
Jensen shook his head.
“Have you ever tried?”
Jensen shook his head again.
“Alright. So … I … should probably get some clothes on.”
Jensen sat up and found he was walking instead of floating as he had been for so long. He stumbled at first, remembering how a body like this worked. Misha reached for him, as if to catch him, but pulled his hand back at the last moment.
None of them had tried to touch him yet. He didn’t even know if they could. Jake hadn’t been able to touch the panel as he’d transformed but he’d been blocked by the door. Was it the transformation process that had caused his inability to touch, or was there something more? Jensen had been able to feel the rock around him, to become a part of it, but he’d also proven himself able to rest against things.
Could he touch something? Or someone? His fingers itched to do so, and Jensen felt a smile spread across his face at the thought of having fingers again. They weren’t … really … but they were familiar enough. He was still the same shifting cloud colors as he’d always been, but somehow in the night he’d put himself back together in a human-like form instead of the cloud he’d inhabited for so long.
“What were you coming to the lab for?” Jared asked as he poked his head out of the adjoining bathroom, toothbrush in hand.
“Actually I went to tell you to come get breakfast and I figured you’d fallen asleep at your desk. It’s your usual MO when you get caught up in something.”
“Yeah, yeah. I just … this is crazy. Right? I had to walk out of the lab because I kept thinking… I’ve gone space-mad. I know it’s just a myth, but a cloud was talking to me and telling me he was a long lost space captain from 300 years ago. I needed to get away from the lab for a bit.”
“So… uh … hey, Jensen. Why don’t you come on down to the galley with me?” Misha asked. “I don’t imagine you eat since you’re a big cloud, but Jared probably needs a little alone time and I could use some company.”
Jensen looked over at Jared and the man seemed a little frazzled compared to last night. He’d only been half listening in to their conversation and he thought back to it now. Jensen was struggling with the thought of having a body again and he’d always known he should be in one. It was probably a much bigger shock to Jared to find out Jensen had been a real person.
He nodded his head and began to walk through the door.
“Hey Jensen.”
He looked back at Jared who smiled at him. Even if he wasn’t completely composed, he still managed to make the effort.
“I’ll see you down there in a few minutes, okay?” Jensen nodded and then Jared looked at Misha. “Just don’t leave him alone, man. You know I can’t be alone for more than an hour without bouncing off walls. I can’t imagine….”
“Don’t worry. We’ll consider this an experiement, shall we?” Misha said as he turned to Jensen. “You can understand us. You can apparently walk. Let’s see what else you can do. Can you smell?”
Jensen looked around the area and wasn’t even sure how to answer that. He shrugged his shoulders instead.
“No worries then,” Misha said with a smile. “I have bacon and eggs cooked up in the galley. If you can’t smell the bacon then we’ll know you’ve lost your sense of smell.”
The galley was towards the back of the ship but before all the cargo and holding bays. They passed Jared’s lab area and Jensen felt the sudden need to look in on his rock. There was nothing there, nothing to tell in his absence. He hadn’t left its safety in 300 years though and it felt odd to be staring down at it. He ran his hand across the surface and he could still feel the talc like powder it left behind on his hand. Felt? Or sensory memory? Jensen wasn’t sure. Misha’s idea of experimenting at breakfast seemed a good one.
They were barely two steps into the kitchen when Jensen heard the unmistakable sound of a laser pistol powering up. He turned with his hands up to stare at Kim.
“What the hell, Misha?”
“Kim, hey stop! It’s okay. It’s just Jensen!”
“Jensen?”
“The cloud. Turns out he’s a real boy after all. He was the captain on the Cosmic Blade.”
“That is not a cloud.”
Misha looked at Jensen and smirked. “No, apparently he turned into a man in Jared’s bed last night.”
Jensen brought a hand to his head a shook it. Seriously? Misha’s innuendos were bad enough but he could see a speculative look in Kim’s eye.
“Figures,” she said as she put the pistol away and turned back to her breakfast. “If anyone could turn a space cloud into a pet, and then make a man out of it, it would be Jared.”
“I am deeply trouble by the way my crew speaks about me,” Jared said as he entered the kitchen. “Especially when we all know you both get laid a lot more than me.”
“It’s not about how often we get laid, Jared, but the circumstances behind it.”
“Remember that waterfall creature you-”
“That was not my fault! Where’s the food?”
Jensen watched as the others smiled and Jared tried to bury himself in a heap of food he piled on his plate. It was jovial banter, nothing harmful. Jensen had already gotten the impression yesterday that Jared was the soft hearted type who took in strays. Their teasing just cemented that for him.
With Jared focused on his food, Jensen could see the way Misha kept an eye on his captain. He could see the way Kim kept an eye on him. He remembered then that Jared had introduced her as the weapons specialist. She wasn’t being hostile, but she was keeping an eye on him just in case. He also got the feeling that Kim was just… a mother figure to the two men on her crew as well.
He relaxed a little and looked back at Jared again. The man’s brow was furrowed and his shoulders seemed to slump as he ate. Jensen did like that at all. Jared had been nothing but helpful and friendly towards Jensen. He’d shown far more compassion and empathy for a cloud than most people Jensen had known would have shown to an actual person. The fact that he’d been worried about leaving Jensen alone showed as much.
He didn’t think about it, but reached over and stole a piece of bacon off of Jared’s plate.
“Hey!” Jared called out in surprise.
Jensen gave him his best smirk as he ripped the bacon in two and popped the first half into his mouth.
And holy mother of all that sparkles in the night sky! The bacon was just on the right side of crispy and practically melted in his mouth. He was hit with the smell of it at the same time, the salty, greasy, meaty tang that filled his nostrils. Each bite gave a pleasant crunch and Jensen just closed his eyes and enjoyed the first food he’d had in ages.
“I really want some coffee,” he said without thinking. He didn’t notice the silence around him as he swallowed the bacon and ate the second half. He loved the feel of it, grinding under his teeth, the way the texture felt against his tongue.
“Jensen?” Jared’s voice made him open his eyes. He wasn’t sure what he heard in his tone. Fear? Awe? Hope?
Jared held a mug of coffee out to him and Jensen’s eyes widened. “Did I say that? Out loud?” And he could hear it. His own voice. And it was his voice. Crackly and rough from disuse, but his own.
“Yeah, you did.”
Jensen stared at Jared until the other man finally nodded to the cup. “Do you take it black?”
He nearly dove at the mug then to get a taste. He heard the pistol again before he could take a sip. He looked up and Jared’s eyes were wide and he’d stepped away from the table. Misha had backed up as well.
“What?” Jensen asked.
“You… uh ... kinda went cloudy again,” Misha answered.
“Say what?”
“You stayed there, but your arm became a cloud again and it shot out at Jared to take the mug. You didn’t notice?”
“I … just grabbed the coffee.”
“You just scared us to death,” Misha said.
Jensen sat the mug down on the table and stared at his hands. They weren’t human. He wasn’t human anymore. In 300 years he hadn’t accepted that. He looked at Kim and her wide eyed stare over her pistol and Misha and the way he’d slowly moved to put himself between Jensen and Jared. He looked at Jared and saw the compassion that had probably hurt him over and over again but who had a heart too big to stop.
“I’m so sorry,” he said softly. “When you go back, just … tell them I did my best to save them all. The radiation killed them and the rock tried to save them, like it did me, but we didn’t understand. Not until it was too late and I was the only one left.”
He let it go then, the idea of being human. He felt himself begin to uncoil then, like a ribbon coming off a spool. He watched his hands lose the definition they’d gained today and he felt his cloud-self form. He heard Jared’s shout of “Jensen! No!” before he flew down the hall and back towards the rock.
He buried himself in the safety of it, the feel of its heavy presence surrounding him. Protecting him. Protecting others from him. He felt the darkness and before anyone could interrupt his isolation, he drifted back into the oblivion of sleep.
**
When he woke, he could hear something outside of the rock. It took him a minute to realize it was music. He pulled away from the core slowly and began to look outside. He was surprised by the sense of relief that filled him when he saw Jared sitting at his desk. His back was to Jensen and he was listening to archaic rock-n-roll. It only took a moment to realize it was actually his music from the Cosmic Blade.
He didn’t know if he should come out of hiding or not, but curiosity had always been his curse and Jensen couldn’t help but want a look at that computer screen to see what Jared was working on.
He slid out of his rock quietly and stood up behind Jared. There were a couple paper articles about the Blade and her experiemental drive on the work station, a few interviews Jensen himself had given about the thrill of piloting the ship and going into deep space, and some blueprints of the ship itself. On the computer screen it looked like Jared was going through the Blade crew’s medical files. Jensen’s was first up on the screen.
He huffed with annoyance when he saw the label asthmatic on the screen. “That’s wrong. I kept telling them the record was incorrect but they never fixed it.”
Jared turned quickly in his seat. He had a quicksilver view of tired red eyes and pale skin before he was engulfed in Jared’s arms.
“Jensen? I thought we lost you!”
“Jared? Hey, I’m okay. I just needed some time. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just…”
Jared pulled back to look at Jensen, but when he reached over to the comm, he didn’t let him go. He hit the comm with one hand and held onto Jensen with the other. “He’s back!”
Before Jensen could say anything else, he was enveloped again.
“Don’t do that to me again, Jensen,” Jared said quietly. “We didn’t know how to get you back out. You just disappeared. And then I started to think maybe we’d accidentally poisoned you by letting you eat bacon or something because I hadn’t had time to run a medical exam on you yet and that damn rock hides you from our sensors. I swear I was about to break the damn thing apart.”
“Hey, I just needed to sleep a bit. It was just … I needed to deal with some things and I hadn’t really come face to face with them yet.”
“Jensen,” Jared pulled back to look at him again. There were tears in his eyes and Jensen didn’t know what to do about that. “You were gone for three months.”
“No, I just …”
Misha made it to the door first, but Kim was right behind him and she pushed inside before him. “Jensen? What happened?”
“Are you okay?” Misha asked.
Jensen could see the worry on their faces. He had no idea what to make of it all. But he’d had 300 years of learning to isolate himself and to deal with his problems that way. He needed to learn how to be among people again, because it was obvious they’d been worried about him.
“I’m sorry,” he said honestly. “When I’m in the rock I lose time. I didn’t realize I’d been gone for so long.”
“Why’d you run away?” Jared asked.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Jensen said. “For 300 years I’ve been hiding in the core of the rock. If I had moved outside of it the radiation would have killed me. It’s what killed all the others. I never had to deal with what I’d become. And then I was almost human this morning and-“
“Three months ago,” Jared corrected.
“Sorry. I was almost human that morning and I was remembering what my senses were and how to use them and then … I’d forgotten I was something else entirely. I was scared and I … I was afraid I’d hurt you by accident.”
“So you left,” Misha said.
“I just needed to go somewhere that I could deal with it all and not have to worry about you guys. I didn’t realize I’d be gone for that long though. I am truly sorry for that.”
“Don’t do that again.” There was a finality to Jared’s voice and Jensen found himself nodding.
“I won’t. I’ll … it might take a while. I’m not used to being around anyone anymore.”
Kim let out a huff and she walked over and put her hand on Jensen’s shoulder. “Just tell us when to back off. We’re a mouthy bunch but we’ll do our best,” she said with a smile. “It’s good to have you back. Besides, you have no idea the number of questions we have for you now that you can actually talk to us.”
She left the room and Misha smiled at Jensen. “We … uh … set up a room for you. In case you came back. We’d like to get some samples of the rock to run some tests but we were afraid if we did something to it, it might hurt you.”
“I don’t know,” Jensen said. “I don’t feel like I’m attached to the rock in any way. Other than it being my hiding place for so long. More tests for you to run?” Jensen suggested.
Misha smiled. “I’ll let you relax a few days before we try it. Make sure you’ve got the doctor’s okay first. Take it easy, Jensen. We’ll see you for dinner, right?”
“Hell yeah,” Jensen said with a grin.
Misha walked out and it left him alone with Jared, who was still holding on to him.
“Hey, I’m not going to go anywhere.”
“I was worried.”
“I can tell. Have you been sleeping at all?”
Jared let out a deep sigh and to Jensen’s surprise the other man lowered his head to rest it against Jensen’s shoulder. Jensen forced him back a step or two, but only until Jared could drop into his chair. Jared slumped down into it, but brought his arms around Jensen’s back and his head was resting on Jensen’s heart now.
“Just give me a minute or two, alright?”
Jensen wasn’t sure what this was, but he held onto Jared and began to run his fingers through Jared’s long air. After a few minutes, Jared sighed. “I already knew.”
“What?” He was totally confused by Jared’s words.
“You aren’t asthmatic. I knew that already. I’ve been watching all the old interviews and programs about you. I’ve read everything scientific theory - and every conspiracy theory - about you and the Cosmic Blade. I swear, the way everyone wrote about you, you were this larger than life hero. I watched every single personnel log so I could figure you out. I think… I might have some unrealistic expectations now that you’re back. I just … I need you to be okay and I know that will take time, but I don’t want to lose you over something like a cup of coffee. Please don’t leave again.”
“Hey, I’m not going to leave,” Jensen said as he pulled Jared’s chin up to look at him. “What the hell have you been doing to yourself for three months?”
“I need to bring you home, Jensen. I can’t… you were lost for so long. I’m not going to let you get lost again.”
Jensen let out soft chuckle as he looked down at Jared. “Looks like I’m not there hero here, Captain,” he said as he ran his hand over Jared’s cheek in a soft caress. The other man leaned into it and Jensen was confused by his own need to comfort Jared. They didn’t know each other, not really, but Jared had found him when he was lost even to himself. There was no way he could ever repay him for that.
“You found me. Now you’re stuck with me.”
Jared let out a relieved breath at that and he smiled at Jensen. “I can deal with that. Once we get back to Earth, we’ll have to see where you want to go, but you’re always welcome here.”
“Are we headed back now?”
“Not until we do more research. The Cosmic Blade will be big news and Misha and Kim have been documenting everything they’ve found.”
“Jared, you know what will happen to me, if you tell them about me.”
Jared’s eyes went wide, like he hadn’t thought of the actual repercussions. “I can’t exist. I’m not human. They won’t believe the rock turned me into this to save me from radiation. I’ll be caged up and kept locked away. Can you just … find out what you can and leave Jensen Ackles lost in space with his crew?”
After a long minute, Jared nodded. “I wasn’t thinking about that. If that’s what you want, of course.”
“And keep my rock. It was home for a long time. I … don’t feel comfortable without it.”
“Of course.”
“And Jared, thank you. I never thought I’d be found.”
“I’m glad we found you, Jensen,” Jared said with a smile. “And welcome to the crew of the Finders Keepers."
Artist: liliaeth
Author: hunters_retreat
Other Pairing(if applicable): Jared/Jensen
Rating: PG
Warnings/Spoilers: Boys in space
Summary: Jensen was the first captain to see this side of the universe. His ship was the most advanced made, an experimental beauty, with a crew ready to explore. Of course, they hadn't counted on second rate backup generators (thanks corporate douche bags!) or a rapidly disappearing crew.
Jared was a space treasure hunter. When he comes across an antique ship, he takes it back to his own and tries to figure out who the ship belonged to (and if he can make a profit from towing it back to port).
Things aren't what they seem and somehow Jared has to put the pieces together because the strange cloud he brought back to the ship might be the key to everything.
**
It was the warmth that drew him back to wakefulness. For the first time in … well he didn’t know how long … there was warmth. Jensen slid away from the blackness of sleep and felt around him for the radiation that had caused him so much pain. He sighed in relief when he found it was gone. Of course, it had left the Blade off and on also so Jensen didn’t put much faith in that. Still, he ventured away from the core of the rock and allowed himself to feel the space of his new confines.
The new holding bay was larger than the ship he’s last been on. The Cosmic Blade had been state of the art (minus the short cuts) but it has also been an exploratory ship, made to discover quickly, and pass on anything that needed a quicker look to other, larger science vessels. Those vessels would have taken twice as long to get there, but that had been the point, really. If Jensen had found anything that needed study immediately he could have taken it back, or gone back to Earth and brought the proper scientists along with him until the other vessels could arrive.
This, was unlike anything he’d seen before. Jensen didn’t recognize a single thing. The holding bay was clean but it wasn’t a sterile space like the last one. This one was well lived in. There were things hung on the walls, star charts and equations, pictures of galaxies that Jensen didn’t know. He moved further out of the rock but left the tail end of his cloud touching in case he needed a quick escape.
The one thing he could sense was that there was no radiation leaking into the ship. Even when the Blade had been in perfect working order there had always been a little. Here, there was nothing. They were either far away from everything or the ship’s shielding was far better than had been available when Jensen left Earth.
The door opened with a soft shhuuu sound and Jensen turned towards the intruder. Wide eyes greeted him in surprise and Jensen fled the safety of the rock before he could think of anything else to do.
“What the hell was that?”
A second body moved into the holding bay. “What was what?”
“There was something in here,” the first said. It was a man. Jensen barely remembered what it was like to have a body of his own, but he remembered the feel of hard muscles under his hands and the taste of warm skin on his tongue. He’d dreamed of companionship for almost as long as he’d wished for his body back.
“Explain.”
Two men then. “It was … like a rainbow colored cloud, circling the room. It was just swirling. It was … beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Where’d it go?”
“As soon as it noticed me it stopped moving. Then it got sucked up by the rock.”
“It noticed you?”
“I guess? It took a second to stop moving and then it disappeared into the rock. It… went into the pores.”
“Are you seeing things, Jared?”
“I swear, it was right there, swirling around the ceiling.”
“We should suit up then. If there is something in there, it could be dangerous.”
“Relax, Misha. We ran the tests and there is nothing harmful in that rock.”
“We tested it for life forms too, and yet you said something came out of it.”
Jared sighed. “Nothing that interesting happens to us, Misha. This is just a junk pick up.”
“You think we’ll find a registry on this ship?”
Jensen watched the two, frustrated that he couldn’t add to the conversation. He thought about trying to come out of the rock again, but he needed to know more. Whatever they had sprayed him with before had sent him to sleep. He didn’t want to know if they could do worse.
“The outside hull was in pretty bad shape and the identifying markers are unreadable but I should be able to get the information from the ship’s computer once you get the systems running again.”
“And the information on the space rock?”
“It should all be in the system. So go get to work Misha and leave me to this.”
“Yeah, yeah. Let me know if anything weird happens again though. You know I don’t like to leave you alone while you’re studying something.”
Jared waved a hand at Misha as he moved to sit at the desk across from the main doors. The other man watched Jared for a moment while he started up the computer, then realized he was truly dismissed and left.
The door slid closed behind Misha, leaving Jensen alone in his rock, with Jared.
The other man hadn’t seemed freaked out by his form. Jensen decided it was worth the risk. They might put him back to sleep, but that was better than the isolation he’d lived with for so long.
He crept out slowly, just the faintest trace of himself on the outside of his rock. The other man was working at his computer, fingers typing away at the console without any notice of Jensen. He spread himself out a little thinner, curiosity getting the best of him.
The hum of the Cosmic Blade’s system could be heard and Jensen understood then that his own ship had been brought aboard a much larger one. His curiosity drug him even closer and he hovered over Jared’s shoulder. The computer lit up with information about the Cosmic Blade and their journey.
The article Jared read told Jensen what he needed to know. The ship hadn’t had time to send out a last known location after its last journey through a space fold and it had been lost. The company had taken a turn for the worse after the mystery and no one knew if it was the space fold technology or something else that had happened to them.
“250 years… wait this article is… wow. A 300 year old mystery. That’s one for the books. Looks like we should be making some money on this expedition after all. Let’s see what that rock was about.”
300 years. Jensen had been lost in space, stuck in his rock for 300 years. Stuck out of his own body.
“Nothing special about… oh hey. That’s weird. Hey Misha,” Jared called over the comm system to his shipmate. “can you hook up the bay we found in the rock in? I wanna get Kim on that right away.”
“You found something?” Misha called back.
“We did. The Cosmic Blade.”
“No way!”
“You know it?”
There was banging in the background and Jensen heard Misha moving over the intercom. “My great grandfather’s sister disappeared on that ship.”
“Seriously? How did I not know that?”
“She was a scientist. It’s a family legend that my grandfather dreamed of her one night. She showed up as a ghostly figure and said she was sorry she wouldn’t be coming home. They never heard from the ship after that.”
“Stop with the ghost stories. You’re giving me the creeps.”
“Um… Jared,” Misha was in the doorway again, but his eyes were on Jensen. He realized he hadn’t been paying attention to the background noise and Misha had been making his way towards Jared the whole time. “I’m beginning to wonder if it was a ghost story.”
Jared turned to see what Misha was looking at and Jensen dove back into his rock, burying himself so deep that he couldn’t see what was happening on the outside.
“What the? Misha, do you … I think…”
“It swear it was watching over your shoulder, Jared.”
“Did you scare it away?”
“What the hell is this thing?”
Jensen was hesitant to come out, but neither of the two men seemed to want to hurt him. He wondered about the ghost story Misha spoke of. Was it really possible that one of the crew’s soul clouds had made its way back to Earth on its own?
“Hey, little rainbow cloud, come on out. We’re not going to hurt you.”
Jensen would have huffed at the tone if he had a body to do it with. He was compelled to listen though, to end the loneliness that had filled him for … 300 years.
He slowly came forward, inching out until he was just a small puff of cloud outside of his rock.
“Holy shit,” Misha said with his eyes wide.
“It worked. It listened. It’s … its sentient life, Misha.”
“Kim, I think we need you in the holding bay,” Misha said into the comm.
“Hey, do you understand me?” Jared was looking at him. Actually looking at him. Talking to him. Jensen didn’t have a voice, but he wiggled up and down to approximate a head nod.
Jared’s mouth hung open, then closed. Then opened again. Jensen waited but the room was silent. The tension grew thicker so when a third person came running into the room, Jensen was so started he dove back into the rock.
“No, come back!” Jared called out.
“Misha, I don’t have time for your shit. What the hell is going on back here? I just got the lab data and whatever they had in the bay is fascinating.”
“It’s here.” Jensen could see Misha pointing at the rock. “There’s something inside it.”
“Something?”
“Please, come back out,” Jared said softly as he got closer. He seemed like he was trying to find Jensen.
Jensen decided it was worth the chance again. It had been … going well. Even if he couldn’t communicate, he was with people again.
He slid out of the rock again, more than before, but with a tail still attached around the rock. He came forward and Jared smiled at him.
“Hey, no need to worry. That’s just Kim. She’s our scientist, weapons specialist, and all around kick ass jack of all trades. This is Misha. He’s engineering, communications, and, sadly chef.”
Jared didn’t say anything about himself, so Jensen pointed. Or tried to point. He thought of making a finger shape to poke at Jared and it seemed to work. The other man looked startled but laughed softly. “Me? I’m Jared. Pilot, medic, and well… it’s my ship so anything else we need that these two don’t cover.”
“Jared, what the hell is that?”
“It understands, Kim.”
“Of course it does. How did I get saddled with the only captain in the entirety of space that could find a pet space cloud to follow you home?”
“He’s not a pet!”
“So you weren’t going to name him and try to keep him?”
“Well… we gotta call him something.”
“If it is a boy,” Misha pointed out.
“Right,” Jared agreed. “Something non-gendered.”
“How about you let me take a look at it before you decided it’s a harmless pet?” Kim asked.
Jensen didn’t like the sounds of that and he pulled back closer to his rock.
“No! Look, you’re scaring him Kim!” Misha called out.
“Hey, hey, no one is going to hurt you. Kim is just sorta protective. She wants to make sure you aren’t here to hurt us. You aren’t, are you?”
Jensen moved from side to side. He felt like a snake but it seemed to get his answer across. Jared beamed at him.
“Jared, even if that thing could hear you, how could it understand English?” Kim asked.
“I don’t know, but it does.”
“Then maybe we should try to get some answers. Like what does it know about the crew of the Cosmic Blade? There were no bodies. Does it know what happened?” Kim asked.
Jensen nodded and Kim startled back. “You do? Did you… take the bodies? I don’t know … eat them or something?”
Jensen shook his head.
“Did you kill them?” Misha asked. Jensen shook his head again.
“Are they alive somewhere?” Jared asked. Jensen didn’t know how to answer that one. He was still alive, but had the others found some way to survive elsewhere? The ghost story made him ache, wonder if somehow the others had gotten free in another manner. He had seen Jake die though. He didn’t doubt that.
“Jared, they can’t be alive. That was 300 years ago.”
“I don’t know. Cryo-freeze or something?”
“Alright, so this is a yes and no only kind of thing,” Kim said as she pulled the gloves from her hands and pulled up a chair. “Let’s see what we can learn.”
**
Jensen didn’t know how long it lasted. Misha disappeared somewhere for food and came back with three plates. They ate as they spoke and Jensen did his best to answer. In the end, he did the best he could. They still had no idea who he was. There wasn’t any reason for them to ask if he was one of the crew and he didn’t know how to tell him that he was. They knew the crew had died of radiation and the shields had failed. When asked, Jensen was able to tell them that, yes, there had been a captain’s log on the private system so Misha had disappeared again to find them.
In the end, they’d gone off their separate ways, except Jared who turned back to the computer to listen to the logs when Misha had them.
“You gonna come watch too?” Jared asked him.
Jensen pulled further away from the rock and did just that. He hovered over Jared’s shoulder as he watched the logs of the journey from beginning to end. They were all Jensen’s personal logs and it was odd to see his face again after so long.
“Jesus, the poor Captain. Experimental equipment and it was faulty to begin with. Wonder what happened to him.”
“Not too bad on the eyes,” Misha said as he entered the lab again.
“I noticed that too,” Jared said with a smile. “Good voice too. I don’t know what happened here though. He kept good records, but his people were just going missing. How do you lose people on a spaceship, Misha? And his last report said there were 7 people left. Then nothing.”
“You have that look.”
“What look?”
“The Jared’s-gotta-get-to-the-bottom-of-this look.”
“Well…”
“Kim is already on the science logs. Looks like the engineer was lost pretty quick so I’ve been trying to make my way through his replacement’s logs. He was just a kid, Jared. Plenty of smarts and he did the job well, but he made a log about everything. I’m gonna be a while.”
Jared nodded. “Thanks Misha.”
“Don’t stay up too late. Where are you gonna start?”
“I think I need to do a little research on the Cosmic Blade, but first I’m gonna hit up the medical logs.”
“Good night, Jared. Cloud? Don’t let Jared fall asleep at the desk, ok?”
“I can’t believe you just told an alien cloud to take care of me.”
“I can’t believe we’re having a conversation with an alien cloud creature at all, so I’m just going to go with it for now.”
Jared let out a heavy sigh but Jensen moved so that a ripple rolled through his form to let Misha know he’d keep an eye out for the other pilot.
Misha’s eyes widened. “We need to name him. Him? Not to offend, but are you male? We don’t want to keep making assumptions.”
Jensen made a nod and Misha smiled. “Alright. See you at breakfast, Jared.”
Jared didn’t seem to be listening to Misha as he walked out. Instead he was back at the computer. “The medical logs don’t seem to be too long. I guess with no bodies to take care of, there wasn’t much for them to say? Let’s check it out.”
Jensen watched sadly as the face of Dr. Ferris took up the screen. She’d been a fine doctor, and one of the first to disappear.
Her logs were short and to the point, much like she always was. When she had disappeared, her nurse, Rob had taken over. His logs were longer, more rambling and whimsical. Jensen had been alone for 300 years, but his grief hadn’t quite hit the way it was now.
“Hey, whats wrong?” Jared pulled him out of his thoughts. “You… your color got dark. Dimmer. Are you … did you know them?”
Jensen nodded again.
“Were you part of the crew?”
Jensen almost forgot his grief at the question. He hadn’t been able to get them to ask the right questions to explain who he was. This might be it.
He nodded frantically.
“Oh my god. You’re…. you’re one of the crew members. How the hell did that happen? Alright, so we’ll figure this out. OK, how can I figure out who you are?”
It was an odd chance that behind the logs was an early news report about the Blade. Jensen didn’t realize he’d pulled away from the rock entirely until he began to swirl closer to the screen. Jared moved out of his way and Jensen swirled until the article was the only thing visible on the screen.
“Alright I get it. You want me to see something there.” He pulled it up on his screen and Jensen was able to find what he needed. He swirled the console again, leaving three words visible.
Jared gasped. “Captain Jensen Ackles.”
He pulled away from the console then and waited.
“You’re… you were the captain. How the hell did this happen to you? What happened to your crew? How did you survive like this for 300 years?”
He felt the enormity of it hit him then. The pain and grief mingled with the comfort of finally having a name again.
“Jensen, Jensen, don’t fade away on me, man. I don’t … I know you can’t answer yet. We’ll figure this out though. We’ll figure something out, Ok? Just … don’t dim yourself out okay?”
Jensen pulled back towards the rock but he didn’t bury himself in it this time. He rested on top of it and looked back at Jared.
“Can you… I need to take a walk man. Need to get my legs and think about this. You wanna come with me?”
Jensen didn’t, but he wasn’t ready to be alone again either. He nodded and took a minute before he left the rock entirely. He peeked out of the lab with a feeler and knew there was no radiation there.
“It’s safe,” Jared said as he stood at the door. “This is gonna seem really strange to you. I mean, design-wise things look the same. The tech changed but we hit the limit on design really. Once you get to the top of the efficiency rating you just can’t get any better. It might not take too long to find your way around. And you can go anywhere you want. I mean, Misha and Kim might not want you in their personal quarters, but I doubt they’ll care, once they know. I know radiation was an issue with your old ship but we’re good here. Best quality shielding you can get. Plus, I put us in the middle of nowhere as soon as I got the Blade onboard. You don’t have anything to worry about.”
Jensen nodded and moved further out the door. Jared was right. The ship didn’t look that different from the inside of any other vessel. Jared began to walk down the hallway and Jensen followed. It was all or nothing now, he decided and he spread himself along the walkway around Jared. He’d been cramped up in the core of the rock for too long. In fact, since he’d taken this form he’d never tried to see just how large a cloud he was.
He tried to take everything in, but after a short walk, he already felt like it was too much. Jared spoke as they walked, but Jared began to talk about changes to the navigation systems and even the antiques Jared spoke of were beyond Jensen’s understanding. Whatever his place in the universe had once been, Jensen had lost everything.
“Hey, you’re doing it again,” Jared said softly. “Do you… need to take a break? I need some sleep man. Didn’t realize how long I was at it. Come on, you can come see my quarters. See what you think of the accommodations.”
Jared led him down another hallway and Jensen followed at a slower pace. He didn’t know why he was dragging his metaphoric feet, but in his loneliness Jensen had turned to the blackness around him and numbed himself to the rest. Now, here, he was less than alive and aware of it all.
When the door opened and Jared slipped inside, Jensen followed. Sleep would be good. He wondered when he’d last needed sleep. When he’d last done anything to warrant exhaustion and he realized that his lack of activity all these years meant very little stamina. Just answering questions (Okay, that had taken forever) had tired him out.
“Wow, I’m an ass. I just assumed you’d stay here. I mean, I assumed you didn’t want to be alone anymore. We can go back to the lab if you want. Did you want to return to the rock?”
It was more a panic reaction than anything else when Jensen swarmed around Jared and blocked him from the doorway. He didn’t want to be shut into his rock again. It has helped him survive but it was a prison as well.
“Yeah, okay, I got it. Sleep here then,” Jared said with a small laugh as he ran his hand through his hair. “Alright, well, you hang easy while I get ready.”
Jensen eased back and began to float around the room. There were pictures on the wall of Jared and his crew, of random people who looked vaguely like Jared. People he had his arms over and people he was laughing with. Whatever else Jensen knew about Jared, these photos spoke of a man who loved his friends and family and knew how to show it. He was affectionate and seemingly generous with his attention. Jensen noticed other things as well. The ship was clean and Jared’s workspace had been uncluttered, but his desk in his quarters was decorated with knick knacks from all over the universe. The walls had a mix of ancient art and space photography.
He heard Jared rustling around and turned back to watch as Jared stripped off his shirt and pants. He tugged on a pair of loose pants to sleep in and pulled back the blanket on his bed. When he dropped down onto the mattress, Jared looked up at Jensen.
“So I don’t know how you sleep. Do you need to sleep?”
Jensen nodded and Jared smiled.
“Good. It might be kinda creepy if you just watched me all night,” he teased. “I… uh… whatever you need to do, feel free. If you need me for anything just get my attention. Somehow.”
Jensen nodded again, then thought of what to do. He’d slept just fine in the rock, but even if he didn’t have a body as he had before, he could remember the feel of a soft mattress. Without any other thought, he moved onto the bed beside Jared. Jared’s eyes grew into large ovals as he watched Jensen settle there.
He knew the colors of his shifting body were still moving but it was as slow as he could get.
“You okay then?” Jensen nodded. “Alright if I turn off the light? The overhead will still leave a small emergency light on just in case.”
Jensen nodded again, though he was grateful that it wouldn’t be pitch dark.
“Jensen,” Jared said as the lights went out and he closed his eyes. “We’ll figure this out. Until then, you aren’t alone anymore.”
Jensen would have sighed if he had the lungs to.
**
“Jared! He’s gone!”
Jensen tried to blink away the sleep but he hadn’t felt this heavy in years.
“What?” Jared’s voice was sleep scratchy as he sat up in bed.
“The cloud is-” The light turned on overhead and Jensen blinked at the brightness.
“Jared, what the hell is in your bed?”
“It’s just Jensen,” Jared said as he looked at Jensen. “Jensen?”
Jensen turned over to look at Jared. And realized that for the first time in 300 years, he had an approximation of his own body. It wasn’t his, wasn’t the form he’d been born with, but in his sleep, stretched out next to Jared, his cloud had formed a body-like casing.
He realized that Jared was still looking at him for an answer and he nodded.
“Jensen?” Misha asked.
“Captain Jensen Ackles,” Jared answered, though his eyes were still on Jensen’s new form. “I found out last night.”
“Before or after you took him to bed?”
“Misha, stop. I was tired. I didn’t think he’d want to be left alone after 300 years of isolation. But he was still a cloud when I went to sleep.”
“So, uh, I came to tell you the cloud - Jensen - had disappeared. But apparently he just followed you to your room and … took man shape.”
“Apparently,” Jared said, his voice shaking slightly as he looked at Jensen. “Have you done this before?”
Jensen shook his head.
“Have you ever tried?”
Jensen shook his head again.
“Alright. So … I … should probably get some clothes on.”
Jensen sat up and found he was walking instead of floating as he had been for so long. He stumbled at first, remembering how a body like this worked. Misha reached for him, as if to catch him, but pulled his hand back at the last moment.
None of them had tried to touch him yet. He didn’t even know if they could. Jake hadn’t been able to touch the panel as he’d transformed but he’d been blocked by the door. Was it the transformation process that had caused his inability to touch, or was there something more? Jensen had been able to feel the rock around him, to become a part of it, but he’d also proven himself able to rest against things.
Could he touch something? Or someone? His fingers itched to do so, and Jensen felt a smile spread across his face at the thought of having fingers again. They weren’t … really … but they were familiar enough. He was still the same shifting cloud colors as he’d always been, but somehow in the night he’d put himself back together in a human-like form instead of the cloud he’d inhabited for so long.
“What were you coming to the lab for?” Jared asked as he poked his head out of the adjoining bathroom, toothbrush in hand.
“Actually I went to tell you to come get breakfast and I figured you’d fallen asleep at your desk. It’s your usual MO when you get caught up in something.”
“Yeah, yeah. I just … this is crazy. Right? I had to walk out of the lab because I kept thinking… I’ve gone space-mad. I know it’s just a myth, but a cloud was talking to me and telling me he was a long lost space captain from 300 years ago. I needed to get away from the lab for a bit.”
“So… uh … hey, Jensen. Why don’t you come on down to the galley with me?” Misha asked. “I don’t imagine you eat since you’re a big cloud, but Jared probably needs a little alone time and I could use some company.”
Jensen looked over at Jared and the man seemed a little frazzled compared to last night. He’d only been half listening in to their conversation and he thought back to it now. Jensen was struggling with the thought of having a body again and he’d always known he should be in one. It was probably a much bigger shock to Jared to find out Jensen had been a real person.
He nodded his head and began to walk through the door.
“Hey Jensen.”
He looked back at Jared who smiled at him. Even if he wasn’t completely composed, he still managed to make the effort.
“I’ll see you down there in a few minutes, okay?” Jensen nodded and then Jared looked at Misha. “Just don’t leave him alone, man. You know I can’t be alone for more than an hour without bouncing off walls. I can’t imagine….”
“Don’t worry. We’ll consider this an experiement, shall we?” Misha said as he turned to Jensen. “You can understand us. You can apparently walk. Let’s see what else you can do. Can you smell?”
Jensen looked around the area and wasn’t even sure how to answer that. He shrugged his shoulders instead.
“No worries then,” Misha said with a smile. “I have bacon and eggs cooked up in the galley. If you can’t smell the bacon then we’ll know you’ve lost your sense of smell.”
The galley was towards the back of the ship but before all the cargo and holding bays. They passed Jared’s lab area and Jensen felt the sudden need to look in on his rock. There was nothing there, nothing to tell in his absence. He hadn’t left its safety in 300 years though and it felt odd to be staring down at it. He ran his hand across the surface and he could still feel the talc like powder it left behind on his hand. Felt? Or sensory memory? Jensen wasn’t sure. Misha’s idea of experimenting at breakfast seemed a good one.
They were barely two steps into the kitchen when Jensen heard the unmistakable sound of a laser pistol powering up. He turned with his hands up to stare at Kim.
“What the hell, Misha?”
“Kim, hey stop! It’s okay. It’s just Jensen!”
“Jensen?”
“The cloud. Turns out he’s a real boy after all. He was the captain on the Cosmic Blade.”
“That is not a cloud.”
Misha looked at Jensen and smirked. “No, apparently he turned into a man in Jared’s bed last night.”
Jensen brought a hand to his head a shook it. Seriously? Misha’s innuendos were bad enough but he could see a speculative look in Kim’s eye.
“Figures,” she said as she put the pistol away and turned back to her breakfast. “If anyone could turn a space cloud into a pet, and then make a man out of it, it would be Jared.”
“I am deeply trouble by the way my crew speaks about me,” Jared said as he entered the kitchen. “Especially when we all know you both get laid a lot more than me.”
“It’s not about how often we get laid, Jared, but the circumstances behind it.”
“Remember that waterfall creature you-”
“That was not my fault! Where’s the food?”
Jensen watched as the others smiled and Jared tried to bury himself in a heap of food he piled on his plate. It was jovial banter, nothing harmful. Jensen had already gotten the impression yesterday that Jared was the soft hearted type who took in strays. Their teasing just cemented that for him.
With Jared focused on his food, Jensen could see the way Misha kept an eye on his captain. He could see the way Kim kept an eye on him. He remembered then that Jared had introduced her as the weapons specialist. She wasn’t being hostile, but she was keeping an eye on him just in case. He also got the feeling that Kim was just… a mother figure to the two men on her crew as well.
He relaxed a little and looked back at Jared again. The man’s brow was furrowed and his shoulders seemed to slump as he ate. Jensen did like that at all. Jared had been nothing but helpful and friendly towards Jensen. He’d shown far more compassion and empathy for a cloud than most people Jensen had known would have shown to an actual person. The fact that he’d been worried about leaving Jensen alone showed as much.
He didn’t think about it, but reached over and stole a piece of bacon off of Jared’s plate.
“Hey!” Jared called out in surprise.
Jensen gave him his best smirk as he ripped the bacon in two and popped the first half into his mouth.
And holy mother of all that sparkles in the night sky! The bacon was just on the right side of crispy and practically melted in his mouth. He was hit with the smell of it at the same time, the salty, greasy, meaty tang that filled his nostrils. Each bite gave a pleasant crunch and Jensen just closed his eyes and enjoyed the first food he’d had in ages.
“I really want some coffee,” he said without thinking. He didn’t notice the silence around him as he swallowed the bacon and ate the second half. He loved the feel of it, grinding under his teeth, the way the texture felt against his tongue.
“Jensen?” Jared’s voice made him open his eyes. He wasn’t sure what he heard in his tone. Fear? Awe? Hope?
Jared held a mug of coffee out to him and Jensen’s eyes widened. “Did I say that? Out loud?” And he could hear it. His own voice. And it was his voice. Crackly and rough from disuse, but his own.
“Yeah, you did.”
Jensen stared at Jared until the other man finally nodded to the cup. “Do you take it black?”
He nearly dove at the mug then to get a taste. He heard the pistol again before he could take a sip. He looked up and Jared’s eyes were wide and he’d stepped away from the table. Misha had backed up as well.
“What?” Jensen asked.
“You… uh ... kinda went cloudy again,” Misha answered.
“Say what?”
“You stayed there, but your arm became a cloud again and it shot out at Jared to take the mug. You didn’t notice?”
“I … just grabbed the coffee.”
“You just scared us to death,” Misha said.
Jensen sat the mug down on the table and stared at his hands. They weren’t human. He wasn’t human anymore. In 300 years he hadn’t accepted that. He looked at Kim and her wide eyed stare over her pistol and Misha and the way he’d slowly moved to put himself between Jensen and Jared. He looked at Jared and saw the compassion that had probably hurt him over and over again but who had a heart too big to stop.
“I’m so sorry,” he said softly. “When you go back, just … tell them I did my best to save them all. The radiation killed them and the rock tried to save them, like it did me, but we didn’t understand. Not until it was too late and I was the only one left.”
He let it go then, the idea of being human. He felt himself begin to uncoil then, like a ribbon coming off a spool. He watched his hands lose the definition they’d gained today and he felt his cloud-self form. He heard Jared’s shout of “Jensen! No!” before he flew down the hall and back towards the rock.
He buried himself in the safety of it, the feel of its heavy presence surrounding him. Protecting him. Protecting others from him. He felt the darkness and before anyone could interrupt his isolation, he drifted back into the oblivion of sleep.
**
When he woke, he could hear something outside of the rock. It took him a minute to realize it was music. He pulled away from the core slowly and began to look outside. He was surprised by the sense of relief that filled him when he saw Jared sitting at his desk. His back was to Jensen and he was listening to archaic rock-n-roll. It only took a moment to realize it was actually his music from the Cosmic Blade.
He didn’t know if he should come out of hiding or not, but curiosity had always been his curse and Jensen couldn’t help but want a look at that computer screen to see what Jared was working on.
He slid out of his rock quietly and stood up behind Jared. There were a couple paper articles about the Blade and her experiemental drive on the work station, a few interviews Jensen himself had given about the thrill of piloting the ship and going into deep space, and some blueprints of the ship itself. On the computer screen it looked like Jared was going through the Blade crew’s medical files. Jensen’s was first up on the screen.
He huffed with annoyance when he saw the label asthmatic on the screen. “That’s wrong. I kept telling them the record was incorrect but they never fixed it.”
Jared turned quickly in his seat. He had a quicksilver view of tired red eyes and pale skin before he was engulfed in Jared’s arms.
“Jensen? I thought we lost you!”
“Jared? Hey, I’m okay. I just needed some time. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just…”
Jared pulled back to look at Jensen, but when he reached over to the comm, he didn’t let him go. He hit the comm with one hand and held onto Jensen with the other. “He’s back!”
Before Jensen could say anything else, he was enveloped again.
“Don’t do that to me again, Jensen,” Jared said quietly. “We didn’t know how to get you back out. You just disappeared. And then I started to think maybe we’d accidentally poisoned you by letting you eat bacon or something because I hadn’t had time to run a medical exam on you yet and that damn rock hides you from our sensors. I swear I was about to break the damn thing apart.”
“Hey, I just needed to sleep a bit. It was just … I needed to deal with some things and I hadn’t really come face to face with them yet.”
“Jensen,” Jared pulled back to look at him again. There were tears in his eyes and Jensen didn’t know what to do about that. “You were gone for three months.”
“No, I just …”
Misha made it to the door first, but Kim was right behind him and she pushed inside before him. “Jensen? What happened?”
“Are you okay?” Misha asked.
Jensen could see the worry on their faces. He had no idea what to make of it all. But he’d had 300 years of learning to isolate himself and to deal with his problems that way. He needed to learn how to be among people again, because it was obvious they’d been worried about him.
“I’m sorry,” he said honestly. “When I’m in the rock I lose time. I didn’t realize I’d been gone for so long.”
“Why’d you run away?” Jared asked.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Jensen said. “For 300 years I’ve been hiding in the core of the rock. If I had moved outside of it the radiation would have killed me. It’s what killed all the others. I never had to deal with what I’d become. And then I was almost human this morning and-“
“Three months ago,” Jared corrected.
“Sorry. I was almost human that morning and I was remembering what my senses were and how to use them and then … I’d forgotten I was something else entirely. I was scared and I … I was afraid I’d hurt you by accident.”
“So you left,” Misha said.
“I just needed to go somewhere that I could deal with it all and not have to worry about you guys. I didn’t realize I’d be gone for that long though. I am truly sorry for that.”
“Don’t do that again.” There was a finality to Jared’s voice and Jensen found himself nodding.
“I won’t. I’ll … it might take a while. I’m not used to being around anyone anymore.”
Kim let out a huff and she walked over and put her hand on Jensen’s shoulder. “Just tell us when to back off. We’re a mouthy bunch but we’ll do our best,” she said with a smile. “It’s good to have you back. Besides, you have no idea the number of questions we have for you now that you can actually talk to us.”
She left the room and Misha smiled at Jensen. “We … uh … set up a room for you. In case you came back. We’d like to get some samples of the rock to run some tests but we were afraid if we did something to it, it might hurt you.”
“I don’t know,” Jensen said. “I don’t feel like I’m attached to the rock in any way. Other than it being my hiding place for so long. More tests for you to run?” Jensen suggested.
Misha smiled. “I’ll let you relax a few days before we try it. Make sure you’ve got the doctor’s okay first. Take it easy, Jensen. We’ll see you for dinner, right?”
“Hell yeah,” Jensen said with a grin.
Misha walked out and it left him alone with Jared, who was still holding on to him.
“Hey, I’m not going to go anywhere.”
“I was worried.”
“I can tell. Have you been sleeping at all?”
Jared let out a deep sigh and to Jensen’s surprise the other man lowered his head to rest it against Jensen’s shoulder. Jensen forced him back a step or two, but only until Jared could drop into his chair. Jared slumped down into it, but brought his arms around Jensen’s back and his head was resting on Jensen’s heart now.
“Just give me a minute or two, alright?”
Jensen wasn’t sure what this was, but he held onto Jared and began to run his fingers through Jared’s long air. After a few minutes, Jared sighed. “I already knew.”
“What?” He was totally confused by Jared’s words.
“You aren’t asthmatic. I knew that already. I’ve been watching all the old interviews and programs about you. I’ve read everything scientific theory - and every conspiracy theory - about you and the Cosmic Blade. I swear, the way everyone wrote about you, you were this larger than life hero. I watched every single personnel log so I could figure you out. I think… I might have some unrealistic expectations now that you’re back. I just … I need you to be okay and I know that will take time, but I don’t want to lose you over something like a cup of coffee. Please don’t leave again.”
“Hey, I’m not going to leave,” Jensen said as he pulled Jared’s chin up to look at him. “What the hell have you been doing to yourself for three months?”
“I need to bring you home, Jensen. I can’t… you were lost for so long. I’m not going to let you get lost again.”
Jensen let out soft chuckle as he looked down at Jared. “Looks like I’m not there hero here, Captain,” he said as he ran his hand over Jared’s cheek in a soft caress. The other man leaned into it and Jensen was confused by his own need to comfort Jared. They didn’t know each other, not really, but Jared had found him when he was lost even to himself. There was no way he could ever repay him for that.
“You found me. Now you’re stuck with me.”
Jared let out a relieved breath at that and he smiled at Jensen. “I can deal with that. Once we get back to Earth, we’ll have to see where you want to go, but you’re always welcome here.”
“Are we headed back now?”
“Not until we do more research. The Cosmic Blade will be big news and Misha and Kim have been documenting everything they’ve found.”
“Jared, you know what will happen to me, if you tell them about me.”
Jared’s eyes went wide, like he hadn’t thought of the actual repercussions. “I can’t exist. I’m not human. They won’t believe the rock turned me into this to save me from radiation. I’ll be caged up and kept locked away. Can you just … find out what you can and leave Jensen Ackles lost in space with his crew?”
After a long minute, Jared nodded. “I wasn’t thinking about that. If that’s what you want, of course.”
“And keep my rock. It was home for a long time. I … don’t feel comfortable without it.”
“Of course.”
“And Jared, thank you. I never thought I’d be found.”
“I’m glad we found you, Jensen,” Jared said with a smile. “And welcome to the crew of the Finders Keepers."