Chapter Text
“Horus,” Dream says. “Egyptian god of the sun, the sky, kings, and…”
“And wars, right?” George finishes dryly. Dream sends him a sheepish grin. “No kidding. Who’s next?”
They haven’t let any of the crew out into the public. It’s been exactly a day since the press conference, and as far as George knows, the media is completely blowing up. Which, yeah, makes sense. No one’s been by to give them any updates; he and Dream have been holed up in his hospital room. They’re not supposed to be watching the television, but it’s been on and muted the whole time. Every major news channel is covering the same story, analyzing the video logs, talking about what they might have missed.
Other records from Ares III are being pulled, anything that might help the MIC in a trial against the Commander, against NASA, against the entire crew. They’re not really sure what’s going to happen; they’re mostly trying not to think about it.
At least, George is trying not to think about it. Dream keeps trailing off a few times an hour, lost in the reports coming from the media. George keeps tugging on his hand to get him to pay attention to what they’re doing (studying more mythology, because it’s something that keeps them entertained).
The whole media shitstorm has gone like this:
They left the press conference in a buzz. Fundy’s entire team was about to lose their damn minds; they could hear reporters yelling all the way down the hall. It took every fiber of George’s strength to not burst into laughter, because how else could things possibly get worse?
“I don’t know how it leaked,” Fundy said later, shaking his head. He stopped by George’s room a few hours after the press conference to let them know he was somehow still alive; they’d hurriedly turned the TV off when he entered. “Yeah, the MIC knew, but we thought they were keeping it under wraps.”
“They probably leaked it,” Dream huffed. George was still trying not to laugh at the incredulity of it all. “They want to blame NASA for something, they’re going to do whatever it takes.”
“Well, they’re going to have a hell of a time of it,” Fundy snorted. “I’ll see you guys later.”
Leaving George and Dream to wait.
Niki and Karl both stopped by for much longer; they’re allowed to go home, but they’re not supposed to really show their faces to the public.
“Does the rest of the crew know?” Dream asked at one point, glancing between the two of them. And fuck, because at that point George hadn’t even thought of Sapnap and Puffy and Technoblade, up on Hermes with no idea what’s happening.
“Bad told me that he’d get a message to them,” Karl said. “But who knows how long that’ll take.” The look on his face made it very clear that yeah, Bad has bigger things on his mind.
Dream emailed Sapnap anyways. By the time a day has passed, Sapnap hasn’t responded, and the rest of them are beginning to get anxious.
The media is losing its damn mind, which is unsurprising. Legal analysts are theorizing on who, exactly, the MIC is going to charge and with what. The possibilities seem endless: the crew for conducting a mutiny, NASA for covering it up. Okay, the possibilities aren’t that endless. But that’s pretty much George’s entire family, so.
If they’re going to charge George with anything, the news is saying, it would be for being implicit in the cover-up. He didn’t make the decision to go back for himself, it’s not like they can arrest him for being privy to the mutiny himself. This fact doesn’t really make him feel better.
The next few weeks feel like waiting for a death sentence. George starts physical therapy and he’s discharged after two weeks with the promise that yes, Skeppy, he’ll get plenty of rest and he’ll try not to stress himself out. After he says this, him and pretty much everyone else in the room laughs.
He and Dream are able to go home, which is nice. He likes eating real food and sleeping in a place that isn’t the hospital. He doesn’t like the reporters that seem to be staking out their house, and he can’t do so much as go and get the mail without cameras in his face. They’re not allowed on the property (he and Dream have each threatened to call the police at least six separate times) but it’s still annoying. He doesn’t even bother yelling no comment at them anymore; he just ignores them and tries to go along with his day.
He starts counting down the days until the Hermes crew comes back to Earth; he misses them more than he’d care to admit, and he thinks this whole waiting game would be a hell of a lot easier if they were all together. Instead, Karl sleeps on their couch every few days and Niki comes over as often as possible and they all try to not think too much about the fact that they could all be arrested or lose their jobs or whatever.
George and Dream talk more, which is nice. They apologize again for the past couple of months; Dream apologizes for not telling George about the moon mission, George apologizes for not telling Dream that his lungs were getting worse. They’re able to drop it fairly easily; it feels like nothing matters compared to what they’ve been through. If their love could survive that, it can survive a few fights. Easily.
That’s what gets George through, really. The fact that this crew has survived so fucking much. After everything that’s happened to them, how could they do anything other than survive? So what, they led a mutiny for George. So what, NASA covered it up. In the end, no harm was really done. George is alive and on Earth. The crew is alive, they’re thriving. Absolutely nothing is going to take that away from them. Not if George has anything to say about it.