cmdr_zoom | "We Happy Few" [fic, gen]

(I've had this Galaxy Quest ficlet sitting on my HD, about 90% finished, for a couple of years now. This seemed like the right time to finally finish and post it.)

Gwen's first thought when she opened the door was, he's not wearing his head. Sir Alexander Dane, OBE, had not actually misplaced his cranium on the way to her house, but he didn't have his trademark rubber "alien" cap on. She'd never seen him without it in the years since the show, and only rarely when they were still doing it - never out of makeup outside his trailer, that was Alex, always the professional - and its absence was startling. Her next thought was, he looks like hell. His light brown, entirely human hair was lank and unkempt and there were bags under his eyes. He didn't look like he'd slept since they got back from what Gwen was already thinking of as "the adventure."

When he'd called an hour ago ("rang her up", as he always put it), she'd thought it was for the same reason Jason had. It seemed that their recent ordeal had been just what their "bold captain" needed to bounce back from his funk, and as soon as their feet touched solid ground again, he'd thrown himself with all his usual enthusiasm into yet another attempt to get the network to revive the old series. Gwen had let him make his pitch to her and finally begged off politely; she was fond of the man, but knowing Jason was a lot like having a big friendly dog, right down to the part where he occasionally tried to hump your leg. Alex, on the other hand, had been much quieter and more serious when he'd asked if he could come talk to her in person. She was beginning to realize just how serious.

He hesitated on the stoop until she drew him inside. "Can I get you something? I think I still have some tea from the last time you were here." She might have offered him another sort of drink, but judging by the smell of his breath as he brushed past her, he didn't need any help on that account.

"Tea would be lovely, thank you," he replied, letting Gwen guide him to her living room couch. "With some cream, if you don't mind...?"

"Of course," she assured him, making sure he was sitting comfortably before going into the kitchen to get started. His voice followed, apologetic: "You understand, I couldn't... I couldn't talk to anyone else. Anyone who wasn't there. They'd send me to the madhouse."

"I know," she answered, smiling to herself as she got out the small teapot and the half-empty box of his favorite blend. Theirs was a long friendship, unlikely on the face of it: the classically-trained British thespian and the girl from Indiana with one Broadway hit under her belt, hired mostly to be eye candy and look frightened on cue. But as he'd soon learned, she wanted to be much more than that. She became his protege on the set and, in time, his confidante. He taught her what he could of the craft and never patronized her (well, hardly ever, but again, that was Alex); nor did he ever make a move on her, in contrast to Jason's casual and once-endearing lechery.

She returned with tea and cream for him and coffee for herself, taking a seat at the other end of the couch and letting the familiar, comforting ritual take over. They talked for a little while of nothing in particular, picking up threads of idle conversation from weeks ago, before it happened. Eventually there was a long pause, which she made no attempt to break. He stared into the dregs of his cup and finally spoke.

"Did you hear about Quellek?"

Gwen shook her head slowly. "It all got so crazy there at the end. Jason and I went to shut down the reactor, and almost didn't get there in time. Then there was the battle, and the thing with Fred not being Fred and trying to kill us all, and then we were splitting off and crashing and..." She swallowed the rest of her coffee and grimaced. "Sorry. I guess I just figured he went off with Mathasar and the rest. He was that one following you around like a puppy, right?" She'd seen the same thing at dozens of conventions, though most of Alex's fanboys weren't as well groomed. Then again, Gwen reminded herself, the Thermians' human appearances were just an illusion. Including Fred's new... girlfriend? She shied quickly away from that thought; Alex was talking again, explaining how he'd found the earnest young alien hiding in a corner.

"We were trying to free the others, the ones who'd been locked in their quarters. We'd just managed to get the door open when one of Sarris's guards found us." Alex set his cup down on his saucer, very carefully. "He shot Quellek."

Gwen gasped, raising a hand to her mouth, and just as quickly reached out that hand to cover the back of his. His lips quirked - half smile, half grimace - as he tried to show gratitude for the gesture, but it never reached his eyes.

"I watched him die, Gwen. A man..." He faltered, then plowed ahead with fierce determination. "A man died in my arms, and all I could do for him was say that stupid... that stupid line..."

His eyes squeezed shut and his shoulders began to quake and spasm. Gwen slid closer to him on the couch, drew him to the bosom that once rated six paragraphs in TV Guide, and let him cry it out.

Some minutes later, when he was calmer, she asked softly, "Well, did you? Avenge him, I mean?"

He looked up at her with wet red eyes, blinking in confusion, and finally nodded. "I've never felt such rage. Never knew I was capable of it. Some of the Thermians and I, we..." He swallowed. "I don't think we actually killed him. But I wanted to. With every fiber of my being."

Gwen nodded, and resolved not to tell him - at least not for a while yet - how close she'd come to completely breaking down in the face of a hallway full of ridiculous traps. Or the nightmares that still woke her in the small hours, and how hard it was not to phone a certain hack writer and just scream at him for being the unknowing architect of her terror. Instead, she hugged her friend again.

"We'll get through this," she promised him. "The same way we got through three seasons of bad scripts, rubber suits, commissary food, Jason's ego and Tommy's puberty. All those years of conventions and signings and openings. And a day and a half of pure insanity and being in way over our heads. Together. All of us." His hair was already a mess, so she gave in to the temptation to muss it up a little more. She might not get another chance for a while. Then she looked him in the eye and said, with all the confidence and sincerity she could manage: "The show must go on."

He chuckled weakly, almost despite himself, but nodded. "The show must go on."