It took them several weeks. Cooper taught Amelia all about the mechanics and controls of the gravity drives, and she taught him the math behind the principles of it.

Everything they had would have to be redesigned. Sleeping, food production, observation, storage... To make it ready for life as a spaceship, they had to re-pack everything.

Even with two androids, it took a lot of hard work to get the HAB section ready for flight. They spent a whole night debating whether to send the HAB and two spacecraft up one at a time and seal them up after they were weightless in space, or to link the Modules into the right shape on the ground and then lift the whole thing as a single piece.

"You have not stopped smilin' all night." Cooper observed.

"Neither have you." She pointed out. "This was my favorite part of the Lazarus missions. Designing an interstellar spaceship? Laying out the whole structure, the equipment... We went all night. Me, my dad, the rest of the team. We were debating back and forth for a week. What equipment did we need, was it worth the weight, worth the fuel... The entire mission was laid out in those meetings. I mean, the government gave us a mission plan, held endless meetings and committees, and we finally agreed to it... and then we started building the ship and had to actually do something that mattered."

"What exactly did the government want to do?"

"Same thing they did for a hundred years. Agree to talk about it more after the next election." Brand yawned. "Did they make it to the Starbases?"

"According to my daughter's abridged journals; currently number two on the recommended reading list for humankind, she timed the launch for just that reason. None of the politicians wanted to admit the earth was finished, and they declared that anyone who went up to space would renounce their citizenship. That worked for Murphy, so by the time everyone agreed that earth was dead, the Stations were civilian run, and totally self-sufficient. Nobody could buy their way on board."

"So the majority of ones who got left behind were the ones that couldn't admit there was a problem." Amelia snorted. " I think I just realized how much she got from you. The one thing my dad could never figure out to anyone's satisfaction. Who stays on earth and who gets to launch."

"Gravity Drive. They could take whole cities if they put enough work into it. But a lot of people didn't make it on the bus." He shivered. "I hate the idea that my kid had to do that without me."

There was a quiet moment as they both turned that over in their heads.

"Number two on the reading list, huh?" She smiled at him.

"Our unauthorized biographies hover back and forth between number twelve and fourteen." He sipped.

"What's number one?"

"Cosmos, Carl Sagan." He said without hesitation.

"Really?" Brand brightened at once.

He let her smile for a whole two seconds. "No, not really." He confessed and she swatted him. "Number One was some teen romance about a sparkly alien who snuck aboard a station for the love of a teenage girl."

She snorted.

"So. Rotation gravity, or artificial?" Cooper said, getting them back on topic.

"I like the idea of having Zero-G sections." Amelia offered. "I always sleep better in Zero-G. Better for workspaces to have gravity, though."

"If we spin the ship, we can have both. But it makes our guidance a lot more complicated." He countered.

And so the debates continued. As space-travelers and engineers, it was the most satisfying thing they'd ever done together.

The season passed. The two of them drew up their plans. They'd decided to keep the same basic shape of the last ship they were on together. The modules would need totally different equipment. The last mission was meant to carry the incubation equipment, and enough supplies to start a colony of infants. For all the damage their ship had taken, they still had the chance to do that.

Band's Ranger was more or less intact, but with little fuel. Cooper's ship didn't have room enough for two people. Just pilot and droid. But Cooper had run the numbers, and they could do it. Her Ranger as a bridge and control room, his Explorer as an engine. It was a century ahead of anything Brand had ever seen, and she took his word that the drive could do it.

The greenhouse was now twice the original size, with the Plan B equipment all to be left behind on the planet.

"We're the first astronauts to have a totally fresh grown diet." Brand said with a smile at him. "Well, the first ones to build their own ship to do it, anyway. You can't seem to get away from farming, but still-"

Cooper chuckled. "Actually, that raises a question." He gestured at the incubation chambers. "What do we do with Plan B? Humanity escaped earth, but..."

"There's still the matter of this place to consider." CASE put in. "Plan B may be irrelevant now, but if you guys take a journey around the black hole for a thousand years, you might need resupply one day. And if earth ever did send a recovery, someone should tell them what happened. The samples in Dr Brand's greenhouse will be ready with one more season to try their luck outside."

"It'll take at least that long to get the rest of the HAB ready." Brand offered. "If we were planning to start a new crop once we got into space..."

"I've run it four times. We'll have a much better chance of seedlings, even freshly planted ones going into orbit, than we will hoping the ripening plants survive the trip."

"So there's your solution." CASE finished. "Harvest your latest crop, preserve it, and plant a new crop before launch. Meanwhile, all the gene-plants that Dr Brand is cultivating will be planted outside, and tended by one of us. If it works, you'll have trees planted and growing."

"You guys want to stay behind?" Cooper seemed stunned.

"Not exactly, but there are benefits to earth, and to you if someone maintains the camp and the crop as much as possible. There are redundant systems for the vacuum release. One of us can harvest and preserve another three or four crops before needing a recharge. If you could leave one of the turbines, it could easily be adapted to slow charge one of us."

"And what use would we have in space for windmills, anyway?" Cooper smiled ruefully.

"TARS and I have been talking about it. He'll be the one to stay behind."

"He will?" Cooper and Brand said in surprised unison.

"Sure." TARS was unconcerned. "And just so you know, I will be changing my name to 'Machine God-Emperor of Planet TARS' once you leave." His light came on.

"Amelia?" He asked her suddenly one day. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure, Coop."

"You knew that the odds of getting pregnant were one in four. If I hadn't shown up... What were you planning to do?"

Amelia swallowed hard. "I was going to try again." She said. Why am I nervous to admit that?

He didn't continue the conversation, and they never spoke of it again.

The work continued until there was nothing left for them to do on solid ground. Eventually, they had to get the Endurance ready to take them back.

"I can fly it up." Cooper told her, unconcerned. "I'll be back before Dinner."

"Fantastic, but I'm still going with you."

"Brand, we've run the schedule. Perihelion is only a few weeks away, and if we want to make it out before the black hole gets any closer..."

"We both know that from this side of the planet, its more important what time of day we launch than what time of year." She argued.

"And most of what's left is going to be done in orbit. Recon and Assessment is a one person job. We stick to the schedule and we can get this done in a week and-"

"And I'm going with you!" She repeated.

Cooper paused, looking back at her. She set her jaw and looked ready to attack him over it.

He suddenly softened. "I'm coming right back." He said gently.

"I go with you, you won't have to worry about it. And neither will I." She ground out.

"Only one seat on the Ranger. We haven't retrofit a second seat yet."

She just looked at him. After a few moments, her eyes started to get bigger and bigger.

Cooper came closer and put a hand on each shoulder, bending close to look in her eyes. "I'm coming right back, Amelia. We'll be on comms the whole time."

"I know you wouldn't just fly off, Coop." She nodded. "But things go wrong up there. We of all people know that. Space is a very final place. And if you get killed up there, you sure as hell better take me with you."

Coop just looked at her. "That's sweet, in a sick kinda way."

"You have no idea, Coop." She said quietly. "Alone on a whole planet? It's... oppressive. I don't know how else to say it. It's like being alone in an empty house and the silence is just pressing in on you. Imagine that from a whole planet, and you'll have some idea what it's like. I won't go through that again. And if it means we miss Perihelion, then I can live with an extra two weeks in space."

Cooper looked at her for another few moments. "Well then. We'd better get another seat in the Ranger, huh?"

And for a moment, for just a split second, she loved him more deeply than she'd ever loved anyone.

Having both of them go changed the schedule enough that they upgraded their first spaceflight from Recon to actual construction. TARS was kind enough to send her the video feed of the launch. Seen from the outside, it was like a magic trick. The two ships, just raising up into the sky.

The weather had cooperated with them for once, and there had been little turbulence. Amelia had felt her stomach drop as the ship rose, but there was none of the pressure that came with retro boosters.

And she saw the other HAB sections begin their ascent too. They had no attitude control, so they started to turn. Amelia grit her teeth, wondering how badly her greenhouse was being tossed around.

But once again, she couldn't help the giddy thrill that went through her when she felt the gravity shift from planetary to artificial. She could tell. They were beyond Negative Return.

They were back in space.

Amelia looked back at the viewport as Cooper collected the compartments with their landing claws. She couldn't even make out the camp, or the hills where she'd been stargazing with Cooper, or the patch where she'd started grass growing... If she strained her eyes, she could just barely make out a line that may have been the canyon where he went swimming, but it was all so... tiny.

For all the fun they'd had talking about how they had a whole world, they'd barely seen any of it.

And then she saw Endurance. Somehow, the old girl was still in the sky, even with a small cloud of debris following her. Gravity again. She thought to herself. Just enough gravity to keep the particles close to the ship. "The cloud of sharp things is going to make it hard to work outside."

"I can pulse the gravity generators, clear away the debris." Cooper said easily.

"Really?"

"Well... I assume so. I can't think of a reason why I couldn't." He shrugged. "I was... I mean, the one thing they weren't going to give me was a job as an astronaut. I've done plenty of engineering from textbooks, but-"

"You're just making this up as you go along, aren't you?"

"You just described my life in one poetic phrase." Cooper worked the controls. "We'll have to go Zero-G if I'm going to use the drive for a different field."

Amelia checked her straps. "Go ahead."

A moment later, she was floating against her chair. Her stomach tried to climb her throat, and she gulped it back down again. "Can I ask you something?" She said, mostly to distract herself.

"Sure."

"Why doesn't anyone call you 'Joe'?" I mean, it's your name. My dad, your dad... Every time someone other than your kids spoke to you; they all said 'Coop' and not 'Joe'."

Cooper chuckled. "My first name came from an estranged uncle that my dad was desperate to make peace with. The result was another massive fight between my uncle and father that nearly demolished several small villages. Then, when my Aunt Josie came to live with us when I was two years old; it became a massive source of confusion for a family trying to teach me new words."

Amelia laughed delightedly. "So they decided to change your name?"

"Dad tried to get it legally changed, but Aunt Jo was ready to strangle him over that one. And after this long, I don't mind. In fact, I like it more than 'Joe'. I've always been 'Coop' to my friends."

"Is that what I am?" She smirked, and then the smile fell off her face instantly. "I mean... aren't we?"

He was about to answer when an alarm started beeping on his console.

"What's that?"

"Proximity alarm." He hissed, working the controls. "Endurance shifted when I pulsed the debris away. She's falling to the atmosphere!"

Amelia swore. If the ship fell, they'd never leave the planet. "Can you catch her?!"

"If I can dock, then I can extend the drive field around the whole hull, just like we planned. But she's going to hit air in a few minutes! Detach the modules! We'll have to come back for them."

Amelia hit the necessary control, but she wasn't even worried. She remembered the last time he'd had to make a daring, downright impossible docking maneuver.

Cooper had caught the Endurance, just as the air started to heat up around them. For all the talk about how it was a one person job, she stayed behind to man the Gravity Drive while he quickly unstrapped himself and ran to the docking ring. If the Ranger came loose of the ship, they were both dead. Once he was sure of the seals, he went into Endurance itself, using the leftover fuel to get them back up into stable orbit.

"You need to kill the gravity drive before the retros fire, and have it on again as soon as the tank runs dry." He told her over comms.

"It was on fumes when I left." She called back.

"Then we better time it perfectly."

Weeks of teaching each other things had given them a near-telepathic sense of what the other would do, and they had arrested the fall in a few minutes. "We're clear!"

"Say it." She said, as soon as the walls of the ship had stopped groaning.

"It was a two person job." He conceded.

"On the plus side, the debris is all gone." Amelia grinned. "We're cleared for EVA."

Welding wasn't an option in space. There would be no ignition in a vacuum, and doing so in a pressurized high-oxygen environment was wildly dangerous.

Seals were done chemically. They both suited up and went outside. Moving the modules into place was tricky enough in Zero G, and it took both of them to put it precisely in place against the hatchway seal. Brand started applying the adhesive strips where the metal met, and Cooper added bolts and screws to provide strength.

"Ready here." Brand called. "You?"

"I'm clear. Fire when ready."

Brand pulled the tab on the sealant strips, and the chemical reaction fired, sizzling the two metal panels together, the metal flash-melting, and then hardening in the sub-zero cold.

"In the old days, we could have just used duct tape." Cooper called over with a grin.

She almost smiled. "On a spacecraft?"

"On anything." Cooper said solemnly. "Duct Tape is the crowning achievement of the human race."

"Said the intergalactic time traveler." Brand laughed.

They headed back inside. There was air enough, but the mix wasn't right. The controls were still damaged, but all the sections left open to space were preserved by vacuum.

Cooper got to work repairing the guidance and power systems, and Amelia the life support. She'd forgotten how tricky it was to move in Zero-G.

The living quarters were trashed, but the science sections were intact. The greenhouse had made the trip fairly intact, and they'd decided to have gravity in the sections.

"Amelia, I'm ready to switch over the Drive Systems to my ship. Orient for gravity."

Amelia rotated herself over so that her feet were pointed the right way. "Ready!"

"In three, two..."

Amelia felt the shift in her guts as she gently floated 'down'. The ship suddenly had a 'down' and that meant the room had floor and a ceiling. The dirt all dropped snugly into their pots again, and the plastic sheeting she had laid over the dirt settled; ready to be re-purposed for repairs. Working with gravity was much faster, and they'd set it all up to float again when they went back to the planet for the rest of their supplies.

"Okay, I'll get started on the Environmental systems." Amelia reported.

She made her way back through the ship, through the living quarters...

The beds were trashed. On the mission, they had spent most of their time in cryo, or working, but there were cots, set into the wall. Four of them. Except the Living Quarters had taken most of the debris damage. There had been holes punched through everything.

"Coop, I think we're going to have to clear out the entire Section, use one of our compartments from the surface. Clearing this out is going to be a big job." She reported. "One that can wait until we get moving."

"I think so." He agreed. "Plus, we clear that whole section out, we can turn it into an extension on the greenhouse. We're gonna need every inch of space."

Amelia was looking around the ship. "We are, aren't we?" Seeing it again, she realized she'd been remembering it as bigger. It was going to be a snug fit. "What do you think about adjusting the gravity drive so that some of the sections are Zero-G?"

"We ran the numbers. Won't work in the ring, but the center sections can handle it. Problem is, those are the sections already built. Can't use the ceilings in Compartments as extra floor space." He grunted into the radio, working on something. "Don't worry, we've got room."

"Yeah, but very little extra." She reported. "Once we move the bed out of here and into a new compartment, there won't be much left in here that's usabl-" She caught herself, mortified.

"Bed? Singular?" Cooper almost stammered.

"Well, yeah." Amelia cleared her throat. "I mean, there's only one left that's intact. Everything in here is scrap metal."

"Oh. Right. For a moment I thought you meant-" Cooper cleared his throat loudly.

Amelia's heart was suddenly beating so loud she was sure her bio-monitors were setting off an alarm somewhere. "Oh. Right."

"I... had planned to include two cots with the gear we were bringing up when we left." Cooper offered. "But, as you say..."

As I say... what? The unfinished sentence kept spinning around in her mind. She hadn't exactly said anything. Was he asking for an opinion? Was he asking about ship design, or about... us?

"Well, it's not like we haven't doubled up before, and we do need all the room we can-" Her mouth shut fast. Did I really just say that?

"Uh, what was that, Brand? Interference on the line."

He was calling her 'Brand' again. She hadn't even noticed that he hadn't called her that in days. "Sorry, Cooper; I must have missed something. I'll do a diagnostic on the comms."

They didn't speak of it again until they got back to the surface.

It was strange, and just a bit claustrophobic, being in space again. For all the hardship of a desert planet, there was wide open space and big skies in every direction. Amelia hadn't minded it at all, but the 'oops' with Cooper had thrown the situation into sharp focus. If they went back into space, there'd be no chance at keeping their distance from each other.

They returned to the planet, one last time.

Night had fallen by the time their work was finished. They'd leave in the morning. Amelia stayed outside for a while, looking up at the night sky. Her breath was misting again, the cold biting her skin. She enjoyed it. By the next night, she'd be in a climate controlled tin can. She might never feel cold air again.

Cooper came out to join her, and held out a flask. "Traditionally, you toast a maiden voyage. Endurance is close enough to a new ship to deserve a drink."

"Cheers." She took the flask and gulped down a mouthful. "What is this?"

"Europan Beer."

"Seriously?"

"Made and brewed in water from a Jovian Moon." Cooper grinned, and took the flask back for his own sip. "What are you thinking?"

Amelia was still looking up. "Stars don't twinkle in space. The atmosphere makes the starlight do that. We may not see stars twinkle again for a while." She took another sip and handed the flask back. "How about you? What are you thinking?"

Cooper sat next to her, close enough to wrap them both in a space blanket again. "When we were out at the ridge, the night of Aphelion? I looked at you when you were looking at the stars. It felt like I was seeing... I don't know, the real you. Without the mission, or the doomsday clock, or the isolation. I felt like I only first met you that night."

Amelia had the strangest urge to break down crying, but smiled instead. "I had the exact same thought about you."

They looked back up at the stars.

Amelia and Cooper spent their time putting their equipment into preservation. There was no indication they'd be back, but it just made sense to give their equipment the best chance to survive without them.

Amelia had drilled TARS in how to handle the Patch. In miles of wasteland, there was now one square of green, wavy grass growing. Trees and bushes would come next, and if they survived, they'd drop seeds. Her Gene-Hacked plants could survive the heat, and handle living in a low water environment. The nightly condensation would water the plants, and their natural ability to propagate themselves would take care of the rest.

"Now, once the planting seasons are done, the most you'll have to do is dig irrigation and protect them from harsh weather." Brand told TARS. "You've got enough preservation supplies to dry-seal two seasons worth of harvest. Every season, take the oldest and replace it with fresh grown, and use the discards as compost."

"Understood."

"Now, what about the trees?"

"The seedlings have adapted to the cold, and there's no sign of attack to their leaves or roots." The machine reported. "I will continue to add bio-matter to the surrounding area."

"In a thousand years, this might be a forest." She murmured to herself. "So, you ready for this? I... worry about you staying behind alone."

"I'm a machine. To pass the time I calculate Pi to the forty millionth decimal point, and see how many books I can read and comprehend at the same time." TARS promised. "If you ever come back, I'll have dinner waiting."

"And speaking of Dinner..." Cooper said grandly, coming up behind them. "Y'know the best part about leaving in the morning?"

"We can stuff ourselves stupid on food we can't take with us?" She guessed with a smile.

"And we don't even have to do the dishes!"

They were leaving in the morning, but didn't talk much about it. It was an odd feeling, like there was something they weren't talking about.

And they both knew what it was.

With most of the structure packed up, they were back in the same room. Cooper slept across the aisle from her, but neither of them were sleeping.

"I can't think of any way to ease into it." Cooper said finally.

"Should we..." Amelia said without thinking, and caught herself when she realized she didn't know how to finish the sentence. "I mean... This time tomorrow, we're working again."

"We've been working this whole time."

"You know what I mean." She said quietly.

Cooper started breathing a little harder. "It's... been a while."

"Been a while for me too. Applicator Kits don't count." She reminded him.

"No, not that. I mean, yes; that. But I meant it's been a while since I've had one of these conversations. The last time I ended up proposing, and that was a good few... Decades ago."

"I know we aren't exactly like that, but..."

"But." Cooper agreed, as if that explained everything. "Amelia, we can't just be amicable. If we're really going to be explorers again? It's going to be a lifestyle. We can't just be coworkers. It was this side of a day ago we finally decided what you were even going to call me."

She nodded. "I know. Look, I don't know that we'll ever be..." 'in love' she mentally filled it in without saying it aloud. "...but after my dad lied and Mann lied and..."

"I lied once too."

"That's different. You did it as an act of self-sacrifice. They did it because they couldn't face the end of the road." She told him. "You're right. This is going to be a big chunk of our lives, and we didn't even discuss if we wanted to do it together. But we didn't even blink before doing it. Like it or not, whether we talked about it or not, we made the choice weeks ago."

"I guess we did." Cooper said, and she could hear him smiling. "We've had quite a journey, you and me. When I made it back to Sol, I couldn't stay there, because I knew the journey wasn't over, even if the mission was."

"Well, if it's not too late to say it? If you lined up a hundred other astronauts; I'm positive that I'd still pick you to do this with." Amelia said honestly. "We have had a journey, you and me. And now that we've decided it's not over yet, I can't do this with anyone else."

"I know. I need you too." Cooper said quietly.

Need. Amelia considered the word in her head. It was the only one that fit. She knew the multiple levels that human beings needed each other. They needed social interaction, positive reinforcement, communal goals, emotional support... physical affection.

But she'd had real love before, and this didn't feel anything like that. And he'd been in love before, and that was long gone too.

Amelia made a decision, and slipped out of her bunk, coming across to join him. He didn't hesitate to make room for her.

"Is it just that we don't have any other options?" Cooper asked as their arms went around each other.

"Do you ever plan to go back to earth?" She asked quietly.

Silence.

"No." Cooper admitted. "I mean, we probably should at some point, but I can't say I..."

"...feel the need to." She finished for him. "Neither do I."

Silence. He started stroking her hair gently, and she started stroking her fingertips over his arms.

"In all the movies, when there's only one woman, and one man left somewhere; they inevitably fall in love, or at least start sleeping together." Brand said softly. "But is that just what happens when there's nobody else, or is that just what happens in movies?"

"Amelia, it's not that I'm not interested." He whispered.

"I know." She admitted. "I've seen you glancing over when you think I can't see. I... I look too." She breathed deep. "This whole thing has been built around what we need, more than what we feel. And we need each other."

"It's not the worst reason, is it?" He murmured.

Amelia licked her lips. "I just don't want it to be like we're obligated to hook up since we're alone together for so long."

"Me neither." He said softly. "If we were both teenagers, maybe we wouldn't care. But I've had the real thing, and I couldn't settle for less"

"Ne neither. It's not like rationing out food, and setting up a work schedule. I spent so long trying to convince myself I could handle being the only human being in the universe." She whispered. "But we're still human, and humans need each other." She let out a shaky breath. "And... It's not lack of options. Because I have no need to go back to Earth, but I need you."

"And I was able to leave earth forever without looking back." He returned. "And I don't think I could do that for anyone else alive."

It wasn't a statement of true love, but it was the most feeling they'd conjured for anyone in quite some time.

"Have you noticed, the robots seem to be elsewhere right now?" Cooper said against her hair.

She smiled and shifted slowly, moving over him. She slid up the cot a little, to look him in the eyes. She was almost two feet shorter than him. They didn't kiss, they just lay against each other, almost nose to nose, just gazing into each other's eyes. "They're better at picking up the emotional subtext than we are."

"So it seems." Cooper agreed, and they just kept staring into each other. "So, um... How long has it been, exactly? Because we may want to take this slow."

"Little presumptuous, aren't you?" She teased. "I mean, just because we're in a bed together right now, pretty much on top of each other, debating how needy we are and how many cots we'd need for the rest of our lives, and we're a bazillion light years from anyone else... You just assume something's going to happen?"

Pause. They both cracked up.

Amelia slid down to lay her head against his chest. His arms went around her cozily, and they settled in for sleep.

"I'll bring two cots." Cooper murmured. "They don't weigh much, and if nothing else, we can use them for bench space."

He was giving her an out. A way to put off the conversation for another time, and she appreciated it. "Good idea."

She felt him shift again, half under her; and she knew that he was being affected by their proximity and the conversation. And she had to admit; she was too. If he pushed a little, she probably would have been all for it... How long has it been for him? She found herself wondering.

He was thinking the same thing. "All the time you've spent dedicated to the mission... How long has it been since you put your life and what you wanted for yourself anywhere as a priority?"

"A while." She admitted. "So. Friends?"

"More."

"Teammates?"

"More?"

"Partners?"

"At least."

Long silence. She kept running her fingertips over his heartbeat, and he kept stroking his fingers along her spine.

"Coop... This is going to happen sooner or later, isn't it?"

"Yeah." He said with easygoing certainty.

"Good." She drawled against his chest. "You in a hurry?"

His fingers froze at the edge of her shirt, and then relaxed. "Not... no." He settled finally. "Because there's one thing that hasn't changed. We've got time."

Amelia felt a little disappointed, despite herself; but she settled into him for sleep, sighing contentedly. They'd get there. Whether love would follow was a far more interesting question, but they had all the time in the world.

It was their second launch in two days, but there was a feeling of incredible finality to it. Amelia had hugged TARS tightly, despite the fact that she couldn't get her arms around him.

They docked with the Endurance, and went to see if the seals they made had held overnight. They had. Amelia took her suit helmet off gratefully, glad to have a ship with gravity. She changed back into her jumpsuit. She felt a subtle shiver, aware that he was looking at her. It would have made her uncomfortable once, but not it made her feel better. Even when she couldn't see him, she knew she wasn't alone, and wouldn't be again.

"One advantage to using the gravity drive instead of rotation?" Cooper whispered in her ear. "The stars don't spin."

He lead her by the hand, over to the window. The stars didn't pinwheel, the way they did when they left earth for the first time. Amelia looked outside, and gazed down at what had been, for a while at least, her own personal planet.

The pale golden world turned below them very slowly, stretching across the entire lower half of the view. Half a world, spread out beneath them. Even without forests and jungles, it was an impressive sight. The two of them gazed down at it for what felt like a hundred years.

"You know, I heard what you said to TARS. You may be right. If we decide to make a loop around Gargantua before we make for the wormhole, there's a chance that we could get back in sight of the planet. We could find that a forest has grown while we were away." Cooper suggested lightly.

"Depends how good a botanist I am." Amelia grinned. "But no. Time to stop looking back."

They came the long way around Gargantua and lined up to enter the wormhole as time flowed fast around them. Everything that Cooper knew about the Sol System had faded into history again.

The gravity from the drive and from the black hole fought each other for a moment before the drive compensated, and Amelia felt her insides do a complete flip as 'down' and 'up' disagreed with each other for a moment.

She could see the wormhole in view, unchanged by the passage of centuries. "So, that little maneuver cost us another few centuries." Cooper said brightly. "I'm told that by now, the Wormhole will have been opened up to include paths to a thousand other star systems."

"Wonder which one we'll land in?" Amelia said rhetorically. "Wormhole alignment in fifteen seconds. Say goodbye to Gargantua."

Cooper released the controls, and they rode the wake, as the walls started to morph back and forth around them. The world of three dimensions had been overruled.

"Never get used to this!" Cooper called.

Amelia laughed, delighted. It was like being in a funhouse.

And then, amazingly, they had company.

There was a ripple in the air, moving gently through their viewport. They had seen it before, on their first trip through the wormhole.

"Was that you?" Amelia asked suddenly, grabbing Coop's hand compulsively.

"No, I don't think so." Cooper stammered out. "It's..."

The 'Bulk Being' hovered in front of Cooper for a while, and then moved to Amelia for a moment, before hovering between them, where their hands were joined across the console.

Cooper knew instantly. "Murph!"

The Bulk Being wavered for a second, before it floated back toward Amelia's side of the ship, on it's way out.

Amelia leaned over, closer to it, so that he wouldn't hear. "I promise, Murph; I'll take care of him."

And then they were alone again.

Cooper was staring at her, buggy eyed. "What if that was it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Murphy was the one that cracked the Gravity Equation. If she built the Wormhole, or the Tesseract, then it means she must have moved in fifth dimensional space too. What if the reason she sent me to find you was because she saw us here together in the future, hand in hand?"

"You think that was young Murph, firing up the Tesseract and looking across the future to find us here? Another Bootstrap Paradox?" Amelia considered. "Does it matter anymore?"

"No."

"Would... would you have come back for me anyway?"

"...yes."

"Then, I guess I'm very glad I met Murphy." Amelia declared. "She saved the world at the cost of the two of us, and she just settled accounts by saving us too."

The walls stopped warping, and the sky had back back into regular normal space. The nearest star was bright yellow, like Sol. And nearby, a gas giant, bigger than Jupiter, with rings. And at least two moons. The nearest moon was a bright and vibrant evergreen. The kind that came from forests.

"So." Amelia said brightly once they were done gazing. "Set course for the nearest planet, Pilot."

"Well, that sounded distressingly like an order." He smirked.

"Well, I'm ranking officer on this ship." She reminded him.

"On the Endurance." Cooper shot back playfully. "This baby is powered by my ship, which makes me Captain."

"A ship you stole, which makes you a pirate." She couldn't stop smiling.

"And technically you declared Endurance lost, which makes it salvage, which makes you a castaway." He was grinning too.

"Oh yes, this is going to be a fun roadtrip." CASE drawled.

"Space Pirate Captain, Castaway Queen and a smart-cracking robot." Amelia burst out laughing. "If we ever do go back to earth, we've got to pitch someone this idea as a TV show."

Cooper laughed with her. They had chosen her ship as the control room, partly because it was easier to detach the other as a landing craft, but mostly because it had side by side chairs. He hadn't let go of her hand since entering the wormhole.

Whether they stayed or not, they would face the next chapter of their story side by side, hand in hand.

AN: And so ends the story. Read and Review!