ON PLANET EARTH, the amount of time allotted into a single day is equivalent to the sum of twenty-four hours. Time on Earth is set in stone; it's always constant—never changing. It was different, however, for the Ares III crew as they moved through the vastness of outer space. Up in space, time wasn't quite measured nearly the same as it was on Earth, or the same at all.

According to Albert Einstein, the faster a person traveled, the slower that person moved through time. It's what's known as time dilation and is derived from Einstein's theory of special relativity. For an astronaut such as Maia Watney, traveling through space added extra time onto her everyday life, whereas she would not encounter the same experience were she to be back on Earth.

If Maia could, she would stop time exactly where it was if that meant she could be freed from the horrid shackles of her life, but that wasn't up to her. She believed the entire aspect of time to be completely ludicrous, and she had felt that way since SOL 18. It was now SOL 30, yet nothing had changed and the probability of seeking change was very slim for her.

With each thought of what happened that day swimming dangerously slow through her muddled mind, her heart seemed to break more and more. Everything about that day had been relatively calm and cheerful until she and Johanssen had received the second storm warning from NASA. Maia had anticipated the whole crew returning to the MAV together in one piece, but her expectations had unfortunately been too high.

That day would forever mark the most agonizing occurrence in Maia's lifetime, though. Her older brother—her only brother—was now gone. It was still hard for her to completely grasp the situation, and as the days passed it became even harder. She was lost without Mark, and the pain of his loss only grew deeper with each passing day. It was as if Mark had ripped Maia's heart clean from her chest when he was swept away. It was an unbearable pain, really, one that her body was hardly fit to withstand. She could do without it, but her theory was that the amount of love a person shared for someone else reflected the amount of seemingly inevitable pain that was sure to surface when that someone is lost. It was a very beautiful, yet a very horrid, symmetry.

She missed him—she missed him so much she couldn't physically stand it.

Mark had always been there for Maia growing up; he was never too far away from her. Even if he had been, he was never ever too far out of reach. She recalled times in which she simply called him for advice and he was there; she recalled times in which he would drop what he was doing just to come see her if she was having a bad day. The two became a packaged deal as they grew older. It was nearly impossible to see one Watney sibling without seeing the other, and Maia loved that their bond transitioned into NASA as well.

Maia let out a scoff as she thought of the organization. Only a week ago, they had requested that each member of the Ares III crew provide eulogies for Mark for the memorial service they were hosting. Maia was the only one out of the six of them that had yet to complete the request, but she couldn't bring herself to write a eulogy for her brother when she was still trying to process the agonizing pain of him being gone. She always believed she would be writing her brother's eulogy when he was closer to the age of ninety, not 41 years old.

The entire situation was frustrating for her. Not only was her pain the worst advocate of her refusal to write a eulogy, but she also couldn't think of anything to say. She had thought about asking her parents, but the idea of it disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared. The two of them were probably in just as much shock as she was. They had lost their only son, and had never been allowed the opportunity of a proper goodbye.

With a sigh of frustration, Maia balled the piece of stationary up and angrily threw it to the floor, followed by her pen. She had spent many days desperately trying to keep her composure for the sake of her very worrisome crew-mates, but with each passing day it only became harder for her to do so. The pain of losing Mark was overwhelming her to such a point that she couldn't keep it buried inside anymore. There was too much of it pushing through to the surface—so much that it was virtually impossible for her to even think of trying to conceal, so she stopped trying.

Maia couldn't take it anymore; she couldn't take the unbearable weight on her chest or the horrible emptiness inside her aching body. There was a hole in her heart, one that only seemed to grow as the time passed so agonizingly slow around her. Her days of pretending to be strong had come to a rather abrupt end—an end that left her wallowing in her pain, her guilt, her love, and her tears. She wished nothing more than for Mark to walk into her room and tell her to shut her "whiny, brat mouth" up, but as she lay in bed, she was met with the realization that not everyone's wishes were meant to come true.

Maia covered her head with the comforter on her bed and hugged her pillow tightly against her body as the tears began to flow at a rapid pace from her eyes. She couldn't help but wish the pillow was Mark, however. He always gave the best hugs, at least in Maia's opinion he did. Mark was capable of making someone feel so special simply by the way he hugged them, and Maia loved that about him. Mark was warm and held a sense of comfort that Maia knew no one else could ever imitate. Mark Watney was one of a kind; there was no one else on planet Earth like Mark, and the painful realization of it only made Maia feel worse in regards to her current feelings.

Maia lay in bed for approximately ten minutes before the sound of footsteps approaching her door startled her back to reality.

"Maia, Commander Lewis is requesting your presence," she heard Beck's voice say.

She wiped the tears from her eyes as quickly as she possibly could and sat up, removing the comforter from her body. Beck's footsteps grew closer, as did his voice, so she hopped down to the floor and moved towards the bathroom in an attempt to hide from him, though her efforts to hide were quite futile. Almost immediately she came face to face with the flight surgeon, much to her despair.

"Maia. . ." Beck trailed off, unsure of what to say.

He could tell she had been crying, despite her attempts to remove all evidence from her face. He was a doctor, which meant he was fairly gifted with reading the features of a person's face to help determine what could possibly be wrong with them, and Maia's facial features held more than enough evidence. Her eyes were swollen and brimming with fresh tears, and her face was redder than it should have been.

The mere sight of Maia worried Beck, however, as he wasn't used to seeing her in such an emotional state. He was used to seeing a bright and comforting smile upon her face, and now, as he stood gazing at her with glistening blue eyes, he couldn't help but realize just how much he missed that smile and how much he wanted to see it again.

"I, um. . ." Maia started to speak, but not a word would come out. The only response she was able to give was another sob, one that was completely out of her control. She had fought long and hard against her emotions, and yet they had won.

Beck rushed over to Maia, wasting not a single second before wrapping his arms around her small body. She buried her face into his chest and wrapped her arms around him, squeezing him as tightly as she could. He only sighed and squeezed her small body tighter against his own in an attempt to comfort her, and it was working, though it wasn't working as much as Maia would've liked it to.

Since the crew had returned back to the Hermes, all of them had had their share in making sure Maia was okay. Johanssen and Beck were her most frequent visitors out of the five of them, while Beck was the most frequent visitor out of him and Johanssen. As system operators, Johanssen and Maia had quite a lot of work to do among the technological beast of a spaceship, but since NASA (Teddy Sanders) allowed Maia some time off to cope with her brother's death, Johanssen was stuck doing her half of the work, as well as her own half. The fact of it made Maia feel particularly horrible; she hated that Johanssen was stuck doing her work on top of her own, but she had assured Maia that it was more than okay and that her only concern was her well-being.

Maia was very thankful for Beck, though. He'd been so caring and so worried about her. There were days when Maia would be so caught up in trying to occupy herself to distract herself from the pain that she would forget to eat or drink, and Beck would always be the one to make sure she did. He took care of her the way an amazing doctor was supposed to take care of their patients, but Maia was no patient to Christopher Beck, and he was most certainly not her doctor. He was her friend, a wonderful friend who seemed to care more about her than she seemed to care about herself at the moment, and for that she was grateful. She enjoyed having someone there, even if it was just for a little bit every day.

"I miss him so much, Chris," Maia cried.

Beck cupped the back of Maia's head with his hand and pulled her closer to him, resting his chin on top of her head. "I know you do, Maia. I hate so much that this happened to you."

"But it happened to you, too," she squeaked. Mark wasn't only a part of the Ares III crew; he was part of the Ares III family, which meant that Beck, Johanssen, Vogel, Martinez, and Commander Lewis had all lost a part of their family as well.

"I know, Maia," he sighed, pulling away from her. "But he was your brother. You grew up with him. You were closer to him than any of us."

The tears flowed faster down her face. "I'm in so much pain—it hurts like hell, Chris."

Chris frowned and brought his hands to her face, wiping away her tears with the pads of his thumbs. "I know it does, sweetheart. But, luckily for you I am a doctor, meaning that it is my obligation to take that pain away. It'll definitely take an exceptional amount of time and a bit of patience, but I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get you smiling again."

"Thank you. . .so much."

He smiled and squeezed her arm reassuringly. "It's not a problem at all, Maia."

Maia could feel the corner of her lips pulling up in an attempt to smile, but her current emotional state would not permit such gesture, so she simply hugged him again.

She was very desperate, though.

Normally, Maia would be too stubborn to accept any kind of guidance from anyone. She was the type of person who believed she could do absolutely anything without the help of someone else, but this was not the kind of help she could just reject. This was help that she desperately needed, as she knew there was no way she could get through this herself. She needed someone there with her, and she was more than okay with Chris being that someone. He had this aura about him that for some reason made Maia feel content. She felt as if she would be in good hands with Chris, and she was more than willing to take the chance to find out.