Mindy Park does not meet Mark Watney, the man who she has spent a long, long year of her life watching over, on the day of his return to earth.

She isn't forbidden to meet him or anything like that, in fact Venkat had been insistent that she, the person who actually realized mark was alive should probably say hi at the very least.

She needed time to herself, time to disassociate from her life that was martian baby sitter and return to her original state.

It's strange, but definitely better. The number of times she has had nightmares of him dying is too damn high. The awkwardness of having to introduce herself as his outer space stalker would be something she didn't need either.

She celebrates when he returns of course. He has his fellow space people and family, heck the whole world even. She could safely fade into the background doing NASA things (staring at pictures of space ) while wishing him all the the best.

Life goes on and she never sees him for the whole first few weeks of his return

Instead she meets him fifteen something sols later

She's on her way to get some much needed coffee when it happens. Dead on her feet, she exchanges her sloppy ponytail for a hopefully more decent bun. Her glasses hanging on the collar of her oversized sweater. The one with a decent number of coffee stains. (She wasn't exactly the picture of grace and sophistication but she was running on mars time here, cut her some slack!)

It was of course during this very moment that Mark Watney decided to materialize out of nowhere.

Alright that was unfair of her, he was probably there the whole time and her blurry vision was too blame but whatever.

They bump into each other and it is of course nothing like the movies, no dramatic slow motion effect to signal the undoubtedly important moment that is meeting the dude who changed your life by almost dying on mars

She would like to congratulate the universe for conspiring to create this situation, one where she bumps into the person she has been stalking for a whole year because she didn't SEE him.

There are a few grunts of awkward surprise, her glasses manage to slip out of her collar but she manages to catch them in time. Jinkies.

"Oh,sorry!" He says, hands held up in apology " I didn't see you there."

He steps back from her quickly and she tries not to take offense and that, he's been through red Martiany hell. His hands in the air twitching.

It's in this moment, where she takes the sight of him in, him and not the plastered all over media face she usually sees, that she truly realizes what that despite being back from you know where, Mark Watney isn't okay yet, not really.

"Oh." She replies and because she doesn't want to break down in tears like the first time she realized he was alive so she presents him with her glasses. "You might need this more than I do."

It's a lame joke but it gets a little smile out of him and she can't help but feel a little proud of that.