So apparently Rush doesn’t love Mandy?
I refuse to believe that. Like, if the way Nicholas looks at her it’s not love, then I don’t know what Love is.
We’re talking about the man who spent one whole year working himself into exhaustion to make the ship work, to understand and control its systems, yet the moment he has a chance to spend some quality time *wink wink* with Mandy he drops everything and goes like “Fuck the ship. Or, rather, I’ll fuck Mandy”.
Seriously, that’s love.
This is from a non-shipper perspective but I don’t think the problem was ever that Rush didn’t love Mandy. Even as a non-shipper I’m certain that he did love her and that he loved her a great deal. They were a canon ship for all that I didn’t ship it, if that makes sense. Rush did love her.
However, he didn’t love her the same way that she loved him. That doesn’t mean that he loved her any less than she loved him, it doesn’t mean that he didn’t love her, it just means his love was different.
I believe that how we love someone is mixed up with why we love them and of course they are different people. So the traits that Mandy admired and loved in Rush, would be different from the ones that he loved about her. Plus Rush still loves Gloria, he will always love his wife and I don’t think that is wrong. She’s dead, love doesn’t stop with death. That doesn’t mean he can’t move on and love someone else, but part of his heart will always belong to Gloria.
Mandy made a mistake, she used her love for Rush as the template. He didn’t love her exactly how she loved him. That doesn’t mean he didn’t love her. He did love her.