Chapter Text
When Annie Shapiro and Martin DuBois exploded, Grace was buried in paperwork.
He would have loved to be able to say he was doing anything else. It would have been a small mercy, but one that would have laid his mind to rest easier when he thought about the deafening impact, about how easily the people he’d spent months working with, teaching, forming a relationship with were just… gone.
It didn’t stick in his head.
Maybe if he’d been there, monitoring them. He was the expert on Astrophage, why wasn’t he there, overseeing two of the six most important people on the whole of Earth? Maybe if he’d gotten it out of DuBois’ head, what did he even need the generator experience for? Maybe if he had reminded Stratt about her policy, about how they weren’t even supposed to be together anywhere. Maybe, maybe, maybe…
He thought about them; there was nothing else he could do.
Annie Shapiro. He was trying to burn her memory into his mind, somehow make sure he would never forget her face, even if it was already blurred to begin with. Annie, who was young and too smart for her age, too smart for comfort, and pretty, too, because the universe was unfair. Except that was an awful thought to have about somebody who had just exploded, wasn’t it? She was full of life, strange like all accomplished scientists—something about how they all can’t ever seem to keep up eye contact or read the room. She was supposed to stay on Earth, have a week of goodbye sex with the man they were sending off to die for the planet, and then bury herself in the research she was already so accomplished at. She was meant to get a Nobel prize, to develop better, effective gene therapies for Huntington’s and Ehlers-Danlos and Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy, and then she was meant to have beautiful kids with a man too young for her. That was her future, written in the stars, no matter how cliché that felt.
And Martin DuBois, who would call him Dr. Grace as though sworn under an oath. Grace would try to remember him too, imprint him on the backs of his eyelids. He was meant to be killed, to commit suicide in space. He would be remembered as a heroic figure, a statue of him, Ilyukhina and Yáo erected in every major political player’s land in the world. He would be a figure in history books, someone that perhaps some teachers would be able to talk about as a friend, because they had known him. He would have left behind a legacy, probably a scholarship in his own name. If he didn’t go, if it had been Shapiro, he would have become the professor with tenure, one that students thought was a bit too strange, who went on tangents about relativity and Schrodinger’s equation and about his other accomplished researcher-friends who would be the ones to invent or discover many of the things he would teach about. He would do cancer research in some government-ran facility, invent the next better alternative to radiation and chemotherapy or help better the current regiments. He would have done research on Astrophage, perhaps even kept in touch with Grace. They would meet once a year, go out for a drink and DuBois would pester him about getting laid and Grace would respond with his usual answer-non-answers but he would secretly enjoy the misdirected concern. He would date a few young women, then be one of the respectable bachelors with money and too many degrees to not cower before.
They were gone. Not even a body. Atomised. A few seconds, and then nothing. A crater in the Earth. Curtain down, play over.
Looking at Dimitri, at a mechanical motion of his hand as the man kept reaching for a bottle of vodka that was not there, stuck in a bunker as they were, Grace was certain that he wasn’t the only one out of sorts. Unaccepting of reality.
Stratt was most likely the only person who had worked with Shapiro and DuBois who didn’t have any qualms about it. She went through the moment as she did through everything, face set, focused, ready to care at a later date, perhaps, if there was a free spot available in her calendar. Ready to only then remember that the people who had just died were beyond numbers in her contact list, beyond tools for saviour, that they were at least acquaintances.
“Dr. Grace. I want a short list of possible replacements.” She said. She always did that, always moved onto the next point in the itinerary, no matter if anybody else was ready to. Once, when he was comfortable in her bed, in that elusive hazy state where she said anything to him and he said barely a word in response, she’d told him some things were simply too important to wait; that she could care when she wasn’t busy putting out 10 different fires at any given moment.
That was all well and good when it wasn’t their friends.
Grace felt his throat close up. They were dead. Gone in a flash and half the world wouldn’t even care. Just as Stratt didn’t.
“Are you made of stone or something?! Our friends just died!” he couldn’t keep it out, couldn’t force his voice to hold steady as the words left his mouth. His hands were shaking; he was grabbing at the pendant at his neck and squeezing it hard as if that could make him think more clearly than he was at the moment. Perhaps it was unfair to her. Perhaps later, when he had time to think it over, he would understand. But not right then; never right then.
“Yes, and everyone else will die, too, if we don’t make this mission happen. We have nine days to find a replacement science specialist.”
He strained, trying to keep tears from falling. It didn’t work.
They were dead. Really, well and truly dead. He’d dealt with loss before, of course, but it was so far away, now. He hadn’t really dealt with it then, either, only showed up to the funeral when the notice had come to him through a distant aunt’s phone call, with a single carnation and a borrowed black tux, numb to the bone. He still had no memories of that funeral service, only of the guilt that rained down on him some days later when he remembered he’d ended up leaving early, mind too focused on some or other experiment he’d been running to stay. And then he’d crashed, alone and feeling like every emotion had been too much, like the world was too big for him; like he needed help with meeting his basic needs, too shaky and depressed to do anything.
And he knew this time would be no different, in the end. His mind would crash later, he would need the help, the comfort of processing everything when broken down into his simplest.
In the moment, he needed to find a way to keep moving forward. Keep himself focused.
But they were dead. It was too real. It had happened too close, they were too close to him, no matter that he hadn’t realised that was the truth until that very moment.
“DuBois…Shapiro…” he tried to find anything intelligent to say. His mind was useless, repeating dead, dead, dead as though it was an accursed mantra.
“They’re dead. They’re dead…oh God…” he was going to lose it. It was too hard, too much, he needed—
He felt sharp pain, bringing tears to his eyes for a completely different reason as Stratt’s hand connected with his cheek. He stared up at her in shock, trembling. He bit on the inside of his cheek until he tasted iron.
“Snap out of it!”
She was good, he thought. Her face was set, mouth a thin line and eyes burning with the will to push forward. It was one of the few dynamic expressions she showed the world. Her hands, however, were wrapped around her tablet and clutching it so hard the knuckles had turned white. Her own cheek was indented again, and she was staring at him with her eyes closed more than he would have seen in her if she was well and truly uncaring. She was also hanging by a thread, even if hers was cut more by the mission problems than by the actual loss of human life. She’d given him some of his faculties back. She was glaring into him, not angrily but in a way that he sometimes saw during his late-night visits, when she opened the door to him too quickly, like she’d been awaiting his arrival for too long.
“Hey!” he could play at this game.
Her death grip on the device in her hands lessened. Grace’s mind still ran in a mantra, but it was becoming background noise. He would have time to feel guilty later.
“Cry later!” she’d taken the words right out of his subconscious, cemented them in his thought process. “Mission first! You still have that list of coma-resistant candidates from last year? Start looking through it. We need a new science specialist. And we need them now!”
His mind latched onto the objective, digging through the document storage of his phone with his mouth moving around some words he couldn’t quite place, but that produced enough white noise to have him singularly oriented towards what she wanted from him. He found a document, closed it when it was the wrong one, scrolled farther. Made a mistake two more times before he struck gold.
“Found it, okay, so the first one here—”
“Just keep it open, call them all after we leave.”
“All of them?” he frowned at her, his eyebrow quirked. She met his eyes. “There’s like a hundred people on this list.”
“And half of them won’t pick up, and most of the rest were only put there because they had the barest amount of qualification.”
He watched her, the bottom of his vision blurred in white from the maximised brightness of his phone screen. She didn’t move, not for a while, only kept writing something on the screen with the touch pen, then crossing it over like the device had personally offended her.
Finally, she took in a deep breath and ran her hands down her face, her fingers tangling in the loose pieces of her hair. She didn’t stay put like this, had immediately returned to her previous activity, eyes as clear as before and her motions less fervent.
He didn’t comment on it.
“I’ll call them all,” he said. His voice was softer than he’d meant for it to be. Stratt didn’t bat an eye, gave only a grunt to indicate she had heard him.
Dimitri looked at him with a word half out his mouth but put back into his throat by sheer force of will. He was frowning. His hand kept travelling to his belt and pockets, trying and failing to find a flask.
He knocked on the door to Stratt’s mobile home the next evening. Sun had set, and there had been no one racing to her or his door for the past 4 hours; neither was he being called away. He had made all the necessary calls she’d requested, noted down everyone who seemed reasonable and sent the list to her at 3 am. She had returned to her mobile home at 4, he heard it by the click of her door, the sound of her shoes being thrown to the ground and something heavy landing on the ground.
He could hear every time she came inside and left. He’d heard the door open last about an hour earlier, and it was definitely accompanied by the noises of somebody coming in rather than leaving.
He waited when she did not answer the door immediately. He made to knock again a few seconds in, then again, but decided to halt for the moment.
He pressed an ear to the door. The lights were off, or she had much better curtains than he did. He could hear the noise of a person moving around inside, though. She was there.
He knocked again. Then again.
When he was lifting his hand for the fourth time, the door opened. Stratt stood there, her face illuminated only by moonlight. She didn’t open the door fully, only enough so that they could speak comfortably.
He’d expected a frown or even something filled with passive rage to be painted across her face, or for it to be overtaken by an expression of pure determination, the same one she’d been wearing for the past too many hours.
She stared at him blankly. It cut harder than any angry twist of her lips ever could.
“Goodnight, Doctor Grace,” she said, like they’d had a full conversation in the time it took him to take her in. A few seconds and she was already closing the door.
He didn’t think. He wedged his foot between it and the wall.
Stratt looked down at it when the door didn’t close, then back up to him. Nothing about her face moved.
“I don’t have time—”
“Just let me in. Please,” he said. “I brought you tea.”
“I have tea.”
He retrieved the package from his pocket, the thin protective foil crinkling over cardboard.
“Not your favourite. You ran out when we moved off the carrier.”
She pushed the door on his foot. He winced and tried to hide it. The memory of her hand on his cheek suddenly stung.
He searched for anything to say.
“I brought my things,” he said. It was a long shot, probably unhelpful. He’d mostly intended to make her tea and make sure she didn’t collapse to the ground or take any more calls, lest he had to hear her scream in 10 different languages into the receiver. Again.
He could scarcely admit to himself if there were other reasons. If he wanted to make sure she drank something, that she didn’t break down alone, thinking of the fact that everyone thought she was a heartless monster—
He noticed the door let up, a little. He pressed on.
“I can keep busy. I won’t bother you. It’s just tea,” and then, pushed forward by having been awake for over 24 hours, filter utterly off and strange ideas abound: “You’re not getting any work done at this point no matter what we do. It’s only a matter if I let you go and stew, or…”
He didn’t dare finish. He didn’t know if she remembered.
By the way the door opened, her eyes looking anywhere but him for a few seconds, he guessed she could hear the words in her own voice.
She turned on the light when he entered. He found the kettle and set the water to boil, pulling out two of her non-descript mugs from a box on the floor. He paid no attention to her, not for a long moment. He watched the steam rise and water condense when it met the cooler wall.
He turned around with both cups in his hands, ready to walk over to her. She was standing right behind him, still without any expression at all.
It was strange. He had never before in his life found himself able to read somebody so well. He knew the way her eyes relaxed when she was happy but only barely so, the way her mouth twisted characteristically when she was holding back a laugh, the way one of her brows would lower by maybe one-eighth of an inch when she was silently enraged. He knew the patterns she traced into his shoulders and saw her trace them into her own thighs, sometimes. He knew the way she liked to hold mugs, with two hands as though they’d break in half while she drank. He knew that she ate with the fork in her left hand, that she slept on her back or on her side, that she wore her hair in braids when she didn’t wash it.
He would never be her friend, not in this life. But he was her greatest observer.
Grace knew her usual stoic, impassive look well enough to draw it from memory. She did not wear that expression right now. Her face wasn’t relaxed, it was a map of all her different ways of being, mixed in such a way that it meant nothing at all. The impassive stretch of her lips with the widening of her eyes that meant secret enjoyment, and the furrow of her brows that was determination, but with her hands calm by her side like she never was when truly on track to something; it was nonsense, all too faint to be spotted at all. Except Grace could see it.
He pushed the cup into her hand. She took it on autopilot, didn’t comment when he supported its bottom as they walked over to the desk. He took a sip. She set her cup down.
“Drink,” he said.
“No.”
He nodded. There was no point in arguing. He was only grateful she wasn’t kicking him out already.
She sat down on the bed, scooted backwards until she was resting her back against the wall. He set his bag down first, on the edge of the bed. He hesitated with the zipper but pushed it aside. He took out a thin book and a set of colouring pencils.
He sat down next to her, pushed himself closer until he could rest his head on her shoulder. It was strange, the haze of his mind was pressing in, but he could keep it at bay, somewhat, still, looking at her and waiting to see if he was right. He didn’t know if she needed this; he did, but sometime between the day before and now, he’d decided it wasn’t about him. He could push it off; he had all the time in the world.
She didn’t flinch when he leaned on her. She didn’t move at all. Ryland hesitated again. She was clearly thinking. There was a dilemma there, a silent one that was probably written a hundred times over on her tablet.
“You’re making a good choice,” he said to her, hushed like she always spoke to him in the dark.
He felt the vibrations of her voice through her shoulder, in his jawline and cheekbone.
“What choice?”
“I don’t know,” he adjusted his position, leaned the book on his legs. “I respect you too much and don’t know you enough, to think I know what you’re going to do. But it will be the right thing.”
She sighed. Her breath shuddered.
“Good and right aren’t the same thing.”
“I know,” he risked it and put his hand over hers. She responded with a twitch of her fingers. “I don’t know if all your choices have been good. I spent a lot of time wanting to tell you they were horrible; I’m not so sure now. I think most of them were both. Good and right.”
She didn’t say anything again. Ryland opened the book and flipped through the pages of simple contours of the planets of the solar system, then some rockets. He picked a page at random, a slightly more detailed showcase of the Earth from the perspective of the moon, with stars dotted around.
Eva breathed in loudly. Her hand tensed under his, closed into a fist, then relaxed.
“I’m going to hell,” she said. He almost expected her to sound tearful, but the words were as calm and steady as ever. “I have committed the sin of pride.”
He hummed. He knew that wasn’t the end of it.
“I don’t believe in God. Look at the world. No God would make something like this. Least of all the catholic one,” she said. “But I thought I could keep it all under control. I was prideful. Cocky, you Americans say, is that right?”
He nodded.
“Here is my price. The fictional God wants me to pay,” she pulled her hand from under his and placed it over Ryland’s, wedging her fingers between his own. “You were humming, in the bunker. Singing, later. Ave maria.”
“I was?”
“Yes. Hail Mary.”
He didn’t laugh. It didn’t feel right.
He leaned into her more.
“Comfy,” he said, letting some of the haze through. He waited.
She relaxed, by a little.
That was enough.
He buried in his own universe, then, pulling out crayons to match different areas of the drawing. He stared with the oceans of Earth, in a dark blue, diligently colouring within the lines, putting his whole into his fine motor skills. He liked the Earth. It was beautiful, and Eva would save it, save them all. She was wonderful like that.
He searched for a brighter blue to add a gradient to the water. Her hand slowly moved over his, tracing the same paths that she’d traced into his skin many times before, too many for Ryland to comprehend, now. It was a shock they weren’t yet etched into his skin.
He paused when switching the pencils and turned to her slightly.
“You’re so good,” he said, smiling.
She laughed wetly. A single tear ran down her cheek. She ruffled his hair as more fell down from her eyes, next to her nose, dipping into the lines of her mouth.
“You don’t know that, Rylie.”
“I do,” he said. She had tissues on the desk, close by to her bed as she always did. He reached for one, conscious of how she quickly grabbed onto his colouring book and crayons to keep them from falling off his lap with the motion.
He turned to her, tissue in hand. His free palm found the line of her jaw and he held it, a bit shakily, his balance always off when he felt this young, this vulnerable. He pressed the tissue to her skin beneath her left eye, then her right.
She was looking at him like she was about to start crying again, when he was done. Her mouth was set in a line, and she was digging her nails into her thighs. Her lower lip was shinier and red, like she’d eaten all the skin off it.
Ryland thought for a moment, recalled what she’d done for him. Talking hadn’t worked, and neither did touching or cleaning up her face or tea…
“Wanna colour with me?”
Her brows narrowed over her eyes in confusion.
“What?”
He took the book and placed it in between them, on the duvet.
“Mars,” he pointed to the planet on the page mirroring the one he was working on. “It should be red.”
“I… I know that.”
He nudged the pencils towards her.
“Play with me.”
He laid down. It made them stop touching but made it more comfortable to colour together. He pressed the light blue crayon into the paper, merging its lines with the dark blue from before, sometimes pressing slightly too hard and leaving a textured indent.
Ryland pretend to be focused only on his own picture, but from the edge of where his vision was still sharpened by his glasses, he caught Eva’s hand picking up the red crayon gingerly. She put it to paper like she held a pen, a stiff grip prepared to sign off on document after document. She didn’t press too hard, only barely leaving a trace on the paper.
He yawned, exhaustion slowly creeping upon him. Eva needed him, though.
She was halfway through Mars when tears started falling from her eyes again, leaving wet splotches on paper. Ryland didn’t notice, not until he was ready to switch to colouring the soil of Earth and saw the traces.
“Eva?”
She put her pencil down. He knew his voice sounded too small. He hadn’t seen her cry before tonight.
She lifted her head, her eyes squeezed shut. She opened her arms towards him and he crawled into her embrace, letting her squeeze his ribcage tight. Her tears were falling into his shoulder, wetting his shirt.
“I…” she was trying to say something. He could feel the wetness through the fabric. Despite the crying, her voice was soft and hushed, the same comforting tones that asked him if he’d brushed his teeth and kissed his forehead and told him he was being very brave and that he would be safe. That she would keep him safe. “I… I l—”
She swallowed the rest of the word against his shoulder, stayed there for a moment longer. Ryland remained still, except for the attempts at soothing patterns his hands were making on her back. He didn’t know how to comfort her. She was the caretaker, the mother, he was only a boy. But she was crying, and he felt an emotion in his chest, a tightness that told him he needed to do anything he could to help.
“I care about you,” she said, finally. It was too solemn. Ryland felt his own eyes water, tried to keep it at bay and failed. He sniffled and she pushed away, looking at his face. “No, don’t—”
“You’re crying, Eva, I’m gonna cry too,” he sniffled again. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve, ignoring her disapproving glance. “It’s okay. Your tears are more important, tonight.”
She shut her eyes again, then wrapped him in her arms again so fervently he was startled. She fell on her back, him on top of her, his head pressed into her chest, where her heartbeat sounded steadily, a little faster with the emotion but steady as always, a peaceful thud, thud, thud that Ryland fell asleep to with ease.
“Sleep,” she said. It didn’t have a please but Ryland knew it was a request, or maybe even a plea.
“You haven’t braided your hair,” he muttered.
She coughed, like she was actively trying not to choke. He rose up a little, looking at her face with concern, but it was only more tears and closed eyes again.
“I won’t tonight, I don’t need to, manekke,” she said. “You don’t have to brush your teeth.”
He lifted off her slowly, anyway, meeting her eyes when they opened.
“I wanna put the book on the floor.”
She let him go. He did it as quickly as he could, returned to her instantly, pulled the covers over them both.
She shook for a moment, like she was sick and feverish. Then, she kissed his forehead.
“Goodnight, jochie.”
“’night,” he said, closing his eyes.
They fell asleep with the lights on.
When he woke, he was alone. Not only in her bed, but in the mobile home as a whole. His mouth tasted like dead fish, his knees felt stiff, probably from sleeping in jeans. His shirt was stiff, mostly on his left shoulder but it spread a little to his back on that side. His hair was stuck to his face, his cheeks raw from the salt of his tears.
He sat up, winced when he realised he’d slept with his glasses on. The whole right side of his face hurt, and he could feel the indents the frames had made in skin.
He saw the mug of tea, untouched and now cold, still on the desk. On the floor were his pencils and the book and a mess of tissues. Eva’s boots and coat, as well as her tablet and phone were gone.
He rose up and stretched, set his feet on the floor gingerly to walk around. Maybe it was for the best that she was gone, he thought, embarrassment colouring his memories of the night. Nothing he’d said wasn’t true, but it was so open.
It wasn’t that he wouldn’t have been able to keep a secret in that state. He’d lied to Eva about having brushed his teeth at least once (she had noticed, because it was a laughably easy thing to check). He simply didn’t see any point in hiding how he felt, in not expressing whatever thoughts came to him in the moment, when like that. Only drunks and children tell the truth.
That was a lie. He was pretty sure Dimitri would classify as a drunk at least sometimes, and he’d definitely lied to him then. That, or Grace’s glasses just kept hiding themselves in Dimitri’s coat by accident.
He grabbed his bag and stuffed his things inside. He examined it for a post-it note, a callback to how they used to communicate. He gave the room a cursory glance, too, but saw nothing. Stratt must have been in a rush.
He picked up the tissues off the floor, threw them in her wastebasket, then pondered its almost-full state and took out the trash bag, replaced it with a new one. He tidied up the bed, poured out the leftover tea into the bathroom sink and rinsed the cup with water and hand soap. His own mug was nowhere to be found—maybe she’d washed that one herself.
He lingered, staring at the drawn curtains, which let only small glimpses of outside light into the room. He was stalling, waiting, uncertain for what. To talk with her? He didn’t want to do that; she probably wanted it even less.
He considered opening a window, letting the place air out, but decided against it. There was no use in him remaining here, no use in pretending he was valuable to this place. He’d done his best, and hopefully now Eva Stratt would feel… less like she was Atlas.
He made for the door, opened it without a care and left, his feet bare on the gravel. He left his shoes inside. He couldn’t find it in himself to turn back. Something like Orpheus, he was afraid—afraid Euridice would appear behind him, perhaps. That she would tell him something, that she would explain herself, that she would demand he explain himself in turn. He didn’t know why that horrified him. Maybe he wasn’t leaving Hades but only walking into it; maybe if she appeared there, it would have meant that Hades had come unto the Earth already. That it was too late. Too late to save them all.
He left.
He did not see Eva Stratt for the next two days. Not even a trace.