Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Grace's heart was still racing from the alert Mary had given them twenty minutes ago, her robotic voice startling him and Rocky from their hours of scientific ramblings.

"Blip-D detected."

Blip-D was a little less than 160 meters away, and had shown up out of nowhere, exhibiting concerning levels of radiation and coated in a substance that could have been a drippy, half-butted paint job, but looked suspiciously more like blood.

It was another ship. When they got closer, Rocky reported on the faint but familiar sound of a heartbeat. A heartbeat that sounded like Grace's but slower. Dangerous. Hurt.

The ship was attached to their airlock now, welded shut and coated in the liquid now forming a puddle at the end of it because of the exposure to oxygen and pressurization.

Except it wasn't a ship. It was a submarine, floating in space, looking like it was made with human hands and then beat in a bloody jar within an inch of its little metallic life with someone inside.

It didn't make sense.

But it's transmissions were crackling over Mary's speakers. Nothing tangible, nothing Grace or Rocky could actually understand, but it almost sounded like a voice. And that voice was almost, however vaguely, human.

Regardless, Grace couldn't just leave them.

He wouldn't.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

The Convict was going to die.

He didn't want to. 

No one else seemed to think the same.

Darkness consumed him. Blood swallowed him. Damned silence was his only companion alongside the burns and pain encasing his every nerve.

"Hello?" The darkness asked.

The Convict was dead. At best, dying.

Still, he had always been condemned for his hope.

The Convict raised his heavy fist, and knocked it against the metal wall.

Clang, clang, clang.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

There was blood.

There was so much blood. There was nothing but blood.

Except that wasn't true. There was a person. Humanoid. Moving. Breathing.

Bleeding.

"Oh- oh gosh- oh god-" He did not want to barf in his space helmet. No one understood how much Grace did not want that happening.

His stomach did not seem to agree.

Gritting his teeth and pressing his lips together, he swallowed it back down, his gag reflex making his eyes water.

So much freaking blood.

But a human. Human-ish, at least. Grace didn't want to even look at the scene any longer, but they did not deserve to be in there. Not alone, not at all.

"Okay, okay." He breathed his regulated air carefully, forcing himself to focus on dragging the person to safety and not on what it must smell like in there and where did all of that blood come from? "You're okay. It's going to be okay."

Grace stepped inside the submarine.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

"C-can you hear me? This is Grace. Ryland Grace. You're on the Hail Mary, and- gosh. Can you even understand me? Hello?"

Hail Mary, full of Grace.

An angel come to save him? Or more visions meant to confuse him? Monsters guised as pretty things to twist his mind and force him to drown? Had Ava already died, and this was her replacement?

The darkness became light, and the Convict wished oh so desperately to follow.

Grace sounded nice after all he had been through. (And all he had done.)

The Convict would bask in the light as long as it let him.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

"Eye movement detected. What is two plus two?"

Grace scrambled to the hatch that led to Armando and their guest, motioning for Rocky to stay in his tunnel and away from the contamination area, and almost falling down the ladder in the process.

It hadn't even been a week! (Or- space's equivalent of one) The stranger should not be awake yet! They were all lucky enough that Grace was a universal blood donor to begin with for them to pull through!

The man (as they had determined in washing away the blood and Armando's medical reports - though the extra bones and teeth in his cheek warranted room for speculation) was struggling against his IV and oxygen mask, furiously writhing against the imbalance from the loss of his left arm. Grace rushed to his side, arms raised in a frenzied attempt to be reassuring.

"Hey, you're okay! I can help, let me-"

Grace hasn't even blinked, he was sure of it, but one second he was reaching for the man and the next he was slammed into the ground, the strangers forearm digging into his trachea with enough force to immediately bruise.

"Who are you?" The stranger growled, barely audible through the scratch in his voice and clacking of teeth in the hole of his cheek.

"Grace." He wheezed, scrambling at the arm holding him down. How was he this strong? How was he pinning him down with only one arm?? "R-ryland Grace. You- you're on the Hail- Hail-"

His face must be turning purple, he knew. He was getting lightheaded, the edges of his vision gone fuzzy.

"Hail Mary." The man finished for him, expression strange and far away. Not that Grace could see much of it as he slowly lost consciousness. "Full of Grace."

"Not- not that full. Only me. One of- of me." And one Eridian rock-spider alien, but who's counting?

"Why am I here? What else does the fucking C.O.I. want from me?"

Grace would have answered him, in fact he wished he could have, really, but he knew he wouldn't be staying awake much longer. So he tapped his arm frantically instead, eyes beginning to roll in the back of his head from the lack of oxygen. Gosh this hurt.

Graciously (ha!) he was released.

Inhaling big, sharp gulps of air, Grace tried to roll away, but found that he was already pinned down by the man now straddling him. Gosh he was warm. Grace hadn't felt any other person's skin against his since-

Hm. He couldn't remember.

(This, of course, wasn't anything new.)

(Still...this particular feeling of darkness wasn't his usual feeling of just not knowing. This darkness hurt. Like it didn't want him to remember.

Hm.)

Anyways. New problem.

On one hand, he really wished he could get some proper air in his lungs. On the other, he had not felt the touch or warmth of another human being in- in a long time.

(The longer he laid there, the more a memory tried to push, creeping at the edges of his mind, one he had definitely forgotten.

It hurt.)

(He was pinned, he was forced, he was losing his consciousness and autonomy with every second he didn't stand back up-)

"Why the fuck am I here?" The man demanded again, pulling Grace from his muddled thoughts. He was almost frustrated by it, but his growing headache reminded him that he might not want to remember that one right now.

"We found you." Grace croaked, slowly raising his hand to his own throat in an attempt to soothe. "I don't know what the C.O.I. is but- you were alive so I- I had to save you."

The man planted his one good hand on Grace's chest, keeping him down even as he fought not to tip over when he tried to move his left arm as well. Grace groaned when his spine collided back with the ground.

"Why?"

Grace looked at him properly then, brows drawn in and glasses horribly crooked on his face. He sounded so confused, so angry that he had to pause. The thought genuinely hadn't even crossed his mind among his other questions.

"Why not?"

Those dark, intense eyes locked onto his, squinting and portraying things Grace wouldn't have been able to comprehend on a good day. Some primal, terrified part of him wanted to break eye contact and shrink away to hide from the man that felt like he could look into his soul.

(He knows you're a coward. He knows you couldn't stop him if you tried. He knows you wouldn't be able to stomach all that blood a second time.)

Slowly, like an animal tracking its latest meal, the man looked down at his missing arm and the bandages protecting its stump. His brows furrowed, and then his entire face scrunched at the tight feeling of his healing boils and burned skin across his body, the ointment Armando had applied no doubt unpleasantly sticky.

Finally, he looked down at where his remaining hand was planted on Grace's heaving chest, scrubbed clean right down to his clipped fingernails. Not even a speck of dirt was left past his initial injuries after Grace and Armando had been done with him.

His eyes snapped back to Grace's and- did one just flash red? Surely not, right? It was just a trick of the light, or something.

Right?

(Honestly, with a rock alien as his best friend and a submarine passing as a spaceship light-years away from Earth, Grace couldn't really be surprised if his new friend was mutated from all that space radiation, now could he?)

"You've used your supplies. You're healing me. You- Why?" Curling his fingers into the fabric of Grace's shirt, he slammed him back into the ground, fury beginning to overtake his expression. "I won't go back down there. Kill me here like God intended, but don't fix me up and then send me back down there- I won't do it! I'll kill you myself, you can't put me back in that fucking sub!"

He was too close, and his slurred, croaky words weren't making any sense through his pointed, bared teeth. Tears were shining in his dark eyes, and Grace swallowed harshly in the face of his anger.

"Grace hurt, question?!" Rocky called from the tunnels, the sound of commotion finally becoming enough for him to override Grace's instructions. "New human bad! Grace hurt!"

"I'm fine, Rocky! It's fine!" I hope it's fine.

"What is that?" The man sitting on his stomach twisted towards the sound, hauling Grace halfway upwards with him. The scientist wheezed with his throats protest, but sat up all the same, using shaky arms behind him to hold himself the rest of the way.

"Rocky, my crewmate. Well- basically. He-"

"You said you were alone!" The stranger growled, hair flying in his face when he whipped around to face Grace.

"I said there was only one of me!" He protested weakly, his eyes widening when he looked over the man's shoulder.

He didn't warn him of the robotic arm coming.

The needle was injected smoothly into the side of his neck, making Grace cringe, and the stranger fell on top of Grace almost immediately, forcing them both to the ground with a hearty thud.

Grace decided to just...lay there for a second, arms out beside him like a starfish. A very bruised, and very battered starfish.

Armando would get him in a second.

"Grace??" Rocky called from the distance in his tunnels, still staying away from the contaminated area. Grace huffed, but it came out as little more than a wheeze.

"I'm fine." He croaked. "He's just scared and hurt. We can't really blame him. He thought I was trying to kill him." The big question was, who had tried before? Who or what was the C.O.I? Why had there been a human in a submarine full of blood in space in the first place?

"Rocky blame new human, statement."

Grace sighed again.

"I know, bud." He looked down at the man on top of him. There wasn't much but frizzy black hair, but he still observed.

He hoped he'd be nicer when he woke up. The body heat, no matter how crushing, was nice.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

The Convict's world was precarious each time he opened his eyes. The pain ebbed and flowed with the light, but he didn't know which was the cause. He didn't open them this time.

He must be dead now, surely. There had been a voice, but then, there had been so many voices.

He knew one thing. Ava had left him to die in that sub, with the blood and the fucking eel hunting him in some sick game of chase. The C.O.I shoved him down there as cannon fodder, an experiment, probably.

He wondered if they were happy with their fucking black box.

Hm, is this what being dead was? Ruminating in your last moments before they damned you to your fate?

Hesitantly, and tiredly, he opened his eyes.

Blinding light was all he saw for a while, until it slowly faded into shapes and slight variations of color.

Why was it so clean?

Right. Heaven. How did he get here?

"Eye movement detected. What is two plus two?"

Simon startled, but couldn't really move. He managed to turn his head to the side, his mental guards rising higher when he saw a man sitting on a cot on the other side of the room. He was white, with short, messy blonde hair and glasses hanging strangely from under his chin. Simon watched, perplexed, as the man (angel?) scribbled over smudged, dark stains on his arm. The other was pink and twisted with scars- healed, but not by much.

"You know he won't answer that. Vitals?" The man asked out of nowhere, and Simon jerked in his bed, feeling caged and vulnerable without the ability to fully move. He didn't even look up.

"Vitals stable. Subject is conscious. Cognitive functions questionable." The feminine voice responded. It didn't sound like Ava. It didn't even really sound human.

"What?" The blonde finally looked up, locking eyes with Simon as soon as he did. Gasping and capping his pen, he tossed it on his cot while staring. He didn't rise or attempt to get closer.

Simon waited cautiously. His tongue feeling like led.

"Hey! Hi, hello. Um. Before you get up I'm just gonna say some stuff, please don't jump me again, okay? Okay."

Simon didn't have time to get a word in, but he still felt lathargic anyways. And the man wasn't getting closer, so he figured all he could do was listen anyways.

"I don't know if you remember, but my name is Ryland Grace, and you're on a ship called the Hail Mary, about sixteen light-years away from Earth. My crew mate Rocky and I found your submarine and got you out, and the medical robot Armando over there has been treating you. We're not going to hurt you, so please don't hurt us. Any questions?"

God, did this guy even breathe?

Please don't jump me again, okay? Why would he just say that? It all sounded rehearsed too, like he'd been saying it for hours. What did that mean? Did they have scripts now?

And then Simon caught sight of the dark bruise around his neck now that his head wasn't ducked low as he wrote. It looked fresh.

Flashes of pinning this man down and choking him come back to him. Simon had panicked, and then the man was panicking, and then...darkness.

Lots and lots of darkness.

One thing though, stuck out exponentially.

"Earth is gone." Simon croaked. How fucking stupid were these guys? If they were trying to trick him, they should have at least made it believable. Hail Mary? Grace? Earth?

"What? The man- Grace, hadn't been smiling, but his face dropped. He looked horrified. Heartbroken. Why did it look real? "What- what do you mean gone? When?"

"Years ago." Squinting in disbelief, Simon rolled his head along with his eyes, unable to face the man pretending to be human. "You should know that."

"I should- why should I know that?"

"Because everyone does. You're fucking with me." Then, smaller in a way Simon fucking hated, "-I want you to stop."

Silence. Simon really hated that silence.

Except this time, it didn't last long.

"I'm not messing with you." A soft voice spoke up. "I promise."

Simon scoffed. It scathed his throat. It didn't hurt like it should have.

There was the sound of shuffling, and that made him nervous, so Simon looked back. Grace was standing, but he was moving away from him, not towards. There was a ladder, and when Simon stretched his neck, he saw that it led to a hatch. Great, if he wanted to escape, he'd be climbing with one arm and numb legs.

Just his luck.

"I'll prove it. Wait here, I'll be right back."

"Where the fuck am I supposed to go?" Simon grumbled, but it was mostly to himself. Grace's legs were always slipping out of the ceiling. Simon stared at the spot as feeling slowly buzzed back in his limbs, allowing him to wiggle his fingers and toes. He didn't get much further than that because, surprisingly, Grace really didn't take long.

Grace came back with a small whiteboard tucked under his arm with a title already written in shaky letters facing Simon as he descended.

Who am I?

N̶a̶m̶e̶? Dr. Ryland Grace
S̶c̶i̶e̶n̶t̶i̶s̶t̶?̶ ̶G̶o̶o̶d̶ ̶a̶t̶ ̶m̶a̶t̶h̶? Molecular biologist
K̶i̶d̶s̶?? Middle school teacher
F̶r̶i̶e̶n̶d̶s̶? Carl, Stratt (?), Yao, Ilyukhina
P̶a̶r̶t̶n̶e̶r̶?̶ ̶s̶i̶n̶g̶l̶e̶,̶ ̶g̶a̶y̶(̶?̶) Undecided

"Oh, ha." He rubbed it clean with his right arm while he sat back in his cot, smudging his pen marks even more and leaving faint marks behind on the board before he was writing again with a green marker in his lap. "Sorry about that."

Simon grunted, unable to think of anything useful to say. Grace continued to scribble.

"Um, by the way, I never got your name with- uh, everything." Grace glanced at him over the top of his glasses, his sparkling blue eyes bright and inquisitive. "Would you mind sharing?"

Shouldn't he already know if he's with the C.O.I? He'd definitely know if it was the blood eel again, stuck in his head. It could be a trick, another ploy for a false sense of security.

But...

Somehow, this felt real.

Simon didn't know how he could tell.

"...Simon." He muttered. For some reason, Grace grinned.

"Awesome. It's nice to meet you Simon."

Yeah, he doubted that.

The angel didn't seem to care.

"Okay." Grace announced, flipping the board for Simon to see his illegible words and crude diagrams. "I'll go first."

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

It was real. Earth was still here. The stars were still here.

Part of him wanted to deny it. The part that wanted to fight and bite and survive. But his hallucinations had never gone on this long (he thinks) or this clearly. He certainly never knew this much about science, and he doubted the eel did either.

It would have all made more sense, he knew, if the space stations disappeared instead of the stars.

He was really here. Somehow on a ship called the Hail Mary, with a scientist named Grace and an alien named Rocky (which he had yet to meet), in fresh clothes and clean skin for the first time in years (if not longer).

He just didn't know how it could be true with his version of reality.

He'd gained enough strength during the story (retelling? History?) to sit up and carefully accept the whiteboard and marker from Grace once he was done.

It seemed fitting to share the horrors at the first sign of hope.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

Grace was really going to throw up this time.

The stars, the planets, the universe- extinguished, left with nothing but ghostlight.

Moons with oceans of blood and creatures straight out of a nightmare. Soil earthed from flesh and death. Voices and X-rays and colonies on the planet Mars. Space stations and cults and disturbing Fathers that made children murderers. Suicide missions and false promises, all leading to where they were now. (And doesn't that sound familiar?)

Grace watched the man, the survivor, Simon (he who listens) struggle for words and gradually taper off from his explanation, his half-formed drawings set aside in favor of clenching his hand.

"I just...I just wanted to live." Simon said quietly, his voice gruff from speaking so long. "All I wanted was to live. I'd live out the rest of my days in that fucking jail cell, I would, but if they- if they put me back in that goddamned sub again I'd- I'd-" Sobs hitched his breathing, making speech much more difficult. Grace's heart hadn't hurt this much since he had to explain to Rocky what radiation was, and why it'd killed his friends. 

"I just wanted to live. W-why didn't anyone else want that?"

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

Simon had barely uttered his last words, sounding weak and pathetic with his tears, when Grace was crouched in front of him, hands hovering but not even close to touching.

"I do." He said, stronger and clearer than anything else he'd said since Simon woke up. Like he meant it. "You're allowed to want to live, Simon. You deserve to live. I want you to live."

Fuck, when was the last time someone had just said his name without contempt? 

(When had they said his real name at all?)

Simon watched Grace furrow his eyebrows and chew his cheek through blurry vision for a while. So long, in fact, that when the angel raised his hand slowly and deliberately towards him, he hardly flinched. He'd seen the decision be made.

Still, Simon braced himself. He did not know for human touch, slow and careful or not, to be particularly kind.

But when Grace just hovers his fingers over the shoulder without bandages and waits there, Simon can't find it in himself to shy away from the tingling anticipation at the almost-touch.

He forced his eyes to catch on baby blue, and nodded.

Grace's hold was firm but nowhere near bruising as his hand encased the meat of his shoulder, his thumb resting over his collarbone while the rest pressed comfortingly against his skin.

Simon didn't mean to melt into warm touch so completely, but it just felt so fucking nice being in the hands of someone who didn't want him dead.

He was really trying to believe that. God, did he want to believe it.

If he had been standing, he doesn't think he'd have been able to stay upright as he unclenched the fist on his thigh and hooked it around the scientists' waist to tug him closer to the edge of his bed, snug against his side as he tucked his forehead into the hollow of his neck.

Grace tensed at the unexpected action, but his shoulder hold quickly morphed into a hug, both hands coming up to span across his shoulder blades and carefully around the stump that had been his left arm. He pressed his temple into Simon's hair and held him as his body shook and his throat tore itself bloody and raw from his wretched screams.

He didn't shush him or force him against him in an unyielding embrace. Simon knew that he could pull away even in his weakest state. He didn't feel trapped or cornered or in danger.

He felt the body flush against his begin to tremble beyond the aftershocks of Simon's own constrictions, and held on just a bit tighter.

"You're allowed to want to live. You deserve to live. I want you to live."

I want to live too.

They didn't let go for a very long time.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

Eventually, Simon does get to meet Rocky.

He doesn't know much about the alien, but Simon gets the feeling he doesn't like him before he even chirps and sings in his strangely beautiful yet hostile way.

Grace, apparently, had built a translator in the beginning of his friendship with the rock alien, but they'd been together for so long that he hardly needed it anymore. He pulled it back up for Simon's benefit, and although Rocky didn't carry any expletives in his vocabulary, the music notes without a written translation were clear enough.

It was intimidating as much as it was amusing, watching the alien scuttle around his tunnels to talk to them as Grace gave him a tour of the rest of the Hail Mary, the blonde scolding him as much as he scolded Simon for trying to teach him the 'bad words' he seemed to be missing.

(He earns some points, he thinks, when they work together to rally Grace into bed. And to eat. And drink water.

...And that one time he'd managed to type up the bad words into his translator while they watched Grace sleep- an oddly calming pastime they took up when Simon couldn't face what laid behind his eyes in the darkness.)

(He knew Rocky and Grace did the same for him occasionally, but he found it comforting rather than creepy. He didn't think about it too hard. The point is, he made another friend.)

...

They don't know where Simon came from in correlation of this universe, where the universe actually existed. Grace proposed an alternate universe, the multiverse- a lot of verses, really. Simon was moreso dealing with the fact that he was staying. That he could stay. He didn't have to go back to prison, or the blood ocean, or that godawful sub ever again.

Grace was letting him stay.

Rocky too, though with a much greater reluctance.

Grace says he's warming up to him.

...

Eventually, Grace talked about his less than up-to-standard memory. The explanation turns into stories of what he had recovered, and this led to hours passed with Grace's voice filling the dull hum of the Hail Mary's electricity.

"Carl was, like, my best friend I think. He helped me figure out how to breed Astrophage and everything! He-..." Grace had a suddenly sheepish look on his face, and he crooked his glasses awkwardly back on his nose from where they had been hanging by his ear. "Sorry. You probably don't want to keep hearing me ramble about this..."

Simon, who had been resting his chin in his palm as he watched Grace talk with half-lidded eyes, sat up like he'd been poked with a sharp stick, suddenly on high alert.

"No. Keep fucking talking. What did Carl do?" He recognized the name from the original whiteboard, and he wondered about the other names listed next to Friends?.

Grace looked back, startled. And then he smiled, a bright, beaming thing that made Simon's heart flex almost painfully.

"Well, first of all, he bought me the supplies. And the Skittles. Did you have Skittles back home? Nevermind, stupid question. They're hard candy that come in different colors. And he'd steal my Twizzlers, but then I just started bringing extra."

"Mhm." Simon acknowledged, settling back on his side of the cot they were currently sharing, their socked feet almost touching where they were curled up facing each other.

"And Stratt- well, she was an interesting one for sure, but..."

And then Grace kept talking. For hours. About Earth and science and Rocky and his kids.

It was never quiet enough for Simon's head to get too loud.

He liked it.

...

Grace shows him the Don't-Go-Crazy room pretty early on, full of blank screens and an electrical panel set to the side with a large platform in the middle.

It doesn't look like much.

But then they're surrounded by life and water and plants and trees and suddenly Simon is sobbing with his one arm wrapped around himself in a vice, his pendant swinging like a totem of ancient times. 

Grace doesn't judge him for that either. He doesn't tease or laugh or call him pathetic for letting his tears fall. He just sits with him, rubbing down the knobs on his spine (even the extra five) and letting him leech off of his warmth as they watch the sun light-years away shine through green, living leaves.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

Even though he spoke of it fondly, everytime Grace thought of returning to earth, of touching another human being, of so much as feeling a blade of grass between his fingers, he felt homesick. 

He also felt a physical aversion at the mere suggestion. Even though he found solace in Simon's calloused, warm hand in his own, sometimes he wanted nothing more than to rip his skin off right after. He did not want to touch that planet, he did not want to touch its earth or swim in its oceans or run in its grass. Not there. Not again.

(But surely someone missed him. Surely he had friends?)

(̶N̶o̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶e̶n̶d̶,̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶w̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶m̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶e̶d̶.̶)̶

Grace isn't sure why, but something tells him not to push those memories too hard. Everything past the lab explosion and Stratt ordering him to find their friends' replacements was bordered with that mean, snapping darkness. It served as a warning to his wants of breaching it, of finding out more, of finally fully remembering.

If Grace knew one thing about himself (and admittedly he didn't always know much) it was that his fear often out won his curiosity. He was scared, and he was a coward.

He let the thoughts fade.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

Grace was working on something in his lab that Simon didn't even bother to comprehend, and Rocky didn't seem to be interested in that particular part of Grace's work, so they opted to leave him to it and settle in the Don't-Go-Crazy room.

Grace had assured him early on that he had unrestricted access to their pirated movies and shows, as well as all of the books available on the internet through his laptop. Simon was still hesitant, wondering that surely anytime would have some limits, but...

He's learning to accept the things Grace says at face value.

Simon had the laptop hooked up the room in his lap, Rocky a few feet beside him in his xenonite ball to give his opinion if he so chose.

He chooses to give his opinion a lot.

"Rocky not like that one, statement. Sad sad sad."

"No. Too much fleshy leaky blobs. Ew."

"Rocky already seen. Simon not like."

As Simon scrolled to the whims of a rock-spider alien, he misclicked something somewhere, he must have, because suddenly he was looking at files with titles very unfamiliar to the movie slogans he'd just been browsing.

These looked different. Confidential, came to mind but Simon didn't really know what to make of it. The file on the top left of the screen, the newest one, caught his eye.

PHM_GRACE_RYLAND_9.13.23

There was a small square that held an image. A blob of yellow in front of a background of almost black. Simon squinted to try and see more details, but found none.

"Rocky Simon curious. Have Grace name. We watch, question?"

Simon shrugged, because why the hell not, the alien was just as curious as him and, technically, he also had permission.

He clicked the blurry square, and the black screens around them flickered to life.

The video file started with a person in a yellow coat entering a plain room from the outside, so they could not see them once they were inside. The quality wasn't the best, but it definitely wasn't as bad as the remnants of such technology on Eden. He could make out things with a fair amount of detail, so he assumed Rocky could too with his special camera-tablet. There were soft voices crackling over the speakers, the words incoherent, and then a commotion as more people entered. Shadows flashed behind the blinds, one darting across the room and getting taller in the corner before it surpassed the rest and burst through the door like they were running from something dangerous.

The others went after them.

Simon sat up, feeling his own breathing grow ragged as more and more people joined the chase throughout the video. The person in yellow never slowed down, pushing faster and faster, their coat flying behind them like a trail for their assailants to follow.

The camera switched. Suddenly Simon had a very clear view of the runners face.

Ryland Grace's face.

Rocky clicked and chittered lowly beside him, his tablet presenting the same image. He wasn't happy about it either.

Grace tripped and stumbled but he never stopped, losing the dark beanie on his head along the way and sending it right into someone's face. He only looked over his shoulder once.

And then he just ran faster.

He'd reached a fence. The fence. Tall and made of harsh barbed wire, but he lunged for it, arms outreached and fingers clawed like he planned to climb like something beyond his biology.

He didn't make it.

Tackled from behind by the two closest grown men, he was forced face-first into the ground, the audio crackling with the shouts and demands of the guards.

But Grace was the loudest.

"No- no! Please! I don't wanna die I don't want this please, please-"

His sobs were ripped from them as they thrashed, his voice broken and cracked, held down by every limb as a man in a white lab coat approached from off screen with something in his hand. Once they were in Grace's line of sight, he started fighting harder, but to no avail.

"Nononono no! I don't wanna die! Stratt! Why are you doing this?! You're murdering me! Don't do it! Don't do-"

Stratt? Grace's boss? The stern woman with unexpected bouts of humanity and familiarity he had found solace in? The woman Grace spoke of with respect and a healthy dose of trepidation, but ultimately fondly?

The man in white crouched, injecting something into his restrained leg. Slowly, the fight began to drain.

Simon clutched his shirt over his chest, trying to comprehend this wailing, desperate man on the ground with the kind and compassionate and beautiful angel that had saved him.

Who would do this to him? Why?

A Black man dressed in a black coat stood a bit away, casting a shadow over Grace in his final moments, blocking out the sun and its light. Grace spoke softer, but no less desperate than before.

He sounded tired. Hurt. Betrayed.

(He was.)

"Carl- Carl, please."

Carl? Candy-stealing Carl? Best-friend Carl? Co-father of the Astrophage Carl?

Watching Grace be strangled and constrained for slaughter, Carl?

"You know who you are." A quieter, unfamiliar voice said. Simon hated how devoid of worry and anger it was."You're gonna do great."

"Please-"

The cameras audio, somehow, barely caught the end of his sentence.

"I don't want to die..."

Simon feels sick having his own words said in another's voice. In Ryland Grace's voice. Rocky hummed lowly, sinking down in his ball in clear distress. Simon stared as the screen froze and whirred to the end, landing on the middle-grade image of Grace stuck to the ground in his yellow coat on a bed of green grass, surrounded by his colleagues. Who he had told Simon he'd thought of as friends.

Bile burned in his mouth and he clenched his teeth. Rocky was singing deeply beside him, curled up at the bottom of the ball much like how Simon was curled and holding himself.

"Earth hurt Grace. Kill Grace. Bad bad bad bad..."

Simon couldn't speak.

"Oh."

The two jumped at the sudden voice. Simon whipped around, gasping at Grace's sudden appearance. Apparently even Rocky had been too involved with the video that he hadn't processed Grace coming.

The blonde was staring at the screen- at himself from years past. Simon didn't like the way his voice trembled with that one word, distant and breathy. Tears were already falling from his cheeks, unaware.

"I...I'd forgotten about that." Grace spoke into the following silence, his hand gripping the edge of the doorway until his knuckles turned white. He looked gutted, lost in wherever his mind had taken him.

And one thing become painfully, achingly clear.

Simon had not been the only one sacrificed for the lives of others.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

Rocky didn't know that was what leaky humans could sound like.

He thought it was a quiet affair. Sure, Grace's sobs were a little loud, but they were mostly hiccups and ragged breaths caught in his throat, searching for more air. And some of those were even good tears, leaked with happiness and relief.

These were not those cries.

These were brutal and higher-pitched. Pleading, begging, despairing.

(It sounded like his crew mates in their last days, unreachable and hurting.

It sounded like he was dying.)

The quieter he got, the longer he laid on the ground, the worse it became. Grace whined and cried silently, his words becoming weak, dwindling into small things that only held larger and heavier weights.

His friend had been hurt irreversibly by the people he had trusted and adored. His friends, his crew, his co-workers. Stratt - weird mean boss lady. Carl - kind deadpan father. Earth - home. Peace. Hurt.

Earth betrayed Grace, and he still saved them. He still almost died for them again just for a chance of their survival. For his home. His friends. His kids.

Earth made Grace sound like that.

Rocky hated Earth.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

Grace remembered what happened after the explosion now.

They had given him a choice. Or- he thought they had. He couldn't do it, though. He knew it was a one-way ticket to the stars and he'd said no. He didn't have parents, or a partner, or a even a freaking dog, but he had his kids. Dozens and dozens of them, and he held them so close to his heart even without his memory. They were why he had done the project. They were why he worked with Stratt.

But then she'd betrayed him. She sent the doctor after him.

Grace watched as the video automatically restarted after a time, now muted from Simon's panicked button-pushing, but he remembered it all like it had just happened.

She'd sent them all after him. The guards and the technicians and the scientists he'd been so excited to work with and-

And Carl. Carl just stood there, not an inch of remorse on his face as he stared down at him, watching him fight and struggle and beg for them to let him go.

Grace remembered the chase in fragments, and he knew it wasn't because of his spotty memory (panic and adrenaline could be a funny thing). He did remember the fear though, crippling his lungs even though he fought it, and the guttural feeling of being hunted by people stronger and bigger than him.

People that wanted him dead.

And they'd caught him.

He'd been so close, too. He didn't have to remember it, he saw it on the screens. He'd been a foot away, maybe less, from that wired fence. It may have been electrified and he may have fried his brains along with any last hope for humanity, but he would've still done it. He almost had.

God, he'd almost killed everyone. (He'd almost survived).

Grace couldn't bare it. He knew he was a coward, but this. This was just disgusting. He'd put himself over an entire planet. He'd threatened to sabotage the mission just because he didn't want to die.

(Gosh, did he want to live.)

And the worst part was that Stratt was right. Even with her betrayal, even with her detached tone and brisk words, she was right. He was too invested to back down now. He'd done it. He'd found the solution, he'd made first contact with aliens and they worked together to save the universe.

He found another human in the depths of face, drenched in blood and locked in a submarine with no plausible way out.

And Grace was still a coward.

Slowly and not at all gracefully, he staggered to the platform with Simon and Rocky and watched himself struck to the ground once more, his insides feeling shakier than his outsides. Was he going to throw up again?

Rocky reached him first, knocking his hamster ball into Grace's hip when he slumped to the ground.

"Grace hurt, question? Heart weird. Lungs weird. Grace leaking. Grace OK, question?"

"Yeah, yeah...I..." He could barely think, let alone put those thoughts into words. The recording reached its end, and that seemed to jolt Simon into action as he reached for the laptop and shut it all off, leaving them in the soft lights left on the walls. Grace blinked, faintly processing the tears sticking to his skin and making his eyes feeling gunky.

"Grace?" Simon prompted softly. When he still didn't really respond, he shifted to face him properly and cracked his knuckles as he flexed them. "...Ryland?"

Grace's eyes snapped to his, finding them as dark as ever, but wider and wetter than usual. It sparked the connection from his brain to his mouth, and then he was off.

"It's...I was selfish. I wasn't supposed to go on the mission, but our scientists died in an explosion- Astrophage miscalculation. Stratt wanted me to go. I wasn't- wasn't even an astronaut. I'm not. But I was selfish and didn't want to go and they- they-" he stared at the screen, black and blank, but the image of himself pinned to the ground was burned into his retinas. He swore he could still feel the dirt clumped beneath his fingernails. "I'm a coward."

"Grace brave, statement. Grace save Earth, even when not deserve it. Rocky Grace save stars. Grace hero."

"You're allowed to want to live." Simon tacked on gruffly, repeating the words Grace had said all that time ago. Tears immediately welled again, and Grace's lips trembled. He squeezed his eyes shut, only serving to make his recent memories stronger.

"I...it was me or billions of people, guys. Obviously I had to- I should have-"

"You deserve to live, Ryland." Simon insisted, shuffling closer until their legs were touching. Rocky pressed closer on his other side. Wide blue eyes stared at Simon, barely seeming to process that he was there at all. "It may have been the only way, but you deserve to live. You deserved to have that choice. It's okay to want to live. You found a way to have both, Grace. It's okay."

"Okay." Grace sounded so small, so helpless. He hated it. He wished he could believe him. 

Simon hooked his arm around his shoulders and dragged him against his chest. The angle was awkward, and the twist of their bodies wasn't entirely comfortable, but it was like a dam broke. Grace gasped wetly into his neck, and then he had nails digging into his shoulder blades and a sobbing teacher buried against his skin, his entire body trembling against his. Simon held him tighter, matching the strength he was holding on with. 

Strangely enough, the pressure made it easier to breathe.

Rocky pressed his xenonite ball halfway into Grace's lap, giving him warmth and soft chittering musical notes that didn't translate into any real words, but gave comfort all the same.

Slowly, Simon started rocking them side to side, pressing his mouth into Grace's messy blonde hair to murmur soft comforts and reparative reassurances, dropping the occasional kiss to his scalp while his hand rubbed soothing patterns into his back.

"You're alive now, Ryland. You get to keep living."

"Grace live on Erid with Rocky Adrian Simon. Grace live long time. Erid not hurt Grace."

"Thank you." Grace cried, sparing an arm to wrap around Rocky's portable enclosure. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

Simon kept rocking. Rocky kept humming. The Hail Mary kept traveling. The planets kept spinning. The stars kept blinking.

And Ryland Grace kept the people he loved most.

They didn't let him go.