Chapter Text
Grace’s hand hurt.
His eyes can’t open all the way. It is as if there were heavy weights holding them down. He was lying down on something–it was really soft.
It’s so hard just to even think let alone move. He needed whatever is in his hand to come out now.
He grasps at his arm sluggishly, too tired to even cry. He manages to feel a bunch of plastic and yanks hard. A sharp pain shocks in the back of his hand followed by a stinging.
Someone nearby yelps and walkie talkie static comes through.
“Grace, Grace, hey, it’s okay.” Large hands hold his arms down gently and Grace wails. “Sshh, it’s okay, it’s okay.”
A smaller hand slides into his, gripping his palm carefully. A soft voice whispers something gentle and kind that he can’t make out, but it soothes the growing agitation all the same.
His mind grows fuzzy as colder rubbery hands take over, pricking the back of his hand again. Grace sobs as they wrap something soft around his hand. He wiggles his fingers but the contraption doesn’t budge.
He tries to push the hands, anything to get them away from him. They’re too close, it’s too hot, and he can’t see.
His vein is slightly cold and his limbs grow heavy. Someone is petting his hair, humming slowly. “Everything will be okay Grace,” the new person says. Her voice is so so familiar. “Just go back to sleep.”
Something in his heart tells him that he should comply and he falls asleep again.
He wakes up slowly this time. His limbs feel sort of floaty and tingly. He sucks something once, twice and it is as if his whole nervous system starts relaxing. He reaches up to grab it only to be met with a hard plastic handle. He spits and it falls to his side. A pacifier? He doesn’t own any.
He stretches his arm to the side and touches a tube. He cracks his eyes open and everything floods back in him all at once.
“Oh, fudge,” he whispers, pushing himself up by the elbows. He doesn’t know where he is, he doesn’t even know whose clothes he’s wearing. His hand is bandaged with a small tube running out of it where an IV would be. He instinctively grabs to pull at it.
“Do not touch that Dr Grace,” a voice sternly says.
He looks up to see Stratt sitting at a desk, typing away on her laptop. Oh he’s so flipping screwed.
Grace drops it immediately. “Sorry.” His mouth feels sticky with saliva as he pushes himself to lean against the headboard. “How long was I out?”
“About 5 hours,” Stratt answers, folding her hands in front of her. She reads something on her screen before giving her whole attention to Grace and studies him for a moment. He silently wishes that someone else would send her an email right about now.
“You are using suppressants,” she states without room for argument.
Grace twists the blanket in his lap and nods. The metaphorical cat is out of the metaphorical bag.
“I am not angry,” she prefaces, which Grace knows is a lie. Of course she is angry, who wouldn’t be? “But I need to know. Did you tamper with suppressant patches?”
She probably already knows the answer—there isn’t a lot that she cannot find out in the Vat. “Yeah,” Grace says quietly before coughing. Stratt slams her laptop shut and rounds the table. She picks up a small cup of water with a bendy straw and sits on the edge of the bed.
She holds it up to his mouth and he gratefully gulps it down, the cool liquid soothing his throat.
“I need to know what exactly you put in them.”
“Caffeine… The measurements and duration are in my office drawer.”
“Okay,” she quickly taps something on her phone and puts it on the bedside table face down. That cannot be a good thing, she’s attached to her phone.
“Lots of people do it,” Grace lamely argues just to fill the silence.
“Have you done it before?”
“Uh, I feel like that’s a trick question.”
“It’s not, I need to know.”
Grace nods and looks away. “From 11th grade to PhD. A little in Grover Cleveland.”
“Regularly?”
“Sometimes.”
“What is sometimes?”
“I don’t know…” Something in Grace chips away and he uses his sleeve to wipe at his eyes. This is going all very very wrong.
“Okay,” Stratt leans back a little. “Even without the tampered versions, which you will show me exactly how and where you did it—the usual directions say to use one for no more than 6 hours a day and you decide to put ten on your body at a time?”
“I forgot,” Grace defends. “I put one on and sometimes forget to take the other off…”
“You forgot?” Stratt repeats a bit more sternly. ”There was four times the amount of suppressants in your body along with heightened cortisol and adrenaline. Dr Ingram suspects mild serotonin syndrome too but there is no way to currently test for it.”
Grace shrinks in on himself and Stratt sighs. If he were smaller, maybe he could make himself disappear. Something to not be in this room with Stratt’s disappointing gaze at him. She looks so disappointed in him.
“Why did you do it?”
“There’s so much work to do…”
Stratt shakes her head. “The project cannot work if my scientists are falling sick from neglecting their drop and supplementing with tampered suppressants.” Something ugly twists in Grace’s tummy and he wants to melt into the bed and become one with the sheets.
“There are currently seven Little crew members who are being treated for Suppressant Fever in the sick bay, eight including you. Ten more are getting their systems flushed of any leftover suppressants as a precautionary measure. You are on a liquid diet for today and maybe tomorrow because you haven’t been eating regularly,” Eva recounts. “Imagine if you had a sudden drop when you were handling Astrophage? Or if Steven Hatch did while working on the spin drives with Dmitri? I refuse to lose my team for something as preventable as this. So tell me, Dr Grace, how is any of this okay?”
Something in Grace breaks.
“I didn’t want to, but then Steve was having trouble staying big while working on the beetles and he asked for help and then Saylee asked the same thing and I wanted to h-help,” Grace hiccups, the words pouring out of his mouth like a fountain, he can’t stop. “I did it in grad school, and everything went okay—”
“Dr Grace, you need to breathe—”
“And then now there’s space dots, and we’re gonna send people into space to die and so many people on Earth are going to die.” Grace’s fingers twist on his shirt, trying to pull it away from himself, its so hot, he can’t breathe. “And suppressants are easy, its just biology and th-the drop zone is so loud and sc-scary—”
“Grace, please—”
“And I’m so so sorry, you’re so busy and you’re here and mad at me and everyone is in the sick bay, and I didn’t mean it to go this far. I’m so tired and my hand hurts and my lab cultures need to be checked every 3 hours and I just wanted everyone to take us seriously, and I-I-I could have killed us—”
“Ryland,” Stratt says gently, more gently than he deserves for putting everything at risk.
“Eva,” he breathes. A smaller part of him takes over and his hands fall limply to his side and he wails. Loud and breathy and it hurts his ears.
Eva gathers him in her arms, slowly maneuvering them so she’s leaning against the headboard and he’s halfway in her lap, leaning against her chest. The sobs wrack through his lungs—the sound of pain and regret filling the space.
Being held like this Grace could pretend that they weren’t the most powerful person in the world and the leading astrophage researchers—just a Caregiver and Little, holding on to each other tightly. Nothing outside of that room existed at that moment. She holds him tight and sways them both gently, cognizant of the IV drip sticking out of his hand. He takes a shaky breath in. All the pieces of his soul are being held together by the sheer force of will that is Eva Stratt.
“I am not angry at you Ryland. I am worried and a little disappointed. But not angry.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, slightly stuffy with all the mucus in his nose.
Eva puts a tissue to his face, holding it by his nose. “Blow,” she instructs. Ryland blows his nose, wincing as Eva wipes the snot away. Ew, gross.
“It is also my fault and I apologize Ryland,” she says, balling up the tissue and tossing a trash can by the bed. “For my oversight and poor judgment.”
“What are—” Grace answers, somewhat confused.
“I have failed to realize what this kind of high stress environment would do to highly educated Littles with access to laboratories and an endless supply of suppressants. You’re right, despite military policies, drop zones are not enough. I should have looked into it the moment I hired you.”
“It’s not your fault,” Ryland repeats miserably, resting his head on her shoulder. “You have to save the literal planet.”
“Yes, well. That is my burden to bear,” Eva answers. Grace shakes his head, but doesn’t argue—its not a fight he can win and he’s so so tired.
“What happens now?” Grace asks. “Are you going to fire me?”
“What?” Eva says, stunned. “That’s ridiculous, no one is getting fired. I chose you all for a reason.”
“Oh.”
“Now you rest until medical clears you.” She brushes a hand down his back and he can feel himself going boneless. “No running around the lab for a while.”
“And after?” he whispers.
“That is for us to figure out after.” Eva rests her hand on the small of his back. “Now I want to figure out how we can help you drop from now onwards.”
“We don’t have to do anything,” Ryland says lamely. “I don’t want anything.”
“And that is what I am worried about,” Eva retorts. “There is no reason for you to restrict yourself until it makes you sick.” She readjusts her hold on him, resting her chin on the top of his head. “If you could choose one thing in the world to have when you drop, what would it be?”
“I don’t need anything,” Ryland says. He does not whine, nope.
Eva gives him a flat stare. “Choose anyway.”
Grace turns to hide his face on her shoulder and considers it. If he doesn’t pick something, Eva might just run through a whole catalogue to see what sticks. “Can it be a book?” he finally asks.
“Depends on the book. If it's work related then no.”
“But—”
“Ryland, no.”
Ryland’s bottom lip juts out in protest (he does not pout). He chews the inside of his cheek before sighing. “You know the Little Prince?”
“Yes, it is the most popular book after Charles Dickens.”
He leans back to look up at her. “How do you know that?”
“You are not the only one on the ship with fun facts. But yes, Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry?”
“Can I have a copy? The English one.” He fidgets with the buttons on his shirt. There’s pretty stars on them. “My teacher used to read it to us.”
“Just English? No sudden French abilities I am unaware of?” she asks in a playful tone (well, playful for her).
“Hey—no teasing, I’m severely injured.” Ryland can almost hear her raising an eyebrow at him. “Oh and um…”
“Yes?”
“Finger paints?” He asks before mumbling out a little quieter, “It’s easier to drop when there’s finger paints.” It has always been a sure fire way of dropping whenever things got too hard. There’s just something about the soft paint on his fingers that made his Little side fall quick and easy.
“Will you promise to use it on paper and not walls?”
“Eva!” He yelps scandalized. His face turning red as she chuckles at him. “You don’t have to get them, its not important to the mission.”
Eva turns to look at him. “If these items ease your hesitance to drop then it is very important.”
“Oh,” he says shakily, his throat suddenly incredibly wet. Tears spring in his eyes again. He tries to wipe it with his hand but the IV is there under all the bandages. Someone wrapped his hand in bandages so he couldn’t pull out his IV—they cared enough to stop him from accidentally hurting himself. His bottom lip wobbles dangerously.
“Would you like a bottle?” Eva gently asks. “Medical sent one with a meal replacement 5 minutes before you woke up. It’s in the warmer.” Right, liquid diet.
“I-I,” Ryland stammers. Part of him wants to get up, to walk away. Another softer part wants to stay and accept the comfort he has so long been denied. “I don’t know.”
“Hold this.” Eva puts something in his hands. It’s a small brown dog with floppy ears. She looks really nice.
“‘Oh,” Ryland mumbles and squeezes the dog. “It’s soft.”
“It is.” Eva agrees gently. “Would you like to give it a name?”
Ryland let out a small gasp, turning the toy in his hands. “Is mine?”
He never really bought toys for himself. He had a penguin toy as a present in college but it got lost when he moved to San Francisco. He never found it within himself to buy another—it didn’t feel right. But the doggy was so pretty.
“It’s yours.”
“Oh.” Ryland scrunches his nose. He’s always wanted to have a dog but his aunt was allergic and in San Francisco he never made enough money to keep a pet other than a rock. He chewed the inside of his cheek. “Laika.”
Eva makes a knowing sound. “It’s a good name.”
“Did you know that Laika means barker?” He holds her up, looking at her little legs and mouth. It was sewn in but Ryland was sure she could bark really loud too if she wanted to.
“I did not know that.”
“Uh huh, the real Laika had really loud barks,” Ryland says, holding the puppy closer. “My students really love Laika,” he whispers, petting the dolls' ears. She was so little and soft with really kind eyes. “We had a picture of her on the wall.”
“You must miss your students a lot.”
“Yeah,” Grace says, rubbing his nose. “They really liked listening about Laika even though they thought it was sad.”
“It is sad.”
“Laika was only in space for-for less than two hours and then she-she died,” Ryland hiccups through building tears. His face crumples and he’s tucked into Eva’s side.
“Oh Ryland,” Eva says with a sigh. She rubs Ryland’s shoulder, as he cries into his new dog friend. “It’s okay, it’s okay. Just let it out.”
“I don’t want them to die.”
“Laika?”
Ryland shakes his head. “Yáo, Olesya, and DuBois,” Ryland hiccups. He spent so much time with them–teaching them about astrophage, prepping Martin and Annie for all the skills they need to use and then die. “I don’t want them to die.”
“I know.” Eva rubs his back.
“But they have to die.” Ryland’s nose feels all snotty. “I needa do a good job here so they can do a good job in space.”
“You have been doing a good job,” Eva praises and Ryland’s heart feels heavy. “The team said you’ve been doing an excellent work.”
He makes a loud, keening sound that feels too broken to be human. “B-but, lotta the science team’s sick and and and, it's my fault—” He takes a shuddering breath.
“You’re going to make yourself sick, Ryland.” Eva strokes a hand on his back. “It’s not your fault, we should have kept a closer look and checked on all of you earlier.”
Ryland smashes his face on her shoulder, trying to find a way to catch his breath again.
“Did you know Laika wasn’t supposed to go to space?” Ryland finally whispers.
“I did not know that,” Eva answers, putting one arm around his back.
“Uh huh, there was a different dog named Albina who already flew twice before. But she just had babies and the scientists thought it was mean to separate a mommy from her babies.”
“That does sound mean.”
Ryland’s head starts to hurt something painful again.
“‘still important,” Ryland murmurs tiredly.
Eva makes a confused sound. “What do you mean?”
“Laika,” Ryland answers softly. “She wasn’t a mommy and didn’t have puppies, but she was still important.”
“She is,” Eva answers. “But without her, I don’t know if we could even have a chance at saving Earth. We learnt so much from her flight.”
“Yeah.” Ryland leaned against her shoulder.
“Will you take your bottle now?”
Ryland shakes his head and winces.
Eva tuts at him. “Brave like Laika, okay?”
“I dunno if she was brave. She was all alone in space and maybe she was really really really scared,” Grace sleepily corrects her. “Moscow said her heartbeat was really really high in orbit.”
Eva hums out loud. Everyone in aerospace knows this story, Ryland doesn’t know why he’s saying it out loud. “She went to space and that makes her very brave,” Eva finally answers.
“But she didn’t know what she was doing.”
“And she did it anyway.”
Ryland deflates like a balloon and squishes Laika in his hands. “Okay.”
Eva grabs the bottle from a warmer Ryland didn’t notice at the bedside table. His body doesn’t feel like his anymore, it’s just something his brain lives in. Eva shifts them until she’s cradling him at the crook of her elbow. His brain feels like mush as she puts the bottle nipple in his mouth.
He gives it an experimental suck, humming at the sweet taste of the formula. It warms his insides in a way that makes him realise how cold he actually was. It fills the emptiness in him, the residing hunger he once forgot.
The IV itches again and he goes to move it. Eva quickly holds his hand instead. He feels full and turns his head away from the bottle and Eva makes a small disapproving noise. He whimpers but is shushed gently. Something else is pushed in his mouth—a pacifier, his brain supplies. The heavy weight grounding him in his body as his mind threatens to fly away again.
His fingers run through Laika’s soft soft fur.
He vaguely hears Eva humming something. It feels like a lullaby he has never heard before.
When Ryland wakes up again, it was dark outside of the windows. There was a small strip of light partially illuminating the room from the crack in the door. In the other end of the room, there is a Carl-shaped figure slouching in the chair.
He blinks at the bedside table. There were three different editions of the Little Prince, a thick art pad, and a box of 48-colored non-toxic finger paints in a neat stack. Standing above them all was another stuffed dog toy with a yellow post-it-note—friend for Laika.
Ryland is lulled back to sleep by the sound of Eva talking to someone on the side other of the door.