Chapter Text
Olesya doesn’t know how long they sit there. There are no windows in their office and their clock is covered with a drawing of stick birds in a migration formation.
Grace’s cries taper off, leaving a sniffling boy behind. Her shirt is ruined with snot and tears, but fine. Dirty shirts are easy problems to solve.
Grace lets out a long whine and hides himself in her neck. She bounces him slightly. “Gracie what’s wrong?”
“Head hurts,” Grace mumbles out.
“Oookay,” Yáo says. He stands up, and Olesya can hear his knees creak beside her ears. He rummages through Grace’s bag, pulling out a juice box. Grace takes tentative sips from the bendy straw, but clearly does not drink enough for Yáo’s liking by the way the man frowns.
“I think it's time for Little boys to rest.” He plucks Grace from her arms, settling the Little on his hip. Grace tiredly curls into his hold, arms around his neck and Laika dangling from his fist. “Fingers have germs.” Yáo gently tugs his hand out of his mouth and replaces it with his pacifier. “Guāi, guāi,” he whispers when Grace whines.
DuBois packs Grace’s things into his overnight bag and Olesya does a sweep to make sure nothing gets left behind. With careful hands, she tucks the blanket around Grace so he is in a makeshift cocoon covering his face and blocking the light to stop his worsening headache.
DuBois carries Grace’s bag while Olesya gets both her and Yáo’s things. The hallways of the Vat are much quieter than usual as they follow Yáo’s lead. Somehow, Yáo has managed to convince Stratt that they all needed to stay together that night, so she arranges for them to bunk at the guest lodgings temporarily.
The room is cramped in the way rooms are on military vessels—but it still manages to fit a small bathroom, two sets of bunk beds, and a Little crib. They barely set the bags down when Ramal and another nurse enter the room.
“Oh, what is this Dr Grace?” Ramal says in a kind tone, gesturing to Laika. “Is your friend not feeling well?”
Still cradles in Yáo’s lap, Grace nods, snuggling close with Laika. “Matching,” he slurs out from behind the pacifier. “Lesya helped.”
“Oh, that is right, you are matching,” Ramal agrees with a smile. “Can I check on both your lines?”
Grace nods, letting the nurses do their job with less dramatics than before.
It is only when the other nurse pulls out two oral syringes filled from the tray that Grace throws a fuss.
“Nooo,” Grace whines, shaking his head. He scrunches his face and hides his face in Yáo’s shoulder. “No want, no want—”
The sound of his crying makes Olesya want to just grab him and run out of the room. There has to be another way, does he really need all of that medication? Is the IV line not enough?
Beside her DuBois also looks like he’s about to pick Grace up and kick the nurses out. The cries kick a part of her already wrought Caregiver instincts into overdrive. She needs to do something to stop them from hurting Grace even more, can’t they see that they’re hurting him?
They tense and she tries to figure out a way to convince the nurses to stop making him cry.
“Ilyukhina, DuBois,” Yáo barks out, getting their attention. “Go get dinner and your things from your room,” he commands.
“But—” DuBois tries to argue but Yáo shakes his head.
“Get out—go shower, eat some food, get some fresh air, I don’t care what, just calm down and get out so the nurses can do their jobs,” Yáo commands.
It is not often that Yáo makes a call like this for all of them, especially when it isn’t mission related. But he’s right, the both of them hovering nearby will only make the situation more stressful for Grace.
Olesya nods and leaves with DuBois trailing behind her. It takes everything in her not to run back at the sound of Grace crying.
They both sit silently in the mess hall. The food in front of her is fresh and smells great, but every bite tastes like ash.
After a while of just pushing his food around, DuBois gets up. “I’m going to bring Yáo something to eat then call Dr. Shapiro. I just need to—-” he lets out a shaky breath. “I need to call her.”
Olesya nods, still stirring her soup around with a spoon.
“Will you be okay?” DuBois asks.
“Yeah,” Olesya sighs, forcing herself to take another bite. “I’ll be okay.”
DuBois nods in acknowledgement and leaves to talk to the chefs.
She scrapes the last remaining food in her bowl, gulping down the last bites just to say that she did eat something and leaves too.
The walk back to her room is a quiet one. Almost automatically, she starts to prepare for the night. She notes that her shirt is still sticky from Grace’s crying and tosses it into the laundry hamper. The showers here don’t run as hot as she would like it to, but she turns it up as high as she can nonetheless. She leans her forehead against the tiled wall, letting the warm water run off her back and soothe her tense muscles.
Two years ago, she stayed in the ISS for four months. Three years before that, she spent two in the ISS and six in the Antarctic research facility.
Life as a cosmonaut engineer is not a lonely one—she has so many vibrant, innovating, loving people in her life. But only a small handful of them are or have Littles and children.
She loves caring for them, don’t get her wrong—it’s wired into her Caregiver biology, but she could not find it in her to have a Little in her life knowing that she would have to go into orbit or the middle of Antarctica for long stretches of time—that she can die on the way there and on the way back.
Before today, she didn’t even know who the Littles on the Petrova Taskforce were—turns out at least two of them are her friends. Olesya has to go to Tau Ceti, she knows that. But how can she leave them behind knowing that it will break their hearts?
By the time she makes it back to the guest room, the nurses are already gone. Yáo has Grace cradled in his arms as he finishes feeding Grace his bottle. Grace looks blissed out in a new set of pajamas. They must have given him the good drugs. Olesya sits in the bottom bunk she claimed, watching as Yáo rocks Grace to sleep.
“I’m sorry,” Olesya says when Yáo transfers Grace into the crib.
“What for?”
“I shouldn’t have let my feelings come over me like that,” Olesya explains. “It wasn’t helpful.”
“You saw someone you cared for in distress and you wanted to fix it.” Yáo sits on the other bottom bunk with his hands clasped in front of him. “You are only human, Ilyukhina. We all have our moments.”
Olesya nods, her finger drawing circles on her striped pajama pants. “Yáo.”
“Yes?”
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Go ahead.”
Olesya clenches her jaw. “You have kids right?”
“Two daughters, yes.”
“How do you do it?” Olesya says around the lump in her throat.
“Do what?”
Olesya turns to look at him. “How do you prepare them for this?” For them dying.
“They hide my shoes every time I see them.”
“What?”
Yáo leans back against the wall of his bunk sitting cross legged on the mattress. “Jia Ying is 6, Hui Ying is turning 4 in a month.” He pulls out a photo from his wallet and hands it to her—two small kids with chubby cheeks, pink raincoats, and jet black hair pose in front of the Sally Ride statue in New York. They look like they’re in mid laugh, mimicking holding the rocket. “I try to spend as much time as I can with them—Stratt flies me out to see them at least once a week. The first thing they always do is take the shoes off my feet and hide them.”
“Children are not stupid, they fundamentally understand a lot more than the world gives them credit for.” Yáo pulls a knee to his chest and rests his arm on it. “They understand what the mission is about—they just have a hard time processing what it means. It’ll be a long time before they can understand why I have to do this. So for now, they process it how they can and we let them navigate through those feelings on their own terms. The logic is sound; if I can’t have my shoes, I can’t walk away from them.”
Olesya hands the picture back to him and he slides it back into his wallet.
“My wife and I do our best to build a support system, it takes a village,” Yáo continues. “She’s staying with her parents now and mine are moving to her hometown next month. My brother takes them out for activities with his own kids.”
“She sounds like a great woman,” Olesya says. It must not be easy to essentially become a single mother while her husband is giving up his life to save the planet.
“The girls are lucky they take after her,” Yáo laughs to himself. “I don’t think Grace realizes it, but he has many people who care about him here. He has his own village. You have to find comfort knowing that he won’t be alone when we’re gone.”
“It still hurts,” Olesya says, pointedly not making eye contact with her mission commander.
Yáo lets out a sigh, running his fingers through his hair. “It does hurt. It hurts all the time,” he confesses quietly. “There is nothing more I want than to be there with them.” He pauses, running a thumb over the picture of his kids. “But I’m doing this for them—because I can. If I didn’t try to build a better future for them, I don’t think I could ever look at them. I can’t even look at myself. But it doesn’t change the fact that the hardest part of every visit is putting my shoes back on before leaving again.”
Olesya presses her palm into her eyes and Yáo moves to sit next to her and puts his hand on her shoulder.
She takes a deep breath and looks at him. He gives a small smile in return. “This is going to hurt. Loving him will hurt the both of you. But I don’t think you can stop loving him, nor he you. Not in the ways that it matters.”
She nods, looking down to try and to keep her tears from falling. Yáo nods and pats her knee.
“Watch him for a moment will you? I need to shower.”
She nods and Yáo takes his bag and hops into the bathroom. She can’t help but snort—of course Yáo has change of clothes in his everyday bag. Always prepared for anything including surprise sleepovers.
She watches a sleeping Grace, the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he cuddles Laika. His eyes flutter open, meeting hers.
“Lesya?” he mumbles out.
“Yes, Gracie?” she whispers, moving closer to him.
“Lesya, phone.”
She looks at him confused before realization dawns. “You want to call Stratt?”
He nods tiredly. “Eva.”
She pushes the railing of the crib down, and sits on the edge of the bedding. Grace grabs a fistful of her pajama pants and she ruffles his hair gently as she sends a text to Stratt.
Moments later the phone rings and she says a quick hello to her boss/dictator before putting the call on speakermode for Grace.
“Eva,” Grace greets sleepily into the phone.
“Hello, Ryland,” Eva says in a gentle tone. “Did you have a good time with the crew?”
“Uh huh,” Grace mumbles, nodding. “Played lots. We built a spaceship.”
“Oh, did you now?” Eva says amused.
“Yeah,” Ryland replies, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “Laika is sick though.”
“Oh liefje, what happened?”
“Her tummy was feeling funny.” Ryland holds the doll close and leans on Olesya. “Lesya fixed it.”
“That is very nice of her.”
“She’s very nice,” Ryland nods even though Stratt can’t see him. “When are you coming back?”
“Tomorrow morning. Carl and I will land early in the morning.”
“Miss Carl.”
“Carl misses you too,” Eva says. “He has been buying candy for you everywhere we go.”
Ryland yawns and rubs his eye. “Skittles?”
“Of course,” she answers. “Now I think it is time for Little boys to go to sleep, don’t you?”
“And you will be here in the morning?”
Eva hums an agreement through the phone. “Before you wake up.”
“Okay,” Ryland says, burrowing himself under the blankets. “Night night.”
“Goodnight Ryland, rest well.”
Olesya says goodbye to Stratt and hangs up the call. Ryland’s breath starts evening out again and she tries to slip out. Ryland jerks awake and grabs a hold of her sleeve.
“Lesya,” he croaks out, voice full of sleep. “Stay? Please?”
Olesya puts her hand over his, stroking her thumb over the back. How could she say no?
“Of course,” Olesya replies. She shuffles and lies down in the crib next to him. Half her body threatens to fall out of the mattress, but she tucks in her legs to make it work.
Grace snuggles closer to her and she cards her fingers through his hair until he falls back to sleep.
In his sleep, Grace moves instinctively until his head is on her chest. She can feel her heart beat against his ear. He burrows into her side as if wanting to put himself between her ribcage. If he wants to sleep near her heart so he knows she’s alive, Olesya will crack her ribs herself.
Tomorrow, Stratt will come back with the sunrise to pick her Little up. But for tonight, he is Olesya’s—her friend, the Little brother she never had, her Gracie.
To say that Olesya isn’t worried about their relationship is a lie. She wants to hunt Stratt down the halls and demand to see her friend but ultimately, she decides to leave it up to Grace.
It takes the next four days before Grace and the other Littles are cleared by medical to be able to go back to work.
It takes another two before Olesya finally finds Grace in the mess hall for dinner. Well, technically Grace is the one who finds her.
He plops down in the seat across from her, dropping a stack of DVDs in the middle of the table.
“Hello, Gracie,” Olesya says, quickly swallowing her noodles and picking up the first one. “What is this?”
“It’s a copy of every Star Trek movie—the originals and the new generation, ” he says, not looking at her.
“And why are these DVDs here?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.
“They’re for you, I think you will like the franchise.” He lets out a deep breath. “It is also an apology.”
Something in her brain short circuits. “For what?”
He starts fidgeting in his seat, wringing his hands out. “I know Stratt asked you to, uh, look after me while I was sick and uh,” his voice drops to a whisper. “And Little. And I just wanted to say sorry and I know Stratt asked but you didn’t really have to—”
Olesya puts down her chopsticks, leans forward, and gently flicks her stupid stupid friend on the forehead.
“Hey,” Grace pouts, rubbing the spot on his forehead. “What was that for?”
“You are being very stupid.” Olesya stares at him flatly. “I didn’t take care of you just because Stratt asked. You are my friend Gracie, of course I did.”
Grace’s cheeks turn pink and he looks down at his lap.
“My memory is kind of fuzzy and I don’t think I can even look Yáo in the eye anymore,” he groans, putting his hands on his face. “I know you were very kind to me and the Little side of me can be too much, you really didn’t need to—”
Olesya leans forward and flicks his head again.
Grace looks up at her and furrows his brows, rubbing the spot again.
“Ryland Grace,” she crosses her arms and leans on the table. “You are not too much. You are my friend. You, Gracie, are very easy to love.”
“Oh,” Grace says, his voice cracking halfway through the sound.
She picks up her chopsticks again. “How about you tell me about which one of these movies we should watch first while I eat and then we can go to my room and watch them after?”
Grace perks up and picks up one of the boxes in the pile. “So this one is the first one, it has my favourite Spock—okay wait, rewind, Spock is an alien from the 40 Eridani system and—”
She smiles into her noodles as Grace talks her ear off about the American space exploration franchise he loves so much. Their relationship will be just fine.