Work Text:
Twenty-six years is awful.
Humanity has no way of knowing what happens aboard the Hail Mary.
As big as the ship is, it's just too... small. Nothing can detect it among the stars of the galaxy.
Twenty-six years is awful. Sixteen is just as bad.
The survivors of Earth holds their breath, a breath they would hold for sixteen years more.
Methane keeps the Earth nice and cozy, but everything still died.
Even the pests that humans hated were gone, and as annoying as they were, life seems empty without them.
No flies. No rats. Not even bees, which makes it harder and harder to grow crops.
Ten years later, it's the same.
Six more years, everybody says. Six years.
But will they survive for six more years?
Religion and faith crashed down from the status they used to hold, barely holding on.
Politics is a mess. Nobody cares what's going on in the middle-east anymore. Nobody even knows.
The native tribes cut off from the rest of society that flourished for so long collapsed.
(The rest of the world did too.)
Tense shoulders collapse, shaking.
They didn't feel how much tension there was before it was released.
26 years...