Chapter Text
The last thing that flashes through your mind as you’re being injected with the coma-inducing cocktail is the tear-streaked face of your ex-partner — screaming, crying, begging.
It’s fascinating, you think, how someone can move through the five stages of grief at such breakneck speed.
You know how it feels, you've experienced it yourself, far deeper than they know. Not that they thought very highly of you anymore.
Selfish. That had been the word. Contradictory by all means, considering what you would be putting yourself through and yet, you could understand. Why you? Why not someone else?
Simply put, there was no one else more qualified. That’s what you had replied. It wasn’t the right thing to say apparently, because after being selfish, you became narcissistic, cruel, and that had been it.
It must've been some sort of psychological phenomenon that let you leave so easily afterwards; some sort of neurological ability to compartmentalize all of it into a little box that you would chain up and vault deep into the recesses of your mind, never to be thought of again.
Somehow, despite that, it’s the first thing you remember when you wake up.
It quickly takes a backseat to the cold numbness that paralyzes you — a deep, dull, fear pounding in your ribcage as your brain tries and fails to catch up.
There’s something down your throat. There’s excessive beeping in your ears. There’s a plastic cage all around you.
You blink, willing a muscle to move — any muscle to move. None of them listen, the synapse firing from your brain not meeting their target.
A robotic arm moves into your field of view, coming down to pull out the tube shoved deep into your throat. It burns like nothing you’ve ever experienced, making you choke and gag simultaneously.
The tears well up — every breath is agonizing and dry.
Water. Water. Water.
“What is two plus two?”
The system voice rings out, all too familiar. That’s the least of your worries; it could do its own fucking math.
Your toes finally twitch, and you can very weakly curl your fingers into a fist. It’s definitely not pretty, the way you flop onto your side like a fish pulled from water but it gives you the momentum to roll off the surface you’ve been laid out on. The tumble to floor is unceremonious but you manage to catch yourself before you face plant.
Okay, the rest of your legs seem to be working, and you could bend your arms. Progress.
“What is two plus two?”
“… Fuck off.”
Cussing out a preprogrammed voice is not a good use of the air struggling to get into your lungs, but it felt good regardless.
“Where… where am I?”
It’s mostly directed towards yourself — the turmoil in your head trying to categorize itself linearly. The robot answers anyway.
“You are the Engineering Mission Specialist aboard the Hail Mary.”
Right. Doctorate in Aerospace Engineering. That took up a large chunk of your life.
“Hail Mary…”
Petrova Line.
Astrophage.
Suicide Mission.
“Right. Fuck me,” you croak out, leaning heavily against the closest wall. It was coming back to you, the memories flooding in like a tidal wave.
“Where…” you pause, taking in a breath. “The crew… are they awake?”
“Commander Yao is deceased. Dr. Grace is awake. His whereabouts are unknown."
You stand stock still.
Realistically, you knew — everyone knew — that there was a chance none of you would even survive just the coma. You can count yourself as lucky. It certainly didn't feel that way.
God, you felt nauseous.
“Wait — hang on,” you tested your weight, trying to find balance as you righted yourself, “you don’t know where Dr. Grace is?"
“Affirmative.”
Your mind is spinning. Where could he be if not here? There must be something wrong with the ship’s sensor detection. Add that to the list of things you needed to do.
“Last known location was the airlock bay.”
You’re half stumbling towards the door now, the blueprints of the ship flashing in your mind as you slap your hand against the button to open the door.
Airlock? Did he wake up and accidentally shoot himself out into the void?
He had been the last addition to the team in the final hour. Stratt had told you and Yao about how brave he had been when he had consented to it.
But that’s just it, wasn’t it? No training. No pilot. No engineer.
Fuck. The mission needed him. More than anyone else. It couldn’t just be you here. What could you even do? What did you know about the molecular biology of an alien life force that was forming a parasitic relationship with the stars in the galaxy?
You nearly put your face through the floor tripping over a tether left out in the hall.
“Shit!”
Your head is still spinning like a goddamn merry-go-round and the nausea isn’t subsiding. Still, even with a frantic half-awareness of your surroundings, it’s hard to miss all the rope criss-crossing everywhere like some sort of obstacle course.
“What in the…?”
It looked like chaos had erupted in the spaceship — cardigans and empty food packets and expo markers littered across any available surface.
“How long have I been asleep since Dr. Grace was woken up?” You ask into the air, leaning heavily against the side of the ship.
“You have been asleep for one month since Dr. Grace had woken up from the wake-up protocol,” the ship replies.
One month. Short in the grand scheme of how long you’ve been travelling. Long to be alone and floating through an empty vacuum of nothingness.
Cockpit. You need to get to the control room. Figure out where you are and what you need to do.
The sore fatigue of being in a years-long coma was fading away fast, replaced quickly by adrenaline as you scramble your way to the controls, noting down every instance of life left by Dr. Grace.
The door to the cockpit opens and you stumble through, situating yourself into the pilot’s seat.
“Pilot detected.”
Your eyes track across the controls quickly, analyzing screens and buttons as you try to rewire your brain into remembering your basic training.
You stop at one screen, a slow hesitant finger tapping on the image right on top of the highlighted dot with the words Tau Ceti written right next to it.
“Oh.”
It leaves you in a rush. It should’ve been obvious from the fact that you were awake, but seeing it in person fills you with a deep sense of something you didn't know how to describe.
“We actually made it. We're orbiting Tau Ceti.”
It’s an almost distant thought, one of those things that the human mind could not simply wrap its head around.
11.9 light years from Earth.
Just you. You and maybe a doctor who is still missing. All alone with the fate of humanity in your hands.
It might be an appropriate time to cry if there was one, but you don’t seem to have it in you. Your brain was too mission-oriented for that.
Maybe that’s why they had chosen you instead of someone else.
You shake your head slightly.
You needed to find this goddamn doctor.
Before you lose your mind scouring the spaceship, you take it upon your tired brain to check over the systems to make sure they were optimal.
Exhaustion must be stronger than you thought because somehow you miss the very obvious screen that shows the Hail Mary floating right next to something massive.
“Blip-A?”
That would close enough to see—
You turn your head too fast, the urge to throw up rolling over in your stomach. You tense, clenching your jaw and will through it.
Somehow — despite being in literal space, you almost forgot you hadn’t even looked out a fucking window yet and —
You don’t scream; you do throw yourself as far back as you can in the pilot seat.
Because out the window, spinning with the Hail Mary was possibly the biggest ship(?) you had ever seen in your life.
You wouldn’t know where to start describing it. Geometrical? Fucking gargantuan?
And it’s attached to your ship.
The airlock.
Clearly your mind isn’t working as fast as your body, because you don’t even think about how running towards where the ship is connected to that thing might be stupidly reckless.
You skid to a stop right outside the airlock doors, heart hammering in your chest so hard it hurt.
Pushing your face against the window, your hands come up to cup around your eyes, trying to block out the bright sterile lighting of the ship. Squinting, you wait for your vision to adjust enough that you could see what was out there.
It looked… rocky — like you were underground caving instead of floating in space.
And it was lit.
The mildly blurry images start straightening out and that’s when you see it.
Dr. Ryland Grace lying under some sort of glass-like geometric panels that covered the other end of the tunnel… dead ... or sleeping?
And on the other side of the glass was… a rock?
You step back from the window, firmly shutting your eyes.
Hallucinating. That must be it. There were multitudes of side-effects that came with coma-induced sleeping that hadn’t been discovered fast enough before you were pumped full of it.
The air leaves your lung. And comes right back in. In and out. In and out.
You return to the window again.
The rock. The rock was moving.
Your eyes widen as the creature raised itself on five appendages and started frantically scuttling around like a crab, tapping on the glass next to Grace.
Was this some sort of eating ritual? Was it preparing a feast out of the man?
You’re only partially relieved when Grace shoots up from where he was laying in some sort of makeshift bed, banging his head against the glass and falling backwards again, clutching his forehead.
It takes another second, in which the rock-like creature is still scampering around, before Grace sits up (a little more carefully now) and turns his head towards the airlock.
Towards you.
His eyes widen so comically that his glasses fall off his face the same time his mouth parts in what you think might be a shriek, but you couldn’t hear anything from beyond the door.
The rock creature grows more frenzied as it keeps tapping against the glass wall, pointing its claws at you, turning its body between you and the still (possibly) screaming man.
The scientist stops after a moment, clutching his chest and taking in a lungful of air before he scrambles to stand up.
You stand frozen, rooted to the floor, watching incredulously at the scene unfolding before you.
Ryland Grace takes slow, easy steps towards the airlock, as though he were approaching a cornered, wild animal instead of a highly trained astronaut (although you couldn’t fault him for that, considering what expression you must be making).
He’s close enough now that you could make out all the details you couldn’t before. Messy blond hair, wild blue eyes, and colourful sweater that instantly took you back to the first time you met him.
“Dr. Grace, this is our Engineering Mission Specialist,” Stratt introduced calmly. You smiled politely at the half-disheveled man and his oversized cardigan, amused at the lab goggles strapped on top of his head.
“Hello — hi… hey,” he said, sticking out his hand in a slightly nervous, unsure way. You put him out of his misery by tightly grasping his hand and shaking it firmly.
“Pleasure to meet you, Dr. Grace.”
You gave him your name, watching as he mentally cataloged it.
“Call me Ryland. Please. No one else seems to want to call me that,” he said after a moment.
The handshake lingered a touch too long, steering right over into awkward territory. He pulled away, fidgeting with his fingers.
You tilted your head.
“Why? You’ve earned your title and doctorate. No reason not to use it, right?”
He stared at you, wide-eyed, before coughing into his fist and nodding. His smile was clumsy and almost shy. Dr. Grace laughed nervously, scratching the back of his head.
“Yeah, I think my peers might disagree with you there,” he said with a self-deprecating chuckle. You could see Stratt raising a questioning brow from the corner of your eye. He quickly started backtracking. "Not that I'm not qualified! I'm very qualified — leading expert on Astrophage... breeding, or just you know — in general. Not just breeding. That would be weird—"
You couldn’t help but feel a little endeared to the stranger floundering his way through these nonsensical pleasantries. Maybe your looming death was making you soft.
Stratt pulled you away after another moment.
"Yep, okay. Bye," he muttered, more to himself than you.
You turned your head, offering him that same polite smile before you left.
He pauses at the precipice of the airlock staring at your face like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. You wonder if you should open up the door for him, but you didn’t know what the hell is out there. Even if he seemed to be breathing fine without a space suit, you sure as hell didn’t want to bet on those odds.
His mouth is moving again, so fast you think he might be repeating slam poetry. You tap on the glass and then point to your ears, shaking your head.
Grace face palms, pinching the bridge of his nose before pressing a hand on the latch—
“No! Don’t open it, fucking—"
It’s too late.
You half fall out of the ship when the doors open, nearly taking you and him down together.
A hot flash of anger burns under your skin, but it disappears the moment you hear him laughing.
You look up from where you’ve sort of balanced yourself on his chest, astonished by the pure elation on his face.
His laughter isn’t humorous — if anything it’s a little crazy — but he smiles more brilliantly than you’ve ever seen before and it evaporates your anger so quickly you forget why you were angry in the first place.
“You’re awake! Oh, thank God!”
Was one month of solitude enough to make someone mentally break? Maybe not on Earth, but it would be understandable floating in the beyond, disconnected from everything.
“Grace crew alive! Crew not dead!”
You pull away from the scientist immediately, eyes darting around to see where the voice was coming from. Behind Grace was that alien rock, still dancing around, chirping and whaling as it tapped against the glass excitedly.
“What in the…”
You’ve been saying that a lot in the past twenty minutes you’ve been awake.
“Oh him? Don’t worry, that’s just Rocky. He’s harmless.”
Sure.
He’s harmless. You’re confused. Grace is crazy.
Yeah… fuck no.
You slowly back up, stumbling feet finding its way towards the airlock bridge, keeping a mildly fearful eye on the two of them.
Many people have told you that you were too cold — too good at shoving your mental state and feelings down. If only they could see you now.
“Wait! Wait! I can explain — just—"
Grace is somehow copying the alien's movements now, shaking his hands and reaching towards you, desperation clear in the way his eyes are locked on to you so intensely. He manages to grab your wrist before you could run back to the safety of the ship and lock the two of them out there forever.
“Please.”
His voice cracks a little, and his grip is so hard you think it might bruise.
Compartmentalize. You were good at that.
You breathe out slowly, scrutinizing the way his features were twisted — like he might burst out crying any moment now. Oh god, he better not –
“No scared! Grace explain crew. Rocky friend.”
The voice rings out again, the rock — Rocky’s chirping providing a backdrop to your and Grace’s heavy breathing.
“Okay… okay. Just — can we go back inside?” You say slowly, your vocal cords raspy from lack of use.
Grace nods enthusiastically, hand still wrapped around your wrist as he turns back towards his alien friend.
“I’ll be back, Rocky. Just hang out for a bit okay?”
“Yes. Grace explain crew. Crew help big science, kill Astrophage!”
That caught your attention.
You don’t have enough time to wrap your head around it before you’re being ushered back into the ship.
The door closes with a hiss, and you’re again surrounded by tether cables and strewn clothes.
The silence sits heavy as you turn back around to face the scientist who is still staring at you in awe. You have nothing useful to say to him, which usually isn't a problem.
“I—“
“Can—“
You both cut yourself off, Grace doing so with a huffed out laugh.
You gesture towards him, giving him the floor. He sighs, running a hand through his tousled hair.
“I’m sure you must be confused. I mean — I definitely went a little crazy when I first woke up, especially when I still don’t remember anything—“
“You don’t remember anything?”
You cut him off, concern growing rapidly. Does he mean that he doesn't even remember how to be a molecular biologist?
He blinks, clearly thrown off.
“Wha— you do?” He asks in disbelief. You nod.
“It’s spotty, but yes I remember, Dr. Grace.”
He flinches hard at that. “You know my name.”
A fresh new wave of worry fills you. “Of course. We’ve met many times. On Earth, I mean.”
Somehow even this very singular situation — he’s the one that looks confused and not you. You hold up a hand, pinching the bridge of your nose with the other.
“Hang on. You don’t remember anything? Not the Astrophage or the Petrova line or how you volunteered for this?”
“I volunteered for this?”
His voice was taking on a shrill quality now. Grace backs up into the wall, slowly sliding down until he’s sat on the floor, knees bent and head between his hands.
The uncertain panic in his voice makes you pause.
You don’t really know what to do. You were trained for extreme conditions. You were trained to deal with your own mental breakdowns. Not other peoples.
Still, you slide down to sit across from him, listening as he mumbles under his breath — words muffled between his hands.
“Dr. Grace,” you say, as softly as you can without sounding too impatient.
He doesn’t look up — instead he shakes his head, his hands now fisting his hair.
“Ryland.”
That catches his attention, blue eyes snapping to yours.
You don’t know how to deal with this but you sure as hell weren’t going to let this derail your mission.
“Your name is Ryland Grace. You are a doctor in the field of molecular biology. You were the Lead Biologist on Project Hail Mary. You discovered how to breed Astrophage which helped us create the fuel for this mission. That's why we are here.”
That was most of what you knew about him. Despite the months spent around each other's orbit in the middle of a giant aircraft carrier, you never really had the chance to get close. Not that it would’ve impacted the mission in any meaningful way. He made the fuel for the coffin blasting you to space. He trained the scientists who were supposed to die with you.
Now you’re starting to wish you had taken the time to speak to him more personally.
“Why are you doing this?”
You looked up from your beer bottle to the man who was sitting down next to you, his own bottle placed next to yours.
“You want the heroic answer or the real, much simpler one?” You asked easily, turning your body towards his.
He was wearing a bright orange beanie, one that sort of made him look like a traffic cone. It was cute — something you might’ve fixated on if the circumstances were different.
He shrugged, “how 'bout both?”
You smiled into the lip of your bottle, taking a swig before you cleared your throat and leaned closer towards him.
In your best impression of Yao, you plastered on a serious, grim face.
“It’s the right thing to do. Humanity is counting on us." It came out as easy as it does any other time someone asked. It was the answer they looked for — the one they expected.
He snorted, shaking his head, but you could still see the question in his eyes.
“And the real answer?”
You hesitated for a moment. Was there even a real answer? The one you had just given him was as real as any other.
You softened your expression, looking into the blue of his eyes.
“Who else if not me?”
Grace didn't say anything to that, looking away from you like your words were too heavy to deal with. You watched as his throat bobbed and he swallowed thickly, biting the inside of his cheek.
“I don’t think I could do it. I’m just a middle school science teacher,” he said lowly, eyes downcast like he’s embarrassed he’s even telling you that. “You’re a lot braver than me.”
You wondered what it is about him that constantly tries to downplay how smart he is. How competent he’s been. You had been trained for this, given context and a reason. He had just been a civilian, teaching children and waiting like the rest of them for someone to step up.
“It’s not bravery.”
Grace looked back up, searching your face for a lie.
“It’s fear.”
He didn't seem to understand. You wouldn’t have understood it the months prior to your decision.
“I thought fear makes you run away from things,” he muttered quietly.
You shook your head. You had thought so to.
“Maybe a little. I’d run away from spiders and snakes,” you joked, trying to pump a little levity back into the conversation. The uptick of the corner of his mouth earns you some self-satisfaction.
"Maybe..." you give him the barest of smiles. "Maybe I'm more afraid of dying here than dying up there."
Grace held your gaze in a surprisingly steady way. You noticed how tightly his hands clenched around his beer bottle.
He glanced away after a moment, seemingly fixated on something else on the other side of the room.
"I hadn't thought about it like that," he replied. You shrugged, "that's because I give people the heroic answer."
He laughed at that, a sound that rang boldly in your head. You're suddenly aware of how much you liked the sound of it.
"Your fear is still braver than mine."
You shook your head. He had it all wrong.
“You can’t be brave if you aren’t afraid, Dr. Grace.”
Grace breathes out heavily, nostrils flaring as he finally pulls his hands away from his hair.
“Okay… okay. I knew some of that,” he says quietly. You nod, moving back to give him some space.
There’s still a distant look in his eye, but he’s present, still staring at you like he can’t look away.
“I’m… I’m really glad you woke up.”
That pangs loudly in your chest. You had been so caught up with the chaos of it all you hadn’t factored in how lost he must’ve been. And he hadn’t even remembered why he was here, or who he was.
You wanted to sympathize with him — you really did. You could see the mental toll this was taking on him as you look at him now. The deep bags under his eyes, the uneven scruff on his chin.
Be patient. Be patient. He needs you to be patient. Your commander was gone and you needed to fill that space.
You were going to become the captain, the pilot, the therapist or friend — anything your scientist needed to do his job.
“I’m glad too,” you say. Comfort wasn’t really your thing but for your mission, you would do all that and more.
He breathes in deep again, shutting his eyes and opening them as he exhales. Grace sits up a little straighter, crossing his legs as the brightness returns to his face.
“I guess it’s my turn to answer your questions,” he says, surprisingly calm given how he had been thirty seconds ago. It's a relief that he could apparently compartmentalize too.
You mentally reload, prioritizing the growing list of concerns in your head. The obvious thing to ask about was—
“That alien — Rocky. Explain.”
Grace nods, likely expecting it.
“Simply put, he’s an alien – obviously. An Eridian from the planet of Erid, about 10 or so light years away from Tau Ceti. He’s here for the same reason we are.”
That made sense. In hindsight it would’ve odd if you were the only sentient life force to be affected by Astrophage killing your sun. Grace continues:
“I met him a week ago when the ship reached Tau Ceti. I’ve been trying to document and translate his language. He’s not hostile — or tried to lay eggs in me, which to be honest that was a really big concern for a while, and I don’t even want to think about —“
“Dr. Grace.”
He winces. “Right yep, sorry. Anyway, since you were asleep and Yao was…”
Grace coughs awkwardly, gesturing vaguely to what you assumed meant space.
“Dead,” you supply. He looks at you questioningly but decides to move past it.
“Well, Rocky was the only other person I could interact with so I figured he and I could at least try to solve… this.”
He gestures again at the ship this time.
It was a lot to take in, but if you trusted him, you could at least take being murdered by an alien life force off your mind.
You’re surprised to find that you do trust him, against all of your better judgement.
His arms fall to his side.
“Okay,” you say, moving to get back up to your feet. Grace looks up at you curiously.
“Okay?” He parrots, blinking owlishly. You nod, wincing as you straighten back up.
“Is that a problem?” You ask, quirking a brow.
“No! No — Not at all — I didn’t expect you to be so…”
“Normal? Calm?"
He chuckles. “Yeah well… I was not as accepting as you were. About all of this.”
There it was again, that thing that he did. He did it on Earth too.
You hold out your hand to him.
“You were alone. Alone with amnesia. Give yourself credit for holding it together, Dr. Grace.”
He reaches out towards you, glassy eyed as he grasps your hand like a lifeline.
“I wouldn’t call it ‘holding it together’,” he replies, a choked out sentence as you pull him to his feet. Grace wipes at his eyes with his free hand, sniffling slightly.
You squeeze his palm.
“Well, you’re not alone anymore. You have Rocky. And…”
You give him a firm look, hoping it would steady him.
“You have me.”