Work Text:
Stratt held the beanie in both hands as she walked.
The knit stretched slightly where her fingers pressed into it, the fibers worn soft with use. Blue - faded in places, darker along the seams where the fabric had been handled more often. There was no logo, no branding, nothing that marked it as anything special. It was clearly cheap and mass-produced, one of a million identical items.
Stratt turned it over in her hands. Her thumb brushed along the edge, catching on a slight fray where the stitching had loosened. Cheap construction. Replaceable.
She pressed her thumb harder against the fabric.
Replaceable.
The word settled in her mind, clean and neat.
She shifted the beanie again, brushing her fingers against the inside lining of the beanie. And somewhere along it, the stitching was uneven - hand-done, not factory. A small tag had been sewn into the lining, the thread lighter than the fabric, the edges of the tag worn where it had been rubbed against over time.
The dusk sky above Stratt was clear and full of infected stars, and she did not look up to see them as she angled the tag toward the fading light.
Mr. Grace's - return to room 12 if lost :)
The ink had bled faintly into the fibers, softening the edges of the letters. The curve of the smile had distorted slightly, pulled by the tension of the stitching.
Stratt's grip tightened, the knit compressing under her fingers.
She released a slow breath through her nose, controlled, measured, and flattened the beanie between her hands, hiding the tag out of sight.
She folded up the beanie, putting it into one of her coat pockets, and looked at the ground below her boots.
The grass was still pressed flat in wide, uneven sections, the yellowing blades bent in overlapping directions where too many bodies had moved through it, where dress shoes and soldier boots had raced across it. The soil beneath showed through in shallow breaks - dark, damp, freshly disturbed. There were handfuls of grass littered around the disturbed dirt - clearly having been ripped out of the ground by a frantic hand, by the last attempts of a fated man to escape the destiny that had been decided for him.
She inhaled once, sharply, then stepped forward, placing herself in the center of the disturbed ground.
In a matter of weeks, the grass would right itself. The soil would settle.
In a matter of weeks, there would be no indication that anything had occurred here at all.
Stratt bent her knees and lowered herself to the earth. The ground was cold through her slacks. The movement was deliberate, controlled to the last degree.
She reached forward with her bare hands.
The soil was loosely packed from being disturbed earlier and it came up without too much difficulty, though her knuckles scraped something rocky and the cold made the digging slower than it should have been.
She built a small pile to one side.
The dirt was getting under her fingernails, cool and dense.
She did not pause.
Handful by handful, she displaced the soil, building a shallow depression in front of her. The work was inefficient and slow. It would have been much faster with a shovel. She continued with her hands.
Her breathing remained even, paced to the motion.
In. Out.
Dig. Shift.
In. Out.
Dig. Shift.
Stratt thought, briefly, about Carl.
Carl had packed Grace's bag. He had volunteered to pack it, she assumed, because Carl had been fond of Grace in a way that Stratt had never seen from him before - his affection a kind of patient, almost indulgent exasperation. The bag had contained everything Grace would need aboard the Hail Mary. She had reviewed the packing list herself.
The beanie hadn't made the list.
After a bit more digging, Stratt sat back slightly, assessing the depth of the hole she had dug. She reached behind her and retrieved the wooden dowel she had brought, driving its end into the hole she had dug in the earth. She pressed the dirt back around it, packing it down with both hands, compressing it until the dowel stood upright without support.
The dirt was still under her fingernails. Her knees were still cold.
When she sat back and looked at the result of her labor, it looked exactly like what it was: a piece of scrap wood stuck in the middle of the disturbed ground.
Nothing more, nothing less.
She reached into her coat pocket, and for a second time, Stratt held the beanie for a moment longer than she needed to.
She did not know if Grace was religious.
Stratt had his entire file and she knew his research and his academic record and the timeline of each and every one of his accomplishments, and she did not know if he would have wanted a cross or a star or something else or nothing at all.
Stratt had not asked. There had been no asking in any of this, by design, and she had been the designer.
She slid the beanie over the top of the dowel. It caught slightly on the rough edge of the cheap wood, then settled, the knit draping unevenly as gravity pulled it into place. One side hung lower than the other.
No name. No cross. The dowel wasn't even the right shape for a marker; it was just a dowel. No marker. No inscription. No indication of its purpose. It just was a piece of cheap wood in the ground with a discarded item placed over it, temporary and disposable.
It wasn't what he deserved.
Stratt rose to her feet.
Her knees ached. She didn't move to brush the dirt from them, which left visible patches of disturbed soil against the fabric, which was a problem for later or possibly a problem for never. She was aware of her hands without looking at them - the grime under her nails, the gritty texture of her palms after digging in the ground. She did not brush them on her coat.
It was a shitty grave.
The beanie was drugstore quality and already slightly misshapen and would be ruined by the first real rain. There was no name and no marker and no ceremony and nothing to indicate that this was an intentional thing rather than an accidental one. In a matter of weeks the grass would grow back and the disturbed soil would resettle and someone would probably trip over the dowel and toss it aside without wondering about it, and the whole thing would be gone without a trace.
Stratt looked at it for another moment, before her gaze lifted.
The sky had darkened, the last light thinning into a deepening blue that would soon give way entirely. There was nothing visible above her - no trail, no flare, no indication of the ship now moving beyond sight.
But it was still there, out of sight. Somewhere among those stars-
Stratt inhaled. The breath was quicker this time, less controlled. Her hands curled slightly at her sides, the dried dirt pulling against her scraped knuckles.
"You were the correct choice," Stratt said to the stars, and her jaw tightened, a brief, almost imperceptible shift, before she drew in another breath, "the only choice."
The words were not cathartic. They did not change anything.
"I’m sorry," she added, more quietly.
Her gaze remained fixed on the empty sky. She did not look down. Not at the grave she had created for the man whose body would never be buried. Not at the disturbed ground that would heal in time. She stood with her hands at her sides and her knees aching and she looked up as the last of the day's light disappeared, and she allowed herself to feel the weight of what she had done for the length of one single breath.
She exhaled.
"Good luck, Dr. Grace."