Work Text:
He’s too late.
It doesn’t happen — it never does. Courtland Gentry is never late and he always finishes the job.
Maybe it’s because this has nothing to do with work. Maybe it’s because, for the first time in years, something else, someone else has taken precedence. Maybe it’s because there were no warnings, no screeching alarms, no goosebumps on his skin screaming at him to brace for impact.
Maybe it’s because he never quite expected his life to be destroyed by the evening news playing on the cracked TV screen of a quiet french restaurant.
“...un changement de dernière minute,” the presenter says. Court’s own french is just good enough to let him follow the string of words coming out of his mouth as the grey-haired man discusses tonight’s much-awaited launch of the Project Hail Mary. “À la suite du décès décrété tragique mais accidentel de deux des six astronautes préparés à monter à bord du vaisseau Hail Mary, le Dr. Ryland Grace, un docteur en biologie moléculaire américain, a rejoint aujourd’hui même l’équipage du tant attendu Projet Dernière Chance, que le monde entier …”
Court frowns, brain struggling to compute the absurd oxymoron fed to him in a language other than his own. As his hair starts standing on edge, an academic picture of a blond man with an awkwardly serious face appears next to the presenter’s head — and effectively bursts through whatever semblance of peace Court had managed to summon in his month of hiding in the countryside of France. The rest of the presenter’s speech gets lost to the sudden whirlwind of his thoughts, Court already up and on his way out of the restaurant without an ounce of consideration for the half-eaten and unpaid meal on his plate. His phone has somehow appeared in his hands, fingers automatically dialling one of the two numbers he would never dare to forget.
The line only beeps once as Court’s breath turns to fog in the cold air of November.
“You’ve reached Ryland Grace, sorr—” Court hangs up.
Dials again.
Beep. “You’ve reached Ryland Grace—”
Hangs up.
Dials again.
Beep. “You’ve—”
“Dammit, Ryland, you stupid fucking idiot, answer the damn phone!”
His voice echoes around the quiet street. Were he any less panicked, he might have been self-conscious about making his presence so loudly known, but as his usually steady fingers tremble to dial the same number again, nothing feels louder than the growing pressure between his ears.
Beep. “You’ve reached Ry—”
The phone clatters to the ground. Court’s entire body tenses, like it would right before a fight, his arms shaking with a specific kind of terror he hasn’t felt in over fifteen years. From where he’s standing he can see the few other patrons of the restaurant eye him warily through the front window, can see the seat he vacated mere moments ago, can see the TV screen as it switches to pictures of the Hail Mary’s three acclaimed astronauts.
Astronauts. He mulls the word over in his head, a wave of nausea threatening to overturn his empty stomach as he watches the same old picture of Dr. Ryland Grace. It hits him, there and then, that it has been years since he and Ryland last exchanged more than a short phone call, years since he last saw his brother’s face, and the sudden regret hits him like a tsunami, threatens to pull him down, to never let him back up again. He can’t remember the last words they spoke to each other, can’t remember the length of Ryland’s blond hair the last time he saw him, can’t, for the life of him, understand what could have motivated him not to tell Court about any of this, can’t picture his elevator-averse and ever-fearful brother ever saying yes to being sent to his promised death.
For a moment, all Court can remember is the blond kid who used to expertly muffle his cries in his sleeve and sneak into his eldest brother’s room in the middle of the night to outrun the bad dreams.
His hands are shaking. Court ignores the sting in his eyes as he stares around the still street. He picks up his phone mechanically, because the hope that Ryland might call him back lingers at the back of his mind like a vain fantasy. He blinks, blinks again, then again, then turns around because he has to go, has to move, has to do something, has to figure out a way to reach Ryland, to sabotage the launch, to keep his brother safe.
Court is good at keeping people safe. He’s an expert at sabotage. He can take out world leaders, survive plane crashes, break out of any jail, create bombs out of nothing.
He can’t teleport.
His feet start walking, desperate to move, as if by willpower alone Court could make it to Baikonour before the launch. Maybe it’s his own fault that he can’t.
He makes it to the end of the street before despair threatens to bring him to his knees again. The launch is scheduled for 8 P.M. tonight, local time. He can’t bring himself to look at his watch, knows that a few minutes won’t make any kind of difference in the matter.
He’s too late.
A wheeze slips past his lips and it suddenly occurs to him that his lungs are too tight to breathe. Dark dots start painting his vision and Court crouches down in the middle of the sidewalk, brings his shaking hands to his head and squeezes, in hopes that the past ten minutes will fade away and reveal themselves as nothing more than a bad dream.
He digs his fingers into his scalp, but the pain does not help him wake.
Spiralling thoughts pull him under, and Court has drowned and bled out and crashed before, but nothing has ever felt so final. Flashes of blue eyes and toothless grins assault him, Ryland’s thick glasses slipping on the bridge of his nose as he talked, shiny tape holding the broken frame together, for new glasses were an idea too expensive to even entertain. Voices and laughter echo around his pounding head and burning bile rises up Court’s throat.
He spits on the floor, tries to conjure the years of conditioning that have led him to become the machine he’s supposed to be, but to no avail. Whatever switch he can flip when danger threatens him seems immutable when that same danger looms instead over his brother.
Looming is too soft a word. Danger has found his brother.
Years ago, Court had hidden his father’s gun behind his bedside table and decided that no other soul would ever get to terrorize his brothers ever again. He had sacrificed everything to keep them safe.
Court’s retching nearly drowns the sudden ringing of his phone, and he can almost feel indents left on his scalp when his fingers finally let go. The number on the screen is not the one he dialed over and over again.
A voice horrifyingly similar to Ryland’s is there to greet him when Court brings the device to his ear, but he could never be fooled. “Court—”
“Did you know?” Court grits out, covering his burning eyes with his free hand and squeezing tight.
“I’m finding out right now,” is Colt’s reply, his brother sounding even worse than Court does. “I swear I didn’t know, I called him last week, I swear h—he never mentioned anything, Court, he’s not answering his phone, we have to do someth—”
“There’s nothing to do,” Court interrupts, dropping from his crouched position to a seated one. The sidewalk is freezing. He can’t bring himself to care. “There’s nothing to do.”
“The fuck you mean, there’s nothing to do? Court, they’re sending him to his fucking death, if we don’t do something we’re never—”
“And what the fuck do you want me to do, Colt?” Court snaps. “Teleport to fucking Kazakhstan? Find a way to nuke the rocket in the next three minutes so he’ll die on Earth instead of out there?”
“I don’t fucking know, dude, you’re the fucking super-spy!” Colt shouts back before a violent sob rips through the line.
Neither of them speaks for a while, Colt’s hysteric cries filling up the silence as Court struggles to push through the ongoing assault of emotions trying to tear him apart. He squeezes his fingers harder around his face when the telltale wetness of tears starts seeping through his clenched digits, to no avail.
Blond hair, blue eyes and snarky remarks keep on bursting through, excruciating reminders that the regrets assaulting him now will stay with him forever.
Court Gentry knows death. He has seen it firsthand more times than he could even recall, he has delivered it, brushed it, watched it destroy even the most powerful of men. Years of training and living have acquainted him with the concepts of loss and grief.
None of it has ever felt like this. Paralyzing terror spreading through freezing muscles, shock numbing his ever-sharp brain, a dagger running straight through his seizing heart. For the first time in as long as he can remember, Court is helpless, speechless, without a plan.
“Court,” comes his brother’s broken voice through the phone. “Court, I can’t lose him. I can’t lose him. I can’t lose him.”
Court’s hand slips away from his face as the pain in Colt’s voice crushes the small aching remnants of his heart. He blinks and watches numbly as tears drop from his lashes to the cold concrete between his knees. Colt is saying something that doesn’t quite reach his ears while Court looks up, eyes catching on the window of a ground floor apartment, a lit TV screen silently showcasing the end of Court’s world to the darkened street.
Dazed, he watches as the rocket launches into the sky, humanity’s last hope dragging Court’s slain heart along for the ride.
Colt’s violent sobs rip through the phone and through Court’s chest. Somewhere in the neighborhood, people start cheering and clapping for the first successful leap of Project Hail Mary.
Long after the screen goes black and the line goes dead, Court still can’t bring himself to even blink.