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Ryland hid, pressed up against the unforgiving cold metal of a heating unit. He could hear the sounds of people rushing past him, speaking in a mix if Russian and English, but he could tell it was all the same;
"Find him. Don't let him get away."
Stratt wanted to kill him. She was going to murder him. Send him off to space to die twelve light years away from anyone and anything he cared about.
When the noise dispersed, he pulled out his phone with shaking hands. He dialed an all too familiar number. Colt's number. His brother. His twin brother who was only a few minutes older but always insisted on calling himself his older brother because he felt it made it more necessary to protect Ryland. Colt would help him.
It rang.
And rang.
And rang.
And then-
"Ry?" Colt's voice echos through the speaker. A little small, tinny, distant in the way he was used to from international calls, but unmistakably Colt.
"Colt," He sobs back, "Oh thank god, Colt. You answered. You actually answered! You have to come save me! Please! You answered, which means you're coming right?"
"Ry- Ryland." He sounds confused, even as Ryland continues to sob into the phone, "Why did you call me. I'm on set, in Australia. I'm halfway across the world. I can't save you."
And reality came crashing back into Ryland all at once, slumping into the metal which never seemed to warm, still as cold as frigid as always.
"Oh. Right." He says, dumbly, "You didn’t pick up."
He was dreaming. He'd had this dream before. Variants of it at least.
It wasn't real.
"I didn't."
"You couldn't have."
"I couldn't have."
"It went to voicemail."
"It did."
"And you couldn't listen to it."
"I can't."
Colton Seaver, née Grace, had died, just days before Ryland Grace was told he was going to go to space. On a boat that crashed and exploded while he was wanted for a murder Ryland knew couldn't have actually been him but would never get a chance to try and clear for him. Colt had died and when Ryland had called him, out of habit or fear or the bone deep belief that his brother could still fix just about anything, no one had been there to pick up.
"And then they sent me to space." He says, quietly. Voice breaking a little.
"It's to late Ry," Dream Colt at least sounded apologetic. Sad. Like he was guilty he had died and couldnt answer the phone even though Ryland knew him answering couldn't have changed anything, "What's done is done."
"No," he whispers, maybe in response to the words, or the tone, or the knowledge he knows is true. But dream Colt- his subconscious- Colt ignores it. Continuing on with that same sad-guilty-apologetic tone.
"There's nothing I can do Ryland. I'm not real. None of this is real."
"So what do I do now?" He asks, voice cracking on a sob. A part of him knows how this ends. How it always ends. With needle in his neck taking his autonomy and his memories and stranding him light-years away from the grave his brother surely had by now.
"Oh Ryland. It doesn't matter." Ryland wished he didn't sound like he knew exactly what was coming. He just- he just wanted to-
"If none of this matters," he whispers, breath shuttering in his chest, "Can i stay with you on the phone at least."
"Ok." Colt sounds as shattered as he does. Ryland wonder, just for one purely unscientific moment, if maybe he was lucky enough to somehow be talking to Colt. Maybe it was his ghost, trying to comfort him somehow.
It was nice to pretend for a while.
"How was your day?" He asked tipping his head back to look at the rainbow in the sky above him. The last piece of earth he'd ever see.
"Good," Colt said, sounding like he meant it.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. It was good. Let me tell you about it."
And later, Ryland would wake up with tears in his eyes, and he'd tell Rocky about his twin brother. He'd tell him how he'd lived, how he'd died, how Ryland had called him because thats what he always did when he was in trouble. How turning around had been easy because his grave was the only thing that Ryland truly wanted to see on earth, and staying in space he could pretend it was all a publicity stunt and he didn't have to live with the loss. He'd tell Rocky everything he could remember and be glad to know that Rocky wouldn't forget it, that his brother's memory would live on.
But that was for later.
Now was for sitting back and staring at a rainbow as his brother told him about the ridiculous stunt that he'd done that would give Grace a heart attack if he saw, and his plans to woo back Jodie, and every little piece of the life that he was planning to live.
And somewhere, back on earth, Colton Seavers would wake up next to his wife, his kids down the hall and a dog at the end of the bed, smiling through tears over the dream he had telling his little brother all about his life.