Chapter Text
StarSavior Grace felt at peace, pressed down into the soft mattress of his abode in the Earth-Centre, the simulated habitat he’d lived in for the last 60 or so years. The air was crisp, humid with the smell of simulated petrichor, and the Eridian gravity weighed down on him as it has done for as long as he could now recall, the sensation of earth and even 0 gravity fading from his aged memory. On days he could stand, he wondered if he would still be mobile if he had returned to earth. Perhaps he could even walk unaided. Perhaps his whole body wouldn’t ache so much.
His mind wandered, taking notice of the weight of a hand in his and squeezed it, testing the flexible zenonite-coating touching his skin, and shifted his eyes, trying to catch the sight of the Eridian at the edge of his fading vision and smiled when he found the familiar muffled brown shape he’d fallen in love with. This was his best friend. This was the Eridian who… who… He was always here, as far as Grace could remember. He was…—
“Grace–” Rocky chimed softly. He shifts his carapace upwards and his shoulders relax outwards in an approximation of a smile. “Grace awake, statement! How feeling, question?”
“Good good good.” he hummed, and Rocky whistled in surprise, rumbling in joy at the sound of his friend’s voice. Grace readied himself for a longer response, breathing deeply and placing his dry tongue against the roof of his mouth, “fetch water, please, question?”
“Wet human want more wet” Rocky laughed, letting go of Grace’s hand and scuttering out the door “always more wet. Will be back quick.”
“Thank you, Rocky.”
Rocky stilled for a moment, before continuing out the room at a slower pace, and Grace for a moment felt bad before it was buried under the confusion of not knowing why he felt bad at all.
Grace sighed to himself, grumbling in the back of his throat in an admonishing vocalisation to himself before coughing for the effort, turning his head to look out the window of the Hail Mary and watching the waves. The air seemed to get heavier the calmer he was, making his pulse feel like it was pumping molasses and fogging up his mind. Grace inhaled a lungful of air, grounding himself in the peace of it all, and breathed out through his nose, eyes stilling on the projected horizon listening to the thrumming of song from the kitchen.
Grace woke up with a sharp inhale, followed by coughing fit, lurching up in his bed and nearly falling out of it in the process. He steadied himself, gripping the cheap headboard behind him and grabbing at his chest, overwhelmed by the everything. His body felt lighter, his mind felt so clear he cried in relief following his own thoughts from one to the next without the cursed brain fog. He couldn’t remember when he last felt this whole— except he did. He could. He remembered it because he felt it, somewhere in his bones, that this was the mind of someone young and unaffected by French drugs. This was—
He looked down at his hands and made a distressed warbling sound, clearer and crisper than he’d expected after years of abusing his vocal cords. His hands— both of them— were flat unmarred skin. He flexed them, noticing the small details of missing scars from nicking himself on zenonite tools, and more notably the absence of the burn scar that covered the back of his left hand and had taken out two of his fingernails. He had 10 fingernails! It shouldn’t be as amazing as it is, but he can’t help but tear up at the revelation that his hands were whole!
It didn’t take long for his focus to shift, catching on the sight of his thin pale legs lined with blond coloured hair, the granny-square blanket he crocheted when he was 23, all the way to his San Francisco apartment. What the actual fudge is going on.
He swallowed down a curse, then swallowed down bile, then launched himself to the nearest waste basket where he threw up food that tasted better than any of the nutrient-paste he’d consumed in the last 7 decades. He forgot flavours existed like this and for a split moment he had the visceral urge to try and shove it back into his mouth and savour the fleeting taste of something that tastes of something before he gagged at the thought. Evolutionary distaste for vomit be damned, he cried into the wastebasket in distress and overwhelm as he found himself revulsed and wanting all at the same time.
It took Grace longer than he’d like to admit, cradling that wastebasket and stimming to try and he recentre himself, before he looked up across his small apartment to the Calander over his desk and finding himself spacing out all over again. 2017. Okay, so the Patrova line has been discovered, but he doesn’t know what Stratt is doing. He can do this. He can game plan… but does he want to?
Something about the dilemma throws him for a loop all over again, wondering if he should just submit to fait and relive events precisely as he experienced them the first time, and then the other part of him— the part that wasn’t dumb dumb dumb— remembered that Stratt is basically a mind-reading strategist and could probably tell something was off with him from a mile away. But wait. He realised something very very important: She hadn’t met him before. How could she know he was different if they’d never had a first impression?
Perhaps she’d think he was crazy and insane and super fudging weird, but there was no way for her to think that was anything other than the eccentricities of a disgraced-academic-turned-school-teacher. This could work.
Grace finally got up, grabbing his calendar and set himself up with a marker and started to put together a plan of action.
So, if his memory is correct (and he doesn’t know if it is) he has anywhere between a week and a month before Stratt shows up. He thinks. He’s fairly sure she shows up in April but he’s worried he can’t remember something so significant as Stratt all but indenturing him to her endless UN-appointed powers as a slave of the patrova force.
Grace, lost in thought, startled when his phone rang from his bedside table. He jumped up, falling over having miscalculated the resistance of lower gravity, and grabbed the phone, answering it from the floor.
He sat in silence for a moment, before cursing himself for not introducing himself like he was supposed to using earth phones.
“Hello? Ryland?” The voice on the other side articulated human English words in a deeper softer exhale, and Grace took a moment to try and remember that the tone was indicative of sadness… or was it tirdness? “Where are—. If — late or stuck in traffic — office.“
Grace was surprised by the spoken language, before trying his best to focus in on the words. It had been a long time since he had spoken or heard English in anything other than written form and he found himself reeling at the disconnectedness of it all. The pauses between the words felt like anger and left him unsettled before he had to remind himself that human words are separate and aren’t like Eridian where words blend into a song or thrum. This is normal and everything is fine. He is fine.
“I—” Grace paused slightly at the pronoun, organising his words in his head the best he could “Am. Sorry.”
He cringed to himself, more than aware he sounded robotic and only a little like he was using text-to speech. Huh, he almost sounded like Rocky through the computer when they first met. The memory brought warmth to his chest and the confidence to continue, “I will be with you fast fast fa— uh— Yeah. I will be there soon.”
“This is the — time. This can’t happen again. This time — teachers meeting, so — overlook it. Don’t make — regret. See you —.”
Grace put down the phone before fumbling it and pressing end call. On one hand, human conversation! And he felt like he was getting better at it through the short call! On the other hand, he knew if he met Stratt as he is now, he would be royally fucked.
It took some scrambling about and a mixture of successful attempts to collect things he’d need for the day and unsuccessful attempts wherein he fell over and knocked his elbow and managed to punch the bathroom cabinet while brushing his teeth, but eventually he was on his way to work. He elected to forgo the bike, realising that if he’s struggling to walk right he probably shouldn’t be cycling on roads, and resigned himself to the hr long walk to school, happily munching on a container of random kitchen items as he went.