Work Text:
The decision to redirect the Hail Mary was not a hard decision to make. It wasn’t an easy decision either, mind you- the decision to willingly give up everything that had only just been placed back into our reach, to turn around knowing we may never see another human being ever again, never eat another burger, never feel the grass beneath our bare feet or watch the sun dip below the horizon.
But it was the right decision.
The only decision we could possibly make.
Rocky.
We couldn’t let Rocky die.
Taumoeba-82.5 was a success, or so we had thought. Bred to survive the nitrogen dense atmosphere of Venus and Threeworld, (book reference if you haven’t read it), we thought we had done it. Thought we had figured it out. Thought we could part ways as heroes, the saviors of two planets.
But it was naive- childish, even, to discount the phenomenon that is evolution. We all just want to survive, don’t we? Turns out Taumoeba-82 is no different from the rest of us.
So here we are, nearly twenty days deep into our fifty-two day voyage to rescue the only friend we have left.
I’d retired to sleep early tonight with slim hopes of getting a good night of rest. In recent days it's become increasingly challenging to escape the nagging thoughts at the forefront of my mind. When I do sleep, I often wake to nightmares.
Tonight was no exception.
In my latest nightmare, we had reached Rocky’s ship, hearts full and hopeful, just to discover we were far too late. The Taumoeba had successfully breached Rocky’s engine, consuming Rocky’s remaining fuel supply- astrophage- exposing him to dangerous, life threatening radiation. We were unable to save him.
The thought of Rocky leaves a tangible ache in my heart. I miss the guy. I miss falling asleep knowing there was someone there, someone watching.
I remember the first night he had joined us here aboard the Hail Mary. I can still picture him in his space ball, a giddy bundle of curiosity.
The first time he proposed watching us in the first place.
“No, Rocky.” Grace laughed. “We don’t need you to watch us sleep, bud. I think we’ll be alright.”
“No.” Rocky had stated, his typical upbeat demeanor was gone, replaced by something else. Something solemn.
“Rocky no watch crew, crew die. Rocky watch Grace, Y/N. Grace, Y/N no die.”
My poor, fragile human heart had never felt the way it had at that moment.
Grace huffed and I nudged him in the side. “C’mon, Ry. It's like a sleepover. When was the last time you had a sleepover? Think about it that way. It could be fun, no?”
And so it was decided. From that day on, Rocky watched us- me and Grace- sleep every night on the voyage to and back from Tau Ceti. He watched us and we watched him and all was well. While it seemed unconventional in the moment, I’d give just about anything now to have it back now.
Tears well in my eyes as I check the hour on my digital watch. Time is something of an abstract concept when you’re floating in an expanse of endless darkness- it's not like you can just look out the window and say, “Hey! The sun's directly overhead, it must be noon!” But we are only human, after all, and humans have a requisite need for a semblance of perspective. We’d go crazy without it.
The Hail Mary has been programmed to mimic the twenty-four hour cycle on Earth, meaning we experience 16 hours of wakefulness and 8 hours of rest. My watch currently reads 2 am.
It’s going to be a long night.
A long, lonely night.
And then it hits me.
Ryland.
My counterpart on this one-way journey.
While we’d become fairly close during our time together on Earth, (being colleagues in a last ditch save the world effort will do that to you), I suppose relationships are amplified once you understand you’re interacting with the only human face you’ll ever see again.
I like Ryland. I like him a lot. There’s something unexplainable but easy about him. I’d lived my entire Earth life in solitude. I didn’t have friends nor did I care to make any, I’d long since been on speaking terms with my parents, I wasn’t fond of animals, and the one time I’d been on the verge of experiencing so much as the slightest taste of love, I shut it down for fear of what it might become.
Maybe it's a trauma bond. Maybe that’s the only reason it feels so easy to talk to him, easy to relate to him, easy to laugh, and cry, and explain things I’d never tried to explain to any other being in my life.
He began noticing it a few days ago, my tendency to wake in the middle of the night. He brought it up so casually, so indirectly, it hadn’t registered to me that he was genuinely concerned.
“You should sleep,” he had stated simply, forcing down another bite of the coma slurry. We had made the executive decision to salvage our remaining food supply for a later point in time.
“You’ve been working hard. You deserve the rest.”
I had actually spent the entire day in the mental health room looking at mountains, beaches, and buildings, so I knew he was just making excuses.
I choked down a bite.
“I’m fine,” I said, even though it couldn’t be further from the truth. I was beginning to look like a ghost. Pale face. Dark gray circles under my eyes.
He huffed. “You’re not sleeping like you should be, Y/N.”
I took another bite. Shrugged.
“Can’t sleep, that's all. I’m fine.”
“I get them too, you know.” This caught my attention.
He stirred the spoon, picking up and dumping heaps of the mush absentmindedly.
“Nightmares. I have them too.”
And I could tell by the sympathy in his bright blue eyes that he wasn’t lying.
“Look, I can’t fix it. I can’t take them away, but if you ever need me-” He leaned forward, placed a gentle hand over my own. The touch surprised me, but it didn’t bother me. In fact, I wished he had kept it there longer. “If the nightmares ever become too much, I’m always here, okay?”
And now, in this present moment, his offer hangs loosely in the air. The last thing I want to do is become a liability to him. Another thing to worry about…
But on the other hand, I could really use to hear his voice right about now.
Fine.
My eyes have yet to adjust to the darkness of the room. The only thing I can really make out is the overhead shadow of robotic arms. I risk a glance at the pod where Ryland had (supposedly) gone to sleep for the night. I really wasn’t sure. I had left him in the lab where he had said he’d like to work a bit longer.
“Ryland?” I whisper, my voice groggy with sleep.
I swing my legs off the side of the pod, my bare feet cold against the ship's tiled floor. A shiver passes through me. I walk the short distance to his adjacent pond but find it empty, a tangle of blankets left in its wake. He was here, but now he’s not.
The thought reaches me before I can stop it. What if something's wrong? In my time on this extraterrestrial journey, I’ve developed a bad habit of expecting the worst. I feel the rhythm of my heart climbing in my chest, a wave of anxiety coursing through my veins. What if something did happen?
“Ryland?!”
Okay, I think carefully to myself. It’s two in the morning, my name is Ryland Grace, where am I?
The lab.
Where else could he possibly be?
I understand it, honestly. I've experienced my own fair share of long restless nights, nights which I’ve spent putting my brain to good use. Equations, calculations, experiments- a strange but effective way to combat intense episodes of insomnia.
I make my way to the ladder, maneuvering myself carefully up the rungs in the darkness of the ship. Once I make it to the top, I pull myself up and over the edge and into the darkened hall, the dim fluorescent glow of LED’s lining the base of the floor my only guidance.
A steady silence envelopes me as I make my way to the lab, the kind of silence that would have been near impossible to achieve back home on Earth. Living in the city, there was always something going on. Always some kind of noise or another. Honking horns, speeding cars, noisy neighbors, barking dogs…
I think I’m always going to miss it, that life I left behind.
No reason dwelling on it now.
I reach the lab shortly, just to discover the area to be empty. No sign of my blue eyed crewmate. There’s a few test tubes scattered around the table, a measuring tape, some nylon thread. A single overhead bulb illuminates the space just enough to see.
“Ryland?” My voice is deafening in silence. “Ry, are you-”
A slight movement catches my attention from the darkest corner of the room, a space tucked in the back corner between two tables. Is that… a leg?
I hear him before I actually see him. A series of muffled sobs.
Oh Ry-
I approach slowly, cautiously, not wanting to scare him.
I admit it- the sight is not what I'd been expecting to find. It’s not something I believed would ever happen, not from Dr. Ryland Grace.
And it nearly breaks me apart.
Ryland is curled up in the corner of the lab, knees tucked close to his chest as sobs rack his body. His hair is a perfect blond mess, and his glasses lay idle on the floor, probably the first time in his entire life I’ve seen them off as opposed to falling awkwardly on his face.
For all but a split second I’m tempted to turn around before he notices me. Tempted to pretend like I hadn’t been here, hadn't witnessed this moment of vulnerability. I’m turning on my heels to leave when it hits me like the weight of a thousand tons- every moment I had ever spent feeling alone and afraid, far too frightened to reach out for the help I so desperately needed.
Instead, I close the space between us, kneeling down beside him, placing a gentle hand over the embroidered fox on the back of his cardigan. His breath hitches and he flinches ever so slightly. Through tear covered hands, I catch a glimpse of tired blue eyes.
“Ry,” I say, rubbing gentle circles on his back. I shake my head. “You should’ve woken me, why didn’t you wake me?”
“I-” His sobs hitch in the back of his throat, and I hate that he’s trying to make it stop. It’s like forcing an electron in a heightened state of energy to reach ground state without actually releasing any energy. It just doesn't work like that.
“I don’t- I- I don't know-”
“Don’t stop because of me, Ry. I mean it. Let it out. It’s okay.”
“Y/N,” he manages through sobs and his voice is broken. So very broken, and all I want to do is take away his hurt, his pain, his fear, and to bear it myself.
“Please, Y/N.” His red rimmed eyes beg. His voice cracks. “Please don’t go. I can't do this alone.”
I respond by wrapping my arms around his torso, burying my face in the crook of his neck as he does likewise. Tears ebb in my eyes as his embrace tightens, holding me close for dear life. I rub my hand up and down his back, and with a breaking sob, “I’m not going anywhere.”
I don’t know how long we spend falling apart in each other's arms, just two halves of a broken whole. It might have been a few minutes. Or maybe an hour. But it doesn’t matter, because in that moment I realize something- Ryland Grace is anything and everything I’ve ever lost.
He feels like familiarity.
He feels like comfort.
He feels like home.
I don’t try to rush him. I sit there, cradling his head in my hands as his tears soak the fabric of my shirt. I let the weight of his body bear down against me, and more than anything, I ensure he knows I’m not going to leave.
I don’t remember when I started singing, but I recognize the song almost immediately.
Sign of the Times. Harry Styles.
“Just stop your crying, it's a sign of the times.” I wipe a lock of blond hair from his forehead and plant a gentle kiss. He lets out a tired but satisfied hum, and I can’t help but smile. I keep singing.
“We gotta get away from here. We gotta get away from here. Just stop your cryin', it'll be alright. They told me that the end is near. We gotta get away from here"
A few stray tears find their way from his eyes and onto his flushed cheeks. I wipe them away with my thumb. His eyes flutter under my touch.
“Just stop your crying, have the time of your life. Breaking through the atmosphere. Things look pretty good from here. Remember everything will be alright. We can meet again somewhere. Somewhere far away from here…”
I finish out the rest of the song, and a comfortable silence settles over us. It takes some time, but his breaths eventually even out. The rise and fall of his chest syncs with my own as I run my fingers through his hair and down his back, my hand occasionally finding its place against the warmth of his cheek. I can’t help but admire him, there in my arms, looking more at ease than I’ve seen him in a long time.
“Feeling better?”
He nods against my chest.
“Much,” he mumbles.
“I’m glad.”
He mumbles something unintelligible, and a smile tugs at the corners of my lips.
“Let’s get you to an actual bed, yeah?” I whisper, brushing away yet another strand of hair.
“You’re half asleep already.”
“Stay here,” he mumbles. “Comfortable…”
I can’t help but laugh. “You know what’s even more comfortable? A bed.”
We eventually make it back to the medical bay, where Ryland slumps immediately. It makes me giggle, this drowsy version of him. Clumsy and carefree- more so than usual. I think it’s cute.
“I miss Rocky,” he drawls, his eyelids already half shut.
Rocky.
The name of our newfound cosmic friend raises an unanticipated but familiar ache in my heart.
“Hope… he’s… alright…” His words are drawn out and slow. I truly marvel that he's still awake at all.
“Soon,” is all I say, brushing his cheek. I remove the glasses which have somehow made their way back onto his face and set them carefully aside. “Soon, Ry. He’ll be with us soon. Just a little longer now.”
Ryland yawns, and his eyes flutter open just long enough to make one request.
"Watch… sleep…”
I smile. “Of course I’ll watch you sleep, Ry. I’m right here.”
“No… watch sleep… next to me…”
And on that night, for the first time in twenty days, there are no nightmares.
Just the rise and fall of Ryland’s chest, and a newfound hope that maybe. Just maybe, everything was going to be alright.