Archive of Our Own

He makes it back to Earth. Surprisingly, he survives the flight.

Among the first things Grace does when intercepted after splashdown is ask for Eva Stratt.

He's regaled as a hero, of course, just as Stratt said he would be. People treat him like a legend, or worship him like messiah.

It's a little flattering— that old worn part of him that craves validation rearing it's head a little— but mostly it's just unsettling.

He isn't meant for spotlights or crowds. He isn't meant for international attention. He's meant for classrooms and labs and the dim of Stratt's office. He'd be grateful if he never had to give another worldwide televised speech in his life.

The nations of the world, or what's left of them, are eager to give him whatever he wants. He spends the majority of his time leading the research and production of Taumoeba, of course; the Sun is still dimming and the Earth is still dying.

His initial 'splashdown' could hardly even be called that; he'd landed on a frozen sea. The world needs saving, and quickly.

But, in all of the in-between, he's being invited to parties and dinners in his honor, and showered with all manner of favors and presents in appreciation for what he's done. It's honestly overwhelming. He just wants time to breathe.

Still, no one will tell him where Stratt is.

The parties are not really his thing. He had enough of them even back then, following Stratt's lead; let alone now, when he's the center of attention.

He's the center of attention everywhere, these days. He misses when he was just a guy.

Still, he attends a lot of them anyway in hopes of meeting someone who might tell him where Stratt is. Maybe someone he met back when he was Stratt's tag-along.

It's not very smooth going. Most of the people he shakes hands with are tight-lipped business people and politicians who would rather get in his good graces than get any actual work done.

He does not envy Stratt, back then, for having to field their badgering phone calls day in and day out. He gets it now.

It takes a while, between his day work and media appearances, but he does manage to pry some inklings about her location. He chases those leads with dogged determination, and after time gets answers he doesn't like.

He had expected bad, but he still doesn't have to like it.

Grace has never been familiar with wielding authority; it's not like he ever had any to wield. Still, he did not spend four years beside the provisional dictator of the planet for nothing, and he's always been a good learner.

So he channels Stratt as best he can, hopes to God that she's okay, and forces his way to be taken to her.

She cannot be removed from her cell, they tell him, so their apologies for the rough conditions but he'll have to go to her.

He learns that she escaped a few years into her first imprisonment, snuck out by connections on the outside, and while in hiding, organized efforts for disaster relief worldwide. (It was, of course, explained to him as being 'illegal criminal activity,' but he could read between the lines.)

Since then, she'd been re-imprisoned, put into solitary to eliminate the opportunity of outside communication, and kept under tighter security measures so she couldn't escape again.

Even as the prison guard is unlocking the cell door, Grace is impatiently tapping his foot. Not caring for propriety, he pushes the guard aside the moment it's opened, unable to wait a second longer to see her.

And— he stops in his tracks the next moment, because it is not a pretty sight. It's not necessarily a terrible one either. It is simply emptier than empty.

The barren cell seems to void all color. It is greyer than grey.

And colorless in the midst of it is Eva Stratt.

His Stratt, who he traversed a universe to find.

Her legs are shackled, connected to heavy chains bolted into the ground. Long enough to move around the small room, but impossible to escape with. Her ankles are dark with old bruises, the skin there rough and worn.

There is hardly any color to her hair.

Nothing can reach her here. Her cell is empty aside from necessities. She doesn't even have books or a TV.

Just the necessary plumbing fixtures, a cot, and her ghosts.

Grace is not unfamiliar with the effects of solitary confinement. It was one of his biggest concerns making the four year trip back to Earth alone.

But he hadn't been alone, not exactly. He had Mary and Armando, robotic as they were. He had the internet, and all of Earth's movies and books and TV shows. He had Yao and Ilyukhina's clothes to cry over, when things got really hard. And he had memories of Rocky.

Those small connections to humanity made it bearable, kept him sane.

And most of all, he had light at the end if the tunnel. He had something to look forward to.

The woman in the cell looks like the only thing she is waiting for is death.

She's sitting on the prison bed, eyes staring blankly ahead. She doesn't look towards the heavy metal door opening. She doesn't look at him.

"Stratt!"

He rushes to kneel in front of her. He looks up at her face, sallow, sunken features and all, but she continues to not see him.

It's shocking, looking into blank eyes. They're drained of color too, if possible; gone from sky blue to pale as fog, or ice.

(It's frightening. So terribly frightening. The small, hopeful part of him that expected her to be the same as she was when he left, if not a little worse for wear, dies in the dim of her eyes.)

He reaches slowly for her face, but is too scared to touch her.

Tentatively, he reaches for her hand instead and flinches when he finds it ice cold. There's hardly any meat on her bones; there's no heating in the prison, despite the cooling temperatures; and she has no coat. The blanket that covers her sheets is the thinnest he's ever seen. He's horrified.

"Stratt," he whispers urgently. "Stratt!"

She doesn't respond at all that first day even though Grace is kneeled before her, head bowed to her lap, gently clutching her hand in fear of hurting her trying to warm it up, and begging for her to knowledge him.

Her mind is elsewhere. Her body is a husk without a soul.

When prison security comes to escort him out at the end of the day, he practically hisses when they try to remove him from her.

How could they do this to her? How could they, how could they, how could they?

Oh, he puts up a fight, for sure, but rules are rules and Ryland Grace knows better than to offend armed voices of authority when he is only a scientist, still. He is able to negotiate the designated visiting hours, at least— he has too little time to see her with his working hours as is, and he knows that she of all people would not like him to neglect his work to care for her. No one is quite willing to offend the hero of the Earth, so they make an exception and let him have his way.

Still, he cannot stay, and she cannot leave.

So he comes back, again and again, bringing coats and blankets and little things that might be easy for her to eat. He brings books and reads them to her, or rambles on and on about his adventures from the floor of her cell, as he used to do with his research progress from the floor of her office.

She is always unresponsive, only robotically moving to eat at her designated mealtimes as if by ingrained routine, but after a while, he notices that she's started to watch him leave. It makes an unnameable hope swell in his chest; the kind that makes him want to cry.

"I'll see you later, Stratt," he always tells her gently when he goes.

Each time they part is harder than the last. He's always thinking about what to say to or bring her next before the cell door even closes behind him.

One day, he's being more stubborn than usual when the guards tell him his time is up.

It's not the first time he's been reluctant to leave, and it certainly won't be the last, but it's the one he protests the most. It's not like anything even happened that day. It was no different from any of the others. Still…

It's not enough. The time spent with her is never enough.

"… Grace."

He's being unreasonable, he knows, but they're the ones being even more unreasonable for keeping her locked in here. Can't they see how inhuman it is? Can't they see this is torture?

Doesn't anyone care that she's dying here? Doesn't—

There's a gaze boring into the side of his face. He turns around.

"Grace."

Her voice is barely audible, more wind than whisper. His heart seizes nonetheless. The guards are promptly ignored as he kneels before her again, gently taking her hands in his.

"It's me Stratt, yes, it's me. Are you awake now? Can you hear me?"

She says nothing for a long time. "… Grace."

A tear falls down her cheek.

He wants to weep too. "Yeah, it's me, Grace," he tells her shakily, head ringing from how badly he wants to sob.

She's clearly unresponsive, still. She can't make out a word he's saying. He doesn't know if she even realizes he's there.

But she remembers him. She said his name. Her voice is nearly gone from disuse, but she spoke.

Grace bows his head to her knees and clutches her hands a little tighter, fervently thanking the God she believes in because even this is nothing short of a miracle.

It's nearly a week before she speaks again.

Her jaw opens slowly, stiff from disuse. "Dr. Grace," she whispers.

She looking in his direction now, but it's like she's looking right past him.

"It's been a while," she greets quietly, voice creaking. "You look different than I remember. But perhaps my memory is wrong. I've misremembered many things about you these past few years. It is human folly. You'll have to forgive me."

Who are you looking at, he thinks desperately. Are you seeing me, or a ghost?

"Has it been twenty-six years yet?" she asks the air. "Have you been dead, by now, for longer than I have betrayed you?"

"No, you didn't! Stratt, I—"

"The prison is a welcome respite. I can't see the sky from here."

It's true, there are no windows. No contact with the outside world. The thought of it makes Grace sick.

She seems to have taken it in stride.

"Hey," he whispers desperately. "Can you hear me?"

She doesn't see him. He doesn't know what she's looking at, but it's not him.

She's being haunted by something, though, and he has a horrible feeling that it has his face in her mind. It's not though. It's not. He's right here.

But she doesn't see him.

"I'm waiting to see if I'll get to see you before I go to Hell," she whispers at nothing. "Even if you curse me and damn me, I'd like to hear your voice one more time, Doctor."

He cries, kneeling at her feet. "You can hear it now, if you wake up," he weeps. "I'm here. I'm right here."

He doesn't know if this is better or worse than before. Either way, it breaks his heart.

In his dreams, he remembers her as she was, tired and noble, more stalwart than anybody. Her hair in the sunset, blazing red.

The next day he's told that he won't be able to see her for a few days, which is so absurd after yesterday's events that he might start seeing red.

The only thing that appeases him is the startling news that she's been scheduled for release. She can't have visitors because she's undergoing medical treatment in preparation for it.

He doesn't know anything about the politics behind the decision, but it's more than Grace could have hoped for.

Still, he is adamant about seeing her, just to make sure she is okay. Call it separation anxiety or whatever you will, but Grace is so, so scared of not knowing how she's doing.

The prison officers reluctantly let him peek into her cell, for just a moment.

Inside, a doctor is checking her vitals. Stratt does not see him, but she does not seem distressed either. The relief that she is okay is palpable.

He suffers the however-many days they told him to wait.

The next time he sees her, she is coherent again.

He steps into the cell, anxious and eager, expecting to spend a few hours talking to her unresponsive form as usual.

Instead, he meets ice-pale eyes, and Stratt, looking at him and seeing him for the first time in over twenty-six years.

For a long moment, neither of them move, frozen. It's hard to tell who is more surprised.

The only thing Grace can think is, she's here. He's been back on Earth for months, and only now has he finally met her.

Her first real words to Grace when she realizes it's him are as stiffly formal as ever:

"Welcome home, Dr. Grace," she says slowly, carefully, as if in disbelief that she's ever gotten to say the words. "Congratulations on mission accomplished."

Her mouth opens and closes. A tear runs down her cheek.

"I am glad you did not die," she says, half-afterthought, as she had the first time they met, after putting him in a room full of argon.

And what can he do then, but collapse at her feet and weep?

He missed this. He saved the planet, and it was all worth it for this.

He learns, soon, why she is being released. They are putting her back to work.

Her shackles are cut off with such a large clatter it makes Grace wince. He realizes for the first time how heavy they must have been; how long she had borne them. 

Grace protests, vehemently. It's too soon, she's barely even recovered enough to say words, let alone work; and what are those bastards thinking anyway, trying to put her back to work after all they've done to her? Are they mental?!

But then the military personnel they sent to retrieve her talk right past Grace and say, simply, "You have a mission to do, Eva Stratt," and Grace is helpless to watch as she stands to obey, a puppet on strings.

"See you, Grace," she pats his shoulder as she goes.

After some digging, he learns the only reason she was released at all is because many of the scientists that worked on the Hail Mary were loyal to her even after her imprisonment, and refused to work under anyone but Stratt.

It was not necessarily a problem when they were in the preliminary stages of breeding as much Taumoeba as they could, since Grace was spearheading those efforts, but once the space agencies who would launch the Taumoeba to Venus started becoming relevant it became an issue. They insisted on being directed by Stratt. No one else would do.

Those scientists had protested her imprisonment since the beginning, but there was nothing they could do about it. They had no leverage, then.

This, their necessity to saving the world with the return of Grace and the Taumoeba, is their leverage. It's their way of finally getting her out.

Grace would be grateful for them— is grateful to them; would have even joined their efforts sooner if he had known— except this method also puts Stratt right to work, with no time to rest or recover.

His heart breaks that this is her life. That this is any of their lives, really.

(The worth of their lives should not be dependent on their ability to save the world. This, he's learned firsthand.)

Surprisingly (or not), Grace's biggest opponent in getting Stratt to recover instead of work is Stratt herself, who throws herself into it wholeheartedly without a moments rest. Saving the world is her life's mission. She is determined to see it through to the end. Grace cannot stop her.

Within days of her release she is commandeering another ship, and another crew. She has world leaders on speed dial. She is back to drinking coffee like it's water.

Grace (who no one expected to follow her onto the ship at all) is helpless to do little more than trail behind her, using his knowledge of space and Taumoeba and Astrophage to help as much as he can in between taking care of her, making her rest and eat, and trying to wean her off the renewed coffee addiction.

"What do you want, Dr. Grace?" she asks tiredly, the day he stows onboard. His role is technically over; he is a great knowledge base and asset, but no longer a necessity now that Taumoeba production is in a stable stage. He can do as he pleases; which most people think is to finally rest, but is actually tailing Eva Stratt like a dedicated dog.

"I want you to rely on me," he answers, trying not to be cowed by her gaze. "I want to follow you around, and I want to be useful to you."

He is unwaveringly adamant, with a newfound courage he did not possess before he went to space.

Stratt has no idea what to do with him, so she simply gives up. He saved the damn world, he can do as he pleases.

She spends nearly all of her time on the ship's bridge, in command of the operation, and Grace spends nearly all his time making moon eyes from his perch next to her while she barks orders and saves the world from her tablet.

Someone brings her two venti coffees. Grace takes them both before she can, which she protests, and places them out of her reach.

"Bring her tea instead," he tells the coffee guy; and because he's Ryland Grace, hero of the world and guy who's in a rumored situationship with their boss, the man hurries to comply.

The look of baffled indignation Stratt sends him makes him giddy for weeks.

And still, they don't talk about it. The big thing. The world is still dying, and they're running out of time, so they don't talk about anything, really.

Still, Stratt acts like she expects Grace to hate her, sometimes. He doesn't. He really, really doesn't.

Some days are harder for her. Those days, she needs to rely on Grace more; to delegate, to fend off phone calls and emails, to take care of her.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Grace," she says, staring blankly ahead at nothing.

"What for?" he whispers, kneeling beside her bed. These days scare him most, because they remind him of how he found her in that cell, hollow and empty.

"You're a good man," she says, "and I sent you to die." It's the closest they come to talking about it. "You're a good man, and you're here wasting your time with me."

Grace makes a noise of extreme offense. "I'm not 'wasting my time'—"

"You should be teaching," she interrupts. "Doing what you've always loved. Meeting people. Finding someone to start a relationship with. You're not scared of attachment, or getting hurt, anymore. And you'd be popular. You're the savior of the Earth." She exhales, trembling only perceptible because Grace is sitting so close. "You should be happy."

Grace is so disbelieving he reels back from it so he can look at her fully. "Are you even hearing yourself?" he asks incredulously. "I am happy."

She shakes her head. "No, you don't—"

"No, you don't get it," he interjects. "You know what I wanted to be doing if I was on Earth that whole time I was in space? This, right here. I just wanted to be with you. Following you around and taking care you of, watching you and following your orders, just like how it was on the Vat."

"I hate that name," she says automatically.

He grins, megawatt, because things aren't okay but that's still the Stratt he knows. "I know. But it's funny and makes me happy, so it's sticking around. This makes me happy, too." He picks up her hand. "There's no place I'd rather be than right here."

She looks at her hand in his blankly.

"… Do as you please," she says eventually, voice devoid of feeling.

"I will."

He wonders if she knows that they're both probably touch-starved. That when he holds her hands on those bad days, that's the only human touch either of them have had in years.

He wonders if her hands hold the memory of it days later, like his do.

Those bad days come less frequently with time (not that they were very frequent in the first place), and after the first time she's gone a month without one, she tells him, approx of nothing, "Thank you for your help all this time, Dr. Grace. I'm alright now. I can manage on my own."

She hasn't recovered anywhere near enough, in his eyes, but that's not the point—

He gapes, flabbergasted. "Are you kicking me out right now?"

Stratt looks at him, somewhere between bemused and judgmental, like he's a child missing simple concepts. "You've done enough. I can't imagine you want to keep wasting your time with me."

Grace stares. Wasting time? She still believes that? "I want to spend the rest of my life with you." And then promptly wants to slap himself because why the fuck did he say that?

She has that confused look, the one she always wore years ago the few bumbling times he tried flirting with her, but this time she's not smiling.

"Your mission is done," she tells him, like she thinks he's confused about something (he's not, just mentally trying to dig a hole for himself to crawl into). "It's been done for months now, frankly. You have no reason to put up with me any longer."

"I'm not—" He cuts himself off, helpless to explain. "Is it so hard to believe I'm here because I want to be?"

"Yes," she says, which is devastating. "There's no reason for you to stay."

He's done all this, gone to space and back, but he still doesn't have the words to express his feelings. He didn't have them on the deck of the Vat, or under the overcast skies at Baikonur.

Even now, all he can say is, in the non-sequitur way he tends to be when nervous, "You always wore neutrals, but your hair always stood out. It's my favorite color." And hopes that she understands this is him saying I was always looking at you. I have always wanted you. You are my reason to stay.

Her face doesn't wipe of its confusion. She still doesn't get it.

Still, she indulges in his whims, as she always does. Lets the topic go, and lets him stay.

(If he's being positive, he imagines her indulgence as a sign that she cares. If he's cynical, he wonders if it is her atonement for the one time he made a decision, and she said no.)

As they get closer to the much-anticipated Taumoeba launches, Stratt has politicians calling her nearly every moment of the day. She cannot even eat without being on the phone with somebody.

"I'm surprised they weren't putting you to work while you were in prison," Grace grouses, pissed off about it, during a rare moment of respite.

"They were, until it became inconvenient for them."

Grace blinks. "Wait, hold on, you can't just give me that. Elaborate! I want the full rundown!" He curses the over-twenty years they've been apart. So many years that he doesn't know about her.

Stratt rolls her eyes, but obliges him nonetheless.

"I wasn't interested in their power conflicts or politics," she explains. "Only about making as many people survive as I could. Unless it had to do with crop yield optimization, resource management, resilient infrastructure building, and the like, I wouldn't help. Which was fine for a while, but the thing about resources and food is that in periods of unrest, those matter more than currency, and nearly every global power only wanted more for themselves without caring about how to best provide for the world.

"My role became political, and the more I pushed for the best solutions on a worldwide scale, the more those self-interested powers disagreed. They were all too able to limit me from my prison cell, then. I was stripped of authority, well and truly. But I had connections, people who truly cared about saving the world, who broke me free. You know the rest," she shrugs, as if the rest doesn't matter at all.

Living on the run, doing what she could, where she could. Being found, recaptured, and put in isolation and shackles.

Grace is still so, so angry at the world for putting her in a cell. Who cares that they all predicted it would happen in advance. He can still be angry.

"They shouldn't have done that," he says quietly, simmering in it.

"I nuked Antarctica," she reminds him, as if that justifies anything.

"I know you did!" he rolls his eyes. "I was in the conference room when you decided it; I was with you when it happened!"

"I sent you to die, Grace," she says, pin quiet, and that's the crux of it, with them.

He throws his hands in the air, fully exasperated. "I know that, too!"

"And you know that they know?" She gestures vaguely at the outside, at the world.

"Yes!"

It'd been made clear to him, when he was searching for Stratt in prison, that her treatment of him had been one of the main reasons she was in there. He was never revered any less for it, his cowardice, but she was hated by everyone for it.

"You know what pisses me off the most?"

He starts to pace, frantically.

"Everyone I talked to acted like I'd still forgotten that part when I insisted on meeting you. Like they knew better than I did what happened." He scoffs. "I was there! I experienced it! I remember it! And it's not important!"

"Yes, it is," she insists. "Of course my crimes against the world matter; of course my crimes against you matter. You should hate me for it."

"No!" He breathes out angrily. "I know everyone expects me to. Everyone only remembers how you betrayed me. But no one talks about how I spent four years by your side. All those 'inhumane' and 'unethical' decisions you made? I was there for all of them. I agreed to all of them. Heck, you practically only paved the Sahara after I advised you to! I was complicit! If what we did was so awful, I deserve to be in a jail cell just as much as you do."

Which, she doesn't.

"Don't talk like I don't understand why you did everything you did, because I do. Even if I think you could stand to be less cold about it, I agreed with everything." Even the sending him to space part. "I'm not without blame, either."

"You aren't," insists Stratt, still quiet, but stubborn. "Those were decisions carried out at my behest, under my authority. I made the final calls. They are not your burden to bear."

"I was a coward!" he shouts.

She shakes her head. "You aren't," she says, again, barely audible now. "You saved the world," she whispers, and God, Grace will never get used to hearing her speak so quietly. The woman he knew had more confidence than God.

Grace wants to kill whoever did this to her. (He wants to ignore how she is never more quiet than when she talks with him, in her guilt.) Instead—

"You did too," he tells her, trying to say it gently against his roaring anger because he wants her to hear it sincerely, know that he means it, because no one else will. "You saved the world too."

She shakes her head again.

"Why won't you believe it?"

She looks at him, and her light eyes are indecipherable in their fixation.

Her fingers twitch when they dip to his crooked frames, and on an unnameable impulse, Grace seizes that hand to bring to his face; lets her fingers spasm in his grip before she gives in and adjusts his glasses there.

He keeps her hand, just because he can. Thinks about their shared touch-starvation, and how he hasn't gotten to hold it in a long time.

"Grace," she says, still watching him with that heart-wrenching gaze. "I didn't save it."

And— Oh.

The world tilts on its axis, just a fraction.

Suddenly, he understands the look in her eyes, because it's the same way he feels when he looks at her. And he knows, then, that she means I didn't save you.

Oh.

There are a thousand butterflies trapped in his chest, beating against his ribcage and wreaking his body. Oh, you love me too, he thinks.

Understands, in the same breath, you hate yourself because you love me, and you had to kill me. Oh. Oh. Oh.

It's a thousand revelations at once, and of the many major, universe changing revelations he's had in his life, this one feels the most important. This one feels like it's setting his heart on fire.

But he knows that there is no way to reverse her self-loathing, because there is no way to undo the past. There is nothing he can say to erase their unfortunate history. He would invent a time machine if he could, if only he was an expert in theoretical physics instead of theoretical biology.

The only way they can go is forward.

She is remorseful, but not regretful. She is glad that he is alive. She is thinking, I killed you, I killed you, I killed you.

He squeezes her hand.

"Can I tell you a secret," he asks, that non-sequitur way of his. "I went to space, but I left my heart with you."

She stills. He doesn't breathe.

"What does that mean?"

"You know what it means."

She shakes her head, and tries to shake his hand off too, futilely. "You should find someone else," she insists, and breaks his heart with it. "Someone to date, or to settle down with. You're still a reasonable age to find someone. You're a world renowned hero. You'll have your fair pick of anyone you want."

"I don't want anyone else," he shakes his head stubbornly. "I only want you."

"I sent you to die."

"I know. Doesn't matter."

"It does matter."

"Not to me, it doesn't."

She exhales, helpless. "I'm even older, now."

"Don't care. So am I."

"Not by this much."

"Irrelevant. I'd like you if you were a rock."

"What—?"

She looks at him for a long moment, like she really can't believe him.

"You liked the color of my hair," she says softly, because it's true. "It'll never be like that again." She spreads her hands in a 'what can you do?' gesture. "I'm all grey."

He stares at her, so intense his gaze could burn. "Doesn't matter," he insists again. She's about to protest, but he interrupts, "Do you know how many times I've looked at you and thought— I would love you, even in greyscale." She stops, stunned. He takes a shuddering breath, suddenly finding the words he didn't know how to say before, because there is nothing more important than assuring her of this, now. "That I would love you, even if all the colors in the world disappeared. Even if we died, and it all faded to black?"

He'd thought about it endlessly, during his four years alone. The truth is, he could hardly even remember what she looked like by the end of them, but still, he knew he loved her.

And because he's looking at her now, he sees all of her: grey hair and pale eyes and paler skin. Washed out and faded. He loves her so much he aches with it.

"I'll love you always, Eva," he says, raw and honest. "For the rest of my life. "

"You should find somebody else," she protests, again.

He shakes his head.

"I won't," he promises. "I won't."

It makes Grace laugh a little, to think that they survived their second fight. Relationship goals, he thinks.

Stratt says it's their third fight, fourth maybe, if you include the arguments they had when they met. And, they aren't in a relationship.

Not yet. Not until they fulfill their objective. Mission-first, as always.

It makes Grace anxious, a little, because the last time he planned to wait until their mission was done before making a move, a building kind of blew up on them. But like last time, he knows the stakes. Like last time, he knows that saving the world comes first.

For her, saving the world will always come first. He gets it, now, in a way he didn't fully before.

(And because he knows her better now, he also knows that she's using the time in-between as a chance for him to change his mind.

She really thinks that he should, and that he will. He won't. Not about her. Not about this.)

She pulls off saving the world one more time, of course. She's Eva Stratt. Grace is, as ever, in eternal awe.

Naturally, they're nowhere near done yet. They've only sent the first few of many Taumoeba shipments to Venus. They will continue to monitor the progress of the Sun and send more as necessary. Still, it's a start to the end of the end of the world.

In the days following the launch, he is predictably annoying, following her around more than usual.

"What do you want, Dr. Grace," she asks him, fed up.

He wants to define their relationship, finally. "I want to be yours."

She gapes, flabbergasted.

He stares at her in awe. "I've never seen you make that face!" he marvels, giddy.

"That's not what I—" she inhales, collect herself. Presses fingers to her temple to rub away the impending headache. "How could you ever want that," she asks.

"Easily," he responds, and only now does he begin to get nervous. "Stratt, you're…" he chuckles, fidgety. Here's the confession he didn't get to make at Baikonur. "You're amazing, you know that? You're brilliant, talented, and the most competent person in any room you walk in. You're confident, and blunt, and a little mean sometimes, but honestly, I like that too." He ducks his chin and gazes upwards at her, shy. "Is that alright?"

She stares at him like he's grown a second head. "Is what alright?" she asks numbly.

"That I like you," he says earnestly. "That I like you this much and I want to stay by your side. Can I? Will you let me?"

Stratt wants to faint. She's given him so many opportunities to walk away, and yet this man… She gives up.

He is Ryland Grace, leading expert in Astrophage and Taumoeba and zenonite and Eridians. Savior of the world.

He is the man who makes her coffees, and then proceeds to substitute them throughout the day with teas. He fought her for Astrophage, once, and he has never let her regret it. He doesn't know it, but he saved her heart.

He saves her every day.

She swallows around the lump in her throat. "Do as you please."

He lights up, megawatt, like a thousand suns.

Call it dramatic, but:

It's like redemption, or absolution, or forgiveness, or grace.

He spoils her half to death after that (as if he wasn't doing so already).

It's like he's taken it upon himself to become her house husband (never mind that they're on a ship), taking care of every need so she can focus on her work.

He helps with that too, of course; no one knows more about Taumoeba and it's affects on Astrophage than him. He is still a scientist, even if he's mostly a retired one.

But most of what's needed now is the engineering of spacecraft and probes to send Taumoeba to Venus and monitor the situation there, which Grace has significantly less experience in.

He still gets research reports on Astrophage and Taumoeba, and he still comes up with a thousand hypotheses for how life evolved the way it did to create the biotas of Earth and Erid and Adrian. He has regular virtual calls with the scientists in labs, getting updates and bouncing theories off each other. He teaches virtually, sometimes, through blogs and videos he uploads to the internet.

Still, most of his time is spent de-cluttering, summarizing documents, making sure Stratt doesn't die of caffeine overdose, and otherwise catering to her every need while she manages operations.

It's almost like being on the Vat again. It's the happiest he's been in a long time.

"Do you really forgive me?" she whispers one day, as he's brushing her hair after hours in her room. He is, as always, endlessly gentle as he does it.

"What's there to forgive?" he asks easily.

"You want me to say it again? I betrayed you."

He hums, kisses her head. "How could I ever care that you betrayed me? Humanity betrayed you worse." He traces lightly across her neck, where there's a tattoo in the shape of their crime.

"It was a premeditated betrayal, one I took willingly," she reminds him. "And it doesn't absolve what I did to you."

"I'll kill them," he says, deceptively mild, willfully ignoring the second part of what she said. "Everyone who did that to you. Everyone who put you there."

"Don't." And there's that age-old note of exhaustion at his antics. "I have enough blood on my hands for the two of us."

He takes those bloody hands in his own and kisses them.

Later, once he's had his fill of brushing and braiding, he tells her, carefully:

"It's not like I never hated or resented you. But more than that, I thought of how lucky I was to have met you. To have been given a purpose like the one we had back then, to have done such incredible work with such incredible people. That I wasn't willing to see it through to the end was my own cowardice. You were right. And I didn't realize it until after I'd become a hero."

"I wasn't right about anything," she says quietly.

"Well, you were right about me, weren't you?" He tries to crack a smile. "Or did you, somewhere along the way, stop believing in me after all?"

She shakes her head, the braid swaying with it. He likes her hair now, too. He likes her, always.

"I never stopped having faith. But that doesn't mean I wasn't wrong."

"You were right," he insists. "And one day, I'm going to make you believe in it. Did you know? I came all the way back home so I could hear you say, 'I told you so.'"

Despite herself, she laughs. The sight is so joyous he could burst with it. It's the first time he's seen her smile since decades ago at Baikonur. She is just as beautiful as she was then.

They both have their nightmares, and when they start sharing a bed, they startle each other awake with them, often.

Grace will never admit it, but more than he dreams of being held down and restrained, more than he dreams of not knowing who he is, more than he dreams of the times he nearly died on Adrian, he dreams of being alone. Of having dead bodies for company, and when they were gone, of having no one. The long period of time Rocky slept after he saved him, and the long four years after they said goodbye.

He dreams of being discarded, of being sent away. Of being told, 'Do you think I kept you on the project for so long because I needed a junior high schoolteacher around?'

"Say it," he asks of her once, having woken them both up with one such nightmare. It's not that bad, Stratt wakes them up more often, with worse, but he's shaken by it nonetheless. "Say that I'm yours. Say that you wouldn't have let me leave your side if the fate of humanity didn't depend on it."

Say that you won't leave me alone again.

It's not true. She wouldn't have let him follow her to prison. She won't let him follow her to Hell.

"… I love you, Ryland Grace," she says instead, and he smiles like that's enough.

When he wakes up, they're holding hands. She sighs, still half-asleep, and leans forward until her head rests against his shoulder. A small smile plays at her lips. Grace feels like he could combust.

Forget the nightmares and the hardships.

This is their life now; him and her and the next twenty years, at least. It's incandescent.

After hesitating for a moment, he slowly moves his other arm to wrap around her. He can't help but squeeze her to him, as gentle as possible, the tension of holding back from simply crushing her against him lining his shoulders. He's so happy he feels like he could die.

This, he knows, is what he came back for. This moment right here, and the rest of their lives together, if he has a say in it.

And this time, he will. He'll make sure of it.