Work Text:
In your many years working under Stratt (both figuratively and literally) you had never once seen her cry. You held her hand after she destroyed Antarctica. It pissed you off, all things considered. Your speciality was Antarctic zoology, so naturally you weren’t exactly excited. But you held her hand anyway and promised her it would be worth it. You could see the guilt on her face, but she hid her trembling lip, clenched her fists, and moved on. You watched her walk home from the courtroom after her copyright trial. It was a decisive victory for her- she walked out without paying anyone a cent. Still, she clutched her pardon anxiously. She knew that after the Hail Mary’s launch, she was quite frankly screwed, but she did a good job of hiding her anxiety. Stratt took a shot of whiskey with her shaking hand and moved on.
Today, there would be no moving on. She was sitting in the corner of your shared room, staring at the wall. She wouldn’t look at you, her wife of three years, and if she wasn’t looking at you, she wouldn’t look at anyone. You could hear her breath wavering and saw her shoulders shake.
“Evie, are you okay?” you asked quietly, putting down the book you were reading. You folded the corner, just like you always did. Stratt hated it. Okay, maybe don’t fold the corner right now. Stratt was upset enough. You unfolded it, smoothed out the paper, and marked your place with the dust jacket instead. Of course, Stratt wasn’t a fan of that either, but it was better than crumpling up the pages of the precious books that she casually stole from a library.
Stratt was quiet. “I… I’m fine, ⍓︎□︎◆︎❒︎■︎♋︎❍︎♏︎. I just need a moment to collect myself. I apologize.”
“C’mon, you know you’re not fine,” you replied. It was fairly obvious what this was about. She didn’t admit it, and you knew she never would, but she was grieving, not just Dubois and Shapiro, but Grace. Honestly, he was never your favorite, but Stratt was allowed to have friends, even though she’d never call them that. All things considered, you and Grace were too similar. You were like two magnets with the same charge, naturally repelling each other no matter what. Of course, you never saw Grace as competition. Stratt was a trustworthy and faithful woman, and you’d never seen anyone more aroace than Ryland Grace in your entire life. At the very least, he was gay, and Stratt was lesbian. No concerns there, other than the fact that he stole your personality and somehow made it nerdier.
Still didn’t mean he deserved to get sent off to die in space though. Of course, Stratt had no choice. It was him or the planet. Your second choice after Zoology was moral philosophy, and Stratt was the definition of a utilitarian: doing what was best for the most amount people. She’s the type of girl to push a fat guy off a bridge to stop a trolley from hitting five people, if that reference makes any sense. She’d pull that lever in a heartbeat, but your trolley-operator-in-chief wife was still pretty upset, and was still not responding to you.
“Evie. It’s okay, you can talk to me. I know it was hard, but you had no choice,” you said. Talking things through always made Stratt feel better. Problem is, she never wanted to do it.
“It’s not okay,” she whispered. “I… I’ll never be able to tell him I’m sorry. I said what I had to so I could get him on that ship. I said horrible things to him. I called him a coward. I told him I only wanted him around because of his coma gene. I didn’t- I didn’t mean that, but he’s going to think I did, and I needed to do it but I wasn’t trying to be cruel and-“
“It’s okay,” you said. “It’ll be worth it. God willing, he’ll save us all.”
Stratt turned around and looked at you. “But he didn’t want to.” Shit, she really was crying now. That was new. You stared at her for a moment, completely dumbfounded, but cleared your throat and continued talking.
“Hey, out of everything you’ve done, this is-“
“This is worse. He trusted me. Antarctica meant nothing to me. I knew it upset you, but it didn’t kill you. Neither of us thought twice about the Sahara desert, and you pirate everything you watch anyway. Dammit, I can’t afford to get distracted from our mission like this. He leaves tomorrow. I should be accepting my fate. I should be preparing my court case that I know I’m going to lose. Everyone’s going to move on. You’re probably going to return to your zoology career, salvaging what’s left of the ecosystems I destroyed. The rest of the scientists will go back to doing what they can before the beetles come back, and the crew of the Hail Mary are going to do their best and then die. Grace is going to die. He was begging me not to send him. He didn’t want me to kill him. He wanted to stay alive for his students, who he’s never going to see again.” Stratt chuckled grimly. “You’ll probably be dead if this doesn’t work. We’ll all die. And Grace died for nothing. I sacrificed everything for nothing.”
Stratt paused for a moment and wiped her eyes. “Thinking about this just makes me wonder if I’d do the same to you. If it came down to it, I’d have to, and there’s nothing I could do about it. I didn’t get put in charge of protecting my loved ones, I was put in charge of protecting humanity. I love humans. We’re beautiful creatures, capable of love and war. Grace was one of my favorites,” Stratt finished, a few tears streaming down her face.
“Evie, you’re spiraling. Come here, it’ll be okay,” you said.
“No, it’s not going to be okay. I just murdered someone. Just another thing to add to my conscience. I apologize, I shouldn’t be burdening you with this.” Stratt was mumbling, barely comprehensible. “This is my cross to bear. You shouldn’t even be on this mission. We needed a zoologist around about as much as we needed a junior high teacher. You were helpful in projecting damage. That was it.”
“Gee, thanks,” you said. “But you cared about both of us, and I care about you. C’mon, you’ll be alright. The earth will be alright.” Of course, you didn’t know that at the time. You just said what you had to say to comfort the love of your life.
“B-but Grace-“
“He’ll figure it out,” you assured her. “It’s not the worst thing you’ve done.”
“Then what was?”
“Blaming yourself.”
Stratt’s eyes widened. “You can’t be serious. You know I’ve done worse.”
“You’re the one pulling the lever, but you’ve also tied yourself to that track along with everybody else. You’re suffering too. It’s screwing up the mission, if that’s what matters to you most. You’re saving the planet.”
Stratt chuckled grimly, but she finally stood up and walked over to the bed. She finished the glass of whiskey that was lying to next to her for who knows how long, and then she collapsed. “Always those philosophy references. You’re not wrong, either. It really is a pity that I’m never going to see the planet I’m saving again. I’m going to be stuck waiting in prison for the rest of my (possibly short) life. I’ll be lucky not to get the death penalty.” She looked grim, but she snuggled into your shoulder. That was how you knew she really needed help. Stratt didn’t usually do things like that.
Honestly, you didn’t know what to say there. She was right. The wrath of the world’s governments would all come crashing down on her. She’d suffer all the world’s pain. It broke your heart to even think about that. Stratt was the most beautiful, hardworking, capable person you’d ever met. What she lacked in kindness she made up for in honestly, and she was always good to you, even when she was offering slightly harsher than necessary criticism. All that would be taken from her. You didn’t want to think about what would happen to her once she was locked away. Would she forget you? You’d never forget her, no matter what. You’d decided long ago that you’d never remarry. Every day, you would pick up your phone and call her for as long as possible. You’d visit on the weekends, and even if you never felt her touch again, you’d be satisfied even knowing her.
But you weren’t there yet, and you wouldn’t be for a while. Hopefully. Your best bet was to enjoy the time you had left with her. “I’m never going to leave you,” you promised, stroking her strawberry blonde hair. Yes, it was strawberry blonde. It was a topic of debate with your coworkers. Like, you’d been her wife for three years, one would think that you might be the most reliable one here. She dyed her increasingly gray roots, but nobody could ever know. It broke your heart thinking of how she wouldn’t be able to dye it anymore once she was taken away from you. Honestly, you felt bad for Grace, but he would do something with his death. He’d die in space after saving the literal world. Grace would be hailed as a hero, while Stratt would rot in a prison cell.
Stratt interrupted your thoughts with a shaky sigh. She was crying again, but she was quiet. “If they gave me the death penalty, I wouldn’t be upset. I deserve it. After all, I just did the same to Grace,” she mumbled, clinging to your shirt and burying her face in your neck.
There was only so much you could comfort her, honestly. What she did to Grace was a hard and morally gray decision. You couldn’t say you agreed with or endorsed it, but it was what had to be done. “I… I don’t know how many times I need to tell you this, Evie, but it was the choice you had to make.”
“So what, you don’t want me to feel the guilt? You want me to just- just hide it like everybody else does? I haven’t cried in months, I don’t know why this is doing it…” she said softly.
“I’m not telling you how to feel, I’m telling you that you aren’t as bad of a person as you think you are. I used to make some very bad decisions when I was younger. I messed up and hurt a lot of people, and that still eats away at me. I couldn’t imagine the guilt you’re feeling right now, but you did the right thing, for me and for yourself.”
She was quiet for a moment, leaning closer to you. “I… thank you, ⍓︎□︎◆︎❒︎■︎♋︎❍︎♏︎. God, I don’t know what I’ll do without you. I have to be composed in front of everyone except you. I can’t lose that.”
You kept stroking her hair and put an arm around her waist, pulling her somehow even closer. She blushed, and you can feel her warmth against your skin. She was always warmer than you, not too much, but by the perfect amount. You were never cold in winter, and there was only so hot that summer could get in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. “You won’t lose it, Evie. I’ll be with you no matter what. I’ll never leave you. Ever. I promise,” you said.
“Even if-“
“Ah ah ah, no ifs. I promise that I will never, ever leave you,” you confirmed.
“Good,” she said. A few seconds later, she was already snoring. She always fell asleep so quickly. For someone so overworked and exhausted, it made sense. Soon enough, you were also out cold. Whatever the day brought wouldn’t be too much for you, Stratt, or anyone else. About a mile away, Grace was sound asleep too. You just hoped that it wouldn’t be too much for him either. But he’d be fine. You’d all be fine, no matter how awful your fates might be. You and Stratt were together now, and that was all you needed.
You dreamt about a time when this was all solved. Hopefully, it would come soon.