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Ever since she was a little girl, Olesya had known that she would one day grow up to accomplish a great many amazing, unfathomable, and as-yet-incomprehensible things. It was a feeling she’d had, deep in her gut, that had accompanied her through all of life’s many tribulations and triumphs. Many of the interested men who she’d refused to give the time of day had called it ‘arrogance’. They said she dreamed too big and thought too much, more than a woman ought. At least, that’s what they said before she inevitably shut them up with her fists and her sharp, smart mouth. Her parents had gotten many calls from the school because she, from a young age, had met misogyny with mean, sharp little fists and elbows.
As she got older, her right hook got cleaner and her tongue got sharper, and she got a little better at reigning in her temper, but only when it benefited her to do so. Through it all, her belief in her own Great Purpose, which sometimes beckoned but at others seemed to Loom menacingly, never once wavered. The moment she heard about the call for astronauts, she knew. She’d never been religious, but her Great Purpose came to her with a Clarity that was the closest she’d ever come to feeling as though there was a higher power out there. She knew she’d be coma-resistant, even before they tested her blood. She knew she’d be chosen. She sat down and broke the news for her parents two days before the confirmation even came back that it was going to be her.
She wasn’t suicidal, but she Understood, deep inside, that sometimes it was worth trading Time for Experience. She was going to die earlier than a human should, but she was also going to do it farther out than anyone else had ever gone, and she was going to do it to the sight of Stars previously unbeheld by human eyes. And if it was an excuse to live her remaining time on Earth with the sort of recklessness and exuberance that she’d always dreamed of but had held herself back from in the name of responsibility… Well, that was just a bonus, and she’d build her Legend while she was at it. She was going to die early, but she was going to Live more than most people ever did. It was enough for her.
None of her sixth-sense moments (or, as spurned men called them, ‘delusions of grandeur’), could have prepared her for the novel, amazing, and previously-unfathomable thing that she was currently doing, however, as she held a needle in one hand and a bottle of lab-made tattoo ink in the other as she prepared to give the world’s only known time traveller a stick-and-poke imprint of an alien’s claw. Off to the side, there was also a potato, cotton swabs, a bottle of disinfectant, and a pair of pearl earrings that said time-traveller had stolen from the wardrobe of the closest thing Earth had ever had to a global dictator, however temporary her tenure may prove to be.
“You could do this properly,you know,” she’d sighed. “Stratt would give you anything you wanted. She’d fly the world’s best tattoo artist out here to do this for you, whether they wanted to come or not.”
“Yeah, but I don’t trust strangers with needles, and I want it to be one of the people that I trust with my life. I want it to be one of my crew, because we’re going to be aliens out there too and I want it to be another alien who does this for me. Yao draws with stick figures and said he’s failed every calligraphy test he’s ever taken. So it has to be you. And having you do the ears while you’re at it is just efficiency,” Ryland Grace told her with a shrug. The glass beads on his crocheted shawl clinked together in what he’d told her was the closest he could get to replicating his Eridian celebration clothing. They were leaving the Vat for Baikonour tomorrow, and in four months, they were leaving the Earth altogether. So tonight they were going to party.
Grace had spent hours in his lab making ink in what he told them was the exact color of Rocky’s carapace. There had been microscopes and a spectrometer involved to make sure the light frequency was exactly the same, down to the nanometer. Ilyukhina followed the design he’d laid out for her just as carefully, although there were, thankfully, no microscopes or spectrometers involved. She’d leave that to science geeks.
Obviously, Ilyukhina knew that he had the same biology as any other human, but the melody he hummed for her while she worked made it a bit difficult to remember. She didn’t think human vocal chords were capable of something so hauntingly alien and yet so achingly familiar, and the way he just kept going without needing to pause to catch his breath, without any break or warble or tiny inconsistency didn’t feel human at all. He explained how it was, actually, pretty easy and completely biologically possible, just not a technique that human singers had ever stumbled upon and thought to train themselves for.
It was something that xenobiologists on his adopted home planet had created in collaboration with professional musicians so that he could add his voice to their Thrums, weaving it underneath and in between their layered words in a way that didn’t add meaning but did fill out the sound and make them feel more Complete. He wasn’t biologically Eridian, but he wasn’t quite human anymore either. His contribution to the Thrums was different but no less valued, something uniquely Grace that added to their melody and filled the spaces nobody had realized until then had been Waiting. He didn’t explain it like that, but Olesya found the Truth of it between the anatomy lecture that he’d woven with musical theory. Then he’d gone back to his Song, and she’d kept sticking and poking, sticking and poking, enjoying the way the vibrations of his Thrumming buzzed along her fingertips as she worked.
He’d made a pleased little trill when she stepped back from her finished work and grabbed the potato and the sewing needle to take care of his ears. Soon Stratt’s requisitioned pearls were slotted into place like they’d always belonged there, catching the light in little opalescent rainbows as Gracie angled his head to examine his reflection in the small mirror. Olesya grabbed her sparkly metallic eyeshadow and shoved him back down onto his bunk.
“Let me show you how we do it in Moscow’s underground techno scene,” she told him, pinkie coated and ready, and he’d laughed and yielded the canvas of his face completely to her discretion.
___________
The party was the same and different, Grace thought, already tipsy on just the little splash of Dimitri’s moonshine that Lesy had added to his orange juice. He still wore his fox cardigan, but under a shawl he’d crocheted from hand-painted mulberry silk, weighed down by hundreds of handmade little glass beads. Financially speaking, he supposed it was a gift from himself, since Ilyukhina had used his corporate card to order it all, but no amount of money could fully capture the love expressed in what he knew must have been hours scrolling through Etsy searching for beads that most closely matched his description of the kinds they made back home on Erid.
She’d swept his lids with silver pigment that was full of reflective, rainbow glitter. She’d put a little mascara on too before muttering something about ‘no, that’s simply too mean to poor Annie and Martin,” and refused to elaborate further on what she meant by that statement as she wiped it off his lashes.
His shawl (and the extra beads he’d sewn into his long skirt) made a tinkling, resonant windchime-sound as he flitted through the room, making conversation, helping himself to snacks, and enjoying the gentle buzz of the alcohol. There was no paperwork under his hands this time, and when Olesya and Yao pulled him on stage to sing with them, he allowed it and didn’t even mind overmuch as all the eyes in the room seemed to focus solely on him. He’d been a passable singer before, but after decades spent in a society that quite literally spoke in music, not even his aggressive modesty could allow him to deny that his voice was probably quite the transcendent experience to listen to.
As the applause finally died down, he was hit with the realization that Eva had slipped out sometime between when he’d last seen her skulking in the corner five minutes ago and when they’d finished the song, and it was accompanied with an involuntary, dissatisfied little click in the back of his throat. Luckily, he had a guess as to where she might have gone.
“Permission to come aboard?” he asked her, climbing out onto the deck and breathing in the cold crispness of the salty air, relishing the way his breath made little clouds of fog in the January night.
“This is you laughing at some reference that only you know, isn’t it?” she sighed fondly, well familiar with the amused, satisfied lilt his voice took on when he was repeating some one-man inside joke from before.
“You were supposed to say ‘you’re already aboard,’” he chided, playful, as he shoved his side gently into hers. “Why’d you leave?”
“Would you believe me if I said ‘fresh air?’” she asked wryly. He rolled his eyes as he adjusted her scarf to fit more snugly against her neck.
“I know parties aren’t really your scene,” he told her fondly. “They weren’t mine, once upon a time, either. But it’s… nice to spend time with humans again. Not the same as being back home, but it is nice. Knowing that they have a future because of the choices we’re making,” he said, gesturing between the two of them to make it explicit to Eva that she was part of the we, if not the entirety of it. “I get it now. I didn’t the first time, but I do now. It’s fun to party like it’s the end of the world, and it’s even better when you know it isn’t.”
“You’re an odd duck, Ryland Grace,” Eva replied, leaning into his chest as he put his arm over her shoulder.
“Is that so, Miss East German youth choir?” he asked her, his voice lifting playfully, blending with the wind.
“I never told you about that,” she murmured, scrunching her brows together.
“Not this time, you didn’t,” he replied. “But last time, you sang for me. I won’t ask you to do it again, but I wanted to compliment you on it anyway. You deserve to hear it.”
“You are entirely too effusive in your praise,” she huffed, rolling her eyes. “Some might say that it cheapens the effect.”
“Some, but not me. Life’s too short to not speak your nice thoughts,” he replied, kissing the top of her head. “I think I’m gonna go back to the party for a while, if that’s okay?” At her nod, he carefully extracted his arm. “By the way, don’t forget your free hat,” he teased again, and Eva knew that he knew she bought them even if she hadn’t told him this time.
She watched his retreating back with an air of annoyed resignation.
“That cheeky bastard, he knew what he was doing,” she grumbled under her breath in German as she strode into the rec room and grabbed the microphone.
The delighted fondness in his eyes was almost enough to make her forget her flaming cheeks as she sang him goodbye. It wasn’t technically goodbye yet, not for another four months, but it felt like every day she was wishing him little goodbyes, packing small pieces of her soul into his cardigan pockets between meetings and knowing looks.
________
“You sang the same song last time,” he told her as he walked her to her cabin. Well, more leaned on her for support under the guise of walking her home- he was loose-limbed and giggly-drunk and she was only under the influence of a single gin and tonic. “You’re such a Harry Styles fan. It’s cute.”
“That’s a little horrifying,” she said, ignoring him, “considering that I shot you off to space non-consensually four months later.”
“Eh, got me where I needed to be,” he replied, waving off her concern. “The real tragedy is that I’ve got PT at seven for my stupid shoulder and I’m gonna be so hungover tomorrow.”
“Ahh yes, punishment for stopping a bullet with your body. And crocheting entirely too much for someone still recovering proper range of movement,” Eva scolded him, unsympathetic.
“You sound like Rocky,” Grace pouted. “Man, you’d’a gotten along so well if you’d met in my first life.”
“Other than the fact that he hated me for murdering you,” Eva reminded him. He blew a raspberry and waved her off.
“Pfft, semantics,” he said. “He’d probably have played nice eventually, cuz I asked him to. I was like his and Adrian’s spoiled little cat- they gave me anything I wanted. So he’d have pretended cuz I asked and then he’d have eventually started liking you against his will because you are very likeable.”
“You are the only person who has ever said that to me,” she told him, fighting back a smile.
“Earth’s loss,” he shrugged. “Cuz you’re awesome. But if I can figure out a way to introduce you two this time around, I’m sure he’ll love you since he doesn’t remember the first time, and I’m not gonna tell ‘im. I want all my family to get along.”
“Your family who live 16 lightyears away,” she pointed out.
“Eh,” he shrugged off the concern. “I’m sure we’ll figure out interstellar Skype eventually. Rocky can do anything he sets his mind to. I never asked last time… I was kinda afraid to hear news I didn’t want to, to be honest. But things are gonna be way better this go round, so I have no reason to be a coward about it.”
“You are not a coward,” she hissed at him, spinning out of his hold and grabbing his wobbling form by the shoulders before he could trip.
“You’re not following the script again,” he sulked. She ignored him and grabbed his chin in one hand, forcing his eyes to meet hers.
“You’re not,” she repeated, consonants sharp against her tongue. “I’m sorry I ever said it before, but I was wrong. I was angry and I was lashing out and I was wrong. You’re not a coward, Grace. You’ve never been one. I gave you an impossible choice and asked you to throw away your life for a longshot and I knew it wasn’t fair and I was angry at myself for having to do it, and I must have thought that if I lashed out and pushed you away that it would be easier for me even if it only made things harder for you. It was wrong and I wish I hadn’t.”
“You haven’t,” Grace told her, his silhouette warped. Eva only then realized she was crying. At least his eyes were also wet; he was a sympathetic crier. He was an everything crier, to be fair. ‘Leaky space blob,’ as he often called himself. Well, now she was a leaky Earth blob. “Stop destroying yourself over mistakes you’ll never make.”
“But I did. I was still her.”
“Maybe. But she did the hard things, the necessary things, and it’s only because of what that Eva did that we’re able to do things better this time around. And if that Eva had a moment where she was cruel because she was crumbling under the pressure, then that just means that she- that you- are also one of the humans that you’re working so hard to save. That Eva did something so unfathomably difficult that it led to all of us getting a second chance. That second chance is for you, too. You don’t have to do the hard thing this time. She did that for all of us. You deserve to benefit just as much as the rest of us do- more than the rest of us do, really. Let yourself benefit from the kinder world those actions led to.” He pulled her into his chest, his strong arms keeping her close, keeping her safe.
“I don’t deserve you,” she whispered into his shirt. She wasn’t sure why it felt like a confession when it was so obvious to her.
“You deserve the world, Eva. The world doesn’t deserve you. C’mon, you’re not sleeping alone tonight.”
Carl had hung back to give them some privacy, but he took up his post by Grace’s door as they stumbled into his bunk. Normally, she knew, he stood guard inside of it, but tonight he stayed outside to give them some privacy as Grace gently ushered her to the far side of the bed before squeezing between her and the two boulders he used as teddy bears.
His weighted blanket was heavier than she typically preferred but surprisingly not oppressive, and his bare skin was warm like the summer sun against hers as he pulled off his clothes and tossed them across the room, except for the shawl, which he nudged gently towards the end of the bed. Now that he was down to his boxers, she could see the new tattoo that Olesya had given him, and it fit him like it had always belonged there.
“Is this okay?” she asked, slotting into him. “Should I undress, too?”
“Only if you want to,” he told her. “Your fabrics never bother me. Perks of a best friend who also has sensory issues; your clothes are always safe fabrics.”
She hummed her acknowledgement, the exhaustion hitting her all at once as she put her chin over his shoulder.
“Does it hurt?” she asked, rubbing the bullet scar with her thumb. It was still raised and shiny.
“The muscle does sometimes, a little. Not the scar itself though,” he muttered, the alcohol still buzzing through his system making him a little loose-lipped. “Only stopped itching like the dickens a couple weeks ago, though,” he pouted. She gave a light little scritch against the star-shaped scar tissue, and he melted.
“Do that again,” he pleaded. “The one on my back, too, if you don’t mind.”
“You should really put some lotion on this once in a while,” she told him, lightly running the nails of her other hand against the old belt mark. “It’s deep.”
“Mmmph,” he replied. The noise could have been either an agreement or dismissal; he was already half asleep.
“I see why your Eridians might have compared you to a cat,” she teased lightly, as he stretched happily and leaned into the back scratch.
“People work too hard for sex,” he replied, voice heavy with oncoming sleep. “It’s like they don’t know back scratches are easier and way better.”
Eva agreed with him, but he’d been right enough times tonight, so she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of voicing the thought aloud.
Or maybe she was just too lazy, her scratches growing slower and further apart as she also drifted off to sleep only minutes behind her Eridian.
She’d wonder about that in the morning, over the two coffees and the omelette that he brought her in bed, and she wouldn’t even bother to correct Dr. Shapiro when she remarked, slightly jealously, that it looked like Dr. Grace had given her ‘a wonderful night.’
It’s not as if she was wrong.