Work Text:
The future of the human race is a comma.
Eva refuses to have it any other way.
In twenty years, the Earth will turn colder and the crops and the fauna would die and so would the people, through starvation and disease and war,
And then the beetles would come (God-willing), and her remaining people will celebrate their heroes and mourn them, and the most brilliant minds they have left will work harder than they’ve ever done to recover their star,
And the Sun will turn its full face to the Earth again, reviving the soil and restoring the rivers and the seas, allowing Her to nourish Her children once more,
And humanity will not only persist, but live again—free to pursue passion, not just survival. Humans will continue to create art and music, not just despite the circumstances, but because they are able to,
And humanity will thrive,
And, and, and.
“What are you gonna do for the next twenty years?” he’d asked, grinning in that easy way he always did. “You got a plan?”
She’d let out a giggle—her brain taking a split-nanosecond to be horrified, because she can’t remember the last time she giggled—amused with her sudden impulse to reply, “Should I come bother you in San Francisco?”
Then the world burst in dirt and smoke and flames, slamming her into the cold hard ground and shaking her into reality in the most visceral of ways.
Eva Stratt’s future is a period.
She’d forgotten it for a moment, lost in golden hair and those brilliant blue eyes.
In twenty years, Eva would be in prison for the crimes she’d committed to stave off the collapse of the planet and to make sure the Hail Mary launched with every possible advantage.
In twenty years, Eva would still be dreaming of those blue eyes, the sparkle and the joy and the pain and the hurt in them, hurt she’d caused.
Eyes she’d sent off to the cold reaches of space.
Eyes that would haunt her until the day she dies.
Eva’s future is a period, and it would be all worth it, so long as the Earth’s continues to be a comma.