Chapter Text
Grace feels a headache coming on.
That’s the first thing he notices.
The second thing is that he’s walking—and with a purpose, but he has no idea what’s going on.
“One nanogram of Astrophage just isn’t enough to blow up a whole building.”
What? Why did he say that?
“The quartermaster gave him one milligram by mistake.”
Where is he?
“That’s…a million times the heat energy that they’re prepared for.”
It feels like he’s slowly coming into consciousness, but that can’t be possible if he’s been walking this whole time. It’s as if he’s been on auto-pilot for the past 12 hours, but at least now he’s come too.
“A measuring mistake… killed my entire science team?!”
Right. The lab. The explosion. Both DuBois and Shapiro are now both dead. Right.
“It doesn’t matter. We have to launch.” Stratt- Eva says, as if that’s just possible.
They’re sitting at a conference table now. Ryland feels like he should recognize this place, but it’s all a bit too fuzzy for him to think straight, let alone remember every location in this large facility.
“If we miss the orbital window, it’ll set us back months.”
“Yeah, but if no one’s trained to do the mission, it won’t matter,” Ryland counters, not understanding how they could truly think the mission can still continue as planned.
“Casualty projections go up exponentially if we delay. We launched on schedule with a replacement science officer.”
“Okay, but,” Ryland starts, rubbing his eyes in hopes to delay his oncoming headache. “who?” He laughs ever so slightly, still in disbelief that Eva is confident in launching on time. No one speaks up, so he continues on. “I mean, that…”
He finally looks up, only to finally realize that everyone else at the table is staring at him.
No.
No.
They can’t be serious.
Eva can’t be serious.
What the heck? They don’t really believe that he’s going to be the next one going into space, right?!
“I’m not an astronaut,” He starts, confusion evident in his tone. They can’t be seriously considering this.
“I don’t need an astronaut. I need an expert on Astrophage who’s mission-ready,” Eva counters, and suddenly any hope Ryland had for this to be all one massive inside joke, a funny prank—really, the cameras can come out now!---is gone. His heart starts to sink.
“I’m not ready.” He’s not. He’ll never be. “I don’t have any training.”
“You’ll pick it up,” Ilyukhina says. Traitor.
“I’m not an astronaut!” Ryland exclaims, banging his palms on the table slightly to emphasize just how much he disagrees with their impromptu plan. “I put the ‘not’ in astronaut! I’ve never done anything- I’ve never done a space wal- I can’t even moonwalk! I haven’t done the whole pool thing–” This can’t be happening right now. This can’t be happening-!
“No, no, no. This is just we do for the picture. For social media.” Ilyukhina brushes off Ryland’s counter so easily like this is what’s going to happen.
“I’m not heroic in any way,” Ryland claims, because he’s not. He doesn’t have anyone to be brave for, and even if he did, he would want to be brave for them on Earth. Without leaving the planet. “I get sick on an elevator.” He tacks on. Anything at this point to convey just how much he doesn’t want to go into space.
“Oh, perfect. There’s no elevator on the ship.” Oh, come on Yao!
“I cannot do this,” He says, finite with no room for discussion. Or, not to them at least, but there’s no way he’s going to change his mind.
“You’re smart. You’ll figure it out.”
Ryland doesn’t want to figure it out. He wants to go home, sit on a couch, and watch terrible drama tv and forget this conversation ever happened.
“This might be very hard for you to understand, but some people are failures. Some people don’t rise to the challenge.”
“You’ve been present for every major scientific or strategic meeting we’ve had on the mission.”
He can’t do this anymore. “You’re missing out an important part of the mission which is the suicide part.” Ryland laughs, but there’s no fooling anyone.
“Grace, you’d be in very cool company.” Not what this is about, Ilyukhina, but ok!
“If you don’t go, you die anyway.”
“Yeah, but I die in…30 years with–”
“With the rest of us.”
Yes. Exactly. Why is Eva still pushing this?
“You have no immediate family, you don’t even have a dog.”
Ryland goes to protest. There’s one thing, one thing that he can even argue now to save himself. “And what about my soulmate? They’ll just- I’m just going to die and we’ll never get to meet?”
What? He thinks, somewhere in the back of his mind, Soulmates?
“Don’t get me started on your soulmate, Dr. Grace,” Eva says, mouth tilted slightly downwards from where it was just a minute ago. “We know you don’t have one.”
And, ooh, ouch, there it is.
…Don’t have one?
“You don’t know that,” he states, trying his best to still his face. This wasn’t meant to come up—why did he bring this up? Just for even the smallest chance to save his skin?
“But you do,” Eva reminds him. “And you can’t hide from the inevitable. There’s no one here left for you.”
Really? He thinks, but can’t bring himself to say. What about my kids? What about you?
Instead, he moves past their current topic of conversation, pausing for a moment before continuing to speak. “So, just so I’m clear. You’re asking me, right now, to…” Ryland takes a deep, albeit shaky breath in, “give up my life.” He phrases it like a question, but there’s no room for debate. He knows what Eva wants from him, and she knows it too.
“I am. We all are.”
Ryland stares at the table for a moment, unable to stare at the person who he thought cared about him, even just a little, but is now asking him to kill himself.
“Can I think about this?”
“You have three hours,” Stratt says, but there is no mercy in her voice.
Ryland can only pray that three hours will be enough to make the right decision.
Soulmate? Grace thinks, waking up from his sleep, a little delirious and confused. Not that he has much time to ponder on that thought with the tubes and surgical equipment all hooked up to him and–
Oh God.
Rocky.
Grace’s current memories flood back to him like a tsunami. Adrian, the fuel, being pinned against cold hard metal for who knows how long, and Rocky. He slowly, albeit a little clumsily, moves his legs off the surgical table one by one, feet dangling just above the floor of the ship.
Past the table and into the hall, Grace spots what looks to be soot caking the floor. He turns his attention to the xenonite walls separating his atmosphere and Rocky’s, but he can’t find its inhabitant.
Damnit Rocky, he thinks, unable to care about his inner-monologue language, Why the hell would you go and do something like that?
Grace stumbles down the hall, grasping at the walls just so he doesn’t collapse and ruin the progress Armando had made on his fragile body. Following the trail of black sediment down the corridor feels like a funeral march.
When Grace finally comes upon Rocky’s body, his heart feels like it’s about to fall out of his chest. His friend—best friend in the whole universe is curled up, weak, and unable to produce more than what sounds so much like a mix of a wheeze and cry. It’s so human.
Grace was wrong before. The real universal language isn’t math. It’s pain.
Grace kneels down, hand against the clear xenonite, wishing more now than ever that he could just reach through and hold Rocky gently against his skin. Stupid atmospheres. Stupid laws of physics. Let him hold the one person in life that made Grace feel whole.
Rocky makes a few more noises. The translator is nowhere to be found, but Grace doesn’t need it.
“I’ll watch you sleep pal.” He says, the first words to come out of his mouth since getting flung against the cockpit walls. Grace needs to take a moment before speaking again, otherwise the next thing that comes out of him will be nothing but tears, and Rocky doesn’t need that right now. “But uh,” he starts again, “you gotta wake up.”
Rocky, at this point, is unmoving. Unresponsive.
Grace taps the xenonite, but nothing happens. Despite that, he stays sat against the wall and waits.
Waits for what? A noise? Movement? Anything?
Not that he could get up if he tried. Grace is so tired. So unbelievably tired that it’s a miracle he was even able to walk down to Rocky’s resting place.
Don’t say it like that, he chides himself. Makes it sound like… his thought trails off. Yeah, Rocky really is just resting, but…but he should still phrase it better. Rocky’s going to pull through. He’s the strongest out of the two of them by a long shot (ha! a hail mary), and if Grace was able to wake up after his injuries, then Rocky will be fine too.
With the adrenaline fading, Grace can start to feel the aches and pains from the disaster that was the Adrian mission. He takes a quick glance down at himself, scanning for bandages and bruising. Nothing looks too out of the ordinary. His head hurts, but that’s to be expected.
Other than being sore and a few purple spots beginning to show themselves scattered about, there’s only one thing that Grace finds weird about his injuries.
There’s a bandage on his right forearm.
What is that doing there?
Grace inspects his arm carefully, rotating it side to side until it finally clicks—Rocky. He must have dragged Grace to the surgical table. It makes sense in hindsight, considering he couldn’t move himself and the med bay isn’t close enough to the cockpit for Armando to be the one to drag him out.
Yeah, thinking about it now, he’s probably a little stupid for not making the connection earlier. Of course Rocky saved him. That’s why he’s suffering now, trying to heal and recover because of Grace’s mistakes.
When has he ever been good for someone?
Grace shakes his head. He can’t spiral. Not right now. Not when he still has questions he needs to answer and planets to save. He can think about how worthless he is later, right now he has to get to work.
It hits him suddenly in the middle of breeding nitrogen-resistent Taumeoba.
Soulmates. Something about soulmates. What are they, and are they real?
It had been brought up in his latest memory, the one where he hadn’t said yes to going on the spaceship yet. Grace remembers thinking about hoping that 3 hours were enough to make the right decision. It must have been, and yet, he can’t currently think about why he would say yes. Maybe it has to do with his…soulmate?
But…he doesn’t have one? Why wouldn’t he have one? Something in the back of his mind tells him everyone has a soulmate.
There’s something pushing at the back of his head, but no matter how hard he tries to reach for it, he just can’t grasp it.
His arm is itching. More specifically, his burn.
Grace sighs. He’s thinking too hard. Instead of trying to figure out his personal situation with soulmates, he should probably just look up the general information around soulmates on Wikipedia.
Yeah. That’s a smart idea. Why didn’t he think of it earlier?
Rocky would have thought of it sooner, a part of his mind whispers. Grace shakes the thought away. He would have, but he can’t dwell on that now. He needs to focus on the task at hand, breeding the Taumoeba- ah.
Right.
That’s something that includes dead time. Like right now.
Grace buries his head in his hands. He can’t do this right now, in fact, it’s probably best he lays down for a bit so he can organize his mind. First, though, his burn needs ointment.
Everything is a bit of a blur after Rocky wakes up.
After a little crying (leaky! leaky! lots! more than usual! friend grace ok? Rocky had exclaimed after their initial reunion, and well, yeah, duh—) Grace finally calmed down enough to officially put on their party.
The screens all around them lit up as fireworks exploded in the digital sky. Rocky had on some party attire so Grace had to get out the paper hats he made with things definitely not important to the mission like his EVA manual. They were happy and content, and so finally, Grace decided now was the time for Rocky to get his own laptop.
“My portable Earth thinking-machine!” Rocky exclaims, his legs moving in a way that almost mimics human stimming, something Grace knows all too well.
“With all human knowledge,” Grace adds on, placing it on the ground between them.
“Thank thank thank,” Rocky says, very clearly excited by the gift.
Despite knowing that he would like it, there was something inside Grace still nervous that somehow he’d mess up gift giving. A small weight lifts off his chest now that he knows for sure that Rocky loves it.
As Grace reaches behind him to grab one last thing to give to his best friend, Rocky speaks up. “We should search something up right now,” he says with a little too much conviction for such a simple request, but who is Grace to deny him?
“Ok, bud, what do you want the first thing you look up on your personal laptop to be?”
“Hmm…” Rocky trails off, clearly have not thought this far ahead in his request. “What is something Grace curious about?”
“Me?” Grace asks, and Rocky gives his best impression of a human nod. Grace purses his lips and his eyes move to stare at nothing in particular besides whatever is above him in the moment.
“Why Grace make such weird thinking face?” Rocky remarks. Grace rolls his eyes and ignores him when suddenly it hits him.
“What about soulmates?”
“🎶🎵? Why do I know word, question?”
Grace programs the word “Soulmate” into the translator database. “I’m not sure. I think I brought it up once or twice when you were recovering. Maybe you picked it up then?”
“Rocky cannot hear words when sleeping. Grace make dumb suggestion, statement.”
Grace closes his eyes and sighs, shoulders slumping. “Then what do you propose?”
Rocky looks like he wants to say something, possibly a snarky remark, but he must ultimately decide against it, because the next thing he says is, “Why bring up soulmates?”
Ah, right, well, “I remembered something while I was recovering from Adrian. It didn’t necessarily have to do with soulmates, but they were mentioned, and they hadn’t ever been mentioned in my memories beforehand.”
“And Grace never look up before now, question?”
“Yeah, it just kept slipping my mind,” Grace answers.
“Then we look up now, statement!”
Grace opens the laptop and positions himself so that Rocky can see the screen with his light translator.
“Wikipedia…soulmates…” Grace whispers under his breath as he types, hitting enter in the search bar and clicking on the wiki link.
“What say, question? Text too small for ball.”
Oh, yeah, Rocky does have a smaller texture plate in his ball, so he’s probably not going to be able to read the article clearly in this room at least.
“It says…” Grace trails off, trying to process and summarize the few paragraphs of text in front of him, “Something about how all humans have soulmates, they’re not sure when they first popped up but depictions of soulmates dating back to caveman times. Apparently you’re supposed to find your soulmate when you make physical contact for the first time and then a small mark will slowly appear from where you first touched. The marks can be anything but they typically represent the soulmates as a whole.”
“Do they share same mark?”
“Looks like it pal. Along with the mark, soulmates are said to acclimate to each other’s lives. Like learning languages or surviving in different climates. Huh. Interesting.”
“Does Grace have soulmate, question? Grace said he had no mate.”
Grace lets out a small—albeit a little sad—chuckle. “Yeah, about that bud, I…” He’s not too entirely sure how to brooch the subject. It’s not like Grace fully understands his situation either, but, “I’m pretty sure I don’t have one.”
“What?!” Rock practically screeches.
Grace flinches back a bit from the noise. At least Rocky has the gall to look a little sympathetic after his outburst.
“Apology apology apology, just confused. How no have soulmate if all humans have soulmate?”
Grace shrugs. “I’m not too sure about it either, buddy. I think…I remember people talk about ‘just knowing’ that their soulmate is only so far away. Either that or that you’re supposed to find your soulmate in your twenties by the latest. I’m in my 30s now, so it’s too late for me anyway. People used to look down on me for it– no, not down,” he thinks, trying his best to pull at any other memories soulmate related of his that are willing to come to the surface of his mind, “They looked at me with pity. Your soulmate, I think, is supposed to appear when you’re at a low point in your life, and everyone around me assumed that…that when my parents…” Grace trails off.
He barely remembers his parents nowadays, not even accounting for the amnesia. Grace doesn’t think he’s thought about his parents in a long time.
“No no no. Not right. Grace have soulmate, surely.”
Grace laughs and shakes his head. “At this point, I hope I don’t have one. Imagine having the other half of you shot up into space before you could even meet them. I wouldn’t want to do that to them."
“But Grace go home now, Grace find mate!”
At that, Grace actually laughs. “I suppose, yeah, maybe I will find them. Doesn’t mean they’re going to be my mate.”
“Then why call soulmate if not mate, question?” Rocky seems oddly pushy about this, but Grace doesn’t particularly understand why.
“It just means that you’re compatible with another soul, or that you complete the other person. It doesn’t necessarily have to be romantic.”
“Understand understand understand. Does Grace want romantic soulmate?”
Grace thinks about it for a moment. “I’m not sure, Rock. That might be nice, but at this point, I think it’d be nice to have a soulmate in general. Plus, I’m not sure how much I could even contribute to a romantic relationship and I certainly don’t want to disappoint the person who’s tied to me by fate by not engaging in much of the…typical romantic engagements.”
“Grace use ‘engage’ to describe ‘engage’. Grace know many word.”
He should have never taught Rocky about sarcasm.
After a big, long, drawn out sigh and an eyeroll, Grace continues on with their discussion. “Anyway, why are you so curious about soulmates?”
Rocky stops his fidgeting for a moment—a few poor tassels adorned on his clothing are pulled off and bent into shapes beyond Grace's comprehension. “Something similar on Erid. Is why I had word to match Soulmate despite not hearing it before.”
“Clearly you did, you just can’t remember where.”
“Rocky always remembers. Grace is stupid. Anyway, Eridians have soulmates too. Slightly different process, but similar.”
“Oh yeah?” Grace questions. “What’s it like?”
“Physical contact is same, but instead of human mark, we slowly get engraving onto surface that touched each other. The soulmates then develop their own language that only they can communicate with.”
Grace’s eyes widen at that. “What do you mean they develop their own language? How on Earth does that work?”
“Not on Earth. On Mary,” Rocky remarks.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever man,” Grace dismisses, motioning for Rocky to continue.
“Is weird. Soulmates talk normally, but when in deep personal conversation, suddenly no one around them understand words. Like a barrier put up against outside world despite no real changes to words soulmates speak.”
Grace ponders this new information for a minute. “That’s so interesting. I wonder why soulmate systems are different on different planets. How did soulmates originate, anyway?”
“Rocky not know, statement. Many Eridians try to figure out, but none succeed. Just simply 🎵.”
…That’s weird. Grace swears he knows what that means, but if he didn’t input it into the console yet, it must have not come up in conversation yet. Maybe he’s spent enough time around Rocky and has gone crazy enough to think he understands the Eridian language.
“Need word. The last one.”
“🎵, question?” Grace nods. “Something science no explain. Something out of this world.”
“Magic?”
“Yes. How Rocky know correct? Has never heard word before. How know it correct, question?”
“That’s weird,” Grace states, “I thought I knew it too. I think it must have come up in conversation at some point, just neither of us thought to catalog the word.”
“Impossible, Rocky would remember, statement. Grace have bad bad bad memory.”
“I’m not saying I don’t,” Grace refutes, “just that maybe your memory has changed since coming into space.”
Rocky is silent for a moment. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. Maybe he should apologize.
“Maybe, statement.”
Grace runs a hand through his hair, and is suddenly filled with remorse. Yes, he should definitely apologize. “Sorry Rock, I shouldn’t have said that. Your memory is perfectly fine. It just might be space that is messed up.”
Rocky visibility perks up after that, thank goodness. “Yes yes yes, space make wrong, not Rocky.”
Grace snorts and smirks up at his best friend. “You know, I had something else I wanted to give you.”
“Oh oh oh? Gift gift Grace give gift!” Rocky exclaims, excited once again at the idea of another gift. It warms Grace’s heart to know that his friend is so happy to be receiving gifts from him.
He pulls out a xenonite container and turns it upside down to let his crochet Earth ball fall out.
“What, what this?”
“It’s Earth,” Grace answers. The ball was a gift from one of his students a long time ago when he first started teaching. She was a shy student but she was as smart as a tack. She would get her work done really early in the class period, and eventually Grace didn’t have any extra work to give her, so he decided to shake things up a bit.
One school day, a few days before their next break was about to begin, she had finished with her work early as usual, but instead of giving her extra credit assignments, Grace pulled a chair up to her desk and handed her a small crochet kit. He figured that as smart as she was, she would probably benefit from a few artsy hobbies, and crocheting just seemed right for her.
She was confused at first, and while no one was paying much attention to them—they were trying desperately to finish their work before the break—she gently picked up the small packet and opened the instructions.
“Why this?” She had asked, and Grace had just smiled at her and said that he thought of her when he passed it in the store and thought that it would be more beneficial than trying to make her do science work up until the bell.
That, as it had turned out, was the right decision. From then on, whenever she finished her science work in class, she would pull out a new project—every day it changed—and work until the bell rang. Somehow, it was like she got even brighter and was able to achieve more than when she would just sit and fill out practice problems or memorize formulas.
At the end of the year, when Grace’s desk was already so full with gifts from his students, she came up and gently placed down the beanbag ball.
“Thank you for believing that I could do more,” she had said, her eyes starting to water, “that kit really changed my life.”
Something about that conversation had made Grace teary-eyed too, but he managed to keep the tears in until after she left the classroom.
Passing the ball on felt poetic, in a way. Rocky gave so much to Grace, and there was no way for him to properly return everything he had done for him, and even if only Grace knew the story, it makes him happy to think his best friend would carry a little Earth around.
“So you can remember me,” Grace finishes, though it comes out strained as his throat starts to close up and his eyes begin to water.
“Rocky won’t forget,” he responds. Rocky doesn’t say “can’t” for some reason, although maybe their previous conversation had something to do with it, but it’s not like Rocky said it in a way to chide Grace.
The tears start to spill from Grace’s eyes but he wipes them up pretty quickly. Rocky doesn’t comment on his leaky-ness.
“I didn’t get you anything,” Rocky says.
Grace looks at him like he’s crazy. “You gave me everything.”
“But if I were to give you something,” He says, leaving room for Grace to answer.
“It’d be…” Grace starts, already knowing what he’s been secretly hoping for the most since they first hooked up their ships, “pretty cool to see your ship.”
The xenonite suit is a little weird, to be honest, but it works and Grace is so excited to see the inside of his best friend’s ship for the first time.
The sunlight reflects off the xenonite in a way Grace has never seen before. It’s so mesmerizing and Grace almost just wants to stand at the entrance and stare at its beauty, but Rocky is already heading onwards so Grace follows suit.
The refraction of the light makes different colors bounce off of Grace’s suit, and not for the first time, he wishes so desperately that Rocky could see colors. He’d be so amazed by the beauty of light.
Rocky shows him around to a lot of different places around the ship. His sleeping quarters, lab, engineering space, just about any area that Grace and his chunky suit can fit through, they go.
Towards the end of the tour Grace finds himself in a corridor with a few plaques, not unlike the ones on his ship sharing the story of Earth and its travel into space to save the planet. Everything is indented—of course it is, that’s how Eridians see—and when Grace holds his flashlight up to them, the light bounces off them onto his face in a myriad of colors. Almost like a rainbow.
Suddenly, the final memory he’s been waiting for slots itself into place.
“I understand you think I’m the right person for this mission, but…” he trails off, putting his glasses away, “I can’t do it.”
What?
Ryland shakes his head continuously and repeats himself, “I can’t do it.”
Eva doesn’t say anything, so he continues to fill the silence. “You’ll find a solution.”
“You are my solution,” she says suddenly, and-
And-
He just-
“My place is in the classroom,” Ryland tries. How does he make her understand that he’s not the right person for this mission?
“Stop pretending this is about your students, it’s so insulting.” Eva replies immediately. “R- Grace we will lose…a quarter of the world’s population in the next 30 years.”
Grace says nothing, but his whole body trembles.
“And that assumes that the nations of the world will work together to ration food. Which they won’t.” Stratt ends her statement with a shrug. “So I’d double the estimate, and if you would truly care about the children, or anyone else for that matter, you’d get on that ship.”
Grace sits in silence for a moment before clearing his throat. He’s been practicing this next sentence in his head for the past hour. “I understand the stakes, I do…” He pauses, taking the moment to compose himself, “But I don’t have it in me.”
Stratt stares at him and Grace can’t begin to unpack what’s in her eyes, so he sniffs, wiping away his eyes, and puts his beanie back on. “My mind is made up,” he’s really trying not to burst into tears at this point, “I’m sorry, but uh, you just can’t talk me into it.”
He whispers a soft “I’m sorry” under his breath as he puts his glasses back onto his face.
“I’m not trying to talk you into anything.” Grace takes a small breath, some relief starting to wash over him, but then Stratt continues. “I am… trying to make you understand..what I’m about to do next.”
Grace’s mind grinds to a halt and he stares at Stratt, trying to make sense of her words, when suddenly she says “Stay calm” and ushers in a man in a lab coat holding a bag of what he presumes to be medical supplies.
Oh.
God.
“What is this?” Grace asks with a laugh, a smile on his face but he feels nothing but dread building inside him.
“Mission plan will state that we induced your coma early to maximize your safety. You will be remembered as a hero.”
Grace…can’t believe it. She would…she would do this? Against his will? She would murder him?
Despite his senses going haywire and having no choice but to be in the moment, what happens next is a blur. He’s on a counter top, he’s pleading with Stratt and the other men who are here to force him onto the Hail Mary. He’s running away and he’s being chased after and he’s–
He’s going to die.
Grace runs as fast and as far as his legs will take him, each step into the ground reminding him of the Earth he so desperately wants to remain on until his time is up. He’s not ready for this, he can’t do this.
He’s so close to the gate, he’s just about to escape when suddenly a man appears at his side out of nowhere and tackles him to the ground
Grace cries out in anguish, yelling, “No! No! No!” to the men holding him down. He doesn’t want this, he wants to live!
His sight starts to blur from the tears but Grace could never forget what Carl looks like. “Carl!” He calls out, praying that his friend will hear him out, save him, “I can’t do it!”
He’s pushed back onto the grass—he’ll never be able to feel grass again after this—and continues to cry out. “No! Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Don’t do it!”
Grace’s final plea comes out strained and with a wheeze. The pain from the needle being stabbed into him is almost unbearable, but when he stares up at who he had come to call a best friend, he finds the pain of betrayal to sting more than the needle or the medicine beginning to flow through his body.’
“You know who you are.”
Grace tries one more time. “Carl,” he says. He’s losing energy fast.
“You’re gonna do great.”
It gets harder and harder to breathe and to keep his eyes open. Everything starts to blur, and Grace takes the chance to glance one more time at the open sky before he loses consciousness.
On the worst day of his life, he spots a rainbow.
The last rainbow he’ll ever see on Earth.
Grace almost drops his flashlight then and there. He hadn’t been talking much to Rocky since moving to the hallway, but there’s no way he would be able to speak now. He slowly, very slowly, continues to walk down the hall, doing his best to pretend that there’s nothing wrong.
He can’t bear to tell Rocky that anything is wrong, let alone what’s wrong. He can’t do that to his best friend.
Rocky must be able to tell that something is up, however, and asks, “Grace ok, question?”
Grace squeezes his eyes close, just for a moment, before opening them and giving a small smile to Rocky. “Yeah, Rock, Grace is fine.”
Satisfied, Rocky continues on.
Grace has never been particularly good at keeping lies from Rocky. He hates how easy it is now.
The two of them eventually finish the tour and they part ways. Grace, now in his EVA suit and separated from Rocky once again by the xenonite wall, motions goodbye in Eridian to the closest friend he’s ever had.
Grace paces around the ship, unable to stop replaying that memory in his head.
Eva- no, Stratt, she’s Stratt now. She was Stratt to start with, but had quickly become Eva. He was Grace for a while—he had honestly gotten used to that from his time in academics and then moving to becoming a teacher—but had moved to becoming Ryland, just like how Stratt became Eva.
But now she’s Stratt again. Someone who should’ve been his closest friend, but betrayed him nonetheless.
For some reason, the thoughts of soulmates keep flooding into Grace’s thoughts whenever he thinks about Stratt.
She was someone who understood what it was like not having the other half of their soul with them—if Grace even had a second half in the first place—but in the end, she tossed him away. Or, more accurately, shot him up into space.
She was like him. Sort of. Not that she didn’t have a soulmate, but they were long gone even before she was born. So kind of like him.
Grace trusted her.
He’d been abandoned.
It’s not like this was the first time. His previous girlfriend broke up with him because he had his head in the clouds, but he had tried a few other times previously. Most of the time, he was a “filler” boyfriend until the girls he found himself getting attached to found their soulmate. That, and, he didn’t like to be as intimate as they wanted, so it’s not as if they were losing out on much when they finally found the one destined to be theirs.
Grace would often find himself daydreaming about what it would be like to find his soulmate. A simple passing-by through a crowd and bumping shoulders. Shaking hands at a party. Maybe it would be when he was grabbing a package when the delivery guy showed up. It’s not like soulmates had to be romantic—in fact, there were plenty of famous platonic soulmates in the world when he had been put into a coma. But, hey, if the delivery guy was his soulmate and they were meant to be romantic, it’s not like Grace would complain. He just wanted someone, anyone, to find him.
But that would never happen, and he knew it. He’s known that since the day soulmates were explained to him.
“Even before your dad and I met, I would always rub my left shoulder whenever I was in distress. It was like the universe was calling out to me, ‘your worries are so small in the grand scheme of things. You will find the person who makes you the happiest one day, and nothing will hurt you anymore.’ Then, the day he caught me when I tripped while walking off stage and he was sitting in the front row seats cheering on your aunt, well. Let’s just say his arms wrapped around my shoulders and legs, and suddenly we knew. We knew it would all be ok.”
Grace absently glided this thumb against his right arm. It felt natural to do so, but he didn’t…feel anything. There wasn’t any sort of comfort, no sense of belonging, no universe telling him it would be ok. Nothing. It was just him rubbing his arm, and there was nothing else to it.
His mom could see the frown on his face, but she just giggled. “It’s ok sweetie. Sometimes it takes a few years for the sensations to finally kick in. Plus, you’re so young, I wouldn’t be surprised if they haven’t been born yet.”
Grace’s frown turned into an exaggerated pout. Before he could say anything else, his mom gently carded her fingers through his curly hair. From this angle, he could barely see a little rose mark peeking out from under her sleeve.
“Your father has one too on his arm,” she says, apparently having noticed his staring. She pulled up her sleeve. “It’s just to represent our connection.”
“But what about the whole…” Grace started, unable to make out what he wanted to say with his words, resulting in him making his hands into claws and trying to smash them together over and over again.
“Oh, the soul sharing? Well, some people pick up new languages they’d never heard before. Your dad was born in Quebec, so when I started learning French, I picked it up as easily as it was to learn pig-latin.”
“Pig-latin?” Grace asked, now very confused.
His mom laughed at him, giving his hair a final ruffle before removing her hand. “Don’t worry about it honey. You know,” she started again, completely disregarding the previous point of conversation, “I’ve heard that people acclimate to different climates too.”
“Acclimate…?” Grace started, but his mom ignored him and continued on.
“My friend used to hate the cold and could only tolerate temperatures only 60 degrees up, but when she met her soulmate who was working on her Alaskan Cruise, suddenly she didn’t mind the snow.”
“Woahhhhh,” Grace said in awe. Soulmates were so cool. He hoped he’d meet his soon, and he certainly hoped that they were already born. Being the older one…that just felt so wrong to him.
When his mom finally succumbed to her illness, Grace made the mistake of asking his father what happened to his soulmark.
“It’s like my arms are always empty.” He said, his eyes blank and staring into nothingness. “I should be holding her, but she’s never coming back.”
Grace could see the matching rose mark on his fathers arm had turned a dull grey, and it looked almost as if it was seeping back into his arm, never to be seen again. Like a scar.
After that day, Grace never saw his father again. He had tucked him into bed, but the next morning, Grace couldn’t find anyone left in the house.
He was all alone.
Is.
Is all alone. No one on Earth wanted him enough to keep him around, that was clear enough.
Maybe he’s not being fair. After all, he’s the one that refused to save the world. He’s the one who didn’t want to sacrifice his lone, pathetic little life to save the lives of billions. What the heck was he thinking? Stay on Earth for his students? The students he ran out of the classroom for when he realized they wouldn’t live past 40? He wanted to stay on Earth for those students?
How pathetic. He’s so pathetic.
Grace stops his pacing at the entry way to the airlock.
Who is he now, anyways?
Is he Dr. Ryland Grace, an Academic? He burned that bridge a long time ago.
Mr. Grace, a teacher? He was willing to let his students all die just so he could die with them.
Dr. Grace, a captain? He was never supposed to be the only one left on the ship.
No.
He’s not even Ryland the Astrophage-Scientist.
He’s just Grace the coward.
Grace sits alone near the place that used to connect him and his best friend—now going home a real hero, memories filled with the false ideas that he was working with someone as brave as himself—holds his head in his hands, and screams.