Chapter Text
Grace missed the rain.
Now, he was always one for ambience and the dramatic flair, which was why foggy weather called to him so dearly. But what he missed currently was the steady downpour, dousing the world in that shimmery sheen of crystalline water. Something about the atmospheric temperatures dropping one or two degrees and the slow lull of droning against window panes tugged at his heartstrings.
As he sat watching Rocky, resting on his xenonite suspensions, Grace thought the sound of the rain would be nice.
And sure, he could power up the immersia room, and toggle on one of the million videos of rainfall that Stratt had loaded into Mary's database—but it wouldn't be the same.
It would be darn close, for sure. But there wouldn't be the rolling grey clouds overhead, or the breeze shifting the scent of rain along the horizon. It would just be a beautiful replica from all sides, something he could see but never touch.
This wasn't a helpful turn of though, he told himself, trying to force his thoughts away from things he couldn't have. There were a lot of those these days.
He wished he hadn't finished all of Ilyukhina's vodka. Now would've been a good time for a sip…or full on drink. Perhaps the whole pouch, really.
Sighing deeply, Grace decided to pull himself up to the cockpit and monitor their trajectory for now. Rocky still had a few hours to his sleep cycle and he would have time to kill until the small Eridian eventually started to boot back up. Anything would beat the self-pity, and nothing chased away the deprecation like watching space go by.
Two years in, and four left—the journey to Erid was certainly going to be long, only made better by knowing that: one, there was an end destination; and two, Grace now had a best friend to do this together with.
And to be fair, when Rocky was awake, there was a rarely a spare thought to what Grace missed from Earth and his old life. He was on a space ship, making his way across their galaxy, to a new planet with new life to meet. Whatever he left behind on Earth, the scientist in him had to agree it was a fair exchange. But in these quiet moments, when Rocky entered his stasis, and the only things left to accompany Grace were Armando and the Hail Mary's internal system, it was hard for Grace not to miss the little things. His arm chair, the ficus in the corner by his living room window, the paper garlands he hand crafted for his classroom ceiling, and of course...the people in those classrooms.
Grace had been somewhat of an introvert on Earth—and even now, he did enjoy the moments to himself. But if he'd known there would be hours where he missed peopling and with the nearest human nearly 11 light-years away, four years by travel due to wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey stuff (aka his favorite special theory of relativity), then he might have put in more of an effort to…
Well he didn't know what. Socialize more? Maybe? Even that didn't sound right.
Maybe he would've biked around the park more, taking in the smell of fresh cut grass and the sights of people running around on the lawn. Maybe he would've made a regular habit of going to breakfast every weekend somewhere new; watching as the wait-staff handle customers and watch who came in and out of view for a morning ritual. Something.
He would've done something.
Grace stopped by his bunk just to grab his quilt for the familiarity of comfort, before finishing his ascension up through the porthole and into the pilot's bay. He gave a light drum of his fingers to Rocky's empty xenonite tunnel, before cacooning himself into the warmth of his blanket. He strapped into the pilot's seat and leaned back, tunning out the hum of Mary greeting him ("Still not a pilot, thank you very much.")
By now, his glasses were haphazardly dangling off his face, and his bleary gaze was directed to the window overlooking the vast expanse of stars.
The loneliness in his chest eased just a little. Yeah. Actually being up here, it's a pretty hard sell to say no to all of this.
Kicking up his feet and tucking them underneath him, Grace checked the radar and noted that there was nothing in their immediate vicinity. Their route to 40-Eridani was as solid as the xenonite that should most definitely not be a solid.
Humming to himself, fingers drumming along his arms, Grace told himself there were a million and one things he should be doing to keep himself occupied. He really shouldn't allow himself to soak in the silence, his thoughts roaming wildly and unkindly. But since his decision to come back for Rocky (one he does not regret, despite his conflicted feelings about Earth) and their restabilization of the taumoebae, he felt like perhaps this was a good way for him to come to terms with things.
Not wallow, exactly—no, he had plenty of time to do that before he met his bestie Eridian. But…what was one supposed to do in order to come to terms with their own reflection being the very last living human they would ever see in their lifetime?
"Whoa. Big thought, slow it down," Grace murmured to himself, huddling further into the blanket.
At this point, he should select a memory to close his eyes to and just…drift listlessly until it was time to head back down to where Rocky was. And there was a lot that he could pick from. Sixth grade parent-teacher conferences. That time he tried to pick up making homemade sourdough (a bizarre and catastrophic failure on his part). When he and Carl found the way to silo off the astrophage and breed them. Or…even that karaoke night, just hours away from tragedy.
But then his mind swung violently to the memory of dry grass stinging his skin, and the blue sky mocking him overhead, and a chainlink fence so close but just out of reach.
"You know who you are—"
I really don't.
"You'll do great."
"You can't know that."
Grace's eyes snapped open, and he really did wish he'd left some of that vodka behind for times like these.
"Inbound signal identified."
Grace must have still be drifting around in his memories, he almost thought he heard Mary's internal system announce—
"Inbound signal identified."
He sat straight up, his eyes roving over the radar. Nothing appeared on the map, the path to Erid still innocently empty.
"Mary…shouldn't there be a blip, or I dunno...?" Grace frantically gestured before his hands skimmed over the bright buttons and dials to look for the communications line.
"No foreign bodies detected. Inbound signal idenitifed."
Grace stared at the radar, willing it to produce some sort of ping before he opened the radio lines. They were too far away from Erid to receive any kind of planetary hail, and there were no other missions that he knew of. Could it be another alien species, like Rocky, sent to study the Petrova lines? Two years ago, Grace would've thought that was impossible. But now as he sat waiting for his Eridian best friend to awaken, on their way to Erid, with a giant spaceship made of xenon in tow, now receiving an even more alien butt-dial…
Yeah, he probably should've seen this coming.
"Mary, what are the chances that I pick up this call and we're given some sort of intergalactic trojan?" Grace asked.
The Hail Mary's internal system didn't respond.
"That tracks," he muttered, rubbing his hand over his face before correcting his glasses into place. He should have probably woken up Rocky first. But with no signs of oncoming projectiles (or planets, or debris, or anything wildly science fiction in nature), then he was probably safe to let the Eridian continue resting. He knew the alien needed some decent shut-eye with all the nonsense he'd put up with. With them being so entrenched in deep space, this rogue communication could be nothing more than a cosmic radio wave that the Hail Mary confused itself with.
"Inbound signal identified."
Sure. Definitely a rogue cosmic radio wave.
"Go ahead and patch us through, Mary," Grace said, flipping the communications lines open so they could intercept the radio wave.
"Communications systems now online, Dr. Grace. Inbound signal transmitting…"
There was the sharp crackle of static that sent Grace's hands to his ears, covering them as he grunted out in distress. A high pitched whistle at the end of the line, followed by a sudden muting of the other side told him that wherever the signal was coming from, it was within a severely pressurized space.
Then he heard it, beneath the crackle of white noise, and the low muttering of someone (something?) on the other line.
"…ay….omething…"
It was garbled at best, but Grace heard it. The minute he heard the voice, he was unstrapping himself from the pilot's chair and grabbing onto the control console, trying to bring himself impossibly closer to the speaker on the communications section. Zero grav was his friend at the moment, making it easy for him to stay suspended between the chair and the console.
Big mistake, because the next line was nowhere near as muffled or inaudible.
"I said fucking say something!"
Grace winced back, his lips down turning and his voice catching in his throat.
Mysterious Voice, that's what he decided to call the signal for now, breathed heavily on the line before continuing into a frustrated tirade. "If they just sent us all here to die, if we're never going back home, then what was the point? Why would they send us and waste finite resources? Can you fucking answer me that."
Ah. Grace's heart clenched for a moment, and again he was back on the grass, an elbow pushing down on his skull and a knee into his back. Someone punched a needle into his neck.
"Come on, you clearly have all the answers! You seem to know fucking everything about why they're sending us out here," the Mysterious Voice demanded, the pitch raising with distress. "So…don't leave me alone. Say…something. Anything."
As soon as they were on Erid, Grace was going to check himself into the closest mental facility. Or whatever the Eridian equivalent of one was. Because he was going to need so much counseling for this.
"Um…you don't have to shout. Promise." Swallowing back the tightness in his throat, Grace spoke into the armed microphone from Mary's system. "Can…can you hear me?"