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They're silent while they do the final checks. Yao making sure they're on the right course, Ilyukhina checking and double checking the ship's systems. They're still silent as they both head to the dormitory.
It's not a good silence, but that doesn't mean that Yao is happy when Ilyukhina breaks it.
“Yao, we have to talk about this.”
“What is there to say?”
She glares at him with sudden venom. “How about, oh look Grace, who looked like he would piss himself through most of training and said he would never actually go on mission because he was too scared, is now here on mission.” She gestures to the bunk at the other end of the room, where Dr Grace lies still and silent in the plastic pod they'd installed him in. “And his nails are fucked up. And his hands have scratches. And there is bruise on his face. Weird, huh? Wonder what could have happen! Is big mystery!”
Yao sighs and crosses the room. Ilyukhina seems to have finished speaking for the moment, and the silence is back. The only sounds are his footsteps and the beeps and whirrs from Grace's life support machines. He'd always heard that coma patients looked like they were sleeping, but he's seen Grace sleeping. He used to pass out on the rec room couch from time to time, after pulling too many late nights at the lab.
Usually, it was when Stratt was away. Whatever those two had going on— and Yao never agreed with Dubois that it was sex, though he couldn't say what else it could be— Grace was more functional when she was around. He took breaks and got to bed at a reasonable time and subsisted off things that weren't brightly coloured and made entirely of sugar.
Yao had overheard Stratt snap at him once, when some new scientists had brought some nasty virus to the Vat and knocked out half the astrobiology team. Grace had been not very successfully trying to hide that he had come down with it himself, and was trying to do the work of four people.
Yao had been planning to try and have a chat with him about it. Obviously he wasn't Grace's superior, but he knew the man respected him and his opinions. Possibly enough to stop trying to power through the flu and get some rest.
But when he next passed the lab, he'd heard Stratt's voice— raised over the sound of another one of Grace's coughing fits— informing the scientist that “you are of no use to this mission if you are unwell. Unless you plan to infect the rest of the ship? We do not have time for you to play the martyr Dr Grace!”
The next he heard, Grace was on sick leave and Stratt was trying to work out quarantine procedures for newcomers on the Vat, so as to prevent future delays.
Stratt.
A sleeping Grace should be snoring. Or twitching. Or muttering nonsense. He should have a slight tension between his brows, frown lines that Yao always felt an irrational urge to smooth out with a thumb. He should be easily startled awake by somebody dropping a glass or a drunk Ilyukhina approaching him with a sharpie.
Comatose Grace's face is slack beneath the tubes. He's clean shaven, neatly dressed, and yes, his nails are torn and there's a bruise forming on his jaw. His lower lip is slightly swollen, not like someone punched him, but like he'd maybe bitten it hard enough to break the skin.
Yao tries to imagine the scene, only three hours after the disastrous meeting, when Grace apparently walked into Stratt's office and bravely volunteered to go on the mission. Happily signing his own death warrant. Nobly requesting to be put in his coma a few days early so that he wouldn't distress his crew mates if he panicked during launch. (Even if it meant missing his chance to see the Earth from orbit, because it's not like Grace was fascinated with images of the Earth or anything.)
Yeah, Yao is drawing up a blank. His imagination gives out about when Grace steps over the threshold into Stratt's office, and doesn't pick up again until he's loaded into the ship.
Ilyukhina comes to stand next to him. “I hate her,” she says. “I fucking hate her.”
“Olesya, we don't know—“
“I know.” She puts a hand on the part of the pod covering Grace's arm. “I love you Grace. You are good friend, but you are a pussy. Smart and kind and good at stupid jokes, but I know you did not agree to die.” Grace, unsurprisingly, does not respond.
Ilyukhina looks back at Yao. “I want to turn the ship around. Fuck Stratt. Fuck Earth that they do this to us.”
She doesn't really want to. Yao isn't sure it would even be possible, the computer probably wouldn't allow it. He puts a hand on her shoulder. It's not the most professional way for a Captain to behave towards his Chief Engineer, but the two of them— the three of them, before Dubois's death— had long put aside those kind of formalities.
(“I'm not dying with coworkers,” Ilyukhina had said bluntly. “I want to die with friends.”)
She breathes deeply now, closing her eyes and biting her lip. She's not a crier, not since Yao has known her, but it looks like something of a struggle now.
“Fuck I need a drink,” she says at last. “And I can't even. I can't even have food because I am going into coma. I hate this. I hate her.”
Yao doesn't quite know how he feels himself. He hates the situation, certainly. Hates the idea of Grace waking up, confused, scared, remembering why he's here and that it's already too late to do anything about it.
But, a little voice in the back of his head keeps reminding him, do you really think that that Paraguayan distillery worker would have been the better choice? Do you really think she'd have been up to the task with three days of training and a Bachelors in Chemistry?
They were all in this to save the world. What did Grace think would happen when he said no?
“We will help him,” he says to Ilyukhina, because that's the one thing he is certain about. “He may be scared, but he won't be alone. We can give him that.”
“They said die to save the planet,” Ilyukhina says, hand still on Grace's arm. “So I said I will die to save the planet. It was scary, but it was… simple, you know? I am dying to save the planet, so I am good person. I am brave, I am hero, my life has meaning. Done.” She scowls. “Kill to save the planet is different story. Help us kill to save the planet, help us kidnap your friend and make him die, put him in his bed, make his coffin all comfy. Keep going, do mission, save Earth, help friend fucking die… I did not sign up for this. They should have told us.”
Yao raises his eyebrows. “And what would have happened if we'd said no?”
“The Earth would die.” Ilyukhina crosses her arms and looks back at Grace. “I know, I know. We are saving world. Is right decision to save billions of lives. But is also wrong decision. They should have let us know. They should have let us make our choice.”
“I know,” Yao says. “It's not fair.”
The computer speaks up then, making them both jump. “Olesya Ilyukhina, it is recommended that you enter your coma within the next thirty minutes.”
Ilyukina smiles. Her eyes are wet, but it's definitely a smile. “Sounds like it's bedtime for me.” She leans over Grace's bunk. “Goodnight Grace. I'll see you at Tau Ceti. You're gonna be scared, and it's gonna suck, but we're gonna get you through it. We're gonna save Earth from scary aliens, then we're gonna have a huge party with vodka and proper music-“
Yao grins to himself. Ilyukhina's idea of 'proper music' is thumping tunes with heavy bass, dubstep and barely legible lyrics, all played at a volume high enough to risk damaging your eardrums. She and Grace had a ton of arguments about it on the Vat.
“- and we're gonna write 'fuck Stratt' and 'Hail Mary Crew is the coolest crew' all over the walls for the future archaeologist aliens to find, so they know how cool we are, and then I'm gonna share my heroin with you and combine with the nitrogen so we both get to die happy.” She looks back at Yao. “You can join if you want.”
“Thank you, but I would prefer to stick with my own method.”
She shrugs. “Suit yourself.”
He helps her climb into her own pod and get all the necessary monitors hooked up.
She grins up at him. “See you on other side, Captain.” Then her eyes close and don't open again.
Yao leaves the room once he's sure she's unconscious. He needs to check the course one final time and send one last radio message to Earth to let them know they're on their way. Also, he knows the next part of the procedure is going to involve the removal of some of her clothing, and he doesn't want to intrude.
His message is short and to the point. The reply is equally short, confirming that they are safe and wishing them luck. Yao turns off the radio and returns to the dormitory.
The stillness is unsettling. The pods look like bodybags. Yao has to check his crew mates' heart-rate monitors to reassure himself that they're both still alive and that they haven't left him alone on the ship.
He doesn't want to climb into his own pod.
He doesn't want to fast forward through the next four years and wake up to a terrified Grace and an angry Ilyukhina and the knowledge that the world is thirteen years closer to ending.
Now that there's nobody around who needs him to be strong and supportive, he can let himself feel his own anger. At Stratt, for doing this to them. At Grace, for being a fucking coward when the world needed him most. At Dubois for dying. At astrophage, for existing. At himself, for volunteering for this nightmare when he could have just let someone else do it and been at home with his wife and kids right now watching the launch on the news.
He rides out the emotion with some deep breathing, then approaches his own pod. Maybe things will look better in the morning. Maybe Grace will surprise them.
He plugs himself into the monitors and lies back, feeling more relaxed as the sedative starts to kick in. He tries to lift his head, one last time, to see his sleeping crewmates. He's already too tired.
“See you on the other side,” he slurs, as the robot zips him in and his eyes slide shut against his will.
And that's the last moment he ever knows.