Archive of Our Own

The first thing that Ryland Grace thought of Eva Stratt — once the initial hesitancy towards her using his doctor title wore off (it’d been years since someone called him Dr. Grace, and it was almost always done by a bitter academic ready to fight him over that dang paper, so forgive him for being so hesitant) — was that she was someone to be reckoned with.

Eva Stratt was tall, stony-faced, and carried herself with the energy of someone who knew exactly how powerful they truly were. It was an incredibly admirable trait — something that he realized after the initial anxiety over being basically scooped up by the neck from his job and dropped into an argon-filled laboratory as though he were nothing more than a mere guinea pig wore off.

Ryland had met plenty of people like her — powerful individuals carrying significant amounts of authority, incredibly confident and so self-assured that they could feel it down to their bones, no need for external acknowledgment necessary — and that just served to make him even more nervous. He didn’t usually mesh well with such types — his own anxieties and oddities, his tendency to ramble, and especially his refusal to back down when defending his own accomplishments and ideas tended to put him at really bad odds with such types.

But Eva Stratt had approached him with that darned paper in hand, asking him to take a look at the samples she’d been given, clearly knowing full well of his actions, ideas and reputation. So, he’d decided to take the leap of faith and hope that maybe, just maybe, he could get through this unscathed.

The second thing that Ryland Grace thought of Eva Stratt was that she was especially intriguing.

For all of his oddities and ramblings and ill-timed, horrifically awkward attempts at humor, Eva Stratt seemed like exactly the no-nonsense type of person to kick him to the curb the moment she got even the tiniest bit irritated by him. And yet, she hadn’t.

Even when he’d attempted to immediately leave the room of scientists she’d just pushed him into — a spider’s web, more like, and he’s the struggling fly waiting to be snatched up and mangled — or when he’d made a complete fool of himself (and likely her by reflection) in front of them with his little song reference, she hadn’t once faltered.

Heck, she’d even made a little joke of her own!

It made the ever-turning cogs in his brain kick into a small bit of overdrive.

Grace was no stranger to judging a book by its cover. He’d done it many times — he was the worst at it in college, amped up on youthful energy and testosterone and his own foolish pride — but it was never something he liked catching himself doing. He’d been working to better himself from the moment he took on his teaching position all those years ago — after all, how was he supposed to really set a good example for his kids if he wasn’t trying to be good himself?

Okay, he’s getting a bit sidetracked now, but you get the point.

On the surface, Eva Stratt seemed just like so many figures of authority Grace had had the displeasure of meeting — cold, apathetic and rigid, caring far more for their work than the people carrying it out.

But clearly, he was wrong (wouldn’t be the first time; no, far, far from it).

Eva Stratt was rigid and seemingly apathetic, sure, but he could already see the other layers of her personality peeking out from beneath the surface, just from the few interactions they’d had so far.

Curiosity bubbled up within him, curling around his mind. It was a dangerous line of thought — curiosity killed the cat, as they’d always say. But Grace was curious. And it’d always been damn near impossible to stop Ryland Grace when he was curious.

Unable to stop himself, Grace had begun keeping a mental notebook of his assumptions and observations on Stratt from that moment forward. Something in him needed to catalogue it, that scientific part of his mind desperate to see of which assumptions he was correct in, and of which he was incorrect.

In some of his assumptions, Grace was proven right day by day.

Stratt was certainly efficient and powerful as all hell — that was for sure. It’s not like he really needed any further proof after the day they’d met — when Stratt had plucked him from his job and into a lab without any questions asked, or when she had an entire room of officials hanging onto her every word, clapping the moment she’d told them to — but that’s just how Stratt was, in character and reputation.

Everyone on the ship treated her as though she parted the seas with her very presence. Conversations stopped the moment she walked into a room. All eyes not busy with work remained trained on her the entire time she stood before them. Each and every command that left her lips was met with such fervent obedience that to doubt her absolute power was to doubt even the simplest facts of reality.

She walked all across the ship with a single-minded determination, her head held high, like a king overlooking each and every one of his subjects for the faintest trace of disloyalty. She’d go from person to person, checking in on everything that was being done. She’d go over each and every piece of equipment aboard the ship, staring as though memorizing them down to the tiniest details. She’d be there for every meeting, every question, every little thing. Nothing on the ship seemed to escape her omnipresent eyes, nor the power she wielded as naturally as the air she breathed.

And in other assumptions, Stratt continued to prove him wrong.

So many figures of authority had built themselves up onto gilded pedestals, far above their common man, and fervently demanded to be treated as such. They knew everything and everyone, and to even entertain anything but was to submit yourself to the executioner’s block.

Stratt was anything but.

She wielded power like a person born with it etched into their very bones, yet she remained entirely aware of and perfectly content with the fact that, human as she was, she could not possibly know everything there was to know. While she was far from the likes of Grace himself — so friendly and talkative and bumbling that he’d share half his life story without ever being asked — she did not seem the least bit ashamed to admit whenever she did not know something.

Of course, unlike Grace, she was typically silent in doing so — taking a step or two backwards to let someone else talk, deferring the attention to them instead and nodding for them to continue if ever caught.

Stratt was also an incredibly far cry from the detached kind of authority he was used to.

Sure, Stratt never seemed to continue a conversation longer than necessary. And sure, she’d never let slip a personal detail about herself, nor did she ever try to pry one from anyone around her.

But she did listen.

If a scientist or guard, or anyone on the ship, really, ever revealed a personal detail about themselves, he could physically see the way Stratt tucked it away into her brain rather than letting it fly into one ear and out the other. He’d notice the way her eyes stayed locked onto whoever was speaking at any given time, standing still in a way that was born from far more than simple politeness.

Stratt seemed more than content, however, to carry herself as though she were just as detached from those around her as those who’d been gifted gilded pedestals far above their common man, so Grace didn’t mention it.

So perhaps Stratt was rigid and powerful and efficient and self-assured, yet magnanimous and attentive. People were rarely as simple as the image of themselves they projected, and Grace was eager to make as many discoveries as possible in the puzzle that was Eva Stratt.

For all of his friendliness and talkative nature, Grace was lonely.

San Francisco was a bustling place, filled to the very brim with people of all kinds, from all corners of the earth. Teaching exposed him to an unending variety of personalities — from the cold and cruel to the warm and bright, from the shy and quiet to the boisterous and playful, from the attentive to the oblivious and just about everything in between.

Grace was a person surrounded by people, yet that never ceased to make him feel less lonely.

For a long time, it was something that made him feel broken. Wrong. Everyone around him seemed to just get it — yet there he stood, alone and oblivious, struggling to pick up the pieces of an invisible puzzle known to the entirety of humanity but him.

Nowadays, he tried his best to not let it get to him. He had people. He had his kids. He had his coworkers, especially those who’d entertain more than just simple pleasantries in the morning or passive conversations in the break rooms. He had Marissa, whom he’d meet once a week at the same restaurant they’d been going to for years now.

Still, sometimes even that did little to soothe the ache buried so deep within him it may as well have been the marrow nestled within his bones.

He was sure others had noticed it. He knew some people had. Like that one Social Studies teacher a few years back, or the kids in his classes who’d question why he wasn’t married like so many of the other teachers, or a friend or two in college who’d insisted he just needed to go cruising the bars with them.

It wasn’t something he outwardly gave, though — which made it all the more surprising when he felt it unravel from within him on one of the few days he and Stratt had no company besides themselves.

He couldn’t particularly remember exactly how the topic had been brought up, nor what had compelled him to bare himself so open and raw and vulnerable besides his seemingly compulsive need to destroy the few relationships he kept.

All he knew for certain was that the moment the words began to leave his lips, he couldn’t stop himself.

“I don’t know. I just — I guess I’ve never been all that interested in relationships like that. Not like everyone else is, at least.” He’d rambled, toying with the computer mouse in his hands as he kept his eyes glued to the screen in a desperate attempt to give himself some semblance of security. “Romance is nice and all in the movies and the books, but as for real life…”

He let his voice trail off for a moment, doing his best to keep content in the silence that threatened to flay him alive. He fought against that intrinsic need to talk, to fill the silence with noise, to keep at bay the anxiety that he was doing something wrong.

He was rarely able to keep quiet for long, however. No matter the damage it caused him in its wake.

“It would be nice to have some sort of companion, though.” He murmured, letting his eyes fall from the computer screen to the blank space on the desk next to it. “We’re social creatures, after all. It’d be nice to have someone around my whole life. I just… don’t think I’ll ever find someone up for that. Up for me.”

Grace squeezed his eyes shut but for a second, taking all the strength within him to will himself to stop. He knew she was likely judging him — kind as anyone tried to be, no one was free from judging others.

Still, he flexed his fingertips and tried to fall back on what he knew. Stratt had taken each and every one of his oddities in stride, uncaring where most would have at the very least put up some sort of complaint. And even if she were to judge him, he was sure it wouldn’t change her mind now — Eva Stratt was a woman on a mission to save the world, and he doubted that one of her scientists whining about being incapable of falling in love like everyone expected him to was something that would make her cast said scientist aside.

So, he stood up a bit straighter and opened his mouth, turning his brain back to the science side, and he talked.

Mercifully, Stratt didn’t mention a thing.

The warmth of the room was almost stifling.

It was a scenario Grace was unfortunately far too used to for his own liking.

All around him, the others bustled around from person to person, chattering away like songbirds carrying a communal tune. People sat in groups of twos and threes and fours and fives, the sounds of their glasses tinkling as they knocked them together in the midst of camaraderie.

The room bustled like a live wire, and all the while, Grace sat in silence, feeling far too akin to a ghost left unnoticed — or worse, ignored.

It was okay, he tried to tell himself. He was used to it by now. He expected it. That was just how things went.

That, unfortunately, didn’t make it hurt any less.

But Grace just sat with his drink in hand, fiddling with it absentmindedly as he pushed his mind to drift elsewhere, trying in vain to fall into some sort of comforting familiarity — like the waves of the beach, steady and sure as they were, lacking in any sort of possible judgement towards his inadequacies.

That was, however, until he instinctively glanced upwards at the start of a new song, expecting to see yet another head of dark hair and was instead met with an all-too familiar head of strawberry blonde.

Eva Stratt was standing in front of the podium, microphone in hand, glancing his way. And she was singing.

Grace turned almost instantly, resting his cheek in his hand as he let the sound of her voice wash over him.

Before their conversation earlier that evening, he wouldn’t have ever taken her for a singer — but he’d been proven wrong time and time again when it came to her, and he was content with it happening again. Especially as the bustling nature of the room slowed, changed. No longer did he feel suspended from a live wire, desperately fighting to avoid getting burned for being entirely unaware of how to meld into the electricity.

The room continued to buzz, but quieter now. It was different. The room buzzed with a sort of anticipation, of disbelief — all eyes laying entirely upon Stratt, clearly caught off guard by the seemingly uncharacteristic display of humanity. Of personality beyond that of a figure of such high authority.

He couldn’t deny that something about the realization miffed him. Sure, he understood seeing Stratt as this rigid, detached high authority — he’d done so himself at the start, after all — but surely it wasn’t that hard to see the beginnings of the layers underneath that first impression, right? To see that Stratt was attentive, magnanimous — that she was human.

He let the unpleasant twinge wash away underneath the cool balm of her voice carrying throughout the room, content to watch even as she stepped from the stage, his eyes following her all the way until she vanished out into the hall.

Even in her absence, he found that the warmth of the room was no longer stifling, but manageable — perhaps even comfortable.

Grace listened to the gravel underneath his shoes as he walked, head tilted ever so slightly to the side as the small breeze in the air filtered about him. The matching sound of Stratt’s footsteps on the gravel beside him kept him grounded from flying away into the clouds like so many times before.

Something about Stratt was comforting in a way he didn’t quite know how to describe. In the months that he’d known her, those seemingly sharp edges had smoothed away to something softer, friendly enough to feel the coolness at the surface during the few moments she allowed him close enough to do so. It was a rare gift, he knew that well, to be let in beyond simple pleasantries and mission details.

She walked next to him, side by side, her usual two coffees in hand as he rattled off about the mission. She seemed content to simply soak in his words, and he didn’t see the need to pry her open any further than what she’d allow, so he left it at that.

It wasn’t until the usual stony mask Stratt wore faltered at his words, something impossible to mistake for anything else but shock painting her features at the easy compliment that left his lips that he realized maybe, just maybe, Stratt was vulnerable in the ways he was, too.

After all, he knew all too well the shock of receiving an acknowledgment after so much silent that it felt undeserved. He was oh so guilty of it himself — even after all the months on this team, working for a greater purpose and being useful, he found it near impossible to accept compliments that felt more like thorns pricking his skin to coax blood to the surface than anything warm and comforting.

It made something inside of him dislodge. His mind flitted back to that godforsaken day in the lab all those weeks ago, where he’d bared himself raw in a moment of unintended weakness, and Stratt had been kind enough to not acknowledge it.

Perhaps it had been more than simple kindness keeping her from pushing the topic, or even worse, ostracizing him for it. Perhaps it had been a sort of kinship, kept hidden out of that very same fear — that very same sense of wrongness.

No — he knew better than to try and assume to know the inner workings of another person’s brain; to know the exact vulnerabilities hidden beneath the surface. He knew better than to project his own feelings and emotions onto others.

Still, something in her behavior felt all too familiar to what he’d known himself all his life. And from it birthed a twinge of longing, of wonder — thinking, considering, what it would be like if he was right. If she did indeed carry vulnerabilities similar to his own.

Would he find kinship in her? Understanding? Acceptance, perhaps, beyond the surface level amount he was occasionally afforded in life?

Companionship, even — were he brave enough to bare those raw wounds in the light of day, where he couldn’t simply run and hide like he’d done before, to extend that idea for her consideration.

He just barely stopped himself from shaking his head in an attempt to wash away such thoughts.

Instead, he fell into the comforting lull of conversation after that, content to see the joy shining in her eyes that was so rarely displayed — fully aware of the magnitude of the gift he was being given, almost drowning in it.

Her smile was something to behold.

And so was the blast.

Grief was something Grace had never cared to know, despite how insistent the universe seemed on making it his friend. Losing someone — whether by death, distance or mere miscommunication — was never easy, even when he barely knew the person.

That wasn’t to say Shapiro and DuBois were so unknown to him as to be considered mere strangers, but still.

He let the final shivers wrack through his body before steeling himself and standing upright, wiping furiously at the tears that fell.

Eva was waiting for him.

The thought of her standing before him didn’t give him the same comfort it usually did. The usual comfort of the silence and coldness she brought with her was poisoned by the all too familiar anxiety that seemed to envelop him in almost every aspect of his life, diluting almost everything good he had until he destroyed it with his own hands.

He could see the disappointment on her face now if he were to not show up, and it was nothing short of every ounce of warmth and fondness and respect he held for her that propelled his feet forward despite the thorns of anxiety threatening to pull beads of scarlet to the surface until they turned to rivers painting his skin. He tried to push away the thoughts as he always did, but anxiety never liked to play particularly fair.

He just barely managed to stop his hand from trembling as he grasped the doorknob to her office, willing himself into taking a deep breath. Perhaps she’d once again prove him wrong on his assumptions. Perhaps she’d once again prove herself more comforting than almost anyone he’d ever met, despite the chill of her exterior. Perhaps he’d find a sense of security — a blanket of the shared grief of losing two people so important.

As he felt the grass dig into his skin like blades, invisible blood staining his skin scarlet as he shouted himself hoarse — begging, pleading, terror flooding through him — something deeply sardonic occurred to him.

She had once again proven him wrong.

There were many things, Grace had discovered, that were practically luxuries on Erid.

Privacy was the main one — after all, living entirely surrounded by a species capable of ‘seeing’ your very blood and organs immediately erased any notion of the idea.

However, much to his surprise, silence was another — and it was something he had never once expected to miss.

No, silence had long since been an uncomfortable thing for him on Earth, ever since it had dug itself deep into his bones in spite of whatever noise surrounded him — and it had become downright terrifying in space.

The constant noise of Erid had become an immense comfort to a man so starved of it as he was. The planet itself constantly buzzed from the nonstop movement of its inhabitants, of the clicks and chirps and songs ringing off the plentiful surfaces. He found himself constantly surrounded by it — enveloped in a sense of warmth he’d never known, seen and known and accepted for everything he ever was. It had soothed something deep inside of him, smoothing the cracked ridges of his heart into something far softer than the deformed mess it had been for so long.

Still, he was a human beneath it all, and every human needed some level of silence every now and then — even if the thought of it was terrifying. Silence would mean he was alone, and he couldn’t bear to be alone — not again, never again, oh god please, never again —

Rocky, for all his difficulties in understanding certain aspects of human social culture (not like he could be blamed for such a thing, of course), understood far better than Grace did just how terrifying silence was. His species used sound to navigate their entire world, after all, and the little bits of agony Rocky had shared of his 40 years in abject silence had been near unbearable to even hear.

It was as such that Rocky refused to leave Grace’s side as much as he refused to leave theirs.

His presence was endlessly comforting to him. When he’d said to Rocky that they’d given him everything, he’d meant it. And that included healing something within him that he’d long since refused to acknowledge had ever broken, for fear of the pain it’d scorch him with.

One of the best aspects of your best friend being an alien who was never raised with Earth’s societal expectations was that Rocky didn’t subscribe to human expectations surrounding ‘love’, nor could he ever attempt to hold Grace to such standards.

Grace had found companionship in Rocky long ago — almost from the very start, even. Something quiet, something that didn’t ever need to be acknowledged to exist, to just be, and it was the panacea Grace had spent his entire life dreaming of, begging for.

To Rocky — and all of Erid, really — it was as simple as the fact that he and Rocky were companions. They knew each other, cared for each other, enjoyed each other’s presence. They would be there for each other until the end of time, and that was all anyone needed to know.

It was something Grace had craved his entire life.

Yet still, he’d find his mind occasionally drifting to those he knew on Earth — especially on days like these, sitting on the shore of his biodome as he let the sounds of the waves crash through him, lulled into a sense of peace by the comforting familiarity.

He’d think of his kids. Of his coworkers. Of Marissa. Of Carl.

He’d often think of her.

He wondered what happened to her after the launch — something of which he was sure she’d done the same. He didn’t try as often to push away the guilt of presuming to know her thoughts anymore. He knew the simple facts, after all.

Eva Stratt had cared for him. He knew that now. He’d even known it then, but hadn’t quite been able to accept it. One side effect of living with an alien, though, was that Rocky would often knock some sense into him of how stupid human social things were at times.

Grace could still feel the red that painted his skin that day; the terror that had plunged into his heart like the depths of the ice that remained at the ends of the Earth. It still tore at him, lapping away at his pain like a dog starved of meat, never quite satisfied.

And yet, despite the agony, the anger had never quite sat right with him. It rarely did in his life — anger was always something ugly, twisting, too painful to hold onto lest he get ripped open at the seams and shredded until nothing was left of him but broken bones — but this particular anger seemed to seep into him like a venom left by an unseen force.

Okay, perhaps not an entirely unseen force. He knew exactly where the anger had been injected, and by what. By whom.

He just didn’t find it particularly fair.

His feelings for her had long ago twisted and morphed into something almost entirely unrecognizable — yet, slowly but surely, they had begun transforming yet again. The comfort of the ever present noise surrounding him, of the company of Rocky constantly by his side, of the easy acceptance by an entire species enveloping him like a warm blanket, all of it had begun smoothing over the painful scarring hidden deep within him.

Enveloped in a sense of peace so profound that it had nestled deep within his bones, Grace felt his anger, his agony, his devastation slowly dissipating into the air, diffusing into the emptiness of space he’d left far behind him.

Grace lifted his head at a sudden noise that pulled him entirely out of his thoughts. His face broke apart into a smile when he saw its origin — Rocky was standing far away at the door to the biosphere, waving happily to him. Grace shifted to stand, dusting the sand off of his legs as he did so.

Whatever he’d had with Stratt — whatever he could’ve had with her — was long gone, over sixteen light years away, and he’d come to accept that.

Years ago, it would’ve caused him even more immeasurable agony. Now, he instead basked in the warmth of the noise of Erid whenever the cold tried to seep painfully into his bones. He’d fallen into the rhythm of life he’d been gifted here, content.

And if the image of a head of strawberry blonde hair were to cross his mind, he’d simply smile at it and let it pass by like the waves on the shore.