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For the first time in a very long time, Simon wakes calmly.
He supposes that it’d be more appropriate to lend that award to when he first ”arrived” on the Hail Mary, but he barely remembers that. All he got when the tried to look back were flashes of brushstrokes painted in calming blues, whites, and grays.
His heart beat a bit calmer than its usual mile a minute, and he can’t recall anything about the nightmare he woke up from. So… yea.
Calm. It’s safe to say that his night so far had been calm.
He lays in his and Grace’s shared bed (god they sounded like a married couple…. he was weirdly okay with that) and stares at the ceiling, tracing the details of the spaceship’s interior with his mind. He takes note of the 2 remaining glow-in-the-dark stars, holding on by but a dream, and the small black line that had separated two parts of the roof. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and listens.
For once, he is staring at the ceiling to pass time. And it ain’t half bad.
His peace, then, is interrupted by sniffles. Crying, it sounds like. He opens his eyes, head turning to the sounds in question. A single light illuminates the top left of his periphery. A silhouette of a man with his head in his hands haunts the shadow of this light. He is trying to muffle his cries.
It isn’t working.
Simon’s heart breaks immediately, and he lifts himself from the bed as quietly as he can. Because if he knows Grace well enough (and he likes to believe he does-he was pretty easy to read anyways), he knows that as soon as he makes it known he wants to help, Grace will scoop everything up, and make a promise he knows he can’t keep.
“I-I'm okay Simon, really. I just…got a case of the Mondays, y’know?”
He steps carefully, making sure to bring their shared quilt with him. Grace had told him it was filled with patterns that symbolized good luck in different cultures. He’d shown him the ones he’d remembered by heart, and had looked up the other ones on the computer that he couldn’t remember.
“It’s been a bit since I’ve last thought about it, if I’m honest,” he had said wistfully, “Hadn’t really thought I’d get the chance to talk to anyone else about this.”
He looks at the ladder above him, and prepares himself to climb. Adjusting to life with one arm had been a little challenging, but he quickly figured out that his over-extensive training had made it a tad bit easier. He wasn’t planning on thanking anybody for that anytime soon, of course. Just a simple observation.
He grunts on the last step, throwing the quilt up first and using his stump to help him in anyway it can. He finally sees Grace, who is silently staring at his own teary reflection in the window. “Grace?”
“I can’t do it, Si…”
He’s never heard the man so broken before. Any time he’d seen Grace show emotion, he’d notice him immediately throw it away with a joke or subject change. He was never afraid to cry, of course. It wasn’t a notion he did out of fear of appearing “less manly” or whatever, Grace had cried all the time.
It was what he was crying about that had mattered.
“What’re you..talkin’ about?”
Grace sniffles, wiping his tears and looking away, “I can't…save us.”
He pauses at that. Thinks about how excitedly him and Rocky had been working together. About how hard they’d been trying to make enough food to last the entire trip to Erid. It was still going to be about 2 years until they actually made it to the planet, and even then, Rocky would have to work with the scientists to make a habitable space for the two. He knew it would be stressful, sure. But…
“Angel what…what do you mean? D-Did something happen, I-”
Grace cuts him off with a sad chuckle, slightly turning his head to face the other. “You shouldn’t call me that…I can’t..,” he bites his lip, almost a fail safe to keep his roaring emotions in their rightful and internal place “I don’t have a solution.”
Grace almost laughs at the irony. Almost. He’s forgiven Stratt already. He did that pretty much the moment he saved Rocky and sent the beetles. He thinks back to the sink in his heart when she’d called the other person in. The way he ran. The cowardly tears that streamed down his face. He thinks-
“You and Rocky are already halfway through a breakthrough. You said it yourself, scientific discoveries take years to even…happen. I-It’s gonna take time-”
“Yea well, that’s time that I don’t really have, isn’t it?” he snaps. “We’re losing food everyday, and I can’t just… magically know how to turn taumoeba into food you and I can eat.” He turns his whole body to Simon, and continues “I-I can’t figure out how to explain to Rocky every single thing we could ever need in order to live happily on a planet I know basically nothing about!” Grace gets up to stand, a crochet model of Earth falling from his lap, “I- I can’t..” he lets out a bitter laugh, “I can’t keep pretending that the hero you all think I am is…is actually me! Th-that the sacrifice I made, the real one anyways..that that ever held any weight. I made a friend, I cared, but what did it even matter? I was selfish-”
His voice breaks, and he lets out a broken sob. His hands curl like he’s grasping at something. A chance to breathe, an answer in everything, a reason it’d be okay to just stop it all, he wasn’t sure.
It’s not comforting. Not at all.
Simon carefully makes his way to the scientist, gently placing his hand on the other’s arm. It isn’t a shut off, it’s a reminder.
“A-Angel-”
“I was the bad guy. I chose that. Willingly!” he scoffs. Grace starts to breathe heavier, tears escaping his eyes once more. His face is worn by this point. From malnutrition or exhaustion, Simon wasn’t sure. It’s probably both.
He holds onto Grace and makes sure he looks him in the eyes. It’s firm, it’s direct, and it’s all-knowing, “You are not a bad person..”
“Yea, I sure chose like one, didn’t I?!”
He turns back to the window, grabbing the last piece of home he had left from the ground, and stares at the stars. It shakes in his trembling hand, but doesn’t fall. He squeezes it. “I-I couldn’t even choose to save the world I loved, what makes you think I can save the two of us?”
It’s quiet.
Too quiet.
Simon recognizes the underlying survivor's guilt like any other. He thinks about the boiling hot days in the submarine, where he’d cling to the seed pendant like it was a lifeline. About the days in prison he’d spend sitting and staring into nothingness because he thought of his brothers and his mom. They had their own complicated shit but..
He takes the quilt off his shoulder and clutches onto it. He looks at the symbol that his hand covers. Two pink hands holding each other in a way that forms a heart. Protection, love, emotional connection. That’s what it wanted to manifest.
He places the blanket around Grace’s shoulders, “I think so much more of you than that.” The other doesn’t shove off the blanket. He seems blindsided by how much of a hug it is, if anything. “You chose to save someone, a friend of yours, instead of returning home. You had a way to go back, to…be home. You chose not to.”
He makes sure the quilt covers his entire body. That he feels the comfort of this empty wave back from the Petrova team. He himself used to be so angry at the people who’d done this to Ryland, but the man always fought him on why he shouldn’tve. “That’s gotta count for something, don’t you think?”
The taller of the two bites the inside of his lip, shrugging. Simon sighs, squeezing his arm through the quilt, ”You’re one of the most selfless guys I’ve ever met, Ryland.”
“That isn’t saying much.” Grace comments.
Simon smiles at that. “Yea….yea I know.”
“This is bigger than me” rings in his head. Blood spills and flesh, flashing lights, and all. He thinks of his dying, hungry, almost primal need to save the world that didn’t want him there in the first place. He thinks back to how desperately he pulled that black box out.
Grace pulls the quilt tighter to his chest, “I didn’t wanna save em...”
Simon sighs, “Grace-”
“I threatened to sabotage the mission if I was forced. Did you know that?”
Simon is silent. He didn’t know that. It tugs at his heartstrings in a way that terrifies him. He lets Grace continue on, “That’s sick, isn’t it? That I couldn’t look them in the eyes and say I would die for the betterment of em all..For my kids.”
Simon traces patterns on Grace’s shoulder, “Nobody expected that of you…It’s a lot to ask.”
Grace thinks back to Stratt asking the team to come in. How ready they were for Grace to say no. It was a thought they had. A choice they were ready for.
“So why do I still feel guilty? If they did all that to me, why-” he can’t even finish the sentence. He’s been hiding this conversation inside his head for years; and now that its come to fruition, he isn’t sure how to feel about it.
“Because you’re human.” Simon responds. “Because..you’re better than you think you are. And this…thing was hard. It was a hard fuckin decision that you’d probably give someone else a hell of a lot more grace for.”
Grace dejectedly turns to Simon, tears soaking his face. He wants to cut him off, wants to tell him no. Wants to say, lie really, that he’d think the same of anyone who’d said no in the case of his certain circumstance.
But he can’t.
“It’d be unfair if I didn’t.”
Ryland bites his lip again, partly in disbelief that he’s found this kind of light. To be known, to be understood in this crushing and horrific way. To have someone that…calls on him like this. Rocky was his best friend. His truly and deeply. He would rather die a thousand deaths in every single timeline than lose him (again), and he makes sure that he knows that. He spent way too long on Earth taking stuff for granted, and now he needs to make sure he sucks it all in before its gone. Rocky was a foundation that held him together, and one that he’d be okay holding with the last bit of strength he had in his entire body.
Simon?
Simon is entirely and utterly. He is something new. He feels, god.
He feels like a Hail Mary.
Grace wanted to vomit. How stupid is that?
Colt was always labeled the lover boy of the family, and yet here he was; “Down bad” as his kids would’ve called it.
“You’re not doing this alone, Ryland. Me and Rocky, we’re gonna help you. Well, me as much as I can, anyway..”
And oh, did seeing Simon blush make him melt over. He chuckles.
“You’re helpful, Simon..You..you’re here. That’s enough.”
The other man looks away, shaking his head. He shares the same sentiment with Ryland, and of course he can’t fucking see it, but man did it frustrate him.
Ryland thinks it’s a little funny.
“You’re a strange man, Dr. Grace.”
Grace scrunches his nose,”What, oh ew-please don’t call me that!”
Simon smirks, “It’s your title isn’t it?”
“Y-yea! But I’m not…” he looks down at the crochet Earth. At the burning lava he called..he used to call home. “I’m not that guy anymore…”
Simon melts at that. Acknowledgement of change. The idea that, overtime, things can and will progress, and not just stay in the hell of one constant. He thinks about how much he’s known what it is to be numb.
He isn’t there anymore.
“And there’s the why.”