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Eva Stratt should have expected this. She wasn’t sure why she was shocked.
Was shock the right word for the feeling in her chest?
It curled and it burned and it spread throughout all her limbs and wanted to spill from her skin and yet she still couldn’t get it out.
Eva Stratt had long since come to terms with the fact that she was not kind. She was not necessarily brave either, nor happy, nor agreeable. She had long since come to terms with the fact that she would have very few friends in life.
Growing up, that fact was easy enough to retain. It wasn’t as though any of the other children let her forget it. It didn’t matter in the end. She was smarter. Maybe if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t have ended up here.
Ryland Grace had been a surprising and rare exception to the loneliness of Eva Stratt’s life. He was something entirely unique, that she hadn’t yet encountered in a person. Perhaps untrue. She hadn’t encountered someone so happy that was willing to be friends with her.
Because that’s what they were. Friends. She knew his favourite coffee order. She knew how he had to make his bed, always in this one strictly peculiar way. She knew he preferred turtlenecks, and that he didn’t like it when his shirts didn’t touch the small of his back. She knew he liked using Gel Pens because they were more fun, and that if he sat still for too long he was probably not thinking about what he was supposed to be thinking about.
She knew he liked the beach, and the wind. His favourite flower was a forget-me-not. It was hilarious how ironic it was.
When Ryland Grace had been gone, she didn’t have to face this. She thought about the look in his eyes when he realized, that putrid and potent fear, but she forgot his face soon enough. A hilarious task. He was everywhere.
The man that stepped up.
It never really looked like him.
Eva Stratt knew his eyes were blue. The bright blue of the sky. She didn’t remember them quite right. He was a distant concept in her memory.
She had found the files on Colton Seavers and Courtland Gentry 2 weeks post launch.
She curled in on herself, in her small apartment in the netherlands as everyone thought of what to do next. She cried for hours. He never knew. She didn’t know. Colton looked just like him. It terrified her.
Courtland was already dead. Eva expunged all lingering charges on his dead name. It didn’t help.
She watched a few Tom Ryder movies. Knowing what she knew, knowing who it was acting, seeing the fear in Colton Seaver’s eyes, it killed her more by the day.
She would order his favourite coffee on accident. She hated it. Too harsh for her tastebuds. She drank it anyway. There was no real public grave for any of the members of the Hail Mary. Statues weren’t really the same.
It was easier to get drunk in a cemetary at 2 am than it was to get drunk lounging on a statue. Sometimes she would pretend anyway. She would visit a random cemetary and search for his name, losing herself until all of the names were the same anyway.
It took her a long time to get over it.
She thought she was over it. There was no justification for her not being over it. It was unfair to Ryland to have her grieve like this. She had killed him.
Eva Stratt did not cry when the Hail Mary returned. Maybe he had gone to Erid and came back. Maybe he was back here to hug Eva and to spend their afternoons while the sun gently warmed in europe somewhere.
He had done it, after all.
Eva Stratt did not expect to pull out an unidentified personnel out of the hail mary; let alone three. She was not surprised. Leave it to Ryland Grace to make first contact with every intelligent being in the universe.
She was perhaps the first to think that two of them looked like Eridians. Faintly. The patterns on their skin would match. She was likely delusional. She never voiced it. Nobody needed to hear her random thoughts of absurdity.
Eva Stratt spent several long days and nights by Ryland’s bedside. Carl was there too. He had retired, somewhat. Mental stress and guilt putting too much of a strain on his psyche for him to safely and confidently return to work.
He was the first person she called. Eva Stratt didn’t really hug people. She hugged Carl. He cried. He cried a lot. She knew Ryland had forgiven him. She knew Ryland had never even been mad at him.
It was comforting to know that Ryland would have Carl at the very least.
There was something about the other human that was odd, to Eva. She could feel it in the way he existed, so quietly, that he was important to Ryland. They seemed to yearn for each other, searching for each other in the silence and the beeping of the hospital, incapcitated and still attempting to reach the other.
She looked at John Doe a long time, taking him in. He was weird. Eva Stratt wasn’t sure what to think. He had been through a lot, every test showed. As if the missing arm wasn’t enough evidence. He mumbled Ryland’s name in his sleep a lot.
Eva Stratt decided that if they both recovered enough before they woke up she would have them put in the same room.
She was finalizing this order when Ryland woke up for the first time. She rushed to the security room, watching as he ran. It was like watching her heart being torn out and ripped anew all over again. He went straight for John Doe.
She was right.
Eva Stratt somehow always ended up being right.
~~
It took a long time for Eva to get the nerve to try and show up in Ryland’s life. Show up again, might be the more accurate statement.
She was terrified. It wasn’t an unknown feeling, but it was so raw she almost doubted she had ever even felt it before.
He shined. It was different. It was so different from the Ryland she knew. He cried for his brother, and he was right there everytime his husband (presumably) woke up. He was smart, but courageous. He was scarred, and there was something in his eyes she had never seen before.
She only got one look at his eyes before he turned and walked away.
Eva Stratt’s heart dropped to her stomach.
He pulled the IV Bag holder with him as he found the courtyard, turning away from her. She was worried he was going to get hurt. She didn’t want him hurt. He needed to stay safe. For his own sake. He deserved this more than anyone.
She watched as he refused to speak with her, grabbing fistfuls of grass and dirt, ogling them like he hadn’t seen them in years.
Decades.
She took that from him.
He was crying. Eva knew he was. She got Colt. She didn’t let herself cry in front of Ryland. It wasn’t fair. She had made her choice.
She wanted Ryland to forgive her. She wanted him to forgive her northern attitude, and for them to be best friends again. Her second in command. The smartest man of all time. She had grown up in the cold. It was colder now, and there was less sun.
Ryland was the sun.
He looked at Eva with terror in his eyes. They were red rimmed and full of fear.
He didn’t even hate her.
He couldn’t hate her.
He was scared of her.
Eva Stratt remembered reading the Child Protective Services files on his early life. Was that how he looked at his father? She would never know. She let Colt intervene. She let Carl save him.
Eva Stratt wasn’t playing the bad guy because she wanted to let Colt and Carl save Ryland from every nightmare he had. She was playing the bad guy because she was the bad guy.
Her choices had been limited. She had dealt her hand. The crops she sowed now where of her own planting.
Eva Stratt would see Ryland Grace never again, presumably. She’d see Dr. Grace. He would never escape the titles that were bestowed to him. They would have to work together.
She left the hospital and walked to the nearest bar to order a shot of Vodka.
She mourned her Ryland.
Her friend.
She had killed him. Ryland Grace was back, but not the same. She had still killed him.
Living with that fact would come every day with the rising sun.
Only due to them both did that sun still shine.