Work Text:
Ryland Grace was a man who was never meant for planet Earth.
He had no immediate family, or at least he never mentioned them. When people would ask, Ryland would just laugh, or change the topic, or say that it didn’t really matter. Sometimes he would say his classes were his family. He would call them his kids; help them through their rough families with a kindness and patience no being made from Earth could possess.
He spends his time in his little pocket of reality, his classroom built around the ways he saw the world. A perfect space where no one expected more of you, where you could be safe, where Ryland could be himself, and where his students had shown him what more there is in life.
Ryland Grace was a man who was never meant for planet Earth, but when his students asked him if they were eating the sun he had never felt more compelled to protect her.
Eva Stratt was a woman dressed in black, always in mourning for the Earth she would inevitably give her life to save. She had given up her future to protect the planet she held closer than anyone else that she would ever meet. And that determination meant she would use people with the skills to help her save her.
Grace and Stratt were a pair never meant to last. One was doomed to lie in the grass of her love and the other was destined to leave her. Their time together was fleeting, but that time was the closest either had come to something else to care for.
They did not love each other in the way that most people think when they hear that word. There was never a blossoming romance, or a frivolous dance. Instead there was a simple understanding. An understanding that the woman of Earth and the man of the stars were always meant to meet, but never meant to stay. So with their limited time together on the taskforce, they would work.
The aircraft carrier they called their home was a place where money was meaningless and sleep schedules were recommendations at best. A place to live for many but a home to very few. A place of endless and unrelenting work all with the singular goal of saving planet Earth. In an environment like that, the two of them thrived.
Ryland Grace was a man who was never meant for planet Earth, and Stratt knew that more than he did.
When the labs exploded and Stratt said that he had 3 hours, that love grew into something so intense it was indistinguishable fear.
It had never mattered what Ryland had said to her, yes or no it all led to the same place. She would do whatever it took to save her beloved planet, even if it meant she had to kill Ryland with her own two hands. The only solidarity was to hope he said yes.
Unfortunately, luck had never been on Stratt’s side, and bravery had never been on Ryland’s. His pleas for freedom fell on deaf ears, so instead he ran. He ran until he couldn’t run any farther, until the soldiers tackled him to the ground and injected amnesia-inducing sedatives into his neck. His last words of screaming that he couldn’t do it, begging anyone to let him go, and then Ryland Grace was gone.
Eva Stratt was a woman now dressed in white, celebrating the wedding of a man to his death.
Rocky was the alien who dreamed of home.
He dreamed of his home when they spotted the curving arc from their sun. He dreamed of his home when he left with twenty two others. He dreamed of his home when each of them started to die, one by one, until he was the only one left.
Rocky had been alone for forty two years, drifting in the void with no hope of saving his star. No hope until a small satellite pinged into focus.
Ryland Grace was a man who was never meant for planet Earth, yet he dedicated his life to saving it.
Grace and Rocky worked together like the pair of hands on a clock. Working together in tandem as if they had known each other for their whole lives.
Adrian was a planet of swirling greens and misty oranges. Home to what they hoped to be their solution, their saving grace. It was beautiful.
Eridians had no sense of vision, but Grace did. His wish for Rocky to be able to see the views of the planet below went unheard, for they both knew that it was time.
‘Fishing’ turned out to be more difficult than imagined. Their ship twisted and bent and broke. Grace was doomed from the start, his life already gone from before he woke up and his new life flashing before his eyes as the walls came rushing towards him.
Rocky was an alien who dreamed of home, and that home included the man dying in front of him.
Smoke and ammonia filled the air as the two aliens finally touched, the touch met with the sizzling of burning skin and the screams from a creature burning in the air.
Grace was never meant for planet Earth, he was meant for the alien who gave his life to save him. The alien who now lied motionless on the floor.
Rocky wasn’t gone, he couldn’t be gone, if he was then– Rocky wasn’t gone so Grace would just work while he waited. Rocky wasn’t gone, and when he woke he found the man who had never left home curled around him in as much a way as he could.
Unfortunately for the sole bound friends, there was only so long they could delay the inevitable. The time had come for them to go their separate ways and save their dying suns.
Fate is a funny thing, and for the man who was never at home on his planet it makes sure that he can never return. So when the time came to choose where to go, there had always only ever one answer.
Erid was a planet just as brilliantly Blue as Earth. Grace had long since been offered the means of travel “home”, but why go home when he is already here?
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Eva Stratt is a woman once again clad in black, but her hair is white as a dove in hopes of a gift from the man she killed.
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Rocky is the alien who dreams of home, a home where he could forever live with his mate and the man who never knew a home until him.
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Grace is a man who was never meant for planet Earth, so he found his home among the stars.