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The rustling of bedsheets wasn’t what woke Ryland. He was so tired that sleep claimed him hunched over the lab table facing the medbay. It was easier than walking all the way back to the dormitory just to walk back here once he got up.
He had made that table his home base, lugging a microscope, some taumeba slides and such over so he could do work while he watched over the new…human?
This human that appeared in a bloody coffin of a submarine in the middle of nowhere. Grace still wasn’t sure that he hadn’t stepped into an alternate dimension with the odd way this whole thing happened.
He and Rocky did the best they could, fishing the submarine in, breaking the barely conscious stranger out and practically dragging him to the medbay.
No, what woke him was the increased beeping of the heart rate monitor followed by the abrupt stop of all sounds. Maybe it was the lack of beeping that brought Grace to consciousness.
Grace huffed, mildly annoyed that he fell asleep when he was supposed to be watching Rocky and the new member on board.
Pushing himself off the desk, Grace saw that the medbay looked the same as when he fell asleep. Except for that huge blurry mass in the dead center of the room. Ryland shook his head slightly and leaned forward, squinting. The action dislodged the pair of glasses haphazardly shoved to his forehead, landing them on his nose. They clarified that the mass was distinctly human shaped.
The new human was awake.
No, not just awake. On his feet. Disconnected from the life support system.
Whatever thick haze of sleep hung around Grace vanished immediately as he shot up from the desk and moved towards this person.
The person–a man– was unnaturally still. Standing a few inches shorter than Grace, he noticed the broad, muscular shoulders that supported a head of thick, deep brown hair. It was slightly frizzy from sleep, though Grace tried his best to make sure there were no knots that formed. It was difficult when the man thrashed, trapped in some horrific nightmare. Having nothing but time and an empathetic burn somewhere deep in his chest, Grace had attempted to smooth the strands back into some semblance of order once the stranger had stopped thrashing. Maybe it crossed some line, but he couldn’t help but think, maybe if the roles were reversed, that he would want someone to do the same for him.
The man’s form was covered by a hospital gown, but it was obvious he favored his right side over his left. Though his back was to Grace, the image of the man’s frontside was all but burned into Grace’s mind.
When they found him, he was covered in thick blood. It was hard to tell what blood was reasonably his and where he could be injured. Though, it was made obvious pretty quick that the man had lost an arm. Recently, too, as there was a constant blood flow from the snapped tendons and stretched flesh. It made Grace gag involuntarily and even Rocky made a noise of unease. What could have happened to result in such a violent amputation?
The man was barely conscious and kept mumbling about his promised freedom. Half of it was inaudible, as there was a horrific gash in his cheek that snaked its way up to his eye. Teeth protruded from the opening. Yes, cheek teeth. Grace had to blink a few times to make sure he saw that right.
“Rock,” Grace spoke through the transmission, “he…he has teeth.”
“Yes, is he not human?” Rocky’s voice crackled back. He was in the control panel keeping an eye on the airlock statistics. They had hauled the submarine into the room they could safely depressurize and breach it in order to see what was sending out the distress signal.
“No I mean–look at my helmet camera. That's not where teeth normally go.” Grace let his shock and medical curiosity get the better of him as he reached his hand towards the sharp protrusions.
It was like his brain cranked the sharpness dial towards 100% as the stranger, snapped into some lucid state by the movement, grabbed Grace’s wrist and held on tight enough to bruise. Rocky’s trill of alarm drilled itself into his mind enough to start a ringing in his ears.
“Please.” The blood in the man’s mouth was so thick that when he opened it to speak, the blood stretched into a thin film before popping open as the man exhaled the word. The gash that traveled up his cheek opened, that same film trapped between the long, thick fangs. Droplets landed on Grace’s helmet and it took everything in him not to immediately jump away.
He would have, if not for the iron tight grip the stranger still had on his wrist.
“P-please? Please what?” Grace grabbed the stranger’s hand with his other and tried to pull him off.
Wrong move. The stranger howled the saddest, most desperate cry Grace had ever heard. Well, he’d heard something similar before. In a memory, against the soft grass of a field. The agony was something that stabbed the very core of his being. The stranger’s eyes were wide, deep and terrified. He froze, lightening the pressure but still holding the stranger’s wrist as firm as he was holding Grace’s wrist.
“No…please, don't leave me here,” the stranger sobbed, chest heaving. All his energy seemed to go towards pleading with Ryland as he released his grip on the scientist’s wrist. The fight left his eyes as they drooped closed. “...don’t leave me to die again.” The words were mumbled as the stranger was knocked unconscious.
Grace just sat there, dumbfounded, staring at the only other human for light years as the ringing began to die down in his head. As it faded, another sound came through.
“...ace. Grace? GRACE??” Rocky’s translator shuddered as he trilled anxiously. Grace blinked, trying to surface from the trance he was in. When did Rocky get so close?
Wait, when did Rocky get into the airlock?
“Grace ok, question?”
“Uh, yeah buddy I’m-” Ryland paused, just for a second. He looked to his singing alien rock best friend, to the stranger doused in blood delivered in an iron submarine, then to the surrounding airlock on a spaceship designed for a suicide mission he didn’t sign up for.
“Actually I think I’ve been better.”
Snapping out of that memory, Grace stepped forward hesitantly. He didn’t know what the right move was, and this one didn’t seem to be it.
If the stranger in his medical bay could stiffen anymore, he did. He must have incredible hearing, Grace mused, if he could hear just my socks on the floor. Still, attempting to keep his distance close to the doorway, Grace slowly lifted his hands to appear as non-threatening as possible. That’s what people did in movies, right? His brain was running impossibly fast and this was the one thing he could hold onto.
Seemingly at a standstill, Grace saw no other option than to attempt speaking. “Hnn–hi” Grace’s voice struggled to leave his throat after its disuse. He forgot he had been asleep maybe a minute ago. No matter, he can try again.
“Ahem. Uh, hi.”
The stranger turned to face him. It took Grace so much strength not to immediately give into his flight instinct.
“I’m Dr, Captain Ryland Grace.”
It was hard to pinpoint exactly why the instinct kicked into overdrive here. It was already humming in his throat when he decided to approach the stranger.
“You’re on the Hail Mary and-”
It must have been his eyes. Deep mahogany that would have looked black under any other circumstances. But the soft light of the medical bay hit them just right, and the irises held the richest shade of brown he had ever seen. Maybe in another lifetime, they were the kind of eyes that would have halted Grace in pure adoration, because how could something so common look so utterly beautiful?
Uhm, but in this lifetime, he was unable to think such fleeting thoughts because those beautiful eyes darted over Grace, as if to size him up, which was a correct assumption
As soon as the words ‘Hail Mary’ left his mouth, he could only blink before the man rushed him. It was a short distance that left Grace with no time to think before the stranger’s only hand found purchase around his throat.
Fear gripped him tighter than the hand, though the hand was pretty freaking tight. Not enough to be deadly, but enough to shrink his windpipe by a fraction. Grace felt himself get slammed into the doorframe. He couldn’t tell if the black stars dotting his vision was from the impact to his skull or the slow and steady decrease of oxygen.
“I…don’t give a,” the stranger choked on his words as well, “a fuck what your name is. I’m… not letting you kill me… again.”
There it was with that word. ‘Again’. If only Grace could ask him what he meant by that. It was kinda hard to get a word in edgewise when this horrific pressure of a stranger’s hand and body against his own shot him back to his last contact with humanity.
His last, conscious breath of Earth’s oxygen.
Face pressed into the grass.
Needle to his back.
Throat raw from screaming pleas that fell on unwilling ears.
In that moment, Grace had nothing. He was nothing. Stratt, the person he had devoted so much time and energy to, made sure he knew he was nothing. She didn’t have to say those words outright, it was so, so painfully obvious he was nothing on Earth.
The perfect sacrifice is one with no attachments. No real responsibilities that someone else couldn’t easily fulfill.
Absolutely nothing about him had mattered.
It was a painful thought as Grace felt his eyes weighing heavily. A bitter notion to die to.
But, he wasn’t sure that was true anymore. It could have been true the last time, but it isn't true now.
He had the solution to the astrophage crisis. He had ventured further than any human had ever done so before. He had someone–something?--to live for.
Rocky, who against all probable odds, found him. Rocky, who had given Grace everything.
Rocky, who was currently asleep not ten feet from where Grace was being strangled by the blood man they had found in space.
After every misfortune, every scar, every discovery, after everything the two of them endured, Grace sure as hell was not letting it end here.
He couldn’t fight back against the handful of Stratt's soldiers pinning him to the ground and sedating him on Earth.
But here, on the Mary, after everything? He could absolutely fight back against this man who was already struggling to stand as it were.
Grace willed his eyes open just long enough to drift to the bandaged stump at the stranger’s left side. It was darkening with each second that ticked by, clearly disturbed by the man’s harsh movement.
Grace’s fingers shakily found their way there before applying as much pressure as he could. It wasn’t much, but it worked.
The stranger howled in pain, releasing the hand at Grace's throat to remove the hand at his amputated arm.
Oxygen had never burned coming into his lungs before, Grace thought, but he was never happier to have a sensation in his life. It meant he was still alive. Taking the opportunity, Grace shoved his shoulder into the man’s chest, knocking them both to the floor. They fell with an ‘oof’–well, more like Grace fell with an ‘oof’ and the man just kept screaming in agony.
Grabbing the wrist of the man, Grace pinned his arm above the stranger’s head as he straddled the stranger’s legs. Though that was a bit hard to do as the stranger kept thrashing and biting out strings of insults.
In a language Grace knew. In an accent he was familiar with. Familiarity is a funny thing when it's unexpected.
If he didn’t almost just die, Grace would have started laughing. This is absurd, he thought, after all I went through, after all that sadness about never seeing humanity again and feeling lonely and touch starved, I never would have expected…well…this. To be strangled and almost killed on my own ship by a human who just happens to speak, wouldn’t you know it, American English.
He snapped back to reality as one of the man’s insults was punctuated by a glob of spit on Grace’s cheek. Gross.
“--you COI pieces of shit never keep your promises–” the stranger bit out the words as if they tasted bitter on his tongue. They had to have, to prompt such a violent and harsh reaction.
Grace, finally feeling like he had some control of the situation, began in a measured tone, “Ok, bud, I’m gonna need you to calm down–”
“--DON’T fucking tell me to CALM DOWN after you psychos threw me into that fucking sub–”
Grace had the feeling this would go on for ages so he raised his voice hoping that the man would listen. “HEY. Listen to me. I have genuinely no clue what you are talking about, but you are running on nothing but adrenaline at the moment and I can tell you’re getting tired.
The stranger’s gaze hardens something fierce, but to his credit, he does stop spitting insults. Grace takes this as progress and continues.
“I know you’re scared. You woke up in an unfamiliar medbay with a weird stranger,” Grace gestured to himself. A distant voice whispered that it was redundant to call himself both weird and strange. Maybe that voice was Rocky’s, and if he were awake, he’d lambast Grace about the inadequacies of the human language.
Not the time. “We found you in a submarine. Both it and you were covered in blood. So, so, so much blood.” Grace shook his head for emphasis. “You, uh, just kinda ‘poofed’ into existence and I’m not sure how–”
“Stop fucking playing with me!” The stranger grit through his teeth and tried to push on the floor to buck Grace off of his midsection. Grace had to counter by pushing his feet into the ground and pushing himself against the stranger’s knees.
“I’m–oh shoot–I’m not playing with you!” Grace said, getting the man restrained between his knees again. It was getting easier to do so, he could tell exhaustion had begun to really set in.
“Ok, here's the deal,” Grace stared into those brown eyes that held contact without looking down. Grace was angled in such a way that the overhead light was casting a shadow over the man’s left side, including that eye. Darn, the light really made a night and day difference in how his eyes looked. Again, in a different circumstance, maybe even another universe, if Grace looked for longer, he would be able to see a faint ring of red shimmer that landed just shy of the man’s pupils. But in this universe, Grace was too preoccupied with the fact the man looked like he was trying to blow his head smooth off.
Grace took a breath, “You can either keep fighting and I’ll just hold you here until you pass out. I can tell you’re getting tired.”
The man squinted slightly but didn’t say anything.
He continued, “Or, you can calm the f down and I can explain as much as I can while we get you some food. What’ll it be?”
Something like confusion clouded the man’s face. “What—why the fuck would you–” his expression hardened into pure disdain and what almost looked like…betrayal? “No, I get it. You’ll feed me before you send me back down into that fucking ocean–”
“Oh my–” Grace couldn’t help the annoyance that washed over him. “What are you talking about? What ocean?”
“DON'T FUCKING LIE,” the stranger thrashed his torso harder than Grace had been expecting. He must have gotten another shot of adrenaline because the movement caused Grace to lose a bit of his balance atop the stranger and he fell to his thigh to the right of the man. His hand still kept the stranger’s arm above his head, but without the restraint, the stranger wriggled his body in an attempt to escape and turned away from Grace, still talking. “I know what’s happening, I’m not dumb! You- you’re really gonna kill me…kill me agai…”
The words seemed to genuinely die in his throat.
Grace was about to ask why he would want to kill this stranger as he scrambled to get back onto the stranger’s torso to restrain him again, but he felt something in the air shift. The stranger wasn’t thrashing, wasn’t resisting, wasn’t talking. If anything, he was completely resigned to Grace’s restraint, arm going limp where it had previously been pulling away. He seemed locked onto a specific item and, following his eyeline, Grace’s own vision landed on the potted flower perched on the lab table he woke up from.
He had put it there after spending too many nights in the medbay fighting malnutrition and exhaustion. Grace remembered reading somewhere that nature acted as an automatic stress reliever. A vague memory surfaced of the wind in his hair, the sound of a bicycle chain spinning, and the California greenery whizzing by on his way to school. It had always been easier to breathe with the lush amount of greenery, and it brought moments of respite from the anxiety that lurked beneath his consciousness.
Yeah, nature was effective at stress relief, but he didn’t expect it to be this effective.
Grace could only describe the look on the man’s face as awe mixed with disbelief. It wasn’t fake either, at least that Grace could tell. It didn’t seem like a ploy to get him to let his guard down.
“...what?” the stranger breathed so quiet it was almost inaudible.
Grace startled. He couldn’t help it. The look on the man’s face–the hate–was completely gone. In its place was…well, it was hard to describe. It was confusion, sure, but there was a softness, or more like a reverence in his eyes.
The stranger cleared his throat, then, “Is that…real?” The voice that had been a terrifying roar not even a few moments ago was now soft, almost broken. Utterly unbelieving.
Grace looked to the man, to the pot, then back to the man again. “What- the plant?” The man only blinked, so Grace had to assume it was the plant he was asking about. “Yeah, it's… real. The people who stocked the ship, they - uh - put a plant cupboard in,” Grace loosened his grip on the man’s wrist but still kept it above his head. “I guess they left it so we could care for them during the journey. But yeah, it's real.” Grace couldn’t help but bark out a short laugh.
This was just so strange, why did strange things keep happening to him? First he makes contact with an alien species, finds another planet with life, finds a human floating in a submarine in space, then said human tries to strangle and kill him and is only stopped by plants he thinks are fake. Grace didn’t curse, but man would this be the time for a good old “what the fuck”.
But that thought died fast as the stranger’s eyes peeled away from the plant to meet his. Eyes that really looked at Grace, pouring over every line, every pore, every inch of his character. It was awkward and slightly intimate in a way Grace was certainly not familiar with.
The stranger inhaled, calculating, then, “...you’re not with the COI, are you?”
Again with this COI thing? “No, I’m not. Unless you mean a certificate of insurance, which I’m pretty sure you aren’t, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Grace says as he lifts his leg over the stranger and scoots beside, helping the man up.
There’s no danger to him. At least not now, when he can barely sit upright. The stranger looks down at his hands–well, his hand. The stump where his other arm should be attempts to mimic the action his right side does. The stranger just stares at the stump before looking to Grace, eyes drooping.
“I should be dead. I…I think I am dead,” the man slurred, swaying dangerously.
Grace pushed himself forward as the stranger all but fell into his arms.
“Well, I can tell you that you aren’t. I’m trying to make sure you live.” Grace mutters incredulously at this new weight in his arms and lap. Despite this man attempting to strangle him not even five minutes ago, Grace can’t help but feel a buzzing in his chest, a spark of longing for another human’s touch. It’s a simple want for human connection, hardwired into every person, but Grace feels it burrow painfully into his chest as he holds this person who, for all intents and purposes, just fully surrendered himself to Grace.
The man stared up at him with those fascinating eyes, clearly trying to keep them open. His mouth opened slightly, then, “...why..?”
It was so quiet, so broken that it hurt Grace to hear. He opened his mouth to respond but–
“They ssent me down to die…and…they didn evvnn–know my…name”
Grace stuttered slightly before asking, “What is your name?” He felt it was only right, the only response he could offer.
Tears welled in the corners of his eyes, but the stranger’s lips twitched upwards ever so slightly, like Grace lifted a hundred pounds from his shoulders simply by asking him the first thing you would ask a new acquaintance. Something so simple clearly meant the world. The stranger almost sighed deeper into Grace’s arms as he muttered, “Si…mon,” before his eyes closed.
Grace just stared. He kinda couldn’t do much else. After four years of complete isolation from humanity, he didn’t expect…well…this.
Slowly, so carefully, Ryland raised his hand to the man’s–to Simon’s face, brushing a stray lock of hair behind his ear. He took a breath.
“It’s ok, Simon,” Grace whispered, “you’re safe. You’re alive. I promise.”
Maybe in this lifetime, maybe in this universe, Grace could get to know the man he was holding. Whatever had possessed the man beneath him to act the way he did, whatever got him into the situation they had just encountered.
Maybe Grace didn’t have to be alone.
Maybe…maybe he needed to find the rest of Ilyukhina’s vodka.