Chapter Text
Part 1: Phoebe
Ryland Grace has been gone for 9 679 days.
Phoebe knows because she's been counting every one of them. She has four diaries of tally marks, and another two full of stories she wishes she could tell him. She has three more that started out as journals that turned into lab logs and calculations for various projects to help save the world.
She is not quite the scientist her father was. She never got her doctorate, for one, because there are only a handful of universities left in their dying world and degrees and qualifications stopped being necessary years ago. She's never had the patience for astrobiology, for another, because the only thing they can study right now is Astrophage and she has seen enough of them for a lifetime. Her own research is closer to home—biology and genetics and genetically modified organisms; protein synthesis and impossible meats; the preservation of as many plant and animal genes they can find in the hope they might be able to revive them when the sun comes back.
If the sun comes back.
It's coming up on 9 680, and there is no sign of relief.
So many people have died. So many things have been lost. She thinks, sometimes, that the world ended the day her father said goodbye through a crackling walkie-talkie as she watched his rocket disappear into space. The truth is that it's still ending, and it is a terrible drawn-out apocalypse determined to starve out the human race.
Sometimes she wonders if it might be easier to let it.
But it would be 9 679 days wasted; 9 679 days of work, all for nothing; 9 679 days of forsaking what Dad set out to do.
Phoebe has waited this long. She can wait a little more.
It is 9 691 days when Mom raps against her cabin door in the middle of the night.
Phoebe almost sleeps through it. She is so used to the groaning and creaking of the Jianchi as it pushes through the ice of the Pacific that, at first, she simply rolls over and buries her face into her pillow to drown out the sound. She only really stirs when she hears Mom's voice, urgent and breathless, through the metal.
"Phoebe. Darling. Wake up."
Phoebe blinks against the darkness and lights the lamp at her bedside. The soft glow washes over her cramped office-slash-cabin. Dad's worn raincoat is like an anchor, and the world sharpens when her eyes land on it and on the decades-old walkie-talkie peeking out of its pocket.
She gets up and opens the door. "Mom?"
Eva Stratt twitches her lips at her from the hall. It's been a long twenty-six years. The copper of her hair has turned silver and the creases in her face have been deepened by stress and sorrow and never-ending sleepless nights. She's in her sixties now, and she's still somehow the most refined and graceful human being in existence. Phoebe has been taller than her for years but she still stands like she doesn't have the weight of the world on her shoulders; like she is still Director Eva Stratt, Dictator of the World.
(Technically, she is still Dictator of the World. A lot of governments are gone now. Entire countries have disappeared, their borders erased as people struggled and fought and built new settlements in their place. Those city states answer to her, and are happy to do so).
"Sorry to wake you, my love," she says, like Phoebe is still nine years-old, shaken awake because they need to be on a plane for urgent business on the other side of the country. "Something's happened."
Phoebe rolls her eyes tiredly. "Who's fighting over what now?"
Mom actually snorts. "I wouldn't wake you for that," she says drily. "Come quickly."
Phoebe groans like she is still nine. "Why?"
Mom hesitates. Her face is unreadable, which is saying something—Phoebe has grown very used her step-mother's very subtle expressions, and it concerns her that she can't figure out what's happening from the tilt of Mom's lips.
"It's the Beetles," Mom says at last, and everything around Phoebe stills. It's like the very ship itself stops moving, until—
"They've come back?"
Mom hesitates again, something like fear sparking in her eyes. "Two of them," she says, doing a brilliant job at hiding tremor in her voice. "We've found no trace of the others. I haven't—no one's opened them yet. They're… they're waiting for us."
Phoebe breathes in.
Then she nods and crosses the cabin for Dad's coat. The fabric is so worn that she's not certain it even functions as a raincoat anymore, but its weight is familiar on her shoulders, its warmth like a reminder of her father's arms.
9 691 days. 9 691 days of waiting and hoping and praying that Dad will come through, and now, all of a sudden—
Phoebe steels herself and grasps at Mom's hand.
It's been a long, cold, and lonely winter indeed, and they have waited long enough.
The next ten hours are the most emotionally tumultuous of Phoebe's life. First the Beetles are in quarantine, and then there is a USB addressed to her and Mom in Dad's handwriting that almost sends her spiralling into tears on its own. Mom kicks everyone else out of the conference room so they can watch his logs together, the first five of which are just of him waking from his induced coma lost and confused. Lesya and Uncle Yao don't even make it to Tau Ceti and are long gone when he comes to. Dad is simply alone in the depths of space, with no memory of who he is or why he's there.
With no memory of them.
It all comes flooding back when he finds a photo of them tucked into his flight suit, but that, honestly, makes it worse. It's hard to watch him struggle, to watch him weep at the realisation that he will never see his wife and daughter again and that he has come here to die. Twice, Phoebe has to pause the logs entirely because they are too hard to watch. Even Mom, with all of her masks and walls, cannot hide her anguish for Dad.
But then he meets an alien. A strange, fantastic creature who is just as alone as him.
Then they find a way to talk, to communicate, to work together and be friends.
Dad lets him move into the Hail Mary.
Rocky offers Dad away home.
For a very long, impossible moment, Phoebe cannot bring herself to believe it. She'd worked so hard to come to terms with the loss of his father that she can't even fathom the concept of his return. Beside her, Mom bursts into tears, her relief, her sorrow, her guilt, too heavy for even her to bear. She cries like Phoebe hasn't seen her cry in years, and Phoebe doesn't begrudge her for any of it. It's decades of convincing herself she killed the man she loves suddenly coming to a head, and Phoebe clutches her hand and holds her close, offering what little comfort she can.
They fly to Tau Ceti.
Rocky is hurt.
Dad is hurt.
Dad discovers Taumoeba and cries for hours at the idea that he has found something to make this all worth it.
Rocky wakes up. They celebrate, and then they part ways.
It's been ten hours and Phoebe doesn't think she's had dry eyes for a second of it, but that's it. He's coming home. After all this time, he made it, and then—
He finds the leak. Realises that it will condemn Rocky and an entire planet to death if he can't do something about it, and then realises that… he can.
But it means giving up his only way home.
Phoebe is not angry at him for it, but the hope that had flared in her chest is extinguished just as quickly as it was lit. Mom's face falls, but her lips twitch in understanding, and when he signs off and promises them he will send the last two Beetles when he finds Rocky, Mom kisses her fingers and presses them to the screen, her own promise to him that it's okay, and she loves him, no matter what.
The screen blinks off. Phoebe rests her face in her hands and sighs.
"He did it," she whispers.
"Yes, he did," says Mom, scrubbing tiredly at her eyes. "We never doubted that he would, did we?"
"No," chokes Phoebe, but it's still hard because it's the first time she's seen her father's face in twenty-six years, and the weight of that time is heavier now than it ever has been before. She pulls Dad's coat tighter over her body, her tears falling like beads onto its lapels. "He really did it."
Mom hums sadly and tugs her into her arms. There are so many things to say and so few ways to say them; so many feelings to feel but not enough room inside her ribs for any of it. He was going to come home, and now he's not. He has saved them all, but not himself. He chose to go and rescue his friend, and in doing so, didn't choose them.
She is clinging to Mom and crying all over again before she even realises it, and Mom holds her tight, like she's still six years old and the walkie-talkie Dad gave her has gone silent in her hand. They have already been in this room ten hours, but it feels like hours more before Phoebe remembers she's not a little girl anymore, and that Dad has sent them some more work to do.
"You don't need to do any of it now," says Mom gently, smoothing her hair with careful fingers. "I can have someone from downstairs isolate the instructions on how to breed the Taumoeba and you can spend the rest of the day processing it if you want."
"Don't be ridiculous," sniffs Phoebe, pulling away at last. "Dad sent those instructions to us. To me. I want to get started."
"Darling—"
"Mom," says Phoebe, her voice breaking a little. "Please. Don't give Dad's work to someone else. He did his part. I have to do mine."
Mom studies her. She's a little worse for wear too, but her eyes are dry and her jaw is set, and Mom wouldn't be Mom if she anything now but get to work.
Phoebe nods, determined, and Mom twitches her lips and nods too.
"Let's begin."
Dad sends them a little Xenonite figurine and two jars of Tauemoeba.
Carl gives her all three the second they're cleared from quarantine, and he's grinning so widely and so proudly that she almost can't see the lines of age in his face. "Look at you, yellow raincoat and all. You look just like your dad."
"This is what I wear everyday," says Phoebe drily, and Carl barks out a laugh.
"Guess it's different today," he says fondly. "Finish the job, Phoebe Grace. Your dad's counting on you."
Phoebe breathes out a snort and gets straight to work.
She hangs the little Xenonite figure off the keychain she keeps her USBs on; slips it into her pocket with the silent walkie-talkie and clutches it in her hand sometimes to remind herself that it's real. She knows how it looks. She's known how it's looked for years—her in her father's jacket glued to Eva's Stratt side just like Ryland Grace before her. The only thing missing is the twizzlers, but Phoebe replaces that with the scarf Mom gave to her on her first Christmas on the Vat, still red as the Petrova Line trailing behind her in the ocean wind.
In her head, it has always felt like she had Dad's shoes to fill, but not one person on the Jianchi looks at her like that. Most of the original science team returned the moment Mom made the call: Dmitri is onboard, this time with his wife who assists Dr. Lamai and her team of doctors and nurses in the med bay. Dr. Lamai brought her niece and nephew with her, and they run around with Uncle Bob's team, helping him experiment with Astrophage as a source of renewable energy. Dr. Lokken is building engines that thrive on Astrophage, and Dr. LeClerc is still monitoring the sun's output and tracking weather events around the world.
It's not just them, either. Other scientists have come onboard. No one gets doctorates anymore, but Dr. Singh might as well be Phoebe's supervisor and mentor, and they've spent a lot of time these past years breeding crops that will survive the cold. (Phoebe has not told Mom this but she's been working on a hardier coffee plant, and she's very quietly hoping to have coffee back on the menu within the next couple of years). A Norwegian scientist, Dr. Eklund, has joined them too, and she is collecting seeds and sequencing the genomes of the plants they have managed to grow for storage in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
They have an animal gene bank now, too. Dr. Flores calls it the Ark Project, and it has the genomes of as many animals as they could gather in the hope that, maybe one day, they might be able to bring them all back.
There are scientists here synthesising medication that they refuse to patent; scientists splicing genes from Astrophage into bacteria to see if they can make something that produces the same energy but can reproduce at lower temperatures; scientists watching other stars to see if there is anyone else in the galaxy who has already found a solution.
The Jianchi was a rogue Chinese ice breaker once. Now it is a floating research centre, and everyone on it is simply too stubborn to give up on the rest of the world. It's far more crowded than the Gansu ever was, which is saying something but Mom should be proud of her work here. She should be proud of a lot of things but this ship, this impossible collaboration of international scientists and scholars, should be near the top of her list.
And when Phoebe brings the jars of Taumoeba to Dr. Singh, Singh only laughs and presses them back into her hands.
"This one's yours to lead, Dr. Grace," she says.
"I'm not a doctor," says Phoebe stupidly.
"You're as good as one to me," says Dr. Singh fondly. "Get to work."
So Phoebe does.
The third Beetle comes back two months later.
Phoebe is working with Steve Hatch's team to design a suite of smaller probes to send to Venus when LeClerc bursts through their lab door babbling quickly in French.
Phoebe is rather fluent now (in other languages too, Mom had made sure of it), but even she only picks up every third or so word. She gets Beetle and Atlantic and returned before she drops the prototype in her hands (Hatch gasps hugely) and races after him, waving frantically at the people in the hall to make way. Mom is already in the control room when she gets there, poring over the latest map of the frozen ocean to help Captain Yuan chart a course.
"It's not here yet," she says, before Phoebe can even ask. "One of the astro teams caught its infrared signature and expects it to land just off the coast of what used to be Canada. We need to get there first to make sure it doesn't destroy itself in the ice."
"When'll it get here?" demands Phoebe, already itching to know what Dad has sent.
"A week," says Mom, looking up at her at last. She has always been a stubborn woman but there is something determined in her eyes today, something hopeful and bright. She pauses and glances at the other people in the room. "Can we have a moment please?"
If the entire room could pout, it would. Yuan and LeClerc and Carl were all Dad's friends too, and if Phoebe's being honest, it feels a little unfair that they should be kicked out of the control room when she and Mom could just as easily leave and have this conversation outside, but they clear out anyway, even if they do shuffle their feet as they go.
Mom waits for the door to shut behind them before she lets her shoulders sag. "Darling, it might not be the news we want to hear," she says, straightforward as always.
"I know," says Phoebe, but she can see the light in her step-mother's eyes and knows that she's only saying it out loud to try and settle her own excitement, her own hope. "We've never doubted him before."
"No," says Mom. "We haven't. But—" She breathes in. "Phoebe, we need to be prepared for the worst."
"We thought he was dead until two months ago," says Phoebe. "We mourned him. We gave him a funeral and everything, and against all odds—Mom, he's gonna find a way back to us. I know it."
Mom lets out a sigh and eases herself into the nearest seat. She's pretty spry for someone in her sixties, but even her joints get tired. "I'm scared to hope," she says at last. It's a very rare moment of vulnerability, rarer still than the days she lets herself cry. "All these years, I thought I'd killed him—"
"You didn't kill him," interrupts Phoebe firmly. "He went for us. He chose to go for us."
"All the same," murmurs Mom. "The first two came back, and I—I really thought…"
Phoebe shakes her head. "Do the math, Mom. The Beetles actually do reach light speed because they don't have people onboard. It only took this one two extra months to reach us, which means it only took him a little over a month to find Rocky. He has enough fuel to get to the 40-Eridani system, which is ten lightyears from Tau Ceti, which means…" She waves her hand, prompting Mom to finish the sentence, but even still, Mom hesitates.
"And if something's gone wrong?"
Phoebe presses her lips together. Then she shakes her head, refusing to even consider it. "We've believed in him this whole time," she says. "What's a little longer?"
A pause settles over the control room. Then Mom sighs and touches the locket at her neck, the rings on her finger glinting in the weak light.
"He's coming back," says Phoebe determinedly. "If there's a way, he's found it, and he's coming back to us."
They get to ex-Canadian waters four days later, and they sail the Jianchi up and down the ice to make sure it's well and truly broken enough for the Beetle to land without trouble. They spot it in the sky two days after that, and almost the whole crew climbs out onto the deck to watch it splash down with bated breath.
Carl and a couple of Yuan's men go out in one of the smaller tugs to retrieve it, and then it's onboard with what might be Dad's final message on it, and for all her bravado, Phoebe hesitates when Carl gives Mom the USB and herds everyone back into the depths of the ship.
But this one is different. Phoebe's grown very used to what Xenonite looks like—there's a team on the ship trying to replicate it and haven't had much success so far—but the USB Dad sends this time has a fancy Xenonite case with a little strip of painters tape on the side like a label:
For Phoebs + Eva :)
The emoji is what gets her. Ryland Grace has always worn his entire heart on his sleeve, and if it were bad news, he wouldn't have put a dumb little smiley on it. Phoebe's heart lifts, and it is pounding away in her chest when Mom finally takes it inside and plugs it into the nearest computer.
They wait, their breath caught in their throats, until—
"Hello Phoebe! Hello Eva!" greets Rocky. Even the translator Dad built him sounds thrilled. "We rescue as much fuel as we can from Blip A. Enough to send Grace home.
"I bring him home now. Eridian live much longer than human and Rocky has enough supplies to make longer trip.
"Rocky bring him home to you. We send other Beetle to Erid with message and Taumoeba. This one to you. Adrian understand. Rocky and Adrian no have offspring yet. Cannot let Grace take Rocky to Erid and never see Phoebe again. Grace see you soon, Rocky make it happen."
There's a scuffle on screen and Dad pushes Rocky's ball out of the way before he appears on screen, grinning and red-eyed and teary once again. "Thanks Rocky," he says softly. "I… thank you."
Rocky chitters in the background, but Dad turns to the camera and smiles. "I need you ladies to do me a favour," he says. "As soon as you get this, I need you to start breeding as much Astrophage as you can. I dunno what the state of the world is but Rocky's gonna need a little extra to get home." He laughs like he can't believe it, and Phoebe thinks her own heart might explode out of her chest at how happy he is. "I'll see you soon, okay? I'm coming."
The log ends.
Mom makes a sound like a sob, but when Phoebe turns to look at her, she is laughing and there are tears of joy in her eyes.
"He's coming back," she says weakly.
Phoebe whoops. Then she scrambles for the ship's PA system and makes an announcement to the entire crew.
"Jianchi crew, this is Phoebe Grace, over," she says, grinning at Mom. "We've got some work to do. Dad's coming home."
The door to the control room is closed, but the cheer that erupts through the ship is impossible not to hear. Phoebe thinks she might be crying again, but she makes a beeline towards Mom and tugs her into her arms.
It has been 6 758 days since Dad flew into the stars to save them all.
Phoebe has waited this long. She can wait a little more.