Chapter Text
When the cosmos first started, it ushered in a plethora of wonders, the likes of which humanity would come to know as the heavens. Stars captivated humanity from the time that humans could first look up at the night sky. It started with the unexplainable, which very quickly devolved into the ‘it should never be figured out, it’s far beyond our reach, we will understand when we die’ sort of unexplainable. Some humans found this delightful, they idolized the heavens and created stories to explain what they considered divine. Gods were born from matters of the human mind, grand stories of heroes from tales long-past. Angels, demons, heaven and hell, nirvana; countless heavens for countless imaginations.
Humans envisioned guides of blinding light, and for some way too many eyes, as beacons in the dark when humanity was at its worst. Hand-in-hand with spectres of the divine, living for the greater god they chose to believe in.
Perhaps humans were much more on the nose than they would have liked to be. Their stories were, in actuality, a bit uncanny. For hidden within the great nebulas and stars were beings that transcended humans. Flickers of stardust and light that had nowhere else to go. They were not able to go back to their creator, and they were too far away from humans to be considered mortal. No, these beings of stardust and flickering light who had always existed came to be known as Angels. The divine beings who acted as the big siblings to all of humanity.
Most humans enjoyed these thrills, other humans were less pleased with these concepts. Astronomers and those seeking answers quickly rose, sky-charters who wished to understand the patterns of the stars and what they meant, doctors who sought to cure entire blights, historians who ached to gather all of what humanity had always been and tell a clear, beautiful story. Those that sought to use their thoughts for questions yet unasked soon became known as scientists. They lived with new ideas in their heads, and gave their lives to a different kind of religion. Science.
Ryland Grace had always loved science. It was simply a fact of life, the same way a moth is drawn to a flame, or a dog to a bone. Ryland Grace loved science. The angel Mercy, even more so.
Perhaps that was one of the reasons that Grace had decided that he absolutely needed to live on Earth for a period of time. Like much of his kin, he had spent eons wandering through the patterings of time. Untethered by an earthly existence. But as he watched, from the seat of the divine, and saw how humankind over time began to formulate more heightening questions, drawing away from the preset of religion, and eventually seeking answers they believed they could achieve; did Grace finally understand what was missing from his own present.
Science. From centuries of watching humans get better and better at science, did Grace feel his own heart stir at the prospect of prodding the known world for answers to questions yet unasked. It was fascinating, watching the minds of these little earthlings go about their lives, always seeking answers, always unsatisfied with what they uncovered.
He had to know what that feeling was like. He just had to know.
Quietly, he had slipped away from the seat of the divine, and began living a simple life on earth. His kin, the other angels, had wondered about his choice at first. It had not been an original decision, plenty of angels from prior angelic divisions had made the same choice years prior. Even some of the archangels had made the choice to move down to Earth. It was a quiet, stilted thing that humanity was unaware of. As far as any humans were concerned, the secret angels they encountered during their lifetimes were just any regular humans. Still, that didn’t make the choice any less unusual.
Despite the concerned questions from his kin, Grace was adamant that he was happy. Here, on Earth, quietly living amongst mortal humans turned out to be something he enjoyed more than he expected. They were funny, humans were. Grace could not find himself bothered by any of their, rather odd, mannerisms. In fact, many of these little quirks were downright endearing.
Mortal life was easy. Until it wasn’t.
Grace’s original reason for touching down to Earth was science. He only learned along the way, what other delicacies the mortal world had to offer.
And.. what challenges it was determined to present.
Angel or not, Grace had to live as any regular human would have. He couldn’t be perfect, that was an angel's job, not something a human could effortlessly pull off. So he had to make the occasional false mistake to appear more human in order to keep himself disguised. Soon enough he got comfortable with the idea of being imperfect.
Perhaps that was his first real mistake.
Grace quickly found out that his love for science may have been just a bit too much. At first he had been content to go through the traditional schooling of normal earthlings, even going as far as to actually work for his PHD and earn it the “mortal way” even if he could have just snapped his fingers and divine-willed himself as a fully-fledged doctor. It’s not like humans would have known the difference, with what the whole “divine miracle” and all that.
Apparently, too much time masquerading as a human could turn you into one. And Grace finally understood why humanity had been plagued with the one disease they could not cure no matter how hard they tried. Hubris.
His career, his love for science, his reason for deciding to abandon the divine life he lived prior all went up in metaphorical flames at that damned UNESCO conference; where Grace, untrue to his name, had ungracefully called the leading scientist in the field of molecular biology a “staggering waste of carbon.”
And just like that, poof, there went his earthly purpose.
The shame he had felt had been so immense, that Grace had genuinely considered returning to his role of a divine angel, but the fear of what his fellow kin would say was enough to stifle that idea to the back of his mind for the foreseeable future. What would his kind have said? Angels were supposed to be perfect. Angels on earth, not so much, but not to the point where they called a human a staggering waste of carbon to their face, on live television, in a giant conference teaming with other humans. No, that, that was just plain stupid.
The UNESCO conference had been his second real mistake. Ostracized from his field, considered a lost cause by his human peers, and unwilling to return to his angelic kin; Grace found himself desperate for a solution. Any solution would do.
He would have been lying when he said he wasn’t surprised at his solution being a middle school. Specifically, a middle school science teacher, at Grover Cleveland in San Francisco.
Oh well, fair was fair.
It wasn’t all that bad. Actually, it was more than “not that bad.” Grace, despite his rough past in academia, thrived as a middle school science teacher. Maybe it wasn’t his burning passion, but it was something wonderful. Perhaps, a small, near mediocre, slice of the divine.
Grace quickly learned that there was something wonderful about helping out earthlings, even more so if they were the small adorable human children he got to interact with on a daily basis. They were eager, open to learn, and Grace made the best of what he could when his little humans were open to his ideas of fun learning.
He really understood why other angels had abandoned the divine in search of a simple life like this. Helping humanity was basically programmed into his being, but there always remained something far more satisfying about helping the youngest of humanity and ushering them into a bright new future.
That was, until his entire life had to, once again, be flipped on its head. And this time, like usual, it started with science. Science and a red-haired woman.
A resounding knock at the door pulled Grace from his stupor, but what really caught his attention was the blunt voice of a woman announcing herself with a “knock knock” while already walking into his classroom. When he fully sat up, and turned to face her, he was met with a middle-aged woman with rusty hair cascading down her back and a rather tight expression on her face. She regarded him with a nod before speaking in that same blunt voice.
“Dr. Grace?”
He gave her a puzzled look in response. This woman didn’t seem familiar at all. Was she a parent of a student? No, that couldn’t have been right. There was something else to her, a weight carried in her shoulders that spoke of being much more than a tired mother.
“Eva Stratt, I’m with the Petrova Taskforce. I need your help.” She began reaching into a bag off to her side, pulling out what looked to be a thick stack of paper. When she revealed the bound book of text, Grace felt his stomach drop. Secret angel or not, anxiety was a potent thing.
“Me?-”
She didn’t give him a chance to continue.
“Did you write this?”
The bound stack of menacing papers held between her- Stratt’s hands had a simple, near plain cover with only the long title to show for what she held. An Analysis Of Water Based Assumptions and Recalibrations of Expectations for Evolutionary Models. The exact same paper that had gotten Grace his extremely unpopular popularity from the peers in his field. Shit.
“Oh. Oh.. Uh-”
Stratt continued to stare him down, the force of her gaze surprisingly powerful despite him being the divine entity in the room. Grace, rather suddenly, found himself needing to fidget.
“That.. was a long time ago. And look- I don’t know what this is, but I’m just a middle school science teacher at Grover Cleveland middle. I don’t- I’m not the guy you’re looking for..”
“You are Dr. Ryland Grace; are you not?”
He could only manage a shaky nod.
“You have a PHD in Molecular Biology, and you stand at the height of a very unpopular opinion that has left many in your field wanting nothing to do with you. But I can give you a chance to prove them all wrong!-”
Now Grace wasn’t proud of it, but when presented with an insistent human, who casually held the entire reasoning for the greatest blunder of his mortal life in her hands like some sort of playing card, Grace had begun fleeing. Literally. With his coat hastily pulled over his shoulders he practically ran out of the building with one Eva Stratt hot on his heels, Grace made way for the safety of his bike, but quickly began slowing once he noticed a man in a dark suit already standing by his bicycle. Stratt slowed as she approached the both of them.
“I need you to come with us.” Stratt’s voice held no room for argument, rather she spoke with an authority that made her sound like she fully expected Grace to simply agree with whatever she said the moment it slipped from her lips.
Unfortunately for Stratt, Ryland Grace wasn’t so easily convinced. Instead, despite Stratt’s concise wording, and openly blunt persona (which Grace appreciated, it had always been annoying to try and figure out the social cues of humans), he did not feel inclined to help. In fact, if he called correctly, commandment four of the angels codex of rules stated that he had to remain neutral and couldn’t help unless asked upon- and as far as he knew, that asking did not pertain to humans unless it was in prayer. At least that’s what the other angels had always told him.
While lost in his thoughts, Stratt regarded him with an odd air of intensity. Behind her, more men in black suits, now accompanied by dark vehicles posted up behind her.
“Petrova line samples splashed down last night, I need you to tell me what they are and how they work.”
Now this was getting out of hand, really, truly, out of hand. Grace had to put a stop to this as soon as possible. With hesitation, mostly due to the intimidating man at Stratt’s side, Grace gave it his all.
“I reiterate, I’m a middle school teacher. Doctorate or not, there are thousands of more qualified people to do what you’re asking of me. And once more, I was fired for standing by what I wrote so-”
It was obvious that she wanted Dr. Ryland Grace’s viewpoint on this Petrova Line matter, and by gosh Stratt was determined to get it. Grace for a brief second, recalled that fourth commandment he and his kin had issued to themselves. It truly was an unfortunate rule to have.
Even more unfortunately, Grace had never really been good at following along with rules he didn’t understand.
And as it turned out, Stratt had one last ace up her sleeve.
“The Petrova samples. It survives on the surface of the sun.”
Grace eyed Stratt with alarm. He looked at her. She looked at him.
Something felt wrong about this. He couldn’t be sure what, but at the edges of his thoughts came the creeping of muffled voices from beyond the cosmos. His kin were speaking, their voices hushed as he attempted to block them out as he had been doing the entirety of his “human life.” Although, like usual, luck really wasn’t on his side. The murmuring of voices became louder, not necessarily clearer, but exceptionally harder to ignore as the volume skyrocketed inside his head. And underneath the guise of his false identity, in a dimension unseen by humans, he felt his wings twitch with petulance.
Something was achingly familiar. Petrova line. Those words were hauntingly familiar. For a moment, Grace racked his brain from where he heard those words before, until he remembered a late night spent at his favorite diner with his old college friend Marissa. At the time, she had mentioned something about the sun dimming, and something about an Irina Petrova. Oh.. that was where it got its name. Petrova, Petrova line. Humans were odd when it came to naming things.
Focus Grace!
Marissa at the time, had been struck with a deep sadness that Grace couldn’t fully comprehend. Grace knew, not only as a scientist, but as an angel, that the light of the sun fluctuated all the time. Much like humans, stars weren’t meant to be perfect, they were meant to change. But Sol, Earth’s sun, wasn’t scheduled to die off for another couple billion years at least. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. It sat, churned slowly, in Grace’s stomach like a parasite.
Then it hit Grace, with a startling, overwhelming clarity.
“The sun's really dying isn’t it?”
And suddenly those far-off whispers in his mind, distant voices of his kins mumblings finally made sense. The Eye had made a decision. Grace’s god, the being from which he and his kind stemmed from, was killing the stars.