Work Text:
After approximately three days aboard the Hail Mary mostly spent in a confused, drunken, terrified stupor, Ryland Grace has successfully answered all of the ship’s safety questions and thereby been granted access to the full laboratory, computer files, and all information pertaining to the astrophage problem. While there are still massive black holes in his memory, what little he can recall is enough to pass security clearance. All the doors open for him now, so to speak.
Well, all but one.
“Mary,” he says again, trying to force authority into his voice. Never mind that the ship’s computer definitely doesn’t care how confident he sounds. “Open file 123019.”
The ship’s clinical, calm voice responds the same way it has for the last three days. “Certainly, Dr. Grace. Please provide file password. Prompt: Who is Eva Stratt?”
He slumps back into his chair with a groan. “Come on, at least a hint!” Names are not high on the list of things that his anesthesia-addled brain recalls.
Mary remains silent.
Is it wrong that he feels like the ship is judging him?
“Crewmate,” he says, even though he’s already tried that answer more than once.
“Incorrect,” Mary responds. “Prompt: Who is Eva Stratt?”
Well, whoever Eva Stratt is, at least she’s not dead. Probably. Or at least she isn’t one of the two bodies he’d sent drifting into the darkness of space. If only he could remember their names.
He tries again, throwing out the next best thing. “Teammate?”
“Incorrect. Prompt: Who is Eva Stratt?”
“Coworker? Colleague?”
“Incorrect. File locked for twenty-four hours.”
He kicks the hull of the ship. It earns him nothing but a dull thud, and then silence.
His first breakthrough isn’t until lunch the next day.
He’s hunched over a ration packet containing crackers and cheese (Solid foods! Yay!) when he catches a glimpse of his cardigan hanging over a chair. Something about the red of the yarn that makes up the fox pattern, it triggers something in his brain. He grabs hold of that thread before it can disappear and tugs… And then it’s right there before him.
“Knock, knock,” a voice says, and he looks up from where he’s grading papers in an empty classroom. School just ended for the day and he’s tired, ready to go home. The last thing he needs is questions from another hovering parent.
But the red-haired woman who walks through the door doesn’t strike him as a mother about to grill him about her shitty kid, not unless he’s about to have the worst parent-teacher conference of his life. No, this woman carries herself as though she knows exactly what she wants and is not going to let a single thing stop her on the collision course straight for whatever that thing happens to be.
Right now, that thing is Grace.
“Who’s there?”
“Not good at jokes,” she answers, already moving on, moving forward.
“Not good at jokes who?”
Not even a smile. Heck, he thought it was funny.
“Dr. Grace,” she says evenly. “Eva Stratt. I’m with the Petrova Taskforce. I need your help.”
He sits bolt upright in his chair, nearly knocking his food off the table. There’s no question who she is now, not with the way she carries herself. Even in his memories, it’s the most striking thing about her.
“Boss!” He shouts to the empty room. “Eva Stratt is my boss!”
“Incorrect,” Mary answers. “Do you wish to unlock file 123019?”
He throws his ration packet at the wall. “Yes!”
“Prompt: Who is Eva Stratt?”
“Ugh!”
“Incorrect.”
“That wasn’t even an answer!”
“Incorrect. File locked.”
For God’s sake.
The question begins to consume him just as much as the astrophage problem. Who is Eva Stratt, and what could be in the digital file that she’s password protected against him?
Maybe he was meant to have help from his dead crewmates, and they would have figured out the answer together. Maybe he hasn’t remembered the right thing yet. Or, most likely, he’s just a freaking idiot who can’t come up with the right noun to make the computer happy. As it stands, no synonym for crewmate, coworker, or boss is satisfactory enough to grant him access.
The next memory is triggered by a meal – Grace guesses what they say about smell and taste being the strongest remembered senses really is true. One second, he’s munching on french fries from tonight’s dinner rations, the next –
He’s standing outside a McDonald’s at midnight, the fluorescent lights reflecting off of puddles in the road. Eva Stratt is standing next to him.
“God, this is exactly what I needed,” he all but moans around a mouthful of fries. “Nothing like fast food to perk you right up.”
Eva just watches him, one eyebrow raised, as he devours a combo meal straight from the bag. Her only sustenance is clutched in her hand. One black coffee. He’s not at all surprised by this.
“Y’know, you really should eat something.” He holds out the bag, jiggling the fries inside for emphasis.
“I’m good, thank you,” Stratt replies.
He shakes the bag harder.
The sigh that escapes her is one of long and varied suffering. “I’m not eating your fries, Dr. Grace.”
“I know you like to pretend you’re superhuman, but I also know from past experience that if you don’t eat soon, you will get lightheaded in about…” He makes a show of checking his watch. “Thirty minutes, give or take a few.”
She scowls at him. There’s a few seconds worth of standoff. Then, she gingerly reaches into the bag. The handful of fries she pulls out have their work cut out for them, especially since she’s staring at them like they personally offended her. She gives them a tiny, suspicious sniff.
Grace laughs. “I take it you’re used to better?”
“Hardly,” she scoffs, still staring at the food like it disgusts her. Her eyes flicker to him. “I used to eat this stuff every day. But watching it get made really takes the joy out of the experience. Some things need to stay a mystery.”
“Every day?” His eyes widen. “Stratt, are you saying you used to work at McDonalds?”
“I was sixteen. If you tell anyone, I will ensure your death is slow and painful.”
Grace doubles over laughing, mind flooded with images of the mighty Eva Stratt working the fryer. “Did you have to wear a uniform? Did they give you a little hat?”
“Stop talking, Dr. Grace.”
But through the tears of laughter in his eyes, he catches sight of one of her rare smiles, and it’s enough to send warmth blossoming through his chest. For someone with such a strict demeanor, Stratt could be so expressive when she let her guard down. Smiling brings out her laugh lines, softens the curve of her cheeks, makes her eyes sparkle. A whole different Stratt comes out. When she quietly laughs, it’s a sound so soft, gentle, and wholly at odds with her every day personality that he barely stops himself from staring.
She finally starts to eat, and Grace wonders how many other people get to see this side of Eva Stratt.
Grace blinks. The memory fades, and the soft whirs and beeps of the Hail Mary bring him back to the present.
“Friend,” he says aloud to the empty room. “Eva Stratt is my friend.”
“Incorrect,” the ship replies.
He rolls his eyes. But the memory, the feeling in his chest – it lingers for a long time.
If not a friend, surely something else significant. Someone important. He feels that much in his bones.
The memories of her are becoming more complex, or maybe he simply now has the context to give them deeper meaning. Eva Stratt, head of the Petrova Taskforce, the woman who kidnapped him from his classroom one day and dropped him into an ocean – literally and figuratively – of international politics and frantic science. She was certainly his boss, and it seemed like they had been friends.
What else could she be? His memory only extends to the early days of the taskforce. Along with that, however, comes memories of Stratt in a court room, pulling out a pardon from every world government and then walking out like she was immune from the law and God.
Did they nuke Antarctica?
“Is Eva Stratt …. a dictator?” he says gingerly. “Am I friends with some kind of redheaded female Stalin?”
“Incorrect,” the Mary replies, and his shoulders relax. At least there’s that.
He’s remembering Yao and Ilyukhina now, too. The memories make him sad and happy at the same time, the bittersweet knowledge of Yao’s steady presence and Ilyukhina’s brighter than the sun (ha, ha) personality serve as both a balm to his loneliness and a reminder of what has been lost, not just for him but for the world. Those two had been ready to give up everything for humanity. Grace had only been a hanger-on, desperate to be of use in some way.
And he remembered DuBois. The science expert. The third head in this trinity of saviors. Grace knows there are no other bodies on this ship. So why is he here, while DuBois is curiously absent?
He can make some guesses, and none of them end well for DuBois. But what he can’t figure out is why they would put Ryland Grace of all people aboard this ship, or what would compel him to agree to do it.
Rocky arrives, and for a while Grace does not think of the mysterious computer file, or the equally mysterious redhead that haunts his fuzzy memories. Eventually, though, he has to explain why he occasionally stops mid-sentence to address the ship like he’s trying to break a riddle.
“Why Grace not know who Eva Stratt is, question?” Rocky asks one day while rocking back and forth in his ball. Grace doesn’t know if Eridians can have ADHD, but Rocky might just be the first.
He explains the computer file locked behind a question, and how the answer seems to elude him no matter how many memories he regains.
Rocky is silent for a moment, claws working the air as he ponders the issue.
“Eva Stratt is Grace mate, question?”
He nearly drops the equipment he’s tinkering with. “No, Rock. She’s not… it wasn’t like that.”
“How Grace know, question?”
“I just do!” he sputters.
Rocky tilts his carapace from side to side, causing his ball to roll. Something like disbelief comes across in that movement. “No, Grace not know much, statement. Doesn’t even know why he in space.”
“I know why I’m here,” he answers indignantly, and holds up the astrophage sample he’s been working with. “I just don’t know how I ended up here when it wasn’t the plan.”
“Exactly, statement. Grace not remember. Maybe not remember Eva Stratt becoming mate, question?”
“Obviously there’s something I don’t remember, but I don’t think it’s that, Rocky.”
Yet he can’t help but wonder. He and Stratt had clearly become close over the course of the project. They had spent nearly every day together, either in her office, around the Vat, or traveling to God knows where to find God knows what that might give them just a little bit of an advantage over astrophage. In all that time, had their relationship ever shifted to something beyond professional, beyond the bond of two people becoming friends while handling a crisis together? He puts his experiment aside, closes his eyes, thinks hard –
A late night somewhere in the thick of the project, so much work behind them but still an incomprehensible amount to go. They’re stuck on a problem, some logistical thing involving vital components of the ship not able to be manufactured in time, and Stratt has been on five different video calls in three different languages trying to convince government officials to act with urgency, which was like asking the sky to be a color other than blue. When she finally presses end on the last call, the way she slumps back into her seat tells Grace that despite her formidable strength of will, she is nearly wrung out.
He gets up from his make-shift desk in the corner and pulls his chair to her side. Stratt opens her eyes at the sound, but only glances his way. Her hair is a mess from how often she’s been running her fingers through it in frustration, the shadows under her eyes darker than he’s ever seen. Grace finds himself, for the first time, genuinely concerned that Stratt is on the verge of some kind of physical or mental breakdown.
He nudges her with his shoulder. “Hey.”
She scrubs her hands over her face and sighs. “Yes, Dr. Grace?”
“You’re doing great.”
Brow creased, she turns to look at him. “I have failed to convince the Germans, the Chinese, or the Russians that they need to focus their efforts on manufacturing as much of our hull material as possible before the end of the year. They are still, somehow, more concerned with money. And so our species will die out because I could not make them see reason.”
He can’t quite suppress a little smile. “That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?”
“So is the sun dying, and yet here we are.”
He chuckles, and maybe it’s the late hour and the days of little sleep, maybe it’s the rare vulnerability Stratt is letting show, or maybe it’s that little something that seems to be growing between them and that he refuses to put a name to because this is Stratt and he isn’t an idiot. A combination of all those things is most likely what makes him wrap his arm around her shoulders. That, and concern that she may actually crumble to pieces otherwise.
“It’s gonna work out,” he says quietly, rubbing her arm.
Stratt doesn’t say anything for a few moments. Her body is stiff to his touch, and for a second he is sure he’s about to be kicked off the project and maybe thrown into the ocean. Instead, though, she softens against him, leaning into his chest. He can feel her eyelashes graze his collarbone as she blinks.
“What makes you think that?” she eventually asks.
He isn’t a fool. He knows the odds. But still.
“Because it will,” he shrugs. “Look at us. Look at the team we have. If there’s anyone who can figure this thing out, they’re on this ship. Courtesy of you.”
Stratt only hums in reply, but her body relaxes a little more. Neither of them moves. When her breathing steadies out into the rhythm of sleep, he smiles and leans into her hair. Just for a moment, just the barest brush of his lips against her scalp. And then days of no sleep catch up with him, and he’s out as well.
When he wakes up a few hours later, the smallest hint of morning light making its way into the ship, Stratt is gone. But one of her cardigans is draped over his body, and a steaming cup of coffee waits on the desk in front of him.
Huh.
Grace stares at the wall.
This memory isn't proof of anything, he tells himself. Nothing other than two colleagues, two friends, looking out for one another. Supporting each other when the work got hard.
Still, something about it has him questioning. Maybe it was the ease of it all, the way the closeness felt correct, as though the universe had intended exactly that moment to happen, one way or another. It could also be the way he had wanted it to last forever. The way he aches for that closeness right now, and the longing is for more than human touch. It's for Stratt. A bone-deep yearning.
"Hey, Mary," he says, still looking at the wall. "Is Eva Stratt my... girlfriend?"
"Incorrect."
"Partner? Lover?"
"Incorrect."
He tries every synonym he can think of, getting more ridiculous each time. Eventually, Rocky snaps at him to give it a rest which is all the same because Mary has locked him out of the file anyway.
He sighs. Somehow, even though his answers are still wrong, this feels like the closest he's gotten to the answer.
Grace runs a hand through his hair, still thinking on the question despite Rocky's insistence that he return to their astrophage experiments. It nags at him, this persistent feeling that he is missing some important piece of the puzzle. He isn't sure why it makes him nervous, but it does.
Two weeks pass before another memory surfaces. Not even during anything momentous. There’s no big reveal or stunning revelation as he looks at some heartfelt photo or trinket or something. No, Ryland Grace simply trips and fall on his face. And that's all it takes.
He groans at the impact, but nothing hurts too bad. He opens his mouth, about to tell Rocky for the fifth time to quit leaving his xenonite tools all over the place damn it, but the memory hits him before he can form the words.
Suddenly, he can feel the arms holding him down. He can feel his heart racing and his chest heaving and the scratch in his throat from yelling and pleading.
It’s a stupid way to remember you'd been sent into space to die, but hey, the body remembers. And Grace's body remembers viscerally what happened last time his body hit the ground with such force. At least this time he can get up.
He doesn't, not at first. He needs to ride the wave of memory, let the panic wash over him. Flashes of conversations go through his mind's eye, nothing concrete in this moment, but he remembers it all anyway.
The room full of his colleagues, his friends, asking him to die.
His refusal, and the sadness on Stratt's face as she tells him he doesn’t have a choice, not really.
The way she watches, unmoving, as he runs. Even then, in the midst of everything, he wonders how her face can be both so cold and so full of sorrow.
The weight of so many guards holding him down, the prick of a needle. A final goodbye from Carl, a man he had assumed was his friend. Then nothing. Blackness for a long, long time.
Rocky is at his side, one claw shaking him by the arm, knocking him back into reality.
"Grace okay, question?!" His trills are high and panicked. "Grace hurt? Heart beating too fast. Rocky sorry, sorry, sorry. No leave tools on floor again. Promise, promise, promise!"
"It's okay, Rock," he groans, and sits up, rubbing at his collarbone. "Just a little wipe out, nothing serious."
Rocky seems to relax. "Good. Grace sit for a little bit. Calm down body, statement."
Grace nods, dropping his head into his hands. Oh, this was going to suck. Suddenly, he doesn’t want to know what is in the file. Whatever it is, how could it be worse than this massive betrayal from the people he had been closest to?
His coworkers were the people he'd held the closest. How pathetic.
"Hey, Mary," he says. His voice is leaden. "Open the super secret locked file."
"Please provide password. Prompt: Who is Eva Stratt?"
"Murderer," he breathes. "She's a murderer."
"Correct. Opening file 123019."
Only six months have gone by since the launch of the Hail Mary. Stratt isn’t sure how she’s supposed to handle another six, let alone the lifetime ahead.
Six months of justifying and re-justifying a project she had already argued in favor of a hundred times before, and the same people now questioning her judgment were the ones who had signed off on it in the first place. She has narrowly avoided jail time thus far, but they don’t yet know that Ryland Grace was forced onto the ship against his will.
Ryland Grace.
Stratt is sure that name would haunt her nights for the rest of her life.
She can’t sleep. Not for weeks, not for months. Every time she closes her eyes, his face looms large in her mind, coming back again and again like a drawer that won’t close properly. Sometimes it’s his face as she remembers it during their long days and nights of work – his nose scrunched in concentration as he runs through an experiment, the dark circles under his eyes and tired smile on his lips as he hands her another coffee after an all-nighter together in her office. The way he laughs with his full body, his shoulders squeezing together and head thrown back at his own stupid joke. The sparkle in his eyes when he explains some arcane scientific concept to her.
More often, it is the anguish on his face as she begs him not to make her force him on that ship.
Project Hail Mary took everything from Stratt. She gave it willingly, yet the absence was still felt, the sacrifice monumental. She loves the Earth. She loves humanity. So much so that she gave up her body and mind, for she is certain her health will never fully recover from the hell she’d put herself through. Even now, she has bouts of lost time, the delirium and lack of sleep taking over. Food is hard to consume and often doesn’t stay down. She’s held together by threads and she knows it.
She gave up her career. Certainly there is no coming back from this, no matter how successful the project turns out to be. What few distant relatives and acquaintances she’d managed to keep before the project have quickly faded, so she’s given up what had passed for a social life. Her future is sacrificed – if there isn’t a jail cell waiting for her somewhere down the line, there is certainly a life of solitude. She had even sent the person she loves into space with no hope of getting him back, all for this damn ungrateful planet.
She knows she loves Ryland Grace, not that she ever told him. How could she, when she had always known it might come to this? Despite her careful planning, however, she never truly believed that Grace would need to board the ship. Too many things would have to go wrong, she told herself, and she had planned everything so carefully. Yet the one thing she had not planned for was her growing feelings for the man. So she hid behind her cool exterior, careful never to show just how fond she was of his stupid, silly mannerisms, the ridiculous way he walked through the world, his penchant for genuinely caring about her. The truth might jeopardize everything they were working toward.
Before the explosion, she had often entertained the though of telling him once the mission was over and they were both picking up the pieces while their three astronauts silently flew through the sky. Sometimes she wishes she hadn’t waited. Sometimes she’s grateful she did.
All she can do now is hope that Yao and Ilyukhina take care of him. And when the end comes, that it is kind to him, even if he didn’t get the chance to choose the method.
Yet she did do one more thing because, though most people would never believe it, Eva Stratt is a sentimental idiot. She could not let it end without saying something, even if she could not say everything. So the video waits in a locked file, ready for the moment that Dr. Grace remembers.
She hopes it will help him somehow, even if it’s really just for her own peace of mind. An attempt at soothing the guilt that plagues her day and night with proof that she tried to make things right, no matter how vastly a video message falls short.
Ryland Grace haunts her every thought, every action. She knows he will for the rest of her life, and she welcomes his presence. It is what she deserves, after all. And, selfishly, at least it is a way to keep him close.
The file loads, the camera focuses, and then Stratt is staring at him from the other side of a screen.
He knows she's not really there. Obviously, this video had been recorded just before the ship's departure from Earth and loaded into the massive hard drive on board. Yet just now, seeing her real, moving, even through a screen, makes his mouth go dry. So long without any other humans for company, and suddenly here was his favorite human again. Even recorded, it is something more than half-remembered fragments of the past. Grace resists the urge to reach out and touch the image of her, knowing how ridiculous it would be. He's vaguely aware of Rocky's presence, but for once the Eridian is quiet, simply watching. Clearly, he understands the gravity of what is happening.
Stratt sits at her desk, the room familiar to Grace through memories, now including the moment he learned he would be sacrificed. He feels his heart clench, and his eyes already begin clouding with tears. He swipes them away angrily.
Stratt looks... tired. Not in the normal way she usually looked tired in their daily work. Everyone on the project was chronically exhausted and they wore it almost like a badge of pride. No, this is an exhaustion that rivals her near-breakdown from his earlier memory. In fact, it’s worse. She's pale, as though she hasn't slept even an hour or two, the shadows under eyes like two stark bruises. Her hair hangs limp around her face. He notices with increasing alarm that her hands, clasped before her on the desk in an attempt at professionalism, are trembling.
"Hello, Dr. Grace," she says. Her voice is softer than he's ever heard it, almost hesitant. Almost. Her accent glides ever smoothly past his ears – he's always thought her voice betrays a gentleness she works so hard to hide. In rare moments, he could see it in her eyes. Now is one of those times.
"If you're seeing this, then you remember what occurred before you boarded the Hail Mary."
Boarded. Yeah, like he'd just waltzed right on. His hand clenches against his thigh. Rocky notices and shuffles just a bit closer.
“I cannot apologize for doing what I know has the highest chance of saving humanity,” she continues. “I do not regret it, and I would do it again if I had to.”
He scoffs. The sound comes out bitter and wounded. How dare she say that to him. How dare she say that from the comfort of Earth while he floats in space an unfathomable distance from home, a distance that would never be closed. Grace had always defended Stratt against her critics, even against those on the project who called her cold or cruel. He’d thought he saw through that hard shell to the soft and gentle thing inside, the woman who loved the world enough to sacrifice herself on the altar of Earth’s fate. In this moment, he feels as though he has been the fool all along.
“I do not regret it,” she continues. “But… I am sorry, Dr. Grace.”
He breathes in. Not quite a gasp, but some little note of surprise. He had not expected her to apologize.
“I’m sorry it had to be this way. If I…,” she trails off for a moment before visibly collecting herself and powering forward, just as she did in all things. “If I could have gone myself, I would have. But sadly I lack the scientific expertise that you demonstrated every day that you were a part of this project. There was no time to train another.”
She glances away from the camera then, as though it hurts to look too closely. Grace has never seen Eva Stratt look so small.
“It had to be you. It was always going to be you, in the event of disaster.” She gives a little smile, but there’s no happiness in it. “I should have told you, but I knew you would have run, and we needed you, Dr. Grace. We still need you.”
He huffs. The whole time … the entire time he’d worked alongside Stratt, she was secretly training him for a suicide mission. All at once, their relationship, whatever it was, breaks and reforms anew in his mind, and it becomes something much more ugly.
On screen, Stratt takes a deep breath. “I didn’t expect it to be so hard.” She runs a hand through her already messy hair. “I convinced myself we would never actually need a tertiary science expert, but you can see how well that worked out. I did not expect to become so attached to you, Dr. Grace.”
He stares. Too many emotions flood his brain. Betrayal, affection, anger, hope, sadness. He doesn’t know where to focus, so instead he simply lets the feelings wash over him as the recording ticks down to its eventual ending.
“For what it is worth, I valued our time together. You were indispensable to me, Dr. Grace, as more than just a colleague. You kept me sane. I will miss you deeply.”
Stratt delivers her lines with the same cool composure she has in all things, but Grace swears he hears her voice break in that last syllable.
“We talked about God once, right before everything went to shit. You asked if I was a believer, and I said it was better than the alternative. I stand by that statement. And I will spend the rest of my time on Earth, on this planet you will save, hoping that one day I can find my way back to you.”
He blinks. There are tears in his eyes again. Whether they are touched or angry tears, he isn’t sure. Perhaps they are both. Her words sound like a confession of more than just guilt, yet in classic Stratt fashion, she talks around her feelings. Grace isn’t sure what to think.
Stratt stood. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to start packing your bags. I daresay I know you best out of the team, so I hope I make the right choices. It should be me anyway. I did this, and I will face the reality of it with each item I pack. It is going to hurt immensely. I hope you can find some comfort in that, at least. Goodbye, Dr. Grace.”
The video ends, cutting to a black screen. Deafening silence permeates the lab.
Rocky skitters nervously in his ball. “Grace … okay, question?”
“Grace is not okay. Grace needs a minute.”
“Rocky give Grace a minute.”
The Eridian quietly leaves the lab, leaving Grace still sitting on the floor, head in his hands. Tears leak down his face. Where to even start?
Yet his mind catches on one detail: his bags. He had wondered over the past few weeks just who had so carefully made the selections because it certainly had not been him. He assumed someone had done it in consultation with Carl, with his colleagues at the school, maybe even with his students. But Stratt?
All of his idiotic t-shirts folded in a uniform, practical style that maximized space. Even somehow still retaining a freshly washed feel, soft and with a faint hint of the cheap detergent he always bought. (Had she broken into his apartment to find out what kind he used? Knowing Stratt, probably). His favorite pajama pants. Letters and artwork from his students. A physical copy of his favorite book, the one that somehow survived the Vat and everything that came before and after. The blanket he’d always swiped from her office when given the chance, and the little lucky cat figurine he kept like a talisman next to his nightstand back home (Okay, yeah, she definitely broke into his apartment). Packs and packs of sour skittles.
He’d had no idea Stratt paid so much attention.
“Has been one minute, statement.”
Grace chuckles, looking up to where Rocky peeked around the doorway.
“Yeah, bud. Let’s get back to work.”
Grace wants to cry more. He wants to yell and scream and throw things right at Stratt, he wants to confess to her what he had secretly, shamefully, imagined the two of them might one day do after the project had run its course. He wants to understand. How could all of the statements she made be true at once, how could he feel all of these things at once?
But Grace cannot do any of those things. Not right now, probably not ever. And he’s sick and tired of moping around feeling sorry for himself. So he does the one thing he can do: he gets back to solving the astrophage problem.
A year passes.
Grace is now living happily on Erid, mostly recuperated from his adventures in space and sitting pretty in his little biodome with all the meburgers he can eat.
Yes, one year.
They still aren’t sure exactly what transpired.
The trip to Erid was supposed to take four years. Instead, it took four months.
On the upside, Grace never completely ran out of food. He’d rationed it to begin with, so there were still ample options left when they unexpectedly reached Erid. The science team developed the meburgers in record time, and Rocky worked day and night to get the biodome ready as quickly as possible. Once they were sure Grace wasn’t in danger of keeling over every minute, they set about answering their other pressing question: how the fudge had they traveled through space so fast?
Best they could tell, it was some sort of wormhole phenomenon. Which wasn’t supposed to be real. But hey, neither were aliens, so.
Unfortunately, that leaves Grace with more questions than answers. For instance, he has no idea how long he’d actually been in space. Is the wormhole thing a one-off, only applying to the specific area of space they crossed to get to Erid, or does it apply everywhere? The journey from Earth to Tau Ceti was supposed to take take about four years in ship time while thirteen years passed on Earth. But had either of those things actually happened the way they were supposed to? What about the Beetles? It was supposed to take them the same amount of time to get back to Earth, but what if they arrived early as well? What does this mean for his chances of going home? Does he even want to?
He receives an answer to those questions sooner than he expects.
It’s a cool, overcast day in the biodome (just how he likes it) when Rocky skitters down the beach toward him.
“Hey, buddy!” he says, walking toward the Eridian. The fabric of his skirt swishes as he moves – human clothes are hard to come by on Erid, and it isn’t like Ilyukhina is going to miss them – and the Eridian jewelry on his wrists and ears jingle with the motion of his body. He has become quite feminine in the last year, not that anyone on Erid knows what that means. He finds he likes it quite a bit. “What’s up? You look excited.”
Rocky is practically vibrating in his new, tighter xenonite suit. “Rocky has surprise! Big big big surprise!”
“Out with it, then!”
“Engineering team has made contact with Earth, statement!”
Grace stares. His silence seems to irritate Rocky, who jiggles with impatience. “H-How the heck did you manage that?!”
“Is long process. Rocky explain more later, but used Earth thinking machine to make connection. Grace want to talk to other humans, question?”
His heart starts racing. “Absolutely!”
“Excite, excite, excite! Come, we bring thinking machine into dome!”
On the way across the beach, Rocky explains that some of the other scientists and engineers have already spoken to humans and informed them of Grace’s survival and his living conditions on Erid. Rocky doesn’t say who, but Grace figures it’s probably some CIA agents or something. Someone official. He mentally prepares himself for a lot of questions.
He sits down at a table just outside one of the observation windows as they bring him the laptop. It’s connected to another device he doesn’t even want to begin to try to understand, and many wires stick out from either side of the keyboard. The screen is black, save for a little loading icon in the middle.
Rocky moves to stand behind the laptop, a sweet attempt at giving Grace some privacy. The gesture is lessened, however, by the roughly dozen Eridians watching attentively from both inside and outside of the dome. Business as usual.
“Humans said they find someone Grace knows, statement. Someone familiar.”
Something in Grace’s mind clicks into place, then. His first thought is Carl, but he doubts the man would agree to it. His second thought is that they’ve set up a connection with his old students. Imagining their excited faces (are they teenagers now? Adults? Or just slightly older than before?) as they speak to their teacher on another planet. But deep down, he knows who it will be.
He sits, hands braced against his knees so hard his knuckles turn white. He’s sweating. And slowly, a picture materializes on the screen.
He’s imagined this moment countless times.
Grace had expected to feel angry. Maybe all his rage would bubble to the surface and he would scream himself hoarse. Knowing him, he would probably start crying. Let out all that sadness and betrayal that had haunted his days on the Hail Mary. Curiously, he feels neither of those things. He’s had a lot of time to think, and apparently he cares little anymore about the path that led him to Erid. Now, he only feels tired.
Eva Stratt looks exactly as he remembers her. Bright red hair flows carelessly over her shoulders, ever striking against one of her dozens of black sweaters. Something hangs on a chain around her neck – he isn’t sure what, but she’s fiddling with it in one hand before tucking it safely under her sweater. It’s the only sign of nerves in her otherwise cool composure.
He manages a small smile. “Hey, Stratt.”
“Hello, Dr. Grace.” Her voice is mostly steady, but there’s something just below the surface. Some unsteadiness that lurks beneath. “I assume you received the message I left for you on the ship.”
“Yeah. I watched it.”
He’s replayed it so many times that the script is burned into his memory.
She opens her mouth. Closes it. The first signs of uncertainty begin to show on her face. “I was … distressed to learn of Yao and Ilyukhina.”
He gives a humorless laugh. “Not as distressed as I was, I bet.”
Stratt doesn’t laugh. She looks pained. Or, as pained as Stratt would ever let show on her face. Honestly, her emotional responses throughout this strange little process are what stands out to him the most. Stratt cares. Despite the horrible thing she did, she cares. What is he supposed to do with that?
“You were never supposed to do this alone,” she says. “I had hoped they would provide you comfort as well as assistance. I’m deeply sorry it turned out differently.”
Grace shrugs, the familiar pang of grief washing over him. “Yeah, well. I had Rocky. Things turned out okay.”
“They certainly did.” She brushes a strand of hair behind her ear, and he tracks the motion with his eyes. “You solved all our problems in record time.”
“How long has it been, exactly?”
“It has been just under two years since the launch of the Hail Mary.”
He blinks. “Well, that’s … unexpected. I knew something was up when we reached Erid so fast, but that’s incredible.”
“Yes. We received the beetles roughly ten months after the launch. The world’s best scientists have been working around the clock since then to deploy your solution. We’re already starting to see the effects.”
“So the sun is getting brighter?”
“It is.”
He lets out a breath, some weight coming off his shoulders. Obviously he knows that the taumoeba worked for Erid, but he’d always wondered, would something go wrong for Earth? At last, he knows it turned out alright.
Stratt glances away. “I also had a small team working on setting up communication with Erid. Our focus was astrophage, of course, but I hoped …,” her voice trailed off. “I am glad to see you well, Dr. Grace.”
There’s silence between them. He sits back in his chair, drums his hands on his knees.
“You shot me into space, Stratt.”
“I did.”
“I begged you not to.”
“Yes.”
“You assumed I would die out here, and you did it anyway.”
“Yes.”
He blows out a breath. “Still don’t regret it?”
Her gaze focuses somewhere beyond the camera. Eventually, she answers. “I find it difficult to claim I regret the decision when the outcome was better than anyone could have hoped. We fixed our sun. We made first contact with an alien species. You survived. But I wish there had been another way.”
“I should have agreed,” Grace says, surprising himself. “I should have made it easier for everyone and just agreed. But I was a coward.”
“You say that now, knowing everything worked out, but could you have possibly made that decision back then?”
“You did.”
She sighs. “Yes. I made the decision for both of us. I really am sorry, Dr. Grace.”
He believes her. Against his own rational thought, he believes her when she says the decision had been torture. Grace knows Eva Stratt like the back of his own hand – countless sleepless nights pouring over reports together and an endless string of days by her side had proved that. He knows just how deeply she cares. Until he watched that video, he’d just never realized that said caring extends to him as well. Or that it somehow still exists despite the rift between them.
“You can come home,” she continues, and the words break him out of his reverie. “Now that we know. About the wormhole phenomenon, I mean. I believe that’s what the Eridians said you called it? Anyway, you should be able to procure enough fuel. Or if the ship is too badly damaged, we can send someone to retrieve you.”
Grace shakes his head. “I’m already home, Stratt. My home is Erid.”
For the first time in their conversation, Stratt appears speechless. Her mouth opens and closes like a fish, and Grace can’t help but find it funny. Finally, she’s the one at a loss for words.
“I see,” she finally replies.
“But … I wouldn’t say no to some visitors,” he continues thoughtfully. An idea strikes him. “I do miss seeing other bipeds.”
Stratt nods, all business again. “There are already leagues of people begging to go on the first mission to Erid. We’ll pick the best and get them trained.”
“I want you.”
Stratt blinks. “Excuse me?”
“You say you’re sorry. Prove it.” Grace crosses his arms. “Get your butt on a ship and shoot yourself into space. See what it’s like. And then maybe I can start trying to figure out if I can forgive you.”
Maybe Grace would regret this. Maybe he wouldn’t. All he knows is that he needs to see her in the flesh, and to see whether he would hug her or punch her given the opportunity. Perhaps both.
He wants to know just what she’d meant when she said all those things in that video.
“You want me …,” Stratt points at herself. “To come to Erid?”
Grace raises an eyebrow. “You said you wanted to, what was it, ‘find your way back to my side?’ Well, here’s your chance.”
Stratt blinks once. Twice. He thinks he sees a faint pink blush rise on her cheeks. “Alright. I’ll set things in motion. Talk soon, Dr. Grace.”
She ends the call without another word, already rising from her chair to no doubt start ordering around Earth’s best engineers and scientists.
Grace turns to Rocky, who had managed to keep relatively quiet despite his excited tapping. “Better start making room for one more, Rock. We have a visitor coming.”