saving grace — ryland grace x reader
summary: the way you and ryland grace got involved with the hail mary are polar opposites. he was forced on this mission against will, despite wanting to live. on the contrary, you volunteered on this mission to die. both of you get caught up in the antithesis of your initial reasoning as ryland finds someone to die for, and you find someone to live for.
tags: somehow angsty?? i meant to write fluff?? reader is lowkey suicidal lmao, reader joined the hail mary to die, rocky mentions and many tears, mentions of eva stratt
Ryland Grace seems to be under the false impression that you are everything he is not.
Being alone in a confined space for so long, you were bound to talk a lot, and it was only a matter of time the topics brushed over how and why you ended up floating in space to find but a semblance of hope to save your planet before extinction in the vast void of the universe.
"Why did you join the mission if you weren't, you know..." Grace trails off, sheepish in his inquiry, "... Sure?"
"Your eloquence astounds me, Doctor Grace," you chuckle, giving him a half hearted shrug. Not meant to be a full reply, but to convey your stance on the matter.
"I had the gene. That was the most important factor, I think. Everything else they could just hammer into my head pronto before launch. Same for the whole astronaut training, apparently." With a contemplative hum, you purse your lips, "Though I suppose it helped Stratt immensely that I picked things up super fast." Purely to show you have a speck of modesty left; "Not to toot my own horn, but to totally toot my own horn," you tack on as an afterthought, just so Grace doesn't think of you as an arrogant ass.
"All the horns are yours to toot, honestly," Grace lifts up both hands in surrender, then gesturing at you with open palms as if to say the stage is yours. "I had heard your name come up multiple times the moment I was cleared to handle confidential information." He mirrors your earlier shrug, like he doesn't want to fully commit to his perception. "Stratt sounded oddly self-assured, like you were the one ace up her sleeve that wouldn't fail her."
That draws a short bark of a laugh out of you. Eva Stratt is many things, but unprepared is not one of them.
Having blind faith in people, also. Not her style at all.
"That's an exaggeration," you push at his shoulder like you push away the ridiculous idea, "I had many back-ups like everyone else, I assure you." Stretching out your legs, you sink back into the impromptu pillow fort with a sigh, "I trust your judgement. If you say so, that is how it must've looked like to an observer. Even if so, it's probably just that she saw high odds of success with my presence or something. Nobody is indispensable to Stratt."
"Oh, I would know."
The bitter chuckle that leaves his lips drip with venom.
... You probably shouldn't ask, but what is humanity without curiosity?
"Could be a different case for you," Nodding, you carefully try breaching the subject. "She was very insistent that you join. I know she's bossy and persuasive, but I still cannot fathom how she managed to convince you. That's Stratt, alright."
It takes you a second that might have come off as you underestimating him.
"Not in a bad way!!" Before he can speak, your hands fly up in defense, "I mean, you just seemed so..." Rolling your hands before clasping them together once you scrambled for the appropriate word for long enough, "... Hesitant. Not to say you were meek or bad at your job or anything, but I was under the impression that you didn't want to be involved any more than the bare minimum needed for the science." Taking a breath through your teeth, you offer a quiet "Sorry."
"You're right on the mark," he says, tone somber, and oh, you're not sure if you can bear to look at him. You have come across him with a mournful expression on his face once or twice, seemingly expressionless but the bleak mood hanging heavily in the air as he watches the stars; and it tugs at your heartstrings in all the wrong ways. "She didn't."
"Hm?"
"She didn't convince me."
Heart dropping to your stomach at the implications, you turn your head to face him at the speed of a medieval gate opening.
"I didn't volunteer," His mouth twitches up, though it's more a grimace than anything else, "I refused — tried to escape when she tried to force me into it. The memories are still a little spotty, but I remember being hunted down."
The sheen of tears in his eyes reflects your own, your lower lip wobbling as he continues; "The grass against my cheek. Uncomfortable pressure on my lower back. A rainbow. The feeling of an intrusive needle in my neck."
They didn't give him a choice. He was hunted down like an animal and forced on a suicide mission with one order, all in the name of greater good. And yet.
And yet he works to help those back home — home, if you can even call it that with the newfound revelation. You cannot imagine being stripped of your autonomy in such a way and still have the resolve to help the very people that betrayed you.
Sure, it is not the entire population. A powerful few, if not just one, but still. You don't dare label him a saint or assume his feelings on the matter, with considerable effort.
The feeling of being betrayed, deceived, far outweighs the sorrow, your resentment manifesting itself as molten anger streaming down your cheeks.
How dare they. How dare they.
"I'm nothing like you, Yao, or Ilyukhina," Grace mumbles, the words haphazardly thrown together as he moves to get up. "Sorry I'm not who you think I am."
Your hand flies to latch on his wrist so hard you hear one of your joints pop.
"We," Swallowing thickly, you close your eyes to pull yourself together, trying to refrain from choking on your words, "We were told you agreed. Yao was against forcing you from the very beginning, as were the rest of us. Stratt said after a long discussion, you wanted to be put in the medically induced coma before launch for nerves or something—!!"
Bile raises in your throat. Your ignorance makes you feel almost complicit in what happened to him, even if you had no say in the matter.
"I'm so sorry," you barely manage to get the words out, lightly tugging at his wrist.
Grace crumples in your arms like a flimsy doll, fingers clumsily digging into your shirt in a poor attempt to hold onto you — or to hold himself together. You can't tell.
"Thank you," you barely hear the words, muffled by your own shoulder, "It's nice to know at least some cared."
Your circumstances could not have been more different. The revelation hangs in the air, present yet not in focus.
It's not like you had someone to die for, you have told Grace that much. No heroism or bravery was involved in your decision, you did simply because you could. No grand aspirations behind it.
It would be nice to be hailed as a hero if you succeed, though it's a double edged sword. You have enough grasp on history to know how quick people are to pin the blame on whoever is the easiest target, in which you and Grace are the very ones.
"I still think that you're extremely brave." Grace croaks, breaking the silence. The glassy sheen in his eyes match yours.
Craning your head to meet his gaze, you can't help but furrow your brows in disbelief. "... I just told you I wasn't thinking much of anything. Might as well have been on autopilot the entire time."
"Doesn't change a thing," Grace shrugs with a surprisingly smug smile that comes with proving himself right, pinky bumping against yours as he adjusts his position gaze at the pixellated beach more comfortably, a small oop— sounding in the room at the contact.
"I think you're extremely brave, too." Before he can pull away, you curl your pinky around his, grip loose in case he wants to pull away, "Brave, and kind."
His pinky curls around yours. The gesture feels like making a small promise, though you don't know what you're swearing to.
The space walks are the fun part of this entire ordeal, rare as they are.
Grace — Ryland, disagrees. He has always been more at home in the lab, which, you get it, him being the lead scientist, and being the only one who can manage to get something done and all.
"Are you sure about this?" Ryland grunts, hooking a foot in the net as he spins around, trying to put his suit on to accompany you, despite it being more strategically aligned to have someone on base at all times, having insisted you don't go exploring alien territory on your own.
Especially in the form of a golden ship at least three times as long as Hail Mary harbouring intelligent life.
"More than," you chuckle, floating over to zip him up, stabilising both him and yourself with practiced ease. "We're not saying anything, though. Can't risk jinxing it. But they did invite us in the form of attaching themselves on our ship, so at least we're not uninvited guests. All implications included."
"Alright, yeah, got it, no problem," Ryland rambles, releasing a shaky breath as he raises his chin as you zip him up, giving you the most unsure thumbs up combined with the soggiest look you have ever seen.
Holding back a giggle, you pull his helmet closer, though you make sure to splay a palm over his head to mess up his hair affectionately before putting it on him, finally baiting an exasperated chuckle out of him.
He still looks like an elastic band stretched too thin, threatening to snap any minute, though. Like, you're sure he's going to get cramps from how tense he is from nerves.
The solution to such a problem comes to you in the form of latching onto one another, which proves surprisingly effective.
Until Ryland gets startled upon first contact.
The scream scared off himself, you, and the creature, until the situation was somehow diffused, and hopefully written off as a misunderstanding on both sides.
The creature is extremely intelligent, and you love it immediately.
Similarities in culture is not impossible by any means even across stars, though it's still astonishing that body language and gestures convey their meaning this well, mimicking aside. You gesture for it to wait, and after a few demonstrations, it understands, and waits. Mimicking the gesture as closely as his physiology will allow, it tells you to wait as well, and you wait.
God, you're communicating. You're actually communicating with an alien creature.
You decide to take shifts to avoid losing time — or brainpower. Ryland tripped four times just trying to bring a clock over, and you walked in circles back and forth between Mary and the Blip-A for seven minutes before it dawned on you that you forgot what you were searching for.
The process of breaking the language barrier is as close to smooth sailing as possible after the arrangement, so much so that after you take off the soundproof earphones when you wake up, a robotic voice greets you.
"Hi friend!"
You take off your eye mask to see Rocky greeting you with a three-clawed wave.
Any semblance of sleep you had in your body evaporates.
"Hi Rocky!!" you coo, voice going up several pitches from excitement as you jog to meet him behind the xenonite, waving at him before turning to Ryland, "You gave him a voice?"
"Makes things a lot easier," he tilts his head, voice laced with sleep. "Welp, guess it's my turn to sleep." He places a hand on your shoulder, lingering before it slips off your bicep, "Knock yourselves out."
"What Grace mean, question?" Accompanied by two taps for emphasis.
"It's an expression, Rock. He means have fun."
There is a void all around you.
No sound, no sight, no feel. No memory of what happened.
Inhale, exhale.
You feel your lungs fill with air before you force it out. That means you can breathe. Good.
There is still no feeling in your fingertips. Nor your face, for that matter, and you worry it's blunt force trauma. Chances of you being treated in some void pool meant for sensory deprivation is quite low. You try shifting your weight somewhere to test where you are. On the floor, probably, until you feel your entire weight pull you down, and suddenly you're like a marionette on a string.
Not the floor, then.
The tension tells you you're strapped in, and—
Blue eyes blown wide with terror flash in your mind. A hand reached out towards you, not your face, but in front of it before your memories cut off.
You yank the safety belt off with pure muscle memory, your entire body protesting as it tries to stand upright, your arm shooting out to find support wherever the panels are.
Your senses come back to you slowly, like static sounding more and more coherent until you stumble upon a channel when searching for one in the radio.
The once muted sound of beeps are now deafening alarms blaring in your ears. The once blurred lights are now blinding as they flash red. The smell of something burning makes you gag.
An inhuman wail makes its way to your ears, and the sight that greets you is of Rocky in the corridor, trying to pull a limp Ryland towards the Lab.
Rocky is out of his space, wisps of black smoke rising out of him. So I no die in Grace and friend atmosphere, you recall. Ryland is unconscious, and probably in worse shape than you are.
You lunge forward before your brain can register what you're seeing.
"Your results are everything I could hope for," Says Stratt, and though her voice remains stoic as ever, you can tell she's impressed as she looks over the report in her tablet, your chest swelling with pride. "To call your body durable would be an understatement. Your performance has not fallen under the optimal metrics in any of the environments we tested you for; not to mention your short recovery time. The textbook definition of sturdy, really."
Your hand hooks into the back of Ryland's collar as you throw your body forward to drag him faster without falling over, barely managing to avoid slamming into Rocky, putting one foot in front of the other with unprecedented determination.
The moment Armando is in sight, you grab the first thing you can reach, which happens to be the insulated blanket Ryland has left lying around, and you flick it in Rocky's direction.
Before you can rasp out the command; ever so smart, Rocky steps onto the blanket, and you waste no time dragging him to his enclosure with all the strength you can muster, even with the world swaying beneath your feet, vision growing dim.
The small wail that comes from the medical bed falls on deaf ears.
"I will make it," you hiss, more for yourself than for Rocky, eyes trained on the clear xenonite, "I've got you, buddy."
Only one out of you three set out on this mission to die. You're not about to let either of them be the ones to die, not when Ryland wants to live. Not when Rocky has a mate, a home to return to.
Your hand slams on something as you lose your footing, though you make sure to curl your arm up, just to save Rocky a few steps.
"Please, God, anyone—" you croak, not having the strength to even lift your head to see if Rocky made it, "Please let them make it. Let them live. Kill me instead. I'll do anything. I'll die, I'll live— anything."
Your world descends into darkness like your plug has been pulled.
"Eye movement detected. Good morning, Doctor Grace."
There is an eery stillness around him.
Blinking to shake off any uncertainties he has, Ryland sluggishly gets up, gaze dropping to a faint trail of black, peppered with red spots, leading out of the lab.
Dread weighs on his shoulders heavier than a boulder as he moves slowly, trying to brace himself for whatever sight that will greet him with each deliberate step.
He sees you first.
Laying face first on the floor, your face is shielded by your arm curling around your head. If he didn't know any better, he would have assumed you had taken a particularly nasty fall but was too embarrassed to get up.
Swallowing thickly, he brings a shaky hand to your neck, resting his fingertips on your pulse—
There is a faint rhythm beating against the pads of his fingers.
He releases a breath he didn't know he was holding, curling in on himself and squeezing his eyes shut, letting his tears fall.
Your other hand reaches out to the xenonite, towards Rocky, and a sob tears itself from his throat when there is a slight move, quiet wheeze of a sound, followed by a thrum.
"Thanks for watching her sleep, pal. I'll take it from here." Hesitantly pulling away from you, he braces a hand against the xenonite, his voice cracking, "I'll watch you sleep, too. But, uh... you gotta wake up, okay? You both do."
