Dare to Dream; Then Write it Down

Masterlist

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Masterlists

Split

The One with Silver Scars

Summary: Adelais Benoit knew that she wasn't normal. Her upbringing, her sanity, her reaction to being abducted by the monochrome man; it set her apart from what the world would consider normal. However, her abnormalities may finally play in her favour for once in her life. Blackmailed into her cousin's birthday party, she will soon realize her differences.

The One With Whiskey Eyes

Summary:  Soulmate AU Split 2016. Not everyone had a soulmate, there were many in the world who were unmarked. Iris Mayfair, however, has been forced to hide her skin for nearly thirty years. She doesn't have just one or two soulmates-even three would make people sneer and judge; no, she has twenty-three legible marks on her skin; with a blurry, unfinished twenty-fourth blooming across her flesh.

Project Hail Mary

Memento Vivere

Summary:

Memento Vivere: Remember to Live. "Not just to exist, not just to survive, but to really live. To feel deeply, cry loudly, love messily. Life isn't meant to be tiptoed through."

When the Petrova line is discovered, Eva Stratt begins to collect the remarkable brains of the world like trading cards. One such collectable is Dr. Hope Emrys, an Engineer and Master Technician with NASA. Project Hail Mary became more to her than just their possible future. It was the ship she put her life and soul into. When Ryland Grace wakes to find her still deep in her coma, he is struck with the fear that he might be left alone, 12 lightyears away from home.

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Memento Vivere || 39 || Proximity

Ryland Grace/Original Female Character

General Content Warnings: swearing, nudity, mature themes, graphic description.

Read it on AO3

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~39~

Twenty-six hours later and they were back to square one.

Rocky absolutely refused to let one of them sleep on the ship. He was adamant that both had to be where he could watch them. Meanwhile, Grace flat out refused to let Hope cram herself onto the little ledge again—she hadn’t said a thing, but he could tell her back was stiff and uncomfortable throughout the day. She twisted, stretched, and audibly popped significantly more whenever she was in his proximity.

Hope’s forehead hit the table as Grace and Rocky went back and forth. He tried to explain about sleeping on the ship and how they had a computer that monitored their sleep, but that wasn’t enough for Rocky.  Especially considering he knew what happened to their crew. He, personally, needed to know they were okay.

“Grace Hope share!” Rocky insisted, stomping one limb in place.

Even Grace deflated this time. “We’ve been over this, Rocky.”

“Not-mates can touch. Sleeping is not mating. Grace Hope share!”

The Eridian could not understand why the two were being so stubborn about it. He understood the anatomy—mostly—and the process of mating between humans. But he also understood that sleeping did not equal mating. Touch did not equal mating. Why could they not just sleep side by side where he could watch them properly?

Hope groaned, forehead still pressed against the cold surface.

Grace dragged his fingers through his hair, agitated at the continued roundabout argument. To Rocky, sleeping in close proximity was no different than when they touched an arm or bumped shoulders.

Trying to explain that it was more than just about sex and mating was in one ear and out the other. Which was impressive, since Rocky was basically a walking, talking microphone. He was basically just one massive ear.

“Human customs make no sense. Humans need sleep. Humans need touch. Sleep and touch. Grace. Hope. Share.”

Hope finally had enough. Straightening, she threw her hands up over her head. “Oh, my god! Fine! We’ll share!”

Grace spun around, slack-jawed, as he caught Hope’s exhausted green eyes. “We will?!”

“We cannot keep going around in circles like this. We need to sleep. Nothing we suggest works for him, and you won’t agree to just repeat what we did yesterday and let me sleep over there. We can’t sit out here for another hour arguing about it.” Her shoulders dropped and her head tipped to the side.

That’s when he realized just how much Hope relied on coffee to keep herself functioning. Sure, he knew she drank it like it gave her life—to the point she had a personal one in her workstation on Earth—but that could have just as easily been due to habit or love for the taste.

No, Hope actually needed coffee. Her complete disregard for a normal human’s sleep schedule made it basically impossible to make-do without it. Which also meant that her overuse of caffeine required her to drink a lot of it to actually get any results.

But on the Hail Mary, they had a finite supply. She was going out of her way to extend that supply, sticking to a maximum of two coffees throughout the day. By the time they hit the twenty-four hour mark, Grace was already becoming fairly useless. Hope could make it a bit longer out of sheer will, but once her second cup of caffeine had run its course, she rapidly turned into the equivalent of a zombie.

It would seem they’d finally reached her breaking point.

He didn’t know what to say to that. “Uh…”

Ignoring him, she stood up. “I’m going to get ready. You go ahead and take a moment,” she made a spinning motion with her finger, “to wrap your head around that.”

Momentarily mute, he just watched her head back into the ship, likely to get changed and brush her teeth. Her feet dragged and caught on the uneven surface of the tunnel, showcasing her fatigue. They were regularly staying awake for longer and longer periods, while sticking to very short stints of sleep. Each day made it that much harder to push that limit.

“Hope agree! Grace Hope share!”

“Yea,” he mumbled, still looking at the airlock.

Grace Hope share.

Grace Hope share??

Heat prickled the back of his neck. The space that his cot was placed in was larger than the ledge she’d slept on, but it was still tiny. A twin bed would feel like a queen in comparison to that little nook. And now they were going to force two grown adults inside it? Hope may be small, but she’s not that small.

That was going to be far more close quarters than he was prepared for. What if he talked in his sleep? She’s right, he moved like crazy in his sleep; what if he hit her?

Oh, fuck. What if he had dreams?

He turned sharply to face Rocky, holding up a finger. “I’ll be right back, ‘kay? Just, uh, gotta go—need to…yea.”

Rocky hummed in question as Grace basically fled out of the tunnel, on the hunt for Hope.

Did she realize what she was suggesting? He knew that brain function deteriorated rapidly when they didn’t get enough sleep. Was that what’s happening?

Once inside, he headed for the dorm. Remembering that she was getting ready to sleep, he jerked to a stop in the corridor. “Hope?” he called.

“Yea?”

Grace peeked inside the dorm.

She’d already changed clothes, stripping off the cargos she’d worn all day for a pair of black sweatpants—bleach stains on the thigh told him they were well worn. Too large on her, she’d had to roll the waistband so she wasn’t constantly stepping on the hem. Her NASA hoodie was tossed onto her empty bunk and had been replaced with a long-sleeved blue shirt. It, too, had the NASA logo on the chest.

Omitting when he’d encountered her after she did her welding shift, this was the most relaxed and dressed down he’d ever seen her.

Most of her clothes looked to be years old, worn to the point of holes. The only things he’d seen her wear that looked new were things provided for the mission. If it didn’t have a NASA or PHM logo on it, it was in rough shape.

It made him wonder if she was just the kind of person to use or wear things to failure, or if they were more sentimental than he realized.

She turned to look at him when he leaned into the room, her hands back behind her head as she loosely braided her hair out of her face for the night. The action lifted the hem of her shirt, showing the rolled waistline of her pants and a few inches of pale skin across her abdomen.

“Uhm…are you sure?”

“About sharing?”

“Yea.” Grace awkwardly moved to stand just in the doorway. “I mean, I don’t want you to think you have to just because Rocky’s pushy.” He wasn’t sure what to do with his hands and ended up fiddling with the band of his watch.

She offered a tired smirk as she tied off her braid. “When has anyone ever been able to force me to do something I don’t want to, huh?” When Grace opened his mouth to respond, Hope held up a hand to cut him off. “Stratt doesn’t count, that woman would tell God what to do.”

Despite the tension, Grace laughed. She’s right about that.

“Jokes aside, there is no forcing of anything.” Her expression grew serious. “That goes for you, too. Are you okay with sharing, Grace? I won’t do this if you’re uncomfortable with it.”

Regardless of exhaustion, she wouldn’t force the man into proximity with her if he was against it in any way. She often had to remind herself that a lot of what she remembered was gone for him. He kept her appraised of the memories that came back to him, and apparently he only remembered as far as the completion of the spin drive test chamber.

He was still missing months of their time working together. Learning together.

Essentially, she was one step above a stranger to him.

However, Grace thought of it differently.

She was a familiar tether to his past. It was a past he didn’t remember, but his, nonetheless. His brain may have been forced to forget her, but his body knew. Right down to his nervous system. Having her presence alone was a balm to all the craziness so far. Even if he only got bits and pieces of her, he’d take it.

Like a nervous tick, Grace adjusted his glasses to hook beneath his chin.

“New deal; the second either of us are no longer okay with the arrangement, we figure something else out. Full stop.”

He even extended a hand for her.

“Deal,” she agreed immediately, taking his hand and giving one firm shake.

They returned to Rocky, dressed in fresh clothes and smelling like mint toothpaste.

The Eridian perked up, already sitting on the top portion of xenonite that was situated directly above Grace’s cot. Having discussed while they were still inside, they two immediately moved Hope’s cot to stack over his and allow for some additional padding.

Both were aware of Hope’s preference to sleep on her right side, and to avoid any addition awkwardness they arranged for her to sleep to the left of the cot so her back was to him. Grace tended toward side-sleeping, but he wasn’t partial to a specific side.

The night before, when Rocky was hovering over him like a spectre, he’d rolled onto whatever side the Eridian wasn’t on in an attempt to ignore his presence. Tonight, it was the body lying next to him that he’d be fighting not to think about. He’d just have to roll so they were back-to-back and pray that he didn’t move too much in his sleep.

Maybe his subconscious would be too terrified of touching her, he’d actually stay completely still for once.

Hope glanced at him as she toed off her shoes. “You set?”

Grace used every fiber of his being to look as nonchalant as possible. “Yea, good. All good. You good?”

He wasn’t successful, obviously, but Hope didn’t call him out.

“Lie down, Ryland.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled, quickly following suit and pulling his chucks off. They left Hope’s basic, mission issued blanket aside in favour of Grace’s quilt—technically it was gifted to the crew, but he’d been using it since he woke up and it had unofficially become his. Hope had no complaints; whatever made him more comfortable aboard the ship.

Being less nimble, Grace climbed in first.

Rocky monitored their movements, watching as he crawled under the blanket and immediately started to fidget awkwardly.

Hope knew that the longer he was left with his thoughts, the worse he’d get, so she crawled into the nook to join him without further preamble. Her pillow was tossed next to his already, giving a minor divide between the two.

Grace was acutely aware of her body as she shimmied under the quilt. Her braid slid across his shoulder for a moment as she turned in place, propping up on one hip.

Rocky paced overhead.

“Goodnight, Rocky,” Hope said first, reaching up to press her hand on the xenonite overhead. He mirrored her, tapping his fingers.

“Hope Grace sleep,” he insisted.

“We’re sleeping, we’re sleeping,” Grace mumbled, shuffling in place. He’d become accustomed to the thinner cot they each got; stacking the two made him aware of just how little cushion they actually got. He had no clue how Hope was able to sleep the way she had the night before—or all her other odd sleeping places, for that matter.

If he didn’t know better, he’d assume her spine was made of rubber.

Naturally, Hope curled onto her right side. Even without facing him, the position made Grace’s nerves skyrocket instantly. When was the last time he had someone sleep beside him? He had incredibly murky memories of old girlfriends, but those predated the Petrova line discovery.

He just knew Rocky could hear his heartrate increase.

Hope took a moment to situate herself on her side, tucking her shoulder under her as comfortably as possible—the double bedding worked in her favour—before she pulled her pillow in against her neck and fell still. The heat that came off of Grace was a mild surprise. Like having a personal heater arranged at her back. It was familiar in a way she hadn’t experienced in years, making her skin prickle for a moment.

His voice broke the silence. “Goodnight, Hope.”

“G’night, Grace.”

Lingering above them—now both lying on their side as they faced away from one another—Rocky inspected the two. This was very different from the last time they slept. Hope didn’t immediately slow down and relax but was instead rolling the necklace gently between her fingers, and Grace seemed to make a conscious effort not to so much as twitch. He was even staring straight ahead at the xenonite in front of him.

Rocky wanted to tell them to relax, to sleep, but he opted to stay quiet and observe the two, instead.

It took longer than the last time they slept, but eventually their heartrates slowed and their bodies fell into rest. Rocky perked up as he noticed the change, watching over his two sleeping companions. Hope hadn’t moved, but Grace had rolled onto his back and was breathing heavily as he slept. This was much more in tune with their prior behavior.

As they submerged deeper into sleep, deep-routed instincts and behaviors took over. No guarding or second guessing, nothing to stop those unconscious actions.

Once he was sure both were safely resting, Rocky climbed down from the xenonite wall and returned to the ship components he’d been working on.

In a familiar pattern to the previous night, Grace moved in his sleep. An arm or leg abruptly flung outward, tossing from side to back to side. Thankfully, he’d remembered to discard his glasses and keep them safely tucked away. Somehow, perhaps the part of his brain that was still aware, he never hit Hope.

She never moved or reacted to his erratic shuffling.

Rocky registered each movement but didn’t concern himself with them. They were always at the edge of his awareness; their heartbeats, their breathing, their movement.

Until Grace stopped moving.

The period of silence was too long. No movement. No grumbles or bangs as he accidentally smacked the xenonite wall beside him. His heartbeat continued to pulse strong and even, but the sudden lack of mobility from the scientist made the Eridian refocus to locate where the two humans were currently sleeping.

Amidst his fidgeting, Grace had rolled to face Hope’s back and proceeded to wrap himself around her entire body.

One arm bracketed up over her head, his head resting on his own bicep in the process, while the other was draped over her torso to anchor her in place. Even his knees were locked in directly behind hers, holding her in the cradle of his body. Hope’s small form was nearly encased in the bulk of Grace’s, right down to one of his feet crowding over hers beneath the blanket.

Curious, Rocky scrambled over the xenonite wall to inspect the two humans.

Was this why they were so concerned about mating behaviour interfering with sleep?

This was more than just touch between humans.

Was this mating behaviour?

Even Hope, who slept completely still, had adjusted to grab Grace’s arm that was looped around her chest. As though they needed to connect to one another.

Quietly, Rocky lowers his carapace to the xenonite as he trills curiously. He knew only minimal bits of information regarding human mating practices. However, he did know that Hope had previously had a mate—likely a mate that was gone, since she no longer wore the ring that represented their union. Grace wore no such items on his person and had made no mention of another female.

He had to assume that meant that both humans were, currently, unmated.

Now that he could witness their unconscious behaviour, he could make the necessary assumptions about their sleep concerns

Grace had immediately gravitated to Hope, cocooning the woman with his body like a protective measure. They fit together perfectly. Not only had he wrapped himself around her, but he’d slotted himself along the entire expanse of her form until he took over all space between them. Knees behind hers, hips tucked together, chest to back with arms keeping her held in place.

However, what Rocky noticed most acutely was how, with his face tucked in against her hair, Grace slept.

No unconscious mumbling or moving erratically from side to side. He remained completely still with his face pressed to the back of Hope’s neck and finally fell into a peaceful rest.

This answered several of Rocky’s wonderings from the night before; no, the lack of movement was not gender based. It not only varied human to human, but night to night.

Rocky twitched his fingers as he contemplated the two.

He had tried to ask Grace the difference between mate touches and non-mate touches, specifically, but the human had just started making stuttering sounds and rambling. Looking at them now, Rocky understood just a little better. This was much more than the basic touches from hands. This was one human crowded completely into the other’s space.

In addition, the way their hips aligned he could understand the way the position could be considered beyond platonic. That answered another query he’d had but had been unable to ask around Grace’s broken stuttering and fidgeting.

Minutes ticked by and they didn’t move. Hope never showed any negative signs to suddenly having Grace plastered to her back. Grace, too, finally laid completely still and seemed entirely content to remain that way.

Rocky hummed softly, slowly climbing down from the xenonite so as not to disturb them.

As they slept, their heartbeats gradually fell into sync.

Short hours later, Grace’s watch alarm broke the quiet of the tunnel. Hope grunted at the abrupt wake up, face pinching unhappily, before her hand fumbled out blindly to grab the offending device, pressing until it finally went silent.

Behind her, Grace huffed in displeasure at the wakeup and automatically tightened his grip. They’d moved subtly in their sleep until she was resting her head on his bicep, and her face was pressed into the crease of his elbow. Grace had completely commandeered her pillow and was essentially cradling her head.

His nose remained buried in her hair, where her braid had come loose throughout the night.

Tap, tap, tap

“Grace Hope awake, question?”

Hope hummed softly in acknowledgement without lifting her head. She was warm and comfortable.

Grace grunted into her hair. “Yea, Rocky.”

The vibration of his words against her back, his chest still pressed in tightly along her spine, finally prompted Hope to register how they were sleeping. Her eyes opened in surprise and was greeted with Grace’s forearm, his sleeve bunched up closer to his elbow. Warm breaths ghosted the back of her neck and ruffled the small baby strands at her nape.

For a moment, she just laid still. Taking stock. Trying to force her sleep-addled mind to understand the current circumstances.

His knees were pressed in behind hers, arms wrapped around her torso and her head, and she was pulled into the front of his body.

The entire front of his body.

“Grace,” she said finally. He hummed, already beginning to doze back into sleep. “I need you to let go so I can get up.”

Hope swore she could hear the click as he registered their current situation. He jolted away like he’d been burned, yanking his arm out from under her head with more force than intended. “Sorry!” he yelped, sitting up quickly. His forehead hit the xenonite above them, where Rocky was currently standing to observe, with a loud bang.

Wincing, she glanced back at him as Grace fought with the quilt and nearly dove free of the cots once it had been pushed aside. He was going to have a lump on his head later.

“You want coffee? I’ll go get us coffee!”

He didn’t even put on his converse shoes. The man made a beeline for the airlock, leaving Hope and Rocky behind to watch him. The engineer sat up properly, rubbing at her face to try and wipe away the remaining sleep. She had to pinch her lips together to stop from laughing.

“What wrong with Grace?”

“He just needs a moment,” she explained as simply as possible.

~

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Memento Vivere || 38 || Biology

Ryland Grace/Original Female Character

General Content Warnings: swearing, nudity, mature themes, graphic description.

Read it on AO3

Previous || Next

~38~

As the humans slept, Rocky remained a diligent observer. He worked his tools and fixed the components from his ship, but he never wandered far. He watched over the two, each sleeping quietly in their places. Grace flipped and flopped from side to side, like he couldn’t get comfortable; Hope laid on her back, feet pulled up like she wanted to curl in on herself but was otherwise motionless.

Their hearts slowed in their sleep, though the rhythm remained.

Rocky took turns lingering over the two. Grace’s position made it easy, since he was lying directly under the xenonite. The Eridian spent most of his time watching over the scientist from directly above him, as close as he was currently able to get to lie on his chest. With Hope, he leant against the wall and listened to the gentle pulse of her heart, sending small vibrations through the surface she slept on.

She slept like an Eridian; never moving.

If it wasn’t for her slow breaths and the audible beat of her heart, she could have been mistaken for a corpse. Almost as soon as she laid down, she’d been asleep. Rocky had listened to her body slow itself and rest.

Grace was the opposite. It had taken him time to fall asleep, constantly aware of where Rocky was around him and rolling over in response. He grumbled and shifted, moving the blanket covering him and crossing and uncrossing his arms. It was easy to track him even while he wasn’t directly nearby. Even when he slowed down and actually slept, his elbow or shin made contact with the walls around him as he moved.

Hope slept through it all.

Rocky was left to wonder if this, too, was due to their differences in gender.

Do all males move and make noise while they sleep? Do all females remain still and quiet?

Did it vary human to human?

He would have to ask them once they woke up. Hope had said they would explain the purpose of sleep proximity as a mating behaviour.

After 29,000 seconds, the small device on Grace’s wrist started to beep.

The scientist woke abruptly at the sound, looking around in disoriented confusion as he tried to locate what had woken him up. His brain caught up with him after a few seconds and he quickly tapped at the button on the side of the watch, cutting off the irritating sound.

“Grace wake up!” Rocky declared, rolling across the wall to stand above him again. “It has been 29,000 seconds; Hope still sleeps.”

Groggily, Grace wiped at his face like it would somehow strip the fatigue from his body. “We don’t sleep for that exact amount every time we sleep. There’s an average, but it’s not precise to the minute.” At the mention of Hope, he rolled over to look in her direction.

It was distorted through the different angles of xenonite, but she was still in the oversized hoodie with the hood pulled up to cover the top half of her face, with her arms crossed over her chest. She hadn’t moved an inch since they’d gone to sleep.

Rocky took his words as incentive to scuttle back over to Hope, standing near her head, before tapping a stone finger against the surface. It caused the first sign of movement since she’d fallen asleep, adjusting her head slightly so she could see out from under the hood.

“Hi, Rocky,” she rumbled out, voice roughened after lack of use.

“Hope wake up! Hi Hope!”

Still half-asleep, she reached out in the direction she could hear him and pressed her hand against the xenonite. She patted the wall, hand lingering for a moment as Rocky tapped again. The sound of Grace moving around told her it was time to get up.

“Coffee,” she sighed wistfully. She could hear Grace snort, completely unsurprised that her first thought was caffeine.

Before getting up, she straightened out her legs and stretched. Her back popped and her knee cracked, but her muscles didn’t protest the movement as much as Grace had warned. The blanket was definitely not enough to soften the place she’d chosen to sleep, a better setup for following nights was going to be a must.

But at least she didn’t have to hear an ‘I told you so’ from Grace.

A yawn fought its way free as she sat up and pushed her hood off her head. Rocky’s focus diverted momentarily to the jingle of the metal she still wore under her clothes; but ignored it in favour of asking the questions he’d thought of while they slept.

“Do all females sleep without movement? Do all males move a lot while they sleep, question?”

And so it begins.

Hope couldn’t help but to laugh softly. It was like dealing with an inquisitive child. “I’ll leave that up to Grace, I’m going in to get my coffee.”

“What that?” Rocky demanded, stomping his feet.

“Hope’s addiction to caffeine,” Grace mumbled in reply, still trying to get his brain into working order. Hope was already in her shoes again and making her way toward the airlock of the Hail Mary. “It’s a drink we have, usually in the morning, it helps to wake us up or give us a boost throughout the day. Hope has an unhealthy dependence on it.”

“I am still finding Skittles in my control room!”

Grace winced.

“I said I was sorry.”

“Sorry won’t get the melted candy out of the controls, Grace.”

Rocky’s focus bounced back and forth between the two. Several of the words were completely foreign to him—though he’d heard them said before during similar moments between the humans.

Once Hope had disappeared inside, Rocky rounded back on Grace.

“Why sleep proximity only for mates?”

Grace sighed.

“There are certain behaviours humans do that are more…intimate than others. Sleeping close together is one of them. We wouldn’t do that with a stranger.”

“But Grace Hope friends. Crew. Not stranger.”

“No, you’re right. But friends or crewmates can have more…platonic intimacy. Platonic is when there is affection there, but it’s not the same you use for a mate. A friend can hug or touch, but the touching is different for mates.”

“Different how?”

Grace’s ears burned.

“Sex, first of all. How humans reproduce.” He was not going to branch into sex as anything other than a reproductive need, he refused. Hope could tackle that one if Rocky truly wanted to know. Giving an alien rock spider the birds and bees talk was bad enough.  “When mates sleep together, it can be a lot more intimate than just closing our eyes and resting.”

“This why Grace Hope have different anatomy?”

Just launch him into space, it would be a quicker, painless death.

Grace scratched at the back of his head. Hope had been right; Rocky was intimately aware of how different they looked under their clothes.

“Yea, Rock, that’s why.”

“How humans reproduce?”

Falling back on his science teacher roots, especially a teacher for the younger generation, he mustered up some maturity and explained it to Rocky in a detached, scientific manner. He’d never had to teach sex ed, that was thankfully left up to the phys-ed teachers, but he did have to teach a certain level of biology and that required some of the more awkward topics to come up.

Rocky listened avidly as Grace explained, in basics, how female and male reproductive systems worked. He already knew poor Hope was going to be absolutely assaulted with questions when she came back out. But Rocky was smart, he picked it all up quickly and immediately moved on to the next question—which is how Grace got pulled into explaining breasts and breastfeeding.

How did he get here?

Hope returned, with two coffees in hand, just as they had come full circle to the topic of sleeping being an intimate thing due to the nature of human reproduction.

Rocky wasted no time. “Has Hope reproduced, question?”

“Rocky!”

But Hope was rapidly becoming accustomed to how blunt the Eridian can be. And, considering he knew about her ‘mate ring’, he likely wondered if she had a child back on Earth. “No,” she answered simply. “I never reproduced.”

She wasn’t nearly as shy on the matter. While handing Grace his coffee, she turned the tables around on the Eridian. “How do Eridians reproduce?”

Grace was obviously shy enough for all three of them, because Rocky launched into an explanation with zero hesitation.

Eridians were actually hermaphroditic; they were both male and female. They mated in pairs and would lay, essentially, an egg. The combination of the two parents’ eggs is what merged to create one fertilized egg. The dominant genes from one Eridian would take over, but otherwise it still required both mates to create a successful offspring. Hermaphrodite or not, they needed a mate to reproduce.

The incubation period was less than two Earth months before the egg hatched, so it was remarkably quick for Eridians to repopulate—though, it was a year for them.

“Human females are pregnant for, standard, 280 days on Earth,” Hope explained. She was back to sitting on the xenonite wall, sipping at her coffee as Rocky had delved into his species. “That would be 1,315 days on Erid. Or just over six and a half years.” The Eridian made a sound of awe.

Then, she pivoted slightly.

“Rocky, why did you say sleep was unsafe alone? Why do Eridians need to watch each other sleep?”

As it turns out, they sleep very differently than a human.

A sleeping Eridian is no different than a dead one—at least on the outside. They go completely still and inert, paralyzed and disconnected from the world. Rocky didn’t even remember exactly why they watch each other sleep, just that it’s what they’ve always done.

Grace explains that it’s a survival norm.

They can’t protect themselves while they’re asleep, and nothing can wake them up. An Eridian must wake up on their own, in whatever time they need. They can’t set an alarm to wake up at a specific time. They’re completely helpless and exposed to possible predators. Having someone to watch you sleep meant that there was someone to keep you safe.

Rocky had been alone on the Blip A for the equivalent of 46 years on Earth.

Not only did he watch his crew go to sleep and never wake up, but there was also no one there to watch him. No one to keep him safe.

Grace bowed his head for a moment, finally understanding. It made regret bubble up inside him; he’d been so close to leaving, even though Rocky had desperately wanted them to stay. So he could keep them safe.

He was grateful for Hope’s perceptive side. She’d noticed something immediately.

“We’ll watch you sleep.”

Rocky perked up, raising his carapace. “Thank. Rocky watch Grace Hope sleep.”

Of course, he wasn’t finished with his questions.

“Grace say humans touch not mates. Why, question?”

Hope looked back at Grace with a raised eyebrow. “What topics did you guys get into, exactly?”

Grace blushed. “You try explaining sleeping patters and sex to an alien!”

“I assumed a science teacher would be better prepared for the awkward questions,” she pointed out with a snort. Her attention returned to Rocky. “Humans are physical creatures. We need interactions with others; it keeps us healthy. Physical touch in a very important part of our lives—not just with mates. It’s how parents bond with children and how people express affection or happiness. Humans can actually become unwell without touch.”

Rocky mulled over her words for a moment. “Hope Grace touch often.”

They blinked. “I mean…sometimes,” Grace corrected.

He stomped. “Often. Rocky observe. Hope Grace touch often.”

Silently, they thought back.

He was right, of course. They hadn’t fully realized how often they touch each other. Even if it was something as mild as Hope poking Grace or flicking him, or when he tugged on her braid or clothes to direct her. She leaned against his leg when she sat on the ground. He leant back against her side if she was standing behind him while he was at the table.

They automatically sought the other out regularly.

Small, insignificant touches. But each touch reminded the other that they were present.

“Okay, often,” Hope agreed.

“Need touch. Stay healthy. Soft, leaky blobs too delicate.”

“Hey!” Grace protested. Hope just laughed; she’d already agreed with Rocky on that matter of human design. It was terrible.

“Now Rocky sleep,” the Eridian declared, selecting one of the portions of xenonite along the wall. It meant he was close by, easier for them to see him. “Grace Hope watch.”

The two nodded. “We’ll watch.”

Slowly, Rocky laid down. He arranged his limbs around himself before going completely still. The two watch him for a moment, observing how he made himself ‘comfortable’ before his entire form just went limp. He didn’t breathe like they did, so they had no way of monitoring his condition.

How long did he watch his crew before he had to decide that they weren’t just sleeping, but had died? Days? Weeks?

After a few minutes of silence, they glanced at one another.

The parallel was unmistakeable. Yáo and Ilyukhina died in their comas. Rocky’s crew went to sleep and never woke up. Rocky had it worse by far; he’d actually been awake to witness it happen. Although, waking up without a single memory, only to discover two dead people was also highly traumatic. Hope wasn’t sure how she ended up being the one who suffered the least.

“What do you think happened to his crew?” Hope asked quietly, as though speaking too loudly would disrupt the Eridian’s slumber.

Grace shook his head. “I dunno, I’ll have to ask Rocky more questions about his ship. From what he’s told me, their understanding of science and space isn’t quite as advanced as ours.”

“You think it might be the radiation,” she realized. He nodded slowly.

“You can’t hear space. Without the right way to study it, they wouldn’t have any idea about gamma rays or ions. They bodies are sturdier than ours, so they wouldn’t have reacted like a human. Maybe they slowly got sick, or it was just that—they went to sleep and never woke up.”

Hope looked around. “Grace. We’re outside of the Hail Mary a lot these days.” And the tunnel doesn’t have Astrophage to shield them.

He already knew the significance. The risk. “Yea.”

She looked back toward the ship. “We should keep taking turns who’s out here. Less exposure over time. Besides, we won’t be sitting here forever. We won’t get our answers floating in space, not moving. We’ll have to check out Tau Ceti’s Petrova line.”

“Right, okay.” Grace clapped his hands before jumping to his feet. “I’ll stay out here with Rocky; you should go inside and check our trajectory to the Petrova line. The best place for us to get a sample would be closest to Tau Ceti e itself, like the ArcLight did with Venus.”

For a moment, he just shook his hands in front of himself as he turned to face the engineer. Now that Rocky had pointed it out, he was aware of how he’d naturally wanted to reach for her. It suddenly felt strange, like the action had changed meaning. He withheld the urge and kept his hands to himself.

Hope glanced at Rocky’s still form one last time. “Alright. We’ll do that. I’ll plan the route, see how long it’ll take. We need to figure out how all three of us are going to get there, though.”

She reclaimed their empty coffee cups as Grace got himself settled at the table. He’d brought out some of his equipment the day before, so he had lots to occupy his time. Technically, he had fresh eyes to look at the Astrophage they’d brought with them. Maybe he’d find something more that he hadn’t thought of back on Earth.

As she headed back to the airlock, Grace called out to her. “Don’t punch any screens this time!”

Hope turned back to gap at him. He pointedly avoided her eyes as he set up his microscope.

Smartass.

~

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[bold-writing]

Memento Vivere || 37 || Heatstroke

Ryland Grace/Original Female Character

General Content Warnings: swearing, nudity, mature themes, graphic description.

Read it on AO3

Previous || Next

~37~

After having a shower and making a brief stop to his room on the ship, Grace remembered that he’d left his bag and his coat down in the lab.

The bag was sitting on the floor, exactly where he’d left it in front of his desk. However, he honestly didn’t want to hike it back all the way to his quarters and come back down again. He’d be going there eventually; he’d just have to remember to take it with him.

So, he gave it a kick to shove it under his desk, out of sight.

“Ow.”

Grace shrieked, leaping back and slamming into the glove box station directly opposite his desk. His elbow banged against the thick acrylic and the handle dug roughly into his spine. His heart felt like it dropped through his ass as he gasped for air, quickly looking around his office chair.

Hope was sitting on the floor, hiding in the minimal space under his desk. Knees drawn up and her back and shoulders leaning against the solid side that housed the assortment of drawers, she also had his blue hoodie bundled up and pushed behind her head to act as a pillow. Even for her size, she looked crammed in.

His bag had shoved directly into her hip when he pushed it.

She was still in the coveralls, but her boots had been discarded and she was barefoot. Her washed hair was re-braided, neatly, so it draped over one shoulder. This time, it was a French braid. The exhaustion on her face explained why she didn’t even crack a smile after nearly causing him to shit himself.

“Hope,” he breathed out. “You scared the daylights out of me!”

His heart felt like it was thumping erratically in his chest, his hand shook as he placed a palm against his sternum, like it would somehow help.

“Sorry,” she just mumbled, barely even turning her head to look at him.

Not sure why she was hiding, Grace opted for caution and leaned in closer, whispering, “What are you doing under my desk? Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

“Hiding from the other welders,” she replied. “If I have to hear one more backhanded compliment about being a woman who can weld, I’m going to superglue their lips shut. Stratt might have an opinion on that.”

Grace, unable to swallow the sound, snorted. He’d missed Hope’s dry whit. However, irritation festered under the surface as he realized the guys he’d seen yesterday had likely been bothering her since they arrived. To such a degree that this woman was curled up under his desk to take a nap.

“Why don’t you just go sleep in your bed?”

“Not all of us get a private room,” she answered flippantly. Immediately after, a broad yawn had her turning her face away. He swore he heard her jaw pop.

In order to avoid craning his neck anymore, Grace moved to sit opposite his desk with his back against the cabinet under the glove box. He nudged the chair out of the way, toward her workstation, so his coat would block them if anyone—for whatever reason—came looking.

“Do you know when you’ll be going back down?”

She lifted a small two-way radio from beside her, tucked out of his view on her other side. “They’ll radio me when I need to head down.” She hadn’t walked away from the chamber with that, so someone had definitely tracked her down after they parted ways.

“What can I do?” he asked a moment later.

Eyes now closed, she lifted a finger to her lips.

“Ah,” he muttered. He could take a hint. He’d never seen Hope, while still awake, be so quiet and indirect.

 His intention had been to go down to find her anyway; he just needed to kill some time here, instead. Snagging a notepad and pen from the desk above her, he resettled a few feet away and started to long-hand the calculations regarding Redell’s black panels.

The breeding of Astrophage was the last remaining complication for the Project—well, that and completing the actual ship. But that was Hope’s domain. He wasn’t worried.

He looked up from his calculations on occasion to check on her. She’d turned her face away from him, still using his hoodie as a pillow, and crossed her arms over her chest. Her feet must have been getting cold; her toes were now curled inward, like they were trying to grip the floor.

Unfortunately, the math confirmed that Redell was correct.

It would take a large scale to succeed, but it was possible. So long as the production of the panels was successful, they’d reach their goal with Astrophage to spare. They would also need to employ a large team to maintain and scrape the panels. They couldn’t just leave them out in the sun indefinitely to do their thing; they’d need to be regularly checked and replaced with clear panels to keep the progress going.

Well, that’s one upside at least. They’d be giving jobs to hundreds of people to maintain the project.

He almost laughed to himself. Was he even getting paid for any of this? He’d never really stopped to consider it.

Working on Project Hail Mary was going to take up well over a year of his life. That was a year of no income, time away from his students, his job, his apartment. He was going to step back into his old life after everything, just go back to how things were?

It made him wonder if his students honestly knew where he was. Had they been told he was going to work on the Petrova line problem? Or was he just…replaced with another teacher or sub to get the students through?

Putting the pen aside, Grace rubbed at the stubble over his face with a slow sigh.

Things were usually too busy to get caught up in these thoughts. There was an advantage to that, because it was depressing when they had the time to stop and considering what was going to happen to the world. To the people who lived here. The children that were born into a new ice age.

He was going to need to update his lesson plans.

The radio at Hope’s side crackled to life, jolting the woman out of her light sleep.

Dimitri’s voice came through, only a slight crackle masking his words. “Hope? It is your turn, little engineer.”

It was obvious that he didn’t care about radio etiquette, but he got his point across all the same.

Hope fumbled for the radio, craning her neck for where the small device had ended up. “On my way, Komorov,” she replied calmly. Her voice was rough from sleep, even just from the brief nap.

Grace sincerely hoped she had slept more before he’d shown up and woken her.

Dropping the radio aside, she rolled herself out from under the desk. Grace reached out automatically, catching one of her arms as she propped up onto her knees right next to him, wobbling slightly as blood rapidly rushed back into her legs after being curled up for so long. She hissed in discomfort as the pin and needles feeling started to set in through her legs.

His brows pinched down in concern. “You sure you’re okay to go back in there?”

“It’s the last go, I’ll be okay,” she assured. Slowly getting to her feet, using Grace’s hand as leverage, she snagged her boots in the same go. “You comin’?”

“Yea!”

It only took a few minutes for the two to reach the argon chamber.

The other welders were nearby but kept more of a distance. Hope stripped back out of her coveralls and boots, standing in another pair of shorts and tank top. They strapped the vest to her again, giving something for the weight of the rig to anchor onto. He also noticed how the doctor came forward to set up a monitor that stuck to her back with adhesives, keeping track of her vitals while in the suit.

Grace watched the process from the sidelines. Since they were only able to work in increments of 30 minutes to an hour, she’d likely been in and out of the setup dozens of times over the last four days. Watching her put on the suit was liking watching a deep-sea diver. She’d attach the umbilical once she was inside, but the rest of the suit was strapped on before she even went into the airlock.

The backup welders lingered nearby. Grace felt the prickle of irritation at the back of his neck when he remembered what Hope had said. They’d basically insulted her simply because she was a woman in a male dominated field; they didn’t even have the balls to be assholes outright—they try and make it flippant and disguise it as a compliment.

At least they kept their distance. Watching, but from afar with the rest of the crowd. One was still soaking in sweat from his recent time spent in the Argon chamber.

Before they locked her helmet in place, she looked over at him. He grinned, giving her a thumbs up. “Good luck.”

She returned the thumbs up, though less graceful through the bulky gloves of the suit. “Don’t need it.”

With familiar precision, Hope got to work.

The room had been cooled slightly in the time the other welder had vacated the space, but they had to do it using the water jackets that lined the outer chamber. It was a slower process than if they could just flush the air out and replace it with fresh, cooler air. Except it was completely filled with argon gas, so that was a no-go.

Just as she did every other time she entered the chamber, Hope checked over all of the welding tools she’d be using. The clock didn’t really start ticking until she started working, so she used that little bit of extra time to be certain she wasn’t going to accidentally blow herself up because someone mis-handled or broke something.

Once she was satisfied nothing was faulty or damaged, she picked up what she needed and moved to the last few plates.

The helmet had a built-in, tinted visor that she could pull down, but she still wore a pair of proper welding goggles under the helmet to keep her eyes safe against the blinding speck of light.

She forced herself to focus only on the task at hand, ignoring the knowledge sitting at the back of her mind that Grace was standing just outside. The music started playing from the headset she wore, filling the inside of her helmet with familiar, loud notes. They started off with Creed this time.

Like muscle memory, she fell into her slow, careful routine with only the music to keep her company.

At least for a few minutes.

By now, she was accustomed to the temperature inside the suit while she was working. It was exhausting and it was disgustingly hot, but it was bearable. She always had the habit of getting lost in her work, ignoring sweat and heat was just another part of that.

Except the heat kept climbing, rapidly. Her skin tingled uncomfortably with the oppressive temperature inside the suit, her face feeling like it was sitting under direct noon sun even with the protection of the visor and thick helmet.

The music did nothing to help her ignore the increasing discomfort.

“Hey,” she spoke up, the two-way communication always left open. Immediately, the music cut off and was replaced by a woman’s voice—the doctor that manned their vitals as they worked.

“Is something wrong?”

“Is the temperature higher than normal? Are the waterlines working?”

Silence extended from the other end for several long seconds. Sweat dripped off of her chin. With nothing else to do, she continued her work. Hopefully it was just a simple fix or the flip of a switch—even after days of this, it’s entirely possible for someone to make a mistake.

The doctor returned. “Hope, the water pump isn’t working. They don’t know how long it will take to fix. You should come out.”

Even though it wouldn’t be seen, Hope shook her head. She was mid-weld. Stopping now would compromise the integrity of it. Tungsten was extremely finicky that way.  An imperfect weld was a weak weld; and considering the extremely explosive nature of the material they were working with, weak welds were absolutely forbidden.

“Can’t,” she denied simply. “We’d have to redo this entire section. I need to finish this.”

Silence resumed again. Then—

“Hope! Get your butt out of there!” Grace. Of course.

“No. It will take me significantly less time to finish this section than it would for us to need to remove and redo it. Astrophage won’t be forgiving for weaknesses.”

“Your body temperature is already higher than I’d like! Hope, that suit’s going to turn into an oven the longer you weld—”

“I know the risks, Ryland. Now, turn my music back on and let me concentrate.”

He started to say something else, but the mic was either taken away from him or he was bodily removed. The doctor came through after a brief pause.

“I’m giving you 15 minutes and then I’m pulling you. If you’re temperature goes too high, I’m pulling you. You’re no use to us dead from heatstroke.”

“You got it, doc.”

Her music turned back on and she continued her work.

She was not a fan of heat. There was a reason she gravitated to the Autumn season and tried her best to avoiding working in southern areas that got, in her opinion, way too damn hot.

However, uncomfortable working conditions was something she’d learned to take in stride a long time ago.

She left NASA once, in a fit of self-destructive anger at the world, and started work on pipelines and oil rigs instead. Working in heavy, hot gear in gross and unforgiving climates was something that had become second nature to her. No neat, clean rooms with AC and top of the line computers. Just the tools and their brains to get the job done.

Heat was a nuisance, but it was bearable.

This heat, on the other hand, was beginning to feel like she’d been thrown inside a pre-heating oven.

Taking a long, slow breath—even that was too hot—she forced the thought aside and kept her attention on the burning light in front of her.

Grace wasn’t going to let her hear the end of this.

Her hands struggled to keep a proper hold as they grew sweatier by the minute, slipping inside her glove. But she just tightened her grip and forced herself to refocus. She moved as necessary, following the path of the weld to make sure every inch was seamless.

The spin drive chamber didn’t afford them a lot of room to move around. It was designed that way, small and compact and contained. The original design hadn’t been meant to house a welder in a massive, heat-resistant suit. Hope actually had the easiest time out of all the welders—being small worked in her favour for once—since she could wedge herself into strange positions to get the best angles.

Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, she reached the end.

Shutting off the TIG welder, she pushed the visor up to see just a bit better and carefully inspected each inch of her work. Still burning hot and emitting more heat by the second, she didn’t linger nearly as long as she usually would.

Her music shut off again. “You better be finished, because your temperature is over 40 and I’m pulling you.”

“Yea, I’m done,” she breathed out.

Lingering only long enough to properly shut down and disassemble her equipment for safety, she returned them to the sturdy metal table just outside the cylindrical chamber before turning to the exit. She could see the flurry of bodies moving around outside the argon chamber, most heading toward the airlock.

The room momentarily spun when she stood completely for the first time, but she forced herself not to sway. Her focus remained down on her tools, like she was just taking an inventory of them, as the dizziness passed.

Then she moved.

An entire team met her outside the airlock; the outer door was opened before the argon had even been fully cycled out. They got the helmet off in record time, letting cool air rush into the suit like someone had just opened the door to winter.

Hope sighed at the blissful feeling. Even if the air outside was warm to everyone else, to her it felt like a fresh blast of air conditioning.

Her headset and goggles were removed, the top of the suit undone and unlatched from her vest, then stripped rapidly down off of her torso. Once the anchor points released, considering how loose fitting it was, the only thing that really kept it from just falling off of her body was how her sweat made it stick to her skin. The vest was unstrapped and pulled off next, leaving her in only her very soaked shorts and tank top.

She’d be dehydrated. Great. An IV was something she could see in her near future.

An arm hooked around her waist, and she was hoisted up from the rest of the suit without any preamble. A gasp tore free before she could stop it, hands grabbing at the sturdy forearm across her stomach.

She hadn’t even realized that Grace was standing there, waiting.

For once, it was his hands that felt like a shock of ice. Even through her sweat soaked shirt, he felt cool to the touch. The way he took her clean off of her feet—and with only one arm—shocked her more than she’d be willing to admit aloud.

Her mouth had barely opened with a protest before she was dumped into ice water.

She swallowed a shriek and immediately tried to pull herself back out.

“Stay!” Grace yelled, holding her shoulders down. “That was so reckless! Do you know what happens to the human body when it’s exposed to temperatures that high for extended periods of time? Stop trying to get out!”

“It’s cold! Fuck!” she yelled back, hands finding the sides of what she realized was a large plastic bin. It was full of water, which was now all over the floor, and ice. It was big enough that her torso fit in easily, but her legs and arms were sticking over the sides. She’s fairly certain she’d kicked him in the leg while she was flailing to get out of the icy tub.

“And you have heatstroke! Stop squirming!”

Hope groaned, tipping her head back against the rigid side of the bin. His hands relaxed off of her shoulders once he was certain she wasn’t going to try and get out again. She twitched with the effort of staying in place. Her body told her to run.

The young doctor appeared from behind Grace, shoving a thermometer under Hope’s armpit and forcing her arm down to pin it. She hissed when her sweaty hand was dunked under the water, making her fingertips sting from the abrupt temperature change.

“Don’t you have a bio monitor stuck to my back?” she asked, keeping her arm down as silently directed.

“It’s not going to read your vitals properly while in the ice,” she explained simply. “We need to get your core temperature down as quickly as we can. If you’d been in there much longer, we’d have to worry about organ failure."

Grace glared at her from where he was lingering over the doc’s shoulder.

That was a first. Usually, it was the other way around. He was really pissed.

Following the little beep the device let out, the thermometer was removed. “105°F,” she read aloud.

Hope winced. Okay, so that was bad. It made sense why Grace looked like he wanted to wring her neck.

Her head dropped back as she closed her eyes, resting on the uncomfortable edge of plastic. Even before she set foot in the suit, she’d been tired; now, her limbs felt like they were weighed down with bricks. The effort of keeping her head up strained at her neck, exhausting the muscles with the effort.

A cool hand scooped under her skull, lifting it long enough to transfer a towel beneath and provide some cushion against the plastic. “Hey, eyes open,” Grace ordered as he gently laid her head back down. “We need to make sure you don’t pass out.”

“You’re overreacting,” she mumbled. Her tongue felt thick.

“You’re literally slurring,” he snapped back.

Tiredly, she opened her eyes. He was crouched next to the tub, lingering close by. One of his arms was resting on the edge near her head. His sweater was discarded, leaving him in a black t-shirt that had a white line across the chest—she couldn’t even focus enough to read what it said, but she had no doubt it was something science related.

“Am not,” she denied. Thankfully, her body didn’t betray her, and the words came out clear.

Grace just shook his head. “You’re insane. You’re the cautious one, remember? Don’t do that again.”

Hope smirked—it was small, barely an uptick at the corner of her mouth. “That’s my line.” Then, she lifted her hand out of the water, sloshing water and ice cubes around, and raised her pinky. “Pinky swear; I’ll leave the stupid decisions to you.”

“Now I know you’ve got brain damage,” Grace snorted. Hope, asking for a pinky promise? The world really was coming to an end. But he looped his finger around hers, nonetheless. “Reckless, not stupid.”

“Uh-huh,” she mumbled, closing her eyes again. With his finger still hooked around hers, Grace shook her hand in a silent reminder. She grunted as she opened her eyes again.

Grace lifted the thermometer up. “Time to check again.”

Several of the crew lingered around, but there was a solid blockade of Russians around where Hope was recovering. No one else was permitted to come closer. Grace and the doc were the only ones who even laid eyes on the Chief Engineer. Whether it was to preserve her privacy or to keep them out of the way, it wasn’t clear. Hope was grateful all the same. Being made a spectacle was the last thing she wanted.

When she started to shiver several minutes later, she was removed from the ice. They didn’t want to leave her in too long and overshoot into hypothermia, but if she started to shiver her body would actually fight to raise her temperature back up.

Ice scattered across the floor as Grace helped hoist her up from the tub, ignoring the way water immediately soaked his pants and shirt. With no hesitation, the doc lifted the back of Hope’s soaked shirt, grabbed the adhesive bio monitor, and pulled.

The engineer yelped as the pads were torn off of her skin like a wax strip, leaping away from the woman out of natural reaction. Her nails dug momentarily into Grace’s bare forearm. “What the hell was that for?”

“What? Better it was quick,” she shrugged. “You need fluids. Go sit, we’ll start an IV. There’s a dry change of clothes.”

Hope wobbled on her feet as she looked over to where a stack of fresh coveralls waited—she could even see the peek of an undershirt among the fabric, likely also hiding fresh undergarments. Grace caught her arm, keeping her balanced long enough to guide her over to where a study chair—though still just a metal fold-out one—had been brought over.

“Here, sit.” She was still shivering.

Once her butt hit the chair, a thick towel was wrapped around her shoulders, and another was used to rapidly dry her arms and legs. Hope watched as Grace knelt in front of her to dry all the way down to her feet. His face was pinched with a look of concentration. There were little speckles of water on his glasses.

The longer she was out of the ice, the worse her trembles became. It was beyond shivering at this point.

She wasn’t surprised that Grace noticed it immediately.

“Are you too cold?”

His hands returned to the towel across her shoulders, pressing it down against her arms before he started to rub them. The wide press of his palm travelled from her arms to her back, trying to create friction that would warm her. The wet press of her shirt perpetuated the chill against her skin from the ice bath.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “Both. My body can’t decide. I don’t know why I’m shaking.”

He nodded. “You’re in shock.”

She wanted to disagree; she knew what shock felt like. She’d gone through shock before. Except, this was different. This wasn’t a mental or emotional shock; this was a physical shock. The rapid swing of temperatures had pushed her to the limit she flirted with constantly.

In a rare occurrence, Grace was the same height as her. Green eyes caught blue ones as he leveled himself in front of her.

A part of her expected him to scold her again. Instead, he grinned. “That was awesome to watch. Terrifying. But awesome.”

~

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[bold-writing]

can you tag ur stuff as ‘x reader’

My stories are x Original Female Character stories. I don't want to upset people with incorrectly tagging. OC/ OFC/ OMC and reader are very different categories. I've seen that complaint on other posts when someone uses the x reader tag just to get more traffic to their content.

[bold-writing]

Memento Vivere || 36 || Sleeping Arrangements

Ryland Grace/Original Female Character

General Content Warnings: swearing, nudity, mature themes, graphic description.

Read it on AO3

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~36~

Once her model was completely finished, with Grace’s help getting it stood up properly for them to use, Hope excused herself back inside the ship to eat and freshen up. If she was able to smell herself, it was well past time for a shower. Grace was polite enough not to say anything.

Armando handed her an egg, cheese and sausage mixture when she entered the dorm. It was room temperature but not actually heated; she scarfed down the dish without really tasting it. The arms waved and wiggled until she took the cup of water as well; she felt like she was being stared down by the camera as she downed that, too.

The medical bot took its job very seriously.

Knowing Grace was outside, she stripped down in the dorm and let the robot snatch her clothes away to be cleaned before she even bothered stepping into the small bathroom cubicle.

It was a strange relief to have open privacy. When they were both on board, they were forced into close quarters. Even if they weren’t in the same room, it only took a few lengthy strides to accidentally walk in on the other person. Knowing their counterpart was with Rocky, with a sealed airlock door between them, gave that small reprieve.

Careful with her water usage, she stood in the small space as she scrubbed at her hair and skin. The ‘bathroom’ rapidly warmed, the smell of the antiseptic soak saturating the air. Water and suds rushed down through the grates, collected by the water recycling system.

Smack nicks and cuts on her hands from working on the model stung with the soap, but it was a familiar feeling that she brushed aside. It was a common part of her everyday job that her hands got cut or burned depending on the equipment she was working with—regardless of caution, it was inevitable.

Hope used the last minute of water to rinse her hair as thoroughly as possible. Once the time was up and the water cut off, she sat on the floor and laid her forehead on one of her raised knees, wet curls of hair hanging down her back. The warmth lingered in the room, but her skin cooled rapidly.

Her back ached, her hands stung, there was a pressure in her neck like it needed to crack, and the improper lighting in the tunnel had given her a headache directly behind her eyes.

She was tired.

Not her usual tired. Not a fatigue from lack of sleep—though, that was there, too—but a weariness about their current situation. The mission. Ryland’s amnesia and Stratt’s involvement. The pressure of knowing Erid’s survival was also dependant on finding a solution.

This was so much more than she signed up for. If only Stratt had known the many things she could have used to hang over Hope’s head.

Regardless of how long they’d been in the Tau Ceti system, Hope caught herself still thinking ‘when we go home’ or ‘when I tell them’. She had to mentally correct herself. So many experiences, especially with Rocky, automatically brought up the natural desire to go to the people she used to surround herself with and tell them everything.

The world would learn, but it wouldn’t be directly from them. Maybe, if they rationed their food, they’d live long enough for the Beetles to reach Earth. But they’d starve to death eventually. Floating in a system 11.9 lightyears from home, their fuel long burned up.

But that was a concern for another time.

She cracked her knuckles out of pure habit before hoisting herself up from the floor. Her vision swam for a moment as the blood rushed to her head, temporarily worsening the headache behind her eyes. After wringing as much water out of her hair as possible, she snagged one of the towels from the overhead compartments.

The dorm’s air was significantly cooler, but she had the forethought to set out fresh clothes beforehand. Ignoring her flight suits, she selected another pair of cargo pants and one of the white NASA hoodies. It was deliberately oversized, so her hands were covered by the sleeves and the hood hung low enough to obstruct her vision—honestly, it wasn’t hard for regular hoodies to be oversized on her.

Her damp hair, left down after she brushed it, rapidly dampened the material.

As she pulled on her shoes again, she looked forlornly at her bed.

She was tempted to ask Armando for a coffee but, considering their limited supply, she didn’t want to go through it too quickly. This wasn’t the Ganzu, where someone was constantly restocking her supply without her ever needing to ask.

Self-control.

Reluctantly.

Before she headed back out to the tunnel, she wandered through the ship to double-check everything was still running well—she diligently ignored the mess Grace had all over the lab after he was left alone in the ship earlier. The last room she went to is the control room, where no alerts or concerns had come up on the monitors.

The outer airlock door was still propped open, so she released the inner door with a hiss of the hydraulics before immediately sealing it behind her again.

The first thing she heard when she stepped through the outer door was a very girlish, high-pitched moan.

“Why is a schoolteacher in space?” a female voice continued in what could only be described as sensually.

Hope stood in the doorway, jaw hanging open, as Grace frantically tapped at the keyboard of the laptop, trying to silence the moaning voice. He was sitting where she had been while talking with Rocky earlier, leaving the two side-by-side with only xenonite separating them. “Nope. Nope. No need to even continue, nope.” She could see the pink of his cheeks even across the tunnel.

“But I’m not allowed to swear in front of him?” she spoke up but stayed standing where she was. Obviously, he hadn’t heard the door open.

Grace’s head snapped up so fast that back of his skull connected with the xenonite wall with a dull thud. It made Rocky jump. “Hope! Oh, my gosh, no! That’s not—no!” His blush spread more rapidly until his ears and neck were just as rosy as the rest of his face. “They’re audio files! Voice files! For Rocky!”

Hope crouched in the doorway of the airlock, elbows resting on her knees, and cocked her head. Well, good to know he wasn’t watching some very themed porn while Rocky was right beside him—teaching him human culture, indeed—but his reaction was too much to pass up.

Maybe it was a tad bit cruel, but the way Grace got flustered and twitchy warmed something in her chest.

“You want Rocky to moan for you?” she asked.

“NO!” Grace nearly exploded, throwing his hands out like it would ward off her words, before they came back to slap over his face in mortification. Glasses askew and now smudged with fingerprints, he wanted to crawl through the xenonite and take his chances with the Eridian atmosphere. Honestly, he just might—his face definitely felt like it was the temperature of the damn sun.

Hope watched it all with a slowly growing smile; though, there was a small bubble of regret at how mortified the man looked.

Rocky looked between the two humans, confused. Strange human customs. Strange human words.

Hope was crouched in the doorway like a predator. Did that make Grace her prey?

Silently, she started to laugh before she hopped down into the tunnel and made her way over to the two. Grace was muttering to himself, muffled against his hands. His ears were still bright red. He was sitting with crossed legs, the laptop across his thighs, but had drawn his knees up like he wanted to shrivel up and disappear.

She waved a greeting to Rocky before she hooked her finger in the cuff of his shirt sleeve and used that leverage to pull one of his hands back. One rosy cheek and clear blue eye became visible. “Relax, Dr. Grace. I was joking.”

He scowled at her, peeking through his fingers. “You’re going to give me a brain aneurism.”

She smirked. “Nah, if that was going to happen you wouldn’t have survived the Ganzu!”

With his hands still covering his face, it gave her the chance to snag the computer and turn it around to see what he was doing. They really did have any file they could dream of onboard, so having vocal analysis of people from back on Earth wasn’t that surprising. The computer basically used those vocals to read out Rocky’s translated comments, no different than text-to-voice while driving.

“Got sick of reading the screen, huh?”

He was still glaring at her.

Rocky could probably hear how fast his heart was going in his chest.

Grace looked her over for a moment as she was reading the screen. For once, she’d left her hair down. It hung over her shoulder in a damp tail, darkening the white fabric of her hoodie. The light in the tunnel made the silver hair at her temples shine.

He snatched the computer back from her—she was still smiling in amusement, but it looked like she was trying to curb it.

“Sit down,” he ordered, pointing at the other section of xenonite ‘bench’ on their side. It would put her a bit lower than Grace and Rocky, but that way she wouldn’t be far. “We’re helping Rocky pick his voice!”

Hope conceded and plopped down on the warm xenonite. To make herself comfortable, she turned her back to the section behind her, facing Grace, and pulled her hood up to cushion the back of her skull. Kicking off her shoes, she lifted her feet to press them against the outside of Grace’s thigh.

Clearing his throat, Grace played the next voice.

The same question, which Rocky must have asked right before they started this little experiment, came through again. This time, with a slight lisp and a British accent, “Why is a schoolteacher in space?”

Grace immediately started to laugh.

“What’s so funny, question?”

Crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back, Hope made herself as comfortable as possible. She had a feeling they were going to be there for a while.

Grace fidgeted a lot, constantly moving around and shifting positions as he ran through the many vocal options they had. He even played one of Meryl Streep reading the question aloud—which then brought on the two looking up celebrity vocals to see if any of them fit Rocky, or just for a laugh at how much it did not suit him. Hope had to hide her laughter in her hood when he tried Arnold Schwarzenegger.

When he played one with a thick, French accent even Rocky shook himself out in a ‘no’. It was something he’d picked up from them; nodding or shaking their heads to convey yes and no. Except, for Rocky, it was his entire body.

Eventually, Grace had turned until his legs were lying alongside Hope’s, her sock covered feet pressed into his ribs as she leaned her arm on his shins.

Rocky, too, moved frequently. He was constantly climbing from one side to the other, keeping Grace and the computer in his ‘sights’. The screen was useless to him, he couldn’t actually see what was on it, but he wanted to be included in the whole thing.

Afterall, it was for his voice.

Finally, the voice that came from the speakers was a gentle, friendly one. A higher tone, like someone who always spoke with enthusiasm.

Rocky immediately perked up, body shaking with excitement as he made happy trilling sounds. Grace, too, raised his hands as he looked over to the Eridian. “That’s not bad,” he declared. When he looked at Hope, she was watching Rocky’s little happy dance fondly.

“I like!” Rocky expression, the voice translating automatically.

“All right!” Grace cheered, clapping his hands before he, carefully, disentangled his limbs from Hope’s and propped himself back up so he was sitting.

Hope had barely moved the entire time, mostly just to shift when her butt started to go numb. But she pulled her hood down and pulled her feet in closer to herself to be out of Grace’s way.

“And, to answer your question, I have no idea what I’m doing in space. I don’t remember.”

Rocky gave a gentle note of sympathy. “Is okay. Grace find out when Grace go home.”

Silently, the two humans shared a look over the laptop. The light caught his glasses, creating a glare that prevented Hope from truly meeting his eyes. Without words, they made a split-second agreement that Rocky didn’t need to know about their fate.

For now, let him believe they would all go home and save their stars.

Rocky turned to Hope. “Hope remembers, question?”

“Yea, I remember,” she answered calmly.

Grace, too, perked up. His memories hadn’t returned to a point that he remembered Hope being on the mission roster, as far back as he could remember Stratt was still searching for the perfect crew that could do the job, be astronauts, and were okay with, you know, dying. It came to mind often, wondering when Hope had gone from Chief Engineer of the Project to an onboard Backup Pilot/Engineer/Scientist.

“Why are you here?” he asked quietly before he could withhold the thought.

She didn’t look at him for a second. When she did, a mask he’d seen her wear on the Ganzu had slid into place. One that she used to keep people at bay, guarding herself with an armour no one else could see. The change was uncomfortable. Like watching the light leave someone’s eyes.

“Because I’m stubborn,” she answered. “And this is my ship. If anyone was going to see it through this mission, it’s me.”

No further elaboration was offered. It was a deflection; they both knew it.

She brought her legs back over the side of the xenonite shelf to grab her runners and slip them on.

Grace watched her move. Not the usual fluid, easy movements. Too quick and sporadic.

One question too far.

Hope stood up first, walking over to the completed solar model. Grace had tried to touch it earlier and of course knocked one of the orbs loose. Without missing a beat, she just calmly put the little sphere back in place and threaded the wires to hold it again.

Grace gently placed the laptop on the table, giving a small sigh before he looked back over to Rocky. The Eridian also seemed to realize that Hope was shut off about the topic, making a curious sound as he looked between Hope and Grace.

“We need sleep,” he finally declared.

“No understand word.”

“Sleep?” Hope asked, surprised. Of all the things they had gone over, they’d forgotten to cover sleep?

Grace looked around, trying to figure out how to show someone sleep. “Uh, just, you go like this.” And proceeded to drop his head onto the table next to the computer with an audible thunk, cheek smooshed into the surface as he faced Rocky.

Rocky immediately panicked. “Died? Is died? Died? No, no, no, no, no, no—”

“No, Rock, not died,” Hope assured. “Resting. Allowing the body time to restore itself.”

“We lay here for 29,000 seconds and then,” Grace continued, raising back up off the table as he took a long inhale, stretching out his arms like someone getting out of bed in the morning. “We wake up!”

“Ohh, understand,” the Eridian confirmed. “We call this—” The following sound was a low one. To Hope, it sounded more like a distant vibration.

Grace diligently added it to the computer program. “Okay, here we go. Sleeeeep.” When he stepped back from the computer, he tried to bow to Rocky dramatically as he said, “Goodnight, sir,” but tripped over his own feet and nearly crashed into the system model, before Hope caught his shirt and steered him away.

“I watch Grace Hope sleep!” Rocky declared.

Hope cocked her head. Was that a mix-up in translation?

Grace seemed to have the same feeling. “No, that’s fine. That’s a little weird.” He fiddled with the model for a second, before he caught Hope’s warning look of ‘stop touching that’ and turned to continue back toward the airlock. “We’ll be good. Goodnight!” He threw one last wave over his shoulder, Hope following behind him slightly slower.

Rocky, however, grew panicked. “Not safe! Eridians must watch sleep!”

That made Hope pause, glancing back at the small rock spider. “What do you mean not safe?” she asked quietly. He was authentically afraid to know that they would be sleeping where he couldn’t see. He must not be able to see as far as the dorm of the ship from his place in the tunnel, otherwise he would have been able to see them lying down before.

He fiddled his fingers for a moment, trying to compose the right thing to say. “Rocky watch crew many days. Crew not wake up.”

Grace froze, still a few meters shy of the door. He slowly turned around.

Hope was still near the xenonite, but she’d approached Rocky when he started to explain. Now, her hand was pressed to the wall, just as it had when they’d first made contact through the clear panels. Rocky mirrored her, letting out a low, sad trill.

She glanced back at him over her shoulder, a frown already pinching her features.

“We could bring the cots out here,” she started. “Not like the xenonite is less forgiving than the metal bunks.”

Grace’s shoulders dropped. How could he possibly disagree after hearing what Rocky went through?

It took more manoeuvring than he wanted, and more trips back and forth than either preferred, but they finally had the basics to sleep in the tunnel. They cots, a blanket and pillow, and a pouch of water that Armando absolutely refused to let them leave without. The robot didn’t seem to like that the two spent so much time outside the ship. Its job was to care for them, but they were never around.

Then came the challenge of figuring out how they were going to make it work.

The two just really wanted to lie down and sleep, both were feeling the heavy effect of exhaustion on their bodies. They tended to push the limits as is, but they hadn’t expected to spend so many hours going through vocals for Rocky. Hope’s headache was back with a vengeance.

Rocky didn’t want them too far from the wall, which meant basically anywhere that he didn’t have direct access to them. So, the floor of the tunnel was out of the question.

Grace, obviously taller and needing more space, was able to force his cot into one of the larger divots of xenonite. It basically meant he’d be encased in it from all sides except his feet, letting Rocky crawl over and around him so he could watch the man sleep.

Except, that was the only place big enough to fit one of their cots.

Hope, sitting on her cot on the floor, looked over the pockets that she knew she could fit and that would satisfy Rocky. She could just lay down where she’d been while they were going through the vocals, but it was too narrow to include her cot. Or she could fold it in half and curl up on one of the higher sections that was wider, just short. Grace would never fit.

Well, it’s not like she hadn’t slept straight on the floor already.

Reaching back, she tested how flexible the cot was. It bent fairly well, but it was very unlikely that it would fold clean in half. There was somewhat stiff foam on the inside and forcing it past a certain point just guaranteed that it would be damaged.

And she did not want to steal the unused ones from Yáo and Ilyukhina’s bunks. Something about them having died there made touching them feel wrong.

So, instead, she left her cot behind and returned to the shelf she’d used before. She folded the blanket she brought with her, the narrow way so it retained its length, and placed it where she’d sleep. Not that it was cold enough to really need the blanket; she’d much prefer using it as a bit of cushioning instead.

“No way you’re going to sleep there,” Grace deadpanned once he saw what she was doing. “You’ll be crippled by the time you wake up!”

She waved him off, already moving to sit on the edge of the shelf to remove her shoes. “I have slept in way worse places than this, I’ll be fine.”

“You won’t be comfortable there,” he insisted. “You sleep all curled up; that’s way too narrow!”

Hope turned to him, surprised. True, she’d been caught by Grace on multiple occasions sleeping in strange, cramped places—the strangest one being under his desk—but she didn’t think he’d bother taking into account that she wasn’t comfortable lying flat. Her body always tended to curl up, usually on her side.

“Unless you want to switch places, this is basically the only option.”

Grace pinched his lips together, clearly unhappy with the arrangement.

“What matter, question?”

“Hope can’t sleep there, she won’t be comfortable,” Grace declared flat out.

“You’re being dramatic! I’ll be fine! If it’s that bad, we’ll just figure something else out tomorrow.”

Rocky rolled along his side of the wall, closer to Hope. He inspected the area she’d chosen, her blanket laid across it. At most, it was the width of her body while lying flat on her back. If she happened to roll while she was asleep—unlikely, but possible—she’d crash right down onto the tunnel floor.

“Grace Hope share,” Rocky declared.

Both humans turned to look at him, eyes wide.

“Sorry, what?” Hope demanded first.

“Uh, humans don’t…we don’t casually do that. There’s—there’s a meaning to that,” Grace floundered, trying to explain to Rocky without getting right into it.

“That’s mate behaviour,” Hope stated bluntly. Grace made a squeaking sound. “Mates sleep that close together. Grace and I are friends; crewmates, but not mates.”

He perked up, carapace rising a bit. He reminded Hope of a puppy alerting to a word it knew. “There is purpose to sleep in proximity? Why only mates?”

Oh, crap, they’d opened that can of worms again.

Hope put her foot down on the matter. “Nope! I am too tired to have this discussion, and it’ll take more time to figure out an alternative! We can circle back to this tomorrow. You sleep there, I’ll sleep here. I give you full authority to say ‘I told you so’ if I complain tomorrow. We’ll figure it out when we’re not sleep deprived. Deal?”

Grace still didn’t look happy on the matter of sleeping arrangements, but he did look eternally grateful to not have to explain the sleeping patterns of human mates to Rocky. For now. She’d bought them time, but he was a persistent alien. He’d ask again.

“Fine, deal,” he agreed. But he still shoved her cot up as close to the wall as possible, right under where she’d sleep, just in case she rolled. “I also get to say I told you so if I wake up and you’re on the floor.”

“Deal.”

“Deal.”

~

Previous || Next

[bold-writing]

Memento Vivere || 35 || Red Berries

Ryland Grace/Original Female Character

General Content Warnings: swearing, nudity, mature themes, graphic description.

A/N: Happy 4th of July to my American readers!

Read it on AO3

Previous || Next

~ 35 ~

Grace found them halfway through their models.

Hope was still sitting on the floor but had adjusted from cross-legged to one knee bent up and her arm resting on it—the woman was a living embodiment of a pretzel. She twisted to look back at him as he opened the inner airlock, letting himself into the tunnel. His hair was still wet from his shower, the strands at the back beginning to curl slightly. His glasses were perched on his nose, wearing a snug sweater with multicoloured stripes that Hope had seen several times on the Ganzu. His usual red flight suit was still tied around his hips.

Rocky sang excitedly once he saw Grace, doing his happy little dance as he waved at the man. Though, this time, he was hanging upside down as he worked on his model.

Grace smiled and waved back. “Hey, Rocky!”

Hope greeted him with a mock-salute, two fingers tapping her forehead.

“What’s this?” he asked immediately, attention zeroing in on the twists of metal and xenonite sitting around Hope. Rocky had a similar setup, though it was smaller in scale.

“We’re making models of Tau Ceti’s system. Then, we can start on a plan,” she explained easily, pointing to the metal ball that represented the star. “Rocky’s way ahead of me.” The look she gave the other mechanic was almost forlorn.

“You’re missing the fancy tools, huh?”

She sighed, tipping her head back. “I was spoiled. Now, I’m in space.”

Grace smiled, breathing out a laugh as he placed his hands on his hips. “Not too shabby. It’s looking good—for odds and ends.”

She lifted up the xenonite ‘Tai Ceti’. “Rocky’s been helping.” It was shinier than the scraps around her from their ship.

But she’d done quite the job already. A half-formed spiral was sitting in front of her, where she’d been meticulously bending the metal, winding it through the sphere’s that Rocky had given to her. She didn’t weld any of them in place, yet. She needed to make sure they had everything in the right place before fixing them in.

It was hard to make sure it was accurate while it was still only partially built.

“Need a hand?” he asked, motioning to the debris around her.

“I got this,” she denied, using a pair of pliers to continue bending. “Go do science sh--…stuff.” Grace clocked her with a look over his shoulder. He’d caught the near slip. She just shrugged, hands going palm up as though to ask ‘what?’.

He just shook his head, snagging the laptop from where she was sitting to take his usual place at his desk. Back to the class of one.

“Alright, Rock, let’s have a science lesson. See if we’re on the same page!”

Of course, he had to first explain what ‘on the same page’ meant.

Grace’s memory had returned where it was most important. Without going into detail that would confuse the alien, he explained their experience and knowledge about the Petrova line, Venus, Astrophage, and the rate in which their sun was dimming.

Hope filled in where his memory was patchy, but for the most part he was able to recount the important scientific parts without issue. Only small details like the timelines still alluded him.

“Hope was one of the ones who built the probe that took our first sample of the Petrova line, bringing it back to Earth so we could study it.”

Said woman was hunched forward, her spine curving with the posture, as she soldered two arcs of metal together to continue the spiral of the model.

“Part of a team,” she corrected, not even looking away from her work. “Grace was the one who first studied and named Astrophage,” she tacked on a moment later.

“Grace Hope leaders on Earth?”

Grace rapidly shook his head. Straightening up, Hope actually looked appalled. “No, we’re not leaders. But we’re good at what we do,” she explained. “Our planet has many leaders; we’re definitely not those.”

“But we were asked by those leaders to help when they found out the sun was dimming,” he continued.

Hope snorted. “Asked. Sure.”

He couldn’t argue that. Stratt literally raced him toward his bike when he was trying to leave the conversation. Then Carl popped up with an SUV and he was pretty sure he’d have been manhandled into the vehicle if he’d tried to say no.

It had likely come up in conversation before his amnesia, but he actually wasn’t sure how Hope was pulled into everything the first time. He knew how she came to be on the Ganzu, but the ArcLight probe was a different matter.

Hope manoeuvred the model off of her legs, where it had been resting while she worked. Grace noticed the movement and stood up, immediately offering her a hand. She took it without hesitation, letting him hoist her up off of her butt. Taking a moment to shake the feeling back into her legs, she looked down at the model and considered how best to mount it to stand it up.

Rocky was basically already finished with his. His use of xenonite meant that he was able to knit his way along, barely needing to pause his work.

She and Grace took a moment to inspect her work so far. Hope tipped her head, frowning. “We’re going to need a ladder,” she concluded, realizing how tall the model will be. It would be over Grace’s head, so she had almost no chance of finishing it without something to elevate her.

“Do…we have those just lying around?” he wondered.

“Yea, they’re retractable ones, compact. Stored in the storage room off the dorm.” Twisting her back to get a small pop from her spine, relieving the uncomfortable pressure that had started to accumulate in her lower back as she was sitting, she motioned toward the airlock. “I’ll go grab it. I need some other tools anyway.”

Grace gave her a quick thumbs up, turning back to the translator as Rocky asked where she was going.

“She’s just getting more supplies to finish the model,” he answered for her.

“Rocky help, statement.”

“We’ll take all the help we can get, but she’ll just be right back. We can’t scale the walls like you, so we need a ladder to reach the tallest part of the model.” Rocky had installed hand and foot holds on his side of the tunnel, so he could easily crawl his way around to reach the entirety of his model. It also meant he was able to crawl easily around the xenonite wall.

“Need anything while I’m inside?” Hope called back from the airlock before she shut it.

The inner door was basically always left open, now, and they would open and close the outer door whenever they were going in or out of the tunnel. No concerns had arisen through their many trips, so the two didn’t feel as unsure about leaving the door between ship and tunnel open for at least short periods of time.

Hope absolutely refused to just leave it open indefinitely, though.

“I’m good!”

She disappeared inside the Hail Mary without another word.

Grace looked back over to Rocky.

He understood science, but he still lacked the more in-depth understanding. There were Eridian scientists that had made the journey as well, but they hadn’t made it. From what Grace could get from Rocky, it proved that they had incredibly similar scientific studies.

They’d have time to dissect more of that later.

Each time Grace had hours with Rocky in the tunnel, their conversations often veered back to science. Biology was a big one. Rocky was fascinated by him and Hope, and Grace wanted to know everything there was to Eridian biology. This was a living rock; he wanted to understand how that was possible!

When he reiterated what he’d learned about Rocky so far, Hope had referred to him as a ‘closed circuit’. Nothing went to waste for Eridians; every process in their body was meant to power them. Which, when you live at a toasty 305 degrees, makes sense.

Eridians are steam powered!

From a biology standpoint, Grace understood how all the systems worked. He knew the science and logic behind how everything worked.

But what made Rocky even cooler was that Hope understood those systems. Not because he’d given her lessons on biology and microbiology for the mission; because Eridians worked like a machine. From an engineering standpoint, it made perfect sense to her.

Grace and Rocky had slid slightly off topic by the time Hope returned. The compact ladder was hooked over one shoulder, and she was carrying another tote bag, likely with more tools and supplies to continue on the model.

When discussing the Petrova line, and how it became visible to them through the use of IR light, Rocky inquired about their ability to see.

They’d talked about Rocky’s particular echolocation, but not their human visual spectrum.

Rocky referred to it as ‘hearing’ light.

“Yes, we hear light.” Grace motioned to his eyes. “These are called eyes. They can focus and detect light. It sends information to our brain.”

“Light gives information about room, question?”

“Yes, light gives humans information like sound gives you information.”

Hope placed the ladder off to the side, leaning against the curved section of the tunnel. “Humans have multiple senses that allow us to tell what’s around us. We can still hear and feel. But without light, we can’t understand the room around us.”

“You hear space? You hear stars, planets, asteroids, question?”

“Yes.”

“Amaze!”

“How do you hear sound?” Grace asked. He’d been wondering that since he figured out Rocky’s echolocation.

Rocky motions to his arms and carapace. “Everywhere. Tiny receptors on outer shell. All report back to brain. Like touch.”

Rocky was basically a living microphone. No wonder they were so smart, their brain’s ability to process information was far superior to a human’s. “We can’t hear as well as you,” Hope offered as she walked back over to her model.

Grace, leaning forward with his elbows braced on in knees in rapt attention, nodded. “If we didn’t have light, we’d only be able to hear you talk.”

Rocky tapped at the xenonite separating them. “Hear Rocky through wall.” Referring to their ability to see through the wall.

“But that wall is different. Light passed through this one.” Grace pointed at the external wall of the tunnel. “We can’t see through that one.”

Rocky bounced on the spot, chittering excitedly. “Amaze. I gave many choices for wall when first build. You chose this because light pass through, question?”

“That’s why there were so many!” Hope exclaimed, pointing over at him. “I was wondering why there were so many different panels.” The thought had honestly been bothering her she thought back to the original wall.

Rocky laughed. “Amaze. Rocky gave choices for different qualities of sound. Never thought of light.” He turned on the spot, something they’d come to realize he did when he was thinking. “Hope Grace hear the same, question?”

Grace winced while Hope laughed. “No, we don’t. I have much better eyesight than Grace.”

The scientist adjusted the glasses perched on his nose. “These? They’re my glasses. The lenses in them allow me to see better. My sight isn’t as good up close, so I wear these. Hope’s eyes work perfectly, that’s why she doesn’t wear them.”

“Female hears better than male, question?”

“Yes!” Hope barked immediately, grinning. Grace flushed, chucking one of the xenonite spheres at her. It wasn’t like he was worried it would break. She caught it with no hesitation, still smiling.

It was a comparison Rocky asked often. Once he came to learn humans had ‘male’ and ‘female’, whenever a difference came up between the two, he often asked if it was because of the gender difference. Since they knew he could ‘see’ through their clothes, he been remarkably polite so far by not asking about those differences.

As Hope propped up the model, only missing two of the spirals she had yet to finish, she paused a moment to face the Eridian. “I have a question, Rocky. Can you hear us? For example; can you hear our heart?” She brought a loose fist in front of her chest and started to clench it rhythmically, mimicking the pulse of a human heart.

Rocky tried to copy the movement Hope was doing with her hand, but the structure of his hands meant his three fingers came together like he was trying to pinch something, instead.

“Not understand word.”

“Heart,” Grace elaborated. “It’s the organ in our chest that pumps blood throughout our body. It’s a muscle, and it contracts to move the blood.” He tapped his sternum, over his heart. “Without our heart, we would die.”

The sound he made was a low, long one. It wasn’t sad, but there was a weight to it. Acknowledging the importance of that one specific organ. “Yes. Rocky hear heart.”

With two of his hands, he reached out with an extended finger and tapped on the xenonite. It wasn’t the usual ‘tap, tap, tap’ he did when he was getting their attention. This one was rhythmic. The hand closer to Hope was slightly faster, though the pattern was identical to the one nearer to Grace.

He was tapping out their heartbeats.

Though, Rocky had them beat. Technically, as he and Grace dove into the science behind their species, he'd revealed that he had the equivalent of five hearts. One for each of his limbs, where it carries mercury-based blood throughout his system—he also had two circulatory systems, trumping them there, too.

“Rocky hear Grace Hope breathe,” he continued. “Rocky knows Grace Hope safe.”

Hope’s heart ached all over again. Knowing that Rocky had watched his crew die, just go to sleep and never wake up, woke a pain deep in her heart. They could have been friends of his, possibly even family—they hadn’t had the heart to ask.

She reached out to tap her finger across from his. “We’re safe, Rock.”

“Hope won’t let anything happen so long as she’s around,” Grace assured. “She’s stubborn like that.”

She shot a glance at him over her shoulder. “Considering how reckless you are, I have to compensate!”

“What mean?”

“Reckless; he does something without thinking. Like taking off his helmet without testing the air.” Grace flinched, though there was a small upturn of his lips. Hope had definitely given him her opinion of his actions once everything had calmed down, snapping at him that it would have taken only a few minutes to be certain the air was breathable.

Rocky defended the man. “Air was safe! Rocky used human air in tunnel!”

“But we didn’t know that. And we could have been certain before just taking off our helmets. Humans are cautious, we take care to avoid things that could be dangerous for us.”

It was the scientist in Grace that prompted him to shrug his shoulders. “I was eating the red berries,” he brushed off.

“Not understand.”

Hope sighed softly. “It’s a phrase. It basically means you take the risk so others around you know that it’s safe.”

“This is what scientists on Earth do?”

“It’s what Grace does.”

~

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[bold-writing]

Memento Vivere || 34 || Question?

Ryland Grace/Original Female Character

General Content Warnings: swearing, nudity, mature themes, graphic description.

A/N: To my fellow Canadians; Happy Canada Day!

Read it on AO3

Previous || Next

~34~

“So, uhh, we met an alien!”

They decided it was time to start properly documenting their work on the Astrophage7 progress. Of course, for Grace that meant explaining everything that had happened thus far—mainly focusing on Rocky. They hadn’t learned anything new about Astrophage, but they had learned there were other planets with life that had been affected by it.

The first log they made was to explain what had happened, as far as they were aware, to Yao and Ilyukhina. Grace did most of the talking, keeping it extremely brief as he explained how he had found them and how he had given them the best funeral he was capable of while on an interstellar ship. Hope summarized what the medical file said regarding her own coma struggles, as Grace sat quietly off to the side.

The next important piece of information to share was their new friend.

“We’ve been learning to communicate. You know, enough to order at restaurants,” he explained, turning the laptop contraption they’d created around to face toward the camera. Hope was in the background, wiring a new microphone after Grace had accidentally yanked on the last one in a bout of excitement. He was reapplying the layers of tape he used to keep the tech together. “This atmosphere would kill him and his would kill us. But I like to keep a wall up in my relationships anyways,” he ended with a shrug.

Hope scoffed. “That clearly doesn’t translate to your belongings because your shit is literally everywhere. Can you keep a wall up around that?” She leaned back to look at the camera, raising an eyebrow.

Grace twisted to look at her. “We talked about the language.”

“Ah. You said I couldn’t swear in front of Rocky, you said nothing about the video logs. Besides, what can they do? Fire me? They’re 11.9 lightyears away.” Without a care, she took a sip of the coffee Armando had brought to her when they came back on board.

It was officially at a point that both surviving humans were able to eat proper food. Hope wasn’t sad to leave behind the coma sludge. It had been good to start, but one very quickly gets tired of slurping down their food. Especially because she had to watch Grace eat actual food—jealousy does tend to fester.

She could live with never seeing him put mustard on dry ramen again, though. He did it in a half-asleep haze the day before, just needing to eat something, but she was horrified.

Grace just shook his head, turning back to the camera. “Anyway; we’re pretty sure he’s a mechanic. He understood a lot of the tools Hope brought out to him, like they were familiar to him. He uses a metal form of xenon; he can basically make anything.” He fumbled with the camera for a moment, moving it so he could show them the metal strip he’d given to Hope. “Look at this! We’re calling it xenonite.”

While he was holding the camera up, he went looking for other things to show.

“And when I can’t understand what he’s saying, which is most of the time, he puts on a little puppet show for me and my tiny brain. He and Hope are ganging up on me, because she usually has a better idea of what he’s talking about, so now I have two mechanics on me about things I don’t understand. And you know what? I don’t mind it. Hope’s less cranky when she has someone who understands her—ow!”

A bright orange wire nut bounced off the back of his head.

“You know I mean that with only respect.”

“Next one’s a socket wrench, Grace.”

With his back to her, he mouthed at the camera ‘see what I mean?’ as he dramatically opened his eyes wide.

Remounting the camera, Grace sat back on the stool as he hid his smile. He couldn’t necessarily say he enjoyed getting pelted with random things, but he was glad to have Hope acting like Hope.

“Anyways, he’s growing on me—at least he’s not growing in me, you know? Which was a concern for a little while. Hope was going to lock me in the airlock and suffocate me if that happened.”

Hope spoke up from behind him, unseen by the camera. “For the betterment of humanity.”

Grace didn’t acknowledge her this time. “His sun is dying, too. So, maybe we can help each other.”

Hope stepped up from behind him. “He’s got very different technology than ours, so we’re hoping they’ve been able to figure out something we can’t.” She looked down at Grace. One of the few times she was taller than him was when he was sitting down. “Maybe he knows something we don’t. We’re still working on getting to a point that we can actually have that discussion.”

He nodded along, crossing his arms as he looked up. “We need to make sure nothing’s lost in translation. Which is difficult, all things considered. Hope used a waveform analyzer on his vocals—”

Hope cut in, realizing where he was going with this. She was now leaning against the desk, only part of her still in frame. “Eridians have the ability to vocalize multiple notes at the same time. So far, the analyzer has been able to distinguish up to five.”

“Honestly, it will take a lot of repetition to pick up their language without the translator,” he commented, resuming his fiddling with the piece of xenonite he’d showed the camera.

“Probably easier for those who are more musically inclined,” she pondered. “Having an ear trained to pick out select notes.”

The two continued to summarize their days so far, explaining everything that had occurred since they each woke up.

Neither mentioned the file Hope had found about Grace’s amnesia.

Hope was sincerely tempted to go off on one of the logs, addressing it specifically to Stratt to air some of her anger at the woman. Except, it wasn’t just Stratt would who be seeing those videos. These were basically the historical documentation that Earth would, hopefully, receive about the Hail Mary and its findings.

There was still a high possibility she’d send back a personal one addressed to Stratt, but there was time yet to decide on what to say.

It felt like a blink that several days had passed since meeting Rocky the Eridian. Their ability to communicate improved daily. Grace and Hope decided to make a bit of a schedule so they could stay with Rocky when he was in the tunnel. Sometimes, they did nothing more than work on their own things while sitting on the other side of the wall.

Knowing that he was alone, they felt it was the least they could do to give him someone to spend time with.

Even when they weren’t actively working on the translator, Hope would sit on the other side of the wall with him, working on her computer or the smaller components of the Hail Mary while Rocky was working on his own devices on his side.

She’d often catch herself just watching what he did, trying to figure out how his tools worked.

It was during one of those situations, only the two of them, when Rocky stopped what he was doing and tapped at the wall. Hope looked up from her tablet to give him her attention, sitting up straighter to show she was listening. She had taken to sitting over the airlock ‘drawer’ that Rocky had installed.

Grace teased her about it being the equivalent to a cat sitting on top of the dryer for warmth.

It kept her close to the wall, and—yes—it was warm. She could easily communicate with Rocky when necessary, and she was able to look over to the nearby computer to see what he said if he spoke to her.

“What that, question?” Rocky asked as he tapped at the panel, pointing at her.

Hope looked down, unsure what he was referring to. She was wearing one of her henley’s and a pair of cargo pants instead of the flight suit. Nothing was on her shirt, and her hair was braided out of the way—finally cut down to an appropriate length—and she hadn’t dropped anything from her pockets.

“What?” she asked, looking around.

Rocky motioned in front of himself, pinching his fingertips together in the vicinity of his ‘chest’ before he pointed at her again. “That. Hang metal. Sings.”

He was hearing her necklace! Hope leaned back to pull the chain from inside her shirt. The titanium links jangled against each other, but it was the rings and recently added charm from Stratt—Hope had been dearly tempted to melt it down when she found Grace’s medical report—that sounded the most when she moved.

She was so accustomed to wearing them, she usually forgot how much sound was actually put out by the necklace.

Lifting it up for Rocky to see, still looped around her neck, the two rings clanged together as the engraved coin swung next to them.

“What mean, question?” he asked, pointing again.

“The necklace?” she asked, tugging on just the chain. “Or the rings?” She tapped her finger against her Iron Ring.

He opened his hand and made a grabbing motion. All of it.

“This is a small chain, a piece of jewellery. It’s called a necklace. It’s a decoration that humans wear. These are rings, we usually wear them on our fingers.” She spoke slowly, making sure he was able to keep up with any new words. As he repeated them, she added them to the translator.

“What purpose, question?” he repeated.

“Humans wear rings for several reasons. Marriage, promises, sentimental, rewards. This,” she held out her Iron Ring. “I was given this when I learned enough Engineering to meet their standards. It reminds us of the values we learn as Engineers.” She bypassed her wedding ring for the one Stratt had given her. “This is a gift from Earth, when I came here to try to save our star.” Finally, she held up the chain. “I made this myself, out of Titanium. It was a way to demonstrate how proficient I am with metal.”

Rocky tipped his body slightly, like when he was thinking. “That one?”

He meant the ring she hadn’t shown. Her gold ring. Even tucked into her shirt, of course he could see it.

“This is a marriage ring,” she explained quietly, holding it up. “When two humans marry, they are promising themselves to each other. They wear rings to represent that promise.”

“Mates!” Rocky declared. That was one of the topics that came up when he was asking about the differences between Hope and Grace. They’d been able to side-step that one for the most part.

“Yes, mates would wear these. Here,” she tapped her left ring finger.

“Not you,” he pointed out. His tone was gentle, quiet. Not quite questioning, but he’s smart. Rocky knows that there’s a reason she doesn’t wear her ‘mate’ ring on the designated finger.

Hope just smiled. It was sad and small. “No. Not me.”

Rocky made a soft, sad sound. Understanding. It wasn’t quite a word, more of a tone that suggested how he was feeling. She noticed how he stroked one of the gems on his lower arm.

He didn’t ask her why she wasn’t wearing her ring properly. It stayed on her necklace instead of the finger she had pointed out. He didn’t ask her why she tucked the necklace away, hiding it beneath her shirt again.

Rocky pointed again. “Hope hurt.”

Her hand had healed enough that she wasn’t wearing anything over the cuts on her knuckles anymore, instead letting the scabs breathe and heal. It hadn’t been a bad laceration, but the constant flexing of the knuckles and movement of the skin meant she split the scabs open regularly.

Grace warned her they were likely to scar if she kept re-opening them.

Her hands, however, was littered with scars. Her career was not one that meant soft hands. Little lines peppered her fingers sporadically from years of getting pinched, clipped, cut, burnt.

Rocky, most likely, was picking up on the rough, raised edges of the scabs.

“I’m okay. They’re almost healed.”

“Hope angry.”

She nodded slowly. He had heard her. “I was. I found out someone on Earth did something bad, and it made me angry. My emotions get the better of me; I acted in anger.”

“Grace fix.”

“He did what he could. My skin just needs to heal, now.” She lifted her hand and wiggled her fingers. The skin didn’t protest the action this time, and all scabs remained in place. “Only minor. It’s okay.”

Rocky shook his body. “Humans too delicate.”

She laughed softly. “I agree. We are engineered horribly.”

Although it was a better topic than the previous one, it was still not a conversation she wanted to continue. So, she pointed to what Rocky had been working on. “What are you making?”

“Tau Ceti,” he answered simply.

It was in pieces right now, but as Hope looked at it, she realized that there were several spheres that must represent the planets and Tau Ceti itself. More strong wires sat aside, curved in varying degrees of arc.

“Hope Grace make model,” he encouraged a moment later. “Need plan, statement.”

She nodded. Her nail tapped against the metal of the laptop. “You’re right. We need to make a plan.”

It’s not as though they were actively delaying it. Understanding Astrophage, the Petrova line, Tau Ceti; they needed to be sure they could understand each other before they dove that far into the science. However, Hope was confident that they had enough vocabulary between them that they could start.

She looked at the time on the computer. Grace had gone inside to take care of himself for a bit. Eat, shower, shave. Hope didn’t think on it much more than that. It was a small ship, considering, so any amount of time the two had privately was appreciated.

Although, both had the habit of looking over their shoulder with the expectation of the other being there. She’d caught herself a couple of times wanting to say something to Grace during her interactions with Rocky.

“Alright,” she agreed, unfolding herself from where she’d been sitting. “Let’s start on a model.”

Unfortunately, she’d been spoiled during the Project’s construction. She was used to having whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted it. If she needed tools, or parts, or materials, she could just go and grab them or ask for them.

It had already been an irritation when she realized she couldn’t patch the hole in the hull like she wanted, it would always be imperfect, but now she had to make-do with spare parts. It would be amazing if she had the ability to make things like Rocky could with his xenonite—and she was sure if she asked him, he’d make her what she needed to build a model of her own.

Thankfully, the lab did have some of what she needed.

She didn’t even need to ask before Rocky was passing over several spheres of xenonite, the same web-like pattern as the little Petrova line he’d sent them in his first container. Her welding gloves were always nearby so she and Grace could remove items from the drawer without burning themselves.

Knowing it was easiest to build from the center, outward, she started with the largest ball to represent Tau Ceti and made her way outward.

Rocky alternated his focus between Hope and the model he was creating. She was sitting on the floor of the tunnel, the laptop still in reach if she needed it, and was carefully bending wires that she’d brought in from her ship. She could use a spiral pattern for the wire, so technically the entire model would be connected.

Obviously, it wouldn’t be to scale. But it gave them a visual.

The jingling of her rings drew Rocky’s attention again.

She wore a ring meant as a promise to her mate, but not in the correct place. She hid it away. Not out of shame…more like she was trying to protect it. Preserve it.

Grace wore no such things.

No necklace. No rings. No promise. Yet, like Tau Ceti and its planets, they gravitated around each other.

~

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[bold-writing]

Memento Vivere || 33 || Thermodynamics

Ryland Grace/Original Female Character

General Content Warnings: swearing, nudity, mature themes, graphic description.

Read it on AO3

Previous || Next

~33~

He wasn’t even gone for four days before their helicopter was setting down onboard the Ganzu once more. They’d barely spent a day in New Zealand, visiting Auckland Prison in order to speak with and acquire Dr. Robert Redell.

Grace couldn’t say he was thrilled about bringing on an embezzling murderer that was convicted of seven counts of homicide to the project, but he had figured out an alternative for their breeding concerns.

Unfortunately, that alternative meant that they needed to pave over a quarter of the Sahara Desert. The black panels, per model, were not as effective as Grace’s. However, his were designed for efficiency. Not scale. The black panels were easy to duplicate and, unfortunately, the Sahara was perfect for the location.

He didn’t like it. It would severely damage the ecology throughout Africa, and likely even Europe. However, as Redell had pointed out, the coming ice age was far worse.

Stratt had liberated Redell from the prison and, temporarily, brought him back with them to the Ganzu. Once they could confirm the production of the black panels, they’d be sent off to be mass produced. During that time, she’d have to deal with the very valid uproar that would come about when they started to destroy the Sahara.

Grace didn’t even wait as he hopped off the helicopter and basically ran away from the others he’d been stuck with for the past 13 hours. He knew that if he’d hung around, Stratt would likely have saddled him with tour duty. He didn’t feel like being shuttled off with Redell for any longer than necessary.

His negligence may have been the cause of the homicides, rather than being an axe-wielding psycho, but that didn’t mean Grace was more inclined to be in the man’s company.

His flippancy toward his actions—past and present—also grated on him.

Instead, he went straight for the lower level.

Hope had been on his thoughts since he left.

Stratt was also acting weird. She was more power-trip-y than usual, glaring down the guard at the prison when he demanded she put aside the taser she brought with her. Grace had to force himself between the two and play peace maker before they also ended up in a prison cell.

But Stratt had conceded and handed over her taser. That was nearly as surprising as her initial power-trip, because Grace couldn’t remember a time when she’s willingly stepped down.

Hope was acting weird. Stratt was acting weird. He didn’t like the timing, and he did not think it was a coincidence.

Dodging the other occupants of the ship, he made his way past the lab and workstation Hope was normally occupying—only stopping long enough to drop off his bag and coat in the lab.

It was empty. The computers were all turned off, no monitors lit up or equipment powered on. If he was lucky, that meant he made it back before they finished with the chamber for the Spin Drives. He’d get to see Hope weld!

Not that he didn’t want to experiment more with the drives—they were an important part of mission equipment. He’d seen her when it came to the more theoretical, planning side of the job. The Engineering side. The Master Technician side was the one he hadn’t gotten the chance to see yet.

He wasn’t involved in ArcLight, so her work there was an unknown for him.

Slightly out of breath, he arrived at Dimitri’s lower level in record time.

Normally, there was a steady flow of movement and workers throughout Dimitri’s denizens. Now, however, there was a large pack of bodies clustered in near the chamber.

Grace went up on his toes for a moment, trying to see who was inside. Not that he’d be able to tell, since whoever was welding would be in a thick suit. His best guess would have to be on the fact that Hope is small, but that’s assuming the other welders brought in were all bigger than her—if they showed up at all.

Hurrying his pace, he walked a wide circle around the majority of the crowd. Everyone was watching the process, it seemed. He wasn’t the only one. Grace wasn’t sure if that made him feel better, or annoyed. She was his friend; he had a reason for wanting to watch her work. Why were they here?

Dimitri spotted him first. “Ah! Dr. Grace! You’ve returned!”

He was nearly yanked through the bodies of people, closer to the front of the crowd. There was actually more open space around the chamber than he’d first assumed. Everyone watching was keeping a good fifteen feet back from the structure. Those closer to the argon chamber were clearly working, monitoring the equipment and the welder inside.

Several tubes were fed through the chamber, including what he assumed was an oxygen line that would attach to the suit like an umbilical.

They were covered in sweat.

Heat bled off the entire structure like standing in front of a massive oven with the door closed.

Dimitri clapped him on the back. “Very good timing! We estimate that we finish very soon! Hope welds now.” He motioned over to where several other men were sitting, watching the inside of the chamber avidly.

Each worked for a few hours at a time, with roughly an hour in between to give them a chance to cool the room. They’d put water-jacket backings throughout the Spin Drive chamber, constantly circulating heat out of the room and flushing cool water back in. It was slow, but it helped bring down the temperature in the room. It was most effective when they weren’t actively welding.

The heat was a big part of why they need to work in shifts. Even if they had cooling tubes running through the suit—which he assumed was one of the other lines fed through the chamber—the temperature inside the suit climbed rapidly. Not only was the suit too thick to dispel heat naturally, closing it inside with the welder, but the exterior temperature from the TIG welding would add to it as well.

Grace returned his focus to the chamber.

Hope was working on the far wall, directly behind where they would place the block of metal that Dimitri wanted to melt in order to test the drives.

The panels higher up were already completed, leaving the ones she was working on easily in her reach. At the moment, she was kneeling nearer to the floor with her back to them. He could see where the umbilical line hung down her back, clipped to the suit so it wouldn’t be accidentally pulled when manoeuvring around the room.

There was loud music blasting from a speaker nearby. It was in Russian, so it wasn’t anything he recognized.

“Are you torturing Hope with Russian music again?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the knelt figure.

The bright blue light that was cast off from her work nearly silhouetted her. Even without looking directly at the light, he had to squint in his eyes.

The other man laughed. “She hears nothing from out here. Her own music plays in her helmet,” he explained, motioning over to where one of the workers close to the chamber was sitting. They had a computer set up in front of them. At a glance, Grace realized they were also monitoring the stats in the room and her suit. The current temperature inside the argon chamber was 250 degrees.

There was a slight concern that Hope’s suit temperature was sitting at a toasty 38 degrees. While that may be a healthy temperature for the human body, it was not the best for a body’s surroundings.

He couldn’t see anything on the screens that would tell him where they were playing her music, but he didn’t doubt she’d insisted on it.

“Isn’t that a bit hot for her?” he asked after staring at the stats for a moment.

Dimitri glanced over as well, reading what Grace was. He hummed in thought.

“We monitor it. If it goes too high, we bring her out. Shifts never exceed an hour.”

He nodded to himself. “Efficient. How’s it been going?”

“Good, very good. Spin drive test should begin in the next 48 hours. New Zealand was good?”

Grace made a face. “Yea. They have a new plan to breed the Astrophage for the mission.”

Dimitri side-eyed him. “You do not look pleased by this.”

“They need to pave over two trillion square meters of the Sahara Desert,” he explained bluntly. He kept his eyes trained on Hope. Focusing on her made it easier not to think about how insane Redell’s idea actually is.

The taller man was quiet next to him for a moment. “Unfortunately, Dr. Grace, we do not get to decide what is good or bad anymore. Sometimes, these things must be done.”

Grace ground his teeth. “I know. Believe me, I know.”

Doesn’t mean he had to like it. Or agree with it.

Inside the chamber, the TIG welder shut off. The sudden lack of bright blue light drew the attention of the crew around them, prompting people back to their tasks. Hope stood up and carefully returned the equipment to the table set in the room, a sturdy metal one that would hold everything they needed and withstand the temperature.

While she was out, they’d cool the room as much as they could before sending the next welder in.

They couldn’t wait too, long, though. Time was of the essence with getting this chamber built.

Dimitri nudged Grace’s shoulder, silently pointing over to where the airlock for the argon chamber was. Where Hope would exit.

He didn’t need to be told twice. The scientist quickly left the Russian behind and headed over to where Hope was already inside the inner airlock, the air cycling through to flush out the argon and replace it with safe, breathable oxygen.

A small team was waiting to help her out of the suit, with a rack to the side of them where it could be hung up for her next turn. Each one was wearing heat resistant gloves, considering how hot the outside of her suit was.

When they pulled the helmet off, her hair was plastered to her head with sweat. It was braided back as usual, a Dutch braid this time. Grace wondered if she did it herself or if someone helped her with it. She usually kept things simple, a basic plait that started at the base of her skull.

She met his gaze as soon as the helmet came up.

“Well, look who’s back from his vacation,” she teased tiredly. Sweat dripped off her nose, and she was flushed red from the heat.

The familiar teasing was a welcome balm after the past four days. The trips he took with Stratt weren’t usually for so long. He realized how much he’d become accustomed to having Hope nearby. To talk to, to listen to. Even just to sit with. A companion among the craziness regarding the current situation.

For someone who didn’t like being around people, she had a remarkably grounding presence. Sitting with her just felt…solid. Comforting in its own way.

The team continued to strip her out of the suit, removing the straps and vest that anchored it to her torso, resting the weight of the rig on her shoulders. “I wouldn’t call it a vacation,” he replied simply. “It was a prison, after all.”

“Did you and Stratt jail break someone?”

“Unfortunately,” he muttered. She looked at him quickly out of the corner of her eye, one brow lifted curiously, before she stepped completely out of the suit.

Grace couldn’t help it; he reached for her once she was clear of the other hands and pressed a palm against her forehead. She was hot to the touch, but that was expected. “Do you know how dangerous it is for the human body to remain for long periods of time in extreme temperatures?” he scolded, keeping his voice low.

Batting his hand away, she moved back. “Stop, I’m gross.”

He shrugged it off, wiping his hand on his jeans. “It’s sweat; it’s mostly water.”

She was dressed for the extreme heat; a tank top and a pair of shorts, leaving a lot of skin bare. The sweat covering her caught the light, making it impossible to ignore. One of the workers lifted her braid to tuck an ice pack against the back of her neck, resulting in a flinch from the engineer, as another one handed her a damp towel.

The weight of the rig must be uncomfortable, because he watched as she rolled her shoulders backward and forward. A small series of pops sounded with the movement. As she shifted, he could see the indents and irritated areas of skin where the harness had pressed and chaffed.

Unbeknownst to the two, Dimitri and several of his closer crew played interference. The other welders had tried to beeline toward Hope once she exited the airlock, only to basically be body blocked by the Russians.

One of them even turned the music up, masking any chance of them catching Hope’s attention by yelling for her. Not that they had much chance to begin with. Hope had been dodging them for days. As far as they’d seen, it was innocent. Just professionals trying to converse with another of their own. Except today was different.

Now, there was Grace. Even indirectly, Grace had a special ability when it came to drawing Hope’s focus. She’d actively ignore others, but she’d seek him out if she knew he was around. Not that she would ever admit to it.

Grace squinted his eyes at her. He knew Hope well enough by now. “You need to eat. When did you last eat.”

She avoided looking at him in favour of accepting her discarded coveralls, cool and dry.

“Hope.”

“I had breakfast!”

“Coffee does not count.”

He didn’t need her to admit it. He already knew it was likely dinner—if not lunch—the day before.

“Come on, we’re going to the mess deck,” he declared, leaving no room for argument. Not that she seemed to have the energy for that.

They’d curtained off a section near the airlock, basically just tarps hung precariously, to form a makeshift changing room. Hope slipped behind the plastic, coveralls and boots in hand, as Grace stood awkwardly near the entrance. He politely kept his back to the small gap, just in case.

To fill the silence—which really wasn’t silent, considering all the noise around them—he started to tell her about New Zealand. They hadn’t taken any time to really enjoy the country, going right to the prison to meet with Redell. He mentioned briefly that Stratt had been on a bit of a power-trip, but he could practically hear Hope roll her eyes through the tarps.

When she emerged, she’d taken a moment to pull her hair out of the sopping wet braid and pull it back in a tangled bun, instead. The redness from the heat was dissipating rapidly from her face, and she was back to wearing her usual coveralls tied around the waist, her tank top changed for a fresh, dry one.

She followed him without prompting, heading toward the nearest stairs that would take them to the upper levels close to the mess deck. “Wait, so you two actually broke a guy out of jail?”

“He’s here. On the ship. Somewhere. I clean my hands of it!” He exaggerated dusting his hands off, making a loud clapping sound.

She huffed a laugh—even that sounded tired. “Good luck with that. For a carrier, this ship is surprisingly small.”

Grace pinched his fingers and thumb together, like telling children to be quiet. “Shh! Don’t pop my life-raft.”

Hope only shook her head, smiling.

Considering the time of day, an odd hour in between meals, the mess deck was mostly vacant. The ship had started to keep the kitchens going at all hours since nobody worked the same schedule as another. Some worked all night, some worked straight through the routine mealtimes and would sporadically pop in for quick snacks.

It was easier to keep a steady flow of food. And with the vast number of workers now on the carrier, it never went to waste.

Hope nearly melted into the metal table as soon as they sat down. A long sigh escaped her as she rested her cheek on the cool surface. There was still a flush to her skin as her temperature tried to regulate while out of the suit.

Joking and teasing aside, Grace looked at her more closely. “You’re exhausted.”

It was one thing to sleep as little as she did, but another to do a job in extreme heat while running on no sleep.

“Almost done,” she mumbled back, not even lifting her head.

He’d convince her to sleep later. For now, he’d make sure she ate something.

One of the crew working in the mess hall came over to their table, completely unprompted, and placed a tall pitcher of ice water and an empty glass directly in front of Hope. “Drink,” he ordered, a thick Mandarin accent coating the word.

It would seem this was not the first time she’d nearly passed out on their table after her welding shift.

Hope hummed in acknowledgement, enjoying the cool metal against her cheek. The man didn’t take offense, only grunting as he turned to leave again.

“While you get started on that,” Grace began, motioning to what was likely sixty-some ounces of water as he stood, “I’m going to get us some food. I’d say stay put but I doubt you have the energy to move.”

She only grunted in reply.

~

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[bold-writing]

Momento Vivere || 32 || Fist Bump

Ryland Grace/Original Female Character

General Content Warnings: swearing, nudity, mature themes, graphic description.

Read it on AO3

Previous || Next

~32~

Aside from having their meals and coffees, which Hope had never been so happy to taste in her entire life, Grace made Hope sit down while he cleaned and rewrapped her hand. While he did that, Armando also took her vitals to monitor that she was healing well after the coma.

It’s hard to believe everything had happened in just one day.

As he was securing the fresh gauze in place, his focus was drawn to the glint of her necklace again. She had it tucked into the tank top she was wearing, leaving it exposed only where it laid on her upper chest. He almost paused what he was doing when he realized that two of the links were different. Instead of the clean silver of the rest of the chain, these two were gold.

And they were sitting atop a blue bruise.

“What happened?” he blurted out.

Lacking any context, Hope just raised an eyebrow at him.

“There’s a bruise,” he tacked on immediately—both to elaborate and somehow save himself from the fact that he was technically caught staring at her chest. Hope tipped her chin down, wondering what bruise he was referring to. She’d felt the tenderness when she woke up, but she didn’t really pay it much mind.

“The door,” she clarified, pressing her fingertips against the discoloured skin. It was a dull pain. She knew nothing was broken underneath. The chest piece of the suit took most of the impact. “It doesn’t hurt much. I wouldn’t be surprised if your back has a bruise or two as well. It was basically the force of getting hit by a car.”  Both remembered how hard that door had swung open.

He pretended not to notice how she purposely adjusted the chain, so the two golden links were tucked under her shirt.

Hope pulled her hand back. The tensor wrap was in place, Grace’s job finished. He’d basically just been holding her fingers. “Come on, Rocky’s probably waiting.”

They may have been a few minutes late.

He made sure to point it out to them, grumbling and stomping as he ranted. Some of the words were caught by the translator, but they hadn’t gone through nearly enough to know all of what he was grumbling about. He shook a fist at them—Hope tried hard not to picture Abe, yelling at the building’s kids for trampling his garden.

It was very apparent that Rocky preferred punctuality.

She couldn’t blame him. If he had been waiting for them the entire time, she’d have been cranky, too. Though, as she peeked through the xenonite, it looked like he’d taken some time to go into his ship and grab some supplies. From this distance and angle, she had no way of deciphering what they were, but she assumed they were components from his ship.

“Sorry, we’re sorry!” Grace tried to placate him.

Rocky stomped again before he quieted down.

Hope was carrying their translator contraption—the computer and tablet now covered in several layers of tape thanks to Grace—as he tried to find a flat place to put the table he’d decided to bring out. They already knew they’d be spending a lot more time in the tunnel, so why not make their lives a bit easier?

They’d taken the time the night before to exchange the usual beginning words, including names. Rocky’s long, sing-song name was definitely simplified by Grace’s decision to name him ‘Rocky’. Not that they had any hope of ever accurately saying the Eridian’s name in his own language.

Grace had been deeply disappointed to hear that ‘Grace’ in Eridian was basically a grunt.

Hope didn’t fair much better, though her name sounded more like a sharp whistle. She’d take that over the grunt that her companion got, anyway. Even though it did sound like someone trying to recall a dog.

They’d also tested how Rocky’s sight worked.

It wasn’t quite echolocation, since he actually had the ability to see through walls. Or hear through walls, as it were. It’s how he knew that Hope was distressed while she was in the control room of the Hail Mary. To a point, he’d likely been able to detect how she’d moved when she punched the monitor.

It explained why he fixated on her hand when she came out, constantly pointing at it when she waved or used her right hand.

Grace had used their little mimic game and held his fingers up in a sequence of numbers. One, one, three—no more than three, since the Eridian only had three digits on each hand. Rocky easily repeated the sequence. Once Rocky had the idea of what Grace wanted, the scientist repeated the actions but this time he’d hidden his hand behind Hope’s back, where it was out of direct line of ‘sight’.

Two, three, one.

Rocky had mimicked back to him with zero issue. Two, three, one.

They came to learn that Rocky’s atmosphere was indeed ammonia and was the equivalent of twenty-nine times that of Earth. They’d be killed instantly if they were to enter Rocky’s half of the tunnel, even if they were wearing their EVA suits. They weren’t designed to handle such external pressures.

Hope pointed out how much more impressive that made their use of xenonite. They used square or flat shaped airlocks, like the drawer that he used between their two sides and the entrance to the ship. Humans used round or circular shapes for their spacecrafts for a reason, it allowed for better containment of the pressure inside.

Working with Rocky to add to the translator, they took turns staying in the tunnel whenever one of them had to go back inside. Grace even brought a stool from the lab to go with his table. In her usual fashion, Hope preferred sitting on the floor or on the sections of the xenonite wall, but Grace lingered at the table like he was a teacher in his class of one.

Some words were more complicated to convey than others and had even required a strange game of charades by the two humans.

When Hope punched Grace on the arm—after he’d used her height to document short vs tall—he’d used that moment to demonstrate ‘anger’. That had earned him another punch. Which led to ‘hurt’.

Rocky had been the one to supply ‘no’ after Grace had confirmed that the jazz-hands he did meant ‘yes’. Apparently, when the Eridian tapped his fists together, he meant no.

Grace took over the bulk of the work. He had a better understanding about teaching, so he had a basic idea of how to approach certain words. Opposites helped, like yes and no. They translated basic emotions and sentiments, like happy, sad, sorry, thankful. When he kept questioning the differences between Hope and Grace, it led to the discussion about how humans have gender.

Their height and hair were immediate differences that were enough to placate Rocky for the time being, but he’d definitely bring it up again. Since he could basically see through walls, it was a no-brainer that he could see through clothes. He knew there were other things that differentiated them.

When Hope pointed this out, Grace had turned as red as his flight suit. He’d even shucked the material down to tie it around his hips, like it would create more of a barrier below the waistline.

The warmth in the tunnel had Hope keeping to just her tank top. Her own flight suit had stayed tied low since she’d woken that morning.

Hope started the idea to have a Show and Tell and brought out some of her tools or other bits from inside the ship. She and Rocky sat across from one another, comparing the two. Grace had lingered nearby, adding new words to the program when they came up. Mostly, he was watching how Hope interacted with Rocky.

When it came to adult humans, she wasn’t the most patient. She used the term ‘dumbing down’ a lot while they were on Earth. Not that she used it as an insult or thought of others as inferior to her, but more that she struggled to simplify certain concepts in order to make them easier to understand. If Hope ever went into teaching, it would definitely have been at the doctoral level.

Early on, when he asked questions about the ship, he had to discretely go and ask one of the other engineers later because—what? He hadn’t wanted to seem like he didn’t know what she was talking about, so several times as she’d ranted, he’d just nodded his head while making a mental note to ask someone about it afterword.

He’d assumed she was doing the same with his science lessons, up until she’d bitten the head off of his old rival and proved to him that she didn’t just understand the science; she was using it to build her ship.

As painful as the thought is, Stratt had picked the perfect person for the alternate. If something happened to him, or if he was never on the ship and something happened to DuBois, he had all confidence that Hope would figure it out.

With Rocky, she never lost her temper or got frustrated when something wasn’t translating quite right.

She looked like a kid on Christmas morning when he demonstrated how he uses liquid xenon to create the models he’d sent them. Hope likened it to braiding or knitting. There were several techniques he showed her, but she described it as knitting the material together. Like a 3-D printer, but more complicated.

Over the course of that first day, they added over a thousand new words to their translator.

“I think he’s alone,” Grace finally voiced.

The two were in the lab. Grace had decided it was time to bring them up to date on what’s most important—Astrophage. It also powered the Blip A, so they had to be aware of what it was. Time to figure out how much the Eridians knew.

“Why haven’t we seen anyone else? It’s only ever been Rocky.”

Hope sighed, fiddling with the strip of xenonite Rocky had given to her after he’d shown her how he was able to manipulate it. “I think you’re right. But a ship that big? Was he always alone? Or did something happen to his crew?” She looked to the scientist beside her. “Are we prepared to ask that question?”

He nodded, understanding her conern. “First things first.”

He lifted the test tube of Astrophage that he had picked out from the lab’s supplies. The thick black substance that was singlehandedly eating stars and killing planets. They stared at it for a moment. Something that looked so useless, like a blob of black tar, was capable of so much damage.

Returning to the tunnel, Grace sat on the stool he’d brought while Hope lingered past his shoulder. Their computer setup remained sitting on the table after Hope had pulled more wires in make sure it had a charger. Rocky was working on the components from his ship, fixing them. He kept himself busy whenever they left the tunnel.

The tube with the black sludge inside was held up closer to the wall. “Recognize this?” he asked, getting Rocky’s attention.

As soon as the Eridian spotted what Grace was holding, he flinched back with a sharp tone of distress, hunkering down slightly.

“We call it Astrophage,” he elaborated. “It means ‘star eater’.”

Rocky responded with an abrupt series of low tones—it sounded scared.

Hope typed Astrophage into the program.

Rocky continued; he repeated Astrophage, before continuing on. Hope could recognize the repeated words before they even came up on the computer.

Grace read it aloud as the translation popped up, “’Astrophage on me star. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad’.” He sighed, “Yeah.” He motioned to himself and Hope, referencing their situation. “Same.”

Rocky continued. “You come from where, question?”

It was one of the grammar quirks they’d picked up so far. When Rocky was asking them a question, he would always end with the word ‘question’. Even when he was declaring something, he tacked on ‘statement’ at the end. He didn’t always do it, since he was picking up on English so quickly, but it was a little bit of his own language sneaking in.

“Earth?” Hope asked. It was a word they’d already covered, so she wasn’t sure why he was bringing it up.

Rocky tried again. “Your star is what name, question?”

“Oh!” Grace realized. “Sol. Our star name is Sol.”

The Eridian responded by telling them the name of their star for him. Hope typed in ‘Sol’. “Our name for your star is Eridani,” she provided. Technically, it was 40 Eridani but that bit of information really wasn’t relevant to the current context.

Rocky gave them the name of his star. Hope typed it in.

She watched the program update to the newest information. Grace rolled the vial of Astrophage in his fingers as he watched her type. Rocky, in turn, watched the two of them. The way Grace kept close to Hope. The strange wrap around Hope’s hand. The soft jingle of metal that alerted him to the decoration she wore around her neck. Did it have a particular meaning for humans? Why did Grace not wear one?

He spoke up, soft tones singing through the otherwise silent space.

“Rocky happy not alone.”

Well…that’s one way to get that information.

Hope’s heart hurt as he confirmed what they’d already suspected. Rocky was the lone Eridian on that massive ship. She reached out to gently press her fingers into Grace’s shoulder. He nodded without looking back at her, also understanding.

He looked over his glasses to where Rocky had remained on the other side of the xenonite, not returning to his work. “Why are you alone?”

Rocky’s fingers twitched as he sought for the right thing to say. A way they would understand. Hope and Grace waited patiently.

Both were painfully aware of their unintentional advantage. Though there were many questions and several hiccups along the way, they weren’t alone. They still had each other.

Rock finally answered, using his hands as he talked to elaborate further. Hope was able to detect the use of several numbers before the translator had even caught up. “Was twenty-three Eridians on ship. Now only one.”

“Twenty-three?” Grace repeated quietly, reading from the screen. “Wow. Uhm…what happened to them?”

As Rocky spoke, he slowly laid down. Demonstrating. Grace bowed his head sadly. It wasn’t a word they’d used yet, but both humans were aware of what he was telling them. Slowly, Hope reached out to fill in the translation.

Died.

“I’m sorry, Rocky,” she said softly.

Grace, unsure, scratched at the side of his head. He wanted to ask more, but he also didn’t want to overstep. However, Rocky was the one who’d brought up the current topic of conversation, so he had believed the Eridian wouldn’t mind the questions.

“How did they die?”

“Rocky not know. Only Rocky not died. Rocky could not fix.”

Hope could feel that last statement in her soul. Someone who could build and repair and fix things hated to be faced with a situation that they could not fix. It solidified her belief that Rocky was a mechanic on his ship. It was his role to fix things. But you can’t fix death.

“How many humans on Grace Hope ship, question?”

Grace cleared his throat. “Oh, uh—”

“There were four,” Hope answered for him. “We lost two on the way here. We don’t know how, but they died in their sleep.”

“It was almost just me,” Grace added on, trying to add some levity to the heavy conversation as he distracted himself by cleaning his glasses on his shirt. “But Hope’s just too stubborn to leave me in charge of her ship.” She gently flicked his shoulder. “So, just us.”

“Us,” Rocky repeated, but he rotated his arms to motion between him and the humans. ‘Us’ included him.

Grace sat back, nodding. He leaned into Hope’s side as he did, subconsciously searching for her. “Correction.” He mimicked Rocky, pointing between the two of them and Rocky in a rolling motion. “Us.”

Rocky spoke again, motioning upward with an open hand. “Grace Rocky Hope save stars.”

Hope smiled, shifting her weight to nudge Grace. He was smiling, too. Tipping his head backward to knock it against Hope’s chest, an acknowledgement to her nudge, he pushed himself up from the stool in the next motion and stepped closer to Rocky. He pressed his fist against the xenonite. Rocky looked down at it, unsure, before he slowly copied the action and pressed his closed fist opposite Grace’s.

“Deal,” he declared, keeping his first pressed to the panel for a moment longer.

Hope smiled as she watched them, reaching up to fiddle with the chain around her neck.

Rocky, without even moving his head, watched the action.

She dropped it before Grace could turn around.

“Called a fit bump, by the way,” he clarified as he stepped back. Rocky responded in his sing-song words.

Abruptly, Hope started to laugh before Grace had even returned to the computer, doubling over with the effort it took. Her cheeks went red with the exertion, and her hands braced on her thighs.

“Fist me” was translated on the screen.

~

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[bold-writing]

Memento Vivere || 31 || Sleep-Soft

Ryland Grace/Original Female Character

General Content Warnings: swearing, nudity, mature themes, graphic description.

Read it on AO3

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~31~

Using the clock, Grace conveyed to Rocky that they’d be gone for a few hours.

Both of them needed sleep. After the coma, Hope should’ve been taking it easy and sleeping more to help her recover. Grace had been awake for several hours longer than her, preparing for the arrival to Tau Ceti. Both were feeling the drag on their bodies.

He’d caught the few times Hope’s head had tipped, snapping back up immediately when she registered the movement.

Their current vocabulary with Rocky did not include ‘exhausted beyond measure’ so he just had to convey that they’d be back. They’d been awake all ‘night’, so it was currently 5:12 in the morning. He let Rocky know to expect them back at 9 am, even applying another piece of tape to the outside frame of the clock—which was now taped to the wall of xenonite. Rocky knew that when the small hand reached the 9 they would return.

Barely any time to actually rest, but they still had so much to figure out. There was going to be time for sleep later.

Hope waved a tired farewell to the Eridian as she half-stumbled back toward the airlock. Grace grabbed the back of her suit to help balance her, carefully avoiding the long braid that hung down her back.

“You need a haircut,” he pointed out.

“Tomorrow,” she grumbled back.

The airlock sealed behind them, air rushing around the two as the ship carried through with the usual procedure to pressurize the room. Technically it was unnecessary, but Hope hadn’t completely disabled the feature. It was still best to let it do its job, even if the pressure was already correct.

Hope pulled the braid back over her shoulder and pulled the small tie free from the end. As they made their way back toward the dorm, she slowly unwove the braided strands. Knots had already formed from the number of times she’d been in and out of her EVA suit or the thermals, constantly causing friction on the strands.

Grace hooked his glasses around one ear and rubbed at his eyes. He was so tired they felt like sand whenever he blinked. The bunks on the Hail Mary weren’t the most comfortable, narrow and thin, but he was looking forward to crashing onto one.

But first—

“Bathroom,” he grunted, beelining for the small room as soon as they entered the dorm.

Hope didn’t even acknowledge him, immediately shuffling back over her to bunk. She called out to the ship computer as she went.

“Mary, set a wake alarm for 8:45 AM.”

“Command confirmed. Alarm set for 8:45 AM, three hours and twenty-six minutes from now.”

While Grace disappeared behind the sliding door, she toed off her running shoes as the cot slid out from its place in the wall and lifted herself onto the assigned bunk. She should probably wait to use the bathroom as well, but she was so sleep deprived her body didn’t even register that it had a bladder anymore.

Armando ambled over, holding another tube of her post-coma paste, but she was already curled up and dozing when the medical robot reached her.

The arms flailed for a moment, unsure what to do. Finally, it just placed the tube on the cot a few inches away from her head. It wasn’t going to go bad in the time she slept, so she could eat it when she woke up.

Just like on Earth; when Hope crashed, she crashed hard.

She was already well and truly asleep when Grace returned from the bathroom.

Afterall, she was fresh from a coma, and she’d been awake for nearly 18 hours by the time she laid down—a nap in the control room hardly counted.

It was rough that her first day awake was also when Rocky’s ship appeared. When he first woke up, he got through maybe three hours before he crashed for another solid sleep, especially because he gravitated back to where Hope was still unconscious.

Lying in his bunk allowed him to keep an eye on her but also made it easy to slip back to sleep while his body was recovering.

Now, she was curled on her side, still wearing the red flight suit she’d pulled on when she first woke up. Her hair was curled and wavy from the braid, pooling around her head on the small pillow they were provided. Her next meal was sitting next to her head, waiting.

Her bandaged hand was pulled up near her face while the other was pressed under her chin.

He lingered near her bunk, watching her face. Fully relaxed, peaceful. It almost reminded him of when she was still in the coma. Except there were no tubes, no leads, no machines to keep her breathing.

Grace had to remind himself that she was alive.

It helped that she was sleeping like she used to, back on Earth. Tucked in tightly to herself, knees pulled up and arms drawn close to her face and chest. On numerous occasions, he caught her in that exact position in her workstation or whatever couch was available. She didn’t sleep flat—at least, not that he’d ever seen.

There was probably a therapist on Earth who made a fuss about how she seemed to prefer the fetal position when she slept.

It helped him differentiate the Hope who’d last slept on this bunk.

The one he’d feared would never wake up.

Gently, he pressed his palm to her back. As exhausted as she was, the touch did nothing to rouse her. If he focused, Grace could feel the thump of her heartbeat. Her torso moved with each breath, ribs expanding and elevating. Diaphragm rising and lowering deep within her chest to let her breathe.

He looked down at her hand again.

She’d been so angry on his behalf that she’d broken something. Not only that, but it had been something on her ship. A true testament to her rage.

The reminder of what she’d found made his stomach coil uncomfortably.

All along, it had been intentional.

To include a directive like that, Stratt had to have done it before they left. The why was going to drive him crazy. And he may never remember. Their assumptions about his memories returning were based on the amnesia being from his coma, not drug induced.

Did he remember Stratt as a kind and forgiving woman? No. But his memories also didn’t paint her as some kind of cruel villain.

Did something change? Something he was yet to remember?

The same something that apparently had Hope put in an early coma?

Subconsciously, his thumb stroked her back.

He wasn’t sure if the thought had crossed her mind, but Grace was left to wonder if the alterations made to Hope’s planned coma had been the reason for her negative reaction. Did they somehow cause her to have respiratory failure because they forced her under too soon?

Truthfully, he didn’t think she’d come to that conclusion. Her anger when she’d told him had been centered around what they did to Grace. When she mentioned her accelerated coma schedule, it had never included what that might mean for her. It did support her assumptions that something bad had happened before the launch.

His other hand gently caressed her head, the soft strands of her hair still clean and smooth. She made a soft humming sound at the contact but didn’t wake up.

Those assumptions centered more around what had happened to Grace and the original crew, but not what it could mean for Earth.

Perhaps he was playing devil’s advocate, but there was the possibility that he was sent because of the Astrophage’s affect on Earth. Maybe their math was wrong. Maybe the planet was dying sooner than they had anticipated.

Or Hope could be correct.

Their only chance to ever know the truth was based on his broken brain—or, apparently, his drugged brain.

He almost wished she had not found that file. This only brought about more questions, and even fewer answers.

Sighing, he pulled back to let her sleep.

Their time was all turned around now. The ship was in daytime mode, leaving brighter lights on throughout the Hail Mary. It meant that Grace could watch her from his bunk. Even with her back to him, he could see that she was breathing.

He wasn’t sure if she had intentionally left her cot projecting out from the wall, but he appreciated it none-the-less. If she’d returned it to its bunk slot, he wouldn’t have been able to keep an eye on her.

Eventually, his own fatigue caught up with him and he slept.

Their exhaustion made sure the two slept clean through. Armando lingered nearby, monitoring them. Neither of the remaining crew so much as twitched as the hours slowly crept by. Shortly before the alarm Hope had set was due to go off, Armando placed another burrito on Grace’s cot. This way, both would have food when they woke up.

Hope awoke to the smell of coffee.

Bleary and confused, she lifted her head and looked around herself. Disoriented. Still Exhausted. Each blink took actual effort to do. She’s on the Hail Mary. In Tau Ceti. Her chest ached and her mouth was so dry her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth—which tasted foul, she realized a moment later.

Had she brushed her teeth before she went to bed?

Could she actually call this a bed?

Slowly pulling herself up onto an elbow, she looked around for the source of the coffee smell.

Armando was waiting at the head of her cot, two cups of coffee in ‘hand’. The two cups of coffee were similar, nearly identical in colour, with the exception of the cups they were served in. She already knew that one was going to be far sweeter. For as much as Grace enjoyed candy, that didn’t extend to his coffee order.

Next to where her head had been, two more tubes of food had been left. Likely, one was from the day before, one she’d missed, and the second was for her breakfast.

“Bathroom first,” she mumbled, sliding off the bunk and giving the robot a ‘one second’ gesture as she passed it.

She took the time to brush her teeth and properly rinse out her mouth, removing the thick taste of sleep from her tongue. Her coffee was probably going to taste terrible after the mint, but she’d live with it. She decided to leave her suit tied around her hips after using the toilet. The ship was warm enough and the tunnel kept a steady temperature thanks to Rocky. Her arms were bare and her necklace disappeared under the material of her tank top.

The alarm that she had asked Mary to set sounded while she was still in the bathroom, likely waking Grace up.

Taking a moment longer to twist her hair up and tie it in a sloppy knot on her head, she finally returned to the main room with the intention of devouring her food and coffee.

She was greeted with the sight of Grace frantically looking around. He twisted in place to look back toward the bathroom as she stepped out, spotting her immediately. The stricken look on his face made her pause.

He looked like he’d seen a ghost.

“Hope!”

The man rolled off his bunk so suddenly he didn’t even have the chance to catch himself, hitting the padded flooring with a thump. She jumped at the sound.

He bolted up and charged toward her.

She nearly flinched away, his abrupt run at her making her body tense up in preparation, but all he did was grab her shoulders, then her face, then her shoulders again. He was looking over her like someone checking for battle wounds. His breathing was rapid and his hands shook when they made contact with her skin.

“What’s gotten into you?” she asked quietly, not sure how else to react. She just held still, letting him grab and touch.

“I…you—you weren’t—”

With his hands framing her face, Hope could do little more than blink at him.

“I what?”

Grace looked over her face. Looking for something.

“You weren’t there,” he finally breathed out. His body deflated, leaning forward until he was resting his forehead against hers, closing his eyes. Warm. Warm and soft and breathing and alive. “Sorry. It’s stupid,” he tried to dismiss, even though he still hadn’t let her go.

Hope reached up to hook her hands over his elbows, anchoring him rather than removing him.

“Ryland, what is it?” Did he have a nightmare?

Grace swallowed before he took a deep breath. She smelt like mint. “When you were still asleep, I could just roll over, and you were there. I could tell you were alive. But I—I woke up and…you weren’t there.”

Oh.

Hope’s heart ached all over again. “You thought I was dead.”

His grip flinched around her ears, twitching with tension for a moment. “After Yáo and Ilyukhina…I at least knew that if I looked for you, you’d be there. Your bunk wasn’t empty. But I woke up and—” he had to stop, forehead pressing down against hers with just a bit more force. “Sorry.”

Hope wanted to shake her head, but between the grip he had on her face and his forehead leaning on hers, she didn’t have much choice. Instead, she adjusted her hands to instead mirror his hold and gently take his face between her hands. The scruff on his jaw prickled her palms. He wasn’t wearing his glasses yet, left behind on his bunk.

“Don’t apologize. I understand.” Her thumbs stroked along his cheekbones gently.

Grace tried hard not to focus on how her breath was warm against his lips. She smelt like mint, so she’d probably cleaned her teeth when she woke up. For once, her hands were actually warm. The kind of warm one carried when they woke up, sleep-soft and pliant. The pads of her thumbs were smooth—old callouses having long since healed during her coma.

“I’m sorry you had to go through all of that alone,” she continued a moment later. Grace couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes. It felt like he’d be intruding on a moment—regardless of him being a part of that moment. “But I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Neither acknowledged the fact that, eventually, they’d both have to go. They didn’t have a means of going home. They didn’t have food to survive forever in Tau Ceti.

Eventually, one of them would have to leave the other.

~

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[bold-writing]

Memento Vivere || 30 || It Starts with One

Ryland Grace/Original Female Character

General Content Warnings: swearing, nudity, mature themes, graphic description.

Read it on AO3

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~30~

Nothing was broken, thankfully.

Well, other than the screen.

Armando sprayed her hand down with a disinfectant that burned, before Grace took over and wrapped her knuckles in crisp, white gauze. He followed the bandage up with a tensor wrap, cutting a small strip out of a longer piece to wrap around her hand and keep the gauze in place. And, hopefully, prevent her knuckles from swelling too much.

As he was wrapping her hand, Grace told her about his decision to name the Eridian Rocky. The little creature had introduced itself with a very long, musical name that they had no hope of repeating, so Grace gave him an English one.

He also basically forbade her from the control room for a while, so she could work on the program out with him and Rocky as he tried to use the clock to communicate numbers. Initially, this irritated her. She had work to do, and she didn’t get the chance to do the digging she wanted. However, he wasn’t wrong. If she went and parked herself in front of those screens again, any level of calm she’d obtained would likely deteriorate.

Although, she made him agree to give her the chance to replace the busted monitor with one of their spares. It was better to just get that over with than to come back some time later and be left to look at the broken one again. While she was doing that, he’d been cutting out pieces of tape and placing them on the outer plastic of the clock in the corresponding places.

She sat nearby and watched as he finished the last few numbers. Grace appraised her of what had happened with Rocky so far. “He basically just played with the measuring tape, and their side of the tunnel is still completely dark. Plus, no face. No eyes. It makes sense that they have a different way of seeing.” He lifted up the clock. It was patchy and the numbers were much too big to accurately tell time with it now, but that wasn’t important.

“So, you’re thinking echolocation?”

“Yup. We’ll find out if he can actually see this.” Then, he pointed at the computer she’s picked. “From there, we can record his version of our words. Boom, Eridian translator!”

Hope already had all the equipment she’d need, including a microphone that would usually be clipped to their clothes while they were doing logs, so the audio was recorded properly. They should probably start doing that.

However, the important information that needed to go back to Earth was about Astrophage and the Petrova line, not Eridians. They’d get to that later.

“Alright, let’s go!”

Another tote bag was slung over Grace’s shoulder—he’d absolutely refused to let Hope carry it herself—and he was brandishing the clock in his hand.

The tunnel was brighter than the last time she’d been inside, the lights set up more carefully for optimal results. The large glass-like wall remained, and Rocky was curled up and waiting on one of the jut-outs that made a sort of shelf.

Instead of the original wall they’d encountered, this one was full of gaps and ridges. Places he could climb across or stand so he was at eyelevel with them—even if he didn’t have eyes. There even looked to be a place that if they were to sit on it, it would allow them to be side-by-side through the xenonite.

Rocky jumped back up as soon as they entered the tunnel, trilling excitedly at their return. Grace rushed ahead, waving the clock over his head.

Hope, getting to see the tunnel properly for the first time, was distracted by the intricacies of the xenonite. No helmet or bad lighting to make it difficult. “It’s a spiral,” she mumbled to herself. The tunnel was formed in a spiral pattern, building onto itself like a coil. This told her that the machine that created the tunnel worked on a rotating track, not just a forward and backward one that she had first assumed. It didn’t create the tunnel one section at a time, but instead in one continuous movement.

Turning in a circle as she followed the spiral, she got a better look at where the xenonite was fused to their hull.

Miraculously, the aluminum showed no signs of melting or damage.

“Hope, come meet Rocky!”

Right.

Turning back on her original path, she carefully tracked over the uneven ground to reach the wall. Rocky was bobbing excitedly, chittering and singing in his language as he watched her approach. Grace stood to the side, smiling.

Even in the short amount of time he’d been with the Eridian before, they’d seemed to have forged an understanding with one another.

“Hope, meet Rocky. Rocky, this is Hope,” the scientist introduced, motioning between the two.

As Grace motioned to Rocky, the Eridian brought two of his legs together and sang out his name in a long symphony of sounds. On his arms were the carvings they’d seen before. Likely, they were markings that proclaimed who he was. Especially if they did use echolocation, the carvings would allow other Eridian’s to literally read who he was.

Hope lifted a hand in a small wave. “Hello, Rocky.”

With a chirp, he mimicked her and lifted a hand with the three fingers spread out. Then he pointed at her hand with one finger, before he waved again.

Not sure what else to do, Hope just waved a second time before she clasped her hands behind her back.

Grace was back to business. “Sorry for the wait, I brought this!” He lifted the clock up again. “Echolocation! Right? You need surfaces to see. Try this.” Holding the clock up in front of his chest, he pointed at the tape. “You see the numbers?”

Rocky seemed to take a moment to focus on the device. Grace had tried to show it to him earlier and got basically no reaction. True, he’d been entirely enamoured with the tape measure at the time, but other than the hands that moved, it wouldn’t just been a flat disc with no purpose.

This time, Rocky brought up two of his hands and started waving them, wiggling his digits as he made happy tones and chirps.

Hope smiled at the reaction, watching as he turned in a quick circle while still waving his hands.

“What’s that?” Grace asked, mimicking the movement with his free hand. “Is that good? Jazz hands means good?” As Rocky calmed down again, the scientist tucked the clock under his arms and gave Rocky a double thumbs up. “We do this. Your version of this,” Again, Grace mimicked the happy dance—he even folded down his ring and pinky fingers, so it was only done with the other three, “is our thumbs up.”

Rocky proceeded to give Grace a thumbs down.

Hope snorted.

“No, that’s thumbs down,” he corrected. Rocky chirped at him. “You need the thumbs up.” He exaggerated the movement of rotating his arm so his thumb was pointing upward. Rocky only did another thumbs down.

Grace’s shoulders drooped slightly. Hope laughed. “Grace, he doesn’t have wrists. I think we can forgive the thumbs down.”

He sighed but shrugged. “It’s close enough.”

Then, to copy what Grace had done when he was returning to the ship to check on Hope—and fix the clock for Rocky—the Eridian held up one digit in a ‘wait one second’ gesture.

“You want me to wait?” Rocky excitedly paced in place, using a different arm to repeat the ‘one second’ gesture before he jumped off of the xenonite wall and scrambled deeper into the darkness of his side of the tunnel. He made quiet tones as he marched off, like someone muttering to themselves.

Hope stepped in closer to the wall, trying to see better as he scrambled back through the darkness. She was wondering what kind of airlock the Eridian’s used for their ship. When he reached the Blip A, a square door opened and Rocky slipped inside easily. Another square. It was remarkable how they were able to contain so much pressure.

Grace continued to talk like Rocky could still hear him, so she moved to the tote bag he had set aside and grabbed the laptop. Her hand pulsed with discomfort, a reminder of her actions that had shame coiling in her stomach.

She chose a somewhat smoother section of the tunnel floor to sit down to work. Legs crossed and laptop sitting across her knees, she looked up to watch as Grace paced slightly with impatience. He was holding the clock behind his back, rocking on his heels, as he avidly watched the tunnel for the return of their new friend.

“Did you teach him that?” Hope asked as she waited for the computer to boot up.

“Hm?”

She lifted her good hand and raised one finger, using her good hand.

“Oh! Yea, I was trying to relay that I was going to be right back when I was going back inside. He kinda copied me then, too. Picks up on everything super fast!”

In that moment, Rocky returned from his ship.

Like Grace had done with the clock, he was proudly holding something up over his head.

Hope immediately abandoned the laptop. It wasn’t nearly as important or interesting as seeing something Eridian. Rocky placed it on the xenonite jut out that he’d been standing on and gently slid the item closer for them to see. It was a cylinder shape that flared outward on either end—it was basically the inverted shape of the canisters he’d been sending them.

It sprang open with a metallic grind.

Hope’s hand stopped Grace’s head as he flinched backward, halting him from going too far. She had a feeling he wasn’t just putting a simple cylinder in front of them. Something was bound to happen. Her palm cupped the back of Grace’s head, helping to calm the momentary panic that coursed through him when the device sprang open.

“I’m good. Everything’s good,” he assured, more to himself than the other two in the tunnel.

Dropping her hand as he stepped in again, she leaned closer as she watched the little device with rapt attention.

“It’s a clock,” she realized. She smiled as she turned to Grace again. “He brought you a clock.”

He nodded slowly as he lifted the one still in his hands. “I showed you a clock, and…and you’re showing me a clock.” They watched as the dials on the cylinder moved. Symbols were etched into the surface that must have represented their number system. “We’re clock bros.”

Hope pulled a permanent marker out of her pocket—she hardly ever went anywhere without one—and yanked up her left sleeve. As it moved, she wrote on her arm. She copied down each of the symbols and marked how and when they moved.

As she was writing, eyes still fixated on the Eridian clock, Rocky started to sing and chatter excitedly. He motioned to the clock, moving his hands around and pointing them at his own etched symbols on his arms.

Grace, at a loss, had no clue what the little guy was saying.

“Wait, uhm…I gotta be honest…I’m not sure I’m getting all of this.” He looked over at Hope, wondering if she was fairing any better.

She was still staring fixatedly at the clock, rapidly writing on her arm. The cap for the marker was held between her teeth. She never once looked down at what she was writing, but somehow, she kept it fairly concise and clear.

Grace watched the marker glide across her skin. Is she doing long division?

“Uh, do you want some paper?” he finally asked, seeing how she was running out of unmarked skin on her left inner forearm. She ignored him.

It had grabbed Rocky’s attention, however, and he stepped around the clock to be closer to Hope. He seemed to focus on her writing hand, the movement allowing him to somewhat see what she was doing. He reached out to tap the panel between them, pointing at her hand.

Finally, she stopped.

“The use a base 6 number system,” she finally explained, looking at Grace. “Nothing higher than a five on that clock.” She motioned to the symbols she’d written on her arm, matching the ones on the Eridian clock.

His eyes widened. She had been doing the math!

“One Eridian second is 2.366 Earth seconds.”

Apparently, he was starting to rub off on her, because after doing the long division along her forearm, she’d written the answer and circled it with several exclamation points. Hope didn’t do that. She did the math, got the answer, and that was that. Grace was the one who added unnecessary points of enthusiasm.

“Did you just teach yourself Eridian time on the fly?”

“You said we’d communicate with them through numbers. We need to learn theirs, too, if we plan to do that. Plus, I’m an Engineer. Math is literally my job.”

Grace huffed a small laugh. “We really need to work on the translator. It’ll take us years to get to a point of science related discussions if we keep going at this pace.”

Hope looked back at the laptop she’d abandoned. The screen was lit up now. It had powered on while she’d been distracted by the clock. “Alright. Divide and conquer!” Going back to the tote bag, she pulled out a tablet. “Using just the laptop is possible, but we need something to record him with, something to store the recordings, something to translate in real time, and something to store the translations. The laptop has the storage, but all that at once is going to slow it down and we might miss something important, so…”

She handed the tablet to grace.

“We’ll do the waveform-analysis on the tablet and use the laptop to translate. It’s not going to be the classiest setup, but it’ll do the job.” She pointed at the tablet now in his hands. “That will give us a better understanding of how he talks, too. It can analyze the sounds and tones he uses. Maybe someday we’ll be able to recreate the notes and speak to the Eridians in their language.”

They set themselves up in front of the xenonite wall, Rocky watching them curiously, and started on their individual tasks.

Hope didn’t even have to dive into the code for the translation program, it had a built-in feature that allowed her to basically create a new language. It would receive the data from the tablet after they recorded a sound and feed it through the program. Even as they were able to build the vocabulary and have larger conversations, the program would automatically select sections of what Rocky said as ‘unknown’ and flag it for translation.

This way, they wouldn’t need to individually record every word one at a time. Especially since it’s unlikely Eridian had precise word-for-word translations into English.

The program, over time, would even learn Eridian grammar and sentence structure, allowing it to recognize different inflections and even tone.

Running a connector between the tablet and the laptop, Hope filled out the parameters for the language before she looked over to Grace and nodded. “All set, let’s give it a try.”

He was already armed with the microphone, which was also plugged into the tablet—thankfully, they had better technology than Apple, because they’d have run out of ports two cords ago.

“Alright, Rock, check this out! We’re going to record you,” he started to explain to the Eridian, lifting up the small black microphone toward the divider wall. Rocky, clearly unsure what was being held up, ducked back with a sound of distress. “Oh! No, no! It’s okay! It’s a microphone,” Grace assured, tapping the microphone and speaking into it to show that it wasn’t going to do anything harmful.

Hope watched the interaction with a small smile.

During their time working together, his teaching background came out fairly often. But seeing how he was with Rocky was different than how he spoke to the rest of them on the project. He knew he was dealing with adults, many older than him, and toned down the basic explanations as much as he could.

With Rocky, and their limited way of communicating, the ‘teacher tone’ was coming out.

“We’ll start with one.”

Since Grace was already juggling the tablet and microphone, Hope lifted the clock up and pointed at the one. “One,” she declared, then lifted up one finger.

Rocky made a short, higher pitched sound as he said his equivalent of one. The recording came up on Grace’s screen, before it followed through to Hope’s a second later. She typed in the corresponding ‘one’ in the translator.

Then, she played it back.

Rocky’s vocals came through the speaker. He jolted, surprised to hear himself. Grace smiled as he lifted one of his fingers. “One!”

~

Previous || Next

[bold-writing]

Memento Vivere || 29 || Rage

Ryland Grace/Original Female Character

General Content Warnings: swearing, nudity, mature themes, graphic description.

Read it on AO3

Previous || Next

~29~

Grace waved to her one last time through the port window before he hopped back into the tunnel and out of her sight.

Unfortunately, the way the tunnel sealed to their hull blocked any of their exterior cameras from being useful. He did still bring the one camera in with him to document the encounters he had with the little alien, but it wasn’t set to a live feed for her to watch.

Once he was out of view, she marched toward the control room.

He was distracted and outside the ship. She didn’t know when she’d get the chance again.

She had access to deeper parts of the ship’s computer systems than Grace did. Obscure corners that he wouldn’t know where to look, which would likely be locked tight against him regardless of him accidentally finding them.

Deep diving into those dark corners when he could possibly walk into the control room was out of the question. Until she knew what could potentially be found, she didn’t want to risk Grace overhearing or reading it.

Hope wanted to scour the system to find out if Stratt had provided additional information regarding the sudden crew change. In her mind, it made sense to send something that would clarify the change once everyone woke up. Why was Grace on board instead of either of the planned scientists? What happened to cause the abrupt change?

And why the fuck was Hope not told when it happened?

Unfortunately, the message might have been sent along with Yáo to deliver personally. If that’s the case, she’d never get her answers. At least, not until Ryland regained his memories.

That didn’t mean she couldn’t try.

Again, since she could run it in the background, she turned on the diagnostic for the current status of the ship. The tugging on their airlock was definitely more than she was comfortable with. Once it was running, she turned to the old diagnostic and hunted down the alert that it had found.

It was a multi-page medical report.

It started on March 15th, the day she was meant to wake up the first time. A summarization of the crew. Basically, it was supposed to be the start of them waking up and would provide a base for their health as they woke up and progressed through the first few days post-coma.

Except she hadn’t woken. Two of them were dead. And Grace didn’t remember a damn thing.

Everything had gone wrong.

MEDICAL LOG: ONBOARD AUTONOMOUS MEDICAL UNIT

PATIENT DATA

Patient Name: Emrys, Hope (Dr.)

Assignment: Eng / Sci-backup. Alternate.

Age / DOB: 36 / 1987-10-04 (biological)

Date of Report: March 15, 2032

Current Status: Medically Induced Coma (Prolonged Stasis)

INCIDENT OVERVIEW

AMU attempt to initiate awakening sequence, resulted in acute respiratory failure. Patient failed to transition to autonomous ventilation and experienced immediate deterioration.

· 8:00 – Initiation: AMU began micro-dose reduction of neuro-sedative agents to resume autonomous brainstem activity.

· 8:06 – Respiratory Distress: Patient exhibited rapid, shallow, erratic breathing (tachypnea, 42 breaths/min). Oxygen Saturation plummeted from 98% to 74% within 45 seconds.

· 8:07 – Autonomic Storming: Patient experienced extreme tachycardia (heart rate 165 bpm) and acute hypertension (210/115 mmHg), signaling intense neurological stress/stasis induced panic.

· 8:08 – Airway Compromise: Severe laryngospasm detected.

· 8:09 – Emergency Re-Sedation: Aborted awakening protocol. AMU administered a rapid-sequence bolus of neuromuscular blocking agents and high-dose sedatives to paralyze the vocal cords and arrest seizure-like activity.

· 8: 12 – Stabilization: Mechanical ventilation successfully re-established at 100%. Vital signs stabilized to baseline status parameters.

Hope slapped her hands over her face and leant back in the pilot’s seat.

There’s a video.

The medical robot had recorded the entire process.

Seizure-like activity.

Did she actually want to watch that? No. No she did not.

The two following pages were Yáo and Ilyukhina’s; unfortunately, it shed no further light on what happened to them. Aside from the same blurb on their Patient Data, the following summarization was Deceased. No cause, no date. Just that they were gone.

Whether the robot had malfunctioned or just encountered a problem it couldn’t solve, they’d likely never know.

The following page was Ryland Grace’s.

Most of the information she already knew, but Hope skimmed through it rapidly.

PATIENT DATA

Patient Name: Grace, Ryland (Dr.)

Assignment: Primary Science Officer

Age / DOB: 35 / 1988-03-01 (biological)

Date / Time of Report: March 21, 2032

Current Status: Awakening Protocol – Successful

INCIDENT OVERVIEW

Successful completion of awakening protocol. Transition from prolonged status to autonomous proceeded with optimal parameters.

At first, it looked like a basic report that broke down how Grace was brought out of his coma. The entire procedure had taken roughly an hour, with no adverse side-effects. At first glance, nothing popped out. Good oxygen, good blood pressure.

Except—

· 9:15 – Amnesia Protocol Administration: Per Project Command directive, the Retrograde Amnesia Protocol was initiated prior to patient extubation. Midazolam and NMDA receptor antagonists administered successfully.

Hope froze.

Hope screamed.

Hope punched the monitor with enough force to shatter the surface. The Medical Report immediately black screened then glitched with a series of colours across the cracked, inky surface. Her hand exploded with pain instantly.

“Stratt!”

She nearly punched another screen as rage oozed through her like a poison. Blood dripped hot along the back of her hand, but Hope ignored it as she curled in on herself, drawing her knees up and squeezing her arms in against the sides of her head like it would somehow contain the fury that made her want to tear the ship apart.

Mary’s voice came through the speakers, talking about distress and calm breathing.

It was Stratt. Of fucking course it was Eva Stratt that caused Grace to have amnesia when he woke up.

She shouldn’t have been surprised, honestly, but the fact that the German woman would actually go as far as to deliberately damage Grace’s mental and physical health was a new level of insanity.

Hope threaded her fingers behind her head, ignoring the flare of pain it caused through her knuckles, and squeezed her arms together so all sound was muffled around her.

What possible reasoning could Stratt have to cause her Primary Science Officer to suffer amnesia? As the lone scientist—excluding Hope’s backup knowledge—Grace was the one who basically carried the outcome of the mission on his shoulders. Even if their crew had all survived intact, Yáo and Ilyukhina wouldn’t be of much help and Hope, in comparison to Grace, had mediocre knowledge around science and how to best study what they might find.

Regardless of her reasoning, Stratt could very well have doomed her own mission.

Hope felt sick.

There was no telling how temporary or permanent Grace’s amnesia would be. For all that woman knew, she was sending him off to space to wake up like a blank piece of paper with no hope of recovery. The brain wasn’t predictable. Anything could have happened after those drugs were pumped into his system.

Thankfully, that wasn’t the case.

“Hope? Hope! Oh, my god!”

Hands grabbed her elbows and pulled her arms away from her head, unmuffling her ears, and Grace’s face appeared inches away from hers.

She’d hadn’t even heard the airlock alarm when he came back in. Was he trying to contact her through his earpiece? She had no clue.

“You’re bleeding! What happened?” he demanded frantically. He turned her hand over to examine her knuckles, two of which were busted open from the force she’d used to punch the monitor. Said monitor was spazzing and glitching, no longer legible with any information and very obviously destroyed. He probed gently at her fingers, shifting them around. No abnormal movement, so she hadn’t broken them.

The pain made her twitch.

More blood rushed out of the small gashes.

Grace looked between her hand and the screen, eyes wide and face pale. “Why would you do that? Come on, we need to clean this.”

“It’s her fault,” Hope mumbled. He stopped tugging on her but kept her wrist held gently in his palm. He was warm. Always so warm. She must feel like ice against him.

“Who’s fault? For what? Hope, I don’t understand. What did you see?”

When she finally looked at him, green eyes catching blue, her rage constricted through her chest again. “Stratt. She roofied you before you woke up.”

She didn’t wait for his reaction. Using her free hand, she turned to one of the other monitors and pulled up the same files she’d just been reading. Bypassing the first three, she stopped on Grace’s and pointed directly at the Amnesia Protocol that was performed minutes before he was extubated.

Grace’s jaw went slack, his hand momentarily restricting around her wrist, as he read the same words that had caused her to lash out. It momentarily felt like someone had doused ice-water though his veins.

He could do nothing but stare.

Hope’s hand clenched into a first again. He could feel the flex of muscles and tendons under his palm as she did so. A few drops of blood fell to drip on the floor. One marked the pants of Grace’s flight suit, immediately soaking into the red fabric. The others dripped through the grating under his feet, unnoticed.

“Whatever happened before we launched, she’s hiding it. Something bad happened on Earth before we left, something that took DuBois and Shapiro off the crew roster and got you added to it. And she does not want us to know.”

Grace pulled his attention away from the screen to look at Hope again.

When he’d initially seen her, curled up in the chair with blood dripping down the back of her hand, he’d assumed she’d been scared. Like a child curls in on themselves when they’re afraid, like a defense mechanism.

No. She was furious.

He can remember her irritated. He can remember her angry. This? This was something he had not seen before.

Her face had red splotches flushed to the surface of her skin, like her rage was trying to literally boil her from the inside. She was tensed inward, even her chin was tucked down, in an act of self-restraint. A restraint that apparently came too late, because she’d definitely punched the screen in an initial fit of it.

That was the part that surprised him the most. This ship was her baby. Every bolt was precious. But…she’d broken something. Her emotions had gotten so high from what she’d read that she’d lashed out at the ship.

For him.

And Grace? He felt…hollow.

Numb.

There was already the constant feeling of something missing. He didn’t remember his childhood or his youth, his family. He didn’t remember school, or old friends he might have had over the years. He had disjointed memories of his kids, his work, his time on the Ganzu. But it was like someone had taken an eraser to the rest of his memories. He was stuck with the annoying ‘there’s a word on the tip of my tongue’ feeling all the time. It was all there, just out of reach.

And all along, it was intentional.

Why?

What could he have done to prompt Stratt to deliberately flush everything out of his head upon waking up?

“What did I do?” he asked. He’d never sounded so timid before.

“No!” Hope shouted. He flinched in surprise at the volume, eyes widening. Her good hand fisted in the material of his shirt—she didn’t pull on him, but she held him in place. “Don’t you dare try and turn this onto yourself! I don’t care what excuse she had; no one deserves to have their brain manipulated while they’re unconscious.”

“But what if I agreed to it?” he asked quietly. “I don’t remember anything about joining the mission. Maybe…the amnesia was planned? I might have agreed to it.”

Hope pointed aggressively at the screen that still showed the file. “Per Project Command!” she snapped. “That’s Stratt. Not you. She gave the directive that you were supposed to be administered a drug before you woke up that would induce amnesia. She’s hiding something. That’s why my coma was induced early. That’s why ground control acted all weird before I went under. Something happened.”

Then, she winced.

Her knuckles pulsed with her heartbeat, throbbing in time with each pump of her heart.

Grace refocused.

“We need to get you to Armando. Clean this up and bandage it.”

“It’s fine, I’ll do it,” she tried to dismiss; she deflated slightly as some her anger started to bleed away. She finally released his shirt. “Why’re you in here? I figured you’d be teaching the Eridian analytical geometry by now.” Grace wouldn’t let her pull her hand away.

“He started freaking out and pointing back at the ship,” Grace answered. He looked between Hope’s face and her hand as he explained. “I think they use a form of echolocation to see. He needs texture on a surface to read it. I’m guessing that means their hearing it pretty good, too. I think he heard you in here.”

He lifted her arm above her head suddenly, bringing it over her heart to lessen the blood flow, before he grabbed the front of her suit and yanked her out of the pilot’s seat. Hope grunted in surprise, not accustomed to being suddenly man-handled.

“He seemed really frantic about something, so I came to check.”

Great. The rock alien was privy to her outburst.

She sighed. “I’m sorry. When I read what she did...I just...”

Facing one another in the opening of the control room, Grace’s hand still holding her wrist to maintain her hand’s place above her heart, Hope suddenly looked so small.

For a woman who was only a few inches over five feet tall, she easily had the ability to dominate the space around her. She was loud. She was confrontational. Even when she tucked herself away in the corner, she never actually looked small. She ran circles around the other techs and engineers, and she didn’t back down when someone tried to argue with her—not even Stratt.

Hope gave the impression of someone larger than life most of the time—try as she might to be the opposite. Regardless of how she hid herself, she wasn’t able to disguise her success or her intellect.

But she was human.

And it was on his behalf that she so thoroughly lost control of her temper.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in against his chest. The movement was so instinctual, she was already pressed in against him before he even realized he was reaching for her. She flinched initially, but relaxed instantly against him. Familiar.

Grace smiled. “Well, as appreciative as I am that you felt the need to defend me, let’s use our words next time.”

Her words were muffled into his shirt. “I still have one good hand.”

“Meh, it’s your left. That’ll be a gentle—OW!”

She pinched him. Right where the thinner skin of his hip covered the bone. Just above the waistline of the suit tied around his hips. It wasn’t actually that painful, more of a warning than anything. A silent don’t try me. It was more of a shock than anything.

“That hurt!” Not really.

“I’m the one bleeding.”

“Your hand! Armando!”

~

Previous || Next

[bold-writing]

Memento Vivere || 28 || Mathematics

Ryland Grace/Original Female Character

General Content Warnings: swearing, nudity, mature themes, graphic description.

Read it on AO3

Previous || Next

~28~

Grace grasped the reality of what he’d just done a moment later.

Holding his helmet in his hands, all of the safe, breathable oxygen that had been keeping him alive released uselessly into the air of the tunnel. For a long moment, he held his breath. His hands trembled with the fear that drummed through his blood.

Well, this was reckless.

“Grace?” Hope pressed quietly, finally stepping in closer to rest a hand against his chest piece. The fact that he was holding his breath was nearly as concerning as watching him breathe.

Soft blue eyes caught her gaze.

With a small hitch from nerves, he finally breathed in. Deep and slow, chest rising beneath her palm as he finally inhaled. No burning or pain. No sensation of suffocation or choking. Just dry, warm air that carried the now common smell of ammonia.

He deflated slightly as he exhaled, some of the colour finally returned to his cheeks. Oh, thank goodness, he hadn’t accidentally killed himself with a leap of faith to trust a rock alien.

Hope would’ve found a way to resuscitate him just to kill him herself.

She reached out to take his face into her hands, her gloves rough on his skin, and forced him to tip his head back up and properly look at his face. “You’re okay? You feel okay?” He nodded limply. His entire body suddenly felt like lead as the adrenaline of his decision rapidly depleted. Gasping breaths took over as his body desperately sucked in the safe, breathable air.

Releasing his face, her hands smacked down on his chest piece. Barely enough for him to register the force. He was definitely expecting a lot more of a violent reaction from her. “Don’t do that again!”

The elation that followed made him laugh, slightly delirious.

“Sorry,” he breathed out. “Gotta show the little guy we trust him, somehow.”

She couldn’t argue with him; she’d been considering doing the same thing literally moments before. Grace just beat her to it. However, seeing him take that risk made her irrationally angry. He never took such risks. Even when he’d first been the one to study Astrophage, he’d been appalled when Stratt confirmed that he was expendable. He was the guinea pig before shipping the rest of the samples off to other scientists around the globe.

The Eridian sang excitedly behind them.

He’d already done the dangerous part, so Hope didn’t hesitate as she reached up to unlatch her own helmet. The smell of ammonia rushed into the confined space the moment the seal broke. They were gradually getting accustomed to the smell and learned to basically ignore it.

Grace turned back to the Eridian that was doing a little side-to-side dance on the spot, like he was celebrating. He lifted up his helmet, like a silent ‘there, are you happy now’. Behind him, Hope raised hers up over her head, basically mimicking the motion that the Eridian had done earlier, with her helmet elevated up over her head.

It made her look like she was holding a trophy up.

From there, they decided to divide and conquer.

Hope needed to get more lighting in the tunnel. This was basically going to be their base of operations regarding the sudden partnership with the rock alien. Grace needed to square away a means of communicating with the Eridian.

Doing their best to convey that they were going to come back, the two entered the EVA room and sealed the door behind them. Technically, since the tunnel is pressurized and has breathable air, Hope could bypass the system that prevented both airlock doors from being open at the same time. However, baby steps were still needed when it came to just flinging open the door to the ship with the hope that nothing bad will happen.

If the seal from the tunnel to the hull were to breach, they’d basically explode. If the wall between their sides cracked, the Eridian’s atmosphere would kill them.

So, one door stayed closed.

Once the EVA suits were hung up, both were more than happy to strip down their thermal layer to their hips. The constricting white fabric wasn’t the most comfortable at the best of times, but having been crammed into it for hours was too much.

Hope wasn’t sure how Grace had dealt with it for so much longer than her.

Grace took the canister from her and went to take their most recent gift back to the lab, reclaiming his discarded glasses on the way. Hope took the chance to go back to the dorms and change back into her red flight suit. Armando was ready and waiting with her next tube of food now that she’d been awake for several hours.

“Thanks,” she tossed flippantly over her shoulder as she rushed back toward the other end of the ship.

She pointedly ignored the mess she could already see in the lab as Grace started tearing through drawers, looking for something—or perhaps just waiting for something to jump out at him. She wasn’t sure the best approach for trying to speak with something that not only doesn’t speak their language but also doesn’t have the same manner of speaking at all.

Even if they taught the Eridian how to understand them better, he wasn’t going to start spouting at them in English. He didn’t have the vocal cords for it. Or a mouth, it seemed.

They would need to find a way to understand their new friend in return.

“Numbers!” Grace shouted as he spotted her creeping through, ducking around the ropes he’d tied.

“Numbers?”

“Math! Math is the universal language. You’re an engineer, you’ve probably heard that before.” Hope nodded absently as she watched him continue to tear through the storage drawers. So, he was looking for something in particular. “Ah-ha!”

He brandished a tape measure over his head. A small one, made entirely of metal, so there wasn’t the risk of any rubber melting off of it in the Eridian’s atmosphere.

“You want to teach him math?”

“Oh, no, he definitely knows that already. You said it, they’re geniuses over there. So, instead, we can start with at least looking at the numbers and we can begin to create a…dictionary of sorts.” He snatched one of the analogue clocks from the wall as well, where it had previously been mounted above the desk Hope had used when soldering their return message.

“That’s going to be a slow process,” she mumbled. She wasn’t saying it was a bad idea, but it would take them a while to learn the sounds he made. While she liked to believe she had an ear for music, she wasn’t sure it was that good.

Just because she was accused of being robotic doesn’t mean—

Wait.

“A computer program,” she blurted out.

Grace turned to look at her, looking at her over the rim of his glasses. “I don’t think Duolingo has Eridian as one of its options.”

Her expression turned deadpan. “We can create a translator with a computer,” she elaborated.

“Oh!” he clapped his hands in understanding. “Record him saying the Eridian equivalent to English words and let the computer do the work. Yes!” He looked over to several of the monitors in the room. “There’s a bunch of extra tech on board, I’ve seen a few laptops scattered around here, actually. So, we just need to make a new program that can act as a go between?”

“We don’t have to make one,” she corrected. “There’re already language translator programs on the Hail Mary, we’ll just have to create a new language to document. Considering how he talks, Fourier transform will help. And we’ll have to make sure we’ve always got a mic near him, otherwise it won’t pick up what he’s saying and translate accordingly.”

He was already going back through the drawers to try and find where he’d seen the laptops. Hope knew where they were, but she figured she’d let him be. He needed to burn off some energy.

“Why would we need translators on board?” he muttered to himself, elbow deep in another cabinet.

“Well, mainly because Stratt went balls to the wall and got basically every single piece of computer technology, program, app, literature—you name it—input on the Hail Mary. But, also, because the crew was originally from three different countries with three different mother tongues,” she reminded him quietly. Gently.

Grace froze. Yao and Ilyukhina. He’d momentarily forgotten they were meant to have a Russian engineer and a Chinese pilot on board. Not just two Americas—well, one and a half; or, two Americans and a Canadian.

He shook the sorrow off. “You’re Canadian,” he declared instead. “Does that mean you speak French?”

“Oui, though, I’ll admit I’m very rusty. I haven’t spoken French since I was a teenager.”

Grace momentarily gave up his search to look back at her again. “Wait, really?”

One of her eyebrows went up. “Yea? I was born in Canada, but a lot of my schooling was done in the States. My mother was the only one who spoke French in our house, so when she passed away I never really used it again.”

From all that he’d remembered about Hope, so little of it was from her past or her personal life. He wasn’t sure if this was information that was supposed to be new to him or not. The casual way she mentioned her mother’s passing made him think it was something they’d discussed before.

She kept going. “I can even try my hand at Spanish just from what I encountered over the years, but I’m more likely to accidentally insult someone by trying to use a French word that does not translate properly.”

“I’m learning new things about you every day,” he joked. Mostly.

“Technically, you already knew that. You heard me cursing out the Russians in French one day.”

He snorted. “Of course it was you swearing.”

She didn’t even look regretful. A smirk tugged at her lips. Oh. That looked dangerous. Why was she looking at him like that?

“It was while working on the spin drive chamber. You tried to show off and tell me you were hot in French.” Her smile grew into a smirk. “Except you accidently declared ‘I am horny’ instead.”

Well, he could just die of embarrassment now. Shove him out the airlock, he’s done.

“I did not,” he tried to deny. It was meek and choked. He could feel the heat rapidly crawling up his neck and into his hairline. He’d turned a rosy shade of pink, right to the tips of his ears.

The look on Hope’s face told him she was enjoying this all far too much. That only confirmed the authenticity all the more. She just casually stood there, smirking, with her hands tucked into her pockets. “You did. And you did it in front of Stratt.”

Grace groaned loudly, shoulders dropping as mortification set in. He knew Stratt spoke French. She’d have understood that blunder clear as day. Which is worse, accidently declaring you’re horny in front of your boss or in front of Hope?

“Go…go do something engineer-y!” he ordered, flustered and embarrassed.

Hope took pity on the man and moved to leave again. Before she’d reached the corridor that led to the EVA room, she called back. “The computers are in the lower bin by your feet, to the left!”

“Were you—were you just watching me struggle? Hope!”

Her laughter echoed back to him.

Now that she knew what they were getting into regarding the tunnel, she was able to better prepare the wires and the lights. They didn’t need nearly as much slack as first expected, since the wall was still halfway between their ships. The work lights for EVA were still ideal, but there were also several lamps from the lab they could bring out as well. They didn’t need to worry about them being destroyed in a vacuum anymore.

And they came with tripods, so they could arrange them around the Eridian’s wall to see him properly.

The ship’s night mode also needed to be adjusted. The lights would want to time off at a certain point—the ones wired in, at least—so she had to trick the system into believing that the tunnel was basically always daytime.

She was in the process of fixing the wires from earlier, which had been damaged when she and Grace were abruptly thrown backward, when the scientist rejoined her.

He was carrying a tote bag full of stuff and had also changed out of his thermal suit—which was slung over his shoulder to hang back up alongside hers. He’d nearly left if on the floor of the dorm but had basically heard Hope yelling in his head and decided against it.

“Okay, we’ll see if he can recognize numbers first. The tape measure should be a good choice since it’s got the best display. But, the clock is a good backup. Can you start on the computer program in the meantime? For the translator?”

Hope was sitting on the floor of the EVA, legs crossed, as she taped the repaired wires back into place.

“Yea, I can do that. I still need to check the diagnostic I ran on the ship, too. And I want to do another one after all that tugging we went through,” she replied, looking up and around the room. The ship was a sturdy one. It had to be in order to survive interstellar travel. But she was nothing if not cautious.

Grace was nearly vibrating beside her.

He wanted to say something. She knew he wanted to say something. But he was trying to be patient and not say something.

“You don’t have to wait for me,” she assured, fighting a smile. It was like telling a child they didn’t have to wait to open their Christmas presents.

He nearly burst out, “Are you sure?”

“Don’t replace me with an alien or get one implanted in you and we’ll be fine,” she assured, humour heavily coating her words.

A snort escaped as he caught her reference. “What would you do if I came back in here, infected with an alien?”

“Lock you in the airlock and cycle out the oxygen,” she answered in complete seriousness. Grace recoiled slightly. “Unless it’s the one from Space Balls because that would provide ample entertainment.”

For once, he reached out to swat her shoulder. “You’re not funny.”

“I’m fucking hilarious.”

“Language!”

Her response was in rough, heavily accented Russian.

Grace didn’t even need to ask her to clarify to know she’d just said something vile in Russian; she’d warned him as much earlier regarding her swearing. He pointed at her. “No.” Then, he pointed at the door of the outer airlock. “You’re going to teach him bad habits and I’m putting my foot down right now.”

He even stomped one foot.

“No swearing around the Eridian!”

Hope laughed, head tipping back with the force. “I’ll do my best, but I’m not making any promises. If he recognizes the word in some way, that just tells me they have their own version of swearing in their language.”

 “Shush!”

Shaking her head with a smile broad enough to show teeth, she moved to get up. “The lights should be good to go, just try not to yank on them. I’m going to go grab some of the tripods from the lab so you can set the work lights up closer to the wall.”

Grace held out a hand once she had uncrossed her legs.

She took it without pause and let him hoist her up. Once back on her feet, she brushed non-existent dirt from her butt before reaching out to grab an earpiece she’d set aside for him. “This is linked to the ship. It should work just fine in the tunnel, and the wall isn’t far enough away that it should lose connection. I don’t want to keep the inner door open but we should be okay to use it occasionally, so I’ll come join you when I’m finished in here.”

He took the earpiece and slid it into place in his right ear. “Got it.”

She took one last cursory look around the EVA room, making sure her wiring was all finished properly, before she nodded to herself. “Contact me if you need anything.” Green eyes looked up at him. “Please, be careful. Even if we know we can breathe in there, there’s a lot of things that can happen.”

“Promise, I’ll be careful,” he assured, then held out a fist.

She looked at it with a raised eyebrow before tapping her knuckles against his.

~

Previous || Next

[stonequiet]

“Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.”

Moodboard for Dr. Hope Emrys from "Memento Vivere" by @bold-writing on AO3

*⁠.⁠✧ *⁠.⁠✧ *⁠.⁠✧

!! I just love her so muchhhh. She's tough but also secretly a softie to the ppl who know her. Can't wait to read more about her.

I miiiight update this board as the story progresses more...

[bold-writing]

Absolutely LOVE this!!

[bold-writing]

Memento Vivere || 27 || Little Engineer

Ryland Grace/Original Female Character

General Content Warnings: swearing, nudity, mature themes, graphic description.

Read it on AO3

Previous || Next

~27~

Grace may not be the most perceptive person when it came to people, but even he noticed the difference in the Engineer. Hope was acting strange. Almost like she…slowed down. Not in the sense of her work, she was still non-stop when it came to her equipment. With a nailed-down design for the ship, she’d even created several 3-D printed models for the main teams, giving them something to actually see when it came to the Hail Mary.

Maybe it was because the preliminary work was done. She didn’t need to scramble to get the preparations for everything underway anymore. It was at a point that others took what she gave them and were doing the leg work.

She was pulled out of her work area on occasion by one of Dimitri’s ‘denizens’—as Grace had come to call them—but that only occupied her for a few hours at most.

Leaning back in his office chair, a Twizzler between his teeth, he swivelled back and forth as he looked over to her workstation from his own. She was hunched over the tablet with a stylus between her fingers, though she was currently using her thumb and middle finger to pinch or expand the image she was looking at.

The usual shadows were present under her eyes, and a half-consumed coffee was within arms reach. She had her hair in the usual braid, recently redone and neatly pulled back but her headphones had started to tug the neat strands out of place.

When he thought about it, she’d been off since he found her on the flight deck. Since her meeting with Stratt.

Asking either of them would be pointless. He’d never say it to their faces, but a big part of why they butted heads so badly was how similar they actually were—to a point. Neither were big on opening up, personal or otherwise. Stratt would stop him cold if he tried to pry and Hope might throw something at him again.

But it was bothering him.

There were so many reasons that Hope could be acting different. They were currently all working on a Project meant to try and save all of humanity, so the stress factor was a very real thing. Combine that with the fact that Hope seemed to be pulled in so many different directions that he was surprised her limbs were still intact.

Hope had meetings with Stratt on a fairly common basis now—more often than the Engineer would like—so it wasn’t just having to do with meeting a woman with whom she did not agree. It was something that had happened in that particular meeting. The one that, for some reason, had sent Hope hiding on the top deck of the ship.

It was really bothering him.

He wasn’t able to torture himself for much longer when Dimitri came through the section Grace occupied, heading for Hope.

“Little Engineer,” he almost cooed. If it was anyone else, she very likely would have snapped at him for the name. But something about Dimitri stayed her usual temper. She must have had her music quieter than usual or wasn’t as deeply focused as she appeared, because she looked up with that simple address.

“Komorov,” she greeted, still hunched over her tablet but at least moving her hand aside to show he had her focus. She lifted one side of her headphones away from her ear, letting it rest back in her hair, instead. “What can I do for you?”

“The argon chamber is ready.”

Grace turned to look at him.

“Argon?” the scientist asked with a frown. He’d noticed they were doing some weird room on the lower level of the carrier, but he hadn’t actually had the time to ask. He turned back to Hope. “What argon chamber?”

Hope was already standing up, casting aside her headphones.

“The heat thrown off from the spin drive tests needs a room that can properly contain it. So, we’re making a tungsten lined chamber. You need a very specific environment to weld tungsten. They built an air-tight room around the spin drive chamber and are able to pump it full of argon gas.”

Dimitri and his denizens had been creating a chamber in the lower levels of the ship that would allow them to test the spin drives. The models he’d been using weren’t actually models; they were to scale, authentic spin drives. They could be placed on the Hail Mary and he was entirely confident they’d work perfectly fine.

However, they still needed to be properly tested.

The issue was the risk of sinking the ship by deliberately igniting even a small amount of Astrophage without being fully prepared.

Hence, the chamber.

It was a multi-layered room that was just big enough for the test. A place to secure the spin drive and a place to secure the ‘target’.

Basically, he wanted to melt several metric tons of metal into a pile of white-hot goo.

The amount of heat that would be thrown off in the process was astronomical, and not something that Eva Stratt was willing to risk doing on land. So, instead, they made the chamber. The issue is the heat possibly melting clean through the chamber as well.

Hope was the one who proposed the use of tungsten. On the scale they were working, using just one spin drive, the tungsten’s melting point was higher than the required Astrophage. Tungsten only melted at over 3’500 degrees, so it made for the perfect protective coating on the inside of the chamber. The middle layer was a specially designed cooling system to make sure the heat stayed inside.

Grace knew she was working with Dimitri on the spin drive chamber, but he hadn’t realized it was going to be so hands on.

“Why—why do you need an argon chamber?”

Hope paused to look at him, in the process of emptying the pockets of her cargo pants. She didn’t have a lot, but watching her toss her room key, a spare pencil, a bevel protractor, and several permanent markers onto her desk was unnerving.

"I’m certified in TIG welding,” she answered. “Fusion welding for Aerospace. I’m going to do the welding inside the chamber.”

Grace finally straightened in his chair, nearly shooting to his feet. “What? But…but isn’t that dangerous?”

“Yes,” she answered, point blank. “But I’ve done it before. This is just a bit of a larger scale. Stratt’s going to be bringing in other welders so we can work in shifts, like a rotation. But we need to get started ASAP so the spin drive tests can get properly underway.”

Dimitri’s eyes flicked between the two.

Grace looked like she’d just told him she was going off to war.

Apparently, working safely in her station as an Engineer with him alongside her wasn’t nearly as nerve-wracking for the scientist as realizing she was, in fact, a Master Technician on more than just paper. She was used to the field work and getting her hands dirty, Grace had just never seen her do it before.

“When will the other welders get here?”

“You’d have to ask Stratt.”

She pulled her henley off over her head, temporarily disrupting her hair as her braid was pulled over her shoulder. Wearing only a tank top underneath, Grace’s eyes widened as he realized that Hope was small, but she was fit.

He’d only ever seen her in her coveralls or henley’s, maybe once in a t-shirt that had the Chinese flag on the back that was obviously supplied by the crew.

Muscles lined her arms and he could see the shift of her lats as she tossed the shirt aside. She was boarder at the shoulder, tapering down to a slim waistline. Was there a gym on the ship? How was she hiding those deltoids?

Subconsciously, his eyes scanned over her to see if her slim build was still in a range that can be considered healthy. He made a mental note to bring her food more often. She didn’t like candy or sweets, so offering what he snacked on was out of the question, but she liked spicy and savoury foods. She lived off of heavily creamed coffee—was she running laps when he wasn’t looking?

Quickly, in a movement that looked deliberately discrete, she pulled a chain necklace over her head and shoved it in the drawer of her desk.

“You should come,” Dimitri proposed, smacking Grace on the back rather aggressively. The scientist jumped at the sudden contact, spinning his chair back around to face the other man. His face rapidly heated. Was he caught staring?

The smirk the Russian was wearing told him he’d definitely been caught.

“What?”

“Come, watch. See the spin drives!”

Hope slipped up behind him now that his back was to her, resting her hands on the back of his chair and abruptly shoving down.

Grace squawked in surprise, arms flailing, as the sensation of falling took over.

“Hope!”

She laughed as she released the chair, letting him right himself and relieve the abnormal feeling of tumbling backward.

“Come on, Grace. I’ve been subjected to your science lessons for the past several weeks; come watch how us simple techs do the work.” She slipped past him and Dimitri on her way toward the stairwell that led down to Dimitri’s domain. Grace noticed how—even though she got along well with the Russian—she pressed back against the wall as she bypassed the boisterous man.

Dimitri didn’t seem to take it personally, only grinning at Grace before he turned to follow.

He supposed he could add the spin drive fiasco to the list of reasons that could have Hope acting strangely. Confident as she may be, working on something as dangerous as the spin drive chamber could easily keep her stress levels higher than usual.

Really, he just needed to speak with her. Grow a pair and ask her flat out what was bothering her.

Grabbing his bag of Twizzlers, he scuttled after the other two.

“Dr. Grace!”

Or not.

He turned slowly back to where Eva Stratt was approaching him. “I need you to come with me.”

“Now?” he asked, cringing slightly.

“Yes,” she answered blandly, providing no additional information.

Grace looked back to where Hope was reaching the stairs. She glanced back as Dimitri held the door open for her, spotting the German woman as well. He could see how her eyes flicked between the two. Then, she turned and entered the stairwell with a polite ‘thank you’ to the Russian man.

Dimitri could only provide a small shrug before he followed.

Grace pouted.

“I was going to watch Hope weld tungsten. What do you need me for?”

“We’re going to New Zealand to visit an inmate in prison.”

“What??”

“Pack your things, we leave in an hour.”

No further context was provided as she turned around and left as abruptly as she appeared. New Zealand? An inmate? What in the hell was that woman up to now?

It wouldn’t take him that long to pack, so Grace quickly ran for the stairwell. He at least wanted the chance to let Hope know that he was leaving again. It wasn’t the first time Stratt had randomly appeared and commandeered him; though it was usually with a bit more warning than this.

Maybe it would afford him the chance to try and figure out what was said in her last meeting with Hope that set the Engineer so out of sorts.

He raced down the stairs two steps at a time, dodging crew members and other engineers that were coming up from Dimitri’s domain. The bag of Twizzlers still clutched in his hand. A man in a naval uniform was kind enough to hold open the door when Grace reached the correct level of the ship, but it was likely due to how fast Grace was moving.

It was either hold the door open or scrape the American off the wall.

The entire level was a bustle of activity, people drifting in nearly all directions. He got a few looks from Dimitri’s denizens but ignored them as he made his way toward the spin drive chamber. He’d seen the original one as they were creating it, but it was now encased in an even larger, airtight room.

Similar to his initial work on Astrophage, the person working inside the chamber would need to wear a special suit. It was going to be considerably thicker than his, however. This suit needed to not only act as an airtight seal against argon gas, but also a protective suit against the heat cast off from the welding. It would be akin to the suit a diver would wear, working on the ocean floor.

Grace’s focus danced over the entire structure before he started searching for Hope and Dimitri.

“Dr. Grace!”

Well, there’s Dimitri.

Following the boisterous man’s greeting, he came up to where several large tables were set up in front of an airlock chamber. It was a thorough, sophisticated setup that he was shocked how quickly it had been put together.

In the center, Hope was leaning in close to another woman as they looked over what appeared to be the readings coming from inside the chamber. Of course, Hope would want to double-check everything for herself before starting anything.

“Where’s Stratt whisking you off to this time?” she asked as she lifted her head, already well aware of what the woman’s abrupt appearance would mean.

“New Zealand. To a prison. Apparently, we’re meeting with an inmate. She wouldn’t even tell me who, or why.”

“Classic Stratt,” she shrugged. Stepping away from the Russian woman, she approached Grace and Dimitri again. Her hands slipped easily into her pockets, as calm as ever. In his peripheral, Grace would see several of the other workers beginning to set up the umbilical cord that would feed into Hope’s suit, providing cold water for the lines inside the suit and her needed oxygen. “When do you leave?”

“In an hour,” he sighed. “I wanted to see you weld.” He refrained from pouting again.

“You should go pack,” she encouraged before she nodded her head toward the chamber. “This isn’t a quick job. We have to do it in increments due to the heat. You’ll probably be back before we’re done. Then, you and Dimitri get to start on the real spin drive tests.”

His shoulders dropped. Fine, he was going to pout. “I don’t like flying.”

“Don’t worry, you’ve got your comfort Twizzlers.” She motioned down to the bag in his hand.

“Well, at least they won’t threaten me with them,” he teased back, bringing the Twizzlers in close to his chest like he needed to protect them.

Hope raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re going to a prison.”

Oh. Right. “Touché.”

Dimitri laughed as he clapped the small man on the back. “Worry not, Dr. Grace. Little Engineer is in the best hands!”

~

Previous || Next

[bold-writing]

Memento Vivere || 26 || Leap of Faith

Ryland Grace/Original Female Character

General Content Warnings: swearing, nudity, mature themes, graphic description.

Read it on AO3

Previous || Next

~26~

There was no movement on the other side of the wall.

As Hope was busy inspecting the various panels, already enamoured with whatever technology these Eridians had, Grace was carefully peering through it for any sign of the other occupants.

The light reflected off the clear surface, obscuring his view slightly, but he immediately noticed a shape that moved through the darkness toward the wall. It was higher up, coming from the ‘ceiling’. It moved along the wall, likely also watching them, by using what appeared to be multiple sets of arms. This wasn’t ET or a Martian. It looked nothing like what they’d concocted in their heads about aliens.

It was moving closer to Hope, who was still staring at the clear xenonite.

Without taking his eyes off the alien, he reached down to tap at Hope’s helmet to get her attention.

Even just at a glance, she could see the stone-skinned alien above her once she stopped focusing on the wall.

Rising to her feet, she stood next to Grace as they watched the Eridian slowly move. Whether it was deliberate or not, it entered the light that Hope had tucked up along the wall and made itself more visible to the two.

Five appendages and a large, stone body. It wasn’t bipedal, like them. It didn’t seem to have any differentiation between the appendages; they were simultaneously both arms and legs. Each tipped with the three digits they’d seen before. It looked like a massive stone spider, though with a few less legs.

Grace leaned in closer.

The Eridian copied him, trilling a low tone in the language it used.

Not sure what else to do, Grace lifted a hand and made a peace sign.

“Hi,” he said finally. The alien turned in place, backing up slightly from the wall. It rotated and moved, giving them a better view of the body as a whole. It climbed back along the wall, away from where it had gravitated to Hope, and over to where Grace had taped the Ramen A in place. Slowly, the humans followed.

The Eridian reached out, pointing at the crudely made ship. Then, it made a grabbing motion. Like it wanted to pick up the strange gift.

Hope was certain it wouldn’t survive their atmosphere. The frail noodles would burn up in seconds.

The Eridian abruptly leapt up, grabbing the wall with all ‘hands’ and slammed its body against the xenonite with a thud. Hope flinched back at the sudden movement, but Grace immediately screamed and scrambled backward—he grabbed Hope as he went, nearly knocking the woman on her ass, while he brandished the wrench he’d brought. She stumbled to a stop behind him, his hand still grabbing at the shoulder of her suit.

Whether intentional or not, he put himself between her and the assumed danger.

The Eridian made a higher pitched whistling-screech sound, its distress also evident.

When Grace swung the wrench down out of reaction to the scare, the alien countered by backing away from the wall and lifting two of its arms, fingers closer in, like it was trying to protect itself. Almost like a scorpion, the arm that was above its body lashed forward threateningly.

“Grace!” Hope snapped, yanking the wrench from his hand and tossing it back toward the Hail Mary. It skittered several yards from the force of her throw.

He didn’t even fight her on it. “No, no, no, I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Waving his now empty hands to show he wasn’t a threat, he tried to calm his erratic heart as he realized the Eridian hadn’t actually meant to scare him. “You scared me when you went…ahhhh!” He raised his arms over his head, feet spread, to mimic the open bodied posture the Eridian had done when it jumped on the wall.

Hope, now left standing like a referee to the side, watched as the alien mimicked the way that Grace stood.

Two arms went overhead, standing on the other three, it mirrored him. When Grace lowered his arms, so did the Eridian. When he raised them again, it copied.

The scientist paused for a moment, closing his eyes as he tried to wrap his head around the absolute absurdity of the situation. Looking over at Hope after he regained just some of his bearings, she was focused entirely on the Eridian on the other side of the wall.

She was going to smack him for this.

Adjusting his arms, he moved slowly side to side in a silly dance. One of his arms lowered across his waist, hand to elbow, while the other stayed raised. He looked like someone trying to do the macarena, but had forgotten the moves. When he was copied, Hope turned to look at him and he could see the shake of her head even inside her helmet.

So, he was dancing with an alien. Sue him.

He started wiggling his hips as well, and the Eridian still mirrored him by swaying its body more while stepping side to side.

“You’re absolutely ridiculous,” Hope laughed, quietly but it was there.

He could only smile, moving on to a wave motion with his arms. Again, their new little friend copied him.

Hope couldn’t even hate it. Historically, dance was a solid means of communications between those who don’t speak the same language. This wasn’t a matter of two tribes meeting for the first time, but it was still a method of passing along knowledge.

The Eridian could see them and was using mimicry as a way to communicate.

Grace kept switching through the poses, first flexing like he was a Greek sculpture, then the pose famously used by Usain Bolt. The Eridian did it’s best to mimic. Considering the difference in their limbs, it wasn’t half bad.

Behind her, Grace laughed. A whistling chirp sounded from the Eridian—it was laughing, too.

With their broken means of communication passed, the two approached the wall again. Hope angled the light she still carried, standing behind Grace’s shoulder now, to give them a better look at their new friend.

“He doesn’t have a face, does he?” she asked.

“I can’t see one,” Grace answered quietly.

The light was able to show that it wasn’t just all one solid rock colour. There were gemstone looking accents along the arms and near the joints that connected to the main body. Additionally, there were markings carved into the appendages. Like tattoos. Maybe birthmarks, but they didn’t look naturally formed, so it must be a way that they carried stories or names.

“Mysterious,” Grace declared. “Faces are overrated!”

The Eridian reached forward and tapped on the wall, a series of sounds accompanying the movement. Just as the rest of their communication had been so far, Grace copied him and tapped the wall as well.

But then the Eridian did it again. The sounds he made were a bit faster paced, higher pitched. Like he was repeating himself with more urgency.

Behind him, Hope stepped away to follow the direction of his pointing—because, yes, she realized he was pointing.

Grace knocked on the wall again. “You like tapping, huh?”

Taking some of the light with her, Hope moved toward the opaque xenonite wall. Nestled in a shelf-like groove was another container, waiting. This one looked different than the others. Instead of a tube, it was shaped like a chest roughly the size of a small jewellery box. Atop the lid, among the other etchings and thread-like patterns, a little insignia of the Hail Mary decorated the front of the container.

Tapping slowly against the wall, Grace hummed out a series of ‘bum, bum, bum’ tones, slower than the Eridian’s prior taps.

Even though he had completely misunderstood him, the Eridian copied Grace and tapped at the wall while making a sound that seemed to mimic the ‘bum, bum, bum’ from the scientist. But then it started rapidly tapping at the xenonite, pointing directly at where Hope was now standing just behind Grace with the package in her hands.

Bless this stupid man, he kept tapping at the wall with increased speed, completely missing the point.

Smack.

While it wasn’t hard, the sudden swat across the top of his helmet threw him slightly off balance.

“Ow! Hope!”

Turning around quickly, irritation initially coating his tone, he immediately simmered down when he spotted the xenonite container she was holding. Okay, she had a valid reason to swat him.

“Oh. You were pointing. You’re not tapping.” He looked back at the Eridian. “Sorry.”

Hope wasn’t sure if Eridians could sigh, but the way that his body deflated slightly when Grace finally got it made her think that it was entirely possible. She smiled, unable to contain her amusement over the entire thing.

“Stop smiling!” Grace chided. Even if he couldn’t see her through her helmet at the angle she was standing, this was the exact kind of situation Hope would find amusement in. Him, embarrassing himself. Her, getting to smack him again.

Saying nothing, Hope just held out the container so Grace could open it. He wasn’t wrong.

A slight hiss of air sounded as the Eridian atmosphere escaped from the container. As soon as he lifted the lid away, a circle of wire-thin xenonite was revealed. Along the wire were small circles of clear xenonite, roughly the size of marbles. Grace pulled it free, lifting it up toward the Eridian and placing it directly in the light of his headlamp.

Two concentric rings with little marbles of translucent xenonite.

Grace tried very hard not to make the comparison that it looked like a very flimsy set of decorated handcuffs.

The last two gifts had been relatively easy to understand but this one was a bit more random.

“I don’t have one of these,” Grace announced as he held it up, not sure what else to do with it. “I love it! Thank you!”

He seemed to realize that neither of the humans understood what it meant. Bowing forward, he lifted two of his hands up above like he was raising something. Hope stepped in closer, still holding the container, as she tried to follow along.

Grace wasn’t much better. “Put this on my head?” To demonstrate, he placed the rings above his helmet.

The Eridian repeated the movement instead of agreeing, denying his guess.

“I think…he wants us to take off our helmets,” Hope realized.

The Eridian chirped, body shaking excitedly. He didn’t have a ‘face’ per say, but he turned what appeared to be the front of his body in Hope’s direction, directly acknowledging her words.

He could understand them! Maybe not word for word, but while they had no clue what his sounds meant, he seemed to be rapidly picking up on their English.

“You understand us,” Hope gasped. She stepped in closer to Grace’s side, right at the wall. “Can you understand us?”

Again, he chirped excitedly as his body shook.

Thrilled, Hope turned to look at Grace. “These guys are geniuses!”

“Geniuses that want us to take our helmets off,” he reminded, leaning closer to her to stress the seriousness. He shook his head at the alien. “No. It’ll—” Grace imitated an explosion with his hand, like his head blowing up. The Eridian seemed to say something else, making a gesture with its hands, but neither of them could quite parse out what it was. “That’s a big ask.”

The lights behind them dimmed suddenly, then went dark.

Grace turned around, surprised. “What?”

The smaller work lights she’d brought still worked, but once the others went dark the majority of the tunnel rapidly went black again.

“Damn,” Hope muttered. The connection she made with the wires was rushed, imperfect. Something must have shifted loose after all their moving around. Getting thrown across the EVA room when the door opened initially likely hadn’t helped. “I got it.”

Stepping back from the wall and their new friend, she made her way back toward the clusters of wires that ran among to the lights and the camera Grace had thought to bring along.

Grace faced the Eridian again and pointed back toward the airlock. “This has taken a turn.” Whether he was referring to the request that they remove their helmets or the sudden darkness from the lights going out, even Grace wasn’t sure. He just suddenly had the urge to get back inside. Where there was safe, breathable air. Confirmed. “Thank you for the…what I hope is not handcuffs.”

He couldn’t help it; the Eridian’s request had panic swelling in his chest. ‘Big ask’ is an understatement.

If they took their helmets off, no more astronauts. No more Hail Mary crew. No more Earth.

Hope was crouching next to the wires he’d dragged out, checking the connection before she made a simple twisting motion. One of the lights behind him flickered back to life, lighting up where the Eridian was still standing on the other side of the wall.

Waiting for them.

Grace kept rambling to himself. “I’m sorry about the whole helmet thing. Unfortunately, we need oxygen to breathe, so…”

Hope watched as he stopped a few feet shy from her, his expression going slack for a moment.

His own words finally triggered a moment of understanding. Lifting the ‘handcuffs’ again, he counted the little marbles the wire threaded through. “Two rings of eight,” he recalled. “O2.” Sighing, he realized that the Eridian knew exactly what he was asking. “You little rascal,” he muttered, finally looking back. “Hope, you’re right; they’re geniuses. This is oxygen!”

Brandishing the rings over his head, the Eridian chirped in celebration; he understood that Grace knew what the gift meant. Then, he repeated the sound he made and lifted his hands up—taking off a helmet.

Still, big ask. Could he just blindly trust that the alien was right, and he’d correctly used oxygen in their half of the tunnel? “I…still don’t think I can do it, though. Sorry.” He kept backing up toward the airlock, motioning to the Engineer. “Come on, Hope, you’re the one who can properly fix the wiring. I mean, unless you trust me with the electronics again.” She hesitated, looking between Grace and the Eridian.

This wasn’t what she’d pictured when it came to meeting them.

It’s hard to know what to expect when you’re encountering an alien species for the first time—Astrophage didn’t count. But this sentient rock spider had so far learned about their atmosphere, their air, their ship, even portions of their language. He had pressurized the tunnel perfectly, matching what they had on the Hail Mary.

The canisters they received had the Eridian atmosphere in them. If the two had been running at their full mental bandwidth, they’d have thought to be more thorough when opening the canisters to sample the air inside. So far, the smell of ammonia and heat were their only leads.

Their new alien friend was much smarter than them. He’d used what was contained inside the canister to understand they needed breathable, oxygen rich air. So, he’d created it for them. He’d completely filled their half of the tunnel so they would be safe. He’d even pressurized it.

Grace’s steps gradually slowed as he, too, was left thinking over everything that had been done thus far. They’d trusted him enough that he was even anchored to their ship, fused to their hull with some foreign glue that for all the knew could melt clean through it.

Was it really so far outside the realm of belief that he got their air right?

With shaking hands, he reached up for the seal beneath his helmet. Blood rushed in his ears, drowning out all other sound.

Leap of faith.

The hiss of his helmet seal alerted Hope to what he did a moment too late. “Grace!”

Looking over at her, he held his breath for a moment longer. One hand was reaching out for him, hovering in the space between them, as she carefully looked over his face.

Finally, Grace took a long, deep inhale.

~

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