A/N: Say hello to my newest hyperfixation!!! Project Hail Mary should be getting added to the masterlist if this is in demand.
- Stratt does not become a caregiver so much as she decides to become one. She assessed the situation, determined it was necessary, and committed completely. That's just how she operates.
- Stratt does not ease into caregiving. She approaches it the same way she approaches everything - she identifies what needs to be done and she does it. The softness comes later. It surprises her more than anyone.
- She is not naturally gentle but she is naturally precise, and it turns out that precision looks a lot like gentleness when it's applied to someone small and tired. She always knows exactly what you need. She just doesn't always know what to call it.
- For all of the coldness she likes to project, she is soft at her core.
- Stratt does not do empty comfort. She won't tell you everything is fine if it isn't. What she will do is sit with you in the middle of the hard thing and stay there until it passes.
"Is it going to be okay?"
She pauses, honest. "I don't know. But we'll handle it."
Somehow that's better.
- Stratt spends an ungodly amount of money and resources to give you the best life possible. Whatever you might want, you get.
- She's very efficient in how she cares for you - if there's a problem, it's immediately addressed.
- She is not soft in the way other caregivers are soft. She is steady. There is a difference and her little learns it quickly. Soft bends. Stratt holds.
- Stratt learns your routines the way she learned logistics - methodically, thoroughly, without making a fuss about it. Within two weeks she knows your preferred snack, your tells for overwhelm, and exactly how long you need before you're ready to talk after a hard day.
- Stratt learns your preferences with the same focused attention she would apply to any mission-critical variable. Your preferred snack. The blanket weight that helps. Whether you need noise or quiet. She catalogs it without making it feel clinical.
- Rules in Stratt's house are explained, not handed down. Every single one. She will tell you exactly why and exactly what the thinking was. She considers this basic respect.
"But why?"
"Because if you skip lunch your blood sugar drops and then everything feels worse than it is. Eat."
A pause. "...Okay."
- Stratt always has a plan. Including, apparently, a regression kit. Organized. Labeled. Restocked automatically. Her little found it once and didn't say anything for a week because they were so moved by the specificity of it.
- She keeps things running so smoothly that you don't notice until much later how much she was quietly managing. The snacks that were always stocked. The noise that always got turned down before it bothered you. The plans that always accounted for exactly how long you actually needed.
"How did you know?"
"I paid attention."
- Stratt has absolute authority over every nation on earth. She now uses that same decisive energy to win arguments about whether it's too cold for a jacket. Her little never wins. The jacket always comes.
- Her little falls asleep sometimes in the middle of her explaining something. She doesn't stop immediately. She finishes her point, tucks them in, and then sits there a moment longer than necessary before she gets up.
- She doesn't say "I love you" easily or often. But she says "you did well today" with such precise, unvarnished honesty that it means more.
- Physical affection does not come naturally to her and she knows it. She tries anyway. A hand on your shoulder. Sitting close enough that your arms touch. It gets easier. She notices when it gets easier.
- She reads to you in Dutch sometimes, not as a lesson, just because some things sound right in her first language and she has stopped apologizing for that.
- When you're little and scared, Stratt doesn't immediately try to fix it. She assesses first - what kind of scared, how bad, what's needed. Then she acts. It is surprisingly comforting to be that carefully looked at.
- Stratt does not lie to her littles. She will simplify, she will soften the edges, but she will not invent a comfortable untruth. You learn to trust everything she tells you because of this.
- If you do something brave, Stratt tells you once, specifically, and then never mentions it again. Somehow, that makes it mean more than if she'd said it a hundred times.
- Stratt does not baby-talk. Not once, not ever. She speaks to her little the same way she speaks to heads of state - directly and with full expectation that they will understand her. They always do. She is never surprised by this.
- Stratt remembers everything her little has ever told her. Offhand preferences or things mentioned once in passing. She never makes a show of it. Stratt just does it. It shows up as the right snack appearing or a small thing handled before it became a problem. Her little eventually realizes she has been paying attention to every single word from the very beginning.
- Stratt is extraordinarily difficult to rattle. Her little figures this out and finds it deeply comforting. There is no version of events that makes Stratt lose her footing. Whatever happens, she will already be thinking three steps ahead.
- She is not interested in being liked. She is interested in being trusted. With her little, somehow, she ended up with both, and she is undone by it in a way she will never say out loud.
