How it feels to post a "x reader" fanfic about a situation that literally no one except for me would want to be in.

titsay
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EXPECTATIONS

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Claire Keane
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
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if i look back, i am lost
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ

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Jules of Nature
Stranger Things
One Nice Bug Per Day

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@starla008
How it feels to post a "x reader" fanfic about a situation that literally no one except for me would want to be in.
POV: looking at the readers waiting for me to finish my sixth editing pass on chapter 3 of my WIP fanfic.
It's coming soon, I promise!!!
And if I said Foxland, then what? ;)
How my mom (driver) and I (spotter) were genuinely moving trying to pull my dad on waterskis behind the boat she’s only driven once.
Warm Me Up
Chapter 2: Out of the Woods
Summary: Set in an alternate universe where the Hail Mary returns to Earth (don't worry, Rocky's fine), Grace finds himself swept up in his own rescue and recovery process with none other than Eva Stratt by his side.
TW: blood and injury, vague medical descriptions
Word Count: 2,549
Eva Stratt swats a single defiant tear from her cheek before it can drip onto Grace’s unconscious form below.
She does not deserve to cry. She does not want anyone’s sympathy. She murdered this man over two decades ago. Her tears have no place here.
Click here to read on AO3.
Eva Stratt swats a single defiant tear from her cheek before it can drip onto Grace’s unconscious form below.
She does not deserve to cry. She does not want anyone’s sympathy. She murdered this man over two decades ago. Her tears have no place here.
She knows this, and still, more threaten to fall.
She decides to blame them on the bitter cold. Or the pure shock of seeing a dead man—
Not dead anymore.
She grasps Grace’s frigid hand as the medics situate him on a backboard, strapping him down. She hopes he’s out, spared from the memories of before.
Hitting the ground, being restrained, a needle, the slow heavy flood of sedation.
Terrible things.
She’s not typically one to lend comfort via touch, in fact, she finds herself rather averse to the idea. However, these are special circumstances.
And Grace is a special person.
Her hand relinquishes his as he’s lifted and carried into the waiting helicopter. Snow shakes loose from the ground and the trees, swirling with the blades, sparkling like the Milky Way. It stings Stratt’s face.
Shielding her red puffy eyes with a sleeve, she trudges behind the procession.
The helicopter door slides behind her with a squeal and a click. Then, they’re in the air, tilting through the pines into the inky black sky. Stratt glimpses the Hail Mary’s wreckage, watching as it gets smaller and smaller in the distance until all that’s left is the soft orange glow of dying fires.
Her life’s work, blown to jagged flaming pieces, and she’s never been more satisfied.
The Hail Mary served its purpose. It has done what it was designed to do.
And more.
So much more. Against all odds, it brought Grace home.
Stratt pries her eyes from the fading debris, settling her gaze on the man sprawled out upon the helicopter’s floor. He’s covered from the neck down in a thick layer of thermal shock blankets, various IV tubes snaking out from beneath the edges. His delirious laughter has long since died out, replaced by sparse ragged inhales that fog the oxygen mask strapped in his messy hair. It fills the cabin with a gentle hiss.
The medics kneel around him, their gloved hands fluttering, adjusting this and that. They shout to one another, rattling off numbers and medications in Russian. The only measurement that Stratt can identify from the sonic flurry is his blood pressure.
70/40.
Not good.
Unknown words roll swiftly from tongues. Pre-filled syringes exchange between steady hands. Needles plunge into IV lines. More lights bounce between Grace’s eyes. Additional instruments clatter as they are wrestled from large nylon bags.
Measurements are repeated. Numbers are not improving. More yelling.
The mechanical sound of a drill reverberates off of the metal walls.
Stratt can only imagine what that horrific noise entails. Whatever it is, it makes her feel nauseous. To further avoid this, she wills her brain to blur the edges.
It’s something she’s learned and mastered over the years.
The blur.
It forces the sickening pictures, both real and imagined, to fade into something akin to background static.
This can stop.
She lets her consciousness rip her focus away from the gritty details, awareness dipping out from the gruesome happenings within the circle.
Back here, she sees a group of people, heads bowed, words confidently spoken, hands brushing one another. From this angle, it looks like worship.
Maybe it is.
He is Earth’s new generation savior, after all.
He’s going to need one hell of a publicist. If he survives, that is.
It’s a dreadful thought.
Her eyes instinctually flicker back to Grace’s face to make sure he isn’t reading her expression. Of course, he isn’t. He’s too distracted by the process of slowly dying.
Even with the exclusion of his recent injuries, it is abundantly clear that he has been battling with his sorry state for some time.
Stratt hadn’t allowed her mind to register his sunken eyes and severely malnourished frame until just now. It hits her like a teeth-shattering blow.
She did this to him.
It was her fault that he had to suffer like this.
She never wanted that.
…
She’s in her office twenty five years ago.
“We need to get him on that ship. I’ll try to make it easy, but I can’t promise that it will be,” she tells the doctor stoically.
Grace arrives and takes his seat across from her only a few minutes later.
She intends to keep him calm during this conversation, hoping that he’ll say yes and remain oblivious to his potential executor who’s waiting for her signal just beyond the door.
She’s sorry that neither of those things happen.
Seconds later, the room explodes into disorienting chaos as her plan is thrust into motion.
A white coat slips into the corner. A chair scrapes against the floor. A quivering breath becomes a nervous laugh, then a pleading sob, then a scream. A flash of yellow between blinds. A speed dial phone call. Muffled shouting. Her steady breath against the glass as he’s tackled to the ground.
Watching, but not moving. Regretful, yet unwavering.
She didn’t want to do it like this, make him fight for his life like an animal. She told him that before he ran, didn’t she?
“Sit down and we’ll do things differently!”
Yes. She did. He ran anyway.
No going back now.
His last conscious moments on Earth are spent begging anyone who can hear him. The guards hold him down with undeterred resolve. The doctor pockets the emptied syringe. Grace’s terrified screams warp into desperate whispers. Carl speaks to him as he twitches and stills, his words fading away into meaninglessness as the drug takes its impenetrable hold.
All watching. Not moving.
She sets down the phone after the confirmation comes through.
It’s done. Just like that.
She averts her eyes as the doctor gently dislodges his fingers from the grass. She makes a mental note to have someone clean the soil from beneath his nails before he boards.
…
Her breath solidifies in her throat. She’s choking on it. Instinctually, she reaches a hand up to her neck and places the other against the cold metal siding of the helicopter.
That’s right.
She’s in the helicopter. She focuses on the frigidness as it leeches the heat from her palm. She gasps quietly, fighting for an adequate inhale.
No one notices.
Good.
Tears of relief spring from her eyes as the breath finally comes, sharp and cold. She stifles her panting into her sleeve until it ceases.
It would be selfish of her to distract the medics from Grace because of this…
Episode.
She averts her gaze to her dripping winter boots.
Grace’s snow-covered clothes are bundled in a wet heap near her feet. She plucks at the stiff freezing fabric.
Despite their tattered state, she recognizes them. After all, she approved them all those years ago after sending Carl to pack his things. The grey cat (on the Golden Gate Bridge, for some reason) T-shirt is unfortunately far beyond saving, but Grace’s fox cardigan doesn’t look too bad.
She can fix that for him.
In her old age, she had taken up knitting and sewing. Although the tedious mechanics of the craft often left her flustered, counting the stitches managed to distract her from the past.
With a few touch-ups here and there, and some generous stain treatment, it would be as good as new. Well, maybe not quite, but close enough.
She hopes the same thing could be said for Grace.
She knows she owes it to him to look. To watch as the medics scramble to put together the man that she willfully dropped and shattered. Even though she deserves to witness the consequences of her doing, she can’t bring herself to look.
It’s just too painful.
Coward.
The word threatens to wind her. How dare she throw that dagger against Grace all those years ago when, deep down inside, she possesses the same fatal flaw?
It’s a lonely feeling.
And yet, in this moment, hurtling through the sky in a metal cage that reeks increasingly of iron, her loneliness is preferable to facing him.
The shame of seeing what she had to do to this man, whom she had once called her friend, is far worse. So, Stratt closes her eyes and takes deep breaths. In through her nose, two, three, four.
Out through her mouth, two, three, four.
In through her nose, two, three, four.
And out.
She prays to whatever is out there that Grace continues to do the same.
…
The helicopter jostles as it touches down on the roof of the air base. Icy snow whips against the windows. It hits so hard, it sounds like pebbles. Someone pulls up a blanket over Grace’s face to shield him from the storm’s onslaught.
Stratt thinks he looks like a body in a morgue.
She desperately listens for his breath, catching the subtle sound just before it’s stolen by the wind. The helicopter’s side door is pulled open by a team on the helipad. Snow floods into the cabin, scraping against the metal interior.
It sounds like sand through an hourglass.
Stratt sinks back against the wall, pulling her legs up into her chair, giving the medical team as much space as possible. Saline bags are transferred into new hands and IV lines are untangled with dexterous precision. The backboard is swiftly slid onto a waiting gurney and the team dashes off to the roof door.
Then he’s gone.
Out of her sight.
Stratt stares at the door long after it clinks closed. She stares at the wheel marks and footprints as they disappear under a fresh layer of snow. She stares until the clamber of the pilots exiting the aircraft pulls her from her dazed stupor.
Something shuffles across from her and she realizes that she’s not alone.
A young medic, too thin in frame to barge her way into the circle, occupies the chair diagonal to Stratt. She gathers empty syringes and ampoules from the floor, stashing them in a nearby sharps container. She has something large and colorful stuffed under her arm.
Stratt thinks they’re flowers at first glance, but no. The young woman is holding a bundled quilt.
It’s the quilt that was aboard the Hail Mary.
The thick material is a little damp, but it’s as vibrant as ever, having been spared from the singe of the ship’s flames.
It’s a miracle.
The medic looks up at Stratt. She doesn’t seem to be surprised that she’s still here. Disposing of the last materials, she sets the box aside and peels off her gloves. She lets out a tired sigh, blowing the air through her pursed lips.
“It’s not as bad as it looks, you know? He’ll probably be able to pull through. The doctors were reversing the shock,” she says casually, her voice infused with a heavy Russian accent.
“Good.” It’s all Stratt can manage to say.
The medic holds out the dripping quilt in front of her.
“Do you think he will want this when he wakes? I saw it out there at the wreck and it looked okay, so I grabbed it.”
“Thank you. I’ll handle it.”
She passes over the bundle with a polite smile. Stratt gathers it together with Grace’s cardigan. The medic hops out and scampers off, making a new path through the accumulating snow.
Stratt sits in the chopper for a moment longer. Her heart rate has long since slowed and her concrete demeanor continues to betray nothing.
However, she feels far too much.
The night’s events, and the flood of emotions attached, have been an overwhelming hindrance to logical thought, to say the least.
She knows one thing. She has to face Grace eventually, even if it wasn’t tonight.
She owes him that much.
After wrestling her go-bag free from behind some netting, she heads inside to begin what is certain to be a long and restless night.
…
A private sleeping quarters has already been prepped despite her impromptu arrival.
She hasn’t stepped foot in this base, the closest one to the crash site equipped with a surgical center, but Russia was familiar terrain as of late.
As fate would have it, she was already “in town” working with the precious contents of the other Beetles when the first calls came through about the Hail Mary-shaped object approaching Earth’s atmosphere.
Stratt didn’t believe it at first, figured it was just some space junk or a stray satellite, but the video files proved her wrong.
It was the Hail Mary.
And Grace was aboard that ship.
The only question remained whether he was dead or alive.
With rapid precision, she mobilized a small team and was in the air within minutes, already well on her way to the projected crash location by the time the Hail Mary hit the ground.
If Grace was alive after slamming against the surface, she was going to do everything in her power to keep him that way.
Everything.
And she did.
Unfortunately, now was the hardest part. The wait.
Grace’s life, that she clenched in her hands for so long, was now in the latex-gloved grip of the doctors.
She has no choice but to trust them.
Here, in this cramped cold room, she has no power. No control over Grace’s beating— or not beating— heart.
That terrifies her.
In an effort to dilute the fear, she scours through the small room, searching for something, anything, that she could use to fix his cardigan.
She comes upon soap, a needle, and thread. That is enough, for now.
After hanging the damp quilt over the shower’s curtain bar, she sits cross-legged on top of her stiff bed and gets to work on repairs.
She can do this.
…
Two sharp professional knocks hit upon the door just before noon, startling Stratt from her stitch-induced fatigue. She scampers over despite the pins and needles that flood her lower limbs. Flinging the door open, she’s met by the young medic from last night standing on the other side.
The young woman’s gaze wanders to the quilt still hanging in the background. She smiles softly, as she glimpses the curtain of vibrant colors.
“He made it through surgery,” she says cheerfully. “He’s asleep, but stable.” She pauses and squints, taking in Stratt’s processing face. After a moment, she adds, “You can see him. When you’re ready.”
Stratt leans her weight on the door frame as relief collides with her like a bullet caught in kevlar.
“That’s good. That’s really—” She stifles a shaking exhale. It’s a breath that she has been holding for the last two and a half decades. “Thank you.” She whispers, nodding.
The medic bows her head and takes her leave.
Stratt stands in the doorway for a long time. Staring at the blank wall across from her, she imagines the man that she’s about to face.
It scares her to see him, just like it did before, but this time, she’s determined to look.
She forced Grace to confront his cowardice for her, for the world.
It’s only fitting that she does the same for him.
She shuts the door behind her and steps into the hall.
Warm Me Up
Chapter 1: Crash Landing
Summary: Set in an alternate universe where the Hail Mary returns to Earth (don't worry, Rocky's fine), Grace finds himself swept up in his own rescue and recovery process with none other than Eva Stratt by his side.
TW: blood and injury, vague medical descriptions
Word Count: 2,430
The Hail Mary lies scattered somewhere in the wintery woods of Russia. Snow drifts from the night sky, sizzling in the small fires that adorn the wreckage.
Grace lies nearby in a hazy daze, still strapped into the captain’s chair but no longer in the control room. It is gone, reduced to shrapnel during the tail end of his clumsy plummet back to the surface.
Click here to read on AO3.
Chapter 1: Crash Landing
The Hail Mary lies scattered somewhere in the wintery woods of Russia. Snow drifts from the night sky, sizzling in the small fires that adorn the wreckage.
Grace lies nearby in a hazy daze, still strapped into the captain’s chair but no longer in the control room. It is gone, reduced to shrapnel during the tail end of his clumsy plummet back to the surface.
He tries to be optimistic that civilization is nearby, but apart from his own disturbance, this place is entirely desolate. Hopefully, a helicopter will be able to reach him before…
Well, he doesn’t want to think too deeply about that right now.
His groggy awareness lurches and shifts until it settles on the warmth that trickles lazily down the side of his face. He’s bleeding.
That’s probably not great.
It stings, grounding him into his malnourished and aching body. He did just fall out of the sky, after all. One second, he was sweltering as the Hail Mary reentered Earth’s atmosphere, the next, he was lying in the snow looking at the stars he traversed while his fingers and toes turned blue.
How the turntables have turned… No, that’s not how it goes. How the turns have— Nope.
Grace struggles to make his brain work. His thoughts flow sluggishly, dripping from one side of his mind to the other, warping as they go. It conjures nauseating memories of waking up from his coma. At least he knows his name this time around.
Doctor Captain Ryland Grace, Savior of the Universe.
Eh, needs some work.
He casts his eyes down the rest of his body. Miraculously, his glasses are still perched upon his nose and relatively intact.
Thank God.
Things are bad enough, he can’t afford to be blind out here too.
Despite the frigid numbness steadily closing in, searing pain manages to stab through the seams. Given the red stains on his tattered clothes, he deduces that he’s covered in multiple lacerations. Most of them seem shallow enough to not be a problem. Hopefully, he’s not out here long enough to deal with the threat of infection.
Luckily, hypothermia would take him out long before then.
Step one: Get up.
Get up? Is that a good idea?
Given the painful twinge in his neck, Grace safely assumes he’s got a gnarly case of whiplash. However, he is well aware that the whiplash could mean something more sinister, like a fracture, and a fracture could mean paralysis (which wouldn’t be ideal).
Deciding to test this theory, he attempts to wriggle some feeling back into his digits. When everything moves on command, he releases a relieved breath that fogs in the frigid night air. He wonders if the Russian wilderness has always been this cold.
It’s far more likely that this type of cold is new, descending across the world during his absence just like Stratt warned him it would. A violent shudder overtakes him as the thought pierces through his brain. Grace isn’t sure if it comes as a result of the bitter cold or…
Her.
Another shudder confirms the ladder.
Not paralyzed, then, but frostbitten, for sure.
Step two: Warm up.
Grace takes a few shallow inhales, there’s a sharpness burrowed deep in his chest, but he’s just grateful that his lungs are still participating in his body’s survival.
He can’t help but think of his students and their dysfunctional group project dynamics. His lungs are the leader, there’s always one, some kid who steps up and takes the reins from those less inclined to participate, his brain and limbs, in this case.
He flops his arm across his torso and indelicately unclasps his restraints. The seatbelt springs free with a click and slides across his body, leaving warmth in its trail. Grace’s eyebrows furrow, disturbing the flaky film of ice that had settled during his semiconscious state.
Shouldn’t the metal be cold?
Grace lifts his forearm into his narrowed field of vision. He’s still holding onto the belt. The underside of the silver clasp is red. Completely. His forearm and torso are smeared too.
He whips his head to the side in panic (whiplash, be damned) searching for something, anything, to staunch the bleeding. There is a piece of shredded cloth, maybe a fire blanket, just within his arm’s reach. His reddened fingers clasp around it greedily and he presses the hefty fabric to his gut. Despite his fried nerves, he manages to keep steady pressure.
Even with the added “first aid,” he fears the injury is still rather scary. Fatally scary? He can’t be certain yet, but he hopes not.
Grace curses his sloppiness in his head. He’s seen enough medical shows to know that you don’t take out the object that you’re stabbed with. He wasn’t stabbed though. He was sliced. No one talks about whether or not you remove the thing that sliced you.
So, that’s a pass, then?
Despite the pain, and the blood, and the cold, and the fires, Graces laughs. He laughs because his brain, the same one that (somehow) saved the universe, is sending him ridiculous notions.
How the hell did he manage to survive with this wacky thing rattling around in his skull?
He glances around, eyes squinting through frozen lashes. He needs something to prop himself up with, some kind of walking stick. He laughs some more when he registers that the Hail Mary’s mop (why does the Hail Mary even have a mop?) is a couple of yards away. Right next to it, half buried in the snow, is the ship’s final Beetle.
There was a reason for hanging on to that, wasn’t there?
His consciousness retreats further into his head, searching through the murky waters of his concussion.
What do the Beetles have?
They have the taumoeba farms, and the xenonite, and the beacon, and the astrophage, and —
The beacon!
Each Beetle contains a tracking beacon (because of course they do). That means that somewhere out there, probably blinking on someone’s computer or sitting at the top of an email inbox, is his exact location.
Grace doesn’t need to find these people, he just needs to outlast the cold and his injuries until they find him! He can only hope they have enough forethought to bring along some doctors. Good ones, if he’s lucky.
Grace drags himself to the Beetle, leaving a terrifying looking trail of blood in his wake. It melts and meshes with the snow.
Hopefully, he doesn’t need all of that.
Judging by his increasing dizziness and the nausea that threatens to claw up his throat, he needs more of it than he currently has.
As he approaches the site, he becomes aware that the business end of the mop is ablaze. A thin trail of smoke trickles up and swirls in the needles of the surrounding pines. At least he doesn’t need the walking stick anymore.
Shakily, he props himself up near the heat and holds out his hands to the fire. He struggles to resist letting his fingers dip into the peaks of licking flame. He’s gotten his fair share of burns for one lifetime courtesy of Rocky’s ammonia-laden atmosphere.
Rocky.
Grace can only hope his friend’s travels are going smoother than his own. After all, he’s got an entire planet to save too.
Grace desires to survive the wilderness tonight, if only to live long enough to discover whether or not Rocky was successful in their joint endeavor.
Grace pulls his knees to his chest, stabilizing the fire blanket stuffed against his abdomen. He knew the ship had a mop, but the fire blanket is a welcome surprise. The thing was probably buried somewhere in storage. It definitely wasn’t in the lab (where it should’ve been!).
He’ll complain to someone about that. Maybe he could take that up with Stratt herself, just to be a pain in her ass. He briefly wonders if she will be with his rescue team, but expels the idea.
Of course, she won’t.
She’s got better things to do than rescue a man whose funeral she attended a decade ago. She’s probably busy working on the contents of the other three Beetles.
Does she know the Hail Mary came back? Does anyone? Will they even look for the last Beetle if they already recovered the others?
Oh no.
Maybe no one will come after all.
No. They will, but they’ll show up whenever it's convenient, finding nothing but the destroyed ship and a popsicled person.
Scratch that.
They’ll find the remains of a popsicled person because the wolves will find him first.
He was going to forgive Stratt for the whole “sending him to space” thing, but he’d damn well haunt her (and everyone else involved) if they let him get scavenged on his own planet, by the same animals that the mission helped save.
Grace stares into the pines, seeing nothing but their trunks and the darkness beyond. He sweeps the trees for a long time, determined to survive, but too weak to do much else. He comes to the conclusion that the next step would be to cauterize his stomach wound, and he really doesn’t want to undertake that horrific endeavor.
He hopes his body will let him know when (and if) that time does come.
He doesn’t see wolves, and he can’t hear any howling over the incessant ringing in his ears. He’s surprised because the full moon really is striking tonight. If he were a wolf, he’d be howling up a storm right now.
He watches the light pass through the branches. The snow beneath sparkles like headlights through a rainy windshield. It looks like stars. The moonlight continues to sweep through the trees.
Grace doesn’t remember the moon moving like that.
To be fair, it has been a while.
The last thing Grace thinks as his vision tunnels is that he should have dealt with his wound sooner.
Death was worse than pain, wasn’t it?
He knew that. He made it all this way, and yet, he just couldn’t bring himself to be burned again.
Ryland Grace started the Hail Mary mission as a coward. It's fitting that he would end it that way too.
Somewhere in the smog of dying, Grace feels pressure grow upon his gut. Something is pressing down on him. Hard. He tries to cry out, to scare off whatever predator has searched him out, but all that comes is a breathless groan.
The excruciation barely manages to tether him to consciousness. He’s aware of something slipping around his neck. It tightens. The wolves are choking him?
The wolves are choking him!
Grace’s arm, which is no longer staunching his stomach, flails to his neck. He’s ready to sink his fists into fur.
One last stand.
His knuckles hit something hard and smooth. Plastic.
Plastic?
It’s a C-collar! Someone put a neck brace on him!
There are people here!
The light of the moon sparks a fiery red glow behind Grace’s eyelids. Then, it shines full force. It’s not the moon. It’s a light. Someone is shining a penlight in his eyes.
God, it hurts.
He squints against it. The light disappears from view and Grace is met with a pair of wide eyes staring at him. He traces the man’s face above, fighting to keep his own eyes from rolling back into his head.
The man is talking to him (or trying to). Grace thinks he sounds like one of the adults from Charlie Brown.
Wah-wah-wah-wah-wah.
That’s so funny!
The man (Mr. Brown, Grace decides) frowns and waves urgently. Others appear at the edges of Grace’s warped vision. He's swiftly rolled onto his side. The movement conjures a wave of pain and coughing, but now there’s a lot more people talking like Charlie Brown adults.
Grace keeps laughing.
He’s guided onto his back again.
Everyone above is gawking at him like he’s crazy. This makes him want to laugh even more. He stares past them into the starry snowy night, giggling like a child. Their urgent voices trickle down. Grace finds he’s able to fish out some words from all the gibberish.
“So, he’s not choking?” A woman’s voice settles in the center of his head. He sighs. It’s nice to hear a real woman’s voice again (sorry Mary).
“No, M’aam. He seems to be laughing.”
M’aam? Who’s m’aam?
He knows that voice, but his memories are all kinds of tangled up.
“Laughing?” the woman says incredulously.
God, that tone.
Grace could recognize that voice anywhere.
Stratt! It’s Eva Stratt. She’s all the way out here? That’s funny.
Grace chuckles some more.
“He’s not quite with it, obviously.” Snow-padded footsteps replace the ringing in his ears and fingers tear at the sleeve of his burned arm. They still a moment later and shift over to the other side. He feels a sharp pinch and then warmth. He shudders. Someone stills his arm by gripping his wrist, pressing him further into the snow.
This feels all too familiar.
He doesn’t want to be sedated and shipped off again. The fuzzy notion fights to the surface within his flooded brain, filling his body with a dreadful sense of nausea. Fear.
They wouldn’t send him back would they? Would Stratt do that? Just to cover her tracks.
“That doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need to be. Will he survive the flight back?”
Oh my God!
She’s going to send him back! She’s going to send him back to his death! A cold, quiet, lonely death in the depths of space!
Grace’s heart pounds and the hot wetness spreads across his gut at an alarming pace. His wound is met with increasing pressure. A silent wail builds inside his aching lungs, releasing nothing but shuddering breath into the crisp night air.
Wait. She said survive, didn’t she?
Stratt’s still talking, her voice filtering into Grace’s head. Her tone is intense, but still dripping with polite professionalism. “---We need to get him to the base preferably before he bleeds out, No?”
“He’s stable enough to move. With an IV and fluids, he should travel fine.”
“Hurry up, then. We’re all freezing out here. Him, especially.” Grace wishes he could glimpse her, confirm that she’s real and she’s here, but his eyelids won’t budge and his laughter is flickering out.
So he listens, expecting to hear her departing footsteps. He doesn’t hear them. Instead, her thin hand finds his own and rests upon it, rubbing soothing circles.
The last thing that Grace thinks before he yields to his weariness is that her touch is so warm.
He missed that.