The World We Knew - Ryland Grace x OC - Ch 8
Summary: One molecular biologist. One astrophysicist. And a love that refused to stay forgotten.
Waking up light years from a dying sun, Ryland Grace and Madison St. James are strangers bound by a high stakes mission and a clinical amnesia, only to realize that the stranger across the lab is the love they were never meant to remember.
Pairings: Ryland Grace x Original Female Character
Tags: Amnesia, Semi Slow Burn, Eventual Smut, PHM Spoilers, PHM Movie Based, Falling In Love, Flashbacks, Fluff, Romance, POV Third Person, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Loss of Parent(s), Romantic Soulmates, Soul Bond, Requited Love, Romantic Tension, Partners to Lovers, Forced Proximity (kinda)
(ch 1) (ch 2) (ch 3) (ch 4) (ch 5) (ch 6) (ch 7)
Over and over, I keep going over the world we knew Once when you walked beside me That inconceivable, that unbelievable world we knew When we two were in love
4 years later
âRecognize this?â
Ryland held up a vial of Astrophage. Rockyâs reaction was instant. His entire frame recoiled, his heavy carapace jerking backwards.
âWe call it Astrophage. It means star eater.â
Astrophage on me star. Bad bad bad bad bad bad.
âYeah. Same,â Ryland said. His voice sounded hollow; the sheer weight of two dying worlds, billions of lives reduced to a microscopic parasite in a glass tube, settled visibly onto his shoulders. He slumped into his chair, looking suddenly very small.
Madison stood just behind him, a rigid silhouette in the tunnel. Ryland couldnât see her face, but he didnât need to; he could feel the pure, defensive tension radiating off her like heat. Her eyes were locked into the screen, her arms crossed over her chest so tightly that her knuckles were turning white. It looked painful, as if she were physically holding herself together.
Rocky happy not alone.
The sentiment hit Madison like a physical blow, catching her completely off guard. The rigid armor of her posture cracked just a fraction. âWhy are you alone?â she asked softly.
Was twenty three Eridians on ship. Now only one.
Madison felt a sharp ache bloom in her chest. Twenty three. That wasnât just a crew manifest; that was a whole community. A tight-knit world of companionship, shared history, and mutual survival, all completely erased.
âTwenty three?â Ryland echoed. âWow. What happened to them?â
Rocky let out a low, mournful chord, moving to lay in a way that needed no translation. âIâm sorry,â Ryland said softly. For a second, the vast distance between their species simply vanished. They were just grieving creatures stranded in the dark.
âHow did they die?â Madison pressed.
Her voice had gone sharp again, clinical and detached, but it was an obvious front. It was a stubborn need for logic acting as a shield against the suffocating sadness of Rockyâs isolation. If she could turn this tragedy into a data point, a mechanical problem to be solved, she wouldnât have to feel the crushing weight of it.
Rocky not know. Only Rocky not died. Rocky could not fix.
The text scrolled by, followed by a new question:
How many humans on Grace and Madison ship, question?
Ryland reached up to take off his glasses, his hands trembling slightly as he pulled up the hem of his shirt to clean the lenses. It was a nervous habit Madison had noticed him falling into more and more lately. A way to anchor himself when reality got too loud.
âThere were four of us andâŠtwo died on the way here. I wish I knew why. Now itâs just me and Madison.â
Rocky made a low, rumbling noise, his heavy carapace clicking softly as he raised his limbs, gesturing that encompassed the three of them.
Only us.
Against her own discretion, Madison felt the corner of her mouth twitch. A small, bittersweet smile tugged at her lips despite the grief clinging to the room.
âCorrection,â Ryland said. He raised his hands, mimicking Rockyâs circular gesture.
The alien responded with an enthusiastic flurry of notes.
Grace. Madison. Rocky. Save stars.
Ryland and Madison traded a long look. It was a rare moment of total alignment between them. Ryland turned and stepped right up to the thick divider. He closed his hand into a fist and pressed it against the clear material, offering a universal human sign of solidarity.
On the other side, Rocky didnât hesitate. He mimicked the gesture immediately, pressing his claw against the same spot on the glass.
âDeal.â
There was a low hum of agreement from Rocky. A resonant, vibrating sound of belief that seemed to echo through the divider. Ryland smiled, letting his hand drop. âThatâs called a fist bump, by the way.â
Rocky responded with a quick succession of clicks, causing both Madison and Ryland to look over at the translation monitor as the text scrambled to catch up.
âFist my bump?!â Ryland read out loud, his eyebrows shooting up. âNo, itâs fist bump.â
Rocky did it to himself, bringing his two closed primary claws together. The monitor blinked:
Same.
âItâs not the same,â Madison replied, her voice deadpan but a faint, amused twitch returning to the corner of her mouth.
Setting the plan was the easy part; building a physical model to actually visualize it turned out to be an absolute disaster.
Rocky was stubborn. He was utterly adamant that they needed to see the precise orbit of Tau Ceti and the exact flow of the Astrophage infection. Unfortunately, Rylandâs fine motor skills were currently a wreck. The makeshift solar system was a structural nightmare, held together by wire and prayer.
âExactly. Astrophage has to reach Tau Ceti otherwise we wouldnât see the Petrova Line,â Ryland said, his brow furrowed in concentration. He accidentally knocked one of the wires which caused the section of planets to fall.
Madison glanced at the laptop, where the text was scrolling rapidly. âRocky has thoughts on your engineering.â
âOh, Iâm sure he does.â
âHe says you are bad at making the model,â Madison read aloud, her tone beautifully dry.
âDo we really need this whole model?â
Rocky let out a string of chirps, triggering a fresh paragraph on the screen. Madison leaned in to read it: âNeed know why star not die. Need plan. Need model to make plan. Grace question is dumb.â
She straightened back up, crossing her arms with a smirk. âI told you three times that I should do the assembly. My hands are steadier and I actually have a sense of spatial awareness. But no, Doctor Grace has it under control.â
âIâm the molecular biologist!â Ryland fired back, defending his battered pride. âI should be the one building the-â
Rocky cut Ryland off with a sharp, percussive snap.
Grace try cover. Bad cover. Madison build. Grace watch.
Madison let out a genuine laugh. âSee? Even the alien thinks youâre being stubborn. Step aside, Grace. Let me handle the heavy lifting.â
Ryland grumbled something incoherent under his breath, his shoulders slumping in defeat as he took a step back. âFine. You know, I used to have one of these in my classroom and it was a lot simpler to set up. And the sixth graders managed it without the attitude.â
Madison shot him a look, but the playful smirk resting on her face showed she wasnât actually annoyed.
Why is a school teacher in space, question?
âThat is a great question,â Ryland said, quickly seizing the opportunity to ignore Madisonâs expression. âIn fact, itâs such a good question that I think itâs time we found you a voice of your own. That way Madison can stop acting as a middleman and adding her own snarky commentary to everything you say.â
Madisonâs eyebrow ached in a challenge that felt dangerously familiar. âAre you saying you donât like my voice?â
âIâm saying your voice isâŠdistracting,â he muttered.
The word hung in the air a second too long, taking on a weight neither of them was prepared for. Ryland immediately felt a sudden heat climb up the back of his neck. Panicking slightly, he turned his attention entirely to the laptop, typing with a sudden focus to avoid her gaze.
âI just meantâŠyouâd be more useful if you werenât tethered to the screen. That-thatâs all.â
Madison didnât push it. She just stood back and watched him work. The stubbornness that usually defined her posture began to soften, melting into a quiet fascination as she watched his fingers fly across the keys. He was building a bridge, coding a text to speech program from scratch, meticulously filtering through audio files to give Rocky a voice that didnât involve her constantly reading text off a monitor.
They spent the next hour auditioning various automated voices, eventually settling on a warm tenor. It had a grounded resonance to it. It felt right. It felt like someone they could trust.
When the sheer, biological exhaustion of their journey finally became too much to ignore, their eyes heavy, they began to pack up to head back to their respective bunks on the ship. But Rocky protested through his new voice box. He didnât want them to leave. He wanted to watch them sleep.
It was an Eridian custom, a deeply ingrained habit of keeping watch over the pack, but Rocky must have also been well-versed in guilt tripping. Madison was entirely sure of it. Because the moment Rocky shared that he used to watch his old crew sleep most days, Ryland caved instantly.
Madison was the hesitant one. She stood, arms tightly crossed, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. The rational, hyper vigilant part of her brain wasnât thrilled about an alien watching her sleep; it felt borderline creepy, an invasion of the ultimate vulnerability.
She looked over at Ryland, who was dragging a couple of pillows and blankets into the tunnel. âYouâre seriously just going to sleep here? Because he pulled the ultimate guilt trip on you?â
âLook, heâs used to a crew,â Ryland said softly, pausing as he looked toward the clear xenonite. âHe lost twenty-three of his people, Madison. Heâs been entirely alone in the dark and keeping watch is how he protects what he has left. Iâm not going to make him feel abandoned again.â
Madison quieted, his words cutting through her remaining defenses. She looked back toward the Hail Mary. The shadows stretching felt heavy, oppressive. She realized that experiencing the dead silence of the ship entirely alone was far more unsettling than sleeping right here.
âMove over, Grace,â she grumbled, though the sharp edge was completely gone from her voice.
Ryland chuckled softly, the tension breaking as he shuffled to the side to make room. âWelcome to the slumber party.â
âShut up,â she replied without any real bite. She settled, pulling a corner of the blanket over her shoulders and letting out a long breath.
Exhaustion claimed Madison first. Within minutes, her breathing slowed into a slow cadence.
Ryland stayed awake a little longer, staring up at the harsh geometry of the ceiling with Rocky above it. He felt a bit strange, watching his friend sleep. But as he looked at the quiet rise and fall of her shoulders, a jagged shard of memory sliced violently through the thick amnesia fogging his mind.
Heâd done this before.
The realization made his breath catch. He remembered the low light of a completely different room back on Earth. He remembered the bitter smell of stale coffee and the exact sight of Madison slumped over a cluttered desk, utterly exhausted by some frantic and shared deadline. It hadnât been creepy then, either; it had been comfortable. It had been safe.
They hadnât just been coworkers thrown together by a government project. They had been anchors for each other in a world that was already starting to fracture and fall apart at the seams.
The full extent of their past remained frustratingly blurry, a complex puzzle with half the pieces still lost in the dark, but as Ryland watched her breathe, he felt a distinct, powerful pull in his chest. It was a cosmic gravity that no orbital equation and no alliance of science could ever truly explain.
