⊠17 ⊠Autism final boss ⊠⊠Look at my writing and drawings theyre pretty cool ⊠⊠Current hyperfixations: Wednesday series & Tidstjuven âŠ
This is the only blog i own and i will mostly share my fanfictions, opinions and drawings! I look forward to building a comunity and meeting people with similar intrests and are apart of the same fandoms as i am! :)
I love to read and write, play videogames, guitar and draw. Im also a big sci-fi and History nerd.
My prononce are She/Her. Im 17 years old. English is not my first language.
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Be clear and specific when requesting: I need the caracter im writing about, what prononce i should use and what the story is going to be about and if you want there to be any specific themes in the story.
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Masterlist.
What i write:
Every gender and prononce.
Angst.
Fluff.
Slight smut.
Xreader.
and more ofc just ask.
What i donÂŽt write:
Smut.
minor x adult.
rape.
weird kinks or fetishes in general.
step-cest.
pedophilia.
Just anything weird in general.
What fandoms i write for:
I will also link any fanart i've done for these fandoms :)
Wednesday
Zombieboy - Isaac Night x reader = [part 1] [part 2] [part 3 ] [part 4] [part 5] [part 6]Â [part 7] [part 8] [part 9] [part 10]
NBC Hannibal
Tidstjuven Julkalender 2025
I hold the inofficial award for being the first Bildsköne Bengtsson x reader fic ever written (correct me if im wrong)
Lying on your back you saw the simulated ocean stretch endlessly before you until it melted into the pale blue sky. The foggy horizon made the sky and horizon blur until they came one. The relaxing moment was somehow bittersweet in ways you couldn't quite place. Maybe it was because this beautiful illusion reminded you of everything you had left behind.
Closing your eyes you heard seagulls in the distance and the waves hitting the shore which carried an invisible breeze. If you concentrated hard enough, you could almost imagine the warmth of sunlight against your skin instead of the recycled air of the Hail Mary. The environmental screens were astonishingly convincing. They couldn't reproduce the scent of saltwater or the feeling of sand beneath your fingers instead of the hard metal beam your back was laying on.
You felt as if you could lay here for the rest of your life. If time stopped here, at this moment, you would be happy.
Your fingers tightened around the meal tube you had been given from the robotic arms. The robot, who you and Grace call Mary, had informed you that it was meal two, day seven. On today's menu it was some sort of heavenly spaghetti and meatball. Of course in tube format. It was basically baby food, since your stomach has not gotten used to whole foods. Grace had been awake two days more than you which means he gets to eat almost solid foods bynow instead of mush in a tube. You could only dream about the day when you could eat solid foods and experience textures instead of baby food.Â
Squeezing out the tasty puree into your mouth which had, to your surprise, started to include chunks of pasta as your digestive system recovers. Each little chunk felt like a luxury. After days of eating what was essentially astronaut baby food, even the smallest change in consistency was exciting.
Your eyes wandered toward Grace who sat beside you. His thoughts somewhere else as his gaze were focused on the horizon. He must be used to the beach, you thought, since you remembered that he lived in San Francisco back on earth. If it wasnât for the hard metal platform you were lying on you could believe that the two of you were truly on a beach trip together.
Together the two of you had explored every nook and cranny of the ship, opening compartments that neither of you had known existed. You had helped Ryland familiarize himself with the laboratory equipment, laughing whenever one of his little test experiments became more chaotic than scientific. You felt proud of him whenever he discovered a memory of a lab instrument's name or fun facts about science. You found it interesting yet amusing whenever he remembered something from back on earth, and all the mathematical formulas he knew in the back of his mind. In return, he'd happily surrendered the cockpit to you, despite the fact that you already remembered every control and procedure. He still insisted on sitting in the co-pilot's seat while you walked him through flight systems, asking questions that occasionally made you wonder how he'd ever managed to become an astronaut since he seemed almost clueless about every control. All these hours wasted on extra simulator training.
During your search for new knowledge of the ship you discovered that every Wikipedia article had been downloaded to the ships database. Same with almost every book written, every song recorded and every movie filmed. The amount of media stored in the ship's digital library was enough to keep two people occupied for several lifetimes. You had spent most of your days reading and listening to music when you werenât working.Â
You and Grace had made it a habit of sharing media with each other every evening. This in turn made you both discover new movies but also bond over already shared interests.Â
"You've never heard this one?" Grace asks as he puts on some niche Math rock song that probably has under 10 000 streams back on earth.
"No."
"Oh, we're fixing that."
Little by little your new life on the ship had started to feel ordinary. But beneath the new routine lived another feeling that you couldn't quite place your finger on.
Loneliness wasn't the right word, Grace had made sure of that.Â
It was something more physical.
Every contact with Grace before the coma had been professional. The kind of contact that meant nothing because it wasn't supposed to.
You thought about the last truly human touch you'd felt.
Your thoughts drifted unwillingly back to the burial.
Ryland's arms wrapped around you while your world fell apart.
Hearing his heartbeat beneath your cheek.
The steady warmth of another person reminding you that you weren't facing grief alone.
You hadn't realized then how desperately you would miss something so simple.
You found yourself noticing every accidental brush between you and Ryland.
His shoulder bumping yours while the two of you squeezed through a claustrophobic maintenance hatch.
His fingers briefly wrapping around your wrist to stop you walking into a low pipe while you are distracted reading a display.
The way he'd instinctively steadied you whenever your recovering muscles gave out.
Each touch had lasted barely a second.
But each one lingered in your thoughts far longer than it should have.
But were these feelings forming because of him?Â
Or would you have felt exactly the same toward any other survivor after a week of isolation?
Your mind refused to come up with an answer. Instead, it replayed moments you shouldn't have been looking back on.
Holding onto his steady forearm while trying to take your first steps after years of being in a coma.
His face only inches from yours as both of you leaned over the same display, completely unaware of how close you'd drifted until you looked up at the same time.
Falling asleep beside each other in the cupola window after spending hours watching the stars.
None of those moments had meant anything and you refused to become the kind of person who mistook loneliness for love. Ryland had been nothing but kind since the moment you woke and kindness certainly wasn't something you had any right to build fantasies around.
Your gaze drifted toward him yet again.
He was sitting close enough that if you stretched your free hand only a little farther your fingers could reach his.
Maybe your hands would simply rest side by side, maybe your fingers would brush and just maybe he'd lace his fingers through yours.
The thought made warmth spread through your chest before embarrassment chased it away just as quickly.
Don't.
You looked back toward the simulated sea.
Don't make this strange.
If you reached for him and he would pull awayâŠ
The memory would follow you for the rest of your life, and probably his too.
On the cramped ship there was nowhere else to go and it would be impossible to escape the awkwardness that would follow the two of you for the rest of your lives.
No.
It was safer to keep your hands to yourself.
Even if every part of you longed to close the small distance between them.
In the end you remained exactly where you were, your free hand resting quietly against the cool metal beneath the projection of sand, wondering if Ryland was fighting the same battle in his own mind, or if you were seeing meaning where there was only friendship.
The peaceful rhythm of the waves vanished in an instant.
ENGINE CUTOFF
Every screen in the room froze and displayed the warning in bold letters.
Your body reacted before your mind had time to.
The half-finished meal tube slipped from your fingers and bounced across the metal floor as you pushed yourself upright. The calmness you had managed to build over the past hour evaporated, replaced by years, well decades, of training taking over. Your pulse increased rapidly, yet your thoughts became clear.
Beside you, Ryland had already scrambled to his feet. The confusion on his face lasted only a heartbeat before his eyes found yours, instinctively searching for an answer he thought you had.
"What happened?" he asked, with a slight panic in his voice.
"I don't know yet."
You were already moving towards the latter.
"Come on." You demanded.Â
You spun toward the ladder leading to the cockpit, grabbing the rungs two at a time as your still-recovering muscles protested the sudden effort. Behind you, you heard Ryland mutter something under his breath before following immediately after, his hands slipping once against the polished metal.
"Little warning next time?" he called breathlessly.
"I'll schedule the emergencies better."
Despite everything, you heard him snicker under his breath.
"I'd appreciate that."
The familiar latter rushed past in a blur as your heart hammered against your ribs.The realization of sudden responsibility settled heavily in your chest as you ducked into the cockpit.
The compact flight deck felt smaller than you remembered, every display glowing with red warning lights while status reports scrolled across the consoles faster than your eyes could read them.
Without thinking, your feet carried you toward the right-hand seat.
The co-pilot's station. Your supposed station.
Your hand was already reaching for the restraints before your brain caught up.
You froze.
The movement lasted barely a second.
Then your stomach dropped.
No.
Not anymore.
That wasn't your seat.
Your eyes drifted almost involuntarily toward the empty command chair.
For one impossible moment, you expected Commander Yao to be there already. You could see him sitting calmly reading through diagnostics before issuing orders in that steady, reassuring voice of his.
You almost heard him.
"Pilot, status report."
The image disappeared as quickly as it had come.
The chair remained empty.
It always would.
A dull ache settled somewhere beneath your ribs. The second-in-command title no longer belonged to you.
Commander Yao wasn't coming.
No one was going to tell you what to do and no one was going to make the difficult decisions for you.
You drew a slow breath before deliberately changing course. Each step toward the pilot's seat felt heavier than the last even though it was barely two meters between the seats.
You lowered yourself into the command seat and quickly fastened the five-point harness across your chest with practiced efficiency. The familiar click of the buckle echoed through your mind.
The ship responded immediately.
"Pilot detected."
The robotic voice was clear and matter of fact. As though nothing had changed, as if it wasn't supposed to sit a whole other human being in the seat you're sitting in now. It clearly hadn't bothered the robot that the person occupying the pilot's seat hadn't once expected to spend the entire mission sitting one chair to the right.
You braced yourself for what's to come as the robotic voice counted down the last three digits.Â
The constant vibration that had become the unnoticed heartbeat of the Hail Mary simply vanished. The low hum of acceleration disappeared so abruptly that it felt like you had been shoved into a vacuum. Your stomach lurched as the familiar pressure pinning you to your seat melted away, your body suddenly forgetting which direction "down" was supposed to be.
The ship's synthesized voice interrupted the silence with its usual impossible calm.
"You are now entering Tau Ceti's orbit."
You barely had time to process the news before a loud yelp snapped your attention away from the displays.
"What the fudging fudge?!"
You looked over just in time to see Grace drifting helplessly across the cockpit.
He hadn't managed to strap himself into his seat before the engines cut out, and now he was rotating slowly through the air trying to hold onto his seat. He grabbed for the edge of the console, missed completely, and continued floating until his feet bumped gently against the ceiling.
"...Seriously?" he groaned as he pushed himself off the roof, only to send himself spinning the opposite direction.
You bit the inside of your cheek. Now was absolutely not the time to laugh but It became increasingly difficult not to.
Ryland finally caught hold of the back of his chair, clinging to it with both hands as though it were the last life raft on Earth. Unfortunately, the momentum he'd built carried the chair around with him, and the entire thing slowly rotated until the seat was facing away from you.
"...I meant to do that," he muttered.
"You've clearly mastered zero-g," you replied, unable to stop the smile tugging at the corners of your mouth.
"Oh, absolutely. NASA's going to use this in the training videos."
"'Here's what not to do?'"
"Exactly."
Despite the flashing warnings still dancing across the displays, a quiet laugh escaped both of you. You released the lock beneath your own chair and nudged yourself gently across the cockpit.
"Hold still."
"I am holding still."
"You and your chair are currently rotating."
"...Details."
You reached out, intending to steady the back of his seat before he could accidentally launch himself somewhere else. Your fingertips came within inches of his shoulder.
Your seat was close enough to his that you could see the tiny freckles across the bridge of his nose. Close enough to notice the amused smile he'd somehow managed to keep despite the situation.
For one second, neither of you moved.
His blue eyes met yours.
You realized just how little space actually existed inside the cockpit.
How close the two of you suddenly were.
Heat crept into your face before you quickly focused on the chair instead.
Professional.
Stay professional.
Just as your hand finally reached the frame, Mary spoke.
"Petrova scope operational."
Grace's head snapped toward the instrument.
"The scope!"
Before you could protest, he instinctively shoved away from his chair. He shot clean across the cockpit, both hands desperately reaching toward the Petrova scope as it extended from its housing.
"I got it!"
His fingers wrapped around the instrument just as his legs floated several feet behind him.
The sudden stop left him hanging almost horizontally in midair, gripping the scope with both hands as though letting go would send him drifting all the way back to Earth.
You couldn't stop yourself from laughing at the absurdity of the moment.
Ryland looked back over his shoulder with exaggerated offense.
"You think this is funny?"
"I'm trying very hard not to."
"You're failing spectacularly." He said as he continued to cling to the scope
"I know."
"I liked gravity." He sighed dramatically. "You think it'll come back?"
"Eventually." You replied.Â
"...Good."
You smiled to yourself as you pushed your chair gently, drifting after him.
There wasn't enough room inside the cramped cockpit for both of you to comfortably look through the scope at the same time, so you settled just over his shoulder, one hand resting lightly against the frame of his seat to keep yourself from drifting away.
You became acutely aware of how little space existed between the two of you. If you leaned forward only another centimeter, your shoulder would brush his. You resisted the temptation.
Instead, you focused on the blurry image reflected from the side of the instrument. Viewing it from an angle distorted the picture, making bright streaks smear across the lens in strange ways. Grace, meanwhile, had the proper view.
His eyes squinted in concentration as he viewed the image. Â
"It's Tau Ceti." There was unmistakable excitement behind the words.
Even after everything the two of you had endured, there it was. Humanities' last hope. You smiled despite yourself.Â
You made it, you thought.Â
Well, the two of you made it. Â
He adjusted the focus slightly.
"You have a Petrova line..." he murmured, more to himself than to you. "...but you're not dimming." His brow furrowed. "That doesn't make sense."
You watched him work through the problem almost visibly, every new observation rearranging the theory inside his head.
"It should be feeding..." he continued quietly. "If it's producing a Petrova line, then why isn't the star losing luminosity?"
You couldn't answer. Astrophage biology wasn't your field, flying ships was.
You leaned a little closer, trying to make sense of the distorted image from where you sat.
"I can't really see from this angle."
"Hang on..."
Ryland shifted the scope slightly, unknowingly bringing the two of you even closer together.
Your shoulders bumped.
Only lightly.
Neither of you moved away immediately.
"Sorry," he said as he left more space for you to look inside the scope.
For just a second, everything felt strangely ordinary again. Two coworkers puzzling over impossible data.
Then something caught your eye.
"Wait." Your smile faded. "What is that?"
Ryland stopped adjusting the focus.
"What?" He replied, his face almost leaning beside you to look into the scope.Â
"There." You lifted a finger toward the display, careful not to touch the optics. " You see that, on the Petrova line."
His eyes followed where you were pointing.
At first, it looked like nothing more than a tiny interruption, a dark speck crossing the brilliant ribbon of light. It could just be dust.
Then the object shifted and a brilliant reflection flashed across one side of it, catching the distant starlight before disappearing again.
Your heartbeat quickened.
"Grace..."
"I see it."
Neither of you spoke.
The tiny silhouette slowly resolved itself as the scope sharpened its focus.
It was moving.
Toward you.
The cockpit suddenly felt much smaller.
You and Ryland exchanged a look, neither of you needing to say what both of you were already thinking.
The Hail Mary's calm synthesized voice broke the silence.
"Blip-A detected."
The words echoed through the cockpit.
Neither of you looked away from the approaching object.
Note:  Sorry for not updating as promised. I have been in a remote village where there's barely any internet so I have not been able to write as much as I have wanted⊠And I'm going there next week too so my uploading schedule might be a bit disoriented for the next week. Due to thunderstorms my internet at home has also been cut out several times a day which makes it quite difficult to upload. But I am planning to finish this story of course and I still love PHM and being a part of the fandom and writing :)
You blinked, the memory dissolving as the bright white corridor of the Hail Mary came back into focus.
For a moment you had almost forgotten where you were. The memories of experiences on earth all slipped quietly back beneath the surface of your mind as you concentrated on the present. On the careful rhythm of your footsteps. On the dull ache in your legs. On the warmth of Graceâs arm beneath your hand.
He walked beside you at a pace that was painfully slow, matching every uncertain step without ever making it obvious he was doing so. His attention wasn't on the corridor ahead but on you. Every slight stumble and every tiny shift in your balance made his grip tighten almost imperceptibly before relaxing again once he was sure you had steadied yourself.
"Careful," he said softly, his voice carrying through the otherwise silent corridor. "There's a doorstep here."
Your eyes immediately dropped to the floor just in time to see the raised metal lip separating one section of the corridor from the next. Your weakened legs barely lifted high enough to clear it, but Grace subtly shifted his weight beside you, giving you just enough support to step over without losing your balance.
"There you go," he said with a small, encouraging smile, as though you'd just accomplished something far greater than stepping over a piece of metal.
It struck you again how naturally helping you seemed to come to him. He never sighed when you had to stop. Never hurried you along. Never made you feel like a burden, even though you knew perfectly well that you must have been slowing him down quite a lot. If anything, he seemed oddly content simply walking beside you.
You understood, suddenly, why he'd become a teacher.
He had the sort of patience that only a few people have. The kind that made people feel capable instead of incapable. Every word he chose seemed carefully considered, every reassurance given without sounding patronizing.
Once the two of you reached the end of the corridor, Grace slowed to a stop.
His smile widened ever so slightly.
"I've got a surprise for you."
"A surprise?" You questioned, as if this hour had not come with enough surprised already.
He nodded.
"I figured... after everything you've been through... you deserved something nice."
Curiosity flickered through you despite the heaviness that still lingered in your body.
"What is it?"
"You'll see."
He carefully guided you to turn toward the adjoining window.
"Just... look."
You did and you almost forgot how to breathe.
The corridor opened into a wide observation area unlike anything else aboard the ship. An enormous window stretched from floor to ceiling, its thick layers of reinforced glass separating you from the impossible vastness beyond.
Space.
Not the night sky you'd spent your entire life looking up at from Earth. No, you noticed directly that the stars and planets were scattered in a way that you could not see from your solar system. Still the scattered stars peeking through the atmosphere were mesmerizing.
The universe spread endlessly before you in complete silence, untouched by clouds or air. Countless stars burned against the blackness with a clarity that almost hurt to look at. Some shone brilliant white while others glowed soft blue, orange or deep crimson.
You didn't realize you'd started moving until Grace stumbled half a step after you.
Your feet carried you forward almost instinctively, dragging him gently by the arm until you found yourself standing only inches from the glass.
Your hand lifted on its own and your fingertips rested lightly against the cold surface.
"...Wow."
The word escaped as little more than a breath.
That expression wasn't enough.
No language had ever invented a word large enough for what you were feeling.
You had seen this before.
Not this exact view.
But this feeling.
You remembered the first time you'd looked through the window of a spacecraft and realized there was no boundary between you and the stars. You'd stood frozen then too, unable to look away as Earth slowly became smaller.
You'd thought it was beautiful.
You'd thought nothing could ever compare.
Nothing on Earth had ever come close to seeing it with your own eyes.
Your chest tightened because somewhere beneath came another realization.
This would be the last sky you would ever know.
You would never see another sunrise over Earth.
Never look at your own stars.
Never see your the solar system you had studied all your life with your own eyes
Never another launch.
Never another mission.
Never another homecoming.
Only this.
The endless universe.
Beautiful enough to steal your breath.
Lonely enough to break your heart.
You smiled anyway.
Because even knowing that...
You couldn't imagine wanting to be anywhere else.
The glass reflected a faint image behind you.
Grace.
His blue eyes were bright with quiet happiness.
"This is incredible." You uttered out
"It is."
"You've been keeping this from me?"
He laughed softly.
"I wanted to wait until you could actually walk here."
Your eyebrows lifted.
"So this was the surprise?"
"I had a feeling you'd like it."
"I like it?"
You laughed quietly.
"I think 'like' is underselling it."
His grin grew.
"I was hoping you'd say that."
Only then did you notice where he was looking.
Not the stars.
Not the distant galaxies.
You.
"You've hardly looked outside," you joked, making eye contact with him through the glass reflection.
His eyes flickered briefly, looking like he'd been caught off guard, before actually turning to look at you.
"I've already had days to stare at space." His voice softened. "I've been waiting to see your reaction."
Heat crept into your cheeks for reasons you couldn't explain.
"You've been watching me this whole time?" You raised an eyebrow.
"A little." He shrugged with a mischievous grin.
"A little?"
"...Maybe a lot." He joked, at least you hoped so.
You shook your head, a crooked smile appeared at the corner of your lips despite trying not to.
"You're unbelievable."
"So I've been told." His gaze dropped toward the floor. "And..." He nodded toward your feet. "Look."
You frowned before following his gaze.
You were standing. Perfectly still without having to lean against anything. The only thing was that you were still holding on to Grace's sleeve which didn't give you that much balance wich made your legs tremble only slightly.
"Youre rightâ You blinked in surprise. âI didn't even think about it.â
"I did." There was unmistakable pride in his voice. "You've been standing on your own for a while."
You stared at your own feet. Somehow, in your excitement, you'd forgotten how weak they were supposed to be. A ridiculous thought crossed your mind. You almost wished your legs were not working.
Because now you didn't have an excuse to stay holding onto Grace. No excuse to be close with him.
Your hand lingered for another second before reluctantly slipping away from his arm.
The absence of his warmth was strangely noticeable. You clasped your hands behind your back like usual instead.
Anything to keep yourself from reaching back.
You turned toward the stars again, trying to ignore the unexpected disappointment settling quietly in your chest.
You wished that someone else could see this. Someone who would appreciate this view as much as you do. Your thoughts immediately drifted to the rest of the crew.
"I wonder..." You looked down the branching corridors. "Have Ilyukhina and Yao seen this yet?"
The words had barely left your mouth before the atmosphere changed.
Beside you, Ryland stopped breathing. His smile disappeared so gradually that it almost hurt to watch. His shoulders, which had been relaxed only moments ago, slowly sagged beneath the weight of something invisible.
He looked away from the window.
Away from you.
One hand came up to rub hard across his face.
The silence stretched too long for it to be comfortable.
"...Grace?" He swallowed and didn't answer. Unusual behaviour for a chatterbox like him. Something must be reallywrong. Your pulse began to climb. "What is it?"
He shook his head once.
"I..." His voice failed him. "I don't..."
Another pause.
His eyes remained fixed firmly on the floor.
"I don't know how to say this."
Every instinct inside you suddenly screamed that something was terribly wrong.
Your heart pounded so loudly you could hear it.
"What happened?"
He closed his eyes.
When he finally spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper.
"They..."
He let out a long, shaky breath.
"...they didn't wake up."
The universe beyond the glass vanished.
The stars.
The planets.
The endless beauty outside.
Everything disappeared beneath those four words.
They didn't wake up.
You stared at him.
"No."
Your voice sounded distant.
Almost unrecognizable.
"No..."
Grace finally looked up.
His own eyes had become glassy.
"I'm so sorry."
"No."
You shook your head harder.
"That's not..."
Your knees suddenly refused to hold you.
The floor lurched violently beneath your feet.
Before you hit the ground, familiar arms caught you.
You weren't sure who reached for whom.
One moment it felt like you were falling.
The next you were pressed tightly against Ryland's chest, his arms wrapped securely around you as though simply refusing to let gravity, or grief, take you.
For several long moments neither of you spoke.
You heard his steadily thudded heartbeat in the silence interrupted by the quiet sob that escaped your lips and the trembling breath he failed to hide.
"Do you want to see them?" Ryland's voice was barely a whisper. The question lingered between you, fragile enough that it felt as though speaking any louder might shatter what little composure either of you still possessed.
You didn't.
Every instinct screamed that you should keep the image you had of them intact. The commander with his perfect posture, Ilyukhina laughing so hard she could barely finish one of her own stories. If you turned around now, if you never stepped into that room, then perhaps some small part of your mind could continue pretending they were simply somewhere else, maybe back on earth or somewhere aboard the ship. Working. Sleeping. Running another system check.
But you knew that wasn't true, that would never be true. The longer you avoided seeing them, the more your imagination would fill in the gaps. The uncertainty would become its own kind of torment.
You slowly pulled away from the hug to look at Grace .
"...Yes."
He searched your face carefully.
"Are you sure?"
The question wasn't dismissive. He wasn't trying to convince you one way or the other. If anything, it sounded as though he desperately wanted to give you permission to say no.
You swallowed against the tightness in your throat.
"I need to."
Ryland gave a quiet nod.
Neither of you spoke again.
You took the first step on your own.
Your legs still felt unfamiliar beneath you, each muscle protesting after years of inactivity, but you couldn't bring yourself to reach for Ryland's arm again. You'd leaned on him enough already. This walk felt like something you had to do under your own strength.
Even if that strength was barely enough.
The corridor stretched endlessly ahead, impossibly long despite the ship's compact design. Only minutes ago these same white walls had seemed full of possibility. Every sealed hatch had promised another part of humanity's most ambitious mission. Another room waiting to be rediscovered.
The cheerful excitement you'd felt standing before the observation window had vanished completely, replaced by a heaviness that settled over your shoulders like additional gravity.
Your foot caught slightly on the metal flooring.
Before you could fully lose your balance, Ryland instinctively extended a hand.
He didn't touch you, just hovered close enough that he could catch you if you fell.
You steadied yourself before he had to.
His hand quietly lowered again.
Neither of you acknowledged it.
The only sound left was the ship itself.
The low vibration of the engines.
The whisper of circulating air.
The soft rhythm of your footsteps echoing through corridors built for four people.
Now occupied by only two.
You passed an open laboratory.
For the briefest moment, your exhausted mind betrayed you.
You could almost see Ilyukhina sitting on one of the workbenches, legs swinging absentmindedly as she dismantled some piece of equipment she'd promised not to take apart. She'd look up the moment you walked in, flashing that effortless grin before making some terrible joke that would have Yao sighing disappointment.
The image vanished as quickly as it appeared. The room was left empty, cold and lifeless.
Further ahead, you found yourself instinctively listening for the commander's voice over the speakers.
You almost expected the intercom to crackle to life.
You could hear Yao's calm authority so vividly that your heart skipped, your head turning toward the nearest speaker before reality caught up with you.
Nothing.
Only static silence.
Your chest tightened painfully.
This was how the ship should have sounded.
Full of conversations drifting between rooms.
Grace talking too loudly while trying to explain something.
Ilyukhina laughing at one of her own jokes before she'd even reached the punchline.
Yao reminding everyone to stay focused despite smiling himself.
Instead...
There was only the ventilation system.
You glanced ahead at Grace.
His eyes remained fixed ahead, though every few seconds they flicked toward you just long enough to make sure you were still walking.
How long had he been doing this alone?
The question settled heavily in your mind.
How many days had passed before you woke up?
Days?
Weeks?
How many times had he walked these exact corridors with no footsteps answering his own?
How many meals had he eaten in silence?
How many times had he stood inside the med bay, wondering if today would finally be the day you opened your eyes?
You remembered waking to find him beside your bed.
You remembered the relief in his face when you'd finally recognized his name.
Had that relief been building for days?
Another realization quietly followed.
Your own memories had returned almost effortlessly.
Faces.
Places.
Training.
The mission.
One memory connected naturally to the next, like pages returning to the right order after being shuffled.
Ryland hadn't been that fortunate.
Even now, he'd spoken about pieces of his past as though they belonged to someone else. His memories had been fragmented, incomplete, assembled from notes, recordings and whatever scraps his mind had managed to recover.
You remembered who you were.
Ryland had needed to rebuild himself.
And he'd done it while carrying the weight of believing he might be the only living human awake aboard the Hail Mary.
The ache in your chest deepened.
You weren't the one who had endured the solitude.
He was.
Yet somehow, through all of it, he'd still greeted you with a smile.
Still slowed his pace to match yours.
Still worried more about whether you might stumble than about the days he himself had spent carrying grief alone.
Some people carried pain loudly.
Ryland carried his quietly, tucked behind patient smiles and gentle jokes, as though if he could make someone else feel a little lighter, his own burden might become easier to bear.
Your heart broke for him.
Without thinking, you shortened the distance between you by half a step.
Not enough to touch.
Just enough that neither of you was walking through the silence alone.
The hatch slid open with a quiet mechanical hiss. Grace stepped aside without saying a word, silently giving you the choice to enter first or turn back while you still could.
For several long seconds, you couldn't make your feet move.
The room beyond was small. Smaller than you'd imagined. Metal walls curved gently into the ceiling, interrupted only by the circular airlock hatch at the far end and neatly secured equipment lining the sides. It should have looked like every other compartment aboard the Hail Mary.
Instead, it felt like a tomb.
The silence inside was different somehow. Heavier. As though even the ship itself knew to remain quiet here.
You finally forced yourself across the threshold.
Your eyes dropped almost immediately to the floor.
Two yellow flight suits.
Nothing more.
Your mind refused to process what your eyes already understood.
One shoulder bore the Russian flag. The other⊠China.
Your breathing caught in your throat.
No.
Your gaze drifted back to the nearest figure. The yellow overalls looked almost identical to your own, save for the familiar Russian tricolor stitched neatly onto the shoulder and the red Roscosmos emblem sewn proudly across the chest. The fabric had faded slightly with time, but it was unmistakable.
Your eyes slowly traveled upward.
The face...
Time and the ship's dry atmosphere had changed it almost beyond recognition, leaving skin drawn tightly against bone, every trace of the lively expression you remembered long since gone.
Yet somehow you recognised her instantly.
"Olesya..."
Her name escaped as little more than a whisper.
The room disappeared.
A memory slammed into you without warning.
"...No, no," Olesya grinned, leaning across the table. "You have to roll the R."
"I can't do it like you."
"You are an astronaut. You can survive rocket launch but not one tiny letter?" She said with her thick russian accent.
You'd tried again.
She'd burst into applause.
"Perfect!"
"It sounded terrible."
"It sounded Russian. You're soon native!"
The memory was gone in a blink of an eye.
The room returned.
Your vision blurred with tears.
Almost without thinking, you lowered yourself onto one knee beside her. The movement made your still-recovering muscles protest, but you hardly cared.
Your fingers reached toward the sleeve of her flight suit.
You hesitated.
Then gently rested your hand against the fabric.
Cold.
Stiff.
Nothing like the person you remembered.
"Captain Serious!"
Olesya jogged to catch up beside you after another training session.
"You know smiling burns almost no calories."
"I smile." You nodded
"You do not."
"I smiled yesterday."
"You frightened three engineers."
"I don't think that's true."
She nudged your shoulder.
"I volunteer to teach you."
"Teach me what?"
"How to have fun."
The smallest laugh escaped your lips. It lasted barely a second before breaking apart into a sob.
The memories stopped as suddenly as they'd begun. The emptiness that followed hurt even more than the memories themselves.
You lowered your head.
"I miss you already..."
The words barely left your lips before warm arms settled gently around your shoulders.
You hadn't heard Ryland move. He didn't pull you away. Didn't tell you everything would be okay.
He sat beside you, one arm wrapped around you with quiet steadiness, allowing you to lean into him if you needed to.
Neither of you looked away from Olesya.
After a long silence, Ryland spoke so quietly you almost missed it.
"You know..." His voice caught. "...the first time I ever saw you genuinely happy..." He smiled sadly at the memory. "...was because of her."
"What do you mean?" You turned your head slightly towards him
"You remember that lunch we had together in the middle of winter, after that conference?"
You frowned.
Then another memory surfaced.
Olesya had spent nearly ten minutes building up the world's worst joke.
Grace had guessed the punchline halfway through.
Yao had sighed dramatically before she'd even finished.
You had tried, really tried, not to laugh.
You lasted exactly three seconds.
Ryland chuckled softly at the memory.
"I'd never heard you laugh, genuinely, before that." His smile widened just enough to soften the grief in his face. "I remember thinking..." He glanced down at you. "...'Oh. So that's what they sound like.'"
You let out a shaky breath that was somewhere between a laugh and another sob.
"I guess..."
You wiped quickly at your eyes.
"...the serious mask couldn't stay on forever."
"No."
Ryland's voice was gentle.
"It never really did around us."
Your throat tightened all over again.
You looked back toward Olesya.
She hadn't just been your crewmate.
She'd been the person who proved that discipline and laughter didn't have to exist on opposite sides of the same person.
And somehow...
Without you ever noticing...
She'd taught Captain Serious how to smile.
Without thinking, you let yourself lean against Ryland's shoulder.
You had spent your entire life convincing yourself that strength meant standing on your own. That composure was something you wore like armor, never allowing cracks to show no matter how frightened or exhausted you felt. Yet standing here, surrounded by the silence of the EVA compartment and the absence of two people who were destined to fill this ship with conversation, you found you no longer had the energy to hold that armor together.
Ryland didn't speak.
He simply remained beside you, steady and warm, his shoulder supporting just enough of your weight that you could forget, if only for a moment, how exhausted you were.
Quiet tears rolled down your cheeks, falling unnoticed onto the yellow fabric of your flight suit.
You had seen death before.
Every astronaut, every pilot, every soldier eventually learned that life could disappear in an instant. One heartbeat separated the living from the dead. One failed system. One wrong decision. One moment of bad luck.
People often spoke about death as though it carried some hidden beauty, some greater meaning.
You had never believed that.
There was nothing beautiful about it.
One moment a person laughed, argued, dreamed, complained about cafeteria food or stayed up too late finishing reports.
The next...
There was only silence.
Only the empty space where their voice should have been.
You realized then that grief wasn't just missing someone. It was noticing all the places they should still exist.
The chair they would have chosen.
The joke they would have interrupted with.
The footsteps you kept expecting to hear around the next corner.
Life would continue, just as it always had. Somewhere on Earth children were being born, people were falling in love, families were eating dinner together without any idea that this tiny spacecraft drifted eleven light-years from home carrying the last hopes of humanity had just lost half their crew.
People died every day.
People mourned every day.
Eventually, those left behind learned how to keep living.
But knowing that didn't make this easier.
Because statistics had never laughed with you over lunch.
Statistics had never called you "Captain Serious."
These weren't names on a mission roster.
They had been your friends.
Your family, in every way that mattered.
Beside you, Ryland drew a slow breath.
"I've been thinking..." His voice was almost hesitant, as though he wasn't sure he had the right to interrupt your thoughts. "...I think we should bury them."
You looked up at him.
"It's the least they deserve." He continued.
For a long moment, you couldn't answer.
Then you gave a small nod.
"...Yeah."
Your voice was barely audible.
"They deserve that."
You were just about to step away from Olesya but something caught your eye.
Her hands rested peacefully across her chest, curled around a small stack of photographs. That hadn't been there by accident.
Carefully, you knelt beside her once more. Through blurred eyes you reached out and lifted the top photograph just enough to see it clearly.
A younger Olesya stood in front of the Kremlin with the most mischievous grin imaginable. She was halfway through climbing over a decorative barrier while someone behind the camera had clearly captured the exact moment before she was caught.
Even frozen in a photograph, she looked incapable of following rules.
A faint smile found its way onto your face through the tears.
"That... looks like her."
The smile disappeared almost as quickly as it had come.
You looked down at the body before you.
The woman in the photograph looked impossibly alive.
The one lying in front of you didn't.
You swallowed hard before looking over your shoulder.
"Did you do this?"
Ryland followed your gaze to the photographs.
"...Yeah."
"You found these?"
He nodded quietly.
"They were stored with everyone's personal belongings."
His eyes settled on Olesya for a moment.
"I couldn't..." He stopped, searching for words. "I couldn't leave them here with nothing." He rubbed the back of his neck, avoiding your eyes.
He had done this alone.
He had searched through their belongings alone.
Chosen the photographs alone.
Sat in this room alone.
Said goodbye...
Alone.
How many times had he stood exactly where you were standing now, trying to find the courage to open the airlock?
Your chest tightened all over again as you turned toward the second body.
Commander Yao lay with the same quiet dignity he had carried in life. Resting beneath one arm was his well-worn sun hat, tucked carefully beside it were several photographs.
The first showed him standing shoulder to shoulder with his wife, both smiling warmly at whoever stood behind the camera.
The second was less formal.
His young child sat on his shoulders, both of them pulling exaggerated faces at the camera while Yao, normally so composed, looked completely incapable of hiding his laughter.
You stared at the picture longer than you meant to.
The child couldn't have been more than eight years old.
Your thoughts drifted unwillingly back toward Earth.
Eleven light-years away.
Time had continued without any of you.
If humanity still survived...
That child would no longer be a child.
They would have grown up without a father, carrying a loss they would never fully understand while the world itself fought to survive.
Your fingers tightened around the edge of the photograph.
Some grief belonged to those left behind.
Some grief stretched across the impossible distance between stars.
And here, aboard the Hail Mary, Ryland had been carrying both.
You start with Ilyukhina. Her body weighs almost nothing as you lift her up into the airlock.
âGoodbye Olesya, I will forever miss you.â You whisper to her before pressing the jettison button. Once the countdown finishes it releases the outer door. Within just a second Olesya Ilyukhina is gone.
âOlesya Ilyukhina,â Grace says. âI commend your body to the stars.â
Next he lifts commander Yao up with ease and puts him into the airlock.
âYĂĄo Li-Jieâ He says in the same manner as before. âI commend your body to the starsâ
He is gone just as fast as Ilyukhina leaving the two of you alone. You were alone all along. But now you are truly alone. There is no sign of life on this ship except the two of you.
You start with lifting up Ilyukhina. Her body weighs almost nothing as you lift her up into the airlock.
âGoodbye Olesya, I will forever miss you.â You whisper to her before pressing the jettison button. Once the countdown finishes it releases the outer door. Within just a second Olesya Ilyukhina is gone.
âOlesya Ilyukhina,â Grace says. âI commend your body to the stars.â
Next he lifts commander Yao up with ease and puts him into the airlock. He waits a moment before pressing the jettison button.
âYĂĄo Li-Jieâ He says in the same manner as before. âI commend your body to the starsâ
He is gone just as fast as Ilyukhina leaving the two of you alone. You were alone all along. But now you are truly alone.
There is no other sign of life on this ship except the two of you.
The walk from the medical bay was slow. Every step felt excruciatingly painful and only reminded you of how long your muscles had gone unused. Although you hated admitting it, Ryland's arm had become less of a precaution and more of a necessity. His forearm remained steady beneath your hand, supporting just enough of your weight that you could pretend you were still walking on your own. He never tightened his grip unless you stumbled, never drew attention to the fact that you were leaning on him. He was the same old nice Ryland you had remembered from before, always eager to help you no matter what and somehow, he instinctively knew exactly how much help to offer without making you feel helpless.
The warmth of his body seeped through the fabric of his yellow overalls, grounding you far more than the brightly lit corridor around you. You found yourself holding on a little harder than you probably needed to. Partly because your legs still trembled beneath you and partly because letting go suddenly felt... wrong. Holding onto his arm felt comforting in a way you couldn't quite explain. For a brief, almost embarrassing moment, you caught yourself thinking you could stay like this forever, simply walking beside him through the endless white corridors with his quiet reassurance only a heartbeat away.
Compatible.
The word surfaced to your mind uninvited.
It echoed through your mind with uncomfortable clarity, carrying the memory of a doctor's office, stacks of graphs, Ryland sitting next to you as Stratt's matter-of-fact voice explaining why NASA had spent years measuring the two of you. You had almost forgotten that conversation. Almost. The memory rose to the surface so suddenly that the corridor around you blurred, replaced by another building in another hallway on another solar system entirely.
The steady rhythm of your breathing drowned out the music blasting through your headphones.
Your legs burned with every rotation of the exercise bike's pedals, but that was exactly where they were supposed to be. The resistance was cranked almost all the way up, forcing your thighs to work against every revolution as if you were cycling uphill through wet concrete. Sweat dripped from your forehead, rolled down your temples and disappeared into the collar of your grey NASA training shirt. The fabric had long since given up trying to stay dry, clinging to your back and shoulders with every movement.
Your smartwatch buzzed again: Target heart rate achieved. Without hesitation, you increased the resistance to another level. You can always push harder. The muscles in your legs protested immediately to the resistance.
Good.
Astronaut training wasn't about comfort. Comfort didn't keep a spacecraft flying. Comfort didn't help you troubleshoot a life-support failure thousands of kilometers from Earth.
Comfort didn't save humanity.
Discipline did.
You fixed your eyes on the digital timer counting down the remaining seconds of the interval. Your breathing stayed controlled despite the strain.
Breathing In through the nose and out through the mouth.
Around you, the NASA training gym buzzed its usual rhythm. Astronaut candidates occupied nearly every corner of the enormous room. Some were lifting impossibly heavy weights under the watchful eyes of strength coaches. Others were suspended in harnesses, practicing awkward body movements that mimicked reduced gravity. Across the room, a group of pilots were finishing a rowing circuit while two physicians quietly monitored their heart rates from tablets. And here you were on your lunch break trying to squeeze in training before another lecture.
The air smelled faintly of rubber flooring, disinfectant and sweat. To most people it would have smelled unpleasant. But to you it smelled like progress.
Every drop of sweat meant another fraction of a second faster. Another kilogram lifted. Another heartbeat closer to becoming exactly what the mission demanded.
Astronaut training had stripped away every illusion you once had about talent.
Talent got you accepted, Discipline kept you alive.
Every day followed nearly the same schedule.
Study.
Train.
Sleep.
Repeat.
You had stopped thinking of it as work months ago. It was simply life.Â
Your life.
You hadn't spent years sacrificing birthdays, weekends, relationships and a social life just to become good enough.
Good enough wasn't why NASA had picked you.
They needed the best.
Not because anyone expected perfection.
Because space punished almost-perfect just as brutally as complete incompetence.
The vibration on your wrist returned.
One minute remaining.
Your lungs screamed.
Good.
You increased the resistance to max level.
You remembered when a reporter once asked during an interview what motivated you. You had in turn answered with something polished about scientific discovery and advancing humanity.
It wasn't a lie.
But it wasn't the whole truth either.
The truth was much simpler.
You loved it.
You loved learning, you loved flying, you loved solving impossible problems, you loved watching every tiny improvement accumulate until impossible things slowly became routine.
There wasn't anywhere else on Earth you would rather be.
A shadow appeared on your right side, you ignored it. Probably another trainer reminding you to hydrate or another gym goer making their way to another machine. To your surprise the shadow remained.
Still pedaling, you pulled one earbud from your ear and looked over your shoulder. To your surprise a man in military uniform stood beside the bike, hands clasped neatly behind his back.
He met your eyes and asked for your name. You told him and he nodded in response.Â
"You are requested in Medical immediately." The soldiers stated.
Your eyes instinctively flicked toward the timer on the exercise bike.
Fourteen seconds left of your interval.
"May I finish the interval?"
"I'm instructed to bring you immediately."
You nodded once, accepting that you wont be able to finish your gym routine.
"If that's the order." You sigh. All this talking has made your breathing heavier.
You reduced the resistance gradually instead of stopping abruptly, allowing your heart rate to recover properly before stepping off the bike. Even now, there was no reason to ignore procedure. The soldier stood still beside you, he didn't say anything to hurry you up so you took your time. Once your pedaling stopped completely you reached for the towel hanging over the handlebars and wiped the sweat from your face before taking a drink from your water bottle.
Only then did you turn fully toward the soldier.
"Was a reason given?"
"No."
"Who is expecting me?"
"Stratt specifically called you in for this meeting."
A small knot tightened in your stomach. Stratt rarely summoned people personally and when she did, it usually meant one of two things.
Something had gone exceptionally well or exceptionally badly.
You searched your memory for mistakes.
Did you miss something during yesterday's simulator session?
Has one of your medical results come back abnormal?
Has another crew assignment changed?
Has the mission been postponed?
Has someone died?!
Nothing came to mind.
You looked down at yourself. Your shirt was soaked through from the workout, and damp strands of hair had stuck to your forehead and neck.
"Permission to change first?"
The soldier shook his head.
"I'm afraid not."
"I'll only require a few minutes."
"The instruction was to bring you immediately."
You hesitated for only a second until you remembered that you had taken some time to exponentially decrease your heartbeat.
"...Understood."
There was no point pressing further, orders existed for a reason.
You collected your towel and water bottle before falling into step beside him without another word.
The walk through the hangar felt considerably longer than usual.
The building bustled with its normal activity. Engineers hurried between laboratories carrying armfuls of reports. Flight controllers discussed telemetry around digital displays. Astronaut candidates crossed the corridors in matching training uniforms, some nodding politely as you passed. A few glanced briefly at your appearance. You couldn't blame them. Your clothes were still damp with sweat. Your breathing had only just begun returning to normal. You looked less like one of NASA's brightest astronauts and more like someone who had just undergone their first time at the gym.
It bothered you more than you cared to admit. First impressions mattered. Professionalism mattered and your attire was the opposite of professional.
If Stratt had specifically requested your presence, the last thing you wanted was to arrive looking unprepared. But hopefully Stratt knew your schedule and she knew you were on your lunch break. You discreetly wiped another bead of sweat from your forehead with the towel. Whatever this meeting was about, you'd face it exactly as you were. Ready, or at least determined to appear ready.
The soldier stopped outside a frosted glass door marked MEDICAL EVALUATION. He firmly knocked twice, leaving knuckle prints on the glass door.
"Enter." A voice from inside replied.
The soldier opened the door and stepped aside.
"You may go in."
You gave him a brief nod before stepping through the doorway.
The room was much larger than you expected. Much larger than a normal doctors visit room
One wall was almost entirely occupied by illuminated medical displays showing ECG readouts, genetic sequencing charts and skeletal scans rotating slowly on oversized monitors. Metal cabinets lined another wall, each one meticulously labelled. The air smelled faintly of hand sanitiser, the kind of scent every hospital somehow seemed to share regardless of where in the world it was.Â
The physician sitting behind the desk looked up from his computer.
His expression remained pleasant, though not particularly surprising.
"You made good time."
"I came as soon as I was instructed."
"I appreciate that." He smiled, taking notice of your unusual attire.
Only then did you notice someone already sitting in one of the chairs opposite the doctor's desk.
Dirty blond hair. A thick, beige knitted cardigan draped over a faded blue shirt. The elbows of the cardigan had begun to wear thin from use, and one of the sleeves looked as though it had been repaired by hand at least once. It was unmistakably Ryland Grace. Shit, you thought, why did he have to be here?
He looked at you the moment the door opened, but you had paid him no mind until now.Â
You meet his eyes and for a brief second confusion crosses his face, probably due to your unusual look and the unusual place to meet. It quickly disappeared beneath a warm smile you had grown used to.
"There you are." He sounded genuinely relieved that you came. "I was wondering who else had been dragged in here."
You blinked in response, your gaze drifting between Ryland and the doctor.
"You too?" You questioned in pure surprise. He nodded in response.
"Been sitting here for..." He glanced toward the wall clock. "...about five minutes."
Your stomach loosened slightly. To your relief you realized it wasn't just you. Whatever this was, it involved both of you.Â
"You look like you've been through it." He said looking you up and down. Your eyes instinctively dropped to yourself. Sweat had soaked completely through your grey training shirt and your hair was still damp despite your attempt to wipe it dry with the towel now hanging awkwardly around your neck. You were still carrying your water bottle in one hand.Â
Fantastic.
Meanwhile Ryland looked comfortable and presentable. Well at least more presentable than you, but that knitted fox sweater wasn't doing him any good. He looked like he'd had time to prepare for this, meanwhile you had been dragged out the gym during intensive training.
Heat crept into your face, both from embarrassment but also from exhaustion from having just trained.
"I'm sorry," you said automatically, looking toward the doctor. "I came directly from training. I requested permission to shower first, but the order was to report immediately."
The doctor offered a reassuring smile.
"No apology necessary."
"I would have preferred to arrive properly prepared."
"I know."
Ryland tilted his head.
"I think you look fine." He smiled. You gave him a raised eyebrow, wondering if he was joking or actually serious. He just shrugged in response, leaving you with even more questions. "You look exactly like someone who just finished cardio."
"I look unprofessional." You sigh.
"No, you look athletic."
"I look like I ran here."
"You probably would have if you weren't escorted here."
Despite yourself, one corner of your mouth twitched.Â
"Please. Have a seat." The doctor gestured toward the remaining chair beside Ryland.
You sat carefully on the chair beside Rylands, placing the towel across your knees and setting your water bottle beside your chair.
Only now did you realize your pulse was still elevated from the workout. Your watch continued displaying the slow decline.
Heart Rate: 118 BPM.
Still higher than normal.
The doctor tapped on his keyboard.
"I'll keep this brief." He said as he drew his eyes from the screen and looked between the two of you.
"You were both screened several months ago as part of the Hail Mary candidate selection process." You nodded in response and Ryland leaned back in his chair. "Among the many tests performed was an extensive genomic analysis."
The physician tapped in another command on his keyboard. Two genetic sequences appeared on one of the monitors. Several regions glowed in blue on both of them.
"You both possess an exceptionally rare collection of genetic variants."
Ryland straightened his posture .
"So we're mutants."
"No."
"...Enhanced humans?"
"No."
"Worth asking." He shrugged as he tried to sneak a glance on you to see your reaction. You just stared at the genetic sequence trying to make sense of it all. You saw how his ears turned red from the corner of your eyes.Â
The doctor continued as though the interruption had never happened.
"Without these markers, remaining unconscious for the duration required by the Hail Mary mission would likely result in irreversible neurological damage with possibility of Death"
The room became noticeably quieter.
"But..." He indicated the highlighted genes. "...both of you possess the necessary combination."
Ryland's joking expression faded.
"So that's why we're here."
"Partly." The doctor nodded. "However..." His eyes settled on you. "...your profile is especially remarkable."
You blinked.
"Mine?"
"Your genetic expression suggests an even greater resistance than Dr. Grace's."
You looked instinctively toward Ryland and he was already looking back at you. Instead of jealousy, his face lit up.
"Seriously?" Rylands face lit up. The doctor nodded.
"Based on current modelling, yes."
Ryland stretched out his hand between you two in hopes of a high five.
"That's incredible."
You answered his high five but shifted uncomfortably in your chair.
"I don't know if I'd call it incredible." You sigh.
"I would." Ryland's grin widened. "I mean, statistically speaking, you're basically evolution showing off."
You shook your head.
"It was luck."
"Sure." He folded his arms. "But it's lucky in the same way winning every lottery at once is lucky." The compliment landed more heavily than you expected. You weren't particularly good at accepting praise. Getting recognition for your hard work was one thing. Being praised for genetics felt...
Embarrassing.
"I didn't earn it."
Ryland looked at you for a moment before answering.
"No." His voice had softened. "You earned everything else."
The room fell silent. You looked down, suddenly fascinated by the label on your water bottle. You weren't entirely sure why that sentence affected you as much as it did. Perhaps because it came from someone whose opinion actually mattered.
The doctor quietly cleared his throat.
"There is... another reason I asked both of you here today."
Ryland looked back toward him.
"Oh?"
The doctor closed one file and reached for another, considerably thicker folder resting on the edge of his desk.
Across the front, two names had been printed side by side. Your full name and Ryland Graceâs name. You frowned in response, why would you two share a folder?Â
"What exactly is that?" You questioned.Â
The doctor rested one hand on the thick folder for a moment before opening it. Unlike the genetic report, which had been filled with unfamiliar strings of letters and highlighted chromosomes, this one contained graphs. Dozens of them. Line charts, tables, psychological evaluations, simulator scores, biometric readings, all carefully tabbed with color-coded dividers. Nearly every page carried both of your names somewhere across the top.
He turned the first page toward the two of you.
"This is a compatibility assessment."
Ryland leaned forward, curiosity replacing the happiness that had settled over him during the discussion of the coma gene.
"What kind of compatibility?" he asked. "Scientific? Psychological? Crew dynamics?"
The doctor nodded in response.
"All of the above."
You exchanged a quick glance with Ryland before looking back at the doctor.
"I wasn't aware NASA did these." You said in surprise.
"We don't," the doctor replied calmly. "Not routinely."
Your stomach tightened. You looked down on your wristwatch, surprised that your stats were actually logged somewhere.
"So why us?"
Before the doctor could answer, there was a firm knock on the office door. It opened almost immediately afterward.
Eva Stratt stepped inside. The threes of your postures straightened almost immediately when she stepped into the room.
She wore the same dark coat she always seemed to wear, a tablet rested beneath one arm, and she surveyed the room with the same clinical efficiency she brought to every meeting. Her eyes lingered on you for barely a second, taking in your sweat-soaked attire, the towel across your lap and the water bottle by your chair. If she had any opinion about your appearance, she gave no indication.
"Good," she said simply. "You have reached this part."
The doctor nodded his head.
"I was about to begin."
She moved to stand beside the window, folding her hands behind her back.
"Continue."
The room suddenly felt much smaller, almost claustrophobic. You sat a little straighter without consciously meaning to. Beside you, even Ryland stopped fidgeting with the sleeve of his cardigan.
The doctor slid another graph across the desk.
"When the Hail Mary crew candidates entered training, Stratt requested that we monitor not only individual performance, but cooperative performance. Humanity cannot afford to send a crew whose members are individually brilliant yet incapable of functioning together."
"That makes sense," you replied.
"It does." He tapped the graph. "During the past years, you and Dr. Grace have completed almost one hundred simulator sessions together."
Ryland blinked. "...That many?"
"You frequently volunteered for additional practice outside scheduled training." You replied.
 "I guess i did."Ryland rubbed the back of his neck.
The doctor continued.
"You two consistently achieved the highest mission-success rate of any pairing available."
You looked toward Ryland who mirrored your movement and gave you a look of surprise.
"We've had a lot of practice." He nodded.
"You have," the doctor agreed. "However, practice alone does not explain these results." He flipped to another page. "This graph represents reaction time during emergency simulations." A blue line and a red line stretched almost perfectly together. "When paired with one another, both of you consistently anticipate the other's decisions before verbal communication is completed."
Ryland frowned .
"What does that mean?" He asked suspiciously.
"It means," the doctor explained, "that if they reach for a control panel, you have already begun adjusting your own actions before receiving confirmation."
.
"I never noticed that myself." You stared at the graph that seemed too good to be true.
"Neither did we," the doctor admitted. "Until we analyzed the recordings frame by frame." He flipped to another page. "This chart measures communication latency." Another. "Stress recovery." Another. "Decision accuracy."Â
Every graph told the same story. Together. Together. Together. You were always performing your best together.Â
"We've trained together almost every day." You folded your arms.
"Correct."
"We've flown hundreds of simulations."
"Correct."
"We've eaten lunch together because there are only so many people working on this program."
"Also correct."
"So..." You gestured toward the stack of papers. "...isn't that the explanation?"
Ryland looked suspiciously at Stratt and then at you.
"What kind of monitoring?" He asked.
The doctor hesitated just long enough to make you uneasy.
"Heart rate."
"Okay..."
"Cortisol."
"Reasonable." You nodded.
"Adrenaline."
"Still reasonable." Ryland added.
"Oxytocin."
Both you and Ryland stared at him.
"...Excuse me?" Ryland asked.
The doctor remained perfectly composed.
"Dopamine."
Ryland slowly turned toward you. You were fairly certain your own expression matched his.
"I feel like we've left the realm of normal astronaut testing," He said.
"I can assure you we have not." The doctor almost smiled. He placed two printed sheets on the desk. One bore your name. The other Ryland's.
"These are average physiological responses recorded over the course of your training."
Your eyes skimmed the numbers without really understanding them.
"You are both exceptionally resilient under stress."
"Good."
"However..." He pointed to a highlighted section. "...when assigned to work together, both of your stress markers consistently return to baseline significantly faster than with any other crew member."
"So... we help each other stay calm." Ryland looked puzzled.
"Yes."
"That's good."
"It is."
The doctor turned another page.
"You also exhibit elevated reward-response markers following successful cooperative tasks."
"Reward response?" You frowned.
"Dopamine release."
"So... our brains like teamwork." Ryland let out an awkward laugh.
"In simple terms."
You exhaled quietly.
"That doesn't sound particularly unusual."
The doctor looked toward Stratt.
She gave a single nod.
He continued.
"It becomes unusual because the response is exclusive."
You frowned.
"What do you mean?"
He tapped the graphs.
"We measured the same values while each of you trained alongside every other available crew candidate."
Your eyes drifted across the pages.
The lines were noticeably further apart. Every single one.
"We repeated the measurements over the years." He turned another page. "The results remained consistent."
Silence settled over the room.
Ryland was the first to speak.
"So..." He looked between you and the doctor. "...you're saying we're... scientifically good friends?"
You couldn't stop yourself raising an eyebrow, had he just friendzoned you in front of your boss?. The doctor adjusted his glasses.
"I am saying your neurological and physiological responses indicate an unusually effective partnership."
Ryland looked relieved.
"Oh." He nodded once. "Okay."
You gave a small nod as well.
"That makes sense."
The doctor didn't immediately answer. Instead, he quietly slid one final chart from a tablet across the desk. Both your names appeared at the top, just like every other chart. Below them was a pair of heart-rate traces. One blue and one red. They climbed almost simultaneously.
The timestamp caught your attention. 12:43 p.m. Today's date. Your brow furrowed as you followed the lines moving in real time.
"...Today?"
"Yes."
You looked down at your watch. It still displayed your pulse. 102 BPM.
"My pulse is high because I just finished interval training," you said immediately. "I came straight from the gym."
"Correct." The doctor nodded. "Your heart rate was expected to be elevated." He turned toward Ryland. "Dr. Grace." Ryland looked at him. "Your resting heart rate when you arrived was sixty-four."
"...Sounds healthy." He replied.
"It does." The doctor pointed to the graph.
"It rose to eighty-one when they entered the room."Â
Ryland blinked.
"...What?"
You looked at him.
His ears had begun turning red again, the pigment creeping slowly on to his cheeks. The doctor turned back to your chart.
"Your heart rate ceased declining upon entering the room despite having completed exercise seven minutes earlier." He looked at you.Â
You immediately shook your head.
"I'd just done cardio."
"Yes."
"It was already high."
"Yes."
"That's all."
"Perhaps."
The doctor's expression remained unreadable.
"But the increase occurred after visual contact."
The room suddenly became very quiet as you felt your face mimic Rylands embarrassment.
You glanced sideways. Ryland happened to glance sideways at exactly the same moment. Your eyes met for barely a second. Then both of you looked away again. You felt your face heating up. You glanced back to the tables that were seemingly having a live playback from both of your watches since you noted that both the red and the blue line had gone up quite a lot during this conversation.
Stratt finally spoke, her voice was as calm as ever.
"This discussion is not about romance." Neither of you answered. "It is about risk."
She stepped closer to the desk.
 "You are the highest-performing crew pair we have evaluated." She rested one hand lightly on the folder. "I intend to keep it that way."
Her gaze moved between Ryland to you.
"If your relationship remains exactly as it is now, excellent."
A brief pause.
"If it changes in any meaningful way..."
She closed the folder with a decisive snap.
"...I expect to be informed immediately."
Neither you nor Ryland seemed capable of finding words. The doctor quietly busied himself organizing the papers, tactfully pretending not to notice the silence.
You stared at the closed folder. Ryland stared very intently at one loose thread on the cuff of his cardigan.
Your eyes opened without trouble this time. You stared at the white sealing as you tried to move your now well rested body. This time you could move your fingers, hand, even your whole arm with ease. You tried the same with your toes, feet, and finally your whole leg. You drew your eyes towards your body and stopped wiggling your limbs once you realized it looked like you were imitating a fish on land. You saw your fingers and feet respond to your mind's demands. You felt relief as you could control the movement of your limbs. You noticed that your blanket was still on but all the cables that were inserted in you before were now gone. You started to worry about how and why they were extracted, but then reminded yourself that it was even more worrisome how and why they were inserted into you.Â
You realised how good your body felt compared to before. God, how long has it been since then? Hours? Days? It must be at least a couple of hours since you felt well rested. Your mind felt restless, you wanted to go up and explore your surroundings. As your eyes moved across the room you suddenly stopped to a halt.
Sitting beside your bed in a chair was the same man who had tried to wake you up before you had lost consciousness.
The instant your eyes met his, he practically jumped out of the chair.
"Oh thank God." He let out in a breath as his shoulders visibly slumped down.
âYouâre awake.â He said, almost disbelievingly. âYouâre actually awake!â He let out a shaky laugh and rubbed his hand across his face.Â
Something about him tugged at the back of your mind. Dirty blond hair. Tired blue eyes. A face that somehow felt familiar despite your complete inability to place it. Your gaze shifted from his face towards the yellow jumpsuit he was wearing. Strange fashion choice in your opinion. But your opinion completely changed once you read the patches on his upper chest. On his left side he wore a golden badge, an astronaut pin with a shooting star enclosed in elliptical orbit that shows to everyone he has completed a successful mission. How did you know what that badge meant? You squinted your eyes to look at the nametag wich read âGRACEâ in big bold letters.
Ryland Grace.Â
Your eyes darted between his golden badge and his face.Â
Of course it was Ryland Grace.Â
You knew the guy and he knew you. You had spent years together. Training, studying and eating lunch together. Arguing over procedures and helping each other, working as a team. Celebrating new discoveries on astrophage. Long conversations while staring through observation windows at rockets and accompanying each other around the base when your schedules allowed you to.
He wasn't a stranger, he was a coworker, a teammate, even a friend.
One of the few people you'd spent more time with than anyone else on Earth.
You remembered the mission briefings, the scientific debates, late nights with stacks of research papers covering conference tables with important people from all over the world. Ryland making terrible jokes whenever the room got too tense and you rolling your eyes every single time in response.Â
Realising you had been staring at him without saying a word you quickly looked away and scanned the room again. Looking back at him he was still watching you with cautious hope, like he was afraid to interrupt whatever was happening inside your head.
"...I know you," you whispered.
His eyebrows lifted.Â
"You do?"
You nodded slowly.
"We worked together." A smile spread across his face. âHow long have I been out for?â You asked him.Â
âDo you mean the first or the second time?â He smiled. It was definitely Ryland, taking every opportunity to make a joke. You rolled your eyes in response but a smile pulled at the corners of your lips. âYouâve been sleeping for about 8 hours.â he told you as he looked at his wristwatch.Â
âThat explains why I'm so well restedâ You reply. âBut what happened to me? I mean before I woke up for the first time?â You questioned His expression softened but a worry started to build up in his eyebrows.Â
â I promise we'll get there,â He replied. You looked down at yourself, the thin blanked still covered your chest but your shoulders were bare and the blanked covered only to your knees, making your calves and feet exposed.Â
âIâŠâ You flickered your eyes from the blanket to Ryland. "I'm not wearing-âÂ
âOh!â Ryland immediately stood up from his chair. âRight! Clothes!â He turned towards one of the cabinets and rummaged through it. âHere.â He turned back holding a neatly folded yellow jumpsuit, almost identical to his. He kept his eyes respectfully fixed somewhere around your forehead as he held it out.
You reached for it, your muscles ached and you had to use both of your arms to try and reach out and take the overall from him. The blanket slipped from your shoulder and slid halfway down your chest.
"Oh!" Rylands eyes slid directly towards the ceiling, before you even noticed it yourself, almost dropping the clothes he was holding in the process. Â
"Looking away!"Â He pivoted his whole body almost ninety degrees away from you with military precision.
"I am now appreciating the fascinating architecture of... whatever that vent is."
Despite everything, a tiny, embarrassed laugh escaped you.
You hurriedly yanked the blanket back up with one hand while grabbing the folded coveralls with the other.
"...Sorry."
"Nope," Ryland replied, still staring determinedly upward. "Nothing to apologize for. Human bodies exist. Totally normal."
Another awkward pause.
âI can leave when you change if you want to.â He replied with his back towards you.
âIf I want toâ you thought and laughed at his choice of words. He made his way to the hallway he had come out of when the first time the two of you met in this place.
 âI will be waiting outside in the corridor while you change. Call for me when you're doneâ He said as he made his way through the doorway dedicated to keeping his head facing the exact same spot away from you in what you considered a funny manner.Â
You swung your legs over the bed sitting up while laying the yellow fabric in your lap. Your fingertips lightly graced the bright cloth. The material was heavy, probably fire resistant. This was not hospital clothing.Â
It was a space suit.Â
With your name on it.Â
You whispered it under your breath. It sounded familiar. That's me, you thought. You have remembered signing it on stacks of paperwork, medical forms, training evaluations, mission reports.Â
You ran your thumb along the stitching as though touching it would make the memories clearer. It did. You remembered that you had worn this before. Maybe not this exact one but a similar replica.Â
On the right shoulder your eyes catched another patch. A blue sphere with a red vector with NASA written on it. The official meatball logo. You didn't have to use any effort to decode the logo, you simply knew.Â
You worked for Nasa. You wore the suit. You earned the pin. Which means you weren't an engineer behind a computer or any other office staff.Â
"I'm an astronaut?!â You whispered under your breath. You smiled, hell yeah I'm an astronaut you thought proudly to yourself.
Then another one of your memories returned to your apartment. It was small, mostly empty except for bookshelves overflowing with books about orbital mechanics, astrophysics and astronomy. Your walls were sparsely decorated with posters of important spacelaunches and pictures of rocketships instead of family photographs.Â
The truth is you didn't have any. No parents calling every weekend, no siblings dropping by unannounced, no partner waiting for you at home, no wedding ring, no children and no best friend to text after work.
There had never been any time for any of that, space had always come first. It took time and dedication to become the youngest astronaut selected in years. That alone made you very popular with the press. During every press conference and post flight media tours reporters were swarming you with questions such as:
"What sacrifices have you made?"Â
"Do you ever want a family?"
"Isn't this a lonely life?"
 You had always smiled politely in response and answered that the work was worth it.
You eagerly flipped the top half around to expose the other shoulder patch. The flag of your country.Â
You remembered a faint memory of someone introducing you as one of your country's greatest scientific achievements.
Visiting schools to get kids interested in becoming astronauts themselves. Another memory was of schoolchildren waving little flags of your country during a ceremony.
When you were most proud of your country were when you answered questions from reporters shouted from every direction on international tours.
"How does it feel to represent your country?"
"What inspired you to become an astronaut?"
You remembered smiling. The practiced smile you'd learned to wear whenever cameras appeared. Your media trainers thought your usual military seriousness was too frightening and boring to broadcast to normal civilians so you had to put on a kind facade to make them happy.Â
Sadly memories slipped away before you could hold onto them when you saw another logo above your heart. It was a circular mission patch. Your pulse quickened, you knew this emblem. You had helped approve it. The words curved around the outlines of the circle,
PROJEKT HAIL MARY
Your vision blurred, it suddenly felt like you were going to throw up.Â
This wasn't your normal shuttle mission. You weren't on the ISS, hell you weren't even on the moon.
You were in a whole other solar system.
You were on the most important interstellar mission in the whole of human history. You remembered the entirety of earth's scientific community gathered to stop this... What was it called⊠Astrophage!Â
Astrophage is destroying the sun!Â
Without the Hail Mary mission the sun would dim and cool down earth which would make the human race as we know it extinct. Climate change, climate refugees, famine and war were just a fraction of the chaos Astrophage was going to bring to earth.
Your hands tightened around the suit. Your own Project Hail Mary suit. You were here to find the cause, solve this mystery and come up with a solution to save humanity.Â
This mission wasn't for exploration, it was earth's hail mary to hopefully save the human race, and in turn kill you and everyone else on this spacecraft. Â
You looked around the room with new eyes. The walls weren't made like a hospital, the ceiling was too low and no walls had windows.Â
Your gaze drifted back to the Project Hail Mary mission patch. You were currently on a spacecraft in deep space. There had never been another possibility. You hadn't trained your entire life for a mission in low Earth orbit.
You hadn't endured years of isolation studies, survival courses, emergency simulations, centrifuges, underwater EVA training, and psychological evaluations for another trip to the International Space Station.
You were here because humanity had run out of better ideas.
Because someone had to leave the Solar System.
Because someone had to go.
And...
You had volunteered.
You sighed at the realization of you being light years away from the closest human. Wait no you werent⊠Ryland Grace was waiting in the hallway. Shit, you thought, how long have i been here just reminiscing of the past.Â
It was challenging putting on your overall since your muscles were still not used to movement. To your surprise you managed to put it on while sitting in the same position on the bed.Â
When you adjusted the jumpsuit you felt something in your pocket. Strange, you didn't remember putting something in there. You open the zipper and fished up the curled up note with your pointer finger. You slowly unfolded it revealing three sentences.Â
Ryland Grace does not know why he's here.
Act normal and explain the mission to him.
Don't make him remember how he got here.Â
Your blood ran cold. You looked towards the door where Ryland was still waiting. Your fingers tightened around the note.Â
All this information at such a short time made your head hurt, almost like the first time you woke up here,Â
A knock at the door disturbed your train of thought.Â
âAre you ready?â Ryland asked.Â
You quickly scrunched the note up and put it back in your pocket again.
âYes I'm ready, you can come in!â You say.
Ryland scootches into the doorway with a smile on his face. You didn't know why he was so happy to see you. You knew the crewmates Yao and Ilyukhina were also on this mission so he had most likely not been alone all this time you had been out.Â
âSo,â Ryland said carefully, âWhat took you so long?âÂ
You shake your head. âIt was just⊠a lotââ
âA lot?â
 âThe patches.â you said as you circled the Nasa meatball on your chest. "My name. The mission patch. My country's flag..." You looked back at him with a small smile. "It helped."
You hover your finger towards his nametag.
âAnd I remember you.â
His smile widened so far and then completely stopped. As if the emotion he was feeling was too big to express.Â
âImâŠGladâ His words came out almost embarrassingly sincere and excited.
âSo am I."Â
You mirror his smile because it was funny that the two of you were both wearing your matching yellow uniforms, like two peas in a pod.
Dressed with your name over your heart and your flag on your shoulder you felt like a new person. Mather of fact you felt more like the person you have always been.
You tried to stand up from the bed but the second your bare feet touched the floor it felt like you stepped on a bed of nails. The pain shot through the soles of your feet and up your calves. Ryland saw your discomfort and as you knees bucked he was quick to come to your side.
âWoah.â One hand hovered near your shoulder without touching you. âYou ok?â He asked with real worry in his eyes.
âYes.â You said as you straightened your posture immediately. It felt like your whole body was going to crumble the moment you stood up on your own two feet.
"My muscles just aren't used to..." You swallowed. "...being used." You let out a deep breath adjusting to the uncomfortable pain that shot through your entire body. "I'll get used to it."
"You don't have to prove anything." Ryland sighed.
"I wasn't."Â
"You kind of were."
You looked away.
"I can walk."
"I don't doubt that."
His voice remained gentle.
"But you also just nearly introduced your face to the floor."
Heat crept into your cheeks.
"I had it under control."
"You absolutely did not."
Your left leg trembled violently beneath you which made the argument die before it could continue. Ryland pretended not to notice and it was such an obvious attempt to spare your pride that it almost made it worse. He slowly held out his arm for you to take it.
"Come on."
"I don't need-"
"I know." He nodded.
"I know you don't want to."
You looked at the offered arm.
Then at him.
"You've always been stubborn."
"...Always?" You asked.
His grin widened.
"Oh, unbelievably."
"I don't remember that."
"I do." He smiled and you rolled your eyes.Â
"I've apparently forgotten all my best qualities." You answer back sarcastically.
"You'll remember." He assured you and nudged his arm closer to you.
You slipped your hand around his forearm. The fabric of his overalls was warm from his body, you didn't remember he was a human radiator. Beneath it, you could feel the steady firmness of muscle. You didn't remember that he was this athletic on earth. His arm tensed instinctively, adjusting to support just enough of your weight without making it obvious.
He was just simply there, ready if you stumbled. You hated how much you needed his help. The first steps you took it felt as if you were a toddler learning how to walk all over again. You hated even more how relieved you felt once your balance stopped wavering.
"There," Ryland said quietly. "Better?"
You hesitated.
"...A little."
"I'll take 'a little.â
Your legs felt disconnected from your brain as you tried to walk, each muscle responding half a second later than it should. You gritted your teeth and Ryland noticed immediately.
"You know," he said conversationally, "you're allowed to admit this sucks."
"It doesn't suck."
"It really does." He said, and you didn't need more convincing than that. But you wouldn't let your pride die that fast.
"I've experienced worse." He looked sideways at you.
"You don't even remember worse."
"...That's not the point." You said trying to ease through the pain. He laughed in response to your stubborn answer. Rylands laugh was contagious and you couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of the moment you found yourself in, trying to learn how to walk lightyears away from home. Ryland glanced over to your direction with a satisfied smile.
He looked ahead as the two of you reached the doorway and his smile became quieter.
"I have missed hearing that laugh."
His words landed gently, so gently they almost hurt. Your chest tightened as emotions you couldn't quite place bubbled up inside you.
For a moment, neither of you spoke.
Your hand was still wrapped around his arm and neither one of you made any move to change that.
Together, you stepped out of the medical bay and into the dimly lit corridor beyond.
The voice came out of the darkness without warning. It was flat and mechanical, completely devoid of emotion. The sound disappeared into the void and the only sound left was a faint mechanical hum.
At first you weren't even sure if what you just heard was real. Maybe you were just imagining stuff. You want to find out where the noise is coming from but you don't have much to work with. You were trapped in a dark room, at least that's what you could make out of it. Your sense of sight was completely gone. And after some tries you realized that all of your other four senses were completely gone. But that's not completely true, you felt something soft on your back. Were you lying down? or standing up? Either way your back was against something soft. Maybe a mattress?Â
"What's two plus two?" The question repeated in the same monotone voice.Â
âwuuchâ You say, surprised at the sound. You were meant to say âWhy?â, completely reasonable response if a computer were to ask you such an easy question. But the ability to talk felt distant.Â
Pain shot down your throat after the attempt of trying to speak. It felt like you hadn't spoken in years. You opened your mouth once again, the effort alone exhausted you. A weak cough escaped and felt as if a sandpiper had just scraped your throat.Â
âF-fourâ You uttered out loud. You couldn't have guessed that it was your voice if it didn't take this much effort to get it out. The voice didn't sound like yours, it was too weak.Â
âCorrect!â The computer answers. You let out a breath. You got tired of all this darkness. Were you in a dark room or were your eyelids still shut? You tried your best to open them. You felt them twitch and move a bit.Â
After concentrating for a while your eyelids finally crept open, only to be blinded by bright sterile light. You weren't ready to give up. You forced your eyes open with all your might even though it felt like your pupils were going to burn off.
"Eye movement detected.â It says as you finally open your eyes. âWhats the cube root of eight?â
What the fuck is that question, you thought to yourelf while your eyes were adjusting to the sterile light. You tried to move your hands and wiggle your toes but to no avail.Â
The shapes finally started to make sense as your eyes finally adjusted to the bright lights. Were you at a hospital? It sure did look like you were on some sort of operating table in a very high tech room. Had you been in a freak accident and had gone through surgery? Or were you in some sort of confined quarantine? You looked around the ceiling corners only to find cameras recording your every move and right in front of you are two robot arms, presumably the ones that have been speaking to you.
You take a deep breath as you try to make sense of it all. You notice you have a breathing mask that fogs up after each breath you take. You breathe again, on command this time. Great, you thought, now you can control your own breathing. Your throat is still painfully dry.Â
And inspecting further down, seeing your body lay in a type of oval-shaped bed with a thin blanket on top. Strange, you thought, you didn't remember putting on a blanket. But you didn't really know how you got here in the first place. But the thing that scared you the most, and could definitely not remember a reason for, were all the cables going in under the blankets from every direction towards your body. The places that cables were inserted were covered by a thin blanket. You didn't know if that was something calming or even more distressing.Â
âWhats the cube root of eight?â The tormenting robot asked once again. You knew the answer like the back of your hand, the answer is two, but you just couldn't make sense of it. You started digging deeper into your memories only to notice you didn't have any.
You couldn't remember why you were here. You couldn't remember your childhood. If you have any friends? Family? Children? You didn't know your age, were you old enough to even have grandchildren? You couldn't even remember if you had a favourite color.Â
You should know these things. It's YOUR memories, so why don't you have any?Â
Any attempt to remember only created more emptiness. The harder you tried the more your head started to hurt. The pain formed into an ache behind your eyes, growing stronger every second.Â
You managed to muster up all the strength you had left in your body to push yourself off the mattress. At first nothing happened except an excruciating pain in your upper body. You wanted to scream but your sore throat instead let out a hissing sound. Your shoulders lifted off of the bed slowly. You tried to find contact with your arms. Slowly bring them up to your shoulders so you could rest on your forearms.Â
You ignored the dizziness and pushed harder even though every muscle in your body protested. You saw the cables under the blanket shift as you managed to haul yourself up on your forearms. The victory only lasted a short instant before the room suddenly lurched sideways.Â
Your vision blurred instantly as the bright lights overhead stretched into smears.Â
âMobility detectedâ The robotic voice continued speaking. You barely heard it as blood rushed through your ears. Your head felt impossibly heavy as the room tilted again. You grabbed weakly at the edge of your bed, trying to find some sort of stability. The movement only made everything worse as dark spots began appearing across your vision.Â
No,
No, no, no.
You couldn't lose consciousness. Not yet.
You didn't even know your own name.Â
A faint sound reached your ears.
Footsteps?
Were you imagining stuff? Is this place a psychward? Was this an episode? It would explain why you're in such a white and sterile room.Â
No, these were definitely real.Â
The person seemed to be in a hurry as the pace quickened the closer they got.Â
It was definitely human footsteps coming from outside the room. You spun your head sluggish around trying to find some sort of doorway, trying to find were the footsteps were coming from. The head movement made the dizziness explode. The world spun as you saw the door open.Â
You could make out a silhouette of a man. You didn't remember knowing him. You saw how his eyes widened and yours did the same thing. The stranger looked completely shocked. So did you.Â
âOh my godâ You heard him say. "You're awake!âÂ
You stared at him. He looked familiar, you could make out his dirty blonde hair through your dizzy vision. But his appearance didn't ring a bell at first glance. But all you could think about was that he was another human. The relief hit so suddenly it almost hurt as you slumped against the mattress as all of your inner power had suddenly run out.Â
The stranger walked towards you in a hurry. As you started to lose control over your dizziness and became limb like a ragdoll on the bed his expression changed completeley.Â
âWoah.â He uttered out, dropping whatever he had been carrying. It hit the ground and it felt as if someone had just hit a gong-gong right next to your ear.Â
âHey.â You heard him say as your world kept spinning. â Hey, don't do that.â The stranger started moving towards you faster. You tried to say something back. Your mouth opened. No sound came out, it just layed limb like the rest of your body.
The last thing you remembered before blacking out was the stranger lunging forward towards your bed. He started to lift up your head to try and see if you were still breathing and had a pulse. You remember his firm grip around your shoulders as he tried to shake you awake as your vision darken around the edges.Â
âStay awake!â You heard him yell and saw his hysterical expression through your squinting eyes as he held his hand to cup your face. You couldnât fight the darkness that swallowed everything around you.Â
This is just a story idea testing out. If thereâs interest and engagement, Iâll continue it ofcoure (Because who does not love silly Ryland) Im just kidding ill definetley continue it...
SUMMARY:
(This will be a mix of book cannon and movie cannon which is the best of both worlds)Â As one of humanity's youngest astronauts, you have spent your entire career proving that you belong among the best. When you're assigned to train Dr. Ryland Grace for Project Hail Mary, she expects an exhausting afternoon spent babysitting a brilliant but hopelessly unqualified scientist.
Instead, you find yourself looking forward to every simulator session.
As the Hail Mary mission draws closer, an unlikely friendship forms between an astronaut preparing to die for Earth and a scientist who was never supposed to be on the ship at all.
But space is vast, lonely, and unforgiving. And when everything goes wrong millions of miles from home, you and Ryland may find themselves as the last two people aboard humanity's final hope.
You stood outside your office with your hands clasped neatly behind your back, staring down the corridor and trying very hard not to think about how ridiculous this assignment was.
Your posture wasn't intentional anymore. Years of training had drilled it into you until it became second nature. It was a stance that commanded respect before you even spoke, which had proven useful more times than you could count.
You had needed that respect.
No matter how many hours you had logged, how many simulations you had passed, or how many impossible situations you had trained for, there was always somebody who looked at you and saw your age before they saw your accomplishments.
You were young, surprisingly young for an astronaut. You were skilled and had been referred to as NASA'S future by many. The same people had also found it obscure that they would send sutch a young, smart and talented astronaut in to a suicide misson knowing you would never return.
The corridor around you remained quiet as scientists and engineers moved between offices carrying tablets, reports, and enough caffeine to power a small city. Nobody looked particularly happy. The end of the world tended to have that effect on people.
You checked your smartwatch. It was one of the most complex and modern technological achievements you were exposed to every day, and usually it was a lot. It calculated everything about your body and habits. It was basically a mini surveillance clock plugging your whole body up to a computer. The experts around you said it was crucial to get to know your body's mechanisms before they put you into a medical coma for the best results. You were happy as long as you woke up from the coma clear minded, if you even woke up at all.
He was five minutes late. Of course.
You sigh. The one afternoon Stratt assigned you up for something important and your trainee was already late.
Your eyes drifted toward the tablet tucked beneath your arm.
Dr. Ryland Grace.
Mission Specialist.
Astrophage Research Team.
Former Middle School Science Teacher.
Every time you read that final line you found yourself getting irrationally annoyed.
Not because he wasn't qualified. By all accounts, Grace was brilliant. One of the leading scientific minds on the entire project. Hell, he was even the one to first come in contact with the Astrophage.
But every time someone referred to him as a mission specialist, your brain immediately translated it into:
Teacher.
Humanity had gathered the greatest scientists, engineers and astronauts available.
And apparently one middle school science teacher.
You were still trying to understand how that had happened.
The door leading to the halway you were standing in opened and you automatically looked towards the door.
Dr. Ryland Grace stepped into the hallway carrying a messenger bag that looked one overloaded pocket away from catastrophic failure. A pair of reading glasses sat slightly crooked on his face while a stack of papers was tucked securely beneath one arm. He was muttering to himself as he walked, completely absorbed in whatever problem had occupied his attention before leaving the office.
"...no, because if the sample contamination happened after extraction, then the isotope ratio wouldn'tâ"
His eyes landed on you. The sentence immediately died.
"Oh!"
His expression brightened in recognition.
"Oh, that's you."
You raised an eyebrow.
"Dr. Grace?"
He quickly shifted his papers to one arm and held out his right hand.
"Ryland Grace."
You shook it as you introduced yourself.
His grip was firm, though his attention was already elsewhere. Namely, you.
"You are significantly younger than I expected." He chuckled awkwardly, casting a look at you as if you weren't supposed to be here.
There it was.
You'd heard some variation of that sentence your entire career. Usually it irritated you but this time it mostly sounded like genuine confusion.
"Thank you."
"I didn't mean that as a compliment."
"I know."
"No, seriously." He pointed directly at you. "You're young."
You looked down the hallway. Then back at him.
"That's generally how age works."
To your surprise, he immediately laughed. Not a polite chuckle, an actual laugh.
"Oh wow."
"What?" You ask, trying to keep your composure with a poker face.
"Okay, now I understand why people are intimidated by you."
"I'm not intimidating." You say as you shrug your shoulders.
"You absolutely are."
"I'm really not." The conversation had already taken longer than expected. Most of the scientists and doctors you have worked with are well⊠Special. Not really talkative and usually straight to the point. Grace was different.
"You have military posture."
You looked down on your body. You stood with a straight back. Shoulders square. Weight balanced evenly on your feet that were a shoulder width apart. Totally normal to you, and almost everyone around you, like second nature. But then you remembered he was American.
"I'm on the clock." You replied as you looked straight to Grace, he was a bit taller than you so you had to lift your head slightly to keep eye contact. Grace continued studying you like he was trying to solve a puzzle. Then his eyes widened slightly.
"Wait."
You immediately disliked that tone.
"What?"
"I've seen you before."
You frowned.
"I don't doubt it." You say with a hint of proudness to your tone.
"No, seriously."
He snapped his fingers.
"The yellow suits."
You blinked.
"The mission suits?"
"Yes!"
He pointed triumphantly.
"I knew I recognized you."
You started.
"You've seen me in mission briefings, I've also seen you there."
"I thought you were somebody's assistant."
The silence that followed could have frozen water.
Grace's smile slowly disappeared when he realized that he had just insulted you, one of the most qualified people working on the mission.
"Oh." He winced. "That sounded worse out loud."
"You thought I was an assistant?" You scoff, furrowing your eyebrows.
"To be fair, everyone in those suits looks vaguely important." Grace keeps rambling on trying to save the situation.
You continued staring.
"And also," he added quickly, "you look way too young to be one of the astronauts."
There it was again. The age thing. Grace shook his head.
"No, because this is genuinely confusing." He gestured vaguely at you.
"How old are you?"
You told him your age and his eyes widened immediately.
"You're kidding."
"No."
He looked up at the ceiling.
Then back at you.
Then up at the ceiling again.
"I'm pretty sure at your age I was eating instant noodles three meals a day and accidentally setting laboratory equipment on fire."
"You set laboratory equipment on fire?"
"Once."
A pause.
"Twice."
Another pause.
"Okay, more than twice."
You couldn't stop the tiny smile threatening to appear.
Grace noticed instantly.
"Aha!"
You immediately wiped it away. "Aha what?"
"You almost smiled." His grin widened.
"I didn't."
"You absolutely did."
You ignored him. Unfortunately that didn't stop him.
"You know what the weirdest part is?" He continued.
You already regretted accepting this assignment from Stratt.
"What?" You sigh.
"The fact that I'm apparently supposed to let you teach me things."
You frowned.
"The simulator orientation?"
"Exactly. It's going to feel like you're one of my 6th graders teaching me." He threw both hands into the air.
"And?" You asked him. You two had already wasted enough time in the corridor, but he sure was entertaining.
"I have multiple degrees."
"So do I."
"And somehow you're the authority figure."
"That's because I'm the pilot for today's session."
You started walking, Grace followed shortly after. It reminded you of all the times you had seen Grace follow Stratt around like a little dog around base.
"And because I'll be the co-pilot on the mission." You continued as you took calibrated steps towards one of the hangars.
Grace followed immediately, still looking mildly offended.
"See? That's exactly what I mean."
"What?"
"It feels wrong. I'm never even going to be in that ship when it launches."
"You never know what can happen." You say as you look back to Grace, making sure he's still following. "Just so you know Stratt did this for team building purposes."
"So you're not here on your own accord?" Grace asked. "Damn..." He replied with a disappointed tone as you smiled with your back towards him. He was funny, you could at least give him that.
The simulator session hadn't even started and somehow you already knew this was going to be a very long afternoon.
The walk across the hangar should have taken five minutes.
With Grace it took closer to fifteen.
Mostly because Ryland Grace seemed physically incapable of observing something without stopping and commenting on it.
Parts of the Hail Mary were scattered around the facility around you, some parts stretching upward through multiple levels of scaffolding and maintenance platforms. Massive support beams disappeared into the ceiling while engineers worked along the hull like ants climbing a skyscraper. The entire hangar vibrated with activity.
Grace spent most of the walk looking everywhere except where he was going.
"Do you ever think about how insane this is?"
"Sometimes. I have gotten used to it."
"How."
"I work here."
"That's not an answer."
"It is."
"It isn't."
He pointed upward.
"That is a spaceship."
You looked at the ship and pointed towards the ceiling.
"Yes."
"A spaceship."
"I've flown a spaceship before."
"We built a spaceship." He says again, most likely ignoring your input.
"We did." You nod as you're growing impatient. All of this has probably taken over half an hour.
"A real one."
You rubbed your temple.
"Ryland."
"No, because seriously. Think about it. Humanity looked at an extinction-level crisis and collectively decided, 'You know what? Let's build the most expensive object in history and launch people at another star.'"
You glanced over. He was smiling and you could almost feel the excitement radiating from him. He genuinely thought the achievement itself was incredible, and little did he know that he was going to be a part of the crew.
He was right, it was impressive.
The simulator occupied an enormous section of the training complex.
The room itself was dimly lit, illuminated primarily by instrument panels and monitor screens. The replica cockpit sat elevated on a hydraulic platform in the center of the room, surrounded by observation stations and diagnostic equipment. Every switch, display, and control surface had been recreated exactly.
The moment Ryland saw it, he stopped walking.
His mouth literally fell open.
"Oh, that is cool." He could barely contain his excitement.
"It's a training simulator not a toy." You reminded him.
"It's a spaceship."
"It's a simulator."
"It's a simulator pretending to be a spaceship."
You pinched the bridge of your nose. Taking a deep breath preparing yourself for a long session in the simulator.
The two of you jumped into the complex flight simulator. He sat at the main pilots seat and you sat on your assigned seat, as the co-pilot. You didn't quite like it that someone so much more underquantified than you sat at the main seat. But you had to shake that jealousy off, this was just training and in an hour he would exit the simulator to hopefully never come back. You showed and explained the basic buttons and leavers and what certain displays meant and how to use them.
Grace looked like he was a child who just entered a candy store. You saw how his eyes widened and twinkled in the dim light of the cockpit. But this excitement also made him more chatty, which you thought would be impossible considering that the past twenty minutes had just consisted of his yapping.
What surprised you wasn't that Grace talked. He had proven himself quite chatty after the first few seconds of meeting him. It was even more surprising that he never stopped.
Not once.
Not for a single second.
Every answer from you generated three more questions from him.
Every explanation became a discussion.
Every procedure became a debate.
At one point you spent twenty minutes explaining emergency maneuvering systems only for him to somehow connect the conversation to fire drills at the school he worked at since he has "done emergency drills before". You just had to shake your head and explain that a school being on fire was not the same problem as a spaceship 11.9 light years away from earth would cause for humanity.
That later escalated to him assuming that all astronauts, like you, were annoying because they could never see the small picture of things. You scoffed and defended yourself by saying that all scientists must be stupid because of how many questions with obvious answers he was asking you.
but the truth was that the questions he asked weren't stupid.
Not even close.
They were insightful and thoughtful. Sometimes he made you think more than you would like to admit.
He asked you the kind of questions that forced you to explain not just what a system did, but why it existed in the first place.
And annoyingly, he understood everything almost immediately.
"You got all that?" You said as you unclipped the seatbelt around you.
You stared at him.
He looked up from his notebook.
"What?"
"I explained that once."
"Yeah."
"And you understood it?"
"Well, hopefully."
"Most people don't. I barely even did it my first time to be honest." It really took a lot of courage to admit that. You were usually not the one to admit any sort of weakness.
Grace shrugged.
"I teach middle school."
You blinked, surprised by his nonchalant answer. Ryland Grace was anything BUT nonchalant.
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"If you can explain cellular respiration to a room full of thirteen-year-olds after lunch, you can learn pretty much anything."
You hated how much sense that made. You remembered your peers in middle school and how slow they were to understand stuff. You had always been an overachiever, but hell, that's why you're here trying to save humanity from extinction.
By the time the simulator powered down and the two of you had made your way out of it, evening had settled over the facility. The training lights outside the observation windows cast long reflections across the cockpit glass while most of the daytime staff had already gone home. Neither of you had anything scheduled afterward. No briefings. No evaluations. No work waiting for you.
For the first time all day, you realized neither of you had been in a hurry. At some point the lesson had stopped feeling like work. The two of you had spent the last hour talking about everything except the simulator.
Teaching.
Flying.
Favorite movies.
Terrible cafeteria food.
The conversation had somehow drifted so far from the original lesson that you couldn't remember where it had started.
Ryland climbed the last steps of the latter and stretched.
"That was amazing." He smiled and you could not help but smile back. Fuck, why did you do that? You quickly composed yourself.
"This was just the surface." You reminded him.
"It was an amazing surface. Besides learning is easy when you have such an amazing teacher"
You rolled your eyes trying to play it off, but the complement made something in your stomach flutter.
He grinned, then glanced at the scheduling board mounted near the exit.
His expression immediately changed.
"Oh."
"What?"
"We're both free tomorrow."
You followed his gaze that went from the whiteboard towards your face with such excitement in his eyes that made it so much harder for you to say no. You shook your head in response, trying to shake off these strange feelings. Besides, Grace was probably the one you should definitely not fall for. What if the rumors between him and Stratt were true? I mean he is skilled, but how could a middle school teacher climb the career ladder all the way up here in some days beside, you know, compromises?
Unfortunately, he was right. The entire afternoon sat empty on both schedules. Another smile slowly appeared on Rylands face and you immediately knew what was coming.
"No." You blatantly replied
"I haven't even asked."
"You don't need to."
"I do."
"You don't."
He pointed toward the simulator.
"Same time tomorrow?" He smiled
You should have said no.
You really should have.
Instead you found yourself looking back toward the simulator, already thinking about the conversations you'd left unfinished.
Which was concerning.
Very concerning.
Ryland's smile widened.
"You hesitated."
"I didn't."
"You absolutely did."
You sigh.
"One hour."
"Excellent."
"Only one hour."
"We'll see."
You laughed before you could stop yourself.
And somehow that seemed to make him happier than getting permission for another session.
By the time the two of you left the simulator part of the hangar together, continuing arguing about whether astronauts or scientists were more annoying, it no longer felt like an assignment.
It felt suspiciously close to the beginning of a friendship.
Denna gÄngen tog jag mig friheten att omdesigna Jeans vÀst lite lÀtt, för att stÀmma bÀttre överens med modet under det sena gustavianska 1700-talet. Julkalendern har ju vissa brister nÀr det kommer till kostymerna: Jeans egentliga vÀst har silhuetten av en 1760-talsjacka utan Àrmar istÀllet för en faktisk vÀst, och har dekorationer runt knÀppningen som bara Àr till för knapphÄl samtidigt som inga knappar anvÀnts. SÄ dÀrmed har jag gjort vissa anpassningar för att implementera dessa detaljer pÄ ett lite mer korrekt sÀtt. KrÄsskjortans form saknar dock samma historiska grund.
(Tar tillfÀllet i akt och klagar ytterligare pÄ Greveholms 1700-talskostymer, bland annat hur Staffan bar knÀbyxor trots att dessa inte var avsedda för arbetare/bönder och hur hans vÀst hade knappar som inte förekom pÄ vÀstar utan snarare jackor. Och grevens klÀder Àr en sak i sig. Grevens klÀder i tvÄan Àr smÄtt bÀttre dock)
NĂ€stan alla detaljer Ă€r handsydda och för formens och syns skull har jag handbroderat lĂ€ngs alla kanterna (precis bredvid sömmen av de vita kantbanden), inklusive över sömmarna runt bakstycket. Ryggens innerfordring Ă€r blĂ„ dĂ„ spökenas drĂ€kter egentligen var blĂ„a för att fungera som blue screen. Och jag valde ett rosmotiv för vĂ€sten dĂ„ det ju Ă€r allmĂ€nt kĂ€nt att allas vĂ„r Jean var nĂ„got av en casanovađŁïž
Hann inte implementera svĂ€rdet dĂ„ alla verktyg som krĂ€vs för det Ă€r pĂ„ mitt landstĂ€lle, men det har jag nog fixat inför NĂ€rConđ
WARNING: This chapter contains slight gore, graphic violence, murder, blood, cannibalism/consumption of human flesh, death of a character and witnessing a murder.
You walked beside Isaac through the halls of Nevermore, trying to ignore how strange this all felt.
The school was silent at this hour. Most of the lights had already been turned off, leaving only the occasional wall lamp casting dim yellow light across the corridor. Your footsteps echoed softly against the old wooden floors while rain tapped quietly against the windows outside.
Isaac still hadnât let go of your hand.
His fingers were cold against yours, but not unpleasant. Youâd almost gotten used to it.
Almost.
Neither of you spoke much while walking downstairs toward the lower floors. Isaac looked distracted, quieter than before. Every now and then you caught him glancing ahead toward Orloffâs office like he was mentally preparing himself for something.
When you finally reached the hallway leading to the office, Isaac slowed to a stop.
âYou can stay here,â he said, finally letting go of your hand. âJust make sure nobody comes down the hall.â
You frowned immediately. âIsaacââ
âI mean it.â His voice softened a little when he looked at you. âIâll only be a minute.â
There was something unreadable in his expression. Not nervous. More determined.
You shouldâve asked more questions.
You shouldâve stopped him.
But instead you nodded slowly.
âOkay.â
Isaac gave you a small smile at that, the kind that always made him look more human than he probably was. Then he turned and started walking down the hall toward Orloffâs office.
You watched him disappear through the door that clicked shut behind him.
At first you stayed where he told you to, leaning against the wall with your arms crossed. The silence around you felt heavy, the late-night quiet made the surroundings feel eerie.Â
After a while, though, standing there started to feel awkward.
You wandered a little farther down the hallway, mostly just to keep yourself awake.
Thatâs when you nearly bumped straight into Agnes.
She startled slightly before narrowing her eyes at you.
âOh my god,â she muttered, placing a hand over her chest. âYou scared me.â
âSorry,â you said quickly. âI didnât think anyone else would be awake.â
Agnes looked at you suspiciously. âI could say the same thing about you.â
You crossed your arms. âCouldnât sleep.â
âRight.â Her tone made it obvious she didnât believe you.
For a second neither of you said anything.
Then Agnes tilted her head slightly. âWhy are you down here?â
Your stomach tightened immediately.
âI was just walking.â
âAt midnight?â
âYou are too.â
Agnes gave a small shrug. âI left my sketchbook in one of the classrooms earlier.â
You nodded slowly, though honestly you had no idea if she was telling the truth either.
Her gaze drifted past you then, farther down the hallway.
Toward Orloffâs office.
âYouâre coming from that direction,â she said carefully.
Your heart skipped.
âSo?â
âSoâŠâ Agnes studied your face with creepish wide eyes. âYouâre acting weird.â
âIâm not acting weird.â
âYou definitely are.â
You let out a quiet sigh. âAgnes, just go back to your dorm.â
Now she looked even more suspicious.
âWhy?â
âBecause itâs late.â
âThat has literally never stopped anyone at Nevermore.â
You rubbed your forehead tiredly. âAgnes.â
Her eyes narrowed suddenly like something had clicked into place in her head.
The silence from both of you was enough to answer.Â
Agnes immediately started walking down the hallway.
Your stomach dropped.
âAgnes,â you called, hurrying after her. âDonât go down there.â
She glanced back at you. âWhy not?â
âJust donât.â
âThatâs not an answer.â
You walked faster to catch up with her. âSeriously, leave it alone.â
âYouâre making this so much worse, you realize that right?â Agnes said. âNow I obviously need to know whatâs going on.â
âAgnes-â
But she ignored you completely and reached for the door handle.
The second she pushed it open, everything went wrong.
Agnes let out a horrified scream piercing through the quiet building.
You froze in the doorway behind her.
Orloff was slumped over his desk.
And Isaac.
God.
Isaac looked up from him slowly.
For one awful second, nobody moved.
Blood stained the front of his shirt and smeared across his mouth. His expression wasnât wild or monstrous like before in the shed. Somehow that almost made it worse.
Agnes disappeared instantly.
One second she was there, the next she was gone.
Invisible.
Isaacâs eyes shifted toward you standing in the doorway.
His expression changed immediately.
Not angry.
Not defensive.
Just tired.
ââŠWas that you screaming?â he asked quietly.
You stared at him for a second before slowly shaking your head. Then, after realizing he probably meant the scream in general, you awkwardly nodded instead.
Isaac actually looked relieved by that answer.
He stood up straight from his hunched over position. Wiping one hand against his sleeve before walking toward you carefully, like you were prey ready to flee from a predator.Â
You didnât.
Even though maybe you should have.
âIâm sorry you had to see this,â he said softly.
Your chest felt tight. âIsaacâŠâ
âI need this.â His voice stayed calm, almost pleading now. âItâs working.â
You could hear it then again, that steady ticking beneath his ribs.
Stronger than before.
More alive.
Isaac stopped right in front of you. His eyes searched yours carefully.
âI can finally fix this,â he said quietly. âI can be human again.â
You didnât know what to say.
Part of you understood.
That was the horrible thing.
Isaac swallowed slightly before speaking again.
âCome with me.â
Your heart stuttered.
âWe can leave tonight,â he continued. âBefore anyone finds out. We donât have toÂ
stay here.â
For a second, the offer tempted you more than you wanted to admit. Just leave Nevermore behind. Leave the weirdness and the rules and the constant feeling that something terrible was always happening.
Leave with him.
But then you looked past Isaac toward Orloffâs gaping skull across the desk.
And somewhere in the room, Agnes was still there too. Terrified.
You shook your head slowly.
âI canât.â
Isaac looked down for a moment like heâd expected that answer all along.
âYou should,â he murmured quietly.
âI need to stay.â
He let out a soft breath through his nose, almost a laugh but sadder.
âYeah,â he said. âThat sounds like you.â
For a moment neither of you moved. Then Isaac reached up suddenly and brushed his hand lightly against your cheek before leaning down and kissing you there softly.
The kiss barely lasted a second.
Cold lips.
Gentle.
When he pulled away, you felt something wet left behind on your skin.
Blood.
Isaac noticed your expression and gave you the faintest crooked smile.
âSorry,â he murmured.
Then he stepped away from you and disappeared down the hallway before you could stop him.
The silence he left behind felt enormous.
Slowly, you turned back toward the office.
Agnes reappeared behind a table, visible again now. Her face had gone completely pale.
The two of you just stared at each other.
She looked terrified.
Not just of Isaac.
Of you too.
Of the fact that youâd been standing there with him.
Then suddenly Agnes stood up and ran out of the office without saying a word.
âAgnes- Wait!"
You ran after her immediately, your footsteps echoing loudly through the corridor.
But halfway down the hall she vanished again.
Invisible.
You stopped abruptly, breathing hard as you looked around the empty hallway.
Som vana fĂ„r man tagga dom bĂ€sta @ebbus och @xx-emoedge-xx för sina fantastiska moodboards! đ
Seriöst detta var nog den SVĂ RASTE moodboarden jag har gjort! Vi vet ju nĂ€stan ingenting av denna grabb! Varken canon eller fanon đ« vi mĂ„ste sĂ€tta stopp för det #merIngoFicsNU!!!! Men gjorde mitt bĂ€sta iaf
Jag tycker nĂ€stan att vi glömmer honom allt för ofta. My shayla han Ă€r bara för söt! đ„șđ„șđ„ș Fick en sĂ„n stor överraskning nĂ€r han klev in och jag bara HAN VAR JU MED I PĂ SPĂ RET! medans jag nu mera förknippar honom med Julkalendern
Och ja bilden i mitten Ă€r pĂ„ Christoffer Nyqvist som jag hittade LĂ NGT ner i hans Instagramflöde⊠men det Ă€r bara för jag verkligen inte hitta nĂ„gon som passade hans vibeđ men det löste sig för blĂ„ tröja Ă€r ju basically Ingo (samt att han sitter ner och Ă€r tyst/frĂ„nvarande)
(Jag vet att Harry Potter Ă€r ett kĂ€nsligt Ă€mne sĂ„ hĂ„ll för öronen⊠men jag fĂ„r lite Marauders vibe om allt detta⊠Hear me out⊠lixom en media dĂ€r smĂ„barnen Ă€r i fokus och sen bara kommer nĂ„gra fans (*host* vi *host*) och tĂ€nker âhur hade de vuxna varit som smĂ„barn?â Och i love it helt Ă€rligt. Samt det som gör det Ă€nnu mera likt Ă€r att allt Ă€r bara headcanonsđ och baserat pĂ„ saker vi har skivigt och inte de faktiska författarna)
sorry om detta ruined the vibe, jag Ă€r sjĂ€lv ingen marsuders fan men jag sĂ„g ba nĂ„gra parallellerđ
Jag har nu bestĂ€mt att KrĂ„ksjös bartender nu Ă€r en del av gymnasie-autđcause how could I not jag Ă€lskar han och hans tvĂ„ sekunder screentime för mycket
I försök att hitta pĂ„ namn till honom hade jag Lasse (mest som smeknamn) för honom och nu kan jag inte tĂ€nka honom som nĂ„t annat sĂ„ nu Ă€r det Lasseđ«¶đ«¶đ«¶han heter typ som Lars-Erik egentligen men ingen kallar honom detđmen om nĂ„gon har ett annat förslag sĂ„ PLSSS tell međŁïžđŁïž
Jag har inte bestĂ€mt hur gammal han Ă€r i gymnasi-aut, men jag troor jag tĂ€nker att han Ă€ndĂ„ gĂ„r pĂ„ gymnasiet med de andra. Han jobbar sĂ€kert helger pĂ„ nĂ„gon restaurang och har stora ambitioner om att Ă€ga en egen en dag. Och kanskeđŒđŒđŒkanske Ă€r han Bengtsson ex on good termsđŒ
Fick vĂ€ldigt mycket inspiration frĂ„n konversationen @xx-emoedge-xx startade om att Caleb Landry Jones skulle vara en perfekt TonĂ„rs Bengtsson och jag kunde inte hĂ„lla med mer! Och sen sĂ„klart ocksĂ„ @ebbus fantastiska fic och tillĂ€g i konversationen som ocksĂ„ inspirerade mig i detta. (PluspoĂ€ng till alla som kan hitta referenser frĂ„n vĂ„ra ficsđ)
Detta var sĂ„ kul att göra! Kanske man gör hela trion? + rivalerna sĂ„klartđ Ăr ocksĂ„ sĂ„ nyfikna pĂ„ hur ni förestĂ€ller er dem i gymnasiet
OMGOMGOMG JAG ĂLSKARđ«đ«đ«đđđdu cookar sĂ„ jĂ€vla hĂ„rt!!! Du har fĂ„tt till honom EXAKT som jag tĂ€nker mig han Ă„Ă„Ă„Ă„hhhhh tonĂ„rs-Bengtsson my shaylađ«¶đ«¶
Ooooch referenserna!!! Bilen! HudvÄrdsprodukterna! Spela kort! Och k(ch)exchoklad!!!! Iiihhhhhhh!!!!
Det kan vara sĂ„ att jag har varsin moodboards för Cindy och Moađ«ą
OMG JA ALLA RĂTT!!! Sen tĂ€nkte jag ocksĂ„ pĂ„ CD skivorna dĂ„ du skrev om att de lyssnade pĂ„ Bruce Springsteen pĂ„ CD men det kan vara LIIIIITE lĂ„ngdraget (och sen sĂ„klart pretty boy grejen pga sin utseendefixering) đ
SNĂLLA POSTA MOA OCH CINDY MOODBORADSEN om du inte redan har gjort det đ TĂ€nkte göra Moa som nĂ€sta⊠allt för att inte skriva ett nytt kapitelâŠđ
Fick vĂ€ldigt mycket inspiration frĂ„n konversationen @xx-emoedge-xx startade om att Caleb Landry Jones skulle vara en perfekt TonĂ„rs Bengtsson och jag kunde inte hĂ„lla med mer! Och sen sĂ„klart ocksĂ„ @ebbus fantastiska fic och tillĂ€g i konversationen som ocksĂ„ inspirerade mig i detta. (PluspoĂ€ng till alla som kan hitta referenser frĂ„n vĂ„ra ficsđ)
Detta var sĂ„ kul att göra! Kanske man gör hela trion? + rivalerna sĂ„klartđ Ăr ocksĂ„ sĂ„ nyfikna pĂ„ hur ni förestĂ€ller er dem i gymnasiet
Om jag gjorde en serie om Bildsköne Bengtsson som tonÄring dÄ skulle jag be Caleb Landry Jones att spela honom (endast baserat pÄ utseendet) (han mÄste lÀra sig prata svenska (och som Bengtsson))
AssÄ it kinda works??? ErkÀnn????
SÄg precis Twin Peaks S3 E5 dÀr Caleb Landry Jones spelar en ung, disheveled, boyfailure (bild 1) och tÀnkte genast pÄ Bengtsson. Disheveled Àr ju inte riktigt Bengtssons look men liksom, rÀtta till slipsen lite, kamma hÄret, klar!
RödhÄrig, frÀknig, tunna ögonbryn, sjukt blÄ ögon, lite mörk under ögonen, och tycker munnen och hakan Àr rÀtt lik!! (+ snygg (tycker jag))
Söt men lite avigt utseende sÄ dÀr, perfekt! (Och Àlskar bilden nÀr han Àr lÄnghÄrig, Àr sÄ svag för att förestÀlla mig tonÄrs-Bengtsson med lÄngt - fast lockigt - hÄr.)
Söt men lite avigt utseende Àr en jÀttebra beskrivning!!! Jaaaa tonÄrs-Bengtsson men lÄngt lockigt hÄr Ähhhh
Jag tÀnker att han nog alltid har varit fÄfÀng MEN kanske att han ÀndÄ hade lite annorlunda estetik nÀr han va yngre. Liksom kan ÀndÄ förestÀlla mig honom med skjortan lite uppknÀppt, löst sittande slips, kajal frÄn kvÀllen innan... snygg sÄklart! Och han tycker det sjÀlv! Men inte prydlig pÄ samma sÀtt som han Àr nu... (Àlskar iofs tonÄrs-Bengtsson med kostym och kravatt OCKSà men kul att tÀnka pÄ olika möjligheter)
Och JA glömde sÀga det innan med detta Àr ju förstÄs OTROLIGT inspirerat av @ebbus gymnasie au!!! Helt obsessed med den<3333
JAG ĂLSKARâŒïžâŒïžâŒïžâŒïžsĂ€rskilt första och tredje bildenđge honom bara mer lockigt hĂ„r dĂ€r varje hĂ„rslinga ligger perfekt och vi har honomđ
HĂ„ller med om Bengtsson som lite mindre prydlig som tonĂ„r Ă€n vuxen! Liksom han klĂ€r ju sig fortfarande stiligt och sĂ„ men allt sitter liksom inte till perfektion pĂ„ honom, vilket blir en del av stilen! Kanske Ă€r detta lite av smĂ„rebelliskt mot sin fancy rikemansfamiljđ€đ€
Och tonĂ„rs Bengtsson med kajal??!!! YOU READ MY MINDđŁïžđŁïžđŁïžjag har planer för gymnasie autđ
Oh my god JAAA!!! Första bilden Àr nÀstan exakt hur jag förestÀllde honom i min gymnasie AU fic. Han och Simon Àr nÀstan lÀskigt lika helt Àrligt.
HĂ„ller helt med om att han skulle vara lite mer rebellisk i ungdomen. Men fortfarande âput togetherâ och prydligt pĂ„ sitt egna lilla sĂ€tt.
Detta gav mig galet mycket motivation att skriva en till del av min gymnasie AU ficâŒïž
Exakt!! Liksom om slipsen hÀnger lite lös sÄ Àr det liksom meningen! Eller skjortan Àr lite skrynklig och inte helt instoppad sÄ Àr det för att Bengtsson vill ha det sÄ!
Det kan va sĂ„ att jag började smĂ„ skriva pĂ„ en liiiten liten fic med Bengtsson och Ingo pĂ„ tyskalektion pĂ„ tĂ„get idag pĂ„ grund av din kommentar pĂ„ min ficđ€đ€
Och PLSSSS skriv mer gymnasie au!!!!!đ«đ«đ«đ«
HAHHAAH OMG HĂLL PRECIS PĂ ATT SKRIVA EN DEL AV BENGTSSON OCH INGO PĂ TYSKAN SJĂLV!!!đđđ vad Ă€r oddsen?! Men assĂ„ wow jag Ă€lskar verkligen ditt gymnasie AU! LĂ€ste precis om den för att fĂ„ ytterligare lite mer inspiration. (Försöker fortfarande ge lite referenser till din fic i mitt skrivande för de Ă€r kul .)
