Chapter Text
His heat comes before he can even properly remember his name.
He doesn’t recognize it at first. The fever is just one additional bad feeling mixing and churning with every strange ache and anxiety. He doesn't notice it in the midst of his existential crisis. But it gets worse.
So much worse.
After initially scrambling around the ship, he realizes his movements aren’t sharpening and his mind is only getting foggier. It's no longer something he can ignore. He feels sluggish and hot. His throat is dry as a desert and waves of dizziness get stronger, making his frantic math spin before his eyes.
Seeing the vastness of space outside the window makes the gravity of his situation slam down on his ribcage. His body buckles. Something breaks. Probably more terrified than he ever has been in his entire life. But he can't even remember his life. He can't remember a thing.
He hyperventilates. His gut twists and churns, emptiness cratering within him. Something was wrong. Well, really, everything was wrong. But he means in addition to the ‘being stranded in space’ thing.
His insides suddenly cramp up, as if eating each other, clawing their way around his lower belly. He cries out, hunched over, fingering clawing at the wall.
“Was happenin…” he slurs, words wrong and clunky in his mouth. “Why am I even…”
He’s dying. As if waking up in the void of space wasn’t enough of a shock to his system, the way his body screams ALONE at him as if he needs some sort of flashing red sign above his head with arrows pointing down for an even bigger effect. He can’t seem to fathom it all.
He's woken up in space and he’s about to die within hours. How does any of this make sense?
Driven by pure need, he forces himself up and pulls together every soft thing he finds on the ship, helplessly dragging it all with him until he can’t anymore. He collapses, curling up tight and trembling. Only when he gathers what little strength he can, he begins arranging it, pushing to create walls around him, tugging and twisting until the desperation quiets.
He’s not even sure why he’s doing this. Logically, it’s a mess - it hardly feels like the priority when his insides are twisting into knots and his head is light with fever. But it’s like he has too. He’s too scared, too alone. He needs a nest, needs any protection possible.
He hides under a colorful blanket and clutches a knit cardigan to his chest. He can’t seem to even fathom letting it go. He buries his face into it, inhaling and…
It all goes blurry from there.
~
The next few days are torturous. A horrible collision of fear, confusion, and howling desperation.
He’s beyond disoriented, painfully gasping into different awarenesses. All he knows is that he wants, wants, needs, needs-
Nothing seems to quiet it. He aches and burns with no relief. The overhanging loneliness feels like a cold blanket on his shivering form, the chill sinking deeper and deeper. Even as his skin simmers there’s icy fear solidifying in his chest.
He’s been scared since he woke up, but this… There’s something primal in the desperation. Utterly alone and unprotected.
Unwanted?
Is that why he’s alone?
He cries unapologetically at the pounding thought, sobbing into his cardigan until he can barely breathe. "I'm sorry," he cries to no one. He doesn't even know why he's apologizing. This all feels like one cosmic nightmare designed to make him regret everything he's ever done and every choice he's ever made. But he can't remember.
He can’t remember.
He doesn’t even know his own name. The robot keeps asking. He hates it. His wild hair, tangled and wet from his tears, sticks against his face. There’s slick between his legs and deep pulsing ache that doesn’t relent. The blanket he’s twisted in is the only thing protecting him from the rest of the world. Universe. Space.
He doesn’t sleep for nearly 50 hours, hunkered in the padded corner from where he first fell out of his sleeping bag. Just out of reach from the robot arms that keep trying to pull at the edge of his blankets when he cries too loud or too long. He reeks of fear-scent, pungent and desperate. He’s so disturbed, he even finds himself contemplating climbing up to the dead bodies, just to have someone to curl up against, to cling to. They’re the only two people he even knows existed, and it creates some kind of desperate cry that sticks in his throat. It’s not pack. But it’s the closest thing he has. The two corpses looming over him.
But then he thinks of their smell. Or more like their lack of one. The emptiness of death. Not a true scent. Nothing alive. Lifeless. Gray.
He’s alone. He's been alone for a long, long time.
It’s like being torn in two.
(A part of him that doesn’t want to remember knows it’s always been this way.)
~
The days recovering from his heat from hell bring a few revelations.
His name is Grace. Ryland Grace.
He's smart. Knows lots of science inherently and can produce equations instantly. As it turns out, it's Dr. Ryland Grace. Not too shabby if you ask him.
Ryland Grace is an omega.
Despite the inherent relief in finally knowing concrete facts about himself, something about remembering this brings a wash of shame. Like he wasn’t supposed to be this way. Or maybe someone he knew was disappointed by this.
He writes the omega symbol on his whiteboard anyway, right next to his name, the words alpha and beta circling strangely in his mind. Beta feels neutral. Almost relieving. There’s safety there. Alpha feels heavier. There’s a weight of expectation. A strange pulse at the base of his neck where his fingers discover the raised skin of a scar.
Newest discovery: Ryland Grace has a mating bite scar.
The whiteboard marker clatters to the ground. His fingers jump back, disturbed. A sickening churn rolls over the uncooked ramen noodles in his stomach.
He’s not sure yet how much food he even has on the ship. Losing his dinner now would be a poor end of the day. He has to figure this out. He needs to focus. So he adds to his list. Anything that surfaces in his mind. A bottle in the ocean washing to shore.
Grace stares at the small list of things he’s written, taking a deep breath to calm down.
WHO AM I?
Dr? Ryland Grace Ω
Science teacher (middle school?)
bay area
Glasses
Friends?
Bite - from who?
His head pounds at this point. Struggling to remember even glimpses of his life. His classroom is the strongest memory. He can envision most of it. Even remembers grading certain papers and projects. He remembers tossing the hackysack to his students. Their enthusiastic grins and perpetual laughter. The Petrova Line. The sun. His pups… they were scared. And he was scared for them.
“Lava,” he whispers to himself, imagining something hot against his fingers. He can hear them chanting in his head.
The small Earth in his bag makes more sense now. He clutches onto it now - the only clear memory of his life that he now has.
It hurts as much as it helps. A whimper escapes him before he can think to stop it. He pushes his hands under his glasses and presses against his eyes, exhausted.
Before quitting, he adds ‘bad at heat’ to the bottom of the list, finding a small bit of humor from the self-awareness. At least no one was around to witness him in such a state. It’s hardly a silver lining. Maybe a grey lining. A dark grey lining.
He’s not sure what he’s going to do the next time his cycle rolls around. He intends to figure out what other supplies are stashed around, hoping that there’s maybe something to help him.
It doesn’t feel promising.
There’s a tug inside him. He touches the scar on his neck again, bothered. Half-expects a memory to flash like a set of sharp teeth. His heart pounds as he waits, but nothing comes. Goosebumps prickling at his forearms and he shakes his head. Before he erases it all together, he decides it's time to sleep.
~
When he finds the vodka, he decides it's time to drink. This was preceded with the realization that his journey across galaxies is a certified one-way trip. A suicide mission.
He's going to die in space. Alone.
His throat burns from alcohol and then burns from cries that twist and choke at his throat. He doesn't know who he could've been to ever volunteer for such a thing but he wants those memories back so badly. He wills them forward, begging his own mind to release them. He needs to feel as brave as he did when he made this decision. He wants to understand.
As he passes out, he already dreads waking up, in no way ready to accept his fate. No matter how unforgiving the math is.
(He also can't believe this is making him hate math. It's all so messed up.)
~
He names his new friend Moppy. Who is a mop. Not his best work. But to be fair, he’s been having what feels like a three day panic attack, so he thinks he’s owed a little grace. (Ha.)
Moppy is not great to cuddle with. But Moppy listens to him cry without shaming him. Moppy doesn’t call him too clingy or needy. Conveniently, Moppy is good at absorbing all his tears. Moppy is all he has now. Grace and moppy against the world. Or, the universe, he keeps correcting himself.
The Dont-Go-Crazy Room on ship blueprints actually has the opposite effect. He loses himself in there for a time, mind melting away into the footage of Earth. He breaks particularly hard when he summons footage of a beach.
“I’ve been here,” he tells Moppy. “I’ve- Moppy, I’ve been here!”
Moppy is actually face down on the floor right now. Grace rolls them over and lays down beside them. He remembers how sand feels. The chill of a crashing wave against his shins. Wind blowing salt water into his hair. If he closes his eyes he can picture himself there.
He's never going to see that again. Never going to feel it.
It hurts a little too much. He suddenly can’t keep it in.
He screams.
And then cries.
Screams some more.
No one else besides him can hear it anyway. Why does it matter if he can’t seem to stop?
Later, he apologizes to Moppy anyway. "I'm sorry you had to hear that," he says, voice raw, as he cards through Moppy's loose hair. It only feels polite.
~
According to their IDs, Yao and Ilyukhina were both alphas. They both have a stack of photographs in their assigned bags. Grace is sure they wouldn’t have hurt him. But a darker part of him wonders if they had woken up when he was heat-drunk the way he was if it would’ve mattered. He likely would have begged for relief. Even from the strangers he had no memories of.
The lack of memory doesn’t stop him from crying about them. He tears up even at the thought of their bodies withering away in their comma bags.
Looking at the photos packed with his crewmates, his own blurry impression of his past feels even more lost on him.
Yao had a mate. He had children. Ilyukhina had friends, parents, maybe a mate as well. They both had people who loved them. Family. Pack.
Grace has no one. There isn’t a stack of pictures in his bag. Just a loose polaroid of him, alone.
Omegas aren’t meant to be alone. Everything he knows about basic biology taught him that. Omegas are the social glue of packs, soft and nurturing. A solitary omega can get by with everyday socialization with strangers, but they are much more likely to develop depression from touch starvation. Packless omegas have the highest rate of suicide in comparision to other designations in solitude (a fact that Grace’s brain unhelpfully has memorized.)
Maybe Grace wasn’t good at being an omega and that’s why he feels so inherently ashamed. Why he can’t go a few hours without rubbing anxiously at his arms and neck, trying to self-comfort as he slowly loses his grip on things.
If he had a mate, they clearly weren’t around when he volunteered to get on this ship. Maybe losing them is part of why he got on the Hail Mary in the first place.
The bite scar on his neck has left him feeling deeply unsettled. No feelings of loss or comfort come from brushing his fingers against it. It makes him wonder what happened to him. Did he have an alpha? The name Carl drifts in and out of his mind, but it feels like a puzzle piece that never fits cleanly where Grace wants it.
He doesn’t understand. It isn’t fair that he’s been left here. It isn’t fair that his crewmates with families and loved ones are the ones who died. He wishes it were him. He wishes he never woke up.
Floating alone in space 11.9 light years away from home is a ticket to insanity for anyone. Omega, beta, or alpha. But Grace has no doubt he’s crumbling exponentially faster than Yao or Ilyukhina would have. Even with memories shakily resurfacing, it doesn’t help the crushing loneliness.
That same loneliness is why he’s held onto their bodies for so long. He can pretend sometimes that they’re still sleeping. That he’s not entirely alone on a spaceship flying further and further away from Earth.
But they deserve more.
Spaceships aren’t equipped with morgues or any proper way to preserve a dead body. Even if there was something Grace could do, it was clear from his fuel calculations that there was no return trip home in store for them. Their bodies will never be able to go home (including his own, though he’s adamantly not thinking about that right now.)
So Grace does the best he can.
As weak as he’s become over the last few weeks, he manages to get their bodies up the ladder, across the ship, and to the airlock. He carefully guides their decrepit, withered bodies into their uniforms, their names are proudly displayed. Heroes. He brings their belongings next, selfishly keeping their extra clothes in his nest on the floor.
He sends them off with a few words that hurt his chest and burn his throat. They deserved someone who knew them. He takes his guesses but the gaping and unnatural unfamiliarity overwhelms him as he goes through their photos and places their memories in their hands. It hurts so much. He must have known them. He grieves them and the memories he can’t find in his head. He’s sorry. He’s so, so sorry.
He knows a few things. He knows they were brave. He knows they were loved. It isn’t enough.
Yao’s body surrenders to space, floating off endlessly. Ilyukhina’s hair sweeps around her in limbo, ghostly and haunting. Grace thanks them for being there as much as they could be. They helped him pretend.
~
Grace spends days wasting away inside the Don’t-Go-Crazy Room. He gets stuck in the scenery of Earth, a deep and unforgiving ache completely immobilizing him. He stops eating. The computer reminds him more persistently, but he can't seem to care, much less move. He grapples over bits and pieces of his life. And it hurts to not remember more than a few flashes. He remembers glimpses of Yao walking beside him through laboratories. His confidence and determination. He remembers the sound of Ilyukhina’s accent and the way she styled her hair. Her laugh mixed with her sarcasm.
Carl and Eva Stratt have surfaced in his memories, but only their first few meetings, so he’s not sure how much to take from that. But it's the start of the bridge that got him here. He uses up any energy he has crying, shoulders shaking as each flash something surfaces, grieving the life he can never go back to.
He gradually moves his nest into the Don’t-Go-Crazy Room for a few days. But the constant and surrounding exposure to bright screens gives him a terrible headache so he reluctantly puts it back in the small entry area before the dorms. It's where it stays for the next few weeks.
He hasn’t been able to make himself sleep in the actual dorm since his funeral for Yao and Ilyukhina. He refuses to lay where they died. Not yet. Grace can barely even look at it. He also hates that he can still smell the lingering scent of his horrific heat, the soured scent of fear stubbornly lingering to the cushioned walls.
Moppy stays in the nest now so he can pretend he’s sleeping by someone. It doesn't work well. He's unable to stay asleep for more than a few hours at a time, becoming gradually more exhausted and prickly. He snaps at the computer because he can, but ends up feeling guilty even for that.
He doesn’t know what he’s going to do the next time his cycle arrives. He had been expecting to find more supplies to help him out, but he’s only managed to find some scent blocking patches and a scent neutralizing spray. He uses it on the dorm room the moment he finds it, and luckily it helps tone down the lingering ghost of fear scent. But he had been expecting more. Did they not think he would have his cycle up here? What about if one of the alphas had to go through a rut?
It makes him wondering if it's just another part of the medical comas that didn't work. Maybe he was supposed to be on suppressants but something broke. It's clear something already went wrong, since he's the last standing of three crewmates. Maybe he's been sterilized and they didn't care what happened to him beyond that if he couldn't get pregnant.
It all makes him feel a little sick, stuck spiraling over what-ifs.
Heat cycles vary in frequency and intensity depending on environmental conditions, as well as mental health status. High stress situations (like the one Grace is currently stuck in) present an interesting scientific ‘fork-in-the-road’ when it comes to survival.
In situations where harm is imminent or already befalling, it’s not all that rare for an omega to go into a stress-induced heat. Whatever evolution was involved in that choice, Grace absolutely disagrees with it. The choice to either die at an alphas hands or to get assaulted by one feels disarming and sickening all at once.
Rather than a stress-induced heat, his body seems to have made the choice on the opposite path - a full cycle shutdown. Thank god. Considering his environment (or prison), the stress of his complete isolation has taken his body’s natural need to procreate and put it to deep sleep. Waking up from a four year coma already in heat whilst completely isolated had apparently traumatized his body enough.
Grace can’t remember how active his cycle was, but if there’s one thing his mind seems to attach to, its patterns.
He can tap a beat to a song before he even recognizes the words. Equations and solutions fly from his fingers before he even can catch up to why he knows what he’s writing. He struggles sleeping on nights when he thinks his skin could start to flush and his insides begin to burn in emptiness. He can tell his cycle is suppressed, like a missing variable in an equation.
His next heat doesn’t come. Instead a detachment settles in him, but also an unsteadiness. A chill haunts him, making him layer up his clothes even more chaotically. Panic attacks are frequent and he’s gotten into the habit of scruffing the skin back of his neck with a tight fist, forcing the release of a muscle relaxant, like a mother would do to their pups.
It may make him a bit useless and floppy afterwards, but it’s one of the few ways to keep the anxiety and paranoia from drowning him. He sometimes even gets an hour of sleep from it. It’s not a permanent fix. The back of his neck is now bruised and sore. He's paranoid and can't seem to relax on his own.
It's a downward spiral. He’s wound too tight. Overly stressed and only getting weaker. He may not be a medical doctor, but he knows biology. While he’s relieved to not go through another heat in these isolated conditions, he knows that it’s not a good sign for his mental or physical state to have a dormant cycle. However, he is in no way inclined to trying to induce heat, no matter the possible health benefit. Not like this.
He’s been sent here to die. The math stays the same no matter how many times he runs the numbers. But Grace wants to live. The realization makes this hurt so much more. He wants to see the beach again. He wants to hear his students laughing and feel them pulling at the sleeves of his sweater. His pups. God, he misses their scents. Anyone's scent. He's so lonely, he's considering ejecting himself out of the airlock just to make it all stop.
But he's all that Earth has now. And he made a promise to his crew.
He's scared that one day that's not going to be enough to stop him.
Then his engines shut down. Three, two, one, zero.
~
Rocky is also alone.
They're both broken from that.
There really aren’t words for how it all feels (not that their translations are very smooth between each other’s respective languages.) But Grace can tell that they’re both desperate enough for connection that their relationship has changed from strangers to something rather codependent in a matter of days.
Their conversations are. Chaotic. To put it simply.
Grace is no linguist. And he already knows that the way he describes words are inherently inlaid with bias and everything human in the way he perceives the world, but he can’t really let that hold him back when trying to get a solid language base with his new alien friend.
Rocky is smarter than him anyway. He knows Grace is biased. Grace finds comfort in that.
Once they have a solid base of words, Grace finds that they can talk to each other nonstop. Hours fly by as they delve into new topics and share about their planets. Their vocabulary between them grows so fast that Grace is practically giddy with excitement. Maybe this isn’t so hopeless after all. Maybe they really can save their stars.
So, not only has he made first contact with sentient alien life, but that alien was also now the most important person to him in the universe. Literally.
To be fair, he can’t really remember anyone else. Not enough memories assembled to make them feel real. A couple more of his students' names have come back and some faces blur strangely in his mind. Eva Stratt is an incomplete puzzle, despite most of his clearer memories being of her.
As they talk, Grace tries his best to explain Earth and humanity with his swiss cheese memory. He remembers the impersonal details of Earth, the science and functions of things. But his memories are severely lacking. His childhood is still all but lost. Who he was before he started teaching is an abstract blur.
It’s uncomfortable to admit how little he remembers. So he tries to downplay it. Luckily there’s enough to talk about that he can get away with it.
He’s genuinely not being hyperbolic when he says that Rocky is all he has right now. While their bond started as tentative and terrifying, the moment he took his helmet off and breathed…
Grace felt something click. Everything about their friendship just solidified.
He still can’t even truly believe it. He has to keep pinching himself and looking out the window to prove that Rocky’s ship is there. He feels like he can finally breathe listening to Rocky’s curious and demanding thrills and vibrations.
Grace isn’t alone any more. His skin sings with relief.
~
It doesn’t take long for his nest to move into the tunnel. For the first time since waking up here, it finally feels like its in the right place.
The radiating warmth from Rocky’s atmosphere comforts him like a metaphysical heated blanket. In the few seconds caught between sleep and consciousness, he sometimes confuses that warmth for another person, pressing towards it only to meet with a hard xenonite surface.
Rocky doesn’t comment on it. He just seems happy that Grace no longer puts up a fuss about watching him sleep. While Grace hates admitting being wrong, this is one of those times he concedes.
“Grace make sleep area so crowded,” Rocky comments as Grace gets ready for bed. It's only been a few days of watching each other sleep. “Hard for Rocky to hear Grace.”
Grace is getting used to the idea of echolocation instead of eyesight. He wonders if he should change the translation in his software from “hear” to “see” so it’s more of an accurate comparison.
“Yeah, I guess I do,” Graces agrees, amused, but continues to readjust his nest walls before sleeping. He shouldn’t be surprised by the question considering Rocky had asked so many questions about the function of Grace’s clothes. “Some humans like lots of soft things to be around when we sleep. It’s kind of like protection.”
“Oh, because human body so fragile.” Rocky stomps a little on the platform above Grace’s body. “Rocky watch sleep is also protection. Grace doesn't need so much stuff.”
“This stuff is called blankets. Bedding.”
“I don’t like, statement. Absorb sound.”
“Well, I like it,” Grace says. “It comforts me. And to be truthful, I don’t even think this is enough. But this is all I’ve been able to find on the ship.”
Rocky gives a bothered click.
“Why not bring more in ship if Grace want more?”
“I’m going to guess it wasn’t really a priority,” Grace says with a sigh, though he has been wondering the same thing himself. He knows how he likes his bed and nesting materials to be. Grace didn’t even have memories and he still tried to create a nest for his sudden onset of heat.
Simply to say, he feels like his past-self should’ve bargained better.
As Grace finally settles down, pulling the patchwork quilt over his body, Rocky grumbles to himself, the computer not catching it under the sound of him marching his feet.
“Well, if Grace like…” Rocky says. “Rocky stop complain.”
Grace smiles under his blanket. “Thanks, bud.”
Rocky gives a short buzz of acknowledgement, moving down and settling on his side of the barrier. A respectful distance as Grace previously requested.
He originally was nervous about someone so new this close to his nest. But now it feels off. Grace watches Rocky tucking in his legs, and something twists in his chest.
“You can be a little closer.”
Rocky stops moving.
“You know, if you want,” Grace adds on clumsily. He flushes a little at his awkwardness, bringing up the blanket to cover part of his face again.
“I want, I want!” Rocky says, scooting closer and bumping against the xenonite to be as close to the as comfortable. He lets out a low hum, tapping lightly against the barrier to emphasize. “Hear Grace better.”
Grace lifts his hand and taps back, leaving his hand there. Rocky’s leg shifts back and presses against the barrier, also leaving it where it is. It’s so close to actually touching. A thin pane of xenonite between, but Grace could cry if he wasn’t suddenly so tired.
Something that has been feral and afraid in Grace since he woke up, has gone quiet. Like a weighted blanket has been pressed down over his body. Seen and protected. Not alone.
“Goodnight, Rock.”
“Grace sleep. Rocky watch.”
Grace falls asleep within seconds.