Work Text:
Ryland Grace had known he was Stratt’s secret tertiary scientist for about two years now. When Lamai told him that he had the coma-resistance gene, a lot of things had started to make sense; Stratt keeping him around, taking him to all her meetings, forcing him to test the equipment for her.
He almost ran, when he found out and the realization hit him. He almost ran, but he didn’t. He had a panic attack in his bunk instead, and then, wrung out and exhausted but unable to sleep, he went to the lab and just fiddled with things until he accidentally discovered a new part of the astrophage’s RNA structure that scientists around the world had been trying to crack for a while. By that point, it had been 36 hours since the far less pleasant discovery about his own body, and his hands were shaking and his head was buzzing and he’d just started to feel kind of… numb… about it all. The terror was there, but it was a background buzz now, and it felt like just another thing to get used to, because he was there for his kids and he wasn’t going to run because of a Statistical Improbability. Sure, he threw up before every EVA drill now that he knew that it wasn’t just something Stratt did for her own amusement, but that was neither here nor there.
Drs. Martin DuBois and Annie Shapiro were brave. Ryland Grace was a coward. But someone needed to teach the brave people what to do, and he was, despite all his faults, an excellent teacher. So he taught and he kept being Stratt’s glorified assistant/science lapdog, and the buzzing, numbing terror of the Statistical Improbability just became part of his reality.
Stratt noticed the change in him, he knew she did. The new heaviness, the skittishness that had ratcheted up and made him jumpier than he already was. Some days, he thought she could see the terror under his skin like a physical, writhing thing. But she never said anything, and Grace assumed that she just thought the pressure was settling further around him as the launch got closer. Maybe she wanted to say something, or maybe she didn’t care as long as he was still competent at his job (which he was; he’d been living with anxiety for as long as he could remember, and he was used to functioning with it. In a way, he’d trained all his life for this- the way his personal life could crumble around him but The Work never suffered, his only anchor in a stormy sea. And maybe the anchor pulled him down as well as kept him stable, but he was drowning so slowly he didn’t even notice).
She never said anything, though. They had a weird sort of relationship. It wasn’t platonic, or romantic, but it wasn’t quite boss/employee either. Without either of them really noticing, cowardly Ryland Grace had started to shoulder a corner of the world for Atlas, who had initially taken it because nobody else would. And he didn’t know her favorite color or the name of her childhood pet, but he knew how she liked her coffee and he knew the way her eyes wrinkled when she was about to yawn and he knew when she was one second away from snapping at an idiotic politician and could step in and make a joke that would walk her back from the edge if only out of sheer exasperation.
Most importantly, he knew what his little corner of her burden felt like; he knew the crushing weight of his small slice of sky, and he was afraid that if he stepped away, the whole thing would crumble. Not the project- she would keep them all alive come hell or highwater- but Atlas herself. He couldn’t stand the thought of running away because of a Statistical Improbability when right beside him was this one person that he could make things a little easier for by staying.
So he didn’t run; even though he probably should have. Maybe he was being a little bit brave for once in his life, or maybe he was just too cowardly to walk away and face the disappointment of the one person who seemed to see something in him that he couldn’t in himself.
In the end, it didn’t really matter. Statistical Improbability doesn’t mean Impossibility, and he’d always been unlucky.
_________
Eva Stratt watched the lab explode in the Kazakh steppes and felt her stomach plummet right down to her feet. She knew what had to happen now, and it was something that she’d prayed desperately never would. She wanted to look at the man beside her and be a little selfish for once in her life; she wanted to tell him to run and run and never look back. But she couldn’t, so she didn’t. And when he cried for his lost friends and she told him to pull himself together, she was saying it as much to herself as him, because she was mourning someone else who didn’t know he was a dead man walking.
________
Ryland Grace had never surprised her before. She didn’t think he would that day, either. But he came in with shaking hands and his glasses askew as always but there was something different in his eyes and the set of his shoulders.
“I know what you want me to do,” he sighed. “I’ve known I had the gene for two years now. I’m not sure if I regret not running then, but I know I can’t run now. I don’t want to… I really, really don’t want to. But I know you well enough to know that I’m going no matter what I say. I know you like me even if you don’t respect me. But I respect you and I like you and I can’t find it in me to force you to make the call that I know you would even if it killed you. Pack my stuff and put me under now before I change my mind, because I’m holding on by a thread here.”
It could almost be called brave, maybe. Fatalistic, but brave. A sort of ‘reluctant hero’ speech. Maybe they’d put it in the movie one day.
They should probably leave out the part where he immediately threw up into the empty coffee urn, though.
______
“I’m not sure if this comes close enough to ‘consent’ for my tastes,” Commander Yao told Dr. Grace as the man clutched the arms of his chair with white knuckles, head between his knees and begging them to ‘knock me out now, for the love of Newton.’
“It’s going to have to,” Stratt told him, squeezing Grace’s shoulder for support. “There’s no other way.”
“She’s right,” Doctor Grace agreed, through heaving, hyperventilating breaths, voice thick with snot. “Trust me, I looked for one. Man, please tell my students I looked way cooler than this when I agreed.”
“Are you agreeing, though?” Ilyukhina asked.
“I’m a cornered fox facing a shotgun and asking you to make it quick; that’s as close to agreeing as I can get and I’m begging you to let it be enough,” the scientist replied. “Please don’t make this harder for me, please.” His eyes were wet and shiny and he looked like he was holding the armrests as much to keep himself from running as to keep himself grounded.
“I am simply not sure if that is enough for me to agree, Doctor Grace,” Yao replied. “I know you are competent enough to do this, but none of it matters if you are not willing.”
“No disrespect, commander, but frankly, I don’t care what you think about it. I’m getting on that ship whether I like it or not, and you and I both know that Stratt will sedate all three of us if she has to. I don’t want to put that on her conscience on top of Antartica and the Sahara and everything else, and I’m asking you- begging you- to please stop arguing with me about this and let me go down with at least the last shred of my dignity intact. I may be a coward but I’d rather do it scared than not do it at all, because that’s just not an option. Now for fuck’s sake, please knock me the hell out!”
The sight of Doctor Grace, who never cursed, using two in one sentence seemed to be enough to make Yao grudgingly drop his protests, and Stratt moved to a crouch to hold Grace’s hands while Lamai sent someone to her lab to fetch the supplies.
“Thank you,” she whispered to him, surprised that he had known her much better than she realized, and thankful that he seemed to care for her enough not to resent her for what she would have done. “I’ll make sure Carl packs only your dumbest shirts.”
“My converse too,” he whispered, over a shaky laugh that was nearly a cry. “I’m an American and I want to wear my shoes inside.”
“I suppose we could make an exception,” Stratt sighed like the thought pained her deeply. “You’re very lucky that I kind of like you.”
“Yes,” he agreed, as Dr. Lamai stepped towards him gently with a syringe, holding her hands up like she was facing a spooked animal. “I suppose I am. I wish it didn’t have to be like this though; I wish that I could be braver.”
“You are just brave enough, Dr. Grace. It’s more than I deserve,” Stratt replied back, a moment of honesty that surprised her. “It will be gentle, and it will be quick,” she promised, as she motioned Lamai closer. “I’ll have Carl take you outside so you can look at the sky while you fall asleep.”
“That’s all I ask,” Doctor Grace agreed, as the needle entered his arm. “It’s not all I want, but it will have to be enough. I’m doing it scared, and hopefully this means my kids will never have to.”
“They won’t,” Eva promised, even though she had no idea if she could keep it. But she’d happily bear the weight of the lie on her conscience if it made things a little easier for the man in front of her. “I’ll make sure of it.”
Eva Stratt could never be selfish on her own behalf. But she pulled every string she had so that every single student Dr. Ryland Grace had ever taught made it through the next 26 years. It was the least she could do for a man who was just brave enough.
She’d never know this, but a very relative amount of time later and 16 light years away, watching the brightening sun of his once-home, Dr. Ryland Grace decided that he had finally gotten all that he wanted.