Work Text:
Eva Stratt is born during a raging storm. Quite literally. Her parents were unconventional, and her mother demanded a “free birth."
They escaped to the woods in the middle of the night, one of the worst storms of the century according to the morning news, and there she was. She was born screaming, blood and guts all over her tiny body, and her dad is immediately disgusted by the vision. There's dirt underneath her mother's nails from digging them into the earth. But her mother started to bleed and didn’t stop. The blood starts to drip down and down and down, in a single line until it joins the creek beside them, turning the water red.
That's actually her first memory, the color red.
It's already morning when her dad finally takes her home, holding her like he would a bag of flour, barely looking at her. There's dirt underneath his fingernails from burying her mother's body in the muddy floor of the forest. It's not raining anymore, and the first rays of sunlight shyly escape the dark clouds.
Eva is named after her mother. Eva is born underneath cascades of water. Eva is already born drowning.
They live in a tiny, beat-up house near a highway. Her dad works as a mechanic, and he stays out all day; her diet consists of mostly cheese and white bread with a side of old milk. She is eight years old, and she loves to watch Star Trek reruns on television. She is fascinated by Spock, by his stoicism and control. She doesn't care all that much for Kirk. That's when she notices she's attracted to Uhura, to her hair, her hands, her face, her skin. And that's when she promptly decides she's going to space; someone like Uhura must surely be out there waiting for her, and she loves to stargaze at night. Eva is always looking up at the stars.
Her dad is not mean, but he drinks a lot. He can never fully look at Eva in the eyes. He never holds her. But he does buy her an old telescope for her birthday; the lens is a bit cracked, but she can look at the moon just fine.
He stays there, on the porch, drinking a beer and watching her. She remembers the grass beneath her bare feet, the summer night breeze in her hair, and the smell of the air. She swears she sees a red comet crossing the sky, jumping up and down. She tells that to her dad, and he smiles sadly at her, holding his beer up.
"You could be an astronomer, Evie," he tells her softly and gulps the beer down. "I'm going to crash; fifteen more minutes, okay? Fourth grade starts tomorrow, and I won't be here to wake you up." He opens the creaky door and goes inside, no goodnight kiss.
"Okay, Daddy."
She smiles to herself and goes back to watching the stars, wanting to see that comet again. Bright red just like her pretty hair.
At night, when she closes her eyes, she can see the comet’s red tail shining behind her eyelids.
Eva is fourteen, and she loves space. She can't get enough of it; she is dead-set on becoming an astronaut, whatever it takes. Eva is fourteen when she falls in love.
Her name is Grace, and she is a grade below her. Her curly black hair catches Eva’s eye, and she wants to look at her forever. She stops wearing her science and Star Trek shirts. No one bullies her for the shirts; she'd beat the shit out of them. But she starts to feel childish and vulnerable. She doesn't want Grace to think she's a nerd.
She leaves a note inside her locker:
"Do you want to have ice cream after school?
YES NO
Eva."
The reply is back inside her own locker at the end of the day; the paper is pink, and she smiles to herself.
"YES ♡
Gracie"
So they go and get two scoops of strawberry ice cream after school, little bits of frozen red in between.
They share the same spoon. Eva holds Grace’s hand. She never wants to let go. Grace strokes her hair.
"Your hair shines so bright underneath the sun like this. You're beautiful, Eva."
Grace's lips are soft against her cheek.
Grace loves to hear Eva talk about space, about science. They lie side by side on Grace's colorful quilt; her parents are working—they’re very important lawyers—and Grace’s house is so cool. Eva can sneak in almost every afternoon. Their study sessions always turn into hardcore making out, and Eva couldn't be happier. Summer is slowly creeping in, and it holds the promise of a full month swimming in the lake together, and Eva wants. They've been together for almost two years now, and Eva is going insane with how much she wants Grace. But Grace isn't ready yet, and that's okay; Eva can wait. Eva would wait forever if she asked.
Grace enjoys writing romance, and science isn't her strongest suit, so she asks Eva to talk and talk and talk. And Eva tells her all about the planets, the stars, and the red comet she saw and never forgot. She tells her all about Star Trek and Spock, how much Kirk annoys her, and all about the space books she steals from the library. Grace laughs, and Eva feels so loved.
She rides her bike back from Grace's house, a dumb smile on her face. The warm setting sun paints her skin a deep gold.
Eva is 16 years old when she finds her dad hanging from the wooden beam of the ceiling in their living room.
He pissed himself; it stains his jeans a dark blue. There's a dark brown stain on the floor behind him. White foam comes out of his mouth. Eva stares at him for a minute. She doesn't cry. But she swears she feels her heart stop beating, leaving her chest hollow and dark. She can hear the rain falling, but there's no rain; the sky is bright orange and the crickets are singing.
Eva gets on top of a stool and cuts the rope.
It is bright red.
Her father's body falls to the floor with a dry thump.
Eva breaks up with Grace at the funeral. Eva thinks Grace might throw up from how hard she's crying. She kneels in front of Eva and squeezes the grass below her, dirt staining her fingernails brown, begging her not to do this, please.
Eva finds it all a bit pathetic.
Eva is 18 years old when she gets into one of the most prestigious history programs in the Netherlands. She gave up on space—on that ridiculous idea—the second she left her father’s funeral. She has no time for Star Trek anymore, and she throws her telescope in the woods behind her house. She gets an allowance from the state and buries herself in history books. She wants to learn anything and everything there is to know. To absorb it all, to rewrite history herself.
She wears only black, her hair is always down, and she sleeps around a lot. It makes her feel good, confident. Eva knows she's beautiful and striking. She turns heads when she goes to the bars near her university. She almost never pays for her own drink. The girls talk. They warn each other to stay away from her; everyone wants to break her down, to get inside her in more ways than one. She lets them down, not gently, after getting what she wants.
She's studying at her desk when she notices she's distracted and making little doodles of the planets on the corner of her very expensive book. She sighs and erases it, almost ripping the page in annoyance. Her roommate, Sarah, is lying down on her bed reading The Left Hand Of Darkness, and she keeps sighing and awing, making Eva more and more annoyed by the second.
"Eva, holy shit. You ever read this?" Eva doesn’t look, but she knows Sarah is holding out the cover.
"No. I'm studying, Sarah. Please." Sarah sighs and goes back to her reading.
Eva's read it a hundred times.
Eva is 22 when she gets her Bachelor of Arts in History. She graduates with honors, top of her class. Five different job offers are waiting in her inbox.
She takes the job from the European Space Agency and tells herself it’s because of the better pay. They hire her as a Policy Analyst. International agreements. Politics disguised as cooperation. It's cutthroat and she loves it. The routine is cyclical, hypnotic—it draws her in; she doesn't need to think about anything but what she's doing. She stops sleeping around, but only because she has no time to think about sex at all. There's no more red in her life.
She starts taking her coffee strong and black, like all the other guys in her office. When one of them touches her thigh during happy hour, she starts wearing pants. She wants to stab him to death with the fork left on the bar table, but she doesn't want to lose her job over it. They all fear her. She fucking loves it.
Whenever the astronauts visit, she closes the blinds to her office and puts her headphones on.
She is 45 when the world becomes aware of the Petrova Line. It’s eating their sun. Humanity will start dying in approximately 30 years.
With the right light, the line shines bright red.
Eva's life takes a turn for the better. She already makes absurd amounts of money, and she's known for being cold, analytical, controlled. The UN puts her in control of it. The entire thing. If it goes to shit, they'll fucking love having a woman to blame.
She starts making more connections, even more than she already has. She assembles an entire team for the Petrova Task Force. She thinks it’s a stupid name, but she’s in charge of everything but the marketing. When they find out about astrophage, she needs to start studying options; they need to learn about it. They will learn more about it.
So they catch it. It comes to her in tubes, and it's black. Gooey. Ugly. Alien.
They need scientists, lots of them. So she starts hunting them down, reading countless pages of bullshit after bullshit. These people are so pretentious; she can't believe they're going to have to save the world alongside her.
One paper sits on her desk, thick and forgotten. She decides to read it just for fun. It's titled An Analysis of Water-Based Assumptions and Recalibrations of Expectations for Evolutionary Models*, underlined in red ink. Sure. Whatever. But it's the name of the doctor that catches her eye; it feels like a little inside joke, like someone sent it to her on purpose.
Dr. Ryland Grace.
The first page reads:
Chapter 1: The Goldilocks Zone is for Idiots.
Well, shit. Now she has to read this loser's paper.
When Eva meets Dr. Grace, she is expecting an old, boring man. What she finds is a middle-school science teacher dressed like a manchild. His classroom is so colorful it burns her eyes a little. There are planets. Stars. More stars. Space. Space. Space. All around her. She immediately hates it. She immediately likes him.
He wears a bright red tie. The noose is tight around his neck.
“That’s lava,” he says when she picks up a little crocheted Earth from his desk. She instinctively smells it.
"It's not," she replies.
He looks down.
"Okay..."
He's so awkward. What's wrong with him? Why can't he look her in the eyes? He annoys her, but she's instantly charmed. Startlingly fascinated.
They step outside. It looks like it’s about to rain. He grabs a bright yellow raincoat from his backpack and puts it on. Unironically. This guy cannot be serious.
She hires him on the spot.
They work nonstop for four years.
There's something about Grace... He's here, but he's not all here. It's like he vibrates at a completely different frequency from everyone else, even hers. They are complete opposites, and yet the entire Hail Mary team thinks they're sleeping together.
She doesn’t understand him at all. She can read him like a book.
He loves science. He's fascinated by it. He talks and talks and talks. She listens. She thinks about herself. Another life. Once upon a time.
They do everything together. She knows how he takes his coffee; he brings her one every morning. They take international trips; they talk to thousands of people. They are a team through and through. Her chest remains hollow, but something bright sparks again. Just a flicker. She's building a fucking spaceship. She's doing this; she's gonna save the world. If anyone can do it, it's her.
At one of the labs, someone gives their science officer 1 milligram of astrophage instead of 1 nanogram.
The whole thing blows up.
They're fucked.
"You believe in God?" Grace asks her a day before she needs to break the news to him.
She takes him in then, fully. The sun setting on his face. The breeze tousling his hair. And he's just lovely, isn't he?
"It beats the alternative." She answers, truthfully. Because it does. She doesn't believe in a mythical God, but she wants to. She prays to it.
And he doesn't know what to say to that. He looks at her for a minute and she wonders if in another lifetime they could have been friends. Actual friends. Maybe they'd meet in college. They'd go out every Friday night after studying. Maybe they could be each other's wingmen, she'd enjoy watching him get flustered over someone. It's almost mythical to think about Grace falling in love. Maybe he'd be the best man at her imaginary beach wedding, the one she and her Grace used to talk about when they were so, so young. Maybe.
Later that night she allows herself to live in that alternate version of herself for a few minutes. She sings a beautiful song, she sings it for Grace.
If nothing else, maybe he'll remember she gave him this. She gave him a whole song.
Eva is 49 years old when she decides she's going to murder Dr. Grace.
They sit him down at a table with his future crewmates, Carl, and everyone that he might listen to. Anyone that could soften the blow.
"You don't even have a dog," she says blankly. Instant hurt crosses his eyes.
"I cannot do this." There are already tears threatening to fall from his eyes; he looks at her in complete and utter fear.
"You're smart. You'll figure it out," she tells him, her hands crossed in front of her on the meeting table. He stares at her in disbelief.
"Can I think about it?" he pleads.
For the first time since she met him, she finds him pathetic and instantly resents him for it. All those years. She resents not going into science. Resents giving up because of her ridiculous excuse for a father. A wave of hatred hits her so hard she feels dizzy. He’s the one following the red string. Her red string. She’s not going. She should be the one going. She’d do it in a fucking heartbeat. She’d die in an instant. And he’s nothing but a coward. She likes him, she doesn't respect him. She wants to tell him all of that; she says none of it.
"You have three hours," she tells him. But she already knows his answer. He has no choice.
She goes back to her bedroom, right beside his own. Door to door. She sits down on the bed and takes a couple of deep breaths. Her jaw is locked; her hand is shaking. She calls Carl and tells him to get the doctors ready. They’re going to have to sedate him. She presses her hand against her chest; she feels nothing there.
The thing is—despite everything—she believes in Grace. She has utter faith in him; she can't explain why. Call it a sixth sense. But she believes that he's the only one in this universe who can do this right now. If there's anyone who can save them, it's him. And by God, she'll put him inside that ship kicking and screaming, but he's going. She will murder him, but he will save the world. He has to.
Eva opens her closet. There’s a single beige piece of clothing inside. She takes off the black one she's wearing and puts it on. He loves colors so much; maybe this will calm him down when she gives him the news.
It doesn't.
"Come on, this is crazy. You don't have to do this," he laughs nervously, looking at her and the doctors closing in on him. Tears falling from his bright eyes.
She is suddenly taken back to one of her art history classes. The painting "Agnus" by Konstantin Korobov flashes in her mind. She's the one painting it.
He tries to escape. It's almost comical. She feels sorry for him. She hates him. She loves him.
There's a lump in her throat the size of an orange. Her voice wobbles for the first time since she was a child.
"Sit down and we can do it differently. Don't make this harder, please," she pleads with him.
He manages to escape. For a couple of minutes—no, seconds.
She hears him screaming outside. Pleading with Carl. She turns her back to the window, closing her eyes. She can stomach anything; she's seen everything. But she suddenly can't seem to stomach this.
Her hand on her chest. Her heart—after years—pounding.
She asks Carl to drive her to Grace's apartment. He is already in a coma, looking peaceful and ready to be sent off. He'll wake up in outer space. He will die amidst the stars.
A hero.
She unlocks the front door and walks in alone, Carl waiting for her outside.
His apartment is exactly like him. The kitchen sink has a few dirty bowls in it and empty noodle cups all over the place. It feels warm and bright, the sunlight creeping in through the soft curtains. She goes to his bedroom, an empty NASA bag in her hand. There are some shirts casually thrown around, like he'd been looking for something less idiotic to wear. A bright, colorful patchwork quilt lies on his bed, and she absentmindedly wonders if his students made it for him. She carefully folds it and puts it inside the bag.
She packs only the essentials. Some random t-shirts with stupid science puns she finds in his drawers, colorful socks, and a single Polaroid picture.
There's no one else in it.
She kneels down then, with a loud thud against the wooden floor.
Eva bites her lip until she tastes blood, and for the first time in over 40 years she cries. She buries her face deep in one of his stupid shirts and sobs uncontrollably. She doesn't remember ever making these sounds, ever crying this hard. Not when she was born. Not as a child. Not when she found her father's body. Not even over her Grace.
She's shaking, her throat feels raw.
He's alone. Oh, God. He's all alone.
She puts the shirt inside her own shoulder bag and doesn't tell a soul.
Eva decides to take one last look at him before he leaves.
She closes the door behind her. Everything is silent. The heart monitor beeps softly in the background. A clock on the wall ticks.
He looks so peaceful like this. The oxygen mask over his face. It’s raining outside, and a rainbow reflects against his hospital gown.
She drinks him in. The messy blond hair. His nose. His light eyelashes. His cheeks. A tear falls from his eye. Probably just a reaction to the medication.
She looks at his hands. There's dirt underneath his fingernails from digging them into the ground.
She doesn't say goodbye, and she regrets nothing.
She hopes that when he wakes up he doesn't remember any of this. That he doesn't remember her at all.
Eva Stratt kisses Ryland Grace's forehead and leaves.
Eva is 70 years old when she sees Rocky the Eridian for the first time, and how unimaginative of Grace. But she's never seen him look so happy. His eyes are bright with joy, with a sense of belonging.
Grace is home.
For something so groundbreaking, she barely blinks. It makes so much sense; nothing has ever made more sense than this. Grace looks entirely in his element; the back and forth between them is so easy, she can’t help but feel a pang of jealousy. They were never in the same rhythm after all. Eva doesn't quite believe in destiny; she never believed in soulmates. But something inside of her wonders. Maybe.
The red string always belonged to him; all she had to do was lead him to it. The Petrova line was made for Grace; it was his—and someone else’s. Eva unintentionally built the conditions for his fate without ever belonging to it. She was never the one meant to be on the other end of the string.
He's not alone.
Grace chooses the alien in every lifetime. And in every lifetime Eva is the one responsible for bringing them together. She knows this, she feels it deep inside of her.
Her first memory:
Red.
She hopes, deep down, that not every time happens with violence. With hatred. With bitterness. Fear.
Grace shows her how to "say" goodbye in Eridian. She does it back to him.
The video ends. She'll never see Grace again.
Her heart beats with something resembling joy.
Eva is old and she dreams at night about another life, sometimes.
Everything is brighter in these dreams, more beautiful. Simpler. And in some of them she's a teacher. A physics teacher. She wears skirts, colorful dresses, and her hair back in a ponytail.
A bright red ribbon that Grace tied it with for her.
In these dreams, she gets her Grace and Dr. Grace.
In them, she's happy. Lighter.
They feel right. But something is always missing. Someone's missing.
When she wakes up, there are tears in her eyes, and she feels all wrong.
Eva Stratt sent Ryland Grace to die alone in space.
He will be mourned by two planets.
Eva Stratt is 76 years old when she dies alone in a tiny bedroom inside a ship, in the middle of a near-frozen ocean.
She saved the universe. There are no windows.
A red comet cuts across the dark sky, illuminating everything around it.