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Yáo and Ilyukhina have been making all their goodbyes for weeks now. Stratt had made sure to schedule everything out so the A-crew would have more free time in the last two months to do just that. Neither of them have a huge number of close relationships, they probably wouldn’t have volunteered if they had, but they’ve both wanted to get closure with any friends who can still be contacted, and in these last hours they’re doing final calls with their nearest and dearest. Stratt’s glad she’s been able to give them that, it feels correct.
She sits at Grace’s bedside in his holding cell, watching his chest rise and fall. He’d woken up for a few minutes at one point and had apparently asked if he could write some letters to send to his “students,” but she’d shot that down as soon as the request was passed up to her. It was a nice idea, but he’s crafty, there was no way he wouldn’t try to sneak in some kind of cry for help. Still, there was no point in making him stay awake and suffer through not being allowed to make any goodbyes, so she’d ordered they sedate him again and just keep him down until it was time. And now she’s here instead.
She gets up from the chair and moves a bit noncommittally to perch on the edge of the bed. She doesn't quite know what to do here, nor how to do it. She doesn’t have to do anything, she could get up and leave, but the feeling of uncertainty is so novel to her these days that she wants to lean into it. This is the last time she’ll ever see him, and he’s been important to her for so long, she shouldn’t waste the chance just because she’s kind of pissed off at him.
Venting frustration? Is that where she should start?
He’d just—she knows him. She’d had to drag him in kicking and fucking screaming, but if she’d taken his “no” as final, sent Cáceres instead, and the mission had failed, he’d have come back to her furious and demanded to know why she’d let him stay. He’s smart enough to know that this is the right choice, and he’d still made her force him. He didn’t want to do the scary thing, and so, like everyone else on the planet, he’d outsourced it to her. She couldn’t even have one person who was willing to wash a single drop of blood off her hands.
She slips one of those blood soaked hands into his boyishly blond hair and, experimentally, grips some it between her fingers. He’s made her frustrated, and hurting him just a little bit might make her feel better. And it’s not just her last chance with him, it’s the last time she’ll have any leverage over anyone or anything for the rest of her life, her immunity ends when the ship launches. She’s never taken her authority for a joyride, maybe she’s been missing out, she knows cruelty is meant to be cathartic.
Her fingers start to twist and tug, she almost hears his sleeping breath hitch, and the idea instantly loses all its appeal. It’s simply not her style. She loosens her grip and strokes her fingers through his hair a few times, instead.
Though it is tempting, she can’t really blame him for trying to make a break for it. She’s not an idiot, it’s a natural thing to be upset about. If you tell someone you’re going to drug them and send them on a suicide mission against their will then they’ll try to escape and make that not happen, that’s how it works. She wishes he’d just complied, but she more wishes that DuBois and Shapiro hadn’t fucking blown up. Or that the sun wasn’t dying in the first place. She wishes she hadn’t had to scare him. She hadn’t been there when security had taken him down, but she’d been listening over comms, she’d heard him beg. It was agony. Then it was worse when he’d stopped.
She lies down on her side next to him, propping herself up on her elbow. Damn it all, she does actually like him. He’s nice. He’s pleasant to be around, he cares how people are doing. He’s got a kind face, and people are going to miss it. His students, probably, if they still think about him at all. And, fuck it, her; she is going to miss him. She likes having him around, and she would have liked an occasional prison visit with him, if those are something she’ll ever be allowed to have. She would have liked to know he had as much of a chance to make it out as anyone else on Earth.
There’s a pang of dissatisfied want in her heart. She knows she’s losing something, and she’d be losing it whether he’d come willingly or not. She also knows how she’d be supposed to ameliorate that loss if this were some torrid Gothic novel; he’s taking a part of her with him when he leaves, so she’ll take a part of him, first. But that’s not what she wants, not really. If he’d been able to stay, and if they’d had a brief window tomorrow before her inevitable arrest, then maybe she would have asked, would have liked to. But not like this. Again, she wouldn’t get anything from hurting him for the sake of hurting him.
Still, the idea has her thinking about Sleeping Beauty.
She has no desire to wake him up, but luckily she is nowhere near his true love.
His lips are warm and breathing under hers. When that eventually stops, it will be her fault. She betrays Grace with a kiss, but unlike Judas, she is prepared for what this means. She’s sending him to slaughter to save the world and she is going take that knowledge with her until the end of her natural life. The memory of his pleas for mercy, and the glimmer of hope that the planet might not be doomed. She isn’t sorry, but neither is she proud.
Human life is all about food, and Eva Stratt’s last memory of Ryland Grace is their mouths on each other.