Chapter Text
Estelle was almost nine when she boarded a boat headed for Antarctica. Mama had corrected her calling it a ship but she didn't care about the difference. She'd call it whatever she wanted if it meant she might get to see a penguin.
They weren't going to sightsee like tourists once did. They weren't going for research purposes like some scientists still did. And they certainly weren't going to see the penguins.
Listening in on the conversations around her, the girl clung to her Mama's side. She felt her hand on the back of her head, fingers threading in through the unruly blonde hair that always escaped her braids. The adults were talking about methane levels and making sure the levels came back up. Estelle's young ears had caught wind of sailors saying "nuke" and "again" but Mama hadn't explained what that meant yet. She always did but she'd have to be patient first.
But Mama wasn't talking anymore. The people around her had walked off and left them on the bridge. That was a funny term to her, bridge.
Mama was stiff beside her, tense and rigid, as she looked out through the frozen windows.
"Mama," Estelle didn't want to think about whatever a penguin or a nuke was. She didn't really care for the scientists that followed Mama and left her in a state. She wanted her back, warm and happy or as happy as she could be. She'd learned sadness from Mama's eyes years prior but occasionally she could wash that away.
Mama hummed, her hand stroking the back of her daughter's head.
"Did you love him?" Estelle knew that there would still be sadness in Mama's eyes when she talked about him but, if she asked the right questions she knew that some of it would fall away and be replaced by something akin to happy.
"Who?"
"Papa."
Sometimes her questions made Mama drift, at least thats what Uncle Carl called it.
Mama looked distant, lost in herself. Her hand stopped moving.
It had been strictly professional in the years leading up, or as professional as a trolley operator and captive could be. Director Stratt and her right hand man, her second in command even if he didn't realize it. But somewhere at the end of that first year things start to shift. The cold warming ever so slightly it's borderline unnoticeable first. It's slow and subtle, akin to the first new little leaves on a tree after a long, hard winter.
You don't notice until it's too late.
They'd starting sleeping together two years in.
Attending the gala had been, surprisingly, Stratt's idea, something about asking the rich to be philanthropic and rehabilitating the task force's image. Grace hadn't been explicitly invited but it had been the expectation of everyone else around him that he attended with her. Stratt had merely hummed in agreement.
It was brisk out, no where near what it would become if the project ultimately failed but still bordering on unpleasant.
She knows he's waiting for her, nervous or unsure whether to go in alone etched into every fiber of his being and visible to the naked eye. He's suddenly quiet once she's in front of him. They're silent as they walk in, only sounds being their shoes hitting against the ground. As she give her name to the attendant, she could almost feel a ghost of touch come from him. His hand brush against her? Him reaching out to properly hold her to himself? A hallucination, that's what Stratt settles on. Dr Grace did nothing of the sort.
Much of the night is filled with meaningless conversation, chatter amongst fools and soulless idiots.
Some useless American bureaucrat catches them first. Well, he catches Stratt first, Grace is collateral to him. He's going on about his politics and beliefs, how the sun isn't dimming and the task force is a waste of money. It's an off key and out of tune song Grace has heard in a million meetings before. Stratt takes it in stride, she takes it with grace.
She can feel Dr Grace's eyes on her the entire time. At the start of the night it is his way of grounding himself, seeking out the familiar in a sea of uncertainty, but by the end of the night that feeling shifts. It's heavy as the conversations repeat for the millionth time with but a new face, not heavy in a lustful manner she is sure but still heavy. Is it tired? Exhaustion? A wish to leave?
They walk out at half past 12:30 in the morning. It's still lively within as the alcohol continues to flow. The car is waiting for them. There's a quiet lull back to their hotel.
That first night they sleep together is literal. A part of Stratt hates just how much she liked waking up with him wrapped around her the next morning. They're still dressed for the gala, only thing missing being their shoes and Grace's God awful tie. The blankets of the bed are thoroughly tangled around them as well.
By now the dress she'd worn, a dark blue floor length thing with minimal details in order to appear formal and not flashy, was uncomfortable. She could easily alleviate the situation by getting up and changing out of it. The issues being she wasn't sure if this was her room or his, no bags were visible from her vantage point, and to get up meant to move. She wasn't willing to voice it aloud but she was enjoying the feeling of Dr Grace's arms around her and his face buried in the back of her neck.
Looking back at their evolution these past two years, she has never felt less like Director Stratt and more like Just Eva.
From there it evolves slowly, first unspoken nights and stolen comfort. Mornings filled with coffee handed to her by Dr Grace and evenings spent in the lab, him running experiments and her working on paperwork. It's quiet, pleasant, and a perfect near escape from the reality they inhabit.
Nothing further occurs until one night in Tokyo. It was exhausting, flying from here to there meeting with who knows but had the needed influence and money. She's approaching sixty hours without sleep, that's what Stratt was estimating. Ryland, whom she only referred to by first name in her mind but never aloud, slumped beside her in the back seat. Having dragged him with her, she wouldn't be surprised if he were also severely lacking in the sleep department but he, unlike her, had the innate ability to fall asleep anywhere. In bed, an uncomfortable chair, behind a microscope, she'd found himself in a variety of locales with increasing discomfort yet sound asleep. Sometimes she wished she could do just the same but then remembered she had work to do.
It was just another mindless event, forced into attendance for optics, finds Stratt hating everything yet looking for Dr Grace with the utmost discretion. He's across the room, mobbed by people with questions, looking incredibly nervous. While there haven't been many events she's been forced to attend, Stratt noticed once his name got out that people had begun to flock Dr Grace with questions. He was the seemingly approachable one of the pair. Being the leading authority on Astrophage came with its perks, a small part of Stratt enjoyed watching him gain recognition and attention.
At the end of the night, as the attendees file out, theres a scant few minutes in which it is only Stratt and Grace in the hall. Some time before, between dignitaries and party goers, she'd mentally dropped 'Dr' before his name. The man was the closest she'd let anyone in years recent, hell he was the only one she'd allowed in her bed in years recent. Exhaustion was written on his face as they waited for the car.
He was nearly asleep by the time the car pulled away. Their rooms, secluded as usual, were next door to one another back at the hotel. Stratt had some work to begrudgingly attend to before she had the liberty to sleep, leaving Grace to himself in the room next door. At half four in the morning, sleep having wished she'd fallen into its grasp, a soft knock came. It echoed in the quiet of her room, part of her hoping it was nothing at all while another secretly wished it was a certain blond. For weeks she'd actively pushed aside any wish for something more between them, they had a job to do and no time to be distracted.
Fate, however, adored her torments.
Grace stood at the door, half awake and bleary eyed. "Yes," she'd asked him hoping his answer was nothing. The file she'd read, memorized, so long ago gave a window into the man–his preferring safety over risk in his fall from academic grace–but there was always something fiery that lived in his eyes. Usually it was aimed toward research and astrophage cells and teaching and anyone else but usually didn't mean always. He said something, not that Stratt registered it with his lips on hers.
The man had no right to be soft with her, to be gentle, caring even, but here he was. Slow at first, almost timid, until it was clear she had reciprocated, then quickly replaced by hunger and desire. With time he woke up under her hands as they shifted the dynamic of their relationship once more.
Work unfinished and an early return to the carrier should have deterred them, not that it did. Stratt, Eva, she wasn't sure who just yet, had pulled him into her room by his collar. His foot kicking the door closed behind them as they continued.
Grace, she determines, must take some enjoyment in diminishing his abilities. Between kisses and the need to remove any fabric between them, he said a scant few words to her. For all the lack of experience in recent times he so claims, Eva knows he cannot understand her at that moment. The words which fall from her lips are definitively not English but she lacks the coherence to know what they are, if they're her father's German or her mother's Dutch. It doesn't matter in the end. Despite the sudden language barrier he understands her. All Eva knows at that moment is Ryland.
Wide awake and desperate, the first light eventually filtered into the room. In the morning, what reasonable folk would consider as such, sat across one another on the jet she learned that that first statement at the door had been him begging the universe for a moment of bravery.
It becomes habit, Stratt opening the door to Grace and Eva falling asleep with Ryland wrapped around her. She fights it, they both do to some degree, but there's only but so much denial the human body can contain. Three years in, the launch possibly in sight, she tried to claim it was only a stress relief. But no one could lie to Eva quite like Stratt tried.
Once they move to Baikonur in the forth year, they nearly drop all pretenses. His room is still next to hers, half the size, and nearly always empty. All that remained there was his clothes, everything else had migrated to her space. In the aftermath of disaster, after she asked him to sacrifice his life for the first time, he kept her as far as he could for those short few hours. Years of growing closer than she'd ever intended and the icy, tumultuous wall between them ate at her.
If she could have killed off Eva in that moment, she would have.
Director Stratt was the one to ask Ryland to go to space.
Director Stratt was the one that sent guards after him when he ran.
Director Stratt was the one to order Ryland onto that Soyuz.
Eva sobbed as she did.
A valient attempt to regain control and compisure, revert back to only being Director Stratt. It had been so long since she was just the director. Slowly but surely it was Eva that chipped away at Director Stratt, first in little pieces with each shirt she added to the bag with his name hastily written atop then all at once. Seeing him unconscious before flight left only the shell of Director Stratt. Eva had won.
The first and only time she told him she loved him was just before he was taken to the launch pad.
The governments of the world don't entertain the idea of a trial for her. They brand her guilty of crimes against humanity despite her intentions. Three days after the launch--three days of planning and bargaining for those that worked under her–and they cuffs are placed. That first two months she's moved from prison to prison, each with increasing security, when the nausea sets in. Stratt is already at home in her shiny new cell deep underground, three and a half months after launch, one designed for the worst of the worst, when she finds out. The medic mocks her, asking if she thinks this will get her out of prison. In between cruel jabs, the medic approximates how far along she is. The possibilities of when conception occurred fall into a window one week before the explosion. A time frame when either as relief or desperation found her entangled in Ryland any free moment she had, seven days in which she'd nearly slipped up and said she loved him.
That last night, hours before horror set in, had been so very difficult. She'd been quiet, so quiet that Ryland was in need of constant reassurance that she'd wanted it in the first place. Their usual frantic and rushed pace slowing to something slow and deliberate. Last time she had actively wanted to admit she was in love with someone was when she was 21 but she had broken her heart into a million pieces. She never thought she could love another so wholly until she'd met Ryland Grace.
They spend months trying to get her to miscarry but somehow it never happens. Women since the dawn of humanity have lost their babes for less but somehow her's hangs on.
She reasons that it's in his DNA.
Despite attempts to get her to say the name as the months drag on and the pregnancy becomes more and more apparent, she never tells them who her child's father is. There are whispers, she's heard them all, saying everything from the guard that stands outside her cell for hours on end to random men known to have been associated with the Petrova Task Force and Project Hail Mary. One person brings up Grace but that is shot down quickly, the exact wording was "as if the Ice Queen would lower herself for her lap dog."
Baby girl is born in that cell during shift change. No guards on her block for two hours was just her luck, exemplified by her daughter being quick and quiet. For the first time since the realization that Grace was the only person remotely qualified enough to go in DuBois and Shapiro's place, she is terrified. Stratt hadn't spent much time around babies in her life but she knew damn well that they were supposed to cry at birth. She rubs her tiny back as much as her fear will allow her until she let's out a tiny whimper.
Three days she hides her and Ryland's baby girl, names her Estelle for the stars she had to send her father to. On day four she's found out.
The guards rip her daughter from her arms. It's the first time she cries in front of any of them, begs for anything. Everything falls on deaf ears. Estelle will be given to her next of kin but Eva has no next of kin. She begs and begs her to be sent somewhere safe, warm, somewhere she'll be loved.
The next time she sees her daughter is after she's broken out of prison. "High priority consulting" was the claim used by the operatives that come for her. They have her in meetings and board rooms, underground shelters. The world as taken a distinctive turn during her time in lock up.
Seeing Carl, she makes her escape. She also learns where her daughter was sent with a single sentence. As he drives, her hidden in the back, he tells her, "She looks just like him."
He brings her to his home where, as soon as she's sat, his husband places her daughter back where she belongs. The blanket she's wrapped in is heart breaking, star maps and constellations. The constellation Cetus is right below her tiny chin. She tries not to look at Tau Ceti.
The following years are spent in quiet isolation, on land and water. When what's left of the task force, scattered and half broken, acquire their ice breaker, Eva is reluctant to join. Estelle, nearly nine years old and curious, is ecstatic. Every time she looks at her daughter, Eva sees Ryland. She's bright, inquisitive, and a carbon copy of a man she'll never meet.
"I do."
"Did he love you?"
"I don't know, Little Star.”
She doesn't need to know that the last time she looked twice at a man was her father, in his coma, on the last visual connection the Hail Mary had with Earth. And neither might never know that even without his memories, when Ryland Grace wakes he will dress up a mop to dance with. He won't be sure of the name but it'll start with an E and he'll know he loved them dearly.