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Carl stood in Eva Stratt’s office with his arms crossed. Back in his days as a [classified] with the [redacted], his glare had, on more than one occasion, sent more than one person into fear-induced cardiac arrest from the force of it alone. But Eva Stratt was unbowed and- apparently- unimpressed.
“I’m not going to change my mind, Carl,” she murmured, only giving him half her attention at best as she typed away on her laptop.
“Yes you are- you cannot send Grace to do a briefing on shore without me. Who will keep him safe?” Carl demanded.
“The rest of his security team, Carl, that’s what they’re there for,” Stratt replied back blandly.
“None of them are worth shit, Stratt. Come on,” he argued. Eva sighed and looked up from her laptop.
“Carl, you are just one man. A very competent man, but still a man. You need to eat and sleep, and you haven’t been doing enough of either. Dr. Lamai is worried about your blood pressure,” she explained to him slowly, stern voice softening slightly around the edges. “You need a break and some proper sleep. Think of it as exposure therapy to deal with your separation anxiety and co-dependency issues.”
“I have neither of those things,” Carl protested, but it was weak even to his own ears.
“You have both of those things, and you do understand that in eight months, Dr. Grace is going to space without you, yes? You can’t follow him there with your flamethrower and your glock to protect him from suspicious-looking asteroids.” Stratt raised an eyebrow at him.
“My job is to make sure he makes it to launch safely,” Carl argued, categorically ignoring the latter point. “I can’t do that if you send him away from the safety of the Vat without my protection to do a press briefing with the UN.” He glared at her again, although it was clearly as ineffective as the first time.
“We will be bringing double the usual security, and all of these men have been personally recruited by me from the most effective intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies from around the world.” In fact, Mossad was pretty much the only government agency she hadn’t recruited from (because fuck Apartheid states). “In fact, most of them are so grateful to me for pulling them away from whatever horrendously irritating politician they were initially charged with protecting that they would happily lay down their lives for Doctor Grace.”
She wasn’t lying- her power over the leaders of the world meant that she was the only person in it who could pull people out of previously iron-clad contracts. You spend enough time in the secret service protecting the Idiot of the Day, and a charmingly kind and eccentric world-renowned-scientist-cum astronaut is like manna from heaven.
“That’s another thing- I don’t like that I’m not the one in charge of recruiting my team,” Carl contested.
“Because you wouldn’t pick anyone- none of them met your impossible standards, so I took it on. Carl, as competent as you are, you cannot do the job of an entire team by yourself.” Stratt rubbed her temples tiredly. The sign of her exhaustion would usually be enough for Dr. Grace to back off of whatever it was he was pressing her for and drag her to bed, but Carl was undeterred.
“Fine, bring the others, but I’m going too,” he demanded.
“Carl, I am going to be frank with you,” Eva sighed. Doctor Grace had asked her to only use this argument as a last resort, and she figured that ‘Carl getting on her very last nerve’ was close enough. “Dr. Grace personally requested that you stay behind. He’s worried about you. He is very concerned about your lack of self-care.”
“Grace is concerned about my lack of self-care?” Carl scoffed.
“I know, I know,” Eva sighed. “Pot, meet kettle and all that. But the point is that if anyone knows the kettle, it’s the pot. And the pot wants you to take a fucking break.”
“I don’t want to do this,” Carl replied, a little desperate. “How am I supposed to relax when he’s so far away without my protection?”
“He’ll have plenty of protection from the best security in the world,” Eva promised. “After you, of course. But his point- and I agree with him- is that you won’t be able to protect him effectively if you’re running yourself into the ground.”
“He didn’t word it like that, did he?” Carl raised an eyebrow.
“No, he didn’t,” Eva conceded. “He was more concerned about you than his own protection. But the point still stands, and that’s my take on the matter. And until the ship launches, my take on the matter is effectively international law. So you will stay here, get some rest, and have a proper meal. Dr. Grace has even arranged to have a chef flown in from New Orleans for the weekend to make your favorites.”
“Oh, that sneaky bastard,” Carl complained. Eva actually smiled slightly, then her face became serious again.
“Look, if anyone in the world understands the guilt that you’re facing, it’s me,” she said. “It’s a unique position to regret something that you can’t remember doing, but that you know you would do, albeit reluctantly, if things were different. We didn’t have a choice in that timeline. But Dr. Grace has very kindly fixed things for us now, and the current versions of ourselves will never be burdened with those choices. The very least we owe to Dr Grace is not to let that guilt influence our interactions with him. He’s made it very clear that he doesn’t want that.” She sighed and took a sip of coffee before continuing. “What he does want is for his friends to be happy and healthy and to take care of themselves in the way that we constantly force him to take care of himself. We owe him that, as well. So as much as I would rather turn you into a Ryland Grace-protection-cyborg with no human needs who could guard his wellbeing 24/7, we don’t have that technology. Therefore, you will honor his request. I am not above sedating you to make it happen.”
Carl did not like losing arguments. Nonetheless, it seemed things weren’t going his way today, so at the very least, things were proceeding along a predictable pattern. As a security agent, predictable patterns were preferable to the alternative.
________
Grace totally understood why being at the UN was not Eva’s favorite thing- they were the people who had appointed her to the job that was the millstone around her neck. But he’d be lying if he wasn’t psyched to be in New York, where the current series of meetings was taking place. He was mostly there to break down the science of things; they’d get all the progress updates in one fell swoop instead of trying to coordinate a constant series of zoom meetings across different time zones, zoom meetings that would be frequent interruptions to Eva’s other, much more important work. So, two days of constant meetings and then an international press briefing at the end before heading back to the vat.
Right now they’d moved onto more politicky stuff, so Grace could finally break out the tupperware of fufu and egusi that the Nigerian delegate had brought him that morning after she saw the way he kept longingly side-eyeing her lunch yesterday.
He couldn’t help it; he moaned appreciatively as he scooped the first bite into his mouth with his fingers.
“That good, eh?” the Nigerian delegate asked, delighted.
“Soooooo good,” he mumbled, remembering just in time not to talk with his mouth full. “Way better than the place near my apartment back in San Francisco. I mean, they were okay, but no amount of writing ‘I want you to hurt me,’ in the Doordash notes ever made them put enough habanero in once they saw my stupid white man name. Hey Eavie,” he turned to Stratt. “Can we get some of this on the ship? This is like, last-meal level.”
The Nigerian delegate looked like she’d be more than happy to make literal tons of the stuff to pack onto the ship, but Stratt just gave him a look that suggested we’ll talk about this later, and also, don’t use that stupid nickname in front of the UN, Mein Gott.
She turned back to answering the question some Swedish economist was asking; Grace wasn’t paying any attention, fully devoted to the meal in front of him. However, wearing his yellow flightsuit, he was kind of hard to ignore. At least having his hands busy with his lunch meant he wasn’t fidgeting like a hummingbird the way he had all morning.
Grace would be lying if he said being stuck in conference rooms listening to people make interesting topics somehow sound boring wasn’t part of the reason why he spectacularly self-ejected out of academia. And a lot of this weekend wasn’t even science; so it was already objectively boring even before the drab grey suits got to it and managed to suck whatever miniscule residue of excitement might have been left.
The Nigerian delegate helpfully handed him a wet-wipe after he’d finished inhaling the food (he’d tried to make it last, but oh well..), and he cleaned his hands before trying to force himself to tune back in. The conversation between Stratt and one of the nameless boring suits had switched into French (ew, French) so at least he had an excuse to tune out now.
Finally, they switched to Italian. Grace still didn’t understand it, but at least the sudden intrusion into his mind of ‘when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore’ was slightly entertaining. Stratt hadn’t let him bring his crochet, or a fidget cube, or anything interesting… something about outdated mindsets and bla, bla, bla. Grace was (ostensibly) dying for Earth, so he thought that was stupid, but Stratt had looked stressed enough about the weekend already, so he let it go. He’d already added to her plate by asking her to make Carl stay behind and get some rest.
Finally, finally, the meeting drew to a close. Just a brief update to the press outside and they’d be on their way back to the vat. Not before exchanging numbers with the Nigerian delegate, however. He was serious about getting her food into his hermetically-sealed astronaut lunch packs.
_______
Stratt took a breath that wasn’t as deep as she’d like it to be, but she didn’t want to break her impassive mask in front of the press. However, internally she was sighing in relief. The press briefing was drawing to a close, and Ryland had been thorough, charming, and excellent at explaining their latest science in a digestible way that served to visibly calm people’s fears. And he hadn’t even been too terribly strange about it- a few mix-ups with his verb tenses, starting to use the past tense before quickly correcting himself and using the present or future tense. Plenty of people got nervous speaking in front of large crowds; it was easily dismissable.
She had just reached out to take his arm and guide him away as the press briefing finished when his head snapped abruptly towards the back-left of the crowd. She startled; she hadn’t heard or felt anything, but his hearing was definitely better than the average human’s after spending nearly half of his life in a society that was entirely dependent on sound.
“What is it?” she asked, but he ignored her. “Everybody down!” he demanded, firmly but calmly, into the microphone. He didn’t yell; he knew yelling only served to increase panic. Then he shoved Eva away from his side just as the shot rang out.
______
Grace grunted and stumbled slightly as pandemonium broke out around him. He ducked behind the podium, looking down at Eva.
“Sorry Eavie, you okay?” he asked softly, knowing that things were already under control as he watched the gunman being tackled out of the corner of his eye.
“You’re bleeding,” Eva replied in lieu of answering, face white.
Grace followed her eyeline to his left shoulder, where red was blooming across the side of his flight suit. He sighed, more annoyed than anything else, as he felt around the area.
“Nothing vital,” he confirmed. “Far from the worst thing to happen to my left arm. Just under the rotator cuff. Just a flesh wound. I think it nicked the subscapularis artery; that’s why it’s bleeding like a stuck pig. Looks worse than it is, I promise.” He smiled at her.
Eva was sure it was meant to be reassuring. She was not reassured. “Arteries are vital,” she declared, like an accusation.
“First response is already on its way,” her first officer responded, like she was being unreasonable for making such a fuss. “Quick fix- pull the bullet out, a few stitches, back to the vat. Easy peasy.”
______
Grace was quite irate to find out that, no, not easy-peasy, and that the hospital (‘seriously, hospital?’ he’d complained. Eva wasn’t sure what he’d thought the alternative would have been- patch him up in the ambulance, school-nurse- style, and send him on his merry way?) was insisting on doing an actual surgery and keeping him overnight.
“Can’t you just do a local anesthetic?” he grumbled at the doctor explaining why, exactly, surgery was necessary. “I’m not too fond of needles.”
He knew they were necessary sometimes, and he would have to deal with them in space for the coma. But, although he and the nanny-bot had gotten off to somewhat of a rough start, he trusted Armando, and he knew Armando. Lamai had personally administered the anesthetics before his appendectomy. But neither one of them were here now, and he was not ecstatic about the idea.
Eva understood why the surgeon was looking at Grace like he was insane; truly, she did. Without the background context of just how much medical trauma the man had undergone while conscious, it was quite a reasonable conclusion to assume that the blood loss was affecting his cognition. With context, it made slightly more sense why the man in front of her was treating a bullet wound as though it were a scraped knee, but the doctor didn’t have that context, so Eva gave her scientist a look.
“Ugh, fine,” he capitulated. Eva’s ‘you will submit to medical care or else’ look was oddly reminiscent of Adrian’s, for all that Adrian didn’t have eyes and was also an entirely different species. “But I want Eva to put the IV in- I don’t allow strangers near me with needles.”
It certainly wasn’t typical procedure, but when the astronaut who is going to die for Earth insists that he won’t willingly submit to a very necessary surgery unless it’s his boss who puts the needle in, you kind of just have to throw up your hands and let things happen.
“Ugh,” Grace lamented as he drifted off. “Carl’s gonna be so fluffing insufferable about this.”
________
The attack wasn’t by an extremist group, thankfully. Just a lone guy who was entirely too overzealous in his opinion that Dr. Grace should stay on earth and was willing to non-lethally wound the man in hopes of keeping him grounded.
Luckily, he’d failed, and although there would be some lasting impacts on Grace’s mobility, it was nothing that would keep him out of space. Not that Eva thought, short of killing him, that such a thing would be possible, and there was no way anyone or anything would be harming another hair on Ryland’s head before launch. Even if the rest of his crew, every scientist on the vat, Dr. Lamai, and Eva Stratt herself weren’t going to be watching him like particularly protective magpies after this, Carl alone was going to be a nightmare about it. Eva Stratt was usually the one saying ‘I told you so.’ She was not looking forward to being on the receiving end of it.
Grace didn’t even look at the treatment plan he was given, simply handing it off to Eva.
“I’m going to hear enough about it from Lamai, I see no reason to waste my time with it now,” he complained with a pout, shrugging his good shoulder. The left arm was in a sling, and he was thinking about how annoying it would be to have to slow down his frequent rants in Eridian because he only had one good hand to use the keyboard. Even when his arm had been burnt to jerky, he’d still had the ability (and a modified keyboard) to be able to use it well enough for communication. The sling had effectively put the kaibosh on that possibility, and hiding it had proved fruitless. Eva was like a darn bloodhound with the thing, finding it when he’d hidden it under the bed, between the mattress and the bedframe, duct-taped to the top of the toilet tank in the ensuite bathroom (because he never travelled without duct tape), and even when he’d crumpled the fabric and shoved it into the half-empty shampoo bottle in the shower. Either he was forced to put it back on, or he was given a new one while the original was sent to be laundered.
“Not cool, Eavie,” he muttered after yet another round of ‘hide the sling’ that he had, yet again, lost.
“You are an adult, Dr. Grace. Please comport yourself like one,” she scolded as she added her signature to his release papers. “Just be grateful I’m letting you skip the prescribed opiates.”
Grace was not grateful; he wouldn’t have taken them anyway. There were limits to even Eva Stratt’s power, and he’d sworn off of anything more mind-altering than Ibuprofen after he’d left the Taumeoba sampler at room temperature because he was trying to do science while doped up. More sensible people might have taken that as a lesson not to do science while severely injured. Grace had taken it as a lesson to just work through the pain instead. That lesson lasted only until they’d saved their planets, at which point Rocky had unilaterally decided something about ‘resting while injured’ that Grace found highly annoying but was unable to get out of.
While Eva Stratt might be just as stubborn as Rocky, she was still a squishy human and he had absolutely no plans of letting her keep him from having Science Time, bullet wound or no bullet wound.
______
Carl was, predictably, apoplectic. Grace was pretty sure the only reason that the man hadn’t tried to put him on a leash yet was because those little kiddie-leashes didn’t come in his size.
He’d worry about that if it came to it, but right now he was lamenting the setback to his ‘get Carl to eat, sleep, and take some personal time’ agenda.
“Look, Eva already fired every guard that was there that day, C-man. What else do you want her to do? These things happen,” Grace shrugged his one good shoulder.
Carl’s devotion to his lecture was admirable, especially considering his friend’s weirder-than-usual getup. Having been medically relegated to only button down clothing for the time being (no raising his left arm) and unwilling to put on a dress shirt for anyone who wasn’t in middle school, apparently, he’d begun raiding the closets of Ilyukhina, Lamai, Shapiro, and Stratt in search of more colorful options (he avoided Lokken’s closet- the woman never wore anything remotely interesting. At least Stratt had the occasional nice blouse out of an abundance of ‘being prepared for anything’ even if she never actually wore them).
Stratt’s closet was where he’d found a cute, loose, sky-blue long-sleeved blouse that buttoned all the way down, and he wore it under the unbuttoned, Hawaiian-style shirt covered in images of various cats that he’d found in Olesya’s closet. Lamai had a cute ruffled orange skirt in her closet that matched the colors of some of the cats on Ily’s shirt, and Annie’s blue lacy knee socks matched Eva’s blouse, more or less, so he thought all in all that he was quite put-together, although he knew that others were unlikely to agree. Whatever- if he was going to get yelled at for getting shot, he was also going to milk every ounce of sympathy to steal his friends’ cool clothes.
“Listen, I didn’t plan to get shot, and at least it was only me and nobody else got hurt,” Grace finally interrupted at around minute ten of Carl’s lecture, which was distracting him from the paper he was writing on a recent experiment while he waited for Lamai to hopefully cave to his persistent whining perfectly reasonable requests to be cleared for lab work again. It was definitely the wrong thing to say.
“Only you,” Carl scoffed. “Only you.”
Uh-oh, Grace realized the depth of his Mistake. The bullet wound is now the least of my problems.
“Look man,” he sighed, putting his good hand up and taking a millisecond to be smugly satisfied when it worked at instinctively stopping Carl’s rant in its tracks. “If you had been there, it might have been you, because we both know you would have thrown yourself into the line of fire. You could have died- that would have destroyed me, Carl. I know you hate it, but I’m glad you weren’t there. As it is, the launch is still on schedule, everything worked out mostly okay, and the worst thing that happened is Lamai losing more sleep to program PT exercises for my shoulder into Armando’s coma-exercise instructions.”
“The worst thing that happened is that you got shot, Ryland.” Grace startled; nobody called him Ryland anymore. It felt like being scolded by his favorite foster mom, who he’d actually respected enough to listen to. “This is the second fucking timeline where I haven’t been able to protect you; I’m allowed to be mad about it.” Carl crossed his arms. Grace wanted to cross his arms right back, but had a feeling that removing his sling at that moment would result in him being strapped down to his bed. Instead, he settled for a complaint in Eridian sign language with his good hand while chirping his dissatisfaction from deep in his throat.
“Look, haven’t I suffered enough?” he protested, giving Carl his best pitiful look. “LeClerc already reamed me in French. French! And it wasn’t like I wanted to get shot. I mean, what could I have done differently?”
“Ducked immediately instead of telling others to get out of the line of fire,” Carl said immediately, like he’d been waiting for the question. Grace gave him an unimpressed look.
“I couldn’t have even if I wanted to; too many school shooting drills engraved the process into my muscle memory. Secure the kids, then get to safety.”
“They weren’t kids; they were reporters.”
“And they were only there to listen to me break down the science for them, so there’s really not that much of a difference.”
Carl had not unintentionally broken his English since he was in college, so the stream of angry Haitian Creole that came out of his mouth surprised him nearly as much as it did Grace. Still, he kept going. The man’s curiosity to know what he said would be a better punishment than a lecture, and going digging into the internet to try to find translations to whatever bits he remembered would at least keep him out of trouble for a while. He hoped.
He still texted Olesya though, telling her to find the most hideously scientifically inaccurate action films to force Grace to sit through in the officer’s lounge. Sure, Grace wasn’t ‘Grounded’ in the sense of not going to space like he wanted, but Carl was going to make it explicitly clear to his friend that he was grounded.