Chapter Text
Grace hummed quietly along with the music as he worked the soil. Today was one of those rare days when he arrived at the greenhouse before any Eridian. Several of the regular botanists were in their incubation period and wouldn't be leaving their burrows for quite some time. Those who weren't tending to a clutch would arrive in a couple of hours for the afternoon shift. So, for now, Ryland was alone. A sharp pang struck his chest. He tried to push the painful thoughts away by focusing on the cuttings he was preparing. He was going to transplant some roses, taking cuttings from them and planting them in different substrates mixed with Erid's native soil. It was a recent experiment, they were trying to determine whether they could create a strain of the plants capable of surviving in the planet's original substrate. Grace forced himself to concentrate on the task. Botany was a long way from his original field of study, and besides, he had to be careful. He'd left his pruning gloves at home and, honestly... he was far too lazy to walk all the way back just to fetch them. He managed to focus for a while. Clipped to his belt were his two old computers, now converted into a rudimentary translation machine. Not that he actually needed them anymore, he spoke and understood Eridian fluentlybut he'd gotten used to carrying the thing around and keeping it running wheneve the rock aliens were nearby, allowing it to refine its simultaneous translation system with the greatest possible accuracy and vocabulary. His plan was to send it back to Earth inside a new beattle so when diplomatic relations with Erid finally began (which they almost certainly would after people watched his video logs), communication would be as smooth as possible. It would be a shame if after everything Rocky and he had done to save both their solar systems, it all fell apart over a linguistic misunderstanding.
Right now, though, he was only using it to play music at a low volume. He didn't particularly care about the genre or even the song itself. He just wanted something to drown out the silence.
Grace had realized very quickly that silence was something he truly hated.
It left him alone with his thoughts and that was genuinely dangerous. If he had nothing to occupy his mind, no Eridian to talk to, no song to sing... he inevitably started thinking about how lonely he felt.
It was ridiculous. Ryland knew it was. He wasn't really alone. He lived on a planet that had quite literally done everything possible to welcome him and make him feel at home. They'd built him an entire dome recreating his favorite Earth biome, for God's sake! And during his years among the Eridians, he'd formed new relationships. He had a pack now, which was already far more than he'd ever managed to have back on Earth. He had friends, wonderful students he taught, and he'd found a family in Adrian and Rocky... The very same Adrian and Rocky who weren't with him right now. They were in their burrow, taking care of their first clutch.
Grace was happy for them. They deserved to have a family after everything they'd been through. For a long time, they'd feared the radiation had damaged Rocky's reproductive system, and discovering that it hadn't was an enormous relief. Ryland truly was happy for them. But deep down... He envied them.
And he hated himself for it. But he couldn't help it. Humans were pack animals, and although Grace had always been somewhat isolated, thinking of himself as an unwilling lone wolf... he longed for human contact. He missed seeing a face other than his own reflected in the mirror. He missed hearing another human voice. He missed the feeling of another person's skin against his own. Grace growled under his breath and shook his head. He turned the music up.
Clearly, his distraction wasn't working.
Forget about all that, he told himself. There's no point mourning something you never had to begin with. What do you think? That if you'd gone back to Earth everything would have been different? He snorted to himself as he picked up the pruning shears. "Nothing would be different. I'd be even lonelier there than I am here." He said it out loud. There was no one around to hear him. "I have Rocky and Adrian here. Soon I'll be the honorary uncle to their little rocks... I can't ask for anything more. I don't need anything more." He lied to himself as he cut the stem of the plant in front of him.
As distracted as he was, he wasn't careful enough. When he reached for the rose after making the cut, one of the thorns pricked his finger.
"Ow! Damn it!" He yelped rather ridiculously as the thorn pierced his skin. A drop of blood slipped from the wound and fell onto the soil. Grace stuck the injured finger into his mouth, sucking on it and feeling more than a little foolish. I need to be more careful... He sigh, tired and ashamed of himself.
A strange glimmer in the flowerbed pulled him from his thoughts.
Frowning, he leaned over to where the drop of blood had landed, but he couldn't see anything unusual. Weird...Then, without warning, a peculiar sensation of weightlessness washed over his stomach, much like the feeling of cresting the top of a roller coaster.
He didn't even have time to react.
He looked down and realized there was no longer any ground beneath his feet. Only darkness.
With a muffled scream, he plunged into the abyss that had appeared out of nowhere.
The darkness swallowed him and everything around him.
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Simon struggled with all his strength to keep the iron lung's control lever in something resembling a stable position, but it was impossible. The blood eel had struck the submersible with its tail, sending it hurtling at full speed toward who knew where. The submarine spun wildly no matter how hard Simon tried to steady it, and the force of the impact kept threatening to throw him against the walls. Simon gritted his teeth and held on, his knuckles white around the control lever through sheer force of will. He screamed as loudly as he could, feeling every last bit of air leave his lungs, but it didn't matter anymore. There was no one left to hear him.
The cables used to lower and retrieve the Lung had snapped long ago, and he'd drifted far beyond the range of the radio. Now, all he could hear were the shrill warning alarms and the groaning joints of the submarine, barely holding together against the crushing pressure of the ocean and its sudden, uncontrolled movement. Simon cursed aloud.
He was going to die here.
Alone and terrified. With no one who cared.
At best, his death would become another footnote, another censored line in the mission records of Moon AT-5. Just one more convict added to the long list of poor bastards who had died down there. A drop of blood seeped through a tiny crack in the hull and landed on his face. It slid down his cheek to his chin, a mockery of a tear.
"I don't want to die here!" He shouted the words in desperation. His fear of death was so overwhelming that it dragged him back to his old habits, to the roots of who he had once been. Before he became a Convict, a number...a butcher.
Desperate, he began to pray.
"Please, if there is a God... any god, help me. If there's anything or anyone out there who can save me... I swear I'll become your most faithful servant. I'll carry out your will and be a devout soldier, Godfearing and obedient. My faith will never falter again..." The lights flickered around him. The air seemed to grow hotter, though Simon couldn't tell whether it was real or just his imagination. The submarine's hull groaned and shuddered. "Please, God, Father, Last Tree... whoever it is..."
It all happened in a split second. The submarine’s forward motion came to an abrupt halt as it struck something solid. Simon was sent flying, tossed like a ragdoll against the end of the vessel. He screamed in pain as his back slammed into the wall before he hit the deck with a heavy thud, the metal grating of the floor dug into his face and the rest of his battered body. Something fell from the ceiling onto his arm, he couldn't tell if it was a pipe or part of the hull's internal framework, and he shrieked in agony as he heard the crunch of bone. He tried to move away but couldn't. The pain was unbearable and was beginning to cloud his vision. Blood began to pool beneath his mangled arm. Simon sobbed aloud, half delirious with fear and pain. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, please... I want… I want to live… even if my life is worth nothing. He felt his life slowly fading away, breathing was a struggle. He gazed up at the ceiling of the iron lung, directing his eyes toward where the sky should be. A sky that had once held life and stars, but now was as damned and dead as he was. Defeated, he pleaded with the infinite one last time.
"Please, God... help me. And if you can't save me, then at least send me an angel to guide me in death. Don't leave my soul trapped here forever." His prayer came out broken and desperate.
He felt the blood pouring from his severed arm suddenly grow warm and... glow? That's impossible, he thought. I'm hallucinating from the blood loss. I'm dying. But then the glow spread. Forcing himself to concentrate through sheer willpower, he turned his gaze toward its source. A blinding light appeared on the ceiling, brilliant and agonizing to look at. He couldn't tear his eyes away as it burned itself into his vision, searing his retinas. The flash lasted only an instant, just long enough to blind him and make him feel its scorching heat.
Then he heard a heavy thud and... a muffled scream?
He blinked and tried to focus his vision. Simply remaining conscious was a Herculean task at that moment. When his sight cleared, he could not believe what he saw. Before him, a man was struggling to sit up, clutching his chest where he had struck himself during the fall with one hand while coughing up blood. He was surrounded by small red petals and... flowers? When the man finally managed to sit upright, he looked him in the eyes. The residual light backlit his head, catching his blond hair and creating a celestial halo. In the hand that wasn't clutching his chest, he gripped what looked like a rose by its stem. Its thorns had pierced his skin, and from those tiny wounds, thin rivulets of blood trickled down his forearm.
How is this possible...? Simon wondered as he felt himself slipping away. He couldn't hold on any longer. Roses... flowers don't exist anymore... They vanished, just like everything beautiful on Earth... His battered mind drifted as consciousness slowly abandoned him. He thought he caught the scent of something sweet and pleasant, mingling with the metallic tang of blood.
Somewhere at the edge of his fading awareness, he thought he heard the angel speak to him, saying something, but he couldn't understand. The angel didn't seem to speak his language, but rather a musical, rhythmic tongue that held no meaning whatsoever to the dying convict.
It sounded beautiful. There can be no other explanation... They sent me an angel to guide me to the gates of hell… Thank you for not leaving me here. I will accept whatever punishment is imposed upon me for my sins.
With this final thought, Simon lost consciousness, and everything went black.