they are mirrors of each other, two sides of the same coin. the scientist who was reduced to a coward and the leader who was elevated until she could see everyone's humanity except her own.
grace sees her as a person. he forgets sometimes, when she wears her armour and lets no one catch a glimpse of her, but he remembers later. he sees her tired, angry, sad, vulnerable, and he thinks of her as mysterious until he learns to ask the right questions. silly, serious, stupid, neither of them cares, and she responds to all of them with an honesty that takes his breath away.
her favourite colour is green ("which shade?" "all of them in the right light"), she takes her coffee almost completely black except on sundays when she wants it sweet, she prefers cats to dogs but admits having both at once sounds nice.
she chose to study history because she had no direction, nowhere to go, in a new world after the wall fell and her old life slowly dissolved. she likes to sing, red wine gives her migraines, and her first car was bright blue, and she drove it until it quite literally fell apart.
he thinks he follows her around, but it's a push and pull, a matter of knowledge and respect, and she treats him with such kindness and integrity that sometimes, he doesn't doubt himself at all.
genuine praise, genuine interest in what he has to say, what he thinks, and, very very slowly, he understands why she chose him to lead.
they work together, move together, eat together, and he knows what she needs before she says it. one quick glance in his direction during a phone call that has her pacing through her office, and he dutifully opens the top drawer to find her some pen and paper.
he also finds, underneath a staggering amount of paperclips, his thesis, printed and bound. it looks... used, and while she talks and writes and argues, he sits and reads. the margins are bursting with notes and small colourful post its, and he experiences the accomplishment that ruined his life through her eyes.
when he reaches the chapter on the goldilocks zone, there's barely any white left underneath pencil marks and the occasional pastel highlighter. grace reads, explores, deciphers her handwriting, and he's absolutely fascinated by it. by her.
he doesn't notice when she hangs up the phone and perches on the edge of her desk, watching him turn page after page. it's only when he gets stuck on several lines of scribbled text he cannot make out even with a lot of squinting that she speaks.
"it's names and phone numbers for the people that wrote the paper you cited for this part."
he flinches, almost dropping it, and resists the urge to slam it shut with the guilt of someone that discovered something he should never have seen.
"right, sorry, i shouldn't have—"
"i don't mind." she shrugs. "it's your thesis, i'm just reading it."
"this is more than 'just reading', jesus stratt, how do you even find the time for this?"
she shrugs again, and there's a slight flush creeping up her face now, a restlessness in her body. not embarrassed, never that, but a vulnerability, a show of trust. a predator revealing its throat and trusting you won't try and rip it out.
"i read the whole thing before i reached out to you, and—"
"you mean before you kidnapped me."
eva flicks a paperclip at him, and it expertly hits him right in the face.
"shush. i found it interesting. i worked for the ESA, i know a thing or two about the microbiology of space, enough to get me through your thesis. i didn't kidnap you for your good looks and funny humour, i could have hired a clown for the latter."
a complicated mix of pride and apprehension warms him from the inside out, and he doesn't think he will ever get used to that, her believing in him like it's easy. so he deflects, he jokes, he makes her smile.
"good looks, huh? am i going to find revealing diary entries next?"
when she laughs and flicks another paperclip in his direction, he dodges it and returns his thesis to its original place, and he likes her, like this, likes the ease of their interactions.
it has been a long time since he's had a friend, and he has a feeling the same goes for her.
"come on, mr. good looks, the german minister of finance is going to land in thirty minutes, and you know ten minutes early is on time—"
"—and on time is late, yeah yeah. einstein defined relativity with you in mind, time works differently in germany."
grace holds the door open for her and locks it behind them (he has his own key, which was dropped in his lap without comment months ago), carries three cups of coffee to the tarmac like he always does, and annoys her with his horrible pronunciation of german names all the way down.
