Padmé

“Why Grace stare at other human, question.” Rocky’s clawed foot taps against the clear xenonite two times, punctuating his observation. 

“What?” The knocks on the smooth surface snap Grace out of whatever trance you’ve enchanted him in. He snaps his head to the right in Rocky’s direction, a confused expression gracing his features before morphing into a more relaxed, knowing one. “Oh… uh, I’m not staring bud.” 

“Grace have head in direction of other human for extended period of time. No clear reason. Rocky wonder why, statement.” 

Grace lets out a small laugh as he glances in your direction, catching a glimpse of your amused expression, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Before his friend can object, he takes his chair 180 degrees and flicks a switch on the control board, the moment punctuated by the hail mary’s acknowledgement of the command. 

Manual mode activated

Behind his back, Rocky shifts his carapace towards you as if to express confusion. You look at him, shaking your head as to tell him to drop it. It's not worth it. 

Or rather, it’s not pertinent. Not when you're about to be the first in both human and eridian kind to enter an alien atmosphere. 

Ryland flips his chair back, gaining your attention as he takes control of the joystick and pushes the ship forward. You feel the ship tremble with motion, foreign, but not irregular, as you turn your head away from Ryland and towards the window of the ship. 

You feel an adjustment in the ship’s trajectory as it enters the lining of Adrian’s atmosphere, eyes searching for something wrong. 

You don’t find it, looking back at Ryland, who’s already looking at you. “This isn’t half bad” you say, glancing up at the ship and the control board. 

“Is full good!”

Ryland holds your gaze, smiling before focusing back onto the control panel. 

-

Ryland holds your gaze, smiling before focusing back onto the microscope, making small adjustments to its view. 

When he’s satisfied he looks up from the viewfinder and to the left at the monitor as he steps back and towards it. You focus on the monitor as well, Ryland stepping out of your peripheral. 

You’re not surprised when the next indication you get of his location is the feeling of a hand on the small of your back as it moves up to circle around your shoulders, his chest pressing against your back. 

-

“Time go fishing, question?” 

When he’s satisfied, he looks up from the control panel and to the left at you. “It’s now or never.”

You wipe the furrow in your brow, the realization, off of your face before you respond with a nod, clicking the seatbelt off of your chest and curving around the chair to stand between your’s and Grace. He stops you with a brief touch before replacing his hand on the controller.

“Be careful.”

“I always am.”

You continue down the hull and out of his periphery as he guides the ship. Rocky engages the collector, extending the chain into Adrian’s atmosphere. 

“3000 meters, probe signal… good.” Rocky states as Grace echoes in acknowledgement, then activating the probe with a press of the collector’s control stick. 

“Now for the fun part.” You say, mostly to yourself, as you enter the airlock, putting your helmet on and activating the air cycle. 

“Go out on hull to retrieve collector. No fun at all.” Rocky chirps.

“It’s a joke rock, just- nevermind, just get the collector so this can be over.” Grace sighs as he hears the external airlock door open. Rocky adjusts the external camera towards you, watching as you exit the airlock and hook a tether to the side of the ship. 

-

“So… why do you do these… tank exercises?” 

On the other side of the glass lay a one to one model of the hail mary, completely submerged in water, and you, in an EVA suit, tethered to the side of the hull “repairing” a heat insulation panel. 

“I think the purpose is clear, no?” Stratt states, her tone indifferent as she flips through a stack of papers pinned to a clip board. 

“I mean, yeah, but… “ Ryland watches your slowed movements, the water creating drag. “It just seems ineffective. There isn’t any wind resistance in space, so practicing like this… I don’t know.” 

“It’s slow, yes, but this is standard. The ship won’t always have gravity.”

-

You feel the hull jolt, the movement catching your suit’s boot and sending you forward. You grip onto a tether bar, catching yourself and your stomach before it falls through and off of the ship. “You felt that, right?” 

“Yes-” Rocky starts, cut off by Grace as he glances at the camera monitor. “Are you ok?”

“Are you worried?” You respond, your voice short with exertion as you repel down towards the winch. 

“Yes” The two respond in unison as you feel a dull thump through the line of the probe. 

“Collector is closed, move winch into position.” Rocky chirps nervously, fidgeting with his claws.

You do as he says, moving the winch and pulling the chain’s lever. The xenonite chain comes barreling towards you like fast moving bullets, catching your glove and fraying the fabric at the tip of your fingers as you gasp. 

“What, what’s wrong?” Ryland chirps through the comms in your helmet, voice frantic. 

“Nothing, the chain is really fast, how long is this supposed to take-?” You yelp as a loud thud announces the probe’s arrival. 

“Collector should be here soon.” 

“I noticed” You take a second to catch your breath before coming forward to take the collector. You hook a tether attached next to yours to the collector before detaching it from the chain, falling forward as Adrian’s gravity grips it back. You pull the collector back into your chest, squeezing your eyes together in relief as you stabilize on the hull. 

“Careful, collector important.”

“Yeah, noted.” You grunt out, gripping the collector with one arm and pulling yourself onto the top of the hull with the other. 

Warning: Altitude

“Ok, we’re basically done, just come back ok?” 

“Quick, quick, quick.” Rocky emphasizes. “Yes, quick.” Grace steals longer and longer glances at the hull’s monitor, straining to hold the ship steady as the tail end settles deeper into Adrian’s atmosphere, making the ship level. 

“I’m coming, I’m-” Behind you, the creaking of the hull grows increasingly irregular, and as you begin to look back, the module that tethers the collector to the ship slams into you, knocking the wind from your lungs and bashing your head against the side of your helmet and then the hull. 

Grace yells your name, frantically looking between the screen and the controls for any sign of movement. Rocky points his crystal viewfinder closer to the screen, making louder and increasingly distressed chirps as he tries to find you with his echolocation. 

“Status update.” He demands, turning the flatter side of his carapace towards what he finds of your form. The adjustment gives him more access, a small feeling of relief as he finds your heart beat and the increasingly steady rate of your breath. 

“Status update” Rocky repeats, and when you don’t respond Grace’s resolve slips. He yells your name again, the feeling of his throat closing in consuming him “Say something, please say anything.” 

“Human safe, question?” Rocky knocks twice on the side of his enclosure so loud, so frantically, that you can hear it through the comm system, and it finally catches your attention. 

“I’m ok.” You give yourself a push into the pushup position, looking around for the collector. 

Grace lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, allowing his focus to come back to the controls. 

“Good, good, good, come inside with predator collector now.” 

Your stomach drops as you find its tether line, following its trail down the side of the hull and off into Adrian’s atmosphere. Using the hand holds, you climb over the side, spotting the collector and breathing a temporary sigh of relief, stopped only when you spot the module it’s attached to about to fly off of the ship. 

“About that” 

“Why not moving, question?” Rocky stomps twice, adjusting the hull’s camera. Ryland glances at the screen, doing a double take as he spots the issue, 

Warning: External Temperature elevated

“Absolutely not, come back.” Grace demands, already seeming to know what you plan to pull off. 

You don’t move, letting your eyes fall shut for a moment as you process what you know needs to be done. 

-

You don’t move, letting your eyes fall shut for a moment as you process what you know she’s implying. 

“No.” You look at Stratt. 

“Excuse me?”

“No, I'm sorry, I just won’t let you, I won’t let us ask this of him. No.” You shift in the hospital bed, grabbing the blanket and throwing it off. 

Stratt stands from the chair she’s pulled up to the side of the bed as you kick your legs over the side of the bed, wincing as you start to push yourself up to stand in front of her. 

“He’s our only solution right now.”

“So then you find another one.” You stop your attempt, looking up at her incredulously. 

“We don’t have time. We launch in three days and nobody else knows what we need them to know but him.” 

You scoff, rolling your eyes, “Don’t bullshit me Stratt, we have thousands of scientists on this and there’s no way you were stupid enough to put them all in the same building.” 

“Not like him.” Her indifference grates on your nerves. 

“Then teach them!”

You drop your head down to your chest as a silence hangs over the room. She stares at you, deadpan. 

“He won't do it, and you know it, and I’m not going to let you murder him. Yao won’t allow it, Ilyukhina won't either. And you really are stupid if you think his brothers won't come after you.”

“What happens to me is irrelevant.”

“I don’t care about you, I care about what happens to the project when the world finds out you sent him against his will.” You look up at her, and then to the door as you see shuffling through the small rectangular window. 

-

“No, no, no, bad idea, come inside.” Rocky spins, adjusting his carapace to point his flat side towards you. 

“Please listen to him, don’t do this.” Grace feels more and more desperate with every second you don’t move towards the airlock, gripping the ship’s controller so tight his skin creaks against the rubber material of the stick. 

You don’t respond, checking your own tether before looking back at the module and then at the probe. 

“We can try again later, please just come back inside, please, please I can’t lose you!” He feels his throat tighten again, and this time it comes through in his voice as his eyes gloss over. 

“There isn’t going to be a later” 

“Abort, abort, abort, will die, nonononononono”

You jump off of the ship, your comms system loud with both of their voices begging you to turn back. As you fall, you reach your arms out, catching yourself on the collector and swinging as you pull yourself up, hugging the sphere with your chest as you hear a sickening creak. The module tethered to the probe gives way, and you watch it fall towards Adrian as you fly upwards, reaching an arm out to catch the ship before you fall with it. 

You groan as the opposing forces pull on your arms, straining your EVA suit further as you pull the probe into the hand holding the ship, using your free arm to find your pocket knife. You unfold it, taking the blade against the probe’s tether and cutting it loose. You feel the weight of the module fall away like a weight off of your shoulders, the breath you were holding escaping you as well. 

You climb onto the side of the airlock, throwing the probe inside before reaching over the side and pulling yourself in with it. 

“I’m here!” you yell through the comms, pushing the door closed and activating the air cycle. 

“Amaze, amaze ama-” Rocky’s voice cuts off as you rip your helmet off, 

“No, not amaze, what were you thinking!” Grace rips open the air cycle door, pulling you up by your shoulders and shaking you. 

You don’t let him finish, ripping off the right glove of your suit and gripping his stupid t-shirt. You pull him down onto you into a frantic, desperate kiss, briefly letting go to rip the other glove off. 

His eyes widen as he processes what you’re doing before settling into your lips, his hands coming up to hold you. Before they can, you push yourself up, moving him away and walking towards the control room to sit in the pilots chair. 

“Human ok, question?” Rocky’s translator brings Grace back to focus. He comes after you, sitting in the chair to your left. 

“I’m ok, but Adrian’s gravity is ripping the ship apart.” You fasten your seatbelt before taking the pilot's controls, making sure Grace does the same before pulling the ship up. 

“We leave now, question?”

“We leave now, statement!” Grace handles his side of the control panel as he answers. 

The chairs lean backwards as gravity pulls the ship back, the creaking of the hull only growing louder. 

Hull Pressure Warning

“Hull bending in big room below bedroom” Rocky turns, adjusting his carapace to hear the disturbance. 

“That's the fuel tanks!” Grace feels dread pool into his stomach as he processes the location. 

You flip open the fuel eject panel, opening the switches preemptively 

“Badbadbad, badbadbad, badbadbad”

“It’s not great, just let me-” You grip the fuel lever, raising it up to give the ship more power.

“Badbadbad, badbadbad bad-”

Warning

“Calm down!”

“Badbadbad, badbadbad, badbad”

You yell out, pushing against the controls as they resist the pressure of Adrian’s gravity.

Rocky settles down, his carapace spinning, “stop engine now?” you can barely hear him over the sounds of the ship.

“No, we need to get into orbit or we’ll crash!” you yell above the resistance, looking up at the hull camera towards the fuel engines. You see sparks of light coming out, your stomach dropping as you increase fuel output. 

“Idea, first no crash, then, not explode, deal?” 

Warning: increased fuel expenditure not advised

“Deal!” Grace answers for you, reaching up to approve the fuel use. 

Seconds feel like hours as the forces of gravity coast off, indicating your escape from Adrian’s atmosphere. “Now?” Rocky asks.

“Now!” you answer, shutting off the fuel. 

The ship seems to slow into what feels like complete silence. You look at Rocky and then around at the hull, and as the seconds pass, you allow yourself to fall into a sense of security. That only deepens when you look back at Grace, who looks at you like you’ve already solved the astrophage problem. You’re safe.

Until you aren’t. 

Your expression morphs as you watch Grace’s unsecured restraint fall towards the window, and then a thud behind you as Rocky drops his crystal visualizer. As you watch Grace’s expression change after you, you turn so quickly you almost spin around in your chair to look at what fell. You don’t get more than a second to figure it out before you and your chair are launched backwards into Grace and into the window. The chair stops just short of colliding with him and crushing his legs, and the force whips your neck backwards, drawing a groan from your lips. 

“Why ship moving, question?”

Grace spots the monitor to his right, showing the side of the fuel compartment torn open and leaking sparks of astrophage. “Theres a hole in it!” 

Hull breach, port side fuel compartments 11 and 12. 

You reach up towards the ejection ignition panel, but as the ship spins unevenly, your chair is pushed forward. You hang by your restraints, Grace’s chair following yours only to be pushed back at a different angle. As you hang, you notice the alternate ejection ignition panel in front of you. You reach for it, but your restraints keep you just from being able to eject the fuel bays. 

“What happening, question?” You can hear the strain through rocky’s translator. Behind you Grace tries to reach the panel but the forces snap him back towards the window. 

You reach for the knife in your suit again, flipping it open and cutting through the top of your restraints. 

“What are you- are you- don’t do that” Ryland struggles against gravity, trying to get to you, but slamming back into the window as Rocky wails. 

You cut through the bottom of your restraints, falling onto the control board with a heavy thud. Your face slams into the glass of one of the screens, cracking it as you groan. You hear Ryland distantly yell out your name as he continues to struggle to get to you. 

You reach your hand out, straining to reach the two ejection switches. 

“Badbadbad, force will hurt human unless human get back into chair.” 

“Don’t- get back in the chair!”

You push yourself forward, flipping the two switches and ejecting both fuel bays at once. 

The force slams your back into the other side of the control board, the knife falling from your grip, and when the ship counter balances, you’re sent back in the other direction, falling directly onto the blade. Your head slams into the screen again, and this time it steals your consciousness. 

-

“You’re right. Which is why I need you to understand what is about to happen.”

The door to the hospital room opens, and a man in a lab coat walks in with a white tray. He sets it on the table. 

You stand up, scoffing in disbelief. 

“Protocol will state we induce your coma early to prevent further delay, you will be remembered as a hero.”

-

*cough*

so ya

You’re annoyed.

Not just by the humidity of the overcast, or how it sticks to your skin under your training suit, but at how long you’ll be in it until you find reprieve. You can see the building now, you’re halfway there from where you began, where you left grace and stratt by the satellites, but all you can manage to think of is how long it’s taken you to get half way and how god awful the yellow color of your suit is. The blue that the sky colors the air doesn’t make it better either, and you start to walk faster towards the building as you hear the sound of thunder come from behind. You were not getting caught in the rain in this cold, not when you’d have to add another layer with whatever lab coat you’d be wearing when you got there. 

You look up at the sky. It’s not often that you get moments to yourself like this, hell, you haven’t had one in months. flash. Stratt has you under constant security leading up to the launch, and-

-

“That’s a long time to be in space” Ryland fights to keep up with Stratt’s brisk walking pace, awkwardly dodging various scientists and engineers as they attempt to do their jobs. 

“They’ll be in comas for most of it” Stratt says, continuing her pace without regard to the weight of her words, as if it isn’t years of these astronauts lives. 

“But is that even safe?”

“Nothing about this is safe, Dr. Grace.” You walk out of a cubicle to the right of Stratt, “But we’d rather it be us than earth.” You look up from your clip board, meeting Rylands eyes with a soft smile, hand extended. He takes it unconsciously, finding himself momentarily captivated as he takes you in. He gives your hand a couple of shakes, but they slow almost as soon as they start. 

Your hands are just too soft, and for a moment, he’s so locked in he thinks your presence may solve the hail mary’s gravity problem. 

Not that he wants you to, god, in this moment he would give anything to keep you far away from that ship-

“Dr. Grace this is one of the crew members of this mission, our second expert in science on board.” 

Damn it. 

He was so captivated he forgets he’s still holding your hand, and it only occurs to him to let go when he feels another one of them join the hand shake. You’ve put your clip board under your arm, which is covered by a bright yellow space suit. 

“I’ve been the one checking your work before it goes to other officials.” You say, giving him one more shake before pulling away. 

Ryland snaps his head to Stratt in disbelief as she makes herself busy to avoid his questions. “Our scientist here will be joining you on any further work and showing you around.” Stratt walks away, bouncing to another conversation before Ryland can even blink. 

-

“Shapiro and Dubois nailed it, again.” Ryland takes a sip from his coffee, handing the other paper cup to stratt, who nods in satisfaction. 

“okay, what about the others?” Stratt asks, but it’s rhetorical. She won’t accept anything other than affirmation, not that she expects anything less. Stratt accepts the cup, following Ryland’s gaze to the figure in the field. You. 

It’s not hard to know what’s happening. You and Ryland had been working together for almost a year now, so it wasn’t unexpected, nor surprising when Stratt found out security saw you and him leaving the same room to go to an early morning meeting. 

Stratt didn’t care, as long as it didn’t interfere with the mission. As long as they made it on time. As long as you complied. 

Still, he didn’t take his eyes off of you as he answered. “They’ll be ready.” 

“I expect so, they have a great teacher.” 

Ryland’s head snaps towards stratt, caught off guard by the seemingly genuine compliment. 

“Can you take a compliment, please?” 

“no” 

Stratt’s eyebrows raise, but it’s just what she expected from him. “it’s an order, ok?”

“Ok, if it’s an order I’ll take it, thank you.” He relents faster than she thought he would, and when he returns his gaze to you her questions are answered. 

“Good” Her voice peaks in tone, and she allows a moment of silence as she takes her first sip of coffee.

“What do you think?” Stratt faces the launch pad, proud of the ship that will carry her, their, astronauts to the hail mary. 

“It’s pretty impressive.” Ryland glances at Stratt, but keeps you in his peripheral vision as he takes a look around the facilities they were standing in the middle of. “You’re… you’re good.” For a moment he feels stupid as he tries to find words to say, but to describe what Stratt’s pulled off would take more time than they had. He’s never heard of or seen anything like it, and even less than 78 hours from its end he still wonders how it’s gone on this long without pushback. 

“3 days huh?” Stratt breaks his stream of consciousness with the exact thought he’d been avoiding since he found out you’d be on that ship, since your relationship changed from just lab partners, despite its impending death. He feels his heart drop to his feet, and he prays for an easy way out, an easy way to avoid admitting he wants them to find a different person to take your place. To avoid admitting that he hopes that the ship explodes before launch. To avoid admitting that he lied when he agreed to being ok with your presence being temporary. 

“yeah….” He takes another long look at you half way down the field and tries to push off the symbolism in the distance. “So… what are you gonna do for the next 20 years? you got a plan?” He sure didn’t, and any attempt at imagining a future for himself after you leave earth, leave him, twists his soul into a pretzel. 

Stratt scoffs into a smile, her face illuminated by a flash of light bouncing off of Ryland’s glasses. Ryland’s face falls as his brain catches up to what’s unfolding infront of him, and he feels the floor pull from under him like a rug before the shock wave even manages. He’s too focused on the way you lift backwards into the air and slam into the ground to realize that the same aftershock is headed towards him. He runs straight into it, and he tastes the force of the air as he feels it expel from his lungs, landing on the grass for no more than a couple seconds before he’s back on his feet. He only barely manages to catch his breath before he’s running, sprinting, onto the field towards your motionless body. 

-

“I can’t… I can’t leave knowing I’ll be leaving somebody behind. I can’t get on that ship knowing I left somebody… knowing I left you in pain.” You stand inches away from him now, close enough to smell the soap he used this morning and the red vines on his breath. He drowns out the nauseating smell the lab floods your senses with as your gaze sticks to the floor, unable to look him in the eye. 

You know if you look up, you’ll break. You haven’t been able to look him in the eye and refuse him yet, and you don’t want to risk the chance that that won’t change. You just can’t. You can’t let him in and leave wondering if he regrets it for the rest of your life, not when you care about him this much. You close your eyes as you feel two hands land softly onto your shoulders, cursing how gently they hold you as they make their way to your face, delicately lifting your head to face him. 

“I can’t live the rest of my life wondering what could’ve been in what we have left” He whispers, wiping away tears you didn’t know had fallen as your eyes flutter open, hesitantly meeting his. 

-

His legs don’t go fast enough, no speed would be enough to quiet the deafening buzzing in his head urging him to get to you. When he does, he crashes onto his knees, the dewy grass staining the denim of his jeans as he crawls the rest of the small distance and rests his hands on the sides of your face, calling your name and shaking your head in an attempt to wake you. It doesn’t change your state, and as he looks you up and down, taking in the aftermath on your body, he feels a cold wetness on the back of scalp. He removes his hand from behind your head, the red that soaks your hair, and now his hand, churning his stomach as he lifts you onto his lap and smoothes your hair off of your face. 

Tears well in his eyes at the way your body moves, your arms dropping limply and your weight draping against his body as he holds you up. He lifts your head to look at him, shaking you as he calls your name and unzips the front of your suit with his other hand. He forms a fist, taking his knuckles over your sternum and rubbing your skin, the skin he remembers kissing not even 12 hours ago, vigorously. Your breath deepens and your head lifts slightly from his hand, your eyes cracking open, clearly disoriented as your initial response begins to push him away. At your consciousness, Ryland quickly picks up his hand from your chest and holds your face in an attempt to focusing your gaze on him. “Hey, hey there you are, come on, look at me.” Your unfocused glare sends alarms through his head, and he’s not sure if you can even hear him. It’s only then he notices the gurney that’s been brought behind him, as a gloved hand lands on his shoulder, startling him before a wave of relief washes over him. He puts one arm under your shoulders, the other under your knees, and lifts you into a bridal carry, placing you onto a gurney and following as you’re wheeled away. 

“I’m sorry grace, you cannot go with them.” Stratt pulls his attention from you, Carl and another one of her security personnel behind her. “What? I don’t-“

“You have to come with us, we need to discuss next steps.” She interrupts him, and he hesitates, turning to look at the EMTs surrounding you, and then at carl.

His eyes plead with him, but he only gets an apologetic look from his friend.

"Ok."

AHHHHHHH, my first piece of writing out in the aether of the internet. I really hope you guys like it.