#human written

"Incorrect. What is two plus two?" The voice asked again, which was getting old fast. Was it a computer? It had the same inflection as before, so it must be, right?

He tried to blink his eyes open again, which went marginally better than the first time. He felt his eyelids nudge open, but snapped them shut again when white light assaulted his retinas.

"Eye movement detected. What is two plus two?"

"Urghhh… Fuh-Fughhh." He tried to answer, but his mouth still wasn't cooperating. He tried opening his eyes again, slower now that he knew it was bright.

The first thing he saw was the robot arm hovering above him. Was that what had been talking to him? It had a sort of grabby hand pointed his way, which tilted at him as he took stock of himself.

Yeah, he was definitely naked, he realized as he glanced south with his newly regained sight. Lovely. He wiggled his fingers experimentally as he looked around the strange, oval shaped bed in confusion. Was that a tattoo on his wrist? Wait, why didn't he know about a strange tattoo on his own wrist?

He didn't get the chance to investigate further, though.

"Hand Movement detected." The computer informed him, and he tried to pull away as the robotic arm drew closer.

"What is two plus two?"

"Fu- fuhooor!" He finally managed to snap at it as he wiggled away.

-~-~-

She woke up slowly as sunlight filtered through the sheer curtains she kept up in her studio. Or at least, she was waking up slowly, right up until her alarm went off.

"Urghh. Can't even enjoy a damn morning without- ugh." She muttered as she grasped for her phone, hoping to turn off the alarm quick enough that she might get a few more precious moments in bed. Said phone was wrapped up in blankets, though. It looked like it hadn't made it to the nightstand last night, but at least it was on the charger. Small wins.

By the time she found it, she was fully awake, and so turned the alarm off without looking as she trudged to her bathroom.

She lazily went through the motions of starting her day— put toothpaste on toothbrush, stick in mouth, brush teeth— as she flicked through her phone, swiping away notifications.

8:07 am Monday, March 20th

Calendar|| Work [@ 1 pm]

Calendar|| Sedimentology and Stratigraphy Lecture [@ 10 am]

Messages|| Tam: feeling gross today, can you take notes for me? I'll owe you coffee tomorrow 🥺💖💖💖 [23 minutes ago]

Messages|| Daisy: Tam is hungover 😩 but be nice to her please [23 minutes ago]

News|| Recently Released Eva Stratt— Twelve years after the Hail Mary Launch, what does she plan to do next now that… read more [1 hour ago]

Pokémon Go|| Your Pokémon has battled hard and has returned to you! [3 hours ago]

News|| Breaking: Eva Stratt Released on preliminary probation, intends to continue work on the astrophage crisis despite… read more [2:32 am]

Her finger hovered over the news notifications, squinting at them for a moment with the toothbrush hanging loosely out of her mouth. That… felt like something to investigate more later, maybe after some breakfast. She sighed, placing her phone face down on the counter and looking herself in the mirror. She reached up to grip the toothbrush properly again, wrist turned slightly out, and froze when she caught a glimpse of the black lettering just under her palm.

A soulmark? Had hers finally come in? She began to look at it in the mirror, curious about what type she had gotten.

It was backwards, but she tilted her head anyways, like it would help her read it. Did that say… Lightyears?

She froze again, before squeezing her eyes tightly shut.

Nope.

Nope.

All big revelations should really wait until after her teeth were brushed and her face was washed. That- She was going to draw a line there. Right there. Because if she opened her eyes and looked at her wrist, she wasn't going to stop, and then what would her dentist say? Probably nothing, but if she let herself beleive that, then she wouldn't brush her teeth. So she just- she needed a minute, okay? For… the sake of her dental health. Yeah. Sure.

-~-~-

He felt like he was going crazy.

Since waking up, he'd been able to discern a few things.

The gravity felt wrong— That was the thing that he was dealing with right now.

But besides that, He was in a weird lab, above a weird bunk room slash med bay that had two dead people in it. He would have called them weird too, but that sounded pretty insensitive, and he couldn't remember who they were to him yet (he was hoping that he would eventually).

Anyways, things he knew: he had been in a coma (presumably), he was a scientist of some sort (also presumably, given how easily he was identifying the lab instruments), and his memory was kaput. He couldnt even remember his own name, which was frustrating, since the medical robot arm kept asking him.

The gravity here still felt off, though- and he was currently about half way through trying to figure out why, timing how long it took to drop some test tubes from the table to the ground. He'd done the back-math to figure out Gravity with each new time measurement, and kept coming up with the same figure- 15 meters per second per second. Earth's gravity was 9.8 meters per second, and that number wasn't supposed to change.

His entire left forearm was covered in pen scribbles now, because he kept getting numbers he didn't like, and he kept looking back at his work. He was doing it right, definitely, which could only mean that he wasn't on earth anymore.

He dismissed that, and briefly considered instead that he could be in a really, really huge centrifuge, instead, maybe somewhere in Europe or something- but then he shifted to write that idea on the inside of his right forearm (he'd run out of space on his left) and paused.

There was already something written there.

"Three point seven… parsecs." He murmured aloud, the words coming more easily to him now than when he'd first woken up. He dropped the pen back on the lab table to brush his fingers over the mark.

A deep sense of dread began to pool in his stomach and work its way up into his throat. The characters appeared neatly inked into the skin of his inner wrist, but he knew that the numbers were variable. This… was a soulmate bond mark. Even through his amnesiac fog, he knew that somehow. He knew it the same way that he knew that the earth was round or the physics formulas he'd been using to figure out the local gravity.

There were a lot of different kinds of soulmate bonds, from what he could remember. But this was… one of the more common ones. A mark that showed how far away you were from your soulmate.

The units of measurement varied depending on what the person with the mark deferred to, which had been researched to hell and back even though experts still didn't know how soulmarks manifested in the first place. Distance soulmate marks like this one would show up in miles for people who thought in imperial terms, or kilometers if you didn't. There had been rare cases recorded of people who worked on seafaring vessels having marks like these in nautical miles, or fathoms.

He brushed over the soulmark one more time, brow furrowing. It felt … weirdly warm, just below his thumb. The mark had taught him three things though, just by existing on his skin.

1) He had a soulmate (who he couldn't remember, which was concerning on it's own. Unless he hadn't met them yet?)

2) He was a scientist who was very familiar with space (or this… probably would have shown up in lightyears instead.)

3) And finally… that he was in space. (There wasn't any room for argument, either. Soulmarks couldn't be faked, and were never wrong.)

Well.

So much for the big centrifuge somewhere in Europe idea. He chewed on the inside of his cheek and adjusted his toga made of sheets. Maybe he could go beg the robot arm thing for more food. Or a drink. A drink sounded good.

-~-~-

She stared at it again, leaning hard against her other hand over a haphazardly made cold brew.

11.9 lightyears.

Lightyears?

That couldn't be right. It just couldn't. Lightyears would mean that her soulmate wasn't even in this solar system.

Was her soulmate an alien? Technically there was overt confirmation of alien life existing, what with the whole astrophage crisis. But… she didn't really want to think about that.

But come to think, she didn't really like her other option either.

To her knowledge, there was only one group of humans far enough from earth to line up with this: The crew of the Project Hail Mary. The people who were supposed to be saving the world- trying, at least. But there was…. there was no way that she was soulmates with one of them.

Right?

A/N: this is my first time posting fanfic to Tumblr, I’m far more familiar with ao3! If the formatting looks weird please let me know :D

Also, I do NOT give permission for anyone to feed my work to AI. This work is HUMAN WRITTEN (as is all my work) with only the assistance of my own brainworms about this fandom and a deep seated need to squeeze Ryan Gosling’s arms at least once before I die. Thank you.

Very inspired by @electro-elemena ‘s amazing story “Grace Graham Rocky Save Stars”! Please check that out too, her writing is like crack to me istg

Written in part for @thecozycoves discord YYY event! Go team Y/N!!