Something I don’t think I’ll ever be over, is how Yao and Ilyukhina died for nothing, and yet at the same time, *didn’t.*
Because they both volunteered to board the Project Hail Mary to search for a solution to astrophage, they were both willing to die in order to give the rest of humanity a fighting chance of making it.
And they both died before ever even seeing Tau Ceti.
And it feels so unfair, because they went all that way for nothing, they died without even getting to try and save the people they were going for.
So they died for nothing.
Except they DIDN’T.
Because their deaths saved Grace, and in turn, saved Rocky and Erid. Without the surplus coma slurry, Grace wouldn’t have been able to go back and take Rocky home, and Erid would have had a much harder time with astrophage.
This isn’t particularly coherent, but I can’t stop thinking about these two people who were willing to die for their world, died before getting the chance to fight for their species survival, and yet their deaths meant the sole survivor of their crew could save both their home, and another.
There’s just something so devastating about that to me.
















