Chapter Text
“What are you doing in space?” Ryland asked in return, indignation flaring in his chest like heartburn. He crossed his arms over his chest. “And who even are you?”
He knew he sounded like a child, but he couldn’t help it. His amnesia had kept him in the dark for this entire mission and he was tired of it. He had only just remembered why it was him on the Hail Mary instead of DuBois or Shapiro, had only just begun to mourn them in the same way he had mourned the others, and yet somehow this man knew all of that. Maybe he didn’t know the specifics, but he knew that Ryland wasn’t supposed to be on this mission, which meant he knew something had to have happened to the other two in order for him to be there.
“I’m the Doctor,” he repeated. He said it in certainty, in perpetuity. He expected the title to be an answer and a reason all on its own.
“Dr… What? What did you go to school for?”
“Just the Doctor,” he answered. “And I’ve never been a good study. Always sort of… wandering.”
Ryland didn’t believe that for a second. There was something about this man that was calculated, almost dangerous. For one, he was on a ship 11.9 light years from Earth that he hadn’t been on mere days ago, but Ryland knew it was more than that. He had seen it in the way he looked at him, the ancient eyes on a face that couldn’t be any older than his own. This was a man who had seen and studied far more than he was letting on. In a way, he reminded him of his kids, the students who were so smart and so unwilling to just be smart. The only way he ever got anything out of them was by feeding into them, letting them answer questions hidden between his own answers…
“I’m in space because… it’s my mission,” he said. “You mentioned the Astrophage. I’m trying to stop it.”
“Yes, that all makes sense, but why you?”
Ryland took that personally. “Why not me?”
The Doctor looked at him curiously then scoffed, waving him off.
“This is the Hail Mary?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And we’re at Tau Ceti?”
“Yep.”
“And you are Dr. Ryland Grace?”
“As far as I remember,” Ryland said.
He smiled to himself. Amnesia joke. The Doctor was watching him again, confusion etched into the creases of his furrowed brows. Ryland stopped smiling.
“Where is Dr. Martin DuBois? The Hail Mary’s science specialist?”
Ryland faltered. He hadn’t expected him to ask that. Losing DuBois was still fresh for him, still in his mind like it had happened only hours ago. His eyes watered. He didn’t want to answer- answering meant living through it once more, feeling all of it again way too soon- but he knew that he had to. The Doctor even asking about DuBois by name meant that he was getting the information he wanted from him.
“There was an accident three days before launch,” he said. His voice was much quieter, almost unrecognizable to his own ears. “He didn’t make it.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. Despite everything in Ryland’s mind that was warning him about this man, he knew he was being sincere now. “But, what about…?”
“Shapiro… She didn’t make it either.”
Ryland wiped away the tears that pooled in his eyes, his chest bearing more weight now than when the Hail Mary had been crushing him. He didn’t know what he was feeling or how to deal with it. On the one hand, he was mourning friends he hadn’t even known he had lost; on the other hand, despair and betrayal were creeping into his heart as well. He still didn’t know why or how he had said yes to taking their place, but he knew that he was here because of them. No matter how sad he felt, a small part of him was still living in that moment, still feeling his reality come crashing down as he realized what was being asked of him.
“Doctor! Is he awake?”
The voice came from down the hall, disrupting the somber moment. As brief as it was, Ryland recognized that voice as being the other one he had heard in his waning consciousness. He looked curiously at the Doctor, wondering where she had been this entire time. Before he could vocalize his confusion, she came speeding around the corner. Quick as she was, she was perceptive, carefully stepping around the debris Rocky had left in his journey to the lab. Her eyes, big and brown, met Ryland’s eyes. Her gaze was kinder than the Doctor’s, even more so as they softened upon realizing he had been crying.
“Hello,” she said, waving in greeting. She smiled something small, a sweet display of dimples and manners. “You must be Dr. Grace. I’m Clara.”
“You two were both in that box?” he asked incredulously.
He realized too late that he hadn’t returned the greeting. Ryland’s manners hadn’t quite caught up to him. In his defense, the box didn’t look very big. It would have been a tight fit. Clara’s face flushed as she understood the implication and she immediately turned her heel to look at the Doctor.
“You haven’t told him about the TARDIS yet?”
“I was getting there,” he grumbled. Ryland and Clara- the former still confused- shared a look. He absolutely wasn’t getting there. The Doctor sighed. “I was! He didn’t stick around long enough to ask.”
“We went over this! Tell him ♫♪♩♫ is okay, explain how we got here, then ask questions,” Clara said, exasperation evident. Ryland knew that exasperation well; he only sounded like that after a particularly long day with his kids. She turned to him. “What order did he go in?”
“Questions first,” Ryland snitched. There was a heat to the way that Clara turned back to the Doctor. He cut in before he could lose them to a bout of bickering that he was sure would be entertaining but ultimately unproductive. “But, wait- did you just speak Eridian?”
“Did I speak what now?”
“Eridian,” the Doctor answered. It’s what ♫♪♩♫ was speaking. Dr. Grace hasn’t been on the TARDIS so the translator circuit isn’t working on him yet.”
“Translator circuit?” asked Ryland.
“This is your fault,” Clara accused, a finger pressed just below the Doctor’s bowtie. “You did the steps out of order.”
“He didn’t care about the TARDIS!”
“Doesn’t matter!”
Ryland raised his hand, hoping to interject. To his surprise, it worked, and both of them stopped their bickering to look at him.
“What is a… TARDIS, exactly?”
***
They were back at the blue box.
“The TARDIS,” the Doctor said, splaying his hands toward the box as if he were presenting a new car. “Time and Relative Dimension in Space.”
“It’s… a box,” Ryland said, clearly trying to sound more impressed than he was. He wanted answers and all he was getting was… wood in space. “And you two were… both in it?”
“Yes.”
Ryland peered at the box skeptically. He looked between the Doctor and Clara, pieces of a peculiar puzzle falling into place ever so slowly.
“At the same time?” he asked.
“Yes,” the Doctor said, smiling brightly.
“Not like that,” Clara quickly amended. She stepped toward the box, placing her hand on the handle as she turned to the pair of men. She paid little mind to the Doctor, smiling slyly at Ryland. “Come see.”
And with that, she slipped into the blue box.
Ryland stood there blinking for a moment. His cheeks flushed and he suddenly became very aware he was still in his medical gown. He didn’t really want to be stuck in a box with someone when he was in so little clothing; it felt like a nightmare he’d had in college. He turned to the Doctor, hoping the man had some sort of explanation for what was about to happen to him. The Doctor, either ignoring or unaware of his silent request, only nodded his head toward the box. As with everything that had happened on the mission thus far, he decided he’d take it in stride. One step at a time, just like when he woke up from his coma.
Ryland took a deep breath and followed Clara into the TARDIS.
Instead of a cramped and dark telephone booth, he was greeted with a rather spacious, circular room, divided into an inner and outer circle by a platform. Metal bars and round lights lined the walls of the outer circle, the gaps between them leading to darkened corridors without endings. The inner circle was lined only with metal railings. At the center of the room was a glass tube filled with cylindrical lights. They started at the ceiling and extended down into a hexagonal structure, each of its six sections at waist height, topped with various buttons and levers and a couple of shapes Ryland couldn’t even begin to name. Though it looked far different from the cockpit on the Hail Mary, he understood the room to be the same, the console at the center serving as the controls. The entire room felt dark and gloomy, cold metal and sharp edges that were not nearly as inviting as the guests who had let him into the room. Ryland reached out to one of the bannisters that surrounded the inner circle, watching as Clara leaned against the console as though she had lived there her whole life. To Ryland’s surprise, the metal wasn’t cold. There was a warmth to it, a breath to it, and somewhere deep down Ryland knew that this box- whatever it actually was- was in some way alive.
“Time and Relative Dimension in Space,” he repeated to himself. He turned around as the Doctor followed him in, the interior of his Hail Mary looking oddly small and distorted from where he stood. “It’s a pocket dimension.”
The Doctor raised his brows. Ryland couldn’t tell whether he was surprised or impressed, or feeling something in between. Maybe he was waiting for Ryland to say something. It was a wild conclusion to come to. Ergo, he needed to show his evidence.
“That’s how you guys are here,” he continued. “This dimension… it exists outside of mine, doesn’t it? The box is just the entrance but this- the inside- is the actual TARDIS. The door moves through space, but the inside is fixed. This is… your spaceship.”
“And time machine,” the Doctor said, feigning his disinterest in the Earth scientist with a heavy shrug. “Though, I suppose the space part is a little more important out here.”
Time machine? His eyes scanned the Doctor up and down. Between the English accent, the tweed clothes, the bowtie, and the weird mannerisms, he had figured the man was just a little odd. Ryland had met his fair share of characters in academia; a man who ran around a little too nicely dressed and used a title as a moniker wasn’t nearly as odd as one might think. He turned to Clara instead, scanning her outfit as well. He might not have been the most up to date on women’s fashion back on Earth, but she looked… normal.
“When… are you from?” he asked. The combination of words felt wrong on his tongue.
“Earth, 2013,” Clara answered.
Ryland considered that for a moment. “That would make you guys around the same age as me.”
“Don’t say that,” Clara said, pulling a face that sat somewhere between a grimace and a frown. “I’ve only just turned twenty six and he is ancient.”
Right. Time travel. She was probably having tea and scones in 2013 just a few days ago. She hadn’t needed to travel thirteen years to get to Tau Ceti. His head was starting to hurt. No matter how close in age they were by birth year, the girl in front of him wasn’t his age at all, relatively or otherwise. His head was starting to hurt.
“Ancient?” he asked, hoping focusing on one thing at a time would help ease his growing headache.
It didn’t.
Despite looking like he couldn’t have been any older than Ryland- if Ryland had walked out of 2013 like Clara had- the Doctor was evidently upwards of a thousand years old and decidedly not human at all. Ryland listened with rapt attention as the pair of travelers chronicled their journeys thus far to him. They described every different era and planet they had been to. Ryland could hardly believe it and wouldn’t have otherwise, but here they were: two strangers, one human and one Time Lord, 11.9 light years from Earth on a ship they traveled to by using a pocket dimension. He had no choice but to believe them. The Doctor and Clara listened as well, learning about the timeline of things that had happened on Ryland’s end. He left out the part where he couldn’t remember how he had ended up being the one on the mission. He didn’t know and he didn’t want them to think less of him because of it. It was odd. For a while he thought he had left the expectations of others behind on Earth, but after only a few hours with his new companions, he was returning to his old ways.
“We landed on the Hail Mary by accident,” the Doctor had started explaining as the end of Ryland’s journey began to meld with their fateful meeting. “Clara had asked about aliens who don’t speak-”
“Aliens who talk less than him,” she corrected. He ignored it. Ryland smiled at her in acknowledgment.
“And I was telling her about this organism that evolved to eat a lifeform that can quite literally live on a star. I entered the coordinates for Tau Ceti e, the TARDIS had a mind of its own and picked its own time and date, and then-”
“The Hail Mary was in your way,” Ryland finished, looking at a screen that showed the TARDIS’ flight path. He could hardly make heads or tails of it, but he could assume as much. “Because the TARDIS hadn’t expected me to be there, because I wasn’t supposed to be piloting her in Adrian’s orbit.”
“Adrian?” Clara asked.
“Tau Ceti e. It’s the name of Rocky’s mate. He named it.”
That was another thing they had explained to him. The TARDIS’ translator circuit and how it was rewiring their minds to help them communicate. Ryland assumed that Clara was already speaking English, but he had no clue what the Doctor’s native tongue was and he didn’t seem too keen on sharing more information about being a Time Lord. Fair enough. The important thing was that this circuit explained what had happened earlier. Clara and the Doctor had actually spoken Eridian earlier when they had said Rocky’s name as it was told to them by him, but now that the TARDIS knew what to translate it to in English- Ryland’s translation of his name- ♫♪♩♫ was now Rocky.
“I don’t get it,” Ryland said, crossing his arms over his body. “I mean, I do- time travel, relativity, the pocket dimension- all of it makes sense, but how did you not know I would be here? Wouldn’t this have been how it was always meant to happen?”
“Not exactly,” the Doctor said. Horrible words to hear about a timeline from someone who called themself a Time Lord. “Time happens all at once. There is no cause and effect, there just… is. At the same time I learned about you, about DuBois and Shapiro, they could have very well been entering that lab, destining you to this very moment and ensuring that that future would never come to be.”
“Then what do you know about that other timeline?” Ryland asked. “You know my name, you know theirs… What about Yáo and Ilyukhina? Why didn’t you ask about them?”
Clara turned her attention to the Doctor too, eagerly waiting to see what he would say. In the short time Ryland had known them, he had picked up very conflicting information about their dynamic. On one hand, they were a team. They worked well together, often finishing each other’s sentences as they recounted their adventures to him. They were both intense and passionate, but there was something else hidden underneath. It was clear that they trusted each other, yet there was a boundary neither of them was willing to cross and that was where their secrets hid. Ryland saw it in the way Clara leaned in for the explanation, learning in that moment that even though she trusted him to take her to all of these fantastical places, the Doctor seemed wary to tell her too much.
The Doctor wet his lower lip nervously, eyes cast downward. He didn’t want to answer, but Ryland wouldn’t take that. If time really was as non-linear as he said, nothing bad would happen if they told him. They didn’t know how this timeline would work out if they told him everything, but in the same way, there was a small possibility that this timeline only worked out if they told him what happened to his crew otherwise. Before Ryland could make his case, the Doctor seemed to realize the same thing.
“Because your crew died in the other timeline as well,” he said. His voice was quiet, grave. “Dr. Ryland Grace, leading expert in Astrophage, was one member on a team of thousands who ensured the crew of the Hail Mary were ready for their journey. Dr. Grace, the team, the rest of the world, didn’t hear back from the Hail Mary for nearly thirty years. When the beetles arrived back on Earth, the first file opened was a video of Dr. Martin DuBois telling the world that Yáo Li-Jie and Olesya Ilyukhina had died on the way to Tau Ceti. After that, he provided the information on the Tau Ceti e organism that could eat Astrophage, said that he provided a sample for Venus, that they would do the rest once they were there, and then the video ended.”
That didn’t make sense. Martin DuBois was a scientist. He was precise and calculated, only ever proceeding with something if it was logical to him. Even losing Yáo and Ilyukhina wouldn’t have deterred him from the mission. To include only the news of their passing and the solution to the Astrophage and nothing else? No data on Tau Ceti or Adrian? No other research? Not even…
“What about Rocky?” Ryland asked. “Rocky is the whole reason I’ve been able to do any of this. DuBois didn’t mention him?”
The Doctor shook his head. “As far as it was told, Rocky and DuBois never met.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Rocky has been here for 46 years. The flight path from Earth to Tau Ceti put the Hail Mary directly in the Blip-A’s vicinity. Rocky would have tried to make contact regardless of who was on Mary.”
“He probably did,” Clara said. The Doctor nodded solemnly. “We’ve seen first hand how resistant humans can be to the unknown, to alien life. Astrophage are one thing. They don’t think, they don’t talk. Rocky on the other hand…”
“So, you’re saying DuBois either avoided Rocky out of fear or-“
“Left out Rocky’s involvement in the mission,” the Doctor said.
“That’s… insane,” Ryland said.
He wanted to scoff, to dismiss this mischaracterization of DuBois entirely, but the notion gave him pause. In all the time Ryland had known DuBois, he had always seen him as a just and righteous hero. He was calculated and logical, but always knew when to make the right decisions. It had never occurred to Ryland that the right decision wouldn’t always be a good decision. Hiding Rocky’s involvement, the existence of life on Erid and Eridians as a whole… As sinister as it felt, Ryland could see his logic. It was as Clara said. Astrophage were aliens, but Eridians were aliens. They could think and communicate. They had mates and children and lives. They were the first intelligent lifeform anyone from Earth had made contact with. Most importantly, they had built a spacecraft that was capable of traveling lightyears away from Erid. This one had taken Rocky to Tau Ceti, but no one could guarantee where the next one would go. DuBois would have been able to vouch for Rocky, could have made a case for Eridians as a whole, but would he have? Was that logical to him?
Ryland shook his head, attempting to clear his mind.
“No, he said. He hoped deep down that he was responding to them and not answering his own question. “That can’t have been the case. Rocky was the first to make contact with me. I couldn’t have avoided him if I wanted to. Besides, you guys already said it: DuBois never made it back to Earth.”
The Doctor and Clara looked at him, puzzled. Ryland was suddenly very aware of his hospital gown again. He pulled at the fabric to try to make it longer.
“Project Hail Mary was always meant to be a suicide mission,” he explained. “With the temporal and atmospheric constraints on building and Astrophage reproduction, we couldn’t build a ship that would hold enough Astrophage for a return. The Eridians didn’t have that problem. Rocky offered me some of his fuel so I could get home and I know he would have done the same for DuBois if they had met.”
Ryland’s eyes had started to water at the mention of Rocky. Part of him was still in disbelief that he'd actually be able to return home; part of him was still in shock over what Rocky had done to keep him safe. He knew he'd never be able to return the favor.
“Still can’t believe your plan was to take me to see space petrol,” Clara muttered under her breath. Ryland was more than prepared to correct her statement, but the Doctor spoke first.
“Regardless, we’re in a bit of a spot. DuBois never mentioned how he got the organism that could eat Astrophage- Astrophagephage, if you will- so now we’re 11.9 light years from Earth, on a damaged ship, with no help other than Rocky, who may be asleep for quite a while.”
“We don’t need DuBois for that,” Ryland said. Another raising of eyebrows, another attempt to make his gown longer. “Rocky and I fished up a sample of Adrian’s atmosphere. If the organism eating the Astrophage-”
“The Astrophagephage.”
“We’ll workshop that,” said Clara. She nodded to Ryland to continue.
“If it’s on Adrian, it’ll be in the capsule Rocky made.”
“That’s great!” Clara beamed. “Where’s the capsule? We didn’t see anything in the lab with Rocky. Is it somewhere safe?”
Ryland scratched the back of his head sheepishly. “Define safe?”