Chapter Text
I’m sorry, Earth.
It was the only clear thought Ryland Grace could muster as his vision began to fade. He could feel the blood trickling from his forehead, smearing hot against the panel in front of him as the cracked screen flashed its futile warnings to eyes that could no longer read. He could feel the ache in his muscles as his chair pressed him against the walls of the ship. Even with the layers under his suit, he could feel every knob and button bruising and breaking his skin as the pressure forced him against them. He tried to breathe through his nose, the metallic smell and taste of copper seeping into his nostrils and coating his soft pallet. He parted his lips for air instead, sucking in a shallow breath that his body promptly rejected with a sputtering cough. His lungs were burning. He tried again, this time even more shallow. The result was just as feeble. His lungs burned even worse. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get them to expand.
He could feel his cheek as it stung against the broken glass. The surface of his skin prickled under a wet warmth and he worried- beyond all else he had to be concerned about- that the blood might have found its way into his eye. He squeezed his eyelids shut, trying to protect what little vision he could. Another wave of liquid pooled around the hollow of his eye and it was only then that he realized he was crying. Briny tears ran over open cuts and scrapes, stinging in a way that hurt him more than the crushing weight of the Hail Mary.
He let out a whimper. It was a wasted breath in the wake of his current state, but it was all he could do. He was going to die. Earth was going to die. Rocky was going to die.
His eyes widened.
Rocky.
In a moment of desperation and clarity, his blurry vision darted frantically around the cockpit. Where had he landed in the cabin? Where was Rocky’s enclosure? The room was spinning and slanting all at once. A wave of nausea passed over him, but he fought the urge to throw up. There was a flutter in his periphery, a panicked wave that jutted in and out of the black frame the was now encroaching on his vision. As soon as Ryland saw Rocky, he could hear him. His noises were dampened by the blaring of the ship and the pressure in his ears, but the more he focused the more he could hear; a cacophony of chirps and thuds as Rocky knocked frantically against the xenonite. Ryland’s heart pounded, pumping a concoction of adrenaline and anxiety through his system that allowed him just enough strength to reach for the switch to activate the centrifuge. If he couldn’t save himself, couldn’t save his home, then the least he could do in his final moments was save his friend. The tops of his fingers managed to lift the cap over the lever– a feat aided only by the loaded spring hinge, and even that had exhausted him further. He had to try. He had to keep going. He had to save Rocky. He had to…
His vision faded completely. His body went limp, succumbing to the force of the Hail Mary fell further into Adrian’s atmosphere. He could feel another hot tear slip from his eye. In his final moments, all he could hear was Rocky. There was no translation chiming through, but Ryland could tell he was repeating the same few phrases in his melodic language. He wondered what he was saying. Back on Earth, Ryland often wondered who would miss him when he died, who would be there at his funeral, who would eulogize him and commit him to memory in one of the most intimate ways someone could be known. He had always feared that answer. Now, as his consciousness began to fade, he found a somber solace in knowing that at least his best friend would miss him.
The last thing he heard before he passed out was Rocky, singing him his goodbyes. And then, a low hum.
Vworp… vworp… vworp…
***
The first time Ryland woke up, he was sure he was dead. Try as he might, his eyes would not open. His body would not move. A tingling crawl traveled over his skin in place of any feeling, any pain or hurt. It was numbness. It was nothingness. He had always been a man of science; by every count of everything he wasn’t feeling, he had to be dead. Yet, he was thinking. That had to count for something.
“Mmh…” he groaned.
His mouth hadn’t opened enough for him to say anything. He couldn’t even remember what he had been trying to say. Still, it was enough to prompt some sort of response. A slight whirring sound came from directly in front of him. Armando. He whimpered at the realization, relief flooding his numbed body as a tear escaped his eye. He couldn’t feel where it fell. He heard the Hail Mary rattle off some information about something that was being injected into his body, but he couldn’t make anything of it. He didn’t care. All that mattered was that the ship was okay.
The ship.
How was it still operational? How did they get out of Adrian’s orbit? Was this Rocky’s doing?
Rocky…
Before he could wonder where his friend was, his brain followed his body. A numbness crept over his mind, dulling his thoughts into a black fuzz of unconsciousness as whatever Mary had instructed Armando to give him took effect.
“Oh, that is quite clever…”
***
The next time Ryland woke up, he wished he hadn’t. His head was pounding, any thought or memory he could muster being promptly squeezed from his brain. His body burned and ached from head to toe. He could hardly move without groaning in pain and every movement was restricted, bound by bandages and gauze. He tried to open his eyes, slowly letting the tiniest sliver of light in. Everything was blurry and blinding, making his headache worse, but he knew he had to keep trying.
As more light filtered through and his eyes tried to focus, he made an attempt to lift himself onto his elbow. Wrong move. He groaned in pain and lost the inch of progress he had made as he fell back onto the bed. He tried something smaller. He braced himself, sucking in as deep a breath as he could manage. His ribs were sore, his abdomen bruised, and yet none of it hindered him from breathing. His lungs filled to the very brim- his chest swelling with air and pride- and exhaled with barely a rasp. Everything hurt, everything was wrong, but he could breathe again. Tears formed in his eyes and he tried as best he could to blink them away. He remembered how desperately he had wanted to breathe in those last moments. He remembered thinking he was dead. He took another deep breath for good measure.
“Is he awake?”
Ryland’s brows furrowed- well, as much as they could when every inch of his body was fighting against his every move. Who was that just now? Had he heard that voice before? His heart started racing. The whirring of Armando could be heard, reacting to his elevated heart rate.
“Quiet, Doctor,” said another voice. This one was feminine. She sounded almost like the Hail Mary, but Ryland knew that wasn’t right. This voice wasn’t robotic. “Let him rest.”
That definitely wasn’t Mary. He knew it couldn’t be another person because that just… didn’t make sense. It couldn’t make sense. He was still 11.9 light years away from any other human. Unless the Hail Mary had a stowaway- two stowaways, he corrected, as he remembered the other voice- but that also didn’t make sense. Maybe something had broken in the ship and it was playing a very specific movie very loudly. Maybe he was still out of it and his brain was personifying Armando and Mary a little too much. But… Doctor? Armando knew medicine, but it wasn’t a doctor. More importantly, why would a spaceship call a robotic arm ‘Doctor’?
His head hurt. The dull ache hadn’t quite left him and was now squeezing his brain, draining it of all rational thought. He closed his eyes, hiding from the light for another moment as he tried to find his bearings.
***
Ryland was feeling better when he woke up again. His body still ached, his head was still pounding, and the skin on his forearm still stung, but he still felt better. He had to focus on that.
He could remember everything that had happened with a little more clarity: the trip to Adrian, the leaking fuel, the weight of the ship crushing him to death as he fought against it… He wished he didn’t remember that last part so clearly. He also wished he hadn’t pulled those memories from Earth in his sleep. He had started to figure he wasn’t supposed to be in space, on this mission with Yáo and Ilyukhina, but having the confirmation made it feel so much worse.
DuBois and Shapiro.
The science expert and the spare.
He huffed out a sigh, the warmth of his breath fanning back over his face under the oxygen mask. He didn’t like thinking of Shapiro that way. She was also a science expert; she was also his friend, but the thought still nagged at him. She was the spare. He was the spare’s spare. He didn’t want to think about it that way. He couldn’t think about it that way. He had a ship to check up on, a planet to save, and a mission to finish.
Most importantly, he needed to find Rocky.
His eyes were crusted with sleep and tears, barely opening as he peered into the bright and sterile light above him. He worked as quickly as he could- which, to his defense, was not as quickly as he would have liked- to remove everything that kept him tethered to the medical bed. Armando watched. Ryland furrowed his brows at the robotic arm. As sentient as it could feel, he had never seen it dote on him like this, like it was waiting to catch him. He shrugged it off, lowering his feet to the floor. He groaned as he stood, his legs not taking kindly to the weight of his body.. It hurt to move; his body was screaming at him to stop, to lay back down and rest. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. No amount of aching or burning was going to deter him from finding Rocky. The thought of his friend drew his eyes to the empty xenonite enclosure and it was only then that Ryland understood why Armando was staying close and at attention.
Beyond the xenonite, shoved into the corner of the cabin, was a massive blue box.
Ryland fell back onto the bed. Armando scurried over, the whir of his movements almost sounding concerned. He waved the robot away, his eyes trained on the box as though it would lunge at him if he let his guard down. The box must have been about three meters tall, towering over him as the light atop it stopped just short of the ceiling. Its width and depth weren’t nearly as great, which eased his mind about the box’s contents only slightly. It appeared to be made of wood- painted a vibrant blue- with frosted glass windows at the top of each side. Above that, signage:
Police Public Call Box
A million questions ran through Ryalnd’s mind all at once, a car wreck of thoughts and feelings. Where did this box come from? How long had it been there? Who put it there? Did this have anything to do with those voices he had heard in his rest? What even was a Police Public Call Box?
“Hello?”
He didn’t know why he asked it. He didn’t know what he was thinking. Maybe whoever put the box there was friendly. Maybe someone was in the box and was waiting for him to say something first. He waited a moment to see what would happen. When the answer was a resounding ‘nothing,’ he chanced moving closer.
It took another deal of effort to get off of the bed, but he was even more determined to find out what was happening on his ship now. He shuffled over to the blue box- it was really more of a crate- and stood idly in front of what appeared to be its doors. In the same way he thought rationally and clearly before he spoke, he lifted a trembling arm to knock on the door.
The door was flung back before he could make contact.
Ryland jumped back in surprise. Only, he overestimated how well he’d be able to catch himself and very quickly realized that he had started falling. He shut his eyes for the first time since laying eyes on the blue box, bracing for impact. Something grabbed his hand instead. Whatever was inside that box was strong, but its skin- at least, it felt like skin- was soft and pliable. It almost felt human. The strong hand stayed on him until he was steady, and only then did Ryland think to open his eyes.
There was a human man in front of him.
“Hello!”
A British human man.
Silence passed between them as they studied each other. Ryland didn’t know how to react. After he had woken up, after he had figured out why he was out there, he had been certain the last humans he would ever see were Yáo and Ilyukhina as they drifted off into space. It had taken a lot for him to come to terms with that. Seeing this man in front of him now… He could feel tears well in his eyes. Fear and confusion battled relief and comfort. He had so many questions about why this man was here, why he was watching him so curiously, why the sadness in his eyes reached far beyond anything Ryland had ever seen. He didn’t know which one to ask first. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. Even with the language barrier, it hadn’t been like this with Rocky…
His eyes widened as he gazed up at the man before him. “Where’s Rocky?”
Before the man could answer, Ryland turned on his heel to search the room. He had been so distracted by the bright blue box, he hadn’t seen the trail of ash and soot that led out of the crew compartment and into the data hall. His heart raced, his throat closing in fear. He stumbled as he stepped away. He wanted to scream, to run- to do anything that felt right with how helpless his search was beginning to feel- but his broken body fought against him at every turn. He kept his eyes down, following every streak and speck of debris that guided him. Some deposits were heavier than others, streaked by Was this Rocky? A lump formed in Ryland's throat at the thought. He didn’t know how much an Eridian could take physically, but this trail was already looking like… a lot more than a human could take. He feared what he'd see when eventually looked up. From somewhere behind him, he heard footsteps. The man in the blue box was the last thing on his mind.
Rocky had made it into the lab. By some miracle, he had somehow closed himself back inside his own habitat, where he sat crumpled against the wall facing the hallway. He was barely moving, bare functioning, but that didn’t matter. He was still moving, and that meant that he was still with Ryland.
“He’s been like that since you passed out,” the mystery man said. From the sound of his voice, Ryland could tell that he was standing at a distance, lending him space. “Refused to sleep until he knew you were okay.”
Ryland crouched in front of Rocky, placing a hand on the xenonite. It was still warm to the touch, but definitely not as warm as he remembered. He took a deep breath as he tried to not cry.
“I’m okay,” he said in a voice that made it clear he wasn’t. “I’ll watch you sleep, pal. But… you gotta wake up.”
Rocky chirped something quiet and feeble, as if to commit to his side of the promise. Within an instant, he stopped moving. No chips. No movement. Nothing. He had seen Rocky sleep a dozen times since meeting him; only now did he fully realize what Rocky had gone through when he talked about his crew not waking up.
“How long was he like that?” He blinked the tears away from his eyes, using his free hand to then wipe them from his face. “How long was I out for?”
“A little over a day,” the man said. “I kept an eye on him.”
“And who are you to do that?”
He could feel the fear in his chest transforming into something angrier. He knew Rocky was safe. Now he had all the time in the world to get his questions answered. He was facing the man once more, a greater distance between them as he sized him up. Tweed jacket and a bow tie. It was certainly more clothes than his own medical gown, but it was the wrong kind of clothes. He was dressed like he could be Ryland’s colleague at Grover Cleveland. He was dressed like a historian. He wasn’t dressed like a dangerous stowaway on a spaceship that had been on a thirteen year journey, but what else could he be?
“I’m the Doctor,” he said, conviction coating his words. “And you are Dr. Ryland Grace, the universe’s leading expert on Astrophage.”
Ryland blinked. What?
“What?” He asked aloud this time. He shut his eyes, shaking his head. He was smarter than this. He had to have more tact with his questions. He was failing miserably. “No. You don’t- How do you know who I am?”
The Doctor- of what, Ryland wasn’t sure- didn’t answer. He took a long stride toward Ryland, careful yet curious. Ryland opened his eyes as he heard him approach, swallowing thickly as he watched the stranger. His weary eyes peered at Ryland in a way that made him feel like he was the intruder on his own ship. He pursed his lips, eyes flitting between Ryland’s as they searched for something they couldn’t quite find.
“That’s not important.”
“I think it is, actually. You can’t just-”
The Doctor cut him off.
“What are you doing in space?”