Work Text:
He finds you on the roof.
Hey, he says. You want to come down?
No, you reply. Dr. Grace, please ensure I am not bothered. I am allotting myself 3 minutes to mourn.
His eyes go wide and soft. Yeah, okay.
Minute one: DuBois.
Yesterday, the foremost science specialist in the world. Incredibly intelligent, wonderfully brave, intensely compassionate.
You mourn the man gone. You weep for what remains.
Wait, says Grace. Three minutes?
Yes.
Minute two: Shapiro.
Insightful, funny, kind. Everything you are not, everything you cannot be.
They were in love, you believe. Grace told you so. Another tragedy.
Last time we lost someone you only asked for one.
You breathe, looking out at the echoes of smoke. Yes. I allow myself one minute per significant loss.
Oh, okay.
Minute three.
Wait a second, who’s the third? Grace steps in front of you, translucent in the dawning light. Like this, it is like he is already dead. Stratt? Who’s the third?
You don’t speak.
Hey, he says. He is softer now, like the grade school teacher he once was. You know everything about him, and you know he hopes to go back to his students after the launch. His children, he calls them. The explosion wasn’t your fault.
I’m sorry.
It wasn’t your fault, he repeats.
No, you think, and reach out with spectral hands and push him off the roof. He falls upward, tumbling and flailing and screaming into the dimming sky. Your palms shine blood-red in the light. But this is.
“Stratt?”
You turn around.
Grace smiles at you trustingly. “Hey. Are you coming?”
You hear him scream from the dimming sun, furious and terrified: I don’t want to die! Stratt, please, I don’t want to-
Grace is still waiting.
“Yes,” you apologize. “I’ll follow you down.”