Chapter Text
Content warning(s): referenced past character deaths (Ilyukhina and Yáo), misgendering and transphobia (from people in Grace’s past), negative thoughts/worry about gender identity (from Grace’s perspective), mention of assigned gender at birth and old pronouns (because Grace is remembering their gender journey and coming out to other). Let me know if I missed anything else.
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(Grace’s POV: Present Day)
It’s been a week since I went back to save Rocky and we began our journey towards Erid. Besides taking care of the taumoeba farms, the two of use have a lot of free time. I have mostly been using this free time to show Rocky movies, shows, music, and books. I like being able to share my culture with him, and revisiting these pieces of media somewhat help with the homesickness I feel. It’s comforting to know that even though I’ll never see home again that I’ll always have reminders of my former life.
There are also some days where I spend my free time just thinking about random topics while Rocky is off doing his own thing. Today is one of those days, and I currently find myself thinking about gender. Back when I first explained human genders to Rocky I felt off when saying I was a man and used he/him pronouns. I didn’t know why I felt that way considering in the memories that came back to me everyone referred to me that way and I didn’t say otherwise. So I just brushed the uncomfortable feeling off at the time and continued explaining genders to Rocky.
Today though, I don’t think I can ignore the feeling anymore. I feel like there is important information I forgot that’s just waiting to reveal itself to me. I’m in the dormitory so I could go look through Ilyukhina’s clothing. If anything is going to trigger gender related memories then a skirt might do the trick, right?
I go to the compartment in the floor where the bags of my former crew members are stored and pull out Ilyukhina’s. I open the bag and the first thing I’m greeted with is the skirt I put on when I first woke up on the Hail Mary. I’m surprised that the fact that a skirt was my first choice for comfortable clothing didn’t make me question my relationship with gender and gender expression at the time.
I take the skirt out and decide to put it on. I untie the flight suit from around my waist, remove it, and pull the skirt on. The skirt still fits as comfortably as it did the first time I put it on and I find myself doing a spin. As I watch the skirt sway with my movement I am hit with a wave of memories.
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(Grace’s POV: College Days)
It’s the weekend, so Marissa invited me to hang out around town with her. We’re currently at a thrift store that she recommended.
“Hey Ry, you should try this on.”
I turn around from the clothing rack I am looking at to see Marissa grinning at me while holding up a clothing hanger with a dress on it. The dress is a light yellow with short, lacy sleeves. I feel my face heat up from embarrassment as I look around to make sure no one else is staring at us.
“Mari, I can’t try that on. It-it probably won’t fit me right and I’d just look silly.”
She pouts and says, “Oh c’mon Ry, I’m sure it won’t look that bad on you. I’ve also been wanting to dress you up for a while now. It’s not like I expect you to keep this dress anyway, so what’s the harm in just putting on a fashion show for me. Please.”
“Fine…” I say as I reluctantly take the clothing hanger from her and step into a dressing room. I face away from the mirror and look at the curtain that acts as a door while I put on the dress. Once the dress is on me, I slowly turn around to face the mirror and find myself frozen as I take in my appearance.
The lacy sleeves frame my shoulders nicely and the dress ends slightly above my knees. The light yellow color of the fabric brings out my eyes. The skirt swayed slightly when I turned around and the movement felt freeing. I’ve felt nice in most of the outfits I own but something about this dress just feels like a whole another level of nice. I actually find myself thinking that I look pretty. I break out of my still position and do a spin. The way the dress’s skirt moves is lovely and I feel a spark of joy at the fact that this beautiful dress is on me.
“Ry, you put it on yet? Can I see now?” Marissa’s voice breaks through my little happy bubble in the dressing room.
“Oh, yeah. I’ll come out now.” I say before nervously pulling back the curtain and stepping out of the dressing room. I’m hopeful that Marissa will also think I look pretty in the dress.
My hopes are broken by the sound of laughter.
“Oh- that’s s-so f-f-funny looking on you! Y-you look l-like a-a k-knockoff fashion d-doll!” Marissa says through laughter.
My face turns bright red from embarrassment and and find myself fighting the urge to cry. I know she’s not trying to be mean, since we playfully pick on each other all the time. But this laughter and playful insult just really hurts. It doesn’t feel like she’s making fun of the dress, but of me. She doesn’t see me as pretty; she doesn’t see me as the pretty person I saw in the dressing room mirror.
“Yeah, I guess I do look funny, huh?” I mumble out before heading back into the dressing room to change back into my regular clothes. The rest of that outing with Marissa, I do my best to keep a smile on my face and not let her know that the dress meant something to me.
That night I silently cry myself to sleep, not wanting to alert my roommate to something being wrong.
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After the dress incident, I try to act like everything is fine. I go through my days like usual and hang out regularly with Marissa. She has no idea that she hurt my feelings and I want things to stay that way.
Despite trying to move on from the thrift store experience, I find myself looking things up on the internet one night. I want to know if any other men have felt such strong feelings upon putting on a dress, since no other guys I know have reported similar experiences. I end up on the LGBTQ Reddit page and find a post with similar questions to mine. One of the comments catches my eye with the term it puts forward: “nonbinary.” I have never heard of that term before so I do some more research and learn that it’s an identity where a person doesn’t feel like they fit snugly into the gender binary of man and woman. Nonbinary people also may use they/them pronouns.
I try out the pronouns in my mind: This is my friend Ryland. They are studying microbiology. They are especially interested in alien life. Their favorite color is blue, especially sky blue.
Those example sentences cause things to just click in my mind. I like they/them pronouns. I like dresses because they make me feel pretty in a gender neutral way. I dislike when I’m called Mr. Grace because I don’t feel like a Mr. I don’t feel like a man, and I don’t feel like I’m a woman either. I’m just a person, I’m just Ryland.
I start to cry, feeling relieved to finally understand who I am but also scared because I don’t know how others will react to this news about me. I can’t hide this side of myself though, I don’t want to. I want to be myself.
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After coming to my realization about my gender, I email my professors to request they use they/them pronouns when referring to me. I don’t have any classes with Marissa, so I won’t have to worry about her finding out about my pronouns through a shared professor. I’d like to tell Mari eventually, but I don’t want her to end up laughing at me like she did over the dress.
My email seems well received by my professors. They all reply saying they’ll keep note of my pronouns and do their best to use them. In the back of my mind I think that the responses are only positive so that there isn’t any written evidence of them being discriminatory to a student. I still try to stay hopeful for acceptance in the classroom though.
This hope doesn’t last for long. Some professors default to using he/him when talking about me, but they correct themselves, and the conversation moves on. Despite these self-corrections happening on a regular basis, these professors still end up misgendering me a lot. I know it can be hard to switch to different pronouns for someone, but it still hurts that despite these professors correcting themselves that they’ll always instinctively see me as a “he” and a man. Other professors are more unapologetic with their misgendering of me. These professors will misgender me and not correct themselves. In these cases I try to speak up and correct them, but this just seems to annoy them. One professor out right tells me that they/them pronouns are nonsensical and that I’m a man and should just accept that since there’s nothing I can do to change that. This professor also tells me that nobody will want to hire me or take me seriously in the science world if I keep believing that being nonbinary is a legitimate thing and keep identifying as such.
This professor’s comment especially stings because they were my favorite professor before all this. I admired their work in the science field and often asked them questions about how they got involved in past projects of theirs. I also know that I tend to joke around when I’m nervous, so I probably won’t be taken seriously when going for job interviews for that reason alone.
Maybe I should just push my feelings aside and just go with society’s expectations for me. If me using he/him and being a man makes the most sense for and is preferred by others, then I should just give the people what they want. I can’t win this fight for acceptance, so it doesn’t make sense to continue pushing for validation. This part of myself can just stay my inner truth, my secret. Maybe if I ignore the truth enough I’ll feel comfortable being a man again. Yeah….that’s definitely going to work.
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(Grace’s POV: Present Day)
The stream of memory comes to an end and I’m once again met with the sight of myself in the skirt Ilyukhina left behind. I clutch the skirt in my hands as I feel myself start to tear up.
So that’s why I found Ilyukhina’s skirt so comforting when I woke up. The outfit made me feel like me, made me feel pretty. I never disliked my more masculine clothes, but skirts and dresses just hit different. Skirts and dresses make me feel in touch with my gender.
But my memories show that I never let myself wear another skirt or dress. I did try to use they/them pronouns but nobody I trusted with that information could truly respect it. So, I went into the science world and the teaching world still pretending like he/him and being a man felt okay to me. The only escape I got from the gender binary was my title of Dr. Grace. I liked being called Dr. much more than Mr, so I appreciated being called Dr. while working on Project Hail Mary.
I never told anyone on Stratt’s Vat about my gender either, but I wonder if Stratt picked up on some of my discomfort with binary gendered language. She seemed to read me easily at times after all. Like how she picked up on the fact that I was scared of forming close relationships with others. With these gender related memories back, I’m now realizing what some of my fears were in terms of connecting with others. I didn’t feel like I could be myself with anyone. I feared that if I told them I’m not a man that they’d laugh at me and misgender me. I was scared that even if they did act supportive of me that deep down they’d still always see me as a man.
I start to cry properly now as all these fears come back to me.
“Grace! Grace leaking, what wrong question?!”
I turn my head to look behind me and see Rocky has entered the dormitory and is rolling closer to me in his xenonite ball. Once he’s rolled in front of me and look down to face him.
“H-hey Rock. I’m j-just remembering s-some stuff.” I stutter out through my tears.
“What Grace remember, question? Memory hurt Grace, tell Rocky so Rocky can fix, statement.” Rocky emphasizes his request by tapping against the bottom of his ball.
I freeze up, still crying. Do I tell him? What will he say to the news that I’m nonbinary? I mean, Eridians are genderless so they/them pronouns will be the most logical choice for them. I just gave Rocky he/him pronouns because it felt right at the time and he decided to stick with the pronouns I gave him. When explaining human gender to Rocky I explained the binary genders as well as the terms transgender and nonbinary, so he’s aware of the terms. That at least makes me have slightly less to explain if I come out to Rocky. But what if he laughs at me? What if he tells me that I can’t truly be nonbinary because I’m not genderless like an Eridian? What if-
“Grace! Grace, breathe. You are leaking too much.” Rocky’s words bring me out of my thought spiral as he lightly bumps against my legs.
“S-sorry.” I say as I take deep but still shaky breaths, trying to calm down. I take my glasses off and hang them from my shirt so I can attempt to wipe my still falling tears.
“Grace no need to be sorry. Rocky just want Grace friend to be okay. Please tell Rocky what wrong.”
“O-okay.” I take another deep breath before continuing. “So, you probably remember how I explained the different genders humans may identify as and that I identified as a man…”
Rocky nods and looks to me to continue.
“…well I just remembered that I don’t actually feel like a man. I feel nonbinary, and I like they/them pronouns. I’m not a man or a woman, I’m just Grace.” My tears have calmed down at this point, as explaining things is able to distract me momentarily from the urges to cry. I still sniffle though.
“So Grace is genderless like an Eridian, question?” Rocky asks, titling his carapace to the side to show his curiosity to me.
“Kinda. I mean, I still feel like I have a gender, but it’s just not a binary one. So I’m genderless in terms of not having a binary gender. But like the other Eridians, they/them pronouns make the most sense.”
“Rocky understand. Grace is just Grace. Grace is a they. Rocky will always remember this and refer to Grace properly.”
I find my tears starting up again at this, being reminded of the responses my professors gave to my email all those years ago.
“Y-you don’t have to l-lie to me a-about being o-okay with this, Rock. I-I can handle h-honesty. A-and I won’t f-force y-you to c-call me s-something y-you think is n-nonsense.” I stutter out through my tears.
“What is Grace friend saying! Rocky no lie, Rocky understand Grace’s words. Grace is nonbinary, statement. Grace knows themself best, Grace speaks fact about self. Rocky want Grace friend to be happy happy and Rocky believe friend Grace about gender.”
Hearing such loving and supportive words for the first time about this subject is so relieving that I fall to my knees and wrap my arms around Rocky’s xenonite ball in a hug. I start to cry even more, but this time they’re happy tears.
“Grace leak more! Did Rocky say something bad?! Apology, apology!” Rocky says in a panic, leaning against the xenonite ball to hug me back.
“It-it’s o-okay, Rock. T-these are h-happy t-tears. I-I’m j-just h-happy to f-finally b-be accepted by s-someone.” I explain through my tears.
“Rocky always accept Grace. Rocky love Grace friend. Did Earth not accept Grace, question?”
“N-no one I t-told about m-my gender t-truly a-accepted it. Y-you’re my f-first r-real supporter.” I chuckle sadly.
“Rocky will make sure Grace never feel unsupported again. Erid will love Grace, statement. Erid will be better home for Grace. Grace can be themself forever and ever.”
I smile through my tears and hug Rocky tighter.
“T-thanks Rocky. I love love love you.”
“Rocky love love love Grace too.”