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Three Eridians were staring at each other. Well, one was staring at the other two- the one that had eyes. The other two were facing him with the distinct air of being supremely unimpressed.
“Why you want to talk to Murder Human alone, question? Who will make sure she is not making plans to murder you again, question?” Rocky trilled, his vents puffing steam like a hissing kettle.
“See, the hostile attitude is exactly why I need to talk to her alone, exclamation!” Grace argued back. “You can’t make first contact with wider Earth by threatening my best human friend; it’ll make a very bad impression, statement,” Grace replied, fingers flying fluently along his full-sized keyboard while he spoke aloud for Ilyukhina’s benefit. Yao had tactfully found somewhere else to be during the so-called ‘lover’s quarrel’ but Lesy had neither the tact nor the discretion. Well, to be fair, she had them; she just had no interest in using them.
“At least threaten Putin first, statement,” she suggested, pounding her bejewelled staff for emphasis. “Realease your anger in very useful manner.”
“Ohh, maybe threatening planetary leaders to be good to Beloved would be more strategic course of action,” Adrian agreed. “Then we can have revenge yelling against Murder Human.”
“Nobody is threatening anyone,” Ryland stressed, slumping back against Adrian’s carapace with a huffy sigh, upsetting the keyboard with a cacophony of notes that unintentionally went quite well with his sulking. “Look, can I please just talk to Eva alone first? Even if she wanted to hurt me- which she never would, by the way-”
“Except for the time she did,” Rocky interrupted, growling even as he scuttled into Grace’s lap and settled himself in for a sulk of his own.
“In an alternate reality that you all collectively erased,” Grace reminded him, idly stroking along the top of his xenonite suit as Rocky fought back the urge to purr like a cat because he still had an argument to win.
“Same person. Time travel will not change nature of beings, statement.”
“Are we sure, question? Because I think Oly might be even more chaotic than the last time?” Grace argued, raising an eyebrow in Ilyukhina’s direction as she lay on the floor, legs up on his bed, enjoying their discussion from what was for her an upside-down vantage point.
“No, I was always like this. Just last time, knowledge of impending death sort of… how you Americans say… ‘bummed me out,’” the Russian pointed out, making air quotes.
“Les, please, you’re supposed to be on my side,” Grace scolded.
“I am on your side. However, I also want Erid cool points,” she rejoined easily. “How else am I going to get Eridian citizenship card?”
“We don’t have those,” Grace sighed for the thousandth time. “Official documentation is pretty useless when you can just thrum with someone to verify their identity. And it’s not like they could have mistaken me for anyone else.”
“Not even Ken?” Adrian teased. Ryland turned to them with a look of abject betrayal.
“Addie, you promised me you wouldn’t watch that movie with Yao.”
“No such promise made, Beloved,” Adrian corrected. “Grace Beloved made request, and Adrian replied that Adrian would not watch stupid movie. Barbie fantastic movie!”
“I’m going to call Eavie alone for half an hour and then you two can respectfully convey your feelings and allow her to share her perspective,” Grace insisted in his ‘teacher voice.’
“Rocky wants to yell! Also, Rocky promised Linux that Linux could yell,” Rocky protested. “Grace make Rocky break promise, question? Grace hate Rocky, question?” He lifted the dominant face of his carapace in Grace’s direction and made little huffing sounds with his vents.
“You are not as cute as you think you are when you do that, Rocks,” Grace snorted.
“Lies and slander! Rocky has been betrayed by one Rocky loves most! Such tragedy!”
“Okay Shakespeare; I promise I’ll make it up to you after you let me talk to Eva. She couldn’t hurt me over a zoom call even if she wanted to,” Ryland huffed in English with deep fondness, arms splayed lazily over Rocky’s carapace as he lovingly rubbed the sole of his foot against Adrian’s behind him.
“Seriously, you probably don’t want to be there for that anyway,” Olesya piped up. “He and Stratt are so soft with each other; it’s honestly disgusting.”
Rocky hissed his displeasure as Grace shot Ilyukhina a look.
“Gremlin knows Rocky jealous type- why Gremlin rotate the excrement, question?” Adrian scolded.
____
As usual when it came to Eridians, Grace got his way in the end, although he’d had to concede that if he could talk to Eva alone, then Rocky and Adrian should naturally have the same opportunity, albeit with Yao refereeing. Yao was not at all happy about the provision- a cheeky suggestion by Ilyukhina- and had protested that he had sworn off diplomacy quite early into their trip to Earth, but ultimately the bargain had been made. Yao’s ability to be rather deceptively sneaky despite his unassuming and stoic manner could be Olesya’s problem to deal with at a later time; Grace was too busy trying to stop his hands from shaking as he opened the laptop.
Eva’s face was about a decade older, with fewer smile lines and some new wrinkles that Ryland wasn’t able to fool himself into thinking were from anything other than stress and grief. There were more greys in her auburn hair, but the fire in her eyes were the same as she started yelling.
“How the fuck did you get hold of this account- Dr. Grace is a global hero, and hacking into his old Zoom is far more serious than standard identity theft. Why, when I get a hold of you-” Then she actually realized who was in the corner of her screen, smirking faintly at her impassioned rant.
“Still defending my honor, Eaves?” he asked her.
His voice was the same as she remembered. It was the phantom heat of a sun whose strength existed only in the collective memory as temperatures dipped and food became scarcer, even with all her efforts and the Eridian-inspired technology that Grace had left behind.
Her mouth fell open, and she blinked mechanically, a stupefaction utterly foreign to her overtaking her features.
“I’m not AI, Scout’s honor,” Grace continued tentatively after thirty seconds of utter silence.
Well duh, thought Eva. Even if AI hadn’t gradually stopped being developed and eventually faded out of all but the most select, controlled uses for very specific purposes, no AI ever could have captured Ryland Grace properly.
Even at its best Artificial Intelligence was never able to capture that undefinable, inexplicable spark of humanity, whether in its ‘art’ or with its deepfakes. And Ryland Grace, more than most, was so inextricably, essentially human. It was why she’d chosen him to be the cradle for the hopes of humanity as a whole. It wasn’t because he was perfect- indeed, he could be impetuous, distractable, avoidant, quick to anger, anxious, quick to frighten- but because he knew all that, and he chose to fight against his flaws and do the right thing no matter what. He had worked and continued to work tirelessly to put his best qualities forward- his curiosity, his kindness, his optimism, his bravery- and define himself by them, and because he chose to look at humanity for its potential and to choose to save them for all of that.
Even if he hadn’t chosen to get on the ship the first time- hadn’t had time to make the choice she knew he would have eventually- he still chose to keep going once he was up there, against every roadblock and every impossible odd that had turned wishing on a long shot into actively clawing a fighting chance out of a situation that was determined to make itself ever more impossible.
In short, there was no way in any world that Ryland Grace could be mistaken for anyone else, and no way to imitate Ryland Grace. That was precisely why Eva Stratt was so incredulous.
“How?” she whispered, a strangled, fragile thing. Ryland had to fight back his own tears, because that wasn’t the voice of Eva Stratt, formidable world dictator and indomitable human spirit in woman form. That was the voice of his Eva, the woman who was willing to fight humanity to save it and sacrifice herself in the process, the woman who was willing to sacrifice herself at the altar of humanity’s worst impulses just to give them the chance to live long enough to do it, the woman who would condemn herself to the cruelties of her own relentless conscience, the woman who both craved hope and feared it more than anything.
“I told you I’d see you again.” He tried to laugh, but it was more of a whimper as he caressed the face on his screen with a gentle thumb. “Eridians don’t break promises. And further, I would never break a promise to you. You have to know that, Eavie.”
Eva was too emotionally overwhelmed to actually laugh, but she did offer an amused little huff, and Grace felt his heart soar with the pride of it.
Even in the first timeline, after the remembrance of a terrible and beautiful betrayal, he’d still secretly hoarded the precious jewels of the amusement she’d only ever shown around him and because of him. The imagined quirk of her lips as she watched the logs and fingered the little xenonite figurine he’d sent just for her had buoyed his spirits as he turned away from Earth, a fitting and warm goodbye to the life he’d known and forgotten and then remembered first with terror and finally with fondness, as he closed the book for the last time on his ties to his first home and followed the red string of fate tugging his heart towards Rocky.
And yet Rocky, stubborn Rocky, his-soul-in-external-form Rocky, who instead of just getting a therapist and being swept down the river of sorrow towards the eventuality of a grim acceptance had invented a new stage of grief called ‘bend space and time to his will and drag his planet along with him’, had given them another chance. For all Rocky hated Eva, it was his love for Grace that had allowed Grace in turn to give Eva the love that in the first timeline he had been too afraid to offer fully and she had been too afraid to fully accept. Rocky’s love made the world a better place and it was in this spirit that Grace had allowed himself to fully share that same affection with a woman that was really closer to Rocky in terms of sheer, stubborn, self-sacrificing will than either of them would ever admit.
“I should have known that you would find a way to bend the universe to your will,” Eva replied, amusement and tenderness spilling over in her voice and interrupting his own pensive reverie on just how full of love he was for Rocky, Adrian, and the woman in front of him.
He chuckled awkwardly and rubbed at the back of his neck, and all of a sudden the feeling of tender irritation that so often came hand-in-hand with Dr. Ryland Grace swept back over Eva as though it had never left.
“What did you do?” she asked, fond exasperation settling easily back into her voice with the warmth of a favorite tea.
“Well, it’s not so much what I did…”