Work Text:
Ryland Grace is four years old the first time he feels the sharp sting in his palms. At the time he’s sitting quietly in the living room reading a book as his mother clack-clack-clacks away on her laptop at the kitchen table. He’s just turned the page when suddenly he feels a sharp impact against his hands.
“Ow!” Ryland drops his book more in shock than anything else, but the pain comes a second later. It’s harsh, radiating throughout his hands in an instant. Confused tears well up in Ryland’s eyes, and when he looks down he sees the red outline of what looks like a long, thin rectangle highlighted against his skin.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?” His mother’s head shoots up from her computer, and she’s out of her chair in an instant.
“It hurts!” He shows her his bright red palms, and she quickly takes his hands in her own. The red marks fade quickly, but the pain lingers – a phantom echo of an action that never happened. “Wh-What happened?”
He’s trying to figure out what he did wrong, but nothing comes to mind. He’d just been reading! Had the book hurt him somehow? He glances down at the cover of the book, but there’s no sign of what had somehow managed to injure him. He turns back to his mother, so many questions in his head, but nothing comes out but a sob.
“Oh, sweetie,” his mother says, pulling him close and rubbing a hand on his back. “You must have gotten your first soulmate echo.”
“S-soulmate echo?” Ryland asks, voice wavering. “What’s that?”
His mother hums. “Somewhere out there is a person that you are… well, they’re meant to be your perfect match in every way.”
“Perfect match?” Ryland asks, tears finally slowing as the sting in his palms fades. His mother finally pulls back a bit, but she continues to rub circles into his back.
“That’s right,” his mother says, “They’ll be someone you can love very much.”
It sounds nice to have someone out there that he’ll get along with perfectly, even if Ryland can’t really grasp what that means. His only question is about that is, “Why does it hurt then?”
His mother pauses, lips pursing. “Well, we aren’t really sure why but we can feel our soulmate’s pain. It’s… it’s not very fun, is it?”
“No!” Ryland says so emphatically his mother laughs, “I don’t want to get hurt, and I don’t want them to get hurt!”
“Oh sweetie, no one wants their soulmate to get hurt,” his mother says, “But it is a reminder that they’re out there. Hopefully they’ll never get hurt worse than what you felt today.”
“Can I… can I help them?” Ryland asks with all the eager naïveté of a child.
His mother smiles, but it’s tinged with something Ryland can’t quite understand. “Not until you meet them. Until then… just remember to take care of yourself.”
And Ryland had nodded then with all of the grave solemnity a four year old could possess. He curls his hands into fists. The pain has long since ebbed at this point, but in that moment Ryland makes a vow to do his best not to cause his soulmate any pain for both of their sakes. He’ll be careful, and he’ll make sure that when he does meet his soulmate he’ll protect them both from ever being hurt again.
The sharp hits to his hands recur for many years after the first. Much later in his life Ryland will realize that sometimes it was a ruler, sometimes it was a belt, but every time it happened, it made his palms sting for a few minutes before the pain eventually faded. His soulmate, he imagines, was never as lucky to walk away with a brief flash of the sensation. Another thing he notices (something that churns his stomach much later in life when he can fully comprehend it) is that his soulmate always gets hit in the same spot on their hands, as if they’d been holding them up in front of themself, expecting the pain like it was some kind of punishment for their misbehavior.
Ryland, for his part, tries to be more careful himself. In some ways it’s like he’s trying to make up for all his soulmate’s injuries by avoiding adding to them, but it’s a near impossible task. He’s a clumsy kid who grows into a clumsy teenager, forever knocking his flailing limbs against tables and bookcases and tripping over thin air. He scrapes up his hands and knees in the way that kids do, and one time he even breaks his left arm falling out of a tree while trying to replicate an experiment about gravity he read about in one of his textbooks.
When the bright blue cast is put on his arm, Ryland takes a black Sharpie and writes ‘I’m sorry’ at the bottom of it, as if the words could somehow transmit to his soulmate who had to deal with the same agonizing pain Ryland had felt when he’d hit the ground.
His soulmate, for their part, never seems to not be injuring themselves in some way. Some of it is normal, but some of it is so consistent it’s practically a pattern. Ryland’s hands constantly sting from the disciplinary smacks against them. It gets to a point where Ryland is carrying cold packs to his classes, the pain becoming so familiar he barely flinches whenever he feels it.
The school makes him talk to a counselor about it, but Ryland doesn’t really know how to feel aside from hoping his soulmate gets away from whoever is treating them so terribly. The hits eventually stop around the time Ryland graduates high school. It’s not as much of a relief as it should be when he begins to start feeling much worse pain in other places.
Ryland’s not a fighter. The closest he’s ever come to throwing a punch was at an arcade machine (which had promptly declared him ‘Super Weak’ and his knuckles had stung from for the rest of the day), but now he feels like his soulmate is getting into a fight every other weekend. It gets bad enough that Ryland starts taking online classes as he studies for his degree, his body constantly aching from whatever brawls his soulmate is going through.
Some days he feels bitter about it – he didn’t ask to be used as a punching bag just because his soulmate is either really into boxing or pissing people off – but more often than not he just feels… kind of sad. If he’s hurting this badly on his end of the connection, then what the heck is his soulmate going through? Pain seemed to be their constant companion, and more than anything Ryland wishes he could reach through their cosmic connection and drag them away from whatever it was that kept them so beat down.
“At least try to stay safe,” Ryland sighs, wincing as he pokes at a bright red mark that would have certainly left a bruise on his ribs.
He knows the pain will fade before long, like it was never there in the first place, but the aches always seemed to linger as phantom sensations. He gets up to go grab a heat pack and stick it in his dorm’s microwave. Ryland watches the plate spin and, not for the first time, wishes his soulmate bond would transfer a little bit of comfort to them as well.
Whoever was on the other end of their connection really seemed to need it.
There’s one really bad day.
Ryland is in the middle of making an unimpressive sandwich for lunch, when suddenly it feels like he’s been kicked in the chest by the world’s angriest horse. He’s shocked he doesn’t physically fly back from the pain of it. His body feels like it’s burning, like he’s stood too close to a fire, and then he’s collapsing on the ground in some of the worst pain of his life.
He thinks he’s dying, that his chest is about to collapse in on itself and that every bone in his body is trying to break at once. His roommate finds him on the floor and drives him to the hospital. The doctors find nothing wrong with him physically, that whatever he’s going through is an relay through the soulmate bond, but the pain is so bad that Ryland can barely speak.
For a minute he wonders wildly if he’s physically feeling his soulmate die.
The pain lasts for almost a full week after, and Ryland ends up skipping classes for the first time in his life. From the time he wakes up to the time he goes to bed he feels like he’s one giant, (barely) walking bruise, only able to drag himself from his bed to the bathroom and back again. It’s one of the worst things he’s ever felt in his life.
But it means his soulmate is still alive, and that’s strangely enough a comfort to him.
Eventually the echoes of pain do fade enough for Ryland to get back to his studies, but the memory of the event haunts him. Ryland has no idea what happened to his soulmate. They were still alive, clearly, but there were worse things out there than death.
‘I’ll find you,’ Ryland vows, ‘I promise I will.’
Simon is pretty sure by this point that his soulmate, whoever they are, hates him.
He wouldn’t blame them. After every thing Simon’s gone through – everything he’s involuntarily put them through – he wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up wanting to reject him as their soulmate entirely. He already knows it’s no one in Eden for what that’s worth, but it almost makes things worse when he knows he can’t explain to his soulmate why they’re going through the things they are, nor is he capable of apologizing to them for everything he’s forced them to experience.
Then again, even if they were in Eden, Simon wouldn’t be able to apologize from the inside of the isolated cell they’d thrown him in.
He doubts he’ll see another person for the rest of his life, much less his soulmate. Honestly he wouldn’t be surprised if the Consolidation of Iron had him executed for the whole mess at Filament Station before he ever got a chance to meet them. Then again, perhaps that’s for the best. Even if his soulmate resents him, he’s sure no one would want to know that they’re attached to someone who’s done so much that can’t be forgiven.
Simon can only be grateful that the cold and hunger probably won’t transmit through the soulmate bond. He’s already made his their life miserable enough without them having to suffer through the years inside a metal box with him. He can only hope he’ll manage to stay relatively uninjured here since at least one of the two of them deserves some kind of peace.
“Don’t have to worry about me anymore,” Simon mutters, letting his head thump back lightly against the metal wall. “Safest I’ve been in decades.” And it’s true in some painfully ironic twist of fate.
He stares down at his hands then. They still have the silvery scars from childhood. Yeah, his soulmate is probably relieved.
Ryland is… unnerved when the pain abruptly stops.
He knows its a weird thing to think, his doctor is of the opinion that ‘no news is good news’, but Ryland himself can’t help but worry that the sudden silence from the other end of the soulmate bond is something far more ominous.
The occasional cut or bruise he gets is a reminder that his soulmate is still alive at least, but the lack of any other injuries sets off alarm bells in his head. Wryly, he thinks it’s probably a little messed up to be worried about the lack of pain, but for so many years it had been such a constant companion that he almost doesn’t know what to do without it.
He starts researching soulmate bonds in his spare time, poring over articles and scientific studies between finding sources for his thesis over whether there might be some way out there to track down his soulmate through the bond. He keeps hitting dead end after dead end. Unfortunately, despite the soulmate bond being ever-present in both scientific research and the public consciousness, there was still frustratingly little out there to explain it. It was unknown to the point of being mystical, and Ryland was getting sick of banging his head against the wall trying to find answers.
But he can’t give up.
Out there he knew there was someone hurting worse than he ever had, who’d endured things Ryland is sure was well beyond anything he could even imagine. He doesn’t really know what he’d ever say if he met his soulmate, but he wants to tell them that he’s still here. That he still wants to get to know them. That he still wants to hold their hands and tell them that he’ll make sure they never have to go through that again.
He’s not sure if he really has the power to keep that promise, but he’s going to do everything he can to follow through.
Years pass, and time blurs into a meaningless haze in Simon’s cell. His days are only marked by the intervals in which food is shoved through a slot in the door and then later when the empty trays are removed. Simon’s only mildly surprised they haven’t shoved him out of an airlock yet when he’s certain he’s one of the most hated prisoners in the cell block. He doesn’t know for sure how long he’s been down here, but he’s pretty certain at this point that the only way out for him is in a body bag.
At least, he was certain until his cell door swings open that day.
A severe looking woman with a patch for the Consolidation of Iron slapped on the shoulder of her jacket stares down at him with narrow-eyed scrutiny. “Convict, it’s your lucky day.”
Simon doesn’t even have to say aloud that he doesn’t believe her, but he can’t deny that deep down he’s grateful for even a brief break in his usual routine. “Is it now?”
“That’s right,” she says, “You finally have a chance to get out of here.”
And that gets Simon to sit up straight against the wall. “Is this some new torture tactic? I already know I’m in here for life.”
“You were in here for life,” she says, “But now you have the opportunity to actually do something worthwhile with your time. Unless you’re really that eager to rot here until you die?”
Already he’s on guard, more than certain that there’s going to be some kind of catch and he’s going to wind up dead anyway from whatever offer she makes him. But then again, what other options does he have? It may end up being something he wouldn’t touch with a fifty foot pole, but Simon supposes he could at least hear what she has to say first.
“And what exactly do you consider worth my time?” Simon asks.
She smiles, but there’s no humor in it. “It’s nothing special. We just need you to help us do a little research.”
The news of the Petrova Line hits the world with the force of a nuclear bomb, and Ryland isn’t left unaffected. He spends more nights than he’d like to admit filled with existential dread, watching stories on the news and doomscrolling through his phone as the outlook for the future of the planet looks grimmer with each passing day. It gets harder and harder to look his students in the eyes and think they’ll never have the opportunity to live their full lives due to things completely beyond their control.
Sometimes he wonders if his anxiety is severe enough to transmit through the soulmate bond. God knows that Ryland has enough anxiety combined with headaches, nausea, and panic attacks at this point to nearly put himself out of commission, even if he somehow manages to drag himself to the classroom every day.
He wonders if he’ll manage to find his soulmate before the world ends. Sure, they have around thirty years before then, but Ryland imagines the deterioration of civilization as they know it will come well before that happens. He wouldn’t be surprised if the food rationing and impending ice age will completely shut down any and all travel both within and outside of the country.
He feels a little ridiculous worrying about something like finding a soulmate when the stakes are so high… but also it feels like the time he needs his soulmate the most. Ryland hadn’t worried too much about being on his own before, but now that the end of the world was on the horizon, he finds himself not wanting to greet it alone.
It’s a sad, desperate, pathetic feeling, but it’s all he can cling to. Sometimes he digs his nails into his palm just a little too hard, hoping vainly that whoever is on the other end might respond in kind. They never do. Maybe he just needs to accept that the only thing he has to look forward to is the memory of a sharp sting against his palm and the collapse of the world around him.
“Dr. Grace, you were the one who wrote this article, yes?”
Or maybe not.
It’s a done deal in all senses of the word. Simon waits in the bay staring at the rusty metal submarine, his ticket out a cell and to freedom – whatever that still means for someone like him.
“They’re about ready to weld you in.”
“This thing looks like it’s going to kill me,” Simon mutters.
The woman he’d struck the deal with raises an eyebrow. “It’s perfectly safe, Convict.”
Simon looks back at her skeptically, but doesn’t bother arguing further. He doesn’t necessarily regret the deal he made, but he’s starting to think his return is a lot less certain than he was originally assured of. He’s not that surprised though. After all, there had to be some reason the Consolidation was going to him of all people to carry out the mission rather than one of their own members.
He was expendable to them
“Whatever you-“ Simon suddenly gasps as he feels a sharp prick in his neck.
The woman’s eyes narrow. “Convict-?”
Simon shakily lifts a hand to the back of his neck, trying to feel for whatever might have stung him, only for his limbs to suddenly fall limp. Simon abruptly collapses like a puppet with its strings cut as the numbness swiftly spreads throughout his body.
“Convict!”
Abruptly an overwhelming feeling of dread floods his veins. It's alternately scorching and freezing, like ice and fire warring through his entire nervous system. It feels like he's about to die, like he's so terrified his heart might just explode in his chest. His pulse is so loud in his ears it's drowning out everything else, some voice in his head is screaming incomprehensibly, crying, begging-
“Shit-!” Simon gasps.
“Please, no, please don’t do this-!”
“I’ll die- If you put me in that thing I’m going to die!” He doesn’t know what he’s saying, why he’s saying it, but there’s some kind of bone-deep conviction in him that there’s something wrong and in that moment he’s not sure if the feeling is coming from him or-
He hits the ground with a thump, and he digs his fingers into the earth as if it might save him. The world in front of him blurs and tilts as the sedatives seep into his system with every beat of his heart.
“What?! Convict, you already agreed to do this!”
“Please, don’t-“ His tongue feels so heavy in his mouth, but he has to try anything that might get them to understand that he isn’t cut out for this, he isn’t brave enough, he isn’t-
“This is murder, you can’t do this, this is-!”
“Murder-“ Simon gasps, “You’re going to kill me-!”
It feels like every cell in his body is screaming at him not to get inside, that he should turn around and run away right now as fast as his legs could carry him, but he can’t even get his body to listen to him enough to get off the floor. Simon convulses as another wave of dread and anxiety run through him.
“Shit, get him in the sub!”
Simon can’t even react as he feels himself being bodily lifted and all but thrown inside the Iron Lung. The world spins enough that the nausea makes him dry heave. He feels like he’s drowning on land. There’s a commotion but it sounds like it’s coming from somewhere very far away. The light around him is abruptly blotted out with a clang he feels in his very bones.
‘They’re welding me inside,’ Simon thinks wildly.
He has to get up. He has to escape. He has to-
“Please don’t, please, I just-!”
“I just want to live-!” Simon gasps before he passes out.
It’s quiet when Simon wakes again. He sits up with a strangled grunt, head aching and body sore. There’s something wrong. His hand automatically drifts to his chest. There’s no injury there, but it feels… off. It feels empty, hollow, like-
His soulmate is gone
The certainty of it is so overwhelming that Simon’s stomach lurches violently. “No, no, no, fuck, they can’t be-“
“You’re back with us again, Convict?”
Simon’s head whips around at the unexpected voice, but he’s alone in the submarine. It’s then that he notices the speaker box on the wall.
“You…” Simon barely manages to get the word out. His throat feels drier than ever.
“Good,” the voice says mercilessly. “We were about to drop you whether you were conscious or not.”
“Go to hell,” Simon manages to spit out.
He’s not dignified with a response. There’s an ominous creak from somewhere outside the submarine, and Simon jolts as the submarine shakes. He’s being lowered, he realizes. The blood ocean of AT-5 is likely right beneath him.
All at once Simon feels wholly unprepared, that familiar dread coursing through his body. He forces himself to his feet until he can stare out the dingy glass of the porthole. Outside there’s only darkness. He can’t even see any stars. The dark waters below are rapidly rushing up to meet him. He knows that once he enters the ocean he won’t be coming back up again for a very long time.
If at all
“Just finish the mission, and you’re free,” the voice says.
Simon forces himself to his feet then, staggering to the control panel until he can fall into the chair. It creaks under his wait. He takes one last look at the world above the waves. The sky looks as empty as the void left behind in his ribcage.
“Free,” Simon says dully. “Yeah. Okay.”
He wakes up disoriented. His throat feels raw from the tube that’s been rudely ripped from it, and his entire body is still shaking the numbness from the sedatives wearing off.
Where is he?
He shifts on the bed, and groans as the movement sets off pins and needles in his limbs. He feels like he’s been hit by a truck at some point while he was unconscious. His ribs especially are aching like he’s bruised or, god forbid, cracked something. “Urghhhh…”
“Motion detected,” a robotic voice says. “What is 2+2?”
“Mmngh,” he mutters, before he shifts again and rolls right off the bed. He hits the floor with a heavy thump. “Ow!”
They’re back
Simon is almost knocked off his feet with the certainty of it.
They’re alive, they’re alive, they’re alive-
He nearly collapses against the wall of the submarine. The right side of his body aches like he’s just fallen onto it, but he’s never welcomed the pain more in his life. He clutches at his side like it might make the sensation linger.
“Thank fuck,” Simon mutters.
I missed you
God, he’s so hungry. And thirsty. And sore. He needs like twelve cheeseburgers, five gallons of water, and a hot bath. Unfortunately, he hasn’t found any of that on the… the spaceship. Holy fudge, he’s on a spaceship. Oh god.
How on earth is he going to get out of this one?
Grace – his name is Dr. Grace according to the computer, but he can’t really remember getting his doctorate at the moment, so Grace works just fine – pads through the sterile white hallways looking for… anything really.
“Hello?”
He can’t be the only one on the spaceship. Well, he clearly hadn’t been if the two bodies he’d woken up with were any indication, but surely there was someone else aboard the ship. They don’t just launch spaceships with three people… right?
“I can’t- I can’t be the only one,” Grace mutters to himself, more out of desperation and rising hysteria than true confidence.
But the more he explores, the more he finds that to be the case.
“This is fine, it’s fine, I- I’m gonna find someone soon,” Grace mutters, climbing up to the next hatch.
The room is full of blank video screens, though they turn on as he enters. He surrounded on all sides now by an ocean, and he jerks back. He’s a little embarrassed to have done so as he realizes it’s just a video.
“Uh, hello- ack!”
Grace yelps and clutches his leg as he feels a sudden stab of pain in it. The sensation fades a second later. “What was-?”
There’s a sharp sting against his palms
“Soulmate!” Grace straightens and looks around wildly. “I-I have a soulmate! Are they… did I know them?” His mind remains frustratingly blank. He can’t even conjure up a face. “Ugh!”
Grace lets out a long breath. “Okay. That’s… okay. Let’s see if there’s anywhere else to look.” He climbs back down the hatch to busy himself searching the rest of the ship.
Simon has a purpose now. He’s going this mission as fast as he can so he can get back to the surface and try and find his soulmate. It’s not the most well-thought out idea, he is still a criminal in the eyes of the general public after all, but its still his only lifeline as he pushes himself to get through the nerve-wracking journey he’s been forced on.
With every incidental injury he feels from the other side of the soulmate bond, he only drives himself harder. He’s going to live. He’s going to make it out of here. Even as the ocean around him seems to do everything in its power to keep it from happening.
There’s something down here
He can feel it. He’s heard it through the speaker box. It shines like a star, some false lure left down here for desperate sailors looking for a safe port, but Simon knows down in his core that there’s no safety to be found in whatever being is trying to draw him closer. He does his best to run from it, screams obscenities at it, and pushes free from whatever grip it tries to have on his mind.
I’m going to live
The submarine jostles and shudders from the weight of the ocean and the pressure of whatever it is giving chase. He just has two more locations to go to, then he’ll be pulled out. They promised him. He’s going to be free.
I’m going to live
The Iron Lung lurches as something impossibly large smashes against the side of it. Simon is roughly thrown into the wall, but he forces himself back to the console. He pushes the submarine as fast as it will go, trying to keep out of reach of whatever is pursuing him. In the back of his mind something whispers that it’s impossible, that this was always how things were going to end, but he angrily shoves that voice away.
I’m going to live
He hast to live, he has to meet them, he has to-
“Grace!”
Grace cries out as the Hail Mary lurches violently, dragged into a death spiral by the puncture in the fuel tanks. He tries to stabilize the ship, but there’s another jolt and-
He slams into the console. His breath rattles in his chest as his lungs try to inflate, to no avail with how tightly he’s wedged between his chair and the unforgiving metal edges.
Hull breach. Hull breach. Hull breach.
Grace gasps, eyes fluttering open. His chest feels like it’s caving in, and he’s pretty sure he’s cracked if not broken a couple ribs in the impact. The screen beneath his head is shattered, glitching wildly and making spots dance across his vision. Distantly he can hear Rocky banging against the side of his xenonite tunnels.
He needs to… he needs to jettison the other fuel tank, but it’s getting so hard to stay awake as the ship spins impossibly fast-
The Iron Lung shudders as the creature slams into the side once more. It’s a miracle it hasn’t just split open like a rusty tin can yet, spilling him out to be crushed or eaten or any other horrible fate that might await him at the bottom of this godforsaken ocean. He curses as he looks around and sees the water rising, leaking through the gaps in the hull until its swirling around his ankles. He hurries to strap the black box to the life preserver. The camera flashes, illuminating the red-
Blood trickles down the screen under Grace’s head. The overwhelming centrifugal force is making it hard for him to stay conscious, and half-remembered dreams or memories or whatever they are are flickering through his head, blurring with reality. He reaches out for the switch to jettison the last fuel tank. If he can do that, he just might be able to stop their death spiral.
Rocky is yelling something, but the computer they once used to communicate has smashed against the floor. Grace is pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to understand what the other is saying anyway. Everything sounds so far away, like he’s underwater trying to make out the other’s words… music… it’s so hard to hear. It’s so hard to keep his eyes open. He reaches out his hand-
He cries out he pull his hand free from the pipes, only for the other one to become stuck fast to the metal. He tries as hard as he can to pull it free. Pain explodes through his body as he feels the muscles tearing and bone cracking until he can-
Someone is dragging him back by his arm. The ship is… is it still spinning? Grace can’t tell. His left arm hurts, hurts, hurts, but he can’t even open his mouth to complain. All he can taste is copper. There’s smoke. The lights are flickering over his head. His whole body feels like it’s about to split apart at the seams.
In front of him there’s a life preserver. No, a control panel. No-
He looks up to the porthole and sees an eye, big enough to eclipse him. It blinks and suddenly there’s stars and a hand reaching out to him. There’s a voice, not from the speaker box this time.
I want you to live.
He can see the other as easily as they can see him. It’s not terrifying in the way the light is. The bloody water has risen to his waist now. It won’t be long until the submarine is flooded.
‘I want to live too,’ he says, even though he knows there’s no way out for him. This is the end of his road. He hopes the life preserver makes it to the surface. He hopes for once in his life he’s done enough. He hopes-
I always wanted to take your hand, you know
And he’d wanted that too. For every bruise, every cut, every flash of pain he’d felt over the course of his life, he’d also hoped that one day he could reach the other end of the bond and meet the person he was supposed to be able to share everything with, pain or otherwise.
Well, he still has one good hand.
He reaches up. ’My name is Simon,’ he says, unsure if that message will reach the other side but hoping desperately that it does. ‘I wish I could have-‘
Grace wakes up with a gasp. After a hectic few minutes of disorientation, he manages to get his bearings once more. He feels numb, though he’s not sure if that’s from the shock of everything his body’s gone through or the sedatives or-
They’re gone
The realization is severe enough to bring Grace up short. A guttural sob wrenches free from his chest. His hand involuntarily moves toward his heart, to the gaping void he can feel opening under his ribcage, and he feels something dig into his palm. He looks down and sees-
“Hey, Rocky. I’ve been keeping watch for about a week now. I hope you wake up soon. There’s… someone I really want you to meet.”
Grace relaxes on the shores of his bio-dome, listening to the waves as he watches the tide ebb and flow in front of him. He leans back against the trunk of the tree behind him, enjoying the shade the leaves provide even though there’s hardly any sunlight in the first place for them to block.
“Enjoying day off, question?” Rocky asks as he ambles over to Grace. He settles in against Grace’s side, also leaning against the tree.
“Yeah, it’s nice,” Grace says. “Needed it before I give the kids their mid-term exams.” He smiles a bit thinking about all the low-toned groans his class had made the day before when he’d reminded them of it.
“Will do fine,” Rocky assures him.
“Yeah, I think so to.”
Rocky tilts his body inquisitively. “How is Simon, question?”
Grace looks up and watches the branches wave in the breeze above him. He presses a hand to the bark, and the wood bites into his palm. “I think he’s doing well.”