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"You look a mess."
"Why don't you?" the shivering woman bit back.
Eva Stratt walked out on the ice floe to the woman soaked in blood. Maybe an attack from some animal? She wasn't sure, but the scarred woman had the nerve to swear at her when she was brought in by net. Something about not trusting her. After everything, Stratt refused to let anyone else die at her hands. Even if they hated her for it.
She had gained a nickname, always said through a snarl or a sneer. Judge, Jury and Executioner. Said by those who thought she held too much power in her hands, even though it had far left her authority by now. The papers had called her Earth's first planet-wide dictator. Some looked at her with awe and respect, and others cursed her until their death via starvation. Earth was cold, now. Eva was cold to match.
The girl, Ava, her crew had informed her, was experiencing a delusional break from reality. She wouldn't stop yelling about submarines and a blood ocean. She had no clue where she was or how she got here, and refused to let anyone touch her. She asked about space stations that didn't exist and a prisoner nobody knew. Everyone cleared the way for Eva when she started sneering about the prisoner that escaped her sight. What a mistake it was, to pretend prison worked in a place like this. Stratt kneeled down and passed over a thermal blanket to Ava.
"Stop barking about the law. You're at sea, the only law and order here is me. Now clean up, stop tracking blood all over my ship. Go take a hot shower. You smell."
"Where am I?!" Ava yelled, voice croaking.
"I just told you. You're in the North Atlantic. You can choose to continue not to listen to me, or you can clean up and we can discuss your future."
"You can't keep me here!" she snarls, before looking around and realizing that yes, Eva can.
"Go shower. I'll prepare a change of clothes." Eva says, feeling like a mother to a particularly unruly child.
"How do you have enough water for a shower?" Ava asks, and Stratt chuckles.
"I know how to manage my resources." she replies, and seeing as Ava has not complied with her, hoists her up by the back of her clothes. "Come now, don't stain my deck."
The shower is awkward. She hears sobbing over the running water, and Eva wonders just what city-state she had been abandoned by. Eva's clothes are a bit too big on Ava, and the green sweater makes paw shapes around Ava's hands. Unbraided, Ava's wet hair has bits of sandy blonde, and the soft picture in front of her pulls at a familiar hole in Eva's heart.
"What's the point of all this?" Ava asks, sitting with Stratt as the boat sails on.
"We wait for the sun to warm up again. The beetles have been studied and the Taumoeba have been released. Now, it's just… waiting."
"It's so bright out. Are we on a planet?" Ava asks.
"What other option is there?" Eva replies, knowing colonization efforts on Mars won't be for another twenty to fifty years.
"The stars- the planets, they're gone. And yet here I sit under what is obviously a sun. I think I'm dreaming." Ava says, turning to Stratt.
"It feels like that, doesn't it?" Eva muses. "Earth is saved. I thought we were all going to die here. I had made peace with it."
"Earth?" Ava seems shocked. "Like… the Earth? The planet humanity originated from?"
"Are you under the impression that Earth is somehow uninhabitable and the planet you are currently on is… not Earth?" Some of the pieces were fitting together, but not in a way she liked.
"You speak like the Quiet Rapture never happened." Ava's voice is trembling, and she wipes away her tears. "This is Earth?"
"Quiet Rapture?" Eva asked. "Yes, this is Earth. Wherever you came from, this is Earth, and humanity will live here for much longer still. Project Hail Mary… was a success." She let out a dark laugh. "You must be the last person to know."
"I don't know how I got here. Earth disappeared… years ago. I live on a space station- or I used to, anyways. Then it was the blood ocean, until we found a solution to the Rapture."
"Did the Rapture- did the stars go out? Did the planet get cold and kill all life?" Stratt imagined her worst possible future, the thing that kept her up at night, the thing that gave her gray hairs at an unprecedented rate.
The very thing she created Project Hail Mary to avoid.
And here was Ava, speaking of the worst future like her past. It couldn't be true. The worst future had been avoided, it worked.
So why was there a remnant of evidence from the other possibility?
"I don't know. It happened before I was born." Ava said.
"That's… impossible." Stratt rubbed her temples and took in the features of the woman younger than her. "You would have been born during the discovery of the Petrova line."
"Well, I wasn't. I was born on a space station and took a job with the COI so I didn't die." Ava seemed a little irritated.
"That's not- Ava, I have supervised every manned mission since the discovery of the Petrova line. I am Eva Stratt, director of the Petrova Taskforce and Project Hail Mary. I am the reason you are alive. I would know you if you so much as took a single space walk."
Ava sighed, and hugged herself, shivering. Stratt took her coat off and laid it over the girl. She made a sound like a disturbed cat, and glared at Stratt. It was then Stratt noticed her blind eye, with a scar over it. Probably from a particularly violent city-state, she concluded.
"One of us is wrong." Ava said, after a beat of silence. "Given that I can see the sun in the sky, and the horizon, it must be me. I… you fixed the Quiet Rapture? You, and the Petrova taskforce?"
Stratt felt a lurch in her stomach. "It was… a team effort. Parts of that team we will never be able to thank properly. Many gave their lives for the effort." Perhaps the most crucial life, she had sent to his doom herself. That, and the alien rock from the video logs. Should they ever come to Earth, she refuses to be the one in charge of dealing with them. They seemed bossy.
"But you were the captain." Ava insisted, something in her expression changing.
"And I served what would have been a life sentence in prison." The resentment in her voice seeps through, and she crosses her arms.
"Why? You saved us. Why would they be so cruel? You weren't with Eden, were you?" There's a hostile edge to Ava's tone, and Stratt rolls her eyes and repeats herself again.
"I am the director of the Petrova Taskforce. I don't know how many more times I have to say that before you remember it."
"You try adjusting to an entirely new reality after your death." Ava replies coldly.
"Death?" Now she feels stupid.
"Yeah. I died trying to find the solution for the Quiet Rapture, but I guess since that means nothing, I got spat back up here." Ava's fingers grip her legs, curling her nails in with anger.
"Pardon my insensitivity, but is it normal to survive death where you're from?" Eva asked curtly.
"No. Is it normal here?" Ava sniped back.
"It is not, that is why I asked. Stop catching an attitude." Eva wished she smoked. This was getting exhausting.
"Oh, fuck off, you old bat."
"And leave you to die again in the freezing water?"
"You have no idea what I've been through-" Ava snarled, making a motion to get up before Stratt grabbed her wrist.
"Sit. Down." She commanded. "Why don't you enlighten me, since you want to bring it up."
Ava glanced up and down at Stratt's imposing form. "I'm not feeling particularly friendly, Captain."
"I don't need you to be friendly. I need you to cooperate."
"I'm not feeling obedient either." Ava snapped back.
"You are out of options, Ava." Stratt said, tone level. "It sounds like I am all you have left. I suggest you do what's best for you."
Ava yanked her arm out of Stratt's grasp and took in a shaky, heaving breath, before vomiting over the side of the ship. Eva thinks she sees blood in the bile.
Always running from her and their fate. What was it with her and herding unwilling sheep to the slaughter? She shook her head. The only way Ava would get hurt is if she hurt herself- and Eva didn't trust her to stay away from it. She walked over to the side of the ship where she realized Ava had started sobbing. Okay. Sure. This might as well happen.
She had to console many grieving families as the bringer of bad news. There wasn't anything that reacted inside her anymore. Nothing hurt as bad as the day where she put him down.
Nobody on the ship was a trained psychologist, so Eva thinks that once again, this falls to her. Tentatively, she reaches out a hand to pat Ava on the back, and she jerks before falling into sobs again. They stay like this for a few minutes before Eva feels awkward just standing there, and reaches her arm around the younger girl instead.
Shockingly, Ava turns around from the rail of the ship and buries her face into Eva's chest.
She must be grieving, Stratt thought. If she was all Ava had left… everything from her past was gone. It was much like death, in that way. Eva held in her arms a ghost from a future never realized. She was warmer now, warmer than the bitter cold she had come from. Eva was her new life, everything she had, and Ava clung to her like a child.
She wasn't sure how much time passed, as she watched the sun set while Ava cried in her arms, but she knew they moved to a chair eventually. Clingy, Ava was. Perhaps she was just trying to avoid the cold sprays of water that splashed against her ship. Stratt felt wet patches on her shirt from where Ava had cried. Nobody from her crew had disturbed her for quite some time, but they usually didn't feel brave enough to disturb her anyways.
"Ava, my arm is falling asleep. We're moving off the deck of the ship now." Stratt informed, taking Ava up with her as she stood.
"Okay." Ava sniffled, clinging to her arm.
"… You can let go now."
"You're all I have, remember?" Ava said.
"I suppose so." Stratt stood in the silence before ushering them inside, warming some soup for her and the girl, both left alone to their devices by the crew. Seriously, where did they go? Were they that scared of her, or was it the new passenger making them wary?
Ava much reminded her of a street cat, feral and wounded. Used to hunting for herself. There was a sense of loyalty Stratt felt deep underneath the surface, loyalty that soothed something inside her.
"Ava, do you have experience in positions of command?" Stratt asked, seeing the girl wolf down her soup.
"Yes, ma'am." She had already adapted to Stratt's command. Something about that felt right.
"My last second-in-command is deceased. Gave his life for the mission. God must have sent me you in exchange. A life for a life. I feel a sense of responsibility for you. Would you like to be my second in command?" She assumed someone with nowhere else to go and nobody else to turn to would jump at the chance for a purpose, even if this was one of Stratt's famous non-choice choices.
"… We just met, are you sure? All of what I know is apparently useless." Her spoon clanked against the can.
"I'm sure. I see something special in you. I haven't seen it in a long, long time. Getting Earth back up and running will cause lots of very quick growth. I need someone capable of holding the line and bringing order to chaos. We will bring peace through structure, just as we brought salvation." Stratt stood up and walked over to Ava, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Will you do it for me?"
She smiled. For the first time, Ava smiled, and leaned into Stratt's touch. "I would love to, Captain."