Work Text:
"Doctor Grace," Yáo said for the third time in fifteen minutes, "do you need help?"
"No," Ryland denied lamely, pacing around the lab.
They weren't far out from Tau Ceti now; only about an hour, according to Mary. There was no difference in the gravity that Ryland had been able to trace yet—but he was positive there would be once they began to truly decelerate. It was almost exciting, if it wasn't also so, so terrifying. He hadn't thought about it much as of yet—he was too busy trying to remember literally anything about himself to do that, and it was likely a good thing that it was taking up so much of his time.
Definitely a good thing.
Yáo didn't leave, standing still and observing Ryland for a few moments. It made Ryland's skin itch, but he didn't say anything—however Yáo wanted to deal with him, it was… warranted. Considering.
Considering that he hadn't even remembered his own name when he woke up.
The memories were trickling in, slowly and disarranged. He remembered the astrophage. His students, his classroom. The Petrova Line. All together, it made his hands tremble with something spine-chilling and primal.
But he was remembering, bit by bit. Neither Yáo or Ilyukhina had been able to tell him why he was the only one who wasn't able to remember anything, and obviously he didn't actually recall, which resulted in an uncertain fugue around the entire ship; Ryland could feel them watching him over the last few days, monitoring his behavior and just generally trying to pretend that he wasn't a huge problem.
But he was, and he is. A huge fudging problem.
At least his ability to use knowledge from his field of expertise was the most intuitive up until this point, an insane relief for everyone. Ryland couldn't imagine if he had woken up both forgetful and dumb. Maybe forgetful was an offset of dumb, though… in which case he was confused, and dumb, and trying to pretend he was doing something other than wearing a hole in the floor.
He turned on his heel and continued chewing on the inside of his face. Maybe one day he'd gnaw right through it.
"Doctor Grace."
"Hm?" Ryland looked up. His glasses were sliding down his nose. He couldn't stop munching on his nails.
"You are—" Yáo made a circular spinning motion in the air with one pointed finger. "—going crazy."
Ryland wanted to be offended—it would be far more dignified of him to pretend that Yáo was wrong—but he wasn't wrong. He hadn't been yet, and Ryland couldn't imagine him doing so ever; maybe a sense of Yáo leftover from them knowing each other before. Ryland wished he didn't have to go off of his intuition and a vague sense of 'ah yes, this feels right' for all of that. When he tried to reach for the memories, all he came away with was empty air.
"I—yeah, a little," Ryland agreed. "Sorry. Am I bothering you?"
"No." Yáo watched Ryland for another moment. "But it will be better if you are relaxed when the acceleration decreases. And you are not."
Right. Easier said than done. "Uh. Okay. Sorry." He forced himself to stop walking for a second, immediately felt as though his entire being was going to vibrate out of his body and never return, and maneuvered himself onto the ground instead. His knee bounced. He was about to say something when Yáo continued.
"Do you remember how to study a sample? For anything we may need to do once we are stopped?"
Ryland's head snapped up. "Yes. Yes, I know how to study a sample!"
He didn't mean to get upset—and honestly, he barely did, more just sounded annoyed—but he was getting tired of being treated like a bomb that might go off at any second just because he didn't know what the heck was going on. It wasn't his fault. It wasn't—and he was working on it. He was remembering more and more every single day, and at this rate, he might even start remembering more specifics about the mission itself soon! There wasn't much he was sure of right now, the pinnacle of that being why he was there in the first place, but one thing he was incredibly sure he knew how to do was study a sample under a gosh-dang microscope. It was practically all he was useful for.
"My apologies," Yáo said, putting out a hand. "I didn't mean to—"
"I know," Ryland cut him off, shaking his head to clear away the Bad Feelings. "I'm sorry. Yes, I remember how to do all of that. Even if I didn't, I think that I'd be able to figure it out; all of that stuff has been appearing back in my brain faster than anything else—with more ease, for some reason, probably because it's more natural or… something. I doubt that it will be any type of problem. For you or Ilyukhina."
Yáo nodded, watching Ryland closely. "Good." He paused, and Ryland made an obligatory attempt not to look visibly uncomfortable. He did not think that it worked. "Would you like to be alone?"
Ryland didn't know what Yáo wanted, or what his goal was. He knew he trusted Yáo, deeply and intrinsically in his soul, in the places he hadn't quite reached or been able to access yet. That calmed him down, just a little bit.
"I guess I don't really mind either way," he admitted. "… If I say yes, will Ilyukhina come down here anyway?"
Yáo shrugged lazily, a smile on his face. "I do not know. You would have to ask her."
"Fair enough."
Ryland liked Yáo. And Ilyukhina. He liked both of them—they had been nothing but kind to him when he woke up, and have been agonizingly patient, considering the stakes. After discussion (and a lot of very obvious stress from all parties involved) Yáo had said that the best course of action was to give Ryland the space to remember things on his own. As much as they could. But they were on a time crunch, a threat looming over their heads, and there was only so much time.
The least Ryland could do was focus on scientific processes before trying to remember personal things like whether or not he liked ice cream, or if he had a good relationship with his parents.
Not that any of that was happening now—either scientific or personal. Instead, he was vibrating with nerves as they inched closer and closer to engine cutoff, pretending to be thinking and remembering, but instead just spiraling.
Yáo was right, he was going crazy.
"This—" He stopped. This was so stupid, but he couldn't help it. He was already sitting on the floor like a child, why not ask for reassurance like one? "This will be fine, right?"
Yáo tilted his head. "Which part?"
"0g," Ryland clarified, feeling that should have been obvious, but maybe he was just ornery today. He'd been feeling irritable. So far, no one had said anything—or maybe they just didn't notice. "I know it's standard for astronauts, but I'm not…"
He wasn't an astronaut. Except, yes, he was, by definition, an astronaut. He had been sent on the mission, which made him an astronaut, despite the fact that he was a middle school science teacher who managed to piss off everyone in his field on the regular until he decided, screw them, and left. Or was fired. Same difference.
"Yes," Yáo smiled, "it will be fine. Very good. You will not enjoy it, but you will get used to it after some time."
Okay. Okay, that… his confidence helped. Ryland took a deep breath, nodding and trying to let it make him feel better, ease the ache. "Okay."
He held onto that hard over the next hour. It tided him over until he began to take notice of the gravity in the ship changing, whereupon he instantly felt an electric jolt of panic so intense he thought it might knock him out. He put his head between his knees, took some deep breaths, and joined the others once he felt marginally better.
The cockpit was amazing. If it didn't scare Ryland so much, he was sure he would have started pressing random buttons or asking Yáo to explain everything to him, to his best understanding. He didn't want to ever have to fly the ship, but the science fiction nerd in him had to admit that it was at least somewhat cool, as well as horrifying that this was his reality.
Ilyukhina grinned at him when he entered—perfect timing, as Mary's formal voice announced 'one minute until engine cutoff.'
Yep, there was the panic.
Ryland gripped the wall. “What do—what do we do? What are we supposed to be doing?” His voice didn’t quite teeter into panic, but it was a very near ‘almost’. His voice cracked slightly in the middle.
That didn’t bode well for him; Ryland was the least prepared of any of them, and he knew it full well. He hated rollercoasters. And water slides. The stomach-drop feeling terrified the crap out of him, and overall, it just felt absolutely awful. He shivered, white-knuckling where he was hanging onto the wall and feeling increasingly certain that he wasn’t going to be able to do this without completely flying off the handle and creating a major problem.
“Not much,” Ilyukhina told him, smiling, but her eyes were sweeping him up and down. “Nothing to do. Hold onto something and get ready for a ride.”
“I don’t think I got training,” Ryland warbled, realizing.
The other two paused. It did not instill him with confidence.
“No,” Yáo agreed, “no time for that, you volunteered at the last minute. Nothing we can do about it now. It will be scary, but you will get used to it.”
Ryland nodded, trying to breathe naturally. Air kept catching in his throat. “Okay.”
“It’s fun!” Ilyukhina promised. “Once your body stops thinking that you’re falling and completely shitting your pants.”
Ryland swallowed. “Funny.”
“Come on.”
“I’ll be okay, I’ll laugh about it later if I survive.”
Ilyukhina snorted as Yáo leaned over and looked at the screens.
'Twenty seconds.'
“Oh gosh. Oh gosh I can’t—”
“You will be okay,” Yáo assured, tone severe, “just hold onto something and breathe. You will not want to move at first, but Ilyukhina is right, you will get used to it! Feels like falling. It is much better than an elevator!”
Ryland had no idea what that meant. He took a deep breath. He could do it, and he was going to. It would be fine. It had to be.
‘Fifteen seconds.’
“It's okay,” he mumbled under his breath. “You’ll be okay. It’s going to feel like you’re falling. You aren’t. You are not falling.”
No one told him to stop the demented muttering, and he was grateful for it. He was doing what he could; it definitely wasn’t enough. His heart was still pounding painfully in his chest, the jackhammer pace making him feel lightheaded. He didn’t know what else to do other than stand there and stare at the floor, pretending he wasn't appalled at the mere idea.
‘Ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven—’
The countdown did not make it better in the slightest; in fact, it made things much worse in every single way imaginable. He closed his eyes.
‘Three—’
“Get ready,” Ilyukhina said helpfully.
‘Two. One.’
For all Ryland had been expecting, it was worse. It was much, much worse. His stomach dropped first, a wrenching, sick feeling that stole the air from his lungs, so hard he let out an involuntary gasp as he felt himself falling through empty air.
He did not handle it well. The first deranged, bad horror movie scream tore its way from his throat and echoed off the walls just as both Ilyukhina and Yáo were beginning to talk to him, their voices drowned out by the shrieking. His heart was in his throat.
'You are now orbiting Tau Ceti,' Mary supplied helpfully.
“Noooooo, no–!” he wailed, flailing. He lost his grip on the wall, freaked out harder as his entire chest clenched in terror, and he kicked out. His foot hit the wall, sending him spinning, curled in the fetal position.
“I AM NOT FALLING!” he shouted over the continued sound of his crew mates’ unintelligible cacophony of advice. “THIS IS JUST SPACE!”
His stomach flipped. It churned painfully, his head swimming from the screaming as he continued to half-wail half-hyperventilate, until he felt a hand grab him by the back of the jumpsuit and pull him backwards, sending his already upset stomach shooting into his throat. Oh God, no.
"Doctor Grace, please breathe," Yáo was saying insistently from behind him, his hand firm on the small of Ryland's back, anchoring him by his clothing—it probably would have helped, if not for the washing-machine motion in Ryland's gut.
Ilyukhina was almost at Grace's eye-level now—whatever that meant when there was no up or down, and everything was a an expanse of directionless space. Her hair floated around her face. It was almost pretty.
Ryland didn't care, because he was about to vomit.
The last terrified noise died in his throat as his mouth clamped shut, teeth cracking together in his skull. Puke in 0g was bad, for so many reasons—including the fact that there were two other people here in the same confined space with him. Drenching your crew mates in your bodily fluids probably wouldn't get you anywhere in the way of productive inter-crew relationships.
Ilyukhina must have seen it on his face, because her expression fell, immediately warping from bemused apathy to complete panic. "No!" she commanded. "No, no, no, no! Don't!"
Too late. Ryland just barely managed to pull out the collar of his jumpsuit as his nausea reached a crescendo, his stomach cramped painfully, and he heaved hard.
It was horrible. It came out his nose. The feeling of it seeping into his clothes and onto his skin made him retch a second time, then a third, and by the time he was done, there were tears running down his face and he was trembling. His belly spasmed with the contracting of his insides.
He groaned.
"Breathe," Yáo reminded him again, less steady than before. Ryland couldn't find it in himself to be annoyed, because apparently, he needed it.
He coughed as he held his shirt closed, and gave another quiet moan, squeezing his eyes shut. He still didn't feel right, everything inside him churning.
"… That was bad," Ilyukhina summarized, and Ryland nodded. He couldn't stop trembling.
"Doctor Grace," Yáo said. Then, when he got no answer, "Grace. Listen to me."
There wasn't much Ryland could do to confirm to Yáo that he was in fact listening; Yáo's voice was sharp and clear, almost too much so. Even so, Yáo apparently decided to keep talking anyway.
"You are doing well. That is a good position—stay there." He sounded slightly perturbed, but Ryland couldn't blame him for that. "You are doing well."
Ryland did not believe him at all. In fact, the exact opposite seemed to be true, since he was currently trembling and sweating with vomit down the inside of his shirt. But he wasn't in a position to argue, either, so he swallowed his tongue and pressed his chin to his clavicle.
It was miserable in so many ways, more than he could possibly count; the shame burned him. From his crew mates' reactions, he was positive that neither of them had a reaction so bad when they experience 0g for the first time. And wasn't that just great? First he couldn't remember who he was, or what he was doing there, and now he was rendered completely useless by lack of gravity. It just figured; he couldn't do anything; he was just a dang liability at this point.
They were talking around him, over his head and around his body as he floated. Ilyukhina placed a hand on his foot, either for grounding, or to ground herself as she floated around him to get a clearer view of Yáo.
"We should have seen that coming," she was saying. Eyes still shut, Ryland couldn't see her expression.
"… Probably," Yáo admitted with a sigh. He patted Ryland on the arm with his free hand. "We should have been more prepared." He squeezed Ryland's arm. "I am sorry."
Ryland made an unintelligible sound that was meant to be 'it's okay', but got lost in translation; his entire being was being pumped with fight or flight chemicals, which didn't leave much in the way of being a good conversationalist.
They stayed there for a while. Ilyukhina might have spoken, but Ryland was too busy clenching every muscle in his body and trying not to die to listen to her. Gradually, very gradually, the blind, wrenching terror gave way to something manageable. His heart still slammed in his chest, but he was breathing, shallow as it might have been.
"How are you doing?" Ilyukhina asked cautiously after a while. From Ryland's vantage point, she looked like she was floating upside down.
"O-okay, I think," he stammered. Gosh, he sounded so stupid. "I'm sorry I'm so pathetic." Ouch. That sounded worse aloud than in his head.
"We should have known better," she denied, waving a hand. "You were not prepared, we were. Our fault. Are you feeling better?"
Ryland grimaced. "I don't think my stomach is quite settled, but I'm—I'm fine. I'm okay."
"Good!" she said, patting him on the foot. He was getting patted a lot today. He made a mental vow to get them back for that… when it wasn't so comforting. "No more vomiting. Please. I am asking."
"Do you think you can uncurl?" Yáo asked before Ryland could retort.
He tried his best. It was still scary, but he managed it—which made the whole room more cramped, since he wasn't exactly a small person, but it was fine. It also shifted his clothing, which made a slow turn of queasiness swell inside him as his soiled shirt shifted against his skin.
"Gosh, I'm so, so sorry," he began, cringing at himself.
"That was very bad," Yáo agreed. "I am going to let go now."
He did. Ryland did not freak out any more than he already had been, which he considered a huge success.
"I'm sorry," he repeated. He needed them to know. "I don't think I'm ever going to live this down."
"Definitely not," Yáo agreed, a smile in his voice. "But it is okay."
The words of comfort were cut short as Ilyukhina grabbed Ryland by the pant leg, tugging him a little towards her. He startled and whipped his head around. "You have to get clean," she accused, wrinkling her nose, "or I will not work with you."