Chapter Text
It is an ordinary day in Eva Stratt's somewhat gilded bird cage. It is also her birthday. She has survived 48 years on this frustrating and beautiful world. It has been four years and two months since the launch of the Hail Mary, and three years and eleven months since her trial. The last one and a half of those years have been plagued since the prison staff have not been providing Eva with her bipolar medication.
Guilty. Life without parole. She pled guilty anyway. There was no point playing silly games. She didn't even hire a lawyer. It would have been an enormous waste of soon to be finite funds in overseas and proxy bank accounts.
She could have much worse. But the Powers that Be couldn't have their little puppet loose with humanity's final effort spent, no no no. So Eva lives a comfortable, occasionally enjoyable, completely useless life while the world eats itself alive like a disgusting, self hating mess of death. Famines. Wars. Diseases from the sea ice Eva Stratt nuked, isn't that crazy? Adverse weather leading to flooding and droughts, Eva can list more, she can.
One of her privileges is that she's allowed to watch the news. Truly, this is a privilege, to sit perched from her ivory tower of a prison watching the world crumble outside.
Eva doesn't know if she can do two decades more of this. It's going to kill her. Maybe that's the point.
It's a normal day, save the fact that it's her birthday. Everything is a normal day in the highest security luxury prison in the world. Eva huffs through her nose. They're not bad. She's just been cooking up potential escape routes and methods if the day ever happens that she gets so bored that she feels like making global news. So not yet.
Then, there's a great rush of unexplainable noise. All Eva is doing is sitting and reading on her bed (one silver lining of her situation is that she's been able to read so many books) when she hears the sound, and her head snaps up.
It’s a noise somewhere between the ripping of fabric and the tearing of flesh.
A wound has opened in the world. Eva can barely believe her eyes, but it's a cut, like someone slashed it across its belly and all its insides and guts slid out.
It's blood. Hot and red and more blood than Eva has seen in her life. The smell of it hits the back of her throat, cloying and salty. The blood pours out but it never reaches the floor, just disappears. It's there because Eva can smell it and can feel the heat radiating off of it, but she supposes it's gracious enough to not leave a mess.
Curiosity gets the better of her and she stands, eyes shining as she walks round and examines the thing that should not exist but does before her very eyes.
Grace would love this, some nasty part of Eva's mind says, and she tries to swat his ghost away like a fly, but he remains standing there out of the corner of her eye.
I'm sorry, I love you, I'm sorry, I'm sorry Ava, I… please… better than this! - a woman's voice rasps over the air. Eva startles for a moment when she hears her name, a rush of pure terror flashing through her.
Ava, be safe, be… taken care of. The voice chokes one more time, and Eva only has one moment to be glad that it was in fact not her name it was saying after all before it spews a body onto the ground in front of her and then disappears as if it was never there.
Save the woman, drenched head to toe in that blood, it never existed in the first place.
Eva isn't squeamish. Never has been. So it's with little fanfare that she kneels beside the body and gathers some of the blood onto her fingertip and sniffs it, considers licking it, and sees Carl's face in her head the first time she licked a dirt coloured bone off of the ground they found on a case together years ago.
"Sorry. Did too much archaeology when I was younger." she'd said. She can hardly imagine the look he'd give her now.
It smells like normal human blood. That frustrates Eva for some reason. So without even thinking, she licks it.
Hm. It doesn't taste any different than it smells. For one moment disappointment floods Eva, and then something shifts.
It's indescribable. It's like the world changes on its axis, and a low throbbing pain kicks into Eva's forehead. A wild rush of nostalgia hits her and she’s back, back at the beginning.
Suddenly, she's six years old again and her father is teaching her about snake venoms, their effects and their antidotes. Suddenly she's alone in a wild place with her flying falcon above her and her dog working the field, searching for birds to flush for the falcon and she's in heaven, the happiest she's ever been. Suddenly she's younger again, seventeen years old and dragged to Midnight Mass by a mother she's spent the whole day trying to avoid, clutching a rosary and praying Ave Maria, gratia plena, dominus tecum. Then she's watching her best friend run for his life as she waits to send him to his death. It is not the first time this has happened. Eva Stratt just has a way of killing people she loves.
"Get out of my head!" she snaps. Fuck, and that was just the surface. Whatever this thing is, it can't have her memories, she won't let it. Eva grabs her forehead and almost screams with agony as another wave of something too powerful for her to understand rocks her again.
Her nose starts to drip with blood as whatever it is lives there now, pushing the boundaries of her body. She closes her mind to it, locking down all thoughts except grey, grey, grey, the colour grey. But it gets one more memory, four years ago after the launch of the Hail Mary, Eva curled up on the office floor sobbing so hard she thought she might be sick. She must have been crying for about 6 hours. Her throat hurt from howling like a wounded child. And then, she'd impulsively snatched a pair of scissors and cut her hair off in chunks. She'd got it smoothed out professionally just before she went to prison, and it's almost down to her shoulders now.
It can have that memory. Eva's shoulders heave. It looks like she at least gets some time to recoup, at least.
And then, with a groan, the bloodsoaked woman sits up and coughs and coughs and coughs. Eva can't see much of her face from the way she's so totally drenched in red, inside-body red, heavy and thick and unnaturally deep. Some of it's drying, crystalising into clumps that Eva knows only too well. She'll need to wash her hair out. She'll need several showers, probably. And her clothes might be unsalvageable.
Her left eye is pale and stares at a slightly different angle to her right, which is a dark blue-grey, a stark difference to her other eye. A twisted scar that reminds Eva of wounds from a fish hook crosses over the edge of her left eye and up through her eyebrow.
She and Eva stare at each other for a few seconds like a pair of predators sizing each other up, doing the mental maths needed to find out if a fight right now is even worth it.
And then the... the something is back, and they both cry out in agony at the same time. Another spurt of blood gushes out of Eva's nose again, and she sobs. A memory flashes in front of her, but it's different this time. It's not hers, for one. Next, it's all consuming and huge, and soon Eva is gone, lost in this new memory.
Her name is Ava and she's fourteen years old. The year is 357 EIC (which Ava remembers because she wrote it at the top of her work yesterday in school).
She and her best friend in the whole world, Elli, have taken their first solo holidays. Their parents both handwaved it; they were all busy with work. So they took the shuttletrain up to one of the huge shopping space stations, Filament Station, booked a hotel room and are getting dinner in fancy clothes at a fancy restaurant.
Perhaps these should have been the best days of her life so far. But they are not. While they're eating dinner, on the huge news screen, a breaking news alert comes across the screens. It tells them that every habitable planet, moon and all the stars have gone, vanished. All that's left is the stations and the starships, and uninhabitable space objects.
And that's it. There isn't any more for them to say. The screens all shut off and the great dome of Filament Station bears witness to the nearest stars flickering out, as if proving them right.
The two of them stare up at the sky, tiny minds trying to grasp the enormity of what they just witnessed, or of what just happened to them, that their parents are, in that moment, as good as dead.
A great hubbub fills the air then. Elli seems to process exactly what has been done to her and sinks off of her chair and onto the floor, and then wails, a painful, mourning sound of pure grief and fear and rage.
Ava can't listen to her anymore, especially when there's the sounds of angry adult men approaching. They both know that is a sound to avoid in any situation, but here? She grabs Elli's wrist and pulls her up and they run and run and run until they find somewhere that locks from the inside, where they lay curled up tightly around each other, Ava shushing Elli whenever her sobs get slightly too loud.
She can't help it. She just wants to live.
Eva comes back to and crawls backwards, gasping for air. What the fuck just happened? The woman across from her is panting, good eye wide and alert.
The further they get from one another in Eva's cell, the further a tight tether seems to be pulled around her neck. She starts choking for air and they stop, stare at each other with wide eyes that are equal parts terror and confusion and suspicion.
Something about the expression on the stranger's face being a mirror of hers is enough for Eva, and she crawls closer slightly, bright orange prison jumpsuit stained with the blood from her still gushing nosebleed.
"Eva Stratt. Most people just call me Stratt, if that makes it easier." Eva's voice is scratchy from the screaming, but she reaches out, despite being on all fours, to shake the bloodstained woman's hand. I think I was just inside her head. Eva thinks. This is fine.
Slowly, the woman raises her hand and takes Eva's, doesn't shake it, just holds it.
"I'm Captain Ava O’Murphy of the C.O.I." the woman says in a rasping, salt-choked voice.
Those words mean nothing to Eva, but she does notice the C.O.I badge on Ava's stained crimson jacket. Her historian mind pings like a radar, as it did in the memory, Ava's memory, of the EIC, whatever that is. That muscle has laid dormant for a very long time. She thinks of timelines and maps and primary sources and a trickle of excitement shivers down her spine alongside the primal terror and raw confusion.
They don't get time to do much more, because then the guards break in, and they pull Ava off. She freezes for one moment, and Eva's eyes widen and she clings onto her.
Wait, she thinks. You're going to kill us! They're dragged apart, and Eva's nose gushes blood, Ava shouts with a kind of pained dog bark, and that strange force is back around Eva's throat, squeezing, squeezing. She lets out a choked scream of pain.
Oh, God, I'm going to die here. Eva thinks. A shout of pure agony leaves her throat and she can't breath through her nose through the blood gushing out and someone else is screaming, too, lots of someones, but Eva is lightheaded and tired, tired, so tired, hasn't cried in four years, undermedicated, overstressed, bored, in pain, confused. She's so many things and none of them all at once.
And then the world goes black and she doesn't know anything anymore.
Eva wakes up in handcuffs on a medical bed. The medical bay is empty aside from her and Ava, who is also in handcuffs, is fast asleep in the medical bed next to her. She's still covered in blood, but some sort of attempt has been made to clean her up, and her jacket and white jumpsuit have been removed.
With some of the blood cleared off, and despite the raised and stark white scar across her left side (or maybe because of it?) there's a kind of softness and delicacy to Ava's face. It reminds Eva so much of her old hunting dog who would curl up in her lap on the drive home from the field, with the falcon hooded and content on his perch in the back seat of the car. She stared up at Eva with eyes as adoring and sweet as can be, having spent the last hour flushing birds to their death for the falcon above her.
Maybe she just misses her dog. Maybe she's losing her mind. She's surprised it took this long, honestly.
"Eva Stratt." Eva's head snaps up and she narrows her eyes in dangerous recognition.
"You!" She barks out a laugh in sharp disgust. "Found yourself a cushy retirement job in the apocalypse, then, Saga?"
Saga Gardell is a tall, thin Swedish woman in her seventies with dark brown eyes and grey and silver hair. She's also occasionally been the monster under Eva's bed for the last three decades.
"Well, well, Stratt, what kind of trouble have you found yourself in? I always assumed you'd be under the radar once you left, but here you are."
"There was no one else who could have done what I did. Or there was, and I was the only one willing to do it." Eva hisses.
"You've been a remarkably easy inmate up until now, Stratt. Such a shame you had to ruin it, but at least you've made things interesting." Saga nods at Ava, still unconscious on her bed. "We physically cannot separate you from one another. The furthest we got without serious pain reactions from the two of you was about five metres." She grins, cold and empty. "Congratulations on your impromptu roommate, Stratt. Try to find out what you can about who she is and how she got here, won't you? If you're not going to work for me anymore, I can at least make use of the skills I invested in teaching you."
Saga stands up and walks over, rolls Ava harshly onto her front and unclips her handcuffs, then moves her back over.
"She's not the criminal here, Stratt." she laughs, and then she's gone, taking a harsh cold breeze with her.
Eva lays on her side, tries to move her wrists in a way to get comfortable. Her face itches from the nosebleeds but she can't wipe it, can't itch it. She wants a cigarette more than anything. She closes her eyes and tries to get some kind of sleep.
She dreams of Grace, of course, Grace handcuffed in a cold prison cell, Grace staring at her with hatred and fear, telling her to go to hell.
She's here, don't worry, Grace.
Eva wakes up to find Ava staring at her. They're alone, but she notices at least three different security cameras trained on them around the room.
"Ah, hello. Good evening." Eva rasps. She pushes herself upright and frowns, coughs, and frowns some more. Has Ava even had evenings since she was fourteen?
She has no idea how to bring it up. She doesn't want to give anything to Saga, who is no doubt listening in, doesn't want it recorded for all of humanity. Eva keeps a lot hidden. There are echoes of people she used to be in her memories that best remain buried.
She sits up as best as she can and smiles, her arms aching.
"Would you be a dear and give me a cigarette? Top left pocket of my jumpsuit, my lighter should be there too. You can have one if you'd like." Ava doesn't move for a moment, and Eva starts to wonder if she’s fucked it all up already, but then she stands, slightly unsteadily, and reaches up to take the box out of Eva's pocket like she told her to.
She lights it, and Eva opens her mouth and Ava places it in there for her. She inhales, and almost immediately coughs as the smoke hits the back of her dehydrated throat. The cigarette spirals down to the floor.
Ava turns around and picks the cigarette up and relights it. With one hand, she cups Eva's face; she's pinned suddenly. Eva feels her thumb brushing her lower lip and opens her mouth slightly, and Ava places the cigarette back in her mouth and lights it.
"Careful, bird." she says, rough but somehow genuine. "Don't cough this time."
Eva feels somewhat spellbound, and realises, in a thrill of terror the situation she's been left in.
She doesn't really think Saga would stop Ava if she hurt her. She's in handcuffs. Ava is shorter than her but has a kind of wiry physicality that speaks of a life fought, tooth and claw, to live.
Ava lights her own cigarette and together they lean back on Eva's bed and smoke in silence.
Eventually, Eva's had enough, and spits her cigarette out onto the floor and stamps it out.
"Still smoking? You're going to give yourself cancer, Stratt." Saga's voice calls, tauntingly, over the prison loudspeaker in the corner of the room.
"Can you FUCK OFF?" Eva snaps, the same way she shouted at a room full of arguing astronauts and scientists at her old favourite job, being head administrator at ESA in Paris, back before astrophage was discovered, with the only stakes being the slow creep of global warming.
Halcyon days.
Ava bends down to pick her abandoned cigarette up but Eva shakes her head.
"Leave it. They can clean it up." Eva stumbles slightly but walks towards the door, waiting for Ava to catch up with her. "We're heading back to our cell. I've decided I'm keeping you." Eva says, loud and pointedly, staring slightly over Ava's shoulder at the camera on the wall.
"Not like I've got much choice." Ava rasps.
Eva ignores her.
They're escorted back to Eva's cell and her handcuffs are removed.
Ava's eyes flicker around the room as if properly seeing it for the first time.
"Has to be the nicest prison I've ever been in." she rasps. Eva notes that down in the mental notebook she keeps for almost everyone in her life. Ava O’Murphy: Has been to prison before?
"I think you need a shower. Come on, I won't look." Eva stands up and catches Ava's hand in her own, and there's a sudden thrum of electricity between them, and they both shout again, and fall back into memory.
Two years. It took Ava two years until she did it. She and Elli have adapted pretty well to this new life. The Quiet Rapture, they're calling it. They've been doing odd jobs here and there for different gangs, different groups.
Some of them are as small as fifty people, willing to say yes to anyone, even two scraggly teenage girls.
Occasionally, they'd ask them to kill someone for them, for money that Ava almost couldn't refuse. Almost.
Until today. The jobs have been drying up as the groups merge and merge and merge, and suddenly Ava and Elli's life descends into warzones, running between rooms on at first Filament Station. Then one of their jobs lands them a ship, an actual ship, a shitty little thing that was probably built almost a century ago, but it lets them travel. Now they’re running errands across whatever spaceship they can find in the nothingness that is their universe now.
But fuel is expensive. And money is hard to come by.
"Don't worry, Elli." Ava says before she leaves. She is sixteen, and she's agreed to kill a man. "I'll be the one with blood on my hands." Elli is asleep, dark hair spilling out over the pillow on their ship like the endless void of starless space that they now float in unto eternity.
Ava kisses her forehead. She'll either fail, and won't come back, and Elli will die, alone in space, with no fuel and no money. Or she'll return a murderer.
She looks out of the window once supposed to show planets and stars and far off galaxies to be travelled to. If Ava thinks hard enough, she can remember the stars. It was only two years ago that they were there, had been there for every day and night of Ava's life.
Now all the window shows is emptiness. Null.
She leaves.
The job is easy. Killing is easy. Ava hates how easy it is. They'd given her the weapon - a vial of venom from some creature that no longer exists to inject into the target - and told her how to use it.
So easy a baby could do it. the leader had sneered, and narrowed his eyes at her. She'd squirmed.
The target is a high ranking member of a new gang that's appeared lately, because everyone's been so worried about Eden, who've been doing some quite scary things. It's called the Consolidation of Iron, but everyone just calls it the COI. They've been aiming to take Filament Station, where a kind of crazy civil war is going on. But the only thing all the gangs on Filament can agree on is that they don't want a single fucking thing to do with the COI.
So. Apparently Ava is the first person desperate enough to say yes.
She lands their ship at the target space station and slips through the vent that her clients told her to take at this exact time, when the target - she didn't even remember his name, just looked very hard at his photograph and hoped - would be retreating to one of the only fancy hotels left in the space stations.
Ava knows this place. She's been crawling around these vents anyway for two years scrounging and stealing anything that could get her and Elli another meal for the night. She knows what room he'll be in too, a fancy lush one with fake gold and fake chandeliers and fake fake fake, would have been cheap as shit before the Quiet Rapture, but everything here is so barren that even a gaudy old hotel room becomes a treasure.
She slips in, and he's fast asleep. He snores as Ava slides into his room on practiced feet. What she makes eye contact with across the room makes her heart stop.
Staring across the room at her with dark, wet eyes, is a dog in a cramped cage. A real dog! This man is as rich as they get!
Cats, Ava and Elli would compete with for scraps of food in the less well taken care of stations sometimes. Dogs! Ava hasn't seen a real life dog since she was thirteen.
The dog doesn't do anything, doesn't bark. Why? She thought dogs were supposed to protect their masters. Ava keeps her eyes on it, heart jackhammering in her chest as she pulls the vial out, presses the needle to the sleeping man's neck, and pushes.
The effect is almost instantaneous. He grumbles in his sleep, and begins to twitch and groan louder and louder.
Ava has to get out of here. But she wastes precious moments on the dog anyway. She runs over, and opens the door of the cage. She remained dead silent the whole time. Perhaps she hated his guts and is glad he’s dead. Perhaps Ava saved her. She doesn't know why, but somehow she sees herself in those eyes.
"Go. Be free." Ava says, and opens the room door, then runs for the vent and clambers up the wall just as the dog runs down the hotel hallway, barking and barking and barking and the man's eyes fly open and he begins to scream, blood flying out of his throat.
Ava and Elli get their fuel money.
The two of them reel back from one another, almost too far but Ava catches herself on the cabinet.
Their eyes meet again, and Ava looks oddly at her, narrowing her eyes as if to try to figure her out.
"Bathroom," Eva rasps, the dog from Ava's memory still barking down the corridors of her mind.
Ava holds her hand out, and she tentatively takes it, expecting another flash of memories, but it doesn't come.
Eva heaves a sigh of relief, and tries not to cling too hard.
Eva sits with her back to Ava on the floor as she showers. The room is full of steam. She keeps her eyes away, picks at the split ends of her hair, draws circles on the fogged up floor.
Ava showers and showers and showers. Eva looks over her shoulder at the water every now and again and it keeps running red.
There’s a silence that isn’t comfortable, but isn’t uncomfortable either. It simply hangs in the air ands makes its presence known.
Eva breaks it.
"Have you been seeing my memories?" Eva asks softly. There's no reply. "I only ask because you called me bird out there. Only my mother and father ever called me that."
"Oh, fuck. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-"
"Consider yourself forgiven." Eva says with a light laugh. "I've been seeing your memories too. I..." she tries not to think too hard about her own past. "Whatever you see in there, don't tell me." And then she stops and groans slightly, and lets her head fall onto her knees. No, that isn't fair. She has so many questions to ask Ava about her memories, about that dark and brutal world she comes from.
They fall into another few moments of silence, dead silence.
"Why is this happening, do you think?" Eva asks.
"There was... a thing. In the blood. On the moon." Ava rasps out. She sounds haunted. "It's... nothing since the Quiet Rapture has ever been normal, but the moons..." She shakes her head. "I don't know." she replies eventually.
Eva sneaks a look at the water, and it's still running red. She tries not to look at Ava, she really does, but she can't help it. Luckily Ava has her left, blind eye turned to Eva.
She's shorter than Eva is, but she's lithe and built and scars run all over her body. Some of them are similar to the almost burn-like scars on her face, and a long pale scar continues down her back. Some of them are just slices and dents, proof of someone living their life physically. There's a kind of brand on the outside of her left arm that Eva doesn't recognise. But most glaringly are the newest scars, only just scars rather than wounds. They run down Ava's spine. Each one is an angry red blot the size of a golfball. They're punctures, Eva realises. Then she sees the slight arc of them and gulps. Something enormous and terrible bit Ava.
Not trying her luck any longer, Eva looks back down to her split ends.
She hears a noise of pure frustration from Ava, and turns around to see her struggling with her hair. There's still blood dried in it, and it's not coming out.
"Could I help?" Eva asks.
There's a long pause. "Yes, please." Ava says, very quietly.
Doesn't like to ask for help, but accepts it graciously. Eva writes in her mental notebook about her.
She carefully picks up the one comb and brush that the prison will allow her, and Ava sits down and leans against the side of the bath that the shower is over.
"Why are you allowed your own bathroom?" Ava laughs as Eva starts unpicking her braid.
"Because people like me never get what they really deserve." she says. She physically feels Ava frown slightly through her hair. "And also they're making an example of me." She sighs. "It's complicated. I can... explain it to the best of my abilities, if you'll tell me something about where you came from."
"Well, first things first, where am I?" Ava asks.
"You're in France. A so called high security prison. More like high luxury." Eva rolls her eyes.
"France as in Earth?" Ava asks, incredulous.
"Yes. Ava, you're on Earth. I - God, I should have started with that, shouldn't I? The Quiet Rapture has not happened here. We are careening towards our own apocalypse, somewhat less suddenly, but yes, you are on Earth." Eva says.
There's a long period of silence as Eva begins to comb a portion of Ava's hair out, dried clumps of blood falling into the bath.
"What apocalypse?"
Eva sighs long and hard. "The astrophage calamity. A tiny space organism has begun eating the sun and almost every other star in all surrounding solar systems. Except one. If we don't stop it then an ice age so calamitous that it'll wipe out all life on Earth will occur."
"And no one's trying to stop it?"
"Oh, we are. That's why I'm in jail. I was their useful little puppet, and then their useful little whipping boy." Eva grins sadly. "A vessel for humanity's sin, and all that. We’ve done all we can. Now we wait." Prison feels, to Eva in her specific situation, less like punishment and more like a little box she has been put into for safekeeping until They decide to wheel her out for some thing or another and then put her back again.
Eva suddenly feels like she's said too much, too fast, too wrong. She blushes - she hates blushing - and digs into a particular bloodstained tangle in Ava's hair.
The two of them sit in something close to comfortable silence, Ava only gasping occasionally and breathing soft and sweet little sighs as Eva focuses on brushing her hair out.
Eventually, she sits up and brings the shower head down, washing the rest of the blood out of Ava's hair. She doesn't really care about getting splashed. She has a thousand identical orange jumpsuits, after all.
"There. That should be better, shouldn't it?" Eva says, and hands Ava the shower head as she goes back to sitting against the side of the bath.
Ava lets her dry, brush and plait her hair once they're out of the shower. It's nice to do something with her hands again, and after a while Ava is leaning into her and going soft and boneless against her body.
Eva doesn't really touch people. She will occasionally, likes sitting back to back with people, but with the exception of Carl, she hasn't really had friendships that last.
She's never really wanted to hold or be held before, but Ava's body against hers is nice. It's like she's only now noticing the absence of something she's always been wanting.
"Take the bed. I'll bother them about a new bed tomorrow." Eva laughs.
Ava looks at her. "I'll sleep on the floor."
"No." Eva smiles. "You're sleeping on the bed."
There's a stalemate. The two of them stare at each other.
It's only one night. Eva thinks.
They share the bed.
Pressed back to back, Eva can feel the rough dips and rises of Ava's scars on her skin. They rise and fall against her through the two layers of Eva's sleeping shirt and the one she loaned Ava.
She doesn't dream that night. Ava does, but she hardly shows it. Eva wakes up to go to the toilet. When she comes back, Ava's eyes are rapidly flickering beneath her eyelids and her lips are trembling.
She simply crawls back into her cot and hopes that she won't miss the warm, textured weight of Ava next to her when she gets that second bed in.