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Eva Stratt doesn't have friends. Certainly not any more, but then again, she never had many friends to start with; no one gets too close when you're a time bomb counting down, tick, tick, tick.
The countdown starts when she gets top marks in secondary school and in universitäten, then when she gets found by all the right people at the right time in the right places, carefully positioned just so, and then she gets catapulted into power by all those right people, and then she realizes all too late that to have all the power means that the yoke of blame and all the pointing fingers come right along with it. Eva can't say that she didn't know great power meant great responsibility, but she had always conceived of herself as more of a puppeteer than a head of state, pulling strings over being pulled, and she decidedly doesn't like this position, but she can do it.
She can do it. She must do it.
Tick, tick, tick.
Eva wasn't a lamb to the slaughter, she knew well that she was beneath the inevitable blade of a guillotine, but she didn't think she'd be a very good lamb. They had chosen her because she was a wolf, because she could do it, but even wolves could be eradicated once they served their purpose. She had a purpose, she had no qualms, and she had nothing but a job to do.
In secondary school, Eva had done the hurdles for the track team. It was simple, it was clean; she ran, and she jumped, and she succeeded, or she didn't. Her best was enough, or it wasn't. She remembered how the world had narrowed to doing, not trying but doing, had narrowed to the path in front of her with a focus on the end.
When the end is lawful, the means are also lawful. Machiavelli usually wasn't to her taste, but she could choke down his philosophy and even enact it, and she didn't have to like it, but she could do it. Wolves didn't think about the sheep they were killing, wolves didn't think about the farmers who would be left with empty wallets and hurting for a living because of their actions, wolves only thought about the end and bared their bloody teeth to get there.
When wolf packs got too big, too powerful, too effective, then they were shot and killed. You couldn't leave predators going around unchecked, after all, not forever.
Just for now.
Tick, tick, tick.
In another life, Eva Stratt would probably work for the UN. Humanitarian affairs, if she had her choice pick, but she couldn't picture exactly what she would be doing-
No.
No, it wasn't that she couldn't picture it, but Eva could not let herself picture it. The fantasy of a life other than this one was not safe in her line of duty, and it was not efficient, it was not effective. And this Eva Stratt could be nothing but effective. Extraneous thoughts, like thinking about what she could be doing if the sun was not being devoured and all life was not on the brink of collapse, were not worth the heartache.
Eva woke up. She brushed her teeth and flossed and used mouthwash, leaving her mouth acidicly minty, and she started her day. She ate, and she dressed, and she worked, because her body was not to be polished or comforted, was not couched in anything the practical and ever-appropriate. Eva didn't have time for anything more than pure maintance, but she did take the time for that exacting maintance. If she didn't, she would break down, her body would rust and fall over, would fall apart, and the world would not have that for their puppet. So Eva ate, and she ate enough, and she ate a balanced meal without savoring a single bite, and she got back to work. Getting to sit down for a meal felt like a luxury nowadays because there was always something to do, always something to sign off on or order or read, and Eva did not have the time for luxury.
Even Grace seemed to keep countless individual packets of sour candy on him for easy consumption. The leftover wrappers were in garbages all over the facility, and when her thoughts were as close to idle as they could come, she wondered how many cavities he had. Grace had to have cavities, there was no doubt in her mind, little holes of rot that had burrowed into his teeth and weakened what was previously strong, but he kept eating candy, and it wasn't her place to stop him.
Her place was to push him. If he needed to fill himself with that rot in order to accept her pushing, so be it. If he didn't let her push, if she didn't push at all, then they would all be dead anyways, and then the decay in his teeth wouldn't even matter.
Eva had never had a cavity. Not one, not once in her life. She didn't eat enough sugar for that, and even if she did, her immaculate oral health routine would ameliorate that choice.
Then again, Eva didn't need to imagine what having a cavity felt like. She didn't need to imagine having something previously strong and hale be hollowed out and filled with a weakening decomposition that spread throughout the rest of her, she didn't need to imagine it for a moment; she knew.
She knew.
Tick, tick, tick.
Sometimes, Grace would speak with the sour sugar crystals from his candy still on his lips, the miniscule flakes lingering at the corners of his mouth. Sometimes, Eva would watch the journey of a crystal fall from just above his upper lip on its journey down, and the back of her throat would run with saliva as her own mouth dried.
Sugar dissolved in water, she reminded herself in those moments when her gaze lingered for too long. It wouldn't last, it couldn't. Sugar was impermanent, and dangerous, and created prime conditions for rotting. Eva needed to outlast everything and everyone, even the soft, sugar-crusted lips of a scientist. Especially that.
Whenever she went grocery shopping and saw those shining packs of candy, all neatly packaged in the grocery store, something in her all but begged. She wasn't a woman for waiting, for asking please, for having someone else deign to give her what she wanted. She was Eva Stratt; she took it.
But she was also Eva Stratt, the world's whipping boy; she didn't beg. That wasn't the job.
Tick, tick, tick.
In another life, she could be Eva, and he could be Ryland. And Eva could see sugar-crusted lips and think the thoughts she wanted to, without abandon, could even act on them if she so wished.
But here, in this life, there is a job to do, and there is a life, in theory, afterwards for them both, but Eva knows that there is no way the Hail Mary goes off without some sort of hitch. With a hitch comes the pointing of fingers, comes the assignment of blame, and she knows how that ends. She is the sacrificial wolf, even with her head bowed and ever-accepting of her fate, but she won't drag someone else into the end with her. In this time, in this life, he can never be more than Grace; she must never be less than Eva Stratt.
Perhaps they will orbit each other, afterward. Perhaps, when the Hail Mary finally sends its data, he will continue to work parallel with her, and their respective gravities will cooperate once more.
Tick, tick, tick.
The astrophage explosion creates ruination beyond comprehension. Ears still ringing, Eva knows what must be done before the thought is solidified, and she knows who must pay the price.
She wouldn't ask anything of anyone that she wasn't willing to give herself. That was why it was easy to order Yao and Ilyukhina and DuBois and Shapiro onto the Hail Mary. If she could, she would, but that wasn't her role to play. Her life has been spoken for since her ascension to power; her life was not the one she would need to give now.
Personal sacrifice was easy; Eva Stratt had cut everything and everyone extraneous to her life from it so that when she was done, there would be the least lost. There was nothing more she could give.
But the world could still take.
Tick, tick, tick.
Even teeth brimming with tiny holes could still bite. Punctured incisors could still shred, pored-filled molars could still masticate, the emaciated jaw would still chew and chomp down until there was nothing left on the tongue and everything was in the belly, digesting away. Eventually, with time, the cavities would grow, and the ability to eat would be impacted, but they didn't have time for that end to reach them first, none of them did, neither of them did. They didn't have to worry about the teeth rotting out of their gums when they didn't have time.
Eva could eat nothing but sugar for the rest of her life, and it wouldn't be enough, it wouldn't diminish her, it wouldn't impair her to an ineffective state until it was already too late, until she had already done what needed to be done.
With enough time, perhaps things would have been different. If Grace had more seconds, more minutes, more hours, if Eva had more time, things would have been different.
But they don't have time. They never did.
Tick, tick, tick-