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“I wonder,” Grace says, out of nowhere.
He doesn’t finish the sentence, so Simon glances up at him, arching an eyebrow. Grace does this a lot, voicing a thought out loud without explaining the preamble, particularly when he’s trying to work out a theory and his brain moves faster than his mouth ever could.
Except he’s not working right now. In theory, at least. They’re in what Simon has only seen referenced as the don’t go crazy room, sprawled on the floor and soaking up a moment of peace and solitude – or however much solitude one can have on a spaceship with an all-hearing, all-sensing stone creature, that is. Grace does have his laptop with him, yes, but it’s set to the side, and he’s sitting up and only tapping away at it with one hand, the other absentmindedly massaging the other man’s head, currently pillowed on his lap.
Simon doesn’t mind the arrangement. He got to choose the video projection among all the Earth-supplied material on hand, and he picked a jungle trail, so from his position he’s feeling as if under a canopy of green, lustrous leaves, vines hanging from every branch and the distant fog of hot humidity – he doesn’t mind sharing the attention with some science experiment if he can remain right where he is, soft, careful fingers carding through his hair and scratching gently at his scalp.
He would still like to know what thought process is happening in Grace’s skull, though. “Wonder what?” He prods, after a few seconds of silence too many.
“Oh!” Grace shakes his head, as if he’d barely registered he was talking and had just come to. “Nothing, nothing. Just a passing thought. Don’t mind me.”
“Ryland.”
“It’s nothing, I swear! Just...may I ask you a question? You can ignore me if you don’t want to answer.”
Simon shrugs. He’s pretty sure that after baring his soul regarding the violence he endured, many times over, there’s very little that could make him uncomfortable, so he doesn’t understand the reticence. “Sure. What is it?”
“I was wondering...you were called Simon before you moved to Eden, right? They didn’t change your name over there.”
That, surprisingly, does make him frown in puzzlement. Of all the questions he could have expected, this was not one of them. “I wager I’d remember having another name before, don’t you think?”
“I know, I know.” Grace chuckles under his breath, that ever-present sliver of self-consciousness seeping through his voice. “It’s just...it’s a very biblical name. It would have been on brand, given what you told me.”
“My mother picked it. The inspiration could have still been there.”
“True.” The hand methodically caressing Simon’s head ghosts over his cheek, making the marred skin of his scars tingle. “In that case, it’d be interesting to know which Simon she meant to reference. I knew there was at least one, but I haven’t been to church since- oh, God, probably high school, so I had to look it up and there’s like, a billion of them. Simons, Simeons, the likes.”
Simon shoots a look to the side, where the laptop screen is the only glaring anomaly in the verdant surroundings he selected. Instead of the customary strings of numbers and trajectories and whatnot, there’s long paragraphs of text staring back at him, one of those compendiums of human knowledge the people who threw Grace into space deigned to share. “How many?”
“Oh, tons. Most of them just get one or two mentions, patriarchs, rabbis… I suppose what I remembered were the ones in the New Testament, the guys that everyone brings up. There’s a couple.”
“Anything worth mentioning?”
“Well, there’s St. Peter. That’s just the name Jesus gave him, he was called Simon before that. He’s the fisherman guy, Jesus’ right hand man. The one that met him at sea and reneged him when he was arrested.”
Despite everything, Simon finds himself scoffing in laughter, the bitter irony not lost to him. Of course there’s a traitor in the mix. No doubts someone up above (metaphorically speaking, obviously, given their current position) is mocking him at this very second for it. And the sea fishing part? That’s just salt on the wound. “Yeah, I bet that’s what she was going for. Anyone else?”
“Only one of relevance. Simon of Cyrene.”
There’s an odd tone to Grace’s voice as he says those words. When Simon looks back at him in confusion, he sees the scientist’s face cast in the artificial light of the computer – it carries that expression that usually precedes an epiphany in Grace’s studies, right before the enthusiastic cheering and the Eridian chirps of support. It’s a face full of wonder, and that is generally a good sign, but Simon has seen enough discoveries go haywire for a lifetime.
“What?” He asks, pushing himself up to a sitting position – he’s already mourning the hand cradling him, warm, welcome, but he can’t relax if he doesn’t get to the bottom of whatever this is. “What’d he do?”
That, at least, gets the other man to meet his gaze – his face changes almost immediately, frantically gesturing in reassurance. “Nothing bad, I promise! I- he helped Jesus carry the cross up the Calvary. I- I just thought it was fitting, is all.”
“Oh.” Simon pauses, the weight of the information settling deep in his gut, right where he tends to feel his stomach sinking when he wakes up at night and can’t remember where he is. The two sensations are not alike at all, but it’s reasonable that they would be close, he thinks, detachedly.
Hasn’t he been carrying other people’s crosses for most of his life, at this point? Straining under a burden that wasn’t his, just because he thought it was his duty, that it was the good, righteous thing to do? How many times was this expected from him, by Eden, by his family, by other survivors? Many. Too many. And that was only up until they decided it wasn’t enough, that he needed to get all the way to the Golgotha and immolate himself, never knowing if his sacrifice would be enough.
It should enrage him, this comparison. It should make him bitter, make him lash out, because he doesn’t need it – it’s just another mark bestowed upon him against his will, and it doesn’t matter if it was done consciously or not. He’s tired of being pushed and pulled on a path to some greater goal that might or might not exist. He doesn’t need destiny to be in his own fucking name.
But as the emotions flurry across his brain, his eyes are still on Ryland Grace, a man who would have every reason to be bitter, too. Who could have decided to be selfish, and lash out in kind, and refuse to share his ship and his rations with a stranger covered in blood who would have deserved to die in repentance.
Who laughs and dances with his alien friend on the way to save a planet, and holds Simon at night without shying away from the monstrous changes in his body, and tells him he has the right to live, too, just like everyone else in the universe.
Simon looks at Ryland Grace, and he understands. “I see.”
Grace’s cheeks flood with color, his fidgeting doubling in intensity as he clearly tries to amend what he thinks was a mistake. “But that doesn’t have to mean anything!” He stammers, shaking his head with another chuckle. “Shouldn’t have brought it up, sorry. It’s just a coincidence, really. I’m sure there are plenty of others reasons why your mother could have chosen-”
“Shut up, Ryland.”
He obeys, mercifully. Simon wouldn’t dare say it, on average – he loves listening to Grace talking, loves hearing the passion and the expertise in the stories of a man he already cares so much for – but if the other kept rambling, he wouldn’t be able to show he understands.
He wouldn’t be able to grab Grace’s twitchy hand and press a kiss in the center of the palm, where a different man might have been nailed to a wooden cross, tearing muscles and tendons. It feels worshipful. It feels right.
“Thank you for telling me,” he says, quiet as a whisper. Every sound carries and echoes inside Mary, and this is not the kind of thing you ought to shout aloud, anyway.
“There are worse roles to play in life, if you ask me. And if this journey is your burden to bear, I’m glad I can help you carry it, Ryland Grace.”