Chapter Text
“Oh shoot!” Grace caught Simon before he hurt himself in his fall. Okay, maybe showing the guy—who believed that all the stars disappeared—the window to the quite starry expanse of space was a bad idea.
Simon okay, question?
“Uh, maybe? I don’t know, I think he fainted.” At least, Grace hoped he’d fainted and hadn’t fallen into another coma or had a brain hemorrhage or a heart attack or
Bring back to bed, Rocky interrupted Grace’s frantic thoughts. Yeah, that was a good idea. Grace scooped an arm under Simon’s knees, lifting him into his arms.
He doubted that if the gravity was on, he’d be able to carry the, frankly, very beefy man. Sure, Grace had been pretty muscular when he’d first woken from his coma, due to the good ol’ nannybot Armando, but in the two years since they’d left Tau Ceti, he’d definitely decreased in body mass. It was mostly due to the lack of food he could afford to eat a day. Even when he exercised himself once a day, it wasn’t enough to stay super buff when his body couldn't even really keep fat stores.
‘And that’ll just get worse,’ Grace thought as he floated slowly down the hallway. By the time they get to Erid, he will probably be on the very brink of death by starvation and all the ailments that come with it. ‘With Simon…could we even make it with him?’
Grace gently set Simon down on his bed, but didn’t let go. He told himself it was because he didn’t want Simon to float away, but in actuality, Grace just wanted to observe him.
His thick black hair was tangled, but it was now clean of blood. Armando’s solution would have been to shave it off, but Grace had detangled many a matted mess in his time as a teacher (don’t ask). At the very least, he could give Simon the choice whether he wanted Grace to brush it out or just cut it off.
He was pretty in his sleep. Not that Grace was watching him sleep. Not creepily.
The scar on his face was big, covering almost the entire left half of his face. It was jagged at the edges, and some areas were deeper scarred than others. It extended down to lip and up to above his eyebrow, with a slash against his nose that wasn’t a burn scar like the rest. Grace didn’t think he was blind in his left eye (though, Grace thinks, any other human probably would’ve lost the eye too), but he remembered how startling red it was when he first saw Simon’s eyes.
Grace reached out and brushed a stray hair away from Simon’s face, before catching himself in the act. ‘Come on, Grace, don’t be a weirdo.’
Simon asleep, question? Why Grace still holding Simon, question?
Rocky had caught him too.
“Just makin’ sure he’s still breathing,” Grace answered, shaking himself out of his little trance.
Grace could just ask Rocky if Simon is breathing. Rocky can hear Simon breathing, statement.
Grace buckled the restraint around Simon’s waist, leaving the other two loose. He didn’t want Simon to completely freak out and hurt himself. Again.
“Guess I forgot about that, Rock.”
Grace dumb dumb dumb. Humans forget too fast.
He nodded, giving Simon another glance. He looked so pitiful; Armando had managed to put him in one of Grace’s white tank tops and sweatpants, and his old clothes would definitely break Mary’s astronaut washing machine. Grace was too dumb dumb dumb to understand how it worked.
The tank top left a lot of skin exposed and was not the correct size for him. His left shoulder was covered in bandages that then dotted his chest, which was very well defined and a little distracting. If Grace looked, he knew he would be able to see the weird gill-like formations on his ribs. That kind of freaked him out, to be honest. Was Simon born like that? He couldn’t be, right? Like, gills. That’s not normal for humans on Earth.
Simon’s legs were also covered in bandages, but Grace paid a lot less attention to his lower half. His legs weren’t growing fins or anything.
Knock on wood.
Grace Simon sleep. Rocky watch. Rocky demanded, ‘looking’ at Grace. Grace is tired. Grace sleep.
“I’m fine, Rocky. I’m probably going to look at the submarine’s blackbox data again.”
If Rocky could glare, he absolutely would be right now. Grace not sleep in 36 hours! Grace sleep, Rocky watch!
Grace shushed Rocky. “Don’t wake Simon up.”
Grace sleep, Rocky watch, statement. Well, at least his musical notes were a bit quieter. Grace sighed.
“I’m not tired, I don’t need to sleep yet.”
Grace fall asleep at lab table again!
“I will not!” Grace whisper-shouted, crossing his arms. It was only then that he remembered that he was still sitting on Simon’s bed, holding himself down with one of the strap ends in order to not float away. He panicked for a second as he felt his body lifting and kicked out a leg, trying to get leverage or something, Grace wasn’t sure. He ended up kicking Simon in the thigh by accident, causing him to groan in pain in his sleep.
“Sorry!” Grace whispered at Simon, tapping the spot he’d kicked lightly one, two, three times. A teacher’s magical way to heal a booboo. Or at least what he had been taught. It probably wasn’t universal.
Grace hurt Simon! Torture, question?!
Grace’s eyes got big and he scrambled to get into a mostly-upright position. “No! No, not torture, I kicked him on accident!”
Simon stirred a bit, disturbed by Grace’s sudden outburst. Rocky noticed and ‘crossed’ his front arms in front of himself. Grace bad bad bad. Grace sleep now, statement. His tone was almost threatening now, taking on a lower octave in one of the chords.
“Ugh, fine,” Grace conceded, holding up his hands. “I’ll take a nap, happy?”
Rocky is happy when Grace sleep proper amount.
Well.
Grace had left his blanket in the cockpit, where he had been sleeping for the past few days. He didn’t want to make Rocky more upset, though, so he crawled into the remaining available bed, laid down, and tightened the restraint around his waist.
“Night, Rocky.”
Sleep well, Grace.
…
Grace sleep eight hours!
Huh. It had been a while since Grace had gotten a full night’s sleep.
He’d barely woken up when Rocky pointed this fact out. He sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Keep it down, Rock. Don’t wanna wake Si–yawn–mon.”
Why, question? Grace wake up.
“Because he needs his rest,” Grace answered, stretching out his neck. It cracked a few times, and he moved on to his back.
<Good morning, Dr. Grace. Would you like breakfast?>
A small mix of taumoeba and coma slurry. Yum. “Yeah, please and thanks, Nanny.” Whatever, he’d have to learn to suck it up and eat it. After all, that was going to be his main nutritional intake for the next…2 years.
One of Armando’s arms extended, holding out a re-sealable packet filled with the exact amount of taumoeba/slurry ratio that Grace could eat twice a day, by his calculations, and manage to survive to Erid. Probably with every nutritional disease known to man.
‘Ryland Grace, space pirate. Gets scurvy from lack of citrus 10+ lightyears from Earth,’ he thought, grimacing as he took the packet. Armando returned to its place in the ceiling and the Nannybot – the system within the dormitories that controlled Armando, both named by yours truly – chirped.
<Enjoy, Dr. Grace!>
Way too happy for the situation at hand. Grace sighed and raised the built-in straw to his mouth. It tasted awful; neither the taumoeba nor the coma slurry tasted good on their own, leaving Grace with a taste that he could not describe to you other than the words ‘awful’ and ‘evil.’
Grace look disgust when eat, came Rocky’s snarky comment.
“That’s because it is disgusting, but you wouldn’t know because you don’t have to eat it.”
Okay, Grace was a little salty about having to eat it. He felt his nose scrunch at the smell of the slurry, his lips curl back at the taste. Horrendous.
“Mm, eat what?”
Both Grace and Rocky startled at the sleepy voice. ‘Shoot, we woke up Simon.’ Grace turned to look at Simon, who was on his right side, bad arm in the air, facing the two. His eyes were slowly blinking, breaking the sleep crusties from his eyelashes. Simon’s face was smushed against the thin pillow, which was a little wet under his mouth for he’d drooled a bit while unconscious.
Grace’s eyes traveled down to the tank top stretched across his chest, damp with sweat. Was Simon too warm? Was it cold sweats? Did he have a fever? Oh shoot he was looking at Simon’s chest in his tank that was too small for him and sticking to his skin and Grace was such a creep oh my god.
He forced his eyes up quickly, meeting Simon’s. Or, at least, the red eye; he had smushed the right side of his face further into the pillow, obscuring his dark eye. Grace flushed a bit.
“Uh, my breakfast. It’s a mixture of coma slurry and taumoeba and it tastes really really bad,” Grace said, holding up his packet. He took a sip of it, for good measure, and tried not to spit it out. “Mmmm, yum.”
“I don’t know what like…half of those words mean,” Simon muttered, not quite awake yet.
Grace burst out in a laugh, accidentally spewing taumoeba-slurry out his nose.
This event causes Grace to yelp, Rocky to let out a high-pitched squeal, and Simon to bolt upright with wide eyes.
“Ow ow ow,” Grace exclaimed, wiping at the crud that had come out of his nose. It hurt like a buttcheek on a stick, as his students a few years…more than a few years…back would say.
“What the fuck?” Simon was rod straight, still as a rock. Well, an Earth rock. That didn’t have 5 legs and talked back.
GRACE! Why do that, question?!
“I didn’t mean to!” Grace snapped at Rocky. “It just happened!”
HUMANS CAN SHOOT FOOD OUT OF NOSE, QUESTION?
There was so much going on, and Grace’s nose and throat burned. He blew remaining chunks of taumoebaslaw from his nose. “The throat and nose are connected. Sometimes when you exhale really hard while drinking it can force itself out the nose.”
Simon and Rocky both looked shocked and horrified. Grace felt self-conscious.
“Just…forget that happened.”
Rocky cannot forget. Remember everything.
“Pretend to forget,” Grace argued, glancing at Simon. The man looked perplexed, wary of the alien but not outwardly afraid anymore.
“How do you understand it?” Simon asked. “It doesn’t sound like words.”
Grace had already explained this to Simon, but with everything going on, he couldn’t expect the other man to remember. “Rocky speaks in music. Certain notes and chords mean certain things. Once we started to figure out similar words in both languages, I made a computer program that could translate his speech to mine. But now that we’ve been in each other’s company for a long time–”
Two years five months is not long time, statement. Very fast, Rocky interrupted.
“For humans it is a pretty long time, dude. Especially with no human interaction,” Grace fired back. “Anyway, now that we’ve been in each other’s company for two years five months, I’ve had plenty of time to memorize words in his language.”
Simon hummed in acknowledgement and Rocky mimicked the noise in three octaves. Simon glared at him.
“OH!” Grace suddenly had a thought. The other two, who were in some kind of staring contest, flinched as Grace jumped to his feet and zoomed out of the room.
He came back a minute later, carrying one of his laptops with Rocky’s translation program installed. He held it up, showing it to Simon, who had been stunned by the amount of startles he’d had in the past few minutes. “Look!”
“Is that translator computer, question?” Rocky chirped, before doing an excited little rattle of his carapace. “Simon hear Rocky now!”
Simon blinked once, twice, tilted his head left a bit, then just kinda stared at Grace and Rocky, who were both looking at him in anticipation.
“Simon okay, question?”
“I didn’t think that would be what it would sound like,” Simon finally voiced.
“Grace speak human better than Rocky, what Simon mean, question?” Rocky’s attention went to Grace, though the translations still came through. “Think my voice sound very nice.”
He shook his head. “No, I mean like I thought you’d have a lower voice. Or more harsh I guess?”
“Why would voice be more harsh? Rocky is not harsh.”
“We spent a while trying different voices,” Grace butt in. “This was the one that felt the most like Rocky, I guess.”
“Did not like scary voice.”
“Oh, yeah, the Venom one?” Grace chuckled, glancing at Simon. He wondered if the guy knew about Venom. “What about the Meryl Streep?”
“Rocky did not like that one. Too…not Rocky.”
Simon looked completely confused by the conversation at hand. But a little less nervous about Rocky when he could understand the alien, which was progress in Grace’s eyes.
“I’ll connect the translator to Mary for ya, Simon, so you can understand what Rocky is saying all the time. Should be pretty easy.” Grace paused, thinking. “Yeah, I can do that in a bit. If it’s okay with you, since you’re awake and all, can we talk? About where you came from.”
Simon opened his mouth, but Grace cut him off. He felt a bit bad, but he figured Simon was going to try and argue that Grace was lying about everything. Even after he’d seen the stars.
“Just–please. I really don’t know about any C.O.I., or Eden, or about a blood ocean, I promise. You can ask me anything you want but you have to answer some questions for me, okay?”
Grace floated a little closer to Simon, who was contemplating what to do. His eyes tracked Grace, wary as he got closer. “You promise?” He asked quietly, nervous as Grace sat down on the bed, near his knees, and grabbed the edge with his left hand.
“Pinky promise,” Grace said, holding up his right pinky finger towards Simon. The man just stared at it, unsure what the hell it meant or what to do. Huh, they didn’t have pinky promises where Simon was from? “It means I promise to keep my promise. We lock pinky fingers together.”
“Why would you lock pinky fingers together. That seems painful.”
“No, I—what? Okay, no, here,” Grace gently grabbed Simon’s hand. He felt the other man stiffen, but he didn’t try and pull away. Grace manipulated his fingers until they were mirroring his excellent pinky promise form. Once Simon was holding his pinky in the air, Grace hooked his one around it. “I pinky promise that I am not from the C.O.I., and I don’t know what any of that is. I just want to talk and figure out how you got from a blood ocean, as you said, to floating in space.”
Simon’s eyes were locked on their hands. “This seems childish.”
Grace shrugged. “It is, sure. But to some it means a whole lot.” He dropped the hold on Simon’s finger, letting his hand fall back to his lap.
“Is that human mating ritual, question?”
“Oh my god, no, Rocky, no!” Grace flushed, having to look away from Simon. God, he was embarrassed. “No, it’s just a human culture thing on Earth. Means promise.”
Rocky made an untranslatable noise that Grace noted sounded sad.
“Earth.”
Grace looked back to Simon, noting the skepticism on his face. “Earth, yeah. I’m from Earth,” he paused, chewing his bottom lip before saying, “you said the Earth was gone, where do you come from?”
“Eden.”
“Right, Eden,” Grace sighed. “You mentioned that the first time you woke up. Um, so, if Eden isn’t on Earth, then how do you speak English?”
“Eden is a space station,” Simon said, looking at Grace like he was stupid.
Grace’s brows furrowed. “I’ve not heard of a space station named Eden. I mean, the I.S.S. isn’t the only one up there, but…”
“What is that?”
“The International Space Station, it orbits Earth and is used by a bunch of scientists around the world to study space.” Grace’s eyes met Simon’s again. “But I’m assuming Eden doesn’t orbit the Earth.”
Simon shook his head. “The Earth is gone, dumbass. There’s only the fou–three space stations and a bunch of fucking moons!”
“Simon is angry, question?” Rocky had been staying mostly silent while Grace and the newcomer talked. “Why, question? Grace is not angry.”
“Because you aren’t making any sense!” He exclaimed, throwing his hand in the air. “Nothing is making sense! The stars are gone, the Earth is gone, I was bolted in that goddamn Iron Lung and sent to die at the bottom of a blood ocean with a fucking huge evil mind-warping monster eel! Of course I’m angry!”
Rocky shrunk back, like a scolded child.
“Hey, don’t yell at him. He didn’t do anything wrong.” Grace sent a stern look to Simon. “We are both just as confused as you.”
Simon looked away, his hand falling back to his lap. He stared at it for a while, before Grace sighed again.
“Okay. Um. Look, Rocky and I just want to help you, but it’s kinda hard when you won’t answer questions and blow up at us when we don’t understand something. There’s obviously a disconnect here but I think if we just had an adult conversation with one another, we can figure this out.”
Simon shrugged.
Grace groaned.
“Please give me something to work with, man!” He begged. Probably not the most ‘educator’ way of going about this situation. “Can you tell me about the Quiet Rapture you mentioned? I really just want to understand.”
Blue eyes met brown; Simon had tilted his head a bit and was side-eyeing Grace. Several seconds had passed when Simon finally relented. “It was sudden. All of a sudden, all the stars and planets were gone. All that was left were a few space stations, a few hundred people, and a bunch of weird moons.”
“How old were you when it happened?” Grace asked gently. “What happened to your family?”
Simon winced a bit. “13,” he answered. “I, uh, didn’t know my actual dad, and my mom was on Mars when the Rapture happened.”
“Wait wait wait, Mars?” Grace lifted his hand to his face, resting his pointer finger against his lip as he pondered what Simon had said. “There are no humans on Mars where I’m from. Unless they suddenly decided to colonize Mars while I was here in space, and then long enough for you to grow up, and…it doesn’t make sense.” He looked at Simon like he was trying to solve a complex equation. “Relativity is weird, but that wouldn’t be possible. Right? No. No. You were born on a space station.”
“I was born on Mars.”
Grace’s eyes widened, and he got up. “You’re from Mars. Even better. Uh, okay. Wait. How long ago were the space stations sent to space?”
“Uh, I don’t know. 200 years ago?” Simon’s gaze tracked Grace as he paced in zero-gravity. “There were more, then. More people too. But then there were a bunch of, like, resource wars. There were four stations when the Quiet Rapture happened. Now there’s three.”
“Oh my god.” Grace stopped. “200 years ago? You’re not making that up?”
“I mean, I don’t exactly remember.”
“200 years ago would’ve been pretty early into America,” Grace muttered to himself. What in the world was happening. “And unless I went through some major time dilation, it should only be like…15 years on Earth since I left.”
They both fell silent, staring at each other. Grace’s eyes roamed over Simon’s face, tracking his emotions. Analyzing the scars across his face, the red of his left eye. The scar that extended out from the left corner of his mouth, almost like a half joker smile. The one over his nose.
Simon was taking note of Grace, as well. There was no way that this guy could be from the C.O.I., nor from the third space station since he clearly didn’t know about any of this stuff. He looked very non-threatening, with his big eyes and unruly hair and skewed glasses on his face. He was wearing a shirt with some kind of science joke on it, one that Simon definitely did not understand. They didn’t teach him that kind of stuff.
“Either we really messed up our math, or you've come from like. Another timeline or dimension or something.” Grace finally said, breaking the silence. “And I have no flippin’ idea how.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t fuckin’ know either.” Simon broke their eye contact. “I was supposed to die in the Blood Ocean.”
Grace looked at Rocky, then back to Simon. “Well, you didn’t. And neither did we.” When Simon looked back up to Grace as he spoke, Grace motioned at himself and his alien companion. “For me, this was a suicide mission. I was supposed to save the earth and then kill myself. Rocky had been in Tau Ceti for 46 years, alone. All his crewmates passed away. But we found each other, and now we found you. So…I guess all we can do here is survive, right?”
Simon scoffed. “Hell of a pep-talk there.”
"I was a teacher," Grace answered.
"You are a teacher still," Rocky corrected.
Grace grinned softly at his friend. "Yeah, bud, I'm still a teacher."
Simon was studying Grace. He could feel the man's eyes on his face, tracing the lines and curves. It was weird. Grace felt a bit uncomfortable being under such scrutiny. Was this how Simon felt whenever Grace was watching him?
"Young Eridians will be excited to learn from Grace. Grace very smart teacher." Rocky waved his hands. "Simon have job?"
Simon seemed to jump a bit when Rocky said his name. He took a second to process the question, before seemingly deflating in on himself. Simon stayed silent but shrugged his shoulders.
Grace noticed. "Hey, how about you ask me some questions?" He gently prompted.
Simon shrugged again, but did lift his eyes to meet Grace's. He thought for a few moment, before straightening up and steeling his gaze. "How did you find me?"
"Uh, our computers picked up a foreign object in space, and we figured we should check it out." Grace explained. "When we got close enough, I could see what the object was. A submarine. I remember thinking: why the heck is a submarine in space? But also, a submarine that looked human. And had human letters on the side. So Rocky built a tunnel to connect to the sub, and a cool knife made of really strong stuff that could cut through the hull. I got in, grabbed you, and got out. Very fast. Because there was a lot of blood and gross stuff. And your arm, which was also gross and must have been horrible for you and I—"
"Grace rambling," Rocky interrupted, cutting Grace's sentence off. "Simon not follow."
Indeed, Simon was staring at Grace with a blank expression. Grace flushed, ducking his head. "Sorry, I didn't mean to ramble like that. Sometimes I get ahead of myself."
"It's…it's fine," Simon said. His own face got slightly warm. "I don't mind."
Grace took a deep breath and continued. "I got you to Armando, the ship's flight doctor." He pointed at the ceiling, where the robotic arm hung dormant. "Got you fixed up. For the most part. You've, uh, you've gained some…mutations? I think? Gills. At least I think they're gills? I didn't analyze it at all because that's, like, a huge breach of your autonomy. Oh! I went back into the submarine to take samples of the blood and…stringy stuff and found a black box! I'm in the process of reading all the data on it, but there's a lot. It hasn't really explained much about the Blood Ocean or whatever yet. I found out why you were so irradiated, though!"
"The camera?" Simon says, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah, the camera. It's an X-ray camera! I didn't know what that button was at first and I pressed it once or twice, but Mary's okay so that's good. I'm not detecting any excess radiation to the ship. And you're not radioactive to Rocky and I, which was a worry at first until I remembered that that isn't how radiation works."
Simon held up his hand, stopping Grace. "You pressed the button."
"Uh…yes?" Grace winced. "In my defense, it was before I knew it was a super powerful X-ray emitter."
"Grace dumb dumb dumb, press button without knowing what is for."
"Yeah, yeah, I know, I shouldn't have pressed it. Moment of weakness."
Simon looked utterly shell-shocked. He was about to say something when his stomach growled loudly, alerting the room of his hunger. Simon stared down at his stomach. He'd forgotten how hungry he was.
"Oh, duh, you're probably hungry!" Grace proclaimed before Simon could get a word out. "I, uh, don't have too much actual food food left. I'm saving it until we get closer to Erid…Hey, Rock, do you think the Eridian scientists can synthesize food with small samples of ours?"
"Rocky sure scientists can synthesize Earth food for Grace and Simon, but might take a bit."
Grace nodded along, thinking. Absentmindedly, he pulled one of the food rations from the storage. He'd put them there so Nanny didn't try and give it to him and then he eat all of the good stuff years before they even reached Erid's star system. It was part of one of the meals Ilyukhina had chosen to bring, 'Cottage Cheese with Apple Puree' as it said in English. Grace floated over to the port in the wall he could rehydrate food himself (without Armando's help). It was amazing what kinds of meals they could send up here that just needed to be rehydrated or something.
Once the cottage cheese felt more…cottage cheesy in the sealed bag, he maneuvered back over towards Simon and offered it to him. "Cottage cheese with apple puree. I haven't tried that particular one yet, so hopefully it's decent."
Simon took the package cautiously. "How am I supposed to eat this."
"Uh…usually I just kinda…squeeze it out into my mouth? Takes less time than finding a utensil. But I can find a spoon for you?"
The man looked up at Grace, back down to the cottage cheese, and then back up to Grace. He nodded, almost shyly. "Yes, please."
"Hey, Armando, can you bring me a spoon?" The arm extended down at Grace's words, procuring a spoon. It offered it to Simon, who took it. "So, yeah. Bon appétit!"
Simon's brow furrowed. "I don't know what that means."
Grace grinned, eyes sparkling. "It means enjoy your food. It's, um, French."
"I don't know what that means either."
Grace let out a breathy laugh. "I should've figured. The Earth doesn't exist where you're from, of course you don't know who the French are," he said, waving his hand. "It's okay, just forget it. Dig in."
The man's brows seemed to furrow further into each other, somehow. "I only have one arm," he deadpanned, his focus going to his hand. He was holding both the cottage cheese package and the spoon in the same hand. How did Grace not notice that.
How did he fix this problem.
Well, Grace could hold the food steady while Simon ate. Or maybe he could spoon-feed him, like a picky toddler. Both would require pretty close contact…
"Do you want me to help you?" Grace asked. "Like, I can hold the spoon. Or the packet, if you want."
"I'm not a child," Simon said.
"Well, I don't know how you want me to help, then," Grace snapped back. He then caught himself. 'Come on, Grace, you're a teacher. You don't snap like that.' "Sorry."
Simon looked a bit shocked by Grace's words, and he stared at him for several seconds. Then he looked down, embarrassed. "No, I'm sorry. You're just trying to help me and I'm being rude."
"You've been through a lot." Grace sighed, hooking his ankle around one of Simon's bed's supports so that he would stay in place as he sat down again. "It's not ideal, but once we're moving again, the gravity will go back to…basically normal. And then you can eat on a plate."
He offered one of his hands to Simon, giving him the option to let Grace help. The spoon, or the cottage cheese.
Simon gave him the package of cottage cheese to hold.
The cottage cheese did not last very long.