Chapter Text
I’m not sure how long Rocky and I just hold each other but frankly, I can’t bring myself to care. I can’t even remember the last time I’ve had a cry as cathartic as this, and even though we’ve hugged before, and quite frequently since Rocky made himself a xenonite suit at that, it’s been a long time since I felt this close to him. Since I started building walls between us so it would hurt less when my best friend inevitably leaves me behind. But those walls are in shards on the floor now, more glass than xenonite, and all the tears that built up behind it are flooding out now. I hold onto Rocky like he’s a lifeline so they won’t wash me away.
I still feel like death warmed over—my stomach’s still empty, my head’s still fuzzy, and my body still aches all over, but at least I no longer hate myself for being the worst friend in the history of friends (except Eva Stratt maybe). At least I can believe Rocky now.
“Okay,” I whisper eventually and pat his carapace through the suit. “Grace really need some water, and then let’s go say hi to Erid so they can help fix my illness, question?”
“No,” Rocky declares. “Rocky hug.”
It makes me laugh. So I guess he’s going to be even more clingy now than he was when I had my better moments. I don’t mind—I just hope it’ll convince my dumb monkey brain for good that he won’t leave me, because the seeds of doubt are still there, deep down.
“Rocky hug after?” I suggest. “It’ll take five minutes.”
Rocky whines, but lets go after giving me another squeeze.
“Five minutes,” he repeats sternly, and then he pushes himself towards his tunnel. He probably has some more preparations to make.
I miss Rocky’s arms around me the moment he leaves, but I know we shouldn’t postpone this longer than we already have. Our argument sapped all energy from my body, and the only reason my eyelids and limbs don’t feel heavy is because there’s no gravity to pull on them. I still feel exhaustion in the stillness of my limbs, in the fog that fills my thoughts. I hate how weak I’ve become.
I sigh and pull myself along furniture to the ladder and then into the dormitory. I ask Armando for a pouch of water and down half of it at once, packing the second half for the way. I might regret chugging half a liter all at once later, but right now I’m parched. Then I use the toilet because I’m not sure how long we’ll be on Erid and I wouldn’t be able to go until I’m back on the Hail Mary.
“Five minutes over,” Rocky points out right as I pull my xenonite suit back on. By the time it’s sealed, Rocky’s already gone through the airlock. It’s strange to see him wearing clothes now, a mottled greenish-brown shirt. It covers most of his carapace, leaving two circular holes at the top and at the bottom. His arms are completely bare still, and he wears a darker bag over it. Filled as it is, it’s almost as big as his carapace, so I offer to take it.
“Is fine,” Rocky says. “Rocky carry.” Then he propels himself from the xenonite towards me, clinging onto my arm. “Ready?”
I swallow. Now that I know that Rocky isn’t going to abandon me the moment he steps foot on Erid, I feel a little more ready, but … if I’m honest, that’s not very ready at all. Still I nod, because all the wait in the world wouldn’t magically make me any more prepared—if anything, I would just spiral more. It would just make me less ready. This is the most lucid I’ve been in a while, and I don’t think it’s gonna last for too long, so I nod. “Ready.” If he can tell that I’m lying, he’s not saying anything.
Maneuvering out the airlock together is a struggle. Rocky insists he be the one to move us, using his free claws to pull us along the handles, and I’m glad he does. It’s not that he’s too heavy, we’re in zero g after all, but the higher the mass, the higher the inertia. If I was the one to steer us, I wouldn’t be able to guarantee I won’t accidentally push him into walls or push us both off course. Even when I tried to move him in the past when we were in the orbit of Tau Ceti or Adrian, it’s been a struggle to get Rocky to go where I wanted him to when I pushed him, and now with my lack of strength? It would be pretty much impossible.
I let myself be pulled along, my arms wrapped around Rocky’s carapace, and try not to think too much about the anxiety forming a pit in my stomach. It’s my first time in years seeing someone other than Rocky, and it’s going to be even more aliens. Aliens from the planet I will spend the rest of my life on, and I can already feel my lucidity slipping. I hope they’ll excuse any blunders I make on account of my illness, and that they won’t be too scared of me. I hope they’ll accept me and my presence here.
I bury my face into Rocky’s carapace—well, I thunk my forehead against the inside of my helmet which I smoosh against him, anyway. The further my mind is gone, the less I’m able to consequently distract myself from what scares me, even though it means I’m less equipped to handle it. Ugh, I just want those thoughts to go away.
I only realize we’ve reached the airlock when I hear the woosh of it being depressurized. Then Rocky opens it and climbs along the handles on the edge of the tunnel until we reach the airlock in its center. This one isn’t transparent—it wouldn’t be, of course, this wasn’t designed with my eyes in mind.
Once we’re inside and the airlock pressurizes with Erid’s atmosphere, Rocky slips out of his suit, letting it float where he drops it. Then he turns to me as he reaches for my arm again.
“Other Eridians behind airlock,” he says quietly, just barely in my hearing range, even though they will definitely be able to hear him. His voice is an octave lower than usual—he’s scared. “Grace ready?”
I’m not, but I nod anyway, quickly pulling myself half-behind him. It’s not gonna hide me from any Eridians, but it makes me feel a little safer anyway.
The door slides open to reveal two Eridians in the tunnel—the one in the front has a deep blue carapace, with light blue streaks with a hint of gray. They’re a bit bigger than Rocky, I think. The Eridian behind them has a jade color with emerald streaks and golden yellow flecks, about twice as big as Rocky and the sapphire colored Eridian. They don’t stay in the back for long, pulling themself closer on the handles as soon as the airlock opens, singing loud notes that are too complex for me to understand and stomping the ground repeatedly. They’re angry, I think, and Rocky shrinks back, lowering his carapace like he does when I scold him for doing something he’s not supposed to.
“Rocky okay, question?” I whisper under my breath, and Rocky moves his carapace up and down in a mimicry of a nod.
“Is okay,” he confirms. “Rocky deserves.”
The jade Eridian shakes their hands in angry jazz hands and says within a chaos of other notes that I can’t quite understand, “Yes, ♩♪♩ <my love> deserves it!”
They’re a little too close for comfort now, right up in Rocky’s not-face, and I fully get behind him now, hiding behind his carapace. My friend switches up the legs with which he’s holding me.
“Rocky had to,” he responds to a question that I haven’t heard. As small as he makes himself, there’s no regret in his voice, it doesn’t waver at all. “Ship not have radio and human very very very sick, human can’t do.”
The jade Eridian yells something back, and I quietly ask what’s going on.
“Later,” Rocky whistles under his breath, the notes mixing with the other Eridian’s angry song in a strange harmony.
The blue Eridian inches closer, hissing something sharply that I recognize as a name after a moment. It’s a little different than the way Rocky always sings it, but it’s close enough, and when I look at the jade Eridian, it seems obvious. I spot a reddish-brown mate mark on their leg, the same shape and size as the jade one Rocky has. It distracts me so much, I don’t catch the rest of what the sapphire Eridian is saying.
“Wait, that’s Adrian?” I exclaim, wincing at how loud my voice is. Sapphire—that’s just what I’m gonna call them now—stops talking, and I get the feeling that all three Eridians are now looking at me. I curl up a little more. “Sorry.”
“No need apologize. Rocky should introduce.” He points at Adrian, then Sapphire, then me as he introduces us each. “Adrian, Rocky mate. ♬♩♫♬♫♬ <Sapphire>, Astrophage mission leader. ♩♩♬ <my treasure>, mission leader, human Grace.”
There’s a moment of what my tired brain understands as stunned silence, then Adrian starts yelling again. Rocky just starts laughing, whistling high-pitched, layered notes I don’t quite understand over the wheezing. The only word I catch is temporary.
“Rock—”
“Later,” Rocky wheezes again.
Adrian stomps their foot against the wall of the tunnel as they say something I can’t understand. Sapphire whistles something but goes ignored.
“Rocky not realize—”
“How, question?”
There’s a beat of silence only interrupted by the fluttering of Rocky’s vents—a sure-fire way to tell he’s desperately trying not to laugh. Honestly, I think he’s probably half-way to hysterical by now, and I trail my finger across the top of his carapace to soothe him, near the edge of his shirt’s collar. It looks wrong—I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Rocky wear a shirt before.
“Wait, are you a nudist?” I blurt out before I can stop myself. I have even less of a filter when I’m this tired.
“Word?” Rocky asks, sounding a little confused.
“Someone who doesn’t like wearing clothes.”
Rocky lets out an unholy screech and tells me to shut up and—yeah, I don’t have the brainpower to think about that, so I file that away for later.
Adrian asks something that Rocky ignores, instead opting to rummage in his bag.
“Rocky Grace find solution to Astrophage problem,” he explains and pulls out a xenonite petri dish filled with Taumoebae. “Taumoeba from Adrian planet, breed and bring to Threeworld.”
Sapphire takes the dish, cradling it close to their chest. They sing a song of gratitude, an octave higher than before. The only words I understand from it are thank you and saviors and heroes. They’re probably talking about me too, so I duck my head.
Adrian says something sharply and Rocky lowers his carapace, but then Adrian’s voice softens. “I’m proud of mate.”
I blink as the words process in my brain and then I bark out a laugh. Yes, mate was the literal translation of what Adrian said, but in the context of calling someone that word, it has a more platonic connotation. Maybe a romantic term of endearment would have been a more fitting translation, but I can’t help the way my tired brain translates things, and so I soon start crying from how hard im laughing. My stomach hurts, but that’s nothing compared to the other pain I’ve been enduring lately. Okay, maybe Rocky’s not the only one on the verge of hysteria here, but who can blame us?
“What so funny, question?”
“Brain stupid,” I wheeze and try to suppress my laughter, but I start coughing instead. Ow. I can’t stop coughing and I can’t breathe, and now my tears of laughter turn into tears of pain.
“Grace?” Rocky asked, voice almost inaudibly low-pitched in his panic. “Grace, what wrong?”
“Lungs hurt,” I wheeze and curl around him because I need something to hold onto as I desperately try to get air into my lungs that have been messed up ever since I got hit with that blast of ammonia just after Adrian—the planet, not the Eridian—, and the malnutrition certainly didn’t help.
“Grace need Armando?” Rocky asks and already starts dragging me back towards the ship.
“No!” I call out before I can properly think about it. Rocky stops and makes an unconvinced noise. “Just need to breathe a minute,” I explain and make a show of taking a few deep breaths as I curl around my rock in turbulent waters, my lifeline. I hear low-pitched voices that I can’t quite understand then, but the vibrations of Rocky’s notes help soothe me as well as the tips of the claws that he runs over my back.
It takes me a while to calm down and get breathing again, but the tears still don’t stop. Gosh, I’m so overwhelmed, I just want to cry and hide and cry and sleep until the Eridians got my food situation figured out and I’m finally okay again. But that’s not going to happen because Rocky is terrified of me going to sleep and never waking up again, so I have to wait and endure and suffer, and I hate it. But I’d do anything for Rocky, so I’ll do it. I’ll do it, even if I’m scared, even if I’m sobbing and hurting all the way.
When Grace starts coughing, all Rocky wants to do is drag his ass back on the Hail Mary and put him back to bed. Tell Armando to put all sorts of observation devices on him to make sure that he’s not actively dying right now. Sure, Rocky got a lot better at reading and interpreting the constant noise that Grace’s body emits, but even with all the reading they did on their Earth thinking machine, their understanding of his body only helps so much. The human body speaks a foreign, gross language that Rocky’s learning to understand, but they’re far from fluid yet.
Even though Grace says it’s alright, Rocky only relaxes once they actually sense his breathing and heart rate calm down.
“Grace okay now,” Rocky explains once their friend’s body relaxes around them, wrapped around them more in a hug than a vice grip now.
“Alright,” Sapphire declares then and raises the dish with the Taumoebae. “I’ll leave Adrian, Rocky and Alien-from-Sol to it and assemble a thrum for Taumoeba research. I’m also gonna send a medic.”
“Is fine,” Rocky explains and raises one of their front arms in defense like they picked up from Grace. “Rocky fine, Rocky healthy. Not need medic.”
“My love,” Adrian says in a low, warning tone. “Should see medic. You don’t know what Vλλℓ years <64.6 years> in space did to your body. You wrote about a space sickness that killed the rest of crew—I already lost my astronaut friends, I don’t want to lose you too.”
Rocky makes a dejected hum, lowering their carapace, and Grace runs a calming hand over them in response. They can’t feel it, but even just hearing it helps. Rocky tightens their arms around their friend’s thin body. “Rocky not leave Grace,” they declare. “Rocky promise stay.”
Adrian pulls themself closer on the handles. “You don’t have to leave Alien-from-Sol,” Adrian pleads. “Just … please let a medic examine you.”
“Rocky not space sick,” they insist. “Astrophage protect.”
“What’s happening?” Grace asks. His voice is quiet, like he no longer has the energy to raise it.
“Adrian insist Rocky see medic, but Rocky fine,” they explain. “Rocky not need medic.”
“Word?”
“Medic,” Rocky repeats. “Not fix things, fix people.”
“Ah, a doctor.” What? “Rocky should see doctor.”
Rocky remembers a conversation they had what feels like a lifetime ago now, when Grace told them his full name and title. Dr. capt. Ryland Grace. “Grace medic?”
“What?” Grace blinks in confusion. “No, Grace isn’t a doctor, Grace is a biologist.” He pauses. “Oh, wrong doctor. Someone who fixes people called doctor, but also title for certain academic achievements. Grace not doctor of medicine, Grace doctor of biology.”
“Same title for different things stupid,” Rocky declares and perks up when Grace laughs again, but he doesn’t try to cough his lungs up this time.
“Sure is, buddy.” After a moment, he adds, “Rocky should still see a medic, even if you don’t feel sick. Even if Rocky feels fine, we have no idea if radiation didn’t have an effect since Rocky wasn’t protected by Astrophage all the time. And Rocky never was examined for the burns after Adrian.”
Rocky lets out a groan that makes Adrian and Sapphire jump. “Fine, Rocky see medic.”
“I will send a medic to my office,” Sapphire announces before skittering off with the Taumoebae.
“Thank you,” Adrian hums and sets off towards the space station. “Follow me?” They pause to tap the wall twice.
Rocky hurries to follow their mate to what they remember to be the mission leader’s office. They’re not sure why Sapphire would leave it to them, but they appreciate the limited privacy it would give them, if only for Grace’s sake.
The human’s staring with wide eyes as they move through the space station, trying to take everything in. Maybe he doesn’t realize it, but the Eridians around them are staring back. It’s not obvious, they don’t need to turn to him to do it, but Rocky can tell with the way they drop what they’re doing and hush their conversations. But when their voices quietly start up again, they realize they’re not just talking about the human but Rocky too, and it makes them shrink back as if that would stop them from perceiving them.
Adrian seems to notice, because they start talking again. “When Adrian read Rocky’s message, Adrian volunteered to oversee the efforts to help Solean-Savior-of-Erid.” Of course they would give him a new name, even if it’s probably temporary for now, but Rocky doesn’t mind. The one they gave Grace was always meant to be temporary, and it never was meant to stick around as long as it did. “Adrian will assemble thrum with biologists, zoologists, environmental scientists and engineers to create a biodome where Solean-Savior-of-Erid can live and to create the nutrients Solean-Savior-of-Erid will need to survive while making sure to keep anything that’s toxic to Aliens-from-Sol out. That’s why Adrian, Rocky and Solean-Savior-of-Erid will talk about what Aliens-from-Sol need. Did you get all that?” they ask Grace, who turns his head to them.
“Huh?”
“New environment distract Grace,” Rocky explains. “Adrian leader of thrum taking care of Grace. Rocky Grace Adrian talk about Alien-from-Sol needs.”
Grace nods and looks around again.
“Adrian has a question for Solean-Savior-of-Erid, actually,” Adrian perks up again, their voice only a single chord now. Grace looks back at them. “Can Aliens-from-Sol only process one chord at a time, question? Is that why Rocky talks like that, question?”
Grace nods. “Yeah.”
“Gesture means yes,” Rocky explains. “Talk to Alien-from-Sol like talk to pebbles.”
“Ey!” Grace complains and hits him, then he lets out a noise of pain and shakes his hand. Rocky laughs at him, making him pout. “Grace sick, Rocky legally not allowed to be mean.” That only makes them laugh harder though.
“Rocky always legally allowed be mean Grace,” they joke, and Adrian stops in their tracks.
“What?”
“Is joke,” Rocky assures them. “Grace not mind.”
Grace nods and leans his head against their carapace, hugging them more tightly.
“Right,” Adrian says and stops in front of Sapphire’s office to pull the soundproofing curtain to the side. The walls are soundproof as well, at least to a degree—they muffle any sounds, but don’t completely swallow them, like most buildings on Erid. The three enter the room, and Adrian hangs from the handles in Sapphire’s usual place. “Let’s talk science, then.”
Rocky takes that as their cue to empty the bag they’ve filled with notes on xenonite tablets and strings of molecule arrangements.