Chapter Text
Rocky felt like he was floating. He was caught somewhere between being vaguely aware of all the commotion going on around him—Eridians of all sorts either trying to talk to him or trying to communicate with Grace—and dreamily watching the fog of his own mind twist and swirl.
Occupying his mind with the tasks of the Eridians around him, he thought about Grace. Communication was a difficult task, Rocky knew. While Eridians are able to pick up languages quickly, Rocky had mostly only picked up English through trial and error and remembering all the talks a late crewmate with a penchant for linguistics had forced him to sit through. That said, there were lots of very smart Eridians and only one very smart Grace, so they’d probably figure it out faster than Rocky did. Not even to mention that Grace was more-or-less fluent in a very rudimentary version of Rocky’s language, so…
… so Rocky was getting distracted. The other scientists are probably asking for Rocky’s help in communicating with the strange alien that they can only kind-of hear through all the general noise of the ship, and Rocky only sat there like a pebble. A stupid pebble at that. Rocky may have always been a little slow to catch on to social nuances, he couldn’t recall a time he’d ever acted so out of sorts. It was idiotic. It was foolish. It was killing Rocky to just sit here and do nothing yet be completely helpless all the same.
“Rocky!” an Eridian shouted, their carapace buzzing with latent energy. “Are you okay? Rocky? Rocky, can you hear me?”
Rocky did not answer. He was waiting for something, but he wasn’t quite sure what. Someone to answer for him? A clear direction of what to do? A task? Adrian? Grace?
Rocky knew he wouldn’t be seeing either of them, at least for a bit. Eridians may be more social than humans, but they weren’t stupid. There were too many things Rocky was required to do first, too many stories he had to tell too many people. They had to make sure he was healthy, that he wasn’t bringing anything terrible back with him, that he was sound of mind, and a million other things. It was too much to do in all the time in the world.
“Rocky!” someone repeated. Rocky was growing tired of all this noise, of Eridians calling his name. It grated upon his carapace uncomfortably, not unlike the way a parent would grow tired of their pebble nagging them.
Rocky made no move to get out of the situation other than a half-hearted twitch of his claws. Every so often, he’d click a note just to hear Grace’s ship. Inside, Rocky can tell exactly where Grace is and what he was doing. Outside of it, he felt a disconnected sort of buzz he hadn’t known since he first left Adrian.
It was similar to that, all these complex things tangled up inside him. He was anxious when he left Adrian, and now he was anxious leaving Grace. He was angry at the universe for doing this to his star when all he wanted to do was stay with Adrian, and now he was angry at the world for bothering him when all he wanted was to stay with Grace. Covering it all was the same foggy film that made his mind slow. It was like wading through mud. Like watching a movie of his life, and being upset at the main character for doing everything wrong.
“Rocky,” someone said, calmer. It was a different cadence, one that made Rocky’s stiff, boiling insides melt to magma. “Rocky, would you please hear me?”
Rocky was listening, but did not move. He felt like an idiot, yelling at himself to just do something, yet nothing changed. Nothing ever changed. The voice that calmly spoke to him was fading into the same mush that covered the other voices, like nothing changed.
That was always Rocky’s issue, he supposed. Change didn’t come naturally to him; he either fought tooth and nail to prevent it or rapidly barreled into it with no regard to his or other’s safety. It was usually the first.
Rocky had been slow to accept the change of being a pebble to being a proud and proper Eridian. He had been hesitant to change his life and become an engineer, and went back and forth for weeks about committing to Blip A’s mission. Even mating with Adrian had come with so much anxiety that he’d avoided them entirely for several days.
Meeting Grace had been easier, if only because Rocky had already worked up the confidence from being the only alive crewmate to do most tasks by himself, and had the confidence to assume the strange alien ship was there for similar reasons.
Rocky thought meeting Grace proved he’d practically cured himself of his embarrassing deficit, what with the confidence he exerted and the shyer emotions he compared himself to Grace with. Like with most things, Rocky was rapidly proving himself to be entirely wrong about that assumption.
He didn’t want to change. He didn’t want to leave Grace. He didn’t want to regale in depth how everyone died, explain who Grace is and what kind of world he came from, or give long, educated lectures on how to grow Taumoeba and how it stopped the Astrophage. He would have to pick up the pieces of his crew all over again and try and fix his world, alone.
Rocky had always been pick up the pieces. He picked up the pieces when it was only him and their pilot left. He picked up the pieces when it was only him. He picked up the pieces when Grace was about to die and it seemed like the world was ending all over again.
Rocky felt like, not for the first time, that there were too many pieces to pick up now. The hard part had been done; he’d traversed several light years! He had gone to an alien star system, an alien planet, met an alien from a totally different star system than the one he was investigating, and found the solution. He and Grace found the answer. The magic cure.
It didn’t feel so magic now.
He didn’t even want to return to Adrian. Adrian wouldn’t understand, not like Grace would. Adrian has had years and years of support with his mate gone, and Rocky had no one.
No one except for Grace, who also had no one. They were each other’s only support for years. They’d grown used to each other. They’d found comfort in each other. They learned about each other.
Rocky was Grace’s comfort when Grace became inconsolable with the pressure to figure everything out. Rocky was Grace’s companion when he needed another living thing to hug and talk to. Rocky was the one to chatter idly to fill the silence when Grace grew quiet with malnutrition, and the one to try again to make a more palatable solution.
Rocky needed Grace. Grace needed Rocky. It was a simple fact of the universe, and to that Rocky knew Grace would say something like ‘just like the sky is blue,’ even though Rocky had no clue what a blue sky looked like.
“Rocky, please,” the familiar, calming cadence sang again as it perked through the murky fog of Rocky’s mind.
“Grace,” Rocky said. Grace would have said he was a broken record. “I want…”
“Your alien is fine,” the cadence soothed. “We are waiting until both of you are well-rested before we proceed. You’re the one worrying everyone. You need to come with me and sleep before we can do anything. Rocky, please.”
Rocky did not reply. He wanted Adrian, sort of. They would know what he needed, but maybe not what he wanted. He wanted Grace. He couldn’t do this without Grace. Who would even be watching Grace while he slept, if not Rocky? Who would be watching Rocky, if not Grace?
It’s not that Rocky didn’t not trust other Eridians, but the last time any of his kind watched him, Rocky woke up to a corpse. A corpse he thought was only sleeping, and only realized was dead days afterward.
With Grace, at least, Rocky would know if he was still alive or otherwise, if Grace happened to fall asleep while watching.
“Grace,” he mumbled helplessly. The soft cadence fretted about him for several moments, but Rocky did nothing. He was stuck in a rut, a positive feedback loop of self-flagellation, dissociation, and muted anger at nothing in particular.
“Your alien is fine,” the other Eridian repeated. Rocky could vaguely recognize the shape of the carapace, the tone of the cadence, but couldn’t quite put his finger on the owner. It had to have been someone important; Rocky had tried before to recall various friends to Grace, and found himself unable to do so with many of them. “Stand up.”
Miraculously, Rocky stood. His arms gave out nearly immediately, but the Eridians nearby seemed to have enough sense to catch him. I must be making a fool of myself, Rocky thought. He couldn’t bring himself to do more than the occasional chirp, even as several Eridians shoulder most of his weight.
It was only when he realized how far away from the Hail Mary they were bringing him that Rocky did anything. His limbs felt heavy, still, so it was more akin to a pebble wriggling when its parents would pick it up. Rocky felt ashamed.
All he had proved was that he was incompetent and lost and a no-good addition to the mission that had to right to survive when there were plenty of far more qualified Eridians that would not have displayed even a sixth of the childish crying Rocky had.
“But Grace,” Rocky tried again. His pleas were met with some rumbling in the group ushering him along. Rocky wished they would listen. Rocky wished he could tell them what to listen for.
With no one to listen for, and no one listening to him, Rocky let the foggy dredges of his mind consume him whole.