Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Make sure you're gentle with the thrusters,” Grace murmurs.

Grace stands just beside the captain’s chair, his elbow propped up right behind Simon’s head, watching him take the controls of the ship in his hand. Simon flexes his fingers where they rest on the shifter, like he’s familiar with how it feels in his palm.

“Fuck is what is there to hit if I’m not?”

“It’s more about what the ship can take.”

“Simon much better pilot than Grace.”

Simon smirks, settling back into his seat as Grace sends a small glare Rocky’s way. “I was a scientist, not-”

Rocky dances back and forth with several chitters. “Rocky was Engineer, Grace make excuse!”

“Maybe it’s an engineer perk you’re missing out on,” Simon adds jokingly. When Grace looks over at him again, they lock eyes and his entire expression shifts into something light and playful.

Grace sighs and pinches his temple, trying to hide his own small smile behind his hand. “Sometimes you two getting along is a real pain.”

It's only been a few days since what happened in the med bay, but something between them has changed.

Simon hangs around more often now, and he drifts much closer than he used to. Sometimes, when Grace is too focused to notice the blanket slipping from his shoulders, Simon simply reaches over and fixes it without interrupting whatever Grace is working on. 

Rocky had been spending more time in the tunnels lately, always tinkering away in rooms halfway across the ship from the two of them.

It’s honestly made Grace miss him. He’s grown so used to his constant presence that, even with Simon right there, he feels a bit lonely at times. 

Lately, he'd been going to bed earlier, too, and fortunately Rocky is always right by his side as he falls asleep no matter how little anyone had seen of him.

Grace hasn’t told anyone that he’s been colder, and his headaches have been steadily rising in both severity and frequency. The crew’s presence is stabilizing, but becoming increasingly more needed as he feels his own body starting to give way.

It’s not like he wasn’t expecting this.

He made his choice.

Simon is healthier for it.

Happier for it.

That’s what matters.

“Grace okay, question?” 

Grace blinks back to himself. “Yeah, sorry. Lost in thought.”

Rocky shifts worriedly. “Grace do this more and more.”

“I know, bud, I’m just tired.”

He trills and pulls his legs closer to his thorax.

Simon clears his throat, drawing Grace’s attention back to him. “Can I move now?”

Grace chuckles. “Go ahead. Remember, not too much at once.”

Simon nudges the thrusters. Outside the Hail Mary, the stars drift almost imperceptibly. “Huh,” he whispers.

“What?”

“I thought it’d be… harder.” Simon releases the shift, scratching his neck. “And louder.”

Grace smiles. “There's no atmosphere. No air means nothing for sound to travel through.”

Simon nudges the controls again, a bit more confident. “Do you fly often?”

“Only when I have to. The Hail Mary is usually set up for a specific trajectory. We only get involved in very special circumstances”

“Have you?” 

“Taken over? A few times.” Grace bumps Rocky’s xenonite with his heel. “When I first met this guy.”

“Grace bad at flying before Rocky teach. Rocky did most of meeting.”

“A skilled captain and humble. Wow.”

“Should Rocky be teaching me instead, then?” Simon asks, his eyes on the instruments in front of him. 

Rocky breaks into delighted clicking, twirling in a small circle. “Good good good, good plan! Rocky teach, Grace watch.” 

Grace opens his mouth to answer, but nothing comes out. The sentence he’s about to say disappears halfway between his brain and his tongue. 

He blinks, and the cockpit tilts. Just for a second. Just long enough, that for one strange moment of time, he can’t tell which way is supposed to be up.

His fingers tighten against the back of Simon’s chair. He doesn’t realize how hard he’s holding on until his knuckles smart with pain.

“...Grace?” The voice sounds far away.

Grace blinks again, and everything snaps back into place.

Simon has already turned around, watching him like a hawk, and Rocky is directly beside him, supporting his leg with his ball.

“Oh.” Grace clears his throat, forcing a smile. “Sorry.” He reaches up to rub at his temple, already feeling the tendrils of a headache tease the back of his mind. “I completely forgot what I was about to say.”

Somehow, Simon and Rocky give each other a doubtful look.

Grace glances between the two of them, furrowing his brows. “What?”

Rocky begins to trill, but before he forms anything legible, Simon interjects. “Nothing,” he says quickly.

“Is not nothing,” Rocky insists, stamping his foot. “Has been ‘just tired’ for many days, even though Grace is getting many hours of sleep.”

Simon presses his hand to his face, sighing heavily.

Grace stares at them, trying to figure out how to hold his expression. “Did you guys think you had to hide that from me?”

Simon shakes his head. He glances at Rocky, encouraged to speak by the Eridian’s wild beckoning motions. “I wanted to bring it up more delicately,” he says, his words pointed.

“Thank you for telling me you’re worried, but I’m fine.” Grace insists. He gestures to Simon. “You have more problems than the two of us combined, anyway.”

Simon doesn’t look entirely convinced, but he slowly turns back around regardless. “Fine. Help me readjust this damn thing.” 

“There’s a small number on the screen above you to your left. I input Erid’s coordinates a while ago, and they should still be saved in the programming.”

Simon squints at the dozens of screens around him, then he taps on one of them, pulling up a full-sized map on one directly in front of him. 

“Good. Now, all you have to do is realign the Hail Mary as best you can using the thrusters, and then we can start up the system again.”

Simon does as he’s instructed fairly quickly, orienting the Hail Mary at nearly the perfect angle with only a few extra moments of adjustment.

Grace takes a second to watch him work, then he laughs quietly to himself. “You’re… really good at this. It would have been so much easier to have you here the whole time.”

Simon gets this smug smile on his face, glancing at Grace over his shoulder. “At least something positive came out of that damn sub.”

Rocky looks at the screen through his strange gun, whirring as he pans over Erid. He stays stagnant over it for a while, his claw tapping against the xenonite he’s holding. 

“What’ddya thinking, Rock?” Grace asks softly.

“One human year away from Erid,” he replies after a moment of hesitation. “One human year away from… Adrian.” 

“Your mate?” Simon questions.

“Yes.”

“Are you excited to see them?”

Rocky bobs up and down. “Yes. Rocky Adrian been apart long time. Rocky want mate. Rocky miss mate.” 

“You’ll see them soon, bud,” Grace assures, kneeling down to press his knuckles to the side of the xenonite, a gesture which Rocky mirrors. “I can’t wait to meet them.”

Rocky trills, bumping his fist against the xenonite several times. “Adrian will like Grace and Simon.”

Grace smiles, running his thumb over the clear pane between them.

“Uh...Grace?” Simon says, his voice low and worried.

“What is it?”

“You should look at this.”

Grace doesn’t get a chance to react.

The lights around them suddenly go red.

Grace immediately stands up, his head rushing.

Every screen in the room has begun to flash with a warning signal, blaring an alarm.

Warning. Warning. Load-Bearing Support Failure Detected. Catastrophic Structural Collapse Imminent.

The words repeat themselves, etching into their minds.

No one moves.

Then Grace is diving for the console.

Simon is up and out of the Captain's seat before Grace even has to say a word, and Rocky is already scrambling into his tunnels.

Grace swings into the seat, his hands immediately on the nearest screen, trying to figure out what structural failure they’re experiencing.

His panic turns to lead in his stomach the second he sees the problem.

“The storage tunnels,” he whispers, partly to himself. “There are structural beams in the storage tunnels,” he explains. “It’s- it’s one of them. If we don’t fix it, it could collapse an entire portion of the ship and rip a hole through the hull.”

“What the fuck do we do?” Simon shouts over Mary as her warning rings repetitively.

Grace looks at the two of them, his heart racing. Simon is staring at him, his eyes huge. Rocky is running around, doing as much as he possibly can be for someone without access to any helpful equipment.

“We’re going to have to go down there and find out,” Grace announces.

They race down the ladder as fast as they can. Grace touches down first, so he tears off and begins opening the hatch leading into the crawlspace below the crew's chambers. The Hail Mary still blares, her warning ringing in his ears incessantly. Grace only waits to see Simon touch the ground before he’s working his way into the cramped storage tunnel, shoving bags out with no concern for what they may hold. He forces his way inside, searching every beam he finds before forcing his body even further into the small space. 

“Rocky says you’re near it!” Simon’s voice echoes from behind him.

Grace stops, turns over, and scans every beam as quickly but as accurately as he can. He finds nothing. He’s maybe ten feet from the entrance, but he can already feel himself starting to panic. He shakes it off. 

He squeezes his way into a maintenance area, surrounded by beams and beams of heavy metal, all spiking up from the ground to the ceiling, and then from one wall to the next in a grid. Grace is barely able to squeeze his shoulders through the larger spots, and even then he gets stuck for a moment. He searches the room, wriggling in and out of impossibly tight areas, repeatedly finding beam after beam that looks completely intact. He reaches a point where he begins to consider the idea that all of this has been one giant failure from the ship’s AI. He runs his hands over stress points, searching high and low for anything at all. 

Finally, he finds it. A stressed beam near the middle, off to the left. It looks corroded. Grace follows the beam up to find a coolant line with a small tear in the bottom. It hasn’t dripped yet, but he knows it will. Years of an unchecked leak. It’s a miracle it’s only affected anything now.

He can see the way the beam has shifted around the corroded spot. It’s only meeting the other half of itself by several inches, the other several hanging off the side.

Grace stares at it for a second, his breath catching hard in his chest.

They would have been fine if they hadn’t changed trajectory. The shift in direction mixed with the weakness from the coolant leak caused the beam to rip apart instead of bend like it’s supposed to.

“No, no, no, no,” Grace mutters, looking around at everything in the area. If they move it— if they even bump it the wrong way—there’s a chance the entire load shifts at once. He knows the wall next to him is the only thing between him and the vastness of space. The beam could collapse and tear a hole right through it. 

He closes his eyes for a second, clenching his fists.

“Okay,” he whispers. “Okay. We just have to get it to connect somehow.” Without moving it, he reminds himself. 

Car jack.

“Okay.”

He shimmies back out, crawling as quickly as he can. Simon greets him at the entrance, reaching in and dragging him into the hallway. Grace stands, his knees shaking, his body already exhausted from the effort to get to this point. Simon’s hand rests on his back between his shoulderblades, like he knows Grace needs something.

Grace explains the situation to the best of his abilities, his voice shaking. 

“We’re going to have to go down there. Both of us. One is gonna have to raise the jack, and the other is going to have to shift the beam.” 

Simon looks up at him. “How much time do we have?”

Grace squeezes his eyes shut, shaking his head. “...None.”

—-

Rocky clicks anxiously just outside as Grace and Simon venture back into the maintenance area. Grace finds the spot again with little issue, but it takes a long time to move the equipment further inside. They work diligently, and mostly in silence. They already lost a lot of valuable time waiting for Rocky to create the brace they need for the beam. Since they don’t have a literal car jack, or anything really adjacent to that, Rocky was able to utilize two springs that should be able to distribute weight the same way. They will have to manually lower and raise the springs using other hastily gathered clamps and beams, but it should hopefully lessen the chances of everything collapsing in on them.

Grace crawls in first, positioning himself slightly off to the side of the beam, and sliding the spring contraptions across the floor towards himself while Simon inches inside.

“How are you holding up?” Grace asks, trying not to look at the beam too much.

Simon’s expression is tense, but he nods. “I’m… I’m good. I’m all good.”

“You can leave whenever you need to,” Grace promises.

Simon presses himself into the space with him, immediately surveying the scene. “Shut up. I’m not going anywhere.”

Grace ignores him. He reaches up to touch the beam, resting his hand against it. He can feel the hum of the ship right under his hand, the vibration of the engine working its hardest.

All things considered, it’s sturdy right now, but it’s broken on a kind of downward slope. One nudge and it slips off.

They begin to work, propping the first spring up, centering it as close as they can to the beam and locking it tight against the others that this one is supporting. They then set up the second spring horizontally, one that will hopefully apply enough pressure to push the top back into alignment with the bottom. It takes a long time. Longer than it should. Every time they stuff a hunk of metal in between the spring’s layers, it takes several rounds of hammering to get it fully wedged inside. 

“Why don’t we shut off the thrusters?” Simon eventually asks, his voice rough. “If we don’t have any gravity-”

"Because we'd change the load." Grace wedges another piece of metal beneath the spring before glancing toward the fractured beam. "Right now it's... stable enough." He grimaces. "If we kill thrust, all those forces shift somewhere else." He taps the beam. "That somewhere might be here."

Simon’s brows furrow, and he turns back to the spring.

Every once in awhile, the ship shifts as the thrusters slowly readjust to the proper trajectory towards Erid, and Grace eyes the beam again. A few times he hears it scrape, only to look over and see it’s moved maybe the length of a fingernail.

Enough movement to become more than concerning.

Grace’s mind races. He could crawl out, run to the cabin, and cancel the readjustments for now. But they’re moving so fast that any amount of time spent facing even half a degree away from their original path could lead to months longer spent on the Hail Mary.

They don’t have the fuel, and they don't have the food for that to be a possibility.

So Grace just pushes himself harder. 

Once, when Simon’s hammer meets the side of a spring, there’s a sharp PING that catches them both off guard. They freeze in place, barely breathing as the world around them thrums. 

Grace glances to the beam. It hasn’t moved at all.

“What was that?” Simon whispers, his words hardly disturbing the air.

“I don’t know,” Grace admits. After a few moments, they lock eyes again. “Just… just keep working. We need to get out of here.”

“Yeah.”

Somewhere overhead, the ship groans, but neither of them stop now.

They work in tandem with each other.

It makes it easier for Grace to ignore the light feeling in his head, the way the sides of his vision have begun to fade ever so slightly.

They almost have the entire contraption set up, when Grace sees Simon twitch.

He flinches, those huge eyes snapping around the room, then his brows furrowing when he doesn’t see what he expected to.

“Hey,” Grace says, relieved to see him look up immediately. “Did you hear her?”

Simon shifts for a second, then nods. He almost looks… ashamed. “It always fucking comes back.”

Grace scootches closer, gently touching his arm. Simon shivers. “Can I help?”

Simon takes a deep breath, his body visibly beginning to shake. He keeps flinching away from his right side, and screwing up his face. “Can you- can you just talk? Please?”

“About what?”

“Anything. Anything, I don’t care.”

“Did you know sound waves are physical?” 

Simon makes a strained sort of laughing noise. “Really.”

“You bet.” Grace turns back to the spring, and slams down the hammer once again. “Most people think of sound like... I don't know... magic air or something, but they're tiny pressure waves. See, I had this experiment I would do with my kids-”

As he talks, he can see Simon loosening up again. Encouraged, Grace talks about anything and everything he can think of. Old lesson plans, random information he picked up while living on Stratt’s boat. He finds it almost calms his nerves as much as it does Simon’s. 

They get to a point where they’re able to sit back for a second, chests heaving, eyes locked on the springs.

“One more,” Grace says.

“One more,” Simon echos.

Grace shifts back to his feet, still crouched, and slots another bit of metal into the coil of the spring in front of him.

He reels back, swings, and hits.

At the same moment, the ship shifts slightly to the right.

PING.

Out of the corner of his eye, Grace sees something shift.

High up, within the grid of beams, far enough away that they wouldn’t have noticed it previously.

A bolt breaks.

A blade of metal, a secondary support now only attached by one end, drops down, swinging like a pendulum.

Right for Simon’s head.

Grace doesn’t think.

He only does what he can.

He kicks his leg out, foot making contact with Simon’s side, sending him careening backwards. 

White-hot pain explodes through Grace's left leg.

Grace is thrown sideways with the force of the impact, slamming into the spring supports. They pop out of place, metal fragments exploding outwards, the beam itself sliding forwards with a sickening screech. He sees the beam in front of him, and suddenly everything is black.

Opening his eyes, Grace finds himself partially wrapped around the bottom half of the broken beam. He groans, his head pounding, and tries to move, but a searing burst of agony flares from his left leg. He tries to look, but most of his vision is blocked.

He doesn’t realize how loud his ears are ringing until he looks up at Simon—now hovering over him, his eyes wild, his entire face frighteningly pale—and sees that he’s apparently speaking.

“-land.” His hand presses roughly to Grace’s pulse point, his fingers digging into the skin. “Ryland, come on. Talk to me.”

Grace can only groan, his vision fading in and out. His chest is pressed against the beam, breathing made incredibly difficult.

“Can you hear me? Ry!”

Grace nods, his head swimming with even just the effort of that. “Yes,” he coughs.

Simon leans over him more, his breath warm on Grace’s cheeks. “Fuck. Your eyes. You can see, right?”

“Yes. I can- why wouldn’t I-?”

“You slammed your fucking face against a brick of titanium. I’m just checking everything. And your pupils are three times the size they’re supposed to be.”

Grace tries to wrap his mind around this, but every thought slips away before he can grab hold of it. “So I… concussion. I’ve had those.”

Simon sits up fully, looking off to the side, and somehow going paler. “Shit. Shit, shit.”

“I can’t move my leg,” Grace grumbles, trying to sit up, but almost blacking out. Simon immediately pushes him back down hard, shaking his head viciously.

“Do not move,” he hisses. 

Grace meets his eyes and sees the terror in them. He tries to shift his foot, and he realizes, he can’t feel it at all. 

His vision dips again.

Simon’s hand is under his chin in a matter of moments. He’s forcing Grace to keep looking at him. To pay attention.

“Ryland,” he says. “You will be fine if I have anything to fucking do with it.”

“The beam-”

“I don’t give a fuck about the beam. I could care less about the fucking beam.” Simon clenches his jaw, his thumb brushing over Grace’s stubble. “I’m going to go tell Rocky what happened. I’ll be right back. You will not die on me.”

“Okay,” Grace whispers lightly, his breath catching.

Simon gives him one last look, then he takes off in the other direction.

Grace is left alone, listening to the hum of the ship, facing either the wall or the chunk of titanium hanging off of it’s base only a little over two feet above his head.

The coolant drips.

Grace clenches his fist, and closes his eyes. 

His heart begins to slow, and his adrenaline drops.

At first the pain is an ache. Then heat. Then pressure. Then something deep inside his thigh begins to pulse in time with his heartbeat.

Just as quickly as it began, it flourishes into something bright and vicious. 

He clenches his teeth so hard he’s afraid they may break.

Waves of pain emanate from his thigh, becoming increasingly worse as they ripple through his body. 

He has no way to tell the time.

He curls in on himself, but the beam blocks him.

He feels tears wet his cheeks. Warm droplets trailing down his arm where his head lies.

It hurts. 

For a moment, when his eyes are shut, darkness overtakes him. Whether he’s blacking out or falling asleep, he can’t tell. 

But he comes back to himself when Simon returns.

“Ryland?”

“Alive,” Grace replies, his voice choked. 

Simon is over him again in seconds, a pack thrown over his shoulder. He drops it on the ground, rummaging through it, and pulling out rolls of gauze and tape.

“Simon-”

“Rocky is freaking out.”

“Si-”

“He has some kind of plan. He’s building a model of this compartment so we can figure out how to get you out of here without crushing us.”

“Simon.”

Simon finally looks over. 

Grace glances at the stuff in his hands. “Tell me you aren’t using all of that?” he whispers.

Simon’s expression drops even more than it already had. “...It’s really bad.” 

Grace shakes his head, trying to sit up again. “You can’t waste all of… you can’t… it’s a waste of…” he tries desperately to talk, but when he opens his eyes he’s back on the floor with Simon’s hand just barely under his head, his face twisted in anger.

“Stop fucking moving. You’re going to kill yourself.”

“You can’t use all of that on me.”

“Yes I can and I will,” Simon insists.

Grace swallows, finally just going limp. He lies there, baring his teeth against the agony of touch as Simon works on his leg. He chokes once, the pain ripping through his thigh and up to his hip. Part of him just wants to take the whole thing off. 

He thinks of Rocky, how terrified he must be. He’s heard the creature’s desperate screams two too many times, and they play through his mind like a broken record.

“I’m sorry, Ryland, I’m trying to be fast,” Simon whispers, his voice deep and rough. “Do you want me to go get something? Like some- I don’t know, fuck. Sedation, or something like that?”

Grace’s heart jumps. He tenses so hard he feels Simon drop something. “No,” he snaps. “Never.”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I’m- I’m trying to help.”

Grace draws a breath, fighting back a scream as Simon’s hand returns to his leg. “Can’t- no sedation. Pl… please.”

Minutes pass like hours. Grace buries his face in his arm, gasping through the pain as Simon frantically fixes everything around them. He whispers apologies, curses, and more apologies, but Grace is still so out of touch with reality that nothing makes any sense at all. 

He sweats through his shirt. Breathing grows more difficult by the second. Simon begins to set up the springs again, but he has to work around Grace’s body. 

He can’t set the springs as close, so there has to be more of them.

The repetitive hammering that took them ages together now lies on his shoulders entirely. 

Grace can’t fight his fading vision, and it sweeps him away before he can say another word.

—

Simon’s shoulders are raw from where he’s repeatedly scraped through the dozens of cramped spaces leading to Ryland.

He crawls out again, dragging the fresh air into his lungs like a lifeline, hunching over and trying to stave off the aggressive panic he feels whispering beneath the surface of his skin.

The entire crawlspace reeks of Ryland’s blood.

The ground, their clothes, the equipment, all of it, all covered in a thin layer of viscous red.

But Simon is holding it together.

Ryland needs him to.

Rocky is yelling, waving a model in front of him, his clicking and panicked whirrs almost sounding like something he can understand by now.

“Grace okay!? Grace alive!?” 

“For now,” Simon rasps. “Have you come up with a plan yet?”

Rocky paces, his vents puffing steam, his legs stumbling. “Grace need help. Rocky fix. Rocky make small suit-” 

Simon shakes his head. “I can barely fit. What about that makes it sound like you can?”

Rocky explodes into a string of expletives, turning around and going back to his ferociously built model. “Same plan until Rocky make something new.” 

“Just… prop it up.” 

“Just prop. Keep Grace alive.”

So he’s back inside. Ryland hasn’t woken up again, thank god. Listening to him try to stifle his whimpers of pain had been agonizing. All he wanted to do was just rip these damn beams apart and get him out of here.

He checks on Ryland’s leg again.

The metal from up above has essentially pinned Ryland’s leg to the wall. It lies buried in the back of his thigh right above the knee, the rest of it stuck fast in the metal of the ground. Wedging Ryland out is basically impossible without doing further damage because of the blade-like edge to the metal. He’s already bleeding, and the way his knee is pressed against the wall leaves no room to try to wiggle him free. The entire area is covered in a thick layer of bandages, gauze, and the like. Everything Simon could grab, he did. When Simon pulls back the top layer, he finds gauze completely soaked through with blood.

“Fuck.”

Simon backs away, shaking out his body. “Come on. Come on. Just fucking-”

He reels back and drives another metal wedge into the spring.

He barely notices the effort it takes this time around 

There’s three of them that need to be mounted now. Two to support the upper columns, and then one to push the beam into place.

Simon’s arm smarts with pain, but he glances at Ryland’s leg and keeps moving.

He drops things, his hand shaking so bad he can barely keep hold of any object within his grasp. His hammer slips several times, and by the end of the second spring, he's missing more blows than he lands.

By the time he moves to the third, speckles of red have begun to show through the top layer of bandages too.

Twice he stops just long enough to press trembling fingers against Ryland's neck, refusing to move until he’s confident that what he feels is his pulse, even as it steadily grows weaker. Afterwards, he doesn't even bother checking the pulse. He watches Ryland's chest instead.

Up.

Down.

Up.

“Good. Keep breathing,” Simon mutters to them both.

He begins to talk himself through the repair as the scent of iron grows stronger with each passing minute.

He finishes the springs. His arms feel like they're filled with molten lead. He’s sweating, shaking, and far too hot, but blood has begun to seep across the floor. 

He installs metal fixtures to hold the springs in place, like they had originally planned. He bolts them in quickly, stepping over to the broken beam and looking over the whole structure. It’s finally stopped shifting away. Simon even grabs the top and tugs on it with his full body weight, but the spring holds steady. He tests each of them by shoving his shoulder into the middle of the spring, but now that they’re completely attached from every angle, they too refuse to budge.

That just leaves the support in Ryland’s leg. 

Simon sits next to him for a second, catching his breath, staring at Ryland’s still body. 

The terror in his chest tries to slip by, and Simon clamps it down. He sucks a wheezy breath through his teeth, scrubbing a hand through his hair before he’s back onto his knees and shoving himself past the tight beams.

He can hear Rocky far before he sees him, the clanks of his feet echoing down the corridor. “Rocky!” he calls.

“Simon! Grace okay?”

“He’s alive still. I have everything in place.”

“Clamps working? Holders working?” 

“Yes.”

“Good, good, good, good. Grace come out now.” Rocky holds up his model, wedging himself into the entrance of the storage area to better show Simon. “This support fall, trap Grace here. Simon cut into support, create open space for Grace leg.” 

“How am I supposed to do that without hurting him more?” Simon asks.

Rocky whirrs, his body shivering. “Simon be careful. Careful, careful.” 

Simon buries his face in his hand, scraping at his forehead with his nails. “I’ve been being careful. I’ve- fucking hell. I can’t. I need to.” 

Rocky watches him, clicking rapidly. “Grace trust Simon. Rocky trust Simon. Bring Grace on this, Rocky help.”

“Bring him on what?”

Rocky motions to something that looks very close to a sled. It’s a sheet of xenonite, and it’s attached to an extensive chain all wrapped around itself right next to them. “Put chain around Rocky ball, Rocky pull.”

Simon nods quickly, crawling to his feet and dragging the chain over. Once Rocky is secure within the chain, he delves back into the crawlspace, inching forward with his arm and bringing the sheet along with his legs. Unfortunately, the sheet is too large to fit within the room they were working in, so Simon crawls in alone. Ryland still lies limp, but his skin has paled to a worrying degree. The bandages are fully soaked through—all of them—and there’s a much larger puddle of blood that has formed around the man’s legs.

Simon pushes forward. He grabs one of the clamps, setting it around the metal trapping Ryland, propping one side against his leg and pushing down hard with his hand.

It slips off and falls to the floor with a crash.

“Shit,” Simon hisses, picking it up and trying again. Again, it shifts with the pressure and tumbles down. 

Simon can feel himself growing increasingly more desperate. There’s this heavy squeezing in his chest, making his lungs feel like they aren't taking in enough oxygen. “Come on,” he mutters. “Come on. Please work with me.”

Finally, he makes the first cut.The metal detaches from the top, letting it turn into a freefloating pendulum again. Simon shoves it so hard it dents sideways, sticking out at an odd angle but staying in place. He immediately begins to make the second cut, but when he tries, the metal in Ryland’s leg sinks in a little further from the pressure. He stops, flinching back, looking towards Ryland’s face.

He still lays unconscious, his eyes rolled back into his head.

Simon grits his teeth, preps the cut, and does it as quickly and as surely as he can.

It snaps off.

He immediately flattens the last remaining part against the floor. He knows not to remove it from Ryland’s leg, but looking at it makes his stomach writhe. Finally he shuffles to Ryland’s head, brushing his thumb over his cheek once. 

Ryland’s eyelids flicker. His lips twist into a grimace, and he inhales a sharp gasp.

“Hey, hey,” Simon whispers, immediately dipping down to meet his eyes. Ryland was glancing around, but his gaze settles as soon as Simon speaks. He goes to talk, but he stops.

“Don’t wake up yet,” Simon murmurs, brushing over his cheek again. “Just… you’ll be okay, but you have to trust me.” 

Ryland’s head bobs down once, almost imperceptibly. His hand reaches up, but his eyes flutter and he’s back under before Simon can say another word.

Simon begins to drag him. He tries to be as gentle as he can, using his own body as a cushion over the sharper bits of the beams they had to crawl through, but Ryland’s leg causes a lot of problems. Simon ends up having to scale the beams quite a few times to go over the section he’s pushing Ryland through, and by the time he gets Ryland settled on top of the xenonite, he’s completely exhausted. A bright trail of red follows the path they did, which Simon tries to ignore. He crawls up the tunnel as fast as he can, whistling in a short signal to Rocky he hopes the alien understands.

He does.

Slowly, jerkily, the xenonite slides along the tunnel. At several points, Simon is forced to scramble around the sled to get it unstuck, or remove it from where it’s wedged intro a corner of some kind. He watches Ryland anxiously the whole time, tracking the blood as it pools beneath him every time they move. Again, and again, any progress they make is bathed in red.

When Ryland makes it to the end, Simon has to lift the edge of the sled to get it over the hump of the doorway out. He braces it against Rocky, the alien using the flexible side of his ball to take hold of the edge, and then he gently eases Ryland out of the storage compartment.

“Grace! Grace, Grace, Grace,” Rocky chants, his voice shrill and worried. “Grace hurt. Need help. Need Armando-” 

“I know,” Simon snaps. “I know.” 

During the last push, Simon’s arm gives out. He drops the edge of the sled, letting Ryland’s leg get jostled as the xenonite hits the floor. Simon pushes himself harder, grunting as he eases Ryland to the floor just outside of the storage room.

He tries to stand, but his legs nearly fail him too.

“Simon!”

Simon looks up, heaving.

Rocky is already rolling away, the sled following after him. “Simon rest. Need strength later. Thank, thank, thank, thank, thank.” 

He looks down at the translator hanging under his shirt even as Rocky’s trilling grows quieter, shaking his head and pressing forward. “I can rest when Ryland is safe.”

He hobbles after them, picking up the blanket that Ryland lost long before this as he makes his way to the med bay. Simon makes it inside far after Rocky has and immediately sets to getting Ryland up off of the ground and onto his bed. Armando helps, thankfully, with a sheet, taking most of the weight into its robotic frame instead of forcing Simon’s overextended muscles to bear it. 

Simon keeps one hand under Ryland’s shoulders even after Ryland makes it to the bed. The robot pauses, waiting.

Simon realizes he’s holding on hard enough that his knuckles hurt.

Slowly, he lets go.

The second Ryland is settled, Armando sets to work on the leg. It moves fast, diligently, every movement frighteningly intentional. The metal is removed and the wound is sutured before Simon even realizes exactly what happened. Somehow, Rocky is already in his xenonite tunnels, watching Ryland as closely as he can while he trills his name in these quiet notes, barely audible over the silent buzz of Armando’s limbs.

Simon stares at Ryland’s face, his hand itching. He reaches up, drags his thumb over Ryland’s forehead to tuck some of his flyaways out of his eyes. 

He feels the tears before they fall this time. Now, however, he’s silent. He just watches Ryland’s face as Armando works on him and Rocky calls for him.

Slowly Simon leans against the bedframe and slides to the floor. He presses his knees to his chest, tucks his head down and wraps his arm around it. 

He can’t move a muscle.

So he sits, and he listens, and, for the first time since Eden, he prays.

He prays into his hand soaked in blood, that Ryland will wake up again.