Chapter Text
Grace could barely stand the whiplash. Being alone so suddenly and without warning made him want to scratch at his skin until the crawling sensation stopped. But last time he kept picking at his skin like that, Adrian had threatened to put him on anxiety medication.
He was fine. He was fine! Really! Simon had been gone for all of, what, fifteen minutes? Besides, the last thing the man had done was scream in his face and punch a sizable hole in the wall.
Grace wandered over to the wall, his fingers tracing the outside of the small crater. Then, he balled his own fist and placed it into the hole. It was deeper than he thought, and Grace’s fist looked small and weak in comparison.
Huh…Simon could just kill him if he wanted to. He didn’t know where the thought emerged from, but it crossed his mind as casually as observing if Simon was good at a sport or craft.
Grace really didn’t know what to do at this point. What was there to do? If Simon wanted to be left alone so badly, then he would leave him alone. Especially if that meant Grace wouldn’t receive a sizable dent in his skull.
He washed out his bowl. The chili was delicious. He hadn’t expected to like it, but it quickly rose to the ranks of the foods he could eat along with his favorite steak dinner from the old diner on earth and the Hail Mary’s nutrient slurry.
It was so strange to him that the man who had made it could go from calm to raging in the flip of a switch. Then again, Grace was the same way, just…a bit differently. His sudden emotional outbursts were more, as Rocky would put it, leaky. Sometimes onboard the Hail Mary, he’d cry over the littlest things, from the overwhelming fear of the Taumoeba pods not reaching earth to finally getting his self-programmed game of pong to work.
Maybe Simon was like that.
Thinking about it made his heartrate slow down, anyway.
He returned to the table to clear off the rest of it. His eyes caught a glimpse of the open laptop. Those beady eyes stared out of the grainy darkness at him, and he quickly shut it.
On the weird logic that Simon and Ellie worked off of, Ellie as the eel did make sense. They had been the closest thing to Simon in his last memories of the blood moon. Then again, when Simon told him that, he’d just come out of his coma and was high on as many of the pain-dulling medicines that the Eridians could synthesize from the Hail Mary’s medical supplies.
And yet how did Ellie being a monstrous ambush predator line up with the same Ellie who hid under the bed after Simon had a nightmare? The same Ellie who whined and cried like a child when frustrated? The same Ellie who called him an angel?
That part didn’t make sense.
A part of him was tempted to go through all the photos on the laptop. It had been a while since he’d looked at him, and the first time, he’d been majorly distracted by the overwhelming feeling of, “Oh my God, another human is here.”
But it just felt wrong to look at them without Simon’s context.
He picked up Simon’s abandoned bowl and found it still heavy. From the looks of it, Simon had only taken a bite or two before the argument started.
He stared at the bowl.
Oh God, Ellie…
Simon had barely eaten, that paired with the emotional explosion was a primordial soup prepared just for Ellie to emerge into. And she would emerge disoriented, upset, and without Grace.
And without Grace to stop her, who knows what they would do. What would Simon wake up to?
He threw the bowl back down and grabbed his yellow coat, knocking over the coatrack in his hurry.
Simon’s heavy footsteps in the sand were easy enough to follow. He had steered clear of the water, so the tide didn’t wash them away. Tracing them down the shoreline, Grace passed the Hail Mary and into the cave where he held class. The sandy footsteps went on for a while until they eventually faded into sparse traces of sand.
“Simon?” Grace called. His voice echoed back around him. Once it was done echoing, he waited only a moment for a response before calling again, “Ellie?”
Nothing.
He’d just gotten himself calmed down in the house, and now his blood was rushing in his ears again.
“Come on, come on,” he whispered to himself, and even that echoed around in the cave like he had shouted.
He pushed in deeper, the sunlight from the opening where he normally taught faded out. It was soon replaced with the soft blue glow of the plankton lakes.
His bare foot brushed against something soft. When he looked down, he saw his own “I Had Potential” shirt staring back at him.
Simon was here? By the water?
“Simon?! Ellie?!” he called louder and shrunk back when the echo reverberated just as loud. He reached down to find Simon’s sweatpants tucked under it. “Shit…”
A slosh of water nearly made him fall over, and he whipped around to see Simon treading water in one of the pools. His dark brown eyes were lit up from the bright blue planktons. Only the top of his head and his eyes peered out of the water like a watchful alligator.
Grace practically scrambled to the edge of the pool with a desperation that would have embarrassed him if he wasn’t so relieved. “Thank God, I––” he paused. “I-I’m sorry, I know you wanted me to leave you alone but––”
The rest of Simon’s face eased up out of the water.
“Why would we want you to leave us alone?”
Ellie. Of course. If Simon had willingly stripped down and jumped into the glowing pool of water, Grace would have unprofessionally diagnosed him as insane.
“Sorry, I…” he sat back on his knees, his head and chest swimming in confusion and fear and relief.
Simon was here. Ellie was here. Grace had found them. Simon was angry, but Ellie wasn’t alone and wouldn’t make things worse. Grace had found them.
Ellie swam a little closer, looking up at him. Despite missing an arm, they moved with surprising confidence and elegance through the water. Which shouldn’t be surprising, he supposed, if they really were a creature of the deep. No wonder they were so fixated on swimming.
“Well…you finally got to swim,” he said in a shaky chuckle.
Ellie’s face split into a grin. “Yes!” They exclaimed, Simon’s deep voice resounding through the cave like an organ. They turned but quickly looked back towards Grace. “Watch! Watch us swim!”
Grace sat there on his knees, counting his breaths quietly as he watched Ellie dart around in the glowing water as gracefully as an otter.
“You’re really good at that,” Grace said, a little calmer now, once Ellie rose above the surface again.
Ellie turned and dove under the water again, so deep that they became just a dark shape in the milky blue. However, just as Grace’s stomach began to turn with fear again, their head popped out of the water. Simon’s hair was like a puddle of dark oil around his head.
Grace glanced down, noticing that Ellie’s gills were pulsing softly against the movement of the water they made from treading it. Were they…functional?
“We are a good swimmer,” they echoed. “We were made for it.”
Made for it. Not born. Made. Grace’s stomach lurched again.
“What, uh…your home…what was it like, Ellie?” he asked as they continued to joyfully paddle around.
“Where we come from?” Ellie grinned. “Oh, it’s warm. It’s so warm, like being held from all sides, and…” they trailed off, and began to tread water again, their movements slightly more lethargic. “It…hurt. We used to hurt all the time. But when we woke up here, we stopped hurting so much.”
Grace sat back on his knees. “So…you hurt Simon because you were hurting?”
A pit formed in Grace’s chest when Ellie shook their head. Of course it wasn’t the easy explanation. Why couldn’t anything be easy?
“No…we were…” They reached up and wiped some of the dark hair out of their eyes. “We were trying to save him…but he wouldn’t listen. He never listens. Not even when we chased him down in that stupid submarine.” They bared their teeth. “Not even when we tore him apart to get him to listen to us!”
A beat of silence passed between them, broken only by the gentle sloshing of water. Ellie stared down into the water. Grace found himself suddenly wishing Simon was back.
“He’d seen the Light, too. He was the only one who understood what it was like. We tried to bring him to salvation…inside us.” Their hand dropped from their face. “We think…we died… We both died. But then suddenly, there was light…” They turned their head and stared up at him, the blue pool glimmering in their eyes, “and then there was you…Grace…”
They swam over to where Grace knelt. “Swim with us…”
Their hand emerged from the water, dripping and glowing a bit from the plankton clinging to his skin. Grace almost snatched it up unconsciously.
But he didn’t. He shook his head, and the hand sank back down in a glowing blue ripple.
“So…instead of you bringing him inside you…you went into him?” he asked. “And now you’re stuck together…” he sighed and rubbed his face. “All of this is a mess…”
Ellie just stared.
“It’s not fair,” Grace said, his voice straining a little as a lump formed in it. He wasn’t sure who he was speaking to, Ellie, or Simon, or even himself. Maybe he was just saying it aloud so it could be heard. “It’s not fair. That you both have to live like this.”
Ellie reached out of the pool, resting their arm on the cool cave floor where Grace sat. “You understand…” they whispered. “Of course you do. You are our angel…”
“I’m not an angel, Ellie,” Grace smiled weakly. “I’m just…trying to figure out how to make you guys okay. I care about Simon too much to let you two live like this. It’s bad for both of you.” He swallowed hard. “And maybe even for me, too.”
“Both of us…” they whispered reverently. “Oh, Angel…you are too good. We would bring you inside us if we could. The world is too cruel for you to be so good.”
Grace’s throat tightened. He wanted to laugh, to say something about how “good” was a very generous term for a man who had once literally turned his back and ran away from saving the world. But the words wouldn’t come.
He decided he was too tired to argue at the moment. “Thanks Ellie…” He swallowed down the lump in his throat. “You, um…you wanna go home now? I’m sure you’re hungry. Simon barely touched his dinner.”
Ellie surged back into the water with a wave and shook their head. “No. Stay. We belong here.”
Grace fought the urge to reach out and grab them. He knew that would just end up with Ellie dragging him with them into the water, and that was a possibility Grace didn’t want to explore. Still, seeing them moving away from him did make all the warning bells in his head fire off at once.
“I know, but Simon doesn’t. He’s afraid of the water, Ellie. Really, really afraid. If he comes out while you’re still swimming, something terrible might happen.”
Ellie remained in the middle of the pool out of reach. Grace stood up. “Please, Ellie…?”
They shook their head. Grace sighed. He picked up Simon’s clothes, holding them to his chest. “Alright…” he said slowly, keeping an eye on Ellie in his peripheral vision as he turned around. “Guess I’ll just go home by myself then…”
He wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing as he slowly made his way back to the mouth of the cave with exaggerated and dragging steps. He used this trick on his middle schoolers when they refused to return to the bus on field trips. Ellie was a beast from an alien ocean beyond his comprehension. She was just going to––
“WAIT!”
He stopped and turned around. Ellie was clinging to the side of the pool, watching him with wide eyes. The distress they wore on Simon’s face squeezed his heart.
“Wait!” They repeated, scrabbling at the side with the one arm they had. “I’m—I’m coming, too, wait!”
It worked.
It actually worked.
“You sure?” he asked.
Ellie tried to heave themself over the side of the pool but slid back into the water. Their efforts left red scrapes up Simon’s bare stomach and chest from the rough stone, and Grace quickly hurried back over so they wouldn’t hurt themself more.
“Okay, okay, I’m coming to help you, hang on.” He set Simon’s clothes down and reached for them. As soon as he did, the thought of them dragging him down into the water flashed through his mind, but he pushed it away at the sight of the desperation on their face.
“Ready? I’m gonna pull, and you use your legs, okay?” Grace gripped Ellie’s water-slicked arm and pulled.
Ellie whined but eventually surfaced and lay on the side of the pool. They coughed, water leaking out of their gills, and soon they were heaving air through them again. Grace kept a hand on their arm.
“You good?”
Ellie nodded, still firmly holding Grace’s hand as tightly as he was theirs.
“Okay… Let’s get you—” Grace looked down and then immediately turned his head back to the mouth of the cave. “Um…Ellie…? Where’s your, um…”
“Our what?”
Grace swallowed and stooped down to grab Simon’s clothes. It was just the shirt and pants. “Where’d your shorts go?”
Ellie blinked and cocked their head. “I took them off.”
“While you were in the water?”
They nodded emphatically.
Grace sighed deeply and rubbed his forehead. “Alright…um…well, just go and put these—”
“Mm-mm,” Ellie hummed and they tugged on Grace’s arm. “Let’s go home now.”
“Ellie, you’re naked,” Grace insisted. “I mean––Simon’s naked!”
Ellie just looked at him. The word didn’t seem to impact them at all.
“Okay…” Grace’s hand tightened around Ellie’s. “Just…God, if you’re out there…please, please, please let Rocky and Adrian not visit the biosphere today.”
Hand in hand, they walked out of the cave. The artificial sunlight shining in the biosphere was like a flashbang to Grace’s already rattled system. It was so dark inside the cave and he was so tired that he’d forgotten it was hardly noon. Grace kept Simon’s clothes tucked under his arm as he led the way back to the house, his eyes locked directly ahead. He was determined not to look behind him, and he was even more determined not to look down.
He could hear Ellie faintly humming behind him and splashing as they kicked their bare feet through the surf whenever a wave came up and washed over their ankles.
As the house came into sight, he felt Ellie’s arm grow heavier in his grip.
“Ellie,” he said, “We’re not swimming anymore today.”
Ellie let out a little whine, but it didn't sound like one of complaint.
“Ellie?” Grace finally turned back to assure himself they weren’t getting distracted. Sure enough, Ellie was following behind, just dragging their feet a little. They swayed a bit from side to side. “You feeling sleepy?” he asked, and they nodded.
“Okay. We’re almost there.”
They reached the front porch. Ellie’s eyes drooped half closed.
“Just hang on for a second…” Grace said as he ran to their room to get them a towel. He threw Simon’s dirty clothes into the hamper, but they just landed on the floor. He could hear Ellie’s lumbering steps as they tried to ascend the stairs after him.
When they reached the top, he threw the towel over their shoulders like a blanket, and they grabbed at it clumsily. Their semi-lucid state indicated that Simon would be returning soon.
And he was still soaked to the bone.
“C’mon, Ellie,” he urged in a whisper as he led them over to the bed. He hurried to grab another towel from the bathroom.
Their chin dropped to their chest. When he ran back, Simon’s hands were starting to shake as rivulets of water streamed down his arm and dripped onto his legs. Grace scrubbed them off until Simon’s miscolored, mutated skin became even more red.
He could hear raspy breaths near his neck as Grace squeezed as much water out of Simon’s hair as he could. Still, it was so thick that it was damp to the touch.
“Simon, can you hear me?” he asked, glancing at Simon’s pale face.
Simon’s gills flared wide, and he stared blankly ahead.
“Simon?”
“...m…mama…?”
Grace dropped the towel.
What?
He knelt there on the edge of the bed next to Simon––Simon the huge mutated prisoner from a world so cruel Grace couldn’t even begin to imagine life there. Simon, who was now calling out for his mom like a child who’d lost sight of their parent at the park.
“Mama…?”
Grace swallowed. He didn’t know what to do. Simon looked so lost. And for Grace, this situation was so alien to him. He didn’t even remember a time when he’d called out for his mom, or dad, or any adult for help.
But still, he knew he had to try.
“Shhhh…” Grace whispered, continuing to towel dry Simon’s hair. Simon had pulled the other towel closer around himself like a shield. “It’s okay…”
“Mama…?”
Slowly, Grace closed his eyes and reached into the back of his mind, back to his mental boxes of Earth that were meant to just collect dust.
There was a student in his homeroom class. He had trouble with short-term memory. His mom was a nurse, and often was late picking him up from school since Jared couldn’t take the bus. Jared? Jared.
Simon held that same desperate, longing look that Jared would as he stared at the classroom door. He knew his mom was coming. He couldn’t remember when she’d come. But he knew that his mom was coming and his teacher Mr. Grace was waiting with him. And when Jared’s mom came, he’d jump out of his desk so fast that it startled Grace and run to her like she’d come home from war.
“Mama…?”
Grace swallowed. He could feel his nose was starting to run.
“Hey…” he began, his voice a bit scratchy. “Simon, look at me. It’s me, Grace. Ryland Grace. You remember?”
He gently turned Simon’s head to look at him, and those hazy dark brown eyes focused. He looked at Grace like he looked at the tomatoes in the garden, like the pot of chili on the stove, like those pictures from the submarine. It was so intense that Grace instinctively wanted to back away, but he made himself stay in place.
“...Grace…?”
Grace sniffed and a smile tugged at his lips. “Yeah…it’s me, buddy…” he gently wiped the water and sweat droplets from Simon’s beard and face, careful that the fibers didn’t snag on the teeth jutting out of Simon’s cheek.
As suddenly as a sunrise, Simon’s face went from despondent to confused amazement. “You’re here…?”
“I’m here.”
Simon gently pushed the rag away. He didn’t seem to care that little droplets of water from the cave pool were clinging to his skin. The clawed hand then went to Grace’s face. Grace instinctively froze up as Simon’s thumb moved against his cheek near his nose, the other fingers tucked behind his ear.
“Oh my God…” Simon whispered raggedly. His quiet breath brushed against Grace’s face. “Oh my God…”
“Simon?”
“You’re real…” he whispered. His eyes searched Grace’s face like he was seeing him for the first time. “You’re real…”
What?
“Of course I’m real,” Grace said. His hand instinctively went up to touch Simon’s. He could feel how swollen Simon’s pointer finger was. It was likely fractured from when he hit the wall, but the logistics of everything seemed so far away when Simon was looking up at him like this.
Like he was an angel.
“Oh my God…” Simon croaked again. “I’m alive…? I made it…?”
Grace nearly choked on his own breath.
Oh. Oh God. That explained so much.
Why Simon moved through the house like he was walking on eggshells.
Why Simon was always hesitant to go to sleep.
Why Simon would look at Grace with a subtle skepticality whenever he talked about the biosphere or the Hail Mary.
“Gee-manently, Simon…” he whispered. “Okay…”
He carefully slipped out of Simon’s grasp, pulling clothes out of the closet as he processed this.
He couldn’t process this. Right now, it was unprocessable.
Returning to Simon, he held out some sweatpants. “Clothes?”
Simon nodded weakly and took them. Grace helped him get his legs through the pant cuffs. Then the shirt went on. Once his head was through, Grace tried to dry Simon’s hair again, and he felt Simon’s hand slip around his back and hold onto his shirt with a force so tight he thought Simon’s claws might just puncture the fabric.
Simon’s hair was still damp, but it wasn’t soaking the back of the shirt anymore. Grace looked at Simon.
“Okay, you’re mostly dry now,” he said. “What else? What else do you need right now? Just…tell me how to help. I’ll do anything you want.”
His head was still reeling. Simon had thought he was dead? Had he thought it this whole time?
“I feel like I’m floating…” Simon whispered. His eyes were wide.
“Is that a good thing?”
Simon seemed to pause and consider it. Then he shook his head. “I still don’t feel real…”
Grace nodded. He knew the feeling, at least a little. It had contributed to his obsession with the weighted blanket that was aboard the Hail Mary. He hadn’t used it in some time, but surely it was folded up in the storage closet downstairs.
“I could go get—”
Simon grabbed his wrist. “No. Please don’t leave.”
The movement to get off the bed was immediately aborted. “Okay…”
“Can you lay on me?”
“Sure.”
Simon lay down, and Grace followed suit, laying across Simon’s chest. He hoped it was enough. Grace wasn’t terribly heavy. He’d lost a dangerous amount of weight on the journey to Erid and was still working on regaining it. Still, Simon seemed appeased. His breathing slowed, and Grace could feel his heartbeat ease. Simon was still gripping the back of Grace’s shirt.
“I’m alive…”
“You’re alive.”
“I’m alive.”