Chapter Text
“Percipient? Did you find them. You know you can’t leave me alone with both Amphiboles. They gang up on.. me.” The stranger’s words slow to a stop as they listen to the scene before them. “O-oh. Um..” the stranger stumbles over their chords.
The two pebbles hide behind the stranger’s legs, clicking curiously at the sad sack of an eridian sobbing in the middle of their foyer. Rocky can’t help but notice that they’re adorable.. they both sound extremely similar. Do they share the same carapace makeup? If they don’t, their mineral makeup is close enough the share the same carapace type in their names. They both peek out at exactly the same time to gauge his reaction. Oh fuck… They’re twins, aren’t they? That’s so cute! Rocky aches for a world where they’re his. He wants to be the person stood beside Adrian cooing soft reassurances to them. He wants wants wants that. He’s wanted pebbles with them for over a century.
Adrian is at a loss for words. They rumble soothingly to all four of the pebbles. Rocky wishes it didn’t still have a calming effect on him too, but it does. He relaxes ever so slightly against his will.
Adrian seems to land on a formal introduction now that all of their pebbles are present. They begin with “Okay little ones this is—“ and they gesture to Rocky, but they clearly haven’t found an end to that sentence yet. They cower in on themself a bit as though the introduction is painful for them.
“This is.. this is Rocky.” They finish after a few beats of silence.
Rocky warbles and tries to make himself more approachable. He might not get to raise them, but he can at least try to make this a better introduction for them. He shouldn’t scare them in.. in their own home. He holds out his front two limbs, palms up and tilts his vents forward, quieting his high pitched whines.
“Hello..” his voice is strained and he can feel the stranger’s echolocation pinging off of him. He wants to snarl at them. Maybe if they took an etching of him and digested it, they could better attempt to pick out all of his details and faults.
The pebble who has been in the chamber with him the longest, Augie, is brave enough to go back to investigating Rocky despite him yelling and crying just moments ago. Rocky thought that might be a bigger issue, but none of the pebbles seem to be frightened of him. They’re just a bit skittish. Augie taps at one of Rocky’s claws curiously. Their carapace is roughly the size of a human tennis ball. They’re such a tiny little thing that Rocky can’t help but coo to them.
He’s aware of Adrian’s carapace raising slightly at his reaction, but he tries to ignore it. He tries to ignore them. Just because they pebbles they cheated on him to hatch are adorable doesn’t mean they’re off the hook— not by a longshot.
“Here now now now!” Augie loudly encourages their siblings before clambering over Rocky’s claws. The twins venture forward cautiously, but the one on Adrian’s back hunkers down in place and refuses to leave their safe spot.
“That one on your claws is Studious Augite.” Adrian says, scuffling their claws against the floor. “They can’t pronounce their t’s quite yet, hence the nickname.”
“Hi Studious Augite.” He tries to be polite for the pebbles sakes even if Adrian’s presence and words are cutting into like sharpened diamond. Rocky also just wants to pretend for a second. When his traitorous mate isn’t interrupting, he can almost believe they’re his. It soothes his soul to observe pebbles after going so long without hearing any. He hadn’t known that was something he’d been missing until he felt that joy again. He gives an excited tap tap tap with his back-most legs as he watches the pebble tumble around and over his hands. Adorably, Augite mirrors him, showing him just how excited they are too.
It’s not long before the Amphiboles, as the stranger had called them, come sprinting over to greet Rocky. He’s not quite experienced enough to be able to hear the structural differences in carapaces, but the two do sound remarkably similar. One of the two grabs on his claw and tugs which prompts the other to tug on a different claw as if either of them could move an adult.
Where could they possibly even want him to go? How silly!
Rocky whirrs a laugh and is surprised to hear how the sound bounces back to him in a familiar way. His adrenal core clenches with a sad recognition. This cave used to be filled with his and Adrian’s laughter.
He’s been gone for so long.
It’s at that moment Adrian decides to speak. “Those two are named Exuberant and Diligent Amphibole. And this is Exceptional Ilmenite.” They gesture to the shy pebble still latched onto their carapace. They notably fail to introduce the stranger that’s still watching him cautiously. “Aren’t.. aren’t they so beautiful?” They chirrup the question hesitantly and Rocky feels like he’s just been split into two. He’s getting sick of saying it, but it hurts like hell.
Because they are. They are beautiful, and they’re not his.
“Mmm. They do have your resonance.” He hums as he tries to stay neutral and keep his body language calm.
“I should hope so!” Adrian laughs, the sound bouncing around the chamber in a way that reminds him of moment where they were distinctly his and this was only their home. “What with them being born in the same exact cavern and all.” They tilt fondly.
“The..” that fact hits him exactly like 8Gs of perpendicular force, and he struggles to form chords. “The same exact cavern? Your.. your clan’s?” He feels ill and off balance.
Adrian had been told by their clan in no uncertain terms that as long as they were mated to Rocky, they would never be able to lay their clutch in their clan’s historic hatching caverns. Even worse, their pebbles— had any survived— would never receive the older clan’s markings or be accepted as partial members of Clan of the slow-cooling magma chamber formed within the mafic-heavy crust of The Marquise Sea.
He almost doesn’t want to confirm his suspicions that these pebbles didn’t have the same restrictions, but he clicks down at the pebbles before him, and sure enough, they have the main strokes of the crest upon Adrian’s sigil limbs carved upon their own.
Rocky is past hurting now.
Now the facts swirling together before him burn like icy cold oxygen in his vents.
He slowly withdraws his hands from the pebbles and stands to his full height. It’s nowhere near Adrian’s height, and he’s still shorter than this stranger by a few units, but his size doesn’t deter him as he slowly and silently walks towards them.
“Rocky..?” Adrian’s voice is clearly worried about his sudden change in demeanor.
Good. They should be worried.
Once he’s within a couple carapace lengths, he sprints forward and pounces on this stranger in his home, next to his mate, with the pebbles he could never have had with Adrian. They both tumble to the ground, as a tangle of limbs and he realizes he’s snarling. In the heat of the fray, Rocky fails to notice the absence of a mate mark on this stranger’s arm and he fails to notice their clan sigil. It doesn’t strike him as odd that in all of his time with Adrian since he’s been back, he never heard another mate mark on their carapace. The two could just be similar enough materials that he can’t hear it, or it could just be another part of their intricate patchwork of lies. His instincts shove those conundrums to the back burner as he gives in to his rage.
“Steatite! Rocky!” Adrian yells.
“Just who the fuck do you think you are?” He screams louder, trying to land a blow on the person who destroyed his life, who took his place.
“Stop this! Get off of Taaff!” Adrian tries to tug him off. He can hear the warning cheeps from the frightened pebbles as they scatter away from the commotion. Had they been his, maybe he’d care. As it is now? All he’s concerned about is making this person pay for every ounce of pain he’s feeling.
“What gives you the goddamned right—?”
“Rocky!”
He’s flailing wildly now and the stranger before him— Taaff, the shortened pet name has him growling deep in his valves— goes limp in his hold, accepting his blows. They don’t even have the decency to defend the family they’ve taken from him. What a coward!
“Adrian, Percipient Labradorite—” he corrects to their uniquifier, so it’s clear to this mongrel who he’s referring to, “—is mine. How dare you?!” He screams and they have the gall to laugh at him.
Adrian finally reaches forward and snatches him off of the stranger, holding him up in the air by his primary limb— the one that Grace considers his ‘hind limb’— not unlike a scruffed cat. He struggles in their grip, flipping and trying to right himself. He scrabbles desperately at their claws. Once he realizes there’s no breaking free from Adrian’s grip, he flails, trying to reach the stranger from his embarrassingly elevated position. Adrian just moves him farther away.
“Rocky. Stop—“ Adrian starts and pauses to let him finish off another nasty snarl before continuing, “This is Splendid Taaffiete!”
That sounds.. familiar. He had gone limp in their grip, but got his ‘second wind’ at the thought that this is someone he knew before he left— “How long—“
“Quiet!!” Adrian shakes him, and despite his rage, he does go silent. Probably because despite everything, he still loves them. “They’re Prized Tourmaline’s hatchmate.” They explain like that should make sense to him.
Horribly, after searchng his memories, it does.
His mind conjures the memory of exactly where he’d heard that name before and it’s not a good one. He must whine because Adrian opts to set him down gently.
”Steatite you have to— They’ll be all alone. Please..” Prized Tourmaline is sobbing.
He’s on the ship, and, fires within, he sure doesn’t fucking want to be. He starting to hate his own name. His crew members only use it when they cry out in pain or when they want to relay their last message in the event his luck holds out and he makes it back.
”Tell Spledid Taaffiete we love them. Tell them we’re so sorry. Olivine and I— they.. they were right. We never should have left—“ Rocky is shaking. He hopes their hearing is starting to become bad enough that they can’t hear it. He was past being able to put on a brave face for the dying rougly fifteen corpses ago. Besides, his mind is screaming questions at him now that their numbers are dwindling further. Who’s going to tell his hatchmates that he loves them? Who’s going to tell his mate? Will there be anyone left?
”Okay.” He holds back a sob. “I’ll tell them. I will.” He promises despite the overwhelming doubt that this ship will have anyone left to pilot it back let alone find the answers to combating the star-eaters. Prized Tourmaline simply won’t be alive long enough to hate him for lying to them while using a serious vocal modifier. It doesn’t matter. None of this matters. If it would bring them a shred of peace as they die bloody and screaming, he’d tell them the leader of their tectonic plate was twirling pompoms just outside the airlock. There’s no point in taking away their hope when it’s the last thing they have left, when everything else will slowly ooze out of their bodies.
”One more thing Steatite,” they add, valves rough as their body starts to unravel. Rocky’s adrenal core pumps into overdrive. What more can he possibly do? How much more can he possibly take? “I want to die beside my love. Please let me die beside Olivine.”
His limbs want to give out at the thought. Both Versatile Olivine and Prized Tourmaline are large eridians— far larger than him. Olivine had hit the roaming stage today. They didn’t have much longer. They couldn’t hear and barely registered touch. They kept crawling to find a spot where they felt less pain. Rocky was sure by now that such a place didn’t exist on this death trap of a ship. Victims of the sickness would wander, dragging their carapace along until they couldn’t anymore. Then came the screaming, and, soon after, they ooze more than mercury from their vents, rendering them incapable of speech. They drip and they splutter liquid everything until they can’t anymore, and then they enter sleep for the last time.
Still.. if it were him? If someone could help him cling to Adrian in his last moments… he would want that. He’d give anything for that.
“Okay.“ He says finally. “Okay. I will fetch them for you. You’ll go together.”
He’s not sure how long he’s been in the memory but when it fades, Rocky is trembling where Adrian had set him down. His vents are dipped forward in submission.
He locks onto Splendid Taaffiete’s form and forces himself to be still. He may as well start fulfilling his promises now that he scraped his carapace all the way back to Erid with a solution he couldn’t have found alone.
“They died in each other’s arms.” His voice is barely above a whisper. “I made sure they were holding each other as they went.”
Taaffiete’s carapace drops to the ground like a stone vanishing into dark water. It’s clear that they’re trying to keep themself together for the sake of their pebbles but they moan, low and full of pain.
Rocky wishes it was a sound he had never heard before.
He steps down onto one of his claws, hard, to stop the memories from dragging him under again. The pain helps to ground him.
It’s quickly followed by more as Adrian drives their body into him and sends him tipping backwards. He flails and tries to right himself, but they’ve always been stronger. He’s pinned into place by a single limb pressing on his carapace.
“Rocky!” They snarl. Before, their tone had been panicked and chiding. Now, they sounded downright furious. “You cannot say such things! That is awful. Can you not understand that?!”
“Let me finish!” He yells, but Adrian doesn’t let up.
“No, you are finished. You’ve said quite enough!” They continue and Rocky whines. He doesn’t want to have lied. He wants to tell their last message, but Adrian’s voice is firm. “Taaffiete has done nothing wrong! They’re the only person who has consistently stood beside me since you left, and you, for whatever idiotic reason, are determined to hurt them— if not physically, then emotionally.”
He whines again at the reminder that he left Adrian alone. He’s so incredibly sorry for leaving. He’s wished to take it back so many times. He never in a million years would wish the loneliness he felt on anybody— least of all the love of his life.
“Every sleep watch that I needed, they were there! They were a godsend after Assiduous Norite and their mate passed. They took off from work to help me look halfway passable as a potential caretaker for them. They watched me as I slept and tended to my hatchmate’s pebbles alone after I went |V days with no sleep—“
They.. what? Wait. No.
“They were the only person that didn’t mock me or question my sanity for believing you were alive. You don’t get to attack them in my home! You don’t get to—“
“Your hatchmate and their mate passed?” He trills up at them and Adrian freezes.
“What?” They ask, frozen.
Rocky clicks at the four small children who are hiding behind a shaking Taaffiete. Norite.. had passed away? They had just taken a mate a few years before the Blip-A had launched.
Adrian had been pissed at all of their progenitors’ comments that at least some of their children could find a proper mate. Rocky groans as the pieces start to fall into place. Norite and their mate would not be barred from laying Adrian’s hatching cavern. Norite’s children would be able to bear the clan’s mark.
His limbs fall flat against the floor. Adrian had mentioned becoming a caretaker.
Oh shit.
These were Norite’s pebbles.
“They’re.. they’re not yours.” He says stupidly after a moment of wallowing in self-hate. Still when he says the words, he feels lighter somehow.
“They are mine in every way that matters.” Adrian shoots back in exactly the manner that someone who had to prove themself capable enough to adopt their sibling’s pebbles would.
“But— You didn’t lay them.” He tries to clarify. Shit, he hopes he didn’t just spill some metaphorical beans and give the pebbles an identity crisis—
“What? No! How would I have—“ They laugh and begin to mock the sentence before they realize exactly why their mate has been reacting so strangely. “Oh Rocky.. No. I— I would never.” Their voice is soft, yet they sound hurt that Rocky could even think them capable of such a thing.
He laughs with relief. Oh void above, they aren’t Adrian’s! They didn’t betray him! And this stranger isn’t his mate’s new lover!
Fuck.
Ohhhh. He really fucked up didn’t he? Rocky stops laughing.
He just attacked someone Adrian cares about for no discernible reason, or rather, a discernible yet untrue reason. Even now, Adrian is tense towards him as they try to soother their friend.
Rocky crouches in on himself.
How does he even go about fixing this?