Chapter Text
After Rocky’s high-energy tour of the Hail Mary, the Eridian had raced back to the Blip-A to pack his things. It made sense to move onto the Mary because it was, frankly, a pain to stop the centrifuge every time Rocky needed to move between the ships, and all of Grace’s equipment required gravity to function. What didn’t make sense was how quickly Rocky had returned after spending the last twenty minutes telling Grace all the things he needed to pack while they figured out how to best divide the space they had. And yet, here he stood, gripping the magnets that kept his ball from floating about in zero gravity.
“Uh, hey, Rock. That was quick.” Grace said hesitantly, his hands poised over the keyboard of the translator laptop. He had thought he’d have a couple hours to work on the rudimentary program he’d made as it had trouble when Rocky switched octaves when emoting. No such luck, it seemed.
<Need Grace collect radio. Important, important, important!> He stamped his unoccupied claws in quick succession and Grace shouldered the makeshift duct tape strap on the laptop before kicking off from the stool he’d hooked his ankles around. Rocky had “attacked” his shins by rolling into them when he didn’t move fast enough during the tour and Grace’s stomach wasn’t prepared for another magnetically-propelled spin-cycle in zero-g.
“I’m going, I’m going!” He shook his head with a huff and an almost-fond roll of his eyes as he led the way through the first and to the second airlock. Waiting inside for him, floating between the closed doors, was some kind of complicated communications array. It had been in a crate of some kind, but Rocky must have been in a rush as some of the pieces had floated out of the box. Witless under pressure, Grace grabbed for the box’s handles without checking the temperature and had to yank his hands back with a hiss. “Cheese and crackers, that’s hot.”
Yes, Grace, welcome to an object that was recently in a 210°C atmosphere.
With stinging palms, he tugged his sweater’s sleeves down over his hands as makeshift oven mitts. He didn’t need to hold the crate for long, not when he could nudge it along just enough to direct it where it needed to go. If only he had another airlock on the Mary so he could cool the darn thing down in the frigid vacuum of space.
Rocky’s impatience to have Grace wire the array into the Mary’s systems had him really wishing for that second airlock. It took them nearly an hour to do it, even with all of Mary’s helpful diagrams and despite Grace’s ingenuity to use various pliers to hold the too-hot parts in lieu of burning himself further. It frankly reminded him of the silly ‘baby hands’ challenge game that was wildly popular with his kids shortly before the Petrova Line was even discovered. He strained his memory to think of the year but nothing came to him. Darn. Still, another memory gained was a positive, and a good memory was a double-positive in his book.
Finally, Rocky was satisfied. <Radio good. Grace keep close. Rocky go pack now.>
“Shouldn’t… shouldn’t we test it?” Grace asked even as he picked up the portable alien radio (still a bit too warm, but not scalding. Maybe he could duct tape this to the back of the translator laptop to keep his hands free…?) to appease the Eridian.
<Cannot. Rocky trust Grace answer while pack?>
“Yeah, bud, call me if you need me.” He waggled the radio a little. The mystery of why it was so important for Rocky to have this set up first wriggled at the back of his brain. It would have to simmer on the back-burner for now, as intriguing as it might be.
Rocky twitched in that way that Grace was pretty sure meant that he’d said something dumb. <Not for Rocky Grace.> He turned toward the airlock and returned to his ship without saying anything more, leaving Grace with even more questions to try to ignore. At least with Rocky gone, he could focus on coding improvements, right?
Wrong.
Rocky had a lot of stuff and, while Grace begrudgingly agreed it was the best option to prevent more accidental burns, he needed Grace to move it all out of the airlock and into Grace’s side of the passage so it could cool down. Which meant getting interrupted every fifteen or so minutes to stop what he was doing to pull items onto his side of the passage. By the third trip, he was sweating profusely from the spike in ambient temperature with all the incidental heat sources floating about. The tongs nearly slipped out of his sweat-slicked grip as he yanked on the final container—nearly catching the thing with his face.
Somehow the panicked flailing was enough momentum needed to avoid being temporarily branded and the only wound was to his ego. The only silver lining was how delightful Rocky’s laughter sounded (even though it was at his expense). Other laughter came to mind, a mess of it across multiple memories, all so fragmented that Grace had no hope in disentangling it. The strongest emotion from the clutter that rattled within was a shame so strong he had to swallow the queasy rush of saliva in his mouth.
Tongs firmly in hand, Grace returned to the Mary, and headed for the laptop he’d left Velcro’d to the gangway in the “Don’t Go Crazy” room—he’d given up going to the lab after his second trip when it was clear he’d be making many, many trips back and forth. No sooner had his fingers brushed the keyboard, the radio hissed from where it had been clipped to his belt. Grace frowned and looked down at it, hesitant to reach for it for reasons unbeknownst to him. “Rocky…?” He asked hesitantly. Rocky said it wasn’t for them to communicate but if that were true, then who?
Loud clanging announced Rocky’s frantic entry into Grace’s side of the tunnel. Had he heard him from all that way? Heck, what was the range of his hearing, anyway? Grace briefly hooked his fingers into the grating to push off and head to meet Rocky and see what the hullabaloo was all about. He should have stayed put, really. The collision in the corridor in itself wasn’t bad, but he was not the greater force at work regardless of his coma-muscles. Not when it came to zero gravity, Rocky, his ball, and his magnets.
Grace’s diaphragm protested, and so did the ribs that were faced with some of the pointier corners of the xenonite ball. He wheezed a bit as the radio hissed again, and one of Rocky’s claws spread and slapped the xenonite wall closest to Grace’s mouth, as if he could muffle the pained groan. The action alone normally would make him complain, but then Rocky did something he didn’t expect.
He sang.
It wasn’t the usual sounds of Rocky’s language. It was unlike anything he’d heard before and yet also too familiar. Like… like someone—a human someone—humming a lullaby. But how would Rocky have heard that enough to mimic it? Grace wasn’t really a singing kind of guy as far as he knew and he couldn’t recall humming to himself as of late so he hadn’t gotten it from him. Plus, he’d never heard the song before. It was beautiful, whatever it was, although it sounded more like the end of a song than the beginning. Why was he singing it at the radio, anyway?
“Um,” he blew out the little air he had to try to reset his diaphragm and hazarded a breath so he could attempt proper speech. “Hello…?” The last thing he expected was a response. Beyond that, he never thought he’d hear another human voice that wasn’t a recording from Stratt’s library of gosh-darn everything. And yet…
“Hey, uh, h-hi, Dr. Grace.” The deep voice shook the tiniest bit and for some reason that made it all the more human. Grace opened and closed his mouth like a fish on dry land gasping for breath. He—how—what?!
Rocky stretched up on the tips of his limb to get closer to the radio, even though it wouldn’t make him any clearer to understand. Not when the laptop had been left behind. Rocky noticed when the voice they’d picked didn’t immediately translate for him and he gestured rudely at Grace to get it. The magnets didn’t work too well on the grate in the Don’t Go Crazy room so Grace would have to play gopher.
The eye roll was affectionate even though Rocky couldn’t see it. He did as he was told, using the para-cord lines he’d tied around the place to help propel him there and back. Rocky sang again as he did, more of that untranslated lullaby as the person on the other end of the radio wouldn’t be able to understand anything he heard. At least, so Grace assumed.
Once he returned with laptop in hand, Rocky wasted no time in crowding close. <When Simon is, question?> He asked, wiggling his carapace in excitement. Grace frowned a little and unclipped the radio from his belt to move it away from Rocky a little. Was it out of misplaced, petty jealousy? Maybe. Rocky didn’t seem phased in the slightest.
“Fourth, um, fourth time. I think.” A rustling came over the radio. Grace brought the radio closer to his ear to try to place it, only to jerk it away when the voice—Simon—continued, his voice louder as if he were speaking up for their benefit. “104.3 degrees, coordinates are… 220.63, 389.98.”
<Instrument readings, question?> At least Rocky understood what the heck this guy was on about.
“Yeah.” A faint sound like something pinging against glass a couple times filtered over the radio. “I think the depth gauge reads—”
“I’m sorry,” Grace interrupted, releasing the radio to hold both hands up to get the person (who couldn’t see him) to pump the brakes. “Have we met?” He expected an apology at the very least, and yet he’s subjected to Rocky’s chiding (<Grace rude!>) and a rough crackling sound that took him far too long to discern as a laugh. A broken one, harsh around the edges, and clearly not often heard. Somehow, that eased the sting of being laughed at. Marginally.
It was, he begrudgingly admitted, a nice laugh all the same. It also answered his question albeit not in a fashion he preferred. “Did… did I insist on being called doctor at some point…?” Even he could hear the wince in his voice. He did get pretty close to blackout drunk on his Russian vodka bender. It could have been then. Drunk as a skunk and high off of being the first human to make alien contact twice (but maybe now it should be considered thrice?)…
Or had they spoken since he’d woken up from the coma while he was stone-cold sober and he couldn’t remember for a different reason? The very idea sent a chill running down his spine. As a scientist, and one trying to save his entire planet, every memory since he woke up was critical. If he had lost something so significant with zero recollection of it happening, what else could he be missing? Horse hockey, he was going to double his efforts with the video diaries and scientific documentation just in case.
“No, Dr. Grace.” Three words had never been capable of knocking him free from a doom spiral before and yet Simon just did. “You were… kind. Impossibly kind.” The softness in Simon’s voice threw Grace for a loop. He’d call it fond but it lacked the underlying warmth that came inherently with it. It had to be something in the timbre that made him think there was more to it than there really was. “I figured this was your first time and I didn’t want to be rude.” Smart. Simon had figured that out from, what, five words?
Simon not being rude aside, Grace was relieved that he hadn’t been the rude one far more. Was he usually rude? Or was there a time where he was known for being so? He couldn’t be certain, but there was an assuredness within that he wasn’t like that with his kids. What a relief that he wasn’t a jerk to kids. “Oh, thank goodness. But, please, just Grace is fine.”
“Mm.” The half-hum was a touch nasally. “Bit of an odd title, ‘Just Grace’, but I suppose we are from different timelines.”
It took an embarrassingly long minute for Grace to realize he was teasing him as what he’d said had completely derailed him mentally. “Wh—timelines?” He grabbed for the radio before it could float entirely out of reach, accidentally propelling himself with the motion. Twisting as he snagged the radio, he floated slowly along on his back like an otter in a river before snagging one of the lines to stop him from going too far.
“Yeah. You’ve still got stars where you’re from.” A crushing weight was audible in Simon’s voice. Grace wondered if they had developed enough trust to be allowed to shoulder some of that weight with him. Had he enough burdens on his own to carry? Absolutely. What was one more when you were already being subsumed? The smallest weight to him could be a massive relief for Simon for all he knew. The idea of successfully helping one being when over seven billion needed him back on Earth bolstered him in a way he didn’t know he needed. How complicated could Simon’s problem be in the face of the astrophage?
Simon’s shaky inhale drew his attention back to the present and he straightened a little in anticipation. “All I have is…” his throat clicked and Grace’s lungs burned a little from the breath he hadn’t noticed he’d held, “is ghost light.”
That… that was probably very complicated. Aw, fudgesticks.
<What ghost light, question?> Rocky asked as he clunked his way closer with the magnets. He didn’t need to be closer to be heard but he’d been going through cycles of borderline separation anxiety and kept his ball as close as he could to Grace when tasks permitted. With how long Rocky had been entirely alone, he couldn’t blame him in the slightest. He drew himself closer, too, stretching out to snag the floating laptop before it could move too far for the microphone to pick up and translate his words.
“It was a theater tradition,” Grace explained, surprising himself with the knowledge even as he spoke it. “Keeping a single light on for safety when it was too dark to see obstacles otherwise. Some superstitions rose around it too, but…” he looked to the radio in lieu of a person to address. “You mean it in a different sense, don’t you, Simon?”
“Yeah.” Silence stretched out between them. The ambient background sounds of mechanical humming was the only proof that the connection hadn’t dropped. Grace wanted to push but without knowing how well Simon knew him, he didn’t dare. Friends were extremely rare out here and the last thing he wanted was to ruin it for his future self. Still, curiosity burned through him.
“There’s nothing anyone could have done.” Grace winced at the words and yet he couldn’t stop himself. “The stars visible to the naked eye could be up to 4,000 light years away.” Assuming that Simon had average human eyesight. He hadn’t exactly asked if he was human, after all. “If they’re disappearing now, they likely died long before your people had the technology to do anything to stop it.”
Simon grunted and a rhythmic thudding of boots belied his pacing. He was bipedal, point to Grace’s assumptions. “It wasn’t 4,000 years ago, Grace. Twenty-fucking-one years. I lived it. One day there just… there wasn’t planets or stars anymore. All of humanity went from 9.2 billion to scarcely over a thousand.”
Grace paused, staring hard at the radio. Humanity? Holy smokes, was Simon human? Had Stratt sent… no. No, there couldn’t possibly be 9.2 billion people on Earth, not with the projections of what would happen on Earth while waiting for the Hail Mary to reach Tau Ceti. While he didn’t know the population off the top of his head (and ‘random fun facts’ hadn’t suffered from his coma like memories pertaining to his life had), he had enough general awareness of the world to hazard a pretty solid guess and that guess was not that high. He snagged the laptop and pulled up the search engine, typing speed limited to one hand as the other had to hold the computer.
The resulting data was timestamped: mid-2021. Was that the year the Hail Mary launched? Or simply when the data was pulled for the massive library that the Mary contained? As much as Grace wanted to know, that wasn’t pertinent right now. What was pertinent was the number on screen. The Earth’s population hadn’t broken 8 billion then, and there was no way the population boomed like that in 11.9 years. Plus… hadn’t Simon said he’d lived it? Twenty-one years? Okay. It was time to ask to dang questions for as long as Simon seemed chatty.
Grace discarded questions nearly as quickly as he came up with them while trying to figure out where to even start. It needed to be simple, not yes-or-no, and be open ended enough to coax as much information out of Simon as possible in one go. Finally, he settled on the simplest, shortest question he could ask and hoped that it hadn’t been so long that Simon wouldn’t know what he was referencing anymore. “It?” He prompted gently, hoping that Simon was still in a talking mood.
“…the Quiet Rapture.” Simon’s muttered response barely caught the microphone. ‘Rapture’ alone held a devastating weight but somehow his voice made it that much more tangible.
Grace’s chest felt caught in a vise when he took his next breath. “Which was twenty-one years ago…” he trailed off, straining to hear the confirming hum over the radio. He drew himself closer to Rocky’s ball just to feel less alone. What he remembered of Earth had still seemed mostly untouched by the ravages of the astrophage. It couldn’t be called an apocalypse, not yet, but Simon had lived for two decades after what had to be an apocalyptic event… He couldn’t begin to imagine what he’d been through. It was better to not think about what ifs and stick with tangible facts.
<Simon know date, question?> Rocky asked, following along Grace’s thought process while he had gotten distracted. He pressed his knuckles against a panel on Rocky’s ball and grinned when Rocky quietly returned the most solemn fist-bump ever.
“Uh…” The speech disfluency dragged on for a few seconds, possibly as a stall to allow Simon time to check his space. “I don’t really have a calendar down here, man.”
“Down…?” A clue to where Simon might be, although it was an extremely vague one in the grand scheme of things. “Nevermind.”
<Exact not necessary. Year, question?> The double-tap of his foot, an accompaniment to all questions the Eridian asked, made the ball vibrate under Grace’s palm. He hadn’t even noticed that he’d kept his hand there after the fist-bump, but the hint of warmth through the xenonite was comforting.
“378 EIC.” A beat. “Maybe 379, if I missed the new orbital cycle.”
While ‘orbital cycle’ was weird way to say ‘year’, Grace couldn’t knock it if they were truly from separate timelines. That was inconsequential compared to the truly fascinating tidbit. “What, uh… what’s ‘EIC’?”
Simon snorted. “Right. Timeline shit.” Grace had a feeling they both would have to explain a lot of ‘common knowledge’ to each other the longer they spoke. “It stands for the Epoch of Interplanetary Colonization.” The tone left much to be desired and it spurred a reflexive apology that rallied at the bars of its cage to spill forth but Grace grit his teeth tight. Not everyone took to teaching like he had. He may have opted for middle school to avoid the emotional whiplash of moody teens, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t developed the thick skin needed for dealing with the worst offenders: their parents.
He would lead by example. “Wait, colonization?!” Okay, that was a poor example.
One could only hope Simon interpreted it as extreme interest (with maybe a hint of jealousy) and not, like, moral outrage or something. “Yeah.” Short, simple, unaffected, thank goodness. “First official colony was in 1992 AD. For some fuck-ass reason the UN and other leading nations decided those on colony ships needed their own fucking calendar. Bet that wasn’t confusing for anyone who still communicated with Earth.”
“Earth.” Grace wheezed, wiping a hand over his face and dislodging his glasses. He caught them before they could float away but didn’t put them on right away; he needed the gentleness of a blurry world to soften the blows. Rocky fidgeted around in his ball in some kind of antsy dance, his trills and chirps muffled while he did his best to contain his excitement.
Simon hummed noncommittally, either unaware or uncaring of Grace’s respiratory distress. “I’ve never been. Never will, now, with it… yeah.” A rustling followed his voice, like he leaned against a wall and shrugged and the fabric scraped at the wall. “I was born on Mars. Might’ve seen it in the sky before I moved to a station but it prob’ly blended in with all the stars.”
“Born on Mars.” Another wheeze escaped Grace as his mind reeled. Questions rose within him, a tsunami of covetous curiosity that threatened to consume. Simon was over 330 years in the future relative to Grace. They couldn’t be from the same universe as there was no freaking way Grace wouldn’t know about colonizing Mars in the 90s. Okay, sure, he’d have been a child back then, and he still had massive gaps about who he was as a person, but he knew in his DNA that he’d always loved space. He would know if they colonized Mars during his lifetime, amnesia or no.
<Why Grace repeat what Simon saying, question?>
Distant squabbling on the other side of the radio washed over Simon innocuously. He sat frozen in fear, eyes as wide as possible in futile hope that he’d see better. It… it was the shape of a man roughly his own size and it had passed from the camera controls into the tiny alcove he’d barely registered in the darkness of the submarine. He strained his ears to hear footsteps or any other signs of what they were doing just out of sight, but Grace and Rocky’s voices drowned it out.
Simon bit his tongue against an outburst as he still felt raw from the virulent backlash from the COI guy who took over from the Captain who spoke to him before. Grace and Rocky had been nothing but nice to him so far, they didn’t deserve the sharpness of his tongue. It wasn’t their fault that he was cornered, vulnerable, and protecting himself with the only weapon he still had. He didn’t… he didn’t want to push them away, didn’t want to ruin the only real light he had in this fucking iron capsule.
“Simon?” Grace sounded worried and if it were anyone else, Simon would think it a trick, something to lull him into a false sense of security. Not Grace, though. He had a naive sincerity to his voice that shone through everything.
Ignoring the prompt, Simon stood slowly and grabbed the only blunt object he had with heft at his disposal—a fire extinguisher—and yanked it from the wall. A quick flip to protect the valve assembly, he raised it and rushed the alcove… just to find it empty. He paused, desperately looking through the darkness for movement. Nothing. He slowly twisted and hit the camera button blindly behind him just to light up the space and… still empty. What the fuck?
He scanned the space with a critical eye, taking in details he’d never even noticed before. Had he even realized there was a computer down here? He’d been pretty occupied by everything else and focusing on his objective so he could get out as soon as possible. The light, of course, faded too quickly for him to look for long and without really thinking about it, he hit the button again.
<What noise, question?> Rocky asked and Simon paused from where he’d begun to crouch by the console, his eyes straining in the weak light to see if those were welded bolts or thumbscrews he could loosen on the left-hand side.
“Camera.” He grunted, twisting to smack the button again to inspect the rust-stained metal again. In the flare of light, his eyes catch on something else, something scratched into the metal. Heavy fingers brushed over it, seeking confirmation that it wasn’t a trick of the shadows in the submarine, and when the familiar lines proved true… Simon found himself stroking over the scarred skin on his neck that had once matched the symbol there.
<Why camera noisy, question? Many sounds why, question?> There were probably even more questions that Rocky asked, but all of them go unanswered. He barely heard him over the rushing sound in his ears.
He twisted the thumbscrews with minimal difficulty—they had been loosened more recently than all the rust made it look. The door folded down and waiting for him was something so familiar and so foreign at the same time. Grace called for him, as the light faded, as the pendant faded from view, as hope welled up swift enough to choke him. Simon slapped at the wall behind him desperately, hitting the camera button on the third try as he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the last place he’d seen it.
Blink.
The tape gave way and he held it in his hand.
Blink.
Boots scuffed the floor and then the wall pressed against his back, but when had he moved?
Blink.
The green glow of the camera’s button reflected off the resin but it didn’t obscure the encapsulated seedling, no. It framed it and the beauty, the promise of it stole breath and had Simon blinking back tears. A shudder wracked him, the closest thing to a sob he’d allow himself. His eyes flicked to the frayed, barren cord around his right wrist, where his own pendant should be. He may not believe the Father’s preaching anymore but that didn’t stop the seedling from bringing him comfort. A symbol of brotherhood, that he wasn’t entirely alone, that another Brother had been here before.
His gut twisted as the peace, the comfort that the talisman had provided, was swiftly tainted as memories burned through his mind and drew forth the ache of abandonment. But… just because his Brothers were following a plan he hadn’t even been privy to, just because he’d been made a scapegoat didn’t mean that the Tree had done so, too. He didn’t worship it, not as Eden did, but he saw it for what it simply was. A living being, like him, struggling to survive with the hand it had been dealt.
The seed had traveled how long and far just to wind up here in his hand? He didn’t believe the sermons, in the words that the Father spouted and his followers repeated without question. He didn’t believe in much at all anymore except his mother’s love for him and if she… if she had sent the Hail Mary as a sign, maybe this was one, too. A well-traveled maple seedling protected in resin meeting him here and now, when he had Grace and Rocky and the Mary so close and yet so far.
How he longed to travel like the maple seedling, cradled gently by the wind until he could land somewhere safe where he was free to grow, to live…
“Simon?” Grace’s soft voice, tainted with the radio’s constant static, was searching. “Please, are you still there?” How long had he been quiet, ignoring the requests for him to respond?
“Yeah.” He finally croaked. Even to him, his voice was off, like he’d been screaming as loudly and hard as he could. Maybe he had and didn’t realize it. The passage of time down here was fucked enough as it was. Blacking out for a moment or two was… it didn’t bother him as much as it should. “Yeah, I’m—” it was then he noticed the scrap of paper. He unraveled it and used another press of the camera’s button to read it. “Cross… the wires.” The thoughtful frown tugged at the cut to his lip as he half-crawled back to the console.
The light faded as he pulled out all the loose wires, their colored coatings stiff with age, and multiple were stripped at the ends. Which wires needed to be crossed? There were no indicators, all ends were slightly mangled in that way that meant they had had been twisted together once before. If he had sufficient light and time, maybe he’d attempt to match ends that looked like they were once twisted together. Now, there was no such luxury. Simon picked two at random and started to move them together, all the while hoping he wouldn’t start a fire—or worse.
<Simon cross wires yet, question?> Rocky asked impatiently.
Simon startled and the wires sparked as they knocked together suddenly. “Wh—no, not yet.” He swore under his breath as he tried a different pair of wires and this time, the console screen flickered. A tiny, self-satisfied smile quirked the corner of his mouth as he met the wires more confidently. As soon as the sparks stopped flaring, he twisted the ends together with his fingers. The judder of electricity was unpleasant but not painful (small mercies) and once they held, he tucked the other stripped wires away from it so not to interfere. “There. Shame there’s no wire nuts.” Not that he could see any in the dark if there were.
“Aw, nuts.” Although Simon had never seen Grace’s face—and probably never would—he knew without a doubt that the man was grinning at his own terrible joke.
<Rocky confused.> He heard Grace inhale to explain before he was interrupted. <Rocky not care. Simon more interesting. What crossed wires do, question?>
“Turned on the console.” Simon barely caught the systems check before a message appeared on the screen. He squinted as he read the words as they appeared, only for a recording to pop up and cover most of it.
“This is not an expedition…” it began. Grace gasped over the radio and for a second, Simon wished he could spare him from this. Grace’s world was so much brighter, so full of hope and life and to have this harsh reality shoved in his face? Simon knew that that the COI might not fulfill their promise but he hadn’t wanted Grace to know. Not yet. The man was naive and kind and might lose sight of his own mission if he thought he could help Simon, too.
The silence after the recording ended felt crushing. Simon kissed his balled fist, the cord of the pendant wrapped around his fingers, and offered his apology before returning to the pilot’s seat. He yanked it back into position as best he could and took a seat. He wrapped the cord around his left wrist, his eyes locked onto the meager lights glinting off the surface. Hands, now steady, rested on the controls. “I want to live.”
A loud sniff over the radio startled him hard enough to send his heart racing into his throat. “I want you to live, too, Simon.” Grace’s voice shook ever so slightly. Was he… was he crying? Simon couldn’t remember the last time someone had cried for him. Years ago, when his mother was still alive, probably.
<Rocky want Simon live, too.> Rocky chimed in. His ‘voice’ was still flat and mechanical in tone, but the notes that sang behind the translated words were melancholic. <Rocky Grace help Simon. Rocky Grace fix. Somehow.>
Simon felt light-headed. Was it the concussion he (no doubt) had from the COI dropping the sub back into the blood ocean, or was it because Grace and Rocky were the first to want to help him, who wanted him to live? A few deep, ragged breaths steadied him only the tiniest bit, but it was enough to have him firming his grip on the controls and resume his journey. He had an objective to complete if he wanted to get the fuck out of here. He wanted to believe, wanted to hope that this nightmare would end with him on a ship far, far away from AT-5, never to return again.
If he didn’t hold tight to that, he’d break.
“Somehow.” He agreed after clearing his throat. His hands flexed on their grips and he stared hard at the map in-between flicking his gaze from coordinates and True Bearing, mindful of the proximity alert.
Grace didn’t let the silence between them go on for too long this time. At least now he sounded more steady, no longer congested from tears shed for a near-stranger over a radio. “Simon? Will you tell us about where you are? You mentioned coordinates, something about your depth, and a… a camera?” The static between them hummed quietly as if it also awaited his response. But how could he tell him without explaining the why? The words glued his tongue to the roof of his mouth.
“I mean,” Grace continued, fingers drumming on a solid surface, “if you’re 330-odd years in our future, then we’ve plenty of time to plan a rescue mission, right?” There was no way that Grace and Rocky would want to do that if they knew. They would hate him and Simon, while used to being hated by everyone in his life since he’d been taken into COI custody, couldn’t have that. He needed to keep this, keep them, for as long as he could.
“Don’t. Don’t waste your time on that. You’ve stars to save, don’t you?” He held his tongue from saying too much more. Discussing future things were dangerous. Grace had cautioned him about paradoxes when they’d plotted the route to Tau Ceti-e. Remembering what was safe to talk about was only going to get more and more complicated if they kept connecting, but this being Grace’s first time made it a lot easier.
<Rocky Grace save stars first. Eridian long long long live, have lots time find Simon. Rocky build good good good ship and rescue Simon. Bring Simon home.> Home. Where was home for him? If Rocky did break him out before he completed his penance, he’d have no home with the COI. Returning to Eden was impossible, not unless he wanted to walk himself straight to the roots of the Tree and bury himself alive before they did it for him.
“You’re not a waste of time or resources, Simon.” And oh, wasn’t that a shot through the heart? His hands released the controls to fist in the fabric of his cowl over his heart. He curled over the navigation console with eyes squeezed tightly shut. The hidden bead in his cowl dug into the meat at the base of his index finger uncomfortably. He squeezed harder to use the physical pain to push away the emotional pain.
“I… I don’t…” He argued weakly, unable to find a reason that he could use to push back without pushing them away entirely. He licked his lips to wet them, his bottom lip stinging as the coppery tang of blood reminded him of the split a moment too late. “Don’t have a home.” He rasped out finally.
<Mm. Not problem. Bring Simon Erid, or Earth, if Simon want. New home for Simon. Better home.> Rocky spoke as if he’d already decided that was the best option without consulting him. He wanted to be angry at yet another decision being taken away from him, another shackle to his autonomy, but if he were honest with himself… He felt nothing but relief. A choice like that felt too big, too impossible, after years of not being able to have a say in any aspect in his life. When the time came… if the time came, he’d choose whether to go with Rocky or stay where he was. That was choice enough for him.
“Okay.” It wasn’t a yes, but the celebratory noises on the other end seemed to treat it as such. Simon’s chest ached—feeling both hollow and over-full simultaneously—at the joyous sounds over the radio. A strong desire to press himself into the speaker and travel across space and time to pop out onto the other side rose over him like the incoming tide. If only it were that simple. “I’ll be waiting.”
The comfortable silence was short-lived, something that Simon was slowly adjusting to. Surely at some point it would interfere with the COI contacting him, but so far it hadn’t. He hoped that, if it came down to it, that Grace and Rocky’s transmission would remain undetected and unheard by the COI. He didn’t need another reason for them to keep him down here and… it was nice to have something that was his and his alone.
“So Simon, tell us about your expedition.” Grace prompted with a falsely light tone. He suspected that he was trying to ignore the words from the recording, calling this an execution. He didn’t blame him. He, too, wanted to focus on the positives—what little of them there were.
“Well, there’s a giant, fuck-off skeleton that I’m s’posed to get a sample of.” Simon replied with a similar false lightness, just to keep the mood up. “All ‘cause I took a picture of something interesting to the Captain.” He firmed his grip on the navigation controls and finally resumed the route back to where he’d seen it. God, fuck, he really hoped he was wrong and that it really was a skeleton. “Just one complication.”
<What complication, question?>
Simon ran his tongue over his teeth as he mulled over how to put this. He sucked his teeth, then sighed through his nose. “When is a camera not a camera?”
“When it’s a sock?” Grace quipped.
“What?” Simon furrowed his brows and threw a glance over his shoulder at the speaker.
<Grace dumb.>
“It’s a joke, guys, c’mon. What’s the difference between a camera and a sock? Cameras take photos and socks take five toes.”
Simon heard the grin in Grace’s voice and guilt twisted in his gut as he corrected him, his tone sharper than he meant it to be. “When it’s a fucking x-ray.”
“…oh my God. Do you think—”
“That the giant, fuck-off skeleton isn’t actually a skeleton?” The rhetorical question burned as it left his tongue. Grace’s strangled squeak was nearly swallowed by the radio’s static. “Never wanted to be more wrong in my entire damned life.” Please let it be a skeleton and nothing else, let him get the sample and get the fuck out of here. He knew it would be hard for Rocky to ‘save him’ if he were on a COI station, but maybe they’d be eager to get rid of him and just… let him go.
“What’s it look like…?”
Simon blinked and considered. “Teeth.” It was what stuck out in his mind the most. “Lots of ‘em, longer than I am tall. Mouth wide open. Multiple, um, sockets. At least one angled forward like—”
“A predator’s eyes.” Grace finished. He made a loud shuddering sound. “I’ve got the heebies and the jeebies and I haven’t even seen the thing.”
“What the fuck is, no, nevermind.” Simon heard Rocky echo him, untranslated. He liked to think that was the Eridian version of ‘what the fuck’, something that Grace would, no doubt, avoid translating. He seemed all prim and proper like that, the way he avoided expletives. Well, normal ones. “Probably some weird Grace-ism.”
“Wh-Simon, words hurt, y’know.” Grace admonished him far too gently for him to take it seriously, especially with Rocky’s melodic laughter in the background.
Simon could get dangerously used to this. He didn’t deserve it at all, but he wanted to. What he’d give to be able to deserve their laughter, their warmth, their trust. He had known them for a mere handful of hours, and for half of those meetings he hadn’t understood anything Rocky had even said. It made no sense that he trusted them this easily.
He should have kept them at arms-length, kept his mouth shut, kept his head down and focused. He knew better than to let them in, to get attached to them. All it did was give him something to lose. Another vulnerability the COI could exploit laid just under their noses all because of Simon’s foolish heart. Oh, how weak his resolve when kindness and companionship fluttered by him with honey-sweet promises that tenderized his heart.
Disaster and heartbreak were the only foreseeable outcome.
And yet… Simon yearned for it anyway. He wanted to fight for this, for them, and to keep whatever this connection they were building together safe to the best of his ability. It would have to be ripped from his covetous hands because he would not let go. Rocky clearly liked him, if his exuberant greetings each time were to be believed, and Grace valued him in a way that no other had in nearly two decades.
Rocky should know what kind of man he called ‘song friend’. Grace should know what kind of monster he wanted to rescue from an unwanted yet wholly deserved fate. Maybe… maybe he could tell them. Not about Filament, fuck, no, he’d lose them for sure if he came clean about that from the start. But now was as good a time as any to open up. A little.
His five remaining objectives had become just the one which meant he had, hopefully, enough oxygen to spare talking more. He owed them this, didn’t he? Grace and Rocky had told them a lot about themselves and their mission and… He wanted them to know. They deserved to know that he trusted them, too. He trusted them so much it scared him.
Simon took a breath and paused as he tried to figure out where even to begin. The chatter on the other end of the radio, something he’d been vaguely aware of but not listening to as his mind had wandered, quieted as if waiting for him to speak. “I’ve never, uh, piloted? Whatever-the-fuck you call it, I guess, a submarine before. Never seen an ocean, either.” He checked his coordinates against the map and, after flipping longitude and latitude to ensure he was still en route, blew out a hefty sigh. “I piloted a runabout for a couple years. Learned when I was barely 15 orbital cycles, ‘cause I wasn’t big and strong enough yet to be useful in a resource run.”
He hesitated and listened to the hiss of the radio’s static, needing confirmation that he wasn’t alone. That Grace and Rocky were still there. Still listening.
“Lucky.” Grace replied, his voice light and playful like this was a completely normal topic for someone from Earth over 300 years ago. “I didn’t learn to drive until I was 16.”
Simon hummed as his shoulders relaxed. He could do this. He could talk about his time before Filament Station. Some of it, at least. “I… It was such bullshit having to wait for them in the runabout, y’know? Anxiety through the fucking roof ‘cause we had no comms array.” Grace and Rocky were an attentive audience and once Simon had begun, once he knew they wouldn’t hate him for the part he played, he found it hard to stop. He told them about the inter-station conflicts, about having to steal and fight for the limited resources everyone hoarded, about how common it was to hurt your fellow man when it was their life or yours.
Telling his story to an attentive, listening ear was a catharsis that Simon didn’t know he needed. Grace hummed whenever Simon paused, showing he was still listening. Rocky asked questions but kept them brief, never derailing the story that became another and another and another… Simon had never talked so much. He had never been listened to as if his words meant something. He’d never felt so seen in his entire life.
When the connection finally died, Simon felt lonelier than ever before.