Chapter Text
In retrospect, I should’ve checked, our cultural rules be damned.
We were only a couple weeks into our final trip towards Erid; things had been going pretty well! I am still coming to terms with the fact that I am not going back to Earth and I might not make it after my food runs out, but, despite all that, our spirits are pretty dang high.
We’d successfully engineered a microorganism that is alien to both of us! Come on, that’s cool! I knew I’d be riding that high for a long time!
Now there isn’t as much to do, science-wise. No longer in a desperate dash towards saving our species, Rocky and I have some time to relax, even if relaxation brings unfortunate thoughts to me. Ah well, I had made my choice and agonized over it already, and doing so again would be for future-me to deal with. Right now, I am focused on playing video games.
“I eat now,” Rocky says, setting aside his texture camera that he had been using to watch me die as Mario approximately five hundred times. He’d teased me at first, but that got stale even for him when he realized this was the permanent state of affairs. Someone’s seventh video game death is a whole lot funnier than his one-hundred-and-seventh.
“Okay,” I reply, not taking my eyes off the screen. “Call me when you’re done and I’ll watch you sleep.”
“Thank.”
Everything is normal for a time, but after a bit, there’s this… Oh geez how do I describe it. It’s a discordant noise and then a sort of… Splattering? And then a commotion that sounds a whole lot like Rocky’s claws scrabbling against Xenonite.
I jump to my feet and make my way towards the ladder. “Rocky?!” I call, concerned. I’d never heard this before. “Are you okay?”
“No come down!” he screeches. I have never heard him so distraught before. “No! Bad bad bad! Stay up!”
His words sound… Garbled, as well as incredibly upset. Those are not the high-pitched squeaks he makes when he’s happy. It’s something far more… Desperate and upset.
I give him fifteen minutes.
Waiting any longer seems… Unfair, because if he falls asleep and I’m not there I’ll feel guilty. The guy has had half a human lifespan’s worth of solo sleeping. It’s the easiest thing for me to do, to watch.
When I make it back down to the dormitory, Rocky is there, still up and awake, moving around his little chamber that contains his food and personal belongings. There’s nothing amiss at first glance, but then I notice a wide silver smear on the floor. It looks like it was hastily wiped up.
I want to ask, but I don’t think I’ll get an answer, so I settle on something that makes more sense, something I’d asked him earlier but I think deserved a second chance.
“Are you okay?”
Rocky angles himself towards me from where he’d been digging around in a bag. His movements seem… Sluggish.
“Yes. Am okay. Was… Food issue. No worry, happens sometimes.”
I raise my eyebrows. Eridians can get food poisoning? Gosh that has to be horrible, I don’t even know how that would work. I both want to know and really, really don’t, but Rocky’s reluctance to speak on it makes the choice for me.
“If you’re sure. Are you still going to sleep now?”
“Yes. You watch, question?”
“I watch.”
Unlike how he usually is after he eats (the whole ‘bug just sprayed with Raid’ pose), Rocky is actually able to walk over to the wall and get himself comfortable. He bumps into a few things on the way, but that’s probably just a side effect of what he just went through as the whatever-Eridians-have-for-adrenaline wears off. He settles himself into his normal sleeping pose, the bed of legs, but leaves one extended, resting on the ground with his claws pressed against the bottom of the xenonite barrier.
I press my hand to my side and smile.
Things are fine after that. For a time.
I had put the incident out of my mind for some time, but eventually I begin to notice that Rocky will get disoriented more than he ever had before, especially in zero g. It’s like he can’t tell where things are, not reliably or all the time. He needs several tries to grab his handholds, he needs even highly textured items closer to his carapace… It’s like he needs sonar glasses. Do Eridians make such a thing?
And he holds himself lower to the ground now, even when his voice is high pitched and happy. I don’t know why he does it. It only happens when we’re in centrifuge mode, like he’s struggling with the gravity. How could that be, though? He comes from twice the gravity I do, he’s used to this.
“Grace, question?”
I set aside the xenonite I’m tinkering with, turning to give Rocky my full attention. He’d fidgeting again, clutching at his own claws on two hands while the rest of him is carefully folded on the ground.
“Yeah buddy?” I ask, leaning forwards. Why is he nervous?
“Not sure how to say,” he begins, then trails off. His notes are low in pitch and immediately, I begin to worry. Maybe it’s nothing! Maybe he’s just feeling sad and we’ll talk and I’ll cheer him up and it will be fine!
“Need new words?” I ask, keeping my tone light, but he’ll know. I bet he can hear my heart speed up even now.
“No.” He clicks his claws together in the gesture I saw him make when we first met. “Not new words. Hard. Hard to say. Hard hard hard.”
Oh, god.
“... Am sick,” he says after a bit. “Like… Like crew. Radiation. Same as them.”
Oh god.
“Eating hard, moving… Feel tired always. Disoriented.” He makes a sad, low noise that doesn’t translate to words, at least, not ones that I know. It’s just… Emotion. Like an Eridian version of human tears. “I no want this to happen, but when on route to Erid alone…”
“But you knew! You knew about radiation!” I can’t help my outburst. It feels like the air is sticking in my chest and I can’t get it out. This is worse. This is so much worse than thinking about how I might die. Hell, this is worse than thinking about how I was going to die before Rocky shared his fuel with me.
At that point, I’d still had amnesia and I was already out here in space. My fate was sealed and I could do nothing about it, but at least for a long time I’d thought myself good enough for it to have been voluntary. And now, thinking about the possibility of my death, it’s… Okay. It’s hard. But I’m not heading to a place where people know and love me. I don’t have to worry about anyone but myself and Rocky.
But him… He has a family. He’s going home.
He doesn’t deserve this.
“I make shielding!” he cries, like he’s trying to defend himself, and I regret my frantic tone immediately. “But is imperfect! I try, I try much much much, but is big ship. I just one Eridian! And Taumoeba escape and efforts all gone! They get through, eat fuel and shielding. No more Astrophage. No more protection.”
Oh my god. I didn’t think of that, and my heart is breaking all over again. Rocky must’ve been scared when his crew had died; he’d basically told me as much. But this time? Alone, knowing about the danger, watching as what was supposed to protect and save you get eaten before your very sensors? He must’ve been hopelessly terrified.
“Oh,” is all I say aloud, weakly. “I…. I’m sorry… Can I help you? I don’t know what…”
“No can help. You not doctor. Not Eridian. And… Eridians also not know enough to help.” And now he hunkers down, all his limbs tucked in, looking as sad as an Eridian is capable of. “I no know what to do. Scared.”
“I’m scared too,” I say. “Scared for you. I want you to be okay.” Please be okay, is all I can think. “People can survive radiation sickness. You weren’t exposed for as long as your crew, right? Maybe you’ll recover!” My words are getting frantic again and I hate it but I can’t really control them right now.
“Thank you, Friend Grace,” Rocky says. His notes have a strange, warble-y quality like he’s unsure what emotion he’s feeling. “For hope. Maybe I get lucky. Maybe because here now, I recover. Maybe Hail Mary save me one more time.”
“Yeah. Let’s keep thinking like that.” Because otherwise, I think we might both lose our minds.
“And I no alone this time. Thought I would be. But no. Is good good good.”
I smile weakly, pressing my closed fist to the barrier. “Is good good good,” I repeat. Then, “can I help you in any way, though? Being sick is hard, no matter what. I want to help.” Being stuck on the other side of xenonite is making me feel pretty useless, I can’t lie.
“I eat. You watch, question?”
I wonder, for a moment, if my ears failed me. “Eat? You mean sleep, right?”
“No. Eat.” He looks incredibly uncomfortable, swaying slightly, but at least he’s holding himself off the ground now. “Some crewmates die during eating. Never heal. Bleed. Bleed too much. Get infection. Don’t want to eat. Don’t want to be watched. But… Scared to do alone. I know is gross. Sorry. You watch, question?”
Oh. It’s like, when humans get really sick, they have to deal with other people caring for them even for private stuff. Normally it’s a nurse or a spouse or a parent, but Rocky doesn’t have a nurse or a spouse or a parent here. He has me.
“Okay, buddy. You eat, you sleep, I watch.”
And I do. I watch the whole process, as he tears the food to bits even more slowly than the first time I saw him and as he feeds himself even more slowly than that. He doesn’t get sick again. But as he falls asleep, I watch as his wound heals the slowest of all.