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“Grace have mate, question?”
It is not a question that Grace was eager to confront.The memories were still very raw, and as they surfaced they had him wanting to search for more of Ilyukhina’s squirreled away vodka. He might have to jettison that heroin if the memories became too clear. Having them come back was like having to relive everything all over again, having to confront why he was the type of person who would be on this mission. The type of person who would throw his life away. It turns out that his life had been fucked over pretty badly already.
“Uh, I did. It was a long time ago. Well a long time ago by human standards.”
Rocky sat patiently for Grace to continue. Grace wouldn’t need to explain the complexities of human biology when it came to alpha, betas and omegas. Grace had explained how it worked via a few movies and Rocky had taken it upon himself to do some independent research while Grace slept. He had had a number of questions about Grace’s omega biology once he had awoken.
Grace turned away from his friend and let out a deep sigh, “His name was Tyler. We met in school. Um, undergrad, that’s the first school humans go to as adults. I was studying biology and he was a history major. We were pretty different. But we worked pretty well. He had a big family and I had been raised by my grandparents, who died when I started university. His family became like my family.”
“New word, grandparents.”
“Ah, it’s the parents of your parents. My mother’s parents, my omega parent’s parents. Well anyway, in human culture, when you find a mate you want to be with you do this custom called ‘dating’, where you spend time with them before you decide if you want to be with them long term. If you decide you want to be with them forever you get ‘married’, that’s when you do a special ceremony in front of your family and sign a paper.”
“You do this with Tyler, question?”
“Yes, Tyler was my alpha and my husband, that’s when you are married to a male. And we lived in a home together. We got jobs, I worked at a laboratory while he went to graduate school and worked part time, that’s the second school humans go to as adults. I was thinking over my options, thinking about going to grad school myself but—” at this Grace sat down on the metal grated floor, crossing his legs, staring down at his laces, “I got pregnant”.
Rocky straightened his legs, his carapace tilting upward in surprise, “Grace have offspring, question? Grace have male, female, question? Why Grace sad, question? Offspring on Erid always happy occasion. Did egg not hatch, question?”
Grace let out a soft laugh, “Remember buddy, humans are what we call ‘mammals’ we have live births. No eggs. And babies on Earth aren’t always happy. Humans can accidentally create babies and they can endanger the mother’s health, or it isn’t the right time because the mother and father don’t have the resources to help care for the baby. So you can end a pregnancy before there is a baby. And Tyler and I thought about it. We talked about it a lot. He didn’t want to be trapping me in a typical omega role. He was good like that. But I don’t know. I didn’t have a family of my own. I only had him. I wanted someone just for me. So we had a little girl.”
“A girl! What name, question?”
“Oh that was a big discussion, I was a big ole science nerd so I wanted to name her something like Nova. But he won out in the end, and we named her Louisa. Said I could name the next one. His mother helped us a lot and it was her name, humans do that, name babies after grandparents.”
“Louisa! Is beautiful!”
“Yeah, she really was.” Grace said, fiddling with his shoelaces, “I called her my little Lou-Lou. That’s another human custom, calling baby humans by short versions of their names. I know you don’t understand colors, but there's this one called yellow and when human hair is that color we call it blonde. I have blonde hair, but it’s gotten darker as I’ve gotten older. But hers was so bright. Sol is yellow. A very bright yellow. She was like the sun.”
At this point Grace’s voice was growing tight and his eyes were growing heavy with tears. Rocky rolled his ball to be closer, learning the xenonite edge against Grace’s knee. “Grace use past form of language. Grace’s girl died, question?” asked Rocky in a hesitant whistle.
Grace sniffed, wiping the tears that were threatening to fall, “She got sick. Human illness that children get sometimes. I took her to the doctor, when I noticed how tired she was being, bruises that weren’t healing. It was a disease in her blood. I thought knowing so much about science would keep me safe, but I couldn’t save her. She just got more and more sick. I only got three years with my baby girl.”
Rocky lets out a trill in comfort as Grace stared ahead and continued on, “I blamed myself. I kept thinking, if I only I had spotted the signs earlier, had gotten her to the doctor earlier. What if I hadn’t thought her being grumpy the week before was because she missed her nap at daycare? Hadn’t seen how pale she was getting. What if I didn’t work, had been home like other omega mothers? I might have spotted something. I could have done something. Afterward, I threw myself into getting my doctorate, and that really drove me and Tyler apart. He wanted to grieve with me but I couldn’t face it, I felt so guilty. Well anyway, fucked up my illustrious carrer in academia in the end anyway. All because I just wanted to be right about something for once.”
“It not Grace fault. Grace cannot fix what was wrong with girl.”
“I was her mother. I would have died ten times over, gone through all what she did if it meant she was here today. If anyone could have saved her it should have been me. I couldn’t save one tiny little blonde baby, Rock. How can I save Earth?”
Rocky puts forth a claw against the xenonite, “We have to try Grace friend. Bad things happen in past. Does not mean better things can’t happen now.”
Grace nodded along, lifting his hand to Rocky’s claw. “Yeah, you are right. Thanks Rocky. I needed to feel sorry about myself, I guess.”
“You have picture of Lousia, question?”
“Yeah,” Finding the smiling picture of the toddler in his haphazardly packed bag had sent him into his worst vodka induced spiral.
“You show me later and you describe. Not all memories need be sad, sad, sad. It is good plan, question?”
“Yes, it's a good plan.”
✩‧₊˚─────⋆⋅☆⋅⋆─────˚₊‧✩
Later, while Grace is floating above Tau Ceti e Rocky began complaining about how boring the planet’s name was. “What color is planet, question?”
“It’s a color called green. Um, it’s a very common color on Earth, a lot of our plant life is green. Many animals are green.”
“Are planets named with human names, question?”
“Yes, many celestial bodies are named after humans.”
“Did Lousia like green, question?”
Grace’s breath caught as he approached the airlock, “What–uh yeah. She loved green. She would say ‘gween’ and had a pair of rainboots she would wear to jump in puddles. They were green. She even loved green foods and not many babies were like that.”
“I think this planet name – Louisa. Louisa the girl with the Sol hair.”
Grace smiled and stared down at Louisa, “It’s beautiful”.