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It was late. Too late. A low hum permeated the Hail Mary, silver lights occasionally giving way for soft flickers to glance across the pearlescent walls, dancing across the metal sheen of various equipment and embroidering the air in a pallid array of colors. It was a kaleidoscope of sorts—a grand display of the stasis Grace resided in now, unmoving, the minute rumble of the ship gliding through zero g permeating his body. Each murmur of his respire ached fervently. Every inch of him screamed for his eyes to finally close and his mind to finally lay itself to rest, but he just couldn't bring himself to.
He just couldn't bring himself to tear his gaze away from the lights, blinding ever so brilliantly above him.
It had only been a handful of days since Rocky's awakening, and even more since the expedition on the cusp of Adrian's atmosphere. They had been lucky to have had survived it—Grace still wasn't certain if they had. Each time he recalled the memories, pulling them out from the haze they had now secluded themselves to, he could only feel the faint remnants of pain they held. The pain of nearly dying on the hull of the Hail Mary, the force of several g's crashing into his body all at once in the control room, the searing heat of Rocky's arms tugging his limp form along. Smoke had plumed from Rocky then, muddying the dull red glow of the ship's emergency systems. And though he had been barely conscious, Grace could still feel that panic of his threaded along every increment of his efforts.
And as a reward for saving his life, he had nearly killed Rocky.
A sharp sigh drew from his lips. Grace turned over as best he could, the sleeping bag fighting back against his every movement. It was tight, almost constricting his frame, but he didn't mind it. Ever since his stupidity with the Taumoeba, Rocky had been like a mother pestering him to his bed, ordering him to sleep like his life depended on it. In a sense it did; should he yet again have been remiss in his ways, addled from fatigue and painkillers, the means to save both of their planets could have slipped from their grasp.
The sleeping bag was akin that of a shield for him. Rocky couldn't see his eyes staring at the lights above; only the movements of his tossing and turning were discernible to the alien's perception. For all he knew, Grace was indeed fast asleep, if only a little on the restless side. But after what they had gone through, who could blame him?
Soft clicks reverberated throughout the room, drawn from Rocky's tinkering on a new project of sorts. He always had something to fix—something to busy himself with whilst awaiting Grace's rise to consciousness. The man could hear his coarse fingers sliding across a metallic surface, weaving together strands of xenonite and affixing them to the ensemble. He didn't know what it was—Rocky was rather secretive about its purpose. At that particular moment, it only appeared to be a misshapen clump of metal, roughened edges protruding outward yet to be refined by the alien's diligent hands.
Grace observed his ministrations—the manner in which his hands moved about and the slow but sure form the metal clump was already beginning to take. A genius engineer Rocky was indeed, even if he refused to believe so. In all honesty, Grace desperately wished the Eridian would give himself more credit than he did. It was rather irksome how he simply could not take a compliment, no matter how many times the man attempted to extend one to him. Whether it was a case of pride or low self-esteem, he knew not, and he would have liked to know.
"Why Grace no sleep, question?" Rocky's voice carved its way into the air, first from the sudden shrill notes resounding from his carapace, and then the laptop set aside a few feet away. His fingers had stilled in their work. In spite of the lack of a face for expression, his frame had tilted upwards, garnering a seeming inquisitive look just from his body language alone.
Grace initially stiffened at the inquiry, at first perplexed before his nerves gave way for a rather lucid conclusion to settle across them. Of course Rocky had caught notice of him—how could he not have? They had been together for so long that it didn't take much for one to know what the other was thinking. The rather cramped quarters of the Hail Mary allotted for such a connection.
His heart had not yet stilled into the gentle lull sleep afforded it. On the inside, Grace was a complete and utter mess. And no matter how much he worked to ensure none of it would slip out, cracks would always appear across the surface.
His arm throbbed with the tender blade of pain. Grace settled his hand to its surface, sweeping his fingers along the smooth folds of gauze. His brows had become furrowed, and for a moment, he deliberated making a grab for his glasses, but even that prospect seemed a Herculean task to his current sensibilities.
Rubbing his eyes, a small breath passed into the trepid air. "It's too bright in here," Grace said, mustering the best weary impression he could. Perhaps, he was yet able to pass off the idea that he had only just awoken a few minutes prior.
There was a small bout of silence before a low thrum emanated from Rocky. "Light can be turned off."
Grace couldn't help but sound a light grumble to this. "The switch is too far away."
"Rocky go turn light off then."
"No, no, you don't need to get out of your room for that." Once again, the silence infiltrated the conversation. Grace had now turned over, taking in Rocky's disposition with a precariously-set eye that eased itself atop the Eridian. He was hunched over, still facing towards the man, and assuming a nearly keen look to his discernment. His project had been left to the wayside, abandoned in favor of the current tides of their interaction.
It was a staring contest of sorts. Both of them knew something was amiss; the air between them did nothing the conceal such a fact from either one. Grace could feel a lump beginning to form in his throat, constricting his airways and forcing a conscious measure of breathing. He didn't like it when the silence dragged. It never boded anything well, especially when he could hear his blood beginning to rush to his ears.
Eventually, a gentle string of notes would be threaded into the quiet, soon coinciding with the laptop's slightly robotic inflection. "Why are you sad, question?"
"Wh-what?" Grace sputtered, completely caught off guard by such a line of questioning. "I'm not upset."
"You rub damaged arm. Your heart beat too fast." Rocky pressed. He'd shuffled forward to where he nearly leant against the xenonite glass separating the two. Then for a moment, he paused, appearing to ponder the next thought he had left to make. "You not seem happy. Seem sad. Is Grace sad, question?"
His words were heavy, weighed down by a near intangible emotion the electronic voice couldn't fully render to completion, but was still felt by how it clung to the atmosphere. The subtle shift in intonation drifted across Rocky's own spoken notes, low in octave, gentle and soothing.
Grace forcibly swallowed the lump. The newfound air burned his lungs, but he took it in regardless whilst his mind clambered for a reasonable response to give. He couldn't lie anymore, could he? Rocky could see right through it all; the fibs and the half-hearted attempts at offering a smile did nothing but intimate the truth. A truth Grace wanted nothing more to forget. A truth that plagued him in spite of his wants.
Words bubbled at the cusp of his lips, unbidden by his tongue but desiring their escape nevertheless. It was foolish of him—everything until this point had been undeniably stupid; that was what had gotten him in this mess, his arm's skin twining with gnarled mutilation, his mind a maze that only seemed to arrive at dead ends.
His fingers worked before his voice as they climbed to his face and began massaging the bridge of his nose. A small chuckle had flown from him before he could stop it, bitter and hollow. "Can't get anything past you, can I?" Grace straightened himself as best he could, wriggling from his sleeping bag while he took a gander at the Eridian before him. No face, no discernible features that could even begin to grant him passage into the alien's mind. And yet, the feelings garnered from just the exchange in looks alone propelled into him with striking clarity.
A smile played along his lips. Grace soon let it take hold. "I'm just tired bud. But I can't sleep, that's all." It wasn't exactly a lie; his body had been begging him to finally relinquish his hold on the conscious world and fall asleep, but he just couldn't. Be it intentional or his mind beckoning him with thoughts of further contemplation, he was unable to succumb, to drift away with the waves of fatigue.
Rocky leaned forward a tad more, dragging a light touch along the xenonite surface. It wasn't an action of significance, rather, the alien's motions were slow and idling, like a human deep in thought. Had the burden of the conversation not heaved itself greatly onto the man, Grace would have happily made a grab for his notebook and began taking notes on the behavior.
"If tired, why can't Grace sleep, question?" A sound inquiry to have been made. Rocky looked expectantly to the man, who absently raised his shoulders in response.
"It's called insomnia," Grace replied dully. "It's something humans get when they're stressed. Or when their bodies just want them to suffer." A tinge of humor laced the final inflection of his words, dry and calloused, but perceivable to a keen ear. He wasn't certain if Rocky would pick up on it, but it did well to assuage some of the stress plucking at his nerves.
"So Grace is upset." Rocky did not appear to take notice of the attempt at levity. Either it was that, or he simply did not care to acknowledge it. "Tell Rocky why. I fix."
For a brief moment, Grace wanted to believe him, to think he could truly fix what was wrong. But there wasn't such an easy solution; he didn't have to be a psychiatrist to come to that conclusion. His heart stirred in tandem with the dip of his head, eyes coaxed to his arm where they wandered along the tidy strips of gauze, images of what resided just beneath conjured and brought to fruition in his mind. His brow creased. His throat felt suddenly parched.
"It's not something you can fix, bud. It's just something I gotta get over." Grace slid his gaze from the sight. His gut had begun to churn, coiling in on itself like a serpent biding its time. The more excuses he scrambled to produce, the tighter a knot it cinched.
A gentle chirp resounded from Rocky, tender and warm as it was carried to Grace's ears. "Still tell. Maybe Rocky can help."
The sigh was harsh when it shoved its way past Grace's lips. "Rocky—"
"You are friend. Rocky want to help. Please tell." Rocky wasn't budging on this. It was an odd thing, their shared stubbornness. Ordinarily, Grace would have found it to be rather aggrieving. But in that moment, with his gut burning as it was, heart clawing against his ribcage for any semblance of reprieve from turbulent emotions, he could only offer the faintest remark of annoyance towards it.
The hull of the Hail Mary groaned in tandem with his thoughts. Grace slumped forward, his head lolling to the side as his eyes flitted along the xenonite wall. For the moment, they observed the way light bounced forth in a brilliant sheen and splayed across the imperfections etched into its surface. An incredible display of ingenuity it was, something Grace could hardly begin to comprehend in how it worked. Xenon was a gas, not a solid. Everything he thought he knew about science had been flipped upside down, all because of one simple object.
A breath slid over his lips, and Grace turned his gaze to the distant pile of personal effects not yet tidied and put away. Perhaps confiding in another would serve to assuage his pain. The prospect was enough to loosen his tongue, tears quickly pricking at his eyes as unruly thoughts swirled around in his head.
"I haven't been able to stop thinking about everything that happened back at Adrian," Grace began, the grip on his arm becoming ironclad. Even with the gauze acting as a protective barrier, he could still discern sporadic bumps of the mangled injury underneath his fingertips, light flickers of pain permeating the area with every motion made by his hand. But he didn't care. He couldn't bring himself to care. Everything else was already a mess. In a sense, it did well to block out the biting sensation of all that was gnawing at him.
"I mean, sure, we're both alive now, but you had to risk your life to save me. And I nearly killed you in return." The final note of his words was merely a whisper as it slipped into the space between them, nearly unnoticeable to his own ears. For a moment, Grace wondered if he'd even said anything, but the tilt of Rocky's carapace was enough to extinguish the internal debate.
When the Eridian didn't speak, Grace endeavored to continue. His chest felt heavy, blood rushed in his ears, but he forced himself to speak, voice low and wavering, "I guess I feel… guilty. I don't know, everything's so screwed up."
The quiet was brief, teeming with unacknowledged voices, words that had not yet made their way into the spoken air. Rocky appeared to contemplate his response, letting the seconds tip over into that of a full minute before he tilted his body upward.
"What is ♫♪♪, question?" he asked in conjunction with the slight raise of his arm.
Grace blinked, confusion embedded into the action before logic took its place and his brows raised. It wasn't difficult to pick out which word Rocky was confused on; it hardly made its way into their everyday conversation, if ever.
"Guilty? It's uhh… feeling bad for something that happened. At least in this context. There are many applications for the word and—"
"So Grace feel bad, question?" Rocky interjected in the midst of Grace's ramblings. When the man offered a sheepish nod, he continued, "Grace not know Eridian biology well. Is understandable why you would make mistake. Why feel bad over mistake, question?"
"Because it could have cost you your life, Rocky," Grace returned with a newfound stiffness. He couldn't help the feeble traces of despondency lacing his voice as he spoke. Everything weighed heavily upon his frame, the burden of such recollections hurtling into him and robbing him of breath. Swallowing, he shifted his attention towards Rocky, to the rough contours of his carapace inked in painful reminders, the light glancing across ridges encrusted with a dried substance. Grace could only presume it to be the Eridian's blood, or some other bodily fluid released as a trauma response to an injury.
"Everything on that mission could have killed you. I took a risk and it resulted in the ship nearly being crushed, and you almost dying to save me. And how did I thank you? By making things worse!" His voice frayed at the edges as his hands clambered for the sides of his hand, finding purchase buried in his hair. He'd hunched over, unable to bear the mere thought of looking in Rocky's direction, at the scars that hadn't yet faded from his perception.
"You're too important for me to make mistakes like that. I don't know if I could handle it if you died. Scratch that, I definitely couldn't. I'd go insane." The tears that had begun to swarm his eyes had slid down his cheeks, now flushed in a fervent red. He furiously worked to wipe them away, but in their place only rose more. Grace utterly detested feeling like this, like a child that couldn't comprehend their own emotions and was thus overcome by them. He was a grown man—a school teacher in the middle of space, away from his home, his kids, and the world as he knew it. Now in front of an alien, spiraling and unable to quell the maelstrom beginning to ravage him.
His breath hitched as he took it in, but it was enough to continue—to expel what had sat buried, clawing for its escape for far too long. "I can't sleep. I can't do anything without constantly being reminded of it," Grace managed weakly. "The noises you made, how scared you were. I just—" He thought he could have gotten through it without losing control. The gate was brittle and cracks splintered forth from all directions, but he had done his best to keep it from tearing open and being pulled under the roaring waters.
Grace couldn't hear anything beyond its might. The rushing currents had drowned out any inclination of the outside world—of the blinding lights staring at him from above, the quiet rumble of the Hail Mary gliding through the endless distance. The very notion that he was not stationary in the world—in the universe.
His eyes had become tightly screwed shut, his hands clambering for his ears to try and quell the noise penetrating his figure. Grace knew how insignificant he looked—how immature and childish he most certainly was to his Eridian friend in that moment. Eridians had emotions; they could feel for others as well as themselves. But they never cried. Grace didn't think they even had the capacity to cry. To Rocky, the man must have appeared as he felt, broken and dilapidated, exhausted and emotionally wrung. How he even had the energy to expend for tears was beyond him.
There was a small nudge to his forearm—a gentle murmur, a glimpse past the raging waters churning within him. It was hardly perceptive to the man, and for a moment, Grace merely shrugged it off. That was until it became more pressing and the sensation refused to relent.
The effort to open his eyes was hard-fought, but the light was eventually able to creep in and flood his retinas. Blinking a few times, Grace turned his gaze over to his side, to where Rocky now resided in his ball, his side of the room beyond the xenonite glass now vacant.
His two front arms were leant against the barrier of his ball, as if in an attempt to get as close as he could to Grace. He chirped slightly, quiet enough to where the computer was unable to pick up on his voice. But the inflection it produced remarked upon a somber state.
"Rocky here, though," the Eridian said, scooting closer. His weight was enough to topple the man, but Grace found he did not mind his insistence to be close. "I will never leave you Grace. You can sleep knowing I will not die—not leave Grace alone." Yet another chirp resounded from the Eridian, this one more shrill in nature. "Human thought very odd. Worry about dumb things."
Sniffling, Grace rubbed at his eyes, working to scrub away any tears that yet remained. "It's not dumb. I just can't help but think about what might have happened if—"
"You are doing it again. Worry about what not happen." Something akin to a sigh escaped the Eridian as he shook his carapace with seeming frustration.
"And I worry about what did happen. I can't win, can I?" Grace offered a wry chuckle, letting his gaze fall. His eyes scampered across the floor, catching against small blemishes made in its otherwise pristine surface. A hand slid upward and latched onto his shirt. "If I hadn't taken that risk, you wouldn't have had to break out of your ball to save me. You wouldn't have been in so much pain. You wouldn't have almost died."
His voice slipped into a soft crack, and Grace ran his palm across his cheek. His efforts stung, the skin tender to even the slightest touch from tears running it flushed. He didn't mind it, though. It did well to tether him to the present moment, to the Eridian sat beside him and peering up with what he felt to be a pensive look.
His hand soon fell to his arm—a habit at this point, it seemed. It ached bitterly as his fingers swept across it; everything ached at this point. The action seemed to provoke a reaction from Rocky, who carefully observed his every movement. "Does Grace arm still hurt, question?" he asked, almost reluctantly, like he feared reopening a wound that had just begun to close.
Grace simply shrugged, shaking his head. "Nah, it'll always be scarred like this, but it doesn't hurt anymore." The lie slipped off his tongue with ease. It was better for Rocky to be unaware of his current physical afflictions; he did not want for the Eridian to be more caught up in his turmoil than he already was.
"I see," Rocky replied, lowering his carapace. The rather furtive scraping of his fingers against the xenonite did not go unnoticed by Grace. "Rocky sorry for hurting Grace."
"What?" Grace felt his eyes widen at the confession, his heart jumping forth and nearly crashing into his ribs. Rocky was apologizing? Why? There was no need for him to do so. Everything that had gone wrong on the mission was Grace's fault, not Rocky's. And besides, he'd only acquired the burn due to his recklessness and forcing Rocky into an incomprehensible position—to save the mission and leave Grace to his fate or put his life at risk and save both.
"You saved my life, Rocky. You shouldn't feel sorry over doing that."
There was the slight dip of Rocky's carapace—a nod as Grace had come to ascertain whilst surveying his behavior. Still, the motion appeared to be reserved, almost sheepish. "Humans take more time to heal than Eridians. Can tell Grace still in pain." He worked to then readjust his ball, positioning it so the malleable panel was facing towards Grace. His arm extended outward, and Grace watched as his hand found its way from the confines of his ball to the gauze wrapped around the wound.
Silence cast itself across the room, and a blanket of emotions too entangled to comprehend settled across them. A low hum emitted from Rocky—sympathetically-woven through the various notes spread along his voice—as his fingers examined the wound in full. After a moment, he looked up at the man before him. "Rocky see damage inflicted. Looks awful."
His fingers retracted themselves back to his ball, leaving Grace to chase after the ghostly remnants of his touch with his own hand. "I forgot you can see how messed up it looks," the man said with a chuckle. "It's fine though, it only hurts a little now, but it's not too bad."
"Grace promise, question?" Rocky pressed, creeping closer. "You not lie?"
Grace returned his inquiry with a nod, the corners of his lips carving upward into that of a quaint smile. "Yeah, Rocky. I promise." His hand drifted along the imperfect edges of Rocky's ball, the Eridian responding in kind with the raise of his body to his palm. It was almost like a pet vying for its owner's affection, but Grace knew better than to draw such a comparison to his friend, his compatriot on their lonely voyage through the stars.
The conversation had ebbed from there. After a few minutes of serene quiet, Rocky retreated back to his space in the room, taking up the project he'd discarded whilst keeping what Grace was certain to be a precarious eye on him. The man had managed to gather the vigor he needed to move from his spot and turn off the light. Out of all the things the computer could do, it couldn't turn the light off for him? It rather astounded him how such a simple mechanic had gone overlooked by the engineers in charge of constructing the ship.
With the lights now dimmed and his body tucked away in his sleeping bag, Grace could only sit there and watch as Rocky diligently worked away at his project. There was a comfort of sorts to be derived from the sight; he had grown quite noticeably used to the idea of having someone there to watch him sleep. Even though for Rocky, it was simply a survival tactic embedded into his evolution, for Grace, it was akin to that of a nightlight in a childhood bedroom. Someone was there for him, always. He was no longer alone; the guilt which had festered within him had been sated into a dull whisper. He was safe and at peace.
His eyes had begun to grow heavy, his respire evening out with the clement waves of approaching slumber guiding him away from the lucid shoreline. And as Grace felt himself drift away entirely, a single string of notes crept into the haze, joining him in his oasis of much-needed sleep.
"Sleep well, Grace."