Work Text:
Memory file upload complete. Memory replay initiated. Sequencing…
The screen is a mess of static and motion blur at first.
And then it becomes crisp.
Textured ground with millions of little small sticks. A clear demarcation of the ground from the skyline. There are wisps in the sky, clouds, and a single arc of a thin ribbon of light. A gradient of the human visible light spectrum, but on the screen it just shows as slightly different textured arcs.
There’s a fence that Grace is running towards. Gridlike, hexagonal, with swirling sharp thin blades all along the top of it.
In the corner of the screen, a series of vitals. Heart Rate 205 beats per minute. Respirations 36 breaths per minute. Oxygen saturation 94 percent but dropping.
Suddenly the screen tumbles, as the memory crumbles.
Oh. Incorrect assumption.
Grace has fallen down—
Has been knocked over by another fellow human.
There is now a surge of security humans. All swarming like anger.
Grace is screaming.
“No! No! Please!” His voice is loud, body trembling, panic in the shake of his body and the rustling of his head. His voice is jarring as it squeals through the speakers playing the memory file.
The security humans do not listen. They hold Grace against the ground. Grace is crying now. Sobbing.
Vitals signs reaching dangerous levels to human life. Unable to sustain for longer. Heart rate reaching critical of 232 beats per minute. Cardiac arrest imminent. Respirations reaching critical of 40 breaths per minute. Hyperventilation.
“YOU’RE MURDERING ME!” Grace sobs, shrieks, chokes.
A human approaches warily but steady, wielding a tube with a very sharp needle on the end of it. It looks like he’s brandishing it like one would a weapon. Body language hostile, face closed off. Frightening.
Grace keeps screaming between his heavy breaths and the sobbing. The memory capture is blurry from the tears in Grace’s eyes, the skewed glasses almost crushed in the ground under his own face. Grace struggles, body jostling, but many security humans holding him still. Pinning him down. Submission. Forced.
“Please, don’t do this!” Grace wheezes, “this is murder. You’re killing me. You’re murdering me!”
The screen jostles, texture, the ground, Grace tears. Wrong, wrong, evil.
“I don’t want to die,” Grace whimpers, barely heard over his own panicking breaths, “Don’t do this, please don’t—”
Something happens that cannot be seen. A needle plunged into Grace’s soft body, and medicine being administered to tranquilize him.
Grace in the memory file makes a choking sort of noise. Awful. Like dying. Like being crushed.
The screen playing the memory suddenly blurs more, then fades, darker. Unconsciousness.
Memory file complete. Replay and backup complete. Data storage archived.
Rocky stands there in shock. Silence as he trembles.
The scientists in the room also are silent. Not a single body moves. All processing what they just witnessed.
A crystalline scanner drops from someone's claws. The clank is followed by a distressingly high pitched whir.
“Savior Grace forced onto Hail Mary mission?!”
And then, the room erupts into chaos.
All Rocky can think of is to leave the room, as fast as he can, to be there when Grace wakes up.
The doors slam open by his body forcing them, he barrels through, into the room adjacent, and slams through those doors too, just in time to see Grace pushing himself to sitting upright on the medical pad.
“Oh. Hey. Uh, well that was… Uh… Did you guys see what I thought you did?”
Rocky tries to be gentle, but it’s difficult to stay disciplined when every cell in his body needs to hug Grace now.
Grace makes a weird face, then smiles, a nervous laugh, and his arms welcome Rocky in to a bruising hug.
“Oof– Ow, okay. Sorry. I’m sorry, you had to see that. I guess I was a little nervous going in to this one and it kind of made me think about the last time I was nervous about something and… yknow once I started remembering that memory I—”
“Enough. No need to explain.” Rocky cuts in.
They sit there, together, Rocky cradled in Grace’s lap. The room empties without a word, scientists gone leaving only the two of them.
After a long few minutes, Grace speaks up.
“Uh, so. Not to change the subject, but did this memory upload work too?”
Rocky practically hisses. Venom.
“Yes. Human memory retrieval successful again with no issues. Grace and Erid scientist design work well. Too well.”
“Jeez, sorry. Really, I didn’t… That wasn’t the memory I was thinking of when I was going to sleep initially… I mean, that’s kind of something no one should see.”
“Or go through.” Rocky feels himself shaking again, hugs Grace tighter.
“...they didn’t have a choice,” Grace’s voice is tight, small, “there was no other scientist qualified to send. It was a logical choice.”
“Logical.” Rocky jerks back. His vents pop.
“Grace forced. Grace not want to go, but he–!! But was–!”
Rocky has to pace now, the shaking in all five limbs too great. He has to walk from one end of the lab to the next. Grace sits there helplessly and watches as his friend processes it.
“Earth force Grace! Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad–”
“Rock…”
Rocky releases a noise Grace hears before. Like someone has kicked a swarming hornet's nest into a steam engine. It’s awful, miserable, rageful.
“Rocky hate Earth.”
“What? Hey—”
“Rocky hate Earth. Rocky hate humans that harm Grace! Rocky hate hate hate scientists Grace work with! Bad. Bad. Bad. Evil! Hurtful. Horrible.”
Grace struggles to get his legs uncrossed from underneath himself, to stand up from the floor, and then intercept Rocky from pacing around the lab again.
“Stop. Rocky, it’s okay. What’s done is done. You shouldn’t have seen that, I’m so sorry.”
“Not okay! Not okay!” Rocky’s two ‘arms’ flail up, preventing Grace from grabbing him to hold him still.
“Humans evil to other humans! Grace help Earth scientists build ship science! Grace help– so much! Grace abandon normal life to help cause! Grace give up everything for Earth! And Earth–”
“It was me or billions of other lives. They– It was a tough call to make but it…needed to…”
Rocky suddenly shoves over a tray of equipment on the far end of the lab. It goes crashing in an awful noise, and Rocky throws things, kicks them, actually puts his leg through some of the boxes and cabinets.
It's… terrifying to watch, considering the strength of most of the xenonite things in here, but also oddly cathartic. Grace doesn’t get in the way. Standing there feeling out of place and numb. The memory was just an awful, hazy thing to him now. He didn’t actually remember much of the details of it other than is racing thoughts of dying, betrayal, a primal fear so eviscerating he could have thrown up at the time…
Words said or said to him, he doesn’t remember, doesn’t remember the grabbing hands, doesn’t remember the needle stabbing him.
Grace didn’t think this memory would come up so soon.
The Eridians had developed a special device, to help study human brainwaves more. A miracle new finding came about, that said device could also access Grace’s brain in ways that were more than just electrical signals. They could access memory, thoughts, more. And the smart, smart Erid scientists had also then developed ways to transcribe this data into something that could be replayed, stored.
They were still testing it out, and so far, there hadn’t been any issues. He hadn’t been hurt during any of the testing, and the equipment didn’t sustain any sort of malfunction yet. No issues.
Grace still wouldn’t even call this an issue. Just… uncomfortable. Unfortunate.
“Earth not deserve to be saved, at sacrifice of Grace.” Rocky drones, his voice low, dangerous.
Grace is starting to feel nervous.
“Rocky, please.”
“Hate Earth. Hate Earth. Hate Earth. Erid punish Earth for wrongdoings, Erid revenge for Friend Grace-”
Enough.
Grace storms over, ignoring Rocky’s strong, flailing and kicking limbs, and grabs him. He can’t lift the Eridian by any means, but he can sort of…flop into him.
“Stop. Stop, okay, you’re scaring me, talking like that.”
Rocky whirs and whines and purrs in a subvocal that Grace can only feel pressed against his chest. But finally, he sinks to the floor. Grace still holds onto him tightly, hugging with all his might.
It’s nice, someone being so upset for him. For the injustice. But Grace had spent their entire years of flying back home to Erid processing it, getting over it, coming to terms with everything…
This just feels like cutting open a healed wound and digging into it.
“I’m never going back to Earth anyway. Never. I don’t even want to.”
Rocky’s angry, upset noises continue to fade down, and finally settle into sad, small whines. Crying. Grace puts his head on top of Rocky, sighing, trying to stop the ache in his heart. It hurts more having Rocky cry on him than it does remembering being forced to go on the mission.
“I’m safe, here on Erid. With you, and the other Eridians. No other humans here but me. And Earth is sooo so so far away.”
Rocky finally leans into Grace.
“Yes. Friend Grace safe here. Safe with Rocky. Safe on Erid. Not forced to go on missions ever ever ever. Not forced to do anything.”
“I know. You guys are so good to me. Better than Earth was.”
“Earth bad. Earth bad bad bad. Rocky hate–”
“No more. Rocky, no more.”
It’s also too complicated. Too morally grey for Grace to try and turn this into something educational. There’s a right and a wrong here and both of those sides are messy and confusing anyway.
“No more memory retrieval.” Rocky says.
“Not like, forever. Cmon, we’ll just. Have a break for a while, yeah?”
“...”
“You guys really liked seeing the flowers and different plants and nature on Earth. And I want to be able to show you guys more of that. More of the good that was on Earth. The nature and animals and my kids.”
Rocky is silent, thinking. Grace can see his little claws clicking together as he does, a habit Grace fondly attributes to Rocky alone.
“Okay. But Grace take long break from memory retrieval. Might remember more bad things. Scary.”
“Maybe. But the bad stuff helps us remember how good the good stuff was, right?”
Rocky remains silent. Grace sighs.
“We can talk more about it later. Lets just go home, yeah? Watch some feel good movies and relax. I think you’ll really like The Sound of Music.”
“Music is already sound. Movie about music?”
“Waaay better, pal. Come on. I’ll show you.”