Chapter Text
Grace had spent fifteen (Eridian) years on Erid when it happened. Just another life-changing event in a merry series, he supposed.
Life on Erid was calm. Grace felt immensely grateful for the care and reverence afforded to him by Rocky’s kin. Immensely grateful for the way they practically yanked him from the brink of death, as weak and starved as he was when he and Rocky finally managed to land on the surface of Erid.
Grace barely remembers it. It comes to him in flashes only, sharp injections of light and noise and sensations.
A chorus of musical sounds, variations in tone and urgency, undercut by the frantic trilling of Rocky’s voice. Warmth on his skin, through Xenonite glass, pulling and manipulating at his frail limbs while Grace barely had the strength to gasp a protest. The smell of ammonia - faint, but still potent enough to sting the flaking skin of his nostrils.
Then, days, maybe months later, blinking back into awareness as sudden as the tide washing over his feet. Grace heard Armando first.
“What’s two plus two?”
Then,
“Grace! Grace! You’re awake! Happy happy happy!”
It takes a moment, without the buoyant voice of the translator, but when Grace understood Rocky’s words and the overjoyed trill behind them, a smile curled tightly across his face.
“Rocky.” He croaked behind the oxygen mask.
“Incorrect.” Armando chirped. Both Grace and Rocky ignored them.
“Friend Grace.” Rocky said, the notes of his voice shaky with emotion. Grace could hear other, lower trills from other Eridians, but he only had ears for one. “Rocky so happy you’re alive. Rocky was so scared. Rocky happy now.”
Pain started to prickle across Grace’s skin and gnaw at his joints, but he managed to crane his neck to his bedside. After blinking the haze out of his eyes, he saw Rocky, cradled in his Xenonite suit, close and familiar. Grace could read the relief in his solid form.
“Hey, buddy. It’s really good to see you.” Grace said, voice wobbly and brittle.
“Grace has been asleep for 79 human days. Bad bad bad. Grace very weak. Eridians had to work fast to make place for Grace to heal. For Grace to sleep.”
Grace felt a swell in his chest, lodging in his sternum.
“Rocky…” Grace struggled, “You’ve done all this, for me. Haven’t you? I’ll bet you’ve been here every minute, making sure your Eridians know about my atmosphere…”
Grace swallowed past the dry lump in his throat.
“About my stupid, squishy, leaky human body. About how to keep me alive.”
Hot tears began to sting his eyes, making Rocky’s form blur before him.
“Have you been watching me sleep? This whole time?”
Rocky moved his limbs a little restlessly.
“Rocky stayed, for Grace. Watch Grace sleep, make sure still alive. When Rocky couldn’t watch Grace sleep, asked Adrian.”
Grace’s face split into a grin, pained but pure.
“Adrian’s here? I can meet them soon, yeah?”
Rocky’s movements turned more excited, more joyous.
“Yes yes yes. Adrian wants to meet Grace as well. Wants to meet saviour of stars and saviour of Rocky.”
Grace’s lip began to wobble. Battling against the ache, Grace moved his hand towards Rocky at his bedside, enough that he imagined he could feel the warmth of Rocky’s form through the glass.
“Rocky would have been dead without Grace. Rocky would have been alone for years and years without Grace. Grace sacrificed life and home for Rocky. Grace brave for trip to Erid for Rocky, even when sick and dying. All of Erid grateful. Adrian grateful. But Rocky is the most grateful.”
Grace was full-on crying now, tears rolling down his hollowed cheeks until they made his skin prickle with sensitivity. He moved his hand closer, straining a bit, until he could brush his fingertips against Rocky’s Xenonite ball. Grace felt the clunk of Rocky knocking his carapace against Grace’s touch.
Yao’s voice - hazy and intangible with memory but whose words ring clear as ever - came to him then. As it had many times on the Hail Mary.
You just need someone to be brave for.
Grace swallowed past the tears that clogged his sinuses.
“Grace love Rocky.” He whispered.
Rocky trilled excitedly, knocking again against Grace’s fingertips.
“Rocky love love love Grace.”
—
It took time, time that stretched in a seemingly endless onslaught, but Grace recovered.
He met Adrian and many more Eridians beside. He ate burgers cloned from his own flesh. He walked the beach that Adrian had so carefully crafted for him more times than he could count, feeling synthetic grains of sand fall through his fingertips and feeling heavy with the knowledge that every single one was created for him. Because Rocky had asked for it on his behalf. Because Adrian and the rest of the Eridians were gracious and grateful enough for his sacrifice to pump all this time and resource into creating a piece of Earth for him. To create for him a home.
The joy and relief settled from a whirling cloud to a gentle fog (go figure) after a while. Rocky had played a heavy hand in setting up his class of adolescent Eridians and the familiarity of it, the other piece of home that the Eridians had given him, was enough to make him want to curl in on himself and cry (again) with the graciousness he felt.
Graciousness he was increasingly feeling like teeth, gnawing at his sternum.
The night after Rocky told him the Hail Mary was ready for a return trip, if he wanted, Grace was thinking about it.
He was happy with his life on Erid. He truly was. He had a beautiful home overlooking a beautiful beach that was crafted just for him. He was alive and healthy - albeit with joints that were starting to complain about the increased gravity - with students that hung onto his every word about Earth science and a best friend he saw every day.
Rocky and Adrian had recently made the decision to have eggs, and the tiny Eridian hatchlings were cute enough to make Grace sob the first time he laid eyes on them.
(“Grace never giving up title of leaky human blob.” Rocky had teased.
“Shut up.” Grace had said through tears. “They are so beautiful, Rock. You must be so proud.”
Rocky’s answering trills had washed over Grace sweeter than any music he ever heard on Earth.)
Yet despite it all, despite the beauty and the love and the gifts he had been given, Grace’s purpose was dwindling. He couldn’t help it.
On the Hail Mary, purpose was like a ten tonne weight draped over both his shoulders, ever changing but somehow never lessening.
Find out who you are.
Find out what you’re doing here.
Get to Tau Ceti. Find out what you can about Tau Ceti.
Save Earth.
Communicate with Rocky.
Save Earth. Save Erid.
Find the predator.
Breed the predator.
Go home. Save Earth.
Send predator home. Save Earth.
Save Rocky.
Save Earth. Save Erid.
Survive long enough that Rocky isn’t alone. Don’t let Rocky be alone again.
Now, his only purpose was to live. Grace wondered where, along the way, he had forgotten quite how to do that.
And then the possibility of returning to Earth was dangled in front of him.
The relentlessness of the journey aside, what would be waiting for Grace there? Even if his Beetles reached home, what could there possibly be left for him, on Earth?
Rocky called him brave. The Eridians called him a saviour. Adrian had thanked him profusely for his sacrifice for Rocky, for Erid. They had done all this for him - saved his life, gave him a home, gave him friendship and appreciation - because they thought him someone worth doing all of that for.
But the truth was, Grace was as much a coward now as he had ever been. The ugliness of it was tight inside his chest, flashing uncomfortably in the memories that came to him, unbidden.
“This might be very hard for you to understand, but some people are failures. Some people don’t rise to the challenge.” Grace insisted, the desperation for his truth to be known making him breathless and hysterical.
“You’re smart.” Eva said, calmly. Coldly. “You’ll figure it out.”
Grace’s truth, now, was that he wasn’t brave enough to see what he had left of his home. The one he was dragged away from, kicking and begging. Whether his discoveries had saved humanity or not, he was too much of a coward to see the consequences for himself - too safe and coddled by this world the Eridians had welcomed him into.
Think about it long time. Rocky had said.
The thing is, Grace didn’t need to think about it a long time. The span of an Eridian night had been enough.
—
After over fifteen Eridian years on this planet, Grace was woken in the early hours of the morning by a frantic knocking at his front door.
“Wuh?” Grace was yanked into consciousness in an instant, gasping and disorientated.
“Grace. Grace. Grace!” Came Rocky’s voice after he muscled his way in, his knocks clearly for courtesy only. “Grace, must wake now.”
Grace fumbled, half-asleep, until his fingertips grazed the frame of his glasses. He shoved them on in time to see Rocky encased in his snug Xenonite suit, already reaching up to shove gently at Grace’s leg under the blanket.
“Jeez, Rock.” Grace mumbled as he tried to blink the sleep from his eyes. “Where’s the fire?”
“There is no fire, Grace.” Rocky said, an incredulity to his voice that projected just how stupid he thought Grace was being. “A ship, in Erid’s orbit.”
Now that woke Grace up.
“What?” He clambered out of bed, narrowly avoiding tripping over Rocky as he grabbed his cardigan and clumsily tugged his arms through it. “A ship? Is it friendly? Are they attacking?”
Rocky tapped Grace on the thigh, not unkindly, silently telling him to shut up for a minute and listen.
“Not attacking. Just sitting in orbit. Ship not like other ships, like a metal tube. No big engines.” Rocky started to lead Grace out of the front door, the cool salty air making Grace shiver. “There is heartbeat of creature on board.”
Grace’s mouth gaped open with shock.
“There’s life on there?” Grace asked, a little stupidly.
“Grace.” Rocky said, the notes of his voice serious and severe. “The heartbeat is a human heartbeat.”
—
The Eridians of the med bay - the one that was originally designed for Grace but had been sitting idle for many years since - allowed Grace in after a few hours, after they had extracted the vessel from orbit and managed to cleave their way inside.
“There was no door.” An Eridian scientist, and de facto 'manager' of the med bay - Iris, Grace had named them - had told him. “Ship was not like any ship that could navigate space. Is very strange. Was like metal tube, welded shut. Team had to use force to get inside. Much fluid inside. Medics say human inside barely alive.”
The medics in question were the same ones that had worked on Grace when he had first come to Erid, their knowledge of human medicine and biology almost entirely reliant on Rocky’s experience of living with Grace and the information left on the Hail Mary’s computers before Grace could wake up to tell them any different. They were very good, but their insistence that Grace be present as soon as the extraction was complete betrayed their lack of understanding at how to deal with the situation. Grace imagined that this was very different from dealing with simple starvation and malnutrition.
“The human has a heartbeat?” Grace had asked, anxiety licking up his spine and seizing in his throat.
“Yes.” Iris said, their carapace tilted up at Grace as if looking at his face - a body language idiom that many Eridians had adopted purely for Grace’s comfort. “Lungs expanding showing breathing. But very slow. Heartbeat very weak.”
Grace nodded. “I see.”
Grace wasn’t sure what to expect when they finally let him in the room where they had placed the human, but it certainly wasn’t this.
There were Eridians, encased in their Xenonite suits, scuttling around and chattering to each other. Grace could only focus on the figure that lay prone on the bed, soaked head-to-toe in thick, red blood.
Grace couldn’t hold back his gasp.
The person on the bed was limp, head tilted to the side. Grace could distinguish shoulder-length hair, matted with blood and some sticking to their face, obscuring Grace’s view of their eyes. One of their arms was missing, amputated just below the shoulder, and Grace shakily wondered if that was responsible for litres of blood that soaked the person to the bone, through their clothes and in every crevice of otherwise exposed skin.
One of the Eridians had obviously gone back to Grace’s place to retrieve Armando, as Grace’s stricken observations were briefly interrupted by them wheeling the nanny bot into the room.
“Heartbeat detected.” Armando chirped as he was hooked to the person on the bed.
Grace never thought he’d lay eyes on another human again in his life. And here one was, soaked in blood and barely alive, inexplicably and impossibly here.
He swallowed past his whirling thoughts.
“We should get them cleaned up. Find out where the blood is coming from before we figure out what to do next.” Grace said.
The Eridians chirped their agreement, and before long, Grace had cloths soaked with treated water, wiping down the person’s face before anything else.
As he pressed the cloth carefully across the person’s eyes, pushing the matted hair out of the way, two sets of closed eyelids were revealed, dark eyelashes shadowing the tops of their cheeks. He wiped the person’s forehead, nose and mouth, feeling a strong jaw under his fingertips.
A man, he presumed?
Grace swallowed, nearly overcome with the roiling mess of emotions that surged in his chest and threatened to make his eyes prickle with tears.
He went to wipe the man’s neck, only to be halted by the thick clothes that still hugged him up to his chin.
“We need to take his clothes off.” Grace said, a little pointlessly, as the Eridians were mainly there to observe and support. Grace was being given the lead, here.
He could have made Armando do it, but Grace didn’t trust the bot to show the gentleness that Grace felt keenly that the man deserved right now.
Grace was handed scissors - one of many items salvaged from the Hail Mary - and he began cutting away the thick fabric. It revealed a thick, built chest framed by a leather harness, pale skin littered with angry-looking bruises. While the pale skin underneath was smeared with blood, it didn’t look like any of the marks of impact against the man’s flesh were responsible for the bleeding.
Cutting away the man’s trousers, his legs showed much the same - bitten by bruises, hair daubed with blood. Grazes on his knees, but definitely not wounds that would cause substantial blood loss. He tried to ignore the feeling of intimacy that warmed his chest at this action - wiping this strange man clean from head to toe, trying to coax truths from his damaged flesh.
What happened to you?
Grace got to the mangled shoulder last, because avoidance was a hard habit to break.
Initially, he wiped a clean cloth across the stump of flesh without looking at it, eyes fixed instead to the man’s slack, unconscious face. Grace wondered, absently, what colour his eyes were. What language was asleep on his tongue.
When he finally allowed himself to look, Grace had to bite back his nausea.
It was not a clean amputation. Rather, it looked like his arm had been ripped from the man’s shoulder, flesh torn and angry. He tried, very, very hard not to look at the bone that was exposed.
Despite the damage, there was no bleeding. Not now, anyway. The pale, waxy quality to the man’s skin showed the blood loss he had suffered, but there was no way he could have bled the amount that was evident on his skin and his clothes and still be alive.
Right?
“Armando.” Grace said quietly, “Please stitch and wrap this man’s shoulder.”
“Blood pressure low.” Armando stated.
“Okay.” Grace’s mind raced a little. He knew he was O negative. He could help, right? “Okay. Um, is there any way I can donate my blood?”
“Blood transfusion possible. Blood bag needed.” Armando chirped.
“Right.” Grace turned and began to dig through the container of things that were recovered from the Hail Mary. The Eridians chirped questioningly around him.
“I need a bag, needle and line. The human needs my blood to build back his own stores.” He explained hurriedly. The Eridians trilled their affirmation but didn’t intervene, which Grace was thankful for.
He found what he needed, eventually, grabbing the equipment and holding it out to Armando.
“Can you connect me to him? Put my blood into his veins directly?”
“Testing and sanitisation recommended.” Armando said, ever cheerful and matter-of-fact.
“He’ll die if we wait.” Grace insisted. He was not that kind of doctor, but he knew enough about what blood loss did to the human body and the urgency of the situation. “Armando, please.”
“Instruction received, Doctor Grace.”
Rocky came back into the room - after speaking at length with Adrian, Grace assumed - when Grace was hooked up to the man on the gurney and trying to blink past the waves of dizziness.
“Grace okay?” Rocky asked, his trills gentle. “Human will be okay?”
Grace smiled weakly.
“I hope so, bud.”
—
Filament Station was cramped, desolate, and had the sour smell of desperation. It was different from the musky stink of desperation rolling from his colleagues, from himself.
One of his Brothers pressed close, hot breath against his ear even as the words made his blood run cold.
“Butch. You head towards the barracks, cut them off there. We’ll head for the reactor.”
The Butcher knew exactly what that meant. What the ultimate consequences were for this. He could smell the death in the air as potently as he could smell the sweat and hostility from the bodies around him.
The flesh of fear across the face of the man in front of him was as stark and sudden as the flash of an explosion. In an instant, the fear shifted to the bared teeth of an animal cornered, and the Butcher stuck his knife into the stomach of the man that was thumping and clawing at his back.
The second he pulled it out, blood hot and branding against his hands, the floor beneath him rumbled ominously. His legs crumpled beneath him and there was a burst of pain as his head hit the metal floor.
Then, he was in a cell. Dark and thick with the smell of damp.
He felt fingers carding through his hair, and when he looked up, his mother’s dark eyes were gazing at him from above. A tear curved a path down her face, pooling at the corner of her mouth.
“Oh, Simon.” She said. “What have you done?”
When Simon looked closer, the tear was as red and lingering as blood. The metallic stench filled his nose until he could barely breathe past it.
“This is an execution.” Ava spat from the radio, filling the suffocating space of the submarine with her crackling venom. “Convict. This is what you deserve.”
“I just want to live.” Simon begged, even when the blood rose to his neck, started to fill his mouth and clog his throat. “I just want to live. Is that so wrong?!”
He couldn’t breathe. His lungs seized with the effort of trying to draw air inside of them, only to be filled with the tepid thickness of blood instead. His body felt like it was ice cold, the warmth only coming from the red flood that was choking him and pulling at his flesh until he screamed.
“I just want to live!” He screamed, his voice lost as he drowned. “I just want to live!”
Simon woke with a gasp.
He woke to light and empty air, so much that he felt his starving lungs would overfill themselves with it as he panted. For a long moment, he saw nothing but bright light and the vague smear of shapes around him. He heard nothing but the ringing in his own ears.
Before words finally started to string themselves together and reach him.
“-in a coma for a while, just take a minute. Try to slow your breathing.”
Simon followed the instruction before his brain started to wonder where it had come from. He breathed deeply for a few precious moments, calming the racing of his heart, before all the pain and sensation of his body slammed into him at once and he went back to hyperventilating all over again.
“Hey hey hey, it’s okay, buddy. Just breathe. Just focus on that, okay? Slow, deep breaths. That’s it.”
Simon’s eyes still hadn’t focused on anything but blurs around him, so when he heard an odd string of musical notes nearby, his mind stuttered with confusion.
“No buddy, just give him a minute. You know by now that the human body takes a minute to come back online.”
The musical notes continued, a questioning tone to them.
“Every human body is different, Rock. And this guy has been through a hell of a lot more than I can even imagine.”
Simon’s thoughts began to fizzle back into awareness, and so did his fear as he finally registered the voice as one both close and entirely unfamiliar. He blinked rapidly until his eyes began to focus, turning his head suddenly enough to hurt.
A man sat close to his bedside, blonde hair short and sticking at odd angles from his head. His eyes were bright, sharp and discerning from behind gold-rimmed glasses. He was looking at Simon with a smile he couldn’t interpret.
Oh, fuck.
They had found him again.
His body reacted before the pain had a chance to catch up. Simon tried to scramble upright, legs stiffly writhing against the sheets around him. He kept losing his balance and not realising why, before his body and mind registered that he was missing an arm.
“Whoa whoa! It’s okay! It’s alright! Calm down, you’re safe!” The man had risen from his chair into a crouch, arms raised and hands outstretched.
“Where am I?” Simon’s voice was like gravel, his head pounding with the effort. “Haven’t I done enough for you people? What else do you want from me?!”
His head still felt like it was half underwater, but Simon’s eyes flickered around the room, searching for a weapon. He settled for the metal pole that held a bag that was connected to his arm through a needle. He ignored the pain of it tugging as he brandished it.
It was then when he noticed a creature to the man’s right, a sort of rock spider, encased in some sort of glass exoskeleton. It was gesturing wildly with two of its limbs, high-pitched, frantic tones seemingly coming from it.
“Rocky! Hey hey, calm down! He’s just scared, aren’t you, buddy?” The man insisted, eyes wide as he brought one hand down close to the rock creature, flapping his hand backwards. One hand remained raised and outstretched, and Simon was struck by the cleanliness of his skin, the lack of scarring to his fingers and forearm.
“Where am I?” Simon asked again through gritted teeth, keeping the metal pole firm in the grip of his one hand. The rock creature had quietened but his limbs remained defensive.
“You’re on Erid.” The man said, his voice also lowering in volume. The bright, pale light of the room caught in his eyes, highlighting the earnest, baby blue of them. His glasses had slipped halfway down his nose, giving him an air of disarray.
“Erid?” Simon croaked. His mind was trying to juggle working out how he was here, how much threat he was under, and just who this person was in front of him, gazing at him with glittering blue eyes and clean hands.
“It’s a planet.” The man clarified, gently. “Home to the Eridians, like Rocky.”
He gestured to the rock creature next to him, who chirped a small song in response.
“They found your, er, vessel in orbit, and they could hear that you were in there. Eridians use echolocation, or something similar. Their hearing is very good, you know? They managed to get you through the atmosphere, get you out of the ship.”
Simon was quiet, letting the man speak in his careful, gentle tones. His grip around the metal pole began to tremble.
“You were in a bad way, when they got you out. You were pretty banged up, and, well, covered in a lot of blood.”
The man paused. The words took a moment to catch up with Simon, barely trying to make sense of what the man had told him already, but when they did, his gut twisted.
“At first, I thought it was your arm.” His voice had dropped in cadence, settling on Simon’s shoulders like a blanket. “But a lot of it…wasn’t your own. Your arm was gone when we found you, I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened to it. You’ve been in a coma for a while, while your body recovered from the blood loss.”
Simon didn’t understand. Was he not back with the COI? Was he still dreaming? Was he dead? Was he somehow now fused to the creature at the bottom of the blood ocean, doomed to exist in a space of confusion and contradiction?
All of a sudden, his grip failed and the metal pole fell to the ground with a sharp clatter. The man and his companion jumped, but Simon startled harder. He tried to catch himself with his arm before he realised it wasn’t there anymore, and then he was falling headfirst out of the bed.
Before two strong arms caught him.
“Whoa there, buddy. I got ya. I got ya.” He murmured, both arms wrapped around Simon’s torso, his breath warm against Simon’s face. He smelled like salt and something fresh, something clean and pure. “You’re alright, I have you.”
Simon was dizzy. His head was throbbing, the pain in his body was biting, and he felt his consciousness slipping from him. The warmth of the man’s body against his was overwhelming.
“What’s your name?” The man said softly as he carefully shifted Simon’s limp body back on the bed. His face had become a blur of blue and peach and gold.
“Simon.” He managed to slur, just as his eyes began to flutter shut.
“Hi, Simon.” The man said. “I’m Ryland Grace.”
Then, his awareness sank back into a black hole.