Chapter Text
***
Rocky always knocks like the world is going to end - doesn’t matter what time of day, what he wants to say, how little sleep Ryland got the night before. He knocks hard enough they’ve had to replace the door a couple of times and no matter how often Ryland tells him to cool it, Rocky keeps on knocking away.
Ryland can’t fault the little guy for his excitement, though, so he lets it slide - even in the force of the knocks unsettle shaky memories laying on the shifting sand of his mind, distant impressions of house parties and colorful pills given to him by strangers and hiding behind a couch while the cops beat on the door. Breathless moments where reality blurred around the edges and joy warred with terror in his drug addled brain.
Safe to say, he’s gotten used to the knocks.
Which is why, one seemingly normal day on Erid, when instead of the loud thumping of Rocky’s arm on the door, he hears a tentative tapping instead, Ryland is rolling out of bed and sprinting towards the front of his house without a single thought, fear worming its way up his spine.
Ryland throws open the door to see Rocky standing outside, one arm raised like he is about to knock again. Ryland looks his friend over, searching for any sign of damage, but nothing seems out of the ordinary.
“What’s wrong?” Ryland asks, poking his head further outside and glancing from side to side.
“Wrong, question?” Rocky says, tilting body to the side.
“You knocked differently than you normally do,” Ryland says, feeling a bit foolish at the surge of panic he’d felt. Despite having settled down on Erid fairly well, his nerves still feel fried from everything it took to find this peace.
“Rocky knock fast, Grace come slow. So Rocky knock slow, Grace come fast. Rocky need Grace come fast.”
“So something is wrong.”
“Do humans come from water, question?” Rocky says, stepping back so Ryland can fully exit his house. The simulated atmosphere is especially off today and Ryland shivers as a brisk chill circles his exposed arms.
“Basically all life comes from water, yes, Rocky, why are you bringing that up? I told you that’s a sore spot for me, my research-”
“Humans created from water, question?” Rocky asks, cutting Ryland off.
Ryland drags a hand through his hair, wishing for the dozenth time Rocky had some sort of facial expressions he could read. “Humans are 70% water-”
“No!” Rocky says, shuffling in the way he always does when he is frustrated at a communication issue. He sits for a second, tapping one of his feet against the sand, and then says, “Humans are born in ocean, question?”
“What? No, that’s-” And then Ryland stops, realizing while this information is obvious to him, it’s not to Rocky. It’s not like he’s had the birds and the bees talk about humans with Rocky yet. And hopefully will never have to. “No, Rocky, humans aren’t born in the ocean. Why are you asking about all this, anyway?”
“A human is in the ocean,” Rocky says, lifting his arm to gesture down the stretch of beach.
“What?” Ryland’s gaze follows to where Rocky is pointing to see. . .something lying in the shallow tide - a large, vaguely humanoid lump. Ryland squints, but can’t make out much detail through the low fog. “Rocky, there’s no way-”
“Rocky checked. Squishy. Has hair. Nose. Eyes. Mouth. Human!”
That gives Ryland pause. Nothing he’d observed so far on Erid has all of those characteristics or could easily be mistaken for a human.
“All the humans are on Earth. . .” Ryland says slowly, and then a terrible thought occurs to him - the chances were incredibly slim, but was it possible one of the bodies of his ship mates somehow made it to Erid? The probability of that happening is so low as to be almost nonexistent, but not zero.
“Grace follow Rocky, question?”
“Yeah,” Ryland says, shaking his head and trying not to imagine the worst - Rocky isn’t super familiar with humans, there is a chance he’s mistaken. “Lead the way, buddy.”
Rocky turns and starts scuttling down the beach towards the shape in the water. As Ryland steps forward to follow, Rocky calls out, “Grace shut door! Not question!”
Ryland sighs and reaches back, tugging the door closed. He follows Rocky down the beach, an uneasy feeling rising in his chest with every step. The closer they get, it becomes clear Rocky is not wrong - it is a human lying face up in the water, eyes closed and body limp.
Then Ryland sees it: blood. On every inch of the body, fresh blood, coating the man’s skin, drenching his clothes, sliding into the gently lapping waves.
Ryland doesn’t even think, he just scrambles forward and drops onto his knees in the water. He uses one hand to lift the man’s head out of the water, away from the reach of the grasping ocean. He scans over the face, but does not recognize the man he is holding. The stranger has shoulder length dark hair, almost black with blood, a wide jaw, and thick stubble.
Ryland uses his other hand to search for a pulse, hand sliding against the thick blood. He finds one, thank god, a weak, fluttering beat against the tips of his fingers - enough to get Ryland back on his feet.
“Strange human okay, question?” Rocky asks, poking at the side of the man’s body.
“I don’t know,” Ryland admits, moving to bend down and grab the man’s arms to try and drag him out of the water. “Humans aren’t supposed to lose this much. . .”
Ryland trails off as he realizes the man’s left arm is completely gone, severed messily at the shoulder. The wound looks extremely fresh and is, Ryland suspects, the source of all the blood. “Holy crap. . .”
Rocky notices at the same time Ryland does. “Stange human missing limb, question?”
“Yes, uh, we need to get him inside, get the Arms to look at him.” Ryland ducks underneath the man’s good arm and tries to lift him up, but the body is fully limp and heavy with water logged clothes.
“Limb grow back, question?”
“No,” Ryland says with a grunt, feet sliding in the sand. “No, humans don’t grow limbs back. Rocky, urgh, can you try to help me or something, he’s heavy -”
“How Rocky help, question?”
“Just grab him or something-”
“Rocky cannot grab-”
“Ugh!” Ryland’s feet slip out from under him and he goes down, splashing into the water. The man falls beside him, face down, and Ryland rolls into a sitting position to lift the man’s head above the water.
Ryland shakes his head, spitting up the bit of water he’d accidentally swallowed. Rocky is halfway across the beach when Ryland looks for assistance and Ryland has no idea where he is heading to, but he hopes it is to get help.
He tries a different strategy to get the man out of the water by flipping the stranger onto his back again so he is floating while Ryland uses his legs to scoot onto shore. It’s slow going, and exhausting, but eventually he drops the man’s arm into the sand and collapses back, chest heaving with exertion.
He really needs to ask Rocky to make him a gym of some sort because he sure has not been keeping up with his exercise. Although, as he makes a mental note to ask Rocky about it later, the image of a hamster running on a wheel in a cage comes unbidden to the front of his mind. In the walls of his biodome, it was sometimes hard not to feel like some kind of pet.
After a moment of catching his breath, Ryland rolls over to see the man lying on his back in the sand. The water has washed away some of the blood, revealing what looked like a sort of large scar or burn cutting diagonally across his face, almost like a permanent blood stain.
“What happened to this guy?” Ryland wonders aloud, planting his hands in the sand behind him. He has a million questions, but shoves them aside for now. First, he needs to make sure the man doesn’t bleed out.
Ryland sits up and looks over the stretch of beach from where they were back to his house - it would be difficult, but he can probably drag the man all the way there by the one arm. Is that the safest option? Probably not, but trying to lift the stranger up is only going to end in Ryland getting a faceful of sand.
He’s pondering the logistics of his next move when he hears the familiar sound of Rocky’s scuttling and turns his head to see Rocky coming down the beach followed by half a dozen other Eridians. He recognizes a couple of them - Apollo, Obsidian, Paulie - as they move to stand next to each other and form a sort of platform.
“Put strange human on friends, question?” Rocky says.
“Yeah, good idea, buddy,” Ryland says, getting to his feet and brushing off the sand clinging to his skin. “You guys okay with carrying him?”
He hears a chorus of affirmative noises, some of which he understands, and some of which he doesn’t - while he can understand Rocky pretty well now without the translator, some Eridians have accents and Ryland is still struggling to figure that aspect of the language out.
Ryland grabs the man by his feet this time and tugs him over to the Eridians, who squat low to help him lift the man up onto their backs. It’s not going to be the smoothest journey, but it will be a hell of a lot better than whatever Ryland was going to attempt to do.
Ryland follows behind as the Eridans move forward, in sync enough to get the job done, ready to jump in and catch the man if he starts sliding off. It’s slow progress across the beach, and every second that passes Ryland worries about the likelihood of the man surviving long enough for the Arms to help him.
He’s happy on Erid, really, he is, but. . .well, continuing the pet metaphor, the first cat is almost always happier when the owner gets a second one. The Eridians are great, a kind and welcoming species who have only ever made Ryland feel good in his new home. And yet, at the first sign of a face like his, the homesickness threatens to make his steps stumble.
What would he do if he found another human again only to lose them soon after? Would the spark of loneliness in his soul, tucked away carefully in the back of his heart where he often forgot it existed, grow into a blazing inferno with this sort of kindling?
Ryland shakes his head, banishing the thoughts for now. He needs to do everything he can to help the other man and if that isn’t enough, then at least he gave it his all.
They reach the house and Ryland takes over, tugging the man’s arm back over his shoulder and hobbling up the steps. He shouts a thank you back at the Eridians in their language - butchers it only slightly, he thinks - and all but drags the man into his home.
The Arms are on them the second they cross the threshold - Ryland isn’t entirely sure how they are able to detect injuries so easily and doesn’t want to risk taking them apart to check, especially considering each arm might as well be a nurse and doctor respectively for Ryland as long as he lived on a planet of rock-like creatures who didn’t understand human anatomy.
They pull the man free of Ryland’s hold and carry him over to the metal surgical table. “Patient suffering severe blood loss," the automated voice says as it begins to strip the man of his blood soaked clothing. Ryland catches a flash of bare chest and his eyes dart down to look at Rocky instead, who stands on Ryland’s right hand side.
“Grace okay, question?" Rocky says, tilting his body towards Ryland in a questioning wiggle.
Ryland is tempted to purposefully misunderstand Rocky’s question, joke and say something like “if you think this is bad, you should see the other guy," brush off his friend’s concern because he is trying really hard to not let his worry gain voice and make it more real.
But Rocky - despite not having eyes or a mouth or any of the other things Ryland can read to know what he was thinking - is peering up at him with a genuine interest in how Ryland is feeling, and Ryland can’t find it in himself to lie.
“I’m just worried, buddy," Ryland admits, sympathetically flinching as the Arms start stabbing the stranger full of IV drips and tubes and God knows what else. “Worried about how he got here. . .if he’s going to live. . ."
“Rocky understand. But strange human will be okay. Rocky make sure."
“Oh yeah?" Ryland laughs, raising an eyebrow at Rocky’s determined squat. “You become a human doctor while I was asleep or. . .?"
“Rocky could be human doctor," Rocky says with the kind of confidence only he could muster. “Humans easy."
“Name literally one thing about human anatomy. I’ll wait."
“Blood!" Rocky says, lifting his hand to poke where the stranger’s blood had soaked through Ryland’s t-shirt. “Goes inside human. Not outside."
“Well, yeah, Rocky, that is true, but it’s pretty basic-”
“Rocky not basic!”
“I never said-”
“Eye movement detected.”
Their conversation is cut off by a sudden scream as the stranger jerks awake, surging up against the hold of the arms. His eyes are wide open, terrified and searching, but unseeing - one a dark brown, and the other a bright blood red.
Ryland shakes off his shock and moves forward to place his hands on the man’s shoulders, trying to hold him down as the stranger bucks against the restraint. “Hey, hey, hey, it’s okay,” Ryland says, trying to catch the man’s eyes. “Listen, my name is Ryland Grace, and this,” he gestures his head vaguely to the place Rocky is standing, “is Rocky. We’re going to get you patched up, alright? But you have to stop moving and let the Arms do what they do.”
The man takes a shaky breath, barring his teeth. Ryland feels him strain upwards once more, and then drop back onto the table. His gaze meets Ryland’s, full of anger and terror and an unfathomable sadness.
The Arms grab him as he makes a sudden move to roll off the table, stabbing him in the neck with the sedative. His eyes go wide with fear, and then roll into the back of his head and his body goes limp. The Arms grab his limbs and drag him back into position while Ryland takes a step back and drops into a nearby chair.
“Strange human scary,” Rocky says, plopping down by Ryland’s side.
“I think he’s just scared,” Ryland says, reaching to fiddle with his glasses and then realizing he never grabbed them when he left the house. “We just gotta wait for him to wake up again, I’m sure he’ll calm down.”
“We watch strange human sleep?”
“Yeah,” Ryland agrees, even though the sight of the man’s battered body makes his gut twist uncomfortably. Is it fear, or anticipation, or even crazier, hope? Ryland doesn’t know, but he settles into the chair anyway and drops a hand down to brush against the top of Rocky’s head, craving a bit of reassurance. “We’ll watch.”
***