Chapter Text
“Let me get this straight,” said Grace, pinching the bridge of his nose. The floor vibrated under the uncontrollable tapping of his foot. Rocky imitated him, thinking the movement meant he was excited. “You got lost on the way back to Erid and discovered a moon covered in a mysterious liquid,” he began, his glasses already hanging from his ears and down to his chin. “So you descended to see if there was anything interesting and found this,” his hands pointed to the unconscious man on the medical table, taking shallow and slow breaths.
Rocky nodded and rushed around the room, knocking a couple of bandages and ointments while doing so, “Rocky found another human, Grace not alone anymore, happy, happy, happy”, he was abruptly stopped by Grace, who had to hold him still so he wouldn’t accidentally hurt the man.
“Is Grace happy, question?” he asked, tilting his head at the nervous human in front of him, “Yeah buddy, I am, it’s just that I had made peace with the fact that I wouldn’t see any other human again but…” he looked at the medical table and sighed. Rocky slightly pushed his head against Grace’s chest to get his attention. “But then you brought him here, and this is all really unexpected, so it will take me some time to process this,” he said, standing up and approaching the man.
He was about 1,80 meters and had a broad- no, the broadest build Grace had ever seen in his life. Not even the military personnel he lived with on that ship in the middle of the ocean were this jacked. His long brown hair fell over his face, and his facial hair was surprisingly well-kept, even though the man had probably been on that moon for a long time.
Which, by the way, the moon was covered in blood. Grace discovered it because the moment Rocky brought the human home, the room was filled by the distinctive metallic scent.
Based on the state of the man, it was no ordinary blood. The most prominent thing about him was that he was missing his left arm, which was wrapped in bandages by Armando. Not only that, but he had a row of teeth going up the left corner of his mouth all the way to his ear. Grace covered his own mouth to stop himself from gasping at the sight, forgetting that no one there would judge him for doing so. His clothes were dirty and obviously covered in blood, rough and stuck to the man’s skin. It truly was a sight to behold, both in the right and in the wrong sense. The fact that this man was alive was shocking.
He wanted to clean him as soon as possible so his wounds wouldn’t get more infected, but decided to wait for a few days before doing so. The reason was that he wanted to respect the man’s rest time and also, was afraid that if he woke up in the middle of it, he would misunderstand the situation and bodyslam him against the wall (rightfully so).
So he pulled up a chair next to the table and grabbed his laptop to work on some stuff, “I’ll be watching him sleep, okay, Rocky? You can go if you’d like,” he said to the Eridian. The creature nodded and made his way out of the house, humming happily. Grace sighed, opened the laptop, and began writing, not really focused on what he was doing.
-
The hours quickly pass and when Grace looks at the clock, it’s already midnight. He stretches his arms over his head and straightens up, hearing his joints pop. When he stands up, his knees also pop, an uncomfortable reminder of his age.
The monitor shows the other man’s vitals: blood pressure of 114/73 mmHg, heart beating at 80 bpm, and his blood oxygen levels are at 98%. He’s going to be fine, thought Grace to himself. Slowly but surely, the man had gotten better, and everything looked promising.
A grumbling interrumpted the silence, signaling that it was about time Grace had something to eat. Heading to the kitchen, he turns on the lights and looks for anything that he feels like eating. The choices are always the same: ramen, xenolite-based food, and a few sprouts that he had harvested after growing them in the Hail Mary. He scratches the back of his neck, rocking back and forth while thinking about what to pick.
The monitor starts beeping. Grace wastes no time and darts to the medical bay where the man is resting. He looks at the screen, and the vitals are all over the place, blood pressure and heart rate at the highest level possible, and blood oxygen dropping lower by the second.
“Help! Armando, come here!” he yells, scanning the room to see if the robot appears. His glasses drop to the floor, and he breaks them while stomping around the room shouting for anyone to help him, “Armando! Rocky! Adrian! Someone help me please!” his hands are on his head, circling the bed aimlessly as he tries to think of a solution. But he can’t. At the end of the day, he is not a doctor, so he obviously doesn’t know what to do.
A long, singular beep ceases his thoughts. He slowly turns to see the monitor: a flatline. The man has died.
A raw, guttural scream fills the room. It’s then replaced by sobbing and slurry words escaping Grace’s lips, “Someone help me, please,” he whispers, dropping to his knees and covering his face with his hands, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry”.
Images flash through his head: when he found the bodies of Yao and Ilyukhina, when he went through their belongings and saw the life and people they left on Earth, when he left them in space trying to make them some type of funeral. He couldn’t save them, and he couldn’t save the man in front of him. He was proven to be useless yet again. “I’m so sorry,” he grips the table and gets up, hopelessly looking and trying to see if the man was actually breathing, and it was all a mistake. It wasn’t. He wasn’t breathing.
He takes the man’s hand and keeps sobbing, his closed eyes filled with tears. “Somebody help me,” he repeats the same sentence over and over again, as if trying to ground himself. Except when he opens his eyes again, he’s looking at the ceiling of the medical bay.
He rubs his eyes, confused, feeling the back of his hands get wet when he does so. Tears. He was crying because of what he was dreaming about. Thankfully, it was just a dream. The thing is, he kept hearing the sentence he was whispering in his dream, calling for help. Weirdly enough, he wasn’t talking. He stretches up on the chair, looks forward, and then he sees it.
The one who was calling for help was the man on the table; faintly, but he was calling for help.
Grace had to rub his eyes one more time to make sure he wasn’t imagining it. He slowly got up and walked over to the man, giving him time enough to react. When they locked eyes, Grace was not shocked when he saw his eyes swirling with anger. The man got tremendously furious. This was going to be difficult to explain.