Archive of Our Own

When Grace was told he could go back to Earth, he had been beyond hesitant and had asked, "Can I think about it?" to Rocky. 

The thinking phase took him a long time. A few years more or less, for him to make his decision. 

It wasn't that he didn't want to go back, in fact, he longed to just see another human. Rocky was perfect the way he was, and Erid was anything but welcoming, his biodome was cosy and had long become a part of his life and home... But he was still human. He didn't regret any of his choices, and would always cherish the time he's spent with all the Eridian children, talking and teaching them new things... But even that could never replace or heal his deep nostalgia for long past memories. 

If he had been asked a bit earlier, just a few months after coming to Erid, he probably would have sneered and said he was better in his biodome. He would frustratingly bat the thought away like an annoying fly, still hurting about being launched away from Earth in the hopes and luck he did manage to find anything on Tau Ceti. About the fact that he would have to succumb to starvation or, if he had the gall to even take them, the euthanasia drugs stashed in the storage room.

Understanding and resentment could coexist and clash within him just fine. He understood and, dare he say, was thankful for Stratt to boot him inside the Hail Mary because yeah, he did succeed. But at the same time, he held onto a deep-seated grudge, one of blinding betrayal and poisonous sadness for being kicked out of Earth, just like that, on the off chance he somehow figured everything out with two corpses by his side. 

But after so many years on Erid, the betrayal turned lukewarm before finally fizzling out. His resentment turned to melancholy, and his sour memories on Earth turned bittersweet. It was a long process, one that included a lot of object throwing, some nightmares and sobbing into his pillow, but he slowly began to miss Earth more than he hated it. 

It didn't help that somehow, he had stopped... ageing... 

It was a huge pill to swallow when he realised that whatever time shenaningan happened on board, mixed with alien atmosphere, the Taumoeba leak, or just fate, made it that he retained his same youthful features as he had ten years ago.

He had looked once at the mirror, brushing his teeth and sluggishly trying to wake up from a power nap after working on a science project he wanted to present to Eridian scientists, when suddenly, he had remarked that his skin looked strangely smooth. Not a single wrinkle on his face. Not a single white hair or even the beginning of a receding hairline. Nothing. He still looked like he was in his thirties. The brushtooth had clinked inside the sink, foam slowly dribbling past his lips and onto his chin, but he hadn't even noticed it because he... he looked young. Painfully, impossibly young. 

Perhaps it was at that moment that he suddenly made his decision. The last shred of his humanity, wiped off him in the worst manner possible. He had his letters, he had his computer, his videos and his pictures to look for if he forgot what Earth looked like, thanks to the Mary's abysmal database. But it wasn't enough. Seeing his body... go off course had broken something inside him and solidified into a single choice he knew was right. 

It still took him months before he slowly eased the idea to Rocky. But then, preparations began, and the Mary was being rebuilt. A little bit bigger, a little bit better, faster and more resistant, with the latest Eridian technology they could offer. 

And then it was time to go. His last day on Erid was sorrowful. Eridians packed at the mouth of his biodome, and followed him outside towards the Mary, and they thrilled and sang a goodbye song like he had talked about in one of his history lectures. He cried a lot while they made a beautiful rendition of "Voyage Voyage" by Desireless. He had almost been unable to brush his fist against his other arm from how febrile and shaken he had been, legs threatening to crumble under the weight of his sadness at the idea of departure. 

He sobbed once again when he realised that Rocky would come with him. He had tried to argue that he didn't need to come, especially since he wouldn't dare take more years from Rocky by Adrian’s side, for the sake of Grace, but Rocky had said, "I'll have so many years with Adrian, but so little with you. I want to make the most of what is left," and then thunked himself inside the Mary's bedroom with his new xenonite suit. It was obvious that Rocky knew Grace didn't have many years left. While his appearance stayed that of a thirty-something man, he was fast approaching his sixties by the time he would be back on Earth. And with the fact that his body had never truly recovered from the starvation he had suffered when en route to Erid, they both knew his life expectancy was shorter than that of an average human being. 

Grave hadn't argued anymore, still feeling guilty but at the same time, oh so happy and emotional that he was inconsolable for hours, "Tears of... they aren't sad tears," he'd stuttered when they rolled down his face, and Rocky softly chittered about 'leaks' again. 

And then they were off to Earth. 

While Eridian engineering was astounding, they didn't manage to reduce the amount of time needed to get back to Earth. Or at least, not in its entirety. In theory, they would manage to make it back on Earth with the upgraded Mary in half the time he had needed to go to Erid, but that still meant that a lot of years would have passed on Earth. He feared how it would have changed from his blurry memories. 

Arriving back in his own galaxy had suckerpunched him.

Seeing Earth from the telescope was even more heartwrenching. It felt like seeing an alien planet. 

The planet had turned completely black, no more blue, no more maroon or green. There was only a massive blackness that engulfed the whole planet like a monster slowly gnawing at a dead land. He had first thought with terror raging inside his veins that he had actually failed, that the Beetles never reached Earth and that his planet was dead and- 

But the Sun was still shining brightly on the side, and not long afterwards, he received a communication request on Mary’s terminal, to which he scrambled to respond. 

The voice had been firm, to the point, demanding his identity and what he was doing on an unauthorised orbital path, away from any space colony. 

His answer had probably shaken the whole foundation of what remained of Earth because they only answered after a few hours, long enough to leave Grace jittery, sweaty and almost on the verge of vomiting from fear and anxiety. 

What had happened? He looked again at the telescope once again, but the black cloud covering the whole planet hadn't disappeared while he wasn't looking. 

On the second contact, the feminine voice was still expressionless but cordial as she rattled off coordinates to help him land on Earth, giving him full access to land without being shot off by accident (what?) and that it was an honour to have a hero back on Earth. That word had tasted very bad on his tongue, and he had been ready to wave that title away with a few denials, but the woman had already cut the communication off, leaving a heavy silence inside the Mary. Grace hadn't really expected a whole celebration and a tearful crew to answer to his introduction back to Earth, but her voice had sounded like a vague dismissal. As if a person coming back from the literal dead, and thought it trivial. Like it was a part of his job. 

He had to admit it hurt his ego. Again, hadn't wanted a big party or an over-the-top reaction, but the words ‘it is an honour to see you, Dr Grace’ had sounded almost off...

It was even more heartbreaking when he landed on Earth.

He had expected to crash-land in the ocean, the Eridians had even prepared and reinforced the Mary's hull for this exact purpose. Instead, when he finally broke through the black clouds surrounding the atmosphere, he could only see a never-ending city with countless lights everywhere. Gone was the blue sky and the stretch of green and brown lands. Instead, tall buildings glared back at his ship while some contraptions formed around his spaceship, as if it were a bird caught in a net, and stopped the Mary's descent like it weighed nothing. 

He was greeted by two identical humans, which threw him off guard before they spoke at the same time and said that he'd have to wait before anyone could see him, but oh please, you can lounge in the VIP room while waiting, please come and follow. 

They hadn't even stopped when Rocky came out of the ship, only blinking twice and sending a message on their tablet before smiling big at Grace and leading him to a golden room with very plushy chairs, a glass of champagne thrust in his hands and left him alone in a new world he didn't recognise. There was a huge window bay in front of him, but the grand buildings that made his neck ache from just looking up and the flying cars?! almost bumping against each other in the vicinity were enough to scare him into ordering the window to become opaque once again. He quickly turned his head to the side when the window began reflecting the interior of the room he was standing in, and showed how unfit he seemed here, inside his familiar white cardigan, synthesised by Eridian technology after the last one had burnt because of a failed experiment.

He had to wait a long time while he paced around, and Rocky stayed subdued. The Eridian probably would have started asking a billion questions per second if it wasn't for the gloomy expression on Grace's face, expressing the utter horror and sorrow the man felt building in his chest.

He was home, but at the same time, he didn't recognise anything. So. Was he truly home? He had agonised about going back on Earth, had been prepared to see the planet change, but not to this point? The sight of a black, starless, perpetually rainy sky made him look down at the golden floor he was walking on in repressed anger. In the end, he found himself reclined in the plushy chair, sneakers discarded and socked feet propped on the armrest while drumming his fingers against his leg. 

Finally, a man with pupilless eyes came in, gave Grace a powerful handshake, said, "So here is the famed Doctor who saved us all!" with a pat on his shoulder. 

Then he got a crashcourse lesson about everything that happened while he was ‘away’ in less than five minutes, "I'm a busy man, you see, but if you have any more question, make sure to ask our assistant, I'm sure she'll be glad to help you navigate your new life here," and then he was granted a huge pay check, a curious glance at Rocky's form but then was swiftly dismissed in favour of having a clause of silence about his arrival back on Earth slapped onto the table (only accepted after making sure that Rocky was safe and the Mary wouldn't get touched by anyone but him, to which the man had gritted his teeth loud enough to be heard across the gilded table, but ended up accepting). A replicant was thrust to his side to help him ‘ease himself’ back on Earth, and out he was of the Wallace tower. 

He was offered a luxurious apartment in one of the higher levels of the sprawling city and then... he was left alone. Again. 

To say he took everything well was a ridiculous lie.

As soon as the door of his new apartment closed behind him, the replicant smiling at him all the same before he even had the chance to ask more questions, he had broken down, heaving and sobbing through his panic and clutching at his painful chest. Rocky had tried to reassure him, to calm him down...

It took hours for his tears to dry, and only because his tear ducts had completely emptied. His eyes were irritated and his nose was sore from so much sniffling. 

"This isn't what I wanted, why, why, why..." he constantly repeated to himself while curling in a ball in the corner of the apartment he had been dumped in. 

Rocky pressed himself against him, thrilling sadly. 

"I didn't expect anyone to be still alive, I convinced myself that- Stratt, Carl, my kids, Colt..." 

The last words were garbled by the sound of his wretched sobs once again. 

He had not thought of his brother for a long time. 

He denied himself this for years, though he supposed he wasn't truly able to because each time he looked at himself in the mirror, he was irretrievably thinking about his twin. As soon as he made his choice, between going back to Earth and going to Erid, he had been forced to grieve for his lost relative. He had to. In some ways, his forgotten memories had already been the coffin he built to bury his twin in. He had been supposed to die in Tau Ceti, and so making his choice had come almost too easily. What was an already dead brother and an endangered alien who turned out to be his greatest strength in the grand scheme of things?

The guilt never abated, but he had hoped that wherever his brother was, he would live a good life thanks to what Grace had been able to provide.

An unfair trade, but it was the only thing he could cling to while he made his trip to Erid.  

It still didn't heal the gaping wound inside his chest when he realised that nothing of what he knew remained. Space colonies? Flying cars? A never-ending city (the only one remaining)? A waste of land beyond it? Replicants?

Pollution so bad that there wasn't any light passing through those black clouds? Was that the reward he got for his wasted life? For this suicide mission? 

If he had the strength, he would have laughed himself to death. 

Instead, he just fell asleep curled up, hugging Rocky hard enough it would probably have broken the xenonite suit if it hadn't been that resistant. 

.

Settling back on Earth was difficult it felt almost laughable.

He had missed Earth so much when he was on Erid, but now that he was here, he almost missed Erid more!

More than anything, he missed Stratt. He missed Carl. He missed his school and his simple life. He missed Colt, he missed his calm breakfast, he missed his bike, he missed his world.

He had asked through the new communication device to have information about what happened to his life after he... left and was given a heavy folder via the terminal. Perfunctory, to the point. Impersonal.

And so he read.

Earth froze over. Colt continued his job as a stuntman until it was impossible to go out without five layers of clothes on the hottest days. He died a peaceful death with Jody. He had children, who themselves began to raise more. A whole little Grace family. Stratt got in jail, but then was released when the Beetles came back. The sun began to shine again. The astrophage allowed for technological leaps, but with that came the pollution and a baby boom no one expected after an almost apocalyptic disaster. Cities began to expand until they touched one another and formed one single city. Technology permitted the beginning of space colonies, and Tyrell, then Wallace Corporation, began to emerge with its replicant technology.

In less than a century, humans had managed to go from one catastrophe to another, and Grace had never felt more stupider and useless, more irrelevant than when he read about all of this. 

He threw the tablet across the room, and the screen shattered.

Not even a day later, a package was left at his doorstep with a shiny new tablet inside. 

He almost broke this one too, but forced himself not to, just because he didn't want to walk back to his apartment door the next day. Too busy looking blankly at the ceiling and hearing the muted sound of constant rain against the closed windows.

He stayed holed up in his apartment for an entire week, scouring everything he could about what happened to Earth, everything and anything to try and find something familiar in the sea of words he read. Nothing did.

All his needs were taken care of thanks to the endless bank account granted by higher dignitaries who didn't even remember what Grace had achieved. The astrophage had been an eventful catastrophe, but was swiftly put under the rug after a new issue emerged: the awakening of replicants, mounting pollution and marginalisation of the growing population between lower and higher levels on top of dwindling resources (again). 

Grace even tried once to see if he could find some pieces of his home back, his own old apartment, but San Fransico just became the equivalent of a small district, and his old home and bike were lost in time.

He just scrolled past this information, despondent when he learnt it, and continued to read about what he missed, as if he could catch up with the past that continued to slip through his fingers. 

.

Finally, they began to go out after another week, forced by Rocky himself, who shouted and screamed about wanting to see the outside. Grace had sneered, "What outside?" but immediately regretted it and accompanied Rocky when he realised that the Eridian had sacrificed as much as Grace when he had followed him back on Earth. Trying to make Rocky discover what was left of Earth was the most basic and littlest thing he could ever afford to repay the Eridian.

And so he forced himself to go out and face his "legacy" as Wallace had said to him on his first day back on Earth. Lots of rain, an almost unbreathable atmosphere filled with gas and diluted pollution invading his nostrils. He also understood the lack of reaction from Wallace when he saw Rocky for the first time, when he looked at the big billboards, hoograms and the modified robots that overcrowded the streets. Nothing seemed to shock humans anymore, and a spider-like 'machine' wouldn't be the first of their discoveries in such a wasted world. 

The only good thing about it all was that it helped assuage Grace's worries about Rocky being used as an experiment.

They went along the busy streets and tried to find anything that resembled the Mary's old videos.

Nothing really matched, but it was still something to do in the meantime.

When Grace finally learnt how to pilot one of those flying cars (after much insistence from Rocky) and was relieved that he wouldn't puke his guts out from motion sickness, they also began to visit a bit everywhere. He spent so much money on small, useless things that he would have driven any big company bankrupt if it had been years ago, but Wallace had pretty much given him a black card and no matter how many zeros flashed before his eyes, he never got any warning, and so he continued to recklessly spend. He also had clearance for any part of the city and a badge that kept people from trying to toy with him. He was pretty much free to do whatever he wanted.

And so when he decided on a whim to go outside the city and towards the desert areas covered in sand, nobody was there to stop him, aside from a warning coming from his flying car to come back to the city before nightfall (what night? he had snorted). 

He shrugged it off and flew towards the edges of the world anyway, with Rocky excitedly singing about the smallest pebble he ‘saw’ as they flew close to the ground. 

The desert was a painful, sad world.

He landed somewhere and just sat silently at the bottom of a huge, broken statue, looking at the horizon without truly seeing anything. 

Then he dug into his pockets and found Rocky's xenonite puppets. There were three in his hands, and he buried them with as much love and care as he could muster while his eyes strained to produce more tears, to no avail. He blamed it on the wind.

It was perhaps because of it that when he tried to get up, vision blurry, his foot caught on something sticking out of the sand he had stirred, after the sorry, miserable burial of his past. 

He fell with a oomf!, his toe throbbing. Looking back at where he stumbled, he was surprised to see that it was a white and smooth surface, barely visible under a thick layer of sand. Perhaps he was exhausted and delirious from too much grief, or he was still as reckless as he had been when he sniffed inside an alien tube, a lifetime ago, but he began to dig around. His fingers hurt, grains slipping beneath his nails and skin scratched as he dug and dug and dug, eyes widening as he uncovered a piece of cloth, then a chest, then a limb, then-

He probably would have called for a hallucination born out of his drowning mind if it wasn't for Rocky's sturdy and steady voice while he ran away from his own face. 

He would have perhaps left the thing in the desert to rot in hell where it belonged, daring to wear his features like he had any rights to, if it hadn't been for the three small bumps inside the desert glaring back at his cowering figure. Under the unwavering, invisible glares he could feel at the back of his neck, he had turned back again and began to... excavate the body.

It was clearly a robot, one of those replicants that kept knocking at his apartment door every week with a supply of food and a pasty smile stretched on its face. 

He tried his best not to look at the thing's face. He couldn't call it human when it wore his dead features, eyes closed and features peaceful, even with a layer of sand crusted in his short hair and covering his bloody clothes. A huge hole at the robot's side was probably the reason why it had... shut down. But Rocky had quickly hummed that he could probably fix it if he had his tools back at the apartment.

And so he hauled the heavy body onto his shoulder, dumped it inside the car and went back to his apartment with his heart so heavy it would have been able to make them crash against the bottom of the street they currently flew over. 

He then sneakily carried the body back to his apartment, praying that nobody would see him. Even the most powerful hero of this godforsaken land wouldn't escape the repercussions of retrieving the body of a broken replicant, apparently shot down, that wore his own face. Grace had done his homework: there was only one reason why it had been killed this far away from civilisation. Chased. Hunted down. 

He tried not to think too much about it and dumped the body on his couch while letting Rocky work his Eridian magic as he took a shower in hopes of waking up from this nightmare. 

What was he trying to achieve, honestly? 

He looked at his own hands, trembling and gripping at the sink like a silver lining. He watched the water draining down the sink with an almost twisted satisfaction, knowing he wasted precious resources, before turning the tap off when the guilt throbbed too heavily behind his eyes.

And finally, finally, he looked at his own reflection, the one that he had done all his best to avoid in honour of his twin brother. He had learnt how to trim himself blind and even took off the mirror in his biodome and inside the Mary, but unfortunately, the one from this bathroom was glued to the wall and impossible to remove without breaking it. Which he assumed would be easily fixed or replaced by one of those replicants that came and went inside his room for his weekly supplies. 

His youthful face stared back at him with the weight of a thousand years upon his shoulders.

It almost looked sad for him. 

He looked away in shame and walked back to the living room, where Rocky was beginning to create things from materials he'd salvaged inside the apartment, limbs expertly waving new components with terrifying speed. 

While Grace had spiralled down in the history of Earth after he left, Rocky had found a unique interest in replicants and how they functioned. At some point during their visits around the city, they decided to buy a small robot cat, on a whim, courtesy of Wallace's funds. Rocky had been more than happy to analyse it with his X-ray vision. So it was no surprise that when he came back from his long shower, Grace found that the robot's interiors were good as new. 

"There were a few missing components and blood. I refilled everything, now we only have to wait," Rocky explained, pointing at the containers of synthetic liquid normally supposed for emergency use if the cat was 'wounded'. 

"Do you really want to reanimate it?" Grace asked in a hoarse voice.

Rocky turned back towards him, "Do you want to?"

"Not really."

"Well, he probably would want to. Humans always want to live, correct?" he said while looking back at the replicant, the menacing shadow of a Blade Runner shooting down the robot silently passing through the silent room. 

"I suppose..." Grace finally murmured, and then he sat on the other couch facing the one where his... doppelganger was... resting. 

And then, they waited. 

.

.

.

It didn't even feel like a wake-up at all.

Grace had been perusing his tablet for a while, until he heard the ironic voice of Armando through the speaker of the apartment: “Eye movement detected”.

He had categorically refused to leave either Mary or Armando at the hands of Wallace, though he supposed it would be like trying to clutch at a mail pigeon when Wallace owned a high-tech computer. It still didn't seem right to leave both of his favourite robots (ah!) stranded inside the Mary's carcass, put in a parking lot specifically for spaceships. Grace had been adamant that the spaceship never be touched, and was granted this much. Though sometimes he would take the time to visit the Hail Mary, just to see if it hadn't rusted like an old man looking after his beat-up car. Perhaps he was in more than one way.

As soon as Armando spoke up, he shared a glance with Rocky. They had come to the understanding that the Eridian should make himself scarce, at least for the moment. A replicant who had just died ought to be panicked and perhaps would see them as threats. Grace had his face and human identity as a sort of protection, but Rocky, with his xenonite suit, was much more vulnerable. Xenonite was solid and strong, but from what he'd read, replicants could modify their bodies for duplicate strength and other harmful upgrades. He would not risk Rocky's life just to satisfy his curiosity. 

The body on his couch did not wake up.

It simply opened its eyes and then straightened up at a slow and constant speed until it was perpendicular to the couch it was lying on. Its eyes stared forward, expressionless, dark, gloomy and half-lidded.

It looked dead already. Or still dead yet.

It looked at him next, head turning. It assessed him.

Grace would have thought that he would get used to the empty look of those replicants. He knew they were supposed to be carbon copies of humans with just a few wires instead of veins, but he supposed that knowing the nature of their conception had made him unconsciously draw a line between those who he knew were humans and those who he knew were robots. 

Perhaps he had focused his anger on the wrong sort. He had pettily looked away from replicants, the idea of robot humans never truly sitting right in his chest. He had thought robots were the root of his grief, of why this sprawling city looked nothing like his old Earth.

He had been awfully wrong.

Because as he stared back at the body, at the man in front of him, he knew if he hadn't seen the hole in his side that spilt wires amongst the red blood, he wouldn't have been able to see the difference between human and replicants.

It made him both sad and amazed at what technology was about to do nowadays. 

But it also left him feeling utterly lost, because if robots weren’t the origin of the problem, then what was?

“You are a human," the replicant said, tonelessly.

He hadn't jumped away from the couch. He only stared at Grace with a weight that seemed to mirror his own sadness, encroaching and invading his heart since he'd landed back on Earth.

He wasn't panicked, not even wary. He seemed... resigned, and sad. If he squinted hard enough, Grace could almost see the imperceptible pinch between the man's eyebrows, and it was only because he knew his face by heart. 

“And you are a replicant,” Grace murmured back. 

The man's, the replicant's eye seemed to dull even more at that. Grace didn't know it was possible to look this defeated while looking expressionless.

"Yes," he said. "I... am,” there, a slight pause that screamed of uncertainty and a proof of the robot's life that ran under his synthetic skin. 

Grace felt his throat close up. 

Did he look like that too? Or was it only because the man wore his face in the worst way possible, because he had seen worse than Grace did?

Was it even possible? 

“Ryland Grace, the Hero of Earth, supposedly dead after giving his life for the Sun,” the replicant said again, matter-of-factly. 

Grace immediately winced at those words, feeling a mean pinch behind his lungs that made his breath stutter. 

“Yeah, uh… I just got back," he fiddled with the plaid he had put around his shoulders. He had grown quite sensitive to the cold over the past few years, and the constant humidity everywhere on Earth made him almost feverish with cold sweat. "Never thought I'd be back,” he tried to joke in a small voice. 

God, he wished Rocky were back with him. He supposed if he really needed to, he just had to wave around, and Rocky would run to him with a xenonite weapon at the ready, pointed at the replicant. 

He didn't do any of it.

“Then, congratulations."

Grace startled, and he looked up from where he was glaring down at a spot of dirt that stained the floor of the apartment. He looked at the replicant, who sat even straighter, back rigid and face even more closed off than before.

“Pardon?”

“Isn't that what should be said? You're back home, you have everything you want now,” the replicant continued while letting his eyes roam around the room, sometimes stopping on some trinkets that Rocky had made, and which Grace had gently put on a shelf to try to decorate the sterile apartment. 

His head tilted to the side, as if he was listening to something, and Grace tensed. He scrambled for something to ask, just to fill the silence and distract the replicant away from his bedroom. So far, the man didn't seem like he wanted anything or posed any threat. He was awfully calm and tame, scarily so.

Yet, his interest in a noise Grace couldn’t hear was the first movement he did other than speak in his toneless, muted voice. Grace made sure not to let his eyes wander back to where Rocky was huddled, in their bedroom, probably watching and listening to everything they said.

“What's your name?”

The replicant frowned for a moment, but then his left eye did a little twitch before falling despondent again. He remained silent, but his head hung low again, away from Rocky.

“You know mine, it is only fair I should know yours,” Grace nudged again, trying to get another reaction other than just silence. It was also perhaps a bit selfish of him, but the reminder of his nickname, of his title, burned badly inside his chest. Seeing the replicant squirm under his question almost felt like a revenge he was finally due. “Do I really have to call you just 'Hey, you'?”

“It doesn’t have much meaning to me,” the replicant finally murmured. He hadn't looked up from his hands, balled up on his laps, his back still ramrod straight.

“What name was given for you?”

A shadow passed in front of the man's eyes, and they... moistened? 

Instantly, Grace felt guilty about his own insistence, and he was about to wave away his questions when the replicant spat out a weak: "I was called... Joe.”

The way he said it, hoarse and raw, sliced through Grace's heart all the same. 

It felt like he had just wrenched a painful memory out of the replicant.

Well, he felt like a complete jerk now. What has he become? He used to nudge and coax reluctant children to tell the truth about their biggest lie whenever they made a terrible mistake at school. Though that had been a lifetime ago… Eridians didn't grasp the same concept of complex emotions as humans did, they were much more blunt and straightforward in their ways of thinking. 

He looked to the side, tapping his tablet softly against the armchair. The replicant followed his movement, sharp and quick, yet devoid of any intent. 

“Do you like it?”

Sometimes he himself forgot the meaning behind Ryland Grace.

He didn't even understand the meaning of the titles attached to the name: ‘hero’, ‘saviour’, ‘a model to look up to', all of those that he found in the articles written about him over the past fifty years. 

“It felt human," the replicant shrugged in the exact same way Grace did. "Better than KD6-3.7.”

“But you don't like it.”

“I… died for it.”

The silence hung heavy on both of their head for a long while. 

Grace unblinkingly looked at the replicant, whom he silently and conveniently renamed K. At least to respect the replicant's legacy. To let Joe die properly and never be brought back again. It felt a bit like mercy.

He would wait until the man, K, found another name to wear. One he liked and felt like his. 

Still, he looked at K and saw not a replicant, but a nameless man who looked at the death door. 

Oh, he was fine. Rocky had done a wonderful job at fixing him. He looked as good as new.

Yet his face was that of a man who wished he had stayed dead. 

Grace looked back at the stain on the floor.

“Why did you wake me up?” K finally asked. 

“I…. don't know,” he confessed. K didn't even grant him an excuse for his miserable answer: he didn't even move or flinch in anger. He just slowly blinked, and that was that. He didn't even get a weak 'alright' or 'understood', just some damning silence that hissed at his ears and made him feel almost like he was on the edge of a cliff, teetering at the edge of the world. “Why do you have my face?”

“To be friendlier, more trustworthy. No one would doubt...”

"Me."

"You."

"Why would you need to be trustworthy?" Grace asked, narrowing his eyes. Then suddenly, he blanched, "You aren't just a replicant... You're..."

He recalled the tattered clothes he had found. A uniform, if not torn here and there. There weren't a lot of professions left for a replicant donning a uniform, made with a trusty face and a hole on his side. There had even been a holster or some kind, empty, but still strapped to his leg.

He had first thought it to be the tools of a fugitive desperate to find a weapon with which to protect himself, but...

"I am not anymore, neither of them," K shook his head, and both glanced down silently at the hole that had just been patched up. 

"You hunt down replicants, retire them, but not anymore?" Grace asked with a bit of sarcasm. 

The files he had been given had been largely censored, especially the ones containing sensitive informations about 'fugitives', but he guessed his 'friendly' face was still working on people, because he only needed to ask a few locals and pull a few strings while he talked in bars before he got a bit more information about the world he had to live in for the rest of his miserable life. 

He knew, at least in the general lines, about the Blade Runners and the waves of replicants that tried to escape Earth in hopes of a better future. The hopes for a revolution, all of that.

Grace had had enough on his plate at the time not to delve too much into any of it, preferring to just shrug and say, 'hope they get what they want, better them than me in space,' he'd laughed, while he thought once again about his biodome and his stranded past. 

Perhaps he should have truly died in space, instead of making it to Erid half-starved and delirious from dehydration. He probably would have been with all of those he loved or reluctantly was fond of in the afterlife, instead of this hell with a mirror version of himself, made to look like him to kill others.

"No, not anymore," K's shoulders were still raised high and what Grace had thought to be an attempt at nonchalance was actually just that. His rigid posture seemed to be only what the man knew how to be: straight and at the ready for orders. "I discovered that my… life, has been based on a lie. I wanted to live. I suppose I wasn't made to.”

Grace closed his eyes in grief.

“I'm sorry… how long were you alive?”

“In service? About 10 years." 

Grace looked at him sternly. K looked blankly back at him. 

"How long have you been alive?" he insisted, making sure to enunciate each word as he did with the most unruly Eridian child that needed a lecture about proper behaviour.

K looked away, before finally saying, once again tonelessly: "A few weeks.”

Grace felt something shift inside of him, like an immense sadness overcoming him. 

He supposed he would always be the soft marshmallow his twin had always teased him to be, each time he took the brunt of an argument because their foster parents had mistaken him for Colt. Instead of snitching on his brother, he would hang his head low and wait for the lecture to pass before he was sent to his bedroom upstairs. There, Colt would look guiltily at his twin and ask in a faux angry voice, 'Why would you do that?' to which Ryland would simply say, 'I was just there at the wrong time. And now, you owe me an ice cream’. 

They both knew it was because Ryland always preferred the one to be lectured, even if it wasn't his own mess to clean. Colt would always make it worse by answering back: his big mouth and short temper always turned a stern lecture into a two-day grounding session, or even sometimes having his favourite toys confiscated for the rest of the week. 

And so, Grace carefully watched K, who looked as lost as him in this world and sighed, before opening his arms, “Come here…” he said.

K looked at him but did not move. And thus it was Grace who had to get up from his chair and slowly come up to the other man. His doubts and worries were for nought because K didn't even seem to flinch back when he crouched near the couch, arms still spread open. 

“What is it?” he only asked. 

Grace rolled his eyes a little bit, but softly said: “A hug, come here, it’s not something I can really teach, but it'll do anyway. It'll feel good, you'll see. It's all I can give you, sorry.”

He had always been the younger brother, the one who needed to be hugged.

Colt always used to open his arms wide when he needed to be reassured and consoled. When they were kids, Ryland had been stressed and nervous and always ran into his brother’s arms. The separation once in the Mary had been like an arm severed, phantom pains haunting his very soul for the rest of his sorry life. His brother had always been a little bit less touchy-feely. He also loved hugs, but only under the guise of hugging Ryland. When his twin had had his accident, he had never asked to be hugged. Only looked murderous and miserable. Ryland had been forced to ask for a hug because ‘he was sad or stressed’, just so he could feel his twin's shoulders relax when his body's warmth spread to the other’s. Like a soul leaking to another.

It was the same thing with K.

When the man still didn't move, Grace huffed and put a gentle hand on the man's shoulder. It felt even more painful when he felt the warmth radiating under K’s skin. Under the t-shirt he had found, an old one with that stupid 'I had potential' joke on it. It didn’t feel like one at all. He should probably find another one before K has the chance to look at it.

Instead, he pulled the replicant until they were chest to chest. K kept his back straight but let himself be pulled in, until his chin was hooked on Grace's shoulder. Then he slowly closed his arms around K. 

While holding a man who didn't know what a hug was, stiffly frozen inside Grace's embrace, he thought back on his rusty memories.

He could almost see his brother's smile and imagined it the same stretching on K's lips, and on his own face as well.

The hug felt real.

It felt like they were both alive.

.

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