Chapter Text
The quiet hurts.
It aches in a way that Ryland Grace isn’t really familiar with - not like this. Never like this. But then, when has he ever experienced anything within the scope of this? The simple answer is that he hasn’t, the true answer is that if he’d been on Earth at this moment, grass beneath his shoes, a dimming sun shining upon him as he looks toward a sky he never comes to realise the true smallness of, Ryland Grace, technical Commander and one of two crew members of the Hail Mary, never would have experienced this.
But he does. He is. Eva Stratt made sure of it. He can feel phantom hands, grass against his face, a pinch in his neck- he heaves a breath, hands running over his face, skewing his glasses and tracing up through his hair.
Ryland doesn’t know what to do. (Yes, he does, he just isn’t ready to properly face it.)
He’d turned his ship around, watched the IR light of the beetles slowly disappear into the great expanse of space. He’d guesstimated Rocky’s location, managed the propulsion, coasted along until the gargantuan ship that dwarfed his own blotted out the light of stars light years away and-
Heart pounding, legs weak, Ryland Grace had crawled into the EVA suit with all of the, well, grace of a newborn fawn, something like excitement and worry palpitating in his chest. I’m coming, Rocky. I’m coming.
Wait for me.
Spacewalking no longer held the fear it used to, the airlock hissing open to everythingandnothing, he checked the tether once - he used to check it twice, thrice, four times, anxiety pushing him to just make sure - before launching himself towards the Blip-A without a care. Worry had gnawed at his heart, crawled up his throat until it was practically choking him. Ryland didn’t care.
Rocky was waiting.
He hadn’t heard when Grace had shouted, but it’s fine - he takes to banging on the hull of the ship with a secondary tether bolt. He really shouldn’t have, anything could have happened but it’s Rocky we’re talking about and Ryland can’t even place himself above Rocky, not really. Face, grass. Hands, hands, hands. Needle pinch.
Not even humanity.
Humanity would be fine though. He’d sent the beetles off without a second thought the moment he’d realised that Taumeoba-82.5 could breach the xenonite breeder farms. It had been easy. Securing the farms had been easy. Re-routing the Hail Mary towards where Rocky should be had been easy. Clinging to the hull for 6 hours was easy.
“Rocky! Come on, Rocky. I’m here, bud! I came for you, please.” His voice is hoarse. Vocal chords tend to get like that when they’ve been screaming, shouting, wailing for more than 6 whole hours. It’s fine. He can stay out here for at least 4 more - Rocky could just be sleeping.
Rocky crew went to sleep. Didn’t wake up. Rocky watched for many days. Never wake.
Ryland Grace stayed there for another 4 hours, until his suit began to beep insistent and pitched. Low oxygen. His arms ache, despite the lack of gravity. His throat burns. His head feels heavy and his heart feels heavier even though he should be weightless right now.
“C’mon Rocky,” he begs, he can’t even bring himself to shout anymore, the visor of his suit pressing against the hull of the Blip-A. His eyes close. Pressed tight against the tears that threaten his waterline. “Please, bud.”
It is silent in space. He hears nothing but the whooshing of air in his lungs, the horrible beeping of the EVA suit. The rushing of blood in his ears.
Rocky had been so excited, despite even the melancholy of saying goodbye to Grace, Rocky had been excited. He’d gone on and on to Grace about finally being able to see Adrian again, about how he hopes that Adrian waited, even if he wouldn’t be mad at them if they hadn’t. Rocky had told him all about what he wanted to do when he got back- how much he wanted to tell Adrian, how he’d promised to tell the other Eridian all about Ryland Grace.
How he’d miss Grace but he’d make sure he’d be remembered for the rest of Erid’s time.
Ryland had made the same promise. Earth would remember Rocky, too. He’d made sure of it when he’d sent off the beetles, asked- no, demanded that Stratt erect a statue in Rocky’s honour. Ryland knows it would’ve made Rocky laugh, would’ve made him happy, but not happier than he would’ve been to realise that Ryland came back for him.
He doesn’t let himself cry until the airlock hisses behind him.
Ryland Grace, technical Commander and sole surviving member of the Hail Mary crew, returns to her alone.
He spends many days after that sort of… half there. Drifting between heaving sobs that gut him like a knife, tearing through his body with all of the vicious, cruel bite of a dog that never learned what kindness was, of a dog that hunts on command. Hands, hands, hands.
Ryland Grace doesn’t know what to do. He’s - alone. He’d been alone before, too, before Rocky, when he’d awoken from a coma that had been forced on him - a choice stolen by the prick of a needle in his neck - to the bodies of what should have been his crew mates. Ryland was no stranger to loneliness but this is different.
It was so very different.
There was the weight of absence, too. And the weight isn’t metaphorical, or maybe it is, but it doesn’t feel metaphorical. There’s a space to his right in a xenonite bio-atmosphere that should contain Rocky but holds nothing. He can feel it, the missing, the gone, like it was his own arm that was taken, a phantom limb of pain in the shape of a five-legged alien that had called him friend, Grace, soul-half. Or well, not quite.
Ryland remembers it well. The translator had been effectively rendered pointless by then, he rarely needed it, only for words that didn’t typically pop up in conversation -
“Grace is Rocky’s ♫♩♬.”
The words had been sang into a silence, Grace and Rocky had taken to spending a fair bit of time in the ‘Don’t Go Crazy’ room. It was peaceful, propped up against Rocky’s not-sphere, warmth seeping through the thin shirt he donned, eyes closed, head tilted back as the sound of waves lulled him into a state between sleep and wakefulness.
It had felt more like home than Earth ever had.
His eyes had peeled open, blinking against the leaden weight of his lids as he let the chords roll over him, turning halfheartedly to peer at Rocky through the clear xenonite. “Didn’t catch that last part, bud. ‘sit mean?”
Rocky had paused for a moment, carapace rocking side to side slowly, in a way that let Grace know he was contemplating it - likely how to explain the word. “Grace is… like Rocky. Different but same. Twins. Eridian clutches have two, sometimes. Rare, but possible. Crystal twins, complete crystal, other complete crystal. Separate but grow together, stronger structure, together.” Rocky trills, one leg tapping against the floor slowly but impatient, demanding Grace understand.
“So, brothers? Twins?” Ryland had laughed but Rocky had given a low trill, the one he used when Grace wasn’t getting something and it was starting to become annoying - it usually took a lot longer, though. It must have meant a lot to him.
“No. Like but not. Closer. Two parts of same cluster, whole.”
“Oh,” Ryland had breathed, meaning slotting together in his head and he understood then, the emphasis. It was important. “Soulmates. We call those soulmates.”
“Define.”
Ryland had taken a moment to consider, “Some humans believe we have something called a soul, not a biological component, but all of the parts that make someone a someone. They think that’s in the soul. Personality, feelings, beliefs, morals. Soulmates are people that share half of the same soul, or they think they do. Part of the same whole, but different, separate.” He echoes. Yeah, he could see it.
Soulmates. Soul-halves.
Rocky doesn’t nod, but he did that little dip and rise of his carapace, an acquiescence. “Definition accurate. Soulmates, yes. Grace is Rocky’s soulmate.”
Grace had agreed because as far as he was concerned, it was true. He’d never felt a connection like the one he has with Rocky, not with anyone back on Earth. Rocky had gotten him like no one else ever did and Rocky said that Grace did, too, more even, than Adrian. The Eridian had then gone on a very passionate rant about how no one would ever compare to Adrian, especially not a leaky space blob.
Right now, Ryland felt like half of his soul had indeed been taken from him.
Part of him aches somewhere deep inside him in a way he’s never felt before. He can practically feel his heart splitting open, it’s a raw, painful feeling. It hurts.
Ryland spends 7 days suspended in space, mourning the empty spaces of his ship that had once been filled with a water-based life form, one that had become so much more important to him than he’d even realised.
All the while, the Blip-A displays no signs of life.
And he checks. He does. He’d stayed in the pilot chair for hours after the EVA, watching the Blip-A through the scope, hoping, praying, that Rocky would give him some kind of sign. Anything. He knows the ship is dead, but Rocky is smart. He’d have made himself known if he could.
The aching in his chest squeezes at that. If he could.
It’s been a week.
He’d checked the screen every five minutes, then ten, then every hour, every two, three- until Ryland sat, seven days later, in the pilot’s seat of the Hail Mary, staring at an absence of stars in the shape of Rocky’s ship and accepted-
No. He can’t accept it. He doesn’t. How could he? Rocky could be in there still, what if he’s just not noticed, what if he was asleep and didn’t hear-
Ryland has to be sure.
He spends another week deconstructing the xenonite panels that Rocky left behind using spare tools that Rocky had, graciously, left him to bring back to Earth in hopes of reverse manufacturing them.
He checks the monitors hourly, still, hope a dying creature in his chest, steadily replaced by grief.
Deconstructing them is pretty easy - it only takes dissolving the glue Rocky used on them, but Ryland is thorough. The glue takes a while to dissolve and Ryland wants all of the available xenonite in the same room, just in case he needs it, rather than traipsing back and forth if he finds himself wanting.
Moving the panels through the hatches had been… interesting to say the least, and Ryland didn’t swear - an instinct left over from his teaching days, one that had greatly amused Rocky when they’d eventually stumbled onto the topic of curse words - but he certainly wanted to.
Teaching Rocky the word “fuck” had been the best and worst day of his life, being forced into a spaceship and sent into deep space not withstanding.
He’d heard it in a movie, Grace remembers as he’s hauling a xenonite panel on his shoulder, balanced precariously as he climbs the ladder back towards the lab. Ryland doesn’t remember which movie, but they’d spent a fair bit of time going through some of the copyrighted-definitely-illegal-movies on the ship.
Ryland had tried to keep it PG-ish, unwilling to breach the horrors of humanity on Rocky “we don’t have a word for cruel” Eridian. Ryland remembers that, too.
“Why humans send Grace if Grace not want to go, question?”
“Humans can be cruel sometimes, bud.”
“Define.”
“Causing intentional harm to someone, usually.”
“… Eridians do not have word for this.”
Something in Ryland had broken that day, he’d spent the rest of it crying, Rocky a comforting presence despite his not-sphere.
“Humans bad, bad, bad.”
“Not all of them, Rocks.” Ryland had defended, because he gets it. He gets why Stratt did it, he thinks of his kids and he gets it. He thinks of the ones he’s saved and knows that yeah. Not all of them. Hands, hands, grass. Pinch.
Rocky had taken a moment, pressed against the side of the not-sphere that Grace had been leaning against and trilled softly: “Not all of them.”
Grunting under the strain, Ryland drops the final xenonite panel on top of the rest - sorted by size and roughly shape for ease, you’re welcome, Ryland! - and takes a moment to steal away into the control room, the clanging of his feet on the metal floor familiar as it is dreadful. It sounds like the tolling of a funeral bell.
Always the same number of steps. Always the same well of hope slowly filling.
Always the same flood of disappointment and grief when there is no sign of Rocky waiting for him.
“Alright Rocks, just gotta-”
Right.
The silence offers him no solace as he gets to work, splitting the larger panels down until they’re far smaller fragments, but not too small - he can’t risk them losing their structural integrity. Can xenonite even lose structural integrity? Eh, he doesn’t want to find out.
It takes hours. The xenonite is durable but against Rocky’s tools, the material doesn’t stand a chance. They’re all made of xenonite, technically, but had been… treated? Or something, to let them cut through the xenonite without risking themselves. Technically stronger, but not used instead because-
“What would we use as tools, question? Grace not think. Grace not very smart.” It had been that lilting tone, one that Ryland came to understand as joking. “This why Rocky genius. Grace not think properly.”
Ryland had snorted but acquiesced. It made sense.
He heaves a sigh, hand pressing under his glasses to rub at his eyes, rougher than he should. He’s tired, the work is done for today, his bunk awaits him but Ryland can’t find it in himself to go and lay down. Rocky wouldn’t be watching. Rocky hadn’t been watching for a month, really, but the knowledge of there may be being no Rocky left in the universe-
It cinches around his heart, tightens around his throat, choking him as he splutters against the tears that stream down his face. Sleep had been a stranger since he got here almost two weeks ago. The little he got was short, fitful and unfulfilling.
“Human sleep inefficient.”
“Yeah, but we need it, or we die.”
“Humans die without sleep, question? Very inefficient.”
Ryland snorted, “What, you need sleep, too. Eridians inefficient.”
“Eridians shut down without sleep. Sleep for time. Wake. Not die if not sleep, just sleep.”
“Inefficient,” Ryland echoes, “what if you’re working and fall asleep, huh? Dangerous, very dangerous. Eridians very inefficient.”
Silence for a beat. “Humans leaky and gross.”
Grace laughs despite the tears and heaving sobs, man. If Rocky could see him now, he’d be horrified. Grace had cried in front of him, of course, but not like this- not this all-consuming sadness.
He’d be worried, too.
“Grace? Why Grace face leaking, question? Grace need medical attention, question? Grace get medical attention, statement. Rocky-”
Ryland had laughed through the tears then, too, “No, I’m alright, bud, I’m just- really happy. I can go home.”
“Rocky thought Grace made peace?”
Ryland can’t make peace with this, with the thought of Rocky just being gone.
It’s another two days before the “suit” - if it can really be called that - is done. Glued together in the vague shape of a person, of Ryland, he’d checked a few times if it’d fit even with the EVA suit. It does. Now he just has to… go.
Check.
Suiting up holds a weight of foreboding. Perhaps the not knowing would be better. Staying here, next to Rocky’s ship until his food runs out, not knowing but knowing. Letting himself go. Earth is safe, Erid-
Isn’t.
He doesn’t think about it. Locks the helmet in place with a soft hiss, steps into the haphazard suit with a dread-laced hope. Rocky has to be fine. He’s probably busy, or something. Trying to work out how to get home.
He glues the suit up from the inside with shaking hands, one of Rocky’s tools in his belt so that he can get out- a few panels of untouched xenonite bundled together with cables, he links them around his waist, the suit not particularly articulate but he can move a bit, walk a bit. It’ll do its job, as long as the glue holds in Rocky’s atmosphere.
The airlock hisses. It sounds like a warning.
The door opens.
Space. Darkness.
Ryland Grace steps into the nothingness, kicks off the airlock towards the expanse of lightless-darkness, starless and massive. Blip-A.
I’m coming, Rocky.
Please.
I hope you’re waiting.
The force of his kick off the Hail Mary was too much - he impacts against the hull of Blip-A with a groan, xenonite panels floating behind him with the same momentum and crashing into his back. If Grace swore, he’d be swearing very much right now. But he doesn’t, Ryland just breathes through the pain because Rocky’s waiting.
Pulling himself towards where their airlocks had once connected, Ryland makes quick work of sealing it off with the xenonite panels, gluing them as quickly - and carefully - as he reasonably can, a jittery feeling of nervousness chasing through him. He wants to hurry. He has to do this properly. He won’t kill Rocky by letting his atmosphere leak.
If he’s still alive.
Once its sealed - or he hopes it is, there isn’t really a way to check - Ryland takes a moment to just… breathe. Staring at the mottled xenonite he has to cut through that will lead to Rocky. A tool pinched between not-very-articulate hands. It’d take a while to chip away at the xenonite.
He could still go back.
He doesn’t have to know.
Ryland Grace begins chipping at the xenonite because if nothing else, he really, really needs to know. He’s desperate.
It takes a while - an hour passes, two, three. But there is eventually a Grace-sized hole in the xenonite and the compartment has long since filled up with ammonia and the scorching temperatures of Rocky’s atmosphere but Ryland’s haphazard suit is holding up for now.
Rocky’s ship is dark. And big.
But there’s few rooms, really - they’re all just scaled for what would’ve been a twenty-three strong crew. He steps over the threshold of the airlock, darkness awaiting, the headlight granting vision in the abyss. Now. Now, he just has to… look.
The ship isn’t too much of a stranger, though Ryland doesn’t remember all of the tour that well. There’s the sleeping room, where an Eridian would be stationed on rotation at all times, to make sure those that are sleeping are watched. There’s the basics - control room, lab, engine, engineer’s room. Rocky’s room.
Arguably the place he is most likely to be.
Ryland begins with the control room.
The trek is the longest, it’s the foremost part of the ship, way up at the tip - the furthest point from both the engines and Rocky’s room. Grace doesn’t think about why he’s going there first, only that he can’t bear the thought of entering the engineering quarters yet. So, control room!
It feels wrong to be traipsing through Rocky’s ship without Rocky beside him. It feels like an invasion of his space - as if Rocky hadn’t quite forcefully invaded Ryland’s, computerised “I come up now!” chiming beside the joyous trill as he rolled up the ramp.
The control room, when he does reach it, is empty. Painfully so. No Rocky, no crew. Emptiness that stretches and a pain that yawns in his chest. Ryland doesn’t bother going any deeper into the room, the absence of life alone has grief crashing like a wave over him, he wants to do this… fast. He needs to know, and then he needs to leave.
With or withou-
With Rocky. Always with Rocky.
The lab is the same. Barren. Ryland had been painfully interested in all the gadgets when Rocky had first shown him around, could’ve spent hours inspecting them, asking questions - Rocky had hustled him along, unwilling to answer what he didn’t really have an answer to.
“Rocky engineer. Not scientist. Can’t explain.”
Ryland huffs a laugh, broken by tears as he turns. The sleeping room. The only other room he truly dreads. He remembers when he was first given the tour - Rocky had avoided it like a plague and Grace had been so curious.
“What’s in there?”
“Nothing. We go back to lab now? Grace may look longer.” It’s unlike Rocky to try to distract Grace so obviously, so quickly. Ryland had drawn to a halt before the doorless-door, staring into the darkness, headlamp not penetrating deep enough to see the contents.
“Don’t be so boring, Rocks, you promised me a tour!” He’d laughed and began walking into the room, the scuttling sound of Rocky’s feet on the floor growing close at a rapid pace, halting before him, carapace lowered, two hands lifted.
Almost… aggressive.
It was the angriest Grace had ever seen him.
“No! Grace listen. Rocky’s ship. Grace listen. Not enter sleeping room. Rocky’s crew -” A pause, realisation dawning on Grace right beside the horror, the sadness. Oh, Rocky. “Rocky’s crew sleep here.”
Ryland didn’t need to hear anything else, giving in to the Eridian, the tour moving on - Rocky had been quiet for a while.
“Sorry. Was not mad at Grace. Crew are… precious. Go home to Erid, bring to their families. Honour them.”
“It’s okay, bud. I pushed, I get it. Don’t worry about it.”
“Grace forgive, question?”
“Grace forgive, statement.”
Ryland breathes before he crosses the threshold of the room, “Forgive me, Rocks,” he says to no one, entering the room with a weight across his shoulders that comes from more than just the Eridian’s atmosphere.
Their bodies are placed at measured intervals between each other, seated on their central carapace, legs folded neatly beside it. Grace would’ve thought them sleeping, all twenty-two Eridians, lined up and -
Rocky must have done it. Gathered their bodies, propped them together as if they were merely sleeping. Watched them. Waited. Waited, waited for so long. Until Grace had shown up. None of them had awoken but Rocky had prepared them for their families, for Erid.
Grace chokes on a sob, he can’t wipe the tears that stream from his eyes, even as he searched for that familiar brown carapace, mottled by jade-green.
“Is Adrian! We swap, pieces with the other forever.”
He’d been so proud, so happy. Especially when Grace had-
“Adrian must be very pretty, their colour is beautiful.”
“Yes, yes, yes! Adrian, amaze, amaze, amaze!”
He can see similar traces of others on the dead Eridian’s - their own colours broken by splashes of another. Pieces of others, carried forever. His heart chips in his chest.
But Rocky isn’t here. There’s twenty-two total Eridians and none of the familiar earthy tones that belong to Rocky.
He’s somewhere, though. Grace knows it. Feels it. It feels like a grief so bone-deep that the word doesn’t even encapsulate it properly. Grief but more. Grief of the soul. The grief of losing half of it.
Ryland makes his way towards the engineer’s room. Rocky’s room. Slowly.
The room had been the one Grace had spent the most time in during the tour, looking at all the little things Rocky had made-
“Memories of home.” He’d trilled, solemn and heart-broken as he fiddled with a small xenonite Adrian recreation. A pair. Parents. Another few, all uniquely shaped, detailed. Friends, cluster members. Family.
It had taken a while for Rocky to convince him to leave, there were just so many little pieces of Rocky scattered around and he wanted to see them all. But they’d left eventually, continued the tour. And now, Ryland stands alone.
Missing the shape of his soul-half beside him.
Procrastination had never been his thing, Ryland likes to do thinks. Immediately. The moment it crosses his mind, he has to do it, and yet. It takes a beat, two, three, before he can take the first step into Rocky’s room. Before he can face the truth that has slowly been pressing down on him since he entered the empty ship.
Rocky would’ve ran to greet him.
He didn’t.
Ryland’s light catches a shape in the darkness.
Flashes of jade-green.
Unmoving.
Two xenonite figures between lax fingers. Adrian and Grace, held close to his carapace.
Ryland Grace beholds the body of his soul-half and shatters.