Chapter Text
It was raining in the Beach bio-dome today. Rocky insisted it always rain on this day each Erid year. Well, multiple Erid days. It was a 24 earth-hour global time of reflection. He suited up easily, the airlock was barely noticeable these days, and neither was his suit. He took his bandolier of tools and wrapped it around his carapace and entered.
The Bio-dome Project had expanded by much in the last hundred years, of course. Different domes of many different types of Earth ecosystems. Humans had been beyond grateful that the Hail Mary had been packed with nearly every kind of plant seed and even some animal DNA. When official contact had been made, Eridians had quickly worked with Humans to start reviving extinct animals, the former having become experts at creating earth-environments.
The entire area was called a “mini-earth” these days. There were always many scientists and caretaker Eridians. In more popular areas, respected artists, writers, and musicians, and philosophers were allowed to Thrum and study. Rocky considered how these careers had once been seen as a “hobby purpose”- a purpose that was useless, something that shouldn’t be the center of one’s life, not practical to their Hives.
And then Grace came, and his Grace had always been so insistent about the importance of the Arts. He’d personally invited artists to come to his beach, to his home, to sculpt him, to hear ocean waves and listen to his thinking machine’s images of trees and earth animals. It'd started a revolution culturally. Rocky had never been prouder, his own third Hatch-mate was an artist, after all. He'd need to go visit them soon.
Now, though, the beach was off limits save for caretakers, Rocky, Adrian, and those with express permission from the two. A section had recently been set aside to introduce endangered earth fauna and flora. It was one of the only exceptions Rocky made. He knew it was probably selfish, to hoard the entire area where his Grace had lived, and Adrian had been the one to suggest that soon, it would be time to open it. To share Grace’s memory. Especially with the upcoming Quantum Drive connections. There was one place that would never be open to anyone but himself, Adrian, and whoever he decided to bequeath the maintenance job to in the next 300 earth years or so he had left.
I never did stop thinking in Earth Years He thought. Not that he wanted to.
He went up the long ramp-way to the home. He could just climb over the rails, up the hill, it’d be far more efficient, but that wasn’t how one was supposed to go up a ramp. He made the ramp, he’d carefully helped Grace down it with leg braces, then his cane, then wheelchair. He’d go up and down it now any damn way he pleased.
He clicked his claws as he approached, and saw that the Caretakers had cleared away the start of vine-growth over the walls. Good, he wouldn't need to actually tell them to do it. The last time someone had done that, he’d fired them and tried to blacklist them.
Adrian said he was too anti-social these days, he needed to be gentler with others. They didn’t know his rage was from grief and love. They only saw rage. Which, for an Eridian, was peculiar. That had caused a very heated argument they’d only just made up from. He knew they were just worried that he hadn’t shown signs of grief-healing, that he didn’t talk to the mind-menders or song-soothers. He knew it wouldn't help, though. He never felt much like an Eridian. Not since his crew died. Not since Grace was taken too soon.
He knocked on the door.
.
.
.
.
.
After a few moments, he let himself inside. The house hummed to life with electricity. Adrian actually had been the one he had to calm down on that compromise- keeping the place always on would make maintenance harder, after all. Adrian had loved being in Grace’s home deeply. The two had had their own special bond. Mostly finding ways to get on his nerves.
{Good morning, Mary. Good morning, Armando.} He chirped out quietly.
“Good Morning, Captain Rocky.” Mary responded. Rocky huffed his vents, unable to keep an amused chuckle in. Grace had changed that at some point, and refused to turn it back and somehow messed up the voice controls so Rocky couldn’t either. Said he was retired, so Rocky was now captain. Annoying him from the past. Grace really could do anything.
Armando just hung there limply in the kitchen. It had stopped functioning ten years ago. Rocky was hopeful that with the Human/Eridian “Quantum Drive” project nearly complete, perhaps he could have actual humans in here to look at what was now very dated technology. For now, though, it was best to let it sleep. The Mary system kept watch. For now, Rocky needed to get to work. He didn’t have much time, he had ceremonies to attend later.
Rocky tapped his foot on the ground, inspecting the integrity. Good…Good…Ah! Bedroom door. Rust developing on the hinges, he could just barely make out the texture difference. He took out a specialized spray can and got to work.
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Rocky closed the front door behind him. He sensed the humming of the electricity switch off in the house as he did so. It always unnerved him, even after all this time. Stirred up painful memories. A heart, beating, and a few uncertain breaths.
“It’ll be okay, bud, I- I just, gotta rest…” A shaky smile, closing eyes that looked afraid, and then, suddenly, nothing. The sound of silence. Deafness emanating where once had been vibrant sounds.
It was the worst day of his existence. Thank the Great Song his Adrian had been there. He would have torn off his suit and burned away in his grief without them. Not that he ever told them that- or, sadly, he didn’t need to.
Rocky adjusted his bandolier and made his way down the ramp again, slowly this time, observing the shape and texture of the ramp. He could imagine there were still fingerprints on it if he concentrated, or the vibrations of Grace’s feet, about to trip over himself.
His Grace loved being alive to a fault. He’d confessed as much on the way to Erid. He’d run, he’d been forced. It had been…a shock, then. He was almost…disappointed, at first. He hadn't said as much, obviously, his Grace was brave, he’d risked everything to save him again and again. So he reserved any judgement and just comforted his dear friend.
Once Rocky knew Grace even better, he’d understood, Grace felt hurt as deeply as the love he felt. No wonder he’d been so afraid to hurt again, to lose what he loved right then, the life that he knew.Grace never did love his own self, see his own worth. He had hoped that Adrian and himself would be enough, that Erid loving him, would be enough.
It hadn’t been enough to stop his body from failing, of course. Stress induced. It was because of how much he loved, and how unable they were to give back, trapped behind Xenonite barriers that kept them safe and slowly killed him. Failure to Thrive, the Doctors said. Experts in all things human. The best biologists they had. It was a miracle he had lived the twenty years he had there, given the circumstances.
Grace was only fifty three when he started to go downhill, then fifty five when he passed. His vitals were “textbook”, he was healthy, until fifty three. He’d given up humans. He’d given up earth. Something he biologically had needed - touch, birdsong, green grass, touch touch touch, human faces… His sacrifice killed him thirty years before he was even due his lifespan. Great Song, when Grace’s students found out…well, they were the only others he allowed into the Beach dome to this day. Pebbles loved with all their hearts. Even only twenty years was enough to sear him into their souls forever. He’ll never forget hearing Citrine keen in particular. Grace’s first student, only 40 years old, keening like they’d lost their world. It was the closest any other Eridian could get to understanding his feelings, perhaps.
Rocky found himself lost in his thoughts, the rain pattering onto his suited carapace in an uneven rhythm. His carapace lowered deeply. It would never, ever, be fair. All he could do now was maintain what he could, make sure that Earth ecosystems were preserved well for contact, that the Quantum Drive and eventual entanglement of their peoples went well. It wasn’t enough. It was all he could do.
He went over to the shore. There was a massive tree that served as a monument. It wasn't quite an earth tree, though. They hadn’t had anything like that on hand then. But a biologist had been working on hybridizing some very rare Eridian flora that thrived in their tallest, coldest mountains with an earth Oak tree. It had a shape similar to an oak, with leaves that bristled outwards in spirals and had large flowers Rocky recognized were similar earths’ Sun-flowers, and a thick bark.
A stroke of luck, really. Something about experimental nano-machines that had originally been made for Eridian biology happening to work *really* well with earth cells. Adrian had been apprehensive, but Rocky insisted, they could always pull it up if it didn’t work, but Grace loved trees, he had to have his tree. Well, he was pretty sure he had said that between his howling grief-chords. He’d need to get Adrian a gift, later, on the way home. Just remembering how difficult he had been when it had all happened filled his carapace with shame.
He gently tapped the ground, getting a good look at the tree. Grace’s body was under there somewhere. Likely just bones now, he thought morbidly. They had put him in a nearly sound-proof casket that was made to slowly degrade. He didn’t want to…perceive him, after all. Grace would have appreciated the privacy.
He settled down under the tree and allowed himself to Keen. No one else was around, he’d checked. Adrian would come later. It was odd to the others, even to Adrian, at first, that he would want to keen alone, to grieve alone. But this was a feeling only he could understand.
At that thought, an especially loud chirp emanated from him unexpectedly, giving him a vague sense of what was beneath the tree.
Huh? What the fuck was that?
He stood up and tapped his foreleg on the ground insistently. He could hear the roots of the tree, the shape of the coffin, now mostly degraded, but…where the hell were Grace’s remains? He tapped frantically, surely the sand was just getting in the way. He heard something now…that wasn’t his skull, was it– no, no orifice, there were just vague dents that sounded similar… it was roundish, though- pentagonal… and had 5…arms?
No, that had to be the roots. He’d gone insane. Surely he’d finally lost his mind from a hundred years of grief. He needed a closer look. Because that couldn’t be right.
Rocky abandoned all pretense of trying to appear sane and started digging into the grave site with a manic urgency, a bizarre idea forming in his crystalline brain. That couldn't be an Eridian tangled deeply inside the roots of the Cold-Oak tree that grew out of Grace’s grave.
It couldn’t be an Eridian who somehow sounded exactly like Grace!