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When Grace dies - of old age, surrounded by his loved ones in his biodome on Erid - Rocky bumps their carapace against Grace's head, picks up their bag of supplies, and begins their trek down into the Underworld.
"I know you're gonna miss me after I'm gone, bud," Grace had said before, his voice soft and insubstantial, like the breeze. "But I don't want you to be sad for too long. You've got a beautiful life here and I'm so happy I got to be a part of it."
"I won't miss you at all."
"Wow. Okay."
"What Rocky means is that I'm not going to have to miss you," Rocky clarifies, a sharp spike of panic cutting through them when they note the little note of genuine hurt in his voice. "I'm going to go down into the afterlife to come get you and bring you back!"
"You’re gonna what?"
"Oh, don't worry. People do it all the time!"
"And succeed?"
"...Rocky is better than all who tried before. Rocky has a plan."
“You know,” Grace had mused. It was a good day that day. Grace didn’t need any help walking to his dining room that morning, besides his cane. He had a warm mug of water and he used magic to make it taste like his favorite “coffee”. It was the hour designated as “sunrise” that Grace had a special fondness for. That and “sunset”. “On Earth, we have stories like that too. About people going into the Underworld to try to save a loved one from death.”
Grace had started telling one of the stories, but he was really bad at telling stories so Rocky picked up where Grace left off. Unlike Grace, Rocky tells stories with drama and passion rather than just reciting a list of things that happened to the characters. The human was a better audience and Rocky was not-so-secretly fond of the way Grace got so into Eridian stories, yelping in fear or laughing until he couldn’t breathe or crying uncontrollably at all the right times. It made Rocky feel like a theater star even if they were no Eridian Meryl Streep.
But instead, Grace grew pensive as Rocky began to recite the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. He was worrying about the implications again.
“You’re saying this actually happened?” Grace asked.
“It’s in the historical record,” Rocky replied. Orpheus had been an incredibly popular musical artist at the time. Theirs was the voice that all, and Rocky means all, musicians are held up against to this very day. “Rocky might have some recordings of Orpheus’s songs somewhere. Adrian is a big fan. Adrian’s an even bigger fan of Eurydice as well.”
“Is that so?” Grace said faintly. “And they were Eridians, right?”
“Of course they were.”
And then Grace went on another Implications spiral. “They should have sent a philosopher.” Grace would lament. “I really don’t know what to make of all of this.”
Rocky had started doing research on it long before that day, ever since the Sacred Thrum welcomed Grace into the Mountain and he knew this could work. He's read countless stories and accounts from the people who had attempted to retrieve their loved ones from the clutches of Death.
"You know, Rocky," Grace had said. "I'm pretty sure all those stories came with a pretty important lesson at the end."
"Rocky knows that," they had replied. "Rocky's learned from all of the stories. Don't worry. I won't make the same mistakes."
"...Alright, buddy, if you're sure."
People had always failed in four distinct ways:
1. They fail to enter the Underworld
There were multiple entrances to the Underworld. Orpheus had used the entrance the closest to the Mountain of the Sacred Thrum, but the closest one is actually about ten miles away from the city center. Rocky would take a car, but it's part of the whole thing to walk so walk Rocky does.
Adrian had not wanted Rocky to come.
"Only fools go to the Underworld!" They had honked before Rocky had left. "So dangerous! So reckless! You are promising the children impossible things and they believe you for some reason! You want us to lose you AND Grace together? I'm tired of you running off to places where I cannot follow you. I thought you were done chasing impossible things."
"It wasn't impossible then," Rocky said. "And it's not impossible now."
"No one has ever done it before."
"Rocky will be the first,” they had insisted. “Rocky and Grace will return.” They did not understand, still do not understand, Adrian’s lack of faith in them. Adrian hadn’t even acknowledged Rocky when they said goodbye.
After a few hours of walking, Rocky finds the entrance to the Underworld. It was smaller than what Rocky was imagining, but this wasn’t a main entrance. Still, it was an entrance to the Underworld so it could stand to be a little more grand. Maybe a sculpture or something. Rocky doesn’t know. They’re not a landscaper.
But the entrance was just a cave, indistinguishable from any other cave save for the fact that the cave it leads to is deeper and quieter than all others. Endless, perhaps, though none of the accounts Rocky had read agreed with each other.
Once Rocky approaches the cave entrance, several of Death’s chords stood guard. They seemed to be spirits of Eridians, muffled and insubstantial, but emitting some hum that activated some primal terror in Rocky’s core.
But Rocky has faced down primal terror before - terror of the truly endless silence of space, terror of eternal loneliness, terror of death twenty-three times over - and they’ve overcome it.
And it is that memory of terror - and that memory of who helped Rocky overcome it - that gets them to step closer. They will take on this trial. They will overcome it just as they’ve overcome these trials before.
In one account that Rocky read, the chords had asked the supplicant to answer some convoluted riddle. Another account described a trial involving a waterfall and the Silent Beast. Most accounts stated that the Chords wanted only a song. Rocky came prepared for all possibilities.
"Rocky," they trill. "We have been expecting you."
Except for this one?
"You saved the stars," one said.
"You and the one called Grace," said the other. Their voices seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. As they spoke, they disappeared and reappeared in seemingly random locations - closer and further then closer again.
"You both have been Blessed by the Sacred Thrum, of which Death is but one Movement within it. It is not within our right to deny you passage."
"We wish you well on your journey and, while you do not need it, we hope you find good fortune on your way down to steal your Grace."
At that, the spirits seem to disappear. Rocky cannot sense their presence anymore.
They didn’t even want Rocky to sing? But they’d been practicing!
It doesn’t matter. Rocky’s not going to complain about not having to face a trial. Still, as Rocky stands at the threshold of the cave, something the chords said rubbed them the wrong way.
"It's not stealing," Rocky says before he passes through these gates. The cave is deep and silent. They cannot hear what lies beyond it. All they can do is step forward into that nothingness. "He was taken. I am going to return him to where he belongs."
"He belongs in the Underworld," the chords say in unison, their voices harmonizing into something deep, something ancient. They were not as gone as they seemed. "He belongs with us, singing the notes of the Song of Death. We allow you to enter this place and sing your heresy, but do not lie to us nor lie to yourself. You are the thief, Rocky, and you will not leave the Underworld with your prize."
We’ll fucking see about that.
Rocky walks forward. They do not turn back.
2. They fail on their journey to the Record of Souls
The silence of the passage into the Underworld is complete, all-encompassing, and worryingly familiar. Rocky has experienced this silence before. He experienced it for 46 years on the Blip-A.
The memory comes back to Rocky so quickly it is almost violent. It is this memory, more than anything else, that almost makes Rocky stop and turn back. It is like the Rocky-He-Was (The Rocky Before Grace) had taken control of their body once more.
But the Rocky-Of-Now knows what waits beyond that silence and that is what gets Rocky to continue moving forward until they finally enter that Sacred Cave.
The Underworld is deep and vast, but, all things considered, pretty straightforward to navigate. But Rocky can understand how people could get lost.
There is something sacred about echoes. It is your voice, your song, but changed, given some new, divine quality and in the spaces between your notes and theirs, you can maybe find some holy truth. The Underworld is the most sacred of caves. The songs of forever-sleeping Eridians echo eternally against the walls and ceilings and floors, resonate with each other to create this Song of Death.
It's paralyzing to enter. Rocky thought they were prepared for it, but after experiencing such profound silence, the sound and echoes stop them in their tracks for precious moments.
But then they again think of Grace, who knows of their plan and is probably waiting for Rocky alone and cold and desperate Rocky failed they failed they failed the taumoeba ate all Rocky's astrophage and Grace's too probably and so Rocky continues forth.
The chords were wrong. Grace Rocky save stars. There is nothing they cannot overcome together.
To traverse the Underworld, one must walk in complete silence. It's almost an impossible task, but Rocky does it. Every step is careful and silent, every breath slow and steady. Rocky cannot speak, but they have no one to speak to yet so that part is easy.
Rocky messes up once or twice and wastes time trying to extricate themselves from the Eternal Song, but they never stop for too long.
They wonder if this is how Grace felt, all those years ago, when he was coming back from Rocky. They had always been amazed by Grace's bravery, his sacrifice. Rocky did not have the words for what it meant to him. The feeling was too big for Rocky, too big for Erid, too big for death, but maybe big enough for life. They had talked about Grace’s decision, of course they had, but Grace's answers to Rocky’s questions were always unsatisfactory.
"I had thought about what I should do for a long time," Grace said the last time they had spoken about it. He was watering his garden of plants that he was growing from the seed packets stored on the Hail Mary. Apparently, they were the ingredients for some spell that Grace had no use for. "But in the end, I realized that I knew the answer already, maybe as soon as I figured out you were in trouble, I just needed some time to realize that."
Stupid Grace, Rocky had thought. Stupid stupid stupid. Because he never realized just how incredible he was. He talked like the decision was simple, easy. He shrugged his weak shoulders and smiled and breathed easily.
Rocky gets it now. Entering the Underworld was the easiest decision he had ever made, so easy it was barely even a choice. Ten years ago, they realized that Grace was going to die soon and they knew what they were going to do next. Rocky almost thinks that they were giving Grace too much credit, then, for turning around, but they silence those thoughts. There's not enough credit. There's nothing Rocky or anyone can do to repay Grace for his kindness and generosity and cleverness and love, but bringing him back from the dead is maybe a good start.
Along his journey, Rocky begins to hear a familiar song. They should not be surprised. This is the Land of the Dead. Of course they would be here. Of course.
Rocky! The thrum of the lost crew of the Blip-A sing. We have missed you!
It is like they are back on the ship again, like they had never left. Eridians do not dream, but Rocky has had this hallucination before. Maybe it was not a hallucination at all. Perhaps Rocky had been so close to death that they had started to hear the Song of Death.
Part of Rocky longs to rejoin that thrum. There were many requirements to join the crew of the Blip-A, but only two that mattered. They needed to be outstanding in their field - the best of the best, the greatest to ever live - and they needed to harmonize beautifully.
It is dangerous for Rocky to do even this, but they crouch in deference towards that fallen thrum. “I’m sorry,” Rocky says and is horrified by the way their voice shakes.
For what? They ask. You saved the stars! We died, yes, but we did not die in vain. We only wish that we could have been more help to you. In your place, we would not have been as strong, as steadfast.
“That’s not true.” Rocky knows that their survival was sheer luck, pure happenstance. Perhaps the Sacred Thrum had been looking upon Rocky kindly, but it did not feel that way at the time.
It took many years aboard the Hail Mary for Rocky to even say the names of the crew. The first time Rocky had talked about them, they had only been able to do it while Grace was unconscious. Rocky had run out of stories to tell Grace to help keep him awake. He eventually was able to speak of them to Grace after many more years on Erid and Grace had given them human names.
Ward was one of the pilots, the eldest and the leader of them all. They had a reputation as kind of a maverick. They had been a deep sea explorer before they were an astronaut and they used to tell all of these stories about the creatures they had encountered on their expeditions. They had to have been lying- there was no way that they had seen a battle between two leviathans - but their voice was always the most sincere in their thrums. They probably could have done what Rocky did.
But Ward was not an engineer. How could they have made the collector for the taumoeba? Would they have thought to make a chain if they knew they did not have the ability to create it? Did Ward have an engineer’s expertise in xenonite?
Hera then! They were the first engineer. They were Rocky’s mentor. Everything they knew, they had learned from them. One of the reasons Rocky was even on the crew was that Hera worked better with Rocky than the other engineer candidate. Whatever they built would probably have been stronger than what Rocky created, more clever.
Maybe so, the thrum sang. But Hera was older. They would have perished on Adrian and Grace would have died with them, dooming Earth and Erid. If they had the strength or the will to break out of the xenonite barrier to save Grace, they would have died from their injuries, dooming Grace and Erid because Grace would not be able to get the fuel from Blip A and Erid would not be able to read the data off of the beetle probe Grace would have sent.
Rocky wants to run, they don’t know what direction, they just can’t be here anymore. But they can’t move. It’s true what they say. The thrum of Blip-A is correct. They’ve probably been singing about this the whole time, as more and more crewmembers found their way into the Underworld. Part of Rocky is relieved to hear them here. They had been so worried that they had died too far from home.
You were the best of us, Rocky. We feel no resentment, only joy in your life and in your success. We hope to find you in the next life, when this song ends and a new one begins.
The crew of the Blip-A and all those in the Underworld will sing the Song of Death until the end of the world, until the heat death of the universe and all life has been snuffed out. The next world will be borne from that song and all its singers will be reborn in this new world that was created by them. This has happened before. It will happen again.
Rocky cannot, will not, wait for the creation of the next world to find Grace again. What if they end up on planets even further apart? What if Grace is a fox and Rocky is a hunter? What if Grace is a flake of snow that melts on Rocky’s skin?
No.
Rocky and Grace will be born again and again, but this is the only life where Rocky is Rocky and Grace is Grace. They are not ready for this life to end.
Rocky stops singing. They hold up one arm and rub it with another.
“Goodbye,” they say. “Thank you.”
Goodbye, Rocky, they sing back. Thank you.
Rocky walks forward. They do not turn back.
3. The fail to convince the Record Keeper to let them attempt the trial
At the center of the Underworld is the Record of Souls. Inscribed on this record are the notes of the Song of Death. It has spun since the beginning of time. It will be made anew at the end of time.
The Record Keeper is another one of the Notes of Death. They etch the notes of the Song into the record by hand, such is their eternal duty. In the stories, the seekers always had to ask them, beg them really, to let them take the trial to bring back their loved ones. The Record Keeper is a strange figure. At times warm and welcoming, at times hostile and cruel. Rocky does not know which version will meet them. Rocky is prepared for both versions. Rocky has planned sweet words for the first and they have a pipe bomb in their bag in case they meet the second.
Rocky wasn’t expecting the Record Keeper to be human.
“Hallo. You must be Rocky.”
Rocky has seen humans besides Grace, technically speaking, in movies, but Rocky has never seen this human before. It is smaller than Grace. Its hair is longer than Grace has ever worn it. Its voice is higher and the way it says words is different from Grace.
“Are you the Record Keeper?” Rocky asks. The human hums in the way that humans do, flat and comparatively emotionless. For the first time in a very long time, Rocky is confronted with just how alien humans are. Grace was just Grace to Rocky. After a few years on the Hail Mary, he barely registered as an alien to Rocky at all. They know the same wasn’t true for all Eridians, but Rocky did their best to keep those Eridians away from Grace. He deserved nothing more than to live the rest of his life in peace.
“Sometimes,” the human answers, which barely answers anything at all. “But sometimes, I am something else. The Record Keeper is using this form currently to speak with you, but I also feel like I am myself. How strange. But far be it from me to waste an opportunity. After all, I have always wanted to speak with you, Rocky.”
Rocky’s never really thought about it, but they suppose they did make several appearances in the video diaries that Grace sent to Earth. Rocky had asked Grace once that, if their positions were reversed, if the Earthlings would treat Rocky the way the Eridians treated Grace. Grace’s silence was answer enough.
“Who are you?” Rocky asks.
“My name is Eva Stratt.”
Rocky goes for the pipe bomb.
“Unfortunately for you, but fortunately for me, that bomb will not work here. You might damage the Record.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” Rock rushes towards her. If the bomb isn’t going to work - disappointing because Rocky put a lot of effort into making it - then they’re just going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. But no matter how long and how fast Rocky runs, Eva Stratt remains the exact same distance away.
It’s like Rocky is on that treadmill that Rocky built for Grace, easier on his knees. Grace had learned a spell to affect gravity in a small area and would use that to mimic Earth gravity, but he couldn’t use it more than once a day and not for too long. It was a spell that he used more for his comfort than for his health.
“I am here,” Eva Stratt says calmly. “Because you want to take a soul from the Song of Death and bring it back to the surface.” Rocky hates how cold she sounds. Did she sound like that when she sentenced Grace to his death against his will? Did she sound like that when she sacrificed the greatest human there ever was for her own undeserving life?
“That is the responsibility of the Record Keeper,” Rocky spits out. “Why are you here?”
Eva Stratt pauses to think without any sense of urgency. Why would she feel urgency? She’s dead and she wants Grace to stay dead. “I am not sure why the Record Keeper is using this form. Apparently, it is not my place to know. Perhaps this is a part of your trial. Or maybe it is a trial of my own.”
“You weren’t satisfied with killing Grace the first time?” Rocky asks. “You want to do it again?”
“I did not want to send Grace on the Hail Mary at all,” Eva Stratt says, some note of frustration entering her voice. Good. “He was not my first choice, he wasn’t even my second, but eventually he became my only choice. I found no joy in it. This decision weighed on me for the rest of my life and haunts me still even in my afterlife.”
“But you don’t regret it.”
“I’d do it again,” Eva Stratt confirms. “I wish it all happened differently. I like to think he would have made the decision on his own if we had more time, but we had no time. It was a matter of one life versus billions. It was barely a choice at all.”
Rocky lunges at her. He gets no closer.
“You were his friend,” Rocky raged. Grace had admitted as much to him one day. That’s what made it hurt so much, he had said. She was his friend. Maybe his only friend on Earth.
“And he was mine,” Eva Stratt said, like it was simple. Like it didn't matter, in the end. “Perhaps my only friend on Earth, but what we were facing was bigger than him and it was bigger than me. Look me in the eyes or, oh, well. Anyway, can you tell me honestly that you wish Grace was not on the Hail Mary? That you wish he had died on Earth from global conflict or climate change or starvation?”
Rocky flinches with their full body. No, no, no, Rocky does not wish that at all.
Still, he hates the thought of Eva Stratt being right. Rocky does not care that she’s right. The last time that Grace saw the sky he was born under and felt the Earth beneath his body, he was being held down and sedated. He was being forced to die like a lamb to the slaughter.
“You thought he was expendable. You threw him away like he was worthless.”
“I did not send Grace into space because I thought he was unimportant.” This was the most emotion Rocky had heard from Eva Stratt. Rocky had no idea what that emotion was. She was far more restrained than Grace or any of the actors in the movies. Rocky was the foremost expert on humans on Erid, but really they were the foremost expert on one human. Eva Stratt was a mystery to Rocky. “On the contrary, Ryland Grace was the most important person on Earth - the most intelligent, the most capable, most indispensable - that is why he had to go. Project Hail Mary only worked because of him, you know that. Maybe even better than I do.”
“You betrayed him.”
“Yes.” Eva Stratt says. Then she sighs. That outburst, if you can even call it that, was maybe all the emotion she could bring herself to feel. “Thank you. For saving him. I was not sure that he lived after turning back for you until we saw that your star had regained full luminance and even then, it was only an assumption.”
“You were looking at Erid?”
“Of course,” Eva Stratt reaches into her pocket and pulls out something that Rocky has not thought about in years. Their first model that they made of Grace, the one based on Grace’s pose after he caught Rocky’s first (technically second) message. Their Hail Mary pass.
Rocky assumed that the thing was somewhere on the Hail Mary, lost when the ship was decommissioned and the pieces of it were put in a Erid’s first space museum.
Grace gave it to her. She kept it.
“Was he happy?”
“Huh?”
“Grace. Was he happy?”
They think of Grace with his students. They think of Grace and his experiments, magical and scientific. They think of the way he laughed when he mastered that gravity spell, the way Grace felt when they touched after Grace polymorphed himself into an Eridian, the way it felt when they hugged for the first time when Grace polymorphed Rocky into a human. He thinks of Grace with Rocky and Adrian’s kids, the way he cried for hours after they were born, for so long he became dehydrated.
“Yes, he was very, very, very, very happy.”
Eva Stratt might smile, but Rocky can’t tell. “Good. You may take the trial. You must lead him out of the Underworld. You must not turn back.”
Then Eva Stratt disappears and Grace takes her place.
The joy Rocky feels is indescribable.
Grace looks like he did when they first met at Tau Ceti, as if he was pulled out of Rocky's perfect memory. His spine is straight in ways it hasn't been since entering Erid's gravity and Grace is standing loose-limbed and tall. Rocky scuttles up to Grace’s side and lets him rest his soul against Rocky. The first time they could touch each other as themselves without xenonite in the way. Rocky savors the feeling because once they get back to the surface, they will never get to feel this again.
"How long has it been?" Grace asks, his voice strong and young again. It was hard, hearing Grace age and it was harder knowing that Erid caused his aging to be much faster than it was supposed to be. Grace would joke about being too young for a cane, then too young for his wheelchair. He learned a spell that would let him levitate like he was in zero gravity again and it helped, but not enough.
Grace lamented the first time he found a grey hair, but Rocky couldn't really tell the difference. Apparently, as humans grow older, even their own DNA begins to forget. It makes too many copies of itself and forgets the color the hair is supposed to be and how elastic the skin is. Rocky and the other Eridians were all so amazed by Grace's human magic, but of all the seemingly impossible things it could do, it couldn't stop aging. It couldn't raise the dead.
Listen. This is how Rocky knows he and Grace, Earth and Erid, were meant to be, fated, most literally, in the stars. Eridians do not have magic, but they do have a way to solve death.
"A couple days, maybe." Rocky says. "The time signature is strange here. Could be faster. Could be slower."
"You sure didn't waste any time."
Rocky preens. "No, I was very fast. I already packed my bag."
"How're Adrian and the kids?"
"Sad sad sad." Rocky says. "But they won't be anymore once we come back!"
They don't say that Adrian was also mad mad mad at Rocky.
"How have you been?" Rocky asks.
"Good," Grace says, which is not what Rocky wanted to hear. Rocky also would have been upset if Grace said bad so there's no winning here, is there?
(Nope.)
"I didn't even realize," Grace continues, "How much aging and gravity affected me until all the effects disappeared. The afterlife is an incredible thing really, but it resists explanation."
"Like magic."
"Yeah, bud, like magic."
"Where's Laika?" Grace's familiar, the sweet and clever girl, was rarely seen away from Grace's side and if she wasn't with Grace, she was with Rocky or Adrian or one of the kids. She was very popular on Erid, more popular than Grace, even, in some circles. Then, Grace invented something called a "plushie" that looked like Laika and, well, they sold enough to fund biodome maintenance for several Eridian lifetimes. That's not even mentioning Albina and Mushka, Laika's friends that Grace had made up for the popular children's radio play.
("Wow," Grace said when he finally learned of the popularity of the little children's radioplay he made up on a whim. "Pokemon Go would rip through Erid like the Black Plague through Medieval Europe.")
"Oh, she's somewhere," Grace says vaguely. "She'll meet up with me a little later."
“Rocky and Grace are lucky. We got the easiest trial.” Rocky tries their best not to think about why that might be. Eva Stratt has not even begun to atone for what she did to Grace, but, Rocky begrudges, this is a decent enough start. “You just need to follow me out of the Underworld. I’m not supposed to turn back, but why would I do that?”
“You really came all this way for me,” Grace says, like he can’t believe it, something like awe in his voice. (There was something else in there too.) Rocky doesn’t know what more they can do to prove to Grace that Rocky will always be there for Grace. But, Rocky thinks with cheer, they’re going to have time to figure it out. Together!
“Of course I did! You came back for Rocky so Rocky will come back for you.”
Grace kneels down, resting his hand against Rocky's carapace and neither of them get burned. Rocky will remember this feeling forever, but he takes the time to carve this feeling into his memory anyway. "What did I do to deserve you?”
“Everything.”
Not able to help themselves anymore, Rocky throws themself as gently as possible into Grace’s waiting arms. Rocky remembers when they were unnerved by Grace’s constant need for hugs. They barely recognize that person they were before Grace.
“I think I’m starting to get what you mean when you say that.” Finally!
"Good!” Rocky chirps. Grace always understands Rocky eventually. Sometimes, Grace is the only person that understands. Adrian tries their best and they succeed 99 times out of 100, but it's not the same. Adrian is not Grace in the same way that Grace is not Adrian.
Grace removes himself from the hug eventually, dusting off his pants. "We can head out whenever you're ready."
Rocky positions themselves so that they are on a straight walk towards the exit. "Okay, I'm ready. Let's go."
Rocky walks forward. They do not turn back.
4. They turn back
On the Hail Mary, after Rocky promised to give Grace two million kilograms of astrophage, it was like watching Grace get reborn. Rocky realized that they had never seen Grace so carefree (comparatively) or so happy, so weighed down by his impending death that he could not find joy in anything. But after Grace realized he was going to live, he found joy in everything.
Rocky didn’t think they were expecting anything, but they guess they were expecting the same from Grace as they were walking out of the Underworld. Rocky, for one, was practically skipping on their way back.
“Adrian and the kids are going to be so excited to see you! Adrian was a little…” furious “wary that we were going to be able to pull this off, but I’m sure they’ll be happy enough to be wrong!”
“Adrian and I had a pretty long talk before I died,” Grace says, surprising Rocky. Adrian never mentioned that. “I’m sure they were thinking about that.”
“What did you talk about?”
“I think you should ask Adrian about that.”
It’s strange. Physically, Grace was just the same as he was when they first met, but his…spirit? His soul? He is just the same as he was before he…left. Calm. Content.
At peace?
Once they get close to the exit to the Underworld, Grace stops in his tracks and Rocky stops with him. Rocky wants to turn back, but they can’t.
"It was nice of you to walk me here, Rocky, but.."
"No."
"Rocky."
"I'm walking you out,” Rocky insists. “We're leaving together."
"I had a wonderful life. "
"Okay, great! I know. Let's get back to it then."
"People die, Rocky. And I was scared of it for a long time, but I'm not scared anymore. I have nothing left to be scared of. I was a coward who saved the stars and got to live out the rest of my days surrounded by my friends and loved ones and helped teach the next generations of Eridians. I found what I was meant to do and I did it. Not many people can say that and mean it. I have no regrets with my life."
Is this what a heart attack feels like? "So then why can't it continue?"
"I'm only human, Rocky, this is all the life I get to have. I'm okay with that. I've made my peace and this time I actually mean that. The life I had was more than I could have possibly hoped for or imagined. I want to see what my death had in store for me. I'm ready. There are people I miss, people I need to talk to, that have been gone for a long time. "
“Stratt doesn’t regret it,” Rocky blurts out. “She told me herself.”
“You talked to Stratt?” Grace asks, shocked. “When? Where? How?” Grace whips his head around to face the direction they came from.
“At the Record of Souls. The Record Keeper was using her form. I spoke to her and she said she’d do it again.” And she said a bunch of other stuff too. Stuff the Grace probably wanted to know, needed to know. Rocky tells Grace everything because if the reason he wants to stay…here is because he needs to know why Eva Stratt got rid of him, then Rocky will tell him why, straight from the mouth of the woman herself.
“Wow,” Grace says, but he does not sound...like he's changed his mind. He's still saying goodbye. Why is he saying goodbye? “That’s…Rocky, thank you.” But it’s not enough? What else does Grace want? Doesn’t he know Rocky would give him anything he asked for? Doesn’t he see that Rocky came to bring him back from the dead?
“But I think I need to hear that from her myself.”
"No." Rocky is trembling. They feel like maybe they are going to fall apart. Each of their segments is going to separate from their main body and they will be the pile of rocks marking Grace's grave for all eternity. "Grace, no."
“I’ve made up my mind. You can’t make me go with you. I love you," he says, like goodbye, like he knows he’s breaking Rocky’s heart but has to do it anyway. "I know it seems like I'm abandoning you, but we'll see each other again, I promise. In the next world too, I’ll be Grace and you’ll be Rocky. I believe that. We found each other in this world against all odds so I think we’ll be able to do it again.”
“Please, don’t do this,” Rocky begs. They want to say you are abandoning me, but they catch the words before they can say them.
Grace is crying. Of course he is. He’s a leaky space blob. “But until then, live the beautiful life you have waiting for you up there. Tell Adrian and Robert Jr. and Apollo and Adonis that I love them too. Gods, I am so lucky, I am so grateful, for all the love I had in my life because of you."
"Not because of me," Rocky warbles. "Because of you."
"I think that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me." Grace rubs his forearm with his fist, the closest he can get to saying farewelliloveyouiwillkeepyousafeinmyheartlikeyouwillkeepmesafeinyours. "See you later."
"But I won't see you later."
Grace smiles at him and Rocky has seen this smile before, years and years ago. The first time Grace left Rocky forever.
"Yes, you will."
Grace turns around and walks back into the Underworld.
Rocky can’t help themself. They turn back. They watch him go.
5. They make peace with it
It takes a while, but Rocky gets there.
(They found each other in all the worlds before this one. They will find each other in all the worlds after.)