Work Text:
For supposedly being asleep, the alien moves entirely too much.
Eridian sleep is very straightforward. We go very still and very quiet and stay that way until we wake. In regular life, where the risks of sleep are very low, this process is so calm that guardians of young Eridians will call it Peace Time For Thinking And Focus.
It was more stressful on my ship, obviously. Watching my crewmates fall into sleep and not know if they would wake up again was scary scary scary. I still remember when Medic ♪♫♩♪ told us they would work on more research for a cure after they took a short rest, only to slump against the edge of their workbench and never wake up.
Sometimes, it was the hope that hurt the worst. When the dead and the sleeping are hard to distinguish, someone can pretend. Someone can look at their talented crew, their brilliant crew, their beloved crew, and even though someone might know better, they can think—
The alien moves again.
In the 16,564 alien seconds since the alien went to sleep, it has moved 14 times (mostly just flexing or twitching its appendages, though it has repositioned its entire form twice) and made three very strange and unpleasant sounds: a raspy hiss, a strange hum, and, for exactly 1,201 alien seconds, a prolonged rumble.
I can’t decide if this is comforting or worrying.
— — —
You are too still, Doctor Grace.
When I think of you, I think of motion. Fidgeting with your pen while thinking, pacing your lab while awaiting results, tapping your foot while attending meetings. Now, as you lay comatose in this hospital bed, the incongruity makes you seem almost alien. Without the gentle rise and fall of your chest, you would be a corpse.
I suppose in some ways, you already are.
If you could see it in yourself to forgive me for this particular moment of weakness — though I understand you likely won’t — I do feel your absence ring out in my chest. Odd, isn’t it? You are mere inches from me now, but the simple stillness makes you feel like you’re already light years away.
No, that’s inaccurate. You were light years away the moment I overrode your request to stay. I watched your face crumple into someone unrecognizable, possessed by more fear than I hoped you had the capacity to carry.
— — —
To distract myself, I consider what it would be like to continue motion while in sleep. What would it be like for my body to move without my command? Fall asleep in one place and wake up in another? I shudder at the thought, suddenly grateful that Eridian bodies are not capable of that sort of betrayal.
Although it confuses me further that the aliens would not watch each other sleep. With a body that can move and make noise and maybe even leak (if the liquid trickling out of one of the alien’s holes is any indication), wouldn’t the aliens want to have someone looking out for their safety?
Especially because the alien looks so fragile right now. In waking moments, it towers over me, but examining it up close as it sleeps, I realize just how light and soft the alien is, how easily it could be hurt. It makes me want to sit closer, to protect it from breaking its own delicate body.
— — —
Your final moments of Earthly wakefulness were an explosion of movement and emotion. Scrambling, running, crying, pleading.
Even then, you were motion, motion, motion.
Now, the world moves without you. A mere day before launch, the base thrums with activity as many of the world’s greatest minds prepare to send our final hope into the stars. This, here with you, is the first time I have sat down for…I don’t even know how long anymore. Long enough that sleep feels like a distant memory.
It’s too much to say I miss you following a half-step behind me. But I do still expect you, my shadow, my-second-in-command, somewhere in the corner of my vision, like a phantom limb I can no longer outstretch. I pause for your commentary, wait for your terrible jokes, leave sentences unfinished as though expecting you to—
…
The hum of your medical equipment fills the emptiness. Oh, Grace. You never were one to let a silence linger too long.
— — —
As if sensing my intentions (which it can’t do. probably.) the alien actually speaks, a strangely cryptic mumble, “Brought coffee, Stratt…”
I twitch to attention. Is it awake? Not enough time has passed for a full sleep cycle, but if these aliens can move in their sleep, maybe they can also cut a cycle short. If sleep is variable, that could explain why they don’t require monitoring. I lean my carapace against the barrier, watching it closely for signs of wakefulness.
Nothing.
The horror of the implication dawns on me: in sleep, these aliens might also be capable of unrestrained speech.
It reminds me of a story that Pilot ♫♩♪♫♫ used to tell us, about lost souls that would possess sleeping Eridian bodies to spend one last day in the physical world. If you weren’t careful, ♫♩♪♫♫ would say, your body could be out on adventures without you even knowing.
I shiver, remembering how there had been other crewmembers aboard the alien ship. Maybe one of them is speaking now. I wonder if aliens have a similar story as us, if this is a common occurrence. I wonder what I’m supposed to do if it’s true.
“Nuh,” the alien seems to say in response to my catastrophizing, its words slurring in an odd hum, “Onesforme, Stratt.”
The resumed conversation, combined with my own self-induced stress, startles me so badly that I trip over my own limbs and tumble off my perch with a loud thump. Humiliating. Am I a pebble again? No. I can’t go scaring myself with these stories, especially not about my alien — human — friend? — Grace. It had trusted me enough to take off its protective skin, it had kept me company, it had agreed to help me save our planets.
I can be brave for it.
— — —
This is not the first time I’ve found you sleeping. With the weight of the world on our shoulders, it has never been uncommon to find the inhabitants of my base in odd locations for sleep, like robots whose batteries had simply run out. Some of the best and brightest curled up on benches, slumped against desks, nodding off over meals.
Forgive me for saying this, but you are not particularly graceful in sleep. In our time together, there have been several occasions where I have retrieved your glasses from where they have clattered to the floor. I once even tipped your mouth closed, if for no other reason than to spare the rest of your lab from your snoring serenade.
Perhaps this care was overstepping. Perhaps it was controlling. Perhaps it was even a sign of weakness. I don’t know. These days, I don’t have the time or privilege to inspect my own morality.
Still, I can’t help but reach for the quilt draped over you now. It’s awash with colors, emblazoned with lucky symbols from cultures around the world. The quilt will accompany your crew into space, but for now it’s wrapped around you. I adjust it so you are better tucked in, a meaningless gesture that does nothing for either of us. If it were any other day, you would shift to get comfortable, or mumble something about astrophage, or flutter your eyes open ever so briefly.
Now, with you as still as stone, it feels as though I’m burying you.
— — —
When I scramble back upright, I notice that Grace has moved again, its head upright. Now it seems to be awake, blinking its visual sensors slowly as it scans our tunnel. A complex series of tiny motions flash across its face in something I am starting to suspect might be an emotion. When Grace turns toward me, its body tenses.
“I…uh…” Grace’s voice is more gravely now, “Rocky?”
My name. Even in a strange, alien language, the sound of my name sung by another seems to crash into me like a ship collision. When was the last time someone woke from sleep and spoke my name? I have imagined such a scenario exactly 213 times since my crewmates started dying.
I wish this was happening with a crewmate now.
I’m glad it’s happening at all.
I don’t even notice I am trembling until Grace puts one of its appendages to the wall. “Woah, Rocky. What’s going on?”
Nobody else woke up, I want to explain, my limbs rattling slightly against the floor as I rapidly re-live the realization I had for each crewmate as they stayed still, still, still, And now you are aborting your sleep cycle for me.
But we don’t have enough shared words yet and even if we did, I don’t know how to explain the sheer, dizzying relief of having an alien — friend, nearby. So instead I just say, “Grace talk in sleep.”
The voice I chose for Grace’s translation echoes in the background as if corroborating my story.
“Shoot. Forgot to mention that could happen,” Grace taps a finger absentmindedly against our wall and I sway in rhythm. After so many losses, the joy of watching a companion who does not die in its sleep is intoxicating. “Did I scare you?”
“No,” I lie, mostly because I cannot seem more scared than the space blob beside me who fell over the first time we met. That just seems wrong. “Need word for only scared little.”
Grace huffs a laugh. “Sure, buddy. I’ll add that in the morning.”
“Morning, question.”
“Whenever I wake up,” Grace amends. “It’s because on Earth we, uh…” it stops its explanation suddenly, opening the hole in its head very wide. It is strange and abrupt and awful to behold.
“What is that, question.” I am pleased my translated copy can at least somewhat convey my overall disgust at the motion. Yes, Grace is a friend, but it really is a strange, gross looking alien too.
“A yawn,” Grace replies, yawning again as though to show off the ability. I am glad Eridians do not do this. “Means I’m still tired.”
— — —
You accused me of murdering you. I admit that feels most real right now, sitting near your close-to-lifeless body like a mourner at a wake. Don’t worry, Grace, I’m not lingering. I’m not even mourning, not really, because this, your almost and future death, is necessary.
You will be dead. I will have killed you. But that is later. For now, you are still a man who will rise from the dead and save humanity from extinction.
I reach for your hand, my fingertips ghosting your skin, but pull away. We were never that close in life. I will not disgrace your dignity in half-death. Instead, I simply whisper:
“You can do this, Ryland Grace. I promise.”
— — —
Grace leans its head against the wall, visual sensors trained on me. “Am I okay to go back to sleep or do you need me to…” he trails off. Does the awful yawn again. “…do something?”
I know I have technically failed in my duties to watch the alien — Grace — sleep. But there is something so comforting about it being awake. How it can spring back to life from a state of restless death.
Before I can stop myself, I blurt out: “Wake up again.”
My translation parrots the request.
Another series of small movements scramble across Grace’s face. “Course, Rock. Always.”
I know I am asking the impossible. But it was not that long ago that I thought an alien ship arriving with help would be impossible, so I ask anyway. “Promise, question.”
Grace, now curled back in its sleeping form, glances up. It reaches clumsily for the barrier, and I step forward to meet its appendage as it whispers: “I promise.”