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The first time he feels the terror, he doesn't understand why. As he barely hangs onto consciousness, the soft silicon presses against his face, enveloping his nose and mouth. The spark of terror catches fire in his chest and quickly spreads across his body. It ignites a screaming inferno within his skull. He forces his eyes open. Everything is red. There's shapes above him. Pure oxygen fills his airways, stale and clinical and familiar and wrong.
He struggles to move, but something heavy, thick and constrictive surrounds his body and he is so weak. A sharp point pushes into his neck and his heart surges, he can't - no no no no no. He can't do this, he won't be forced unconscious, no, he has to stay awake, he has to. He lifts his head, and sees the hazy shape of Rocky, out of his xenonite ball. Rocky's giving off black smoke and– the sound is him, screaming.
No. Rocky's dying. No no no no. He can't- Grace pushes himself up, trying to look, to get closer. He overcomes the bulk of his EVA suit to raise himself, but something pushes against his chest, keeping him down. He's trying, but the haze is pushing in. He has to get to Rocky, he has to get up, he can't be put under when Rocky is collapsing in front of him, he can't...
.
His head is pounding. His arms and legs are cold, except for a portion of his right forearm that stings. Something's on his face. It gives him air but it's wrong, it's suffocating, he needs it off. He blinks his eyes open sluggishly, pushes himself up, gets the mask off his face, and he remembers.
Rocky. Rocky.
.
He watches Rocky for hours, with only the medical gown between him and the coolness of the metal floor and the heat radiating from the xenonite glass. He welcomes both sensations. Good distractions from the pounding in his head and the impatient desperation in his chest.
He tore off all the monitoring implements an hour or so in, throwing them a pathetic few feet away, despite his best efforts to send them far across the room.
At least after waking up this time, he didn't have to pull catheters out of himself. It isn't much consolation. There are no consolations to be found as he watches over Rocky's sleeping body, desperately hoping he'll wake up. Grace has no idea what to do if he doesn’t. Rocky had to do this for his entire crew, and they never woke up. It's torturous. He wonders if Eridians can even tell the difference between sleep and death at first. Rocky would have waited and watched and hoped, far longer than it made any sense to.
Grace doesn't know everything about Eridian biology – far from it. Maybe Eridians are far more resilient than he thinks. They're little earthen fortresses of rocks and metal. Grace would be dead in seconds within Rocky's atmosphere, but that doesn't mean Rocky can't survive after minutes in Grace's...
He fiddles with the ties of his gown and his mind wanders. He hopes Armando didn't cut up his EVA suit and its underlayer. He's not sure if the other suits on the ship will fit him if he needs one.
He imagines Armando turning him over, moving his body around as he lays limp, pulling the EVA suit and underlayer off of him and replacing them with the gown. He thinks these are fresh socks too. He's not sure about the underwear. He hopes not.
It sets his teeth on edge to think about what all the robot did while he was out, and he isn't sure why. He'd be dead if it didn’t. During his coma, he'd have developed bedsores if the robot wasn't able to move and maneuver his body. If it's able to do that, it would be able to change him out of the EVA suit and into the gown.
Still, there's a lump in his throat.
Maybe it's fear of the coma. Two out of three of the people under it died, which is a pretty abysmal success rate as far as elective medical procedures go. Something about the coma and the care failed, and not knowing why leaves him wary of being in any kind of unconsciousness that isn't good-old-fashioned sleep.
Maybe it's the idea of sleeping like Rocky does, unable to rouse if something is wrong. Trapped in sleep, unaware and unable to respond to what's happening around you. It's horrifying. Eridians watch each other for a reason: to feel "comfortable and safe," as Rocky had put it.
Rocky stayed awake for him. Until Grace woke up and staggered over to his airlock, Rocky watched him sleep, all while in agony. The least Grace can do is return the favor. He can't sense the entire ship like Rocky can, can't watch him without a line of sight. His head pounds and his body aches, and he knows he needs medicine, water, and food.
He moves as quickly as he can; which is to say, not very quickly at all. He asks Mary for a video feed of the lab once he's in the bedroom. The frame isn't the best view, but he still can still see Rocky, and that's enough for now.
—
It hits him as he explores Rocky's ship. Seeing the markings on the wall Rocky pointed out, it reminds Grace of the golden placards on the Hail Mary. He wonders if they were the same, if Rocky's people had considered sending a message to other life that might be out there if their people died. Rocky always intended to go back, but this was Erid's first real spaceship. Maybe the Eridians that designed it considered it might never return.
Maybe not, though. Eridians are different from humans. Maybe they have no concept of a suicide mission. They had enough fuel to go back, without accounting for relativity. He's grateful that Eridians didn't know to factor it in. It's the only reason he's going home to Earth. Rocky has saved his life already, and now he and Erid are saving him again with the excess fuel.
Grace Rocky save stars.
He knows Rocky is the best his species has to offer, without meeting any others. Grace isn't the best humanity has to offer, but he's certainly not the worst. They're saving their planets together.
A streak of light, refracted into a rainbow through the Blip A's xenonite catches his eyes.
A lump forms in his throat. He'd remembered the explosion before, he'd remembered being asked to go on the mission. He remembered being in shock, being terrified. 3 hours. He'd been given 3 hours to choose to give up his life. And he… There's a sinking feeling in his chest as he recalls those hours. He'd gone up to the roof to think, the smell of burning metal and ash still in the air from the crater across the grounds of the base.
He'd buried his face in his hands and cried, wrestling with the choice for all three hours. When the time was up, some military guys came and found him. Or rather, Grace knew that they had been nearby, at the doorway to the roof, waiting on him, keeping an eye on him. It hadn't helped Grace think any clearer. Two hours in, he'd entertained the thought of running off the roof just to spite them, because he couldn't think of any other reason they'd be watching him this closely.
He hadn't heard one of the soldiers calling his name until the guy's boots entered his vision, eyes locked on the gravel in front of his feet. He'd wished it was Carl that came to get him. He wished that the two of them could talk about this. More realistically, Grace wished he could talk at him and Carl could give some of his ever-observant and dry responses. He wished he could just talk with someone through all the reasons why he wasn't right for the mission, that it'd be better for everyone to just find a proper replacement and push back the launch.
He played his words over and over as he walked towards Stratt's office, stopping at the bathroom while the military guy waited outside the door. He considered climbing out the window, but he knew he wouldn't get far without being seen. He owed Stratt his explanation. As much as he wanted to just leave and go right back to his school, to his kids, he thought that maybe they'd accept his "no" more favorably if he promised to help train up the new replacement scientist.
Surely everyone else saw how wrong he was for something this important? Years of people's lives spent on this project couldn't be wasted by sending such a poor choice of scientist on the mission. They'd see that. They had to.
They didn't. Stratt didn't. A man in a white lab coat entered the office, a medical bag in hand and every alarm in Grace's head went off at once. It's a blur of fear and panic, words fumbling out of his mouth. He'd pleaded. And then he ran.
He was tackled, feet away from the fence. He'd have climbed it, barbed wire and all. But hands pushed him down into the grass, and he held onto it, begged and cried and pleaded, to the men holding him down, to Carl, to the world. Carl said something. "You know who you are. You're gonna do great."
A needle pierced his skin and the thudding in his chest slowed, until everything was dark.
Rocky energetically gestures about the Blip A, humming explanations of how the steering works. Grace is lightheaded. He clumsily raises a hand to catch himself against the wall, but the xenonite suit's rigidity makes him falter. Rocky catches him, humming sounds of confusion.
It takes Grace half a minute before he's aware enough to speak.
"I'm good, buddy," he lies, interrupting Rocky's torrent of worried notes that Grace doesn't have the wherewithal to process into words just yet. He's getting better at understanding Rocky's language without the translator, but it takes all his focus and requires Rocky to speak simply and slowly. He is decidedly not speaking slow and simple now as Grace rights himself. "Just, uh, got a little light-headed."
Rocky hums a response and Grace has to ask him to slow down, and Rocky does.
"What word mean, question? Head is light, question? Xenonite suit not have enough oxygen, question?" Rocky punctuates each inquiry with two steps and leaves extra space between his words.
Grace squints, slowly piecing together each question’s meaning. "Maybe…" He knows how frustrating he must be for Rocky sometimes, how sluggish his mind is at learning compared to Rocky's perfect Eridian recall. "I might just be tired. Or hungry. I'll explain 'light-headed' later, but it's not a big deal, I get light-headed on elevators." He can tell Rocky is still concerned, his body stationary with his carapace angled at Grace in full focus. "I think I'm gonna go take a few minutes and eat something, you just keep getting your ship ready."
"Grace need Rocky to watch sleep, question?"
"Uh, I don't think so. But I'll let you know if I need a nap, okay?"
He makes it back to the Hail Mary, out of the xenonite suit with Rocky's help. Once Rocky is far away enough on the Blip A, he slowly slides to the floor. He puts his head in his hands. When he closes his eyes, all he can see is his hand grabbing at clumps of grass, a rainbow in a cloudy sky as a sedative forced him unconscious.
—
Grace is finishing a burrito and watching the Taumoeba farms when Rocky returns. His xenonite ball clangs loudly as he comes to a stop next to Grace on the step. Somehow, it’s a comforting sound.
"Grace sure Grace okay, question?" Rocky asks with gentle taps instead of stomps at the end of his words.
Grace smiles reassuringly and nods, swallowing the last bite and crumpling the wrapper. "Yeah, I think I just hadn't eaten enough."
"Grace breathe different and heart beat fast on Blip A." Ah, right to it then. Rocky doesn't waste time. "Grace say Grace head light, question?"
"That happens when humans don't eat or sleep enough and then overexert our bodies," he explains with a shrug. "Especially if you lock your knee joints, and I think I locked mine." It's not technically a lie, which is the best kind.
Rocky slumps, speaking an octave lower. "Xenonite suit design not Rocky's best work. Make too fast."
"No, it's great!" Grace straightens. His technically-not-a-lie is backfiring. "It's just… kinda heavy. And I'm not exactly graceful."
"What word mean, question? Grace name but longer, question?"
"Uh, the opposite of clumsy?” He shrugs. “'Grace' can mean being light on your feet and good at controlling your body's movements. Making them smooth and beautiful." He gestures as he explains, his hands moving about in his best approximation of elegance, juxtaposed to his usual movement.
"Grace not very much like name." Rocky states flatly and it almost breaks Grace out of the fog clouding his thoughts. He exhales a sharp laugh and shakes his head.
"Thanks, Rock." He stands uneasily, knocking the rolling chair next to him off-kilter in the process. He barely catches it from falling, and his grip forces sensations and images flash in his mind– panic, his own shaky voice pleading, shoving a chair and climbing up onto a counter, running frantically until he's tackled to the dirt. Writhing and begging on the ground.
"Is okay." Rocky busies himself with gathering his tools from his xenonite-encased side of the lab, spinning idly as he speaks. "Grace good at other things. Good science. Save Earth, save Erid."
He guesses so. Stratt had deemed his life worth sacrificing because of it. 'You're smart. You'll figure it out.' She was right, and it pisses him off. He was only able to do it because of Rocky. And because he thought he'd agreed to do it in the first place.
The coma that killed Yao and Ilyukhina didn't kill him, and he'll never know why. He could've died just as easily as they had. Rocky would still be alone, and Earth and Erid would never have Taumoeba to save them, not without another doomed mission. Grace's last conscious moment would've been crying in the dirt that he couldn't do it, no, don't do it, please. He'd have died for nothing.
Now he'll get to bring back the Taumoeba to Earth himself. He'll live. Thanks to Rocky. No matter how much he wants to make Stratt wrong, just to spite her, he'll do it all anyway. If she isn't in prison already for Antarctica or the Sahara, she will be if he tells anyone what she did to him.
He isn't so sure he wants anyone to know, though. He can't even bear the thought of telling Rocky, much less all of Earth. He has time to think about it, he guesses. 4 years of travelling alone to let his anger fester, or to let it go. He doubts it'll be the latter.
Rocky and he will be parting ways soon, and they'll never see each other again. Maybe he'll regret lying to Rocky one day, and never be able to fix it… No, it's better he doesn't tell Rocky. When Rocky returns home and tells the Eridians Grace’s full story, it'll paint humanity in a horrible light. It'll cause problems decades down the line when Earth is doing better and humans inevitably want to seek out Erid. Best to play it safe, for interplanetary peace purposes.
He stares at the floor until his eyes lose focus.
If he's honest with himself, Grace doesn't want to tell Rocky. He doesn't want Rocky to know how much of a coward he really is. Grace wishes he didn't know either. It's the only memory that's returned to him that he wishes stayed lost. If he could go back, stop himself from remembering it, or any other memory ever again, he might just do that.
He's still a coward.
He exhales slowly and shudders. Rocky turns, his carapace angling like it does when he's giving Grace his full attention.
"Grace okay, question? Tell truth, statement."
Grace smiles and gives Rocky a nod. His eyes are tearing, and he blinks them away. Why does he have to be so easy to read? Even an alien without eyes or a face can tell when he's being too emotional. That's his bad, he supposes. He’s the one who explained what crying meant. Why does he talk so much, why can't he be mysterious?
Images of Stratt flash in his mind. Her smile on the deck of the vat on the night she sang. Her nodding to him as she sang to him. The lyrics he'd felt in his chest as she sang, that he'd teared up at: “Remember everything will be alright. We can meet again somewhere.”
He doesn't know if he wants to meet her again. He's angry at her. He's furious. She betrayed him in the worst way a person can betray someone. She murdered him. Whether he comes back to Earth or not, she chose to murder him. And he'd thought that they'd become good friends by the end. One of the closest friends he'd had in years, as much as Carl had become.
Carl had watched, stood by as she'd killed him. She'd told him "Don't make this harder, please." Told him to sit down so they could do it "differently". Differently. She'd wanted him to roll over and let her kill him, to make it easier on her. He hopes she feels guilty still, he hopes she feels guilty for the rest of her life. He hopes that when he comes back to Earth, he gets to scream in her face for everything she put him through, for all of the days of having no idea who he was, just that he was far from home, alone, and would die there.
"Grace, question?"
Grace swallows. His hands are in fists, his nails digging into his palms. He forces them open and tries to shake the tension out of his body. "Yeah, sorry, I'm fine, Rock." He stands and turns away, grabbing up misplaced pipettes to put away.
"Grace explain, statement."
"Explain what?" Grace says, shoving a drawer closed, still facing away from Rocky. He knows it doesn’t make a difference for Rocky whether Grace is facing him or not, but he still avoids looking back.
"Grace explain why being leaky and quiet. Grace muscles tense."
"I just - I'm fine, Rock, really." Grace turns, waving a dismissing hand but still not looking down to his friend.
He hears the frustrated stomp of Rocky’s legs against the xenonite. "Grace no lie." The tone is sharp and rattles in his vents like they did when Grace first failed to understand that Rocky was pointing behind him. It’s rare that Rocky gets this annoyed with him, and the sound is loud and overwhelming.
"Fine! Fine," He spits, and immediately regrets raising his voice when he sees Rocky flinch, legs pulling inward towards his body. "Sorry. I just… I remembered something that made me angry.” He sighs, dragging a hand across his face. “You know how I'm missing memories. One came back that pissed me off, but I'm fine now."
"Grace still angry."
"I'll cool down in a little bit, okay?" Eventually. He doesn't see himself ever not being mad at Stratt. "Just give me a minute."
"Grace leaky before, now Grace angry." Rocky observes, crouching low in his ball. "Grace leaky when Grace not angry later, question?"
"I'm not going to cry!" he yells. On cue, his eyes tear up like they've been summoned by Rocky's mention of them.
Rocky shifts backwards away from Grace with another little jump and a clang of his xenonite ball, his legs pulling tighter to his body and low to the ground. Rocky sits perfectly still and a crack forms in Grace’s anger. A sob forces itself out of his mouth, and more follow close behind til he’s shaking. God, he hates crying like this. He hates that he’s distressing Rocky like this, scaring his only friend in the universe.
Grace leans back against the lab counter and sinks to the floor. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to yell at you, it's not…"
"Is okay.” Rocky raises up slightly, and rolls closer in front of Grace’s downturned face. His carapace enters the edge of Grace’s field of vision. Rocky’s gotten in the habit of getting close up and into Grace’s line of sight for conversation, doing so for emphasis when Grace isn’t already looking in his direction. It’s the closest Rocky can get to forcing eye contact, and it’s effective. “Grace okay, question? Answer, statement."
"Yeah. No. I don't know…" He doesn't want to explain this to Rocky. Rocky's smart, he'll ask the right questions and piece things together if Grace tries explaining it half-way.
Rocky leans further towards him, an inch from the glass of his ball. "Grace want explain, question?"
He shakes his head and rubs his eyes. "I don't think so, buddy. Sorry."
"Anger bad, bad, bad when not talk.” Rocky bounces on the repeated words. “Anger stay inside bad, bad, bad."
"You're not wrong.” Grace wipes his tears off of his hands and face with his hoodie. “I just… I don't know how to talk about it."
"Grace say memory bad. Memory make Grace angry." Rocky lowers his carapace, his body motionless except for a fidget of his claws like he does sometimes when he’s thinking.
"Yeah…" He knows where this is going. There goes the whole holding-his-tongue-to-avoid-Rocky-asking-the-right-questions plan. He really does talk too much.
"Grace explain memory, question?"
He exhales a long sigh, dragging his hands down his face. He slows down and chooses his words wisely. "Someone I thought of as a good friend betrayed me… Could have gotten me killed. Should have killed me, really." And she did it on purpose. He doesn't say the last part. He knows that'd only lead to more questions. “If I hadn't been lucky, then…” He survived his coma, sure, but he was always meant to die.
Without Rocky, he’d be dead. Earth and Erid too, eventually. Rocky’s the best luck he’s ever had, that either of their worlds have had. And Grace is upsetting him.
"I don't… I don't really want to talk about this, Rock. It’s all in the past, you know? Sorry this put a damper on our celebrating.” He shakes his head to himself. “We've got what we need to save our planets, you know? That’s what's important."
Rocky tilts closer to Grace as he speaks in a quiet, low tone. "Feelings important."
Grace sighs again, putting a hand on the xenonite glass like someone might put a hand on a human’s shoulder. "Yes, they are. And I am feeling thankful that I got to meet you. I couldn't have done any of this without you, pal."
"Rocky also could not do without Grace." Rocky replies, still quiet, but at his regular volume. He presses the top of his carapace against the other side of where Grace’s hand sits on the xenonite, and Grace almost thinks he can feel a change in the warmth from Rocky’s proximity.
He basks in that warmth for a moment until he feels another bout of tears coming on. "Let's do it, then!" Grace claps his hands together, turns to the lab counter, and pulls himself off the floor with a smile that's only half plastered-on. "The Taumoeba population should be enough for both of us to have plenty now, let's take a look!"
—
On the journey back to save Rocky, Grace has nightmares. At first he doesn't remember them. Waking suddenly with his heart racing, the memory of the dream is gone before he can think about what it was. All it leaves is a feeling, his heart pounding in his chest, terror clawing up his throat. It takes a few nights before he can identify a more abstract feeling. He finds the word for the sensation: trapped. He can't move or escape in the nightmares, he thinks. Not until he wakes up, and by then the trapped feeling has already settled deep in his gut.
Later, he wakes up halfway through the night, gasping for breath with another word to add: powerless. Trapped and powerless. Cheery stuff.
The closer the Hail Mary approaches her target, the more those feelings stick around throughout his days, until they permeate all his waking hours. The more time passes, the more likely it is that Rocky will be dead by the time Grace finds him. If he finds him. Grace can't move any faster than this without putting himself through weeks of heavy g-forces that this ship wasn't designed for. Grace's best chance is to go at this pace, at this speed, until he's close enough to find Rocky. The waiting, not knowing if his best friend is dying alone thousands and thousands of miles away… it's getting to him. He wants to tear at the walls of the Hail Mary, will himself across space to reach Rocky in time. He pulls on his hair like it'll take his screaming mind out of his skull.
A week out from arriving where Rocky should be, he's wracked with panic and frozen in place on the floor for what feels like hours. Mary's voice spends the bulk of that time trying to suggest he go down to Armando for medication. By the time he gets his breathing right and is able to stand and fumble down to his bed, he sees Armando poised at the ready with something in hand. For a moment, Grace thinks it's a needle and syringe, and his panic surges again.
Another half hour later he finishes making a list of grounding sensory details to focus on, and he's exhausted. Mary's voice recommends he get some rest and offers a sleeping pill that Armando gestures at him. He's hit with a wave of nausea at the thought.
"Stop recommending medical treatments, please." His voice is strained, and he hates the sound of it, scratchy in his throat. Mary doesn't seem to fight the command, thankfully.
He drinks some water and nibbles on a burrito before he collapses into his bunk. He tries to picture Rocky above him, his image refracting at the seams of the xenonite glass.
The nightmare comes, vivid and violent.
.
He's still. Frozen. His eyes are closed. His thoughts are slow, heavy. His senses take in information faster than his mind processes. Better his eyes can't open, then. He's breathing in air that smells void of any comfort. His studio apartment was small but it was cozy. He'd light candles and the smell would stick around for hours in the small space after they'd been blown out. His broom closet on the vat always smelled like coffee or tea, depending on the time of day. This smell is pure and clinical. There's something on his face. The air moves within it, different from the air on his cheeks.
Wind. He hears it now. He hears the flow of oxygen filling a mask on his face too. It's sanitized. He likes the scent on the air that comes with a cool wind, especially when there's a touch of the ocean in the breeze. The air filling his lungs is too stale.
He can't move to take off the mask. When he tries, he can't alter his own breathing. He can't act upon his own body at all, only feel it. It scares him. But it does nothing to his body's sensations. His muscles do not tense, his senses do not sharpen. His fear is more a conclusion of logic than one of his body's physiological responses. There's no familiar rise of panic that puts a lump in his throat and sets his nerves on fire. The comfortable discomfort of anxiety he's known all his life is alarmingly absent, and the hole it leaves in his mind is far worse.
His mind lulls, struggles to find its way back to his senses. He's laying down. On something that is shaking. Thin padding beneath him. And it's not just shaking, it's moving. It's moving him. A… gurney? His mind takes ages to find its way to the concept, then the word.
Sound. Voices? He can't move. He can't move. He can't think.
.
He's cold. Like warmth leaving freshly-bared skin. His sweater is missing. Undershirt too. There's something on his face. Oxygen mask. Right. Beyond his eyelids, the light is cool, too. Something touches his chest, warm and cold. The cold part sticks, the warm pulls away. A hand? Wasn't skin. Gloves, then. Again, cold and warm, but at his arm. Something pinches and it hurts, warm gloved hands leaving behind something in his arm. Needle. IV? He can't open his eyes, he can't look. He can't ask. He can't… Voices, low, quiet. He can't piece together their words. A warm, gloved hand is at his waist, grazing sensitive skin of his stomach as it pulls his belt. The sound of snipping comes from something cold at his ankle. Snipping like his good metal scissors his students argue over every year, without fail. Cold metal snipping, moving higher up his calf. His shoes are off. Why…
.
He's warm. But he isn't cozy. The feeling on his skin is unfamiliar. Fabric. A texture different from his go-to t-shirts, button-ups, sweaters, jeans. He's laying down. There's something tucked around him. Blanket, maybe? He can't move to test the hypothesis. He can't open his eyes to look either. His eyes won't move within their sockets.
Wind moves through his scalp. Stale air, oxygen mask. He feels movement beneath him. What was the word? Transport not-quite-bed for medical purposes? Gurney. He's on a gurney. Has he been on the same gurney this whole time? Has time passed? How much? He doesn't know. There's light. Light he can't open his eyes to see, but he's outside, he thinks.
Outside. On a gurney. Unable to move. What…
Voices. Familiar ones. He catches a rare word. "Mission," "ready," "coma," and "launch."
His mind perks up at another word before he fully recognizes it. "Grace."
His heart thumps in his chest. The voice is familiar, soft and accented. It comforts, but terrifies him. Why? Who…
Stratt. She…
He's going to die. She's killing him. He can't move because he's drugged because she's murdering him.
Voices again. "Heart," "elevated," "sedative," and "dosage."
No. No. No no no no no. Get him out. Please, please. He screams it in his own mind, screams for help but no one, not even his body, answers him.
.
Heavy. Gravity. Force. More than gravitron carnival rides designed around centrifugal force. More than the jet. It hurts.
.
Movement. Tired. He's so, so tired. He wants sleep. Why isn’t he asleep? Not quite awake, not quite asleep. His body hurts. But it's light. His back isn't fully flush against what he's laying on.
His body moves, but it isn't him that moves it. It's strange, how his arms shift, light as a feather. There's a hand on him. Hands. He's lifted. Moved to another surface. Cold. He's getting cold again as a zipper makes sound. When was he cold before?
Things, strips of something flexible, are placed across his body at a few different points. For some reason he doesn't lay still, rising against the straps even though his body is limp. A mechanical whir sounds above him, then something shifts at his throat. The zipper of whatever he's wearing makes noise as it is pulled down, cool air hitting his chest directly. As the whirs continue, something like a hand grabs him, but not a hand. Another joins it, a whir matching every movement he feels. The hands, mechanical, maybe robotic, lift his torso up and begin pushing the fabric off his shoulders.
He moves too easily, needing so little force that it shocks his system. It's wrong. His senses feel like a live wire as he hovers limply, enough that when he hears voices, they become words that become sentences.
"Privacy, Ilyukhina." A name. A familiar one? Maybe. The man's voice feels familiar.
"We are on mission together," the woman says. Also familiar. Russian? "We wake up in coma suits and underwear together. We should be comfortable."
The man doesn't respond, at least not verbally, and the woman breaks the quiet. "Okay, I want to watch what the robot does before my turn." There's a touch of fear in her intonation, something that doesn't feel right to his ear. Not in her voice. He's not sure why.
Another stretch of quiet. "Fine, fine," she speaks again. "We go check cockpit."
They make no noise as they go, a metal sound and the following silence the only sign they'd left. He wishes they didn't go, he doesn't want to be alone, he wants to hang on to the only two voices he's been able to make sense of.
The arms are pulling the clothing he's wearing down past his hips now, and he realizes the underwear he's wearing aren't his own boxers, but unfamiliar briefs. He feels the IV still in his arm, things stuck to his chest, but now he feels the two tubes coming out of him that the robot delicately works around as it pulls the jumpsuit down his legs. Why…
Cockpit. Weightlessness. He's– oh fuck, he's in space. It's… It's Yao and Ilyukhina, and they're in space. He's being stripped by a robot, prepped for a coma, on a suicide mission, in space. He first notices the heart monitor's beep as it speeds up. He wants Yao and Ilyukhina to hear the faster pace of his heartbeat and come over, take the IV out of his arm, let him speak to them, let him tell them how he doesn't want this, let him move again, let him go back home, go back to Earth, please.
Instead, he feels the screaming terror grow quieter, dampening as his heart beat slows again. Things are stuck on his chest, his arms, his legs by the robot arms, all connected with wires. Latex slides up his legs, tubes being maneuvered around him. He's drifting, being slowly forced beneath a wave of sedation. If his mind screams enough, maybe he'll break through, maybe they'll hear him, maybe they'll save him. Help him, please. I don't want to be here, I don't want to die, get me away from this thing, drag me away from here, please, help. His vocal cords do not respond. His muscles do not tense. He silently screams until his mind drowns beneath the waves of nothingness forced into his veins.
.
When he wakes from the nightmare, he's screaming.
He doesn't know if any of it was real or not. He hopes it wasn't. He hopes it's his own anxious mind lashing out at him. He can't bear the thought of the nightmares being rooted in real scraps of memory that are sitting around in his Swiss cheese subconscious. Regardless of whether they're real or not, he'd prefer that they stay buried deep at the bottom of his brain, and stop rising to the surface while he sleeps.
He misses Rocky, misses waking to the comforting sight of him perched above in his xenonite-encased bunk. Rocky would have plenty to say about Grace's sleep-screaming. When they meet again, he hopes Rocky won't have to hear him like that, but it's a comforting thought to imagine Rocky's worried tones and insistent pestering for Grace to explain what's wrong. He'd find a lot more comfort in Rocky's stubborn questioning than the bottle of sleeping pills in Armando's hand.
Rocky can't wake up when he's asleep. He can't move, paralyzed. Grace never asked if Rocky has moments of awareness when he sleeps. Rocky found the concept of dreams to be incredibly strange when Grace explained human sleep cycles to him. He never explained nightmares.
He hopes Eridians are completely incapable of being conscious during sleep. Grace can't bear the thought of anyone else, let alone Rocky feeling like he did in those nightmares. Trapped in your own body, powerless, as the world moves around you, as the world moves you. Grace hadn't had someone to keep him safe as he slept then, not like Eridians do. He'd been put under specifically to give up his life, taking away his choice of safety. Yao and Ilyukhina couldn't have known, shouldn't have known. It would've jeopardized their performance if they ever found out, of course they were lied to.
It isn't just the watching; it's the trust that makes Eridian sleep safe and comfortable. Rocky had offered to watch Grace sleep as soon as he'd learned that Grace could sleep. And Grace had returned the favor. It'd been the first time Rocky had slept safely in decades, the way Eridians are meant to sleep.
Rocky hasn't had anyone to watch him sleep in weeks now. With the Taumoeba devouring all the astrophage on his ship, Rocky will think he'll never have anyone to watch him sleep ever again. That he'll die alone, away from home, with no way to get the Taumoeba back to Erid.
Grace isn't going to let that happen. All he needs to do is get there. The rest is simple enough. It will be easier because Rocky will be there. He'll starve, he'll be malnourished and he'll wither away until he dies, but Rocky will live. Erid will live. He just needs to get there.