Chapter Text
Some days, Grace can believe that Erid is some kind of paradise – that is, if you ignored the gravity trying to grind his bones to dust and wear down his joints in double time, the atmosphere that would love to crush him to pulp, and the searing temperatures that would cook him in an instant if he stepped foot outside the biodome. Yes, ignoring all of those silly little things, it felt like some kind of paradise thanks to how peaceful it was.
Everyone he met with was always respectful and calm, sometimes almost infuriatingly so. Grace suspects that Rocky occasionally steps the needling up a notch to compensate for how careful everyone else is around him.
On Earth it would be chaos if Rocky was in Grace's place, Grace is sure of it, but here the chaos never reaches him. It's very considerate of them.
It does mean, however, that his guard is very much down on the one occasion that it does make its way as far as his biodome.
—
When Grace wakes up to the sound of screaming, his first thought is that he must have left the laptop running and some horror movie had somehow ended up in the queue. Reality, therefore, takes a little while longer than it should do to make its way through to him. It's not until the screaming shifts in pitch from something similar to a human to something closer to a boiling kettle, that Grace actually tunes his full coherent brain into the sound.
Spurred on by a sudden burst of adrenaline and acting on instinct, Grace launches himself out of bed towards the sound. He even manages to avoid tripping over his blankets, despite their attempts to wind their way around his legs.
He skids out of his room, then out of the house, running to the wall of the biodome closest to him. The sound gets louder and louder as he runs, and he realises that there is some variation in pitch and tone, it is just very difficult to make out.
Rocky and the other eridians that he has met have always been very careful around him, knowing that too much sound might damage his eardrums. What this means is that, until this point, he hadn't truly appreciated just how loud they could actually be – it was one thing to see the data on paper, after all, and another thing entirely to experience it. When he reaches the source of it he staggers to a stop, holding his hands over his ears.
There is a stranger standing just beyond the walls of the biodome. Their carapace is a paler shade of brown, so picking them out against the backdrop of darkness is simple enough.
Rocky stands between them and the dome, legs wide in a defensive stance that Grace has only seen a handful of times before now. "Rocky?" Grace calls out over the noise, but receives no response.
The stranger is the one screeching. Grace can still only make out every other word, the volume and the fact that he doesn't have his translator on him working against him. They're not simplifying their speech and they certainly don't look like they're about to speak slowly or repeat themselves - not intentionally, at least. Luckily, they seem to be at least a little bit circular in what they're saying, because Grace manages to pick out a number of chords relating to 'revenge', 'pain', and 'death'.
On second thoughts, Grace isn't feeling particularly lucky about that realisation.
Before Grace can do anything like ask Rocky what any of this means, the stranger is no longer just screeching at his friend – they take a scuttling leap forwards, and the two of them clash.
"Rocky!" Grace shouts in alarm, pressing himself to the xenonite barrier as if he might be able to reach them if he tried hard enough.
It's chaos. The two of them roll away from the barrier, a tangle of limbs that Grace can't make heads or tails of, not until Rocky manages to push himself very clearly on top. He seems to be trying to pin the other eridian down, claws grasping at their limbs. He almost manages it, too, before the stranger manages to swipe one of their free arms upwards and push Rocky off of them entirely.
The sound the two of them make as they struggle is atrocious. Before this moment, Grace would have never thought he would describe the sound of rocks clashing against each other in such a way, but when it was his friend's life on the line the noise took on a whole new meaning.
"Rocky, be careful!"
He isn't sure if Rocky can hear him, but he hopes that he can. Eridians are good at multitasking, right? If Grace can't help, he at least wants Rocky to know that he's there.
He knows that the security team must be on the way, logic tells him they must be, but he wishes they could arrive sooner. How could they even let something like this happen in the first place? A stranger shouldn't be able to get as close to the dome as this one has.
Grace freezes, torn between leaving to try and raise the alarm elsewhere somehow, and staying to watch over Rocky. He should leave, it's the more logical of the two options, but the thought of his friend being injured without him there to even try to do something about it leaves him paralysed.
It's at that point that Grace realises that more shapes are moving out of the darkness towards the duo. For a moment Grace feels a spark of hope that it might be somebody arriving to help… before the shapes become more defined, and his heart sinks.
More strangers slink out of the darkness, each prowling forwards to make a semi-circle that surrounds Rocky.
"Watch out!" Grace can't help but yelp out, despite knowing how useless a reflex it is. If Rocky didn't dodge something, it wasn't because he couldn't sense it coming. He has a better sense of his surroundings than Grace does, given the limited light levels outside of the dome.
Sure enough, when one of them lunges to grab Rocky, Rocky's already moving. He doesn't dodge the attack, but rather uses the momentum of it to pull the newcomer over him, throwing them onto the ground next to the barrier. Before the others can descend upon him Rocky darts forwards, lifting the other eridian as if to push him back into the xenonite.
Grace stands on the other side, waiting – but Rocky doesn't make any attempt at a disabling blow. Instead, Rocky hesitates.
From where he stands Grace gets a good enough view of Rocky tilting his carapace in his direction, something about Grace's presence seeming to make him freeze instead of take action, but that's all Grace has time to notice before the other eridians move in.
"Grace!" his friend cries out, finally speaking up. "Leave! Now!"
He sounds desperate. He's digging his claws into the ground, but there are four of them and one of him. Despite knowing that they'd overpower him in an instant, Grace wishes more than anything that he could be on the other side of the barrier, wishes that he could do something, anything, to help his friend.
Useless. He's useless, again.
Grace yells, and yells, but they don't listen to him. They take his friend and drag him out of sight, leaving a trail of mercury behind them.
Rocky doesn't call out for him again, but by this point Grace knows what an eridian in distress sounds like. The wailing sound pierces through the shadows, and Grace wails with it, despite there being nobody left to answer him.