Chapter Text
It’s been about two months into the journey to Erid, and Ryland’s pretty sure he’s actually starting to lose his freaking mind.
He’s been keeping himself as busy as he possibly can, up until now – making sure Rocky’s settled and has everything he needs from the Blip A; daily checks on the Taumoeba farms to make sure they’re still secure; cataloguing every single item on the ship, which he’d neglected to do while he was busy freaking out about dying in space, saving the world, and then rescuing his best and only friend from also dying in space. Stratt pirated literally every single piece of media in existence, and Ryland’s memories are coming back a lot easier and quicker now, so he spent an afternoon collecting all of his favourite movies, songs, and YouTube video essays into organised, easily-accessible boxes. He also found the artificial light settings, so he actually has afternoons now, a simulated day-night cycle that helps him keep track of time.
Ryland has checked over the remaining stores of real food, the supply of coma-slurry, and tested the calorific properties of Taumoeba. He’s almost certainly going to get every nutrient deficiency in the book by the time he and Rocky reach Erid, but hopefully, it won’t be enough to kill him. He’s saving some samples from the real food and the coma-slurry to give to Erid’s scientists to help them synthesise the proper nutrients he needs, at Rocky’s suggestion.
All in all, Ryland has had a very productive few months, not including saving two solar systems and all that. And now he has nothing else to do.
Which, okay, isn’t strictly true. There’s talking about culture and language and alien biology with Rocky, there’s movies to watch, songs to listen to, video games to play – even papers to write, if he really wanted to. Although it’s not like anybody will ever read them.
Ryland tosses around in his bed like a rotisserie chicken. The lights are all off, but he can hear Rocky tapping away in his tunnel next to him. He’s been in his engineering element since they started flying back to Erid, doing all the little fixes and improvements around the ship that they didn’t have time for before.
“You are not sleeping.” Rocky observes after a while longer of Ryland flopping from side to side and huffing in increasing impatience. “You said you would sleep.”
“I’m trying.” Ryland mutters. “It’s not as easy for humans as it is for Eridians.”
Sleep has been an increasingly large problem as of late. Ryland sits around all day, tries to convince himself to do something productive, fails, eats chalky pasty coma-slurry, stares into (literal) space until his eyes start to burn, and then lies awake in bed feeling miserable about his life choices.
Or, as he remembers now, not choices.
Rough arms pinning him down, grass and dirt against his cheek, the needle being jabbed into his neck as his screaming fades into a desperate wheeze–
Ryland slams his pillow over his head and groans.
When he does manage to sleep, there’s nightmares. Ryland hasn’t really explained the concept of dreaming to Rocky, let alone the concept of dreaming about your most traumatising life experiences, so he’s thus far unaware as to why the thought of sleeping makes Ryland so afraid.
He doesn’t want to revisit his own functional murder again, sue him.
He also hasn’t told Rocky that he didn’t actually volunteer to go on this mission. He isn’t sure if he ever will – he probably should, considering he’s going to spend the rest of his life around him, and he deserves to know that he’s not the person Rocky thought he was, but Ryland is, as has been previously established, a coward.
His eyes itch, but won’t close. He just stares into the darkness of the dormitory, listening to Rocky work. He hasn’t slept more than three consecutive hours a night in a week. He can remember hearing from somewhere that humans need four hours straight a night within the healthy eight hours to keep them sane, which probably explains why he feels so much like he’s unravelling at the seams.
“You are still not sleeping.” Rocky observes, pausing his tapping. “You are actually less asleep than you were before. I can hear your heart rate increasing.”
Before the Taumoeba escaped into Rocky’s ship, he spent the start of his trip back to Erid building an interface for his laptop that let him use it, and then immediately teaching himself how to code. One of the first things he did once Ryland picked him up was make him spend about a week helping him update the translator to include proper grammar and sentence structure using a new app that he, of course, coded himself. While that’s impressive and all, it does mean that Ryland’s now fully exposed to the sheer amount of sass stored inside Rocky’s carapace.
Ryland can only sigh. “Yeah. Don’t think I’ll be sleeping for a while yet, bud.”
He shuffles around until he finds the switch for the small lamp above his bed and flicks it on, blinking groggily against the light. Rocky is sitting on what used to be the empty bunk next to him, as always, dutifully watching over him as he sleeps. Since he should, really, be sleeping.
Ryland’s head feels like its full of cotton, thoughts buzzing in and out of focus like TV static, but he sits up anyway and turns to look at Rocky. “What’re you doing?”
“Working on a new camera setup.” Rocky replies, poking a tiny screwdriver into something that does, upon further examination, look like a bigger version of his texture-screen. “This screen will give me more detail, higher frame rate. It’ll make it easier to watch all of the Earth movies you keep talking about.”
“Mm.” Ryland can’t muster up the brainpower needed for a proper response. The brain burns 400-500 calories per day on average, only 160-260 of which are waking brain activity, his memory helpfully supplies. Technically, if he thinks about it that way, him not sleeping is actually saving him calories in the long run. Useful, since he’s already rationing his food and trying very hard not to think about the state he’s going to be in by the time they reach Erid.
Rocky has set all his tools down and is tilting meaningfully towards Ryland, angling what Ryland has dubbed his ‘satellite face’ forwards, since something or other about the shape of his carapace makes it best for detailed sound reception. Ryland’s not sure when he stopped working on his camera – he must have zoned out. It’s been happening more and more recently.
“Grace.”
“Rocky.”
He was aiming to add a little humour to the situation, but Rocky still looks unimpressed. How does an alien rock spider with no face manage to look unimpressed? Ryland honestly has no idea.
Rocky scuttles until he’s right up against the barrier, only a few inches away from Ryland’s face, and he gives into the temptation to rest his forehead against the cool xenonite. There’s a humming-buzzing noise deep in his skull that he can’t shake off.
“Humans need to sleep for 28,800 seconds every night, you haven’t slept for more than 11,556 in eight nights, not including this one.” His voice softens a little – something about the length of the notes or a gentle waver at the end that cuts through the relative monotone of the translator. “You need to sleep.”
Ryland opens his eyes to find Rocky’s hand splayed in front of his forehead, and presses his own against it. Three taps, and three taps back. Ryland’s head spins.
“I know. I am trying.” It feels like a defense and a promise at the same time. “I just can’t. Stupid human brain stuff.”
“Very stupid. Inefficiently designed.” Rocky agrees, but there’s no bite in it.
They sit there for a while in the almost-silence of the spaceship. If Ryland tries hard enough, he imagines he can hear the whirring of the spin drives, or the whoomp of the Astrophage releasing their energy, or maybe even the scientifically impossible cartoonish tinkling of the stars as they shoot past, like windchimes. Maybe, if they do make it all the way to Erid and Ryland asks nicely, Rocky will make him some windchimes of his own for whatever human aquarium he’s planning on putting him in.
Eventually, Ryland’s head starts aching too much for him to hold it up anymore, so he lies back down on the bed and turns the lamp off again. He’s half-tempted to check the time, but he knows from experience that it always ends up making it even harder for him to sleep.
He drifts in half-consciousness for a while, fractured pieces of memories offering themselves up, even if he probably won’t remember them again tomorrow. The long grass that grew at the boundary of his grandparents’ garden, the gnarled old tree he was always too afraid to climb, a telescope gifted for some birthday or another and how he spent every night for weeks staring at the stars for hours on end until his grandmother coaxed him inside with promises of shortbread fresh out of the oven.
Ryland wonders if he ever ended up looking at Tau Ceti. He wonders if Rocky ever felt that there was someone watching him sleep after all.
He jams his face harder against the eyepiece of the telescope, searches and searches until he finds the brightest star in the sky, the only one not dimming. He looks for the tiny streak of red coming off of it, and for the speck of shadow that crosses it each orbit, his friend who doesn’t know he’s coming for him.
Grandma’s voice comes singsong and airy from the porch behind him, calling him inside for dinner. Ryland can smell shortbread, and hear the creaking of Grandpa’s rocking chair, the buzz of the radio he listens to every evening. The air is cold, and he can’t feel his hands anymore, and his back hurts from bending over the telescope, and his glasses are abandoned somewhere in the grass at his feet, but he can’t tear his eyes away from that star and its red line and the alien who doesn’t know help is coming.
“I can’t go inside.” Ryland hears himself say. “He can’t sleep alone. Please don’t make me go.”
“Ryland Grace.” Grandma’s voice is sterner now, the tone she only uses when he’s actually in trouble. “You’ll catch your death out here. Get inside.”
Ryland shakes his head. Tau Ceti burns into his eyes. “I can’t do it.”
“Grace.”
“I can’t do it.”
“Dr Grace.”
There’s a fox screaming in the underbrush like it’s dying, and Ryland is going to throw up. “You’re murdering me.”
A hand lands on his shoulder and then his head hits the ground and there’s a knee at his back and arms pinning him down and he’s scrabbling at the grass and screaming in the underbrush like’s he’s dying, and Stratt looks like she’s going to throw up.
“I have to do it, Grace.” She says softly, kneeling by his head as he howls and sobs, as the hands on him grow sharp claws that puncture his skin like needles. “You know I have to do it.”
Tau Ceti burns into his eyelids and he screams and screams until blood floods out of his mouth, and screams louder when the needle goes into his neck and sets his whole body ablaze, burning like superheated ammonia.
“Grace.”
“Don’t do it, don’t do it, please-”
“Grace!”
“Stop it stop it please stop you’re murdering me-”
“Grace!”
Ryland jolts awake to find himself at the tail end of a scream, tangled in blankets and wheezing for breath, halfway to falling off the bed. Rocky is in his ball on the floor next to him, frantically knocking on the xenonite, and slumps when he realises Ryland’s awake.
“Grace.” The notes are soft and sloped in relief. “Grace okay, question?”
He only uses the pidgin from their early days when he’s really worried. Ryland chokes on a sob and slides down to the floor, blankets and all, and slumps over Rocky’s ball. His heartbeat is rushing in his ears and he can’t get enough air into his lungs, chest aching the way it did when the guards tackled him to the ground, thoughts sluggish like he’d been sedated –
That was a bad one. Like, really bad, and Ryland doesn’t want to think about the inevitable conversation he’s going to need to have, but he can’t help it; all his other nightmares have been horrible and terrifying, yes, but not bad enough that Rocky needed to wake him up. Not bad enough that Ryland’s pretty sure he’d been screaming in his sleep, and it makes nausea roil in his stomach to think of what Rocky might have heard him say.
He hasn’t told Rocky about nightmares. He hasn’t told Rocky about how he ended up on this ship. He knows Rocky well enough to know that the Eridian pressing himself up to the xenonite below him and humming in high-pitched anxiety all the while is absolutely not going to let this go.
Ryland is going to have to talk about it. He really, really, really doesn’t want to talk about it.
“Grace,” Right on schedule. Great job, everyone! “what happened, question? You were screaming.”
Okay. Plan A: deflect. Ryland sits up and wipes his eyes. “Uh, how long was I asleep?”
“10,116 seconds.” A little under three hours – sounds about right. Rocky manages to look unimpressed. “Stop deflecting.”
Ah. Scrap plan A, then. Ryland decides that plan B: half-truth will have to be good enough; his head is spinning, and he still can’t quite breathe. He lets his head fall back against the frame of the bed, cool metal making him shiver a little, and switches his brain into Teacher Mode. “I need a whiteboard.”
<><~><>
The evil fluorescent lights in the lab are making Ryland’s eyes burn, but it’s worth it to be standing in front of a whiteboard with something to teach, Rocky sitting patiently (or as patient as Ryland supposes it’s possible to be when you’ve just witnessed someone have the mother of all nightmares without knowing what that even is) in front of him.
“Okay.” Ryland says, wiping yesterday’s ink off the board and uncapping his pen with a satisfying pop. “The human sleep cycle. I’ve already told you about how human bodies and brains don’t shut down when we sleep, but I don’t think I’ve explained exactly what it is that the brain does when it’s asleep.”
He divides the whiteboard into two columns – NREM and REM, with their full names written out below. Rocky’s pointing his camera at the board intently, evidently having finished his new texture-screen.
“NREM is divided into three phases; N1 is shortest, and it’s basically when you’re just falling asleep; N2 is longest, where sleep gets deeper and the brain consolidates memories; and N3 happens lasts, where sleep is deepest and the body repairs itself.” The board blurs before his eyes as he finishes writing it all down and moves over to the REM side, stumbling a little as he goes. Rocky makes a quiet noise of concern, but doesn’t say anything. “Then there’s REM – rapid-eye-movement sleep. The purpose of REM is to keep sorting and storing away memories, and the brain is most active when this is happening, so that’s why the body can move or – or make noises.” Ryland swallows harshly. His mouth is dry, so it’s just kind of uncomfortable. “When memories are being processed, the body experiences it as dreaming, which is where you… I guess you kind of hallucinate about past experiences? It doesn’t usually make much sense, and a lot of people don’t remember most of their dreams. They can be funny, weird, scary, or a combination of all of them.” A deep breath. “The scary ones are called nightmares.”
Rocky is quiet for a moment. “I will call general word ♪-♬♬, scary word ♫♪ -♬♬.”
Ryland crosses unsteadily over to the lab table to type it into the translator, probably taking longer than he really needs to. Screw it – he’s really freaking sleep-deprived and he should be allowed to stall about explaining nightmares to his best friend, the rock spider alien who doesn’t dream.
“You had a nightmare.” Not a question.
He slumps down to sit on the floor in front of Rocky’s tunnel. “Yeah. They’re not usually that bad. Sorry I freaked you out earlier.”
Rocky runs a hand along the measurement markings on his arm the way he does when he’s thinking hard. “Humans can’t decide what they dream and when, question?”
“No, it’s subconscious.”
“So don’t apologise.” He pauses, shifts a little. “What was your nightmare about, question?”
Ryland kind of saw the question coming, but he chokes all the same. He can’t tell Rocky, not yet, not like this, sat huddled in blankets on the lab floor at simulated stupid-o-clock in the morning, about one night of missed sleep away from throwing himself out of the airlock as it was. It’s cowardly of him, but that’s already been established, and the thought of Rocky knowing he’s a coward makes nausea beat at his stomach.
Plan B: half-truth.
He shakes his head. “I can’t talk about it, Rock. Not right now. I’m too tired.”
Rocky’s carapace lowers a little, but he nods it all the same. “Okay. I understand. Do you think you can try to go back to sleep, question? You’re wobbling.”
“Maybe.” Residual mother-of-all-nightmares panic aside, Ryland is so unbelievably tired right now that it might just be enough to knock him out if he tries hard enough. Passing out from exhaustion is close enough to sleep, isn’t it? “I’ll try.”
He stands up, and has to immediately sit right back down again because his blood doesn’t stand up with him and his vision blacks out for a second. When he opens his eyes again, Rocky’s in his ball, and Ryland stands up slower this time and leans on him all the way back to the dormitory. He flops down into bed, everything swaying even as he’s stationary. Rocky climbs into the bunk next to him.
“Hey, Rock?” His voice is rough and sore, but he doesn’t even care right now. “If I look like I’m having another nightmare, could you just – wake me up? Please?”
Rocky hums a low note of concern and comfort at the same time. It’s dissonant, but in a pretty way. “Of course. You sleep, I watch.”
Ryland sleeps.