Archive of Our Own

So, being dead. There's no cessation of consciousness, to begin with.

Not that I'd know what that would feel like, of course. I've never experienced non-existence before. But I'm pretty sure I'm experiencing conscious thought, however minimal, and cogito, ergo sum, right?

I ask myself, what's five times five?

Forty-one.

Alright, so, "I" am still here, that's something. The totally atheistic view of death is off the table, cool.

So, what's next? I don't have a lot to work with, just me and my thoughts. I sure hope that's not all I have in store for eternity. I've had a lot of time to experience nothing but my own company and it wasn't exactly my idea of a fulfilling existence.

Okay, wait, that was a memory. Not a particularly clear one, but still, any memory is somewhere to start. I concentrate.

It... isn't fun, but its the most concrete thing I have right now: loneliness. Not even "loneliness," actually. That's a profoundly weak word for it.

Absolute, utter isolation, the kind you can literally use to torture people. The kind nobody is built to withstand, and somehow withstanding it anyway. Every day the same, every year, every century, and on and on and on, yet on and on I go. It's soul-crushing to reflect on, but at least it's my soul being crushed.

Yeah, something else is coming into focus, this is good...

... oh.

Oh no. No no no this is bad. Abort mission, back to the void, the void is our friend now-

But it's too late.

Something tangible finally reaches me, and I feel it before I even feel it - horrible, horrible pain.

In the absence of any real proprioception, it barely even feels like sensory input; it's just this abstract, merciless attack on my consciousness from all directions. I want to react somehow, struggle, let out a cathartic "ow" or perhaps a good "holy fucking shit" or three, but I still don't have anything to work with.

Oh shit, am I in Hell? Is that what this is?

Kind of harsh, isn't it? I mean, I didn't do much, I know, I failed at just about every opportunity possible, but I at least put in the effort. Aren't you supposed to get points for trying?!

Calm down. Breathe.

There's nothing to breathe with, of course, but mentally going through the motions helps. It makes me notice something important.

There's something underneath me. I'm not in the void, this isn't some abstract pain dimension or incorporeal zone of divine punishment - I'm on a surface. Something solid. Gravity.

The more I pay attention to it, the worse the pain feels, but I soldier on and focus with all my might. Any actual sensory input, any information to figure out what the hell is going on, is worth a little bit (a lot) of pain.

The surface takes on a particular shape, more pressure on certain places than others. There's a craggy bump underneath me that feels kind of annoying, pressing up into my body in kind of a uncomfortable way, and the bump itself feels like its getting a little crushed-

A body, I have a body. I still have a body, I should say. And that "bump" is one of my arms, awkwardly folded up and pressing against my underside. You'd think the overwhelming pain would trivialize something so minor, but my newly-rediscovered body insists on resolving it all the same.

Anyway, does that mean I'm not dead? Best not to jump to conclusions, but a body with sensory input is pretty good evidence. Unless this is one of those afterlives where you still have a body, I think that's a thing.

It's right around then that I notice something, something that completely halts every other thought: I can't hear anything. I can feel the floor below me, but the "void" that I'm in, it isn't a void. It's total silence.

Oh. Oh God.

For all the pride we take in being adaptable, there's still frighteningly little that can be done for the completely deaf, and what can be done requires extremely specialized equipment and training we obviously don't have. If I can't recover my hearing, at least a little, that'll be it - I'll be less than useless to the mission.

"Mission?" What mission?

That shakes something loose. All at once, I feel a lot of information fighting for entry into my conscious mind, like a crowd piling up around a poorly-planned exit. A few seconds ago this would have been great, but I can't let it all in just yet - right now, I have a problem that needs to be solved immediately.

I can't hear, okay. What can I do about it? Normally, there's an intuitive solution here, so intuitive we call it an instinct - tap something. Unfortunately, tapping requires fingers, and I can't feel mine.

So, I search for my fingers. Worming my focus around all the pain is challenging, but it's getting easier. It isn't quite a uniform haze of torment now that I can feel my body again: its slightly worse in some places, and ebbs and flows in others. It's really fucking bad along a jagged line across my torso, radiating ache in every direction, but, hey, that makes my arms feel less bad by comparison.

The arm that I'm awkwardly pressing against is the easiest to keep track of, so I feel out the end of it. Sure enough, there's my claw. Unfortunately, its stuck. Literally, stuck between a Rock and a hard place (What? What does that even mean, who taught me that?), there's just no way I could move it in the state I'm in.

But that's okay, I found one claw, I can find another. Let's find out what's behind Arm Number Two.

I pick another arm at random. What do you know, it hurts like a motherfucker just like everything else, but at least it isn't stuck. The claw at the end is free to move on my orders. Awesome, I just need to give the orders.

Nothing, at first. No worries, I knew this wouldn't be easy. I take my time with it. Don't try to lift anything, Rock, we can take care of that later. Just concentrate and maybe curl a knuckle or two.

It takes a few tries, but finally, I get a budge. Shocker, it hurts, but, I can move. That's an accomplishment in itself.

I curl my finger back and forth, slowly. It's not a proper scratch or anything, the sound it'd make should be so faint as to be barely perceptible, but any object physically interacting with another object should produce some amount of sound energy.

It takes a few tries, but, to my overwhelming relief, I eventually get something. Right in time with the movement, sound travels up my arm and registers in my brain. I can hear my own body, kind of. And I have a very-slightly better awareness of the floor beyond what's immediately below me, again, kind of. It's very poor, very fuzzy hearing at an extremely limited range, but that's a huge deal at this point. If I can go from completely deaf to just barely hearing anything, I can go from barely hearing anything to hearing a little bit better.

I allow myself a few moments to pause, take stock of the situation.

At this point, I think I can safely say that I'm not dead. I still can't remember why I thought I was dead, I'm sure it's very important but, hey, not dead. I'm on a floor made of something smooth and sturdy, and the air feels pretty warm.

Well, it's pretty neutral, actually. Yeah, on closer inspection, very decidedly room temperature, the kind you'd normally not comment on. So why'd I think "warm"?

First guess: Grace must be getting to my dome again. Him and his ridiculous Earthling climate I've had to fight and circumvent and compromise with all this time, set so abysmally far below every freezing point it defies all logic and-

Grace.

Information blazes through my mind all at once, and a landslide of nausea along with it. I don't remember everything, but I remember exactly why I should have died now - along with a fresh wave of confusion about why the fuck I didn't - but I don't have time to worry about that.

Everything after I threw that lever is a blurry, cacophonous mess. There's no way I can navigate any of that right now, but my last clear memory involved helplessly listening to my friend and only surviving crewmate getting crushed to death. And the pitiful amount of hearing I've been able to carve out in my little torture prison isn't nearly enough to check on him.

Dammit, dammit-

I try to move, but I can't. There's not even a surge of pain from the effort; my body is just completely helpless right now. I try moving my claw again, but panic has completely thrown off the carefully-built concentration that made that possible.

He could be hurt, or dying, right next to me - hell, he could be looking me square in the carapace, right now, trying to start a perfectly pleasant conversation, and I wouldn't even know it.

DAMN IT.

It takes a long time, the arm shakes and boils over with pain through the whole process, but with sheer force of will I lift Claw Number Two from the floor. It's by a distance barely measured in millimeters, this is still going to be monumentally quiet, but I'm not trying to get Grace's attention - I just need to figure out where he is.

The arm gives out, hitting the floor with barely the suggestion of a patter. It feels like I just crashed it down at terminal velocity, yet it sounded like basically nothing, even less than I was hoping for. The ship, it must not be at full gravity.

I don't have any more energy. That was the best I could do in this state. Is it enough...?

There's more noise, at least. It's hazy, but its coming from all directions. A meager amount of new information is able to creep in: a little more floor, a wall directly next to me, occasionally specked by a strewn object that sounds... metal, probably my tools.

There's more than just the ambient sound, though. I hear something else, something actually making noise. It's a constant, droning hum, very low and unobtrusive, but noticeable.

The electronics on the ship. I remember now. Earthlings have made technological strides that boggle the imagination, but if the electrical currents they use to power those wonders weren't so damned inefficient, I probably wouldn't be picking up anything right now. Lucky break.

Then I catch something else. The electronics are ubiquitous, even in this state I can follow them anywhere in the ship. And directly above me, above the ceiling, there's something else making sound. It's faint, it takes a little while to be sure it isn't my imagination, but it's distinct, and it's a sound I've had plenty of time to learn: footsteps. They're slow, dragging, barely any life behind them at all, but they're unmistakably the sound of legs doing their job. Legs, not arms, and there's two of them.

The very instant I'm sure, I pass out.

--

I'm welcomed back to consciousness by fresh, mind-shattering pain. Objectively, this is a good sign - pain is only useful to a body that's determined to get better - but objectivity is the last thing on my mind. Everything felt bad before but it was nothing like this, I can already feel my brain realizing it woke me too early and apologetically pulling me back under.

The only thing stalling me is this awful sound, much louder than anything from before, and right up close to me. Vibrations buzz straight through the partition wall, the floor, and through every corner of my terribly abused body. It sounds like some kind of machine-

Hang on - is that Grace? What is that idiot doing this time?

I can't tell, there's nothing but pain right now. Unconsciousness returns and it comes as a tremendous mercy.

--

I wake up, again. Everything still hurts, of course, but it's downright tolerable compared to before. The worst of it isn't even the crack anymore, that's finally healed a bit, but, weirdly, my throat. I think this is new; I hadn't even thought of it before, but now it feels starkly raw. Every breath stings, especially on the intake-

Wait, I'm breathing. Its a slow process, steady and halfhearted, but I'm definitely breathing again. So my body has enough going on now that it needs a heat sink, that's really good. I even feel a little cooler than before, holy shit, I might actually pull through this.

And the good news keeps coming: my hearing finally has a decent bit of range again. It's still very hazy, I need to concentrate to read anything other than a basic geometric shape, but I can recognize the space I'm in, finally.

I don't need to strain myself to know where Grace is anymore; if he were an Eridian, I might, but the Earthling body is ever-loyal in its constant noisiness. I hear him only a meter or so away from me, moving and making more than enough sound to ease my concerns for the time being.

I'm in the dormitory airlock, sprawled out on the floor just as I was before, arm still jammed against my thorax. There's a mess of everything in every direction, all the tools and spare parts I kept so organized, and a whole lot of... biological-sounding stuff, probably my blood or something. It sounds pretty gruesome, but, whatever it is, I didn't die from it.

I didn't die. Why?

Well, that's not a hard question, it's self-explanatory - I made it back to the hab before any of my critical cell populations could completely eat dirt. In principle, its the exact same reason I never succumbed to radiation poisoning.

So, how did that happen? How did I - against the pull of gravity, no less - get from the control room, through the laboratory, up into the dorm, and back on my side of the airlock?

I think I know the answer, and I don't like it.

I turn my attention back to Grace and actively listen. He's on his bunk, I'm pretty sure, and he's squirming around a bit. I can hear his voice, but if there are any words in it, I'm in too rough of shape to make them out. He's facing away from me and being pretty quiet, so he's either talking to himself again or these are just general Earthling noises.

Slowly, I drag one arm across the floor. It's tempting to use the arm that's stuck, finally alleviate that little bit of annoyance, but I resist and go with the arm that's closest. It's a laborious effort to be sure, but it's easier than last time. My claw finds the wall, and I give it a weak but proper tap.

Everything comes into slightly better focus, including Grace. I hear him mumble something and lift his head, but not in the right direction. He's alive and some level of alert but he doesn't sound "well." His whole circulatory system is way too loud for this little activity.

I tap the wall again, a little harder. The sound I get back all but confirms my fears.

God dammit, Grace...

The tapping makes him turn to me, finally. For a good long moment, there's no reaction, he just looks at me and blinks. Then-

"Rocky!"

A cacophonous series of sounds hit me in rapid succession. As uncomfortable as it is, it's actually very helpful - with every bump, my surroundings clarify just that little bit and keep that way, adding up. Grace launches his weight across his bunk hard enough to overcome its carefully-engineered balancing mechanism and tip, sending him to the floor. Even as he falls he's already scrambling to move, and when he finally does he doesn't quite make it all the way to his feet; this must be the "perfunctory quadrupedalism" he told me about. Despite the awkwardness, he still rushes up to the wall way too fast and has to brake with a hard thud against his hands.

"Rocky, b¢δδ≤, are you okay?!"

Hearing Grace move that fast quells what's left of my fear, but even in the state I'm in, I can tell: he sounds like absolute shit. Half his clothes are missing and largely in their pace is a variety of (what I assume to be) medical equipment - I recognize it all from the ship's "robots-only" section.

I half-expect my voice to be completely out of commission, so I don't exactly plan to be understood when I mutter my answer: "Hate to complain, my friend, but I've been better."

Turns out it's in commission, but it hurts, something is definitely wrong up there.

Grace frowns and does something I've never heard him do before. Cupping his hand into a semi-circle, he presses one side against the wall and tilts his head so that the other side can surround one of his ears.

"I don't understand," he says. "Speak louder?"

It's an ad hoc resonating chamber. I don't know if that's him being a nerd or if that's another nifty thing Earthlings just know how to do, but either way, he's putting in the effort to hear me. Painful as it is, I need to meet it.

"... Sick."

"Yeah, you’re sick. You came into my air, of course you’re sick! You almost died!”

His voice sounds a lot like it does after he gets emotional and leaks everywhere, and yeah, he's probably been doing that too, but I don't think that's what this is. There's an extra-gross texture to everything connected to the holes in his face, all the way down. I'm pretty sure this is from physical damage.

Oh, if this wall wasn't keeping us both alive-

But I pay for that intrusive thought immediately. Sheer frustration makes me feel a lot stronger than I really am and I, very stupidly, try to stand. I actually manage a decent bit of headway, but even in the weakened gravity I'm not nearly well enough for that kind of workout yet. I clunk back to the floor, feeling almost as shitty as the second time I woke up, except for that one arm - I wasn't going to do that and not take the opportunity to finally get it unstuck.

I wait it out, taking a few deep, stinging breaths. I already know what answer I'm going to get, but I have to ask him. "... How I return here?"

"I moved you," he replies, as if he were talking about one of my duffle bags and not dead weight more than double his own mass. And that isn't even the worst part.

"You touch me air?"

I recognize the gesture he's doing with his arms, rising up at their connecting points to his body. It's fairly broad but in this case it indicates dismissal, "Don't worry about it."

"A little, yeah."

Of course he did. Of fucking course he did.

I rap my fingers against the floor. Tremendous waste of energy right now, but if I had all my faculties I'd be using my whole body, let me have this.

He just couldn't leave well enough alone, could he? I did exactly what I was supposed to do, for the mission and his own safety, and he had to go and fuck it all up. It's not like I wanted to die, sure, nobody does, but it was necessary. I've been prepared for whatever became necessary for this mission - worse than that, far worse, if it ever came to it - for longer than he's been alive.

And what does he do? Turn around and immediately chuck that effort in the trash, of course! Not an inconsiderable amount of effort either, I threw myself in the jaws of death at great personal inconvenience-!

Get a grip. Breathe.

Right. Mission first.

However it happened, Grace is hurt, possibly very badly. In an Earthling atmosphere, the fundamental solvent of all living chemistry starts to vaporize at 244 degrees Celsius, and my life support sits at a cozy 550 degrees. The priority here is obvious.

I reassess him. I don't know exactly what to listen for, but there's a lot of changes and they follow a pretty clear pattern, mostly concentrated to one particular side of his bilateral plane. There's a lot of soft-sounding medical equipment strapped tightly to his skin, like patches on a leaky pipe, and everything underneath is in varying levels of not-normal. The most egregious by far is the arm on that plane - it isn't just patched up but completely covered, down to the wrist, and there's a lot of new textures where his skin ought to be. My guess: that equipment is performing the role of "skin" while the real stuff recovers, assuming this isn't permanent.

I shift a claw and point.

"Skin on arm is... not smooth. Damage?"

He looks down where I'm gesturing, as if he'd forgotten all about it. He pulls the affected arm from the wall.

"A little, yeah. But I'll be okay."

His vital signs are elevated, but that could just as easily be from emotion, and Grace is not exactly adept at hiding pain. I can't be sure, but he's acting remarkably calm for such an extensive injury. More than anything he just seems tired.

I run the numbers again, and again, and I just can't make sense of it. Conditions that should have made him a cloud of vapor, instantly, and that wafer-thin mesh held the line. I remember Grace telling me, in scientific detail, how his skin was principally the same as mine from both a biological and evolutionary point of view, however vast the difference in raw strength, but I guess some things you simply need to hear to believe.

Really, truly amazing, these people. Utterly determined to survive.

I take another deep breath, slowly braving all the discomfort, and then let it out. It's starting to sink in now.

Neither of us are dead. Somehow. Grace is alive, despite his own efforts, and I didn't have to die to make it happen.

The ship too. In fact, that might even be the most remarkable survival story to come out of this whole operation. The amount of trauma it's been through is, even to my blown-out hearing, painfully apparent in all directions. Several parts are outright gone, every other surface is warped or crumpled in some way, and I can hear evidence here and there of Grace patching the hull while I was down for the count.

And yet, it chugs along, still dutifully protecting us from the silent eternities of space. Earthling superstitions about naming and anthropomorphizing their vessels, like they're worthy of respect on the level of a person - it's still kind of stupid, but, I think I get it now.

Through some truly, utterly insane combination of dumb luck and even dumber action, we all survived our people's collective first expedition to an alien planet.

We were the crew that the universe or fate or God or whatever, in all its machinations and insistence on snuffing life out, simply could not kill. Or maybe the crew that God-or-whatever simply couldn't allow to die under any circumstances, not sure. If I still feel like it, I can unpack the theological implications of this when I get home.

I'm still angry, but... minutes ago, from my perspective, I was grappling with my own certain death. Now I'm thinking about home.

"You damage self to save me," I grumble. "Thank."

He gives a tired smile. "You did the same thing."

It'd have been really nice to leave it at that, but... something still bothers me. But before I can find the words, Grace leans in and says something very confusing.

"Is your radiator organ okay? You were on fire and got full of soot and oxides."

First of all, yikes, but I'll freak out about that later. Just before he'd spoken, I'd finally directed my attention to the gory crap that was strewn around my body, and it definitely wasn't blood.

"It healing," I answer, attention still on the walls. As soon as I was sure, I point at one of the stains. "This... come from inside me?"

"Yes."

Oh my God.

"... How it leave me?"

He smiles a little wider, a little dumber. I know that sound.

Obviously proud of himself, he points at something I had noticed was there for a while but hadn't thought to pay attention to. A small, extremely crude-cut metal box was stuck up against the wall, surrounded by an equally-crude box, and then an even worse one. There's other bits attached to it, but it's such mess of what could generously be called attempted engineering that I don't even want to guess what it's for - not that I have to.

“I made a device to blow air at you. I aimed at your radiator vents and all that nasty stuff came out.”

"..."

In spite of everything, I laugh. Just like everything else, it hurts, but it actually makes me feel a lot better. It's so utterly, profoundly absurd, my poor voice actually manages to get a good trill going before finally giving out, then I just sputter.

"How long was that... 'stuff' inside me?" I finally manage.

He thinks for a second. "About... two days?"

Forty-eight Earth hours. One hundred and twenty. Holy shit, he didn't even wait - he cut it just about as close as he could get away with. I wheeze out another laugh.

This is perfect. It couldn't have been more perfect if I'd planned it. If this won't teach him a lesson, nothing will.

"You almost kill me."

His voice rises so hard that it cracks. "What?!"

This is exactly what I get for covering everything from my ovulation cycle to the exact cellular makeup of my spleens before explaining something this basic to first aid. This is exactly what he gets for frying himself half to death just to save my worthless ass.

"How?! I blew all the soot out of your radiator!"

I need a moment to compose myself; I actually feel lighter from sheer giddiness. I manage to shift my carapace and give the side I'd been leaning on a much-needed break.

"Black substance is not soot. My body make this. It cover damage while body repairs."

Who hadn't been taught to not pick at their scabs as a kid? I know one guy!

The sweet, stupid bastard had thwarted my plans to sacrifice myself, likely nearly dying in the process, then he went and channeled all that sweet, stupid bastard energy into making this metal abomination that almost killed me anyway.

I keep waiting for him to laugh too, but he just stares at me. I'm surprised, I mean, if he actually had killed me then yeah, I'd get it, but come on, man - I know both our species have a sense of humor.

"Oh..."

His expression changes, slowly. He isn't laughing.

"Oh no..."

His hands shake as he brings them up to his face, covering the opening he eats through. This is a new one, and absent of any explanation, my Ericentric mind reads it as a gesture of deep, overwhelming shame.

He can't hear me when I laugh. I remember now. I don't think I forgot, actually, there'd just been so much going on that I hadn't thought of it. I can adjust my speaking voice to accommodate the frequency range of his hearing, but, real, honest laughter? You can't force that to sound any sort of way.

Oh, have I fucked up. That all must have sounded miserable from his perspective. He must think I'm angry - and I mean, yeah, I am angry, but I'm angry about him being an idiot and getting himself burned up, not the stupid scab thing. I didn't want him to actually feel bad.

"I'm so sorry!" He's about to start leaking. "I was trying to help-!"

Shit-

"No say sorry," I croak. I can't even speak with any urgency, I wasted all my energy laughing and being a jackass. I really, truly could not have fucked this up harder if I tried. "If you did earlier, I die, but, I heal enough before you do it."

I rattle the numbers off again. Can I salvage this without outright lying...?

"... removing help a little. Thank."

It was a half-truth at best, but I was going to have to start breathing again eventually. And there really was a lot of gross shit in there, I shouldn't be surprised that he mistook it for a problem.

He bumps his head against the wall and puts his face in his hands. I can hear him leaking, but only a little - God, he really must be tired.

"Sorry..."

What am I doing? I'm better than this. It isn't much, but I drag an arm across the floor until it touches the corner where the wall connects.

"No say sorry," I repeat, doing my best to sound firm. "You save me when you put me here. Thank thank thank."

Maybe I'd been a little too eager to die back there. I would have done it either way, of course, but thinking back, I must not have completely gotten over myself.

That pitiful, irrational part of me that feels responsible for what happened to the crew - I hate it, I'm embarrassed by it, I recognize it for what it was and know it isn't at all helpful, but I guess none of that was enough to completely stamp it all out. I should really hunker down and review some of my training... later, when I'm feeling better.

Besides, if I really had died, what then? Grace, doubtlessly, would have still done the exact the same thing, for the exact same reason, gotten the exact same amount of hurt, with the exact same risk of death, only it would have all been for no reason at all. There's no timeline where I save him and he doesn't do all that.

Not to mention, he'd have to eventually accept that I was never going to wake up, and... well, he'd be inconsolable. I'm hard on myself, it's a vice, but even the meanest, most self-critical part of me knows it.

He'd also be alone.

I try to get up again, testing my strength. I hold position for a new record of just over a second before crumbling.

"I am weak, but... I will heal."

My voice probably dipped out of range from the effort, but Grace still seems to catch the meaning. He nods and steels himself with a few raspy breaths, then he pulls away from the wall. He sits down the side of his bed, eyes still on me.

"Would you be more comfortable in zero g?" he asks. "I can turn off the centrifuge."

Ah, that reminds me. We went through this whole ordeal for a reason, didn't we?

"No, gravity help heal."

Before I continue, I take the time to finally stop sprawling and tuck in my arms, giving my body some badly-needed support. I can't stand yet, but I can at least sit down like a grown-ass man.

"Sample container is safe?"

"Yes. It's in the lab now."

Thank God. I figured that was true, he'd probably be a lot more out of sorts if it wasn't, but you never know.

"I made an Adrian environment in a sealed container and put some Astrophage in along with the sample container. I'll see how it's doing in a bit."

"Good. Earthling light sense, very useful."

"Thanks," he sighs. "But my Earthling brain wasn't as useful. I don't have a way to get the sample out of the container."

I tilt at him. He probably doesn't know what that means, but I still do it.

"You seal sample and can no access sample?"

"Yes."

It's tempting to launch a properly ruthless zinger, but he's been through enough for one day.

"Usually you not stupid. Why stupid?"

"Earthlings are stupid when we need sleep," he mumbles, rubbing around his face. "And when we take medicine to stop pain. I'm tired and δr፱ggℇδ right now."

"You should sleep."

He, of course, stands up, wobbling all the way.

"I will in a bit, but first I have to stabilize our orbit. Our apogee and perigee are..." He holds out one finger and twirls it in a circle, trying and failing to enunciate a point. "... well, it's not a good orbit."

Well, if he insists on killing us both as the anti-climax to this whole adventure, I can't exactly stop him.

"Adjust orbit while stupid. Good plan."

He pauses, then lets out a weak laugh. It's not much, but I hope it makes him feel better.

"New word: CsɐᄃЯɐƧn. You say opposite of true meaning to make point. CsɐᄃЯɐƧn."

"Sarcasm."