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This wasn't good. This wasn't good at all.
The Mary was broken in more ways than one right now. It wouldn't stop jolting from the engines, spinning still for the artificial gravity, but pressing forward occasionally, knocking Grace off his feet and into whatever was closest to him: the wall, the floor, or Rocky. Grace had no idea why the ship was doing this. He had no idea how to fix it. At least not yet.
"Bad bad bad," Rocky chirped over and over, his notes layering with the alarms from Mary and the red flashing lights that blurred Grace's vision. "Bad bad bad!"
"I know!" Grace snapped back, running a hand through his hair. "I know! We gotta find out what the heck is going on."
The alarms on the Mary had been blaring the same tone every couple of seconds for over 15 minutes now. Nothing was coming up on the screens as an issue, other than the fact that the life support systems were failing, but there was no cause. There was no reason for the system to be failing and now Grace had a few days of oxygen to solve this, assuming that there wasn't anything using his oxygen supply outside of him and assuming that the Mary wasn't moving itself towards a sun or star that would burn him and Rocky up on impact.
"Come on, come on. Give me something," Grace pleaded with the screen, scrolling through all of the error messages, now coming in and stemming from one single area of the the ship: the brain of the ship, the microcontroller that was stored deep down in the depths of the Mary near the fuel, the astrophage that was no longer functioning properly.
Without another word, Grace took off, sprinting through the dimly lit ship towards the ladder, Rocky hot on his heels, rolling right behind Grace in an attempt to keep up with his friend.
"Where we go, question?" Rocky chirped, following Grace's lead into the depths of the Mary, down into the belly of the ship where the electronics were kept.
"We're going to look at the microcontroller," Grace explained. "It's the thing that controls the ship and it's not functioning properly right now. I might need your engineering skills to fix it."
"Rocky help. Rocky always help," he vowed.
Stopping suddenly with Grace, both attempted to hold steady as the engines jolted again, sending Grace into the wall and then onto the floor with a harsh thump as Rocky was thrown around the hallway, landing beside Grace with similar force.
"You okay?" Grace asked, pushing himself back to his feet as quickly as he could, glancing at his friend.
"Yes yes yes. Rocky Grace fine. Need fix now," Rocky chirped out, taking off down the hall, urging Grace to keep leading him and to keep going. They needed to solve this as soon as they could.
Crawling down the ladder, Grace gripped onto it with everything he had, the ship shaking and tumbling as the engines spurted out astrophage energy at random intervals, knocking him back and forth against the ladder. Keep hold of it was difficult, especially as his palms sweat in fear, nearly causing him to lose his grip.
"Be careful, Grace!" Rocky shouted at him from his tunnel beside Grace, following his friend down the ladder as best as he could.
"I'm trying!"
Jumping off from a few rungs up, Grace hit the ground with a harsh landing before he took off down the hall, shouldering open the door of the room that contained the microcontroller.
"Okay, okay, c'mon Ryland," he muttered to himself, using his flashlight to take in the processor core. "You can do this."
"What wrong with ship, question?" Rocky asked anxiously, rolling into the room and pushing his way over to Grace, nudging fallen boxes and supplies out of his path, things that Grace stepped over without a second thought.
"It looks like the brain of this ship got fried by something," Grace rambled, running his fingers over the charred remains of the microcontroller, black dust that was eerily familiar in a horrible way staining his fingers. "Luckily, it's just the one, so we can fix it."
"Good good good," Rocky muttered, tapping his claws together as he watched Grace, unable to do more to help.
Grace moved and worked quickly, moving pins out of one chip and into another, an identical replica nearby that was undamaged - a duplicate in case something like this happened. At least he wouldn't have to dig through multiple boxes in the dark for it, this was much simpler.
"Almost done," Grace hummed, the flashlight in his mouth as he readjusted the wires and chips.
This wasn't his forte. This was Ilyukhina's job, not his. Luckily, he was a nerd growing up and knew how to reconnect one chip from another from burning out most of his own computers growing up.
The ship jolted again, sending Grace slamming into the boxes under his feet, tripping him and causing him to land on the floor, mild pain running itself through his right side as he grunted out in pain. He'd barely felt it and this wasn't the time to worry over a new bruise - he had plenty already and much bigger things to worry about currently.
"Grace okay, question?" Rocky yelled, stuck under a pile of boxes, unable to move.
"I'm fine!" Grace shouted at him, ignoring the pain and clipping the last few wires into the chip.
Almost immediately, the Mary stopped yelling at them and the red lights went away, calmer white lights taking their place, blinding Grace as a hand came up over his eyes.
"Rock?" Grace asked, moving the boxes off of his friend in a manic haste. "You good?
"Rocky fine. Grace fine, question?"
"Yeah, yeah," Grace replied quickly, pushing the last box off of Rocky's hamster ball. "I'm good."
"Good good-" Rocky began, cutting himself off when he could finally see Grace clearly, his vision no longer skewed by alarms or boxes. "Grace hurt," he whispered quietly, taking a look at his friend.
"It's just a bruise, Rock," Grace waved him off, not even bothering to look at his side. "I'll be okay."
"No no no," Rocky shouted incessantly, shaking his ball back and forth, a claw coming up to point at Grace's side, where the bruise was that he could barely feel anymore. "No no no! Grace no understand! Grace hurt! Grace bleed!"
Grace was confused, his mind scrambled and puzzled over what Rocky was talking about until he looked down at his side, his eyes meeting what Rocky had been pointing at and so nervous about.
Sticking out of his was 2 inches of solid piping on his right side, slightly above his hip and in towards his stomach.
"Oh," Grace breathed out, his eyes locking on the red liquid that dripped slowly from his wound in time with his heartbeat.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
"Grace go Armando now!" Rocky demanded.
"Yeah," Grace agreed quietly, shock overtaking his body, still unable to feel his wound. "Okay."
Rocky skittered nervously around Grace as the two climbed their way back into the main atrium of the ship, Grace's steps becoming slower and less coordinated as the trail of red in his wake became more and more prominent - a Petrova line of his own creation that followed him forever.
Grace stumbled, the floor swaying under his feet as he collapsed against the wall, Armando and the med bay in view, Rocky's piercing chirps of worry piercing his ears like the Mary had done so earlier.
"Go Grace!" He chittered. "Get help! Need help!"
Pushing himself off of the wall with the last of his strength, Grace passed out on the floor next to the bed, the pipe in his side shifting with the impact, twisting and pressing itself deeper into his side, but he could no longer feel it. He could never feel it.
~~~
The first thing Grace noticed as he woke up was Rocky's nervous tapping echoing around the room, his claws coming together in a steady rhythm that matched his own heartbeat, like it was his way of reassuring himself that Grace was still alive.
The second was the burning, breathtaking pain that emanated from his right side, radiating around the area up and down his torso, infecting his ribs and hip near it.
"Ngh," Grace huffed out in pain, unable to say anything meaningful at the moment.
"Eye movement detected," Mary called as Rocky gingerly moved closer to Grace, coming from between his legs to his left side, careful to avoid his injured side. "Increasing pain medication now."
"Thanks Mary," Grace muttered out, tilting his head to look over at Rocky, a slow hand resting on top of his ball as the heat radiated into his body from the ammonia atmosphere.
"Grace hurt, question?" Rocky asked gently, pressing himself against the side of the ball, desperate to get as close to his friend as he could.
"Yeah," Grace whispered out, weak and pained. "I'll be okay though," he reassured him.
"Why Grace no get help immediately, question?" Rocky asked. "Why Grace say fine when not fine, question?"
"I didn't know I was hurt," Grace responded honestly.
Rocky just stared at him silently for a moment, confusion evident in his body language, a language woven into Grace's being after being together for so long.
"How no know hurt, question?"
"Humans have this thing called adrenaline," Grace began explaining gingerly, the narcotics flooding his system as he spoke, making his words slur as his mind drifted slightly further into space and the stars that surrounded them. "When we're in high stress situations, the brain releases it and it can mask pain, make us work better for the time being until the danger passes. It helps us to stay alive until we are safe. I didn't feel it because of that. I didn't even feel it until we got up here."
"Humans no able feel pain, question?" Rocky clarified.
"Only sometimes," Grace slurred out, his eyes fighting to stay open and to answer Rocky's questions - ever the teacher, per usual.
"Humans weird, statement," Rocky deadpanned, making Grace chuckle slightly before realizing his mistake, a hand coming over to press on his wound slightly. "When Eridian plural hurt, feel all," Rocky explained. "Know when injured, not like humans."
"Yeah, humans are a bit weird, bud," Grace agreed, his head lolling on the pillow behind him.
"Sleep. Grace need sleep," Rocky commanded, pressing himself into Grace's non-injured side. "Rocky watch."
"Thanks buddy," Grace managed to say as his eyes shut and he feel into a deep sleep, resting and recuperating his injured body, still recovering from the burns that covered him from the planet Adrian and Rocky himself only weeks ago.
Settling down, Rocky watched Grace as he thought. The ability to not feel pain, to shut off those feelings, was completely foreign to him and worried him slightly. Just how far could humans push themselves without realizing it?
From that moment on, he vowed to keep a closer watch on his human. He didn't want to see his Grace get injured again - he was far to precious for that.