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Nothing about the way the Eridians loved Grace should have surprised Ilyukhina anymore, but they kept finding small ways.
Like the lack of needles, for one. Eridians had no needles in their own medical practices, but they were, definitely, the easiest ways to do things for a lot of human medicinal practices and procedures. Rocky would have read about that on the laptop Gracie gave him the first time around. And yet, none of Gracie’s Eridian medical procedures used needles- everything was either topical, a pill, or a contact-device that could ‘listen’ to the finer details of his biology to make sure his vitamin, mineral, and hormone levels were all as they should be. Rocky had practically been using the device as a comfort item, checking Grace’s ‘labwork’ every few hours to make sure that his stint on Earth hadn’t harmed his health in any way.
Grace hated needles, and so instead of adapting existing medicine to Eridian technology, which would have been much easier to do, they looked at human medical technology and re-invented it. In comparison to everything else they’d done for him even before the time travel, it seemed like such a small thing.
Which was maybe why Ilyukhina was so hung up over it. Creating a biodome and synthesizing food to keep him alive, while daunting, had been very, very, very necessary. They’d done it out of love, yes, but also because there wasn’t another choice. Re-inventing the medical field not to use needles just so that he would never have to face his phobia around them was incredibly sweet, incredibly difficult, and also incredibly optional. Plenty of people on Earth had needle phobias, and yet nobody there had ever revolutionized medical technology about it.
Olesya mused over this as she chewed on some Eridian-made refried beans and rice that, if she didn’t know were synthesized on an alien planet, she would have sworn were from any little hole-in-the-wall Tex-mex place near NASA headquarters.
The Her-fajitas were pretty good too.
“And?” Grace asked, as he chowed down on some birria tacos (made with synthesized beef from the cells on the Mary; the novelty of auto-cannibalism had long-since worn off for him and so he, like Yao, had opted for more ‘normal’ dinners).
“I am not just literal snack. Am whole meal,” she declared cheerfully around a mouthful, giving him a bright thumbs-down. “Chef Ramsey is very good at his job!”
“I am so excited to find that you’ve given her a taste for human flesh before I am to spend three years locked on a spaceship back to Earth with her,” Yao muttered, voice flat and sardonic.
“I mean, you could always go back into the comas if the trip gets to be too much. We’re reasonably sure the ship will be okay after all the mods we made,” Grace reminded him.
“Yao can do as Yao wants,” Ilyukhina responded, “but I will not go into coma again. Track record for surviving for me is 50-50. I do not like odds. Will just play lots of minecraft and try not to eat Yao.” She smiled cheekily at the mission’s second-in-command.
“And I am not about to put myself into a coma after she says something like that,” Yao replies, not looking at all amused by her jokes.
“Listen, if cannibalism really worked like that even with other food options available, I would have been snacking on Redell on like, day two after landing back on the Vatt,” Grace assured the man.
“You literally are a citizen of another planet. You are an outlier in human psychology and should not be counted.” Yao was not pouting. Yao was expressing his concerns in a very dignified and stoic manner.
“Spiders Georg,” Olesya randomly blurted, causing Yao to look at her with a concerned and slightly fearful expression.
“Calm, Captain. Is ‘MEEM’,” Adrian assured the man. “Human engineer is functioning at normal cognitive capacity.”
“Ух ты! The aliens are more caught up on internet culture than you!” Olesya exclaimed with delight. “This is best day of my life!”
“Savior of Erid, Hope from Tau Ceti, He who Endured, Bringer of Erid’s Beloved Grace Friend Rocky,” another Eridian called out, suddenly breaking into their conversation. “Houston has received radio transmission that we have successfully rescued Mercy from Sol, Grace from the Skies, Courageous Squishy Angel Savior Friend, Bringer of Hope and Knowledge, Guardian of Life and He Whose Exoskeleton is formed of Our Dreams! Rock of Ages Thrum has declared a new international holiday in jubilation!”
“Oh wow, you guys got the radio transmission time down that much, question?” Grace piped up cheerfully. “That’s awesome!”
“Why do Eridians have Houston?” Olesya asked. “They don’t even have Texas!”
“Did you really name what sounds like Eridian UN the ‘Rock of Ages Thrum’?” Yao moaned.
“Mercy from Sol, Grace from the Skies, Courageous Squishy Angel Savior Friend, Bringer of Hope and Knowledge, Guardian of Life and He Whose Exoskeleton is formed of Our Dreams calls radio station near space elevator ‘Houston.’ So is official Eridian name,” the Eridian explained. They were grey and around the same size as Rocky, and they had a portable radio mounted to the top of their xenonite suit.
“Guys, this is HAM,” Grace introduced the two humans.
HAM the Eridian knew that Mercy from Sol, Grace from the Skies, Courageous Squishy Angel Savior Friend, Bringer of Hope and Knowledge, Guardian of Life and He Whose Exoskeleton is formed of Our Dreams knew his name, but hearing it from their very own planet savior’s mouth still sent a thrill of excitement right through their mercury bloodstream. They buzzed with delight.
“You named the radio operator HAM?” Yao asked, extremely unimpressed.
“Yeah I know, it’s not kosher. Good thing Shapiro’s not here,” Grace replied, looking entirely too pleased with himself.
“Beloved Grace very good at naming things,” Adrian declared smugly, the proud recipient of an entire planet named in their honor. He’d tried to insist that it was Rocky’s idea, but they knew their mate entirely too well to believe that. However, the starving, dying alien trying to, as the human pebbles might say, ‘Rizz Rocky up’ by being the best ‘WING-MAN’ in three solar systems had immediately endeared him to them perhaps even more than saving the entire planet had. It was a gesture that made it clear not only that Beloved Grace was a great being, but that he was truly good. How could Adrian not come to care for him immediately? How could they not make it their Number One Goal in the Universe to do everything in their power to help nurse him back into a shape that was appropriately blobby for his species?
Grace had been so worried in those early days about ‘keeping Rocky from Adrian’ or ‘preventing them from re-uniting properly.’ As the two took turns watching him sleep on the Mary while the other participated in the ‘Keep Mercy from Sol, Grace from the Skies, Courageous Squishy Angel Savior Friend, Bringer of Hope and Knowledge, Guardian of Life and He Whose Exoskeleton is formed of Our Dreams alive’ Thrum, almost never in the same room for very long because it was their joint mission to look out for both Beloved Grace, Third of Their Soul’s immediate and long-term health, and the best way to do that was to divide and conquer, Grace fretted. Half-dead, starving and delirious, spewing self-deprecation about how they should leave him to his own devices and go have a proper reunion, Adrian had felt all five of their hearts break for him.
Couldn’t he see that he was everything to them- to both of them? He’d brought Rocky back to Adrian. He’d saved their planet. But more than that, here was the one being in the universe who loved Rocky as much as they did, and who had been willing to give everything not even for Erid as a whole, but for Rocky alone?
“Grace not break Rocky Adrian bond,” they’d promised him, a gentle claw on his skeletal face as they gently readjusted the blankets and pillows with another claw, making a nest that would prevent him from hurting himself as he thrashed around in his confused, fever-induced hysteria. “Grace makes Rocky Adrian bond stronger, statement. Grace rest now, command. Grace belongs to Erid-inclusive-pronoun now. Erid will protect its own.”
Shaking free of the traumatic memories, Adrian was glad that the hand that rested on top of their suited carapace now was hale and hearty and free of the texture of burnt skin that had once engulfed the entire left limb. His joints sounded strong, not swollen at all, and his bones were the density that they were supposed to be. In the latter days of the first timeline, his heart had been struggling- nothing life-threatening yet, but worrying nonetheless. Now it pumped strongly and consistently. His muscles were fit and dense and not eating themselves away just to keep him alive. He wasn’t suffering at all.
“Should have done this sooner,” they ‘whispered’ to Rocky in a frequency above Grace’s hearing range and quiet enough to be only heard by the two of them even with Eridian’s superior hearing. “Could have saved Beloved from much suffering.”
“Agreed,” Rocky whispered back. “Would have been hard to be separated, but better for Grace’s long-term health. Shame that took terrible tragedy that forced idea.”
“Never again, statement,” Adrian promised their mate, still above Grace’s frequency. He could tell that they were having a secret conversation, however. He always knew, whether he mentioned it or not. The rhythmic bumping of his thigh against Rocky’s carapace, and the way he was rubbing circles with his thumb on top of Adrian’s, had always been his ‘tell’, an involuntary comforting motion that he made when he knew the other two were worrying about him out of his earshot.
“No no no, Donatello!” Their Beloved was currently scolding the artist they’d brought along for the crew (because it was a long trip to Erid and what if Grace got bored of his surroundings? Donatello’s job was to make sure that his side of the ship was always cozy and pleasing for him). Donatello was using the faster-than-light radio on top of HAM’s carapace to talk to their mate back home, a renowned sculptor. “I can hear you, and you better tell Michalangelo that I said no more statues of me!”
“But statues of Mercy from Sol, Grace from the Skies, Courageous Squishy Angel Savior Friend, Bringer of Hope and Knowledge, Guardian of Life and He Whose Exoskeleton is formed of Our Dreams are mate’s passion in life, and they make cities of Erid sound so nice and avante-garde,” the green Eridian protested. “Would you-reverent really deprive them of their life’s joy, question? You-reverent would rather them be forced to ‘PAYNT’ ceiling of large religious structure, question?”
“Showing you those art history lectures on Youtube was a mistake,” was Grace’s only reply.
________________
There really wasn’t that much to do this time around for the humans. The Eridians had already done everything, including breeding enough Taumeoba for them to start the farm back on Earth to send to Venus. The Eridian’s current priorities seemed to be more centered around finalizing and building tech for Faster-than-light video chat for Grace, getting all of Grace’s stuff off the Hail Mary and onto the Blip-A, and being basically glued to Grace every second of every day, or at least what passed for a day in space. The man’s fingers were constantly flying across his keyboard (a much nicer one than the one Stratt had commissioned) as he caught up with his friends about what they’d all been up to since they’d last seen each other.
Yao thought that he would feel rather claustrophobic if he had as many people as consistently near him as Grace did, but Grace didn’t seem to mind. He assured them that, other than Rocky and Adrian, he normally had more privacy than he currently did, but he’d missed his people just as much as they’d clearly missed him, so everyone seemed happy with the arrangement. Other than the use of his full title, which they still refused to drop despite his begging.
“Savior Rocky told us we were allowed to appreciate you properly and ignore your demands to be treated with less-than-deserved love and reverence,” or some version of the sentiment were lobbed at Grace like a pineapple grenade whenever he huffily demanded that they ‘cut it out.’ It made him even grumpier that Rocky got to have his informal title used. “Next time want informality, do not self-sacrifice, statement.”
“It will stop soon, Grace Beloved,” Adrian assured him. “It is partly because Rocky is being a menace, but they are also on most formal behavior for humans. They wish it to be clear that Erid-inclusive-pronoun treats you with respect and appreciation. They wish to set example for Earth on how to treat you properly.” They and Rocky were still using the closest ‘you’ pronoun, at least, even if the other Eridians were being way too formal whenever the two humans were within (human) hearing distance. While they were always using his full title (and enjoying it way too much), they would at least use more familiar and friendly second-person pronouns whenever the other two were back on the Mary.
“They do know that Earth is never going to actually know about the time-travel or anything from the first timeline, right? There’s nobody to ‘set an example’ for,” he grumbled, hands hitting the keyboard with slightly more force than necessary as he pouted. “Just Yao and Lesy, and they’ve always treated me well.”
“So rest of crew is slightly overzealous. Not a bad thing. Everyone missed you very much. It makes them happy,” Adrian assured him as they both watched Rocky sleep.
Whatever Grace might have responded was cut off by Yao and Olesya, who came up to him wide-eyed and panting.
“The Hail Mary exploded,” Yao announced without fanfare, hands shaking.
“I’m sorry?” Grace asked, sure he must have misheard, or that he’d once again gotten so used to Eridian that his English was starting to slip even though he knew rationally that it hadn’t been nearly long enough for that.
“We were in tunnel, about to start transferring first load of taumoeba, when she just… exploded!” Olesya seconded, waving her hands wildly.
Armando, in the corner of Grace’s bedroom, whirred quizzically.”
“Mary?” Grace asked. Her database and servers had all been copied to the Blip-A and incorporated as a separate, secondary system, partly for ease of incorporating the human tech and data into the Home Ship’s own systems, and partly because Grace liked her. So even if the physical ship had actually exploded, Mary was still there in the room with them and could give them insight into the issue.
“My servers are only a copy, but it does appear that the main ship has, in fact, exploded, based on eye-witness accounts and the fact that I can no longer connect with the original servers,” her gentle, slightly-robotic voice came over the intercoms.
“Can you guess what might have caused it?” Grace asked everyone and anyone.
“Everything was running in peak condition on last systems check,” Olesya said, tugging her long ponytail in frustration. “In fact, only thing that I can think of that might have caused such a reaction is edge case that blew up lab with Annie and Martin in first timeline. But with xenaluminum coatings, chances were one in 60,000,” she continued, huffing her bangs out of her face.
“No…” Grace replied, horror lacing his voice. “This is all my fault.”
“No,” Yao snapped, ‘command voice’ slipping into place. “It is not. We all decided as a team that the risk wasn’t worth it after what happened the first time. You do not get to blame yourself for a freak accident where nobody was hurt.”
“Captain is right,” Rocky agreed, now awake and vibrating with indignation, but Grace cut him off.
“Nobody was hurt?!” he asked, disbelief lacing his voice. “You could have died! And that was your ride back to Earth. What the hell are we going to do now?”
“Could bring to Erid,” Adrian offered. “Build new spaceship for them there.”
“Adrian, they have families back on Earth that they will have lost decades with if we do that,” Grace despaired.
“Okay, so visit Earth, statement,” Dr. House offered, ever pragmatic. “Savior Grace (he’d finally talked them down to at least a reduced version of his title) has Eridian lifespan now. Drop off humans. Then go home.”
“You could make diplomatic mission,” Olesya squealed, now getting excited by the idea. “Oh, that would be so cool!”
“Go to Earth?” Rocky rebutted. “Earth try kill Grace! Earth shoot Grace! Earth want to keep Grace from Erid! Earth too dangerous for Grace!”
“Aww, come on Rocks, you really liked all the scenes of Earth in the Don’t-Go-Crazy room the first time,” Grace reasoned. “And you guys could all meet my friends there. It might be kind of fun! I mean, I really miss home too, but relatively it’s a pretty small amount of time…”
“Friends like evil murder human?” Adrian asked wryly.
“Friends like the woman who helped me get home and was constantly beating herself up over a choice she never even made in this timeline,” Grace corrected.
Rocky perked up at the mention of Stratt. “Rocky make gun, question? Rocky fight evil murder human?”
“Rocky no!” Grace protested
“Rocky yes!” the other Eridians, including Rocky, cheered in unison.
_________
In the end, a Thrum was held to decide whether to return the humans to Earth or bring them to Erid. Although, it was really quite obvious to Ilyukhina and Yao that they would be going home, since Grace had expressed a desire to bring them home and the Eridians seemed to do basically anything Grace wanted. The thrum was mainly to ensure that his desire was genuine and not driven by a false sense of guilt or responsibility. The conclusion seemed to be that he did feel guilty, but that he’d want to bring them home either way. The Eridians seemed to accept that conclusion and decided that they could work on helping him get rid of his unnecessary guilt on the long trip to Earth.
The other part of the thrum seemed to be deciding how much ‘defensive’ weaponry the Eridians were allowed to build for Grace’s (and their own, but mainly Grace’s) protection. Grace, Ilyukhina, and Yao all acknowledged that some measure of defense was necessary as a last-resort, just-in-case measure because Earth could be unkind even to their own people.
Diplomacy would be the first order of the day. No Eridian wanted to hurt innocent people. The main issue was talking the Eridians out of going ‘John Wick’ on particular humans such as Stratt, Carl, anyone who had helped Stratt and Carl send Grace to space against his will the first time, some random guy named Mark, the grave of Grace’s biological father, about three-quarters of his foster parents, and anyone who had ever so much as looked at Grace wrong.
“Rocky, you cannot bring a grenade launcher to first contact,” Grace stressed. “We can have some weapons in case things get ugly, but we’re leaving them up with the part of the delegation that’s staying on the ship. Your bodies are enough of a weapon already if things go wrong on an individual level, and we’ll make sure that we get only the best security for those of us who are down on the planet at any given moment.”
He wasn’t about to mention, at this time, just who would most likely be arranging that security. He was going to have to be more delicate about bringing Rocky, Adrian, and All-Rocky-Plural around to the idea that Eavie was actually really cool and they should all be friends. He was sure they could manage it, if he could just keep his Eridian family from killing his Earth family long enough to see that Eavie was basically a combination of Rocky and Adrian’s personalities put into a squishy human.
And if they were going to Earth already… Well, he could be honest with himself that he had a bit of an ulterior motive. He wanted to bring Eva back with him- if she wanted to go, that is- and to get her to consider the offer, she’d need to have at least reasonably high confidence that she wouldn’t be killed on sight the second she stepped foot into the biodome.
Also, it would definitely be better for Yao’s blood pressure if the newly-christened Eridian delegation could get a lot more chill very quickly.
The man currently looked a bit nauseated as he watched Olesya rally the Eridians with a cry of “Road trip! Road trip! Road trip!”, her fists and dozens of claws punching the air as Grace, happily sandwiched between Rocky and Adrian, watched fondly as he showed Yao how to set the coordinates into the ship’s navigation system (or, the one on his side of the ship. There were two control panels for the ship- one on the Eridian atmosphere side and one on his, and course adjustments or steering could be done from either of them).
“Is it too late to change my mind about the coma?” Yao asked, tiredly, as he finished setting the course for Earth.
Grace only laughed at him as, in the background, Olesya was showing the Eridians how to crowd-surf.