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Rocky hates humans. The thought is sudden and so out-of-the-blue that he stops in his tracks.
He’s doing his daily check-in of his workshop; all his endless projects and experiments he’s got going on, piles and piles of stuff cluttered everywhere. Adrian once called this place a dumpster. Rocky got offended a little, but not too much, because they were right.
He mulls it over. Where did that come from?
Yes, humans are viscerally weird creatures because they’re aliens, but that doesn’t mean Rocky hates them. One can’t hate something just because of the way they are. It just isn’t done.
So why…?
The alarm system goes off. Rocky’s heart skips a beat.
He drops whatever he was doing and sprints out of the workshop and down the road towards the bio-dome.
Rocky hates humans.
The getting into the xeno-suit, going through the airlock and sprinting up the endless stairs of Grace’s home is somewhat of a routine. Rocky visits him at least twice a day these last few years. He can’t not; not only because he feels sick if he’s not around his friend, but also because Grace gets into trouble significantly more than he did in the past.
That’s why the bio-dome team set-up a failure system; the first time Grace had a heart attack, Rocky had thought he’s going to die right after Grace if he doesn’t wake up. He did, and then cried and Rocky felt like his heart was bursting with feeling.
The alarm goes off every time something goes wrong.
Rocky hates humans, he thinks, once he senses Grace inside the house. It’s muffled because of the walls but Rocky can still hear him. He’s plastered on the floor, his wheelchair ways away from him. Rocky hears breathing, but it’s so faint it might as well be not there.
He barges inside. “Grace!”
Grace doesn’t answer. Rocky titters across the floor towards Grace, twittering in distress. Rocky knows the medical team is coming right after. He can’t wait for them. It might be too late until they arrive.
Rocky gets closer. Grace is still breathing, he is. It’s faint and labored. It’s what Grace has been the last few years—faint and labored.
Rocky gets onto his chest, lowering himself carefully to not crush his delicate ribcage. Even thirty years ago, when Grace had been young and energetic, Rocky could’ve crushed him to death just by getting on top, even more so now. It would be so easy. Get closer to him, impossibly close, hear his faint but steady heartbeat against his carapace, become one with it. Thrum with it.
Rocky thinks that the answer to the meaning of life could be extracted from a thrum like that.
He doesn’t do that. He lowers himself carefully and listens to his best friend’s heartbeat. Until the medical team arrives and does what they do best; keep his Grace alive.
Rocky hates humans.
They live a fraction of the Eridian lifespan, yet they deteriorate faster and worse than any Eridian ever could. Their very DNA stops being eligible to keep them alive, their very cells stop self-reproducing. Their blood vessels thin out, their heartbeat becomes weaker, their breath becomes labored and wrong. Their body hurts. They start to forget.
They scare so easily. They’re so fragile.
Grace comes to before the medical team can get there. He opens his eyes and the air coming out of his lungs whistles so uncomfortably, Rocky cringes.
“Friend Grace. Are you okay?” Rocky asks. He needs to get off Grace’s chest. He can’t make himself.
Grace grumbles something. Becoming old has made him grumpier. He’s still Grace; he jokes and laughs and goes on tangents on all matter of different things, but the pain gets even people like him. He whines about aching joints, headaches, muscle cramps.
Oh what Rocky would do to rid him of that fragile body.
Grace opens his eyes. Then he screams.
It’s not his scream as it was all these years ago when they just met. It’s worn out and quieter, yet still devastating. Rocky gets off Grace’s chest as fast as he physically can.
Grace backs off into a corner. “Who are you?” Grace demands. “How did you get in here?”
“Friend Grace…” Rocky tries, heartbroken.
“Who is Grace?!” Grace chokes on his own words, his cough dry and painful. “Get out of here!”
Rocky wants to get closer. He can’t be far. He can’t. He needs to look after Grace, he needs to make sure he’s okay.
He’ll die right after Grace if something happens to him.
“Get out!” Grace shouts. He’s shaking.
He’s scared of me, Rocky thinks. I scared Friend Grace.
Rocky speaks, “Okay, Friend Grace. Wait for the medics here. I’ll be outside.”
Then, he gets out of the house.
Medics arrive. Rocky yells at them for being too long and snaps, explaining that Grace fell off his wheelchair and didn’t recognize him. Medics chittered amongst themselves for a bit before Rocky snapped again, telling them that Grace might be dying inside. They don’t pay him any mind, sending one of the medics inside.
Rocky wants to yell at them for being so calm. Grace is dying inside! What are they doing!
Then, it hits him. Grace is dying. He’s been for a while now. Rocky collapses on the tiny rocks under him.
Grace forgets where he is constantly. Sometimes he’s so scared he can’t talk, sometimes he’s mad, sometimes he’s apathetic. Most of the times he remembers Rocky, but sometimes not. Rocky hates those times.
He hates when Grace backs off from him. “Who are you?” he’d ask, carefully, as if assessing threat. As if Rocky could ever hurt him.
Grace wakes up screaming, or doesn’t wake up at all, whining. He begs someone to not kill him. To not do this to him. He just wants to live. He just wants to live.
Armando has to feed him and help him clothe and relieve himself. Grace’s eyesight gets worse and worse and worse. He falls a lot.
When he’s himself, he always apologizes. Sorry for being a burden, bud. Sorry for making you worry. Sorry for this. Sorry for that. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
God, that hurts.
Rocky listens, even though it’s unbearable. How Grace complains about his cramps and pain, and everything. Rocky’s human is hurting and he can’t do anything.
His human is dying.
One of the medics approaches him. Sunny, its name is. Grace had named it that because its color resembles the sun. (Rocky fucking hates it.)
“Savior Rocky?” it chitters, concerned.
“My Grace is dying, isn’t it?”
It chitters in distress. Rocky hates it. Rocky hates it.
“How long has it got?”
Sunny backs off, not wanting to answer. Suddenly, Rocky feels rage, leaping to his feet. “How long?!”
“Maybe a few weeks, Savior Rocky. Its body is in bad condition. Its vitals are deteriorating faster than we anticipated. We will keep someone on duty at all times from now on.”
Rocky slumps again. A few weeks is nothing.
“It’s not long enough.”
“We’re sorry, Savior Rocky.”
“Fuck off.”
Rocky hangs around the next few days, even though Adrian begs him to take a break. He can’t.
“I can’t, my love,” he tells them, purring comforting nonsense into their big carapace. Then, he sets off to the bio-dome.
Grace lays on his bed in delirium. He begs not to kill him. He screams. He whines in pain.
It’s unbearable. Rocky feels like he’s dying too.
That day, Sienna is on duty. They chatter about human hormones they’ve been reading scientific papers on, and Rocky truly appreciates it. Anything to not keep listening to Grace’s suffering.
Once, Grace comes to for a couple dozen minutes. He cries. “I’m sorry Rocky. I’m sorry.”
Then, he asks for rain and passes out again.
The next few days, the bio-dome performs the rain sequence non-stop. Rocky doesn’t care how much energy that wastes.
Rocky holds a hollering Grace down when they need to inject painkillers. Grace is terrified of needles. Sienna whines in misery.
The moment Grace stops breathing, Rocky screams.
He screams, and screams, and screams, and screams.
A paramedic called Luna embraces him in his arms and chirps a child’s ballad to sooth him. It doesn’t help. Nothing will ever help.
Rocky had thought he’d die with Grace. He curses everything in this Universe for it’s not what happens.
Grace once had told Rocky that he’d like to donate his body to Eridian science.
When they take Grace’s body away, Rocky lies by his empty bed and weeps.