Work Text:
Something is wrong with Grace.
Physically, he’s improving. The science thrum finally solved how to make him proper nutrition and he’s started to gain weight. His body is not used to Erid's strong gravity, but it is adjusting.
My carapace no longer feels like it is shrinking around me. My Grace is going to live!
But something is still wrong.
He denies it. He says he’s fine. Says he’s grateful for his biodome and for being alive. I want to believe him.
But I can hear his body’s stress signals even through the xenonite wall. His heart beats rapidly, he rubs one wrist with the other hand, he wraps his arms around his chest, he breathes deeply to try and calm himself.
Not all the time. Sometimes he’s lively and harmonious and we talk as we did on the journey to Erid. But more and more, I can hear his distress.
And I need to fix it.
I know it’s not normal, how much of my happiness and sanity depends on this human. But I spent years alone (alone alone alone, no one to watch me sleep, in a ship full of memories and dead air and failure).
And just when I was about to give up or lose my mind completely...
The universe gave me Grace.
We helped each other. We fit together like two parts of a machine that I hadn’t known was broken. I needed his science, his clever mind that turned disaster into triumph time and time again. He needed my engineering. My xenonite and my hands. And if I hadn’t given him my extra Astrophage, neither of us would have survived. I don’t like thinking about that.
And then we spent years alone together, just the two of us in the Hail Mary. Binary stars spinning through space. There was no way to return to normal after all that.
I knew my people would treasure Grace because he saved Erid. But the song is more complex than that, for me. He rescued me from a lonely death in space, but more importantly he gave me someone to care about again. Someone I could protect while he slept. Someone real, after all that time. My brilliant, infuriating friend, with his inefficient human body and ingenious brain and complete disregard for his own well-being when he’s focused on a goal.
And now he’s disregarding his needs once again. But the goal eludes me.
Obviously Grace misses being around other humans. That is reasonable and I have suspected it for a long time. But if that’s the only problem, why would he hide it? He knows that I would understand after my years alone at Tau Ceti. There must be something else.
I need to investigate this. I will search the Earth thinking machine for Grace’s symptoms.
Oh. Oh.
Human psychology is fascinating. And strange strange strange. On the way to Erid my research was focused on practicalities, how we would survive the trip without going insane and how I would keep Grace alive on my planet. But now I understand that there are so many other things he needs and feels.
Direct contact with other people, especially physical connection with loved ones, is much more important to humans than I realized. The lack of it explains why Grace’s stress is rising even though he’s finally safe.
And I think I know why he hasn’t told me.
Despite how much they rely on other people, it’s not uncommon for humans to fear vulnerability and to hide their feelings. It’s a baffling paradox, but it explains much about how Grace behaves.
Grace loves to talk. But he rarely voices any emotional struggles. Initially I suspected it was a human water-preservation instinct, since when he gets emotional he tends to leak. But now I realize it’s something intentional, a wall he built around himself, even if he can’t see it anymore.
This makes no sense to me. Eridians can hear our companions’ every movement, and we trust each other to watch when we are completely vulnerable. It simply doesn’t occur to us to conceal our pain from the people we love. Does his reticence mean that Grace doesn’t trust me after all?
On the journey here, I was often puzzled when I remembered his fatalistic attitude to his suicide mission. Back at the beginning, when he thought he was going to die in space... why didn’t he just ask me if I had extra fuel? True, we didn’t know each other well. But we had established friendly relations (I was not shy about showing how delighted I was to meet another person), and he had nothing to lose. Now I suspect that admitting his fear and asking for help felt like a bigger risk than his potential death.
I wonder if this wariness started when his planet sent him into space to die against his will, or if he always kept people at a distance. To need something so badly and yet fear it so deeply... it must be awful. Like a dissonance that refuses to resolve.
A painful dissonance is growing inside me too, rising until the noise fills my whole body. My research on human psychology has given me explanations, but no solutions. I can’t give Grace his planet or his people. I can’t make him trust me with his heart and not just his life. I can never give him the contact he craves: my xenonite ball lets me enter his environment, but it keeps us too far apart and it doesn’t move well on the sand and rock. (Though Grace finds it funny when I get stuck. It’s worth keeping the ball around for that, then.)
What am I good for, if I can’t fix this? If he doesn’t trust me enough to let me try?
No. I will fix this. I failed my crew; I will not fail Grace.
An idea strikes me at last: the form-fitting protective suit that I designed on the journey from Tau Ceti. I couldn’t risk actually building it on the Hail Mary, but I started it once we arrived on Erid, more as an experiment than for any real purpose. And if it works, it would let me interact with Grace more directly, comfort him more closely.
Yes yes yes! I will focus my efforts on that project.
The xenonite suit has potential. It needs more refinements, but it should allow me to move normally in Grace’s atmosphere. I will try to make the final version thin enough that he can feel the texture of my carapace, and flexible enough that I can wrap my arms around him like I would around Adrian. I’m not human, but I have to believe that this will help him.
I continue working on the suit even as Grace refuses to admit that he is unhappy. No, maybe he’s not exactly unhappy, but something is missing. If he conceals what he needs, even from me, maybe even from himself...what can I do?
Adrian often tells me that I can’t fix everything. That I should only worry about what I can control. I know they are right. (They always are.)
Still, I’m an engineer. Fixing things is what I do.
So I will build a suit.
And when Grace takes down his walls, I’ll be ready for him to let me in.