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The first time they have to replace something is after years of being on Erid.
It's been a adjustment period, but we finally managed to get my food and vitamin needs covered, so I managed to make a full recovery from the host of diseases and deficiencies I got on the trip to Erid. My bio-dome had been made, and was the most incredible thing I'd ever seen.
Thanks to Adrian, and their team, I have a home now.
A dang good recreation of a beach. The sand is slightly too rocky, the grain sizes slightly off but it's basically perfect other than that. My students make me new shells every year, so I've got a whole scattering of them along the beach. One of my favorites is utility vest yellow and reflective. It's so alien, but I love it regardless.
I love my students.
I got a job, a few years into being on Erid. Once I was physically recovered, and the star was starting to recover, I was starting to go a bit.. crazy with nothing to do. After a incident of me literally trying to climb the walls of my bio-dome, Rocky started having me try out teaching various classes.
I settled into teaching both new pebbles and scientists about the gaps in Eridian's knowledge and I'd never been happier.
Life had started to settle. I had a job, a home, food and my best friend in the universe.
Then I started to feel.. weird.
Being under Erid's gravity was rough on my body and joints, but I'd get even more tired than usual. I'd struggle to wake up in the morning, and usually wake up to Rocky dang near trying to break my door down.
I'd use my cane a lot more and eventually switched to a wheelchair-like device my medical team made me.
When I started throwing up due to nausea constantly, Rocky flipped out and dragged me in front of my medical team and demanded they fix it.
…
Heart failure. In the earlier stages. But my heart was starting to give out on me.
Rocky lost it.
I'd never seen him that desperate before.
Adrian pulled me out of the room, so I didn't hear most of it but it was bad.
Real bad.
Later that night, Rocky climbed into my bed and perched on my chest in a way he hadn't done since we were on the Hail Mary. Echo-locating at my failing heart like he could just find the one design flaw and patch it up. Find the problem, design solution, apply it, bada-bing bada-boom, there you go, problem solved.
I might have been going a bit hysterical.
More than a bit.
I cried. I laughed. I laughed till I cried.
How bitterly ironic.
Just as we'd finally, finally gotten my health stable, just as I finally started to live again, just as I started wanting to live. My pathetic, squishy, body was giving out on me.
We had gotten all the way to Erid and I was going to die of heart failure. Not starvation, not of crushing centrifugal force but of heart failure.
"I-I don't want to die."
"I know.", hummed Rocky, "We will fix. I promise."
"You can't promise me that, buddy."
"Can. Will. Grace not want to die, Grace not die. Statement."
…
True to his word, he did.
"You-You did what?!"
"Made replacement heart for Savior Grace. Will have to surgically install."
Objectively, I understood how. The same core process that made the me-burgers, but specifically for replicating a healthy human heart. My heart.
Objectively, I understood.
My less rational side of my brain was screaming.
They'd need to cut me open. They'd need to-
I'd need to go under. I'd need to be sedated. I'd go to sleep and just have to pray that I'd wake up.
I could die. They could kill me while trying to save me.
Rocky nudges himself against my arm.
"Please. Will not do without your permission. We will help you. Erid will help you."
"…"
"Rocky love Grace. Rocky not let Grace die. Statement."
I let out a choked laugh.
I did say I'd let Rocky do open heart surgery on me, didn't I?
-
The next time was decades later.
The transplant had worked. I'd felt better than I had in years, though it wasn't like I had good data to compare to. Between the coma, starving and the fact I wasn't the pinnacle of health even on Earth it sorta skews the data.
I was about 80 years old, give or take some due to relativity and the amnesia.
I had gotten old.
Between everything that had happened to me, it was a miracle I had gotten as far as I did. I should have died ten times over, but here I was.
My internals, basically everything except my heart, was starting to slow down. My joints were starting to give after decades in double gravity, my eyes starting to get worse. Basically everything was starting to break.
I was slowing down. Shutting down, slowly but certainly.
Someone should have been planning my funeral.
My funeral, which would probably be a Erid-wide event.
(God that sounds egotistical to say.)
It was true, though. I was beloved by Erid and I loved them right back. They had given me a home, family, friends. I was the Savior of Erid yes, but I was also Friend Grace. So many Eridians made my life here possible, so many. I had met all of them, had thanked them all, had named them all.
I was lonely back on Earth.
Despite the fact I had to interact with everyone through a layer of xenonite, I rarely felt alone on Erid.
I loved it here.
But I was dying.
I don't remember exactly what happened, what bit of my body gave out first. But I remember the world collapsing into a staticky spiral of pain and confusion.
The world kept coming in and out of focus.
I'd get flashes of panicking Eridians, the artificial sky of my biodome, the (highly claustrophobic) stretcher they designed for me, and the ceiling of the hospital room I'd stayed in when I first arrived on Erid.
God everything hurt.
There was a mask on my face, an IV in my arm and the chords of arguing Eridians.
I couldn't-
I can't-
"Grace. Grace."
Rocky.
I'd know that voice blind.
I'd probably know it deaf, from the rumble it sent through my chest.
"I-I-can't. it h-hurts."
My chest is on fire. I choke on bile.
Rocky is singing. I'm not registering it.
Couldn't I just die peacefully? Hadn't I earned at least fucking that, universe?
"-Will help. Will-"
My brain blacks out, then back in.
"Say yes."
His voice rumbles through my brain. It drowns out everything else.
It is a command. It is not a request.
I answer. I choke on it.
"Yes."
Rocky scream-sings something to the surrounding Eridians as the world goes black.
-
I spend about a year in a medical induced coma.
The Eridians, somehow, managed to replace all my failing organs.
Turns out starvation and radiation exposure (even the limited amount I got) will damage just about everything in your system.
I stopped keeping track after that incident. There was too many things to count.
God, was I still even me?
-
It's been..
about one and half centuries, maybe two, since I arrived on Erid.
My routine is pretty much the same. Wake up, shower, eat breakfast, walk with Rocky to class, teach, either work with my bio-dome team, spend time with Rocky and Adrian or if I'm lucky, go on a small excursion into the area around me in my (much nicer) version of Rocky's hamster ball.
I don't have to brush my teeth anymore though.
Which is a good thing since we ran out of toothpaste about a decade ago.
My existing on Erid has created more new fields than I can count but one of them is dentistry. I'd already lost some teeth due to scurvy and everything else, so I wasn't too surprised when I lost the rest. Rocky kept some of them, my dentist, Orion, got the others.
(I did make sure I knew where they all went. I don't want a black market of my biological material floating around Erid.)
I now have a very nice set of artificially implanted teeth.
They're slightly pearlescent actually. White with a rainbow sheen when the light hits them just right.
I think they're beautiful.
My eyes are slightly different too.
One of them, the left one, is just a shade too green and the right one is a shade of electric blue you can only get with contacts on Earth.
To be fair, for a race that can't see color, they've done a dang good job of replicating it.
Some of my skin patches are slightly mismatched, sure, but I'd only notice if I was looking for it and it's not like anyone else is ever going to see it.
My scar from Rocky, the hand-print burned into my arm is untouched.
Me and him both were unmovable on that. The rest of me could change but that, that mark, that testament to our bond would stay.
I stretch. Wide and long, reveling in the lack of true pain in response.
My new joints make being in Erid's gravity much easier, though I did need to relearn how to swim which was as mortifying as it was exciting. I'm hoping that my five years of slowly wearing Rocky down will finally convince him to take me to the underground hot springs two cities over.
He's still as protective as ever. And bossy.
A very loud knocking interrupts my thoughts.
Speak of the devil.
I laugh as I pull on my clothes and jewelry, and quickly down the nutrient shake as I pull the door open.
"Grace! Good morning. You are less late than usual."
I quickly flick the tip of my tongue out at him, and wrap my arms around him.
(I save the full sticking my tongue out for when I need to really gross him out.)
He quickly responds, holding me with four of his limbs. He quickly echo-locates into my body, making sure nothing's gone wrong internally. He never quite managed to drop the habit after the initial crash of my body.
"I'm fine, Rock. Just.. sentimental. Having a moment."
He lets out a amused huff.
He shifts so he's carrying me and starts walking down the beach.
I laugh so hard it hurts, and he follows, making little chirping noises.
I squish my face against his carapace through the xenonite and bathe in the sound of my heartbeat, singing alive-alive-alive alongside Rocky's joyful song.
If I think about it, I can feel the slight difference in my joints, the tightness of my skin patches, the rhythm of my internals. My glasses are plain glass, since I technically no longer need them. Just about anything I can think of has been replaced, or edited from the Ryland Grace that got tackled into the ground that day.
I can feel the space in my chest where the horror used to live.
The utter fear, the alienation from myself and the question of who I even was anymore.
It used to wrap itself around my lab-grown, artificially strong heart. It would scrape against my ribs, settle in the spaces between my organs and hold my lungs in a vice grip.
But it faded.
I am alive. I am here.
Rocky is here. Adrian is here.
Erid is here.
I'm home.
I want to live.
What was there to complain about except that I had been loved?