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We are halfway through the journey to Erid when you say those four words to me.
"I love you, Rocky."
The sound of them is tender, slipping off the tip of your tongue with ease. Your lips wrap around the syllables of my name so sweetly, so gently, and with a touch of reverence—as though I am worth such a thing.
I do not get the chance to respond; you fall asleep soon after, your consciousness drifting off into this world of dreams you've told me about. It is not somewhere I can follow you to, as much as I want to, for Eridians cannot dream. Eridians cannot do many things a human can, and vice versa. There is still such a big gap between us, one I long to bridge so desperately.
The xenonite mesh of my suit, for one—it is a necessity that goes against my desires, but I dare not let my selfishness hurt you in any capacity. The language barrier, for another—picking up English was but a matter of memorization, and that happens to be a task my biology is geared towards. Alas, at a baseline, you will only ever be able to pick up rudimentary Eridian, by pure virtue of the human body lacking the faculties for both hearing and speaking the full range of it.
What a shame, really. I have so much to say to you, so much to sing to you. I am not an Eridian of many notes, but you have turned me into a bard. You have pulled an eloquence from me that goes beyond the capabilities of my vocal cords—for if you could press your hands to my carapace and feel the beating of my hearts, you would know that their very rhythm is a serenade to you.
It is no matter; I will speak my affections in a pitch you can hear, and in words you can understand. I have no need for you to be able to communicate with me perfectly, so long as I can still convey the things I want to. However, I am not sure if I will actually be able to.
I know two languages, yes. I know the word for "love" in both of them. I know what you said to me, and I know how to say it back. But my mental lexicon, vast as it may be, is still so woefully inadequate.
Love is too small a word to encompass the depth of what I feel for you.
You are so many things to me. You are Grace—brave, brilliant, and beautiful. You are my saving grace, and I would have it no other way.
You are an equal—a professional in your own field of study, one which complements mine. You have a sharp mind, though it is quite stubborn. I cannot fathom how someone who saved two planets still has doubts in his own competencies. I bet Earth would have awarded you many accolades, if they had the chance. Thankfully, I know Erid will do so in their place.
You are a friend—an irreplaceable companion, one who I wish to spend the rest of my life with. Even without the circumstances of our first meeting, I would have been drawn to you. We click together in a way I rarely do with another, and that is made all the more clear as we spend time in each other's presence. Now that the astrophage problem has been solved, there is no real reason for us to do so. But we do anyway, for the bond between us goes beyond our duties.
And… you are a prospective mate, even, if you would like to have me. I know you just confessed your love to me, but I should probably do my due diligence. After all, human communication is not as straightforward as Eridian communication; on top of that, you are cagier than most of your kind.
Still, I hope I mean as much to you as you do to me, and I hope I am as many things to you as you are to me.
In fact, I had already asked you as much. I think back to a conversation we had a few nights ago, while we were lounging in what you call the "Don't Go Crazy" room. You were laying on the floor, your back cushioned by the blanket beneath you. Meanwhile, I had crawled over your chest on sheer impulse, my arms bracketing yours and keeping you in place.
Neither of us were paying attention to the movie playing on the screens, and even its sounds were lost in the song of your heartbeat—it had quickened in response to our proximity, and by that point I could no longer think.
I could only ask, "What is Rocky to Grace?"
This close, I could hear the machinations of your body so clearly. I could hear the way your breath hitched, the way you swallowed thickly, the way your blood rushed to your cheeks. Only your mind remained a mystery to me, but even then I had already managed to draw a confession.
"You're my everything," you whispered, so very fondly it made my hearts ache.
It was a vague answer, but I did not hate it. Maybe it would have been enough, actually, if I still had my wits about me. But then you averted your gaze and tilted your head away, like you were still hiding something despite the fact that "everything" could not possibly encompass more than what it already does. And I could not bear it—I craved for more of you, so much so that I wished to pry unspoken sentiments out of your mouth with my own claws.
"More." One of my arms reached for your face, trailing down the skin of your cheek. "What does everything entail, question?"
"P-please don't make me talk while we're in this position." A whine slipped from your lips. "I'm a little distracted."
Your hands twitched at your sides, but I did not budge. If anything, I inched closer; carefully, I pressed my carapace to your chest. I did not misjudge my strength, so the impact should've been quite light. And yet, it knocked the air out of your lungs all the same. Oh, what an honor it is to have your biological functions entirely at my mercy, to have your veins thrum at my behest.
"More, Grace," I urged, grabbing your chin and making you look at me properly. "Specify. Put a name to it."
You paused, as if trying to find your words again. Or was it your breath you were looking for? I had robbed you of both, it seems.
After a few seconds, you spoke again. This time, with a newfound vulnerability. "You're… you're my soulmate, then. Someone I was fated to be with."
Soulmate. I liked the sound of that. The term hadn't come up before, so I deduced it was cultural rather than scientific. I wondered what set it apart from, say, partners or spouses.
Now that had raised a new line of inquiry. So I withdrew my claws from your chin and pulled back, giving you just enough space to move away if you wanted to. You didn't; instead, your hands came up to hold my arms. This time, you were keeping me in place, however arbitrarily given the difference in strength between us.
Your heart skipped a beat, and your voice wobbled with anxiety. "Did I… say something wrong?"
"No," I reassured you. "New word."
"What?"
"Someone you were… what to be with?"
"Oh."
With that, you relaxed. Your fingers absentmindedly traced the markings on my body, running along the grooves we use to say farewell. Such an act was tender, almost unbearably intimate—I would have lost my focus to it, had it not been chasing your every word.
"Fate is a concept many humans believe in," you began telling me. "It's the idea that our lives are decided for us before we're even born, that some things are destined to happen."
On Erid, the concept of "fate" is a faraway thing—mere wishful thinking rather than a facet of reality. The perfect memory of my species lends to rich documentation of our history, thus everything can be traced back to their points of origin. All unknown phenomena of the past are bound to be readily explained by the science of the future, so there has never been a reason to believe that some things are simply meant to be.
I sensed there was another gap to be bridged. I stayed silent, leaving you room to continue. You gave in easily, like you always do.
"It's kind of hard to explain but, hmm… Well, let me give an example instead. There is this human idiom, 'written in the stars'."
I hummed, "Stars form symbols?"
"No. Well, occasionally they do. But that's different—constellations. Anyway, the idiom goes like that because light takes time to travel, especially those from stars. So if something is 'written in the stars', that means it's predetermined by some kind of cosmic force."
"Interesting."
Softly, you admitted, "It reminds me of us, a little. Sometimes I wonder if our meeting was fate. If it was written in red, somewhere in the stars."
"Red," I repeated. "Like astrophage."
"Like astrophage, yeah."
I do not know colors beyond the measures of their wavelengths, nor do I know how to interpret the numbers attached to them. I do not know what you mean, not exactly. So much of the human experience is beyond my grasp, and there are some gaps I simply cannot bridge.
However, if our meeting was truly written in the red of astrophage, then it would mean that the stars started dying for us—that the entire galaxy mourned for them by singing a dirge, and it was loud enough to be heard in the vast silence of the Big Nothing.
Perhaps the universe was torn in two a long time ago and is trying to pull the broken halves back together. For everything comes from stardust, from planets and moons to humans and Eridians. For across trillions of miles' worth of space and billions of years' worth of time, we existed at just the right parameters to have met each other. Then, perhaps the universe made me to love you, and perhaps the universe made you to be loved.
Perhaps that is what you call fate.
Now I know why the prospect of it is appealing. It must be a small comfort to have the road ahead already decided for you, to know that your life comes with a cause. It must be easier to believe that all the hardships in your life were made to put you on the right path, so that you do not regret anything once you are where you were meant to be.
But, do you understand what this sounds like to me? That by calling us "soulmates", you are saying that you came into existence because of me. That by calling what we have "fate", you are saying that you were born from all my desperate prayers to be saved, that you were sent to complete me.
Oh, and I thought my feelings for you could not run any deeper.
You are half of my soul already, but I want more than that. By measure of math from an engineer's mind, I want the thickness of my xenonite suit to be zero and the distance between us to be in the negatives. I want us to press our bodies together, carapace-to-forehead, and wrap our limbs around each other as tightly as we can. I want us to be so inexplicably intertwined that it's hard to tell where I end and where you begin.
Do not be mistaken; for it is not proximity alone that I seek. There is a festering desire in me that goes beyond love, that goes beyond reason. I want to crawl underneath your skin and settle in the cavity of your ribcage. I want to stay there, for as long as you will have me. I want to stay there until your brain atrophies and your heart stills, until rigor mortis turns your body into my new carapace. And I will wear it like a glove until your bones crumble to dust, and it is then that I, too, will die alongside the remnants of you.
I want to be you, my Grace. Because if fate does exist, then perhaps I was never meant to live without you.
To myself, I am a known failure. My life's work has always been to fix, fix, fix and yet there was so much I couldn't. The ship I had a hand in building could not protect my crew; the breeder tanks which were my pride and joy ended up dooming both of us. My very touch damaged your skin so severely that it left a permanent mark—how was I supposed to believe that I am any good at my job?
But you fixed what I could not. You gave me answers, gave me newfound hope, gave me a reason to keep going. You saved me, time and time again—not just my life, but also my pride. For the xenonite suit is a marvel of engineering; it is a feat of invention, of hours of research, of failed prototypes scattered atop blueprints, of claws carefully weaving thread by painstaking thread. For it is proof that for you, I could do anything.
So, please… let me lose myself in you, Grace. Let the song of my hearts weave into the notes of your heartbeat. I will be your harmony, because it is all that I am good for. It is all I want to be good for.
I wish to tell you, "I don't want to be anything anymore." I wish you would reply, "You don't have to be anything. You just have to be mine." Then, I wish you would pull me close and embrace me so tightly that the whole universe around us fades away.
Eridians do not forget. But, just for a second, please let me pretend that nothing has ever existed before you and nothing will ever exist once you are gone.
Is that love? Surely not. Surely something so selfish cannot be love. Surely something so visceral cannot be given such a beautiful name. Besides, love is too small a word to encompass the depth of what I feel for you.
Yet it is also the only word I have that even comes close to doing so.
I must make do. There are social conventions at play here, both human and Eridian. Though I desperately want to go beyond both, I must admit it is easier to settle with what we already have. For now, I will let you scratch at the surface of my desire. For now, I will let you have a cursory taste of my yearning. Then maybe someday, I could tell you the extent of everything when you are ready to hear it.
So, a few hours from now, you will stir awake from your slumber. I will already be at your side, taking up the empty space of the bed that you like leaving in the shape of me. Then, I will brush the hair out of your eyes as you blink up blearily at me, and I will say:
"Rocky love Grace too."