Archive of Our Own

“Grace,” He hears Rocky chitter, trying to snag his attention. It's easy enough to catch his own name in Eridian by now, even without the computer spitting out the English for him, but– okay wait, that thought gives him another idea.

“Yeah bud?” Ryland hears himself say absentmindedly. He's more focused on snatching up the handset lying in reaching-distance so he can add another point to his ever-growing bulleted list, considering.

“Your gravity is confused, question?” 

He stops, letting the handheld slacken in his grip. “My gravity is never confused, I'll have you know,” Ryland shoots, letting his head tip back from his up-side down position lying in his bunk with his legs in the air, swaying to and fro against the wall. He shoots Rocky a petulant look. “I am oriented exactly as I intend to be.”

Even without facial emotive capacity, Rocky is plenty expressive from his spot on his side of the bedroom. If a rock could level a deadpan stare, Rocky has it down to a T. “You are upside-down.” He deadpans.

“I'm in my thinking pose.” Ryland clarifies, looking back to his handset and eyeing the contents of his ever-building list. The bunk is comfy under his back and he lets his legs flop about above him with a sigh, thinking.

Thinking, thinking, thinking.

“What thinking are you doing?” Rocky asks.

…Perhaps over-thinking is more accurate.

“Well,” He starts, biting a hangnail absently. It's a habit everyone in his life tried to get him to kick growing up and apparently one no-one tried hard enough to kick, him included. “Accounting for time dilation and various features of our course to Erid, we have– what, four Earth years to kill? Thirty-five Eridian years, give or take? Time's not even real anymore.”

“Kill?” Rocky presses abruptly, incredulity obvious in the chords of the question. “Four years to kill?”

“Sorry, another human turn of phrase. Make time pass, make it ‘go’. ‘Kill’ it.”

“Humans…” Comes Rocky's next grumble, and Ryland has to snort in agreement, amused.

“I know. But I was thinking–”

“Dangerous.” 

Ryland tilts his head back again, staring at the upside-down image of his roommate with as much offence as possible. “Hey–”

“Is joke!”

“I know.”

“Human joke. Very silly, but amusing.”

“Still.”

Rocky titters, clearly pleased with himself. “You were thinking, question?”

“Yes. About the four years ahead of us.”

Rocky hums, settling down with his legs tucked in as he listens. It makes Ryland think of their family cat he'd adored growing up, a big fat ginger tabby called Obi, because A New Hope had just come out and everyone was obsessed. Excellent taste. It makes him acutely miss cats in general though, which he has to quickly set aside like all things he occasionally remembers he'll never see again. Ouch.

Rocky seems to speak carefully after the pause. “Is a long time, even for an Eridian.”

“Wouldn't wanna do it with anyone else bud.” He reassures. “But I'm very aware how human I am, and… well.”

“Would hope Grace knows he is human.” 

“–And what I'm saying,” He says pointedly. “Is that humans go a bit… crazy, without enough variance and motivation in the day-to-day.”

Rocky trills, a quiet rolling chord of understanding. They're on the same page. “Eridians not too different.” He offers thoughtfully. “A task or goal means a happy Eridian. Working toward something for your thrum is good purpose.”

Ryland snaps his fingers in agreement, handset abandoned on his stomach now. “Right. If I'm gonna make it to Erid–” And how cool, cementing myself as the first human setting foot on an exoplanet! “–I'm gonna need to plan out the next four years a little.”

“Yes yes, okay.” Rocky shimmies a bit in agreement. “And what thinking you have so far?”

Ryland hefts the handset back up into view to consider the brainstorming he's managed thus far. Like any good scientist, he's tried to be systematic about it, and divided things up by a set of variables. If his students had been here they'd've started up a chorus of groans, protesting emphatically. The thought warms him a little.

Metric one: Time.

This one is uncontrollable. He has four-ish years to survive until they reach the 40 Eridani system, and it's the main measure to this thought experiment; Organising the things he gets up to over the next four years to minimise the myriad of pathologies the human condition develops under the circumstances he'll be living in is the main goal. He has one shot at this, and there are some easy ways to circumvent developing the kind of listless, depressive hopelessness that most worries him about the road ahead.

Control variable: Nutrition.

He has little choice about this factor if he hopes to survive; rationing is essential and has to be implemented effective immediately. He has about enough food to last him a normal two-and-a-bit years, or a restrictive four years if he dials back his intake. Rocky won't like it, and Mary sure won't condone it either, but she can be reprogrammed in-keeping with the new timeline of things; Rocky, he's sure, already knows.

Poor diet has a big impact on mental state. It's not like the Hail Mary was ever intended to do more than simply sustain its occupants long enough for them to save planet Earth (to-do list point number one ticked, hah. Stick it, Earth), so he'll be both restricted and miserable about it– but the hope is he won't be totally starved. What he's accounting for there is the lack of drive inherent to a prolonged state of malnutrition; Anything requiring decent output or mental fortitude is either going to require a spot near the top of his list (‘do sooner rather than later'), or a spot somewhere along the list in line with whenever it is his body will have… adjusted to the state of things. He's keeping his options flexible; he's never starved before so it's hard to tell when exactly that'll happen.

Independent variable: Available entertainment. 

This one is simple. When Stratt loaded him into the Hail Mary and blasted them out into the great unknown, she gave them one last gift for the journey. Somehow, a snapshot of most of the entire internet is at his disposal. With the right motivation, his options for things to do are potentially endless. 

He could learn new languages (Eridian at the top of his list, of course– though not covered here), new musical instruments, or areas of science he never specialised in. He fully intends to write some papers up on his findings out here and beam them back to Earth at his own convenience (the Beetles may already be on their way, and definitely on course to arrive first, but it's imagining whatever literature he might produce in the next few intervening years simply arriving back home one day unannounced and undisputable that makes him really grin), but these are all things he needs to carefully plan out. No point consuming the easy material – movies, podcasts, books – while his brain is at its best. Save those for years three and four, he reckons.

Dependent variable: Mental health.

Obviously, this is the main factor he's working against. Physical health and wellbeing, while a crucial pillar of his survival, are almost simpler factors to manage. He has nutritionally dense, but depressing meals to last him the time, and all the forms of exercise and resistance training he could possibly want at his disposal for keeping strong despite the conditions of travel. Long-ago did he already explain to Rocky the purpose of the running machine or the weights designed to be lifted to keep human muscles strong. He'll certainly need the extra density once on Erid, if his sit-down with Rocky, the planet’s Wikipedia page and a calculator was a good-enough approximation for what the gravity might feel like to him once there (2.09G. He's trying not to think about it).

All of this boils down to the list he has in front of him on the handset. 

• Stuff to do soon

• Stuff to work toward

• Stuff I'll get to

“I'm figuring out the best order for the things I'll do to keep busy,” He explains, then has a thought. He bends his legs at the knee and plants both socked soles of his feet against the wall above his bunk, craning back to look to the Eridian. “You got any ideas for things you wanna get up to in the next four years?”

Rocky blows a kind of laugh out his vents. “Is like pointless thrum-career questions.” He explains. “How does any Eridian know where they will be in thirty-five years?”

“Yeesh, that a universal constant then?” He laments. “Ugh.”

“In answer,” Rocky starts. “Unsure. Knows that learning more from humans will be of interest. Also knows anything done alongside Grace will satisfy.”

Ryland stares, entirely touched. He's forgotten all about his list, and the rationing and the planning. He manoeuvres himself with purpose, finally righting himself on the bunk to lie propped on his front, supported on his elbows. His feet absently kick the wall still, and he glances to the handset. “Love you man. You too.” 

“Good good.” Rocky rumbles, shifting softly where he sits. “What Grace have in mind?”

“Well,” Ryland breathes, looking back down. “Some of my ideas can become obvious collaborations. Like making something together, or for a specific purpose. Like–” He grins, eyeing the enclosure that makes up Rocky's half of the room. “We need to upgrade your pad.”

“New word?”

“Your room. Your half of the dorm.” He pauses a moment. “...I can't even explain that saying in all honesty.” 

“But upgrades to my room.” Rocky presses, very interested. He sways and rocks eagerly. “We make a space for hang-out. And a zone in the lab like ship-workshop.”

“Anything you want, bud. The Hail Mary is yours now too.”

“And other ideas?” 

He considers his ideas. “There's an obvious one we could make a project out of.” He hazards, flicking to it down his list. “On earth we have instruments designed just for music. Playing pretty chords, like Eridian speech.”

Rocky sits up straight, attention caught. “Music machine?” 

“Yeah,” He chuckles. “I never properly learned any though. In humans, learning things is easier the younger you are. My brother got the music lessons, and I went to coding club as a kid.”

“Human child smarter than Grace.” Rocky states. Not even a question, the bastard.

“Hey.”

“Interesting concept!” Rocky defends quickly as he smothers a snicker. “Grace wishing to learn a music-making art form?”

“Which, if you're up for it, I could do once you've made me the instrument. We have Wikipedia, xenonite and a dream. I'm sure it can be done.”

Rocky stands to attention, humming happily. “Will fashion you the best instruments.” He states, nodding along. “Which you want first, question?”

He balks, not anticipating the decision coming so soon. Okay, he thinks, huffing a breath out as he does. What is within the realm of possibility here? 

“I'll link you to the page for a piano.” He settles on, making sure it's in the appropriate section on his growing list. “Pianos work on resonance too. Will be a familiar concept, and a good first challenge.”

Accomplished trills from Rocky, and a little wiggle makes Ryland laugh. “A piano we will make!” He declares. 

“Glad you're on board.” Ryland admits, decisively moving the item up his agenda.

·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

“Mealtime, Dr. Grace.”

“In a sec, Mary.” 

Ryland barely feels the keys of the keyboard as they fly beneath his fingers. Once upon a time, he remembers writing the very paper that landed him where he is today with the same fervor (and desperation– c'mon, PhDs hardly pay well) that he feels now. He supposes he's ended up similarly driven, in a way; The urge to prove something to the world ties his past self to the person he is today. Back then, it'd been all the brash veracity of a young man in a big wide, untouchable world.

Now, his writings come with all the confidence of the only man able to deliver them; the only man as far outside that world as he now is.

The only other backdrop to his work is the soft hiss, tinker of Rocky on his side of the lab. Fashioned into a workshop of his own design, with all the necessary features and dimensions, Ryland sits now in a little alcove perfect for being near Rocky while he works, just for the sake of closeness. ‘Parallel-play’, as they've come to call it.

Another few seconds of revision is all he's afforded before his companion speaks up over his work. “Grace's words will be stupid without sustenance.”

“I will not be stupider for two extra minutes of work.” He rebuts.

“So says the forgetful human.” Rocky shoots back loftily. Grace is already better at picking out intonation in Eridian conversation, especially so when it's him being made fun of; it's his most common exposure case.

“Hence this forgetful human's wish to get his last thought down.” 

He hits the last full stop with triumph and reflexively saves before taking to his feet and depositing the laptop on the nearest bench as he trundles over to where Mary is presenting him with his allocated portion of coma slurry for the evening. 

“Thank you Mary,” He says with a flourish, bringing his dinner back to the alcove he haunts when he wants to watch Rocky do his best work. He unstoppers the slurry dinner and takes a hefty gulp, making a sour face but glad for the chance to get as much down as possible before the taste really starts lingering. “How goes it?”

“It goes well.” Rocky says without interrupting his work. “Earth instruments are so interesting.” A kind of frame is appearing as Rocky works on it. Maybe the pressure bar for the piano? “Bulky and inefficient, but very interesting how humans managed to achieve what Eridians innately do.”

He can see the portable earth-thinking-machine opened up to a design for an upright Steinway. Rocky's spoiling him. “Pianos are on the bigger end of the spectrum as far as instruments go, most are a whole lot more compact. Don't look too much into pipe organs though.”

Rocky manages to shoot him a look. “The problem when Grace says there are things Rocky doesn't want to know, is that Rocky does often want to know.”

“Imagine a whole room is the instrument itself.”

“Nevermind. We will save that one for on Erid.”

It takes a bit of back and forth to get the xenonite piano feeling right. They've not got much room to work with in the exchange drawers when it comes to passing bits back and forth between them, so it's mainly consisted of Rocky pushing some deconstructed part or three his way with instructions on how to fit them together.

They've got the beginnings of a small tuning board and strings, already set up on his side. It's been a good challenge for Rocky, researching the human construction of things and figuring out a way to make them translate into xenonite. The strings of a piano, ordinarily, would be steel and copper under high tension; not a problem for Rocky to engineer, but Grace is learning enough himself just trying to put it all together.

He taps away at a string as he has a tuner's forum guide open beside a YouTube tutorial for pitching by ear. He's sure there's something on the ship he could jerry-rig to read out the pitch down to the exact hertz, but he's having fun doing it the amateur way.

“That sound good?” He asks, tapping away at a prototype string for middle C. It sounds near enough to the tone being spat out by YouTube.

“No, not the same.” Rocky says without stopping. “Higher.”

Right. He's got his own personal spectrum analyser sitting right across from him. Duh.

“Too high.”

…Maybe he'll stick with YouTube though.

They decide going for the full seven and a quarter octaves of a traditional piano is overkill, so eventually they have something of a keyboard-sized xenonite upright. Five octaves is more than enough for Grace, the complete beginner that he is, but he thinks the piano makers of Earth will forgive him this. They did just make a piano in space. 

They decide it'd be nice to have it live in the dormitory. The lab generally has less available space, and it'd have to live permanently on one of the worktops in there. He steals one of the little rolling stools – the Hail Mary came with three, so he can definitely spare it – and hefts it down the ladder to the bedroom.

The first tune he taps out on the thing is clumsy, but it makes all the work worth it to see the way Rocky perks up. He comes to sit as close as possible to Ryland from his side of the xenonite, settling in attentively, and Ryland smiles, fumbling his way through the simplest of familiar tunes; Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. He likes to think his rendition is about Tau Ceti in particular. Or no– 40 Eridani A. He is playing it on xenonite after all.

“Human music better when straight from the instrument.” Rocky says gently, humming contentedly. “Recordings …flatter.”

“Definitely,” He agrees, peering at the PDF of a Grade One learner's book he'd downloaded to the handset. He'd been teaching himself to read a stave in preparation, and once he figured out middle C, works from there.

He tumbles through finding some chords that feel like they work. Keys and intervals that compliment each other nicely. Some start feeling familiar as he finds them, melodic, and then–

♬♫He♪^♭llo

Rocky stills right as he does.

… ♬♫ ♪^♭

It's not the same, has none of the roll and rasp and resonance that Eridians put into their speech, but those notes–

“He-llo,” Grace says to Rocky as he plays the chords beneath. 

Rocky goes mental.

“Grace sing Eridian!” Rocky cries, bouncing off his side of the divide and skittering gleeful little rings around the room. “Eridian song, Eridian tones!”

“Yeah!” He laughs, staring back at his hands on the keys. He plays it again, then dances around the scales trying to find other chords he's familiar with in conversational Eridian.

♩♬Ear♪^♯♬♪♩th

“You know that one?” He plays it, his chest aching.

“Grace planet, Earth.”

“Ear-th. How about…”

♪^♭Er 𝅘𝅥𝅯id  

♪♬♪♩♩♪^♯Ro–

He's going to need more than a handful of minutes under his belt to figure out Rocky's name. It doesn't pass Rocky by what he was attempting though; A gleeful trill erupts from him, bouncing on all five legs.

“Grace learn fast,” Rocky intones. “Bodes well for learning Eridian.” 

He's honestly touched. “Aw bud.”

“You must learn famous Earth music. Rocky wants to hear for real.”

That's certainly the idea. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star today– who knows, Debussy's Suite Bergamasque tomorrow.

Actually, he's pretty sure that'd take more than just four years even if he were being specially tutored for it back on Earth.

But between he and Rocky, how hard could it really be?

·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

The first release he sends back to Earth feels… kinda terrifying, but he presses ‘Broadcast’ with such relish picturing Stratt's face in… what will it be based on their current position along the course, twelve years? So 2053 maybe? The route from Tau Ceti to 40 Eridani is taking him continuously further from Sol, and he was the closest to Earth he ever will be again when he made the decision to release the beetles and turn back. Thus, the sooner he can send anything, the better; The projected transit time for beaming things back in Earth’s direction is only growing with each day that passes, but he’s come to see the situation it leaves him in with great humour.

The beetles’ projected touchdown back on Earth lands somewhere in the mid-to-late end of 2050. How funny if he sent a handful of data transmissions along between here and Erid, arriving at random, increasingly delayed intervals. 

Earth’s own Dr. Cpt. Ryland Grace, keeping them on their toes forever more. Stratt did say she needed people unafraid to annoy everyone else, so he thinks it only fitting.

Mary’s done the heavylifting prepping the transmission. He uploads the first finished paper to her C:\ drive Outgoing Transmissions folder, titled ‘RG no.1.docx’ (why not keep them guessing), and admires his work before he sends it off forever.

‘Transmission sent.’ Mary announces to the cockpit, and all of a sudden it’s gone, whisked away behind them through space. He really hopes Earth gets it. He also likes that he’ll never know. 

“Grace paper sent!” Rocky asks from in his ball by Ryland’s feet. “He will stop talking about astrobiology now?”

He grins down at his friend, giving the ball an aggressive noogie to make Rocky shriek. “I shan’t be silenced, not even by sixteen lightyears of space!”

The Eridian equivalent of sticking your tongue out and blowing a raspberry comes from somewhere near his shins. “You will get along with Adrian far too much.” He grumbles, but there’s no heat in it.

“Maybe we’ll team up, form an alliance.” He wonders aloud as he makes his way to the pilot’s chair and sinks carefully into it, legs swinging idly. The rationing is presenting unignorably now in the stiffness he feels in the mornings, and the growingly-persistent need to sit down if he overdoes it. “Erid’s first astrobiology thrum with a real alien on the roster.”

“I will never know peace.”

·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

The piano is what gives them the idea for the Eridian emulator in the end.

He doesn’t want to toot his own horn (he totally is, who else is here to judge him) but he’s developed something of a proficiency for it. He’s a scientist, and therefore methodical, before anything else, so he structured his learning around an official, centralised examination board. The US, unable to agree on anything across all fifty states as usual, had no such equivalent, so he goes with the ABRSM; renowned and, more importantly, with resources he can find in English. He tore his way through grades one to three, and now sits learning a Vaughan Williams waltz.

“Previous one was nicer.” Rocky tells him. He’s been working on that project of his that he refuses to tell Ryland about or let him see the progress of, turned secretively with his carapace between Ryland and his work. 

“Which one?” He asks, peering at a tricky bit of the piece he’s been going over. It should go up and down and then– nope, still not got it.

“The broomstick hero. Flying.”

“The Kiki’s Delivery Service one? Yeah that one was nice.” 

They’d decided to restrict the early journey to one movie a week. He didn’t want to go as far as banning them altogether, but he reasons fifty-two movies a year still leaves them plenty to tear through later down the line.

Rocky had taken to requesting specific ones from movies they’d ended up watching, telling him to switch when he was tired of hearing Ryland attempt the same three bars over and over for half an hour. He’s tempted to suggest they try building a violin next, then he can really commit to annoying the hell out of Rocky. He doesn’t even want to consider how they’d come up with an alternative to bowing hairs, so maybe it’s for the best. Actually, he’s got plenty enough hair he could grow out in the next three years, and– no, what is he thinking?

Rocky definitely takes to the piano though. Says he finds it akin to the melodic humming Eridians sing for their clutches in the days of early childhood on Erid.

That’s what gives them the idea.

“Grace’s playing,” Rocky begins out of nowhere, making him pause. Ryland pulls away from the keys to give him his full focus. “In some ways, similar to Eridian intonation.”

He hums his assent. 

“Translator take Eridian and broadcast the equivalent English. But what if Grace could play the Eridian equivalent to his English?”

He leans back, thoughtful. “Definitely doable. If fashioned with real strings like a piano, it won’t be particularly portable. But we could make one like the translator– reverse-engineered so I had some ability to play out a reply to things.”

“Full size of Eridian speech covers many frequencies.” Rocky points out. “Portable will have to mean condensed in some way.”

“Could build it around modulation,” Ryland drums his fingers against his thighs absently where he sits at the piano. “Keys that pitch the range up or down based on what I mean to say.”

Rocky likes it. Declares it a good starting point. He quizzes Grace on how far they’d be able to take this; Would the input have to be all done through the touchscreen of a handset or the keys of a laptop, or could they repurpose wiring from around the ship to actually construct a mini keyboard for it?

“No. Is so flat like this, and delayed. Need word, for gaps and jumps between phrases.”

“I guess ‘stilted’ is the word. Yeah, you’re right. Is it even understandable like this?”

Rocky’s carapace tilts in thought. “To Rocky, yes. Meaning is there. No variety, or context. Like a question in English without the question-making sounds.”

“Is there any way around that?” Ryland runs a hand through his hair, and Rocky rumbles low. A ‘considering’ noise Ryland’s come to recognise.

“With time, any Eridian could understand.” He reassures. “And there is science on Erid for replicating Eridian speech through machines. For Eridians with injuries; difficulties communicating. Scientists could adapt for Grace.”

“Gosh, okay.” He blows out an impressed breath. “Until we arrive then, I can work on getting something together to suffice for learning the basics of the language.”

Their designs end up somewhere between a little digi-keyboard and a DJ’s button pad. He’s got all the input he needs for simple chords, modulators for going up and down the scales and options for producing some of the simplest of varied tones; He has options for playing the notes as a trill, or a whistle, or a hum. 

Rocky has a time trying to perfect the samples that they’ll load into the Eridi-pad (that’s what he’s dubbed it, no he is not taking criticism). He wants to get them just right, and sits there breaking down the individual sounds he builds words around for capturing into the waveform software. 

Sometimes, mid-conversational practice, he keens an annoyed tone and cuts Ryland off. “No. Let me re-do that tone. Not enough clarity, we try again.”

He pulls the waveform software back to the front and finds the input Rocky means. They go again, and Rocky is more satisfied. Each revision gets them closer to a good range of Eridian speech – it’s not only Rocky telling him so, but Ryland hears it himself in the phrases he taps out, can pick out how they mimic sounds he’s used to hearing Rocky make.

That’s the other part of all this that’s exciting him; locking in so hard on language immersion this early is training his ear to hear Rocky past the waveform-to-speech output. He hears his meaning underneath the computer’s interpretation and finds himself catching it before the laptop’s said a thing.

Soon enough Rocky is bringing up another issue with him though, and it’s nothing to do with the Eridipad.

“Grace speech improving, but Rocky will have to teach structure soon.” He’s told after they agree to break for dinner one evening. “Rocky understand fine, because Rocky understand structure of English. But does not sound like Eridian sentences.”

“Oh jeez. Please tell me you don’t mean grammar?” He says, freezing where he’d been setting everything down on his bunk. “Even beyond the solar system I can’t escape grammar?”

“Need word?”

“Sentence structure of a language. The… rulebook, guess?”

Rocky hums his understanding, bouncing in an imitation-nod. “Yes, ‘grammar’. Grace’s Eridian all wrong. Words, yes, but order sounds like an Eridian that hit their carapace too hard.”

“Hey!”

·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Ryland had to revisit his rationing plan a little over a year and a half into the trip. 

He’s been keeping a careful eye on his stocks for anything and everything the Hail Mary deems edible, and even things it doesn’t. Mary was not a fan of him the day he decided to see how much nutritional value he could get out of the taumoeba, but he’s starting to realise that needs must with the way he’s started feeling colder, shakier, foggier. Any nutritional boost at all must be considered given the hit his health is sure to take, and even if it’s taken supplementally with a meal, he’ll take any small benefit over none at all. 

He does think it’s been doing something for his subsistence, so that’s a win-win in his eyes. He’s started replacing some amount of the coma slurry Mary usually gives him for a healthy portion of taumoeba from their breeder tanks, and he points out to Rocky the two-fold benefit he’s created; maintaining the breeder tanks means periodically taking a measure off the top as you would with a sourdough starter (and the analogy also serves to make him feel better about it all, actually: If there could be anything worse than the taumoeba to subsist on, it’d be a yeast).

Then, there’s the on-board hydroponic farm.

“What Grace doing?” Rocky had asked him one very early day into their co-living situation. Grace had glanced over his shoulder and jiggled the watering can a little. 

“Oh, this? These are plants.” He’d explained, and when he’d pointed to the little seedlings up on the workbench, Rocky had hurried to transfer from his ball into one of the tunnels so he could scurry up and get a closer look hanging from within it. 

“Rocky doesn’t recognise.” He was told, and– oh, duh, he supposes he wouldn’t. Eridians live in darkness, or at the very least in an environment not dependent on it. So photosynthetic life is probably unlikely on Erid, and any foliage he’d seen from the clips the ‘Don’t Go Crazy Room’ can provide is all one-dimensional, and unrecognisable beside the real-deal.

“A plant is a type of Earth life. They grow using sunlight, and clean the air for us.”

Rocky had rocked back on his legs, leaning away trepidatiously. “Grow with sunlight? You have a star-eater like astrophage on board?”

He had stared. “No, I– Plants don’t… ‘eat’ the sunlight.” He blinked. “But you know, I actually should have thought about that, of course they’d seem similar.” He’d said, a little dumfounded. Huh.

The better part of that day had devolved into the chemical rabbit-hole that is photosynthesis. Rocky is, of course, a far more capable pupil than anyone he’d had to teach in recent memory, so by the time they’d reached arguing about the Calvin Cycle and he’d found himself debating the concept of a wavelength-dependent process with a creature entirely unable to perceive the notion of colour, he’d found himself properly mentally taxed in the way only a teacher ever feels. 

He can’t say he even understands their inclusion on the ship. Some of the species they’d selected for the Hail Mary are edible – leafy salad lettuces, radishes, bok choy and spring onions – but also plenty that aren’t. He tends to a zinnia seedling now, in amongst the other flowering species provided. 

He suspects the justifications for them being on-board are many and varied. Some element of it must be psychological, some for air quality. Mostly, he’s grateful now that they made it to the final designs for the ship; Taking care of the little farm has been plenty-fulfilling for his human nurture-drive. 

Doesn’t hurt to throw a radish or two in with his meals now and then, too, but he’s needing to be ever so careful about it all. He may have come from a background in biology, but Mark Whatney he is not. With his latest small radish clutch in a tray to his side, and one of the laptops perched to display a Rougette radish blog page, he carefully muddles through snipping the seed-pod stems and setting them aside to dry out and yield more seeds he can add to his slowly-growing collection.

He’s acutely aware that, no matter how hungry he may feel now, he’s going to feel a whole lot hungrier – then a whole lot deader – if he doesn’t take the steps now to make sure he’ll have food once he’s on Erid.

Scuttling from behind him. “What yield this time?” Rocky rolls to a stop at his shins, angled up at him with interest.

Ryland makes for the Eridipad– it comes everywhere with him these days and always in reaching distance. ‘♩♩ +, ♬♪ λ’ He taps out, pleased at Rocky’s trill of understanding. Twenty-seven. “So I’ll germinate… I dunno, maybe fifteen? And store the rest.”

“♪♪ is enough for Grace?” He’s asked. Rocky’s been doing that lately, asking after his whole food scarcity thing. He knows his companion can’t be too happy with it all.

He nods with a shrug. “Needs-must, pal. I’m hardy, it’ll take more than skipping a few meals to get to me.” He’s struck by an idea, and moves a hand back to the Eridipad. “Hey, um– ♪^♯♩movie ♩♬♩night? I promised you Episode II after last week.”

Rocky bounces on the spot, eager. “The space magic movies?” Then, he stills. “Is there more  Mr. ‘Binks’?”

Ryland can’t help a full-bellied laugh, startled out of him as he carefully levers himself upright on ginger footing, rubbing out a knot of pain in his hip. “Unfortunately I can neither confirm nor deny. Mostly because I don’t remember.”

Even without saying a thing, Rocky’s pause seems unimpressed. “Rocky will cope. For magic space knights.”

“Attaboy.”

·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

‘Analysing Sample. Results shortly.’ Mary says as Ryland is handed a band-aid by Armando to stick in the crook of his elbow. Hopefully, Rocky was engrossed enough in his secret project to miss the exchange, or at the least not spare it a second thought. He’s not hiding his deterioration from Rocky, not really – Rocky can tell better than anyone what the time thus-far has done to his body – but he’ll spare him the details where possible.

Earth hackey-sack in hand, he waits patiently for the ping that’ll indicate his results are ready on the readout.

…Not great. The chronic protein deficiency is catching up to him. He was hoping the coma slurry was sufficiently fortifying the contents of what he was managing to eat, but it seems he’s stretching it beyond what demand it was designed to meet. For the four years of transit, he was sustained on a steady intravenous drip of the stuff. Now he reckons he’s getting one day’s dose… perhaps every three?

Point is… doesn’t look like his kidneys are too happy. Nevermind all the rest of it.

‘Nutritional intake has been insufficient, Dr Grace.’ Mary starts to say, and he jumps, whipping his head up to look back at her console with hasty shushing motions. “Mary–!”

‘Results demonstrate prolonged kidney damage, indicative of stage two–’ 

“Mary, shush!” He says desperately. 

Too late.

Downstairs, Rocky’s tinkering has stopped.

…Rats.

“♪^♯♬Grace?”  Rocky is calling, pattering his way through the tunnels to him.

There’s no point pretending he wasn’t just being told he’s made it to the chronic kidney disease part of malnutrition. They are long past the point where Rocky demanded to sit down with Wikipedia and a PDF of Campbell’s Biology ripped straight from Wayback Machine or something. 

He knows these words. Grace knows he knows these words. Rocky knows Grace knows– 

“♪^♯♬Grace–”  Rocky coos, trundling into the part of the lab he’d hunkered down into for this and stopping briefly, no doubt taking in the scene with better clarity. He’s still got his tinkering gear strapped in place, and Grace regrets that this interrupted him, that–

“Mary is giving you ‘hard time’ again, question?” He says, then rolls closer – right up to where he sits on a lab stool in the corner with his quilt draped around him like a cape – and makes an aggressive full-bodied jab in the direction of Mary’s console. Ryland can’t help it, he chortles on a sudden snort of laughter, letting a leg kick closer to the xenonite keeping Rocky from him. 

“She can’t help it bud.” He says around his laughter. Rocky leans closer to him in his ball. 

‘I am programmed to ensure optimal survival chances for every member of the crew,’ Mary states, begging her usual spiel. 

Yada yada, Grace mimes to Rocky, who chitters in amusement. 

“Grace, Mary is needing a reprogramming.” Rocky says flatly, then turns to snipe her way– “An alive Grace on Erid is better than a perfect Grace now!”

Ryland doesn’t quite have a response to string together for that, tugs his throw closer instead as something aching and warm blooms behind his sternum, right in the parts of his ribcage that ache.

“Grace, no–” Rocky says suddenly, facing him now with a reangling to fidget on the spot like he does when he’s nervous. “Language gap– Grace is perfect always– and–”

This time a cackle really does burst its way out of him, and he swipes at his cheek where his eyes seem determined to leak, as Rocky would say.

“Seems ‘turn of phrase’ is something of a universal constant. It’s okay bud, don’t freak.” He reassures, slowly bending down to pat the top of the xenonite ball. “I know what you meant.”

·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

They celebrate reaching the end of their second year in-transit with the lamest excuse for a cake Ryland’s ever managed, but it’s still everything somehow.

He has nothing like cake, or candles – any kinds of icing, even – or a way to safely light a candle if he did have one without setting off Mary’s every warning alarm and fire-suppression system… but point is, they made do.

Rocky had helped him get settled in the Don’t Go Crazy Room with the Hail Mary’s best imitation birthday cake balanced in his lap; The very last two Pop Tarts (not even a flavour he particularly likes; they’d been in Ilhyukna’s pack) layered one atop the other with a small xenonite replica of a lit candle stabbed through the top.

Now he waits for Rocky to rejoin him, and gets to decide on the backdrop for today’s occasion. 

“Mary, have you got that emulation of the beach at Pacifica?” 

‘Certainly, Dr. Grace. It seems to be a crew favourite.’ She comments as it loads to life around him. The sudden hum and whoosh of waves lapping a shore instantly settles-in to relax the line of his shoulders. 

He sinks back into the little arrangement of pillows he’d chucked down to sit against. “I took my brother there when he visited me during college.” He says idly, knowing Mary won’t really do much with the info, but enjoying that he can say it nonetheless. “Definitely fond of it.”

Distant clattering always preludes Rocky’s movements to join him, but this time he hears gentle tinkling and jingling accompanying the patter of footfalls. A smile works its way across his face, knowing already that Rocky’s glammed himself out in the customary celebratory wear appropriate for such an occasion. 

“Grace, eyes closed please.” Comes Rocky’s voice around the bend. He’s stopped somewhere just shy of the Don’t Go Crazy Room, and Ryland is tickled to picture him excitedly lying in wait.

He reaches for the Eridipad set up by his side. The latest edition is better than ever; Rocky helped him greatly refine the output quality, and gave the xenonite casing a makeover. The same ‘see you later’ ridges Rocky has carved into his shell are worked down one side of the little handset. The first time he dragged a knuckle over them and heard the right sounds – human, but Eridian; his version of it, Rocky had declared in delight – he’d felt like he could finally dare to hope at having a place on Erid.

‘♪♬♪♩♩♪^♯♬♬♪^♭Rocky.’ He plays.

“Grace close eyes!”

“Okay, okay.” He snickers, and covers them with his hands for dramatic effect. “They’re closed! But if you’re about to give me the stupidest-looking hat you could make on purpose, you’re excommunicated.”

More jangling pattering. He hears Rocky come to a stop in front of him, but his brain only registers it doesn’t quite sound how he’s used to, and Rocky didn’t even really have a rebuttal for that, when– 

“Grace can look.”

Letting his hands fall, he opens his eyes.

“Not a hat.” Rocky is saying as he holds out Eridian celebratory garments that Ryland’s never seen before– holding it out to him, because Rocky’s not in the ball, no wonder it hadn’t sounded quite right, he’s– 

Form-fitting xenonite. Flexible where Rocky shifts his weight to and fro a little, that nervousness he sometimes exhibits when he really cares about something, and is waiting for Grace’s opinion. Transparent still, like the enclosures and the tunnels and his ball – the ball he’s left behind somewhere because– 

This is a suit. Rocky’s in a suit that he’s walking in, was able to climb here in, is able to clutch the hand-crafted jewelry from within, his claws snugly moulded into what must be flexible gloves at the end of each arm, because– yes, he can see where one of the claws his weight is braced on shifts and adjusts.

“Jewelry.” Rocky says. “And suit. For Grace.”

“Rock–” Ryland has no words. He clutches at straws trying to come up with anything, ends up flapping his gob like a fish. “You–? Rocky.”

“Rocky has better range of movement in suit.” He explains, demonstrating by twisting to and fro. The celebratory garments clink like windchimes as they sway. “No more being limited to the ball.” He says, then lower, “For closeness. Eridians are used to closeness, in sleep for example. Grace has gone without closeness altogether. No longer.”

“Rock–” He chokes out, and lunges past the outstretched gifts to wrap his arms around Rocky– fully, properly, for the first time.

It’s like coming home. It’s everything he’s been missing, cool sturdiness from the xenonite and warmth from Rocky himself, and all of a sudden it’s like the remaining two years they have to weather to make it to Erid are finally survivable.

Rocky takes a second too, trilling softly from within the circle of his arms, then his own slowly come to wrap behind Ryland’s back – carefully, so gently, like he’s testing what the appropriate amount of pressure for a human as fragile as Ryland has become might be. The garb jingles some more as he settles into it, gifts still clutched in-hand but forgotten by both in favour of the moment.

“This was your project.” Ryland croaks behind tears. He’s hugging his best friend.

“This was my project.” Rocky hums. “Though Grace will still have to tell Rocky when the hug feels done.” He tacks on. “–Am learning.”

“This hug could never be long enough.” He snorts, emphatic despite the leaking he’s doing all over the brand new state-of-the-art, first-of-its-kind invention.

“Grace needs to put on his celebration wear at some point.” Then, “Is not too hard? The hug?”

“You are being so gentle, dude, I’m good.” He pulls away carefully, and Rocky immediately loosens the circle of his arms. “We’ve got plenty of time to get it right, don’t worry.”

“Is the whole point of today!” Rocky agrees, then gestures eagerly with what looks like a necklace piece. Ryland is careful about leaning forward so Rocky can loop it over his head, then the Eridian is fiddling with the other part of the set. Looks like a bracelet?

“Very special day indeed.” He remarks, fond to his core as he watches his friend who is still altogether not used to the very invention he is now encased in try to figure out the clasp on his own gift. Wordlessly, he reaches out in offer of taking it, and is patient as Rocky explains the Eridian-made lock on the piece.

“Where should it go?” He asks once he’s got it loose.

Rocky indeed gestures to his wrists. “For your arms. Would be these,” He taps to his own equivalent pieces that sit snug up by where his arms meet carapace. “–But Grace version.”

He’s suitably jingle-jangling in short order, fist bumping Rocky for real with a swoop of joy.

“You’re crazy dude,” He laughs. “–Honestly. You did all this…” He gestures to the lame pop tart excuse of a cake. “I feel thoroughly outdone.”

Rocky waves a hand, batting the comment away. That’s one he knows the little guy picked up from him; he loves the cultural osmosis they’ve leant into. “Grace been busy too.” He says simply, then settles into a proper loaf beside him by the pillow-pile. “Two years… as humans say, ‘home stretch’ to Erid now.”

“Yeah,” With the sounds of the Californian coast around them and the gentle music of their Eridian jewelry as they settle and shift, Ryland relaxes against Rocky and properly feels his warmth working magic through his side. “Home stretch now. Easy peasy.”

·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

“Stupid human implements.” Grumbles Rocky.

Ryland makes a face in his direction, reproachful. “They work perfectly well for humans, I'll have you know.”

“Repetitive,” Rocky moans. “–Fiddly!”

Grace watches the Eridian's grip fumble from within the handles of the scissors he's trying to wrangle, xenonite suit and all. Rocky lets them tumble to the floor, contemplates in stillness a moment, then visibly makes to crush them before he exhibits restraint and lets his arm thunk down beside them instead.

Ryland snorts. “Hey– come up here.” He offers, patting the bunk beside him. He'd not even bothered getting changed today, still in what he's been using as pyjama wear. The fox cardigan gets bundled up overtop whenever he finds himself particularly chilly, which he burrows down into now.

Rocky seems all too happy to abandon the scissors with haste, scuttling toward him and climbing up gently on nimble arms. The bunk isn't exactly the biggest, fitting one human or a very closely-acquainted two. With Rocky in the mix, they've found the best configuration is Rocky taking the foot of the bed, and Grace curling up at the head.

His compatriot remains ever amused by the squishiness of the mattress pad, stepping gingerly at first then graduating to springy-stepped bounces. He settles down comfily and leans in, to better parse what Ryland’s up to.

“This is why we're destroying the airlock manual?”

“Indeed it is,” Ryland says with a flourish, gliding his scissors through a final time so another little strip of paper – about an inch wide – flutters to join its brethren beside him on the bed. “Very important stuff. More important than depressurisation theory.”

“You said we make stars with these.”

Ryland discards his scissors too in favour of thumbing up the topmost strip from the pile. The only hardcopy documents Stratt had deigned important enough to have printed were for systems aboard the Hail Mary that he might ever have needed to operate under catastrophic power loss; the airlock, the launch mechanism for the Beetles, and a cargo manifest made the cut. 

Now, with the first few pages of each cut to shreds around him, he holds the strip up between him and Rocky, and pinches it between both forefingers and thumbs. “Earth has a cultural practice that involves ‘paper’,” He flaps it a little for emphasis. “–This stuff. It’s our most prevalent writing medium. And because it’s flexible, people worked out cool ways to fold it.”

“Fold,” Rocky repeats, miming the would-be action in the air between them with two of his claws. “Is not something Eridians do. Writing inlaid on stone, or constructed in xenonite.” He explains. “–What is purpose? You said we would make stars.”

Ryland gives it a think through, then decides to start with the very basics. “I’ve shown you before what distant stars look like to humans,” He opens with. “–On your visualiser.”

“Small dots.” Rocky confirms. He does a little ‘nod’ with his whole carapace, a gesture picked up from Ryland. 

“Well,” He goes on. “–The human light-sensing organ is a complicated thing, but for the purposes of our current extracurricular of choice, an important detail is the way light behaves when it interacts with the eye.” He raises a finger and points to one of his own. “Anything getting between the light and your receiver makes it ‘diffract’.” 

“New word,” Rocky says immediately. Ryland nods.

“Means to ‘scatter’, or ‘spread’, or ‘bend’. Technically the same happens with sound waves hitting surfaces and bending around them, so you might actually have an equivalent for it.”

Rocky perks up. “Ah, is probably ‘𝅘𝅥𝅯♫𝅘𝅥𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅗𝅥𝅗𝅥𝅘𝅥𝅯’!”

Ryland takes a moment to plug it into his Eridian dictionary. “For the visible light from stars, this makes it look like intersecting lines to our eyes. So people often represent them that way when trying to depict them.” 

“Okay,” Rocky then gently takes the little strip of paper from him with two of his claws. “We make these from… ‘𝅗𝅥𝅗𝅥𝅘𝅥𝅯♫’?”

“Paper? Yes.” He smiles, beginning the process of folding up the first strip. “We call it ‘origami’.”

Despite Rocky’s endless rigor for all things in the pursuit of knowledge, Ryland has found him to be a surprisingly patient study these last couple sedentary years. He does suppose though that origami is a far cry from their mission days, when every minute counted. With both the time and distance from that pressure they’ve been gifted, learning how to learn simply for learning’s sake has been quite the curve.

When curiosity, suddenly, will do no killing, Ryland finds he’s come to know a new side of himself. Rocky too. Even back on Earth, or Erid, no leisurely learning comes without a price when it’s squeezed between work, errands, and domestic upkeep. 

Being slow about things might be the toughest lesson he’s lived.

Rocky watches him fold the first few strips into little paper stars that he takes the time to mold and pinch into the right shape. When the little pile beside him is a good few stars strong, Rocky reaches for a strip of paper and starts giving it a go. He’s got far less dexterity in the suit than he does out of it, but he’s not the best engineer Ryland’s met for nothing. Rocky’d spent the last however many weeks working the suit’s handpieces into something he can be precise enough with to rival a Davinci endoscopic surgical system. 

It’s remarkable.

They make a hundred little stars between them, quietly folding them one after another in the peace of the dormitory. He’d sourced the paper from a couple different manuals so they’d have a mix of hues, since ESA had gone to the trouble of printing them in distinct colours for easy differentiation. They have pink from the airlock manual, blue from the Beetle launch instructions, and the cargo manifest came in yellow. Rocky can’t tell the difference, but Ryland likes it.

“From Earth, the stars look like they’re in these… patterns,” He starts, picking up a few from their pile. He shifts further back on the bed to make space between the two of them, and Rocky follows suit, shuffling down a little more toward the end. Ryland smooths down the quilt between them, then puts the stars down one by one into the arrangement of the Big Dipper. “This is maybe the most famous.”

Rocky perks up. “Is Petrova line and infected planet!”

Ryland stares down at what he’s laid out. “It’s–” He blinks. “Okay that’s weird, you’re not even wrong, it does kinda look like that–”

He makes as many constellations for Rocky as he can think of, then pulls up more to show him from on the laptop. “This one is called Cygnus, because it kinda resembles this Earth animal.” He tabs over to Wiki. “–A swan. See?”

“But two words nothing like eachother,” Rocky says reproachfully. “Is this more bad human naming, question?”

“It’s because I’m showing you the English name,” He points to the section on its scientific classification. “Earth has many languages, so most scholars try to use the same language to prevent confusion. So this is Latin, because we decided to name creatures in Latin. ‘Cygnus’ is what this animal is called in Latin.”

Rocky leans closer to the screen with his seeing-receiver, then angles to his texture screen incredulously. “Why six names?!” 

Ryland drags a hand down his face. “Oh Rock, don’t make me explain binomial naming convention, I don’t have it in me.”

Rocky decides Canis Major is his favourite constellation after Ryland explains it’s named after a dog. “‘Dog’ 𝅘𝅥𝅯𝅘𝅥𝅗𝅥𝅘𝅥𝅯 is ‘man’s best friend, like Rocky is Grace best friend!” He proudly proclaims. Ryland disguises the subsequent ‘squishy emotions’ this elicits in him by giving Rocky a noogie and re-scattering the stars to show him another arrangement, trying not to let his watering eyes spill over. 

“I can’t believe I forgot,” He says, picking up more of the stars off to the side. “I haven’t shown you the constellation Erid is part of.”

Rocky goes still, then tilts his carapace toward Grace. “You can see Erid from Earth, question?” He asks, tone level.

“Yeah bud, or– okay, it’d be more accurate to say we can see your star, 40 Eridani A. But you’re up there.” He explains, carefully putting stars down in a snaking pattern, glancing back and forth between his reference for it on the laptop and the star-scattered quilt. “It’s one of the biggest in the sky,” He goes on. “–With twenty-four stars. And yours, is here.” He says as he puts one down, then three more to complete the pattern. “–Near the end of the river. That’s what this constellation is named after.”

Rocky extends a gentle arm, feeling over the star representing 40 Eridani A with care. “Wish I could say Erid has equivalent patterns including ‘Sol’ ♩♬♪^♯♬♪♩♪♩,” He admits. “But stars aren't visible from Erid's surface. So no equivalent cultural importance.”

The core of Ryland softens, and he stretches out to gently pat atop Rocky's carapace. “It's fine bud, we come from very different places. There can't be a correlating aspect of life to everything.”

“Still,” Rocky says, then trills in a lighter gesture he seems to regain some joviality from. “But this mean Earth will be able to see Grace always! If Erid visible to humans.”

“A hundred percent,” He concurs, even as the thought kinda… strikes him for the first time, Rocky announcing it to him now. He feels it'd been fairly obvious to him– as far as their intragalactic neighbours were concerned, he's going to end up practically a stone's throw away; barely sixteen lightyears give or take. Sure, he's not as close as Alpha Centauri, or Sirius, but 40 Eridani was long ago noted and logged by ancient human astronomers, and would continue being part of the nightsky he thinks he'll miss for the rest of his life, so long as Earth sustains the atmosphere & visibility to see it.

The thought makes what he faces a fraction less daunting, he supposes.

·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

He doesn't really register Rocky distantly trying to silence Mary through the haze of his still half-asleep mind, chirruping up to her in displeasure from somewhere beyond the foot of his bunk while Grace drags a pillow over his head. He only registers the ache between his shoulder blades as his head swims, and the painful jut of hips he can no longer really get comfortable on with the passably-padded mattress provided to the Hail Mary crew. He wonders if it’s time to thieve the last of the three on-board (Ilhyukna’s has become the foundation to the Don’t Go Crazy Room pillow pile) and double them up.

He eventually works up the energy to silence her himself, delaying his mandated meal by an hour to give himself time to feel human again. The pit in his stomach makes it perfectly clear it wouldn’t stay down even if he had it now, regardless. 

He groans his way upright and leans his back against the headboard of the bunk, opening his eyes slowly. Mary’s had the decency to keep the lights low overnight until he asks for them to be brought up to full, so he only has to wince his way through this a little.

“W’h time is it?” He asks the ceiling. 

‘You have been asleep for eleven and a half hours, Dr. Grace.’

It is the universe’s cruelest robbery that he doesn’t even feel rested after all that. Ugh.

“I wish I still had a beetle on board.” He says to no-one.

Rocky chirps in confusion, popping his carapace up a little higher to better hear Grace. “Why?”

“So I could write to Stratt and personally cuss her out with the full ire of my chronically malnourished-ass.”

“Once on Erid we will construct probe, properly send her your curses.”

Close enough. He gets over himself and groans his way some more to uprightness.

He plops himself down to do the essential tasks of the day before he loses what little steam he has; tending the hydroponic farm, and checking the taumoeba tanks. All is fine, as it has been, so he lets himself feel the relief before harvesting what taumoeba he can for his own consumption into a little beaker, letting his head sink to lay atop the worktable beside it. “What’s on the menu today, Mary?”

‘I can provide–’

“No wait, let me guess! Is it… more tau-slurry?”

‘It is.’

“Who’d have thought?”

‘You did, Dr. Grace.’

“Mary… shut the hell up.”

It takes him twenty minutes to stomach the stuff once she presents it and he gets it mixed up. He’s really not enjoyed learning from a first-person perspective of the various fun ways the body becomes paradoxically averse to nutritional intake during chronic underfeeding. It was never pleasant to get down in the first place, but now when Rocky trundles in to check-in with him a short while later, he’s still breathing through the roil and churn the first couple mouthfuls have set off in his gut.

“♪^♯♩Movie today?” He’s asked. 

He takes a moment to compose himself. The last thing he’d want is his frustration aimed anywhere near Rocky– not after all he’s done for him. 

“Maybe later, bud.”

“Grace okay if Rocky continue in workshop?”

He nods, still breathing shallowly. Somewhere in the back of his mind he processes Rocky leaving. At some point not too far into their journey back to Erid, Rocky really came to terms with the fact that Grace does in fact mean it when he says he benefits from some space, as most humans do from time to time, and yes, he’s aware Rocky can still hear everything going on around the ship, but it’s more for Grace’s sensibilities than any sense of true privacy. 

He’s not stupid; He knows that with Rocky aboard, nothing he does can ever truly be private. But that’s not the point. There’s a certain security in Rocky respecting the boundary enough to be in the next room despite how little it matters from Rocky’s own perspective. 

Right now, he’s fuelled by that small, vulnerable part of his center-mass that loathes the idea of being seen while he’s down. 

The rest of his meal for the day comes with him when he’s eventually ready to shuffle his way back into the dorm. He’s given up getting it down in one go, and maybe it’s for the best actually; He’d previously taken to getting it down and done, just to avoid stretching the awful taste any further through his day than otherwise necessary.

Now, it’s necessary to make sure it even stays down.

When he next submits to Mary’s plying and provides an up-to-date blood sample, he doesn’t even bother looking through the results himself– just tells her to forward the data straight to Armando’s adaptive judgement algorithm so, at the very least, the medbot is working with the best info he can give it.

He’s less than enthused when Armando starts wiggling at him incessantly.

“Cut it out, you’re being rude.” Ryland pouts, weakly swatting one of the freakishly animated arms out of his way as he shuffles past. His ankles are hurting something particularly fierce today.

‘Your nutritional intake has been insufficient, Dr. Grace, I recommend reviewing whether your hydroponic produce could–’

“Stuff your recommendation.” He spits, distracted. “Rocky!”

“♪♪^♭Here.” He picks up from somewhere toward the lab. 

“Where’d I leave the laptop?”

A distant Tap Tap.

“𝅗𝅥♪ Workshop!”

Once he has it in-hand – a trip up and down the ladders that makes him wish distantly for the easy weightlessness of microgravity (oh how far he’s come!) – he then plonks back down on his bed with it balanced on his lap. Armando draws nearer as he’s settling in, and he gives the closest arm a little nudge. “I’m not actually mad at you bud, I know you’re just doing your job.”

He’s trying to beat his Snake PB when he next goes for the rest of his tau-slurry. Taking a careful gulp, he grimaces, then has to stay very still when his stomach rolls in protest. 

Slowly, Ryland sits up straight, hands on knees and eyes shut. Even breaths. Counting steadily in his head. It’s not even more than the taste that elicits this reaction in him – sure, some part of it will be the malnutrition itself, with his stomach growing used to the portions of ever-decreasing measure, but it’s largely like trying to convince himself to swallow the skimmed surface of a stagnant pond. He just can’t get his brain on board with doing it.

By extension, his stomach once again makes its displeasure known; he dives for a basin he’s been keeping by his bed and heaves.

He’s wiping the evidence away with the back of his hand, breathing carefully, when Rocky comes pattering in. “+^♭Fourth time this week,” He says neutrally, stopping by the foot of the bunk. “𝅗𝅥^♯𝅗𝅥^♮Bad 𝅗𝅥^♯𝅗𝅥^♮bad.”

“Yes, thank you Rock,” He gets out through gritted teeth, then immediately shuts his eyes when guilt sets off an altogether different unpleasant curl in his gut. “–Sorry, I’m… tired.”

“I know this,” Rocky states simply. Up onto the mattress he climbs. “–More sleep, but worse quality. Highly restricted diet. Little stimulation. Any Eridian would be frustrated also.”

Ryland huffs a laugh, warmed. He takes the time to reach over to his Eridipad and tap out an appreciative 𝅘𝅥𝅯𝅗𝅥𝅗𝅥thank 𝅗𝅥^♭♫you.

Rocky trills gently, then shifts his weight slightly. “Have been wondering. How did you eat on the trip to Tau Ceti?”

Ryland knew this was coming, and averts his gaze. “I didn’t want to already be at that point.” Rocky only tilts his carapace in further confusion, so he sighs. “I was fed through a tube, Rock. ‘Naso-gastric’ tubing. It put the food directly in my stomach.”

Rocky is so immediately repulsed, it’d be funny in any other context. “What tube? ‘Plastic’ tube? Inside you? Barbaric.”

He chuckles. “Oh bud, I promise you there is so much worse in modern human medicine than a tube down your throat. I’ve been starting to wonder if I ought to give it a go to be honest.”

“No,” Rocky is quick to spit out. “–Forced sleep is not natural, you said it was dangerous–”

His heart sinks. “No, Rock,” Ryland is quick to soothe. He reaches out a hand, gently anchors it on one of the Eridian’s claws. “I don’t have to be asleep to have this kind of tube. It wouldn’t have to go there.”

Rocky seems to consider it for a moment, hunkering down and getting situated, carapace over folded legs. “You would put a tube in while conscious?” He asks, incredulous. “Humans not sane. Humans crazy.”

“You knew that,” Ryland laughs, batting the suggestion away, trivial. “Yeah dude, it happens all the time. Sure, it isn’t pleasant, but on the flipside it’d mean a whole lot less vomiting.”

He doesn’t need any advanced Eridian to see the scepticism radiating off his friend. “You promise it is safe?” Is all he asks.

“Promise.” Ryland swears.

An hour of laptop research and querying Mary finds he and Rocky situated by a chair the Eridian helped him pull up to be within Armando’s reach. Now, he perches in wait. Mary directed him to the main stash of medical supplies the ship came equipped with, within which he found the naso-gastric tubing. 

He’d been doing his level-best not to go through his finite supply of coffee the last two-and-a-half years soaring through space, but he rather thinks that if he’s going to be sipping on something to try and get this godforsaken tube down his throat, he’ll have earned the damn coffee. He sits, pouch of coffee by his side, sharpie at the ready, and holds up the tubing as demonstrated by the short YouTube video he’d studied twenty minutes prior.

“You gonna help me bud?” He asks, raising the end of the NG to his nose so he can bring the rest of the tubing back toward his ear, guiding the long end to dangle over his chest. “–I need to know roughly where the bottom of my sternum is. Can’t X-Ray to confirm I’ve done this right.”

Hefting his weight up onto three of his legs, Rocky leans against the chair Grace sits on and gently feels against his chest with another arm, somewhere toward the base of his ribcage. “♪♪^♭Here.” He trills softly, curling his claw to point at a spot in his midriff. Ryland pinches the tubing at Rocky’s instruction and makes to mark the length with the sharpie before fishing through the first-aid kit to find some simple lubricant. If he’s to get this thing in, he’ll give it the path of least resistance thanks. 

“Here goes nothing.” Ryland breathes. “Armando, save me if I fuck up.”

Down the hatch it goes. It’s the most uniquely unpleasant feeling he thinks he’s ever felt. Once it’s past the nasopharynx he pauses, torn between the urge to hack a forceful cough and vomit as hard as he can. Instead, he valiantly reaches for the coffee pouch and starts gulping it down, guiding the tube deeper with the motion. Everything around him besides the acute sensation of it all is a distant forgotten thought– all except the gentle pressure of Rocky’s claw tapping on his chest to double-check the tube isn’t worming its way into his lungs. 

An impossible eon later his hand reaches the sharpie-mark. He breathes hard, staring straight ahead. Armando doesn’t move from where it hovers nearby, and Rocky’s gentle tap-tapping wanders lower. “Tube is in your stomach.” He confirms.

“Yay,” Ryland says weakly, all nasally and restricted. “Thank god.”

“You are okay?” Rocky checks.

“I will be.” 

He does as he’d read about, getting more fluids down and trying for an aspirate. It’s a formality given Rocky’s own confirmation – which he trusts infinitely more than his own amateur attempts to replicate what he’d learned WikiHow-style half an hour prior – but he manages to produce a small fluid sample through the tube that he’s dubious of until he gets a pH dipstick into it and verifies what Rocky’d reassured him of.

A pH of 3.5. Stomach acid.

“Yippee,” He sings weakly as he tapes the tube in place – a strip where it meets his nose, and one on his cheek to keep the loose tail of it in place where he tucks it back behind his ear. “–Go team.”

Despite hearing for himself that the whole ordeal went as according to plan, Rocky is understandably in need of consoling after it all. At Ryland’s request, he’d gotten all the ‘humans are bonkers’ comments out of his system before they’d gone ahead with it all, and now squeezes himself between the wall and Ryland, who collapses back into bed once he’s finally done with flushing the line, loading a dose of tau-slurry, and hanging it from one of Armando’s appendages to let the 1.5 g’s do all the work of feeding him. 

They chuck on Princess Bride and call it a day.

·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Because of the NG tube, it’s another couple months before he loses his first tooth. And for some reason, it’s still a nasty surprise.

When planning his diet, he’d tried to spread the solid foods out through the years, mostly so he could still have a burrito or two to look forward to toward the end. He’s slowly chewing through one of them, trying to savour every morsel, when it happens. 

He ends up spitting the molar out into his palm, staring at it. It had a filling in it already by the looks of it. It’s no less uncanny the little things that still pop straight into his head, years of amnesia down the line. He was about seventeen when he got that filling.

There’s no point making a fuss about it. He sets his burrito down and slowly ekes himself up, padding to the small basin in the lavatory and taking care to rinse it off. It still has the root, which is unnerving him a little, and that thought has him realising he’s been tonguing the socket this whole time, which he abruptly refrains from doing.

From Armando he requests a pouch of saline water, and he rinses it around his mouth as he sets the tooth down, just staring at it.

Rocky is not a happy chap about it all when he learns. “Nothing?” He asks obstinately, tapping with the question. “You can stick a tube down your throat but you can’t do anything for this, question?”

“Teeth are complicated dude, and they don’t grow back once they’re gone.” He sighs out. “You knew this might happen, I warned you.”

“Grace try again with Eridian food,” Rocky stomps out, temper getting the best of him. He’s been so good about it all once he’d realised how withdrawn his own frustrations had made Grace– how much guilt it stirred in the human, to make his friend so worried. But everyone has their limits. “–We are now at the permanent problems. I find a way to make it safe.”

“We tried,” He gets out, tired. “I tried and tried and tried. It’s no fault of yours, Rock. It just is.”

“No.” Rocky quavers. “I don’t need you perfect once we reach Erid, but I need you alive. Will you be alive?” He cries, drawing back into himself. “You are thin. You are tired. I eat just fine, but I’m watching you become nothing like Grace. My crew–”

Ryland can’t help the breath that catches in his throat, the way his eyes abruptly well. He sinks into a chair and cradles the molar between his knees in a slackened grip, unable to look away from Rocky as his throat silently works. “I’m sorry,” He chokes around, then forms a clenched fist around the tooth he can bury his forehead against, hunching forward. “–I wish I had another answer. I wish I’d been successful with the samples you gave me. I wish–”

“You,” Rocky gusts. “–Don’t get to say ‘sorry’.” He forces his way forward, suddenly, burrowing his carapace between Grace’s knees where he sits lamenting. Grace pulls back, then just weeps harder, brows knitting. “You did not do this. You are surviving what other humans did to you, it’s them that should be sorry.”

“What they think now does nothing for me, Rock.” He breathes out, trying not to sniffle too much lest he disturb the NG. “What’s done is done, and we are where we are. We’ve done all we can. And hopefully–” He doubles down, clutching Rocky’s suited form between trembly palms, anchored by him. “–My calculations all those years ago were solid, and my gardening has been half-decent, and I’ll make it. Okay?”

“You are sick.”

“This isn’t like your crew, Rock.” Ryland falters, his tears splashing down onto the xenonite shell of the suit Rocky’d engineered, just for him. “–It isn’t. We knew this was coming, right? And I’ll survive it.”

“Your tooth cannot be put back?” Rocky asks quietly. Ryland shakes his head wearily, sitting back upright and scrubbing at his face with the back of one forearm. 

“No.”

“If you were on Earth?” He presses.

“Sure,” Ryland shrugs. “They had implants that dentists could insert, or dentures.”

Rocky pulls back enough to level a ‘look’ at Ryland; an opinionated jutt of the carapace more than anything. “Eridians will become better at this than any human.” He bites obstinately. “And Rocky will fix.”

Ryland smiles sadly, and tiredly, still aching all over. More than anything, he wants to be back in bed, and he’s kinda bummed he didn’t even finish the burrito he’d been looking forward to for the last three weeks. “Losing one tooth isn’t anything to become an orthopaedic doctor about Rock,” He makes the point to say, then raises a hand in surrender at the squawk that earns him. “...But sure, at some point I’ll pull up some articles on it for you.”

“Not for me,” Rocky presses. “I have been building… set of resources.” He settles on. “–In a format Eridian specialists will be able to read. When we are in range, I am hoping to transmit an information packet. They will have the most important things ready.”

He stares down at his friend, a little lost for words. Then, some of the tension he’d been holding across his shoulders slackens. “I don’t know what I did to earn you, Rock.” He croaks. The palm cradling his wayward molar slackens, and he stares at it a little more, bringing his other hand up to massage at his cheek soothingly. 

“You turned around and came back for me.” Rocky reminds him simply, like he’s being an idiot. 

“Hah. Oh yeah.”

He’s tapped pointedly by a pushy claw, jabbing gently into his thigh. “No more ‘speaking down’ to yourself, please. Thank you.”

“Aye aye captain.” Ryland nods, head sinking as he smiles. 

“And you’re sure we can’t make the Mary go faster?” Rocky checks quickly.

He can’t help the snort of amusement that escapes him then. “All my blood would pool in my feet and my heart would give out.”

Rocky gripes and grumbles, fluting unhappily before turning-heel and plodding off. “...The teeth Rocky can ‘make peace’ with.”

·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

He’s tabbing through that list of ways to occupy himself from so long ago when Rocky comes climbing into the bedroom through one of his tunnels. “Is time to change stomach tube?” He asks.

Ryland reaches for the Eridipad. ‘𝅘𝅥♫Yes, ♪^♭♬late 𝅗𝅥𝅗𝅥today.’

“Wrong conjugation.”

Ryland considers. ‘♪^♭♬♩Later?’

Rocky chirps, pleased.

‘♪^♭♬♩Later 𝅗𝅥𝅗𝅥today.’

“♫𝅘𝅥𝅯Good ♫𝅘𝅥𝅯good! Eridian improving.”

Ryland achieves a smile. “Did the articles I gave you on proteins help?”

Rocky perks up. “Yes. Is largely fortunate news, many of your essential amino acids we have on Erid. Not all. Isolate what we have, the rest they synthesise.”

Ryland lets his head roll so he can better address Rocky. “Yay, Eridian-make tau-slurry. Can’t wait to switch it up.”

Rocky points a threatening claw his way, no real heat behind it. “Too 𝅗𝅥^♯♪𝅘𝅥grumpy 𝅗𝅥^♯♪𝅘𝅥grumpy. See the ‘reflective’ linings.”

“So help me I will turn this ship around.”

Changing the NG is even less fun than getting it down the first time had been. He not only has to essentially throw the tube up to get it out, but his nostrils are hosting sores where the plastic has been chafing the tender skin there for eight weeks– and that was really pushing it anyway.

‘𝅗𝅥^♯𝅗𝅥^♮Bad 𝅗𝅥^♯𝅗𝅥^♮Bad,’ He taps out, thumping the floor a little in distress as he pants weakly with the mess of the extraction before him on the floor. Rocky croons sadly by his hip, one claw extending. Ryland acquiesces, hooking his pinky through and around it.

Armando whirrs softly somewhere behind him, right before a weight settles over his shoulders. It almost makes Ryland jump, leaving him instead to look up, a little bewildered, and find the quilt blanketing him where he sits.

He brings a hand up, clutches the nearest edge close. Covers balled up by his sternum, he closes his eyes. Nods. 

“You need new feed tube today, question?” Rocky quietly wonders. “Solid food today, new tube tomorrow?”

His nodding grows surer, answering Rocky. “Might be for the best.”

The burrito Armando presents him has to wait a half-hour or so before Ryland even has the appetite for it. It goes down bit-by-bit over the rest of the day as he and Rocky marathon Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

At some point he must fall asleep though, ‘cause he ends up needing Rocky’s blessing to rewind the last few episodes and resume it further back, so Ryland feels a little less lost in it all. 

·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

“♪^♯♬Grace? Been gardening a while.”

Ryland’s brows, knit together in puzzlement, lift as he rubs at his forehead. “Did I say how many of the bok choy I was setting aside last time?”

Rocky climbs down through the nearest tunnel, gripping a hold by Ryland’s head and tapping a little with another claw to better parse the scene. “You said… ∀five, you put them to keep. In the fridge, over there.”

“I didn’t… So I didn’t put them to dry out?” He flips back a page in his little logbook. “I thought I put them to dry out.”

“Definitely in refrigerator.” Rocky reassures. Ryland’s heart sinks, and he pads over to the chilling unit, opening it to pull out the draw he’d designated for all the food-safe bags he’s been carefully keeping track of his produce in over the months.

There, tucked under some baggies of cress he’d gathered the day before yesterday (or the day before that?), sat the last bok choy harvest in it’s bag. Sodden and rotten.

His head thunks into the minifridge door. “...Idiot.” 

Out comes the bag, which he condemns the contents of to the waste disposal, scraping out as much as possible to make rinsing and sterilising the bag itself as painless as possible. 

His logbook denoted he’d put that lot out to dry. Forgetting what he'd done is one thing; how did he mis-record it entirely?

“How long would that produce have kept?” Rocky asks him later. “λThree days?”

He nods, sat staring at his little farm. “Yeah, pretty much. Radishes ten days maybe. Cress two days, if that.”

“You able to give me the numbers, question?” Rocky tries. “For all that the garden produces.”

The sudden frustration that begins to simmer leaves him feeling cold, and tired, but mostly disappointed in himself. “I don’t want to have to do that.” He grits out, staring a hole through the poor onion shoots looking right at him. “What does that make me? If I can’t even keep track of the variables in something as straightforward as this?” He has to consciously unclench his jaw. “–Messing up my own chances?”

“♪^♯♬Grace,” Rocky says, like one might chastise a pebble. He has to close his eyes at it. “–Is first time you’ve done this in all ∀λ+∀‘1217’ days.”

“I can’t afford to be making silly mistakes like that.” He bristles. “All of it was factored in at the start, on day one when I– When I turned back.” 

“You said it was never predictive.” Rocky stomps out. “Only a guide. Has not been perfect besides. Food lost to ‘vomit’ episodes. Why, ♪^♯♬Grace, this is what you ‘draw line’ at, question?” 

“Because this is… I don’t know if I can trust myself anymore.” He admits to his hands, clasped before him. He could almost pretend to be bowed in prayer if he could be convinced of any God that could still hear him. “This is all– I can’t get this wrong, Rock. Don’t you see? It’s not getting any better for me– if I can’t keep to the numbers I’ll survive just long enough to die in orbit over Erid.”

“Not going to happen,” Rocky rumbles testily. “I am preparing my scientists, they will have all the information they need. You know this!”

“Who's to say they'll even be receptive to helping me?” Grace pushes. “How do you know that?”

Rocky pulls back a little, affronted. Ryland’s head drops, and he shakes it where he sits, defeated. 

“Nevermind.” He mumbles. “I… Sorry, I appreciate everything you're preparing, I do–”

“Why wouldn't Erid want to help Grace?” Rocky flutes. “–Question?”

He looks up, shoulders creaking as he does. His bewilderment manifests as a sudden shrug, a sigh blustering out of him. “I dunno Rock, I'm a sentient alien. You know I'm not gonna hurt anyone, but they might not even trust me until they can meet me themselves.”

“Why would they conclude you might hurt anybody?” Rocky presses. “This is human culture thing. Distrust?”

“More like… caution?” Grace corrects.

“That is 𝅗𝅥^♭♫𝅗𝅥^♮sad, 𝅗𝅥^♭♫𝅗𝅥^♮sad, 𝅗𝅥^♭♫𝅗𝅥^♮sad,” The Eridian warbles, sounding shocked. “Eridians will not treat you this way. They will not just let you die because of something you might do, Grace. No sense to it. How is that fair, question?”

Ryland can't work up an answer, brows furrowing as his throat works painfully. He gestures with a hand, vague. “‘Fair’ isn't a factor when it's your civilisation on the line.”

“We were already ‘on the line’!” Rocky points out, vents working. “Human brain not working again, and you're being too mean to yourself because of it.” He jabs a claw accusingly Ryland’s way. He feels himself deflate. “You pose no additional ‘threat’ to my people that we hadn't already accounted for. We hold the solution to Erid's salvation. You, Grace, are the only thing that should matter to them. And this,” He gestures to the garden. “–Is your pride.”

“Of course it's my pride,” Ryland says as he slowly stands. He holds himself around his middle, staring at his slippered feet. “–The last thing I want is to be any more of a burden.”

Rocky seems to throw his arms up, incredulous. It's such a distinctly human gesture, it almost cracks a sad smile over Ryland’s face. 

“Saying you are a burden when I am in your ship on your life-support systems, delivering the organism you isolated to save my people.” Rocky stomps away. “If you don't stop being mean to my friend Grace, you will not like Rocky soon enough.”

“Hey,” He croaks, at a loss. “Cheap blow, buddy.”

Rocky puts a fist up to the xenonite divider. Ryland pads over, resting his own up against it, gentle. 

“You have all the timelines you've been using for the garden?” Rocky hums. 

Ryland snorts, forehead thunking to xenonite. “Better put that perfect memory to use huh?” 

“Will not let Earth produce go to waste.” He says definitively. “Team-working.”

“Team-working.”

·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

As determined as Ryland has been to live – determined enough to work the very earth of his home beneath his nails, unwilling to part from it, then, after his life rebegan, to get the Hail Mary fit for a return journey with his very lifeblood and sweat – it's not much of a life he's experiencing in the final months on the approach to Erid.

Long ago did they exhaust the roster of things to keep him going. Then, it was him exhausted of drive, subsisting day-to-day with a tube down his throat for much longer than advisable and a sleep that stretched on and on into the hours until what waking life he was living felt like the brief, disoriented moments of lucidity one has as they dip in and out of awareness on a slow, aimless waking.

He thinks he's slept through a lot of ER, or was plagued enough by the nerves in his feet burning their protest to the starvation that he just couldn't follow along; Either way, Rocky is happy explaining bits that confuse him as they come up. He supposes he just gets to rewatch it at some point if they make it home in one piece.

He floats the idea of sedation to the whole Hail Mary crew, inevitably. It's on one particularly draining morning when he's eaten the last solid meal he thinks he'll manage for the rest of the trip. Aching everywhere, joints inflamed and head spinning a little, it's then he realises that the sores around where his tubing always chafes are never going to heal over properly if he doesn't have the building blocks to produce the collagen anymore. It feels like the warning shot to prelude the worst – still yet to come – that quietly debuts in the new tenderness over the old scar he'd earned from Rocky, and the burns crawling up his arm.

It's hardly easy to find a comfortable way to sleep when everything hurts.

“𝅗𝅥^♯No,” Rocky is quick to say, hating the thought just as much as Ryland had known he would, if not more. He watches the Eridian stood by his bunk through tired eyes, just waiting. “I will not do it to you. Not necessary.”

“We're past that point, bud.” He insists, even this taking it out of him. “I could catch an infection like this, my body isn't healing anymore.”

“You said you'd need to feed into your chest,” Rocky points out. “You could become ill if that goes wrong.”

“That's true,” He concedes. “This is what we do though. It's a risk-benefit analysis. Am I more at risk if all my old wounds slowly soften and ulcer, or if I go back under?”

“You said it was not just sleep. Would need Armando to breathe for you, and put in the tubes, and your heart is already–” A claw comes up, gently finding his wrist. Ryland nudges back with his pinky– or rather, he hopes he does. He can't really feel his hands fully anymore, not with the ascending numbness. He thinks that one is the thymine deficiency. “–Your heart, already working too hard.”

“Rock, I can't even get up. Am I even making sense anymore?”

“You never made sense.” Rocky says, petulant. “–Forgetful human. I will not put you back into that dangerous not-sleep. We are nearly home.”

Long prior, once they were close enough that Erid could feasibly pick up a radio signal of enough clarity, and with enough of a relativistic head-start on their arrival, Rocky had handled getting the last pieces together for the puzzle of Ryland's survival broadcast to be sent ahead to his homeworld. For something they'd been building up to for months and months, it all happens relatively quietly in the end. 

Ryland slept through it. He's been doing little else, and as a result was eventually served the hardest pill he’s had to swallow; Rocky quietly going back to sleeping unwatched. He now matches the length of Rocky’s own sleep cycles more often than not. Ryland hadn’t been able to speak, for fear of everything coming out in great leaky sobs, the day he’d put two-and-two together and realised Rocky had decided that being awake himself whenever Ryland was too took precedence. 

They’d shut down the hydroponic farm not long after. Rocky had helped him collect the very last seeds of the final crop, guiding the operation to its logistical end, so Ryland was free to put the last of what could be dried or frozen away to keep. They’d sat in his bunk the day after comparing the numbers he’d kept over the last fourteen-hundred days, and tabulating Ryland’s yield. 

“You have been efficient,” Rocky says, tapping at his arm. “–Certain there is nothing else needed, question?”

Ryland hums his reassurance. “The seeds will keep. They're hardy little things.”

Rocky taps two claws together, a nervous tic Ryland couldn't miss, so he brings a knuckle up, knocking it into his carapace gently; a silent question.

“I have done some calculations,” Rocky begins. “–Based on your remaining food. Increasing tube-feed by +Itwenty-five percent for these final Iℓsix weeks–” 

“Rock…”

“♪♩♬𝅗𝅥Please.”

Grace falls silent.

“You will still have Vtwo months of tube-feed for after we make orbit. Not including what you wanted to set aside for Eridian scientists. I know you wanted bigger… ‘safety catch’. But–” Rocky fidgets further. “–You will have more strength for orbital entry maneuver.”

Grace's throat works as he weighs it up. He did want a better safety net than only two months’ worth. He has no guarantee the Eridians will be able to successfully synthesise the compounds comprising his coma-slurry, let alone that they'd even be willing to do. There'd be all the downsides to upping his intake early, too; increase what his body is receiving now, and demand matches supply. He was planning on practically dissociating through however many months it'll take the Eridians to get a good thing going for him, and in the most shameful way, not having the energy to remain awake for much of the day is what's currently sparing him feeling most of the pain.

But, then he looks at Rocky, curled up beside him in his bunk, taking on the care of everything the Hail Mary demands nowadays, and quietly recalculating whether they can spare just a little extra food for him.

Ryland comes to realise, looking to Rocky then, that he'd already made his decision deep down; He knows Rocky's right. The Hail Mary’s path up until the impending orbital maneuver has been much of a straight-shot, only needing the odd tweak here and there. They've been dead-on in their deceleration for a well-angled slingshot into a stable orbit above Erid, but Ryland will need to find some way to be at the helm for approaching and docking with what Rocky has described to him is essentially a space-elevator circling through Erid's thermosphere. That's where they'll disembark. 

Thank goodness they didn't need to consider finding a way to survive a proper re-entry; The Hail Mary was never designed to undertake one. But if Ryland is too emaciated to be on top of his game in the pilot’s seat when the time comes, it's not just he and Rocky he kills.

“Trust me.” Rocky says. Statement. 

Like Ryland ever needed anything else.

“Okay. Twenty-five percent.”

·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Ryland eventually learns to forgive himself for his disgusting lack of faith in Erid's leadership on the matter of his survival, but it takes a sure minute.

He practices active reflection a lot the first few months that he actually feels like he has his brain back. Reflects on his biases. Sure, he was heavily projecting what was the very human assumption that an alien would likely be treated with fear and hostility upon first-contact, but he needn't have. Rocky had already explained much of Erid's leadership structure to him early on in their journey, and the lack of similarities there to Earth’s own governing design should have tipped him off.

Rocky, he later learns – for all his reassurance and bravado that Erid would help Grace, beyond a shadow of a doubt – had in fact developed some reason to quietly entertain a sliver of whatever insecurity Grace had been dumbly harping on about. Hearing after the fact that Rocky had levied the proprietorship of Taumoeba-82.5 over Grace's treatment was a singularly humbling moment he'd have scolded Rocky for within an inch of his sordidly-long life had Grace not needed to immediately pass out after making contact with Erid's space-station.

Adrian is the one to finally tell him much of it. 

Wrung dry down to his very bones, which were themselves under a fair bit of strain, Ryland had slept through almost the entirety of his first week officially docked at Erid. Rocky, after three days of it, could still not be convinced to part ways, and drove the Eridian Orbital Commission to personally reach out to Adrian ahead of protocol'd timelines to get this idiot's mate up here goddammit, he's lost it.

When Ryland eventually came around on what he thinks was afternoon of the eighth day, he finds himself still aboard the Hail Mary, with a lot more Eridians bustling about it than he's used to. 

His quarters seemed to have become a sort of viewing-gallery on the Eridian side. Someone important is missing, he can't see him in his usual spot, so–

Tap Tap.

On his… shoulder?

Tap.

Into his cheek. Softly.

Grace swings his foggy gaze around, and there he is. Xenonite suit and all, stubbornly and assuredly by his side. He's loafing somewhere up by his ribs, gentle in the pressure he allows to weigh on Grace, and is Tap Tapping up and around his head, humming lowly.

“G'mornin.” Ryland manages to croak.

Rocky goes very weepy, or the Eridian equivalent he supposes. Grace finds it in himself to bring an arm up, one finger gently Tap Tapping back.

They'll be alright.

·· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Adrian is the first Eridian he gets a proper introduction with once they successfully get him planet-side. 

Meeting face-to-face with them up in the Hail Mary just hadn’t been possible; Rocky's tunnels were, understandingly, all Rocky-sized, and he comes to learn Eridian size deviates much further on both ends of the mean than human heights do. Where Ryland is taller than most, Adrian is just one of many Eridians that dwarf him. It’s sometimes a regional thing, he's told – something about the geology you grow up around – but that's about all he can remember of it. He's far too preoccupied hearing the pounding of his own struggling heart in his ears, once they come into view, to retain much else.

They are imposing. Much taller than Rocky, and of the most gorgeous teal-affect carapace. He watches Adrian approach the xenonite between them unhurriedly, and pull up short just before it. Gently tapping at the ground, slowly getting the shape of him.

And, finally asleep – jammed right up to the closest bit of the divide he could get at – Rocky. Adrian slots in right beside him, one of their rear legs finding his carapace to brush.

Grace's heart gives a tremendous ache, and suddenly all of it just feels worth it.

“I am told you ♬♪^♯♪𝅗𝅥𝅗𝅥^♮♩♩ Eridian?”

A slightly lower timbre to Rocky. A semitone or three lower, if he had to guess. Ryland pulls his translator closer. Suddenly self-conscious, he makes himself sit up further. ‘♫𝅗𝅥^♯Passable ♪^♭𝅘𝅥𝅯♬♬Eridian,’ He taps out. God he hopes he's making a good impression.

Adrian trills– surprise, he thinks? And his heart lifts hopefully.

“You can already speak it.” They observe evenly.

Ryland nods, then remembers he has to be back under the assumption no-one here will understand his human-isms, for now. Not while Rocky is asleep, anyway. ‘♪♬♪♩♩♪^♯♬♬♪^♭Rocky 𝅗𝅥♪♫built,’ He taps out with shaky fingers, then points to the device. If they’re in any way as smart as Rocky, he’s hoping they’ll get it.

Then, he tries for a confident ‘♬♫♪^♭Hello,’ waving with his other hand as he does, the muscles in his face aching as he instinctively cracks a shy smile.

Adrian rumbles a noise he’d come to understand as a contracted version of a ‘hello’ – a ‘hi’, or ‘hey’. Fascinating; Adrian sings it as a second inversion, the fifth of the last chord swung down. He has a feeling he’s about to re-learn Eridian all over again.

Adrian probes at the barrier gently. Tap Tap. “You seem tired.” They note, gentle.

Ryland can’t help but chuckle, head sinking a little further into the cushions behind him as he stops fighting gravity to keep up appearances; They’d brought all the Hail Mary’s bedding out into this microclimate chamber for him, which his joints are greatly appreciating now. ‘Am a long way from ♩♬♪^♯♬♪♩home.’ He says simply.

“You sleep?”

Ryland nods, tapping a ♩♫Yes.

“Sleep now.” Adrian presses.

Ryland shakes his head.

“No?” Adrian’s nearest claw flexes a little, like Rocky’s does when he’s confused. “Why not, question?”

Ryland nods a little in Rocky’s direction. ‘♬♩Watch ♩-ing’.

Adrian holds their silence a couple moments more, then their rear leg draws in further and they adjust, buttressed against Rocky where he slumbers. “I have the watch now.” Their frontmost claw taps the barrier again, then stays there. “Sleep.”