Chapter Text
"Rocky!" Ryland Grace hollered through the corridors of the Hail Mary. He was manoeuvring his flimsy meat sack through the complex halls whilst attempting to gain the attention of his best friend. Dodging through the messy floors of a post-lift-off celebration. In fact, the human man was still eating some of the leftover him-meat burger patties.
He had only recently woken up from his two-hour-long nap, which had come as more of a way of getting back onto his feet after the large amount of mystery hours he had stayed awake for. Time outside the biodome was really weird.
The two space pals had just started upon their next mission, the third of many more to come. Deliver Taumobea to every single planet and star affected by astrophage. This time, it was the planet Xeria-Anne, named by boring old Earth scientists after a boring old Earth scientist who had called him stupid after that paper was published. (Grace preferred the name 'The Salami' because it was red and covered in speckles). It wasn't too far away from Erid in the grand scheme of things. They were going from the closest to the furthest planet and star to ensure they had enough fuel for each one, simple. It may have also been an excuse to have a massive celebration once Grace and Rocky returned from the very last journey, aka, the longest journey...
"Yes, what Grace need. Question? Grace want to bore Rocky, question?" The robotic, monotone voice that they had chosen to represent the Eridian alien answered back just as Grace passed fully into the cockpit where Rocky was currently sat next to the window.
"Do you think we could make me-sausages? Cause I think eating me-burgers is getting a bit boring. Especially because I don't have anything normal to go on it... Dry ramen isn't really burger bun texture... Or taste, or size, or comparable at all really. Neither is coma slurry, or really anything on this ship." Grace replied as he walked up towards the seat of the cockpit.
"Yes. Grace clone meat can be made into Earth pig cylinders." Chimed the Eridian
"Nice." Grace cheered as he leaned back into the chair. "It honestly feels so weird eating myself, but I guess you guys do something similar. Hamsters do it, well, they eat their kids, so that's...disturbing."
"Cannibalism wrong, wrong, wrong for humankind. Make weak human body sick. Disgust disgust disgust disgust! Gross flesh blob."
"The second part was unnecessary..." Ryland answered back, "Hold on , Rock, do you think I'm a cannibal? I mean, eat human meat as my main source of protein..."
"Nooooo. Grace not cannibal. Grace auto-cannibal! Grace eat Grace own body, is technically not illegal on earth." Rocky stated with a happy chirping noise to punctuate his statement.
Ryland was about to begin his next sentence with a smile when a sudden whirring pierced through his ears. Strangely, Mary was silent, nothing detected, nothing notable...according to his systems at least. A few seconds later, a mechanical whirring cried through the cabins; instantly, the two inhabitants of the spaceship started to enter a confused state of unrelenting fear.
Rocky wailed and wailed in what Grace interpreted as gut-wrenching screams.
"Loud! Loud! Not good noise! Panic panic panic panic panic panic panic. Grace panic. Not good! Not good!"
The Eridian immediately fled to the nearest window, smashing harshly against it as the Hail Mary churned and shuddered. It was incredibly obvious that Rocky knew exactly what was happening; what was worse was that Grace had absolutely no clue what he was in for.
"Grace! Grace! Rocky see wormhole! Statement!!!" Rocky squealed before he was once again slammed up against the window, a loud thump sounding as he curled up into a ball in what seemed like a response to stress, one that seemed to involve passing out or falling asleep, just like some humans.
"Wormhole?! Rocky! Hey! Wake up!" Ryland screamed. "MARY! GO THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION! PLEASE! NOW!" Crying out in fear as he went, he leapt forwards in his seat and tried to steer the Hail Mary the opposite direction. Nothing worked; it wouldn't budge, and oh god they were going to die.
Neither answered. Realising the wormhole must have messed with the sensors and radars, Ryland attempted to shift himself and Rocky to a safer position, jumping out of his seat to reach him. Instead, right as he moved down towards Rocky, the ship's lights shattered, spraying a thin veil of glass over his body, all whilst the spaceship shook and wobbled, flinging Grace into an array of hard metal pipes.
A resounding pop filled the room beneath the groans of the ship as the ship flung him backwards. Grace yelled, white, pulsing pain erupting from his elbow and shoulder. He couldn't look. He was far too terrified. A broken arm could make this ten times harder.
The astronaut was about to drag himself to the driver's seat when a sudden pang of pain and a tug of cold metal drenched his arm. He was stuck. His arm was wedged between the slit in the floor for his chair.
"ROCKY!" He cried, tears pricking his eyes. This couldn't be the end for them. No way. No. He was going to live. They would return to Erid whether that damn wormhole liked it or not.
The ship jostled again, throwing Grace forward. This time, two distinct snaps rippled through the room, followed by a heaving howl crawling from Ryland's throat.
His arm bent at four unsettling points. His wrist, his elbow, abnormally at his shoulder, and at the brand new fracture.
He looked out of the window, hoping, praying to nothing, praying that it was just turbulence. It never could have been. One glance and he saw it, a burning ring of light. It was awaiting his arrival, awaiting its next meal. Glistening and shining, it seemed beautiful, gorgeous even. Nothing like how he imagined his death to look.
Looking down didn't help either; his left leg bent grotesquely in a direction he'd never imagined to see his leg at. He was close to assessing his injuries before the pain caught up to him to achieve a violent bite through every nerve in his body.
Not long after, his injuries caught up to him and he fainted from the excruciating agony.
_______________________
In all honesty, Grace hadn't expected to wake up again. He was frighteningly numb, stuck in brumal temperatures, insanely shaken, worried for his best friend in the entire universe, covered in bruises and blood, and had at very least two incredibly broken bones and a dislocated shoulder.
Pain fluttered through him like a dead thistle. He started to breathe in heavily, a perfectly natural response he hoped. Hold on, he thought. Was he able to breathe this air? He was one hundred per cent sure that there were at least a few holes in the ship; I mean, there was one virtually right above his head letting the stale air within his spaceship mingle with this planet's air. A planet with the right configuration of gases to allow him to respire His body craned as his eyes flicked open wildly, only to be met with charred metal, rubble, his own blood, everywhere. And his best friend lying limply under his casing...in the snow.
Realising the impossibility of the formation of snow within the Hail Mary's cockpit, Ryland instantly shifted onto as high alert as possible that was achievable with the level of pain he was currently dealing with. He was either on some unknown planet of ice that somehow had the atmosphere he needed to live, or he was back on Earth.
Fudging hell, it was taking him way too long to think. Did he have a concussion or something? How had he not realised the environmental conditions he was currently trapped in were like this? It was freezing for goodness sake.
It was only after the recognition that they were sunken into a pile of snow and ice that he recognised how cold he was and how the billowing winds of the snowy desert surrounding him were slowly aiding in the malfunctions of his bodily movement. His fear had kept him blissfully unaware of the icy temperature surrounding him. Now that he had had any opportunity to confront his senses, they became the culprit of his torture.
Ryland's heart sank past his stomach and dropped out of his bumhole. He was going to die. There was no way out. His arm was stuck and broken, his leg in a similar state. The temperature would likely cause hypothermia; his wounds were opening up again, likely due to scurvy...again. Damn the nutrients slurry and clone Ryland burgers. Speaking of food, he did have some of that. Luckily, the ship had been so mangled that the tube of coma food had ended up dangling virtually in front of his face. The more dire trouble was water. He didn't know if this "snow" was actually frozen water or not. He couldn't risk it. Rocky could still be alive. He didn't want to poison himself now and allow Rocky to wake up to his corpse. That's if Rocky did wake up...
He had to do something. For goodness sake! He couldn't die! Not like this! Damn it! Rocky couldn't die like this! Rocky. He had to help him! His body could help warm his little ball of atmosphere, like a weird piece of human insulation. Although if he did that, he would need a way to stay alive. Food. The tube!
Grace instantly started batting his hand towards the plastic tube in front of him, yanking at his broken arm to try and reach towards it and eventually grasp it. He succeeded after maybe seven tries, tearing the hole in his arm where his bone was sticking out even further as he finally wrapped his stiff, cold fingers around it.
Immediately upon gathering it in his frozen fingers, he started to frantically tear himself away from the slot. Ryland tried for ten minutes before his common sense kicked in. Tentatively, he reached his working arm towards his damaged one, placing the tube into his mouth in the process. Once he finally gripped his own skin, he started to systematically claw his arm from its cold, metal cage.
It was released after a minute or so of crazed movement. As it finally relented, he collapsed backwards into the chilling bed of ice. Not allowing himself a minute to relish in his new, incredibly painful freedom, Grace instantly used his good arm to force the feeding tube down his throat. As soon as it started to thrum, a heavy wave of relief crowded his mind. It was warm. He would be able to eat unconsciously and keep Rocky company as they both died a slow, biting, unconscious death.
By this point he was virtually catatonic. His body was shutting down to try and preserve the life that resided inside of it. His mind, though. His mind was screaming and wailing.
His one working leg only took him a step before he collapsed once again, almost yanking his feeding tube from his mouth. The rest of the two-metre journey involved a painstaking crawling through the mystery snow, freezing the front of his body as he attempted to make his way towards his best friend.
He made it. Finally. He crawled weakly onto the xenonite ball, heaving his decaying body atop of it. Warm. It was warm. But not warm enough. Grace was far too aware that if the temperature dropped any further, Rocky would likely die from the cold. Knowing this, he used his 'leaky, squishy body' to cover as much of the ball as possible in what he interpreted as the last hug he would ever receive.
_____________________
In all honesty, this was not what Tony Stark was expecting when he was forced out of the Stark Tower at seven o'clock in the morning by some very distressed politicians. He had thought it was something like a nuclear bomb threat, or maybe something genuinely concerning. Instead, he was met with a crashed spaceship in Antarctica that they wanted him to investigate for some god-awful reason.
Apparently it was something that nobody had ever seen, a supposed marvel of engineering, and they theorised it may be dangerous. So why not send the man who was practically drowning in much more useful projects and had absolutely no time to muck around with spaceships?
He went anyway. It would be some fun, something a little more relaxing. The fuel was apparently likely to be incredibly interesting due to the distance it had allowed, so he also went to see if he could use it on one of his projects.
The jet ride down there was fairly boring. Just sea and ice. He'd spent the entire time working and being given an incredibly boring briefing.
Next thing he knew, he was disembarking from the plane and was standing in a newly built research base in Antarctica with a parade of soldiers surrounding him.
"Is this really necessary?" Stark bluntly asked a very intimidated intern.
"I'm sorry, Doctor Stark! But-"
"Yes, yes, I know." Stark replied as he was approached by a woman with shoulder-length blonde hair.
"Eva Stratt" The woman held out her hand to shake the engineer's hand. "Head of the Patrova task force."
"My pleasure, Ms Stratt. Tony Stark." He took her hand and shook it. Although the handshake didn't last incredibly long, as both instantly turned and started to walk towards a meeting room, almost entirely in sync.
The door clicked shut behind them, Eva locking it almost instantly before they both took their seats around a table that was meant for a much larger gathering of people.
"Explain it to me, Stratt." Stark said, keeping his 'relaxed, billionaire, playboy' facade up.
"The Patrova asteroid. You know it?" Stratt asked in her very monotone voice. She received a nod in response.
"As you likely know, it is not an asteroid. It is a spaceship. One with technology comparable to that of your own creations. One that has no records of even existing. We want you to take a look at it along with a crew of carefully chosen doctors, soldiers, and a complete forensic team."
"Why? Expecting me to die or something?"
"No. We have ensured that the ruins of the ship are structurally sound enough to enter and explore. It is in case of the unlikely situation of it being inhabited by a living extraterrestrial being."
"So, why me exactly?" Tony asked flatly.
"As I said, the technology within this spacecraft has likely never been seen before. We were hoping that your mind would be able to detangle it and harness it for future space exploration missions. You are largely here to assess the damages and the components of the ship."
"I think that I'm going in by myself." Tony stated, not leaving room for argument. "I don't want anyone damaging potentially never-before seen equiptment."
"If that is what you have decided, Mr Stark. I cannot stop you. Anything you find, please report back. Our team will remain outside in case of any form of emergency."
"Thank you, Ms Stratt." Stark grinned and walked towards the door, unlocking the deadbolt with a click. "Show me the way."
Stratt stood up and calmly walked over to the door, yanking it open and allowing Tony to go through before her.
______________
It was cold. Well, no shit, it was Antarctica. But the point still stands.
A desert of snow and ash lay before him, reaching out over the horizon. Although the remnants of smoke from the flames that cloaked the spacecraft still overcame his senses as it wafted up into the air, flying a bitter, burning smell directly into his face.
It was pretty clear that they had called him out in a rush; there was no defence around it, there was no cover, it was out in the open.
The ship itself was protected by an island of debris; none of it looked too sharp, meaning it would hopefully be easy to climb over.
Tony Stark made his way towards the wreckage. It certainly looked like something built by NASA, aside from the fact that most of the paint was scuffed and the entire thing was drenched in children's scribbles, and a very large drawing of what seemed to be a rock spider?
Traces of some kind of logo seemed to have been scraped off and covered by a weird green circle. It almost seemed to be a planet. Weird...
He sauntered towards the newly designated entrance (chosen by him), gripping his flashlight in a heavy grip. His plan was simple. Map the area, investigate the tech, take notes for the scientists, confirm everything safe, get out. Simple.
And so he entered the ship. The first area he entered was dark. Surprise surprise. He rapidly flicked his flashlight on. Instantly, he was met with what looked to be the discards of a large glass structure. Curiosity overcame him, and he placed his hand on it. It was pleasantly warm. He noted that down. When he finally found what looked like an entrance, he immediately stuck his hand in. Scorching heat bloomed all over his hand. He instantly yanked it back out again. Luckily he hadn't stuck his hand in there long enough to contact any burns over the first degree.
He let out a huff of annoyance but continued anyway.
Messy was the main word he would use to describe what seemed to be a living area, although most areas within the ship seemed to be living areas.
All the surrounding area looked like a regular old NASA spaceship. Again. Odd.
That's how it went for about ten minutes. As he walked around, a digital map of the floor was made using a tracking device and a scanner. Junk littered every square inch. In some areas there were just circles of frozen meat. Every so often he would come across a hole or tear and try to imagine the entire history of the metal cylinders that made up the structure of the ship.
Finally, finding an area that looked like it held something significant, he started to tinker. Nothing would start. Shocker.
He was looking around, trying to find something, anything that might hint at how the system worked. That was when he spotted an object out the corner of his eye. Something vibrant. A pair of orange legs, and blood. Everywhere. The walls, the ceiling, the floor.
Now seeing in more clarity, the entire scene was framed by what seemed to be a torn-apart cockpit. A large gash positioned itself just above the most prevalent puddle of blood, shining a light upon the horrors that were bound to be waiting just beyond the direct sunlight. That body had to have been the captain's.
Tony had left his thinking brain behind. He sprinted towards the legs, allowing himself to charge through the puddles of blood, leaving crimson-stained footprints behind him. It could be inhuman; it could be dangerous! Was he nuts? Ohabsolutely.
Sprinting through the destroyed room left him fumbling over a small pile of rubble. He dived towards the carcass, caring for nothing but discovering the identity of the body laid before him. Gently, he knelt down and pried the face of the body to look towards him.
It was a person. A corpse of a person. Or at least it should have been. A long plastic pipe seemed to stretch towards his head. A head that was very subtly warmer than its surroundings. A head that was currently connected to a neck had a pulse, weak as it may be.
Tony instantly rolled him off the glass ball and into his arms. Although he vastly regretted the force at which he carried out that action, as soon as he saw his full face, he realised that this man was not dead, but rather very rapidly dying. Somehow he was still a little warm all over; somehow he was only barely injured (in comparison to most others experiencing being in a crashing spaceship); somehow this man was alive. Gently, Stark pulled the plastic tube from his throat, finally realising that it was likely a feeding tube as some kind of watery, maroon sludge started to pour out of it. Looking erratically back over to the glass ball, he saw what looked like an incredibly abnormal rock sculpture. How this man had received any of this material and placed it inside of something that had the capability to supply third-degree burns, he had absolutely no clue. I mean, unless he was insane enough to go onto a random planet, most likely alone.
Unconsciously, he shook his head in utter disbelief. Trying to decipher the identity of his mystery spaceman, it struck him. He had absolutely no clue who this poor sucker was. That meant that in the most likely case, someone had either managed to accidentally avoid placing anything about this man on the internet or somewhere where FRIDAY could scan, or somebody had actively tried to disguise his space explorations. This John Doe had a story. This John Doe... shit!
Finally remembering that he was holding a soon-to-be corpse in his arms, Tony gathered his strength and hauled the man over his shoulder, sprinting from the broken spacecraft and started to yell.
"THERE'S A MAN! GET ME A DOCTOR AND A JET!"
_______________________________
Everything was blurry when Grace awoke. Blurry and bone-numbingly painful. It was far warmer and more comfortable than being in that snow. Although this time everything hurt, exactly as it did after that 'fishing trip'. Rocky had been injured and almost died then, similar to this. Sugar.
Ryland shot up, ignoring his pain and finally snapped his eyes fully open in the manner of a spooked animal.
"ROCKY!" He screamed, his eyes filled to the brim with anguish.
It was at that very moment that he realised... he was not in the ruins of the Hail Mary. He was in a hospital bed. An earth hospital bed. There was English writing on the walls. He was on earth; he was alive and on earth. Where on earth, he couldn't quite tell. Likely England or America.
He sat there for a second in a pained daze, eyes extending to the size of saucers, listening to the slow, sterile beep of what he presumed was his heart rate monitor, although it did immediately start to increase in speed once he realised exactly what was happening. In front of him hung a large mirror... not suspicious at all...
Slowly, he craned his neck to look to the left of him; once again his eyes widened to an impossible level as he made eye contact. He made eye contact. With a human. A real human man.
He vomited... then cried... then screamed whilst vomiting onto the floor. Pathetically, he attempted to wipe the puke from his face. Instead, not only did he realise one of his arms felt like it was being placed in a furnace full of hot nails, but he also realised that he was just wiping the vomit over his face.
His first day back on Earth, and he vomited when seeing the first person he'd laid his eyes on in probably over a decade. Fudgeballs.
Luckily for him, this man seemed to remain patient enough with him and waited until he had finished vomiting the very poor and likely unhealthy contents of his stomach onto the sheets and the floor to the right side of the bed, those contents being his own flesh, coma slurry and heaps of Taumoeba waste. Delicious. It certainly showed within the contents of his stomach, because the man next to him pulled a face of disgust when seeing his barely digested food that appeared closer to a very liquid-y stew.
As soon as Ryland finished, the dude handed him a glass of water. It was very obviously had meds in it. He drank it anyway.
"My name is Tony Stark, why don't you tell me your name?" This man seemed incredibly calm for someone who was seeing a guy that nobody had seen in years and was watching said man completely break down. Maybe the world had forgotten him as things progressed? Maybe Stratt never disclosed his face due to him not being a real astronaut. Maybe nobody cared.
"Are you real? Please, Tell me you're real! Be real!" Ryland screamed. "I can't be hallucinating! Not- Not again!"
"I am real, I am so, very real." Tony said as he placed his hand on Grace's arm, probably to try and comfort him.
He vomited again.
Well, more like just dry-heaved and cried.
"You're real! You're real! How am I not dead?!" Grace sobbed, clutching the heavy blanket that was resting upon his lap. The hysterics started again as he started to babble about nothing and cry...and scream... and cry some more.
His mind was overrun with thoughts. He was somehow alive, he was somehow on earth, he was somehow out of that dammned ship, and he was somehow seeing another human being. All of it felt so impossible. He tried and struggled to slow his breathing. I mean, who could really blame him? This was the first real person he had seen in years. He was almost drowning in every feeling known to mankind, suffocating every one of his thoughts.
"Breathe, sir, breathe." A distinctly feminine voice called out to him, although it was not her hands she felt. They were Stark's hands that were pressed on his chest and back, grounding him into a reality that he viewed as both the most painful and delicate thing in existence.
Finally, his body relaxed. He stared downwards towards his bedsheets in what could only be described as a melancholic glare.
"My name is Dr Captain Ryland Grace. I- I was on the Hail Mary. Th-the spaceship... I'm from California, I have no family. I'm thirty o-or forty or fifty-something. What's happening? Where am I?"
"Well, you're on Earth, you're in my tower in New York City, you are now a state secret, everything upon that ship has been moved to my basement, and you need to tell us everything." Stark answered in a heavy, smooth voice.
"N-no. Where's Rocky? Is he... okay...?"
"Rocky? Is that the statue you were on top of when I discovered you?"
"Statue? What do you- Crap!" Instantly, the very broken, incredibly sick man rose to his feet and leapt out of his hospital bed so fast Tony barely had a chance to catch him.
"Whoa- easy there, tiger! Your statue is safe."
"No! No! You don't understand! He's Eridian. He's too cold! Scared! I need to be with him!" Ryland yelled as he scrambled out of Stark's arms, tearing every wire from his body.
"Sir! You can't rip your catheter out!" The nurse screamed as he started to haphazardly crawl towards the door.
"It's okay, I've done it before! I've done this before!" Hurls of sobs replaced his words as the gravity of the situation dawned upon him. This was exactly like waking up upon the Hail Mary. Exactly how it was before he found the corpses of Yáo and Ilyukhina. If this was all repeating, was Rocky... dead?
"NO! no, no, no, no-!" He cried again and again. "It- it can't happen AGAIN!" He said between his incessant blubbering.
He tried, and tried and tried to run, to leave the room, his broken leg weighing him down as he frantically clambered towards the exit of the room. The two other people in the room were screaming something. Well... the nurse was. 'Stark' seemed to be just talking at him in a surprisingly lulling tone.
Hands. He felt hands. Although this time they were reaching round him and pulling him upwards, not crushing him into the dirt so they could drug him. He still yelled, whimpering something about 'all of it happening again'. Relaxed is what he should have been. He wanted to relax. In all honesty, compared to his last interaction with people, this felt like the warmest hug he had ever been given. Still, it remained far too overwhelming.
Finally, he firmly landed in the bed he had been in before, still feeling the hands of 'Stark' resting gently upon his shoulders. It wasn't painful; it wasn't violent.
"FRIDAY. Please retrieve Patrova extraterrestrial object 001 from the lab."
A humming, mechanical voice replied with a very direct "yes sir," although footsteps did not accompany it. Really, it reminded him of one of the voices they had tested for Rocky. It gave him some kind of odd relief.
"You're the best babygirl."
Everyone sat in silence for at least a minute or two before Ryland stopped choking on his own thoughts.
" You... you said that I was a 'state secret'... Does Project Hail Mary not... exist? That wasn't a secret... I mean unless... No. I- you introduced yourself like I am supposed to know who you are. I don't- I've never seen you once in my life. You mentioned that you had a tower, so you're like famous or something. I taught middle-schoolers. They would have known who you were... I-" Grace took a deep breath in and out before staring Tony directly in the eyes. "I came here through a wormhole; nobody knows what the Hail Mary is, nobody could find my name or who I was. Technology seems almost the same as before I left, if not from an earlier year..." he said, spying the TV in the corner of the room. "This... this is a different universe. Oh Rocky... Adrien..."
"Okay, well," Stark replied in a simple manner. "You will be questioned more about this when you are less, y'know, half-dead."
"I- what does being a 'state secret' mean for me?" Ryalnd asked, his hands still very obviously trembling.
"None of your history can be disclosed to anyone not given authorisation; you will not be allowed back into civilisation until you are deemed fit to; it is unlikely that you will be allowed to return to your old life."
"What, so I'm going to be stuck in isolation or something?"
"Uhh, no... You will be living in the Stark Tower. Or my house. With me."
"Why? Uhm- will I be working or something? How long will I be staying with you?"
"All good questions. One, because Stratt put me in charge of you, two-"
"Stratt? No- Uhm... never mind."
"Okay.. Two, absolutely not. Three, until you are.. better. That okay?"
"Yh-Yeah- Um... I-I guess."
_______
A crash sounded through the room as the previously statue-like rock-spider rolled into the room while squeaking something. Immediately, the nurse who was still in the room started to scream before she sprinted out of the newly opened door.
"Rocky!? Oh my god, you're alive! Oh my god... HOW?" Screamed the vastly confused astronaut.
Instead of replying in a way that could be understood, the alien started to cry and sing in Eridian before it jumped onto Grace's chest, causing him to make a large oomph-ing sound. Ryland wrapped his arms around his pal and started to cry, once again.
"Oh man, I thought you were dead!" Those words were met with a joyous few chirps, which Tony interpreted as something rude due to the way that the Doctor's face screwed up in mock annoyance.
"Yeah, well, you're the weird one now! We are on Earth!"
Again, that was followed by some trills from 'Rocky', likely some form of retaliation.
"Look at you, smartypants, speaking an alien language. So, this is Rocky, I'm guessing? Seems friendly." Thank God, Stark thought to himself. " The little guy speaks through echolocation, doesn't he?"
"Yeah... How did you-"
"Shhhhh, you're talking to the smartest man in the world, baby." Stark stated, leaning back in his chair.
For some reason, that caused 'Rocky' to go absolutely nuts in what seemed like a fit of rage.
"No! Rocky! He's- He's not ugh.. Well, I think he probably is if he feels comfortable enough saying it, but- No! No! I'm not though! Oh my god... no!" Tony hated being left out of conversations that involved him, especially one where he couldn't understand what was being said about him. Although, it was a little amusing watching a man argue with a singing rock.
"I'm so sorry, Mr Stark! There are a few things that I have neglected to err, tell him..." That brought another chirp out of Rocky. "What- No! No. I'll explain later."
"Well, you seemed to have cheered up a little, haven't you, Gracie? Want to tell me about your ship?" Stark uttered through the chaos of Rocky and Grace's conversation.
"Uhm... okay. Rocky. Do not interrupt me, please. This might actually be important. Ah-! Anyway! Uhm, the ship, the Hail Mary! It runs on astrophage, a star-eating blob of cells; they're really quite powerful. You know, in one of our first tests, we melted an entire square metre of steel? Maybe tungsten? I err- I can't really remember. Anyway, its bacically just a really dangerous biofuel, really. It uses stored mass and converts it to infrared light for propulsion. Cool right? Sorry, that was a bad joke... that you won't under...stand... Uhm... oh! The robot on board, his name is Armando, and the ship's system is Mary. It should have an auto-translator on board to let Rocky speak English! Or any language, I suppose... Did you know Eridians only have one language spoken on their planet? Weird right? Oh! Also! All my findings have been saved within the ship's system!"
Wow, that man can ramble, Tony thought. Ryland Grace. The non-alien alien. Surprisingly cute for a guy who was acting as if he hadn't talked to another human for over a decade.
"That is all I needed, Dr Grace. But thank you for the fun facts." Stark professed with a striking smirk. "You'll have some pushy visitors over the next few days; I would advise answering. They are massive dicks when they don't get what they want. Oh, also most of your ship is broken, including what I interpret to be the translator. We salvaged some video files, but that was about it." Stark got out of his seat "Is there any astrophage left on board?"
"Yeah, tonnes, literally, two hundred and-something of them. The Eridians didn't want me to er- you know what, never mind. Wait! Uhm! Please- wait for me to experiment with it! I'm like literally... the only human person in your universe that knows anything about it. I- I really don't want anyone else to die because of it." Ryland answered in a way that Tony could only interpret as a way of making him look like a very wet cat.
Rocky broke into the conversation as soon as Grace finished with some cheery little chirps.
"No, Rock- you can't; they can't even understand you- I- I still need to make you a new translator, then you can help. Ah. uhm! Xenonite!"
"What?" Stark answered back, confused. There was no way this guy had found a way to make solid xenon.
"Solid xenon! The err- The glass! It's what they build with, the eridians." Nevermind Tony thought.
"Well, you can tell me all about it when you're walking, princess." With those final words, Tony left the room, sauntering out into the hallway and into the next room over. He opened the door with a smooth push, stepping into the room that currently had Bruce Banner, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, and Eva Stratt inside. A large window was planted in the wall. A one-way mirror into the next room over. The newly built 'hospital recovery room', specially built for their new extraterrestrial buddy.
Luckily, one of the cleaning ladies had been patient and polite enough to wait until Tony had come out, leaving her to clean up the majority of Ryland Grace's last meal from the floor. A new nurse entered as well, likely to re-attach each and every tube and wire that Grace had torn from his body, aside from the ones not deemed necessary now that he was awake.
" You can't fraternise our spaceman, Mr Stark." Eva said matter-of-factly as he shut the door behind himself. "I just did. Anyway. Don't know if you could hear, but that guy is a space scientist who may just have one of the most volatile fuels on earth all to himself."
"We have more pressing concerns, Stark." Steve sighed. "Like the sentient rock."
Almost as one, each person within the room focused in on Rocky as he sat himself upon Ryland's chest to chirp something in his face.
"You know he can see us, right?" Tony asked into the room. "Echolocation"
"So, what are our next moves?"
"Question him, house him under the protection of The Avengers, work with him. You can do that, can't you, Mr Stark?"
"Yeah? Yeah." Tony answered, leaning against the back wall to watch Rocky and Grace in the room.
"Hungry dude? I- you need to make yourself some pockets." Grace said with an incredibly gentle smile. A chirp came from Rocky as a sound of confirmation. Grace handed the sentient rock what looked like a small pebble and then squeezed his eyes shut.
Attention in the room once again focused upon the two newest residents of Earth, everyone's curiosity piqued over the eating habits of an alien being. That was their first mistake. As soon as Rocky started feeding himself, disgust and horror swallowed the room whole.
"I get why he was closing his eyes.." Bruce said, being the only one in the room not averting his eyes from the horrors that beheld them.
Eva walked towards the one-way mirror and sent the screen up to cover it from their side.
"May I have your attention again? This is my final briefing before this is fully handed over to The Avengers. If you have any concerns over safety or staff, the United Nations will supply anything necessary. You will be trusted with the interrogation of 'Dr Captain Ryland Grace ', of which you must report back to us. Harm must not come to him. He is a state secret. Do not share information about him or 'Rocky'. Is that all final?"
Nods from within the room confirmed her message. "Thank you. I wish you all the best"
There she went, the dictatorial matriarch of the Patrova Task Force, gone, moving on to some other unnamable task.
"So... Who's going first thing tomorrow morning?" Tony asked the room with an almost greedy smile.
________________
Midnight: the perfect time to explain human behaviour to an alien, despite the fact that Grace felt more like an alien amongst his own species than amongst the Eridians.
Luckily or unluckily (He hadn't quite decided yet), his sleep schedule was the most out-of-tune thing in the galaxy. None of it aligned with regular sleep patterns. Grace slept when he was exhausted; Rocky slept when Grace slept. His clock had run out fairly quickly after he had woken up from his coma aboard the Hail Mary, and he had decided to turn Mary's alerts off when he was drunk. He forgot how to turn it back on again. As a result, he only slept if he had a reason to. Not having any proper time restraints may have also helped (?), as it meant that his life didn't require as much coordination.
"Grace, explain why Tony Sparkles most smart man on earth", Rocky sung out as he scuttled around the room excitedly. "And why he perform mating ritual. Statement. Do now. Now. Rocky want know. Now."
"Okay! Okay... well, firstly he figured out your echolocation faster than I did; he owns a tower in New York, and he moves from place to place when living. That normally means that someone is rich, successful, and most likely intelligent. The world's governments are trusting him with delicate secrets; they're trusting him full stop. He also just looked and smelled expensive-"
"Why you smell him? Some kind of weird human mating ritual, question?" Rocky interrupted.
"Wha- No! ahem. I can just tell. From... it...Shut up." Rocky tried again to butt in with a defensive mix of noises.
"Abababa- No! He is smarter than me! That is a fact. Secondly, some humans flirt with each other for fun, to gain a reaction. Either that or it's just part of their personality."
"So is a mating ritual. Grace need mate. Too much stress. All day stress stress stress. Make Grace annoy Rocky."
"NO. No... no. No!" Grace sighed as he lay back into his bed. "Look, can you just turn the lights off? So I can sleep?"
Rocky followed with a hum of concern. "Grace sick? Grace need medication? Grace never sleep this early. Still have twenty more hours by this day! Bad? Leaky space blob get even more leaky?"
"No- Rock, I'm just tired, and sore, and in a lot of pain. Okay?"
"Pain? Need worry? Worry Worry Worry. HeEllllLlp!"
"No, I'm completely fine! Kind of... Please, just turn the lights off."
Finally, Rocky did the intelligent thing of listening to Grace and turning those dammned lights off. At last, both were able to relax. As soon as the lights switched off, Rocky fled back over to sleep on Ryland's chest, furiously digging his arms into his good shoulder. They were somewhere new. Grace figured that Rocky was panicking about being in such a new, strange place, much less a place that had previously fired Grace up into the sky without a single care in the world. Really, it wasn't too abnormal when Rocky was worring bout something. And the reasoning for this bout of protectiveness was, well... reasonable.
When he first met Rocky, he had disliked the invasiveness of his sleeping habits. Luckily, he had grown to depend on them; they felt comforting in a place that used terror to constrict his every move. Weirdly, he had also grown used to the noises of the alien's eating, although that was much more of a relief.
... His brain took a long, silent pause.
It was so strange being back on Earth. Yes, he was technically home, yes it felt good... but Rocky had just been stripped away from his home with no clear way to get back, and, if he was being honest with himself, Erid was his home as well. The home that had accepted him. The home that he had been dragged away from by a glittery space hole. When he recovered, he had to find a way to return Rocky and himself to their universe's Erid. Luckily, due to the lack of recognition from Tony, Grace had realised that he probably didn't have a weird doppelganger in this universe; he had no way to know if Rocky would experience the same thing, though... Also, it wasn't like Rocky didn't have other Eridians waiting for his return. For Grace, it would be easy to reintegrate into his home planet. He knew almost nobody from his original universe anyway, well, aside from the Eridians and everyone working on Project Hail Mary. Rocky still had a life back on his home planet, a life his friends and family expected him to come back to. Nobody on Earth was waiting for him like that.
Oh well, he thought. It had to be an issue for another day. Not a single other option other than resting was available to him in the state he was currently in. He could start that project tomorrow.
"Rocky smarter than Tony Sparkles." The eridian mumbled as he finally dozed off.
Ryland chuckled as he, too, fell asleep.