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Bright banners hang across the 'don't go crazy' room, made of folded up manual sheets scribbled over with highlighter. A beautiful bright forest scene is displayed on the many wall panels, a favorite of his.
“Surprise!” Grace grins, slipping the string of a homemade party hat over his own head.
<Grace Rocky make party for Simon!> Rocky trills.
He holds out a second party hat “I know we don't exactly know what day it really is because of time dilation, and also you're from Mars so the months don't exactly work the same way, but I figured we'd just pick a day to celebrate.”
It feels like the floor is falling away around him. He's flooded with memories - the taste and texture of slightly gritty cake made by his mother, and a salty-umami sort of soup with savory green pieces in it that he didn’t remember the name of anymore. Soft candlelight illuminating their small cabin as she sang to him, their own little sanctuary away from the prying eyes of Eden. Her hands in his hair, oiling it, washing it, putting little braids in it when it was too short for long ones.
“Simon?”
He thinks about how his mother died before he transitioned. How she used to save parts of her own rations to make him those cakes and that soup. How he watched her starve slowly, fat and muscle melting away, leaving her weak, then gaunt, then dead. The first birthday he had without her.
His first birthday in prison, spent being tortured. They'd grabbed him by his hair to keep his head steady, forced the handle of a hot poker into his fingers, held it there, and made him press the hot iron against his own throat. The pain was white hot and excruciating, unlike anything he'd ever felt before, and he could smell his own flesh cooking on his body. He'll never forget that fucking smell.
His chest hurts, his leg hurts, his throat hurts. Phantom pains, fresh wounds that haven't been fresh in a long time, bloodsmell and sweat and mildew.
It's a blur of real and not real until he finds a corner to press himself into. He feels small.
“Simon!”
He is 12 and 17 and 32 all at once. He is lost and afraid and overwhelmingly guilty. He wants his mom. He wants his knife. He wants things to have stayed the way they were.
<Simon okay, question?>
The mechanical quality of Rocky's voice brings him back into his body.
The ball rolls closer.
<Simon need to calm down. Is okay. Is safe safe safe. Rocky come closer, question?>
“I don't know if that's a good idea, bud-”
He forces his body to loosen, making space for Rocky to roll up against his chest, letting his head drop onto the xenonite.
The warmth and weight helps ground him. Rocky sings wordless tones that remind him of a home long gone.
Grace sits next to him, not touching, just watching quietly.
He tries to breathe a little deeper, letting his lungs stretch to fill to capacity, then deflate.
“M’okay” he manages to force out.
“You sure? Cause you don't seem very okay”
“I’m sure. Birthdays are just… complicated, for me.” He tries to curl in on himself further, impeded by Rocky. “Most of the traditions around birthdays died out pretty quickly after the stars did, but my mom was determined to keep them alive for me. She uhm, she died. A little while after my 12th birthday. It wasn't the same without her. I tried to keep the tradition alive, but Eden wasn’t exactly very keen on the whole ‘celebration of life’ thing, so I’d just sing to myself and be done with it. And then I went to prison. Every birthday after that was spent alone and miserable, thinking about everything I’d lost, or being fuckin' tortured.”
“I'm so sorry, Simon. That’s just- you didn't deserve that. And I'm sorry about the birthday thing, we don't have to celebrate-”
“No! No, it's- I want to. I just got overwhelmed by everything. Memories and shit hit me full force.”
He reaches for the discarded party hat and, with some difficulty, gets it on his head. He offers Grace what he hopes is a reassuring smile.
<Time party, question?>
“Time party, statement” That gets Grace to break out in a grin.
Grace and Rocky sing happy birthday to him. It's honestly nicer than he thought it'd be, given that Grace's singing leaves much to be desired, and Rocky is using his translator. There's a terrible little taumoeba and coma slurry cake, with a paper ‘candle’ on top because having open flames aboard the Mary is too risky.
The cake is comically terrible. It's somehow dry and sticky at the same time, and it tastes like concrete and sadness. They choke it down anyway, since they can't afford to waste it.
Grace gifts him a lopsided stuffed cat, clearly made from a cut up crew jumpsuit. The stitching is messy and visible, and the limbs are all different sizes.
It's the best birthday he's had in 20 years.
They end the night stargazing on the floor of the ‘don't go crazy' room. Rocky has busied himself with some sort of maintenance, he can’t remember what exactly, but he’s elsewhere. Honestly, he suspects the eridian isn’t actually fixing anything, but needed an excuse to make himself scarce, giving him and Grace the illusion of privacy.
Grace has been rattling off constellations for the past several minutes, filling the space with pleasant noise.
“You said we’re made of stardust, right?”
“Yeah, basically. Same elements, same origin”
“I think I'd like to believe she's part of a star somewhere. Maybe she went wherever my stars went, or maybe she followed me here.”
“That sounds lovely”
They sit in silence for a while, a comet flying across the screen.
“... Ryland?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think she really could be out there, somewhere?”
“Well, matter never stops existing. So every atom that ever made up her body is still there. And wherever she ended up, in whatever form that takes” Grace moves closer, holding his face with cold fingertips “I think she’s very proud of the person her son grew up to be”
His throat feels tight around an invisible lump. He wants so badly to thank him, for this, for everything, but he knows that he'll break down if he tries to speak.
Instead, he presses closer to Grace, and lets quiet tears roll down his cheeks.
“Happy birthday, Simon”