Chapter Text
Simon is halfway down the staircase when he’s overcome by a sudden violent bout of coughing. From his vantage point tucked into the cliffs kitty-corner to the base of the staircase, Grace twists around and peers through a keyhole opening in the rocks so he can see.
Simon’s been coughing a lot lately, Grace realizes as he watches the man bend double, hacking breaths shaking his frame. But this level of intensity is new. Is he sick? The idea seems ludicrous – they’ve been sharing the biodome for over a year with neither of them falling ill in that time. Maybe pneumonia? Grace himself has aspirated water from swimming in the biodome’s sea, but Simon doesn’t swim. He still could have breathed in water from sitting in the waves while Grace swam, or – Grace’s mind races as he starts to shift his weight, preparing to set aside the tablet with the lesson plans he’s working on – or even water from showering. Pneumonia can come on quickly once liquid catches in the lungs. Maybe it’s something like –
Grace freezes when Simon stumbles, a final heaving cough nearly taking him off his feet as several particles spray from his mouth. The keyhole in the cliff face is small. Grace sets his cheekbone against it so he can better see the man as he weaves a little, reaching down and plucking something from the staircase at his feet. Slowly, he straightens up, panting weakly, his one remaining hand cupped in front of him where he regards its contents with a look of consternation.
Suddenly, he glances up and around, frantically sweeping his gaze across the beach. He doesn’t see Grace in his spot tucked under an overhang in the cliffs. After a moment’s search, his shoulders slump and he curls his fingers into a fist, turning on the stairs and nearly tripping on the first step up before he seems to get his feet under him and climbs slowly toward the house and out of sight, his breath rough and rasping.
Grace sits still for a minute, blinking, his heartbeat slowing. He’s not sure if he should go see if Simon needs help, or if the slump of Simon’s shoulders was relief when he didn’t see Grace. Maybe he wants to be alone. He knows Grace isn’t in the house, but he still headed that way even knowing there are a limited number of places Grace could be. They never leave the biodome without telling each other – it’s always such a production of getting into an exosuit that can stand up to Erid’s atmosphere that there’s no way it could be missed, anyway.
His musings are cut short by the sound of hurrying footsteps. Grace pokes his head out of the overhang and blanches at the sight of several Eridians racing across the rocky beach, beelining straight for the stairs. He recognizes them as members of the biodome team following Adrian, but Rocky isn’t with them. Adrian makes no move to turn or acknowledge Grace, though they have to know he’s there, as they sprint up the staircase toward the house. Only a minute or two later, the clattering footsteps return, the whole pack of them retreating back down the stairs. Simon is held aloft between Adrian and Hulk, another green-hued Eridian who is almost as tall as Adrian. Simon’s swearing at them, but in a good-natured way, seemingly complaining about the jostling and insisting he can walk. He starts coughing again as they hit the sand, and Adrian reacts by slinging Simon solely into their own grip and taking off toward the medical center building which spans the biodome and was alternately each human's home while they recovered from starvation and amputation, respectively.
Stunned by this sudden turn of events, Grace waits until he can’t hear the Eridians anymore, then unfolds himself from his hidey-hole. His legs ache from being bent for so long, and he nearly drops the tablet two separate times as he stumbles his way over to the staircase, climbing it to the halfway point so he can peer over the edge of the cliff toward the medical center. He’s not sure what he expects to see – like all Eridian buildings, it doesn’t have windows. Rocky had gotten the team to add clear xenonite panes while Grace was bedbound with beriberi, but those face the other way, into the biodome wall itself, where Rocky programmed sunny days and winter snowfall in turns until Grace got strong enough to complain about the jarring transitions and fight him for the handheld controls.
As he starts to move his foot in preparation for continuing up to the house and calling Rocky to find out what the heck is going on, Grace slips. He catches himself immediately, looking down in shock at the unfamiliar sensation of something small and soft moving under his sole.
When he lifts his shoe, he finds himself staring blankly at a pale, delicate shape that, at first, he can’t make sense of. He has to crouch and pick it up to feel the airy weightlessness of it, the artificial breeze fluttering at its edges and threatening to tug it right out of his grip. His fingertips go white from the force of keeping it clamped between them, because what he’s holding is suddenly the most important thing in the world. Grace casts about wildly and finds three more, gathering them with the focused air of one of the aircraft carrier's scientists handling astrophage. This feels just as world-ending as a potential explosion.
Silently, Grace turns on his haunches and sits heavily on the next step up, staring at the precious, cursed items clenched between his fingers. He’s holding four pale flower petals, two of them streaked with blood, and he knows exactly what this means.