Archive of Our Own

Grace stood a lone figure on the beach made of too-large sand, rounded glass and shards of rock at his feet, all carefully crafted to complement the alien life he brought to the planet. He was unmoving but not silent, always so noisy and singing with life just by existing, and it was easy for Rocky to keep him in its awareness even as it lingered back by the hard packed dirt of the walkway to Grace's home. It didn't want to disturb him yet; so rarely did Rocky get to catch Grace during a quiet, contemplative moment. He had his weight on one leg, his hands in his pockets and an expression on his face that Rocky had no name for.

With each stridulation, the cave around it sang back. Carved stone with geometric designs left by artisans eager to have their mark on the grander artwork that was Grace's life, xenonite walls of opaque and transparent materials made up the airlock into the oxygen-rich atmosphere and the various panels for lighting maintenance and other electrical power sources, crystals that resonated with beautiful echoes crawled along the walls and ceilings and making for a beautiful location for human eyes and eridian auricles.

It would all outlive its sole occupant by long enough to become artifacts of a different time.

Grace's heart sent out a wave of sound with each beat, reaching Rocky like the artificial sea beyond where he stood, but twice as beautiful. His muscles sang as he shifted positions, and his shoes against the sand ground out percussion as he turned and smiled at it. Whatever had been on his face or on his mind before was gone, replaced with an expression Rocky likened to an aria. Singular, beautiful, accompanied by whatever instrumentation Rocky carried with it whenever it walked beside him. He was going to be a lone voice for the rest of his life, never again lost in a chorus of others, and there was nothing anyone could do about that.

"Hey, buddy," Grace said. His voice was low, almost lost under the sound of the waves, rough, unrefined, gorgeous. "How long have you been watching me?"

Rocky hadn't kept track of the time. Instead, it asked, "What were you thinking about?"

Grace allowed this change in conversation as befitted his name. "Just thinking about Earth," he said, as if it was somewhere nearby and not a place he'd never see again. "About beaches I've been to and how this one is different."

For the briefest of moments, Rocky considered what it would take to send Grace back to Earth. It got as far as considering the time it would take to refuel and the materials it would take to repair the human spaceship, but no further. To send Grace back to the planet that asked him to die and then didn't consider his answer, to repeat the offense and deepen the wound, was an unthinkable act. It would sooner crush itself into fine pieces to scatter along his beach than hurt him in such a way.

So instead, it resigned to hold onto him like a spun glass artwork until he slipped through its fingers, returning to sand after spending such a brief moment in time refracting light it couldn't see into rainbows it couldn't fully comprehend. Losing him would destroy a part of it that would never be able to heal, and it couldn't imagine its life without that piece missing in the far-flung future.

Its continued silence spurred Grace into filling the air, nerves jittering along the edges of his words. "Don't get me wrong, this is beautiful. Perfect, even. I love it here, and nowhere back on Earth could compare, it's so different, way more colorful than anywhere I ever visited."

His body audibly relaxed once it said, "It was made just for you, I would hope so."

What it didn't say was, I would reshape the entire world if you asked me to.

Grace's smile grew until his teeth rang back in clear relief. He knew, and he would never ask. It was one of the many reasons Rocky loved him.

Rocky returned to consciousness in Grace's lap. It had opted to sleep with him this time, cradled by his body and surrounded by the music of his existence. Grace's fingers danced along the top of the suit it wore, each tap a little kiss, a mark of affection left on the small panels with percussion and the natural oils of his skin. Rocky trilled its easy joy, and Grace's chuckle joined in alongside it, discordant and gentle.

The school year had just ended and Grace had more free time for the next few months while the next class was selected and the visual roster created for his benefit. Rocky wanted to capitalize on this to spend more time with him when he would allow, before his days were gratefully eaten by classwork and student groups and hands on projects to make molecules and star systems. Adrian had conceded the time with no argument, only extracting a promise from Rocky to visit home at least once a week.

They understood there was a piece of Rocky that Grace would forever hold, and understood that sometimes his fingers against its crystalline soul hurt like a missing piece. Rocky wished it was less dependent on Grace, a separate entity instead of a half intertwined organism from their years with only each other, but even after the time spent on Erid with their own lives and communities and hobbies, the parts of them that had grown together had yet to grow apart. It had apologized to Adrian on more than one occasion for its shortcomings, for not being strong enough to break away from the human's grasp and return to them wholly. Only occasionally did they take its apology and give nothing in return; more often, they responded by saying that in order to survive, it had shared parts of itself with Grace that now forever belong to him, and all they could do now was enjoy the time they both had with him and not dwell on what they had no power to change.

Rocky understood the strength needed for that decision. There was nothing it could do to thank Adrian enough to make a difference.

Grace was older now, more experienced, and his bones were starting to grind whenever he walked. Rocky marked another year gone by and wondered how many more they'd have left together.

"Have a good sleep?" Grace asked. He drummed both hands against the top of the xenonite suit, light taps of the heels of his palms all over, making Rocky want to shiver with the cold of his skin and the sound of his affection.

"Yes," it said. It pinched the fabric of his pants between its claws, unable to feel how soft or coarse or thick or thin it was, just that it was of Grace's world, one of his few remaining possessions from his life before. It wanted to give him everything, but he would never ask for more than what he thought he deserved, which was far below what anyone objectively would agree on. "You need new clothes."

Grace chuckled, the sound like river stones knocking against each other from the push of the water. "My clothes are fine, Rocky."

"Yes," it said. "That's not what I'm saying. You need more."

Grace chuckled again. He stopped tapping to run his fingers along the seams of the various panels, the roughness of the solder scraping against his skin. The sound bounced around the inside and along Rocky's carapace, its own caress. "I have everything I need, buddy."

It knew that tone. He used it often when talking about it, a softness that existed in only one other instance: when he was talking about his home planet. A love that had no name, reaching deeper than either of them knew how to explain. It made its brain sing with joy, and with sorrow, because there would be nothing similar to it once he was gone. He was getting old, and his bones were starting to grind because of the pull of the planet he refused to leave. It was his home, by choice, until the end of his life.

Rocky reached for him, pinching at his clothes and tapping at his body to get a clearer read. His bones were weakening but still healthy, his muscles recovering from time spent in space and malnourished, his tendons stretching as he lifted his arms and placed his hands on Rocky's suit, resting his head against the top. The in and out of his breathing filled out the image of his lungs, the beat of his heart echoing through his chest, the gurgle of his stomach telling the passage of time. Grace was a resilient, strong, living and breathing symphony that Rocky wanted to reverberate through its very soul, as impossible a dream as that was.

"What are you thinking about?" Grace asked. He murmured against the xenonite, the way his voice cut through the air still like a caress, his chest vibrating with the tenor and acting like what Rocky assumed a spotlight did, chiseling his heart into fine detail with the sound.

"You," it said, and pressed itself against him, wishing there was nothing between them to keep it from feeling the softness of his clothes, the yield of his flesh, the feather of his hair. Grace said no words, just let out a faint upward inflection that was as loud as a roar with how close Rocky was pressed against him. It dragged a claw down the plane of his back, enjoying how it made him shiver. "I love you," was what it said. I would travel the universe again for you, was what it didn't.

Grace's smile was carved with a sculptor's hand, dimpled and delicate and beautiful. "I love you too," he said. He knew it would. Rocky would brave the cosmos again, the long quiet of space, the emptiness and the nothing, if he asked. He would never ask. There was no reason to ask when where he wanted to be was right there in its grasp.

Grace was laying on the beach well past the start of his night cycle, tracing shapes into the air with intentionality that Rocky did not know. He held up his arm when Rocky approached, and it slotted itself underneath it without needing to think about it.

"I still can't really believe it," he said, after the waves had filled the silence for so long it became static. "I've spent so long not thinking about it that I can't imagine what it's like there anymore."

He couldn't see the stars through the thick atmosphere of Erid, but he didn't need to. He pointed with certainty in a direction, and Rocky was sure that if it checked on the location of Sol he would be close. It was brighter now, growing stronger with each passing moment even as the change had long since occurred. It was a late delivery, thanks to the distance between Sol and its Grace, but it finally arrived. He had succeeded.

Rocky thought about offering him the refilled and repaired Hail Mary again, now that a good decade had passed since the last time it offered, but hesitated. He had said no before for a variety of reasons, it knew; the fact that he was finally settled in, that he wasn't too keen on space travel again, that the uncertainty was a sickness he couldn't cure by chasing the dying sun, and that he didn't know if there was anything familiar waiting for him back on Earth. Now, with the luminance of Sol a hard fact in his hands, Grace was contemplating all of this again. 

Rocky didn't want to encourage his departure from Erid for a few very selfish reasons. This was his home as much as Earth was and Rocky had no anchor to Earth like he did, if he left then Rocky was going to go with him, and if Grace left then there was no return trip for him. He would arrive at Earth and stay there for the rest of his natural life, and that scared the hell out of Rocky.

This was their home now. Earth had sent Grace off to claw at the vague hope of survival for the entirety of his planet, and he had sent back the key to its life with pieces of his heart in a capsule. Rocky didn't want to hand him back to them when Grace was its own precious treasure, the most resonant gem it had ever found. Earth didn't deserve any more of him.

But Rocky would go with Grace, if he did want to go back. It wouldn't bar him from a proper homecoming, and would instead do everything it could to make it a comfortable and safe journey to his final destination. It would stay with him until the end, and if there was enough of it left to make the trip back to Erid, it would leave Earth for its own final resting place. As pleasing as it sounded to die with Grace, it had Adrian, and to leave Adrian alone after all of their patience and understanding and grief was unconscionable to it. Adrian deserved better. Adrian deserved what would be left once Grace had carved out the parts of him inside of Rocky. There was enough love there to matter, despite how broken it would be for its second return home.

"I don't think I want to go," Grace said, a statement of fact solid and heavy in the air. "I want to stay here. They can figure everything out without me. I don't need to be there to help."

It was a rush of fresh rain on a parched field, hearing him so certain in his decision to stay. The tension Rocky didn't realize it was carrying around was washed off of it in the downpour, leaving it feeling exhausted and light. It nudged him with its body, and he nudged it back with his hip.

"You're staying," it said, not asked. It sounded as relieved as it felt, unable to hide it in the layering of its voices or the harmonization of the words in the nighttime air. "With me."

"You know it." Grace's fingers started tapping, raindrop kisses against its carapace as he played invisible keys against its body. "I love you. I want to stay here for as long as you'll have me."

He said it almost like a joke. Rocky knew it wasn't.

"I'll always want you here," was what it said. I want to enjoy the time we have, was what it didn't.

Grace was older still. He commented that his body was aching and his hair was graying and his eyes were failing, but he was happy. It was obvious in the way he spoke and moved and sang and taught. Erid was slowly crushing him into dust and all he could think about was how to use himself as fertilizer.

They fell into silence, nothing but the sound of the waves and the faint hum of the electricity through the biodome. Grace kept tapping his fingers, incessant in his affection even as the minutes passed by.

Rocky knew he was preparing to speak by the way he inhaled, but he didn't say anything right away. He held the breath, his lungs going indistinct from the lack of movement, and then the shapes of them and the vessels and roots and bronchi sketched themselves against his body when he let the breath out in a whoosh. "We should add this to the wall," he said.

One of his recent projects had been immortalizing humanity's story by carving it into the stone wall by the airlock. He originally painted it, but changed to the more time-consuming, more complicated, more Eridian method after only a few hours of work. He started with the basics, something he had described as being on a golden record somewhere out in space, and went from there. He wanted to add Sol's survival and the continuing existence of humanity to that wall. Another artifact for the future. Another sign that said Grace had made it all the way to Erid, and he was loved.

"If you want to," it said, not knowing how to put words to the way it felt like it was being torn apart and put back together at the same time. He wanted to leave fertile soil for whoever came after him, and Rocky hated to think of a future after he was gone.

Grace turned his head to smile at it, that same delicate, beautiful smile as always, a sight Rocky knew it would adore, if it had eyes to see it, because of how much the sound of it caressed its core. "It makes sense to add." His taps became teasing. Poke poke poke, all along the side of its suit until his hand found the top and resumed tapping along the seams of the panels. "It's part of our history. You'll have to explain it to someone someday," was what he said.

I want you to live, was what he didn't say, one of the few requests he ever had. He knew its proclivities all too well.

Torn apart and put back together again at the same time. Filled with love and sorrow in equal measure, melody and harmony weaving together and losing track of which was which as the song went on, outlining the steps of a dance only the two of them knew. He was going to be gone long before Rocky would see the end of its own life, and he was setting up a garden for it to take care of in his stead. The loneliness was a waterline slowly rising, and Grace was putting effort into keeping it from drowning even though all it wanted to do was follow him under.

"You could just leave behind informational plaques. Preemptively turn this place into a museum," was what it said, making its voices rise and fall in playful irritation it didn't feel.

I want you to live, was what he finally asked of it. Rocky had no choice but to obey.

"My symphony." Adrian met it at the door, waiting for it to return home from a visit with Grace. He was bored with the free time he had during the off season, and Rocky indulged his silly games. Hide and seek, tag, something he called "Marco Polo"; he was childish in his joy and made decades younger by the lightness of it. Rocky wanted to commit every second to memory, but knew that it never could.

It held a hand out, and Adrian placed one of theirs between its fingers, saying nothing of how human the gesture was. They had long accepted that Rocky was permanently changed by Grace's presence, and did their best to follow the steps to the dance. 

They had been waiting for it to come home, so clearly something was on their mind. "Was there something you wanted to talk about?"

"Yes." Adrian hesitated. That was enough to set Rocky on edge, anticipating a drop into something dire, or at best something uncomfortable. Adrian tended to be so sure footed, certain in their decisions and willing to negotiate the terms with Rocky when necessary. Hesitation was unlike them.

They still said nothing. Rocky prompted, "Is something wrong?"

"Not wrong," they said. That did nothing to ease the tension in Rocky's body, the unsteady pulse of its hearts as it shifted. "I have an idea I wish to bring up, but it might be an unpleasant one given the circumstances."

"Unpleasant," it repeated. "And you're sure nothing is wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong." Adrian pulled Rocky closer by their joined hands, pressing close and humming a low note of apologetic amusement. "It has been a difficult decision to make, but I have made it and I want to bring it up to you."

That was more like the person Rocky had come to adore. Tension eased but didn't dissipate, and it hummed back a harmony of soft annoyance. Adrian chittered in further amusement. "What is it?"

They hesitated again, but for only a brief moment this time. "I wanted to bring the possibility of children up for consideration."

All at once, Rocky could hear the sound of the future, in all of its noisy glory and empty air. If they had children, Grace could be part of their lives— but only briefly. He would be a flash of incomprehensible light, lost to the darkness of Erid and a child's lack of understanding, and then be gone forever.

Adrian knocked their bodies together, a gentle nudge to move Rocky from the empty hole that was Grace's eventual departure, despite the human being alive and well just a short walk away.

"If you dislike the idea—"

"No." Rocky couldn't put chords to the words stuck in its brain, afraid that the force of the realization would make it splinter and shatter. But Adrian knew. They were the one to bring it up, because they could think about the absence of Grace with less torturous pain. They had weighed the options and brought their decision to Rocky for consideration, and now Rocky had to imagine the shape of a family without Grace in it.

Adrian didn't press. They waited, droning and making Rocky's whole body vibrate with it, easing its tension bit by bit until its joints were loose and it sagged to the floor. They followed with it, not pulling away for even a moment.

"Are you sure?" it asked, once it found its song again. "Their names?"

Adrian let out a beautiful chime, their voices shaking through it.

Adrian knew what it was asking. Not if they were sure they wanted to start a family now, but if they were sure of Grace's ephemeral role in it, of his hands shaping the way their family would look only to scatter to the wind. Of his mark left on not only the two of them, but their offspring, by influencing them as much as he could with what little time he had and by giving them names that Rocky and Adrian would then translate.

"I am sure," they said.

By the time any children they had would reach maturity, Grace would be long gone. He would be around long enough to act as a beacon, a symbol of curiosity and bravery to work to emulate, but not as a direct guiding hand. There wasn't a guarantee they would have any solid memories of him, either, if the dice rolled low and he left them early. Rocky was hoping for at least another twenty years, but that was in ideal conditions. Grace was still being ground down into dust with each passing second, his frail body unfit for the life he chose to live on the much harsher Erid instead of returning to the soft ease of Earth.

Following behind that thought with a predator's poise was the alternative future where they had gone back to Earth with Grace long before they knew the fate of the planet. Even with that uncertainty, if they had left as soon as they were able, Grace could have lived the rest of his life in comfort. Rocky and Adrian would have had a harder time, but the comparative difference was negligible when considering the details. Thirty, forty years in lower gravity to see Grace thrive, compared to that same amount of time spent listening to his body break down under the weight of it all.

"I want to," it said, hating how its voices shook but knowing it could not stop the pain. "I want to. Please."

"Of course." Adrian trilled, gentle amusement lining its song.

It would be a surprise, for now. With the time spent drifting in space, unprotected by the radiation that had claimed its entire crew, there was no knowing what had changed about Rocky's biology. There was no guarantee it could even lay viable eggs, and there had been no reason to find out before now. The damage left behind from everything else, from the loneliness and the passage of time and the ways they changed while apart, gave Rocky and Adrian other things to focus on. To be in the position to consider it now, when it almost felt too late, was a situation Rocky wanted to call comedic. To bring children into a situation that could only end in heartbreak after spending so long healing. How comical.

Rocky held a note, singular and waiting for Adrian to layer one underneath it, and then added another and another until they were a ten note chord, synced and whole, unbroken and holding nothing but love, for the moment the music lasted.

If fate smiled upon them in even a fraction of the way Grace often did, then at least this part of their future was a bright spot with Grace's fingerprints all over it.

Grace's toothy grin was a chord with missing notes and yet no less complete. "Cut me some slack!"

"Grace," Rocky said, trying to be patient. "Your hip is broken. You cannot walk. You shouldn't be moving around."

"So roll me around! What else is that wheelchair for?"

Rocky knocked its body against the nearest vertical surface, which was Grace's bedroom wall. He was being stubborn, as he tended to in his old age. Despite all of his doctors telling him to take it easy and stay in bed, he insisted on taking 'a stroll' around the dome. The wheelchair wasn't ideal for this, with the lack of proper paths across most of the beach, and the paths that did exist snaking around the outer edge to the cliffs, the airlock, his home, and nowhere else. He was clearly not going to budge, though. He wanted to get out of the house and there was little Rocky could do to convince him to stay in bed and recover.

It was reminded of a time decades ago, when it was just the two of them on a tiny spaceship. Grace had reached the point of being what he called 'stir-crazy', and had started running laps around the lab in an attempt to ease some of his anxious energy. Rocky's tunnels had made this difficult, but he’d persisted until he’d been exhausted and capable of sitting still for more than a few minutes. He’d needed to get out and run around, he’d explained. It's good for me.

Grace had been bedbound for a week and was used to far greater levels of physical activity. It was no wonder he was going stir-crazy again. Rocky knew that if it didn't facilitate his actions, he was going to do something that would inevitably lead to greater injury, and he was already frail. He didn't need to hasten the end of his life by trying to go out on his own and rolling off the cliff on accident.

"Fine," it said. "But I'm pushing you and you're not going to do anything but tell me where you want to go."

Grace held his hand out for a handshake, as if that was a necessary component to this conversation. Rocky put its claw against his palm anyway, not wanting to deny him his small pleasures, and earning another toothy grin for its indulgence.

Helping Grace into his wheelchair was one of the worst experiences in Rocky's life; it could hear every weakening bone, every trembling muscle, every strained beat of his heart. His time on Erid was catching up to him, and at his hobbling speed there was nothing that could be done to stave off further degradation. Whatever chance he had at an easier life was left behind when he made the final decision to live the rest of his time on this alien planet light years away from his place of birth. He had no regrets, evident from the way he cackled in delight once Rocky started pushing him towards the front door, and the way he sighed with new peace as the light of the overhead illumination brushed his wrinkled face.

He was weathered now, like the rocks of the cliff beach and the mountain faces of the world beyond his little bubble. If he were eridian, he would barely be entering his adult life; as a human, he was approaching the end of his entire existence. In another few decades, only bone would remain, with none of the life or energy or joy he carried with him through the stars all the way to another planet. None of the rough laughter and jagged words from his singular voice, none of the rare instances of song that came from him, none of the various noises to signal his mood or act as reaction for the unseeing and unfamiliar audience he always had.

He turned his face towards the sky and closed his eyes. Rocky pushed him steadily along the path around the outskirts of his home and tried very hard not to think about how little time they had left. A blink of an eye, as Grace often phrased it. A line in the sand. An echo.

"Dog years" was one that had started to come up more often as the years flowed by. Grace described himself as Rocky's pet, a dog with a significantly shorter lifespan but with enough weight to his existence to bring Rocky low once he was gone. "I'm not happy that my death will hurt you," he had said, when Rocky had grown silent and still. "But I am happy that I was so important to you that my death will hurt. You know?"

In the present, following the trail of years of walking human feet, Grace said, "Hey Rocky?"

He sounded wistful, distant, unfocused. It was a mood that was rare in his early years but was becoming more and more commonplace. It was how he sounded when he was thinking about his life, his hardships and losses and victories and peace, and it was how he sounded when he brought up the concept of dog years. Rocky braced itself for what was inevitably going to be a difficult conversation. "Yes, Grace?"

He didn't say anything right away. The sound of the wheelchair against packed dirt and the ever present rush of the waves filled the air instead, as he inhaled and exhaled measured breaths.

"As I get older," he said, carefully enunciating each word. "I will start to lose myself."

Rocky stopped pushing him. Grace didn't acknowledge this.

"I will start to forget, and I'll start not being able to recognize things or people. Heck, between the amnesia drugs and the coma, I'm surprised it hasn't happened already. I'll be able to take care of myself in a basic way, but anything more complicated than routine will be difficult."

"Why are you telling me this?" Rocky started pushing him again, careful to keep its pace slow to avoid losing control of itself, the conversation, or Grace's wheelchair. It didn't want to hear any of this, but it knew it had to. It was the unavoidable future, and Grace had long been gearing up to ease into this period of his life. He knew it was coming, and he wanted Rocky to know now too.

"Because it's important." Grace tapped his fingers along the arm rest, the dexterity of his younger years faded with time and ground down to clumsy hands. Each tap was a kiss, the same as before, unable to be placed along the xenonite suit because Rocky was behind him and out of reach, but the sentiment was clear. I love you, I'm sorry, I love you. "It'll get worse as time goes on," he continued. "What's important is that at some point it will seem like I'm getting better, but you need to know that I won't. It'll be a last piece of clarity before I die."

From the sound of it, it was something that often happened. Humans, dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions of them, all experiencing something different yet so similar, and Grace wasn't anywhere near the community that could best understand and help him. He had chosen this knowing how lonely the end of his life would be. He insisted it wasn't lonely at all.

Rocky filed this information away for later, knowing that this conversation  would carry it through the hardest part of Grace's journey. "I understand."

"I just don't want it to come as a surprise," Grace said. His voice was a caress Rocky could never feel, soft skin made rough by calluses, long fingers and delicate touches. If it wasn't so selfish, so damaging of a request, Rocky wished they could touch just one more time.

"I understand," it said again. Then, "Grace?"

Grace smiled, the expression both happy and worn down at the edges until it was melancholic. "Yeah, bud?"

It was a question that had long since percolated in Rocky's brain, one it never had the courage to ask because of how much explanation would come with it, but time was slipping through to the bottom of the hourglass regardless. It wanted to know before it was too late.

"What color is your hair?"

"Oh." Grace tugged at one of the freed locks, the rest braided back and out of his face. "Right now? Or when I was younger?"

"Both."

Grace hummed. "Right now it's grey and white," he said. "I used to be blond—that's yellow hair. Do you want to know what color my eyes are too?"

If Rocky could smile, it would be doing so. All it had was a trill, a noise well worn and familiar to them both. "Yes."

"They're blue."

And now for the hard part. "What other things share those colors?"

"Oh," Grace said again, a lightness to his tone that made him sound amused and touched at the same time. "What's with the question, Rocky? Just feeling sentimental?"

"Yes." No use denying it. It wanted to hear Grace speak while it could come up with excuses, to hear him lecture and explain and get lost in whatever it was he was talking about. He tended to talk with his hands, putting his whole upper body into gestures to emphasize his point.

"Well. I'll have to think about it!" Grace laughed, the sound echoing off the nearby cliffs and filling the dome. "Can I get back to you?"

"I can wait." Rocky trilled again, and started the journey back to Grace's home. It was about time for his medication.

As Grace spent more time learning, hearing and understanding the language often used around him, he started to sing more.

It began with a new melodious quality to his voice, faint enough that he didn't notice it had become part of him, but each sentence, each word out of his mouth carried a song after a few years in Erid. It was rough, unrefined, a true aria of humankind in the gentle darkness of an alien world, and Rocky was besotted. It wanted to hear him speak more, to catalogue the music as it became more distinct in his voice, to memorize the song of him all over again now that the melody had changed. Grace was more than willing to talk for hours on end, with gentle prompting a little else getting him started on an impromptu lecture that would only end once he reached the natural terminus, or when Adrian scolded them both for skipping meals.

With the natural song of his voice developing, Grace started singing intentionally as well. He spent hours listening to human music, revisiting what he considered old favorites and searching through the more recent catalogue of music he had for something he enjoyed. He learned the lyrics, the melodies, the occasional harmony, until he had a host of madrigals tucked away in his brain to pull out at a moment's notice. He sang as he did chores, as he outlined lessons, graded homework, answered correspondence. He sang as he idled and as he acted.

During one such idle period, Rocky found him on the floor of his living area, hands folded over his stomach with a pillow tucked under his head and his feet. He had earbuds plugged into one of the redundant laptops from the Hail Mary and resting in both ears, some kind of acoustic music drifting out of them. Rocky didn't care to listen to the details of it. "Grace?"

Grace pulled out one earbud and let it drop to the floor. "Hey buddy."

"Listening to more music?" Rocky settled at the curve of Grace's hip, and Grace immediately took up a tapping rhythm with his fingers that matched the song drifting through the air.

"Yeah. I just felt like it." He paused the music with a poke of the spacebar. "Music carries a lot of meaning. I know you know that, but sometimes I forget."

Grace was not a musical person, by his own admission. For him to seek out music was a fact with some significance that had not dulled over his life surrounded by it. He was a man that preferred to sink his teeth into text or science, not chords and measures. "Did you find a song that you liked?"

"Yes and no." Grace brought his other hand up, reaching for the window on the ceiling that showed the biodome's sky. Whatever Grace saw there, it had something to do with the quality of light, perhaps the intensity or the color or the angle, but the detail was lost on Rocky. It wished, not for the first time, that it could perceive the world the same way Grace could. It wanted to know just what he experienced, what the colors of its life were, just as Grace often expressed a desire to know the songs of Rocky and Adrian's.

He said nothing more, so Rocky said, "Elaborate."

"It's alright," he said, voice ringed with laughter. "Not really the kind of music I used to listen to that much. It just had some lyrics that…"

The tears that gathered at the corners of his eyes didn't fall immediately. They lingered there, refracting the sound of the music and Grace's heart and his breathing and Rocky's natural stridulations to perceive the world around it. When they did finally fall, they traced a line down the sides of Grace's cheeks and tapped against the floor in an uneven tempo. It had felt like eons since Grace had last cried so openly. With experience came poise, and he held himself to a standard befitting of royalty, keeping himself tightly bound together even when battered by everything life threw at him. He was no longer a lost soul in a sea of stars unfamiliar to him, but a human with a life and a community and a place to pour his troubles when they became too much to bear.

Rocky pinched at his clothes, dragging his attention back to the song and the floor and the light through the ceiling window.

"The lyrics got to me," he finished, dropping his hand back to his stomach. He laced his fingers together, then laced them with Rocky's when Rocky wiggled its own hand underneath his. The strength he used to squeeze was an echo of his younger years, but familiar nonetheless.

"Can I know?" Rocky asked. It scooted closer until Grace had no choice but to turn onto his side and curl around it, pulling it to his chest in a motion as natural as breathing. The mucous all over the inside of his body made its usual disgusting noise when he sniffled.

"It's silly," he murmured, a particular kind of melody that danced along Rocky's auricles and left it wanting to shiver.

It settled for pressing in closer, hearing the way his body moved and adjusted to accommodate it, the slight increase in his heartbeat at the proximity, the way his breathing shortened with excitement and tears. "A lot about you is silly, Grace."

Grace knocked a fist against the xenonite suit, a motion that made him feel better and did little to bother Rocky aside from being a little loud. He pressed his forehead to the closest panel and closed his eyes, more tears falling from his lashes to patter against the floor.

He sighed. Condensation gathered on the xenonite from the heat of his breath before fading. His voice carried the tune with gentle hands, ferrying it along and releasing it into the air to scatter like sand thrown into the wind. "The funny thing with living is no one makes it out alive."

Grace covered his eyes with an arm, losing all composure as soon as his voice tapered into silence. Rocky wrapped its arms around him and cradled him, purring as he sobbed and wishing it could do something other than watch him get older.

"I wish we had more time," he said, clarity ringing out nestled among the ragged breathing and uneven crying. He grasped at Rocky as if afraid it would disappear from his grasp, his already tired muscles working hard to keep it in his arms. It held him as close as it could.

For some reason, Rocky had always assumed that Grace experienced the time differently than it did. That the decades they had spent together were long, sweeping symphonies with complicated instrumentation and interwoven leitmotifs from different events in their lives, both from before and after they met. To Rocky, it felt like a nursery rhythm, short and simple, begging to be made longer but having a definitive end with little space to expand it. It had not considered that the decades, over half of Grace's natural life, would feel just as short to him as they did to Rocky.

Grace fit in its arms like he had been sculpted to do so. Rocky gently lifted him from the ground and carried him to the couch, holding him and harmonizing with his grief in a discordance only they could make. A quintet layered over a monody. It didn't let go until long after he cried himself to sleep, draped over it with his heart in the perfect spot to listen to. He would wake up on his own soon. Rocky wanted to listen to the sound of his life and sit with its feelings for a moment while it had the chance.

It felt so contradictory that life was precious because it was fleeting, but that felt like the only truth as Grace grew older. He would not be around forever. Every laugh, every bad joke, every tear was worth it, because it meant he was alive. He had been alive. He had loved and changed the world with loving and careful hands, holding it so close to his heart until the thought of separating from it was so painful he sobbed himself to sleep.

His heart was a steady tempo, keeping time to the song of his life as it grew ever slower.

Rocky promised the human asleep in its arms that it would keep the song going, long after he stopped singing it himself.

Grace didn't start to forget like he had warned. Instead, he started to fade.

It was a gradual change, spread over decades and leaving a trail of sand over the memories Rocky held close. He didn't forget, he didn't stop recognizing people or places or things, he just slowed down. Each motion took longer to complete, each goal took longer to reach, until he couldn't do almost anything he wanted unassisted.

And he started to sleep more, as the years went on. A sparse six hours turned into seven, into eight, into nine, and then frequent naps were sprinkled throughout the day. Rocky ran its hand through his gossamer hair during one of these naps, Grace's head tucked into the curve of its arms and his fingers like sunlight against the xenonite panels. Adrian was on his other side, and the two of them together provided enough heat to keep him warm as his body started to lose the ability to retain heat.

He was a song slowly growing distant. Rocky tried to reach for the noise while he still had it, and listened to the steady beat of Grace's heart from where he was pressed against it. It was fainter than before, and there was nothing to be done about it.

Grace's hair was thinning now. It was silver and white, like the metal of the same name, or aluminum, or snow or clouds or stone. It used to be blond, which was yellow and brown, which was gold and bronze. Wheat fields, dusk, dawn, polished wood, wet clay, river rocks, sunlight. His eyes were blue, sometimes grey. Blue like the sky of earth, like bird eggs, like sapphires, like ice. Grey like rain clouds, slate, the same silver as his hair, the same stone, and the sky over the ocean or during a storm. 

Grace had written all of this down so he wouldn't forget, knowing full well that Rocky and Adrian would do all the remembering for him if he asked. He wanted the satisfaction of writing, of completing a task on his own while he still could, of having the list physically in his gnarled hands. Sounds echoed off of his wrinkled smile in beautiful swoops of music, and Rocky imagined the world in color as he read it aloud.

He was starting to fade. Gold became grey became white, and Grace had always said that clear skies meant they were cloudless. The blue of his eyes would blend with the sea and become indistinguishable from the water. 

Adrian ran a claw up and down Grace's thigh, a sorrowful drone hanging quietly in the air. They knew as well as Rocky did that his time was approaching. Neither of them would ever be ready to lose him, so the least they could do was set him gently onto the coming wave and listen to him drift out and disappear. The intentionality was important, even if each moment was a crack snaking over their composure.

Rocky wondered what the clarity would manifest as. If forgetting was broken by temporary remembrance, a harbinger of the end, what would fading be interrupted by? Certainly energy. A final flash of light from a dying star that had given two worlds a new horizon, a line tying them together for future generations to follow to the other side. It wondered what his last surge of life would be used for. It was only a matter of time before it would know.

Grace rolled away from it, onto his back, his lungs inhaling and holding in air as he stumbled back into consciousness. He blinked and stared up at the ceiling, unspeaking and unmoving, for a long few moments before his hands sought them out. One found Rocky, tapping a sluggish rhythm along its arm, and the other found Adrian, tracing the seam between two panels at an equally sluggish pace.

"Welcome back," Rocky sang to him. His face pulled up into a smile, sending the music bouncing around the room.

"Good to be back." Grace yawned, jaw cracking and muscle twitching, his body painted in noise with the loud inhale and exhale. He stretched out, Rocky and Adrian shifting to the sides to allow him the space to reach with his hands and point his toes. Then he groaned, long and loud and satisfied, and let out an equally satisfied sigh when he relaxed again, folding into the soft mattress and blending in with the bedding.

"How did you sleep?" Adrian asked, taking their spot at his knees. He rolled onto his side again to curl his legs around them, scooting closer to leech the warmth permeating the xenonite suit. Rocky tipped into his arms when he held them open, pressing as close as it could to hear the soft beat of his heart and the way the blood flowed through his body. He was made of harder edges now, less weight on his bones to dampen the sound of the way he was alive, but no less beautiful. Still an aria of humanity, singular in its strength and echoing light years even now.

"Fine," he said, voice already drifting back towards sleep as he often did lately. Sleep for hours, wake up for only a handful of minutes and sleep again. It was as clear a sign as any.

"How are you feeling?" Adrian asked, the second question in a familiar sequence. Grace grumbled, smiling again, and Adrian chittered a laugh. "Fine?" they guessed.

"Fine." Grace smiled more. "Where are the kids?"

"My siblings are taking care of them." Adrian tapped along his thigh up to his hip. It never quite healed right, but it healed enough to allow him to self-ambulate when he had the energy. Often he allowed himself to be wheeled around instead, saving what he had for something more important than simply walking. "They have a field trip coming up and…" Adrian hesitated, but the pause didn't register in Grace's ebbing focus. "We wanted to be with you," they finished.

"What a sweetheart," Grace murmured, affection second nature to him after so long, reaching out again to tap his own fingers against what he could reach of Adrian's body. "All for little old me?"

"Anything for you," they said. Grace gave no sign he heard the wavering in their voices, but Rocky had heard. It didn't trust its own voices just yet, weighed down by the emptiness that had long since made a home in its crystalline brain where Grace had left an impression of his soul and song. "Anything you want."

"Anything I want." He let out the breath in a sigh, punctuated by a hum. "I think," he said, and paused. His voice was a crackle now, worn from a life of laughter. His face bloomed into a smile again. "I think I want to take a walk along the beach."

He sat up without assistance, and, ah, this was it then. So soon. Always too soon. Adrian fluttered around him like an anxious breeze, but Rocky felt itself settle into acceptance as it listened to his old joints creak and grind. It was peaceful, in a way, to know that the end was close enough to hear. Grace grabbed his cane and heaved himself to his feet, and barely waited a second before starting to shuffle off.

Adrian jumped to their feet, ready to follow, but stopped when Rocky didn't immediately do the same. It didn't need to say anything for them to understand the message in the silence. Their legs trembled, but they did not yet fall. Rocky climbed out of the bed and gently bumped them as it passed, and they leaned on each other as they followed Grace down to the water.

He was slow moving, so they easily caught up with him, but persistent, so he didn't stop once they did. Rocky and Adrian bracketed him as he walked, the beginning and end of a song keeping the whole of him in tune, until he reached his destination. He stood close enough that the water lapped at his shoes. It soaked into them and into his socks and the cuffs of his pants, staining the fabric with noise. He rested his hands on the head of his cane and looked out at the artificial sea, a sigh almost lost to the sound of the waves.

"This place is beautiful," he said, as if he had never done so many times before. "This is the best home anyone could have ever asked for."

"Anything for you," Adrian responded. Grace didn't acknowledge the tremble of their voices, and just smiled at them. "Do you want anything else, my Grace?"

"No." He reached down and caressed the top of their carapace, the smile losing definition as his mind drifted into memories. "I have had everything I ever wanted. And I have you two to thank for that."

"Anything for you," Rocky echoed. Grace started to reach down for it, but Rocky met him halfway, pushing up on the tips of its claws to hear the press of his palm against its suit.

"It'll be okay." Grace patted both of them, the smile returning in full artistic beauty, made even more so by the wrinkles on his skin that had been slowly carved by the flow of time. "Thank you both. I love you."

Rocky and Adrian fell into an easy harmony, returning in tandem, "I love you too."

Grace looked out at the water again, and let out another soft sigh. He stood there with them in gentle silence until the dome cycled towards dusk, the hum of electricity quieting as the lights powered down. Only once some of the lights switched off did he shift, taking hold of his cane again and turning back to his home.

"I'm tired," he said. He took the first step, somehow still limber after standing in the same position for hours, then paused. "Will you two watch me sleep tonight?"

"Of course," Adrian said, cutting off the high pitched whistle that was the start of a cry. "Always."

"Always." Rocky reached up to hold his free hand, and he tapped kisses against its arm.

"Good." Grace started shuffling home again, bracketed once again by Rocky and Adrian. "I've earned a lazy day."

Rocky had never truly considered how different Grace was from other humans. Grace insisted that he wasn't the pinnacle of human life. He wasn't that athletic, wasn't that beautiful, wasn't that brave, wasn't that selfless. He did, with some pushback, accept that he was on the smarter side, but with the caveat that he wasn't the most intelligent person out there. Humanity, he would say, was far beyond what he could ever hope to be.

Rocky was doubtful of his denials at every turn, and not just because it knew of Grace's habit of self-deprecation. It was doubtful because even amongst eridians, there were few willing to accept dying for their planet in the way Grace had. He made the conscious decision to push past the betrayal and not punish the whole of the Earth for the last-ditch, desperate effort to prevent its own death. Rocky knew of very few eridians that would do the same.

Stella bumped against it, graceless and intentional. "You're zoning out again," they said. "What are you thinking about?"

"Grace," Rocky said immediately. The old pain was still there, but lesser. Just an ache now, and not a twisted knife. Given where they were both standing, this wasn't as much of a surprise as it otherwise would be. Time had eased the song into a gentle breeze that caressed, no longer a blaring cacophony that made it difficult to do more than miss him.

Stella hummed, bumping it again with comfort in mind this time. They had no words to say, knowing the feeling of the old ache in their own hearts. Rocky brought a claw up to tap along the xenonite encasing them, but the sound of it was dulled by its own suit and some of the affection of the action was lost.

"Where is your sibling?" it asked, enjoying the way Stella tilted into the touch and trilled anyway.

"Playing tour guide," they said. "It should be here soon."

"And Adrian?"

"Making sure Sol doesn't get too off track," they said, ringing with amusement.

Not but a moment after the chords left Stella did the sound of an approaching crowd reach them. Sol was regaling the humans with the history of the biodome's creation, from the early planning stages to the final touches before Grace had moved in and called it his home. If any of them noticed the extra layers of fondness in its voice as it spoke of Grace, they didn't comment on it.

Adrian helped the humans into the airlock and out of their spacesuits, unfamiliar configurations capable of withstanding Erid's atmospheric pressure. They were as shapeless as Rocky remembered Grace being, when it first saw him; a short stump of a head, two long arms and two long legs, suits concealing their faces and masking the internal noises of life that came with being squishy and unarmored. As they removed them, their features came into detail. Long and short hair, big and small noses, full lips or so thin they were difficult to distinguish.

The airlock cycled, and the humans stepped into the breathable atmosphere, the soft light, and the sound of waves. They looked around, and now that there was very little material between itself and the new arrivals that muffled the soft edges of human existence, Rocky could hear how they were all so similar in shape but varied in detail, and how none came anywhere close to the song of Grace. But Rocky had known that would happen.

The captain, whose name Rocky had been told was also Grace, named after their savior, looked down at it and Stella and smiled. Her smile was so similar to Grace's while being nothing like it at all. It drew in almost all of the human attention, waiting front and center for them with Stella just slightly behind it, and some started murmuring in recognition. Their early correspondence with the approaching human vessel included mention of Grace's video logs, so it knew there was a good chance they would know it by sight. Human eyes never ceased to amaze it. With amusement, Rocky noted that none of the astronauts standing before it wore glasses, so they'd have better eyesight than Grace ever did.

A few finally noticed the carvings on the walls surrounding them and gasped at the sprawling history recorded there. From the recreation of the golden record to the history of the astrophage probe, to various events Grace considered important enough to immortalize in stone. Their discovery of taumoeba, the trip to Erid, the slow ascent of both suns, the hatching of the first generation under a renewed star, the first graduating class of Grace's students, the probe sent to Earth to establish contact, the arrival of a probe sent from Earth for the same reason. It had been many long years since human hands last pressed against the rock. New fingers left their mark against it now as they traced the edges of the carvings left by one of their own.

"Hello, friends," Rocky said, stepping forward into the warm shadow of Grace's hard work. "Welcome to Erid."