Chapter Text
Rocky is working on a fiddly bit of machinery in a handheld control for a transport vehicle when Simon’s breathing changes.
“Grace,” Rocky says, his gloved claws moving swiftly as he repairs some wiring. “Eye movement detected.”
A dish clatters in the next room and Grace bursts through the doorway, safety goggles hanging around his neck and glasses askew on his face. “He’s awake?”
“He’s about to be,” Rocky confirms, checking in on Adrian. They tap their exosuited limb against his from where they’re curled around him, working on two different texture tablets. He needs to repair their highest joints – they’re heading into a molt soon, and their gear will need to be resized.
Grace vanishes from the doorway, and Rocky listens to him hurry across the lab and come back into the room carrying the singular human chair to place it next to Simon’s bed. Rocky will have to look into fabricating more furniture now that they have another human. They’d never imagined Grace might need to entertain any of his kind, let alone that they’d have another person to live here.
“How long until he’s awake?” Grace asks, hands clasped between his knees as he spins the chair back and forth. Rocky observes him indulgently. This boundless energy is so much more welcome than the lethargy he’d been fading into for months previously, even if it does exhaust Grace’s doctors.
Rocky reminded them that none of them spent years alone with Grace on a tiny spaceship, and they regarded him with a new level of respect. He should probably be offended on Grace’s behalf, but he understands where they’re coming from.
“He is awake now,” Rocky says. “Hello, Simon.”
“Hey,” Simon rasps, his eyes still closed. Then he frowns and opens them, blinking up at the ceiling. “Wait...can you still understand me?”
“Of course,” Rocky reassures him. “You are speaking Grace’s language. Clearly you understand us, as well.”
“Another gift,” Simon mutters, squeezing his eyes closed. “What the fuck was it thinking...?”
Grace’s toe taps on the floor and Rocky resists the urge to chastise him for acting like an unruly pebble.
“Simon, say hello to Grace before he explodes.”
Simon opens his eyes again and twists his head around, stopping as soon as he makes apparent eye contact with Grace and inhaling sharply. “Hi,” he says breathlessly. “You look...a lot better.”
Grace leans forward, propping his elbows on the mattress next to Simon. “So do you,” he grins. “You clean up nice. I can actually see what you look like under all that blood.”
“Is it bad?” Simon asks, bringing his right hand up to paw weakly at his face. Grace scrambles for it and tugs it back down to the mattress, squeezing Simon’s palm between both of his.
“What? No! Why would it be bad? You look great – I mean, fine. You look fine. Very...totally fine.”
Simon seems distracted by Grace’s hands – which is lucky for Grace. Both Rocky and Adrian have stopped working on their respective projects in favor of observing Grace absolutely bomb the first real conversation he’s had with another human in years.
“How do you feel?” Simon rasps, his thumb rubbing along the edge of Grace’s palm. He doesn’t seem to be doing it on purpose. Rocky gets the feeling that, if he had two hands, both of them would be touching Grace right now.
“So good,” Grace mumbles, then blinks. “What?”
They verbally dance around each other for a few more stilted moments, then Rocky takes pity on Grace and stomps one limb in an attempt at a reminder.
“Oh! Right. Questions.” Grace scratches a hand through his hair. “How, um...Rocky said you told him you were ‘put back the way you were when it took you.’ Can you elaborate on that?”
Simon sighs and digs his head deeper into the pillow. “It’s something like a god,” he says. “I saw something I wasn’t supposed to, something that shouldn’t exist, and it changed me. And then later, I was dying and it changed me again. Still died, though.” He shrugs.
“Rocky says you...threw up a tree?”
“Is Rocky going to ask any of these questions?” Simon asks, turning his head to glance at the two Eridians in the corner of the room.
Rocky waves an arm at him. “Grace needs to practice conversing in his language. He has not needed to for a long time, and he is very bad at it.”
“Rocky!” Grace sputters, and Simon chuckles weakly.
“Fair enough,” he rasps, then licks his lips. “Is there water? And can I sit up?”
Grace scrambles to get a canister while directing Armando to raise the bed. Simon takes a swig of water, then drains the whole thing and looks at the empty container with apparent confusion.
“Guess I haven’t had anything to drink in...a while.”
“And you threw up a tree,” Grace reminds him.
“I threw up my core,” Simon says. “I was the tree.”
“Okay,” Grace says slowly, nodding and then shaking his head. “Nope. You lost me.”
“I told you it changed me.”
“Into a tree?”
“What would you pick?”
“Not a tree!”
“The tree-like structure in the depths of the biodome sea is gone,” Adrian cuts in smoothly.
“Yeah, of course, it’s on the bluff now,” Simon says, then clamps his mouth shut and fidgets shiftily, his brow furrowing. Maybe this is another thing he’s not supposed to know anymore.
Adrian just hums in response and keys in some data to one of their tablets, probably giving the go-ahead to start harvesting and analyzing some of the various fruits and nuts hanging from the tree’s branches. Rocky shivers in delight at how nonplussed Grace’s expression is. This is better than any Earth television show.
“So...if you were a tree,” Grace starts, “and also dead...how did you end up here?”
“Great fuckin’ question.” Simon fidgets with the empty water container in his hand. “No idea. Time wasn’t – I don’t think I was really aware. But then it pushed me and told me to follow the thread, and that led me here, somehow.”
“It told you? You could talk to it?”
“Kind of?” Simon’s mouth twists. “Not really. Impressions, more like, but it’s...I think I had different senses when I was like that. I can’t really describe it.”
“Very Mountains of Madness,” Grace says, nodding sagely.
Simon frowns at him. “Mountains of what?”
“Oh – uh, never mind. That’s probably not a good book to start you off with.”
“Okay...?” Simon’s tone is wary.
“All right, this is going to sound weird, but...” Grace scrubs his palms on his legs. “I’m just gonna ask. I have to ask. Uh...are you a god?”
Simon tips his head back against the pillow propped behind him and raises his hand, holding it flat and wiggling it side to side in a so-so gesture that Rocky learned from Grace. “Maybe I was,” he says, eyes fixed on the ceiling. “A fragment of a god, at least. But I don’t think I am anymore.”
“Cool,” Grace says, biting his lip. “Sure! That’s...cool.”
Simon drops his head and looks at Grace. “Is that gonna be a problem?”
“What? No! Of course not!” Grace waves his hands. “Not at all! I’m just – I was just curious.”
“If it helps...” Simon’s lips quirk. “I don't think I was one of your gods.”
“My – sorry, my gods?”
“The thing that changed me – the god, whatever – was from outside my universe. And from what Rocky told me about your world...I think I might be from outside yours.”
Rocky pays very close attention to Grace as his heart rate picks up and he takes a deliberate deep breath. He's not sure why Grace seems so stunned by this suggestion – it would make much more sense than some of the alternatives. There is plenty of media in the Hail Mary's archives about parallel universes. Why would they talk so much about it if they didn't think it was, on some level, true?
It might be more human senselessness, though. They are very good at that.
“I...I'm definitely not the right kind of scientist for this kind of thing,” Grace says slowly. “But if you think that's correct, I'm inclined to believe you. You're the one who lived it, after all.”
“Not really,” Simon smiles wryly. “I was dead at the time.”
Grace chuckles and shakes his head. “Okay, man.”
Rocky taps gently at the control unit in his claws, thinking. Simon had said he'd been sent by his people to try to save the stars, but it went badly, and he'd died. So maybe, in his universe, the astrophage won. If that's true...if that's the case, maybe this universe was hatched from that one, after the last stellar energies died out and it cooled until its atoms lost the ability to stay apart. Gravity would have collapsed the entire universe back into a space no larger than the smallest nuts on the tree, and the energy generated from that collision could kickstart a new explosion.
But that would make Simon older than the universe. Rocky observes him as he continues to speak quietly to Grace, leaning forward a little on the bed and gesturing with his hand. The skin on his left side sounds better – it's smoother and more even, though there's still something wrong with his cheek. Surely, if he were older than the universe, even with only partial access to a god's energy, he would have been able to fix that?
He's not the right kind of scientist for this, either. He's not sure why he's thinking so deeply about it. They can ask more questions later. Right now, Simon's organs are starting to make sounds that are too similar to how Grace's were before he was fixed.
Grace can’t hear that, though, and he presses on. “So...why me? It seems like you gave up something pretty powerful, in a pretty unpleasant way, and I’m just...me.”
Simon says nothing for a moment, and from the tiny movements of muscles around his eyes, Rocky thinks his gaze is flicking across Grace’s face.
“It wasn’t really a choice,” he says slowly, “even though I think I would have chosen the same. I was called here for you, sent here for you. No idea why, but...I think it got tired of me.”
“The...the god?”
Simon nods. “Yeah. It ripped me out of my universe, out of my body, and I don’t know if it even meant to. I think we got tangled up in each other a bit too much by accident, but then it was stuck with me, like a rock in its shoe. It’s probably been looking for an excuse for the last few thousand years to get rid of me.”
Rocky feels his joints stiffen. Was his theory right, then? Simon doesn’t seem to notice that he said anything strange, and he continues on before Grace can do more than open his mouth.
“I don’t think it could kill me – I was already dead. And...” he trails off, blinking vacantly. “It was too dark.” He shakes his head. “Not sure what that means, but it’s...it factors in, somehow.”
“Sounds more like you were a pearl,” Grace says after a moment, and Rocky lets his vents clatter in an exasperated sigh.
“A what?”
“A pearl? It’s – it’s something that forms when grit gets into an oyster, and the oyster builds up layers around it until it turns into something smooth and shiny.”
“...You think I’m smooth and shiny?” Simon sounds choked.
Grace flails his hands again, his glasses nearly falling off his face as he shakes his head wildly. “No, no, no, that’s not – that’s not what I meant. I meant like the grit in the oyster –”
“And what the fuck’s an oyster?”
“It’s a mollusk. A type of shellfish – wait, you don’t know?” Grace drops his hands to his lap and leans forward. “I thought you knew everything.”
“That was before.” Simon huffs gently, but Rocky can hear the joints in his fingers creaking where his grip tightens on the sheets covering his lap. “Now, I’m...I’m not supposed to know.”
“But you could find out?”
“Maybe. But I don’t want to check. I can’t.”
Grace’s brow furrows. “Why?”
“Because you have eyes,” Simon sighs. “It isn’t safe. It wasn’t safe before, but now it’s...it’s really not safe.”
This must be something to do with the light the human-shaped thing kept referencing. Rocky flips the control over in his claws and jabs at a loose gasket as he listens to Grace try to figure out how to respond to that. Simon’s organs make another writhing, coiling sound, and Rocky has no idea how Grace isn’t hearing it. It’s so loud.
“So, uh.” Simon tugs at his shirt – one of Grace’s t-shirts, stretched taut across his chest. His own shirt was too battered and torn to be allowed back into the medical facility, but Grace asked Rocky for a box and has his clothing stored in the biodome. “Did you ever get the food thing figured out?”
“Oh! Yes, are you hungry?” Grace gets to his feet and goes over to a crate on the counter, crouching to dig through the experimental samples.
“I don’t actually remember the last time I ate food,” Simon says vaguely, and Grace casts a wild look at Rocky, who shrugs at him. How is he supposed to know how to respond to that? Simon’s a human now, which means he gets to be Grace’s responsibility.
“That sucks,” Grace says finally, then advances on Simon with three packets held out like a shield in front of him. “What flavor of nutritional paste do you want? We’ve got bitter, sour, and cardboard.” He drops them on the bed next to Simon’s hip and flops down in the chair. “We’re working on them.”
“Good thing the team made a breakthrough with sucrose, then,” Adrian says mildly, and Rocky smacks them, their exosuits both ringing from the impact.
“What,” Grace says.
Simon smirks, thumbing open a packet of nutritional paste at random. “What? I got it.”
“Oh, not fair, you don’t get to have secret jokes from when I was unconscious!”
“Eat your paste, Grace,” Rocky says, tightening a screw.
The humans are quiet for a few minutes until Simon wrings the last bit of goop out of his packet and drops it on the bed. “That was really bad,” he says.
Grace groans and buries his head in his hands. “I know,” he moans. “They’re so bad!”
“We’re working on it,” Adrian says, and Grace and Simon both immediately reassure them that the paste is fine, actually, it barely needs improvement, and they’re sure everyone, especially Adrian, is doing their best. Also they’re drinking a lot of water now purely for the purpose of hydration, and not at all in an attempt to wash the taste out of their mouths.
Rocky is never going to leave this room. He hasn’t been this entertained in months.
And then, of course, Grace’s next comment completely changes his mind.
“So,” Grace says, leaning over Simon with his elbows on the mattress and his hands clasped under his chin. “I hear you kissed me.”
Simon swallows with a click, then nods jerkily. “I...did do that, yeah. I, uh – I’m sorry. It was part of the...” he gestures vaguely. “Everything.”
Grace captures his hand again in one of his and smiles at Simon. “I’m not mad,” he says. “Especially since it sounds like it saved my life. Thanks for that, by the way.”
“Thank Rocky,” Simon says.
“I already did. Now I’m thanking you.” Grace takes a breath and Rocky holds very still. Is he really going for this already? Rocky had bet Adrian it would take Grace at least a month to work himself up to it. “And I guess I’m asking, or offering – if you wanted to try again, with both of us actually awake this time.”
Simon blinks at him for a moment. Rocky is getting ready to rise when Adrian’s claw scratches very faintly at the floor between them. Wait, they say. And then Rocky remembers that Adrian has been coaching Grace while Rocky kept vigil over Simon. “You’re just so much better at watching recovering humans,” they had said, then taken Grace off for walk after walk through the biodome, ostensibly to get his body used to being upright and moving again after being bedbound for so long.
The dirty sneak, Rocky realizes with wonder. Adrian cheated on their bet. They stacked the deck in their favor by talking Grace into asking Simon to kiss him now, instead of whenever he would have naturally come around to it. Rocky thought he’d had an advantage through familiarity with the subject, but Adrian was two steps ahead of him, as usual.
He does not deserve a love like this.
With all his rumination he’s missed the actual reply, but Simon is nodding and reaching for Grace, then pausing when Grace takes his sole remaining hand back, clasping it in his palm as he reaches for Simon’s face.
“Hey,” Simon says. “Now I’m the one in treatment, and you’re by the bedside.” He wiggles their hands together. “Twinsies.”
Grace laughs so hard he cries, and in the middle of all that, he leans over and presses his lips to Simon’s, both of them grinning into each other’s squishy mouths, and okay, yep, Rocky’s done.
He and Adrian shuffle out of the room, but the humans are oblivious. They pause in the lab so Adrian can compile the data from their tablets with one of the main biodome infohubs, and Rocky tilts his carapace to listen. Simon and Grace are laughing again, but that’s no guarantee it’ll be safe to be near the two of them any time soon.
“I did not stop watching him,” Adrian murmurs quietly, so the humans don’t hear. “Grace. I never – but from one moment to the next, he had changed from sick to well. There was no in-between. He simply...was.”
“What are you saying?” Rocky knows his mate, so knows that Adrian is working their way toward something.
“It was like Simon, before,” Adrian says slowly. “He would be gone, and then he would be there. It was like that.”
Rocky contemplates that for a moment. “Do you think Grace is like Simon now? Like he was before?”
Adrian makes a negative noise. “But Simon gave something of himself, to change Grace. To fix him. Maybe it stuck.”
“Maybe,” Rocky says, raising his limb to draw Adrian’s attention to the thin thread that is still wrapped around his arm, the end drifting off to some unknowable distance. Only, when he really concentrates, he can feel that the other end is still connected to Simon – it just passes through somewhere else first. “Or maybe Simon didn’t give everything away.”
Adrian buzzes with interest, their vents rattling. They stomp a claw in excitement. “Is he not entirely human, then? Do you think that will change?”
“I don’t know,” Rocky says, and he really doesn’t. He is learning more and more each day that he doesn’t know anything. Simon’s existence alone challenges many long-held assumptions by both Eridians and humans, from the sound of things, let alone their evidence of what he could do. “But Adrian – I think we’re going to have a longer time than we thought to figure it out.”
They listen together to the two strong bodies conversing in the next room, both healthier than they have any right to be after going through their respective traumas. And they barely even know the full extent of Simon’s trauma – knowing he died was enough, plus the arm; but somehow, Rocky is sure there’s more. So why do they sound like their bodies are a decade or more younger than they should be underneath their skin?
“I think you may be right,” Adrian says finally, and laughs in bright relief. “What a privilege!”
“What a joy,” Rocky replies, tapping his encased limb against Adrian’s to hear the musical chime before the two of them make their way toward the airlock back to Erid, ready to shed their exosuits and finally bask together in the world they worked so hard to save.