Chapter Text
Quiet is a gentle sound on the Hail Mary.
There’s an unspoken understanding between Rocky and I; it’s one we haven’t touched on since we started the journey to Erid and I don’t think we ever will. The implications of what it all means is different for the both of us.
For Rocky it means he’s going home. He’ll save Erid and all of its inhabitants. He’ll reunite with his mate whom he’s spent an unimaginable amount of time away from. He’ll return to his life; the one he lived before the sun started dying.
For me it means everything and nothing. If I never turned back Rocky would have died in space and Erid would fall into ruin. If I never turned back I would have lived the rest of my days on earth knowing that, out there, is a planet with no Rocky to save them, a whole species that is slowly dying out. If I never turned back I would spend my time surrounded by people, I’d be a hero, I’d probably go back to teaching, and I wouldn’t ache for the touch of another human being.
Turning back means everything for Rocky and slow, painful starvation for me.
He tells me about the taumoeba I can eat, the calories it would provide, and the fact that we have an unlimited, constantly breeding, supply of it. And in return, I don’t tell him about the nutritional value it doesn’t have, the vitamin C it lacks, the inevitable case of scurvy, and the pure dissatisfaction that eating it will have. He deserves to have at least a little hope that I’ll make it to Erid alive.
Rocky's been telling me about all of the possibilities that could come with getting to Erid. He’s been doing a serious amount of thinking about it. In this best case scenario he’s created the Eridian science team would work together to create me, my very own, little ecosystem. They would supply my every need and want: they’d synthesise my food, purify my water, and construct my dream house.
It’s nice to hope every once in a while. Sometimes I let his words wash over my mind and paint a pretty picture. On occasion I let the sound of his optimism lull me into a comfortable dream.
Either, Rocky is the most stubbornly enthusiastic Eridian I’ll ever meet, or, he’s just as scared as me and is leaps and bounds better at hiding it. For his sake, I hope it’s the first one.
I don't let him see me when that picture smudges into something much darker and when that dream turns sour. I don’t let him see me scared and mourning my life that's still so full. At least, I hope the running water pressure is enough to drown out my pounding heart and heaving lungs.
We’re not that far into the trip to Erid. Five months out of 4 years isn’t much in the grand scheme of space and time. A lot has happened and not a lot has been done. There’s been a lot of hypothesising from Rocky, obviously. A load of math and science has been done under his constant badgering and annoying insistence on 'this has to be done now!'. And, an absolute ton of conversations have happened, and most of them have been about nothing and the other half are things I, at one point, would have never considered weird, until I met a 5 legged, rock-ish, echolocating, alien engineer.
But really, the most significant thing that’s happened in these past 5 months has been the unfamiliar feelings that have begun to bubble and tip into my brain. Because, it turns out that giving up your own homecoming for your alien companions instead isn’t as platonic as I had once thought.
As horrifying as the thought is, I’m in love. With Rocky. Who is, quite possibly the only being in this universe I’ve ever called my best friend.
Romance has never come easily to me. Sometimes I wonder if it ever came to me at all or if I’ve been living my life under a false pretense of what romantic love is. I loved my ex-girlfriend, I’m sure of it. The memories of our past relationship may still be hazy but the feelings they surface are real. Except, my problem arises when I compare what I felt for her with what I currently feel for Rocky.
It’s not the same love. What I felt for my ex was soft, quiet, and gentle. She was a soft flutter of the stomach. What I feel for Rocky is a gut wrenching, asphyxiating longing. He’s a punch in the ribs that carries emotions I’ve never never felt this strongly before.
I’m choosing not to acknowledge the fact that he’s an alien right now. I have enough to worry about as it is.
It didn’t hit me all at once. It was more like being choked. It’s gentle at first; the hands around your neck are gentle and forgiving, they leave room for you to breathe, room to plead. Then they get tighter; it starts to hurt, you can feel the creases and calluses of each finger that digs in and makes it harder to get air, speaking becomes difficult. And finally, you’re choking; you can no longer feel anything but the weight of hands around your throat as they constrict your airflow completely.
That’s what falling in love with Rocky felt like.
Tap tap tap.
I hum. I wasn’t asleep, just thinking.The lights on the Hail Mary are bright and it starts to hurt my head after a few too many hours spent in the lab. So I often find myself here, lazing on a chair with my eyes closed as I go over things in my mind instead. I could easily dim the lights, they’re LED so are, therefore, fully customisable, but putting the effort in to do that right now sounds like an internal battle I’m not ready to fight.
Rocky and I have been in the lab all day. It started as a normal day of science, talk, science, talk, but eventually it ended up in us tinkering with the design of the taumoeba breeder tanks and trying out different things. So we just never really left the lab. It's somewhere into what I now call nighttime and I know I should probably hit the hay soon but as I previously said, that doesn't sound like a battle I currently want to fight.
“Grace, question?”
Rocky’s voice cuts through the tranquil quiet we constructed over the past few hours of silent working and it takes physical effort not to groan at the thought of conversing right now.
He has no reason to keep saying ‘question’ after everything he asks. I know his voice like I know my favourite song. I can tell you what every dip in volume means and what every lilt conveys. I can pick up when he’s being sarcastic, when he’s annoyed with me, and when he’s genuinely excited. I know his voice better than I know my own.
“Rocky.” I say.
If I don’t verbally confirm I’m listening to him he simply won’t talk to me; he’s surprisingly petty. Conversation gets difficult when I don’t want to respond to him constantly. He still doesn’t quite understand the concept of the human social battery.
“Rocky has question.”
I sigh.
“Shoot me, pal.”
He makes a confused hum.
”Rocky not want to shoot Grace, Rocky only have question.”
“Have I seriously not used that idiom before? Whatever, it just means ask away.”
“Human language weird.” He chides. “Rocky has a question about Grace friend.”
“Who?”
“Grace friend in bedroom.”
Oh. Right.
You see, when you’ve been the only waking human on a spaceship for months at a time you begin to lose track of things. And I, particularly, keep forgetting I’m not the only living person on this mission.
In the bedroom, still calmly comatosed, is Santiago Estrella. I don’t remember much about him. What I do remember about him is that he’s a fairly renowned aerospace engineer from Spain who was recruited onto the Hail Mary mission after the explosion. A memory that particularly sticks with me, however, is Stratt telling me how easily he agreed to fill what was once Ilyukhina’s role. She was absolutely using that in an attempt to guilt trip me.
I came into contact with Santiago a couple of times and, on occasion, even had some fleeting conversations with him. He was the head engineer of construction so he was pretty hard to miss — he was in every important meeting, always reporting something to Stratt, and raising, quite possibly, the most questions I’ve ever seen anybody ask. He was determined to make this spacecraft as efficient as he could in what short time we had.
The times we did talk didn’t reveal much about his personality. I mostly remember a lot of questions about astrophage, the distracting way he'd tap on his watch when focused, and the strong scent of metal. I don’t remember anything negative about him which I'm hoping speaks for his personality.
I open my eyes. The lights are harsh but I can deal with it.
Rocky remembers and mentions Santiago’s existence a lot more than I do. Apparently, living on a spaceship has really given me the object permanence of a baby.
”Does Grace friend usually move in sleep, question?” Rocky says after a far too stretched out silence. We really need to find an Eridian word for Santiago’s name, Rocky can't keep calling him Grace friend. “Rocky been watching closely. Grace friend been moving in sleep. Is weird, yes?”
My mind blanks for a few moments before what Rocky said settles in and I suddenly startle up in my seat.
“Moving? What do you mean moving?”
The speed at which I shot up obviously alarms him as I see him pick his carapace up from the floor. It’s kind of cute… No, nope, not right now, I shake the thought away. He steps closer to the xenonite barrier.
”Fingers and face muscles move. Only small movement but does not seem normal.”
A wave of feelings crashes aggressively into me. Life, rocky is talking about a real, honest to god, sign of human life. I can’t get my hopes up too high, it could be nothing. It could just be a lighting up of the nerves, it happens to coma patients sometimes. But Rocky has noticed it. It’s happened enough times to be of interest.
”I- when?” I ask, stumbling over my hundreds of thoughts.
”Started today. Rocky noticed when Grace was asleep. Has continued.” He taps lightly on the xenonite. “Rocky did research on human thinking machine. It says movement in sleep can be sign of waking up.”
“Yeah it — it can be.”
I sit forward. This could mean a lot. It could mean that Santiago is coming out of his coma. I, hopefully, gain another friend in the lonely vast expanse of space. However, that would mean that my food source will half and taumoeba consumption will double. We’ll both starve but — at least there’d be another person there with me. It could also, obviously, mean nothing. Santiago’s nerves might just be reacting to an external stimulus, there’s still plenty of time for him to die or never wake up.
I drag a hand down my face and groan.
”Grace okay, question?”
“Yeah, I’m alright buddy.”
“Is good news! Grace and Rocky have new friend!”
I chuckle. Endless optimism. The happiness in his voice pushes away the nauseous feeling that had begun pooling in my stomach. It makes me feel lighter in a terrifying way.
“I hope so, buddy.”
And I do. I want Santiago to wake up. I want us to all get along. I want to have someone else to back me up about dumb earth customs. Someone who'll laugh at my stupid jokes. Someone I can touch.
There's an ache that comes with being unable to touch Rocky. I can ‘hug’ him through the xenonite ball, sure, but it's not really a hug, is it? If he presses close enough sometimes I can feel warmth. But it's not his warmth, it's his atmosphere. I want to be able to feel his individual fingers, to know what laying my hand on his carapace would feel like, and really, truly, hug him. But it's not possible, it never will be and I'll live with that fact for however long I'm alive.
I sit with my thoughts for a little while longer but they're broken up by a yawn; the inevitable human need for sleep. I stand up and stretch. Rocky doesn't need me to tell him when I'm going to bed anymore, he just stands up with me and puts away whatever he was tinkering with. He's gathered enough data from the time it takes me to have my last meal of the day to when I go to the dormitory that he can predict my next movements.
I go through the motions. Getting changed, brushing my teeth, washing my face. But the whole time I'm distracted. Because there, in the far left bed of the room, is a man who may still have hope for life. I keep watching him, out of the corner of my eyes, in the reflection of the mirror, looking over my shoulder. He's motionless and looking at him doesn't do anything but give me a sinking sense of dread and sadness.
I don't tend to look Santiago's way, the mere sight of his bed makes me feel sickeningly, vicerally, uncomfortable. My perception of his face isn't from what I can readily see but what I can recall from my memories because I haven’t been able to look at his face. I can’t see his face for longer than a minute before the uncannyness of it all starts settling in and I have to tear myself away.
But tonight I find myself wanting to look for the other man. My eyes naturally drift his way searching for any form of movement, any sign of life. Because I desperately want him to be alive.
My efforts in watching turn up fruitless. I haven’t caught a singular twitch or sign of anything other than a man in a deep coma.
I lay down in my bed. I'm facing away from Santiago and towards Rocky's xenonite chamber where he's already settled down to watch me. Any weird discomfort I used to feel about him watching has been gone for a long time. It's comforting now, having someone watch. Correction — having him watch.
In fact, I've gotten so used to having him here that on the first few nights apart from him I struggled to sleep. I tossed and turned, grunted and groaned, and eventually walked around until I physically tired myself out. But now it's easy again and it doesn't take me longer than 10 minutes before I start falling asleep.
I drift for a while as usual. I'm in that weird state between consciousness and sleep where everything is fuzzy and the sheets feel oh-so soft. My thoughts are distant and far and few between and the only sounds I can hear are those of rocky tap, tap, tapping gently on the keys of his laptop.
“Heughhh…”
My eyes shoot open. Rocky is pressed against the barrier in a matter of seconds.
I didn’t make that noise and neither did he.
“Eye movement detected.”