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To Rocky, Humans as a species were... interesting.
Not that he had met with any interstellar species before. Even though the universe was vast and unending, the life it had was… What was the word for it?
Scarce.
Their galaxy was filled with solar systems, rogue planets, solitary stars, and so much more. It wasn’t a thing that Eridians were concerned about. They weren’t like humans who gazed upon stars and dreamed of reaching them. Their lack of sight had fundamentally altered their view of the universe. Eridians did not hold the awe humans held for celestial bodies.
What had Grace called it? Having a moment.
But nevertheless, Rocky knew that space was home to a myriad of constellations and planetary systems. Given the abundance of these conditions, life ought to have been found everywhere, but the reality was far from that.
It was a fickle thing, life.
Many planets didn't support it, whether it was because of too thin atmosphere or an unstable core; the truth remained.
And the stars literally being eaten alive was another factor.
And those who did support it somehow, didn't hold anything too similar with each other. The greatest example Rocky could think of was the obvious differences between his and Grace's. And it wasn’t like Rocky had encountered any other alien species before, just leaky space blob Grace; and if they had to count it, the taumoeba collected from Adrian’s atmosphere.
And there were worlds that looked like they should not be able to support life, yet did so regardless. Like the equations did not matter at all.
Grace had told him about the insects called Apis mellifera; or rather, bees. How, despite the blaring odds against them, they fly anyways. Because they do not care what mathematics says about their abilities. The bees just fly because they can.
Life doesn't need to have a reason.
The reason is life.
Life is the reason they exist, the reason they could save their planets, and save each other.
Life is the reason Grace turned back to save Rocky.
Life is a persistent, unpredictable thing.
Rocky sometimes thought about what might have happened if there were no outliers to the star infection. Sometimes he thinks about it in his sleep without meaning to. Grace had given the word nightmares; they still make him feel restless.
Humans were... also weird.
That is what Rocky examined the first time he saw Grace out of his exo-suit.
Still, Grace was covering parts of his body, but this time it didn't offer any kind of shielding from outside elements of any kind. How can a thin material made out of processed plant matter can be of any use?
And don't even get Rocky started on plants.
Another thing Rocky observed about humans was that they were soft.
Grace wasn't joking when he said Rocky was a literal rock, no.
Though biology was like this. It shaped the life around the environment it inhabited. Erid was hot, boiling, high-pressured, and dark; sharp and solid. It made sense Rocky's species adapted the way they had. One with the environment.
Humans did not hold a hardened carapace to protect them; all they had was a thin layer of tissue that did little to nothing. And it was even semipermeable.
The hard structures that molded their bodies were located deep within their bodies, and the entirety of them was encased in numerous circulatory systems, each serving a different function. A pile of utterly superfluous and unnecessarily complex systems.
Moreover, none of them were efficient; there was constantly a discrepancy in exertion.
And don't even get Rocky started on how many holes the human body has. It was a matter even worse than plants.
What doesn't make sense is how fragile humans are to their environment.
Humans were fragile.
They had depths of water so pressurized that nothing should continue living. They had heights where the atmosphere grew thin enough to choke. They have hot and cold spots to the extremes that Rocky thinks their star, Sol, is faulty to begin with.
But the biosphere is everywhere. There is life in ocean depths, in volcanic erosion sites, and in freezing temperatures; life on earth persists.
Life on Earth was persistent.
Humans were also persistent.
Rocky had seen Grace after the Adrian fishing incident.
Not immediately, because he had his own recovery to do. But once Rocky had awakened, he sensed the extra layers of plant-fiber wrappings around Grace and, beneath them, damaged tissue hotter than Grace's normal body temperature, pulsing unevenly and sealed beneath careful coverings.
It spread across his arms. Along his back.
Grace moved differently for some time afterward, a lot restricted for a while. He couldn’t freely manipulate his body like before.
Even asleep, Rocky sensed tension within him. Like the injuries remained present inside Grace's awareness even when consciousness did not.
Despite the severe burns he had sustained from Rocky’s scorching atmosphere, Grace had woken up before Rocky and had managed to carry out his routine actions to a certain extent. It was hard to comprehend: how could he still be functional despite such extensive damage?
Grace had reassured him, saying he would be fine, that he would heal.
Rocky did not tell him no Eridian would have survived a catastrophic injury like this.
Time passed.
Both of them worked slowly while recovering. They had all the time in the universe now. There was little purpose in rushing toward survival when survival had already been won.
It took a while before Grace removed the wrappings.
But the difference upon his exterior did not disappear.
If anything, the injuries had solidified.
Did Grace lie? The question disturbed Rocky enough that he avoided asking it.
He did not wish to cause further distress. Because whenever Rocky mentioned the injuries, Grace dismissed him with an increased pulse and strained vocal patterns.
Grace said Grace would heal, in time. It might take long, but he will.
For Rocky, Grace had not healed at all.
“Is Grace still hurt. Question?”
They had long since reached the time of night Mary had designated for them to maintain their daily routines. Grace knew he needed to sleep, but the fact that night and day were merely arbitrary distinctions made the task difficult.
He sat hunched over a console he had long stopped reading, exhaustion pulling at the corners of his vision while his thoughts drifted uselessly between equations and memory.
The question startled him from both. He yawned as he answered, “No, no Rocky. I'm all good. Why?”
Rocky had been acting a little differently as of late. More withdrawn, quiet, and attentive. He would go long periods of time without saying anything, only tapping his xenonite walls in his direction multiple times a day. soft percussion of his fingers against the walls, small vibrations Grace had long ago learned to recognize as attention. Or worry.
Sometimes, while working, Grace would feel those taps echo faintly through the hull and realize Rocky had checked on him three times within the same hour.
There was something wrong, and Grace didn’t know what. It unsettled him.
So, when Rocky initiated conversation, Grace welcomed it.
Rocky was doing the same tapping motion again. "Exterior different. Statement."
Grace blinked.
He then looked down toward his own arm.
The bandages had become fewer lately. Armando had finally deemed the worst of the burns stable enough to remain uncovered, freeing Grace from what he privately referred to as his mummy phase. Most of his forearm showed now beneath rolled fabric, pale scar tissue threading along the skin in uneven paths.
“Yeah…” a small sound, “…that happens. We call them scars.”
Rocky moved near the xenonite wall. Out of instinct, Grace extended his arm towards him.
The damaged place no longer leaked.
Its temperature matched the rest of Grace's body now, mostly. But the tissue remained altered beneath Rocky's senses: uneven and fibrous, changed permanently from what it once had been.
Grace ran his other hand through the damaged skin, assessing it. It was a different feeling for sure; the epidermis and the dermis charred, leaving the area leathery and stiff.
A permanent rearrangement of what had once existed there.
He knew, everything considered, that he got lucky. That amount of exposure to heat could have ended him. He could’ve ended with severe hypovolemic shock and died of heatstroke and organ failure.
The human body, for all its persistence, possessed frustratingly clear limits.
But there was no point of delving into what could have been, especially in the predicament they were in. All Grace tried to do was not to think too much about it anymore; that’s all he could do anyways. And he got to save Rocky, so he wouldn’t have it another way.
After a long silence, the translator’s robotic speech cut in. “Hurt, question?”
“Not like before,” Grace explained. “Sometimes it does.”
“Hurts now. Question? Bad bad bad.” Rocky's plates shifted uneasily.
There it was, not curiosity of how human bodies are restored. It was fear. Grace tried to reassure his friend. “I am okay, Rocky; injuries on humans just leave marks.”
The scar curved along the outside of Grace's forearm, pale and uneven beneath artificial light, and it spread even further on his back. Rocky had learned enough human anatomy by now to understand the tissue had rebuilt and stitched itself incorrectly. Healed but changed, never to be the same again.
Yes, Grace said he was healed. But to Rocky’s senses, his skin was not right. And the distinction felt significant to Rocky.
The evidence of Rocky hurting Grace remained.
"No. Statement.”
Grace frowned, taken aback, and repeated. “No?”
“Rocky hurt Grace. Bad bad bad.”
Something inside Grace’s chest tightened. This wasn’t just concern for his well-being; Rocky had been carrying this guilt? Burden?
“Honestly…” Grace takes a second to formulate what the scars mean to him. “…if I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.” He paused, and the clicking ceased.
Grace looked toward the xenonite wall. The thick material that separated them, and thought about the moment where there was none. It was the first and only time Grace ever could hold his friend.
“It’s a reminder that I got to save you,” he continued quietly.
Grace looked at the distinct Eridian handprint on his forearm. “The same way you did for me.”
The translator remained silent long enough that Grace almost wondered if it had failed.
"No. Not same not same.” He clicks his fingers together, a sign of distress.
And God. Grace’s chest ached.
It is rather hard to get a read on Eridian body expressions. No face to interpret. No eyes. No expressions built from muscles humans instinctively understood.
But evidently, grief translated interspecies. Rocky sounded heartbroken.
And Grace did not know how to fix it.
Grace remembers asking about the carvings Rocky carried on his body.
It was just a question to pass time; he had always been curious. He was a scientist, after all. How could he pass up an opportunity to learn more about an alien species’ culture?
They were in the ‘don’t go insane room,' as Grace cleverly named it, just sitting down and watching early morning from a seashore, the surface of water covered in fog, with soft waves crashing onto the coastline. If Grace imagined hard enough, he could feel the breeze and the cold of the leftover night leaving goosebumps along his skin.
It was also a good thing that Rocky invented that gun-looking device to sense the screens; Grace was grateful that he got to share this with his friend.
Rocky had explained then, pointing out each and every line embedded on his surface.
The most prominent one, being a different color than the rest of him, was the mate mark. Adrian had an identical one on them also, just in the same earth color Rocky had.
Grace’s gaze followed each mark Rocky pointed to. The family crest he had was another one showing how high he was in the rankings as an engineer. The oldest one he had on his inner arm was used for saying farewell. The newest one, for the Blip-A mission, the Petrova line and Tau Ceti are intertwined in clear, precise lines.
Each one had a purpose, a meaning behind it that held significance to his species, and bonds Rocky had on Erid. Each one is purposeful, carefully engraved delicately on the surface of his carapace; intentional.
Grace thought that, for a species that had perfect memory, they would hold a great record of things with them all the time.
For a moment Grace had felt a pit in his stomach that he couldn’t quite recognize. He had no tattoos, no. He had always been a bit scared of needles to undergo such a thing. But he did have some scars on his body, faint ones, sure, but they were still there. The only thing that bothered him was that he had no idea where any of them had come from. They weren’t purposeful and held no meaning besides the faint memory of hurt and failure.
For some reason, he suddenly felt a stinging pain in the back of his neck. And the phantom scent of dried grass reached his nose.
Next sleep cycles came and went without Rocky mentioning the conversation again. Grace tried to tell himself not to read too much into it.
Overthinking things, unfortunately, was a recurring problem while being stuck on a suicide mission eleven light years away from Earth; it was especially a problem when your only consistent companion was a five-legged alien engineer who was separated from him by incompatible atmospheric requirements and thick xenonite walls.
Grace, for his part, tried not to notice that Rocky no longer lingered during work sessions. That the translator remained quiet for longer stretches than usual.
That the familiar rhythm of conversation, the effortless trading of theories and questions and impossible engineering problems, had become strangely sparse.
He told himself Rocky was busy.
There was always more work to do on Mary. Maintaining a ship that was never designed to operate for this long required a ton of work. Still, absence had weight.
Rocky did not come to watch him sleep the first night.
By the second sleep cycle, Grace found himself listening for Rocky.
Which was ridiculous.
The Hail Mary was not silent. It had never been silent. Life support hummed endlessly through the walls. Pumps cycled. Systems breathed in their own mechanical language.
The absence of Rocky had made Grace think he fucked this up beyond repair, without even knowing how to fix it. He never realized how attached he had gotten until now.
Grace listened for the musical clicks of work, the low vibrations that carried through the metal plates of the ship like distant thunder. He knew them well enough to notice when they disappeared.
Or rather, disappear as well as they can be. The ship had become rather cramped now that there were two separate enclosures within it. But they made do with what they got.
Though Rocky was still there, Grace knew this.
Even though he could hear the occasional scrambling of legs against the xenonite, half-awake beneath dimmed lights, he would hear gentle tapping notion in his lying direction; it still gnawed at his chest.
Tap tap tap. Against the xenonite wall beside his sleeping quarters. Not loud enough to wake him fully. Rocky checking in.
Embarrassingly, the realization that maybe he hadn’t fucked this up beyond repair comforted him more than it should.
Because despite everything, despite the growing silence, despite the strange withdrawal, Rocky still came. Still watched over him in whatever quiet Eridian way existed between observation and affection.
Grace tried not to overthink it, tried not to think that what if Rocky regretted things now. Not the whole saving stars mission or being selected to board Blip-A to go to Tau Ceti.
His hand instinctively went to Eridian's hand-shaped scar. But maybe the fishing on Adrian to collect samples, or sending that first tube to Hail Mary.
Maybe Rocky regretted learning about humans, and his fragile biology.
Maybe the inefficient softness of a species that broke so easily and healed so poorly.
Grace thought that, maybe, his friend was mourning something he had no way of fixing. Like the radiation poisoning killing all his other crew in Blip-A.
Rocky was an engineer, a brilliant one at that. He was a fixer at heart, or whatever Eridians had that was equivalent to a heart. But there were things no one could fix, like the taumoeba evolving to eat xenonite, like scars Grace carried.
It was pathetic to miss Rocky by the third night cycle. Admitting it? Another embarrassing moment for a grown man who apparently needed to be watched so he could get his beauty sleep.
Grace missed arguing over science. Missed Rocky interrupting his work with abrupt questions. Missed hearing his name through the translator's mechanical cadence.
He missed not being alone.
Loneliness in the vast emptiness of space was a dangerous thing; he had learned it the hard way.
So, Grace buried himself in work. Checked on the taumoeba breeders again and again. Adjusted figures that did not need adjusting, because Rocky was the one who did the calculations. Pretended not to keep glancing toward the xenonite chambers.
And pretended not to sleep as poorly as he did.
It wasn’t the distant soreness beneath healed tissue or the pulling of skin when he sometimes moved wrong in his sleep. He had learned to coexist with discomfort.
It was the silence, the absence of the sounds of something he had grown fond of. And knowing he ruined yet another relationship he had. Way to go, Grace.
Tap tap tap.
Grace laid there, still, in the dimmed artificial lights. A shaky breath escaped him; he closed his eyes. Not all lost cause, then.
The morning cycle came gradually. Grace sat at the table with coffee cooling untouched beside him, pretending to analyze data he had already looked over twice.
The sound reached him first. The familiar vibration of rolling beneath his feet.
Grace turned his head towards the sound.
Rocky emerged inside his xenonite sphere with the same impossible steadiness he carried into everything, moving toward the partition with deliberate purpose.
Relief hit Grace so quickly it irritated him.
“Hey,” he said, unable to keep the warmth from his voice. “Look who decided to stop ghosting me.”
Rocky rolled closer. “Hello Grace. Sorry you wait, required long time.”
Frowning, Grace asked, "What required a long time, bud?”
In turn, Rocky rotated slightly. “Watch. Statement," the motion exposing one of his forelimbs.
Grace stopped completely with the mug halfway up. At first, he did not understand what he was seeing. The Petrova crest remained embedded where it always had, a dark line integrated into Rocky's mineral body, elegant and unmistakable.
But above it, there was something new, fresh. The exterior around it remained rough at the edges, recently carved out. A series of deliberate grooves cut into the arm.
Grace stared; that’s all he could do. His brain is lagging behind, unable to formulate coherent words.
Because, no way.
The translator’s digital voice activated; sounding impossibly pleased with himself, Rocky said, “Rocky has Grace mark now.”
Everything felt quieter; the constant hum of Hail Mary had felt distant. Grace had a hard time setting his coffee down before kneeling on the ground.
All his attention fixated to a single thing, on the arm Rocky held towards him through the xenonite. Now that he was closer now, there was no way of mistaking it. Letters, not in Eridian; oh no. But a very familiar, and very human English alphabet.
Carved directly into Rocky's arm.
G R A C E
Engraved on his friend’s arm, just above Petrova's line.
His throat felt tight, dizzying. His eyes burned, vision blurring.
Three sleep cycles where Grace had convinced himself Rocky was upset with him. Long nights where he had wondered, unable to sleep, if Rocky could no longer look at him without seeing damaged skin and grieve.
The distance and the lack of presence hold an entirely new meaning now; Rocky had not been avoiding him. He had been doing… this. Grace rubbed his stinging eyes with the back of his hands; he didn’t want to close his eyes; he might miss even a single second.
Rocky shifted, harmonics fluttering with unmistakable satisfaction. “Grace leaking. Is Grace distressed. Question?”
Grace opened his mouth; nothing emerged. Rocky has finally done it; he has rendered Grace speechless. His heart was nearly beating out of his chest. Only the soft clicks of Rocky’s fingers were audible through his pounding heart in his ears.
"…Is Grace not happy. Question?” Rocky inquired. Grace shook his head so hard it made his neck hurt.
He looked at the carefully carved letters. “No, no Rocky I—" Grace covered his mouth.
His voice failed. Because he could not stop looking. Eyes zeroed in on the uneven edges, on the imperfections where sometimes lines got deeper, and on the inexperience of writing in a language from another world entirely.
Rocky’s harmonics clarified, trilled with obvious satisfaction. “We match now. Same same.”
A wet laugh escaped Grace at that. “You really did this?” Warm tears slipped down before he could stop them.
“Yes. Now Grace not only one.”
His human heart swelled in his chest; he was full on crying now, unable to wipe tears off his face.
The first time he had felt the claws of loneliness loosen up enough for him to finally breathe since he opened his eyes from the medically induced coma with amnesia was the first time Grace had met Rocky.
And for the second time while being sent on a suicide mission against his will, for Doctor Ryland Grace, the desolation and the helplessness of the vastness of outer space had never felt so distant and bearable.