Chapter Text
“This is a one way ticket for me, pal.” Grace tried to keep his tone matter of fact. He’d have preferred upbeat- the last thing he wanted to do was break his new friend’s heart- but he just wasn’t going to pull that off. He couldn’t lie to Rocky though; the Eridian would see through him in a heartbeat. Because of his heartbeat, even.
“So what happens Grace?” He purposefully kept his gaze on his task, ignoring the concerned, approaching scared tone Rocky somehow managed to get the computer voice to put out. They had work to do- he couldn’t afford a breakdown.
“Oh, I’ve got enough food to last me at least a couple years.” As he spoke, Rocky followed behind as close as he could through his xenonite walls. A few years? A few years? “Maybe a couple more if I stretch it out?”
The follow-up came out so easily- did he not understand how that made it worse?
“So Grace die, question?” Rocky tapped insistently, crowding even closer to the clear wall separating him from his unlikely roommate. Grace simply walked further away from him, back turned.
“Once, once we’re done I’m gonna die.” He set down the boxes he was shifting around.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It slipped my mind?” Grace shrugged.
It hadn’t slipped his mind and Rocky knew it. Between the two of them he had the better memory. Whether Grace had forgotten or was deliberately ignoring it was impossible to tell. It tracked though- the human was selfless like that.
“No. Grace say Grace go home.” At least the robot translator helped cover some of the warble in his song. This- what Grace was telling him- it wasn’t acceptable. The images of the rest of his crew floated up, unbidden, until Rocky roughly shoved them away. It was unacceptable.
“Listen-”
“No.” Rocky interrupted, firm.
“Listen-”
“No!”
“Listen! Grace continued, just as firm as he leaned down to be level with Rocky’s carapace. This was why he hadn’t wanted to have this conversation. It was just going to upset the both of them and it didn’t matter anyways, not when they had no other choices if they wanted to save both of their planets.
“I got to meet you.” He continued. “I got to do all this amazing stuff.” He gestured around the Mary as he put as much comfort into his voice as he could. “I’m good. I’ve made peace with it.”
“What mean?” Rocky started to panic. He couldn’t help it- Grace was a brilliant, brave, selfless man, but he was also an idiot. There had to be a way around it. “What mean make peace?”
“It means,” Grace sighed, “I know I’m not going home, I know why, and it’s okay. Thumbs up?” He held up his hand, thumb already in the upright position. A part of him needed Rocky not to fight him on this- if his only friend out there in the great beyond couldn’t accept it then he was going to spiral, and spiral hard.
“No.” Rocky shook his carapace the way Grace often shook his head, one of many mannerisms he’d picked up from the human over the last few months.
“Tiny thumbs up?” He tried again.
“No.” Rocky could feel himself shrinking in, becoming smaller and softer, but he couldn’t help it. He hadn’t thought it possible to lose anyone else to Tau Ceti, at least not in the same fashion, and yet here they were.
“We got stars to save.” Grace reminded him. “Okay?” Silence stretched between them for a long moment before Rocky broke it. The back of his mind was already running numbers even as he continued the conversation. He didn’t have any words that could perfectly encapsulate what Grace was, but the humans might. No matter how much that particular one tried to laugh it off with a joke.
“How much astrophase you need, question?” He finally asked. It’d be a sacrifice, technically, but Erid wasn’t in dire enough straights yet to really feel the impact of such a small amount of time as he estimated would be lost. To Rocky personally, Grace accepting his offer would be a gift.
“Two million kilograms.” Grace told him. To him, the amount felt like an insurmountable mountain even as the words sent a shiver over relief over Rocky’s hard shell.
“I can give.” Rocky told him. The words were gentle, but he wasn’t letting Grace say no. As much as it would hurt when they parted ways, he refused to leave the human there to just die alone and cold in the vastness of space. “I go home six years slower.”
What was six years to a being that lived for hundreds?
“It’s too much-” Rocky was almost beside himself, as the phrase books he’d found on the human thinking machine (he liked to peruse it when Grace was asleep, sue him, how often was he going to get the chance to study an alien’s culture?) would say. This human was going to be the death of him instead.
“Rocky watch crew die, could not fix.” He interrupted. “Grace say Grace will die. Rocky fix.” He fought to keep his warbled song as gentle as Grace’s voice had been. He didn’t want his rage to break the moment. Grace could be tricky- if he said or did the wrong thing, he’d just fall back into stubborn refusal.
It shouldn’t be that hard to accept the gift of life. Rocky didn’t like it.
“Grace go home.” He insisted when his offer was met with no response. No, that wasn’t true. There was one, silent, response- Grace was leaking again.
“Okay.” He finally, finally acquiesced. Rocky, inveterate little shit that he was, couldn’t resist pulling his leg about it now that it was finally safe to. Besides, the attempt at humor helped him shove the niggling doubt and suspicion that still remained in the same box as his former crew.
“I thought Grace make peace, question?” He teased lightly. He wasn’t expecting Grace to wrap himself around his ball a few moments later in what he called a ‘hug’. It was weird and he didn’t quite understand what was happening, but it seemed to help him so Rocky simply let it happen. Sometimes that was the easiest thing to do when it came to Grace, a trait that was as endearing as it could be frustrating.
A trait that- like the man- would now continue to live.
The silence in Rocky’s ship once he was finally headed back home was awful. He didn’t have the room with the screens and the videos that Grace did, but he did have plenty of time alone with his own thoughts. At least he knew Grace had something to keep him occupied for the long trip back- he could only imagine the amount of trouble the human would find himself in if he wasn’t kept suitably entertained.
Something still didn’t sit right about the way he was so willing to just. Accept his death like that. He couldn’t figure out exactly what it was though- it was vexing.
Humans were too hard to understand. Rocky thought he understood Grace pretty well though after all those months in forced proximity, different worlds aside it was pretty hard not to know him on some level.
Grace was endlessly brave, pushing himself further toward their goal no matter what the personal cost was to himself every time Rocky turned around. It didn’t surprise Rocky in the slightest that he volunteered for a mission like that. It didn’t surprise him that the humans built in as much as they could to make their astronauts last days comfortable either, especially since they didn’t have the technology or time to give them a return trip. From what Grace told him, that was a normal thing for them to do for a cause so noble.
So then why did Grace seem so… almost hesitant to go back? He was relieved to live, that much was clear, but his answers had been vague when Rocky asked what he was looking forward to back home. He’d gone all frozen and stiff- the most still Rocky’d seen him probably the entire time, even- when he wondered what the human’s reactions to his surprise return would be.
He’d snapped out of it so fast Rocky almost didn’t notice it, caught up in imagining his own homecoming too, and did the ‘smile’ thing with his mouth that was supposed to indicate happiness. That’s what really made him notice it though, he couldn’t get that exact memory to go away. Why-
Oh.
That was his fake smile, the one he’d put on when he was trying to comfort Rocky after admitting it was a suicide mission.
Well shit.
The realization brought up as many questions as it answered, but there wasn’t a lot Rocky could do about it now. It was far too late. The most he could do was stay in touch with the scientists monitoring the stars for the day Sol inevitably, hopefully, brightened again. At least he’d know Grace made it home safely. That would have to be enough.
Well, that was that. The Taomoeba were eating through Rocky’s ship. A lot of thoughts crossed his mind when he realized there was nothing he could do about it- thoughts of home, thoughts of Adrian. Hope was a brutal thing; he’d thought he’d ‘made his peace’ with never seeing them again ages ago, but Grace appearing from the stars changed that. Accepting it again a second time?
The keening wail so intense it grated as it left him echoed through the entire ship, heard by no one but the lingering ghosts. What had he done to deserve this happening again, and again, and again?
It was bad enough he was shell-locked. That was half the reason he’d volunteered for the mission to begin with. His crew had been expecting to return if all went well but there was always going to be risk. Better he take on that mantle than someone with a brighter future.
But he’d have given anything just to hear Adrian’s beautiful song one last time.
He thought about the ‘other side’ Grace’s human thinking machine told him about. A few select groups of Eridians believed in something similar, but they were more secluded groups. Rocky’d never really been one for religion and he was much more interested in learning about human’s mechanical capabilities while he could (once an engineer, always an engineer). He hadn’t paid that much attention to the topic, something he now regretted.
If he was being honest with himself, a part of Rocky thought humans were more prone to it because of how absurdly short their lifespans were. Regardless, if something like that did exist, he hoped it’d be a long, long time before he saw Adrian again. They were supposed to have long lives; his greatest hope for his partner was that they lived theirs to the fullest.
It was almost a comfort knowing it wouldn’t be nearly as long until he saw Grace again, assuming he believed in that sort of thing.
He just hadn’t realized how much more quickly that would be.