Chapter Text
It started as it always did, the morning of the deciding.
Rocky knocked on his door at the same time he always did, just early enough to annoy him slightly, but not enough to prevent him from pulling on his jacket and joining his friend on their usual walk down the beach. The one Eridian scientists had created especially for him.
“Knock knock, Grace awake now, Grace Rocky go.”
Doctor Ryland Grace shuffled towards his door, a smile building in his chest as he moved towards the sound of his best friend scratching, impatient in the way he always was when Grace was taking ‘too long.’
“You know you are meant to knock on the door, rather than just saying ‘knock knock’”
His response came before he even opened it fully, anticipating Rocky’s dancing form in the sand outside as he waited for Grace to emerge.
But this morning, Rocky was not alone.
Another Eridian form creaked beside the angular, boulder shape of his best friend.
It was not uncommon for Adrien to accompany Rocky,- their status as mates binding them in ways greater than Grace would have thought possible if he hadn't seen it for himself- it took Grace off his guard, at least momentarily.
When they were together, Rocky and Adrien were so undeniably a unit that it was hard for either to truly see beyond the view of each other.
Nonetheless, the three of them set off in a row, walking down the sand of Grace's beach towards the place Grace called his classroom, where, in a few short minutes, a number of Eridian rock children would become his newest, most attentive students.
One among them, he realised with a pang of sadness, would be Rocky’s own daughter, Elysia.
The grains crunched beneath his Converse, the canvas worn after years of wear, but still his go to choice among his albeit slim clothing options available to him on this planet, that was, at times alarmingly so, not designed for humans.
Not without mountainous effort on Rocky’s part, Grace reminded himself as he looked around the beach, designed and built specially for him.
It was in the selflessness of gestures like this, that Grace was struck by an overwhelming sense of gratitude. It reminded Grace every day that he had someone who cared enough to change the laws of his planet, spend years perfecting details that were necessary only in showing love, and all of it for Grace.
“So guys, how excited are you for your daughter to learn from the greatest human school teacher on the planet of Erid?”
“You are only human school teacher on planet Erid.”
Eridians were smart, but the depth of their humor ended well beyond deviation from literal interpretation of language.
“Yeah Rock, but still, this is a big day for you both, I mean, this is your baby we’re talking about here.”
The mates went quiet at that, and Grace got the distinct feeling that emotions, words, were passed between the pair without reaching him.
The three continued their walk in silence, feet slipping on the sand slightly as they went.
This is what tore at him, the conflict of emotions.
Grace’s life was here, some part of him took one look at Erid when he first arrived off the Hail Mary and buried itself in the Xenodite of the land, where it had lain ever since.
But the other part, the part that had become increasingly harder to ignore, remained on Earth.
It wasn’t that he longed for the people, or the world he had lived in in the months before he left, but there was a connection among people that, try as he might, was impossible to replicate here.
They were just too different.
Yes, he loved the children he taught, and the friendships he had made with the Eridians. But they could never be human. And he could never truly belong here.
The trio reached their destination, arriving at his classroom just in time for Elysia to find her perch, front row on one of the many stone benches lining the cave on the other side of the atmospheric barrier.
“Well, this is it you guys.” Grace turned to his companions as he came to a stop.
“Good luck, Grace.”
It had taken a lot to be able to communicate with Adrien as freely as it had been with Rocky, but their kindness was a warmth that emanated from their very being to touch Grace just as he needed it.
“Thank you, Adrien, really.” Maybe even smarter than their mate, though encouragement was rare from the Eridian.
He supposes, he knows the reason when he boils down his emotions.
The truth stands, Ryland Grace was lonely.
It felt like a betrayal to even think it, to doubt the love and unerring kindness shown to him from people so far away from his world their existence seems unfathomable.
But after twenty Eridian years on the alien plant, not even their love was enough to keep the hole in his heart quiet.
In truth, he had felt it since the beginning.
His best friend, Rocky, was brought to him by fate, by chance, and the unbreakable bond of ‘choosing’ they held in one another, born from a time when there was no one else.
But now, back on Erid, there was someone else. A whole planet of someone else's for Rocky, ones who looked like him, spoke like him, even breathed like him.
And Grace had no one.
It became increasingly clear over the course of the lesson that Elysia was completely her parents’ child. Every equation Grace wrote on the blackboard was met with the small, but determined, raised arm, and an accompanying click-click-click projecting the correct answer.
The trend set by the small child in the front row. gained recognition not only by Grace himself, but the other children in the class.
While intelligence was higher in the general Eridian population than it was in humans on Earth, Adrien was renowned for their intelligence, and Rocky, even before he was lost in space, was known to be a great scientist.
Watching his best friend’s daughter in that front row, Grace was filled with an enormous sense of comfort.
Elysia was exactly who he imagined Rocky’s daughter to be, a cure to the fear he felt from the decision he knew he had to make.
“Hey, Rock, could I talk to you buddy?”
At the end of the school day a horde of parents arrived to greet the mass of hyperactive children excitedly relaying the day’s events of learning back to them.
Among the group of parents was Grace’s own best friend, along with his mate.
“Yes, Rocky Grace talk.”
After a moment of discussion, Elysia and Adrien headed back up along the path leading away from the Earth temperate bubble, leaving Grace and Rocky alone.
Rocky activated the suit he wore to protect himself from the climate of Grace’s air, which he had developed to become a retractable part of his body, disappearing into a band that wrapped around a joint on one of Rocky's many limbs.
The pair set off along the beach, mirroring a path they had taken together countless times. Grace was reminded, momentarily, of a specific walk that took place a decade after his arrival to Erid, when Rocky offered him an arm, a promise to wait, ‘think long time,’ Grace was beginning to think he had.
“Elysia, she is incredible, so smart, I can’t believe it.”
It was a way of making conversation, but, as always, small talk was lost on Rocky.
“Yes of course, she Adrien daughter. Adrien smart, Elysia smart. Is genetics, Grace.”
“Yeah buddy, I do know what genetics are. You should be proud, you’ve raised a good kid is all I’m saying.”
“Thank you Grace, appreciation.”
“You’re welcome bud, anytime, you know that.”
“Yes, Grace good teacher, know many things, save many lives.”
It was an effort to shake the lump from his throat as Grace tried to formulate a response. The difficulty with Rocky was his tendency to speak from the heart in ways that struck Grace to his core, while remaining so clueless to the impact of his words upon the man.
Grace halted in his tracks, and Rocky stilled too, watching him. After a moment of silence, the alien broke Grace’s train of thought.
“Is that all Grace want to say?”
The air grew thick with words that seemed to get caught in Grace’s throat.
“Uh, no, that wasn’t all I wanted to say.”
He fought to keep tears from his eyes, caught off guard by the way the conversation was beginning to run him over from behind.
He couldn’t keep the break from his voice, however, and Rocky turned to look at him in alarm.
“Grace OK, question?”
“Um, yeah buddy I’m fine but, you remember, around ten years after we came back here, you told me something? You told me that the Eridian scientists had been working on the Hail Mary, and that she was ready if I- if I wanted to return to Earth. I asked if I could think about it, an- and you said-”
The build up of tears prevented Grace from forming the next words, but Rocky was right there with him.
“Rocky say Grace can think long time.”
“Yeah, well, I think I’ve thought long enough, and I have my mind made up now.”
Rocky anticipated his meaning before he said it, his agitation increasing as he took in the words. Sand started coming up in little crescents around his feet, but he said nothing as he paced in front of Grace.
“You know Rock, you’ve given me an amazing life here, honestly I think you saved me, even after all the times that you actually did. I wouldn’t be here without you, buddy, I wouldn’t be anywhere without you, and nothing could ever take that away from us, but-”
“But what, Grace?”
Grace tilted his face to the artificial sky, begging the tears that stung his eye sockets not to roll down his cheeks. They did though, of course, as the deepest truth, the one he’d been holding in spilled out of him.
“I’m so lonely here, Rock.
You are my best friend, you’ve been the best friend I have ever had, but you’re also all I have. We came back here and suddenly you had your whole world again, and I’m not blaming you for a second, but it was different for me. I mean, at least in space we were on even ground, you know we both couldn’t be around each other without the walls and everything else, but it’s not like that anymore.”
“OK.”
The boulder’s tone was difficult to decipher, Grace was unsure of how to interpret the meaning behind them.
“Okay? That’s all you have to say Rocky, really?”
“What you want to hear? You allowed these feelings, I understand.”
“You understand? You’re not angry with me? You know, it’s been a long, long time and you have had to change so much, just for me.”
“Is not so much, Grace forget in all things Rocky do for Grace, Grace do for Rocky. Is not enough, will never be for saving Rocky, there no score.”
It threw him off slightly, the calm, decisive way Rocky spoke to him. There was no room for Grace to feel guilt, but somehow he managed it.
Rocky continues, however,
“How long Grace feel this, question?”
“Maybe one year, maybe longer, but I think I really cemented the feeling today. Seeing you, with Adrien and your daughter, there is no way for me to have that here, no way for me to have anyone but you. At first I was worried, scared that I’d be leaving you alone, but, your daughter is so much like you Rocky, she’s so kind, so talented. I knew it from the first moment I saw her, but she was so much like you.”
There was silence as the boulder shaped scientist took in the words of the other.
“So Grace leave Erid?
“Yeah, I’m ready to leave.”
It felt like taking a deep breath out, and he caught Rocky’s faceless gaze as he looked down, heart thumping between the overwhelming sense of terror and relief at having the words out in the open.
Rocky said nothing, but lowered himself onto the sand below, facing the grey, foggy water.
Grace matched his position in silence, and the pair watched the waves roll in for a moment.
“You wrong about Elysia. She not like Rocky, not like Adrien. She smart, she kind like Grace."
And if another drop of salt water finally crept its way towards the sand at that, no one on Erid or anywhere else in the universe need know any better.