Tell Me Not In Binary Numbers

She was on a long round of antibiotics and I was the cleaning wound out daily with every other day salt soaks and we saw some brief improvement over the last couple of weeks but last night I noticed her limping and when I checked her foot it had swelled back up and started bleeding.

I thankfully already spoke with the vet because we were working to save the money for her procedure, so I have an invoice which you can see here:

It'll be anywhere between 464.70 to 564.70 to get her foot cleaned out. I have $150 of that already saved up, and I will call and schedule her appointment the second I hit my goal.

150/564.70

rocky: rocky has seen this on earth portable thinking machine. grace very brave. grace has name, question?

grace, not entirely paying attention: yeah man its grace you know that

grace: it is, but everyone calls me grace anyway so it's fine

rocky: grace is sure, question? grace could pick any name

grace: hmmm... worth a thought, i guess. got any ideas?

rocky: rocky 2

grace: aw :) wait whos first?

i think that if grace ever met stratt again (which could never happen, there's no way grace is leaving his home and his partner. but if he did meet her again, with rocky at his side, obviously), she'd say with tears threatening to fall 'i wish i hadn't had to violate you so,' and he'd wrap his arms around her, and she'd cry for the first time in a very very very long time, and he'd cry for the fifth time that week

'i don't forgive you 'cause there's not anything to forgive. you saved the world as much as i did. as much as rocky did.'

'two worlds,' rocky would add, leaning against grace's legs, radiating comforting warmth through his exosuit

'yeah, it sucked. i was scared. i hated you for a while. but if our positions had been reversed...' he pauses. 'no, let's be real. if our positions had been reversed, earth would be a snowball by now. i could never be as organized as you, are you kidding? but in theory, i... I'd have done the same thing to you. and i'm always gonna remember what happened, but i don't blame you. because you didn't do the wrong thing.'

her getting that moment would be so. so cathartic. and she kind of got it when she saw grace's video logs and he says she was right. but that woman deserves to be hugged and explicitly outright told she isn't to blame alright i love her so much

Grace liked earth. He liked his students. He liked his work. But he didn't love it. He loved living. He didn't love the individual things, but he sure as hell loved living with them.