blog of bats and books

Eridians don't have nightmares. That's something that Grace knows for a fact. When Grace had first woken up from one on the Hail Mary under Rocky's watch, he'd spent a long time explaining what they were, and why they might happen – but only after reassuring a distressed Rocky that, no, he wasn't dying or in pain, no he wasn't lying about that fact, and yes the screaming had been involuntary, and not in reaction to something real or tangible.

So, he knows that this can't be an eridian version of a nightmare, or a night terror, or anything like that, because Rocky had explained that these don't exist for eridians. It just seems to have the same effects as one from the point of view of a human.

Knowing all of this doesn't make the screeching any less intimidating.

It had started what must have been only a few moments ago, but feels like much longer from Grace's perspective. He'd been sitting at his computer when he'd seen movement in the corner of his eye, just the twitch of a limb, and had gotten up to greet Rocky as he came out of his rest cycle.

Before he had managed to get close to Rocky, however, the eridian had started screaming. It's not a sound that Grace had ever wanted to experience again.

"Rocky!" Grace calls out again over the din, despite the fact that trying to get Rocky's attention had only made the screeching worse the first time he'd done so. "It's okay, I'm here!"

Predictably, Rocky doesn't calm down at this. Instead, he scuttles backwards, something that makes Grace himself startle a little in turn. Until that point Rocky hadn't moved at all outside of the initial twitch of a leg, fitting the 'nightmare' comparison even more. With the xenonite between them Grace can't do anything to try and provide physical comfort to his friend, or even inspect him more closely to see if there was something physically wrong with him. All he can do is watch as Rocky slinks backwards down the tunnel, the screeching turning into nervous chittering.

Suddenly, there is silence, which is almost worse than the sounds of distress.

"...Rocky?" Grace tentatively calls out, placing a hand against the xenonite tunnels.

He doesn't get a response, but he can see Rocky shudder slightly – one of the few shared mannerisms between humans and eridians – at the motion. He seems to shrink away from Grace, and Grace hasn't seen an eridian cower before, but he can imagine that this is what that looks like.

"What…" Rocky whistles out, almost too quietly for Grace to pick up on. "What… Where…"

He can't seem to get the chords out for a full sentence. Grace doesn't think he has ever heard Rocky sounding anything less than purposeful in his notes. This doesn't even sound like the more complex eridian sentence structures that Rocky had been occasionally sharing with him. It just sounds muddled. Confused.

Grace doesn't get the chance to ask Rocky anything in return before Rocky is shuddering again, jumping to his feet– and then slumping, and freezing perfectly in place.

For a few long moments, Grace just stands there and waits. Rocky had collapsed mid-step, and now isn't even making attempts at notes as he had been doing before that point. The change is uncanny, but it is also a familiar one, because it is something that Grace has witnessed the couple of times Rocky had let a project get away from him and had fallen into his paralysis-state for rest without first pausing his work.

Sleep both makes sense and doesn't. On the one hand, Rocky had only just woken up a few minutes ago, before all of the screeching and confusion. On the other, there had been all the screeching and confusion, and that wasn't normal.

Either way, Grace has no way of knowing what might be happening to his friend. Worse, he doesn't even know how he might help him. All he can do is wait, and watch.

—

Not knowing how long Rocky might sleep for sets Grace on edge. Not knowing if Rocky is even sleeping at all also sets Grace on edge. So predictably, when Grace finally caves and goes to grab his laptop, wanting to trawl through every set of notes he'd made on eridian biology for any vague hint of an answer, that's when Rocky taps on the xenonite behind him – and Grace jumps out of his skin.

"Rocky!" he cries, joy and admonishment warring in his voice. "Don't do that– wait, no, ignore me, are you okay?!"

Rocky taps the xenonite again in confusion. "Rocky is well. Is Grace well? Heart organ go fast, many signs of distress, bad bad bad. What Grace do when Rocky is sleeping, question?"

After all that, Rocky's grilling Grace?

"What Grace do?" Grace repeats. "More like, 'what Rocky do'! Rocky, not-many-seconds ago you woke up and started screaming! Then you went back to sleep, and woke up normal!"

"Rocky make distress sounds, question? Grace certain, question?"

"Yes! Do you think I'd make this up?"

"Oh." The response is so underwhelming, Grace once again finds himself wishing he could actually interact with his friend. Not for a hug this time, though, not now that Rocky seems to be okay again. No, Grace is filled with the urge to pick up his friend and shake him. Had this all been some kind of prank gone wrong? It doesn't feel like something Rocky would do, but then there are still times when he really does seem alien to Grace in how he acts and the conclusions he comes to. Perhaps this is one such occasion, and Grace needs to have a serious discussion with him about pranks that are funny and okay, and nasty tricks that genuinely scare the heck out of people.

Before he can vocalise this, Rocky is waving a claw at him. "Yes, yes, Rocky understand now. Rocky know of condition. Rare rare eridian condition. Worker cells for crystalline neuropathways not function correctly when initialising wake up, results in imperfect memory recall. Is interesting! Very unusual for eridians to experience. Random bad luck, not happen to Rocky before. Only hear of it from friend of friend of friend. Occasionally, hear about it in stories on radio broadcasts."

"Memory recall?" Grace repeats when Rocky is finished with his explanation, latching onto the most important bit. "Like, you forget things? I thought that couldn't happen."

"Not permanent. Shorter rest cycle is quickly initiated again to fix the problem. Understand? All is normal, now. Rocky is well."

Grace mulls the concept over. "...I suppose you were acting like an eridian might if they suddenly found themself on an unfamiliar ship in the presence of a creature with its insides on the outside. From your point of view, I mean." He's quick to correct himself, given that Rocky is liable to hold any concession over his head on the 'leaky space blob vs scary space spider' front, even in times of distress.

At his comment, Rocky laughs. Grace, with the sound of his friend's screeches still echoing in his mind, huffs in irritation. "I want to go back to something you said a second ago there, Rocky, buddy, because there is no part of this that is 'interesting'. That was scary! Very very very bad! And this was something you knew about, but didn't warn me might happen? Not cool!"

Rocky honks, arcing upwards in indignation. "Grace knew nightmares could happen and did not say. Grace knew sleepwalking could happen and did not say! Grace knew–"

"Okay!" Grace cuts him off, raising his hands in surrender. "Okay! I get the picture."

"I give no picture. Only facts."

At that, Grace manages a smile. Then, sighs. "I mean, I understand what you mean. And I think I owe you another apology for all that sleepwalking and nightmare stuff you had to deal with, and-will-probably-deal-with-again-" he says the last part very quickly, and continues before Rocky can do more than hiss at him in response- "because, man, that was rough! I'm just glad you're okay. When you started screaming, I thought… well."

Although the sentence loses itself near the end, Rocky still tilts his carapace in acknowledgement.

"Grace think many things," Rocky chimes. "Only important thing for Grace to think is that all is okay now. Rocky here. Grace here. Conclusion: all will be well."

Rocky had known that life had become too easy. The thought that something bad was going to happen was one that he couldn't banish no matter how many good things happened that might prove it to be false. All it took was one thing going wrong, and the sinking feeling would return with conviction.

This situation was more than one bad thing, Rocky thinks to himself as he listens on.

The stranger, an eridian he had no name for, claimed to be family to one of his crewmates. Rocky can't understand why they might think that trying to hurt Rocky might be satisfying to them at all, but he also can't understand why he can't make himself believe that life can ever just be simple again, so he doesn't think he's the best judge of things like that.

What he does deem himself a good enough judge of is when the situation has gone beyond saving with chords. Despite his best attempts, there will be no singing them down. They're spitting insults, curses, and taking no care for the fragility of human ears… something that Rocky neglects to be concerned about until he senses the arrival of his friend in the dome nearby.

Rocky wants to stop, wants to tell Grace to go back into his house where he won't have to witness any of this, but if he doesn't put his full focus into dealing with this threat then he'll pay for it dearly. Mostly likely Grace will, too. Revenge rarely stops at the rational target, and Rocky doesn't even see himself as a rational target. The thought of Grace being even remotely near the line of fire is unacceptable.

For the last year of Rocky's life, everything, everything has been about keeping Grace safe – or more accurately, everything has been about keeping Grace happy. If Grace had demanded that he partake in the clinging-to of rocks without a harness (as Rocky has read about in the diaries of particularly crazy humans) in order to continue to live happily on Erid, then Rocky– well.

Rocky would have agreed. But he would have perhaps engineered any potential falls to be less fatal. Some solution involving 'foam', perhaps?

Regardless, Rocky is willing to go to any lengths to ensure that his friend loves life, and now, these people are threatening Grace's carefully curated happiness. How dare they?

Rocky asks them as such. He receives a whistle of rage in return.

When the stranger inevitably attacks, Rocky's almost glad for it. It stops the screeching, and with the last strand of his attention he can't bring himself to tear away from Grace, he can sense the human relax.

Rocky doesn't hesitate to defend himself. He has probably bought himself enough time for the security team to mobilise, even if the stranger had somehow slipped past the first line of defence. They'd spent enough time ranting at him before actually making their move, after all.

The team would have been alerted ages ago. Maybe the stranger has disabled one system, but there are redundancies upon redundancies when it comes to Grace's safety.

The stranger and Rocky dance around one another, both around the same size and build. It means that neither of them have a real advantage, and neither can get the upper hand.

Still, it has been a long time since Rocky has come to blows with anyone. Even before the mission, before meeting Grace, he had only really wrestled with his peers for fun. He finds himself faltering despite all he has to fight for – and all he has to lose.

Grace is saying something through the xenonite, but Rocky can't muster up a reply. All he can think of is the fact that they've been at it a while, and nobody else is around.

The team should have arrived by now.

This realisation makes the appearance of more hostiles less of a surprise that they probably intended – the only reason for the first response team to not show, is if they had been already intercepted. Well, fine. Rocky shifts his body around to meet them. So what if there were a few more to deal with? He'd survived insurmountable odds before, and spent decades dealing with problems on his own. Surviving this would be a breeze. He just needed to ignore the eyes at his back, the human staring him down, finally exposed to the uglier side of Erid.

One of the newcomers lunges at him. Their attempt at pinning Rocky is sloppy, making them easy enough to toss onto the ground. Rocky lines up what would be a disabling blow, rearing up to push them into the xenonite.

Rocky's senses falter at the xenonite. Logically Rocky knows that the barrier can withstand far worse, but Grace is right on the other side of the glass, watching. He hasn't ever seen violence on Erid. What must he be thinking? What is he thinking of Rocky right now?

Rocky pays for the hesitation, of course.

The group of them gain the upper hand as soon as he provides them with an opportunity to do so. They drag him away, one of them hissing about getting away from biodome, and now it's Rocky's turn to curse at them.

One of them strikes him in a weak point of his carapace, and he can't help but wail. The same instincts that had aided him in the fight now betray him; an eridian in distress will inevitably call out for help. It is in their nature. It is likely the reason why the stranger hadn't stopped screeching when finally faced with Rocky - their distress is of a different nature to Rocky's, but on some level it is still recognised as distress. Their worker cells only know one response, whether it is to something rational or not.

"This isn't going to help you," Rocky tries to say, and is struck again for the attempt. "Stop! Why are you doing this?!"

They've secured most of his limbs, but he manages to reach out with the last of them, striking back against the one who had hit him. They all go down in a tangle of limbs and claws again, Rocky fighting with all he can.

It's a pointless effort, but Rocky isn't looking to escape. He's looking to buy time for those that must be on their way to help him. Even the few extra minutes he's delaying them might make the difference.

It isn't long before they're dragging him onwards again, but he still feels vindicated.

The strangers are trying to take him away from the biodome entirely. Rocky doesn't like the idea of it, given that it must mean that they have some kind of revenge in mind that isn't as simple as killing. The first of the strangers, seemingly the leader of the group, is whistling something that gets lost in the chaos of the scuffle. Their allies pay them no attention.

"Hey!" Rocky hisses out, "Let me go!"

They ignore him. They're nearing an exit, something that Rocky can recognise despite the fact that they're now holding Rocky above the ground and doing their best to interfere with his senses. This is an area that he knows well.

Logic tells him that it is no use to try and escape again, not when he is outnumbered and they are expecting the attempt, but for a second time that night he ignores it.

He has so much to fight for, so he fights.

He doesn't escape them entirely but he manages to scrape one claw along the ground, tapping as hard as he can to get a read on the situation. There are other eridians closing in on their location, but they're still some distance away. There's movement closer to the group of them, but it isn't any of the security team that's approaching them. It's–

Rocky freezes. No. Surely not. Surely he wouldn't.

The person that reaches them first is not an eridian at all. Grace had told Rocky that humans could move quickly when properly motivated, but Rocky had never imagined that he'd sense such an action from Grace himself. Leisurely 'jogs' along the beach had been the extent of it.

The group of strangers sense Grace's approach at the same time that Rocky does. If they were running without the burden of Rocky, they could easily outpace the human, but as it is they are too slow.

With reluctance they slow down, two of them letting Rocky go to get a read on the situation.

Grace skids to a stop as he reaches the group, lungs audibly struggling to keep up with the effort of running in a heavy suit. He's clad in the clear xenonite that they'd been experimenting with most recently, and with the clumsy gloves he's somehow managing to hold a large canister of–

"Oxygen!" Grace calls out, the suit's translator chirping out the phrase. "Don't move!"

At that, the whole group freezes. Any eridian with even a vague knowledge of the sciences could recognise that threat.

Rocky twitches. Grace's plan is obvious, but any wrong move from Rocky might give the game away. All they need is a half minute more of a diversion. Rocky can manage for a half minute…

Still, the urge not to chitter at the sight of Grace threatening to set a group of eridians on fire with a fire extinguisher is almost too much to contain.

The eridians also seem to realise the time crunch that they're under, but luckily not the bluff, and a couple of them try to back up.

"I said, don't move!"

Grace points the canister towards the ones who had tried to shuffle away, and they come to a stop. Rocky can't help but chitter a little. He's sure that to strangers, Grace must seem grotesque, probably even dangerous – but all Rocky can see is the human that manages to stumble over thin air at least three times a day, and would probably manage to injure himself worse with the fire extinguisher if he ever truly tried to use it as a weapon.

In the end, it's the leader that speaks up. "You won't do it," they chime, stepping forwards to separate themself from the group. "Rocky is precious to you. You won't risk his life, even if you are telling the truth."

That quickly sucks any humour out of the situation. Rocky twitches within the grasp of the other eridians.

The leader takes another step forwards, then another step, and then Grace is taking a step back– and that's what really gives the game away, whether the leader buys the bluff or not.

They take the concession for what it is, and jump towards Grace.

Instinctively, Rocky tries to hurl himself forwards, trying to get between the eridian and his friend. The claws of the others hold him back, and he kicks out anyway, desperately, unable to accept his weakness.

In front of him, he can sense a crack, and his hearts jolt – but it isn't the clear xenonite of Grace's suit cracking. It's the sound of stone on stone, the sound of two eridians brawling, and Rocky could sing. The claws that hold him in place drop him like he's freezing, and he is free.

"You took your time!" Grace calls out from the floor, where he has seemingly decided to stay.

As the chaos unfolds around them, the intruders scattering as the rest of the biodome security team descends on the scene, Rocky really can't find it in himself to judge the man. In fact, curling up on the floor sounds like a fantastic idea.

With the sound of screeching rage and struggle echoing in the space around him, he crawls his way over to Grace. As soon as Grace clocks his presence, Grace is pulling him into a hug, and Rocky trills in happiness despite the ache across his carapace. Chaos may have found them, but they had also found their way back to each other.

Content that the danger was being dealt with, the two of them lay there, recovering. Then, Rocky finds enough energy to sound out a few chords.

"...A fire extinguisher?" he chimes. "Really?"

Grace doesn't even try to contain his slightly manic laughter, and after maintaining the facade of judgement for a few moments longer, Rocky joins him.

----------

Some days, Grace can believe that Erid is some kind of paradise – that is, if you ignored the gravity trying to grind his bones to dust and wear down his joints in double time, the atmosphere that would love to crush him to pulp, and the searing temperatures that would cook him in an instant if he stepped foot outside the biodome. Yes, ignoring all of those silly little things, it felt like some kind of paradise thanks to how peaceful it was.

Everyone he met with was always respectful and calm, sometimes almost infuriatingly so. Grace suspects that Rocky occasionally steps the needling up a notch to compensate for how careful everyone else is around him.

On Earth it would be chaos if Rocky was in Grace's place, Grace is sure of it, but here the chaos never reaches him. It's very considerate of them.

It does mean, however, that his guard is very much down on the one occasion that it does make its way as far as his biodome.

—

When Grace wakes up to the sound of screaming, his first thought is that he must have left the laptop running and some horror movie had somehow ended up in the queue. Reality, therefore, takes a little while longer than it should do to make its way through to him. It's not until the screaming shifts in pitch from something similar to a human to something closer to a boiling kettle, that Grace actually tunes his full coherent brain into the sound.

Spurred on by a sudden burst of adrenaline and acting on instinct, Grace launches himself out of bed towards the sound. He even manages to avoid tripping over his blankets, despite their attempts to wind their way around his legs.

He skids out of his room, then out of the house, running to the wall of the biodome closest to him. The sound gets louder and louder as he runs, and he realises that there is some variation in pitch and tone, it is just very difficult to make out.

Rocky and the other eridians that he has met have always been very careful around him, knowing that too much sound might damage his eardrums. What this means is that, until this point, he hadn't truly appreciated just how loud they could actually be – it was one thing to see the data on paper, after all, and another thing entirely to experience it. When he reaches the source of it he staggers to a stop, holding his hands over his ears.

There is a stranger standing just beyond the walls of the biodome. Their carapace is a paler shade of brown, so picking them out against the backdrop of darkness is simple enough.

Rocky stands between them and the dome, legs wide in a defensive stance that Grace has only seen a handful of times before now. "Rocky?" Grace calls out over the noise, but receives no response.

The stranger is the one screeching. Grace can still only make out every other word, the volume and the fact that he doesn't have his translator on him working against him. They're not simplifying their speech and they certainly don't look like they're about to speak slowly or repeat themselves - not intentionally, at least. Luckily, they seem to be at least a little bit circular in what they're saying, because Grace manages to pick out a number of chords relating to 'revenge', 'pain', and 'death'.

On second thoughts, Grace isn't feeling particularly lucky about that realisation.

Before Grace can do anything like ask Rocky what any of this means, the stranger is no longer just screeching at his friend – they take a scuttling leap forwards, and the two of them clash.

"Rocky!" Grace shouts in alarm, pressing himself to the xenonite barrier as if he might be able to reach them if he tried hard enough.

It's chaos. The two of them roll away from the barrier, a tangle of limbs that Grace can't make heads or tails of, not until Rocky manages to push himself very clearly on top. He seems to be trying to pin the other eridian down, claws grasping at their limbs. He almost manages it, too, before the stranger manages to swipe one of their free arms upwards and push Rocky off of them entirely.

The sound the two of them make as they struggle is atrocious. Before this moment, Grace would have never thought he would describe the sound of rocks clashing against each other in such a way, but when it was his friend's life on the line the noise took on a whole new meaning.

"Rocky, be careful!"

He isn't sure if Rocky can hear him, but he hopes that he can. Eridians are good at multitasking, right? If Grace can't help, he at least wants Rocky to know that he's there.

He knows that the security team must be on the way, logic tells him they must be, but he wishes they could arrive sooner. How could they even let something like this happen in the first place? A stranger shouldn't be able to get as close to the dome as this one has.

Grace freezes, torn between leaving to try and raise the alarm elsewhere somehow, and staying to watch over Rocky. He should leave, it's the more logical of the two options, but the thought of his friend being injured without him there to even try to do something about it leaves him paralysed.

It's at that point that Grace realises that more shapes are moving out of the darkness towards the duo. For a moment Grace feels a spark of hope that it might be somebody arriving to help… before the shapes become more defined, and his heart sinks.

More strangers slink out of the darkness, each prowling forwards to make a semi-circle that surrounds Rocky.

"Watch out!" Grace can't help but yelp out, despite knowing how useless a reflex it is. If Rocky didn't dodge something, it wasn't because he couldn't sense it coming. He has a better sense of his surroundings than Grace does, given the limited light levels outside of the dome.

Sure enough, when one of them lunges to grab Rocky, Rocky's already moving. He doesn't dodge the attack, but rather uses the momentum of it to pull the newcomer over him, throwing them onto the ground next to the barrier. Before the others can descend upon him Rocky darts forwards, lifting the other eridian as if to push him back into the xenonite.

Grace stands on the other side, waiting – but Rocky doesn't make any attempt at a disabling blow. Instead, Rocky hesitates.

From where he stands Grace gets a good enough view of Rocky tilting his carapace in his direction, something about Grace's presence seeming to make him freeze instead of take action, but that's all Grace has time to notice before the other eridians move in.

"Grace!" his friend cries out, finally speaking up. "Leave! Now!"

He sounds desperate. He's digging his claws into the ground, but there are four of them and one of him. Despite knowing that they'd overpower him in an instant, Grace wishes more than anything that he could be on the other side of the barrier, wishes that he could do something, anything, to help his friend.

Useless. He's useless, again.

Grace yells, and yells, but they don't listen to him. They take his friend and drag him out of sight, leaving a trail of mercury behind them.

He has to call out to her, even as he nears the figure and his heart sinks as his bad feeling becomes undeniable reality. He knows this person, knows her stature; the way she draws her coat around herself as tightly as she can, like a shield.

It hasn't done enough to shield her now, not from freezing winds like these.

Carl jogs to reach her, checking the area around them for threats before kneeling down at her side to get a good look at her. She's breathing, he can see the motion, but that doesn't do much to calm his heart. He shouts their location into his radio, calling for one of the medics, and for the rest of the security team to sweep the outer deck, then continues with his own assessment.

There's no blood, no open wound. It seems as if his initial suspicions are correct – it doesn't look like she has been attacked, it looks like she has stood out in a winter storm for too long and for no good reason. Her skin is pale, ghostly, and Carl moves to put himself between her and the storm winds as best he can.

She doesn't respond to him, not as he repeats himself louder, and not as he waves a hand in front of her face. She doesn't do anything at all until he finally resorts to touching her, putting a hand on her shoulder to try and jostle her back to awareness – and suddenly she's jerking away from him, eyes fluttering open but struggling to focus on him. "Stop it," she says, or attempts to say. The words come out slurred. "Please, don't do it."

Don't do what? Carl would like to ask, but doesn't. Now isn't the time to pry.

"Eva," Carl says again, this time without the urgency. "It's okay. It's me, Carl."

"Carl?" she repeats, blinking slowly up at him. Her teeth are chattering, he can now see, as she finally manages to meet his gaze. She seems confused, and fails to hide a flinch as he shifts to kneel closer to her, attempting to better shield her from the elements.

He carefully raises his hands so she can see them, and doesn't like the way that she very visibly relaxes at the sight. She'd never been a very tactile person in her days before launch, but this– he doesn't like the implications. He never had managed to get much out of her about her time spent away from the team, the years she had spent in and out of different prisons, but judging by the cell they had rescued her from it had been a grim time for her… and if her living quarters had been bad, he can't imagine the company would have been any better.

"We should get inside," he shouts over a sudden gust of wind, and she shakes her head frantically, saying something in response to him that he can't make out.

Before he can try to offer any other comfort, or make another attempt to move her out of the wind, the medics arrive.

They quickly take over, but Carl stays by her side, trying his best to keep her calm. Her eyes, when they manage to focus on any of them, are slightly wild in a way that he has never seen before. Not in Stratt, at least.

When she notices him looking, she stares back at him in a way that makes him hopeful that maybe the worst of it is over. Perhaps the shock of seeing new people has brought some clarity back to her.

Then, she frowns. "You're old!" she exclaims, and Carl almost laughs. So much for coming back to herself.

"So are you," he says right back.

She blinks at him. Then, she looks down at her own hands, watching intently as they continue to tremble. "What's happening to me?" she whispers.

"We need to get her inside, now," one of the medics says, and that has Stratt flinching again.

"No!" she barks out, and they're all startling at that, as she manages to find the commanding tone that they all know only thanks to the fear that so obviously has taken hold of her. "Don't take me back! Please, I don't want to go back."

Again with the begging. It's wrong. This was all wrong. Carl has never heard her plead with anyone, not like that.

She looks up at him, finding his face amongst the cluster of medics. "The room is too small. Too small. And too cold. I don't want to go back. Don't make me."

"It's cold out here, Eva, and it's dangerous for you to stay–"

"No! No, this is nothing! Nothing!" She's shouting again, but seems to lose the energy just as quickly. "This is nothing…"

Carl considers his suspicions, and Stratt's confusion, and makes an educated guess.

"You're not there any more, Eva," he says. "We want to take you somewhere warm, not back to any cell. Hey, look at me. Tell me, was I ever there? Tell me, Eva."

"...No." The admission is quiet.

"That's right," Carl attempts a smile. "So, follow that logic. If I'm here, then you can't be there any more. You can trust me."

She looks up at him, expression unreadable, and for a moment he feels hopeful–

"Why weren't you there?" she asks instead, voice cracking. "I was so cold."

Then her expression crumples too, and her whole body along with it, swaying in a very telling way. Before the medics can reach her she slumps to the side, energy spent.

Carl catches her, of course, and when the medics rush in to take her from him, he shakes his head. "Show me where you need to take her," he tells them, and then follows them into the ship.

Eva looks across at the television screen in one corner of the room. It is currently being used for its intended purpose, and not for one of the many conference calls she'd had to attend with too many participants all demanding her attention to fit on an ordinary computer screen. An international news channel, selected at random, is silently running through the top stories of the day.

As if there could ever be any doubt, "Successful Launch of the Hail Mary!" is the first to be reeled off, and all those that come after it are still tangentially related. Today is a day that the world is going to celebrate, despite the sombre nature of the astronauts' sacrifice that dogs the project.

Even with the world celebrating, Eva can't bring herself to join in. The world might raise a glass to the sacrifice made by those aboard the Hail Mary, but she is the only one who will spare a thought for the sacrifice that she had been forced to make – the many of them that she has made, willingly and knowingly, and all of them in the name of saving as many lives as she can.

Besides, there are so many better things for her to be focusing her attention on, so many more problems to solve and projects to plan. Even if she doesn't join in the celebrations, there's work for her to be doing.

Eva can't pull her attention away from the third drawer down of her desk.

She feets tired. More than tired, she feels sick.

With the project to focus on she had always found a way forwards, not letting anything stop her – certainly not something as meaningless as sickness, or guilt – but now that the ship is on its way, all of her other worries feel distant. Instead of spending her time looking into the next steps that Earth needs to take to prolong its survival, she finds herself wondering why someone else can't take over the planning for now.

Someone else will need to, soon, regardless of whatever strange mood it is that has snuck up on her. The world is going to want answers, people are going to want someone to blame for all of the terrible choices that Eva has made, and Eva is going to be the one waiting for them with the answers that nobody wants to hear.

She stops drumming her fingers, and opens the drawer of her desk. Then she opens the box, takes out one of the vials, and holds it up to the light.

What would happen to her if they found a stranger standing in her place? She'd been warned about the potential permanent effects of the memory drug should she not manage the dosage correctly – and she is certain that she would find it no trouble at all to manage it incorrectly.

She could leave everything behind her. The exhaustion, the choices, the responsibility... everything. After years of stopping for nothing and nobody, focusing everything on one goal, she would finally be free of it all. Looking at it from that angle, it almost seems like a peaceful prospect.

Would the world still judge her as harshly if she couldn't remember anything? Maybe so, but maybe it would soften the blow. Maybe people would think twice before judgement.

It's in moments like this, where I am between my sleep state and wakefulness, that the injustice of it all feels strongest. Most of the time, I struggle to summon any feeling at all.

I muster the energy to move my legs, stretching them out in front of me. I could just continue to lay here, but it wouldn't do me any good, and I had made a promise to keep myself healthy even when Grace couldn't – not that any such promises matter now, not really, it sometimes feels like. Not when the person who'd bring me up on breaking them is dead.

Still. I continue to stretch, then pull myself into standing. Before me is my workbench, many projects sprawling out across the surface, all of them abandoned.

I spent many of my last years focusing my efforts on keeping Grace either happy or healthy. Now, I have nothing; nothing that I find I can keep my attention on, at least. It doesn't matter how many projects I overlap, or how complex a challenge I set myself, I always end up getting distracted before I can finish anything. In the weeks since Grace's death, nothing has sparked joy in me the way my work used to do, and I don't know if it will ever again.

I'm debating whether I can be bothered to try something new, when I hear movement at the front of the house. Adrian must be back from their work shift.

I spare them a little attention as they move around, and spare them more when they shuffle closer and closer to my room. They linger, silent, but not making an attempt to mask their presence.

I have kept the door to my workshop closed since returning to this place, and that was weeks ago. It's rude of me, I won't deny it, and I wouldn't be surprised if Adrian was finally here to call me out on it. I know that grief is supposed to be a communal thing. You are meant to share it. I'm being selfish – something in me wants me to hoard these moments for myself. I want to wallow in the memories alone instead of joining any song for the departed.

Sure enough, Adrian calls out to me. "Rocky?" they chime, frustratingly gently. "Can we talk?"

They've been so patient. They've given me space. I couldn't ask for a more understanding mate.

"I'm busy," I snap at them, sinking back into myself.

The door opens, and I can't help but startle. Adrian walks up to me, but not so close that I feel crowded. They've always been good at judging things like that.

"This is important," they say. "It's about Grace." I want to tell them to leave, but at the end of the day, I hadn't locked the door. Every sleep-cycle, their presence in the room next to mine has been a comfort. A little bit of normality creeps into my life when they themself settle down to sleep, and as much as I want to hate it – the idea of normality in this situation – I can't.

I gesture for them to continue.

"I spoke to the doctor who was there with them, at the end," Adrian begins, pulling no punches. "I wanted to pass on what they told me. I think it might help."

Perhaps they think they might not get another shot at this conversation, which is a fair assumption to make, given how I can't help but flinch away at the reminder of my failure. I flinch, but I don't tell them to stop. Weeks ago, I couldn't face the thought of hearing what Grace might have said. He'd often been confused, near the end. What if he'd thought I had abandoned him? What if his last moments had been spent afraid, because of me?

I had been too much of a coward to ask for the truth, and had turned people down when they'd tried to confront me with it. But, I can trust Adrian to deliver it to me now.

"The doctor wanted you to know that Grace was peaceful," Adrian says, and I feel the weight across my body start to lessen. "His last words were of you. He wanted you to keep moving forwards. He was asking if you'd accepted that position on the eridian welcoming committee." Adrian pauses. "He wanted to know that you'd have something to focus on. He wanted you to know that you were loved, and he wanted to know that you'd be okay."

It's so much to process. I latch onto the idea of finding something new to do in the aftermath of Grace's death, something that Grace had wanted me to work on. The idea of having a purpose again is tempting, but–

"He makes it sound so simple. You both do. But it isn't. How can I just move on from this?"

How could he ever ask me to do that?

"Let me help you," Adrian says. "Maybe talking to someone who has been where you are might be helpful. I know that it seems impossible right now, but–"

"You don't know what it's like! You… you…!"

Even as I'm saying the words, I'm realising how foolish they are. Of all the things to say to them, when they'd spent as long as they had done waiting for me, grieving for me... I am foolish. Selfish.

I wait for Adrian to explode, to trill in very justifiable anger. Instead I am met with silence, which is almost worse. Then, they settle down next to me, and take one of my claws in their own.

This isn't an eridian gesture. We hum, and trill, and let our presence be known through our chords. No, this is a human gesture – the first I have felt for many days, now.

When they start talking, their voice is quiet but steady.

"You'll spend a long time sitting and waiting for something to change. After all, what's the alternative? You couldn't ever imagine life without them, but now you are alive, without them. Surely reality needs to shift to accommodate something so wrong? So, you'll spend a long time sitting and waiting for something to change before something actually does, and it won't be anything you would expect at all – in my case, I was hungry, and I needed food, so I went out to get food. And then I needed a new power cell for the radio, so I left the nest to get one. And then a friend asked for my help on their project, and I accepted, and took on work of my own again.

"Because," Adrian breathes, "I realised that nothing was going to change in the way you expect it to. You have no choice but carry on until you find normality again, because when a person is so intertwined with your life, there is no with or without them. Their life echoes on through yours. You carry their song, and you find normal, and you keep on living with all the habits you have picked up from them. You chime laughter at the memory of them. They drive you onwards."

They come to a stop, shuffling their feet while they try to find the chords to continue. While they do so, I try to parse meaning from what they've already said.

I am alive. Grace is not. There are humans who will be coming to Erid and would appreciate being met by eridians who truly knew them, and all their quirks.

"I think you should take the job," Adrian says quietly, after some time.

Grace doesn't think Rocky would ever admit to feeling resentful towards Erid for being left to figure out the astrophage solution by himself. He can understand why – they hadn't known the dangers, and would have likely just doomed even more eridians to death – but sometimes, on the rare occasion that it comes up, Grace thinks he might sense a little bitterness. He sometimes even feels a little bitterness on the eridian's behalf, despite logically knowing that it doesn't make any sense.

There would have been time to send another ship, at the end of the day. They'd been working on other prototypes, Rocky had told him, but Rocky had never seen any evidence of a second launch.

"It was irrational thinking pattern," he admits, finally, when Grace prods him about it. "Should be glad that nobody follow. Anyone that follow would die, with almost one hundred percent certainty."

He settles his carapace to the ground as if he has come to a stop, but Grace knows better. Rocky's fidgeting, working his way up to admitting something else, and sure enough he eventually chimes out again. "Sometimes, when alone on ship, Rocky had choice: anger, or nothing. Anger, or no thought at all. So Rocky choose anger, even when anger was irrational." He pauses, and Grace shuffles closer. "Rocky not want to be alone, even if other eridians got hurt because of it."

Grace leans into Rocky's side, and feels a gentle purr of acknowledgement at the contact. "You're not alone now, buddy", he says, unnecessarily and very necessarily both at the same time.

—

"Blip-A detected."

Grace raises his hands above his head in a gesture that might have been exasperation or might have been surrender – he thinks he can justify either, given the current state of chaos aboard the Hail Mary. "Sure!" he cries. "Why not?!"

Minutes ago, the ship had begun to decelerate. It was not due to decelerate for another eight months.

"Maybe this will answer some of our questions, at least," Grace mutters, abandoning the console. It had been spitting out increasingly confusing data in regards to what it was that had been detected and caused Mary to flag a problem, so he gladly leaves it behind to find Rocky.

The two of them meet at the viewport, Grace skidding to a stop before Rocky can get tangled up in his legs.

"Rocky, did you–"

Movement from the corner of his eye has him cutting himself off. Impossible movement, because it is coming from the side of him that is facing the viewport.

Grace turns. Rocky's saying something to him, but Grace isn't focused on translating the chords. He's focused on the sight before him: another Blip-A, in all its glory, no mere glitch in the Mary's detection systems. They've decelerated but they haven't come to a stop. They're going to go sailing on past, and probably begin accelerating again fairly soon.

Grace takes off running towards the cockpit.

—

This ship isn't an exact replica of the original Blip-A, it turns out. It's smaller, for starters, and the internal structure is much more compact. They have their similarities, though, enough for Rocky to be able to pinpoint the best place on the hull for him to be able to get a good reading of the ship's interior; he builds a bridge of xenonite and runs a live test in his newest suit, ignoring Grace's worries in an effort to reach the ship as fast as he can.

Both Blip-As are gravesites. That's a similarity that Grace wishes that they didn't have.

They'd known what they were going to find, when their radio calls had gone unanswered. They'd known that something bad must have happened, for this ship to have been left floating in the voidspace between solar systems, months away from reaching its destination.

Knowing doesn't make the discovery any easier to process. They make it back to the Hail Mary before Rocky sinks to the floor, and Grace goes with him, wrapping his arms over the eridian's shell in the only gesture of comfort he can offer. It feels too alien a thing for the moment, but it's all that Grace has.

"They send help," Rocky wails, anger and grief diffused in the chords. "They not give up. Rocky wrong wrong wrong–"

Grace has no words to comfort him. All he can do is hold Rocky close, and kneel in the place of the dozens dead that didn't survive for long enough to reach him.

---

everybody say thank you to @stardustloki for talking me down from killing Adrian in this one. i'll have to save the major character death for another day.

–standing in front of a jury, hands bound in front of her, telling herself that it wouldn't be that bad, and even if it was, it would be worth it. If she just stayed where she was, and did what they demanded of her, then perhaps they would realise that she might still be useful to them if she were free. Perhaps her predictions had been wrong, her planning all for nothing.

She remembers–

–metal biting into the skin of her wrists, being dragged along corridors that all looked the same as each other, the people handling her as if she might pose a threat. She remembers humouring them anyway, going over what she might do to escape them, as if a person of her stature, worn down by time and starvation and weariness, might be able to muster up any strength to harm anyone except themselves.

She remembers–

–feeling something warm and red running down her arms, hands secured above her head. Someone with a personal grudge, chasing a carefully nurtured desire for revenge, watching her as she struggled. She remembers telling herself that someone would step in, eventually. Someone would stop them.

When Grace had been younger, he'd hated how easily he cried. It wasn't a trait of his that he stopped disliking, in fact, until he began training to be a teacher. By the time he has a class of his own, he has learned enough to be able to reassure a student that another had dubbed a 'crybaby', and mean it.

It isn't a bad thing to cry easily, he tells them. People express themselves in different ways, and it isn't a bad thing to share that vulnerability with the world – it's a brave thing.

When he explains this aspect of himself to Rocky, it's just another point on the list of traits that make him a 'leaky space blob'. It doesn't feel like teasing, not like it might have done coming from a human. It's just another fact. It doesn't come up again, except when Rocky occasionally decides to prod him about his 'gross human tendencies' when Grace gets a bit too emotional over a move. Or over a hug. Or over one of many random meaningful moments that make up their lives on the way to Erid.

This means that it takes Grace longer than usual to consider what the equivalent of crying might be for an eridian, if they have any such direct equivalent at all. In fact, Grace doesn't think about it at all until he starts his work on constructing a better translator device for communicating with future eridians.

The device picks up on a larger range of frequencies than the last one had. The software is updated and tweaked until it meets Rocky's standards, which are, as usual, pretty high. Grace makes a point of using it whenever they're working together on something in an effort to spot errors in real-time, and since they're almost almost working together, he never really bothers to turn it off.

One 'morning', Grace wakes up well before he usually does. He had been struggling with restless sleep before that point, the morbid topic of their talk the night before looping through his thoughts at every opportunity, so he isn't surprised to find his sleep disturbed once more.

Rocky shifts a little, clicking as he notices Grace waking up. He had claimed that he was unaffected by the necessary discussion surrounding the impact of starvation on the human body, but had insisted on watching Grace even more closely than usual when he slept, so Grace has his doubts.

"Grace need more sleep," Rocky chimes gently. Grace doesn't need the translator to tell him that, he's heard it enough times (and in enough tones) by now to know the phrase by heart, but he finds his eyes drawn to the screen regardless.

The device is picking up on another frequency, something lower than his human hearing can pick up. It doesn't seem like Rocky is attempting to talk with him, given his prompting for Grace to go back to sleep, so even in his state of sleepiness Grace finds himself feeling a little curious.

When Grace points it out, expecting it to be the result of a bug, Rocky stiffens. "Apology," he whistles quietly. "Rocky is being rude rude rude. Not mean to upset Grace."

"I'm not upset," Grace says automatically, then blinks. "Should I be upset? Is there a reason I should be upset?" He feels like he's missing something. He's still too tired for this.

By the time Rocky explains the sound – a frequency too low for any human to pick up on, but one that any eridian would recognise as something mournful, something sad – Grace is wide awake. Apparently, to an eridian, grief can be a contagious thing. It takes the form of a song that can spread and spread, passed on by other eridians until it reaches someone who can return to the source of it and do something about it.

Well, there isn't much more that Grace can do about the prospect of him slowly starving to death, and he doesn't think that the sound has been stimulating any sort of distress response in himself, but that isn't going to stop him from trying to do something about it.

Grace isn't sure how to tackle things from the perspective of an eridian, but he's comforted enough crying children by this point to know what might help regardless of the species barrier.

"Hey," he says, pulling himself closer to Rocky. "It's okay. It's going to be okay."

Rocky doesn't respond, choosing to wordlessly lean into the touch, but Grace can see the silent spike in what the translator picks up.

They stay like that for a while. Eventually, Grace slips back into his own thoughts.

For decades, there hasn't been any eridians around to answer Rocky's cries for help. There hasn't even been anyone around to recognise the sound for what it is. Today, Grace silently promises to himself, that's going to change.

----

Here, the room around me is quiet. Comfortable.

…I'm in a room. A space with five walls, and a nest that I am curled up in, and a familiar non-eridian shape hunched over in one corner.

I make an effort to pull myself out of the haze of sleep. There had been an accident, I can remember. An explosion. I had been trapped, and injured, and Grace–

Grace is with me, now. They are safe, and I am safe, and so all must be well even though I have no way of knowing what had happened in the time that I have been trapped in my rest-state. Grace shifts where they sit, and I focus on them, gauging their wellbeing; they aren't asleep, I can tell this from their heartbeat, but the lolling of their head gives away their weariness.

Silly human. Always needing reminders, even now. "Grace should sleep. Statement."

Grace jerks their body upright at my tune, even as weak a tune as it is, and from that movement I can get a good enough read of them to sense that they are not badly injured in any obvious way.

"Rocky!" they cry with blatant relief, before they laugh and shake their head in disbelief. "There is no way–!" they cut themself off. "There is no way the first thing you do is tell me to take it easy!"

Their laughter soothes any worry that had been growing inside of me. Whatever had happened, that once-jarring sound tells me that it can't have been that bad... if I ignore the ache in my carapace, and the fact that I am obviously in some kind of medical area.

"You're unbelievable," Grace continues. "You're alive! Oh man, Rocky, I'm so glad you're alive."

It's at that point that Adrian enters the room, cutting off Grace before they can work themself up enough to start leaking from their light-sensors. Grace still sniffles a little while Adrian scuttles up to me, but neither of us comment on the sound, both of us too preoccupied with making sure the other is okay. Adrian purrs, seemingly content, and Grace seems to regain some control over their reactions.

We remain there for a short while. Then, I steel myself to ruin the moment of calm, curiosity winning out.

"What happened?" I finally ask.

Between the two of them they explain; the minor fault in an astrophage fuel store that had led to catastrophic failure; then the explosion that had led to a building collapsing over our heads. One of the dangers of introducing such a volatile substance into our infrastructure, and not something that we could have seen coming, Adrian explains, although they do not sound happy about it at all.

Grace talks about watching it all happen, helpless within their transport unit until the dust had settled. They tell Rocky about how they'd managed to free themself from it, and found the other eridians in various states of distress and injury – but none of them dead, somehow, though some stroke of luck.

They become quieter when they recall not being able to find Rocky. But, Grace doesn't make any attempt at sounding ashamed for leaving the other eridians behind to look for them after they knew that help was on the way. Especially since they had been able to find Rocky just in time.

"-and when the rescue team arrived to help, I was able to point them in the right direction. They found you, and the medics took over, aaaaand that's how we ended up here!" Grace concludes with a grin.

It's at this point that I realise something is wrong. Grace might have gotten better at hiding their 'white lies', but Adrian beside them makes no effort at all to hide the irritation in their posture at that final part of the explanation.

"Grace." The human turns towards me, face moulding itself into an innocent expression. "What aren't you telling me, question."

"I– what–" they splutter, giving Adrian the chance to take over.

"Grace lies!" my mate booms out, and both myself and Grace shrink backwards slightly. "Grace do stupid, dangerous things. Stupid stupid human. Climb through rubble to reach Rocky. Say, they can't wait. Say, Grace can reach areas that rescue team could not. Move rubble with weak human body." At that, they pause to huff. "...Grace do stupid brave things, perhaps. Adrian is glad glad glad that Rocky is safe. Wasn't there to help Rocky themself. Again."

They come to a stop, curling in on themself, and I can't help but crawl over to comfort them. The movement hurts, but it's worth it. I tilt my carapace against theirs, sharing warmth. Adrian hums, still sounding dejected, but not as much as they had been.

Sheepishly, Grace speaks up. "I'm not going to say that I'm sorry for doing the things that I did," they say, "because I know that if you had been in my place, Adrian, you would have done the same."

We all fall quiet, at that. Adrian can't deny the truth in Grace's words, and honestly, I myself am struggling to focus on them.

Sleep is creeping up on me once more, I realise. My body obviously needs more time to heal and recuperate. I relay this to the two of them and they settle down next to me in unspoken agreement: both will watch over my sleep, today.

Before I lose consciousness, I get their attention once more. "Rocky thank thank thank Grace Adrian. Much affection. Much love." I carefully whistle the notes, overlaying tones of affection. Then, I pause. "And Rocky not forget about Grace doing stupid dangerous things. Will discuss further after sleep-cycle, statement."

The sound of the explosion must have wiped out my internal map of the place. That's why I'd gotten mixed up. Following the logic helps me to ignore the instincts that tell me to check on ship readouts that I don't have access to and do not exist – because I am not in space – and do something actually productive.

I take stock of myself. I'm not badly injured. There is some damage to my carapace, but nothing so serious as to have broken through the outer shell completely. All things considered, the situation could be much worse.

I let out a click and tap two of my claws against the stone beneath me, trying to re-orientate myself. Just as there is stone below me, there is stone above me, too; slabs of it, leaning precariously against one another, but seemingly wedged in place for now. In fact, rubble encases me in every direction, making re-mapping the space even more of a complicated task. Retaining my knowledge of this area likely wouldn't be helpful to me anyway, with how much of this place has been destroyed beyond recognition. There's even some kind of sound-proofing material that has ended up in the blast zone, often interrupting my attempts to locate a path through the debris.

I hadn't been underground before the explosion, that much I knew. Now, I have either ended up a level lower than I had been, or a building must have collapsed onto the road around me. Either way, something had gone badly wrong. There is barely enough space to shuffle around in a circle, and no sign of an exit. Not that I can hear from where I am, anyway.

I can't properly sense the boundaries of this space, I realise. There isn't any soundproof material to hinder me after all. My hearing feels weaker than it should be, and I try to suppress the urge to tap again, to tap louder. If my hearing is damaged, then that won't help. I must keep a stronger hold on logical thinking.

What I can do is call out for help – even if I can't hear a response, that doesn't mean there isn't anyone close enough to hear me. I had been travelling with others, I can remember. They'd been following behind me, accompanying Grace. There's hope yet that rescue is nearby.

Maybe Grace is nearby. I suppress the urge to fidget at the thought of them being in a similar predicament as me. They'd been travelling separately in their xenonite transport, and behind the group of the other eridians. They should be fine. Surely, they should be fine.

…But what if they're not?

What if Grace had gotten unlucky, as they often do? What if they are pinned under rubble that they have no hope of shifting? What if they're stuck, waiting for me to rescue them?

Until now, I have been content to wait and figure things out slowly, but the image of Grace trapped like I am drives me to work quicker. He's probably scared. Alone.

I utter a low-pitched rumble for as long as I can. Then I wait, and listen for a response to my call for help.

Nothing.

It's only when I start to try and move around, intending to carry on calling out from the few other locations I can access, that I notice how sluggish I'm feeling. My limbs want to drag against the stone, and it takes me longer to process the sound input around me.

My body wants to shut down, obviously deeming a sleep-cycle necessary to return itself to full functionality. I can't allow it. I am still needed awake. Grace needs me awake.

I call out again, and once again receive no response in return. In desperation, I crawl to the thinnest section of the wall that I can get a read on with my limited hearing, and try to shift some of the stone. It should be an easy task for me, but I'm far from being at my strongest, and weariness slows my efforts down.

I pull and pull and pull at a rock, until– yes! It pulls free.

And above me, the other slabs of stone shift.

I freeze in place, cursing my haste and my lack of thought. I should be better than this. I know how to judge structural integrity. I need to focus, need to work through the exhaustion, as I have done before, as I had managed to do for decades–

"Rocky?"

Cutting through the sound of debris shifting over my head, comes a voice. No eridian would make sounds like those – there is only one person it can be.

"Grace!" I call out, before I even take the time to process what they might be saying, once again tapping the stones around me to try and pinpoint the human's location. The sound of shifting rubble has come to a stop, leaving my efforts uninterrupted.

Eventually I manage to detect movement, and even the outline of the suit that Grace has to wear to survive in our atmosphere. No details, but it tells me enough to understand the situation. They're above me, pacing the area, seemingly alone.

I call out to Grace again, but they don't respond. "Rocky," Grace calls out instead, "can you hear me?"

I cry out an affirmative even though I know it must be useless. If Grace didn't hear me just then, they can't hear me at all. Their hearing isn't as good as an eridian's, and I am too far away from them.

It doesn't help that my cries are growing weaker, sleep encroaching even faster than it had been before. I have no choice but to slump to the ground, and as I do, my carapace creaks. Mercury moves within the cracks, pooling in places it shouldn't. Exerting myself as I had done when shifting the rubble had been not just a bad idea, but a potentially fatal one – I need medical help, and fast.

I don't dwell on this fact. I don't have any choice in the matter.

As sleep takes hold of me, it's all I can do to focus on the sound of my friend, who has turned to walk away. They're going to leave me down here, and they won't ever know it. It's a thought that scares me more than the fact that I will be sleeping with nobody to watch me. Grace will never forgive themself.

I let out one final wail. The footsteps come to a stop. Then–

---

this was inspired by andy weir's document on eridians, specifically this part: "Humans have vastly better spatial memory. This is due to the fact that they are unable to sense it in all directions, like an Eridian can. So if a sudden noise or event removes an Eridian’s ability to hear, it will not have any idea what the makeup of the room is unless it put conscious effort into memorizing it in advance. While a human knows exactly what the room is like behind him, and could even find their way around in the dark."

The trawler that they acquire for her when their final plans are set in motion is no aircraft carrier, but it's close enough. They have it all set up for her, ready and waiting for her arrival, which Eva can appreciate. These past few weeks have been overwhelming. Having the logistics taken care of for her is one less thing that she has to try and set her weary mind to while she reacclimatises to life outside of a cell.

The crew has made some obvious efforts to mirror the setup they'd perfected on their first vessel. The layout is as close to the previous as they can get, and even some of the furnishings seem to have been transported from some of the old rec rooms to these new ones.

It should be a comfort. Eva finds that it is not.

The familiarity does nothing to help the panic that sets in when Eva is finally left alone in her quarters, a place that is spacious as far as ship quarters go, but is still a mere three metre by three metre box when all is said and done.

It's a ridiculous thing, to feel trapped in a room with an unlocked door. Ridiculous, she tells herself, leaving said door to swing shut behind her as she makes for the top deck.

She only passes a few people on her way, keeping her head ducked low so nobody will be able to get a read on her expression. Eva can blame her brisk pace for her breathlessness and nobody would be any the wiser, but doesn't want anyone to stop and question her regardless. Not that she truly thinks anybody might – it'll take more than a decade away from them for anyone to forget that it's a bad idea to interrupt Eva Stratt when she is walking as purposefully as she is doing so now.

She finds a quiet corner of the ship with little trouble – the cold wind is biting enough to cut through the haze that had carried her away from her room, and she doubts anyone else is going to brave it willingly – and she soon finds herself gripping the steel railings, taking deep but unsteady breaths.

Ridiculous, she tells herself again. She's being ridiculous. How is she supposed to resume command when she is afraid of lingering for too long in a small space. Almost all of the rooms on this ship will be small.

She closes her eyes, and makes another attempt to steel herself. The sound of the waves crashing against the side of the vessel is mesmerising, and she tries her best to focus on it.

It had just been a room, she tries to reason with herself. It had been small, yes, but any of the ship's sleeping quarters would be, and it wasn't even that small, not by the standards she now held. It hadn't looked even remotely similar to–

She takes another breath, even more ragged than the last.

The roar of the waves seems distant, somehow. She's waiting, she realises. Waiting with baited breath for something else. Jeering, perhaps. Or laughter.

For the most part, her life over the previous years had been dull. Whether it had been dictated that she served her time owed outside of a cell or within, she was always watched very carefully. Treatment had ranged from mundane to harsh, but had rarely been cruel.

It made the times where their treatment of her had been cruel stick with her all the worse.

With little else to do she would find herself stuck in a cycle of reliving the worst days over and over, either those during her tenure as mission director, or those spent at the hands of some particularly vengeful overseer. There were a couple of faces she doubted she would ever be able to forget. A couple of places, too; small rooms, with no windows, and nobody around to hear her shout or yell in fright at some imagined threat in the dark.

Rooms with no space to pace around, or even to fully stretch herself out.

Rooms that she had thought they might keep her in forever, because nobody was hurting her, were they? In fact, they were being kind enough to leave her to her own devices. It was a kinder fate than she deserved, wasn't it?

Eva grits her teeth at the memories, then smooths her expression. A moment of anguish is all she can allow.

The walls of this ship will not crush her, no matter how much they might have seemed to press on her lungs. The room that she will sleep in – somehow, eventually, between nightmares – may not have a window, but there is nobody to stop her from seeking out a different view. There will be no laughter. No mocking. Nobody to taunt her, and to tell her that providing her with any space larger than a grave was a mercy she didn't deserve, not with all the blood on her hands.

The first thing Eva notices when she wakes up is that she has made a mistake – because she is waking up. She had never intended to go to sleep in the first place, not here, in her office.

She's slumped against the arm of the sofa, and it's only when she shifts to sit fully upright that she notices the second unexpected facet of this situation in the form of a blanket that slides onto the seat beside her. The woollen material rubs against her arm as it shifts, and she blinks, frowning down at it.

She supposes she can understand how she ended up passing out in her office. Usually Eva keeps a strict schedule that involves at least six hours of sleep (Eva has learned from the mistakes of others, and knows that making critical decisions under limited cognitive function is a recipe for mission failure), but the previous day had been a gruelling one, and the night before that an emergency had meant that she had been unable to spare any time for rest.

The blanket, however, makes less sense. She's still staring down at it as if it might hold some kind of answer for her.

The fact that somebody had gone out of their way, used their precious time, to make her life a little more comfortable shouldn't be unexpected – but, somehow, it is.

The kindness surprises her.

In a world where everyone around her has no choice but to dedicate their every waking moment to ensuring the future of mankind– by her own orders, nonetheless– she has become used to brutal efficiency. She surrounds herself with it. Immerses herself in it. They made her the project leader because of it, because she could get the job done quickly enough to save them all.

She picks up the blanket from where it has fallen, and finds herself rubbing the material of it between her fingers, unable to pull herself from her thoughts. Later, she'll blame the fact that she was still waking up for her sluggishness. The reality, that such a simple reminder of what she was fighting for has almost driven her to tears, is harder to confront.

The kindness had surprised her, but it had been proof that there is still plenty of good in the world.

—

There is still plenty of good in the world.

There has to be, because that was the nature of humanity, but it has been a long time now since Eva has seen any proof of it for herself.

In her cell, she shivers. She had always known that prisoners would be the first to feel the effects of rationing. She had braced herself for it, accepted it, and even now that she is facing it she doesn't truly resent anyone for it. It's a cruelty she could see coming.

She hadn't, however, continued to follow that logic to the conclusion that other resources would be limited, too. She'd had other things to concern herself with, and little time to consider how comfortably she might spend her years in prison.

They'd taken the blanket and the bedding from her cell, the week previous. Others needed it more, they'd said, looking down at her as they carried it away.

It was one thing to know that the world was getting colder and colder, and another to feel that cold creep into her bones through the walls of a cell, with not even the flimsy sheet of fabric as a buffer. Even with her legs drawn up off of the concrete floor, she can't escape it. Her teeth chatter, and she huddles in on herself, hugging her legs to her chest. It must be the middle of the night, by now. These days, she sleeps in the daylight, when some small amount of warmth returns to the room.

This won't be forever, she reminds herself. Not forever; just until she is needed again outside of this place.

She has contingencies in place, of course, when it comes to her time spent in prison, and plans for if those contingencies fail. These years of her life have always been weighed by how usefully they might be spent, either outside of these walls or within. Currently, she's the distraction the world needs to keep the pressure off of the remaining Hail Mary team – but one day, the scales will tip, and her life will be more useful to those trying to recover the beetles.

It's a strange party. Rocky has always assumed that all parties that Grace has held on Erid are odd by Earth standards, but this one feels strange even to itself. Many of the friends that Grace has managed to accumulate over the years are present, people are talking and laughing together, and Earth music is playing over a set of modified speakers. There isn't any food, something that Grace had explained would usually be found at Earth celebrations, but this is normal. Everything is, theoretically, as it should be. There isn't any reason for Rocky to be acting as it is, not by the standards that it knows Grace would judge it by if Grace had already seen Rocky lurking at the outskirts of the gathering, making no move to actually join in.

As it is, Grace hasn't spotted it yet, so Rocky is left with more time to brood.

It's the reason for celebrating that just feels wrong, in Rocky's opinion. It taps the ground to get a clearer picture of the party from where it sits at the bottom of the cliff, then tucks its arms even tighter around itself.

The reason for celebration this time is the removal of Grace's arm cast. Apparently this is a 'colourful' thing, something that they had all assisted Grace in decorating, adding different patterns and eridian messages to it in accordance with important Earth traditions. Grace had said that it would be sad to see it go, but Rocky couldn't be more glad to put the whole thing behind them.

Rocky had said it would be a worse reason to host a party than the others they had shared, but Grace had said it didn't care. He'd rather celebrate something simple, rather than the avoidance of something as dire as death by astrophage crisis, like their first celebration had involved.

Rocky would argue otherwise. Any situation involving its friend being in pain was dire enough for it.

When the accident had first occurred, a fall that had led to a broken bone, Grace had been in agony. Rocky couldn't forget the sounds it had made, the vocalisations of pain that Rocky hadn't heard it make for many years now. Worse, almost, was how Grace had attempted to calm Rocky in the aftermath. As if Rocky were the one that had been howling in pain just a few hours beforehand.

It was "just something that happened", Grace had told Rocky. "Just an accident, nothing more."

It was something that Grace could have avoided, Rocky had argued, and Grace had shrugged. It'd told Rocky that it needed to learn its new limits. It was getting older, and having brittle bones was just one of the consequences of that process that it should have been expecting.

Grace had gone on to remind Rocky of the other signs of aging that it was anticipating, after that. It had explained things to Rocky that Rocky had already heard it bring up a dozen times before.

That was another human thing of its that Grace hasn't managed to shake – reminding Rocky of things that it had no physical way of forgetting. Grace blamed its own imperfect memory for forgetting that fact, but Rocky knew the truth behind its reminders. Its friend had been circling back to the same morbid topics surrounding its own mortality at an increasing frequency, as of late.

It keeps going back to the same topics, and saying the most unthinkable things, and now it wants to do something as ordinary as hosting a party? Rocky doesn't know how it can follow suit, not after what Grace had said to it.

As if intercepting the light-thoughts from Rocky's crystalline pathways, Grace finally notices Rocky's chosen lurking-spot and ambles its way over to it.

"Rocky!" it exclaims, showing its teeth. "I didn't see you over here, sorry. How's it going?"

It's aiming for casual, Rocky knows, just as it knows that Grace is hiding its discomfort. After all of these years, it's almost figured out how to mask its emotions from it – but just as Grace has adapted, so has Rocky. Silly Grace, thinking that Rocky wouldn't be able to notice a lie.

"I'm tired," Rocky replies, choosing not to address the 'elephant in the room'. "It's nearly my sleep cycle."

Despite the lack of enthusiasm, Grace latches onto its words. "I didn't realise," it exclaimed. "I could tell people to start leaving, if you wanted. You could sleep. I would watch."

Rocky hums, a noncommittal noise that it had definitely picked up from the human, and one that has the human drooping slightly where it now sits. Rocky didn't care – it was fitting to use its own quirks against it. Nothing less than it deserved, after what it had said.

"Some day, Rocky, you're going to have to let me go. I just want you to be ready for that."

Grace had been mistaken at the time when it'd thought that Rocky had been upset over the idea of it dying. Not that Rocky isn't – but it was the fact that Grace had assumed that Rocky wasn't able to do something about it that had really gotten to it.

Despite Grace's squishiness, there are many human traits that Rocky is grateful that it possessed. Its humour, its closeness, its melodic laughter… and, right now, the fact that it would be impossible for Grace to be able to interface with any eridian thrum.

Rocky isn't sure why it is hesitant about Grace knowing of the thrums Rocky has encouraged, thrums with the goal of extending its short lifespan, but Rocky is. Grace has been amenable to things in the past that had shared the goal of improving its life, such as the various walking aids and supports that helped it move under greater gravity than it was designed to handle. Grace had been grateful for such interventions, even, but this…?

Rocky isn't sure.

Not that Grace's opinion mattered in this case. There is only one option, really. There is a problem, and Rocky is going to fix it. Even if it can't stop its friend from falling and injuring itself, it can do that.

By its side, the human shifts. Even lost in thought as Rocky is– another human trait that Rocky had picked up over the years from Grace, or at least was willing to blame on it– Rocky picks up on the motion, and refocuses.

"Later," Rocky says, addressing the human's concerns over its sleep. Grace shrinks in on itself some more, so Rocky shifts a little closer, extending a claw to lay on its knee. Grace takes comfort in contact, Rocky knows, and uses now to distract from its mood – and to check up on the human, emitting a click to get a better picture of its friend.

Rocky hasn't been squeamish about observing Grace for a long time now, and had been there when the fracture had occurred, so finding it along Grace's arm-bone is a simple matter.

Less simple is dispelling the sound-memory of the incident that had led to it; it had been a terrible thing, a sound that no human should make. Eridians would emit cracks when fighting, or when colliding with their craggy environment, but that was just the sound of their carapace doing its job and keeping them safe. With Grace, the sound had meant something very different, transforming from something ordinary into something terrible.

Rocky wouldn't ever be able to forget it, just as he wouldn't be able to forget any of the reminders of Grace's shorter lifespan. As it huddles against the human, clicking again more audibly to reassure it that Rocky is watching over it, Rocky can't shift its thoughts away.

Neither, it suspects, can Grace, not if the grip against Rocky's arm and the closeness of it is anything to go by. Grace still needed Rocky, in more ways that it might realise.

And here Grace was, telling Rocky that it needed to let it go without a fight.

Never.

---

It takes Grace a few years longer to realise what must be happening to him, and longer still to work up the courage to actually confront Rocky about it. Although, he wonders if part of the hesitation might not have been due to nerves, but rather a morbid curiosity over how long it would take for Rocky to tell him.

Did Rocky truly think he wouldn't notice? Grace isn't as observant as his eridian friend, but he isn't stupid, no matter what Rocky might say when Grace is overly tired or acting in a way that doesn't make sense to him (as if anything that didn't make sense to Rocky must be stupid by default).

It isn't like there hasn't been opportunity to bring the subject up, either. Grace has spent a long time trying to get his friend to talk to him about Grace's shorter lifespan, and what to do when it is spent. He has never succeeded, and to this day it has been one of the few things that they'll properly clash over; Rocky, never willing to sit still for the conversation, and Grace, never willing to just let it drop.

Well, no further. Today, Grace isn't going to give Rocky the chance to escape the conversation.

"Hi there, Rocky," he calls out in greeting, watching the eridian skitter towards him down the beach. Grace is aiming for casual, but he knows that Rocky knows him well enough now to notice his nerves showing even through a simple greeting. "Come on, sit down. I want to talk to you about something."

Rocky does as he asks, but audibly clicks in his direction as he does so, a sound that is typically used to get a better picture of his surroundings in difficult or unusual terrain. The eridian has told Grace before that Grace's squishiness makes him especially easy to get a read on, so the louder echolocation sound is purely for Grace's benefit – I've got my 'eyes' on you, Rocky is telling him.

In return, Grace smiles. Rocky's full attention is exactly what he wants here, after all.

"Yes, yes, talking," the eridian chimes, "what else would Rocky be here to do? This is supposed to be your rest day. No adventures today."

As he settles, he shuffles his claws in front of him, something that is decidedly not for Grace's benefit, Grace suspects, given that this is usually a nervous tell.

"Agree, agree, agree," Grace replies. "No adventures. Maybe a movie, or a game of chess… I just have a question for you, first."

He turns, making sure that he has Rocky's full attention.

"When, exactly, were you planning on telling me that you'd done something to mess with my lifespan?"

Rocky doesn't freeze, exactly, because he had already stilled himself when Grace had started talking and adopted the pose of a boulder in true eridian fashion. He does, however, fail to respond.

Grace waits, and waits, then sighs.

"Why wouldn't you just tell me? Why not ask?"

"...What is the point of asking when there is only one correct answer. Statement."

At that, Grace finds himself scowling. "That's not the first time I've heard that kind of sentiment, Rocky. And yeah, I guess everything worked out in the end, because I got to meet you, and we were able to save our worlds, but… still. It stings to not have been able to make that choice myself."

Rocky shuddered. "What if Grace said no? Grace had said that he had made peace with lifespan, and maybe it is like the first time, a false-peace, but maybe it isn't. Maybe Grace has made peace. Maybe Grace doesn't want to–"

He cuts himself off, his final note ringing out without another to follow.

"It doesn't matter," he finally continues. "Rocky has fixed everything. Any other outcome would be unacceptable."

He pauses. Shuffles from one claw to another.

"Rocky can't keep being Rocky without Grace."

The last part is warbled quietly, almost too quietly for Grace to pick up with his limited range of hearing. It's not an apology, or an excuse, but a confession.

"I don't think Grace would be Grace without Rocky, either," Grace admits, and feels Rocky lean into his side at the concession, "but no matter how long I live for, one of us is going to end up dying eventually."

He pauses, and pulls Rocky closer, drawing him up into a hug. He doesn't want to say what he has to say next, knows that it'll hurt his friend, but some things need to be said. If they had been, then this conversation wouldn't have needed to happen.

"There are just some things that you can't fix."

"Rocky!"

Grace was shouting the word before he was even really awake enough to realise what he was saying. Unfortunately, he was also not awake enough to have fully forgotten the motivation behind it, images of how his friend might ignite in his oxygen-rich atmosphere still lingering in his mind's eye.

"Rocky is here," the voice– the chords– came from somewhere next to him, finally doing the job that Grace's panicked wheezing hadn't been able to do and dispelling the nightmare for good. There were no wailing notes of pain behind them, no high-pitched screech; just the usual steady timbre that Grace would expect from the eridian.

Rocky was fine. There wasn't any emergency. Adrian was long behind them, and the two of them had survived.

Grace focused on that thought, struggling to wrestle back control of his breathing. It took him longer still to really comprehend where he was and what Rocky was up to, even after he had forced himself upright and blinked away the worst of the grogginess - he wasn't used to seeing the eridian running around outside of the ball, and certainly wasn't used to having him be able to get close enough to try and provide some kind of physical comfort.

Rocky, xenonite suit catching the lights above them, had huddled into his side, far closer and warmer than he had been able to when he had been restricted by the xenonite ball. It was nice. Grounding, even.

"Nightmare," Rocky stated once Grace had gotten his breath back, and Grace nodded despite the fact that the eridian wasn't really looking for clarification. By this point, it was not as uncommon an occurrence as it had been a few months ago when they'd started their journey towards Erid. In fact, nightmares had been making an increasingly regular appearance during the night-cycle that Grace had adopted.

Grace wasn't stupid, despite the recent accusations that Rocky had thrown at him for occasionally avoiding sleep. He knew that having increasingly dire nightmares was normal for someone who had been through as much as he had.

Knowing that fact didn't mean he had to like it, however, and soon he was pushing himself even further upright, bracing himself to swing his legs around and off of the bed– only to find himself faced with an immovable force.

Next to him, Rocky had shifted, placing a hand against Grace's shoulder.

"Grace only sleep for two hours," Rocky chimed. "Is not enough."

Grace grimaced, and shrugged off the touch. "I don't think I'm going to be getting any more sleep at the minute, bud," he said. "I need to stretch my legs. Get out of the way, would you?"

Rocky shifted, two of his other arms thudding against the bed in an agitated manner.

"Grace say this last night. And night before! No sleep bad bad bad for Grace."

The two of them stopped and stared at each other – or, rather, Grace frowned at Rocky, and Rocky tilted his carapace towards Grace in a manner that Grace had been interpreting as a hard stare.

Then, when Grace went to push himself up again regardless, Rocky stepped forwards into his space, taking full advantage of being free from the xenonite hamster ball.

The xenonite suit was a new addition, one that had gone through a few iterations already before Rocky had landed on the version he was using now. He'd insisted on making it, refining the design to something more form-fitting in case of emergency, despite Grace's best efforts to reassure him that their journey shouldn't pose any threats similar to what they had faced around Adrian. Not that Grace had been trying too hard, beyond trying to quiet his friend's anxieties – it gave Rocky no excuses not to help with chores like keeping the ship tidy, even if it did give him more opportunities to be a menace.

Grace still found it a little jarring to see his friend moving around in it, and stranger yet to have his friend use to get up in his face.

The two of them had celebrated its creation with a proper hug, which Grace had melted into and then promptly freaked out over. Since then, they'd been working up to maintaining closer and closer contact, Rocky obviously not trusting Grace's reassurances that he was going to be fine.

Until now, that was.

"Rocky!" Grace sputtered, left with no choice but to let the eridian push him further and further backwards until he was lying down flat again. "Hey, cut it out!"

Grace had known, intellectually, that eridians were strong. It was one thing to know that as a fact, however, and another thing entirely to experience firsthand.

Defiantly, he tried to wriggle down the bed and out from underneath Rocky, only for Rocky to immediately hook two of his arms under Grace's and haul him back up into place. Although, maybe 'hauled' was the wrong word to describe it, given how little effort the eridian put into moving him. Despite the gentle grip that Rocky kept on him, there was no chance of escaping it.

"Come on, Rocky," Grace groaned, "stop messing around! I'll go to sleep eventually, I promise. I'm just not tired right now."

"Grace also promise this two nights ago! Only few hours of sleep since then, not enough. Grace lie lie lie." Rocky tilted his carapace upwards, as if realising something, then chittered in a pitch that Grace had come to understand as laughter. "Now Grace lie! Lie down."

Grace sighed.

"Is joke!" Rocky clarified, all-too-pleased with himself, and disappointed at the lack of encouragement that Grace usually provided towards his efforts at human puns.

"Okay, okay, good one!" Grace forced himself to laugh, aware that he might be grinning a little too wide to be convincing. "I'm giving up now. No need to keep–"

Grace cut himself off, trying to pull himself up and away this time.

Even the element of surprise was of no help to him. In fact, he probably found himself the one more shocked out of the two of them, not truly expecting Rocky to keep up his antics for long. As it was, all Grace succeeded in doing in his second bid for freedom was getting himself wedged underneath Rocky's carapace, half stuck on his side, half with his arm trapped underneath him.

Rocky chittered. "Amuse amuse amuse! No problems, if Grace insists, Grace can sleep on front!" he chimed smugly.

Grace didn't bother with a response that time, given how stubborn he knew Rocky could be when he'd made up his mind about something. He settled on gritting his teeth, something that the eridian probably found more disturbing than any barbed words Grace might spit at him, trying to think of anything that might persuade Rocky to see reason.

Above him, the eridian shifted, moving more of his weight onto Grace's back as he seemed to take the human's silence as surrender. It was far from a crushing force, nothing more than a gentle pressure, but something about it still had Grace freezing up.

Grace swallowed. Rocky knew what he was doing, he reassured himself. In the eridian's own words Grace was a 'leaky space blob' - Rocky knew that Grace wasn't as sturdy as he was. But still, as he lay there, he could have sworn the weight above him was increasing even further. It was shifting from a gentle but steady pressure to something more crushing. Something truly inescapable.

Something that seemed to be making it harder and harder to breathe.

"Rocky," Grace managed to get out, "I don't think I can sleep like–"

Rocky made a gentle hissing sound, not dissimilar to white noise. It was the eridian equivalent of a 'shhhhhh'.

"Less talk, less worry, more sleep. Rocky protect."

Right, sleep. That was the whole purpose of this. But grace didn't feel particularly restful, nor did he feel particularly safe, no matter what his friend might insist upon.

In fact, he could feel… a chill?

That didn't make any sense. Rocky should have been an inescapable source of heat, and here he was suppressing a shiver.

Then, he went to clutch the bedsheets, intending to drag them closer towards himself, and found himself clutching at blades of grass.

Wheezing, he forced his head to the side and his gaze upwards, eyes gliding over the sight of a chain link fence and a stormy sky and settling on a faceless figure. That wasn't right either, he knew it wasn't, and yet in his confusion his brain couldn't summon up the answer to who he should be looking up at.

"Sleep," they commanded, but he didn't want to go to sleep. He didn't want to go to sleep, but they weren't going to give him any choice about it. He knew that with as much certainty as he knew that everything about this was wrong, wrong, wrong.

There were hands holding him down, pressing against his spine, his ribs. They'd caught him, and now they would never let him go.

He wouldn't be able to move them. He knew that with certainty, too. Enough so that he didn't even bother to try.

They were going to hold him down until he slept and slept and couldn't wake up even if he wanted to.

The ground beneath him was cold and hard… no. No, there was give to it, a softness that went beyond the texture of grass, but that didn't make any sense. Nothing made any sense.

Why did he have to sleep?

"Please…" he whispered. Whimpered, really, but panic now held him too firmly in its grip for him to care. "Please, I don't want to go. You're killing me. You'll be killing me. Please."

Discordant music chimed overhead, as nonsensical as everything else around him.

"I can't do it, I'm sorry. I don't want to go. I want to live. Please, please."

Desperation had driven him to fight against his breathlessness, but now that overtook him too, and his words failed him. In their place came tears, sobs that escaped between wheezes and distracted him from the fact that there was no longer any weight pressed against him at all.

The hands had disappeared. The grass, too.

There was a bed underneath him, he realised eventually, after exhaustion had slowed his panic to a stop. A bed underneath him, and above him…

Nobody.

Grace blinked. Slowly, he twisted himself around so he could face upwards, appreciating the fact that he could breathe a little easier again.

There was nobody there, he thought to himself, but there should be somebody, there should be–

"Rocky!"

Realisation had him shouting for his friend for the second time that day, sitting bolt upright and looking around the room. His room on the Hail Mary, he could remember, now. It was like he was coming out of a nightmare, except this one hadn't needed him sleeping to sneak up on him.

There was nowhere he was safe from them, then.

Movement caught his attention in the corner of the room before he could start to spiral again, and his gaze landed on his friend. The eridian was inching his way towards Grace, wariness apparent in every hesitant step.

"Grace?" he warbled, as unsteady in his vocalisations as he was in his movements.

"Rocky," Grace repeated himself, although this time out of relief rather than distress. "Rocky, hey, what happened?" He still felt a little distant from everything, a little shaken.

Rocky paused, hunched in on himself. "Apology, apology, apology," he said, maintaining a careful distance from Grace as he spoke. "Rocky hurt Grace. No understand how. Rocky much careful, Grace much precious. Rocky want help Grace with sleep, but Grace upset upset upset. Grace leak. Grace no make sense."

Grace leaned backwards into the pillows, absorbing everything that Rocky had told him and thinking back on what must have happened.

"I…" he began, then failed to summon the words or his courage to explain. "I'm sorry, bud. I must have surprised you. That was just a human thing, like a nightmare." He tried for a smile, but it came out far more wobbly than intended. "Just a silly human thing, that's all. An overreaction."

Rocky was smart. He'd want a better explanation than that, Grace knew. But maybe this time he'd grant Grace a little mercy.

On the floor beside him, Rocky shifted from arm to arm. "Not silly human thing," he finally came out with. "Scary human thing. Grace say Rocky killing him. Why?"

Why.

Well, there it was. No mercy for Grace this time. Rocky wasn't going to let this one go, even if he agreed to drop the topic for the moment.

"I was mistaken," Grace whispered. "I was confused. Sorry, Rocky. You… you reminded me of something bad that had happened to me on Earth, that's all. Something I'd rather not talk about, please."

Rocky uttered a mournful sound, leaning his carapace towards Grace. "Bad, bad, bad," he warbled. "Apology."

"Don't." Grace bit out. "You didn't do anything wrong. I was the one who–" He cut himself off, shaking his head. "Nothing. Let's just forget about it, okay?"

Carefully, Rocky pulled himself up onto the bed. He tapped the sheets twice, shifting from side to side. "Yes," he chimed quietly, almost beyond the range of Grace's hearing. For a moment, he looked as if he might want to settle against Grace's legs, before changing his mind and dropping onto the bed where he stood.

The space between the two of them was only a foot or so, but it felt further. Grace felt the urge to fill it, to shuffle closer, but found himself glued to the bed where he sat.