zai

He knows his gut spins with something muddy. A murky sort of unease, like he’s obligated to be acutely aware but falls just short of detail.

Twisting memories and shadows of what once was, what could have been or what he might have wished to be, knock around his eardrums often. 

Counts and summation are at the mercy of logic. Every so often, Grace reflects—or well, tries to—in an effort to warp what evades him into something less dubious.

It hurts. A pinch that dulls into a droning, long ache in his skull.

What the hell was in that vodka? 

It’s unclear how long ago he cleared the stock. Perhaps it’s still running in his system, the mad buzz of liquor tugging unease in his veins.

Something clicks against the floor, tinny in its echo—a hollow reverberation from afar.

Grace knows Rocky can’t sit still.

Then comes a thud.

Perhaps it’s a motor inside, that spurs a sideways scuttle, to stave off the dread of paralysis. 

“Rocky break plug.” comes a voice from around the corner. “Amaze.”

A smile tugs at Grace’s lips. “Uh-huh,” Sarcasm. That’s new. Not a motor. That much he’s certain.

Rocky isn’t something that can be trialled to success or struck down at an error.

“Fixing it.”

No, Rocky is something far more capricious. Xenon metallicised and fragments created at the behest of sporadic intention could only find its root in something fuller.

The shape of the universe has congealed and moulded itself time and time again. Yet in all its warped, ripping glory—

“Rocky fixed it!” Another clunk. “Rocky try again.”

—a divot in celestial sequence has allowed Grace this.

He flicks through photos, places that furrow his eyebrows—though the tunnel of his memories is still a tenebrous thing.

Screen sliders rush through a torrent of reminiscence. Grace thinks he should take his time with these. On Earth, he was certainly known. After all, the double-edged sword of life and death sits heavy in his hand.

Blurred faces and rayless smiles meet his inquisitive gaze. His own suited portrait seems to be missing. There’s a rustling to his right.

Grace knows this is a suicide mission. 

He must have had nothing to lose. There's a clench in his jaw, and a pen twirled in his finger now. Gaze briefly flicking behind him, his temple creases in thought.

His life must have truly rounded itself off. Cyclical ends, and answers to all his questions. 

Something unknowing sits in his stomach at the notion.

A distant screw meets gravity and begins a quick, echoing roll against the ground.

Ryland Grace must have truly been ready to die. Eager to embrace the stars, to fight for salvation. He’ll remember it. Remember and be less scared of doomsday.

He thinks of his peers.

If fate had its fangs pulled, spine ripped out and moulded into a slingshot to fling the Hail Mary back, would they still be there?

He could assume crow’s feet instead of the youthful naïveté of pretending in those eyes. To kid oneself into nonchalance.

Or the soles of his shoes might set down into ash. His fingertips kissing debris and eyes bracing dust.

A poster greets his next ogle.

Believe in the Hail Mary.

Bold letters, charged font, fluorescent colours—man-made messiah thrust into the faces of the public.

Please believe we can do this.

A cry for help. To whom? God, perhaps.

But they rid themselves of their confessional. Shot it into space, in fact. Though in place of lattice there lies wiring, the curtain is a pressure chamber and the wood is the thick shine of metal.

“Rocky fix. Good, good, good.” There’s no reply to his announcement. Rocky rolls past the separating wall—where Grace is perched, the man still dead to the world in his musings. “...Rocky fix…?” he repeats. Still nothing.

Grace is curled in a chair, perturbed and bent in on himself in thought.

Nothing could orchestrate this, Grace concludes. This cramped cockpit, this adoring creature, no goodness could ever settle anywhere to produce something like this.

Certainly not in a human, anyway.

The Hail Mary is confession in steel, reckoning in alloy infusion—twirling to its own orbit and commanding its own saviour.

Grace knows that much.

But to know is a nod to mere fact. To declare sic probos and move on. To understand is when the soul takes root. 

When Petrovas itself has dug its cosmic hand into the mind and tethered it to the heart.

Rocky makes Grace understand. Doesn’t have him guess motivation in narrow of gazes, or the tense of shoulders.

Clear cut. Exact and perfect.

He may not have truly known Earth, but the vivid perception of the Eridian he’s come to know could blast the nearest star to smithereens.

Grace snorts a little at the notion. “Astrophage better watch out,” he mumbles fondly to himself.

“Grace take over Astrophage?” 

“Oh my God!” Grace almost kicks a cabinet over as he comes down. Startled, he scrambles for purchase, but his ass hits the floor anyways. It’s cold, and shoots a vivid pain up his spine.  “Don’t… scare me like that.” he groans, nursing the tingle. His poor coccyx. The jostled lilt in Grace’s voice sees Rocky angle the prismatic chamber he’s been navigating to crouch a little.

“You say Astrophage watch out,” Rocky perches in concern. “Is it dying? But we haven’t found a solution. Is fuel broken?”

A shaky laugh escapes Grace. “No,” he wheezes. He sounds almost winded. Like he’s been caught and the air’s been snatched out of his lungs. For reasons other than his bruised tailbone. “Nah, just… they gotta watch out for us.”

Rocky stills. 

A tiny noise flits out. It holds the same notion as a blink of confusion. Grace swallows the urge to laugh again. “Because we’re gonna find a way to get them!” he offers instead.

“But Rocky Grace kill Astrophage.” Rocky trundles even closer. “Grace traitor?”

That’s a sour notion. “No!” Grace places his hands on the small enclosure-esque structure. “We’re going to kill Astrophage, yes?”

“Yes.”

“So they gotta watch out, because we’re going to kill them so hard.”

Grace feels like a cartoon. The man of the moment, posed on the title screen. He wonders if they’d make cartoons of him back home.

His palms on Rocky slide a little as his fingers tense. Home.

How could home be so far away? Sure, there are literal light years between him and that herald of a planet—but nothing in his chest feels that way.

No screaming yearn, no clutch for a hint of nostalgia. Just confusion. Dim, dull confusion.

“Kill them so hard, statement.” Rocky affirms. Grace refuses to curb his humour this time—settling for his palms to rest once more as a giggle tumbles out of his mouth.

It’s here he understands why there’s no chasm in him. 

No gaping leak for a bleeding heart to pour out of.