Picture with me; Grace just do not make it to Erid, he dies a couple of weeks or even days before getting to the planet.
Maybe he had a sickness that his malnourished body couldn't take rid of, maybe because he had such sensible skin he got a cut that went to deep, or got infected. Maybe he just went to sleep and didn't have the energy to wake up again.
When the Blip-A gets to Erid and the eridians are able to open it to see inside, all what they found is an Rocky focused in watching over a Grace that will just not wake up.
The scientists try to snap him out, but he just doesn't react and they do not have time to waste, so they found logs about the taumeba and are able to understand what it is.
Rocky is in a catatonic state, unresponsive to the world, but the eridians assume he is sleep, that he fall sleep while watching over this alien entity. It isn't until they try to move Grace that Rocky reacts.
He is feral, he doesn't allow anyone to touch Grace, murmuring things about food and sleep and "human" fragility.
Not able to make Rocky hear reason they have to call Adrian to the scene, who is quick to react and try to calm their mate.
Rocky lets Adrian come close, he tries to explain what is happening to Adrian he exclaims things along the lines of "he is sleep, let him sleep, he is tired." They even let them touch Grace, because Rocky knows that Adrian is safe, Adrian would never hurt anyone, much less someone as inofensive as a sleeping Grace. He focus on keeping the other eridians at bay.
Adrian realizes that Grace is dead, peacefully dead, just as someone who had not sense their own dead, or had made peace with it, but completly gone of this world, and they have to be the one to tell their mate the hard true;
"No! no, no...he is just sleeping, like the others did, but he will wake up, he has to wake up, he... he saved the stars, he saved me! he would not die in his sleep, no after everything, no like this..."
That is when they finally touch Rocky, to have all his attention.
"I'm so sorry, my melody, but he is gone."
And Rocky collapses against Adrian, crying in painfully shrieks and shaking, because somehow he has been able to be the only survivor, again.
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