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Until Grace slips out a sentence along the lines of "could you give me a little grace here" and Rocky immediately points out he used a word wrong so Grace has to explain that yeah, grace means elegance but it can also mean mercy sometimes too.

common origins of suffering, euphoria, and ferret

Grace wasn't sad and lonely, he was happy, he had a good life, he very much did not want to die. They have to do a looney tunes chase sequence and drug him because Grace was *very* unwilling to be the sacrificial lamb. Humanity's savior was dragged kicking and screaming into the role and called selfish for daring to be a coward, as if most of us wouldn't be.

And then he befriends Rocky, who never demands a sacrifice from him, who willingly prolongs his journey home so Grace can go back to his. Rocky has a mate back home and his species depends on his return, and still risks his life to save his squishy human friend. And Grace returns the favor.

i remember entering his office with my tape recorder, sitting in a chair that was too big, and asking him questions about war, and his life after war, while swinging my legs over the edge of the chair. i remember being very, very quiet as he spoke of pulling the car over on the highway for fear of crashing when his hands would shake uncontrollably in response to song on the radio or a smell that he couldn’t be sure was real or sense-memory. and of ruined relationships and anger and american hypocrisy. 

and i also remember that was the day i learned what “valor” meant. he used “valor” in a sentence and i didn’t know that word, and when i asked him to explain “valor” he became very quiet. and i can’t remember precisely what he said, if he ever offered me the dictionary definition or not, but i do remember him looking very sad, and saying something about our country’s idea of “valor”, and also something about a broken promise. and there was an edge to his words that i couldn’t parse at the time that i would later come to understand was bitterness, that he sounded bitter.