Dog years this, early dying grace that. Didn’t Rocky still get exposed to a high dose of radiation in the taumoeba leak incident? Like, more than he ever passively experienced on Erid in his entire life, period?
Give that rock cancer. Doomed queerplatonic relationship. They both die at the same time and Adrian turns the biodome into a museum to their sacrifice.
#consider: rocky dying before grace #grace gets told about how tragic it is that he will die so young #his lifespan is nothing compared to an eridian's #rocky preemptively grieves for him #as do the other eridians #and then #when grace is in his 50s maybe 60s #starting to get old but still so much time left ahead of him #rocky starts to falter #his carapace cracks and his vents don't properly function #the eridians have no idea what they're looking at #and grace is no medical doctor but when they describe the foreign cells growing in tandem and overtaking rocky's little biomatter #grace knows with a sinking feeling deep in his gut that rocky will not make it. the radiation got to him after all. rocky is dying of cance #and there's nothing grace can do #over the next 5-10 years grace tries to play with his friend and keep him company but rocky can do less and less until he can only lie ther #the change starts slowly but accelerates exponentially #grace and adrian take turns watching over him as rocky sleeps more and more #the news leaks and suddenly they aren't the only ones watching #some eridians make pilgrimages to watch over the savior of erid in his last moments #when he finally dies there is a massive day of mourning across the planet. #grace and adrian cling to each other as best they can but it's not the same. it will never be the same #and grace is left with a horrible all-encompassing clawing feeling of guilt. it should have been him. it should have been him. #it should have been him. he was the one meant to die first. what does he do now? without rocky? without his best friend? he dies soon after
via hivemindofevilbats
