Chapter Text
Eleven.
That was how many light years Rocky had traveled on his mission toward Tau Ceti, his mission to save his homeworld from the alien parasites consuming his specie’s star.
Twenty two.
That was how many people, how many of those that Rocky considered not only colleges but friends, Rocky had watched fall asleep, only for them to never reawaken.
Forty six.
Forty six years he had spent alone in the vast void of space, surrounded only by the glimmer of the final brilliant star; the reason as to its continued burning, the one thing that may save his dying world, slipping between his three clawed hands like sand he’d only ever seen through the screen.
Five.
The number of months he had spent with the man who’d clumsily danced and fumbled his way into Rocky’s life trying to save their stars. The number of months that, despite the stress and the anxiety and the certainty that if they failed their species would die, had been some of Rocky’s favorites.
Fifty six.
That was how many days Rocky had spent huddled in the generators of his ship, trying desperately to stay warm and breathing as his ship failed around him. The number of days before Grace, the incredible idiot that he was, banged against the walls of his ship and pulled him from the deteriorating wreckage of the place he’d lived for five decades and told him he would take him home.
Four.
The number of years the trip from Tau Ceti to Erid would take factoring in relativity and time dilation.
Five.
The months still left before they arrived back at Rocky’s home planet and their journey came to an end.
Three.
Three days since Grace last woke up, and calling the hour or so of half delirious apathy in which the human’s eyes had been half open wakefulness was a stretch even to Rocky’s desperate mind.
Rocky had the whole of the meals required to feed a crew of twenty three for decades, Grace had the remnants of the scraps meant to sustain a crew of three for months; and try as they might, there was simply no way he would ever be able to glean anything useful from the eridian’s food, high in lead and mercury as it was.
Grace had assured Rocky that, so long as he was careful, he would be more than capable of making it all the way to Erid, that this was not some stupid gambit at proving to himself he’d grown from his supposed cowardice–which Rocky disagreed had ever existed in the first place–back on Earth. He’d said he’d be okay.
The fucking liar.
Rocky couldn’t believe how long it’d taken him to realize, couldn’t believe that he’d just looked past the clear lies, past the obvious numbers, past the same somber acceptance from back when the human’d thought he’d be starving in space. He’d been too happy to be back with him, been more than willing to look past the fate the man had sentenced himself to out of the selfish elation at the extra moments the pair could share.
Grace had known from the moment he’d turned the Hail Mary around that he wasn’t making it out of the glorified metal cage.
And Rocky had had the audacity to be overjoyed.
His closest friend had clipped a chord to his waist, let the muscle be stripped from his arms, the life from his eyes and the sustenance from his belly and Rocky'd stood there and clapped.
His friend had killed himself, and he’d had the gall to be grateful.
And of course he was grateful! He understood why; he did!–it wasn’t just Rocky he was dying for, it wasn’t just his stupid clinginess that sentenced the human to years of wasting away; he was giving himself away to save Erid, Rocky’s entire planet essentially required the death of this incredible idiot who’d somehow dug himself such an unfillable hole in Rocky's heart.
That didn’t stop the guilt.
Because Grace was starving.
The first two years had been… fine. Not the best, but fine. Sure, Grace had grown skinnier–impressive, considering his already rather slender frame–and a bit tireder, but he’d had a meal a day and it’d been fine.
Then it started.
Rocky would’ve liked to of said that the first weeks were the worst, the slow fall into irritability, the endless pacing, the muttering, the curses, the throwing things, the endless minutes of arguing followed by unfocused eyes that ended in Grace tangled in a pile of dirty blankets on the ground sleeping nearly 12 hours straight despite the man’s previous insomnia.
He would’ve been lying.
Grace may’ve been a ghost in those early days, but at least a ghost makes its presence known. At least a ghost suggests something that may’ve once been alive.
Rocky wasn’t human, all the knowledge he had on the human body came from audio books and documentaries that Grace had played for him months if not years before, but as an eridian he got a special sort of torment from the gradual slowing of his friend. He could not see the color drain from his friends skin, could not see his eyes glaze over when he dissociated;
But he could watch his body fail in real time.
A wall separated the pair as it always had, and Rocky had had no choice but to sit for months, incapable of doing almost anything as he ‘watched’ Grace’s heart slow, watched his insides thin and deteriorate, watched the previous soft curvature of his muscle burn away to reveal his friends new emancipated form.
Rocky had seen many a zombie film, had chittered and chortled with Grace as the pair laughed at the slowmoving infectious idiots shambling along half dead and gurgling. He’d listened as his friend had gone on rant after rant about viruses and transmission and the immune system and the real world version of cordyceps.
But the ship was completely sterile; there was no virus or fungus or bacteria leaving the man who had become his other half while he journeyed home to waste away, and it wasn’t funny when the shambling, moaning, deteriorating body was that of someone you knew.
Grace had been in that state for nearly three months: zombie-like in appearance, ghost-like in presence. Then, he’d fallen into a near constant sleep. The human had admitted to having extensive trouble with sleeping, something Rocky had been striving to rectify during his time with him, but recently the exact opposite was the problem.
The human had explained the 24 hour day-night cycle on Earth, and how humans were supposed to sleep for about a third of it–that being eight hours.
For a month he slept nearly 22.
22 hours, over four eridian days, completely dead to the world with Rocky’s only indicator of his continued survival the faint uneven breaths pulled into his lungs every few seconds.
Grace had not left the medical bed on which he’d been dragged to and placed by Armando–the nanny-bot overseeing anything medical on the ship–for nearly three weeks, simply staying almost completely still even during the short bouts in which his eyes were open enough to technically consider him awake.
Rocky was going mental.
The human had not woken up in 15 Eridi days; 78 hours human time–over three Earth days!
22 times he’d watched his crewmates die.
23 times he’d watched as a friend he’d lived with for years broke down in front of him.
A discrepancy between them, a difference of one number–one that he was determined to keep but that was becoming more and more apparent with every day was nearly impossible to prolong.
Grace had not left the medical bay in weeks, and as such neither had Rocky; if his friend was to be asleep then he would be there to stand guard.
But how can one guard against death itself?
How could he possibly guard his friend against what was eating him alive if he was being consumed by his own failing body?
Letting out a soft chortle in distress, Rocky shifted to stand from where he’d been laying for the past hours. Careful to keep as much of his focus on the sleeping Grace as possible, the eridian suited up in his xenonite hamster ball. Slowly, Rocky rolled the geometric ball out of his xenonite enclosure, losing his balance halfway down the ramp and tumbling to the foot of the bed like a tossed die.
Unfolding his tangled limbs from beneath him and standing to reach up toward the sleeping figure of his friend, Rocky trilled again.
Grace did not answer.
- - - -
When Rocky came to, he was hit with a feeling of immense guilt. His friend would likely die for him and his species and he couldn’t even stay awake to watch over him properly. Of course he knew such a feeling was stupid, the eridian sleep cycle wasn’t something that could be delayed or fought off for longer than a few minutes and he’d already been fighting so hard for so long, but with Grace curled up above him, motionless and barely breathing as Armando worked to maintain the iv attached to his body, Rocky wasn’t exactly in his right mind enough to be as pragmatic as he usually was.
It was then that he heard it. A soft beeping, coming from the command deck of the ship.
Rocky stood, confused.
“Unknown signal detected”
Rocky jolted. That was Mary, the ship’s AI; and unlike her typical standard greetings or silence, and despite their cruising along at a steady almost light speed in the middle of the open expanse of space, she was reporting an unknown signal?
There shouldn’t be anything here; like, anything. Unless Rocky had slept for much longer than the few hours that was typical for him, the Hail Mary should still be in relatively the same area as far as space went; and right now they were passing through a section of space that was empty even proportional to the rest of space. No stars–and as such planets–for several lightyears and a belt of small asteroids that acted as a thick blanket that–at least according to his light-sound translator–blocked out most of the light coming even from those stars.
Without a star or stable planet there shouldn’t have been any life out here, nevermind life advanced enough to ping the Hail Mary. There wasn’t even anything nearby that would serve to attract a sapient species from elsewhere to come here–except, actually, could they potentially be heading to Tau Ceti just as he and Grace had?
It… didn’t make a whole lot of sense. For a separate species to have intersected with their path while on the way to Tau Ceti would mean that they would’ve needed to have come from directly behind Erid, which didn’t seem particularly likely.
Wait,
Could it be another eridian ship?
That would make more sense; it would be coming from the correct direction and with how long Rocky had been away it wouldn't surprise him if his species had sent out another ship just in case–hell, that had been his survival plan (wait for another ship to come save him) before Grace had decided to become the self sacrificial bastard he always refused he was and offered him a way home.
Of course, if it was an eridian ship than shouldn’t Mary have at least recognised it to some degree?
Then again, human tech was weird.
The sound never came again, and any human would’ve likely doubted themself in that moment–the pattern reliant blobs–but Rocky’s memory was–as with all eridians–perfect, and he knew for certain that the Hail Mary had detected something despite the impossibility of it all.
He ‘looked’ up at the still sleeping Grace, the human giving no sign of acknowledgement to his movement despite his typical hyper-observance.
Trilling softly to himself, he signalled to Armando to guard the sleeping human–something the bot had already been doing, but it had him feel better–before carefully rolling the xenonite ball within which he currently resided out of the medical bay and down the various hallways–eerily empty without a certain someone always dirtying them up–before he pulled himself up the ramp onto the command deck. If it was another eridian ship, he might be able to get help for Grace (unlikely as it was that they’d be able to do anything).
“Hello, Rocky” Mary greeted in her typical monotone voice.
Rocky chittered slightly in response, rolling himself over to the radar only to see that nothing had been picked up by the device.
“Radar nonfunctional at full speed”
He paused. That made sense, but… then where had the signal come from?
It took Rocky several seconds of rolling around to check all the screens–unable to see all of them at once due to his need for his light-sound translator–before he found where the mysterious signal had been picked up.
It was the petrovascope.
Seven Earth minutes previously, the petrovascope had reported an immense influx of the red light it was tuned to–something that didn’t make sense seeing as to his knowledge the petrovascope should be even less functional at speed than the radar.
Regardless of what should be possible, somehow the petrovascope had picked up on an incredibly high energy flash of the petrova frequency that had lasted no more than a few seconds.
It was no wonder Mary had been confused by the signal–such a signal shouldn't have been possible. However… if the eridians had sent a second ship it likely would have been powered by astrophage just like the first–it was the only energy source efficient enough for the travel required–so it would have been emitting the petrova frequency…
If Rocky slowed the ship the radar would become functional and he could look for whatever had emitted the flash of light, but to do such a thing would even further delay his and Grace’s arrival on Erid.
However, a quick check back in on Grace through the walls of the Hail Mary made him think that, as unlikely as it was that whatever had given off such a signal would be able to help…
…The chance that Grace would make it to Erid without that help was even lower.