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Watching over Rocky’s sleep became normal about 1 month into our long, long trip to Erid.
Or at least, as normal as keeping guard over a slumbering alien lifeform - one who happens to be a super smart, genius engineer and yet still thinks Hallmark movies are the best things since sliced bread (ooh, note to self, teach Rocky more English expressions) - can be.
However, I gotta hand it to Eridian culture; there’s a certain comfort in watching him sleep and being watched in return. At first, it was unsettling, sure - I mean, humans rarely watch each other sleep unless it’s like, creepy. Or sometimes love-y, I guess? Never really experienced it back on Earth, thankfully. And yeah, in the beginning, having someone’s focus on me while I try to drift off to sleep felt… wrong. Unsettling. Even though Rocky doesn’t really have eyes, I’d still feel the hair raising on the back of my neck, instincts and ancient anxieties screaming at me that I wasn’t alone, something was there, something was wrong and I needed to wake up because I was in dangerー
Rocky found this quite confusing and, apparently, a little offensive - for Eridians this was a sign of distrust. It took a bit to comfort him and led to a long, long conversation about human evolution, and predation, and the difference between the conscious and subconscious mind - which was actually a really interesting discussion and I wish I knew more about psychology besides what I remember from that one semester in college…
Especially since it’s only what I remember remembering, I’m still a little foggy from the amnesia (thanks, Stratt) so that’s a whole other can of worms - ooooh, more expressions for Rocky!
Back to the original point - at first, I was a little weirded out by the whole watch-you-sleep-watch-me-sleep thing, but now I’ve actually grown to like it. It’s… reassuring, knowing that someone cares enough about you to sit and keep your body company while your mind is away. That someone loves you enough to stay, for hours on end, just… existing in your proximity to make sure nothing happens to you. Like a safety net, even though you’ve got nowhere to fall.
Anyway, it’s Rocky’s turn to sleep this time. Since he can do it anywhere, he was benevolent enough to go to sleep in his part of the lab so I can putter around with the lab equipment and keep myself entertained while I wait.
(Now that I have several years worth of free-time on my hands, and industrial grade, high-quality lab equipment I can use for poops and giggles whenever I want (sometimes), I’ve been playing with bacteria and cells for the last few weeks. Most of the equipment is useless while we’re in transit-mode, hence the ‘sometimes’, but hey! Microscopes work in 0G!)
(I also may or may not have taken samples from some of the remaining food rations, specifically the beans-and-rice-meal, which I know I shouldn’t be wasting because I only have so much left but it was for a good cause… I originally intended to show Rocky what plant cells looked like on Earth using a physical sample, and then I realized I might have a potential food source in this if I can figure out how to ‘The Martian’ the dehydrated beans into a full plant, and then I started thinking about plant-soil microbiomes for plant health, and thenー)
(God, I wish there was Adderall in space.)
Anyway, I have a lot prepared to show Rocky when he wakes up. It’s gonna be great, too. I made models. The Don’t Go Crazy Room is fully booted up and prepared with different Planet Earth-esque films about plant adaptations to the different Earth biomes. We’re going full Earth Plant Bio 101 - it’s gonna be awesome. He should be up in about an hour or so, so there’s plenty of time to mess around before the lesson. And yeah, Rocky’s an engineer, not a biologist, but a scientist is a scientist no matter the subject matter soー
The Hail Mary groans softly, stilling my hands against the box of glass slides. I hold my breath carefully, straining to listen, my heartbeat thump thump thumping distractingly in my ears.
The Hail Mary wasn’t meant to last this long. Stratt’s best engineers made her to last long enough to get to Tau Ceti, figure out how to save Earth, and send the probes - but not much longer than that. They didn’t account for anyone to try to make the journey home, let alone the journey to another planet. That hadn’t been part of the deal. Why waste the time and resources to try and make the ship last longer than necessary on a suicide mission? Additionally, they certainly did not account for the damage caused when we used the Mary to surf in Adrian’s upper atmosphere, what with all the heat and pressure that came with fighting the gravitational pull of Adrian ripping out paneling and chunks of her hull… That one’s on us, yeah, but still.
Each groan of Mary’s hull is a reminder that she is running on fumes and borrowed time, and it never fails to send a chill down my spine.
Rocky is doing his absolute best to make sure we make it to Erid alive, though. His mobility in the Mary is limited - he’s stuck in either his hamster ball - “what is ‘hamster’, question?” “uuuuh, so it’s a small Earth mammal that’s a really, really common pet despite how easily they, like, die for the dumbest reasons.” “oh. Why kept in ball if so fragile, question?” “uuuh…so they can explore?” “...” “...” “stupid.” “I don’t know, Rock! I never had a hamster.” - or the few xenonite tunnels we’d constructed back when he first came over to my ship. He’s got a prototype suit that fits him better, made of distressingly thin xenonite that gives me some major anxiety, but he’s confident he can make it work, so what do I know? For now, though, we’ve finally been able to set up a small interface in his habitat that will allow him to connect to the Mary in case of emergenciesー
(spinning, spinning, spinning, the chair pressing hard into my back, blood at my temple, red lights darkness red lights red darkness red black red black I can’t reach, I can’t reach, Rocky, Rocky, spinningー)
The ship falls silent, just the regular hum of electricity and life support systems settling against my ears like white noise, and a sigh tumbles from my lips.
Okay. Good.
I have to manually uncurl the tension in my shoulders, rolling them gently for a little relief. A massage would be fantastic right about now. I think, as Earth’s savior, I deserve a massage. It’s a shame there’s no masseuses in space. A real bummer.
My good posture only lasts as long as it takes to fix it before I’m hunching back over the microscope lens, my glasses scraping the plastic eye piece. A thin slice of bean, treated and pressed, sits snugly in the microscope stage between two slides to keep it from floating away. The bean might already be cooked, and it was at least definitely dehydrated, but maybe there are a few living cells remaining. Maybe this isn’t as much of a long shot as I thought (“as you Americans say, it’s a long shot…” “A hail mary.” “yes”).
I breath out, playing with the stage control knobs, trying to focus the sample just rightー
The bright white light of the lab turns red in my peripheral, and suddenly I’m up, ramrod straight, just in time for the computer’s warning; “Warning. Autopilot error. Collision imminent.”
“Collision?!” I squeak, launching myself out of my chair with far less grace than my last name would suggest. Icy adrenaline, already chugging through my veins, spreads a dooming chill like morning frost through my body as I twist and turn in zero gravity, pulling myself around the ship on my rope network with a speed and urgency that has ropeburn nipping at my palms.
“Correct. Immediate pilot attention required,” Mary responds casually, because of course, why not?
“I’m not- can’t you do it? What’s wrong with the autopilot?” I hiss as I round a corner a little too quickly, my momentum nearly dragging me down the wrong hallway. With a grunt and a yank, I correct my course towards the control room.
Mary’s reply is a little too chipper for my taste; “Autopilot error. Immediate engineer attention required.”
“Thank you for nothing, Mary,” I huff, clambering into the pilot’s chair. (“You’re welcome, Dr. Grace. Pilot detected.”)
As I strap in, clipping the seatbelt into place, my mind briefly takes me back to Rocky, sleeping and defenceless in the lab- No, not the time. If the ship crashes, we both die anyway. He’ll be okay until I come back. He has to be.
Okay, okay! First, no crash. Then not explode. Wise words to live by in space. I can do this. Probably.
The piloting screens bloom to life under my touch, a bright, frightening red illuminating the ship’s details, our course, our surroundings - everything bathed in panic panic panic red which is really, really not helpful right nowー
At my left arm, the navigation interface highlights the looming threat with a flashing red circle (enough with the red, please!) and exclamation point - which, wow! Thank you, I would have never noticed the giant floating space rock hurtling towards us through the viewport window!
The rock itself is almost invisible in open space, cloaked in the dark in-between where starlight doesn’t quite reach - but this one is big, big enough that its edges catch and warp against the distant light like a hungry void, gray and brown clawing around its massive shape in a losing battle against its sheer sizeー
“Warning. Collision imminentー” Mary repeats, helpfully. Not.
“Fudging-! Yes, Mary, yes, I see it, I see it,” I hiss through my teeth, heart in my throat as I grab the throttle and yank it to the right hard.
The Hail Mary lurches and I can feel it in my chest, the sudden change grabbing at my heart and lungs and squishy internal organs in a way that brings acidic bubbles to the back of my throat. In the background, something falls and crashes somewhere else in the shipー
The Mary jerks as I accelerate, banking hard as the asteroid crowds in close enough to cut out the last of the remaining starlightー
“Erratic Maneuver Detected.”
“Mary not- not now,” I manage, but I’m starting to feel the effects of the acceleration as it presses me back into the chair, which was only recently stabilized by Rocky with xenonite and oh, no, please, I don’t want another repeat performance where I go face-first into the control panelー
My body is wound tight, muscles braced and aching as I keep the throttle in place, hoping I made it on time, praying that piloting practice on Adrian was enough to save usー
Suddenly, the viewport opens up again with bright, twinkling starlight. I gasp, raggedly fighting to push air back into my lungs because holy moly, ooooooh thank god.
The asteroid floats by, harmless, undisturbed. It’ll continue onwards, unknowing and uncaring for the actual almost-literal heart attack it caused.
I did it. It worked.
My hands shake as I ease up on the throttle, carefully returning it to a neutral position. Then, for the sake of my mental health, I flick off the engine. If the autopilot is broken, Rocky should take a look at it before we get too far off-course. We - I - don’t have a lot of wiggle-room, so to speak, with my food supply and adding even a few extra days on our trip to Erid is no bueno.
Mary whirrs in complaint, angry with me for my lack-luster piloting skills, I’m sure, but slowly we begin to drift, and I can breathe again.
“Oh,” I sigh, rubbing still-shaking hands across my stubbly face because oh, that was so close. Too close. We were supposed to be done with the theatrics, with the life-and-death bullhonkey.
What the heck, universe? Not cool.
I don’t want to move for a bit. The siren song of dissociation calls my name, and honestly, I’m so, so chill with just sitting here for a second and decompressing and trying to remember all the breathing techniques I learned for my students, butー
But the lights are still flashing red, flashing with urgency and Mary is saying something and I have to drag my mind, kicking and screaming, back to focusー
“-ected. Toxic gas in Laboratory detected. Toxic gas in Laboratory-” Mary drones, and once it clicks into place the cold sweat is backー
Oh god, noー
The banging noise. The gas leak. The lab.
Rocky.
“Rocky!” I yell down the corridor, desperately pawing at my seatbelt buckles, hoping in vain that our calculations were off, that somehow he’s already awake, that he’s already realized his habitat was compromised and he’s getting himself safely into his ball, “Rocky-!”
(-but I know, I know, he’s still sleeping and he’s vulnerable and I’m not there, I’m not there to protect him, I left him and now there’s a leak in his habitat and he’s getting exposed to oxygen and oh I’m a terrible friend!)
“Warning, high concentrations of ammonia gas detected. Caution is advised,” crones Mary from all her speakers, surrounding me in noise as I finally break free from the piloting chair and use it to kick off down the hallway.
Okay, plan. I need a plan! And maybe a tarp, and some duct tape - if it’s a small enough hole I can just, just plug it temporarily and that should be fine, that’ll be enough to hold things over until Rocky wakes up and can fix it betterー
“Rocky!” I shout as I burst into the lab, and instantly the problem is clear. One of the larger shelving units has finally had enough of the Mary's erratic movements, and the bolts keeping it connected to the floor had given way and sent it crashing down onto Rocky’s xenonite barrier.
It hadn’t landed on Rocky - small miracles - but… oh, that’s not a quick fix. There was no patch-job this side of Tau Ceti that would fix the absolute collapse of a good portion of Rocky’s habitat ceiling.
(“thin xenonite weaker, but allow light pass through so Grace see Rocky. Different than Blip-A, xenonite hull stronger, thicker!”)
This was no small leak. This was no quick fix. I shouldn’t be in here without a suit, what with how much ammonia I can already smell mixing with the oxygen in the air, but I don’t have time. Already, I can hear Rocky’s carapace beginning to sizzle as the oxygen reacts with his skin - he doesn’t have time.
I’m in my flight suit, the arms tied around my waist. It’s not as thick, and it has nothing that will protect my face, eyes, and lungs from Rocky’s toxic atmosphere - but it’s all I have time for; it’ll have to do.
Quickly, I fight with the knot of the suit’s sleeves around my waist, trying to hold my breath as much as possible as my nostrils start to burn. My eyes sting and water, and everything is going blurry even with my glasses, so I make a quick decision and close my right eye to protect it from the gas. My left eyelid fights me, trying to close too, begging to be saved from the painful burning, but I stubbornly wrench it open.
Before I get the flight suit zipped up all the way, I yank my shirt collar over my mouth and nose. It’ll do nothing, I know, I know, but there’s no time, no timeー
Floating forward, I fight the red flashing lights as I try to find Rocky’s ball in the dark-red-dark-red - and one thing is going right because it’s still docked exactly where it’s supposed to be.
It’s something Rocky fixed after the Fishing-Fiasco on Adrian; his carapace shaking briefly as he described how flawed the design had been, with how easily he’d become stranded when it rolled away from its docking port. How useless he’d felt. He hadn’t taken it well when I’d tried to reassure him - how was he supposed to know what would happen on Adrian when he designed the ball? No, he’d insisted, he should’ve prepared better as a failsafe - and now, in hindsight, he knew better and it was a quick fix anyway, he said. He insisted.
Now, I’m so, so thankful for his stubbornness, because even though the lab is in utter disarray from my less-than-smooth piloting, even as equipment and beakers and the box of glass slides float around freely in zero gravity, the hamster ball sits exactly where it’s supposed to in its dock.
No small miracles there - just my good ol’, super-smart roommate and his terrible, horrible, no-good PTSD.
With the sphere located, I navigate into Rocky’s habitat, fighting back a nasty cough and burning tears. The heat engulfs me, dragging thick through the air and just on the far side of uncomfortably warm. For a moment, I can almost imagine it’s like stepping into a sauna, heavy steam in the air burning against the skin of my face - but no, there’s no moisture in this air, and the heaviness is from a toxic gas that’s starting to burn against my skin, my only saving grace (ha) is how diluted it’s becoming with the colder oxygen air of my atmosphere, but it still hurts in my chest, on my lips and inside my nose, my left eye is burning so bad and everything is so blurryー
It’s only thanks to the 0Gs that I’m able to lift Rocky’s mass, his heavy, solid body floating rigidly in my arms as he continues to sleep, unaware of the danger he’s in, we’re in. The black, flaking rust billowing from Rocky’s skin is getting thicker and leaving behind some sort of trail in our wake; our own Petrova line of dark, horrific suffering. Silvery mercury bubbles against his shell, and I know I have to hurry but my body is screaming at me, oh it hurts so badー
I try to touch him as little as possible as I maneuver him into his ball, but it doesn’t make much of a difference - it’s not long before my flightsuit, sleeves drawn over my hands as best as I could manage, begins to hiss and burn away. I can’t feel it yet, but I know I will, it’s only a matter of time before the heat hits my skin and cooks my arms and, a little hysterically, I wonder if it’ll scar too - just like the handprint Rocky left when he saved me on Adrian, which I cherish more than I can put into words because I’m terrible and sentimental and emotional about how much I love this little alien, and it must be so wrong to be so pleased to have a physical reminder of how much he loves me tooー
Gasping uselessly, I finally manage to fit Rocky’s frozen, still and very-unhelpfully, very distressingly rigor-mortis-like body into his ball and slam the lid shut. It hisses as it seals, cycling ammonia in and oxygen out, and Rocky’s body stops oxidizing and I need to goー
Grunting with the effort it takes, I fight my way through tears and the emergency lighting to escape the lab. My chest burns as the ammonia eats away at my lung tissue, as my cells scream for oxygen and get poison instead. I can’t- it’s so hard to breathe. My chest, oh god it’s bad, it’s so much worse than being squished by centrifugal force, so much worse than that because it’s burning inside, I need to get somewhere I can escape the ammoniaー
I don’t remember getting to the airlock, but I find myself inside it with a slightly clearer head. I open my right eye, and the difference should be distressing because I probably just blinded myself in my left eye but I can’t, I can’t think about it right now. This far from the lab, from the leak, and there’s enough fresh air to breathe and I can think again, just a little, just enough to seal the airlock behind me, just enough to lock myself in, lock the poison out, just enough to tap at the controls with numb fingers and flood the airlock with oxygen and start centrifuge-mode, spinning, spinning, spinningー
I wake and immediately know something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. The ship’s vibrations are wrong, and there’s a stinging, angry buzzing that throbs against the outer layer of my carapace. It’s wrong wrong wrong, so something must’ve happened while I slept because there’s no other explanation.
“Grace,” I warble, hearing his automated system call out the human equivalent in ‘my’ voice through the empty air of the lab.
No answer comes.
Hissing with the unexpected pains, I tap harshly against the floor, looking around - and I’m not where I fell asleep. How did I get here, in my ‘ball’, when I absolutely went to sleep in my… my construction, my ruined, broken broken broken construction?!
“What happen, question?” The robotic voice echoes my confusion through the still air as I haul myself to my feet. My body aches, but the damage is minimal - surface level at most; “Where Grace, question?”
More silence is my answer, and that’s wrong wrong wrong. Grace was there to watch me sleep. He knows how much it means to me, for him to watch over me - even though humans don’t have the same tradition, even though he was confused by it at first, but he’s watched over me since we started cohabitating and now he’s not. He was there when I fell asleep, but now there’s a hole in my construction and our atmospheres are clashing, and I’m no longer where I was when I went to sleep, and Grace isn’t here!
“Grace!” I call out again, louder, more urgent. I push forward in my ball, disengaging from the ruined construction that I’ll have to fix soon, that’s pumping out more and more of my lovely healthy atmosphere into the Hail Mary where it shouldn’t be.
Stopping short, I quickly dock the ball back into its slot. The controls for my atmosphere machine are right next to the dock inside my construction - if I just reach inside, I can turn it off long enough to find Grace and get his help fixing my construction.
It’s an easier decision than it probably should be, to open my ball enough to stick my arm through and turn off my machines - even though it lets the poison in, even though my body immediately starts to react and burn again. It’s easy, because if my construction is leaking ammonia into the Hail Mary, then Grace is in danger, and if that’s true then I have to fix it. Other Eridians would call me crazy, reckless, stupid. But Grace is in danger unless I fix this.
And I can fix it, this time. This time, unlike on my ship, there’s no invisible killer (radiation, Grace called it) that I’m useless against, no outside force coming to rob me of my final and most precious traveling companion. Not this time. This time, I can fix it.
So fix it I do.
My arm sizzles, and it hurts hurts hurts, but against my mounting worry the pain is insubstantial. As soon as the machine is off, I pull my arm back into the safety of the ball and seal it shut again, squealing softly at the burning burning burning that’s fizzling against my skin. With the ball sealed, the urgent stinging starts to fade as my atmosphere stabilizes, leaving behind a dull buzzing sensation - but nothing I can’t handle.
The Hail Mary speaks throughout the ship, the odd-high-different-not-Grace-voice calling out softly to her crew of three-turned-one-turned-two, "Toxic gas no longer detected in Laboratory, warning dismissed."
Grace still hasn’t answered me.
“Grace!” I call out again, stretching my awareness through the walls of the Hail Mary as I begin to move, rolling the ball as best I can through the clutter. The longer it takes to find him, the more intense the bubbling anxiety in my stomach cavity feels, migrating through the soft membranes of my inner body to prickle frantically across my outer carapace, distracting and worse worse worse than the oxygen burns.
“Grace! Where Grace, question?! Answer!!” I yell, louder, pitching at higher octaves because now, now I know something bad happened to him. He’d respond, if he was okay - he always responds when I call him. Even just to say his version of my name back to me, he always answers.
It takes way too much time before I finally finally finally find him. His small, squishy, fragile human body is laying on the ground in the airlock, and it’s too still, and it’s clearly wrong wrong wrong because his fleshy human lungs are only taking short, sharp breaths instead of big slow ones, and his heart is thump thumping too fast, also wrong. Very bad bad bad.
The door to the airlock is closed, and even with the flexible xenonite patch of my ball, I’m helpless to open it - so I do the next best thing and ram into it with my ball at full speed. Stupid? Yes; but Grace is bad bad bad and needs to get to the medical room immediately, and I can’t get to him!
This is worse than Adrian. This is so so so much worse because he’s hurt and I can’t get to him.
“Grace! Grace wake up now! Grace wake up now now now!” I plead against my xenonite, rearing back onto my back legs to pound against the clear material. The noise reverberates through the metal door, painting a clear and terrible image of Grace being too still still stillー
Thenー
“Grace! Awake, question?”
Please, please move again. Please show me you’re okay.
Grace stirs with a pained whine and I lose all strength in my arms. The relief rolls through me, wholly and almost physical, sending me crashing to the floor of the ball.
“Rocky?” he huffs, his voice hoarse and his next breath shaky. Then he makes a terrible noise that sends me reeling, these loud, harsh noises from somewhere deeper in his chestー
“Grace okay, question? Grace hurt, question?” I ask, getting my feet back under me, the wonderful, soft relief souring immediately back into fear.
“Rocky…” he repeats, and no, that’s not an answer to my question. I roll back a few inches, then rock forward. My ball makes a reverberating thud against the metal door.
“Grace friend, answer question. Hurt, question?” It’s less of a question, more of a statement. Grace is definitely hurt hurt hurt, but how bad? Clearly bad enough, though. He needs to get to the medical room now, but he’s still not moving!
Grace groans again, curling his body tightly, pressing his stupid-long legs into his chest which is also stupid, because he’s only making it harder for himself to breathe. “Rocky… are you- you okay buddy?”
A flash of terror-flavored annoyance sparks against all five of my hearts so strongly it hurts, “Stupid question! Grace is hurt. Grace needs to go medical room now!”
Grace whines before his chest spasms, and he starts making those terrible noises again. His hands grapple for his lungs like he can somehow reach in and set them straight himself.
“Yeah, yeah,” he gurgles between Bad Noises, pushing himself up slowly, shakily onto his elbows, “hang on, I have to- have to put on my suit.”
What? I stamp my foot harshly against the ground, “Why suit, question? Waste time!”
Grace shakes his head, even though he can’t see me, because he knows I can see him and something about that makes the hurt worse, “I can’t- It’s, our atmospheres are mixing. The lab…”
I find myself mirroring him, shaking my carapace back and forth, a habit I’ve picked up from Grace, and have to physically stop myself. He can’t see me anyway, “No, Rocky fix. Hail Mary have oxygen. Check computer and Rocky Grace go medical room.”
“What?” I hear him mumble, soft, to himself probably, but then he starts to drag himself upwards, onto his knees, and finally onto his feet. His whole body sways once, betraying him, but he clutches onto the doorframe so hard I can hear the force of his knuckles tighteningー
(Something is wrong wrong wrong, because his skin sounds different, his skin and the fabric he wears is different bad bad bad, his smooth-ish skin is now bumpy, raised like the scar my handprint left from Adrianー)
I can hear him pressing buttons on the computer, and I want to scream at him, because how could he be so smart but so so so stupidー
The door’s mechanisms churn, the metal screeching in protest as Grace turns the knob sealing him away. I skitter a few paces backwards to give him room, but once the door is open I rush in.
Good thing I do, too, because once the door is out of the way Grace’s body flops forwards towards the floor. It’s not much of a nicer landing, with the harsh geometry of my ball - and, not for the first time, I wish I was soft. How much easier it would be, to be soft for him to lay on? To hug? If we could exist together, in the same atmosphere, with nothing to keep us apart. Everything would be better. I could help him now, help him stand and walk and get to safety, if I could just reach him.
Grace groans and makes more Bad Noises, and I can feel every vibration against the xenonite.
Up close, pressed against the thin barrier between us, I can feel it more. Burns of his own, like mine, crawl up his arms and against his chest. The rough texture stands out against the healthy flesh, outside and inside, his lungs crinkling wrong wrong wrong with more of those terrible terrible terrible noises, because his atmosphere is oxidizing to me but mine is poison to him, and my stupid stupid stupid perfect perfect perfect human did exactly what he was supposed to and shouldn’t have; he fulfilled his duty to keep me safe in my sleep, like a proper Eridian, but now he’s bad bad badー
“Grace. Medical room. Now,” I demand, harsh and angry and so, so scaredー
“Okay, okay buddy. Thank you,” he gasps as he pushes himself up, struggling to pull enough air into his damaged lungs, “for fixing the air.”
I can’t respond, because there’s too much fear sitting too close to the surface - fear that’s sharp and angry and not meant for my perfect friend, my wonderful and stupid and selfless friend Grace, and I know if I try to speak it’ll come boiling over like the liquid mercury in my veins and to him it’ll be just as toxic. Instead, I don’t say anything. I just roll beside him, offering support when I can, where I can.
It’s a long trip.
Rocky’s mad at me.
Rocky always has things to say, and he’s certainly not shy about saying them. Even when it’s rude, or confusing, or 3am and I’m trying really hard to sleep.
So it’s pretty obvious that he’s giving me the cold shoulder(s) right now.
Armando whirls above me, applying cream and bandages to the ow-throbbing-painful skin (or rather, the mess that’s left of it) on my chest and arms. My flight suit, or at least the top half of it, is pretty ruined. Rocky’s heat had, essentially, seared right through it. It did a little to protect me - so now I only have second degree burns instead of third degree burns, yippee - but in some places it also melted a bit into my skin, which is making me incredibly nauseous to think about (but that also could be the ammonia exposure, which is also Terrible with a capital T). Armando is not being gentle as he separates it, and I have to stop watching or I will vomitー
Dragging my eyes away, I find them drawn to the sulking form of Rocky, who’s parked himself in the corner of the room and hasn’t said a word since the airlock.
(My eyes are… okay. My left is really blurry, and Armando says there’s a 50/50 chance the damage is permanent, which - I knew? I know the effects of severe ammonia exposure on a human body - I made sure to refresh my memory on it when Rocky started moving in more permanently. Symptoms include, but are not limited to: irritation of the eye, nose, and throat, difficulty breathing, temporary or permanent blindness, nausea and vomiting, abdominal or mouth pain, confusion and altered mental status, possible pulmonary edema, swelling of the throat and airways, chemical burns, respiratory failure, cardiac arrest... oh yeah, and of course, death. I knew I was essentially filling the Mary with poison, but what else was I to do? Leave Rocky stranded? Leave him to die? Fat chance.)
My lungs burn pretty bad, but the oxygen mask is helping. A little. I finally stopped coughing, which is a definite bonus. I don’t think Rocky liked the coughing that much - he kept flinching each time, but it’s not like I could hold them in.
It’d be really great to get a distraction from all this in the form of a conversation with my best friend, but noooo, Rocky is, seemingly, mad at me. For saving his life.
I just can’t win today, apparently.
“Rocky,” I croak behind the mask, then cringe because oh, my voice is in rough shape. Rocky’s body shakes, but he doesn’t answer or turn, “Rocky, come on, man.”
Okay… Fine.
It hurts to swat Armando out of the way, but he’s clearly used to it already because the robot only flails a little bit before it backs off. Ooh, good, it’s learning. Nice.
Sitting up is… bad. I can’t stop the strangled grunt that pries itself from my diaphragm as I push myself up on the unburnt portion of my forearms, and ugh, the coughing comes back with a vengeance.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and force my body upwards, hacking roughly into the oxygen mask. Maybe this was a mistake, but it’s too late, I’m committedー
“Grace lay down now! Stupid!” Rocky barks, and suddenly his xenonite ball is pressed against my legs and I can see him bobbing up and down in anger between the black spots in my blurry vision.
“Why are you ignoring me?” I ask as soon as the coughing subsides, accepting the cup of water Armando thrusts urgently in my direction. My question only seems to upset Rocky further, and it’s almost visible when his control snaps.
“Why, question? Grace stupid, answer! Grace almost die! Grace hurt! Bad bad bad! Stupid!” Rocky’s voice sits in a higher octave than usual, the melodic hums of his organ-like sounds coming out sharp and barbed like his words.
But I’m getting pretty good at understanding him, after all this time. The wobble at the end of his statement wasn’t from vocabulary.
Immediately, I feel myself soften. Swallowing the water and setting the cup aside, I reach forward and press a bandaged hand against the xenonite. It hurts, and like always Rocky’s hamster ball is warm to the touch, and that hurts too against my crispy skin, but I do it anyway.
“Rocky, you did the same for me on Adrian. You’re my best friend - I wasn’t going to leave you to die,” I insist. I lay forward, trapping the ball between my legs and my chest (even though it hurts) and keeping Rocky from escaping, “I love you, buddy. I was so scared when I heard the gas alarm, I thought I’d killed you by saving us.”
Rocky is quiet for a second, but he shuffles slowly to lean against the xenonite too - a hug. “What happen, question?”
His voice is smaller now.
I sigh. “I found another thing for you to fix, when you’re up for it. Mary’s autopilot almost smooshed us into a space rock,” I make a splat noise with my mouth. Rocky hisses, distressed. “I had to go pilot us myself.”
“Mmm. Bad bad bad.” He says, the little bugger. My piloting skills have absolutely gotten better and he knows that - but I’m too tired to argue.
“Yeah, yeah,” I huff. My breath fogs up the xenonite glass, and all I can see in my mind’s eye is the black oxidation clouding off of Rocky’s sleeping body. I hug the ball tighter, “You asked me to watch you sleep to keep you safe. I kept you safe as best as I could. I’m not going to apologize for that.”
Rocky coos a noise that’s deep and low, and it vibrates somewhere under my ribcage.
“Rocky happy Grace save him. Mad at Grace for being stupid, but happy Grace okay.” He insists, softer now, “Grace turn rest. Rocky turn watch. Rocky turn keep Grace safe.”
“Okay, bud,” I choke out quietly, a myriad of emotions bubbling up my throat, “Okay. Thank you.”
It’s easy, then, to lay back down and fall asleep. Rocky’s watching. A safety net over nothing - and it’s easy to fall, then, because I know we’re always going to catch each other.