Chapter Text
Everything was going just fine until Marble collapsed.
Limestone and Rhyolite were there in an instant, fussing over the supine Eridian and trying to figure out what had happened. Rocky didn’t hear about it until later when Flint showed up at his workshop to pass on the news, though he’d sensed something had gone wrong - none of the crew were particularly partial to suddenly dropping to the floor, except maybe Ammolite.
They all showed up at the med bay, excepting members of the crew who were running experiments that simply couldn’t be left alone. Marble had regained consciousness fairly quickly, though they were still a little shaky on their legs.
Really, they insisted, the whole thing had just been an unfortunate accident. It wouldn’t happen again.
*
Needless to say, it happened again, though not nearly as dramatic as collapsing to the floor. Rocky had even been with Marble, helping the assistant scientist fix a problem with one of the xenonite synthesizers, when their legs had shaken and their chords had started sounding just a little more off-pitch than usual.
He’d shuffled Marble straight to the med bay, where Limestone was still cleaning up their patch from the last time, and handed them over to the medics. Rocky had wanted to stay to make sure they’d be alright - truth be told, it was getting a little scary - but Rhyolite had insisted him loitering around and taking up space wouldn’t help Marble with anything, so he wandered back to his workshop at the back of the ship, taking the broken synthesizer with him, and threw himself back into repairing it.
*
Marble didn’t get better.
Lazurite and Aventurine were arguing all the time now. None of the crew could fault them for that - the two hatchmates, the other two assistant scientists, had been best friends with Marble long before the trio had signed up to go to Tau Ceti. Still, their arguments sometimes led to fights, and those were nothing if not disruptive.
Arkose had to send Heliodor to break them up almost every few hours. The captain was the most level-headed Eridian Rocky knew, but even he (and Rocky was particularly dense considering social cues) could tell the situation was making Arkose tense. Twenty-three Eridians, far away from Erid and all confined to one ship? If it got too heated, they were all done for.
It came as a surprise when Rocky was able to work for a whole day straight without one of the hatchmates busting into the workshop and distracting him from his work. It wasn’t expected, but he welcomed it.
Then he found out the sudden peace wasn’t the result of the hatchmates finally getting along or Marble making a miraculous recovery.
Instead, Lazurite had fallen sick as well.