Chapter Text
It’s a nice day on Erid. Then again, most days are nice here.
The fog. It’s working overtime today, visibility at its lowest, but Ryland likes it that way. He’s been waking up earlier these days just to catch the height of it in the dome the Eridians were so adamant to build for him as a show of gratitude. The fluctuations with the water temperature have practically disappeared by now, as have the gravity issues. They’ve figured out how to synthesize different foods for him, too, and he’s beyond grateful. He’s grateful for Rocky and Adrian, he’s grateful for his students, he’s grateful for the life he has here when he was supposed to die in space. It’s something he still isn’t fully used to, on nights where he dreams of Earth, only to wake up the next day far, far away. And he doesn’t regret it. He wouldn’t take any of it back, if given the chance. He’s home, and he wakes up early to see the fog.
There are times, still.
Moments come, when he wakes up before his alarm, when he’s up later than he should be, when Rocky goes home and he’s alone in his house, in the dome, where he thinks a little too hard on it. Where he remembers a little too much about Earth. The brush of arms walking past someone on the street, high-fives that aren’t separated by a glassy suit to avoid killing the person on the other side, a hand on his cheek or fingers curling around his shoulder. He’s made peace with a lot, and none of it changes that he’s grateful and happy here. Vice versa, his state of content doesn’t change the course of late nights and early mornings, missing things he never really had, at least not for a long time.
But the fog is nice. Rocky will show up in about an hour, probably ask him (again) how long he’s been up, inquire (again) on why he’s been getting up earlier these days, and Ryland will tell him he’s just getting a little older, that it’s getting a little harder to sleep, and Rocky will stare at him with a lack of face that still somehow manages to be so pointed, before turning away like he knows something’s up and is just trying to figure out the right way to ask, and the subject will change. All in all, it’s not the worst life to live. Just means Rocky cares, even if Ryland’s misplaced nostalgia is really the least of his worries, and should be the least of anyone else’s. He’s fed, he’s got his best friend visiting him every morning. He’s home.
(It still gnaws at him, that the last human contact he remembers was being forced into the dirt and drugged up. He’s forgiven Eva, he understands, but it still bites.)
He breathes, deep, a steady inhale of the cool morning fog through his nose, and a slow exhale into the same mist that surrounds him as he sits on the beach, no shoes, feet at the edge of the water. He hears Rocky before he looks, and he smiles.
“Morning,” he says as the scuttling of five legs on the sand comes to a stop beside him, and his head turns to face his best friend with that same smile. A series of notes and clicks comes in response.
‘Hello. What is Grace doing up so early?’
Ryland snorts a laugh, turning his gaze back out to the water. It’s beautiful. Always is. “Same as last time I was up early, Rock. Woke up before my alarm.”
‘Sleeping less.’
“Mhm.”
‘Getting older.’
“See? You already know.” There’s a pause after he says it. That staring, pointed pause. He doesn’t expect the next question, though it’s not really a question. It’s a statement.
‘Grace misses Earth.’
His heart jumps into his throat a little, and he swallows hard around the ache he wishes he could get rid of after all this time. “No,” he says, and it’s not a lie. Not really. Not in the ways that count. There’s another pause before Rocky speaks again, and it’s a bit quieter, a bit sadder.
‘Can get you back to Earth.’
“No, Rock,” Ryland insists, “I told you, I’m taking a long time to think about that. Promise.”
‘Then why is Grace sad?’
And that’s the million dollar question, in the end. It’s not really enough to be considered sad, as far as he’s concerned, but it’s something. Some melancholic feeling, the need for something one never had. Like early humans striving for the stars. “I’m not really sad,” he sighs, pulling his heels from the edge of the water and resting the soles of his feet in the sand. His elbows lean on his knees, and he looks out through the fog to the makeshift ocean. “Sometimes, I miss other humans, that's all.”
‘Feel alone?’
“Mmmm, not alone. But sometimes I get lonely.” He looks over at his stoney friend, shrugging a little. Rocky takes a moment to think about it, and he still sounds a little sad when he replies.
‘Understand.’
Ryland leans over, carefully resting his head against the glassy suit Rocky’s wearing. “But I’m happy here, with you. And Adrian, my students…I wouldn’t change a thing.” That seems to cheer him up, and he leans further into the touch.
‘Good. Had extra fog to make Grace happy.’
“Ooooh, so that was you?” Ryland laughs. “I was wondering why I could barely see my hands in front of my face.”
‘Is that bad?’
Another laugh, and his arm goes around Rocky’s form. They press into each other a bit more. “Not at all,” he murmurs, and he means that. Even if the inexplicable, not-quite-sadness finds him from time to time. It’s perfect. “It’s perf–”
There’s a flash of light, nearly lightning like, above them, and the sound that cuts him off is awful, starting with a distant crash quickly followed by a nauseating hiss. Ryland’s gaze shoots up to fully follow the flash and sound, and his eyes widen at the site before him. There’s a goddamn hole in the sky above them, leaking ammonia into the air and water, causing the fog and waves to move erratically and violently upwards. The mist around them starts to clear, and he stumbles to his feet as Rocky starts telling him to get in the house. He doesn’t have much time to think about it, between the shove he gets from a stone limb and the continued screaming of his name and the same order over and over and over. Shit.
He runs.
They’re both running. The door is slammed behind them as he makes it inside (something Rocky would be proud of him for, if the circumstances were different, probably), and then he’s at the window, staring through the glass in time to see some sort of object fall (presumably) from the hole in the sky and into the wild waves below. His heart’s pounding in his ears, eyes stuck on the chemical reaction before him, vicious and terrible, and he wonders if his borrowed time is up, and–
It stops.
The waves settle into more natural waves. The suction towards the hole in the sky soothes, and Ryland blinks once, twice, before turning to Rocky with a shaking breath.
“Are you okay…?” he says, hands trembling a little as he grips the window sill. The thrum of sounds from his friend is shaky, too, scared, but he gives a quivering thumbs down.
‘Okay. Grace okay?’
Ryland nods, giving a mirroring thumbs down. “I’m okay.” He turns back to the window. “What the hell just happened?”
‘A breach. The secondary shield is now in place. Is safe to go out.’
He swallows. “Didn’t even know there was a secondary shield.”
‘In case of foreign objects in atmosphere.’
“Good thing.”
‘Good, yes, good good.’
He squints through the window, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose from where they slipped during his scramble inside. The foreign object in question settles like a beached whale, half on the sand, half submerged as the water finishes its wind-down. His heart sinks a little, then jumps, like some invisible force giving him terrible CPR. It looks like a vessel of some sort.
It looks like a vessel.
The exterior is rusted to all hell, dripping with a substance Ryland really, really doesn’t want to assume is blood. But the way it mingles with the water, dribbles into the sand…he isn’t sure what else it could be. That’s not what catches his eye the most, however. It isn’t the terrible shape the thing is in, nor the crimson contaminating what surrounds it. It’s the lettering, barely visible, on the side. SM-13. SM-13.
English. Earth. Human.
“It’s human.” He doesn’t mean to say it out loud. He can’t do much else, feeling frozen for a moment. Rocky chirps.
‘From Earth?’
“I–” He isn’t sure what to feel. Nausea hits him, despite that. “I guess, I don’t know…”
‘We go.’
He doesn’t give himself much time to think about the fact that the ocean was rising and thrashing moments before, nor does he try to stop the adrenaline-induced shaking in his body before moving. No, that same adrenaline, paired with Rocky’s encouragement, drives him towards the door he’d slammed moments ago. He yanks it open, doesn’t close it behind them (sorry, Rocky), and runs, still barefoot, straight for the mystery ship. Never mind that he’s uneasy on his legs, that he feels heavier—an issue with the gravity regulator, no doubt—he needs to figure out what the fuck is going on. He glances back every so often to ensure Rocky’s still with him, half expecting to wake up at some point like this is some twisted dream, but he doesn’t. Rocky follows. He stops a few meters away, and he catches his breath.
Closer, he sees that the hull is breached on the far end of the bullet-shaped vessel he tries to peer inside, nearly falls over, and catches himself before collapsing into the red polluting the sand. “What…?”
‘I go.’
He can’t argue. Rocky’s already moving, carefully stepping through the blood-stained sand and clambering up the side of the hull until he’s directly over the gaping, jaw-like hole, and he looks for a moment, studying, and Ryland waits, waits, waits as his heart threatens to throw itself out of his chest and join the bloody mess below…
Rocky comes back. Ryland’s lips part, and he’s interrupted with a simple question.
‘Armando can still fix?’
His stomach clenches a little. “Fix?”
‘Fix human.’
His mouth closes again, and he looks from Rocky to the hole in the side of the foreign object.
‘Grace.’
“What?”
‘Armando can still fix humans?’
His voice comes out hoarser than he means it to. “Yeah.”
Rocky’s legs shift a little, and he makes a chittering sound, before humming again. ‘There is human in foreign object.’
Ryland swallows hard. The adrenaline is wearing off. He still isn’t sure how to feel, but sick is certainly at the top of the list. Relief might be, too. Or fear. Concern. Too many emotions to count. Someone else is in there. Another human. “Oh.”
‘We must move human to Armando.’
He nods, finally, forcing a breath through his nose as uncertainty looms over him. “Yeah. On it.”