Chapter Text
It was hard to ignore the man with the gun watching my every move, but this was a hell of my own making.
When I offered to give him Yao's gun to help him feel more secure in this weird situation he found himself in, he accepted. That wasn't a surprise. What was a surprise was Rocky actually agreeing to the arrangement and reminding me to give Simon the bullets too.
Maybe Rocky had more faith in the man's self preservation than I did. Maybe I'm a bad person. Who knows?
So, he had a gun pointed at me, usually, while I was in his vicinity. Sometimes he just had the gun in his hand and was watching me for any sudden movements.
None of us knew how he came to be here, but the situation was that he was, in fact, here, and he was human.
He was also more or less stranded in the dormitory because he only had one arm. The other was a stump, wrapped in bandages that looked like they desperately needed changing, and with his iron grip on the gun there was no way he was able to climb the ladder to the lab. This meant I could escape by doing some science whenever I wanted. Unfortunately, having a second living human within arm's reach for the first time in recent memory made it impossible for me to want to leave.
Rocky was understanding of my strange behavior, but less understanding of our new roomie's. He trilled unhappily when I shifted and the other human jumped. He hissed whenever Simon pointed the gun at me, which then made him point the gun at Rocky. I tried to explain why that was a terrible idea, but the concept of xenonite flew right over his head. I couldn't blame him.
But the tension in the air was killing me. I had to do something.
"You said your name is Simon, right?"
He pointed the gun at me, but kept his finger off the trigger. Okay, mission failed.
"Yes," he said, voice hoarse. He didn't accept water when I first offered it and I was sure he'd still say no if I tried a second time. Something about the robot arm unsettled him, and that combined with his intense distrust of me meant he hadn't eaten anything either. I just hoped he wouldn't get an infection from the dirty bandages.
"Hi Simon," I said. I licked my lips, but my mouth was dry and this didn't do anything to help. I tried to keep my eyes on his face, but it was very hard to keep myself from staring at the gun. "My name is Grace. This is Rocky." I motioned to the side, and Simon glanced at Rocky before looking back at me. He did the same thing I did, licking his lips with a dry mouth, and I felt sympathy for him. It wasn't everyday you came face to face with an alien.
"You said that already," he said. He lowered the gun so the barrel was at least pointed away from my chest. It wasn't much but it was enough to keep my heart from failing from the stress.
"You're on the Hail Mary," I said.
He squinted at me, his entire face creasing in a frown. "You said that too."
"Is there…" I was going to say "is there anything I can get you?" but that was a nonstarter. I switched to, "Is there anything you want to ask me?"
That made his face crease more, now with contemplation and some anger mixed in with the annoyance and suspicion. "Where are we?" he asked.
Since he obviously didn't mean the name of the ship, he probably meant the star system. He had taken the information that we were in space as if it was old news, nothing worth gasping or gawking about. "Tau Ceti," I said.
Rocky added, the voice synthesizer happy and grinding against the tense atmosphere, "We are here looking for reason star not die."
Simon looked at Rocky. Then he looked at me. The crease disappeared from his face and genuine, naked surprise took its place. "You're looking for the reason the stars disappeared?"
"Okay." I held my hands up, and in response he lifted the barrel to point at me again. "There's some kind of disconnect happening here. We don't know what you're talking about." I motioned between me and Rocky. Simon had read something between the lines that wasn't there, at least not from our understanding of the situation. When he didn't immediately respond, still staring at me with surprise, I continued: "We're looking for the reason that Tau Ceti's star isn't dimming. Our stars are." I motioned between us again. "We know why, and it's called astrophage. If we don't stop it, then our home planets are going to die."
Simon swallowed. Rocky cringed at the sound.
He said, voice low like we were sharing a secret, "What home planets?"
Rocky said, "Erid." at the same time I said, "Earth."
Simon lifted the gun and I couldn't stop myself from cringing away from it. Rocky hissed, as he'd been doing each time Simon threatened me, but this time Simon didn't change his focus to Rocky. He kept his wide eyes on me. "Say that again."
"I-I, uh." I made myself inhale, hold it, then exhale. It didn't help much, but it was enough. "I'm from Earth."
Simon's arm fell to his side. He fell back against the wall with a whoosh, and just stared at the floor. Maybe that was the wrong answer. Maybe it was the right answer. Maybe he was also an alien and thought I wasn't, and hearing that confirmation was a shock. Either way, it made him look like I had turned the gun on him instead and fired.
Simon slid to the floor and pressed the back of his hand to his eyes. I knew it was a terrible and stupid idea to try approaching him, so I didn't and just sat down where I was, pressing my back against the xenonite wall. Rocky tapped at the spot just above my shoulder and said, too soft for the computer to hear and translate, "Human Simon crying."
I watched his shoulders shake and wondered why, but didn't dare ask.
He didn't fall asleep like I expected. Once he had pulled himself together he looked over at us with an exhausted resignation, and sighed through his nose.
He said nothing. We stared at each other for what felt like hours, and only then did his eyes slip shut and he fell asleep.
"So what do we do about." I nodded over my shoulder at where Simon slept, curled against the wall with the gun firm in his hand. "I mean, I know it's my fault he has the gun but it's really stressing me out."
Rocky hummed a wordless tune, then held three of his arms up in a shrug. He tapped the wall with one hand and pointed at the laptop with another until I closed it, then asked, «How long does it take humans to adapt to new environments, question?»
"That really depends," I said. I thought about how long it took me to get used to the fact that I was alone in the depths of space, and then how long it took me to accept that my closest relationship was with an alien. I didn't know if I was a good metric for measuring that sort of thing, but I had to guess that whatever I had going on was maybe half as traumatic as Simon's whole deal. "I'd give him a week, at least."
«One week,» Rocky said, voice layered with mild annoyance and skepticism. «Grace not going to do something stupid and start fight, question? Grace not going to try to take gun back from Simon, right, question?»
"You-!" I clamped down on my shout fast enough that I bit my cheek, and spent the next several seconds squeezing my eyes shut and rubbing the outside as if that would help ease the pain. Simon didn't move, but his tense shoulders told me he was awake.
Rocky, the little devil, started chirping nonsense at me. I responded with vague affirmations, until Rocky said, «Simon is not going to shoot Grace, statement. Worry less.»
Assuming that meant Simon had drifted back to sleep, I said, "Kinda hard to do that when I can't think straight because he's pointing a gun at me."
«You gave Simon the gun.»
"I wasn't expecting you to say yes!" I hissed, struggling but succeeding in keeping my voice low. "Why would you say yes to giving an intergalactic transient covered in blood a gun?"
Rocky, for some reason, considered this question like it wasn't rhetorical. «Chances of Grace being hurt significantly lower with gun than with Simon unarmed," he said. "Human media talks about cornered animal instincts and Simon is cornered animal.»
I opened my mouth, then closed it. He had a point. I didn't like that he had a point, but the fact was that our new potential-friend Simon was now armed and I wasn't, and that tipped the scales in his favor enough to hopefully get him to relax sooner rather than later. He had only been with us for about 18 hours by this point, but I knew he wasn't stupid and I knew he wasn't reckless. I remembered the way he kept glancing from me to the airlock and back, and then put me in between. He was protecting himself. The only time he tried to hurt me was when he first woke up and thought I was trying to hurt him, and I knew it was self defense because he muttered a quiet apology six hours later.
Cornered animal, indeed. Maybe I could use that to our advantage.
"Okay, here's the plan," I said, and Rocky perked up. "We're going to ignore him as much as possible."
Rocky immediately deflated. «How is this good plan, question?»
"I'm going off of some pretty flawed logic right now," I admitted. "But I think it'll work. Pretty sure, anyway." Rocky hummed his skepticism. "Look, I'm a molecular biologist, not a sociologist."
«Continue with plan, Rocky will judge Grace later.»
I rolled my eyes. "There's this animal back on earth that tends to get left outside, and they can go kind of feral."
«Word?»
"Feral, it basically means behaving in a way that doesn't work with civilization. But these animals, they can be brought back inside and have their behavior changed through validation and other positive stimuli. They can be resocialized into house pets."
Rocky hummed again, moving his body in circles as he considered this. «Word is (feral) for Eridian. How is ignoring part of this, question?»
"We have to show him we're not a threat first. Then he can come to us instead of us trying to force the interaction." I was kind of proud of myself for this plan, actually. Sticking to it wasn't going to be easy, but the alternative could be anything from one of us to all of us dead. Some unpleasantness while he warmed up to us was preferable to that.
«Okay. Grace Rocky ignore Simon until Simon can adapt to current environment without excess stimuli, then Grace Rocky change his behavior with positive stimuli.» He bobbed his body up and down in an approximation of a nod. «Feels like appropriate time to say time go.»
I huffed a laugh at that. "Time go."
The plan was definitely easier to lay out than it was to follow, but we managed.
"Grace bad at math," Rocky said, tapping furiously against the wall. "Grace very bad bad bad at math and will kill us all."
"It's a hypothetical!" I yell, throwing my arms in the air. "Nobody is going to die!"
Both of us ignored the huff of laughter coming from the corner.
"Forget problem," Rocky said. "Get chess instead."
"You just want to punish me for being so bad at math," I said, but I reached over and grabbed the makeshift chess set anyway. It was just a square of plastic taped to look like a chessboard, with lab equipment of appropriately small size in place of the traditional pieces. I ignored the sound of movement behind me as I set it up, and Rocky only tapped the ground a few times as Simon shuffled closer in order to keep a close eye on him.
He hovered far enough away that I couldn't tell where he was without turning around, and turning around was just going to scare him away. Rocky chirped, wordlessly showing his excitement, and with the way he was bouncing from one claw to another, I knew it wasn't about how he was going to thrash me in chess. He seemed way more interested in getting Simon to open up than I was.
I set up the pieces one by one, taking my time while Simon hovered nearby and Rocky planned my assassination. I could tell that Simon wanted to ask questions but was too shy to do so. Something in the air was familiar. I remembered old students, shy kids kicking the floor and averting their eyes but hungering for information and connection. But I don't know where the gun was and I didn't want to turn around to find out, which meant I wasn't going to turn around to talk to Simon. This was worse than all of my nightmares about giving a presentation with no pants on.
"Your move," I said to Rocky.
It was a quick game, because of Eridian eidetic memory and my lacking expertise in chess. Simon made a curious noise when I lost in four moves, but said nothing. I reset the board, flipped it around so I had white, and we started another.
That game, I lost in six turns. Simon huffed another quiet laugh when Rocky started dancing around with glee, and I heard him shuffle back over to his corner and sit down. Only then did I risk turning around to look at him, and I saw the gun on the floor beside him on his bad side.
"Grace set up board again, play play play," Rocky said. "Chess now, stare at Simon later."
I choked and coughed, and Rocky laughed at me.
He kicked my butt three more times before I called uncle and gave up. He started his usual gloating routine by dancing around his section of the dorm and telling me every mistake I made during each game. At several points during this tirade I heard Simon laugh, so quiet I almost missed it but definitely there.
Rocky mercifully dropped it once I put the game away, and on cue he started to shuffle out of the dorm and up to the lab. "Grace have good meal, call Rocky when done."
"Will do, buddy." I waved until he was out of my sight, and then I was alone in the dorm with Simon.
Rocky trusted in Simon's restraint as much as he trusted in Simon's self preservation, because he hadn't even hesitated on his way up the tunnel.
I didn't turn around right away, half because I was scared and half because I didn't know what to say that wouldn't just make all of this even more awkward, but there wasn't much else I could do. Simon was staring at me with an eyebrow raised when I finally turned around.
"It's uh." I held my hands out in a halfhearted ta-da! "It's meal time. Again." And then I clapped my hands together. I was almost surprised it didn't make him jump. "Are you going to eat anything?"
Simon looked me over, up and down and back again, with slow consideration. "No," he said. "I'm not hungry."
I stared at him. He stared back. He looked like he was daring me to say something about that, but I had nothing to say that I hadn't already said. I wasn't going to force him to eat. I just wished he would eat anything. The last thing I wanted was for my only human companion to die of starvation before we could make anything out of this whole mess. I made an exaggerated shrug, and he rolled his eyes.
The robot arm deposited a warm burrito into my open hand and then folded itself away again without a word from Mary. This wasn't on purpose, and it just made me feel awkward, but it was too late now. I held the burrito up to Simon in a toast, and he gave me a look like he was pitying me and my insanity.
He said nothing while I ate, and just watched me. It was definitely awkward, since I had spent however long eating by myself because my only other companion considered eating to be a solo deal and now I had a rapt audience, but I ate the whole burrito. I stuck the wrapper in the designated waste disposal and then stood there, even more awkward, while Simon continued to stare at me. I didn't know what expression was on his face, but it at least didn't seem negative.
"Okay," I said. He raised a brow. I held up my hands. "I'm going to go do some science for a while. Are you, uh. All good down here?"
He looked around, down at himself, up at the ladder, then back to me. "I'm good," he said. How he managed to make two words sound so irritated was impressive.
"Okay, cool. Uh." I motioned up to the lab and then gave two thumbs up. Was I always this awkward or was this a new development? "Call if you need anything."
He said nothing. I fled, and Rocky stomped several times in clear annoyance.
«Simon still not eat, question?»
I stretched out on the lab floor and sighed. With the door closed there was no way Simon could make out what I was saying to Rocky, even if he did move closer, so I didn't bother lowering my voice. "No, nothing."
«How long can humans survive without food, question?»
"As long as we have water, a pretty long time." I gesture at the ceiling in futility. "But he's not drinking anything either. If he keeps this up he could die within the next few days."
Rocky warbled. The sound brought tears to my eyes, but I rubbed them away before they could fall. «What now, question?»
"I have to push," I said, already hating the idea. "We can't keep ignoring him until he gets used to us if he dies from dehydration first."
Neither of us were thrilled about it, given the good progress we'd made in just 32 hours, but neither of us wanted Simon to die either. We sat in companionable, morose silence until Rocky said, «Humans need too many things to live.»
I rubbed my arms and thought about how long it had been since I had touched or been touched by someone that wasn't trying to hurt me, and said nothing.
"So it's, uh." I tapped a nonsense rhythm against my knees. Rocky made an unhappy noise at the lack of order to it, and Simon raised a brow at me. "It's been a few days since you got here," I said, holding my hands out. "And you still haven't eaten anything, or had any water. I'll be honest, Simon, I'm starting to worry."
Simon bent one leg and straightened the other, resting his arm on his knee and tilting his head. "I'm fine," he said. He phrased it like a challenge again. I refused to meet that challenge with force.
"I'm sure, bud, but I'd really appreciate it if you at least had some water." I had a bottle of it right next to me for this very conversation, and I picked it up and shook it in his direction. "Please?"
Simon tilted his chin up. He looked at me with a burning anger in his eyes, and said nothing.
I sighed and dropped my hand.
"Why do you care?" he asked, the anger in his eyes reaching his voice. "Why are you so insistent that I eat or drink something?"
The anger hit me square in the chest, and I couldn't help the frustration that reared its head in response. 48 hours and the chance of losing the only other human around for light years was growing by the minute. "Because why wouldn't I!" I threw my hands in the air. Simon actually flinched. The frustration disappeared in a puff of smoke and left me feeling hollow and sick to my stomach. He did his best to keep himself stalwart and proud, but he couldn't keep his fear hidden forever, and the wide eyed look he gave me just reminded me of every abused kid I ever had in my classroom. I pulled back until my voice was soft, trying to reach for that soothing tone I used on those skittish kids when I tried to help them all those centuries ago on earth. I fell a little short, but it was better than nothing. "Why wouldn't I care? We're stuck out here." I gestured around the ship, at myself, at Simon, at Rocky where he stood in absolute silence. "All we have is each other."
It was the wrong thing to say. Simon sat up with a hiss, and he held the gun up, pointing it right at me. I brought my arms up to cover my face out of reflex. "Like I haven't heard that before!" He pulled the hammer back, but by this point I had lost my patience. I was too worried and stressed and annoyed and exhausted to be properly scared by this, with every hour adding to the boiling anxiety I had coursing through me.
"I don't know! I don't know what you have or haven't heard, Simon! You haven't told us anything!" I motioned to him with both hands, then let them fall to my side. "All I know is that you showed up here with us when it should have been impossible, and you're not eating or drinking and I'm worried."
Simon looked at me with his jaw clenched. He looked me in the eye for a long, drawn out moment, and then glanced at the gun in his hand. His brow furrowed. He looked back to me, and tilted his head like a confused dog. That gesture made something in my chest throb.
He flicked the gun. I cringed, bringing my arms up again. We stared at each other, until we suddenly weren't. Simon did a quick series of actions to the gun and set it down on the floor with a hard thunk, then flipped me off and turned so he was curled into his corner and facing away from me.
He didn't move after that, except to adjust. He didn't respond to anything I said, either. He might as well have been asleep, but I knew he wasn't.
Rocky tapped on the wall over and over until I finally looked at him. After all of that, I was exhausted. I felt like I had been tackled to the ground, with the way my body ached and my brain crackled with static. "Grace go watch feel good show," he said. I reached over and turned off the voice synth without a thought. «I watch Simon sleep. Grace need to relax before sleep. Over 48 hours since last full sleep cycle.» He tapped on the wall a few more times for emphasis.
I was too tired to argue. I just said, "Okay." I rubbed my face and let my glasses hang off one ear, and sighed down to my toes. Rocky hummed at me with worry until I started moving towards the ladder.
Simon waited until he was sure Grace was asleep before he moved. Rocky was beside Grace, just on the other side of the clear barrier made of no material he'd ever seen before, and paused for only a moment when Simon first shifted.
He tilted his carapace when Simon pushed to his feet. It was hard, harder than he wanted it to be, with the throbbing in his arm and the ache in his bones and the way his entire world felt off kilter, but he managed. He stood and breathed until his vision stopped spinning, and then he bent down and grabbed the gun off of the floor.
Rocky was shaping something out of a splotchy metal substance, and didn't stop as Simon approached. He just moved his body in a way that Simon knew meant he was watching without eyes, and let out a series of notes that the laptop nearby translated as, "Something wrong, question?"
The voice synthesizer was off so Grace could sleep, but the program was still running just in case Simon needed to talk to Rocky. Lucky him the other human was so considerate, because he did, in fact, want to talk to the alien. Also lucky him, the alien was willing to talk to him after that big argument he had earlier with its pet human.
"This gun doesn't work," he said, and held it by the barrel with the handle pointed up. Rocky stopped his shaping and set it down, his full attention on Simon now. Anxiety crackled through him, but he planted his feet and stared down the alien that had no eyes to stare into. "You blocked the hammer. It can't shoot anything."
Rocky whistled something, and then went right back to that weird metal as if the conversation was already over. He was just following the contour of the thing with his hands (claws?), not making anything new but following the finished edge. His attention was still very much on Simon, from the way he remained tilted his direction. The computer read: "Yes, Rocky broke that." Simon inhaled, ready to pitch a fit about being held against his will and lied to and placated with false promises, but then Rocky chirped again. "Grace unaware. Rocky do it in secret."
That dowsed the growing fire in his gut so fast it almost made him dizzy. "He really doesn't know?"
"Grace not know," Rocky confirmed.
Simon looked at the gun. It wasn't from a maker he recognized but he knew how guns worked and knew how to make sure they kept working, and this one was beyond repair. The alien material that looked like glass but wasn't was spread thin over where the hammer would meet the primer and make the bullet fire. It was hard to see even when looking right at it; Simon knew guns enough to notice it, and he knew aliens enough to know he wouldn't be able to fix it.
Rocky was still watching him, Simon knew, even as Simon stared at the gun and thought about what this meant for him. Rocky kept following the contours of his project as if doing so was soothing to him. It looked like a piston of some sort.
"Why?" Simon asked, because he couldn't think of a reason that made sense. He knew the not-glass was harder than a bullet, that they were in space and firing a gun was a death sentence, and that the alien couldn't survive in human atmo and vice versa. What use would Grace have for a gun, and why would the alien want to keep it from firing when it wasn't in any danger from it?
Rocky trilled, and something about it registered in Simon's brain as sad before he read the words on the screen. "Rocky didn't want Grace to hurt himself."
Simon did a double take.
Rocky didn't want Grace to hurt himself.
"Why would he do that?" Simon asked, angry on Grace's behalf. He had been watching these two interact for days, and they were what could only be described as 'friends'. What reason would Grace have for a gun that involved using it on himself?
Rocky set down his project again and seemed to consider something. Simon felt like Rocky would be looking him up and down if he had eyes to do so. Then, he picked back up on his shaping and chirped. Clipped, maybe flippant, but Simon knew it was an unhappy tone at the core.
"Grace sent to space with no way to go home. Grace sent to die. Gun for ending life early before starvation."
The words ricochet around Simon's head like a bullet fired from his useless gun. Grace sent to die. He looked down at the man in question, half pressed against the alien glass by Rocky's side, drool leaking from the corner of his mouth, patchwork quilt half kicked off from his tossing and turning.
Grace snorted and snuffled, eyebrows furrowing, but before he could do anything else Rocky let out a low hum that vibrated the air. It unknotted something in Simon's chest, a tight ball of anxiety he didn't know was there but he could feel start to unravel as he watched Grace fall back into a peaceful sleep from the precipice of a nightmare. Rocky didn't stop humming until Grace pressed one cheek against the glass, the ghost of a smile on his face.
Simon shoved the gun into his pants pocket, ignoring the part of his brain that screamed at him for it. It wasn't a danger to him anymore, and careless handling wasn't going to do anything more than pinch him very badly. "Why tell me this?" he asked, holding his hand out as if an annoyed devotee in supplication. "What good does it do you to tell me any of this?"
Rocky puffed out air like a human would in a sigh. He held up his project, and Simon watched as it moved, lengthening and contracting, smooth and near silent except for the click of material against itself. "My Grace alone for long time," he said. "New human appear, and Rocky knows Grace wants more. Grace too kind to take, so he waits."
An instinct reared its head somewhere in Simon's gut, but it quickly fell dormant again. What could Grace do to Simon that hadn't been done already?
He ground his teeth together. He didn't want to give in to the aching void in his chest that wanted the calm monotony Grace kept offering. Instead, he asked, "Why shouldn't I just tell him you broke his gun?"
Rocky set down the piston and said nothing for a long few seconds. Then: "What good does it do for you to tell Grace?"
He didn't have an answer to that. Any damage he could do to their relationship was damage that would blow back onto him as well, and he may not know exactly when or where he was, but he had come to enjoy the simplicity. He liked listening to their banter and seeing all the things they did to amuse themselves. He even liked the calm, despite the simmering anxiety underneath. He didn't want to change that.
Rocky let out a low hum, only slightly higher in pitch than the one he used on Grace, and it resonated in Simon's bones. He didn't realize they were words until Rocky pointed towards the computer. "Rocky think humans kind, like Grace. Rocky hope this human right now is kind like Grace."
Simon cursed under his breath and stomped back over to his corner. He ignored the chittering from Rocky that was definitely laughter.
In the morning, or what could be counted as morning, I woke up to find Simon's corner empty. For a brief, terrifying second I thought he had disappeared just as quickly as he had appeared. A ghost that would haunt me for the rest of my life with only Rocky's faultless memory to assure me he was even real. But then I heard him.
"I don't think that's fair," he said, volume low like he was trying not to disturb me. "Why would he do that?"
And then Rocky said, «Because Grace is worst friend ever, bad bad bad, so unfair to good friend Rocky.»
I sat up.
Both of them looked over at the same time. Simon was leaning against the wall of the dorm next to the ladder, the gun in his pocket, his hand massaging the bandaged stump of his other arm. Rocky was holding up three miniatures: me, him, and the airlock he had made when we first met.
I groaned.
Simon had moved the laptop so it was facing where he was, and had made the text bigger so he could read it without moving it closer. That told me he was tech literate on top of normal literate, which was nice and also concerning, but I decided to think about that later. "Rocky, what are you telling him?"
«Telling Simon about time Grace left when I said wait and did unnecessary experiment for standardizing weight,» Rocky said. Simon looked at Rocky, then at me, then at the laptop. «I said wait but no no no, Grace so smart and go swing water pouch around instead.»
"It was a good experiment at the time," I groused. "I just got…overeager."
"So you can actually understand what it's saying?" Simon asked. He looked surprised and a little impressed, even as he grimaced from his self administered massage.
"We've been hanging out too much," I said. Rocky vocalized his wordless dissent. "Has he just been telling you what we've been doing?"
At this, Simon got shy. It was a little different than I expected but mostly the same as anyone else, with averted eyes and an even quieter voice when he said, "Yeah." He also ground his teeth together, which I wished he did less. There were no dentists out here. "First contact with an alien and all that. It's…interesting."
I was looking at a grown man who had recently undergone some unknown amount of physical and mental trauma and was frequently threatening me with a gun (which I gave him) but this still caused a level of cuteness aggression that surprised me. Touch starvation really skewed my perspective.
"Yeah," I said. I cleared my throat. "Uh, yeah, it was pretty interesting to experience it too."
«Grace awake, time for breakfast now,» Rocky said, saving me from my own awkwardness. «I go to control room, call when done.»
He paused to give what would have been a meaningful look to Simon, and then disappeared up the tunnel. Simon went from massaging his arm to rubbing the back of his neck, keeping his eyes on the floor instead of anywhere near me.
Mary deposited a warm sealed container into my hand and a cup of water into the other, and before I could even think to ask Simon mumbled, "I wouldn't mind some water."
That explained the meaningful look. I focused very hard on not making a noise like a tea kettle and succeeded, and even set down my food and drink without spilling. I said, "Okay."
Mary handed me another cup of water upon request, and I held it out to him. It felt like offering a stray cat food for the first time, all the way down to the way Simon took slow and measured steps towards me like he was afraid I was going to try grabbing him. I hadn't even gotten out of bed yet. When he took the cup, he did so with a calculated grip to avoid touching me, and then brought it to his lips and drank the whole thing in one go.
He stared at the empty cup. He licked his lips. Then he held it out to me and said, "More."
I couldn't help the laugh that bubbled out of me, and he only looked slightly offended by it. When I grabbed the cup back from him our fingers brushed against each other, and both of us reacted like we had been shocked. We pulled back and the cup, which was plastic, went clattering to the floor and rolling away. Simon looked like he had seen a ghost. I felt like my heart was going to beat out of my chest. My skin tingled like I had cut off the circulation for too long and it almost hurt.
Rocky called down the tunnel, «Grace Simon okay, question?»
I couldn't get the words out the first time, but the second time I managed, "Yeah, we're good. Just, just dropped a cup, that's all."
Rocky chirped an acknowledgement. Simon was still staring at me like I wasn't quite real. I could only handle so much staring before I felt like I was going to collapse into myself like a star and got up to retrieve the cup.
"Did you…still want more water?" I held it up without meeting his eye. He hesitated, then nodded. "Cool. Mary, more water please?"
When I held it out again he was even more deliberate when taking it from me. I wanted to close the distance so badly but I didn't. My skin still tingled. I watched Simon down the entire cup again and promised myself I would wait for him to make the first move, even if it hurt.
He didn't ask for more water after that and just returned to his corner. He took the gun in hand and slid to the floor using the wall as support, and then watched me in contemplative silence while I ate. It wasn't anything fancy, a rehydrated something that I couldn't taste at the time, but it seemed to fascinate him.
"Are all of your meals like that?" he asked. He sounded unsure, like the question could be seen as rude or offensive and he was anticipating backlash. He looked confused for a moment after I nodded.
"Do you want some?" I asked. When I held it out to him he flinched, but he didn't immediately say no. I didn't move, and avoided looking him in the eye for good measure, and soon he was shuffling toward me. His movements were just as slow and deliberate as his earlier steps, and fluid. Whatever life he had before meant he had pretty good control over his body, even now. He paused when I opened my mouth. "I can also get you your own meal so you don't have to share mine, if you want."
He furrowed his brow. Instead of nothing, which I had come to expect, he actually said something. "Do you have enough for that?"
Several things snapped into place in my head at once. This entire time, he must have been saying no because he either didn't want to reduce my food stores or because he expected me to want something from him as repayment. Too many faces came to mind, all kids with a skewed idea of love and family and kindness, wondering why I wanted to help them when they had nothing to give me in return. Hindsight really was 20/20.
I had no reason or desire to lie to him, so I didn't. "This was supposed to be a 3-person crew," I said. "My other two crewmates died before we even got to the Tau Ceti system. I have plenty of food to share with you."
He chewed on that information, not looking anywhere near me, and then nodded. I felt like I could survive in the vacuum of space with how the elation hit me like a truck. "Okay. I'll…take my own."
"Mary," I said, and had to reign in how happy I sounded so it wasn't weird. "Register new crewmate, name: Simon."
"New crewmate registered," the computerized voice said. "Voice sample required."
"So you can ask for your own meals and won't have to wait for me," I told Simon.
He looked skeptical. "Uh." And then he looked awkward. "Hi. I'm Simon."
"Voice sample saved. Hello, Simon."
He frowned. It was just endearing enough that I had to hide my smile behind my food.
"Okay, now ask for breakfast," I said.
He shook his head, not a denial but in disbelief. Maybe the absurdity of the situation was finally catching up to him. Did they have something like Mary where he was from? "Can I have breakfast?" he asked. He was gruff and embarrassed and I wanted so very badly to smooth out the crease between his eyebrows. I sat on my other hand to keep from reaching out. He held his hand out when the robot arm started moving, and Mary placed a wrapped meal into his waiting palm. Then he just stared at it, like he couldn't decide if he actually wanted to eat it or not.
"There's a schedule," I said, for the lack of better things to say. I didn't want us to sit in silence again. "You won't be able to get more food than what's allotted to you, so you don't have to worry about eating too much."
For once, this seemed to be the right thing to say. The crease disappeared and he started to unwrap his meal, using his teeth in order to do so. It was awkward to watch, but he managed. Offering to help was a step too far, even after all this progress, but it did give me an idea to bring up to Rocky later.
"And, uh."
Simon looked over to me, sauce smeared on his cheek from his enthusiastic eating. Keep it together, Ryland.
"You don't have to keep sleeping on the floor," I said. I motioned further into the dorm. "There's plenty of bedding if you want something softer. I have everything I need right here." I patted my quilt. Simon traced some of the patterns on it with his eyes. "So everything else is up for grabs. You don't even have to ask."
I wasn't going to say that I was never going to use any of it because of my deceased crewmates, but from the way he frowned he probably understood what I left unspoken. And, thankfully, he nodded. "Yeah, I'll do that." He glared at his food so hard I thought it might catch on fire. He said, "Thanks."
That made my heart stutter in a way that was kind of embarrassing, and I knew that Rocky was going to give me grief for it if he heard it happen again.
"Yeah," I said. "No, no worries."
I turned off the voice synthesizer when Simon finally dozed off, since I didn't need it anyway. The clicks and whistles of Rocky's plain voice(s) didn't disturb him as much as the computerized voice, and the man clearly needed his sleep. He was too thin, sunken eyes and hollowing cheeks from the lack of food from wherever he came from, and pale from no sunlight in who knows how long. I tried to catalogue everything I could about him by sight alone, hoping that I could use something I could see to help him ease into life on the Hail Mary with his two new weird roommates. He was nestled in with most of the other bedding, practically drowning in the spare blankets and pillows, and looked like he was in heaven and hell simultaneously. His life before, with clothes so threadbare they might as well have been gossamer, likely had little by way of duvets.
«Grace,» Rocky said, the Eridian equivalent of a whisper. I hummed, not looking away from Simon. His breathing was shallow but consistent. «New human needs arm,» he said.
I looked over to Rocky, and found him holding up a small model of a human arm made of thin xenonite. It could articulate, and he moved it up and down by the elbow in demonstration.
I remembered that I had the exact same thought earlier, watching him eat. No use complaining about Rocky beating me to the punch. "Do you want to use xenonite to make him a prosthetic?" I asked. Given how badly he and Simon had reacted to each other at first, I was surprised by this change in Rocky's behavior. Just as I was surprised by Simon's change in behavior, but now I was getting suspicious. Something had definitely happened between them when I wasn't around, and the only time that was the case was when I was sleeping. I didn't know how to feel about the idea of them talking while I was asleep, mostly because Simon might as well have glued that gun into his palm since it rarely left his hand.
He had respect for the gun and its safe usage, though. If there was one thing I picked up from being on that military aircraft carrier for so long it was the idea of trigger discipline. But it was still a gun, possibly being waved back and forth over my unconscious body, and I'm going to stop thinking about that before I make myself panic.
«Humans better with both arms,» he said, and moved the small xenonite arm until it was straight. «Prosthetics normal for Eridians. Not common but not rare. I know how to make a basic model, and can adjust for human arm.»
"I think he'd really like that," I said, and I couldn't help how soft and gooey that made me feel. The idea of being able to help Simon find some level of normalcy was something I didn't know meant so much to me until Rocky said he wanted to help. "But you should ask him when he wakes up, because that's a pretty big assumption on both our parts."
Rocky set the miniature down with a soft thunk, and did a thing with his body that I decided a while ago to interpret as an eye roll. It was the same kind of motion, and Rocky told me it had the same basic interpretation too. «No.»
"No?"
«Grace ask, not Rocky." It tapped on the wall between is in emphasis. "Humans need connection to own kind. Ask and start connection that way.»
"Rocky," I said, crossing my arms. He was right, but hearing it come from him first made me feel self conscious, like I was a teenager unsure of how to make friends again. "Are you sure?"
«Rocky is wingman like from television.»
I squeezed my eyes shut and pinched the bridge of my nose. I didn't know if I wanted to start the cultural conversation about the romantic implications behind that word or not, and decided to shelve that for later when I didn't have to whisper because Simon was sleeping and Simon wasn't pointing a gun at me because he trusted us at least enough not to hurt him. Who knows how long that will take, though.
I didn't want to start an argument, either, so all I could do was say, "Fine."
Rocky trilled happily, probably because I gave in so quickly and he felt vindicated.
"Where I'm from," Simon said, and his voice wasn't loud but it still made me jump. He frowned with his whole face, but continued, half ignoring me now. "Where I'm from, there are no stars. They disappeared, and all that was left was some ships and stations."
He got quiet. I blinked at him, watching the way his face twisted and relaxed and pinched as he thought about what he was going to say next. He set the gun down on the floor next to his hip and gestured at me in frustration.
"Got anything to say to that?"
"Uh." He started this conversation with no preamble, and I was still trying to find my bearings. He was just sitting in his claimed corner of the dormitory, watching us move around, and then just…started talking. I looked at Rocky, who tilted his carapace towards me in an approximation of the same thing. Then I looked back to Simon, who looked like he wanted to bolt. "No, not yet. I can save my questions until later."
He sighed like this was an inconvenience for him, and gestured in frustration again. "We didn't have any idea what to do," he said, his voice hard with anger but rough at the end of his sentence. He turned his eyes down and didn't look at me. "But there was a chance. A moon, with an ocean of blood. I was." Even I heard it when he ground his teeth together. "I was sent down there to see what I could find. I was welded into that shitty submarine and sent to die, just for a chance that something was down there."
I must have made a noise, because his eyes snapped up and met mine. Rocky behind me let out that low hum he liked to use whenever I was getting anxious, and I saw Simon's shoulders relax at the same time mine did. He was still angry, but the frightened animal look in his eyes was gone and replaced with a tiredness I knew all too well. My heart beat painfully in my chest and I had to swallow to keep myself from sobbing.
"Yeah," I said. My voice didn't want to get any louder than a mumble. "Yeah, I get that feeling."
Simon sighed and propped up his arm with his knee. He gestured vaguely in our direction, eyes down and away again. "I know," he mumbled back. "The…Rocky told me. That they sent you out here to die."
Ah. That explained it.
The gun sat abandoned on the floor. I walked over to him before I could convince myself not to, every cell in my body yearning to get closer, and sat on the other side of him. He leaned away from me but otherwise didn't move. He radiated heat like a living, breathing human and was close enough that the fabric of our pants brushed against each other. I didn't dare touch him. I needed it like a drowning man needed air, but I inhaled the water instead of forcing him. The thought of taking that choice away from him, even knowing how much the physical closeness would help both of us, made me sick.
"I don't know anything about missing stars," I said, keeping my voice quiet. I still felt the burn behind my eyes that meant I was close to crying, but I stubbornly kept a lid on it. Simon didn't even flinch. "But I think that we're from different places."
"What makes you say that?" he asked, matching my volume. His expression was blank, but his hand clenched and unclenched in a steady rhythm.
"I only know of two operational space stations, and they were still there when I left Earth."
Simon straightened. He might as well have set me on fire with how much the heat from his shoulder burned mine. Still so close yet so far. It was hard to focus on anything but that point of almost contact, but I heard him when he said, "Maybe. Wouldn't be the weirdest thing I ever heard."
I rubbed my hands together in my lap. The anxiety and desire warred inside of me until all that was left was a foreboding feeling in my lungs and sweaty palms. "I can't…I don't think I can get you back to Earth," I said. "But I can at least make your life on the Hail Mary decent. If that's okay."
I glanced at him. He was staring ahead, his fist clenched and knuckles white.
"I don't know how you got here or why you were put here specifically or anything remotely useful about your situation," I said. I rubbed the back of my neck with the arm farthest from him, not wanting to risk touching him and derailing my train of thought beyond salvaging. "I don't even know where I'd begin with figuring that out. With the way things are, we're both probably still going to die out here anyway."
Rocky whistled, a sentiment with no words but plenty of stubborn denial. I waved him off, because that was a conversation to have later after everything settled down again like sediment.
"But I can make what time we have better than what they expected to happen to you. Part of that could be, uh." I pointed. Simon was watching me from the corner of his eye, stiff and waiting. "Making you an arm to use? Rocky said he knows how to make a basic prosthetic and can change it to work for humans."
He turned to face me, moving enough that our knees knocked together. The point of contact felt like it was on fire. It was easier to pretend I was okay when there wasn't someone right here that I could hug and hold for hours.
"Yes," he said. There was a light in his eyes that wasn't there before, and my heart stuttered again. Rocky shuffled around, and I knew he was going to tease me about all this later. "Can you really do that?"
"Uh, yeah. I—I mean Rocky is the expert here." I pointed over to him, but Simon was watching me like I had all the answers he needed. I might as well have been handcuffed— and I'm not finishing that thought! "Rocky, a little help here?"
Rocky shuffled around again, and I heard the chittering laughter underneath his voice when he said, "Will require time for Simon to recover. Make list for new limb. Eridians need checklist to make sure new limb okay to use, so soft squishy humans need list too."
Simon glanced Rocky’s way, a brief flick of acknowledgement, before continuing to stare at me. "If you're the expert, why am I the one making the list?" I asked. I might as well have been asking Simon, since it was hard to look away with him staring at me so intensely.
Rocky stomped all of his legs, one at a time in a rapid rhythm. "Humans will know humans better than Rocky!"
I got up. I couldn't handle it anymore, and if I stayed I was just going to do something stupid. "Yeah, yeah, sure. Right." I brushed myself off, adjusted my clothes, cleared my throat, clapped my hands, and then stood there. Seriously, was I always this awkward, or was something about Simon special? "Doctor's orders, Simon, you gotta get your strength up before we can actually make you a prosthetic."
"The alien is a doctor?" Simon asked. His tone was wry, and my ears were hot.
"No, that's me." I pointed at myself with both thumbs, too scared to turn around. I might as well have been 16 again with how this was going. "Not a medical doctor, mind you, but I am Doctor Ryland Grace. I studied molecular biology, specializing in speculative xenobiology." And my blood type was O negative, astrological sign Aquarius. Get it together, Ryland!
Simon was quiet for a moment too long and I had to turn around or risk coming apart on an atomic level. He was looking up at me with an expression I couldn't quite parse, eyebrows furrowed and mouth turned down. His voice was soft when he said, "Your first name is Ryland?"
I very suddenly had to get out of there before I went into cardiac arrest. Rocky laughed at me as I ran away, too.
I heard Simon ask him as I reached the lab, "Did I say something wrong?"