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Grace groans as he slowly sits down on a bench in front of the house, setting his cane aside. Geez, his knees are not what they used to be some years ago. They creak unhappily at each movement and start to ache if he walks too much. He sighs. Time spent first in zero gravity and then in double Earth’s gravity will do that much to you.
He looks ahead. The biodome lights, dimmed slightly for the evening, shimmer between the waves of his personal little sea and tangle lovingly in his longish greying hair, finding last strands that have not yet lost their golden gleam. (There are fewer and fewer of them each day.) The lights are artificial, Grace knows it. But if he closes his eyes, he can pretend he almost feels the tickling warmth of non-existing sunlight on his wrinkled face.
“Grace tired, question?” Rocky chirps as he settles on the bench by Grace's side, folding his limbs in a way he always folds them when he's getting comfortable and is not planning to go anywhere anytime soon. Grace puts a hand on his carapace – Rocky purrs – and leans back on the bench with a content exhale. His back is killing him just as much as his knees do.
“Yeah, a bit.”
“But we not walk much,” Rocky insists, puzzled. “Walk a lot more before, Grace not tired. Grace sick, question?”
“No, no, buddy,” Grace slightly curls his fingers into the xenonite suit, seeking the familiar warmth. “I’m okay. I guess it's just the age finally getting to me.”
He can’t help but smile. Wow, what a thing to say. Once he thought he would never live to old age – and now look at him, grey hair and creaky knees, sitting on a bench beside his house with his best friend by his side. If this isn’t happiness, then what is happiness at all?
Rocky shifts slightly under his hand.
“Age? Grace old?”
Grace chuckles.
“Yeah. I mean, in Eridian years I’m definitely not, but, hey, not everyone gets to live for 600 years. Meanwhile in human years I am pretty old actually. I’m not sure how old, though, considering the years spent in a coma, and time dilation, that can get complicated, as you know–”
“Yes yes, Rocky know,” Rocky interrupts, and there’s an intensity in his voice Grace hasn’t heard in a long, long time. “How old Grace, question?”
“Well…” Grace scratches the back of his head. “I’d say around… seventy? Seventy one? In… here years. On Earth I’d be even older.”
“And how long humans usually live, question?”
Oh.
Grace immediately understands what Rocky is getting at.
Something in his chest aches sweetly.
“Rocky…” he murmurs, almost musical, turning to face his friend.
“How long, Grace?” Rocky repeats, and his tone is nearly hysterical now, high and shaking, like a string of a violin taut so tight it’s about to snap.
“It depends,” Grace says softly, brushing Rocky’s carapace. Rocky leans into the touch. “Most people live to their eighties. Some are lucky to push it to ninety or even one hundred.”
Rocky stills.
“So… short,” he whistles, sorrow bitter in his voice. It sounds unnatural. Grace desperately wishes he could take it away somehow, lie, make up something to cheer Rocky up. He knows, however, that there’s nothing he can do. It’s the same quiet grief that comes when a child learns about their dog’s lifespan. It’s inevitable. Unavoidable.
“Grace…” Rocky stutters, fidgets with his hands, shudders suddenly, as if the mere thought of what he is going to ask is already too much for him. Grace knows what he is about to hear before Rocky finally speaks. He shuts his eyes.
“Grace… will… die, question?”
There’s a weird feeling of déjà vu nagging at the back of Grace’s mind. They’ve been here before. Back then the stars were dying, the future was vague, and Ryland Grace was sure he was going to die alone among the stars he had unwillingly sacrificed everything for. Grace remembers long sleepless hours trying to convince himself that it was worth it, that his life meant nothing in comparison to billions, that at least he met Rocky, and that was definitely worth it. (He always thought about Rocky when everything was too much.) But he wasn’t ready to die. He wanted to live. Oh, how he wanted to live. The thought of slowly dying of starvation, alone, on a spaceship drifting in the vastness of space, light years away from everything and everyone he had ever known was unbearable.
Now, it’s different.
Now, he has lived a life.
Now, he is not alone.
Now, he has something worth both living and dying for.
Grace raises the corners of his lips, just a little.
“Yes,” he says, “I will.”
Rocky makes a small sound. It’s so high-pitched, Grace barely hears it. Then another, shaky and sad. He lowers his carapace to the bench and makes himself as little as possible, his vents trembling under the glimmering curves of xenonite.
He’s crying.
Grace's heart drops.
“I’m not dying now!” he adds quickly, silently cursing himself, hands hovering helplessly over Rocky’s trembling body. “I still have years ahead!”
“But you will die!” Rocky trills mournfully – and suddenly he is all over Grace, his hands pressing almost painfully into his back and sides and neck, all clutching onto his clothes so tightly and so desperately, as if death were about to take Grace away right now. He makes that small sound again, and it pierces right through Grace’s aching chest.
Grace holds him. Of course, he does. He forgets about his darn knees and his aching back and holds him close, whispering sweet nothings into warm xenonite. He would hold Rocky forever if he could, safe and comfortable within his embrace – his best friend, his heart, his guiding star.
“Rocky,” he sings, quiet and soft, rocking slightly back and forth. “My friend, my love, I’m here now. It’s okay.”
Rocky silently nestles further into his chest. As if wishing to become one with Grace. As if being this close is still not enough, and he yearns to curl up in the cradle of Grace’s ribs, so that the familiar beating of his heart lulled him to sleep.
Grace would let him without a second thought.
“Come on, buddy,” he repeats, leaving a featherlight kiss on the top of Rocky’s suit. “I’ve got you.”
“Not for long,” Rocky hums quietly. His trembling has subsided, but there’s still a slight shaking to his voice, and he’s holding Grace just as tightly.
“No, not for long,” Grace agrees tenderly. “But right now I’m here. Think about that.”
“Difficult,” Rocky sobs. “So little time with Grace. Grace mean so much–”
“Come on,” Grace says teasingly, while something in his chest twists ugly. “I’ve been here enough. Y’all must be tired of me.”
Rocky makes a broken sound.
“Never tired. Never enough.”
And Grace stifles a sob that threatens to escape his parted lips, because of course, it’s not enough, it would never be enough, for someone who lives for hundreds of years twenty years is nothing.
Dog years, he thinks, and his eyes sting. For you, I'm just a fleeting moment, a single blink on a scale of long centuries. For me, you're everything that has ever been and will ever be.
He has to say something.
“When I was a kid, we had a dog,” he says, and Rocky leans into his voice, listening. “We called her Star, because she had one right over her nose. We found her on the side of the road, dirty and hungry, somebody must have just left her there. We took her home, though dad wasn’t really happy about it. But we cared about her, Colt, Court and I.”
His brothers’ names taste bitter on his tongue. Grace closes his eyes for a second. Rocky chirps quietly.
“Why Grace tell all that, question?”
“Well…” Absent-mindedly, Grace starts rocking back and forth again, holding Rocky close. “Dogs don’t live much. I mean, compared to other animals, they do, but compared to humans… They’re like you and me. The dog's entire life is just a part of human's existence.”
“Grace like dog?”
“Yeah,” Grace chuckles wetly. “I’m like your dog, buddy.”
Rocky shifts, pressing a hand to Grace’s chest.
“What… happen to Star, question?”
Grace closes his eyes again.
“She… died. I think it was dad. He never liked her, she annoyed him to no end. One day Colt and I came back from school, and she was dead. He must have given her some poison, I don’t know. Or maybe I just don’t remember.”
Grace remembers, however, Star lying on the kitchen’s floor, motionless, eyes glassy and nose cold and dry. He remembers calling out her name, standing over the corpse of his friend, Colt kneeling beside him, just as desperate, dad yelling at them for “making drama out of nothing”, mom standing silently in the corner with her eyes down, as always. Grace remembers Court getting them out of the kitchen, strong arms wrapped protectively around their shaking shoulders. God, Court must’ve been no older than 13 then. Just a kid who had to grow up early to care for his little brothers.
“We buried Star in the forest behind our house," he says, almost feeling the smell of wet leaves and rain. “It was fall, October, maybe, and we wrapped her in her favourite old blanket before laying her into the grave pit. Court put a few stones over the grave, so we knew where she was.” Grace takes a breath. Rocky presses his hand to his chest a bit harder. Grace smiles weakly. “That night I thought about death for the first time in my life.”
He lay in his bed, in the dark, listening to Colt’s uneven breaths, and thought about Star, about her clever eyes and wiggling tail, about the way she used to chase the squirrels in the forest and play with sticks. She was so full of life, and now she was dead, and smart little Grace couldn’t wrap his smart little head around it. He thought about death, not knowing it was only the beginning.
Grace concentrates on the present, on Rocky’s grounding warmth enfolding him.
“I'm telling this so you could understand: I know how you must be feeling, Rock,” he murmurs. “And I’m sorry you’ll have to go through it. If I could, I would’ve done everything to spare you this. But we both know it’s impossible. Death is a part of life.”
Rocky sobs again, this time soft and quiet, his vents trembling.
“Rocky know. Not make it easier. Grace is–”
His voice breaks, again, and Grace can’t take it anymore, because Rocky’s voice is not supposed to sound like that, he should be rumbling, whistling, trilling happily, a living orchestra of joyful sounds. He isn’t supposed to sound so desperate.
“I know,” Grace whispers, tugging Rocky impossibly closer. “I’m sorry, my star, I’m so sorry.”
Rocky tucks the top of his carapace under Grace’s chin.
“How Grace so calm, question?”
Grace smiles sadly, lowering his head so Rocky could feel his smile.
“I’m not scared to die. I’ve lived a life, more full than I ever expected it to be. All because of you, Rocky.”
And it’s you I’m scared to leave behind is lost between the waves that timidly lick the shore and whisper about infinity and mortality. It’s dark in the biodome now, artificial evening giving way to artificial night, and first stars already peek through the transparent dome. Grace looks at them and thinks about a small boy that spent the nights looking at those stars and dreaming of one day travelling among them with an alien best friend who would show him the farthest corners of the Universe. Grace looks down at Rocky nestled in his lap and thinks: I would’ve gone through everything again just to know that in the end I would be here, with you.
Grace looks at the stars and thinks that maybe, just maybe, he’ll become one of them when he dies.
“When we buried Star, Colt and I were devastated,” he says, brushing the curves of Rocky’s suit, and Rocky purrs sadly at the sound of his voice. “I couldn’t stop crying, he was sobbing, too. And Court, well, usually he wasn’t the one to talk much. But he always knew what to say when one needed it. And that night, he told us about dog heaven.”
“Dog heaven? What is, question?”
“Do you believe that death is not the end?” Grace asks, and for some reason his voice is shaking. “That there is something on the other side?”
Rocky shifts. Grace would have thought he is looking at the stars, too, but he knows Rocky can’t see them.
“Some Eridians believe death is like sleep, but with dreams,” he rumbles, an unexplainable emotion seeping into his voice, too. “Fall asleep and never wake up, dreams forever. But no science. Only belief. Why Grace ask, question?”
“We have that, too. Many people believe that death is just a transition, that in the After life continues, or something like that.”
The stars blink at Grace, distant and beckoning. His heart is beating under Rocky’s warm hand.
“But that night Court told us about dog heaven. It’s a place where all dogs go when they die. It’s warm, with enough old blankets and toys and sticks and squirrels for dogs to be happy.”
Grace exhales. The waves exhale with him.
“Court said, in this heaven dogs could wait for their owners.”
Rocky stills. Grace looks at him – the brightest star he has ever known. He brings up his hand to rest it against Rocky’s warm side.
“So I thought, maybe there’s a dog heaven for me, too?” he says, and Rocky's hands clench into his clothes.
“You believe in that?” he chirps, his voice trembling like starlight.
“I don’t know,” Grace admits with honesty and smiles sheepishly. “But I’ll believe in anything just to be sure that I will see you again.”
And that’s it.
That’s the whole thing about Ryland Grace: there’s not a single thing in the world he wouldn’t do for Rocky. He crossed time and space to meet him, he turned away from his home to save him, and he will believe in the afterlife to give him hope that they will meet again someday, somewhere far away from everything they have ever known. With Rocky beside him, all seems possible.
Rocky presses into him, so tightly it might leave bruises. Grace doesn’t care, pressing even closer, eyes burning with tears. There’s no way they weren’t meant to be, their bodies intertwining perfectly, curve to curve, limb to limb, enfolding the other with radiating warmth.
“I found you in the stars when we first met,” Grace sings, and Rocky hums with him. “So, when I die, it will be your turn to find me there.”
“Will you wait for me?” Rocky asks. Grace laughs, and it’s like Infinity laughing at the end of the world.
“Always, my star,” he says, and the stars glimmer in his tears. “I’ll always wait for you.”