Chapter Text
There were a lot of things in life that Ryland Grace never thought he’d do.
For one, going to space was pretty crazy in itself. He wasn’t an astronaut. He was a molecular biologist that got a little too emotional during an important science conference, and was promptly shuttled straight out of his field and into the life of a middle school science teacher. It didn’t help that he was infamous for writing a paper that pretty much all of the people in his field thought was a hilarious joke.
Either way, whether he stayed in the science community or was shunned down into a lesser profession, neither path should have led him to space. He should still be on Earth right now, if his life had gone normally. He should still be in his classroom, surrounded by eager students that he had learned to love after losing his previous job. Biking to work every morning, staying up late every night to grade papers, spending his meager paycheck to ensure his classroom was lively and full of fun.
Sure, maybe the years would have gotten rougher as time went on. The sun was dying, after all. People were starving. Grace would probably be starving, too. But it was still the life he’d been meant to have. The life he would have chosen for himself.
But things didn’t go as planned. The second he chose to run back to Stratt and help save the world, his fate was sealed.
Now he was in space, and ever since that horribly insane truth fell upon him, his life had become increasingly more ridiculous and unpredictable. It may have started with space, but stuff somehow always got more wild.
He met an alien. Became best friends with that alien. Discovered that Adrian had a predator with the alien, and then both of them almost died saving each other when they attempted to procure said predator. Then they managed to breed a nitrogen-resistant strain of that predator, the Taumoeba, as they called it, and thus figured out how to save two whole worlds that were lightyears apart.
Then Grace learned he was brave when he turned back to save Rocky. When the Taumoeba learned to get through xenonite and started eating the astrophage fuel, it wasn’t even a choice. Grace knew he had to go back to save his friend. There was no question. So, he sent off the beetles to Earth, and set a course to go pick up his best friend. And now they were on their way to Erid, so they could save that planet, too.
Grace thought the utterly insane parts of his life would end when he actually set foot on Erid a year or so from now, but… he was wrong. So insanely, unexplainably wrong.
Usually, even when the crap he went through was insane, there was at least a scientific explanation he could fall back on to keep his sanity. This time, though…
God.
Grace didn’t even know how to process this.
They were three years into the four year long journey to Erid. Grace had long since extensively planned out how to ration his remaining food to last him the journey, and was even being extra cautious. He was eating just enough to get by and was substituting a significant amount of his meals with a strain of Taumoeba that he’d bred to be edible. It also helped that he had more than enough coma slurry left. The other two human passengers of The Hail Mary passing away had left him with years worth of extra. The only big issue they were facing was boredom. Sure, there were things to do. Ship maintenance, looking after the breeding farms for the Taumoeba, the Don’t Go Crazy Room with all of human media, video games, Rocky teaching Grace to better understand his language. There was lots to do, but it was also monotonous. And they had one year left of this.
Three years was a very long time. And the closer they got to Erid, the longer it felt like they’d be there. He thought this last year would feel like the longest one.
Grace almost wished it would have stayed monotonous and boring.
Because now there’s some… entity… inside the ship.
And it was utterly horrifying.
Neither of them were sure how it got on the ship. It started with alarms blaring inside of Mary, saying there was some kind of contamination. Grace feared that the Taumoeba had somehow managed to escape their breeding tanks again, but when he checked, it wasn’t that. Grace and Rocky blindly scrambled around in a panic, trying to figure out what in the world was happening, when suddenly there was a flash of light and a loud BANG! from an explosion that sent Grace crashing to the wall.
For a cold second, Grace thought that was it. Something went wrong with Mary, and they were definitely dead. Out in the vacuum of space.
But when his vision cleared, and his hearing returned to the sound of Rocky frantically screaming his name, he realized that wasn’t what happened. And the explosion? Well, he still didn’t understand what happened. But it wasn’t an explosion of fire so much as it was a burst of mysterious light and a shockwave that had sent him flying across the lab. But even more horrifying than that was what he discovered after he managed to gain his bearings again.
In the middle of the lab… there was a splattering of blood. It covered the white walls, floor to ceiling. All over the lab tables, on the equipment, and all over Grace. And in the center of it all?
A man.
Or at least, he mostly looked like a man. From a distance, it had looked like a blob of red and unidentifiable viscera. But after staring for a good few minutes in cold shock, Grace was able to make out a human-like shape.
Blood caked every inch of his body. It soaked into his clothes. It was matted in his hair, so caked into his skin that he almost thought it was an actual part of him. And the smell… it burned Grace’s nose. Made him choke every time he took a breath. The iron scent was so strong he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to get it out of his nose.
At first, Grace refused to come near the creature (Yes! Creature! Because there was no possible way a human just appeared on his ship in a flash of impossible light). He was terrified, and so was Rocky. He just kept screeching from his side of the xenonite wall, shaking and asking a million questions that they both knew Grace could not answer. But then Grace saw the man gasp for air and vomit up a bunch more blood on the floor. He was unconscious as he did so, and Grace somehow managed to lurch into action. His brain shut down a bit as his body moved on autopilot to do damage control. Covered in blood and trembling, he crawled to the man and moved him onto his side so he wouldn’t choke on the blood he was vomiting up.
Then, with the help of a whole lot of adrenaline, he managed to drag the unconscious man into the next room where Armando was already waiting at the ready. The robot took the injured human (possible human) with care. It cut off his clothes and began the process of administering first aid.
Grace stood to the side and watched, his brain lagging behind. The entity appeared to be a human male. Underneath all the blood, he couldn’t tell how old they were, but he didn’t think that unanswered question mattered near as much as the hundreds of other mysteries that were bouncing around in his head. Armando diagnosed the human and listed off the injuries to Grace. He was freshly missing an arm. There was a minor concussion. Various abrasions and bruises littered his body. There were also… teeth.
Not normal teeth, though he did have normal ones inside his mouth. But on the left side of his face… there was another set of long, sharp teeth growing out of his cheek. And his ear on that side was strangely long and pointed. Kind of webbed, almost. Like a fin. There were also scars all along that side of his body. His skin looked like it was melting off his skeleton, and there were infected, pus-filled boils and blisters all over him.
Grace felt sick to his stomach, so he turned and vomited onto the floor. Rocky screeched in alarm, rolling his ball into Grace’s side as the man crouched on the ground with his hands on either side of his mess.
“I-I think I’m gonna pass out…” Grace heaved. It was the first thing he’d said since the flash of light. His head was spinning, and the edges of his vision were going dark. The smell of metal was still thick in the air from the blood, and his eyes burned as tears streaked down his face.
“Bad bad bad!” Rock nudged him harder with his ball. “Grace can’t sleep! Danger danger danger! New human! Must stay alert!”
Grace panted hard, his heart thudding so fast he could hear it in his ears. He trembled, struggling to control his breathing. Rocky was right. He couldn’t pass out right now. Not when there was a whole other person now on his ship.
“Y-you think it’s human?” Grace asked. “Are you… are you sure?”
“Yes,” Rocky said. “Sounds human to Rocky. Insides and outsides are same as Grace. Only small differences. One less limb. Odd protrusions on face.”
“Yeah…” Grace said. Holy cow. “Y-yeah, okay… alright. Okay.”
“Grace just saying yes in different words.” Rocky pointed out.
“Yep.” Grace whimpered out.
“How did new human get here, question?” Rocky asked. “This normal for humans?”
“No, no no no,” Grace shook his head quickly. “Nope. Not normal.”
“Grace heart beating fast fast fast,” Rocky said, a bit more gently. “Rocky get in better xenonite suit. Help Grace.”
Rocky had gotten into the ball as quickly as he could so he could be in Grace’s atmosphere with him. He did have a more form-fitting suit now, but it took longer to get into it. As Rocky rolled away, Grace sat back on his legs and turned over his shoulder to look at the other… human. Armando’s arms were moving up and down his body, and there was a tube down his throat. His vitals were on a screen beside him, and they were all over the place. Some of the blood had been wiped from his body, just enough for the medical robot to properly get to his damaged parts. His clothes had been mostly cut away, revealing the harsh red that was covering his skin.
Grace sat there until he heard Rocky running across the floor towards him, his form-fitting EVA suit now fitted to his body. He embraced Grace in a tight hug, and he felt himself sink into his warmth as tears continued to stream down his face. Three of Rocky’s limbs were curled all the way around his body, and he couldn’t help the small sob that crawled up his throat. He didn’t even know why he was crying. Maybe it was just the shock of the situation. It was pretty scary to have some person appear on a ship light-years away from any habitable planets. His sudden appearance was impossible to comprehend and Grace had really thought for a cold, terrible moment that the explosion of light had been their death.
Rocky trilled sadly, his own carapace trembling in Grace’s grasp as he squeezed him back. This was probably stressful for both of them.
After a bit, Grace pulled back. He tried to wipe his eyes, but he was still covered in blood. And now there was a bunch of it smeared on Rocky’s suit now as well after the hug.
“W-we should clean up and try to figure out what just happened.” Grace said, even though a bigger part of him wanted to down the rest of the vodka he had left and pass out. Maybe this was all a dream and he’d wake up later and the strange being in the medical room would disappear.
But this all felt too real to be fake. The sticky heat of blood clung to his skin so uncomfortably that this couldn't possibly be a nightmare. It was so terribly, vividly real. Grace stumbled to his feet, and Rocky trilled in concern as he followed him to the bathroom. He removed his clothes, and for once, Grace was so beyond caring that he was naked in front of Rocky as he sponged himself down. The eridian could see through his clothes anyway, so it hardly mattered if he had them on or not.
Besides, he didn't want to be alone right now. And it seemed like Rocky didn't want to either. He patiently waited as Grace meticulously cleaned himself, and helped get himself clean when his turn came next. Then Grace managed to get into a clean pair of clothes and he suited up in some plastic PPE and slipped on a face mask before they returned to the medical wing of the ship.
Armando had stitched the wound of the man's missing arm closed and was pumping him full of fluids through an IV line. Grace stood several feet away from the bed with Rock at his side. The eridian curled a claw around his leg as a way to comfort the both of them. They remained in that position for several minutes before Grace found the courage to get closer. Hesitantly, he reached a gloved hand out and touched the man's remaining arm. His skin was warm through the latex.
Grace's breath hitched. They weren't making direct skin contact, but this was the closest he'd gotten to actually touching another person besides Rocky in literal years. Sure, there was the xenonite EVA suit that allowed him and Rocky to make contact, but there was a small bubble of distance always between them when they touched. And when they had touched for real? Well, they both had scars as evidence of it.
Even longer before that, the last time Grace remembered being touched… was when he was pinned to the ground and sedated.
There had been signs of touch starvation over the last few years that they'd been traveling to Erid, but there was also something conflicting about it, too. The only reason Grace hadn't gone insane craving it was because his most recent memories of being touched were traumatizing. Both himself and Rocky got hurt saving each other, and before that… he'd been forced and the result of it upended his life as he knew it.
Even now, just touching the man's arm through his gloves caused a dizzying concoction of mixed emotions to rise within him. For one, there was a small bit of relief. But more overpoweringly, Grace felt like he wanted to crawl out of his skin. It was such a terrible feeling that he felt like he might really be content for the rest of his life only touching Rocky through his suit.
Grace wrenched his hand away before beginning the process of washing the man down. He had a bucket of water, and he kept having to replace it every few minutes when it got murky and gross because of all the blood. As he worked, Rocky followed him around in silence, tapping his claws on the ground as he observed the new (supposed) human. His skin was darker than Grace's by a few shades, despite the sickly pale tinge to his cheeks. His face was scuffed with dark stubble, and his black hair was long and matted with blood. Grace took extra care to wash it clean with what he had, trying to touch him as minimally as possible.
When he was as clean as he could get him, Grace sat down in a chair at the side of the medical bed. Armando reported that the patient was stable. Grace had the robot run a DNA test. It came back… human.
“Impossible…” Grace mumbled to himself.
“Armando have margin of error, question?” Rocky asked.
“I'm not sure what percent, but I'm pretty sure it's extremely minimal,” Grace sighed, throwing off his gloves into the medical waste bin before stressfully running his hands through his hair again. “Armando, take another sample and run the DNA test again.”
Armando took some more blood and ran the test again. A few moments passed before the screen listed off the results. It came back human. Grace sighed and let his head thunk against the screen that showed a report of the results.
Rocky chittered nervously. “This really not normal human thing, Grace, question?”
Grace groaned dramatically into the screen before looking down at his best friend. “How would you feel if it were another eridian that appeared in a flash of light, and I kept asking if that is normal for eridians?”
“Is not normal!” Rocky said quickly, shaking his carapace side to side as his vents steamed the inside of his suit. “Impossible!”
“You're preaching to the choir, bud.” Grace let out a sad laugh.
Rocky sang a low rumble, but it wasn't words. He rubbed two of his claws together anxiously, tapping a third one on the ground so he could keep observing their new passenger.
“If it… if he wakes up,” Grace said, feeling a little faint as he looked back at the man. “Maybe we can ask him and he'll have the answers we're looking for.”
Cleaning up the blood that was smeared all over the walls of the lab and in the hallways leading to the medical wing was a bio-nightmare. Rocky helped him scrub it all up, and Grace kept his protective gear on as they worked. They threw all the bio-matter into biohazard bags and sent them out the airlock.
It took a whole day of exhausting work. When that was done, Grace went to the whiteboard. He erased what was written there about how he was expected to ration his food for this final year of their journey across space, and began the tedious process of figuring out how to incorporate a second person into that plan. It was do-able, but there would be less to fall back on once they actually made it to Erid. Rocky assured him that they'd be able to synthesize the food they'd need relatively quickly, but Grace really didn't like having his safety net shaved down so much.
What choice did he even have, though? There was a whole extra person aboard the ship! He didn't know how or why or if he was hallucinating the whole thing. But he had to be prepared to get them both through this.
A few days passed and the man didn't wake up. His vitals remained stable, and Grace made sure that Armando was cleaning his wounds and changing his bandages regularly. Grace was barely sleeping, and Rocky kept nagging and nagging about it. But no matter how hard he tried, his brain would just not turn off. The bags under his eyes were almost as heavy as they'd been after the fishing incident on Adrian and he'd been waiting for Rocky to wake up. He barely slept back then, too, even though he should have been resting because of his own injuries.
It didn't help that he took a sample of the blood that had been smeared all over the ship. It was human blood. It smelled like it, it looked like it, and it was it. Even crazier, was that the DNA in the blood did not match the DNA of the man lying unconscious on the medical table. Instead, the blood samples were an amalgamation of more people than the computer could even count. The implications of such a discovery set Grace so on edge that, when he did manage to get some sleep, he had nightmares about drowning in a pool of blood.
What could have happened for someone to be that drenched in other people's blood? Had he come from a human slaughter house? And if he had, how in all of the universe, had he ended up on The Hail Mary? Grace checked the logs on the ship right before the man appeared. There had been some unlabeled and unknown contaminant aboard the ship, but the alert had stopped after the man had appeared. It was ‘cleared out’ after that point, and Grace had no way of figuring out what exactly the contamination had been. The whole thing was just one big mystery.
Grace sighed, resting his face on his hands and pushing his glasses up as he leaned over the table in the medical wing. Rocky was in his EVA suit across from him, fiddling with the computer Grace had gifted him. He was reading up on human anatomy and biology, trying to be useful in case the new human(?) needed intervention that Armando could not handle.
“Eye movement detected.”
Grace's head shot up and Rocky straightened on his chair.
There was a low groan of pain from the medical bed.
Grace stood so fast his knee hit the underside of the table and he yelped in pain. But he was so eager to get to the bed that he ignored it and limped his way towards the man. He stood just at the edge of the bed as the man's eyes fluttered open, cloudy and with a half-lucid look in them.
“New human awake! New human awake!” Rocky chirped, doing his usual jazz hands mixed with a quick twirl in his excitement.
“What is two plus two?” Armando asked.
“Armando, stop,” Grace said breathlessly, pushing the medical robot's arm aside. “Hello! Can… can you understand me?”
The man's gaze drifted towards Grace, and he held his breath. It was already so impossible that he was here at all. What were the odds that he even could understand him? He appeared to be maybe Korean, and that made the possibility of him understanding English even less certain. Not that there weren't a lot of Korean people back on Earth that spoke English. But this was a man in space. He might not speak English. Hell, he might not even speak any human languages.
The man was silent, his dark, hazy eyes starting both at Grace and through him at the same time. He was probably hopped up on plenty of painkillers, thanks to Armando. And maybe he was a little out of it because of whatever… most likely traumatic thing he went through to get here.
But Grace could handle that! He'd been through this. Kind of. He'd woken up on The Hail Mary, scared and alone with no memories. So he was pretty sure he could empathize. He could make the whole experience a lot easier to process, since he went through it first. He wasn't sure if this stranger was waking with memories or not, but they'd work it out.
“Well, ah…” Grace smiled awkwardly, running a hand through his hair when the man didn't respond after a few seconds. “We can work out the language barrier later, if you don't understand. We can start with… introductions? My– my name is–”
Before he could get his name out, the man suddenly lurched forward with a speed that Grace wouldn't expect from someone just waking up from a three-day coma. A burst of pain exploded from his face as the man's fist collided with it, and his glasses went flying across the room. Rocky screeched in alarm as Grace stumbled back a step in complete shock.
“H-holy shit–” Grace cursed, hand covering his nose. He could smell blood as something wet dripped down his lips.
The man was standing now, his eyes crazed and his feet spread apart with his one remaining hand raised in a fist. Grace trembled as Rocky continued to screech in alarm.
“GRACE LEAKING! GRACE HURT! NEW HUMAN BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD–”
The man lunged towards Grace again and he screamed as he dodged out of the way. They knocked over everything in the medical room as Armando desperately reached for the man, needle at the ready to put him to sleep and stop the fight. But the man stayed just out of reach. The chase was quick and brutal, and the man managed to catch him quickly. Grace's world spun violently as he was slammed to the ground and the man pinned him there. Another punch hit his face, and Grace cried out in pain as he raised his hands to shield himself from another blow. Then there was a hand around his neck, and Grace couldn't breathe!
He couldn't breathe, and he was by the fence all over again. Pinned and helpless, Carl standing feet away, betraying him along with Stratt as he begged for help that wouldn't come. Tears squeezed out of his eyes as his mouth moved uselessly, unable to inhale.
Grace clawed at the arm holding him in place, unable to even beg for him to stop as the edges of his vision started to go dark and fuzzy. The man looked down at him, his eyes still crazed and hazy. As if he wasn't even fully aware of himself. There was a desperate tension in his face, a fear there that spelled danger. This wasn't an act of rage, it was an act of fear. An act of survival. He viewed Grace as a threat, and he hated so much that as the victim, he was still empathizing with the person killing him.
It was only a few seconds that he held him there, but it felt like hours. And Grace definitely would have died, except Rocky was there. He bodyslammed the man, knocking him several feet away. Rocky crawled over top of Grace's body as he coughed and gasped desperately for air. A low, dangerous growl rattled the whole room, and Grace didn't even know that Rocky could make a sound like that. He could feel the vibrations all the way down to his bones. Rocky raised two arms threateningly at the man, and the stranger crawled back a few feet in fear. Armando was able to sneak up from behind him at that point and administer the sedative. The man jerked back from the prick in his neck, and fear lanced through his expression before he slumped to the floor.
Armando lifted his limp body and placed him back on the medical bed.
Grace wheezed, coughing hard through the burning in his throat. Rocky was still standing over him protectively, carapace trembling as he lowered himself closer to Grace's body. He tapped one of his claws on Grace's chest, using his echolocation to assess the damage done.
“Grace hurt hurt hurt,” Rocky trilled worriedly, one claw touching Grace's cheek and wiping away some of the blood there. He was still trembling. “Like when we go fishing.”
“I-I'm alright,” Grace grasped his claw, voice strained and scratchy after being choked. He coughed again, rolling over onto his side and curling his knees up to his chest. Rocky shifted around him, still remaining perched protectively over his body. He trilled worriedly, still tapping his claw on parts of him to hear Grace's body better. “I-I'm not as hurt as I was before.”
“New human bad,” Rocky tapped his claw hard on the floor for emphasis. “Bad bad bad. Need throw out airlock immediately!”
“W-what? Rocky,” Grace gasped, squeezing one of his arms with trembling fingers. “No, we can't just… that'll kill him!”
“Good!” Rocky's vents fluttered with his anger. “Deserve to die after hurt Grace! Almost kill Grace! No no no!”
“Rocky–”
“No.” Rocky cut him off.
“Rocky,” Grace tried again and he could see Rocky shift slightly, struggling not to interrupt him. “We can't kill him.”
Grace didn't have it in him. It was one thing to refuse a suicide mission that was supposed to save the world. But it was a whole other thing to actively murder someone. He genuinely would not be able to live with himself.
And that sucked, because… God, he was terrified. Of that man on the medical bed. He was scared of him. Grace shivered, curling into a tighter ball. He could still feel his fingers around his throat.
“Can't allow him to hurt Grace again,” Rocky insisted. “If Grace won't use airlock on new human, must find other way to protect Grace. Must must must!”
“Y-you're right,” Grace coughed, resting his forehead against Rocky's arm. “Okay, you're right. We can… figure something out. Maybe…” His head spun a bit, now that the adrenaline was starting to wear off. His face and his nose especially were throbbing with pain and he could taste blood in his mouth. “M-maybe we can cuff him.”
“What does word mean, question?” Rocky lightly tapped his claw on the floor twice.
“It's, you know… handcuffs. Like something we can put on his wrist. Like a bracelet,” Grace said, gesturing to his own wrist. “Human jewelry. A band that goes around the wrist. Except it's not jewelry. It's made out of metal, and it has another band attached to it that you can connect to something else to keep the person in one spot. I'll show you pictures so you can make it.”
“Ah, understand,” Rocky nodded his carapace (something he'd picked up from Grace. Nodding was a human thing). “Containment device. Erid have something similar.”
“Alright, buddy,” Grace patted him. “Gonna need some room to get up.”
Rocky hesitated. He let out a small upset warble, obviously reluctant to get out of his protective stance over Grace. But after a moment, he did move. Grace sat up, and Rocky pressed his carapace into his side comfortingly. Grace rested one hand on top of him, right beside his vents, willing his body to stop shaking.
“Grace hurt,” Rocky mentioned again. “Need see Armando.”
“Armando is helping the other human,” Grace reminded him. “Besides, my injuries aren't life threatening. I'll be fine.”
He reached up to wipe his nose, and the back of his hand came back bloody. He sniffed a bit, only smelling iron. He could still taste blood in the back of his throat, and he grimaced.
“Is… my nose crooked?” Grace asked.
Rocky tapped the floor a few times to get a better look. “Cartilage is out of place. Bone structure is normal.”
“Aw, cheese and crackers…” Grace sighed. “He broke my nose.”
“Have Armando fix,” Rocky suggested again. “Bad human does not deserve Armando help. Can take break to help Grace.”
Grace closed his eyes for a moment. The stranger was just up and running around a moment ago. He was pretty sure he wouldn't die in the few minutes it would take to get his nose sorted out. And he was also very unhappy with the idea of letting it heal like this and having a crooked nose for the rest of his life. Not because he would look ugly or something, but because it could cause him trouble with breathing.
“Fine,” Grace said, slowly stumbling to his feet. “Armando! I need help real quick.”
As he approached the robot, its arms paused their ministrations on the stranger's body. It was in the process of reinserting the IVs he'd ripped out of himself during the commotion. Armando's arms swiveled towards him almost worriedly, and it had Grace stand close as it assessed the damage. The part where it helped pop his nose back in place was more painful than the actual punch had been, and Grace cried like a baby while Armando disinfected a gash that was on the bridge of his nose and bandaged it.
Then he went on to find his glasses. He felt his inner Velma come out as he crawled on the ground, trying to differentiate between the various cluttered items all over the place. Honestly, without his glasses, Rocky could probably see things better than he could, and the little guy was literally blind.
“What Grace doing, question?” Rocky asked, following behind him.
“My glasses,” Grace said. “Help me find them.”
“They are right in front of Grace,” Rocky chittered in annoyance, grabbing them off the ground and holding them right up to his face. “Is brain slow after head trauma, question? Grace need nap.”
“Shut up, you little turd,” Grace huffed as he snatched the glasses from him and placed them on his face. Then he paused, blinking a few times in surprise when the world didn't clear up like it was supposed to. The right side was as blurry as ever, and the left side was spiderwebbed with cracks. “What the heck?”
Rocky tapped the floor a few times as he observed him. “Glasses are broken.”
Grace pulled the glasses off and felt the lenses with his fingers. The right side didn't have a lense at all and the left side was so badly cracked that it was useless.
He only had this one pair of glasses. Whoever was responsible for packing essential items for the trip hadn't included any extras. Maybe it was because Grace was never supposed to live long enough to need extra pairs, or maybe they didn't have the chance to plan ahead for him because Grace was never supposed to be on this mission to begin with.
But now his one and only pair was broken.
A sob rose from Grace's throat before he could stop it and tears resumed their race down his cheeks. Rocky whistled worriedly, shifting on his five legs and hovering around him as Grace cried.
“He broke my nose and my glasses!” Grace sobbed to Rocky. “Why does it always have to hurt?!”
“Why does what always have to hurt, question?” Rocky asked, gently touching Grace's face and trying to wipe away the unending tears.
“Touching people!” Grace cried in exasperation. “Why does it always have to hurt!”
As he devolved into further sobbing, Rocky wrapped his arms around him in a tight hug. They stayed there for a while, with Grace just crying all his feelings out. He was a little embarrassed. He didn't think he'd ever cried this much in front of his best friend before, but the stress of all of this was starting to really get to him. He just couldn't help it.
Rocky eventually managed to coax him into getting up and going to bed. Grace laid down with Rocky curled up beside him, two of his arms splayed over his chest. He stared at the ceiling for a long while, having calmed down a bit. But a few tears still slipped down his face and Grace kept wiping them away sadly.
“Rocky will make Grace new glasses,” Rocky said to him quietly. “Will be better than old glasses. Made of xenonite.”
Grace giggled a bit. “That'll be kind of hard to do if you don't understand human eyesight.”
Rocky paused a minute. “Rocky use clear xenonite for lenses. Not understand problem.”
“Oh, buddy,” Grace looked down at him. “It's a lot more than that. The lenses need to be shaped in a specific way so that the light reaching my eyes is corrected and I can see properly.”
“See… properly, question?” Rocky tilted his carapace in confusion. “Are glasses not just fashion statement, question?”
Grace barked out a laugh. “Oh man, have I not explained this to you yet? And where did you hear the term ‘fashion statement'? I never taught you that.”
“Heard it on human thinking machine!” Rocky told him. “Glasses not for fashion, question?”
“No,” Grace shook his head. “Some humans are born with the wrong eye-shape, and it makes our vision bad. The wrong shape makes light process through them poorly. It makes things blurry. We use glasses to help correct that so we can see better.”
Rocky let out a low humming sound. “Humans inefficient.”
“Yeah,” Grace smiled. “Tell me about it. I've needed glasses my whole life.”
“Will do research on human thinking machine,” Rocky tapped him reassuringly. “Figure out how to help Grace see again. Trial and error. Different glasses prototypes.”
“If anyone can do it, I know that you can.” Grace said, blinking sleepily at him.
Rocky wiggled a little closer to him. “Grace sleep. Rocky watch.”
“You sure?” Grace yawned.
“Rocky will always watch Grace sleep.” Rocky promised.
It was the last thing Grace heard before his eyes slipped closed and he succumbed to unconsciousness.