Chapter Text
“Eye movement detected.”
Grace sat with his half-eaten pouch of food in the ‘don’t go crazy’-room watching recordings of a windswept meadow with rolling hills reaching weakly for a stunningly blue sky as those words echoed through the ship. He’d been so lost in his thoughts—though could he really call it such if his mind had been utterly blank all along?—that he wasn’t entirely sure if he hadn’t imagined it or not. He was only a little ashamed and uncomfortable with admitting that it wouldn’t have been the first time.
Back when he’d been on the Hail Mary on his own, long before he’d met Rocky and they’d joined forces to find the taumoeba without even knowing that that was what they were looking for, he’d occasionally heard things that weren’t there. Like his brain was trying to fill the empty space, the silence that at times had felt so deafening, especially when he didn’t remember yet. Who he was, why he was there, or that it hadn’t been his choice at all. And then when he’d said goodbye to his friends and colleagues, ones he’d only just remembered, his imagination played tricks on him as though to taunt him.
He’d never been the most social person, at least after he’d blown up his own academic career and retreated to a simpler life as a middle school teacher. He’d loved his life, his kids with their eagerness to learn and the trust they had in him, the few friends he loosely kept in touch with, and the people he got to know while working on Project Hail Mary. But being light years away from home with no one to talk to besides Mary, who wasn’t designed for proper conversations, and himself? It hadn’t been easy, but he’d managed. And before he could toe that line a little too closely, he’d met Rocky and everything changed.
They succeeded in their mission, making all of it worth it even as he accepted that he would truly never see the world he’d been ripped away from again. Instead, he needed to believe that the beetles would reach earth, that Stratt would finish what they’d started, and that they’d reach Erid and their scientists would do the same with their sun.
Yet, in all of this, was he asking for too much when wishing that the only other human on board would wake up? That perhaps someday he wouldn’t have his meals on his own anymore, that if he’d hear a voice, it wouldn’t be the one coming from the speakers belonging to Mary or Armando or even Rocky or his own head but from a living, breathing person? With a human voice and heartbeat, a person like him?
Perhaps he was being a little selfish just thinking of what he wanted and what would be good for him. Maybe the unconscious man wouldn’t like him, wouldn’t speak the same language; maybe he wouldn’t like sharing meals or laughter with him at all. Would avoid him and hate him for damning him to a life where it was only the two of them on an alien planet with an atmosphere that would kill them almost instantaneously if they got exposed to it.
Well. There was only one way to find out but…
“Eye movement detected,” Armando said again, breaking Grace out of his train of thought. This time he was certain it wasn’t a trick of his imagination. It wasn’t his mind interpreting words into the recording of the wind or a stray thought pretending to be a voice.
Once he understood the implications of those words, he nearly dropped his spoon.
“Grace, Grace, Grace,” Rocky called out to him a second before he heard him rushing through his tunnels spread across the Hail Mary, the chaotic thumping of his arms and legs. “Heartbeat different, human might wake up, statement. Grace quick.”
Hastily Grace tried to do everything at once—set down his food, slip the quilt off his shoulders, and get up—which ended about as well as he should’ve expected.
“Dang it,” he hissed as he spilled some of his food and nearly tripped as his foot got caught on the quilt, his glasses slipping dangerously far down his nose. He caught himself on the metal grate, the impact sending a brief ache up his arms, but he was too excited and in too much of a rush to care.
“Grace okay question?”
“Yes, yes, all fine,” he said and finally managed to untangle himself. Who would’ve thought a big square of fabric could prove to be so difficult?
“Hurry, hurry, hurry.” Rocky tippy tapped in place as though itching to turn and make his way back to the med bay on his own making Grace feel only more anxious than he already did. His thoughts and heart raced a mile a minute, his body feeling frustratingly slow.
It’d been so long since they’d picked up their unexpected new passenger. A human just like him so far away from home, one Grace had no explanation for, even less so when they’d got him on board and could have a proper look at him. The way he’d vomited right on his own shoes at the sight before him, the body covered in blood and grime and missing a limb in a way that did not look intentional or done professionally in any capacity of the word, was not his proudest moment, his stomach churning again as he thought back to it.
Quickly he pushed the memory aside focusing instead on making his way to the other side of the ship while pushing his glasses back into place.
Armando’s arms hovered over the body as though waiting for something, anything. The monitor the man was hooked up to showed a steady heartbeat, the same it’d been at for what by now felt like forever. The beeping something Grace occasionally even heard in his dreams like it was making fun of him, pointing a finger at that little flower of hope that’d bloomed in his chest at the mere idea that there could be another human on board, that he wouldn’t have to be alone anymore. Not that Rocky wasn’t great company, he was his best friend, but he still wasn’t a human.
“Is he waking up?” Grace asked unwilling to allow that wave of disappointment in just yet.
“It doesn’t seem like it, Dr. Grace,” Armando said, voice monotone, his arms moving again as though assessing things but then stilling upon merely reaching the same conclusion.
“Didn’t you just say there was eye movement?”
“False alarm.”
Grace didn’t curse, a habit he’d picked up in his years as teacher, but in that moment, he really wanted to use that f-bomb. He hung his head and his shoulders sagged, his body feeling tired all of a sudden as the excitement and anxiety was swept away like a drawing in the sand too close to the waves lapping at the shore.
He knew the man needed time to recover, his body injured in so many awful ways, enough that he should’ve been dead long before he’d come abord. And yet he wasn’t. His heart was beating and lungs filling with air without Armando having to force them to do so.
Whoever this man was, his will to live was strong enough to get him this far. It wouldn’t make sense if he’d do it just to die now, or to never wake up, so close to the finish line yet never reaching it. Grace wasn’t sure if he could take it if he’d end up like Yao or Ilyukhina, if he’d turn into another lifeless body he’d have to release through the airlock.
His heart ached at the memory feeling like an iron fist was squeezing it.
“Human need time,” Rocky said though even his notes sounded a little sad as well. Grace nodded in agreement. “But was sign that moment close. Human body has weak design but he strong. Like Grace.”
“Thanks, buddy,” Grace said and stepped away from the bed and closer to the xenonite wall, his hand tapping it like he would Rocky’s shoulder if that was something he could do without both of them paying for it greatly. A small shudder ran down his spine at the memory, one he refused to dwell on even so many months later, the fact that they’d both been so close to death, to failing, to bringing doom upon both their worlds.
Rocky pressed his claw against the xenonite as well and for a moment they stayed like that allowing the quiet to linger.
Eventually Grace turned around again and approached the body on the med bay bed.
The man was pale though Grace wasn’t sure if that was his natural skin tone, his hair was long and black and lay around his head like a shadowy halo. With Armando’s help Grace had washed it to get rid of the dried blood that had caked it and he’d tried his best to comb it afterward, but it didn’t quite look as neatly as he’d intended for it. In a way it reminded him of his own hair after he’d first woken up. How long it had been, longer than Grace ever had let it grow.
A scar ran across the left side of his forehead, one that was still bleeding when they’d found him but was now healing in shades of pink similarly to the cut across the bridge of his nose. The black eye had long faded, and all the cuts and bruises on the rest of his body had as well. Grace’s biggest concern, as well as Armando’s, was what little remained of his left upper arm. Grace wasn’t a doctor, much less a surgeon, so he was grateful that Armando could take care of tending to the wound himself; the sight was horrific enough to give Grace nightmares for a week, and that was before the clothes were removed and the fraying skin, bone, and muscle were exposed and prepared for surgery. Now all that was to be seen was a healing stump wrapped in white gauze.
Three months had past and the man was still alive. Nothing got infected. He didn’t die. But he also still hadn’t woken up.
While Armando could do a lot of things, estimating the likelihood of his survival wasn’t something he was capable of.
Slowly, Grace raised his hand and gently placed it on the man’s right forearm far enough away from where the IV needle was stuck in his vein. He felt warm, warm in a way only a human did, in the way human skin did against human skin. Outside of helping Armando undress, clean and dress the man in what looked like a pale blue hospital gown, it was only the second time that he’d allowed himself to touch him, unwilling to be a creep potentially doing something the man wouldn’t want. But this time, he gave himself that moment, just a few seconds, just enough to satiate that cold ache somewhere buried deep inside of him and closed his eyes.
Maybe he was a creep, maybe he was crazy, maybe he was just a leaky blob as Rocky liked to call him.
“Grace, Grace, Grace,” came Rocky’s voice again just as the heartbeat monitor’s beeping picked up its pace.
Grace opened his eyes and looked at the man’s face, the ever so subtle frown moving his brows and barely there twitch of his lips.
“Eye movement detected,” Armando announced and there it was, his eyes moving beneath his eyelids. Unmistakable. And if both Rocky and Armando saw it, he wasn’t making it up!
“Oh my God,” Grace whispered while Rocky chirped behind him, a word that they must’ve missed in all their conversations because no translation followed. Perhaps a cheer or something that fit better than his usual amaze, amaze, amaze.
The man’s eyes flew open revealing two dark brown, nearly black irises looking up at the ceiling, his face contorting with discomfort at the brightness surrounding them. He blinked and blinked until his features smoothed out again and his eyes remained open.
“What is two plus two?” Armando inquired much the way he had forever ago.
The only reply he got was a groan.
“Incorrect.”
“Armando stop,” Grace said. He’d hated that question when he’d first woken up and didn’t want the man to have to go through it as well.
“Yes, Dr. Grace.”
The man groaned again, his lips twitching and pursing, jaw moving like he was trying to remember how to form words. After sleeping for so long and obviously having gone through hell, Grace couldn’t say he was surprised.
“It’s okay,” Grace said quietly, calmly, and leaned a little forward, enough so that the man could possibly see him, put a face to the voice talking to him. “You’re okay, you’re safe.”
He groaned again, his lips moving enough to make a sound close to a word but not quite.
“Human awake question?” Rocky inquired tapping his feet in place. “Breathing and heartbeat so fast.”
“Rocky wait, give him time,” Grace said and looked at him over his shoulder. Rocky lowered his carapace just a little and moved to the side as though to get a clearer view from behind their xenonite barrier.
“Dnh thch y,” the man said like a mix between a groan and letter salad.
“Don’t force yourself, it’s okay, take it easy,” Grace said turning his full attention back onto him.
The man moved his eyes and head just that little bit, enough so he could look at Grace, their eyes meeting for the first time. And as much as he wanted Grace had no idea what emotion he saw in them, was it fear? Was it relief? Was it agony? Perhaps a mix of it all. He had no idea. No one had prepared him for what to do in a situation like this. Ever so briefly, for just a split second, he wished Yao or Ilyukhina could he there and help him, both much more at ease with people than he was, less awkward and terrified.
But neither of them was here. Only Grace was. And he had to help the guy in a way no one had been there to help him.
“Dnh tah myh,” the man tried again, voice deep and rough with disuse, strained as though he was forcing the sounds from his throat and through his teeth.
“I don’t understand,” Grace admitted.
“Why Grace no understand question?” Rocky asked. “Is human like Grace.”
The man turned his head that little bit more, eyes looking behind Grace and going wide, a spike in his heartbeat making the monitor beep loudly like a warning. Grace squeezed his eyes shut to gather himself, too many things happening at once, too many moving pieces.
“Rock, we’ve been over this, humans have different languages,” he said trying to do so as calmly as he could and then added: “Can you please just…you’re overwhelming him. Give us a moment.”
After a moment of hesitance and another unintelligible groan from the man, Rocky slowly retreated out of the med bay and out of sight though Grace knew he could still watch everything that was happening perfectly well. He was certain he waited just around the corner willing to jump into action if something were to go wrong though he wasn’t quite sure how much his friend would be able to really do from behind the clear xenonite.
“You don’t have to be afraid,” Grace said turning his attention back on the man and trying his hardest to sound reassuring and even more calming.
The man coughed and said: “Don’t… touch me.”
Only then did Grace realize his hand was still on the man’s forearm. Quickly he pulled his hand away like he’d touched something scalding hot and took a step back.
“Sorry,” he said genuinely apologetic. “I didn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.”
“Like you’d care,” he said, voice still so dark and low but that little bit less rough than before. His eyes somehow got even darker, like he’d put up a shield between them, so Grace raised his hands hoping it would help. Show him that he really meant no harm.
“I…”
“What is this?” he asked and coughed again, his body shaking with it. He flexed his hand and then raised his head enough to look at where his left arm should’ve been but obviously wasn’t. “Fuck.”
“There wasn’t anything we could’ve done,” Grace said, hands still up in the air, voice tinged with sadness. “It was gone when we found you.”
“You won’t put me in there again.” What the heck did that mean?
“Put you were? We’re not going to do anything to you; we’re just trying to help.”
“Help,” the man said with a humorless, flat laugh, a deep scowl slashed across his face.
What had happened to him? Why was he suddenly so angry and yet so…afraid? Sure, he’d been somewhat taken aback when he’d seen Rocky for the first time, even more so when he’d woke up in the Hail Mary with no recollection of how he’d gotten there or even what his own name was, so he could understand the fear but not the anger. What had been done to him? And more importantly, was he afraid Grace could do the same or that he had a hand in what had already been done?
“I don’t know what happened to you, but I swear we mean no harm,” Grace said and took the smallest, slowest step closer toward the man. “We found you and tried our best to save you, I promise you don’t have to be afraid.”
“Where’s David?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
The man scoffed. “I won’t let you trick me again.”
Before Grace could even begin trying to decipher what he could mean or who David could be, the man rolled off the bed onto his feet and closed the distance between them with so much force that Grace stumbled backward. His back hit the wall hard enough to knock the air from his lungs, his eyes going wide with surprise. The man stopped right in front of him, his hand wrapped around Grace’s throat with so much strength that in any other situation he’d be impressed by it so soon after waking up if he weren’t actively struggling to breathe.
“St-op,” Grace just barely managed to say.
“Like you did?” the man said, his face even closer to Grace’s own, eyes dark pools ready to drown him in, and lips snarled like a terrified dog snapping at the hand trying to harm it. But Grace didn’t mean any harm, he never did. He just wanted a friend, a human to talk to, to be around, to help.
He grabbed at man’s wrist as his vision began to swim and the edges vignetting, dark and foreboding, his lungs screaming and aching, his heart going haywire in his chest. “We j-ust wa’ted to help.”
And maybe there was something in his voice, his eyes filled with fear and tears spilling onto his cheeks, that broke through the man’s own horror because his hand loosened around Grace’s neck, a little and then entirely. But it was too late.
His legs gave out beneath him, his body crumbling to the floor just as the world turned dark and quiet.