Chapter Text
It’s funny what his mind decided was important enough to remember.
Little flashes, sometimes a picture and sometimes less, slipped so easily in that he barely even noticed them. One moment he is digging what he hopes is a clean jumpsuit out of the storage container by his cot and the next he remembers what the crape myrtle looked like that was planted outside of his third grade classroom window.
Not useful, but interesting.
At first Grace was desperate to chase any scrap he could. He gave himself headache after headache trying to grasp onto the fleeting wisps of memory.
What was his teacher’s name?
What was the school called?
What was the mascot?
Sometimes the memories would come but more often than not they slipped away just out of reach. The important stuff remained. The science and math was always there and that was what was important. The mission remained, not the extra fluff.
Still...
He vaguely remembered that classroom with the pink flowering crape myrtle. He remembered how the teacher rolled the TV in even if he couldn’t remember her face. He remembered the click of the tape being loaded into the VCR and the ugly orange jacket Carl Sagan wore as he sat in the flowering field.
“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”
Was that the moment young Ryland Grace was inspired to learn more about the universe? Was that what led him here sitting next to a rock alien in a hamster ball as they tried to figure out how to save their worlds?
It was kind of a cool thought.
“Graaaace,” it was always hard to tell with the modulated voice if Rocky was annoyed but Grace liked to think by now he was pretty good at telling his new friend’s moods.
“Roooooocky,” his voice was muffled from his face being pressed into the cool metal of the table. The nausea had come on without warning, crashing over him until he was dry heaving as Rocky complained of the noise and ‘disgust’.
“Grace is finished reverse eating question?” He asked, tapping lightly on the xenonite wall.
“It’s called puking Rocky. Throwing up. Vomiting. Tossing cookies,” Grace grimaced and tried a careful sip of his water pouch, relaxing when it didn’t come back up. “Ugh.”
“It is-”
“Disgust I know,” he glared at the Eridian. “I’m not doing it on purpose. The zero gravity must have messed me up more than I thought...or the centrifuge is making me ill or maybe it’s the stupid food having sat in space for three years.”
“Or the-” and Rocky finished with an untranslated trill.
“I don’t know that word,” Grace wiped at the cold sweat on his forehead.
Rocky thought for a moment. “Small human.”
“Well that is rude,” he mumbled and Rocky let out an exasperated note. “What?”
“The small human inside Grace,” he pointed one arm at Grace. “Inside your torso.”
Grace stared at him, straw still between his lips. Inside his torso? What the hell was Rocky talking about?
It seemed like Rocky could tell something was amiss when he shifted a bit. “Hear Grace’s heartbeat here,” he pointed at Grace’s chest. “And smaller, faster one there.”
And he pointed at Grace’s stomach.
His first thought was obviously chestburster. It seemed fitting that this disastrous space mission would inevitably end with a much meaner alien than Rocky punching through his chest. Grace was man enough to know that he wouldn’t be nearly as heroic as Sigourney Weaver in the moment.
Then little moments started slipping into place.
Grace remembered his biology professor rambling on about male carriers and how he had gotten tested that year as well, feeling a little bit special when he got the results that he was in that twelve percent.
He remembered not having time to grab anything from home when he was taken to the aircraft carrier and thinking that he didn’t need his pills because when was he planning on getting lucky?
No.
Impossible.
“Rocky, what do you mean?” His voice sounded a bit desperate to himself and Rocky froze. “What do you mean by heartbeat?”
“Grace’s heartbeat is now faster,” Rocky said and then paused, seemingly focusing. “And Grace’s second heart is much faster.”
He stood perfectly still, mind racing. It was impossible. It had been three years in suspended animation, that couldn’t happen. It just couldn’t.
But...maybe it could?
Rocky sang out his name worriedly as he knocked into the table and scrambled to get to the medical section. He pulled the tourniquet tight around his arm with his teeth and pressed the needle into the crook of his arm.
“Something is wrong with Grace question,” Rocky asked, legs tapping on the metal floor.
“No,” Grace said back, chest tight and eyes burning, as he put the tube into the sample collector and assigned the test. “Everything is fine. Just...I’m just checking...”
They didn’t have any damn strips to pee on.
That would be a stupid thing to bring on a suicide mission to space.
“What Grace checking for question,” Rocky stretched his carapace up higher, almost like he was standing on his tiptoes.
The machine beeped and the results flashed across the screen.
HCG Level: 108,293 mIU/ml
The numbers blurred together into a black blob against a white screen. Distantly he knew Rocky was talking to him but it was hard to hear over the rushing in his ears. The air felt heavy and painful as he struggled to take a deep breath over the tightness in his throat.
“Well fuck,” he breathed out and dragged his fingers through his hair.
“What is that word question,” Rocky asked and Grace snorted out a laugh, feeling nearly hysterical.
The cosmos are within us indeed.
He laughed until he threw up