Work Text:
“Who the fuck is this, question?”
“Language, Rock,” Grace called. The laptop translator was sensitive enough to pick up Rocky from the other end of the lab, where he was supposed to be adding more links to their xenonite chain. Grace didn’t need to raise his voice to respond, but old habits died hard.
“No.”
Grace sighed. “You can’t just say no when I tell you off.”
“And yet, Rocky say no.”
“Come on, man.”
Rocky rolled slowly across the lab, chain-making tools clinking on his belt. He was moving slower than usual, which was strange; the hanging lengths of chain hadn’t slowed him down before. Grace looked up from his lapful of links and noticed Rocky was holding something through the access port of his xenonite ball. A small square of… paper? Or something?
“Whatcha got there?” Grace asked.
Rocky gave his equivalent of a shrug, then whipped the paper across the floor towards Grace. He caught it and shot Rocky a look.
“Who the fuck is that, question?”
“Rock.”
Rocky stamped his foot in lieu of repeating his question. Grace figured it was easier to just look at the thing Rocky had found, rather than try to teach him basic manners.
It was a Polaroid photograph of a woman standing in a brightly lit warehouse full of science equipment. He recognised it as the lab on the aircraft hangar, where he had met the crews of the Hail Mary in his memories, but it wasn’t the lab that drew his eye. It was the woman.
The shape of her body was lost beneath a shapeless red and blue hoodie just like the one he was wearing. Her face was no more visible: she peered out at the camera with wary blue eyes, her features half-covered by her hand and a shag of dark blond hair. She looked like a cornered fox.
And she looked… just like Grace.
Was she his sister? Heck, she could be his twin. But, there was no trace of a sister in his fractured memories—not even a half-sister. If she did exist, she was buried with the rest of him.
“Where did you get this?” he asked.
“Under box. Grace messy. Who is, question?”
“I think this is my sister, Rock.”
“Hm. Need word.”
“Um…” Grace cast his mind back to their discussions of Eridian reproduction. Eridians laid eggs, but they laid clutches of eggs, so surely the concept of ‘sibling’ wouldn’t be too lost on Rocky. “A clutchmate. Specifically a female clutchmate.”
“Hm. Human gender gross. Rocky has seen on Earth thinking machine, gender is choice. Why give gender when hatch if is choice, question? Stupid stupid stupid.”
Grace huffed out a laugh and laid the photograph on his thigh. He picked up two chain links with xenonite-raw fingertips, and said, “Story of my life, Rock.”
Wait. Was that the story of his life?
He looked down at the photograph. At the woman standing in the Project Hail Mary laboratory, where he had once stood, wearing his clothes. At the woman who looked just like him.
Oh. Oh.
“Well, fuck.”
“Language.”
“No, no,” Grace said, slowly. “I’m allowed this one.”
“Grace allowed but Rocky not. Unfair.”
“Rock—” Grace put his head in his hands. “Can you just give me like… one second? I just need to think.”
“Fine. Rocky go build chain. Rocky doesn’t want to talk anyway.”
With that, Rocky rolled back across the lab. That was as close to a temper tantrum as he ever got, and Grace would normally be worried about that. But right now, he was more worried about himself.
Herself? No. No, that felt wrong. Referring to himself as something other than he made him want to claw his skin off.
And the more he looked at the photograph of the woman, the less she looked like a woman at all. Every feminine feature was carefully obscured, and it was intentional. It was armour.
“Grace breathing too fast. Grace die?”
“No, not die,” Grace said. He left his chain links on the floor, stood up, and started pacing the lab, desperate the shake off the sudden waves of anxiety coursing through him. “Just… realising something pretty big about myself.”
“Realise what, question?” Rocky rumbled away from his own pile of chain links and tilted his carapace at Grace.
“Y-you read about human gender on the Earth think—on the laptop. About gender being a choice.”
“Yes. Rocky know everything about human gender. Rocky know how stupid it is.”
“You know about people changing their gender, then. Realising they’re a different gender than they thought they were.”
“Transition gender, yes. Grace has done this.”
Grace paused mid-stride. He turned on the spot, the heel of his shoe squeaking on the floor, and looked at Rocky. “What did you say?”
“Grace transitioned gender.”
“Mm. Uh-huh. Okay. How do you know that?”
“Grace has scars on chest. Rocky see different texture and ask what is, but Grace say texture is hair. Grace tired, Grace stupid. Rocky ask Earth thinking machine. Learn about surgery. Learn about top surgery.”
Grace’s knees nearly buckled. He fought through the feeling, left Rocky in the lab and ran to the bathroom. He stood in front of the mirror, unzipped his hoodie, and lifted his shirt. Beneath his pectoral muscles were two faint, pale scars, each one seven or eight inches in length.
Rocky rolled up behind him and offered Grace a thumbs down. “Top surgery.”
“Why didn’t you say something?!” Grace demanded. He whirled around to face Rocky, unsure if he was mad at him or just mad at himself for not noticing the scars across his chest. They were thin and neat, but they were still there.
“Rocky think Grace know. Armando gives Grace testosterone injection.”
Grace grabbed two fistfuls of his hair and groaned. He hadn’t felt so muddled since waking up in a space-coffin with two dead crewmates. Armando had given him an injection in his thigh not long after he woke up, then another one a couple of weeks later after Rocky had come aboard. Grace had assumed it was just like… a super space supplement, or something. Not testosterone.
“You didn’t tell me that either!" he cried out.
“Rocky think Grace know!” Rocky threw two arms up in the air. “Is Grace not happy, question?”
“No, I… I am happy,” Grace said. He couldn’t know for certain, but it felt like it was the first time in his entire life he had ever said that and meant it. “I just wish I knew sooner.”
“Does it matter, question? Grace is Grace. Gender not matter.”
“It does matter. It’s important to a lot of humans. I just… I didn’t know how important it was to me until now,” Grace said. “It’s just a surprise, okay? I don’t remember having surgery, doing testosterone injections, or anything like that. It’s like I didn’t transition before I came aboard.”
A memory suddenly came back to him. He clung to it like his life depended on it.
“Listen, Stratt, I appreciate the whole, uh, living-on-a-boat thing, but I was kinda… doing something, back home. Is there any chance I can, I dunno… leave for a while?”
“What were you doing that could possibly be more important than your work here?”
“Oh, you know. Stuff. Personal stuff.”
“Do you need a counsellor?”
“No! It’s not that. I had an appointment. I’d been waiting for it for a long time so…”
“We have doctors here.”
“Yeah, uh… not the right doctors.”
“Try me.”
“I… oh, fudge. Okay. I had an appointment with a gender clinic. I was on a waitlist for like, three years, and I've been saving up all this money... uh. I know this is, um, extenuating circumstances, and my personal life probably isn’t important, but—”
“It is important. It just can’t be a priority right now.”
“I know, but—”
“The Hail Mary will launch in a matter of months. I need you to focus on that, and only that, until then. Once the ship has left orbit, I will pay for your treatment myself.”
“...okay. I’ve waited this long. I can wait a few months.”
“Oh my god. Armando gave me top surgery.”