"I had a blueprint for my life," Jalina said softly. "Design colonies across new worlds. Establish humanity among the stars. Eventually return to Earth and teach the next generation of architects how to build homes in impossible places."
"A logical plan."
"A plan that's now completely impossible." She closed the notebook. "Liberty is scattered across a galaxy I can't navigate. Earth might as well be a myth. Everything I'd mapped for my future doesn't exist anymore."
My chest tightened. This was goodbye. She was telling me she couldn't stay, couldn't build a life on Mothership when her entire species was lost and suffering.
"But blueprints change," Jalina continued. "Buildings evolve during construction. The best designs adapt to conditions you didn't anticipate. You taught me that."
"I did?"
"Every time you took my sketches and made them structurally sound. Every time you found a way to implementideas I thought were impossible." Finally, she looked at me. Her brown eyes were still tired, still sad, but something else shone through. Determination. "I'm saying I want to redesign my blueprint. With you in it."
The words didn't process immediately. My mind, so good with spatial calculations and systems integration, stumbled over the emotional mathematics.
"I don't know if I'll ever see Earth again," Jalina said. "I don't know if we'll find all the Liberty survivors. I don't even know if I'll stop feeling guilty about being happy while others suffer. But I know I don't want to face any future without you."
"Jalina—"
"I love you." She said it quickly, like ripping off a bandage. "I've loved you for weeks. Maybe since you first trusted me to sketch courtyard angles while you ran calculations. Maybe since you defended my designs to the council. Maybe since you volunteered for a suicide mission into hostile territory just to support me." She laughed shakily. "I'm terrified to say it because everything's so uncertain. But I'm more terrified of not saying it."
The tightness in my chest transformed into something else. Something vast and overwhelming that I couldn't name because I'd never felt it before.
"I love you," I said. The words came out rough, unpracticed. "I've never loved anyone. Never imagined I would. Work was enough—designing systems, optimizing spaces, solving mathematical puzzles. Then you looked at my sterile blueprints and saw what was missing. I saw what I couldn't see alone."
"Zor'go—"
"You make me better. Not just at design. At everything." I moved closer, closing the distance she'd maintained for three days. "I don't need certainty about the future. I only need you in it."
Jalina's eyes filled with tears, but she was smiling. That luminous expression that transformed her entire face.
"Then we'll design certainty together," she whispered. "One day at a time."
I kissed her.
It was our first real kiss, not the tentative brush of lips after the exhibition, but something deeper. Desperate and tender and full of promises I didn't know how to articulate. She tasted like hope and salt and the charcoal she was always smudging across her hands. Her small body fit against mine like she'd been designed for exactly this purpose.
When we broke apart, both breathing hard, her smile widened.
"This is very unprofessional," she said.
"Completely inappropriate for a work site."
"We should probably stop."
"We absolutely should not stop."
I lifted her, carefully, always careful with human fragility, and she wrapped her legs around my waist, her mouth finding mine again. We stumbled backward until my shoulders hit a support beam. Jalina's hands tangled in my hair, pulling me closer despite the impossible height difference.
"Here?" I managed when she started pulling at my uniform collar. "In an unfinished construction zone?"
"We're literally building our future," she said against my throat. "Seems appropriate."
Logic failed me. So did restraint.
I set her down long enough to strip off her jacket, her shirt, watching her skin pebble in the cool air. She was so small, barely reached my chest even standing on the reinforced flooring, but her expression held no uncertainty. Just hunger and trust and something that looked like joy.
"I won't break," she said, reading my hesitation. "I promise."
