“You okay?” I ask, brushing his knuckles with mine.
He doesn’t look at me. “I don’t know who I am without a mission.”
The honesty guts me.
I don’t answer right away. Just reach out and take his hand, lacing our fingers. His grip is calloused and warm and just slightly too tight.
“You’re a father,” I say softly. “That’s mission enough.”
He swallows. Looks down. Nods once.
But I can see it in the way his jaw ticks. The way his shoulders never quite relax.
The war’s over.
But the fight inside him?
That lingers.
That night,Ripley climbs into our bed, limbs sprawled like a tiny octopus. She has a nightmare—murmurs about masks and stun batons.
Valtron doesn’t speak. He just holds her tighter.
And I see it again, even in the dark. The question in his eyes.
Is peace really ours?
Or is it just a pause?
Some nights, I think about broadcasting again.
About telling the truth, unfiltered. No producers. No agenda.
But then I look around at this ship—our cluttered, creaky, wonderful little home—and I remember what truth really is.
It’s not a headline.
It’s a family. There’s something about the way Valtron stares at stars like they owe him something.
Not in a bitter way. Not anymore. But in that slow, haunted fashion of someone who’s memorized all their old ghosts and is still trying to forgive them.
Most nights, he walks the observation deck alone.
So I watch him.
Not out of suspicion or worry, but because even after all this time, I still find him beautiful. Still trying to figure out how someone so quiet, so broken, can make me feel like I’m the whole galaxy when he looks at me.
Lately, I’ve started recording him. Quiet little clips on my pad. Just for me. I angle the lens low, catch the way the starlight rims his silhouette. The twitch of his jaw. The way his shoulders set like he’s preparing for something that might never come.
Not to broadcast.
Just to remember.
I want proof, someday, that he made it out of the war and into something like peace.
He catches me one night.
I’m leaning against the far wall, pad up, half-lost in the frame. He turns. Sees the red light blinking.
