“You always were a journalist first,” he says.
I should be embarrassed.
Instead, I lower the pad. Step into the starlight with him. “Now I’m yours first.”
He doesn’t say anything. Just reaches for my hand and pulls me close.
And in that moment, I know.
It’s not about recording him. Not really.
It’s about bearing witness.
Because men like him… the world forgets them. Turns them into myths or monsters. I want the truth.
We talk more now.
Not the shallow updates about ship routes or fuel cells or whether Ripley snuck cookies again.
But real stuff.
The kind that strips you bare.
He tells me about the blackout zone. About the heat. The screams. The way the ground felt like it was swallowing everything whole.
“I didn’t think I’d make it,” he murmurs. “Didn’t even want to, at one point.”
My chest aches. I thread my fingers through his hair, tugging gently. “But you did.”
“I kept thinking about you. And… something else. I didn’t know what then. But I do now.”
“What?”
“Ripley’s laugh. I hadn’t even heard it yet. But it was in my bones somehow.”
I tell him about the labor.
How I screamed for him and cursed him in the same breath. How the medbot malfunctioned halfway through. How I passed out and woke up to Ripley nestled on my chest, squalling like she had a message for the stars.
“She had your eyes,” I say, blinking fast. “Still does.”
Valtron’s thumb brushes the corner of my eye.
“I should’ve been there,” he says.
“No,” I reply. “You should’ve lived. And you did. That’s what matters.”
We don’t try to fix each other.
We just see each other.
Later,in our bunk, the silence stretches warm instead of cold.
No armor. No secrets.
He lays beside me, back bare, riddled with scars. I trace each one with my fingertips like reading Braille.
He doesn’t flinch.
