I glance away.
“After that last mission... things went dark. No team. No credits. No backup. Combine had agents in every port. I was just a ghost with too many scars and no place left to bleed.”
“You could’ve come back.”
“I couldn’t even crawl.”
The silence turns heavier.
Then I speak again.
“I ended up in the pit fights. Backwater station called Quen’s Halo. No rules. No sponsors. Just blood and bone and grit. You win, you eat. You lose, you bleed. That simple.”
She stiffens.
I don’t stop.
“I didn’t go in to win. I went in to disappear. Figured I’d burn out. Leave nothing. But I kept surviving. And one day, someone called me Blastaar. And the crowd roared.”
I meet her eyes.
“It was the first time I felt real in years.”
She doesn’t speak.
I keep going.
“I told myself I was surviving. But what I was really doing… was searching. Every system I entered, every fight I booked—I made sure the press was there. Made sure my name reached across the stars.”
I lean forward.
“And then I saw her.”
Rhea closes her eyes.
“I saw her in the hall, clutching that drone like it was the most important thing in the universe. And when she smiled… I knew. I knew I’d found more than I ever deserved.”
She opens her mouth.
Closes it.
Breathes.
And whispers, “She loves stars, you know.”
“I believe it.”
“She builds models of freighters from junk she finds. Says she wants to be a pilot. Or a reporter. Depends on the day.”
I smile.
Pain in my chest. Pure and brutal.
“She’s got fire.”
“She’s got you.”
Silence again.
