I lift a hand — not to touch. Just hover. Light.
“I do,” I say. “And I believe in you.”
No boast. No roar. Just truth — quiet, deep, steady.
The night wind licks across the pool. Water drips from the falls, pattering on rock like distant rain. The smell of moss and mineral and cold water hangs between us.
She doesn’t lean away. She doesn’t flee. Instead she glances at my extended hand again.
Slowly — like a dawn creeping across a dying world — she touches me. Her fingers press to mine. Soft. Searching. Trusting.
The simple contact sends a shiver up my bones, but I don’t tense. I don’t tighten. I let the moment settle. Let her warmth seep through.
“You’re learning,” she murmurs.
I close my eyes. The night hush presses against my skull. My voice rumbles low.
“I learn fast.”
She laughs once — soft, broken, beautiful. A sound I realize I never thought I would hear from her without fear in it.
The moss around the pool glows brighter — little blue lights scattered across cracked rock and damp earth. They pulse, slow and heartbeat-steady. The smell of wet stone and moss and night air mingles into something sacred and fragile.
She steps closer. Her breath is steady. She turns her face up to me.
I lean in. No claws. No armor. Just bone and heat and breath.
Our lips nearly touch. The world shrinks — to water droplets, to moss-light, to us.
I don’t kiss her yet. I wait. Because this isn’t conquest. This isn’t claiming.
This — is offering.
Her fingers tighten around mine. Her scent fills my nostrils: soap, pine-mist, fear, memory, everything soft and alive about her.
“Stay,” she whispers.
The word is small. Gentle. Near-fragile.
“Always,” I answer.
We sit by the pool, back against damp stone, legs tangled, hands still clasped. The cold seeps through the rocks into my bones. But I feel warmth — real warmth — waking something inside me that starfire and war never touched.
We talk — softly — about nothing and everything. About ruined worlds. About childhood ghosts. About what it means to be human, to be Reaper, to be caught between blood and hope.
I tell her about moons I watched burn. About the crush of victory and the stink of death. She doesn’t flinch. She listens. Her hand never leaves mine.
When the first warning-bells hum across the compound — the signal that late-shift patrols begin — I don’t rise. I just keep breathing, letting the night, the moss-light, the soft press of her palm remind me that maybe I don’t have to stand alone.
I don’t even move when she curls tighter against me. I don’t need to — because the moment already holds.
The world outside bleeds steam and steel and hunger. But here — under the blanket of alien sky, beside moss that glows like hope, next to the only human alive who doesn’t see me as bone and spurs — I feel like something new might be growing.
Maybe it’s destiny. Maybe it’s choice. Maybe it's fear quieted by trust.
Maybe it’s love.
And if love is the most dangerous weapon a Reaper can wield — I’m finally holding it.
