"Elena." I waited until she looked at me again. "On the derelict, before the raiders attacked. What I said?—"
"Was a crisis situation. Adrenaline and desperation. I know how it works." Her expression shuttered, walls going up. "You don't have to explain. We're both alive. Mission accomplished. We can go back to being professional colleagues who occasionally argue about maintenance protocols."
She was giving me an out. A way to pretend that kiss had been nothing but combat stress and survival instinct. A clean retreat to the safe distance we'd maintained for months.
I should take it. Should accept the escape she was offering and go back to the careful neutrality that kept things simple.
"I meant it," I heard myself say instead. "Everything I said. Everything I felt."
Her breath caught. "Vaxon?—"
"I've wanted you for months. Wanted to know if your skin was as soft as it looked, if you tasted like electricity and chaos, if that brilliant mind would feel as good as I imagined when I finally kissed you." The words came easier now, like removing armor piece by piece. "I told myself it was inappropriate. That I was too damaged. That you deserved better than someone who couldn't protect his own unit."
"Don't." Elena's voice was fierce. "Don't you dare blame yourself for surviving when others died. That's my specialty, and I'm trying to retire from it."
"Then help me." I held out my hand, careful of the medical equipment. "Teach me how to live instead of just surviving. Show me how to stop punishing myself for being alive."
She stared at my outstretched hand like it was a trap. Or a promise. Maybe both.
"I don't know how to do relationships," she said quietly. "I've spent my whole life proving I'm smart enough, capable enough, worthy enough. I don't know how to just... be. Without the proving."
"We'll figure it out together. Make mistakes. Argue about stupid things. Drive each other crazy." I kept my hand extended, patient. "But we'll do it honestly. No more pretending this doesn't exist between us."
"What if I mess it up? What if I'm too much chaos and not enough stability and you realize?—"
"Elena." I waited until her eyes met mine. "I fell for you because of the chaos, not despite it. Because you see problems as puzzles to solve instead of limitations to accept. Because you multitask at impossible levels and forget to eat when you're hyperfocused and explain electrical theory with the passion most people reserve for religion." My hand remained steady, an offer without pressure. "You're not too much. You're exactly enough."
She crossed the space between chair and medical pod, her small hand sliding into mine. The contact sent electricity through my damaged nervous system, the good kind this time, not the killing kind.
"This is a terrible idea," she whispered.
"Probably."
"We're going to drive each other insane."
"Definitely."
"And if this goes wrong, we still have to work together because we're stuck on the same ship in a different galaxy?—"
I pulled her closer, carefully given my injuries but with enough force to stop her spiral. "Elena. Stop thinking and just answer one question."
"What question?"
"Do you want this? Us? Whatever form it takes?"
She looked at me for a long moment, hazel eyes searching. Then something in her expression softened, opened, let me see past the walls to the hope and fear and desperate longing underneath.
"Yes," she said. "God help me, yes."
"Then that's enough. The rest we'll figure out."
She leaned down, had to, given our height difference even with me horizontal in a medical pod—and kissed me. Soft and careful, mindful of my injuries but real. No combat adrenaline. No life-or-death crisis. Just Elena and me and the honest want between us.
When she pulled back, her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
"I've been so alone," she whispered. "Watching Dana and Er'dox, then Jalina and Zor'go, then Bea and Zorn. Seeing them all find their people while I just kept working and pretending I was fine."
"You're not alone anymore."
