A short, real sound.
Then she looks at me. Really looks at me. Her eyes are bright and dark all at once.
“They offered it,” she says quietly. “Advisory post. Sectorwide clearance. High-level access. All the resources. No oversight.”
“And?”
“I turned it down.”
“Why?”
She looks away again, watching the last of the refugee families file into the shuttle.
A little girl stops at the threshold. She turns around, waves at a technician near the bay entrance. He waves back, smiling through tears.
Mara’s voice drops.
“I don’t want to manage systems,” she says. “I want to protect them.”
My chest tightens.
Because that’s her. Always has been.
Not interested in titles or ranks or walls.
She wants to be on the ground, where it hurts. Where she can hold the line.
I step closer, not touching yet.
Then I reach for her hand.
She lets me.
Fingers sliding into mine like we were always built this way.
“Then we do it together,” I say.
Her grip tightens.
The corridor to the shuttle is quiet.
Not empty—quiet. The kind of silence that settles in after something sacred. There’s still movement in the bay. Crews finishing the last checks. A few scattered voices over comms. The low hum of auxiliary engines spinning up for final launch prep.
But here, just outside the loading ramp?—
It’s just us.
Mara stands with her back to the access doors, head tilted slightly, eyes on me like she’s waiting for a signal I haven’t givenyet. She doesn’t fidget. Doesn’t shift her weight or scan the room. She’s still, composed, but I can feel the tension just under her skin.
She knows something’s coming.
I take a slow step forward.
Then another.
Until we’re close enough to share breath.
Close enough that all I have to do is lean in, and our foreheads touch.
