"Don't." Her voice cracks on the word. Just slightly. Just enough that I hear it, feel it. "Don't give me that. Not now."
"When, then?"
"Never." She slams the rifle back into the rack hard enough that the whole unit rattles. "It doesn't matter what you felt six years ago. It doesn't change what you did."
"I know."
"It doesn't make it better."
"I know that too."
She whirls. Her hand finds my chest, pushes. Not hard—she's not trying to move me. Just establishing distance. Claiming space.
I let her.
Her palm is warm through my shirt. I feel her pulse in her fingertips, fast and hard, the rhythm of someone whose control is costing them.
"You calculated my life," she says. Her voice is rough now. Raw. "You weighed my survival against mission success and I came up short. That's who you are. A man who can love someone and still sacrifice them."
"Yes."
The admission costs nothing because it's just truth, the kind that cuts clean instead of ragged. Simpler than the lies that would make this easier. Kinder, maybe, in its own brutal way.
Her hand fists in my shirt. The fabric bunches in her grip, knuckles white against the dark tactical weave. She's close enough now that I can smell the gun oil on her skin, the sharp bite of her fear-sweat underneath. Close enough that I feel her pulse hammering against her wrist where it presses to my chest.
Close enough that she can see my marks flaring with everything I'm feeling, everything she's making me feel—and there's nowhere to hide from what this conversation is doing to both ofus.
"And you'd do it again."
Not a question. She knows the answer. I can feel that she knows, that somewhere in the six years since she's run every scenario, every variable, and come to the same conclusion I have.
Given the same situation, the same math, I would make the same choice.
"If the math demanded it," I say quietly. "Yes. I would."
Something crosses her face. Pain. Acceptance. Neither quite complete.
"At least you're honest." She releases me. Steps back. Her walls snap up so hard I actually feel it as pressure against my senses. "That's more than most people manage."
She walks past me, each step deliberate and measured, her boots striking the deck plating with military precision. The sound echoes in the empty armory, sharp and final.
At the door, she stops. Her shoulders are rigid beneath her tactical gear, every line of her body screaming controlled tension. Her hand rests on the frame, not quite bracing, not quite hesitating. Just... there.
She doesn't turn around. Doesn't look at me. She knows what she'll see if she does—my marks still glowing with everything I just confessed, with the truth we both have to live with now.
"Two days," she says, her voice flat and professional in that way that means she's feeling too much and locking it down. "Gamma-7 and back. We can be professional for two days."
The implication is clear: after that, all bets are off. After that, we'll have to figure out what the hell this is, this thing where she hates me and wants me and refuses to let either feeling win.
"Astra—"
"Get some rest, Commander." The title is a wall between us, deliberate and cold. "We launch in twenty-eight minutes. I need you sharp for this."
I need you.
The words she didn't say hang in the air between us, louder than what she actually spoke. I feel them anyway, not through sensing, just through knowing her. Through six years of carrying the weight of what I did and what she became because of it.
She's gone before I can find anything to say that wouldn't make this worse.
