“I wouldn’t do it otherwise.”
There it was.
Not romance. Not a promise.
Choice.
I sat down slowly, the slate forgotten on the table. Through the vent, I could hear the colony settling into evening—distant voices, the soft thrum of power redistribution, and the low comfort sound of a place that expected to be standing tomorrow.
I imagined this rhythm stretching forward. Days of work that mattered. Nights when I didn’t sleep with one eye open. A partner who adjusted heat cycles instead of asking me to change.
The thought startled me.
Partner.
I looked up at him, really looked—the scar-crosshatched skin at his throat, the steady patience in his posture, the way he gave space instead of claiming it.
I cared for him.
Not in the abstract. Not in the way danger makes people cling.
I cared because he made room for me without asking me to shrink.
“That aunt of yours,” I said lightly, because my chest felt too full, “does she inspect everyone’s living arrangements?”
“No,” he said. “Only mine.”
“Why?”
He met my gaze, unflinching. “Because she knows I don’t change things unless I intend to keep them.”
The silence that followed was delicate and dense.
“I don’t know if I’ll stay forever,” I said at last.
“I know,” he replied. “I’m not asking for forever.”
“What are you asking for?”
“Today,” he said. “And tomorrow, if you wake up wanting it.”
Something in me loosened then—a knot I hadn’t known I’d been carrying since the war ended and survival stopped being enough.
I nodded once. “I want tomorrow.”
His expression didn’t change much.
It didn’t need to.
“That’s enough,” he said.
Later, lying on my pallet with the partition half-drawn, listening to the mountain breathe, I understood the truth had already settled in me, quiet and certain:
If staying meant this—shared space, shared consideration, a life that didn’t demand constant retreat—then leaving would be the harder choice.
And that frightened me.
Because it meant I was already imagining what it would be like not to go.
