“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” He held her gaze steadily. “I remember enough to know. Not all beings risk themselves for strangers. Not all beings look at something unknown and choose… mercy.”
She looked away, but not before he caught the flush spreading across her cheeks. Her hand tightened briefly around his before relaxing.
“I’m not merciful,” she muttered. “I’m practical. A dead alien in my drill field would have been a bureaucratic nightmare.”
A rough, unfamiliar sound escaped him and it took him a moment to realize he was laughing. The sensation was strange, rusty from disuse, but it felt good. Right.
Her head snapped back towards him, her eyes wide. “Did you just?—”
“Laugh.” He tested the word. “This is the word? When something is… unexpected. Amusing.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny.”
“I know.” He smiled, and felt something warm bloom in his chest when her blush deepened. “This is why it is funny.”
She made an exasperated sound, but he could see the corner of her mouth twitching. “You’re picking up more than just vocabulary. You’re picking up sarcasm.”
“I have good teacher.”
This time she laughed, the joyous sound he wanted to hear again and again. He wanted to be the one who caused it, who drew it from her despite her walls and wariness.
He knew these feelings were dangerous, but he had been cold for so long. And she was so warm.
The storm maintained its assault on the dwelling throughout the day, winds screaming against the reinforced walls, but inside their small shelter, a fragile peace had settled. She continued to talk—about her work and the rare minerals she sought beneath the ice—and he continued to listen, filing away each new word, each piece of information.
She showed him her console and explained the data to him, and he was surprised by how much he understood because of his own familiarity with the ice. She was brilliant. That much was clear even through the gaps in his understanding. The way she described her work revealed a mind that saw patterns others missed, that could look at raw data and extract meaning from chaos. Her hands moved as she spoke, tracing diagrams in the air, and he found himself watching those hands with increasing fascination.
Small. Callused. Scarred from years of labor. Strong.
Like her.
“Sorry,” she said eventually, cutting herself off mid-sentence. “I’m rambling. You probably understood about half of that.”
“More than half,” he said. “Your work is… important. To you.”
“It’s my life.” She shrugged, but he heard the weight behind the words. “Out here, it has to be. There’s nothing else.”
There could be.
He didn’t say it aloud. He had no right to imagine himself as part of her future. Not yet.
She showed him how to heat the emergency rations, and he noticed once again that they were growing scarce. She tried to insist she wasn’t hungry and he tried to insist that she take half, and they eventually compromised on sharing the meal but giving him the larger portion.
After they ate, she started yawning, catching herself too late to hide it, and he felt a sudden surge of protectiveness. How much sleep had she had? How much had she given of her food and her warmth and her energy to keep him alive?
“You need rest,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“You are tired. Your eyes…” He searched for the word. “Dim. Heavy.”
“That’s a polite way of saying I look like hell.”
He didn’t know what hell was, but he understood her meaning. “Rest,” he repeated. “I will watch.”
“Watch what? The storm?” She gestured at the window. “It’s not going anywhere.”
