"Again," I rasp at the AI, my voice raw from exertion and something deeper I refuse to examine. The word comes out like gravel, like I'm grinding it between teeth that ache from being clenched too hard for too long.
"Lord Haid." Thanatos's voice cuts through the combat haze like a blade through tissue. "The training droids are not an infinite resource."
I turn. He stands at the ring's entrance, arms crossed, expression carefully neutral in that way that means he's judging me and has already reached a conclusion I won't like.
"Then requisition more." I kick a droid head across the floor. It bounces off the barrier with a dull clang.
"We've been through this cycle before." He steps over the threshold, boots crunching on debris. The barrier recognizes his biometrics, allowing entry without protest. "You destroy equipment when you're processing emotions you refuse to acknowledge. I clean up the mess and requisition replacements. The mechanics complain. You ignore them. We repeat."
"Your point?" I wrench off my training gloves, throw them aside with more force than necessary.
"My point is that you're wasting resources we can't afford to waste, damaging infrastructure we need functional, and avoiding a conversation you need to have." He picks his way through the carnage with the careful precision of someone who has done this too many times. "With yourself, if not with anyone else."
I turn away, focusing on the wall display showing station vitals. Oxygen production up twelve percent. Air quality is improving across all sectors. Nitrogen levels stabilizing. Food stores are increasing daily. All because of her. All because I stole a woman from a party and brought her to this dying rock, and she chose to save us anyway.
Chose to save me, with her terrible coffee and her sharp wit and the way she looks at my scars like they're something other than proof of my failures.
"The droids are for combat readiness," I say, because deflection is easier than truth. "The Apex blockade could move at any time. We need to maintain?—"
I freeze mid-motion, hands still raised toward the display controls, fingers hovering over the interface, every muscle in my body locking into sudden, terrible stillness. The casual devastation of those simple words hit hard, knocking the air from my lungs as thoroughly as any combat strike.
The training room falls away, the sparking remains of the droids, the scorched floor panels, the acrid smell of melted circuitry, all of it fades into insignificance against the weight of what Thanatos has just said.
My hands remain suspended in the air, frozen in place like I've been caught in some kind of stasis field. I can feel my pulse thundering in my ears, each beat a hammer blow against my skull.
"What?" The word comes out rough, scraped raw from somewhere deep in my chest. "What did you just say?"
"You heard me." Thanatos moves to stand beside me, close enough that I can see his reflection in the polished metal of the wall panel. His expression is grim. "It started in the lower sectors, spread through the residential levels. Now even the mining crews are using the title. They see her as salvation. As hope made flesh. As the miracle that will turn this place into something livable."
My jaw clenches hard enough to ache. "She has a name."
"They don't care about her name. They care about what she represents. What she's already given them." He gestures at the display, at the climbing numbers that prove her impact on every system, every life aboard this station. "Clean air. Real food. Thefirst green things most of them have seen in years. Children who can breathe without coughing up blood."
Each word is a nail driven deeper into the coffin of my original plan. The one where I use her gifts to save my people, give her the codes and a new identity like I promised, send her away to live whatever life she wants far from this place.
Far from me.
"The deal was always temporary," I say, but the words taste like ash. Like lies I told myself to justify the abduction, the theft, the unforgivable act of ripping her from her life because I needed what she could give. "Six months to establish sustainable agriculture. Then she's free to leave."
"And if you send her back, there will be riots."
The blunt certainty in his voice makes something cold slide down my spine. I turn to face him fully, searching his expression for any sign of exaggeration, finding only the hard truth.
"Explain."
"The people see her as theirs now. As part of this place, this community. The woman who saved their children, who grows food in dead soil, who glows with life in a sector built from death." His gaze is unflinching, relentless. "If you put her on a ship and send her away, they will view it as a betrayal. Of them, of her, of everything she represents."
"She's not a symbol." The words come out harsher than intended, edged with something raw. "She's a person. With autonomy and choice and a life that doesn't include being worshipped by miners who don't know the first thing about her."
"Then what does it include?" Thanatos asks quietly. "Because from where I'm standing, she seems fairly content here. Engaged with the work. Connected to the people. Present in a way I've never seen her look in any of the surveillance footage from her mother's estate."
My hands curl into fists. The urge to hit something surges back with violent intensity, but all the droids are already destroyed and Thanatos is my friend, which means I can't solve this problem with my fists.
"She deserves better than this." I force the words out through gritted teeth. "Better than a dying station in a blockaded sector. Better than a warlord who kidnapped her and a population that's turned her into their patron saint."
"Maybe." He tilts his head, considering. "Or maybe you're projecting your own guilt onto a situation she's handling better than you are."
The accusation hits too close to center mass. I turn away, unable to hold his gaze, hating that he can read me this clearly.
