Chapter 7
NAULL
The silence after my question stretches, elastic and aching.
It hums with unsaid things. Her boots click against the grated floor as she paces, head low, fingers twitching like they want something to do—anything other than be part of this moment.
A shudder from the storm groans through the bulkhead, the kind that rattles teeth and makes the walls flex like lungs taking a worried breath.
I lean back against the supply crate and fold my arms across my chest, watching her. Not predatory. Not patient. Just... present.
She stops moving like someone hit pause. Her back is to me, spine too straight, hands clenching and unclenching at her sides. I say nothing. The wind outside can speak for both of us until she’s ready.
“I fight it,” she says finally, voice rough. “Because I know how this ends.”
I cock my head. “How what ends?”
“This.” She spins and gestures sharply, like she’s cutting through the air. “Whatever’s happening here. Between us. This... static.”
I step forward, boots scuffing slow. “You touch a live wire enough times, eventually it stops hurting. Becomes a part of you.”
“No. It burns you,” she fires back.
I stop a pace away. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”
She meets my eyes then. Not a glare. Not a glare exactly. It’s too soft for that. More like a warning, or a plea dressed up in barbed wire.
“That’s not what I’m scared of.”
Something inside me goes quiet.
“Then what are you scared of, sparks?”
Her arms fold like she’s trying to hold herself together. The flicker of motion draws my eye—her thumb rubbing the edge of a callus on her palm, a nervous habit I’ve only ever seen when she thinks she’s alone.
“I’m scared of needing something I can’t keep. Of depending on someone who vanishes the minute I breathe easy. Of... of trusting the wrong variable in an unstable equation.” Her voice is shaking now, but not weak. She’s fighting herself as much as she’s fighting me.
“You think I’m temporary.”
“I think everything is.”
I reach up, slow like I’m coaxing a wild animal. My fingers find the strand of hair that escaped her braid, tucking it gently behind her ear. Her skin is flushed and damp. She’s breathing hard like we just climbed a mountain.
“I’m not here to visit,” I say. “I’m here to stay.”
She looks away. “You don’t know me.”
“I do. Not all of you. But enough.”
Her lips part, but nothing comes out.
“I’ve seen your dreams,” I say. “Felt the way you flinch when I get too close in the meld. I know you grind your teeth when you’re stressed and hum under your breath when you think no one’s listening.
I know you fix machines not because it’s your job, but because it’s the only time you feel in control. ”
She opens her mouth again. “That’s not fair.”
“No. It’s true.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. Long enough that the storm cracks loud overhead and the lights flicker. Shadows stretch long over her face, making her eyes look too big, too dark.
“I’m tired,” she says softly.
“Of what?”
“Everything. Holding myself together. Pretending it’s all fine.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “Of being alone even when I’m not.”
I reach for her hand. Her fingers twitch once, but she doesn’t pull away. Our palms meet, warm and calloused and unsure.
“I don’t want to fix you,” I say. “Just... stand beside you while you fix yourself. Or don’t. Either way, I’m still here.”
Her head lowers like a weight just fell off her spine. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Then don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t try to do anything. Just... be here. With me. That’s enough.”
Her thumb brushes mine.
“I still don’t trust you,” she says.
“You don’t have to. Not yet. Just give me time.”
“And if I do?”
“I’ll earn the rest.”
She sits down. Not dramatically. Just like she ran out of places to run.
I sit beside her. Close, but not touching.
The hum of Whiplash powers through the silence. The wind howls. The walls breathe.
And for the first time, neither of us tries to escape.
We just sit.
Still.
Together.
Waiting.
The words settle between us like a pressure front, dense and close.
I feel them more than hear them, like her voice is crawling inside my chest and anchoring itself behind my ribs.
For once, I don’t try to fill the space with my usual charm or bravado.
That part of me—cocky, grinning, incorrigible—is silent, for once, curling in on itself because it knows this moment isn’t for him.
She looks away fast, like she regrets saying it. First the floor, then the bulkhead wall, like either of them are gonna give her better answers than I can.
And I can’t stop staring.
Because it’s not the words that sucker-punch me—it’s the way she says them. Like a confession and a defense, all tangled up in fear. Like she’s been holding it in for so long that it burned a mark in her lungs and she’s only now realizing she can breathe it out.
I shift on the floor, trying not to make a sound, trying not to scare her off. She’s already halfway out of her skin. I don’t even know what part of her I’m supposed to hold—her hand, her shoulder, her pain.
I just… sit there.
Back off, just a bit. Give her the space she needs to not bolt.
And gods, my heart’s thundering. I can hear it in my ears, feel it in my tail. It’s ridiculous. I’ve faced off against monsters three times my size with less adrenaline than this.
Eventually—gods, it feels like hours but it's probably minutes—she slides down the wall and sits beside me. Doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t look at me.
Just... sits.
Back to back.
Like maybe she trusts me enough to be close, but not enough to face me. And you know what? That’s okay.
Her shoulder is warm against mine. Solid. I lean back, not all the way, just enough that we’re touching but not crowding. Her breath is slow. Controlled. Too controlled.
“Hey,” I say, voice low. “You don’t have to say anything else.”
She lets out a breath that sounds like it’s been living in her lungs for a decade. “I know.”
But we talk anyway.
Not about the war. Not about Meld. Not about duty or duty rosters or mech diagnostics or proximity syncs.
Stupid things.
“What’s the worst food you’ve ever eaten?” I ask, mostly to get her to laugh.
She snorts. “A protein bar labeled ‘steak’ that tasted like wet cardboard soaked in soy sauce.”
I laugh. “Was it at the academy?”
She nods. “Had this weird aftertaste, like synthetic regret.”
“Synthetic Regret,” I repeat, mock-serious. “Great name for a band.”
Her laugh is soft, real. “Or a failed cologne.”
We’re quiet for a while, but it’s the kind of quiet that has weight but not discomfort.
I tell her about Vakutan childhood meals—how we’d roast slabfruit on plasma grills and smear it with crushed glowroot paste until our faces were painted neon.
She tells me about tamales. Her grandmother’s recipe.
The way they’d wrap the dough in corn husks, the steam filling the house, the way the smell would cling to her hair.
“My hair would smell like chili and cumin for days,” she says.
“Sounds delicious.”
“I was ten.”
I hum. “Still delicious.”
She rolls her eyes, but her voice’s softer now. She’s loosening.
“You ever eat gravity gum?” I ask. “Back on Sernuul, there was a vendor—old guy with one eye and no sense of hygiene—used to sell these sticks of gum that had temporary grav-shifts in them.”
“What does that even mean?”
“You chew it, and for like twenty seconds, you get lighter. Like, floaty. Makes burps sound like music.”
“You made that up.”
“Swear on my tail.”
She laughs again, a little breathless. “I don’t even know if that’s impressive or horrifying.”
“Bit of both,” I admit.
We sit there as the storm screams above, ripping across Rhavadaz like it’s trying to claw the skin off the planet. The vibrations rumble through the metal around us, but in this little bubble, it’s just us. Back to back. Breathing. Talking.
She tells me she used to draw star maps on her bedroom ceiling with glow paint. That she had a pet lizard named Newton. That her mom used to work long shifts at a data farm and she’d sneak into the old university libraries to read tech manuals for fun.
“I was a weird kid,” she says.
“You were a brilliant kid,” I correct.
She doesn’t argue. Just sits with it.
I tell her about Vakutan war chants—how we sing before every major battle, not just to honor the dead, but to remind ourselves we’re still alive. That the rhythm is everything. That we don’t carry weapons before we carry sound.
“You sing?” she asks, amused.
“Badly,” I admit. “But with enthusiasm.”
“I’ll believe it when I hear it.”
“One day,” I promise.
Silence again.
Then, softly, she says, “I used to be terrified of the dark.”
I glance sideways, even though I can’t really see her face. “Used to?”
She shrugs. “Now I’m just… tired of pretending I’m not.”
I swallow hard. “Yeah. Same.”
The air shifts. Not the kind of shift from the failing HVAC or storm pressure, but something inside the space between us. Something real. Something dangerous.
“I almost died in a mech once,” she says.
My gut tightens. “When?”
“Before Whiplash. Training exercise. My first pilot panicked and overrode the emergency protocols. Fried the core. I was in the repair bay, rebalancing the neural load when it blew. Knocked me out cold.”
I don’t say anything for a second.
Then: “That why you hate Meld?”
She doesn’t answer immediately. Then— “It’s part of it. I don’t like giving up control. Trusting someone else with my body, my brain. It’s like offering your spine and praying they don’t snap it.”
“I get that,” I say. “I do.”
She looks over her shoulder, just slightly. “Do you?”
“Vakutan warriors Meld before our first real mission. We have to. Sometimes it’s with someone we barely know. You learn real fast that trust isn’t about logic. It’s about choosing to fall anyway.”
She shivers. Not from cold.
“I don’t know how to do that,” she whispers.
“I’ll wait until you do,” I say. “Even if it takes a war and a thousand windstorms.”
She doesn’t respond, but her hand—her fingers—brush mine. Light. Almost nothing.
But not nothing.
Outside, the winds begin to fade. The storm’s passing. The pressure starts to ease. The base systems groan and flicker, trying to come back to life.
“I guess that’s our cue,” she murmurs.
“Yeah.”
We stand together, slowly. Not rushing. The air still hums with something heavy and unspoken. She doesn’t step away this time. Neither do I.
We walk out of the maintenance corridor shoulder to shoulder.
And I swear—every step feels like a promise.