Tynrax
Ican’t stop shaking.
Every step back toward the ship takes effort I don’t have. My legs work but barely. Everything hurts in a way I can’t catalog or explain, just a deep ache that goes past muscle into something fundamental.
Aris’s hand is on my arm. Has been since we left the survey site. Her grip steady, warm through my jacket sleeve.
I should tell her to let go. Should maintain some kind of boundary. But I can’t bring myself to say it. The words won’t form. And honestly, without her touch, I’m not sure I’d make it back.
The landscape passes. Gray regolith, volcanic rock, the relay station in the distance. I register it all but can’t focus on any of it. My mind keeps slipping, catching on fragments I can’t quite hold.
The survey site. The creatures. Her trapped. The decision that wasn’t really a decision at all.
Then nothing. Just white noise where my memory should be.
I remember her voice calling me back. Her hands on my face. The way her saying my name cut through the static.
Everything else is gone.
“Does this help?” she asks. We’ve been walking maybe twenty minutes. “When I touch you?”
The question catches me off guard. Not because it’s invasive but because it’s true.
“Yes.”
The word comes out rough. I clear my throat but it doesn’t help. Nothing helps except her hand on my arm, anchoring me to something outside my own head.
She doesn’t ask me to explain. Doesn’t push for details. Just keeps walking, keeps her hand where it is.
I’m grateful for that. I don’t have words for what her touch does. Just that without it, the static gets louder. The fragments sharper. Like I’m coming apart and her presence is the only thing holding me together.
We walk in silence. Her breathing is audible in the thin air, steady despite her exhaustion. She’s tired. Running on adrenaline that’s going to crash hard when we get back to the ship. But she’s not complaining, not slowing down.
She’s stronger than she looks. Tougher than she gives herself credit for.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she says eventually. Not angry. Just stating fact. “You knew what would happen.”
The words sting because they’re true. I did know. Understood what going near the ruins would do to me. What hearing her in danger would trigger.
But I’d gone anyway.
“I couldn’t leave you trapped.”
It sounds inadequate even as I say it. Like I’m minimizing what actually happened. The truth is simpler and more complicated than that.
The truth is there was never a choice. Not really. The moment I heard her voice over the comm, heard the fear in it, every other consideration stopped mattering.
My safety. My control. The mission parameters. None of it meant anything compared to getting to her.
She’s quiet for a moment. Then her grip on my arm tightens. Not much, just enough that I notice.
“You barely held on,” she says. “The survey site didn’t have a field, I know. But hearing me in danger. That’s what really made you change, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Another inadequate answer. But what else can I say? That her fear reached me through whatever barriers I had left? That my body moved before my mind caught up? That I’d do it again even knowing the cost?
“If I’d known...” She trails off. Starts again. “If I’d known it would affect you like that, I wouldn’t have gone. I’d have found another way.”
“Then I wouldn’t have come back,” I say, looking at her. “But you’d be alive.”
Her fingers dig into my arm. Not painful. Urgent.
“Don’t do that. Don’t make me worth more than your safety.”
“Too late.”
The words come out before I can stop them. Flat. Final. True.
Too late to pretend otherwise. Too late to rebuild the walls between us. Too late to be what I was three days ago when this mission started.
She doesn’t say anything to that. Just holds my arm tighter and we keep walking.
The ship comes into view. Communication array bent at a wrong angle. Landing strut buckled. The damage looks worse up close than it did from the ruins.
We’re stuck here. No way to call for help. No way to leave.
Just us and a relay to fix and a colony running out of time.
I stumble on loose regolith. Aris’s hand shifts, steadying me before I register the misstep. I catch myself but she doesn’t let go.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
We reach the airlock. She palms the entry pad and the door slides open. The ship’s interior lighting is too bright after walking in pale moonlight. I blink against it, vision adjusting slowly.
Aris guides me toward the medical bay. I should protest. Should tell her I’m fine, we need to work on the repair plan, there’s no time for this.
But the part of me that maintains those kinds of facades is gone. Burned away along with everything else.
“Sit,” she says. Not asking. “I’m checking you for injuries.”
“I’m fine.”
The lie is automatic but unconvincing. She gives me a look that says she knows it’s a lie and doesn’t care.
“Sit anyway.”
I sit.
The medical bay chair is cold through my jacket. I rest my hands on my thighs and try to hold still while she pulls out the scanner. The hum of it fills the small space. Familiar sound. Routine procedure.
Except nothing about this is routine.
She runs the scanner over me. Shoulders, spine, ribs. Checking for damage I know isn’t there. Not the kind that shows up on scans anyway.
“No major injuries,” she says after a minute. “Some bruising. Minor stress fractures in your hands that’ll heal.”
She pauses, looking at the readout. Her expression shifts. Something she sees there troubles her.
“Your control,” she says quietly. “It broke. The stress, the fear for me. It was too much.”
I know that already. Felt it shatter. But hearing her say it makes it real in a way it wasn’t before.
“There’s static in my head that won’t clear.”
It’s the best description I have. Not pain exactly. Just noise. Interference. Like my thoughts are fragmenting before I can complete them.
She closes the scanner but her hand stays on my shoulder. Light pressure. Steady.
“We need to understand this,” she says. “Let me check the component I retrieved.”
I nod. Don’t trust my voice.
She moves to the workstation, pulling up the diagnostic interface. Her hand doesn’t leave my shoulder. Like she’s forgotten it’s there.
Or maybe she hasn’t forgotten. Maybe she knows what I already know. That her touch helps. That the static quiets when she’s close.
The component analysis runs. Takes maybe twenty minutes. She scrolls through data, muttering to herself about molecular bonding and stress tolerances and integration specs.
I don’t follow most of it. Can’t focus on technical details right now. Just sit there with her hand on my shoulder and try not to think about what happens when she pulls away.
“Compatible,” she says finally. Relief in her voice. “One problem solved.”
She turns back to me and that’s when she seems to realize her hand is still on my shoulder. She doesn’t move it immediately. Just looks at me, something unreadable in her expression.
“You came for me,” she says. Quiet. “Even though you knew what it would do to you.”
“Of course I did.”
Like there was ever a question.
She blinks. “Why?”
The question hangs between us. Simple on the surface. Complicated underneath.
I could deflect. Should deflect. Tell her it was tactical necessity or mission parameters or any of a dozen professional reasons.
But the walls that let me do that are gone. There’s just truth now. Raw and unfiltered and terrifying.
I look at her. Really look. See the exhaustion she’s hiding, the worry she won’t voice. The way her hair’s falling out of its tie. The dust smudge on her jaw she hasn’t noticed.
“Because you’re not just the geologist.”
The words come out wrong. Not what I meant to say or maybe exactly what I meant to say and that’s worse.
I try again.
“You’re Aris. And I couldn’t leave you there.”
Her breath catches. Just slightly. Enough that I hear it in the quiet of the medical bay.
The space between us feels smaller suddenly. Charged. Like I’ve said too much and can’t take it back.
The cargo bay. Waking up with her head on my shoulder. The way my body calmed just from her proximity. All the small moments over the past days that I’ve been categorizing as professional necessity.
They weren’t professional. They haven’t been for a while now.
“We should rest,” she says. Her voice sounds strange. “Big day tomorrow.”
“Yes. We should.”
Neither of us moves.
I’m still sitting. She’s still standing close enough that I could reach out and touch her if I wanted to. Her hand is still on my shoulder.
I should stand up. Should step back. Should put distance between us before I say something else I can’t take back.
But I can’t make myself move.
“Aris,” I say. Just her name. Nothing else.
“Yeah?”
I don’t know what I was going to say. The words are gone. There’s just her looking at me and me looking at her and something happening that I don’t have words for.
Finally I make myself stand. Make myself step back. The loss of contact is immediate and jarring. The static rushes in to fill the space she was occupying.
“Goodnight, Aris.”
Her first name. Not Doctor. Not Saavik. Saying it out loud feels significant. Like I’m claiming something I have no right to claim.
She doesn’t correct me.
“Goodnight.”
I walk out of the medical bay. Down the corridor. My quarters are at the far end. The distance feels longer than it should.
Inside, I sit on the edge of my bunk. The room is quiet except for the hum of life support. Standard ship sounds I usually don’t notice.
I should sleep. Need to sleep. Tomorrow we attempt the repair again and I need to be functional.
But I can’t shut my mind off. Can’t stop the static long enough to rest.
I lie back. Close my eyes. The darkness behind my eyelids isn’t peaceful. Just empty.
Without Aris close, everything is louder. Sharper. Harder to hold together.
I think about her in the cargo bay right now. Probably still researching. Looking for answers in those fragmented texts about anchoring and bonded pairs and pre-Suppression practices.
Looking for a way to fix what’s broken.
The solution isn’t rebuilding the walls. I know that now. The suppression is gone. Shattered past repair. Whatever I was before I touched that interface, I can’t go back to being that.
The solution is her. Has been from the start.
Physical contact. Sustained connection. Some kind of feedback loop I don’t understand but can feel working.
When she touches me, the chaos settles. When she’s close, I can think clearly. When she says my name, I find my way back to myself.
That’s anchoring. Has to be.
The texts don’t explain how it works. Just that it does. That bonded pairs could regulate each other. That connection could replace suppression.
The idea terrifies me more than the ruins did. More than going feral. Because it means surrendering control to someone else. Trusting her with the parts of me I’ve spent years learning to wall off.
But maybe that’s what this requires.
Not control. Trust.
Not walls. Connection.
I can still feel where her hand was on my shoulder. Can still hear her voice calling me back from the edge.
Stay with Aris.
Tomorrow we’ll try the repair again. And this time, I think I know what we need to do.
The question is whether I’m brave enough to actually do it.
I lie there in the darkness, listening to the ship’s systems, counting the hours until morning. The static doesn’t quiet. Doesn’t fade. Just keeps filling my head with white noise.
But underneath it, I hold onto one thing. One clear signal in all the chaos.
Her name.
Aris.
And the memory of her hand on my arm, steady and sure, guiding me home.