11. Ursa #4
I laugh, and his expression changes at the sound. It is not triumph. It is not smugness. It is wonder, quickly hidden but not quickly enough. The bond pulls again, softer now, threaded through with something achingly human despite the fact that neither of us really knows what to do with it.
I look out over the docking ring because looking at him directly feels like stepping too close to an open flame. “This is going to complicate my reporting.”
“Yes.”
“You admit that very calmly.”
“Panic would not make it less true.”
“I have ethical obligations.”
“I know.”
“I cannot become your propaganda arm because you looked at me across a feast and rewired my entire nervous system.”
His mouth curves. “That is a vivid accusation.”
“It is a factual summary.”
“Then ask the next factual question.”
I turn back to him. “What do you want from me, Gnash? Not from the interview. Not from IHC. From me.”
The question hangs between us, rawer than anything I have asked on record.
He lowers his gaze to my mouth for the briefest instant, and heat moves through me so fast I grip the railing. When his eyes return to mine, they are darkened by restraint.
“I want many things,” he says. “Most would frighten you if I named them too quickly.”
“I’m not fragile.”
“No,” he says quietly. “That is why I am choosing care.”
The words hit harder than any declaration could have. Care. From him, the word sounds unfamiliar and sacred, dragged from some buried chamber he does not open often.
I realize the recording field is still active.
So does he.
Neither of us moves to stop it.
My voice comes out lower than before. “And professionally?”
“Professionally, I want you to tell the truth.”
“Even if it damages you?”
“If the truth damages me, then perhaps I deserve the wound.”
“That is a dangerous answer.”
“You like dangerous answers.”
“I like honest ones.”
“Then tell me one.”
I breathe in, tasting metal, warmth, and my own nervousness. “I came here expecting to find a story. I did not expect to find a person.”
Gnash’s expression stills.
I push forward before courage fails me. “That does not absolve you. It does not excuse the blood on your record or make your choices simple. But it changes the question. I thought I was asking whether the galaxy was wrong about you. Now I think the harder truth is that the galaxy may be partly right and still using that truth to hide its own crimes.”
His gaze does not leave my face. “Will you say that on your broadcast?”
“Yes.”
“Dawson will hate it.”
“Dawson hates anything that requires viewers to think for more than six seconds.”
“Then I look forward to irritating him.”
“You and me both.”
For a moment, we stand together above the docking ring, wrapped in the mechanical heartbeat of Guyver Station and the impossible pressure of everything neither of us is ready to name.
Below us, cargo crews shout, children laugh, engines cycle, and history moves in the dark with knives under its coat.
Gnash lifts one hand slowly enough that I can refuse.
I do not.
His clawed fingers brush a loose strand of hair back from my cheek with such careful restraint that my breath catches.
His hand is enormous beside my face, capable of violence I have seen documented in casualty reports and raw footage, yet his touch is lighter than the drift of warm air from the vents.
“Ursa Ramone,” he says, and my name in his mouth sounds less like identification than vow. “You are going to make my life very difficult.”
I look up at him, pulse loud in my ears, compad still recording, career and ethics and attraction colliding so violently that I can barely stand still.
“I have a gift,” I say.
His thumb lingers near my cheek, not quite touching now. “So I have learned.”
The professional part of me knows I should step back, end the recording, ask about troop deployments, return to my berth, and write until I have turned this impossible day into something structured enough to survive broadcast. The woman inside me, the lonely one I keep sealed behind competence and sarcasm, wants to lean into his hand and see whether the bond between us feels as real in quiet as it did beneath the eyes of diplomats.
I make myself reach for the compad.
“End recording,” I say.
The pale ring of light collapses.
Gnash’s eyes darken further. “Interview complete?”
“For now.”
“And what begins now?”
I should have an answer. I have built my entire life on answers, on questions sharp enough to carve them free, on surviving rooms where powerful men expect me to be smaller than I am.
Yet here, with the Badlands burning beyond the glass and Gnash standing close enough to make the air feel charged, honesty becomes the only tool I have left.
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
He bends slightly, bringing his face closer to mine, but he still does not touch me without invitation. “Then we learn.”
The words settle into me with a terrifying gentleness.
I nod once, because anything more might break whatever fragile discipline remains between us, and together we stand above the living, dangerous station he built from grief, fury, and impossible hope while the first honest interview Gnash has ever given waits inside my compad like a lit fuse.