Page 245 of Red Scale Daddy
Roma finally sets the microspanner down and shifts Lyra carefully in the sling. “The model is stable.”
Dad moves closer, squinting at the hovering schematic. “Stable enough or Roma stable?”
“Define the difference.”
“Stable enough means it won’t explode. Roma stable means it won’t explode unless provoked, insulted, overheated, underfed, miswired, or looked at with insufficient reverence.”
I grin. “That does sound familiar.”
Roma gives both of us the look, the one that should have lost power years ago through overuse but somehow remains fully operational. “This model is for Alliance civilian rescue vessels, not combat retrofits. It is designed to improve emergency acceleration without sacrificing passenger safety.”
Dad arches a brow. “Look at you, building engines for people who want to live.”
The words land soft but deep.
Roma looks down at the schematic, and I see the old shadow pass behind her eyes—not taking over, not swallowing her, just passing. It happens less often now, but it still happens. Some things don’t disappear because love shows up. Some things have to be met again and again, in kitchens, in workshops, in quiet rooms after nightmares, in the careful choice to stay when every old instinct says distance would be cleaner.
She reaches for Lyra’s foot and rubs her thumb over the tiny sock. “People wanting to live does improve design parameters.”
Dad’s face gentles before he hides it behind a grunt. “Sure. Parameters.”
I stand behind Roma, one hand resting lightly at her waist. She leans back into me by the smallest degree, a movement so natural now that I still sometimes forget to breathe around it. The first time she did it, months after we came home, I froze like an idiot because I knew what it cost her to trust another body with even that much of her weight. Now she does it while arguing about propulsion models with a baby strapped to her chest, and I swear there are victories medals don’t know how to measure.
Lyra catches my finger and squeezes with shocking baby strength.
“Ow,” I tell her. “Tiny warlord.”
“She has excellent grip control,” Roma says.
“She has your interrogation style.”
Dad scoffs. “Please. That child gets her intimidation from me.”
Lyra squeals, pleased with the accusation, and Roma’s laugh slips out before she can contain it. Full. Clear. Still rare enough to feel like a gift, but not fragile anymore. It belongs here now, among the tools and schematics and coffee rings on my reports.
My reports.
That still feels strange.
I’m not on active combat rotation anymore. Not really. I consult. I train. I help rebuild defense protocols that don’t treat living bodies like convenient shields. Some days I teach young pilots how to keep their heads when panic climbs into the cockpit with them. Some days I sit with soldiers who came back breathing but not whole, and I tell them the truth no one told me gently enough: that surviving is not the same as knowing how to live afterward, and needing help doesn’t make them broken. It makes them here.
At first, I hated it.
Not the work. The stillness around it. The absence of orders screaming through comms. The way my hands twitched when a door slammed. The way my body waited for an explosion every time the house went quiet. Combat gives you purpose like a knife at your throat; peace asks you to choose one without bleeding for it.
Roma found me one night in the garden, three months after Lyra was born, standing under the dark with my pulse racing because nothing was wrong and my body did not know what to do with that.
She didn’t ask if I was okay. She knew better.
She stood beside me in her robe with the baby monitor in her hand and said, “The perimeter system is active. Dad is asleep in the chair pretending he is not. Lyra is breathing normally. The house is not under attack.”
I remember laughing once, badly. “You checking the facts for me?”
“Yes.”
“Does it help?”
“It helps me.”
