Page 59 of Red Scale Daddy
“It also cuts off everything that might make doing them matter afterward.”
“We are not discussing afterward.”
“That is the problem.”
She looks away first this time, but not in defeat. More like she is choosing not to fire every weapon she has.
“I cannot afford afterward,” she says.
The words are steady.
They break something anyway.
I sit with them longer than I should. The ship hums. The displays glow. Somewhere behind the panels, her impossible systems keep us alive because she built them with grief, brilliance, and no room for mercy.
When I speak again, my voice comes out lower. “Then borrow one.”
She frowns. “What?”
“An afterward. Borrow mine if you have to.”
“You do not have one.”
“Then we’ll have to improvise.”
Her laugh is not cold this time. It is short, disbelieving, and edged with something that might become pain if either of us lets it. “That is your solution to everything.”
“Only when it works.”
“It does not always work.”
“No. But neither does refusing to imagine anything past the finish line.”
She studies me for a long moment. The cockpit feels too small around us, though nothing has changed. Her gaze drops once to my hands, then returns to my face. I wonder what she sees. A reckless Vakutan with bad manners and worse instincts. A useful liability. A man who does not care enough about his own life and is already, stupidly, beginning to care too much about hers.
The route alarm pings softly.
Roma turns back to the controls, but the motion is slower than before. “We lost six minutes and forty-three seconds.”
“Tragic.”
“I recovered one minute on the alternate vector.”
“Heroic.”
“I may recover two more before the next checkpoint.”
“Romantic.”
She shoots me a look over her shoulder. “Do not make navigation weird.”
“I would never.”
“You would absolutely.”
“Yes,” I say, and let the smile come because the air needs somewhere else to go. “I would.”
She returns to the controls, but this time the corner of her mouth moves.
