Page 164 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

“You cannot give a speech like that in the middle of a cosmic hostage situation.”

“I will attempt better timing later.”

“Later,” she repeats, and the word breaks something open in her face.

“Yes. Later.”

Anita looks down at our joined hands. Tears spill over now, cutting bright tracks through the dust on her cheeks. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Save the archive?”

“No.” She shakes her head, and her voice turns small in a way I have never heard from her. “This. Someone standing here and meaning it. Someone seeing the worst parts of me, the pride and the fear and the obsession, and not turning it into leverage. I have had colleagues who wanted my work, men who wanted the novelty of me, institutions that wanted my brain as long as my mouth came with a mute button. I have never had this.”

I cup her face carefully. “You have it now.”

Her eyes close for one breath. When they open, there is awe in them, and it is not the kind the archive inspires. It is smaller, warmer, and more dangerous to me because it asks nothing of gods.

“I choose you too,” she says. “Not because my nervous system got hijacked in a hazard zone. Not because the galaxy needs romance to put a cute hat on existential horror. I choose you because you keep showing up when it would be easier to become armor. I choose you because you are trying, even when everything you built yourself from is lying in pieces.”

My throat tightens.

She leans closer, her forehead touching the lower edge of my jaw because our heights make tenderness logistically ridiculous. “And because you let me be scared without treating me like I am broken.”

I rest my hand at the back of her head, feeling the softness of her curls beneath my palm. “You are not broken.”

“Neither are you.”

“I am uncertain.”

“Welcome to humanity. It’s sweaty and badly organized.”

I breathe out something almost like laughter.

For one fragile moment, the chamber’s violence recedes around the shape of her. The archive still screams in light. Rolaev still waits. The Choir still advances. But Anita’s hands are in mine, and I can see a life beyond this chamber so clearly it hurts.

Not a destiny.

A possibility.

I imagine her in some future expedition office, barefoot on a chair despite three posted safety rules, surrounded by illegal piles of notes, arguing with a projection while drinking coffee strong enough to qualify as a weapon. I imagine myself in the doorway, pretending to be annoyed while checking the locks twice because some habits do not need sacred justification. I imagine Brakk visiting only to complain about our maintenance standards and steal expensive components. I imagine Sira sending quiet messages from distant archives, filled with questions none of us can answer cleanly. I imagine Anita laughing in a room with sunlight, real sunlight, not archive glare or excavation lamps, and the image nearly brings me to my knees.

“What?” she asks softly.

“I was imagining a door that does not lead to danger.”

Her smile trembles. “Sounds fake.”

“It had sunlight.”

“Now I know it’s fiction.”

“And you were arguing with someone.”

“That part tracks.”

“You were safe.”

Her smile fades, but the tenderness remains. “Nobody is ever completely safe.”