The bench creaks when I sit beside Selene. The wood is warm from sun. The courtyard shadows have begun to lengthen at the edges, blue gathering under the wall and under the planter boxes. Somewhere above us, unseen over the roofline, a flock of birds cuts across the air with the soft coordinated rush of bodies that trust the route.
Selene leans her shoulder against mine.
For a while we say nothing.
We watch Astera make the tiny sleep-faces of a person busy inventing dreams from nothing. We listen to the district breathe around us—distant voices, a skimmer passing somewhere beyond the lane, a dog barking once and then deciding against commitment, wind moving through the scrub.
After a minute, Selene says, “Do you miss it.”
There is no need to ask what she means.
The command structure. The channels. The clean brutal vocabulary of fleets. The old certainty that if disaster came, at least I would know what role my body occupied inside it.
I think about answering quickly and choose honesty instead.
“Sometimes,” I say. “Not the institution. The clarity.”
She nods slowly. “Yeah.”
“I miss knowing what every alarm required.”
“And now.”
I look at Astera.
“At present,” I say, “every alarm appears to require tea, caution, and very small socks.”
Selene laughs, soft and tired and still somehow surprised by joy when it catches her unguarded.
“That’s embarrassingly domestic.”
“Yes.”
“I love it.”
That makes something in my chest pull tight in the best possible way.
I turn toward her.
The late light catches at the line of her cheek, the loose strands of hair escaping around her face, the deepening softness around her mouth that has nothing to do with weakness and everything to do with having survived enough to finally stop mistaking hardness for worth.
“I chose life,” I say.
The words come out quieter than I intended.
Selene’s gaze meets mine at once.
“Yes,” she says.
Not a question. Not a comfort.
Recognition.
“I keep checking the headlines,” I admit, because if I’m going to say it, I might as well say all of it. “Part of me still expects the old logic to be vindicated. To find out sacrifice was the only thing keeping the structure upright. That without someone swallowing the full cost, the war would have returned.”
Her eyes hold steady on me.
“But it didn’t,” I say.
