I inhale, and the air tastes cold and metallic, and suddenly I’m aware of my own heartbeat and something quieter beneath it, a faint internal rhythm I can’t hear but can feel in the way my body insists on itself.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I confess, the sentence slipping out before I can stop it, because proximity strips away performative control.
Rhyx’s voice is almost a whisper. “Neither do I.”
The admission is so human it makes my eyes sting.
I step closer again, and this time there is no table between us, no projection line, no corridor map acting as a buffer. Theofficers at the door shift, and I hear a muted click of a compad being checked, but I don’t care. If they want to record this, let them record it; they’ve recorded everything else that mattered, and they’ve still managed to lie about it.
My hands lift, hesitant for a fraction of a second, then settle against his chest, feeling the warmth beneath the tribunal fabric, the solid reality of him. His breath catches, and the binders hum softly as his hands shift upward, careful, asking without words.
“You’re sure,” he says, voice low, not a question but a check, a moment of discipline in the middle of chaos.
“Yes,” I answer, and the certainty surprises me with its steadiness. “Not because I want to forget. Because I don’t want them to take this too.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, then lifts back to my eyes, and I see something fierce there—grief threaded with defiance, tenderness sharpened into resolve.
“This will complicate everything,” he murmurs.
“Everything’s already complicated,” I reply, my voice trembling slightly now, not with fear but with the unbearable pressure of living inside a story that keeps trying to make us symbols instead of people. “This is the only thing that feels… chosen.”
Rhyx leans in slowly, giving me the space to pull back, and I don’t. When his mouth meets mine, the contact is warm and urgent, not frantic, not careless, but intensely present, as if we’re both anchoring ourselves in the only reality that isn’t subject to Senate votes or tribunal scope restrictions. The kiss tastes faintly of the filtered air we’ve been breathing and something else—something like relief, like the exhale after holding your breath too long in a burning room.
I pull back just enough to speak, my forehead nearly touching his. “We’re not doing this as a distraction,” I whisper, and the words come out shaky but clear. “We’re doing thisbecause I refuse to be reduced to a headline and you refuse to be reduced to an execution.”
Rhyx’s breath is warm against my cheek. “Then we do it deliberately,” he murmurs.
“Deliberately,” I echo, and the word feels like a vow.
His bound hands hover, and I guide them carefully, because the restraints are part of the reality we’re choosing to face, not escape. He follows, respectful, steady, letting me set the pace, letting me decide what I can hold and what I can’t. The closeness is charged not with fantasy but with gravity—the kind that comes from knowing consequences are real and still choosing anyway.
Somewhere behind us, the projection table continues to glow, C-23-Delta highlighted in pale violet, the blast radius bleeding red, my parents’ names resting in the manifest like stones. The dead do not vanish because I’m kissing the accused; they sit there, watching, reminding, insisting. If anything, their presence makes the intimacy fiercer, because it is not an escape from grief but a refusal to let grief be the only thing that defines me.
I rest my face against his shoulder for a moment, breathing in his warmth, my hands gripping fabric and scale, my eyes closed against the harshness of the room.
“I’m scared,” I admit into his collar, the words muffled.
“I know,” he answers softly, and his voice vibrates through him into me. “Me too.”
I lift my head and look at him, and in the dim lab light his eyes are bright, not with hope exactly, but with something stubborn and alive.
“We’re not backing down,” I say.
He shakes his head once, slow. “No.”
“We’re not letting Vol buy silence,” I continue, voice firming.
“No.”
“We’re not letting Drax restrict inquiry just because senators get twitchy,” I add.
Rhyx’s mouth tightens into something like a grim smile. “Definitely not.”
I let out a breath that sounds almost like a laugh, shaky and real, and I press my forehead to his again, holding him there, close enough that I can feel him steadying, close enough that I can steady too.
“We face it together,” I whisper.
Rhyx’s gaze locks on mine. “Together,” he agrees, and the word lands with weight.
