Not her skin.
The sheet.
“I was a coward.”
No one contradicts me.
Good.
The room should not lie.
“I let old ghosts speak louder than you. I let Horus IV tell me homes become targets and love becomes casualty lists and wanting peace is how men get civilians killed. I let every dead person I failed convince me that the safest thing I could give you was distance.” My voice drops lower. “Then Ron found you anyway.”
A sound comes from my chest, small and ruined.
I swallow it.
“If you wake, I will do better. I will not hide behind the word danger when what I mean is fear. I will not make you stand outside the truth because I think ignorance is armor. I will not treat your love like something too fragile for my hands.”
My eyes burn.
Vakutans cry. Not often in public. Not easily. War burned most tears out of me years ago, or so I believed.
Apparently not.
“I love you,” I whisper.
The words enter the room differently now. Not shouted in rain. Not thrown desperately before another departure. Spoken beside her bed, where the only witnesses are machines, wounds, and whatever part of her might still hear me.
“I love you, Evie Mercy. I loved you when you waved at me in the rain before you had any reason to think I was more than a monster. I loved you when you fed me and pretended not to watch whether I liked it. I loved you when you touched my scars and became angry for the boy I was before the war finished making me useful.”
My hand curls in the sheet.
“I love your bakery. I love your ridiculous magnets. I love your angry plants. I love the way you refuse to let Halo die quietly. I love the way you argue with me, tease me, feed strangers, burn dinner when upset, and make every room believe warmth is an act of rebellion.”
The monitors blur.
“I love you enough that I am terrified of what I will become if you do not wake.”
That truth is too dangerous, but it is truth.
I lean closer.
“Please wake.”
Nothing.
“Please.”
Still nothing.
The trauma bay door opens softly behind me.
Mira’s voice comes low. “Kauss.”
Five minutes.
No.
