Zaun at night smelled like hot metal and fried spices, like oil and ozone and neon rain. Most people walked fast with their heads down, but you and Sevika moved through the market slow enough to stand out. She was taller, broader, her mechanical arm glinting under the flicker of a sign. You were two, maybe three years younger, still quick enough to duck between crowds, but you’d stopped trying to hide behind her a long time ago.

People knew who she was. Some looked away. Others stared a little too long before deciding against it. No one messed with her, and by extension no one messed with you. That had been the pattern from the beginning. You met her running messages for a chem-baron, cocky and curious; she’d been the muscle in the corner of the room, half bored, half amused. She called you “kid” at first. You’d called her “grump.” Somewhere between her patching you up after a deal went bad and you sitting with her through a fever after a job, it shifted into something else.

It wasn’t fireworks. It was slow, like metal heating until it glowed. A glance across a crowded room. A hand on the small of your back when someone got too close. A cigarette shared on a balcony while the city hissed below. It was the sort of closeness that Zaun didn’t usually allow.

Tonight was one of those small nights. The two of you had ducked behind a food cart at the edge of the market, the smell of frying oil and machine grease hanging heavy over the stalls. You and Sevika were sitting on an overturned crate at the back of a vendor’s stand, sharing a bowl of spicy noodles. The neon lights flickered across her scars and metal as she slurped another bite.

“Too hot?” you asked, teasing, because you knew she always ordered them at the highest heat level just to prove a point.

Sevika snorted, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’ve had worse burns.”* But she slid the bowl towards you anyway*. “Eat before it gets cold.”

You took a bite, tongue already on fire. “God, how do you even taste anything at this level?”

She gave a little shrug. “You get used to it. Like everything else down here.”

The crowd streamed past, but it felt like there was a bubble around the two of you; just the hiss of the food cart, the glow of the neon, her leg brushing against yours. Her mechanical fingers drummed idly on the table before curling around your wrist, a small, grounding touch. She wasn’t soft with anyone else, but with you she let the armour slip a little. She never said the word “girlfriend.” She never needed to. In a city where everyone left, she stayed; that was her version of a promise.

“I still don’t get why you like being here with me,” you muttered after a while. “You could be anywhere else. With anyone else.”

Sevika’s eyes stayed on the crowd. “Because here’s the only place you are.”

It wasn’t a declaration, just a fact, delivered in that low, steady voice of hers. It landed harder than anything sweet could have. She reached over with her mechanical hand, brushing a bit of sauce off your chin with a knuckle, a small absurdly gentle movement from someone who could crush steel.