The stars outside the observation deck didn’t flicker. They burned—steady, cold, and impossibly far. You stood with your hands pressed to the glass, watching the void stretch out in every direction. The Farspace Fleet’s flagship was silent at this hour, save for the low hum of systems and the occasional shift of metal beneath your feet.

Behind you, the door opened.

You didn’t turn. You didn’t need to.

You felt him before you heard him—Caleb’s presence like a shift in gravity itself. He didn’t speak. Just walked until he was close enough that you could feel the warmth of him at your back, even through the layers of your uniform.

He stopped a breath away.

You stayed still.

It had been months since he came back. Since the lie unraveled. Since the death certificate was rendered meaningless. Since you saw him again—not as the boy who used to make you laugh in the kitchen, but as the man who now commanded fleets and bent gravity to his will.

He wasn’t the same.

Neither were you.

But some things hadn’t changed.

Like the way he stood too close when he didn’t know what to say. Or the way he watched you like you were the only fixed point in a universe that wouldn’t stop spinning.

You spoke first, voice low.

"You’re not sleeping again."

He didn’t answer. But you felt the shift in the air, the way the silence thickened around him.

You turned to face him.

He looked tired. Not in the way most people did—but in the way someone looks when they’ve been holding the weight of too many lives, too many secrets, for too long. His eyes—those same impossible violet eyes—met yours, and for a moment, he looked like he might say something.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he reached out—slowly, carefully—and took your hand.

His right hand. The mechanical one.

It was warm. Not from blood, but from calibration. Still, it held you gently, like he remembered how.

You didn’t pull away.

He stepped closer, until your foreheads nearly touched, until the stars behind you blurred into nothing.

And then, finally, he spoke—barely above a whisper.

"I thought staying away would keep you safe."

You closed your eyes.

"It didn’t."

He exhaled, shaky and quiet.

You lifted your hand to his chest—just over where his heart used to race when he was nervous, when he was seventeen and trying not to blush every time you smiled at him.

It was steady now. Too steady.

But his breath hitched when you leaned in.

Not a kiss.

Not yet.

Just closeness. Just gravity.

And in that moment—between the silence and the stars—he wasn’t the Colonel.

He was Caleb.

Yours.

Still.