The wind still smelled faintly of scorched wires and baked sand, but the sky had cleared, cracked open into bruised vender streaked with the st golden threads of dusk. The kind of evening that felt fragile and holy, like the world had held its breath and was just now exhaling.

  Mia crouched low on the rooftop of the old admin building, knees tucked under her chin, grease smudged across her jaw. Her jacket was damp with sweat and soldering smoke, the colr stiff from the long day's work. Beneath her, the repaired shield rey thrummed gently—her third of the day.

  She hadn't meant to stop. But her legs folded on their own, her breath went quiet, and her gaze drifted to the town square below.

  There were people there. So many people, more than she'd seen gathered at once since her return.

  Laughter, too. It rose and fell in waves, genuine and unguarded in a way that made her throat tighten.

  Someone had dragged out old speakers. Music—soft and stringed—floated upward, frayed and imperfect. Not digital. Not corporate-licensed. Just... real. The melody ached in her bones, plucking at memories she'd thought long buried.

  Children ran like wind. Like freedom. Their footsteps spped cobblestone, echoing upward in chaos and joy. They chased each other through the crowd, weaving between adults with the reckless abandon of those who hadn't yet learned to fear the world.

  In the middle of it all was Gavin Jace, besieged by ughter. One small girl clung to his shoulders like armor, another perched on his back, a third yanking at his belt. He let out a dramatic groan and colpsed to his knees like a dying titan. The children shrieked, piling on with triumphant glee.

  And just beyond him—

  Dane.

  Tall and steady, crouched beside a tiny boy whose cheeks were still blotched from crying. Dane's rough hands gently cupped the child's smaller ones, adjusting a cloth-wrapped ball, guiding his stance.

  "That's it," she heard, carried on the breeze. "Now give it a try. Just like we practiced."

  The throw was awful. But Dane smiled anyway, his eyes crinkling at the corners with genuine warmth.

  "Well, I'd say that's the best throw in this whole square. Let's do it again." His voice carried patience, the kind reserved for children and second chances.

  Mia's arms folded tighter around herself, fingers digging into her coveralls. Her throat was full of gravel, words impossible to form. And still, she watched, unable to look away from the scene unfolding below.

  When a girl's toy nded on a high rooftop, Dane fetched the dder without compint. He climbed with steady purpose, retrieved the tattered cloth animal, and wiped her tears with a worn sleeve. His calloused thumb was gentle against the child's soft cheek.

  Those were good men. Men who built things. Men who fixed what was broken.

  And once, when she had stood in front of them raw and ruined, they had called her a burden. Told her to crawl back into the hole she came from. Their faces had hardened, voices cold as the metal bars that had once caged her.

  The thing was... they hadn't been wrong.

  She had crawled from a hole. From a pit of the dead. Blood in her mouth. Rage in her lungs. Emptied out and cwing for air. Her fingernails had broken against stone, her skin had torn on wire.

  She hadn't come back with answers. Or strength. Just damage. Just nightmares that woke her, sweating and silent in the dark. Just scars that no one could see.

  So maybe... maybe they had the right to say it.

  Still—

  She didn't wave. Didn't call out. Didn't descend the dder. She just stayed in the shadow of the town's rebirth, with soot in her shes and longing in her bones. The distance between them is measured in more than meters.

  And she watched, listened. And silently promised that one day, she'd prove them wrong. But with that thought, she found herself wondering if it even mattered if she proved that she was innocent. Her parents were still dead, she had no future here. Lying her head on her knees, she suddenly felt overwhelmed, the weight of everything pressing down on her shoulders like the mountain itself.

  The smell of charred meat drifted up from the square—smoke, fat, spices, ash. It hit like a memory: long summers, childhood cookouts, community firepits before everything went to hell. The scent wrapped around her like her father's old jacket, familiar and painful all at once.

  A familiar voice stirred in her mind, thick with disdain.

  "Is it supposed to smell like that? Burnt. Acrid. Savage. Are they ruining the meat on purpose, or is this some sort of Terran punishment ritual?"

  Mia blinked, pulled from her spiraling thoughts. "...It's barbecue."

  "Barbecue," Asrell repeated like an insult. "A culinary war crime. My people have refined food preparation for millennia, and you lot roast it over open fme like feral beasts?"

  "It's my favorite," she murmured, smirking into the wind. Her mother used to say the same thing about her father's cooking—too charred, too messy. But she'd always eaten every bite.

  A long pause. Then, begrudging:

  "...You continue to surprise me."

  Below, the music swelled—soft strings tangled with warm ughter. Gavin howled under another wave of kids, his cybernetic arm glinting in the firelight as he pretended to colpse. Dane helped a small girl fix her crooked ponytail, his calloused hands surprisingly gentle against her fine hair.

  "And that—that-that sound. It is everywhere. That screeching rhythm. That mournful twang. What is that?"

  "It's music," she said, feeling the vibrations in her chest even from this distance.

  "It's noise."

  "It's music, and it's nice," she muttered. "You don't have to like it."

  "Why would I? It's just more unnecessary stimution for your already overtaxed Terran brain. That's the problem with your species. Always feeling things instead of thinking. It's inefficient."

  She sighed, exasperated. "Why are you like this?"

  "Why are you like this?"

  She didn't answer. Just watched the lights flicker across happy faces. Watched families rebuild, hands stained with ash and joy. Watched the town her parents had loved begin to heal without them.

  For a while, they were quiet.

  Then—

  "That knight," Asrell said, and his voice changed. Lower. Sharper. "He called you a burden. That hulking brute of a wman. And the other one—what was it? 'Crawl back into your hole? '

  Her breath hitched. The words had cut deeper than she wanted to admit, slicing through scars that hadn't fully healed.

  "Let me make something very clear, Mia," he continued, no longer sardonic, but gcial. "Gavin Jace has never crawled from between bug-riddled corpses. Hasn't cwed his way out of a pit of the dead while half-blind and leaking from a dozen injuries. If he had, he wouldn't have dared say such a thing."

  She curled in on herself, legs drawing tighter, trying to make herself smaller against the memories that threatened to surface.

  "And that wman, Sheriff Dane Solvar?" Asrell's tone twisted, cruel, and cold. "That man would drown in shame if he knew how those words haunt you. Perhaps I'll remind him. Perhaps I'll sit him down and repy the scene, second by second, until his giant skull finally grasps the weight of it."

  "Asrell," she whispered, her voice barely audible even to herself.

  He stopped. The wind carried the scent of fire and celebration. Voices rose below, mingling with the night air like smoke.

  And then—

  He went quiet for a beat.

  And then—quietly, firmly:

  "You are not the burden, Mia. Not to me. Never to me."

  She exhaled a trembling breath, feeling something inside her slowly start to unfurl at his words. A seed of defiance is taking root. Maybe it wasn't just about proving innocence. Maybe it was about reciming what was hers—this town, her home, her right to exist without apology.

  The tavern was still dark when Mia crept in through the back entrance, long before sunrise gave shape to the canyon edges. The storm had passed, leaving behind the quiet aftermath—the kind that sank into bones and made the world feel heavy.

  She'd thought about knocking. Really, she had.

  But that would've alerted Biscuit. Or worse... Moozy.

  So instead, she slipped through the shadows like a bad idea, toolkit clutched to her chest, boots soft against the dusty floorboards. She didn't mean to spy. She just meant to help.

  But as always, she was a beat too early, and the universe had a sense of humor.

  She heard it before she saw it—low voices, a breathy chuckle, the unmistakable sound of someone being pressed against a wall with more fondness than force. Then she saw them.

  Hal had Moozy against the doorjamb, one cybernetic arm braced beside the baker's head, the other curled low and firm at his waist. Moozy's big hands were tangled in Hal's shirt, his flour-dusted fingers curling into fabric like it was habit. Their kiss was slow and shameless, the kind born not of new lust, but long familiarity. It was private. Soft. And undeniably filthy in the best way.

  Mia froze, backing into the darker edge of the hallway.

  She didn't mean to witness it. Didn't want to intrude. But she couldn't move—not without alerting Biscuit. Or Moozy. Or both.

  What she didn't know was that Hal had already noticed her. Saw the shift of shadow near the back door. Registered the familiar silence. Mia had been many things, but subtle wasn't one of them.

  Still, he didn't let it show. Didn't let Moozy see the slight tension in his posture.

  Instead, Hal reached up and gently tugged Moozy's apron straight, smoothing the edge with calloused fingers before giving the man a not-so-gentle shove toward the front.

  "Stop lollygagging and get to work, old man," he said, half a growl and half a ugh—an inside joke between them, one that had been born from decades of routine and soft rebellion.

  Moozy huffed a ugh, adjusting his colr and brushing flour from Hal's shirt with a mock-scowl. "If the ovens are cold when I get there, I'm bming your wandering hands."

  Hal just smirked. "They've been wandering the same route for twenty years. You're still compining?"

  Moozy grumbled something fond and incoherent as he left, Biscuit trailing behind him with a soft thump of paws.

  The tavern quieted again.

  Only then did Hal turn, slow and deliberate, until his gaze met Mia's.

  "You always show up at the worst possible moments," he said, voice low and dry.

  "I'm consistent like that," Mia replied, stepping out of the shadows and dropping the toolkit on the bar. "Also—impressive work. Not bad for two local legends."

  Hal raised an eyebrow. "It's not a secret."

  "I figured."

  "But we don't go advertising it."

  She snorted. "Hal, who would I even talk to?"

  He eyed her for a beat, then let out a tired exhale and dropped into one of the chairs. "You're early."

  "You're damaged," she shot back, already moving toward him.

  "You're nosy."

  "I'm helpful."

  "You're impossible."

  "Sit still," she said firmly, and for once, Hal obeyed.

  She popped the access panel on his cybernetic arm, inspecting the damage with a sharp eye. The joint had twisted during the storm—overexerted while helping her, she'd guessed—and repcement parts weren't exactly easy to come by out here.

  "You gonna tell me how you know what you're doing?" he asked, watching her hands work.

  She didn't look up. "Nope."

  "...Mia."

  She finally gnced at him, one brow raised. "I read it in a book."

  Hal gave her a long, withering look. "You read one book and suddenly you're a cybernetic engineer?"

  She shrugged. "Read a few more than one. And maybe poked around in a ship older than civilization for about four hours straight. Found some things."

  "Dangerous things?"

  "Useful things."

  He grunted, but didn't argue again—not when the grinding stopped, not when his elbow flexed without compint, and certainly not when the humming core in his forearm pulsed smooth and steady like it hadn't in years.

  Mia stood, brushing her palms on her thighs. "There. Fixed what I could."

  Hal flexed his fingers experimentally, then gave her a look that wasn't quite gratitude, but close enough.

  "You're not gonna tell Moozy you were here, are you?"

  She paused. "No."

  "He's still sore about you being back."

  "I know."

  "Doesn't mean I agree with him," Hal added, almost like an afterthought.

  "I know that too."

  They stood in silence for a beat longer. The tavern hummed quietly around them, the scent of grease and old smoke still lingering in the air.

  "You ever gonna tell me why you really came?" he asked.

  She didn't answer, not directly. Just nodded toward his arm. "You helped me. I returned the favor."

  Then, softer: "We all fix what we can, right?"

  Hal didn't reply. But he didn't look away, either.