He didn't answer. He just hauled her over his shoulder, his hands shaking as he carried her through the smoke. In the med-bay, as the automated surgeon worked, he sat in the corner, fists white-knuckled, watching her breathe.

A long pause. Then: "I am not sound where you are concerned."

And that was the horror and the thrill of it. They weren't two halves of a whole. They were two storms colliding—each one promising to tear the other apart. But somewhere in the wreckage of their mutual destruction, a single green thing had begun to grow. Not love, not yet. It was something rawer. An obsession. A recognition.

But tonight, the ceasefire shattered.

"And you lost the southern fleet," he shot back, stepping closer. "While you were busy playing politics."

That night, she used it.

They chose to be each other's ruin.

"No," came the reply. "It's the only honest thing I have left."

Her heart, that traitorous organ, skipped. "That's weakness."

"I hate you," she whispered, her lips an inch from his.

When they kissed, it tasted like broken treaties and unshed tears. Like the first wound of a war that would never end—because neither of them wanted it to.