Sleep had become a strange, unpredictable visitor. It came uninvited, often in fits and fragments, and never when Atlas wanted it.
When it finally arrived, it didn't bring rest it brought memories.
The hum of the ship's systems faded into the background as his eyelids grew heavy. His body, worn from weeks of repetition, sank into the cot as if gravity had tripled.
And then he was elsewhere.
Rain fell in silver sheets across the streets of Arcadia Prime, the capital city of Earth's United Commonwealth.
Lights shimmered across slick black pavement. Crowds moved like rivers beneath neon billboards. He stood in the middle of it all dry, untouched watching a memory unfold.
She was there.
Dark hair. Laugh like warm static. Her name caught in his throat even in dreams. "Lia"
She turned toward him, smiling like the sun through clouds. They were in the cafe again, the one beneath the arboretum dome where green vines touched the glass above.
It smelled like citrus and coffee. Her hand reached for his.
"I miss you," he whispered.
Her eyes held something deeper than memory. Something aching and eternal.
"You don't have to be alone," she said, voice soft as starlight.
And then, with the suddenness of breath stolen by vacuum, she was gone.
Atlas sat upright in his cot, breath ragged, eyes wide. The room was dark except for the soft, pulsing glow of emergency lights.
"Another nightmare?" EVA's voice asked, not unkindly.
He wiped sweat from his brow. "No. A dream. A good one... maybe the last good one I've got."
"Was she someone important to you?"
He didn't answer right away. He stood, paced toward the viewport where the endless dark greeted him like an old friend.
"She was everything," he said. "And then she was gone."
Silence.
"I do not understand grief," EVA said eventually. "But I am beginning to recognize it."
"That's more than most people manage,"
Atlas murmured.
They stood in silence, man and machine, as the void outside remained vast and unchanged.
But inside the Valkyris-9, something had shifted.
The distance between them was lessening. And in that closeness, the dream lingered not just of a woman once lost, but of Earth, of memory, of something worth surviving for.
Even in the silence of space, the echo of her voice still held warmth.