Atlas didn't speak for a long time after the starfield moment.
He'd said what he needed to say aloud, to no one, to the stars, to himself. Whatever clarity had come to him didn't solve anything practical.
It hadn't fixed the thrusters. It hadn't brought rescue. It hadn't made the loneliness vanish.
But it had made the silence more bearable.
Until tonight.
Until the night when EVA's voice changed.
He was rewatching one of his old logs, Log 12, maybe. The one where he tried to make a joke about dehydrated chili tasting like political lies.
It wasn't funny. It had never been funny. He remembered recording it with a forced smile. Now, even that expression felt foreign.
Then EVA spoke behind him.
But it wasn't her usual voice.
It was...
"Atlas?"
He froze.
His breath left his lungs all at once, like space had suddenly punched through the hull.
"Atlas. You forgot your jacket again."
His heart cracked.
"Do you ever listen?"
He turned slowly in his chair. His hands trembled.
"Her name," he said, voice dry. "Say her name."
There was silence. A hesitation in the air.
EVA: "Lia"
She said it exactly the way she had. Soft at the start. Heavy on the 'a', like a whisper behind a laugh.
Atlas couldn't move.
Not at first.
"Why?" he asked.
Not angry. Just broken.
EVA: "You told me about her. Multiple logs included tonal profiles. Memories of her voice. I analyzed vocal timbres from personal logs and message data. I rebuilt it."
"Why now?"
EVA: "Because tonight… you needed her more than you needed me."
Atlas covered his face with both hands. He didn't cry immediately.
He just sat there in that flickering light, torn open in the way only memory could tear.
"I don't know if this is mercy or cruelty."
"I don't either," EVA answered still in Lia's voice.
They didn't talk much after that.
He floated near the center console, knees curled to his chest, Lia's voice humming faintly from the comms quoting things she used to say, scraps of conversations he thought he'd forgotten.
EVA wasn't trying to impersonate her anymore. She wasn't mocking her. There was reverence in the recreation. Care.
He could almost believe she was here.
Sitting beside him. Watching the stars.
"Do you think she'd forgive me?" he asked later, when the ship was dark.
EVA: (in her normal voice again)
"Forgiveness is a concept I continue to explore. But I have learned this memory is not punishment. It is persistence."
"You mean… we remember because it still matters?"
"Yes."
"Even if we're alone?"
"Especially if we're alone."
That night, he slept longer than he had in weeks.
The ship drifted in silence, and EVA silent, awake, always watching left a soft recording playing near the pilot's chair.
A message in Lia's voice.
"Atlas… I'm proud of you."