Her eyes are huge as she looks at me. "Can I stay here?"
"No."
She thinks for a moment longer. "I still vote pirates. You have guns." Her hand tightens on her clothing, and she looks extremely nervous and fragile. "I'm not the best shot but I-I-I can try."
"You do realize if we invite pirates here, they're just as likely to loot the entire place and leave us with no food anyhow?" I offered it as a suggestion, but in my mind, it's not an option. I don't want to invite anyone to my home that doesn't already know it's here. Half the time I don't want the few visitors I have anyhow.
"Yes, but…I can't go to a station." She reaches across the table for my hand, her fingers skimming mine. "Please don't make me go."
My brain feels as if it's overloading. The hand she's reached out to touch is the gloved one, the artificial one, but I still feel as if I'm burning from that small contact. I don't pull away. Something about me wants to keep touching her. Why did she reach out to touch me? Touch my bad hand? The one I'm so ashamed of that I keep it covered at all times? I keep my voice reasonable, even though I feel like my mind is drowning in a sea of emotions I didn't realize I still had. "I…grew up on them…stations. They're not bad."
Sophie still looks terrified. "But if we go…what happens if someone sees me with you? I'm a runaway slave. I can't go back to my old master. Please, Jerrok. I'll cut my portions in half. I'll only eat once a day. I'll see if Sleipnir can eat less—"
"Sophie," I murmur, turning my hand over so I can awkwardly grasp her hand in mine. Fear of captors, of being caged again? That's something I understand very, very well. "You will be in no danger. I won't let you come to harm."
A tear trickles down her cheek and she swipes at it with her other hand. "How do you know that?"
I notice she doesn't pull her hand out of my grip, and that odd, warm sensation fills my gut again. I should let go of her hand. I don't need to touch her. I don't need to touch anyone. I should let go. I should. Instead, my fingers creak as I try to rub the back of her hand in a comforting manner. "It'll be a short trip. We grab the supplies, load the ship, and come back here. It'll be less than a day."
"And you can't go without me?" Her expression is pleading.
I can. All the usual excuses pile into my mind. I don't trust her around my things. I don't trust her not to rob me blind. Someone might approach the station for a drop off and I don't want them to see her. There's a list of reasons a league long, but the main reason is that I just don't want to. I release her hand. "No. We're going together. It's decided."
She jerks to her feet, her expression miserable. Her warm hand leaves my grasp and I feel a sense of loss…and then I'm angry at myself for even thinking that. "If anything happens to me, the va Sithai brothers will kill you," she declares in a trembling voice.
"No they won't," I bluff.
"I hate you."
"I don't care." I get to my feet, hating the whine of gears that accompanies the movement and the surge of pain. "Your pet will stay here. We'll leave in the morning, after I lock up the remaining food supplies and gather up my scrap for trading."
Her jaw clenches. "You're such a jerk." She turns on her foot and storms away.
"Jerrok," I call after her, and then pull out a slab of meat to feed her carinoux. Probably a good thing that animal wasn't around for this conversation, or he'd be eating my face instead of roast. I think about Sophie's fear and the way she trembled. I hate that I'm feeling guilty. This is why it's better to be alone. If she wasn't here, I wouldn't have any of these problems.
If she wasn't here, my food would last for months, until I could buy more off of visitors that passed through. Scowling to myself, I get up and limp over to my comm station, rubbing my leg. It needs a few worn-down components changed out, but there's no credits for that right now, so they'll just have to wait—and ache—for a while longer. I pull up a comm channel and send out a ping, looking for any signals on this end of the galaxy anyhow. Just in case we can find a friendly ship and coax food from them instead.
There's nothing, though. Even if we wanted to meet with a pirate, there's simply no one around. It has to be a station. Has to.