There had always been that skittish fear wedged beneath his ribcage, that he shouldn’t inflict her with this relationship when he knew he was going to die; and yet somewhere in all that, he’d never stopped to consider the prospect of her death until it stared him right in the face. Until it was Marie in that nightmare of a colony, looking at him steady and level, accepting her own fate, and he realised suddenly that he didn’t want to accept it for her.

Gazing at her, then, he starts overcompensating, words tripping loose on his tongue and seesawing into tangents: “Whatever you need, Marie. I can cook something if you have an appetite? If you just wanna sleep, my bed’s just over there. I’m sorry I didn’t— I do want to go on vacation with you, I want to figure this out, I just—”

Chris can be so eloquent and well-spoken in front of a crew and his subordinates — motivational speeches are his specialty — but something in him just crumbles in front of her, the composure bleeding away. She’s already seen him at his worst. When he’d been an inch away from a grizzled unshaven hermit, she was the person he let past those doors and to stay with him in Montana.

How absolutely, utterly stupid of him, to squander this.

“I mean, that’s a discussion for later. Obviously. But I’m just saying. Whatever you need, I’ll give it to you. Gorn eggs have a way of reorienting your priorities, I think.”