Atmospheric pressure followed her with a cruel embrace as she fought against her own sobs, straight into the reset built on a foundation of her tears.

"Spacyn?" Admiral Mythrai's voice asked through the bloody haze. "Are you alright?"

Every voice disappeared to the vacuum of space, doomed to the end of time. A dying butterfly with the nebulous wings of truth, and a hand rested on her shoulder before wrapping an arm around her neck. "Nova," his voice whispered, but the sound of him choking on his own blood echoed through her ears when she drove her fingers into his coat to rip out the pain from him.

How many more times? Nova screamed, but no one heard. Tucked into the shelter of her arms, she willed it to disappear. Another hand guided her closer into a softer, gentle embrace of nebulous greys with a sense of caution instead of insatiable curiosity.

His voice joined the dissonance of whispered starlight. Nova choked on rustic bile as he pulled her out of the chair. Horrific sounds filled her mind, a thousand deaths, with no escape or sense. Static drowned out the present when someone nudged her into motion against the current, until it came to an unfair stop and her tears stained her fingers to mix with blood.

"Nova?" Neo drew her hands off her face with a concerned frown. "What's wrong? Talk to me."

Talk to me...

Nova drove her teeth into her tongue and embraced him. "I'm so sorry," she begged for forgiveness for the cruelty she perpetuated, except her apologies meant nothing to someone who'd never remember the reason why. It webbed her throat to say nothing. "I don't want to be alone."

He returned her embrace with a slow exhale, never choking on it. Unlike the last loop, where he asked the questions and she pushed him with her inability to answer them, he said, "There's no need to be sorry."

But you don't even know why I'm saying it, you foolish... Nova held him close to hear him breathe. In her bubbling peripheral, Thuni and Ulin hesitated on the edge of her event horizon. Another change in the loop. Thuni's hesitation rang out, but he led Ulin to the transit system, to follow the track of the loop. Unable to warn them once more, she held onto Neo. Her single lifeline. "I don't want to be here," she rasped. I don't want to stand here with only the bloody consequences of my actions.

"Anywhere in particular you'd rather be?"

I want to go home.

"Nova."

Impossible.

Neo sighed and guided her through the corridor, a silent gesture of assurance and consistency between variables. He never changed. It strengthened the musical heartbeat as he rushed her back to their dorm. Neo closed the door with one hand, blocking out the nail-scratching noises. Her ears rang with pain as she cried into his shoulder, and another failure awaited her.

"Talk to me, Neo."

One last time for her flimsy hope.

He shuffled in her grip. "Any topic you want to hear?"

Last time I asked, you questioned if I was sure — as if I never wanted to hear you talk again. "Anything." Just tell me you're still here. You can die, but it resets. It will always reset. Nova wiped her tears with her sleeve as he gave her support she failed to give in return in his last moments. You died right when I almost had you. I was so close. I know I could've changed something, but you... you left me.

Were you just too tired? Was it too much?

Why didn't you hold on for a couple more moments?

It took him too long to answer, and she jolted when he squeezed her. "Everything around us is moving away."

"...what?"

"Away." Neo withdrew from her with a knowing smile. "Everything we know is moving away from us. Here, at the nebula, where our reach cannot extend further, though we know something is past the wall. Something we cannot understand pushes the universe in motion, expanding farther than we can hope to comprehend." He hesitated, then continued, "They say when time has crossed the darkest of the starless sea, with nowhere left to go..." He took in a steady breath, unlike the anxious, but no less excited one he had when they first launched from the planet. "At the end of it all, it will fall silent."

The music went quiet.

Neo blinked, then pinched his chin when his smile turned sheepish. "You know, people find the idea of that strange. Scary, even." He rolled his shoulders and wiggled. "I used to think the same way, but I started thinking about it in a different lens. I found the idea comforting. Things happen too fast. Sometimes things are too noisy. Sometimes all you need is for everything to stop and fall silent, and at the end of it all, that is what will happen."

Silence.

Neo grinned. "You said you wanted me to talk about anything."

Her own tears fell quiet in her throat. "How long were you holding onto that one, Neo?"

"Ages." He giggled. "I was waiting for the moment in my life where someone would ask me to talk about anything."

Nova broke in laughter and tears. "Neo, that could mean anything."

"Yep."

And yet, to you, it means the end of all movement and noise... and you make it sound almost... optimistic and peaceful. Exhaustion of a thousand lifetimes slammed into her spine as she let him go.

"Everything moves towards the silence," he reiterated. "In every moment we live; long before and long after." He leaned against the window. Nebulous mist fluttered in the shape of butterflies.

As with the universe of time, moving through suspended space.

Never one without the other.

To silence it returned.

Out of energy, her pain fizzled. Others, to explode into miraculous cycles of life within the same death of what came before. Nova held her hands when her heartbeat slowed with the space station, thrumming in her ears. Steady, it lulled her into a sense of security with the dancing colours outside to splash across his face and scatter starlight across his eyes.

A whisper of pressure to shimmer out of view, between the dark, formless matter, leaving her with the grey butterflies, shaped in stars.

"Hey..." Nova wiped the last of her tears off her cheeks. "You know what... that helped, Neo. Thank you. You should've been a poet."

He grinned. "Good. I've been tempted, but maybe in another life."

Nova hid a smile behind her fingers and weariness filled her broken heart. In another life. Another loop. I won't lose you again. I have to find a way, but first... I just want to rest. I just want to rest and find my reason to move. Nova shuffled to their room, and Neo loomed behind to stand at the doorframe. She sat down on his comforter. "I guess that means we're not going anywhere fast?"

Neo beamed. "I was thinking that."

Nebulous tendrils snaked behind the reinforced glass to set their room into a cascade of colour. Her fingers dug into his mattress when he stood there, staring.

Staring.

"I'm sorry," she repeated.

"It's okay," he said with a blink. "I'm here. I was just thinking."

"As you do." Nova patted the spot beside her. Neo tipped his head with a nod and joined her. In his silence, the moment stretched on. As Thuni and Ulin suffered for her reluctance. Her heart clenched, but ice grew in the cracks. "I'm tired."

"I understand." He eyed her. "Do you want me to give you some space?"

"No. I want you to stay." Though what I want doesn't change anything, you still believe everything matters.

Neo stayed and turned his staredown to the window.

Nova tucked herself against his wall, for something solid to lean on. Flat on her aching back, she folded her arms when he whipped out his datascroll and continued to stare in drifted attention. Many tabs filled it, full of an unreadable scrawl. He clicked through each one, his brow slowly furrowing.

He never left, but the loop continued in its cruelty.

His death left her alone.

"Neo."

He hummed in acknowledgement. "What do you need?"

"Do you want to be alone?"

"And only have myself to talk to?" he joked. "I'm good. I'd drive myself up that lovely wall over there." He nodded to the one across from him. "It is a very nice wall though. Maybe I can fit something in? I know you've bugged me to write stuff down to help keep track of things, and I'm trying to be better at that." He tapped his chin with his datascroll with a bounce of his leg.

"You know what I meant, comedian." Nova lifted her hand up. "C'mere."

Neo shrugged. "You can't say I didn't try to lighten the atmosphere, as it were."

"You have way better jokes than that, Neo. Try again."

"I take offense to that." Neo flattened himself beside her and folded his arms. "See? Like so."

Nova punched his arm, and he winced with a mischievous smile.

Yet, why won't the universe let him exist?

A sense of familiar dread crawled through the back of her mind, but she ignored it to shift onto her side. "Come here."

Neo scooted closer and she wrapped her arms around him. He responded in one fluid motion. "It's been a while since we've done this," he observed.

"We've just never found the time... and neither of us wants to be alone."

"Yeah." He gripped onto her.

And died.

Nova bit on her tongue until she tasted blood. "Thank you, Neo."

"You don't need to thank me."

Nova fought her weariness. I wonder if he feels the same exhaustion from the loops... or does he not get it, because he doesn't remember living it?

"Neo."

Neo switched his attention from his datascroll to her.

"You should sleep."

"I'm not tired. I actually got enough sleep during the rest shift for once, and I didn't need sleep meds to do it. Amazing, I know," he joked. "You look beat though. You should rest. I'll be—"

'...here.'

"What was that?" she whispered with a shudder in her heart.

"I'll be here, Nova."

Nova frowned, but tucked closer to him and held on for as long as time allowed.

A synced heartbeat, shadowed by the pressure.

Tears slipped across the ice she tried to form in her heart.

His smile while stars fluttered across his eyes, a sweeping blink in the dark and the inflection of her name. She listened to his heartbeat and breathing. Back in the darkness, it formed into familiar alarms.

Just give him a chance.

It reached out with grey, nebulous tendrils, a sense of purpose.

But you won't give him one.

Nova lifted herself out of his relaxed arms when it sounded in the past and fluttered around her. Hands in her lap, she stood up on shaking legs to shift for the doorframe of a different chamber, to escape it and rush to make an ever-shifting choice.

Don't look back. Don't look back.

Don't see it. Don't look too close.

"Warning," it came out softer. "Lockdown A initialised. Anomalous threat detected."

Nova ignored the dread and turned back.

He hadn't woken up from the alarms, fast asleep with his datascroll abandoned to the side. Her sense of terror refused to let go of her heart as she loomed over him, to look into the abyss and spot a shadow. He breathed softly, peacefully. Another shift until the second lockdown... where something pulls you away and you die. "Fuck, one more hour of this..."

Neo stirred. "Huh...?"

She had no energy to repeat something from another loop, though he would never fail to believe. One final comfort in her isolation, trapped between time and space. Her fingers clutched his coat when the alarms subsided with the pressure in her temples, not an agonising scream, but a numb press into them.

"Don't worry about it," she whispered, but he fell back asleep. I thought you said you weren't tired.

Nova slipped his datascroll out of his fingers and left the temporary comfort and safety he provided. Every tab opened, she investigated his cabinets, where the live sample waited to give her one more answer. Nova pressed the datascroll against her chest when her knees trembled with an empty breath leaving her lips, and she pressed her palm into her mouth to block the taste of bile.

One last check on him the longer the breathing and heartbeat deafened her, to keep herself on the move, to reach the comfortable silence, she frowned at the heavy shadows underneath his eyes.

Nova shook underneath the atmospheric pressure.

I will find a way.