"If, we can get out"
"What?" he said, startled.
"I didn't want you to worry, but there's been two avalanches since you got back, and all the snow the blizzard dropped."
He stared at her column in numbed shock, but she wasn't finished.
"There's about eleven meters of snow above us. I don't know if I can get out. And even if CenSec shows up, I don't know if they'll hear a hail under all this ice. I lost the signals from the surface right after that last avalanche, and the satellite signals are getting too faint to read clearly."
He said the first thing that came into his head, trying to lighten the mood, but without running it past his internal censor first "Well, at least if I'm going to be frozen into a glacier for all eternity, I've got my love to keep me warm."
He stopped himself, but not in time. Oh, brilliant. Now she thinks she's locked in an iceberg with a fixated madman!
"Do," Her voice sounded choked, probably with shock. "Do you mean that?"
He could have shot himself. "Tia," he began babbling, "it's all right, really, I mean I'm not going to go crazy and try to crack your column or anything, I really am all right, I, "
"Did you mean that?" she persisted.
"I," Oh well. It's on the record. You can't make it worse. "Yes. I don't know, it just sort of, happened." He shrugged helplessly. "It's not anything crazy, like a fixation. But, well, I just don't want any partner of any kind but you. If that's love, then I guess I love you. And I really, really love you a lot." He sighed and rubbed his temples. "So there it is, out in the open at last. I hope I don't offend or frighten you, but you're the best thing that ever happened to me, and that's a fact. I'd rather be with you than anyone else I know, or know of." He managed a faint grin. "Holostars and stellar celebs included."
The plexy cover to Ted Bear's little 'shrine' popped open, and he jumped.
"I can't touch you, and you can't touch me, but, would you like to hug Theodore?" she replied softly. "I love you, too, Alex. I think I have ever since you went out to face the Zombie Bug. You're the bravest, cleverest, most wonderful brawn I could ever imagine, and I wouldn't want to be anyone's partner but yours,"
The offer of her childhood friend was the closest she could come to intimacy, and he knew it
He got up, carefully, and took the little fellow down out of his wall-home, hugging the soft little bear once, hard, before he restored him again and closed the door.
"You have a magnificent lady, Theodore Bear," he told the solemn-faced little toy. "And I'm going to do my best to make her happy."
He turned back to her column and cleared his throat, carefully. Time, and more than time, to change the subject. "Right," he said. "Now that we've both established why we've been touchy, let's see if we can figure out what our options are."
"Options?" she replied, confused.
"Certainly." He raised his chin defiantly. "I intend to spend the rest of my life with you, and I don't intend that to be restricted to how long it takes before the pirates find us or we freeze to death! So let's figure out some options, hang it all!"
To his great joy and relief, she actually laughed. And if there was an edge of hysteria in it, he chose to ignore that little nuance.
"Right," she said. "Options. Well, we can start with the servos, I guess..."
Tia snuggled down into his arms, and turned into a big blue toy bear. The bear looked at him reproachfully. He started to get up, but the bedcoverings had turned to snowdrifts, and he was frozen in place. The bear tried to chip him out, but its blunt arms were too soft to make an impression on the ice-covered drifts. Then he heard rumbling, and looked up, to see an avalanche poised to crash down on him like some kind of slow-motion wave. The avalanche rumbled, and Tia-the-bear growled back, interposing herself between him and the tumbling snow.
"Alex, wake up!"
He floundered awake, flailing at the bedclothes, hitting the light button more by accident than anything else. He blinked as the light came up full, blinding him, his legs trapped in a tangle of sheets and blankets. "What?" he said, his tongue too thick for his mouth. "Who? Where?"
"Alex," Tia said, her voice strained, but excited. "Alex, I have been trying to get you to wake up for fifteen minutes! There's a CenSec ship Upstairs, and it's beating the tail off those two pirates!"