Upon first closing the compartment door behind him, Jared took another shallow breath before moving warily back to take a seat, his back against the wall of the cabin where Lili also sat, leaning against a pillow, a blanket wrapped around her.

“Hi,” she softly greeted him as he took that seat next to her in the dim glow of a battery powered lantern she had earlier turned on at the opposite side of the compartment, near where their feet now were.

“Hi,” he returned in a matching tone as Lili then moved to offer him a pillow from the crate on her opposite side, at the back of the compartment. “Thanks,” he managed, taking the pillow and placing it at his own back, before moving his eyes to continue focusing on the lantern rather than allowing himself to look over at her.

“Getting a little colder,” she managed a moment later.

“Little bit,” he offered his own agreement in the same near whisper they both spoke in.

“Here ya go,” she offered as she lifted the side of the cover for him to share with her in a moment shockingly reminiscent of their last night on the ship, following that terrible nightmare/vision of his. Of course, rather than his mind staying on those terrible indecipherable images, he couldn’t help thinking back to the earlier, much more pleasant hours of that same night.

He allowed himself to take a deep breath as he took the offered half of the blanket, while somehow still attempting to remain out of contact with her body, despite the only about five inches of space there was on either side of them there in that tiny room.

Lili couldn’t help a sad smile as she noted the way he kept his body tensely glued to his own space despite the cover they now shared, “You know, if it does actually get colder still, we might eventually have to let at least our legs touch,” she couldn’t help calling him on his obvious attempt to avoid contact.

Jared’s breath caught a bit at her bringing attention to his obvious body language, while he was trying very hard not to bring any to it himself, “It’s ok, Lili. I did hear what you said.”

Her eyes then narrowed a bit at that response before finding her own, “What I said…when?”

“You know, about the different life,” he managed, though couldn’t help moving his eyes from the lantern to instead focus downwards, blankly staring at the fibers of the blanket that now covered them.

“The different life?” she repeated, still asking for a further explanation of his sadly spoken words.

“How it was a completely different life when we were up there on the ship, together,” he answered, practically swallowing the final word.

She just shook her head, trying to decipher exactly what he was implying about her possible hidden meaning behind the words, “What does that comment even have to do with the general theory of us staying close together to keep warm?”

“I just mean, that once you said that, I let myself remember what else you said, when we were still up there. And I get it now. And I’m saying I’m…ok with it,” he repeated, trying to sound like he meant the assurance.

“What do you mean? What else did I say, that you are apparently, ok with?” she had to ask.

“You know, when you came to my room that last night,” he began with another ragged breath, “You explained it all, before anything even happened,” he managed to add, “I guess I just kinda blocked out that part, for a while. Until I heard you again, today, and then I let myself remember. Sorry if it seemed like I had forgotten, at first.”

“Exactly which thing that I said, before ‘anything’ happened?” she asked, looking over at him with a further crease of her brow.

“Remember, we both said it actually,” he allowed with a tiny scoff that seemed to hide just a bit of his own shred of self-loathing, somehow.

“What did we both say?” she shook her head again, only speaking slightly more loudly, growing a bit weary of his increasing vagueness.

Jared let out a long breath, “You know, that that night, we were both so scared, that we didn’t even really know what we wanted…And that we both just wanted to stop being scared, for at least a little while,” he responded, almost repeating her own words verbatim.

Lili shook her head once more, a sad breath catching in her own throat, “So, you think that I meant that…”

“Like you said, that was a different life then. And you’re right, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Jared…what we shared, that night…”

“I understand, honest Lili, especially in light of all of this, right now.”

“In light of all what?” she asked, her own brain going in a million directions, just trying to follow along with all of his half-spoken thoughts.

“This--The fact that we really are most likely trapped on a strange new planet, with no other humans, at all. Just the four of us. Just the one of you, and the three of us,” he added more quietly.

“Now you’re really losing me, Jared,” she told him, almost pleading for him to just say all of what he meant for once.

He let out another nervous breath, continuing to force his eyes to avoid hers, “I mean, if we really want to try and survive here, to make a new life here at all, I know that I’m the most fucked up one out of all of us. I admit that,” another breath, “I mean, Kyle always knows exactly what he’s doing, and Ian, yeah he may not have a two-hundred IQ, but at least he knows what he is. And he’s not some questionably sane freak of nature. I mean, I accept those facts, and I don’t want you to feel like you’d ever owe me any kind of explanation for accepting them too, ok?”

Lili was stunned into silence for a long moment, her own breaths coming shakily as she thought on his words, before finally having to speak again, “So, you understand?”

“Yeah,” he repeated, seeming to force back quite a bit of emotion as he got the word out.

Lili just scoffed, “I really doubt that you understand anything, Jared,” she told him, which did cause him to look back up at her statement, “You sure as hell don’t seem to understand that, fucked up or not, you’re the first person I ever connected with, and I don’t just mean physically. You’re the only person I ever connected with, in any way,” she stated through her own breaking voice. “Or at least that’s what I thought. Sorry if I was wrong after all,” she managed to add before moving to switch off the lantern and curling down into the cover, attempting to bury her face in the pillow just to avoid having to try and make him truly understand anything at all, right then.

When Lili awoke the next morning, she spent countless minutes just lying there, staring up at the roof of the supply compartment in thought, rather than letting herself look over at Jared, who still lay next to her, though on his side, facing away from her. Not even sure her companion was even awake yet, Lili at last forced herself to sit up, trying not to jar the cover enough to wake him, if he were still asleep. She then looked around the compartment, coming to the conclusion that in order to open the door at all, let alone make her way out, she would still have to crawl over where he had slept just inside the door. Another sigh as she braced herself to try and lean over him, without disturbing him, and open the door at last.

Though she succeeded in getting the door open, the sound it made as it slid upwards, did do well to startle Jared out of his continued slumber, as he moved his eyes up to where she had had to awkwardly lean across him just to get the door open.

“You coulda asked me to move,” he attempted to offer politely, through his sleep hoarsened voice.

“Move,” Ian was the one who responded to Jared’s statement, from where he and Kyle slowly made their way to stand up from the seats they had already spent too many hours in that night.

“Morning to you too,” Lili muttered as she did move to purposefully crawl over Jared’s body before bothering to wait for him to heed Ian’s ‘request,’ himself.

Jared swallowed with a bit of a blush as she crawled across his legs, but chose to say nothing else before waiting for her to clear the compartment, and then moving to follow as well.

“So, I guess nothing attacked us in the middle of the night?” he finally asked Ian and Kyle once they moved past him a moment later.

“Yeah, we fought ’em all off all by ourselves. We’re badass like that,” Ian returned with a smirk, “Now, come cuddle with me, Kyle,” he had to add as Kyle just shook his head over at Ian before making his way back to the recently vacated compartment.

“So, is this cover, uh safe?” Kyle attempted as he reached the compartment.

“Safe?” Jared asked with a raised eyebrow.

Though it was then Lili who spoke up, “He wants to know if we were fucking on it all night. No, but thanks for asking, this time,” she told Kyle bluntly as she moved to take a seat in the cockpit, paying no heed to all three of the expressions that particular statement caused.

“Ok, then,” Ian stated with his own deep breath a moment later, “See you two lovebirds in a few hours,” he added with a shake of his head, before moving to close the compartment door behind him and the still stunned looking youngest of the team.

As the door closed, Jared finally reminded himself to breathe again, as he turned back toward where Lili busied herself looking through the food stores next to the cockpit seats, rather than looking back his way as of yet.

“So, I guess I don’t really need to guess at whether or not you’re still upset then, huh?” he managed as he forced a few cautious steps in her direction.

“Upset about what? You insinuating that I waited twenty-five years before finally giving someone my virginity because I was apparently afraid of dying, and since we’re still alive, that that means that I now have to backtrack from that apparently horrible mistake you seem to think I now believe it was? How would I be upset by that?”

“Lili…” he began, not even sure what he had meant to follow the word with.

“Jared, some advice: Try to use those psychic abilities to decide whether or not you should keep talking right now.”

Her statement more than easily did silence him though, as he somberly moved to take a place in another of the seats near the window where she continued to sort out the food in an obviously annoyed manner.

Several painfully long moments after they had each forced down their breakfast, both now simply staring out the window in silence, Lili finally made some attempt at communication once more, “So, even if Kyle got the engines to work again, and even if the ship is really still up there…” she began quietly.

Though that was hardly an easy subject she was making an attempt at speaking about, Jared was still thankful for the change from the previous one, “What about it?” he asked with as much gentleness as he could muster.

“Even if all of that happened, there’s still not enough air in the suits to get us back up there, is there?” she asked in a near whisper.

Jared took a deep breath, knowing that the last thing in the world he should do right then is lie to her in any way, “No, there’s not.”

Lili closed her eyes tightly, choking a bit on her own tears before speaking again, “So, if they aren’t up there, or even if they are, and they still can’t get to us…” a deep breath, “Then we really are gonna die here, aren’t we?” she breathed the question rather than spoke it.

“Yeah, we are,” he admitted softly as her eyes immediately flew back to him, in utter shock that he would so easily make such a damning statement, especially considering it was him making it, “But,” he managed, “I can pretty much assure that it won’t be as soon as we all might think, right now.”

Her eyes widened a bit at that statement. “Explain, please,” she begged.

“I’m trying to decipher the things I’ve seen. A lot of them, just last night. And I know that at least one of us is going to still be here, still alive, several months from right now, possibly years.”

Lili let out a tiny scoff, “There was a calendar in your vision?”

“In some form.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just trust me when I say, I know that you’re not going to die any time in the immediate future, anyway.”

“You’re gonna have to give me more than that, Jared.”

“In the visions I saw, you were still alive, Lili, at least several months from now, possibly longer.”

“I don’t get it. How could you tell it was several months away, and not just several days, or even hours?” Lili pressed.

“It was pretty obvious,” he said quietly, his eyes still glued to the forests outside.

“Maybe to you,” she denied. “But remember, I can’t see inside your head, now can I?”

“Because, Lili, you were…you were about to…about to become a mother.”

The shocked silence that followed seemed to go on endlessly before she finally managed any kind of response at all, “Um, you couldn’t see any more than that?”

“I thought that was a whole lot in itself,” he sighed heavily.

“I mean, you didn’t see if me, or this baby, actually survive that; the birth I mean?”

He just shook his head, “All I can really get right now is you, in labor, here, in this place, this planet, that we’re on right now.”

Then she thought of yet another truth to factor in, “But…but I can’t have children, at least right now I can’t, remember?”

“Then, maybe what it means is that at least two of us do manage to survive, for at least another three years, right?” he attempted to sound like that was some reason to continue to hope, after all.

“And….you couldn’t see which two?” she whispered sadly.

“No. I only saw you, having a child…having someone’s child,” he added more quietly, his own eyes turned downwards, not able to help thinking of how far away he had felt like he had actually pushed her only hours before the most recent of these eerie dreams had decided to come to him once again.

Lili took another breath, “Still, you told me, that night, that you could never be sure what was a dream, and what was actually a vision, right? So, none of this may even be a vision at all. Right?”

Jared sighed again, “Like Kyle said, the older we get, the more we figure out. The easier it gets to do things… like telling the difference now, between a dream and… not a dream.”