Ten

"Samus?" a low voice asked.

"Mm?" I replied drowsily, opening my eyes to see Aaron sitting beside me with an expression that looked torn between amusement and confusion.

He chuckled. "What was it you said about not sleeping?"

"Oh!" I bolted upright, suddenly embarrassed, and he laughed as I attempted to smooth out my tangled hair. "I'm sorry…" I frowned at him. "Did you know that you talk in your sleep?"

He gave me a look of mock horror. "I hope I wasn't giving away Galactic Federation military secrets."

"No, just a bunch of names," I muttered, growling when my hair wouldn't behave and lie flat. "I look like a frizzy mess," I complained.

He smirked in that annoying way of his, then shifted so that he was behind me. I stiffened as I felt his fingers combing gently through my hair, somehow working through the tangles. I could feel him shaking with silent laughter as he smoothly undid the terrible mess that was my hair. "I may talk in my sleep, but you roll all over the place. It was all I could do to keep you from falling out of bed."

I frowned, feeling my muscles involuntarily relaxing as his hands gently massaged my scalp. "Where did a buzz-cut Marine learn how to handle long hair?"

He chuckled again. "I learned quickly after my wife yelled in pain a few times."

"You're married?"

"I was," he corrected with a sigh. "Had a little girl, too, only three years old. Raina. They both died in a Pirate raid on Arrehah seven years ago."

So that's what he meant by having no family left. I restrained an urge to turn around. "Was her name Katie?"

He finished, putting my hair in its traditional ponytail before coming around to stare into my eyes. "How did you know that?"

"It was one of the names you said in your sleep last night."

"Huh. What other names were I saying?" I told him, and he shrugged. "My squad. We all have nicknames. Cross, Erase, and Det were the three men who died during the Homeworld invasion. By the way, Samus…" He grinned. "You have a fantastic singing voice."

I glared at him. "You were supposed to be asleep!"

He laughed, leaning against the wall and putting his hands behind his head. "I was. I woke up sometime around four hundred, and I heard you singing. After a few minutes, you drifted off to sleep. You looked so peaceful and cute that I didn't want to wake you."

I threw his pillow at him. "Stop calling me cute!"

He caught it easily, swinging it back to hit me gently in the face. "Not gonna happen," he said with his characteristic smirk. "You're just too cute for me to stop calling you that."

I snatched the pillow back from him, growling, but he dodged my second blow, coughing. I frowned. "Are you okay?"

He nodded. "Yeah, just a little sore. Don't worry about me. What was it that you were singing last night?"

I chuckled. "Loosely translated, 'calm down, stop having nightmares, don't wake up.'"

"Wow, I can see you were inventive."

I glowered at him for a long time, and he returned the expression…then we both burst into laughter.