Punching the wall in barely contained rage she turned, taking her suit in hand, pulling the tight, confining layers over herself.

After eighteen months in low grav and high danger he accused her of trying to kill him? It was a joke, he’d been getting more erratic for weeks. She’d caught him staring at her, his eyes never leaving hers, till she’d finally stopped meeting his gaze.

The lab was the only place she could get some respite, but if he thought that he could confine her there then he was sadly mistaken. A refuge was only a refuge when it was an option, a refuge enforced was a prison.

She opened the airlock, the thick dust gathering about her boots while she waited for it to cycle.

The sun was almost down, she’d nearly missed it, the magic time when she could trick herself into believing that she wasn’t on Mars, that she wasn’t trapped in a few square feet of carefully controlled environment.

She climbed the low hill and watched as the sky surrendered blood red for the blue she missed so much.