"Always." Head inclined— "I mean it." —obvious on his face, in his voice: he did.

If he could have kept holding her hand during this prep, he would have. One more reason to hasten through it. He picked up the pile of clothes where he'd left it and gathered some of the emptied food containers for kindling. For real fuel… "Can we gather branches somewhere nearby, or shall I temporarily steal the heating coils from the oven?" Stick that in a stack of rocks and you could heat anything enough to burn. A blaster could approximate the effect, but he'd ditched his on the data tower. Good riddance.