Kaira stared at the human, confused. "Then... how have you survived so long? You made a joke about dying before, earlier."
"I have." Li smiled, running a hand through his hair to smooth it down. "I've been drowned. I bled out internally. I had hypothermia once. Doesn't matter. Strength isn't in the body. It's in the mind. If you get knocked down a hundred times, but you get up a hundred and one, you can still win. I thought you'd know that."
"What do you mean?' she asked, intrigued despite her confusion.
The human gestured to her ship, to everything, in a grand, vague way. "Look at everything your people accomplished. Look at everything you put together, worked together to make, thought about and improvised and created. You're 'weaker' than us, sure. You're better, too. You care about each other. You take care of each other. And now you sail across the stars. What's throwing a good fist, compared to world peace?"
She studied him then, perhaps for the first time, in full, in detail. His clothes were worn and mended, probably by hand. His glasses were held together with tape. The bright copper of his hair could not hide the bags under his eyes or the tension in his shoulders. There was exhaustion there. And yet, improbably, when Li had found himself in a position to defend a stranger, he'd risen to the occasion.
"There is a different kind of strength," Kaira pointed out, softly, "to coming from a world that does not care for their own, and choosing to fight for others regardless. You are strong, too, in a way that has little to do with musculature."
"Then I guess," he grinned, blue eyes twinkling, "we have a lot more in common than either of us thought."
In spite of the wild adventure that led to this point, she smiled.
