Martha hadn't realized, until this moment, until this circumstance, just how much she'd come to depend upon the death toll. Oh, not in the way that one would expect--she'd fought hard to save someone each time she'd been called too, and she'd never wanted to reset someone. Death had never come to be cheap for her, but by the same token, having watched him die, Martha had come to accept it as a net that would be there to catch them should they fall to accident or misfortune or to someone's slick hands. There wasn't that here, and if the Admiral wasn't honoring deals, then there was no way that she could just make a new deal to bring him back.

It scared her to death, and perhaps for the first time, she'd begun to understand why he'd been so perpetually frightened of losing her like that.

"Forewarned is forearmed," Martha admitted, and then she nodded a bit. "Sev, if I lost you..." She started to speak, and then she moved to her toes and kissed him as if that could some how chase the thought of that away.