Morning drifted in soft and grey through the curtains. Mina woke before the sun fully cleared the rooftops, the kind of half-sleep where you can feel another person's heartbeat before you open your eyes. Aaron's arm was around her, heavy and warm. For a moment she lay still, listening to the steady rise and fall of his chest.
He was home.
She had known, when he left the night before, what he meant to do. He hadn't said the words, but his eyes had told her—calm, focused, like a man walking toward something that had waited too long. She'd wanted to stop him, to pull him back from whatever line he was about to cross, but she'd seen the decision already carved into him. So she'd only whispered, Come, and watched him disappear into the dark.
Now he was back.
Mina turned carefully to face him. His face was shadowed by sleep, but she could see the exhaustion carved deep around his mouth, the faint scrape of dried blood along his knuckles. He looked peaceful in a way that frightened her; not content, just emptied.
She brushed a strand of hair from his forehead. "Aaron," she whispered.
His eyes opened slowly, the grey, early morning caught in them. For a second he looked lost, as if he'd forgotten where he was. Then his gaze focused on her, and the edges of him softened.
"It's done," he said quietly.
Mina nodded. "I know."
He swallowed, voice rough. "I didn't want you to see me after. I thought I'd feel… something different."
She reached up, fingers grazing his jaw. "You don't have to explain. You did what you thought you had to do."
Aaron closed his eyes and leaned into her touch. "It doesn't feel like victory. Just silence."
"That's how endings feel," she said. "They're not loud."
He pulled her close again, his face buried in her hair, and for a while they didn't speak. The baby stirred softly in the other room, a tiny, living reminder that not everything in their world was built on vengeance.
Mina felt Aaron's breath against her collarbone, heavy and uneven. She held him tighter, her voice barely a whisper. "No more running. No more blood."
He nodded against her skin, a silent promise he wasn't sure he could keep. But for now, wrapped in the thin light of morning, he let himself believe her.
Outside, the city stirred to life again—cars, seagulls, the ordinary hum returning. Inside, two people who had spent the night chasing ghosts simply held on, waiting for the noise to drown the past.