She knew the shape of him before her eyes caught
up.
Her body named him first: weight, heat, the
exact geometry of those shoulders.
Arms wrapped her before the concrete
could. Solid, warm through uniform cloth, holding like her body remembered what
to do even when the mind didn't.
His forearms were iron until the last inch,
where his hands trembled once and then went still.
"Got you," he said, quiet.
The words brushed her ear and, under them, a tiny catch, like a gear slipping a tooth.
Her palms hit his chest. Nothing moved. She
pushed, pushing was the only thing still hers.
Under her hands, his breath against bone, then
flat into discipline.
"You're alive."
"Why would you do this to me."
The words came out broken, not a question so much as a leak in a hull.
Around them the crowd surged and thinned and
surged again, a tide chewing its own shoreline. Rose didn't see it. She saw
jawline, the shallow shadow under it, a thin new scar at the hinge. Hair the
right black, now threaded with wrong silver. Zack's face, older in impossible
ways.
For a breath, the mask slipped; grief flashed
raw and unarmored in the set of his mouth, then locked back in place.
Then the eyes.
Not the warm, night-drenched dark she'd leaned
toward on Devil's Maw rooftops. These were cold river after thaw, glass rinsed
until every other pigment had been scoured out.
They didn't soften, only blinked too slowly, as
if holding back a flood.
Her relief lit and died so fast it left
afterimages. The void rushed in.
"Caellum," she rasped. "You're alive. Why would you do this to me."
His name struck him, physical pain; she felt the flinch move through his chest, small as a bird's.
Her gaze kept jumping over his shoulder to the
ship ramp, to that dark mouth where a familiar smirk should break the world's
spell. Any second. Come out. Make it a joke. Please.
His grip eased a fraction, as if to let her go
to the hope he couldn't give back, then firmed because he knew she'd fall.
He didn't move. Not a blink.
"I'm sorry," he said. Airless words. No place
for hope to hang.
The apology scraped him on the way out; she
could hear it.
He let one second pass, long enough for hope to
peak and hold—and then cut the cord.
"He's gone."
The floor tilted. Sound narrowed to a high,
needling whine. Breath thinned.
Against her ear, his heart stumbled. One uneven beat, then the metronome of control.
'He promised.'
'He promised me.'
'Say anything else.'
She tried to go around him. Legs failed in a
soft, ridiculous way, like she'd been poured into a girl shape and it hadn't
set. She stumbled; he steadied her without changing expression.
Not quite true. His jaw ticked, a single pulse of muscle betraying the effort not to look away.
"No," she said, hating the way her voice frayed.
"You are like him, your face with those joke, tell me you're lying. Tell me he's coming down that ramp and you're both idiots."
He didn't answer with words. He stepped into her
fall and closed his arms. Not comfort. Containment.
His hand found the back of her head and hovered
there a breath too long before settling, as if asking permission his voice
couldn't.
"It's not a prank," he said into her hair. His
chest thudded against her ear too fast, as if his heart hadn't learned the day
was over. "I'm sorry."
The last syllable thinned. For an instant he
pressed his mouth to her crown without quite touching, like blessing and apology both.
Something inside her let go the way a rope lets
go after too much weight. The sound that tore loose wasn't speech. It scraped
her throat raw on its way out.
He tightened once around her, a reflex like
bracing under falling stone.
Her hands balled in his uniform. She hit him
once. Again. Again. The blows thudded against muscle and bone.
He took them. He did not block. His shoulders
lowered a millimeter, as if offering the hits somewhere softer.
'You liar.'
'You said in one piece.'
'Bring it back. Bring it back.'
The strength ran out fast. Punches collapsed
into a hold. Fingers locked and stayed because there was nothing else to hold.
Her face was wet and hot and graceless. She didn't care. Dignity belonged to
places without ships and lists.
His knuckles whitened at her spine, then
loosened; he made himself breathe with her, slow, slow, lending rhythm to lungs
that had forgotten how.
He didn't offer words to plug the hole. He
anchored. His chin settled on the crown of her head. His breath hauled in and
out like he was pulling it by hand. Sweat. Metal. Salt. The clean sting of
antiseptic somewhere nearby. The station's lights hum-singing through concrete.
Beneath the metal tang was something stubbornly human. Soap and the faintest curl of smoke, as if he'd stood too close to heat for too long.
Devil's Maw flashed up, unhelpful and whole:
warm midnight, roofs they weren't allowed on, the night crowding so close the
stars felt like breath. Zack's eyes, very dark, catching every shard of light
and keeping it. Promise spoken too lightly at first, heavier when she made him
say it again. I'll come back to you. I'll be there to save you every time. The
warm drag of his palm ruffling her hair like a brand.
Under her cheek his throat moved around a name
and swallowed it.
"You promised."
"I left because you promised."
Around them, the noise dulled by degrees. A
woman's voice broke to pieces and tried to keep screaming anyway. Boots
hammered metal, orders broke and fell flat. The ship breathed out heat and
silence.
His shoulders squared at each new wail, then
sagged back that stolen millimeter when it passed.
Her body found rhythm again. Breaths started to
stack instead of scatter. The shake in her arms softened. She could feel the
wet cooling on her face, the warmth of it still sinking into his shirt.
He felt it too. She felt the flinch when the
fabric chilled against his skin, the way he drew her closer anyway.
Don't look up.
Don't look.
Look.
She made herself lift her head.
The face was the same in all the ways that
mattered to memory: the mouth that tilted when he was about to dare her, the
cheekbone she'd traced with a fingertip once and pretended not to, the nose
she'd sketched in the margins of lessons she didn't hear. All of it matched.
And the smallest fracture ran through it now. A grief line fine as glass, crossing the place where a smile used to start.
And then the thing that turned memory into a
weapon.
His eyes were blue—shocking, scoured.
They widened, just once, like impact, then set.
She watched him force the tide back behind that color.
Air left her in a sound smaller than words. The
world tipped again. He didn't let her fall. He held her in the hinge of a
moment that refused to close.
For a heartbeat, his forehead leaned toward
hers. Gravity, not choice, before he pulled it back an inch and made the
distance.
That was where the day ended for her: on a face that matched the one she had begged the sky to give back, and on a pair of eyes
that said it had not.