CHAPTER 28 — Never Leaving You
ELION — POV
The moment seemed to stretch as, the world around us became quiet.
Not the silence of the bunker's halls or the dead, flat quiet of the apocalypse.
But a different kind of silence.
A personal one.
Meso sat in my lap.
Her weight was warm and grounding, her breath soft against my neck, her hands still fisted behind my head like she was terrified I'd vanish if she let go for even a second.
She wasn't shaking anymore… but she wasn't calm either... I could feel the tension in her shoulders and hips.
I didn't move.
I let her hold on.
Let her feel that I was real, solid, here.
She clung to me like a drowning girl gripping a floating door in an endless ocean.
Finally, after a long stretch of breathing and heartbeat syncing, she muttered:
"You're warm."
Her voice was small. Not timid — she probably wasn't capable of timid — but it was softer than I'd ever heard it.
Like she was letting me into a side of her nobody else would ever see.
One arm slipped from around my neck and she wiped her eyes quickly with her sleeve — trying to erase the evidence.
"Don't look at that," she muttered. "Pretend it didn't happen."
"Meso—"
"Nope. Didn't happen~"
She rested her forehead against my collarbone again.
I brushed her hair lightly with my thumb.
"You cried on me." I said lightly, teasing her.
She elbowed my ribs.
"Shut up." She pouted.
I smiled.
That was more like her.
We stayed like that for another few seconds until she finally pushed herself upright, still straddling my waist but sitting up, wiping at her eyes again like she could scrub away vulnerability with friction.
Then she finally looked at me.
Her eyes red — not just from their color, but from emotion.
Her voice trembled a little, but she didn't hide it this time.
"You dropped a bomb on me, El."
Ah.
So that's where this was going.
She didn't sound angry. She sounded hurt. Not jealous — deeper than that.
"Which bomb?" I asked gently.
Her jaw tightened.
"'I have a girlfriend.'" She quoted it like reading a crime sentence.
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. "Yeah, that's… fair."
"I didn't even get to respond," she muttered. "You sent it and disappeared into the void because you apparently fear reading my typing bubbles."
She glared at me. I had the decency to look slightly ashamed. She knew I was driving and wouldn't read what she messaged me.
"You would've written a novel," I said. "Or killed me through the screen."
"That's not—okay, maybe the second one is true, but that's not the point."
She grabbed the collar of my hoodie and pulled me closer until our faces were inches apart.
Her voice dipped low.
"You didn't prepare me. For this. For any of it."
"Meso—"
"You appear in front of me after four years. Four years of calls, plans, secrets, code drops, trauma-dumps, universal theories, promises.... Four years of knowing you better than anyone. Four years of—" She broke eye contact for a second."—waiting."
My chest tightened.
"Meso…" I whispered.
She looked up immediately, eyes sharp as blades.
"You don't get to call me that unless you mean it."
"I do mean it."
Her lips parted slightly.
And then she finally said:
"You didn't lie to me. That's the only reason I didn't break something tonight."
"I would never lie to you."
"You better not. Because if you do…" Her fingers tightened in my hoodie. "…I won't forgive it."
There it was.
Not a threat.
A truth.
Because this was how she loved — intensely, obsessively, fiercely.
She wasn't the jealous girlfriend type— even though we never defined our relationship past 'best friends' I knew there was something deeper. But she was territorial. Almost primal.
The kind of loyalty built through years of isolation and matching insanity.
I lifted a hand and cupped her cheek. She tensed for half a second — Meso didn't do physical contact — but then she melted into it like she'd been waiting for that since chapter zero.
"I'm here," I said. "I didn't disappear."
"You could have." she mumbled, still trying to protest.
"But I didn't." I said firmly.
She stared at me long and hard, looking for cracks, the lies, any inconsistencies.
Whatever she was hunting for, she didn't find it.
Finally, she leaned forward until her forehead bumped mine.
The contact was small, warm, grounding.
"Meso…"
"Hm?"
"You're important to me."
That broke her. Not visibly — she'd rather die than show that — but something changed in the way she breathed.
Her voice was barely a whisper.
"…Good. You should feel that way."
"I do."
She swallowed.
"Then say it."
I met her eyes fully.
"You're important to me," I repeated. "And not replaceable."
Her breath hitched sharply.
"…Elion."
"And I'm not leaving you behind. Ever." There was something solid in my voice.
She shut her eyes for a second, and when she opened them, something inside them steadied.
The trembling was gone.
The fear was replaced by something else:
Resolve. Loyalty. Relief. And something darker, deeper, tighter.
We had a weird relationship, but we had a bond.
She slid off my lap and sat beside me on the bed instead, though our legs remained touching.
Then she cleared her throat.
"Alright," she said, voice steadier. "Now we talk."
"About?" I asked curiously.
"Everything."
She lifted one finger.
"First rule: don't lie to me."
"I'd never." I knew that was her biggest thing when we messaged online.
"Good." Another finger.
"Second: don't disappear again. If you need space, you can tell me. If you leave, I want to know where you're going."
"That's fair." This was her base.
"And third…" She hesitated.
Longer than I expected.
"Meso?" I asked.
She exhaled slowly.
"I accept," she whispered, "that you… have her."
Alexiy.
The word wasn't spoken, but it was felt.
"She's not a threat," I said immediately.
"No," Meso said. "She is a threat… to my comfort. My order. My expectations of the future."
She looked down.
"But she's not a threat to you. And that means she's not my enemy."
A pause.
Then she added, grudgingly:
"…She's pretty."
I snorted. "Yeah."
"And she loves you."
"I know."
"And you love her."
"Maybe," I said softly.
Meso turned to me sharply.
"You either do or don't."
"Meso—"
"Say it. I need to know what I'm working with."
I sighed.
"I care about her. I mean this past few days have been a lot. This whole thing is... it's new. It's fast, and intense. But yes… I think I'm starting to fall in love her. I mean she didn't break when the world did. Yes, she's weak and scared, but she's stills standing and ready to fight. That says something you know?"
She stared at me.
Then—slowly—she nodded.
"I can work with that."
"…Really?" I was surprised.
"Oh, absolutely not," she said brightly. "But I'll adapt."
I blinked. Yea Meso wasn't the 'corporation' type.
She elbowed me lightly. "Relax. I'm not going to stab her."
"That's reassuring—"
"Unless she lies to me."
"Meso—"
"Or steals."
"Meso—"
"Or touches my stuff."
"…That one I understand."
We ended up talking for over an hour about skills, stats, our theories, or experiences and observations. When I got to the part about how I "died" she almost strangled me.
Meso leapt back onto of my lap and held my face in her hands, as if searching for any lies in my words. When she realized I was truthful she gave me an earful about; protecting myself first, and not risking my life.
I didn't agree, but I didn't argue wither. When I got to the part about my 'bloodline' skills, she stiffened.
Then she smirked faintly.
Then her expression softened again.
"You're building a family," she murmured. "A blood family. A team. A… collective."
"Yeah. Something like that." I wasn't supposed that she could already guess my part of my plans.
"And you want strength."
"More than anything," I admitted. "I want to be untouchable. Free, uncontrolled. I'll be the strongest.... or die trying, and I already died once."
Her smile stretched slow, wide, dangerous.
"You know you're just as interesting in person s you were in the first day we messaged.."
She leaned against my shoulder.
"Then I'll help you... We're best friends remember."
My breath stilled.
"I'll map our hunting zones, and we need analyze mutations. I've already started to design mana-capture devices, to track hordes easier. We'll need calculate your stat-growth patterns, and look into the possibility of skill evolutions.." She looked up at me. "Just don't die. That's all I ask. Don't leave me."
I placed a hand on her back.
"Deal."
We stayed like that for several minutes.
We were two broken pieces fitting together. Just two lunatics who finally found someone who understood their kind of madness.
Eventually, she sat up straight and clapped her hands once.
"Alright!" she said. "Time to talk Theories! We've been dreaming about this day for years, and now that's finally real we need to make sure we're the ones on top in the end... right?"
I looked at her and thought about what the future was, now that society has collapsed, and personal power ment everything.... "Yeah, we'll be the ones to place order in this chaos. I Meso... I don't seek salvation — I seek supremacy." I felt a wide grin appear on my face and when I saw he face twist into a twisted broken smile like mine...
I knew... This world had created a pair of 'monsters', and we were going to thrive in the chaos.