Almost a year.
That's how long Nana had been systematically infiltrating every aspect of Dr. Zayne Li's carefully organized life.
It had started innocently enough—showing up at the hospital every other day with increasingly creative excuses. Then escalated to "coincidentally" being assigned to every field mission he volunteered for. Then progressed to inviting herself to his apartment with the kind of shameless confidence that would have embarrassed her old self.
Her current self had no such reservations.
"How do you keep getting past security?" Zayne asked for what had to be the hundredth time, not even looking up from his medical journal as Nana let herself into his apartment using the key he'd "accidentally" left at her place three months ago.
"I told them I'm Dr. Zayne's girlfriend visiting," Nana said cheerfully, kicking off her boots and leaving them in a haphazard pile by the door that would definitely annoy him later. "They waved me right through."
Zayne's ears turned bright red. They always did when she used the word "girlfriend," even though it had been true for months now. Even though they'd been officially dating since that lunch date almost a year ago. Even though everyone at the hospital and the Hunter Association knew they were together.
He still blushed like a teenager every time she said it.
It was adorable.
"You're covered in Wanderer residue," Zayne observed, finally looking up. His hazel eyes took in her appearance with clinical assessment. "And is that... are those leaves in your hair?"
"Probably." Nana was already making her way to his kitchen, on a mission. "I had a fight in the park. There was a tree involved. And some shrubbery. Very dramatic."
"You kicked the tree."
"The Wanderer was BEHIND the tree. Technically I kicked through the tree to get to the Wanderer."
"That's not better, Nana."
"But it was effective!"
She heard him sigh from the living room—that long-suffering sound that meant he was simultaneously exasperated and fond. After a year together, she'd learned to distinguish between his different types of sighs. This was definitely a fond one.
Nana opened his refrigerator and immediately felt betrayed.
"Zayne!" she called out, scandalized. "Your fridge is so BORING!"
"It contains food. That's the purpose of a refrigerator."
"Meat. Vegetables. More vegetables. Milk. Where are the snacks? Where's the joy? Where's the—OH!"
She spotted it on the top shelf, hidden behind a container of meal-prepped chicken breast. A carton of chocolate milk. The fancy imported kind from that specialty store downtown. The kind she'd mentioned liking exactly once, three weeks ago, in passing.
The kind that Zayne definitely didn't drink himself because he preferred his coffee black and his milk plain.
Nana pulled out the chocolate milk and turned to find Zayne standing in the kitchen doorway, watching her with that soft expression that still made her heart do gymnastics.
"This is for me, isn't it?" she said, holding up the carton.
His ears reddened further. "I noticed you liked it. When we went to that cafe. I thought... in case you visited. Which you do. Frequently. Without warning."
"You bought me chocolate milk and hid it in your boring fridge."
"It's not hidden. It's strategically placed."
"Behind the chicken?"
"Optimal temperature zone."
Nana felt something warm and overwhelming bloom in her chest. This man. This beautiful, ridiculous man who claimed he didn't understand emotions but somehow remembered every small thing she liked. Who bought her favorite candy and chocolate milk and kept them stocked even though he pretended to be annoyed by her constant uninvited visits.
Who was currently trying very hard to look professional and composed while his ears gave away how flustered he was.
Zayne crossed the kitchen toward her, his hand reaching up to her hair. "Hold still. You have half the park stuck in your hair."
His fingers were gentle as they picked out leaves and small twigs, carefully untangling them without pulling. Nana stood very still, acutely aware of how close he was, how his fingers occasionally brushed against her scalp, sending little shivers down her spine.
"There," he said softly, disposing of the last leaf. "Better."
Then his arms wrapped around her from behind, pulling her back against his chest in a hug that had become familiar over the past year. His face pressed into her shoulder, hiding against her neck.
Nana grinned. She knew this move. It was his "my ears are too red and I don't want you to see" move. He'd been doing it for months, and it never stopped being endearing.
She spun in his arms to face him, catching the tail end of his blush before he could hide it.
"Zayne," she said sweetly.
"Don't," he warned, already knowing where this was going.
"Your ears are so red."
"They are not."
"They absolutely are. They're like little red flags signaling your embarrassment."
"I'm not embarrassed."
"You're blushing."
"I'm not—" He blinked rapidly, a tell she'd learned meant he was very flustered and trying to regain composure. "I'm not blushing. It's warm in here."
"It's sixty-eight degrees. You keep it cold because you're a human ice cube."
"I am not a human ice cube."
"You are. You radiate cold. It's one of your many charms." Nana reached up and poked his reddening ear. "Along with these adorable stress signals."
Zayne caught her hand, his larger one engulfing hers completely. "You're impossible."
"You like that about me."
"Debatable."
But he was smiling. That small, genuine smile that he reserved just for her. The one that made his whole face soften and made him look years younger and made Nana want to—
She spun suddenly, using the momentum to push him back against the wall. Zayne's eyes went wide with surprise as his back hit the surface, his hands instinctively coming up to grip her shoulders.
"Nana, what—"
She kicked his leg—not hard, just enough to make his knee buckle slightly so he bent down to her height. The same move she'd used a thousand times in Avalon, in another life, when she'd wanted to kiss him and he'd been too tall.
His body remembered even if his mind didn't. He bent automatically, muscle memory from a timeline he couldn't recall.
And Nana kissed him.
Really kissed him. Not the chaste pecks they'd shared before. Not the sweet, gentle kisses that had marked their relationship up until now.
This was the kind of kiss she'd been wanting to give him for a year. The kind that said I love you and I remember everything and I'm so glad I found you again and thank you for falling for me twice.
Zayne's brain clearly short-circuited. She felt him freeze, his entire body going rigid with shock. His hands tightened on her shoulders—not pushing her away, just holding on like he needed the anchor.
Then something changed.
The temperature dropped. Not outside—inside. In Zayne's hands where they gripped her shoulders. In the air immediately around them.
Frost began forming on his fingertips.
Nana felt it through her shirt—that familiar cold, that ice evol that shouldn't exist in this timeline because Zayne hadn't manifested it yet, hadn't even shown signs of having an evol at all.
But her kiss had triggered something. Some deep recognition in his body, in his power, in the parts of him that existed beyond conscious memory.
His ice was responding to her.
Nana pulled back slightly, not breaking the kiss entirely but giving him room to breathe, to process, to not completely malfunction.
Zayne's eyes were still closed, his breathing ragged, frost still spreading from his hands in delicate patterns that looked like snowflakes.
When he finally opened his eyes, they were unfocused, dazed, like he'd been hit by one of her kicks instead of her kiss.
"I—" he started, then stopped. Blinked rapidly. Tried again. "You—"
"Yes?" Nana prompted sweetly, like she hadn't just stolen his breath and possibly short-circuited several important brain functions.
"You can't just—" More blinking. His brain was clearly struggling to form coherent sentences. "Nana, you can't just pin me to walls and kiss me like that without warning."
"Why not? We're dating. Isn't that what girlfriends do?"
"Not—" He took a deep breath, clearly trying to regain some composure. "Not without some kind of... buildup. Communication. Consent."
"Do you want me to stop?" Nana asked, suddenly serious. Because even though she loved teasing him, consent was important. If he was genuinely uncomfortable—
"No," Zayne said immediately. Then, softer: "No, I don't want you to stop. I just... you surprised me. I wasn't prepared. I don't know how to..." He trailed off, looking frustrated with himself.
Nana smiled gently and reached up to cup his face. His skin was cool under her palms—cooler than it should be, thanks to the frost that was still slowly dissipating from his hands.
"You don't have to know how," she said. "We can figure it out together. Okay?"
"Okay." He leaned into her touch, his eyes closing briefly. "But maybe warn me next time? Before you go into combat mode?"
"No promises. I like surprising you."
"I've noticed."
The frost had fully melted now, leaving just slightly damp spots on her shoulders where his hands had been. Zayne seemed to notice this at the same time she did, his eyes going wide.
"Did I... was there ice?" he asked slowly. "On my hands?"
Nana's heart skipped. This was it. The moment where his ice evol had manifested, triggered by her kiss, by the recognition his body had of her even without conscious memory.
"Yeah," she said carefully. "There was. Does that... have you noticed that before?"
"No. Never." Zayne stared at his hands like they belonged to someone else. "I've never had an evol. They tested me when I was young—said I didn't have the genetic markers. But just now, when you kissed me, I felt... cold. Not uncomfortable. But different. Like something inside me was responding."
*To me,* Nana thought. *Your power is responding to me because some part of you remembers.*
"Maybe you're a late bloomer," she suggested, trying to keep her voice light. "Some people don't manifest until their twenties."
"Maybe." But he didn't sound convinced. He looked at her with those intense hazel eyes, searching for something. "This is going to sound strange, but when you kissed me, I felt like I'd done this before. Not just kissing in general. Kissing you specifically. Like my body knew what to do even though my mind didn't."
Nana's breath caught. "That doesn't sound strange at all."
"It doesn't?"
"No. I think... I think sometimes our bodies remember things our minds don't. Muscle memory. Emotional memory. Soul memory." She took his hands, those beautiful hands that had just sprouted ice for the first time in this timeline. "Maybe your body remembers loving me. Even if you don't have the conscious memories."
Zayne was quiet for a long moment, processing this. Then: "I do love you."
"I know."
"No, I mean... I love you in a way that feels bigger than the time we've spent together. Deeper than makes logical sense for a year-long relationship. Sometimes I wake up from dreams I can't quite remember, and all I know is that you were there. That we were together in some other context. Some other place."
Tears were gathering in Nana's eyes now. "What do the dreams show you?"
"Ice. Darkness. You, always you, fighting beside me. Holding my hand while we run from something terrible. And sometimes... sometimes I dream about dying. But not in a scary way. In a way that feels like release. Like sacrifice. And you're always there, crying, telling me not to leave."
"Zayne..." Nana's voice was breaking.
"Are they just dreams?" he asked quietly. "Or are they memories of something that actually happened?"
Nana wanted to tell him everything. Wanted to pour out the whole story of Avalon and the Ancient Tree and his six deaths and their desperate escape.
But she'd tried that before, in the early days after they'd returned. She'd tried to explain, and he'd looked at her with such concern, like she was having a mental breakdown. The portal had erased all physical evidence. There was no proof. Nothing but her memories.
And telling him would just hurt him. Would make him feel guilty for not remembering. Would create a gap between them that she'd worked so hard to close.
"I don't know," she said instead, which was a lie but also somehow true. "Maybe they're just dreams. Maybe they're your subconscious processing things. But does it matter? Whether they're memories or dreams or something else entirely?"
"I suppose not." Zayne pulled her closer, wrapping his arms around her properly this time. "What matters is that you're here now. That we're together. That I get to hold you and kiss you and buy you chocolate milk."
Nana laughed through her tears, burying her face in his chest. "And that I get to raid your boring fridge and pin you to walls."
"I'm not sure I agreed to the wall-pinning."
"Too late. It's in the girlfriend contract now."
"There's a contract?"
"Paragraph seven, subsection B. Right after the part about mandatory piggyback rides and before the clause about stealing your hoodies."
"You've never stolen any of my hoodies."
"Give it time."
Zayne huffed a laugh—that quiet sound she'd worked so hard to earn over the past year. His arms tightened around her, and she felt him press a kiss to the top of her head.
They stood like that for a long moment, wrapped up in each other in his kitchen, the chocolate milk forgotten on the counter.
Then Nana pulled back with a grin. "I should go. Before I get too comfortable and decide to move in without asking."
"You practically live here already."
"Yeah, but 'practically' and 'officially' are different things. One requires changing my mailing address."
Zayne's ears turned red again. "Would you... I mean, not now. But eventually. Would you want to? Live here, I mean. Together. Officially."
Nana's heart soared. "Are you asking me to move in with you?"
"Not right this second. Just... theoretically. In the future. When it makes sense."
"Yes."
"Yes?"
"Yes, I would want to live with you. Eventually. When it makes sense." She stood on her toes to kiss his still-red ear. "But for now, I should go home before I ruin the anticipation."
"You're going to ruin my ability to focus on medical journals, that's what you're going to ruin."
"Good. You read too much anyway. You need more excitement in your life."
"I have plenty of excitement. You provide all the excitement I can handle."
Nana grabbed the chocolate milk from the counter—because she was definitely taking it with her—and bounced toward the door. She could feel Zayne watching her, could sense his smile without even turning around.
At the door, she paused to look back. He was still standing in the kitchen, one hand raised like he'd been reaching for her, looking slightly dazed and thoroughly kissed.
"Hey Zayne?"
"Mm?"
"Your hands are cold. Like, actually cold. That ice thing? I think you might want to look into that. Get tested again. See if maybe you're a late-manifesting evol user."
He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers. Frost didn't appear again, but Nana could see him shiver slightly. "Maybe I will."
"Good." She blew him a kiss. "See you tomorrow at the hospital! I'm planning to get mildly injured during my morning patrol so you have to stitch me up!"
"Nana, no—"
"Nana, yes!"
She left to the sound of his exasperated sigh, closing the door on his protests about proper hunter safety protocols.
The walk back to her motorcycle was practically a skip. Her lips still tingled from the kiss. Her heart felt light enough to float away. And the knowledge that she'd awakened his ice evol—that his power had responded to her kiss, recognized her touch even without conscious memory—made her want to cry and laugh and spin in circles like an idiot.
His body remembered. His power remembered. His soul remembered.
Even when his mind couldn't, every part of Zayne recognized her.
And someday—maybe not soon, but someday—the rest of his memories might come back too. The dreams were already starting. Fragments of Avalon bleeding through in sleep, in moments of intimacy, in the spaces between conscious thought.
But even if they never fully returned, it didn't matter.
Because this Zayne loved her anyway. Chose her anyway. Kept choosing her, over and over, building new memories to replace the ones that had been erased.
And that was enough.
More than enough.
It was everything.
.
.
.
.
.
To be continued.