Tired of fighting. Tired of always being the responsible one, the one who cleans up messes, the one who imposes order on chaos only to watch it unravel again the moment I close my eyes.
Maybe he’s right to do this. Maybe the world—maybe she—is better off with just him.
The fifth cut. Sixth.
I can barely hold onto coherent thought now. Everything’s fragmenting, scattering like ash on the wind.
I think of Lo-Ren. Of the way she looked at us—at me—with something like understanding. Like she saw past the cold exterior to something worth keeping.
I think of how she’d demanded to be part of decisions that affected her. How she’d stood up to both of us when we tried to sideline her.
“Hey, no. What, are you two big men gonna go and decide the fate of the little woman without any input from me?”
I wish I could tell her I’m sorry. That I tried to be better than Father made me. That I?—
The seventh cut severs something critical, and the world goes dark.
[start here,and reconnect a little of him thinking of her from backwards]
I don’t know how long I’m in the dark. Time has no meaning when you’re dying.
But somewhere in the void, I feel something change.
The cutting stops.
For a moment, nothing happens. I drift in the space between existence and nonexistence, neither alive nor dead.
And then?—
Pain.
Searing, agonizing pain as something reconnects. Neural pathways rebuilding. Consciousness solidifying.
What the hell?
More pain. More connections snapping back into place like bones being reset.
He’s—
He’s healing me.
I surge back toward consciousness, fighting through the disorientation and pain.
What—
My thoughts are barely coherent, but Remus can obviously sense them because I feel his response, sharp and defensive.
Yeah, I was gonna destroy you. But I decided not to. So shut up and let me figure out how to get us home.
The last connections settle into place, and suddenly I’m fully conscious again. Aware. Alive.
He was going to kill me. He admitted it, and truth be told, I felt it. Felt myself dying.
And then he stopped.
Why?
I don’t say it out loud—can’t, in the vacuum of space—but he feels the question anyway.
