After, he cleaned up quick then gathered me close, my back to his chest. We lay quiet, breathing syncing as city lights painted patterns on his ceiling.
"I wasn't lying," he said eventually. "About loving you."
"I know." I laced our fingers over my stomach. "I don't know how to say it back yet. The words are all tangled with him."
"Then don't say it. Just feel it. However that looks for you."
"It looks like this," I said. "Like choosing to stay when every instinct says run. Like letting you see me shake apart. Like trusting you to put me back together after."
"That's enough. More than enough." He kissed my temple. "Question though?"
"Mmm?"
"You said twenty-three when he recruited you. How long were you there?"
"Twelve weeks" I did the math. "I'm twenty-four now. I lost some time after they abandoned me, when I thought I was going to die."
"You're young. You have a lot of life ahead to build something better."
"With him alive out there?" I laughed bitterly. "He won't let me go, Nathan. Not really. I'm his greatest success. His perfect proof of concept."
"Then we make sure he can't touch you again."
"How?"
"By being what he never expected." Nathan pulled me closer. "By you healing. Growing. Becoming someone who doesn't need his structure to survive."
"That could take years."
"Good thing I'm patient."
I turned in his arms, studying his face in the dim light. "Why are you doing this? Really?"
"Because you're worth it." Simple. Certain. Shattering. "Because everyone deserves a chance to discover who they are outside their damage. Because—" He smiled, crooked and real. "Because I'm selfish enough to want to be the one who gets to watch you bloom."
"I might never be normal."
"Normal is overrated. I just want you whole." He traced my cheekbone. "However that looks."
I kissed him, pouring everything I couldn't say into the connection. Gratitude and terror and something that might have been the seed of love, planted in soil I was still learning to tend.
When we broke apart, I said, "Moscow."
"What?"
"If we're going hunting, we need information. Real intel, not Dmitri's scraps." I met his eyes.
"You sure you're ready for that?"
"No. But I'm tired of running from ghosts." I settled against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. "Time to face them. All of them."
"Together?"
"Together."
The word felt like a vow. Like choosing a future neither of us could predict but both of us wanted to survive. Outside, the city pulsed with neon life, unaware that two broken people were learning to build something whole.
I'd signed my autonomy away at twenty-three, desperate for quiet in the chaos. At twenty-four, I was choosing to reclaim it, one terrifying free decision at a time.
