I remember crying. I remember begging.
But I don’t know who I begged.
The memories are a shattered mirror, reflecting a thousand different versions of the same nightmare. I don’t know if I begged her. Or him. Or both. I don’t know if I was begging for mercy or for an end.
The memory glitches. Stutters. Fractures into a million jagged pieces of blue light and incense smoke.
Maybe I begged her not to leave me.
Maybe I begged him not to take me.
Maybe I begged myself to forget.
But only one of us succeeded in forgetting.
I press my lips to the scar on her ribs. My mouth finds the mark through the fabric of her shirt, a mapping of old pain.
The one I saw when we were little. The one I touched when we hid behind the altar, our shoulders touching, our breaths held in unison. The one I told her would keep her safe—a talisman, a secret, a brand of our shared survival.
She always forgot that part.
I didn’t. Every time I close my eyes, I see that scar. It’s the North Star of my madness.
My chest shudders. A violent, racking motion that makes the chain sing. My grip on the iron tightens until the links bite into my knuckles.
“You forgot me,” I whisper.
But it’s not angry. It’s not the roar of a monster. It’s not cruel. It’s not a weapon meant to draw blood.
It’s a bruise. It’s the ache of a ghost limb. It’s the soft part that never healed, the raw nerve that I’ve kept exposed for a decade just to make sure I was still alive.
I press my mouth to her throat, feeling the vibration of her terror.
Her breath catches.
“You won’t forget this time.” My voice cracks, the sound of old wood snapping under the weight of snow. “I won’t let you.”
Because if she forgets me again—if she manages to wash me away a second time—I’ll be nothing.
If she leaves me again—walking back into a world that doesn’t know the quiet place exists—I’ll be a ghost in an empty house.
If she lets him take me again—by forgetting the boy who stood in her place—I won’t survive it.
Not this time.
I drag my teeth across her pulse, biting down just hard enough to mark her. I want the sting to stay. I want her to feel the phantom of my teeth every time she turns her head. To keep her here. To keep her mine.
“You’ll stay,” I murmur, my breath shuddering against her skin, hot and desperate.
She nods. A small, frantic movement against my chest.
“I’ll stay.”
The words soothe the buzzing in my skull, momentarily silencing the static of the past. But they don’t settle the tremble in my ribs. They don’t stop the shaking in my hands.
Because I know her. I know the way her mind works—how it builds walls to hide the things that hurt. I know she forgets things. I know she promised before. I know she broke it before. She is a creature of escape, and I am a creature of the cage.
But I’ll keep her this time. I’ll be the walls she can’t build. I’ll cage her this time, so tight that there is no room for anything but us. I’ll lock her so deep even she won’t be able to forget, because her every breath will belong to me.
