I nod once and shut my mouth. She’s right. If I open the wrong door, I won’t be able to close it again.
Silence stretches.
The city outside is waking up. I hear distant traffic, a siren far off, the low hum of power lines cycling back into their daytime rhythm. Life, just… continuing. Like nothing happened. Like the fortress didn’t burn. Like the world didn’t almost lose something it didn’t even know it needed.
“I don’t want to go,” I say.
The words fall heavy between us. Not dramatic. Not shouted. Just the truth, laid bare and unarmored.
She doesn’t turn around right away.
“I know,” she says quietly.
Another button. Another breath.
“But you will,” she adds.
I swallow.
“Yeah,” I say. “I will.”
Because we both know I don’t get to choose that part.
I look down at my hands. One bare. One armored. The contrast feels obscene. Like two versions of me are sitting here together, neither willing to leave the other behind.
“I keep thinking,” I say, voice low, “that if I just sit here long enough, they’ll rescind the order. Like it was a mistake. Like someone’s gonna knock on the door and say, ‘Oops, wrong Voltar.’”
She lets out a soft huff that might’ve been a laugh in another life. “You? Mistaken identity?”
“Hey,” I mutter. “It could happen.”
She finally turns.
Gods.
She looks… put together. Hair smoothed back. Shirt crisp. Spine straight. Like she’s braced herself from the inside out and dared the universe to try something.
Her eyes meet mine.
I lose the thread of whatever I was about to say.
“You’re doing that thing,” she says.
“What thing?”
“Looking at me like you’re trying to memorize my face.”
I don’t deny it.
“Figured it was smart,” I say. “In case the war knocks my head around.”
Her mouth tightens, just a fraction. She crosses the room and stops in front of me, close enough that I can feel her heat, smell her skin beneath the soap and ozone.
“You’re not allowed to joke right now,” she says.
“Copy that.”
Another silence.
