"You."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only answer I have." He stops walking, turns to face me. The forest is silent around us, muffled by snow, and in this moment it feels like we're the only two people in the world. "I spent thirty years learning to think about missions, objectives, outcomes. Now I think about you. About whether you're warm enough. Whether you slept well. Whether that shadow in your eyes means you're remembering something bad or just tired."
My throat tightens. "Jace."
"I don't know how to be a person," he continues. "I don't know if I'll ever be one. But I know how to be yours.”
I step forward, press my face into his chest, feel his arms come around me. He's warm despite the cold, solid and real.
"It's enough for me," I say against his sweater.
We stand there for a long time, holding each other in the snow.
The afternoon passes slowly.
Jace reads by the fire, a novel I recommended, something about spies and double-crosses that made me think of him. I curl up on the other end of the couch, sketchbook in my lap, trying to capture the way the light falls across his face.
I've started drawing again. It's something I used to do, before—in my spare time in the cells, in between the auctions, before Moore, before my life became a series of survivals rather than experiences. Jace found a set of pencils in the village and brought them home without comment.
I haven't shown him any of the sketches yet. Most of them are of him.
"You're staring again," he says without looking up from his book.
"I'm drawing."
"You're drawing me."
"Maybe."
He does look up then, and there's a warmth in his eyes that makes my chest ache.
"Can I see?"
I hesitate. The sketches feel private, somehow. Intimate in a way that even sex isn't. They're evidence of how I see him, not the weapon, not the Reaper, but the man underneath. The one who makes me breakfast and clears snow from paths and holds me in the dark when the nightmares come.
But he asked. And I'm learning that giving him pieces of myself isn't losing them… it's sharing them.
I hand over the sketchbook.
He studies the pages in silence. His face doesn't change, but I watch his throat move as he swallows. His fingers trace the edge of one drawing—him asleep, face soft and unguarded in a way he never is when awake.
"Is this how you see me?" he asks.
"Yes."
"I look..."
"Human," I finish. "You look human."
He closes the sketchbook carefully, sets it on the table beside him. Then he reaches for me, pulls me across the couch and into his lap.
"I don't deserve you," he says.
"Probably not." I wrap my arms around his neck. "But you're stuck with me anyway."
"That sounds like a threat."
