His mouth curves. “Good plan. Balanced. Very scholar-warrior of you.”
I roll my eyes, but I’m smiling.
He moves toward the door, finally snagging his shirt from where it landed last night.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“I give you privacy,” he says. “For shower. For thinking.” He waits without performing, without filling the silence with charm. “Unless you want me to stay.”
“I…” I glance at the bathroom, at the bed, at the open laptop with FORMAL RESEARCH ETHICS COMPLAINT glaring from the screen. “I’d like you to stay,” I say. “But not… hovering.”
“I can be not-hovering in the courtyard,” he says. “Or in your little kitchen, making real food.”
The idea of having him within reach but not underfoot settles something in me.
“Kitchen,” I say. “Real food sounds good.”
He nods, then pauses.
“Sophia?”
“Yeah?”
For a moment, the performer is completely gone. No charm, no grin, no teasing. Just Flavius—man, not Jester. The one who sat with me in silence while I shook, who watched as I wrote dates on a whiteboard while I reassembled my reality.
“I am proud of you,” he says simply. “For choosing yourself. For choosing truth. For choosing to fight.”
My eyes sting.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
He gives a small, almost shy nod, and then he turns to rummage in the fridge.
I stand in the quiet of my little bathroom, the morning light painting lines across the floor. In the other room, my laptop waits. The complaint document sits open, bare-bones but real. The path ahead is terrifying and unclear.
But for the first time since I saw Blackwell’s name at the top of my work, the hollow in my chest isn’t just loss.
It’s also space.
Space I’m going to fill with my own choices. My own fight. My own name.
I turn on the water and let the steam and heat chase yesterday’s residue from my skin. As water drums against tile, I think of the line I drew this morning between before and after.
Before: small, safe, strategic.
After: scared, yes—but standing.
By the time I’m dressed and padding barefoot back into the main room, the scent of eggs and toast perks me up.
I glance at the laptop one more time.
FORMAL RESEARCH ETHICS COMPLAINT – DRAFT.
Not submitted.
Not finished.
But begun.
