Not the version he shows the world. Not the version he lets the tourists believe.
Him. The man who survived this. The man who chose gentleness anyway.
It’s not the dizzy, abstract kind of love I used to read about and mentally file under “probably exaggerated for narrative impact.” It’s not a crush. It’s not hero worship.
It’s recognition. Reliability. A sudden, terrifying clarity that feels less like falling and more like finding a door I’ve been circling for years.
It’s knowing, in my bones, that I have just watched one of the worst things that was ever done to him—and I still see the man who brought me dinner and sat at my table and said, “I stand beside, not in front” like that was the easiest choice in the world.
It’s seeing what he could have become and what he chose to become instead.
Terrifying.
And also… strangely steady. Like the feeling after you solve an equation and everything balances.
He’s watching me with that intense focus he has, and I wonder if he can see it written on my face. The realization. The recognition. I don’t know if I want him to or if I’m afraid he will.
Not yet. Not until after the fight.
But soon.
“You are quiet,” he says.
“That’s new?” I manage.
He snorts softly. “You are quiet in different way.”
I breathe out slowly, my muscles unclenching. Not panic—recognition. A moment you don’t walk back from.
“I’m… recalibrating,” I say. “Fitting new data into an existing framework.”
His mouth quirks. “Is that what you call watching men hit each other with sticks?”
“Yes,” I say. “It’s very technical.”
The joke lands exactly where I needed it to, loosening the tension without making it disappear. He leans his forearms on the top rail, next to my hands, so close that his heat rolls off his skin.
“The others will be done soon,” he says. “If you stay, you will see more. Some you will like. Some you will not.”
Watching the others only sharpens the shape of what he carries—different bodies, different traumas, the same inheritance of violence.
“I can handle it,” I say. And to my surprise, I mean it. “I don’t want a cleaned-up version.”
He nods once, accepting that.
“And the complaint?” he asks after a moment. “You do not forget it while you watch us?”
“No,” I say. The word settles easily now. “It’s still there. Looming. The possibility that they’ll try to crush me for speaking up. But…”
I look back at him, at the way he stands now—breathing hard, sweat-slick, fully himself.
“But?” he prompts.
“But watching you fight makes it feel less like I’m doing something impossible,” I say slowly. “You survived much worse with much less. I can handle a committee with email access.”
A flicker of something like pride crosses his face. Not pride in himself. In me.
“Good,” he says. “You remember that. When they send stupid letters, you think of Cassius trying to hit me on the head instead.”
