"I wish I couldn't have felt it," I tell her. "I wish the connection had cut off immediately. I wish I'd just made the choice and walked away clean."
Her breath catches.
"But it didn't. I felt every second. Felt your terror. Felt your pain. Felt the moment you started thinking maybe I was coming back." My marks are blazing now. Bright enough that her face is lit blue in the dim gym. "Felt the moment you realized I wasn't."
"Stop—"
"You want me to say something else? That's all I have. I left you. I felt you suffer. And I've replayed those ninety seconds every day for six years, looking for a different answer."
"And?"
"And I don't have one. The math was clear. I chose correctly." I meet her eyes. "I've hated myself every day since. But I'd do it again."
She shoves me away.
Stumbles back. Her breathing is ragged, her walls fracturing, emotions bleeding through faster than she can lock them down.
Rage. Pain. And underneath it all?—
That ghost of want. Stronger now. Close enough to the surface that she must feel it too.
"Get out," she says again. The words are cracked glass, fracturing on every syllable.
This time I go.
I make myself walk. Make myself put one foot in front of the other. Make myself not turn around when I hear the sound behind me—the soft thump of her body hitting the mat. The ragged intake of breath that's trying to be quiet and failing.
She's sinking to the floor.
I hear her trying not to cry. Hear the war she's fighting with her own throat, the way she's choking back sound like sound is surrender.
I keep walking.
Every step away from her feels like pulling against gravity. Like leaving the orbit of something that's already caught me.
My marks are still blazing. Still responding to everything I'm feeling from her through the connection I can't sever even when distance should deaden it. The rage bleeding into grief bleeding into something she won't name and I can't touch.
The gym door closes behind me.
I don't look back.
Because staying would mean reaching for her. And reaching for her would mean using my abilities to smooth this out, to calm her down, to make it easier.
I won't do that to her.
Not now. Not ever. Not when doing it would prove every terrible thing she believes about what I am.
Even if it means we both suffer through every second of this, her grief raw and unfiltered, my marks blazing with the echo of it, both of us drowning in what I can feel and can't fix.
Even if the restraint is killing me. Even if every instinct I have is screaming to reach back through our connection, topush calm into the storm, to make her stop hurting in ways I know exactly how to do.
I could. God, I could. My abilities are right there, waiting, eager. It would be so fucking easy.
I don't.
I make it back to my quarters on autopilot. Muscle memory carrying me through corridors I don't see, past personnel I don't acknowledge. My marks are still flaring—brilliant turquoise lighting my path like a beacon advertising exactly how fucked I am.
I reach my door. Seal it behind me.
