I just sit there on the small couch near the bed, my knees pulled up, my head resting lightly against the cushion, listening to the soft hum of the air conditioner and the heavy, steady sound of his breathing, and before long the exhaustion that’s been pounding at the back of my skull starts pulling me under.
My eyes drift closed, just for a second, just long enough for the room to blur?—
Then he jolts upright with a violent, ragged inhale.
My heart jumps, my body snapping awake instantly, the blanket slipping off my lap as I scramble out of the couch and rush to his side. He’s sitting forward with his hands gripping the sheets so tightly his knuckles have gone white, chest rising in sharp, painful heaves. His eyes are unfocused, wide, like he’s still trapped somewhere he can’t escape from.
“Artyom,” I whisper, touching his arm gently. “Hey. Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay. You’re here.”
He drags a hand over his face, shaking, his breath catching like he’s swallowed broken glass, and it takes him a moment before his eyes finally find mine. There’s panic there, but also something deeper I’ve never seen before in his eyes.
I move without thinking and sit on the edge of the bed, reaching for his hand with slow, careful movements, the way you approach an injured animal you don’t want to startle. He doesn’t resist. His fingers curl around mine immediately, tight and desperate.
“She was calling me,” he whispers, his voice rough and cracked open. “I heard her… I heard her calling me again. My… my mom.”
I shift closer, gently pushing his hair back from his forehead. “It was a dream. Just a dream.”
“No,” he murmurs, shaking his head. “It wasn’t. It’s the same since I was a fifteen. I always see her… right before it happens.”
My breath stills.
“Tell me,” I whisper, because he needs to say it, because this isn’t a wound he can keep stitched shut forever.
He exhales shakily, his voice small in a way I’ve never heard.
“My father was at war with another powerful family in the city.” He pauses, staring somewhere over my shoulder, like the room has dissolved and he’s watching something behind it. “They came to kill him.”
His fingers tighten around mine, rough and shaking.
“They came at night. Three of them. I remember the sound before anything else—the door hitting the wall, my father yelling my name, my mother grabbing my arm so hard her nails dug in. She… she put herself in front of me.”
His throat works once, a painful swallow.
“She kept pushing me back, even when they were shouting at my father, and one of them cocked the gun. I was fifteen, Kira. Fifteen. Old enough to understand what was happening, too young to do a damn thing about it.”
His jaw tightens, a tremor running through it.
“She kept saying my name, telling me to stay behind her. I tried to pull her back, I swear I did, but she shoved me behind her and stood there like she could take the whole fucking world on her own.”
He blinks hard, his breath shaking.
“And one of them just… lifted his arm and shot. No warning. Just—” He stops, breath catching.
I slide my hand to his cheek, my thumb brushing his skin and he leans into it like he can’t help himself.
“She went down so fast,” he whispers. “I thought she slipped. I thought she’d stand up. I dropped to my knees and she—” Hisvoice thins, raw. “She looked at me like she was sorry. Like she had failed. She tried to speak and all this blood?—”
He squeezes his eyes shut.
“She apologized for not protecting me, while she was dying.” His breath breaks on the last word.
I wrap my arms around him immediately, because there’s nothing else to do, and he lets me pull him in, his forehead dropping against my shoulder, his breath warm against my skin, his whole body trembling with something he’s held on to for too many years.
His shoulders shake once, a subtle tremor that somehow hurts more than if he were sobbing openly. I slide my arms around him, pulling him into me, and he comes without resistance, lowering his head to my shoulder like he’s forgotten how to carry the weight of this alone.
He wraps one arm around my waist, carefully, pulling me close enough that our chests press together, and I can feel his breath on my collarbone, warm and uneven, can feel the tension in his body slowly unwinding under my hands.
“You were just a kid,” I whisper into his hair, my fingers tracing soothing lines down the back of his neck. “You couldn’t have saved her.”
