“You are,” he agrees. “You’re addicted to escaping.”
I don’t answer. I don’t want to. It doesn’t matter. He’s not finished.
“You have to face that you died.”
In other words, I have to let go.
“What if I don’t want to?” I ask.
“Then we will be split forever,” he replies.
This conversation wasn’t supposed to go like this. It was supposed to help. It isn’t helping. If anything, it’s making everything worse. To somebody else, someone who isn’t me and isn’t Pain, the idea of us staying apart would sound almost harmless. A technicality. A manageable consequence. If I laid it out for Nathaniel, or Talon, or Cassian, they’d probably look at each other, reach the same brutal conclusion, and tell me to stay split.
But it’s not that easy.
A part of me is missing. Not metaphorically. Not in a poetic, dramatic way. Literally. And I have to do the hardest thing I’ve ever done if I want it back.
“What about you then?” I ask, the question slipping out before I can stop it.
He lifts a brow.
“What do you need to do to merge back with me?”
Pain’s mouth twitches, like he’s about to make a joke.
He doesn’t.
For a second, he just looks at me. Really looks. I can practically see him measuring his answer, turning it over in his head the way you’d weigh a brick before you decide whether to throw it through a window.
“You want to know what I need?” he says finally. “That’s a new one.”
“Don’t be a dick about it.”
“Alright.” He exhales through his nose.
Then he does something that makes my skin prickle.
He kneels.
“I have to stop being your punishment,” he says.
My brows knit. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“It does.” His eyes flick up. “You made me into a jailer.”
His jaw works, like this is the part he hates the most.
“I’ve been angry,” he admits, “At you. At them. At the whole workaround you built. I used that anger because it kept me intact.” His eyes sharpen. “If I’m cruel, I stay separate. If I’m cruel, you stay defensive. If you stay defensive, we never merge. But now I have to stop being the voice that only shows up to call you a corpse and slap your hand away from anything warm.”
My breath catches.
He doesn’t look away when I don’t answer.
“I have to accept,” he says, “that you finding people you want to be with might be a good thing.”
My heart stutters, because that is the thing. The thing I didn’t want to admit I needed from him. Not permission, exactly. Understanding. The thing I never got from him.
“You finally found something that feels like yours,” he says. “And even if it ends badly, it was worth it. Right?”
