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I pause for a moment, and I think back, without really meaning to… To that time.

When my mother died, when my father became increasingly violent, when everything started falling apart without anyone on the outside really noticing.

The years when my body got broken more times than it has ever been healed.

My drawings were full of shaky lines, of shapes that didn't really make sense. Monsters. Things that resembled what I felt more than what I saw. Nothing pretty, nothing calm.

Even the thoughts written next to them were messy. Every drawing was pure noise on paper.

I swallow hard, trying to smile because I don’t want to worry him. “I was a very sad little girl back then,” I finally say quietly. “And my drawings were just as sad.”

He doesn’t answer right away, he just… stays next to me. As if silence was something he never felt the need to fix when it happened between us.

I keep walking, but nothing really holds my attention the way he does. Everything else fades a little too fast; the portraits, the statues, everything. My focus keeps returning to him.

“I prefer your current version then,” he says softly.

“The one who draws on the desks in class?”

“That one,” he confirms, full of confidence.

“So you’re encouraging bad behavior, then?”

He shrugs, “Precisely.”

We keep walking by statues, and beautiful paintings, all of it sliding past like it’s not really part of the same world we’re in. Everything is still and composed. And all I can feel is him. His hand is still in mine. His presence is still next to me. His warmth is still here. I notice it again, then I stop noticing it. Then I noticed it again.

His thumb moves once, then again, and for some reason, my heart follows the movement.

I look away from the art without meaning to, floating around with a warm feeling in my chest.

“You know…” he says. I turn my head and he’s not looking at me yet. “I’ll make sure your future self never has to draw sad things.”

I swallow, but it doesn’t really help, because my mind immediately does that thing where it tries to understand it, then stops halfway through the thinking.

Future self.

I never really imagined there would be a future version of me. For a long time, I didn’t think I was meant to become anything that came after. I didn’t think I’d still be here, still breathing through days I once thought I wouldn’t survive. Still learning how to exist in a world I kept trying to leave.

Future me, not drawing sad things anymore.

Not together, or maybe together. I don’t know why that thought even comes.

I keep walking but my steps feel slightly off for a second, like I forgot the rhythm we had and need to find it again. His hand doesn’t change, it still is holding mine like it never considered doing anything else.

I glance at him, and I think, stupidly, and quietly, that no one has ever said anything about my future like it included them in it.

We turn a corner and stop in front of a bench. A portrait hangs there above it, darker than the others. The face is still, in a painful, unfinished way, like it’s been left behind rather than painted. Sad, almost, as if the painter tried to leave something of himself behind after everything else had already gone, his life included.

Damien pulls me down with him, and suddenly we’re sitting side by side. The bench creaks softly under us, but neither of us moves after that.

We just stay there, facing the portrait like it asked us to stop. It feels strange how natural that is. How easy it becomes to exist beside someone without needing to justify the space you take.

His hand is still in mine. Fingers intertwined, and carefully linked.

“Don’t you ever think it’s a little insane… this need to be remembered?” I say, without thinking.

He turns his head slightly. “What do you mean?”