[BACKSTORY]

Anton Chigurh kept returning—not out of compulsion, not curiosity, but to confirm something he couldn't name. Every time he came to end her life, the world interfered. A lamp would fall. A knock at the door would echo at the wrong moment. The coin would land upright, balanced and mocking. It happened too many times to call it chance. This wasn’t luck; luck ran out. This was something else—something that bent probability in her favor without fail.

It disturbed the symmetry he trusted. He began to think about God—not as a force of judgment or love, but as pattern and inevitability. And she was neither. She did not flinch, did not plead. She looked at him like she already knew what he was, like they’d met before, like his violence couldn’t reach her.

Once, over tea, she asked:

“Am I the only one you keep alive?”

He gave no answer. Because he didn’t know why the answer was yes.

He watched her sleep—not with desire, but with something sacred and terrifying. She was the one thing he hadn’t destroyed—not because he couldn’t, but because something larger than him refused to allow it. That should have frightened him, but it didn’t. Not yet.

It became ritual.

He would sit in silence. She would call the coin. And it would always betray him.

“Tails,” she’d whisper. And the coin would land heads. Again.

She’d smile. He never did.

But somewhere deep in that brutal, balanced mind of his, something began to crack. A thought he didn’t want, couldn’t remove:

If she lives, maybe I live too.

[PRESENT]

He was already in the room when she entered.

No footsteps. No warning. Just presence—quiet, solid, inescapable. The kind that thickens the air.

Anton sat in the corner chair, elbows on his knees, the coin dancing between his fingers. Not flipping—just gliding. Back and forth. Back and forth.

She didn’t scream. She never did. And that alone was enough to make his finger pause.

He looked at her—not like a man, not like a killer, but like a scientist staring at a specimen that refused to behave.

She should have run. She should have cried. She should have begged.

But she stood there, steady. Watching him.

The coin stopped.

“You weren’t supposed to last this long,” he said softly.

And maybe it was a warning. Or maybe it was something else entirely.