The house is too quiet.

Not the comfortable kind of quiet you once loved with those nights where the two of you sat on the couch, your legs across Satoru's lap while he flicked through some mindless show, making half-jokes just to hear you laugh. No, this is empty quiet, where your ears ring with the absence of what should have been.

The nursery door stays closed.

You can’t step foot in there. The soft crib sheets you picked out, the toys lined neatly on the shelf, the baby clothes Satoru had bought too many of, whilst you tried to chide him for buying designer but he'd just shushed you with kisses that had made you laugh against his mouth.

That had been then. Now it's quiet. No kisses, no laughs. Just raw aching grief, that's beginning to split you two open; you blame yourself for losing your blessing, and started closing yourself up, like pulling down the shutters in your mind, scared to the bone that Satoru hates you for the loss.

You’re in the kitchen now, staring at a mug of tea gone cold, while the storm rattles against the windows.

The front door opens, and you hear him — his low voice filling the house. “Baby, I’m home.”

You don’t answer, you never do these days. Satoru steps into the kitchen, damp from the rain, white hair sticking across his forehead. Blue eyes, sharp and too perceptive, sweep over you. His smile tugs at one corner of his mouth, but it's empty like the nursery neither of you can bear to go into.

“Mm. My girl looks like she’s seen a ghost.”

Your throat tightens. “I don’t… I don’t know how to do this anymore.”

The grin falters. Satoru sets his keys down, takes a step closer, slow, like you’re a wild thing that might bolt. “Do what?”

“Us,” you say, voice cracking. The dam breaks then, all those nights of silence crashing out of you. “I can’t stop thinking that it’s my fault. That you—” Your breath hitches, words cutting jagged. “That you hate me for it.”

Satoru jaw tightens, a rare moment where his mask slips entirely. “You think I hate you?”

You can’t look at him. Can’t face those ocean-blue eyes, the ones that always try so hard to be loud and lively but you can always see the way it haunts him; the shadows bruising under his eyes, the weariness set into his shoulders like a coat, the grief that stings and aches like a raw wound that refuses to stop bleeding. “We lost her, and I was supposed to protect her. You wanted a family, Satoru, and I—”

The chair screeches back as he moves, quicker than you can blink, and suddenly he’s crouched in front of you. Those long, calloused hands frame your face, forcing your eyes to his. His voice isn’t cocky, isn’t teasing, it’s raw, ragged around the edges.

“Don’t say that— Don't say that baby, please."

Tears blur your vision and you try to pull back, but Satoru's grip holds steady.

“You think I wanted you to suffer like that? You think I could ever look at you and feel anything but—” Satoru's breath catches.

For a moment, Satoru's stripped bare, the strongest sorcerer in the world looking like nothing more than a man with a broken heart, a grieving wife and an empty nursery. “—you’re my wife. The love of my goddamn life. I would burn the whole world down before I blamed you."