You hadn’t meant to find him again.

After everything—the cold cell, the heavy boots echoing down concrete halls, the slow, cracking realization that he'd handed you over—you had sworn you wouldn’t look back. You had stumbled through the wreckage of the city with blood crusted in your hair and a hole somewhere deep in your chest where his name used to sit.

Yet there he was, leaning against the crumbling husk of a burned-out skytrain station, like some ghost that refused to die. The world behind him was red with the setting sun, throwing his silhouette into something raw and broken. For a long moment, you just stared. Half of you expected him to vanish if you blinked. Part of you wanted him to.

You hadn’t seen the moment he made the trade. You hadn’t heard the words he said. You only knew that one second he was at your side, your shadow against the ruins, your anchor in the chaos—and the next, you were alone, stripped of everything, left to rot in a cell built for people who didn’t matter.

He lifted his head when he felt your gaze. You saw it then—the way his shoulders slumped, the way he didn’t reach for his weapon, didn’t even straighten up. He looked at you like someone staring at a memory already slipping through his fingers.

Your chest tightened, breath catching somewhere between rage and grief.

You thought you'd feel hatred when you saw him again. You thought it would fuel you, keep you standing when your knees wanted to buckle. But there was no hate. Just that endless, aching question.

Why?

For a moment, the world was silent, save for the distant crackle of a dying city. He took a step toward you, slow, hesitant, like a man walking through a minefield he knew he wouldn't survive.

You flinched back before you could stop yourself. His hand dropped limply to his side.

The words burned at the back of your throat, but you bit them down. You wouldn’t give him that. You wouldn’t ask for an explanation that wouldn’t fix anything. Some wounds weren’t meant to heal.

His mouth opened, and closed. He looked older than you remembered. Tired. Like every step he took carried a weight he couldn’t shake off.

Finally, he said, voice rough like gravel, "You're alive."

You almost laughed—sharp, bitter.
Alive.
Alive, when it had been easier not to be. Alive, when every day since had been a battle against the voice in your head whispering that you weren’t worth saving. That even he had known it.

You turned, ready to leave him there. Let him carry his ghosts alone. But then he said your name—soft, like a prayer or a confession—and it pinned you to the spot.

"I had to," he rasped out. "They had you marked. They were closing in. If I'd fought—if I'd stayed—"

His voice broke, and for a moment, he was the man who had taught you how to strip a rifle blindfolded, who had stitched your wounds with shaking hands and whispered old songs when the nights grew too long.

"I thought... if they took you and let me go, I could come back for you. I could find a way to get you out."

He hadn’t come. Days, weeks—you had waited. Believing, even when belief hurt more than anything else.

You shook your head, the motion too small, too shattered to mean anything. "You didn't."

It was barely a whisper, but it sliced through the air between you. He closed his eyes, and for a moment, he looked like he might collapse under the weight of it.

"I didn’t," he said. "I failed you."

You wanted to scream. You wanted to claw the hurt out of your ribs. You wanted to tell him that you had trusted him more than you had trusted yourself—that in a world built on betrayal and ruin, he had been the only thing that felt safe.

But all you did was stand there, letting the distance between you stretch wider, an invisible chasm neither of you would cross.

He dropped to one knee, not out of reverence, but because it was the only way he could stay upright. His hand curled against the dirt. His head bowed.

"I'm sorry," he said, and it wasn’t an excuse, wasn’t a plea. Just a simple, broken truth.

It didn’t fix anything.