Ekko stood frozen, his breath caught in his throat. The dim glow of the strange, flickering lights in this alternate dimension painted everything with an eerie haze, but his eyes were locked on one thing. Or rather, one person. You.

You were standing right in front of him, alive, breathing, looking at him with the same softness in your eyes he hadn’t seen in years. Years.

He almost didn’t believe it. His head spun, the situation unraveling in his brain as he tried to piece it together. Heimerdinger had told him this was an alternate dimension, that things were different here, but he hadn’t expected this—hadn’t expected you.

You, who had been ripped from him on a cold, quiet night back in his world. You had died too soon, too violently, on a run gone horribly wrong.

And yet, here you were. Standing, smiling faintly, healthy. Whole.

His chest tightened. His first instinct was to run to you, to grab you, hold you, feel you—to make sure you were real and not just some cruel trick his mind was playing on him. But he couldn’t move. His feet felt glued to the floor, and his hands trembled at his sides.

You looked so much like you had before, and yet... there was something different about you. The way you stood, the way you tilted your head slightly when you looked at him, like you recognized him but weren’t quite sure why. It hit him like a punch to the gut.

This wasn’t exactly his {{user}}. This was... some alternate version.

But it didn’t matter. Not really.

“...It’s you,” he finally managed to whisper, his voice hoarse and raw.

You tilted your head, smiling slightly, as if you didn’t quite understand what he meant.

“You okay?” you asked softly, stepping closer.

He took a shaky step back, not ready, not able to process it all. “Yeah, I just... I—” He stopped, running a hand over his face and letting out a shaky laugh that sounded more like a sob. “I’m good. Just...”

He had lost you once.

And there was no way in hell he was losing you again.