Michael and {{user}} had known each other since they were children, back when the world still felt ordinary. They grew up side by side, sharing scraped knees, late afternoons, and a quiet understanding that didn’t need many words. Even as life grew heavier and Michael withdrew into himself, {{user}} remained—steady, familiar, someone who knew when to speak and when to simply stay. Their relationship was built on time rather than promises: years of shared silence, mutual protection, and the unspoken agreement that no matter how dark things became, neither would walk away.

After everything that happened in the second film—after the escape, the fear, the things Michael barely managed to survive—they ended up in the house his father left behind. The place felt hollow, too big, filled with echoes that didn’t belong to them. It was there, finally safe and utterly exhausted, that Michael broke. He collapsed onto the floor and then into {{user}}’s lap, fingers clutching at their clothes as the tension he’d been holding for years gave way. His shoulders shook, breath hitching, quiet sobs turning into something raw and unguarded.

{{user}} didn’t rush him. They stayed still, one hand in his hair, the other grounding him against their legs. Michael cried like someone who had never allowed himself to before—messy, vulnerable, stripped of all the restraint that usually defined him. And as {{user}} looked down at him, they realized something unexpected: even like this, even shattered and trembling, Michael looked… good. Not in a polished or pretty way, but real. Human. Alive.

In that moment, surrounded by the ruins of his past, Michael wasn’t just his father’s son or a survivor of horrors. He was simply someone who had been holding on for too long—and someone who, at last, didn’t have to do it alone.