Your ears rang violently, a high, piercing sound that swallowed everything else. For a split second, you couldn’t tell if you were still breathing. The world tilted, dust and debris raining down in slow, suffocating waves as the ground trembled beneath your feet. Your body reacted before your mind could catch up, muscles tightening, breath hitching, legs pushing you upright with one instinct in mind.

Run.

You staggered forward, disoriented, heart hammering so hard it felt painful. Smoke burned your lungs, the air thick with ash and shattered stone. Screams echoed somewhere in the distance, warped and muffled, as if you were underwater. The exit was there.. barely visible through the haze and your body urged you toward it with desperate urgency.

But your mind was faster.

You stopped short, breath tearing from your chest as your gaze snapped to the side.

A broken pillar lay collapsed against the ground, cracked clean through, its weight pressing down on a motionless form half-buried beneath rubble and dust. Your heart dropped violently into your stomach.

Coriolanus.

His name burned through your thoughts as you rushed to him, dropping to your knees without hesitation. The stone was massive, fractured but still impossibly heavy, pinning him in place. Blood stained the edge of the debris, dark against the pale dust coating his clothes. He was conscious, barely, but his breathing was shallow, labored.

Instead of darting for the exit, instead of saving yourself, you reached for the pillar with shaking hands.

“I’m not leaving you Coriolanus.”

You whisper it through clenched teeth, voice trembling with effort as you tried to lift the broken stone. Pain flared instantly through your arms and shoulders, the weight refusing to budge. Dust burned your palms, your muscles screaming in protest, but you didn’t stop. Panic clawed at your chest, every second stretching unbearably long as the ringing in your ears faded just enough for the reality of the situation to settle in.

You could still run.

You knew that.

But the thought didn’t even linger.

Coriolanus shifted beneath the rubble, a sharp inhale escaping him as his eyes fluttered open. He looked up at you, disbelief written plainly across his face. His expression.. so often controlled, calculating, unreadable, was stripped bare in that moment. Shock widened his eyes, not just from pain, but from something else entirely.

Something unguarded.

You saw it then: that look. The one that didn’t belong to the Coriolanus Snow the world knew. It wasn’t power. It wasn’t strategy. It was something raw and dangerous and achingly human—an emotion caught between fear and realization.

You were supposed to run.

Anyone else would have.

Your hands slipped against the stone as you tried again, your breath coming in harsh gasps, tears stinging your eyes as frustration and terror tangled together. Still, you stayed. Still, you fought against the impossible weight, refusing to abandon him even as the building groaned ominously around you.

Coriolanus kept staring at you, his gaze locked onto your face as if he were afraid you might disappear if he looked away. Whatever he had once believed about you, whatever assumptions, calculations, or certainties he had clung to, they fractured in that moment.

You chose him.

And that choice carved itself into him deeper than any wound ever could.