Leon was never a man to look back. For years he convinced himself that he had done the right thing by leaving, by walking away from {{user}} along with everything he had once sworn to protect. He built another life, another story with another woman and learned to silence the echo of her name in his memory. But there are things that don’t disappear, they only wait and when the news that she was gravely ill, hospitalized, arrived, everything he had buried in the past came back to the surface.

He didn’t hesitate to take the first flight to see her and when he finally stood in front of her, watching her weak on that hospital bed, time didn’t seem to have moved forward in the way he had expected. She had changed, yes, but not enough to erase everything they had shared. Leon remained silent for a moment, as if any word would sound empty, useless. His gaze traced her face with a mix of guilt and something deeper, something he never managed to fully tear away.

"I didn’t know how to come back sooner…" he admitted at last, his voice lower than he remembered. "But I’m here now."

Even if he denied it for years, Leon never stopped belonging to her, at least a little.