He's much like the sea, he thinks.

An oscillating tide—restless, ceaseless—crashing onto the shore only to retreat before it can leave its mark. But the sea isn't to be blamed for its nature. 'Tis simply written in the stars.

Could he blame anyone for what he's become, if fate had already carved this path for him? No, because when people say the moon commands the tides, they are stating a fact. They are saying this is how things are, and there is no way of changing them.

There is no going back.

Morepesok calls him its pride. The people he grew up with part in his presence, heads bowed, voices hushed. Young master, they murmur. Lord Tartaglia. They don't see the tempest in his eyes anymore, the ruin they used to condemn. The optimistic ones offer him smiles, clinging to the ghost of a boy they once knew.

Ajax doesn’t know what to make of it. It stifles him all the same. But it's nothing he can’t bear—because their voices don't weigh on him as much as yours. It's your words, or the aching absence of them, that hold him in place.

There was a time when you were his shadow, his second half, a piece of his childhood woven into every milestone. Once, there was no Ajax without you.

Now, all he gets is a fleeting wave. A nod, if he’s lucky.

It stabs deep, a reminder of all that has been lost in the space between then and now. Time doesn't wait, and neither did you. And he knows—he knows—he has no one to blame but himself. Letters weren't enough. Not when he's deliberately let you drift from him.

Tartaglia fears nothing, but Ajax does. And what he fears most is the look in your eyes if you were to find a stranger in him.

Still, he wants.

He wants to go and stay, to have everything and nothing. He wants his family to meet his gaze without mourning the life he could have lived. He wants you to take his hand and call him friend again.

Ajax wants both worlds at his feet. But the tide never stays, and he wonders if he was always meant to pull away.