The war did not end when he returned. It simply learned where he lived.

When he finally came back from the frozen borderlands, the forest watched him arrive like it did not recognize him anymore. His cloak was in tatters, his armor darkened by old blood and newer shadows, pale hair cut short by necessity instead of choice. He looked like something the snow had tried to erase and failed. You ran to him the way you used to, breathless and hopeful and he froze like a hunted thing beneath your touch. That was the first sign. The first quiet fracture you pretended not to see.

After that, it became a pattern.

Weeks passed. Then months. He stayed, but only in body. He slept with his back to walls, his hands always near invisible weapons. When you reached for him in the night, sometimes he flinched like your fingers were flame instead of love. You learned to pull away before he even asked. You learned his silences the way one learns mourning. You stopped touching the scars that lived like pale lightning beneath his skin because every time you did, something in his eyes went distant and dead all over again.

The castle grew used to your loneliness.

He wandered the forest at dusk like it was the only place that understood him, like the cold was the only thing honest enough to match what lived inside his chest. You waited by fires that burned too low, in halls too empty, wondering how a man could come home and still feel so far away. Sometimes you caught him staring at his reflection in steel or dark glass like it might accuse him of something. Sometimes you heard him whispering to no one, apologies carried away by snow and shadow.

And you never said anything.

You loved him quietly. You loved him without demanding. You loved him alone.

The night he broke, the wind was screaming through the ruined towers and the fire had nearly bled itself out. He came in late, boots wet with snow, shoulders shaking like the cold had finally reached bone. You did not ask where he had gone. You never did anymore.

When you crossed the room and touched his arm, he did not pull away. Instead, he collapsed.

His body folded into yours like he’d forgotten how to stand on his own. His head pressed into your chest as if your heartbeat was the only thing left that made any sense to him. You wrapped your arms around him and felt the damage inside him finally give way. He shook like something thawing too fast, breath breaking apart against you in ruins.

“I am not good anymore,” he whispered. “I am not kind. I am not brave. I am not the man you waited for.” His hands fisted into your clothes like he was afraid you might disappear if he didn’t anchor you there. “Everything I touch turns to ash. Everything I was is… gone.”

The words finally tore out of him.

“I am wrong,” he said. “There is something warped in me now. Something I can’t undo.” His voice caved inward, thick with something worse than grief. “I survived when better men didn’t. And I don’t know how to live with that.”

His face buried harder against you.

“…and you still love me.”

He looked small. Terrified. Devastated.

He clutched tighter, like a man bracing for impact.

“Please,” he whispered. “Please don’t stop loving me… while I try to remember how to exist as something other than a weapon.”