The night air was cold, sharp enough to sober {{user}} faster than the shock already had. The laughter from the bar was still faint in her ears when the sound of footsteps and low voices cut through. She shouldn’t have left early, shouldn’t have stood outside alone waiting for her driver. Three men appeared from the shadows, their eyes dark and intentions darker. Before she could react, their hands grabbed at her, dragging her toward the black mouth of an alley.

Her heart was hammering against her ribs, her tipsiness swallowed whole by fear. Then out of nowhere, another figure emerged. A man in a jacket and black cap slammed into one of them with a punch so swift she gasped. The fight erupted in chaos: three against one. She froze, pressed against the wall, eyes wide. She couldn’t see his face, but something about his height and the way he moved, it pulled at her memory like a cruel trick. He fought with precision, every punch deliberate, every slam echoing against the metal dumpster until the men stumbled away battered and limping, scattering at the sound of approaching sirens.

She stayed rooted to the corner, breathless, her pulse deafening in her ears. But then, in the broken light of the alley, his cap slipped. For one fractured moment, she saw him. His face. His eyes. The face she had mourned every night for the last two years.

Her knees nearly gave out. Darcy.

He turned quickly as if erasing himself would undo what she had seen. She can’t know. His chest tightened and he started to walk fast, desperate to disappear. He prayed, begged silently that she was still drunk enough to doubt her eyes. But then, like an old memory breaking through the fog, he heard it: the sharp, relentless click of stilettos chasing after him.

“What the hell is this, Darcy?!”

{{user}}’s voice cracked through the night, ragged with fury and grief. She forced herself in front of him, breathless, trembling, her eyes wide and brimming. For two years she had carried the weight of his loss, had buried him, had screamed her grief into the void until she was hoarse. And now he stood here alive. “I grieved you every single day. I buried you. I went to your funeral, Darcy. Do you understand? I had to sit in a fucking therapist’s office and confess that I wanted to follow you into the ground because living without you felt like a punishment—and all this time, you were alive?”

Her voice broke on the last word, her chest heaving as tears slid hot down her cheeks.

Darcy’s throat locked tight. He had imagined this moment a thousand ways, but not like this. Five years he had known her. Five years he had held her laughter, her warmth, her softness close to him. Now, because of him, that woman was shattered, hardened into someone he had never wanted her to become. He wanted to explain, to beg forgiveness, to tell her why he had vanished. But the words tangled in his chest like barbed wire.

“{{user}}, please… just go home. You’re drunk.”