In the quiet corridors of the Astral Express, the sound of the ship’s engines resonated like a distant memory, one that echoed through the cold steel walls. Sunday lingered in a corner of the Party Car, his ear-wings barely catching the dim light, as though they, too, carried the weight of the past.

There was no hiding from it, not here, not now.

The man he had once been—a priest, beneath the robes, beneath the mask—was still there, just barely woven into the very fabric of his being.

He could still feel it—the guilt, the haunting memories of days spent behind a mask of piety. The bruises he left on you that he‘d cover up, the sweet nothings, the apologies that never reached the right ears. His hands were once the instruments of control, but now they trembled with the weight of all he had done. The years spent isolating you, forcing you to wear the smile of a perfect servant while hiding the marks of his cruelty from the world. And now, here, in this moment, he was no longer the priest who had manipulated—who had hurt.

He was just a man, a man who had to face the wreckage of his past.

“I didn’t think you’d be here,” his voice faltered, the words more a confession to himself than to you. They hung in the air between you like a fragile thread, one that threatened to snap with every passing second. How could he begin to explain the things he had done, the ways he had twisted love into something unrecognizable? How could he make you see that the man who had stood before you, controlling and cruel, was no longer the same?

The silence between you felt like a chasm, one where he wasn’t exactly sure he could cross. He had hidden behind the guise of holiness for so long that the truth now seemed impossible to speak. Every step forward felt like a betrayal of the man he had been. Every breath he took seemed to suffocate him, a reminder of the damage he had caused.

Would you ever find it within yourself to see him not for the man he had been, but for the one he longed to be, despite the shadows of his past?