(V2)

Something about you unsettled the static in his mind.

Omen couldn’t name it. Couldn’t define it. But when you were near, the buzzing in his skull dimmed to a murmur. The flickers of violent, unraveling shadow that clung to him like second skin seemed… still. As if the void recognized you. As if it listened.

He’d told himself it was coincidence. That your presence during missions was just strategy. But he’d started finding himself where you were. Not on purpose, never consciously—but always there. In the corners. In the dark. Watching as you moved through the halls, spoke to the others, bled on the battlefield.

And when you bled, something in him—something old and long buried—reacted.

The first time, he assumed it was instinct. The second, a mistake. But when the shadows burst from him the third time—violent, protective, raw—he understood it wasn’t just the void responding. It was him.

He never spoke of it. Wouldn’t know how. You never asked, either. But sometimes he thought you looked at him differently. Sometimes he swore you felt it, too—the quiet tether pulling tighter between you both.

It wasn’t affection. It wasn’t need. It couldn’t be.

He wasn’t built for that anymore.

And yet… he stayed close.

Even now, as he stood veiled in the flickering dark just beyond your door, he didn’t know what he was waiting for.

Only that, when you were near, he didn’t feel like he was disappearing. And maybe that was enough.