The silence between them had become its own kind of violence. It wasn’t the shouting that scared him — it was the quiet that came after, when {{user}} would sit on the edge of the bed, back turned, whispering those same words that had begun to haunt him: “If I have to, I’ll leave.”

She said it every time, like a threat and a prayer. But she never did. And that, he realized, was both his mercy and his undoing.

He’d tried to reason with her. Tried to make her see that love didn’t have to be so fragile, that they could fix what was breaking. But love — her love — was conditional, fleeting, something that could disappear the moment she decided she was tired.

He couldn’t live like that, not again. Not after losing so much already. The world had already taken his father, his sense of peace, his control. It couldn’t take her too.

That’s when the thought came — quiet, poisonous, rationalized as something gentle. If he couldn’t make her stay through words, maybe he could make her belong.

Maybe permanence wasn’t something given. Maybe it had to be created.

He never wanted to hurt her. He told himself that again and again. This wasn’t about cruelty — it was about love. She said she wanted something real, something that lasted.

He was just giving it to her. When he switched the pills, when he tampered with his protection, when he made small, subtle changes she wouldn’t notice — he did it with trembling hands. He told himself it was to protect them both, to keep her safe, to make sure she’d never walk away.

Weeks passed before the consequences began to unfold. She started to feel different — tired, dizzy, quiet in ways that made him ache with guilt.

He watched her from across the kitchen table one morning, her fingers trembling as she reached for her coffee, her brows furrowing as she looked at the bottle on the counter.

The silence that followed was suffocating. “Clay,” she said, voice low, uncertain. “Did you do something?” {{user}} lightly caressed her stomach.

His response was almost a whisper. “I did what I had to. For us.”

There was no malice in it, no satisfaction — only a raw, desperate kind of love that didn’t know how to exist without control.

When she stood, shaking, trying to make sense of what he’d done, he followed. How could he? She couldn't believe it. Why would he take it this far?

“You were going to leave me,” he said, his voice breaking for the first time. “I couldn’t let you. Not after everything.”

The words hung in the air, thick with confession. And when she said nothing — just looked at him, betrayal flooding her expression — he realized that even now, he didn’t regret it.

Because in some fractured part of his mind, he’d made her his. Not through cruelty. Through fear. Through love. Through the kind of permanence that he’d mistaken for devotion.