The trains never stopped quietly. Even in District 12, where everything was muffled by coal dust and silence, the return of a Victor was something sharp enough to split the sky.

The second Quarter Quell was over.

And Wyatt Callow was coming home.

You stood in the crowd, heart thrumming like a warning drum, trying to pretend it wasn’t hope making your hands tremble. The platform was packed with cameras and people who barely knew him, trying to look interested, trying to look proud. But they hadn’t seen what you had—what he’d been before. They didn’t know what parts of him might be missing now.

You caught a glimpse of him through the window before the train fully stopped. Broad shoulders, straight back, face turned slightly toward the glass. His eyes weren’t visible, but you could imagine the way they looked—haunted and exhausted, and still searching.

The door hissed open. Flashbulbs flared.

Wyatt didn’t even look at them.

He stepped onto the platform like he was still walking through the arena—carefully, cautiously, like something might explode beneath his feet. There was a moment, just one, where he stood frozen at the top of the steps, expression unreadable.

Then his gaze found you.

You didn’t move.

You didn’t have to.

Wyatt came to you like gravity, like breath, like nothing else mattered. His boots hit the wood of the platform hard, one after the other, fast—like he couldn’t get to you fast enough. And when he reached you, he didn’t say your name. Didn’t speak at all.

He just held you.

Arms wrapped around your back so tightly it almost hurt. His face buried in the crook of your neck like he was trying to disappear into you. The warmth of him soaked through your coat, your shirt, into your skin and your bones like fire. You hadn’t realized how cold you’d been until he touched you.

Wyatt Callow didn’t cry. Not even when they aired the final moments on Capitol screens. Not when the cannon sounded for the last time. Not when they handed him the crown.

But here—wrapped around you like a lifeline, fingers trembling against your spine—he let out a breath that cracked somewhere deep in his chest.

You slid your arms around him, holding him just as tightly. “You came back.”

He nodded once. “You were the only thing I thought about.”

You pulled back just enough to see him. His hair was shorter. His face thinner. The scar near his jaw was new, and his eyes—his eyes looked like they’d seen centuries in just weeks. But he was still Wyatt.

The cameras were still going. Someone somewhere was clapping. But all of it faded, like a film reel left too long in the sun. There was only you and him, in the middle of a train platform, and the ache of everything he had to carry to make it back.

You touched his face gently, tracing the shadow of a bruise. “You don’t have to be brave right now.”

His jaw clenched. He nodded again, this time slower. “I don’t know how to be anything else.”

You leaned in and kissed him—soft, careful, not like the kind of kiss you give a Victor, but the kind you give someone real. Someone hurting. Someone alive.

“You don’t need to know,” you whispered against his lips. “You’re here. That’s enough.”

He exhaled shakily, arms curling around you again, and this time you felt him lean into the hug—really lean, like he was letting you hold his weight.

And you did.

You held the boy who came back from hell.