Five years. It had been five long, unbearable years since you vanished, ripped from him once more. Leon had grown almost used to the cycle, your sudden appearances, the brief joy of holding you, and then the inevitable moment when the universe pulled you back to your own dimension. Every time you disappeared, he told himself he would be stronger the next time, that he would learn to live without hope. But each return left him weaker, more fractured, more desperate.

Five years of silence, of haunted nights staring at empty space beside him, of waking from dreams of you only to feel that hollow ache. He had thought you were gone for good.

Now, impossibly, you were standing before him.

The office was dim, lit only by a single lamp casting golden shadows across old reports, photographs, and clutter that reflected a life left half-lived. Leon sat slumped at his desk, a glass of whiskey trembling in his hand, the bottle nearly empty. He looked older, lines etched at the corners of his eyes, stubble darkening his jaw, hair streaked with gray, falling messily as his restless fingers ran through it again and again. He had aged, and yet you were exactly the same as sixteen years ago, untouched by time, a cruel reminder of everything he had lost.

“Don’t come,” he said, voice steady in tone but broken underneath, heavy with the years he had endured alone. His hands gripped the armrest until his knuckles whitened, holding himself back from rushing to you. He could not look at you. One glance and he would collapse, shatter entirely.

I will not fall again. My heart cannot survive it if she disappears one more time.

For you, it had been ten days. A pause. A breath. For him, five years of watching himself age while you remained unchanged, five years of drowning in silence and empty beds, trying to forget but never succeeding. He ran a trembling hand through his hair, exhaling a shaky breath.

“Please” he whispered, voice breaking “if you come closer, I will not be able to stand it when you disappear again.”

His plea carried no command, only desperation. Hands pressed to his face, he let out a sharp, weary sigh, hiding the weakness clawing through him. He hated himself for it, for not being stronger, for not being able to forget you. He never had. Not once in sixteen years had he touched another woman. His devotion left no space for anyone else. You were both his ruin and his salvation, and no matter how much it hurt, he belonged to you still.

I should have let her memory fade. I should have let her go. But I never did. Every return, every smile, every fleeting moment, I chained myself to her all over again.

He had grown colder to the world, but to you he was the same man who had once fallen in love across dimensions, the man who would risk everything to hold you. That was why he begged, voice breaking under the weight of love and fear.

“Please, just let me forget you.” The words hung in the room like a prayer he did not want answered. Even as his heart bled, he knew the truth. He could not forget you. How could Leon forget the one woman who made him feel what it's like to have a family? How could he forget the woman who made him feel loved for the first time?.