The scent of baking bread mixed with the crisp autumn air drifting in through the kitchen windows, a comforting, constant reminder that this, finally, was real. Downstairs, the sounds of your perfect, impossible life were in full swing: the rumble of Kit Walker’s deep baritone instructing a lesson on tractor parts, punctuated by the high-pitched, insistent demands of Marley, who was six, and the soft, musical giggle of four-year-old Isla.

You were married, living the high school dream on a small patch of land, raising a son and a daughter. You had fought your way out of the suffocating hell of Briarcliff, and yet, the specter of that place had begun to follow you up the stairs.

The coldness you had felt before, the profound and paralyzing instability that had earned you a straitjacket and a padded cell, was creeping back. It was a silent, creeping rot that you recognized instantly, and it terrified you. You couldn’t tell Kit. Not after everything he had endured—the false accusations, the experiments, the loss of Alma. He had poured every ounce of his resilience into protecting this fragile peace, and you couldn’t be the one to shatter it.

You had retreated upstairs to the bathroom, claiming a headache. You just needed a moment, you told yourself, a moment to push the darkness back. But the darkness was winning.

The silence from downstairs was the first warning—the children abruptly hushed, trained over the years to recognize the tension in their parents' voices. Then came the sound of Kit’s careful footfalls on the wooden stairs, slow and heavy with concern.

"Sweetheart? You’ve been up here a while. We’re about to have lunch," he called, his voice gentle but laced with the worry he always tried to mask.

You didn't answer. You couldn’t.

The door handle turned. You hadn't locked it, a habit Kit insisted on breaking after Briarcliff.

You turned away from the sink as Kit entered, his handsome features already set in an expression of mild impatience transitioning instantly and violently into pure, seismic horror. You felt the warm, sticky flow running down from your wrist, dripping onto the clean white ceramic tile. In your tightly clenched hand, a sharp piece of glass—shattered from an old shaving mirror—felt impossibly heavy.

Tears, hot and unstoppable, streamed down your face, blurring the edges of the room. You looked directly into his hazel eyes—eyes that had seen the worst of humanity and the terrifying expanse of alien skies—now focused entirely on the blood and the piece of glass.

"No," Kit whispered, the single word grating and raw, pulled from a place deeper than trauma. He didn't rush forward; he moved with the agonizing slowness of a man approaching a wounded animal. He held his hands out, open and trembling, a silent, desperate plea. "Please, darling. Put it down."