“All right.”
I let out a breath. It wavers once. Annoying.
“This thing we’ve been doing,” I say, then hate the phrase instantly. “No. That sounds stupid.” I start again. “Us. This life. The apartment. The relief work. The plans. The… cabinet latches and tea and memorial routes and all of it.”
The faintest furrow appears between his brows, not from confusion. From care.
I press on before I lose my nerve and turn the whole thing into a joke.
“I do not intend to keep living as a temporary figure in your life.”
Silence.
My pulse is suddenly everywhere.
I force myself to keep going.
“I’m not interested in being the person you survived a tribunal with. Or the person you were kind to because we got caught in the same machinery. I’m not doing some long maybe. I’m not… passing through your life in a dramatic little arc so we can both call it meaningful later.” My throat tightens, but my voice holds. “I want permanence.”
There.
Said.
The words land between us with a weight so total it almost has sound.
For one long second, he just looks at me.
Not shocked. Not cornered. Just looking, as if he understands the size of what I have handed him and refuses to insult it by reaching too fast.
The city outside hisses with wet traffic. Somewhere in the building a pipe settles with a dull knock inside the wall. My tea cools untouched.
When he speaks, his voice is very quiet.
“Selene.”
I brace without meaning to. Ridiculous. He notices everything.
Then he says, “I have already structured my civilian status around the assumption that you will stay.”
The breath leaves me all at once.
I stare at him.
“What.”
He blinks once, as if this is somehow the part he did not realize would be surprising. “The residency filing. The residence conversion. The location choice. The safety modifications. The access design. All of it was built on the assumption that you would stay.”
My brain catches on one phrase. “Safety modifications.”
A corner of his mouth shifts. “You were very occupied with statutes. I had time.”
I actually laugh then, because the alternative is crying and I would prefer not to do that standing next to an annotated memorial route.
“You built our life around me and did not mention it?”
“I assumed it was evident.”
“Rhyx.”
