The helplessness of it.
Because I would not have stopped him.
Even now. Even knowing this is what it would do to me.
I would not have taken that choice from him.
That truth sits like a blade in my chest.
And then?—
The bond slams back into place.
It is not gradual. It is not subtle. It hits with the force of something snapping taut again after being stretched to breaking, flooding through me so completely it drives the air from my lungs a second time.
Alive.
The realisation comes with the sensation, inseparable from it.
Alive and here.
My breath stutters violently as everything inside me tries to recalibrate around that single, impossible fact.
Warmth presses close.
Not imagined.
Not memory.
Real.
A hand touches my face.
“Varek.”
His voice.
Pax.
I drag my head up, the movement rough, unsteady, panic still clawing through me because I do not trust it yet. I do not trust that this is real, that I have not already lost him and am now grasping at something my mind has constructed to soften the impact.
But he is here.
Mud-streaked. Breathing hard. Eyes bright with something fierce and unsteady and entirely, undeniably him.
Alive.
He stayed.
The truth lands with more force than the loss did because it is not just relief. It is shock. It is disbelief. It is something dangerously close to reverence for the choice he has just made.
My hand closes around his wrist before I can stop myself, my grip too firm, too desperate, anchoring him to me as though he might still vanish if I do not hold on.
He doesn’t pull away. Instead, he leans in. Close enough that I can feel the heat of him, the steady rhythm of his breath, the solid, grounding presence of his body right in front of mine. The bond surges, not strained now, not tearing, but full and overwhelming and alive in a way that nearly drops me again.
He chose this.
He chose me.
