The words cracked apart on the way out.
This wasn’t really about medals, or the federation, or even my father.
I was standing in Dean’s room realizing I finally had something I couldn’t bear to lose.
Dean went absolutely still, and I saw something close to fear enter his eyes.
He stood, and the movement startled me, even though he approached me slowly, carefully, as though afraid sudden motion might break something already fragile.
“And what happens to you in that version?” he asked.
My composure finally fractured. “I stop lying.”
For the first time all evening, I wasn’t talking about federations or headlines or consequences.
I was talking about myself.
I pressed my hand flat against my sternum, grounding myself against the sharp ache building there.
“If I do this,” I whispered, “I do not go home the same.”
The sentence sounded calm. The fear behind it wasn’t.
Dean nodded. “I know.”
“And if I do not…” My breathing hitched. “Everything stays intact.”
Dean tilted his head. “Does it?”
I closed my eyes.
“If I do not,” I said quietly, “I go home and I lose you.”
Dean’s breathing caught, and when he spoke again, his voice was low and steady. “I just need to know something.”
I looked at him.
His expression remained controlled, but I heard it then, the strain underneath.
“If this ends…” He swallowed. “Am I something you regret?”
The question hit me so hard, pain radiated through my chest. “No.”
Relief and pain flickered together across his face so quickly I almost missed it.
“No,” I repeated. “Kvrat, Dean… no.”
That was the unbearable truth. Dean had become the one thing in this entire situation that I did not question. I regretted none of it. Not the first kiss, nor the nights in his room. Not the way he had slowly become the safest place I had ever known.
I regretted only the world waiting outside it.
Dean studied me, and I saw the exact moment he believed me.
I’d told him the truth, raw and terrible and irreversible as soon as the words left my lips.
“And the worst part?” My voice cracked. “I will know I had one chance in my life to be honest. And I stepped away from it.”
The realization hollowed me out, because I already knew exactly how that future looked.
