The sky outside was beginning to gray, the late afternoon slipping into a quiet dusk. I had spent most of the day moving around the house with no sense of time. I had cleaned the same counter twice. Folded and refolded laundry that didn't need my attention. Watered a plant that was already damp.
It had been three weeks since I lost the baby.
Since I felt all the brokenness inside me again.
No one knew. Not my friends, not my officemates. Not Elián. And maybe that was better. Maybe silence was easier than explaining how I had been holding a whole future inside of me, quietly, foolishly, hoping that one day it might give him a reason to stay.
That night, I fell asleep with tears dried on my cheek and a sweatshirt that still smelled like him.
In the dream, I wasn't Mara.
I was someone else. But I knew it was still me.
The air was colder. Crisper. I was standing outside a large, wooden home with a tiled roof, the kind I had only seen in period dramas. My hands were soft and clean, dressed in delicate folds of cream and muted blue—hanbok silks layered across my body, bound at the waist with pale ribbon. A hairpin weighed gently in my braided hair.
The sun was just beginning to rise behind the trees, streaking the morning with gold. There was dew on the grass. The world was still.
And then I heard it.
The slow sound of hooves. A steady march of Armor. Soldiers — ten, maybe fifteen — approached the gates. Their uniforms were deep blue, trimmed in black, faces unreadable. But I saw him right away.
He rode a black horse.
Helmet tucked under his arm; sword strapped across his back. His Armor glinted like obsidian in the light. And when he dismounted, my breath caught in my throat.
Elián.
But not quite.
His name wasn't Elián then. But the eyes were the same — a deep, unreadable brown. The kind of eyes that held promises they would never say out loud. He looked at me with a mixture of pride and sorrow, like he had been preparing for this goodbye his whole life.
He stepped forward and gently removed a leather bracelet from his wrist. Without a word, he tied it around mine. His fingers lingered on my skin.
"You'll wait for me?" he asked.
His voice was different — rougher, older — but the weight behind it was the same. The softness. The ache.
I nodded, already crying.
He touched my face, gently, like he was memorizing every detail. "I'll find you," he whispered, "in every lifetime."
And then he rode away.
I waited.
The days passed in the dream-like wind. Leaves changed, snow fell, and the plum blossoms bloomed again. Still, I waited. Each passing year made my heart heavier, but I waited.
Until one night, someone came to the house. A messenger.
He bowed as he spoke. But I didn't hear his words. I only saw his hands — holding a bloodstained bracelet.
I woke up with tears streaming down my face, my chest aching like something had been torn loose.
It took me a minute to realize where I was — back in my room, back in this life, back in Quezon City, where people ghosted each other on Viber and love was something you offered with a shrug.
I sat up slowly.
There was no Armor. No horse. No ribboned hanbok. Just the raw ache of remembering something that never quite belonged to this life.
I broke.
I wept like I hadn't allowed myself to weep in weeks — not for the baby, not for Elián, not for the silent weight of everything I had kept inside. My whole body trembled as I curled forward, pressing my hands to my eyes like I could squeeze the grief out.
"I'm sorry," I whispered in the dark. "I didn't deserve you in this life."
And I meant it.
Because maybe I had hurt him, too. Maybe loving him without asking for more, maybe letting him stay without committing, maybe giving all of myself without a label — maybe that hurt him, too.
Maybe he had been trying, in his quiet, reserved way. And I had only ever asked him to meet me where I was broken.
Or maybe — maybe some love stories were only meant to pass through us. To teach us. To awaken something, we lost in a lifetime long gone.
But as I sat there in the dark, wiping tears with the back of my hand, one thing rang true above all else:
I had loved him across time.
And I was ready to let him go.
Not because I wanted to.
But because I had to.