TW: Mention of rape and mention of miscarriage
She sees too much. That is her curse. That is why he kneels.
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It began with a sound.
Or perhaps it had always been there. Lurking somewhere deep in the marrow of the house, in the unseen places between breath and heartbeat. It was thin, almost imaginary, so quiet it felt more like a vibration inside the blood than anything the ear could claim. A sound that sat at the edge of knowing. A sound that remembered.
For a while, Luna thought it was the sea. The tide had a way of making itself known in odd hours, pressing against the walls in slow, uneven sighs, dragging bits of broken shell and weed into the cracks of the cliff below. She had learned to live with it, to sleep through its hunger. But this was different. This sound was not the sea. It was too deliberate, too precise, like a single note held too long on a bowstring that never snapped.
It came quietly. Just a thread of pressure slipping under her skin. Slow. Careful. Inevitable.
The note rose from somewhere she could not name and found her spine. It hummed through the space between her ribs, through the small bones of her wrists, through the places where magic once felt light. Her breath faltered.
The candlelight trembled.
The pages of the open book at her bedside fluttered once, twice, before settling flat again, as if they too had heard it and thought better of moving.
She froze, fingers hovering over the blanket, the smallest motion of her body gone still. There was a moment where the world held its shape. The air, the dim outline of the window, the hum of the wards under the floorboards. All steady. All the same. And then, beneath it, that impossible sound began to grow teeth.
It didn't rise in volume. It rose in presence.
She blinked. The walls blurred.
The rhythm of the room fell out of step with her own.
The light grew strange—longer, slower, melting at the corners like paint left too close to heat. Her chair creaked, though she hadn't moved. A faint pressure built in the back of her head, soft at first, then sharp enough to make her grip the blanket to keep from floating away. The air thickened, folding inward, carrying that same endless, piercing note until every part of her body was nothing but vibration.
Her lips parted. She tried to breathe. The air refused her.
The world tilted.
The sound filled her chest, too vast, too ancient to hold. It became everything.
And then the floor fell away.
No warning. No rupture. Just a quiet betrayal of gravity. One second she was wrapped in the familiar heaviness of the world, the next she was unmoored. The chair beneath her vanished. The window bled white. The sound deepened, thick as water, pulling her down through its center.
She didn't fall fast. She floated in the slow collapse of space, light splintering in shards across her vision, her pulse hammering so hard it hurt to exist inside her own skin. Her stomach twisted. Her body forgot itself. The noise had turned to silence now, but it was worse—dense and living, pressing on her like a hand to the chest.
There was no up, no down. No breath. No body. Only the thin, merciless thread of awareness that refused to break.
And then the light began to move.
She stood in the garden.
Or perhaps it was what remained of one.
Something that had once been alive, once gentle, once filled with the soft noise of bees and the small comfort of earth between fingers. Now it was a corpse.
The air was black and thick, clinging to her skin in a way that made it hard to tell where she ended and the ruin began. It smelled of metal and old rain, of salt and something sour beneath it, something that made the tongue recoil. The air did not move freely. It pressed against her, close and cold, heavy with a damp that sank through her clothes and into her bones.
Every breath scraped. Every inhale felt like swallowing the aftermath of fire.
The garden was wrong. Everything about it was wrong. The ground tilted in strange ways, the horizon warped, like she stood inside a memory that had been folded and torn too many times. The plants she recognised by their shapes alone were no longer soft. They writhed as though caught mid-death, twisting their stems toward the sky like fingers trying to tear open the heavens. The leaves were brittle and slick at once, veins running dark with some sap that looked more like blood than anything meant for life.
The sky hung low and close. Clouds pressed against it in heavy sheets, stretched too tight across the heavens, as if stitched there by something that had forgotten mercy. There were no stars. Not even a suggestion of one. Only that dull, endless black, that strange hum in the air that was neither silence nor sound. The wind did not move like it should. It did not pass through her hair or brush her skin. It howled, long and hollow, the cry of something that had once known how to sing and had since been broken into mourning.
The ground squelched beneath her feet, sticky and thick, each step met with resistance. At first she thought it was mud. She wanted it to be mud. But the smell told her otherwise. The warmth against her bare skin, the way it pulsed faintly with its own life—she knew. Blood. Too much of it. Too deep for the earth to have swallowed. It clung between her toes, heavy as guilt.
Her pulse started to race. She could hear it everywhere. Not only in her chest but in her throat, in the tips of her fingers, in the pit of her stomach. It filled the space that sound had left behind. Each beat was too strong, too close, the rhythm of panic made real. She tried to take a breath that would ground her, but the air had gone thick, clotted. She drew in only smoke and the faint echo of decay.
The edges of her vision blurred.
And then they were there.
She did not see them arrive. They were simply there, the way nightmares always are, existing before the mind has time to register them.
Theo stood beside her. Rigid. Pale as stone. His shoulders were locked, muscles drawn so tight it looked painful, as though his body was caught between attack and surrender. The light of the dying wards flickered against his face, pulling strange, uneven shadows across his features.
His mouth was open. A word balanced at the edge of his lips. Too late to save. Too loud to hear. She could not make out the sound of it, only the shape of him caught in the act of shouting. He looked carved from something brittle, something that would shatter if she reached for him.
No sound reached her. Not from him. Not from the world. Only that humming silence that had replaced the sky.
But she saw his fear.
And that was worse than hearing him scream.
It was written across his face, carved into the hard line of his jaw, into the hollows beneath his eyes. Real fear. The kind that strips a person of speech and dignity. The kind that takes the body first and the mind second. She had seen him angry, cruel, wild, but never this. Never this raw terror. It hollowed him out.
His wand was raised. His arm trembled, the tip of it glowing in erratic pulses that made the air twitch. Magic sparked around them, thick and feral, bursting from the ground in wild threads that sizzled against the smoke. The wards screamed, lines of light cracking across the soil in jagged webs before being swallowed again by the dark. The earth groaned underfoot. It was fighting something—something too vast, too wrong to name.
And then she looked down.
At first, she thought the soundless space had conjured another trick, another shadow cast wrong. But the shape was too small. Too still.
A child.
She did not want to understand.
But the body did before the mind could argue. The recognition was instant, primal, cutting through the confusion like a blade. Every part of her rebelled against it, every breath turned to stone.
The child was seated in the dirt, no older than a year. Small hands splayed in the air, trembling. Her body was so slight it seemed impossible that it had ever known laughter or warmth. Her skin gleamed white in the distorted light, so pale it bordered on transparency, veins like threads of blue glass beneath it. Her eyes were open—unnaturally open. Too wide. Blind and empty, yet filled with a strange, unbearable knowing. The colour was wrong, milky and opaque like old pearls, like the eyes of a creature that had already crossed some unseen threshold.
Her mouth was open too, round and soundless, frozen mid-cry. And even though no noise left her throat, Luna could feel the wail vibrating through the marrow of her bones. It was a cry that did not belong to this world. The cry of something being unmade.
The child's thin dress hung in tatters, once white, now stained with soil and something darker. The hem was torn unevenly, strands of fabric tangled around her knees. Her feet were bare, streaked with mud, toes curled inward. Every small tremor in her limbs looked like a question—please, or why, or come back.
Luna's chest clenched.
She had never seen her before. Yet she knew.
She knew her in the way the body knows the pull of gravity. In the way a heartbeat knows its rhythm without instruction. In the way a mother might recognise her child in a room of strangers even if she had never held her. It was absolute. Terrifying in its certainty.
That was no stranger's child. This was her own. The thread that tied her to Theo made flesh and small and breakable. Her blood and his, tangled into one fragile vessel that had somehow been placed in the centre of this ruin. The bone of her bone. The breath of his breath. Their daughter.
The word pulsed behind her eyes before her mind dared to form it. Daughter.
She wanted to move. To reach for her. To call out. But the sound that rose in her throat never formed. It caught there, thick as grief, strangled by the horror of knowing.
And then the air changed.
It split with a violence that had no sound. The world tore open between one heartbeat and the next, a rupture that shivered through her body like lightning without light. The ground convulsed beneath her feet, the weight of it shifting in a sickening roll that sent her stumbling. Her stomach dropped. The earth groaned.
From the cracks came the roots.
They burst upward in violent rhythm, long black tendrils, slick with sap that smelled of rot and old magic. They twisted around themselves, clawing for the surface, dragging clumps of blood-soaked soil in their wake. The sound of them was wet, obscene, the sound of something half alive, half dying, moving too close to the skin.
They reached for the child.
Luna could smell them now. The stench of iron and decay and the faint sour sweetness of death that had lingered too long. The air grew heavier with each breath she took, clinging to her lungs until it burned to inhale. It crawled into her mouth, coated her tongue, made her gag.
Then came the shadows.
Not figures, not creatures, not anything that could be given a name. They rose like smoke given thought, stretching tall and thin, edges dissolving even as they formed. They moved as one, a tide that devoured light, silent but for the faint hiss of ash falling from what passed for their limbs. The sight of them made her skin crawl.
One broke from the mass. Taller than the rest. Slower. Its steps were deliberate, almost human in their patience. It came forward with the confidence of a thing that had never failed.
The cloak that covered it rippled like ink, edges leaking darkness that bled into the ground. And then, from beneath that black, an arm extended — long, wrong, jointed in ways the body should not allow. Fingers slid from the fabric, smooth and bone-pale, bending with unnatural grace before spreading open.
A hand.
It hovered above the child, steady and sure.
Theo moved before thought could reach him.
She saw him throw himself forward, his wand blazing in his grip, the tip flaring white. His mouth moved, shouting, pleading, cursing but the world refused him sound. The magic answered his call with furious light, raw and uncontrolled. Sparks tore across the cracked ground, runes flaring and collapsing as fast as they appeared.
The wards screamed. They burned at his feet, circles of protection flashing like dying stars. But the shadows drank them in. Every spell vanished into the dark, devoured by it.
Theo kept fighting. His arm slashed through the air again and again, the rhythm frantic, his movements wild. Light burst around him, searing and useless, until the air itself began to thicken with the residue of too much power, too much desperation.
The child didn't move.
Her little hands still reached toward the air, fingers trembling. Her blind eyes were locked on nothing, reflecting the madness of the light. And then, with a slow, terrible inevitability, her mouth opened.
The sound that came out was not a cry. Not at first. It was a vibration that began in the teeth, spread to the bones, then built into a scream so piercing it fractured the world. It tore through the black sky, through the walls of the garden, through the fabric of Luna's mind until she thought she might split in two.
Her whole body convulsed.
The sound did not come from her, yet it felt as if it did. As if her soul had been forced into the shape of that scream, dragged raw through every nerve and left to burn. Her vision spun. Her lungs locked.
She tried to reach the child. Her muscles refused her. Her body was no longer her own.
Something had her.
Something cold and ancient and merciless. It wound around her wrists and ribs, invisible but heavy, binding her to the ground. Her magic fought it, sparking beneath her skin, but it was like trying to fight the ocean. Every flicker of power died the moment it rose.
"No," she gasped. The word came broken, mangled by the raw edge of her throat. "No, please—"
Her knees buckled. She hit the ground hard, palms sinking into the wet soil. The warmth that met her hands was unmistakable. Blood.
She tried again, clawing at the dirt, dragging herself forward by inches. The roots shuddered beside her, writhing toward the child with hunger.
Theo's voice rose beside her, a low, hoarse roar that carried all the grief in the world. He had abandoned words now. His spells came silent, desperate arcs of motion. The air around him burned white, his body outlined in light and shadow, but it made no difference. The magic dissolved before reaching its target.
The figure kept advancing.
The hand lowered.
Time slowed to a crawl.
Every muscle in Luna's body screamed. She pulled herself another inch forward. Her nails split against stone. She tasted iron.
The figure's head tilted slightly, like a curious animal observing its prey. Its hand flexed once, then reached down.
The child's scream peaked and then, just as suddenly, it broke off.
A single line of silver light split the dark.
It passed through the child's chest so smoothly it was almost elegant.
There was no blood. No violence. Only a soft, shuddering arch of her small body, a breath caught mid-cry, a pulse that stuttered once and was gone.
The silence that followed was unnatural. Complete.
The shadows stilled. The roots froze mid-twist. Even the air seemed to forget how to move.
Theo's wand fell from his hand.
The light from it faded to nothing.
Luna stared, unblinking, her vision trembling at the edges, her heart thudding so loud she thought it might burst.
And then the world broke.
The sound of it was not a sound at all, just the sudden, absolute shattering of reality.
The garden collapsed in on itself.
Luna fell.
Her knees hit first, the impact jarring through her bones. Her breath left her in a sharp cry that was not just pain but the shock of loss made flesh. Her body folded forward, hands sinking into the red earth. She stayed there, trembling, her eyes fixed on the still form before her.
The child's body was small enough to fit between her palms. Too small. Too still.
Her own breath came in shallow bursts, each one thinner than the last. Her vision swam. The colours of the world had gone wrong — all red and grey and void.
Beside her, Theo made a sound she had never heard before. Not a word, not a scream. Just the hollow scrape of air being torn from the chest of a man who had lost everything. He stumbled forward, dropping to his knees, hands shaking as they reached for the child.
He lifted her carefully, as if afraid the body would crumble if he breathed too hard. His fingers were slick with blood, his face drawn and hollow. His mouth opened but no sound came. He simply held her, cradling the small, lifeless weight against his chest as though by doing so he could convince the world to undo itself.
The earth around them pulsed once, a final echo of life, then went still.
Luna felt something inside her tear. A clean, silent break somewhere deep in her chest. It was not physical, though it hurt more than any wound she had ever known. Her magic recoiled. The thread that tied her to the world snapped, leaving a hollow where her power had lived.
She knew this was a vision. She knew it in the logical part of her mind that still fought for reason, that small, stubborn voice that whispered this could not be happening. That it was not real in the way stone was real, or water, or the body she had left behind in her chair. But logic meant nothing here.
The grief was real.
The pain was real.
The sound of Theo's quiet sobbing — muffled, shaking, torn from somewhere deep and wordless — was real.
Her hands trembled in her lap, then lifted, then fell again. They were useless, shaking things, unable to reach or comfort or protect. Her mouth opened and something left her — a sound, soft and broken, so thin it was hardly sound at all. It was human. Awfully, terribly human. The kind of noise made only by those who have forgotten how to breathe and remember only how to hurt.
It was not prophecy anymore.
It was punishment.
The air around her collapsed.
The motion was not graceful. It was not slow or poetic or divine. It was the opposite — raw, violent, absolute. Her body gave way as if the bones inside her had turned to ash. She hit the ground hard, knees striking first, palms scraping into the slick dirt. The impact jolted up through her body in sharp shocks, but the pain barely registered. The grief eclipsed it.
She folded in on herself, spine curving, chest hollowing, the sound that left her throat caught somewhere between a scream and silence. Her mouth opened wide, but her voice failed her. The noise came out strangled, voiceless, too broken to carry the weight of what it tried to name.
Her hands clawed at the ground. She dug through the wet earth like a creature unmade, scraping through mud and root and blood as if sheer will could undo what magic could not. The soil fought back, heavy and thick. It clung beneath her nails, mixed with her blood as the skin tore from her fingertips. Her nails bent, cracked, broke. She did not stop.
She could feel the pulse of the land beneath her palms, faint and fading. It throbbed like a dying heart. She pressed harder, desperate, delusional, convinced that if she could dig deep enough she would find a way to reach through the soil and take the child back. That she could pull her from the earth the way a mother might pull her child from water. But there was no water here. Only blood.
The child's body slumped forward.
So small. So still.
The sight of it shattered something inside Luna. It was not a single break but a thousand small ones, each one cutting clean through another part of her.
The small fingers twitched once.
Twice.
Then fell still forever.
The quiet that followed was worse than the scream had been.
The world did not weep. It watched. The wind had gone dead. The trees had stopped moving. Even the blackened vines that had writhed moments before hung limp, their hunger spent. Time stood on its edge, unwilling to pass, as if the universe itself refused to move forward from what had just happened.
And Theo —
Theo collapsed beside her.
There was nothing deliberate about it. His body simply broke. He hit the ground with a dull, heavy sound, his limbs folding like a marionette whose strings had been cut. His breath tore from him in ragged bursts that didn't sound human.
The noise that escaped his throat was not a word, not a cry, not even a groan. It was the hollow, guttural ruin of a sound pulled from the deepest part of him. It scraped raw against the back of his throat, harsh and ugly, too full of loss to be contained.
He reached forward, hands shaking so badly he nearly dropped his wand. His fingers found the child, brushing the small curve of her shoulder. He hesitated, as though afraid she might break further at his touch. Then he gathered her up.
It was unbearable to watch.
The care with which he held her, made the grief sharper. He looked like a man handling a sacred relic. As if she were still alive and simply sleeping.
Her small body lay against him, impossibly light, her head tucked beneath his chin. Her hair brushed his throat, damp with blood and soil. His arms locked around her, tightening, trembling. His shoulders began to shake.
He bowed his head over her, his entire body curling protectively, uselessly, around the child. The motion looked instinctive. Animal. A final act of defiance against a world that had already taken too much.
Luna's breath came fast and shallow. Her own chest burned as if she were the one holding the body, as if she could feel the weight of it against her ribs.
She wanted to move toward him. She wanted to take the child from his arms. She wanted to share in that impossible burden, to touch her, to know the truth of her with her own hands. But she couldn't move. Her body wouldn't obey.
Then it came.
The snap.
Not a sound — a sensation.
A tearing deep in her chest, sudden and final. Sharp as lightning. Cold as death. It ran through her ribs and spine like a crack in glass. She gasped, clutching at her sternum, the pain blooming outward until it reached the tips of her fingers.
It was her magic breaking.
The break echoed. Through her bones. Through her blood. Through the fragile space that separated her from everything she had ever loved.
A weight settled over her. Immense. Unforgiving.
She bent forward, forehead pressed to the dirt, fingers trembling as they clutched at her chest. The sound that tore from her lips was small and awful, the kind that shouldn't exist outside of nightmares.
"No," she sobbed. The word broke each time it left her mouth. "No. No. Please."
Her voice scraped against itself, raw and spent, like her throat had been sanded hollow. Her head shook violently, as if she could shake herself free of the truth, as if she could rattle her way back into her body and wake up from this. Her hair stuck to her face in damp strands. Her lips split. Her chest convulsed.
She dragged her hands over her own skin, clawing like someone trying to tear her soul back inside her body. The dirt smeared across her face. Her nails left streaks down her neck. She didn't feel it. None of it mattered.
"Please," she whispered again, voice collapsing into itself, barely audible. "Please."
The world offered nothing.
The garden disappeared.
The blood-soaked earth. The trees. The twisted sky. The still, small body in Theo's arms. All swallowed by black.
The stars vanished. The horizon folded in on itself.
And at the centre of that fading world, the two of them remained — a man and a woman brought to their knees beneath the weight of a grief too old for language. A grief that had lived before them and would live long after.
The darkness pressed closer until even the sound of their breathing was gone.
And then, at last, there was nothing.
°°°
The scream tore through the house like a living thing, sharp and jagged as a blade drawn through skin, reverberating through stone and wood and ward alike, a sound so raw it seemed to peel the air itself apart, so sharp it jolted every line of magic strung through the house into a shivering frenzy. The wards flared in wild response, flashes of defensive light snapping through the corners of the rooms.
Theo was already running before his mind could catch up, already moving before thought could form words around the panic that ignited in his chest like dry tinder to flame.
His body acted on instinct alone, legs surging forward, muscles coiled tight and trembling beneath skin gone cold with sudden dread. His bare feet struck the floorboards with bruising force, each impact echoing sharp and fast in his ears, the sound swallowed by the ragged churn of his breath and the thunderous pulse of blood pounding through his skull.
He barely heard the second scream over the roar of his heartbeat, but when it came, jagged and broken, tearing from somewhere deeper, somewhere that had no words, no shape, only raw, flayed pain, it sent a sharper spike through him, a deeper, colder crack through the fragile dam of his control.
This was not a cry of fear. This was not a sound of warning.
This was the voice of someone drowning inside their own skin, a sound born of devastation so complete that even the house seemed to reel beneath its weight.
His heart slammed harder, faster, his lungs burning as he sprinted through the twisting corridors, heedless of the objects he knocked aside, the wards that sparked as he passed, his only thought a singular, blinding need to reach her, to see her, to stop whatever was tearing her apart.
The house seemed to stretch and shudder around him, the very walls vibrating with the echo of her scream, and beneath it all was the cold, gnawing terror that he might be too late.
"LUNA." His voice caught in his throat, useless, too small to reach her. He sprinted down the corridor, skidded around the corner toward the west sitting room where her presence had flickered just moments ago. The wards at the threshold flared too bright, a pulse of sick light that burned cold against his skin, warning him that something had torn through them from within.
He shoved through the door.
And stopped.
She was on the floor.
Curled in on herself in a way that was all wrong, all sharp angles and shaking limbs. Her hair was wild around her face, a halo of pale gold tangled with sweat and strands of fraying magic. Her eyes were wide but unseeing, fixed on something that was no longer there. Her lips were parted on a thin, ragged breath that could not quite make it past her throat.
She did not see him. Did not hear him. She was lost somewhere deep, trapped behind a vision that had already broken her.
Theo's knees hit the floor hard enough to bruise. He was beside her in an instant, dragging her against his chest with shaking hands, voice already breaking itself apart in the desperate rush to reach her.
"Luna. Luna, come back. Come back to me. You're safe, you're here. You're safe."
She fought him at first.
Arms flailing in blind panic, nails catching his skin, a sobbing, shuddering body caught in the grip of something too dark to name. She thrashed against him, legs kicking weakly, a low moan caught in her throat that made him sick with helplessness.
But he would not let go.
He wrapped himself tighter around her, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other pressing against her trembling back, fingers splayed wide as if he could somehow shield her from the thing that had already cut through her mind.
"It's me. My love it's me! You're safe. Please, listen to me. Please, please."
Her sobs tore through him.
He could feel her heartbeat hammering wild beneath his touch, could feel the heat of her skin burning through the thin fabric of her sweater.
And then, slowly, painfully, her hands found his shirt.
Clutched at it. Gripped it in fists too tight, too desperate, the way a drowning person would cling to the last breath of air. Her body wracked with violent, helpless sobs that would not stop, each one tearing through her slender frame like it might break her apart entirely.
Theo rocked her. Back and forth. Back and forth.
He did not know what he was saying anymore. Words had become nonsense, a low stream of broken murmurs against her hair, against the shell of her ear, against the pulse that beat wild beneath her throat.
"I have you. I have you. Nothing will take you. Nothing will touch you. I swear to you. You are safe. You are safe."
But the house knew better.
The house was alive now, reacting to her pain, reacting to the vision that had shattered the air. The wards pulsed wrong beneath the floor, a deep, resonant hum that rose and fell like a second heartbeat. The lights flickered faintly above them, casting the room in sickly waves of cold and gold. The very walls seemed to lean inward, as if listening too closely, as if bearing witness to something they could not contain.
And Theo was terrified.
Not of whatever horror she had seen.
But of losing her to it.
Of watching her break in his arms and knowing that this time, he might not be able to bring her back.
He buried his face in her hair, arms tightening until his muscles shook with the strain, willing her to hear him, to feel him, to hold on.
And somewhere beneath the storm of her sobs, beneath the trembling ruin of her breath, he felt her hands tighten in his shirt. Just a little. Just enough.
And he kept rocking her, voice raw with the only words he had left.
"I have you. I have you. I have you."
~~~
She was shaking so hard he thought, for a moment, that her bones might come loose inside her. Her breath stuttered in short bursts, chest rising and falling with a rhythm that wasn't steady enough to sustain her. Her fingers clawed into his shoulders, into the fabric of his coat, into the skin beneath it. She wasn't holding him. She was clinging. Clutching. Desperate in the way a drowning thing might reach for the first shape that breaks the surface.
Theo didn't ask. He only held her. She felt small in his arms, not fragile exactly, not soft, but stripped down to something raw. Something half-formed and trembling.
He gathered her against him and lifted her with the quiet, grounded strength of someone who had carried wounded bodies through worse. But this was different. This was something he didn't have the language for.
He carried her to the bed and sat down with her still in his arms. She didn't let go. Her breathing came in broken patches. Her face was wet against his neck, but she wasn't sobbing now. She was past that. She was something else. He shifted, trying to settle her onto the bed, but she made a quiet, wordless sound of protest and burrowed closer, so he didn't move again. His arm stayed around her back. His hand moved slowly up and down her spine, not trying to soothe, just anchoring her. Just reminding her that she was here, and he was here, and whatever had just torn through her was over now, at least for the moment.
Minutes passed like that. Maybe more. Time stopped meaning much. She trembled in his lap like something barely tethered to her body, and he kept holding her like he could keep her from coming undone entirely.
Eventually, her breathing began to slow. Her shoulders still twitched every few seconds, as if her body hadn't caught up to the fact that the vision was over. Her muscles remained tight, the tension buried deep beneath her skin, like the memory of what she'd seen was still looping somewhere behind her eyes. But the worst of it had passed. The storm, at least for now, had begun to ease.
Her fingers loosened slightly in his shirt. Not much. Just enough to remind him that she was still there. That she was still holding on. Her weight settled more fully against him, though she kept herself half-curled, half-defensive, as if she didn't quite trust her body to hold itself upright if she let go completely.
Still, she said nothing.
The room felt impossibly still. The kind of stillness that wasn't quiet but waiting. Something delicate sat between them now. Not distance. Not space. But something harder to name.
He waited until the sound of her breathing began to smooth out into something almost human again. Then he spoke.
His voice came low. Gentle, but not soft. Measured. Like he had been carrying the words for a long time before allowing himself to set them down. There was no edge to them. No suspicion. No pressure. Just the shape of a question that needed to be asked, even if it would never be answered.
"What did you see?"
She didn't answer.
The silence that followed didn't feel cold. It didn't feel like rejection. It felt like a wall rising quietly between them, not to keep him out, but to keep something else in. Something older. Something worse.
He didn't repeat himself. He didn't try to fill the gap. He stayed where he was, still and patient, feeling her breath against his neck, waiting. Hoping.
She didn't lift her head. She didn't pull away. Her hands remained clenched in the fabric of his coat. Her fingers twitched once. Her breath caught again. Then again.
And then she shook her head.
The movement was sharp, almost violent. Not directed at him, not meant to hurt, but so sudden and forceful that it jolted through both of them. It was the kind of motion a person makes when they're trying to physically reject something they can't bear to remember.
When she spoke, her voice was not steady. It was raw. Scraped thin from crying. Brittle in the way glass sounds when it is just about to break. The words came out in a whisper, but not a fragile one. It held something else. Something awful and immovable.
"Not this one."
That was all she said.
And yet it wasn't just an answer. It was a barrier. It was a line drawn in something far more permanent than ink. This wasn't a refusal made of pride. It wasn't stubbornness. It wasn't fear, not exactly.
It was final.
Her voice didn't tremble the way it should have. That was what shook him. It wasn't that she was afraid. It was that she had already accepted whatever she had seen as truth, and her refusal was not to protect herself, but to protect him.
The words sat between them like a sealed box. One that would not be opened. One that should not be.
And even though he didn't know what lived inside it, he felt the weight of it press against his chest all the same.
Her face was still half-hidden against him. Her body had gone quiet, but not calm. She was too still. Too silent. Her eyes, when she finally tilted her head just enough to look up at him, were glassy. Not with tears anymore. With something heavier. Her expression was unreadable, but not blank. Not detached. Just exhausted in a way that seemed to go deeper than her skin.
He tried again. Just once.
"What was it?"
The words came out quieter than before. Less a question, more a breath given shape by something he couldn't contain.
His voice caught near the end, not enough to break, but enough to betray the strain sitting beneath his calm. It wasn't grief. Not yet. But it was close. The kind of ache that came from knowing something terrible had happened, and that it would be even worse once he understood it fully.
He didn't plead. He didn't press. He just asked.
And she looked at him.
Not a glance. Not a flicker. She turned her head and let her eyes meet his with the kind of stillness that felt like a scream pressed flat against glass. In that instant, he saw the cost. Not in the way her jaw tensed. Not in the shallow tightness of her breath. But in the depth of her gaze. Something in her eyes had folded inward. Not fear. Not guilt. Not even shame.
Grief.
Old grief. The kind that didn't burn but settled. The kind that made itself a home in the bones. It was the quiet grief of someone who had seen too much, who had carried it silently, who had learned to shape her life around it without ever speaking it aloud. That grief had been there before he arrived. He knew that now. It had been living inside her for years, maybe longer. But his question had brought it closer to the surface.
Like it had been waiting just beneath her skin, silent and undisturbed, until now.
If he asked again, it would tear her in half. Not with drama. Not with fire. Just a quiet, clean fracture. Something delicate and essential would split, and he would not be able to put it back together.
She would not fight him.
She wouldn't argue. She wouldn't shout. She would simply vanish. Right in front of him. She would still sit there, still breathe, still hold the shape of herself. But the part of her that made her her would retreat so far inside that nothing would reach her again. And the worst part was, she would let it happen.
She would make it easy.
Because people like her didn't beg for protection. They simply buried what hurt too much to carry, and if someone reached too deep, they buried that too.
So he didn't ask again.
He did the only thing he could. He lowered his head until his forehead touched hers. Gently. Carefully. A gesture without purpose, except that it felt necessary. Her skin was warm. Damp from tears that hadn't dried. He could feel the soft tremble in her breath as it passed between them, could feel the faint twitch of her fingers where they still clung to his coat. She didn't flinch. She didn't lean in, either. She just stayed still. Present.
She allowed the moment to exist, which somehow meant more than if she had said anything at all.
They stayed like that, suspended in a silence that felt older than the room, older than either of them. It wasn't comfortable. It wasn't healing. It just was. A pause carved out of time, held together by everything they weren't saying. Every heartbeat passed like a question that would never be answered.
His hands didn't move. His arms stayed around her. Not tightly. Not protectively. Just there. Just enough. His body curved toward hers with the kind of instinct that didn't come from logic or reason, but from something deeper. The need to be near her, to hold what little of her she was still willing to give.
He didn't try to fix it. He knew better. Whatever she had seen wasn't a wound to be healed. It was a truth too sharp to carry. And if she was carrying it alone, it was because she believed she had to.
So he stayed.
And even though she said nothing, even though the grief still burned quietly in her eyes, she didn't pull away.
That was enough.
And still, he didn't let go.
~~~
Later, when her breathing had finally slowed enough to resemble rest, he stayed awake.
Her body had folded into his without ceremony, curled up against his side as though her bones had lost the will to hold her upright. Sleep didn't come easily to her. Not real sleep. It came in fragments. Shallow dips into unconsciousness followed by sharp, restless twitches. He could feel every one of them. Her arm would jerk. Her fingers would clench in his shirt. Once, her whole frame stiffened, as if she had remembered something in her dreams that her waking mind was trying to forget.
Theo didn't move.
He lay with his head resting against the wooden headboard, the old frame pressing between his shoulder blades. His hand stayed on her back, fingers drawing slow, quiet circles through the thin fabric of her shirt. Just to remind her that he was there. That she was not alone in whatever half-formed nightmare her mind was trying to outrun.
He didn't expect sleep for himself. It hadn't even occurred to him to try.
There was too much in his chest. Too much that couldn't be named. Not thoughts. Not questions. Something heavier than either. It lived behind his ribs, low and unmovable, a pressure that made it hard to sit still. Her silence had become part of him. The way she had looked at him when he asked, the way her eyes had shuttered, the way her voice had cracked, the way she had refused without ever raising her voice. All of it stayed with him.
And not as memories.
Not as things he could sort through or understand.
It stayed as weight.
Not metaphor, not grief. Something closer to dread. Something physical. Like a stone sitting too long in one place inside his chest.
He didn't know what she had seen. He didn't know how deep it went. He only knew that whatever it was had nearly torn her in half right in front of him, and he had not been able to stop it.
So he held her.
Her body had gone slack at some point, not quite limp, but heavy in a way that told him sleep had finally taken her, even if only for a little while. She had tucked herself into the curve of his side without speaking, her breath evening out against his shirt. He let her be. His own body had gone still too, though he knew sleep wouldn't come for him.
He didn't want it.
He needed to stay here, right here, in this moment that still felt half broken. His head leaned back against the headboard, spine aching from the angle. One of his arms curved protectively around her waist. She didn't stir. The house around them had gone quiet, the kind of deep quiet that only arrived after a storm.
Eventually, though, her body twitched.
Just a small shift. Her fingers moved against the fabric of his shirt. Her legs curled more tightly beneath the blanket. She didn't wake fully. But she didn't stay lost in sleep either. Her breathing changed, subtle and uneven, and he felt the shift without needing to look. That fragile space between dreaming and waking had opened beneath them like a ledge. A moment that could tip either way.
He knew better than to speak too soon.
He waited.
He let his hand keep moving, slow and steady, as if his palm could mark time for both of them. He didn't want to startle her. He didn't want to remind her of what she had seen, but the truth was, he hadn't stopped thinking about it since she fell into his arms. Her pain had taken root in him, unfamiliar and too large, and even if she never gave it shape, he still needed to know. Not the details. Not the vision. Just the cost.
So when he finally spoke, it was barely more than a whisper.
"You don't have to tell me everything."
His voice held steady, but only just. It wavered at the edges, softened by something too quiet to name. "But I need to know if this is hurting you more than it should."
He didn't know what he expected.
Maybe silence. Maybe her to pull away again. Maybe for the moment to collapse under its own weight. But what came was smaller than that. A pause. A breath that caught just slightly in her throat before releasing again.
He didn't look at her face. He didn't try to catch her eyes. That kind of closeness was too much right now. It would feel like pressure. It would feel like a demand. And whatever this was, whatever she had barely survived seeing, it didn't deserve to be dragged out of her by force.
He just stayed where he was. Still. Present. Hands steady. Voice quiet.
"I don't need the vision," he said, even softer this time. "Just tell me if it's too much. That's all."
Another pause followed. Longer this time. The kind that stretched out until he could feel his own heartbeat against her back. His thumb stilled, resting at the curve of her spine. He waited.
It was a whisper.
Hollow. Stripped of everything but breath and the shape of pain. The kind of whisper that barely made it into the air before sinking under the weight of what it carried. Rough around the edges. Cracked from disuse. The kind of sound that had never really been spoken aloud, not like this, not with someone listening.
"They come to punish me."
Those five words didn't land like a revelation. They landed like a truth that had been living inside her for far too long. Buried deep. Left to rot. And now, unearthed, it smelled of sorrow older than memory.
Her voice didn't tremble when she said it. Not at first. But the strain was there. Tight. Brittle. Carried in the stretch of each word, pulled too far and too thin. Like they'd been held inside her ribcage for years and only now were being released into the world. Not willingly. Not easily. Just because there was nowhere else for them to go.
She didn't rush to explain.
She didn't try to soften it or pull it back or offer any comfort to fill the silence that followed. She didn't defend the words. Didn't wrap them in context. She simply left them there, suspended in the dark between them. A fact. Uncomplicated and final.
Then came the next.
And this time, her voice caught halfway through the sentence. Not with hesitation. With something worse.
"I see her die."
Not them. Not a crowd. Not strangers.
Her.
One person.
One soul that mattered more than the rest.
Her breath hitched like she had surprised herself by saying it. Like naming it out loud made it more real, more impossible to survive. Like that grief had only ever existed inside her as a silent storm, and now the first drops were beginning to fall.
"I see her die over and over again."
The words were flat. Not lifeless. Just tired. Tired in the way only grief can be when it has nowhere left to go.
"I can't stop it."
Her voice was beginning to shake now. Just slightly. Barely enough to catch unless you were listening closely. He was listening closely.
"I can't change it."
She wasn't crying. Not in the obvious way. But the cracks were there. In her throat. In the tiny pauses between the words. In the way her hands clenched the fabric of his shirt, fingers curling tighter like she needed to hold onto something real or she might vanish.
"I can't even move."
That was the line that hit him hardest.
The helplessness in it.
Not the horror of the vision. Not the repeated death. Not even the grief.
It was the paralysis. The forced stillness. The unbearable cruelty of being made to watch someone you love die, again and again, without being able to do a single thing. Not even reach out. Not even scream. Just stand there. Useless.
He didn't speak.
Not when the tremor in her voice had begun to bleed into her breath, not when her head dipped closer to his chest like the act of speaking had taken too much out of her.
"I see it happen," she whispered again. The words quieter this time. More fragile. Already fading. "And I can't do anything but watch."
She didn't say who she was talking about.
She didn't need to.
He didn't ask.
Because the way she said it , the way her voice softened at the edges of her sentences, the way her body curled tighter against his, told him everything.
It was someone she loved. Someone who had mattered. Someone she had lost, not once, but countless times, and was still losing now every time she closed her eyes.
She didn't give him the name.
But he felt it anyway.
Felt it in the way she pressed herself into him, not for comfort, but for escape. As if she could crawl deep enough beneath his skin to be safe. As if she believed that if she just got close enough, the vision might not find her again.
He felt it in her breathing. Shallow now. Stretched too tight in her chest. Not panicked. Just worn out. Used up. Like her body had nothing left to give except the motion of surviving one more hour.
He felt it in the way her voice dropped into silence again. Not because she had said all she needed to say, but because there was more and she couldn't say it yet. Maybe she never would.
So he held her tighter.
Just enough to make a promise without speaking it. Just enough to tell her, without needing words, that he had heard her. That he would carry this with her. That even if she never spoke another word about it, he would still be here.
He didn't speak his vow. He didn't need to.
It formed silently, somewhere beneath his ribs. Slow. Steady. Unstoppable.
He would find the thing that had done this to her. Whatever shape it wore. Whatever world it came from. Whatever shadow had marked her with this curse.
He would find it.
And he would not ask it questions.
He would not reason with it. He would not seek answers. He would not grant mercy. Because whatever it was, it had touched her. It had made her bleed from the inside. It had turned her gift into something cruel, something torturous, something she had to survive every single night.
If it ever came for her again, it would not leave.
And if it thought it could take her from him, it would learn exactly what he was willing to do to keep her whole.
He didn't say any of this.
He just let her stay close. Let her bury herself in the quiet between his breaths. Let her tremble. Let her not explain. Let her fall apart in silence.
And he stayed with her.
Not for the night. Not until she fell asleep again.
He stayed in a way that meant more than hours. He stayed in a way that meant permanence.
And when he finally closed his eyes, still holding her close, he didn't fall asleep.
He listened.
To her breathing.
To her pain.
To the promise inside his own heart that he would never, not once, let her face it alone again.
He hadn't meant to love her.
That much he knew. He could trace that truth like a scar, familiar and cold beneath the skin. He had never meant to let her in. Had never planned to watch her this closely, to listen this carefully, to want this much. It wasn't logical. It wasn't clean. It wasn't safe.
It had happened anyway.
And now here she was.
Asleep in his arms, her face pressed close to his chest, her breath catching now and then like even in sleep she couldn't quite outrun the things that haunted her. And he couldn't look at her without feeling it, that unmovable weight sitting in the center of him, taking up space in places that used to be guarded, locked down, untouchable.
He loved her.
It sat inside him like a vow he had made before he even knew her name. He didn't understand it. He didn't need to.
He loved her in the way that made the world fall out of focus. In the way that made everything else feel like background noise. In the way that made him want to tear apart the sky just to shield her from a single moment of pain.
He loved her in the way that terrified him.
Because she was fragile, but not weak. Strange, but not lost. She moved through the world like it had already broken her and she had simply chosen to walk anyway. She didn't ask for protection. Didn't seek comfort. She kept her sorrows close and her joys even closer, like she knew the world would try to take them from her if she left them out too long.
And he didn't know how to protect someone who didn't want to be saved.
But gods, he wanted to.
He wanted to keep her safe. Not just from whatever haunted her, not just from the visions that tore through her like knives, but from everything. From the weight of being misunderstood. From the people who didn't know what to do with her strangeness. From the silence she wrapped herself in like armor. From the loneliness she didn't talk about but carried in her eyes every time she thought no one was looking.
He would burn the world to keep her from hurting like that again.
She didn't know. She couldn't.
She had no idea what she meant to him. She had no idea how close he kept her in his thoughts, how often he imagined the shape of her in his arms long before it ever happened. She didn't know how often he had watched her from across a room and wondered what it would feel like to be needed by her. Not casually. Not in passing. Needed.
Chosen.
Trusted.
He wanted her trust more than anything. Not because it would mean he had won something. Not because it would make her his. But because it would mean she was no longer carrying all of it alone. That she had let him in. That she had allowed someone else to see the damage and hadn't flinched.
She stirred slightly in her sleep. A small sound escaped her lips, not a word, not a cry, just breath shaped into something that almost hurt to hear.
He adjusted his hold on her, his arm tightening around her waist, his hand still moving slowly against her spine. The motion was steady, careful, something he hadn't even realized he was doing until now.
He didn't want to be the reason she flinched.
He wanted to be the reason she could rest.
And the truth was, he didn't care what the visions were. Not really. He didn't need the details. He didn't need the names. He just needed her to stop looking like she was waiting for the world to collapse beneath her feet every time she blinked.
He would hold her through it. He would stand between her and the edge. He would become a wall if he had to. Not to trap her. Not to contain her. Just to give her something solid to lean on when everything else turned to ash.
She wouldn't ask him for that. She might never ask him for anything.
But he would give it anyway.
And if whatever had touched her came back — then it would learn what it meant to be feared by someone who had nothing left to lose but her.
Because she was his.
Even if she didn't know it.
Even if she never said it back.
She was his.
And he would not let her fall. Not while he still had breath in his body.
Not ever.
~~~
The storm had not passed.
It tore through the night like something sent from another world, clawing at the windows, shaking the walls, howling across the coastline like it knew who was inside and what they were trying to forget. The wind rose and fell in long, furious breaths, heavy with salt and cold and things that could not be named. Rain drummed against the glass, steady and relentless, as if the sky itself refused to sleep.
Inside the room, they hadn't moved.
Sleep had never come. It hovered at the edges, just close enough to tempt but not to claim. Luna lay tangled against him, her body pressed along his with the kind of closeness that did not ask for space. Her legs were curled into the shape of herself, her arm draped over his chest, her face tucked beneath his jaw. She was too still to be resting. Too silent to be anywhere but inside her own mind.
Theo hadn't closed his eyes once.
His hand moved slowly along her back, a motion that had become second nature now. He didn't speak. He didn't shift. He just breathed and listened and let the storm outside mirror the one between them.
At some point she began to speak.
Barely audible. Thin as a ghost. Not a whisper meant to be heard, just a sound shaped into words because silence had started to hurt more than speaking.
"I see too much."
She didn't look at him. Her face stayed buried near his collarbone, her fingers pressed lightly against his ribs, not holding, not gripping, just resting there. Her body was so still he almost didn't realize the words had come from her until he felt the faint vibration of them against his chest.
The words hung between them like a thread. Fragile. Almost invisible. But it tugged at something in him anyway.
He didn't answer.
He knew she wasn't done.
"I see what could happen," she said next. "What will happen. What might happen if I speak the wrong word at the wrong moment. If I take the wrong step. If I love the wrong person."
Her voice wasn't bitter. It wasn't dramatic. It was quiet. Detached in a way that was somehow worse than any sob. Like she had lived with this truth so long, it had turned into wallpaper in her mind. Something always there, but too exhausting to point out anymore.
Theo felt her breath stutter against him. Just once. A brief hitch in the rhythm. He might have missed it if he hadn't been paying attention to every single inch of her. But he was. He always did.
"And sometimes," she continued, "I see it all at once."
He closed his eyes, not to shut her out, but to let the words settle.
"The deaths," she said, softer now. "The endings. The empty chairs. The blood on the floor. The echoes. The questions. The stillness that follows. I see it before it happens, and I carry it with me after, and there's no moment where I don't feel it."
Her voice cracked.
"I see the things I might be able to stop. And the things I should be able to stop. And the things I know I won't. Even if I run. Even if I scream. Even if I burn everything down just to try."
She shifted then. Just slightly. Just enough to bury her face more deeply into his chest. Her hand curled into the fabric of his shirt like she needed something to hold on to, even if it was already tearing.
"It steals them from me," she said. And this time, the words weren't shaped like a thought. They came out like a wound. "Before they've even lived."
The sentence broke on the last word. Her voice caught and fell apart around it.
Theo didn't breathe for several seconds.
He felt the weight of every syllable settle in his chest, like her grief had reached inside him and made space for itself. Not with force. Not with violence. Just by being so quiet and so complete that there was nowhere else for it to go.
Her visions weren't gifts.
They weren't warnings.
They were losses.
Private deaths that only she had to witness. Futures she lived through alone. Endings she carried in secret. And the way she said it told him that this wasn't new. This was old. Older than the war. Older than her name being whispered in battlefields and corridors. This had been part of her long before anyone understood what she could see.
She had been grieving people who hadn't died yet for most of her life.
And it was breaking her.
Theo's jaw tightened. Not from anger. Not even from helplessness. But from something deeper. Something darker. The kind of rage that wasn't loud or volatile, but quiet and immovable. A cold, unrelenting fury that curled at the base of his spine and sat behind his eyes like flame waiting to be given shape.
He wanted to say something. Anything.
But there were no words that could match what she had just given him.
So he didn't speak.
Instead, he adjusted his grip on her, slowly, carefully, pulling her closer until there was no space left between them. Until her cheek rested just above his heart. Until her breath lined up with his own. He was here. He was real. He was solid. And she was not alone inside the weight of what she carried.
He didn't tell her it would be alright.
Because it wouldn't. Not always. Not completely.
He didn't promise that she would never have to see another death.
Because they both knew that wasn't true.
But he could promise her this.
He would be there.
When the visions came, when the darkness closed in, when the weight of what she knew became too much to carry — he would be there.
Holding her like this. Quietly. Unshakably. Without asking her to explain. Without needing her to make sense of it.
Just there.
And if whatever force had done this to her, whatever ancient curse or cruel thread of fate had marked her with this kind of sight, if it ever came close again, if it ever tried to take from her again, if it ever reached for someone she loved again, it would not find her alone.
It would find him instead.
And it would bleed.
Because there were some things in this world worth protecting even if it meant tearing yourself apart.
And she was one of them.
Always.
Even before she spoke a word.
Even before she looked at him with eyes full of things he could never fully understand.
Even before he knew what it meant to love someone like this.
He would carry it.
He would carry her.
Even when she couldn't carry herself.
Especially then.
He didn't look at her, not because he couldn't, but because he knew this wasn't something she could say if he looked too closely. This wasn't about eye contact. This wasn't about comfort. This was a confession that had never been spoken aloud, not fully, not with anyone listening.
"I live in the shadow of things I have not yet lost," she whispered. "But I lose them anyway. Again and again. In sleep. In silence. In moments that should be mine."
He could feel the tremor in her fingers now.
The grief wasn't loud. It never was with her. It lived in the pauses. In the breaths she held too long. In the way her voice quieted when she spoke about the future, like it was something that hurt to imagine.
He couldn't take it from her.
But he could give her something else.
His voice, when it came, was low. Rough from disuse. Sharpened by something ancient that lived deep beneath his calm.
"Whatever you saw," he said, "whatever it was that broke you, whatever future you think is coming — I won't let it happen."
Luna didn't move.
At first he thought she hadn't heard him. But then she gave a sound. Not a laugh. Not quite. It was something smaller. A hollow thing. A breath pushed out with no joy behind it.
"You don't understand," she murmured. "Some things cannot be fought."
Her voice was steady now. But only because it had gone flat.
"Some things are written before we're born. Some things are bigger than us."
His hand stilled on her back.
"Then I will fight fate itself," he said.
The words came out with no hesitation. No drama. No doubt.
"If that's what it takes, I will fight the sky. I will fight time. I will fight the gods, if there are any left to listen. I will not let it take you."
He turned slightly then, just enough to press his lips to the top of her head.
"I will not let it take anything that belongs to you."
There was a silence after that. Not tense. Not final. Just wide.
Luna didn't respond.
She stayed still, forehead resting against the curve of his throat, breath warm against his skin. She didn't say she believed him. She didn't say she didn't. She only clung to the quiet, and to him, as though she didn't expect it to last, but needed it anyway.
She needed the promise. Even if it was impossible. Even if she thought it was foolish. Even if she had already seen how it would fail.
And he gave it to her without question.
He had no idea what she'd seen. He didn't need to. Her pain was enough. Her voice, cracking like frost beneath his fingertips, was enough.
She belonged to no one. He knew that. She was not something to be claimed.
But gods help whatever came for her again.
Because she belonged to herself.
And he would tear through prophecy, through magic, through fate itself, to make sure it stayed that way.
He would give his breath. His blood. His name. His future. All of it.
Because the storm outside might rage, but she was the only thing that mattered.
And he would not let her be stolen.
Not again.
Not while he still had anything left to give.
°°°
"I see my baby girl often," Luna whispered.
Her voice was quiet, but not distant. It came from somewhere deep inside her. A place she rarely touched. A place that still trembled, even now, after all the other kinds of pain she had learned how to survive.
"She's beautiful," she said softly. "Her name is Seline."
That name broke something open in the air. Something thick and invisible, something that shifted the shape of the room without a sound.
Seline.
Theo froze.
He didn't mean to. His body simply stopped working for a moment, like something inside him had misfired, like a piece of him had suddenly snapped into place and it didn't know what to do now that it had found its match.
Seline.
He had dreamed that name. Had woken up with it caught in his throat. Had felt it burning through him like a brand. And now here it was, falling from Luna's lips like it had always belonged to her.
His breath caught.
She didn't notice. Or maybe she did and chose not to say anything.
"She has blond hair," Luna murmured. "Wild curls. Like mine when I was little, before the war and the worry ruined it. Her eyes are blue. Bright blue. But they shine like moonlight, not like sky. Like they've seen something already. Something no one should have to see."
Theo couldn't speak.
He just leaned in and pressed a kiss to her temple. It was all he could manage. A silent gesture that said I'm here, I'm listening, I don't know how to hold this but I will try.
Luna stayed still for a while.
Then she said, without warning or hesitation, "I was raped, you know."
He flinched. Not because he didn't believe her. Not because he doubted. But because the way she said it felt like a knife being laid gently on his chest. No anger. No buildup. Just truth, placed down with the kind of care that meant she had been carrying it alone for a very long time.
"It was one of your former colleagues," she continued, her voice steady but strange. Like she had walked through fire and come out on the other side made of smoke. "His name was Clotho Kent."
Theo's mouth opened, but nothing came out. His hands clenched without him realizing. His jaw locked.
"I killed him," Luna said.
Still calm.
Still quiet.
"I buried him under the tree out back. The one that never blooms. I think the earth there likes him. He doesn't speak. He doesn't fight. He just stays where I left him."
There was no tremble in her voice.
No apology.
"I feel no remorse," she said. "Don't mistake me. I'm not looking for comfort. I'm not looking for forgiveness."
Theo finally found his voice, though it cracked like glass.
"That disgusting bastard—"
"It's okay," Luna interrupted gently. "He's dead now."
She didn't flinch. Didn't raise her voice. Didn't move.
"I found out weeks later that I was pregnant."
The words came slower now. Not halting. Not ashamed. Just tired.
"You know what's so fucked up?" she asked, voice barely above a whisper. "I was happy."
She laughed. Once. A sound that didn't belong to joy. It scraped across her throat like broken stone.
"I was happy," she said again. "Happy that I wasn't going to be alone. That maybe the world wasn't done giving me something to hold on to. That I would have someone here. With me."
Theo's chest ached so badly he didn't know how he was still breathing.
"But she was gone," Luna whispered.
Her hand moved to her stomach without thinking, palm resting there gently, as though the ghost of that girl still lived somewhere just beneath her skin.
"She left," she said. "Or maybe the world took her. Maybe she was never meant to stay. Maybe I should be grateful for that. Maybe it's mercy. But I hated it. I hated losing her. I hated feeling like the only thing that could have saved me had vanished before I even knew how to love her properly."
Silence.
Heavy. Long.
Theo didn't rush to speak. Didn't fill the quiet with sorry or that wasn't fair or I wish I had known. He knew none of that would touch the place she had just opened for him.
He moved his hand slowly over hers, covering it where it rested on her stomach.
Their fingers didn't intertwine. They just stayed like that. Two people holding the same space. The same ache.
"I would have loved her," she said softly. "I would have done everything right. I would have learned how to make the world softer just for her. I would have given her everything I never had. I would have told her stories. I would have let her dance in the garden. I would have braided her hair."
Her voice cracked. Barely. Just at the edges.
"But she never came. She never got to live. And I don't know if that was fate or punishment or mercy in disguise. All I know is that I still see her. I see her in my dreams. I see her in the corners of rooms that should be empty. I see her every time I close my eyes."
She paused. Swallowed hard.
"I named her Seline because it felt like moonlight. Because it felt like she deserved something beautiful."
Theo leaned in and kissed the crown of her head. Then her forehead. Then the spot between her brows. One by one. Slowly. Carefully. Like each kiss was a vow. A piece of armor. A benediction.
And when she finally let her eyes close again, he whispered into her hair, steady and quiet.
"She would have been the luckiest girl in the world to have you."
Luna didn't reply.
But the way she curled closer told him that was the only answer she needed.
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Clotho was one of the Three Fates or Moirai in Greek mythology, her sisters being Lachesis and Atropos.
She was the one who spun the thread of the lives of all mortals, as well as the one to decide when a person would be born or killed, along with other similarly important decisions.