Chapter Text
The city sprawled beneath you like a map you no longer recognized—glittering with artificial light, but devoid of warmth. Linkon City was never kind, but in this hour, it felt cruel in its indifference. Neon signs blinked and pulsed below like distant, dying stars, echoing the fading rhythm of your own heartbeat. You stood still, high above it all, where no one could reach you. Where no one tried.
The wind tore through your coat, your uniform stiff with dried sweat and scorched edges from your last mission. You hadn’t changed. Hadn’t eaten. You barely remembered when the mission started—let alone ended. Everything blurred together: gunfire, blood, the hum of your Resonance Evol pulsing like a second heartbeat in your skull. Days folded into nights without pause. You weren’t sure when you last closed your eyes. Not really.
They’d tried, of course. Tara’s messages came often in those first weeks. Sweet, worried, persistent things. “Let’s get food?” “Please text me when you’re back from patrol.” “You don’t have to act strong with me.” You’d read them, sometimes. Replied once or twice with bland reassurances: “I’m fine. Just tired.”
A lie wrapped in half a truth.
Your superiors at the Hunter Association offered check-ins, too—cautious and professional, with undertones of genuine concern. Even Captain Jenna had softened her tone in meetings when speaking to you, as though afraid you might break if she looked too hard.
You’d learned how to smile through it. How to thank them. How to nod and pretend like you weren’t unraveling at the seams. It was easier that way. Less messy. You didn’t want to become another problem for them to solve. You didn’t want to be pitied. Most of all, you didn’t want to explain the kind of grief that hollowed out your lungs and made the world feel like cardboard.
Because Caleb was gone.
Your brother in everything else but blood. The boy who used to draw planes in the condensation on the window and build paper wings for your dolls. The one who called you “starlight” when you were young, because Gran said your eyes held galaxies. You didn’t remember the explosion.
Only the silence afterward.
The absence of his voice.
The ringing void where his laughter used to live.
And Gran... oh, Gran.
You still waited for her voice some nights, the way it used to echo from the kitchen. Still imagined the warmth of her hands, grounding you, calling you “my brave girl.”
There were no brave girls now.
Only ash.
Only silence.
Your fingers curled around the metal railing. Cold. Steady. A contrast to the trembling in your arms. You told yourself it was the wind. But your knees buckled beneath you like you were marionette-cut, the strength in your limbs evaporating like fog in morning light.
You didn’t cry. You hadn’t in weeks. Not when it mattered. Not even when you’d stood over what remained of their file entries, two silent death notices on your commlink. But now—on this rooftop, under a bruised sky and unblinking stars—you felt the ache claw its way up your throat like bile.
You wanted it to stop.
Not just the pain, but everything. The noise. The pressure. The endless cycle of saving people when you couldn’t even save your own family. Your Evol was supposed to resonate . You were supposed to connect, to protect. But all you did was survive. Barely.
And you hated that you were still breathing when they weren’t.
The city spun beneath you in a kaleidoscope of flickering lights and colorless motion. You let your head fall forward, the railing biting into your arms as your vision tunneled. Your body had had enough. You were burning the last scraps of adrenaline, running on fumes and stubbornness, and now—finally—it was abandoning you.
Darkness coiled at the edges of your vision. The wind howled louder than it should have. Your knees hit concrete. Your fingers twitched. You thought, dimly, that maybe this was what it felt like to fade. Not in some noble way. Just... quietly. A system shutdown.
And just before the black swallowed you whole, a voice from deep within your memory whispered:
“You’re not alone. Not while I’m here.”
But it wasn’t Caleb nor Gran.
It was someone else.
Someone you didn’t understand.
Someone who refused to let you disappear.
And then— nothing.
//
Consciousness didn’t come all at once. It was a slow, syrupy return, like surfacing through honey-thick waves of sleep. The first thing you noticed was the warmth—not sterile or harsh, but soft and golden, like a late afternoon sunbeam had wrapped itself around your body and refused to let go.
Then the scent.
Fresh linen. Clean air. A faint trace of citrus and something cooler—like wind over water. Not a hospital. Not the mission hall. You knew that much. You’d woken up enough times in those places, heart pounding, fists clenched. This was… different.
You blinked, lashes fluttering like moth wings against the swell of exhaustion. The ceiling above you was white, edged in soft grey trim. Not yours. And the bed—
You were in a bed.
Not yours.
The covers were tucked around you with care, not haphazardly thrown like you would’ve done. The sheets smelled like they’d been dried in the sun and folded by someone who didn’t know how to be careless. Everything was quiet. Safe.
You tried to sit up.
“Don’t.”
The voice came from your left—low, quiet, unmistakably familiar.
You turned your head slowly, the movement making your temple throb. And there he was.
Xavier.
He sat beside the bed, his arms resting on his knees. The soft lamplight spilled across his silver hair, turning it almost white, like starlight captured in strands. His blue eyes were fixed on you—not blank like usual, not distant—but watching you, sharp and full of something unnameable.
You stared at him, throat dry. You must’ve looked a wreck—your skin hot and clammy, breath shallow, hair sticking to your temples. And he looked like a damn portrait. Calm. Unmoving. Marble and moonlight.
"You didn’t call for help," he said, voice level. But there was a weight to it. Like every word was a stone laid carefully on a scale he couldn't bear to tip.
You opened your mouth to speak, but no sound came out.
His brows didn’t furrow—but his eyes flickered. A subtle shift. Worry, maybe. Or something like it. “You always act like you’re replaceable.”
That hit harder than it should have.
You turned away, throat tightening, shame prickling up your neck like heat rash. “Why do you care?” you whispered. “We barely know each other.”
For a moment, the silence hung heavy. So heavy it could’ve drowned you both.
Then you heard the chair scrape softly against the wooden floor. Not angry. Just patient. Measured. He stood, but didn’t leave. You felt the bed dip slightly beside your legs.
“Because someone has to,” he said quietly.
"I didn't ask for your help," you say, your voice trembling.
"I know," he replies. "But I’m doing it anyway."
You feel tears prick at the corners of your eyes, the weight of your grief threatening to overwhelm you. Xavier steps closer, his presence grounding.
He says softly. "I know what it's like to feel alone."
You look up at him, searching his face for any sign of insincerity. But all you see is understanding.
He sits beside you, his hand resting gently on yours. "You don't have to go through this alone."
The dam breaks, and you let the tears fall, the sobs wracking your body. Xavier pulls you into his arms, holding you tightly as you release the pain you've been holding in for so long.
"I'm here," he whispers. "And I'm not going anywhere."
You closed your eyes.
It wasn’t a confession. Not exactly. But it cracked something inside you. Not a fissure of pain—there was already too much of that—but something quieter. A splinter of understanding, just barely pressing through the fog.
You didn’t deserve this. You didn’t deserve him.
“I should go,” you say, voice brittle as glass.
He nods, slowly. “You can. When you’re steady.”
“I’m steady now .” You snap.
"You’re not." Calm. Certain.
And that certainty makes you want to scream.
He just looks at you.
That look .
That unreadable, ocean-deep stillness in his eyes. The way he doesn’t react when you’re trying to be cruel. As if he’s already lived through worse and still chooses to be here.
You feel it all crash into you again—the grief, the guilt, the aching wrongness of being alive when Caleb and Gran are not.
“I wanted to die with them!” The words explode from your chest like shrapnel. “You don’t get it. I don’t want to be saved. Why do you keep showing up like you have the right?”
His eyes don’t soften. They sharpen. But his voice? It stays low. Steady. Almost unbearably kind.
“I know you want to disappear,” he says. “You’ve been doing it slowly, piece by piece. I’ve seen it.”
Your hands shake. “Then let me. Why won’t you just let me? ”
You want to shove him away.
You want to scream, to claw at his chest, to make him hurt in the same raw, skin-stripped way you do. You want to demand answers he doesn’t owe you—ask what right he has to look at you like that, like you’re worth saving when everything that once anchored you to this world has turned to dust.
But you don’t move. You just breathe. Shallow. Uneven.
“I’ve seen it,” he says again, quieter now. “In the way you stop replying. The way you vanish after patrol. How you always stand too close to ledges like you’re trying to remember what it would feel like to fall.”
You inhale sharply, but Xavier doesn’t stop.
“There’s a silence to people who’ve lost too much,” he continues. “It clings to them. Like smoke.”
Your lips part, but still—no words.
His eyes search yours, not with pity, but precision. Like he’s studying a fracture beneath glass. Watching the way the light warps around it. Waiting to see if it will hold… or shatter.
He just sits there, body still, gaze steady, holding you. The kind of presence that doesn’t beg to be trusted—but earns it, quietly. Gradually. With the patience of someone who’s learned that pressing too hard will only make people run.
“You’re not a burden,” he says after a long moment. “You’re grieving. That’s different.”
His voice is still even. But there’s something about the way he says grieving . Not soft. Not hesitant. Like it’s a word that tastes familiar in his mouth, even if he doesn’t want to say why.
You stare at him, throat burning.
“You speak like you know,” you whisper.
“I do,” is all he says.
And it’s enough. Not because it explains anything. But because you believe him. Because behind that quiet certainty, you feel it—that unspoken ache in him that mirrors your own. The weight in his bones that wasn’t built overnight. The shadows he wears not like decoration, but armor.
He doesn’t say who he’s lost.
He doesn’t say what broke him.
But the silence that follows is thick with things unsaid. You don’t need the details. The truth sits there between you anyway, palpable and alive.
Your anger dissipates slowly, leaving behind only the hollow space grief carved out. You press the heels of your hands into your eyes, embarrassed by your outburst, by the weight of your vulnerability, by how close you came to falling apart again.
“I didn’t mean to yell at you,” you mutter.
“You needed to,” Xavier replies. “You’re allowed to.”
You drop your hands, blinking at him.
He’s so still. So careful.
And then—softly, without fanfare—he leans forward, pressing his forehead to yours.
It’s not romantic. Not exactly. It’s too quiet, too fragile. His skin is cool against your feverish heat, and you feel the sharp contrast like a grounding wire.
Your breath catches. Your eyes, unfocused, latch onto his.
Blue.
Not cold. Not blank. But deep, stormy, full of a kind of intensity that almost startles you. There’s a flicker there—worry, sharp and sudden. Then surprise, quickly smoothed over. Then a focus so complete it nearly knocks the air from your lungs.
He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t flinch.
And you forget to be sick. You forget to be sad.
You forget everything but him.
His eyes are so blue. Not in the lazy, icy way romance novels describe—but in a way that feels like sky stretched to breaking. Like clarity on the edge of collapse. You study them—how they reflect light, how they don’t shy away from your gaze. The flecks of something lighter near the center, like sunlight caught in ice.
Your heartbeat stutters.
“You’re warm,” he says finally, quiet as breath. “You still have a fever.”
You should care more. Should be embarrassed by how close he is, how your lashes nearly brush. But all you can do is stare, and breathe, and try not to fall apart again.
Xavier pulls back slowly, with care. His hand grazes your temple—checking again, methodical—and it lingers there for just a second longer than it needs to.
“You need rest,” he says. “And food.”
You nod dumbly.
He doesn’t move to leave.
And somehow, you’re grateful. Because the silence between you now… it’s no longer empty.
It’s shared.
You droop onto him and he pulls you closer into his arms like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and you just let him.
His grip is firm but careful. He smells like the tea he makes every morning (the only thing he can prepare without burning the kitchen down). His voice, when he speaks again, is quieter than before—like he’s afraid if he’s too loud, you’ll disappear again.
"You don’t have to heal all at once," he murmurs. "But you have to stay. That’s all I ask."
And in that fragile silence—held together only by the rhythm of his heartbeat—you realize he’s not pulling you out of grief.
He’s just sitting in it with you.
//