Mira woke to the taste of copper and chemicals.
Not just in her mouth—in her sinuses, coating the back of her throat like she'd swallowed something that wanted to crawl back up. Her head felt like someone had filled it with static, white noise that made thinking feel like pushing through mud. Her limbs were heavy—too heavy, disconnected, like they belonged to someone else's body and she was just borrowing them.
The air smelled wrong. Sterile but not clean. Antiseptic trying desperately to hide the smell of old blood underneath, the way cheap perfume tried to hide the stink of fear-sweat. It wasn't working.
She kept her eyes closed.
Assess first. React second. Old habits. The kind that kept you breathing when breathing was a choice you had to fight for every single day.
Her wrists were bound—zip ties, plastic, cheap. Amateur hour. The kind of restraints you bought in bulk from industrial suppliers, not the resonance-reinforced ones the Church used. Her ankles too, pulled tight enough to cut circulation if she'd been here much longer. She was sitting, slumped forward against something cold and unforgiving. Metal. A support beam, maybe. Structural. Load-bearing.
Voices somewhere to her left. Low. Careful. The kind of whispered conversation people had when they thought you were unconscious but weren't quite sure.
"—should be out for hours," a woman said. Mia's voice. Tight with stress. "The dose I gave her would drop a Symphonic-level Tuned. She shouldn't even be dreaming right now."
"And if she wakes early?" A man's voice. Rough. Uncertain. Young, maybe mid-twenties. Scared and trying not to show it.
"She won't." But Mia didn't sound sure. She sounded terrified. "Just—keep watch. I need to report to—"
Good, Mira thought distantly. You should be scared.
She focused inward, past the fog of sedative trying to drown her consciousness. Found the foreign substance in her bloodstream—synthetic sedative, mid-grade, probably stolen from a Church medical shipment based on the molecular structure. Military issue. The kind they used on prisoners who needed to be unconscious but alive for interrogation later.
It was spreading through her system like oil in water, coating neurotransmitters, trying to drag her back down into chemical darkness.
She touched it with her resonance.
Healing wasn't just about fixing wounds. Any street medic with enough training could stitch flesh and set bones. Real healing—the kind that made you Tuned, that elevated you beyond simple medical knowledge—was about understanding the body. Every cell. Every chemical pathway. Every invader that didn't belong.
She wrapped her power around the sedative and began breaking it down. Molecule by molecule. Turning poison into nothing but waste that her kidneys would filter out and forget.
It hurt.
Not physically. Worse. It felt like remembering.
Because this wasn't the first time she'd purged toxins from her blood. Wasn't the first time she'd woken up restrained in a place that smelled like death wearing perfume. Wasn't the first time she'd had to choose between staying unconscious and safe or waking up and becoming something she'd tried very hard to stop being.
The memories came flooding back. Unbidden. Unwanted. Unavoidable.
Like they'd been waiting for a moment of weakness to claw their way back to the surface.
Ten years ago. The safehouse in the industrial quarter, fifth floor, corner apartment with reinforced windows and three escape routes she'd memorized before accepting the contract. The target—a Ferroline lieutenant named Marcus Webb who'd been skimming profits from the family's resonance trade. Easy job. Standard work. In and out before anyone knew she'd been there.
Except there had been children.
Two of them. Maybe eight and ten years old, small and scared and hiding in the bedroom closet when she came through the window at three in the morning. She'd been so quiet. So careful. Professional. The way she'd been taught by instructors who measured success in bodies that never screamed.
She hadn't known they were there until it was too late.
She'd done the job clean. Professional. The way her trainers had drilled into her skull until it became muscle memory more reliable than breathing. Webb died quickly, efficiently, probably didn't even have time to register what was happening before the blade opened his throat and his life spilled out across expensive carpet that would never come clean.
But when she turned to leave—wiping the blade on his shirt, already planning her exit route—she saw them.
Through the crack in the closet door. Two pairs of eyes reflecting the dim streetlight coming through the window. Wide. Terrified. Watching.
The girl was crying silently, hand pressed over her mouth, shoulders shaking. The boy—the older one—just stared at her with eyes that looked exactly like hers had once, before the Morrows taught her what survival really cost.
Before she learned that monsters weren't born. They were made. One choice at a time until you couldn't remember who you'd been before the blood.
She'd frozen.
For exactly three seconds—long enough for everything to fall apart—she'd just stood there, blade in hand, a man's blood still warm on her fingers, staring at two children who would never forget this moment as long as they lived.
And in that moment of hesitation, the boy had screamed.
High and terrified and loud enough to wake the entire floor.
She'd run. Left the body still cooling. Left the children traumatized and orphaned. Left a piece of herself in that room that she'd never gotten back.
Three days later, she found out what happened next.
The girl had disappeared into the foster system—shuttled between homes that didn't want her, lost in bureaucratic shuffle. The boy had vanished completely. No records. No trail. Just gone, like he'd never existed at all.
She'd searched. Called in favors. Hacked databases she shouldn't have been able to access.
Nothing.
He'd been erased from every system, every registry, every list. The kind of disappearance that meant someone powerful had taken him. Recruited him. Turned him into something he'd never wanted to be.
Just like they'd done to her.
Mira's eyes snapped open.
The sedative was gone. Metabolized. Turned into harmless waste that her body would filter out within the hour, leaving nothing but a lingering headache and the taste of regret.
She was in a warehouse. Old. Abandoned. The kind the Cult of Silence liked because they were off-grid, no resonance signatures for Church scanners to detect, no surveillance cameras recording what happened in the dark. Rusted metal beams. Concrete floor cracked and stained with things that might have been oil or might have been something worse. Windows high up on the walls, broken and letting in pale moonlight that did nothing to warm the space.
Mia stood fifteen feet away, talking quietly to three Cultists—two men and a woman, all wearing those grey robes with red spiral threading that marked them as initiates. One of them held a chain-whip, the spiked kind that thrummed with Silence resonance even at rest. Nasty weapon. Designed to cut flesh and corrupt soul simultaneously, leaving wounds that never quite healed right.
The woman Cultist turned, adjusting her hood.
And Mira's breath caught in her throat like a physical thing.
Because she knew that face.
Older now. Scarred—three parallel lines across the left cheek, ritual markings or punishment, hard to tell which. Harder. Emptier. But the eyes were the same. Still had that look. The one she remembered.
The boy from the closet.
Except he wasn't a boy anymore.
He stared at her. Recognition flickering across his features like lightning—brief, bright, burning. Then hardening into something cold and hungry and full of ten years of rage that had nowhere else to go.
"You," he whispered. Voice rough, like he'd forgotten how to speak and only remembered for this moment. "I know you."
Mia's head whipped around. Saw Mira's open eyes. "Shit—that's not possible, she shouldn't be—"
Mira smiled.
It wasn't a kind smile. Wasn't meant to comfort or reassure. It was the smile of a blade that had been sheathed for years and was remembering how sharp it used to be.
"You fucked up, Mia," she said quietly. Conversationally. Like they were discussing the weather and not kidnapping and betrayal and everything about to go very wrong.
Then she moved.
The zip ties snapped—not from strength, but from decay.
Mira's unhealing resonance flooded through the plastic like poison through veins, breaking down the molecular bonds at the atomic level, turning solid restraints into brittle dust in less than three seconds. The ties crumbled away from her wrists and ankles like they'd been buried for decades.
She stood slowly, carefully, testing her balance. The sedative was gone but her body still remembered it, neurons firing sluggishly, muscles reluctant to obey. It would pass. It always did.
Her hand went to her hair—found the long pin she always kept there, hidden in her bun, tucked away where nobody thought to look. Eight inches of surgical steel, filed to a point sharp enough to pierce bone, weighted perfectly for throwing or stabbing. She'd carried it every day for ten years, just in case.
Just in case she had to become that person again.
She pulled it free. Let her hair fall loose around her shoulders.
Mia backpedaled, one hand going to the chain-whip at her belt, the other forming signs in the air—Silence resonance, shaping, preparing. "Stay back!"
"No," Mira said quietly. Simply. Stating fact.
The Cultists charged.
The first man—young, maybe twenty, probably recruited fresh and full of zealot faith that hadn't been tested yet—swung at her with a Silence-imbued blade. Short sword. Church design. Stolen, probably.
Mira sidestepped—muscle memory, perfect economy of motion, not wasting a single movement—and drove the hairpin into the gap between his shoulder and collarbone. Not deep. Just enough to make contact.
Not to kill.
To unmake.
Her unhealing resonance poured into him through the steel like liquid death, spreading through his nervous system, shutting down synapses one by one. His scream cut off halfway as his vocal cords stopped responding. His legs gave out. He collapsed, still alive, still breathing, but his body had forgotten how to move.
He'd recover. Eventually. If someone got him to a real healer within the next few hours.
She didn't particularly care either way.
The second man—older, scarred, veteran of something that had left him missing two fingers on his left hand—hesitated. Smart. Saw what happened to his companion and decided maybe charging the woman who'd just turned off someone's nervous system like flipping a light switch was a bad idea.
The woman with the chain-whip didn't hesitate.
She lashed out, and the weapon came alive in her hands—segmented metal links wreathed in Silence resonance, spikes extending from each section like teeth, moving with a will of its own. It cut through the air with a sound like tearing fabric, aimed directly at Mira's throat.
Mira caught the chain mid-strike.
Bare-handed.
The spikes bit into her palm. Blood welled up, running between her fingers, dripping onto the concrete floor.
The woman Cultist's eyes went wide. "What—"
Mira smiled wider. Felt the pain like an old friend returning. Like a reminder of what she used to be.
And began healing herself while simultaneously projecting unhealing into the weapon.
The metal corroded. Rusted. Aged a hundred years in three seconds. The chain-links crumbled, fell apart in her grip like they'd been buried in salt water for decades. The spikes dissolved into orange dust that drifted away on air currents that smelled like ozone and decay.
"You brought the wrong target," Mira said softly. Almost gently. Like she was explaining something obvious to a child who should have known better.
She moved like water. Like smoke. Like death in a lab coat that had seen too much and remembered everything.
The scarred man tried to run. She let him take three steps before her hand shot out—grabbed his wrist, flooded unhealing through his nervous system. Not enough to paralyze. Just enough to remind him what helplessness felt like.
He collapsed, gasping, alive but very aware of how close he'd come to being something else.
The woman Cultist backed away, hands up, chain-whip gone, nothing left but fear and survival instinct. "Please—I didn't—"
"Save it," Mira said.
The boy—the man now, the orphan she'd made ten years ago—came at her with bare hands wreathed in Silence resonance. No weapon. Just rage and training and ten years of hate that had festered into something toxic.
She didn't dodge.
Let him touch her.
His Silence tried to eat at her resonance, tried to sever her connection to the Source, tried to turn her into nothing but flesh and fear.
It failed.
Because Mira had spent ten years learning to balance life and death in her hands. Learning to hold healing and unhealing simultaneously, to exist in the space between creation and consumption. The Silence couldn't sever what was already balanced on the edge of both.
She grabbed his wrist. Locked eyes with him across three feet of cold warehouse air.
"I remember you," she said, and her voice cracked like glass breaking. "I remember that night. I remember your father. I remember—" She stopped. Swallowed. "I'm sorry. For what I did. For what I made you."
He spat in her face. The saliva was mixed with blood from where he'd bitten his own cheek. "Sorry doesn't bring them back. Sorry doesn't give me back ten years. Sorry doesn't—"
"I know," she whispered. "I know it doesn't."
Then she threw him—not hard enough to kill, not gentle enough to be merciful. Just hard enough to stop.
He hit the wall twelve feet away and slumped, conscious but stunned, staring at her with eyes that couldn't decide between hate and recognition.
Mia was backing toward the exit now, chain-whip forgotten on the ground, hands shaking, eyes wild. "Mira, please—I didn't have a choice—they would have killed me if I didn't—"
"Everyone has a choice," Mira said, and she was walking forward now, steady and inevitable as sunrise. "You chose this. You chose to betray people who trusted you. You chose to drug me and drag me here and deliver me to them." She stopped five feet away. "You chose wrong."
Mia's hands came up—wreathed in Silence resonance, forming shapes in the air, calling on powers she'd spent years learning to wield. Chains materialized from nothing, spiked and writhing like living things, formed from pure Silence given temporary shape.
They lashed toward Mira like striking serpents.
She didn't stop walking.
Just raised one hand.
The chains hit her healing aura and stopped. Frozen mid-strike, vibrating with conflicting resonances—creation versus consumption, life versus void, existence versus nothing. The air around them crackled with the sound of fundamental forces canceling each other out.
"You can't—" Mia's voice was panicked now, high and desperate. "That's not possible, you can't just—"
"I've had ten years to perfect the balance," Mira said quietly, and there was sadness in her voice now. Regret. "Healing and unhealing. Life and death. Creation and destruction. I'm very, very good at what I do."
She closed her hand into a fist.
The chains shattered like glass, exploding into fragments of Silence that dissolved before hitting the ground.
Mia ran.
Turned and sprinted for the exit, footsteps echoing in the empty warehouse, hood falling back, hair streaming behind her.
Mira didn't chase.
Just watched her go, standing in the middle of the warehouse floor, surrounded by groaning Cultists who weren't dead but wished they were, hairpin still in her hand, blood still dripping from her palm where the chain-whip had torn flesh.
Behind her, the orphan—the man whose life she'd destroyed with a moment's hesitation ten years ago—stared at her with eyes that couldn't reconcile what he was seeing with what he'd imagined.
She looked down at him. "I can't undo it," she said softly. Voice rough with emotion she'd tried very hard to bury. "What I did. Who I was. The choices I made that put you here." She stopped. "I'm sorry. That's all I have. And I know it's not enough. It'll never be enough."
She turned and walked toward the exit, stepping over bodies and broken chains and the wreckage of everything she'd tried to leave behind.
"Wait," he said. Voice cracking. "Just—wait."
She stopped. Didn't turn around.
"Why?" he asked. "Why didn't you just kill them? You could have. I saw what you can do. You could've killed all of us without breaking a sweat."
Mira was quiet for a long moment. Then: "Because I'm trying very hard not to be that person anymore. And if I start again—" Her voice broke. "—I'm not sure I could stop."
Then she walked out into the night, leaving him sitting there with questions that didn't have good answers and a past that refused to stay buried.
Reverb found her three blocks away.
He'd been tracking her medical bag—had sewn a chip into the lining two years ago, just in case, paranoid hacker habits that everyone mocked until they saved lives. When she'd disappeared and the bag had moved to a warehouse in the industrial district, he'd known something was very wrong.
He came around the corner at a dead run, out of breath, eyes wild with fear and adrenaline and two hours of imagining the worst—
And stopped.
Because Mira was walking calmly down the street like nothing had happened. Hair down. Lab coat spotted with blood that wasn't all hers. Hairpin still in her hand, catching streetlight, gleaming.
She looked like something from a nightmare. Beautiful and terrible and wrong in ways that made his brain struggle to process.
"Doc?" His voice was careful. Controlled. The way you talked to someone standing on the edge of a roof. "You okay?"
She looked at him. Really looked. Focused on his face like she was seeing him for the first time or maybe the last time, memorizing details in case she never got another chance.
"You followed me," she said quietly. Not accusatory. Just stating fact.
"I saw," he said. Admitted it immediately. No point lying. He'd gone to the warehouse. Watched through a broken window. Seen everything—the fight, the unhealing, the power she'd kept hidden for years. "I saw what you did."
Silence stretched between them like a bridge made of glass. Fragile. Ready to shatter.
Then Mira laughed—short, bitter, broken. The kind of laugh that had nothing to do with humor and everything to do with giving up.
"And now you know what I am," she said. Voice flat. Empty. "What I was. What I've been pretending not to be."
Reverb stepped closer. Didn't flinch. Didn't back away. Just closed the distance until he was standing right in front of her, close enough that she could see he wasn't scared.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I do."
She waited. For him to run. To back away. To look at her differently. To see the monster instead of the healer.
Instead, he took her hand. The one still holding the bloodstained hairpin. Wrapped his fingers around hers, blood and steel and all.
"You're someone who survived," he said quietly. Firmly. Like he was making a declaration to the universe and daring it to disagree. "Someone who made choices you can't take back. Someone who chose different. Someone who runs a clinic in the worst part of the city and hasn't charged for treatment in three years even though you're barely surviving yourself." He squeezed her hand. "You're also someone who can kill with a touch and chose not to. Tonight. When you could have. When it would've been easier. You chose not to."
Mira stared at him. "You're not scared?"
"Doc." He smiled crookedly. Self-deprecating. "I've hacked Church databases. Stolen from the Families. Run interference for a Blessed and a god-touched warrior. I've got three governments who want me dead and a list of crimes long enough to get me executed twice." He shrugged. "You think I'm clean? You think I haven't done shit I can't take back?"
"That's different—"
"It's not." He met her eyes. "We've all got blood on our hands. Everyone in the Morrows does. Question isn't what we've done. Question is what we do after. Who we choose to be when we could choose anything else."
Something in Mira's chest cracked. Some wall she'd built years ago, brick by careful brick, to keep people at a distance so they couldn't see what was underneath.
She'd been holding it together—perfectly controlled, perfectly calm, perfectly professional—and suddenly she couldn't.
She collapsed against him. Not crying. Not breaking down. Just empty. Hollow. A vessel that had poured out everything and had nothing left.
He caught her. Held her. Didn't say anything. Just stood there on a street corner in the worst part of the city at three in the morning, holding someone who'd spent ten years pretending to be someone else.
"I killed again," she whispered into his shoulder. "I swore I wouldn't. Swore I was done. And I—"
"You survived," he said firmly. Voice certain. "They took you. Drugged you. You defended yourself. That's not the same as what you were."
"Isn't it?"
"No." His voice was absolute. "Because you chose to walk away. You could've killed them all. I saw. You had the power. You had the opportunity. You didn't." He pulled back just enough to make her look at him. "That's not the same person. That's someone who learned. Someone who changed."
Mira wanted to believe him. Tried to. Almost succeeded.
"Come on," Reverb said gently. "Let's get you home."
They returned to the hideout to find chaos barely contained.
Kojo was pacing like a caged animal—six feet four inches of muscle and divine power and barely restrained violence, gauntlets glowing faintly gold, clearly minutes away from tearing the city apart brick by brick until he found her.
Ilias sat with his head in his hands, staff across his knees, looking gutted. Like someone had reached into his chest and torn something vital out.
Seraph stood by the window, rigid and furious, one hand on her weapon, watching the street like she expected enemies to materialize from shadows.
When Mira walked in, Kojo moved so fast he was a blur.
He wrapped her in a hug that would've broken ribs if she hadn't been Tuned, lifting her off the ground, holding on like he was afraid she'd disappear if he let go.
"Where the fuck—" His voice cracked halfway through. "Mira, I swear to every god that's listening, if you ever scare me like that again, I will—"
"I'm fine," she said quietly. Hollow. "I'm okay."
He pulled back. Looked at her. Really looked.
Saw the blood on her lab coat. The hair down. The hairpin still in her hand. The emptiness in her eyes that said she'd gone somewhere dark and wasn't quite back yet.
"What happened?" His voice was gentle now. Careful.
She glanced at Ilias—still sitting there, unaware of what she really was, seeing her as the healer who'd patched him up a hundred times, who'd never hurt anyone, who was pure and good and everything he needed in a world that kept trying to break him.
"Not here," she said. Voice barely above whisper. "Kojo. Seraph. Can we—"
Understanding flickered across Kojo's face. He knew. Had always known, probably, that Mira had secrets that cut deeper than medicine.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "Yeah, let's—"
They moved to a back room. Private. Just the three of them. Away from Ilias and Reverb and anyone who didn't need to know what she'd been.
Mira told them everything.
Mia's betrayal. The kidnapping. Waking up bound in the warehouse. The fight. The unhealing. The way she'd torn through three Cultists like they were nothing.
The orphan.
His eyes. The recognition. The hate.
When she finished, Kojo looked like someone had gutted him with a dull blade and left him standing.
"Mira—" His voice was rough. Raw.
"I had to," she said. Voice flat. Matter-of-fact. "I had to become that again. To survive. To get out. To come back."
"I know." His voice was barely controlled. "I'm sorry. This is my fault. If I'd been more careful, if I'd watched her closer, if I'd—"
"You couldn't have stopped it." She looked at him. Met his eyes. "But I can't go back now. Can't pretend I'm just a healer. They know what I am. The Cult knows. Which means—"
"Which means you're a target," Seraph finished. She'd been silent, processing, watching Mira with soldier's eyes that saw everything and judged nothing. Now she stepped forward. "They'll come for you. To eliminate the threat or recruit you. Either way, you're in danger."
"Let them try," Mira said coldly. And for a moment—just a flash—Seraph saw the assassin underneath. Death's Daughter. The legend.
Seraph studied her for a long moment. Then: "I noticed your hands once. The calluses. The way you move. How you hold instruments like they're weapons." She paused. "I thought you were just careful. But you're not, are you? You're trained."
Mira met her eyes. "Ten years. Best assassin in the Morrows. Over forty confirmed kills. Then I walked away."
"Why?"
"Because I saw what I'd become." Mira's voice cracked like breaking ice. "In a child's eyes. Reflected back at me. And I couldn't—I couldn't be that anymore."
Silence fell heavy and absolute.
Then Seraph did something unexpected.
She stepped forward and embraced Mira. Not gentle. Not pitying. Just firm. Real. The kind of hug that said I see you and you're still here.
"You're stronger than I am," Seraph said quietly. Voice fierce. "You chose to walk away. To become something different. I'm not sure I could've done that."
Mira almost broke again. Almost let the tears come. Almost let herself feel everything she'd been holding back.
Almost.
"We don't tell Ilias," Kojo said firmly. Not a question. A statement. "Not yet. He's got enough—"
"Agreed," Seraph said immediately. "He sees you as pure. Good. Untouched by the violence. He needs that right now. Needs someone who represents what he's fighting for, not what he's fighting against."
Mira nodded slowly. "Then that's what he'll see."
But inside, she felt the weight of what she'd been settling back over her shoulders like an old coat that fit too well.
The blade pretending to be a healer.
The killer wearing a lab coat.
Death's Daughter, trying very hard to be someone else.
Meanwhile, in the Cult's sanctum beneath the city, in chambers that smelled like incense and old secrets, Mia stumbled through the door.
Gasping. Eyes wild. Robes torn. Looking like she'd seen death and barely escaped.
Voiced void turned slowly. His movements were deliberate, controlled, the kind of calm that came from absolute certainty or absolute madness.
"Report."
"She—" Mia couldn't catch her breath. "She's not just a healer. She's—" She looked up, and voiced void saw genuine terror in her eyes. "She's the assassin. The one from the stories. Death's Daughter."
Silence fell like a curtain dropping.
One of the other Cultists—younger, maybe sixteen, new enough to still believe the stories were just stories—whispered, "That's a legend. She's been gone for ten years. She can't be—"
"She's real," Mia snapped. Voice sharp with fear and certainty. "I watched her. She broke through military-grade sedatives like they were nothing. Tore through three of our best like they were children. She has unhealing, true unhealing, the kind that unmakes things at the molecular level." She was shaking now. "And she's with them. With the Venns. With the godtouched brothers."
The voiced void's expression didn't change. But when he spoke, his voice carried weight that made the air feel heavier.
"Then we have made an enemy we cannot unmake." He paused. Let that sink in. "Withdraw all operatives from the Morrows immediately. Do not engage the healer. Do not approach her. Do not even look in her direction."
"But the mission—"
"The mission adapts." His voice was final. Absolute. "We will find another way to isolate the boy. Another angle. Another weakness." He turned back to the darkness. "But we do not fight Death's Daughter. Not unless we have no other choice."
The Cultists dispersed quickly, efficiently, like smoke dissipating.
The voiced void remained alone in the chamber, staring at nothing, calculating probabilities and outcomes.
"She was supposed to stay retired," he whispered to the shadows. "Supposed to stay buried."
But the shadows didn't answer. They never did.
That night, Mira sat alone in her clinic.
Medical supplies restocked—Reverb had called in favors, traded information, probably done illegal things to replace what Mia had stolen. The shelves were full again. The instruments cleaned and organized. Everything in its place.
But she could still feel the blood on her hands.
Still see the orphan's eyes.
Still remember what it felt like to be that person again. How easy it had been. How natural.
That was the part that scared her most. Not that she'd done it. But that it hadn't felt wrong.
Reverb appeared in the doorway. Didn't say anything. Just sat beside her in the second chair, the one for patients who needed someone to sit with them while they processed bad news.
After a long silence, she spoke.
"Thank you. For not running."
"Yeah, well." He smiled faintly. Self-deprecating. "I'm stupid that way."
She almost smiled back. Almost.
"When this is over—" she started.
"When this is over," he interrupted gently but firmly, "we'll figure it out. Together. Whatever you need. Whatever happens." He took her hand. "You're not alone in this."
She looked at him. "You're sure? Even knowing what I am? What I was?"
"Doc." He squeezed her hand. "I've seen monsters. Real ones. Ones who enjoy the hurt they cause. Who choose cruelty because it's easier than kindness." He met her eyes. "You're not one. You were a tool. A weapon someone else pointed. And you chose to stop. That's not monstrous. That's human."
"I was—"
"Were," he emphasized. Past tense. Final. "You're not that person anymore. Haven't been for ten years. And tonight—" He paused. "Tonight you could've been. Could've killed them all and felt nothing. You chose different. That matters."
She wanted to believe him. Tried to. This time, she almost succeeded.
They sat there in silence—her hand in his, blood washed away but memory remaining—and watched the city lights through the window.
Outside, the Morrows hummed with tension. The Cult retreated into shadows. The Church prepared their next move. And somewhere in the darkness, an orphan she'd made ten years ago was trying to figure out who he was if the monster he'd been hunting turned out to be more human than he'd imagined.
Inside the clinic, two broken people sat together and pretended everything was going to be okay.
And maybe—just maybe—if they pretended long enough, it would become true.