Three months.
That was how long it had been since I slept in the same bed as my wife. Three months since London. Three months since Katulu took our daughter and left a message we still could not read. Three months of two houses, one fence, and a silence that had learned our names.
The first week she did not speak at all.
I brought food to her door. She left the plates on the step, some eaten, some not. On the eighth night I knocked anyway.
"Elena."
"Go home."
"I am home."
"Then go to the other one."
I stood there with my hand on the wood until the porch light clicked off. She had not opened the door. I slept on the sofa next door and listened to nothing.
By the second week we had a system that was not a marriage.
Morning texts. Short.
You alive?
Yes.
Rift?
No.
Eat something.
I did.
That was the whole conversation some days. I started answering later. She started not asking. The gap in the middle filled itself with news footage of London and a crib neither of us could move.
One afternoon I found her in the garden. She was standing where we used to lie, coat on, arms wrapped around herself like the air had a temperature only she could feel.
"They still can't read it," I said.
"I know."
"The linguists think it's a claim. Not a threat."
"I know what it is." She did not look at me. "It's a receipt."
"Elena—"
"Don't say my name like that. Like we're about to fix it on the grass."
"I'm not trying to fix it."
"Good. Because you can't."
I took a step closer. She took one back. The fence between the houses suddenly looked honest.
"Do you want me here?" I asked.
She was quiet long enough that the answer arrived before the words.
"I want her here," she said. "I don't know what to do with you while she isn't."
I nodded. I went back inside.
That night I broke a man's wrist in a corner shop because he pointed a gun at a clerk, and I held the break longer than the job required. On the roof after, violet light crawled under my skin and I could not tell if I was shaking from the fight or from the sentence she had left in the garden.
Was I becoming a monster?
I did not text her about it. She would have heard the part I wanted absolved and none of the part that scared me.
There were smaller days too. Those were worse.
I came back from a patrol once and found a bag of her clothes on my step. Not a note. Just the shirts she used to steal. I washed them. I folded them. I put them back on her step the next morning. By evening they were gone. We never mentioned it.
Another night the power cut on her side of the fence. I stood at the window and watched her move through the dark with a phone torch, room to room, not coming over. I could have fixed it in a minute. I texted.
Need help?
No.
The light came back an hour later. I do not know how. I did not ask.
On the worst morning she opened her door while I was leaving food and we almost collided. She looked thinner. I looked like I had slept in the suit, because I had.
"You don't have to keep feeding me," she said.
"You don't eat if I don't."
"That's not your job anymore."
"What is my job, Elena?"
She stared past my shoulder at the empty garden.
"Find a way through," she said. "Or stop standing on my step like the food is a conversation."
"I'm trying to talk to you."
"You're trying to be forgiven."
"For what? For losing?"
"For being the one who was supposed to hold them and didn't. Same as me. I just don't want a witness while I say it."
The door closed. The plate stayed. I ate standing up on the path because carrying it back felt like losing twice.
The third month looked normal, which meant it was lying.
We met at the lab once, because Command asked. The wall was still marked. She stood on one side of the room. I stood on the other. A technician talked about energy residue. Neither of us looked at the delivery bed.
After, in the car park, she said, "You don't have to keep coming to these."
"I'm her father."
"I didn't say you weren't."
"You talk like I left."
"You fly off every time I say the wrong thing."
"You say we shouldn't have met."
She closed her eyes. "I said if I hadn't taken the trial, she wouldn't be gone. That is not the same sentence. You keep hearing the one that hurts you."
"Because it's in there."
"And London is in there. And Voss. And her. You don't get to rank them."
We stood with the car between us. I almost reached for her hand. She put hers in her coat.
"Are we still married?" I asked.
"On paper."
"That's not what I asked."
"I don't have a better answer tonight."
She drove one way. I flew the other. The sofa still smelled like nothing. I lay on it and said Nova into the dark, the name we had never made official, because saying it in an empty room was the only place it could not be corrected.
We did not have sex. We did not kiss. Once she brushed past me in the lab corridor and both of us froze like the contact was a mistake. She said sorry. I said it's fine. Neither of us meant the words we used.
Parents called. I did not answer the first three times. On the fourth, Mum's voice was careful.
"Is Elena all right?"
"No."
"Are you?"
"No."
"Do you want us to come?"
"Not yet."
Dad took the phone. He did not ask if I was still a hero. He asked if I was sleeping. I lied. He knew. He let me.
All I could do was think about our child. On patrol. In the shower. While I watched a man beg and wondered how long I had been the kind of person who made men beg. The line moved. I told myself it was the job. Some nights I believed it.
The breaking news hit at 2:14 a.m.
Every channel. Every alert. A rift, smaller than London, opening over the old industrial lot. Gold-black light. Armour. One figure, then three.
The Immortals had returned.
I was in the air before the anchor finished the sentence.
Elena was faster.
I saw her from a mile out. No suit. No mask. A coat over whatever she had been sleeping in, hair loose, bare feet already off the ground. Purple light was thin around her. Enough to fly. Not the old fire.
"Elena."
She did not answer the comm.
I tried again. "Wait. We do this together."
Her voice came back flat, already far ahead of me.
"We haven't done anything together in three months."
Below us the lot was a wound. Katulu stood in the hole with two soldiers behind him. The message on the wall was still there.
Elena did not circle. She did not wait. She aimed herself at them and flew.
Coat snapping. Hair wild. Hands open. No weapon. No costume. Three months of an empty crib turned into a straight line through the dark.
I pushed harder to catch her.
I did not.
She was already crossing the last of the open air, going straight at Katulu like the distance was the only thing she had left to break.