the drowning man

Every love story begins the same way: a chance meeting between a boy and a girl. Friendship blooms through conversations and quiet moments. Affection becomes devotion and they dream of a future, endure hardships together. Somewhere along the way,  they realize they were always meant to stand beside one another. I used to envy stories like that because our world was never built to allow such simplicity. Mutantdom teaches you early that survival comes before happiness. Society brands you a monster long before it bothers to learn your name. Every battle strips away another illusion until duty becomes second nature. You stop fighting because you believe you’ll win. You fight because someone has to. You become a shield for those too frightened to raise their own voices. You fight for tomorrow, even when you no longer expect to see it yourself. And it’s a lonely way to live. Until you. You were the one place the war could never reach. In the middle of endless conflict, you gave me something no battlefield ever could— peace. We fought through hell together, buried friends together, carried burdens few could ever understand, yet somehow we always found our way back to one another. I’ve worn more scars than I can remember. But none of them compare to the wounds left by losing you. I’ve never lost you only once. I’ve watched you die beneath different skies. I’ve held your hand as entire worlds unraveled around us. I’ve lived through timelines where fate still found a new way to steal you from me. Time changes nothing and you’re an open wound that continues to bleed each time we’re forced apart. That is the curse of loving someone across lifetimes. This grief, it never fades. It only learns how to walk beside you. It becomes another scar beneath the uniform, another weight you carry. Still… I’ve never truly lost you, Jean. I find you in the silence after the fighting ends. I hear your laughter carried on the evening wind. I look toward the stars and remember every impossible moment we stole from a world determined to keep us apart. Even now, I can still feel the fire in your eyes— the fire that reminded me I was more than a weapon. You have always been more than the woman I loved. You are the reason I never became the monster the world expected me to be. Every choice I’ve made, every battle I’ve survived, every impossible tomorrow I’ve refused to surrender to… they all began with you. If fate demanded I march through every war, every broken timeline, every impossible future just to stand beside you one more time... I would do it without hesitation because amid the smoke and blood of every fight, you are by my side empowering strength.