rewind

『••✎••』

It starts as a simple image—soft, ordinary light pouring through half-open blinds—the kind of light that paints the walls gold. Not in a harsh or unforgiving way, but in a gentle manner that’s enough to warm everything it touches. In that light, the house doesn’t feel like a hideout or a cage; it feels like an actual home.

Abel is at the center of it, of course, knees bent with little clumsy hands around his favorite toy cars. He pushes them in crooked lines across the floor, lips pursed in concentration until something makes him laugh—that high, unguarded, pure laugh. It’s the kind of sound that cuts through every scar you’ve gathered. A sound untouched by the world outside these walls.

You find yourself clinging to it, as though you can thread it into your own bones and let it patch over every fracture in your heart.

And then there’s Jax, leaning against the counter in that grey shirt you love with the white sleeves from his undershirt tugged to his forearms, the cotton softened by countless washes. He’s not heavy with exhaustion or hollow-eyed from nights you’d rather forget—no leather, no patch, no ghosts stitched into the fabric. Just him, bathed in that gentle light, with his blonde hair catching the sun like a memory of the man he might have been. It’s untamed and boyish in a way that makes you think of the man he might have been if the world had been kinder.

His smile is soft. Softer than most ever get to see.

He kneels to help Abel with a car flipped upside down, his fingers gentle as his smile. He keeps his movements patient, laughing in that low, warm way that—God—almost breaks you because it feels so possible, so close.

You stand there and drink it in. The brush of his hand as he passes you a mug, thumb grazing yours like he’s done it a thousand times, like he’ll do it a thousand more. The way his shoulders loosen when Abel climbs into his lap, small hands clutching at his shirt, both of them wrapped in some kind of everyday joy you can barely hold onto.

It feels like poetry, this life you build in your mind. A rhythm of mornings spent in tangled sheets, afternoons in sunlight, evenings filled with nothing but the sound of Abel’s footsteps and Jax’s voice reading from a book he picked up just because Abel liked the cover. No shadows waiting outside. No calls that drag him away into blood and smoke. No fear hanging above you like a storm.

But the dream is greedy. It pulls you deeper, dares you to imagine more. You picture birthdays at the park, balloons tied too tightly to benches. Abel, with frosting on his cheeks, is laughing so hard he hiccups. You’re crouched down behind the camera, trying to capture every second, every frame, because for once, you weren’t afraid of time running out.

You imagine late nights, the three of you piled on the couch, Abel half-asleep against his father’s chest, Jax’s arm thrown lazily across you like it’s the most natural thing in the world. No tension in his jaw, no restless tapping of his fingers, no wariness in his eyes.

Just peace. Just love.

It is everything you want. Everything you’ll never stop wanting. But even as you hold it close, you feel the familiar pull—the faint judder that warns you this world is too fragile to last.

The warmth fades first, the colors dimming, as though the sun outside suddenly remembers to set. That sweet, golden world dissolves into shadows, piece by piece.

You know why. You’ve always known.

And you stand corrected when that voice sneaks in first, as it always does. Low and sharp, carved with smoke and certainty:

This is the life, sweetheart. Don’t waste your time pretending it’s not.

You can almost see her in the corner of your vision—arms crossed, expression both fierce and cruel, love wrapped in iron. She never lets you drift too far into hope. She anchors you with the reminder that this family—this legacy, is made of blood as much as it is of love.

The dream resists for a moment as you want to stay there and believe in it, but Gemma and reality itself have always had a way of cutting through illusions.

And so, it’s gone.

The sound that replaces it is sharp, jarring: the creak of the front door. The slam of reality walking back into your life.

And there he is.

Not the man in the dream, not the Jackson softened by sunlight and laughter. This Jackson is torn and raw, blood smeared across skin and fabric until you can’t tell which is his and which belongs to someone else. His plaid shirt clings darkly in patches, his knuckles split wide open, his face swollen in places you can’t even track fast enough. The air around him smells like iron, like dirt, like rage.

It punches the air from your lungs.

Your body moves before your mind does—you close the distance and wrap yourself around him, pulling him into your arms as if you can hold him together, as if the strength of your embrace might undo whatever broke him this time. You bury yourself in the bruises, the blood, because what else is there to do? He’s here, and he’s alive, and that has to be enough.

The dream dies in your chest, as it always does, and you hate yourself for how desperately you grieve it every time.

Because you know the truth: there is no sunlight-only life waiting for you. There is no quiet kitchen, no simple happiness, no safe future untouched by the weight of the cut. There is only this.

This man you love. This family held together by threads of devotion and despair. This cycle that will always pull him back out that door and return him to you broken.

And you will always take him back, and you will always do everything in your power to put him back together because even though you know how this story ends, you can never bring yourself to give it up.