#doodle world

Zavier is a man who has watched everything he ever cared about turn to ash, who carries every scar, every loss, and every regret like chains around his heart. He knows better than anyone that loving someone is the most dangerous thing he could possibly do.

He has traveled through time so many times, failed so many times, and watched the world end in so many ways that he long ago convinced himself he had no room left in his heart for anything but duty and grief. And then he meets you, bright, brave, and stubbornly kind even when the world is cruel, and suddenly he feels something he had believed died in his timeline: hope.

It terrifies him. He tells himself it is a weakness, that caring for you will only cloud his judgment, that if he lets himself love you he will only suffer more when the inevitable comes, and yet he cannot tear himself away. He finds himself watching you when he thinks you are not looking, memorizing the sound of your laugh, the way you hold yourself in battle, the kindness you show even to people who do not deserve it.

And every time he does, his heart aches, because he knows that in his timeline, you did not survive. He lost you once, in fire and darkness, and now here you stand, alive, radiant, within his reach, and he is torn between the overwhelming urge to hold you close and protect you from everything, and the desperate, terrified need to push you away before history can repeat itself.

He fights these feelings with every fiber of his being, because loving you feels like betraying the version of you he already lost, like he is replacing the person he failed to save with someone new, and that guilt eats at him constantly.

He tells himself you are just another variable, just another part of the timeline he is trying to fix... but he knows it is a lie.

He notices everything about you: your habits, the things that make you smile, the things that trouble you, the way you fight and the way you care, and he remembers every single detail with a reverence that breaks his own heart, because he is terrified that one day, he will have to watch you vanish all over again.

He loves you from a distance, in moments when he believes no one is watching, because to love you openly would mean admitting how much he stands to lose, and he has already lost so much that he does not know if he could survive losing you a second time.

He is afraid to let you see his face, afraid to let you know who he truly is, because he fears that once you learn he is Quincy, the boy from the ruined future, the one whose father destroyed the world, you will look at him with fear or pity, and he does not know which would hurt him more.

The most agonizing part of his love is that he carries the memory of losing you in his heart every single day. He remembers how you died in his timeline, the last words you spoke, the way you looked at him, the pain and regret in your eyes, and that memory haunts every interaction he has with you now.

When he looks at you, he sees two versions of you: the vibrant, living soul standing before him, and the ghost of the person he failed to save. Sometimes he will stare at you, lost in thought, and his eyes will grow distant and sorrowful, and when you ask him what is wrong, he will shake his head and say only that he is sorry, that he will not let anything happen to you this time, that he swears it on his life.

He loves you with a desperation that is almost painful to witness, because for him, loving you is not just about happiness or companionship; it is about redemption. If he can save you, then perhaps he did not fail entirely. If he can keep you safe, then perhaps everything he has suffered, every timeline he has walked through and every death he has witnessed, will have been worth it.