“the One that got away.”

What do you mean who?? you wondered. "Valko, he works with EonCore? I've mentioned him before, and I'm sure you've got a file on him, or something..." You desperately start looking through online records as you talk to Sylus, your latest inquiree, hoping his connections would bring you something. Anything.

"Kitten, There's no one named Valko who works with EonCore. Trust me, I'd know." And when he says that, you're starting to become more frantic. As you finally find the chairmen page, you see it. Or rather, you see nothing. Valko isn't there. It's like he never existed, replaced by another faceless name.

"This isn't funny...he's real! I know him!"

"Are you sure he didn't give you a fake name? He could have been an EVER agent..."

"Sylus, he was on this website just last night, he was with me last night! Something's wrong, something's...I have to go find him. I won't rest until I bring him home."

-

It hurt to think about the events that led to your undoing. The weeks prior to the moment your mother drew her last breath. You were a cracked vase filled with wilting flowers and overflowing regret. Every breath you took consumed more energy than you could spare and yet the world just. Kept. Spinning. 

“I brought you flowers. Yellow tulips, by the way.” The words felt like lead on your tongue. It was one thing to accept your mother was never coming back, it was another to try to act normal about it. “I know you never cared for them, but I didn’t think leaving a pack of cigarettes on your grave was very tasteful.” You bitterly smiled to yourself at the memories of your mom sneaking a cigarette in the backyard when she thought you were asleep. It was a nasty habit you did everything to rid her of. A fruitless attempt to protect her from the inevitable. 

“I’m sorry I haven’t figured out your epitaph yet. It’s just so hard to condense your entire life into a few words. Plus, they charge by the letter, so I’m trying to be really selective.” It felt weird, speaking into empty space, but you read online that it helped with grief, so you tried anyway. 

That was how you approached most things nowadays. Eating, drinking, sleeping, they all seemed meaningless. But, you knew you couldn’t survive on just antagonism and mourning, so you did it anyway. 

“Zayne called again. I know you told me not to hate him and that it wasn’t his fault, but I can’t bring myself to agree.” 

The moment Zayne told you that the heart that could save your mother’s life was going to someone else replayed in your mind like a scratched vinyl stuck on an aggravating note.

“I got so frustrated by his constant calls that I threw my phone into the ocean.” You let out a sad laugh. “Guess that’s the last time I bring anything with me when I’m walking along the coast.” 

You paused for a moment, feeling stupid. But you had so much to say to her, it all just began spilling out.

“I know you don’t want to hear this, but I might lose the house. I burned through all my paid leave, and the idea of going back to work for Sylus makes me want to put my head through a wood-chipper. I know I have to, but how can I focus on work when I have nothing left to work for?” You tasted the tears before you felt them, the saltiness reminded you of your weekends at the beach with your mom. You did everything to get out of joining her, you hated the beach, but it was her favourite place to be and in a desperate attempt to cling on to whatever was left of her, you forced it to be yours too.

“I’m sorry I never got you that house you dreamed of, or the dog. I’m sure there are lots of dogs in heaven, and at least the dogs there have been screened. With my luck any dog I would’ve gotten you would’ve been evil.” You teetered around the grievance you truly wanted to apologise for. 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t spend much time with you before you passed away. I was so sure you would get the transplant. I tried so hard to save for it. I should’ve been with you. If I knew—” The sobs raked through you with a force that knocked the air out of your lungs. You sat down next to her tombstone, leaning your head against the chiseled rock. 

There were moments when you’d wake up, and in the haze of your muddled mind you’d forget she was dead. But then the ache in your body is deciphered by your mind, and you’re reminded of just how much you’ve lost. Maybe that’s why they called it mourning. Grief dawned on you like the rising sun.

Life had a way of being entirely unfair, and there was nowhere to hide from fate’s piercing claws. And as if to ensure you hadn’t forgotten just how cruel life could be, your head whipped around at the sound of footsteps behind you to find the last person you wanted to see.

Sylus was dressed in a long black coat hanging effortlessly off of his broad shoulders, a black dress shirt that really should’ve been buttoned up to the top, and a pair of black slacks that made his long legs look impossibly longer. He looked every bit the cunning grim reaper, and it wasn’t just because he was surrounded by graves.

“I didn’t know you were back in the N109 Zone.” The words came out harsher than you intended as your head returned to it’s position against the rock. 

Sylus stopped in front of you, lowering himself to his haunches so that you would be face-to-face. It stung to look at him, so you focused on picking at the grass instead. 

“I only got back a few hours ago. I heard about your mother. I’m sorry.” Having been deprived of his voice for over a month, you cursed the butterflies that coursed through you like muscle memory. Part of you wished he’d returned disfigured, but you knew it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Ugly or devastatingly beautiful, the storm that was Sylus could not be stopped, only weathered. 

“Sorry that she died or sorry that you weren’t there?” The bitterness in your tone was unfamiliar to you. Even though you knew it was unfair of you to expect him to have stayed, he left immediately after he dropped you off at the hospital and you hoped he’d have been there just a little longer. It didn’t help that you didn’t hear from him until two weeks later, and by then you were too engrossed in your battle against Akso hospital’s medical board to respond. 

“You haven’t been answering my calls; they’re not even going through anymore. You haven’t blocked me, have you?” Sylus countered your question with one of his own. If you cared enough, you might’ve called him out on his diversion. 

“No, my phone broke.” That was an understatement if there ever was one. 

“How long ago?”

“A week.” That much was true and since you couldn’t afford a smart phone, a shitty $30 flip phone weighed down your pocket. 

“And all the times I called before then?” Sylus’s eyes perused you with intensity, and you suddenly felt self-conscious. You weren’t dressed well, in a pair of black sweatpants that were too big on you and a matching hoodie. Grieving people were allowed to dress terribly without judgement, Y/N. It’s okay.

“I didn’t feel like picking up.” The grass continued to bare the brunt of your nerves as you answered. The you that wasn’t effectively an orphan would’ve made up some excuse to protect his feelings, but you were resolved to change that. Your mother was strong, independent, and she never backed down from a fight. Not against men like Sylus, and not against her illness. If you wanted to honour her memory then you had to live your life the way she’d want you to.

“Do you have a phone now?” 

You reached into the pocket of your sweatpants to take out the grey flip phone. You watched as Sylus bit back a laugh.

“I’ll get you a new one.”

“I don’t need you to get me anything.” You quickly retorted.

“You’re going to need a phone from this century if you’re working for me, Y/N.” He said it so casually, as if you were put on this earth solely to serve him as his accountant. 

“Right, about that…” Your determination to be confident and unapologetic began to dwindle as you wondered how to tell Sylus you needed more time.

“No. Resigning is not an option.” Twelve minutes. It took Sylus twelve minutes to return to his usual controlling self. You were impressed, truly, it was a new record after all. 

“We don’t have a blood pact, Sylus. I can resign if I want to. Besides, that’s not what I was going to say. I need more time off.” You didn’t sound very convincing, but it wasn’t like you could change who you were overnight. It would take a lifetime to unlearn your bad habits. 

Sylus looked conflicted, as if he didn’t know what to say. When he chose to finally open his mouth, you wished he hadn’t.

“I’ve given you a month, Y/N. That’s enough.” His statement came out so matter-of-factly, you wondered if you had imagined it. A month was not nearly enough to recover from losing your mom, but you figured a man who killed people for a living wouldn’t understand. 

“It’s only been two weeks since she died. And I’m sure the temp you’ve got is perfectly competent.”

“The temp doesn’t know the company like you do and I haven’t bothered teaching him on the premise that you were returning. If you’re not back soon I can’t promise you’ll have a job to come back to.” 

The tension in the air dissipated as you began to laugh. Loudly. Obnoxiously. Hysterically. 

“You— You seriously think I care whether or not I have a job? I can barely will myself to eat right now—employment is not my priority.” You wiped back the tears that began to spill out. Their origin unknown, between your hysteria and sorrow, your eyes were constantly puffy.

“People die all the time, sweetheart. It’s no reason to throw your future away.” Sylus stood up straight at the end of his statement, holding his hand out to you. 

The angel on your shoulder whispered that in his own peculiar way, this was his attempt at comforting you. But you stopped listening to that angel when they buried your mom under six-feet of dirt, and you couldn’t help the word vomit that escaped you like water barrelling out of a splintered dam. 

You pushed away his hand, and stood up to look at him with a ferocity you didn’t know you possessed.

“I get that something really dark and twisted must have happened in your youth to make you so heartless, but most people have shitty childhoods, sweetheart. We choose not to be terrible, insufferable people because of it.” The unbridled rage you’d spend so long trying to suppress seeped out of you uncontrollably as you screamed at Sylus. You walked toward him, your anger taking hold of you as you began to push him away. A few months ago you would’ve given anything to touch him, now all you cared about was making him feel a semblance of the pain he instilled in you. 

“Some of us choose to feel our emotions in their entirety, regardless of how much it hurts, because we’re not scared to love and lose. You’re a coward, Sylus and you may think that my mother dying is just an inevitable consequence of life, but my world will never be the same.” In an attempt to calm down, you took a deep breath.

“You can judge me all you want, but it won’t change the fact that when you die, no one will mourn you.” The word vomit continued, and when you saw the hurt flash briefly within his eyes, you felt the arms of regret begin to sink their claws into you. 

You shouldn’t have said that. It wasn’t you.

But before you could take it all back, Sylus’s phone began ringing and you figured from the urgency in which he answered it must’ve been her. 

“I lost track of time, I’ll be right there.” He spoke in a low voice in what you could only assume was an attempt to mask the fact that he was leaving you for something more important, again. 

He opened his mouth to speak, but you beat him to it.

“Just go.” You waved him off and turned back around to face your mother’s grave, though now the tears welling up in your eyes couldn’t be entirely attributed to the grief. 

Early November

You weren’t sure time could heal the gaping wound your mother’s passing left behind, but grief had settled into your life like an imposing aunt. It was in your home, touching your things, ruining your food, and never once leaving you alone. It didn’t feel so all-consuming anymore, but it clung onto you constantly like a shadow. 

You were watching the third Harry Potter movie at 8am when you received the eviction notice via Email. You’d been expecting it, ultimately you were behind on rent, but the reason plastered on the paper was exponentially worse than your own incompetence.

…Selling to developers…suburban expansion project…

As if losing your childhood home wasn’t bad enough, they were planning on destroying it. Memories were bound to decay with time, that was an inevitable consequence of being human. Sooner or later you’d forget the way your mom dressed, or the smell of her perfume. Tangible things like photographs, places, they kept those memories anchored. You couldn’t lose the house, it wasn’t an option. 

You spent the next hour trying to reason with your landlord over the phone, but he was committed to selling. He rejected every single one of your proposals, though even you knew they were weak at best. The developers were offering significantly more than market value, there was no way you could beat that. Stupid gentrification. But, your landlord told you he was sympathetic, and the deal hadn’t been finalised just yet. If you could match the developer’s offer by the end of the month, he’d gladly sell it to you instead.

Of course the developer’s offer was $800,000, and by the looks of your financials, you were about $796,312 short. 

Desperate for a catharsis for your unending frustration, you screamed into the throw pillow on your couch until your throat felt raw. Then, you opened up your laptop to figure out a plan. 

30 minutes later you had:

Sell your kidney to an organ broker and use the money to get a loan from any dodgy bank that would accept your mediocre credit score. 

Dabble briefly in prostitution and use the money to get a loan from any dodgy bank that would accept your mediocre credit score.

Become a squatter and protest the demolition of your home environmental-activist style. 

“Wow, Y/N. Graduated top of your class and this was all you could come up with, huh?” You muttered to yourself as you stared at the list of terrible ideas. Your mind hadn’t come up with something so horrific since the bed-in-breakfast Mother’s Day fiasco when you were 11. 

The only option that didn’t end in bodily harm or a prison sentence was to work as many jobs as humanly possible for the next few weeks in hopes you could somehow manage to accumulate the deposit for a loan. You could probably sell some appliances too, and maybe revisit the kidney idea if it came to it. 

Despite it being a long-shot, you had to try. You changed into a pair of flared leggings and a sweater. It was basic and borderline mismatched but traversing your explosive closet was a large undertaking you tended to avoid. You dug a copy of your old resume out from your file drawer, after all, it wasn’t like your experience as Onychinus’s accountant was going to do you any good. Further, listing Sylus as a reference would ensure you never got a job again. 

You figured the easiest place to start was the central district of the N109 zone, bars and restaurants there were constantly hiring and from what you’d heard their only requirement was that you had two functioning legs and arms. But when you tried to leave through the door to begin the job search you collided with a formidable wall. 

Since when was there a—

“Where you headed to, Y/N?” The familiar voice was so surprising it made you jump, the action accompanied by a shrill scream.

“What the fuck? Why are you just standing outside my door?” You rarely ever swore and you were sure that if your mother was still alive she’d throw her shoe at you for using the devil’s language. But of all the things you expected to see that morning, Sylus outside your door was not one of them. 

“Is that any way to welcome your old employer?” Sylus stepped into your home without an invitation. Conclusive proof against your theory that he was secretly a vampire. 

“What are you doing here?” You asked again, still staring at Sylus like he sprouted a second head. You couldn’t think of a single reason why he’d show up at your place of residence, he never did while you were still his employee.

“I need you to come back.” You choked back a laugh at his ridiculous request. Was he insane?

“Go to hell.” Your vicious response didn’t sway Sylus. 

“I’ve fired an accountant every week since you left. The accounts are in complete disarray, half my businesses are behind on their bills, the other half have been paying the wrong amounts to the wrong companies. My investors are unhappy, my debtors are one week away from assuming I’ve gone bankrupt and I haven’t slept in weeks. Come. Back.” While it stroked your ego to hear that the organisation was suffering in your absence, you couldn’t just forget the terrible way he’d treated you in and out of the workplace. 

“You insisted I was especially replaceable and now you’re saying you can’t replace me?” You chose to remind him of just how horrid of an employer he was, an action he didn’t appreciate. 

“If you’re going to dwell on the semantics I’d rather just cut to the chase. What’s it going to take to get you back?” Sylus’s tone suggested he was truly trying to negotiate with you. Of course a man like him didn’t know how to take no for an answer. 

“Pigs to fly.” You quipped, opening your door in hopes he’d get the hint and leave. 

“Y/N, I’m serious. We can’t survive without you.” His desperation went straight to your head, but you stood your ground. 

“Then die.” You tried to shove him out of your doorway, but he was about as easy to move as a truck. 

“Everyone has something they desire, sweetheart. Name your price.” While you were ready to fire up a quick retort, his suggestion reminded you of the very reason you were about to leave the house. 

Perhaps this was a sign; you could swallow your pride if it meant you got to keep your home. 

You pretended to give it thought, sighing loudly in contemplation. “Fine. I want a sign-on bonus. Or in this case, a re-sign-on bonus, I guess…” You trailed off, unsure if he would agree. 

“Alright, how much?” He was quick to accept your terms, and you decided to test the waters of just how desperate he was for your return. 

“A million dollars.” 

“Done.” 

Dammit, you should’ve asked for more. 

“I want a personal driver too, I’m sick of biking to work.” You would’ve been okay with just the bonus, after all, it was insanely generous. But you’d be a fool not to milk this opportunity for what it was worth.

“Anything else, princess?” The condescending nickname only added fuel to the fire as you fired off more requests. 

“I don’t want to share my office with the twins anymore, they’re loud and annoying and they have no respect for the sanctity of my monthly budgets.”

“Okay.”

You masked your shock at his sudden magnanimity. “One last thing. Since you’ve come to the realisation that I am, in fact, a valuable asset to your organisation, you’re not allowed to be a dick to me anymore.” 

“Elaborate.”

“No more calling me stupid or other degrading insults, threatening my job security, threatening my life — just no more threats in general — and if you’re going to assign me extra work that is beyond the scope of my job description, a please and thank you would be nice.”

“You’re pushing it, Y/N.” Of course treating his employees like human beings was the most difficult request. 

“You just agreed to give me a million dollars and being nice to me is where you draw the line?” 

Sylus sighed, deliberating in silence for a moment. When he saw that your resolve was unrelenting, he begrudgingly agreed. He wasn’t sure where your newfound confidence was coming from, but he would be lying if he said he didn’t find it the slightest bit attractive. 

“Alright, you’ve made your case. I’ll agree to your conditions. Now, please fix it.” 

It took every fibre of your being not to break out into song and dance at your victory. “Let me get my coat.”

______________

You stared at the horrific mess your beautiful spreadsheet had turned in to. This was a disaster. A colossal, unfathomable disaster. “How could you let it get this bad?” Your voice was dripping with fear, it was like staring a train wreck. 

“It wasn’t like it happened on purpose. Besides, if you’d never—” Sylus interrupted his own sentence which you were sure contained an insult, and you could almost hear the evil chuckle resounding in your head at the sight of his obedience. This was going to be fun. 

“This is going to take forever to fix.” It would actually only take the day, but you didn’t need to tell him that.

“I need it fixed by the end of the week. Please.” He looked pained as he added the nicety. Soooooo much fun.

“Add on a massage chair for my office and I’ll get it done by Wednesday.” You wondered just how far you could push his desperation. 

“Deal.” He held his hand out for you to shake and when you did, you felt a strange sense of accomplishment. Now you could tell people ‘How to Tame Your Dragon’ was loosely based on your life. 

“You know, Sylus, I’m liking this new dynamic.” Your shit-eating grin couldn’t be wiped off of your face no matter how hard you tried.

“Oh I can tell. Now, get to work.” Sylus made a show of pulling out your office chair for you, and when you sat in it for the first time in two months, you felt an overwhelming sense of nostalgia. And for once, the recollection of your past didn’t hurt as much as it usually did.  

Mid-November

This time around, your employment under Sylus was much more pleasant. Surprisingly, he’d actually adhered to your conditions. 

The twins were slightly offended that you no longer wanted to share your office with them, but their gratefulness for your return trumped any antagonism they had for you. You were kind of a celebrity in Onychinus’s executive team, their saviour, if you will. 

But, the enjoyment of your newly established status could not be savoured. Undoing months of mistakes was turning out to be positively exhausting. You were an accountant; socially awkward, stuck to her Excel sheets, spent most of her free time indulging in shitty rom-coms. You were not built for briefing CEOs, Chairmen, investors, subsidiaries and of course, debtors, on your commitment to stability via video call.

Sylus insisted it had to be you, even though he usually handled the bureaucratic part of the organisation. Something about him not being able to answer their questions regarding the numbers. You told him you would tell him what to say through an ear piece like a spy movie, but he responded with a resounding no. 

It was more like ‘hell will freeze over before I turn into a glorified puppet, Y/N, blah blah blah’.

Every single one-on-one conference call made you feel like you were getting hives. Not to mention the active effort it took you to refrain from making stupid jokes at every opportunity. When the last one with the representative from Onychinus’s main bank was over, you had officially smoothed over all bad blood between Onychinus and it’s stakeholders.

Giving yourself a moment to recalibrate from the sheer amount of social interaction you had been subjected to, you glared at the shared calendar event. ‘Miss Hunter’s Birthday in 13 days’.

You tried to distract yourself from that familiar sinking feeling in your gut with your work. Sylus never remembered your birthday, but it wasn’t like it mattered. You were his accountant, he was your boss. That was the extent of your relationship, even though you’d both said things to each other that would cause your HR department, if you had one, to self-emulate. But in the chaos of buying your home, going back to work and learning how to navigate life with your unwanted companion; grief, you’d forgotten all about your feelings for Sylus.

They weren’t gone but they were muted, like a voice screaming out to you while your head was underwater. Most of the time they were easy to ignore, but in times like these they were too loud to overlook.

You couldn’t dwell on your self-pity for long because there was a knock at your door. No one ever knocked on your door, people just tended to barge in.

“Come in?” Confusion dripped from your voice. When the door opened to a pair of twins with shameful smiles, you knew they were about to ask you for a favour.

“We… fucked up.” Three words you never wanted to hear coming out of either Luke or Kieran’s mouth.

“What have you done?”

“Long story short. Boss sent us to pick up a gem for Miss Hunter’s birthday. It’s really rare. The man who owns them is this older, heart of gold type old guy who refuses to sell to nefarious people because of his outdated principles. He wouldn’t give it to us, said something about us being part of Onychinus. We knew if boss didn’t get this gem today he’d have our heads displayed on mantels in his office, so we threatened the old man with a gun and then an entire arsenal of security appeared out of thin air and we were blacklisted from the property.” Kieran’s explanation left you astounded. 

The twins had their fair share of asinine mistakes, but this one might have taken the cake. 

“You threatened an old man with a gun…” 

“Yes.” Kieran responded. 

“Over a gem?” You asked in disbelief. 

“A very rare gem!” Luke corrected. 

“Huh. How am I supposed to help?” It was a genuine question, you didn’t really see a way out of this one. 

“Can you go and convince the old man to sell the gem to you?” Kieran’s request made your eyes widen in protest.

“No way! I’ve had my fill of uncomfortable business meetings.” And wasn’t that the truth. If you had to see one more man in a business suit ask you ‘if you even knew what you were talking about’ you might throw your laptop into the first body of water you could find. 

“Please, Y/N. Sylus will kill us. Do you want our deaths to hang over your conscience?” 

Luke’s question was an innocent hyperbole, but at the mention of deaths hanging over your conscience, you were reminded of your mom. Your face dropped, your fingers slowly forgetting what they were supposed to type. Kieran, the more observant twin, elbowed Luke.

“Fuck, Y/N. I’m sorry, I forgot.”

“No, no, it’s fine. You don’t have to walk on eggshells around me, I’m not going to burst into tears.” You weren’t sure that was true quite yet, but fake it till you make it, right? 

“Will you help us? Please. We’ll owe you big time.” The line was clearly rehearsed since they said it in unison, or maybe it was some weird twin telepathy thing. Either way, it freaked you out so much you agreed. 

“Fine, what’s the address?”

_____________

You knocked on the large wooden door of a beautiful home. It was classically designed, a perfect intersection between modernity and the timeless complexity of archaic house designs. It was rare to see homes like these in a society that prided itself on progress. 

When you heard the sound of soft feet shuffling toward the door, you felt the guilt eat at you internally. You were tricking an old man into selling a gem to people he very reasonably did not want to sell to.

“Y/M/N?” 

Did he— why did he call you by your mother’s name?

“That was my mother, I’m her daughter, Y/N.”

“Oh, thank god, I was beginning to think I’d finally lost it. Come in, come in.” 

Your interest had been piqued, and you forgot all about the gem as you entered the old man’s home.

“I must say, I’m surprised you’re here. Did your mother send you?”

You swallowed the lump in your throat. “She passed away just over a month ago.”

“Oh god. I’m so sorry, dear. Are you alright?” The question was filled with so much warmth it made tears well up in your eyes. Your mother never had any friends, and you were estranged from your extended family. You were all alone in your grief, and hearing someone who knew your mom in some capacity ask you if you were alright felt bittersweet.

“Yeah. I’m doing okay. If you don’t mind me asking, how did you know her?”

“You don’t know? I figured that was why you were here.” 

Right. The reason you were here, the gem.

“No, I’m actually here entirely coincidentally, I came to acquire a gem.”

“Which gem were you after, dear?” He asked the question as he looked around his living room for something.

“The Painite one.”

He stopped pacing and turned to you with an accusatory stare. “This wouldn’t happen to be related to those two rowdy boys who came by earlier, right?”

“Well…” You couldn’t lie to him. He looked like the old man from ‘Up’, it was entirely unfair. 

“I’m afraid I can’t sell to you. I’m concerned you’ve even gotten yourself wrapped up in such a terrible organisation.” He shook his head, his disappointment evident in his tone. 

“Look, I know what you’ve heard, but most of the rumours you hear about Onychinus don’t have a modicum of truth to them.”

“Then why hasn’t your boss cleared them up?” A great question. 

“In this business its good to have a reputation that instills fear in others. You’ve seen what people do for Protocores and black-market items. Onychinus serves as a… regulatory body of the underworld, the only people they harm are those that harm others.” The practiced speech came from years of listening to Sylus give it to yourself and others. 

“I don’t know dear, I’ve heard some horrific things about their leader, Sylus.” You were probably responsible for a few of those rumours…

“The only horrific thing about him is his sharp tongue. Seriously, he has a way of finding your worst insecurity and then using it to drag you through the dirt.” Recognising the unhelpful tangent, you digressed.

“But when it comes to business, he’s fair and when someone hurts the people he cares about, he’s merciless. He has a good heart, it’s just encased under a very thick layer of stone.” When he didn’t look convinced, you continued. 

“In fact, he wants this gem for a woman. She’s special to him and its her birthday in a few days. She’s a hunter, by the way, she saves lives. So, even if you don’t want to sell to Sylus because he’s probably half demon, you should sell it to her. You know, by proxy.” The argument was a stretch but you couldn’t help your rambling. 

“You are the spitting image of your mother.” 

The comment caught you off-guard.

“You think so?”

“I knew your mother when she was your age. She used to sing live at a bar I frequented with my friends. It was a simpler time, before wanderers attacked. I was head over heels in love with her, and I knew she felt the same way about me. But, she got wrapped up with the wrong guy, a real bad man, and it took finding out she was pregnant with you to break it off with him.” He recounted his past as he continued to search his drawers for something, when he came back to the couch in front of yours, he handed you a photo.

It was of your mother, except she was much younger. She was on a stage performing, a part of her life she never told you about. She looked happy and was glowing with the kind of ethereal beauty that never dwindled with time. He was right, you looked a lot like her. 

“Can I keep this?” You looked up at the man, and he gave you a small nod. 

“Of course. You know, I offered to help her when I found out, said I’d raise the baby as my own, but she told me I was destined for more than she could give me. Said she had to do this on her own. She was stubborn but she loved boundlessly, Y/N, just like you.”

You were confused, this man hadn’t known you for very long, how could he know such a thing? “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know what that Sylus man has done to deserve your adoration, but I can tell you love him. And for you to come here on his behalf to convince me to sell him the rarest gem in the world for another woman? You truly do have your mother’s heart.” 

His words sprouted doubt and introspection. Why were you trying so hard to get Sylus such a romantic gift when it was meant for someone else? Were you secretly a masochist?

“If it’s alright with you Y/N, I’d love to get to know you. Your mother was my first love, and it’s nice to have someone to talk to about her.” 

You gave him the sincerest smile you could come up with. “I’d like that. I don’t really have anyone to talk to about her either.”

“As for the gem, I’ll sell it to you but only if you promise to love a man who will go to these lengths for you, not someone else.” 

“I promise.” You’d promise to try, at least. You told the man, who you now knew was Dr Jeffery Hunt the geologist, that you needed to get back to work. You exchanged contact information with a promise to catch up later and trade stories about your mom. 

You left the house with the rarest gem in the world in one hand, and an infinitely more valuable picture of your mother in the other. 

___________

You walked toward your office where Luke and Kieran should have been to find the door slightly ajar. You stopped just outside the door when you heard Sylus’s voice from inside your office.

“You sent Y/N to get the gem? Was the task too difficult for the two of you?” You tried to sympathise with the twins, but it was kind of funny to see Sylus berate someone else for once.

“The owner said he wouldn’t sell to Onychinus—” Kieran’s attempt at an explanation was shot down instantly.

“So you pick some random person off the street and send them in instead. You don’t send the girl the gem is for to go retrieve her own present. You have completely ruined the surprise.”

Wait, what?

“No, it’s fine, we sent Y/N not Miss Hunter.”

“Miss Hun— why would you assume it’s for her?” The question hung in there for an uncomfortable moment, after all you assumed the same thing. 

“Her birthday’s in a few days.” Luke timidly added. 

“How do you know that?” 

“It’s in the shared calendar.”

“Fuck.” 

With your ear plastered shamelessly against the door, you smiled to yourself. He had a bad habit of putting personal events in the shared calendar.

“The gem was for Y/N. Thanks to you imbeciles I have to figure something else out.” 

Why was the gem for you? Was it poisonous? You started down at the velvet box in your hand and wondered if the gem was secretly a teeny tiny bomb. 

“Is it Y/N’s birthday soon too?” Kieran’s question offended you. Your birthday was in March and both he and Luke were at your celebratory birthday dinner last year. 

“No, that’s in March. It’s to celebrate her 3rd year with Onychinus. Although now I’m wondering if your time here has come to an end.” It was kind of sadistic, but it was comforting to know that Sylus threatened other people’s job security over minor inconveniences too. 

“No! Please, we promise we’ll make it up to you.” 

You stopped listening to the conversation as you opened the box in your hand. The gem glistened under the artificial lights as questions fired off in your brain. He wanted to give this gem to you? How did he even remember the day you started at Onychinus? And he knew your birthday?

Before you could search for the answers, the sound of footsteps approaching the door made you panic. You tried fruitlessly to escape the long hallway but Sylus stormed out before you could.

“I um, got that gem for you.” You pretended you weren’t eavesdropping and held the gem out to him, but he pushed it back toward you. 

“Thanks. I was going to have it turned into a necklace, but since the cat’s out of the bag, you can decide what to do with it.” He clearly knew you’d heard everything and gave the twins a pointed glare as they scurried out of your office. 

“It’s really too much. Most employers get their employees a gift card or something.” You tried to hand it back again, but he was unrelenting. 

“I’m not most employers, and you definitely aren’t most employees.” The loaded compliment made you bite back a smile. 

“In that case, a necklace would be nice. I have a photo of my mom when she was my age, she wore a necklace with a similar looking gem. Do you think you could find someone who can copy the design? It would mean a lot. I’d pay for it, of course.” You kept the photo in your wallet now, it quickly became one of your favourites. When you passed the photo to him, he looked at it for far longer than necessary. 

“Consider it done, and your money’s no good with me. Save it for something else.” He paused for a moment, took a photo of the necklace on his phone and returned the photograph. “I see where you get your beauty from.” The comment was so nonchalant and inconsistent with Sylus’s usual dialogue that you were left speechless. Your heart battered against your ribcage as if it were trying to escape and mount itself onto him instead. Traitorous organ. 

You watched him turn around and walk toward his office. The sight of him walking away from you brought back memories of that day in the graveyard and what you’d said to Sylus before he left. 

“You can judge me all you want, but it won’t change the fact that when you die, no one will mourn you.”

The guilt was eating away at your conscience, and you knew you had to let him know that you didn’t mean what you said. Especially not now. 

“Sylus, wait.” He stopped just as his hand reached the doorknob of his office door and looked up at you expectantly.

You raked your mind for the right thing to say, and Sylus didn’t make a sound as you prolonged the silence. 

“If you died, I’d mourn you.” And you meant it. You maintained eye contact despite the urge to look away from his intense gaze in an attempt to convey your sincerity. 

He shook his head with a slight chuckle in response, and walked into his office wordlessly. 

You figured he hadn’t given what you said a second thought. It was foolish to think you could ever hurt the impenetrable Sylus’s feelings. You weren’t even sure he had feelings. 

But, unbeknownst to you, when Sylus closed the door behind him, he felt himself let out a breath that alleviated a pressure in his chest he didn’t know he’d been carrying. What you’d said to him in the graveyard weighed on him like an uncomfortable tumour. 

Sylus knew you were right, but the idea of no one caring for him never bothered him before, not until you said it. It dawned on him that the only person who’s idea of him actually affected how he thought of himself was yours. 

Late-November

“Finish up, we have a reservation at six.” At the sound of your boss’s  voice, you looked up from your computer screen. Your eyes were watery from staring at the ledger for hours but you still couldn’t reconcile the $15.70 that was missing. It was driving you insane.

“Was there a meeting I forgot existed?” The calendar looked empty from where it stood on your second monitor. Well, it was empty now that Sylus deleted the shared calendar event for Miss Hunter’s birthday which should’ve been yesterday. 

“No, it’s just us. I’m taking you to dinner. Now hurry up.” You couldn’t help the frown on your face. There was surely an ulterior motive. 

“Taking me to dinner? Are you asking me out on a date?” You were teasing; hell would freeze over before Sylus would ask anyone out on a date. Though, maybe he already had, after all he was busy yesterday…

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’re celebrating your third year with Onychinus. As an employer I believe rewarding long-term employees can strengthen their loyalty to the company.” He regurgitated the words like they were toxic. 

“You stole that from the last issue of Forbes magazine. I would know since I was the one who gave you the article.” It was titled ‘Ten foolproof ways to make your employees like you’ and you thought it would be funny to leave it on Sylus’s desk. 

“And I’m responding to your feedback like number 4 on that list suggested. Now, do you want to go to this dinner or should I ask someone else?” 

You quickly scrambled out of your seat, you couldn’t miss out on a chance to see Sylus actively try to be a regular boss. Who could say no to dinner and a show?

“No, no, I’ll go.” You grabbed your bag off of the floor and followed Sylus out of the building. You asked him a series of questions about where you were going, when you’d be back, if you were getting paid for the time you were forced to spend with him, but he answered none of them. 

Sylus was driving for all of 2 minutes before you began to draft an appreciation letter to the inventor of seatbelts in your head. 

“You know, you may be harder to kill than a regular person, but I will die if you crash this car.” Pleading for your life in an expensive sports car was not how you expected to go. 

“It’s a little early in the night for your theatrics, Y/N.” Sylus’s deadpan tone did nothing to soothe your concerns as he turned yet another sharp corner with aggressive speed. 

“It’s also a little early in my life to die.” You unhelpfully added.

“Relax, will you? I’ve never crashed before.” 

Well, there’s a first time for everything. You thought as you tightly gripped the handle of the door. You found yourself suddenly missing the middle-aged man who would grouchily drive you to and from work. At least he drove like he valued his life. 

 _______

When you arrived to the place in one piece you felt severely under dressed. Sylus was wearing his regular attire, a suit without the tie, and you were dressed in linen pants and a turtleneck. Sylus never enforced a business dress code, though in that moment you found yourself wishing he did.

The restaurant was multi-level and sat at the top of a mountain. The exterior screamed affluence and you were sure everyone who dined there was in a different tax-bracket. Sylus reserved a table on the rooftop which unfortunately meant you had to ascend four levels in your mediocre outfit that made you stick out like a sore thumb. 

When you eventually reached your table, you quickly hid in your seat. While it was unrealistic to assume anyone would pay you any attention but your embarrassment was usually irrational. Nor, did it help that Sylus naturally made heads turn wherever he went. He was freakishly tall and unnervingly handsome; next to him anyone struggled to look attractive.

“You’re in a rush. Hungry?” Sylus asked across from you as you buried your face in the menu. You didn’t feel like explaining how being out with him made you feel insecure, so you forewent a response. 

The waiter quickly returned with a bottle of wine. Of course Sylus’s favourite wine was known universally. Why wouldn’t it be? He practically ruled the N109 Zone.

“Thanks, she’ll have a mojito.” Before you could tell the waiter not to bring you your favourite cocktail, he was gone.

“I’m not drinking.” Your protest fell on deaf ears. “Drinking with your boss is like number 1 on the list of things you shouldn’t do if you value your job.”

“You don’t have to worry about embarrassing yourself in front of me, Y/N. You’ve done that plenty of times sober.” Sylus smirked as he made the dry joke and you held back the urge to step on his foot under the table.

Never mind. You needed a drink pronto.

“Asshole.” You muttered under your breath.

“What was that?”

“Artichokes! I said the artichoke salad looks good.” You could tell Sylus wasn’t convinced, but he dropped the matter anyway. 

“Order whatever you’d like.” 

“There’s no prices on the menu.” You flipped it around every which way but not a single price appeared.

“Sweetheart, the people who can afford to dine here aren’t too concerned with prices. Don’t worry and order what you wish.”

Aw, how sweet. Sylus thought you enquired about the prices because you were concerned about overspending. As if. You knew that man’s financials inside and out, if anything, you wanted to order the most expensive things on the menu. 

“Jeez, my bad Mr One-Percent.” Your joke was not well received.

“Can we have one night without your incessant sarcasm?” The plea sounded genuine, but it was denied. 

“We could, but that’s no fun.”

“I find you painfully unfunny, Y/N.” You smiled to yourself at his blatant lie. Everyone found you funny. 

Before you could think of a retort, Sylus pulled out a large velvet box and slid it toward you on the table.

“What’s this?”

“The necklace.”

You opened it up eagerly and the sight of it brought pure bliss to your heart. It was exactly like the one your mother wore, and it was even more beautiful in person.

“It’s perfect. Thank you.” Feeling slightly remorseful for your attitude prior to the gift-exchange, you gave him a sheepish smile.

Sylus watched you lift it up to put it on, but quickly interjected. “Allow me.” He stood up, walking toward your seat. Flushed, you clumsily turned around so your back was facing him. You felt goosebumps on your skin when his cold hands bunched your hair away from your neck, the tips of his fingers leaving a trail of wired nerves in their wake.

You took your hair from his hand to hold it up, the mere feeling of your fingers brushing his gave you heart palpitations. The act was way too intimate, and despite how it good it felt to have him so close, your brain knew it was safest to pray it would be over soon.

When Sylus was done he spun you around to face him and shamelessly observed his handiwork. “It looks good.” Your brain short-circuited the moment your eyes met his, so you sat in front of him in complete silence.

The moment was rudely interrupted by the sound of a familiar voice.

“Sylus? Y/N? Fancy seeing you here!” You both turned to the source of the voice to see Miss Hunter in a beautiful baby blue gown. As if you didn’t feel bad enough about your choice in attire. You began to smile until you noticed that the arm linked with hers belonged to your mortal enemy. Dr Zayne. 

You got up to greet them, despite your primal urge to push Zayne off the roof, but Sylus beat you to it. “Miss Hunter, always a pleasure.” You tried not to gag at the sight of Sylus being so gentlemanly. It became particularly hard when he kissed the top of her hand. 

“I didn’t know you knew Dr Zayne.” The comment slipped out of Sylus’s tense smile with a twinge of what you thought was hostility. Was he jealous that she was with Dr Zayne? Were you jealous that he was jealous? Are you in a soap opera?

“Oh, he’s a childhood friend andmy doctor! I’m very lucky. How do you know him?” Before you could whisper to Sylus to make up some excuse, he was firing off information about your personal life to the last two people you wanted to discuss your personal life with. 

“He was Y/N’s mother’s doctor.” Everyone went tense, everyone except for Miss Hunter, of course. 

Your eyes followed her as she turned to you, praying she wouldn’t ask about your mother’s health. Instead, she praised your nemesis. “He’s brilliant, isn’t he?”

You wanted to scream in protest. You wanted to swing a chair into Dr Zayne’s head, and then use the broken scraps to beat him to a pulp. But you opted to force a painful smile instead. 

“He’s definitely something.” You looked right at Zayne, hoping he’d understand the implications of your backhanded compliment.  

“Well, we were just here to celebrate my birthday yesterday, but the hostess said it was all booked out and silly Zayne forgot to make a reservation. We just came up to the rooftop to get some pictures, but you guys should enjoy your dinner!” Miss Hunter’s polite dismissal was the perfect opportunity to end the painfully awkward interaction and move on with your night. 

“Thanks.” You were about to return to your seat when Sylus decided to continue with his commitment to ruining your life.

“You guys should join us, the more the merrier, right Y/N?”

The question you had no idea how to answer only poked at the jar of pent up murderous rage you were trying to suppress. It wasn’t like you were subtle about your hatred for the Doctor, why the hell was Sylus inviting them to stay?

“Right.” You couldn’t have sounded less sincere if you tried, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. You had to focus on making it out of this building without a homicide charge.

When Miss Hunter happily agreed, Sylus quickly waved down a waiter and made them transform your two-seater table into a four-seater. Unfortunately for you, the seating arrangements somehow ended up with you next to Zayne and Sylus next to Miss Hunter . 

Zayne could feel the hostility radiating off of you in waves, but he was too scared to do anything about it. 

“Happy birthday, by the way.” You offered Miss Hunter the nicety, since she was really the only innocent person at the table. Your unfounded hatred for her took the back-burner when Zayne was around. 

“Thanks, Y/N. I love your necklace, where did you get it?” Yet another question you didn’t know how to answer. If this was how the entire night was going to be you might as well cut your losses and take your chances with jumping off the roof.

“It’s um, custom made.” You avoided Sylus’s glare. 

“Well it’s beautiful.” You couldn’t help but smile at her compliment. Her sunshine-y attitude could rival yours. 

“Sylus knows the guy who made it, I’m sure he could get one for you too.” You glanced at him only to see him quirk an eyebrow at your response. Was he seriously mad? You were practically the world’s greatest wingwoman. 

When Miss Hunter turned to look at him, he quickly shut her down.  “He retired right after making that piece, actually. Something about getting arthritis.” 

He was definitely lying. You weren’t sure why he was gatekeeping this jeweller and you never got the chance to ask. 

“Oh, that’s unfortunate. Hey Zayne, you’ve been awfully quiet. Say something!” Miss Hunter gave him a playful push on the shoulder as she teased him. The sight would’ve been adorable if it weren’t for satan’s incarnate sitting inches away from you.

“Yeah Zayne, how was work? Steal anymore hearts lately?” You asked the deceivingly innocuous question while breaking apart a piece of bread. The double-entendre was like a secret you both shared; though the idea of sharing anything with that waste of space made you inscrutably angry. 

Sylus silently observed the interaction with curiosity. Your passive-aggressiveness was a trait he thought you only reserved for him. You were always nice, to everyone. Seeing you treat Zayne so coldly was like witnessing a beaver play the piano. It was unnatural. 

“Work went as well as expected.” Zayne’s clipped reply left no room for further discussion. The conversation came to do a lull, and you took it as the opportunity to excuse yourself to the bathroom. You immediately beelined away from the table that currently situated your nightmare blunt rotation and toward the women’s bathroom that was positively Zayne-free. 

The bathroom was just as extravagant as the rest of the restaurant but you didn’t get to admire it before you splashed water on your face in an attempt to cool down. There was no way you could last an entire dinner next to Zayne. Maybe you could say you were feeling sick. Probably a bad idea when he’s a doctor. Work emergency wasn’t plausible, your boss was at the table. What if you just ran away? You could live with the shame and embarrassment.

You looked up at the ceiling and silently cursed the heavens for your terrible luck. Seriously, you must’ve been a serial killer in your past life to deserve this fate. It was a never-ending series of unfortunate events, and you were desperate for a break. 

When you eventually left the bathroom, Zayne was standing right outside the door. He startled you, but the moment the shock wore off your face morphed into a deadly glare. 

“Look, I know you think I’m a terrible person but—”

“Monster is the term I’d use, but go on.” You rudely interrupted Zayne. He chose not to acknowledge your comment. 

“I rarely get to spend time with MC and I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t ruin her birthday dinner because of me.” It didn’t take long for you to realise that MC must’ve been Miss Hunter’s first name. 

Zayne ruined everything he touched, he needed no help from you. 

“I’m sorry, does the fact that I’m angry at you for letting my mother die put a damper in your dinner plans?”

“Yes it does, actually.” Zayne responded quickly. He either didn’t understand sarcasm or was an even bigger dick than you thought.

“Then might I suggest you take her someplace else. It’s your fault you couldn’t get a table here. Why should I have to suffer because your incompetence knows no bounds?” You couldn’t think of a time you’d insulted someone so much in such quick succession. Dr Zayne brought out the worst in you, but you could reflect on your actions later. Right now you were at war. 

“We are perfectly capable of having an amicable dinner.” 

You rolled your eyes at his condescending tone. “You might be, I’m not that mature.” 

“Y/N. We’re both adults.” He pleaded.

“Bite me.” 

Before Zayne could open his mouth again, Sylus interrupted.

“Everything all good here?” For once in your life, you were grateful for Sylus’s interruption. 

“No.” You said.

“Yes.” Zayne also said, at the exact same time.

“Zayne you should head back to the table. Miss Hunter's waiting for you.” Zayne didn’t think twice before taking the out and you internally flipped off his retreating form.

Sylus grabbed you by the forearm, his grip tight as he dragged you to a secluded part of the rooftop and away from the bathrooms. 

“What’s going on with you?” He asked the moment you stopped moving, his hand still gripping onto your arm like a vice. 

“Can you let go? You’re hurting me.” He quickly released you, his eyes washing over with something you couldn’t recognise as you soothed the part he’d rubbed raw. 

“Why are you acting so childish?” His question would've angered you had you not been angry already.

“I hate his guts.” The response did not help your case, but you weren’t very articulate when you were upset. 

“What did he do to you?” Sylus’s eyes narrowed, and he spoke in a low tone that was laced with danger. You didn’t think too much of his strange reaction, Sylus acting strange was pretty much the only consistent thing in your life lately. 

You gnawed on your lip, unsure of how to respond. Your grievance against the world-renowned doctor was one you’d always kept to yourself. After all, everyone had nothing but praise for the brilliant Dr Zayne. 

“Y/N, if he touched you I’ll—” Your eyes quickly widened in shock at his interpretation.

“No! Nothing like that. It’s just, a few days before my mom died, a heart came in that was a match. But there was this other guy who was younger and needed it just as badly. The policy was that the hospital's medical board would vote on who got the heart and the entire board, Zayne included, unanimously agreed that the heart should go to the other guy.” They said it wasn't personal, that it had everything to do with survival rates, but there was no way to detach personhood from medicine.

You realised that when you said it out loud, your hate seemed unfounded. “I know it wasn’t entirely his fault, but he didn’t even try to give my mom a fighting chance. He didn't say anything to sway them, he just silently agreed. He was supposed to be her advocate.” The frustration began to boil over, and before you knew it there were tears welling up in your eyes.

“God, I spent every last dollar of my paycheque to make sure she got the greatest medical care money could buy. Everyone said he was the best, but when it really mattered, he did nothing for her. I was such an idiot.” There was an uncontrollable fountain of tears streaming down your face, and you were grateful for Sylus’s decision to drag you to somewhere secluded. 

The familiar tendrils of an oncoming panic attack began to wash over you as you began to hyperventilate. No matter how much you wanted to blame Dr Zayne, or the universe, or your shitty luck, the only person you could really blame was yourself. You sent her to that hospital, you convinced her to hold on for a transplant, you spent her last months on this Earth slaving away in another city instead of by her side. There was no way to get that time back. 

“Y/N, look at me. It’s not your fault.” Sylus’s voice was like a beacon of light that led you through the dark tunnel you were trapped in. He cradled your face in his hands, wiping away your tears as they continued to stream down your face. But when your tears showed no signs of slowing, he pulled you into his arms, his hands holding your tear-stricken face against his chest.

He ran his long fingers through your hair as he whispered everything you wanted to hear. "It’s not your fault. It’s okay to hate him. It will get easier."

You weren’t sure how long you spent with your face buried in his chest, but by the time you’d returned to reality, his white dress shirt was slightly transparent where your tears soaked through the material. 

You laughed a little at the sight, and the corners of Sylus’s lips raised ever so slightly at the sound. When he saw you were okay, Sylus began to speak. “Don’t move. I’ll grab your bag and we’ll get out of here.”

Before he could leave you tugged on the sleeve of his suit jacket. “Hey, I’m sorry I ruined your dinner.” You truly were. Sylus did not deserve to be subjected to yet another one of your meltdowns, but he seemed to have a habit of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. 

“No it's my fault, I ruined it by inviting them to join us. I promise I’ll make it up to you.” Sylus then manoeuvred through the restaurant toward the nightmare table. When he returned with your bag in one hand and the other outstretched toward you, your heart skipped a beat. Or two. He played the role of the knight-in-shining-armour quite seamlessly, and he looked every bit the handsome prince charming. You tried to remind yourself why it was so dangerous to be attracted to a force like Sylus, but when he smiled at you like you were the only two people in the room, all caution was thrown to the wind. 

_____________

In the spirit of making things up to you, you made Sylus take you to a restaurant of your choosing. It was a hole-in-the-wall dumpling place that charged so little one would question if they were serving real meat. But you never found better dumplings, so you took the risk anyway.

The dynamic was completely subverted as you sat on the table that was slightly sticky with cheap cleaning chemicals. Sylus was the one who looked out of place, his suit was unarguably the most expensive thing in the room and it brought joy to your miserable night to see him out of his comfort zone.

“How did you find this place?” The question was warranted, other than you two, the only other occupants in the restaurant were a few middle-schoolers.  

“I used to come here a lot with my friends in high school.”

“Did they all die from food poisoning?” Sylus seemed proud of his quick-witted joke. You gave him a pointed glare to convey just how unfunny that joke was. 

“Funny, but no. We just drifted apart after we graduated.” The clipped reply shut down any further inquiry. You thought back to the fond memories you had in that restaurant. Things were different when you didn’t yet know the cost of failure; before you knew what you’d be losing. And while everyone may have moved on from this small town in the N109 Zone, you never left. 

“Do you even have any friends?” You choked on your drink at the question. He was genuinely asking and the worst part was, you really didn’t.

Your constant struggle to make ends meet and maintain a high GPA for your academic scholarships made it impossible to have a social life. It didn’t help that you went to a college you couldn’t afford. It was hard to find people to relate to when everyone had grown up with silver spoons. Then after you graduated you landed at Onychinus, and it wasn’t exactly a friendly environment.

“Of course I have friends.” Your lie was a feeble attempt to preserve the last of your dignity. Sylus had seen you at your absolute worst, but there was something extremely dehumanising about letting him know you were insanely lonely.

“Really, who?” His genuine surprise only made your insecurity worse.

“You don’t have to sound so shocked. Plus, you wouldn’t know them.” 

“Try me.” Of course he wouldn’t drop it. When has Sylus ever let something go?

“Well, there’s Mr Demir, and Luke and Kieran, and my newly acquired friend Dr Hunt.” In a desperate attempt to keep up your lie, you pretty much just named all the people you knew. 

“Y/N, that’s the man who sells you your sandwiches, my assistants, and a geologist who sold you a gem.” 

“Has anyone ever told you that no one likes a know-it-all?” 

“I think you should get out more. Maybe tone down the sarcasm and you might just make a friend or two.” Your jaw-dropped in faux shock at his unsolicited advice.

“You’re one to talk, your best friend is a mechanical crow.” You snuck a dumpling off of his plate while he was distracted.

“I don’t need friends, they’re unnecessary burdens.” He took a swig of his beer. You thought he’d burst into flames if he drank anything other than red wine, but he adapted to his surroundings with little effort.

You put a hand on your heart as if in pain and jokingly gave him a solemn look.“Then why would you wish such a cruel fate onto me?”

“Because I hate seeing you this miserable, Y/N.” The amusement from your banter died a quick death at his confession. You thought you kept it together most of the time, though bawling your eyes out in the N109 Zone’s hottest restaurant probably didn’t do that facade any good. But for the most part, you handled the death of your mother relatively well. 

“I’m not miserable. Not all of the time at least. Like right now, I’m only mildly annoyed!” You tried to change the topic the only way you knew how, with humour, but Sylus wasn’t budging.

“You take care of everyone but yourself and all it’s done is isolate you. There needs to be a give and take, sweetheart. People don’t like feeling useless.” He spoke to you softly, as if he was scared the timbre of his voice would cause you to shatter into a million pieces. 

There was a sinking feeling in your stomach that followed his oddly specific guidance. He seemed to know more about you than you thought he did, and you were torn between feeling seen and feeling judged. 

“That’s sound advice. Guess you’ve been reading more magazines.” You were grasping at straws, willing to try anything to get the unwanted spotlight off of your inadequacies. 

“You also need to learn how to accept help without downplaying your problems.” 

“Okay, okay. You sound like my mother. Has her soul possessed you?” There you go Y/N. Play the dead mom card, that’ll work. 

He chuckled at your joke. You knew he found you funny.

“You don’t know when to quit, do you?”

“Yeah, the manufacturers didn’t include an off-switch. No refunds, sorry.” You stuffed a dumpling in your mouth as the tension subsided. 

“Oh, I’m not returning you, sweetheart. They’ll have to pry you from my cold dead hands.” While you knew he was probably referring to the value you brought his company as his accountant, you couldn’t stifle the butterflies that wreaked havoc in your stomach.

You didn’t move when Sylus’s car stopped outside your house. 

“Thanks for tonight, I had fun. Sorry it didn’t go to plan.” You turned to him after you unbuckled your seatbelt and the tight confines of the car felt even smaller.

“It’s fine, I liked this version of events better anyway.” His low voice reverberated through the small distance between you, nestling in your heart that was beating unhealthily fast. 

“Me too. Next time you take a girl to dinner you ought to let her know if she’s supposed to dress like she’s going to the met gala.” Your advice had a bitter undertone because part of you still wished you could be the only girl he’d take to dinner. 

“I usually do, but this particular girl doesn’t need a fancy dress to be the most beautiful girl in the room.” The candid compliment made the butterflies do summersaults, and while their gymnastics routine continued, you found yourself at a loss for words.

“Goodnight, Y/N.” Sylus leaned over the centre console and opened the door for you, completing the chivalrous act of opening the door for you in his own unique fashion. He was so close, all it would take was one small move and his lips could’ve been on yours.

“Goodnight.” You barely got the word out through the sudden bout of breathlessness you were experiencing. And when you were finally encased in the familiar four walls of your home, you thought about every moment you shared with Sylus and how different he seemed from the man you knew before. 

The weekend passed by in a blur. The necklace that looked like a carbon copy of your mom’s was nestled on your neck. A permanent reminder that made ‘Operation Sylus: No More’ infinitely harder to achieve. 

Perhaps you shouldn’t have asked him to stop being a dick, because what you thought would be an easy feat was beginning to feel like climbing a mountain with a peak you couldn’t even see. 

You were staring at the list on your notes app on your brand new phone in hopes of searing it into your memory. 

Operation Sylus: No More

The foolproof guide of getting rid of all feelings Sylus related by the end of November. 

Step 1: avoid Sylus and all thoughts of him at all costs.

Step 2: no more funny jokes, his laugh is seriously deadly. 

Step 3: force yourself to remember Miss Hunter in moments of weakness. She’s the one he really wants. 

Step 4: try to find love elsewhere, like the corner shop owner, he may be in his 50s and happily married but he’s kind of a silver-fox!

Step 5: do not, under any circumstances, allow yourself to be alone with Sylus for too long.

You violated step 5 that Friday when you let him take you to dinner and you were reaping the consequences of your mistake. There was no way you could survive the free-fall if you couldn't get your heart to obey your mind. The disconnect between the two vital organs might be the thing that kills you.

When you heard something shatter in the hallway, you quickly put your phone down and went out to investigate.

The door opened to Mephisto standing on a side table where an empty vase used to sit. The vase was now on the floor in pieces in front of your feet. 

“You did this on purpose.” You pointed an accusing finger at the bird, but all he did was tilt his head to the side as if he couldn’t understand you. You knew he could understand you perfectly well.

The cold war between you two started in your first week at Onychinus when he would swoop at your head spontaneously for no reason. Sylus told you he did it to everyone he didn’t trust and that he’d be over it in due time, but you were too vindictive to let it slide. 

Several back-and-forth pranks later, the bird seemed to have remembered the tradition you managed to forget. “If this is your way of saying you miss me then you take an awful lot after your owner.” Your words faded as you made your way to the kitchen to find the broom. However, upon your return you saw that the floor was flawless and the door to your office was closed.

You rushed in with unparalleled speed to see your worst nightmare; Sylus leaning against your desk in his usual model-like fashion with your phone in his hand.

Panic coursed through you like never before as you remembered what had been left open on your phone when you set it down and the painful fact that you left it unlocked. 

Prayers for a sinkhole to open up and consume you in that very moment went unanswered as Sylus looked up at you with a smirk on his face.

“Is my laugh really deadly?” He looked amused. 

Come on sinkhole. Anytime now. 

When you didn’t answer, Sylus moved toward you. When he was close enough to touch you, he leaned down to make sure your eyes were on his.

“Your deadline is fast approaching, Y/N. Care for a progress report?” The taunting question made heat rush to your face.

“It was stupid, I wrote it months ago.”

“Then why did you have it open?” 

You couldn’t exactly tell him that his willingness to change his cold and cruel demeanour just to keep you as his accountant revived the feelings you thought were long dead. You definitely couldn’t tell him that the necklace that suddenly weighed down your chest made your heart skip a beat every time you touched it. And there was no way you were telling him that the dinner you shared was the happiest you’d felt in a long time.

“I was going to delete it when I heard Mephisto break something in the hallway.”

“Delete it? Guess you don’t need it anymore.”

“Nope.” You popped the P on the word for emphasis. “Can I have my phone back now?” He placed the device into your outstretched hand. 

“So how do you feel about me now, sweetheart?”

You tried your best to appear unperturbed by his taunting. “Mad at your blatant violation of my privacy.”

“Forgive me. I saw my name on your phone when I went to check in on you and I was curious.”

“Mephisto told you I broke the vase, didn’t he?”

“Don’t deflect. Do you still have feelings for me?”

“No, they’re gone. Can we please drop this? It’s embarrassing.” You lied in favour of self-preservation and hoped he wouldn’t be able to see through your act.

“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, Y/N. Many women confess their love for me every month.” You rolled your eyes at his ardent display of over-confidence and narcissism, though you knew he wasn’t exaggerating.  

“Okay, brace yourself there bachelor. No one said anything about love.” It was true, you never said you loved him. Whether or not you did, well that was a secret you’d take to the grave. 

“So then which feeling are we discussing?” The loaded question came out of his mouth so casually, like someone ordering a latte. A display of power that reminded you of just how little this mattered to him. 

Your feet felt like they were grounded in their place by an invisible force and you were sure your cheeks were beet red. You knew your mouth was slightly agape in shock, but you couldn’t even close it. Meanwhile, Sylus was unfazed, treating your feelings like a game. 

“Since when do you even care about how I feel?” The sudden outburst was accompanied by your hand running through your hair out of frustration.

Sylus’s jaw clenched and for a moment he said nothing. There was no hint of amusement left on his features. 

“You think I don’t care about you?” He seemed irritated by the premise, but you couldn’t figure out why. You thought Sylus was proud of his clear disregard for other people’s emotions. 

“You treated me like gum stuck to the bottom of your boot for years. What reason did you give me to think otherwise?”

“I don’t know, maybe the fact that I pay you more than my highest ranking footmen. Or that I had Mephisto tail you when you used to bike to and from work to make sure you got home safe. Hell, I invented the lunch budget when I hired you just to make sure you were eating— I even banned mushrooms from my kitchen in case you wanted to eat here. Not to mention the bullshit extra work I’d assign you just so you would stay longer.” 

Choosing not to dwell on the implication of his silent acts of kindness, you interjected. “Hey, I took those tasks seriously!” The twins thought you were crazy when you asked if Sylus was making those assignments up. You knew you were right. 

“Don’t interrupt me.” Your mouth clamped shut at his rather reasonable request. Sylus wasn’t a big talker, so when he monologued, it was important. 

“Your kindness, your humour, it all caught me off guard. No one ever treated me like you did and I had no idea how to feel. The little doodles you sent back to me on the notes I left you delineating tasks? I kept every last one. When Mephisto complained to me about that time you put corn-starch in his water fountain and almost destroyed his wiring, all I could do was laugh. I treated you like I treated all my men because I didn’t want people to find out that you were my weakness.”

You swallowed the lump in your throat, but the pressure wasn’t budging. There was so much you didn’t know about Sylus, so much you completely misunderstood. This revelation caused a series of chain reactions to go off inside your brain and the weight of what he was trying to say felt suffocating.

You dreamed of a time where Sylus would reciprocate your feelings, but the reality of it was more daunting than you realised.

“All my threats are empty with you, Y/N. You’re the only one who gets away with the attitude you give me. You tell me you crashed a car worth over half-a-million dollars and all I could think about was if you were okay. I even offered to buy your house for way more than it was worth just to get you back. Do you seriously think I don’t care?” 

All sound came to a stifling halt. 

“Wait, you were the ‘developer’?”

The inklings of betrayal wove their way through your skin as the pieces began to fall into place. The timing of the eviction notice, the fact that he’d shown up at your house the day you received it, the way he was so quick to agree to the ridiculous bonus. 

He manipulated you like a puppet on a string and let you think you were in control the entire time.

“Don’t look at me like I’m some traitor.” His audacious demand made your blood boil.

“You are a traitor! How could you do that to me?” You yelled.

“You were going to leave me like I was nothing!” For the first time since you’d met him, Sylus raised his voice to match yours. Your entire body went cold at his vulnerability. He was afraid of being abandoned, and that was a fear you both shared.

“Not seeing you every day made my heart feel like it was being ripped out of my chest. I could barely focus, all I could think about was what you were doing, who you were with. So imagine my surprise when I come to find that while I’m being tortured every minute I’m away from you, you needed more time.

“I knew I was being selfish, I knew that your grief had nothing to do with me, but I’ve never been good at putting my feelings into words. That day in the graveyard when you wouldn’t even look at me, I thought I’d lost you for good. It ate at me like a parasite. I had to get you back and I won’t apologise for not playing fair. There isn’t a rule I wouldn’t break for you, Y/N.”  

It was hard to hate him for what he did when you understood where he was coming from. You were two sides of the same coin. While you overcompensated for the lack of love in your life by becoming the ultimate people-pleaser, he avoided it at every turn, saw it as a weakness. But at the core of every human being was an innate desire to be loved and an inherent fear of being abandoned. 

People couldn’t leave your life if you never let them in. That was a philosophy you saw both your mother and Sylus live by. It was lonely and difficult, and if you had the power of hindsight you would’ve tried harder to convince your mother she was worthy of love. You couldn’t make that same mistake again. 

You loved Sylus, that much was ingrained into the flesh of your heart. For all his rugged edges, he had a way of making things happen that was akin to magic. His determination, his grit, it was admirable.

His intelligence was infuriating, you couldn’t get anything past him. If he received the Greeks’ horse instead of the Trojans, you were sure he’d have seen right through their ruse. 

His desire to make the N109 Zone a better place stemmed from a sense of altruism you could only hope to possess. And when Sylus did things for others, he never expected anything in return. 

But for all his greatest traits he had some difficult ones too. He’d hurt you more times than you could count, and even if he’d changed drastically since your mother’s death, you couldn’t quite trust that he wouldn’t hurt you again.

“You already know how I feel about you.” You confessed. It was no secret you wore your heart on your sleeve, despite your mother’s constant reminders that the world was filled with terrible people who’d take advantage of your candour. You chose to see the good in others, it boded better than the grim lifestyle that came with perpetual pessimism. 

“Then why are you fighting this?” His question came out pained, and it was one you could answer. 

“I’ve loved you for a long time, Sylus. I loved you even though you insulted me, ignored me, reminded me I was replaceable every chance you got.

“I told myself it was just how you were, that it wasn’t personal. But when you walked out on me in the hospital when I needed you the most, I loved you a little less.”

Sylus felt an unfamiliar twinge in his chest, like someone took a needle to his heart. He left that hospital because he wasn’t sure you’d even want him there, and it pained him to see you so distraught over a problem he couldn’t fix. When MC came to him with an important mission in Skyhaven, he saw an out, and like the coward he was he took it. If he knew that you’d lose your mother while he was away, he never would have left your side. 

“When you didn’t call until weeks later, when you showed up only to tell me I was being dramatic for grieving, I loved you even less. Every time you screwed me over you made it easier to live without you.”

It hurt to remember the pain you were in back then, the immense pressure of the burdens you carried. But if there was ever a chance of you and Sylus working out, he needed to know the truth. 

“I’ve only ever loved two people, Sylus, and in one month it felt like I’d lost them both. I still love you, I’m afraid I couldn’t stop if I tried, but I don’t know if I can be more than your accountant right now.” You couldn’t survive another heartbreak, that much was for sure. 

Even though Sylus looked like he was going to be sick, you continued. 

“I thought I was okay with you treating me like everybody else, thought I was strong enough to take it. But when I saw you with Miss Hunter and the softness with which you spoke to her, it broke me. I saw that you were capable of being gentle. You just didn’t think I was a worthy recipient of your kindness.”

He was quick to correct you. “That’s not true, sweetheart. Not at all. She has something I need, something I can’t take with force. It’s why I’ve had to adopt unusual methods. If I’d known it was causing you so much pain I would’ve explained. Fuck, Y/N, you deserve so much more than just my kindness, more than I could ever give you. I can’t even think of a person on Earth who deserves you at all.” 

When Sylus saw the tears begin to slide down your cheeks, he resisted the urge to wipe them away.

“I’ll give you anything you ask for, anything but letting you go. There’s nothing so broken it can’t be fixed, Y/N. You taught me that. Let me fix this.” He tested the waters by taking your hand in his and when you let him, he pulled you into his arms. 

For a moment, the room was silent. You listened to his heartbeat through his chest and it might have been even faster than yours. It felt like deja vu, reminding you of that moment in the restaurant, or that time in his hallway after Zayne’s phone call. Sylus was there to comfort you more often than not, why were you so scared of letting him in?

“I want to believe you, I just don’t know that I can.” Your voice was small, timid. As if you were afraid something you’d say would shatter the sanctity of this moment and you’d find out it was all a dream. 

“I won’t stop trying until you do, sweetheart. You’re it for me, there’s no one else.” He kissed the top of your head with a softness you didn’t know he possessed and the words were like bandages wrapping around the wounds inflicted by your own envy.

In the comfortable silence, Sylus made a vow. “I don’t have regrets — you know that quite well — but I regret the way I treated you. I’ll spend every lifetime repenting for my mistakes, Y/N, and I promise I’ll never let anything hurt you again.” He squeezed you tighter and the comfort his warmth brought you was a welcome change to the cold you lived in all the time. 

Desperate to diffuse the overwhelming angst of the situation, you pulled away from his embrace and clapped your hands together. “Okay then, as of today we commence ‘Operation Sylus: The Redemption'.”

His loud laugh resounded through your office, and it was a sound you’d never get tired of hearing. He grabbed your chin. “Have you always been this corny?” 

“I watch a lot of movies, okay? Now, shake on it.” You shook his hand off your face and held out your hand with an invitation that he instantly accepted. With his warm hand encasing yours, you whole-heartedly hoped this operation would be a success. 

Late December

You assumed the dynamic between you and Sylus would drastically change following your impromptu heart-to-heart. But the changes came in small waves. 

It started with the middle-aged man who silently drove you to and from work with a permanent scowl on his face being replaced by Sylus himself.

Then there was the sticky notes he’d usually place on documents explaining the task and deadline, now with an added addendum.

— That necklace was the best decision I’ve ever made.

— Your hair looks especially nice today.

— Did you switch perfumes? I like it.

— That new lipstick suits you. Your lips are all I can think about. 

You saved all of them in a drawer at your desk. 

He had someone bring you your lunch every day and spent your entire lunch break with you. Somedays you talked until your tongue felt like it was going to fall off, other days you just sat and ate together in silence. And every Friday afternoon, instead of taking you straight home, he’d take you to visit your mother’s grave with a new bouquet in his hands. 

You were glad he was taking things slow. His small gestures made your heart flutter without overwhelming you, but it had been a month since your confrontation, and he didn’t even try to touch you. 

While your inexperience with love, lust and romance never impacted any significant aspect of your life before, it was growing increasingly difficult to wait for Sylus to make the first move. He didn’t want to scare you, that much was understandable. But you were growing angsty waiting for him the tension between you two hit a boiling point.

The glorious plan came to you while you were shopping with Luke and Kieran for Onychinus’s annual Christmas gala. It was a networking event masked under the guise of a holiday celebration where the people hiding in the shadows of the underworld could spend one night communicating on the surface.

Every year, Sylus insisted he couldn’t outsource waiters for the event because of potential security leaks, so you, the twins and a couple other of his staff were forced to fill in as the help. Sylus told you that you wouldn’t have to participate this year, but you began to look forward to the event. It was like an unorthodox Christmas tradition.

Your eyes drifted to the costume section of the party store, and when they landed on a short red Santa’s helper dress, you felt a lightbulb turn on in your head. Maybe you had to give Sylus a little nudge.

“Hey, aren't you guys kind of bored of the slacks and the dress shirts he makes us wear?” You sowed the seed of doubt into your unwilling accomplices.

“Duh. I hate dressing like a butler.” Luke’s eyes continued to scan the aisle for decorations. The hall was professionally decorated, but you added your own little details every year. It made things less drab and it gave the twins an excuse to spend hours in the party supply store. 

“What if we went with Christmas themed costumes this year?” The twins turned to look at you with confusion, but they quickly warmed up to the idea when you pointed at the wall of seasonal costumes.

“I’m Rudolph!” They made their declarations in unison before breaking out into an argument in the middle of the party store.

“Just flip a coin!” You desperately suggested, taking a coin out of your wallet and placing it on your thumb, ready to flip. People were beginning to stare.

“I’m heads!” They said in unison, again.

“Kieran you’re heads, Luke you’re tails.” You assigned them the parts of the coin alphabetically and watched it flip through the air. When it landed in your hands, it displayed tails. You silently hoped they would move on from this unnecessary battle and restore peace to your shopping trip again.

“Sorry Kieran, Luke’s Rudolph.” Kieran complained for the rest of the day about how annoying being an elf was, and how, since he was an inch taller than Luke, it only made sense for Luke to be the elf instead. 

They argued like the siblings you never had, and for all the pain and suffering they caused you, there was no denying you loved having them around. Besides, working for Sylus left the three of you trauma-bonded for life. There wasn’t really an out from this unconventional friendship. 

_________________

You failed to remember to clear the costume idea with Sylus before the gala. He was just so busy trying to organise the event, and you were similarly swamped with ensuring all the invoices were sent out on time to the right vendors. You barely saw each other in the days leading up to the big event.

The dress was shorter on you than you anticipated. Coming up just above mid-thigh, it was nothing like anything you owned in your closet. The little hat it came with was cute though and you pinned it to your hair. The make-up you wore was the same as your everyday makeup, barring the eyeliner you’d spent way too long trying to perfect and your lipstick. 

Other than the dress, you really did look the same as you did most of the time. Would Sylus even notice?

Right on cue, a knock on your door snapped you out of your train of thought, and you took a deep breath before opening it. 

As you expected, Sylus looked unfazed by your choice in attire as you moved out of the doorway to let him in.

“I see we’ve foregone the uniforms this year.” His comment was a welcome distraction from your insecurities.

“Whimsy is part of the Christmas spirit, you know.”

“It’s cute. Did you get that dress from the children’s section?”

The question came so out of left-field it left you were stunned. Once the shock settled in, you suddenly felt self-conscious.

“No… Why? Does it look childish?” You couldn’t help the vulnerability in your voice. 

Sylus closed the distance between you in a few long strides, his hands were on you in an instant. His palm was holding onto your waist the other tracing alone the edge of your dress. 

“Quite the opposite, I’m just wondering why they’d make a dress so short for adult women.” 

“Adult women can dress however they want, Sylus.” You chided.

“I know, but I’ll have my hands full if I’m trying to host this event and take care of the hoards of men that will be chasing after my girl at the same time.” He whispered the words seductively into your ear, the hand on your thigh slipping ever-so-slightly under the dress.

You ignored the warm, fuzzy feeling that bloomed through you at the sound of Sylus calling you his girl.

“There won’t be ‘hoards of men’. This will be the third time I’m working your annual gala and I’ve only ever gotten hit on like four times.” You knew from the way his eyebrows furrowed that you shouldn’t have told him that.

“Four times? Men hit on you four times while I was in the room and you didn’t tell me?” He was clearly angry, his rage unwarranted since it happened right under his nose. 

“I didn’t think you’d care. Most of them were like fifty, anyway!” That was true, and every time one of them placed a hand on your shoulder or your forearm, it made you grimace. 

“If men approached you in long pants and a dress shirt with a plate of refreshments in your hand what do you think they’ll do when they see you in this get up?” He walked you back until you were standing against the wall.

He had a point. Maybe it was too suggestive.

“I can change—”

“No. You never have to do that with me, baby. Just stay where I can see you, alright?” 

“Okay.” You felt a blush paint your cheeks. The tension was bubbling up between you. His hand was searing into your waist, his other one moving dangerously high on your thigh. You really thought this would be the moment he kissed you. But then the warmth of his hands was abruptly gone. 

“Okay. You ready to go?” He held the door open for you. That was it? Frustrated at your lack of results, you silently walked out of your house.

__________________

“Did you see Sylus’s date?”

“Of course, she’s definitely the hottest girl here.”

“I bet she’s had work done.”

“If so, I need the name of her surgeon.”

You eavesdropped on the hushed whispers of a group of women who were gossiping in a corner near the kitchen. The second you walked through the doors of the extravagant event hall, you both went your separate ways and you hadn’t seen him since. So much for not letting you out of his sight. 

All you heard about the entire night was his mysterious date and her envious beauty. He never told you he was bringing one, nor did he ever ask you to fill the spot. But before you could completely spiral, you reminded yourself of Sylus’s promise. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. There had to be a perfectly reasonable explanation. 

“Now what’s a pretty girl like you doing working here?” Your train of thought was interrupted by the voice of a man. You turned around, expecting to see one of the many sleazy old men who frequented these events and saw you as an easy target, but all you saw was a young, attractive guy in a three-piece suit. Huh.

“Hors d’oeuvre?” You offered the plate to him in place of a response. 

“No thanks. I’ve had my fill, though I must say, the other servers aren’t quite as easy on the eyes as you.” His eyes shamelessly scanned every inch of you, head-to-toe, and you felt uncomfortable under the scrutiny of his gaze. 

“Oh, um thanks.” The blush on your cheeks was an unwanted biological reaction, you weren’t used to attention from men within your age range. It wasn't like you thought you were ugly, you were just a bit of a hermit.

“What’s your name, beautiful?” You were about to answer his question when someone did it for you.

“Y/N.” The voice belonged to the man of the hour who seemed to have appeared out of thin air. 

“Sylus, hello. Hors d’oeuvre?” Clearly you were running out of things to say if your default reaction was to offer everyone a snack, but it was hard to find the voice to speak when you saw the girl who had her arms wrapped around his. 

Miss Hunter. You should’ve known. Your eyes passed over her beautiful dress and pinned up hair. She lived up to the rumours, she was definitely the prettiest girl in the room. Next to Sylus the pair reminded you of a renaissance painting. They made sense, and clearly not just aesthetically if he brought her as his date instead of you.

Sylus saw the way your eyes trailed off to MC standing next to him. He saw the self-doubt turn your eyes glassy, and all he wanted to do was whisk you away to a private room where he could show you just how badly he wanted you, and no one else.

But his enemies were in attendance tonight, it was part of the reason he didn’t want you there. Sylus’s only weakness used to be his mortality, and even that was debatable. But now his biggest weakness was tangible, and she wore an adorable Christmas themed dress that made every man in the room brim with desire. Miss Hunter may have been the focus of all the women in attendance, but all the men could talk about was the sexy server in the little red dress. It was driving him insane. 

But MC was a hunter and if he endangered her, she could get out of it unscathed without his help. Their enemies were the same, which made them perfect allies, but it also made their loved ones easy targets. Sylus would never forgive himself if he let someone hurt you. So despite the excruciating pain that coursed through him at your hurt expression, he did nothing to quell your concerns.

But he couldn’t idly stand by and let this man make a pass at you either. It was clear Henry was not aware of Sylus’s newly established no-fraternising-with-the-staff policy. 

“Henry, not distracting my staff, are you?” Sylus directed his attention to his business associate. Henry ran a security company which supplied a large portion of their weaponry from Onychinus. The contract they shared was a substantial source of revenue that Sylus couldn’t afford to compromise. 

“I’m just wondering where you found such delectable staff.” Sylus felt his jaw clench at the way Henry undressed you with his eyes and your consequential discomfort. Fuck the contract, he was going to make that man pay. But he couldn’t inflict his revenge quite yet, so he played nice. 

“Unfortunately my staff are exclusively mine. I’m sure you understand how difficult it is to find loyal help.” Well, at least he tried to play nice. The subtle jab at Henry’s recent whistleblower scandal was a low blow, but he wasn’t above kicking below the belt.

Annoyed and slightly confused by the exchange, you rolled your eyes at the testosterone-fuelled men bickering and cleared your throat.

“I think I’m needed in the kitchen. Nice meeting you, Henry.” You gave him the kindest smile you could muster and gave Sylus no smile at all. It was the least he deserved for blindsiding you with his date. 

“I should check on the catering, excuse me.” Sylus followed you to the kitchen and the second he caught up to you, he pulled you into a nearby storage closet.

There was barely any room for the both of you in there, so you were pressed up against his body. You tried to create some distance between you two, but he just pulled you back in by your waist.

“What are you doing? I’m supposed to be working and you’re supposed to be socialising. We can’t do those things from here.” You berated him quietly, your voice barely above a whisper. You didn’t really need anyone from the staff discovering you in this compromising position. You’d had enough embarrassment in one night for a lifetime.

“Miss Hunter is just here with me on business.” Sylus’s statement did little to comfort the tumultuous storm in your mind. 

“I don’t care.” In a sense, it was true. It seemed your mind didn’t care whether Miss Hunter was there with him on business or not, it still hurt all the same. 

“Don’t lie to me, I can tell when you’re upset.” Sylus tried to caress your cheek but you pushed his hand away. 

“Okay, fine. I’m upset. Now will you let me leave?” You tried to wriggle out of his grasp but to no avail. His hand squeezed your face as he forced you to face him. 

“If you’re upset, talk to me about it. Don’t antagonise me by flirting with other men. It won’t end well for them.” The fire in his eyes swore retribution and you did not want to be Henry right now.

“I wasn’t flirting!” You tried to defend yourself but you knew he’d see straight through your ruse. 

“That sweet smile of yours is reserved for me and me alone.” There was no way Sylus would’ve let that over-the-top smile slide and this was exactly how you expected him to react, but it only made you more upset.  

“Right, but I just have to make do with sharing you with Miss Hunter.” The irony of the situation was not lost on Sylus, but he had a laundry-list of crimes, hypocrisy was the least of them. 

“I’m all yours, baby. I promise it’s just business.” He sounded sincere, and you trusted him to tell you the truth. Sylus never lied unless it was out of omission, but when you asked him a direct question, he never failed to answer honestly. 

“I can help you with business.” You tried to reason, your palm resting against his pounding heart. 

“Not this kind, sweetheart. I’m just trying to protect you. I need you to trust me.” You trusted Sylus with your life, with your heart. Which was why you knew you wouldn’t like the answer to the question you asked next. 

“Did you sleep with her?” The mere thought of it tasted like acid on your tongue. It wasn’t like you weren’t aware of Sylus’s past, but where the other women in his life came and left like the tide, Miss Hunter’s presence was persistent. 

You needed to know just how far they’d gone, even if it might destroy you. 

“Yes. It was one time when we first met in September. Before I realised how I felt for you.” The words pierced straight through you like bullets of radiation. Your palm slowly slipped off of his chest and you diverted your gaze to your heels. “Y/N, you know I only want you. It meant nothing to me.” 

Perhaps it wasn’t the fact that they’d slept together that hurt you so deeply. Maybe it was the way he looked at her, the way she got under his skin. Sylus may love you, but what if he wasn’t attracted to you?

The thought slipped out of you before you could mull it over. “How am I supposed to believe that when you were all over in seconds and you won’t even kiss me?!” 

A hint of recognition flashed through Sylus’s eyes as he realised the catalyst behind your frustration. For some odd reason that he could never figure out, you were insecure. Even though your charm bordered on lethal and your beauty was unparalleled, you still felt inadequate. It perplexed him how someone could look so divine and not be aware of it.

“I haven’t kissed you because I wanted to make sure you were ready, sweetheart. I was worried I’d scare you away, because I’m sure if I got a taste of you I wouldn’t know how to stop.” He sounded strained when he spoke, as if he was recalling his frustration at having to hold back. 

You watched him intently, his words dripped with a desire you both shared. With his body so close to yours, it was hard not to wish he’d just act on his primal instincts. 

“You’re entirely unaware of your affect on me. You have no idea how precarious the string holding me back from insanity has become. When I saw you in that dress, I was sure I wouldn’t be able to hold back. But then you'd look up at me with those angelic eyes and I realise I can’t risk losing you.” 

Before you could even think it through, your desire became overwhelming and your lips were on his in an instant.

It was nothing like you expected, nothing like the chaste, sweet kisses you saw in your movies. It was heated, messy, desperate. His lips ravaged yours like a man on death row devoured his last meal. You felt his desire with every movement and all the doubt you had dissipated instantly. His hands were all over you, one softly held on to your neck, while the other held on to your waist like you might disappear. 

His lips moved to your cheek, your jaw and eventually the sensitive skin on your collarbone. When he bit a particularly sensitive part of your neck, you let out a whine. You hoped he hadn't given you a hickey. His face came up to yours as he looked at your lips which were red from the impact and the desire running rampant in your eyes. It might’ve been the most beautiful you’d ever looked.

“Well? I’m still here.” You whispered against his lips before giving him a chaste peck.

Sylus knew you weren’t just talking about this moment. You never left, even when he gave you a million reasons why you should. He didn’t know what he did to deserve such luck, but he knew he’d never give you a reason to walk away from him ever again.

“We should get out of here.” Somehow you knew he didn’t just mean the storage closet. He shifted to lead you out but you quickly stopped him.

“You can’t leave your own party! What about your date?” As much as the idea of MC hanging off his arm made your skin crawl, it wasn’t right to just leave her alone. 

“She’ll be fine. The only woman I care about is right in front of me, and I want to do so much to her than kiss her in a storage closet.” There was an underlying promise in his tone, and you felt the slightest bit of fear that you might’ve bitten off more than you could chew.

“You’ve lasted this long, what’s one more night?” Your last ditch effort to escape the dangerous situation was unsuccessful. 

“Sweetheart, I can't wait another second.” He gave you a soft, gentle kiss that conveyed his fraying restraint. Your fear felt inconsequential when he was with you, you knew you could trust him wholly with every part of you. 

So, when he led you out of the storage closet and all the way to his bedroom, you never once felt scared. Or insecure. Or inadequate. Sylus worshipped you like you were his salvation and he never once let you doubt yourself again.

Later that night, as you laid in his bed underneath his covers, staring over at his peaceful sleeping expression, you realised he was your salvation too.

Christmas Day

“What’s the surprise?” You asked the same question for the umpteenth time. 

“Just be patient, we’re almost there.” You let Sylus lead you through what you thought was a building while you obediently kept your eyes shut. Eventually your feet came to a halt, and you were bursting with anticipation. 

“Alright, open your eyes.” When you opened them you were in the living room of a charming beach house. It was so bright it took your eyes a while to adjust, but when they did you noticed that it was decorated with splashes of your favourite shade of yellow. The large balcony doors opened to the sight of a familiar beach, and you felt a range of emotions wash over you all at once. Sadness, nostalgia, yearning. 

“Merry Christmas, baby.” Sylus’s voice behind you snapped you back to reality. 

“What is this place?” The awe in your voice could not be concealed.

“It’s yours. I know how much you hate being on the beach, but I also know it meant a lot to your mother. From this balcony it’ll be like you’re right there without actually being there.” He sounded almost nervous while presenting his gift to you, worried you might hate it. But there wasn’t a word that could describe the pure gratitude and love you felt for the man standing in front of you. 

“You bought me a house on my mother’s favourite beach?” The disbelief in your voice was almost tangible. 

“Yeah.”

“Sylus, all I got you was a pocket watch!” You thought that since you were both not very big on Christmas, you would exchange small gifts. Clearly small wasn’t a word Sylus kept in his vocabulary. 

“You gave me so much more than that.” The suggestion in his voice did nothing to soothe your guilt. 

“This is too much.”

“Y/N, you’re more familiar with my assets than I am, if this made a significant dent in my bank account I think you would’ve noticed when I bought it a month ago.” 

“You’ve had this for a month?” The shock persisted, but he was right. His expenses ranged from a box of paperclips to the purchase of a two-hundred-million dollar industrial complex. 

“Yes, I bought it the first time you asked me to take you to the beach after work.”

“But what if we didn’t work out?” A month ago that seemed like a palpable possibility, but now you couldn’t imagine your life without Sylus in it.

“I’d find a way to trick you into taking it anyway.” 

You all but rolled your eyes at the memory of his less-than-graceful plan to acquire your house until you ended up working for him again. 

“Right, of course. You’re quite good at that I hear.” 

“I’m good at many things, I’ll remind you later.” He drawled against your ear, but before you could force him to act on his promise he spoke up again. “For now, there’s one more surprise.” 

You let Sylus lead you out to the balcony with his hands on your shoulders, driving you forward. He stood behind you, his chest to your back. He pointed to a hill on the left of the house where a beautiful willow tree sat atop the beach on a cliff.

“I bought that plot of land too. I don’t want to overstep, but if you’d like, we could move your mother here. Have her final resting place be at the place she loved the most.” His voice kept you anchored as memories of your mother threatened to pull you away. It still filled your chest with overwhelming sadness when you thought of her, but the thought that she could spend forever in the place that brought her the most joy filled you with relief. You didn’t get to give your mother much, but at least Sylus helped you give her this. 

You couldn’t stop the tears streaming down your face if you tried.

Sylus had come a long way from that day at the graveyard, an even longer way from the day you met him. The fact that he grew to care about your mother as much as you did made your heart swell with love for him that expanded every day. Something you didn’t even think was possible.

“She would love that.” Sylus wrapped his hands around your waist, placing an ever-so-gentle kiss on your temple. “I wish you could’ve met her when she was alive, you would’ve loved her.” They were both the strongest people you knew, and it pained you that they never got to meet. 

“I’m sure I would have. After all, I am a huge fan of her work.” You couldn’t help the laugh that escaped you at his cheesy joke. You were rubbing off on him, that was for sure. He peppered kisses all over the side of your face at the sound of your joyful laugh and you had to squeeze out of his grasp to make him stop. 

While you wished you didn’t have to lose someone so important to you to gain another, things always had a weird way of working out. Your future was still murky, but what you did know for sure was that ’Operation Sylus: No More’ could officially be declared a massive failure. And even though the physical hole in your heart still existed, the proverbial one shrunk to half it’s size; and you had the silver-haired man with the stone-encased heart of gold to thank for that. 

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But weeks turned into months, and the novelty soured into something oppressive. Wherever she went, Mephisto followed. Outside the research wing, across narrow streets. On quiet evenings when she wanted nothing more than to disappear into the anonymity of the crowd.

She had tried to ignore it.

She had tried to rationalize it as paranoia born of exhaustion, as an overreaction to a world that had never once allowed her the luxury of peace. But every time she looked up, there it was — obsidian wings folded neatly, red optics dimmed just enough to pretend at sleep.

She had spoken to Sylus once.

It hadn’t been a confrontation. Not really. Just a clipped message, professionally phrased, asking him to recall his machine, reminding him — politely — that she valued her privacy. She had not accused him of malice. She had not raised her voice. She had assumed, perhaps foolishly, that being clear would be enough.

The crow remained.

Weeks passed. Then more.

Mephisto followed her into narrow alleys and crowded streets alike, unbothered by weather or time of day. It observed from rooftops while she ate alone at small cafés, from distant perches while she met colleagues, from reflective glass surfaces where she caught its outline doubled over her own reflection.

The final straw came on a gray afternoon when the city felt too claustrophobic. Mikayla exited a small bookstore near the pedestrian bridge, her arms full of files and thin paperbacks, her thoughts already tangled in the work she had yet to finish.

She felt it before she saw it.

The soft displacement of air and the minute shift in sound as wings sliced through the wind.

She stopped.

The mechanical crow descended with controlled grace, landing on the bridge railing not five meters away. Its wings folded in a precise, practiced motion. It tilted its head, optics adjusting, recording.

Something inside Mikayla snapped — not violently, not suddenly, but with the quiet certainty of a boundary crossed one time too many.

She exhaled, slow and steady, setting her belongings carefully on the ground. Her movements were deliberate, calm enough to surprise even herself. When she straightened, her hand went to her weapon lodged in her holster with the ease of long familiarity. She aimed without hesitation.

The shot was clean.

Metal shrieked, sparks scattered like startled birds, and Mephisto crashed to the pavement in a tangle of wings and fractured mechanisms. Mikayla crouched, methodical even in her anger, dismantling the crow with practiced efficiency — disconnecting joints, severing delicate wiring, dismantling each piece as if this were just another field task.

By the time she stood, Mephisto was no longer a watcher. It was a collection of parts — silent, inert, stripped of the gaze that had haunted her steps for months.

She packed the parts, sealing them in a reinforced container. Before sending it off, she recorded a message, her voice even, restrained, carrying only the sharp edge of not wanting to leave any misunderstanding.

“I’ve asked you to stop.”

“I don’t care what your intentions are, or what you think you’re protecting. My life is not yours to observe.”

“If you ever send that bird after me again, I’ll dismantle you the same way.”

“Do not contact me. Do not follow me. Leave me alone.”

---------

The package arrived without ceremony.

No warning. Just a secure container placed on the long table in Sylus Qin’s private study, its matte surface catching the low light like a bruise. The room itself was immaculate — orderly shelves, signed documents, a single desk positioned to face the city skyline beyond reinforced glass. Everything in its place, everything under control.

Everything except the weight pressing against his chest.

Sylus dismissed Luke with a curt nod and waited until the door sealed shut before approaching the table. He didn’t rush. He rarely did. Urgency was a weakness he’d learned to outgrow early in life. Still, as his fingers brushed against the container’s edge, a subtle tension settled into his shoulders, instinctive and uninvited.

He already knew.

The moment he disengaged the lock and lifted the lid, the truth revealed itself in cold, unmistakable clarity.

Metal fragments lay nestled within padding — wings disjointed, optic lenses dark, delicate internal mechanisms exposed in ways they were never meant to be. The parts were arranged neatly, as though whoever had dismantled Mephisto understood precisely what they were touching.

Sylus stared.

For a long moment, he did nothing at all.

Then, slowly, he reached in and picked up one of the wings. The weight was familiar, the balance exact. He turned it in his hand, thumb brushing along a seam he remembered sealing himself years ago. The metal there was scorched faintly, evidence of the shot that had brought the crow down.

His jaw tightened.

Mephisto had been his first success.

Not his first attempt — there had been countless failures before it. Broken prototypes littering the hidden corners of his past, nights spent hunched over schematics with bloodied knuckles and burning eyes, teaching himself what no one else would. But Mephisto had flown. It had watched. It had worked.

He had been young then. Younger and weaker than he liked to remember.

The memory surfaced unbidden, a dimly lit room, parts scavenged from discarded machines, tools borrowed and never returned. His hands had trembled as he soldered connections, not from uncertainty, but from the weight of intention behind every movement. He hadn’t been building a weapon. He hadn’t been crafting surveillance.

He had been chasing a dream that wasn’t even his own.

‘Birds’, Mikayla had once said at the Gaia research center, almost absently. ‘I keep dreaming of birds. They’re always above me, flying freely.’

She had laughed afterward, dismissing it as nonsense.

Sylus hadn’t.

The six-year-old had built Mephisto because he didn’t know how else to give someone freedom in a world that had denied him any. He had poured hours into perfecting his balance, refining his responsiveness, ensuring he moved with something approaching grace rather than brute efficiency. When he had finally taken flight, lifting into the air with a soft mechanical hum, Sylus had stood there in silence, heart pounding harder than it ever had in the experimentation rooms.

It had been proof.

That he could create something gentle.

Now that proof lay dismantled before him.

Sylus’s gaze drifted to the smaller components — the processor unit, the core framework, the optic assembly. He recognized the precision in the disassembly. This hadn’t been careless destruction. Mikayla hadn’t lashed out blindly. She had known exactly where to strike, exactly how to take Mephisto apart without unnecessary damage.

That knowledge stung more than rage ever could.

He set the wing down carefully, as if it might break further under careless hands, and closed the container. Only then did he reach for the recorder beside it.

He played the message once.

Her voice filled the room, steady and controlled, stripped of affection. She drew a line — and made it clear she would defend it.

When the message ended, the silence that followed felt uneasy.

Sylus leaned back against the desk, one hand lifting to press against his temple. He closed his eyes, exhaling slowly, deliberately, forcing the rising tide of emotion back into something manageable.

She was right even if her actions were wrong.

The admission settled heavily in his chest.

He had crossed a boundary, mistaking vigilance for care, presence for protection. He had watched because he was afraid — afraid of losing her again, afraid of a future where she existed beyond his reach. And in doing so, he had driven her further away.

He poured himself a drink, the amber liquid catching the light as it filled the glass. He took a measured sip, then another, the burn grounding him even as it failed to dull the ache beneath.

Christmas lights flickered faintly outside his study, reflected in the glass of the window like distant stars. Somewhere in the base, Luke and Kieran were laughing, their voices muffled but persistent, trying to inject warmth into a season that felt undeserved.

Sylus didn’t move to join them.

Instead, his gaze returned to the closed container, to the pieces of a machine that had once symbolized hope and now represented everything he had failed to protect.

He made his decision quietly.

He would apologize.

Not through intermediaries. Not through machines or messages. He would explain himself in person, acknowledge the harm he had caused, and then — if she wished — he would leave her alone.

It was the least he owed her.

He had no way of knowing that when he stepped out into the city that evening, the final fracture of his heart was already waiting for him, illuminated behind restaurant glass.

---------

The city was dressed for winter in quiet ways.

Strings of warm lights traced balconies and storefronts, reflected in glass and puddles alike. Traffic moved steadily, engines humming beneath the evening air, and people passed one another with scarves tucked high and shoulders hunched against the cold. It was ordinary. Comfortingly so. The kind of night that suggested continuity, life moving forward whether one was ready for it or not.

Sylus moved through it like a ghost.

He could not take Mephisto with him. For the first time in years, there was no shadow overhead, no mechanical presence sitting above his shoulder. The absence followed him closely, a hollow echo where certainty had once lived. Still, he welcomed it. If he was going to face Mikayla, it would be as himself.

He told himself this was the right thing to do.

Mikayla’s location was not difficult to find. He recognized the restaurant instantly, not because he had followed her there before, but because it suited her — quiet, understated, warm without being ostentatious. Large windows faced the street, revealing the soft glow within. Candles flickered on small tables, their light diffused through glass and linen, casting everything inside in a gentle amber hue.

Sylus slowed.

Across the street, he stopped.

At first, he didn’t see her.

His gaze skimmed the interior automatically, cataloguing exits, spacing, angles — a habit he had never quite unlearned. Then, as if the world itself had shifted to draw his attention, he found her.

Mikayla sat near the window.

She looked… at ease.

Her posture was relaxed, shoulders loose instead of drawn tight. One hand rested near her glass, fingers tracing idle circles against the condensation. She was speaking, expression animated in a way he hadn’t seen in months, her eyes bright with something unguarded.

Across from her sat a man Sylus did not recognize.

He was leaning forward, elbows resting lightly on the table, listening — not the performative kind of listening, but the genuine article. He smiled when she spoke, a soft, reflexive expression that spoke of familiarity rather than effort. When Mikayla laughed, the sound visible even through glass, the man’s hazel eyes lit up as though he had earned it.

Sylus felt the moment land in his chest.

Not like a blow.

Like a collapse.

He stood there, unmoving, the noise of the street fading until all that existed was the scene before him. The world narrowed to that window, to the intimate pocket of warmth inside it, to the realization settling heavily into his bones.

She had moved on.

Worse, she had never even loved him in this lifetime at least.

The thought arrived fully formed, undeniable in its clarity.

This wasn’t a misunderstanding. This wasn’t a casual meeting mistaken for something more. The body language was wrong for that — too open, too unselfconscious. Mikayla’s head tilted slightly as she listened, her smile unguarded, her laughter easy. 

Sylus’s fingers curled slowly at his side.

He had known this was possible, intellectually. He had told himself — many times — that Mikayla owed him nothing. That her life was her own, even before and even now. That whatever bond he carried from another lifetime existed solely within him now, a relic of a past she could not remember.

Knowing something and seeing it were very different things.

Memory surged without invitation.

A different world. Mikayla standing beside him in a sorceress form, her presence a constant he had once believed immutable. He had watched her weep for him. Had carried her name across time like a wound that refused to close. Had rebuilt himself again and again around the idea that one day, somehow, he would find her.

And he had.

But she had not found him.

The man across from her reached for his glass, their fingers brushing briefly as Mikayla blushed at the contact. The expression was small, inconsequential — yet it struck Sylus and tore his heart open all at once.

That should have been enough.

It should have been proof that she was happy, that she was safe, that the world had given her something gentler than the life that had shaped him. It should have brought relief.

Instead, something inside him fractured.

Not jealousy or anger.

Grief.

Pure and suffocating.

Because this was the future he had never been able to imagine — a Mikayla who lived without him, who smiled without weight, who shared her evenings with someone who did not carry centuries of loss in his chest or maybe he did.

Sylus realized then that no apology would change this.

He could still give it. He would still offer it. But whatever hope had lingered, unspoken and fragile, dissolved quietly as he watched her lift her glass in a small toast, eyes warm and present.

He took a step back.

Then another.

He did not look away until the restaurant window slipped out of his line of sight, until the glow faded into just another reflection among many. When he finally turned, the city rushed back in all at once, less festive and more louder than ever.

By the time he returned to N109 Zone, the decision he had made earlier — to apologize, to explain — felt strangely distant. Not wrong. Just… irrelevant.

What did explanations matter, when the life he had wanted no longer had room for him?

He entered the base without speaking to anyone, footsteps echoing down familiar corridors. The faint glow of Christmas lights greeted him again, their warmth mocking in its persistence.

And for the first time in a very long time, Sylus allowed himself to feel truly, devastatingly alone.

---------

The base was alive in the way it always was.

Luke glanced up from the console near the entrance, smile already forming out of habit, only to let it fade the moment he met Sylus’s eyes. Kieran followed his gaze, the twins exchanging a look that spoke volumes without a word. They didn’t stop him. They didn’t ask questions. They simply watched as he passed, long strides echoing down the corridor.

Sylus did not acknowledge them.

Each step toward his study felt heavier than the last, as though the building itself resisted him, walls narrowing subtly, lights dimming just enough to feel oppressive. When he reached the door, he keyed it open and stepped inside, sealing himself away from the rest of the world.

The study greeted him with stillness.

The city stretched beyond the reinforced glass, illuminated by scattered lights and distant traffic, but none of it reached him here. The desk stood precisely where it always had, chair pushed in, documents stacked neatly. And there, resting at its center like a quiet accusation, was the container.

Sylus didn’t approach it immediately.

He removed his coat with deliberate slowness, hanging it on the back of the chair. He loosened his gloves, setting them aside, and rolled his shoulders once, as though bracing himself for impact. Only then did he move closer, gaze drawn unavoidably to the box.

He opened it again.

The pieces were unchanged, exactly as Mikayla had left them. He lifted the optic unit this time.

The red lens caught the light, dull now, unlit and unseeing. He turned it over in his palm, thumb brushing across the surface where once it had pulsed with quiet awareness. Mephisto had always been observant, attentive to the smallest shifts in Sylus’s tone, his posture, his unspoken commands.

Faithful to a fault.

Sylus closed his fingers around the optic and exhaled slowly, a breath that felt far too thin to support the weight pressing down on him.

He set the piece aside and reached for the bottle on the shelf behind him.

The first glass he poured went untouched for several minutes, the amber liquid glinting in the low light. When he finally drank, it burned sharply, dragging his attention back into his body. He welcomed the sensation. It was easier than thinking.

Another drink followed. Then another.

Time lost its shape.

Outside the study, Christmas crept in despite his absence. Somewhere, faint music played — muted carols stripped of cheer, reduced to background noise.

None of it crossed the threshold of his door.

Sylus sank into the chair behind his desk, one elbow resting against the polished surface as he stared down at Mephisto’s remains. The image of Mikayla at the restaurant rose unbidden again, her laughter replaying with cruel clarity. The way she had leaned forward. The way her eyes had softened — not for him.

He shut his eyes.

‘You waited too long’, a voice whispered, unhelpful and persistent. ‘You were too late.’

He poured another drink.

He thought, briefly, of repairing Mephisto himself. The knowledge was still there, ingrained in muscle memory and instinct alike. He could rebuild the crow, restore its flight, erase the evidence of loss with enough time and focus.

But the thought exhausted him.

What would it mean, anyway?

Mephisto had been built for her. Its flight had been a gift meant to bridge a distance she hadn’t even known existed. Rebuilding it now felt… hollow. Like trying to resurrect a conversation that had already ended.

The glass slipped from his fingers and clinked softly against the desk, liquid sloshing over the edge. Sylus barely noticed.

He leaned forward, forearms braced against his thighs, head bowed just enough that his silver hair fell into his eyes. His breathing slowed, then stuttered, a barely perceptible fracture in his composure.

He did not cry.

But something inside him folded inward, careful and complete, sealing itself off to survive.

Christmas was coming.

And Sylus Qin had never felt farther from it.

---------

You noticed the change before anyone else did.

Not because you were watching him but because Sylus Qin had a presence that altered the air around him when something was wrong. Normally, his silence carried weight, intention. This silence felt hollow, like a room emptied too quickly.

He stopped speaking during briefings. His gaze lingered too long on nothing at all. When Luke cracked a joke one evening, Sylus didn’t even acknowledge it — not with irritation, not with approval, not at all. He simply passed through the space as if the world had dulled around its edges.

You saw the drinking, too.

Not excess — Sylus never unraveled that way — but the quiet, deliberate kind. A glass poured and left untouched for minutes. Another finished too quickly. Bottles were replaced sooner than usual, though no one ever commented on it.

And then there was Mephisto.

Or rather, the absence of him.

The crow no longer circled above the base, no longer perched in its usual places, no longer greeted you with the faint mechanical caws you had come to associate with its presence. Onychinus felt strangely empty without it, as though something essential had gone missing and no one knew how to name it.

You found out why by accident.

You were delivering updated diagnostics to Sylus’s study when you saw the container on his desk. He wasn’t there — rare, but not unheard of — and the lid had been left ajar just enough to reveal a glint of familiar metal inside.

You stopped and stepped closer.

Your breath caught as you recognized the pieces.

Mephisto lay dismantled within, his wings folded inward unnaturally, his optic unit dark and separated from its frame. Even broken, he was unmistakable. You had worked and trained alongside Sylus long enough to recognize his craftsmanship anywhere — the precise joins, the balance of form and function, the care embedded in every choice.

You understood immediately that this wasn’t a simple malfunction.

Something had happened.

You didn’t touch it then. You couldn’t — not yet. You closed the container gently and stepped back, your chest tight with an ache you couldn’t fully articulate. Whatever had broken Sylus this time, it wasn’t something words could fix.

That night, you lay awake far longer than usual.

Your workshop waited patiently at the far end of the base, tools organized with a familiarity that comforted you more than any living presence ever had. You had always found solace in mechanics — in problems that could be solved with enough persistence, enough logic, enough patience.

Sylus had taught you that.

Not intentionally, perhaps, but by example. You had watched him build, disassemble, rebuild without complaint. You had learned to admire the way his mind worked — not just sharp, but careful. Reverent, even, when it came to things he loved.

Mephisto had been one of those things.

You made your decision quietly.

In the early hours of the morning, when the base was at its stillest, you returned to the study. The door opened easily at your clearance level; Sylus trusted you with far more than he realized. You moved carefully, as though afraid the silence itself might protest.

The container was exactly where you had last seenit.

You lifted it with both hands, surprised again by its weight, not physical but emotional. For a moment, you hesitated, glancing toward the door as if expecting Sylus to appear and stop you.

He didn’t.

You carried Mephisto away.

Your workshop lights flickered on with a soft hum, illuminating blueprints spread on surfaces and scattered schematics. You set the box down gently, as though it held something fragile — and in a way, it did. When you opened it fully, the damage revealed itself in careful detail.

Mephisto had been shot and dismantled.

You swallowed.

“You deserved better than this,” you murmured, unsure whether you were speaking to him or to the man who had made it.

You began slowly.

You separated each piece, laying them out in meticulous order, cross-referencing old schematics and maintenance logs. Sylus’s original code was elegant, layered in a way that reflected both brilliance and stubbornness. He had built redundancies into Mephisto not because he expected failure, but because he understood loss.

You were not as good as him.

That truth became apparent quickly.

Where Sylus would have rewritten entire systems without hesitation, you found yourself pausing, rereading, testing small changes before committing. You burned through hours chasing solutions that slipped just out of reach, fingers smudged with grease, eyes strained from staring too long at glowing screens.

Some nights, nothing worked.

You leaned back in your chair, exhaustion pressing heavy against your spine, and wondered if you were foolish for trying at all. If your efforts were misplaced. If fixing a machine could ever ease a pain this deep.

But then you remembered the way Sylus had looked lately — distant, hollowed out — and you pushed yourself forward again.

You weren’t doing this to be seen.

You weren’t doing this to be chosen.

You were doing it because Mephisto and Sylus meant too much to you.

Days passed.

You lost track of time entirely, meals forgotten, sleep taken in brief, uncomfortable bursts against the edge of your workbench. You spoke to an unfixed Mephisto as you worked, narrating your thought process aloud, coaxing systems back into alignment with quiet determination.

“Alright,” you muttered one afternoon, rerouting power flow again. “Let’s try this differently.”

Progress came slowly, but it came.

A system initialized where before there had been silence. A wing joint responded with smooth precision instead of resistance. When the optic unit finally flickered faintly with the same hue of his original creator, you laughed softly, a sound halfway between relief and disbelief.

You wiped at your forehead with the back of your hand and kept going.

Christmas arrived without announcement.

You didn’t even notice until Luke and Kieran burst into your workshop, voices loud and cheerful, both of them wearing sweaters so aggressively festive they nearly hurt to look at.

“Merry Christmas!” Luke announced, spreading his arms wide.

You startled, nearly dropping the component you were holding.

Kieran’s gaze immediately shifted to the workbench, to the mostly reconstructed but powered off crow you instinctively tried — and failed — to hide.

They exchanged a look. Then smiled knowingly.

“You know,” Luke said gently, “Bossman doesn’t say it much.”

“But this?” Kieran added. “This matters.”

They simply left you with quiet encouragement and a promise of support that warmed something deep in your chest.

By late afternoon, your hands trembled with fatigue as you placed the final components into position. You tested the systems one last time, heart pounding as you powered Mephisto on fully.

The crow lifted his head, flexing his wings as he balanced on the counter.

Ruby optics glowed steady as Mephisto let out a delightful caw. 

You exhaled shakily, a smile breaking through exhaustion as you leaned forward, resting your forehead briefly against the cool edge of the workbench.

“Welcome back, Mephi,” you whispered.

Carefully, you powered Mephisto off and placed him into a gift box, lining it with soft padding before sealing it shut. You wrapped it simply in black and golden gift wrapper before attaching a big red bow on the top.

As evening settled over Onychinus and lights glimmered softly through the corridors, you lifted the box and headed toward Sylus’s study, unaware that the hardest part of this act of love still lay ahead.

---------

You had rehearsed your words on the walk down the corridor. Sylus did not need a performance tonight — he needed a hand to be reached out, not a sermon. Christmas was a flimsy pretext, you only wanted the sound of him among living people, to puncture the hollow quiet that had wrapped him like a second skin.

The study door was ajar when you arrived. Inside, the room looked like a battlefield fought not with soldiers but with small, private losses — an overturned glass on the rug, papers scattered in a lazy arc, a coat tossed on the chair in a way that had never once been allowed when he was himself. 

Sylus sat behind the desk like a man who had been emptied and then refilled with something colder. His shirt was wrinkled, the collar open, the black fabric slightly askew. Silver hair, usually combed into artful disarray, now lay in real disorder — strands sticking up at odd angles, falling across his forehead in neglect. He had not bothered to hide the fatigue in his face, it pooled in the hollows beneath his eyes and colored the lines at the corners of his mouth.

You set the gift box on the desk with careful hands and stepped a few paces back, keeping your voice low.

“It’s Christmas,” you said. “You should come out. Luke and Kieran are downstairs—”

“You don’t have to do anything,” you continued, stepping further inside. “Just… come out for a bit. Luke and Kieran are waiting. They’ve put up that ridiculous red tree again. The lights on it are flickering, and they’re arguing about whose fault it is.”

The corner of his mouth twitched but it vanished before it could settle. He reached for a bottle instead.

“Don’t,” he said, hoarse, because the word was small and meant to hide the enormity of what it refused. He inclined his head to the mess strewn around him. “Don’t… tell me what to do.”

You swallowed and crossed the room. The glass clinked faintly as you took it from his reach and set it aside on the desk.

“Enough for tonight,” you murmured. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

That, finally, drew his attention to you.

His eyes lifted to you, dark and sharp, rimmed with exhaustion that ran deeper than sleeplessness. There was something fractured there, something raw that had no patience left for gentleness.

You broke eye contact first.

To give your hands something to do — to keep yourself from saying too much — you crouched and began gathering the empty bottles. Glass knocked softly against glass as you collected them, one by one, stacking them carefully.

“I’ll clean this up,” you said, your voice steady despite the tightness in your chest. “You can rest or maybe freshen up. Or just sit somewhere that isn’t—”

He watched you do it, and the watchfulness turned into something like a sting.

“Stop.”

The word cut through the room like a blade.

You froze, fingers curled around the neck of a bottle.

Sylus stood abruptly, the chair scraping back with a harsh sound. The air around him shifted, thickening, the faint glimmer of his evol stirring beneath his skin like a living thing pressing against its restraints. The lights above flickered, once, twice, reacting to his instability.

“Don’t,” he said, his voice low but shaking with contained violence. “Don’t pretend this is concern.”

You rose slowly, still holding the bottles, your heart pounding.

“I’m not pretending,” you replied quietly. “I just don’t want to see you like this.”

A bitter laugh tore out of him, sharp and humorless.

“And who asked you to?” he snapped. “Just because I picked you off the streets four years ago doesn’t give you the right to manage me. Or lecture me. Or act like you belong here like—”

He stopped himself for half a second, jaw tightening. 

“—like a wife,” he finished coldly.

“I just wanted you to remember that you’re not alone.” you pleaded. 

That was when the glass shattered.

He hurled the wine glass past you, not at you — but close enough that it exploded against the wall beside your head, shards raining down like sharp, glittering snow. You flinched despite yourself, breath catching painfully in your throat.

“Get out,” he roared. “Leave me alone!”

For a long, aching second, you simply stood there, staring at the broken glass, at the man unraveling in front of you, at the ruin grief had carved into him. Blood prickled from the side of your arm that had been unknowingly scratched by a shard.

Then you straightened.

You gathered yourself, smoothing your expression into the small, respectful line you had learned to wear. “I’m sorry for disturbing you,” you said, and your voice did not falter although your throat felt raw.

He called after you, a strangled sound that might have been an apology had it been gentled.

You didn’t look back.

The doors slid shut behind you with a soft, final sound. The corridor swallowed you whole, its emptiness echoing the hollow space his words had carved inside you. Your footsteps retreated, quiet and controlled, until you rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.

Only then did Sylus notice the box.

It sat untouched on the desk, wrapped neatly, a simple bow affixed with care that felt out of place in the wreckage of his study. Frowning, he approached it slowly, as though afraid of what he might find, he reached out and pulled it closer.

He opened it.

Mephisto stared back at him, whole and perfect, red optics glowing softly in recognition.

For a moment, Sylus couldn’t breathe. His knees weakened, forcing him back into the chair as his hands trembled violently over the familiar metal. Every joint moved as it should, every artificial feather restored with reverence. Fixed not with perfection, but with devotion. Just like he had once done, all those years ago.

“She fixed you,” he whispered hoarsely, disbelief cracking his voice.

The room felt unbearably quiet then, the weight of what he had done settling heavily on his shoulders. He pressed his palm over his eyes, a broken sound tearing free from his chest as regret hit him with full force.

The study felt smaller once the shock wore off.

Sylus stood frozen before the open box, Mephisto pecking on his palm. The alcohol haze receded just enough for clarity to strike, sharp and merciless. His fingers traced the curve of the mechanical crow’s head, reverent, disbelieving, as if the slightest pressure might undo the miracle set before him.

“No…” His voice cracked on the single syllable.

This was not a patchwork repair. This was not a rushed reconstruction meant only to soothe him. He could see it — every careful workaround, every compromise made where your skill met his original design and refused to surrender. Lines of code rewritten not to surpass him, but to respect him. Mephisto was alive because someone had loved him back together.

And Sylus had thrown a glass at that person.

The memory hit him in fragments, your flinch, the way you straightened immediately after, the quiet apology that had no business leaving your mouth. 

For years, he had told himself that distance was mercy, that emotional restraint was protection. Yet here was proof that someone had stood beside him not out of obligation, not out of desire to be chosen, but out of care that asked for nothing in return.

“You didn’t deserve that,” he muttered, pressing a hand to his face.

---------

He went straight to the twins.

Luke and Kieran were in the common room, chatting about something. Their expressions shifted instantly — from relief at seeing Sylus finally out of his study, to confusion when they followed his gaze to Mephisto, and then to anger when they noticed the absence of one particular presence.

“You hurt her,” Luke said knowingly. There was no accusation in his voice, only grim fact. Kieran’s jaw clenched beside him, eyes colder than usual.

“I know,” Sylus said simply. He looked at them, the men who had once followed him into darkness without fear, and he felt smaller than at any moment in memory. “Tell me where she is.”

Neither of them answered.

“I asked you something,” Sylus said abruptly, guilt chewing away at his heart. “Where did she go?”

Kieran crossed his arms. “Somewhere safe. Somewhere you can’t hurt her again.”

Luke exchanged a look with Kieran — protective, reluctant. “You have to earn that, bossman,” Luke countered. “You can’t just come asking for directions like it’s a task order. You hurt her and we don’t give out people like inventory.”

Sylus swallowed. “I was wrong,” he said hoarsely. “About everything. About… her. About thinking I could ignore what was right in front of me because I was obsessed with what I’d already lost.”

Luke tilted his head. “And?”

“And I need to apologize,” Sylus continued. “Properly. Not because of Mephisto or because it’s Christmas but because I failed her.”

Silence stretched.

Luke studied him for a long, heavy breath, seeing perhaps the honesty in Sylus that always hid behind his composure. “She left on her bike.”

Sylus looked up sharply.

“Seaside road,” Kieran added. “Tracker’s still on. She hasn’t moved in a while.”

Sylus was already grabbing his keys.

---------

The ride was a blur of cold air and roaring engine, the city lights dissolving into streaks as the road curved toward the coast. Wind tore at his clothes, but he welcomed the sting — it grounded him, kept him present, kept him from drowning in his own thoughts.

He found you exactly where the tracker said you’d be.

You sat on the rocks overlooking the sea, knees drawn up, helmet resting beside you. The ocean stretched endlessly before you, black and restless, waves breaking against stone with patient insistence. You did not turn when he approached. Perhaps you heard him. Perhaps you simply didn’t care.

Sylus let Mephisto go first.

You heard the faint whirr first, a sound so familiar it tugged at something fragile in your chest. When you looked up from the sea, the mechanical crow descended in a controlled glide, landing lightly on the rock beside you. His optics dimmed, then softened, the red glow gentler than before. He tilted his head, studying you, before stepping closer.

Mephisto leaned in, the cool curve of his head rubbing gently against your cheek, careful not to scratch, careful as though he understood delicacy. A low, almost apologetic caw vibrated through his frame.

You swallowed hard.

“Hey,” you whispered, lifting a hand to steady him. “It’s okay.”

Only then did Sylus step into view.

He looked different — less armored somehow. The wind off the sea tugged at his jacket, but he barely seemed to notice. His eyes were fixed on you, not searching this time, just looking. Mephisto took flight again, circling once before perching on Sylus’s shoulder, a silent bridge between you.

“I thought he should come,” Sylus said quietly. “He owed you… a thank you. I owed you everything else.”

You said nothing, only watched him approach. 

He dropped to his knees.

The motion was sudden, unguarded. Gravel bit into his trousers as he reached for you, hands clutching at the fabric near your legs like an anchor. His forehead pressed briefly against your knee and then looked up with a kind of rawness you had never seen on him before. 

Silver hair fell into his eyes, tears tracked silently down his cheeks, leaving thin, salt streaks against the pallor of his skin. There was grief there, but it was not for the phantom across a lifetime — this grief was aimed at you.

His voice was small when he started again. “I’m sorry,” he said, and the apology felt insufficient and vast at once. “For how I treated you. For letting something that belonged to the past become the excuse to punish the present. I… I was wrong and I—” His breath broke. He swallowed and tried again. “I took my fear and turned it into anger, and I took that anger out on the only person who did not deserve it.”

You inhaled deeply. “You know what hurt the most?” you asked, voice steady despite the ache behind it. “Not the shouting or even the glass that you threw. It was when you said I couldn’t act like a wife in your life. As if I had overstepped just by caring.”

“I never wanted to replace her,” you continued. “I never wanted to be seen that way. I knew who she was to you. I made peace with it long before you ever noticed me.”

Your voice wavered, just slightly. “But being told I didn’t even have the right to stand beside you… that I was pretending… that broke me.”

His face closed, as if the truth you named was a blade that found its target. “I remember,” he rasped. “I remember saying it. I remember thinking — if I keep everything tightly measured, I will not lose what I can’t bear to lose again. I tried to keep everyone at arm’s length and failed even worse. I’m so sorry.” 

He stared at you like he was trying to memorize the ridges of your face, as though in that mapping he might also find the way back from his own darkness. His eyes briefly flickered to your arm and he stilled when he saw a cut standing out starkly against your skin, a thin slice along your forearm where the glass had probably grazed you. Dried blood traced its edge, ugly and unacknowledged in the chaos of the night.

His breath caught sharply.

“…You’re hurt.”

“It’s nothing,” you said automatically, instinctively pulling your arm away from his view.

Sylus reached out anyway, slow, asking permission without words. When you didn’t resist, he gently took your wrist, turning your arm so he could see properly. His jaw tightened.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, the question not accusing but genuinely bewildered. “How did I not see this?”

You exhaled. “Because you were not looking.”

Sylus wordlessly fished out a handkerchief from his pocket and cleaned the cut, dabbing at the dried blood until the wound looked smaller, the edges pink and angry but contained. He took the handkerchief and folded it into a strip, then wrapped it around your forearm where the skin had been broken. His fingers fumbled with the knot, clumsy, awkward — every movement a penance.

He pressed his head against your feet, breaking down into sobs. The tears came not for the past you both had carried across time, but for you — real, present, flesh-and-blood you who had been hurt by his hand, by his words. He did not cry for Mikayla, he cried for you.

And even in your anger, that thought warmed your heart, turning your insides into putty.

You reached for his face before you could second-guess yourself.

“I love you,” you admitted softly. “And I have for quite a while.”

The confession hung in the air, fragile and irreversible.

Sylus’s breath shuddered, garnet eyes widening as realisation settled in them. Slowly, deliberately, he took your hand. Then — before you could react — he lifted it and pressed it flat against his own cheek.

“Hit me,” he said quietly. “If you need to. I deserve it.”

You blinked. “Sylus—”

“I don’t want absolution,” he interrupted. “I want accountability. If you forgive me, it has to be because you chose to not because I begged well enough.”

“Feel free to slap me twice and harder for not realizing how much you mean to me and how earnestly I love you too.” His words had a hint of humour laced in it, reluctantly spoken out too as if he was unsure how you’d react.

You bit on the inside of your cheek to stop your face from breaking into a gleeful smile but you had no doubt your eyes had already given you away. Your hand trembled against his skin and instead of striking him, your fingers curled, cupping his jaw as your thumb brushed over the place where you could have hurt him.

“This isn’t how we fix things,” you chided softly.

You leaned forward then, closing the distance he hadn’t dared to bridge.

Sylus inhaled sharply, as if your nearness alone had startled him, as if he had been bracing for rejection even now. He didn’t move to meet you, didn’t lift a hand to guide you closer. He simply stayed — still, open, allowing — like a man who had finally learned that love was not something to seize, but something granted.

Your lips met his.

The kiss was gentle, tentative in its honesty. It carried the faint scent of salt from the sea, the lingering bitterness of apologies long overdue, and beneath it all, something fragile and new — hope, unsteady but real. 

Sylus froze for a heartbeat, breath caught between disbelief and reverence, before his hands came up slowly, carefully, as though afraid you might rethink if he moved too fast.

One hand settled at your waist, warm and grounding. The other hovered for a moment before resting against your back, not pulling, only holding you there, as if anchoring himself to the proof that this moment was real.

When you drew back, neither of you went far.

Your forehead rested against his, your breath mingling with his in the cold night air. His eyes were closed, lashes damp with tears he no longer tried to hide. 

You lifted a hand, brushing your thumb beneath his eye, wiping away the tear he hadn’t noticed fall. He leaned into the touch without thinking, a silent confession in itself.

“Merry Christmas, Sylus,” you whispered.

He pressed his forehead more firmly to yours, breathing you in as if committing the moment to memory.

“Merry Christmas,” he said softly.

Sometimes he forgets that too, that’s he’s been reborn. That he’s not the dragon who fought beside a sorceress and died by her claymore.

Maybe that’s why it makes it way so easily into the cusp of his speech, and calculative, thoughtful Sylus fails to see the drop in your expression when he says that you’re different then how he remembers you.

It’s a damning feeling, when he knows he’s upset you. When you refused to lean into the curve of his body and instead turned, but he’s nothing if not patient when it comes to you, he’s waited a long time for you after all.

So he closes his eyes and lets sleep take over, you’ll come to him when you want to.

But his eyes shoot open when he hears a sniffle.

“I know you’re asleep.” your trembling whisper fills the silence, “and I’m too much of a coward to say this to your face.”

He waits, hears you take a breath, hears the sniffle of your blocked nose. He fights every urge in him to turn around and pull you into his embrace. He waits to hear your next words, a confession? A curse? An angry rant?

“I’m sorry.”

An apology. A teary apology falls from your trembling lips.

“I’m sorry that you were cursed to be born in this lifetime with me. I’m sorry I don’t remember.” you’re quietly sobbing, each word whispered into the dark like you’re a sinner confessing your sins to a deity above.

And this is what makes Sylus Qin, leader of Onichynus, the feared legend and otherworldly conqueror, freeze like a deer caught in harsh headlights-

A resigned whisper, tentative-

“I’m trying, you know?” a sniffle, “I really am.”

He’s never felt a pain like this in his chest before. A burning itch that makes him feel like he’s being swallowed whole, akin to a familiar grief. He’s hurt you.

“I don’t want you to love me because of who I was. Because I know I am not the same.”

The mattress dips, you’ve shifted to face his back.

“Please don’t leave me if I can’t remember. I’m trying. I am, I am.”

He feels the mattress shift again as you start to cry violently and that’s when he turns. His own salty wretched tears streaming down his face.

He pulls your sobbing form to him, all but smothering you. Hoping that his hold will keep you from feeling like this and for all his childish hope, he knows that you feel like this because of him.

He’s never felt more guilty.

“Please don’t go.” You cry, face in the crook is his neck. His hand massaging your right shoulder, “Don’t you know how much it hurts? This pain lingers and festers and it feels like there’s this hole in me.”

He holds you close, hand moving to pat the back of your head, and Sylus apologises, like the true sinner he is, to the deity you are.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into your ears and you shoulders shake more, not daring to look him the eyes, “I am so sorry,” and you cling to him.

“Don’t leave me.” Soft whimpers leave your throat, you’re baring your heart out to a wolf that feeds on souls, who revels in unravelling people.

“I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, kitten.” He whispers, kissing your temple, “I will never leave you.”

You look up, his eyes glinting in the darkness, his hands around you and his breath like fresh air, “I love you. You, the hunter, who assumed that I would love you for anything but the features that make you who you are, whom I love with every beat of my cursed heart.”

“I’m trying.” You state pathetically but he just shakes his head and pulls you close.

“You will never have to try with me. Never again. I will spend the rest of our lifetime proving this to you.”

“I am not who you loved millennia ago,” you reason, you’re scared, terrified, so much so that you want to push him away, so he can’t hurt you again.

“You’re the one I love now. In this lifetime. There is nothing that will change that.”

“What if I never remember?”

“Then we will make memories together, so we can both reminisce when we are old together. You’re with me now, I’m never letting you leave me.”

He rocks your trembling form, shushing your worries and kissing your head from time to time.

When your breath slows against him and he can hear your slight snores, Sylus looks at your tear stricken face.

Not the sorceress of his past, but his hunter of the present. The hunter who didn’t teach him about love but the one who nurtured it. Not the vengeful fiend, the brave lovely hunter who dared to rip his heart open and settle in like it was made for her, and it was.

The love of his life.

There is music and the faint buzzing of the motorcycles on the road. Now, there are two of them in the frame. Racing to get ahead and tossing the camera back and forth despite the speed they're going.

The backdrop changes drastically from dark and dreary red skies to a clear cerulean as they travel from the N109 zone to Linkon.

Kieran wins with his motorcycle with blue accents, overtaking Luke's yellow-lined one just before the turn to the daycare.

The point of view shifts to Luke's. Two boys with cat stickers over their faces (to conceal their identity) run at him hand in hand with their lunch boxes behind them, happily yipping and yapping about their day.

─────────•────────

"And then... and then— woah! are we going on the motie-cycle?" the louder one asks as Kieran helps him put a leather suit on and some pads. "Mama say we can ride?"

"Uhh..." Kieran clears his throat, and glances at the camera. "Mama said to pick you up."

"Cool!" he says, squeezing his eyes shut as Kieran pops the tiny helmet over his head.

"Wookie, can play music?" asks the other one, closer to the camera. His voice littler and raspy from underuse.

Luke hums. Tightens the pads over the little one's shins. "Mhm. We can go slower too."

"No," the boy grabs his arm. "No, want fast too. Just not loud."

Luke places the helmet over his head and the camera gives the shiny small visor a kiss. "Okay. Wookies got it, Roro."

────────────•─────

The littles are backpacked on them and mic'd up. The upbeat music is replaced with a hardcore version of the wheels on the bus and—who we learn is Lucian's— rambling in the comms.

"And if— if you mix yellow and blue—"

Unfortunately, the music in the other—Kyros's— helmet cuts out when he speaks. "Woosian, qui-eet."

"Is turn orange!"

"Oh, yeah?" Kieran smiles. "And what about yellow and red?"

Lucian falters. "Poo-pool?"

"Qui-eet, pease!"

"Kee-wo, what your favorite color?"

The horn on the bus goes beep, beep, beep for a while, before Kyros answers. "I wike red and white."

The daddy on the bus says shh, shh, shh. Lucian nods. "Ah, peek."

"Yes." Kyros nuzzles against Luke's back. "Qui-eet now, pease?"

"Okay, Kee-wo." Lucian says kindly. Kieran chuckles.

Luke reaches around to tap his helmet fondly. The mommy on the bus says I love you, all through the town.

──────────────•───

The scene is them sitting on the park bench. Legs swinging in synchronized harmony as they wait for Kieran to race over to them with a handful of sundaes.

The cat stickers are back on the babies' faces as they cheer for the ice creams placed in their hands.

"Mama say we can have ice cream too?" Lucian asks excitedly, grabbing the little cup from Kieran and taking a spoonful of his immediately. As if delaying would give them time to answer no and take it back.

Kieran simply hums, avoiding the question.

“Mm! Yay!” Kyros takes a spoonful of his too, and makes a chocolate mustache over his mouth.

Lo-fi plays in the backdrop of a timelapse that catches Lucian sneaking licks from Kieran’s cup, and Kyros going “aa” for additional scoops from Luke’s.

Back on the motorcycle, they speed along a different road into the outskirts of the N109 zone, onto a secluded property.

Luke shows off by hooking his leg around Kyros and doing a spin to get him down. Behind them, Lucian smacks Kieran’s arm repeatedly, asking to be done the same to.

───────────────•──

“Well… that’s our afternoon.” Luke tells the camera, positioned now again to his helmet just by the door. Littles and his own twin gone. “This isn’t like any of my usual ones, but a change of pace is good every once in a while, huh? Let me know in the comments what you…”

He trails off, looking up at the figure that has just walked up the porch steps. There is a flash of white on his visor before the camera pans down to his neck. “Luke.”

“Hey,” Luke’s voice shifts into something deeper. More conscious and leveled, but comfortable, even if he doesn’t intend to. “You’re home early.”

“It’s pasta night.” Says the man simply. His voice battling the purr of a bike’s engine behind the camera’s lens. “And we’re watching Toy Story.”

“Oh, cool.”

“Are you staying?”

“Yeah, yeah. We can stay.” The camera is crowded closer to Luke’s chest, like he’s trying to keep it from capturing the man’s reflection.

“Great. No shoes in the house, okay?”

“Yep, yup. Got it.”

The door shuts, and Luke gets back to vlogging. Voice pitching upwards again like it used to. “You heard it here folks, pasta night and Toy Story. Gotta blast. See you in the next one!”

─────────────────•

↻

You want to strip out of this lingerie that feels more and more like a costume, pathetic and useless on you; you kinda want to tear your flesh off too, or somehow be magically transported back to your place in Linkon, to the moment before you added this fucking outfit to your cart.

Silence prevails on the other side of the door, so much that you can hear the hum of the city below. Of course Caleb wouldn’t come looking for you, you feel so fucking stupid.

…

Caleb can’t exactly tell what he’s expecting to see, after he settles down on his office chair with a shit eating grin. He has ideas that dance across his mind, one more delightful than the last. You, sweetly calling his name and prancing in to sit in lap. You, annoyed, standing hands on hips in the doorway and calling him out for being an asshole when you’ve made yourself so tempting for him.

He doesn’t prepare himself for dead silence. The lack of reaction from you is in fact so startling that it makes him pace a few laps around his desk. Are you waiting him out? You couldn’t have fallen asleep in so little time right? It’s you though, so he can’t be sure, in all honesty.

It takes around fifteen minutes of stewing before he finally breaks and he makes his way back to the living room, coatless and with quite a few buttons if his crisp white shirt undone, only to find it empty. No noise, no you, only the book you were pretending to read tossed haphazardly over the couch.

In a moment of madness Caleb imagines you out there in Skyhaven, all lace and sweetness and the temper he can’t live without. As if you would’ve just walked out his door in that state, for no reason he can readily grasp.

“Pips?” His voice is far steadier than he feels. It echoes in a way he’s no longer used to, since you started building this new relationship where he can finally love you openly, loudly, unashamedly.

You don’t answer, but Caleb’s good at minding the details, and the sound he picks up from behind your door is one he’s trained himself to recognize even if you try your damndest to hide it.

You’re crying, muffling it into a pillow by the dull sob he barely catches, and it breaks his heart clean in half. He did this. There must’ve been signs, somewhere in your face, in the way your eyes peeked over the cover of the airplane manual you used as a prop, that you weren’t up for games tonight, not that kind at least. And he missed them.

It’s quite obvious, here standing at your door, knocking softly so he doesn’t startle you. You generally don’t pose yourself, specially not so overtly that it makes you look uncomfortable. Caleb’s whole chest aches with the thought of you, coming to the conclusion that he doesn’t appreciate the effort, or that he doesn’t find you the most attractive person he’s ever had the honor of laying eyes on.

So he drops the nicknames, whispers your name instead to ask you to open the door, to let you know he means it. And maybe it works, maybe you just hear the guilt in his voice, the honest desire to make this right, because you disengage the lock for him.

Caleb tries, he really does his level best not to crowd you, but you’re there, now in one of his shirts and sleep shorts. Your eyes are red, hair a mess, and he can clearly see from here a scrap of torn lace peeking out of the trash can in the corner.

“Baby—“

You’re not looking at him, like your bare feet are the most interesting thing in the world.

“I just wanted to feel pretty for you.”

His hands fucking shake at your admission. Caleb understands how much it takes for you to be this vulnerable, with him or anybody. It takes you feeling like you can’t hold things anymore. You, the strongest person he knows.

“You’re so beautiful, I can’t believe you’re real sometimes, Pips,” he attempts. It’s not enough. “I’m so sorry I didn’t show you tonight.”

“No, I’m not sexy,” your eyes shine with fresh tears, head shaking, “you’re so handsome and strong and lovely, you stop people on the street and I’m just a— blob.”

“Baby, you’re my only fantasy. Since the very beginning, every bit of you. I’ve only ever wanted you, the sexiest, prettiest woman I’ve ever seen. The only one that drives me crazy.”

You hiccup and finally, finally, take a step into him. You settle your arms around him and your cheek against his chest; and Caleb has permission to hold you at last. He folds over you, trying to hide you from the world that could make you think you’re shapeless. As if you’re not the axis that defines him, the shining point his life revolves around.

He tries not to cry himself, but he feels you tucked into him, warm, soft flesh around an iron core that still needs his reassurance from time to time. He needs to tell you more, he figures, has to be more transparent about how you’re always on his mind. How the thought of your voice soothes him when tension stiffens the back of his neck; and the memory of your skin on his is the one thing that’s sure to help him sleep at night when you’re not here.

Caleb coaxes you under the covers eventually, he moves with you, keeping a hand always on your body, —your arms, your thighs, whatever he can reach as your breathing settles, exhausted. And he’s talking nonsense, the unfiltered running commentary he usually keeps to himself.

You’re so warm. I love this little dimple here. This scar is my favorite cause I told you not to climb that tree and you did it anyway to prove me wrong. I wish I could sleep with these icicle feet in my bed every night.

Then you’re laughing, face tucked into the crook of his neck, mumbling that you love him. The full three words —four— ‘I love you, Caleb’.