Chapter Seven - Past

Flashback: Lyon, France. 10 years ago.

The hallway outside the ICU stretched like a tunnel—too long, too white, too still.

It was the kind of sterile quiet that didn’t belong to grief but to aftermath. A stillness after screaming. A silence after thunder. Something final.

Serena walked it alone.

Each step felt like her feet didn’t quite touch the ground, as if the world had loosened its grip on her, leaving her untethered. Her hoodie swallowed her small frame, her hands curled deep into its sleeves like she could hide from the moment if she just made herself smaller.

The lights overhead flickered too bright. The air tasted of bleach and ghosted metal. And beneath it all—beneath the hospital scent of sterilization and endings—there was the echo of something more personal: perfume, faint, long faded. Her mother’s.

She had died quietly. That was the worst part.

No defiant last word. No final storm.

Just a shallow breath. Then stillness.

A woman who shone brightly, chaotically, who had loved too violently and lived too beautifully to ever be described simply—gone. Her body, still and cold.

Serena didn’t remember falling. Just found herself folded at the base of a vending machine, her back against cold glass, her legs drawn up to her chest like a child’s.

The sobs didn’t ask permission. They tore through her throat, jagged and unkind, full of sound and shame. She buried her face in her arms, sleeves soaked in tears, trying not to hear herself break.

She didn’t want to be seen.

She didn’t want to be alone either.

It was always like this with her mother. Even now.

She had spent her life both longing for and hiding from her—aching to be chosen, terrified of being noticed. Her mother had loomed over everything, always a step ahead, always unknowable. A war machine in designer silk. A myth in crimson heels.

Afraid for her. For Selena's passion to act. Afraid of how she'd be exploited, just like she was. Always holding her back.

And yet… Teaching her a lot. Serena had loved her. Still loved her. Even now. Even after everything.

It wasn’t the legacy she cried for.

It was the woman beneath the wreckage of it. Someone who was messy, real and so afraid of fading away.

A soft hum buzzed overhead. The vending machine clicked once, coin slot malfunctioning. Her breath shuddered against her sleeves. Somewhere down the corridor, a machine beeped. A nurse coughed.

And then—

Footsteps.

Slow. Solid. Not the quick shuffle of hospital staff, not the careful tread of mourners.

Different.

Serena didn’t lift her head. She couldn’t. She didn’t want anyone to see her like this—hollowed out, ugly with grief, her pain not elegant or poetic but raw. Messy.

Her mother always told her— never show your face like that to anyone unless the camera is rolling.

But the shadow paused.

Something in her stilled.

Even before she looked up, her body recognized him. Not by name. Not by voice. But by something older than memory—something instinctual. Bone-deep.

He had always found her like this.

Once, it had been in Vienna, two years earlier. She was fourteen. Lost. Cold. Wandering through the marble corridors of a diplomatic gala after following her sister sneaking away from her security detail. Her dress was too thin for the snow.

Men had noticed her—unsettling smiles and sharp eyes.

But then he had noticed too.

He hadn’t said a word. Just appeared beside her like a shadow with weight. Moved between her and the strangers like he belonged there. Like he always had. She smiled up at him then. Tiny and happy.

He had walked her to the car. Said nothing. But his presence had anchored her. Made her feel, for a single fleeting moment, seen and embraced.

And now, here.

Once again with her world unraveling and her mother gone.

And there he was again.

She blinked through blurred lashes, her breath catching. He hadn’t changed much. Older, maybe. Sharper. But the stillness was the same—the kind that didn’t come from apathy, but from something else.

He kneeled beside her. Her hands clenched in her sleeves.

There was a part of her that wanted to turn away. To curl back into herself. To preserve whatever sliver of dignity she hadn’t cried out onto the sterile floor.

But another part—a louder, needier part—moved toward him. She knew it would be cold beyond the fog of him, but she didn't care.

She didn’t speak at first. Didn’t know how.

Her fingers lifted, almost on their own, and rested lightly against his chest. The fabric of his coat was warm from his body, soft but structured, like everything about him.

“I know I always put you in a spot,” she whispered.

Her voice was hoarse, broken from sobbing.

“Can you please do this one thing for me?"

She didn’t elaborate immediately. She wasn’t talking about violence or protection. She meant something more ancient. More personal. More desperate. More impossible.

He could make her mother a name whispered in fear, or a memory honored in secret.

“Don’t let them turn her into a monster,” she said, her voice shaking. “She was more than that. She was fire. She was… she was trying. All the time. You don’t know how hard she tried to be good, even when she didn’t know how.”

Her eyes burned. Her hands trembled against him.

“I just wanted her to choose us. Me. But I think… maybe she didn’t know how.”

She didn’t know why she said that to him. Why it spilled out.

Maybe because he looked like someone who would understand. Maybe so he would find some sympathy for her. It was shameless, desperate; but Serena had no choice.

He didn’t say a word. Not one.

But he let her speak. Let her cry.

And when she tried to get up— her knees wobbled, when her hands fisted weakly into his coat—he caught her.

Not dramatically. Not with urgency. Just… steadied her. One hand at her back, one cupping her elbow.

She broke then. At the tenderness and the warmth after feeling the isolation build and build.

Not into sobs, but into something quieter. Her tears were silent now, dripping down her cheeks without fanfare. She leaned into him like she was falling through the world and he was the only solid thing left.

His body was warm. Unmoving. Patient.

And she—

She wasn’t afraid.

Even in the presence of someone who had a reputation that was colder than anyone she knew. She just held on.

She wasn’t afraid because he didn’t look at her like she was a girl coming undone. He didn’t look at her like she was fragile or foolish or pathetic.

He just… held her.

And didn’t walk away.

That’s what she’d remember.

Not her request. Not the silence.

But that he stayed.

That when the world had emptied out and her mother's life collapsed around her, and grief twisted into loneliness—

He didn’t walk away.

Not then.

Not even after. Maybe.

Because even when her eyes fluttered closed and the weight of exhaustion pulled her under, even when the fluorescent lights blurred into a soft, colorless haze—

The last thing Serena felt was the quiet warmth of him holding her up.

And the steady beat of a heart that didn’t flinch from her pain.