Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Enid had entered enough locker rooms, production meetings, and staged confrontations to recognize when something was being set up for her. The arrangement here was unmistakable; if anything, it was too polished, too silent. The hallway leading to the conference room lacked the usual background noise of Winter City Studios. There was no low chatter from passing crew members, no distant shuffling of equipment, not even the faint electronic chime of a badge scanner at the restricted doors.

She adjusted the sleeve of her hoodie, aware that it wouldn’t alleviate the slow, throbbing pain in her broken arm. The ache had become manageable — until she moved awkwardly or the weight of expectation pressed a bit too hard. Resting was what she needed, but that option vanished the moment she read Thornhill’s email: Non-negotiable. Immediate attendance required.

So here she was.

Ajax had mentioned the name earlier, in that cautious way people do before an impact. Rafael Clay. He had let it settle like a test, waiting to gauge her reaction before deciding how much more to say. She kept her expression neutral, allowing the name to sink in like a punch that didn’t land immediately but still sent a warning through her ribs. Now, standing at the threshold of the conference room, her stomach twisted at the thought of him inside — comfortable, settled, as if he belonged there.

The last time she had seen Rafael, the situation had felt different — colder, more uncertain. He had stood just outside the action, observing. Not helping. Not intervening. Just... there. The kind of presence that left a mark without lifting a hand. Even now, she struggled to define what he had been to her — an observer, an accomplice, or something worse?

She flexed her good hand, pressing her nails into her palm just enough to regain focus. It doesn’t matter. Not now.

The studio’s walls were a bit too white, the floors too clean, but this part of the building had been stripped of its usual vibrancy. She felt funneled somewhere, guided by an absence rather than a presence. Glancing up, she half-expected to see a security camera tracking her, but they remained still — either inactive, misaligned, or simply for show.

The silence wasn’t just quiet; it was orchestrated.

She rolled her shoulders back, ignoring the tug on her injured arm, and let her boots land a bit harder on the tile as she approached the door — a confirmation to herself as much as anything. The last time she had been called into a meeting like this, she had left with stitches and silence. That wouldn’t happen again.

Not to this version of her.

She pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Rafael was already seated, leaning back as if he had been there for hours.

And he looked comfortable. Too comfortable. It was as if this wasn’t his first time in this room, at this table, or in this conversation. He appeared to have memorized the exact placement of the coasters and had grown accustomed to the overhead lights humming at a slightly different pitch than those in rehearsal spaces.

Rafael exuded a kind of ease that was more than confidence — it was ownership. This wasn’t just a meeting; it felt like a rehearsal, a script he had long since memorized. His chair wasn’t stiff-backed like the others; it reclined slightly, allowing him to sprawl without appearing unprofessional. The positioning was deliberate. He sat in direct sight of the door, compelling her to step fully into his space before claiming her own.

His arm draped casually over the back of his chair, fingers tapping absently against the leather, establishing a rhythm too intentional to be accidental. His jacket — dark, fitted, effortlessly expensive — was unzipped just enough to reveal the Henley beneath, sleeves pushed up as if he were still deciding whether to roll them down and pretend he hadn’t already made himself at home.

The chain rested just below his collarbone, barely visible but akin to a signature. He had worn it under his costumes during rehearsals, the metal catching the stage lights whenever he forgot to tuck it away. It was muscle memory — slipping it beneath his shirt before curtain call, as if it mattered. Or perhaps it hadn’t, until now, when everything about him reminded her of the things she had spent years trying to forget.

Rafael’s gaze flicked to her cast first. It wasn’t the surprised glance of someone caught off guard, but a calculated look, like someone checking an expiration date — assessing whether something was still usable.

Enid felt the impulse to adjust her sleeve, to shift subtly so the worst of her injury was out of sight, but stopping herself became defiance. Let him look. Let him see the damage. She wouldn’t make it easier for him to pretend this was casual.

Now his gaze met hers fully — assessing, cataloging, waiting. There was a familiarity to it that twisted something within her, but she ignored it. The feeling between them wasn’t nostalgia; it was muscle memory. The kind that kicks in when you step onto an old stage and your body remembers the blocking before your mind does. A familiarity she didn’t want, laced with things she refused to name.

“Sinclair.” Rafael stretched the name just enough to feel purposeful. It was as if the name were an inside joke, a marker of some unspoken past he still claimed. As if they were picking up where they left off instead of properly sitting across from each other for the first time in years.

Thornhill’s gaze flicked between them, observing something neither had yet to say. Her fingers rested neatly on a crisp stack of papers, but she wasn’t reading. She was waiting. For what, Enid couldn’t tell.

“I was beginning to think you wouldn’t show,” Thornhill said, a pleasant smile settling into place. It wasn’t patronizing, exactly, but there was something rehearsed about it. “But I’m glad you did. Please, have a seat.”

Enid sensed the placement wasn’t random.

The chair directly across from Rafael was pulled out just enough to imply expectation — not enough space for neutrality. Close enough that she would be completely in his line of sight. Close enough that if she reached across the table, she could easily knock over the glass of water set before her.

She didn’t sit immediately. Instead, she lingered for a second longer than necessary, letting the silence hold, letting Thornhill watch, letting Rafael see that she hadn’t moved yet, that she wasn’t playing along just because they expected her to.

The room had shifted — not physically, but in the way things do when people have already decided where you fit before you even sit down. The air felt dense, arranged, as if an invisible marker had been drawn around her chair before she entered, framing her within a scene she hadn’t rehearsed.

Her gaze flicked to the contract in front of her chair. The pages were crisp, untouched, not a single pen mark marring the margins. The pen at the top was aligned too perfectly, suggestive of expectations — like she was meant to pick it up without thinking, as if the next move had already been planned.

She didn’t reach for it.

Instead, she pulled the chair out slowly, letting the scrape of metal against tile ring louder than necessary. A small disruption. A refusal to let this unfold too neatly. The chair steadied her, anchoring her against the expectations in the room. When she sat, she didn’t relax — spine straight, heels planted, good hand flat against the table. A posture that neither invited conversation nor backed away from it.

Thornhill’s fingers pressed lightly against the stack of papers before her, smoothing an invisible crease. Not a fidget. A correction. Keeping things in order — including them.

“You didn’t mention him,” Enid said, keeping her gaze fixed on Thornhill. The words were not a question; there was no room for misinterpretation.

Thornhill barely hesitated. “I didn’t need to. You already knew.”

Rafael exhaled a sound that could have been amusement. “You always did catch on quick,” he murmured, mostly to himself.

He leaned in slightly now, elbows on the table, hands loosely clasped — a conversational stance designed to invite a response. It looked effortless, but she knew better. He had done this before — eased into spaces, made himself comfortable, let people feel as if the conversation was just beginning when he had been leading it all along.

She didn’t look at him.

“If this is about safety, there are actual stunt coordinators with film experience,” she said, keeping her focus on Thornhill. “You could’ve chosen any of them.”

“Mr. Clay has a history with you.” Thornhill’s tone was smooth and neutral, but Enid sensed the weight behind it — something more calculated than mere familiarity. Thornhill wasn’t looking at Rafael as she spoke; her attention was entirely on Enid, watching for a reaction, waiting to identify her pressure points.

Enid let out a slow breath through her nose. Her fingers curled slightly against the table, her nails pressing into her palm just hard enough to register the sting — a small, sharp point of control. A reminder that she was still in her own body, still present, still deciding her next move.

Rafael hummed softly, considering. “And here I thought you’d be happy to see me,” he said, tilting his head slightly, watching her as if he were waiting for something specific. “After everything we’ve been through.”

Enid met his gaze, searching for some sign of his intentions. His expression remained unchanged, but she knew him well enough to recognize the smallest tells — the faintest flicker in his eyes, the way his fingers tapped the rhythm that was anything but random.

The room was quiet, but not empty. It held a silence that wasn’t merely an absence of sound but a presence of expectation. The lights continued to hum, not quite in tune with those in rehearsal spaces, and the air smelled like engineered neutrality — no coffee, no paper, just sanitized, controlled nothingness. It made the polished table between them feel more like a stage than a meeting place.

She could almost hear it. Act 5, Scene 3. The tomb is cold. Juliet lies still. Romeo reaches for her.

Rafael’s voice was too low for anyone else to hear but perfectly placed for her. He recited lines they should have long since exhausted but never had. The way he caught her offstage, hands steady at her waist, felt like it had never quite belonged to the script. The final scene had always felt too real, blurring the line between performance and reality.

She blinked hard. No. This wasn’t then. This wasn’t that. And Rafael Clay wasn’t here by coincidence.

Her stomach twisted as she turned to Thornhill. “How much access does he have?”

Thornhill’s smile didn’t falter. “Everything necessary for ensuring your performance and safety.”

Rafael made a quiet sound of acknowledgment. “Medical files. Injury reports. February documentation.” His fingers drummed against the table once, twice. “It’s important that I have the full picture.”

Something in her pulse misfired, a brief falter before she could smooth it out. He shouldn’t have that. Nobody should have that. Not February. Not something that shouldn’t be spoken of as just another line in a file. But Rafael had listed it like it belonged there, like it was just another piece of data — one more thing to study.

Thornhill shifted a page in front of her. “We’ve already finalized clearances. All we need now is your signature.”

The pen was still there, placed exactly where it had been when she walked in. The same as before. But somehow closer — a detail that shouldn’t have changed but had.

Enid didn’t pick it up.

Her fingers hovered near the pen, close enough to feel the smoothness of the barrel without touching it. The space between wasn’t hesitation — not really. It was something else. A pause that lasted just a second too long. Long enough to be felt. Long enough that it wasn’t just a break in movement but an acknowledgment of the movement not made. The expectation pressed at the edges of the silence — Thornhill waiting, Rafael watching, tracking the gap between her hand and the decision they both anticipated her to make.

It was a scene, wasn’t it? The three of them seated in perfect composition, the Winter City Studios emblem in the corner of the contract like a backdrop, the pen placed like a cue, the fluorescent hum filling the pauses between scripted beats. A careful arrangement leading to one inevitable conclusion.

Rafael exhaled, quiet but intentional. Not interrupting. Just… noting.

Then he tipped his head slightly, studying her as he used to when trying to predict her next move before she even made it. There had been a time when he was good at that. So good, in fact, that it had never occurred to her how much effort it took. How much he must have watched her, must have learned her like a script. And even now, after years apart, after everything buried under time and distance and February — he was still watching.

Not expectantly. Not impatiently. Just waiting.

“You still hesitate the same way before making a decision,” he said, his voice softer than before. Not teasing. Not smug. Just stating something he knew to be true.

Her breath caught — just slightly. Not enough for anyone else to notice, but enough for her to know it happened. Enough to feel the misstep, the brief moment where her body reacted before she could stop it.

Rafael didn’t miss it.

“You do,” he continued, as if it were just conversation, as if they were discussing something as neutral as blocking cues. He braced an elbow on the table, his body language still open, still unbothered. As if he had nowhere else to be. As if watching her process this moment was the only thing that mattered. “You always start with your right hand. Hover, like you’re testing the weight of the choice. Then you flex your fingers — just a little—”

His own hand moved as he spoke, mirroring the motion loosely. Not a performance. Not an imitation. Just muscle memory, as if the pattern of her hesitation had ingrained itself into him as well.

“And then you press your thumb into your palm before you—”

She dropped her hand.

The shift was immediate — a clean break. It was a purposeful movement, a rejection of a pattern she hadn’t realized existed until he pointed it out.

Rafael’s expression remained unchanged, but something flickered in his eyes. It wasn’t satisfaction, not quite — just a quiet confirmation. “Before you go through with it anyway,” he stated.

Her pulse quickened, unsteady for a moment before it regained its rhythm. Because he was right — he was right. And that realization stung more than anything else: that he had noticed this before she did, that he had seen it happen repeatedly until it became something he could predict.

The worst part? He had pointed it out years ago, when they were college kids. She had gripped her script too tightly before their first Much Ado About Nothing preview, while he adjusted the stiff collar of his doublet, watching her from the dressing room mirror. “You always hesitate like that before you go through with something big,” he had said, sounding half-distracted, but he hadn’t been. Not really. “But you always do it anyway.”

That memory settled in her mind.

It didn’t hit her all at once; it seeped in slowly, like warmth bleeding into cold. It filled the spaces she had forgotten were still open — initially, not an unwelcome memory, just something quiet and easy. It settled behind her ribs before she even realized it was there, pressing against something deep within her that she had missed before she could stop it.

Rafael saw it, of course he did.

“I really did miss you, you know.” His voice was quieter now, less structured, less rehearsed.

She looked at him then, really looked. He wasn’t smiling — not fully.

And that was different.

Rafael had always known how to say just the right thing at the right moment, leaving people feeling exactly what he wanted them to feel. That was what made him good. That was what made them good together.

Yet right now, there was nothing calculated in his words — just something she couldn’t quite name. Something that reached her before she could put up a wall.

She should have ignored it, should have let it pass without acknowledging it, without allowing it to hook into something deep inside her. But she didn’t.

Because the truth was—

She had missed him, too.

Not the now, not the person sitting across from her in this reality, but the version of him that had existed back then, in the space between — between her childhood and the aftermath of February, in that brief window when she felt whole instead of fractured.

And for the first time in years, she allowed herself to remember. Really remember.

It hadn’t been perfect, but back then, perfect hadn’t mattered. It had been right.

Late nights in the rehearsal hall, words slipping between them in hushed murmurs, the line between scripts and reality blurring until it was hard to tell which was which.

She could still feel it — the way Rafael’s hands had found her waist, steady and sure, lifting her into a perfect arc during Phantom of the Opera. The way their voices layered over each other effortlessly, harmonies intertwining as if they belonged to something greater, something neither could claim fully. They had always known how the other would move, how to anticipate, how to catch and be caught without thought.

It had been instinct.

It had been safe.

And for a moment — just long enough to be dangerous — she let herself sink into it.

Rafael must have sensed it, felt the shift, because something in his expression changed. The sharp edges softened, his eyes searching hers with a new kind of caution, as if he were afraid of startling her. He seemed to understand how fragile this moment was, how fleeting.

“Do you remember our last show?” he asked, something threading through his voice that made her throat tighten.

She swallowed.

“Romeo and Juliet,” he continued, fingers still tapping out the slow rhythm on the table. It was an unconscious habit from years of counting beats between cues, waiting for the right moment to step in. “Closing night. Final scene. You almost fell, but—”

“You caught me,” she murmured before she could stop herself.

And for a second, they were there.

The stage beneath her heels, worn and uneven from years of movement. The warmth of the overhead lights casting everything in a soft glow that made it easier to believe in impossible things. The scent of old wood, dust, and fabric softener from freshly pressed costumes. The exact moment she had let herself drop, body weightless, trusting — because he had always been there, exactly where he was supposed to be. His arms bracing, breath unsteady against her skin as he held on.

That final scene had never felt like acting. The scripted emotions blurred into something real — something neither of them had acknowledged, yet it had always been there.

Her fingers curled against the polished surface of the table, grounding herself, trying to stay present. The smoothness of the wood was too clean and impersonal, nothing like the gritty stage floor or the spaces they used to inhabit. But it wasn’t enough to pull her completely out of it.

Rafael was watching her again, but this time it wasn’t with calculation. It wasn’t a performance; it was something soft, something regretful.

“We were good together,” he murmured.

A breath caught in her throat.

Because they had been — before everything else, before now.

And God, she missed it. Not just him, but them. The way they had fit together before everything cracked apart, the ease and instinctiveness that felt like home in a way nothing else had since.

Her fingers pressed into the table — grounding, grounding, grounding. But it wasn’t enough to stop her from feeling it.

Rafael must have sensed it too. When he spoke again, his tone was careful and measured.

“I really did think we were going to get it right.”

She exhaled slowly, the ache in her chest settling into something quieter.

He stated it like a fact, leaving the timeline open-ended, allowing her to fill in the blank.

She wanted to say something, to fill the silence with something real that might name the feeling curling inside her chest.

But she didn’t.

Because Rafael was here now. And for the first time, she was realizing—

He was here for her.

That should have meant something. It should have made her pulse spike, should have flooded her with memories of sharp-edged February, should have made her push away from the table and leave. But it didn’t. Before she could grasp the realization, before she could absorb the implications of him sitting across from her, she found herself somewhere else entirely.

Early March. The first breath of spring lingered in the air, but it was still cold — the kind of cold that settled in the bones and refused to lift, even as the sun lingered longer in the sky. The BU Theatre had been running on half-working heating, and despite the space heaters smuggled into the rehearsal hall, the hardwood stage remained freezing. She could still feel it — the bite against her bare feet, the way it seeped up her legs as she stood at center stage, arms loose, chin tilted up to the rigging, eyes closed as Rafael circled her.

“Thus with a kiss I die.”

His voice, low and steady, threaded through the silence, filling the space between them.

By then, she had fallen a hundred times, enough to know how to distribute her weight and let gravity take over without fear. But that night — that night — she had slipped, just enough to throw herself off-center, just enough that for a fraction of a second, she knew she was going to hit the floor—

But Rafael had been there.

Not just as a scene partner or another body in motion. He had caught her, arms locking around her waist in an abrupt but safe stop. She could still feel it — the way his grip tightened, not in character, but as him. The way she clutched the fabric of his costume, fingers curling into soft linen as if afraid to let go.

Time had stretched in that moment, space expanding between them, making room for something unspoken — something that had always been there but had never been named.

Then it was after.

The stage lights cooled. The audience murmured as they filed out. The rest of the cast moved around them in waves of exhilaration — we did it, we really fucking did it, the reviews are going to be insane. Someone was hugging her — Phillip? Kaia? The edges of the memory blurred, softened, but Rafael was still there, still close, still looking at her with that same unreadable expression — a mix of triumph and something deeper, something that felt like the moment before a decision.

Then came the green room.

Voices hummed from the hallway, muffled by distance. The only real light came from the half-open door, casting a dim glow over discarded scripts, a champagne bottle someone had cracked open in celebration, and Rafael standing just two feet away, shirt still undone at the top, stage makeup smudged along his jaw.

He had been watching her.

Like he had on stage. Like when he caught her. Like he was still bracing for her weight, still feeling the impact of it.

Someone had put a champagne glass in her hand. Someone had called her name — Enid, that was fucking magic, do you even realize? — but it all felt peripheral. Everything was secondary to this — the space between them. The way her pulse quickened, the way she became acutely aware of every breath she took, of every inch of air that still remained between them.

And then she closed it.

One step, then another. Rafael met her halfway, hands threading into her hair, backing her against the vanity, the champagne glass slipping from her fingers, forgotten.

It had been so easy. That was the essence of Rafael — it had always been easy. No pretense, no hesitation once the decision was made. Just them. Just feeling. The scent of stage makeup and warm velvet, the solid press of his body against hers, the slow glide of his hands down her spine. The deep, satisfied sound he made when she pulled him closer.

That night had been perfect.

The last perfect thing.

Because now, as she reflected on it — tracing the roads that led to this moment, to the contract before her, and to him sitting across from her in a Winter City conference room—

It had been right after that night when everything changed.

Not all at once. Not suddenly. But undeniably.

The moment when their lines began to blur in a way they couldn’t undo. When Romeo and Juliet transitioned from mere performance to something real. And for a while — oh, for a while — it had been so good.

Until it wasn’t.

Until it was over.

Until she chose hockey. Until he chose something else. Until he walked away, and neither of them looked back.

But now—

Now Rafael sat across from her, watching with that same unreadable expression. The same look he wore in the green room, in the rehearsal hall, on stage. Suddenly, it felt as if no time had passed at all. As if the years had folded in on themselves, February not yet etched into her bones, her body still knowing how to fit against his, her mind still trusting.

And that was the most dangerous part of all.

Her fingers twitched slightly against the table. Before she could process it — before she could think — she was moving.

The pen was in her hand. The contract lay before her.

And the next thing she knew — she was signing.

One stroke. Then another. Her name forming in real time, in real space, now, here, not five years ago, not in a green room, not under the heat of stage lights, but here.

The pen glided too smoothly across the paper. The ink settled too quickly. There was no pause, no moment of weight before the final stroke. It just happened. The pen clicked against the table as she set it down.

Silence.

A waiting silence. The kind that stretched long enough to feel unnatural, long enough to make her aware of the seconds ticking by, of the ink drying into the fibers of the contract like something permanent.

Her breath slowed, deepened, as it always did after a decision was made — after the moment had passed and there was nothing left to undo. The contract sat before her, final, unmovable, her signature resting at the bottom in dark ink. A signature belonging to this version of her, the one in a Winter City conference room, not the girl who once stood under theater lights, not the person she had been before everything shifted.

And Rafael — Rafael exhaled.

Not victory. Not relief. Something else.

Something that lingered between those feelings. Something almost like regret, but not quite.

Enid didn’t look at him.

She focused on the paper. For the first time since entering this room, since seeing him, since slipping into memories she hadn’t realized were buried beneath her skin—

She finally understood what she had done.

The moment had already passed. The decision was made. But her body hadn’t caught up yet. There was no taking it back, no shifting the ink, no erasing the fact that whatever hesitation she might have felt — whatever flicker of instinct warned her before nostalgia swallowed her whole — was now irrelevant.

Because she had signed. She had agreed. To what, exactly, she wasn’t sure yet.

Thornhill, however, was.

“Wonderful,” she said smoothly, reaching for the contract, flipping through the pages as if she expected nothing less. As if hesitation had never been a possibility. “I’ll have this processed and distributed to the necessary departments by tomorrow.”

Her tone was light, pleasant, but her movements were precise — flawless in their efficiency. Every step of this had already been laid out. There had never been room for anything else.

She looked up, her expression carefully composed. “We appreciate your cooperation, Enid.”

It felt too clean. Too easy. With just a few strokes of a pen, Thornhill had what she wanted, as if all that had ever been necessary was the illusion of choice.

Enid's stomach twisted.

Across the table, Rafael leaned back slightly, one hand resting against the armrest, but his gaze wasn’t on the contract or Thornhill. He was watching her.

And she recognized that look.

It wasn’t satisfaction. It wasn’t smugness. It wasn’t even relief. It was something else, something quieter, something waiting. He had anticipated this moment, hadn’t he? Not the signature itself, but the instant after — the moment it hit her, when she realized she had just let it happen, allowing herself to fall into the past and forget.

And now they were here.

“You made the right call,” Thornhill continued, sliding the contract into a sleek leather folder. “Now we can move forward without delay. Rafael, I’ll have your finalized schedule by tonight, but you should prepare for the start of the new protocols next week. Our priority will be getting Enid adjusted to your methodology.”

His methodology.

As if she were a student. As if she were something to train. As if she were a project, not a person.

Her good hand curled against her thigh, fingers pressing into the fabric of her jeans.

Rafael nodded, professional and distant. “Understood.”

He was already shifting, already rising from his chair, already leaving. That should have been good, should have brought relief, should have been exactly what she needed right now.

But it wasn’t.

Because something — something — was still suspended in the space between them. Something that had never existed before.

A moment passed.

Then Rafael moved. The chair slid back smoothly as he stood with the kind of grace that came from years of knowing how to exit a space without disrupting the scene. Enid felt it more than she saw it — the shift of air, the subtle pull of attention his presence always commanded. She didn’t look at him or track his movements. She didn’t trust herself to.

Thornhill continued speaking — something about logistics, something about sending a copy of the finalized agreement — but Enid wasn’t processing any of it. Because Rafael was walking past her now, heading toward the door, and she should have let him go. She should have.

But then, his hand.

A light touch. Fingers brushing her good shoulder, just enough pressure to be felt, just enough presence to mean something. Not forceful. Not demanding. Just there.

She inhaled sharply, her body reacting before her mind could catch up.

Then he leaned down, close enough that no one else could hear, close enough that his breath was warm against her jaw. For the first time — the first time ever — his words carried no performance.

“I’ll always catch you.”

Soft. Steady. True.

As if he were giving it to her, as if it wasn’t a reminder or a promise, but something real. He knew exactly what that meant, exactly what it would do to her.

And that nearly broke her.

Because, God, wasn’t that what she had always wanted to believe? That he would? That he had? That if she had just let herself lean in, if she had trusted him a little more, maybe—

No. She couldn’t think like that. Not now. Not here.

Her breath caught in her throat, her shoulders tensed, her body betraying her by leaning into the touch just the slightest bit before her mind caught up, forcing her to remain still. And Rafael — he felt it. He must have, because his fingers lingered for a moment longer, pressing slightly as if to acknowledge it before he let go. Before he left.

The door clicked shut behind him, the sound too quiet to match the way it felt — like something had just been sealed off.

And Enid…

She couldn’t move. Not yet. Not when something inside her had shifted, like a fault line subtly slipping out of alignment, something loosening but not settling. Something she didn’t know how to handle.

Thornhill was speaking again, but Enid didn’t hear her. Because Rafael Clay had just said something real.

Now she had to figure out what she was supposed to do with that.

The room fell quiet again, the conversation technically over, but Enid still felt off-balance, as if something had been knocked loose inside her and hadn’t settled back into place. It was as though she was moving, but the ground beneath her had shifted enough that she had to recalibrate every step.

Thornhill, of course, remained perfectly composed, perfectly pleased, completely unaffected by any of it. She smoothed her hands over the leather folder in front of her, her smile measured but undeniably satisfied.

“I know this wasn’t an easy decision,” she said, devoid of concern. Only approval. Only reinforcement. “I appreciate your willingness to put the production first.”

Enid nodded once — not in agreement, but in acknowledgment. She needed to leave.

Her pulse was still wrong, too loud, and the air in the conference room felt too small, too filled with things she didn’t have the energy to untangle. Rafael’s words kept looping in her head, overlapping with old memories and feelings she shouldn't let herself sink into. She needed to get out.

She exhaled, clearing her throat slightly as she forced herself back into a professional demeanor. “I’ll look out for any follow-ups,” she said, her voice sounding distant to her own ears.

It sounded like her, but not quite. Too steady. Too smooth. The kind of steadiness that came only from forcing something in place.

Thornhill nodded, pleased. “You’ll hear from me soon.”

Of course, she would. Enid had given them exactly what they wanted, and she wasn’t sure if she’d just given up more than she realized.

She pushed back her chair, good hand bracing against the table as she stood. Thornhill didn’t stop her. She had what she needed — there was no reason to.

Enid turned toward the door, stepping away from the table without looking back, without letting herself process the way Thornhill’s expression carried something deeper than mere satisfaction. Not just pleased. Proud. Like Enid had proven something. Like she had just done exactly what was expected of her.

The realization should have made her stop, should have caught her mid-step, but she didn’t let it. Not yet. She walked.

She stepped into the hallway. The door closed behind her. And the moment she was alone, her composure cracked. Not visibly. Not in a way anyone watching would notice. But inside, something pulled tight, something deep and wrong, something threatening to tip. She needed out. Not just out of this hallway, but out of this building. Out of the proximity of it all.

Her trailer.

Her feet moved before she could think, carrying her toward the back lot, past crew members she barely registered, past lighting rigs and grip equipment, past conversations she didn’t hear. The air felt too sharp, the world too real in the worst possible way. It didn’t make sense. Nothing had happened. Nothing bad. There was no reason to feel like something had shifted — except that it had, hadn’t it?

She reached her trailer, the metal steps creaking under her boots as she climbed them too fast, yanking open the door with more force than necessary, stepping inside, closing and locking it behind her, and exhaling.

The silence pressed in immediately. The hum of the outside world faded away, leaving only the stillness of her own space. It wasn’t much — just a small production trailer, a couch against the far wall, a kitchenette barely big enough to stand in, a desk she never used. But it was hers.

Except, for the first time, it didn’t feel that way.

The space still carried the faintest trace of coffee from the morning, stale and lingering, as if it belonged to someone else entirely. The space didn’t feel safe; it didn’t feel like a separation from what had just happened. If anything, it felt larger, stretching around her in ways it hadn’t before, as if the edges had pulled back just enough to make room for something unwelcome.

Her back hit the door, her body sinking into it, her good hand pressing against her face.

She needed to stop thinking about it. About him. But she couldn’t.

Because Rafael Clay — Rafael fucking Clay — had looked at her like she was still the person she had been before everything went wrong. Before February. Before she had stopped trusting that anyone would be there when she fell.

And the worst part? The worst part was that she wanted to believe it again. She inhaled deeply and slowly, but it didn’t help. Because for the first time since she had walked into that meeting, since she had signed that contract—

She wasn’t entirely sure she had made the right choice.

Wednesday had always believed that if something was undeniable, it should remain unspoken.

She had built her life around that philosophy — silent acknowledgments, truths swallowed whole, decisions made in the margins rather than in the spotlight. But as the late November wind clawed at the gaps in her coat, she found herself faltering, hesitation blooming in the quiet spaces she had once mastered.

Her fingers curled tighter around the steering wheel, the leather creaking under the pressure. The forest road stretched ahead, slick with black ice, each turn edged with danger that demanded restraint. The headlights carved a path, twin beams illuminating the fractured glint of frost like a film reel stuck on the same frame. The road was unforgiving yet familiar. She had driven it before, just as she had replayed the same conversations, choices, and unavoidable conclusions in her mind.

Tyler’s voice threaded through her thoughts again.

“You can’t keep changing the script just because you’re afraid of what the audience might see.”

She had dismissed him at the time — a shallow critique from a man whose creative vision was as flat as the scripts he clung to. But now, alone in the dark, his words settled differently. Not as an accusation, but as an observation.

Because the truth was — he wasn’t wrong. That realization lingered.

The road narrowed, the trees pressing closer. Bare branches arched overhead, stripped down to raw shapes, their outlines shifting in her periphery. The headlights caught movement — only the wind, only the trees, only the natural order of things. Yet the feeling remained, settling at the base of her skull, a vague awareness that something unseen had turned its attention toward her.

She dismissed it but couldn’t shake it.

Instead, she counted the seconds between streetlights.

One, two, three, four.

It was a habit she had carried from childhood. Numbers were concrete, unaffected by interpretation or feeling. Morticia had once told her that numbers never lied. They existed outside of subjectivity — a structure that did not shift based on perception.

But tonight, Wednesday lost count at seven.

And she hated that.

Her exhale came slow and measured. Outside, the road curled into the dark, each streetlight beginning to space further apart, gaps widening in a way she hadn’t noticed before. The air inside the car had warmed, yet she still felt the cold creeping in — just beneath the surface, in a way that had nothing to do with temperature.

It was late. Later than she’d planned. The script read had run long, weighed down by endless discussions and the friction of ideas scraping against one another. The studio lot had emptied by the time she left, leaving only the hum of maintenance lights and the low murmur of lingering conversations she had no interest in overhearing.

Now, as she traced the route toward Hana’s safe house, her mind drifted.

Enid would already be there, sprawled across whatever furniture she deemed most comfortable, blissfully ignorant of the concept of personal space. She would have left the heat on too high, probably fallen asleep with her phone balanced precariously on her chest, half an energy drink abandoned on the nearest surface. The thought should have been grounding, something solid to return to.

Instead, it unsettled her.

Because it was a pattern — a pattern she had seen before.

It always began with positive familiarity. Something warm, something easy. A presence that took up space in a way that felt inevitable rather than intrusive. A closeness that seemed harmless — until it wasn’t. It was the kind of comfort that settled in unnoticed, threading through the quiet moments and reshaping the silence between them.

Wednesday had spent years identifying these shifts. The ones that started small — unspoken understandings, lingering glances, a gradual, imperceptible erosion of distance. And then, before she could name it, before she could prepare for it, the edges blurred. Proximity became something dangerous — a tether she had never intended to hold.

She had seen it before. Felt it before.

And, more than once, she had watched it unravel.

Her grip on the steering wheel tightened, knuckles pressing white. The road continued ahead in a series of slow curves, demanding full attention, but her thoughts still refused to obey.

Because Tyler had been the last to leave tonight, and his parting words still echoed in the back of her mind.

“You’re not protecting the story anymore, Wednesday. You’re hiding from it.”

At the time, she had dismissed his words, once again, as another instance of his self-important deconstruction. Yet, during the drive, those words had settled into her mind, filling the spaces between her thoughts.

Her phone buzzed against the console, but she ignored it. She already knew who it was.

Morticia had been calling all night, her persistence quiet yet relentless. There would be no voicemail, no follow-up messages — just the steady, rhythmic insistence that Wednesday answer, that she acknowledge whatever her mother had already deemed true.

Wednesday didn’t believe in fate, but Morticia’s timing was infuriatingly spot-on. It wasn’t supernatural foresight; it was simply her mother knowing her too well.

She should have silenced the phone, turned it over, removed the distraction entirely. But she didn’t. Instead, she let it sit there, buzzing intermittently, as if waiting for her to relent.

A sharp curve approached, its angle steeper than the last. She eased off the accelerator, letting the tires adjust to the road’s shift beneath them, feeling the subtle resistance in the steering as the car settled into the turn. The pavement was slick, a thin layer of frost barely perceptible but enough to make her grip tighten around the wheel in quiet anticipation. She sensed the road’s demand for precision, the weight of her caution pressing against the subconscious calculations running in the back of her mind.

The twin beams illuminated only the stretch of asphalt directly ahead, while the edges of the forest pressed inward like a living boundary. The darkness beyond remained impenetrable, a vast, unknowable space where every flicker of movement — real or imagined — felt significant. In the mirror, trailing headlights appeared, neither gaining nor falling away. They were simply there.

The pattern of their presence gnawed at her thoughts. It was nothing, she told herself — a car on the same route, heading in the same direction. A mundane reality. But the mind had a way of drawing connections where none existed, filling gaps with old knowledge, past experiences, and warnings disguised as memories. She had seen headlights like this before. She had tracked their movement, convinced herself it meant nothing. Until it did.

Her pulse quickened, though her expression remained unchanged. She forced herself to focus on the mechanics of driving — the press of the pedal, the slight corrections in the wheel, the measured depth of her breathing. It was muscle memory. Control. A reassurance that she could dictate the outcome of this moment, that she could prevent the present from echoing the past.

The road straightened, yet her unease did not dissipate. The forest deepened, darkness growing between the branches. For the first time, she noticed how much emptier this stretch of road had become — no streetlights, no signs, just a narrow line of asphalt and the persistent feeling of being watched. The headlights behind her maintained their distance, but their presence now felt purposeful, a decision rather than mere coincidence.

She exhaled again slowly, willing herself to shake it off. But the past had a way of creeping forward when least expected, blurring the lines between now and then, making the present feel like a place she had already inhabited. As the road narrowed, forcing her into a single direction, the familiar sense of inevitability took hold.

Waiting for the moment it all collapsed.

The headlights behind her drew closer now, their glow seeping into her mirrors, pulling long and distorted across the road. It was the kind of presence that forced attention, unsettling something beneath the surface of rational thought.

Her fingers flexed against the wheel, an unconscious response to the familiar sensation creeping in — the quiet knowledge that something was about to go wrong. Not paranoia. Not fear. Just recognition. The same feeling that had pressed at the edges of her mind before every catastrophe she had ever witnessed. And she had witnessed more than most.

Then, movement. Fast, erratic. Something was wrong.

Through the dark, a new pair of oncoming headlights pitched sideways, caught in a wild spiral. The car ahead lost its grip on the road, a sudden, uncontrolled shift that sent it skidding into her lane. The angle was impossible, the speed too great. Time seemed to hesitate, warping just enough for her mind to register everything at once — the sharp tilt of the vehicle’s frame, the way the tires scraped against the ice, the absence of any control.

Action came before thought. Her hands jerked the wheel to the right, but her own tires instantly betrayed her, slipping free of traction. The car twisted, sliding perpendicular to the road, momentum wrenching her sideways. The world tilted — trees, asphalt, headlights, sky — flashes of movement colliding, layering over each other like film spliced together at the wrong speed.

The past flickered at the edges of her vision. Another road. Another moment where control had become an illusion. Different circumstances. Same inevitable pull.

The anti-lock brakes pulsed beneath her foot, a mechanical rhythm against the chaos. Her headlights carved through the spinning scene, illuminating glimpses of destruction: the other car, fully sideways now, tires catching, metal groaning in protest. For a split second, she saw movement inside — someone in the driver’s seat, a blur behind tinted glass. The undeniable presence of another person.

And then, impact.

The guardrail took the hit, metal screaming under the force, the structure shuddering as if it could feel the collision in its bones. The impact jolted through her car, rattling the frame, but the force didn’t reach her. She felt it in theory, in the logical understanding that she had struck something, but her body refused to acknowledge it. Everything felt distant, dampened, as though the moment had already passed and she was only observing its aftermath.

Her car came to a stop at an angle, nose tilted slightly upward, headlights pointing toward the empty sky. The engine hummed, the heater still filling the space with artificial warmth. She was unharmed. She knew that. She could feel it in the way her hands remained steady on the wheel, in the absence of pain or pressure or anything suggesting injury.

But she didn’t move.

Because she wasn’t looking at herself. She was looking at the wreckage below.

The second car had taken the worst of it. The same patch of ice had sent it further, its momentum unchecked as it hit the barrier already weakened by her impact. The metal had crumpled like paper, offering no resistance as the vehicle broke through. It had gone over.

And she had watched it happen.

She pieced together the scene in fragments, just as her mind cataloged information: the gap in the barrier, the tire tracks veering toward the edge, the point where the road ended and the drop began. Her gaze settled on the car at the bottom of the ravine, its frame warped and the roof crumpled inward from the impact. It had rolled. More than once. She calculated the distance, estimated the speed, and assessed the probability of survival in a single, dispassionate breath.

Low.

The silence that followed was absolute, an unnatural stillness as if something was waiting to fill it. Even the trees appeared frozen, their branches unmoving without the wind. Nothing stirred. Nothing affirmed life.

Her phone buzzed against the console, the screen flickering to life with a faint glow over the dashboard. Fourteen missed calls. The name on the screen was no surprise.

Mother.

Morticia had known. She had sensed it, reaching out as if she could intercept the moment before it arrived. The thought settled over her uncomfortably, but she barely registered it.

Because the past wasn’t just pressing in now. It wasn’t merely an echo.

It stood before her, fully formed and perfectly recreated.

Two wrecked cars. One on the road, one below. Silence where sound should have been. A body waiting to be found.

She had watched this before.

For the first time since the car had stopped moving, her body caught up to her mind. The breath she had been holding released — shallow and uneven — and a tremor worked its way into her fingers before she could suppress it. Her hands clung to the wheel, knuckles locked, her body stuck in a futile attempt to stay anchored. She had no injuries. No physical reason to be frozen in place.

But she couldn’t move.

Then, a branch snapped in the ravine below.

The sound shattered everything — breaking through the memory threatening to consume her, the shock, and the creeping sense of detachment. It wasn’t just the shift of settling wreckage. It wasn’t random. It was movement.

Someone was down there.

And they weren’t dead.

The realization jolted her back into herself. The world surged back into full color, sensation rushing in at once — the cold air curling through the cracks in the car’s frame, the smell of overheated tires, the distant pulse of blood thrumming in her ears.

Her fingers fumbled with the keys, killing the engine before she even realized she had moved. The abrupt silence inside the car made everything outside sharper and louder. The wind returned, rustling through the trees and filling the space that had been marked by stillness.

She pushed the door open, stepping into the freezing air, her legs unsteady but moving.

The beam of her phone’s flashlight wavered as she angled it toward the ravine. Breath curled in the space between her and the wreckage below.

“Hello?” The word barely escaped her throat. It sounded wrong — stripped down, raw in a way she hadn’t anticipated. “Can you—”

She had to stop, recalibrate. The cold air stole whatever steadiness she had left, forcing her to swallow against the dryness in her mouth. “Please, are you okay? Can you hear me?”

The wind carried her voice away before she could tell if there had been a response. Silence clung to the space around her. The only sounds left were the soft tick of cooling metal and the faint hiss of something leaking from the wreckage below. Her feet slid against the ice-slicked ground as she moved forward, the slope ahead uneven and treacherous. There was no time for careful footing. Her usual grace abandoned her in favor of sheer urgency. She needed to get down there. Now.

The car was fifteen feet below, but it looked farther. It appeared wrong. Metal bent in on itself in places it shouldn’t. The windshield, a spiderweb of fractures, barely clung to its frame. The body of the vehicle had folded, its impact against the terrain merciless, leaving no doubt about the force that had sent it tumbling into the ravine.

“I’m—” The words faltered. She exhaled hard and tried again. “I’m coming down. If you can hear me, just— make a sound. Anything.”

Nothing.

The slope offered no traction as she half-slid, half-stumbled toward the wreckage. Her boots skidded over loose dirt, scattering it into the dark. The flashlight in her hand swung wildly, casting erratic shapes against the trees, making everything feel too alive in the worst way. Her thoughts clawed at her, trying to pull her backward — back into memory, back to before, back to a different car, a different accident — but she forced herself forward. The past wasn’t here. This was now.

“Please,” she called again, her voice wavering, but she didn’t care. “Just— hold on. I’m almost—”

Her foot caught on something beneath the snow — an exposed root. The momentum sent her pitching forward, gravity yanking her down the last few feet. She barely caught herself against the car’s twisted frame, the impact rattling through her bones. The metal was frigid against her gloves, the scent of leaking coolant and scorched rubber thick in the air. Steam curled from beneath the hood, delicate despite everything.

The driver’s side window was fractured beyond recognition, but the shape inside—

She could see movement. Faint, uneven. Someone was still in there.

“Can you hear me?” She angled her flashlight through the webbed glass. The words spilled out too fast, too sharp, her brain racing ahead of her mouth.

The light illuminated pieces of the interior — deflated airbags, shards of glass, fabric torn from the roof. A figure, still strapped into the seat, hanging wrong, twisted by gravity and wreckage alike.

Then she saw it. The badge swaying gently from the rearview mirror.

Winter City Studios.

And below it, wedged between the crushed roof and what used to be the passenger seat, a phone, its screen still glowing. A paused video, its edges cracked but unmistakable — a training session, frozen mid-frame.

A recognition she didn’t want slammed into her.

No.

The flashlight beam trembled slightly. The phone was covered in stickers. Stupid, garish stickers. Ones she had seen before. Ones Enid had applied herself, insisting Ajax’s phone was offensively plain without them.

Ajax.

The name formed in her mind before she could stop it.

Her flashlight finally landed on his face.

The world tilted.

He was suspended upside down, the seatbelt the only thing keeping him from collapsing into what remained of the roof. Blood traced slow paths along his temple, trailing upward against the laws of gravity. His features were slack, too still, but—

Breath. Shallow. Weak. But there. Fogging against the fractured glass.

He was alive.

But her stomach clenched at the sight of his right leg — wrong in every possible way, twisted at an angle that shouldn’t exist. White bone pushed through torn fabric, obvious even in the dim light.

Wednesday had never particularly liked Ajax. She tolerated him for Enid’s sake, but he was never someone she would have gone out of her way for. He was an unnecessary addition to her existence — loud, clueless, prone to poor decisions, occupying too much space. And yet.

He was Enid’s best friend.

He was the reason she had ever stepped into stunt work to begin with. He had dragged her into it, nudging her toward something she never would have found alone. Enid spoke about him with warmth and ease. He had been there before her, long before Wednesday.

And now he was bleeding out in front of her.

Her hands pressed against the fractured glass, ignoring the way it bit into her palms. This wasn't Xavier. This wasn't then. This was now, and Ajax was still breathing. She had to hold onto that. Had to act before the balance tipped.

A branch snapped behind her.

Wednesday twisted, flashlight cutting sharp arcs through the trees. The beam flickered over trunks and frozen ground, catching only the restless sway of pine needles and the shifting contours of the night. The wind stirred the remnants of snow, whispering through the clearing, but nothing moved. No shape in the dark. No eyes reflecting back at her.

Still, the unease settled in her ribs, curling there like something poised to unfurl.

She turned back to the car, inhaling to steady herself, but the moment she did—

Time fractured.

Her flashlight illuminated Ajax’s face, but something felt off. The angles didn’t align, the scene misconfigured. Before she could stop it, another image imposed itself over reality — Xavier, motionless in the driver’s seat. The overlay was seamless, her brain stitching together past and present without her consent. The same wreckage. The same blood trickling along a temple. The same silence. A silence too dense, too deliberate, signaling an ending before her mind could catch up.

Her breath hitched, shallow and inadequate.

She wasn’t merely remembering — she was there, the night folding in on itself.

Her fingers twitched at her sides, muscle memory igniting. Frozen ground beneath her shoes. The chemical scent of deployed airbags burning the cold air. The sharp crunch of glass beneath her every step forward.

She had known. Even before she reached Xavier’s car, before she saw his face, something inside her had already cataloged the outcome. The moment stretched impossibly long, as if time itself resisted her arrival, wanting to delay her from seeing. But she had seen. She had stepped closer and found Xavier like that, head tilted unnaturally, a cruel angle etched into his spine.

His eyes had been open. Blank. Empty. Yet somehow, still watching.

She squeezed her eyes shut now, but it didn’t matter. The images overlapped, twisting, oil bleeding into water. This is Ajax. Not Xavier. Not the same. She knew that. She could see it, but her body refused to believe it.

Then came the worst part.

The memory spoke.

Not aloud, but like all intrusive recollections — threaded into her senses, folded into her thoughts, curling against her spine with the same sick familiarity.

“Make sure they get my good side, darling. This’ll be my finest performance yet.”

The last thing Xavier had ever said to her. The final proof of his voice before it vanished forever.

Her stomach twisted.

She hadn’t known then that someone else had been documenting too. That another lens had been watching, capturing every reaction, every fractured second of grief in the aftermath. That her horror had been recorded, repurposed, framed as part of his final performance.

She had always been the observer. The one who documented. And Xavier had made her the subject instead, reducing her to another piece of the composition.

Her throat constricted.

This isn’t Xavier. This is Ajax. He’s alive.

She forced the thought forward, trying to breathe through it, but the two images kept layering, collapsing into one another.

She blinked again, and Xavier’s blood became Ajax’s. She blinked once more, and Xavier’s twisted wreckage settled exactly where Ajax’s car lay now. Her flashlight flickered over the warped frame, and her pulse stuttered at how eerily familiar the destruction looked. Different road. Different night. Same scene.

The world tilted, reality folding at the edges, blurred like ink bleeding through paper. Ajax needed help now, but all she could see was Xavier’s body, all she could hear was his laughter, all she could feel was that creeping certainty that this moment was being captured. Turned into something she had no say in. Something beyond her control.

Move. The command barely registered over the white noise in her skull. Help him. Do something.

But her limbs wouldn’t obey. Her body, caught in the undertow of past and present, refused to separate the two. Ajax’s ragged breath tangled with Xavier’s silence, reality growing impossibly thin, as if the moment were being pulled apart strand by strand. Her muscles locked. The slope beneath her feet warped, the road above slipping farther and farther away.

Then…

Movement.

Fingers twitched. Body unfolding.

No.

Xavier peeled himself from the wreckage. Limbs unraveled, shifting in ways that defied anatomy. His head lolled as he straightened, neck bending at an odd angle, the serene curl of his mouth never faltering. Blood traced its way up his face, defying gravity, following paths it had carved long ago.

“The camera’s still rolling, my dear.” His voice was close, familiar, the same tone he had used in rehearsals. “Shall we give them a proper finale?”

Wednesday’s feet reacted before her brain could process it, stumbling back up the slope. Her hands skidded against the frozen ground, nails catching on exposed roots. The cold air burned in her lungs. She climbed on instinct, blind panic overriding logic. This isn’t real. This isn’t real.

“Always trying to leave before the scene is finished.” The words slithered up the back of her neck, too close. “But you know better than anyone — every performance needs proper documentation.”

Her foot slid on ice. She collapsed forward, knees hitting the ground hard. Pain surged through her legs, but she pushed herself back up, fingers clawing at anything that would hold. Ajax needed help. He was real. He was here.

But what was real? The sting of ice against her palms? The howl of wind? Or Xavier’s laughter, soft and appreciative, as if she had just hit her mark perfectly?

The slope stretched, impossibly steep, the top retreating as if the road itself were being pulled away. She wasn’t running. She was fleeing. And Xavier — not Xavier, not real, just a hallucination — was still moving, steps silent against the snow.

“Did you really think you could stop watching?” His voice curled around her, threading itself through the wind. “That you could step out of the audience? Oh, my dear. That was never your role.”

The road. Get to the road.

Her fingers found another root, another ledge of frozen dirt, and she pulled herself upward. Her lungs ached. Her legs trembled. But the headlights — real headlights — flared around the bend, sweeping across the trees, throwing shapes that momentarily froze in the beam.

Wednesday turned toward them, breathless and wild, stumbling onto the pavement. Her arms lifted, waving frantically. Her voice tore from her throat, raw and desperate. “STOP! PLEASE! DOWN HERE!”

Brakes shrieked. The truck slowed, its headlights swallowing her whole. The glare seared into her retinas, grounding her, anchoring her back into the present. The hallucination flinched. The past resisted being erased.

But it was gone. Xavier — his twisted, impossible movements — vanished like a frame cut from a reel. The wreckage below remained. And Ajax — Ajax was still real. Still dying if she didn’t act.

The driver’s door slammed open. A figure jumped down, boots crunching in the snow. “Jesus Christ,” a man’s voice floated through the static in her head, grounding her further. He was already reaching for his phone. “Where are they? How many—”

Wednesday pointed toward the ravine, her voice sounding distant, detached. “Down there. He’s trapped. His leg—”

The man was already speaking into his phone. “Yes, accident on Route 73. About two miles past the lumber mill. Car went over, at least one victim—”

His voice blurred into the background, white noise again, but a different kind this time. Real noise. The sound of someone stepping into action. The sound of a script being rewritten.

She should follow. Should help. Should do something.

But her body wouldn’t move.

The world swam. Colors ran together, lines losing their edges. The road beneath her feet felt distant, unstable, as if she were standing on something that no longer existed.

Someone was speaking to her. Someone touched her shoulder. She barely registered it.

A whisper threaded through the static. “The show must go on.”

Her head turned sharply, expecting Xavier, expecting that smile — but there was no one there.

Her knees buckled. The world tilted. Cold air rushed past her as she collapsed, weightless, falling upward into the void.

And then…

There was nothing at all.