Lucien dreamed of red.
A scarf, wrapped tight around a woman's throat. Snowflakes catching in her hair like stars. She was laughing—just once—and then something warm pressed against his lips.
Then fire.
And loss.
He sat bolt upright in bed, drenched in sweat. The room was silent. Still. The memory—or was it a dream?—was already slipping from his grasp.
But the feeling remained.
I've kissed her before, he thought. Whoever she is.
Elsewhere, Aveline was pacing her room. For days, she'd tried to ignore the tug in her chest. The ache in her ribs. The hollowness of knowing she had once had something—someone—worth breaking the universe for.
And now?
She didn't even know his name.
But she remembered the color of his eyes.
Gray-green. Like the sea before a storm.
She remembered the sound of his laughter—low and rough, like he hadn't used it much.
And she remembered his hand in hers, fingers interlocked like puzzle pieces.
It has to mean something.
She opened the file cabinet Jules had let her access—limited debrief data, they called it. Mostly redacted reports, neuro-imaging logs, and Concordia's failed trial results.
But one page stopped her cold.
A line in a medical report labeled:
SUBJECT 04: LUCIEN R. HALESIMULATION ANCHOR: "Snowfall Proposal Memory"STATUS: PARTIAL EMOTIONAL RETENTION
Her breath caught.
She hadn't said a word about the snow. Or the proposal.
But he remembered it.
Aveline pressed a hand to her chest, shaking.
She wasn't crazy. It hadn't all vanished. Some part of him still knew her.
Lucien found her again in the garden court.
She was sitting on a bench beneath a blooming cherry tree, reading a book she wasn't truly looking at. She sensed him before she saw him.
He didn't speak.
Just approached slowly, as if unsure he was allowed to.
She closed the book and looked up.
Their eyes met.
Silence stretched between them. And then—
"You feel it too," Aveline said softly.
Lucien exhaled like he'd been holding it for days. "I don't know your name. But when I see you, I feel... like I owe you something. Or like I've lost something I never should have let go."
Her voice trembled. "My name is Aveline."
He nodded slowly. "Lucien."
A beat.
Then:
"Did we know each other?" he asked.
"Yes," she whispered. "In a way no one else ever has."
He sat beside her, their knees nearly touching.
"I had a dream," he said. "You wore a red scarf. I proposed."
Aveline blinked back tears.
"That happened."
Lucien turned to her. "But when?"
Aveline looked away.
"In a version of time that doesn't exist anymore."