The door remained open between them.
Lucien stood there, just inside her room, the distance between them filled with unspoken electricity.
Aveline's fingers trembled around the sketch. She traced the charcoal lines—her face drawn from memory he shouldn't have, from a loop he wasn't supposed to recall.
"You've drawn this before," she said softly, her voice laced with awe. "Back then... you always drew me when you didn't know how to say the words."
Lucien looked down, his brows knit in confusion. "Back then?"
She almost told him everything.
Almost.
But the truth—about the loops, the sacrifice, the time she gave up just to love him again—still lodged too deep in her chest.
So instead, she said, "I think… we've been here before."
He took a slow step forward.
"Do you believe in fate?" he asked.
Aveline nodded. "I believe in second chances."
They talked until midnight.
Not about time travel. Not about Concordia. Just about everything else.
Lucien told her about the books he used to read as a boy—how he always skipped to the last chapter because he couldn't handle the tension.
Aveline confessed she used to write love letters she never sent, hiding them in old coat pockets and forgotten notebooks.
"Did anyone ever read them?" he asked.
"Just one person."
He tilted his head. "Was he worth them?"
She smiled. "He still is."
Later, Aveline made tea, and they sat on the floor near the balcony, wrapped in a blanket against the cool night air.
He stared at her like he was trying to memorize her again.
"I'm afraid," he admitted, voice quiet.
"Of what?"
"That I'll remember too late. That I already forgot something important. That… whatever I feel for you is just a ghost."
Aveline touched his hand. "Ghosts only linger when something matters."
He looked at her, gaze flicking to her lips.
"Would it be too forward if I—"
She kissed him first.
Soft. Slow. Like a promise.
It wasn't desperate or rushed. It was tender, cautious, a question and an answer all at once. His hand slid into her hair as hers gripped the collar of his shirt.
And though he didn't remember loving her before, he knew it now.
In that kiss.
In that breath.
In that moment where time didn't rewind—it simply held still.
At 3:00 a.m., when Lucien had drifted to sleep on the couch, Aveline sat at her desk, the sketch still beside her.
She opened the flash drive.
The memory file flickered on screen.
And her face, on that snowy cathedral day, stared back at her.
"I'll find a way to make you remember," she whispered. "Even if I have to fall in love with you all over again."