Noah spoke slowly, as though unearthing pieces of himself long buried beneath frost and fire.
After his parents vanished, he erased who he was.
He adopted false names. Forged identities.
Slipped between lives like smoke in a closed room.
He navigated digital shadows and whispered networks—dodging traps disguised as allies, evading watchers masked as friends.
He had been abducted once.
Left in an abandoned ER, long forgotten by time—where silence pressed like gauze against the walls.
For three nights, he lay there. No food. No voice. No exit.
Just the failing buzz of a dying light, and blood—thick, metallic—seeping beneath him in slow, uncertain pools.
He wasn't even sure if it was his.
A shard of rusted metal had torn through his shoulder.
Even now, the scar remained. Pale. Quiet. Permanent.
He had expected to die.
But he didn't.
And the crueler truth was—no one had come looking.
After that, he wandered warzones, posing as a broker in places where bullets had names and silence had a price.
"This," he murmured, touching the faded gunshot wound at his ribs.
"Was from then."
Celeste couldn't breathe.
"And this one—"
He unbuttoned his shirt halfway.
A scar. Deep and clean. Knife work.
"They came for me. In the night."
She said nothing.
What words could answer a life like this?
Her gaze settled on him. At his mouth, drawn and pale.
At the way his eyes drifted—not out of distance, but fatigue.
And she thought: Who could possibly say they understand this man?
Celeste placed her hand gently on his chest. Over his heartbeat.
That quiet, steady rhythm of a man still standing when he had every reason to fall.
She traced the scars.
The bullet's truth. The knife's memory. The ruin beneath his skin.
And then—her lashes trembled.
A tear slipped down her cheek and vanished into the linen below.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
Noah opened his eyes. Saw the sorrow. The guilt.
"…That wasn't your bullet,"
he muttered, trying to smile.
"Why are you crying?"
But she only bowed her head.
"I'm sorry I didn't find you sooner. I'm sorry you had to survive it alone."
Celeste climbed gently into the bed beside him and, for the first time, held him as if he were not broken—but worthy of being whole.
Noah stared at her.
At her tears. At the hands that trembled as they touched him.
He wiped her cheek with the back of his hand.
"Look at me."
His voice cracked.
"I'm the one who got stabbed, Celeste."
He let out a half-laugh, eyes flicking to her tear-streaked face.
"Why do you look like you're the one who took the knife?"
She looked up at him, eyes red and open.
And in that breathless space between them, he thought:
Not once…Not once in my life has someone cried just because I was in pain
Her tears landed softly on his skin.
And something in him—broke.
"Celeste...Stop crying..." he murmured.
But his voice faltered.
Then—he moved.
Hand to her cheek.
No warning. No permission.
Just a rush of instinct and memory and need.
He kissed her.
Hard.
Like a man grasping the edge of a dream before it vanished.
It wasn't desire.
It was survival.
A tremor.
A prayer.
The only language he had left.
When he pulled back, breathless, his eyes darted away.
"…Sorry," he said, voice rough.
"…I shouldn't have."
But neither of them spoke after that.
Because some truths can only be spoken with silence.