Elias POV
Yes.
The word settles between us like a body hitting concrete—final, irreversible.
I don't flinch when it leaves my mouth. I don't correct it. I don't soften it with explanations or remorse. I've already done the arithmetic of this moment a hundred times in my head, run every possible version of the future where I lie, where I redirect, where I pretend the truth is more merciful when diluted.
It never is.
Noa stares at me like she's seeing me for the first time, and in some ways, she is. The version of me she's lived with—careful, attentive, measured—was never false. It was simply incomplete. A curated exhibit. I showed her the angles that wouldn't cut.
Her lips part, but no sound comes out. Her hands are still shaking. I catalog the signs automatically: shallow breathing, dilated pupils, delayed blinking. Shock tipping toward dissociation.
She's slipping.
I should stop this.
I don't.
Because stopping now would be another lie.
"You planned it," she says finally, her voice thin, almost brittle. Not an accusation. An observation.
"I prepared for it," I correct. Precision matters. "I didn't know when you'd remember. Only that you would."
Her laugh is ugly and broken. "You sound like this was… inevitable."
"It was," I say calmly. "You don't erase something that violent and expect it to stay buried forever."
She looks away from me, toward the blank laptop screen, as if she can still see the ghosts of the files I destroyed. Her life, reduced to data. Then to nothing.
"You took my choice," she whispers.
I kneel again, slow enough not to startle her. Every movement is deliberate. People mistake restraint for kindness. It isn't. It's control.
"You made the choice," I say. "I just carried it out."
Her eyes snap back to mine. There it is—the spark. Rage trying to claw its way through the fear.
"I was sick," she says. "I was traumatized. I wasn't thinking clearly."
"You were thinking clearly for the first time in weeks," I reply. "You were methodical. Specific. You knew exactly what you couldn't survive remembering."
"That doesn't make it right."
"No," I agree. "It makes it necessary."
Dr. Keene shifts behind us. I don't look at her. She's irrelevant now. A witness who understands too late that she never had any authority in this room.
Noa pushes herself up, unsteady but determined. "You let me believe I was fragile," she says. "Broken. That I couldn't trust my own mind."
"You couldn't," I say simply.
She flinches.
Good.
"Every time you panicked," I continue, "every time you doubted yourself, every time you asked me if you were overreacting—I was stabilizing the narrative. Keeping you aligned with the version of reality you could function inside."
"You gaslit me."
"Yes."
The admission lands harder than if I'd denied it.
Her hands curl into fists. "You're sick."
I tilt my head. "So are you."
She slaps me.
The sound is sharp, echoing in the small room. Dr. Keene gasps. Noa's hand trembles after, like she's shocked by her own violence.
I don't move.
I don't raise my voice.
I don't touch my face.
"That," I say quietly, "is why."
Her breath stutters. Tears spill over now, uncontained. "You're not even sorry."
"I am," I reply. "Just not for what you want me to be sorry for."
I stand, giving her space she doesn't know what to do with.
"I'm sorry," I continue, "that it had to be this clean. I'm sorry you remembered in pieces instead of all at once. That's always more painful."
"You're talking about my life like it's a project," she cries.
"It was," I say. "And it worked."
She shakes her head violently. "You don't get to decide what 'worked.' I'm ruined."
I study her carefully. The tremor in her shoulders. The way she's still upright despite everything. The way she's angry instead of catatonic.
"You're standing," I say. "You're coherent. You're furious. That's progress."
She looks like she wants to scream.
"I could have let you rot in a cell," I go on. "I could have let the system dismantle you, label you violent, unstable, disposable. I didn't."
"You decided I was worth more than the truth."
"I decided the truth would kill you," I say. "And I wasn't willing to lose you to morality."
That's when something changes in her expression.
Not fear.
Not anger.
Understanding.
"You didn't do this for me," she says slowly.
I meet her gaze.
"You did it because you couldn't let me go."
There it is.
The thing she's been circling since the beginning.
"Yes," I say again.
The honesty is almost a relief.
"I watched you unravel after the stairs," I continue. "You stopped eating. You stopped sleeping. You talked about disappearing like it was a mercy. I calculated the outcomes. Prison. Suicide. Institutionalization. None of them ended with you alive."
"So you rewrote me," she whispers.
"I preserved you," I correct. "I removed the parts that would have destroyed the rest."
Her voice drops to almost nothing. "And if I hadn't asked you?"
I don't hesitate.
"I would have convinced you."
Silence crashes down between us.
Dr. Keene backs toward the door. She understands now. She always should have.
Noa stares at me like I'm something dangerous she's only just learned how to see.
"Say it," she whispers. "Say what you really did."
I step closer.
Lower my voice.
"I didn't erase your memory to save you," I say. "I erased it to keep you."
Her breath catches painfully.
"I didn't need you innocent," I continue. "I needed you incapable of leaving."
Her knees buckle. I catch her before she hits the floor.
She doesn't thank me for it.
As I hold her shaking body, I lean down and press my mouth close to her ear.
"And the worst part," I whisper, slow and deliberate, "is that if I had to choose again—knowing this would be the outcome—I'd do it exactly the same."
Her sob breaks against my chest.
I close my eyes.
Because this—
This is the moment that matters.
The moment she understands that the man who saved her life is the same one who took it away.
And I would rather be her villain than lose her entirely.