They didn't tell us right away.
But they didn't have to.
You can read certain truths in silence — in the way adults suddenly speak softer, move slower, avoid looking directly at you.
We were sitting on the back of an ambulance parked at the top of the hill. Someone had wrapped a blanket around my shoulders even though I wasn't cold. The fabric smelled faintly of antiseptic and smoke.
Lucian sat beside me.
Perfectly still.
A medic had tried to clean his hands earlier, but he pulled them away after a moment. Now dried blood streaked across his knuckles and palms, dark against his skin.
Down the slope, the rescue lights painted the trees in flashing red and white.
I could still hear the tools cutting metal.
But it had changed.
The urgency was gone.
Now the movements were slower.
Careful.
Final.
I stared at the ground between my shoes, trying not to look down the hill again.
Lucian didn't even blink. His gaze stayed locked on the wreck site like he could rewind time if he focused hard enough.
"They're taking a long time," he said.
His voice sounded like someone else using his mouth.
I swallowed hard.
"They're trying."
He didn't answer.
A few seconds passed.
Then he stood up.
"I'm going back down."
A paramedic stepped in front of him.
"Hey — you can't—"
Lucian walked past him.
I followed.
We reached the broken guardrail just as two responders were climbing back up the slope.
They were carrying a stretcher.
Covered.
Lucian stopped so suddenly I nearly walked into his back.
The world shrank to one image.
White sheet.
Still from beneath it.
Lucian's breath hitched.
Once.
Like something catching.
A second stretcher appeared on the slope below.
My chest didn't collapse. It just emptied. All at once. Like a room where someone turned off the lights and locked the door.
Lucian stepped forward.
A firefighter blocked him gently.
"You need to stay back, son."
Lucian shook his head.
"No. They're just — they're hurt. They just need—"
The firefighter didn't say anything.
That silence did what words couldn't.
Lucian understood it.
And something in him that had been holding everything together just... let go.
"No," he said again. Quieter this time. More to himself than anyone else.
Then—
"This is your fault."
The words came out without warning, aimed straight at me.
I flinched.
"What?"
"You stopped me." His voice cracked somewhere in the middle of it. "Back there — you grabbed my arm."
"Lucian—"
"If I'd gotten to them sooner—"
"That wouldn't have—"
"You don't know that!" The words tore out of him loud and raw. A few of the responders looked over.
I stood very still.
"They were alive," he said, quieter again, his voice dropping like he'd run out of fuel. "They were still in there and you — you made me—"
He stopped.
Pressed a fist hard against his mouth.
Looked away.
His shoulders shook once. Just once. He didn't let it go further than that.
I didn't say anything for a moment.
Then carefully, quietly — "I didn't make you do anything."
Lucian laughed.
It was a broken, ugly sound. Nothing like his real laugh.
"You told me to stop every time."
"Because the car could have—"
"You always do that." He turned back toward me suddenly, and his eyes were red now, glassy, burning with something that had nowhere left to go. "You always — you stand back and you watch and you calculate everything and you — you don't just—"
He couldn't finish it.
His hands opened and closed at his sides.
"Lucian," I said softly.
"Don't."
"I'm not—"
"I said don't."
He looked away again.
Down the hill.
At nothing.
A long silence stretched out between us.
When he spoke again, his voice was low and strange, like it was coming from somewhere very far inside him.
"I saw something under the car."
I frowned.
"What?"
But he shook his head slowly.
Like he wasn't ready.
Like the thought was too sharp to hold yet.
The responders moved quietly around us, giving us space without leaving us alone.
Lucian wiped his face once with the back of his wrist.
Then he looked at me with something that wasn't quite anger anymore.
It was worse than anger.
It was the look of someone who loved you and was starting to wonder if they should.
"You gave up," he said.
Not a shout. Not an accusation. Just a quiet, tired sentence that landed heavier than anything else he'd said.
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
There were no words that fit.
Because grief had made its choice.
It had picked a direction.
And it was pointing straight at me.