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Aventurine watches Ratio sleep.
He does it too often now, afraid of the guilt that creeps in when Ratio is awake. He always stays quiet, still, tucked beside him in their shared bed like a stranger borrowing someone else’s life. He watches the steady rise and fall of Ratio’s chest, the curve of his lashes in the moonlight, the way his mouth sometimes moves in sleep as if still whispering his name.
A name that doesn’t really feel like his own.
Ratio is always so careful with him. Gentle in the way he touches, speaks, breathes around him—as if he’s afraid Aventurine might break apart at the seams if handled too roughly. And maybe he would. He already feels threadbare on the inside, unraveling in places he can’t name. There is no name for this emptiness, this strange grief of loving someone who loves you more than your own body remembers.
Ratio tells him stories sometimes. About things they did, words they said, laughter they shared beneath starlight and seawater—and Aventurine listens like a ghost haunting someone else’s past.
He smiles when he’s supposed to. He nods. He pretends. He murmurs, “That sounds nice.”
But it doesn’t feel nice. He doesn’t remember any of it. And that’s the part that tears him open, again and again.
One night, long after Ratio has fallen asleep, Aventurine wanders into the study.
The lighthouse is quiet. A slow wind stirs the curtains, carrying the scent of brine and wet sand. The old desk creaks as he leans over it. His fingers skim the edge of the notebook Ratio had given him—the one that held the memories of her.
His sister.
He doesn’t remember her face.
But the ache in his chest is real. So sharp it takes his breath. The pages blur beneath his eyes, words trembling like waves as if the paper remembers what he cannot. He turns the page. Another entry. Another drawing. A note in a different handwriting, a little curved and unsteady. His handwriting?
"If I forget her, please don’t. She was all I had. I’m trusting you to carry this for me."
Aventurine closes the book slowly, carefully, as if afraid it might break under his touch. He presses it to his chest, hoping he would somehow suddenly remember.
He doesn’t. He never does.
His eyes wander toward the shellcrown sitting on the desk, nestled in sea glass and silk.
Coral and pearls adorned the crown, arranged with delicate precision. Ratio had told him it was a gift, a confession of love from him— no, not him. The other Aventurine.
This Aventurine just stares at it, feeling like a thief in his own skin.
He reaches out but stops just short of touching it. He can’t. It feels sacred. Like something meant for a version of him that no longer exists.
Later that night, he finds himself in the bathroom, standing before the mirror. He unbuttons his shirt slowly, tracing fingers over the place just above his collarbone—his neck, where once a brand used to be. It’s gone now. Erased with the rest of what he traded away.
He keeps touching it, again and again, like chasing a memory his mind can’t touch. The skin there is smooth, but it feels wrong somehow—naked in a way that makes his stomach twist.
He doesn’t remember the brand. Doesn’t remember the chains, the pain, the way they used it to claim him. But his body does. His body recoils from the phantom touch. His chest tightens every time his thumb brushes over the spot, like he’s pressing on something rotten just beneath the surface.
It makes him feel sick. Cold. Frightened. And he doesn’t know why.
Just that whatever used to be there was never meant to be part of him.
The tears don’t fall until he sees his own expression in the glass—strange, unfamiliar, cracked with grief.
He presses his forehead to the mirror and whispers, “I’m sorry,” to a reflection that doesn’t answer.
Back in bed, the dreams come haunting him again.
Vivid, fever-warm dreams of saltwater and strange songs. Laughter echoing through coral tunnels. His own voice, warped and rough, saying things he doesn’t understand in a tone he barely recognizes.
And then—Ratio.
Clear as day. Standing at the edge of the shore, eyes wide, hand outstretched.
“Don’t forget me,” he says, voice breaking.
“Please. Please, don’t forget me.”
Aventurine wakes with a gasp, heart pounding. His skin is damp, hair sticking to his forehead, and sheets twisted around his legs. Ratio stirs beside him, murmuring his name groggily.
He doesn’t answer. He can’t. He wants to scream. He feels like he’s been flayed open and sewn back together wrong. Like he is not himself—like the self everyone wants him to be is standing just out of reach, smiling kindly while Aventurine bleeds for the right to wear his own face.
Ratio never pressures him.
He never begs. Never asks, “Do you remember yet?” Never says “Why can’t you love me the way you used to?”
But Aventurine sees it. In the quiet moments. The way Ratio hesitates before reaching for his hand. The way he smiles like it hurts. The way he stares at him when he thinks Aventurine isn’t looking.
That flicker of pain. That shattering hope.
It kills Aventurine more than any memory ever could.
Because he wants to remember. Desperately. He wants to feel what Ratio feels. Wants to know the love that shines so clearly in Ratio’s every word, every touch, every breath.
He whispers apologies when Ratio’s out of earshot. Sometimes to the sea. Sometimes to the stars. Sometimes to nothing.
He doesn’t know what he gave up.
He only knows he must have loved Ratio enough to give everything away.
And that… that thought alone is enough to make him ache.
Because if he chose this once—then it must have been worth breaking for.
So each night, he watches Ratio sleep.
Not because it brings comfort.
But because it’s the only part of this life that doesn’t ask him to remember.
And some nights, he lets himself believe that maybe—
just maybe—
he’ll find his way back by morning.