Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The horrid sound of buzzing is nothing but a pain within my ears. I know I'm used to it, at least when I was able to bear it.

“Ivan? Dear… it’s time to wake up now.”

Her voice drifted through the haze, warm but strained. “ We need to get moving with your schedule today. You’ve got another rehabilitation session on Thursday, remember? And that new developer from your job—you're meeting him later this week. I’ll probably go shopping afterward, but we can go together if you’d like! "

Ï̴̜̽̒ ̵̧̘̥̳̲̲͇͗͝ṽ̵̧̥͇̹̳͍̫͖̩̪͐̈́̿͝ ̸̛̛̥͇̪̝̙̥͛̾͛̀̅͋͆͌̄́̾͝͠a̸̦̾͐̃̈́̐͂͝ ̶̧̛̙̰͖͎͈̯͎̩͙̟̲͓̬̜̽͌̌͐̌̌̊̂̅͊͛́͝ṇ̸̼̯̱͈̠̘̖̱̭̦̯̏͑͒̚̚͝.̷͈̭̈́͒͐͗̊̌̃͐̊̊̊̊̅̂̾ͅ ̸̯͕̟̱̙͕̘̟̹̥̏̈́̈́̄͜Í̵̢̙̯̘̝̹͗̒̃̾̎ ̴̖̯͔̗̬̼͇̜̥̣͓̙̎̈̇͒͒́̌̿̇͒̆̀́ͅv̸̘͇͉̙̬̻̎̋̐̾̀̀̈́̍͗͌̚ ̶̡̮͓͇̹̑̀̑̑̂ȧ̴̡ ̷̛̥̼̒̂̔̋̍͑̏̕̕̕n̵͎̝̠͚͕̻͎̫̖̝̐̉̔͜͝ͅ.̸̢͚̼̫͕̭͉̟̔̾͒͐̉̈͛̇̓ ̸̫̼̳͙̯̝̜͔̍̋̋͌̌̂̀Ì̶̙͕͙͎̞̯͕̞͉͓̈̈͊͌̑̃͒̚͝ ̸̢̧̰̖͕̗̠̬̣̓̀̉͋̽͆͂̀͜͝ͅv̵̢̨͍̪͊ ̷̺̇̎̽̒̔͒͝͝ă̵̬̻̖͎̟͇̠̠̱̮̫̹̐͗̎̿̄͑͌̓͛̈́͘̕͘̚ ̸̘͓̭̫̺̤͆̀͊̉ñ̵̢̧̖͙͚͔͙̪͓̮͇͎̰̓̂.̵͇͖̥̻̭̺̹͖͚̏͛̍̀̈́̏̕͜ ̸̩̣͉͖͓̻̫̪̮̳͒̄̌͌́̚̚I̸͚̥̝̭͍̦̥̦͊̽̐͛̍̓͛̊͋̍̍̄͝ ̶̧̛͈̗̩͙̍͌̎͛́̐͝v̴̡̝͙̜̲̣̯̟̫̤̥͐̊͒ ̶͔͔̭̤̺̯̮̽̑̀̎̀̓͑̚͝͝a̶̘͆̂͊̇̌͌̾͑̅͐͒͆̀̇͑ ̵̨̬͎͙̠̖̳͚̭̠̹͒̂̀͂̈́̋̈́̇̌͒̅̈́̕͜n̴̮͍̖̳̳̰͇̆̈́̋͋̔͜,̵̨̢̯̝̻̤̥̩̰̮̭͛̐̊̑͘͠

...

Silence swept over the room, heavier than it had any right to be. The digital clock on the nightstand punctuated it with its dull, rhythmic hum—an almost taunting reminder that time was moving even if Ivan wasn’t.

" Ivan?. You alright there sweetheart?.. " His mother paused, shoulders tensing as the lack of response stretched thin. She turned, her expression flickering with unease. The packed boxes by the doorway—leftovers from promises to “sort things out soon”-were suddenly obstacles she cut past with unusual urgency, like she might kick them aside if it meant shaking him out of whatever fog he’d sunk into.

" I'm fine Mum, I'm fine. "

The sudden touch of Ivan's cold hands amongst his mother almost made her flinch, not in fear-but some sort of regret faced between her son and herself. She let out a small sigh, partially of relief and fatigue. 

" Okay then. Let me help you into your wheelchair today alright?. " She said coursing a smile that barely reached her cheeks, like a dullness that restricted her from purely and fully smiling. 

Sometimes, I wonder how I'm even alive. I know its blunt, but it only feels like yesterday I tried to jump off a building after I'd ruined my only true- Friendship. I don't mention his name anymore, not to myself or to my Mum. Sometimes I feel like doing so, but whenever I do I can feel this tight pain closing around my throat and my lungs feel like they're completely undeveloped, like I've start life over again. It would be fun no?, to be able to start life over again?. I live in a shithole of an apartment, all the way on the bottom floor. Can't blame that on anyone but myself though really.

And I’ll admit it… sometimes the idea of starting life over again sounds almost fun, in a sick, impossible kind of way. To wipe the slate clean, shake my younger self by the shoulders, tell him that bottling up every damn feeling would crack him in half one day. Because look at me now: living in a shoebox apartment on the bottom floor, where the walls smell like old water and the lights flicker whenever the neighbour slams their door. I can’t blame anyone for that except myself—not really. I built the trap and then walked right into it.

I remember the fall. Not vividly, like some cinematic moment everyone loves to dramatize, but in fragments—like someone shuffled the memory before handing it back to me. After I stepped off the railing, I caught sight of a car parked on the street below. Old, pale metallic blue. A fading relic of a colour that still managed to hit me harder than the wind did. It looked so much like Mum’s car—the one she used to drive me around in when I was little, weaving through neighbourhoods while running errands. Dad was always at the fire station, saving everyone else’s families while she kept ours moving.

Don’t get me wrong—he was a good dad. The best, honestly, the kind of man any kid would brag about on show-and-tell day. Mum… was okay. Decent, I guess. The joyrides were fun, those little pockets of freedom, but her compliments always felt like they came with small punctures in them, tiny holes that let the warmth leak out. Nothing she said was ever fully clean—always a backhanded twist at the end, even when she didn’t mean it. I don’t hate her. I just always felt like there was this thin sheet of plastic stretched between us. We could see each other perfectly, but we could never quite break through it and actually connect.

But that’s not the point. The point is that my own mother watched me step off the edge of a fifty-to-eighty-foot building. She saw the whole thing. And I’ve never heard her scream like that—not even close. It was the kind of sound that splits the air in half. Maybe even louder than the day I was born, though I’d like to think she screamed for different reasons then. It makes sense, doesn’t it? You don’t expect to ever scream louder than when you’re bringing your child into the world. You certainly don’t expect to find a louder scream years later—watching that same child try to leave it right in front of you.

I think about that sometimes. Not because I want to relive it, but because it feels surreal, like a moment stitched wrong in my timeline. A mother shouldn’t have to witness that. And I shouldn’t have been the reason she did.

Before my father passed away, he was already living in a broken body. The incident that did it to him wasn’t even dramatic in the way people expect when they picture a firefighter’s death. He went back into a burning house for one last civilian—just one person who hadn’t made it out yet. Half the building was already collapsing into ash. The air was thick enough to chew. And nobody could’ve predicted that one of the support beams, charred all the way through, would give out the moment he crossed under it. It didn’t bend. It didn’t groan. It just snapped—fast and merciless—crushing his spine in an instant. He survived long enough to be pulled out, long enough for us to hope, and then his injuries dragged him to the reaper anyway.

People say firefighting is dangerous, and yeah, it is. But most don’t die from scenes that look like they were ripped out of a tragedy documentary. They die from smoke eating away at their lungs. They die slowly, years later, from cancers that grow out of everything they inhaled. It’s still awful, still cruel, but different. My dad’s death wasn’t quiet. It was violent. Sudden. A freak moment that no amount of training could’ve prepared him for. I can’t imagine how many firefighters have given everything—literally everything—just for the hope of saving one more person.

And as grateful as people claim to be that I survived my fall, it didn’t come with a miracle ending or a heroic recovery. “Grateful” feels like the wrong word when the cost was this high. I was in a coma for a month and a half. When I finally woke up, the world didn’t greet me with relief—it greeted me with limits. I’m paralysed from the waist down. I can feel a faint hum of sensation sometimes, and I can twitch a muscle if I concentrate hard enough to give myself a migraine. That’s what they call “progress.” So you can imagine how physical therapy feels—like trying to force life back into a body that isn’t interested in cooperating.

My mum keeps telling my doctors that she believes I’ll get better. She says it with this desperate sort of brightness, the kind that sounds like she’s trying to convince herself more than them. I don’t argue, but the truth is… I don’t see the point. Being stuck in this chair isn’t even the worst part of my life. Not by a long shot.

Turns out I’m… off sometimes. That’s the polite way of saying it. I have episodes. Not as violent as before, thanks to the meds they pump into me, but still not enough to haunt the edges of my days. I hate them—hate the way they coil around my thoughts like something parasitic. The doctors call it a condition, a disorder, whatever clinical term looks best on paperwork. But to me, it feels like a tumour made of shadows and regret, feeding off every negative thought I try to bury.

It doesn’t talk as loudly as it used to. Doesn’t scream. Now it lingers. Sometimes it stands just barely in my peripheral vision—never close, never far—like it’s waiting for an invitation I’ll never give. And sometimes, when my medication starts to wear off and the world gets too quiet, it whispers my name. Soft. Familiar. Like it knows I’ll hear it no matter how much I pretend I don’t.

Ivan hooked his fingers around the cold metal rim of his wheelchair, the wire-like circle biting into his palms as he pushed himself forward. The wheels whispered across the floor before skidding softly to a stop at the table. Waiting for him was a single plate—toast, eggs, and bacon arranged into a crooked little smile, like a breakfast trying its best to cheer him up.

His mother turned at the sound, an almost radiant happiness lighting up her face. “ I hope you like it! I made sure the bacon’s perfectly done—just how you liked it! ”

Ivan stared at the plate for a moment. The steam curled upward lazily, carrying the scent of salted edges and butter-soft eggs. It should’ve been comforting. Once, maybe it was. “ I never said I liked bacon and eggs, Mum,” he said finally, his voice flat but not biting. “I’m more of a cereal person. ”

He didn’t mean it harshly—it wasn’t annoyance or rejection, just a plain truth spoken out loud. Maybe he did like it once. Maybe before everything changed. Maybe before food became something you ate because you needed to, not because you craved it.

Her smile faltered, dimming like someone had turned a dial down too fast. A thin ache flickered at the corner of her mouth—a tiny, helpless expression that stabbed more than any argument could. He hadn't meant to upset her, but the damage was instant, sharp.

A pang of regret punched him in the chest. Without hesitating, Ivan grabbed the fork and shovelled a piece of egg into his mouth, forcing himself to chew and swallow even though the taste felt muted. He took another bite, then another, and slowly—slowly—the warmth crept back onto her face. Her shoulders relaxed.

“ There you go,” she murmured, turning back to the stove to finish her own breakfast, humming a tune that rose and fell with small notes of relief.

Ivan kept eating, not because he wanted the food, but because it was the only thing in the room he could fix. Unlike his friendships.

Chapter Text

The morning routine slid by with the usual stiffness. After breakfast, after the forced smile and the apologetic bites of bacon and eggs he never asked for, Ivan rolled himself toward the hallway while his mother scurried around gathering bags, keys, coupons, a water bottle she’d lose within the hour, and a jacket she swore she needed even though the sun outside was barely warm.

Their apartment door groaned as she opened it—old hinges, older paint job, and a lingering smell of damp carpet in the hall greeting them like an uninvited guest. Ivan didn’t need help getting out the door, but his mother hovered anyway, hands half-raised like she might catch him if he tipped even an inch. He didn’t argue; some battles weren't worth the breath.

“ Alright, ” she exhaled, locking the door behind them. “ Let’s get this done early so we can relax later. ”

Ivan nodded. Silence was easier than words right now, and she seemed to accept that. They made their way to the door—he hated how the lights flickered in that hotel, how the hum inside always felt like a trapped bug—but they reached outside without incident and crossed the parking lot toward her car.

The ride to the store was quiet aside from the crackling hum of the radio. His mother always put on the same station, an easy-listening mix of pop songs from years ago sprinkled between cheerful ads. The kind that tried too hard to sound upbeat, like they were terrified someone might change the channel if they took a breath.

She cleared her throat softly. “ So, um… we need groceries, of course. Milk, bread, a few veggies. And you said you needed new compression wraps, right? ”

“ Yeah. The ones I have are… worn, ” Ivan murmured, staring out the window. Buildings blurred by. People with whole, easy lives walked down sidewalks, their strides confident, fluid—things he no longer had. The thought made him shrink inward.

His mother nodded quickly, as if proud of him for speaking at all. “ Well, good. We’ll make sure you get what you need. ”

He didn’t respond, but she didn’t push it further.

The store’s automatic doors parted with a gust of too-cold air-conditioning that hit Ivan’s face like a slap. His mother pushed the cart with one hand and hovered behind him with the other. He rolled himself, though she kept trying to correct his direction every few steps, her hand darting in to straighten him like he was misaligned furniture.

“ Mom… I can steer, ” Ivan muttered under his breath.

“ Oh! Sorry, sweetheart. Habit, you know.” She chuckled nervously.

He gave a small shrug and kept rolling forward.

The inside of the supermarket was bright—too bright. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, reflecting off polished floors and rows of metal shelving. The faint smell of fruit mixed with cleaning chemicals and plastic packaging. Ivan disliked grocery stores. Too many people, too many noises, too many places for his brain to snag on ghosts he didn’t want to remember.

“ Let’s start with produce, ” his mother said, steering the cart toward the apples. “ They’re on sale today. ”

Ivan followed beside her, trying to keep his breathing steady. Everything was fine. Everything was normal. There was no reason for the buzzing behind his skull to grow sharper.

But the buzzing didn't care.

As they moved deeper into the aisle, a knot formed in his stomach. His fingers tightened on the wheelchair rims. Something felt off, like a pressure building in the air before a storm.

His mother chatted on, unaware. “ Ooh, look at these peaches! They’re finally back in stock. ”

Ivan didn’t respond. His gaze drifted, unfocused, then flickered toward the end of the produce section.

And that was when he saw him.

Or at least—someone who looked so painfully similar that the world froze around him.

A adult hooded decently tall guy, hood pulled up but low enough to notice, vibrant yellow messy hair poking out, glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose. He wore a faded pinkish hoodie Ivan had seen a hundred times before, on a different person, in a different life. He stood in the snack aisle, scrolling absently on his phone.

Ivan’s breath caught.

His heart slammed once, hard, before erupting into rapid, panicked beats that rattled against his ribs like a trapped bird. His hands trembled on the wheels. His mouth went dry.

No… no, no, no… it can’t be—

Andrew.

The name tore through his mind like a jagged shard. He hadn’t thought it—really thought it—in months. He’d avoided it, buried it, locked it in a mental box and shoved it down until even memories lost their shape.

But seeing that silhouette—those mannerisms, that familiar slump of shoulders—it ripped the box wide open.

His chest tightened sharply.

Images hit him like flashbulbs:
Late-night coding sessions.
Shared ideas.
Shared laughter.
Arguments that spiralled.
Silence that followed.
The day it fell apart.

The day Ivan’s last string snapped.

He felt a cold sweat trickle down his spine.

It can’t be him. It CAN’T be him.

But logic didn’t matter. Trauma didn’t care about facts. His body reacted before his brain could reason.

His vision tunnelled.

His breath stumbled.

His fingers went numb.

The buzzing in his ears roared until the supermarket noise dissolved into a distant, underwater echo.

And then his lungs simply… stopped listening.

“ Ivan? ”

His mother’s voice snapped into the edges of his fading awareness, muffled, panicked.

“ Ivan? Honey? What’s wrong—what’s happening? ”

He couldn’t answer. His throat wouldn’t open. Air felt thick, unreachable. His hands slipped from the wheels and landed limply in his lap.

The fluorescent lights overhead seemed to tilt, slanting as if the whole room were falling sideways.

His mother rushed toward him, dropping the produce entirely. The apples scattered across the floor, rolling like startled marbles.

“ Oh God—Ivan, breathe. Sweetheart, look at me. Look at me. ”

Her hands cupped his face, thumbs brushing frantically against his cheeks.

The Andrew lookalike hadn’t noticed them. The small iconic cleft lip Andrew had wasn't there. He picked up a bag of chips, turned, and walked toward another aisle. Out of sight. Gone. Like he always was.

But the damage was done. His pulse hammered, frantic and uneven. His breath hitched in sharp, useless gasps. His skin tingled like electricity crawled beneath it.

“ Ivan, hey—hey, listen to me, ” his mother pleaded, voice cracking. She knelt down eye-level with him, her knees pressing painfully against the tile floor. “ You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re having a panic attack, alright? Just breathe with me—slowly, sweetheart, slowly. ”

Her hand went to the back of his neck, grounding him, steadying him.

But the world kept blurring, swimming, folding inward on itself.

The fluorescent hum intensified. His heartbeat throbbed in his ears. His vision flickered like a dying screen.

He felt himself spiralling down, down, down—

“—There you go. That’s it. You’re doing good, Ivan… just keep listening to me…”

Her voice was a soft, desperate anchor.

His lungs finally dragged air in—thin, shaky, painful. But it was air.

His eyes burned with tears he couldn’t stop. His hands trembled violently in his lap.

His mother brushed his hair back with trembling fingers. The fear in her eyes was raw—real—not the polite worry she used when talking to doctors, but something deeper. Older. The fear of almost losing him before. The fear of losing him again.

“ Oh sweetheart… ” she whispered, her voice breaking. “ You scared me. You really scared me. ”

Ivan opened his mouth, but his voice cracked into nothing. He felt a sob punch out of him without warning. He hadn’t cried like that in years—not since the rooftop, not since the hospital, not since he’d been forced to rebuild his life from pieces that never fit right anymore.

His mother leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him, careful, gentle. Not smothering—just holding him like she was afraid he’d slip through her fingers again.

He clung to her shirt with weak, shaking hands, swallowing ragged breaths.

“ I’m sorry, ” he gasped.

“ Don’t. Don’t apologize. ” She stroked the back of his head. “ None of this is your fault. ”

“ But I— I can’t— ” He squeezed his eyes shut. “ I can’t stop seeing him. ”

“ I know, ” she murmured. “ But you don’t have to face this alone. ”

She stayed there with him, on the cold supermarket floor between fallen apples and broken memories, until his breathing steadied again.

Customers passed by, some staring, some whispering, but no one intervened. They didn’t need to. His mother had him. She always had, even when she wasn’t perfect, even when her words sometimes came out wrong. She was here.

When Ivan finally pulled back slightly, she wiped the stray tears from his face.

“ You want to go home? ” she asked gently.

He nodded his head weakly. “ Yeah.. I don't- want to be here any longer.. ”

Her expression softened—A sort of relief but still worried. “Alright. Then we’ll take it slow. Together.”

Chapter Text

The sunlight leaking through Ivan’s bedroom window felt too gentle for how raw he felt inside. It was a soft, weak sort of morning light — hazy, dust catching in its glow — but his body still felt like it was made of shattered glass from yesterday’s panic attack. His chest occasionally fluttered like it couldn’t decide between breathing and locking up again.

His mother hovered all morning, watching him like he might crack open if she turned her back. But she didn’t push him to talk. She made breakfast quietly — toast this time, no forced smiles made of bacon and eggs — and left it on the counter near his wheelchair with a soft pat on the shoulder.

He appreciated that more than he could say.

By the time she backed the car out of their parking spot, Ivan felt like he’d aged ten years overnight. The seatbelt cut awkwardly across his lap, and he tugged at it until it stopped pressing into his hip.

“You feeling alright, honey?” his mother asked, glancing over with that knitted-brow softness she’d worn since the supermarket.

“Mm,” he hummed without thinking.

She sighed — not disappointed, just worried — and turned her eyes back to the road.

They drove in silence. Houses passed by in neat little rows, identical lawns, identical letterboxes. People walking their dogs. Kids already fighting over scooters. Life everywhere. Smooth, bright life that made Ivan feel like a glitch in the middle of a perfect animation.

The therapy center stood on a quiet corner, modern and pale with big windows that tried a little too hard to look friendly. His mother parked in the disability bay and helped guide the wheelchair out of the trunk platform, though he could practically feel her itching to take over even the smallest motions.

“I’ll be in the car afterward,” she said softly. “Take your time.”

He nodded and rolled himself toward the doors.

The waiting room smelled faintly of tea and something citrusy — like the staff were trying to force optimism into the air. A soft melody played overhead. He always forgot the name of the song, but it felt familiar in a way that bothered him.

“Ivan?” the receptionist smiled. “Dr. Clay will see you now.”

He wheeled himself down the hall, stopping at the second door on the left.

He knocked, even though he didn’t need to.

“Come in,” came the therapist’s calm voice.

Ivan pushed himself inside.

Dr. Rowan Clay sat in their usual chair — cross-legged, notebook balanced on their lap, warm eyes behind circular glasses. The room was muted and safe: soft browns, soft blues, nowhere for the mind to snag. A weighted blanket sat folded in the corner, next to a quiet bubbling fish tank.

“Ivan,” Dr. Clay said with a gentle smile. “I’m glad you came today.”

He swallowed. “Mom made me.”

Dr. Clay chuckled softly. “Lots of mothers do. But you still showed up — and that matters.”

Ivan rolled to his usual place near the low table, facing the therapist.

“You seem tired today,” they observed gently.

“Yeah.”

“Rough night?”

“…yesterday was rough,” Ivan corrected quietly.

The therapist nodded slowly, their expression softening. “Do you want to talk about what happened at the store?”

Ivan flinched slightly, fingers curling against the wheel rims. He didn’t want to remember the way he fell apart between the apples. Didn’t want to remember the silhouette that felt like a ghost ripping through him.

But Dr. Clay wasn’t pushing. They were just placing a door in front of him, waiting to see whether he’d open it.

He took a shaky breath.

“I thought I saw someone,” he murmured.

Dr. Clay waited, hands still, eyes patient.

“I thought I saw Andrew.”

There it was. His chest tightened instantly — a physical ache, almost like punishment.

“I see,” they said softly. “And that triggered a panic response?”

Ivan nodded.

“Did it feel sudden?”

“It felt like… like something punched through my brain. Like I couldn’t breathe. My hands went numb.” He exhaled shakily. “I couldn’t think.”

“That sounds very frightening. I’m sorry you went through that.”

He shrugged, staring down at his lap. “It was stupid.”

Dr. Clay’s head tilted slightly. “Why stupid?”

“Because it wasn’t him. It was just some guy who looked like him.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “But the second I saw him… everything inside me just fell apart. Like it still has this power over me. Like I’m still—”

He cut himself off.

Dr. Clay didn’t speak. They waited, quiet, giving him space.

Ivan stared at the grain of the wooden table. The room hummed with the soft sound of the fish tank bubbler. His throat tightened, but he pressed on.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m pathetic,” he whispered. “All this time, and I still fall apart over a person who probably doesn’t even think about me anymore.”

“Ivan… people don’t react that strongly to others unless that person mattered deeply to them. There’s nothing pathetic about that.”

A hard swallow traveled down Ivan’s throat.

“…He mattered,” Ivan admitted.

Dr. Clay’s gaze softened with understanding but not pity. Never pity.

“Tell me about that,” they encouraged gently.

Ivan’s shoulders hunched. “We worked on so many projects together. Scripts, game levels, world designs. Sometimes we stayed up all night fixing bugs no one would even notice. He made it fun. He made everything feel like it had a point.”

He hesitated. His voice cracked on the next breath.

“He made me feel like I had a point.”

Dr. Clay nodded. “It sounds like he was someone you felt connected to. Someone who gave your world meaning.”

“Yeah.” Ivan laughed weakly, wiping at his eye. “More than he probably knew.”

“And when that connection ended…?”

Ivan flinched, heart skipping painfully. “It broke me. I—I know that sounds dramatic, but it did.”

He lifted his hands, then let them fall helplessly against his legs.

“It wasn’t just about the stupid game. Or the fights. Or the stress.” His voice trembled. “It was everything underneath that.”

Dr. Clay leaned forward slightly. “What was underneath it, Ivan?”

The words stuck. His breathing grew shallow.

He looked away, toward the bubbling tank, the blur of fish gliding behind the glass. His eyes burned.

“I put him on this pedestal,” he whispered. “Like he was the only person who understood me. The only one who… cared.”

“That can create a very powerful bond,” Dr. Clay said softly. “Especially for someone who felt isolated or unsupported elsewhere.”

Ivan nodded slowly.

“But that bond can also become overwhelming,” they continued. “If you invest too much of your self-worth into one person… their absence can feel like losing a part of yourself.”

Ivan’s breath shuddered. “Yeah.”

“Did you feel that way?”

Ivan squeezed his eyes shut. A tear slipped down his cheek.

“…I think I loved him,” he admitted in a small, broken voice. “Not just as a friend. Not just as someone I worked with. I loved him in every way I knew how.”

Dr. Clay didn’t react with surprise, or judgment, or pity — only steady acceptance.

“That must have been incredibly painful to carry alone,” they said.

Ivan’s control cracked instantly.

His chest heaved, and a choked sound tore from him — not quite a sob, not quite a breath. Tears blurred his vision, falling fast. He lifted a hand to wipe them, but his fingers shook too hard.

“I didn’t even realize it at first,” he tried to say, voice strangled. “But when everything fell apart… it felt like I lost— like I lost something huge, something I wasn’t supposed to lose.”

“You lost someone you loved,” Dr. Clay said gently. “That kind of grief is real. It’s valid.”

“And I couldn’t handle it,” Ivan choked. “I was stupid. I—I ruined everything. I pushed him too hard. I needed him too much. I said things I shouldn’t have. I suffocated the friendship. I made myself impossible to be around.”

“Ivan, I doubt you were impossible.”

“I was desperate,” he whispered. “And he saw it. And he left.”

His shoulders shook as another wave of tears broke him open. He covered his face with both hands, ashamed, overwhelmed, exposed in a way that hurt like a raw wound.

Dr. Clay’s voice remained soft, grounding.

“You were hurting. That doesn’t make you a monster. It doesn’t make you unworthy.”

“I scared him off.”

“You struggled. You didn’t know how to express what you were feeling. That doesn’t make you unlovable.”

Ivan’s breath snagged on a sob. “I still dream about him.”

“That’s normal.”

“I still… I still want him to be okay. Even if I never see him again.”

“That speaks to your heart, not your flaws.”

“I still miss him,” Ivan whispered, voice cracking apart. “Every day.”

“Of course you do.”

“I hate that I miss him.”

“I know.”

“I hate that I still love him.”

There it was — naked, trembling, devastating.

Dr. Clay leaned forward, voice softer than anything else in the room.

“Ivan… love doesn’t disappear just because it hurts. And what you felt — what you still feel — isn’t shameful. It means you’re human. It means your heart works. Even after everything.”

Ivan sobbed into his hands. His chest burned. His lungs felt bruised.

“But why does it still hurt so much?” he gasped.

“Because losing love — even unspoken love — is one of the deepest wounds a person can experience,” Dr. Clay murmured. “Especially when that love was never given a chance to breathe.”

Ivan lowered his hands, tears streaking his cheeks, eyes red and hollow.

“I feel like I’m stuck,” he whispered. “Like I’m trapped in the same moment over and over. That rooftop. That fall. His voice. The silence after.”

“And you survived all of it,” Dr. Clay said. “Even when you didn’t think you could.”

“But for what?” Ivan whispered. “Everything feels broken.”

Dr. Clay paused — choosing their next words carefully.

“For the chance to heal,” they said softly. “For the chance to learn your heart wasn’t wrong for loving. For the chance to grow into someone who won’t have to carry that pain forever.”

Ivan swallowed a sob.

“You’re not broken beyond repair,” Dr. Clay continued. “You’re grieving. You’re healing. You’re learning how to exist again. And that is brave, Ivan. That is incredibly brave.”

Ivan’s breathing slowly steadied, though tears still fell in quiet streams.

He wiped his face weakly with his sleeve. “I don’t know how to stop loving him.”

“You don’t have to stop,” Dr. Clay said gently. “You only have to learn how to live beside that love. Eventually, it will hurt less. Eventually, it will change shape.”

Ivan nodded slowly, his chest aching but lighter than before — like something deep inside him had finally cracked open and let air in.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“I’m proud of your progress,” Dr. Clay said sincerely. “You trusted me with something you’ve been afraid to say out loud. That’s a huge step forward.”

Ivan sniffled, eyes still watery. “It doesn’t feel like a step.”

“Steps are small,” they replied. “But they still move you forward.”

He didn’t argue.

For once, he let the warmth in those words settle in his chest like something he might actually believe someday.

Chapter Text

The rehabilitation centre always smelled faintly of antiseptic and old carpet, like a mix of too-clean and too-lived-in. Ivan had come to recognize the scent the same way he recognized the hum of fluorescent lights or the shudder in his chest whenever he passed the automatic doors. His wheelchair rolled forward with its usual soft creak, his hands gripping the rims just tightly enough to keep his nerves from rattling.

His mother walked beside him, close but not hovering—though he could tell every part of her wanted to. She kept her bag hugged to her chest like it was a shield from the cold hospital draft.

“You slept okay?” she asked, not for the first time that morning.

Ivan shrugged. “As okay as usual.”

She nodded, but the line of her jaw tightened. She hated that answer—he could see it. Yet she still accepted it, because she knew pushing too hard only made him pull further away.

They entered the rehabilitation room. It was wide and open, full of parallel bars, cushioned floor mats, resistance bands, and the metallic chirp of medical equipment in idle mode. Two other patients were already there, working through their routines—an older man balancing between bars, and a teenage girl practicing grip strength with a focused scowl.

At the far end, Dr. Gellan looked up from a clipboard. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with a calm smile that didn’t feel forced. He’d been one of Ivan’s physios since the day he woke from his coma, and though Ivan would never say it aloud, the guy’s steady voice helped keep him from spiraling some days.

“There he is,” Gellan said, crossing the room. “Morning, Ivan. You ready to give it another shot today?”

“Define ready,” Ivan muttered.

Gellan laughed softly. “You’re here, aren’t you? That’s step one.”

Ivan rolled his eyes, but a tiny spark of warmth flickered in his chest. Whatever. He’d take it.

His mother stood by the wall, hands clasped in front of her, eyes already shining with nerves she tried to hide. She was terrible at hiding things. She bit her lip like she always did when she didn’t know how to help him. It almost made Ivan want to tell her to wait outside—but the last time he did that, she’d taken it personally, and he didn’t have the energy to go through that again.

“Okay, champ,” Gellan said, moving behind the parallel bars. “Same goal as last time—just a lift, a brace, and a count of five. If your legs seize up, we stop immediately, yeah?”

Ivan nodded, jaw clenching.

His stomach twisted as Gellan braced his arm and helped position him between the bars. The metal was cold under his palms, grounding but unforgiving. His legs hung uselessly beneath him, weak like overcooked pasta, trembling before he even attempted anything.

But trying was mandatory. Expectation. Routine.

Even if he hated it.

“Deep breath,” Gellan instructed. “On your cue.”

Ivan inhaled. The air tasted stale. He felt his heart rate spike anyway.

“One… two…”

He pushed down with his arms. His shoulders burned instantly. His back screamed with the effort of trying to stabilize something that refused to cooperate. His left knee twitched—barely a millimetre of movement, but enough to spark a bolt of pain up his thigh.

He sucked in a gasp through his teeth.

“Easy,” Gellan said quickly, supporting him under the ribs. “You’re doing fine.”

It didn’t feel fine. It felt like trying to lift a dead weight attached to a panic attack.

Ivan clenched his jaw harder, arms trembling violently. His vision blurred slightly, the edges going grey.

He managed to rise an inch. Maybe two.

His breath hitched—half triumph, half pain.

“Good,” Gellan murmured, steady and grounding. “Hold that. I’ve got you.”

Ivan’s arms shook so hard he thought they’d snap. His legs buzzed with that awful static pain—tingly, heavy, needle-like, all at once.

“One…”
“Two…”
“Three…”

By four, the pain was everywhere.

By five, he couldn’t take it.

His arms buckled.

Gellan caught him before he crashed fully, lowering him gently back into the chair. The moment his weight settled, Ivan’s lungs opened with a harsh, shuddering exhale that he couldn’t disguise. His hands curled into fists against his thighs as he tried to blink away the wetness stinging his eyes.

“Hey,” Gellan said quietly, crouching to meet his gaze. “That was progress. You held longer than Monday.”

Ivan looked away, blinking hard. His throat thickened.

Progress.
Such a stupid, meaningless word.

His mother moved closer, her voice trembling at the edges. “Sweetheart, you looked so— I mean, you were amazing. Really.”

He hated the look on her face.
Hated how broken she looked watching him break.

He forced a weak smile. It didn’t convince her—it didn’t convince anyone.

“Okay,” Gellan said, patting his shoulder. “Let’s rest for a minute. Then we can do a gentler exercise. No more lifts today unless you want to try again.”

Ivan shook his head quickly. “No. No more standing.”

“Got it.”

His mother crouched beside the wheelchair, brushing his hair from his forehead like she used to when he was little. Her hands trembled slightly.

“I’m so proud of you,” she whispered. “Even if it hurts. Even if it feels impossible.”

He swallowed, throat tight. “It… it just sucks. That’s all.”

“I know, baby,” she murmured.

For a moment he let himself lean against her palm, just enough to feel anchored—but not enough to look like he needed it. He hated needing things. Hated looking weak. Hated that this was his life now: counting seconds, forcing muscles to twitch, pretending he wasn’t drowning in frustration.

Gellan returned with a padded resistance band. “We’ll switch to assisted flexion, alright? Low strain. Just enough to tell your legs the fight’s still on.”

Ivan nodded, wiped his eyes quickly, and lifted his hands to accept the band.

The next twenty minutes passed in slow burning motions—tiny stretches, micro-movements, sparks of pain that came and went like flickering lights. His mother watched every second, gripping her bag tighter and tighter until her knuckles turned white.

At the end of it, Ivan slumped back, sweaty, exhausted, and oddly hollow.

“That’s it for today,” Gellan said gently. “You did enough. More than enough.”

Ivan nodded weakly.

His mother exhaled a shaky breath, brushing a hand over her face. “I’m… I’m so proud. I know I say it too much, but—”

“No,” Ivan said quietly. “It’s fine.”

“Alright,” she whispered, smiling with watery relief.

Gellan wheeled him toward the exit. “Same time Thursday?”

“Yeah.”

“And Ivan?”

He looked up.

“You’re allowed to hate this,” Gellan said. “But don’t forget—your body’s listening, even when it feels like it’s ignoring you. You are making progress.”

Ivan didn’t trust himself to speak, so he just nodded.

As they moved toward the doors, his mother took hold of the wheelchair handles, giving him a tiny squeeze on the shoulder.

“You were so brave today,” she said softly.

He wished he felt brave.
All he felt was tired.

But at least he was still here.
Still trying.

Even if trying hurt.

Chapter Text

Ivan’s apartment always felt a little too small and a little too loud, even when the building was dead silent. The walls were thin enough for him to hear the pipes groan when someone upstairs flushed, or the muffled music from the guy next door who never seemed to sleep. His space—if you could even call it that—was barely big enough for his wheelchair to turn in without bumping into something.

Still, it was home.
And more importantly, the only place where he could make enough money to keep himself afloat.

His desk sat pressed against the one window in the living area. It wasn’t really a proper desk—just an old wooden table he’d found at a roadside clean-up, scratched and uneven, stained with coffee from nights when he’d tried to stay awake to meet deadlines. Beside it sat his cheap laptop, its casing covered in paint chips where the plastic had worn away from years of anxious tapping.

On good mornings, if the sun hit his window at the right angle, the whole desk glowed with a soft, golden wash like some kind of cosmic sympathy. Today was one of those mornings.

Ivan wheeled himself into position and opened his laptop. It groaned awake with the tired sigh of an old man, but it still worked. It always worked—much more than he could say for the rest of his life.

His fingers hovered over the keyboard for a moment, pausing, waiting for the switch in his brain to flick.

Click.

And just like that, he was somewhere else.

Writing was the only time he felt like the world loosened its grip around his chest. On the screen, he wasn’t paralysed. He wasn’t haunted by the lingering shadow in the corner of his eye. He wasn’t a patient or a disappointment or a collection of injuries and diagnoses and trauma.

He was just a voice—pure, sharp, alive.

He typed:

“The lighthouse didn’t shine for the lost.
It only shone for those willing to be found.”

He stopped, reading the line over again. He could almost hear one of his old clients—the smaller indie companies that bought scripts from him—calling it “a bit too poetic,” but he didn’t care. His writing was the only place he allowed himself to be dramatic. To feel things without choking on them.

He kept typing.

The story he was working on was for a little Roblox game studio that liked emotional narrative cutscenes. They never paid much, but they paid enough. Enough to keep the lights on. Enough to keep water running. Enough to buy groceries that didn’t taste like plastic or sit in dented cans.

And sometimes, they sent him thank-you messages after a script was finished.

He lived off those messages more than he lived off the money.

Around twenty minutes into writing, he heard a soft creak behind him.

His shoulders tensed.

.̵̧̨̩̺̪̩̮̱͈͎̣͙̙̿̑͋͆̋͊͐͘̕ ̵̮͇̖̜̝̫͚̯̩̃̔̄̿͋̉̑̐͛̅̉͊͒̔̾̕̚̕ͅ.̷̠͍̗̹̹̩̎̃́̆̾͌̔̈̓̽ ̴̧̡̢̢̡̛͓̫̗̩͍̜̺̻̱̯͇̠͔̲̳̑̔̎́̀̽̒͑͊̓̀͘̕͝.̶̨̢̹͈̖̼͕̞̰̲̺̇̒͒́̉̔̀̈̆̏͂̎̎̏̌̈́̿̚͜͠ͅ

The “Tumour,” as he’d come to call it, lingered just out of sight—never fully visible, always flickering like a smudge on his peripheral vision. Some days it stood silently, pulsing with his heartbeat. Other days it whispered. Today, it was quiet, but Ivan could feel it watching.

He swallowed, fingers still tapping.

“ Not now, ” he muttered under his breath.

But of course, the mind didn’t listen.

It rarely did.

He typed another few lines, humming softly to distract himself, but the silence behind him seemed to thicken. The hairs on his arms rose. Cold pricked the back of his neck like static electricity.

He didn’t turn around.
If he didn’t look, it wasn’t real.
That was the rule.

He took a breath, closed his eyes, and kept typing anyway.

After all, escaping into work was the only escape he had.

Until Andrew’s name drifted through his mind like smoke.

He didn’t even see the memory coming—one moment he was writing a dialogue exchange between two characters, and the next he was back on a cracked sidewalk, walking beside someone who felt like the sun.

Andrew.
Too smart for his own good.
Too kind without realizing it.
Too much of everything Ivan wished he was.

They used to walk home from work together back when Ivan still saw himself as a person who had a future. Andrew talked with his hands, spoke like he was narrating his own life, laughed with a crooked grin that made his eyes squint. He was the kind of person who carried warmth like a second skin.

God, Ivan had adored him.
More than he should have.
More than he understood at the time.

He admired him like people admire shooting stars—knowing they’re too bright, too fast, too impossible to hold.

And he fell in love with him somewhere between script meetings and the nights they stayed up fixing broken code. Not just romantic love, but something else—something big and stupid and childlike. Something that made him want to be better. Something that hurt even before it ended.

Ivan blinked hard, his vision fuzzing.

His chest tightened, slow but insistent, like someone turning a crank inside his ribs. He breathed in sharply; it didn’t help.

“ Stop,” he whispered to himself. “ Not now. Please. ”

But the memory kept coming—Andrew’s laugh, his voice, the way he’d said Ivan’s name when he was excited about a new idea. The way Ivan had mistaken that warmth for something it wasn’t. The way the friendship had cracked under the weight of unspoken things, misunderstandings, hurt, pride, fear. The way losing him had shattered more than just their project.

The way it pushed him to that rooftop.

His breathing grew ragged.

The buzzing in his ears grew louder. The room tilted. His hands flew off the keyboard and clutched at the sides of the desk as if the world had suddenly turned to water and he was slipping under.

The “Tumour” shifted behind him—he felt it move, even though it didn’t exist.

“ Ivan? ”
He felt his entire body jerk upright.

His mother’s voice broke through the fog like a cold splash of water. She poked her head through the doorway, holding a grocery bag.

“ You okay? ” she asked softly.

Ivan wiped at his face before she could see the wetness in his eyes.
“ Yeah, ” he lied. “ Just… working. ”

She stepped closer. “The air-conditioner broke again; I heard you breathing hard. I got worried.”

He forced a thin smile. “ Just concentrated. I’m fine. ”

She didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t push.
“ Alright, ” she murmured. “ Don’t overdo it. ”

He nodded and turned back to the screen.

He waited.
And waited.

The “Tumour” receded back into the corners of the room, sinking into the dim edges like a stain at the edge of his awareness. His heartbeat slowed. His breath steadied.

He cracked his knuckles, rolled his shoulders, and lifted his hands back to the keyboard.

He typed.

He wrote until the sun slipped lower, until the light in his apartment turned soft and pink, until the story in his head drowned out the ache in his chest.

And even though his eyes burned and his heart still felt bruised, the words came back to him—gentle, patient, familiar.

Writing didn’t fix him.
It didn’t erase the past.
It didn’t silence the thing in his periphery.

But it made the world bearable for a little while.

And for Ivan, that was enough.

Chapter Text

The message arrived just after noon, breaking through the grey lull of another sluggish day and lighting up Ivan’s screen with a soft ping. He had been staring at a blank document for nearly an hour — fingers motionless above the keyboard, mind drifting aimlessly like a balloon without a string. He wasn’t blocked exactly; he just felt drained. This whole week had been a parade of pain, panic, and exhaustion, and despite writing being his sanctuary, even that had been hard to slip back into.

But then the notification blinked in the corner of his laptop like a friendly knock.

ANV.SQ26:
Got a minute? I want to show you a change to the protagonist’s arc.

Ivan blinked, sitting upright, his heartbeat picking up speed with a small but noticeable kick.

He typed back:

N-il@78:
Yeah. I’m here.

The reply came instantly, as if the sender had been waiting on the other side of the screen with equal anticipation.

ANV.SQ26:
Good. Been wanting to run this by you since last night. I’ve been thinking about the direction of the final chapter — maybe instead of the protagonist facing the antagonist alone, we give them a moment of hesitation. Something human. Something flawed. Something that makes the final confrontation hit harder.

Ivan reread the message slowly.

Something about the phrasing tugged at him — a faint déjà vu he couldn’t fully place. ANV had always been articulate, but today there was a rhythm in their wording, a cadence that tugged at him with irritating nostalgia. He shook it off. His brain did that sometimes when he was tired.

He typed back:

N-il@78:
That actually lines up with the emotional thread I’ve been writing. I can revise the earlier scenes to set up that moment.

The typing bubble appeared. And for some reason, it made Ivan smile.

ANV.SQ26:
Perfect. I knew you’d get it.

He froze for a moment.
That sentence.
The casual confidence.
The warmth buried inside it.

He’d heard it before.
Somewhere.
A long time ago.

But before the thought could unravel further, another message popped up.

ANV.SQ26:
By the way, you free later this week? There’s a café downtown with enough space for mobility chairs. I was thinking it’d be easier to hash out the last pieces of the script in person.

His breath caught in his throat.

In person?

The idea hit him in two opposite waves: excitement that pricked like needles under the skin, and fear that curled into his stomach like a fist.

Ivan stared at the message so long that the screen dimmed, forcing him to wiggle the trackpad.

He hesitated before replying.

N-il@78:
You want to meet?

ANV.SQ26:
Only if you’re comfortable. No pressure. Just thought it’d be nice after all the ideas we’ve tossed around.

Ivan leaned back in his chair. His hands trembled slightly — not from fear, not entirely anyway, but from a disorienting blend of anticipation and something softer. He’d been working with ANV for a month. Just a commission at first, simple, straightforward. Then it became brainstorming sessions. Long chats. Voice notes exchanged. Jokes. Late-night discussions about character motivations. Comfortably slow conversations about craft and storytelling.

And recently…
He found himself looking forward to their pings more than he expected.

But meeting?
In public?
With a stranger?

His throat tightened.

He typed slowly:

N-il@78:
I’ll think about it.

ANV.SQ26:
Of course. Take your time.

He breathed out. Relief and unease at war with each other.

He closed his laptop gently, as if worried a sudden movement might break the fragile bubble of calm.

But the room changed when he wasn’t looking.

The air cooled.

A soft hiss filled the edges of the silence.

And from the corner of his eye, the “Tumour” flickered awake — a dark smudge hanging just at the boundary of his vision. Watching. Listening. Feeding.

His chest tightened again.

Not now.
Not when things finally felt… almost good.

Ivan lifted a hand to rub his temple and forced himself to ignore the cold presence watching him like a predator in waiting. If he acknowledged it, it would only sharpen, break shape, whisper. He’d learned how to avoid feeding it. Don’t look. Don’t engage. Don’t talk back.

But the thing pulsed anyway — a distortion of shadow, a weight leaning toward him with a slow hunger.

“You can’t take this,” he whispered under his breath. “Not everything.”

The Tumour did not answer.
But its silence said enough.

His mother found him in the kitchen half an hour later, staring at the kettle as it boiled, zoned out enough that he didn’t hear her footsteps until she touched his shoulder.

He startled, wheeling around too fast and bumping into the counter.

“Oh! Honey—sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Ivan tried to steady his breathing. “It’s fine. Just… spaced out.”

She tilted her head, studying him in that way she always did when she was worried but didn’t want to crowd him.

“You look… brighter,” she said softly. “Not happy — I know that’s a big word — but you look like something lifted off you. Even just a little.”

Ivan shifted. “I got a message from a client.”

Her eyebrows rose. “A good one, I’m guessing?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. We’ve been working on a long script. They want to meet in person to finalize things.”

Her eyes widened with genuine surprise — and something warmer beneath it. Gratitude, maybe. Relief. Hope. He hadn’t seen that expression on her in a long time.

“Oh, sweetheart.” She crouched down, brushing her thumb over his cheek in a way that didn’t feel patronizing for once. “You… you’re excited.”

He looked away, cheeks heating. “A bit.”

“That’s wonderful,” she whispered. “It’s been so long since you looked forward to something.”

He swallowed. Hard.

“Yeah,” he managed.

She didn’t hide the way her eyes softened — a mix of pride and heartbreak and motherly tenderness all twisted into one expression.

“What’s their name?” she asked.

He paused.

And realized he didn’t actually know.

“Just their handle,” he said. “ANV.SQ26.”

Her smile faltered slightly. “That’s… quite a name.”

He shrugged. “It’s Roblox. Everyone’s weird.”

She laughed at that, and he liked hearing it — it made the apartment feel less heavy, like the air was finally being replaced with something breathable.

She moved toward the stove. “Do you want tea? You look like you need something warm.”

He nodded.

As she reached for the mug, she glanced over her shoulder again. “You deserve to be excited about people, Ivan. Even if it’s just one person. Even if it’s just a meeting.”

Her words caught him off guard, scraping something sharp inside him.

He deserved people, once upon a time.
He wasn’t sure if he still did.

But he didn’t say that.
He only murmured, “Thanks.”

While she prepared the tea, he opened his laptop again.

Another new message.

ANV.SQ26:
Sorry if I came on strong. I just enjoy talking with you. You’re… honestly brilliant with story structure. Thought meeting might help the process. But we can keep things online if you’d rather.

Ivan’s heart thumped once, hard.

Brilliant.
No one called him things like that anymore.

And something about the phrasing — the gentle reassurance, the soft “if you'd rather” — hit painfully close to someone he used to know. Someone who used to hype him up, lift him, speak to him with warm enthusiasm that always came from the chest, never from the surface.

Someone he never expected to lose.

His breath trembled.

He typed:

N-il@78:
Let’s try it. I can do the end of the week.

...

ANV.SQ26:
Perfect. I'll get the restaurants location and send it to you tomorrow.

Ivan closed the laptop again, leaning back, letting the moment wash over him like warm water.

But something still nagged at him.

A tiny thread in his brain pulling at a memory he couldn’t reach yet.

He ignored it.
He wanted this feeling.
Just a moment of something close to hope.

He tried to enjoy it.

Later that evening, Ivan rolled his wheelchair into the living area where the window was cracked open — cold air filtering through with the smell of rain. His mother sat on the couch, blankets wrapped around her legs like a makeshift cocoon, watching one of those survival shows she loved but never admitted made her cry.

He parked beside her.

“You okay?” she asked without looking away from the TV.

“Yeah,” he said. “Just… thinking.”

She nodded. “About your meeting?”

He hesitated, then nodded.

She muted the TV and turned toward him fully. “Honey… if you’re nervous, that’s normal. You haven’t met someone new since—”

Her voice broke off, and she didn’t finish the sentence.

Since the fall.
Since Andrew.
Since everything.

Ivan picked at the corner of his sleeve.

“It’s not just nerves,” he said quietly. “It’s… I don’t know. I just really like working with them. It’s been the only thing that feels good this month.”

His mother’s expression softened so slowly it nearly melted.

“Then hold onto it,” she said. “Things like that matter more to you than you actually may think.”

He nodded, but the tightness in his chest still pulsed — the Tumour lingering in the corner where the hallway light didn’t reach. Watching. Always watching

When he lay in bed that night, staring at the water-stained ceiling, he replayed every line ANV had ever sent him. Every message. Every joke. Every feedback note. Every late-night brainstorm.

There was something there.
A familiarity he couldn’t name.

But he didn’t want to ruin it by overthinking.

He wanted to meet them.
He wanted to feel something besides pain and fear.
He wanted a day that didn’t end with him fighting to breathe.

A simple meeting.
A public place.
A friendly face.

He could do this.

He whispered into the darkness, “I can do this.”

Behind him, the Tumour shifted — a low ripple of movement at the edge of reality.

But for once, Ivan didn’t flinch.

He was tired of letting fear decide the shape of his life.

He closed his eyes.

And for the first time in a long time…
he felt something that wasn’t dread.

Something almost like anticipation.

Something almost like hope.

Something almost like he was ready to step into the world again — even if only for an hour, even if only to meet a stranger.

He didn’t know yet that the stranger wasn’t a stranger at all.

He didn’t know that the past was already walking toward him, wearing a new name, a new face, a new mask.

All he knew was this:

He was going to try.

And trying, for Ivan, was a rare and fragile victory.

Chapter Text

Morning drifted in without announcing itself, a pale sheet of light sliding through the crooked blinds of Ivan’s apartment. Dust floated in it like suspended snowfall, each tiny particle drifting at its own pace before sinking back into stillness. The apartment was always quiet at this hour — no humming of street traffic yet, no clattering pipes from the upstairs neighbour, no clunky noises from the elevator two doors down. Just the soft, empty echo of a space lived in by someone who rarely spoke above a hush.

Ivan sat on the edge of his bed, not fully awake and not fully asleep. His legs rested in front of him like they belonged to someone else, stretched out in the morning cold. He lifted his hands and rubbed them over his face, feeling the slow tension in his jaw, the familiar dryness in his eyes. His mind was slower today, softer, like his thoughts were wrapped in cotton.

Yesterday’s rehabilitation session lingered in the back of his skull like an echo. His muscles remembered the strain, the shaking, the burn. He remembered trying — genuinely trying — to stand. He remembered the bars beneath his hands, slick with the sweat of effort. His mother’s eyes glistening with hope and fear at the same time. The doctors, gentle but firm, like they were handling a cracked vase they refused to give up on. The pain. The trembling. The way his knees warned him before they even buckled.

And he remembered the moment — the smallest instant — where he realized something.

A quiet truth he didn’t want to say out loud yet.

He placed his hands on his thighs, fingertips pressing lightly into the fabric of his sweatpants. He waited. He imagined sending a signal. Move. Just a twitch. Just a millimeter. Just something.

But he felt… nothing.

He exhaled, long and slow.

Maybe this was what acceptance felt like — not a dramatic moment, not a breakdown, not anger or grief clawing up his throat — but this flat, heavy clarity. Like water settling after a storm.

He reached for his wheelchair, pulled it closer with practiced ease, and shifted into it. His body knew the motions well, too well. Muscle memory didn’t demand permission; it simply moved. He secured his seating and let his hands rest on the wheels.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t sigh dramatically. He didn’t break or snap or flinch.

He just… existed.

And that was scarier than falling apart.

His mother was already awake, the faint sound of dishes clinking drifting from the kitchen. Ivan rolled out slowly, wheels whispering across the floor.

She turned her head when she heard him approach. “Morning, sweetheart. I was just making tea. Want some?”

“Sure,” he said. His voice came out low, distant.

She paused halfway through pouring the water. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Just… thinking.”

That was always her cue to worry. He could see her shoulders tense in the way she angled the kettle, the slight downturn in her lips. But she didn’t press him — she’d learned, finally, to give him space when his thoughts turned inward.

Ivan parked near the kitchen table and rested his arms across the edge. He looked down at his legs again. There was no resentment, no fire of frustration like there used to be. Just a quiet sense of inevitability. A silent understanding.

His mother placed a mug beside him, steam brushing against his chin.

“You did good at the last appointment,” she said softly.

Ivan didn’t respond right away. He swallowed, feeling the warmth burn down his throat. “I tried.”

“You did more than try.”

He shrugged.

His mother hesitated, then took the seat across from him. Her voice dipped into something fragile. “They think you’ll make progress. I know you will.”

He blinked once. Twice. His fingers curled slightly around the mug’s handle.

“Mom… can I say something without you getting upset?”

Her breath caught — she always hated those sentences — but she nodded. “Of course. I’m listening.”

Ivan stared at his legs again, almost like he was mourning them from afar.

“I don’t think I’m going to walk again.”

The silence that followed felt like a wall collapsing, quietly and without debris.

His mother’s lips trembled. She wasn’t crying — not yet — but the grief in her eyes was sharp enough to cut through bone. “Ivan… baby… don’t say that. You don’t know that. The doctors said—”

“I know what they said,” he interrupted, gently. “I just… feel it.”

“Feel what?” Her voice cracked. “Defeat?”

“No.” He took a slow breath. “Reality.”

She covered her mouth. He wished she wouldn’t look at him like that — like he was disappearing in front of her.

“I’ll keep going to rehab,” he said. “I’m not giving up. I’m not just… lying down and accepting whatever. I’m still going to try.” His throat tightened. “But I can’t keep pretending that one day I’ll just stand up and everything will magically be fine again.”

His mother’s eyes dropped to the floor, her hands gripping the edges of her sweater. She looked small, like a worried child instead of the parent she was supposed to be.

“Everything changed for me,” Ivan said quietly. “My body changed. My future changed. I’m allowed to admit that, right?”

She nodded, but it was slow, hesitant, like each movement was pushing through water.

“I’m not saying I’m hopeless,” he murmured. “I’m just… accepting that things are different now. That maybe I won’t walk again. And that has to be okay eventually.”

His mother wiped her cheek. “It just hurts hearing you say it out loud.”

“I know,” he said. “It hurts saying it.”

Later that day, Ivan rolled himself into the living room. The air smelled like detergent — his mother had done laundry earlier. Faint warmth radiated from the dryer vents, filling the apartment with a homely, almost nostalgic scent.

He paused near the window, staring out at the street below. Kids walked by in uniforms, some dragging backpacks, some laughing, some running as if their legs were built for the sole purpose of carrying them forward easily, effortlessly. The sight didn’t sting the way it used to.

Instead, it felt distant. Like watching a memory instead of a wound.

He touched the glass. His reflection stared back at him — tired eyes, messy hair, thin frame, and legs that sat unnaturally still beneath him.

He didn’t hate what he saw.

He didn’t love it either.

But he accepted it.

For the first time.

A soft shift in the air pulled his attention. A shape — faint, like smoke trapped in the corner of his vision — hovered by the hallway. The Tumour. Not violent, not whispering, not clawing at him. Just… watching.

He didn’t flinch.

“What do you want?” he muttered.

It didn’t answer — it never truly answered — but it tilted its head in its usual, unnatural way. Observing him like he was a puzzle missing too many pieces.

“I’m not breaking today,” Ivan said under his breath. “So you can try someone else.”

The shadow didn’t move. Didn’t react. Just stayed there, its presence colder than the air around it.

Ivan took a steadying breath and rolled away. And the Tumour dissolved into the wall’s dimness like fog dispersing in sunlight.

In the afternoon, Ivan returned to his desk. The place where he wrote, where he could breathe a little easier. Blank pages didn’t judge him. Scripts didn’t ask uncomfortable questions. Stories didn’t care if he could stand or walk or run.

Words were the one place where he wasn’t disabled.

He sat there, fingers hovering above the keyboard. His thoughts drifted downward like slow snowfall. He didn’t think about Andrew. He didn’t think about the fall. He didn’t think about the accident, the pain, the months he lost in a hospital bed.

He thought about now. About himself. About the life he was still shaping, even if it didn’t look like the one he once imagined.

He typed a sentence. Then another. And another.

He wrote for an entire hour before stopping, only when he noticed tears sliding quietly down his jaw and landing on his hands.

Not sobs — not sharp and painful like before — just slow, soft tears, like his eyes were simply letting go of something heavy.

He wiped them away and kept typing.

By the time evening rolled around, Ivan was back in the kitchen, helping his mother peel vegetables from the chair. It was mundane, gentle, almost comforting. His mother kept glancing at him like she was still processing everything he’d said earlier, but she didn’t cry again. She didn’t try to force optimism or insist on miracles.

She just accepted his acceptance, the same way he was trying to accept his body.

Halfway through slicing carrots, she paused. “You know… even if you never walk again… it won’t change how proud I am of you.”

Ivan’s hand froze over the cutting board.

His throat tightened.

He swallowed hard. “Thanks,” he whispered.

It wasn’t enough. But it was all he could manage without falling apart again.

Later, when he lay in bed again, staring up at the ceiling in the dim glow of his nightlight, he didn’t feel defeated.

He didn’t feel broken.

He felt human.

And he let himself whisper something into the cold, still air:

“I can live like this. I can still be me.”

His legs didn’t answer. His muscles didn’t twitch. His nerves didn’t flicker to life.

But he didn’t need them to.

Not tonight.

Tonight wasn’t about walking.

Tonight was about standing — not on his feet, but within himself.

Chapter Text

Ivan woke to the faint shuffling of someone moving around the apartment — the quiet, purposeful noises only his mother made on mornings when responsibility outweighed sleep. Cabinet doors clicking open, the soft rustle of paper envelopes, the subtle creak of her wallet being overstuffed with documents she always forgot to remove.

He blinked against the dull morning light bleeding through the blinds, rubbing his eyelids until the room sharpened around him. His body felt heavy today — not just his legs, but everything: shoulders, lungs, thoughts.

His door nudged open.

“Sweetheart?” his mother whispered, poking her head through the crack. Her hair was hastily tied up, and the keys in her hand jingled from the tremor of rushing. “I have to go pay the lease. They’re already annoyed with us… I can’t put it off anymore.”

Ivan nodded slowly, pushing himself up into his chair. “Yeah. Okay.”

“I’ll be quick,” she promised, though they both knew she’d return overwhelmed and exhausted. “There’s leftover dinner in the fridge. I set your medication out for you on the counter so you don’t forget.”

He managed a small, tired nod. “Thanks. Be safe.”

“I’ll try,” she said, giving him one last appraising look — a mother’s instinct asking Are you okay? without needing to say it aloud — then slipped out the door. The lock clicked shut. Silence filled the apartment like settling dust.

Ivan let out a breath.

He rolled into the kitchen, rubbing his arms to shake off the early cold. The apartment was dim, only the low sun casting orange streaks across the tiles. His chair bumped softly against one of the kitchen drawers as he maneuvered toward the fridge.

He pulled out the leftover dinner — simple stir-fry his mother made last night — and the cold container fogged beneath his touch. He placed it in the microwave and pressed the familiar buttons.

As the microwave hummed its tired song, Ivan turned toward the counter.

And there they were:
His pills.
The small white ones he took every morning.

A glass of water sat beside them, already filled. His mother always did that. Just in case he forgot. Just in case he felt too tired to stand at the sink. Just in case the morning pain was too sharp.

He reached for the pills.

Then froze.

A cold pressure pressed against the side of his cheek.

Not wind.
Not breath.
Not imagination.

Something close.

He turned his head slowly — painfully slowly — and his entire body locked.

The Tumour stood inches from him.

Not across the room.
Not lurking in the periphery.
Not a whisper at the corner of his eye.

Right there.

Towering.
Shuddering at the edges.
A void stitched into the shape of a person.

Its face — or where a face should’ve been — leaned toward his. A pure blackness, deeper than shadow, darker than night. Like a hole ripped through reality itself.

And it was glaring at him.

Except voids don’t glare.
Voids consume.

Ivan’s breath caught so violently in his throat he let out a tiny, choked noise. He jerked back instinctively, but his chair bumped into the counter behind him, trapping him.

“Stop,” he whispered, trembling. “Please stop—”

The Tumour didn’t move.

Didn’t flicker.

Didn’t breathe.

It simply existed inches from him, radiating cold pressure that pressed into his bones.

Ivan reached blindly for the glass of water with shaking hands. His fingers hit the rim, slipped, and—

CRASH.

The glass shattered against the floor, shards scattering across the tiles. Water spread quickly, soaking into the cuff of his sweatpants. His pill skittered across the counter, teetered at the edge—

“No, no, no—”

And slipped.

Right down into the sink.

It bounced once, twice, then vanished straight into the dark metal drain.

Ivan’s stomach dropped.

His medication — the only thing keeping the Tumour from ripping through his senses — gone. Gone for the entire day. Gone until his mother returned. Gone while the Tumour stood inches from his face.

“No—please—” His voice broke. “I didn’t mean to—”

The Tumour leaned closer.

Ivan’s lungs collapsed inward. He tried to wheel back, but his fingers were shaking too violently to grip the rims. His chair jerked sideways, skidded against the counter, and trapped him between the edge of the sink and the opposite cabinet.

His breathing sharpened into short, violent bursts.

His chest tightened.

The walls felt too close.

The Tumour’s shape rippled — black static pulsing, like veins of shadow widening and narrowing. No eyes, yet somehow it looked like it was drinking in his fear with every tremor.

“I-Ivan… you’re okay…” he whispered to himself, words stumbling through shaking lips. “You’re fine, just—just breathe—”

But he couldn’t.

He couldn’t inhale.

He couldn’t exhale.

Air scraped against the back of his throat like glass shards, every breath shorter and faster until they weren’t breaths at all — just panicked spasms forcing their way out.

His hands clawed at his chest. His vision blurred. His ears rang. His skin felt like ice spreading beneath it.

The Tumour took one more step forward.

Ivan screamed.

Or tried to.

The sound barely made it out — a crushed, strangled breath — before his lungs seized again.

His body curled inward, not by choice but by panic.

The microwave beeped somewhere behind him, cheerful and oblivious. The smell of warm food drifted out, contrasting sharply with the cold terror freezing his veins.

His arms trembled violently. His fingers twitched uselessly against the rims of the chair. His head grew light, then heavy, then both at the same time.

He couldn’t think.

He couldn’t move.

He couldn’t breathe.

His heartbeat pounded against his skull like fists banging against a locked door.

The Tumour hovered now, looming over his slumped form, its empty blackness expanding — swelling — swallowing the space around him. The kitchen lights flickered once, twice, as if reacting to its presence.

“I… can’t…” he forced out, tears spilling uncontrollably. “Mom… Mom…”

But the apartment swallowed his voice.

Ivan slipped lower in his chair, muscles refusing to respond. His chest rose in short, frantic jerks. His vision thinned at the edges, a tunnel collapsing inward. His ears rang so loudly he couldn’t tell if he was screaming or silent.

The Tumour’s shadow stretched across the tiles, touching him, crawling up the wheels of his chair, slipping beneath him like cold, invasive fingers.

His body jerked with a violent sob.

And then another.

And then—

Nothing.

His breathing continued — barely — but his consciousness flickered, dimming like a candle struggling against wind. His limbs went limp. His head fell forward until his chin hit his collarbone.

He was still breathing, but he wasn’t there anymore.

The front door clicked open.

“Sweetheart? I’m back—” His mother’s voice was breathless, hurried. “The lease is paid, and—”

Her grocery bags hit the floor with a soft thud.

Ivan’s wheelchair was in the middle of the kitchen.

Ivan was slumped inside it. Head hanging. Chest rarely rising. Hands limp, fingers pale where the blood had drained from panic. His shirt soaked where water had splashed. Glass shards throughout the floor. His pill nowhere in sight.

And the look on his face —

Eyes wide and unfocused. Lips parted. Frozen in terror.

Her breath broke into pieces.

“Ivan?!”

She ran — nearly skidding on the water — but grabbed the chair, cupped his face with frantic hands, her voice cracking into desperate sobs.

“Ivan, baby, look at me—! Sweetheart, please—! Oh my god—!”

His eyes didn’t move.

His chest rose in shallow, irregular spasms.

His skin was cold.

His mother grabbed his hand, squeezing so tightly her knuckles whitened. “Please breathe. Please breathe for me—”

Ivan’s head lolled slightly, a tiny movement, but not conscious. Not deliberate. Not present.

She looked around wildly — at the glass, at the spilled water, at the empty sink drain — and then back to her son. “Oh god… Ivan, what happened—?”

She didn’t see the Tumour dissolve into the shadow behind her.

She didn’t see the last ripple of darkness evaporate beneath the cabinets.

She only saw her son — terrified beyond consciousness — and the world around him left in silent ruins.

The drive to the hospital barely registers for Ivan. His mother keeps one hand on the wheel and one hand locked around his, trying to keep him tethered to her voice. Every now and then she squeezes, her breath hitching when he doesn’t squeeze back. His chest still stings from the way it seized earlier, but now there’s just a strange emptiness — like his body ran out of ways to scream.

The hospital staff move quickly, but gently. A nurse kneels by his chair to check his fingers for glass, brushing over his palms with practiced patience. Another takes his pulse, counting under their breath, brow pulled tight but not alarmed. The room smells of disinfectant and steady routine.

Ivan doesn’t speak, but he watches them work. Somewhere in his head, shame curls tight. They’re all acting like everything is normal, like this is just another check on a chart — but he knows why he’s here. Because he panicked. Because he lost control. Because a glass slipped, and a pill slipped, and his whole system just collapsed.

But the doctors step back with a polite nod.
“No cuts. Oxygen levels are fine. He’s exhausted, but stable,” one of them assures his mother.
She nods too quickly, like she’s holding something heavy inside her mouth.

On the way back home, she keeps glancing at him — tiny, frantic looks — as if he might suddenly vanish from the passenger seat. He wants to say I’m fine. He wants to say I’m sorry.
But the words sit heavy on his tongue and go nowhere.

The apartment feels smaller when they return. His mother immediately ushers him to the couch like he’s fragile enough to crumble, and she practically runs into the kitchen. Pots, bowls, leftover containers — they all move with sharp, anxious clatters. She’s cooking like speed can undo the morning.

Ivan sits where she placed him, still slightly dissociated. The kitchen light catches the spot where the glass broke earlier. The shards are gone, but he can see the memory replay perfectly: the water, the glittering break, the pill disappearing forever. His stomach tightens, but he pushes the thought away and focuses on staying present.

His mother finally emerges with a plate of food — real food, warm, fresh, made too quickly but still carefully prepared. She sets it in front of him with trembling hands.

“Eat,” she says, but her voice cracks like she didn’t mean for anyone to hear it.

He nods. He tries.
But the smell, the memory, the weight in his chest — nothing lets him take a single bite. His throat feels too tight, his entire body too tired.

She notices. She doesn’t push him, but her eyes fall, her shoulders sink, and she takes the plate away with a defeated kind of softness.

He lets her guide him to his bed. The blankets feel heavy and safe. He sinks into them without resisting, barely managing to roll onto his side before the exhaustion starts pulling him under.

His mother thinks he’s asleep when she steps out into the living room. But the apartment is small. Walls are thin. Ivan lies still, staring into the dim ceiling as her pacing starts — slow at first, then frantic.

Her voice, low and strained, slips through the air:
“…my fault… should’ve been here… he was alone… how could I leave him alone…”

Every sentence makes his stomach twist.
He wants to get up, to tell her no, to tell her it wasn’t her fault at all — but his limbs won’t move, and his chest feels like it’s locked shut. He can’t even call out.

He just listens, eyes stinging, body sinking deeper into the mattress. Eventually he turns onto his side, pulling the blanket up over his ears. It doesn’t block out her pacing, or her muttering, or the guilt that hits him square in the ribs.

He closes his eyes anyway.
Sleep drags him under not because he’s calm, but because he’s simply worn down — wrung out completely.

And for the first time in weeks, the darkness feels easier than staying awake.

Chapter Text

Night draped itself over the shoebox apartment like a heavy wool blanket, thick and scratchy against the skin. The single lamp beside Ivan’s bed hummed, the bulb flickering with that low, wounded heartbeat it always seemed to have near the end of its lifespan. Shadows breathed gently along the walls. The world outside was quiet in a way that felt more like a warning than peace.

Ivan lay on his back, blankets pulled up only to his waist, his legs stiff under the fabric—useless, faithful, familiar weights. His mother had checked on him three times already. She’d tucked the covers around him, then apologized for doing it, then apologized for apologizing. Her footsteps had paced the thin carpet. The soft, cracking tremble in her breath had told him she’d cried in the hallway when she thought he couldn’t hear.

The apartment finally fell silent.

And that left Ivan alone. Truly alone.
Alone with the one thing that had been haunting him more than the Tumour, more than the shattered glass and the drained medication, more than the faint soreness in his ribs from earlier panic:

Tomorrow.
Tomorrow he would meet “ANV.SQ26.”

He stared up at the ceiling until the ridges of old paint stopped looking like ridges and more like rivers—fractured little maps splitting into tributaries, flowing down toward the corners of the room. His chest rose and fell too quickly at first, then settled into something steadier, though shallow.

His mind wouldn’t shut up.

What if they hate me?
What if I’m too quiet? Too awkward? Too… broken?
What if they see the wheelchair and their first reaction is pity? Or disappointment? Or—worse—recognition?

Because somewhere, deep beneath bone and breath and the cheap sheets clinging to his skin, he felt it:

Something about them had always sounded familiar.

Their typing quirks.
The way they paused before sending long paragraphs.
Their habit of scrapping half their ideas and rewriting them three times.
Their sense of humour—dry, but thoughtful.
Their empathy in small, strange places, like they knew exactly when to pull back and when to lean in.

And the timing.
God, the timing.

He’d met “ANV.SQ26” or who he'd Anv for short, after weeks of spiralling again, after the physical therapy session that left him shaking, after the nightmarish reappearance of the Tumour in the corner of his vision. After nights spent wondering if he had any place in the world except the one he wrote on his computer screen.

And then this person had shown up—bright, warm, excited about his writing. They talked to him like he was still… him. Like he hadn’t broken—no, shattered—over the past few years.

He hated how much that meant to him.

He hated how much he looked forward to the little message notifications.

He hated—though maybe “feared” was the better word—how much this meeting mattered.
How much this stranger mattered.

He turned slowly onto his side, wincing as the movement tugged at his muscles. The lamp glow spilled across his desk where one sticky note—crumpled, yellowed—stared back at him with as much accusation as a note could have:

Saturday, 2:00 PM
Meet ANV.
(Remember to breathe, idiot.)

Ivan let out a small, broken laugh.
Not a happy one.
Not really a sad one either.
More the kind that comes out when there’s too much inside and nowhere to put it.

He pressed a hand over his eyes, swallowing hard.

Because there was something else.
Something darker, something he didn’t dare put words to—not aloud, not even in his own journal.

What if he got attached again?

What if this person became another Andrew in his life?

Another pedestal he would worship from the ground up.
Another echo of someone who once made the world feel bright, only to later rip it apart.
Another person who would walk into his life with gentle hands and then leave him standing at the edge of a building with nothing but the weight of absence in his chest.

A whisper of shame curled through him like smoke.

He shouldn’t compare.
He shouldn’t still care about Andrew at all.
He shouldn’t feel that ghostly warmth in the hollow of his ribs when he remembered how Andrew used to call him “genius” whenever a script actually compiled without errors.

He shouldn’t—
He shouldn’t—
He shouldn’t—

But he did.

And tomorrow, he’d sit across from a stranger who typed like Andrew used to type, who thought like Andrew used to think, who carried that same spark in conversation that once made Ivan feel like he was actually worth talking to.

His pulse rattled against his throat.
His stomach flipped, sour and tense.
He felt small again, like he was 17 and trembling on a rooftop with old guilt burning his lungs.

“What if he’s just like him?” Ivan whispered to the dark.

The shadows didn’t answer.
The hum of the lamp didn’t comfort.
The room didn’t shrink, but it felt like it did.

He turned onto his back again and stared at the ceiling until the cracks blurred. He tried grounding himself like his therapist taught him—five things he could see, four he could touch, three he could hear—but everything around him just looped back to the same questions.

Would tomorrow be good?
Would it be terrible?
Would it change nothing?
Would it change everything?

Would “Anv” see him as Ivan?

Or as a broken body in a chair?

Or somehow- would they see the version of him he used to be, the one who dreamed big, who laughed easily, who believed in collaboration and friendship and future?

His eyes stung suddenly.
He wasn’t even sure when it started.

He lifted a trembling hand and pressed his knuckles to his mouth, swallowing the tight ache swelling in his throat.

“I just… don’t want to mess this up,” he whispered.
The smallest confession.
The biggest fear.

Because if this person walked out of his life, If tomorrow went wrong. If the Tumour returned again, louder, hungrier-If the fragile little hope he’d been holding onto snapped—

He didn’t know what he’d do.

He didn’t know if he’d have the strength to start over again.
Or try again.
Or try at all.

Ivan closed his eyes tightly, forcing his breath to slow, counting the seconds until the shaking in his chest softened.

Tomorrow was coming whether he wanted it or not.

He wasn’t ready.
He wished he was.
He wished he felt brave.

But all he could do now was lie in the dark, listening to his mother finally settle into her own bed across the apartment, and wonder who “ANV.SQ26” truly was-

And whether meeting them would be the start of something healing…
or the beginning of another heartbreak he wasn’t sure he’d survive.

Chapter Text

Three days passed in a strange, stretched-out haze. Not quite peaceful, not quite tense — just a quiet, vibrating anticipation that seemed to pulse beneath every hour. Ivan found himself slipping into cycles of restless half-sleep and jittery wakefulness, the upcoming meetup with ANV.SQ26 simmering in the back of his mind like a pot left on low heat.

He didn’t know why he was nervous.
Or — no. He did.
He was terrified of wanting something again.

Because wanting meant hope, and hope meant a fall if it slipped from under him.

And he’d fallen enough for a lifetime.

Still, the day finally arrived. A faint grey morning, sky washed with a dim palette of clouds. Ivan’s mother stayed unusually quiet while helping him get ready, her movements soft and careful like she didn’t want to startle him. She’d been doing that more often since the kitchen incident — walking as if the floor beneath her might crumble.

She laid out his clothes, brushed through his hair when his fingers shook too much, set his bag gently onto his lap like wrapping fragile glass.

“You’re… excited,” she finally said, the slightest trembling hope in her voice. “Aren’t you?”

Ivan couldn’t lie.
He nodded.

Her smile twitched, almost breaking with relief.

The café ANV had chosen was a small, locally owned place near the centre plaza — close enough to be public, far enough to avoid big crowds. The car ride felt longer than usual, even though it was barely ten minutes. Every bump in the road seemed to echo through Ivan’s heartbeat.

His mother tried to chat a few times, but all her words sounded distant, muffled by the thick fog of his spiraling thoughts.

What if they don’t like me?
What if I disappoint them?
What if they recognise me?
No—not possible. They can’t know. They can’t.

And yet a cold dread crept down his spine every time the name ticked across his mind:

ANV.
Andrew.?

He shook his head.
Coincidence.
It had to be.

His mother parked the car, stepped out, and wheeled him toward the front of the café.

“You’ll be okay?” she asked quietly.

He nodded again, though his throat felt tight.

“I’ll be right across the street if you need me. I promise.”

She gave one last squeeze to his shoulder before leaving him by the entrance — not too close, not too far. Just enough for him to feel held without being hovered over.

The café buzzed with a soft, warm noise — espresso machines humming, spoons clinking, chairs dragging quietly across wooden floors. Ivan let his eyes drift across the room.

People laughed.
Talked.
Existed without fear.

He swallowed the jealousy down.

His wheels clicked softly along the floor as he moved deeper inside, toward the small corner table ANV had suggested. It was empty — clean, simple, and terrifyingly real. He parked there, hands already trembling, and began waiting.

A minute passed.
Then two.
Then ten.

He inhaled, trying to steady the trembling in his chest. Maybe they’re running late. Maybe they're nervous too. He let his gaze wander, studying the various décor pieces on the walls, anything to keep himself grounded.

Then his throat tightened.

The Tumour.

It flickered in the reflection of a hanging metal light fixture — just a shape, a smear of black forming a hollow outline behind him. No eyes, no face, just a wordless presence leaning forward from a corner of his vision.

Ivan jerked his head away.
It remained in the reflection.

“Please,” he whispered under his breath, “not now… please, not today.”

The shadow didn’t speak.
It never did when the medication was still fresh in his system.
It only watched.

He shut his eyes until it disappeared from the edges.

He moved toward the drink dispensers on the opposite wall, telling himself a drink would help — sugar, warmth, anything to distract the rising panic. His wheels creaked slightly on the wood flooring as he approached, reaching out shakily to grab one of the cheap paper cups.

It slipped from his fingers once.
Twice.

“Get it together…” he muttered to himself.

He bent carefully, retrieved the cup, and lifted it up to the machine.

But before pressing the button, he paused.

A familiar voice — low, warm, slightly deeper than years ago — drifted from somewhere to his left. Not close, but not far either. A tone he’d heard a thousand times through late-night calls and game debugging sessions. The voice that had once been his comfort and his home.

His shoulders stiffened.

His heartbeat spiked.

He didn’t dare turn.

Instead, he pretended to focus on the machine, his hand hovering over the dispenser button.

But he felt it.

A presence.
A weight.
Someone standing just a little too close behind him.

And then —

“…Ivan?”

His blood ran cold.

No.
No, no, no—
It couldn’t be—

He turned his head slowly, breath locked somewhere deep in his lungs.

And there he was.

Andrew stood barely a meter away, a paper cup in his hand, his eyes wide with the unmistakable shock of recognition. He looked almost exactly the same — messy hair, that familiar tired brightness in his gaze, the slightly hunched posture of someone who’d spent too many nights staring at code.

He looked older, sadder, realer.

His mouth parted slowly.

“Holy shit,” he whispered. “It… it really is you.”

The world around Ivan blurred into a distant ringing.
The Tumour vanished entirely — replaced by a much more terrifying reality.

Ivan’s grip slipped from the paper cup.
It hit the floor with a soft, pathetic sound.

And for the first time in years, Ivan couldn’t breathe for a completely different reason.

Not fear.
Not trauma.

But the overwhelming, earth-cracking shock of seeing the one person he had both loved and lost — standing in front of him again, in a cheap café, holding a cup of warm coffee like fate had been waiting patiently for both of them to return.

Chapter Text

It was Andrew.

No username. No Roblox avatar.
Not ANV.SQ26.
Not the abstract ghost of a memory.

Just… Andrew.

Ivan’s breath dropped out of his body like a stone in dark water. His chest locked instantly. His fingers curled so hard around the wheel handles his knuckles whitened. Every thought scattered in an instant, replaced by a buzzing so loud it could’ve been the earth splitting in half.

Andrew didn’t move either. His face paled in real time, eyes widening, throat bobbing as if he’d just swallowed broken glass. His hand dropped uselessly to his side, the drink lid clicking out of the dispenser and rolling on the ground without him noticing.

They stared at each other like deer who had both wandered into oncoming traffic.

Ivan wheezed. Andrew flinched at the sound, taking half a step back, then forward again—conflicted, panicked, unable to choose whether to run or stay. His jaw trembled as if he wanted to speak but had forgotten how.

Ivan’s lungs spasmed. His diaphragm clenched. That familiar, horrid sensation of my lungs aren’t developed enough for this life slammed into him. He tried to inhale, but his throat only stuttered, hitching and collapsing in on itself like a punctured balloon.

Andrew made a sound—something quiet, sharp, fearful—but didn’t move toward him. He couldn’t. His body was frozen. Completely locked. Fight-or-flight had chosen neither: he was stuck in the awful, trembling middle.

And then Ivan’s wheelchair lurched.

A small hand slapped onto the handle behind him.

“COOL!!!” a little girl shrieked. “MUMMY LOOK! HE HAS A REAL CHAIR WITH WHEELS! IS IT LIKE A RIDE?! CAN I TRY?!”

Ivan’s pupils blew wide with terror.

He couldn’t talk.
He couldn’t even breathe.
He couldn’t manage a single sound of protest.

But the child didn’t care. She grabbed the handles with the unfiltered enthusiasm of a spoiled kid who had never been told “no” and began rocking the chair back and forth.

Hard.

Ivan’s torso whipped with the motion, his hands slipping off the wheels. His backpack smacked against the backrest with each aggressive jerk. His vision blurred.

Andrew took a stuttering half-step forward, eyes horrified—but still frozen, shaking like his legs had been drained of strength.

“Sweetheart—stop that!” the girl’s mother yelled from somewhere nearby, but the child only screamed louder.

“LET ME SIT IN IT!! I WANNA DRIVE!!!”

The rocking grew harsher. Violent.

Ivan’s lungs failed to inflate. His chest squeezed itself into a painful knot. He tried to raise a hand, to push the girl away, anything—but his arm shook uselessly at his side.

His mother, from across the plaza, recognized the sound—that sound—and dropped everything she was holding.

“Ivan—IVAN!”

She started running.

But the child pushed again—too hard this time—and the wheelchair jerked backwards.

The wheel hit the lip of the sidewalk.

And suddenly gravity shifted.

Ivan’s world tilted.

He could hear cars.
He could hear the wind of passing traffic.
He could hear Andrew’s breathless, panicked gasp—
But his body was sliding backwards, toward the edge.

Andrew snapped out of his paralysis.
Finally.

“I—IVAN!” he shouted. His voice cracked.

Chapter Text

Andrew didn’t think—he moved. One moment he was rooted to the concrete, lungs locked and hands trembling uselessly at his sides; the next he was sprinting across the pavement, shoving past bewildered bystanders as Ivan’s wheelchair teetered dangerously near the drop-off of the curb. The world funnelled into one thin, brutal line: Ivan tipping back, the wheels skidding, that small terrified sound caught in his throat.

“Ivan!”
It ripped out of Andrew like a reflex, raw and cracking.

With barely a second to spare, Andrew dove forward. His hands clamped around Ivan’s upper arms—too tightly, too suddenly—but it was the only thing keeping Ivan from going over with the chair. Ivan’s body jolted violently in his grip, breath punching out of his lungs, but Andrew didn’t let go. He hauled him back, stumbling several steps until his knees nearly gave from pure adrenaline.

The empty wheelchair didn’t survive.

As soon as Ivan was clear of it, the chair—still rocking from the little girl’s last shove—rolled backwards, wheels spinning like frantic insects. It slipped off the curb, landing directly in the path of an incoming car.

The impact was instant.

A hard, sickening CRACK exploded through the street as the vehicle collided with the wheelchair. Metal twisted like tinfoil. Plastic arms and spokes scattered across the road in a violent spray, some pieces clattering and bouncing all the way to the opposite pavement. The driver slammed on the brakes too late, tires screaming against asphalt. The smell of burnt rubber filled the air.

Every noise around them collapsed into silence.

Bystanders froze mid-step, mid-sentence, mid-breath—some with hands covering their mouths, others instinctively reaching toward their phones, unsure whether to record or call emergency services. A few parents pulled their children closer. Even the little girl who had started the chaos seemed stunned speechless, staring wide-eyed at the debris littering the street.

And in the center of all that stillness stood Andrew and Ivan.

Andrew’s chest heaved, breath coming in ragged, disorganized gulps as he held Ivan’s body against his own—one arm wrapped around Ivan’s back, the other gripping his arm so tightly his knuckles were white. He couldn’t loosen his hold. Not yet. Maybe not ever. His fingers felt like they were welded into Ivan’s sleeves.

Ivan wasn’t doing much better.

His own breathing was sharp, shallow, uneven—more like panicked gasps than real breaths. His eyes were wide and unfocused, pupils blown with fear. His hands twitched uselessly against Andrew’s chest as if trying to understand what had just happened, trying to anchor himself in a body he no longer trusted.

His wheelchair—his only mobility—was gone. Obliterated.

A fresh wave of terror shook through him, so powerful that his torso convulsed, and his legs—those fragile, uncooperative limbs—felt like dead weight hanging off him. He might’ve collapsed if Andrew hadn’t been holding him.

“Ivan, hey—hey, look at me,” Andrew breathed, voice trembling so hard it barely formed words. “I’ve got you. You’re okay, you’re okay, I promise”

Ivan's gaze flickered upward for half a second, meeting Andrew’s eyes—those same eyes he hadn’t seen in what felt like a lifetime—before panic dragged his focus away again. His ribs shuddered violently. Every breath sounded like it cut him on the way in.

Someone in the crowd whispered, “That car would’ve hit him…”

Another whispered, “He would’ve died.”

Andrew heard every word. His heart clenched so painfully he nearly buckled.

He tightened his grip around Ivan—not harshly, but protectively, instinctively. Ivan could feel it: the shaking under Andrew’s skin, the desperate steadiness of his hands. He was holding Ivan like he mattered. Like losing him would’ve ended the world.

Because the truth was written all over Andrew’s face.

He was just as terrified as Ivan was.

And around them, the entire street seemed to hold its breath—watching the two of them, shaken, tangled together on the sidewalk, standing at the thin, trembling edge of a disaster that almost wasn’t avoided.