Chapter Text
“I don’t know what to do anymore,” Pierre said, his voice fraying despite the restraint he forced upon it.
His eyes were exhausted, hollowed not by sleeplessness alone, but by a longer, quieter despair.
“I know you think I betrayed you,” he continued. “But I swear to you– by my last breath, if I have one l– I did not. I did not betray you.”
The words came softly, deliberately, as though he were already rehearsing them for a final moment.
The ginger stood opposite him, framed by the half open door.
For a fleeting instant, he wanted to reach for Pierre to draw him close, to gather him into his arms and press him there until the trembling stopped. To cradle him, not merely against his chest, but beneath his skin, where grief and loyalty had once lived together without contradiction.
He knew Pierre would have wished for that too.
But he did not move.
The accusation was never fully spoken, yet everywhere present hung between them like a sentence already passed. Its bitterness was enough to keep his hands at his sides.
The door remained ajar.
“I love you,” Pierre said suddenly. “I’m sorry. I’m tired.”
A pause.
“I’m going to sleep now.”
The words were wrong.
They did not wound but they unsettled. They arrived out of place, stripped of warmth, carrying a strange, feeling of end.
The ginger felt the dissonance immediately.
Pierre’s calm was unnatural.
His withdrawal was too complete, too deliberate. It was not peace; it was a mix of resignation and hopelessness.
The door began to close.
Something inside the ginger resisted.
He tightened his grip on the edge of the door, fingers digging into the wood, refusing to let it shut. He turned sharply, compelled by an instinct he could no longer ignore.
And then he saw it.
A rope its shadow stretched long and golden against the wall.
A chair placed beneath it, waiting.
“No,” he breathed. Then, louder, breaking, “No–no—no.”
He pushed past Pierre and into the room, shaking his head violently, as though denial alone might undo what stood before him.
But it did not.
There was a hanging rope. And a chair under. Meaning this commitment was about to be done.
Not a thought. But a decision.
The rope hung there, prepared.
The chair stood ready.
Everything was real. Terrifyingly real.
The ginger turned back to Pierre, his voice unsteady now. “Why?”
Pierre lifted his gaze.
Blue eyes met his not pleading, not fearful, but distant, already elsewhere. No words rushed to his lips. No apology followed.
At last, slowly, he spoke.
“You believe I betrayed you,” he said.
A pause.
“And I cannot survive that.”