"I was wrong." My voice is raw. Stripped. The voice underneath the voice. "I was so wrong."
She eyes me. "You were a controlling ass."
"Yes."
"You nearly got me killed."
"Yes,” I wince at that one.
"You packed my bag. You chose for me. You did exactly what my father did."
"Yes."
She waits. I don't defend. Don't explain. Don't offer the tactical justification that my mind wants to build because justification is the language of the man who packed the bag and I am trying, in this factory, in this blood, to be someone else.
"I want you to trust me. To treat me like a partner. NEVER make a decision about my life without asking me."
"Done."
"I want to stand beside you. Even when it's dangerous. Especially when it's dangerous."
"Done."
"I want to know everything. No secrets. No protecting me from information."
"Done. All of it. Done."
Her voice breaks. The first crack in a composure she's held for six hours in a chair and four days on a mountain and nine days of rage.
"I want to go home."
I cross the distance. Pull her into my arms. She presses her face against my chest and the blood on my shirt doesn't matter because she's alive and I'm alive and the war is over, and I can feel her breathing against me and the rhythm of it is the only sound that has ever made the world bearable.
"I love you. I should have said it every day instead of sending you away."
"You're going to say it every day now."
"Every day. I swear."
She pulls back. Looks at me. Her face changes. The relief shifts. Something else rises underneath it. Resolve.Determination. The expression of a woman who has been carrying a weight for fourteen days and is about to set it down.
"Nico." Her voice is careful. Steady. The voice she uses when the information matters too much for imprecision. "There's something I have to tell you."
My chest tightens. Expecting a new threat. Another betrayal discovered. Another piece of this war that hasn't finished detonating.
"I'm pregnant."
Two words, and the factory disappears.
The bodies. The glass. The blood on my hands. The soldiers securing the perimeter. The overhead light. All of it falls away and there is only her face, pale and exhausted and certain, and the two words that rewrite every moment of the last fourteen days.
"You're—"
"Pregnant. Yes."
I drop to my knees.
Not from weakness. Not from injury. From the weight. The sheer, crushing, reconstructive weight of what she's just said. My knees hit the concrete and the impact barely registers because my mind is unspooling backward through every moment I missed.