The hum of Red’s refurbished unit had settled into something gentle over the past year, no longer the cold, hollow echo of a place meant for surviving, but the quiet warmth of a space that someone had started to live in again. The overhead lights glowed soft and amber, adjusted exactly to her tolerance. The air recyclers throbbed at a steady rhythm instead of coughing unevenly. Even the floor felt different now, padded with the cheap but comfortable mats Zoey insisted on buying.
Zoey sat in the middle of it all like she owned the room, slouched back in Red’s reinforced chair with her boots propped against the far wall. A half-disassembled MG7X lay across her lap, components scattered in a messy horseshoe around her. She hummed off-key to whatever beat she imagined existed, flicking a tiny part between her fingers before deciding she didn’t actually know where it went. She shrugged.
Red watched her without watching her, curled sideways on the bed with her tablet resting against her knee. Her posture was loose, her breathing slow and even, her guard down in ways she almost never allowed anywhere else. The faint warmth of Zoey’s presence, the weight of her, the sound of her, made the whole unit feel less like a bunker and more like a den.
“Hey,” Zoey muttered around a bit of metal she’d clenched in her teeth, “if this thing explodes next time I fire it, it’s not my fault. Some asshole must’ve put it together wrong.”
Red didn’t look up. “You put it together wrong.”
“Yeah, well,” Zoey said, spitting the part into her palm, “someone had to.”
Red’s muzzle twitched, the soft, involuntary almost-smile Zoey was always too pleased to catch. The warmth of that moment lingered just long enough for Red’s mind to wander, drifting over the past year, the small repairs they’d made, the rhythm they’d built.
And then Zoey, in her usual oblivious confidence, muttered,
“Hey, remember that job you did? The one with the faulty guild intel?”
A harmless question. No weight behind it.
But Red froze.
It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t even visible at first. It was a subtle, sharp internal jolt, the kind that made her chest tighten and her breath shorten, like a cold hand pressing against her spine. Her tablet dimmed as her thumb slipped off the screen. Something old and sour crawled up from the back of her memory, uncoiling through her nerves.
She had never canceled that contract.
The realization hit hard enough that her hands started trembling before she could stop them. Not shaking in panic, something quieter, older. A dull return of the feeling she thought she had buried under months of repairs, new lighting, new furniture, new routine. She swallowed once, but it didn’t clear anything.
Zoey didn’t miss it.
Her boots dropped to the floor with a thud.
“Red?” Her voice softened instantly, a tone she reserved for maybe three people and two of them were dead.
Red tried to inhale, slow and controlled, but the air snagged in her throat. “I… forgot something,” she managed. “About that contract.”
Zoey leaned forward, elbows on her knees, all attention on her. Not impatient, not prying, just there. An anchor. “Talk to me.”
Red’s eyes drifted to the floor. “I never closed it. Never terminated the job. It’s still active in the Guild system.” Her voice wavered, thin around the edges. “The smuggler’s den wasn’t marked unresolved. It was marked in-progress.”
A thick silence followed. Zoey didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. Anger didn’t explode out of her, it condensed, heavy and electric, brightening her already-burning eyes.
“Those people,” Red whispered, “they’re still logged as my target. Like I’m supposed to finish it. Like nothing happened.”
Zoey’s jaw flexed. Not in annoyance, in fury. A clean, sharpened fury that had nothing to do with her own ego and everything to do with what had been done to Red. She rose from the chair, the plates of her prosthetic arms clicking softly as she rested them against the table.
“Red.” Her voice was low, even, but the air around her seemed to thrum. “You told me what they did. And now you’re telling me the Guild thinks that job is still open like it’s paperwork?”
Red wrapped her arms around herself, not tightly, just enough to steady the tremor in her fingers. “I didn’t think it mattered anymore. I didn’t—”
Zoey stepped closer, lowering her head to catch Red’s gaze. “It matters. And we’re fixing it.”
Red blinked up at her. “…We?”
Zoey’s anger sharpened into something proud, dangerous, and unmistakably protective. “Yeah. You’re not doing that alone. Not ever again.” She placed one hand on Red’s shoulder, gentle, careful despite the strength behind it. “We’re completing the contract, sweetheart. On your terms.”
Red didn’t smile. Didn’t relax. But her posture changed, a tiny shift inward toward Zoey, a quiet acceptance.
Zoey squeezed once, then stepped back. “Get your armor ready.”
Red nodded.
The warmth of the room remained, but now it glowed around a new center of gravity, heavier and hotter.
Justice was coming, and Zoey was already moving toward it.
Zoey didn’t wait for Red to gather herself. She didn’t need to. The decision had already been made the moment Red admitted the truth, and Zoey moved with the restless, purposeful energy of someone who refused to let the world take another inch from the woman in front of her.
She crossed the room in three heavy strides, pulling open the gear locker Red kept bolted into the wall. Tools clattered. Weapon mounts snapped open. The room filled with the muted metallic thrum of readiness. But Zoey didn’t touch Red’s weapons; she only cleared space, laying things out in neat rows with a kind of reverence she’d never admit to.
Red rose from the couch slowly, feeling the aftershocks of the memory but not drowning in them this time. The outline of Zoey’s silhouette, tall, broad, impossibly solid, steadied her in a way nothing else ever had. She approached her own armor station with deliberate movements, letting her mind shift from remembrance into preparation.
Zoey watched but didn’t interrupt. “You want help with the back plates?” she asked, tone casual, warm, familiar.
Red shook her head. “I’ve got it.”
“Good,” Zoey murmured, and turned back to her own gear.
Her Titan suit stood against the wall, ten and a half feet of red-and-black metal shaped around the outline of something halfway between a warrior and a monster. The crystalline core pulsed dimly behind its chest aperture, casting faint red light across the unit. Zoey approached it like she always did, not reverent, but possessive, like greeting an old, dangerous friend.
She tapped the controls with her prosthetic fingers. The hard-light systems flickered awake. The visor slid open with a hiss. The air pressure changed as internal seals equalized. Zoey grinned, sharp and eager.
Red, turning aside, focused on her own armor, angled composite plating, matte grey, reinforced around the joints, a system built for maneuverability and endurance rather than brute force. She lifted the torso piece and slipped into it with a practiced motion, the locking points snapping shut around her hips and ribs. The familiar weight grounded her. The helmet sat waiting on the shelf, dark visor reflecting the steady glow of Zoey’s Titan.
Zoey glanced over her shoulder. “Need me to double-check your seals once we’re in the Mantis?”
“Yes,” Red admitted quietly. “Please.”
Zoey’s expression softened instantly. “Done.”
The air between them settled into a quiet rhythm, the kind of silence they had earned after a year of learning each other’s pace, each other’s breathing, each other’s fault lines. Zoey didn’t pry. Red didn’t explain. They simply worked side by side, a practiced symmetry emerging from shared intent.
By the time Zoey climbed into the Titan, the room trembled with its weight. The exo-frame sealed around her arms, her shoulders, her spine, locking each component in place with a heavy clunk. The glowing HUD visor dropped over her face with a wash of amber light. She flexed her hands once; the suit responded like an extension of her own body.
“Alright,” Zoey said, voice amplified slightly through the suit’s modulator. “Let’s go ruin someone’s whole night.”
Red slid her helmet on, her voice filtering through the comm interface with a calm she didn’t entirely feel. “You’re enjoying this too much.”
“Nah.” Zoey’s visor tilted toward her. “I’m enjoying the company.”
Red’s chest warmed despite herself.
They exited the unit together, stepping into the dim corridors of the sublevel. Zoey’s Titan made the floorplates rattle. Red kept pace with her, small and quiet beside a walking war machine but somehow never overshadowed by it.
The Mantis waited for them in its alcove, massive, armored, the engine humming like a beast eager to run. Zoey climbed into the driver’s seat; Red took the co-seat, connecting her helmet to the interior system with a small magnetic click. The cabin lights dimmed automatically to Red’s preferred levels.
Zoey set her hands on the controls. “You good?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’re rolling.”
The Mantis lurched forward, smooth and heavy, pulling into the lower tunnels before rising toward the outskirts. The city’s glow filtered through the viewports in fractured patterns. The ride was quiet. Not tense. Not nervous. Just quiet in the way shared conviction always was.
Red stared out the window. Zoey spared her a glance every so often, but never pushed her to talk, never demanded reassurance. Red didn’t need to say she was ready; she had put on the armor. Zoey didn’t need to say she was with her; she had put on the Titan.
Ahead of them, the structure that concealed the old service hatch loomed into view.
Zoey cut the engine.
“Your call,” she said softly.
Red opened her door. “Let’s end this.”
The service hatch sat half-hidden beneath a derelict industrial block, the same metal slab Red had forced open more than a year ago, the same entry to the place she had crawled out of bleeding and half-conscious. The rust around its edges looked the same. The air smelled the same. Even the faint hum of the old maintenance conduit felt unchanged, as though time refused to touch this corner of Sigma City.
Red approached it slowly, her boots soundless against the concrete. Zoey trailed a few steps behind, the Titan Vulpes’ heavy frame vibrating through the ground with each step. She didn’t move ahead, didn’t try to take point, she stayed at Red’s back, letting her lead the way into the shadows she had once escaped alone.
Red stopped in front of the hatch. Her gloved hand hovered for a moment, fingers trembling just once before she curled them into a fist and forced the motion steady. She pressed her palm against the lock plate. The old mechanism buzzed. Then clicked. The hatch cracked open with a long, metallic groan.
A breath slipped out of her. Not relief, an acknowledgment.
She stepped through.
Zoey waited half a beat, then followed, ducking beneath the frame as flakes of loosened concrete rained off the doorway.
The corridor swallowed Red immediately. Narrow. Industrial. The same choking fluorescence overhead. The pipes along the ceiling rattled softly with the same vibration she remembered from that night. Every detail pressed against her mind, sharp enough to raise the ghost of old panic, but she didn’t stop. She tightened her grip on her rifle and walked deeper.
Zoey stayed several paces back, giving her space, giving her ownership.
Red reached the first turn in the corridor.
She barely made it two more steps.
Figures emerged from the shadows in a synchronized sweep, rifles raised from every angle. Half a dozen on the left. More on the right. Two on the catwalk above. Armored, masked, poised, but not disciplined enough to hide their smirks.
Red stopped cold, her rifle halfway raised before she realized how badly she was outnumbered. They had been waiting. Watching. Expecting her.
One of them stepped closer, gun leveled at her visor. “Well, look who crawled back.”
Another snorted. “Thought we dumped you in the gutter ,for good.”
A third voice cut in from above, dripping contempt. “You come alone this time, freak? Didn’t learn your lesson?”
Red’s pulse didn’t spike. Her breathing didn’t break. But something deep inside her curled inward for a moment, a reflex carved into her bones from the night they dragged her through these halls.
Her fingers tightened around her rifle.
Then she straightened.
“I’m not alone this time.”
The ceiling exploded.
Concrete and steel burst downward in a violent eruption, showering the corridor in debris. The shockwave rattled every wall panel. Red threw one arm over her head on instinct, a small, involuntary motion she hated the moment it happened , but the instinct faded as a massive red-and-black silhouette dropped through the collapsing ceiling.
The Titan Vulpes landed like a meteor.
The floor buckled. Dust billowed in a choking cloud. Chunks of rebar skidded across the ground.
For one stunned heartbeat, the guards froze.
Then Zoey lifted her head, visor glowing through the dust.
“Hi.”
The corridor erupted into gunfire.
Rifles barked from every direction, muzzle flashes strobing the walls. Bullets hammered into Zoey’s armor, sparking off the plating, bouncing harmlessly from the kinetic dispersion fields. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t stumble. She didn’t even raise an arm in defense.
She charged.
Her first step crushed someone’s knee with an audible crack. Her second tore a turret from the ceiling and flung it into the catwalk above. A gas canister rolled across the floor toward her — she stomped it flat before it even hissed, the compressed cartridge exploding uselessly under her heel.
Red pivoted aside, instinctively clearing herself from the blast radius as Zoey’s rampage tore through the front line. Gunfire became screams. Screams became metallic crashes. The whole corridor filled with the chaotic roar of a one-woman wrecking crew tearing into the men who once believed this place made them untouchable.
Red moved as soon as Zoey created an opening. She ducked under a broken conduit, slid past a overturned crate, and sprinted deeper into the smuggler’s den. Her path was clean, Zoey was making sure of it. Every trap Red had stumbled into the first time was already dismantled, crushed, shredded, or simply ignored by overwhelming force.
Behind her, Zoey laughed , not out of joy, but out of sheer contempt for the idea that these men ever believed they could break Red and survive the mistake.
But Red didn’t look back.
She pushed forward, heading straight for the core of the den, toward the man who had orchestrated everything that happened to her.
The corridor ahead loomed open.
She didn’t hesitate.
The corridor behind Red dissolved into a storm of violence the moment she broke away from the firefight. She heard the gunfire surge, then warp into something deeper, the distinctive roar of metal striking metal, men shouting in panic, the guttural mechanical hum of the Titan Vulpes pushing its systems past safe limits simply because Zoey didn’t care about safe limits.
Red didn’t look back. She didn’t need to. Every crash, every scream, every ricochet that didn’t reach her told her exactly where Zoey was and exactly what she was doing.
A turret mounted above the next junction swung toward Red’s path, its sensors locking onto her. Before it could fire, Zoey slammed into the wall behind it with enough force to make the entire panel cave inward. The turret ripped free of its mount, wires snapping, the whole assembly dropping uselessly to the ground.
Red kept moving.
Another trap triggered just as she passed beneath a crossbeam,a gas dispersal unit dropping from the ceiling. It hit the floor and burst in a choking plume of grey, the same chemical blend that had once slipped through the cracks in her armor, crawled into her lungs, and turned her limbs to water.
Not this time.
Her seals held perfectly. Her visor remained clear. Her breathing stayed smooth. She stepped straight through the fog without slowing.
Somewhere behind her, Zoey let out a delighted, vicious cackle. “Gas? Seriously? I could breathe this shit for breakfast!”
A spray of bullets clattered against the walls. Something heavy crashed across the floor. The sound of metal grinding against metal followed, Zoey ripping another mounted system apart by hand, probably just because it annoyed her.
Red slipped deeper into the den, her body moving with a controlled precision she had never been able to access the first time she entered this place. Back then she had been reacting, flinching, choking, stumbling through panic and half-shattered armor. Now her steps were measured, deliberate, every footfall chosen rather than forced.
A supply chamber opened in front of her, stacked high with crates of contraband. Weapon parts. Chemical compounds. Stolen tech. The passage that had once been an insurmountable choke point felt almost easy now, because the noise behind her was wiping the board clean.
A row of mechanical shutters jerked downward ahead of Red in an attempt to trap her. They slammed shut one by one — the system trying desperately to cage her path. But Red dove through the last gap before the shutter met the floor, rolling smoothly and rising fluidly on the other side.
Behind her, the shutters shook violently.
Then one of them simply exploded outward, a Titan-sized fist punching through it as if it were made of cheap drywall. Zoey shoved the shredded metal aside and stomped into the corridor.
“You’re good!” she called after Red. “Keep going! I’m just doing renovations!”
A guard darted around a corner toward Red with a raised shotgun. Before she could turn to engage, a section of the ceiling collapsed in a rain of concrete, Zoey had ripped an overhead ventilation pipe loose and hurled it blindly into the hallway. The man disappeared beneath the debris.
Red didn’t break stride.
The deeper she ran, the more the facility opened like an old wound. Junctions she remembered. Crates she remembered. The faint smell of chemical grit she remembered far too well. But this time the path didn’t close around her. This time she wasn’t fighting paralysis or gas or fear.
She wasn’t fighting alone.
Behind her, Zoey roared loud enough to shake dust from the rafters. Something exploded, probably something important, but Zoey never cared about that sort of detail. The floor trembled as the Titan made short work of a mounted kinetic barrier, smashing through a blue arc of energy and tearing out the emitter with a feral grunt.
Red passed a broken sensor array, its wires sparking in the dim corridor. She knew exactly how she would have died here last time, pinned, choking, trying to crawl for a pocket of breathable air.
But the seals she wore now held tight, and the fog she breathed was clean.
She reached the final length of hallway that led to the inner chamber. No traps triggered. No ambush unfolded. The path lay open, cleared by Zoey’s destructive wake.
Red tightened her grip on her rifle.
Ahead of her waited the man who had orchestrated everything the one face she had never allowed herself to imagine killing until now.
She stepped forward.
The gunfire behind her slowed, then shifted into something more methodical, Zoey cleaning up anything still standing. Red didn’t need confirmation. She knew Zoey would keep the entire labyrinth behind her locked down while she advanced.
For the first time since entering the hatch, Red allowed herself a breath.
Not relief.
Something sharper.
Something right.
She reached the reinforced door to the main lair. She didn’t kick it. She didn’t blast it. She simply placed her hand on the manual lock and turned.
It opened with obedience.
She walked through.
The inner chamber was dim, lit only by a handful of overhead strips that flickered with the low, tired pulse of aging electrical systems. The air felt stale, heavy with the residue of too many unwashed bodies and the metallic tang of weapons left unattended. Crates lined the walls. A table covered in maps and cash sat dead center. And behind it, half-risen from a chair, stood the man responsible for everything.
He froze the moment he saw her.
Red stepped inside with slow, measured calm, letting the door close behind her. Her visor hid her expression, but the tension in her shoulders made something in the man’s posture falter. He looked older than she remembered, not in years, but in decay. Softer around the jaw. More brittle around the eyes. Whatever power he had gathered here was built on the assumption that no one would ever come back for him.
Especially not her.
“Hold on,” he sputtered, hands lifting slightly. “Hold on, we can - let’s talk about this -”
Red didn’t speak.
She raised her rifle and fired a single round into the floor beside his foot. Concrete shattered, dust spraying up around his ankle. The warning was enough. His legs buckled, and he collapsed to his knees without her needing to touch him.
“Please,” he whispered. “Please, we can make a deal -”
She stepped forward until her shadow fell over him. Then, very steadily, she slung her G3 over her shoulder, letting it lock into the holster mount across her back. Her hands were empty now, no weapon raised. Just the cold precision of intent.
Her gauntleted fingers closed around the back of his collar, hauling him upright enough for her other arm to snake around his torso. She pulled him into a rear mount with practiced efficiency, her forearm pinning him in place while her free hand produced her combat knife from its sheath.
The blade pressed to his throat. A clean, perfect angle.
“How does it feel to be alone, motherfucker?” she said, her voice low and even inside the helmet’s modulator.
The knife slid across his throat in one decisive motion.
He gasped once, a wet, choking sound, and Red released him, letting him fall forward to the concrete floor. Blood spread quickly beneath him, darkening the cracks in the old slab as his body twitched and then went still.
Red stared down at him, breathing steady. There was no tremor in her hands this time. No dizziness. No gas in her lungs. No one pinning her down. No one watching. Nothing but the muted hum of failing lights and the smell of blood cooling in the stale air.
It wasn’t catharsis.
It wasn’t triumph.
It was hollow. Empty in a way she expected but still didn’t know how to name. She had ended him. But nothing inside her felt repaired.
The reinforced doorway behind her groaned as something massive pushed through it. A moment later Zoey stepped into the room, the Titan Vulpes dripping with dust, blood, and fragments of armor plating from the bodies she’d torn through. Lead fragments clung to her suit like glitter. One of her horns had a new dent.
She looked around at the aftermath and huffed. “What gives? You ended the party without me!”
Red didn’t answer. She brushed past Zoey wordlessly, the dull weight in her chest anchoring her movements. She didn’t look at the corpse again. She didn’t look at Zoey either. She just kept walking,out of the chamber, out of the den, away from the body and the moment she had waited a year to reclaim.
Zoey watched her go, the sarcasm fading from her posture. She turned and followed her, her heavy steps echoing through the hall.
The walk back through the den felt longer than the descent had, though nothing blocked their way now. The corridors stood ruined behind them, walls buckled, lights shattered, traps destroyed, bodies scattered where Zoey had left them. Dust still floated in the air, settling over the wreckage like a thin grey shroud.
Red moved through it all without looking at any of it. Her steps were steady, but her posture had changed, not tense, not afraid, just… emptied. Something in her chest felt scraped clean, the kind of hollow that left no room for anger or victory.
Behind her, Zoey’s Titan suit thudded heavily with each step. Normally she would’ve bragged, laughed, or made some flippant comment about the damage she’d caused. But the silence Red carried with her soaked into the air, dampening every impulse Zoey had to speak.
At one point they passed the corridor where Zoey had torn down the shutters. Plates of mangled metal lay scattered like broken ribs. Zoey glanced at them, then at Red’s back, waiting for any sign of reaction. Red didn’t give one.
She just kept walking.
By the time they reached the old service hatch, the outside light cut through the dust like a thin blade. Red stepped into it first, emerging into the cold industrial air. The night felt too familiar, the same scent of rust and concrete that had clung to her the night she crawled out of the culvert, barely alive. She stopped just outside the hatch and inhaled slowly, trying to find some difference between then and now.
The air tasted the same.
Zoey followed her out a moment later, ducking under the hatch frame. The Titan’s servos hissed as she straightened. She cast a quick look up at the building, then down at Red, her visor dimming to give Red a clearer view of her expression behind the HUD.
“Hey,” Zoey said quietly, almost tentative. “It’s done.”
Red didn’t answer. Her helm tilted slightly, but her body didn’t shift. The wind brushed against her armor with a dry whisper. The only sign she’d even heard Zoey was the faint twitch of her fingers around the grip of her rifle.
Zoey took one step closer, not touching, not crowding, just near enough for her presence to register in Red’s periphery. She didn’t offer comfort, didn’t give some empty line about justice or closure. She knew Red wouldn’t want it. She knew Red wouldn’t believe it.
Instead, after a few quiet seconds, Zoey lifted her chin toward the Mantis parked nearby. “Come on,” she said softly. “Let’s go home.”
The word didn’t make Red flinch, but it didn’t warm her either. She turned toward the vehicle, her movements precise and numb. The Mantis’ interior lights activated automatically when she approached, bathing the inside in a soft, amber glow.
Zoey opened the reinforced side door for her, letting Red climb in first.
Red didn’t look back at the building.
She didn’t look back at the hatch.
She didn’t look back at the place where she’d nearly died, or at the room where she’d killed the man who orchestrated it.
She just sat down in her seat, staring straight ahead, her visor reflecting the dim glow of the dashboard.
Zoey climbed in after her. The Mantis door sealed shut with a heavy thump, muffling the outside world. She set her armored hands on the controls, glancing once more at Red before starting the engine.
Red didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
Zoey didn’t push her.
The engine rumbled to life, and the Mantis rolled away from the building, tires crushing loose debris as they left the forgotten industrial block behind. Neither of them said a word as the smuggler’s den disappeared into the darkness behind them.
There was no triumph trailing after them.
No catharsis.
Only the dull, quiet truth that the past had been confronted, and that sometimes, even when you burn the rot out of a wound, the scar remains cold.
Red’s unit was dark when they stepped inside, the only light coming from the faint hallway spill. Neither of them reached for the switch. Neither spoke.
Red walked straight to the center of the room, fingers already working at the clasps of her armor. The plates came off stiffly, dropping to the floor piece by piece in a muted clatter. She didn’t bother stacking them or cleaning them or even looking at them. By the time her undersuit was exposed, she was already trembling.
She sat on the edge of the bed.
Her hands found her face.
And then she broke.
It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t violent. It was a small, sudden collapse, like something inside her finally losing tension after being pulled taut for miles. Her shoulders curled inward, her breath stuttering, tears soaking into her palms as if they’d been waiting for hours to fall.
Zoey stood near the door for a moment, still half in her own thoughts. She’d left the Titan in its locker compartment during the walk over, no ceremony, no commentary. But now, she moved. Quietly, slowly, almost cautiously for someone who could tear a steel hatch in half.
She crossed the room and sat beside her on the bed, careful not to crowd her.
Red tried to speak once, the words caught behind a sob. It took another breath before she managed, “It didn’t… feel like revenge.”
Zoey kept her gaze steady, her voice soft. “Yeah,” she murmured. “Most of them don’t.”
Red shook her head, choking on another breath. “It didn’t feel healing either. I thought...after everything...killing him would fix something. Or close something. But it just…” She pressed her palms harder to her eyes. “It just felt empty.”
Zoey exhaled through her nose, a slow steadying breath that softened her entire posture. “From experience?” she said gently. “Most contracts are like that. Transactional. Tactical. You do the job, you walk away, and the world doesn’t clap or weep or change for it.”
Red sniffed, tears streaking down her cheeks. “Then why does it feel worse now?”
Zoey tilted her head, searching Red’s expression with careful eyes. “Because you’re not in the place you were when it happened.” She reached out, resting a hand lightly on Red’s back, not pushing, just present. “Back then you were drowning. Dissociated. Shutting down just to survive. Everything felt like one big numb blur.”
Red’s breath hitched.
Zoey continued, gentle but firm. “Now? You feel things separately. You’re not mixing your trauma with your instincts anymore. So the emptiness stands out on its own.” She paused. “That’s not a bad thing, Red. It just means you’re here. In yourself. Even when it hurts.”
Another sob slipped out of Red, quieter this time.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I thought this would… I don’t know. Fix me.”
Zoey leaned in, her brow brushing Red’s temple. “Sweetheart, nothing fixes you. You fix yourself. A piece at a time. And revenge doesn’t get the final say.”
Red let out a shaky breath, wiping at her eyes without much success. Then she turned toward Zoey, voice raw. “I’m happy you came with me.”
Something in Zoey’s expression softened, deeply, instinctively. “Damn right I did.”
Red didn’t hesitate. She reached out and wrapped her arms around Zoey, burying her face against her shoulder. It wasn’t a desperate hug or a panicked one. It was full-bodied, clinging, a hyena-sized collapse into the only solid thing she trusted not to break under her weight.
Zoey’s arms folded around her immediately, holding her tight, one hand steady against the back of Red’s head. She leaned her cheek into Red’s fur, letting her breathe, letting her shake, letting her feel whatever she needed to feel without interruption.
“I’ve got you,” Zoey whispered. “I’m right here.”
Red cried into her shoulder, soft but steady, the kind of crying that wasn’t panic or despair, but release.
After a long moment, Red pulled in a trembling breath. “I just… I didn’t want to do it alone.”
Zoey pressed her forehead lightly to Red’s. “You never will again.”
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