Stefan had always thought he was the one who could hold it together. The fixer. The quiet strength. The man people came to when the world got too loud.
But after what he learned — after Steve looked him in the eye and told him he wasn't going to fight, wasn't going to try, wasn't going to live — something inside Stefan cracked. Something heavy and old, something he didn't even have a name for.
He didn't argue. Didn't beg.
Just left.
And when Aveline called, her voice soft and hesitant, asking if he wanted to meet… for the first time, he didn't find a reason to say no.
They met at a little bar on the corner of a street neither of them usually bothered with. It was dim and quiet, the kind of place people went to disappear. Stefan nursed his first drink too long, then his second too fast. By the third, the edges of the world blurred in a way that made it easier to breathe.
