At 3 AM I just couldn't pretend anymore. I was sick of the orange sheets twisting around my legs as I tossed and turned. I wasn't even tired, and I knew why. I was mentally and physically wrung out. I wasn't sure I was ready for whatever came next, the inevitable fallout that was surely coming.

I half expected to see Elodie forcing him into the room at knifepoint. Or even for Jack and Elodie to come bursting through the door asking if they could shoot him now. Luc and Colette entering with an armful of booze would have made sense as well. But I was alone, and I was terrified to figure out what that meant. Every wild scenario I'd been imagining couldn't dampen my panic at the Occam's Razor of it all. He wasn't standing in my doorway because he'd already left. And now I was going to have to tell Anya.

The only reason I had a small sliver of hope was that I didn't have a dozen Order guards in my room right now demanding to know where he went. So he was here...somewhere. I shook off the notion that Jack and Roberts strong-armed him to the basement. Instead, I could visualize him wandering the halls of Riberton with a tumbler of vodka and ice clinking in his hand, deciding which wing of this property he was going to claim for his own now. It was the only thing that made sense. Everyone falls back on old patterns, right?

But in my heart, I couldn't see him doing that either. I could feel it in the way he held me while we danced tonight, the way his eyes burned my skin when he looked at me. A part of me felt guilty over the bow, but I needed him to know I'd changed. Maybe that's why he didn't want to talk to me, I wasn't the same girl he left behind. The thought was infuriating though. Hadn't this changed him as well? Shaken him down to his very core as it had for me? We had so much left unsaid between us. But this was exactly what all my nightmares had been about - he'd come back, but not for me.

Giving up on sleep completely I tossed the covers off and grabbed my glasses and a hairband off my nightstand as I stood. Padding across the carpet in my bare feet the bedroom door creaked as it opened. It was eerily quiet. Honestly, how could anyone be able to sleep after all that? It had been this insane rollercoaster of adrenaline and cortisol for me, and I hadn't been part of the actual fistfight. I peeked into a couple rooms on my way toward the kitchen, hoping someone was up so I could get some answers. Dark and empty. Where the hell had they stashed Colette? The main house? I contemplated heading toward Elodie's room but immediately decided against it. One more shock to my system might actually give me a heart attack right now.

Rounding the corner into the living room the muted TV bathed the room in a bluish glow. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I looked around for the remote to turn off Sports Center, but instead...I found him. Still in his tux, bowtie hanging loosely around the collar of his shirt, and using his jacket as a blanket, he was frowning in his sleep. And my heart swelled against my ribcage, thumping wildly at the sight of him. I wasn't sure if I was ready for this. I looked around to see if Luc was in here, but we were alone. No one was here to run interference or tell me lines to say. I didn't know what to do. Walk away? Wake him up and shout? Hug him fiercely?

I stood quietly in the doorway studying him, how he scrunched his forehead and air escaped his lips. Memories of watching him sleep flooded me, overwhelming and crystal clear. They stretched all the way back to the beginning of us - on the train, morphed into opulent beds in hotels and villas, plunged into couches in hospitals and finally settled into the comfort of the bed I'd just left. I'd spent months watching him sleep, marveling at the wonder of how this simple act had come to mean so much to me. Stability. He was there, every morning, no matter what had happened that night. He was someone I could lean on, rely on, count on to be there for me while everything else in my world continued to fall apart in my hands. Until he wasn't anymore. Because no matter how infallible he'd seemed to me he really was human. Just like me.

It didn't excuse all he'd done to us. I felt the anger bubble as I recalled everything - the lies he'd spun around me in his misguided attempts to protect me, the wedge he'd forced between Jack and Elodie and myself to keep those lies intact, the danger he'd put everyone in by leaving. They were all things we'd have to work through. I sighed as I moved closer to where his long frame had somehow managed to fold itself onto the couch. He didn't look so guilty of all those things when he slept. But we couldn't pick up where we left off, broken in another hospital room. Despite the twinge of anger and hurt simmering in my veins, I couldn't deny seeing him like this, knowing he hadn't left made me want to curl up beside him, to be with him. Maybe we could start over. Now that the playing field was finally level it might be the perfect place to begin. My heart ached at the possibility of it - I still loved him. Even if it was going to be the thing that finally destroyed me, destroyed all of us. I needed to wake up next to him.

My breathing was so quick I had to sit down. I tried, as carefully as I could, to move to the love seat, but could only make it as far as the coffee table. I managed to sit soundlessly, but when I shifted so I wasn't on the edge it caused the stack of magazines no one ever read to slide off onto the floor. His eyes shot open and I instinctively clenched my left fist, ready for the spike of pain. But nothing happened. His face dropped into realization as his eyes adjusted and he sat up, instantly, his jacket falling to the ground.

"Are you real?" He whispered.

I nodded in response, unable to say anything from the giant lump that had formed in my throat. Had it been happening to him too? The lucid nightmares that tricked you into thinking everything hadn't exploded?

He rubbed at his face, the five o'clock shadow scratching against his hand and then ran his fingers through his hair, trying to make himself look a little more presentable for me. His left hand grabbed the end of his bowtie and pulled it off, his ring and the face of his watch catching in the light from the TV. But my eyes were pouring over his arms. He'd rolled the sleeves up on his tux shirt and all of his new scars were exposed to me now.

"You stayed," I whispered back, feeling utterly exposed and raw.

"I stayed," he quietly said, our eyes locking. He swallowed hard and pressed his lips together as the two of us flickered from blue to yellow to red from the changing commercials.

"Thank you for staying."

"There is nowhere else I'd rather be," he said and reached forward across the small space between us for the stiff tendril of hair that had come loose. I held my breath, terrified and exhilarated all in the same moment. But he pulled his hand back and clenched his fist as he cleared his throat to ask,

"No more pink?"

I knew he'd notice that. I'd almost bit through my lip when the stylist had erased it to stop myself from crying in front of her. But I couldn't be that girl anymore - naive, gullible, vulnerable. The pink was the last vestige of who I'd been. But I suppose his new scars were his. If he had finally controlled the power that was always ebbing through him he certainly couldn't have remained the man I remembered - indifferent, unaffected, unattached. You didn't get scars like that from ignoring your destiny.

"So that's how you snuck up on us tonight," I nodded toward his hands.

"Us?" He wondered, curling his fingers into loose hanging fists.

"I had to tell Jack and Elodie. Because of…" I trailed off.

"Russia."

We both went quiet but I couldn't help my curiosity, "how close were you that night?"

"I was there," he frowned down at his hands, "in another part of the palace. I thought I was ready."

"But then the Meleck's again."

It rolled up through the very center of me, held back only from my clenched teeth and tight lips. I wanted to tell him I wished it had been him that shot David Meleck. I wanted to tell him how lonely I'd been, how angry I still was, how desperate I was to have everything go back to normal. And how crushed I felt to look at these new scars and know that reality was just another memory now. Another lifetime. Another version of ourselves we can never go back to. He studied my face in the quiet and I could see in his eyes he felt the same. I wasn't the girl he'd saved almost a year ago. But neither of us knew what that meant now.

"I kept trying to come back, you need to know that - you must have known."

I shook my head, "just Russia."

The room filled with silence, but to my surprise, it didn't feel uncomfortable or confrontational. It was what it was. We'd both been through a lot over the past few weeks, his scars were evidence of that.

"Thank you," he continued his head lowering in embarrassment, "for looking after Anya while I was…" he couldn't finish the sentence.

"Of course. She is mine and I am hers. I will always do everything in my power to protect her."

"I'm proud of you, Avery." He looked back up at me. "You've accomplished so much in spite of everything constantly being ruined around you."

Like you? I thought, but I didn't say anything. Instead, I flushed at his praise, feeling it burn up my neck and onto my cheeks. My stomach flipped with nerves and then agitation at how easy it remained for him to fluster me. But at least now I didn't clam up and shrink away from him. People weren't as intimidating when you knew all the places they were broken.

I paused to take a deep breath, contemplating what I wanted to say next, "Stellan," I said waiting for him to look me in the eyes, "how did you do it?"

"Do what?"

I guess it was a loaded question. The list of everything I'd been burning to know filtered through my mind. Escape our second story hospital room? Flee the scene when there were already ten Order and Saxon security guards canvassing the place? Evade every attempt to find you? Not breathe a single word of this to Anya? Keep it a secret even from the Circle? Figure out how to control it? Without me helping you? Make it back to me? How do you always find me when I need you most?

I carefully reached forward and grabbed his hands, running my thumbs over all the new scars. They were mostly iridescent now, though a few higher up his forearms were still that healing pink color. We'd managed to keep it together in front of the Circle and all our staff, even our friends, but I needed to know. He didn't have to act anymore, we didn't have to pretend when it was just us. His hands shook a little in my own and I looked up into his face for the answer. He swallowed hard and I gently squeezed the ring finger on his left hand, just above his ring. Guilt, relief, and panic all seemed to cross his face at once and then he clenched his jaw. Maybe not tonight then, I thought.

He took a deep breath and exhaled, "a lot of trial and error."

My fingers softly traced the new, translucent lines up onto the back of his hand and then to the watch. I could almost hear his heart hammering away in his chest, just as wild as my own.

"And then even more pain and frustration."

My fingers brushed against the cool fabric of his tux shirt and I realized I was completely in his space now.

"Until finally I just...surrendered."

My legs were between his, my hands on his forearms, inches from his face. I licked my lips instinctively and he leaned in.

It was the softest ghost of a kiss and only for a moment. He pulled back just enough for us to share a breath and then leaned in again. This time my fingers slid under his rolled-up sleeves as the kiss deepened, but still gentle and hesitant, as fragile as I still felt. His forearms flexed under my hold like he was clamping onto his knees so he wouldn't be tempted to touch me and I pulled back. Breathless and flushed, I slid away from him, knocking over more magazines and folding my hands in my lap so I wouldn't be tempted to touch him more either. It wasn't fair to either of us.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I shouldn't have done that."

He closed his eyes, nodding quite a few times as his shoulder started to curl inward, "it's okay."

"I'm just not ready."

His eyes snapped open in surprise, "ready?"

"What did you think I was going to say?" I asked, completely confused.

"Interested," he murmured, relaxing his shoulders.

I shook my head. Why would he possibly think that? When I'd been sleeping in his jackets, and wouldn't let Gemma change the orange sheets, and making lists in my head of all the things I was going to scream at him when he came back. Because I knew he would come back. For a lot of different reasons - loyalty, integrity, Anya, the Order. But also to fill that ache in his chest - the same one that had been slowly consuming me too.

"I don't know how to fix this," he said, his voice shaking. "But I want to try."

Tears flooded my eyes and I swallowed hard, nodding, before I thickly said, "it's not just me you have to atone to."

"I know."

"A couple of sucker punches in a hallway isn't the answer either," I sniffled, wiping the tears off my face. "They don't understand you like I do. They're gonna need more time."

"But I can stay?" He looked deep into my eyes for the answer first, the gold catching all the flickers from the TV.

I nodded, "in the bedroom across the hallway from me."

"Thank…" he started to say but I quickly pressed a finger to his lips.

"Don't."

He quietly nodded, "anything else?"

The anger and hurt were still there, but it wasn't as intense anymore. It was going to take a lot of work to get back to something, but as I watched his eyes survey me I knew in my weak, shitty heart I wanted him here. I wasn't ready to walk away from this, from him, from this family we'd made. I closed my eyes briefly and then replied,

"Patience. With me and with them," I gestured down the hall, "and just keep trying, as hard as I am. That's all I ask."

His warm fingers wrapped around my wrist as he kissed my finger, and then gently pulled my hand back so he could kiss my rings as well. With a final squeeze, he let go and stood, offering me a hand up as he asked,

"You want some coffee?"

I waved off his hand and stood on my own, nodding up at him as I answered, "sure."