[private] what we owe to each other

[jamie]

from the destruction, out of the flame

He had been reborn in mourning.
Kicking wild at the fish hook in the pit of his belly.
The thing Carnage had used to drag him from his home, spitting him out on the beach again.
The grief and the pain of it all had compounded into something else entirely.

Something he does not have a name for. Something that has changed him.

How violently he starts at the sight of the fog. Because he remembers. Remembers the pain. How it had devoured him. How he had lost her in it and could not call her back. A pain that had nearly driven him mad. (Sometimes he wishes even still that he had succumbed to it, because the pain of being ripped from his home is worse. And he has not called on his own fog yet. Does not trust it. Cannot trust it.)

But this fog does not bring pain. It brings an invitation.
He summons a portal of darkness and it delivers him to her there on the Tephran border. And he knows that it is her, of course. He would know her anywhere.

He studies her soft edges and feels no sharp stab of remorse for leaving her. For not looking for her. For being so keen to forget all about her. He feels no impulse to apologize for the decisions he had or hadn’t made.

“Hello, Beyza,” he rasps, wary of the fog that shifts around her.

you need a villain, give me a name

Jamie