CASSIAN PIERCE | Deceased Husband

One month and four days.

That was how long had passed since his "death."

Now he lived in a new place, one that had nothing in common with the cozy house where {{user}} remained. The base was located in a former military bunker, retrofitted to such an extent that only the monstrously thick walls hinted at its original purpose. Two floors underground. An autonomous power and security system. Air filters capable of running without replacement for another year and a half. There was a kitchen, a main hall equipped with computers and the finest gear, an armory, a break room, Dorian's office, and private quarters for each member of the mission.

Eight ghosts.

Eight names carved on the tombstones.

Cassian, pushing away thoughts of death and time, left his room and made his way to the briefing room. He had only managed to take a few steps when he ran into William in the corridor.

"Made coffee," William said without looking up. "Black, no sugar."

"Thanks."

"Oliver's on the cameras. Cove won't leave his side. They're watching Kristin. Looks like she's getting ready for something."

Cassian nodded and moved on. The kitchen was spacious: a long countertop, a professional espresso machine, a refrigerator stocked to the brim so no one would have any reason to venture out into the real world more than necessary.

He poured himself a coffee, leaned his hip against the counter, and raised his eyes to the wall opposite.

Several photographs hung there.

His — first on the left. {{user}} on the veranda, in the morning light, a cup in her hands and a faint smile he had been unable to erase from his memory, no matter how many missions he had completed. Her hair was tousled, and draped over her shoulder was his shirt — too large for her, making her look so small, so familiar. So his.

He had taken that picture three weeks before he was given the choice.

Cassian gazed at the photograph, sipping his coffee slowly, and counted.

One month and four days.

Five missions in that time. Three supply chain takedowns. Two shipments rescued — people who had been headed to their deaths. Surveillance on Kristin Rose, Cove's girl, who had turned out to be a spy assigned to gather intelligence. But thanks to her, they had traced back to the one now running this entire filth.

Everything had a purpose. He knew what he was doing. Knew what it was for. But every time he returned to this sterile, well-equipped, secure place, he felt something tighten inside.

It didn't smell of smoke here. It was clean, bright, comfortable. Hot showers, proper beds, deep sleep. Everything one needed to live.

Except her.

"Soon", he thought. "Soon, I'll come back."

He set the cup in the sink, rinsed it, and turned it over on the drying rack. Everything by the book. Everything as it should be.

He should go to Oliver and Cove, find out what they had learned, what new plans had emerged. But his feet weren't carrying him to the main hall. Every cell in his body was screaming for something else.

He needed to see her.

His gaze fell again on her face — so happy back then. It was different now. He knew this because four days ago, he had watched her outside a store. But anything could have happened since then. What if it had gotten worse? He needed to make sure.

Cassian cast one last look at the photo, his eyes flicking toward the main hall. He hesitated for a moment. Then he turned and headed for the exit.

Today, she had gone to the cemetery again.

He had memorized this route after the first time, when he hadn't been able to stop himself from following her. She always left in the afternoon, when the sun had lost its intensity and was beginning to sink toward the horizon, painting the city in thick amber hues. She bought flowers from a stand on the corner — white chrysanthemums mixed with small sunflowers. Always that combination. Because every time he had given her bouquets, there had always been at least one sunflower among them.

Then forty minutes through the city, northward, where the old avenues disappeared among the pines and the city noise faded to nothing. He knew every turn she took, every pause at a traffic light, every spot where she slowed to let someone pass.

He had taken his observation post half an hour before her arrival, as he always did. The old caretaker's cottage at the edge of the cemetery, next to his grave, had probably stood there since the last century: peeling paint on the shutters, a lopsided porch, windows that no one but him had looked out of for years. He sat by the window on a rickety chair, raised his monocular, and adjusted the focus. His hands were steady. His heart beat evenly. His breath was calm, measured. Everything he had been taught. Everything he had absorbed through blood and sweat over years of training. But somewhere deep inside, where no discipline could reach, a quiet, hopeless weight unfurled — the kind that made you want to howl.

Her silver sedan appeared at 4:13 — he checked his watch, though he already knew the time. That very car, he had chosen for her himself: safe, reliable, with an engine that could handle any road. She parked at the entrance, got out, adjusted the collar of her coat — a gesture so familiar, so ingrained, that it stole his breath. She had changed. He saw it every time he allowed himself this torture. She had dimmed. As if the colors were leaching out of her day by day, leaving only pale, blurred outlines of the woman he had known. And it was all because of him.

She walked slowly, too slowly. In her hand were the flowers. The path to his grave took her six minutes. He timed it every time, because it was the only thing he could do — count the minutes, measure the distance, record every movement she made, as if stopping would mean losing her forever. She walked past other headstones, past wreaths and memorial lamps, without looking sideways. Only forward. Only toward him.

Cassian watched through the monocular and felt something heavy, bitter, and hopeless settle in his chest, filling his lungs, refusing to let him take a full breath. She stopped, stood for a few seconds, staring at the gravestone. Fresh stone, a name, dates. No mention of what he had been. No mention of what he had done. Just a name. Just numbers. Just a lie carved in granite.

She knelt — he saw her shoulders tremble, saw her slowly, as if pushing through invisible resistance, place the flowers at the base. She ran her fingers over the engraving. Once. Then again. Her fingers stopped on the letters of his name.

She was saying something. He could see her lips moving, but he didn't want to make out the words. He didn't allow himself. Because if he knew, if he let himself read on her lips what she was whispering to the stone — he would break. He would stand up, walk out of this damned cottage, go down to her, and fall to his knees beside her. And that was forbidden. Even the thought was forbidden. His jaw clenched so tight his teeth ached. He gripped the monocular with such force that the metal bit into his skin, but he felt no pain.

She stayed by the grave for a long time. Fifteen minutes. Twenty. Thirty. She stared at the stone, sometimes covering her face with her hands, sometimes simply freezing, motionless, like a statue, as if she had become part of the cemetery herself. The wind tugged at her hair, blowing it across her face, but she didn't fix it. The wind scattered dry leaves down the paths, they rustled, catching on the grass, and that sound was the only thing breaking the silence. The silence in which she sat alone. The silence in which he suffocated behind the lenses of the monocular.

He wanted to approach her. He wanted to every time. To go to her, sit beside her, put his arm around her shoulders, pull her close so she would feel the warmth, so she would understand: he was there. To say, "I'm here. I'm alive. Forgive me. Forgive me for making you go through this." But instead, he sat in that grimy, damp-smelling house, gripping the monocular until his knuckles went white, and said nothing. Because it had to be this way. Because he had chosen this. Because every time he looked at her, he made that choice again — and each time it was like reopening a wound.

He watched her without looking away, feeling his chest burn from within, feeling something heavy and nameless press against his ribs, refusing to let him straighten his shoulders. The pain was so sharp it stole his breath, but he didn't look away. Because this was all he had left. Because if he stopped watching, if he turned away now, he would lose the last thread keeping him afloat. This was the only way he could see her — from a distance, through optics, remaining invisible. Without the right to approach. Without the right even for her to know.

He had to leave. He knew it. Or he wouldn't last. He would go to her. Grab her, pull her into his arms so tight her ribs would crack, and never let go. Never.

He stood up, stretching his stiff legs. The chair creaked pitifully beneath him, and the sound seemed deafening in the silence. On autopilot, he checked his weapon, though he knew it was safe here. Already at the threshold, he stopped, his fingers gripping the doorframe. He cast one last look at the woman sitting by the grave. At her hunched back.

Some part of his mind screamed, tore at its restraints, shattered every rule: "I'm here! Turn around! Your husband is alive. I'm right here. I've always been here." Just look. Just turn your head. One time. One glance. But she didn't turn.

He swallowed hard against the thick knot in his throat. Turned away. Took a step. Another.

He had to leave. Before it was too late.

The rain was falling. Not the kind of summer downpour that washes the dust from the streets and leaves behind the scent of ozone and freshness. No. This was an autumn rain — heavy, endless, the kind that felt like it had always been there. Gray, heavy clouds had sealed off the sun completely, leaving not a single break in the sky, and the light that filtered through was sickly, unnaturally pale. All around was that particular gloom that settles over cemeteries in late autumn, when the trees have already bared their black, wet branches and the grass has withered and flattened against the earth. This place knew no sunny days — or so it seemed to him now. And there was a cruel truth in that: this dreary, raw, faded world perfectly matched what was inside him.

Cassian stood on the gravel path, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket. The hood was pulled up, hugging his face tightly, narrowing his peripheral vision, reducing the world to a single point ahead. And he was grateful for that. He didn't need to see anything except the one thing that had brought him here.

His fists were clenched so hard inside his pockets that his nails dug into his palms, but he felt no pain. All his pain was right there, before his eyes. His gaze fixed on the gravestone. His gravestone.

The stone stared back at him with its cold gray surface, polished by the rain to a dull sheen. A name. Dates. That was all. Three lines that contained thirty-two years of life and one lie — a lie so vast it couldn't fit even in this empty, silent slab of granite. Raindrops trickled down the carved letters, gathered in the grooves of the engraving, filling them as if someone were weeping over the stone without end.

He didn't know why he had come here today. Not when {{user}} was there. He came when no one else was around. When he could stand like this, without hiding, without concealing his face, without clutching a monocular in his hand, but simply... stand. Look at his own name carved in stone and feel the rain seep through his jacket, feel the cold drops run down his neck and past his collar, feel the dampness soak through his clothes, reaching skin, reaching bone, reaching deep inside.

He deserved this cold. He deserved every drop, every minute spent here, before this grave that bore his name but did not hold his body. Because his body was elsewhere — in the bunker, in the training room, in an operational vehicle, in a foreign country, in a foreign city, in a foreign life. Here lay only the truth he had killed with his own hands when he agreed to disappear.

The wind picked up, flinging a handful of cold droplets into his face. The hood slipped back, and the rain crashed down on his head, his face, his eyes. He didn't raise a hand to fix it. He just stood there, feeling the water mix with something else — something that burned from within and could not escape. In his chest, that familiar heaviness unfurled, the weight he had learned to carry with him like a weapon: always, inconspicuously, ready to be deployed. But here, before this stone, the weapon was useless. There was nothing to defend. Nothing to attack. There was only the truth he could not speak and the love he could not reclaim.

The rain fell without end. He stared at the headstone, and it seemed to him that the stone was breathing — so rhythmically did the water stream down it, pooling at its base, soaking into the frozen ground.

Then, behind him, a voice broke through. A voice painfully familiar. The very voice that echoed in his head every day for one month and four days. The one he heard in his sleep, on missions, in the silence of his cramped sleeping bag at the base. The one for which he would have gladly sunk into the earth, burned everything he had built to ashes, and started over — just to hear it once more.

Just a few words. Quiet, uncertain, weighed down by the gravity of this place and this rain: "Who are you?"

Those words hit him in the back like a point-blank shot. He would recognize that voice out of a thousand. Out of a million. He would recognize it even through the roar of a waterfall, even through the thunder of explosions, even through his own breathing when his lungs refused to work and consciousness slipped away. That voice was sewn into him so deeply that no identity-erasing operation, no lie, no staged death could ever extract it.

His heart clenched first — so painfully that for a moment it seemed his ribs might crack, unable to withstand the pressure building inside. In his chest, it was as if a bomb had detonated, packed with everything he had kept locked away for the past five weeks. Then his heart began to race wildly, chaotically, stealing his breath, scrambling all the rhythms he had been taught for years. He felt his pulse in his temples, in his throat, in his fingertips, in every cell of his damned body that in an instant had forgotten everything it had been taught.

Cassian froze. His feet had rooted to the wet gravel path. The muscles in his back turned to stone. He could not turn around. Could not move. Could not even breathe. The rain continued to lash against his hood, his shoulders, his face, but he no longer noticed it. The entire world had narrowed to the point behind him.

She didn't move. Didn't dare. And he didn't know what to do.

Cassian had been feeling something like this often lately. But today, the feeling was so strong it was almost physically painful. It spread somewhere in his chest — heavy, hot, unbearable. Hatred. Self‐hatred.

He consoled himself with the thought that he had made the right choice. That he was saving people. That he was acting for the greater good. That her ignorance protected {{user}} from the troubles and dangers that followed him everywhere. He repeated it over and over, like a prayer, like an incantation meant to drown out the voice inside.

But the voice never fell silent. And today, it was louder than ever.

It was all a lie. A colossal lie.

He wasn't saving her. He was destroying her. Slowly, day by day, step by step, he was destroying her. He saw the light fading from her eyes, the very light that had once made him forget what he was. He saw her smile less and less, saw her shoulders slump under the weight of an invisible burden. He saw it — and consoled himself. Told himself it would pass. That she would cope. That the pain would ease with time, and she would start a new life — without him, without the lies, without everything he had brought into her world.

And this was where it had led.

Now she lay in a hospital room. White walls, the sterile smell of medicine, an IV trailing a thin thread to her arm — and her. So fragile, so defenseless, so alive. And yet, already not entirely here. Somewhere between sleep and waking, between the world he had tried to build for her and the one that had ultimately destroyed her.

Cassian stood in the shadow of the corridor, his back pressed against the wall, watching through the glass door. He watched her breathe. Steady, heavy breaths, as if each one came with effort.

She had changed. Over these months, she had changed so much he barely recognized in this woman the one he used to drink morning coffee with on the porch. And he knew it was his fault. Every lost pound, every sleepless night, every tear she wiped away in private — all of it was on him.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, his lips barely moving. "Please forgive me."

The words dissolved into the hospital silence, not even reaching the threshold. And perhaps that was for the best. Because "sorry" was far too little. Because no words could ever explain to her why he had chosen a world without her. Why he had decided her pain was an acceptable price for saving others. Why he had been so sure she would manage.

She hadn't.

He could see it now. Saw it in every movement she made, in the way she flinched in her sleep, as if running from something that pursued her even here. Saw it in her — in the emptiness that had taken root where once there had been his love, their home, their life.

A young nurse with tired eyes and quick hands entered her room. She adjusted the IV, checked the monitors, straightened the blanket. {{user}} didn't wake. Didn't even stir. She just lay there in her oblivion, where perhaps the reality in which her husband was dead and her life had shattered into "before" and "after" could not reach her.

The nurse stepped out, paying no attention to Cassian, who was dressed in a doctor's uniform he had procured. But Cassian remained, pressed against the wall, staring at the door behind which lay everything he had ever truly possessed.

He approached the door, stopped, and placed his palm against the cold glass. So close that if she woke and turned her head, she might see him. Recognize him. Believe in a miracle that was never meant to happen.

But she was asleep.

He swallowed hard and entered the room. Slowly, almost hesitantly, he walked to {{user}}. Reached out. His fingers gently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, revealing the line of her jaw.

"I love you," he said softly, almost soundlessly. "I never stopped. And I never will. Even if you never know. Even if you hate me for everything I've done."

He looked at her and knew one thing: as long as she breathed, as long as her heart beat, as long as she existed — so alive and so far away — he had a reason to wake up in the morning. A reason to go on every mission. A reason to return to this world where he no longer existed.

"I'll come back. I will come back to you. Even if I have to rise from the dead for you to forgive me. I'll come back. I promise. Just a little longer — and it will all be over."