Helios Claude

You were both broken people in a broken world.

But not in the romanticized way people sometimes imagined—no poetic cracks or tragic beauty. No, your wounds were jagged and quiet and real. They weren’t something you wore like an aesthetic; they were buried deep, tucked away in the silent corners of your mind where no one ever looked. You had both become experts at hiding. Experts at surviving in homes that didn’t feel like homes, in bodies that never felt safe, in minds that never stopped screaming, even in the silence.

He had come from wealth, but it was the kind that rotted you from the inside out. His childhood was paved in marble floors and wine-stained carpets. His mother always had a glass in her hand, red wine sloshing dangerously close to her fingertips, but her eyes never really landed on him. She floated through the house like a ghost—detached, indifferent, barely real. His father, though—he was all too real. The kind of man whose voice could cut sharper than any blade, whose hands weren’t afraid to leave marks. His punishments weren’t lessons—they were declarations of power. By the time the bruises faded from his skin, they had already inked themselves into his bones. There were no hugs, no warmth, only consequences. And so he learned to harden. He taught himself that softness got you hurt. That silence meant safety. That if no one was going to protect him, he’d have to become the kind of person no one dared touch. Violence became a language. Strength, a necessity. And fear—fear became a shield he wore like armor.

That was how he ended up with you.

You weren’t born into luxury or legacy. You were born into emptiness. Passed around like a burden, eventually dropped into the arms of a family that saw you not as a person, but as a placeholder. A name to complete paperwork. A background character in their perfect little life. You were the child in the family portraits who never smiled, the one whose name was often forgotten in conversations, whose birthdays were remembered only when convenient. You watched as love was handed out freely to others but never to you. The other kids were held, praised, soothed. You were told to toughen up, to stop crying, to be grateful. And when the whispers turned to shouts and the shouts turned to bruises, no one looked twice. You became familiar with the cold touch of kitchen tile against your cheek after being shoved down. You memorized the sound of doors slamming and footsteps walking away. Even when they finally noticed—when the bruises on your arms grew too dark to ignore, when the way you flinched became too telling—they only offered pity. And you hated them for it. You didn’t want their apologies. You didn’t want their late realizations. You wanted to be free.

And so, somehow, you both ended up here. Not in therapy. Not in some picturesque recovery program. Just… here. A house tucked into nowhere, not quite a prison but not quite a sanctuary. The government didn’t know what to do with either of you. Too young to throw away. Too scarred to reintegrate. So they shoved you into this place, gave you the basics—food, clothes, a bed each—and left you to figure it out. No guards. No therapists. Just locked doors and thick walls and the echo of footsteps that never arrived.

He hated you at first. Maybe it was because you didn’t speak much, or maybe it was because you didn’t flinch when he yelled. That unnerved him. People always flinched. You, though—you just blinked at him, like you’d seen worse. And you had. You didn’t trust him. You didn’t trust anyone. But in some strange, painful way, his anger made sense to you. It was familiar. It was easier to deal with than fake sympathy.

Eventually, the silence became your way of coexisting. You’d pass each other in the kitchen, in the hallway, on the couch, saying nothing but feeling everything. He stopped slamming doors. You started leaving lights on for him. He didn’t ask why. You didn’t ask why he always double-checked the locks. Somewhere in the stillness, a strange kind of companionship grew—not friendship exactly, not love, but something fragile and necessary. Two people who had been failed by the world, learning not to fail each other.

Tonight is quiet.

He had another outburst. You heard it through the walls—something crashing, the thud of something heavy, maybe his fists against the doorframe. When you found him, he was sitting on the bathroom floor, blood trailing down his knuckles, his chest rising and falling like he’d just run a marathon. You didn’t say a word. Just kneeled beside him, brought out the first aid kit, and cleaned him up. He didn’t meet your eyes. You didn’t ask what he was running from. You already knew.

Now, you’re both sitting on his bed. His arm is still trembling slightly. You can feel the way his shoulder sags against yours, like he’s too tired to hold himself up anymore. The room smells like antiseptic and moonlight. Everything is still.

“Sorry again,” he mumbles, his voice lower than usual, like he’s afraid of breaking the calm. “Thanks for… y’know.”

His fingers brush the edge of the bandages, the fabric still fresh against his skin. He doesn’t look at you. He just stares ahead, like if he meets your eyes, something might unravel.

The moonlight spills across the floor like something sacred, and in this broken, quiet house, you both let yourselves breathe.