The hospital corridor was eerily silent.
Only the rhythmic beeping of machines could be heard, distant and cold, like a ticking clock counting down fates yet to be decided.
Jayden lay unconscious in the emergency room, hooked up to IVs, his body riddled with wounds.
In the ICU across the hall, Aria lay motionless, surrounded by machines that breathed for her.
It was a cruel poetry.
Two lives.
Two heartbeats.
One fighting to wake up.
One fighting not to fade away.
---
In the darkness of his mind, Jayden dreamed.
Not sweet dreams —
but broken memories, bleeding into one another.
He saw himself as a boy again, sitting alone on cold church steps, waiting for a father who never came.
He saw his mother's hands — rough, trembling — handing him a single coin with a whisper:
> "Survive, Jayden. No matter what."
He saw Aria — the first time he had met her, standing in the rain, her umbrella turned inside out by the wind, her laughter wild and free.
He saw the moment she first touched his hand.
The moment she first called his name — not like a weapon, not like a command.
But like a prayer.
Like a home.
Tears slid down unconscious Jayden's face.
In his dreams, he screamed:
> "Don't take her from me! I just found her!"
But there was no answer.
Only silence.
---
Inside her own coma, Aria wandered through a strange, shifting dreamscape.
The sky was a deep violet.
The ground cracked like glass beneath her bare feet.
And in the distance, she saw Jayden — bloodied, broken — reaching out for her.
But every step she took toward him, the ground crumbled more.
He kept whispering:
> "Stay, Aria. Stay with me. Don't go."
Tears blurred her vision.
She wanted to run to him.
But something heavy chained her ankle —
a thousand invisible regrets, betrayals, and fears pulling her down into the darkness.
Suddenly, a soft light appeared above her.
A choice.
Follow the light — leave the pain behind forever.
Or fight.
Stay.
Endure.
Her heart thudded painfully in her chest.
The memory of Jayden's lopsided smile, his stubborn hope, his clumsy way of saying he cared —
it anchored her.
She clenched her fists.
She turned away from the light.
And she ran back toward him.
---
In the real world, the heart monitors beeped faster.
Nurses rushed in.
Doctors shouted orders.
Something was happening.
Jayden's fingers twitched first — barely a ripple against the sheets.
Then his eyelids fluttered.
Pain — sharp, deep, merciless — dragged him back to consciousness.
His vision swam, and for a terrifying moment, he didn't know where he was.
Then he heard it.
A gasp.
A soft gasp.
He turned his head, agony lancing through him.
And there, through the glass wall separating the ICU from his room —
Aria's eyes opened.
Clouded, weak — but alive.
Alive.
Tears filled Jayden's eyes, unashamed.
He reached out a trembling hand toward her, across the distance, across the glass.
And in her room, Aria weakly lifted her hand too, mirroring him.
Fingers pressed against invisible walls.
Separated by glass.
Bound by fate.
Connected by something no one — not fate, not Cain, not death itself — could ever tear apart.
---
Later, when Jayden was stable enough to sit up, a kind nurse wheeled Aria's bed closer.
He held her hand in both of his, afraid she might vanish if he blinked.
Aria's voice was a broken whisper.
> "You… came for me."
Jayden laughed through his tears.
> "Idiot."
"Where else would I be?"
She smiled, so faintly it was like a ghost of a smile.
But it was real.
It was hers.
And Jayden knew — in that fragile, painful, beautiful moment —
that he would destroy the whole world before he ever let her go again.
---