'Let go. LET GO NOW!'

'He's seeing how pathetic you are. He's feeling how you're trembling like a scared baby. He's going to think you're weak, that you're a burden, that you're exactly the type of broken girl who needs to be saved and...'

But Ren's arms tightened around her with a deliberate gentleness that somehow felt like giving strength rather than pity.

Not saying anything that would shatter the moment. Not asking what was wrong when the answer was everything and nothing simultaneously. Not trying to fix her with empty words that couldn't change reality no matter how well-intentioned.

Just... holding her like that was enough, like her being like this didn't change anything important.

And something about that simple gesture made the tears fall faster, made her melt into his arms with surrender…

'WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS? Why don't you run? Why don't you pull away from the crazy girl who just collapsed without apparent reason in the middle of dance practice?'

'WHY DO YOU STAY?'

But Luna knew the answer…

Because Ren was different from everyone else who'd passed through her life.

He'd been different from the very first day.

Time passed while she cried. Luna wasn't sure how much, seconds, minutes, hours all felt the same when you were broken into pieces trying to remember how to breathe properly through grief that closed your throat.

Slowly, very slowly like the tide receding, the torrent of tears began to diminish. Not because the pain went away, it never did, you only learned to live with it like a chronic injury that ached but didn't quite kill you. But because even her body had limits to how much it could cry before exhausting itself completely.

The tears became a drip instead of a river flooding down her face. Her breathing stabilized from ragged gasps to almost a normal rhythm. The trembling in her hands calmed to occasional shiver rather than a constant shaking.

And Luna allowed herself... just for this moment... just for this single instant she'd never admit to later...

To feel safe.

Ren's arms were solid around her. Warm against her skin in ways that reminded her bodies were real and present rather than ghosts and memories. Real in ways memories weren't no matter how desperately you tried to hold onto them, no matter how many times you read letters that captured words but not presence.

This was firm and certain and undeniably present.

'I'm safe.'

The thought arrived without invitation and Luna almost laughed hysterically at the absurdity.

How could she be safe when her world was crumbling around her?

When her mother was reduced to a crystal wearing away with each use?

When her uncles were constantly maneuvering her toward the not so hidden preference for forced marriage disguised as choices?

When her father was lost somewhere, unknown to her, frozen in a trap that shouldn't have caught him if Selphira's suspicions were correct?

But here in this moment, in these arms that held her without demanding anything in return… She felt safe anyway despite all logic arguing otherwise.

'Idiot... You're being an idiot! This is temporary! It's going to end… It always ends! You can't trust that anything good will stay because good things NEVER stay for the unlucky.'

And there it was, the familiar thought that had lived in her head for years like an unwelcome tenant she couldn't evict.

Since that day when her world had broken without warning and taught her that happiness was fragile.

Seven years old when she'd learned the world could shatter in moments and no amount of crying would fix what had been destroyed.

Eight when she'd understood that the pieces of her life and her father's would never fit together the same way again, that some breaks couldn't be perfectly mended no matter how carefully you tried.

Nine when she'd decided that being broken didn't mean being defeated, that she could function while shattered if she learned to hold the pieces together through sheer force of will.

She'd had a complicated childhood that had shaped her in ways most people never understood.

It hadn't always been like this in her mind before the tragedy, this intensity that burned, this drama she performed only for herself in an internal theater nobody else could see.

Intense.

Thinking at velocities that were scary. Feeling with depth that hurt.

Exactly like her mother had been, perhaps a way of keeping Lykea alive in the world of Luna's interior thoughts.

But while Lykea had allowed all that intensity to shine outward in dramatic declarations and exaggerated compliments and love expressed without shame or restraint or concern for propriety...

Luna had learned to keep it all inside as secrets that could be used against her if discovered.

The nobles praised her constantly with compliments that felt like knives.

"What a reserved child," they said with approval that made her want to scream. "So mature for her age. So controlled. Nothing like her mother."

They said it as a compliment, as if being different from Lykea was an achievement rather than a tragedy.

Luna smiled politely and hated them in silence with an intensity that would have shocked them if they'd known how much rage she carried beneath those perfect manners.

Because they didn't understand anything despite thinking they saw everything.

They didn't understand that inside she was SCREAMING all the time, that she wanted to cry and rage and demand that the universe return her mother immediately. That she wanted to be dramatic and expressive and exaggerated exactly like Lykea had been, wanted to love with embarrassing intensity and declare feelings without caring what others thought.

But she couldn't allow herself that freedom because if she let herself feel everything she actually felt...

She would crumble completely and there'd be nothing left to rebuild from the rubble.

And she couldn't afford that luxury when she had a mission, when nobles like her uncles waited for any sign of weakness to exploit, to use as leverage to take everything she still had left.

So Luna had stored all the intensity inside where it couldn't be seen or judged or weaponized against her. She'd buried it deeply beneath layers of control and composure.

And she'd perfected the mask until even she sometimes forgot which parts were real and which were performance.

Reserved when inside she was chaos. Controlled when inside she was screaming. Perfectly polite when inside she wanted to set things on fire and watch them burn.

All lies carefully maintained because the truth was too dangerous to show.

But inside she remained her mother's daughter despite all attempts to be different.

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