The Weight of a Name

The moment the name left Victor's lips, the air itself seemed to falter.

"S–Sasha."

The sound of it—fragile, trembling, and soaked in years of silence—cut through the cool night like the edge of a memory too sharp to hold. The fountain murmured softly behind her, moonlight rippling across the water's surface, each shimmer catching on her golden hair like starlight tangled in silk.

Her breath hitched. The name—his voice—hit her like a forgotten melody suddenly remembered. Her fingers, resting in her lap, tightened; a faint tremor coursed through her arms. She had waited so long to hear him speak her name again. She had imagined it a hundred times—angrily, wistfully, lovingly—but never like this. Never this quiet. Never this raw.

Her throat ached. Her heart twisted.

All the words she'd wanted to throw at him—accusations, questions, pleas—sank somewhere behind her ribs. What escaped her instead was a small, broken exhale. She wanted to speak, to say something, but nothing came.

Why now? Why after all this time?

Victor stopped a few paces away. The sight of her—fragile yet composed, trembling yet proud—brought a heaviness to his chest he hadn't felt in years.

He'd been with countless women before—his past life had made him intimate with human fragility, with desire, with the language of longing and regret—but this was different. Sasha wasn't someone he could measure in skin and sighs. She was a wound that had never healed right, an ache that stayed quiet until she looked at him like that.

Gods, he thought, exhaling slowly. How could the former Victor be such a fool?

He took a careful step forward. The dry leaves beneath his boots crunched softly, echoing in the moonlit garden. Each sound seemed to make Sasha's body tighten, a silent instinct to flee battling with the weight keeping her seated.

And still, he moved closer.

When he reached her, Victor didn't speak. He simply lowered himself onto the stone bench beside her, leaving a respectful distance, the kind of space that could be crossed with a single breath—or never at all.

The silence stretched between them. Not empty, but charged.

Neither looked at the other. The fountain murmured. The wind played with her hair. His pulse thudded quietly in his ears.

He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, hands loosely clasped. He breathed in slowly, letting the night air fill him, then exhaled a single word.

"…Sorry."

It was barely audible. Yet to Sasha, it felt like the sound tore the stillness apart.

Her shoulders jerked. Her head turned, just slightly, enough for him to catch the faint tremble in her jaw. Her golden eyes flicked toward him, uncertain, then darted away again—up to the moon, as if searching for steadiness.

For the first time in years, Victor truly looked at her. The faint light from the fountain kissed her skin, softening the edges of her face. Her beauty wasn't sharp or perfect—it was human. The faint crease near her brows, the restless flutter of her lashes, the tightness around her mouth when she tried to stay composed. It all struck him harder than he expected.

She's changed, he thought, eyes softening. But so have I.

And yet… she was still Sasha. The girl who once smiled too easily, who argued with him over trivial things, who waited for him after every sparring lesson just to walk home together.

Now she sat beside him, silent, trembling, radiant in the kind of sadness that comes only from loving too deeply.

Victor's voice broke the quiet again, deeper this time. "I mean it, Sasha. I'm… really sorry."

She turned toward him slowly, eyes glistening, her expression caught between disbelief and pain. "Why…?"

Her voice cracked at the single word.

He blinked, unsure. "Why?"

"Why did you do that to me?" she whispered, each word trembling as if it weighed too much to speak. "Why did you push me away? Why pretend like I didn't exist?"

Victor opened his mouth—then stopped. His throat felt tight. There were so many ways to answer that, yet none that would make sense to her. Not the truth of his current self. Not the truth of what he had become.

Her eyes glimmered in the moonlight, raw and beautiful and broken.

"Do you know," she said softly, "how many times I came to your house after that night? How many times I waited at the gate just to see if you'd come out? I told myself I'd yell at you. I'd curse you. I'd throw something at you if I had to. But when I saw your window dark, every single time…" She shook her head, a bitter smile ghosting her lips. "I just went home."

Victor's chest ached. His fingers twitched against his knees, wanting to reach out, to touch her hand, to tell her he was here now. But he didn't. Not yet.

He inhaled deeply, the air thick with the scent of night-blooming flowers and memories. "Sasha…"

Her eyes darted to him, sharp now, guarded.

He sighed. "In the past…"

He paused there, the words hanging unfinished, fragile.

Because how could he tell her? That the man she'd loved was gone? That the one sitting beside her was someone reborn—literally, spiritually, irreversibly changed? That his past self, foolish and selfish, had hurt her without ever understanding what she meant to him?

He looked at her again, really looked. The way her jaw tightened to hide the shake in her lips. The faint mark on her wrist where she'd once worn the bracelet he'd given her. The way her breath caught whenever he moved, as if she was afraid he might vanish again.

The silence that followed was dense, heavy enough to press against their ribs.

Sasha's gaze lowered to her lap. "You always stop halfway," she murmured. "Even now."

Victor's heart clenched.

For a moment, he wanted to explain everything—to spill the truth, to tell her that his soul had changed, that the universe had twisted and remade him. But what right did he have to ask her to understand something even he barely did?

So he just sat there, under the soft glow of the moon, with the woman whose heart he had once shattered, and let the silence stretch again.

The fountain whispered. The night wrapped around them like a secret.

Her hand shifted slightly, brushing against the edge of his sleeve—so slight it could have been an accident. But Victor felt it, a spark of warmth against his skin, a reminder of everything unsaid.

He looked up. Their eyes met again.

No more words. Just that long, quiet stare—his full of regret, hers full of old hurt and reluctant hope.

And then she looked away.

He wanted to reach out, to say her name again, but he didn't. Because somehow, in that silence, he realized this was the first time in years she'd truly been honest with him.

And maybe, before anything else, he needed to be honest too.

He took one more breath, slow and steady. "Because in the past…" he began again

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