Three weeks.
That's how long they'd lived in the house without a real clock.
Time passed in shadows on the floor and the groan of water pipes.
Mornings were still — prayer, tea, silence.
Nights were tangled in sweat and nightmares and limbs that no longer knew where one body ended and another began.
But this night was different.
Lucien broke.
---
It started with a glass falling from the counter — a simple thing.
Aaliyah bent to pick it up.
But Lucien just stared at the shards, frozen.
"Don't touch it," he said, voice tight.
Silas turned. "It's just glass."
Lucien didn't respond.
He stood there, jaw clenched, body shaking like he was holding back a scream. Then he dropped to his knees on the floor beside the broken glass.
He didn't cry at first.
He just sat there, breathing like every inhale hurt.
---
Aaliyah knelt slowly in front of him. "Lucien…?"
His eyes finally met hers — but they weren't his.
They were a boy's eyes.
Lost. Shattered. Terrified.
"I used to pick up bottles like this after my mother's clients left," he whispered. "Before she'd wake up. Before she'd scream at me for letting them in."
The silence that followed was suffocating.
"I thought I was saving her," he said. "But she never wanted saving."
---
Aaliyah reached out — and he flinched.
She didn't stop.
She pulled him in, gently, firmly, until his head rested against her stomach and his arms clung to her like drowning fists.
"I'm not her," she whispered.
"I know," he choked.
"And I'm not leaving."
His body shook against hers.
And she didn't move. Not even when the floor dug into her knees.
Not even when Silas sat behind her, wrapping them both in his arms.
They stayed that way until the trembling stopped.
Until breathing felt possible again.
---
Later that night, they all lay in bed.
Lucien's head was on her chest now. Silas's hand cradled her thigh.
It was quiet, but not empty.
"You okay?" Silas asked her softly.
"I don't know," she answered.
But what she meant was: I will be.
Because that night, she wasn't just being held.
She was holding them too.
And it changed something.
In her.
In them.
In all three.
--