Chapter 47 When the Fire Went Out

Aria's voice was steadier now, but her gaze was distant, like she was watching stars collapse behind her eyes.

"After she fell... and he ran... no one knew where Aldrin went. Not even Isabella. He disappeared like breath in winter."

Iris sat still, her fingers brushing the rim of her cup, eyes locked to Aria's every word.

"But I found him. Or maybe he let himself be found. I don't know."

The room dimmed with memory.

 

Flashback

The bar was empty, dim, the kind of place time forgot.

Cigarette smoke curled above flickering lights. Bottles lined the shelves like soldiers at rest. The only sound was the low grumble of a ceiling fan and the shuffle of a solitary drink.

Aldrin sat at the far end, hood low, shirt soaked with old rain and older blood. His hands trembled—not from fear, but something deeper. Anger that had nowhere left to burn.

He didn't flinch when Aria sat beside him.

"You drink now?" she asked softly, voice more music than words.

"No," he murmured.

She glanced at the untouched glass beside him.

"Good," she said. "You're terrible at it."

That pulled the smallest ghost of a smile.

"You shouldn't have come," he said, still not meeting her eyes.

"But I did."

They sat in silence.

Then—he turned, slowly, and looked at her. Really looked.

Not as she was, but as if he were reaching for a life before the Institution.

"You're still here," he said.

"I was always here," she answered.

She took him home that night.

He didn't speak much. Ate little. Slept less.

But she sat with him—every night. No judgment. No pity. Just presence.

 

"He was a storm," Aria whispered in the now. "But quiet. The kind of storm that breaks from the inside out. I changed his bandages. Cooked when he wouldn't eat. Talked when he went mute. I reminded him of the boy who used to read poetry at midnight and danced barefoot in gardens. I reminded him of who he was before the Institution carved their name into his bones."

 

Flashback

One night, she found him standing in the backyard shirtless, fists bloodied, breath ragged.

She said nothing.

Just walked up and pressed her forehead to his chest.

"You're going back, aren't you?"

He nodded once.

"You're not ready."

"I'll never be."

"Then heal the broken, Aldrin," she whispered. "Don't fight them. Make peace with them."

He looked down at her, eyes glassed with war and grief.

"I can't stay."

"I'm not asking you to."

She stepped back, placing her hand on his heart like a farewell prayer.

"But when you're done... when the fire dies and the war stops echoing... your home is here. Not in the ruins. Not in vengeance. Here."

And with that, he left.

Shoulders heavy with ghosts. Eyes forward.

No goodbyes.

Only purpose.

"He never said it," Aria finished, looking at Iris now with a distant smile, "but I think those words followed him into every battle since. That maybe, deep down, he's still trying to earn his way home."

Iris didn't speak.

Because something in her chest suddenly ached to be that home.

The iron clank of weights hitting the floor echoed through Aldrin's private gym like distant thunder. His shirt clung to him, soaked in sweat, chest rising and falling in slow, deliberate gulps.

He sat down on the cold steel bench, elbows on knees, hands trembling—not from exertion, but from everything else.

From her.

From Mara.

The rage had nowhere left to go. The silence in the room rang louder than war drums.

He looked up at the ceiling, like maybe it would break open and scream for him. But it didn't. It just stayed still.

Like he had to.

But he couldn't.

Not tonight.

The road was dark, carved between mountains and memory. The car's engine purred beneath him as he drove with no music, only the wind whipping against the windows and the ghost of her laugh echoing in his mind.

Mara, reading aloud from banned texts under a sheet of night. Mara, eyes sharp with revolution, mouth full of fire and philosophy. Mara, teasing him for being too serious. Mara, calling him her storm made flesh.

He gripped the wheel tighter.

Her voice drifted in like perfume from another lifetime.

"You think too much, Aldrin. You feel like a monsoon. Say it. Whatever it is. Say it before you drown."

But he never did.

He never said what he needed to say.

 

The bridge stood just like before—old bones of iron and concrete, jagged with rust and time. The same wind. The same view. The same grief.

He stepped out of the car.

Boots crunching gravel like bones.

And stood at the spot.

The exact one.

Where she'd slipped from his arms.

Rain hadn't fallen, but he could still feel it—phantom droplets, cold on his skin.

He saw her again.

Eyes wide, blood at her lips, whispering through the storm:

"Let me go, Aldrin…"

His jaw clenched.

He could still feel the weight of her body on his back, the taste of gunpowder in the rain, the scream in his chest as she fell.

He hadn't just watched her die.

He lost her.

And he burned the world for it.

 

They called it the Red Week.

The Institution said it was a rogue insurgent faction.

But it was Aldrin.

It was him.

One by one, he hunted every operative who stood in his way.

Every chamber lit with fire.

Every corridor soaked in shadow and retribution.

His mind was a war drum. His fists were the law.

And when he found the fourth shadow—Nero—hiding behind a walled estate cloaked in false loyalty and backroom pacts, Aldrin didn't hesitate.

He didn't offer words.

Only silence.

Only fire.

He remembered Nero's final plea, trembling, back against marble.

"You loved her more than the mission. That made you weak."

And Aldrin's voice, low as thunder:

"No. That made me human. You killed the only thing that ever made me want to live."

He pulled the trigger.

Twice.

Nero fell.

The rain fell harder.

But it couldn't wash the blood off his hands.

Not then.

Not now.

Back on the bridge, Aldrin leaned forward, resting his forearms on the rusted railing, eyes locked on the valley below.

The wind howled like it remembered her name.

He whispered it once.

"Mara…"

His breath caught in his throat.

Not for what he did.

But for the love that never had the chance to become more than a whisper.

The wind bit colder now, carving down the valley like it knew something was coming. Aldrin stood still, eyes locked on the mist crawling below. He hadn't moved in minutes.

But he felt it.

That shift in the air.

A presence.

The echo of old footsteps in a new world.

He didn't need to turn around to know it was her.

Mara.

"I wondered if you'd follow," he said softly, voice gravel-laced.

She stepped from the shadows like a ghost dressed in flesh and defiance. The moonlight painted her in silver, wind kissing her dark hair into movement.

"Still too poetic for your own good," she mused, arms folded, head tilted. "You always did love a balcony or a bridge."

He turned to face her—face unreadable, soul unraveling.

Her eyes searched him.

"You haven't changed," she whispered.

"I have," Aldrin replied. "You died. I had to."

They stood there, the air thick with silence and storms not yet broken.

He stepped closer. His voice cracked just once.

"I'm sorry, Mara. I should've said it then. I should've held you tighter. I should've—"

She placed a hand on his chest, gently over his heart.

"It's fine, Aldrin." Her voice was too soft, too haunting. "We all fall. Some just fall further than others."

He looked down at her hand. It was warm. Real.

And yet everything about this moment felt like a dream folding in on itself.

Then she smiled—quiet, deliberate. Dangerous.

"I'm rebuilding it," she said.

Silence.

"The Institution. Our home. Our weapon. It was never meant to die with me."

His breath caught.

"Mara…"

"You destroyed it—for me," she said, stepping back now. "I've spent every year since... rebuilding it for us."

He shook his head. "There is no 'us.' That part of me... the man who lived in that place... he died the night you did."

"You sure?" she asked, brow arching. "Because he looks like he's standing right here. Stronger. Wilder. Ready."

"No," Aldrin said, firmer now. "I won't go back. That man was made of shadow and orders. I buried him with the ashes."

Her expression didn't falter. "Then it's a shame," she said, turning.

She walked past him—slow, deliberate—heels clicking like countdowns on cracked concrete.

Her final words lingered like gun smoke behind her.

"Well, your empire may just have to burn then… if you stand in my way."

She stepped into the black car waiting at the edge of the road, the door closing behind her like the end of a chapter.

The engine hummed.

And she disappeared into the night.