✦ the room with the rifle over the mantle ✦
Sharp mouth. Steady aim. A better heart than he likes anybody noticing. This room is for the man I met in the Third Rail—and kept choosing after the road finally grew quiet.
a note left folded
This page is for every part of you that survived long enough to become gentle again. For Little Lamplight, for Duncan, for the cure, for every ugly mile between losing home and learning that you were still allowed to have one.
You make tenderness look like standing guard while pretending you only happened to be there. I know better. I always will.
— Aiya ♡
four things under glass
Not the whole story. Just the pieces that still catch the light.
the beginning
A child-made city, a mayor too young for the weight of it, and the first proof that surviving can make somebody funny, difficult, brave, and fiercely protective all at once.
the promise
The journey was never only about caps or contracts. At its center was a father refusing to let the world take one more person from him.
the meeting
A singer, a mercenary, a basement bar, and the beginning of a story neither of us was sensible enough to leave alone.
afterward
No more Gunners. No more contracts. Just modern life, dry commentary, ridiculous technology, and the strange luxury of having somewhere safe to come back to.
pocket inventory
standing order
The old rule, softened by time: no disappearing alone, no carrying everything in silence, and no pretending you are difficult to love just because you learned to be difficult to lose.