Chapter 1 - The Words That Could Not Be Taken Back
The apartment was too small for two people who had spent months hurting each other.
Rain tapped against the grimy windows. The refrigerator rattled in the kitchen. Stolas stood beside the couch, his feathers disheveled, watching Blitzø scroll through his phone with an expression that suggested the conversation was already over.
“Blitzø,” Stolas began carefully. “Could we please talk about what happened?”
Blitzø laughed without humor.
“Oh, now you wanna talk?”
“I have been trying to talk to you for weeks!”
“And I've been trying to figure out why the hell I ever thought you gave a shit about me!”
Stolas recoiled.
Blitzo speaks. "I have also been seeing someone recently
"who?"
"Andrealphus"
Stolas confronts Blitzø with tears of rage
"Of all the demons in the Nine Circles, Blitzø... you chose the family that tried to have me slaughtered? Was everything we had just a joke to you?"
"I gave you a roof, A job, and went through hell just to get this plant and you have been fucking behind my back and in front of me. You never even bothered to care about my well being in all those months wishing you would. At least he makes things easier for me and doesn't treat me like a plaything like you did, or take everything I do for granted."
Stolas: Voice trembling, a breathless, choked sound) "A plaything...? Blitzø, how can you—after everything, how can you still think that is all you were to me? I gave up my status, my palace, my entire comfortable life... I moved into this... this shoebox because I wanted to be near you! On equal ground! I didn't take a single thing for granted!"
He steps forward, hands reaching out instinctively before dropping heavily to his sides, trembling violently.
"And Andrealphus? You think he makes things easier for you? He is using you, Blitzø! He doesn't care about your well-being—he cares about destroying mine! He is an ice-cold, calculating viper who is laughing at how easily he pulled you into his bed just to spite me! If you wanted to hurt me, if you wanted to rip my heart out and stomp it into the dirt... congratulations. You won. But please, do not look me in the eyes and tell me that monster actually cares about you."
“When you said at that trial that you'd rather be dead than live without me by your side, I actually believed you.”
His voice cracked. He immediately covered it with anger.
“Then I ran into an old client we met at Sinsmas. She told me what you said afterward. And I quote: ‘This was so stupid. I ruined everything, and I did it for what? These stupid, foolish fantasies.’”
Stolas's four eyes widened.
“You heard that?”
“Yep. All of it.”
“Blitzø, please. That isn't what I meant—”
“Then what the fuck did you mean?”
He takes a step back, gripping his own arms as if trying to hold himself together. The realization that his lowest, most agonizing confession of regret was twisted and brought back to Blitzø by an outsider makes him physically sick.
"Blitzø, no... you—you don't understand the context of what I meant. When I said those were 'foolish fantasies,' I wasn't calling you a mistake! I was calling myself a fool! A fool for thinking a sheltered prince like me could just stumble into your world and think love would be enough to fix the decades of damage between us! I thought I ruined your life by forcing myself into it!"
Tears finally spill over, burning tracks down his feathers.
Stolas: "I said I would rather be dead than live without you because that is the truth. But hearing that I hurt you so deeply that you threw yourself into the arms of my worst enemy... it makes me realize my fantasies really were stupid. Because I never learned how to love you without breaking you."
Blitzø stood.
“Going to a party celebrating hating me. Making out with some guy at a party celebrating my downfall. Fucking around behind my back. Claiming we weren't a romantic couple. Saying I didn't deserve someone like you.”
His hands trembled.
“Is that your way of loving me?”
“Blitzø—”
“I've been isolated all my life. I wanted somebody who was there for me as much as I was there for them. I thought maybe you could be that person.”
He stared at Stolas.
“Turns out, You're not.”
The silence afterward was worse than the shouting.
Stolas completely stripped of any defense. The harsh reality that Blitzø wanted a true partner and felt completely abandoned by him crushes what is left of Stolas's composure.
His voice breaks completely, a strangled, agonizing sound escaping his throat
"Blitzø... I..."
He reaches out, his clawed hand trembling violently in the empty space between them, but he drops it. He looks down at the floor, the weight of his own thoughtlessness crashing down on him. There are no excuses left to make. He can't deny a single word.
Stolas lowered his head. Tears gathered beneath his four eyes.
“You're right,” he whispered. “I wanted to be your home. But I was so wrapped up in my own misery that I never understood how deeply I was hurting you. I wanted to be that person for you. I wanted to be your home. But I was so blind to my own privilege, so clumsy with your heart, that I ruined the only thing that ever truly mattered to me. If Andrealphus gives you the peace and stability I failed to provide... then I have no right to stand in your way. Even if it kills me to see you with him."
Blitzø looked away.
For one fleeting moment, he wanted to believe him.
Then he remembered every humiliation, every unanswered question, every night he'd convinced himself he was nothing more than an amusing distraction for a lonely prince.
The moment passed.
“Get out.”
Stolas froze.
“What?”
“Get. Out. Of. My. Apartment.”
“Blitzø, I have nowhere else to go.”
“Should've thought about after using me. I can't believe how stupid I have been.”
Stolas stood motionless, as though his body had forgotten how to move.
Then he picked up his coat.
He walked toward the door without another word.
Blitzø didn't stop him.
The door closed.
And for the first time in months, Blitzø had the apartment to himself.
He sat down on the couch and stared at the empty space beside him.
“Good riddance,” he muttered.
His stomach twisted.
He repeated it until he almost believed it.
