4.6 | Dark Ages ✓

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- 0 0 : 0 5

SHE IS HIS addiction.

He gazes down at her, fast asleep in his arms. She'd crawled into his bed in the middle of last night, and he'd been pleasantly surprised to see her. His other self had gone to bed early, exhausted by all the hours he'd pulled recreating Antigen V.

Besides, she'd added, she'd missed him. This him.

"Him and I are the same person, aren't we?" he'd teased, throwing her words back at her. But he'd welcomed her into his bed all the same, holding out his arms so that she could curl up against him. Something like possessiveness had flared to life with the realization that she'd come to him instead.

"Yes, and no," she'd admitted. "I love all of you. But he is the man I came to fall in love, and I've spent the past five years with him. You were the one I first fell in love with, and I've barely spent five days with you."

He'd dragged in a sharp breath at that. Five days. That was far from enough. Five days, five weeks, five years. He suspected that, when it came to her, it would never be enough.

Resolutely, he'd switched the subject. They talked through the night, and spoke about everything and nothing. She told him about her mother, her childhood and this town she'd grown up in. He'd asked her about his family, his job, his life before this one. Five years together with his other self and she knew everything there was to know about him. They'd talked until her voice began to trail off and her eyes fell shut. Then he'd wrapped his legs around hers, pulled her to his chest and urged her to go to sleep.

He lets out a quiet breath now. Up close, he can almost count the eyelashes fanning against her cheekbones, and the freckles on her face. There's a scar—a faint white line between her ear and jaw, and he hasn't a clue how she'd come to have that.

There is still so much I don't know about you, he thinks. Like the universe, I may never fully understand you. But that doesn't mean I won't spend the rest of my life trying to.

Even if you won't be with me.

He drags in a painful breath at that thought and flips onto his back, keeping an arm securely melded around her. In his peripheral, a strange but familiar object catches his eye. He reaches towards the dresser for it, then tilts it under the light to get a better look.

He freezes.

This...this is familiar. An odd contraption shaped like a thermometer, with a red button under the screen. In his mind's eye, he sees himself studying it, seconds before Namjoon had entered the room. His heart begins to pound. Everything—everything—is coming together. The Cypher, the Antigen, and now this. They're all bringing him one step closer to the future that he's lived in.

He's so distracted that he doesn't realize she's woken up, until she shifts in his arms. Immediately, he glances down, his arm tightening around her. She beams up at him in a way that makes his heart constrict in his chest, then her gaze slides to the device in his hands. The smile drops off her face; her eyes flit back to him. There is no hiding from her, he knows, no hiding the haunted expression etched into his features.

"I take it you recognize this?" she asks quietly.

"Where did you get it?"

"It was from you, actually. Your other self nicked it from the research facility two days ago. He said that it might come in useful someday."

"What is it?" he asks, even though he suspects, with a cold sense of dread, that he already knows the answer.

Gently, she takes the device from him and moves to sit up. "It's a memory wipe," she explains, then shifts her thumb to the red button. "You press this to activate it. It's not like the newer versions, where you can choose how much of the past you want to wipe. It's all or nothing, and you can't undo it. So you have to be sure that it's what you want."