“No. Syn cleared them while I was in the hospital.” Darling fell silent as he tried to reconcile what she said with his memories of being in Resistance custody. “You never sounded like you were looking for me.” She’d sounded happy every day. Like she didn’t have a single care in the world.

“That’s because you heard the voice of the Resistance leader—the soldier who couldn’t afford to let anyone know her weaknesses. No matter how I felt, I couldn’t let them see it. But I swear to you, Darling, I was screaming and crying inside for fear of your death—you can ask my sister, if you doubt me. Or Ture. They’ll tell you that I wasn’t human. My mental state was so bad that they came over every weekend to stay with me so that I wouldn’t hurt myself.”

She traced the scar on his chest where Timmon had branded him with a hot chain. “And I know I shouldn’t have left you there without checking on you. I hate myself every time I think about you in that room, starving and suffering at the hands of the people I entrusted you to. I know it’s not the same as your having gone through it, but I promise you, you’re not alone in that hell. A part of me dies every time I see a scar on you that I could have… that I should have stopped.” Her voice cracked. “You are the most important person in my life. The only one I can depend on and when you needed me most, I wasn’t there for you. I—” Her words broke off into deep, heart-wrenching sobs. “Why didn’t I just open that damn door? Why?”

Darling pulled her against him and held her tight. “It’s all right.”

“No. No, it’s not.” She was crying so hard now, that her entire body was shaking. “I let them hurt you. I did. And now—”

“Shh baby,” he said, hating himself for upsetting her like this. “I swear I will never, ever bring it up again.”

Zarya believed him, but it didn’t change the fact that when he slept, if he slept, he still had horrifying nightmares over it.

I failed him in the worst way imaginable.

“I’m so sorry, Darling.”

Tightening his arms around her, he kissed her cheek. “You want to know the truth?”

No. Not if it was worse.

But before she could speak, he continued. “I would gladly suffer all of that and more if at the end of it, I knew you’d be waiting for me.”

She cried even harder. How could he feel like that? How? They’d torn him up so badly that Syn had barely been able to piece him back together.

“I was trying to cheer you, Z. Not upset you more.”

“I know.” She hiccupped. “I just… how did you survive it?”

Leaning back, he pulled her into his lap and held her with her head tucked beneath his chin. The warmth of his body soothed her more than anything. “At first, I thought you’d recognize me. After all the times that damned scar showed through my hair when I didn’t want it to, the one time it could have served me, it didn’t show at all. You got to love irony, huh? Anyway, once they chained me, I kept thinking you’d come in, see the scar and know me.”