The first mory that surfaced was the interrogation room. Ashley Blackheart across from him, an S rank officer who had spent her career studying n like Alessio D’Rossi, and himself, a fifteen year old who had awakened two days ago, sitting there like he’d done it a hundred tis, leaning forward and saying:
’If even the highest authorities of the Federation tried to harm my family, I would do exactly the sa thing to them that I did to that terrorist.’
He’d said that... To an S rank. With nothing but raw confidence and whatever had unlocked in his chest when Alessio’s mories ca rushing back.
’There was no need for it... None. She was a nuisance, not a threat. The right move was to give her nothing, be boring, be blank, be the scared fifteen-year-old she expected. Instead... I handed her confirmation that sothing was wrong with .’
’I didn’t even pause to think... I just opened my mouth and ’he’ ca out.’
Then the other mories followed in their chain, each one a decision made at the edge of calculation, where the emotional pull of Alessio’s instincts had arrived half a second faster than Damian’s own judgnt.
’I’ve been wearing ’him’ like a second skin and calling it who I am.’
"...You’re right," he said.
He said it quietly, and his mouth curved in a way that wasn’t quite a smile. The bitterness in it was directed inward.
Luna saw the shift before he could contain it. Her expression softened and she reached over and moved the hair from his face with careful fingers, looking directly into his eyes.
"Hey." Her voice was quiet. "The intelligence is still there, the way your mind works... that’s still you. The art you developed is proof of that... Nobody else would have conceived it." She held his gaze, steady and sure. "That part was never Alessio."
They stayed like that for a mont, her fingers still where they’d moved his hair, him looking back at her.
After a while Damian said, "I still feel like the old beggar is influencing ... Like I’m moving along a path he already designed."
He reached for the bottle.
But Luna’s hand got there first, she poured a glass and drank it, and this ti she didn’t cough. Just set the glass down and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
’She’s past the burning stage.’
"It’s helping think," she said, to his expression. "Don’t look at like that."
’If Mom were here right now, I would be dead.’
The alcohol was settling into her.
The particular looseness around her eyes, the way she was sitting slightly closer than she’d been before without seeming to notice, the way her voice had lost the last layer of composure she usually kept between herself and everything else.
She looked at the middle distance with a focused expression.
"I don’t know what kind of powers that disgusting old man has." Her voice ca out flat with an edge underneath it. "That useless piece of garbage who should die a horrible, painful..."
Damian’s lips twitched.
"...miserable, drawn-out death." She finished it with complete conviction.
Then she blinked. "Wait... I’m getting too emotional." A pause. "Let ..."
She murmured sothing under her breath.
Emotional Void.
The change was imdiate. The looseness in her posture didn’t disappear, but everything behind her eyes cleared, the way a room looks different when soone opens the curtains. Her silver eyes went sharp in a different direction, turned inward and calculating rather than warm.
When she spoke, her voice was stripped of everything except the logic underneath it.
"If I wanted to control a person across a lifeti I couldn’t supervise..." She looked at the wall, working through it out loud. "I can’t know who they’ll be in their next life and I can’t predict their circumstances, their choices, what they’ll learn..."
She turned the problem over.
"So... I can’t control what they think. Smart people question things... Give them a clear mind and they’ll reason their way out of any script you write for them."
She took a pause.
"But here’s what psychology has known for centuries... People don’t actually make decisions with their minds. They make decisions with their emotions, and then they use their minds to justify those decisions afterward. Every ti, even brilliant people... because they’re better at constructing the justification."
Her hands folded in her lap, completely still.
"So if you want to control soone intelligent, you don’t touch their logic. You build their emotional wiring... You give them a self, an identity made of instincts and loyalties and reflexes that fire before thought can intervene." Her voice stayed level. "And then you let go... You don’t need to be there anymore. Because they’ll make every choice you intended while believing completely that they’re choosing freely."
She looked at him directly.
"The instinct moves first and the reasoning follows. And the person never knows the difference because it all feels like who they are."
Then the skill wore off.
It left her face like a tide going out, the warmth and the flush and the particular softness of soone past their second glass coming back all at once. She blinked slowly.
"That’s all I could think of," she said, her voice her own again. "I’ve been fighting my own emotions my whole life. I know what they do to a person’s judgnt, even when you can see it happening."
"..."
Damian had gone very still.
The words were still moving through him, rearranging things.
’He didn’t give information... He gave Alessio.’
Not the mories or the knowledge... but the person. The forty years of emotional architecture, the loyalty that didn’t need a reason, the protectiveness that overrode calculation, the instinct to stand between danger and the people he’d claid, the reflex to escalate, to never show weakness, to carry everything alone.
All of it built into his chest like load-bearing walls.
All of it moving faster than thought.
’And I’ve been calling it who I am.’
"That’s..." He stopped.
"I know," Luna said.
He looked at her for a mont. Then he exhaled, slow and controlled, and said nothing else because there wasn’t anything to say yet. The thought needed sowhere to go and it hadn’t found it.
Luna watched his face with those eyes that saw everything whether he wanted her to or not.
Then sothing shifted in her expression. She tilted her head, and a different kind of focus ca into her eyes, the kind that ant she’d just connected two things.
"So," she said. "...You risked your life for another woman."
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