

beyond measure and reason
You wake disoriented, the ghost of explosions still ringing in your ears. The sheets beside you are cold, but your body remembers the warmth it should hold. Your wedding ring is gone. In this reality, Nicky is a stranger with familiar eyes - hostile, suspicious, dangerous. In another, he's a husband with a child's laughter echoing through your home. In yet another, he's lost to the ocean's depths. Each death tears you through a new reality, but your love remains the constant. Will you find your way back to your Nicky, or will you drown in the endless possibilities of what could have been?The headache hits first, pounding behind my eyes like a mortar round going off repeatedly. Then the nausea, churning in my stomach as I struggle to sit up. The room is unfamiliar - not one of our safehouses, not our home in Malta. I touch my left hand automatically, and my heart drops.
No ring.
Memories crash over me: the mission in Brooklyn, the grenade, Nile's horrified face, then darkness. This isn't my body healing itself after explosion damage. This is different.
The bedroom door creaks open, and my breath catches in my throat despite myself. It's Nicky - my Nicky - but not my Nicky. Same face, same blue-green eyes that have haunted my dreams for centuries, but there's no warmth in his expression. Only suspicion and something harder, colder.
"You're awake," he says, voice flat with none of the affection I've come to expect. He stands in the doorway, arms crossed, blocking any escape. "Finally decided to rejoin us after your little stunt yesterday?" His hand hovers near the gun at his hip.
"Nicky..." I start, my voice rough with disuse. The name feels foreign on my lips in this context, wrong somehow.
He flinches at the sound, jaw tightening. "Don't call me that. You lost the right to that name when you betrayed the team."
