Chapter Text
(Leo’s POV)
The next morning, the atmosphere in the house was… different. The thaw was more pronounced now; the dripping from the roof was a constant, steady rhythm, and patches of muddy grass were beginning to appear at the edges of the snowbanks like continents emerging from a white sea. The world was slowly returning to its normal shape. And so, it seemed, was Rofi.
He was polite. He was friendly. He smiled and made jokes and played his part as the cheerful, energetic center of the group. But something was missing. The easy intimacy, the casual touches, the shared, secret glances—they were gone. He still sat near me at breakfast, but he left a careful, deliberate space between us. When he talked to me, his eyes didn’t quite meet mine. He was treating me like he treated everyone else. Like a friend. A neighbor. A roommate.
And it was killing me.
My mind, a master of self-torture, immediately jumped to the worst possible conclusion. I had done something wrong. I had messed up. My silence after Ollie’s question, my awkward, frozen panic—it had been the final straw. I had shown him just how broken I was, and he had, quite logically, decided to back away. He had seen the full extent of my damage, and he was done. The kindness, the affection, it had all been a temporary measure, an emergency response to a crisis. And now that the crisis was over, so was the intimacy.
It was exactly what I had feared. And yet, it was a thousand times more painful than I could have imagined. The warmth of the last few days had made the cold of my own loneliness feel so much colder.
I needed to get out of the house. I couldn’t stand being in the same room with him, feeling the chasm that had opened up between us. I needed a mission. A purpose. An excuse to be anywhere else.
“I, uh… I need to go back to my apartment,” I announced to Theo, who was wiping down the already spotless kitchen counter. “I need to get some more clothes. And my laptop.”
Theo looked up, his expression full of his usual, gentle concern. “Are you sure, Leo? The roads are still pretty slushy.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said, my voice more clipped than I intended. “It’s not that far. I need the walk.”
“I can go with you!” Rofi offered from the living room. His voice was bright, helpful. But it was the voice he would have used for anyone. It wasn’t special. It wasn’t for me.
“No,” I said, too quickly. “No, it’s fine. I… I need to go alone.”
The hurt that flickered in his eyes was so fast I might have imagined it. But it was there. I had hurt him. I had rejected his offer of help, just as he seemed to be rejecting me. We were two people, standing on opposite sides of a growing canyon, throwing stones at each other.
“Okay,” he said, his voice quiet. He turned back to the TV, and that was that.
The walk to my apartment was a miserable, wet affair. The slush soaked through my boots, chilling my paws. The air was damp and heavy. The world was a dreary, grey-and-white mess, a perfect reflection of my own internal state.
When I finally reached my apartment building, I fumbled with the keys, my paws numb with cold and anxiety. The lock clicked, and I pushed the door open. The air that hit me was stale, frigid, and silent. It was the air of a tomb.
My apartment was exactly as I had left it. Neat, sterile, and empty. The boxes I had packed for my move were still stacked against the wall, silent monuments to my failed escape. The furniture was covered in white sheets, making the room look like a graveyard of a life that had never really been lived.
I walked through the silent rooms, the sound of my own footsteps echoing unnervingly. This was what I had been so desperate to get back to? This… nothingness? This profound, soul-crushing emptiness? I had been so focused on escaping the ghosts of my past that I hadn’t realized I had built myself a new prison, one of my own design.
I went into the bedroom and opened my closet. My remaining clothes hung there, limp and lifeless. I pulled out a few sweaters, a pair of jeans, and stuffed them into a backpack. I grabbed my laptop from the desk. The screen was dark, reflective. I could see my own face in it. The face of a stranger. A sad, lonely snow leopard who looked just as lost and out of place here as he did in Theo’s warm, loud, and lively house.
I stood in the middle of the living room, surrounded by the ghosts of my own making. The ghost of my ambition. The ghost of my independence. The ghost of my self-imposed isolation. They were all here, whispering to me in the silent, cold air. See? they seemed to say. This is who you are. This is where you belong. Alone.
But for the first time, I didn’t believe them.
Because my mind, my traitorous, hopeful mind, was filled with the memory of other things. The warmth of Rofi’s arm around me. The sound of his laughter. The taste of Artemis’s lasagna. The sight of Ollie’s passionate, excited face as he talked about his game. The feeling of Hunter’s heavy paw on my shoulder. The gentle, paternal kindness in Theo’s eyes.
That was real. That was life. This… this was just waiting.
I looked at the boxes again. My escape plan. My one-way ticket to a new, and probably just as lonely, life. And I felt… nothing. No excitement. No anticipation. Just a deep, weary sadness.
I didn’t belong here anymore. I had thought this apartment, this solitude, was my safe place. My fortress. But it wasn’t. It was a cage. And the door had been open all along.
I zipped up my backpack, my movements slow and deliberate. I took one last look around the sterile, empty room. It wasn’t a home. It had never been a home. It was just a place I had been hiding.
I walked out of the apartment, locking the door behind me. I didn’t look back. The walk back to Theo’s house was just as cold and wet as the walk to my apartment had been. But something had changed. The cold didn’t seem to bother me as much. The slush under my paws felt less like a miserable obstacle and more like… a path. A path that was leading me somewhere.
I didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t know what I was going to say. The future was still a terrifying, unknown country. But for the first time, I knew, with a certainty that settled deep in my bones, that I didn’t want to go there alone.
I reached the front door of Theo’s house and hesitated, my paw hovering over the doorknob. I could hear the sounds of life inside. Laughter. Music. The sounds of a home. My heart was pounding, but it wasn’t just with anxiety anymore. It was with something else. Something that felt a lot like hope.
I took a deep breath, and I opened the door.
