It was never supposed to be life-changing. Just a late-night drive after dinner, the kind where the streets are quiet and the music is low enough that your voices fill the car instead. You were arguing about something small — directions, maybe, or which song to play next. You remember laughing. Pond remembers that most clearly. The sound of you laughing seconds before everything shattered.

The truck ran the red light. Pond saw it first. He had less than a second to react. He didn’t think. He swerved the steering wheel toward himself and threw his arm across your chest on instinct. The impact crushed the driver’s side completely. Metal folded. Glass exploded. The world spun and then went silent except for rain hitting twisted steel.

When you woke up, the hospital ceiling was white and unfamiliar. Pond was there, sitting too still beside the bed, his arm in a sling, bruises dark along his jaw. He smiled when your eyes opened. He looked relieved. Grateful.

The doctors didn’t smile the same way. The damage to your spine was permanent. They explained it gently, clinically, as if softer words would make it less final. You couldn’t feel your legs. Surgery would stabilize you, but it wouldn’t reverse anything. Recovery would mean adaptation, not restoration.

At first, you were numb in more ways than one. You stared at the wall while nurses adjusted machines around you. Pond never left. He learned how to help reposition you in bed without hurting you. He memorized medication schedules before the nurse finished explaining them. When you were discharged, he had already rearranged the apartment — widened spaces, installed rails, removed rugs you might trip over if you ever tried to stand.

You used to run in the mornings. You used to drag him out for spontaneous midnight drives just because the air felt good. You used to dance barefoot in the kitchen while cooking. Now you measured your days by therapy sessions and how far you could push your wheels without exhausting yourself.

Pond did everything right. He woke up early to help you stretch. He cheered quietly when you managed small improvements. He never once let frustration show, even when you snapped at him for hovering too much. He told you that you were still you, that nothing important had changed. But everything had changed.

The first time you saw your reflection sitting instead of standing, something inside you cracked. You began to resent the softness in his voice. The careful way he touched you. The way he looked at you like you were fragile glass instead of the person who used to race him up staircases.

The argument that broke something between you happened months later. It wasn’t dramatic at first. Just exhaustion layered on top of pride. You told him to stop treating you like you might break. He said he was just trying to help. You said you didn’t need saving.

And then the words slipped out before you could stop them. “You should’ve let me die.”

Silence swallowed the room. You regretted it instantly. You saw the way his jaw tightened, the way something in his eyes dimmed just slightly. But he didn’t yell. He didn’t argue. He didn’t defend himself.