Just like he said, he took me to the doctor.
The private helicopter bustled beneath me like a cold reminder of the man sitting beside me. Judas's presence was suffocating even when he wasn't looking at me. He stared out the window and I hated how perfect sculpture of indifference his side profile was.
It didn't take long to reach the city. My chest tightened. So many people. So much noise. Yet, I felt impossibly alone.
The skyline became hazy through the fog of my thoughts. This city had always been cold, but now its chill seeped into my bones in a way that had nothing to do with the weather. Moscow was the same, but I wasn't. I wasn't sure I even knew who I was anymore.
Judas's voice broke through my haze as he spoke to the pilot. The authoritative tone grated against me and it irked me how easily he moved through the world, bending it to his will. Without caring for anyone.
I thought I had seen vulnerability in him when his parents visited, but why did it feel like they took a part of him with themselves?
I sat stiffly beside him. Trying to disappear into the leather seat. My breaths felt heavier, harder, as if the very air conspired to suffocate me.
When we landed, I didn't bother looking around. It didn't matter where we were. It didn't matter that life bustled around me. All I could feel was the emptiness clawing at my insides, slowly consuming me.
Judas didn't touch me as we stepped into the car waiting for us. He didn't look at me. But his silence was louder than any words.
I looked out the window staring at my reflection against the glass. People moved and I couldn't help but wonder if I'd ever felt that way. Alive. Whole.
But no.
I was fractured now and a collection of broken pieces would never fit together. And Judas? He held the hammer that had shattered me.
For the first time, I let myself ask the question I'd been too afraid to face.
Would I ever escape him?
Or worse...
Would I even want to?
I took another shaky breath wrapping the coat around myself.
Soon we were at the clinic.
He got out, wearing his shades and the cane. So, he was going to pretend to be blind?
I didn't speak. Neither did him when we entered the clinic.
The middle-aged doctor ran some tests as soon as he saw him.
The tests were motorized and objective. Bright lights, cold instruments, and the sterile scent of antiseptic. The doctor spoke to Judas more than me, as if I were just a vessel-a problem to be solved. Judas stood by my side, arms crossed, his gaze sharp and assessing behind the shades, but he didn't touch look at me. Not once.
And still, I couldn't stop thinking about his hands. About the way they had pinned me, hurt me, and claimed me. My skin burned with the memory and my chest tightened with shame.
The results were something that should relieve me. Instead, it felt hollow. Void.
Negative.
I was no pregnant.
And the delayed periods were just due to stress and slow immune system.
The nurse placed a reassuring hand on my arm and said in heavy accented voice. "You're young. Stress does this sometimes. No need to worry."
No need to worry?
I wanted to laugh. Or scream. Or both. But I said nothing. My voice was strangled by the bitter knot in my throat.
Judas said nothing either. He didn't move, didn't react. His silence was louder than anything the doctor or nurse could have said. It draped around me until I could barely breathe.
I wasn't carrying his child.
And yet, I still felt owned. Marked.
As we left the clinic, the nurse's polite smile followed me out the door. But it didn't reach my heart. It couldn't. My chest was too heavy for my thought to untangle.
What did this mean? For him? For me? For us-if there even was such a thing as "us"?
The ride back to the helipad was silent. I couldn't bring myself to look at Judas, but I felt him. Every inch of him. His was like a storm. Violent even when he was quiet.
Once we were back in the helicopter, I stared out the window as Moscow shrank beneath us. The sprawling city of light and life became smaller and smaller until it was just a blur on the horizon.
And still, I couldn't shake the thought.
What were we?
The answers wouldn't come. Only the silence. Only the endless, aching silence that stretched between us and it was heavier than any words could ever be.
That night, he didn't come to the bedroom too.
The stillness was icier than his absence. I stared at the ceiling for hours, willing sleep to take me. But it didn't. Instead, I replayed every word, every touch, and every moment where I thought I could hate him and hate myself more.
And then I cried.
I cried for who I was before him. I cried for who I was now.
Because the truth was a bitter. A jagged pill lodged in my throat. I wasn't his lover. I wasn't the woman he loved. I wasn't anything but his possession, something to control, to destroy. And yet, I missed him. His warmth. His presence. The way he could make me feel alive even while tearing me apart.
Why? Why did it have to be him? Why did he have to be my destruction?
The night stretched on endlessly. When sleep finally came it was heavy and when I woke, my pillow was still damp. And the side of the bed colder than ever.
The island was quiet the next morning, just the way it always was. Yet, something felt different. Off.
I sat by the window, staring at the horizon and my hands were wrapped around a mug of tea I didn't drink. The ice was endless much like the void inside me.
Why was I here?
The answer was simple. He kept me because he could. Because I had allowed it.
But the question that haunted me wasn't about him.
It was about me.
Why was I still here? Why hadn't I tried harder to leave? To escape?
A sob bubbled in my throat, but I swallowed it down, choking on the truth.
I was afraid.
Not of him, though he was every nightmare made flesh. But of myself. Of what I'd become without him.
He was the storm, but I was the wreckage.
And as much as I hated him, I hated myself more. For craving the chaos he brought into my life. For finding comfort in the torment. For missing him, even when he was the reason for every scar etched into my soul.
My thoughts spun like a cyclone as another realisation crept in.
He'd discard me like a used shirt.
If he left, what would be left of me?
People like us didn't live. We survive.
But surviving felt a lot like dying.
I placed the mug down and pressed my palms against the cold glass as my reflection stared back at me-a ghost of a woman I didn't recognize.
"You're mine," he'd said.
Not because he loved me. Not because he cared.
Because he could.
I closed my eyes and let the tears fall again.
Judas didn't just own me.
He had erased me.
And the worst part?
I had let him.