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“You need to figure it out. Because if you fall apart, we all die.”

The line goes quiet. When she speaks again, her voice is hollow.

“I thought... I thought you of all people would understand.”

“I understand that someone has to keep fighting. And if you won’t, then?—”

“Then what? You’ll do it better? You’ll save everyone because you’re so much stronger than weak little Pepper?”

“That’s not what I?—”

“Yes, it is.” Her voice hardens. “That’s exactly what you mean. Just like everyone else—blame Pepper when things go wrong.”

“Pepper, I didn’t mean?—”

But the line’s already dead.

She doesn’t call back.

She doesn’t answer when I try to call her.

And three weeks later, when the crisis resolves and the dead aren’t dead and the world doesn’t end, I get a text:

“We survived. No thanks to you.”

That’s the last time any of them contact me.

That’s the moment I realize that the person I was most afraid of losing—I’d already lost her.

Because I chose fear over love. Blame over support. Control over connection.

I chose to hurt her rather than admit I was drowning too.

The projections end, but the stone isn’t finished with me. It forces the most devastating realization to the surface—the truth I’ve been hiding even from myself.

The worst part isn’t that I said those words.

The worst part is that I meant them.

In that moment, watching Pepper break down, I was furious at her for being human. For being vulnerable. For needing support instead of providing it.

I was angry at her for falling apart when I needed her to be strong.

And instead of admitting I was scared too, instead of saying “I’m drowning and I need you to throw me a rope,” I used the truth as a weapon.

I chose the cruelest honest words I could find.

That’s who I really am.

Someone who hurts people with truth instead of connecting through it.

Someone who uses honesty as a blade instead of a bridge.

Someone who chooses cruel truth over vulnerable truth every single time.

Two years. I’ve chosen to hurt the people I love most for two years—not by lying to them, but by refusing to trust them with difficult truths.

By choosing isolation over the risk of authentic connection.