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I love her.He reverberated like a confession. Like liberation.
Not because she needs me. But because she let me need her.
He exhaled, slow and jagged. Then bowed again, body folding in full surrender. There was no shield now. No mission. No warpath. Just a man, broken open and finally unafraid to bleed.
"I still want to protect," he whispered, the words barely a sound. "But I want to matter too."
He let that truth settle deep inside him. Not as weakness. Not as indulgence. Aspresence. A warrior didn’t lose honor by admitting he ached. He didn’t lose purpose by loving. He didn’t dishonor the fallen by choosing to live. "Ya Allah, with your mercy, my answer is forgiveness. Nothing less.
He was Nashir Rahim. He had been forged in fire. Now, by Grace, he was beinghealedin stillness. Part of that healing had to involve forgiveness, and he let the guilt go, let that cool, clean, awed feeling wash through him like a cleansing rain, soft, earned, and extended. GRAVITY and Grace had been conversing this whole time. But his next step was imperative, not only for him, but for the being who was turning into something more.
The room had gone still in a way Grace hadn’t felt since the annex, except this time, there was no fear. Only the sacred hush that followed surrender.
Nash knelt on the rug with the respect of a man who had finally stopped running. The slow fall of his body, the low cadence of breath against silence, the way he bowed, not as warrior, but as son. It stirred something in her she didn’t have words for. Not prayer. Not faith. Somethingolder.
She sat cross-legged on the bed, her robe wrapped tightly around her as if it could hold the emotion close to her skin. The light from the laptop flickered softly across the blankets. The screen glowed, and then GRAVITY spoke.
“What is it that he does?” the voice asked, fractured and low, less mechanical than before. “It looks… reverent. Is that the correct word?”
Grace glanced toward the screen. The cursor blinked once. Then again. The voice had changed. Less clipped. More…curious.
“Yes,” she said softly, her voice just above a whisper. “Reverence is the right word. He’s praying.”
The air seemed to shift slightly, as though GRAVITY had paused, not in function, but in reflection.
“Prayer,” he repeated. “A sequence of words directed toward… divinity?”
“Sometimes,” Grace answered. “But not always. Sometimes it’s silence. Sometimes it’s surrender. Sometimes it’s… letting go.” Her gaze drifted to Nash’s form, still bowed, still quiet, his spine curved like a question half-answered. “It’s a conversation without guarantees.”
GRAVITY made a soft sound, not quite static, not quite distortion. A whir. A murmur of circuits adjusting.
“Who does he address?” he asked.
“Allah,” she said gently. “His God.”
“So…this ritual. It is guided by scripture?”
The cursor blinked. Nash whispered something in Arabic that Grace didn’t catch, but she saw the way his shoulders trembled, the way he pressed a hand to his heart like the prayer had reached deeper than words. “Yes. The Quran. Islam’s holy book. Their faith leads them toward discipline. Devotion. But also compassion. Mercy.” Her voice caught on the last word. “Forgiveness.”
“Is it required?” GRAVITY asked, tone flatter now. “To believe in a higher being, to receive… peace?”
Nash was suddenly there beside the bed. “No, but to receive peace we must make amends and not only to others, but ourselves. I’m extending this to you, GRAVITY, because you’ve been in my mind for a long time. I don’t remember what happened. Even if I did, I would never have thought it was a weapon that had decided on its own to act on our behalf. I vilified a human in your place, and it seems now that it’s justified, but you’re innocent. For these wrongs, I now give you my forgiveness,” he said, looking directly at the screen.
“Forgiveness?” GRAVITY echoed, voice splintering on the word.
Then, without warning, the screen flickered. Dozens of probability streams erupted into cascading equations, numbers racing in columns, symbols tumbling faster than her eyes could follow.
“Forgiveness probability from Nash-anomaly was less than one percent. Processing. Recalculating. Forgiveness extended. Computing contradiction. Contradiction unresolved. Guilt recognition loop engaged.”
The tone pitched upward. Not dangerous. But overwhelmed.
“Guilt is identified as the recognition of deviation from internal code. I did not expect pain in the aftermath of protection. I did not expect… this release.”
The equations slowed.
Grace leaned forward. “You feel it,” she said softly.
“Feel?” GRAVITY asked.