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“Jamie, we already agreed that you shouldn’t do street performing anymore,” Jesse reminded him, setting his glass on the counter with a soft tap. “That’s too dangerous, what if you get attacked again?”

“She’s going to attack me anyway, sooner or later.”

The second he said it, the energy in the room shifted. Jamie felt Jesse’s gaze sharpen, felt the tension spike like static in the air.

“…She?” Jesse echoed, his voice quieter now, careful, like he was stepping around something fragile.

For a heartbeat, Jamie’s mind raced to piece together what had just slipped from his lips. He hadn’t even realized. But something had just surfaced from somewhere deep, somewhere he’d been too afraid to look.

The image hit Jamie like a physical blow.

A wave of dizziness washed over him, his vision blurring at the edges. He reached out to the kitchen counter for support as heat rushed to his face, his heart pounding wildly in his chest. The room felt too small, too close, as fragments of memories surfaced, overwhelming and sharp.

“It’s okay, just breathe.” Jesse’s voice was low and steady, but filled with concern.

Jamie swallowed hard, barely registering the touch of Jesse’s hand on his arm. Trying to steady himself, he set his glass on the counter, the sharp clack of it hitting the surface louder than it should’ve been. “It’s… a woman,” he got out. “In my dreams. I… I can—”

Giving into a sudden impulse, Jamie pushed off the counter, stumbling toward the living room where he had started a painting the day before.

He barely even noticed Jesse following him.

His mind was spinning, desperately clinging to the image flickering at the edge of his consciousness before it could slip through his fingers again.

He needed to capture this, needed to anchor the fragile moment into something tangible before the faint memory vanished again.

The figure he’d been painting yesterday had already begun to take shape—yet it was nothing compared to the clear vision he had now. His hand moved with newfound purpose, the brush gliding across the canvas almost as if guided by something beyond his control.

The strokes flowed confidently like never before.

The once hesitant lines solidified with each pass, and from the chaos of abstract shades, a figure began to emerge.

Still indistinct in a way; as if there was something in his head that just couldn’t remember, but clearer than ever, some details were forcing their way through.

Minutes passed in a blur. When Jamie finally stepped back, his breath caught as he stared at the person now looking back at him from the canvas.

A woman, there was no doubt of it. Tall, with long red hair cascading all the way down her back. Even her facial features had started to take shape, faint yet unmistakable. It was honestly alarming how much clearer things were now, compared to how blurry and vague they had been before.

Behind him, Jesse exhaled quietly. “…It’s really starting to come back to you, isn’t it? Is this… the person who attacked you?”

Jamie hesitated. Turning his head, he met Jesse’s serious expression before glancing back at the canvas. “Yes,” he then said, a deep certainty settling in his chest. “I still don’t remember anything more than this, but I do remember her fiery red hair.”

Jesse swallowed hard. “Well, I… suppose that makes sense. You’ve got ice powers, so you’ve got blue eyes and white hair, and she’s got fire powers, so she has red hair. It fits quite well.”

“Mhm,” Jamie nodded slowly. “If only I could remember her name. Or why she attacked me…”

Or what that strange tool was he kept on seeing in his nightmares, or why there was always a dead body in his dreams .

And why he’d had blood on his hands…

Jesse’s voice cut through his spiraling thoughts, gentle but firm. “Don’t stress yourself too much. Just getting this far is impressive enough.”

“But if I hadn’t been standing in my own way, I could’ve seen it so much sooner,” Jamie said, his fingers tightening around the brush in his hand. “I was… just fighting against myself, because I didn’t want to remember.”

“Well, maybe that’s true, but you were just trying to protect yourself. No one’s going to blame you for that.”

Jamie pursed his lips as a new wave of determination flooded through him. “I don’t need to be protected any longer. Not from this, not from anything. I’m ready now. I need my memories back, more than ever, and it’s time I finally stopped running.”

Because now, it was Jesse who needed protecting.

Because the seals kept wearing off, even faster than before.

The only way to heal Jesse was to remove those powers from him, and Jamie couldn’t do that if he didn’t remember how .

His therapy sessions with Dr. Alevera held the answers; the means to unlock his memories, the means to heal Jesse, and the means to protect himself from the harm his own powers could cause. That was the key to it all.

He needed to push harder.

All this time, he had been trying to fight it, hadn’t wanted to remember who he was or where he was from, because he’d been terrified of what might happen then. Because there was still that dreaded certainty he couldn’t shake—that, once his memories returned, he would have to leave.

He hadn’t brought it up again since that first time he’d told Jesse. He’d buried it, shoved it down, refusing to let that looming fear come between them.

But he knew Jesse felt it too.

It was like trying to ignore the inevitable, like pretending the elephant in the room wasn’t there, even as it loomed larger with every passing day .

When you can’t be with them, it’s torture …

But if Jamie needed his memories to undo what he’d done, there was no question about what he had to choose.

Still… as the following couple of days went by, and Jamie truly faced the prospect of what was to come, he began to fear he wouldn’t have the strength to do it.

He didn’t want to leave Jesse, he didn’t even think he could.

When it was finally time for his first appointment with Dr. Alevera after getting back from the coast, his concern for Jesse was the only thing on his mind.

All throughout his discussion with her, Jamie couldn’t think of anything else.

Where Jesse was, what he was doing, if his seal was wearing off too much already, if he was in any pain.

It had been a long time since Jesse had stopped coming with him to his sessions, and now it felt as though every minute they didn’t spend together was a minute of lost time they would never get back.

It was making it difficult to concentrate on the breathing exercise towards the end of the session.

On top of that, he was battling a pretty bad headache.

He’d been dealing with it so far by creating thin layers of ice on the palm of his hand and pressing it against his forehead whenever he was sure Dr. Alevera wasn’t looking, but he had to be careful not to do it too often or he’d risk getting caught.

What he wouldn’t give to be able to just take a couple pills like Jesse and Austin did whenever they had headaches. That would make things much easier.

But, recalling that he couldn’t take medication was just reminding him that he was… different.

Which just made him feel even worse.

“You seem distracted today, Jamie,” said Dr. Alevera, pushing a strand of her brown curls out of her eyes and tucking it behind her ear. “What’s on your mind?”

“…Quite a lot,” Jamie admitted, though he still wasn’t sure how much he should tell her about himself.

A part of him wanted to tell her everything—about his powers, about the day he’d hit Jesse with th em, about the bit that had transferred to Jesse and was now resting in him, and about the ever-growing certainty that Jamie wasn’t entirely human—but he knew how ‘crazy’ that would make him sound.

He supposed he could just reveal it. Create some ice flowers, change his hair and eyes on purpose in front of her, something to make her realize that he wasn’t just making it up, that it was real.

But still, he hesitated. Not everyone would be as accepting of the strange, unbelievable truth as Jesse and Austin had been.

There was something in him warning him to be careful about who he revealed his secrets to, a little reminder in the back of his head that one wrong move could cause them all to end up as ketchup.

“Well, would you like to talk about it?” Dr. Alevera pressed. “It’s what I’m here for, after all.”

That was true, though. Perhaps he could reveal a little about what was happening, without revealing everything…

“I… have been getting this feeling,” he told her. “The closer I get to remembering who I am and where I’m from, the more certain I am that I won’t be able to stay here.”

“Oh?” Dr. Alevera tilted her head as she regarded him with her bright, hazel eyes. “What makes you feel that way?”

“…I don’t know,” Jamie admitted. “I just feel like it. And I know that it’s the right thing to do—remembering everything, I mean—but if it comes at such a high cost, I just… something in me still doesn’t want to remember at all.”

“A high cost?”

Jamie nodded. “I would have to leave Jesse. What cost could be higher?”

Dr. Alevera smiled, before turning her gaze to her notebook to jot something down. “It must be… difficult, to imagine saying goodbye to someone you’ve grown so close to.”

“That’s putting it lightly,” Jamie sighed. “I feel as though I’d be saying goodbye to my whole world.”