Page 73 of Ruthless Kings of Obsession

He opens his eyes, and there's something haunted in their depths. "The worst part? She still came to visit me in the hospital. Still brought her homework to do beside my bed, still asked questions about my research, still treated me like I mattered." A broken laugh escapes him. "Even after everything, my Evergreen kept growing, kept persisting, while I..." he trails off, gesturing to himself, "I just withered."

The question forms before I can stop it, sparked by something nagging at the edges of my awareness. "Why doesn't she seem to remember any of this?" I study Marcus's troubled expression. "When she talks about you, it's always just 'Pigtails.' Nothing about the labs, the research, the friendship you're describing."

The atmosphere in the room shifts perceptibly. Even Eva seems to grow more still in her sleep, as if her unconscious mind senses the weight of what's coming.

Zander's hand pauses in her hair again, his eyes narrowing with dangerous interest. Ares sets aside his tablet completely, all pretense of distraction abandoned. Ren leans forward in his chair, previous playfulness entirely gone.

Marcus stands frozen, the collection of faded bows dangling from his fingers like fragments of a broken past. The hospital lights cast strange shadows across his face as he stares into nothing, lost in memories none of us can see.

The silence stretches until it feels like glass about to shatter. Outside, night presses against the windows like a living thing, waiting to hear what secrets will spill in this sterile room that's become our confessional.

Finally, Marcus lets out a long, heavy sigh that seems to carry years of regret. His eyes find Eva's sleeping form, watching how she instinctively curls closer to Zander's warmth.

"I took it all away," he admits quietly, the words falling like stones into still water.

The implication hangs in the air between us as the monitors continue their steady beeping, marking time in a room where time suddenly seems to have lost all meaning.

Broken Pieces Of Our Past

~MARCUS~

Years Ago…

The chemotherapy drugs make everything too sharp and too fuzzy at the same time. Colors blur at the edges but sounds pierce like needles, each footstep in the hospital corridor feeling like an ice pick to my skull. The cocktail of medications they pump through my veins turns time elastic – stretching endlessly during treatment, then snapping back like a rubber band until whole days disappear into fog.

I hate everything.

The constant nausea. The way my bones feel hollow but somehow still ache. The pitying looks from nurses who've known me since I was born. The fact that the cure I developed for my parents' cancer – the one that put them both in remission – does nothing for the particular mutation eating away at my marrow.

But most of all, I hate that she won't stop coming.

The door opens with its familiar squeak (everything in hospitals squeaks, like pain needs a soundtrack), and I don't need to look to know it's her. The scent of her shampoo– something floral and sweet that makes my stomach roll – reaches me before her footsteps do.

"Hi Marcus," Eva's voice carries that forced cheerfulness I've come to despise. "How was treatment today?"

I stare resolutely at the window, watching rain trace patterns on glass. My reflection shows what the disease has done to me – hollow cheeks, dark circles under sunken eyes, skin that looks like paper stretched too thin over bone. The drugs make my hands shake as I clench them in the hospital blanket, fighting another wave of nausea.

She moves into my peripheral vision, and I catch a glimpse of pigtails tied with pale blue ribbons. She's wearing them again, despite everything. Despite Domino's mockery, despite my betrayal, despite the fact that everyone says they make her look childish.

She's wearing them for you, a voice whispers in my head.Trying to remind you of better days in the lab, when you both wore matching coats and solved impossible equations together.

The thought makes fury surge through my veins, hotter than any chemotherapy drug. How dare she try to manipulate me with memories? How dare she persist in being kind when I've done nothing to deserve it?

"I brought your homework," she continues, unfazed by my silence. The rustle of papers feels like sandpaper against my raw nerves as she sets a stack on the bedside table. "I already completed your copy, so you can just submit it whenever you feel up to it. Your grades won't drop this way."

My hands shake harder as I continue to ignore her, the medication making every emotion feel amplified to breaking point. The latest round of experimental treatments has my body at war with itself – trying to kill the cancer while not killing me in the process. Each heartbeat feels like a battle, each breath a negotiation.

"I also did some research," she adds, and I hear more papers being arranged. "I found some interesting studies about alternative treatment protocols. There's this team in Switzerland working with genetic markers similar to what you identified in your parents' case. I thought maybe?—"

"Stop." The word emerges as a growl, the first I've spoken to her in days.

"Marcus—"

"Just fucking stop!" I still won't look at her, can't look at her. "Stop bringing homework, stop doing research, stop pretending you care! You're like gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe – no matter how hard I try to scrape you off, you just won't let go!"

More rustling as she unpacks what smells like food – probably another attempt at finding something I can keep down. The scent makes bile rise in my throat, medication and rage and bone-deep exhaustion combining into something explosive.

"I made that soup you used to like," she says quietly, either not hearing or choosing to ignore my outburst. "The one with?—"

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