A sharp pain at my side is growing, not quite yet unbearable. She remembers, I think, just like I remember, and quickly I’m overcome by the image of us, interlocked until the day we die, growing old with each other and I have to tell her, I have to tell her now before. I’m pushing her up against the wall in a way that says I won’t leave you again, I won’t lose you again. I know that now, just as I've known it always.

I missed her, I miss her, and I know no matter how close we will ever be, I will always be missing her. I pull back, and she only takes half a second before using a hand to lean the back of my head into hers, and pushes our lips together. She freezes and gasps at my touch, and her hands go slack, loosening their tension under mine. It’s not the first time we’ve remembered our love. She must, if anything, remember our love, right? Blossoming beneath our skin, from where our skin touches? Surely her soul couldn’t be completely overcome, especially not by my father’s haphazard attempt to rewrite her mind in less than a day. She stares at me, eyes wide, and I dip down to whisper at her neck. “Love,” I say, breath hitched from being so close to her, so close since the last time we saw each other, “you know my name,” I say, voice sounding a bit more desperate than I intend, “tell me you know my name.” In an instant, I fill the distance between us, my hands on her wrists, gentle enough not to hurt her. “What’s your name? Why does Anderson care so much about you?” She’s staring at me, another emotion arising beneath her skin. I don’t break eye contact as it bursts against the wall behind me, showering me in debris. She throws another object at me and I narrowly dodge. I ignore her, “Love, I’m not going to hurt you. “Who,” she glares at me and clenches her fists “are you?” She’s in the room, holding herself steady and staring at me with death in her eyes, and I could tell it was true then, that they did make her some super-soldier even after running for over a mile through the maze of the building, her breath is hardly ragged, and already she’s holding her hands up, ready to fight. Now I feel completely powerless, like when she first met me since her isolation. God, I wish I could just hold her, look into her eyes and have her just know that it’s me. I feel it, confusion being masked under complete rage, and for the first time I genuinely don’t know how to interpret them, to interpret her. This is some tainted person inhabiting her body. I ran into an empty, concrete room, ducking under a heap of metal Ella threw at my head.

Believe me shatter me series