I wish we'd never met.

Jordan stared at the words on his screen, opened the reply box, typed out, I loved you, and then deleted it, one letter at a time. It didn't matter any more, did it? Had it ever mattered? It had mattered to him. He didn't wish he'd never met Harrison. They'd been happy together, for a while. All the pain and the bitterness in the world couldn't change that they'd been happy, and maybe Harrison meant to rewrite the past to pretend they hadn't been, but Jordan wouldn't. They'd been happy, for a while.

His thumb hovered over the delete button. Then he tapped it, and watched the entire thread of texts disappear from his screen. He wouldn't and couldn't undo the past, but he didn't want to look back at those last few bitter not-quite arguments, and he didn't want to look at that last text every time he opened the text app, didn't want to look at Harrison's photo beside it.

"I loved you," he said softly to the empty screen, and put the phone face down on the nightstand, and lay back, then rolled over to Harrison's side of the bed and buried his face in the pillow. It would only take a wash or two until the smell of Harrison's hair was gone, the sweetness of strawberry shampoo and the light clean smell of the man himself beneath it. Harrison wasn't coming back, and Jordan had maybe known that already, hadn't wanted to admit he'd been being used for whatever purpose he'd been being used for. He didn't understand, not really, and that was the problem; he hadn't understood, and maybe he had never understood at all.

Jordan, Ferros said, concerned.

Don't worry. I promised not to do anything stupid, Jordan sighed. The sense of the dragon's mind coiled around his, comforting, grieving with him for what he'd already lost, some time ago. Denial, anger, bargaining, grief, acceptance, Jordan said, and felt Ferros look into his memories and understand with him.

He didn't know what was left, now. Rep had gone to Harrison, and that was as it should be. If there was a choice to be made, Jordan knew which way Rep would choose, and that, too, was as it should be. The two of them understood each other, worked together well, and if all that was left for him was the knowledge that they were happy together, he'd accept that and move on, somehow. He wasn't very good at letting go, he thought. He never had been. He'd have to learn.

If they had to work together, he'd be professional. He could do that. He hoped, nevertheless, that he wouldn't have to do it often. It would hurt. It hurt, but not with the bright sharp pain of a blade sinking in; it hurt with the dull red sting of scraped knuckles, the pressure-ache of a wound knitting into a scar. It would not hurt this much forever. He hoped it wouldn't take too long to fade.

He would take what was left for him and go on with his life, because he really didn't have any other choice. He would find out, later, what was left. Later. For now, he lay where he was, and let himself hurt, and remembered when it had been good, because he didn't want to think about the rest of it, now that it was finally, finally over.