In another life, Thian drafts a different story of could have beens and what ifs. It’s not something that’s habit; for as much as he once considered himself an artist, he could rarely envision something grand. Too rational. Both feet on land. He’s not Cassandra, who can scheme up brilliant ideas and madness in a technicolor form of something to remember. He’s not V—

He sighs. Thian drafts the concept art in his head. In another life, family didn’t die and brothers didn’t leave. In another life, a scholarship is won and he went on a plane to Athens and never looked back. In another life, he and Patterson might have made it past three months, maybe even until after a graduation he actually lasted in college enough for. In another life, Zachariah Valiente is alive, and Thian’s still his protege. In another life, he didn’t turn Val down the first time, and they probably blew up into a fallout that left nothing but bad wounds and hated each other for the rest of time. In another life, he got it right with Cassandra. In another life, he got it right with the boy with streaks in his hair. In another life, there is no Asmodeus. In another life, his magic stayed as it was. In another life, he was already dead before he got to this point, gave in to the teenage angst dream of death and suicide or the burnout that kills you sooner than any goddamn natural cause. In another life, he kept the stupid guitar. In another life, maybe he could take the idea of someone who ľ̵̗̱̏̏o̸̧͆̾͠v̶̠͚̅̍ȩ̷̗̥̿ś̵͓̞ him, without any fucking pacts intersecting that question. No goddamn idolization, no goddamn immunity, just—

”Don’t think the with a heart’s hypothetical,” he says coolly, because it’s an easy enough thing to say. Kai Tan gives a damn.

Love, in Thian’s cloistered and narrow understanding of the word, is weird, complicated, and inherently fucking difficult to separate from other shit. Lust, fascination, idolization, codependency. Pick your poison. He’s likely gone through every iteration, and is all too willing to just foot the bill.

Something bothers him about the story she tells, though. In the effortless question of what it means to be wanted, or if it were ever possible…

”Bullshit.”

No hesitation, a response blunter than a kitchen knife.

”People make stupid fucking decisions, and we keep making stupid fucking decisions, but isn’t that the whole fucking point of, I don’t know, being a person?”

He doesn’t know if he’s making sense.

”We just make the stupid decision, and sure, it’s, like, shit to realize or look back on later. But seven times out of ten, we do what we can to not make the same stupid decision, then make more stupid ones, and avoid making our old ones, until, eventually, that lands us with…”

With what?

”Us, and it’s bullshit that stupid decisions automatically means you’re never going to be wanted by someone, because there’s at least 7-billion people in the universe, and sure, it’s none of that soulmate crap — but that kind of… permutation of stupid decisions must just make you someone who can be enough for someone who’s their own mess of stupid decisions that wants to do it right, just like you do. And with you, because we’re all idiots who don’t fucking like being alone. If we did, we wouldn’t be fucking surrounded by art. Which, you know, is shit made by someone else and is an outpour of who that person is, or was, and what mattered enough to them that it was worth making something about.”