Chapter 13: Bleeding Hearts - Part 2
POV: Raven Reyes
Raven had been keeping notes. Not because she'd planned to document Alec's impossibilities, but because her engineering mind refused to accept data that didn't make sense. Three weeks of careful observation had filled a small notebook with sketches, timestamps, and medical assessments that painted a picture no rational person should believe.
She found him near the dropship as evening shadows lengthened, working on spear maintenance with the focused attention he brought to tasks that let his hands stay busy while his mind processed whatever secrets he carried. The arrow wound from yesterday's patrol was completely invisible—not healing, not scarred, simply gone like it had never existed.
"You had a black eye yesterday," she said without preamble, settling beside him on the log he'd claimed as a workspace. "Swollen shut, dark purple bruising from that Grounder's fist during the ambush. Today it's gone—not fading, gone."
His hands stilled on the spear point he'd been sharpening. She could see him calculating responses, weighing deflections, preparing the arsenal of jokes and dismissals that had deflected every previous confrontation about his medical impossibilities.
"I documented it," she continued, pulling out her notebook and opening it to pages covered with detailed sketches. "Because I thought I was going crazy. Thought maybe stress was making me see things that weren't there."
The drawings were precise—medical illustrations showing wound locations, depth assessments, healing progressions that violated basic biology. Arrow punctures that closed in hours. Cuts that disappeared overnight. Bruises that faded to nothing while she watched.
"But I'm not crazy," she said, her voice steady despite the fear underlying her words. "You heal impossibly fast. Injuries that should take weeks to recover from are gone in hours. And every time someone notices, you deflect with jokes about good genes or lucky angles."
Alec stared at the notebook like it contained his death warrant. Which, from his perspective, it probably did. Evidence of abilities that would make him valuable to people with no concern for his autonomy or wellbeing.
"Raven—"
"I just need to know you're not in danger," she interrupted, her voice cracking slightly with the vulnerability she'd been hiding behind technical curiosity. "That whatever this is isn't killing you. That you're not paying some horrible price for surviving things that should kill you."
The fear in her voice seemed to break something in his defensive walls. She watched him war with himself, terrified of exposure but unable to keep lying to her specifically. She could see how much she'd come to matter to him, how her acceptance or rejection would determine whether he felt human or monstrous.
"Please," she thought desperately. "Trust me. Let me help carry whatever this is."
POV: Alec Morgan
The notebook was my worst nightmare made real—documentation of abilities I'd spent months trying to hide, evidence that would condemn me if it fell into the wrong hands. But as I looked at Raven's careful sketches, I realized they weren't drawn with scientific detachment. They were created with worry, with desperate need to understand, with fear for my wellbeing rather than curiosity about my capabilities.
She wasn't documenting me like a specimen. She was trying to help someone she cared about.
"She matters too much. I can't keep lying to her. Not when she's looking at me like my answer will determine whether I'm worth saving."
"I've always healed fast," I said quietly, setting down my work and meeting her eyes directly. "Faster than normal. I don't know why, I don't know how to control it, and I've spent my whole life hiding it because people who are different get studied, dissected, used."
The truth felt like stepping off a cliff—terrifying and irreversible and somehow necessary. Her expression shifted from fear to something approaching relief as I finally offered honesty instead of deflection.
"Different how?" she asked gently.
"Injuries that would kill normal people heal in hours instead of weeks. Poisons get neutralized. Burns fade. Broken bones knit back together." I took a shaky breath, vulnerability scraping my throat raw. "I don't age normally either, I think. Don't get sick like others do. It's like my body adapts to whatever tries to hurt it."
She absorbed this information with the systematic processing I'd learned to associate with her engineering mind. Not rejecting the impossible, but categorizing it, looking for patterns and implications.
"How long?" she asked.
"My whole life. Since I was a kid. Maybe longer—it's hard to tell when you're trying not to notice it yourself."
"And you've been hiding it alone this entire time?"
The question hit harder than I'd expected. Alone. Yes, that captured the essential truth of existing with capabilities that marked you as other than human. Alone with secrets that would horrify the people you wanted to protect. Alone with knowledge of what you were that couldn't be shared without destroying everything you'd built.
"I'm not a threat," I said desperately, my voice breaking with the need for her to understand. "I just want to help without becoming a lab experiment. Want to keep people alive without having to explain why I can survive things that kill them."
She studied my face for a long moment, and I could see her making calculations that would determine whether I remained someone worth caring about or became something to fear.
"Please don't run. Please don't see me as a monster. Please don't make me lose the one person who knows part of what I am."
Instead of backing away, she stepped closer and took my hand deliberately, her fingers warm against my palm as she made a choice that would change everything between us.
"Okay," she said simply. "I won't tell anyone. But you don't carry this alone anymore—if it's dangerous, if it hurts, you tell me. Deal?"
The offer overwhelmed me completely. Trust without full explanation. Support without demanding complete honesty. Partnership despite the fundamental strangeness that defined my existence here.
I pulled her into a hug that felt like drowning in relief, like finally being allowed to breathe after months of holding my breath. She wrapped her arms around me with fierce protectiveness, and I felt something break loose in my chest—the desperate isolation that had been eating me alive since arriving in this world.
"You're still the same annoying weirdo I like," she whispered against my shoulder. "Fast healing doesn't change that."
The acceptance in her voice was everything I'd wanted and never dared hope for. Someone who knew part of what I was and chose to stay anyway. Someone who would help me carry secrets too heavy for one person to bear alone.
We separated slowly, and I realized I'd crossed a line I couldn't uncross. Someone knew part of my truth now, making me both more vulnerable and less alone. The careful balance I'd maintained between secrecy and connection had shifted fundamentally.
But as I looked at Raven's face—determined, protective, absolutely certain about her decision to trust me—I realized the vulnerability was worth it. Some risks were worth taking, even when they led toward exposure and all the dangers that came with it.
For the first time since arriving on Earth, I wasn't completely alone with what I was.
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