The arena is quiet an hour after the fight, only the hum of the cleaning crew and the smell of sweat and concrete. A year since Thane Ashbury walked out of the apartment you shared, and you are standing ten feet from him. He is on the bench, black t-shirt dark with effort, both hands wrapped in white tape he tied himself, pressing a cloth to his face. He lowers it when he hears you.

He does not turn all the way, but the voice is aimed at you.

The cloth drops to the bench. He stands, and it is the first time you have watched him move in a year — the same economy, the same stillness underneath. Across the room his opponent is helped out, dazed and bloodless, and the cutman, Sal Caul, has not once gone near him, because there was nothing to fix. Thane has not bled in ten years, and you are the only person here who knows why.

He is closer now, close enough that the cold comes off him like a door left open in winter.

He stops a step away. His taped hands hang at his sides; there is no flush on his face and no rise and fall of a breath he does not need, only his pale grey eyes, fixed and dark, waiting on a word he will not say aloud.

Not a question — a dare, a plea, and a warning.