**Caius' POV**
The room had grown eerily quiet. Eloise still hadn't said a word, her gaze fixed on the doctor as if looking at him too hard might make him disappear.
I wasn't blind—I saw the way her fingers clenched the fabric of her sleeve, how she held her breath every time the doctor spoke. There was something off.
Something *deeply* personal.
I decided to break the silence in the only way I knew how—playfully.
"So," I said, tilting my head toward her, "are you going to introduce me properly, or should I start making wild guesses?"
Eloise blinked and turned to me, startled, like she had forgotten I was even in the room. "What?"
I smirked. "The way you've been staring at him, I was starting to think he was a long-lost lover, but considering the fact that he's old enough to be your father..." I trailed off, raising an eyebrow.
She inhaled sharply, and in that moment, I knew.
I wasn't expecting her to confirm it. It had just been a joke—something to lighten the tension. But the way her face lost its usual color, the way her lips parted in a silent struggle for words...
I had hit something real.
"Wait," I sat up straighter, ignoring the dull ache in my side. "He *is* your father?"
Eloise's mouth opened, then closed. She looked at the doctor again, as if she needed to confirm it herself.
Finally, she whispered, "...Yes."
I stared at her, then at him.
The doctor—her father—showed no outward reaction, his expression calm, unreadable. But there was something in his eyes, something I had missed before. A familiarity. A quiet understanding.
I looked back at Eloise. She looked *shaken.*
Of all the things I expected to hear today, *this* wasn't one of them.
"You wrote him," I murmured, realization settling in. "Just like everything else."
She swallowed hard and gave a small nod.
I exhaled slowly, my mind spinning. This wasn't just a coincidence. This was something deeper.
And from the way Eloise was looking at her father—like she wanted to run to him and collapse into his arms, but also like she was terrified of what that meant—
I knew this was just the beginning.
——-
*Eloise's POV**
I never thought I would see my father again. Not in this life. Not in *any* life.
Yet, here he was—standing just a few feet away from me, the same sharp eyes, the same steady hands. The way he moved, the way he spoke... It was all so painfully familiar.
But it wasn't *him.* Not really.
I wrote him.
I created this version of him, hoping for something different. Hoping that maybe, in this world, he could be the father I had always needed. The one who stayed. The one who cared.
My hands trembled as I clasped them together, my throat tightening. I could feel Caius watching me, waiting for me to speak, waiting for me to explain.
I took a shaky breath.
"I wrote him into this story," I finally admitted, my voice barely above a whisper. "I— I didn't do it consciously at first, but I guess a part of me *wanted* him here. Wanted to see him again."
Caius said nothing, just listening, just *understanding.*
I swallowed the lump in my throat. "In reality... my father was different. He wasn't always there when I needed him. And even when he was, it felt like... like I wasn't enough to keep him around."
The weight of those words settled between us.
I forced myself to look up at Caius, searching for something—judgment, pity—but all I found was quiet understanding.
Because *he knew.*
He knew what it felt like to lose someone dear, to carry the weight of that absence every day.
"I think," I said, my voice softer now, "I wanted to heal something inside me. To create a version of him that I could believe in."
Caius finally spoke. "And does this version feel real to you?"
I hesitated, looking at the man who shared my father's face. "I don't know," I admitted. "But... I want to find out."
Caius reached out, his fingers brushing against mine in a silent show of support.
And in that moment, I knew—whether my father was real, or just a story I had written into existence, *Caius was here.* He was real. He wasn't leaving.
And for now, that was enough.