Author: Eva C. Stein

Weeks passed before they met again, at what they still called a café: legacy infrastructure, where some devices failed to detect low-spoken words. Vines snaked through fractured steel. Light filtered through old purification nets.

Mae’s fingers traced the rim of her cup. A faint thrum beneath – a bio-sensor gauging how much of the drink she had left.
“You ever think forgiveness gets twisted?” she asked, eyes lifting to meet his.
Aidan shifted, neural weave twitching beneath his collar. “Where’s that come from?”
Mae smiled – warm but frayed. “Sorry. It’s just –”
His gaze softened. “Don’t be. Twisted how?”
She exhaled. “Like it’s not about release. More like… inheritance. A burden handed to you like it’s a gift – with a smile, even.”
“Someone real, then.”
She nodded. “He hurt me.”
Aidan said nothing.
“Nothing ever flagged it in the system,” she went on. “No errors logged. But it still rewrote the core – enough to change the root permissions. They said forgiveness would reset everything. But I never got that far – and I ended up the failed install.”
Aidan disturbed a patch of bio-moss on the sill. Its green looked dull beneath the dust.
“Because you couldn’t forgive?”
“Because I couldn’t even pretend to forgive. And somehow that made me the defect.”
“The world expects peace,” he murmured. “But always asks the wrong person to pay.”
Mae’s lips pressed tight. “I wanted to be the strong one – the forgiver. But every time I tried, it felt like I was erasing myself to make space for his feelings.”
Her voice caught. “He offered his apologies. Moved on. I’m expected to be pleased. Pleased? I was furious. Still am.”
“Anger, again,” Aidan said – “a memory that won’t erase – like shame, only louder. Just like you said. Proof we survived.”
She looked up, eyes catching pale city light, fractured through the netting above.
“I think anger’s louder because it can never be overwritten.”
He nodded. “Silence protects. But it also isolates.”
Mae’s fingers curled around the cup. “And if I forgive just to meet the spec? To satisfy the ritual of reconciliation?”
She shook her head. “Then I’m not forgiving – I’m surrendering. And it’s my pain that gets repressed so his comfort stays intact.”
“Forgiveness – or whatever they call it – shouldn’t be a chain,” Aidan said.
“It is, though,” she whispered. “When you’re expected to wear it like grace.”
The moss fluttered with faint air from the ducts.
“I want permission,” Mae said, “to stay angry. To not be ready. To not transcend what he did just to be palatable again.”
Aidan’s voice was low. “Then take it. It’s yours.”
She looked down. “But I keep thinking if I don’t forgive, I’m somehow… faulty.”
“Maybe forgiveness isn’t excellence,” he said. “Maybe excellence is not lying to yourself about how much it hurt.”
Her eyes glistened. Light catching there – fragile, refracted.
“I’m tired of feeling defective for not letting go.”
“Then don’t,” he said. “Sometimes holding on is what keeps you whole.”
The sensor’s glow receded as Mae leaned back.
“Maybe,” she said, voice steadying, “forgiving isn’t about peace. It’s about power. And choosing what parts of myself I don’t give back.”
Aidan leaned in – close, but not too close.
“Maybe some things are unforgivable. What about that?”
Mae didn’t answer. The glow of the sensor dimmed to nothing.
Outside, dust turned slowly through the light net.
Aidan stayed where he was – just close enough to hear her, if she ever chose to speak.