Vega had never felt comfortable in his own flesh.

Even as a child, before he had words for it, he knew. He felt it in the way his limbs moved, in the way his reflection caught in glass and water, familiar yet wrong. His body betrayed him in small, quiet ways—an unexpected tremor in his fingers when he tried to tie his laces, a heaviness in his legs when he ran too long, a sudden weakness that made no sense.

He watched Nova move across the field, her body light, sure, effortless. She ran ahead of him, the grass bending beneath her feet, her laughter rising over the wind. He tried to follow, but his steps faltered. His limbs did not move the way he wanted them to. His legs felt uneven, one slightly heavier than the other, as if the earth itself were shifting beneath him.

By the time he reached her, his breath came too hard, his fingers tingling with a strange numbness he could not name. He wiped his palms on his pants and said nothing.

They walked to the river together, as they always did at the end of long afternoons, the heat settling low over the hills. Nova skipped a stone across the water, her wrist snapping with perfect precision. The stone leapt six times before sinking.

Vega picked up a rock and threw it. It spun awkwardly, dropping almost immediately.

Nova glanced at him. “Your hands are shaky again.”

He curled his fingers against his palm. “I guess.”

She sat down in the grass, wrapping her arms around her knees. “Does it hurt?”

He wasn’t sure how to answer. It wasn’t pain, not really. More like a dull buzzing, as if his limbs were full of static, the connection flickering in and out.

“No,” he said finally. “Just feels… wrong.”

Nova didn’t ask anything else. She never did when he got like this. Instead, she leaned back onto her elbows, looking up at the sky. Vega sat beside her, his hands resting on his thighs, as if pressing them down might make them feel more solid.

The river stretched ahead of them, dark and slow. He looked at his reflection in the water, watching the way it shifted with every ripple. The distortion was soothing. Here, his shape wasn’t fixed. He wasn’t wrong. He was just changing, like the water itself.

Nova followed his gaze. “What are you looking at?”

“Myself,” he said.

She frowned slightly. “You look the same as always.”

He didn’t answer.

She had always understood him better than anyone, but not in this. She didn’t know what it felt like to be trapped inside a body that would not obey. To stretch out his fingers and feel them resist. To take a step and wonder if today would be the day something gave out beneath him.

Vega reached down and dipped his hand into the river. The cold sent a shiver through his arm, numbing it further. His reflection wavered, breaking apart into pieces before reforming.