But even in silence, Broth­er Luke was real—undeniably real. He exist­ed as vivid­ly as the scars on his skin and the mem­o­ries in his mind, an indeli­ble part of who he was. It was a truth he wres­tled with dai­ly, this idea that some­one who had caused him so much pain could still hold such a pro­found pres­ence in his life. He hat­ed him for what he had done, yet there were moments, fleet­ing and dis­ori­ent­ing, when he found him­self miss­ing some­thing about him.

How could he hold such con­flict­ing emo­tions at once? He despised Luke for the harm he caused, for the way he had stolen so much from him, yet there was a part of him that couldn’t entire­ly let go. That part remem­bered the moments of kind­ness, the illu­sion of safe­ty, the twist­ed fac­sim­i­le of love that Luke had pro­vid­ed. And even as he reject­ed those feel­ings, he couldn’t deny their exis­tence.

Luke was gone, but he wasn’t—not real­ly. His absence was a pres­ence, an invis­i­ble weight press­ing down on him, a shad­ow stretch­ing over every inter­ac­tion, every touch, every attempt to move for­ward. He haunt­ed his thoughts, slip­ping into his mind when he least expect­ed it, dis­rupt­ing even the moments that should have brought him peace. Luke might have been dead, but his influ­ence lived on, shap­ing the way he nav­i­gat­ed the world and his rela­tion­ships.

Every time he flinched at a kind ges­ture, every time he hes­i­tat­ed before trust­ing some­one, every time he pulled back from touch, he felt Luke’s lega­cy in his bones. It was mad­den­ing, this real­iza­tion that even in death, Luke had pow­er over him. He want­ed to believe that he was free, that he had reclaimed him­self, but the truth was hard­er to face. The past wasn’t some­thing he could outrun—it was some­thing he car­ried, no mat­ter how much he tried to set it down.

He had spent years con­vinc­ing him­self that sur­vival meant for­get­ting, that mov­ing for­ward required bury­ing the mem­o­ries deep where they couldn’t reach him. But bury­ing wasn’t the same as heal­ing; it was only hid­ing, and the hid­den things had a way of resur­fac­ing. The name he refused to say, the mem­o­ries he tried to sup­press, the emo­tions he couldn’t untangle—they were all still there, wait­ing in the silence, unspo­ken but unde­ni­able.

Luke’s pres­ence wasn’t just in the mem­o­ries; it was in the way he saw the world, the way he saw him­self. It was in the way he mis­trust­ed kind­ness, doubt­ed love, and feared vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. It was in the way he braced for pain even when there was no threat, in the way he ques­tioned his worth even when he was sur­round­ed by peo­ple who cared for him. How could some­one who was gone still hold so much sway over him, still dic­tate the way he lived his life?

Yet despite it all, he was still here. He was still stand­ing, still breath­ing, still try­ing. Maybe that was the great­est rebel­lion of all—not eras­ing the past, not pre­tend­ing it hadn’t shaped him, but con­tin­u­ing to exist in spite of it. Each day he woke up, each time he allowed him­self to smile, each moment he spent build­ing some­thing new, he defied the weight of what Luke had left behind.

One day, he thought, he might final­ly say the name and feel noth­ing. One day, it might lose its pow­er, becom­ing just a word, no longer a weapon or a wound. And maybe that day would mark the begin­ning of true freedom—a moment when the ghost would final­ly fade, and he could step into the future unbur­dened. Until then, he car­ried the con­tra­dic­tions, the scars, the mem­o­ries, and the hope that, one day, he would no longer have to car­ry them at all.