Diana had been carrying the competition announcement around for four days now, unopened in her phone, unmentioned to Arthur, weighed down by a strange, disproportionate anxiety that had nothing to do with the actual physical challenge and everything to do with how he might react to the idea.

She'd rehearsed the conversation more times than she cared to admit, lying awake each of the past four nights running through increasingly elaborate versions of how it might unfold — Arthur's face falling slightly at the news, a careful, diplomatic show of support masking quiet disappointment underneath, the specific, familiar shape of every previous partner's reaction whenever she'd mentioned wanting something that required time and attention independent of them. She'd learned, over years of relationships that rarely survived contact with her actual ambitions, to expect that particular flavor of reluctant tolerance, and some deeply worn groove in her thinking simply assumed Arthur would eventually reveal the same pattern, however much the past several weeks had suggested otherwise. She thought about her last relationship before arriving in this world, a fellow soldier who'd initially seemed supportive of her training but had grown increasingly resentful of every hour she spent away from him, until eventually she'd simply stopped mentioning her own goals altogether, finding it easier to shrink than to fight for space that apparently wasn't hers to claim.

She told herself she was simply waiting for the right moment, though by Wednesday evening, watching him cook dinner with his usual careful, focused precision, she recognized the waiting for what it actually was: the same familiar cowardice she'd spent the past several weeks learning to name and resist, now resurfacing in a slightly different shape. She thought about Zafir's advice, about the fear that never fully disappeared before you simply had to act anyway, and decided, watching Arthur add vegetables to the pan with his usual careful attention, that tonight would finally be the night she stopped rehearsing and simply spoke.

"Can I tell you something?" she said, finally, sitting at the kitchen table while he chopped vegetables for a stir-fry that had become something of a ritual between them.

"Always." He didn't look up from the cutting board, though something in his posture shifted slightly, attentive.

"There's a fitness competition. Regional level, nothing enormous, but real — actual categories, actual judges, actual prize money for the top placements. It's in six weeks." She paused, watching for his reaction with more anxiety than the statement itself seemed to warrant. "I've been thinking about entering."

Arthur set down his knife, giving her his full attention in a way that made the anxious knot in her stomach loosen slightly, though not entirely. "That sounds significant. Tell me more."

"It is significant. Or it could be. I used to think about competing years ago, before everything with Solaria fell apart and competing in anything stopped being remotely relevant to survival." She traced a pattern on the table with one finger, avoiding his eyes. "I got a text from an old training friend last week. Forwarded me the details. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since."

"What's stopping you from entering?"

The question landed with unexpected directness, and Diana looked up, surprised by its simplicity. "I don't know. Time, mostly. Training for something like this properly means considerably more hours at the gym, considerably less time for — for this. For us. And I didn't want you to think I was choosing to disappear into training when we've only just gotten to this point."

Arthur studied her for a long moment, something in his expression she couldn't immediately read. "Diana, is this something you actually want to do? Independent of how it might affect us?"

"Yes. Desperately, actually, now that I've let myself think about it seriously."

"Then I don't understand the hesitation."

"The hesitation is that I assumed you'd see it as an inconvenience. Something taking me away from the relationship right when we're finally figuring out how to be in one."

Arthur crossed the kitchen, taking the seat across from her, his expression serious in a way that made her brace slightly for whatever came next. "I want to be very clear about something. I am not interested in a version of you that shrinks your own ambitions to accommodate my comfort. I spent my entire previous existence surrounded by people who diminished themselves in my presence out of fear or obligation. I have absolutely no interest in recreating that dynamic here, with you, of all people."

"That's not what I meant to suggest was happening."

"I know. But I want to say it directly anyway, because I suspect it's relevant regardless of your intent." He reached across the table, taking her hand. "I want you to compete. Not despite our relationship. Alongside it. I want to help you train, if you'll let me, and I want to watch you walk into that competition knowing you're doing something entirely for yourself, something that has nothing to do with survival or obligation or proving anything to anyone else."

Diana felt something tighten in her throat, considerably more emotional than she'd anticipated feeling over a conversation about gym schedules. "That's — Arthur, that's considerably more supportive than I expected."

"Did you expect less?"

"I expected you to be gracious about it, technically supportive while quietly resenting the lost time. That's what previous partners have done, historically."

"I'm not previous partners." His grip on her hand tightened slightly. "I watched you carry an entire kingdom's expectations on your shoulders for years, apparently, forced into a role that left no room for anything resembling personal desire. I am not going to be one more person asking you to set aside what you want for someone else's comfort."

She stared at him for a long moment, something in his sincerity landing with more weight than she was fully prepared to process sitting at her own kitchen table on an ordinary Wednesday evening. "I don't know what to say to that."

"You don't need to say anything. Just enter the competition."

"You make it sound so simple."

"It is simple. The wanting is already there. The rest is just logistics, and logistics are considerably easier to solve than desire." He offered her a small, warm smile, something in his certainty deeply, uncomplicatedly reassuring. "I've solved more difficult logistical problems than a training schedule, I promise you. Court intrigue involved considerably more moving pieces than macronutrient timing."

"That's a low bar for comparison, given that court intrigue apparently involved actual assassination attempts."

"Fair point, absolutely. Nonetheless, I remain entirely confident in my logistical capabilities regarding this considerably lower-stakes challenge, court intrigue notwithstanding."

---

They spent the rest of the evening discussing logistics with a practicality that felt, to Diana, almost dizzying in its simplicity — Arthur asking specific, genuinely curious questions about training schedules, competition categories, the particular nutritional requirements of serious athletic preparation, taking notes on his phone with the same methodical focus he brought to debugging code.

"You don't need to memorize my meal plan," she said, watching him type something after she'd mentioned, almost in passing, the specific macronutrient ratios her training would require.

"I want to understand what you need. That's not optional research, that's basic partnership."

"I've genuinely never had anyone offer to learn my nutrition requirements before. This is a new experience."

"Then I'm glad to be providing it." He glanced up from his phone, something warm and slightly amused in his expression. "For what it's worth, I've also been researching appropriate encouragement phrases for competitive athletes. Apparently 'you performed adequately' is considered insufficiently supportive."

Diana laughed, the tension of the evening finally, fully releasing. "You researched encouragement phrases?"

"Briefly. I wanted to be prepared. My natural instinct toward dry understatement seemed potentially counterproductive for this particular application."

"I appreciate the effort, though I promise I'll accept dry understatement just fine, given how well it's served us so far."

"Noted. I'll recalibrate accordingly, though I reserve the right to revert to dry understatement in moments of genuine emotional overwhelm, purely as a coping mechanism."

"Granted. I'll allow strategic reversions."

They continued through the evening this way, working out the specific shape of the next six weeks with a collaborative ease that felt, to Diana, entirely unlike anything she'd experienced in previous attempts at balancing ambition against relationship. Arthur asked about her training split, nodding along as she explained the specific muscle groups requiring focus on different days, and made a note, unprompted, to adjust his own work schedule slightly on the days she'd need earlier dinners to accommodate late training sessions.

"You don't need to restructure your entire week around my gym schedule, honestly," she said, watching him cross-reference something on his calendar app with the seriousness of a man planning a military campaign.

"I'm not restructuring my entire week, technically speaking. I'm making minor adjustments to ensure you're properly fed and rested during a demanding six-week period. That's considerably different from restructuring, if we're being precise about terminology."

"Semantics, purely and simply."

"Precision, actually, genuinely. There's a meaningful distinction between the two concepts."

"You would say that, naturally. You're a developer. Precision is basically your entire personality, top to bottom."

"I contain multitudes beyond precision, though I concede it features prominently."

She smiled at him, something warm and grateful settling deep in her chest, watching him continue methodically working through the logistics of her ambition as though it were the most natural, obvious thing in the world to fully support — no hesitation, no subtle resentment lurking beneath the surface, simply straightforward, practical care.

---

Later that night, after Arthur had gone to sleep, Diana sat on her bed with her laptop open to the competition registration page, cursor hovering over the submit button for several long minutes, an old, familiar nervousness rising despite everything Arthur had said that evening.

She thought about every reason she'd once had for setting aside this particular dream — the endless demands of her role in Solaria, the belief that personal ambition was, at best, a luxury afforded to people without responsibilities weighing on them, at worst, a selfish indulgence unbecoming of someone meant to embody strength for others. She remembered specific conversations, years ago now, with commanders who'd gently but firmly redirected any mention of personal goals back toward the greater mission, the greater good, the greater burden she'd been assigned to carry without complaint. She'd internalized that redirection so thoroughly, over so many years, that even now, sitting in an entirely different world with an entirely different set of pressures, the old instinct to shrink her own wanting still surfaced automatically, a reflex considerably harder to unlearn than she'd expected, though tonight, at least, she felt more prepared than ever before to finally start overriding it.

She thought about how thoroughly that belief had shaped nearly every decision she'd made for years, and how strange it felt now, sitting in this small, unremarkable bedroom in a world without magic, finally considering a choice that belonged entirely, unapologetically to her. She scrolled back up through the registration form one more time, reading over the competition categories, picturing herself actually standing on that stage in six weeks, and felt something stir in her chest that she recognized, with some surprise, as genuine excitement rather than the anxious, obligation-driven determination she'd once associated with any form of competition.

She thought about Arthur's words from earlier — *I want you to compete, not despite our relationship, alongside it* — and found, turning them over one final time, that she believed him completely, without the usual reservation she'd learned to apply to nearly every promise anyone had ever made her. She thought, too, about how strange and wonderful it was that the same instinct which had once made her suspicious of any partner's apparent support now simply, quietly trusted his, an evolution in her own thinking that felt, examining it honestly, considerably more significant than the competition itself.

She thought about Elaria — the version of herself that had once existed only to be strong, to be looked up to, to never once ask for anything resembling personal want — and felt, sitting here now, a quiet, satisfying sense that she was finally, slowly, learning how to hold both versions of herself at once: strong when required, but also, simply, allowed to want things for no reason beyond her own genuine desire.

She scrolled through the competition details one final time, memorizing the date, the venue, the specific categories she intended to enter, letting the reality of the decision settle fully into her chest before she let herself hit submit, wanting to feel every part of the choice rather than rushing past it the way fear so often tempted her to do with decisions that mattered.

She hit submit.

The confirmation email arrived within seconds, and Diana sat there staring at it, feeling something unfamiliar and entirely welcome settle into place — not the anxious, obligation-driven determination she'd once associated with competition, but something closer to simple, uncomplicated excitement, six weeks stretching out ahead of her like an open door she'd finally decided to walk through. She reread the confirmation twice, memorizing the date and category listing as though committing them to memory might make the whole thing feel more real, and found, somewhere in the second read-through, that a small, private smile had settled onto her face without her quite noticing when it arrived.

She padded quietly out to the living room, where Arthur had fallen asleep on the sofa with his laptop still open beside him, and stood there a moment simply watching him, feeling a rush of gratitude so sudden and complete it nearly caught her off guard. His laptop screen still showed the notes he'd been taking earlier — a color-coded meal schedule, a list of macronutrient targets, a small, carefully organized document titled simply "Diana's Training Support," the kind of quiet, unglamorous evidence of care that had become, over the past several weeks, exactly the language she'd learned to trust most from him, considerably more meaningful than any grand romantic gesture could have managed on its own.

She resisted the urge to wake him with the news, deciding instead to save it for morning, and pulled a blanket over him instead, tucking it carefully around his shoulders the way he so often did small, thoughtful things for her without ever making a production of it. She stood there a moment longer, watching him sleep, thinking about how thoroughly her expectations of this relationship had been rewritten over the past several weeks — from a chaotic, resented living arrangement into something that now felt, standing here in the quiet dark of their shared living room, like the safest, most solid thing in her entire displaced, uncertain life, considerably more solid, in fact, than anything she'd built during her entire time as Elaria, when solidity had always seemed to come at the cost of genuine warmth.

She returned to her room already composing, in her head, the specific training schedule she intended to propose over breakfast, six weeks of hard work ahead of her, and for the first time in longer than she could easily remember, not one single piece of that ambition belonging to anyone but herself. She climbed into bed, phone glowing briefly as she set her alarm slightly earlier than usual to accommodate the first day of proper training, and fell asleep faster than she had in weeks, the anxious churning of the past four days finally, fully quieted, replaced by something considerably calmer and more settled than she'd expected to feel on the eve of such a significant decision.

The following morning, she found Arthur already awake when she emerged, two mugs of coffee waiting on the counter, a printed copy of what she recognized immediately as his meticulously researched training support document sitting beside them, complete with tabbed sections and a small handwritten note in the margin reading simply "you've got this."

"I registered last night," she said, watching his face carefully for his reaction, still slightly braced despite everything he'd already said the evening before.

"I saw the confirmation email notification pop up on your laptop before you closed it. I assumed that meant yes." He handed her a mug, something quietly, deeply pleased in his expression, entirely free of the careful, diplomatic hesitation she'd spent four days bracing herself against. "Congratulations. Six weeks starts today, apparently, according to my calculations."

"Six weeks starts today," she agreed, taking the mug, feeling something settle fully and completely into place — not just the decision to compete, but the entire, unfamiliar experience of being supported this thoroughly, this generously, by someone who seemed genuinely delighted by her ambition rather than merely tolerant of it. "Thank you, Arthur. Genuinely. I don't think you understand how much this means, having someone actually want this for me instead of just enduring it." She paused, studying him over the rim of her mug, something warm and slightly overwhelmed crossing her expression. "I've spent so many years learning to make my own wanting smaller, quieter, easier for everyone else to tolerate. Having you actively want this loudly, on my behalf, feels almost disorienting in the best possible way."

"I understand more than you might expect. I spent considerable time learning, recently, what it feels like to have someone finally want something for you, rather than merely permit it." He smiled, warm and certain. "Now drink your coffee. We have a training schedule to properly implement, and I've already color-coded the calendar."

Diana took a sip, savoring the small, ordinary domesticity of the moment, and found herself, watching him pull up the color-coded calendar on his laptop with obvious enthusiasm, thinking that six weeks of hard training suddenly felt considerably less daunting with someone this thoroughly, delightedly invested in her success standing right beside her, ready to face every single one of them together, one carefully scheduled day at a time.