He’d heard how cruel the mind could be. He had experienced it firsthand. From the way his mind would egg him on when he used to argue with her. His own logic telling him he was right, his own mind insisting that logic had a place in this relationship. The way he tricked himself into resenting her for joining the army. The way his mind took the comfort away from the eulogy he was going to deliver at the very moment he needed it most. The way his mind locked the memories away, slowly, efficiently, as if it was to preserve them, as if it wasn’t a coping mechanism that wound up backfiring. The way his brain fixated on the one fact about her, about them, that she had died, and that he’d never be able to get her back. The way his mind orchestrated Alpha so that Tex showed up at the same time, because that was the only way his mind could see her again. The way his mind justified the preferential treatment he showed Tex. The way his mind justified all of his actions, with such conviction, in the face of every opposition - until Tex was gone. Allison was gone. Again.

But the cruelest trick his mind ever played on him are the moments of doubt of all those memories of Allison that were locked away, all those things he remembered aside from her death, all those instances of the two of them together. The mere suggestion that those things were something his mind invented. The slightest of doubts, in his weakest moments.