Overture Downs but if I keep going crazy like this

First, there came recognition.

Then, there came fear.

Terror flashed across her face and more distance was placed between them, a single, retreating step taken. He was not shocked by this, her reaction minimal in comparison to what he had expected. After all, he was the sort of ghost from the past that most would never want to see again; physically, he had never harmed her, but one might argue that the mental attacks inflicted were worse.

A wound of the flesh would always heal quicker than that of the mind.

“Kove,” he confirmed, following her own confirmation of identity. She had grown—or matured, rather—since their last encounter, different now from the scared girl he had once known. That she stood there still, facing him now, was proof enough of that. Whatever ordeals she had been put through in the past seemed to have faded, or at least no longer held her in as tightly of a grasp. But, of all the things that he had also let go of, she was not quite one of them; interrogating her, weaseling his way into her mind, was one of the first tasks assigned specifically to him by the Brotherhood. Her enslavement in the woods was an event that would forever stand out in his memories, for it was the first time he had come to realise the type of company that the forest’s inhabitants kept—and what they were capable of.

“I can leave, if you would prefer that,” he offered, ready to honour her wishes. He was not the same man he was back then. Hell, even back then, he wasn’t himself. The shadows had morphed his mind, stealing from him his identity and the teachings of his true family. Back then, he wore a mask to fit in, to fall in line and ensure his life continued—but at what expense? Now he was free, able to live his life as he was always meant to but, although he had moved on, he could not expect the same from those that knew him then.