“You could’vereached out,” she continues, voice rising. “You could’ve sent a message. You let mebelieveyou were ashes.”
Silence rattles between us like a shuttered door.
“The Whisper Core wouldn’t let me,” I say, quieter than the rain. “It forced me into other minds, into echoes of your scream, into circuits I shouldn’t have touched. I was locked in. I fought. The melds failed. They burned. They rejected everything that wasn’t you.”
Her eyes narrow. “Don’t you dare lean on tech as an excuse.”
“I’m not—” I start.
“Yes, you are!” she yells. The echo of it ripples over the arches. Some students peek from windows above. I see them freeze. I don’t care.
“You’re hiding behind vision, behind prophecy, behind the god-damnedWhisper Core,” she says?—?the rain spattering off her lips, the glare in her eyes sharper than any sword. “And while you fought your battles I foughtmine. I changed diapers at 3?a.m. I stuffed textbooks in a baby bag so I could sneak into class and still keep his world stable. I pivoted engineering research while my world shook underneath. And you— you disappeared.”
I step in, close enough she can feel my warmth through the soaked fabric. “I died,” I say. “And in the dying I found something worse than death: beinglost. Being erased.”
She steps away, cuffs of her coat soaked, breath visible in the cold. “That’s your pain. My son doesn’t know you. He doesn’t know your voice in his head. I see him wake up crying from a dream with eyes like yours. Ihearhim whisper ‘Papa?’ in the dark.”
The wordPapacrashes inside me.
I reach out and she doesn’t pull away. My fingers curl into hers, wet, trembling.
“He reached out,” I say. “Your son—our son—connected when everything else failed. The signal crossed the void. I felt it. Ifelthim. Felt you.”
She draws a deep breath and pulls her hand free. “You say that. But how can I believe it?”
“I don’t ask you to trust me,” I say, voice low, raw. “I ask you to seeus. To see what we built. Maybe what we lost. And what we still might.”
She looks at me like I’m offering a shipwreck. “I don’t know if I can do this, Naull.”
“I don’t expect you to,” I say. “Not yet. I just ask for a chance.”
She closes her eyes. The rain creeps through, dampening the collar of her coat. She presses a gloved hand to her chest, over the baby-carrier. Her voice comes out in a whisper. “You don’t get a chance for a redo. I can’t pretend nothing happened.”
“I know,” I say again. “That’s why I’mhere.”
Some sirens wail faintly in the distance. The smell of damp stone and infant linen and her shampoo wraps around the night air. I reach above and pull her hood low. She lets me. I lean forward and press my lips to her forehead. Cold water trickles down her cheek, as if the storm itself is weeping.
The hush between us is thick. Her face inches from mine. Not forgiving. Not closing. Just pausing.
“I’m not promising you forever,” she says. “Not now. I’m promisingmaybe.”
“Then I’ll take amaybe,” I say. “Because I won’t let you disappear again.”
She turns away, walking toward her flat. I stay under the arch, drenched but still standing. She doesn’t look back. Doesn’t say it.
And that’s enough.
Night crawls in. I walk beside her—slower now, giving distance, respecting the fragile bridge between us. The lamp-post light flickers over us; our puddle reflections fracture and merge.
When I reach the bench outside her building, I stop. I turn. I watch her climb the stairs.
She pauses on the threshold—turns. Our eyes meet once more. She nods. Just a nod.
Then the door closes.
In the window above, a faint glow. A silhouette. She watches.
I sit on the bench, rain dripping off the edges of the wood, cold seeping through my coat. My body is aching, raw from the crash and the pursuit, but it feelsalive.Full.
