The room felt colder than usual that morning. Not from the air, the small heater in the corner hummed softly, but from the silence. That heavy, persistent kind of silence that sits in the room even when the world outside continues without pause. Willy sat at his small desk, his fingers resting on the page of an unfinished letter. He had been trying to write for an hour, but the words refused to take shape. It wasn't the letter in front of him that occupied his mind. It was the one he had sent days ago, the one to Tim. The one Tim still hadn't answered.
He had told himself not to expect a reply too quickly. The operation Tim was on was dangerous, sensitive. Tim had warned him, "There might be days when I can't say much, or anything at all. Don't read into it, okay?" But Willy knew him too well. Tim always found a way to answer, even if it was just a single line: I'm safe. Or I miss you. Or simply, Soon. But this time, there was nothing.
Nothing except the small, routine notes and the food parcels, the same supplies Tim had been sending since he left. The bread was fresh, the fruit packed neatly, the handwriting on the scraps of paper steady and precise. Eat well. Take care of yourself. The words were neat, almost too neat, as though they had been written by a man trying very hard not to say anything else.
Willy stared at the latest note for the tenth time that morning.
No signature. No sign that Tim had even read what he had written.
The letter he'd sent had been important, personal. He'd even risked saying something tender in it, something he almost never committed to paper: You're the only one who feels like home.
If Tim had read those words, there would have been an answer. He was sure of it.
The days blurred into each other. Three days without a reply. Four. By the fifth, Willy began counting hours. He paced his small quarters, restless, distracted. Even the guards noticed.
"Everything alright, Willy?" one of them asked casually.
"Fine," he lied, forcing a small smile. The less anyone noticed, the better. Their marriage wasn't public. It couldn't be. Not here. Not with the people Tim worked for, and certainly not with the people Tim was working against. The secrecy had been part of their life from the beginning, whispered vows, no witnesses except a clerk who didn't ask questions. No public acknowledgment. They didn't even say the word "married" outside the privacy of their home.
But secrecy had its cost. Now, in Tim's absence, it meant Willy had no right to demand answers. No one would see him as a husband waiting for news. To them, he was just another man asking after someone else's business.
That thought gnawed at him until he finally decided to act.
The head of security was a broad man with a calm, unhurried demeanor that always seemed, to Willy, just a little too measured, like every word was weighed before being spoken. His office smelled faintly of coffee and paper. The blinds were half-drawn, letting in strips of pale afternoon light.
Willy: "Hello… Did Tim get my letter?"
His voice came out steadier than he expected.
The head of security looked up from the stack of papers on his desk. His eyes were unreadable.
Head of Security: "Hello. We sent it, but we haven't received a response. That's all we know."
The pause after that's all we know was subtle. Most people wouldn't have noticed it, but Willy had learned to listen for pauses. In their world, a pause often carried more truth than the words themselves.
Something flickered in the man's eyes, gone too quickly to name. It wasn't sympathy. It wasn't annoying. Something else. Something held back.
Willy nodded politely, thanked him, and left the office, but the moment the door closed behind him, the weight in his chest deepened. He replayed the conversation in his head over and over as he walked back down the corridor. They'd sent the letter. No response. That was all they knew. At least, that was all they were willing to say.
That night, Willy lay awake, staring at the ceiling. He tried to recall the last time Tim had gone silent like this. Once, years ago, during a long operation in another city, Tim had disappeared for almost a week, but even then, Willy had received a short message, scribbled hastily on the back of a receipt. Still breathing. Wait for me. This time, there was nothing.
The only thing he had were the parcels. They arrived on schedule, but the last one had been… odd. The bread was cut differently, wrapped in a different paper. The handwriting on the note was Tim's, he was sure of that, but the strokes were slightly off. Like they'd been written in haste, or by someone distracted.
Eat well. Take care of yourself.
No W. No T.
By the seventh day, Willy's worry turned into a quiet, constant hum beneath his thoughts. He noticed things he might have ignored before: the way two guards lowered their voices when he passed, the way a clerk quickly shuffled papers into a folder when he approached the desk, the way the head of security avoided his eyes in the hallway. It was probably nothing. It could be everything.
He thought about going to the mailroom, pretending to have some business there, maybe seeing if his letter had been returned. But that would draw attention. Too much attention. If Tim was in danger, the last thing he wanted was to make himself a target too.
Instead, Willy began to watch. Quietly, carefully. He lingered in corridors longer than necessary. He memorized faces, noted who came and went from the communications room, listened to footsteps in the hall outside his quarters at night.
The silence was starting to feel deliberate.
One evening, on his way back from the common area, he caught a fragment of conversation from behind a partially closed door. Two voices, one low and tense, the other sharp with authority.
"…still no contact from him?"
"…we don't know if"
The rest was muffled by the sound of a chair scraping.
Willy's heart pounded. He moved past quickly before they could sense his presence, but the words followed him like shadows.
Still no contact.
Were they talking about Tim? Who else could they mean?
By the tenth day, Willy had stopped sleeping through the night. His mind chased itself in circles:
Maybe Tim couldn't answer. Maybe the letter never reached him. Maybe...
He cut off the thought before it could finish.
Every time fear tried to take shape, he fought it with stubborn belief: Tim was alive. He had to be. If something had happened, Willy would know. They couldn't hide something like that from him.
Could they?
The truth was, they could. They could hide anything.
And that thought, more than the silence, more than the unanswered letter, was what made Willy decide he couldn't just wait anymore.
The next morning, he sat at his desk again, staring at a blank page. He picked up his pen, hesitated, then began to write another letter. This one was short, almost cryptic, a message only Tim would understand.
If you can't speak, send the flower with the stem broken. If you're safe, send the full bloom.
He folded it carefully, sealed it, and addressed it as usual. But before he handed it over to be sent, he did something he hadn't done before: he marked the inside of the envelope with a faint pencil line, invisible unless you knew to look. A way to know if this letter, too, was intercepted.
That night, he dreamed of Tim.
Not a soft, comforting dream, but a strange, restless one. Tim was standing in a fog, close enough to see but too far to touch. He kept trying to speak, but his mouth made no sound. In the dream, Willy shouted, begged him to come closer, but Tim only shook his head and turned away.
Willy woke before dawn, his chest tight, his hands gripping the blanket as though he'd been holding onto something in his sleep.
It was just a dream.
But it didn't feel like just a dream.
The following afternoon, the head of security passed him in the corridor. The man nodded politely, but there was a flicker, almost a wince in his eyes. Willy slowed his step, pretending to adjust his sleeve, just to watch him walk away. The man didn't look back.
Willy's decision solidified in that moment. He would stop asking. He would start finding out.
Because the silence had gone on long enough.