Chapter 113: The Silence Between Us
Early Morning
They hadn't meant to stay this long.
Ten days.
That's how long it had been since Selene carried Aria across the threshold of the apartment — both of them bleeding, one from the ribs, the other from places too deep to suture. The apartment had been a temporary stop. A place to recover, maybe plan the next move. But the longer they stayed, the harder it became to leave.
Outside, the world spun on a dull axis of smoke and danger. Inside, time didn't stop — but it slowed. It unraveled in longer threads, the hours stretching into shapes neither of them recognized, until the walls stopped feeling like a trap and started resembling a pause in the fall.
Morning came slowly. It wasn't the sharp brightness of survival or the dry gold of the flatlands. This light was blue and bruised — like it had bled through the edges of the world just to reach them. It filtered across the warped floorboards, paused at the edge of the bed, and touched Selene's shoulder as if uncertain whether it was welcome.
She hadn't moved.
Aria lay curled against her back, breath slow and even. One hand rested at her hip — not clutching, not tentative. Just resting. Present. Like something found and not let go.
Selene stared at the ceiling, tracing cracks she'd memorized over the last week. The silence around them wasn't absence — it was presence. The thick, unsaid hum between two people who had survived too much and said too little. Words had become dangerous, fragile. Even in safety, they could tear more than bullets.
She didn't want to move.
Didn't want to break the spell. But she did anyway.
She slid carefully from the bed, Aria's hand sliding off her waist like a dropped thread. The mattress sighed. The blanket cooled. She hated how much she noticed.
The floor was cold. She didn't bother with boots or weapons. Just walked barefoot across the faded wood into the kitchen, where the window — cracked from a long - ago storm — let in that blue sliver of daybreak.
She filled a dented metal cup from the tap. The water tasted like old iron, but she drank it anyway, staring through glass warped by time. Outside, the ridge loomed in the distance, jagged and indifferent. Somewhere beyond it, Ezra had disappeared again — like a wound that hadn't healed, just retreated beneath the skin.
She hadn't told Aria everything. Not what Ezra had said before he left. Not about the venom coiled inside his voice. Not about the part of her that still listened, even when she wanted to forget he'd ever existed.
Her hand trembled as she set the cup down.
"You always leave before you're ready."
Selene didn't turn. Aria's voice, still brushed with sleep, threaded into her like breath. Gentle. Clear.
"Did I wake you?" she asked, quietly.
"No," Aria said. "I felt you missing."
Selene turned then.
Aria stood in the doorway, blanket wrapped loosely around her. Her curls framed her face in soft, defiant disarray. Barefoot, like her. She crossed the room without hesitation and leaned against the counter beside Selene, close enough for their shoulders to brush.
Not for warmth. Not for balance.
For grounding.
Selene inhaled slowly.
"I didn't sleep," she admitted.
"Because of him?"
She shook her head. "Because of me."
Aria didn't speak. Didn't rush to fill the silence. She just waited. That was something Selene was still learning — how much trust could be carried in stillness.
"I don't know how to need someone," Selene said finally. "Not without… breaking something."
"Then don't break it."
"I don't know how not to."
Aria turned to face her fully. "You haven't broken me, Selene. You keep trying to carry everything alone, like you're some inevitability I need to be protected from. But I'm here. I'm still here."
Selene swallowed hard. "You shouldn't have to be."
"But I want to be."
The silence that followed wasn't absence. It was the loudness of everything they didn't know how to name. Ten days hadn't softened the sharp parts of their history. But it had shown them where the seams might hold, if they let them.
Selene looked down at her hands. They still bore faint scars — some old, some new. Her fingertips had the calluses of someone who never stopped bracing for the next collapse.
"I'm still… not safe," she said.
Aria exhaled. "Selene, I'm not looking for safe. I'm looking for you."
That sentence. It cracked something open in her chest — something fragile and angry and aching.
She didn't respond.
Didn't have to.
The silence swelled again, filled with the soft clink of the cup, the hum of morning air pressing in around them, the creak of the old walls holding their breath.
"I used to think needing someone meant weakness," Selene said finally. "That it meant losing pieces of myself I couldn't get back."
"And now?" Aria asked.
Selene didn't answer right away. She stared at the horizon — the bruised blue thinning to pale gray as dawn continued its slow advance.
"Now I think it might mean letting someone hold them while I learn how to breathe again."
Aria reached out. Her fingers brushed Selene's wrist, not pulling, not pressing. Just touching.
"I don't need you to be whole," she said. "I just need you to be here."
That was the thing about Aria. She didn't demand Selene become something else. She didn't ask her to forget, or bury, or explain. She only asked her to stay.
Selene took another breath. This one came easier.
"We should leave soon," she said, though her voice lacked conviction. "He's not gone. Not really. And the city's still…"
"Rotting," Aria finished. "I know."
"But you don't want to go either."
Aria gave her a long look. "I'll go when you're ready. Not before."
Selene turned her hand slightly, until their fingers met. Intertwined. Neither pulled away.
The sun finally crested the far edge of the world. Light spread in low, gold bands across the walls. It made the cracked paint look warmer, the silence gentler.
A fragile morning, but theirs.
Selene looked down at Aria's hand in hers.
"Will you stay?" she asked.
"I already am," Aria said.
Another beat of quiet.
And then, softer than breath:
"For as long as you'll let me."