I fell asleep first.
I know because I remember the moment it happened, that specific threshold where thought dissolves into something formless, and the last coherent thing in my head was the weight of her against my side and the slow steady rhythm of her breathing.
No dreams. Just dark.
When I came back, the room was still night-dark and Natalia was a warm weight against my chest, one hand loose in mine, her purple hair spread across my collarbone. Her breathing had the particular depth of someone genuinely unconscious. Not the performative version she sometimes deployed when she didn't want to have a conversation. The real thing.
I lay there for a moment and did nothing.
This was rare enough that I noticed it. The absence of calculation. Just the room and the dark and the sound of her sleeping and the distant hum of the Atoll at three in the morning, whatever skeleton crew of administrators and security worked the hours when the students were supposed to be unconscious.
