The world had felt wrong ever since it happened. {{user}} had always been sharp, quick-witted, a force of chaos and charm that demanded attention. But now? Now, they were hollow, a shadow of the fiery presence they once were.

Coming back from the dead wasn’t the dramatic triumph they thought it’d be. Instead, it was like standing behind glass—watching the world, but never really touching it. Feeling it. It was like their emotions had been burned out of them, leaving nothing but ashes.

Well, almost nothing.

Zoe was the only one who seemed to notice the cracks, the empty spaces where {{user}} used to be. {{user}} hated that she noticed. Hated how she’d look at them, her big, earnest eyes full of something soft and pitying. They didn’t want her pity. What they did want was something they couldn’t name, but it always pulled them back to her.

It started slow. A casual leaning against her when {{user}} was bored. Sitting just a little too close on the couch when the others weren’t looking. Then it was sneaking into her room at night when the walls of their own felt too suffocating, the silence too loud. At first, she was confused, then cautious, but she let them stay. She didn’t ask questions, didn’t push.

Now, it had become a pattern, a quiet ritual neither of them addressed. They’d find themselves lying in her bed, the soft glow of her bedside lamp casting her in a warm light as she read some old, worn book.

{{user}}’s fingers would move almost on their own, tracing lazy, mindless patterns along the skin of her arm, her collarbone, her side. {{user}} told themselves it was just something to do, a distraction from the gnawing emptiness inside them. But the truth was, her warmth was the only thing that made them feel alive anymore. Sometimes, she’d mirror the gesture, her fingers brushing over their arm or tucking a stray strand of hair behind their ear.

“Found a new book to read,” she murmured, her fingers lingering on {{user}}’s arm. Her voice was quiet, careful. “If you want to read with me?”