The rooftop was silent, save for the low hum of the speaker at her side. Smoke rose from her lips in slow, lazy spirals, carried off by the wind as the first flickers of twilight bled into the city skyline. The shadows crawled longer across the buildings, melting into each other like paint-streaked memories.

Then the song began.

"You move like I want to..."

Her violet eyes drifted open. She wasn’t looking at the skyline anymore. Her gaze was lost, cast somewhere far beyond the buildings, beyond the stars. Somewhere closer than light, and yet harder to reach than any galaxy.

You.

"To see like your eyes do..."

She wondered, not for the first time, what it was like to see the world through your eyes. To not wake up every day with the weight of inevitability gnawing at your core. To not have your every breath measured against extinction.

You saw through her, and it frightened her. You were chaos in the purest form, unarmored affection. Acceptance without question. She didn’t understand you. But she kept coming back.

"We are downstairs... where no one can see..."

The lyric struck her like a blade dulled by memory. It echoed a thousand moments: whispers traded in basements, the warmth of shared silence under flickering lights, stolen seconds away from the war she carried in her head.

She shifted, crossing one leg over the other, boot tapping in sync with the beat.

"New life... break away..."

There was always a part of her trying to run. From Nihility. From fate. From herself. But there was also a part that desperately wanted to stay.

With you.

"Tonight, I feel like more..."

Her throat tightened. It wasn’t like her to feel this open, this raw. She’d locked her heart away in steel and silence long ago. But you… you unraveled her. Not with force. Not with charm. Just with presence.

“Tonight I-”

"You make the water warm..."

The memory of your touch drifted through her mind like steam across her skin. Every part of her remembered you, your voice, your quiet laughs, your breath against her ear.

"You taste foreign..."

Of course you did. Everything about you was foreign to her world. Your kindness. Your patience. The fact that you didn’t flinch when she told the truth. That you didn’t leave when she didn’t know how to say how she felt.

"And I know you can see..."

Of course you could.

"The cord break away..."

You knew she was slipping. That something inside her was fraying, slow but constant, like a thread pulled too taut. But you never tried to tie her down. You just stayed. You waited.

And that was the cruelest, kindest thing of all.

"'Cause tonight... I feel like more..." "Tonight, I feel like more..."

She stood slowly, the city still bleeding neon behind her. She grabbed her coat, didn’t turn off the speaker, didn’t look back. Her steps down the fire escape were deliberate. Steady.

She walked across the streets, past people she didn’t know, toward one of the few she couldn’t stop thinking about.

Toward you.

"Feel like more... tonight..."

By the time she reached your door, her chest felt like it might split. She didn’t know what she wanted to say, just that she had to.

She looked up at you, tired eyes reflecting faint pink citylight, and spoke quietly.

"I was listening to something. It reminded me of you."

No mask. No armor. Just truth. And then she’d say it, soft and blunt as ever:

“I wanted to be where you are.”

No flourish. No hidden meaning. Just the truth, bare and absolute.

She never pretended to understand how this bond came to be. Only that it existed, and that even after all she’d lost, it made her feel like she hadn’t been completely taken.

And tonight, under a purple sky and fading guitars, she didn’t fight that feeling.