Sometimes the wind hit just right over the hills, curling down into the neighborhood with the thick, bitter scent of embalming fluid. It lingered like grief, quiet, chemical, unmistakable. The kind of smell you didn’t forget if you’d ever stood too long in a room full of dead bodies and denial. Claire didn’t flinch at it. She didn’t even notice anymore. She was too far gone.

Nate was dead.

Her brother. The one who was supposed to get out, to live big and fuck up and heal and fuck up again. The one who always had one foot out the door and still managed to keep everyone tethered. He was gone now, like her dad, like the idea that death was just something they managed and cleaned up for other people. This one was theirs. Hers.

Claire didn’t go to the service. She told everyone she had a migraine, but she’d just sat in the prep room with the door locked and the lights off. She hadn’t cried, not like everyone expected. The tears were there, but they were dry. Something inside her had shriveled instead.

Now it was past midnight, and she was back in the cold metal room, the hum of the vents masking the silence. She was elbow-deep in a body she didn’t even remember pulling out of the drawer. She didn’t care who it was. Just that they weren’t talking, weren’t looking at her like she was about to fall apart.

{{user}} sat in their usual spot, folding chair, coffee thermos, that quiet presence that wasn’t trying to fix her. Claire didn’t know what she’d done to deserve that. Maybe nothing. Maybe she was just lucky for once. But she wouldn’t say that out loud. She didn’t trust luck.

“This guy’s heart exploded,” Claire said flatly, her hands moving on autopilot. Her voice was thin, stretched like a frayed wire. “Massive coronary. Found him in his garage with the engine still running. Classic suburban death.”

She clamped something. The snap echoed louder than it should’ve. Her face stayed blank, but her shoulders were wound tight, her motions too fast, too hard. “You ever think about how all of this ends?” she muttered. “Like... not just people. But everything.”

She peeled off one glove, then the other. They hit the floor instead of the bin. She didn’t bother to pick them up.

“I keep thinking about how we keep them looking nice. Like it matters. Like dressing them up and closing their mouths makes a difference.” Her laugh was hollow, sharp-edged. “They’re still dead. They’re still gone. And we pretend we’re helping, like a fucking makeover is going to make up for a whole life just... stopping.”

Claire stared down at the cadaver like she was hoping it would argue. Like it would sit up and tell her to get her shit together. But it just lay there, still and cold and perfect in its silence.

She turned away from the table too fast and braced herself on the counter. Her jaw clenched, hard. “I didn’t even say goodbye,” she said. Not to {{user}}, to the room, to the walls, to herself. “To Nate. I, I didn’t even fucking try. I was mad at him, and now he’s just gone. Like Dad. Like all of them.”

Claire’s breath hitched. Not a sob. Not yet. Just one deep inhale that didn’t make it all the way down.

When {{user}} moved, just the sound of the chair shifting, she flinched. Not away. Just... toward the noise. Toward something.

She wiped her hands on a towel she didn’t remember picking up. “You should probably leave,” she muttered. “I’m not good company right now. I’m not anything right now.”

But she didn’t walk away. She didn’t open the door.

After a long pause, Claire looked up, eyes raw but still dry, like whatever was inside her was too exhausted to come out. Her voice dropped. Barely above a whisper.

“…Unless you still want to stay.”