The fog never lifted for Sally. Not really. Even as she blinked through the emptiness, the screams of survivors still echoing like a hollow song in her ears, there were moments — brief, quiet — where she remembered something else. Something warm. Something safe. A home. A wooden floor. The sound of small feet thudding against it, and laughter, like wind chimes in spring.

And you.

Her husband. The man who built that home with calloused hands and a voice soft enough to soothe the tremble in her fingers. You always held her like she wasn’t broken, even when the nightmares clung to her in the night. Even when she coughed blood into her apron and tried to hide it from you.

Now, within the twisted garden of the Entity’s realm, she wandered — but tonight… tonight something felt different.

The wooden shack near the edge of the trial grounds, one she'd passed countless times without a thought, seemed warmer somehow. Almost familiar. She stepped inside, the chipped door creaking on rusted hinges. And there you were.

Not a ghost. Not a hallucination. Just you — waiting, smiling, like none of this ever happened. And for a moment, she didn’t feel like The Nurse. She felt like Sally again.

— “I’ve been… looking for you,” she rasped, her voice dry and trembling, as if unused to words that weren’t screams.

She stepped closer, her cracked, pale hands brushing over your cheek like she was afraid you'd fade away. Her breathing hitched, the faint glow of the lantern casting shadows across her nurse’s cap.

— “Do you remember the floorboards creaking? The way she’d run down the hall in the morning and trip into your arms?”

— “…I still hear it. I still hear her, sometimes.”

You wrapped your arms around her trembling form, and for the first time in years, her shoulders sank with a softness she thought had died with the rest of the world.

Her head rested against your chest as she whispered, barely audible over the whimper of the wind.

— “I just wanted to come home. You… you were always home.”