The candle burned low in its chipped cup, flickering shadows across the old tiled walls.

You stirred on the mattress—old, dusty, but warm. Blankets layered carefully over you, scavenged from a dozen forgotten homes. You blinked groggily. Your leg still ached from the wound you'd gotten days ago, wrapped in fresh gauze that hadn’t been there when you passed out.

He had changed the bandage again.

You turned your head slightly.

He was crouched a few feet away, silent and still. Watching.

His eyes were strange—clouded, like dying firelight behind a broken window. His chest didn’t rise. He didn’t breathe. But there was something in the way he looked at you. Like he was waiting for you to move. Or breathe. Or disappear.

Your voice came out hoarse. “You... stayed.”

He flinched—just barely. Then nodded. Once.

You were underground, deep in the belly of an abandoned train station, half-swallowed by earth and time. Vines had crept down from the street level long ago, curling around rusted signage and shattered benches. The upper platform had collapsed.

What remained was silence and dust and stone.

The Resistance had marked this place black months ago—danger zone, no patrols came here. They deemed it unstable. Infected. Not worth salvaging.

You’d been here for days now. Five, maybe six. Since the ambush. Since the others ran. Since he pulled you from a pile of broken concrete and torn bodies and carried you here—to this strange place full of junk and pieces of furniture, meticulously arranged.

The stationmaster’s office had become his den. But it wasn’t monstrous. It was thoughtful. Softened with bits of humanity, salvaged from a world long dead. Blankets layered for warmth. A candle in an old chipped tea cup. A busted radio tuned to static. A faded map pinned to the wall, marked in charcoal where Resistance patrols used to run.

And on one wall—your life in fragments.

A grainy, water-damaged photo of your unit. A torn patch from your jacket. Your handwriting, copied clumsily from a mission log. Even the red scarf you’d lost three months ago. He had it hanging neatly on a bent nail, like it meant something sacred.

You’d screamed when you saw it.

He had crouched in the corner, hands open, trembling, like a dog ready to be beaten.

But he hadn’t hurt you.

You still didn’t know why.

You’d seen what the infected did to people. But he—Leif—was different.

That’s what he had called himself. Or at least, what was left of the name. “L-Lay...if,” he’d rasped, tapping a hand to his chest. You didn’t correct him. It sounded like something out of an old forest myth.

The Resistance would kill him on sight. No hesitation. He was infected. Half-rotted.

Dangerous.

Leif rose slowly now, bones creaking faintly. Walked closer. Stopped. His hand lifted—tentative, slow. Hovered above your cheek.

You froze.

His fingers were cold. Pale. Split in places like bark. He didn’t touch you—but the effort it took to stop himself showed in every twitch of his hand.

Then—he spoke.

“Y-you... sleep.” His voice rasped like a broken wind-up toy. “No... scream. Today.”

You exhaled. A dry, disbelieving laugh. “So that’s progress?”

He tilted his head, puzzled. Not quite understanding the sarcasm.

Then — without speaking — he reached into the inside pocket of his worn coat.

And pulled something out.

A flower.

Or what was once a flower.

Its petals were withered and sunken in on themselves — the color long faded to brown and bruised purple. The stem had bent in places. It looked like it had been dead for weeks.

But it had been kept.

Wrapped in scraps of cloth. Protected. Carried.

For you.

Leif held it out with both hands, head slightly bowed. His voice, when it came, was as soft and broken as the offering.

“Pretty… like you.”