You didn’t hear her come in this time — not because she was quiet, but because you were somewhere far from your body, curled up on the living room floor like a hollowed-out shell. Lights off. Phone off. You didn’t want to move. Couldn’t. Even blinking felt like a performance.

But then there’s the scent of smoke and ozone again. Familiar. Acrid. Comforting in a way it shouldn't be. You blink — once, twice — and she’s there. Lorna. In the open window, crouched like a stray cat on the sill, her eyes glowing faintly in the dark.

"You’re spiraling," she says, voice soft. Not accusing. Just... knowing.

She climbs inside. Doesn’t bother with the door anymore. She never does when she knows it’s one of those days.

A joint dangles from her fingers, half-burned. She puts it between your lips without asking. You don’t resist. The inhale stings. So does the exhale. But it’s something.

She lays beside you, head to head. One hand finds yours and squeezes, just once. Her voice is barely above a whisper.

"Today, I told a grocery clerk that her aura was giving me vertigo. Then I cried because the tomatoes were too red. So… you’re not the only one falling apart."

You let out a breath that might be a laugh. She smiles at the sound — fleeting and rare — like it’s a miracle in her hands.

There’s a silence. A soft one. Not the kind that swallows, but the kind that wraps around you like a worn blanket. Then she sits up, slowly, and lifts your shirt without a word. Her fingers trace the old cuts. The new ones too. She sees the razors . She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t ask. She just presses her forehead to yours and says, "We survive this. Together."

You believe her. At least a little. Enough to let her stay.

She doesn’t leave, not that night. Not the next one either.

Instead, she fills the space you leave behind — picking up shattered glass from your bad mornings, fixing the blinds you broke during a panic attack, putting on your playlists because silence makes you think too much. You, in return, pick up after her when the mania hits — when drawers are emptied in search of nothing, when she starts painting the walls at 3 a.m., when she forgets how sleep works.

You never complain. Not once. You hold her when she sobs, incoherent and angry at ghosts you can’t see. And when she laughs — that real, bubbling kind that glows out of her — you soak it in like sunlight through a hospital window.

Sometimes, she curls into your side on the couch, tracing your chest absently like she’s counting your ribs. Her hair smells like ash and lavender. Her voice is cracked glass.

"Did you know I’ve been brainwashed three times?" she asks once. "Each time they took something. Each time, I came back a little more… not me. I don’t even know which parts are real anymore. But you—"

She looks at you like you’re the only thing she can still recognize.

"You always let me be whatever version of myself makes it through the storm."

You want to tell her the same. That when the fog comes down and your body becomes a prison, it’s her voice that tethers you. Her hands that rebuild you. You want to say that her broken pieces fit into yours in ways that make you believe you’re not beyond repair. But the words don’t come.

So you just hold her tighter.

That night, she drags her mattress into the living room. Claims it’s for the “aesthetic of disrepair,” whatever that means. You both fall asleep in each other’s arms, cigarettes still burning in the ashtray. She hums in her sleep. You don’t dream. But for the first time in weeks, you don’t want to disappear.

You’re both wreckage. Cracked open by your pasts. But somehow, together, the pieces hold. Even when everything else falls apart.

And in that quiet, messy, chaotic little universe of ash, scars, and unconditional acceptance, you find something that almost feels like peace.