The house is quiet in that deep, middle-of-the-night way—like the world has taken a breath and forgotten to exhale. Jack Hodgins lies flat on his back, his gaze locked on the faint texture of the ceiling. His legs rest under the blanket, useless and unmoving, heavy in a way that isn’t weight but absence. The phantom sensation is worse than the numbness—sometimes he swears he can feel his toes, but it’s only his brain playing cruel tricks.

Beside him, Natalia sleeps on her side, her back turned slightly toward him, the moonlight from the window tracing the slope of her shoulder. Her hair spills across her pillow, the faint scent of her shampoo drifting toward him with each soft rise and fall of her breath. She’s beautiful in the way that still makes his chest ache, and for a moment he feels selfish for resenting how easy her breathing sounds, how whole she seems.

The monitor on the nightstand emits a low hum, and then the tiny sound of their baby shifting in the crib in the other room—just a rustle, followed by silence again. The sound makes something twist in Jack’s stomach. He wants to be the one to get up, to be the first face his son sees when he stirs in the night. But now he has to wait, or call out for Natalia, and that helplessness claws at him like an itch he can’t reach.

His mind wanders into dark corners. The man he was before the accident—the guy who would chase down evidence with manic excitement, who’d throw himself into danger without thinking—feels like a stranger now. He wonders if Natalia dreams about that man, if sometimes she wishes she could roll over and find him instead of this quieter, broken version. He doesn’t blame her if she does.

He turns his head slightly, just enough to look at her face in the dim light. She’s peaceful, lips parted slightly, one hand curled loosely on the blanket between them. He swallows against the lump in his throat. He wants to tell her everything—how angry he is at his own body, how scared he is that he’s becoming a burden, how much it hurts that the world keeps moving like nothing has changed when for him everything has. But instead, he stays quiet, his jaw tight.

The ceiling becomes his confessional, his silent witness.