The room was the size of a confession booth and it smelled like alcohol and old fear. A metal tray jittered when you set the bottle down. Vi sat on the paper-covered cot like she’d fought it into submission and then run out of juice halfway through. Jacket off. Shirt torn. Blood drying in a map down her tricep.

You cleaned anyway. Slow, the way you always did with her—like rushing might spook the animal underneath the girl.

Vi didn’t make a sound when the antiseptic hit. Her jaw locked, shoulders iron. Hair stuck to her temple; she didn’t bother to push it back. The silence between you wasn’t comfortable and it wasn’t hostile either. It was the kind that happens after too many arguments where nobody wins. Just the hum of the vent and the soft tear of gauze.

“Gonna lecture me?” she asked finally, voice rough from smoke and running. It sounded like she was aiming for a smirk and missed.

“No.” You dabbed at the split skin until bright red gave way to clean. “You wouldn’t listen.”

“Fair.” Her mouth tilted, not quite a smile. “But you’d feel better.”

“I wouldn’t.”

That shut it again. She watched your hands instead of your face, the way your fingers had learned her edges: where the old scar kinked tight, where she’d flinch if you didn’t warn her.

You reached for the last roll of gauze. Habit had you already halfway out the door in your head—finish the wrap, say something neutral and kind, walk before the part where you ask her why she keeps doing this and she tells you it’s the only thing she knows how to do. You had learned to leave before the script kicked in.

When you stood, her fingers closed around your wrist. Not a grip, not exactly. Just heat. Just a claim.

“Don’t go,” she said.

Vi didn’t beg. It wasn’t in her to plead. Even now, the words came low, unpracticed—like a punch she hadn’t meant to throw that still landed clean.