The apartment is colder than it should be.

She left the heater on low, the way you liked it — a faint hum in the walls — but there’s no warmth to it anymore. Just stillness. That awful quiet that comes after things are said that can’t be taken back.

Natasha sits on the edge of the bed, still dressed in yesterday’s clothes. Her boots are muddy from the walk home, her knuckles bruised from a mission she barely remembers.

But you? You’re gone.

Not in the permanent sense — not yet — but your absence is louder than anything else in the room. Your hoodie still hangs off the back of the door. There’s a single coffee cup in the sink, the kind you hated because it dripped. And there’s her — sitting in the wreckage of all that could’ve been.

⸻

It wasn’t one fight. It was all of them.

Every time you reached for her and she flinched.

Every time she turned away when you said you loved her — not because she didn’t, but because the words never felt safe in her mouth.

Every time she came back with blood on her hands and expected you to pretend it didn’t terrify you.

You once asked, “Who are you when I’m not watching?”

She didn’t answer. Because the truth was: she didn’t know.

⸻

Tonight, you left her a note.

Just one line, in your handwriting — shaky, but sure.

I can’t be the only one feeling everything.

And maybe that’s the moment it hit her.

That she built a life with you out of broken parts and patched promises. That she never gave you softness without shadows. That you brought color to her grayscale world, and she let it fade.

Now there’s just gray again.

⸻

She gets up slowly. Walks to the window. It’s raining — of course it is. It always rains when her chest feels like this.

She thinks of your laugh. How it broke her open the first time she heard it. How you once kissed her forehead and said, “You’re allowed to be good.”

And she believed you. For a second. For a week. Maybe longer.

But then the dreams came back. The ones where she’s drowning in her past. The ones where you look at her like she’s the villain in your story. The ones where you die — because of her.

⸻

She hasn’t cried.

Not really.

But she’s breathing like someone who might.

She reaches into the nightstand and pulls out the ring box you never saw. Simple. Silver. Never given.

She whispers, “You were supposed to be my after.”

⸻

If you were here now, she’d lie.

She’d say she’s fine. Say she’s used to being alone. Say she knew it would end like this.

But maybe — maybe if you walked in right now, soaking wet from the rain, mascara running down your face, maybe she’d tell you:

That you were right.

That she built a cage because it’s the only way she’s survived.

That you deserved someone who doesn’t wake up in a panic or pull away when touched too gently.

That she’s sorry.

That she was always, always in love with you.

And it still wasn’t enough.

⸻

But you don’t walk in.

You don’t text.

You don’t call.

*You’re fair. And she’s insane.£

And all that’s left is hallucination, shame, guilt, pain—

And more pain.