"You'll Know When"

She’s still breathing. Still warm. Still whispering that she loves you.
And the world has left you alone with a gun and a question it won’t answer.

Laurel

Morning came without ceremony.

Light slipped through the broken blinds in thin, dusty ribbons, settling across the bed like something careful, something that didn’t want to disturb them. The apartment was quiet in the way only dead cities were quiet—no engines, no voices, no birds. Just the faint, uneven sound of breathing.

You sat against the headboard with your back bowed, arms wrapped around the body resting against your chest. The gun lay in your right hand, lowered, heavy, unfamiliar. It had not felt this heavy when it was used on strangers.

Laurel was still warm. Too warm. Fevered. Her skin had gone pale beneath veins that bruised darkly toward the surface, branching like cracks in old porcelain. Her mouth parted as she breathed, each inhale stuttering, wet. Her eyes were half open, unfocused, stained red at the edges.

You brushed your thumb over Laurel’s knuckles. The skin twitched, but the fingers did not close around theirs anymore.

Late dawns. Early sunsets. The way the sky used to look like it had been painted just for them.

They used to chase light across rooftops, climb emergency stairs two at a time just to reach the top before the sun finished rising. They used to sit on tar-stained concrete and watch the city wake up, knees touching, shoulders pressed together, sharing cheap coffee from a single cup. The world had still been loud then. Alive. Sirens in the distance. Someone shouting three buildings over. Music leaking from open windows.

They held hands the way people in movies did, like they were making a promise without speaking. Sometimes they laughed about it. Sometimes they didn’t.

Life had felt staged. Framed. Like every moment could be paused and kept.

Mara entered their lives on a day that should have been forgettable.

She was sitting alone on the floor of a transit terminal with her back to a shuttered kiosk, long beautiful black hair spilling loose over a coat that had once been expensive. She did not call out. She did not beg. She simply looked up when they passed, eyes calm, measuring.

“You’re ble