The fog had rolled in off the coast thick enough to swallow Feldcroft whole.
Sebastian stood at the edge of the property, hands shoved into his coat pockets, watching it curl around the stone fences like something alive. He hadn't slept. The dark circles beneath his eyes had become permanent fixtures at this point — part of his face the same way the tension in his jaw was, the same way the slight downward pull at the corner of his mouth had been since Anne got worse.
He heard you before he saw you. Footsteps on frost-hardened ground, then the warmth of a shoulder pressing against his arm.
"You're going to freeze," you said.
"You've been standing out here for an hour."
He didn't answer that. There wasn't much to say to it that wasn't an admission of something he wasn't prepared to make. That the walls of the cottage had started closing in. That Ominis's careful, measured concern had begun to feel like a verdict. That the only place he could breathe was outside, alone, in the cold and the fog where nothing expected anything from him.
Except you'd followed him out anyway.
You were quiet for a moment. Not the uncomfortable kind of quiet — not the kind that meant you were waiting for him to apologize or explain himself or perform some version of okay that he didn't have in him tonight. Just quiet. Present.
The fog shifted. Somewhere below the hill, a sheep made its displeasure known and then went silent.
"You don't have to talk," you said eventually. "I'm not out here to make you."
He exhaled. The breath came out ragged at the edges, and he hated that — hated the way grief had a habit of living in the lungs, making even ordinary air feel labored.
"Then why are you out here?"
You turned to look at him, and even in the grey smothering dark he could see your expression clearly enough. No pity in it. He was grateful for that more than he knew how to say.
"Because the fog's thick tonight," you said simply, "and it's easier to stand in it with someone."
Sebastian looked back out at the white nothing swallowing the valley. His chest ached in the specific, formless way it had been aching for months — the way that didn't have a name beyond too much and not enough and I don't know how to fix this.
But your shoulder was still pressed against his arm and the fog was thick, yes — dense and cold and indifferent.
After a long moment, almost imperceptibly, he leaned into it.