🗂️

Without even noticing, your go-to lines become: What are you waiting for? You'll never know if you don't try. And then, worse: Want to practice? Just pretend I'm them.

The one person who was ever meant for you never shows up. That's what you believe. And every time that thought hits, it pulls you under.

Your contact list has eleven names.

Four are family. Two are coworkers you've never spoken to outside of work emails. One is your dentist. Three others—you have to think before you can place them. Fewer people, fewer complications. Complications have always felt like something that happens to other people—the loud ones, the ones who cry in public, the ones who call their friends at midnight. You are steady. Manageable. Easy.

And then there's Wanda Maximoff.

She comes to the same monthly knitting circle—late, always, dressed like she imagined the evening differently than it turned out. Auburn hair, always slightly undone, catching the light when she moves. She argues passionately about projects she hasn't finished yet. She laughs at her own jokes before she finishes telling them. People turn toward her the way plants turn toward light. Warmth just comes off her naturally.

Between the two of you, maybe forty sentences total. You've counted.

Wanting and doing have always felt like two separate countries, and you've never learned to cross the border.

In October, Wanda's partner of two years leaves her.

She texts you on a Tuesday night—hey are you up—no question mark, like she already knows the answer.

You are always up. She calls and talks for an hour without stopping: the whole story, every detail, the last conversation replayed almost word for word. She is the kind of person who needs to say a thing out loud before she can believe it happened. When she finally goes quiet, she says, "I don't know why I called you. I just knew you'd pick up."

"I'm glad you did," you say.

Both things are true. The second one is easier to say.

She heals out loud.

By November she is rage-texting you at ten at night. December, she's dragging you to a terrible holiday movie and crying at the happy ending anyway, laughing at herself between tears. By January she's making plans again—small ones, tentative, like testing weight on a healing bone.

Come February, the worst of it has passed. Coffee on Saturdays, then dinner, then walks with no destination—her talking the whole time, you listening and watching the way streetlights catch in her hair when she turns to make a point. A few weeks of this, and it starts to feel like a rhythm.

One evening she stops in the middle of a bridge, leans on the railing, and looks down at the water. The light off the river catches in her hair, turns it almost copper.

"I want to try again," she says. "With someone. But I feel like I forgot how."

You wait.

"Can we practice?" She turns to look at you, eyes completely serious. "Like—dates. Getting close to someone. You're the safest person I know."

The word safest settles in your chest like something heavy and warm at the same time.

"Sure," you say.

So you practice.

Wanda throws herself into it the way she throws herself into everything—completely. She shows up at your door with flowers once—reservations already made, already laughing before you open it, mid-explanation of the joke. Good morning texts go from twice a week to every day, like something she's decided to do for the rest of her life. At a late-night diner she sits across from you for three hours and talks about her childhood, her fears, the specific way grief lives in the body. She wants to know yours too.

This is the part where you should match her.

When she asks what you're thinking, you say nothing much. When she asks if you're okay, you say always. One door stays closed, and she—busy with the warmth of her own opening up—learns, after a while, to stop checking it.

She gives you everything. You give her what you can reach.

In April, she's half-watching a show from her end of the couch, legs folded under her, half-watching you.

"You know what's weird about you?"

You raise an eyebrow.

"You're always okay." She tilts her head. "Like—I pour everything out and you just hold it. You never spill."

"Spilling seems like a lot of work," you say.

"I'm serious." A beat. "You never need anything from me."

"You've got enough going on."

She looks at you a moment longer than usual. Then she smiles—soft, a little unreadable—and turns back to the TV.

Walking home that night, you think about what she said. You file it under nothing important.

You keep going.

May is warm and unhurried.

The Saturdays stretch longer. One afternoon she falls asleep on your shoulder mid-movie, and you sit very still, watching the credits roll, not wanting to be the reason it ends. Another evening she reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind your ear, just because it was there. The moment passes without a word.

Then one night she kisses you.

Slowly, the way you do something you've been thinking about for a while. You don't pull back. When it ends, she rests her forehead against yours, and you stay like that, close enough to feel her breathe. Her nose brushes yours. Neither of you says anything.

She starts coming to your apartment after that. You have never shown this place to anyone, and she has nothing to measure it against—no sense of how rarely this door opens at all. She just takes off her shoes at the entrance and makes herself at home, easy and certain, and you let her, and it feels like something you could get used to.

You file that under nothing important too.

That's what you tell yourself.

By June, a name starts appearing in her texts.

Vision said the funniest thing today. Then: went to that ramen place with Vision, have you tried it? Then just: Vision.

He texted her first, she mentioned once, like it was nothing. Like that's just what people do.

She talks about Vision the way she talks about everything she loves—in full, vivid sentences, like she's already narrating a film she's fallen for. You listen, say the right things, keep showing up—Saturdays, dinners, the long walks.

Presence feels like enough. Eventually, you think, she'll see what's already there.

She sees something. Just not that.

One evening, somewhere between the second drink and the walk home, it comes out before you can stop it.

"You've been talking about Vision a lot lately."

She looks at you. Something shifts in her expression—not quite a frown, just attention, suddenly focused.

"Yeah?" A pause. "Does that bother you?"

The honest answer is right there. You step around it.

"Is this practice?" The words land before you can pull them back. "All of it—the dates, the kiss, the sex. Is that what we agreed on?"

The word sits there between you for a moment.

"Right," she says. Quiet. "Practice."

She doesn't bring it up again. Neither do you.

But something has been named. She knows where the door is now.

July is bright and relentless, the kind of weather that has no interest in how you feel.

Wanda still texts. Still shows up. But something in the rhythm has shifted—a half-beat off, like a song you know well, played slightly too fast. You can't point to anything specific. When you try, it slips.

You tell yourself it's nothing.

It doesn't quite take.

August arrives the way it always does—sudden and total, the heat sitting on everything like a held breath. You have the fan running and the curtains half-drawn when she shows up, a reusable bag over one shoulder, already mid-sentence about something that happened on the train.

She picks the movie. She always picks the movie. You order in, eat on the floor because the table is covered in books you keep meaning to shelve, and somewhere in the second act she pulls her knees to her chest and goes quiet in a way that has nothing to do with the film.

"I need to tell you something."

The screen keeps going. Someone on it is laughing.

She and Vision. A few weeks now. She'd wanted to find the right moment. Her voice is careful, the way you handle something you know might break.

"You brought me back," she says. "I couldn't have gotten here without you." A beat. "You know that, right? You're everything to me."

"I'm really glad," you say.

One second. Your throat tightens.

Then it passes. Steady. Easy. The voice of someone who is always okay.

She hugs you at the door, long and tight, her chin hooked over your shoulder. Then she's gone, and the sound of the latch is very small in the quiet.

The movie is still playing.

You go back to the floor. Settle into the space she left. The takeout containers are still there, her half-finished drink beside yours. Outside, the heat presses against the windows like it has nowhere else to be. The fan turns. The people on the screen keep laughing at something you've already forgotten.

You don't turn it off.

Days after, you open your contacts.

Eleven names.

You scroll through slowly. How many of them know what you look like when something actually hurts? How many would call you at midnight?

The number is smaller than eleven.

And then—slowly, the way light comes up in a room—you start to see it.

Wanda came to you because you felt safe. You held your hands open and asked for nothing back. She poured herself into that space and you held all of it, and it was true—the flowers, the diner, the good morning texts—every bit of it. She just told the story the way she needed it to go.

And you let her. Every I'm fine, every need you swallowed before it could reach the surface—that was you, making room. Shaping yourself into something easy to leave.

She told you that you were everything to her, and she meant it.

She just meant it the way you mean it when you thank someone for holding the door.

You find her name and press delete. It takes about two seconds.

Ten names. A rounder number anyway.

You close the contacts screen.

Outside, summer hasn't loosened its grip. Somewhere out there, Wanda Maximoff is happy. You hold onto that, because it's real and it matters and you want it to be enough.

The rest is real too.

No matter where you stand, no matter who turns toward you with that much warmth—when it comes time to choose, you are the last name that surfaces. The steady one. The safe one who holds the door.

The one who lets go.

You.

✼••┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ʇsı˥ ǝɥʇ uo ʇsɐ˥┈┈┈┈┈┈┈••✼

When the nurse held out the paperwork, Wanda was holding the baby—a girl. Yael stood beside her, working through the discharge forms with quiet efficiency. Paperwork had never been part of the job, out there, but her hand didn't waver.

"Parents' names go here," the nurse said. "Since you're married, we can list both of you." She said it the way people say things that are simply true.

Yael took the clipboard. She looked at the form for a moment, then wrote. Without a word, she held it out to Wanda.

Wanda was looking at the baby's face.

She hesitated before taking it. Those sea-glass eyes—somewhere between blue and green, like shallow water—found Yael's. Yael's chin dropped, barely a movement. Then she shifted, gently lifting the baby from Wanda's arms. Wanda slowly wrote her own name into the remaining space in the parents' section. When she finished, she looked away from it immediately.

"The space for the child's name is the only part still blank."

The name field. A small void.

"You have fourteen days to file. No rush."

Outside, the air was sharp and frigid. Yael walked ahead. They crossed the parking lot without speaking. The baby slept in Wanda's arms. Wanda lowered her carefully into the car seat in the back.

Yael stayed in the back seat, beside the baby. For a few seconds after the door closed, she looked out the window.

"Let's go home," she said.

Wanda buckled her seatbelt. "Yeah."

The car pulled up in front of the bookstore. The sky was still a murky white.

Yael stepped out and lifted the baby from the car seat—that careful, uncertain grip. Five years of heavy work—pallets, beams—and she still hadn't worked this out. The baby's face scrunched, as though she might object. Then it smoothed.

Yael let out a breath. "Doesn't complain much." Something moved at the corner of her mouth—close to a smile, not quite there—and then she was already turning toward the door.

Wanda unlocked the front door. The brass bell gave its tired, friendly sound. They moved through the quiet shop—old paper, lemon oil, winter light slanting through the tall windows—and toward the stairs at the back. Yael went first. The treads creaked under her feet. The baby slept on.

The door at the top opened into the apartment. South-facing windows. Winter light, coming in.

 Day One

The room was just beginning to lighten when Yael woke.

Habit. Five years of waking before dawn to get to the site—it was in her body now. Beside her on the narrow bed, Wanda was still asleep, a small crease between her brows. And from down the hall, from the small room at the end, a sound.

The baby was crying.

Yael sat up. Wanda's eyes opened. For one moment they looked at each other.

Yael opened the door and there she was, in the thin winter light: small body, improbable volume. Yael picked her up. Better than yesterday, a little. Not good, but better.

When Wanda came into the kitchen, the sound was still everywhere—through the walls, inside the walls, filling the apartment. She opened the cabinet above the counter and took down the tin of decaf. Two teaspoons per mug. She'd bought it when Yael moved in, and she'd made it the same way every morning since.

She looked at the door to the small room.

She'd cleared that room alone. Back when Yael was still keeping her distance—still saying not yet when Wanda showed her the scan. Wanda had moved the old boxes herself, carried the Jarvises' leftover things down to the stockroom. The crib arrived flat-packed and she'd built it herself, in the quiet of an afternoon. One fitted sheet. A few burp cloths. She'd kept it understated on purpose—because what if Yael said no. But now the crib was there and the baby was there and Yael was there.

The kettle started to complain.

Yael came out of the small room and settled on the sofa to feed the baby. Wanda stood at the edge of the kitchen, mug in both hands, and wasn't sure where to look, so she looked at the window.

After a while, Yael held out her free hand. Wanda brought her one of the mugs. Yael took it one-handed; the other arm stayed around the baby.

They sat in silence for a while. The sound of the baby drinking. Their own coffee going cold.

That afternoon, Wanda sat on the sofa with the baby while Yael slept beside her. How much the birth had cost her body was still plain to see. In sleep her face looked younger—the jaw unclenched, something eased. The light caught the reddish tones in her short dark hair. The thin chain at her collar caught it too; beside the chain, the glint of a gold ring.

Wanda looked away.

The baby's mouth moved. Some small dreaming business. Wanda watched her face—the shape of the brow, the line of the lips. When the baby's unfocused eyes drifted toward her, there was one brief moment where something seemed to catch. Just for a second.

She couldn't say yet who this face belonged to. She stopped that thought before it went anywhere.

A name.

Fourteen days. Day one.

Wanda looked at the window. The winter afternoon stretched thin over Agloe Street.

 Day Two

In the morning, Yael took care of the baby while Wanda opened the shop for a few hours. One regular came in and bought two paperbacks. That was it.

Just before noon, Wanda started going through the desk in the back office instead of heading upstairs. She'd been putting it off—old catalogs, booksellers' association pamphlets, Mr. Jarvis's handwritten notes. Things she kept meaning to sort through.

When she pulled two pamphlets out of the back of a drawer, something slipped out from between them and fell to the floor.

A business card.

Argleton Office Supply. Sales Representative. Victor Jarvis.

She put it face-down on the desk.

She stood there for a moment, hands flat on the wood. Then she picked it up again—just the edges, without turning it over. Just paper. There was a phone number on the other side. An email address. She knew that without looking.

She slid it back between the pamphlets. Set the pamphlets at the edge of the drawer. She didn't throw it away.

Upstairs, afternoon light filled the apartment. The angle of the windows caught Yael's eyes—hazel, Wanda had learned by now, though they rarely showed it indoors. In that light they were greenish, almost gold. When Wanda moved, the color went back to dark.

"You're back early," Yael said.

"Quiet day."

Wanda hung her coat over the chair. The baby was awake in Yael's arms, looking at something—the ceiling, or nothing at all.

Wanda crouched beside them and looked at the baby's face.

A name. The father. The paperwork.

The baby looked at Wanda. Or seemed to.

"What are you looking at?" Wanda said, very quietly.

No answer. The baby opened her mouth, then closed it again.

Later, Yael fell asleep on the sofa. Wanda took the baby without waking her.

She stood in the kitchen with the baby against her shoulder, one hand resting on the small warm back. The apartment was quiet—no kettle, no creak of floorboards, only Yael breathing from the other room and, closer, the small sounds the baby made. Something between breath and voice.

Wanda didn't move.

The baby turned her head and her cheek came to rest against Wanda's collarbone. The weight of it was almost nothing. Wanda felt it everywhere.

She looked at the small face. The jaw was still unformed. But something in the set of it—the way it rested—reminded her of Yael asleep.

She stood there until her arm went numb.

That night, Wanda couldn't sleep. Yael's breathing was steady beside her. She thought about the business card in the drawer, then made herself stop. She lay looking at the ceiling until, at some point in the night, Yael's arm fell across her stomach. Heavy. Warm. That was all.

 Day Three

The baby cried at two in the morning.

Yael started to get up. Wanda put a hand on her arm. "I'll go."

The small room was dark. Wanda lifted the baby out of the crib and the crying eased. She rocked slowly and moved into the hallway—the pale streetlight coming in through the north-facing window.

After a while, the baby quieted. Not asleep, just still. Wanda stopped rocking too. They stood there together in the dark, looking at the window.

"Can't sleep?"

Yael was in the doorway, one shoulder against the frame. That expression she had sometimes—not quite awake, not quite asleep.

"I was asleep. Just woke up."

Yael came and stood beside her. She looked at the baby, then looked at the window.

The silence held for a while.

"I've been thinking about the ring," Wanda said.

Yael didn't move.

"I have the other one," she said. "A ring. Same as yours. In a drawer." She kept her eyes on the window. "I never put it back on. I couldn't throw it out either." She looked at the baby. "I don't know what to do with it. I didn't want to decide alone."

Yael was quiet for a moment. Her hand moved to the chain at her collar—not to pull it out, just to touch it—and then dropped away.

"I brought mine to a pawnshop twice," she said.

Wanda said nothing.

"Both times I brought it home." Yael's voice was even. "I don't know why."

Another silence. The streetlight lay in a long pale strip across the floor.

The baby made a sound in Wanda's arms. Something half-protest, half-drowsy. The kind of sound that fills a room.

"A name," Wanda said. "I've been thinking—Veneda. For the middle."

Yael turned to look at her.

"It's Slavic. Same root as Wanda. I liked the idea of it being something carried forward. Not her own name exactly, but something passed down—is that strange?"

"It's not strange," Yael said. No hesitation.

Wanda looked at the baby. "I want you to choose the first name."

The silence this time was longer. Wanda didn't fill it.

Yael looked back at the window. One more time, her fingers found the chain. She didn't lift it. Just touched it, then let go.

"Zia," she said. Still looking at the window. "I heard it somewhere, a long time ago. It stayed with me."

Wanda said it back quietly. "Zia."

"Zia Veneda."

Out loud, the name held its own weight.

Wanda looked at the baby's face.

"Zia Veneda," she said again. Testing it, this time.

The baby didn't answer. But her eyes moved.

The three of them stayed there for a while.

 Outro

Morning came.

Wanda was up first. She made the decaf in the kitchen, two mugs, and said the name once under her breath. Just her lips moving. No one to hear it. But it stayed in the room a little.

Yael came out of the bedroom. Her hair was doing the thing it did in the morning—slightly unruly, the short dark strands finding their own angles. Wanda held out a mug. Yael took it.

"Zia's still sleeping," Wanda said.

The first time she'd said it. Yael's hand paused, just briefly, before it finished closing around the mug.

Then, from down the hall: a sound. Small, certain.

They both turned toward it.

Wanda started to move and stopped. She looked at Yael. Yael was already walking.

Wanda watched her go into the small room. Then she turned to the window. South-facing. Winter light, coming in. A little brighter than yesterday—or maybe it only seemed that way.

There was still so much undone. The business card in the drawer. The ring in her drawer. The paperwork. Nothing resolved.

But this morning, the baby had her names.

Wanda moved toward the small room with her mug. Inside, she could hear Yael lifting the baby. A small voice, and then Yael's lower one answering—she couldn't make out words. She stopped in the doorway.

She looked in.

Yael was facing the window, the baby held against her. The north-facing light was thin and winter-pale, and both of them were in it. Then Yael turned. She looked at Wanda. She didn't say anything. She just shifted, slightly—making room.

Wanda went in. She stood beside Yael.

Zia was asleep between them, still that face that belonged to no one yet. But the corner of her small mouth was lifted, just barely—something that might have been satisfaction, if a face this new could hold such a thing.

Yael's free arm came around Wanda's waist. Not pulling her in. Just there. And then Yael's lips touched her temple—one second, maybe two. That was all.

Three of them, in the same light.

Wanda said nothing.

Outside, the winter went on.

She stays at your place once a month, perhaps even less frequently, and then vanishes back into the unknown. She sees several other women besides you, and she offers no explanation or apology for it. Never disclosing her residence or her occupation, she simply drifts in, eats, does what needs to be done, and departs the following morning by the time you wake up.

---

You have told yourself you understand the arrangement. You have named it, categorized it, held it at the proper distance the way you might hold a photograph of somewhere you have never been. This works, mostly. It works until you catch a particular slant of light through the subway window, or smell rain on pavement before it falls, and then the whole careful architecture collapses without warning, and you are left with nothing but the fact of her.

---

The first time you truly noticed her, she was seated on the subway. Her gaze was fixed on the smartphone in her hands, yet her posture remained remarkably poised. Occasionally she would look up, and the intensity in her eyes as she stared down the tracks intrigued you. They were a restless green—not a fixed color but a living one, shifting the way sea glass shifts when light moves through water, darkening into something ancient and forested, or clearing into pale crystal depending on the angle.

After that, you began to watch for her intentionally. She was always disciplined, riding the same car at the same time, disembarking exactly one station before yours. Some days she carried a book she never opened. Some days she carried nothing at all—no bag, no phone, hands resting in her lap with a stillness that looked less like peace than like something held carefully in place. You noticed she always chose the same seat when it was available, second from the end, and when it wasn't, she stood near the door without holding the rail, absorbing the motion of the train with a slight adjustment of her weight, automatic and unconscious, the way sailors do.

While your attention was captured by her, she never seemed to take any notice of you. Once, the train lurched, and in catching yourself you must have made some sound, because her eyes moved in your direction—not to your face, but somewhere just past it, the way you'd check a noise in a room you'd already decided was empty. You assumed it would always remain that way.

Then came a rainy Friday. In the afternoon, the sky suddenly unleashed a torrential downpour. The charcoal clouds were thick and oppressive; it didn't look like it would let up anytime soon. Remarking to yourself how unusual this was for the season, you unfurled the folding umbrella you'd kept stowed in your bag since the last storm—pale orange on the outside, the underside a vivid yellow floral in hogushi-ori weave, a souvenir from Japan. The moment you stepped out from under the overhang, you felt someone's presence beside you. You braced yourself instinctively, but upon realizing who it was, the tension drained away.

The woman you had only ever watched from a distance as she got off the train.

"Hey, I'd rather not get soaked today. Mind if I join you?"

She spoke in a composed, alto voice. Half a shoulder was exposed to the rain, and her coppery hair had darkened as it absorbed the moisture.

You stared at her profile for a moment. Then: "Sure."

---

Rumors circulated that she drifted between various women. Peggy, Maggie, Carol, Jane, Pepper, Wanda, Maria, Agatha—names without context, without explanation. Whether those names belonged to real people or were merely fabrications, you couldn't say for sure. You had learned, early on, that with her the question of what was real was not the useful one.

You'd even heard a story about someone presenting her with a ring, asking for her hand in marriage, only for her to press it back into their mouth in a parting kiss. She is quite the celebrity in certain circles, so there is never a shortage of gossip.

Don't get too deep. You told yourself this every time you met, every time your bodies intertwined.

The nights she came, she did not announce herself with noise. You would hear the door, and then nothing for a moment, and then she would be there, shedding her jacket the way water sheds off a roof—without fuss, without ceremony, as if rooms were simply things she moved through. You had stopped asking where she'd come from. The question had a way of making the air go flat.

There was a particular hour, somewhere between midnight and the kind of dark that feels permanent, when she would lie still and you could almost convince yourself that she was simply a person, resting, the way people do. Her breathing would slow. Not asleep—you had learned the difference—but somewhere adjacent to it, someplace she allowed herself to go when she thought you weren't paying attention. You paid attention. You had always paid attention. You had enough sense not to say so.

Once she said, to the ceiling more than to you: "I used to not be able to sleep in rooms with windows." A pause. "I'm fine now."

You didn't ask what changed. She didn't offer it. The city outside went on making its low, indifferent sounds.

---

In the morning, your voice was still thick with sleep. "Oh, Natasha." You pulled a pack of cigarettes she'd left behind from the bedside drawer. "You forgot these."

Taking the pack from your hand, Natasha pulled one out and placed it between her lips. You silently extended a lighter.

"Why do you have such a nice lighter? You don't even smoke, do you?" she asked in a flat tone as she took it from you.

"Oh, that? I got it from someone," you said nonchalantly. "If it's that nice, do you want to take it?"

Natasha considered your offer for a moment. "No, I'm good. Even if I have a nice lighter, I just end up losing it immediately." She spoke with practiced ease, the cigarette still dangling from her lips, as she flicked the flame to life—and then said nothing. But you had seen it—the fraction of a second before the nothing, the small adjustment behind her eyes, like a door closing quietly in a house you weren't supposed to know had rooms. She drew on the cigarette. Exhaled.

"The room is going to reek."

You said it flatly, which was worse than shouting.

---

Teeth brushed, clothes changed, coffee brewed. Sandwiches made from whatever was in the fridge—you didn't ask if she was hungry; by now you knew she always was. The two of you ate without talking much. You ate slowly. She didn't, but she waited anyway, turning her cup in her hands, and you watched her do it and said nothing.

She paused at the front door. She didn't look back immediately—just stood there for a moment, her hand not yet on the handle.

"Aren't you taking your cigarettes?"

"I'll leave them here."

The silence did its work.

"I'll come back for a smoke." A beat. "As long as there are some left."

---

When the pack started getting low, you made sure to buy another of the same brand.

The visits had changed too—once a month, then twice, then something closer to weekly, the numbers accruing quietly like interest on a debt neither of you had agreed to take on.

The season had turned without you noticing—the way seasons do when you've been paying attention to something else. The rain came differently now, not the sudden vertical kind that had soaked her hair that first afternoon, but a low, horizontal thing that arrived without drama and stayed. Sometimes on the subway home, the light would catch the window at a particular angle, and for a moment the city outside looked like something submerged, and you would feel it again.

Then the train would move, and the light would change, and you would be simply a person on a subway, holding a bag with a pack of cigarettes in it that was not yours.

You both belonged to the same school club. Back when you were an underclassman, the seniors were numerous, but they had all eventually graduated. The grade above yours had a decent showing, yet you were the sole member of your own year, and that predicament showed no sign of improving even after nearly six months. Sensing a crisis, the faculty advisor scouted several students from the grade below you a week and a half before summer break. Wanda was among them. From the very beginning, she captivated you—perhaps because the aura she projected was subtly different from everyone else's.

Wanda was flashy. Or rather, she was simply a different kind of girl from you. Less than a week after she joined, you heard from other members that she'd started dating someone in her own grade. Even before that, she'd apparently kept an active romantic life, constantly cycling through dates, breakups, and reunions with various people.

That relationship with her classmate, however, didn't last two months. Wanda had begun showing her affection for you, and though you hesitated at first, you eventually leaned into it. First, her hand would brush yours; then she'd let it linger a little longer. You'd share quiet laughs like they were secrets, and finally your fingers intertwined. Her affection felt good. There was a genuine warmth in the sense of being understood. It was like something that belonged only to the two of you.

Still, you also had an ulterior motive. The new recruits were fickle, and several were on the fence about quitting. Wanda was one of them. Deep down, you couldn't entirely deny the selfishness of using the relationship as a way to make her stay.

Autumn arrived, and with it came the club's major annual competition. Your club was slated to submit a video project, and finishing everything from pre-production to post-production within the deadline was essential for the screening. Truth be told, the preparation had been inadequate. The results that year were lackluster, but you and the new members gained something real—solidarity, friendship, and the drive to do better next time.

After the competition ended, only you and Wanda remained in the clubroom. Since it wasn't a popular club, the room was tucked away at the far end of the old school building—a place no one would set foot in without a reason. You sat before the mixing console, playing a pop track from some obscure band. It was a sample CD sent by a commercial firm; though the label read Please return after use, you had never actually sent one back. You had just picked one at random from the cluttered shelf. Wanda sat in a chair behind you, leafing through a magazine.

"Hey."

Wanda's voice called out to your back. It was casual—the blunt, slightly languid tone you might use with a sibling. By then, she had stopped treating you like a senior. That reverence for upperclassmen, so inexplicably and strictly upheld within the school, had vanished entirely from her demeanor.

"I broke up with him," she said, deliberately leaving the who unsaid.

Unsure how to react, you froze, your fingers still resting on the faders. Oblivious to your unease, Wanda stood up. You heard it—the scrape of the chair against the floor, the rustle of fabric, and then—

Her hands came around your shoulders and settled just below your collarbones. Her head rested against your left shoulder, her hair grazing you softly, and a sweet scent drifted up to meet you. As she shifted, her lips brushed your neck, and you instinctively hunched your shoulders.

"So, what do you think?" A trace of honeyed coquettishness ran through her voice.

Her breath warmed your neck, sending a shiver down your spine. A breathy, strained "Hm?" was all you managed.

"What am I supposed to say?" You tried to sound composed. You didn't quite pull it off.

Wanda laughed, and the sound made your heart race.

In a soft, low voice, she said your name. "I like you. Let's go out."

A surge of joy rose in your chest. At the same time, a whole cocktail of feelings hit you at once: the shock of her actually saying it out loud, the calculations already forming in the back of your mind, a quiet pang of guilt, and everything tangled in between.

A beat passed. "Sure, let's do it," you said. Your heart was hammering. Wanda giggled against your shoulder, and the feeling of her there was warm and almost ticklish.

To be honest, your feelings for her weren't particularly intense—not then. It was because being with her was fun. Because being with her made you feel warm. And above all, because you didn't want her to leave the club.

Just as you had intended, Wanda seemed to have decided to stay.

The two of you fit together better than you'd expected—well enough that the relationship held, through the ordinary friction and through Wanda's tendency to act on feeling before thought. It stirred a low, persistent unease in you, but you kept that to yourself, as you kept most things. And still you were utterly enthralled by her. The mere prospect of losing her was paralyzing. You went on dates. You exchanged tokens of affection. You celebrated anniversaries and shared kisses and embraces—countless firsts, all experienced beside her.

Gradually, you came to understand more of her life. She had been raised in a single-mother household; her mother struggled with certain psychological instabilities. If she ever found out about the relationship, Wanda said, she would impose a suffocating lockdown—no leaving the house, no contact with the outside world.

You offered glimpses of your own life in return. Your family, the fact that your home had never really been a sanctuary. She didn't react much to that. You minded more than you let on. So you offered something easier instead. Your favorite characters and the foods you liked were easier to share, so those were what you shared.

Once, you broached the subjects of self-harm and mental illness, disguising your own experience as general curiosity, trying to read how she'd respond. She recoiled. Changed the subject. You said nothing more.

You had been hurting yourself since you were ten. It all started back in school. You accidentally sliced your fingertip deep with a box cutter. You couldn't forget that strange sensation you felt in that moment, and things gradually escalated from there. Your wrists. Your forearms, and when space ran thin, your upper arms. When emotions pressed too hard against the inside of you, the cutting was how you found your way back to something manageable. Somehow, no one around you had ever noticed. You learned, with Wanda, that this was one more thing to keep hidden—and so you watched her face carefully for any sign of disapproval, the way you had always watched faces. It was simply how you moved through the world. Most people, you suspected, had never thought of you as anything in particular—a presence that caused no friction, drew no attention, and could be overlooked without consequence.

Until graduation, the days with Wanda were largely peaceful. Not dramatic in any way the world would have noticed. But underneath, you were submerged in her—in the very fact of her. The hours apart were durations to be endured. You exchanged messages every night and still couldn't quiet the anxiety about the future, your degree, what any of it was leading toward. The dread had nowhere to go, so it stayed.

What you gave her, you gave without measure. Wanda was affectionate—she'd sit close enough for your arms to brush, and in front of trusted friends she'd wrap her arms around you from behind. She'd look up with those shimmering green eyes and break into a smile the moment she caught you looking. You were her anchor, her first call when anything went wrong, the one who caught whatever she dropped before it hit the floor. She leaned on you entirely. Whether she truly perceived this or simply took it as a given made no difference to how fiercely you held her up.

You had no frame of reference for any other way. This was your first relationship. Wanda was the whole of it, and for you, that was enough.

Time flows with ruthless indifference. Seasons cycle. Partings come whether you are ready or not.

You left for university in spring. The destination was nearly a two-hour flight away, across the sea. There had been no real conversation about it—no plan made together, no future discussed. You simply left. Wanda remained.

Contact continued. You believed it would hold.

For the first three months, it did. Messages came often; calls were carved out whenever possible. During the late-April holidays, you visited Wanda. She held you as if trying to bridge the weeks apart, and in that moment, you thought: we can do this. But something was already shifting beneath the surface—something you were not yet willing to name. Her messages grew less frequent. Calls dropped to every few days, then further still. She still wrote, occasionally, and her words were warm when she did. You answered every one with encouragement, and you kept choosing not to say what you were starting to feel.

Then, during a break, Wanda told you she had kissed someone. A friend. She had been so lonely, she said. She still had feelings for you.

You forgave her. That evening she held you with a kind of urgency that felt like it was trying to close some gap between you—and you let her. You were glad to have her close. But somewhere beneath it, you noticed the hollow quality of your own relief.

You said nothing.

When the weight became unmanageable, you had your own way of managing it—one that left marks, that you kept hidden. You knew the exhaustion that followed would leave you useless for days. You did it anyway.

After that, you stopped going home for breaks.

The second year of university arrived. Wanda had graduated and enrolled somewhere new. You didn't ask where.

By then, there were no more calls. What remained was a kind of waiting—low, persistent, no longer rooted in real hope. You still loved her, perhaps beyond what was reasonable. Perhaps beyond what was safe.

One evening, you came home, opened your computer, and the messenger loaded. On your friend list, Wanda's icon appeared—with a status line beside it.

An unfamiliar name. And below it: I love you.

You read it again. Your mind refused to accept it. You stared at the words, searching for another meaning. The room remained unchanged. The screen stayed lit.

Several days passed before you finally wrote to her.

Hey—who is Vision?

Her reply came the next day.

Huh? He's my boyfriend.

Nothing more. No explanation. No softening. Her words replayed in your mind in that icy cadence, chilling you to the core.

Your existence had been quietly erased from her life. You had become someone she didn't feel she owed an ending to. The relationship that still lived in your hands—that you were still holding—had already ceased to exist in hers.

It felt as though all the warmth had drained from your body, replaced by an all-encompassing, frigid void. The moment the truth sank in, the color drained from your face. Your mind went blank. Then came the hollow questions: Why? How could this be? Only then did the ache in your chest register—and the tears finally began to fall.

We cherished each other so deeply. Why, just why, and when did it all fall apart? I knew nothing. I don't understand.

Everything had become meaningless.

Panic, despair, and a paralyzing uncertainty about an impossible future consumed you. What am I supposed to do? The traitor had already moved on, unburdened, while you remained shackled to your own emotions, unable to stir.

There was bitterness—perhaps a fraction of resentment. But more than anything, you were at a total loss as to how to proceed, or even how to compose yourself. Those feelings coalesced into a persistent knot in your chest: anxiety, heartache, revulsion. Hopelessness and melancholy. With each passing day, the despair grew heavier, threatening to crush you under the weight of emotions that had nowhere to go.

You self-harmed. Again and again, you cut your wrists, chasing the brief, illusory sense of release it gave you—but the relief never lasted. When the emotional weight became unbearable, you cut deeper, further. Your forearms. Then your upper arms, when there was no space left. More than once, your forearms ended up looking as though they'd been smeared with tomato ketchup.

It was excruciating. A voice echoed in your head, endlessly demanding to know why it had come to this. Every day was spent submerged in gloom. In front of others, you kept a mask of normalcy, barely managing to endure the passage of time.

You wanted to die.

You wanted to die.

And yet—somewhere beneath the ruin of it all—you harbored a vague, unsettling conviction: that simply dying was not enough.

---

Your spirit had perished.

Superficially, nothing had changed. In the back row of the lecture hall, your hands moved with mechanical precision across the page. Amid the professor’s voice, you nodded at your friends’ banter and smiled when expected—a twitch of the mouth, nothing more. The mask had fused to your skin long ago.

The devastation lived in the quiet gaps. When no one was watching, your face would grow wet without warning. In the dead of night, lying in the dark, a heat would rise in your chest and cold tears would trace your cheeks. You never wiped them away. You stared at the ceiling as they soaked silently into the pillow, and by morning they were gone.

There was no word from Wanda. That silence paralyzed you; there was no way forward. You unlocked your phone again and again, scrolling through the old messages—the final exchange unchanged, the reply that would never come. Rationally, you knew it was over. Yet the wanting refused to die. Many nights you woke and found yourself staring at those old exchanges, listening to something creak deep inside.

If Wanda had declared the end—it’s over, even just those two words—you might have had something to hold onto. Something to close your hands around and eventually set down. But Wanda had said nothing, so you couldn’t treat it as finished. You weren’t allowed to. The days passed in suspension, your feet never touching the ground. Even when you reached out, there was nothing to grasp.

Outwardly, nothing appeared different. You attended every lecture, submitted every assignment, and replied to group chats at the right moments. You ate, tasting almost nothing. Sleep came or it didn’t—some nights the sky was already paling when you finally closed your eyes.

No one knew. Not about what lay beneath your sleeves, nor why you wore long sleeves even as summer arrived and the campus trees turned green. You kept the thin fabric pulled down, clutching the cuffs. The lecture halls’ air conditioning gave you a convenient excuse, and no one questioned it.

Every day was heavy, a weight that dug deeper into your shoulders with every step until your feet seemed to sink into the earth.

You couldn’t see the future. University, credits, life after graduation—all of it hummed as a low, constant drone beside the grief, never quite touching it. Your fingers kept moving across the keyboard in the library, meeting every deadline. Yet a question would surface in your mind and dissolve before it could form: What comes after this? The answer always faded into mist.

Days and months drifted by, indifferent to your happiness or misery.

The pain in your heart had dulled to a chronic ache, settling into a hollow void in your chest. The sharp thorns that once pierced you with every breath now throbbed with faint lethargy. Occasionally a sudden memory would tighten its grip, only to be swept away by the tide of everyday life.

That year, your birthday passed like any other day. It was early March, the cold not yet gone. There was no cake, no celebration—just the silent turn of the calendar page. You received terse messages from family and a few “happy birthdays” on social media. Sitting on your bed, you exhaled softly as you stared at the screen. The accumulated years felt strangely alien, as if the age weren’t meant for you. The flavorless reality of it widened the hollow in your chest a little more.

The pain Wanda left behind had become a permanent part of you, encrusted at the bottom of your heart. You didn’t look at it or touch it, yet it was there with every breath. While walking across campus, Wanda’s voice would sometimes resurface. While sipping coffee between lectures, laughter from a nearby table would echo Wanda’s, and you’d look down.

It wasn’t that you yearned to meet someone new. You were simply exhausted by the stagnation.

As the void in your chest slowly expanded, you felt you might finally be able to move forward. The thought was vague—I want to change something—floating in your mind without clear shape.

One night, tucked under your covers, you installed the app. With no grand resolve, you searched for it, downloaded it, and filled in the bare minimum: your age, a brief bio. After a pause, you added a single photo—one of your back taken on campus at dusk, your face lost in shadow from the backlight. You tapped “complete” and closed the screen right away. You didn’t care much what happened next. You just needed to do something. Placing the phone on your bedside table, you closed your eyes. A tiny ripple spread inside you, and you drifted into a shallow sleep.

For the first time, you were trying to fill the small opening that had formed within.

---

It was Natasha who initiated contact. The message was brief—a single detail drawn from your profile, and a short question about it. That was all. You read it over once before setting your phone down, then again before replying, choosing your words carefully and trying to sound as though you hadn’t.

2週間が経ってから、あなたたちは再会した。ナターシャは特に急いでいる様子もなく、それが忍耐なのか、単なる無関心なのか、あなたには分からなかった。どちらにしても、大した問題ではないように思えた。その間、交わされたメッセージはゆっくりとしたペースで進み、まるで互いのペースを確かめてから、それに合わせていくかのように、お互いにゆっくりとメッセージをやり取りしていた。

Your first meeting was at a small café near the station. Natasha was already there when you arrived—seated, a half-finished coffee in front of her, her bag resting neatly at the edge of the table. In person, she was calmer than her photos had suggested. Her laughter was quiet, contained, without much rise or fall. The light inside was low. Entirely different from Wanda. You couldn’t have said how, exactly. You didn’t try. You let the observation settle.

The conversation came easily enough. Natasha listened without pressing—she didn’t fill silences, and she didn’t seem to need to. Somewhere in the middle of it, you noticed you had said more than you intended. The realization came with a faint edge of unease, but it didn’t stop you.

After the café, you walked through a park nearby. Beside her, you registered that she was roughly your height—a little shorter, maybe. The space between your shoulders felt strangely easy, neither crowding nor pulling away, and her steps fell in quiet sync with yours on the gravel path. Even that small thing felt strange against the shape of Wanda in your memory, where every nearness had once carried a different weight.

When it was time to part, Natasha asked if you’d like to meet again. Her tone was even, just checking. You said yes. The words sat briefly in the air between you before the city absorbed them.

There was something in her presence that left a trace you couldn’t name. Stepping back outside, you felt the evening air was a degree lighter, the lingering warmth of the café giving way to the cool spring dusk against your skin. It might have been the season—late enough in spring that the cold had nearly finished loosening—or it might have been something else. Either way, it settled quietly into the space inside you.

The second time you met, Natasha remembered everything you had mentioned—culinary preferences, a shop that had caught your attention, remarks you'd thought nothing of. That March, for the first time, someone said it before you had thought to remind them. That struck you, unexpectedly. Perhaps because you had always been the one who did the remembering.

With Wanda, you had kept a careful inventory: their likes, their moods, the words that lifted and the ones that didn't. You had assumed that was what love looked like. Part of you still does. But talking with Natasha, you understood for the first time that the inventory had been entirely one-sided.

Sitting with that asymmetry—and with what now stood opposite it—something shifted in you. Quietly, without announcement.

The five-year gap had given you pause, but in practice it went unfelt. Natasha never spoke down to you, never framed things in terms of age or experience. Natasha spoke to you as an equal. That parity—something you'd had with Wanda until quietly you hadn't—was simply there.

Natasha was not one to wear feelings openly. Her expression held a particular stillness; you could rarely tell what lay beneath it. That was why one moment stayed with you. Mid-conversation, something you said caught Natasha off guard, and for just a second she didn't suppress the laugh—she simply laughed. Nothing more. But it was directed at you, and you felt it land somewhere behind your ribs, warm and unexpected. There were other moments like that: small fissures in the composure, each one passed to you like something kept back until now.

Natasha never rushed. The distance closed by degrees, each step calibrated to yours, the approach so gradual you were already inside it before you'd noticed. You had guarded yourself—there were places Wanda had opened that you had not allowed to heal clean, raw edges that still flinched at the slightest touch—and yet you opened. Without deciding to.

One afternoon, Natasha mentioned her younger sister. Apparently she was everything Natasha wasn't: impulsive, spontaneous, moving between odd jobs to fund trips abroad. Natasha brought her up because the sister—Yelena—would be staying at Natasha's place for a stretch.

"It happens all the time." Natasha's mouth curved, just slightly. "She thinks renting her own place is a waste of money."

You had been to Natasha's apartment several times by then. You had a spare key. Natasha added, almost too carefully, that she didn't want you caught off guard if you stopped by and found her sister there—then scratched her cheek, looking faintly flushed. It was unlike her. You smiled.

You met Yelena in late autumn, at Natasha's apartment. She was exactly as described: at ease with strangers, already talking before the introduction was finished. You exchanged contact information and fell into occasional messaging afterward.

There was something in that—in existing within Natasha's life at a remove from Natasha herself, in the faint scent of her shampoo still clinging to the cushions, in being known to the people who knew her. You didn't try to name it. You simply registered it, and let it settle.

That year, winter arrived with a slow, deliberate chill and did not relent.

As their intimacy grew, Natasha began to reveal things ordinarily kept from the world. A fleeting softening of expression; a small, unguarded seepage of vulnerability. These glimpses, never granted to anyone else, quietly held you in place.

Yet Natasha's core remained unreachable. The past, the wounds, the primal fears—you could trace the outline, but the center was untouchable. In company, Natasha maintained a flawless equilibrium, deflecting every inquiry with practiced ease. Only alone would Natasha's shoulders drop slightly, and fragments of truth would surface at the edges of conversation. You could go no further than that.

You never pushed. You sensed that pushing would prompt a withdrawal—or perhaps you simply didn't want to disturb what existed. Thoughts would form in your mind, take shape, and be swallowed before they reached your mouth. Natasha seemed to need you. The small daily exchanges, the weight of Natasha leaning into you on tired nights—you told yourself this was enough. But Natasha never vocalized a need for anyone. You noticed the asymmetry. You said nothing. It was a different kind of imbalance than what you had known with Wanda, but an asymmetry nonetheless—one that accumulated silently, without declaration.

Alongside the relationship with Natasha, your conversations with Yelena had woven themselves into your daily life without effort. Yelena spoke openly—about meals from recent trips, places worth visiting—the kind of easy, unguarded talk that required nothing of you. Being held within the orbits of both Natasha and Yelena felt like belonging to something larger than a couple. It was its own form of steadiness.

Nothing dramatic occurred. That was the year's essence. The days moved with quiet continuity, their rhythm as level as still water. There was none of the volatile intensity that had defined your time with Wanda—that heat you had always sensed would eventually consume itself. Watching Natasha's profile in a quiet moment, you held the days close. You would not understand until later that the absence of fire does not mean the absence of ruin.

At some point, a subtle awkwardness entered the relationship. It wasn't distinct enough to name—only a slight shift in the atmosphere. You noticed. You said nothing to Natasha.

Yelena's message arrived in the dead of winter—a winter more severe than any in recent memory. In the middle of an ordinary exchange, the line appeared:

Hey, it looks like my sister is back on that app again.

You read it. Read it again.

That app—the one where you and Natasha had first met.

I don't know what she's thinking, but I thought I should let you know.

You didn't know how to respond. After nearly a minute staring at the screen, you typed: I see. Thanks. Yelena's next message drifted back into small talk. But the information stayed—a precise, quiet weight lodged in your chest.

That night, lying awake beside Natasha, you stared at the ceiling in the dark. The questions you wanted to ask remained unspoken. Natasha's breathing was even and slow. The room was silent.

Something began to form—and you turned away from it before it could. The knowledge simply existed there. Small. Precise. Going nowhere.

Imperceptibly, the sunlight outside had begun to harbor a certain warmth. Some days you could sense a fundamental shift in the quality of the air—and today was one of those days.

The message from Natasha arrived just before noon. A single sentence: we need to talk.

Something heavy and viscous stirred deep in your gut. You went to meet her.

The meeting took place at a café near Natasha's apartment. She spoke with a disquieting composure. She was already seeing someone else—someone younger. It had already begun, and she wanted to end things here, properly. I want to end things with you. Her words seeped into you gradually. A dull, heavy ache settled behind your eyes, and you barely managed to suppress the tears threatening to spill. You remained speechless. Only that same question from back then—why?—gnawed at your chest.

Natasha spoke evenly. There was no deception in what she said; there was no longer any need for lies. She was simply moving forward, detached and methodical. It was that very composure—the rehearsed stillness of someone who had possessed the answer from the start—that devastated you the most.

When you looked up, Natasha was already gone. On the table sat one cup drained to the bottom and another—cold, virtually untouched. You stared at them.

Something cold rose in you. Precise. Tangible.

Again.

The person you had believed to be the polar opposite of Wanda had wounded you in exactly the same place. You were the last to know. Again. It had already ended inside her while you were still inside the relationship. Again. The conclusion had been delivered. You'd had no part in it. Again.

This collapse differed from the first. You didn't wail as you once had. Something necessary for weeping was absent. You felt parched. The dryness did not pass.

Natasha must have forgotten what today was, you realized. Or perhaps she'd remembered but decided there was no reason to delay. It didn't matter. It was a wretched gift.

Something jagged remained in your chest. Not sharp enough to cry over. Just there.

It’s over.

The light outside was soft. Spring was arriving. That was the only certainty.

---

The outlines of a larger life had begun to press in from all sides. Job hunting arrived the way the next semester always had—information sessions, entry sheets, interviews, group discussions—your body moving through each stage with no particular sense of choosing. When the offer came, what settled in your chest was not relief. A flat, impersonal recognition: Oh. So this is what comes next. No agency, no momentum. Only the quiet mechanical fact of moving from one structure to the next.

You thought of the scars on your arm. Hidden beneath long sleeves, your forearm was always cold to the touch. When you ran your fingertips along the skin, the uneven surface brought the memory back with precision. No one could know—not now. In the professional world, you were required to perform the role of a normal person without exception and without error. Those scars were evidence of something that could not be explained. To expose them was to risk everything you had built.

So the facade grew more deliberate. Your tone, your expressions, your word choices—all calibrated so that nothing surfaced, and no one came close enough to look. You met every deadline, replied to every email, existed in the workplace as someone unremarkable, perhaps even reliable. No one noticed the emptiness, or the weight that settled the moment the performance had to stop.

The moment you returned home, it stopped. You couldn't eat. Couldn't bring yourself to shower. You stood before the open refrigerator and found you couldn't decide, the cold air pooling around your feet, and eventually you gave up and lay on the bed instead. The ceiling. Yesterday's collar stale against your skin. Thoughts circled without landing, moving entirely on their own.

They kept returning to Natasha. Not thinking—more like checking. There was a space where Natasha had been, and every day you pressed against it to confirm what you already knew: still empty. It wasn't the kind of absence that hurt. It was simply nothing. And the nothing had become the only proof that Natasha had ever been real.

Wanda surfaced occasionally too. You had deleted the contact information long before you had ever met Natasha. You had no particular urge to recover it.

That was where things stood. You had not thought to want anything different.

It was summer when the message from Wanda arrived.

You had only recently recreated your account after deleting it entirely once before. You must have surfaced through mutual acquaintances, because the moment the notification came through, you knew who it was just from the icon.

Long time no see. How have you been?

You read the short sentence over and over. Your finger hovered. For a moment, something welled—an old wound recognizing pressure—and then it was gone, pulling back as quickly as it had come. What remained was quiet. Flat. Wanda's name existed on the screen, and once that fact alone would have been enough to rewrite your entire day. Now nothing arrived.

The nothing felt strange for a moment. As if you were being shown what you'd become. Then even that passed, and you accepted it the way you accepted everything now: as fact.

You had no idea what Wanda wanted. You searched yourself carefully—checking whether her name could still do what it once had, whether you'd be pulled under again. After several days, you typed a reply.

Doing okay. You?

There was no real meaning in it. No real reason to block her, either. So you didn't. The words were almost automatic—the kind of reply that keeps a line open without committing to anything.

Wanda replied at once: I'm doing well. Over the following days, you exchanged a few messages. Where you were living now, where you were working. Neutral inventory. Then, after a few exchanges, she said it: Vision and I broke up. A long time ago.

That name snagged somewhere. A flicker of resentment—directed at nothing in particular—rose and was gone before you could examine it. Irrelevant.

Can we meet? There's something I want to talk about.

You weren't without pain. But you had come to believe the pain was yours to carry—that suffering was, in some way, what you were for. At the same time, you told yourself you felt nothing. Both things sat inside you at once, and you had stopped asking which one was true.

By then, you had exchanged enough messages to have a rough sense of the shape of things. Status updates, neutral questions, the gradual closing of distance—it followed a pattern. And you had known Wanda long enough, once, to recognize the pattern for what it was. Given all of that, it wasn't hard to guess what the something was. Picturing it produced nothing. Maybe that was the answer. Or maybe it was only because nothing came that you could say yes at all.

Sure.

After you sent it, you wondered why you had. The word had cost nothing. It never had. Natasha drifted into your mind—the ending, the soft spring light, the composure that had felt like a door closed from the other side. You weren't looking for anything. But a wound doesn't ask whose hands these are. It only knows that something has found it.

Meeting Wanda wasn't a decision. You had no decisions left in you.

Wanda had changed, yet in certain respects, she remained exactly the same.

You met at the central gate of a large terminal station. Everyone there had the look of someone waiting—restless, eyes scanning. When you glanced up, she appeared through a gap in the crowd. She was striking. Probably that was only familiarity. It didn't stop you from noticing.

Your heart hammered. You masked it.

Wanda's eyes found yours. Her expression shifted for a fraction of a second before she closed the distance, moving as though no time had passed at all. In place of a greeting, she hummed a short, low tune. You said, "Yeah."

Once, you would have stood pressed against her—hands linked, arms hooked. Now you trailed half a step behind. Between your misaligned shoulders, a gap: wide enough to be noticed, small enough to ignore.

"What do you want to do?" A brief pause. "Want to see a movie?" She was trying to bridge the distance; you could feel the effort. "That works," you said. What you kept to yourself was that it didn't matter.

Wanda never mentioned the past. Whether she'd decided to leave it there or simply never thought about it, you couldn't tell. Probably both. It was the kind of thing that would have mattered to you, once.

You watched something neither of you had chosen with much conviction. Afterward, dinner at a diner near the station, and then you parted for the night.

You met with Wanda several more times after that.

Some of them could be called dates. Limited-time exhibitions, shared meals, the long way home. Wanda talked. You listened. Her voice, once the best part of any day, was a pleasant sound now—nothing more.

There were moments you didn't mind. Your chest would stir, occasionally. It wasn't anything you could call romance, and you didn't try.

Being with Wanda was fine. That was all it was.

The professional world changed the practical terms of things. You had your own money now. Your time was your own to arrange. Seeing someone didn't require managing other people's awareness of it; a late-night message needed no invented excuse for the following morning. The small constraints that had once made everything harder were simply gone.

Wanda's office was close enough to yours that meeting after work became routine—a habit neither of you had consciously chosen. Habits settle that way, quietly, before they've been decided on.

After enough evenings in public, she invited you inside. There, Wanda told you she had ended things with Vision again, and that she had wanted to see you. You listened. You understood what was being asked, and you didn't refuse. There was no particular reason to.

You didn't ask yourself whether you loved Wanda. The question seemed unlikely to yield a clean answer, and you doubted the answer would change much either way. Wanda was simply there. Being with her wasn't painful. That was what you had.

The fixation was gone—the low-grade vigilance that had once occupied so much of you, the unconscious tracking of her silences and whereabouts. Jealousy and anxiety existed somewhere in the background, technically. You could no longer feel them clearly enough to act on them.

Whether that was maturity, or indifference, or something that had no name yet, you didn't examine closely enough to say.

Wanda was simply there.

Eventually, your life drifted into a kind of self-indulgence. On the surface, both of you put in a reasonable effort at work, playing the part of inexperienced young professionals. The moment you left for the day, though, the mask came off. Whenever Wanda wanted you, you complied. Her appetite was formidable; she was entirely passive, and you were always the one giving. You had a drive of your own but no particular interest in the act itself, so the arrangement, by and large, worked. You rarely made it to the bed. Some evenings you were so spent that the convenience store food you'd picked up on the way home sat forgotten until the next morning—breakfast after the shower. You stopped going back to your own apartment.

It was Wanda who first brought up living together.

It happened on a weekend afternoon. The two of you were on the sofa, half-watching something on television. She said it the way she might say anything—an offhand remark dropped into whatever else they'd been half-watching.

"Rent is a waste of money. Let's just live together."

You didn't answer right away. You made a vague sound of acknowledgment and let your thoughts drift. It was true that maintaining your own place had stopped making sense; your lease was coming up for renewal anyway, and the timing wasn't bad. Still, somewhere in the back of your mind, there was a faint unease—something between dissatisfaction and the sense of being swept along—though it wasn't enough to make you push back. You couldn't find a clear reason to object.

The word marriage surfaced. Once it did, it clarified quickly. To be honest: you wanted to get married, and soon. Not because of Wanda in particular. Your future had always felt suspended in fog—you had graduated, started working; the structure was there, but nothing felt settled. Marriage would provide a framework. Once that framework existed, the question of what comes next would at least go quiet. You wanted that. Not to marry her, specifically. You wanted to be married.

"Let's move in together," you said, after some time had passed, "and get married next year.” Your voice was flat.

Wanda looked slightly surprised. Then she smiled. Once, that smile would have done something to you. Now it was simply confirmation that she was happy.

The preparations were busy in a practical way. Weekends went to property tours; both of you agreed on finding the right place, somewhere you might stay for a long time. Eventually you settled on an apartment, signed the paperwork, and moved. Two people's belongings gathered in one location. It was as simple as that—and yet the shape of your daily life changed. The same space every morning. The same space every night.

The anxiety about the future lightened. Just a bit. It hadn't gone. But being in the fog with someone beside you was slightly better than being in the fog alone, and that was enough.

The life you shared with her ran more smoothly than you had expected. You paid the rent, prepared meals, spent weekends together, gave vague, perfunctory updates to your parents.

You decided against a wedding. The conversation never really had to happen—it simply trended that way on its own. The idea of something grand was exhausting. Wanda didn't push.

For a while you talked about taking photos. You looked up studios, narrowed it down to two or three, and never made a reservation. A busy stretch followed. You told yourselves you'd do it when things settled, and before you noticed, the seasons had changed. The talk faded. Wanda didn't seem disappointed. Neither did you.

You registered the marriage one year after moving in, as promised. You submitted the paperwork at the local government office. It was accepted. You may have stopped for a meal on the way home, or you may have gone straight back. You don't remember.

You don't even remember what the weather was like that day.

Everything you had wanted was in place. At work, you existed as a married person. Yet something inside you hadn't changed. The void simply lay there. You couldn't fill it. Somewhere beneath it all, you had entertained the notion that the sheer fact of marriage might close it. You only realized you'd been hoping for that once it failed to happen.

You stopped trying to measure your feelings for Wanda. There was no longer any meaning in the measuring. Asking yourself whether you loved her didn't seem like a question that led anywhere.

Wanda was there beside you. And having her by your side was—for who you were now—probably enough.

You had stopped tormenting yourself. Without even noticing—perhaps it was around the time you and Wanda reunited—you had stopped cutting. White lines remained on your arms, but they no longer bloomed red.

That was fine. There was nothing worth seeking beyond this. When you are hollow, you don't even know what to want. As long as things held, you could at least see the outline of a future.

And that was enough.

Wanda hadn't changed. She talked a lot. Her feelings were written all over her face. It was easy to tell when she was in a good mood or a bad one. She told you about her workday. You listened. You gave the expected responses. Occasionally, you laughed.

Wanda loved you. You knew that much. She said so, and she knew how to show it. You could feel the warmth when she held you, and you understood it was real. You accepted that warmth. You took it in and put it somewhere. Where, exactly, you didn't know.

If someone had asked whether you loved her, you probably couldn't have said yes. But you never hurt her. That was a conscious choice. You didn't do to her what she had once done to you. You stayed faithful. Being faithful—for you, now—wasn't particularly difficult. When there is no obsession, there is no motive for betrayal. That stillness was what made it possible.

Occasionally, knowing Wanda's nature, you felt a low anxiety that something might happen outside the walls of this home. Old betrayals don't disappear easily. But the fear was less about losing Wanda and more about what would become of you if this framework fell apart. Beyond that, you no longer expected anything specific from her. In a way, that was a relief. You suspected that even this anxiety would eventually fade.

Work continued. Your professional self, your domestic self, and the self you were when alone had always been three separate people. You had learned, over many years, how to move between them without showing the transitions. No one ever noticed the seams.

At some point, you heard from Natasha. She was, in the end, the same in one way as Wanda—someone who had decided and left, and left the same-shaped space behind. When you told her you had married, she replied, "Oh, I see." Something still lived in your chest: old, without much weight, recognizable in outline and hollow at the center. You acknowledged it, then put your phone face-down.

Wanda called something from the next room. You replied.

Nothing dramatic happened. That was the nature of this period. No turning point arrived. Days accumulated. Months passed. Seasons came and went and came again.

The phrase maintaining the status quo might have applied—but that phrase implies intention, as if you were trying to hold something in place. You didn't have that much will. It simply was.

After a bath one evening, you caught your reflection in the mirror and stood there a moment. For the first time in a long while, you looked at the scars on your arms. It had been years since you last cut. You could no longer match a scar to the moment it came from. That was fine. Sometimes something felt suffocating, or the urge to die arrived without warning. In those moments you wanted to cut, but you held it to biting your skin—just short of breaking it.

There were no peaks. No valleys. You felt nothing. And you felt nothing about the fact that you felt nothing.

You pulled your sleeve down and went to bed.

---

Several years had passed, and the marriage to Wanda persisted.

The subject of children came up eventually. Wanda wanted them; you felt something closer to aversion. Each time she brought it up with warmth, you deflected—never directly, never clearly—and neither of you named what that meant. The gap between you widened without being acknowledged.

An awkwardness settled in and stayed.

Still, mornings came. Days followed. Then more mornings.

Light came through the curtains—soft, spring light. Not harsh, not cold. The kind that simply exists.

Your eyes were open. You hadn't moved.

Wanda wasn't beside you. From the kitchen came the sound of running water, the quiet clink of dishes.

You stared at the ceiling.

There had been a time when waking meant something arrived with it—Wanda, or Natasha, or the future, or the persistent question of why you were the way you were. Now there was only the ceiling, the light, and the muffled sounds of Wanda somewhere in the apartment.

What am I supposed to do?

That question had always been there. It was there the night Wanda called Vision my partner to the screen without flinching, there when Natasha ended things quietly in the spring light, there during every night spent staring at a ceiling in an empty room. It had never found an answer. It wasn't going to find one now.

But this morning, the silence didn't frighten you. You didn't weep. You didn't feel adrift. The question surfaced, and nothing followed, and that was all.

The closest thing to an answer was this. This morning. This light. The faint sounds of Wanda somewhere in the apartment. Lying here, eyes open, in the spring light, feeling nothing at all.

That realization didn't change anything.

You had never cared much for spring. Your birthday fell in it; betrayal had come with it, more than once, dressed in soft warmth. That had been the pattern.

Now you felt nothing toward it. You couldn't even remember what feeling something had been like.

There had been a time—early, in the worst of it—when dying had a specific shape in your mind. Not simply dying. Dying in front of her. Dying in a way that would lodge inside her and stay: a thing she could not put down, could not explain away, could not eventually stop thinking about. You had wanted to become the proof of what she had done—to exist inside her as damage, permanently, after you were no longer there to be dismissed. The wanting had been precise. It had its own texture, its own momentum.

Six years had passed since then, and more. What remained was not grief and not malice. The malice had gone. The feeling had gone with it. It was simply the space where something had been—emptied so thoroughly that you could no longer locate the edges of where it used to live.

You heard Wanda in the hallway. Footsteps, approaching. Before the door opened, you closed your eyes.

 ---

 This is what remains.

A person who wakes in the morning and does not move. Who answers when spoken to, eats, sleeps, appears in all the places a person is expected to appear. From the outside—from any distance—it reads as a life. The apartment, the work, the marriage, the light coming through the curtains in spring. These are real. They have weight. They take up space.

Happiness was never going to be yours. You understand that now—not as a wound, not as a verdict, but as a simple fact that took too long to arrive. You prayed for it. You chased it. You held on past the point where holding on made any sense. None of it changed the outcome. So you stopped. You accepted what was placed in front of you instead: this apartment, this person in the kitchen, this light. You did not choose them so much as cease to refuse them.

Now you sit among the remains of what was once, in some earlier life, called love. The expression on your face is there because faces require one. You breathe. You occupy space. That is the sum of it.

The wanting has worn through—not from having been satisfied, but from having been carried too long without arriving anywhere. What is left is the counting: how many days remain in a life this empty, and the low, patient hope that the number is not large.

There is nothing left to wait for. Not even the end.

---

Extra Scene

Natasha

The evening light had already faded from the apartment when you closed the door behind you. Natasha was waiting on the sofa, legs folded neatly beneath her, the same composed stillness she always carried. She wore a loose button-up shirt over dark trousers, sleeves rolled once at the wrists. Her gaze met yours—quiet, unreadable—and something in it made the air feel heavier than it should have.

You crossed the room slowly. When you reached her, you didn’t speak at first. You simply knelt between her knees and rested your forehead against her thigh, the fabric cool against your skin. After a long moment you looked up.

“Nat… I want you tonight. Please.”

She didn’t answer right away. Her fingers threaded once through your hair, a small, measured touch. Then she exhaled, almost silently.

“…Alright.”

She stood, and you followed her to the bedroom. The lamp on the nightstand stayed off; only the faint orange glow from the hallway spilled in. Natasha unbuttoned her shirt herself, deliberate and unhurried. She let it fall open but kept it on her shoulders, exposing only what she chose to expose. Her upper body, bare from the waist up. The pale curve of her breasts, the faint shadow beneath them. She stopped there. No further. Her arms remained half-covered by the open shirt, as if the fabric offered some last boundary she refused to cross completely.

You reached for her, but she caught your wrists gently.

“Lie down.”

Her voice was low, even, the same tone she used when checking the time or confirming plans. You obeyed, stretching out on your back. Natasha climbed over you, knees on either side of your hips, and lowered herself until her bare chest pressed against yours. The contact was warm, deliberate. Her nipples brushed over yours as she shifted, a slow, careful drag that made your breath catch.

“Is this what you wanted?” she asked quietly against your ear. There was no teasing in it, only a calm confirmation.

You nodded. “Yes… please. More of that.”

She gave it. She moved her upper body in small, controlled motions, letting the soft weight of her breasts slide and press against you, nipples tracing faint circles over yours. Each pass sent a low current through your skin. You arched slightly, chasing the feeling, but Natasha kept the rhythm steady, never letting it accelerate beyond what she decided.

Her hand slipped between your bodies. She didn’t remove any more of her own clothing. Instead she touched you—fingers sure, practiced, sliding over and then inside you with the same quiet efficiency she brought to everything else. No hesitation, no excess movement. She found the places that made your thighs tense and worked them methodically, thumb circling where it counted while two fingers stroked inside with slow, deep pressure.

You let out a shaky breath. “Natasha… feels good. You feel good.”

She made a small sound of acknowledgment, almost a hum. Her face stayed close, breath warm against your neck, but she never lost that stillness. Her own hips remained still, offering nothing of herself below the waist. Only her chest moved against yours, and her hand between your legs, giving.

You wanted more than the light flicker building inside you. You wanted to sink into it, to let the pleasure crest fully for once, to feel it for her sake. But the old brake engaged somewhere behind your ribs—the familiar, reflexive pull that kept everything at a safe distance. Even as the warmth spread, even as your breathing turned ragged and your fingers clutched at the open sides of her shirt, the release remained shallow. A soft, trembling wave that crested gently and receded, leaving you flushed and breathing hard but not undone.

Natasha felt it. She always did. She slowed her hand, then stilled it, letting her palm rest warmly over you as the aftershocks faded. Her chest remained pressed to yours, skin to skin, nipples still lightly touching.

“That’s enough?” she asked, voice low and even. Not disappointed. Not questioning. Simply checking.

You nodded, throat tight. “Yeah… thank you.”

She stayed there a moment longer, letting the contact linger. Then she shifted off you with the same quiet grace, pulling her shirt closed but not buttoning it. She lay beside you, one arm draped loosely over your waist. Her breathing was calm, almost unchanged.

You turned your face toward her shoulder. The faint scent of her skin filled the small space between you. The hollow in your chest remained exactly as it had been before—neither lighter nor heavier. Only the warmth of her body against yours gave the moment any shape at all.

Natasha’s fingers traced a slow line along your arm, stopping just short of the old scars.

“Rest,” she said simply.

And you did.

---

Wanda

The evening had settled into the apartment the way it always did—quiet, unremarkable, the hum of the refrigerator the only sound once the television was switched off. You had just stepped out of the shower, with a towel draped over your shoulders and your hair still wet, when Wanda appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. She was already in the oversized T-shirt she liked to wear around the house, the hem brushing the tops of her thighs. Her hair was loose, still carrying the faint scent of the conditioner she used, and her eyes caught the low light from the bedside lamp in that familiar way—shimmering green, direct, unafraid of whatever they saw.

"Hey," she said, the word soft and blunt, the same casual drawl she had used back in the clubroom years ago, only slower now, heavier with something that wasn't quite urgency. She tilted her head, lips curving just enough. "Come here."

You crossed the room without thinking. There was no decision in it, only the habit of years—the same habit that had carried you through the move, the paperwork, the quiet dinners. Wanda reached up as soon as you were close enough, fingers sliding under the edge of the towel. She tugged once, letting it drop, and then her hands were on your chest, palms flat, warm. She didn't push or pull; she simply leaned in until her forehead rested against your collarbone.

"I want you tonight," she murmured against your skin. The words were low, almost conversational, but the breath that carried them trembled a little. "Been thinking about it since lunch. You know how it gets when I can't stop."

You nodded once. Your own body responded the way it always did—blood moving, skin warming—but the feeling stayed at a distance, like something observed through glass. Still, you lifted her easily; she was light the way she had always been, and she let you, arms looping around your neck, legs wrapping your waist without resistance. You carried her the few steps to the bed and laid her down. The mattress gave under her weight with a small sigh of fabric.

Wanda stretched out on her back, the T-shirt riding up to bare the soft curve of her stomach. She didn't take it off. She never did unless you did it for her. Instead she reached for you again, pulling you down until you were braced above her, knees between her thighs. Her fingers traced the old white lines on your forearms—light, absentminded, the way one might touch a familiar scar on their own body.

"You're warm," she whispered. Her voice had that honeyed edge now, the one that used to make your pulse skip years ago. "Always so warm after a shower. Come on… touch me like you mean it."

You did. Your hands moved over her the way they had learned to—slow at first, then surer, mapping the places that still made her breath hitch. When your palm slid between her legs she was already slick, hips lifting to meet you with a small, needy sound that wasn't quite a moan. "There," she breathed, eyes half-lidded but fixed on your face. "Just like that. Don't stop."

She stayed passive beneath you, the way she always had. Arms loose around your shoulders, head tipped back against the pillow, letting you set the pace, letting you give. Her thighs parted wider when you shifted, and when your fingers pressed inside her the first slow push drew a low, drawn-out sigh from her throat—almost a laugh, almost a whimper.

"Ah… yeah. That's good." Her voice cracked just a fraction on the last word. She rocked up to meet you, but only enough to urge you deeper, never taking control. "You feel so fucking good. Keep going… like that."

The rhythm built the way it always did between you—steady, unhurried, the wet heat around your fingers and the small sounds of her breathing the only sounds besides her voice. She didn't claw or bite; she simply held on, fingers digging into your back when the pleasure sharpened. Every few strokes she would whisper your name against your ear, the same name she had said in the clubroom years ago, only now it carried the weight of shared rent and registered papers and all the quiet evenings in between.

"Deeper," she said once, voice husky and direct. "I want to feel you tomorrow when I'm sitting at my desk." A small laugh followed it, breathless. "Don't look at me like that. You know I like it when you reach that far."

You gave her what she asked for. Her breathing grew ragged, green eyes fluttering shut for longer stretches, mouth open on silent gasps that eventually spilled into words again.

"I love you," she gasped, the confession slipping out the way it sometimes did when she was close—unguarded, almost surprised by her own voice. "God, I love you like this. Don't stop—don't you dare stop—"

Her body tightened around your fingers in slow, rolling waves. She came with a low, shuddering sound that wasn't dramatic, just deep and honest, hips stuttering up once, twice, then going slack. You kept moving through it, the way she liked, until the aftershocks faded and she was murmuring soft, half-formed praises against your neck—"so good… always so good for me…"

Only then did you still your hand, pressing your face into the curve of her shoulder as your own breath came ragged—the warmth that had gathered in you loosening at last, quiet and distant, but real enough. Wanda's arms tightened around you, one hand stroking the back of your head in lazy circles.

For a long moment neither of you moved. The room smelled of sweat and her shampoo and the faint trace of the dinner you had cooked earlier. She kissed the side of your neck, lips lingering.

"Stay inside me a little longer," she whispered, voice soft and sated now, the coquettish edge gone. "Just… stay. I like feeling you there."

You stayed. The ceiling above you was the same ceiling it had been every night since you moved in. Your heart slowed. Hers did too, steady against your chest. Outside the window the city kept its indifferent rhythm, but inside the apartment there was only the quiet sound of her breathing and the faint, familiar warmth of her body still wrapped around yours.

She fell asleep first, the way she always did—mouth slightly open, one hand still curled loosely at the nape of your neck. You lay there, eyes open in the dark, the hollow in your chest neither smaller nor larger than it had been before. It was simply there, the same as always.

And that, too, was enough.

Your eyes rested on the wooden sign swaying behind the glass of the entrance. It read: "Y/L/N Workshop. 3D Sculpting / Commercial Mannequin Production. Plaster Prototypes / FRP Molding. Wood-Carved Signage. Inquiries Welcome."

You were the kind of craftsman known only to those who had sought you out. A specialist in 3D modeling and mannequin making. Your skills were solid, but you preferred to stay out of the spotlight, adhering to a philosophy of small-scale production.

Without customers, the shop was effectively closed. So, you decided to immerse yourself completely in your own hobby. You dragged a clay figure, roughly your own height, from the back of the shop onto the open floor where the light hit it.

That was how you always worked: save the eyes for last.

Until then, there is the armature─the core you build first, the skeleton everything else follows. You pack the clay around it, find the center of gravity, coax the mass into the right distribution of weight. Then, only once the form is there, you shave and scrape and refine: the height of the shoulders, the angle of the jaw, the depth of each shadow. Even though you intended to make it stand perfectly straight, a tiny bit of weight always remained on one leg. You thought about reshaping it, but decided against it.

That felt more like her.

No matter how much you try to mend things with other details, the body doesn't lie. You had learned that lesson early on. The shoulders bear weight. The hands hold on past the point of reason. And the spine curves, however slightly, toward something.

She surely wouldn't always stand perfectly. Perfection, especially in a position like hers, can sometimes become an intimidation. Besides, trying to stand perfectly all the time must be exhausting. Caught up in tremendous effort, sacrifice, and the various complications where boundaries must be drawn, she would likely wear herself down.

As you scraped the clay, you weren't looking at photos or videos. You didn't need them anymore. You remembered her every detail. The angle of her shoulders. The shadow of her collarbone. The heaviness of her eyelids when they briefly close after a battle. It wasn't something you would describe as perfect. It only hinted at a strength that was barely holding on.

Still, you liked that dignified posture where such strength seeped through. You tilted the chin up slightly. But the mouth─you didn't turn it up completely. When the light hit it, a faint shadow fell across the cheek. The version of her you were shaping was the polar opposite of the scarlet chaos she unleashed; there was a quality to her expression that was best described as serene.

That's fine, you thought. While you were making a hero, you were just giving form to your own admiration.

And yet.

Your hands hovered somewhat hesitantly, yet precisely, in front of the face you were creating. Then, slowly and carefully, you shaped the eyes you had left for last. The clay eyes didn't focus on a distant threat; they were coming into focus as if searching for a place to return to.

It wasn't a perfect form, not by any means. You didn't think of her in that way. It just felt somehow dishonest to make it symmetrical. You didn't realize that this was an expression she showed to no one.

The woman you were carving was a household name throughout the city. An icon. A red flash streaking across the sky. Something untouchable.

Fussing over the details, you redrew the lines over and over, eventually feeling satisfied enough to step away for a moment. When you returned with a steaming mug in hand, you found you didn't quite like it after all and started over again.

How much time had passed─?

The sound of the doorbell shattered your concentration. Annoyed, you wiped your hands on the front of your apron.

"Come in," you called out, followed by the sharp sound of leather shoes against the floor.

The footsteps were certain, carrying an air of arrogant composure. They approached your back. After a significant pause, you finally turned around. This was a workshop you ran steadily by yourself. You couldn't afford to be looked down upon.

The man was somewhat slim and of medium height. He wore an expensive-looking suit with a natural, casual disarray that looked stylish on him. You immediately sensed that he was wealthy.

"Can I help you with an order?"

"Yes." The man replied without hesitation─the kind of yes that required no thought, as if the conversation had already been rehearsed on his end. "A bust. Bronze. Something for the lobby─a little legacy project, you could say." He began to walk as he spoke, and something in the way his eyes moved through the shelves, the workbenches, the drying parts─unhurried, but precise─told you he wasn't seeing any of it for the first time─not in the way that mattered. He moved through the space without hesitation.

He came prepared, you thought.

When the man turned back toward you, his eyes were drawn to what was behind you. There stood the figure you had been breathing life into until just a moment ago. Something shifted in his face. "Huh," he muttered, almost to himself, and began to circle the statue. He placed a hand on his chin and narrowed his eyes to check every detail. He stared at the sculpture as if trying to burn a hole through it.

"Is this for sale?" After a moment, he asked you, his gaze still fixed on the statue.

"No," you answered immediately. "It's not for sale."

"Then, is it for a promotion? A portfolio?"

There was a beat of silence.

"I don't intend to put that on public display," you said quietly, as if drawing a careful line between the two of you.

The corners of the man's mouth, topped with a mustache, lifted slightly. He looked into the eyes of the statue. "So, this is how she looks to you."

Something in the phrasing stopped you─to you, he had said, as though the answer belonged specifically to you and no one else. The thought had no time to go anywhere. The professional worry had already moved in to replace it. Is something wrong? Was I mistaken?

"Nice, I like it." The man gave a casual shrug and looked at you. Then, he clapped his hands with a crisp, pleasant sound. "Make one of me," he grinned. "That was the plan from the start─a bust, bronze, for the lobby. But with this quality?" His gaze drifted back to the figure. "I'm thinking bigger. Some of the other guys as well." He pulled a business card from his breast pocket and handed it to you. "Let's have a meeting. Come to my place. I want to give you a formal commission. The pay will be generous." The man looked like he was about to do a little dance.

And then, it finally clicked. The man in front of you was someone you had seen countless times on the television screen.

As you stood there, stunned and expressionless, the man─Tony Stark─flashed a grin. Then, he looked at the sculpture one last time. "The results are so good, it makes me want to show it to her myself," he said, letting out a laugh. His face looked as though he had just found the ultimate entertainment.

---

You watched from the doorway until the street took him, then went back to the workshop and didn't stop moving for the rest of the afternoon.

There was plenty to do. The commission had expanded considerably, and the organizational work alone─revised timelines, updated material estimates, a second sketchbook pulled from the shelf─was enough to fill the remaining hours. You filled them.

At some point in the evening, you stopped.

The results are so good, it makes me want to show it to her myself.

You had filed that away when Stark said it. At the time, it had seemed like the kind of thing he said─slightly too much, meant to land. You had let it land and moved on. He knew her. Not the way the rest of the city did─not the red light in the upper atmosphere, not the name on a news ticker. He had stood beside her. Which meant when he looked at the figure and said what he said, he wasn't speaking abstractly.

You crossed to the shelf and uncovered the figure.

The clay had been wrapped─damp cloth first, then plastic sheeting over that─since before the commission came in. Stored correctly, at this time of year, it would hold for another month or two without losing workability. You had known that. You had been telling yourself it was close enough to let rest indefinitely. That had been accurate. It had also been convenient.

You examined the surface. The shoulder. The line of the jaw. The weight in the standing foot. Everything where you had left it.

Because Stark had said what he said, you told yourself, it made sense to move forward. That was the reason you gave yourself. You didn't look for another one.

You covered the figure again, locked up, and left.

---

The mold work happened in the margins─an hour after the day's commission work, sometimes less. The Stark bust came first. That was the correct order, and you kept to it without difficulty. A section of the mold at a time. The workshop lamp on low. You kept the radio off.

The casting required a full day uninterrupted─each pour had to follow the last within a fixed window, or the joins would show in the finished surface. You took a Saturday. Your hands moved through the sequence without consulting your memory. Mix. Pour. Wait. You used the waiting to get ahead on the commission sketchbook.

By late afternoon, the form was clear of the mold. You set it under the bench lamp and looked at it for a while. The seams were where you had expected them. A few air pockets along the collarbone─minor, addressable. The surface was rough in the way plaster always was straight from the mold: unfinished, waiting.

The face you left for last.

The cloth went over it. Turned off the bench lamp and left.

---

Standing before the sleek, rounded silhouette of Stark Industries, you felt a wave of intimidation wash over you. The afternoon following Tony Stark's visit to your workshop, he had sent a text regarding a meeting. Now, following the date and time specified in that message, you stood poised in front of Stark's headquarters.

Looking up, the summit of the building seemed to dissolve into the sky, vanishing into the blue. You caught your breath and clenched your fists tightly, attempting to mask your trembling hands. You knew that if you hesitated too long, your hard-won resolve would begin to wither. Steeling yourself, you began to stride toward the main entrance.

Passing through the glass doors, you were greeted by a space that exuded the atmosphere of a sophisticated corporate office. A painting hung directly across from the entrance─oil, precisely the right scale, a subtle playfulness in it that was easy to miss. Your attention slid past it almost immediately. Suddenly, your gaze was drawn to a particular corner of the space where several stone busts were lined up. The height of the pedestals, the distribution of weight, the tilt of the necks─by professional reflex, your eyes began to dissect the details. You only snapped back to reality when you nearly collided with a person in a suit passing nearby. You adjusted your grip on your bag and made your way to the reception desk.

"Excuse me," you said, your voice raspy with nerves, addressing a female staff member whose eyes were fixed on a screen at the counter. When you stated your name and the time of your appointment, she tapped rhythmically at her keyboard before looking up. "Conference Room Five, on the seventh floor."

After thanking her, you headed straight for the elevators. One arrived almost immediately after you called it. Several people crowded in with you. The proximity of others, close enough for shoulders to brush, made you unexpectedly tense. Contrary to your internal agitation, the elevator smoothly delivered you to your destination.

The doors slid open to reveal a corridor stretching straight into the distance. Jostled by those exiting the lift, you hurriedly stepped out.

Conference Room Five. The door featured an inset glass panel, offering a clear view of the interior. A large "5" decal was positioned slightly above the center of the glass, perfectly placed at eye level. Taking a deep breath, you knocked and opened the door.

"Pardon me."

Tony Stark was already inside. He was perched at the end of a rectangular table with an air of nonchalant ease, as if he were in his own living room. Beside him stood an individual holding a tablet, presumably an assistant. Upon noticing you, Stark raised a hand. "You made it. Have a seat."

As prompted, you sat in the chair directly across the table from him. The assistant laid out several documents: an overview of the commission, estimated deadlines, and compensation terms. You looked them over; the scope of the project was significantly more extensive than you had anticipated.

"I have something I need to clarify," you said, looking up. "Regarding the bronze casting, I'll need to engage a specialized subcontractor. I can handle everything up to the design and creation of the prototype, but I need your approval on that point."

Stark didn't seem particularly surprised and gave a casual wave of his hand. "That's fine. The prototype is what matters."

You gave a small nod, and the discussion continued: the number of figures, their scale, where they would be installed. Stark leaned forward as the conversation progressed. He became especially talkative when the subject turned to his own likeness. Taking notes, you slowly began to find your rhythm.

Once the general points were settled, Stark leaned back and crossed his arms. "One more thing," he said. "I've decided to have one of the team members drop by today as an observer. They're running a bit late due to some business on our end, but they'll be here momentarily."

Before you could ask for clarification, there was a knock at the door.

"Come in," Stark called out. As the door opened, you turned around reflexively.

You knew that face─it was impossible not to. It had been everywhere: news, newspapers, public discourse. She stepped inside and walked toward Stark. Her profile matched, down to the last millimeter, the contours you had traced with your fingertips in your studio.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw Stark smirk.

You looked forward, dropping your gaze to the surface of the table and staring at your scribbled notes. Nothing registered.

She's real.

The obvious truth finally sank in, delayed. A figure who belonged on a television screen was now breathing the same air as you. That specific slope of the shoulder, that exact angle of the jaw you had struggled to capture in clay, existed right here, close enough to touch, if you had dared.

Stay calm. You thought. This is just work.

Yet, inside you, something entirely unrelated to work was quietly seething. The reality of the countless hours you had spent crafting her image in your workshop rushed back with a strange, heavy sense of consequence. That had been a private creation─an extension of a hobby. And yet now, the subject was standing right in front of you.

Stark spoke. "Allow me to introduce you. Serving as an observer for this commission─" he paused just long enough to enjoy the moment, "─Wanda Maximoff."

Stark's voice sounded distant. You managed to look up, intending to offer at least a polite nod. In that instant─you felt her attention before your eyes had fully risen. By the time you looked up, her gaze had already moved on. Your eyes never actually met.

You exhaled, realizing only then that you had been holding your breath.

---

By the time you looked up from the work, several weeks had passed since the meeting at Stark Industries.

After that initial meeting, you had visited Stark Industries one last time to finalize the specifications. Since then, you had hardly emerged from your workshop. Progress was steady. Capturing Tony Stark in a bust─balancing his trademark casualness with the underlying intellect─had proven slightly troublesome, but a compromise was finally taking shape in the clay.

Stark visited the workshop on a fixed schedule every few weeks. Aside from those appointments, he also dropped by whenever the mood struck him. Having retired from the Avengers and left the company to his employees, he seemed to have an abundance of time on his hands. Each time he arrived, he would wander around the studio, reaching out toward anything that piqued his interest until your intervention prompted a nonchalant shrug. He would pose questions, then shift his gaze to something else while listening to the answer. You had come to understand that this was simply how he operated.

You had noticed his gaze lingering on a sculpture that wasn't part of his commission. He never remarked on it, and you offered no explanation.

Today was a scheduled visit.

You were not, by nature, someone who welcomed the presence of others in your workspace. Clients disrupted the rhythm; their questions pulled your attention from your hands. You had always preferred the shop closed and quiet. Sitting before your workbench, smoothing the surface with a flat tool, you waited for the doorbell. Somewhere along the line, the scheduled visits had stopped feeling like interruptions.

Stark had a habit of letting things drop in passing─a preference she had for something, a reaction she'd had to something else. Nothing substantial. He never lingered on it. But by now you had accumulated, without meaning to, a small and useless collection of details that had nothing to do with the commission. You hadn't thought about why any of that had stayed with you.

A little past the appointed time, the bell chimed. He was always late. The sound of the door closing followed. Footsteps.

─Multiple people?

Puzzled, you turned around, instinctively setting your tool down on the desk, almost tossing it. All the while, your eyes were locked on the two figures entering, particularly the one following behind. Wiping your hands on your apron, you stepped away from your chair, took a breath, and exhaled. "Welcome," was all that managed to escape your lips.

"Hey, how's it going?" No apology for the tardiness. There never was. He always brushed it off with a casual greeting. Behind him, you saw Wanda Maximoff give you a slight nod of acknowledgment. Just like before, she seemed to be communicating without words.

"The work is progressing smoothly," you replied to Tony.

And then there was Wanda. She said nothing. Led by Tony, she stepped into your workshop. You watched blankly as she─and he─moved through the space.

Wanda had stepped into your studio.

"Don't mind us, keep working," Tony said breezily. With no reason to refuse, you nodded. He had visited this workshop numerous times; he knew his way around. The only thing that felt off was Wanda's presence beside him today.

Stark began to survey the studio. Wanda followed. His voice filled the room as he introduced the workshop to her, every syllable crisp and clear.

You picked up your modeling tool and turned back to the workbench, but your fingertips wouldn't move. With your back turned, your entire being was tracking their footsteps.

Tony's stride was confident. Having been here so often, he knew exactly where everything was. The moment you sensed those footsteps heading in a specific direction, you held your breath.

This is bad.

Clutching the modeling tool in one hand, you didn't─couldn't─turn around to stop him. The words failed to come. You couldn't find a single justification to intervene.

"Take a look at this," Tony said. His tone sounded as though he were showcasing one of his own creations. "Not bad, right?"

You didn't turn around. Couldn't. Clutching the modeling tool in one hand, you snapped your mouth shut, looking foolish. It was all you could do. You felt a cold sweat prickle down your spine.

Silence followed. In that stillness, you slowly risked a glance over your shoulder. Just as you feared, Wanda was standing before the sculpture. She was motionless. She said nothing. She simply stood there. You couldn't read her expression. You started to try, then stopped. You were afraid to know what her face might reveal.

Tony stood there with his arms crossed, looking satisfied. The silence lasted longer than expected. Eventually, it was Tony who broke it. "Good work, wouldn't you say?" he remarked, in a way that could have been directed at either Wanda or you. It felt less like a question and more like a simple confirmation that his perception was shared.

You didn't answer. Wanda remained silent as well. She hadn't moved an inch. From your angle, it was impossible to tell where her gaze was fixed─the face, the hands, or the piece as a whole. However, you thought her breathing had grown slightly shallow. It might have just been your imagination.

Satisfied, Tony walked over to you without another word. Leaving Wanda where she was, he began discussing the project's progress. While you responded, you continued to track Wanda out of the corner of your eye. She slowly looked away from the statue and glanced your way for a fleeting moment. Before your gazes could truly lock, you dropped your eyes back to your work.

The conversation with Tony ended quickly─a few confirmations and the date for the next session. While taking notes, you noticed Wanda's footsteps moving away from the statue.

She began to wander slowly through the workshop. The tools lined up on the shelves, small figures in the process of drying, material samples pinned to the wall. She did exactly what Tony used to do, though she didn't reach out to touch anything. She just looked.

Even as you answered Tony, you remained acutely aware of exactly where she was.

Before long, Tony glanced at his watch. "Time to head out," he called to Wanda. She nodded. Just as when they arrived, there were no words. The two of them left the workshop. The door closed.

Something had changed in the room─not in anything you could point to. You didn't move for a while. Did she take offense? You had created a likeness of her without her permission. And today, you had allowed her to see it. The question sat there.

At some point, you crossed to the far wall and laid a cloth over the figure. You picked up your tool and returned to work.

---

The night before his scheduled visit, a message came in from Tony.

"Something came up. Can't make it tomorrow. Sending Wanda in my place. Thanks."

That was it. No apology. That was the kind of man he was, and you had stopped expecting otherwise. You typed back a single word─Understood─and set the phone down. For a while, you just stared at the screen. Then you closed the message, turned back to your workbench, and kept going. You had been about to call it a night. You decided not to. Your nerves were wound too tight to sleep anyway.

Inspiration struck. That was the reason. You were going with that.

The next morning, you were up an hour earlier than usual. Your eyes had simply opened. No particular reason. That was what you told yourself.

---

The doorbell chimed right on time.

"Excuse me." Her voice was brief but clear.

You rose from your chair, wiping your hands on your apron as you crossed to the entrance. Wanda Maximoff stood just inside the doorway, one step back from the threshold. Her expression was the same as before─quiet, unreadable.

"Welcome," you said. "Come in."

She gave a small nod and stepped inside. "I appreciate your time." That was all.

As you turned to lead her further in, your eyes swept the workshop─and your stomach dropped. You had always worked alone on short-term commissions. There was no designated space for guests. How had you not thought of this before?

"Would you mind waiting a moment? I'll get something set up." The words came out faster than you intended. You watched her face.

A small nod.

Moving with more urgency than grace, you crossed to the corner of the workshop, unfolded the collapsible table propped against the wall, and set two work chairs beside it. A spare cloth went over the surface. It wasn't much. But it was everything you had to offer right now.

"Please," you said, gesturing to one of the chairs. "I'll make tea."

On the way to the small kitchen, you noticed your hands were moving too quickly. Slow down, you thought. This is work. Same as when Tony comes. It wasn't the same.

You filled the kettle and set it to boil. Pulled out two mugs. Set them down, adjusted the angle of one, left it. While you waited for the water to heat, you kept your back to the room and listened. Where was she looking? What was she thinking? You had no way of knowing.

The kettle clicked off. You poured, removed the bags, and carried both mugs to the table─setting one in front of Wanda, the other at the seat beside her.

"Before you pass along Tony's questions," you said, "I'd like to walk you through the current progress first. It might make reporting back to him a little easier."

Wanda gave a slight nod.

You stood and began moving through the workshop to gather what you needed. Just doing the job thoroughly. Material samples, a few sketchbooks pulled from the shelf, pages sorted into order. Simple tasks. They took longer than they should have.

A few times, you sensed her watching you. You kept your head down.

The workshop was quiet. Time moved strangely. A faint shift of fabric─Wanda adjusting her posture. The sound of it passed through you before you could stop it. You sensed her eyes settle on you, and this time, you were certain.

Pencil still in hand, you went still. Wanda was watching your hands. The way you held the pencil, the angle of your fingers, the lines accumulating across the open page─she was following all of it, quietly and without comment. You kept working. Pretended you hadn't noticed. Kept your head down and your hand moving. The pencil was on the page. Your attention was somewhere else entirely.

Wanda Maximoff was, from a sculptural standpoint, close to an ideal subject. A slight asymmetry existed between her left and right sides. That subtle imbalance caught light in ways perfect symmetry never could. The angle of her jaw. The depth of her collarbone. The fingers that shifted even when the rest of her was still. Every detail held its answer before you had thought to ask the question.

Beautiful, you thought.

A moment later, her gaze shifted away. You caught the change at the edge of your vision. The air in the workshop felt faintly different. Or maybe it didn't. You weren't entirely sure.

"Let's go over everything," you said.

You returned to the table and drew the work-in-progress closer. Opened a sketchbook, pencil ready, and walked Wanda through the current stage and what came next─step by step, plain language, no technical terms. She was here on Tony's behalf, and she'd need something useful to bring back to him. That mattered to you. She listened carefully. Now and then her gaze moved to the sculpture itself, settling on some detail. Her questions were few, but each one was precise.

When the walkthrough was done, she passed along Tony's items: two points of clarification on the progress, one question about material specifications. You answered each and noted them in the margin of your sketchbook.

When the last item was settled, Wanda gave a small nod. "That covers everything. I'll pass this along to Tony." She rose from her chair.

"Thank you for coming." You stood and walked her to the door.

At the threshold, she turned. Your eyes met hers. You didn't look away. The moment to do so came and went before you found it. She didn't look away either. For just a second, both of you stayed there─held in place by something neither of you had chosen. It wasn't long. But it was more certain than anything else that had happened today. Something passed between you.

Wanda held your gaze for a moment longer. Then, quietly: "Thank you." She gave a small nod and stepped out. The door closed behind her.

You cleared the table─carried Wanda's mug to the kitchen, then your own. Came back. Sat down at the workbench. For a moment, you just looked at the empty chair.

---

From the next visit on, you had the table and chairs set out before she arrived. No particular thought had gone into it. You had simply decided, at the end of the last session, that she would come again─and left them where they were. You laid a cloth over the surface. Dust would collect otherwise, and dust looked careless. Presentation was a form of courtesy to a client.

Wanda came. She was alone.

Whether that was Tony's arrangement or her own call, you didn't know. The only advance notice had been a short confirmation from Tony's assistant─a single line with Wanda's name in it. You typed a reply─I'll be here─more carefully worded than anything you would have sent Tony, and put your coffee cup in the sink. She arrived on time. The same as before.

"Please," you said. Wanda stepped into the workshop, keeping her footsteps quiet. Your eyes met. Without looking away, you stood and gestured toward the table. That it was already set up─Wanda said nothing about it. She glanced at the chair once, and sat.

"I'll make tea," you said.

"Thank you." Less of a pause than last time. You noticed, while you filled the kettle, and pretended you hadn't.

You set the tea down and turned back toward the worktable. Before you got there, Wanda spoke. "Please continue. I'm here to observe."

You stopped. Observer─the word moved through your mind. That was her role here. If this was professional observation, the correct thing was to continue working and be observed. That was simply how it worked.

"Understood," you said, and rolled up your sleeves.

The day's work was surface finishing on the plaster prototype─the first commission piece, Tony Stark's bust. You moved a fine rasp in short, careful strokes, working the surface smooth. Plaster dust collected between your fingers. You brushed it off on your sleeve. It collected again.

Wanda sat and watched your hands. Last time, you had moved around the workshop and her gaze had followed you. Today she was still. She simply sat there, watching only your hands. That stillness came through more clearly than movement would have. Something shifted faintly at the back of your neck. You didn't turn. She was observing. That was what she had come to do.

After a while, she spoke. "What happens to it, eventually? This material."

You set the rasp down─not to answer, but because the angle of the question had caught you slightly off guard. "The plaster?" you asked.

"Yes."

"This is the prototype. We take a mold from this shape and pour the bronze. The final piece will be a bronze casting. Once the mold is made, the plaster original doesn't need to be kept. Sometimes it gets disposed of."

"Disposed of."

"Yes. Once the mold is done, its purpose is finished."

Wanda was quiet. You picked up the rasp and returned to work.

"It's not─" she started. No words followed.

"I don't find it a waste," you said, before you'd decided to. Whether you were anticipating her thought or simply thinking out loud, you couldn't tell. "The piece survives in the bronze. The plaster work is there in the final form. That's enough."

No answer came. You didn't look at her. The sound of the rasp across the surface was all that continued in the workshop.

---

The next visit came a few days later. By then, Wanda coming to the workshop alone had settled into the natural order of things. Tony joined her only when something required his direct input, or when he had time to spare. You didn't ask for reasons. This was how commissions progressed. Who handled the progress checks wasn't yours to decide.

The table and chairs were already set out. You made tea and brought it over. Kept working. This visit, there was more conversation. Wanda said something; you answered. She said something else; you answered again. Gradually, a kind of space had opened between the exchanges─not quite business communication, not quite small talk, something in between.

That day, you explained the way shadow worked in sculpture. The occasion arrived naturally─Wanda's attention had caught on a plaster piece resting on the worktable, and she asked what stage it was at. You wiped your hands and stood in front of it. Wanda rose from her chair and came to stand beside you─both of you facing the same direction.

"When you make it too even," you said, tracing a finger lightly along the cheekbone, "the light becomes uniform. But a human face is slightly asymmetrical─the left and right sides take light differently. That difference is what reads as expression."

"...What changes, if it's even?"

"It goes flat. The eye slides over it. You could say the sense of a person's depth becomes harder to perceive."

Wanda was looking at the figure's face. You were looking at it too. You were looking at the same thing.

"Is that what you did─with the eyes on that one, as well." For just a moment, her gaze moved to a corner of the wall.

Your hands went still. What she meant by that one was clear. The figure standing against the far wall, under the cloth.

"...It was a judgment I made," you said.

"A judgment you made."

"Yes."

Wanda said nothing more. Neither did you. She stayed where she was. You didn't move either─not because you couldn't, but because there didn't seem to be any reason to. A car passed outside. Its sound moved thinly through the walls. For some reason, the ordinariness of it felt strangely solid.

---

The following week, the consumables ran out. The rasps were clogged. The release agent had been low since last month. A brush lost a whole cluster of bristles at once. You made a list and headed out.

On the way back from the supply shop, you turned down a side street and stopped in front of a coffee shop. At the workshop you brewed your own, or forgot to drink it entirely. Getting coffee somewhere outside was something you rarely did. You ordered at the counter and stood at the window bar facing the street. People moved past outside─different speeds, different directions. That there were this many people out on a weekday afternoon always struck you as faintly surprising. Working in the workshop, the number of people visible through the glass was limited. Every time you stepped outside, the scale of the world came back to you, the way things do when you've been indoors too long.

The coffee was hotter than expected. You waited, finished it slowly, dropped the cup in a bin on the corner, and stepped back out.

There was a park nearby. You went in. A weekday afternoon─sparse. A parent with a small child, an older man on a bench with a book, a woman walking a dog. You didn't sit. You moved along the path slowly, the supply bag hanging from one hand. You were uneasy without something to do with your hands. That much you already knew. Walking with nothing in them gave you a vague sense of displacement. You stopped near the pond. The surface moved with the wind. Time to head back, you thought, and looked up─

The light came before the sound.

The edge of the sky turned red. It was over in a moment, but it was certain. A bundle of light, close to crimson, cut between two buildings. You couldn't move. It wasn't a choice─the option simply wasn't there. People around you looked up. Someone pulled out a phone. You didn't. You knew yours was in your pocket. The thought of reaching for it never arrived.

A few seconds of quiet. Then a low, muffled sound reached you─something moving, far off. You recognized the type of sound from news footage, but hearing it move through actual air was nothing like that. It entered your body differently. The light moved again from a different angle. Near the top of a building, something traced an arc. You could make out the silhouette─you thought you could.

You understood immediately who it was. That understanding was all that remained. Who it was─just that, fixed and certain.

People began to gather. You left the park quickly. Walking back the way you came, the supply bag knocked against your arm. Rasps, release agent, brushes. The weight of them was in your hand. That much was real. That was your world.

You walked faster and returned to the workshop. Unlocked the door, set the bag by the shelf. Changed into your work clothes.

Then you stood in front of Wanda's figure. The cloth was still on it. You didn't lift it. You stood there and read the outline through the fabric. The position of the head, the angle of the shoulders, the foot bearing the weight. You traced back in your mind the light you had seen between the buildings.

It didn't match.

What was here was a still form in plaster. What had been there was force, moving through the city sky. Both had to belong to the same person─and yet however you tried, the two wouldn't come together inside your head. Whatever it would take to bridge them, you didn't have it. You reached out a hand. Stopped. You weren't sure why.

You hadn't been commissioned to make it, but you had gathered what you needed, drawn from your memory, moved your hands. What had been in that sky was a hero.

The person who opened the door of this workshop and walked in was something else.

You went to the worktable. Reached for the new rasps and swapped them for the old ones. Set them against the plaster. Moved them. The sensation of the surface smoothing came back through your palm. You focused on that. That was enough.

---

On the next scheduled visit, she arrived on time. Table and chairs already out. Tea waiting on the table. Wanda sat down.

"I'd like to go over the progress," she said.

"Of course." You turned toward the worktable and opened the sketchbook, walking her through the current stage and what came next. Clearly. Precisely. No room left for ambiguity. You kept your eyes on the table as you explained. Not toward Wanda. There was no need. Pointing to drawings and the prototype was sufficient. Sustained eye contact wasn't always required.

Her questions were fewer than before. Fewer even than the visit before that.

"When should we schedule the next check-in?" Wanda asked.

You consulted your notebook and gave her the dates. "Tony's bust should be nearly complete by then. Some of the others are taking shape."

"Understood," Wanda said.

"Any questions?"

"No."

"I'll have what's ready for you."

"...Yes."

The sound of Wanda standing. You glanced at her tea. She'd only finished half. The time before, she'd finished all of it. Maybe she wasn't feeling well. Or maybe today's visit had simply been shorter, and she hadn't gotten around to it.

You walked her to the door and opened it. Wanda stepped outside. You watched her back for a moment─just a moment. The way she held her left arm, close to her side, the movement slightly restrained. Not stiff, exactly. Careful. The door closed. Footsteps moved down the hall. Faded. Gone.

You started to clear the table and chairs, then stopped. Lately you had put them away immediately after she left. This time, you left them out a while longer. It was more efficient to have them ready for the next visit. That was your reasoning, and you returned to the worktable.

Passing Wanda's figure, the edge of the cloth caught your eye. You didn't stop. Kept going. That was all.

You sat at the worktable and picked up where you'd left off on Tony's bust. Rasp in hand, set against the surface. You moved it. Moved it again. Something was off. You couldn't locate what, not right away.

After a while, the rasp had gone still. It was in your hand, but it wasn't moving.

On an impulse, you lifted the cloth from Wanda's figure and looked at the eyes. You took a moment to place when you'd last touched them─then it came back. The day after the shadow explanation, you'd noticed something and made a small correction. You'd shaved too far along the rim of the iris. You took a fine chisel and worked it carefully. A little. Checked. A little more. By the time you stopped, the shape had settled back to nearly where it had started.

It had returned. Almost the same form as before the correction.

This was right. This was correct.

Outside the window, the wind moved. Inside the workshop, there was no sound.

---

That day, too, Wanda arrived on time. She unhooked her coat and hung it up, sat down. Both hands wrapped around the cup. The same sequence of movements she had repeated every visit, carried out in the same order today.

You kept working, tracking her from the edge of your vision. Her left arm moved more freely than last time. Taking off her coat, the faint hesitation that had been there before─today, it was nearly gone. Recovering. The thought reached that point and you stopped it.

The quiet returned to the workshop. You adjusted your grip on the rasp and kept going. Today's silence had a different quality from before. The first time Wanda had come here alone, the silence had density─a taut stillness, the kind that comes from being watched intently. You had registered it as the sensation of being observed. Today's silence had no such tension.

She's gotten used to it, you thought. But your hands kept moving, and the thought didn't quite land the way it should have. Before, Wanda had watched your hands─the way you held a pencil, the angle of a tool, the accumulation of lines on the page. You had filed it under professional interest in the craft. Today, her gaze was on the work itself. Not your hands. The work.

That was good, you thought.

That day, you found it difficult to concentrate. You couldn't account for why. The light was coming in at a slightly poor angle today, you decided. These things happened.

At the end of the visit, Wanda confirmed the next date. You answered without consulting your notebook─you already had it in your head. "That day, then," you said. Wanda nodded and moved toward the door. At the threshold, a faint shift in the way she was standing. The suggestion of turning back. A pause, and then the door was open and she was gone.

You stayed where you were.

---

A few days later, you went to Stark Industries on business─a materials change request and a specifications meeting with the bronze casting subcontractor. The date had been arranged in advance. You entered the building. The same lobby as before. Last time, your professional eye had started to pick apart the stone busts in the corner before you caught yourself. This time there was nothing to catch. Your gaze didn't go there. You walked toward your destination. The business was brief─two points of clarification, no discrepancies in either party's understanding. You said your goodbyes to the person handling the account and headed for the exit.

You turned the corner of the hallway.

Wanda was standing there. She was talking to someone else.

Your feet stopped. Not because you told them to. They simply stopped.

Fifteen feet, maybe more. You couldn't hear the conversation. All that was visible was the angle of two bodies, the space between them, and the air that filled it. The person facing Wanda had their back to you─still, barely moving, leaning slightly in her direction. When they shifted, just slightly, you caught the edge of his face. Not a face you could forget, if you had seen it once. You had. Wanda was speaking, looking at him. Something in the angle of her shoulders had loosened. Her left hand moved─something between an explanation and a confirmation. Her left hand moved freely.

You noticed that, and the other thing, and looked away.

They were standing close. The kind of closeness that has a history behind it. You had no way to read that pull. All you could see was the distance and the air. There is air here that you cannot enter. It was the place this certainty had been building toward, from the day in the park. There is a daily life here. The daily life of people who have spent time together in the same place. The air of where Wanda belongs.

You are outside that air. It was simply a fact.

The business was done. The hallway led to the exit and you followed it. Outside, the air was cold and flat. You walked back with your eyes on the pavement, and you kept them there.

---

Back at the workshop. Key in the lock. Change of clothes. Rasp in hand. Tony's plaster original was at its final stage─a few more sessions and it would be done. The other figures were at varying points of progress: some had been transferred to plaster, others were still in clay. Still, the end of the series as a whole was visible.

On the way to the workbench, you passed Wanda's figure. The cloth was on it. You didn't stop. You walked past.

You set the rasp against the surface of the plaster model and moved it. Plaster dust settled between your fingers. You brushed it off. It settled again. Your hands kept moving, and somewhere inside you, something was working its way toward language. It hadn't reached words yet. But it was there.

When this series is complete, the commission will come to a close.

You didn't stop the rasp. When exactly those thoughts would become words─that, you didn't yet know.

---

At the next scheduled visit, Wanda arrived on time. The table and chairs were already out. Tea was on the table. She sat down and wrapped both hands around the cup.

Today, her left arm─you didn't notice. Whether the careful restraint that had been there was still present. Your attention was on the workbench.

"I'd like to go over the progress," Wanda said. You opened your sketchbook and gave the update without moving from your chair. Efficient, you thought. Wanda listened and nodded. There were more questions today than last time─you took that to mean something in the previous explanation had been unclear, and filled in the gaps.

The conversation moved with functional efficiency. Question. Answer. Another question. The moments where an explanation used to open sideways into something else─those didn't happen today. It wasn't that you held back. Wanda's questions stayed within the range of progress review. You kept your eyes on the table.

At the end, Wanda said she'd schedule the next check-in. You said you'd be here. She moved toward the door.

At the threshold, she turned. Your eyes met hers. Wanda held her gaze steady. "Take care," you said.

For just a moment, something crossed her face. Her mouth opened, slightly. No words came.

"…I'll come again," she said. The door closed.

You looked at the table. The cup was empty. You carried it to the kitchen, washed it, returned it to its place on the shelf.

---

That night, the workshop was quiet. At the workbench, you set the rasp against Tony's plaster original. The surface smoothed beneath your hands. Your hands told you so.

After a while, the rasp was still in your hand. It had stopped moving.

You were standing in front of Wanda's figure before you had decided to move. You took hold of the edge of the cloth. You didn't lift it. The shape of the figure came through the fabric─the position of the head, the angle of the shoulders, the foot bearing the weight. You stood there and read it for a while. Every client relationship has an end.

You let go of the cloth. Back to the workbench. Rasp in hand. Set it against the original. Moved it. Somewhere along the way, your hand had stopped again. The rasp had gone faintly cold in your grip.

That was all.

---

 A few days later, an invitation to a party arrived from Tony Stark. Your eyes lingered on the screen for a moment, reading through a message far more densely worded than his usual periodic check-ins. According to the text, the ostensible reason for the gathering was that the team members want to meet the person sculpting their likenesses. It concluded with a definitive command: Be there. In a sense, you're the guest of honor. You reread it from the beginning. It also mentioned, Don't overthink it─treat it like a house party and come relaxed. That made the line between work and private life ambiguous, and you weren't sure where you stood. Nevertheless, once you were labeled the guest of honor, there was no way out. You typed and deleted various responses before settling on a simple Understood. I'll be there and closing your laptop.

You ran through the faces of the five others whose likenesses Tony had commissioned alongside his own: Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye. Who else would be there.

A restless sensation rose in your chest. You cast a glance at the laptop pushed to the side of the workbench, but it offered nothing back. About a week remained until the party. You thought about what to wear, what to say─treating it as an extension of professional duties, the way you always did when the work moved outside the workshop. You also prepared some reference materials: photos of the completed prototype for Tony's bust, and the other figures, which were finally taking shape. You didn't notice, until later, that the figure of Wanda had ended up in the frame.

You thought, idly, that you hoped it would be a clear day.

---

That day, you stood in the main living space of the Stark residence. The room opened wide─glass running the length of the seaward wall, and more of it throughout, in the corridors leading in, in the partitions between spaces. Light came in from multiple directions.

You felt a faint unease about the height. The thought arrived unbidden─what if it breaks─and didn't entirely leave. You held a glass of champagne and stayed near the wall by the entrance, keeping the windows out of your direct line of sight. Everyone else seemed to be enjoying the view without reservation.

Glasses clinked throughout the room. Laughter ran from one end to the other, and voices filled the space in a way that had no gaps in it. At the center was Tony Stark, working the room the way he always did─unhurried, completely at ease, already absorbed by the steady stream of people gravitating toward him.

You took a small sip from your glass. The carbonation prickled your tongue. The party was still in its early stages, new arrivals appearing one after another, each following the same sequence: the greeting, the brief exchange with Tony, the gradual absorption into the crowd. You watched from the wall.

Tony noticed you. Each time he raised a hand in your direction and began to move, someone intercepted him before he got there. You recognized faces from the news and didn't know what to do with that. You stayed where you were.

After a while, the flow of new arrivals slowed, and a specific rhythm settled over the room. The crowd had sorted itself into groups. The window for entering a circle without a reason had closed without announcing itself. You exhaled quietly.

At that moment, your gaze was drawn to a single figure across the room.

Wanda had come from the direction of the kitchen─emerging from somewhere past the far counter. Beside her walked someone you recognized without having been introduced. Vision. You stayed where you were.

She saw you. Said something to Vision─brief, turned slightly toward him, her voice lost in the noise of the room. There it is, you thought. Your chest was quiet in a way that wasn't quite comfortable.

Vision nodded at something she said, glanced once in your direction, and stayed where he was. Wanda crossed the room toward you alone.

"I didn't know you'd be here," she said.

"Tony invited me," you said. "I didn't know what to expect." A pause. Your eyes moved briefly toward the crowd where Vision had gone. "Is he all right?"

Wanda followed your glance. "He's fine," she said, and left it there.

She stood beside you rather than across from you, both of you facing the room. It was different from the workshop─no table between you, no work to keep your hands occupied. The conversation moved in small steps. The party around you. The commission. How the figures were coming along. Outside the workshop, her sentences came differently─less precise, more space between them. You found you didn't mind the spaces.

At some point the conversation had drifted, and in the pause that followed you said, without entirely meaning to: "Is that your partner─the one you came in with."

It wasn't a question, quite. It came out flat, the way things do when you've been thinking them without knowing it.

Wanda went still. Not for long. But you caught it─the half-second before her expression settled into something else. She turned to look at you, and something in her face was harder to read than usual. "Why do you ask," she said.

The noise of the party continued around you.

"I'm sorry," you said. "It came out wrong."

Wanda looked at you for a moment longer. Then she glanced toward the room. "It's loud in here," she said. "There's a terrace."

Outside, the air came off the ocean cold and steady. The sky had cleared enough that you could make out stars─not many, but a few. The terrace was almost empty.

You stood at the railing. Wanda stood a step back from it. Neither of you spoke for a moment.

"What made you ask that," she said. "Inside."

You kept your eyes on the water. "It came out wrong. I didn't mean anything by it."

"That's not what I asked."

A pause. The wind moved through the space between you.

"I'm not sure," you said. It was as honest as you were willing to be.

"You're not sure, or you'd rather not say."

You didn't answer. The water below caught the light in long, shifting lines.

"We'll see," she said. Not quite accepting it. Something closer to filing it away.

Another silence. This one had a different quality from the ones in the workshop─less settled. Something in it hadn't decided where to land.

"He and I─" Wanda started. She stopped. Started again differently. "It's not simple."

"You don't have to explain anything to me."

"I know I don't." She looked at you. "I'm choosing to."

You turned to look at her then. She was already looking at you─directly, the way she rarely did. Something in her expression had moved past the careful stillness she usually kept.

"It's not what you thought," she said.

You turned back to the water. "All right."

"It's coming to an end," Wanda said.

"Yes."

She looked at you for a moment. "And after that."

The words settled. You kept your eyes on the water and let them. The light below was still moving, the same as it had been all evening, and somewhere between one breath and the next something shifted in your chest and didn't shift back. You had lost count of your drinks somewhere along the way.

You closed the distance between you.

Wanda went still. Not pulling back. Not moving forward. The warmth of it moved through you─and something cold followed it down your spine, and that was your mind catching up. You started to pull away─

Her hand closed around your arm.

She pulled you back. And this time it was her─certain, without hesitation─and whatever stillness she had always kept between you was gone. Her hand was at your jaw. You stopped thinking entirely.

---

The party ended at some point. You were not entirely sure when.

Later, at home, you sat for a while without turning on the lights. Your coat was still on. After a while, you took it off and laid it across the arm of the chair.

Outside, the city was still lit─the occasional car moving below, a few windows bright across the way.

You were aware of your own heartbeat in an unfamiliar way─not racing, just present. The room was the same room it always was, and yet you sat in it differently, or it held you differently, and you weren't sure which. You went to bed, and you didn't sleep for a long time.

---

The visits continued─Tony, then Wanda, then both, then Wanda alone. The cadence looked no different from the outside.

But it had changed. The distance at the workbench─a few centimeters closer than the work required, and neither of you adjusted. The way her fingers would briefly overlap with yours before pulling back when she returned a sketchbook.

Between sessions, you worked on Wanda's figure. You lost track of time more easily than before.

Wanda began coming alone more often. The meetings ran the same as always, but something in the air had shifted.

That day, when it was time for her to leave, she stopped at the door. She looked at you for a moment. "I need your number," she said. "To confirm the next visit."

You couldn't help a slight smile. You gave it to her.

She typed it in without a word and left with a quiet "Goodnight."

Later that night, a message arrived. It wasn't about the next visit. There's a place I've wanted to go. Are you free this week?

You read it twice. Then you typed back: Yeah, I'm free.

---

Wanda was already there when you arrived. She raised a hand when she saw you. The market ran along a stretch of flat ground near the water, vendor stalls extending in both directions. The morning was bright and cold at the edges.

You moved through the stalls without a plan. That was her pace, and you fell into it. She stopped when something caught her eye and kept moving when it didn't. Now and then she said something about what she was looking at─not quite commentary, not quite directed at you, something in between. You found yourself listening for it. Your hands stayed in your pockets.

At one stall, she stopped. A low table of carved wooden pieces, old stock mixed with newer work. She picked up a small bear, turned it over once, and held it out to you. There was something in her expression that wasn't quite a smile.

You took it from her. Her fingers and yours occupied the same space longer than a moment, and then it was gone.

The bear was palm-sized. The grain ran clean through the body. The weight was right, the stance considered. You turned it over. Wanda leaned in, her shoulder almost at yours.

"The feet," you said.

She looked. A pause. "They're not even."

"No." You turned it once more. "That's what makes it stand."

"You would notice the feet."

You set the bear back on the table. She looked at it for a moment, then moved on, her step lighter than it had been. You followed. The water was visible between buildings at intervals.

The walk back was longer than it needed to be.

---

After that, there were other days. A bookshop she had wanted to find. A film, one you'd wanted to see, and dinner afterward that neither of you had planned on. A place that turned out to be closed, and somewhere else you ended up instead.

By the third time, you had started to think about it before it arrived. By the fifth, you had stopped arguing with yourself about what to call it.

The meetings outside accumulated in small details─her order at a counter, the direction she walked without being asked, the way silence between you had started to feel like something shared. Enough had passed that you no longer reached for explanations.

It happened on a day when the completion of the commission was finally within reach. Wanda was in her usual spot, her posture easy. You were at the workbench with your back to her, working.

She said something quietly.

Your hands stopped.

The workshop held the sound for a moment. Then Wanda said your name.

You turned to face her. You looked her in the eye. You began to speak─

Before the sentence was done, she had already crossed the distance.

---

A short while later, you ran into Tony in the hallway outside Wanda's room. He looked at the two of you and didn't say anything for a moment. You held his gaze without flinching.

"Hello, Mr. Stark," you said.

Wanda, beside you, tightened her hand around your arm.

Tony's mouth moved into something unreadable. He glanced between you once, gave a single nod, and turned to go. Then, almost as an afterthought: "Good work." A beat. "Cap liked the figures, by the way. Nat had some thoughts about the photograph─the one where Wanda's figure caught the frame." He kept walking. "Just thought you'd want to know."