I'm lying on my back in a bed that is too soft. The mattress gives under my weight like it's trying to swallow me, and I can't find the right angle to convince my spine that this is safe. My arms are at my sides, palms open, fingers spread against the cool cotton of the fitted sheet. I've been lying like this for what feels like hours, counting the seconds between breaths, waiting for the door to open.
The room is dim. A single lamp on the nightstand casts a small circle of gold light across the worn leather armchair in the corner. The shadows beyond it are thick and hungry, pooling in the corners like water. The window is cracked open a finger's width, and the air smells like rain and wet earth and something else — something clean I don't have a name for. Clean sheets. The smell of nothing chemical.
I should be able to sleep. I'm exhausted in a way that goes deeper than bone, a heaviness that sits in my chest like a stone. My eyes are dry and burning. My muscles ache from holding tension for so long that I've forgotten what it feels like to unclench. But every time I close my eyes, the darkness behind my lids is the same darkness as the cell, and my body remembers what happens in the dark.
So I keep my eyes open. I stare at the ceiling and try to map the texture of the plaster, the way the shadows from the lamp move when the breeze from the window shifts the curtains. I count the seconds. One. Two. Three. Four. The numbers are a rope I can hold onto, something to keep me from drifting into the place where the needles live.
Natasha is on the floor.
She's sitting with her back against the wall beside the door, her knees drawn up to her chest, her hands resting loose on her shins. She hasn't touched me since I lay down. She hasn't spoken. She's just — there. A shape in the dim light from the cracked door, her red hair a dark spill against the white wall, her breathing quiet and even. She's watching the space between us, not me directly, and I understand that she's giving me the gift of not being stared at.
I don't know why she stayed. I didn't ask. She just... settled against the wall like it was the most natural thing in the world, like she had nowhere else to be, and the question died in my throat before I could give it voice.
My fingers twitch toward the edge of the mattress. I catch myself reaching for something solid — the frame, the nightstand, anything that will ground me in this room instead of the one in my head — and I hear her shift. Not closer. Just adjusting. A small sound of fabric against skin, letting me know she's awake without having to say a word.
The silence stretches. The night presses against the window, dark and endless, and I can feel the hours ahead of me like a wound I have to survive. Hours of dark I don't know how to fill without counting seconds until the next session. Hours of lying here waiting for the door to open, for the woman in the lab coat to step through with a tray of needles and that calm, clinical expression that meant I was about to learn something new about what a body can endure.
I open my mouth to say something. I don't know what. Maybe I want to tell her she doesn't have to stay. Maybe I want to ask her what time it is, or what happens tomorrow, or if the door locks from the inside. But what comes out is a sound I didn't mean to make — a small broken thing, a hitch in my throat that escapes before I can swallow it, and it hangs in the air between us like smoke.
Natasha's hand appears in the space beside the bed. Palm up. Fingers loose. An offering.
It's not reaching for me. It's not grabbing, not demanding. It's just there, a few inches from the edge of the mattress, waiting. Her eyes are on the wall across from her, still not looking at me directly, and I understand that this is a choice I get to make. I can take her hand. I can let it lie there. I can roll over and pretend I didn't see it. The decision is mine.
I stare at her palm. The calluses on her fingers. The faint scars across her knuckles. The way her hand doesn't waver, steady as stone, patient as the tide.
My hand moves before I decide to move it. My fingers slide across the cotton sheet, over the edge of the mattress, and into the space she's made. I don't grip. I just rest my hand in hers, light as a leaf settling on water.
Her fingers close around mine. Gentle. Firm. Warm.
She doesn't say anything. She doesn't squeeze, doesn't pull, doesn't move. She just holds my hand like it's the most natural thing in the world, her thumb resting across my knuckles, and I feel something in my chest crack open.
I don't cry. I haven't cried in four years and eight months. I forgot how. But something in my throat tightens and loosens at the same time, and I take a breath that fills my lungs all the way down, deeper than I've breathed since the windowless room.
The night stretches on. The shadows don't retreat. The dark still presses against the window. But the hand holding mine is real, and warm, and I can feel her pulse through her palm, steady and alive. A counterpoint to my own racing heart.
Minutes pass. Or hours. I lose track.
"I used to count," I hear myself say. My voice is rough, scraped raw from disuse. "In the cell. I would count the seconds between the experiments. See how long I could make the number go before they came for me again."
Natasha doesn't respond. Her hand stays steady around mine.
"The highest I ever got was fourteen thousand three hundred and twenty-two." I pause. "That was a little under four hours."
Her thumb moves across my knuckles. A slow, deliberate stroke. Not a command. Just an acknowledgment. I hear you. I'm here.
"I don't know how to have more time than that," I say. "I don't know what to do with a whole night. A whole bed. A door I can walk through."
Her voice comes low and soft, barely above a whisper. "You don't have to know tonight."
I close my eyes. The dark comes, but it's different now. It's not the cell dark, not the hungry dark that waits for needles. It's the dark behind my eyelids with her hand in mine, the sound of her breathing, the smell of rain through the open window.
"Tell me about something," I say. "Anything. Something that happened today that was good."
She's quiet for a moment. Then: "There was a spider in the kitchen this morning. One of those little ones with the long legs. Tony tried to kill it with a spatula, missed, and knocked over a bowl of fruit."
A sound escapes me. It might be a laugh. It's rusty and strange, a foreign thing in my throat, but it's real.
"He stood there," she continues, "holding the spatula, staring at the overturned apples, and said, 'I'm going to need a bigger spatula.'"
The laugh comes again, stronger this time, and it hurts. It hurts in a way I don't have words for — a good hurt, the ache of a muscle waking up after being frozen too long.
"What happened to the spider?" I ask.
"It escaped. Probably living in the vents now, plotting its revenge."
I smile. It feels strange on my face, like a muscle I forgot I had. "Good."
Her hand squeezes mine once, a brief pressure, then loosens again. "Yeah," she says. "I thought so too."
The silence that settles after that is different. It's not the waiting silence. It's the resting silence. The silence of two people sharing a room without needing to fill it.
I turn my head on the pillow, just enough to see her. She's still sitting against the wall, her knees drawn up, her profile sharp in the lamplight. Her eyes are closed now. Her breathing has slowed. But her hand is still around mine, and I can feel her thumb resting against my palm, a point of contact that says still here.
"Natasha."
Her eyes open. She turns her head, and for the first time since I lay down, she looks directly at me. Those green eyes, dark in the dim light, unreadable and open at the same time.
"Thank you," I say. "For staying."
She holds my gaze for a long moment. Then she nods, a small motion, almost lost in the shadows. "You're not alone, Sigrun. Not anymore."
I don't know what to do with those words. They're too big, too heavy, too full of something I don't have a name for. So I just hold onto her hand and let the night settle around us.
The rain starts again, a soft patter against the window. The breeze carries the smell of wet earth and clean air. Somewhere in the compound, a pipe clicks and hums. The lamp casts its small circle of gold on the ceiling.
And I'm still awake, still alert, still waiting for the door to open. But for the first time in years, the waiting doesn't feel like dying. It feels like living. Just barely. Just starting. But real.
My grip on her hand tightens, just a fraction. She responds in kind. A conversation without words, spoken through the pressure of skin on skin.
I don't know if I'll sleep tonight. I don't know if I'll ever sleep the way I used to, without the weight of the cell pressing down on my chest. But I know that she's here, and that her hand is warm, and that the rain is falling on a world that doesn't have a needle waiting for me.
I turn my face toward the window, letting the cool air wash over my skin. My eyes are heavy. My body is still coiled tight, still ready to fight, still expecting the door to burst open. But the hand holding mine is patient. It doesn't rush. It doesn't demand.
And that patience is the most terrifying thing I've encountered since the extraction. Because it means she'll wait as long as it takes. It means I don't have to be ready before I'm ready. It means I get to move at my own pace, and she'll still be here when I get there.
I don't deserve that kind of patience. I don't know what I did to earn it. But it's here, in the pressure of her fingers around mine, and I'm too tired to argue with it.
The minutes pass. The rain fills the silence. And somewhere in the dark hours before dawn, my body finally lets go enough to drift. Not into sleep, not fully, but into a state somewhere between wakefulness and rest, where I can feel the weight of the blanket and the warmth of her hand and the steady rhythm of her breathing.
It's not safety. I don't know if I'll ever feel safe again. But it's something close. Something that could become safety, if I let it.
The first pale light of dawn is just beginning to creep through the window when I open my eyes again. The lamp is still on, casting its small circle of gold. The rain has stopped. And Natasha is asleep against the wall, her head tilted to the side, her hand still loosely holding mine.
I watch her for a long moment. The way the morning light catches the red of her hair. The softness that settles into her face when she's unconscious, the guard lowered, the sharp edges smoothed. She looks younger like this. More human. Less like the stories I've heard whispered in the facility's hallways.
I don't pull my hand away. I don't want to wake her. I want to stay here, in this moment, before the day begins and the questions start and the world asks me to be something I'm not ready to be.
So I lie still, my hand in hers, and watch the dawn fill the room.
The light changes. The shadows shift. And somewhere in the compound, a door opens, and I hear footsteps in the hallway. The day is beginning. The world is moving.
I don't know what comes next. Medical tests. Questions. The slow, painful work of becoming a person again. But I know that when I finally move, she'll move with me. Not holding me back, not pushing me forward. Just walking beside me, one step at a time.
I take a breath. The air tastes like rain and morning and the faint salt of tears I didn't shed. My hand is still in hers. And for the first time in four years and eight months, I think I might be ready to face the day.