The cold bit deeper the longer Void moved, soaked and shaking, trudging through the city's damp underbelly. The fall hadn't killed them - but it had stripped away the buffer Aura had always given everything. Now it was raw nerves. Reality without the filter.
And Void had no idea where the hell home was.
Not because they didn't have one. But because Aura was the one who knew how to get there. Void? She'd only ever ridden shotgun - snarking, analyzing, offering insight, sometimes screaming from the back of the mind while Aura drove with trembling hands and a heart that still hoped.
Now Void was in control. And the GPS was fucking fried.
She limped past the 3AM skeleton of a bus terminal, hugging herself for warmth, clothes dragging behind like ghosts of the fall. The lights stung her eyes. Her fingers twitched with every passing shadow. People looked at her - but not for long. Just another messed-up girl in a broken city.
"Alright, okay," she muttered to herself, pacing under a flickering sign, "think, you glitchy bitch. Aura always took the tram... No. No, wait. She stopped after that cunt left her, said she couldn't stand being around people anymore. Uber? Nah. She'd never spend money on that. She walked. From where?"
Void stared at the concrete like it might cough up a map.
She dug into the jacket's inside pocket. Empty. No phone. No ID. No keys. Just a plastic lighter and a half-crushed lip balm Aura hadn't used in weeks. She cracked the lighter, just once, watching the flame hiss against the wind.
"Useful as tits on a toaster."
Still, she pocketed it. It felt like Aura. Like her warmth was folded into the metal. That counted for something.
It took Void two hours of wandering before she recognized a single goddamn landmark.
A corner bakery with the faded lesbian flag sticker Aura had once pointed at and smiled, saying, "See? We exist in the wild." A stupid thing, but Void clung to it like it was a lifeline. She spun slowly, looking at the cracked sidewalk, the rusted railings, the grime-painted alley nearby.
"C'mon, c'mon... where'd you go from here, girl? Left? Right? You always liked the park..."
She closed her eyes.
"Okay, Aura, help me out. I know you're in here somewhere. Whisper, flicker, give me a fucking hint."
Nothing.
Then a pull.
Not a sound or a word. Just a gut feeling, like the body tilted forward on its own. She followed it. Past shuttered convenience stores, under humming power lines, through the belly of the city with her hair still dripping and her soul unraveling thread by thread.
It was dawn when she saw the building.
An ugly concrete block of Soviet leftovers, blank windows and a keypad rusted from a decade of nicotine fingers. It didn't look like a sanctuary. But the stomach-clenching relief that punched into Void's chest when she saw it?
That was real.
"Holy shit, this is it."
The body moved on its own again - like Aura had left some muscle memory in the sinew and bone. Elevator. Fifth floor. Apartment 428. The code? Her thumb hovered. Four digits. Aura's birthday?
She typed it in. Nothing.
"Of course not," Void huffed. "She was never that obvious."
Then she remembered. Not a date. Not a number.
A song.
She punched in 2013.
Never Fade Away.
The lock buzzed open.
Inside, the apartment smelled like peppermint tea, candlewax, and dried tears. Everything was still. The blanket was crumpled on the couch, tarot deck on the floor. Her hoodie hung on the chair like it was still wrapped around shoulders that didn't feel safe anymore. already died by Mylie Taylor played in the background the way it did when Aura left the place with her mind made up as to what's gonna happen next.
Void dropped to her knees in the doorway.
This place was sacred. A mausoleum. A battleground.
"You lived in here like a fucking ghost, Aura," she whispered. "But damn it... you loved this place."
She crawled to the bed and curled up on top of it, soaked clothes staining the sheets, cheek pressed to a pillow that still smelled like Aura's shampoo. Her voice - fragmented now.
"You really left me to figure all this out on my own, huh?"
A pause.
Then, very faintly - maybe memory, maybe madness - she heard a whisper, a laugh, a sigh:
"No, Void... I left you the pieces. You wanted to build? Build."