The pen in Astra's hand had not moved. It hovered above the notebook like it had been waiting all along, its point catching the light from the window. But her eyes weren't on the page—they were on Gael. He sat in the same stillness as before, his posture perfect, his face unreadable. Sixteen and yet carved with a kind of poise that felt older, almost unsettling in how controlled it was. The sunlight slanted across his cheekbones, giving his profile a sculpted edge, and for a moment, Astra forgot herself. "Memories," she said softly, almost as if the word were an invocation. "They aren't just stories, Gael. They're echoes of how we first learned to survive the world." Her voice lingered longer than it should have, brushing the air between them like the trace of a hand. Gael didn't shift, didn't blush, didn't respond the way other boys his age might. He only blinked, slow and deliberate, as though turning her words over like an object he could not name.
"You remember what came after the diagnosis, don't you?" Astra leaned forward slightly, elbows resting on her knees, closing the space between them. The lavender scent of her perfume floated closer, intimate now, no longer just background. "Tell me, Gael. Walk me into it. Show me what the child version of you saw." Her tone was gentle but too warm, too personal for the role she was supposed to play. She knew it, and yet she didn't pull back. Maybe because Gael's condition excused the slip. Maybe because part of her wanted him to notice, even if he couldn't feel. Gael's eyes flicked to hers at last, steady, unblinking. For the first time, it felt as though he were holding her gaze—if not to connect, then to trap it. "The car," he said finally. His voice was flat, but the sound of it in the quiet room held weight. "After the doctor's office." Astra's chest rose slowly as she breathed in, controlled, attentive. "Good," she murmured, almost under her breath. "Take me there." And with that, Gael's world began to fold backward, the edges of the office dissolving into the dim blur of his childhood memory.
The office air seemed to dim around me, and suddenly, it was not Astra's steady eyes I was staring into, but the smudged car window from so many years ago. Raindrops clung to the glass, rolling down in crooked lines like the world outside was melting. I was small again—legs too short to dangle past the seat, hands pressed flat against the cold window. My reflection stared back, pale and expressionless, the shape of a child who looked like he should be crying but wasn't. Mother sat in the front, her knuckles white around the steering wheel. She didn't speak, but the silence was loud—thicker than the rain pattering above us. Every so often, I would hear her breath catch, sharp like she had swallowed glass, but she never let the sound turn into words. Beside her, Father leaned back, jaw tight, his hand drumming once, twice, against the door before curling into a fist. The air between them carried weight I couldn't measure, though I could see how it bent her shoulders lower, how it made him bite down harder on nothing at all.
I remember watching them, not feeling, just noting. The way the windshield wipers scraped back and forth, frantic and desperate. The way the world outside blurred, but the tension inside stayed sharp. I knew something was wrong, though wrong was only a word then, not a sensation. Mother's eyes flicked up to the rear-view mirror once, landing on me. Red-rimmed, glassy, but desperate to stay strong. "It's going to be alright, Gael," she whispered, almost as if she was trying to convince herself more than me. I didn't nod. I didn't answer. I just stared back, and when she realized I wasn't giving her anything, she broke her gaze, as though the silence hurt more than any reply could. The car smelled faintly of wet leather and Father's cologne, sharp and overwhelming. That scent burned itself into me—more memory than feeling, more permanence than comfort. And still, I sat there, quiet, watching droplets race each other down the glass while my parents drowned in storms I couldn't understand.
The ride stretched on like an endless corridor. Rain softened into mist, but the silence never broke. I remember Father finally speaking, his voice sharp enough to cut the air. "Elara, drive faster. You're dragging this out." Mother's fingers tightened around the wheel. She didn't answer, but the muscles in her jaw worked, grinding through a storm she wasn't allowed to voice. I leaned my forehead against the cool glass, watching streetlights smear into long yellow streaks. Somewhere deep down, I understood their words had nothing to do with driving, though I couldn't tell you what they were really about. It was noise, a rhythm of anger and endurance, bouncing around a space too small for all of us. When we finally pulled into the driveway, the world seemed to hold its breath. The house loomed with its dark windows and crooked gutters, a shape I knew as home but one that felt like a stranger.
Mother shut off the ignition. Her hands lingered on the wheel, stiff, refusing to move. Father sighed—no, not sighed, it was a sound closer to disgust—and shoved his door open. The slam cracked through the rain-soaked air. I stayed still, waiting for someone to tell me what to do. Mother turned, finally meeting my eyes again. Her lips pressed together in something that might have been an attempt at a smile, but it never reached the rest of her face. "Come on, Gael," she said softly, as if the words were fragile. "Let's go inside." I unbuckled without hesitation. There was no sadness, no comfort, just movement. My small shoes splashed against the wet concrete as I followed her, keeping a measured distance, like a shadow that didn't know where to belong. Inside, the house smelled of damp wood and faintly of old cigarettes. The silence followed us in, heavier now, wrapping around the narrow hallways. Father's footsteps pounded ahead of us, heavy and restless. The sound echoed off the walls, filling the house with a tension I couldn't name. Mother's hand grazed my shoulder briefly as she guided me toward the living room. Her touch was warm, trembling. She wanted it to mean something. I only registered it as pressure, weight, direction. Nothing more. I sat on the edge of the sofa, watching them from the corner of my eye. The storm wasn't over. It was only gathering inside these walls.
Father's pacing started before the door had even settled in its frame. He moved like a man with nowhere to go but too much energy to sit still, his footsteps scuffing against the hardwood. Every pass he made sent a ripple through the air, like the house itself knew it should brace. Mother set her purse down on the table, slow and deliberate, as though the stillness of her movements could smother his restlessness. Her hands lingered there too long, fingers tapping the leather, betraying nerves she tried to disguise. "Dorian," she said finally, her voice careful, the kind of careful that wasn't gentle at all. "Let's just… let it be. Tonight isn't the night." He stopped pacing, but the silence that followed was louder than his steps. His head turned, sharp and sudden, his shadow stretching across the room under the dim ceiling light. "Not the night?" His voice cracked like dry wood. "Elara, when is it ever the night? You sit there pretending it's fine, pretending he's fine, and you don't see it. You never do." I kept my eyes on the floor, on the faint stains in the rug I couldn't name, on the way the fibers bent differently under the lamplight. Their voices rose and fell above me, not quite words, just shapes in the air, jagged and thick.
Mother's voice cut back in, sharper now. "He's a child, Dorian. He's three years old. You can't blame him—" "Don't you tell me what I can or can't blame!" His fist struck the wall with a thud that rattled a picture frame above the couch. The glass clinked inside its casing, a trembling sound that hung in the air. I looked up briefly, not at him, not at her, but at the frame. The photograph was tilted now, one corner sinking lower, a face inside frozen in happier times. My eyes traced the angle of the tilt, wondering if it would fall. Mother flinched, but then she straightened, as if bracing herself against a wind. "You're scaring him." I didn't feel scared. I only noted the volume, the force of her words compared to his, the imbalance of their voices pressing against each other like waves on stone.
"Scaring him?" Father laughed, a sound so hollow it scraped the air. He took a step toward her, his body filling the space between them like a wall. "He doesn't even feel it, Elara. Don't you get it? He's empty. Nothing's there. And you want me to sit and act like that's normal?" His words cut sharper than his fists. I didn't understand them then, but they lingered, heavy and strange. He spoke like I wasn't in the room, like I was furniture, like I wasn't real at all. Mother's hand rose, not in defense but in defiance, trembling but steady enough. "Don't say that in front of him." He leaned closer, voice low and venomous. "Why not? He doesn't hear me the way we do. He never will." The air pressed in tighter. Their shadows loomed larger under the dim light, their figures twisting into shapes I couldn't place. Something inside me knew what was coming next, though I didn't feel it—only observed, like the way I noticed rain streaking glass. The house had become too small for both of them.
The strike still echoed in my head when Astra's voice cut in. "Gael." The name rolled from her lips like a whisper meant for only him. I blinked, and the living room dissolved—the stain of blood on the tile, Mother's trembling frame, Father's shadow—all of it peeled away until I was back in the present, in the narrow glow of the therapist's office. Astra leaned forward, close enough that her perfume reached me before her words did. She wasn't across the room anymore; she was perched at the edge of her chair, her face tilted, her lips only a breath away from my ear as she spoke low, intimate. "You don't have to tell me everything at once. Some memories… they cut too deep." Her words brushed soft against me, but it was her closeness that lingered, deliberate and slow, like she wanted me to notice even if she believed I couldn't.
Her gaze moved over me, lingering longer than it should have—on my jaw, my eyes, the silence I carried. A smile ghosted across her lips, thin but knowing, as if she was pulling me back not just from memory but into her gravity. "You're doing so well, Gael," she murmured, almost against my skin. "But let's stop here… for now." I nodded once, not because I agreed, but because the room was quiet again. The noise of Father's rage had vanished, replaced by Astra's presence—warm, persistent, too close. She lingered near me even after the session's end, her hand brushing against the back of my chair, her lips curving with something unspoken. And still, I felt nothing.
Astra's voice lingered in the room even after her words had stopped, like the last vibration of a string. She stayed close, closer than any therapist should, her lips curving into something softer than professional. "You're… different, Gael," she whispered, her eyes locked on mine. "Most people would break telling me what you just did. But you…" She tilted her head, studying me the way one studies a puzzle they don't want to solve too quickly. "You stay untouched." Her fingers drifted to the notepad in her lap. She tore out a small sheet of paper, the sound sharp in the silence, and scribbled something with quick, looping strokes. Without asking, she slipped it into my hand, her fingertips brushing against my palm longer than necessary. When I unfolded it, an address stared back at me—an address that wasn't here.
Astra leaned in again, her lips so close to my ear that the warmth of her breath sent a shiver down my skin. "If the memories ever get too heavy," she murmured, "you can come here instead." A pause, then a playful curl in her voice: "But only before midnight." Her smile when she pulled back was almost a secret. I folded the paper neatly, without reaction, and slid it into my pocket. And still, I felt nothing.