"So you are ready to die here, eh?"
Your laugh broke the stillness.
It wasn't loud. It wasn't cruel.
It was soft, almost amused and that was what shattered me.
"You will die," you continued calmly, "but you still won't let me go. Tell me… why are you attached to me, when nothing will be yours in the end?"
Your laughter was the most beautiful sound I had heard since the day I met you.
And it hurt more than anything you had ever said.
I leaned my head back against the cardboard box, its rough edge catching in my hair, grounding me in the dark. For a moment, I closed my eyes and let the sound of you exist inside me.
"Yes," I whispered at last, my voice thin, almost weightless in the moonlit room. "I am ready."
I swallowed, my throat dry.
"I've spent my entire life acquiring things, companies, land, people. But everything I ever bought was already willing to be sold." A faint, broken smile touched my lips. "You're the only thing that ever said no to me. The only thing that never had a price. That's why I want you."
I turned my face toward the box, pressing my cheek against it, trying to feel the vibration of your breath through the thin wall between us.
"You ask why I'm attached," I murmured. "You think you're teaching me something about the world that money fades, that power rots. You think I'm just a greedy woman clinging to another possession."
A dry chuckle escaped me, turning into a soft cough.
"But you don't understand how a heart like mine works."
My fingers lifted, tracing the outline of the box in the darkness, not possessive but reverent.
"If nothing goes with me into the grave," I said quietly, "then I want that nothing to be you. If the end of everything is a void, then I want us to fall into it together."
I hugged my knees to my chest as a chill crept through the vast room. Hunger gnawed at me.
"I don't care about owning your future anymore," I continued. "Or rewriting your past. I just want to be the reason you don't reach whatever it is you're searching for. I want to be the final distraction."
My voice lowered, soft but sharp with intent.
"You say you're ready to die here," I whispered. "Then let's make it a ceremony."
You chant your name.
I'll count your breaths.
You pray to your ghost.
I'll hold this box like it's my altar.
"If I can't be the goddess you worship," I said, a tremor slipping into my tone, "then I'll be the demon that keeps you from her."
Slowly, carefully, I reached into the opening of the box not to pull you out, not to steal you away but to find your hand in the dark. I needed to feel the pulse at your wrist. To measure time. To know how long we had left.
"Tell me, Manu," I whispered, my forehead resting against the edge. "Does your Radha feel this cold? This hunger? Does she bleed when she's cut?"
My fingers curled gently around yours.
"I am real," I said softly. "I am here."
"Why, is Radha worth more than the woman who is dying at your feet?".