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It’s raining. Hard.
The kind of relentless, horizontal rain that makes the sky feel angry.
Most of the newsroom has already cleared out. One of the interns practically sprinted out an hour ago, muttering something about flood warnings. Agatha stayed. She always does. The click of her keyboard echoes in the near-empty space, steady and sharp, slicing through the hush like a warning.
She’s halfway through a piece she doesn’t care about—some city infrastructure update—and sipping a fourth cup of coffee that’s long gone cold when her phone lights up.
Unknown number.
She doesn’t answer unknown numbers. She has rules about that—boundaries. But something twists in her gut, something irrational and instinctive.
She answers.
“…Hello?”
The voice on the other end is breathless. Shaky. Female.
“Is this Agatha?”
Agatha stiffens. “Who’s calling?”
“It’s—I’m Alice. I work with Rio. At the station.” A pause. “She—she’s been in an accident.”
Agatha’s world tilts.
“What kind of accident?” Her voice is too even. Too calm. It’s the calm of a person whose body is holding its breath, bracing for impact.
“There was a call—a fire. Apartment complex downtown. They got most of the residents out. But there was a structural collapse. Rio was still inside.”
Still inside.
No. That’s not—
“She’s alive,” Alice adds quickly, like she knows what’s coming. “They got her out, but she’s in surgery. It’s bad. I—she wasn’t breathing when they pulled her, but the EMTs got her back. I didn’t know who else to—”
“You weren’t supposed to call me,” Agatha says.
It doesn’t come out angry. It comes out small. Hollow.
“I know.” Alice exhales shakily. “She didn’t list anyone. No emergency contact. Just the station. But I—I found your number. It was scribbled on the back of a photo. She didn’t list anyone for emergency contact, not even family. But she had your number.”
Agatha remembers that photo. Rio had claimed she hated it. Called it “the world’s least flattering shot of someone mid-sneeze.” But she hadn’t thrown it out. Just tucked it away, worn and creased, like a secret she couldn’t quite let go of.
“I thought you’d want to know,” Alice says quietly.
Agatha’s already moving. She grabs her coat, her keys. Her bag is still zipped open, files spilling out. She doesn’t care.
“I’ll be there in ten.”
“Agatha—”
She doesn’t wait for whatever else Alice was going to say. She ends the call. Slides the phone into her coat pocket with fingers that don’t feel like hers.
The elevator ride is too slow. The rain outside is a wall, but she doesn’t flinch.
It isn’t until she’s in the car, hands clenched so tightly around the wheel that her knuckles ache, that the first thought fully forms:
She didn’t list me.
Agatha swallows hard. Her throat burns.
She didn’t list her.
She didn’t call her.
But somehow, someone still knew.
The emergency room smells like bleach and cheap soap and something darker underneath—burnt plastic, scorched fabric. The air feels too cold, too bright, like it’s trying to sterilize the sheer chaos that lives here.
Agatha shoves the front doors open with both hands.
She’s soaked to the bone. Her coat is heavy and dripping, her hair sticking to her face, mascara smudged under her eyes. She doesn’t remember parking. She doesn’t remember running through the rain.
She just remembers Alice’s voice.
At the front desk, a tired-looking nurse glances up. “Can I help you?”
“I need to see Rio Vidal. She was just brought in. Firefighter—rescue team—injured on call.” The words tumble out too fast, her voice tight, too loud in the quiet.
The nurse’s expression doesn’t shift. “Are you family?”
Agatha hesitates. It’s barely a second, but the pause is fatal.
The nurse’s lips thin. “I’m sorry, ma’am. We can’t share information with—”
“She doesn’t have family,” Agatha snaps. “Not here.”
“I understand that, but if you’re not on the contact list, I—”
“She didn’t make a contact list.”
The nurse blinks. Agatha leans forward, voice dropping to something cold and sharp.
“I know because I wasn’t supposed to get the call. But I did. Because someone who gives a damn made a judgment call. So you’re going to make one too. And you’re going to tell me where she is.”
Something in her tone makes the nurse falter.
There’s a tense pause as she types something into the computer. “She’s in surgery,” the nurse says finally. “Critical condition. We don’t know how long it’ll take.”
“Then I’ll wait.”
“There’s a designated waiting room for trauma patients’ families—”
“I said I’ll wait.” Agatha’s voice cracks on the last word.
The nurse nods, gently points down the hallway. “Room 112. Around the corner. You’ll have privacy there.”
Agatha doesn’t thank her.
She just walks, shoes squeaking wet against the floor. Her limbs feel mechanical—jerky, too tight in her own skin. Like she’s wearing someone else’s body. Someone who knows how to fall apart and is just pretending to hold it together.
The waiting room is empty.
Two plastic chairs. One table. A stack of out-of-date magazines.
Agatha paces. For a long time, that’s all she does.
Back and forth. Back and forth. Hands clenched. Mouth pressed shut.
She tries to call Rio. It rings twice, then goes to voicemail.
She tries again. Same thing.
On the third try, it doesn’t even ring.
She curses, throwing the phone down on the table so hard it bounces. A nurse walks by and glances in, but doesn’t stop.
Agatha sits. Stands again. Runs her hands through her hair.
Minutes stretch.
Then an hour.
Someone brings her a paper cup of coffee. She doesn’t touch it.
Eventually, Alice shows up—wet hair in a ponytail, eyes red. She says something—“I’m sorry,” maybe, or “she’s strong,” or “they said the bleeding’s under control”—but Agatha barely hears it. She nods once. Doesn’t trust herself to speak.
She doesn’t cry.
Not yet.
Not here.
At some point, they let her in.
“She’s stable,” a nurse says. “Still sedated, but out of surgery.”
Agatha barely hears the instructions. Her legs carry her down another hallway, past another set of doors, until she’s standing in a private room that feels too white. Too clean.
Rio is there. Still. Silent.
She’s hooked up to machines that beep too loud in the silence. Her skin is pale, bloodless. There’s a gash stitched just above her brow, and bruises blooming along her temple and collarbone. One arm is wrapped tight in a cast. There’s a bandage across her ribs, tubes in her nose, wires everywhere.
Agatha stares.
Then she walks forward and takes Rio’s hand.
It’s warm. Barely.
She grips it hard enough her own fingers ache.
“You asshole,” she whispers. “You complete, reckless, self-sacrificing idiot.”
Her voice trembles.
“You don’t get to die without telling me first.”
She sinks into the chair beside the bed, jaw clenched, blinking fast.
“I mean it,” she murmurs. “If you pull some heroic stunt and flatline on me, I swear to God I will—I will find you in the afterlife and punch you in the throat.”
Rio doesn’t move. Just breathes, slow and shallow.
Agatha lowers her head, still holding her hand.
“I wasn’t supposed to be here,” she says, quieter now. “But I am. Because you didn’t list anyone. Because you didn’t tell anyone. Because you—” Her voice breaks. “Because you kept my number. And that was all it took.”
The silence stretches.
The machines beep.
And Agatha stays.
She doesn’t leave. Not for food. Not for water. Not for anything.
Just waits.
Because Rio didn’t ask her to come.
But Agatha came anyway.
Agatha doesn’t know how long she’s been sitting there.
Time warps in hospital rooms. It’s either too fast or too slow, and nothing in between. She watches the monitors like they’re holy things, sacred guardians of the only thing that matters in the world right now: the steady rise and fall of Rio’s chest.
Every beep is a temporary relief.
Every silence in between makes her stomach twist.
She hasn’t moved from the chair, not really. Just shifted positions a few times, tried not to let her leg go numb. She’s still holding Rio’s hand. At some point, she draped the blanket back over Rio’s shoulder when it slipped. It felt wrong, leaving her exposed like that. Vulnerable. As if she hadn’t just charged into a burning building like a goddamn martyr.
Agatha hates how peaceful she looks.
Like nothing hurts. Like there’s nothing left to fight.
“Don’t you dare,” she murmurs, barely audible. “Don’t you dare go out like this.”
She’s exhausted. Not the tired that sleep can fix. Bone-deep, soul-deep. The kind that settles in your chest and wraps around your ribs like something heavy and wet and unrelenting.
She looks at Rio’s face again, studies every inch of it—every freckle, every faint line, the fading scar just under her jaw. The one she got helping pull someone out of a wreck on the highway. She said it was nothing at the time, waved it off like she always did. Agatha hadn’t said it out loud then, but the scar scared her. This scares her.
“I didn’t even get to tell you,” she whispers, fingers brushing lightly against Rio’s. “That you can’t keep doing this. That I need you to stop making me fall harder and then throwing yourself into fire like it doesn’t matter.”
Her chest aches.
“I need you to wake up,” she says quietly. “And not because it would break me if you didn’t—though it would—but because you’re not done yet. You’re not.”
The room stays quiet.
The machines continue their rhythmic chant.
And Rio stays still.
So goddamn still.
Agatha leans back in the chair, jaw clenched so tightly it aches. She’s biting down on something—grief, maybe. Rage. Fear. All of it.
She stares at Rio’s hand in hers, thumb tracing the edge of a scar on her knuckle. A burn mark, probably. Rio had told her once where it came from, something about a stovetop and a rescue dog who wouldn’t sit still, but Agatha hadn’t been listening. Not really. She’d been too distracted by the way Rio laughed when she told the story, like pain didn’t count if it came with good intentions.
That’s the problem with Rio. She treats her body like it’s collateral.
Like it’s worth sacrificing. Like it’s fine if it breaks, so long as someone else walks away from the wreckage.
Agatha didn’t understand that at first. Thought it was some hero complex, something performative. But it wasn’t. It was worse than that. It was genuine.
Rio really would rather die than watch someone else suffer.
And that’s the part Agatha can’t forgive.
Not if she stays like this.
Not if she leaves Agatha behind without a word.
Agatha swallows hard and looks away, blinking fast.
The room buzzes softly with the hum of machines and fluorescent lights. Outside the door, a gurney wheels past. A nurse murmurs something into a walkie. Somewhere down the hall, someone cries—low and hopeless and quiet, the kind of crying Agatha knows too well.
She presses her fingers to her temple, breathing out hard.
She should’ve said more.
So many things she never said. Not out of fear, exactly. Just habit. A practiced silence she never quite learned how to break.
Like that morning a few days ago. Rio had made her breakfast, still in sleep-rumpled flannel and mismatched socks, humming something under her breath while flipping eggs. She’d slid a mug across the counter like it meant nothing—like the whole act wasn’t intimate in a way that had left Agatha stunned and speechless.
She should’ve said it then.
Should’ve told her how stupidly soft it made her feel.
How dangerous that softness was, and how she didn’t mind.
Should’ve said, “This feels like more than it’s supposed to,” and meant it.
But she hadn’t.
She’d just raised an eyebrow and said something sarcastic about cholesterol.
Rio had laughed. “You’re welcome, sunshine.”
And now here she was.
Hooked up to machines. Covered in bruises. Pale and silent and—still.
Agatha runs her thumb along the back of Rio’s hand again.
“Don’t you dare,” she whispers, more desperate now. “Don’t you dare leave me with that as the last thing I said to you in person.”
She lets her head fall forward, forehead brushing gently against Rio’s hand. Just enough to ground herself. Just enough to keep from falling apart completely.
It’s not a prayer, what she says next.
But it’s close.
“Please wake up.”
It starts small.
A twitch—barely a shift—but enough to jolt Agatha upright.
She doesn’t know how long she’s been sitting there. Her body is numb in parts, her fingers cramped from holding Rio’s hand too tightly, too long. Her whole world has narrowed to a chair beside a hospital bed and the shallow rise and fall of the woman in it.
So when she sees Rio’s fingers move again—this time not as a reflex but with a hint of intent—Agatha forgets how to breathe.
She leans forward, heart hammering. “Rio?”
No response. But there’s another twitch. Her mouth shifts. Her brow tightens like her body is trying to remember how to be in itself again.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Agatha says, voice trembling. “You’re okay. You’re in the hospital. You made it.”
Another long pause. Then slowly, painfully, Rio’s eyelids flutter.
They open a fraction. A glint of earthy brown beneath heavy lashes. Glazed, unfocused—but present. Alive.
Agatha laughs under her breath, a sound halfway between disbelief and devastation. “There you are.”
Rio blinks once. Tries again. Her head shifts toward the sound of Agatha’s voice like it’s a tether she doesn’t want to lose.
“You scared the absolute hell out of me,” Agatha mutters, trying and failing to sound even slightly annoyed. Her voice cracks halfway through.
Rio’s lips part slightly. No sound comes out.
“Don’t try to talk,” Agatha says quickly, brushing her fingers lightly across the back of Rio’s hand. “You’ve got tubes and wires sticking out of you like Frankenstein’s monster. Very flattering look, by the way.”
That earns her a faint twitch of the lips. A hint of the dry smile Rio always hides behind when she’s in pain and doesn’t want anyone to know.
Agatha squeezes her hand gently. “I wasn’t supposed to be here. But someone from the station found my number in your locker. You didn’t list anyone.”
Rio’s brow furrows faintly. Her eyes don’t leave Agatha’s face.
Agatha exhales. “You idiot,” she says softly. “You didn’t want me to worry, is that it?”
Rio blinks once. Slow. Guilt shadows her features.
Agatha leans closer, close enough their foreheads nearly touch. “Newsflash, Vidal: I worry about you constantly. Whether you let me or not.”
There’s a long pause.
Rio closes her eyes for a moment, not from pain—but from relief. She’s still there. Still listening.
Her thumb twitches again, brushing faintly against Agatha’s knuckles. A quiet gesture. Tender. Apologetic.
Agatha clings to it like it means something.
Because it does.
“Don’t you dare do that again,” she whispers, voice suddenly small. “Don’t you dare leave me with that stupid conversation about breakfast being the last thing I ever said to you.”
Rio opens her eyes again. They’re clearer now—still drugged, still tired, but focused. On her.
Her lips move again. Barely a whisper of sound.
Agatha leans in. “What is it?”
“Didn’t want… to worry you.”
Agatha closes her eyes. Lets out a shaky breath that sounds suspiciously like a laugh. “God, you’re a nightmare.”
She rests her forehead briefly against Rio’s hand, pressing her eyes shut. “You reckless, beautiful nightmare.”
Rio doesn’t say anything else. She can’t. Her energy is fading again, eyelids growing heavier with each blink.
“Sleep,” Agatha murmurs. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She raises the head of the bed a little with the remote. Fixes the blanket. Adjusts the IV line without being asked. She moves like someone who’s done this before, even though she hasn’t. Because she knows Rio. Knows her well enough to know she’ll pretend she’s fine the second she wakes again.
“You’re going to hate how much help you need,” Agatha mutters. “Try to fight me on it. I dare you.”
Rio’s eyes drift closed, but her hand stays in Agatha’s.
Still warm.
Still holding.
Agatha settles back in the chair and glances toward the hallway just as a nurse walks by. The woman pauses at the door, takes one look at Agatha curled in the seat, and quietly slips away. A few minutes later, she returns and drapes a folded blanket over Agatha’s shoulders without a word.
Agatha doesn’t say thank you. She can’t.
She just keeps her eyes on Rio.
Watches the rise and fall of her chest like it’s the most important rhythm in the world.
She still doesn’t say it out loud.
I love you.
But it’s there. In her hands. In her silence. In the stubborn way she stays.
And Rio knows.
She doesn’t say it either.
But she squeezes Agatha’s hand again.
And that’s enough.
It’s quiet now.
The adrenaline has burned off, leaving only the ache of everything that almost happened. The fluorescents have dimmed slightly, the room humming with that strange, clinical stillness that hospitals seem to cultivate like an ecosystem. The chaos of the ER feels miles away. Agatha could almost believe they’re the only two people on the floor.
Rio is sleeping.
Not unconscious—sleeping. The lines in her face have softened, the tension in her shoulders released. Her breathing is steady now. Her color’s better. She looks tired, yes, but no longer on the edge of something fatal.
Agatha hasn’t moved in nearly an hour.
Her fingers are still wrapped around Rio’s, even now that Rio’s grip has slackened into something looser, dream-soft. The blanket the nurse left is draped over her shoulders, forgotten. Her coffee’s long gone cold on the side table. She doesn’t notice. Her world is the pale curve of Rio’s cheek against the pillow. The slow, living rise of her chest.
It hits her then—not with force, but with weight.
How close she came to losing her.
And how completely, utterly wrecked she would’ve been.
She watches the IV drip tick in slow intervals, the soft beep of the monitor, the way Rio’s hand still rests within hers, even now. She watches the freckles across her wrist, the faint burn scars on her fingers, the bandage tucked around her forearm like a poor substitute for armor.
And for the first time in hours, Agatha lets herself really feel it.
The fear.
The anger.
The unbearable love that swells in her throat like something she doesn’t know how to live with, let alone name.
She doesn’t cry. Not quite. But her jaw tightens, her chest draws tight, and something old and careful and brittle inside her begins to crack.
She squeezes Rio’s hand again—softly this time, not like before when she was afraid Rio would vanish if she let go. Now, it’s something gentler. A tether, not a lifeline.
“You’re not allowed to do that again,” she whispers.
Rio doesn’t answer. Her brow twitches faintly, like she’s dreaming.
“You don’t get to go into burning buildings without telling me. You don’t get to almost die without a plan. You don’t get to keep shutting me out just because it’s easier to pretend this doesn’t mean what it means.”
She laughs quietly, bitter and fond in equal measure.
“God, I should be so mad at you.”
She lets her head fall back against the chair, looking up at the ceiling tiles. Her fingers stay where they are.
“But I’m not. I’m just…” She sighs. “I’m just so damn in love with you, it makes me stupid.”
There’s no one here to hear it but the walls and the beeping machines.
And Rio. Maybe.
Maybe.
She dozes off at some point. Not long—just a few minutes, her head tilted awkwardly against the edge of the mattress, her hand still in Rio’s.
She only stirs when something shifts. A breath. A rustle of sheets.
Rio is awake.
Only barely—her eyes half-lidded, lips dry and parted—but awake. Watching her.
Agatha straightens instantly. “Hey.”
Rio blinks slowly. Her hand tightens faintly in Agatha’s.
Agatha swallows hard. “You should be sleeping.”
Rio doesn’t answer. Just keeps looking at her like she’s trying to memorize her face.
Agatha feels her pulse spike again, softer this time. Not panic. Something else.
Rio’s fingers twitch. She tries to speak. Her voice is rough, broken. “Still here?”
Agatha nods. “Of course I am.”
Rio’s mouth curves—barely. But it’s there.
“I thought—” she starts, but winces. The words are too much.
“You don’t have to explain,” Agatha cuts in gently. “It doesn’t matter. You’re okay. That’s all I care about.”
Another beat. Rio’s throat works as she tries again.
“I didn’t think you’d stay.”
Agatha freezes.
The words hang in the air. Fragile. True.
Rio meets her eyes. Tired. Open. Honest in a way that hurts.
“I always stay,” Agatha whispers.
Another silence.
And then—Rio moves her thumb just slightly against Agatha’s hand.
The same motion as earlier, but slower. More deliberate.
A thank you. A question. A promise.
Agatha leans forward, presses her lips lightly to the back of Rio’s hand. No drama.
Just her.
Still here.
Still holding on.
Later, a nurse comes in. Checks vitals. Smiles at them both without comment.
“You need anything?” she asks Agatha quietly.
Agatha just shakes her head. “No. I’ve got what I need.”
The nurse nods and slips out.
Rio’s already dozing again. Agatha adjusts the blanket one more time. Pulls her chair closer. Resettles her weight until her head can rest gently beside Rio’s arm, close enough to feel the warmth of her.
There are still so many things left unsaid.
But they don’t feel heavy now.
Just quiet.
Just true.
And in the hush of the hospital room, under flickering lights and the rhythm of Rio’s steady breath, Agatha lets herself believe—for the first time in hours, maybe ever—that this love might be real.
And that Rio knows.
And that she feels it too.