Chapter Text
The morgue smells like citrus disinfectant and old breath.
Nico stops noticing after the first year. The cold becomes ordinary; the quiet becomes mercy.
He writes the time of death in block letters. He washes his hands until the skin splits. Sometimes he thinks he can hear the bodies whisper—just the air-conditioning, probably.
When he looks at the glass doors of the freezer, he sees his reflection blink a second too slow. Bianca used to blink that way when she was tired.
&&
Nico first realizes that death is permanent at age ten, when Bianca forgets to wake up.
They call it sleep at first — an extended, painless one — and he believes it until the housekeeper whispers condolences that don’t mean anything.
He doesn’t cry. He waits. Because she always comes back.
But she doesn’t.
When Hazel is born two years later, the world expects him to start over.
He doesn’t.
&&
Hazel texts him at noon: eat something that’s not coffee.
He sends back a photo of a sandwich still in its wrapper.
She replies with a heart.
He throws the sandwich away untouched.
&&
Bianca lives in small things now:
—the static on the morgue radio that cuts out mid-song
—the smell of her shampoo on strangers in the street
—the way he keeps setting two plates at the table and pretending it’s habit.
He tells himself he’s over it. The lie gets easier the more it repeats.
&&
Hazel first realizes that Nico is not her brother in the same way she is his sister at age eleven.
He speaks like every sentence is a closed door.
He smiles only when no one looks.
She calls him “Nico,” not “brother,” and he never corrects her.
At family dinners, she is praised for “bringing light back into the house.”
Nico stops showing up to dinner.
&&
Hazel visits on her day off, brings soup, rearranges his plants. She talks about her job, about Will, about the sun.
He listens without really hearing.
“You look thin,” she says.
“I’m conserving energy.”
“You mean starving.”
“Same difference.”
Her jaw tightens. “You think grief is a personality trait.”
He shrugs. “It’s the only one that stuck.”
Later, when she hugs him goodbye, his ribs click like piano keys.
&&
Will first meets Nico in a hospital stairwell, spring 2021.
Nico had been called in to move a body to the morgue.
The girl couldn’t have been older than Bianca was when she died.
Same dark hair. Same small, quiet face.
He stood there too long, staring, until someone told him to sign the papers and go.
Will found him by accident on the stairs, crying into his hands, the way people cry when the sound can’t get out.
Will doesn’t say anything — just sits three steps below him, close enough to be real but not close enough to touch. because proximity is mercy, and mercy is all he knows how to give.
When Nico finally speaks, it’s without looking up, his voice sounds far away.
“She died again.”
Will doesn’t understand until later that grief doesn’t stay buried. It finds new names, new faces, and comes back.
Grief never dies. It just learns new ways to stay.
&&
He dreams of Bianca most nights, but the dreams are mundane—folding laundry, walking home from school. In one, she asks him to hold her hand and he can’t; his fingers pass through air.
He wakes with his hands clenched so hard the nails draw blood.
At work, he catalogues a new intake, a young woman drowned. The tag around her wrist reads Bianca A. for a split second before his vision clears. He laughs under his breath and it echoes in the stainless steel.
&&
Hazel calls again.
“Come for dinner. Will’s cooking.”
He says he’s busy.
“You work nights. It’s barely five.”
“Then I’m sleeping.”
“You don’t sleep.”
He ends the call.
Later, guilt tastes like rust in his mouth.
&&
Will loves Nico like a terminal diagnosis he refuses to acknowledge.
He brings him coffee every morning, drives him to work when Nico’s car won’t start, calls him “sunshine” even though he means it ironically.
Nico doesn’t laugh.
He says, “You can’t fix people by loving them.”
Will answers, “I know.”
He doesn’t.
&&
There’s a locker in the morgue he never uses. Inside, he keeps a violet she once gave him, long dead, the petals like ash. Sometimes he opens it just to check it’s still there—proof that something can stay gone.
&&
Bianca shows up in the kitchen on a Wednesday.
She looks exactly the same as when she left—hair half-wet, cardigan buttoned wrong, that absentminded tilt of her head that meant I’m listening, but I’m already gone.
Nico doesn’t ask what she’s doing here. He just keeps stirring his coffee until it goes cold.
“You’re wasting away,” she says.
He answers, “It’s fashionable.”
She laughs, soft and cruel. “You still think jokes make you human.”
She also shows up in flashes:
A child’s laugh too close to her pitch.
A flicker of movement behind frosted glass.
A sentence half-remembered, finishing itself in his head.
She never speaks again, but he hears her anyway.
&&
Hazel texts: You’re scaring me.
Nico sits with the message open for a long time.
He types: I’m fine.
Erases it.
He tries again: I don’t know how to stop hurting.
Deletes that too.
He writes: I’m scared, Hazel.
Backspaces until there’s nothing left.
For a second, his thumb hovers over her name, like he’s about to send something, anything.
Then he locks the phone.
It lights up once in his hand, waiting for him to change his mind.
He doesn’t.
&&
Hazel calls every Sunday.
“How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Are you eating?”
“I think so.”
“Do you miss me?”
“Sure.”
After the third week, she stops asking.
&&
One evening he stays late, inventorying belongings. Wallets, watches, wedding rings. He lists them, labels them, files them. It feels like prayer.
When he finally looks up, the clock is blinking 3:03 AM.
Someone has written on the fogged glass of the observation window: still here.
He wipes it away. His hand comes back wet and shaking.
&&
Hazel stops by unannounced two days later.
“You look awful,” she says.
“Occupational hazard.”
“You smell like bleach.”
He almost says you smell like her, but swallows it.
They eat in silence. She pushes her plate away halfway through.
“I can’t keep visiting you like this,” she says.
He doesn’t look at her. “I didn’t ask you to.”
She breathes in too fast. “That’s what hurts. You never ask. Not for help. Not for anyone.”
The air between them folds in on itself.
Nico’s fingers twitch against the table, the small tremor of someone fighting the need to reach back.
He says nothing.
She waits like maybe silence will turn into an answer.
It doesn’t.
When she leaves, the door stays half open, as if it’s waiting for him to change his mind.
He doesn’t.
He just stands there until the light burns out.
&&
Bianca’s photo sits on the counter. He turns it face-down, then right-side-up again. It doesn’t help.
He tries music; every song ends where hers used to.
He tries work; every name tag reads hers for a second.
He tries forgetting; memory rots slower than flesh.
&&
One night, after too many hours and too little sleep, he walks home through the industrial district. The sky is the color of hospital light. His reflection follows in every dark window, thin, half-there.
He whispers, “You can stop now.”
The echo answers, “You first.”
&&
He writes a note he doesn’t send:
Hazel—
Don’t look for me.
Tell Will the sun sets fine without me. Know that you and him are the only thing that made me hesitate.
I’ve been trying to find a way to stay, but every room sounds like an echo now, and I don’t belong in any of them.
You deserve someone who looks at you and still sees the world, not someone counting exits.
Will deserves someone who can love him without breaking him for it.
I’m not sure what comes next.
Maybe rest. Maybe nothing. Maybe somewhere I can stop being a ghost.
Don’t wait for me.
If I can, I’ll send a sign.
If I can’t—
you’ll know why.
N.
He folds it small and leaves it on the kitchen counter beside the photo.
&&
At dawn, he locks the morgue for the last time. The key stays in the door. He walks toward the sea.
No one sees him leave.
&&
Outside, the air smells like rain and endings.
Bianca walks beside him, shadow thin and steady.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
He says, “Somewhere quiet. Somewhere it doesn’t hurt.”
She nods. “That’s all you ever wanted.”
&&
When Hazel calls that afternoon, the line rings into silence.
When Will checks the apartment, the coffee cup is still warm.
&&
Bianca hums somewhere in the walls.
The morgue freezer clicks shut.
&&
&&
It’s rather quiet, in the end.