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The rain had started sometime after midnight.
Emil noticed because the sound against the windows changed. The tapping was soft at first, then gradually gained a rhythm. Got heavier. Fingers—almost like fingers—tapping against the glass.
He opened his eyes slowly. The room was dark except for the little lamp beside Ada’s desk. She had fallen asleep there again, her cheek pressed against an open notebook, her left hand still loosely holding a pen.
He stared at her for a while. He always did whenever he had the chance. And besides, Ada always looked different asleep.
She looked smaller, less composed.
During the day she carried herself like someone balancing a glass of water that could never, ever spill. Every movement she made was careful and deliberate—elegant in a clinical sort of way, of course. But asleep, she looked tired enough to…
…well, break.
Emil pushed himself upright carefully, the blankets slipping from his shoulders. His head hurt less tonight, which alone felt miraculous.
The floorboards creaked under his bare feet as he crossed the room. Immediately, Ada stirred.
Even half-conscious, she noticed him moving. It was like some terrible instinct she had.
“Emil?” Her voice came rough with sleep.
He crouched beside her chair. “Sorry.”
“You’re apologising for walking?”
He nodded. Ada exhaled softly through her nose, not quite a laugh. “Come here.”
He rested his head against her knee almost automatically. There was something… domestic about the motion that would’ve concerned anyone else, but Ada only threaded her fingers through his tangled hair with absent familiarity.
There were scars hidden beneath the strands. She knew every single one by touch.
The rain continued outside.
“Bad dream?” she asked softly.
Emil hesitated. “C…Couldn’t remember if it was a memory.”
She paused—then immediately resumed petting his hair, slower this time.
“You’re here,” she murmured. “Not there. Not anymore.”
There. The circus. With the dogs. Then the asylum. Then the straps and the white rooms. Then the electricity crawling through his bones—over them, underneath them….
Sometimes, Emil thought Ada hated those memories more than he did. He wasn’t sure if it was because they hurt him, necessarily, but because they were the one thing she couldn’t erase.
Because she was a woman obsessed with fixing things.
And Emil was built almost entirely from fractures.
“You should sleep properly,” he said after a while, looking at the notebook beneath her arm, at the pages and pages of observations written in precise handwriting.
Mood changes, sleep disturbances, response to stimuli…
She had promised she would stop recording things clinically. Mostly, she had.
Mostly.
Ada looked down at the papers like she’d forgotten they existed.
“Right.”
Emil watched her carefully. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
"Thinking too hard.”
A faint smile tugged at her mouth. “That’s… rich coming from you.”
Emil frowned slightly. “I don’t think too hard, not like you. I don’t think… I don’t think at all.”
“You do,” she said softly. “Just differently.”
That answer seemed to satisfy him, the tingly feeling in his chest, the migraine throbbing louder, but it didn't hurt.
Emil rested his cheek more heavily against her leg. Ada continued combing her fingers through his hair, slower and slower until the movement became almost sleepy itself.
Something was unsettling about how naturally they fit together. How it felt… inevitable. Like ivy wrapping around a collapsing house.
After a long silence, Emil spoke again.
“If I remembered… everything…” he murmured, eyes half-lidded, “would you still like me?”
Ada's expression changed immediately.
Humans.
They really do ask the most devastating questions at one in the morning.
Ada tilted his chin upward gently.
“Emil,” she said, very carefully, “there is nothing you could remember that would make me leave.”
It sounded romantic, albeit a little frightening. But to him? It sounded like music—beautiful and intense, but somehow broken and quiet at the same time.
Because she meant it. Completely meant it.
Emil studied her face for a long moment, like he was trying to memorise it all over again.
“Thank you.”
He leaned forward, burying his face against her stomach. Ada stiffened in surprise before relaxing almost instantly, wrapping an arm around his shoulders.
Outside, thunder rolled somewhere distant. And inside, the lamp glowed warm against the dark, illuminating two people holding each other like the world would end if they stopped.
And maybe for them, it would.