In the previous chapter...
Tracy smiled with a sad, understanding smile. "Then maybe that's our pact under the rain," she said, symbolically extending the hand that had held the umbrella. "I promise not to burn myself out so much on this painting—which I'm not even sure what it's about—until dawn too often. And you… you promise to look for a kind of structure that doesn't include beating yourself up or consuming insane amounts of coffee and cigarettes. Even if it's just a little, taking it one day at a time."
It was an impossible promise, born from a moment of pure human connection, free from the entanglements of Alyx's past. But in that moment, under the yellow umbrella—a symbol of a future Alyx desperately wanted to protect—she simply nodded.
"One day at a time," she repeated, and for the first time, the phrase didn't sound like a cliché, but like a tangible, almost revolutionary plan.
Tracy smiled—a warm, nonjudgmental gesture. "I have an abnormally good sense of smell. It's not a useful superpower, except for detecting spoiled milk and… unhealthy habits in potential rain-soaked friends," she said, her voice soft and calm. "And between the smell of rain and paint, there's a ghost of bitter coffee and tobacco. It's persistent, like a clear reminder that you don't know how to let them go."
Alyx looked at her own hands, imagining the scent that must have clung to her like a second skin. The fact that Tracy had noticed it—that she had seen beyond the disguise of serenity and loose clothing and had perceived the truth simply from the air around her—amazed Alyx. This stranger, who she had just met, was the first person in months who not only saw her symptoms but smelled them, and yet didn't recoil. That, more than any speech, completely disarmed her.
"Take care, Alyx," Tracy said, and this time her words were more than a farewell—they were a blessing wrapped in a deeply sincere wish. Carefully, she took the umbrella from Alyx's numb hand. "I hope you find that new story for the earring—one that belongs only to you."
And then she was gone. The figure with the small acoustic instrument and the yellow umbrella melted into the fog, leaving Alyx on an island of sudden stillness, watching the yellow umbrella recede like a beacon in the damp night, strangely bright.
Alyx stood there, feeling the weight of the promise and the echo of her own warning. She knew she hadn't directly changed the future—she hadn't revealed any secrets. But she had planted a seed, both in Tracy and in herself. That warning hadn't just been for Tracy; it had been like looking into a mirror for herself. To save others—whether Tracy, Marshall, Lily, or those she loved—from the clear precipices she saw, she first had to save herself from falling into her own, headfirst and without a parachute.
The earring in her pocket—the mate to the one Lily had returned—no longer felt like a stone. Now, she felt its outline with a newfound curiosity. It was a key, yes. But not to unlock the past. It was to close one door and find the lock for the next. The conversation under the rain with the woman whose name she knew from a future she now desperately wished to alter had been the first turn of that lock.
Her walk back to the apartment was different. The same steps on the same wet streets, but her rhythm had changed. It was no longer the slow march of a prisoner returning to her cell, nor the anxious flight of a fugitive. It was the deliberate step of someone who, for the first time in months, saw a curve in the descending path she had been walking.
Now there were two paths. The left, a familiar downward spiral full of coffee, the gym, and canvases with silhouettes silently screaming at her. To the right... something unexplored, full of possibilities without ashes.
As she climbed the stairs of her building, her hand didn't tremble when she searched for her keys. Opening the door, she was greeted by the smell of coffee and paint—a reminder of what she had promised to leave behind, one day at a time.
She approached the canvas she had hidden in her room the day before when the group came for the intervention. She saw the silhouette, full of color, and how she had felt empty just hours ago, directionless, with nothing. But now she felt a determination to survive herself.
She took the silver earring from her pocket and held it under the dim light of the lamp. It had a faint shine. And though it was no longer the symbol of the promises between three now-broken people, here in her hands, in this apartment, after a conversation that belonged only to her, she saw it beginning to transform. It could become a reminder that even broken things can be kept—not as relics of pain, but as memories of something that was real. And that reality, with all its pain, was preferable to hiding in the hell of self-imposed punishment that numbed that memory.
Her phone buzzed. It was a message from Robin. But it didn't contain the expected interrogation. Instead, it was an invitation laden with concern. Attached was a blurry photo of Barney trying to do a fire trick at MacLaren's to impress a pretty blonde, with Ted rolling his eyes in the background. The caption read: "We miss your look that says from a mile away, 'You're being an idiot, Barney.' Take care. – R."
Alyx looked at the photo and, though she didn't smile, she felt the initial tension when the message arrived relax slightly. She saw what they were trying to say: they were there. Maybe not perfect, not with all the answers on how to help her—that was clear—but they were there, in their own clumsy, pathetic, yet always genuine way.
She didn't reply to the message. She wasn't ready for that yet. But she didn't delete it either. It was proof that the outside world, with all its chaos and imperfect affection, still existed.
So, she simply took the canvas of the silhouette, removed it from its stand, and carried it to where a living room should be (though she only had a bench). Placing the now-finished artwork on the wall, she thought only that tomorrow, maybe she would go to the gym. Or maybe not. She might just go for a walk, or sit in a café and watch people pass by. She could do or not do many things outside her previously imposed schedule. But tonight, she just sat on her bench, feeling the dampness in her clothes and the echo of an unexpected conversation under a yellow umbrella, and decided to stop fighting in silence. Instead, she would now listen to herself, without silencing that inner Voice.
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