They came down from the roof just before dawn, the sky bruised with the first hints of light, like even the sun was mourning something it couldn't name.
Inside the shelter, the air had turned still. Too still.
Lilly felt it before she saw it. That gut-deep instinct that death leaves behind like smoke.
She moved fast, Sam close behind her, back into the room where they'd left Alyx sleeping off the blood loss—stitched, bandaged, fragile as paper. But when they stepped through the door…
Lilly froze.
Alyx was gone.
Not missing—gone.
Laid back on the cot, eyes closed, skin waxen and too quiet. The wound must've bled again. Or maybe the heart had just given up fighting. Some people don't survive even after the bullets stop.
Sam moved slowly; a breath caught in her throat. "Lilly…"
But Lilly was already on her knees beside the cot, pressing two fingers to Alyx's neck, hoping for something—anything—but the silence answered back.
Alyx had always been the one who made dying look like an inconvenience. The one who joked through blood and betrayal. Who taught Lilly how to vanish, how to lie with elegance, how to love without hope.
And now they were still.
Gone without goodbye.
Sam crouched beside her. "Do you want to bury Alyx?"
Lilly shook her head. "Alyx hated goodbyes. Said funerals were for people who wanted to pretend they didn't have blood on their hands."
Sam was quiet for a moment, then asked softly, "Then what did Alyx want?"
Lilly closed her eyes. "To be remembered. Not forgiven."
They didn't speak after that.
Just wrapped Alyx in a clean sheet from the cot and carried Alyx to the tunnels—back into the dark they'd once called home. Lilly lit a match, left it flickering by the concrete where she'd carved Alyx's name.
And when they walked away, neither of them looked back.
Back at the shelter, the world felt smaller.
Lilly stood against the wall, hands braced, heart unraveling. Sam came up behind her, gently tracing a finger down her spine.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"No," Lilly said.
Sam kissed her shoulder, then her temple.
"You'll never be alone again," she promised.
And for a breath—a heartbeat—a kiss against the wreckage of everything they'd lost—Lilly let herself believe it.