Zayn's pov:
The first thing I heard was the sound.
It wasn't beep from the moniters or the soft shuffle of the nurses shoes on the polished floor. It was her voice.
Low and warm, almost playful in places.
For days the only silence I had known felt like weight on my chest - and, worse, the silence when her words came out cracked and brittle like they would shatter in the air between us. But this morning... it felt different.
I stood in the doorway for a moment, wanting wanting to break it. She was talking to a nurse, hands moving just a little with her words, hair sweeping forward as she leaned a little closer. Her tone had a lift to it. A softness I didn't realize I had been starving to hear again until I heard it.
I took a step inside, and she turned. Her eyes found mine just like it was perfectly natural. "Good morning," she said. Not guarded. Not hollow. Just... there.
I swallowed the knot in my throat and gave her the smallest smile I could muster without letting it turn into something too overt. "Morning. You're up early." She tilted her head, like she was deciding how much to give away. "Couldn't sleep much. Too many thoughts." I tried to keep my voice light. "Good thoughts?" Her lips curled not a smile yet, but enough to do something to my tight chest. "Maybe."
There was something in her eyes that I hadn't seen in a long time, and it struck me out of nowhere how much I had missed it. She bit her lip lightly as if she were hiding something, and I had to look away so that I wouldn't give too much away.
When I looked back, she was staring at me.
"Do you think you can grab me some roses?" she asked, casual, but yet, not reckless.
"Roses?" I asked, surprised.
"Yes." She adjusted on the pillows, looking out the window with her eyes. "I just... want to see them. I mean, you know how they look in the winter? The cold air makes the petals a lot brighter. Almost like the roses are daring the frost to touch them."
I didn't even think about it. "I will get them."
Her eyes met mine again and for just a second, I thought I noticed softness in her eyes. "Thank you."
I tried to ignore the way my heart raced.
After that, conversation flowed effortlessly-for the first time in weeks. She told me about the things she'd loved, little pieces of her that she hadn't talked about in months.
A little bookstore she got lost in.
How the smell of old paper was both dust and warmth.
The time she spent all evening on a single drawing because she couldn't figure out the lines.
She even gave me a hard time when I confessed I couldn't draw to save my life. "You? You probably only draw stick figures with misshapen heads," and she had this slight grin on her face. "Hold on,"
I said, leaning back for a moment, "my stick figures are an exemplary portrait of artistic balance."
Her laugh - short-lived and understated fanned throughout the room. It was something delicate that I wanted to keep around. I didn't want to press to hard, have her withdraw from her own laughter, so I stayed close but at least a step off in distance so she wouldn't feel I was jumping in and crowding her.
It was like watching someone walk back into the sunlight after weeks of the shadows they had been in.
Then, suddenly, she asked, "When do you think they will let me go?"
I blinked. "Go?"
"Yes." She gently tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, her fingers remained there briefly. "I want to get out of here. I want to run. I haven't run in so long." She turned to look out the window again, her voice softening. "Winter is almost here. I want to play in the snow."
Her words left an image in my head that I could not forget - her in the cold, cheeks flushed pink, snow caught in her hair, laughing like the cold didn't hurt at all.
"I promise we will rescue you," I said quickly, without thinking. "I will make sure that you witness the first snowfall."
Her eyes remained on me for a second and I told myself that she was looking at me right at that moment, not some walls around her.
It did not concern me that she had not said my name once. It didn't matter that there was something in her eyes that still floated somewhere I could not pursue. What concerned me was that she was here, communicating with me, requesting things from me, and sharing bits of herself once again.
She smiled slightly. "I would appreciate that."
And my heart, a flimsy and ridiculous thing, took the words and constructed an entire future.
I remained with her that entire day. I got her tea when she said she wished something warm, and I stayed by her side, watching her hold the cup in her hands with a little smile and her eyes closed for a moment, as if she could feel the steam up against her skin.
She shared more words about places she wanted to visit, things she wanted to read, dishes she always wanted to make. She blushed for a second when I saw her glance at me and quickly looked away. I swear that meant something.
I tucked every one of her smiles away for safekeeping.
Proof she was improving.
Proof she still looked at me like that.
Proof that I could be the one she wanted beside her.
By the time the outside light began to fade, she was quiet, her eyelids heavy with tiredness that comes from talking so much after being silent for days.
I didn't want to go.
So I didn't.
I sat there close enough that if she reached out of her own way, my hand would be waiting. And as her breathing slowed, I let myself imagine this was an onset. This winter, she'd said she wanted to run into will be ours.
To be continued.....