The house was not much.
One bedroom. A leaking roof. A small kitchen with one flickering bulb that buzzed like it was warning them to leave.
But to the three of them, it was a graveyard of the past and a womb for something new.
No names had followed them here.
No headlines.
No parents.
No God — or maybe too much of Him.
---
Aaliyah stood by the window the first morning, wrapped in one of Silas's oversized shirts. She watched the birds fight over crumbs in the cracked courtyard. She didn't speak. She didn't cry.
Lucien watched her from the kitchen, half-awake, cigarette unlit between his fingers.
Silas was already fixing the broken door, hammering without words, like he could fix her too.
They didn't touch her that day.
Didn't ask her anything.
Didn't crowd her.
But they were near.
And for the first time since the world collapsed, Aaliyah realized silence didn't always mean loneliness.
---
That night, she found a folded scarf on her pillow — deep green, smooth, untouched. Not hers.
Lucien looked up when she saw it. "You left yours behind," he said quietly. "Figured you might want something... new."
She ran her fingers over the fabric.
It wasn't about the scarf.
It was about being seen.
---
They split the bed.
Lucien on one side. Silas on the other. Aaliyah in the middle.
At first, the space between them was polite — like strangers who knew too much.
But slowly, it shrank.
Lucien began to rest his hand near hers, never touching. Just close.
Silas started to brush against her accidentally in sleep, his body warm, his breaths steady.
She never moved away.
Not once.
---
In the dark, they began to talk.
Not loudly. Not easily.
But honestly.
Silas spoke of a father who died calling him a disgrace.
Lucien, of being raised in brothels and backrooms, never told he was wanted.
And Aaliyah… Aaliyah finally told someone that her first memory of prayer was being beaten for doing it wrong.
"I don't know what I believe anymore," she whispered one night. "But I believe in this. Whatever this is."
Lucien's thumb grazed her knuckles.
Silas's arm wrapped around her waist.
And in that moment, their bodies told the truth before any of them could speak it:
They were becoming a home.
---