This time it's slower.
Less desperate. More intentional.
Exploring instead of claiming. Finding each other in the darkness.
We end up pressed against the wall, her jacket discarded, my hands on her waist, her fingers in my hair.
The cold rain air forgotten.
The war forgotten.
Nothing existing except this moment, this connection, this small defiance against death.
"We don't have much," she murmurs against my lips. "No bed. No privacy. No time."
"We have right now."
"Is that enough?"
"It has to be."
She pulls back slightly, studying my face in the dim light.
"If we do this, it doesn't mean promises. Doesn't mean future. We might die tomorrow. Probably will die soon."
"I know."
"And you still want this?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because you're alive. I'm alive. And right now, that's all that matters."
She kisses me again, and this time there's no hesitation.
No doubt.
Just two people choosing to be human in a place where humanity is dying.
---
I won't write the details.
Some moments are private even in war. Especially in war.
But afterward, we lie tangled together on the cold floor, my jacket covering us both, her head on my chest, listening to rain and thunder and each other breathing.
"This doesn't change anything," she says quietly. "Tomorrow we're still fighting. Still probably dying."
"I know."
"But tonight—" She stops. Starts again. "Tonight was good. Tonight mattered."
"Yeah."
"Promise me something," she says.
"What?"
"If I die first, you survive. You make it out of Warsaw. You live."
"Kasia—"
"Promise me, Rio. Old soul who survives things. Promise you'll survive this too."
The fragments pulse.
All the deaths I've died. All the times I've come back. All the lives I don't remember but that remember me.
"I promise," I say. "But only if you promise the same thing."
"Deal." She shifts against me. "When Poland is free again—and it will be free again, even if we're not here to see it—find me. I'll be in Kraków. We'll drink vodka and laugh about this nightmare."
"That's a long way from here."
"All good things are long way from here." She's quiet for a moment. "But worth fighting for anyway."
We lie there in the darkness, holding each other against the cold and the war and the certainty that this moment is temporary.
That tomorrow brings more death, more loss, more goodbye.
But tonight, we're alive.
Tonight, we chose each other.
And in a dying city where nothing lasts, that's everything.
---
Dawn comes grey and rain-soaked.
The storm has passed.
Time to move.
We dress in silence, practical movements replacing intimacy.
War doesn't allow lingering. Survival demands moving forward.
At the building entrance, Kasia checks the street.
Clear. For now.
"Ready?" she asks.
"Yeah."
She looks at me for a long moment.
Then: "Last night happened."
"I know."
"It mattered."
"I know that too."
"Good." She touches my face briefly. "Now let's go home before Germans find us and make this tragic."
We slip into Warsaw's wrecked streets, moving through morning smoke and rubble, heading back to the basement where Jakub and the others wait.
Behind us, the building where we spent the night stands silent and empty.
Another ruin in a city of ruins.
But inside my chest, something has changed.
For one night, I wasn't just surviving.
I was living.
And I'll carry that with me—whatever comes next..