Some memories don't fade.
They don't soften at the edges or blur with time. They stay sharp, waiting, like embers under ash.
Ayaan doesn't remember being two years old.
I remember it enough for both of us.
That morning began like any other. Ordinary. Safe. The most dangerous kind of day because it gives you no warning. I arrived at their apartment just after sunrise, my backpack slung over one shoulder, hair still damp from a rushed shower. I was the babysitter. Nothing more. Nothing less.
His mother greeted me with tired eyes and a smile that tried too hard.
"He didn't sleep well," she said, adjusting her dupatta. "Teething again."
Ayaan clung to her leg, cheeks round, curls bouncing when he moved. He looked at me suspiciously, thumb in his mouth.
I crouched down. "Good morning, troublemaker."
He stared. Then smiled. Just like that. As if we had an agreement only he understood.
That was the last normal moment.
His parents were supposed to return before sunset. A quick errand, they said. I remember teasing them about leaving their son with someone barely older than a teenager herself.
"You're responsible," his father laughed.
I wish I had argued harder. I wish I had said no. I wish I had known that life only gives warnings after it's too late.
The smell came first.
Not smoke—plastic.
Burning wire has a smell that crawls into your nose and refuses to leave. I was in the kitchen warming milk when I noticed it. Subtle at first. Wrong.
Then the lights flickered.
I froze.
Before I could move, there was a sound—sharp, violent. Like something snapping inside the walls. A pop. Then another.
And then the smoke came.
It poured out from under the bedroom door like something alive, thick and dark, swallowing the air. The fire alarm screamed. Ayaan started crying instantly, his small body stiff with fear.
"It's okay," I said, even though nothing was. "It's okay, baby."
I ran to him, scooping him up. He buried his face in my neck, screaming, his tiny hands gripping my shirt so hard it hurt.
The heat rose fast. Too fast.
I tried the front door. It wouldn't open. I don't know if the lock jammed or if my hands were shaking too much. The smoke burned my eyes. I could barely see.
I dropped to my knees, remembering something someone once said—stay low.
Ayaan was coughing now. Weak. Terrified.
I wrapped my scarf around his face, around mine, my hands moving on instinct alone. I remember thinking, I am not dying today.
I remember thinking, He is not dying today.
The hallway outside was chaos. People shouting. Doors slamming. Someone screaming a name over and over. The walls were hot. Not warm—hot. Like they were breathing fire themselves.
I don't remember how I got out.
I remember air suddenly rushing into my lungs, cold and painful. I remember falling, Ayaan still in my arms. I remember holding him tighter than I ever held anyone in my life.
And then I remember turning around.
The building was on fire.
Not a small fire. Not a manageable one. Flames poured out of windows like fury. Black smoke clawed at the sky. Sirens wailed in the distance, too slow, always too slow.
I stood there barefoot, shaking, my clothes stained with ash, and stared at the place where his parents were supposed to come home.
They never did.
At the hospital, everything smelled like disinfectant and fear. Ayaan lay still on the bed, an oxygen mask too big for his face. His eyes were open, but empty. Not asleep. Not awake.
Gone somewhere I couldn't reach.
"Trauma-induced amnesia," the doctor said later, gently, like that could soften the blow. "At his age… the brain protects itself. He may lose memories from before the incident. Possibly permanently."
Two years.
His entire life.
Erased.
When he finally looked at me—really looked at me—there was no recognition. No smile. No trust.
Just confusion.
"Where's Mama?" he asked.
I broke that day in ways no one saw.
Funerals followed. Paperwork. Quiet conversations behind closed doors. People spoke about him like he was an object needing placement. Temporary homes. Systems. Orphanage.
I watched from the corner, invisible again.
That night, he cried until he fell asleep holding my finger. Not because he knew me—but because I was there.
And something inside me made a decision before my mind could catch up.
I would not leave him.
I didn't save his parents.
I couldn't save their home.
But I saved him.
And fire took everything else—including the memories that might have told him who he used to be.
Now, when Ayaan asks about his past, I tell him stories that start with us.
Not before.
Never before.
Some memories are meant to be forgotten.
Others are meant to be carried—quietly, painfully—by someone who survived.
In the days that followed, time stopped behaving normally.
Morning and night blended together in the hospital ward, measured only by the change of nurses and the beeping of machines. Ayaan slept a lot. When he was awake, he was silent in a way that frightened me more than his crying had. Children are not meant to be that quiet.
He flinched at sudden sounds. Dropped spoons. Closing doors. Even laughter made him tense, his small shoulders rising as if bracing for impact.
The doctors said it was normal.
"His mind is healing," they told me.
But I knew better. His mind wasn't healing. It was hiding.
When they finally removed the oxygen mask, he touched his face like it didn't belong to him. He studied his hands for a long time, turning them over, opening and closing his fingers.
"Who am I?" he asked once, barely above a whisper.
The question didn't feel like it came from a child.
I swallowed. "You're Ayaan."
He nodded slowly, accepting it the way someone accepts a rule they don't understand but won't fight.
"And you?" he asked.
I hesitated.
I wasn't anything to him anymore.
I could have said babysitter. Stranger. Someone temporary.
"I'm… your Mother," I said.
The word settled between us easily. Safe. Harmless.
That night, he woke up screaming.
Not words—sounds. Raw terror ripping out of his chest. His eyes were open but unfocused, his body shaking violently. It took three nurses and me to calm him down.
"Fire," he gasped once, just once.
After that, he never said it again.
The therapist later explained that the brain sometimes locks trauma away, sealing it so tightly that even the person who lived it can't reach it.
"Those memories may never return," she said.
I looked at Ayaan playing on the floor with a plastic car, making soft engine noises, and wondered if forgetting was mercy or punishment.
When the question of his future came up, everything became complicated.
I was too young.
I wasn't family.
I wasn't his legal guardian.
Each sentence felt like a door closing.
"He needs stability," a social worker said kindly.
"I can give him that," I replied, my voice steadier than I felt.
She looked at me closely then. Really looked.
"You're very attached."
I almost laughed. As if attachment were a flaw.
The adoption process was not easy. It wasn't meant to be. Papers disappeared. Rules shifted. People asked questions they had no right to ask.
Why do you want him?
Can you afford this?
Are you prepared to raise a child alone?
No one asked the most important question.
Can you leave him?
Because the answer would have ended the conversation immediately.
The day it became official, I held the document in my hands and cried silently in the bathroom. Not from happiness—from fear. From the weight of what I had done settling into my bones.
I had chosen him.
And by choosing him, I had chosen a life of hiding.
We left the city soon after. Too many eyes. Too many memories soaked into every street. I cut my hair shorter. Changed my clothes. Learned how to shrink myself further.
Ayaan adapted faster than I did.
Children always do.
But the fire followed him in small, cruel ways.
He panicked at the smell of smoke, even incense. He refused to sleep with the lights off. If I stepped out of the room without warning, he would sob until I came back.
Once, when a neighbor's gas stove flared too high, he collapsed to the floor, hands over his head, screaming like the world was ending again.
That was the night I held him until dawn, whispering promises I didn't know how to keep.
"You're safe," I said over and over. "You're safe."
Sometimes I think he believes me.
Sometimes I know he doesn't.
Now he is four. He laughs easily. He runs. He asks endless questions about everything except his past. The two years fire stole from him are a blank space even I am afraid to touch.
He doesn't remember his mother's voice.
He doesn't remember his father's hands lifting him high.
He doesn't remember the flames.
But his body remembers.
And I do too.
So when people look at us and see two orphans clinging to each other, I let them.
Because the truth is heavier than they could ever carry.
I wasn't born his sister.
I became his mother the moment the world burned—and I refused to let him burn with it.