Whispers of Until.. Part 1 - Shadows of Summer
He sat through the first, raw minutes of her grief without intrusion, understanding from the long, dark history of his own silent room that sometimes the most necessary thing you can offer a broken person is the absolute permission to be entirely inside their ruin before anyone attempts to pull them out of it.
As he sat there, the sensory details of the courtyard seemed to sharpen with painful clarity. He could smell the faint scent of lavender soap on her skin, cut through by the sharp chemical odor of the institutional floor wax that had clung to her clothes from the administration building. A short, unbidden memory flashed through his mind—a memory of Summer from their sophomore year, sta