She wouldn't sleep alone when he first brought her back. The house was too big. Filled with too many ghosts. She'd go on walks instead of sleeping but eventually the ghosts of the old town outweighed the ghosts of her empty house.

He found her, on one of his own bad nights, sitting silently on his porch in the early hours of the morning. She wouldn't answer when he questioned her and so they spent that night on his porch together. This was how it started.

He eventually convinced her to move back inside (though he can't for the life of him remember how), and so their silent nights on cold porches became soft nights in a foreign bed. They never touched on the porch, never spoke or interacted. Now she holds his hand every night as they wait for sleep to claim them. And when she can't (or won't) rest he whispers soft words into the dark to coax her into sleep. This is when it got worse.

She had bad days (worse days) when she could barely make it out of bed. He'd pull her up, dress her, take her downstairs and slip out the door before Sae arrived to take over. Lately though the bad days were outnumbering the good and his silent departures were becoming more infrequent. Sae merely nodded knowingly the first morning she arrived to find him sitting quietly at the table. And so he watched helplessly as she disintegrated before his eyes.

A month goes by and she doesn't utter a word. He whispers to her every night, quiet conversations that she doesn't join. She's giving up (given up?) on life, but when her hand still slips into his every night, and as his thumb strokes the back of her hand softly, he knows she's hanging on his every word. The dying flame of the girl he once knew watching him from the shadows of these new dead eyes. And he hopes that maybe somehow their little talks are what's keeping the flame alive.

Some days she gets confused. She calls out for past faces. Hides from phantom bullies he cannot save her from. She breaks her silence one night to tell him that they're no more alive than all the people they've killed. Her whispered words burn like ice through the darkness of her bedroom. He knows they're both waiting for death. But he'll be dammed if he lets her go this easily now. Now his whispers are filled with the life of her few untainted memories. And when she drifts to sleep the only images burning into her soul are the memories of freedom. Wind rustling through the trees, grass beneath her feet, gentle water caressing her as she floats in her lake. And the flame grows a little brighter.

When she awakens one night to find him drinking slowly from an old bottle of some sort of alcohol she realizes she isn't the only one who's spent the past few months shattering. Their gray eyes lock and she knows that somewhere along the way they've lost each other. His gaze pleads for her. To leave him be, to come back, to fix this mess. To understand. When she slips her hand from his grasp he all but breaks. And when she tucks her head under his chin it only takes a moment for his arms to surround her, pinning them together. And together they start to heal.