This time, it wasn't her life hanging in the balance.
It was his.
The stranger who wasn't really a stranger.
The man who saved her, time and again, through a screen—
with nothing but his words, his smile, his warmth.
She looked at him—still, vulnerable, and completely unaware of the power he'd held in her darkest hours.
She could've given up a hundred times.
She almost did.
But somehow, he was always there.
And now, for once… it was her turn to show up.
She pulled on her coat, her boots crunching against the wooden floor. She paused.
What if he woke up and found himself alone?
No. She knew that pain.
Knew it far too well.
The silence of waking up to no one.
Of crying in your sleep, only to wake up and realize… no one even knew.
Every night, she whispered the same thing before closing her eyes:
"Please let it be over."
But morning always came, and the nightmare never left.
She refused to let him wake up to that same silence.
Not him. Before stepping out, she grabbed a pen and paper—her hands trembling—and wrote a note:
"I'm going to find help.
Please stay.
Don't leave.
Not you."
She placed it beside him.
Gently. Carefully.
Like leaving behind a piece of her soul.
And so she stepped into the blizzard.
Into the cold.
Into the unknown.
With a heart full of fear—
and a fire that hadn't burned in her for four long years.