There are silences that hurt.
Then there are silences that heal.
The one between Aarav and Anaya wasn't empty. It was full of everything they hadn't said yet—grief, guilt, memories that ached like old wounds.
It had been twelve days since she moved into Aarav's flat. The space was barely enough for one person, and yet... somehow, it didn't feel crowded. Maybe because they didn't demand anything from each other. Maybe because both knew how rare it was to find someone who didn't ask questions.
They lived like shadows—quiet, careful, always on the edge of something they didn't name.
Aarav still didn't know where she'd come from.
Anaya still didn't know why he'd helped her.
But both of them knew this much:
They didn't want to be alone again.
Each morning began the same way.
Aarav would wake up first, stretch his back from the hard floor, and make tea—two cups, without asking if she wanted one.
Anaya would wake to the scent of ginger and cardamom. She never said thank you. But she always drank it to the last drop.
Sometimes she'd sit on the balcony for hours, sketching invisible lines in the air, as if her fingers remembered what her heart had forgotten.
Once, Aarav asked, "What are you drawing?"
She replied, "The version of me that never existed."
On the fourteenth day, the silence between them broke—not with a scream, but with a whisper.
Aarav was reading on the floor, a pen in his hand but no words on the page.
Anaya sat across from him, her knees pulled to her chest.
"Do you ever feel," she began slowly, "like you're still stuck in the moment your life broke?"
Aarav didn't look up. "Every day."
Anaya nodded, like she'd expected that answer. "What broke you?"
He took a breath. "Does it matter?"
"Yes," she said. "Because I'm tired of being the only broken one in the room."
Aarav stared at the ceiling fan for a long moment.
"My brother," he finally said. "Three years ago. He died in an accident. I was supposed to pick him up from school. I was late. Five minutes."
He didn't say more.
He didn't need to.
The silence that followed wasn't uncomfortable. It was heavy—but shared.
Then Anaya said, "Mine was slower."
He looked at her.
"Not a moment. More like... an unraveling. Thread by thread. Until one day, I looked in the mirror and didn't recognize who I was loving anymore. He never hit me. Not really. But he broke me in ways that bruises couldn't explain."
Aarav felt something twist inside him. Rage? Pity? No—just pain. The kind you feel when someone finally shows you their scars.
"I left. And I never looked back. But he still lives inside me sometimes. In my sleep. In my panic. In how I flinch when someone moves too fast."
She paused.
"You don't have to fix me," she added quietly.
"I wasn't going to," Aarav said. "But I can sit beside you while you figure out how to rebuild."
She smiled. Barely. But it stayed.
That night, Aarav made khichdi. He was a terrible cook, but he tried.
Anaya laughed—an actual, real laugh—when he spilled the dal.
He froze. "Was that a laugh?"
"Maybe."
"I thought it was a cough."
She threw a spoon at him.
It was the first moment that felt almost... normal.
The next morning, she wasn't on the mattress.
Panic rose in his throat. For a terrifying second, Aarav thought she'd left.
Then he heard her voice from the balcony.
She was on a call.
"I'm fine, Ma... No. Don't ask me where I am. Just know I'm not dead... No, I'm not coming back. Not yet."
A pause.
"I'm safe. I promise."
When she came back inside, she didn't explain. And Aarav didn't ask.
But something had shifted. She wasn't just surviving anymore. She was reaching for something.
Later that day, she found one of Aarav's notebooks lying open.
"Can I read it?" she asked.
He hesitated. "You'll hate it."
"Let me decide that."
It was a story about a boy who spoke only in poems, and a girl who couldn't read.
By the time she finished, her eyes were damp.
"Why haven't you published anything?"
Aarav looked away. "Because I'm scared I'll start believing I'm worth something."
Anaya didn't reply. Instead, she reached for the notebook, tore out a page, and began to draw.
Aarav watched as the lines became familiar—the boy, the girl, a bridge between them made of silence.
She handed it to him. "You wrote them. I just gave them a face."
He folded the paper gently, as if it were fragile.
"Maybe we make a book," she said.
"Maybe we do," he replied.
One evening, as thunder rolled in again, Anaya stood at the balcony, arms crossed.
"Do you ever wonder," she whispered, "what we are to each other?"
Aarav joined her. "Sometimes."
"And?"
"I think we're two people who met at the exact moment we had nothing left to give. And somehow... we gave each other the one thing no one else did."
"What's that?"
"Space."
Anaya looked at him then, really looked.
"You know," she said, "this city's ugly."
"I know."
"But with you... it feels a little less cruel."
He didn't answer.
Because sometimes, love isn't something you say. It's something you breathe into the silence between two damaged hearts.
And at that moment, under the bruised sky, both of them finally exhaled.