The crying didn’t last forever. Nothing that intense ever does. It burned through him until there was nothing left to hold it up, until the sound thinned and broke and finally went quiet on its own. What came after was worse in a different way. Not empty exactly. Just still.

Charles stayed curled on the bed long after his voice gave out. His throat ached, his chest felt tight in a way that didn’t ease with breathing, and his body felt like it had been hollowed out and put back together wrong. He didn’t move. Not because he couldn’t, but because there was nowhere to go.

Time passed without shape.

At some point, someone knocked. Soft, careful, like they were asking permission to exist near him.

He didn’t answer.

The door opened anyway, just enough for a figure to step in. One of the nurses. Not the one he worked with often, but familiar enough.

“We need to check your vitals,” she said gently.

Charles didn’t respond.

She stepped closer, movements slow, not forcing anything. She checked what she needed to, adjusted the blanket where it had slipped, made sure the bandages held.

“You lost a lot of blood,” she added quietly. “You need rest.”

Charles stared at the wall.

“I’m already resting,” he said.

His voice sounded different. Flat in a way that didn’t match the words.

The nurse didn’t argue. She stayed a moment longer, then stepped back.

“If you need anything,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t ask.

The door closed again.

Outside, the camp hadn’t stopped. It couldn’t. Damage needed clearing, people needed treating, something like order had to be put back in place before night fell again. The structure held, even if parts of it had been torn apart.

Yiannis moved through it without really seeing it.

He helped where he was needed. Lifted debris, carried the injured, gave instructions that came out steady even when his thoughts didn’t feel that way. No one questioned him. They didn’t need to.

But every step circled back to the same place.

The door.

He didn’t go in again right away.

He stayed close. Close enough to hear if something changed, far enough not to push where he had already been told not to.

The others noticed.

No one said it directly, but it settled into the way they moved around him. Quieter, more careful. A shared understanding that something had shifted and couldn’t be set back the way it was.

By the second day, the camp had stabilized enough to breathe again.

Charles hadn’t come out.

Yiannis knocked once that morning. Not loud. Just enough.

“Charles,” he said through the door.

No answer.

He waited.

Nothing.

He almost left.

“Go away,” Charles said from inside.

It wasn’t sharp. Just tired.

Yiannis stayed where he was.

“I just want to check on you.”

“I’m alive,” Charles replied. “That’s enough.”

A pause.

“Let me in.”

“No.”

The answer came quicker this time.

Another silence stretched between them, thinner than before.

“Charles,” Yiannis said.

“Don’t,” Charles cut in. “Just… don’t.”

Yiannis closed his eyes for a second, then opened them again.

“Alright,” he said quietly.

He stepped back.

He didn’t go far.

Later that day, one of the workers approached him, hesitant in a way that made the question feel heavier.

“We were thinking,” she said. “About… the baby.”

Yiannis didn’t respond immediately.

“What about it.”

“We could hold something,” she continued. “A small thing. Not official. Just… something to mark it.”

Yiannis looked at her, the words settling slowly.

“He didn’t ask for that,” he said.

“No,” she agreed. “But sometimes people don’t know what they need.”

A pause.

“And if he doesn’t want it.”

“Then we don’t do it.”

Yiannis nodded once, though it didn’t feel like a decision he could make.

“Not yet,” he said.

She accepted that.

That evening, the sky dimmed into the same quiet it always did, but it felt different now. The camp carried on, but softer. Like everyone was aware of something fragile just under the surface.

Yiannis found himself back at the door again.

He didn’t knock this time.

He just stood there for a moment, listening.

No sound came from inside.

He rested his hand briefly against the wood, then let it drop.

“I’m here,” he said quietly. Not loud enough to carry far. Just enough.

There was no answer.

Inside, Charles lay on his back, staring at the ceiling again. The same place he had woken up to, the same place that now felt too large and too small at the same time.

He heard the voice.

He didn’t respond.

Not because he didn’t want to.

Because he didn’t know how.

The words sat somewhere out of reach, caught behind something he couldn’t move yet.

So he stayed still.

And outside, Yiannis stayed a little longer before finally stepping away.

Not because he wanted to.

Because sometimes staying didn’t change anything.

And this was one of those times.

On the third day, the nurse came back. The same one who had checked on him before, her voice steady in a way that didn’t pretend this was normal.

“They’re planning something,” she said gently. “For the baby.”

Charles didn’t look at her. His eyes stayed fixed somewhere past the wall, like the space beyond it might offer something better than the room.

“What kind of something,” he asked.

“A small funeral,” she replied. “Just a few people. Quiet.”

Charles let the words sit for a moment.

“They can’t cremate,” she added after a pause. “There wouldn’t be… anything left.”

Silence settled between them, heavy but not sharp.

“That’s why they thought burial would be better,” she said.

Charles swallowed once, slow.

“No,” he said.

The nurse didn’t react right away.

“No what.”

“No funeral,” Charles replied. “Not like that.”

She hesitated, then nodded slightly, like she expected resistance but not the shape of it.

“Do you want to tell me why.”

Charles let out a breath that didn’t quite reach the end.

“Because it’s not fair,” he said.

The nurse frowned a little. “Not fair to who.”

“To everyone else,” Charles answered. “All the ones who didn’t get anything. The ones who died out there. The ones we couldn’t even stop to—”

He stopped himself.

“They don’t get a funeral,” he went on, quieter now. “They don’t get a name read out or a place marked. So why should she.”

The nurse’s expression shifted, not disagreement, just something that hurt to hear spoken out loud.

“You’re not wrong,” she said.

“That doesn’t make it easier,” Charles replied.

“No,” she admitted. “It doesn’t.”

Another pause stretched between them.

“What do you want to do,” she asked.

Charles didn’t answer immediately. He had avoided thinking that far ahead, like the question itself would make it more real than it already was.

“I want to bury her,” he said finally.

The nurse nodded once.

“Alright.”

“By myself.”

A small pause.

“You don’t have to do that alone,” she said.

“I know,” Charles replied. “But I need to.”

She studied him for a second, then nodded again.

“We’ll prepare her,” she said. “You can come when you’re ready.”

Charles didn’t respond. He just sat there, letting the decision settle into something solid.

When they brought the baby to him, they didn’t say much. Just placed the small bundle into his arms with a kind of care that didn’t try to fill the silence.

Charles didn’t move at first.

Then he looked down.

She was smaller than he had imagined. Wrapped in white, neat and careful, like someone had taken time to make sure she was held together even after everything else had come apart. Her face was still. Too still. But soft in a way that made it hard to accept what that meant.

He adjusted his hold without thinking, one hand supporting her head the way he had seen others do, the other resting along her back.

She was cold.

That was the part that settled deepest.

Charles swallowed hard, his thumb brushing lightly over her cheek.

“Hey,” he said, voice barely there. “It’s me.”

The words felt strange as soon as they left him. Late. Too late.

He traced her face slowly, careful with every movement. Her cheeks, her closed eyes, the small shape of her nose, her lips that looked like they might move if he waited long enough.

“She looks like she’s sleeping,” he murmured, more to himself than anyone else.

No one corrected him.

He held her like that for a long moment, long enough that time lost its edges again.

Then he stood.

The walk to the burial site wasn’t far, but it felt longer than anything he had done in days. Each step measured, careful, like moving too quickly might change something he couldn’t afford to lose.

The ground had already been prepared.

Yiannis was there.

He stood a little to the side, hands still marked with dirt, the space in front of him already shaped into something final. He didn’t say anything when Charles approached. He didn’t need to.

Charles saw the grave and stopped.

For a second, everything in him locked.

“No,” he said quietly.

It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.

His grip tightened slightly around the bundle.

“No,” he repeated, shaking his head. “I can’t—”

Yiannis stepped forward without thinking.

“Charles.”

“I don’t want to put her there,” Charles said, voice breaking in a way it hadn’t before. “I don’t want to—”

The words fell apart before he could finish them.

Yiannis reached him then, pulling him in carefully, one arm around his shoulders, the other steadying the baby between them.

“It’s alright,” Yiannis said, though nothing about it was.

“It’s not,” Charles choked out. “It’s not alright.”

He leaned into him, the weight of everything finally breaking through whatever he had been holding up until now.

“I didn’t even get to meet her,” he said, the words uneven, catching on each breath. “Not really. I didn’t get to—”

His voice cracked again.

“I was going to keep her,” he went on, the admission coming out raw and unfiltered. “I wasn’t going to give her to them. I changed my mind. I was going to keep her and I didn’t even—”

He pressed his face into Yiannis’s shoulder, trying and failing to steady himself.

“I don’t want to leave her here,” he said. “I don’t want to walk away.”

Yiannis held him tighter, one hand coming up to the back of his head, grounding him the only way he could.

“You don’t have to rush,” he said quietly.

“But I have to do it,” Charles replied. “That’s the worst part. I have to.”

The wind moved lightly through the space, quiet and indifferent.

Charles pulled back just enough to look down at the small bundle in his arms again.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

His fingers trembled as they brushed over her face one last time.

“I should’ve been better,” he added, voice breaking again. “I should’ve—”

The words didn’t finish.

They didn’t need to.

Yiannis stayed with him, steady, present, even when there was nothing he could do to make it easier.

And for a long moment, Charles just stood there, holding his daughter, caught between not wanting to let go and knowing he had no choice but to.