In the previous chapter...
Tracy smiled a sad, understanding smile. "Then maybe that's our pact under the rain," she said, symbolically extending the hand that had held her umbrella. "I promise not to burn myself out so much on the painting—which I don't even really know what it's about yet—until dawn too often. But you... promise to seek a kind of structure that doesn't include hitting yourself or insanely consuming coffee and cigarettes. Even if it's just a little, taking one day at a time."
It was an impossible promise born from a moment of pure human connection, free from the entanglements of Alyx's past. But at that moment, under the yellow umbrella—a symbol of a future Alyx desperately wanted to protect—she simply nodded.
"One day at a time," she repeated, and for the first time, the phrase didn't sound like a cliché but like a tangible, almost revolutionary plan.
Tracy smiled, a warm, non-judgmental gesture. "I have an abnormally good sense of smell. It's not a useful superpower, except for detecting spoiled milk and... unhealthy habits in potential rain-soaked friends," she said, her voice soft and calm. "And under the smell of rain and paint, there's a ghost of bitter coffee and tobacco. It's persistent, like a clear reminder you don't know how to let go of."
Alyx looked at her own hands, imagining the scent that must have clung to her like a second skin, rubbing strongly on her. Tracy had noticed it; she had seen beyond the disguise of serenity and loose clothing, had perceived the truth simply from the air around her. Alyx was surprised that a stranger, until now, was the first person in months who not only saw her symptoms but smelled them, and still didn't retreat. That, more than any speech, was what completely disarmed her.
"Take care, Alyx," said Tracy, and this time her words were more than a greeting; they were a blessing wrapped in a deeply sincere wish. Carefully, she took the umbrella from Alyx's numb hand. "I hope you find that new story for the earring—one that belongs only to you."
And then she left. The figure with the small acoustic instrument and the yellow umbrella melted into the mist, leaving Alyx on an island of sudden quiet. Watching that yellow umbrella move away like a beacon in the damp, strangely bright night. Alyx remained, feeling the weight of the promise and the echo of her own warning.
She knew she hadn't changed the future directly—she hadn't revealed any secrets—but she had planted a seed, both in Tracy and in herself. That warning hadn't just been for Tracy; it was as if she had seen herself in a mirror. To save others—whether Tracy, Marshall, Lily, those she loved—from the clear precipices she saw, she first had to save herself from falling into her own, which she was heading towards directly and without a parachute.
The earring in her pocket, the matching one Lily had returned, no longer weighed like a stone. Now she felt its outline with new curiosity. It was now a key, yes. But not to open the past. It was to close one door and find the lock for the next one. The conversation under the rain with the woman whose name she knew from a future she now desperately wished to alter had been the first turn of that lock.
Her walk back to the apartment was different. The same steps on the same wet streets, but her rhythm had changed. It was no longer the slow march of a prisoner returning to her cell, nor the anxious flight of a fugitive. It was the deliberate step of someone who, for the first time in months, saw a bend in the downward path she had been walking. Now there were two paths: the left one, a familiar downward spiral full of coffee, the gym, canvases with silhouettes that silently screamed at her. The right one... something unexplored, full of possibilities without ashes.
Climbing the stairs of her building, her hand didn't tremble as she searched for her keys. Opening the door, she was greeted by the smell of coffee and paint. She felt it as a reminder of what she had promised to leave behind, one day at a time.
She approached the canvas she had hidden in her room the day before when the group came for her intervention. She saw the silhouette filled with color and how she felt empty just hours ago—directionless, with nothing. But now she felt a determination to survive herself.
She took the silver earring from her pocket and held it under the dim lamplight. It had a faint gleam. And though it was no longer the symbol of those promises between three people, now broken, in her hands, in this apartment, after a conversation that belonged only to her, she saw it begin to transform. It could become a reminder that even broken things can be kept—not as relics of pain, but as a memory of something that was real. And that reality, with all its pain, was preferable to hiding in the hell of self-imposed punishment that numbed that memory.
Her phone rang. It was a message from Robin. But it didn't contain the expected interrogation; it was an invitation laden with concern. Attached was a blurry photo of Barney attempting a fire magic trick at MacLaren's to impress a pretty blonde, with Ted rolling his eyes in the background.
The caption finished with: - We miss your look that said from miles away, 'You're being an idiot, Barney.' Take care. - R.
Alyx looked at the photo, and though she didn't smile, she felt the initial tension when the message arrived relax slightly. She saw what they were trying to say: they were there. Maybe not perfect, not with all the answers on how to help her—that was clear—but they were there, in their own clumsy, pathetic, but always genuine way.
She didn't reply to the message. She wasn't ready for that yet. But she didn't delete it either, because it was proof that the outside world, with all its chaos and imperfect affection, still existed.
So she just took the silhouette canvas off the easel and carried it to where a living room should be but only had a bench. Placing the now-finished artwork on the wall, as she did it, she thought only that tomorrow, maybe she would go to the gym, or maybe not. She might just go for a walk, or sit in a café and watch people pass by. She could do or not do many things outside her previously imposed schedule. But tonight, she simply sat on her bench, feeling some dampness in her clothes and the echo of an unexpected conversation under a yellow umbrella, and decided to stop fighting in silence. Instead, she was going to listen now—to all of herself, without silencing that inner voice.
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