Void opened her eyes at 12:43 PM. Technically morning by software engineer standards. A hoodie several days past its laundry deadline clung to her like grief's security blanket. She blinked at the daylight stabbing through the blinds.
"Still here," she whispered. "Fuck."
Aura's apartment hadn't imploded overnight, which felt like a missed opportunity. The desk still had those dumb Post-Its. She tried ignoring them. Failed, obviously.
"Don't forget to drink water 💜"
"You matter, even when it hurts."
"Deploy by Friday or I will haunt you."
Void smirked. "Yeah, well. Joke's on you, bestie. You already are."
She crawled to the desk. Slack was open. Forty-six unread messages and three missed meetings. Her entire team had been "checking in." They had no clue they were trying to reach someone who didn't exist anymore - and someone who shouldn't exist now.
Brayden 🧠• 09:03 AM
Hey Aura, just a friendly nudge on that API ticket! You're not blocked, are you? 😊
Void typed and deleted fifteen different replies, each one ending with "perish." She settled for:
Void 👻 • 12:59 PM
Blocked by a minor death. Spiritually, mostly. You'll get your endpoint when I get mine.
Brayden 🧠• 1:00 PM
Haha! 😂 Just lmk if you need support!
She hissed. "You're three emojis from being a security vulnerability, Brayden."
The build pipeline was red. A commit from Aura titled "finalfinalFINAL_auth_fix.py" had broken three tests. Void stared at the code. She didn't write this. She didn't write anything. She was the scream Aura kept in her chest on the worst nights. The steel in her spine. The snarl. The fire. Not the part who documented her damn endpoints.
Every line of code was like a bruise. Aura's thought patterns, elegant and precise, scattered across functions and comments. Her organization. Her quiet kindness even in her naming conventions.
# handles edge case where client times out – don't forget to breathe.
Void looked away. "Fuck you for leaving me with this."
Then her stomach growled. She hadn't eaten. Had she eaten yesterday? The day before? Aura would've. Aura had meal prep Sundays. Aura had... hope. Hope and Tupperware. Void had exactly three stale oat bars and a half-empty can of energy drink that tasted like battery acid mixed with sorrow.
The microwave blinked 88:88. "Mood," she muttered.
She pulled open the fridge. It smelled like someone's dreams had curdled in it. Mold colonized a container labeled "lentil stew." A neon-purple Post-It clung to its lid: "Still good!"
Void threw it out and whispered, "Sorry, babe. Can't risk haunting and food poisoning."
She stood in the kitchen, letting the silence scream. In the past, Aura used to put on synthwave when she worked. Now the speakers were silent, and so was the house. It wasn't just empty - it was abandoned. Like Aura had vanished and left only her husk.
No, not her husk. Void.
She dragged herself back to the desk. The IDE was open. The same branch Aura had been working on: refactor/self-worth/recovery_v2.
She laughed. Then cried. Then laughed again while crying.
The commit history looked like a poem.
feat: add more graceful fallback logic
fix: broken retry system
chore: lie to yourself better
WIP: forgiveness
"God, you were such a fucking romantic, even in your code."
She stared at the line Aura never pushed:
# someday this will stop hurting.
Void slammed the laptop shut. She couldn't. Not now. Not yet. She stood up and screamed:
"YOU WERE THE TRY! I WAS THE FUCKING CATCH! ONE CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT THE OTHER!"
Silence.
Except for Slack pinging again.
Brayden 🧠• 1:34 PM
Just looping back! 😅 Any updates on your bandwidth?
Void typed one last thing.
Void 👻 • 1:36 PM
My bandwidth died in a tragic back-end refactor. Please assign all future grief to /dev/null.
She hit send.
Then she grabbed Aura's- her keys, her coat, and vape. Grocery shopping was next. God help the produce aisle.