Separate

PART ONE: ULTIMATUM

I. Dara

FOURTEEN DAYS. Dara read the number for the twentieth time. Then she folded the visa and slipped it beneath the counter. Same place. Same crease. Four o’clock in the afternoon. Café Malam. Eight tables. Two customers today. Five years ago, this would have been the busiest hour of the day. Now she wiped down a table that didn’t need wiping just to keep her hand from shaking.

The cloth moved in slow circles. Wet. Dry. Wet again. Cardboard boxes were stacked in the corner. She'd started packing three days ago. Slowly. One thing each day. Day one: the recipe books. Day two: the spare cups. Day three: a photograph from the 2019 River Festival. Only one picture still remained on the wall.

She stopped wiping. Looked at it. Three years ago. She and Tomas stood outside the café on opening day. He was holding the sign he'd painted himself—CAFÉ MALAM OPEN 7 A.M. – 10 P.M.—and laughing because the lettering slanted downhill. Dara stood beside him, looking straight at the camera.

There was one thing the photograph couldn’t show. Just before the shutter click, Tomas had leaned over and whispered, if this doesn’t work, we can always close the place. Not to comfort her. Simply to acknowledge the possibility. Back then, certainty had come easily. They believed in each other. They believed Limina would survive.

Now certainty wasn't the question anymore. Dara took the photograph down. Slipped it into her bag. Not because she wanted to forget. Because she couldn't bear to leave it behind on the wall of a room that would soon be empty.

"Take care of yourself, dear," Wati had said that morning before leaving. "And don't stay here too long."

Mira, her cousin, ran a small guesthouse in Aldara's southern district. She'd been asking the same questions for two years. When are you coming? Why are you still there?

Dara's answer never changed. The café wasn’t ready to be left. Things weren't stable. Not yet.

But the visa came with an expiration date. Whether Dara was ready or not made no difference to it.

She folded the cloth and tucked it beneath the counter before lowering herself onto the stool behind the bar. Mira always talked about Aldara as though it should have felt familiar. The street still bore familiar names. The food tasted the same. Older people even called the river by the same name as the one that ran through Limina. As though something had been taken long ago that was never meant to be divided.

Dara had never been to Aldara. Still, whenever Mira spoke about it, it felt less like leaving and more like going home.

Tomas was supposed to come by that evening. She'd spent three days avoiding this conversation. Fourteen days wouldn't wait.

✦ ✦ ✦

II. Tomas

THE WESTERN CHECKPOINT closed at seven every evening. It reopened at six the next morning, unless there was an incident. An incident could mean anything. Gunfire. A bomb scare. Or someone coughing a little too hard in front of the wrong soldier.

Tomas carried a medical permit. A single sheet of official paper identifying him as a healthcare worker at a nonpartisan clinic. Legal. Every time he handed it over to a Sarayan soldier, there was the same two- or three-second pause. He never knew what it meant. A clinic. Or a prison cell.

Tonight's guard was young. Twenty-one. Maybe twenty-two. There was still something unguarded about his face, something the uniform hadn't managed to erase. He read Tomas's permit twice before looking up.

"Medical?"

"Yes."

"Which clinic?"

"East Side. The red brick building near the old university."

The young soldier handed the permit back. He didn't smile. He didn't stop Tomas either.

Tomas walked through the gate. His breathing didn't settle until his twentieth step. Fresh graffiti covered the wall of an abandoned bank. The LLM emblem in red. Sarayan propaganda painted over it in black. And over both of them, something else. A butterfly. Nothing more than a silhouette, its wings turned toward the river. Tomas had no idea who kept painting it. But this was the third one he'd seen that week.

An elderly woman shuffled along the sidewalk ahead of him, dragging a suitcase whose wheels kept catching in the broken pavement. He quickened his pace.

"Here. Let me help."

She turned. For a moment, recognition crossed her face. Then she smiled—not at him, but at whatever memory she'd mistaken him for.

"You're Aron, aren't you? Vale's boy?"

Tomas shook his head. "No. I'm Tomas. No relation."

"Oh."

She let him take the suitcase. "You seem like a kind young man."

They walked half a block before stopping outside an old house with peeling paint. Tomas set the suitcase down beside the door.

"Thank you. Your parents must be proud."

He nodded. He didn't tell her they'd died sixteen years earlier. The sentence didn't need correcting.

People in Limina had their own ways of saying things. Your parents would be proud simply meant: You're still here. That counts for something.

He continued toward Café Malam. From halfway down the street he could already see the lights inside. Dara was still there. He could see her silhouette moving behind the glass.

He stopped across the street. Three days. Reza’s voice from yesterday came back to him. The operation is moving deeper into the East Side. We need you full-time. Safe house. No compromises. He already knew the answer Reza expected. He also knew the one Dara was hoping for. The two couldn’t exist in the same mouth.

He crossed the street.

✦ ✦ ✦

III. Both

THE DOOR OPENED. Dara looked up from behind the bar. For the briefest moment, two emotions crossed her face at once. Relief that he'd come. Dread that he'd come. Only someone who'd known her long enough would have noticed the difference. Tomas had known her for three years.

She poured his coffee without asking. Black. Two sugars. The larger mug instead of the standard one because he always asked for a refill anyway, and this saved them both the trouble. The habit had formed without either of them noticing. It was its own language. It meant only one thing: I know you.

They took the table in the far left corner. Always this one. From there they could watch the intersection without turning their heads.

Tomas looked at the coffee. Still too hot.

"Busy today?"

"Wati. That was it."

Silence. Outside, a motorcycle passed. Then nothing. The only question was who would stop putting it off first. Dara did. "I got the visa."

Tomas looked up.

"Aldara. Mira runs a guesthouse there. She says I can work with her."

Outside, the loose board on the roof knocked softly in the wind. Tomas had been saying he'd fix it for months. He never had.

"I'm leaving in two weeks. If everything goes through."

If.

"If?" Tomas asked.

She met his eyes. She wasn't crying. Dara never cried at the beginning of difficult conversations.

"Come with me." No hesitation. No preamble. The words landed with the weight of something solid. Not pain. More like the ground disappearing beneath him.

He wanted to say yes. Wanted to stand up, grab his bag, tell her they could leave tomorrow. Instead, nothing came out.

"We could start over," Dara said. "Aldara's safe. Mira says the clinic needs more medical staff. We could have a life. A normal one. Together."

Tomas opened his mouth. Closed it. Tried again.

"Okay." The answer came faster than he'd intended.

"Okay. We'll figure something out."

She looked at him. For a moment, something flickered across her face. Not hope. Only the outline of it.

"I can apply for a visa. Lenna knows someone at the checkpoint. The paperwork—" The words kept coming before he could think them through. "Or I could cross another way. Ezra once said he knew a route if—"

"Tomas."

His name stopped the sentence before it could finish.

"You know that won't work. Saraya already has your name. If they catch you trying to leave Limina illegally, you'll never make it to Aldara."

"Then what am I supposed to do?" There was no anger in his voice. Only someone asking a question he genuinely didn't know how to answer.

"Tell me. Anything. I'll try."

Dara said nothing.

Tomas stood and walked to the window. The street outside was nearly empty. He kept looking at it, as though he needed something beyond the glass to keep speaking.

"I want to go with you. But I can't. And you can't stay here waiting for me." He let the sentence trail away. He didn't need to finish it. Tomas turned back and walked to the table. Stopped beside her. On the same side this time. Not close enough to touch. Not far enough to call it distance.

"Don't go." Two words. He put everything he had into them.

Dara looked up. Her eyes shimmered now. "I have to."

"No, you don't." He finally sat down again. In his own chair. Not beside her. "We'll find another way."

"There isn't another way, Tomas." There was no anger in her voice. Only something sadder than anger. "You know that. Stop pretending you don't."

A long silence. Above them, the loose board on the roof knocked softly in the wind.

"Halim needs her insulin monitored every day." Tomas spoke quietly, almost as if saying the names out loud made them more real. "The Kosan twins. Eight years old. They're back in the clinic every other night whenever the pollution gets bad. Jodi's shrapnel wound gets infected if nobody cleans it."

Dara said nothing.

"If I leave, who's going to take care of them?"

"There are other medics—"

"Who?" He wasn't arguing. He genuinely wanted an answer.

"Lenna's already overwhelmed. We lost two people last month. We're barely keeping up as it is."

"Tomas—"

"They need me." There was no pride in it. Only someone stating a fact he wished weren't true. "I know their names. I know their faces. If I leave… They won't have anyone."

Dara held his gaze for a long time. "I need you too." Her voice slipped somewhere quieter. Somewhere more honest. More fragile.

Tomas closed his eyes.

"I know." Barely above a whisper. "And it's not the same."

"Why not?"

"Because losing me won't destroy you." He opened his eyes again. "You'll survive. You're strong. You have family waiting for you in Aldara. You'll build another life." A pause. "They won't." His voice barely changed. "I'm not saying they're more important than you. But you have somewhere to go. They have no one else."

Dara looked at him so long that, for a moment, Tomas wished he were someone else.

"The LLM contacted you again." Not a question.

He didn't answer. He didn't have to.

"When do you leave?"

Not if. When.

"Two days. Maybe three. Reza wants me full-time at the safe houses on the East Side."

"Two days." She repeated it quietly. Not angry. Not even sad. Like someone checking the numbers one last time before closing the ledger. "I have two weeks. You have two days."

"Yeah."

She stood. Walked behind the counter, turning her back to him. "Where do I fit into your plan?"

"Dara—"

"No." She didn't turn around. "I'm asking you seriously. Where do I fit? Do I stay here while you disappear underground? Visit you in safe houses that aren't safe for me?"

Tomas stood too. He walked to the counter. The bar stretched between them like a border neither of them knew how to cross.

"I don't want you to disappear." He rested one hand on the counter. Close to hers. Not touching. "I don't even know what I want anymore. Every future I can imagine ends with someone getting hurt."

Dara wiped at her cheek with the back of her hand. Quickly. Almost angrily. Then she did something Tomas never expected. She laughed. Not loudly. Not for long. Just one quiet breath of laughter. The kind that came when pretending became more absurd than the truth.

The two of them standing on opposite sides of the bar in the café they'd built together. Talking about a choice they'd both known the answer to for three days. Neither of them are willing to say it first.

"Tomas." Her voice was still unsteady. But something in it had changed. "You know we've both known how this ends, don't you?"

He didn't answer.

"Ever since the LLM first reached out to you. Ever since I started packing up my recipe books."

Her gaze drifted toward the boxes stacked in the corner.

"We've both known. We just didn't want to be the one to say it first."

Tomas was quiet for a long time. "Yeah."

Dara picked up the untouched mug of coffee and carried it behind the counter. "I understand why you can't leave. I understand there are people depending on you."

She turned to face him. Her eyes were rimmed with red now, but her voice never wavered. "And I understand that you've chosen them. So I have to choose myself."

A pause.

"Which means… We're over."

The words settled between them. Tomas stood there as something inside his chest quietly gave way. None of it reached his face. He walked to the door. His hand rested on the handle. He didn't turn around.

"I love you." His voice was steadier than he'd expected. Silence.

"I know." Another pause. "But it isn't enough."

Tomas opened the door. And left.

Inside the café, Dara waited until even the echo of his footsteps was gone. Then she slid down behind the counter. Not into a chair. Onto the floor. Her back against the cabinet. Her knees drawn to her chest. She cried the way she never allowed anyone to see. Not loudly. Just quietly. As though something inside her had finally given way after holding for far too long.

Outside, Tomas walked another two blocks before stopping on an empty street corner. He leaned against the wall of an old building. Closed his eyes. He didn't cry. Not yet. He only stood there, face tilted toward the darkening sky, trying to find a way to move from this moment into the next. Above him, the first stars appeared. Small. Distant. Indifferent.

✦ ✦ ✦

PART TWO: THE THINGS LEFT UNSAID

IV. Clinic — Tomas

THE CLINIC OPERATED in two shifts. The day shift was for anyone who could come. The night shift was for those who couldn't make it before the checkpoint closed.

Tomas had worked the night shift alone for the past three months. Not by choice. There simply wasn't anyone else.

His last patient that evening was an eight-year-old girl who'd been running a fever for four days. Her mother had brought her in through the alleys behind the market after the main gate closed. Tomas brought the fever down, started her on antibiotics, then recorded everything in a ledger whose pages had long since yellowed with age. The mother paid with two eggs and a packet of salt. Tomas accepted both without a word.

After they left, he lowered himself into the clinic chair with the uneven leg. He'd been meaning to fix it for two months. He never seemed to find the time.

Through the small window, cracked in one corner, he could see part of the street outside. These days, the streetlights on the East Side come on in patches. Saraya cut the electricity three nights a week without warning.

His gaze drifted to the medicine shelves. A shipment had arrived the previous month—antibiotics, bandages, ampoules they hadn't seen in years. Always from the same donor. For years now. Always on time. Always roughly the same amount. No name. No way to thank whoever cared enough to keep sending them without ever revealing themselves. Tomas had never tried to find out. Some gifts were better accepted without questions. Questions had a way of closing doors that were better left open.

The back door opened. Reza. Forty-eight. Hair that was always a little too long on one side. A jacket with hand-stitched repairs across the right shoulder—stitches Tomas himself had sewn after what happened in Kosamaya three months earlier. Reza came carrying two thermoses of coffee. Without asking, he set one on Tomas's desk.

"The operation’s moving." He took the chair he always used—beside Tomas instead of across from him, as though sitting side by side made it feel less like giving orders. "Next week. The East Side safe houses are full. We need another site farther south."

"How many?"

"Twelve. Three of them are children."

Tomas took a drink. The coffee was too hot. He drank it anyway.

"The southern route puts them closer to the Sarayan lines."

"Yeah."

"If they’re discovered—"

"They won’t be." Reza said it without complete conviction. More like someone who had already considered the alternative and decided moving was still better than standing still. "You don't have to be there. We just need your signature on the medical authorization. We'll handle the rest."

Tomas looked at Reza's unopened thermos. "Dara leaves next week."

Reza didn’t answer immediately. He already knew. Tomas had never hidden Dara from him. "I know."

Silence settled between them.

"What do you want me to say, Tomas?" Reza asked at last, his eyes drifting to the cracked window. "That you can go with her?" He kept looking at the cracked window. "I can’t say that."

"I’m not asking you to."

Reza unscrewed his own thermos, took a slow drink, then set it back on the desk.

"My mother died last month." He said it in exactly the same voice he'd used for the operation's moving and three children. No emphasis. Just another fact that had been waiting to be said. "I couldn't get to the funeral. The checkpoint stayed closed for three days."

Tomas looked at him. Reza kept his eyes on a blank patch of wall.

"Everyone loses something. You. Me. The people in those safe houses." He stood. "The question isn't what we've lost." A pause. "It’s what we still have." He headed toward the back door. "The authorization's on the front desk." He paused at the door. "It can wait until tomorrow." The door closed behind him.

Tomas was left alone with two thermoses of coffee—one half empty, the other still untouched. He didn’t sign the authorization that night. But he didn’t put it away, either.

✦ ✦ ✦

V. The Old Woman — Dara

CAFÉ MALAM had closed for the night, but the front door was still unlocked. Dara sat behind the bar with a cup of tea gone cold, counting how much sugar needed restocking and how many bags of coffee she might never have to order again.

An elderly woman stood in the doorway, leaning on a wooden cane. Her hair had gone completely white, and the lines on her face looked like the map of a long journey. She peered into the café with the uncertain expression of someone wondering if she'd come to the right place.

"Are you still open?"

"We’re closed." Dara said it automatically, then caught herself. The old woman was still standing in the doorway, leaning on her cane, looking as though she'd run out of places to go. "But come in if you need to rest."

She made for the nearest chair—not the most comfortable one, simply the closest. Her legs no longer gave her the luxury of being selective. She lowered herself into the chair with the weary breath of someone who'd walked a very long way.

Dara poured the last of the tea from the kettle. It had long since gone cold. She set the cup down without asking.

"Thank you."

For several minutes, neither of them spoke. The old woman sipped her tea slowly while Dara went back to counting the sugar, even though she already knew the numbers by heart.

"Where from?" Dara asked at last.

"The West Side." The old woman set her cup down. "My grandson’s on the East Side. The checkpoint closed at seven. I didn’t make it through. I’ll try again tomorrow morning."

"Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?"

"An old neighbor’s taking me in." She nodded vaguely towards the street. "Not far from here."

Silence settled between them. Outside, the wind drifted past with nowhere in particular to go.

"You’re leaving," the old woman said.

Dara looked up.

"Those boxes." she pointed toward the corner without turning her head. "Half packed. Not sealed." A faint smile touched her face. "That’s how people pack when part of them still hopes they’ll change their minds."

Dara wasn't sure what to say.

"My husband packed like that too." She wasn't speaking to Dara anymore, only to the cup in her hands. "Before he left to join the resistance. He packed for days without ever finishing. I thought it meant he was having second thoughts."

She paused, blowing on tea that had long since gone cold.

"Turns out he wasn't having second thoughts. He just didn't want to finish packing. Because once the bags were closed, he'd really be gone."

Dara said nothing. Her fingers came to a stop above the inventory sheet.

"Did he make it?" Dara asked.

The old woman didn't answer right away. She set her cup down and straightened the cane that had tilted slightly against her chair.

"No." Just that. Flat and matter-of-fact.

Dara waited.

"He died six months after he left. My grandson's twenty-two now. I only met him a month ago, when the checkpoint opened for three days."

Dara wanted to ask something else, but she didn't know what. "Do you regret it?" The question slipped out before she had a chance to think better of it.

For the first time since she'd sat down, the old woman looked directly at her. It wasn't the kind of look that said the question was wrong. Only that it belonged to someone who hadn't yet learned there wasn't a simple answer.

"Every day."

Dara didn’t move.

The old woman glanced toward the half-packed boxes again, as though she'd only just remembered they were there.

"But I'm still alive." A pause. "And he isn't."

The two truths had lived side by side inside her for years. Now they rested quietly between them, asking nothing more to be said. With some effort, the old woman pushed herself to her feet and reached for her cane.

"Good tea," she said. "Even cold."

At the doorway, she stopped without turning around.

"Those boxes. If you've already decided to leave, seal them tonight." Another pause. "Dragging it out only makes it hurt longer."

She was gone before Dara could answer. Dara sat in silence for several minutes. Then she got to her feet. She crossed the café, pulled a roll of packing tape from the drawer beneath the register, and sealed the first box: Recipe Books. The second: Cups.

She stopped at the third box. Tomas’s gray jacket lay inside. Dara lowered herself onto the floor in front of it. She left it open. Not tonight.

✦ ✦ ✦

VI. Second Conversation — Both

TOMAS arrived fifteen minutes before closing. Not like he usually did. Not the way he usually did. Tonight he waited until almost closing, like someone who'd reached the front door but still needed to walk up and down the steps three times before knocking.

Dara knew he would come. All the boxes had been sealed. Except one. Tomas noticed it. The open box. He said nothing.

Dara poured the coffee. No two sugars tonight. Just black. Somewhere inside her, even the small habits she'd never had to think about were beginning to slip away. She set the mug on the corner table and sat down. Tomas took the chair across from her, leaving a more deliberate distance between them than usual.

"Tomorrow morning," Dara said. It wasn't a question.

"Yeah." Tomas looked at his coffee. Tonight he didn’t pick it up. The silence was different from the night before. Familiar somehow. Like ground they walked often enough to know where it gave away and where it was still safe to stand.

"I want to apologize," Tomas said at last.

Dara looked up.

"Not because I know I was wrong. I'm not even sure I was." He looked down at his hands resting on the table. "But I want you to know I understand why this isn't enough. You deserve more than this."

Dara didn't answer right away.

"You don't have to apologize for something you can't change."

"I know." He nodded once. "Still."

Silence settled over them again.

"What would you do," Dara asked quietly, "if one day you could leave?"

Tomas looked at her. He hadn’t expected the question.

"Maybe nothing would really change," he admitted. "The clinic's become part of who I am. Not because I'm trapped here. Because it's where I want to be." He paused. "But maybe I'd come find you someday." Another pause. "Before I came back."

Dara studied him. There was something in her eyes he couldn’t quite read. "I’m not going to wait for you, Tomas."

"I know."

"Not because I don’t care."

"I know that too."

Silence. Outside, the wind rattled the café window that had never quite closed properly.

"I'm going to blame you," Tomas said. There was no anger in his voice. Only honesty. "Not now. Later. Maybe without even realizing it. One day, when I can't carry all of this by myself anymore, I'll remember that you left."

Dara was quiet for a long time. "I know." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "I'll blame you too. Not because I hate you."

"I know."

"Because you'll be there, and I'll still be here, and..." She let the sentence die. Her hand lifted from the table, then settled back down. "That's the hardest part."

Tomas nodded. "I don't have any words left either."

They sat together in a long silence. Two people who had walked a long road side by side, now resting for a moment before it split in two. Neither of them hurried. There was no more time to be gained by rushing what little remained.

At last Tomas picked up his coffee. It had gone cold. He took a sip and frowned. "No sugar."

Dara looked at him. Something shifted across her face—not quite a smile, but close enough to resemble one. Not because anything was funny. Because she'd forgotten something she never forgot, and somehow that small lapse said everything neither of them could. "I'm sorry."

He took another drink. "It's okay."

The café closed at ten. Tomas helped pull down the shutters. He already knew which latch always stuck, knew it needed a shove from his left shoulder so they wouldn't have to wrestle with the extra lock. They stood outside the darkened café.

"Don't look back," Dara said. "If you do, you'll climb down."

He frowned.

"When I was little, I used to climb the guava tree behind Mira's house. It was tall. If I looked down halfway up, I could never keep climbing. I had to keep looking at the top until I got there."

"What are you talking about?"

She gave a small shake of her head.

"I don't know." She smiled without meaning to. "Maybe tomorrow. Maybe you. Maybe me."

Tomas looked at her. "I'll try not to look back."

"I know you won't be able to."

"You won't either." She didn't argue.

They stood there a few moments longer. No touching. No grand farewell that could pretend to make any of this easier. Just two people standing outside a place that had once belonged to both of them.

Tomas left first. Dara watched until his silhouette disappeared at the intersection. Then she went inside, locked the door, and stood in the middle of the dark café.

The boxes in the corner. Eight tables. No customers. She walked over to the third box. The one holding Tomas's gray jacket. She folded the flaps closed. Ran tape across them.

Picked up a marker to write on the cardboard. Stopped. The marker never touched the box.

✦ ✦ ✦

PART THREE: CHOICES

VII. The Decision — Tomas

THE AUTHORIZATION FORM was still sitting on the clinic’s front desk the next morning.

Tomas sat in the chair with the uneven leg. He still hadn't fixed it. He looked at the form. There was something he'd never told Dara. Something he never would. He was afraid.

Not of Saraya. Not of prison cells or bullets. He'd lived in Limina too long to be afraid of things that were concrete. What frightened him was something else.

That if he ever left Limina, there would be no version of himself waiting anywhere beyond it. This clinic. These patients. The East Side streets whose potholes he knew by memory. They were more than the place where he worked. They were the only place where he still knew who he was.

And he couldn't tell Dara that. Because it would sound like admitting his decision wasn't only about the patients. That part of him stayed not only because they needed him—but because he needed them. He didn't know whether that made his choice more right or more selfish.

He reached for the pen. Signed.

Lenna was standing in the doorway at the back of the clinic. She didn't ask what he'd just signed. She already knew. "Dara leaves tomorrow?"

"Yeah."

Lenna said nothing. She walked into the dispensary, pulled open a medicine drawer, and began counting supplies. Her hands needed something to do so she wouldn't have to speak. "We're running low on morphine," she said eventually.

"I know."

"Reza thinks another shipment might make it up from the south next week."

"If it gets through."

Silence. Lenna closed the drawer.

"Are you still taking the night shift?"

"Yeah."

She nodded once. Then disappeared back into the dispensary.

Tomas looked at the signed authorization. The ink had already dried. He folded the paper and slipped it into the envelope Reza had left for him.

Outside the window, the East Side streetlights began going dark one by one. Saraya's turn to cut the power today. Tomas counted. Three on. One off. Two on. One off. No pattern he could predict. Just like everything else in Limina.

✦ ✦ ✦

VIII. Two Futures — Tomas

THE FIRSTIRST FUTURE: He leaves.

He imagines himself in Aldara. Six months from now. A year. Dara knows the way to the market. He doesn't. She walks ahead without thinking. He follows behind, learning what it means to be the one catching up.

And then the faces come. Not vague faces. Halim, seventy-two, takes insulin every day. The Kosan twins, eight years old, have asthma that doesn't care what season it is. Jodi, still living with a shrapnel wound that refused to heal on its own. He would spend the rest of his life never knowing whether they were all right. And that—not Limina, not the struggle, not the LLM—was what he couldn't carry with him to Aldara.

THE SECOND FUTURE: He stays.

If he stayed, he would blame Dara. He'd already told her that. What he hadn't told her was this: he would blame himself too. Not for staying. But because there would be nights when he could no longer remember Dara's face exactly as it was. And that would feel like a deeper betrayal than any decision he could make.

He wasn't afraid of dying. Not because he was brave. Only because he'd grown too tired to be afraid. And between two futures that would both break something inside him—only one left those faces with someone to care for them.

Tomas lay on the narrow clinic bed until the sky beyond the window began to pale. He didn't sleep. He only lay there. Then he got up, washed his face, and started the morning shift.

✦ ✦ ✦

IX. Farewell — Both

DARA left Café Malam before dawn. A backpack slung over her shoulders. One small suitcase. The photograph stayed tucked inside her bag, untouched since the day she'd put it there.

Tomas was waiting outside. He hadn't told her he would be. Dara had never told him what time she planned to leave. Still, he was there. She wasn't surprised.

They stood on the empty sidewalk in the dark. The street was deserted. Somewhere beyond the buildings, the Marga River murmured through the city—out of sight, but unmistakable. Water moving on, indifferent to whatever happened along its banks.

"Where's the taxi picking you up?" Tomas asked.

"The main intersection. Salim said five o'clock."

"We've still got twenty minutes."

"Yeah."

Twenty minutes. Tomas had no idea what to do with twenty minutes. He wanted to say something that mattered. Something that would be enough. But every sentence he found sounded borrowed, words countless other people had spoken at countless other goodbyes—and they hadn't been enough for them either.

"I wanted to say…" He stopped himself. "No. There's nothing I can tell you that you don't already know."

Dara held his gaze. "Me neither."

Silence settled between them. The wind drifted past. Not cold. Just there.

"If one day Limina…" Dara began. She couldn’t finish.

"If one day what?"

She shook her head. "It's the kind of question that doesn't have an answer."

Tomas wanted to reach for her. They stood too close not to touch, and somehow too far for it to happen naturally.

Dara moved first. She stepped into his arms without ceremony, like someone too tired to turn the moment into anything larger than it already was—someone who only needed somewhere to rest for a few seconds before walking again. Tomas wrapped his arms around her. He felt the weight of her backpack. Felt the uneven rhythm of her breathing.

They stayed that way for several seconds. Maybe longer. Neither of them was counting.

Dara pulled away first. One step back. "Promise me you’ll be happy."

Tomas looked at her. He knew it wasn't a promise he could make. He knew she knew that too.

"I can't promise you that."

"I know." She adjusted the strap on her bag. "But I was always going to ask."

An engine sounded at the end of the street. Salim. Five minutes early. Dara turned and started walking.

Tomas didn't call after her. Didn't run. He only stood there, watching her grow smaller with every step—the backpack too large for her frame, her stride unwavering even though he knew she had every reason to hesitate.

At the intersection, she stopped. She didn't turn around. She stood there for a moment with her back to him, like someone who knew that if she looked back, she would never keep going.

Then she climbed into the taxi. The door closed. The engine pulled away. Tomas remained on the sidewalk until he could no longer hear it.

✦ ✦ ✦

X. A Matter of Minutes

DARA’S BUS cleared the western checkpoint at 6:03 a.m.

At 6:09 a.m., Tomas crossed the bridge toward the East Side.

Six minutes. Less than a kilometer. Between them, the Marga River kept flowing as it always had—brown, slow, indifferent to who stood along its banks or where they were going.

— THE END —

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Six minutes.

Less than a kilometer.

The Marga River runs between them.

Dara left for Aldara. Tomas stayed in Limina.

Yet one question lingered—not who was right, or who was wrong, but what becomes of those who remain in a city that never stops asking, and those who leave because they have nothing left to give.

Dara and Tomas's story is only one of Limina's many voices.

This novel follows another.

A woman whose name has gone unspoken for ten years. The man who returns across the river. A single night that will change everything.

The Way You Say Their Name is about the names we never find the courage to speak honestly.