That was the first dress Curt ever made for me by hand. A gift for our wedding anniversary.
Ten years ago, I wore it to a dinner and never came home alive.
Curt said nothing. Slowly, he turned his face away.
The panic in his eyes was impossible to hide.
His hands rested on the table, all ten fingers trembling.
"Impossible."
A murmur so faint I could only hear it because I was pressed against his back.
His heartbeat slammed through the silent interrogation room.
Once. Twice. Again.
Fast and brutal, like a sledgehammer cracking against his ribs.
A flash tore through Curt's mind: a rainy night, ten years ago.
Bernice, drenched in blood, coming to find him.
Lightning illuminating her features, melted and corroded by sulfuric acid, like some helpless ghost.
"Professor Baxter, I killed someone…"
"Stop waiting for her. Your wife… she's not coming back. I didn't mean to, Professor… my face just—it hurts so much."
"Professor, I don't want to go to prison… Please."
Back then, he'd softened.
For the next half hour, Curt didn't move.
No matter how Captain Carter pressed him, he sat as if turned to stone, not saying a word.
I hovered above him, watching, a thousand thoughts flooding through me at once.
The first time we met, I was wearing a floral dress.
He was carrying a thick anatomy textbook and walked straight into me. Before I could even speak,
Curt said, perfectly deadpan: "A blunt-force collision like that can cause bruising and subcutaneous bleeding. I should take you to the clinic."
It wasn't until much later that I found out he'd planned the whole thing—spent a full week staking out the library, waiting for me, and even got a friend in the medical school to help, all to make sure there'd be a reason to see me again.
Curt was never a romantic person.
Spending his days with the dead made him quiet, hard to approach. People called him the dissection fanatic.
But only I knew.
After anatomy class, we'd sneak off to the alley behind campus for offal hot pot.
He couldn't handle spice, but he'd order the hellfire level without so much as flinching.
"Liking someone means you want to do the same things she does."
He could replicate my walk perfectly, every little habit.
He knew every bone in my body—length, width, curve—and he'd even built a little plastic skeleton figurine scaled exactly to me.
He hung it from his backpack and fiddled with it every day.