Mission Forensic
Part 34: The Night We Pulled Apart
Evening bled slowly into the campus, the last of December’s sun slipping behind the neem trees and leaving the pathways rimmed in a thin, winter gold. The final bell of the semester had rung an hour ago, but its echo still seemed to hang in the air—doors opening, papers rustling, laughter breaking out in small, unbelieving bursts.
Edward and Catherine stood at the edge of the main lawn, the exam block behind them already dimming into shadow. Students streamed past—some buoyant, some dazed, everyone looser now that the grip of theory papers had unclenched. Shawn was narrating his final answer with the conviction of a man who had invented biochemistry; Ahana let him speak for a full minute before arching an eyebrow and saying, “That’s charming fiction,” which only made him bow low and declare, “I, a humble artist, accept your critique.” They drifted toward the bus stand in their usual tangle of banter and soft arguments, leaving the two of them alone.
Catherine hugged her notebook to her chest, the cold turning her breath to thread-thin fog. “It’s over,” she said, almost to herself.
Edward watched a flock of mynas lift from the field in a single, rippling motion. “It is.” His voice was quiet, steady. Relief registered in him as stillness rather than celebration.
She shifted closer, shoulder brushing his. “So now we finally do what we planned to do—sleep till noon, drink coffee in mugs the size of bowls, and not open a single book for forty-eight hours.”
He smiled at that, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. The pause was too long not to notice. Catherine felt the first, faint tug of unease.
“What?” she asked.
He hesitated, then pulled his phone from his pocket. A message glowed on the screen. Ridhima ma’am. Office if you’re on campus. Urgent.
Catherine’s gaze flicked up to him. “You’re going?”
“She wouldn’t call if it wasn’t important,” he said. “I’ll be quick.”
Cold slid through her in a different way. “We just finished. Five minutes ago, we finished.”
“I know.” He tucked the phone away, already organizing steps in his head. “I’ll see what she needs and come back.”
“Or you could tell her you’ll come tomorrow,” Catherine said lightly, though she could hear the wire tightening in her tone. “Like a person who just survived December.”
Edward’s jaw shifted—not a wince, not impatience, just that small adjustment of someone aligning his thoughts. “It’s Ridhima ma’am,” he said. “And if it’s urgent, it could be… worth it.”
“For you,” she said softly. “Yes.”
He heard the fracture then; he always did. He reached for her hand. “Give me an hour.”
She let him hold it, didn’t look away, and for a second the old ease returned—their rhythm, their unspoken trust. Then she let his hand go. “I’ll head home,” she said. “Text me when you’re done.”
He nodded, grateful and guilty in the same breath. “I will.”
She watched him cross the lawn toward the faculty wing, that familiar straight-backed pace that made him look older than the rest of them—older not by years, but by gravity. When he turned the corner and vanished into the corridor’s cool shadow, she pressed her fingers to her temples, exhaled, and began the quiet walk toward the gate.
Dr. Ridhima’s door was open. The office lights threw a clean rectangle onto the corridor tiles, pages pinned to the whiteboard like small, silent arguments.
“Edward,” she said, looking up from a stack of printouts. “Good. Sit.”
He did, and the room shifted on a hinge from ordinary to consequential.
“The Bureau of Police Research & Development,” she began, “has floated a call for sponsored student-led projects. Three months. Seed funding. The Institute will support the best proposal we can put forward.” She slid a sheet toward him. “I want you to lead one.”
The oxygen in the room changed. Edward read while she spoke: timelines, deliverables, areas of interest—crime scene analytics, latent pattern recognition, triaging digital evidence for field teams. His mind unfolded, lit from within.
“You’ve been consistent,” Ridhima said. “Reliable. You can move work from idea to execution. I’ve watched you do it under noise.” She tapped the page once. “Choose a problem tightly. Draft a concept note and a short deck. If we aim for a pilot around molecular subtyping of latent trace or a lightweight fingerprint enhancement kit for field use—” She stopped, watching his eyes. “You’re already building it, aren’t you?”
He had the design in his head before he could answer: reagent stability at varying temperatures; a fold-out carrier with two-step enhancement; a phone-based capture template with automatic ridge-contrast check. “Yes,” he said quietly.
“Good.” Her voice softened, just enough to be felt. “Tonight, give me a one-page abstract and five slides. Tomorrow—review. If it holds, we’ll go to the Dean first thing.”
He nodded. The weight didn’t frighten him. It steadied him.
Ridhima’s gaze flicked to the door, then back. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
“I haven’t,” he admitted.
“Don’t be clever, Edward. Be efficient.” A hint of dry amusement crossed her face. “And tell Catherine you’ll be late. She’s not a fool.”
He pocketed the sheets. “I’ll message her.”
“Send the draft by nine,” she said. “And breathe.”
He worked at the end table outside her office, each slide assembling itself with the satisfying click of a mechanism seating into place: problem, field constraints, proposed method, consumables, workflow, expected outcomes. He wrote the abstract last—simple, sharp, unfussy.
At 8:57 he attached both files, wrote Draft v1, and hit send.
Catherine unlocked the flat alone. The silence met her like a question she didn’t want to answer. She set her bag down with more care than necessary, boiled water for tea purely to occupy her hands, and stood by the stove listening to the whistle. Steam curled against the kitchen window; somewhere downstairs a scooter coughed and stilled.
Her phone lit up once: Working with Ridhima ma’am. Will be back by nine.
No heart. No joke. No “I miss you already,” which was foolish to want, and yet.
She didn’t reply.
She carried her cup to the sofa and sat without turning on the lamp. From here the lilies by the window were only pale smudges in the dark. The day replayed itself: the last exam, the lawn, the way his hand was warm inside hers, the way he had already been partially elsewhere. She told herself she was being unreasonable. Then she told herself she was not.
By the time his key turned in the lock, the clock on the wall said 9:12.
Edward stepped in—tired, composure intact, a kind of precise quietness that would have calmed anyone else. “I sent it,” he said. “The draft. It… came together.”
Catherine set her cup down. “Congratulations.”
He heard the absence inside the word. “Cathie—”
“I know,” she said. “It’s important. It’s always important.”
He took a step forward. “It’s for BPR&D. If it lands, it’s months of real work. Real field impact. You know what that means.”
“I do,” she said. “I also know what tonight was.” She stood, crossing her arms without meaning to. “I wanted one evening. One. After weeks of not breathing, I wanted to breathe with you. That’s all.”
“We have the rest of the week,” he said. “We have the break.”
“And tonight?” she asked, a thin thread of anger pulling tight at last. “Do we ever get tonight?”
He blinked, the first hairline crack. “This couldn’t wait.”
“It could have,” she said evenly. “But it didn’t. Because when it’s Ridhima ma’am, you don’t make her wait. When it’s the Institute, you don’t make it wait. When it’s a deck, a draft, a meeting—you move the world. When it’s me—” She stopped, swallowing, the words burning their way out. “You ask me to be understanding.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” she said softly. “It’s accurate.”
Silence drew a careful circle around them. He held her gaze, breathing once, twice.
“This isn’t about choosing work over you,” he said, low. “It’s about choosing a chance while it still exists.”
“And this is about choosing me while I’m still here,” she said.
It landed. She saw it land. And for a second she wanted to step toward him and undo the strike, to say no, that isn’t what I mean—except it was, and not saying it would be worse later.
He reached for the back of the chair, steadied himself there, the way he steadied instruments in lab. “I’ve never made you second.”
“You don’t make me second,” she said. “I become it while you’re busy being perfect.”
He flinched this time; no one else would have noticed, but she did. The room felt smaller.
He tried again, softer. “Come here. Sit. We’ll talk. I’ll make tea.”
She shook her head, already moving toward the bedroom. “Not tonight.”
“Catherine—”
She pulled a small overnight bag from the wardrobe, the zipper’s rasp louder than it should have been. “I’m going to Ahana’s.”
He felt it before she said it. “At this hour?”
“At this hour,” she said, slipping her charger into the side pocket, checking for her wallet with a practised hand that trembled only once. “It’s ten-thirty. I’ll text when I reach.”
He stood in the doorway as she tied her hair back, not touching it, not reaching for her. His voice, when it came, was steady to the point of breaking. “Tell me you’re coming back tomorrow.”
She didn’t answer that. She lifted her bag, walked past him, paused only to slide her feet into her shoes by the door.
“Catherine.”
She met his eyes. There were a hundred gentler versions of this moment. She didn’t have the strength for any of them. “You don’t get to be surprised,” she said quietly. “I told you what I needed. You told me what couldn’t wait.”
The corridor’s cool air rose around her as she stepped out. The door clicked shut with the softness of an apology.
Ahana opened the flat at the second knock—hair tied in a knot, oversized sweatshirt, the calm of a person who studied better after midnight. Shawn’s laughter drifted from the kitchen; the smell of butter and masala told the rest of the story.
“Cathie?” Ahana blinked once, reading everything in a glance. “Come in.”
Catherine stepped into the warmth. The weight of her bag eased from her shoulder as Ahana took it without comment, set it near the couch, and flicked on the softer lamp by the bookcase. “Tea?” she asked.
“Yes,” Catherine said, voice fraying at the edges, “please.”
Shawn appeared in the doorway, spatula in hand, theatre softening into real concern. “Is everything—”
Ahana’s look said later. Shawn nodded. “I’ll make the eggs,” he said, and vanished, the frying pan clattering in reassurance.
They sat at the small table by the window. The city outside was a web of distant scooters and the occasional bark of a street dog. Ahana placed the cup in front of her. Catherine wrapped her hands around it and didn’t drink.
“I hate being the thing he postpones,” she said finally.
Ahana was quiet a long time. “He is good at carrying weight,” she said. “Sometimes he doesn’t see that you are carrying him.”
Catherine’s laugh came out broken. “He went to Ridhima ma’am. BPR&D call. Draft tonight. Slides. You know the rest.”
Ahana’s mouth tipped. “Of course he did.” A beat. “And of course he will do it well.”
“That’s the problem,” Catherine said. “He will always do it well.”
Ahana reached across and touched her wrist. “Stay here tonight. Sleep. We’ll decide what to say in the morning—when saying anything doesn’t feel like breaking something.”
Shawn slid a plate onto the table—a lopsided omelette, two pieces of toast, the kind of meal that tried to make itself useful. “We have extra blankets,” he said, too casually. “Top shelf.”
Catherine looked up at both of them and felt the ache slip sideways into gratitude. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Shawn said. “Thank Ahana. I’m the emotional support omelette.”
“Good,” Ahana said without looking at him. “Be supportive quietly.”
His grin flickered, softened, and he retreated, the kitchen light slanting across the hall like a small promise.
When the clock marked eleven, Catherine texted: Reached. Staying here tonight. She watched the screen for a long time before turning it face down.
Catherine sat quietly while Ahana fetched an extra blanket. There was no fuss, no flood of questions—just the calm competence of someone who understood timing. Shawn appeared from the kitchen doorway, hair a little rumpled, concern soft in his expression.
“I’ll sleep on the couch,” he said before Catherine could speak.
Ahana nodded once, already expecting it. “Yes. And no arguments.”
Shawn only lifted two fingers in a small salute and began rearranging cushions without commentary. It was the gentlest kind of respect.
Catherine followed Ahana into the bedroom. The room was dim, washed in a faint amber glow from the streetlight filtering through the curtains. Ahana pulled the comforter back and patted the space beside her, the gesture simple and steady.
They lay side by side, facing the ceiling. For a while, there was only breath—slow, uneven at first, then gradually syncing in quiet rhythm.
“I don’t want to be angry with him,” Catherine said finally, her voice thin but sure.
“I know,” Ahana murmured, turning her head toward her. “Sometimes hurt looks like anger on the outside. But it’s not the same thing.”
Catherine swallowed. “I just… wanted today. Just today.”
Ahana’s hand found hers under the blanket, not gripping, just there.
“You gave your best to this semester,” she said softly. “Your mind, your time, your calm. And you wanted him to meet you in the same softness at the end of it.”
Catherine blinked hard, tears warm but contained. Not spilling. Not breaking.
“It wasn’t about a date,” she whispered. “It was about being seen.”
Ahana nodded. “Yes. And you’re allowed to want that. You’re allowed to ask for it.”
Silence stretched—comfortable now, not aching.
Outside, a scooter passed, distant and fading.
Catherine’s breathing steadied.
“Do you think he’ll understand?” she asked.
Ahana exhaled slowly, thoughtful. “Edward is careful with the world. Sometimes too careful. He holds everything with equal weight. He will understand—when he realizes not everything should weigh the same.”
A pause.
“And he will,” she added quietly. “Because it’s you.”
The words settled around Catherine like warmth.
She shifted slightly, resting her head against Ahana’s shoulder the way she had once during their first semester, when homesickness had hit them both like weather. Ahana didn’t move—just let her be held by the quiet.
The night grew softer around them.
No decisions made.
No futures forced.
Just rest.
At last, Catherine’s eyes closed—not from defeat, but from release.
She would decide in the morning.
And the morning would be kinder.
Edward stood in the living room where she had left him, the vase of lilies carving a white silhouette against the window. He read her message twice, then set the phone down as if it might break. The flat was too quiet, the proposal too finished, the night too long.
On the desk, the certificate from the workshop leaned against a stack of journals, the seal catching the last thin light. He walked to the window, laid his palm against the cold glass, and let the feeling come all the way in—the success that had no one to tell, the precision that had no warmth around it, the sentence he hadn’t found in time: Come now. Don’t go. I can make this wait.
He couldn’t unmake the evening. He could only meet the morning differently.
He picked up his phone, typed and erased, typed and erased, then finally wrote the only thing that didn’t feel like argument or defence:
I’m sorry. I chose badly. I’ll be here at eight. Or anywhere you ask.
He didn’t send it. Not yet. He set the phone down again, sat on the sofa where she had sat in the dark, and kept the shape of the apology in his hands until the hour passed him into night.
Outside, December moved across the city with its small, clean cold. Inside, two flats held two different silences.
And in both, love waited—not gone, not sure, but steady enough to be found again in the morning if they walked toward it.
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