3-five months and a half

The room should not have existed.

It was not large - just four walls, a locked door, and every surface covered in her. Photographs of Amelia. Big frames and small ones, candid shots and stolen glances, pictures taken from distances she never knew about and angles she never posed for. Every season. Every year. Every version of her face that had ever existed in the world, arranged with a care that lived somewhere between devotion and obsession.

In the middle of it all, he lay on the floor with her photograph held loosely above his face, eyes tracing her features the way someone reads a map of a place they have memorised but cannot stop returning to.

"Amelia." His voice was quiet in the way that had nothing to do with gentleness. "Do you want to leave me again?"

He chuckled softly - a sound with grief running underneath it like a current.

"You want to leave. But I won't give you the chance." He tilted the photograph, studying her. "Wake up, little fox. Don't you want to know what your stalker looks like?" A faint smile crossed his face. "I come to your ward every day, you know. I sit beside you. I talk to you. The nurses think I am a relative." He paused. "Don't you want to see your twin? She has been miserable since she found out."

He set the photograph carefully against his chest.

"I am waiting for you, Amelia."

The room was very quiet around him. The photographs stared back.

✦

THE MORETTI MANSION

The Moretti mansion was warm in the way old houses are - not from heating, but from decades of people living loudly inside the same walls.

In a room decorated in deep reds and soft golds, Merlin's younger sister Lisa lay with her head in their mother Cassie's lap, staring at the ceiling with eyes that had not been right for months. Cassie ran her fingers slowly through her daughter's hair and said nothing, waiting.

"Mom." Lisa's voice was flat. "When do you think Amelia will wake up? You told me to wait a while. It has been five and a half months."

Cassie's emerald eyes - the same shade her daughters had inherited - moved carefully. She said nothing that answered the question.

Lisa exhaled. "If she doesn't wake up I will feel guilty for the rest of my life."

"Lisa -"

"Let me speak." Her voice cracked at the edges. "That day - she told me she was feeling down. She asked me to stay with her. And I -" She stopped. Swallowed. "One phone call from Angelo and I left. I just left her there." A tear tracked down the side of her face into her hair. "If I had stayed, she would still be here. Flirting with me, roasting me, talking too much like she always does." Her voice dropped. "I am a bad friend, Mom. I am a really bad friend."

Neither of them had heard the door.

Lina - Lisa's twin, quieter and steadier and always arriving at exactly the right moment - stood in the doorway taking in the scene. She crossed the room without a word, sat beside her sister, and pulled her into a firm embrace, one hand moving slowly across her back.

"Cry," she said simply. "Let it out."

The permission was all Lisa needed.

Her sobs filled the room - raw and unguarded, the kind that had been building for five and a half months behind a smile nobody had thought to question. Cassie kept her hand moving through her hair. Lina held on.

✦

THE DE SERIA MANSION - THE NEXT MORNING

Aurelia had not slept properly in three days.

She had felt it again last night - Amelia's heartbeat, sudden and urgent, pulling her out of a dead sleep at some hour she hadn't bothered to check. She had sat upright in the dark, one hand pressed flat against her own chest, breathing carefully until she could tell the difference between her heartbeat and her twin's.

It had never lasted that long before.

She came downstairs earlier than everyone else, moving through the house with the particular quiet of someone who did not want to be asked questions. By the time the family gathered in the living room she had already been awake for hours, turning the feeling over in her mind like something she couldn't set down.

"Morning." She moved through the room, hugging her parents briefly, her movements unhurried and easy - the mask back in place as naturally as breathing. "Dad, where is the driver?"

Antonio looked up from his coffee. "He went to his hometown."

She nodded once, already thinking past the answer.

"Aurelia."

Lorenzo's voice. She turned. He was watching her with the particular attention he reserved for things he didn't like the look of - his two-month-old daughter Camille asleep against his shoulder, one large hand curved around her tiny back. Kimberly sat close beside him, watching Aurelia with the same quiet concern.

"What is wrong?"

Aurelia opened her mouth. Then closed it.

Then she started moving - a slow circle in the middle of the living room floor, her lips moving slightly, her eyes somewhere else entirely. The room watched her. Bianca straightened. Marco, who had been leaning in the doorway with his phone in hand, looked up.

"Aurelia." Lorenzo's voice sharpened. "Stand still and speak properly."

She stopped.

The room waited.

"I felt it." Just above a whisper.

Kimberly was beside her in two steps, one hand on her back. "Darling. What did you feel?"

"Amelia's heartbeat." Aurelia's eyes came back into focus. "I felt it last night. It was racing - faster than I have ever felt it. It woke me up." She looked at her mother. "I have felt it before, once in a while. But it has never lasted that long."

The room was completely still.

Bianca's hand came up to cover her mouth.

"Are you sure?" she asked quietly.

"Yes." No hesitation.

The silence that followed had a different quality - not dread, but something fragile and almost unbearable, the kind that comes just before something either breaks or holds.

Then Lorenzo's phone rang.

He stepped aside - Camille still against his shoulder, still sleeping through all of it the way only babies can - and answered. The call was short. When it ended he stood with the phone at his side for a moment, his back still partially to the room.

Marco pushed off the doorframe. "Lorenzo."

Lorenzo turned around.

"The hospital called." His voice was steady in the way that required effort. "Amelia is awake."

The word landed in the room like something physical.

Bianca made a sound that was not quite a word and not quite a cry - and then her legs went, and Antonio caught her before she reached the floor, his arms going around her, his face pressed into her hair.

"Mia cara -"

"Get the keys." Marco was already moving, his phone back in his hand, his jaw set. "I will drive."

Kimberly reached for Camille, lifting her carefully from Lorenzo's shoulder without waking her. Lorenzo was already at the door.

Aurelia had not moved.

She stood in the middle of the living room exactly where she had been, her arms at her sides, her eyes very bright. Five and a half months. Every unanswered phone call and every sleepless night and every morning she had come downstairs wearing a face that was not hers - and now -

"Aurelia." Lorenzo's voice from the doorway. Quiet. Just her name.

She moved.

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