I gathered the bag next. The passport was inside—old, expired, damp. A strange relic, given what I had just witnessed. I replaced it carefully, then collected the loose pages I could reach. Leftover sketches. Notes. Printed drafts. The proposal itself, annotated in Katherine’s sharp, uncompromising hand.
I took those pages too.
Then I looked over the ledge.
Katherine lay below in the courtyard, half-shadowed by rain and stone. At that distance she already resembled a tableau arranged by tragedy—a pale shape on wet pavement, a girl transformed into a tragic event.
I descended at a leisurely pace. That may sound cruel, and perhaps it was.
But I already understood that the difference between seconds and minutes would matter less than what I chose to do once I reached her.
The courtyard was deserted. The storm had driven everyone indoors. Katherine lay twisted near the base of the wall, one arm bent at an unnatural angle, rain soaking through her dress. Blood had begun to pool beneath her head, diluted by water until it looked less dramatic than it should have.
She was still breathing, but barely.
Her eyes opened when I crouched beside her. Recognition moved across them slowly, like something surfacing through deep water.
“Professor…” she whispered.
Extraordinary, the dignity people attempt even while dying.
I studied her. She was in pain. Terrified. Bleeding into the rain. Still lucid enough to understand that my presence meant the story had gone wrong.
Her fingers twitched toward my coat.
“Help… Céline…”
I could have.
That is the only honest way to tell it. I could have called for help. I could have shouted. I could have pressed my hand to the wound and performed the ordinary moral gesture. She might still have died. Most likely would have.
Instead, I thought of Céline’s face above the ledge—utterly bare in the moment she understood herself. She had looked stunning. That face did not deserve to be hidden behind bars.
I had spent my life collecting fractures. Here was one split wide open by survival, monstrous and grieving and more alive than any person I had ever seen.
Katherine made a small, wet sound.
Rain struck my face.
I drew the embroidered handkerchief from my coat pocket—white linen, my initials stitched in one corner by a woman my mother once employed for pointless domestic refinements. I had carried one for years because men like my father believed small rituals of gentility mattered even when their hands were filthy.
Katherine’s eyes followed the movement. For a single second, she understood exactly what was happening.
That understanding made the act intimate.
I placed the handkerchief over her mouth and nose and held it there.
Her body offered one last stubborn protest—a weak thrash, a sound swallowed by linen and rain. Her eyes remained locked on mine, wide with disbelief, as though even then she expected the world to honour what was supposed to happen to girls like her.
When her breathing stopped, the rain continued.
A life had ended beneath my hand, and the storm simply kept falling, indifferent and thorough.
I folded the handkerchief afterwards and returned it to my pocket.
I kept it.
Not as a memento of Katherine’s fracture.
