The only light on the eighth floor that night was Anna's.
Most nights, someone stayed late, project managers clearing briefs, design interns tweaking motion graphics, execs pretending to be too essential to go home. But tonight, they were gone. The floor was empty.
And she was still there.
Alone, eyes dry, fingers sore.
Not working.
Just... not leaving.
The screen on her monitor had long gone black. Her tea had gone cold an hour ago. The war room across the hallway, still dark.
It wasn't a burnout.
It wasn't even pressure.
It was resistance.
To what, she couldn't quite name.
Earlier, the day had unfolded like a checklist. Nothing caught fire, but everything felt slightly off tempo.
Ben had been quiet. Not the dismissive kind of quiet. The observational kind. Like he was watching a wind-up clock, waiting to see if it ticked one beat out of rhythm.
Sydney had sent her a direct message during the mid-afternoon workflow check-in:
"Nice pacing. Hope it lands the same tomorrow."
No context.
No smiley.
Just a bait.
Anna hadn't taken it.
Not out of grace.
Out of focus.
She didn't have the energy to parse half-compliments anymore.
__
Leah had been a lifeline that day.
Not by doing anything monumental, just by being where she was supposed to be. Anticipating needs. Catching logic gaps. Refilling her tea without asking.
At 4:12 p.m., Leah had handed her a folder, clean, printed mockups for the next internal sync.
"I included the scent capsule overlays," she said. "And added a narrative track on memory triggers. Feels more like you."
Anna blinked. "You wrote this?"
Leah shrugged. "I scribbled a lot. You made it readable."
Anna looked at her for a long moment.
"You don't know how rare that instinct is."
"I know," Leah said softly. "That's why I stayed."
By 7:00, the lights began shutting off in sections. Automatic timers VAST installed during a performative energy initiative no one remembered anymore.
At 7:13, Leah reappeared with her bag on one shoulder and a protein bar in the other hand.
"I'm heading out," she said. "You good?"
Anna nodded. "Thanks for today."
Leah hesitated at the door.
"You're not gonna sleep here, right?"
Anna gave her a faint smile. "Only if the lights stay on."
And yet, 30 minutes later, she hadn't moved.
Not an inch.
She was seated in her chair, head resting gently against the back cushion, the soft hum of the server racks filling the room with a kind of electronic hush.
She knew she wasn't tired.
Not in the physical sense.
She was simply... held.
Tense. Bound. As if her body had memorized the posture of composure so thoroughly it forgot how to do anything else.
__
The door creaked open at 9:02.
She didn't move.
Ben.
He stepped in like he expected her to still be there.
Not surprised.
Not smug.
Just... present.
He didn't say anything at first.
He crossed the room slowly and leaned against the far table, hands in his pockets.
Anna finally turned her head toward him.
The silence wasn't hostile.
But it wasn't friendly either.
He nodded toward her blank screen. "Deadlines already killed the glow?"
"I finished hours ago."
"Then why are you still here?"
She considered lying.
Then she didn't.
"I don't know."
Ben nodded once.
"I used to do this too," he said quietly. "After big pushes. I'd sit in the dark and try to remember why it still mattered."
She didn't speak.
He continued.
"Sometimes it was ego. Sometimes adrenaline. Sometimes... I just didn't want to go home to silence."
Anna looked at him, eyes heavy but sharp.
"This isn't silence."
He raised an eyebrow.
"No?"
"This is what it sounds like when your bones still think they're being hunted."
Ben sat down at the edge of the table across from her.
Not touching.
Not close enough to claim the space.
Just... near enough to feel real.
"You're doing good work," he said, voice low.
"That's not what you said last quarter."
"I wasn't looking properly."
She laughed, just once. Dry. Small. "You've always known how to sell a sentence."
"I'm not selling anything."
He looked at her like he meant it.
And something in her, something old, twitched.
Not desire.
Not nostalgia.
Memory.
Of the elevator.
Of before.
Of what she thought she saw in him once.
Anna sat forward.
"Why are you really here?"
Ben's jaw flexed.
"I saw Sydney walking out with a file marked 'Creative Bypass.' It had your name crossed out and mine underlined in red."
Anna stilled.
It was the kind of stillness that didn't look like shock.
Not a gasp.
Not a flinch.
Just the way a machine pauses when recalibrating pressure.
"How sure are you?" she asked, voice even.
"I saw it. She didn't see me."
Of course she didn't. Sydney never looked behind her unless it was to assess a threat or watch someone fall.
Anna stood, walked to the window, and leaned against the sill. Outside, the city lights blinked like they had no idea anything was happening. Or worse, like they saw everything and didn't care.
She crossed her arms.
"So this is what it's going to be."
Ben didn't answer. He didn't need to. The silence said it all.
She turned back to him slowly.
And there was no heat in her eyes.
Only clarity.
"I gave them a campaign that sings," she said. "And they're hedging bets. Not because it's weak. But because I'm the one who wrote it."
Ben stepped closer, but not too close.
Enough to listen.
Enough to witness.
"You knew this could happen."
"Yes," she said. "But I didn't expect it so soon."
Her voice cracked slightly on that last word. Not in volume. In precision. Like she hated that it had slipped past her mouth before she could close the gate.
Ben saw it. She knew he did.
But he didn't reach for her.
He didn't try to comfort her.
That, at least, meant he was learning.
"You didn't warn me last time," she said. "When the numbers changed and you let me walk into that review blind."
Ben's face tightened.
"That was different."
"No," she said. "It wasn't. It just hurt less."
He stepped back.
And that, finally, was the right move.
She let the words linger.
Then she looked away.
The quiet between them expanded, but it wasn't empty.
It was full of unspoken wounds, of missed apologies, of the version of them that had almost become something real.
Ben finally sat on the edge of the table near her desk, elbows resting on his knees.
"You think I don't carry guilt for that?" he asked.
She didn't look at him.
"That's not the currency anymore."
"What is?"
"Proof."
Her voice was cold.
But underneath it, he heard it too,was weariness.
The kind you don't show unless you forget someone's watching.
Or maybe the kind you finally let be seen.
Anna exhaled and walked toward the edge of the war room where they had left a storyboard printout from earlier in the week. She peeled it from the board slowly, carefully.
"Do you know why I stayed tonight?" she asked.
Ben shook his head.
"I wasn't working. I was avoiding the part of myself that wanted to hope. Again."
She set the storyboard down. "Hope makes you soft. And softness here gets twisted into incompetence."
Ben stood.
But didn't move forward again.
"Don't lose all of it," he said.
She turned.
"All of what?"
"The part that still hopes."
Anna didn't smile.
But something behind her eyes flickered, like the heat from a fire she hadn't realized was still burning.
"I don't have time to be the girl who left the lights on for someone who never meant to come back."
Ben nodded.
Quietly. Slowly.
Respectfully.
And that, maybe, was the moment Anna realized: he wasn't trying to fix anything.
He was trying to be present for what he had helped break.
And while that didn't make him good…
It made him human.
And for tonight, that would have to be enough.
He left the room.
Didn't ask for anything.
Didn't offer anything.
Just walked out like someone who knew not to stay longer than the silence would allow.
Anna sat back down.
The hum of the city was lower now.
Even the servers sounded softer.
She didn't open her laptop again.
Instead, she reached for her notebook.
And this time, her hand hovered over the page longer than usual.
Not because she didn't know what to write.
But because she did.
And it scared her a little.
Day Six.
I am not afraid of the dark.
I am afraid of who I become when no one's left to see me carry the light.
But I carry it anyway.
Because if no one else leaves the lights on…
I will.
For me.
She closed the notebook.
Let her breath out through her nose.
And for the first time that day, let her head rest back on the chair, eyes closed, not from exhaustion.
But from the weight of choosing to keep going.
Not for them.
Not for recognition.
But because she had finally decided:
She wasn't done yet.