They said that if the water in your lungs didn't kill you when you drowned... the coldness did.

- I woke up to a cold bed. The same bed that had been my only grasp at reality last night was now a cold fiend, cruelly supporting my numb body as I laid unmoving.

He was gone.

I closed my eyes, feeling the surrender throb through me.

Last night... happened. I had given it all up. The last piece... all of me... I'd given it away to him... and now?

I was stripped bare, naked and alone; Vulnerable.

- I had given up before the violin.

Pressing my lips together, I curled into a ball. I didn't want to do this anymore. I couldn't, but I wasn't done yet... he wasn't done yet... we weren't done.

We had destroyed each other, but fuck we weren't done yet. I could taste it in my mouth, could feel the bad omen seep into my lungs as I tried to breathe. He was under my skin, in my body.

Sitting up slowly, I pushed my hands past my face, through my hair, pulling at it. I could feel everything slipping through my fingers. I could see it happening; I was losing touch with reality, but I also couldn't stop it, but hell, why was I worried? Tony had been doing it for eight years and he was still around. Or was he?

My empty, cold apartment mocked me with its silence.

I cupped my mouth when a sound started breaking from it. I was sitting alone in my bedroom, naked after a night of having witnessed multiple murders, and after all was said and done, I had consoled myself by sleeping with the murderer.

The murderer who had brought me back to life.

The irony was macabre. The sound on my lips slowly died when it stopped just being hopeless sobs. No more.

My chest started aching and my gut deflated instead, creating a hollow sensation that only seemed to spread rapidly by the second until it consumed me. It took less than a minute; when it was over, I couldn't even cry.

No more.

Last night... last night had taught me that there was no such thing as escaping the inevitable. Tony was missing, but not gone. Those men had come looking for blood... and blood they had gotten. I had been looking for something to bring me back to life... and hadn't I felt alive yesterday?

My eyes fell shut. I didn't want to think anymore. Couldn't.

Silently rising, my body worked on autopilot. I walked towards the bathroom, coldness nibbling at my skin like a hungry scavenger. I instinctively avoided the mirror the second I turned on the lights. I finally knew why Tony had given up on his reflection. I turned towards the shower and turned it on. The whole of New York would be looking for me, for him, but all I could concern myself with was washing the aftertaste of his touch off my body.

Even though it sung through my veins, much like the feelings he had woven into my heart.

~~~

There was nothing. No news. No reports. No signs that it had happened.

It was as if last night had been nothing but a twisted nightmare.

Turning off my TV, I continued to stare at the dark screen. Nothing. By now it should've been all over the news. Four Russian mobsters found dead in alleyway. Police should have been investigating. Eye witnesses should've described me and Tony entering the alley. Big Brother should be knocking on my door.

But nothing.

There was a strange restlessness in my body, ripping at my nerves, the kind you felt when you knew something bad was going to happen. Any minute now. I was waiting, but for what? The police? My name to pop up somewhere? Tony? Something was coming, but I didn't know what. Something should be coming, but where was it?

I had bleached the entire bathroom after my shower. I didn't realize I had spent hours manically scrubbing the floor of my tub until I looked up and found my hands raw and red and my head dizzy from the fumes. It was almost evening again, silence falling over the city. And yet no sirens at my door.

Four people had died yesterday. Maybe even four and a half. I felt as if a part of me had crumbled away last night, a part I feared I'd never get back. But when had it crumbled? Before... or after?

Tony was a murderer.

My eyes closed, trying to settle the truth inside me. He was a killer. Soldiers killed, but only for peace. But how could death ever be the answer to peace?

Rest In Peace. They got theirs, but where was ours?

Yesterday something I couldn't explain had happened, some I feared not even Tony could explain. Those men... they had asked him questions... they had come looking for him, but they had been looking for someone else in truth. 'Where is he?'

Conflicted, the array of emotions that ran through me threatened to tear my already torn heart apart. I felt... numb.

There was a coldness in my chest, yet every nerve in my body seemed to throb with something. I recognized the sensation, even though I'd never felt it quite like this before.

I felt disconnected from what had happened in the alley, and very connected to what Tony had done. His reaction...

What was he connected to? What was his past, what had made him like this, what had made him a triggered killing machine hunted by glorified terrorists?

Never before had a question been more important to find an answer to.

But there was no Tony around to play the instrument who held all the answers.

I wanted to cry, but at the same time I felt... empty. I was hollow, but filled with so many thoughts and emotions and I just... couldn't... They decompressed inside my chest, forming a knot that tied my throat and tear ducts into a firm ball.

I ached to hold myself in my arms again. To remember the person in this body I was trapped in, yearned to clutch myself and feel myself still here, still alive in my own world.

But I wasn't.

In my journey to help find Tony, I had lost myself.

Oh...

Just as the first sob opened from my throat, as did the door to the apartment, the lock wrestling before unlatching. The footsteps halted the second my cries filled the silence.

"Melody. My fucking God."

Just like that they rapped against the floorboards as Dan ran towards me, throwing his fashionable leather bag carelessly away on the floor and dropping down next to me. I was seconds away from falling apart when he caught me in the very last second.

My... savior?

"Melody. Melody," He cradled me into his shoulder as I broke apart, sobs ripping from my throat in merciless, endless cascades. He held me so tightly... "Oh, Melody..."

"Dan..." I clutched onto his jacket, feeling the damp material chill my already numb skin. Snowflakes tainted it. My human radiator was cold...

"You're done now."

I had missed his voice. It was firm and currently non-negotiable in my ear. But I had missed it so much.

"Do you hear me, Mel? You're done with this now. I don't care what you say. You've gone too far."

Too far was a long time ago. And it wasn't far enough... "I can't..."

"Yes, you can. You fucking will." Dan pulled away angrily and gripped my head, cupping it harshly in his cold hands. His thundering eyes were so different from the warm orbs I usually knew. No more love and smiles. "Mel, I can't stand by and watch you do this anymore. I don't care what you feel you have to do, you're gonna listen to me now. It's time for some tough love. Do you hear me?"

For weeks the only sound I had heard was Tony's violin... yesterday, I heard him. In my ear... against my skin... against my mouth...

"I slept with him."

I felt Dan stiffen the second my words polluted the air, but I couldn't stop them from coming out. It was a truth I needed to say aloud... to admit. I had slept with him... I had done the unthinkable...

There was no coming back from this.

"Did he hurt you?" Dan questioned, his whole body taut. I shook my head, because the truth was... that, he hadn't. He had hurt me in many ways and I had so willingly let him... but last night, he didn't.

Last night... he had loved me.

But the love hadn't been for me.

Dan sighed. I felt him brush a hand over my hair and place a lingering kiss against my temple. "You need help, Mel. More than I can give you."

I closed my eyes and felt the tears fall. Wasn't that the hardest truth to admit? That we couldn't take care of our own soul. Our own heart. Admitting defeat... that we weren't a fighter after all...

"Dan..."

"What do you want out of this, Mel?"

My heart stopped. A question I hadn't asked myself in so long sounded so foreign in my ears. What did I want "I..." What did I want? What did I... want? "I... I want to... help him."

"Is that really what you want?"

I flinched. Dan's words were so unyielding, so sharp, like a blade... was it really what I wanted?

"Yes... y-yes, I do."

He looked straight into my eyes. "At what cost, Melody?"

Bang.

It was like something pierced through me. A bullet – the truth.

At what cost was I willing to help him? What would I sacrifice to save his tattered soul? My own? Everyone around me? My whole life?

My eyes lifted and met Dan's. Just like Tony's, they were blue, but a completely different blue. Different shade. Tony's were full of shadows and pain, and on bad days, thunder. Lightening. But Dan's...

"I think it's time you talk about it," Dan's voice softened a fraction as the last wall inside me crumbled. Or rather, the pile that once was the wall settled with dust. It was time; No more. "You haven't been dealing any of it, Mel. You need to talk it out. All of it."

All of it.

Before Tony...

Before...

"I can't," I whispered again. Were those my new favorite self-destructive words? I can't. Why couldn't I? "He still needs me..."

"Christ, Melody! Please listen to yourself!" Dan gripped my cheeks again when I started to avoid his glare, the truth too clear in it. "You're sitting on the living room floor crying, you're a ghost and I barely recognize you! When was the last time you ate?"

I had completely forgotten about food. I hadn't felt it in my stomach, had had bigger concerns than filling my body with sustenance. Again, Dan's words hurt too much. How much more had I let go of? How much more would I?

"I'm calling your therapist," He stated. Again, it wasn't a suggestion. He was taking charge of what was left of me and steering it on the right path. I was too weak to argue. "I'm setting up an appointment and you're gonna go. I'm also calling Carlos and turning you in sick on undefined time. All this shit ends now, Mel. Is that understood?"

I wanted to nod, but I knew if I did, I'd lie. It wasn't over yet... it was coming... I didn't know what, but none of this was over.

"I'll go to the appointment," I whispered, Dan easing with relief. And it was the truth. But I left out the part I couldn't say. The part I knew he'd refuse to let me do.

Dan didn't know was what had happened yesterday. What Tony and I had been a part of, what had went down in that alley. Last night we hadn't gotten a chance to talk, so I didn't know what was coming.

But whatever it was, Dan couldn't and wouldn't become a part of it.

That was the only truth in all this chaos.

"I love you, Mel," Dan whispered silently against my hair as I laid against his shoulder. I couldn't remember moving. He held me in his comforting arms and slowly lifted me up on the couch, laying a blanket over me. "I'm sorry I waited so long..."

I closed my eyes when exhaustion washed over me. A whole new fight was about to start and I wasn't sure I was ready for it... everything I had been warding off for six months was about to get dug out, a minefield in my warzone about to be stepped on.

I wasn't ready for it...

No more.

• • •

It's on rock bottom we dig out the finest treasures within ourselves and find the reason to swim back up to the surface again. With every gasping breath.