• Learn what's toxic for you. Not everyone can see it, but even fewer have the strength to get rid of it. •

I followed Tony.

Some place in my mind, I realized what a perfect metaphor those words were for the current of our relationship. I had followed him and he had followed me, but none of us had known where we were going.

But not anymore.

As Tony steered down a separate alley and I followed him, I knew after this, I was taking back charge of my life. I had been letting the wind carry me for too long, had been numb for too long, and Tony woke me up with a pain I had somehow still inflicted on myself.

No more. As of today, I was done. I was done feeling numb, done feeling pain, done... crying.

– After today, I was pursuing only my happiness. Mason hadn't loved me, Tony couldn't love me, and I hadn't even tried to love myself.

That was all going to change today.

I held on to the violin as Tony stopped in a desolate alley with shelter from the wind and the world. There was a steam grit that was melting the snow and creating a thick fog-like air, too dense and warm to breathe. Had it not been broad daylight, I would've felt unsafe in this particular alley.

But as Tony had said, 'I was safe.'

My eyes met with his back. He was standing quietly, eyes lowered to the ground, shoulders tense. The sky was overcast and yet bright, but a storm was rolling in over us. A storm that would only affect this alley and our hearts as my hand trembled around the violin case.

"You have to take it." I broke the silence and waited for him to react, to see his back tense up and his fists clench. Instead I watched him remain every bit as still as before, standing unmoving like a statue. "Tony..."

He broke his form only to lower his head more. His hair was tied up in that loose bun and the tips of his ears were red from the cold. I watched his white exhale fill the air five times before he finally turned around and met me.

"I can't."

Can't. I squeezed my eyes shut when it felt like a stab to the heart with an icy rod. He was lying again. It wasn't that he couldn't, it was that he wouldn't.

He didn't want her, but he also couldn't love me.

He was sinking so damn fast and I had to get off. My eyes welled up with tears at the pain. I felt like I was abandoning him – leaving him behind when he needed me the most.

But two casualties were harsher than one. I knew Tony didn't want me to drown either, but telling me he couldn't take the violin was killing me in a whole other way.

He was leaving me with Blue and I didn't want to swim anymore.

"Tony," My voice trembled as I slowly walked up to him. I held the case out. "Take it."

"I don't want it."

"Christ, Tony!" The tears welled over my lashes and I shoved the trunk into his chest, harshly. "It's yours. Take it, own up to it!"

I let go and Tony gritted his teeth as the suitcase finally left my hands. I breathed out and felt like a stone fell off my lungs. I took a deep breath and shook in relief as my soul finally got its release. No more Blue.

Until my eyes landed on Tony.

He was looking down at the case. With soft hands, he shifted it around and opened it. I heard a thudding in my ears. Adrenaline or my heart? I watched as he slowly pulled the slim violin out of the suitcase and let the suitcase dump to the ground. Thud.

The bottom string was still broken. She was still broken, but something told me he still knew how to play her. He could still make her scream more, still make her bleed if he really wanted to.

And the violin, too.

But as I saw him cradle it in his arms like an infant, I begun to realize... maybe he didn't want the pain anymore either.

Maybe, he wanted to move on, too.

"Play," I whispered. When his eyes closed, I repeated the simple word. "Play."

"No."

"Play, Tony."

"No."

"Goddamn it, play!" I screamed. I couldn't take it any longer. I was letting go of him so he could have her, but he was rejecting her, and it made everything feel so... worthless. I had not spent months trying to help him and fail, only to see him shove away his last hope of finding her. He would never find the closure he wanted without Blue. "You're going to play the violin, and you're going to find her. You're going to keep it because I can't—"

"Melody—"

"—can't keep doing this, can't stay, I have to stop this, we have to stop—"

"Melody!" Tony roared and made me cut my own voice off before it broke. I looked up at him and saw his eyes lit with fire, lit with anger, with pain. The violin was mute in his hand, but his eyes were singing his emotions now, pouring them out like rivers—

The violin fell to the ground with a clatter. Tony threw it down on the cold asphalt and I gasped as I witnessed what happened next.

His foot slammed down on top of the delicate instrument. The wood protested, the strings bent, and with a horrifying snap that reminded me of how he had snapped that mobster's neck, the violin broke in half, ruined.

Broken. Dead. Silent, at last.

I stared in horror at the mangled instrument on the ground. The thousands of dollars worth of money laid like firewood, splintered and ashen against the wet, melting ground. Just like the violin, something inside me snapped.

He had departed with Blue.

I heard his footsteps thud across ground. The boots that had destroyed the violin stopped in front of me, just as the hands that had last held the victim on the ground came to my face and cupped my chin. He upturned it and made me meet his blazing eyes.

"I can't keep doing this either," He rasped, laying his forehead against mine. His hands cupped my face and drew me to him desperately. "You're right, you can't help me. You can't help me find Blue anymore," His voice lowered, and then his lips stilled against mine. "I stopped looking for her weeks ago, Melody."

My breath choked up. My chest closed and my eyes jerked up to find his closed, his eyebrows drawn together in pain. He held me so tightly in his palms, clinging to me. Only me.

He had stopped looking for Blue weeks ago.

"Tony..." I croaked. This wasn't how it was supposed to end. Not this... not... him. He wasn't supposed to be saying this... she wasn't supposed to be broken on the ground... his lips weren't supposed to be on mine.

But they were.

I closed my eyes as Tony kissed me and held me firmly in his arms. Or was I holding on to him? I cried as we molded ourselves together tenderly, clinging to one another. I felt the world move outside and inside, something stirring within me.

He had chosen... me.

I gasped when I suddenly felt a wall behind me. I couldn't remember my feet moving, but Tony seemed equally surprised as me. He pressed a hand against the wall before hissing against my lips when my hands wrapped around his neck. Within seconds everything was culminating, exploding in a way I never expected it would.

"Melody," Tony breathed against my neck as my feet lifted off the ground, my legs hoisting around him. He had lifted me off the ground and I couldn't breathe, so I desperately tried to take the air from his lungs. "Melody."

"Anthony," I combed my hand through his hair. He had picked me. He had chosen me. I sobbed and couldn't find heads and tails in anything. What did this mean for us? Was this still the end or a new beginning? A different one from the one I had expected? Or were we fooling ourselves, thinking we could make this work? What was happening?

"Melody," Tony set me down on the ground again and I panted for my breath, still clinging to him. It wasn't blue he wanted anymore, it was me. His mouth roved against mine, tasted me, couldn't get enough of me. He wanted me.

Had I finally become his Blue, too?

I sunk my teeth into his bottom lip and felt the tremor go through me when it happened. I needed to know, needed to feel him meant it, feel him really choose me, and he knew. We both moved, and nothing then was going to come in between us anymore. 

Tony hoisted me up a second time as I unbuckled his pants and locked my lips with his. He grunted, and with quick movements, pulled my jeans down, just enough to allow us to join.

I cried as he sunk inside me. Moving, taking, giving, breathing against each other's lips in agony, we became one. Like we never had before. My nails clawed down his scalp, ripped at his hair as heat and pressure built between us. He was really here. I locked my legs around him and followed each driven dip of his hips, sinking into me. I was burning up, feeling everything.

Tony.

Tears fell down my cheeks. I felt him in my arms, his lips buried in my neck, his shoulders tense as we moved together. Together.

We had been moving together for so long separately, but now... we were finally together. We moved in sync, our labored breaths came together like a symphony and our bodies melted together in the freezing cold. Together.

We could do this, together. If we were both finally here, maybe we had a shot of surviving. We could fight, together.

I trembled and felt the feeling building inside me. Tony groaned against my throat just as his grip tightened on me as well. I clutched on to him and buried my face in his neck and whispered the words I was dead terrified of saying.

"Don't leave me." I held on tightly and sobbed when I felt his breath against my throat, scorching me.

"Melody," He gripped me impossibly tight and then tensed up as a garbled sound erupted from his chest. "Rya..."

The world stopped.

Every snowflake, every noise, every breath from each our lungs stilled as that one word stretched into infinity.

Rya.

Like a head emerging from a blue ocean, I heard the starved gasp of air ring from Tony's soul as it breached through the surface for the first time in eight years.

Rya.

– He had finally found her.

My hands unfolded from his coat and my grip around his hips loosened as Tony seemed to stay frozen. I lowered myself on the ground and didn't... couldn't look at him as I drew back. What was that feeling in my chest? Not pain... it seemed too easy to just be pain...

The icy surface of the sea he had been drowning in had finally broken. Eight years of being stuck on that lonely island, surrounded by blue, nearly drowning every time he searched for land...

He had finally found her.

Tony still didn't move when a single tear fell from my eye. We had been so close... so close. Oh, but that had been last moment, hadn't it. Now the world had changed and the winds had shifted. The seas had taken him on a course I couldn't follow. Wouldn't.

I needed land, and he had finally discovered the vast blue seas and how to find his way home.

And so therefore, I had to do the same.

Slowly, I lifted my hand and pressed it to his cheek. Tony's eyes were shut, but they squeezed harder and let a single wet line mar his face.

The only blue I would ever get from him.

When I moved, he still didn't move, but let me leave silently, stepping over the broken carcass that was Blue... or at least her previous home.

She had found a new one, and that evicted me.

But it was okay.

This was what I had wanted all along. To help him find blue, to leave him with her so he wouldn't be alone anymore.

And hadn't I?

I breathed out and let my last tear fall as I left the alley, leaving behind my past and the man who had finally found his true love, his past, his Rya.

And as I stepped out onto the street and headed into the cold wide world... it was open for me to do the same.

– We were both finally free, at last.

• • •

And so the fandom crashes and explodes as I tell you this is the end. There's going to be an epilogue to wrap things up completely, but you won't get anymore Tony and Melody for now.

... Until Hacker comes out.