It was another one of their late-night sessions. The surface of the black coffee table was barely visible anymore, covered end-to-end by the pizza boxes and chip bags.

"Fucker," Caleb grumbled at the monitor as he pounded furiously at the buttons of his plastic controller. "Babe? Babe! What're shooting at? C'mon!"

"Baby, what would you do if I died?"

"...what?"

"What part of the question didn't you understand?"

"What? Like in the game?"

"No, in real life."

"Ivy, what the fuck..."

"Seriously, what would you do?"

"Ivy...what? What made you ask me this question?"

"Curious."

"Ivy...I-I-I-"

"Just answer! You would be sad, right?"

"Of course I would be! What would you do if I died!"

"Oh, I'd totally kill myself!"

"WHAT!"

"Yup."

"Ivy, I-"

"Feel like a shitty-ass boyfriend? That's 'kay."

"Ivy, I mean, obviously I haven't given it that much thought and it's still not something I'd wanna think about but, I..." his voice trailed off. When he turned to look at her she was already facing him; her big, beautiful green eyes gazed longingly into his, hanging on the edge of his lips for an answer.

"I dunno, I guess I'd kill myself too, okay?"

"Oh, baby, I love you!" she exclaimed as she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. After a couple of seconds, she pulled her lips away, and in a mundane, journalistic fashion asked, "How?"

"'How?'"

"How would you do it?"

"How would you do it!"

"I would carve my heart out of my chest with a bowie knife because it would be the source of my greatest pain."

Caleb was not ready for such a fast answer.

"...What?"

"Just kidding. I would wanna do that. But it's way too messy," she said with a giggle as she leaned over the arm of the couch and started sifting through her purse, and of course, Caleb found himself in utter shock by what she pulled out.

"What the fuck are those!"

"Cyanide pills!" she said with a proud smirk. "One for me, and one for you!"

"I don't want that!"

"I thought you needed an idea..."

"Ivy, I didn't think you had cyanide pills just lying around."

"Why? I'm me."

"Good point...But anyway..."

Before he could finish, she took his palm and shoved a pill in it. She lifted her pretty eyes up at him again. And just like that, he knew he was a dead man.

"Just keep it," she whimpered. "I couldn't bear the thought of you suffering. It's like dying twice."

He awoke from a funny dream. The reality was much bleaker. The blue pill rested in his palm; a pill as blue as the marina sky.

The lingering birds overstayed their welcome; in the frigid weather, their songs were more querulous, and without joy or warmth the way they sounded in the spring and summer. The green forest had gone brown and, in dying, left a saturnine aura over the fading colors of the world. Time spent outside was much shorter, interactions diminished, with the silence came a miasma, and with neglect came cold loathing. Within the frigid empty cells, the hollow prison had a plangent heartbeat, fading and quietly dwindling.

When it was lights out and all was quiet, Caleb could hear her next to him. Ivy smiled as she whispered softly in his ear, encircling his trembling fingers with her warm hands, steadying them as they held tightly to the item that would take him to her. He reached for the phone and dialed her number one last time as he pushed the pill to his lips.

He put it in his mouth as the tears began to stream from his eyes. He clenched his teeth and tensed every muscle in his neck as he tried to will himself to bite down.

"I'm sorry!" he cried as he let the pill fall from his mouth in a wad of saliva. Caleb fell to his knees and continued to sob. "Ivy, I'm sorry. I'm a coward, I'm sorry."

Grim softly approached him in the darkness as he cried, kneeling down in front of him and quietly gathering up the pill. Then, he stood up and backed away from him. When he returned to his cot, he made sure to embed the pill so far beneath his other belongings that Caleb would never find it.

***

Caleb approached Grim in the yard the next day after lunch. He stood alone by the gate as he smoked a cigarette.

"Hey," Caleb said.

"You can talk," Grim chided as he spouted a tight burst of smoke from his lips. "I almost can't believe it."

"Yeah, well, I guess I deserve that. What you did the other night. Well, what I'm trying to say is— thanks."

"You don't have to thank me, necessarily. I judged you too early. That route is not for you."

"Yeah, I'm a coward."

"It's not about being a coward. It's just that you decided that you had something to live for. It made you spit the cyanide pill out."

"But that's the thing. I don't. Not anymore."

"Because you lost that one special person..."

Caleb said nothing, but in his retreating pupils Grim could read everything.

"Don't you wonder why I have cyanide pills in my cell? They were a gift from my cellmate. I guess there's no sense in denying it to you. He was also my beloved. Those pills were our escape plan for if things just became too much. But I guess things were way worse for him, because while I was just beginning to see the light, his was fading. And then one day, we were separated. I had a physical that day and was gone just long enough for him to do what he did. He wrote a note to me. It said, 'Don't follow me.' When I saw him I realized how much of a coward I was. I guess he realized it, too. I couldn't do it, no matter how much I thought I wanted to. No matter how tiny it was, I couldn't give up the light.

"You may not think so now, but there's a part of you that sees a little light. A little part of you believes the story isn't over. Whatever it is, it's keeping you alive. Let it strengthen you. Right now, you're no good to anybody."

He flicked his cigarette and started walking back towards the prison. "But maybe someday you'll actually be ready for the way out."