"Your boyfriend's dying, Mal. He's dying."

"What do you mean he's dying?" Mallory asked the doctor, nearing him. He moved a step backwards, not wanting to be the object of her fury. 

"We thought it was the burns before, but as we dug deeper, we found out it was a brain haemorrhage. Something must have knocked him out in the fire, a plank or something. We tried to heal him, tried surgery, tried everything, but it's not—"

"No!" Mallory plunged for him but Ava and the security guards pulled her back. "He's lying. He's a liar, Ava. Jason can't be—he can't be dead!

The doctor rose to his feet, smoothening the wrinkles that had formed on his lab coat. "I never said died. I said dying. We managed to retain him in a comatose state. He's alive, but unconscious." The doctor picked his clipboard from the floor. "He hasn't got much time. If I were you, I would stop trying to kill a doctor who isn't God, and spend the last minutes with him. It's all he has."

Mallory was wrecked from inside. She was trembling. She'd toppled over the cliff of madness, over all the cliffs. Greif. Anger. Sadness, until she was on overdrive, like a turbulent bot who had been clogged with too many bugs and was about to self-destruct. 

She ran to the doctor before he could walk away. "But you can still save him right? You said it yourself, that I was dead and I came back to life. You can—"

"There are limits to what we can do, young woman. Yes, I did say you were dead, because there was no hope for you, but somehow you came back to life. It was a divine intervention as far as I'm concerned." He paused to search her eyes. "I hope your boyfriend is that lucky."

He walked away.

Mallory slipped down the wall and stared bleakly into the atmosphere. She couldn't cry. It was one of those moments that stripped you of the ability to do anything. Her chest clenched, her mouth dried, and all she could think about was the void that would remain if Jason were to go to. Cole's void was still there, and it was already large enough, to widen it with Jason's death would result in instant death.

"I know this is hard to digest," Ava said, stroking Mallory's hair. "He was my son too."

"Bullshit!" Mallory spat, to Ava's horror. "You hardly knew him, Ava. You didn't know him like I did. Were you the one who spent most of the summer with him? You didn't get attached to him—"tears poured heavily from Mallory's eyes— "Hell, you didn't love him!"

Ava looked down, pain flashing on her face. "You can't blame me from being absent in his life, Mallory. It wasn't my fault. It was Jane's."

"And that's why i envy you. Because no matter how much you hurt Jason with your absence, it wasn't your fault, but me. Me? it was all my fault. It was my fault he walked into that fire to save me. It was my fault he's lying in a bed. It's my fault he's going to die, and if anyone thinks for one moment that I'm going to live if that happens, then they've never been any more wrong."

Ava shook her head at Mallory, speechless. "You've got a little more time to spend with him. Stop mulling, and use it well. Do you want to come in, or would you rather stay here, and mull over a past that can't be fixed." Ava shrugged, entering the ward where Jason was in. "The choise is up to you."

She slammed the door on Mallory's face.

Mallory began to walk away. She couldn't for a second stand to look at Jason in the state that he was, breathless, on the precipice of death. One look at him, and she would instantly hate herself. All she would see was a million reasons why this was her fault.

But this isn't about you. It's about him.

Mallory stopped in her tracks at the suddenness of that internal voice. She didn't know whose it was, but It definitely wasn't hers. It wasn't—

He was with you all this while, Mal. He walked through flames for you. You have to be there to honour him in his last moments. Be there for him like he was there for you up to the point of death.

Mallory shook the voice off, but it continued to say the same thing, over and over again, torturing her until she lost it and turned in the opposite direction for Jason's room. She placed her hand on the doorknob, breathed loudly, and opened the door.

When she opened the door, they were all around his bed. Ava, Susan, and Diana. Mallory avoided Susan and Diana's gaze, for the fear that she might find a pernicious rage in it, for assaulting them and locking them in a room. She didn't even want to know how they got out. She'd hoped that they would never get out in the first place so that they wouldn't confront her, but there wasn't even an iota of hatred in their expressions. There was nothing related to her. All their focus was on Jason, and when Mallory neared the bed to sight him, hers was too.

She couldn't help but stifle tears as she saw the burns on his body, red disfiguring patches that made her want to run out of the room, and cut herself till she was covered in bruises. She'd done this to him. But yet there was peace in the way he lied, his hands lying on his chest in a way that screamed surrender, his face bearing a calm she'd never seen before. He'd found his peace.

"I'll go first," Ava said. She sat on his bed, stroking his hair. "If seventeen years of being in captivity has taught me anything, it's that life is not fair. And even now, seeing you like this, i still solemnly held that belief. I was meant to know you, Jason. My son. I was meant to make up for seventeen years of my absence. I was meant to be your mother." Ava paused for a breath. Susan touched her shoulder, urging her to go on, but Ava didn't, couldn't go on. Lips quivering, she pressed her mouth to Jason's head, and whispered a very soft "goodbye."

Diana went next. She didn't say anything for a while, just stared at him blankly. "What's to say, really? That we've been friends, that we've been more than friends, that you were the only singular thing that made my life less unbearable. You were there for me in the darkest of times. You remember that time when my father beat me to a pulp?" Diana stopped to let out a sad laugh. "You promised to beat him in the same way, too. Too bad my father had backup. Thing is, I love you Jason Trevor, and I hate that I spent my entire summer pretending that I didn't. I'll be honest. You falling in love with Mallory crushed me."

Mallory squirmed.

"But even then, I didn't hate you. I only pretended to. I don't know what people say to others who are dying, but I'll miss you, Jason. I'll spend forever missing you." She quickly wiped her tears and pressed her cheek to his face.

Diana ran into Susan's arms. "It's okay, Diana. It's okay."

Mallory nearly fainted when Ava told her it was her turn next. She barely got her feet to move closer to him. It was harder to look at him, and it was impossible to say anything at all. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She had a million things to say, but she didn't know how to say it, how to express it.

"You don't have to say anything." Diana touched her shoulder.

Mallory swallowed hard. "I-I have to."

"No, you don't understand," Diana retrieved Mallory's violin from behind, the same violin Jason had given her on her first day of starlight. The moment she touched it, memories assaulted her, of Jason, of the first time they went, their runaway from the paparazzi, their first fight, every single one of them up to the scene of the fire.

"If you can't speak it, you can play it," Diana urged.

Closing her eyes, Mallory sat by Jason's side. She took her bow, placed her chin on the chin rest, and set herself free. She channelled the one million things she wanted to say into just one melody, one tune, one song. She poured out every emotion, every pain, guilt, sadness, into the violin, its mesmerising cadence wafting into her heart to mend the holes in it, to fix it, piece after piece, person after person until she felt completeness come over her until she felt something shift, something bring itself into an overwhelming coherency.

"His vitals are rising," she heard someone say through the haze of her melody. "Call the doctor. Call the doctor!"

Mallory continued to play like her life depended on it. Because she felt like it did. She couldn't stop, and even when she felt compelled to, something forced her to continue, like an invisible hand aiding her to continue strumming the strings.

"Don't stop playing Mal," Diana screamed. "Hang in there. He's waking!"

More passion sifted into Mallory's melody, more determination, fervour, desire, life.

"This isn't medically possible," she heard the doctor say through the darkness. "Its like he's healing himself. What the hell. Get me my stethoscope... call Rosaline... get a gas mask!"

Mallory continued to stay in the dark world of her melody. She felt something rise to the surface, getting closer. But she was getting tired, she was losing it.

"Don't stop, Mal," Diana yelled. "Jason's going to come back to us!"

She would've stopped if not for the last news. Tiredness wore off, and the desire to see Jason again became her fuel. She added more aggression to wielding her bow, more ferocity. Then she stopped playing, not because she'd grown tired of playing, but because someone took her bow away from her, gently, intentionally.

She slowly opened her eyes and screamed when she was met with Jason's smiling face. Tears streamed down her face. Cries of joy reverberated through the hospital. Doctors and nurses were hugging and shaking each other.

Jason was back and he was smiling at Mallory.

"I heard what you said, Mal," he said, grinning.  "And yes, I love you too."

Mallory hugged him, and she swore it would be something she would do over and over again. It wasn't every day someone you were certain you'd lose came back to life. It wasn't every day her melody roused someone from the dead.