"I know you didn't do it," Mr. Steele said slow.

"She won't see me will she?" Josh replied putting his hands on his face, "she hasn't come into work she-"

A week, a week before explanation, a week of nightmares. 

"She's taking a mild sabbatical in Greville to get her thoughts together," he replies, "she'll be back eventually. You shouldn't even be here Joshua how did you find me? You know this is what's best for her...for me." 

Josh shudders, his toes digging in his shoes; or she won't.

Jacob Steele knows he is too thin, too pale, he looks weak and tired. And yet what can he do? What can he say except offer up a small word of explanation in the commonplace until she returns from gathering her things. While she tells her father it's a protection, he can't help but wonder who they're killing, her identity, or the man who has found in her a lifetime  worth adventuring on. 

-------------

"Where are you going?!" Uriah exclaimed as Josh pushed his way out of the box.

"I'll be right back alright? Just- Just hold on!"

There have been moments in his life when he's felt like every second was ticking away wasted. Seconds blurring, their individual colors melted into a cataclysm of uselessness.

And then there were moments like these.

Ones where his heart throbbed against the back of his skull. Every sense seemed heightened and narrowed onto a single purpose. He waited until the intermission, walking silently along the back of the hall, frantically searching for those pairs of green eyes to stare back at him. Frantically he searches, walking faster and faster, bumping into audience members, mumbling apologies as he pushes between rows of seats. 

"Mel?"

The house lights brightened, illuminating the rows of hundreds of people until-

"Mel?!"

The dark blonde of the girl in the back row appeared.

"Excuse me," Josh nearly yelled, pushing past the crowds, his hand outstretched for aisle C.

"Mel-"

The blonde stands by a young man, tall, handsome, broad in shoulders.

"Sorry," the young man laughed, "Can I help you?"

Josh looks breathlessly to the young woman beside him.  The young mans face changes, not colder, just intrigued. Gently he taps her shoulder.

"It's um-" Josh stammered looking between the pair, "Sorry- If I'm not wanted I-"

The girl faces him, "Sorry, do I know you?" 

Josh frowns and stumbles back a little, "No...no sorry, I don't. I just thought-" 

He happens to glance across the room to a girl was face is half crowded in the shadows, he sees the man beside her, the way his hand is on her shoulder. A logistician would spare himself any further embarrassment. 

"Come on, don't be stupid," she screams in her head trying desperately to get him to look up at her, "Come on, just look at me. I can't  tell you. They won't let me tell you. He's just a guardrail with an agenda. Correlation isn't causation. Josh come on- just look, just see me."

For an IQ 140 who works in security he seems awful slow to recognize it.

"Oh," Josh swallowed hard and backed away blinking as he stares, "You- You probably have obligations, things to do. Places to be."

The couple frowns and takes their seats again and Mel tries to fight forward with a large step. 

The security officers arm comes in front of her, as if protecting her from a car accident rather than simply stopping her from explaining. Mel opens her mouth in protest, eyes ablaze, she has to tell him, he has to know everything and yet- no words come out. 

"Melanie," her Fathers warning voice comes from a few aisle down. The two turn and look, sharing a silence, a hesitation. 

"Yes," Mels voice cracks in reply as she squeezes his hand a bit tighter, "I'm coming."

And Mel thinks Josh turns to look, as if he's heard Jacobs voice from afar. She used to believe he could pick hers out from a crowd. 

But if he does- he chooses not to come over. 

Apparently she was mistaken.

He watches in confusion, the swirling jackets and shoes, limbs and laughters. How could she just turn and leave? Theres something strange in the way she looks, like every part of her is being dictated by someone else, a stenographer to an invisible page.

He watches everyone trail away, waving a small salute before shoving his trembling hands in his pockets. If Melanie Steele was there that night, she isn't now. 

She doesn't look back.

--------------

She's still out there.

And as long as she is there is hope she will come.

So he tells himself.

She talked about the Channel Isles once, Paris or Spain, Gurnsey or London perhaps. The days are bleeding into madness, the pill bottles are refilling and memories resurfacing. He finds it hard to speak at work, he distrusts strangers and cowers at the sight of flame. 

And yet he lives, he carries on as best he can with his mind in another place. 

He keeps himself together by believing that when two people are meant to be they find a way despite the odds. He believes in loyalty, trust and code, but more than anything- he believes in her. He has to, or what else is there left to live for? 

----------

Weeks flying by in dreams, back to routine, back to mendacity of pizza crusts and street musicians. He still remembers where it happened. He had been sitting on his couch, the noise of the theater roaring above when the call came in. 

Her number- 

Could ten digits be more exciting? 

He takes a moment to collect himself. This is what he's been waiting for, just say what you think, all of it and she'll listen and for once she'll know the truth. That he's always cared. That she misunderstood, his stubborn nature obscuring the facts so blatantly adoring. 

"Mel!"

"Mr. Taylor?"

"Yes. Who is this?"

Quiet. 

"Who?" Josh laughs and leans against the doorway. 

"Sorry for what?" 

He used to love kaleidoscopes as a child, an escape from the world of pain, into a simpler one of geometry and shape. When one view was exhausted, one only had to turn the wrist a fraction of the way to see new horizons, new lives.

His back slams against the door, the ringing in his ears louder by the second.

He can see it too perfectly in his mind every detail, a car, a guard rail, red overtaking the green-

The phone slips from his hand and clutters to the floor, and sinking he follows soon after. 

"No," he whimpers rocking back and forth hands pulling hard on his hair, "no."

He feels his nails dig into his palm, tighter, harder than he's ever dreamt.

Let it be a dream.

Nothing but a dream.

A nightmare, he was well used to those. 

His mind floods to his childhood, begging his father to go back, to help save what remains of the car crash. To call someone.

How was he in the same spot again?

He hadn't asked for a loop, he hadn't asked for any of this.

How?

How had they found her? He should had been there, if he had only told him he could had been there. Who's going to pay for the funeral, who's car takes her home, was she awake, did she hold someones hand, why didn't she call, how did they get her phone, how dare they touch her phone, was she scared, did it hurt, did she hurt, who's going to tell him, why didn't they, how did they, is there anything left to bury, who, how- why- how- why- why- how-

"Here," her voice laughs in his head, he can almost feel the the warmth against his palm of her hand, and those words so comforting suddenly so painful"So you'll always know someone cares about you."

-------------------

"You haven't been doing well lately, have you?" Jack says one night as the moon hazes in through the window, "I thought we were doing better... you said you were doing better." 

Josh clenches his jaw, his back to his brother.

His eyes close tightly.

And flipping a switch he turns back with a smile, "Yeah? What you mean?"

 A smile that doesn't spare him the diagnosis of weeks of intense distress that keeps him homebound and paranoid. 

"I mean, I think you're taking this worse than you let on at least," Jack mumbles taking a slice of the pizza.

He closes the fridge after retrieving a cold can of coke and opening it.

"How do you figure?" Josh grins jumping up onto the counter, his legs kicking the air freely. 

"You're smiling too much."

Josh shrugs it off like an annoying joke, but he hasn't eaten. He shrugs but he hasn't slept all week. Because, it can't be true, it can't. So he goes on as before, sleepwalking through a nightmare he can't wake up from. He shrugs, but his heart skips like a needle on a scratched record, his head goes back and he feels everything drop. 

"Josh?" Jack says worriedly as his brothers eyes begin to haze, "Josh answer me." 

He feels his joints give way, his eyes clouding as he falls from the counter and into the quiet of the dark. Darkness free of the lights and sounds of a world without Melody Steele. 

"What's wrong?" he cackles trying to recover from his laugher.

She sighs, a fond smile, worried, "You laugh too much."

----------

So here begins torment. And as most torment, we begin it alone. 

Years of reprogramming simply to get out of bed. So was the last trial, the one that broke him over the edge more than all others. It is a sad truth, but those happy days we hold oh so dear often turn the coldest once something has soured their tone. The list of phobias grows, the disorders with them. And yet despite this, despite the thousands of tiny struggles another book must relate, there is healing. 

There is what comes after. 

He still wears a computer bag everywhere. Never takes cars anymore, only bikes. Every crash, every police car, and stop sign seems to scar the image of her grave in his mind.

He won't look at raisins.

Certain plays stop his breathing, certain buildings make him drown. Breaking glass sends him reeling to the floor, gasping, hyperventilating, buffering indefinitely on a screen of terrors.

After all, after five years, he sees the crash like a movie in his mind. He has answers he never wanted, all with that imagination she gifted him so freely. 

He cringes at yield signs, goes without a coat in Autumn, hiding a pair of white nike shoes in his closet. Burying pictures under floorboards.

But still-

There remains that hope, that one wish.

That someday, it might be more than just the accident, just the unspeakable. Something doesn't sit right as he hangs up the sweatshirts and takes out his suits. Something feels terribly hollow and wrong as he puts in the earbuds to drown out the street musicians and boards the A train on 42nd street.

The dreams, that nagging voice, they all taunt and tell him she's still out there. They tell him to get rid of her forever, as quickly and efficiently as possible. 

Melanie Steele is dead, and so Joshua Taylor as the man he was is too. 

Because without Mel, there is no Josh. 

He wanders, without purpose, searching aimlessly those crowded city streets for something he can't understand.

Returning home from work, he ignores Jacks calls on the answering machine. Reads another letter from Violet, opens another text from JJ.

Waiting.

He closes the window, he no longer wants to see the crowds roll by. Their little struggles and epiphany's don't seem so trivial anymore. But it's alright, or so he tells me. Life goes on.

If: It has for hundreds of years for millions of people.

Then: it will for him.

And so, tying those laces with shaking hands day after day, he treks onwards.

For the only reason he could. The only reason Joshua Taylor ever would.

For Mel.

THE END.